Previously: How Mormons Should Think About The War In IsraelIn my last post I discussed how hundreds of thousands of religious Jews condemn the current State of Israel as a blasphemy against God. Zionism (the philosophy that birthed the political State of Israel), is, they insist, diametrically opposed to the religion of Judaism.
And they are right. The Jewish Torah is the Hebrew language equivalent to the Pentateuch in our bible, and the Tanakh is pretty much identical to the rest of our Old Testament. Those scriptures are clear that God does not permit anything resembling the "Jewish Homeland" that has been forced onto Palestine since 1947.
So how come so many Christians support a system of government that is so clearly opposed to scripture? And worse, why are Christian pastors able to completely ignore all the teachings of Christ and call for the wholesale slaughter of over half a million innocent men, women, and children?
You might be interested in taking 41 seconds to click below and watch Pastor Greg Locke, a maniac who claims to follow the teachings of Christ, insist that "Israel should make the Gaza strip a parking lot by this time next week."
Sadly, Pastor Locke is not alone with those sentiments. There are many otherwise good Christian men and women who suddenly demand the blood of innocents simply because our politicians and media have so conditioned them.
This raises the question: how did Christianity come to this? The answer lies in the fraudulent "bible" compiled by one Cyrus Ingerson Scofield. For many years Scofield was a nobody, a small time crook and forger who was repeatedly in and out of jail, a man who abandoned his wife and children to take up with a mistress, and who even conned his own mother-in-law out of her life savings while he was in jail by forging documents he mailed to her that convinced her he was onto a sure-fire investment that actually never existed. At some point this petty grifter was, oddly enough, recruited to join the exclusive Lotos Club of New York, where he was introduced to Zionists who needed a way to get Christians to support their fraudulent scheme of a "Jewish Homeland" and next thing you know Cyrus Scofield awarded himself a fake Doctor of Divinity degree and became the ministerial face of the Scofield Reference Bible. At this point, as Scofield biographer David Lutzweiler concludes, Cyrus Scofield exchanged a life of financial swindling for the infinitely more lucrative life of theological swindling.
The Scofield Bible was first published in 1909 and would have been little more than another edition of the King James translation of the bible, save for one difference. What set the Scofield Bible apart was that it was bolstered by loads of commentary and footnotes, so if a reader wanted a clearer understanding of a passage of scripture, they had only to look at what Scofield and his editors had to say about it in the margins.
The problem was that Scofield and his editors weren't so much providing a clearer understanding of a passage as they were "correcting" the original bible text so that it advanced a theology that the original had never contained. The Scofield Bible is where you'll find the absurd teaching of "the Rapture," that peculiar notion that just before everything gets too heavy, all the believers will be taken up to heaven so they won't have to endure the tribulations of this world.
Never mind that in over 1800 years of scriptural exegesis, nothing like that had ever been taught before. Not by the early apostles, not by the any of the first and second century church fathers, not by any of the noted ministers and religious scholars of the Great Religious Awakening in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, and not by Joseph Smith or even Alexander Campbell in the 19th century. Not by anyone. Cyrus Scofield alone came up with it, and the Christian world has not been well served by having that false hope of a miraculous rescue dangled in front of them. When have God's people ever been spared the horrors of this world? Never.
Long story short, this bible of Scofield's became the bible of every believing baptist, fundamentalist, pentecostal, and evangelical congregation in America. It was promoted as scripture through the Moody Bible Institute and taught at the Dallas Theological Seminary, which meant that every pastor with a certificate of divinity has been passing Scofield's peculiar religious philosophy down to their congregations for the past hundred years. Pat Robertson, Oral roberts, John Hagee, John MacArthur -all the major TV and radio evangelists have been selling the Scofield interpretation of scripture to their viewers and listeners. It is this influence that has resulted in the common but false belief among so many Christians that "the Jews are God's chosen people."
