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1[a]THE MIGHTY One, God, the Lord, speaks and calls the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.
2Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth.
3Our God comes and does not keep silence; a fire devours before Him, and round about Him a mighty tempest rages.
4He calls to the heavens above and to the earth, that He may judge His people:
5Gather together to Me My saints [those who have found grace in My sight], those who have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice.
6And the heavens declare His righteousness (rightness and justice), for God, He is judge. Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!
7Hear, O My people, and I will speak; O Israel, I will testify to you and against you: I am God, your God.
8I do not reprove you for your sacrifices; your burnt offerings are continually before Me.
9I will accept no bull from your house nor he-goat out of your folds.
10For every beast of the forest is Mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills or upon the mountains where thousands are.
11I know and am acquainted with all the birds of the mountains, and the wild animals of the field are Mine and are with Me, in My mind.
12If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are Mine.(A)
13Shall I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?
14Offer to God the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High,
15And call on Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall honor and glorify Me.
16But to the wicked, God says: What right have you to recite My statutes or take My covenant or pledge on your lips,
17Seeing that you hate instruction and correction and cast My words behind you [discarding them]?
18When you see a thief, you associate with him, and you have taken part with adulterers.
19You give your mouth to evil, and your tongue frames deceit.
20You sit and speak against your brother; you slander your own mother’s son.
21These things you have done and I kept silent; you thought I was once entirely like you. But [now] I will reprove you and put [the charge] in order before your eyes.
22Now consider this, you who forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver.
23He who brings an offering of praise and thanksgiving honors and glorifies Me; and he who orders his way aright [who prepares the way that I may show him], to him I will demonstrate the salvation of God.
Footnotes:
Psalm 50:1 Asaph was a Levite and one of the leaders of David’s choir. He was the head of one of the three families permanently charged with the temple music. His family formed a guild which bore his name and is frequently mentioned (II Chron. 20:14; 29:13; 29:30). Twelve psalms (50; 73-83) are attributed in the titles to the family of Asaph. 128 of Asaph’s family members, all singers, came back from Babylon and took part when the foundations of Zerubbabel’s temple were laid (Ezra 2:41; 3:10).
Psalm 143:8b
Cause me to know the way wherein I should walk.
To ascertain the Lord’s will we ought to use scriptural means. Prayer, the Word of God, and His Spirit should be united together.
We should go to God repeatedly in prayer, and ask Him to teach us by His Spirit through His Word. For if we should think that His Spirit led us to do so and so, because certain facts are said to be so and so, and yet His Word is opposed to the step which we are going to take, we should be deceiving ourselves…..
No situation, no business will be given me by God in which I have not time enough to care about my soul. Therefore, however outward circumstances may appear, it can only be considered as permitted of God, to prove the genuineness of my love, faith, and obedience, but by no means as the leading of His providence to induce me to act contrary to His will. – George Muller.
God’s voice in His Word, and His voice in the leadings of His providence never contradict each other. If the event points one way and the Word another we may be assured God is not speaking in the event.
- Daily Meditations for Prayer.
Recently that Hollywood scholar Cameron Diaz gave us an illustration of the secular/godless worldview on marriage: “I do [think marriage is dead]. I think we have to make our own rules. I don’t think we should live our lives in relationships based off old traditions that don’t suit our world any longer.”
The current generation in America is shunning marriage for cohabitation at an unprecedented rate. According to the 2010 edition of the State of Our Unions report by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values, “The number of unmarried couples has increased dramatically over the past five decades. Most younger Americans now spend some time living together outside of marriage, and nonmarital cohabitation precedes most new marriages.”
According to the report, between 1960 and 2009, cohabitating couples in the U.S. increased more than fifteen-fold. Also, “About a quarter of unmarried women age 25 to 39 are currently living with a partner, and an additional quarter have lived with a partner at some time in the past. More than 60 percent of first marriages are now preceded by living together, compared to virtually none 50 years ago.”
