More on Christian Jewish relations.

What follows comes from links sent by Daphne Anson for various reasons. I admit it's a bit of a filler, but it's all good stuff and worth a look. I've been too busy with decorating the kitchen (aargh) and  with church and stuff, this week. I hope to put up some original material in the very near future.

From the Times of Israel: http://www.timesofisrael.com/christians-pray-in-jerusalem-for-israel-and-the-jews/

A very good article that does not have a go at Christian Zionists. Jews and Christians have too much in common to remain estranged forever.

This article is a brilliant survey of Christian Zionism and Evangelical Christianity.  It is a must-read. http://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2013/10/evangelicals-and-israel/

I don't like rap but I'll give this a pass. It makes a very valid point.




And finally, where our tax money goes when it goes to the UNRWA when it is supposed to be helping refugees. I suppose it is helping them - 

to hate Jews.

Some more truth-telling about Israel.

Zombie Anti-Zionism and more about Greenbelt.

In the USA, one Alf Cengia, writing for the Omega letter, characterises the mindset of Israel's opponents as Zombie-like. You can read it here.

In Australia, Daphne Anson has dug deeper into Greenbelt and Kairos Britain.

No prizes for guessing the one name that crops up in both articles. You can read his thinking here. Apparently, Christian Zionism is a heresy. That's very strong language. It means that we are not Christians, we are false teachers and, unless we repent, we're doomed.

He completely misrepresents/misunderstands the theology that underlies Christian Zionism. I have begun to address this in previous posts here and follow the links at the bottom of the post. I will address the issues in future posts on understanding prophecy.

Much, much more to come.

Part 4. Developing Christian Zionism, my next steps. Between the wars, '67 - '73.

In 1967, I was a young Christian who had much to learn about the scriptures and even more to learn about Israel and Zionism. I would not have used that term then, but as I have already indicated here , the basics were already in place. I still had to survive school, a gap-year, discover what I really wanted to do and get into college. It would be misleading to say that Israel was at the forefront of my thinking.

For me, as for many, it is only when those years were looked at in retrospect that we realised what had been happening. What seemed like an intensely personal journey, which it was, turned out to be road on which many others were also travelling. Sometimes called 'The Jesus Movement' what had happened was actually a unique form of revival. In the past, Christian revivals have always been associated with places and spread from there. This time it took place across a generation. Roughly between the Israeli wars, a generation came to faith in Jesus Christ in a radical (proper sense - not political), evangelical and charismatic way. Denominational barriers came crashing down, and were viewed by many as irrelevant. 

In 1967 a great many Christians were looking at their Bibles and wondering what is was they were witnessing. For me, as for many, these words of Jesus were taking on a new significance: “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. 

Now there are many who argue that is nothing to do with current day Israel and some of them are conservative evangelical Christians. But there were and are a great many Christians who looked at the state of the world and began to wonder if these were truly the end-times.

(Before anyone posts saying the last days started with Pentecost, I know that. The question is are we reaching the end of the last days?)

We had only just begun to emerge from the shadow of WW2, the Korean War had ground to a halt, the Vietnam war was rumbling on and we had survived the Cuba crisis. Most people of my age were too young to understand the Cuba crisis, but everyone a few years older and paying attention was scared witless.

The vast armies and massive devastation of the apocalyptic books of the Bible began to look a lot less symbolic.

We were beginning to realise that we were looking at a series of 'firsts'. For the first time in history we had the capability of destroying not only ourselves but everything else as well. The end of the world was suddenly nigher than we wanted it to be. For the first time we had the ability to translate the scriptures into every language on the planet and for the first time the gospel could be preached to every nation even without going there by Radio and TV.  (The internet was in its infancy so very few knew about it and the Web was decades away.) 

And of course, the big first, the clincher for many bible-believing Christians, was the emergence of the Nation of Israel in the Land and it kept on surviving wars where human reason expected that it would be destroyed. Not only that, Israel was gaining territory!

Then, we began to hear of Jews coming to believe that Jesus was the Messiah. I know that Jewish readers will have their own opinions about this last one and I will have to examine it another time.  Suffice it to say, for the moment, that the Early Christians (all Jews) decided that Gentiles did not have to become Jews in order to join the Church. Similarly, there is no reason why a Jew should magically cease to be a Jew when joining the Church. After all, Jesus is a Jewish Messiah.

Of course, it didn't work out like that historically and there are knotty issues even today. I will explore these in other posts.  

Finally, those Christians who take an interest in such matters began to realise that devout Jews were beginning to look for the coming of the Messiah. We were beginning to see some sort of understanding, a lessening of hostility and a common hope. The only difference was over one word. Christians are also looking for the (second) coming of the Messiah. 

Unpacking that one word should be interesting.

Post Script 

Shortly after the '67 conflict, I read Obadiah as part of my daily devotions. As a result, I concluded that some sort of conflict in Lebanon was to be expected. That one is still working itself out! I still think that Israel will have to create some sort of protected zone for the Lebanese people who want to live in peace and are also in danger from Israel's enemies, rather like the Kurds were given in Saddam's Iraq.


