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Israel & Hamas: Just War vs. Pure Evil & the United States

As blog readers surely know, on October 7 thousands of Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and butchered and tortured many helpless Israeli citizens.  On the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, they did things like the following:

A young boy and girl, 6 and 8 years old, and their parents were around the breakfast table. The father’s eye was gouged out in front of his kids. The mother’s breast was cut off, the girl’s foot amputated, and the boy’s fingers cut off before they were executed. And then their executioners sat down and had a meal.

In total, around 1,400 Israelis have been murdered by Hamas, and more than 4,500 injured. It was Israel’s 9-11.

In response, Israel invaded Gaza, intending to overthrow Hamas.  Israel told civilians to leave the northern area ahead of time–but Hamas told them not to leave, and was turning people back into the war zone.  (Did Hamas give early warning to Jewish civilians before launching their unprovoked attack? Hmm.)  Hamas deliberately puts people in Gaza in harms way so that they can be killed, and then Israel can be blamed.  Hamas’ main headquarters is underneath Gaza’s main hospital because Hamas knows that Israel respects human life, while they do not.

What are some things we can learn from this war?

1.) It is a just war for Israel.  Anyone who recognizes that God blesses those who bless Israel (Genesis 12:3) should automatically be biased in Israel’s favor in a situation like this one, but even if one very foolishly rejects God’s Word, anyone with half a brain can see which side is right in this war.

2.) Hamas is acting like faithful Muslims should act.  They are obeying the god of Islam, who told them: “slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush” (Quran 9:5).  The Quran is full of open-ended commands to violently kill people, and Muhammad was a bloodthirsty murderer, as one can clearly see if one reads his biography.

3.) Not just Hamas, but Muslims in general have an anti-Jew problem, because of their religion.  Is every Muslim anti-Jewish? No–many Muslims do not care about their religion, just like many Roman Catholics don’t care what the Bible says or the Pope decrees.  But the Muslims that do care about their religion are anti-Israel.  Why is Rashida Tliab advocating and defending genocide of the Jews? Her district is full of Muslim immigrants.  Islam in America–like Islam everywhere that it is true Islam–is violent and bloodthirsty, which is why the most dangerous evangelistic endeavour I ever had, where I was closest to being killed, was not at various Gay Pride parades, but in the American heartland politely and respectfully passing out the evangelistic work The Testimony of the Quran to Muslims. A majority of American Muslims are at least partially in favor of the brutal murders that Hamas committed on October 7, and around 40% of them approve the terrorist leader of Hamas.  Imagine if 40% of any other demographic were in favor of terrorism.  The people in Gaza voted in Hamas.  Now since that vote there have been no other elections, since Islam is against democracy and in favor of dictatorship.  There are no free and fair elections under Sharia law.  But when the Muslims in Gaza had a chance to vote, Hamas won.

4.) Because the left is anti-Bible, and because Joe Biden needs Muslim votes in swing states like Michigan to win reelection, the Democrat party is becoming more and more anti-Jewish. Calling on Israel for a ceasefire is absolutely bonkers.  More Jews were killed in a single day than at any time since the Holocaust, but Biden calling on $100 million in aid to the Muslims in Gaza and the West Bank for “humanitarian” purposes is about what the Babylon Bee described it as, and the money is certain to be diverted to support terrorism.  Would we have been fine with calling for a ceasefire after 9-11 and then giving “humanitarian” aid to the Taliban and Al Qaeda?  Biden should be calling on Israel to utterly obliterate Hamas.  Hamas should immediately release all American hostages and all other hostages.  Anyone who actually cares about the people in Gaza not getting killed should want Hamas overthrown as soon as possible.

5.) Because the mainstream media is dominated by the left, all kinds of false equivalencies are made between Israel’s just war and Hamas’s unjust murders.  Inflated numbers of casualties in Gaza are repeated by major press organizations from figures spoon-fed to them by Hamas itself.  Of course, Islam allows Muslims to lie.  Reporters in Gaza can either repeat what Hamas tells them to report or they can get tortured and killed themselves, or at the very least get kicked out of the territory.  How many Jewish reporters do you think are on the ground in Gaza getting information? Oh yes, the same number as the number of Jews who live in Gaza–zero–while in Israel Muslims are around 20% of the population and have equal rights (yes, the freest place for Muslims in the Middle East is in Israel).  And even though Israel is the freest place in the Middle East for Muslim Arabs, usually only around 33% of Arab Israeli citizens oppose Hamas, and the large majority oppose Israel’s defending itself; immediately after this butchery of Israelis–including Arab Muslim ones–23% of Arab Israelis still do not oppose Hamas, while 33% oppose Israel defending itself even while the blood of their murdered and tortured fellow citizens is barely dry.  Israel is pressured to stop fighting because its terrorist, true Muslim opponents in Hamas want as many of their own civilians killed as possible. (If you want information about Israel that is free from anti-Jewish bias, please check out FLAME: Facts and Logic about the Middle East, and consider their newsletter. They are a Jewish, not a Christian organization.)  The mainstream media are very, very worried about the the three Nazis that are left joining with the 17 KKK members in the country holding a demonstration somewhere that has thousands of counter-protesters, but a blind eye is turned to the vast multitude of American Muslims who are actually in favor of killing the Jews.