Now, those of the worldview of Miss Diaz might ask, “so what? Why shouldn’t we make our own rules?” As is often the case, when we go our own way, ignoring the wisdom of the One who made us, there are tragic consequences. According to a recent federal study, the Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect, children living with their mother and her boyfriend are about 11 times more likely to be sexually, physically, or emotionally abused than children living with their married biological parents.
Likewise, children living with their mother and her boyfriend are six times more likely to be physically, emotionally, or educationally neglected than children living with their married biological parents. In other words, according to W. Bradford Wilcox, “one of the most dangerous places for a child in America to find himself is in a home that includes an unrelated male boyfriend — especially when that boyfriend is left to care for a child by himself.”
According to the study, children who live with their cohabitating biological parents don’t fare much better. In these circumstances, children are more than four times more likely to be sexually, physically, or emotionally abused and they are three times more likely to be physically, emotionally, or educationally neglected than children living with their married biological parents. Again, according to Wilcox, “a child is not much safer when she is living in a home with her parents if her parents’ relationship does not enjoy the legal, social and moral status and guidance that marriage confers on relationships.”
Also according to the study, not only does cohabitation do little to prepare couples for marriage (which is often the excuse for cohabitating), but “a substantial body of evidence indicates that those who live together before marriage are more likely to break up after marriage.”
The solution to this travesty goes far beyond simply uttering “I do.” However, the solution does begin with a simple step of recognizing that marriage is not a man-made institution that we are free to redefine using “our own rules”-at least not without devastating consequences.
Jewish-Scottish scholar David Daiches stated in his 1956 autobiography entitled TwoWorlds: An Edinburgh Jewish Childhood, that one can assert that Scotland is the only European country which has no history of state persecution of Jews. Scots have long believed themselves to have a biblical connection to the Jewish people. And unlike their English contemporaries, Scottish students were not required to take a religious oath. The first Jewish congregation in Edinburgh was founded in 1816 and in Glasgow in 1823. The Scottish Council of Jewish Communities (http://www.scojec.org/) produced a guide entitled Scotland’s Jews by Dr. Kenneth E. Collins in June 2008 where the Rt. Hon Alex Salmond, MSP, First Minister of Scotland wrote “I am confident that Scottish Jews will continue to build on the foundations of this impressive legacy of which they, and our nation, can be rightly proud.”
This rosy picture, however, has changed in the last few years as the Jewish community in Scotland has experienced a steep decline. Jewish graves at Glenduffhill Cemetery in Glasgow have been desecrated. And “slogans sprayed on walls around the cemetery and on the headstones themselves pledge support for Hamas….” In sheer numbers the antisemitic incidents in Scotland are relatively small but they are increasing.
An April 2010 report entitled “Scotland’s Jews: Community and Political Challenges” by Kenneth Collins and Ephraim Borowski underscores the following:
In the 1950s, the Jewish Scottish community numbered 18,000 but has now shrunk to around 10,000.
In 1999 the Jewish community established the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities (SCoJeC), as a democratic representative body to speak on the Jewish community’s behalf.
The SCoJeC has successfully worked with the Scottish government on matters of mutual concern.
Historically there has been little antisemitism in Scotland, but the increase in antisemitic activity has been “associated with events in the Middle East. Specifically, the Scottish trade union movement has pursued a policy of boycotting Israel despite a dialogue with the Jewish community aimed at understanding both sides of the conflict.”
Recently several districts in southwest Scotland have expanded the boycott on Israeli products, and are now barring stores from carrying English translations of Israeli books. Shortly after Operation Cast Lead, the West Dunbartonshire Regional Council, located west of Glasgow, approved a bill that called to boycott goods produced in Israel. After the raid on the Turkish Flotilla to Gaza, the boycott included “a ban on the purchase of English translations of Israeli books and the distribution of these books in public libraries throughout the council’s jurisdiction.” The Scottish city of Dundee also joined the West Dunbartonshire by distributing “posters…calling on some 150,000 residents to refrain from buying Israeli goods.” Israeli products will also have a special mark placed on them to make them more identifiable. No other country’s books are being boycotted.
It is expected that “ten more Scottish councils may join the boycott.”
