Trump Continues Down Wrong Path on Israel

I'd hoped since my last post that Trump might get better advice and pull back from defending the "Palestinian" cause against Israel, but according to this article on David Horowitz's Frontpage Mag site, he's unfortunately continuing in the same wrong direction.   The problems aren't hidden.  The "peace" projects have never worked and it's not hard to find out why, so how does it keep happening over and over again that American presidents continue to pursue the same old failed policies?

Trump Embraces PLO Fantasy
Originally from the Jerusalem Post.  By Caroline Glick:

If things develop as reported, then Trump is serious about embracing the PLO and intends to have his top advisers devote themselves to Abbas and his henchmen. If that is the case, then Trump is setting himself, his advisers, his daughter and the US up to fail and be humiliated.

The PLO is the Siren that drowns US administrations. It is to the PLO that America’s top envoys have eagerly flown, gotten hooked on the attention of the demented, anti-Israel press corps, and forgotten their purpose: to advance US national interests.

If Trump is serious about repeating this practice, then rather than repair the massive damage done to the US and the Middle East by his two predecessors, the 45th president will repeat their mistakes. Like them, he will leave office in a blaze of failure.

To understand why this is the case, three things must be clear.

First, the PLO will never make peace with Israel. There will never be a Palestinian state.

There will never be a peace or a Palestinian state because the PLO wants neither. This is the lesson of the past 25 years. Both Abbas and his predecessor Arafat rejected peace and statehood multiple times and opted instead to expand their terrorist and political war against Israel.

Why did they do that? Because they are interested in two things: personal enrichment – which they achieve by stealing donor funds and emptying the pockets of their own people; and weakening, with the goal of destroying Israel – which they achieve through their hybrid war of terrorism and political warfare.

The second thing that needs to be clear is that the Palestinians are irrelevant to the rest of the problems – the real problems that impact US interests – in the region. If anything, the Palestinians are pawns on the larger chessboard. America’s enemies use them to distract the Americans from the larger realities so that the US will not pay attention to the real game....

Trump’s election opened up the possibility, for the first time in decades, that the US would end its destructive obsession with the PLO. For three months, Israelis have been free for the first time to discuss seriously the possibilities of applying Israeli law to all or parts of Judea and Samaria. And a massive majority of Israelis support doing just that.

On the Palestinian side as well, Trump’s election empowered the people who have been living under the jackboot of Abbas and his cronies to think about the possibility of living at peace with Israel in a post-PLO era. Polling results indicate that they too are eager to move beyond the Palestinian statehood chimera

But now, it appears that Trump has been convinced to embrace the PLO obsession. The same entrenched bureaucrats at the State Department and the same foreign policy establishment in Washington that brought the US nothing but failure in the Middle East for a generation appear to have captivated Trump’s foreign policy. They have convinced him it is better to devote his top advisers to repeating the mistakes of his predecessors than to devote his energies and theirs to fixing the mess that Obama and George W. Bush left him with. They have gotten him to believe that it is better to empower the PLO than develop coherent strategies and plans for dealing with the problems of the region that actually endanger US interests and imperil the security and safety of the American people.

How disappointing

We can't recover America's Greatness by oppressing Israel.

Uh oh.  Trump is telling Israel to cool it about building settlements on "Palestinian" land.  Sounds like the Islam lobby got to him.  Big mistake, capitulating to a lie.  There is no Palestinian land in that area, for starters, and there is no Palestinian people.  It's all a political invention.  The very idea of a "peace" in the Middle East is a big fat delusion.  The Muslim world has said in so many words they want Israel dead, they do not want peace.  They have refused every peace plan offered.  They draw their maps without a hint that Israel ever existed.  You can't negotiate a genuine peace and it's futile to keep trying.  To ask Israel to pull back on their settlements for the sake of an impossible peace is to betray Israel. 

Rather adds to my forebodings in the previous post.

The Church does inherit many of the promises to Israel but God still has a plan for Israel

Back in the late 80's and early 90's, when I was still a new Christian, all I ever heard was the pro-Israel or Christian Zionist point of view. I heard it in Church and in Bible Study and in parachurch organizations and in the popular books of the day.

At first it was exciting to hear about fulfilled prophecy, but eventually it started to bother me as it seemed to relegate the Church to some sort of afterthought of God's while supposedly His main concern was always the nation of Israel. The Church just sort of interrupted His plan but after "The Church Age" is over we are to expect that He would resume His dealings with Israel.

 I'd done a lot of reading on my way to Christian belief and always found that the Church was the whole point of redemptive history, not some afterthought.  So this emphasis on Israel was starting to get to me. Since then the Reformed churches have become more influential and now the Christian Zionists complain that we're making Israel irrelevant, and call the theology that I'd always regarded as orthodox traditional theology by the pejorative term Replacement Theology.

Jan Markell sent along another piece on the subject of Israel, this one objecting strenuously to "Replacement Theology" as the devil's work within the Church against Israel, "Christian" Palestinianism: More Lies From the Pit of Hell by Geri Ungarean for the website Rapture Ready.

I wrote an article on Replacement Theology not too long ago. The main proponents of this lie from the pit are the main stream denominations - Presbyterian Church USA, Lutheran, Methodist and some Baptist churches, among others. The Catholic Church has been teaching RT since its inception...

