End of Israel?

[Matt Black]

Name-calling - the last resort of those who know they've lost the argument. I suppose you think the same of Jesus and John - tackle them first before you turn your fire on me.

 

[The Scribe]

Name-calling - the last resort of those who know they've lost the argument.

Not name calling. It's the truth. You lost when you started questioning God's chosen people. :tonofbricks:

 

[KenH]

You seem anti-Semitic. Shameful.

I've seen this act before where some premillennialists, especially the dispensationalist kind, accuse anyone who doesn't buy into their system of being anti-Semitic. Shameful.

 

[Linda64]

God casted them out. He's has already brought them back.

You seem anti-Semitic. Shameful.

Israel still existed between 70A.D. and May 14, 1948, but it was inhabited mostly by Arabs and the land became a wasteland. Now that the Jewish people are back in their own land, Israel is "blossoming as a rose". Yes, God did cast them out, but He promised to bring them back to their land...which He has done:

Isaiah 43:5 Fear not: for I am with thee: I will bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee from the west;

Isaiah 43:6 I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back: bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth;

Concerning the prophecy in Ezekiel 37 about the "dry bones":

Ezekiel 37:11 Then he said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel: behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts.

Ezekiel 37:12 Therefore prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel.

Ezekiel 37:13 And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves,

Ezekiel 37:14 And shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land: then shall ye know that I the LORD have spoken it, and performed it, saith the LORD.

Indeed, God has brought the children of Israel back to their land...in unbelief now, but at the end of the "time of Jacob's trouble" (Jeremiah 30:7), they will return to their God and recognize Jesus Christ as their promised Messiah. (Zech. 12:10)

 

[Matt Black]

Not name calling. It's the truth. You lost when you started questioning God's chosen people. :tonofbricks:

Then question Jesus and John too.

 

[Matt Black]

Israel still existed between 70A.D. and May 14, 1948, but it was inhabited mostly by Arabs and the land became a wasteland. Now that the Jewish people are back in their own land, Israel is "blossoming as a rose". Yes, God did cast them out, but He promised to bring them back to their land...which He has done:

Yes, in the 530s BC

To be frank, you're moving the goal posts here. You're claiming that Israel did exist when it clearly didn't for nearly two millenia. That makes about as much sense as claiming that 'England' existed when Julius Caesar visited Britain in 55BC, despite the fact that the English were nowhere near the place and wouldn't be there for another 4 centuries.

 

[Linda64]

From The Berean Call Newsletter, September, 2000, (excerpts):

September 2000 Newsletter: O Jerusalem, Jerusalem!

For 1,930 years since the A.D. 70 destruction of the temple, Christ's words (proving that He is God the Messiah - Isaiah 9:6). have been fulfilled in history, and their continued fulfillment today is at the heart of the Middle East crisis. Control of Jerusalem was the major issue breaking down recent peace talks at Camp David. Sadly, neither the Israelis nor the Arabs in their "peace" negotiations give heed to what God has decreed for His land and His city. Were the world to take the Bible seriously, real peace would be instantly established. Former UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali has expressed the world's true intent toward Israel: "The Jews must give up their status as a nation and Israel as a state, and assimilate as a community in the Arab world."

Popes throughout history have opposed God's prophecies and promises concerning Jerusalem. The Crusaders captured Jerusalem from the Muslims for the Church, not to restore it to the Jews to whom God, as the Bible repeatedly declares, had given it as a possession forever (Genesis 13:14-15; 17:8; Leviticus 25:23; Jeremiah 31:35-40; Ezekiel 37:26, etc.). Pope Urban II, organizing the First Crusade in 1096, called the Jews "an accursed race, utterly alienated from God" and urged the Crusaders to "start upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre to wrest that land from the wicked race and subject it to yourselves." Urban II's offer of full forgiveness of sins for Crusade participants brought forth hordes of volunteers who, under the banner of the Cross, massacred Christ's earthly brethren, the Jews, by the thousands all along the route to Jerusalem. The Crusade leader, Godfrey of Bouillon, vowed to avenge the blood of Jesus upon the Jews, leaving not one alive. Upon taking the City of David, the Crusaders chased the Jews into the synagogue and set it ablaze.

