Nobel winner’s problem with ‘a peculiar people’ and Israel

Posted on June 21, 2012 by Gene & LaVada Triesch
Jewish World Review June 21, 2012 / 1 Tamuz, 5772By Abraham Cooper and Yitzchok Adlerstein 

 Tutu’s willful blindness and what Methodists consider sacred

JewishWorldReview.com | When Nobel laureates speak, peace-seekers generally listen. Thankfully, Methodists recently voted for a balanced approach to the Middle East, rejecting Rev. Desmond Tutu’s support of a harsh anti-Israel resolution. Presbyterians will soon be voting on similar measures, and they too will have to weigh the appeal of Tutu’s strong “moral” censure of the Jewish state.

Tutu had worked hard to influence the vote to divest Methodist pension funds from three American companies doing business with Israel. He penned a letter to delegates at the quadrennial General Conference of the United Methodist Church, and published an op-ed in The Tampa Bay Times as the conference met. But Tutu deployed language — both recently and in the past — that crossed from political agitation to incitement.

“In our struggle against apartheid, the great supporters were Jewish people,” Tutu wrote in the past. “They almost instinctively had to be on the side of the disenfranchised, of the voiceless ones.”

Yet he also descended into rank anti-Semitism.

“Whether Jews like it or not, they are a peculiar people.  They can’t ever hope to be judged by the same standards which are used for other people.”

In a scathing indictment of Israel, he claimed that it has “oppressed more than the apartheid ideologues could ever dream about in South Africa.”

Could it be that Rev. Tutu has forgotten how brutal were the racial policies of apartheid? Or is he engaged in conscious revisionism when he finds that Israel — where 18 percent of citizens are Arabs who vote, criticize the government, have representatives in Knesset, attend all universities and contribute a justice to the Supreme Court — treats Arabs worse than the Afrikaaner treated blacks?

Tutu declaims with prophetic rage: “God formed a very particular relationship with a particular group of people; Hebrews who were oppressed as slaves in another land. As time moved on, this people disobeyed God and time and time again the prophets had to call them back to their deepest values.”

He makes it perfectly clear that he is not speaking of the Biblical Israelites alone, but the Jews of today.

“Prophetic voices have been calling this empowered people who were once oppressed and killed, to their deepest values of justice and compassion, but they have refused to listen.”

Why does he not invoke the Bible to condemn the sins of Palestinians: terror, suicide bombing, racial incitement? Where’s the biblical fire and brimstone against those in Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Iraq who persecute and murder Christians?

While churches are bombed and countries are cleansing themselves of Christian and other religious minorities, Rev. Tutu — and the churches pondering divestment resolutions against Israel — are silent. Where does the Nobel laureate’s animus come from?

From two sources. While Tutu is a social progressive, he appears to be an old-school theologian. He simply cannot let go of centuries of Replacement Theology, in which all covenants with Jews were voided in favor of the New Jews, i.e. Christians. References to a Holy Land are interpreted allegorically; Jews should not lay claim to any piece of real estate, or expect to return to the Middle East. In fact, the Jewish return to their ancestral home came as a rude and unwelcome surprise to old-guard theologians.

American Jews have enjoyed decades of goodwill bridge-building with Christians. The Vatican’s 1965 Nostra Aetate, inspired by a saintly Pope who truly respected Jews, was a sea-change for the Catholic Church. Many evangelicals have been effusive in their philo-Semitism and support for Israel. But such is not the case among some Protestant denominations where classic rejection of Jews, conscious or otherwise, often persists without challenge.

While many mainline Protestants see a theological basis for respecting Jews and Judaism based on Romans 9-11, and many others simply understand the secular arguments for six million Jews as modern stakeholders in the Holy Land, others cannot bear the thought of a resurgent and empowered Jewish people. Jews were supposed to become footnotes to history, not chapter headings. Tutu remains caught in a theological time warp.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, many Christians reconsidered their relationship with Jews. Two Popes — John XXIII and John Paul II — confronted the Holocaust with honesty, and made decisive changes in Church conduct. Tutu’s encounter with the Holocaust apparently took an opposite turn.

Tutu’s mentor was Mohandas Gandhi, who had a blind spot for the lives of Jews. Faced with the rising specter of Hitler’s threats against the Jewish people, Gandhi was asked what Jews ought to do. In 1938, he essentially counseled them to commit suicide: “The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews…. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy.”

Gandhi compounded this outrage as the conflict between Jews and Arabs in the Holy Land heated up, incited by Hitler’s ally, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Gandhi insisted that the Jews had no place there, “only by the goodwill of the Arabs….There are hundreds of ways of reasoning with the Arabs, if they will only discard the help of the British bayonet.”

One such was for the Jews to “offer satyagraha to the Arabs and offer themselves to be shot or thrown into the Dead Sea without raising a little finger against them.”

Tutu, the student seems to have learned well from his teacher.

But instead of disappearing, three years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the Jewish people rose from the dead to declare the modern State of Israel. Six decades later, against all odds, the Jewish state thrives.

Most rank and file churchgoers have room for two narratives. They seek ways to improve the lot of their Palestinian co-religionists without rejecting the Jewish people’s right to pursue their national and spiritual future. That tolerant vision — not Tutu’s willful blindness — may be the best last hope for peace.

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PJTN Shavuot (Pentecost) Message

Posted on May 25, 2012 by Gene & LaVada Triesch

I am posting the latest newsletter from Laurie Cardoza-Moore, of Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, as it gives Christians a good background on this important Feast of the LORD that is being celebrated this weekend around the world.  The Feast of Shavuot (Pentecost) when the church, assembly of God’s people (ecclesia in Greek), was gathered at Mt. Sinai for the giving of the Torah by God to His people.  We encourage you to visit PJTN’s website and support their good work.

Shalom, Gene & LaVada

PJTN Shavuot Message

May 25, 2012

Dear Friends of PJTN:

This coming Saturday night and Sunday, our Jewish brethren are celebrating the Festival of Shavuot. This Festival is one of the three annual pilgrimages to Jerusalem in the Bible where G-d requires all the males of His people to show up and not to come to Him empty handed (Deuteronomy16:16-17; 2 Chronicles 8:13).

This Festival is celebrated as the giving of the Torah, starting with Moses receiving the Ten Commandments.

As we recount the story of the Exodus from Egypt, we are reminded that all the Twelve Tribes of Israel, including Egyptians who chose to sojourn with them, stood at the foot of Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments. In Exodus, they accepted the Ten Commandments and agreed in unison, “All the words that the L-RD has spoken, we will do.” Exodus 24:3

During this festival, in Synagogues around the globe, the Ten Commandments will be read as well as the Book of Ruth. I encourage our Christian brethren to re-read the book this weekend too.  We are reminded in this beautiful story of Ruth’s commitment and dedication to honor and serve her mother-in-law, Naomi:

“But Ruth said, ‘Do not urge me to leave you, to turn back from following you. For where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people are my people, and your G-d is my G-d; where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus may the L-RD do to me, and so may He do more, if anything but death separates me from you.'” Ruth 1:16-17

In the story, we see the responses from Naomi’s daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth, and their very different commitments to their mother-in-law. These two women are representative of how Christians are divided today with regards to support of our Jewish brethren and Israel. Ruth chose not to leave, in fact, her commitment to her mother-in-law was unto death. Where Orpah chose to return to her family and her gods, not feeling the same commitment to honor and serve Naomi.

