A weary word on Christian infighting

There seems to be an escalation of arguments between some Christian ministries these days that takes up an awful lot of time.  I've not been following most of it lately but first became aware of it because of the attacks on Jonathan Cahn over his book The Harbinger which I defended here for many months.  The last thing I posted on that subject was an interview of Cahn by Chris Rosebrough, someone I'd never heard of to that point.  I thought he did a very fair job of interviewing Cahn and bringing out the unfairness of the criticisms against him.  The ministries that attacked Cahn are very respectable ministries you don't really want to criticize in turn, but the attacks were so unfair you have to point out the unfairness.  And I personally believe you have to name the ministries or otherwise all you do is create confusion.

Then I more or less backed away from the controversies.  But it was Chris Rosebrough who hosted the debate between James White and Chris Pinto on his radio show on Wednesday, and looking up more on the debate at You Tube I found a program he did a couple months ago in which he was taking Pinto to task for slandering a friend of his, asking that Pinto apologize.

I don't want to get into all THIS either, but I listened to the first part of that radio show and felt that now Chris Rosebrough is the one being unfair.   He goes on at great length explaining how Chris Pinto had committed this sin of slander and I started getting impatient to hear the evidence.  Then when he played the audio in question it seemed to me he was completely misjudging Pinto's point.  I wish I had access to Pinto's whole show now but I don't, so this is based just on that part I heard.  Pinto described Rosebrough's friend as someone who had gone to Harvard Divinity School and then described Harvard Divinity School as where a certain professor who promoted Christian homosexuality had taught.  Rosebrough took that as insinuating that his friend was gay or supported gay Christianity but all Pinto was saying was that Harvard Divinity School is really not the kind of institution where a professing Christian should seek his education;  it's not the sort of institution where you could expect to get solid Biblical teaching.  I heard nothing more than that.  According to Rosebrough Pinto edited that part of the program afterward, but I didn't hear anything in it along the lines Rosebrough was suggesting anyway.  I couldn't listen past the first few minutes because Rosebrough was going on and on with this misjudgment and I got tired of it, so I hope I didn't miss something I needed to hear.

And now there is the debate between Pinto and White which has required me to be more aware than usual of how heated the Bible controversies can get.  And in this case Pinto is being accused quite offhandedly of being a conspiracy thinker.  As if he was jumping to conclusions from a lack of evidence, which is what that usually means, but in fact the conclusion of conspiracy is clearly based on the facts he's been researching.

I wish I could say Pinto had won the debate.  He did a very nice job of presenting his thinking and his research, but I have to conclude, as I titled my blog post on it at the Bible blog, that Truth lost the debate.  Truth just doesn't win debates these days.  That's just the way it is.  People who win debates are glib and scholarly, they demand certainty and don't have much patience with the kind of probing and inconclusiveness Pinto's research requires.   I concluded that the important issues involving the Bible versions come down to spiritual discernment and I agree with that more and more as I think about it.  That's a virtue that isn't usually evident in scholarly debate.  It isn't evident, period, in the defenders of the Westcott and Hort Greek texts or anything having to do with textual criticism or the modern Bibles.

Waking Up Among Wolves: The Antichrist Pt. 1: The Papacy

When I started this blog I had a few topics in mind I wanted to pursue, such as the woman's head covering of First Corinthians 11.  That and the Bible versions controversy quickly became big enough to get their own separate blogs.  As I was researching various subjects, such as by listening to sermons at Sermon Audio, the topic "Antichrist" kept popping out at me and eventually I decided that was going to be a topic here as well, but at first I didn't have a lot to say about it. 

I mostly had the Futurist idea in mind, that the Antichrist is to be a personality who emerges at the very end before the Lord returns, and I was aware of various candidates from false religions for that title, such as the Imam Mahdi expected by the Muslims, Maitreya expected by the Buddhists and pursued in a more universal form by Benjamin Creme, and the false Messiah expected by the Jews since they rejected the true Messiah, and so on. 

Unlike most Futurists, however, I did appreciate the Protestant Reformers' view of Antichrist as the papal system throughout all history and thought a particularly telling piece of evidence was the Latin title for the Pope that adds up to 666 through its Roman numerals: VICARIVS FILII DEI.  Nevertheless I had the Futurist attitude that the main thing was still the emergence of the major final Antichrist at the very end, which seems awfully close to a lot of us, and the papacy wasn't really an active agency in my mind.