Coming to modern times, Theodor Herzl records in his diary that when in 1904 he asked Pope Pius X to support the Zionist cause, the Pope replied, "We cannot prevent the Jews from going to Jerusalem, but we could never sanction it." In 1919, Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, Vatican Secretary of State, said, "The danger that frightens us the most is that of the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine." A 1928 Vatican decree refers to Jews as "the people formerly chosen by God." The Second Vatican Council in 1965 affirmed the centuries-old claim that "the Church is the new people of God...." We have quoted [TBC, Sep. '99] the June 22, 1943 letter to President Roosevelt from Pope Pius XII which said in part, "If a 'Hebrew Home' is desired, it would not be too difficult to find a more fitting territory than Palestine. With an increase in the Jewish population there, grave new problems would arise." So the "vicars of Christ" and their Church have consistently opposed the fulfillment of God's promises to His chosen people!

That Jerusalem would be "trodden down of the Gentiles" has been a fact of history, exactly as Christ foretold. The Babylonians held Jerusalem, then the Medes and Persians. Alexander the Great took it for the Greeks in 333 B.C. Later the Egyptians and Syrians alternately had it until the Romans under Pompey captured Israel in 64 B.C. and held it into the fourth century A.D. In the seventh century Islamic invaders took control, to be replaced near the end of the eleventh century by the Crusaders. They held Jerusalem until Saladin (Sultan of Egypt and great Muslim warrior) retook the city in 1187. Later the Islamic Mamelukes of Egypt possessed Jerusalem. Then the Ottoman-Turkish Empire ruled for about 400 years. The Turks sided with Germany in World War I, so the Allied victors gave Britain a mandate in 1917 to administer the region.

Central to the Middle East conflict today is the issue of the so-called Palestinian people. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), headed by Yasser Arafat since 1969, claims to represent them. To this day, the PLO declares, "The struggle with the Zionist enemy is not a struggle about Israel's borders, but about Israel's existence."

The PLO is an Islamic terrorist organization. It trained most terrorists around the world: Idi Amin's murder gangs who killed about 300,000 black Christians in Uganda; the Italian Red Brigades; German Baader-Meinhof gang; the Iranian Revolutionary Guards; terrorists in Latin America, etc. Arafat committed his first murder at age 20. Under him the PLO became the most vicious and bloodiest terrorist organization ever known. It holds records for the biggest hijacking (4 aircraft at once), the largest number of hostages (300 at one time), the largest ransom extorted ($5 million from Lufthansa) and the greatest number and variety of targets (40 civilian aircraft, five passenger ships, 30 embassies or diplomatic missions, and massacres of school children), etc. The Palestinian Prize for Culture was recently awarded to Abu Daoud for his book telling how he planned and murdered eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics!

The PLO's terrorism against Jordanian civilians was so vicious that King Hussein chased them into Lebanon. There the PLO wiped out the Christian towns of Damur, Beit Mallat, Tall Abbas and others. Its reign of terror went largely unreported. The international press was cowed into silence by the brutal murder of those who dared to tell the truth: Larry Buchman and Sean Toolan of ABC-TV, Mark Tryon of "Free Belgium Radio," Robert Pfeffer of Der Spiegel and others. About 300,000 Lebanese civilians were murdered in the PLO's rape of that country before the Israelis expelled them. Yet Israel was painted the villain!

Incredibly, Arafat and his PLO murderers have been sanitized and lionized by world media. John Paul's recent trip to Bethlehem was in response to Arafat's invitation to join him there to celebrate "our Jesus Christ." Our Jesus Christ? Arafat says Jesus was a Palestinian freedom fighter against Israel, and the Pope smiles and blesses him! John Paul II has warmly received Arafat in Rome many times. This ruthless, sadistic terrorist and murderer was given the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 and is honored as the champion of justice for the Palestinian people.