With the continued threats Israel faces in this generation, I want to thank our Christian supporters for their dedication and commitment to stand with our Jewish brethren and Israel at this crucial time in history. Like Ruth, the Moabitess, I pray you too will recommit yourself to this Biblical support.

To our Jewish brethren, may you be comforted knowing that as you stand in the Synagogues and recite the Ten Commandments and read the Book of Ruth this weekend, The Almighty has raised up millions of “Ruth’s” around the world to stand with you. Even though there is much turmoil and hate in the Middle East, you do not stand alone. Like Ruth, we, at PJTN, reaffirm our commitment to you to “let nothing but death separate you and all of us.”

With much love,

Laurie Cardoza-Moore, President
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THE REAL ROOT OF THE CHRISTIAN EXODUS

Posted on May 13, 2012 by Gene & LaVada Triesch

Note:  Our purpose with this blog category is to bring you information that you may not otherwise receive in your daily news media outlets.  We encourage you to visit the blog sites we reference to get all the information and subscribe to their news sources.

THE REAL ROOT OF THE CHRISTIAN EXODUS

What 60 Minutes overlooked in the Holy Land

By: 

David Parsons, ICEJ Media Director

Posted on:  Tue, 01 May 2012   -0400
 
With his recent segment for 60 Minutes, CBS News reporter Bob Simon has once again stoked the perennial debate over why so many native Palestinian Christians have been leaving the Holy Land in recent decades. Sadly, he addressed this important issue with a very superficial brand of journalism. The report relied mainly on one local Palestinian cleric – notorious Israel-basher Rev. Mitri Raheb – to single out the “Israeli occupation” as the scapegoat for this Christian flight. There was no need to dig deeper, since Simon knew the report was sure to be a sensation from the moment Israeli ambassador Dr. Michael Oren caught wind of the production and intervened with his bosses at CBS News.If Bob Simon had truly wanted to know why Arab Christians have been fleeing in droves from Palestinian areas, he should have asked those émigrés now living in Toronto, Sydney and Santiago. Because that is where the majority of Palestinian Christians now reside – in dispersed communities in Canada, Chile, Australia, Germany, the United States and elsewhere.The disturbing truth is that more than 60% of the Arab Christians born in Palestinian areas over the past several generations now live abroad. Yet the same holds true for Lebanese Christians, as a similar 60% of their beleaguered community now live in foreign lands.Indeed, there has been a widening Christian exodus from all the surrounding Arab countries, with Iraq’s ancient Assyrian Christian community collapsing from 1.5 million to as few as 250,000 since the Second Gulf War commenced in 2003. The Coptic Church in Egypt is also losing tens of thousands of parishioners in the wake of the Arab Spring.So it is indisputable that Arab Christians are fleeing all across the Middle East, and surely the Israeli occupation is not to blame. Rather, this flight has been primarily due to local conflicts and the rise of Islamic militancy, as noted by Ambassador Oren, and the Palestinian Christians are no exception to this trend. The lone exception, in fact, happens to be the state of Israel, the only place in the entire region where Arab Christians are growing in number and are afforded their democratic rights.

 

 
Still, some Palestinian clerics insist that Muslims and Christians would co-exist in perfect harmony if not for the Jews and their settlements. That, sadly, is a living portrait of a people in denial. How else to explain that Palestinian Christian flight from the Holy Land predates the “occupation” by decades?
 
For instance, the last British census in 1948 recorded 29,000 Arab Christians living in Jerusalem, while the first Israeli census in eastern Jerusalem in 1967 found only 11,000. That means two-thirds of the Arab Christian population had fled during the 19 years of the Jordanian occupation of east Jerusalem.The real root of the current exodus actually lies in the historic interplay between Christians, Jews and Muslims in the Middle East ever since the Islamic conquests began in the seventh century. The region’s Christians and Jews became dhimmis – suppressed minorities living under Muslim dominance. They could keep their faith but had to accept second-class status. To survive, both communities adopted a code of silence which dictated that they never challenge the system nor say anything bad about Islam in public.This system of dhimmitude basically held until modern times. The Crusades may have brought temporary relief for some Christians, but only terror for the Jews.
 

When Ottoman rule over the Middle East began to wane, the dynamic finally began to change. The Great Powers of Europe moved into the region, each concluding deals with the Sultanate in Istanbul to provide protection to various imperiled Christian denominations. Western missionaries also brought with them schools, hospitals and other modern institutions. With their better education and job skills, Arab Christians became more mobile and many began to migrate to the West to escape the prison of Islam. Thus the modern-day Christian exodus began.

Meanwhile, the Zionist movement arose with a dream of restoring Jewish sovereignty back in their ancient homeland. Israel’s emergence in 1948 challenged the system of Muslim dominance over Christians and Jews, an achievement the Arab world has never truly accepted.

For many Christians in the Middle East, the rebirth of Israel actually stands as a light and model of freedom from Muslim tyranny. But for Palestinian Christians, the conflict that seeks to destroy the Jewish state has been too close for comfort. They are powerless to end it and struggling to survive.

Thus many Palestinian Christian leaders have taken to patriotically waving the flag of Palestinian nationalism higher than even their Muslim neighbors, in the hope such loyalty to the cause will safeguard their flocks. They rail against the Israeli occupation and the settlements as the reason for their dwindling presence. The checkpoints and security barrier may create hardships for them, but it is not the core reason why proud Christian families who have weathered many turbulent centuries here are now pulling up roots.

We must all understand that they are employing an ancient survival mechanism ingrained through centuries of Muslim oppression. Unable to name the real culprit, Palestinian Christians often deflect Muslim anger away from themselves by directing it at the Jews. Meantime, Ambassador Oren is giving voice to the very things they cannot say.

 

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Who’s Afraid of the Messiah?

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Gene & LaVada Triesch

Jewish World Review May 3, 2012 / 11 Iyar, 5772

Who’s Afraid of the Messiah?

By Michael Freund

JewishWorldReview.com | Though he has yet to appear, Israel’s long-awaited Redeemer is very much in the news these days.
From the Sydney Morning Herald down under to the Vancouver Sun up yonder, headlines around the world trumpeted former Shin Bet director Yuval Diskin’s charge on Friday that Israel’s “messianic” leadership is misleading the public on Iran.Speaking at a public forum in Kfar Saba, Diskin insisted that an Israeli strike against the Ayatollahs’ nuclear installations would not halt Iran’s drive to obtain atomic weapons.

He lambasted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, attacking them personally and declaring in no uncertain terms that, “I don’t believe in the prime minister or the defense minister. I really don’t believe in a leadership that makes decisions out of messianic feelings.”

Referring to them dismissively as “our two messiahs”, Diskin added that “I’m telling you, I’ve seen them from up close, and they’re not messiahs.”

The press of course had a field day with all this, lapping up the fact that one of Israel’s most senior security establishment figures had taken a swing at his former bosses on such a sensitive issue.

But while much of the attention was focused on the Iranian angle as well as the political ramifications of Diskin’s remarks, there is one question that was completely overlooked: When did having a messianic impulse become a bad thing? Or, to put it more succinctly: who’s afraid of the Messiah?

To be sure, in our modern political context, many people are uneasy with the idea that leaders might be influenced by religious or theological beliefs.

We like to think that they make cold calculations based purely on an assessment of the overall situation while taking into account nothing other than the national interest.