It was years ago that I first came across a book by Joseph Canfield titled The Incredible Scofield and His Book, which not only uncovered the petty criminal background of Cyrus Scofield, but also exposed the faulty teachings contained in his study bible. (I wish I had hung onto that 1988 edition because today it's selling for $165.00!)
It was also about that time that I saw a notice where some guy was offering a $10,000 reward to anyone who could show where the bible states that the Jews are God's chosen people. That got my attention because here I was in my thirties and all my life I had believed that to be true. No matter that I had access to latter-day scripture as well as Joseph Smith's inspired translation of the bible, I had just always assumed that somewhere in the scriptures was the plain teaching that declared the Jews to be God's chosen people.
Well, I discovered that teaching was to be found nowhere in the scriptures. Neither God nor any of His prophets ever claimed that the Jews were God's chosen people. God had made a solid covenant with Israel, but it's quite a stretch to assume that "Israel" and "Jew" meant the same thing.
On that note, if you want to upset your average Evangelical Christian today, you might remind him that Moses was not a Jew. Neither was his brother Aaron. Or Joshua. Many of the Old Testament prophets weren't Jewish either. Here's a short list of bible heroes most people think come from the tribe of Judah, yet do not:
Moses-not a Jew
Aaron-not a Jew
Joshua-not a Jew
Elijah-not a Jew
Elisha-not a Jew
Deborah-not a Jew
Gideon-not a Jew
Samson-not a Jew
Obviously Abraham wasn't Jewish either, but try telling that to your typical Scofield-toting Baptist.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. If we're going to examine who the people were that God covenanted with in the Old Testament, we're going to have to take a trip through The Wayback Machine and get a bit of a refresher. I'll try to make it short:
Israel, Israel, God Is Calling
Before any Jews ever walked the land, there was Israel. And before there was an Israel, there were Hebrews, so our narrative will start there. No, let's start earlier than that; let's go all the way back to Noah.
One of Noah's sons, as you'll remember, was named Shem. Shem is the father of the family line known as Shemites, and just nine generations after Shem, Genesis introduces us to one of Shem's descendants, a man named Terah. Terah and his three sons traveled from their home on the other side of the Euphrates and settled in the land of Ur. Those already living in Ur referred to Terah and his family as "Ivir" which is anglicized as either "Eber," or "ibaru," meaning "crossed over." The name of that clan eventually came down to us as "Hebrews," or "those who crossed over." In this case the reference was to a family that had crossed over from beyond the Euphrates river. One of Terah's sons was named Abram. Abram the Hebrew.
I said I was going to make this short, but I can't resist retelling this story:
Terah was a wicked man; not only an idolator, but a manufacturer of idols. His son Abram was smart enough to realize that these idols made of stone could not possibly grant anyone's wishes, and he did not care to follow in the family business, which was the making and selling of idols. Rabbi Hiyya Bar Abba, a Rabbi from the third century, relates this account from the Genesis Rabbah:
"Terah left Abram to mind the store while he departed. A woman came with a plateful of flour and asked Abram to offer it to the idols. Abram then took a stick, broke the idols, and put the stick in the largest idol’s hand. When Terah returned, he demanded that Abram explain what he'd done. Abram told his father that the idols fought among themselves and the largest broke the others with the stick."
After this act of blasphemy against the gods of Ur, Abram (later renamed Abraham by God) had to skedaddle, and he eventually ended up in Canaan where God promised him that his descendants would be more numerous than the stars in the sky. Skip ahead several years, and Abraham's wife, Sarah gives birth to Isaac. Isaac has a son named Jacob, and this is where things start to take off.
God changed Jacob's name to Israel, and over time Jacob/Israel has twelve sons, whom he named, (in order of birth) Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulon, Joseph, and Benjamin. Israel also had a daughter; Her name was Dinah. But she was a girl so she doesn't count.