6.) The fact that this is a just war for Israel does not mean that Israel is a righteous country. The vast majority of Jews reject and hate their Messiah, the Lord Jesus. Jews from all over the world are allowed to immigrate to Israel, but Jews who believe Jesus is the Messiah are not allowed in.  Tel Aviv is considered one of the most gay friendly cities in the world, despite the clear statements in the Old Testament about the abomination of sodomy. Moses in Deuteronomy 28 describes exactly what Israel has faced for the last 2,000 years since “all the people … said, His blood be on us, and on our children” (Matthew 27:25):

 

And thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of thy life: In the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning! for the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see. (Deuteronomy 28:66-67)

 

Israel is not going to have peace, not only because the nation is surrounded by Muslims who hate Jews like the Quran tells them to do, but because the curses of Deuteronomy are upon them, and will continue on them until they repent and believe on their Messiah, the Lord Jesus.

 

7.) As individual Christians and churches, the best thing we can do is preach the gospel to every creature.  Love and preach the gospel to the Jews and send evangelists to them.  Love and preach the gospel to the Muslims and send evangelists to them. How well equipped are you to evangelize Jews?  How about Muslims?  Do you have tracts for these two specific false religions?  Love your neighbor as yourself.  How well would you want a Christian to be equipped to speak to you if you were lost in one of these false beliefs?

 

8.) From a public policy perspective, the United States should support Israel because God has sworn in the Abrahamic Covenant that He would bless those that bless Israel, something repeated throughout the Old Testament.  God used Babylon to punish His rebellious people centuries ago, and He uses Islam to punish them today, but woe to the Babylonians and to the Muslims who attacked the Jews!  If someone says we give Israel too much foreign aid and we can’t afford it, he is consistent if he is also aware that foreign aid to all countries is less than 1% of the federal budget and is also in favor of the kind of drastic entitlement reform that could actually save us from defaulting on our national debt.  If he doesn’t want to either abolish or drastically reform Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, but is very indignant about foreign aid to Israel (most of which, for weapons, goes to American companies), his position is not very consistent.  Once someone is a citizen here, he has freedom of religion and speech.  He is free to be a fool and put on a white hoodie and burn crosses.  He is free to be a fool and chant “From the river to the sea” and so call for genocide of Jews. But we should let as few of these people immigrate here as possible.  Muslims who actually believe in Islam should not be let into the country, and those non-citizens who believe in Islam’s teachings about jihad should be deported.  Furthermore, we need to recognize that, like Muhammad, modern faithful Muslims respect power, not truth.  When Muhammad was powerful, he killed the non-Muslims; when he was weak, he advocated religious tolerance.  If we want to deter terrorism and want there to be more peace, and less war, then Israel should be allowed to enact a ferocious response on Hamas that will discourage the Muslims who surround Israel from acting upon their religion’s murderous and anti-Jewish teachings.

 

By the way, Russia is also guilty of awful war crimes in Ukraine. (Did you know Ukraine has the second largest number of Baptists of any European country–only less than the UK?)  Deterring Russia means letting the Ukrainians defend themselves.  Ronald Reagan, in God’s good providence, won the Cold War by helping to arm those who fought the Russians when they were invading.  We should balance the budget and pay off our national debt by fixing entitlements, and that can be done while, without putting any Americans on the front lines to fight, we send weapons to an imperfect but pro-Western nation with freedom of religion that the Russians decided to butcher the citizens of in their cruel, unjustified, barbaric, and wicked invasion.

Does the KJV Translate Hebrew and Greek Words Too Many Ways?

In the James White / Thomas Ross Preservation / King James Only (KJV) debate, James White claimed that the marginal notes in the 1611 edition of the King James Bible were the same as the textual notes in modern Bible versions. Is this true? In part 10 of my review of the James White & Thomas Ross debate on the preservation of Scripture I point out the severe flaws in this argument by Dr. James R. White against the King James Version, and the KJVO position.