Clearly, however, that is a naive oversimplification, if only because every leader is also a human being whose decision-making is shaped and influenced by the values, principles and beliefs that he holds.

Furthermore, whether Diskin realizes it or not, it was a messianic world-view that lay the foundation for the birth of this country.

Indeed, as Barak noted when he responded to Diskin’s broadside, it was none other than David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, who said that Zionism is a messianic movement.

And Theodore Herzl, too, though avowedly secular, was also inspired by messianic hopes.

As the Hebrew University’s Prof. Robert S. Wistrich noted in an article entitled “Theodore Herzl: Between Messianism and Politics”, the founder of modern-day political Zionism “was attracted to the Messiah legends of the Jews from early adolescence.”

A year before his death, Herzl confided to the Hebrew writer Reuven Brainin that he had dreamt as a child of twelve that he would play a leading role in Israel’s redemption.

Herzl described the dream as follows: “The King Messiah came, a glorious and majestic old man, took me in his arms and swept off with me on the wings of the wind. On one of the shining clouds we encountered the figure of Moses . . . The Messiah called to Moses: ‘It is for this child that I have prayed!’ And to me he said: ‘Go and declare to the Jews that I shall come soon and perform great wonders and great deeds for my people and for the whole world!'”

In light of this, would Diskin now express a lack of confidence in Herzl and Ben-Gurion and their achievements?

The fact is that since the dawn of time, Jews have believed in the coming of the Messiah, anxiously awaiting his arrival and hoping for the better world that he will usher in.

As the late scholar of Jewish mysticism Gershom Scholem noted in his groundbreaking work, The Messianic Idea in Judaism, “Judaism, in all of its forms and manifestations, has always maintained a concept of redemption as an event which takes place publicly, on the stage of history and within the community.”

Three times daily, Jews appeal to the Creator to send the Messiah. In the Amida prayer, we say, “May the offshoot of your servant David soon flower . . . for we await Your salvation all day.”

And every Sabbath, a special prayer for the State of Israel authorized by the Chief Rabbinate is recited by many the world over. It states, “Our Father in Heaven, Israel’s Rock and Redeemer, bless the State of Israel, the first flowering of our redemption.”

The messianic urge, and the hope inherent to it, is in part what kept the Jewish people alive throughout the ages.

Staring long and hard at the horrors of exile, it was the dream of a brighter future that sustained our ancestors through their darkest hours and gave them a reason to carry on.

As Jews, we are expected to believe with complete faith that even if he tarries, the Messiah will yet come.

For Diskin to deride this creed is appalling and he should be ashamed of himself for mocking one of the fundamental doctrines of Judaism.

But let him say whatever he wishes. I, along with countless other Jews, will continue to long for the day when, as the prophet Isaiah (51:11) put it, “those the L-rd has rescued will return. They will enter Zion with singing and everlasting joy will crown their heads.Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.” May it happen soon.
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Click here to go to article and bio of Michael Freund.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0512/messiah_politics.php3

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April 2012 Newsletter from Gene & LaVada

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Gene & LaVada Triesch

There is something on my heart that I need to share with you all… 

Most of you know that we began to get serious about our faith in Jesus, the Messiah, several years ago and that led us to start a music ministry.

2004

One of our first appearances as Menorah Music, at Wimberley Gospel Festival, 2004

[Note: run your cursor over each scripture reference for a pop up window with the scripture verse.]

We recently received a newsletter from a church organization, which included an article about a newly formed Lutheran church in Brenham, TX.  In the article, was this sentence, “We believe God is always with us, continuing without change, and the Holy Scriptures through which we know Him also continue without change.” 

Now, on the surface this seems like a very reasonable statement that would be agreed with by most believing Christians.  But, the ‘catch’ phrase is, continuing without change.  Do they really believe that God is without change or that the Holy Scriptures are without change?

And here is why I ask this.  (And, by the way, it’s not only the Lutheran churches that do this…it’s most all of them.)

The Bible does indeed say that Jesus (the Living Word) is the same yesterday, today and forever.  (Hebrews 13:8)  And that God does not change. (Malachi 3:6)  Of course, Malachi is in the Old Testament, which happens to be the only scriptures that Jesus or the Apostles ever referred to.  The Old Testament makes up about two-thirds of our Bible.  There was no New Testament in the time of Jesus.  And, in the last words of the “Old” Testament, we are reminded in Malachi 4:4-5, “Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and ordinances that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel.  Behold, I will send you Eli’jah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes.” 

When Jesus was walking to Emmaus with two disciples after the resurrection, “He interpreted to them in all the scriptures the thing concerning himself.”  (Luke 24:27)  What scriptures was He referring to?

So, are we really following God as He continues without change?  Here is a Scriptural example:

Leviticus 23:2-3

“Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘The LORD’S appointed times which you shall proclaim as holy convocations—My appointed times are these:  ‘For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a sabbath of complete rest, a holy convocation. You shall not do any work; it is a sabbath to the LORD in all your dwellings.

[He then gives the instructions about His Feasts in verses 4-21.]

And ends up with this statement in Verse 21…

Leviticus 23:21

“It is to be a perpetual statute in all your dwelling places throughout your generations.”

This is God’s Word to God’s people.  Right?  Perpetual and throughout your generations pretty much means from now on… forever… ad infinitum, without end, right?

Fast forward to the time of Jesus and His Apostles… Jesus said He did not come to destroy the Law and the Prophets but to fulfill them.  (Matthew 5:17)  The Torah  — the first five books of the Bible — are His instructions, which He gave to Moses on Mt. Sinai.   The word, fulfill, was translated from the Greek word, pleroo, which also means, “to fully preach”…  The same word is used in Romans 15:19 where it is translated to fully preach. ( “…I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.”)  Jesus came to fully preach the Law of Moses, not destroy it or make it of no use.

Then, we learn from Paul in his letter to the Romans, in Chapter 11, that we, as believers in Jesus, are “grafted in” to the “cultivated olive tree,” the commonwealth of Israel…a people chosen by God to be a light to the world!  We are adopted into His Family!   No where does it say that Jesus came to “start a new religion” or, a “new church.”  In fact, the believers in Jesus at that time were known as “The Way,” a sect of Judaism!!  (Acts 24:14)

We look at how Jesus and His disciples lived… and we see that they kept the same Sabbath Day that had been kept by their people since the Exodus; they kept the Feasts that God had said were “His Feasts” (not Jewish Feasts); they kept the Commandments/the Law… the Torah.  Actually, “instructions” would be a better way to define “the Torah” rather than “Law.”   In fact, Jesus instructed the people to listen to the Pharisees when they “sat in Moses seat” and do what they say, but don’t do as they do, because they don’t practice what they preach!  (Matthew 23:1-3)  [When a Torah teacher sat in Moses seat, he could only read from the Torah scroll, he could not make a commentary or preach his own sermon, etc.]

And Paul…   Paul went to great lengths to prove that he was NOT teaching against the Law of Moses!  (See Acts 21:24 & Acts 24:14 but also most of Chapters 21-28.)

Now, fast forward again… to 325 A.D.  The Roman Emperor, Constantine, merged paganism with Christianity.  He changed the day of worship, the festivals celebrated, the days of the celebrations, etc.  He did away with everything “Jewish”… [our Lord and Savior was born into a Jewish family, He was Jewish, of the bloodline of David.]  And Constantine decreed that if anyone was found keeping the “Jewish Sabbath” or “Judaizing” that they be put to death!  Constantine, prior to “converting” to Christianity, worshiped the Sun god, Mithra, whose birthday was December 25.