As Giulio Meotti has written, “it is impossible to make an exhaustive list of the economic actions against Israel, with radical anti-Jewish venom spreading through the West” and as Caroline Glick has written, “what did [Israel ever] do to the Scots?”
The Scottish decision is the first time that a European region has actually “cleansed the presence of Israeli books.” It is reminiscent of all the evil associated with the Holocaust — from marking the books to denying people the ability to read and think for themselves.
Meotti, author of A New Shoah: the Untold Story of Israel’s Victims of Terrorism poignantly calls for “European intellectuals to stand for truth because the worst of all anti-Jewish persecutions, that of Hitler, almost marked the end of European history. Now it may happen again.”
This despicable Scottish decision to ban Israeli books “is eerily reminiscent of darker times” and demonstrates how far “respectable antisemitism has come.” Anti-Zionism is the new name for antisemitism and “a place that boycotts books is not far from a place that burns them.”
Forget the Five Pillars of Islam. It is the Five Stages of Islam that threaten the fundamental freedoms of Western Democracy. Freedoms which include freedom of thought, expression, and association and the crucial derived right of freedom of the press. We should never forget that “Islam” means submission — the opposite of self-determination and Enlightenment values.
Six years ago Dr. Peter Hammond published a remarkable book which included a statistical study of the correlation between Muslim to non-Muslim population ratios and the transition from conciliatory Islam to fascist Islam. The stages are the same in 2011 but the demographics have changed to show an alarming progression. Many European nations and the U.S. are on the cusp of moving to a higher bracket. The demographics change but the story is the same. First comes the taqiyya and the kitman; then comes the Sword of Islam. Imam Rauf, the Ground Zero Mosque promoter, is the current master of taqiyya. He has gulled everyone from Bloomberg to Maureen Dowd of the NYT — who fanaticizes over male Muslims. Expect doppelgangers of Khomeini for stage 5 and Islamic PEACE at last.
Stage 1. Establish a Beachhead
Population density à 2% (US, Australia, Canada).
Muslims are conciliatory, deferential but request harmless special treatment (foot bath facilities, removal/elimination of that which is offensive to delicate Muslim sensibilities – like walking dogs near Mosques).
Stage 2. Establish Outposts
Population density 2% – 5% (UK, Germany, Denmark).
At 2% to 5%, they begin to proselytize other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups, often with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs. A recent example is that of Sheikh Abdullah el-Faisal who is back in Jamaica after being kicked out of the UK. Sound harmless? Read on:
The dispatch, dated February 2010, warns that that Jamaica could be fertile ground for jihadists because of its underground drug economy, marginalized youth, insufficient security and gang networks in U.S. and British prisons.
Stage 3. Establish Sectional Control of Major Cities.
Population density 5% – 10% (France, Sweden, Netherlands).
First comes the demand for halal food in supermarkets, and the blocking of streets for prayers; then comes the demand for self rule (within their ghettos) under Sharia. When Muslims approach 10% of the population the demands turn to lawlessness. In Paris, we are already seeing car-burnings. Any criticism of Islam results in uprisings and threats, such as in Amsterdam. In France which may be over the 10% range, the minority Muslim populations live in ghettos, within which they are 100% Muslim, and within which they live by Sharia Law. The national police do not even enter these ghettos. There are no national courts, nor schools, nor non-Muslim religious facilities. In such situations, Muslims do not integrate into the community at large. The children attend madrassas. They learn only the Koran. To even associate with an infidel is a crime punishable with death.
Stage 4. Establish Regional Control.
Population density 20% - 50% (Europe 2020?).
After reaching 20%, nations can expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings, and the burnings of Christian churches and Jewish synagogues.
Stage 5. Total Control, Brutal Suppression, and Dhimmitude.
Population density > 50%.
Unfettered persecution of non-believers of all other religions (including non-conforming Muslims), sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon, and jizya, the tax placed on infidels. As Muslim population levels increase and all infidels cower in submission there will peace at last. Dar al-Islam is achieved and everyone lives under Sharia and the Koran is the only word.
