Promoting a Failed System Leads to Cosmic Disasters
Inasmuch as we love our Jewish friends and support our Hebrew allies, there is however a foolish movement in American Christianity to promote patterns of conduct exemplified in the Old Testament as demonstration of that love and support.
Such a misguided approach has led to convoluted exegesis that fail to recognize the words of God himself concerning the Israelites whom current Christian theologians are driving Christian congregations to emulate. It is as if AIPAC was preaching the sermon rather than a Christian preacher. Many electronic preachers even display the flag of the United States with the flag of current physical Israel right on the stage, while excluding the Christian flag.
Electronic preachers continue to motivate the flock into adopting attitudes displayed under the Old Covenant where Scriptures tell us, as the Apostle Paul reminds us, that the Old Covenant was a "custodian" in accordance with which God allowed certain things to happen; and that now, men are without excuse. You cannot "name it and claim it" when the property lawfully already belongs to somebody else--otherwise, it's called theft.
For example, they keep preaching that the wealth of the wicked is laid up for the just and the illustration they use is that when the Egyptians let the Israelites go, the Israelites left Egypt with all the gold and silver and expensive cloth etc. . . But Christian theologians then exercise a form of amnesia in forgetting that Moses had not received the Ten Commandments yet, that the Israelites were steeped in pagan rituals which caused them to violate Jehovah's priestly instructions. What did they do with the gold with which they had exited Egypt? Well, the Holy Bible, in Genesis written by Moses, tells us that the Israelites then under the leadership of Aaron, Moses's brother, built themselves a golden calf to worship while carousing and engaging in debauchery and sinful abominations--they were not worshipping Jehovah who had just freed them.
Meanwhile, God is giving the commandments to Moses on Mt. Sinai. As Moses was absent from the encampment while receiving the Law on tablets of stone, when he descended from the mountain, he found the Israelite camp in chaos, anarchy and immoral godlessness. Twenty-three thousand Israelites died in the desert that day as punishment for their sins, transgressions, trespasses and iniquities against almighty God.
Christian ministers seeking lessons from the Old Testament seldom drive their teachings to their logical, spiritual and moral conclusions as stated in the Holy Bible due to their misguided blind allegiance to supporting the physical Israeli cause in the Middle East, i.e., land acquisitions etc. . .
We all desire a peaceful Middle East wherein Jews and Arabs live side by side as brotherly neighbors. These descendants of faithful Abraham need the love of Jesus Christ in their hearts, not the enmity of partiality and partisanship that blinds them both to the opportunities of Christian salvation.
Christian ministers have not managed to know how to ally themselves with the Israelis without diluting the Gospel of Christ whom the Israelis as well as the Arabs still reject. They have forgotten that Moses himself, King David and all the Prophets convicted the Israelites as being a stubborn, stiff-necked and rebellious people whom God had to chastise so many times due to their refusal to abide by God's commandments--they had always wanted a king or form of government that would allow them to behave like all the other nations that surrounded them, that is, to make war, conquer territory, levy taxes, own slaves, etc . . . Please read Samuel's testimony in the Books of Kings. At their initial request for a king, God had rejected their demand, but finally conceded that they had not rejected Samuel the priest, but rather God himself as their king.
From Saul to David, and a host of kings that succeeded them, the kingdom had always been divided from within, which caused a great chasm within the Israelite people, as the whole kingdom finally disintegrated into the Northern Kingdom and Judah in the South. Since then, the Israelites never achieved a unified kingdom or government, even up until the time the Romans invaded Palestine. Because of their rebellious disobedience of God's commandments, Israelites ended up in captivity to the Egyptians, Babylonians, Medo-Persia, Assyrians, Greeks, and finally, at the time of Christ's coming, Palestine had been under occupation by the Roman Empire.
In sum, Christian theologians bending backwards to demonstrate their support for the current State of Israel engage in convoluted scriptural exegesis as they attempt to muster a form of appreciation for Old Testament Israelites that not only conflicts with God's indictment of their conduct but also completely disregards today's unspiritual adventures of current Israelis in Middle East geo-political affairs.