Until I ran across some of Chris Pinto's films at You Tube.  Others, such as ex-priest Richard Bennett, also identify the papacy as Antichrist, but Pinto brings out the ongoing activity of the papacy as Antichrist down the centuries and into the present in a way nobody else I'd seen does.  He also made me aware of the active role of the Jesuits from their origin into the present.

This has had the effect of making the Antichrist himself come alive in a real and immediate way that I wasn't expecting at all.  It's quite startling. 

It's what I mean by the title "Waking Up Among Wolves."  It's like I've been asleep to all this except in the most intellectual abstract way and suddenly it has become quite real, almost "up close and personal."  And of course this latest Pope is almost frenetically pursuing a role that easily defines him as "That man of sin."  He may or may not be the last Pope as an old Catholic prophecy predicted, and even if he is he may not be THE Antichrist, who may be a political figure like Hitler, backed by the Pope, but the development of the qualities of the Antichrist is pretty startling.

Still a "watch and see" situation, only in my mind looming large as it never did before. Kind of like waking up surrounded by wolves.

===================================== Part Two:  Islam    

A Couple of Timely Shows from Jan Markell's Ministry

Here are a couple of recent radio shows from Jan Markell on the subjects that are her forte: current events, politics and spiritual breakdown in the Church.

On the program Entertaining Spirits Unaware Jan and guests discuss some attempts to domesticate the occult even in the Church or at least through a recent issue of Christianity Today.  Eric Barger, who writes on the occult, and Jill Martin Rische, daughter of the late Walter Martin, also a writer on the occult, are her guests.

I didn't know the occult was becoming a sort of fad in the Church. A real head-shaker. Some people really do sell their souls to Satan in exchange for worldly success. The version that is accepted in the Church, however, is more like a gullible blind acceptance of things like Harry Potter. 

And Christianity Today has been off the rails on a lot of subjects for a long time. I guess it makes sense this is where a deviation in direction would end up, in an inability to see the antichristian nature of ghosts and horror stories and magic etc.

The other show is about the government's invasion of privacy of citizens, and about the current situation concerning Iran: Deliver Us From Evil

Rivers of Living Water

John 7:38 He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.  

John 14:12 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.

I could spend a lot of time on these verses, but there's really only one simple message I want to convey: I think we ignore these promises of Jesus in a way that is depriving the Church of power these days. They have no doubt been misused, such as by the Charismatics, Pentecostals and others, but we don't have to fall into their theological systems to take them seriously. We don't need to know, for instance, whether they have anything to do with a separate "Baptism of the Holy Spirit" or not, all we really need to know is that Jesus promised this kind of power to His followers, to those who "believe on Him," and we don't have it.

"Rivers of living water" certainly implies the power to impart spiritual life to others. that is, salvation.   Don't you long for that power? We have the Holy Spirit if we believe, but we don't seem to have the Holy Spirit in this degree of power. Why not?

One thing that is often ignored by the Charismatics and others who claim to have such power is that "The Holy Spirit is given to them who obey." Yet they expect to have the power without bothering to obey, which is no doubt a big reason why all they are getting with their zealous exertions to possess it is counterfeits.

So maybe the reason NOBODY has this power these days is about lack of obedience. Something to think about.

Nevertheless I think we should be praying for this power, using Jesus' own words: Teach us what it means to have the river of living water from our bellies, so we may possess it;  teach us what it means to have the power to do those greater works so that we may do them, and above all teach us what it means to "believe on You" because obviously we aren't getting it or we'd have these powers.

The First Thanksgiving WAS What We've Been Traditionally Taught it Was, Contrary to the Revisionist History Concocted by Leftists

UPDATE: 

Just heard a Special Program on Pilgrim Radio, my local Christian radio, Remembering Pilgrims, created by Moody Radio.  It did a very nice job of dramatizing some of the events and interviewing experts to give basically the same information I've covered below. 

Wish it was available online somewhere so I could link to it but it doesn't seem to be.

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Didn't get a Thanksgiving message together this year but maybe I can get a brief belated one up at least.  Chris Pinto did a message on the first Thanksgiving of the Pilgrims, demonstrating that they DID have a feast that included turkey and they DID share it with the peaceable friendly Indians who were their neighbors, contrary to some propaganda we've heard in recent years that says the Pilgrims didn't get along with the Indians and so on. 

Here's the link to his radio show page, where you can find his Thanksgiving show for November 27th over the next few days, until it rolls into his website where you have to subscribe to listen.