Our current Western world leaders are suckered by taqiyya and kitman and steering us into stage 3. Allen West seems to get it but I can’t see that any of the crop of current GOP contenders really get it. Fear of bigotry at stage 2 is the Islamists’ greatest weapon. Crucified on the cross of bigotry — is that the future of the Western democracies? Bigotry is only bigotry if it is out of touch with reality and it is the suckers who believe the stage 1-2 peace pitch of Islam who are the ones who are out of touch with reality — not to mention our mesmerized President. The first GOP candidate who announces to Imam Rauf and his supporters, “Fine. A Mosque at ground zero. But how about a cathedral in Mecca first? It is part of our Christian outreach program of bridge building.” will be the first to get it and a big boost in the polls.
In an earlier incarnation, Scott Wilson worked for several years as the Washington Post’s Jerusalem correspondent. So you would think that he learned something about the ancient historical, political, national, and cultural ties of Jews to the Holy Land.
But you would be wrong.
In the Post’s May 28 edition, Wilson, currently the paper’s White House correspondent, writes as follows in the lead paragraph of his article about the arrival of President Obama in Poland:
WARSAW–Within hours of arriving Friday in this once-occupied capital, President Obama encountered the enduring emotion surrounding the state of Israel, founded as a sanctuary from the virulent anti-Semitism that wiped out much of Poland’s Jewish population during World War II. (“Obama visits monument to Warsaw Ghetto uprising” page A10).
In one stroke of the pen, Wilson thus wipes out 4,000 years of Jewish national and territorial attachments to this land. According to Wilson, Israel is merely a recent sanctuary for Jews persecuted elsewhere. This is the same distortion of history that Obama promulgated in his 2009 Cairo speech to the Muslim world when he erroneously connected Israel’s existence to ‘the aspiration for a Jewish homeland rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied — anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust.
Of course, this also happens to be what Iranian President Ahmadinejad and countless other Israeli enemies preach — that Israel is a latter-day colonial implant in the Holy Land because Jews suffered elsewhere and then were sent to Palestine to displace a more indigenous population — the Palestinians. Why should Palestinians have to suffer for sins committed against Jews by Europeans?
So, let’s examine exactly why Wilson offends real history when he writes that Israel was “founded as a sanctuary from virulent anti-Semitism” — i.e. a protectorate against another Holocaust.
Jewish ties and claims to the land — i.e. Zionism — don’t have their roots in the Holocaust but date back some four millennia when, according to the Bible in Genesis, Chapter 12,” “the Lord said unto Abram: “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto the land that I will show thee. And I will make of thee a great nation.”
Here’s the real genesis of Zionism through the ages. Israel’s first claim to the “land” and to a “nation” in this land.
But if you’re not religiously inclined, there are many other historical markers with ample secular evidence. More than 3,000 years ago, King David established Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish people and the Jewish nation. His son, King Solomon, built the first Jewish Temple atop Temple Mount. For more than a millennium, with only a 50-year hiatus of exile in Babylon — Jewish monarchs reigned in the Holy Land. There were as many Jewish monarchs in that time span as there have been U.S. presidents.
Even after the Roman conquest and the dispersal of Jews to other places, there was a continuous Jewish presence in the land right up to and until modern times. By the thousands and tens of thousands Jews populated the land over the last 2,000 years and established dozens of vibrant Jewish communities. And while no other people established Jerusalem as their capital, Jews the world over continued to cling to it and to pray to it.
In modern times, Jewish claims to nationhood got a huge boost from the 1917 Balfour Declaration, with British Foreign Secretary James Balfour declaring that “His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” A “national” home, mind you, not just a homeland without Jewish sovereignty.
The Balfour Declaration subsequently was embraced and endorsed by the Allied victors after World I at the San Remo conference, by the League of Nations when it granted Britain an interim mandate in Palestine, and by the U.S. Congress.
When some Holocaust survivors arrived in Palestine, they were greeted by a long-standing, fully organized Jewish community set to declare Jewish resumption of sovereign nationhood.
Jews happen to be the most indigenous people in this land, with political rights, claims, and actual sovereign rule than any other people. They are not the British in India or the French in Algeria.