We can see the finger prints of Satan in every church who is turning its back on God’s Holy Word. There is a new outcry from the pulpits of the PC crowd.

They yell, “Free Palestine! Israel is occupying land which is not theirs! Israel is an apartheid state! Down with Israel! Boycott products made in Israel!” They compare Israel with Hitler’s SS. To them, Israel is the oppressor, and are occupiers of their own land.

I agree with her that such accusations of Israel are very wrong, as I just wrote in a previous post, and it's fair to call it the work of Satan too, but I disagree that any of this has to do with theology. Apparently some kind of theological excuse for denouncing Israel is made in those pulpits, but it's hard to see how they could use Replacement Theology for that purpose;  probably it's more along the lines of the typical liberal misuse of the teachings about love and kindness and the denial of the right to self-defense, such as were directed against Israel in the film I discussed in the previous post.

Again, what does Replacement Theology have to do with whether or not Israel is at fault as they claim?

Interestingly most of the churches Ms. Ungarean lists are known as liberal churches, but what she calls "Replacement Theology" is taught in conservative churches as well, particularly Reformed or Calvinist churches.

I've never wanted to get very deep into this controversy, but every time it comes up and I post something on it I am forced to learn a little bit more about it.   I don't enjoy it, the disputes can be rancorous.   I recently listened to some dispensationalist arguments against Replacement Theology at Sermon Audio but I'll never be able to learn enough to have more than a broad grasp of the issues.

They often start off saying something like "Replacement Theology is the belief that God is finished with Israel, that He cast them off for their sins and particularly their rejection of the Messiah, so now the promises He gave to Israel all belong to the Church."  Then if their focus is on Covenant Theology, the theology of the Reformed or Calvinist churches, they'll go on to characterize Replacement Theology as related to Amillennialism and the allegorizing of scripture. 

None of this addresses any of my own concerns.  I strenuously oppose Amillennialism, have never seen any reasonable excuse for allegorizing anything in scripture, don't believe that God has completely cast off Israel, and I continue to appreciate the insistence of the Dispensationalists on the literal interpretation of numbers in scripture (if it says "a thousand years" it means a thousand years and not just "a long time" and so on.)  

And yet I do think that many of the Old Testament references to Israel refer to the Church.  I think this because I think this is what the New Testament says.

Geri Ungurean continues:

Another NEWSFLASH: God Himself is a Zionist.

“For the Lord has chosen Zion; He has desired it for His habitation. ‘This is My resting place forever; Here I will dwell, for I have desired it. I will abundantly bless her provision; I will satisfy her needy with bread.

Her priests also I will clothe with salvation, and her godly ones will sing aloud for joy. There I will cause the horn of David to spring forth; I have prepared a lamp for Mine anointed. His enemies I will clothe with shame, but upon himself his crown shall shine’” (Psalm 132:13-18).

Such a flat statement applying this passage to ethnic Israel is simply not true. The New Testament refers to Zion in spiritual terms as the heavenly Jerusalem, and specifically not a something of the senses that could be touched:

Heb 12:18  For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest...,   Heb 12:22  But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,

This is the dwelling place of the living God, not earthly Zion. He dwells in His people as the New Testament says, not in buildings made of stone or on earthly mountains. And what could the "horn of David" refer to but the Messiah?

Here's what Matthew Henry says:

Here will I dwell, for here he adhered to his principle, It is good for me to be near to God. Zion must be here looked upon as a type of the gospel-church, which is called Mount Zion (Heb. 12:22), and in it what is here said of Zion has its full accomplishment. Zion was long since ploughed as a field, but the church of Christ is the house of the living God (1 Tim. 3:15), and it is his rest for ever, and shall be blessed with his presence always, even to the end of the world. The delight God takes in his church, and the continuance of his presence with his church, are the comfort and joy of all its members.

Ms. Ungurean's article continues with more analysis of Political Correctness in the churches and Christian Palestinianism, and I agree with her in general about the errors there, but my interest is more in the meaning of Replacement Theology.

As I say above I believe that the New Testament requires us to interpret many of the references to Israel, Zion, and other terms in the Old Testament, as applying to the Church because they all point toward the coming of the Messiah and the fulfillment of God's plan of redemption in a heavenly and not an earthly Jerusalem. There is a general complaint by the Dispensationalists that we "spiritualize" the Old Testament references to Israel, but in fact it's the New Testament itself that spiritualizes them.

The New Testament also clarifies that Abraham himself was not looking to earthly Israel as the promised land but to a better country, that is, a heavenly promised land:

Hebrews 11: 9  By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: 10  For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God...
13  These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.  14  For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country.15  And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. 16  But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.

Paul in Galatians 6:16 refers to "the Israel of God" in a context that clearly defines it as referring to the Church, to believers in the Messiah:

Gal 6:14-16  But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.  15  For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.   16  And as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.

Although this passage is often disputed it seems to me that the Israel of God can only be believers, certainly not unbelievers, and if it's believing Jews then they are part of the Church just as believing Gentiles are, and they can't therefore be a different group from those who "walk according to this rule" and that includes all believers, both Jew and Gentile.

