Tag: Israel

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Why the Left and Islam Join Together Against Israel

The Left and Islam make strange bedfellows. The former is allegedly the political philosophy of freedom, liberation, social justice, women’s (womyns) rights, LGBT rights, animal rights, and warm puppies (well, Leftists actually are more likely cat people). Islam, on the other hand, promotes Sharia law, limits the role of women in society and the family, would hang gays, lesbians and the transgendered, is against free speech (must not insult the  prophet), and is responsible for most death-by-terror in the world. Islam allows for rape, pedophilia, and recruits children as suicide bombers. As I write this, ISIS is demanding Iraqi women undergo genital mutilation.

But they can and do join forces against Israel.

One might think this is coincidental: Islam hates Israel because it has historically done so, and the Left is against Israel because Israel is perceived to be unjust towards its neighbours; these two entities (Islam and the Left) have otherwise nothing in common. The Left’s silence on the above Islamic social values is telling.

But I think there’s a much greater reason for the Left’s hatred of Israel: the natural rebellion against the acts of God in history.

The story of Islam is that Abraham’s son Ishmael, not Isaac, is rightfully heir to the land promise. God promised the land to Abraham (Genesis 12:7). The Bible is clear, however, that the land belongs to the heirs of Isaac, as he was the son of the promise (Genesis 21:12; Romans 9:7). Ishmael was born to a slave woman, Hagar (Genesis 16-21). This sets Islam against Judaism and Christianity, as the claim to the land and blessings of Abraham are seen to be usurped by Isaac, not divinely conferred upon him. Islam will forever be at war with the Jews, and the Jews know it. If Israel were to be eliminated as a state, no Jew would be allowed to exist anywhere else in peace. Islam will seek to eliminate all descendants of Isaac.

This too, of course, means that the story of Jesus must be rewritten by Islam. The Islamic Jesus is unrecognisable to Christians. The Islamic story of Jesus has nothing to do with the historical Jesus as described in the most accurate accounts of His life: the canonical Gospels.

Israel has a Biblical, historical, moral, legal, political, and theological claim to the land. [Important note: I do not believe that the theological claim to the land is absolute; I am not a dispensationalist, nor do I believe that Israel’s return to the land has eschatological significance].

The Left does not seem to get this, as the Left has little use for, or useful understanding of, Christian theology. Failing to understand this, however, means that he Left’s confusion about the events that are taking place in Israel must continue, with some sort of relativist understanding of “human rights,” or “social justice.” Justice is served when terrorists are rebuffed and punished. But if launching rockets from hospitals, schools, and homes are ok, and measured retaliation is not, then the Left is too morally and legally confused to comprehend. Starting with a hatred of Israel, no attack against Israel is unjustified to Leftist thinking.

The Left, by definition, tolerates religious faith only in its most private expressions. The existence of Israel, and from that the Christian Church, is an affront to an ideology that denies both God’s existence and His actions in history. Creation points to a Creator (Romans 1:18-28, Psalm 8, 19), and atheism’s feeble attempt to deny that is becoming apparent (“New” Atheism, Dawkins, Hitchons, et al). Creation points to a Creator, a nation’s existence points to a Lord of History. The nation of Israel also points to Christ. In fact, Israel will not be the end recipient of the wrath of Islam and Left, it is Christ and His church. The rebellion started before our first parents kept the garden, and the end of the battle is on the horizon. Sin and death were defeated on the cross.

Both Islam and the Left represent human rebellion against a God Who acts in history. It is the Christ who is hated who is also the Christ who can heal all divisions (Ephesians 2:11-22).

 

 

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The Perfect Peace Plan for the Middle-East (and everywhere else, too)

There is only one way there will be peace between warring nations, tribes, and families, and that is for the combatants to accept the fact that they are indeed at war with the Lord of Lords. It is in His household, and nowhere else, that peace is possible:

Ephesians 2:11–22 (ESV)

11 Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— 12 remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. 17 And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. 19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
 

There is only one people of God.

Colossians 3:5–11 (ESV)

5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming. 7 In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. 8 But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. 11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.
 

Note then, that the new self, always being renewed, is a place where tribal, national, political, economic and ethnic differences melt away. Religious differences (Islam, Judaism, Baha’i, and Christianity, for example) fade away as it is only in Christ that this renewal is possible. Muslims and Baha’is must reject their false prophets; Jews must cease rejecting their Messiah. All must bow to Jesus as Lord (Philippians 2:9-11, 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”)

Without submission to Christ, there will be no peace.