So, to continue. Many years later (some accounts say 215 years, others say 430), Jacob/Israel and his original twelve sons were long dead, Israel's numerous descendants (meaning the descendants of Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulon, Joseph, and Benjamin) found themselves no longer guests of the Egyptians, but their slaves. It was a long and involved process for the Israelites to gain their freedom, but eventually God freed them so the Israelites were able to leave. This is where the story of Moses comes in, and all twelve tribes left Egypt behind and moved with all their stuff to settle in the promised land, which was the land that had originally been given to Jacob/Israel centuries before. So now the Israelites were back home once again.
(By the way, it's worth noting that although Jacob's descendants referred to themselves "Israelites" ("ite" meaning "son of," as in son of Israel), that is not what the Egyptians called them. In those days other nations referred to the descendants of Abraham as Hebrews. That's one of the things you'll notice Cecil B. DeMille got right when he made the film The Ten Commandments. Moses and his people were always referred to as Hebrews, although if you're ever discussing that movie with someone it's a sure bet that other person will say it's a movie about how God freed the Jews.)
That map you see in the upper left hand corner of this page approximates where the various tribes of Israel settled. Joshua assigned each family their own huge tracts of land to live on, and all twelve families combined became known as Israel. So to recap (and this is important): previously Jacob was called Israel, but subsequently Jacob's sons and their families were known collectively as "the House of Israel" or simply just "Israel." From that time on, whenever God referred to Israel, he was referring to all 12 tribes of Israel combined, not just any one of those tribes alone.
You'll notice there's no tribe of Joseph on that map. That's because before he died, Jacob formally adopted Joseph's sons Ephraim and Manasseh unto himself, afterwhich the descendants of Joseph were given all the blessings their father had obtained and the tribe of Joseph was henceforth referred to as either Ephraim or Manasseh rather than being known singularly as the Tribe of Joseph. Levi isn't on that map either, for the simple reason that Levi was not given a land inheritance because the Levites were to devote themselves to sacerdotal duties and were to be supported by the other eleven tribes.
The Big BreakupNow that all the Israelites were safely ensconced in the land of Israel, we settle into the rest of the Old Testament, with all the bible stories you're familiar with, David and Goliath, Samson and Delilah, and so on. All this took place mostly during the reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon, as all twelve tribes existed as one united Kingdom known as the Kingdom of Israel.
But oh-oh, what's this? Upon the death of King Solomon there was a nasty dispute over who should now be king over Israel. When Solomon was alive God had repeatedly told him he was going to lose the kingdom of Israel, as Solomon repeatedly and blatantly "did evil in the sight of the Lord, and went not fully after the Lord."
That was an understatement. God had twice warned Solomon to his face that he was headed for disaster, yet Solomon stubbornly continued to offer sacrifices to the pagan gods, including Moloch, the abomination of the children of Ammon. That was the last straw:
Wherefore the Lord said unto Solomon, Forasmuch as this is done of thee, and thou hast not kept my covenant and my statutes, which I have commanded thee, I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, and will give it to thy servant. (1Kings 11:11)
What a burn. Solomon's kingdom wouldn't be passed on to one of his many sons; it would be given to one of Solomons servants.
So here's what happened: at one point Solomon had hired this new guy, Jeroboam, to be his servant and one day Jeroboam was out walking alone wearing an expensive new garment when he crossed paths with a prophet named Ahijah. The two of them were alone in a field and before Jeroboam knew what was happening, Ahijah grabbed Jeroboam's garment off his back and quickly ripped it into twelve pieces.
And he said to Jeroboam, Take thee ten pieces: for thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel, Behold, I will rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to thee. (1st Kings 11:31)
But Ahijah also told the startled Jeroboam he wouldn't be getting all of Israel; God would keep the tribe of Judah in Solomon's family for David's sake. And that's how it went. Solomon died and all ten tribes of the North chose Jeroboam as their king while Solomon's son, Rehoboam was left to rule over only the tribe of Judah and some of Benjamin way down at the Southern end of the country.