Then another distinction is made between ethnic Jews and believing Jews, further "spiritualizing" terms that are earthly or fleshly in the Old Testament, including circumcision:

For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh:

There are also all those New Testament passages that show the Church to be God's chosen people:

Eph 1 4  According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:

2 Thess 2:13  But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:

James 2 5  Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him?

1 Peter 2:9 But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light:

Concerning the covenant with Abraham the New Testament is clear that all who live by faith in Christ are inheritors of that covenant, though it could possibly also be said that as long as this earth exists the land of Canaan was clearly given to the physical descendants of Abraham. The only problem there is that it is an everlasting covenant and we know from other scripture that this earth is passing away, and the "everlasting" covenant could therefore only be the spiritual covenant, the covenant with the Church.

Here's Matthew Henry again:

GENESIS 17:6-7 Here is, I. The continuance of the covenant, intimated in three things:-1. It is established; not to be altered nor revoked. It is fixed, it is ratified, it is made as firm as the divine power and truth can make it. 2. It is entailed; it is a covenant, not with Abraham only (then it would die with him), but with his seed after him, not only his seed after the flesh, but his spiritual seed. 3. It is everlasting in the evangelical sense and meaning of it. The covenant of grace is everlasting. It is from everlasting in the counsels of it, and to everlasting in the consequences of it; and the external administration of it is transmitted with the seal of it to the seed of believers, and the internal administration of it by the Spirit of Christ's seed in every age. II. The contents of the covenant: it is a covenant of promises, exceedingly great and precious promises. Here are two which indeed are all-sufficient:-1. That God would be their God, v. 7, 8. All the privileges of the covenant, all its joys and all its hopes, are summed up in this. A man needs desire no more than this to make him happy. What God is himself, that he will be to his people: his wisdom theirs, to guide and counsel them; his power theirs, to protect and support them; his goodness theirs, to supply and comfort them. What faithful worshippers can expect from the God they serve believers shall find in God as theirs. This is enough, yet not all.

2. That Canaan should be their everlasting possession, v. 8. God had before promised this land to Abraham and his seed, ch. 15:18. But here, where it is promised for an everlasting possession, surely it must be looked upon as a type of heaven's happiness, that everlasting rest which remains for the people of God, Heb. 4:9. This is that better country to which Abraham had an eye, and the grant of which was that which answered to the vast extent and compass of that promise, that God would be to them a God; so that, if God had not prepared and designed this, he would have been ashamed to be called their God, Heb. 11:16. As the land of Canaan was secured to the seed of Abraham according to the flesh, so heaven is secured to all his spiritual seed, by a covenant, and for a possession, truly everlasting. The offer of this eternal life is made in the word, and confirmed by the sacraments, to all that are under the external administration of the covenant; and the earnest of it is given to all believers, Eph. 1:14. Canaan is here said to be the land wherein Abraham was a stranger; and the heavenly Canaan is a land to which we are strangers, for it does not yet appear what we shall be.

In all of this there is no necessary idea that God is completely through with Israel and I don't see anything in scripture that says so. There are passages that speak of their failure to uphold their end of the covenant but there are passages that promise that He won't abandon them completely anyway, and how much of that refers to the Church I really don't know. We know from Romans 9 through 11 that He plans to save "all Israel" in the end and that definitely refers to earthly Israel. That to my mind is enough to give earthly Israel a place in God's plan. and I can't ignore the fact that their defeat of the Arab states who attacked them was nothing short of miraculous. This is all based on history and not scripture but nothing happens without God, the state of Israel couldn't be there at all if God weren't superintending the whole thing, and again their defeat of their enemies shows to my mind God's hand in their affairs. God isn't finished with Israel and He isn't finished with Planet Earth. Although the heritage of the Church is spiritual, and that includes believing Jews as well as Gentiles, a transformed body, a transformed life, God began His work with earthly people on an earthly planet and there's no reason to think He would not bring that work to a fitting finish, and for that earthly Israel has to play a gigantic role.

HOW it all is to happen I haven't sorted out in my mind.

Some Warnings Against the Bogus Bibles, Against the Bogus "health care plan," and Against the Bogus "Palestinian cause" plus Update on Jesuits

11/20 UPDATE:

Chris Pinto's radio show today is about Jesuit influence, particularly in Scotland. He quotes from J A Wylie's book on the history of Protestantism (It's listed at my Catholicism blog).   In passing he mentions a book about Vatican influence in Nazi Germany.  The book is available but so is this video Interview with John Cornwell about his book, Hitler's Pope.

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THE GREAT BIBLE HOAX:

After writing yesterday's post for the Bible Hoax blog I went back and listened again to Chris Pinto's radio show The Burning of the Bibles, which I'd linked in the previous post at that blog, because I remembered that it gives support to some of the claims I was making about Westcott and Hort's Bible revision of 1881.  It does, and it's an excellent outline of the whole Bible debacle that was hatched in the 19th century and has been creating chaos ever since, causing the English Bible to be brought into doubt.  Yes we're talking conspiracy.  The revision of 1881 was more of an attempt to destroy the King James Bible by people under the influence of the Vatican than it was any kind of legitimate revision.  This is what Chris Pinto has been repeatedly documenting for some time, and this particular radio show does a very nice job of outlining the whole story.