Do your own research on the history of the Christian church and its holidays.   I think you most likely can see where all this leads.  Gene and I have done an extensive study on the history of the Christian church and its days of worship and celebrations.  The Constantinian church ultimately became the Roman Catholic Church.   The reformation was led by Martin Luther and others centuries later.  But they never “reformed” or, restored, the church to its original form… The Way.

So, back to my opening paragraph regarding the comment in the newsletter…  Most all churches, pastors and Christians in general, say that they believe God’s Word is unchanging, that God is the same  yesterday, today and forever, and yet, many teach that Jesus did away with some or all of the Law, that the “New Covenant” has replaced the “Old Covenant,” that the Old Testament is old and the New Testament has replaced it…and, even that “the Church” has replaced Israel with regard to all the promises of God!  Not so, according to Scripture!

Amos 3:7 says that God will not do anything without first telling His prophets!

“Surely the Lord GOD does nothing, Unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets.”   And nowhere in the Books of the Prophets or anywhere else does it say that God will be changing His Sabbath Day to the first day of the week, or that He will be discontinuing His Feast Days, or that His Law will become irrelevant.  He gave instructions that no one was to add to or take away from His Law.  (Deuteronomy 12:32)

According to the Scriptures, there will be a “restoration of all things” in the Last Days.   (See Matt. 17:11 & Acts 3:21)   And that is what we see happening just since we first began our music ministry in 2004.  Many people all over the world are learning about the Hebrew roots of the Christian faith; they are studying and following the Torah teachings that Jesus taught!  He said, “If you love me, keep my commandments.”  (John 14:15)

Let me ask you…  what “commandments” was Jesus referring to?

“He who says, “I know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.”  (1 John 2:4)

Also, “the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.”   (1 John 2:6)   (There are many other such scriptures.)

“Sin” is the transgression of the Law.  (1 John 3:4KJV)  Jesus was without sin.  He did not break the Law… the Law of Moses…the Torah.  He rebuked the Pharisees for their “doctrines & traditions of men,” their “Oral Law,” which did go against the Torah.

Long held traditions are not easily set aside or let go of.  Very often fond memories are attached to these traditions.  Memories can remain.  Traditions can change which will, in turn, bring about new memories!  Should not our traditions follow a biblical pattern?  A pattern, which holds to what is true?  You may ask, why is this so important?  Jesus seemed to think it was.  “Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches [them], he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:19)

For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.  (1 John 5:3)

Because of all the research and study that we have done, we do the best we can to walk as Jesus and His disciples walked… they kept all the Commandments.  We have been so blessed since beginning this walk of faith!  Keep in mind, we are not talking about obeying the commandments for our salvation!   Jesus, Yeshua, paid the price on Calvary for our sins, but because we love Him, we keep His Commandments!  And we do it with the help of the Holy Spirit!

Also, keep in mind, He said this immediately after He stated that He came to “fully preach” the Law….and that UNTIL HEAVEN & EARTH PASS AWAY NOT ONE JOT OR TITTLE WOULD PASS FROM THE LAW UNTIL ALL BE FULFILLED!  (Matthew 5:18)   It is interesting to note that a different Greek word was used here to translate into the English word, fulfilled.  It was ginomai, which means to become, to come into existence, to be made, finished, etc.   Makes you wonder what the motive was to translate pleroo as fulfilled in Matthew 5:17, but as fully preached in Romans 15:19…and then when they really did have the word ginomai they correctly translated it as fulfilled!!  Just a thought…

The more we learn, the more there is to learn!  We are seeking the truth from His Word and we get help from many teachers of the Holy Scriptures.  We do believe that errors have been made by the Church because it has discarded its Hebraic roots, which need to be restored.  The world doesn’t need another “church.”  If the truth matters, then it should be sought after!

If you would like to know more about this, please get in touch with us.  There are many believers around the world who have begun this walk of faith at this time, which we believe the Bible refers to as “the Last Days.”

Love and blessings,

LaVada

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Hemorrhage of Hatred

Posted on April 22, 2012 by Gene & LaVada Triesch

Incidents that should make the world’s Front Pages but WON’T because of the ‘unacceptable Truths’ they would reveal.

By Caroline B. Glick

JewishWorldReview.com |

Hatred of Jews is the central animating feature of the political and strategic reality of the Middle East. It is hatred of Jews that dictates the legal regimes, foreign policies, military aspirations, cultural mores, educational themes and even public health policies of our neighbors from Ramallah to Teheran.

Despite the centrality of Jew hatred in all aspects of public life in the Arab and Muslim world, our neighbors’ unrelenting and irrational abhorrence for Israel and the Jewish people remains a dirty secret that you aren’t supposed to mention in polite company. From Washington to Brussels, talk of the policy implications of Arab and Muslim Jew hatred is prohibited.

Omar Abu-Sneina, a convicted terrorist murderer is one of the thousand Palestinian terrorists that Israel released from prison in order to secure the release of Israeli hostage IDF Sgt. Gilad Schalit. Originally from Hebron, Abu-Sneina was released to Hamas-controlled Gaza. This week the IDF announced that since his release Abu-Sneina has returned to the terror business. The Israel Security Agency intercepted a memory card he sent his family in Hebron with instructions for how his fellow terrorists should go about kidnapping and holding IDF soldiers hostage. The instructions demonstrate how for Abu-Sneina, Israelis don’t even deserve to be treated like animals.

Among other things, he discussed how to hide a hostage. As he put it, “Avoid hiding [the captive soldier] in desolate places, tunnels or forests, unless the aforementioned [captive] is a corpse or a severed head. If the aforementioned is a live human, that must be visited at least once a week and provided with food and drink, it is best to hide him in a house, an agricultural farm, a workplace, etc.”

Abu-Sneina’s coldblooded cruelty and rejection of the inherent value of the lives of Israelis is not simply a function of the fact that he is a terrorist. It is a reflection of the values of Palestinian society. Those values are continuously expressed and reinforced by Fatah and Hamas controlled media outlets, cultural and educational institutions and religious authorities. The ubiquitousness of Jew hatred in the daily lives of Palestinians is so overwhelming it is difficult to imagine any facet of Palestinian life that isn’t inundated by it.

Take grammar lessons. According to a translation provided by Palestinian Media Watch, the Palestinian Authority’s Arabic language matriculation examinations for high school students include questions such as, “Punctuate the underlined phrase: Do not view the occupier as human.” And “Punctuate the underlined phrase: We shall die in order that our land may live.”

This week a Palestinian court sentenced Muhammad Abu Shahala to death for selling a home in Hebron near the Cave of the Patriarchs to Jews. Shahala was arrested shortly after several Jewish families moved into the house last month. He was reportedly tortured and quickly tried and sentenced to die by a PA court.

The PA was established in May 1994. The first law it adopted defined selling land to Jews a capital offense. Shortly thereafter scores of Arab land sellers began turning up dead in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria in both judicial and extrajudicial killings.

Leaders of the Jewish community of Hebron wrote a letter to international leaders this week asking them to intervene with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and demand that he cancel Shahala’s sentence. They addressed the letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy, the Director General of the International Red Cross Yves Daccord as well as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres. In it they wrote, “It is appalling to think that property sales should be defined as a ‘capital crime’ punishable by death. The very fact that such a ‘law’ exists within the framework of the PA legal system points to a barbaric and perverse type of justice, reminiscent of practices implemented during the dark ages.”

