Remembering … breakfast!
An age with no use for truth has no use for history. Chuck and Karen Cohen expose today’s ‘reality theft’ – but God’s facts stand…
Racing towards 2018, we are amazed at how much of what the Word said would happen in the last days is happening:
Israel’s restoration agitating nations; the gospel declared throughout the earth and the huge end-time harvest happening now; the increase of knowledge; the push for a one-world government; God’s judgment upon nations trying to divide His land; God giving societies over to a reprobate mind resulting in LGBT out of the closet and seen as normative; the cancer of anti-Semitism and the release of the green (“pale”) horse of Revelation – green being Islam’s official colour. That list is enough to spotlight God doing a sudden work to wrap up this age.
The root supports you
“Boast not against the branches [unbelieving Jews]. But if you boast, know that you do not support the root, but the root supports you.”(Rom. 11:18) Gentiles in Messiah Yeshua are now grafted into Israel’s olive tree. That truth is supported by “the root,” which is God’s promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that in their Seed all the families of earth would be blessed (Gen. 12:3; 22:18; 26:4; 27:14). Paul calls this promise the gospel, the good news, to the gentiles (Gal. 3:8). In Romans 15:8-12, he says it was a major reason for Messiah coming to and serving the Jewish people.
Paul warns against treating God’s chosen people arrogantly (Rom. 11:19-23). Much of the Western Church has done just this by teaching believers to interpret the Old Testament [Tanach] through the filter of the New, yet the New Testament [NT] uses the Tanach to prove its theology is of God (2 Tim. 3:15-17).
Try this eye-opening bible study. Trace all NT uses of the word “scripture” and substitute “Old Testament.” Historically, this is what the NT refers to. Now ask yourself if you really believe what the NT declares about the Tanach? If not, why call yourself a New Testament believer if you don’t believe this most basic proof for the NT being God’s Word, a continuation and fulfilment of the only Scriptures the Church in the New Testament had? It’s simple. If you do not believe that all of the Tanach is still God’s Word, then you really do not believe the New Testament either.
The importance of history lessons
H. R. Gur writes that liberal elites often view Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahuas part of the Trump-Brexit-Le Pen-AfD (AfD = Alternative for Germany) move of democracies to the far-right in a “populist surge” which could “shake the foundations of the liberal world order.” Yet this view “is shallow, the evidence drawn almost entirely from the news cycle…” Bibi is not a populist nor does he “believe his political identity is rooted in upending an established political order…”
A division exists between him and other right-wing figures. If “Trump pushes ahead with his peace initiative,” it will ram into “Netanyahu’s fear of what he sees as irresponsible concessions …” While Trumpseems to live/think in the now, “Netanyahu sees himself at the wave-front of a long and demanding history.”
In a 2013 event, Bibi expressed this to the US Congress: “History is an understanding of the forces that work, the values that shape present action and direct the future. If you have that knowledge, you are empowered in ways that you can’t be by watching the nightly news or reading the morning editorials. We live in an ahistorical age when many people’s memories go back to breakfast, but if you’re armed with that insight you have immense power for good.”
Gur says, “Netanyahu’s critics frequently deride the flowery and often tendentious historical references that pepper his speeches,” but he is a student of his late father, esteemed historian Benzion Netanyahu, “gleaning from him a defining sense of responsibility to a deep past and a belief that the most important trends and facts in a nation’s political life are not those that find expression in the news cycle.”
Gur states that for Bibi, “the small community of people who stand at the helm of human affairs is divided not between left and right so much as between the impatient ignoramus and the considered planner.”(“Damning with deafening praise: Why Netanyahu is unimpressed by Trump,” H. R. Gur, TOI Op-ed, 21 May 2017)
Referring to “the partial cease-fire in southwestern Syria” which Trump negotiated with Russian President Putin and which is a danger to Israel, leaving Iran sitting along Israel’s Syrian border, Zev Chafetswarns about the lessons of history. In the midst of WW I, the UK and France divided the Ottoman Empire between them without consulting their allies or the native people living there. We are still paying for that arrogant move.
Chafets notes that Netanyahu is respected by both Trump and Putin. Bibi’s constantly “realistic appraisal of the Middle East contributes to the confidence both sides have in him.” In the late ’70s he “warned that Arab terrorism against Israel, if tolerated by the West, would eventually morph into a worldwide epidemic.” In 1993, he rejected “the Oslo Accordsas an effort to paper over insuperable differences between Israel and the Palestinians,” predicting it would end in bloodshed. He saw the “Arab Spring” as only “media euphoria” which would not end up with democracy – but disaster. And he “has been right in insisting that Iranian aggression is the most acute problem in the Middle East…”
Netanyahu’s respect from both these world leaders has been noticed by others. In July,India’s PM Modi visited Jerusalem, calling “for an alliance against terrorism,” yet saying not a word about a Palestinian state, a cause that India, with the world’s second largest Muslim population, has zealously supported for decades. He also warmly invited Bibi to visit India.