I started that blog based on the writings of John Burgon, a contemporary of Westcott and Hort's who saw their revision as an indefensible undermining of the Bible, which he called "poisoning the river of life," and wrote a series of critiques of the revision that became the monumental book The Revision Revised.   Although Burgon's name has been used by a King-James-Only organization, The Dean Burgon Society,  Burgon did not give King-James-Only arguments.  His effort was entirely to show the scholarly deficiencies of the 1881 revision, both in their substitution of corrupted Greek manuscripts for those underlying the King James, and in their mangling of the English translation itself by thousands of unnecessary changes, both against the instructions that had been given to the revising committee. 

What Chris Pinto does is show that there were very likely ulterior motives to their mutilation of the King James Bible, specifically in the use of the corrupted Greek manuscripts, and that these motives were most likely fostered under the influence of the Vatican.  The Vatican of course had, and still has, strong motives to bring down the Reformation, which had deposed it from its former power in Europe, of which the King James Bible was the crown jewel.

This particular radio show was inspired by an incident in which Catholic priests in America burned the King James Bible in the year 1834, as reported by the Protestant writer John Dowling, but Pinto doesn't get to that incident until late in the show because he gets sidetracked by the fact that the criticisms of the King James used by Catholic apologists as reported by Dowling are the same as those unwittingly given by supposedly Protestant Bible textual critics today.

The title of Dowling's book is The Burning of the Bibles:  Defense of the Protestant Version of the Scriptures Against the Attacks of Popish Apologists for the Champlain Bible Burners,  and Pinto says that the arguments Dowling describes as those of the Catholic apologists for the burning of the Bibles

...are arguments that are nearly identical to your textual critics in modern times, who don't realize that many of their arguments come from the Roman Catholic Church ...  even though these guys are professing Protestant evangelical, sometimes neo-Reformed...  the arguments they make about the Bible and its history...come from Roman Catholic apologists, and Jesuits and rationalists...who have made these arguments for hundreds of years.  And of course I believe that because Higher Criticism gained the upper hand in the 19th century, largely as a result of events surrounding the discovery of Codex Sinaiticus, and because of the discovery of Codex Sinaiticus, this is what led to the full-blown exploitation of unbelieving Higher Criticism in our colleges and universities...  and as a direct result of the Higher Critical arguments gaining the upper hand, what immediately happened after was the beginning of modern-day ecumenism...

This gets him into a discussion of how the revising committee of 1881 introduced the corrupted Greek manuscripts, but especially how their arguments came to dominate today's Bible scholarship. He says we have to understand that

...Westcott, Hort, Scrivener, all of these guys, were Anglo-Catholics... That's why they invited Cardinal John Henry Newman, who was the leader of the Oxford Movement, to come and sit on the committee with them.... Cardinal Newman, his entire purpose was to reclaim England for Rome.

The plot goes on thickening from there, through the work of Phillip Schaff who did the American version of the English revision, how Schaff kissed the feet of the Pope and how he was a keynote speaker at the ecumenical Parliament of World Religions of 1893 which included Buddhists and the satanic Theosophists Blavatsky and Annie Besant among the bogus "Christians" and so on and so forth. This is all within the first six minutes of the radio show, and it goes on from there until he finally gets back to Dowling's book in the middle of the second half of the show.   Listen and weep.  That's what happens to me when I hear this stuff.

What can I say.  I pray and hope that Chris Pinto's work might change the minds of some of those Protestant Christian spokesmen today who are committed to the modern Bible versions.  I pray for James White and Daniel Wallace and John MacArthur who are very influential Reformed Christian leaders who are unwittingly supporting these Vatican-inspired Bibles that are contributing to the destruction of Protestant Christendom.  Why?  Because they have put their trust in Bible scholars, some of whom were unbelievers, such as Bruce Metzger, and Jesuits.  If there is a lesson here from the Bible itself, it must be the many warnings to us to avoid the "wisdom of this world."  It's just another of the devil's strongholds we are to bring down through the spiritual weapons we have been given in the Word itself.

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So I wanted to point back to that radio show today, hoping hoping hoping my voice joined with Chris Pinto's and others who are saying the same things might help turn the tide against the Antichrist Vatican's plots -- if it might by God's providence reach some open ears.

But Protestant Christendom is so far gone these days, so completely under God's judgment, so mutilated and dying, I wonder how much hope is there that the Lord might have mercy on us at this late hour.

There are so many fronts on which we need that mercy these days, the Bible versions are just one of them. 

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THE PLANNED OBAMACARE TRAIN WRECK

I just heard a radio show Jan Markell hosted on Saturday, on two separate topics, Obamacare and Israel that constitute two such fronts, that was something like being punched twice in the stomach:  one, the second, was on The Planned Train Wreck of Obamacare, which suggests that this was never a legitimate health care plan, which many of us knew anyway, but a designed attack on American capitalism.

There's a whole lot that needs to be said about how capitalism is a specifically PROTESTANT system, that brought about the unprecedented prosperity of Protestant America, and how socialism is the economic system of the Vatican, whose work can be seen in the miserable poverty of Catholic nations.  This wasn't part of Jan Markell's show, but it's necessary background.  All this stuff was new to me over the last year, and I've hardly even touched on it in my blogs.  All I'm going to do here is say this much and hope others who are still in the dark about these things, as I was, will do the research.  I've listed many sources on such things at my Catholicism blog.  Check out the book Ecclesiastical Megalomania, which is available at The Trinity Foundation for some eye-opening revelations about Catholic economics.