Part 1; Part 2, Part 3,
 

The Big Lie, madness and the famous Eccles.

Over at Daphne Anson's Blog is a piece on a lady who used to be my MP. She's a very likeable person, as far as I could tell from the few times I've met her. However, in my opinion, like a great many socialists, but not all, she's a sucker for a sob story. Enough of Clare Short, it was something else that is so mad you've got to laugh, if only sardonically.

After reading Daphne's piece, I got curious and looked up 'ElectronicIntifada'. It's on an illustration with the post with a quote from Steven Sizer. EI seem to believe that the BBC is now ruled by a cabal of hardline Zionists. If that is true, it's a revolution. Will we now see the Balen report? Somehow I doubt it.

As I looked through the Google links on EI, I found this at Uprooted Palestinian . It appears that this  believes that George Soros funds EI, which may or may not be true and, get this, that George Soros is part of the Zionist conspiracy. Yes, he states that EI are Israel's spokesman.

"The truth is that these Electronic people are Israel’s spokesmen."

We can judge the quality of his reportage from another, more recent post, on the Syrian genocide.

The piece is headed by a picture which has nothing to do with Syria but is of Mohammed al Durrah (Dura).

My link goes to an exhaustive Wikipedia piece which leaves the matter unresolved, wisely from their point of view, because it has been demonstrated that, if the boy died, he was never killed by Israeli bullets.

What matters is not the truth but the tug on the heart.

Behind both these websites is the allegation that a Zionist Cabal is at work. Now back to Stephen Sizer . His quote is a criticism of CUFI and includes a picture with the link 'Banging the Drums of War'.

The article he is linking to, by one Emily Warda (and also here ) contains some valid criticism of what is really US American culture and not Zionism, followed by assorted distortions, unsupported assertions about Christian Zionism, an exaggeration of CUFI's influence and finishing with the (unsupported) assertion that they are banging the drums of war. CUFI has some 1.3 million members but that is out of a population of nearly 316 million. That's 0.4% of the population. OK, let's make some allowances for age and call it nearly 1%. According to the leftist Salon.com the muslim population could range from less that 1 million to up to 10 million. This is typical of attempts to quantify Islam. Generally, most come out at 2 - 3 million. Allowing for age, it's about even. I doubt that all the CUFI supporters are rich, white and powerful.

Which brings me back to the madness. If Zionism, in all its forms, is so powerful why am I not the Archbishop of Canterbury; why is Stephen Sizer still a vicar; why did the Holocaust happen; why is Israel so small; why does Israel surrender land for peace...etc. etc.?

Ah, yes. That singularly unsuccessful Zionist plot to rule the world which is simultaneously rich, powerful, secret, diabolical... yawn. Where does this strange idea come from? Its a Big Lie. Goebbels practiced it. Paul predicted it http://bible.cc/2_thessalonians/2-11.htm .

Actually, the lie is a distortion of promises in the Tenach and in the New Testament. It's the argument over the nature of that distortion and how to interpret scripture that separates me, and others, from Sizer and his ilk.

The day when Israel will be pre-eminent among the nations only comes with the (return of) the Messiah. This will not be brought about by precipitating Armageddon (more about that some other time). It's the rage against God that leads to a rage against real Christianity and against the Jew (again more later).

It's God's fault. He chose someone. It could have been a Briton. If it had we would be fighting the French and others for a piece of  the British Isles. It would have been the same story with British names. Josh Davidson would have been born in the North of England and executed in London. And so on.

The Messiah had to be somewhere. Which brings me at last to that saner form of madness which is the Goon Show and the famous Eccles. 

Eccles, when trapped in a coal cellar and questioned on what he was doing there, replies "Everybody's got to be somewhere".

And therein is the problem. The Jews, and others, are allowed to be somewhere, just as long as it is somewhere else.

First steps in Zionism - Part 3: 1967 and all that!

These are my memories of what it was like to be 14, at school, discovering a personal faith, discovering the Bible and being confronted with the amazing feat of arms that was the Six-Day War. It's my history as I remember it. I will try to be accurate but it's not journalism or general historical analysis. It's about how I became/discovered I was a Christian Zionist.

It's worth remembering that in 1967 many people still had personal memories of WW2. Grandparents and some parents had served in the Forces. Most had done National Service and nearly all had lived through the War. We knew what the Germans had done. Back then we were less fussy about German /Nazi distinctions. We knew that the Jews deserved a homeland and we knew, to some extent, the Bible.

The Four 'Rs were reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic', and religious instruction. This latter meant Christianity and, because Christians revere the Old Testament/Tenach, there was some familiarity with Judaism and with the Geography etc. of the Holy Land. We knew things that these days some people actually question, such as the reality of the Temple in Jerusalem until AD 70. I'll post later on the change in terminology and the undermining of Christian Education in the latter half of the 20century. (Not a thesis, just a blog-post!)

For those who want a timeline and a history of the build-up to the war, I suggest that you go here . It's quite amazing how different political attitudes were then.