Palestinians? There never was a Palestinian people, nation, language, culture, or religion. The claim of descent from a Palestinian people who lived for thousands of years in a land called Palestine is a hoax! That land was Canaan, inhabited by Canaanites, whom God destroyed because of their wickedness. Canaan became the land of Israel given by God to His people.

Those who today call themselves Palestinians are Arabs by birth, language, and culture, and are close relatives to Arabs in surrounding countries from whence most of them came, attracted by Israel's prosperity. The name Palestine comes from the Philistines, who were not Semites, but invaded Canaan from Crete and parts of Asia Minor. Yet Arafat, an Arab, claims that ancestry.

In A.D. 130, the Romans rebuilt Jerusalem as a pagan city with a temple to Jupiter where the Jewish temple had stood. Provoked to rebellion, about 500,000 Jews were killed and thousands sold into slavery. The Romans angrily renamed Israel "Syria Palaestina." Jews living there became known as Palestinians. During World War II, the British Army had a Palestinian Brigade made up entirely of Jewish volunteers. The Palestinian Symphony Orchestra was all Jewish, and The Palestine Post was a Jewish newspaper.

In 1948, Arabs who had fled from Israel (attacking Arab nations had broadcast, "All Arabs get out!") began to claim they were the true Palestinians and that the land of Israel had always belonged to them. World media eagerly promotes that lie. Yet in 1948, Arabs owned a mere 3 percent of so-called Palestine.

Israel's claim to the land goes back 4,000 years to Abraham's purchase of the cave of Machpelah in Hebron. There Sarah, Abraham, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob and Leah are buried. In Hebron David was crowned king. This sacred Jewish site has no relationship to Arabs or Muslims. Yet Muslims claim Hebron as their own, built a mosque to keep Jews and Christians from visiting the cave, and are determined to drive out every Jewish resident.

http://www.thebereancall.org/node/5701

 

[Bro. Curtis]

Israel still existed between 70A.D. and May 14, 1948, but it was inhabited mostly by Arabs and the land became a wasteland. Now that the Jewish people are back in their own land, Israel is "blossoming as a rose". Yes, God did cast them out, but He promised to bring them back to their land...which He has done:

Excellent.:applause:

 

[Matt Black]

All this mutual adoration and the quoting of chunks of Scripture is all very nice, I'm sure, but I still don't see why what Cyrus the Great did in fulfilment of OT prophecy in 538BC has got anything to do with what David ben Gurion and Co did in 1948

 

[Andre]

I offer the following opinion as extracted from an article by British theologian NT Wright:

One of the specific things on which the New Testament insists, again and again, is that in the life, death and supremely the resurrection of Jesus the promised new age has dawned. The return from exile has happened. ‘All the promises of God’, says Paul in 2 Corinthians 1.20, ‘find their “yes” in him.’ This is in fact the great Return, even though it doesn’t look like people had thought it would. Instead of Israel as a political entity emerging from political exile, we are invited in the gospel to see Israel-in-person, the true king, emerging from the exile of death itself into God’s new day. That is the underlying rationale for the mission to the Gentiles: God has finally done for Israel what he was going to do for Israel, so now it’s time for the Gentiles to come in. That, too, is the underlying rationale for the abolition of the food laws and the holy status of the land of Israel: a new day has dawned in God’s purposes, and the symbols of the previous day are put aside, not because they were a bad thing, now happily rejected, but because they were the appropriate preparatory stages in God’s plan, and have now done their work. When I became a man, I put away childish things. Lift up your eyes, says Paul in Romans 8, and see how the promises to Abraham are to be fulfilled: not simply by a single race coming eventually to possess a single holy strip of turf, but by the liberation of the whole cosmos, with the beneficiaries, the inheritors of the promise, being a great number from every race and tribe and tongue, baptized and believing in Jesus Christ and indwelt by his Spirit.

