Stephen Sizer & The Sons of Menelaus

by James Jacob Prasch

Stephen Sizer is an Anglican vicar, identifying himself an Evangelical and calling Israel an “Apartheid regime” that Christians should oppose.  

The supposed Evangelicism of Stephen Sizer’s contemporary Anglicanism is hardly that of Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Hooper, Tyndale or that of the Anglican martyrs who established Evangelical Anglicanism. Indeed, in the age of popular Anglican ecumenism, the Thirty Nine Articles of Anglicanism are long compromised. Much if not most of what the Anglican martyrs were brutally murdered for has popular acceptance, even among Anglican Evangelicals. Much less is Sizer’s Anglicanism that of a Wilberforce, or a Shaftsbury, who accepted the biblical teaching about the prophetic purposes of God for Israel and The Jews as is taught in scripture.

The first opponents of the gospel in The British Isles were the pagan Druids. Now the leader of Mr. Sizer’s church is one.  The Anglicanism of Stephen Sizer is rather the spectacle of a Druid who ordains homosexuals and lesbians and is committed to placing the blessings of The Anglican Church on same sex marriages now Arch Bishop of Canterbury. Now his Druid Arch Bishop with Bishop Harris of Oxford (who like Mr Sizer, claims to be from the Anglican Evangelical tradition) installs a homosexual Bishop in Reading right in the backyard of Mr Sizer’s own parish in Virginia Water. Yet Mr Sizer, like his fellow Evangelical Anglican Nicky Gumbel (who advocated the writings of Rowan Williams as devotional reading for lent), remains relatively complacent about the satanic hijacking of his own church and instead expresses his moral outrage at Israel, raging about an  imagined apartheid government.

The moral deficiency, and the lack of Christian integrity and conviction evident in Mr Sizer’s remaining in such an institution instead of upholding biblical truth and righteousness, speaks volumes about his twisted capacity to propagate the demonstrable lie that modern Israel is an apartheid regime. Yet it is the latter and not the former his web site is devoted to.

One would expect that a true Christian within the Anglican communion would be more concerned with the spiritual and moral bankruptcy of his own church than the alleged Injustices perpetrated by the nation Israel against a mainly Islamic population hostile to Christianity.

Once an institution becomes so morally abject, spiritually dead, and socially irrelevant as The Church of England, characterized by everything from the spectacle of  homosexual clergy meeting in Southwark Cathedral (where true Evangelicals were once persecuted), to a betrayal of its own beliefs, it is indeed what Paul describes : “Holding to a form of religion but denying the power therein” (2 Timothy 3:5).  This spiritual bankruptcy

reflects an underlying doctrinal bankruptcy where literal meanings are negated and texts spiritualized or confined to only being relevant to an era long past. From Rowan William’s consignment of biblical injunctions against homosexuality to a past age to Stephen Sizer’s consignment of biblical teaching on the land of Israel being eternally bequeathed to The Jews, we see the same pseudo-hermeneutic that will engage in everything from Gnostic spiritualization of texts to dismissal of literal future prophetic meaning in order to avoid taking God’s Word as it is. Indeed, such games date back to conflicts between the Antiochan and Alexandrian schools in the patristic era, but from medieval Roman Catholicism to modern Anglicanism the silly game goes on.

We of course do not deny biblical typology, uses of Midrash in the New Testament or literary allegory when the texts so demand. But this does not literal meanings (except in the mind of another of Mr Sizer’s fellow Anglicans, the  higher critical, pro homosexual and theological ultra liberal - Bishop John Sponge). The literally hundreds of Old Testament prophetic predictions, including those pertaining to Israel, had a literal fulfillment for Christ’s first Coming and on that basis alone, prophetic predictions will be literally fulfilled regarding His return.

Once an institution like the Church of England becomes as discredited as it is today with its homosexual clergy and pagan Arch Bishop or as discredited as the Roman Church from which it never truly fully broke from is today discredited with its pedophile clergy and the endless scandals of its hierarchy covering it up , such institutions must try to reinvent themselves to re-establish moral credibility. Since they are no good at religion (a 22% decline in UK Church attendance in 10 years with the Anglicans declining by 1,000 per week according to the Brierly reports) political justice becomes the manufactured moral crusade as an alternative to their perceived moral failure.          

As the theological lie that divine prohibition of homosexuality was only for a time long past, so the lie that the national promises of God to Israel are likewise only applicable to an ancient era, are counterparts of the same doctrinal theology which is no biblical theology at all.  Stephen Sizer’s claim of Israel being an apartheid regime is not only a lie, it is an obvious one, but more bogus is the convoluted hermeneutic by which he attempts to circumvent the biblical basis for recognition of a prophetic significance to the re-establishment of biblical Israel. 