If one attributes and ties Israel’s founding to merely a post-Holocaust adjunct to provide sanctuary to persecuted Jews, any other place would have sufficed and, in fact, several geographic alternatives (Uganda among others) were floated in the last couple of centuries.
But Israel, of course, is not just a sanctuary born from the ashes of the Holocaust, as Wilson would have it. It has a 4,000-year-old pedigree — with a deeper and longer history than anyone else in the Holy Land.
For a former Jerusalem correspondent to perpetuate this colossal canard is a blot on the Post’s credibility.
A Christian general practitioner is fighting a reprimand from the General Medical Council (GMC) after he talked about God with a patient.
Dr Richard Scott, a partner in a medical centre in Margate, where all the doctors are Christian, saw the patient last year, at the request of the patient’s mother. At the end of the consultation, Dr Scott and the patient discussed religion. The patient has continued to seek treatment from the practice, but his mother filed a complaint, claiming that Dr Scott had tried to “push religion” on her son.
Dr Scott, a former missionary, then received a letter from the GMC threatening to put an official warning on his file. He has refused to accept this, and has chosen to fight the case with support from the Christian Legal Centre and a human-rights barrister, Paul Diamond.
Dr Scott said: “I only discussed my faith at the end of a lengthy medical consultation, after exploring the various interventions that the patient had previously tried, and after promising to follow up the patient’s request appointment with other medical professionals.
“I only discussed mutual faith after obtaining the patient’s permission. In our conversation, I said that, personally, I had found having faith in Jesus helped me, and could help the patient. At no time did the patient indicate that they were offended, or that they wanted to stop the discussion. If that had been the case, I would have immediately ended the conversation.
“This complaint was brought to the GMC not by the patient, who has continued to be a patient at this practice, but by the patient’s mother.”
The medical practice at which Dr Scott works is well known in the community for having Christian partners, and the NHS Choices website states that the practice is likely to discuss spiritual matters with patients during consultations.
Dr Scott worships at St Paul’s, Cliftonville, and says that he has shared his faith with thousands of patients over his 28 years in medicine. He said that he often invited people to Alpha courses at his church: out of eight he might invite, two might come, and one might have his or her life transformed as a result, he mentioned.
He said that the GMC’s accusation that he had harassed a vulnerable patient was “disgraceful”. “I offered a needy patient a way out of the situation.”
He has written articles in the past on whether GPs should evangelise. In one, he wrote: “Christian GPs are in a unique position to reach the lost in their local area. Sharing the gospel with patients is not an abuse of trust because God himself gives us the authority, and salvation is their greatest need.”
The chief executive of the Christian Medical Fellowship, Peter Saunders, has backed Dr Scott’s case, and has accused the GMC of acting disproportionately. “Good doctors do not treat their patients solely as biological or biochemical machines.
“Rather, they practise ‘whole-person’ medicine that is not concerned solely with physical needs, but also addresses social, psychological, behavioural, and spiritual factors that may be contributing to a person’s illness.
“Here we have the case of a doctor who has talked to many patients about faith matters, and who has had only a very small handful of complaints. . .
“From the facts of the case as reported, it appears that the General Medical Council has acted with inappropriate and disproportionate force, and appears to have applied its very reasonable guidance in a selective and unbalanced way.”
The founder and director of the Christian Legal Centre, Andrea Minichiello Williams, called on the GMC to back Dr Scott, and not bow to “political or emotional pressure”. “He acted within their own guidelines, and his unblemished record should not be tarnished —even by a letter on his file.”
Woody Allen’s latest effort is a love letter to both Paris and the director’s own earlier, funnier movies. It also sees fit to mock Republicans and tea partiers.
In approximately eighteen months, Barack Obama may well be a lame duck limping to January.
During the same period, more thousands of Jews will continue being added to the population of Judea and Samaria. Since 1967, several powerful world leaders who worked to oust Israel from Judea and Samaria have passed away. During that same period, the Jewish population of Judea and Samaria, including the areas of East Jerusalem liberated in June 1967, has grown to 558,000 — 230,000 in Greater East Jerusalem and 328,000 throughout the rest of Yesha.