To suggest, therefore, that as Christians we should support the state of Israel because it is the fulfilment of prophecy is, in a quite radical way, to cut off the branch on which we are sitting. It is directly analogous to the mistake of the Galatians, who thought that if they were members of Abraham’s family they should go the whole way and get circumcised. It is similar to the mistake of which the Reformers accused the mediaeval Catholics, of supposing that in every Mass they were actually re-crucifying Jesus, when Jesus’ death had been once and for all, never to be repeated, on Calvary. It is a way of saying that in the cross and resurrection God did not actually fulfil his whole saving purpose; that Jesus did not in fact achieve the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy; that his resurrection was not the start of God’s new age; that Acts is wrong, Romans is wrong, Galatians is wrong, the letter to the Hebrews is wrong, Revelation is wrong. Say that if you like, but don’t claim to be Christian in doing so.

 

[Bro. Curtis]

I'm curious....how many who say Israel isn't the O/T Israel believe in the rapture of the saints ?

say it like this, with no rebuttal to others, IOW, BE NICE !!!!!

I believe Israel to be God's chosen nation, where Christ will set up his Earthly Kingdom, and I believe in the rapture.

 

[just-want-peace]

I believe Israel to be God's chosen nation, where Christ will set up his Earthly Kingdom, and I believe in the rapture.

This flys for me!!!!

 

[Linda64]

I believe Israel to be God's chosen nation, where Christ will set up his Earthly Kingdom, and I believe in the rapture.

:godisgood::thumbs:

 

[Linda64]

Double post!

 

[KenH]

I believe that the "rapture" occurs at Christ's second coming at the end this world.

 

[Palatka51]

As far as I understand the history of Palestine and Jewish/Israeli ownership thereof there has always been Jewish residency in the land of Palestine even sense 70 AD. Jerusalem has always had a Jewish sector, Christian sector and an Arab sector. Israel has not had perpetual autonomy sense the Maccabeean period between the Greek period and the Roman period until 1948 AD. Again there has always been a Jewish presence but not autonomy. Jerusalem and the "Holy Land" has been trodden under the feet of gentile rule from actually Babylonian rule until 1948 AD, the period of no Jewish Monarch even to today.
Jesus did ride into Jerusalem as the Jewish King. However upon His arrest the people rejected Him. After all, How could the Heavenly King allow Himself be captured by the gentile power? He became the chief cornerstone rejected and even now is a stumbling stone for the Jews. His status as a stone of stumbling will be reversed in a spectacular fashion.
Zachariah Chapters 12&13 there is evidence that spiritual revival will come to Israel after they have returned to their land.
Zechariah 12 describes Israel just as Israel is today.
Zechariah 13
1In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness.
2And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the LORD of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered: and also I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land.
3And it shall come to pass, that when any shall yet prophesy, then his father and his mother that begat him shall say unto him, Thou shalt not live; for thou speakest lies in the name of the LORD: and his father and his mother that begat him shall thrust him through when he prophesieth.
4And it shall come to pass in that day, that the prophets shall be ashamed every one of his vision, when he hath prophesied; neither shall they wear a rough garment to deceive:
5But he shall say, I am no prophet, I am an husbandman; for man taught me to keep cattle from my youth.
6And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.
7Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the LORD of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones.
8And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the LORD, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein.
9And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The LORD is my God.

 

[Matt Black]

I offer the following opinion as extracted from an article by British theologian NT Wright:

Andre, thanks for this from +Tom Wright, with which I thoroughly agree.

Bro Curtis, I do believe in the rapture but not in the continuation of the Covenant with the modern Israeli state.