THE EVANGELICAL POLITICAL ABANDONMENT OF ISRAEL

The second punch in the stomach from Jan Markell's weekend radio show was on the fact that the growth of Reformed theology in American churches has contributed to the political abandonment of Israel in evangelical circles, in favor of supporting the "Palestinian" cause against Israel.  This is apparently due to the Reformed theology that says the Church has replaced Israel in God's plan, which I've discussed here before as in my opinion a misunderstanding of what scripture teaches.  I believe the Church is the fulfillment of God's plan that He began with believing Israel, not a replacement but a fulfillment, a continuation.  It isn't the result of God's rejection of Israel but the completion of His plan through the coming of the promised Messiah, which goes back to Eden.  Apparently some Reformed or Covenant theology sees it as a substitution instead of a fulfillment.  In either case it is true that earthly Israel is no longer God's people as only BELIEVING Israel is God's people and that's the Church. 

HOWEVER, we're also talking about spiritual Israel versus earthly Israel (or "Jacob") as I've looked at it -- and I could be wrong about this way of looking at it but it makes sense of some things for me.   Looking at it this way, there is no "replacement" of Israel at all.  Earthly Israel today is the playing out of Old Testament teaching as misunderstood by unbelieving Jews, but it makes no sense to me to take the Reformed view that God has utterly abandoned them, let alone to treat them as some kind of specially evil earthly nation.  God hasn't abandoned a single earthly nation on this planet, why would He abandon the Jews who represent His firstborn chosen people?  If only for the honor of His name among the peoples God is not going to abandon even apostate earthly Israel. 

We know from scripture that a time will come when a huge number of Jews will recognize their true Messiah, and we also know that Jesus is going to return to the Mount of Olives.  God hasn't abandoned that piece of real estate or the Jewish people even in their apostate condition.  And how can it be denied that they are THERE, on that land that God originally gave Abraham?  That couldn't happen without God's willing it.  Yes, that land was a type of a heavenly Promised Land that Abraham himself looked to, as so much of the Old Testament gives us types that point to Christ and our redemption through Him, but in earthly terms it still represents that promise God gave to him. 

AND historically speaking God has clearly supported the nation of Israel miraculously against many of the attacks by her Arab neighbors since she became a nation in 1948.  There is no doubt in my mind that Israel, for all her unbelief, is still under God's protection and still figures in God's plan for the finale of Planet Earth.  AT THE SAME TIME there is also no doubt in my mind that earthly Israel is under God's judgment for their apostasy and rejection of their Messiah, which can certainly be seen in their being surrounded by implacable enemies.  Only God could juggle these two facts but that's what He's doing.

Theologically it makes no sense to treat Israel as if it doesn't exist or isn't in fact back on that particular piece of land given to them, but it's also political and historical blindness to take up the "Palestinian" cause against Israel.  Surely the Palestinians are a miserable people we need to pray for, but they are the pawns of their Israel-hating leaders who invented the whole idea of a "Palestinian people" in the first place to be a thorn in the side of Israel. 

There is no such thing as a Palestinian people.  The area known as Palestine was almost barren of population when the Jews began to settle it.  It had no official name, it had no government, it had no "people."  Mark Twain wrote a description of the land as a wilderness on his visit there in the late 19th century.  The accusation that the Jews stole the land from a "Palestinian people" is just bogus.  They bought whatever land was owned by the few who owned it, but the over five million people who today take the name of "Palestinians" are the descendants of citizens of all the surrounding Arab nations who originally came to the area to work for the Jews as their nation was being built up.  When the first Arab attack on Israel was planned, the Arabs living in Israel were warned to flee the country to protect themselves.  They became the "Palestinian" refugees whose refugee status was then blamed on Israel although it came about through the Arab warning of the imminent attack.

Over the decades attempts to bring peace to the region between Israel and the "Palestinians" have included many generous concessions by Israel to form a Palestinian State, that were nevertheless rejected by the "Palestinians," over and over and over, and yet the reason for this continues to go unrecognized by most of the world:  the refusal to accept any compromise whatever with the nation the Arabs want not to exist at all, and which their maps show as not existing at all.  There is NO peace plan that will ever work for this reason.   America has been right all these decades to support Israel, but the ridiculous "peace plans" we've tried to foist on the region show a basic blindness to the true political situation.

The "Palestinian" cause has been invented entirely as a ruse to give Israel a bad reputation in the eyes of the world and ultimately to eliminate the nation from the planet altogether as many Arab leaders have so often made clear is their desire.   There is a book which details this plot through historical facts and quotes that is available at Amazon,  Philistine: The Great Deception, by Ramon Bennett, which I got from the ministry of The Berean Call back before 9/11. 

Whatever your theology, the historical facts ought to tell you that supporting the "Palestinian cause" which is founded on devious Arab plots against Israel, is not the side to be on.

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We need a new Protestant Reformation.    