I personally refused to preach in segregated church in South Africa under real apartheid.  Our ministry operates orphanages for AIDS orphans in South Africa and I recall what real apartheid was. It is not Israel where Israeli Arabs are protected by law, have full suffrage, and are conscription exempt that by any stretch of the imagination can be called apartheid. While income levels of Arabs are lesser than the Jewish average, they are no lower than many poorer Sephardic Jews, most Russian and Ukranian immigrant Jews, most Falasha Jews, and many Chassidic Jews in Israel. Their income levels moreover are substantially higher than most Arabs in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and even in many oil rich Gulf states.  Sizer conveniently omits this from his thesis as he does the fact that according to the World Health Organization of The UN, prior to the intifada, Arab standards of living in Gaza increased by nearly 350% over what they were under Nasser and West Bank Arabs saw an increase of 320% prior to 1967.  The source of increasing poverty now is the consequence of Islamic terrorism and the pilfering of international aid given to Arafat’s Palestinian Authority (which even former members of Arafat’s cabinet admit).

Mr Sizer’s fraudulent claims of apartheid, are of course supported by his fellow Anglican Desmond Tutu who shares religious services with witch doctors, consorts with Libyan dictator Mohammar Qadaffi (whose regime is responsible for the machine gunning to death of wpc Yvonne Fletcher on the streets of London) and who calls for the ordination of lesbians as Anglican priestesses. Sizer’s claims further insult the plight those truly suffering under apartheid governments, such as Arab Christians in Islamic countries. It is little wonder that so many Born Again Evangelical Palestinian Arabs  such as journalist Yusef Farro and Palestinian Evangelist Assis Shorush are so vehemently pro Zionist, with upwards of 20,000 Arabs – many of them Christian, voluntarily serving in the Israeli military to defend their freedom against Islamic persecution.

Arab Christians are safe no place in The Middle East to practice their faith not harassed for it except in Israel. No Islamic state safeguards the rights of Christians and nearly all Arab Islamic persecute Arab Christians. Yet as Mr. Sizer crusades against Israel and endeavors to make the establishment of a second Palestinian state (in addition to the one which demographically and geographically already exists in Jordan) Mr. Sizer does not tell  his devotees that Article 6 of the Palestinian Constitution states that this Palestine will be an Islamic state. And we know what happens to Christians in Islamic states – there are no exceptions. The work Mr. Sizer  does for advancing the kingdom of Satan through attempting to make  the establishment of another Islamic state is not simply that he is effectively  championing the cause of Islam and its dogmatic aims at global domination. Neither is it only in that he is wanting to see what can only be a Christian persecuting state in the land God gave The Jews forever, symbolizing conquest of the bible by the Koran. The real outrage is rather in that Mr Sizer seeks to make the promulgation of an Islamic imperialism   which says “God has no Son” and decrees death for becoming a Christian, an Evangelical cause.

If Mr Sizer wishes to see an actual apartheid, may I suggest he visits Malaysia where people are imprisoned for becoming Christian and where on the basis of race , someone not an ethnic Malay of Moslem faith is disenfranchised and cannot even study at a university. May I suggest he visits Saudi Arabia where the sentence for becoming a believer in Jesus is hanging or decapitation, where Christian women are flogged, and Christian children taken from their parents by law, while Mr Sizer and Mr Tutu say nothing. While we have 55,000 dead Christians in the Philippines, 200,000 in East Timor, over 10,000 murdered in northern Nigeria, and 2.1 million dead Christians killed by the Moslems by some estimates in Sudan, Mr Sizer decides to wage a crusade in the Christian church not against the Islamic counties exterminating Christians in genocidal proportions, but on Israel, the only true democracy in The Middle East where the religious freedom and human rights of Arab Christians are protected, and the only place where they can vote in free multi-party elections. This is to say nothing of the fact that Israel gives Arabs a far better lot in terms of income, longevity, health care, low infant mortality than they will get their own surrounding Islamic counties.

The hypocrisy and dual standards of Mr Sizer while astounding, is not surprising. It reflects the very core of his contemporary Anglicanism. While all Calvinists do not subscribe to the unbiblical doctrine of Replacement theology which contradicts Romans 9-11, the particular Reformed theology of Mr Sizer , like that of Peter Glover , clearly does. In his response to James Sundquist, Mr Sizer relates his views of Israel to his Reformed Covenant theology. Mr Sizer maintains that he does not replace Israel with the church but that dispensational Christians replace the church with Israel. He argues that there was only ever one covenant.