Yitzchak Rabin had an Oslo plan to withdraw from Judea and Samaria, but he was tragically assassinated before it could be advanced. Shimon Peres, Rabin’s Labor Party successor, thereupon entered as Israeli prime minister with a higher than 90% poll rating and assured everyone that he would complete the vision of withdrawing. Yet an outbreak of Arab bus bombings wiped out Peres’s support, whereupon he lost office to Binyamin Netanyahu. After Bibi compromised on Hebron at the Wye Conference, his stellar polls suddenly plummeted, and he was ousted by Ehud Barak.
Barak proceeded to withdraw unilaterally from South Lebanon, creating a vacuum soon filled by Hezbollah, and then to work with Bill Clinton to prepare a complete withdrawal from virtually all of Judea and Samaria. Inexplicably, Arafat turned him down, started an Intifada, and Barak lost the government to Ariel Sharon in a landslide. Sharon soon shifted course ideologically; formed the new Kadimah party; unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, creating a vacuum soon filled by Hamas; and then turned his attention to withdrawing from Judea and Samaria. Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, he sustained a massive stroke that has left him comatose for years.
Ehud Olmert followed Barak with the promise to withdraw from Judea and Samaria. Then Hezbollah terrorists started a war, and Olmert’s miscalculations and failures, augmented by the incompetence of a defense minister with no qualifications other than being a socialist union organizer who rose to head the Labor Party, obliterated his authority. Stymied by the scandal of war, Olmert was consumed and further driven from office by financial scandals. Tzipi Livni, the last Kadimah prime minister, was voted out rapidly. And now Netanyahu again.
During that same period since 1967, Richard Nixon presented the Rogers Plan. Nixon has passed on, and Rogers has passed. Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger tried imposing the “Reassessment Plan.” Ford is gone, Kissinger irrelevant. Jimmy Carter has done everything imaginable through a lifetime to advance the cause of Hamas and Fatah sovereignty. Yet, as president, he pushed Israel until he unexpectedly was overwhelmed by 19% inflation, Iranian hostages, a botched rescue mission, and Soviet progression on three continents.
Israel enjoyed some respite during the Reagan years, with her concerns sympathetically grasped by Secretaries of State Alexander Haig and George Shultz. Then George H.W. Bush came in, reached 90% popularity with the Desert Storm and the war in Kuwait, turned his attention to pressing Israel with James Baker as a decidedly unfriendly secretary of state, and even condemned American Jews for lobbying in Washington for Israel. Somehow, his poll numbers disappeared overnight as the economy upended. Bill Clinton came in, made Arafat the most frequent invitee to the White House, and pressed Israel to cede Judea and Samaria — and yet he saw everything fizzle as Arafat rejected the offers. The Clinton White House soon became consumed with its own survival as repeated scandals began erupting like unquelled acne.
George W. Bush came in, supported Israel initially as no president ever had, and enjoyed stellar poll numbers, even expanding his party’s leads in the first bi-elections and then winning reelection. As he turned during his second term to pressing Israel, under his “Road Map” to cede Judea and Samaria, Hurricane Katrina hit, and the American economy, led by bursting housing and banking bubbles, subsequently collapsed overnight, eradicating his poll numbers and devastating his party.
And now Barack Obama. Obama came in with excellent poll numbers, rapidly moved towards pressing Israel to halt all construction in Judea and Samaria, and heaped the onus for Mideast problems on Israel, even traveling and genuflecting throughout the Arab world on an Apology Tour centered on a speech in Egypt. His efforts radicalized the expectations of Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah because Abbas had to be at least as extreme as the American president. And Obama’s gigantic poll numbers flattened in the face of pressing for an Obamacare whose details we would learn only after it was passed, even as James Cameron could not help Obama solve an oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The GOP’s victories in November set records.