End Times sadness about Israel, & about the condition of the Church

More sadness about the times we live in.  Gets to me a lot these days.  Just heard Jan Markell's weekend radio show, When Being Jewish is a Crime where she demonstrates the growth of anti-Semitism in America, really depressing stuff, and of course the usual negative attitude against Israel which is all of a piece with the anti-Semitism.  I don't share the theology of those ministries that teach that the Old Testament still applies to unsaved Israel, but I nevertheless believe Israel and the Jews are a big part of God's plan for the last days, and even if I didn't, I know Israel is not guilty of the charges the world keeps slamming against her.  It's all trumped up and that fact alone shows that God still cares about* His wayward people or they wouldn't be attracting such hatred.  They need the gospel above all of course, need to recognize their own true Messiah whom they've always rejected, that's where all our prayers should be focused.

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UPDATE 7/21:  *Feel I need to be more accurate about the hatred piling up against Israel.  Yes it certainly indicates God has His eye on her, but so did the miraculous events of their wars in which a vastly outnumbered little nation defeated the big Arab nations that tried to destroy her more than once.  There is no doubt in my mind that God is watching over Israel, and scripture indicates that when the Lord Jesus returns it will be to the Mount of Olives.  There is no doubt that Israel figures in God's end times plans. 

Nevertheless it seems necessary to try to account for the hatred in other terms as well, as God's judgment.   This is how I explain the precarious position of America in the world today after all, so much hatred around the world after a long time of being in the world's favor, the demoralization and undermining of the culture that we've been witnessing for some time and so on.  I think America has been particularly blessed by God, and in some sense also in a covenant with God because of the dedications of the land to God by early Protestant settlers, and their determination to live by God's law.  This is not the same as the covenant initiated by God with Israel but it is still a special relationship that many early Americans honored and appears to have been greatly blessed by God.  So God's judgment of America is likely to be more severe than His judgments of other nations that haven't known God. 

Israel of course represents the God of the Old Testament in a very high profile way, and the fact that they themselves don't recognize their own God but are in an apostate condition, a sinful condition, even rejecting Him outright, puts them in the position of drawing down a really terrible judgment, described clearly in the Hebrew scriptures, Deuteronomy 10 and Leviticus 26 in particular.  I also don't think we can ignore the fact that they are still under the curse they took upon themselves when they chose Barabbas over Christ and called for our Lord's crucifixion.  Jesus from the cross asked the Father to forgive them, but until they repent there can be no forgiveness.  Yet scripture says they WILL repent, the last generation will recognize Him as the Messiah and turn to Him.  But before that happens they are under God's judgment.   Again, simply on the basis of the curses in Deuteronomy and Leviticus they are under God's judgment anyway because they are in the apostate condition of having turned away from their God altogether to rule themselves.  To recognize this would be a very bitter thing for the Jews but in the end they must come to recognize it. 

God hasn't abandoned them.  He's watching over them.  Something wonderful is going to happen with them and probably not too long from now, if I understand this rightly, but before that happens scripture seems to indicate they are to go through a terrible time of judgment known as "Jacob's trouble." 

Yes, they need the gospel of their Messiah above all and we need to be praying for them.    

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Then I read a new attack on the Harbinger, the usual crazy misreading of it, the idea that Cahn thinks America was directly predicted in Isaiah's text.  What's depressing about that is that Christians can think so wrongly about anything and be so aggressive and destructive in their wrong thinking as well.  There are also Christians who accuse him of "extrabiblical revelation" and again I experience the sadness that Christians have no ability to judge these things rightly.  Extrabiblical revelation is the Book of Mormon, it's the papal teachings of Rome that contradict the Bible, it's the people who think they have the Spirit and trust whatever the "Spirit" seems to say even if it's contrary to scripture, and The Harbinger is not guilty of any such thing; it is a straightforward application of the Biblical text.  This is not some need I have to defend The Harbinger, because I've been terribly disappointed in Jonathan Cahn's alliances with false teachers and apostates and figure the book's message is compromised by that and can't do the work of influencing the nation to repentance and revival for that reason.  Despite all that I still find the main message of his book to hold up so now it just stands as God's judgment of the nation that won't be turned back.

Christians all around seem to be falling for compromises of various sorts, seem unable to apply the most basic biblical discernment to the situations we are facing these days.  It's all very sad.  Not that I consider myself safe from such errors either, all I can do is pray to be preserved from them as much as possible.

As usual there are other things on my mind I could add to this and as usual I'm not sure I have the energy to get to them.  But if I can I will.

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Meanwhile I'm due for surgery in a few weeks and hope Christians reading any of my blogs would pray for a good outcome.  Thanks.

Jewish Christians, Israel, Replacement Theology, Anti-Semitism, Catholic connection

Heard last weekend's radio program at Jan Markell's website, Understanding the Times, titled The Church's Missing Agenda, with the show's executive producer Larry Kutzler sitting in for Jan, and I've got to say this was one confusing -- and annoying -- theological experience. I had to listen more than once to try to figure it out.

The guests on the show were Shelly and Scott Volk, father and son, Jewish pastors of churches, Shelly's in Arizona, Scott's in North Carolina. I knew of Shelly Volk because of his earlier association with Art Katz, whose books and tapes I absorbed avidly years ago. Art Katz was an inspiring preacher and he never annoyed me, so I was surprised to have such a reaction to this interview with the Volks.