Then Bibi went to Paris for a ceremony recalling the “Vichy complicity in the Holocaust.” During his visit, French president Macron said that “anti-Zionism is a reinvention of anti-Semitism,” reinforcing “Netanyahu’s oft-mocked mantra.”(“The Middle East’s New Peacemaker: Israel,” Z. Chafets, Bloomberg View, 17 July 2017)
Melanie Phillips, columnist for The Times (UK), penned an open letter to Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and point man on peace negotiations. She was encouraged to hear him say to a group of congressional interns, “there may be no solution…” Yet she was miffed when he said, “We don’t want a history lesson,” but to focus on a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian situation.
Phillips: “If you really don’t think history is important, then you aren’t even going to get off the starting block. For heaven’s sake, this is all about history. The Jewish people’s unique claim to the land is rooted in the history of this land.”
History shows “us this is a war of aggression by the Arab and Muslim world against the Jews. And it really matters here who is the aggressor and who the victim.” The West rejects this as not important, viewing this as “a conflict between two warring sides.” But no, Israel is just defending itself against annihilation.
History reveals that this is a religious war. “In the 1920s, the grand mufti of Jerusalem…incited pogroms against the returning Jews by falsely claiming the Jews intended to destroy al-Aksa,” the mosque on the Temple Mount. That same accusation is “used today by the mufti’s contemporary cheerleader, Abbas.”
The problem is that “the way this issue has been” presented is essentially wrong. “It is not a ‘conflict’ but a war of annihilation. There can be no negotiation with aggressors” in a war like that, as “any compromise with such a non-negotiable agenda is a form of surrender…” Yet the West rewards Arab and Muslim hostility in Israel “by treating that agenda as legitimate. This continues today in the West’s insistence on treating Palestinians not as murderous and colonialist pariahs but as statesmen-in-waiting.”(“An Open Letter to Jared Kushner,” M. Phillips, JP Op-ed, 3 Aug. 2017)
UN: Bibi recommends the Bible
Bibi reminded the UNGA that last year he told them Israel was undergoing a “revolution” in its “standing among the nations.” Countries are seeing what Israel can offer them, “in innovation, technology,” and “in fighting terrorism.”
He then criticized “the UN and its agencies” for targeting Israel. “Syria has barrelbombed, starved, gassed and murdered hundreds of thousands of its own citizens and wounded millions more, while Israel has provided lifesaving medical care to thousands of Syrian victims of that very same carnage. Yet who does the World Health Organization criticize? Israel. Is there no limit to the UN’s absurdities when it comes to Israel?” He then noted that UNESCO “declared the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron a Palestinian World Heritage site. That’s worse than fake news, that’s fake history…” Yes, Abraham, both Isaac and Ishmael’s father, is buried there, but so are Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah, the “patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish people.“That truth is not found in UNESCO’s report, but “you can read about it in a somewhat weightier publication. It’s called the Bible… I highly recommend it… [It] even got four-and-a-half out of five stars on Amazon. And it’s a great read. I read it every week.”
Netanyahu agreed with Trump, when at the UN he “called the nuclear deal with Iran…an embarrassment.” Bibi: “Iran vows to destroy” Israel almost daily, is directing “a campaign of conquest across the Middle East” as well as “developing ballistic missiles…”
Israel’s policy on this deal is simple: “Change it or cancel it, fix it or nix it. Nixing the deal means restoring massive pressure on Iran, including crippling sanctions, until Iran fully dismantles its nuclear weapons capability. Fixing the deal requires many things, among them inspecting any military or other site that is suspect and penalizing Iran for every violation. Above all, fixing the deal means getting rid of the sunset clause.
“We must also stop Iran’s development of ballistic missiles and roll back its growing aggression in the region…” Today an Iranian curtain descends on the Middle East. “Iran spreads this curtain of tyranny and terror over Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere, and it pledges to extinguish the light of Israel.” Addressing Iran’s leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, he said, “The light of Israel will never be extinguished…Those who threaten us with annihilation put themselves in mortal peril.”
Warning the world, Netanyahu said, Israel will “act to prevent Iran from establishing permanent military bases in Syria…to prevent Iran from producing deadly weapons in Syria or in Lebanon for use against us, and…to prevent Iran from opening new terror fronts against Israel along our northern border.”
Speaking directly to Iranians in English and Farsi, he added, “You are not our enemy ” When the day comes and “you will be free from the evil regime… the friendship between our two ancient peoples will surely flourish once again.”
He ended with this: “As the Prophet Isaiah said, ‘I have made you a light unto the nations, bringing salvation to the ends of the earth’.”(“PM takes aim at Iran in UNGA address,” Israel Hayom, 20 Sept. 2017; “[Bibi] Responds to UN ‘Absurdities’ on Israel: ‘It’s called the Bible I Highly Recommend It’,” cnsnews.com, 20 Sept. 2017)