Here's what that map of Israel and Judah looked like after the divorce:
(Note: Biblical scholars are undecided as to where Simeon was actually located on the map of Israel, or if it even existed with its own territory at all by the time of the division. Jacob's blessing to Simeon indicates he was pretty upset with Simeon and his brother Levi: "they have killed men in their anger and hamstrung oxen as they pleased. Cursed be their anger, so fierce, and their fury, so cruel! I will scatter them in Jacob and disperse them in Israel” (Genesis 49:5–7). So it's most likely the Simeonites, already by this time the smallest and weakest tribe of the 12, were scattered to live whereever they could find a place within the boundaries of the other tribes. It's worth noting that the tribe of Simeon is the only tribe Moses did not give a blessing to before he died. Also be aware that the actual placement of all the tribes on these maps is only an approximation; Simeon's whereabouts have never quite been known, so when it comes to drawing maps, that tribe is often placed near or inside of Judah's boundaries as an educated guess.)
This was the first time the Kingdom of Israel had a falling out, and it was a nasty one. From then on it was the tribe of Judah (the Jews) versus the rest of Israel. They fought each other all the time, which didn't do much to endear either kingdom to God. Meantime, the Lord called prophets in both the North and the South to call His people to repentance, but to no avail. Both sides had turned from their God. The prophets warned both kingdoms that God would use their enemies to destroy them unless they turned back to Him, and eventually that's exactly what happened. But not immediately, because God had made covenants with all twelve tribes of Israel collectively, and he always gives his children plenty of time to repent.
Two things to note here: from this time forth, whenever the Lord referred to either the kingdom of Israel (which housed the ten tribes) or the Kingdom of Judah (which housed Judah and some Benjamites), he referred to them by their separate names. No longer were both kingdoms collectively known as "Israel." Only the ten Northern tribes were called "Israel." The Southern tribe was called "Judah." This is why it's incorrect to refer to the modern descendants of Judah as "Israel." They were once a part of Israel, but haven't been associated with Israel for thousands of years. The Lord certainly never referred to descendants of Judah as "Israel" in any of His dealings with them.
Second, God did not favor one kingdom over the other; he was effectively turning his back on both apostate kingdoms because of their wickedness: “For the children of Israel and the children of Judah have only done evil before me from their youth." (Jeremiah 32:30)
And the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria, and the spirit of Tilgathpilneser king of Assyria, and he carried them away, even the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh, and brought them unto Halah, and Habor, and Hara, and to the river Gozan, unto this day.
And just like that, Tilgath-pilneser, king of Assyria, carted off 3/10ths of the kingdom of Israel. Ten years after that, Assyria had a new king, this one named Shalmanesar V, and he came back to the land of Israel and hauled off a few more of the Israelite tribes, and after him, the Assyrian kings Sargon and Sennacherib plucked away those Israelites that still remained in the area. It took twenty years of seiges and battles, but eventually most of Israel had been taken captive and carted off. The Assyrians didn't get the kingdom of Judah yet; maybe because Judah was too far to the south, or maybe God just wanted to give the Jews more time to get their act together, but eventually Judah fell as well, only it fell to a different enemy.
Here's what you get to know about the Assyrians: These were very clever kings. The vast land of Assyria was a mass of conquered and occupied countries, and the Assyrian king kept his captives from rebelling by first hauling them away captive and then dropping them some place very remote from their original homeland. They then further split their captives up so they were no longer living anywhere near each other, thus separating them from their fellow countrymen.This is what the Assyrians did with the Israelites, displacing them way up North in several different and remote locations beyond the Euphrates river. But then to make any chance of revolution even more difficult, they shifted captives from far off lands and moved them into the homes of other people they had taken captive. So, if say, any of the Israelites were to escape and make it back home, they would find an entirely different people with a very different language and culture living in their former houses and working their farms and vineyards. Even if an Israelite did manage to escape and make it all the way back home, "home" would now be a very different -and very foreign- country occupied by strangers.