Let me see if I can sum up my annoyance: They seem to be saying that the "Church" has a "Gentile" flavor to it that denies the essential Hebrewness of the scriptures, which deprives us of a necessary perspective, especially on Israel. Much of the time their way of speaking seems to set themselves outside the Church as in "we" versus "them" although they are believers in Christ and certainly know that scripture tells us "there is no more Jew or Gentile ... but all are one in Christ Jesus." They do emphasize at times that they identify with the Church, but often their language suggests a sense of distance from it nevertheless.

For instance, they refer to the mention in the Book of Acts [Acts 11:26] of the point at which the Church started to be called "Christians" and clearly imply that they think this described a switch from a predominantly Jewish to a Gentile Church, which makes the name "Christian" pretty much synonymous in their minds with "Gentile." But the Church at Antioch was just as much Jewish in those days as all the churches were. Paul and the apostles always went to the Jews first, to the synagogues, wherever they took the gospel. The first believers were ALL "Christians", both Jew and Gentile. This kind of thinking that makes the Church Gentile simply must come from the modern Jewish mentality and not from early church history.

In fact, Matthew Henry makes the point that the name "Christian" would have been a unifier of Jew and Gentile, rather than the divisive Gentile designation the Volks are trying to make of it:

Thus those who before their conversion had been distinguished by the names of Jews and Gentiles might after their conversion be called by one and the same name, which would help them to forget their former dividing names, and prevent their bringing their former marks of distinction, and with them the seeds of contention, into the church. Let not one say, "I was a Jew;’’ nor the other, "I was a Gentile;’’ when both the one and the other must now say, "I am a Christian." [Matthew Henry commentary at Blue Letter Bible for Acts 11:26]

This quote gets at what annoyed me so much about the interview with the Volks. All this emphasis on their Jewishness and the Jewishness of the scriptures and the supposed Gentileness of the Church and so on IS divisive and does bring "seeds of contention into the church." And after you spend some time sorting it out and finding that they are wrong about most of this, wrong about this supposed denial of the relevant Hebrew context of the scriptures and the gospel, which I went on to do and report on below, it is more clearly shown that this IS merely a contentiousness that shouldn't be made so much of.

They don't quote anyone so that we might know who, or what segment of the Church, they are referring to when they speak of "Christians" having a deficient appreciation of the Hebrew background of the scriptures, or what that looks like in action. This is made all the more mystifying in the context of the use of audio clips concerning anti-Semitism, in which the speakers --both pro and con anti-Semitic positions-- are also not identified, but the implication is that "Christians" are somehow the "anti-Semites." We are left having to figure out how to connect these vague accusations with some notion that the Church is rather too "Gentile" and doesn't appreciate the Hebrew scriptures.

A host of objections floods my mind as I try to grapple with this.

First, the Reformers, as I've been most particularly learning from Chris Pinto recently, DID see a role for Israel in the last days, contrary to the accusation that the "Church" has left Israel out of their reckoning. Have contemporary Reformed churches done so? They need to be specific.

Second, I remember a discussion of the translators of the King James Version of the Bible as taking care to preserve the Hebrew forms and rhythms of its language even in the New Testament Greek -- wish I knew where to find that comment now. Certainly the newer translations haven't bothered with such niceties but I don't think this is what the Volks are objecting to.

Third, my own experience since I became a believer in the late 80s has been of a veritable inundation with the Hebrew context of the gospel. Who hasn't learned the "scarlet thread of redemption" that can be traced from Eden to Christ? Who has missed out on a study of the Book of Daniel's direct prophecy of the timing of the coming of Christ, or the prophecies of the world situation of the last days in that and other Old and New Testament books as well, prophecies we are seeing unfolding before our eyes? I had years of Bible study with Kay Arthur's materials for instance, who is strongly pro-Israel. I got this in both a Presbyterian church and a charismatic church. The same pro-Israel position is also true of John MacArthur whose books and tapes I avidly learned from. And Chuck Missler did very interesting in-depth studies of the meaning of the ceremonies and feasts of Israel as depicting Christ. I got from Kay Arthur's studies the analysis of the tabernacle as showing Christ, and that's the sort of teaching Missler also did. Jews for Jesus made the rounds of the churches too in those days with similar teachings; maybe they still do but it's been a while since I got to see them.

Perhaps my experience was not the norm? But if not, then what is needed is a clear reference to the experience of the majority of the churches about which I apparently know nothing, as I would have thought such teaching, at least of the building of the New Testament on the Old, to be essential and unavoidable.

So, I need to ask WHICH part of the "Church" is supposedly deprived of this sort of teaching?

Some of the complaint from the Volks seems to have to do with "replacement theology," which has been the subject of a few recent posts of mine, but it's not clear exactly how that fits in either. WHICH part of the Church teaches this theology anyway? And exactly WHAT IS this theology in their minds? Surely they can't deny that the Church IS the Israel of God, spiritual Zion, the inheritor of the Abrahamic covenant by faith, SCRIPTURE SAYS SO. But they DO seem to deny this and get it all confused with the notion that "therefore" there is no longer a role for national Israel. The latter does not necessarily follow from the former but they seem to put it all together as one package. I've discussed my own view of this in more detail in earlier posts.

SOME PART OF THIS HAS TO BE ROMAN CATHOLIC, AND PLEASE LET'S STOP CALLING ROMAN CATHOLICISM "CHRISTIAN."

Is it perhaps the CATHOLIC "church" that most strongly holds the "replacement theology" that is so objected to? This needs to be made clear.