The Word of God however teaches that God would give a New Covenant and that this New Covenant would also be made with the House of Israel and House of Judah (Jeremiah 31:31), into which Paul said that believing non Jews would be in-grafted.

But given his demonstrable compromise on the ecumenical and inter faith issue, even Mr Sizer’s commitment even to Calvinism must be questioned. Many Reformed Christians would never condone such compromising antics with unbelievers and false religion as Mr Sizer does.

Satan does not want Christians ready for the Second Coming of Christ anymore than he wanted The Jews ready for his First Coming, so Satan raises up deceivers like Stephen Sizer to attempt to blind the eyes of God’s people to the fulfillment of eschatological prophecy.  Jesus taught us plainly that the Jews must be in Jerusalem to facilitate His return (Matthew 23:37-39, Zechariah 12: 1-10, Luke 21:24), and no true Christian will hearken to the hypocritical demands of a vicar from a homosexual ordaining church headed by a druid that we reject Christ’s teaching on Jerusalem, Israel, and The Jews.

At no time in history has there existed an Arab Palestinian state, and when they had the opportunity to create one neither the Ottoman Empire, The British Empire, the League of Nations, nor The UN saw a need for one. Simply stated, Palestinian Arabs were never seen as a distinct people group within the Arab world. In 1970 Arafat said “ Jordan was Palestine” as did King Hussein of Jordan in 1968. Only in Black September of 1968, when Arafat tried on the Jordanians what he has now tried on the Israelis, the British trained and equipped Jordanians systematically massacred upwards of 15,000 of them in 12 days and drove tens of thousands out of Jordan into refugee camps in Lebanon. I have yet to see the Israelis deal with Arabs the way the Arabs have dealt with each other.

The record is irrefutable. To cite but a few episodes on a very long list:

• The Bradford Riots
• Lockerbie
• The bombing of India’s Parliament
• The demands for the murder of a UK citizen, Salman Rushdie, for writing a book
• The Moscow Theatre hostage taking
• The Islamic slaughter of Christians in Southern Philippines
• September 11 th
• Murders of UK policemen in London and Manchester
• Islamic Slaughter of Christians in Nigeria
• Islamic slaughter of Christians in Sudan
• Islamic racial/religious apartheid in Malaysia
• FALN bombings in France
• The Lufthansa hijackings
• The Achino Lauro hijacking
• The Bali bombing
• The massacre of 74 tourists (including a small English girl) in The Valley of the kings.

If Israel did not exist, the world would face the same problem – militant Islam. The only thing Israel is really guilty of is standing up to militant Islam and its jihad, its terror, and its wholesale blood bath persecution of Christians. From Chechnya to The Ivory Coast to The Far East, there are three times as many conflicts involving Islam as with all of the world’s other religio-people groups put together. While the Saudis fund the construction of mosques and Islamic institutional all over Britain & Europe, including madrassas indoctrinating children in doctrines of militancy, the Saudis won’t allow a single church to be constructed in Saudi Arabia where Christians are routinely imprisoned, beaten, and executed. Mr Sizer’s response to the Christian dilemma in The Middle East: “mobilize Christians against The Jewish State”. 

Anyone wishing a fair, comprehensive and biblical perspective of contemporary Middle Eastern events is invited to order Moriel teaching tapes: “Arab – Jewish Reconciliation in Christ” and “ Israel and Islam in history and Prophecy”.

From May of 1948 until June of 1967, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, Gaza, and The West Bank were all in the hands of Arab Moslems. If the Arabs Moslems wanted a Palestinian Arab Moslem state, why didn’t they establish one when they had nearly 20 years to do so?

As Satan does not want Christians recognizing the prophetic significance of modern Israel, neither does he wish Christians mobilizing to stop the real apartheid, and the real war crimes in The Middle East – Islam and its orchestrated extermination of Christians, while Mr Sizer , while claiming to be Reformed, joined at Guilford Cathedral with his Islamic, Roman Catholic, and liberal Protestant allies in attacking not only Israel, but Evangelicals who do not share in betrayal of the cause of Christ at the hands of his Moslem friends who persecute Christians. Like Menelaus, who joined the Seleucids against his fellow Jews in the Book of Maccabees, Mr Sizer aligns himself with the enemies of Christy against The Scottish clergyman, Attrick Wilkinson likewise denounces Israel as “the bully of The Middle East’. I just returned from the Persian Gulf. If Wilkinson were a Christian in a Moslem country ,  instead of reducing himself to the level of a  prejudiced ignoramus Mr Wilkinson would know who the real bullies in the Middle East are. So too if Mr Sizer could experience the plight of Christians in Islamic countries he would know that the real apartheid in The Middle East is not in Israel.