This process of relocating prisoners resulted in the Israelites being shipped off to live in various foreign lands among foreign peoples with whom they had nothing in common, not even the language. Other conquered peoples were transplanted into lands from where the Israelites had been taken, so now Judah's neighbors were no longer fellow Israelites, but complete strangers whose ways and culture the Jews found distasteful. The inhabitants were strangers in their strange new lands. As for the transplanted Israelites, the Assyrians made it difficult for them to maintain their former religious customs over the generations, and over time most of these captives all but forgot who their forefathers had been.
Meanwhile, back in Judea the tribes of Judah and Benjamin (and a few lucky Levites) remained pretty much as before. That was a close call, right? The Assyrians almost got them, too, but lucky for the Jews, they dodged that bullet.
Well it was a reprieve, and not a short one, either. God really didn't want to see Judah punished the way the rest of Israel had been, so he sent several prophets, among them Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, Ezekial, Joel, Jeremiah, and our own Lehi to warn the Jews that they too would be destroyed if they didn't repent. Then about 130 years after the fall of Israel, God had finally had enough:
"Behold, I will give this city into the hand of the Chaldeans, and into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and he shall take it: And the Chaldeans, that fight against this city, shall come and set fire on this city, and burn it with the houses, upon whose roofs they [the Jews] have offered incense unto Baal, and poured out drink offerings unto other gods, to provoke me to anger. For this city hath been to me as a provocation of mine anger and of my fury from the day that they built it even unto this day; that I should remove it from before my face, because of all the evil of the children of Israel and of the children of Judah, which they have done to provoke me to anger, they, their kings, their princes, their priests, and their prophets, and the men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem."
Wanna guess what King Zedekiah's reaction was when he heard the prophet Jeremiah deliver him that message? He locked Jeremiah up in prison, demanding to know "where do you get off prophecying that the Lord said he'll give this city into the hand of the king of Babylon and he will take it?" (Jeremiah 32:3)
Wanna also guess what happened next? The Lord gave the city into the hand of the King of Babylon who set the city on fire and burned all the houses to the ground and completely leveled the temple. In a word, the Jews got hit with a lot more destruction than the Israelites ever did.
And guess what happened to Zedekiah? He was captured by the king of Babylon, his eyes were put out, he was loaded down with chains and carried off to Babylon where he remained in prison until he died. I think they call that Karma.
Although the Jews suffered greatly and faced powerful cultural pressures in a foreign land, they maintained their national spirit and religious identity. Elders supervised the Jewish communities, and Ezekiel was one of several prophets who kept alive the hope of one day returning home. This was possibly also the period when synagogues were first established, for the Jews observed the Sabbath and religious holidays, practiced circumcision, and substituted prayers for former ritual sacrifices in the Temple.So unlike the scattered Israelites, the Jews managed to retain their culture and their religious traditions. While Israel was scattered all over creation, the Jews remained a united people despite having been taken captive.
The good news is that some 66 years later, the Persians conquered Babylon, and Babylon's new ruler, Cyrus the Great, issued an edict allowing all the Jews to return home. Those who had not died off, along with the many who had been born during those years in Babylon, did just that, successfuly resettling in the old city of Jerusalem, and even rebuilding the temple.
And that's where we find the land of Palestine at the time of Christ: all that was left of the once mighty nation of Israel were the descendants of that one lone tribe of Judah. As for the other tribes of Israel, the ones taken captive by the Assyrians, those people never did return home. Those descendants of Israel have come to be known as the ten lost tribes. Those tribes didn't just evaporate; their descendants still exist to this day. The sons and daughters of Israel were simply scattered to dwell among the other nations of the earth.
Meanwhile, the Jews who returned to Judea still had a lot to learn about being tolerant. You remember Samaria? Samaria was a large part of the geographical area that had been occupied centuries earlier by the Northern tribes. Well, not all of the Israelites had been captured and carried off by the Assyrians; a number of stragglers had been overlooked and left behind, and when some of the other Assyrian captives from the hinterlands were moved into this area North of Judea, over time those captive foreigners intermarried with those remaining Israelites. Because the remaining Israelites retained their culture, they still practiced many of the old rituals just as the Jews had continued to do while in captivity in Babylon, and those Israelites even had their own temple in the North. Sadly, the Jews returning from their Babylonian captivity considered these "Samaritans" to be subhuman half-breeds that were below their notice. Jesus had to teach them that these neighbors to the North really were their brethren.