As pressure from the Obama administration to withdraw has intensified against Israel, signaling to Israel’s foes that historic diplomatic backing from America is not reliable, the economy has failed to respond to “stimulus.” Now it’s petering out again under the weight of oil at $100 a barrel, receding housing starts, joblessness stuck at 9 percent, and the Mississippi cresting. Natural disasters already have led to rising commodities futures, and the elected leadership refuses to open ANWR to drill here and drill now, intensifying the Obama economic calamity as he tilts at green windmills.
Obama’s entire Mideast speech, including forgiving Egypt’s billions of loan dollars, was crafted around his intent to squeeze Israel back to suicidal 1967 borders. If Washington only will listen respectfully to the Arab world, from Hamas to Mahmoud Abbas, the message could not be more clear: there will be no negotiated peace with Israel. First, Israel must divide her capital city. Then she must agree to be overrun by three million aliens seeking to supplant her. And she still will have no right to exist within the geographical Orbit of Islam. As we saw on Sunday, “Nakba Day” (The Day of Catastrophe) in the Arab mind is not the day in June 1967 that Israel liberated Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, but instead the day in May 1948 when Israel breathed her way into existence.
All the talk about demilitarizing and assuring (even guaranteeing) that weapons will not infiltrate into such an Arab Judea-Samaria is made ridiculous by the massive rearming of Hezbollah in South Lebanon (under the noses of United Nations forces that were supposed to prevent it) and the rearming of Hamas in Gaza since the Goldstone War. The unification of Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah with Hamas solidifies an outward posture that parallels the unmistakable refusal to abide alongside a Jewish country.
But in the end, it does not matter. Sixty years after Hitler, no Israeli government is going to uproot nearly 600,000 Jews in the land where they themselves live. It is fantasy. If the past half-century has taught anything, it has taught that the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria will outlive all of us, including those now abiding in the White House.
Dov Fischer, adjunct professor of law at Loyola Law School, is a columnist for several online magazines and is rabbi of Young Israel of Orange County. He blogs at rabbidov.com.
The cynical snickering over the failed denouement of Reverend Harold Camping’s May 21st predicted rapture, now postponed to October 21st, may be somewhat justified. Sadly, he joins the ranks of hundreds of other preachers throughout history who thought they knew more than the Messiah they professed to follow.
Ersatz prophets throughout the ages continually have failed to heed the words of the Christ, who said the secret of his return was hidden even from him, secreted in the Father’s heart. But still the irresistible urge to proclaim The End has afflicted cultists and fringe groups from time immemorial.
One need only think of the founder of the Jehovah Witnesses, Charles Taze Russell, who predicted Christ’s invisible return in 1874 and a much more noticeable appearance in 1914. Christ did not appear, but world carnage did in the form of WWI. Russell’s successor, undeterred by the failure of Christ to appear on command, visibly or invisibly, determined the year 1925 was when Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the prophets would return to earth.
But before we break out into maniacal laughter at Reverend Camping’s and others’ notions concerning the Rapture, Second Coming, or Apocalypse, perhaps it might be a good idea to take a look at why Camping’s ill-fated predictions arouse such intense interest and ridicule.
First, there is an interest among those on the left, particularly among left media types, in ratifying their contempt for religion and people of faith by selecting the most absurd examples of Christianity run amok. That way the hard intellectual endeavor of studying faith traditions is neatly avoided while one satisfies one’s penchant for setting up paper tigers which may be shot down with one good cynical laugh. Isolated incidents and fringe doctrines are taken as the sum and substance of the whole of Christianity. Thus, any story of a televangelist’s adultery, a priest’s molestation of a child, an out-to-lunch interpretation of scripture, or a failed prophecy becomes fodder for an anti-Christian feeding frenzy. There go those embittered people with their religion and guns again. Bunch of crazies, perverts, and hypocrites. Why should we permit such deluded and hypocritical folk access to public discourse?
Bwahahahaha.
How easy is it to laugh at religious folk who believe and practice such insane and/or naive absurdities? Apparently, very easy.
But are enlightened secular sophisticates are so much more reasonable and, well, sane when it comes to Apocalypse Now? Are leftist secularists immune from attacks of apocalyptic craziness?
No.