A co equally pathetic demonstration of hypocrisy is evident among other of Mr. Sizer’s fellow Calvinists in both Scotland and in The USA. The Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) sees it clergy saturated with free masonry and liberal higher critical apostasy. Watching the moderator of The Church of Scotland on TV for a New Year address, he did not mention the Name of Jesus Christ nor the Gospel even once, but went on about everything from prison reform to social and political policies; everything except what Christ called the church to actually be and do. He had no more in common with John Knox than Rowan Williams does with William Tyndale.

Yet, the Scottish Calvinist Ian Gill derides Israelis as “blood thirsty grinders of Palestinian into the dust” , saying nothing of the corruption the Palestinian Authority perpetrates at the expense of its own people, nor the fact that Israel does not bomb Palestinian buses or target civilians as the Moslems do. Both times the mainly Moslem Palestinian Arabs were offered a state, with the partition in 1949 and by Ehud Barach, they responded with terror forcing the Israelis to act in self defense. Hamas admits if they get a state they will simply continue the ‘jihad;, not only against Israel but against the Christian West. Yet in the perverted reasoning Mr Gill shares with Mr Sizer, Israel is to blame, and Christians should side with the Moslems, despite Islam’s persecution of us.

In the USA, yet another Calvinist, Robert Shuller, the positive thinking guru of Crystal Cathedral fame who teaches that “Jesus Christ went to the cross to magnify his ego”  had the Islamic Grand Mufti of Jerusalem preaching in his church saying that “he would not  object if his grandchildren became Moslems. Shuller’s protégé, Bill Hybels likewise had a Moslem preaching in his church to explain Islam. I would like to see a Mosque that would allow an evangelist to explain the Gospel.

By no means however, do all Calvinists hold anti Zionist and pro Islamic theology, although as doctrinaire Calvinism is replacementist they certainly seem at forefront of it.

It is interesting to note that as organizations founded as Evangelical deviate from a biblically orthodox doctrinal position, they turn against Israel. We have seen this with World Vision, Christian Aid, and Tear Fund of New Zealand. Many Evangelicals find it impossible to even any longer regard such organizations as biblically Christian, even without reference to Israel.  In our much considered view, no saved Christian should ever support these organizations as they are no longer biblical and by and large substitute a gospel agenda with a biased anti Israel political one, often turning their backs on the persecuted church in Moslem countries to identify with Moslems against Israel.

If there was a man who knew about injustice and apartheid it was Dr. Martin Luther King who wrote: ”Make no mistake about it. Anti Zionism is but anti Semitism”.

Meanwhile, ministries not turning their back on the plight of persecuted Christians in Islamic countries such as ‘Barnabas’ tend to be sympathetic to Israel’s brave stand against the blood thirsty aggression of Islamic barbarism pandered to by Wilkinson, Sizer, and NZ Tear Fund director Stephen Tellestrup.  Mr Sizer however had one of his articles against Israel published by “Friends of Al Aqsa”; most people know that the Al Aqsa mosque gives its name to the  Al Aqsa suicide bombers. Mr Sizer indeed seems to have some very interesting friends.

The factual dishonesty of Stephen Sizer however is eclipsed only by his hypocrisy.

To join non Evangelicals in denouncing Evangelicals and to align himself with Moslems while the Moslems massacre our brethren in Jesus is something many Christians will see as the true mark of a Judas. While Christians are butchered by the genuine Islamic apartheid , Mr Sizer calls falsely calls Israel, the region’s only democracy protecting the lives and rights of Arab Christians, an apartheid regime. We regard Mr Sizer as truly wicked. If a cleric in a backslidden church in violation of its own 39 articles and in rejection of its own heritage, headed by a Druid who ordains homosexuals was really driven to moral indignation by wrong being committed in God’s Name, why does he not begin with a crusade in his own morally bankrupt and spiritually abject church? If as a Christian he is indeed upset by injustices in The Middle east, why does he not campaign on behalf of the millions of Christians murdered by his Islamic partners in anti Zionism, instead of against the one nation opposing these killers?