Anyway, after Jesus' death and resurrection, just as Jesus had prophesied, the area that had been home to the Jews for centuries was completely destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. The ancient historian Josephus claimed that 1.1 million people were killed during the siege of Jerusalem, 97,000 were captured and enslaved, and many others fled to areas around the Mediterranean. This resulted in what is called the diaspora, or scattering of the Jews into most of the known world. And that brings us back around to our discussion of the misleading theology of the Scofield Reference Bible.
This Isn't IsraelPerhaps Cyrus Scofield's greatest sin was in how his study bible deliberately misleads the reader into thinking that every time Israel is mentioned in the bible, what is meant is "Jews." Keep in mind that for millions of unsuspecting people who have answered an alter call and been "saved," the first bible put into their hands is a Scofield bible. All they know about their newfound religion is what they take from a very flawed source, not to mention the distorted doctrine they learn from the preachers who teach from that source.
As flawed as the original 1909 edition was, it contains nothing as egregiously incorrect as the more recent editions. Oxford University Press has always held the rights to the Scofield Reference Bible; Scofield himself was only the front man. And in modern times Oxford University Press has made an alarming number of "Improvements" to the best-selling bible of all time. As C.E. Carlson writes:
Oxford edited the former 1945 Edition of Scofield Reference Bible in 1967, at the time of the Six Day War when Israel occupied Palestine. The new footnotes to the King James Bible presumptuously granted the rights to the Palestinians’ land to the State of Israel and specifically denied the Arab Palestinians any such rights at all. One of the most brazen and outrageous of these NEWLY INSERTED footnotes states:
“FOR A NATION TO COMMIT THE SIN OF ANTI-SEMITISM BRINGS INEVITABLE JUDGMENT.” (page 19-20, footnote (3) to Genesis 12:3.) (our emphasis added)
This statement sounds like something from Ariel Sharon, or the Chief Rabbi in Tel Aviv, or Theodore Herzl, the founder of Modern Zionism. But these exact words are found between the covers of the 1967 Edition of the Oxford Bible that is followed by millions of American churchgoers and students and is used by their leaders as a source for their preaching and teaching.
There is no word for “anti-Semitism” in the New Testament, nor is it found among the Ten Commandments. “Sin,” this writer was taught, is a personal concept. It is something done by individuals in conflict with God’s words, not by “nations.” Even Sodom did not sin — its people did. The word “judgment” in the Bible always refers to God’s action. In the Christian New Testament, Jesus promises both judgment and salvation for believing individuals, not for “nations.”
There was also no “State of Israel” when Scofield wrote his original notes in his concocted Scofield Reference Bible in 1908. All references to Israel as a state were added AFTER 1947, when Israel was granted statehood by edict of the United Nations. The Oxford University Press simply rewrote its version of the Christian Bible in 1967 to make antipathy toward the “State of Israel” a “sin.” Israel is made a god to be worshiped, not merely a “state.” David Ben-Gurion could not have written it better. Perhaps he did write it!