They went on to make the reasonable comparison between the PA’s law prohibiting land sales to Jews to Nazi Germany’s Nuremburg laws that constrained and finally outlawed trade between Jews and Germans. The letter concluded with the question, “Is the Palestinian Authority a reincarnation of the Third Reich?”

Click here to continue reading…

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0412/glick042012.php3

 

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United Methodist Church May Divest From Israel

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Gene & LaVada Triesch

The following article comes from the ministry, HOPE FOR ISRAEL, headed up by Moran Rosenblit.

United Methodist Church May Divest From Israel

By Sharona

The United Methodist Church in the United States will be deciding on a crucial proposal at their upcoming 2012 General Conference. This proposal “calls on the United Methodist Church to end its financial involvement in Israel’s occupation by divesting from companies that sustain the occupation.” Proposal 21071-FA-Non-Dis, “Aligning UMC Investments with Resolutions on Israel/Palestine”

Proponents claim that this is not a proposal aimed at being “anti-Israel” or “anti-Semitic,” yet they fail to explain how these companies are supporting an “occupation” or how Israel’s actions can be described as an “occupation.” Members also stress that Jerusalem is a city that is “holy to three faiths,” (http://unitedmethodistdivestment.com/) implying that it should not belong to Israel, despite the Scriptural basis for such ownership, and also suggesting that Israel does not allow Islamic or Christian worship, which is completely false. Though Israel has not always treated native Believers or Muslims fairly, they are treated far better than minority groups anywhere else in the Middle East and are able to worship freely. The truth is that, currently, Muslims are allowed to worship at the Temple Mount/Dome of the Rock area far more easily than Jewish worshipers, who are barred from entering the Temple Mount the majority of the time.

Furthermore, similarly to other divestment groups, they disparage things like “checkpoints, the separation wall…” but do not offer any other viable solutions to the security problem or consider the difficult position that Israel is in.

While Israel is far from perfect, sometimes discriminating against minorities and sometimes acting out of selfish interests, it is far from the dictatorship that many who seek to delegitimize Israel would make it seem. Israel has not been restored yet and continues to operate as many powerful governments in Western nations do.

There is a spiritual root to this vehement need to delegitimize and incite hate towards Israel and there are spiritual consequences for those who take part. In Genesis 12:3, God tells Abraham, “I will bless those who bless you and I will curse those who curse you and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” Furthermore, Joel 3:1-3 contains a harsh warning of judgment against all nations who took part in dividing the Holy Land.

Moreover, the United Methodist Church would be ignoring many Scriptures about the birth of the nation of Israel being a fulfillment of Scripture (Isaiah 66:8, Ezekiel 20:34, Isaiah 11:11-12, Isaiah 43: 5-6, 21). Though this nation will also include Gentiles who are to be treated as sons of Israel and to be given an equal inheritance (Ezekiel 47:23), it is clearly a land that is serving the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and is not a divided land. Both Israel and the Palestinians have a long ways to go before such a thing would be possible and it will only be in a restored nation that the people of Israel could get over their distrust of Gentiles to allow such.

However, divesting from Israel will not encourage things along but, rather, will only serve to confirm Israel’s fear of non-Jewish groups, especially Christians. There is a very long history of hatred and anti-Semitism from the Church, the very institution that should have been the most supportive of the Jewish people. Such a proposal can only further alienate Christians and Jews from each other, which will also further complicate the relations that Believers within Israel have with the Israeli government and Israelis.

Many look at Israel in its current state and may not see many reasons for support. It is true that Israel makes mistakes and even has policies that are not fair. It is also true that, in the name of security, the Palestinians have a very hard time moving freely between Israel and the Palestinian controlled areas and that many are suffering due to the actions of those who seek to destroy Israel. These are realities one cannot ignore. Believers who truly desire a just and compassionate response that does not ignore God’s Word should pray for both a revival among the Palestinians and for the restoration of Israel. Realistically, the situation in Israel will not be solved until such restoration has happened, despite many attempts at physical solutions, such as divestment and a two-state solution.

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Messianic Jewish leaders respond to “Christ at the Checkpoint”

Posted on March 11, 2012 by Gene & LaVada Triesch

We were just now made aware of this post to the Messianic Daily News.   The conference referred to was held March 5-9, 2012, in Bethlehem, Israel.  You can get more details from our last post by Lars Enarson and The Elijah Prayer Alert.  (see below)  We will attempt to get the latest news regarding this conference posted soon.

Gene & LaVada

Messianic Jewish leaders respond to “Christ at the Checkpoint”

posted Feb 22, 2012 6:48 AM by Robin Harris

February 17, 2012

As representatives of the international Messianic Jewish community, we raise deep concerns about the anti-Israel and, indeed, unbiblical nature of the Christ at the Checkpoint conference soon to be held in Bethlehem.

The Messianic Jewish community has noted the growing opposition to Zionism and the state of Israel within some elements of the Evangelical Christian world. Such opposition ignores the profound and ancient connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel, and the modern history of the founding of the state of Israel. Equally troubling, this opposition is often linked to a resurgent supersessionism,  the doctrine that the church replaces Israel as God’s covenant partner. This theology, which has led historically to anti-Semitism and the tragic oppression of the Jewish people, appears to permeate this entire conference.

The conference is being promoted internationally and features speakers from around the world, including prominent American and European Christians, several of whom have a decidedly anti-Israel bias. We address the following to the conference organizers as evidence of our concerns:

  • Your conference title, “Christ at the Checkpoint,” places the Israeli border checkpoints as the central issue of Christian concern. You frame the entire story of Israeli-Palestinian conflict in terms of Israel’s alleged oppression and abuses, with no historical or political context provided, and no allegations of oppression or abuse on the part of any Palestinians or other Arabs historically or currently.
  • You state a desire for “hope in the midst of conflict,” and for peace and reconciliation among followers of Jesus. Sadly, both the structure of your conference, with its one-sided focus on the Israeli “occupation,” and the anti-Israel record of some of its key representatives, work against peace and reconciliation.
  • Your website features speakers who repeatedly raise “the grim reality” of “the occupation” as virtually the only challenge that Palestinian Christians face.
  • Your conference objectives discredit Zionism alone of any political movement, thereby undermining your own talk of peace and reconciliation, which would require seeing both perspectives.
  • You claim to “stand resolutely against all forms of violence and racism, regardless of the perpetrators,” but the only form that you mention is  Zionism. There is no mention of the violence perpetrated against Jews by Palestinians, including Hamas, which regularly attacks Israeli civilians.

In the tragedy of the Israeli-Palestinians conflict there are two claimants to justice, Jews and Arabs, and true reconciliation efforts must recognize this reality. We urge you, therefore, to  be true to your own affirmations and disassociate from all anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish expressions during your upcoming conference. You have take a  stand against Zionism as “ethnocentric”. We disagree with this characterization and challenge you instead to take a stand against anti-Semitism, against jihad, against fascism in the Arab world, and against the cult of child martyrdom, as promoted by many opponents of Israel, including several that have hosted visits by your organizers.

We urge you to state support for peace efforts between Israel and the Arab world that recognize the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, and its right to firm and secure borders, without any threat of terrorism.