He begins by reading some psalms of Thanksgiving, for the first nine minutes or so, and then starts to get into the story of the first Pilgrims, how they had many tragedies and many died the first winter but how they had a good harvest the next year and that was the reason for the Thanksgiving celebration, which they planned to last three days.

Edward Winslow was the assistant governor to Bradford and wrote a report on the Thanksgiving celebration.  Pinto quotes from Winslow's account, which he wrote in a letter in December of the year of the celebration, which is published at the website Mayflower History dot com.  Winslow reports that they had a good harvest of wheat and Indian corn although some of their other crops hadn't done so well.  After they got in the harvest four men went out and brought back enough fowl to feed the company for a week.  They were joined by neighboring Indians including Chief Massasoit and ninety of his men, whom the Pilgrims entertained and feasted for the three days, after which the Indians went out and killed five deer, which they presented to the governor.

So there it is from an eyewitness at the time who participated in the feast, who ought to know.  So that those historians who emphasize the conflicts with the Indians that did occur but at different places and at other times are simply wrong to discount the story of the first Thanksgiving and the basis for our continuing to celebrate it. 

Twenty years later Governor Bradford wrote his History of Plymouth Plantation in which he also described the great plenty they enjoyed that second year although he doesn't describe the Thanksgiving feast itself.  He describes the abundance they enjoyed including fish and fowl along with a peck (two gallons) of meal per person per week, and mentions that they also had many wild turkeys.   Winslow doesn't mention the turkeys so we can thank Bradford for that piece of our historical lore that justifies our continuing way of celebrating the holiday. 

Pinto goes on to mention another historical document written by a visitor to the plantation, a William Hilton, who arrived on a ship called The Fortune soon after that first Thanksgiving.  He wrote home to England about... turkeys! AND reports that the neighboring Indians were "peaceable and friendly," which contradicts a lot of that revisionist history about the murderous white man who couldn't possibly have celebrated a friendly feast with the Indians.   Hilton also describes the abundance of natural foods in the land, from nuts and berries to fish and fowl and game, and also describes the people as genuinely godly Christians.

So is the traditional story of Thanksgiving vindicated.

Pinto then goes into a discussion of a website called The Kasama Project which promotes Communism and seeks a Communist takeover of America, and includes a page titled Native Blood:  The Myth of Thanksgiving, all about how the first white settlers wouldn't have invited Indians to a feast but only murdered them and stole their land from them, and about "the ruthless ways of capitalism"* ("unlike the Communists," Pinto goes on, who murdered over a hundred million people in the twentieth century alone). 

He mentions the Salem Witch Trials in relation to the idea that the white settlers were nothing but murderers (while of course the Communists are the peace lovers who murder the unborn along with anybody who objects to Communism when they are in power).  He says he got this information in the mail about how the Salem leaders had a day of fasting and contrition for that blot in their history.

Another website Pinto mentions is Pilgrim Hall dot org.

I might as well also include a link to my post on Thanksgiving from 2010 which also deals with the propaganda that seeks to denigrate this part of American history

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*We need to be praying against Communism too.  Another subject I might do a post on if I can get to it is the Pope's recent denunciation of capitalism, which I heard Rush Limbaugh talked about on his show yesterday. 

Yearning for a True Holy Spirit Revival

Here's the link to the talks at the STRANGE FIRE CONFERENCE

When Jonathan Edwards preached his famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" on July 8, 1741 to a congregation in Enfield, Connecticut, many were powerfully affected even to having visions of Hell over which they were being dangled, and this is said to have been the beginning of the Great Awakening that profoundly changed American life just before the Revolution.

Lately I've been thinking some of us could do with the experience of being dangled over the pit of Hell, and I'm including myself, most particularly myself. Speaking of "awakening," most of the Church needs to be awakened these days to a reality of our faith that few of us appreciate. This is apparent just in the condition of the world around us, the nations around us and the Church itself with its growing apostasies in all directions, plus our worldliness that can be seen in divorce statistics and such woeful things as addictions to pornography, about which I just heard an interview on Christian radio.

  I hope those who do have a powerful faith are exercising it in prayer on behalf of the rest of us. Or maybe I should say I hope there is such a thing as some who have such a powerful faith.