The Oxford 1967 Edition continues on page 19:
“(2) GOD MADE AN UNCONDITIONAL PROMISE OF BLESSINGS THROUGH ABRAM’S SEED (a) TO THE NATION OF ISRAEL TO INHERIT A SPECIFIC TERRITORY FOREVER”
“(3) THERE IS A PROMISE OF BLESSING UPON THOSE INDIVIDUALS AND NATIONS WHO BLESS ABRAM’S DESCENDANTS, AND A CURSE LAID UPON THOSE WHO PERSECUTE THE JEWS.” (Page 19, 1967 Edition Genesis 12:1-3)
This bequeath is joined to an Oxford prophesy that never occurs in the Bible itself:
“IT HAS INVARIABLY FARED ILL WITH THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE PERSECUTED THE JEW, WELL WITH THOSE WHO HAVE PROTECTED HIM.” and “THE FUTURE WILL STILL MORE REMARKABLY PROVE THIS PRINCIPLE”(footnote (3) bottom of page19-20Genesis 12:3)
None of these notes appeared in the original Scofield Reference Bible or in the 1917 or 1945 editions. The state of Israel DID NOT EXIST in 1945, and according to the best dictionaries of the time, the word “Israel” only referred to a particular man and an ancient tribe, which is consistent with the Bible text. See “Israel,” Webster’s New International Dictionary 2nd (1950) Edition.
All of this language, including the prophecy about the future being really bad for those who “persecute the Jews,” reflects and furthers the goals of the Anti-Defamation League, which has a stated goal of creating an environment where opposing the State of Israel is considered “anti-Semitism,” and “anti-Semitism” is a “hate crime” punishable by law. This dream has become a reality in the Christian Zionist churches of America. Only someone with these goals could have written this footnote.
The State of Israel’s legal claims to Arab lands are based on the United Nations Partitioning Agreement of 1947, which gave the Jews only a fraction of the land they have since occupied by force. But when this author went to Israel and asked various Israelis where they got the right to occupy Palestine, each invariably said words to the effect that “God gave it to us.” This interpretation of Hebrew scripture stems from the book of Genesis and is called the “Abrahamic Covenant”. It is repeated several times and begins with God’s promise to a man called Abraham who was eventually to become the grandfather of a man called “Israel”:
“[2] AND I WILL MAKE OF THEE A GREAT NATION, AND I WILL BLESS THEE, AND MAKE THY NAME GREAT; AND THOU SHALL BE A BLESSING:”
“[3] AND I WILL BLESS THEM THAT BLESS THEE, AND CURSE HIM THAT CURSETH THEE: AND IN THEE SHALL ALL FAMILIES OF THE EARTH BE BLESSED.” Genesis 12:3, King James Edition.
It is upon this promise to a single person that modern Israeli Zionists base their claims to what amounts to the entire Mid-East. Its logic is roughly the equivalent of someone claiming to be the heir to the John Paul Getty estate because the great man had once sent a letter to someone’s cousin seven times removed containing the salutation “wishing you my very best.” (The Scofield Bible -Its Powerful Effect on Modern Christianity)
Well, the good news is that there's a noticable shift in Christian churches today. Younger people are less inclined than their elders to have a knee-jerk reaction to support the state of Israel without question:
Pastor Brian Zahnd of the Word of Life Church in St Louis, Missouri, is among a new breed of mega-church ministers who are rejecting hardline Christian Zionism in favour of a more balanced view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Christian Zionism “is flawed theologically” and fails to heed the teachings of Jesus and Hebrew traditions. “One who takes the Bible seriously cannot use the Bible as a pretext for injustice towards other people,” Zahnd told Al Jazeera
What “pulls people away from the reflexive dualism that ‘Israelis are the good guys and Palestinians are the bad guys’ … is hearing stories from Palestinian people” about life under the Israeli occupation, Zahnd said.
Well, I could go on and on with this topic, but I started out indending to discuss what we know about the whereabouts of the Lost Tribes. Looks like I'll have to put that off to next time. Meanwhile, given the times we live in, I think it's important for us all to not automatically assume everything we hear about the Middle East is the gospel truth. The fog of war is a birthing ground for incredible amounts of lies and propaganda.
That said, Connie just came across the following video which I think is worth everyone's consideration. I'd like to see how Greg Locke, the pastor featured in the video I opened with at the beginning of this post, would react if he were to see this information. This is a video you won't find anywhere on the highly censored Youtube channels, I can tell you that.
(Note: I strongly recommend you don't have this running with children in the room, for reasons that will eventually be obvious):
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