We urge you to remember the terrible history of Christian supersessionism, which led to invalidating the Jewish people and their unique covenant with God, stripping away the Jewishness of the Biblical message of redemption for all through the Messiah Yeshua (Jesus), and promulgating Biblical interpretation that demonized the Jewish people and inevitably resulted in centuries of Christian anti-Semitism and persecution of the Jewish people.

And, finally, we urge you to remember the words of that famous Rabbi, Paul of Tarsus, who wrote these words to Gentile Christians concerning their relationship with the early Messianic Jews and the Jewish people:

But if some of the branches are broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root that supports you. Do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you.(Romans 11:17-18)

Paul Liberman, President

Joel Chernoff, General Secretary

Messianic Jewish Alliance of America

Howard Silverman, President

Russell Resnik, Executive Directpr

Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations

Jeff Forman, Chairman

International Alliance of Messianic Congregations and Synagogues

John Fischer, President

Joel Liberman, Executive Director

International Messianic Jewish Alliance

Contact: Joel Chernoff, joelchernoff@mjaa.org, 610-304-2237

Russ Resnik, rebrez@umjc.org, 505-440-2265

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PRAYER ALERT – from The Elijah Prayer Army, The Watchman Int’l.

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Gene & LaVada Triesch
We just received the following Prayer Alert from Lars Enarson, of The Watchman International ministry in Israel.  It is regarding The Christ at the Checkpoint Conference in Bethlehem, March 5-9. We include it here, in its entirety and hope you will take the time to read and visit the website of The Watchman Int’l.  And, answer this call to prayer.
…Gene & LaVada

The Feast of Purim and the Threat From Iran

Prayer Alert 12-03, Feb 24, 2012 / Adar 1, 5772
• The Feast of Purim and the Threat From Iran

“Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” (Est 4:13-14)
Two thousand four hundred years ago, Ahasuerus, the king of Persia, issued a decree that every Jew in his Empire, which stretched all the way from India to Europe and Ethiopia, should be killed. We read in the Book of Esther,

“Dispatches were sent by couriers to all the king’s provinces with the order to destroy, kill and annihilate all the Jews—young and old, women and little children—on a single day, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the month of Adar, and to plunder their goods. A copy of the text of the edict was to be issued as law in every province and made known to the people of every nationality so they would be ready for that day.” (Est 3:13-14)

Persia is today called Iran and history is repeating itself today in an eerie way. On February 5, Alireza Forghani, an analyst close to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wrote on a government affiliated website that, “the opportunity must not be lost to remove “this corrupting material [Israel]. It is a “‘jurisprudential justification” to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel.1 Forghani claims that Israel could be destroyed in less than nine minutes.

In the time of Ahasuerus the Jewish people were saved from annihilation mainly through a godly woman called Esther, who interceded for her people. The death decree could not be annulled but a new decree was eventually issued from the king, saying that the Jewish people had a right to defend themselves.

“The king’s edict granted the Jews in every city the right to assemble and protect themselves; to destroy, kill and annihilate any armed force of any nationality or province that might attack them and their women and children; and to plunder the property of their enemies.” (Est 8:11)

This was the victory that since then has been celebrated every year during the Feast of Purim. The Feast occurs this year on March 8 and 9. It certainly is a prophetic Feast for the situation right now in Israel and the Middle East. Iran has not only repeatedly vowed to wipe out Israel and the Jewish people just like they did in Persia, it is also developing nuclear weapons to do the job.

Israel has repeatedly stated that it cannot afford to let Iran get the means to destroy them. However, basically the entire world community, including the USA, is at this time refusing to let Israel defend itself by destroying Iran’s nuclear weapons’ program. Every day world leaders and top American officials are telling Israel that an attack on Iran would be a disaster, it would crash the world economy, etc. etc.

President Obama believes that an Israeli attack now on Iran would jeopardize his reelection in the fall, since there will most likely be a hike in the oil price. He is therefore putting an enormous pressure on Israel. On March 5 he will meet personally with Netanyahu in the White House.  After this summer it will, according to many Israeli experts, be too late to stop Iran. The small window to act is right now and we need to pray like never before for this situation.

Last week, two different military expertise opinions about Israel’s ability to stop Iran were released, one in Germany and one in the US. The German report stated that Israel is well able to stop Iran at this time from developing nuclear weapons, while the US report came to the complete opposite conclusion; that Israel is not able to do the job. And if they do, it will only delay Iran for a couple of years. The German report thought that an Israeli attack could stop Iran for a generation.

We are asking all of you to fast together with the Jewish people on March 7, which is the Fast of Esther, for God’s intervention in this crucial situation. Esther’s uncle Mordecai urged her “to go into the king’s presence to beg for mercy and plead with him for her people.” (Est 4:8) He added,

“Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?” (Est 4:13-14)

We know that after the Jewish people, Christians are next on Islam’s agenda. If we do not speak up now for Israel and go before the King of kings in heaven in prayer and fasting on behalf of the Jewish people, we are next in line. Esther’s answer to Mordecai was,

“Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my maids will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish.”

We ask you to fast for Israel on March 7, without food or drink if possible, and cry out to God for His help to Israel.

• Pray that Israel will be freed to defend itself from Iran’s threat of annihilation!
“The king’s edict granted the Jews in every city the right to assemble and protect themselves; to destroy, kill and annihilate any armed force of any nationality or province that might attack them and their women and children; and to plunder the property of their enemies.” (Est 8:11)

• Pray for courage and strength to Benyamin Netanyahu and the government of Israel to do what is right!
“Fear not, you worm Jacob, you men of Israel! I am the one who helps you, declares the LORD; your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel. Behold, I make of you a threshing sledge, new, sharp, and having teeth; you shall thresh the mountains and crush them, and you shall make the hills like chaff.” (Isa 41:14-15)

• Pray for supernatural wisdom and power in dealing with the threat from Iran! Pray for the perfect timing!
“Blessed are you, O Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by the LORD?
He is your shield and helper and your glorious sword.
Your enemies will cower before you, and you will trample down their high places.” (Deut 33:29)

• Pray for protection from rocket attacks from Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas as well as Iran in case of an Israeli attack on Iran!
“Sing to God, O kingdoms of the earth, sing praise to the Lord, Selah to him who rides the ancient skies above, who thunders with mighty voice. Proclaim the power of God, whose majesty is over Israel, whose power is in the skies. You are awesome, O God, in your sanctuary; the God of Israel gives power and strength to his people.” (Ps 68:32-35)

  • The Christ at the Checkpoint Conference in Bethlehem, March 5-9

Like a muddied spring or a polluted well is a righteous man who gives way to the wicked.” (Pr 25:26)

March 5-9, Bethlehem Bible College, is inviting Evangelical leaders and Christians around the world to come to Bethlehem in order to support “a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Sang-Bok David Kim, President of the World Evangelical Alliance, Lynne Hybels, Co-founder of Willow Creek Community Church and Tony Campolo are among the many guest speakers. It boasts of being the largest Christian Conference in the Middle East.

One of the primary goals of the conference called Christ at the Check Point (CATC) is to make an all out attack on Christian Zionism,” calling it “an exclusive theology of the land that marginalizes and disenfranchises the indigenous people.”2 One of the blog posts on CATC’s web site states that “Christian Zionism as it currently stands is sinful and produces sin.”3

Christian Zionism is referring to Christians, who support the state of Israel believing that God has promised to give the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob their land. CATC is promoting a theology that God’s promises to Israel are null and void. It is necessary for all of those who are followers of Yeshua and who believe in the Bible to speak out and sound the alarm about this conference.

