I was disappointed about the lack or even the non-existence of any local news coverage about something as important as this was. I feel assured that had it been something about Obamacare and/or Muslin related, they would have been all over it.
And it is very important for two main reasons.
- One is that all the nations around Israel are trying their hardest to exterminate Israel.
- Number two is how close Iran is to having a nuclear bomb.
Anti-Israel activism in U.S. church circles has increased in recent years especially among some evangelical elites. Mainline Protestant elites have been anti-Israel for decades. Last fall officials of several Mainline denominations urged Congress to reconsider U.S. military aid to Israel, prompting Jewish groups to cancel interfaith dialogue. More politically significant have been exertions to shift evangelicals away from their historically strong affinity for Israel.
For the last several years anti-Israel evangelicals have hosted a “Christ at the Checkpoint” conference in Bethlehem featuring some prominent U.S. evangelicals. Last year’s included evangelist Tony Campolo, a spiritual counselor to President Bill Clinton, and Florida mega church pastor Joel Hunter, a spiritual counselor to President Barack Obama. The next “Christ at the Checkpoint” is February 2014 and will feature Geoff Tunnicliffe, head of the World Evangelical Alliance. There will also be a Dallas Southern Baptist pastor, despite his denomination’s strong support for Israel.
Additionally speaking is Gary Burge of Wheaton College, himself a prominent author critical of Israel who teaches at America’s most prestigious evangelical college. Anti-Israel sentiment among evangelical elites is strongest in academia and in international relief and missions groups.
In November the Alliance for Baptists, a liberal Baptist denomination, will host Waging Peace and Justice in Palestine in Washington, D.C. at a prominent Calvary Baptist Church, which President Obama has attended. The featured speaker will be a Lutheran Palestinian pastor who in 2009 backed the anti-Israel Christian manifesto Kairos Palestine: A Moment of Truth, which Western church groups often cite.
And in December, Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA) will host a similar but much larger advocacy event in Philadelphia called Impact Holy Land, featuring prominent Palestinian clergy and U.S. evangelicals. ESA is now co-headed by Pentecostal academic Paul Alexander, who helped push the Society for Pentecostal Studies in a more Palestinian direction at a 2012 meeting at Pat Robertson’s Regents University.
Anti-Israel activism by Mainline Protestants is often motivated by residual Liberation Theology, and / or Replacement Theology, which teaches that Israel is no longer God's chosen people and that the church has replaced Israel today.
The critique of pro-Israel evangelicals particularly has been that their motivation rests on end-times theology/prophecy, which is very controversial even among conservative Christians.
The Christian Zionism movement that we hear much about today, and is most commonly criticized and caricatured, actually originated in 19th century premillenialist dispensationalism founded by English pastor John Nelson Darby and popularized by Bible commentator C I Scofield. The teaching asserted that the Jews would rightfully return to their homeland before Christ’s return.
Some of the modern adherents to Darby's teachings have included Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, Hal Lindsey and John Hagee.
The critics of Darby complain this sort of Zionism is prone to “ignore the legitimate needs of Palestinians, to support Israel right or wrong and even think Israel can do no wrong, to see the Middle East conflict solely in religious terms, and to ignore indigenous Christians in the region — both Jewish and Arab.”
Anyone who studies Church History, understands that Christian interest in a Jewish return to Zion actually goes back earlier than Darby, especially to the Puritans of Britain and New England in the 17th century. Eighteenth century philosopher-theologian Jonathan Edwards, espoused that perspective. Early American Calvinist philo-Semitism in fact inoculated America against Europe’s more virulent forms of anti-Semitism.
This has been propelled by Christians who were noticing that the Old Testament refers to “the land” 2,500 times, that at the heart of God’s covenant with Israel is the promise of that land, and that the return of Jews to the land in the last two centuries is a partial fulfillment of biblical prophecies.
In the 19th century Protestant philo-Semitism in Britain fueled the Christian Zionism leading to Britain’s Balfour Declaration in 1917 affirming support for a Jewish state. Some English Zionists theorized that God judges nations by their treatment of Jews, contrasting Spain’s 1492 expulsion of Jews and Spain’s subsequent ultimate decline with Britain’s rising glory after Puritan Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell invited Jews to return after four centuries.
Then, you have the divine promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3: “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Many American Christian Zionists today, commonly quote that passage.
Twentieth century evangelicals were gratified by Israel’s creation in 1947 while liberal Protestants were often more ambivalent. Catholic and liberal Protestant affirmations of God’s continuing spiritual covenant with Jews typically omit any connection to the land of Israel, which many Jewish interfaith partners “believe is an indispensable manifestation of the covenant.”
It is difficult to understand how the “charge of illegal occupation" against israel can be made, when “Israel has made repeated efforts to comply with UN stipulations for the territories, while its Arab neighbors have not.”
Israel’s willingness in the 1993 Oslo Accord to cede 92 percent of the West Bank, which Palestinians rejected, is a very good example.
How can one claim this when the Jews have inhabited ancient Samaria (the West Bank) for over 3,000 years, and make this a requisite for peace. “What other country has been required to give up land that it won in a defensive war?” he asked. “Do Germans displaced from Königsberg clamor and agitate for that German city to be returned to them by the victorious Russians?”
It seems that those who are opposed to Israel, just want them to roll over and play dead when they are attacked.
How would we feel, and how would we respond if we experienced a succession of 9/11-like attacks, regularly over several years, in a country the size of New Jersey or one-seventeenth the size of Germany, where nearly everyone knows someone who has been killed or maimed.