One clue to this particular confusion did come up in this broadcast as an audio clip was played of a man very aggressively denouncing the Jews as "the accursed Jews" -- without identifying the speaker but implying that he somehow represents something "Christian." It wasn't hard to google "accursed Jews" and trace the clip to a video at You Tube in which a Catholic [identified as Richard Joseph Michael Ibranyi] standing in front of a table full of Roman Catholic paraphernalia, a crucifix with a dead Christ pinned to it, pictures of Christ with a Catholic flavor, a picture of the face on the shroud of Turin, a statue of Mary, candles and so on, goes on ranting against the Jews. The film was made by a group called "Mary's Little Remnant" --Mary, not Christ, Mary the true god of Roman Catholicism.

From his first few minutes on the subject it's clear he's a traditionalist Catholic who rejects the council of Vatican II as apostasy, and some of his objection is that that council said Jews should not be accused of the blood of Christ. Of course his own views are apostate as well, just judging from the table behind him, although he's right that the Jews did take the curse of Jesus' death upon themselves and Vatican II is wrong.

So are the Volks who deny the special culpability of the Jews, and the rest of us who have tried to take the heat off the Jews for this, as I also used to do. Shelly Volk gives the typical defensive denial {17:06]:

I would just say this: Jews for centuries have been called Christ-killers, and you know what, in a sense we even see that written in the New Covenant [so far so good, yes we do], but the reality of it is [could "the reality of it" be something different from what the New Covenant says? Careful here.] that the Roman Centurions killed Him, the Jews killed Him, we all killed Him by sin, but the fact of the matter is, the crucifixion of the Messiah was in the heart of God. In other words ... He wasn't killed, He gave up His life voluntarily to fulfill the will of God and that's what we have to go for. The ultimate end is, What does the word of God say? {17:42]

This is what a lot of us do when we discover the role of the Jews in the Bible, try to get them off the hook. But we have to rewrite scripture to do that. The Jewish leaders brought the charges against Jesus, the Jewish people supported that action with their cheers for the release of Barabbas rather than Jesus, then they took the curse of the death of Jesus on themselves and their posterity:

Matthew 27:22-25 Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? [They] all say unto him, Let him be crucified. And the governor said, Why, what evil hath he done? But they cried out the more, saying, Let him be crucified. When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but [that] rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed [his] hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye [to it]. Then answered all the people, and said, His blood [be] on us, and on our children.

Scripture is very clear that they did this, it can't be avoided. Yes, in a sense we're all guilty of the blood of Christ, but it was the Jewish leaders who brought the charges against Him while Pilate tried to get out of prosecuting Him, and only the Jews specifically agreed to be cursed for His death.

It's sad, really, they had no idea what they were doing, as Jesus said from the cross, but the curse has followed them down the centuries nevertheless. What should our response be? Pity I think.

I do agree with the Volks about the Catholic guy's ATTITUDE, it is arrogant and boasting against the Jews and you can see how violence could come out of it. I only heard the first few minutes of his talk and it would need a lot of careful thought to sort out the true from the false and all the implications, but acknowledging that the Jews are under a curse for the blood of Christ [until they receive Him as Savior] no way justifies the Roman Church's anti-Jewish pogroms and the tortures and murders of the Inquisition. Jesus rejected all violence against His enemies and the Romanist perpetrators are going to get worse than the Inquisition at the judgment seat, PRAISE THE LORD!

One thing needs to be made clear in these last days: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS NOT CHRISTIAN. Pre-Vatican II or post-Vatican II it's all still the Antichrist system and the Great Apostasy. This is one of the biggest errors being made by the true churches these days, to treat Romanism as just another denomination of Christianity. It is NOT CHRISTIAN AT ALL! If there IS a Rapture of the Church soon, before the last days come to their full expression of horror and evil, the main representative of "Christianity" left on earth is going to be the apostate Antichrist Roman Catholic Church, the Harlot Church, and the Great Tribulation of those days is very likely to look like the Inquisition and the Holocaust (which also had Roman Catholic roots -- go hear Chris Pinto) rolled into one and magnified to unimaginable heights.

It was not right for the Roman identity of this denouncer of the Jews to have been left out of the discussion with the Volks. This is a rant that could have come from Mel Gibson, who was apparently raised in this form of Catholic anti-Semitism.

Also, at the very beginning of the Understanding the Times radio broadcast an audio clip was played of a man with a British accent who is also not identified, who was going on about how anti-Semitism in Europe has been increasing in recent years "as a consequence of pandering to the bigotry of Muslims," referring to the huge increase in the European Muslim population, who then went on to say "not that Europe has ever needed much encouragement in that direction." And here again it occurred to me to ask, WHICH PART OF EUROPE? Catholic Europe perhaps? The Inquisition killed over 50 million people, most of them TRUE CHRISTIANS. It was the ROMAN Church that set itself to exterminate the Jews, along with all the true Christians, along with sundry Muslims, witches and whomever else they felt like torturing and murdering. If there was SOME Protestant or other source of anti-Semitism, this has to be made clear. And try to avoid histories of such things that have a hidden Jesuit connection in them too. The history of the Holocaust often traces it back to Luther's Lies of the Jews, but the predominant role was really the Catholic church. Pinto proves this.