Not only is CATC promoting Replacement Theology, which is robbing the Jewish people of their identity, their promises and their destiny. They go even one step further by promoting the shameful hoax that the Jewish people today are not even Jews. The Simon Wiesenthal Center wrote about the first CATC in 2010,

“Evangelicals who came with an open-minded commitment to hear both sides heard Mitri Raheb, a pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem deny the connection between modern Jews and those of the Bible.

“’I’m sure if we were to do a DNA test between David… and Jesus… and Mitri, born just across the street from where Jesus was born, I’m sure the DNA will show that there is a trace. While, if you put King David, Jesus and Netanyahu, you will get nothing, because Netanyahu comes from an East European tribe who converted to Judaism in the Middle Ages…. I always loved to say that most probably one of my grand, grand, grand, grandmas used to babysit for Jesus.’ No one stormed out in protest.”4

They also wrote, “One of the architects was Anglican vicar Stephen Sizer, who denies that he is an anti-Semite but hangs out with Holocaust revisionists and whose trip to Tehran included a defense of Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial.”5

Calling on Christians to Immediately Support a Palestinian State

On their web site, CATC urges Evangelical Christians to support a Palestinian unilateral bid for statehood without peace with Israel.6 Rev Alex Awad states that, “Those who pray for ‘the peace of Jerusalem’ need, at the same time, to support the immediate creation of a Palestinian state.” In Luke 21:24, Yeshua calls Jerusalem an occupied city when it is in the hands of Gentiles. CATC is doing the exact opposite.

Awad says in his appeal that Christians in the world tarnish their testimony when they are passive about the injustices in Palestine and continues “Some Christians hesitate supporting the Palestinian bid for statehood for fear that it may result in creating a militant Islamic state. Fortunately, the current move for statehood is driven by the most secular, progressive and non-violent branch of the PLO.”7

The following happened when this “secular, progressive and non-violent branch of the PLO” recently celebrated their 47th anniversary. The moderator of the event introduced the PA Mufti by screaming in the microphone: “Our war with the descendants of the apes and pigs (i.e., Jews) is a war of religion and faith. Long Live Fatah! [I invite you,] our honorable Sheikh.” The PA Mufti Muhammad Hussein then took the podium and quoted a Hadith (traditions attributed to Muhammad), calling for all Muslims to unite in order to kill all Jews. 8

PA leaders applauded small children as they sang, “Oh, my pure land, I shall saturate you with my blood.” Another rally in celebration of the same anniversary stated, “Our children are our honor and glory, they were created to be fertilizer for the land of Palestine, and for our pure land to be saturated with their blood.”9 This then is what Pastor Awad wants Christians around the world to get behind in order to not “tarnish their testimony in the world.”

Awad states in another sermon, “If Jesus were to be born in Bethlehem today, he would have difficulty crossing from Bethlehem to Jerusalem.”10 The truth is that as a faithful Jew, Jesus would not even survive very long today in Bethlehem, as Palestinian terrorism makes life for any Jew in any PA controlled area not only dangerous, but outlawed.

The Jewish sages aptly comment about King Saul who spared Agag, but later tried to kill David, “He who becomes compassionate to the cruel will ultimately become cruel to the compassionate.” On CATC’s web site, Israel’s so called injustices are highlighted and placed in focus, whereas Islam’s injustices and cruelties are ignored or even accepted under the disguise of Christian love. We have not found one word of criticism of Islam. Not even a hint! Rather, one of the speakers at CATC 2010, was praised by the organizers for his reconciliatory approach towards Islam, free from confrontation and “islamophobia,” the common term used today for anyone today who dares to criticize Islam.

Reconciliation or Hatred?

Yeshua warned that the deception in the last days would be so great that if possible even the elect will be led astray. Reading the preface to the book that will be published this spring from the lectures of the first CATC in Bethlehem in 2010, it seems like this conference is the best thing that has ever happened in human history. The preface says,

“This book is a work of Godly Love. The study of Godly Love is an emerging interdisciplinary field devoted to examining benevolent action in the world.”11
What beautiful words! Let’s, however, take a little closer look behind the nice façade.

Israel Today has pointed out that one of the speakers at CATC is British Christian writer Ben White, who recently published the book Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination and Democracy. Extremist Israeli-Arab Knesset Member Haneen Zoabi, who has personal connections with Hamas and other terrorist groups and who participated on board Mavi Marmara in the Gaza flotilla where Israeli soldiers were lynched by terrorists, has written the foreword to the book!
Israel Today continues,

“What is curious to us is why the Bethlehem Bible College would invite someone like White, who expresses such scorn for Israel that he is embraced by Israel’s most vocal antagonists, to a “Christian Conference of Hope and Reconciliation”? It raises the question: Is CATC really about reconciliation between Arabs and Jews, or is it about further delegitimizing Israel?”12

Learning From History

A report from the first CATC stated, “The conference speakers …examined the dangers of using the Bible to justify ethnic hatred towards others, whether in demonizing Islam or minimizing the effect of the Holocaust.”13

This is a very strange statement. Islam is a religion not an ethnic group. While it is wrong to hate people, it certainly is not wrong to hate a false religion that sends people to eternal damnation. If so, this conference definitely should not call itself Evangelical. We are called to hate sin and love the sinner. CATC does not seem to be able to separate between the two.

The speakers also “examined the dangers of …minimizing the effect of the Holocaust.” This is a very ambiguous statement. The traditional view in the Muslim world is that Israel is a disaster that happened because of the Holocaust in Europe. The Holocaust definitely played a role, but the Jewish people have prayed and longed for a return to their ancient homeland for two thousand five hundred years, mentioning it in their prayers more than twenty times every day!

History often repeats itself. While it is easy to condemn something that happened 70 years ago in another part of the world, it is not always so easy to discern what is happening in your own day. The famous pastor Oswald J. Smith of the People’s Church in Toronto, said after he came back from a visit to Germany in 1936, “Every true Christian in Germany is for Hitler. I know, for it was from the Christians that I got my information, and right or wrong they endorse Hitler.”14

How could the Christians in Germany be so blind that they supported possibly the most evil person that has every lived? Is it possible that the same thing is happening again today? The Palestinian Christians behind CATC is supporting the successors to Hitler, like Yasser Arafat and his associates, in their national aspirations.

Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin Al-Husseini with Hitler
Arafat’s predecessor, mentor and close relative, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini, was one of Hitler’s closest advisers during the Holocaust.  He lived in luxury in Berlin during the war fully paid by the Nazis and encouraged Hitler as much as he could to do more to murder the Jews at a faster rate. It is the national Nazi-Islamic agenda engineered by Husseini and Arafat that CATC is supporting. We need to pray for Arab Christians that will act like Dietrich Bonheoffer, who dared to stand up and confront Nazism in his day.

Tony Campolo, who is one of the main speakers, wrote after the first CATC, “What troubles [the Palestinian Christians] most is that their fellow Evangelicals in America have very little understanding of the way the entire Islamic world views what is happening in the Holy Land.” The most important factor in the conflict, according to Campolo, is how the Islamic world views what is happening Israel. What betrayal of the Gospel!