Mr Sizer is on an endless rampage against Christian Zionist organizations and even one Jewish Mission (CMJ). To be sure, Moriel has also been critical of a number of Christian Zionist organisations due to their  unbiblical refusal to share the Gospel of Yeshua with The Lost sheep of The House of Israel. Indeed , The International Christian Embassy Jerusalem is directed by Malcom Hedding, a bonafide heretic who said Jesus never came to die.  Despite the rhetoric of ‘Bridges For Peace’ , the only bridge for peace between Christian and Jew is The Jewish Messiah, Jesus, whom they refuse to preach, and Ebenezer Fund signed an agreement never to tell a Jew about salvation in Yeshua. What makes Exobus, ICEJ , Ebenezer etc. wrong however is not what they do, but what they fail to do. As much as we may disapprove of these organizations for their tragic compromise of the gospel, they are right in their support of Israel’s right to its biblical homeland in the face of the same Islamic terror that threatens the rest of mankind, and are additionally correct in recognition of the prophetic significance of current Middle East events. Other Christian Zionist organizations however moreover, such as Christian Friends of Israel and Prayer For Israel have not compromised Yeshua and are not heretical. 

The biased Christian anti Zionism Mr Sizer personifies always seems to ride on the back of Replacement theology which rejects the teaching of Jeremiah 31:312 that The New Covenant was made with the Jews, not with The Church. Hence if God is in covenantal terms finished with the Jews, He is automatically finished with the Gentile Christians, because He never made a covenant with them. According to Romans 11, they are in-grafted to a covenant made with the Jews. If God is done with Israel, He is therefore done with Stephen Sizer. No place did God ever make a covenant with the church. Again, this error derives directly from the Calvinistic error of Covenant theology which denigrates the New Covenant, falsely claiming with no scripture to support it that  God made only two covenants, one with Adam and one with Abraham. Hyper Calvinism lends itself to such blatant heresy and into all manner of doctrinal error, including reconstructionism, cessationism and replacementism.

Yet such faulty theology is not the exclusive domain of Calvinists. Elim’s George Canty, who is pleased to do joint conferences with a divorced and remarried replacementist hyper Pentecostal like Ray Bevan, authored an article published by Elim teaching that “Jesus Christ had no Jewish blood”. Last year Elim tried to revive the Toronto deception featuring John Arnott from the Toronto Airport Vinyard as its conference speaker. Just as with the extreme Calvinists, we routinely see replacement theology going hand in hand with other forms of false doctrine and demonic deception.

This year the UK Evangelical Alliance (an organization we see little point in recent years as it is so compromised and is in need of something more biblical in its stead) published

Two replacementist articles in its journal , but did not publish a counter point or responsive article. The Evangelical Alliance has long been under the domain of theocratic hooligans from the pro Toronto and pro replacementist camp and no longer fairly represents a balanced cross section of Evangelical Britain. The sway of drawing Christians to be against Israel, even at the expense of effectively supporting the Christian persecuting forces of Islam in the process is a visible goal of Satan and his unwitting agents in the church.  

Stephen Sizer is not the first UK clergyman to attempt to organize Born Again Christians against Israel. The first was Restorationist mouth piece, prosperity preacher, and Toronto Experience advocate Brynn Jones. Soon after publishing his anti Israel magazine articles, his magazine went out of circulation on the back of his Harvest enterprise going into insolvency. In early May of this year, Brynn Jones in the prime of his life was summoned to appear before a Jewish judge named Yeshua and suddenly dropped dead. Whether his untimely death was a judgment we can not say, but the collapse of his publication certainly was, and certainly removed him from the face of the earth.  

Despite the growing need for discernment based literature, we also now see the CRN journal of Mr Sizer’s fellow hyper Calvinist replacementists Peter Glover and Frank Needham going out of publication. As the Word of God says: “I will Bless Them that Bless Thee and Curse Them that Curse Thee”. Another is the Calvinistic Baptist Allan Morrison whose monogram against Christian Zionism was quickly followed by his being knifed in the back by his fellow hyper Calvinists and deposed from the pastorate of his church.

Stephen Tellestrup of Tear Fund NZ, Attrick Wilkinson, American Restorationist and Toronto Experience advocate Rick Godwin, Peter Glover and perhaps above all Stephen Sizer would be even more foolish to believe that they will be immune.

In the dual standard of a hypocrisy that removes the indictment for injustice of Christian killing Islamic countries and unfairly places it on God’s ancient people Israel, they play a very reckless game that they cannot possibly win. With the cause of the barbarian Islamic heathen who slaughter the followers of Christ and kill the kinsmen of Christ they may align themselves just  as Menelaus joined himself to the Seleucids. But Menelaus met his fate and unless they repent so shall Mr Sizer and his ilk.

To draw on the biblical anthropomorphism, “They touch the very Apple of God’s own eye” (Zechariah 2:8).