 

[hillclimber1]

I offer the following opinion as extracted from an article by British theologian NT Wright:

One of the specific things on which the New Testament insists, again and again, is that in the life, death and supremely the resurrection of Jesus the promised new age has dawned. The return from exile has happened. ‘All the promises of God’, says Paul in 2 Corinthians 1.20, ‘find their “yes” in him.’ This is in fact the great Return, even though it doesn’t look like people had thought it would. Instead of Israel as a political entity emerging from political exile, we are invited in the gospel to see Israel-in-person, the true king, emerging from the exile of death itself into God’s new day. That is the underlying rationale for the mission to the Gentiles: God has finally done for Israel what he was going to do for Israel, so now it’s time for the Gentiles to come in.

It is the rejection by Israel, of it's promised Messiah, and the resulting "setting aside" of the completion of the Kingdom, that we find ourselves today. This age we are now in was NOT prophetic, it was hidden in God, the Father. Eph 3 all, specifically verse 9. There is no longer a difference between Jew and Gentile.

That, too, is the underlying rationale for the abolition of the food laws and the holy status of the land of Israel: a new day has dawned in God’s purposes, and the symbols of the previous day are put aside, not because they were a bad thing, now happily rejected, but because they were the appropriate preparatory stages in God’s plan, and have now done their work. When I became a man, I put away childish things. Lift up your eyes, says Paul in Romans 8, and see how the promises to Abraham are to be fulfilled: not simply by a single race coming eventually to possess a single holy strip of turf, but by the liberation of the whole cosmos, with the beneficiaries, the inheritors of the promise, being a great number from every race and tribe and tongue, baptized and believing in Jesus Christ and indwelt by his Spirit.

Beautiful truth, but the long promised Kingdom, with Christ sitting on David's throne, is still to come, after the fullness of the Gentiles be come in, and immediately taken out. In the mean time Israel is blinded to Christ. Rom 11:25

To suggest, therefore, that as Christians we should support the state of Israel because it is the fulfilment of prophecy is, in a quite radical way, to cut off the branch on which we are sitting. It is directly analogous to the mistake of the Galatians, who thought that if they were members of Abraham’s family they should go the whole way and get circumcised. It is similar to the mistake of which the Reformers accused the mediaeval Catholics, of supposing that in every Mass they were actually re-crucifying Jesus, when Jesus’ death had been once and for all, never to be repeated, on Calvary. It is a way of saying that in the cross and resurrection God did not actually fulfil his whole saving purpose; that Jesus did not in fact achieve the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy; that his resurrection was not the start of God’s new age; that Acts is wrong, Romans is wrong, Galatians is wrong, the letter to the Hebrews is wrong, Revelation is wrong. Say that if you like, but don’t claim to be Christian in doing so.

Christ has not taken His rightful throne in Israel yet, so that particular prophesy has not been fulfilled. Paul's writings, which were revealed to him over 2 or 3 decades, applies to this age in which we reside. This age was "hidden in the Father", completely apart from prophetic scripture. Once this age is fulfilled, i.e. the fullness of the Gentiles, the Messiah, Jesus Christ, will again take up His prophetic program. The angel told Mary that her Son would take up the throne of David, and that it would have no end. That has Not occurred.

I know some will try to spiritualize this, but David sat on a real throne, in a real country, in a real time, and Christ will also.

 

[Andre]

There is no longer a difference between Jew and Gentile.

I share this opinion, but I do not believe there will be a rapture in the sense that is commonly believed. I hate to seem like a shameless plagiarizer, but I will again quote Tom Wright on the subject of the rapture:

The American obsession with the second coming of Jesus--especially with distorted interpretations of it--continues unabated. Seen from my side of the Atlantic, the phenomenal success of the Left Behind books appears puzzling, even bizarre.(1) Few in the U.K. hold the belief on which the popular series of novels is based: that there will be a literal "rapture" in which believers will be snatched up to heaven, leaving empty cars crashing on freeways and kids coming home from school only to find that their parents have been taken to be with Jesus while they have been "left behind." This pseudotheological version of Home Alone has reportedly frightened many children into some kind of (distorted) faith.​