I vaguely remember Nasser taking the straits of Tiran (Gulf of Aqaba). Everyone knew that a regional war was was imminent. What no-one expected was a different kind of Jew.

The school I attended had a Combined Cadet Force. The best in the North-East, then and now. US reader, please do not make the mistake of interpreting this as being the same as your ROTC. It's very part-time, more fun, more relaxed, less intense, in short, more British. It's not full-volume, buzz cuts, calling sergeants 'sir' (good grief!!!) etc. Voice of command, yes on parade, hair - just above the collar, and our lot were so arrogant ( I'm sorry to say) that we never saluted anyone under the rank of Major. I'm not sure how we got away with it. The point being we appreciated the feat of arms that was the Six-Day War.

Instead of Saul cowering in his tent, or the dreadful images of the Holocaust, we had an army of Davids, young, fit and victorious.

Some of us thrilled to see this, and when we saw those same soldiers reunite Jerusalem and praying at the Western Wall, it felt like we were watching the Bible come to life.

And then, as part of my growth as a Christian, I discovered Obadiah. to be precise 1:20 . Zarephath, half-way between Tyre and Sidon. I wondered if we might see conflict in the Lebanon in that area? Obadiah got that one right, but possession is yet to come. Given the persecution of non-muslim Arabs, I still expect to see them look to Israel for protection.

To summarise, at this point I believed that:

The Jews had a right to live in their historic homeland;
They had a right to self-determination - rule themselves;
And they had a right to self-defence.
This made me a Zionist, if I but knew it.
It also made me a patriot as every nation has these rights.

I also believed that I was seeing the fulfillment of prophecy .
This made me a religious Zionist.

Finally, it seemed to me that this heralded the return of the Messiah.
And this made me a Christian Zionist.

Nothing, that I have learned since, has changed these basic convictions.
There is much more to come, but these are still my first steps in Zionism.

Learn more about these pictures here.

First Steps in Zionism Part 2 - some reflections.

Of course, I've missed out a lot of what happened in the 40s, 50s and early 60s. I had only just become a 'teenager' in '66. How I hated that word! Teenagers this; teenagers that. Judge a whole generation because they had reached 13.

In the UK, I could just remember the orange juice ration for babies and my sister being weighed in at the 'clinic', which actually was the Methodist Church Hall. It would feature again in my early life.

Being a voracious reader, and my parents having subscribed for me to a part-work encyclopedia called 'Knowledge', I had some idea of the possible consequences if the USA/USSR confrontation had gone wrong in '62. I can still recall the day that President Kennedy was assassinated. I was aware of the Suez crisis but I couldn't have told you much about it.

Growing up in an English Market Town in the Durham Dales had a great many blessings and privileges; not least our very own Museum/French Chateau and a Public School, Grammar School and Secondary School. 

It wasn't idyllic, by any means, but it was a much better life than many, even in the UK, enjoyed.

We didn't hear much about Israel. As far as my generation was concerned, it was where it was supposed to be, where the Bible said it was, more or less. We knew nothing of the Balfour declaration or the machinations of T.E. Lawrence and the Foreign Office. My father's generation, having done National Service, couldn't comprehend why Irgun and other groups attacked the King David Hotel and hung National Servicemen, just young men trying to serve King and Country. 

Now, at a distance, I can only wish that we had kept our word. I think that there are apologies due on both sides.

I don't know that I really 'became' a Zionist. I think it is the word that best describes what I believe and how those beliefs developed. For me, and for many, Israel had every right to exist in its homeland. After all, a war had just been fought for the right of all of us to live freely and in our own countries. At least, that's what the people fought for.

First steps in Zionism - a personal journey.

This is the first post in a series that will examine how and why I became a committed Christian Zionist. It is my  journey and my understanding.

Like many other brought up in the 50s and 60s, I went to Sunday School. This is different in the UK to what is found in the USA. 

At my home church we had a Lay Reader (non-ordained minister licensed to preach in the Anglican Church). He had the enormous privilege of going to Israel for a holiday. Back then foreign holidays were for the rich alone. We were just beginning to get used to the idea that working people might holiday abroad.

He came back with a slide show of places in Israel. He told us that here was where Jesus did this, or there was where David did that etc. etc.  Thus was born a desire, still unfulfilled, to go to Israel and see for myself. I was about eight years old. Many others were taught what I was taught, but they are neither Christian or Zionist.

Back then, I hadn't encountered the idea that scripture was unreliable. I never swallowed that lie.

In course of time (1966), I was confirmed into the CofE and stayed with the Church. It was through the writings of C.S. Lewis that I was shown the work of Satan and the saving power of Jesus the Christ. About this time, God was working in the lives of millions of young people (1967/8). This Revival was sometimes called the Jesus Movement, but I knew none of that. All I knew was the God  that I had personally encountered was the Jesus I read about in the Scriptures.  

I soon came to realise that if I believed the Gospels, I had to believe the Old Testament/Tenach. I didn't know it at the time, but I was now an 'evangelical' Christian.

For me, Jesus and Israel were inseparably intertwined - and I wanted to go to Israel all the more.

Next: 1967 and all that.