And seeing how the critics of Israel hypocritically condemn Israel for alleged human rights abuses but typically ignore what Iran, Syria, China, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia, are doing to their people.
That is the "pot calling the kettle black," if you ask me.
I stand with Israel, because God stands with Israel, and I have read the Book, and in the Last chapter, Israel is still here. Some of the others, ain't. So which side are you on?
For the last several years anti-Israel evangelicals have hosted a “Christ at the Checkpoint” conference in Bethlehem featuring some prominent U.S. evangelicals. Last year’s included evangelist Tony Campolo, a spiritual counselor to President Bill Clinton, and Florida mega church pastor Joel Hunter, a spiritual counselor to President Barack Obama. The next “Christ at the Checkpoint” is February 2014 and will feature Geoff Tunnicliffe, head of the World Evangelical Alliance. There will also be a Dallas Southern Baptist pastor, despite his denomination’s strong support for Israel.
Additionally speaking is Gary Burge of Wheaton College, himself a prominent author critical of Israel who teaches at America’s most prestigious evangelical college. Anti-Israel sentiment among evangelical elites is strongest in academia and in international relief and missions groups.
In November the Alliance for Baptists, a liberal Baptist denomination, will host Waging Peace and Justice in Palestine in Washington, D.C. at a prominent Calvary Baptist Church, which President Obama has attended. The featured speaker will be a Lutheran Palestinian pastor who in 2009 backed the anti-Israel Christian manifesto Kairos Palestine: A Moment of Truth, which Western church groups often cite.
And in December, Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA) will host a similar but much larger advocacy event in Philadelphia called Impact Holy Land, featuring prominent Palestinian clergy and U.S. evangelicals. ESA is now co-headed by Pentecostal academic Paul Alexander, who helped push the Society for Pentecostal Studies in a more Palestinian direction at a 2012 meeting at Pat Robertson’s Regents University.
Anti-Israel activism by Mainline Protestants is often motivated by residual Liberation Theology, and / or Replacement Theology, which teaches that Israel is no longer God's chosen people and that the church has replaced Israel today.
The critique of pro-Israel evangelicals particularly has been that their motivation rests on end-times theology/prophecy, which is very controversial even among conservative Christians.
The Christian Zionism movement that we hear much about today, and is most commonly criticized and caricatured, actually originated in 19th century premillenialist dispensationalism founded by English pastor John Nelson Darby and popularized by Bible commentator C I Scofield. The teaching asserted that the Jews would rightfully return to their homeland before Christ’s return.
Some of the modern adherents to Darby's teachings have included Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, Hal Lindsey and John Hagee.
The critics of Darby complain this sort of Zionism is prone to “ignore the legitimate needs of Palestinians, to support Israel right or wrong and even think Israel can do no wrong, to see the Middle East conflict solely in religious terms, and to ignore indigenous Christians in the region — both Jewish and Arab.”
Anyone who studies Church History, understands that Christian interest in a Jewish return to Zion actually goes back earlier than Darby, especially to the Puritans of Britain and New England in the 17th century. Eighteenth century philosopher-theologian Jonathan Edwards, espoused that perspective. Early American Calvinist philo-Semitism in fact inoculated America against Europe’s more virulent forms of anti-Semitism.
This has been propelled by Christians who were noticing that the Old Testament refers to “the land” 2,500 times, that at the heart of God’s covenant with Israel is the promise of that land, and that the return of Jews to the land in the last two centuries is a partial fulfillment of biblical prophecies.
In the 19th century Protestant philo-Semitism in Britain fueled the Christian Zionism leading to Britain’s Balfour Declaration in 1917 affirming support for a Jewish state. Some English Zionists theorized that God judges nations by their treatment of Jews, contrasting Spain’s 1492 expulsion of Jews and Spain’s subsequent ultimate decline with Britain’s rising glory after Puritan Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell invited Jews to return after four centuries.
Then, you have the divine promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3: “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Many American Christian Zionists today, commonly quote that passage.
Twentieth century evangelicals were gratified by Israel’s creation in 1947 while liberal Protestants were often more ambivalent. Catholic and liberal Protestant affirmations of God’s continuing spiritual covenant with Jews typically omit any connection to the land of Israel, which many Jewish interfaith partners “believe is an indispensable manifestation of the covenant.”
It is difficult to understand how the “charge of illegal occupation" against israel can be made, when “Israel has made repeated efforts to comply with UN stipulations for the territories, while its Arab neighbors have not.”
Israel’s willingness in the 1993 Oslo Accord to cede 92 percent of the West Bank, which Palestinians rejected, is a very good example.
How can one claim this when the Jews have inhabited ancient Samaria (the West Bank) for over 3,000 years, and make this a requisite for peace. “What other country has been required to give up land that it won in a defensive war?” he asked. “Do Germans displaced from Königsberg clamor and agitate for that German city to be returned to them by the victorious Russians?”
It seems that those who are opposed to Israel, just want them to roll over and play dead when they are attacked.
How would we feel, and how would we respond if we experienced a succession of 9/11-like attacks, regularly over several years, in a country the size of New Jersey or one-seventeenth the size of Germany, where nearly everyone knows someone who has been killed or maimed.
And seeing how the critics of Israel hypocritically condemn Israel for alleged human rights abuses but typically ignore what Iran, Syria, China, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia, are doing to their people.
That is the "pot calling the kettle black," if you ask me.
I stand with Israel, because God stands with Israel, and I have read the Book, and in the Last chapter, Israel is still here. Some of the others, ain't. So which side are you on?
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