This dramatic end-time scenario is based (wrongly, as we shall see) on Paul's First Letter to the Thessalonians, where he writes: "For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout of command, with the voice of an archangel and the trumpet of God.The dead in Christ will rise first; then we, who are left alive, will be snatched up with them on clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord" (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).​

What on earth (or in heaven) did Paul mean?​

It is Paul who should be credited with creating this scenario. Jesus himself, as I have argued in various books, never predicted such an event.(2) The gospel passages about "the Son of Man coming on the clouds" (Mark 13:26, 14:62, for example) are about Jesus' vindication, his "coming" to heaven from earth. The parables about a returning king or master (for example, Luke 19:11-27) were originally about God returning to Jerusalem, not about Jesus returning to earth. This, Jesus seemed to believe, was an event within space-time history, not one that would end it forever.​

The Ascension of Jesus and the Second Coming are nevertheless vital Christian doctrines,(3) and I don't deny that I believe some future event will result in the personal presence of Jesus within God's new creation. This is taught throughout the New Testament outside the Gospels. But this event won't in any way resemble the Left Behind account. Understanding what will happen requires a far more sophisticated cosmology than the one in which "heaven" is somewhere up there in our universe, rather than in a different dimension, a different space-time, altogether.​

The New Testament, building on ancient biblical prophecy, envisages that the creator God will remake heaven and earth entirely, affirming the goodness of the old Creation but overcoming its mortality and corruptibility (e.g., Romans 8:18-27; Revelation 21:1; Isaiah 65:17, 66:22). When that happens, Jesus will appear within the resulting new world (e.g., Colossians 3:4; 1 John 3:2).​

Paul's description of Jesus' reappearance in 1 Thessalonians 4 is a brightly colored version of what he says in two other passages, 1 Corinthians 15:51-54 and Philippians 3:20-21: At Jesus' "coming" or "appearing," those who are still alive will be "changed" or "transformed" so that their mortal bodies will become incorruptible, deathless. This is all that Paul intends to say in Thessalonians, but here he borrows imagery--from biblical and political sources--to enhance his message. Little did he know how his rich metaphors would be misunderstood two millennia later.​

First, Paul echoes the story of Moses coming down the mountain with the Torah. The trumpet sounds, a loud voice is heard, and after a long wait Moses comes to see what's been going on in his absence.​

Second, he echoes Daniel 7, in which "the people of the saints of the Most High" (that is, the "one like a son of man") are vindicated over their pagan enemy by being raised up to sit with God in glory. This metaphor, applied to Jesus in the Gospels, is now applied to Christians who are suffering persecution.​

Third, Paul conjures up images of an emperor visiting a colony or province. The citizens go out to meet him in open country and then escort him into the city. Paul's image of the people "meeting the Lord in the air" should be read with the assumption that the people will immediately turn around and lead the Lord back to the newly remade world.​

Paul's mixed metaphors of trumpets blowing and the living being snatched into heaven to meet the Lord are not to be understood as literal truth, as the Left Behind series suggests, but as a vivid and biblically allusive description of the great transformation of the present world of which he speaks elsewhere.​

Paul's misunderstood metaphors present a challenge for us: How can we reuse biblical imagery, including Paul's, so as to clarify the truth, not distort it? And how can we do so, as he did, in such a way as to subvert the political imagery of the dominant and dehumanizing empires of our world? We might begin by asking, What view of the world is sustained, even legitimized, by the Left Behind ideology? How might it be confronted and subverted by genuinely biblical thinking? For a start, is not the Left Behind mentality in thrall to a dualistic view of reality that allows people to pollute God's world on the grounds that it's all going to be destroyed soon? Wouldn't this be overturned if we recaptured Paul's wholistic vision of God's whole creation?​

 

[NaasPreacher (C4K)]

You seem anti-Semitic. Shameful.

Disagreeing on eschatology does not make one anti-semitic.