The Arab believers in Israel truly need all the support they can get. But they don’t need help in the form of shameful replacement theology, which has caused the Jewish people endless sufferings in Christian lands for two millennia and only plays right into the hands of Islam. Now, a so called Evangelical Conference in Bethlehem is resurrecting this monster from the Dark Ages that strips the Jewish people of their identity and destiny. It is a disgrace and a shame on the Name of our Savior.

The Arab Palestinian followers of the promised Messiah of Israel, need the apostolic gospel Paul preached, that as believers in Yeshua we are joint heirs with Israel to the promises of God. They need our full support in prayer and action to stand strong against Islamic ideology, persecution and intimidation. Paul wrote to the believers in Rome, “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.” (Rom 15:10)

In Acts 13, Paul confronted a sorcerer and false prophet named Bar-Jesus (Aramaic for “son of Jesus” or “follower of Jesus”), “’You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right! You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord? Now the hand of the Lord is against you. You are going to be blind, and for a time you will be unable to see the light of the sun.’ Immediately mist and darkness came over him, and he groped about, seeking someone to lead him by the hand. When the proconsul saw what had happened, he believed, for he was amazed at the teaching about the Lord.” (Acts 13:10-12)

Those at CATC who claim to be followers of Jesus, but “pervert the right ways of the Lord” need to be confronted! We urge you to spread the information in this Prayer Alert about CATC to warn as many as possible!

• Pray that Arabic Christians will have the courage to stand up against Islam!
“Like a muddied spring or a polluted well is a righteous man who gives way to the wicked.” (Pr 25:26)

• Pray that the apostolic gospel, that gentile believers are heirs together with Israel, will spread in the Arab world and give much hope!
“This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.” (Eph 3:6)
“Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.” (Rom 15:10)

• Pray that lies will be exposed at CATC March 5-9!
“Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.” (Eph 5:11)

• Pray that God will hinder all promotion of Replacement Theology at this conference!
“You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord? Now the hand of the Lord is against you.” (Acts 13:10-11)

May God bless you as watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem!

Lars and Harriet Enarson

1  wnd.com/ayatollah-kill-all-jews-annihilate-israel/
2 christatthecheckpoint.com/palestinian-christians-call-on
3 christatthecheckpoint.com/letter-to-christian-zionists
4 jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=245581
5 Ibid.
6 christatthecheckpoint.com/support-palestinian-statehood
7 Ibid.
8 youtube.com/watch?v=kDoV8ZL9Xkc&feature=youtu.be
9 childrens-blood-fertilizes-saturates-palestine-video/
10 comeandsee.com/view.php?sid=1181
11 christatthecheckpoint.com/preface-checkpoint-2010-book
12 israeltoday.co.il/language/en-US/Default.aspx
13 palestinian-christians-call-on-evangelicals-for-action-
14 wnd.com/2004/01/22992/
In this Alert:
• The Feast of Purim and the Threat From Iran

• The Christ at the Checkpoint Conference in Bethlehem, March 5-9
Weekly Scripture Portion
25 Feb
Terumah “Heave offering”
Torah: Exodus 25:1-27:19
Prophets: 1 Kings 5:26-6:13
Gospel: Matthew 13:1-53

The goal of the Elijah Prayer Army is to network intercessors and prayer groups around the world, praying together in unity as the Holy Spirit directs.

Please share with us what the Lord reveals to you as you pray. You can e-mail, fax or write us.

Contact Information

E-mail: epa@thewatchman.org
The Watchman International
PO Box 94
Lake Mills IA 50450, USA
Phone: (641) 592-1514
Fax (641) 592-1513

Duplication and retransmission of this writing is permitted, providing that the complete source and contact information for The Watchman International is included.

The Elijah Prayer Army

The vision for the Elijah Prayer Army is to inform, equip and unite intercessors around the world as watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem to pray for final restoration and salvation of Israel, preparing the way for the LORD.

A Ministry of The Watchman International

Visit our website www.thewatchman.org

Copyright © 2012 The Watchman International Inc.

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Blessed by ‘Proclaiming Justice to the Nations’

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Gene & LaVada Triesch

We’re posting the whole article here…we agree wholeheartedly with Joseph Farah, who states, “What too many Christians don’t understand is that our salvation comes through the atoning sacrifice of messiah Yeshua – who we know mainly through his Greek name Jesus. Through His death on the cross, and our embrace of Him as Lord and Savior, we are “grafted in” to the covenant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. So our bond with Israel is not just based on worldly political realities, but on a spiritual promise from God.”

Blessed by ‘Proclaiming Justice to the Nations’

Exclusive: Joseph Farah praises group fighting ‘the new anti-Semitism’

NASHVILLE – Shabot shalom, y’all!

I am here in the country music capital of the world this weekend to be honored by one of my favorite organizations – Laurie Cardoza-Moore’s “Proclaiming Justice to the Nations,” a staunch antidote to the virulent mental illness known as anti-Semitism.

It’s my great honor to receive the “Ed McAteer Tree of Life” award for 2012 at the annual National Religious Broadcasters convention from PJTN.

PJTN educates media professionals, Christian leaders and Christians around the world about the biblical responsibilities to act against the “new anti-Semitism.” PJTN was founded in 2001 in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

This will be a special honor for me, not just because of my love and admiration for PJTN and the work of Laurie Cardoza-Moore, but also because of the award’s namesake. Ed McAteer was a dear friend until his death in 2004. I had the privilege of traveling with him to Israel. He would also call on me to accompany him on visits to leaders in Washington to present briefings on the situation in the Middle East. He was a very special man who just wanted to be a blessing to his country and to the nation of Israel – and he was both.

One of the most important objectives of PJTN is in educating Christians about their biblical responsibility to stand with their Jewish brethren and Israel, utilizing the powerful medium of documentary films to facilitate dialogue between the Christian and Jewish communities.

What too many Christians don’t understand is that our salvation comes through the atoning sacrifice of messiah Yeshua – who we know mainly through his Greek name Jesus. Through His death on the cross, and our embrace of Him as Lord and Savior, we are “grafted in” to the covenant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. So our bond with Israel is not just based on worldly political realities, but on a spiritual promise from God.

The work of PJTN is more urgent than ever, as too many Christians have lost sight of who their Savior was, why He came and how He will come again.

Meanwhile, only one generation after the Holocaust, anti-Semitism is on the rise again all over the world – including here in the U.S.

How else is it possible that one tiny, liberty-loving, self-governing, independent, prosperous nation, which was resurrected in one day after 2,000 years, could be the target of more United Nations condemnations than all the rest of the nations of the world combined?

How else is it possible that even the U.S. is backing the creation of a so-called “Palestinian state” carved from the heartland of the Jewish state to be governed by unrepentant terrorists who insist that their new nation exclude any residents who are Jewish?

How else is it possible that even leaders in the U.S. sit idly by as mullahs in Iran plot the deployment of weapons of mass destruction designed to annihilate the Jews of Israel and throughout the rest of the world?

That’s why the world of PJTN is so vital.

I urge you to support this important, life-affirming ministry in any way you can. And I invite you to become more familiar with all of the resources they make available to the public.

I know it will be a blessing to you the way it has been a blessing to me.

Joseph Farah is founder, editor and CEO of WND and a nationally syndicated columnist with Creators Syndicate. He is the author or co-author of 13 books, including his latest, “The Tea Party Manifesto,” and his classic, “Taking America Back,” now in its third edition and 14th printing. Farah is the former editor of the legendary Sacramento Union and other major-market dailies.

 

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