Well, I can report that I've been praying more myself, and I'm thankful that I'm able to do it. I've also been reading a lot of Andrew Murray (Absolute Surrender, The Spirit of Christ, Experiencing the Holy Spirit), hoping his exhortations and guidance to living in the power of the Holy Spirit might bring about the awakening I know I need personally if I'm going to be of use to anybody else.

Most genuine revivals begin with a powerful sense of personal sinfulness, which is what Edwards' famous sermon brought about in that Connecticut congregation, and that's what I'm hoping my own reading and prayer will do for me too. I pray for revival for the entire Church but I'd be very happy if God would revive me personally for starters.

 One thing I can report is that I'm heartily sick of myself, my so easily falling into sin, the flesh, self, worldliness, and the more I read and pray the more I feel that, which is painful of course, but has to be a good thing. There was a time when I couldn't read much of Murray, I'd just end up feeling "I can't possibly do that," (such as "absolute surrender" to God) even that I couldn't have the faith that what's impossible for me is possible with God, which he avidly preaches. But this time I'm believing it and hoping it will bear fruit.

Yes I know there is good reason not to pray or hope for revival in our time just because the Church IS in such bad shape. A W Tozer many years ago said revival could be a disaster with the Church in such a worldly condition. Leonard Ravenhill focused more on how the condition of the Church prevented us from having revival. If you go all the way back to Spurgeon you can find him preaching on how much the Church needs revival but that he'd rather have no revival at all than have a revival trumped up in the flesh or a revival aflame with "wildfire."  

Wildfire, or Strange Fire, is unfortunately what we've been getting through the Charismatics for some time now.   I've often avoided praying for revival because of all the counterfeit "revivals" we've seen over the last few decades, from the "Toronto Blessing" to "Brownsville" to the Todd Bentley demonic horror in Lakeland. So I hope instead for a new Protestant Reformation, and we certainly do need that, but at the same time I yearn for the TRUE power of God to come down and transform us as a doctrinal reformation may not do. Or would do much too slowly in our desperate times.

So now I'm again praying and hoping for a real revival, but it MUST start with me, I must personally be revived as we all must who hope for revival. The Strange Fire Conference got me moving in this direction, maybe by a circuitous route. I was convinced by it that the gifts of the Spirit that inaugurated the Church at Pentecost had ceased, and the best evidence of this to my mind is that the phenomena that are being called "the gifts" are nothing like the gifts in the New Testament Church, and most of them are outright counterfeits.  But at the same time the position of Cessationism can go too far in the direction of denying the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit among His people in all times. Those who join the Charismatic movement often do so because of the yearning for the felt presence of God to power our lives and power His work through the Church. It's a legitimate desire when too much of the Church depends only on correct doctrine and DOES feel "dead" as the Charismatics always complain about it.

HOWEVER, the Charismatic movement has NOT succeeded in bringing the true power of God into the Church, but sure has brought a lot of counterfeits of Holy Spirit power instead. The true power of God would dangle us over the pit of Hell until we realize our desperate need of Christ and then come to cling to Him with a new recognition of what this Christian life is really all about. Instead, the counterfeits bring us bogus "prophecies" and bogus "tongues" and bogus "healings" and bogus "apostles" and bogus "revivals."   AND along with all the bad doctrine and the counterfeit supernatural phenomena interestingly often comes a great tendency for Church leaders and members to fall into some of the grossest kinds of sin. Such as Todd Bentley did, such as others that could be named in relation to the Prophecy movement have done. Such as I myself have done too. It's scary and depressing how sin is always right there breathing down my neck. I'm plagued by it unless I pray constantly against it. 

Go hear African pastor Conrad Mbewe who preached at the Strange Fire Conference about the condition of Africa if you want to get an appreciation for the connection of false doctrine with sin. There the biggest churches preach what he says is really a version of African witchcraft mingled with Christian terminology, thanks to the preaching of the false Word-Faith gospel, and where sexual sin has become common among the PASTORS of such churches, who even take advantage of women in their congregations. Take notice: SIN is the fruit of these counterfeit "miracles" they all seek. We all too easily fall into THE FLESH, even if we are true Christians but maybe some of us should ask if we are truly Christians and I'm including myself.

But some of us ARE walking in the flesh even if we are true Christians, when we don't live in the TRUE power of God.

So this is why I'm seeking personal revival, and it's why I'm still hoping for revival for the Church at large too. We need the Holy Spirit of God to come down and dangle us all over the pit of Hell as TRUE doctrine is preached to us and the counterfeits are exposed.

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.