We have been thrown into this conflict between Jews and Arabs, which has cost us very dearly in terms of American lives, resources and expenditures. And only God knows how long we will be in Iraq and Afghanistan. If the problem is a spiritual one, then Christian ministers ought to preach the Gospel of Christ with partiality to none and openness to all. For God shows no partiality. (Romans 2:11.) Current members of physical Israel, in the Middle East, should have been members of our common Christian family a long time ago, as members of the Israel of God. The deceitfulness of the devil has hindered them in spirit, mind, soul, heart and will. But many of them will be saved, before the end of the age comes, as prophesied in the Holy Bible.
Biblical history reminds us that God had to keep a faithful remnant continuously under his careful blessings, as the majority of Israelites failed to keep God's commandments, thrown to and fro into the godlessness of earthly concerns that contradicted the pattern of ownership God had set in motion for them. They were the "carriers of the tradition" whose truth had climaxed into the coming of Christ as Messiah, hence, Jesus's response to Pilate when Pilate asked him "What is truth?"
God had desired the Israelites hold him as their heavenly and earthly king, until Messiah would arrive to fulfill the whole law and the Prophets by whose miraculous works the Old Covenant would mature into world-wide prophetic materialization as the New Covenant of love, merci, righteousness, legal prosperity, and lawful liberty. The Israelites were not allowed to have an earthly kingdom in order that their mission on the earth to enlighten all tongues, tribes and nations regarding God's covenanted relationships, in their "chosen position" as God's children, would have no competition, until such a time God would decide that the harvest was ripe for sending Messiah. Mission accomplished and fulfilled in the coming of Jesus Christ. Then, as the Gospel is preached, known, received and believed throughout the world, children of God in Christ, from all tribes, tongues and nations, become the "priesthood of believers" and the "chosen generation."
It never worked out that way--Israelites had failed to acknowledge their universal mission for God on the earth. The Israelites always succumbed to the quest for earthly power, riches, land, conquest, and warfare, which God punished by engendering conditions for eventual captivity, in the aftermath of which God saved a faithful remnant to accomplish his purposes for humankind.
The Book of Hebrews, Chapter 11, explains how by their faith, the righteous and the remnant, had gained God's favor; by knowing that their obedience to God's commandments had embodied a greater purpose to redeem, not just the Hebrew people group, but also all of humankind. And throughout the Gospels, openness of the Scriptures to all tribes, tongues and nations, provided the means by which all peoples would become acquainted with God's greater plan of salvation for humanity as well as with God's righteous means and instruments for transforming their lives into creative, constructive moral productivity.
In Hebrews 8:13, the Apostle Paul proclaimed the Old Covenant obsolete, as it was fading away due to God having fulfilled all promises and all commandments via the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, as Messiah, for both Jews and Gentiles--now as the Israel of God, embodying God's plan of righteous, prosperous and peaceful living on the earth for all peoples.
The major theme in the Old Testament is that God had given the Law to the Israelites, through Moses, in order that they, as a people group, might be brought to faithful righteousness, so that God would prepare the way for sending Messiah to redeem and deliver all humankind from sin, death, Satan and hell. Current dwellers in physical Israel have failed to recognize the universal purpose for which God had willfully chosen their forebears. That universal mission has been fulfilled also for their benefit, as in their becoming members of the Israel of God (Galatians 6.) God had always reminded them that their "status of chosen people" had not been due to their good behavior but rather due to the goodness of God who overlooked their human frailties in order to accomplish his greater plan of salvation for humanity as a whole.
Since at that time all nations were pagan godless tribal societies, God had to begin somewhere; thus God chose one people group among many. For we must remember that Abram was originally from Ur, of the Chaldees, Chaldea, then in the Babylonian Empire--configured now in a region that falls within the international borders of Turkey, Iran and Iraq. All descendants of Abram whose name God changed to Abraham ("father of many nations") were Hebrews; and it is later on, that some acquired the name of Jews and others the name of Arabs, due to differences in location, culture, language and religion, etc . . ., and due to Satan deceiving them both with strife, enmity and warfare. Spiritual wickedness in the heavenly realms or spiritual places is as real as a bacterial infection that debilitates the human organism by sabotaging immuno-metabolic efficiency.