One has only to think of the range of End Time, apocalyptic scenarios cooked up by the extreme environmentalists, Gaia worshipers, and Pachamama devotees, along with other crazies who have left the realm of reality and rushed headlong into prophecies based on their ideas of what is infallible; be it “science” (actually pseudo-science) or a pantheistic “god.” The End by asteroid; The End by violent explosions of the sun; The End by dried up energy sources; The End by global warming; The End by ice age; The End by evaporation of the ozone layer; The End by human predations. Or, even more colorful: The End by mutating viruses; alien invasions, human made robots run amok; or evil, conscienceless human clones rebelling against their creators.
Bwahahahaha.
Thus proving the religious impulse and the interest in how it all will end is not only ineradicable, but also not confined to overtly religious faith based entities such as Judaism and Christianity.
But there is yet more to the story of Mr. Camping and his ilk.
As formerly referred to, paying attention to and trashing Mr. Camping and other earnest believers whose prophetic instincts have proved erroneous is a way for the anti-religious to avoid intellectual and spiritual encounter with the deeper beliefs of a great faith which has its roots in a history some 4,000 years old, and which has played an irreducible role in the shaping and building of Western civilization.
It is a way of avoiding an encounter with some of the greatest minds and achievements of Western civilization. It is a cheap way of bypassing the immense and incalculable contributions of Christian thinkers like Augustine, Aquinas, St John of the Cross, Luther, Calvin, Barth, Niebuhr, Bonhoeffer, C.S. Lewis, and countless other theologians who have grappled with the spiritual and intellectual problems of their and our own age within the context of Christianity.
It is a way of discarding the Christian art, architecture, and music which has informed and elevated the mind, heart and soul of countless millions: Chartres, Notre Dame; Giotto, Cimabue, Van Eyck, Rembrandt, El Greco; Handel, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Dvorak, Stravinsky — just a partial list.
But most critically, the sarcastic and cynical focus on Mr. Camping’s failed prophecies is a way to avoid the historic claims and person of Jesus Christ, whose example and work have transformed millions of followers whose depth of faith and loyalty increases over the years. It is also a way to avoid the profound idea that something is irreducibly wrong with this world and that the wrong needs expunging and the world needs redemption. Mr. Camping, though simplistic and naïve, is at least on to that.
And while Christ himself exhibited humility by refusing to predict the day and hour of his return, he did indeed speak of an Apocalypse, of a time when all wrongs will be addressed, all false prophets proved wrong, and all that is right, all that is good, true, and perfect re-established. In this respect, among others, he stood firmly in line with the visions of the Hebrew prophets, particularly the great visionary, Isaiah.
Christ and his disciples spoke of a time when scoffing and ridicule will fall away, every cynical and mocking tongue is silenced, every enemy of God destroyed, and every knee bowed in acknowledgment that he is Lord.
Sounds a bit harsh to modern ears used to perennially non-judgmental “I’m Ok; you’re OK” banalities, along with easy listening Kumbaya music — even though millions sit through performances of Handel’s Messiah and listen to odd-sounding numbers such as “Thou Shalt Dash them to Pieces” like a potter’s vessel along with hair raising judgmental recitatives such as “He shall laugh them to scorn.”
Of course, the above is to say nothing of countless artistic depictions of the End, Michelangelo’s chilling depiction of the Last Judgment probably providing the best tingle-up-the-leg vision, including a portrait of the artist himself skinned alive. Definitely an uncomfortable view of God and judgment, though such a view of “Dies Irae” has been ensconced in the Roman Catholic mass for centuries — a particular favorite of the author’s being Verdi’s scalp tingling version.
Yes, even many Christians are unaccustomed to the idea of a God who laughs in derision at the follies and foibles of the human race and who will eventually judge the misdeeds of all mankind. But such a God has been depicted in biblical literature, Christian art, and music for millennia.
Cynics may scoff and people may imagine all kinds of vain things, including false prophecies, visions, and dreams. Cynical jokesters may imagine themselves both funnier and more knowledgeable than God himself, but “He that sits in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision,” as David, king of ancient Israel notes in Psalm 2. In other words,
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