In times such as these, it is necessary that electronic preachers and Christian theologians understand that they cannot dilute the Gospel in order to cater to their geo-political preferences, lest their sermons of health and wealth be misunderstood as assent to unwarranted Israeli aggression against Arabs in the Middle East. The rule of law has been established for legal prosperity. And lawful prosperity is not "divinely ordained aggression;" nor is prosperity obtained through military conquest of lands and resources that already belong to other peoples. Christian ministers err greatly in not being able to separate their sympathy for physical Jewish causes, from the greater plan of God to save all peoples from strife, warfare, poverty, bloodshed and injustice through the loving redemption of Jesus Christ.
The Apostle Paul, by God's Holy Spirit, reminds us that we, both Jews and Gentiles, who have been born again, who have converted to Christianity, who recognize Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, from all tribes, tongues and nations, are the Israel of God (Galatians 6); that we represent spiritual Israel, the embodiment of God's heavenly purposes for humanity; and that uncircumcision of the flesh or circumcision of the flesh counts for nothing, for God had desired "circumcision of the heart," from the beginning, that is, rejection of wickedness, evil, and godless idolatry; in sum, that faithful Christians or spiritual Israel, whether Jew or Gentile in ancestry, are now ambassadors for Christ, and representatives of God, to embody the will of heavenly design for human living on the earth as children of God (John 1:1-14.) That was God's plan for the people group called "Israelites," from the beginning, and is still God's purpose to redeem as many will believe in the saving plan he established by the coming of his son Jesus Christ.
The physical temple of stone in geographical Jerusalem was destroyed in A.D. 70 by the Roman Empire, and there is no prophecy or commandment to rebuild it thereafter, for we, human beings who have received the Holy Spirit of God in Christ, Messiah Jesus, have become God's real temple, as prophesied from the beginning; hence, the revelation that the ark of the covenant and God's temple were in heaven (Revelation 11:19; 14:17; 21:22.) And the Jerusalem, of which the Apostle John speaks, in Revelation, is from heaven or from above, and not a geographical, physical Jerusalem captured out of contention, warfare, conquest and strife. (Revelation 21.)
There is no recognition in the Holy Bible for a physical kingdom of Israel as the purposes of God for instituting a "nation of Israel" or the "Israelite people" had been already fulfilled by sending Messiah to descend from the righteous faithful remnant, among whose members were Abraham, Moses, Isaac, the Prophets, David, the Virgin Mary, Joseph her husband, the Apostles etc . . . through whom God accomplished his purpose and plan, for all of us Jews and Gentiles, more than two thousand years ago, in short, for all of humankind.
Terms that had expressed God's promises of a new heaven and a new earth where righteousness dwells, in the Old Testament, such as Zion and Beulah land, are newly fulfilled in names such as "the Jerusalem from above," in the New Testament, as conceptual encapsulations of God fulfilling his plans for humanity,--that they shall live in peace, love, prosperity, justice, liberty, equality and righteousness rather than in warfare, enmity, hostility, bloodshed and strife.
Electronic preachers, Christian theologians and ministers must understand that the Old Covenant has been fulfilled and that physical Zionists of today have no heavenly purpose as far as the Old Testament and the New Testament are concerned, except that a certain number of Judaic Jews,--a number that denotes "completeness" or "fulfillment" in numerology such as "one hundred and forty-four thousand," which is a multiple of twelve,--will come to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior (Revelation 7) before or during end-time events that will announce the fulfillment of God's purposes for the Age.
In short, today's physical Zionists are descendants of Abraham, as we are, but who had failed to understand the universal purposes of God for themselves--as those who had built the golden calf in the desert while God was giving the law to Moses on Mt. Sinai, after God had delivered them out of Egypt. These "modern" descendants of Abraham failed to know God's plan for them as the embodiment of God's universal mission that they would teach the whole world regarding God's merciful grace and righteous salvation through the coming of Messiah who would transform all tongues, tribes and nations into spiritual descendants of faithful Abraham as children of God living together in a new earth where righteousness dwells.
We do pray that Jews in Israel, Jews around the world, Arabs in the Middle East and around the world, as well as Christians in America and around the world, come to realize the greater universal purposes God had for sending Jesus Christ as the savior of all humanity wherein all descendants of "father of faith," Abraham,--Jews, Christians and Arabs,--can enjoy peaceful and prosperous living in Christ, on the earth where righteousness will indeed dwell.