 

In our debate James White argued in the same way that he did in his book: “[T]he KJV is well known for the large variety of ways in which it will translate the same word … the KJV goes beyond the bounds a number of times” (James R. White, The King James Only Controversy: Can You Trust Modern Translations? pgs. 288–289).  The numbers White cites are inaccurate, and White fails to point out that in the examples he supplies where the Authorized Version (allegedly) translates words in too many different ways in English modern versions such as the ESV, ASV, NRSV, and NET actually have more, not fewer, different translations than does the KJV. James’ argument here (again!) is not serious scholarship, and only sounds impressive if one is either ignorant of Hebrew or does not own a good Bible software program that enables him to compare the KJV with modern versions. The fact that Dr. White wrote The King James Only Controversy in merely a few months comes through all too clearly.  Learn more by watching debate review video #10 at faithsaves.net, or watch the debate review on YouTube or Rumble, or use the embedded link below:

TDR

KJB1611 Marginal Notes = Modern Bible Notes? White Debate 9

In the James White / Thomas Ross Preservation / King James Only debate, James White claimed that the marginal notes in the 1611 edition of the King James Bible were the same as the textual notes in modern Bible versions.  Supposedly the marginal notes in the KJV justified textual notes in modern versions attacking the Deity of Christ (1 Timothy 3:16), the Trinity (1 John 5:7), the resurrection (Mark 16:9-20), justification by faith alone (Romans 5:1), and other crucial Biblical truths.  Thus, James White had stated that he believed “very, very firmly” that the KJV translators would be “completely” on his side in the debate. James White used what he called the “many, many, many, many marginal notes the King James translators themselves provided” as justification for the marginal notes in modern Bible versions like the LSB (Legacy Standard Bible) and as an argument against the King James Only position.  Dr. White made the same argument in his book The King James Only Controversy.

 

Do the marginal notes in the 1611 King James Bible justify notes such as the Legacy Standard Bible’s marginal note in Matthew 27:49, which teaches that Christ did not die by crucifixion, but by a spear thrust before He was crucified?:

 

Some early mss add And another took a spear and pierced His side, and there came out water and blood

The answer is a resounding “No!”  Not one of the 1611 KJV’s marginal notes attack any doctrine of the Christian faith.  Not one teaches the heresy that Christ died by a spear thrust before His crucifixion.  Not one questions the resurrection or the resurrection appearances of the Lord.  Not one attacks the Deity or true humanity of the Savior.  Indeed, the KJV translators were following the following rule:

 

“No marginal notes at all be affixed, but only for the explanation of the Hebrew or Greek words, which cannot, without some circumlocution, so briefly and fitly be expressed in the text.”

 

Around 99.5% of the KJV marginal notes are not even arguably related to textual variation, and not one marginal note in the King James Version teaches anything like the heresy that fills the footnotes of many inferior modern Bible versions.

 

Learn more in 1611 KJV Marginal Notes = Modern Version Textual Footnotes? James White Thomas Ross Debate Review #9 by watching the embedded video below:

or by watching the video on FaithSaves.net, Rumble or YouTube.

 

TDR

Sing John 3:16 in Koine / New Testament Greek: Ιωαννην 3:16!

Would you like to learn how to sing John 3:16 in Greek?  You can sing these words in the very speech in which the Lord Jesus Christ originally spoke this blessed promise to Nicodemus!

 

You can learn to sing the infallible words of John 3:16, the most famous verse of the Bible in the video below from Rumble, or watch it on YouTube, or see it at Faithsaves.net.

 

John 3:16 Song: Koine Greek New Testament Language

Ιωαννην τρεις:εκκαιδεκα ωδή εν γλώσση Ελληνικη

 


View John 3:16 Song in Koine Greek on Rumble

View John 3:16 Song in Koine Greek on YouTube

TDR

The Hand of God on the KJV Translators: James White Debate 8

The King James Version translators did not claim that they wrote under the same kind of supernatural control that the apostles and prophets received to infallibly record Scripture in the original languages.  But did they claim that God’s special providence, His good hand, was with them?  Yes!

 

Continuing the debate review videos on the James White on the King James Version / Textus Receptus vs. the Legacy Standard Bible / Nestle-Aland text, review video #8 looks at the fact that the KJV translators claimed that the “good hand of the Lord” was “upon” them in their translating work, referring to this language in Ezra and Nehemiah for the special providence of God.

 

In other words, the KJV translators referred their translation work neither to merely the general providence of God—they are stronger than that—nor to a series of continual miracles—that is more than they affirm—but to the special providence of God, so that the Word is by “his singular care and Providence kept pure in all Ages” (London Baptist Confession of 1689).

 

Furthermore, Scripture teaches that God’s providence is by no means imperfect; He can preserve a “pure Word … in all ages” through special providence without the active intervention of one or more miracles after the miracle of dictating the original manuscripts, as the book of Esther, for example, makes very clear.

 

Learn more by watching the video below:

You can also watch debate review video #8 in the embedded link above, or see it on Faithsaves.net, YouTube or Rumble.

 

Please subscribe to the KJB1611 YouTube and the KJBIBLE1611 Rumble channel if you would like to know when more reviews are posted.  Thank you.

 

TDR

 

Were the KJV Translators KJV Only? James White KJVO debate 7

Continuing the debate review videos on the James White on the King James Version / Textus Receptus vs. the Legacy Standard Bible / Nestle-Aland text, review video #7 examines whether the KJV translators were KJV Only. (Note that to avoid the historical fallacy discussed in review video #2 obout whether the KJV translators would have been KJV Only today or supported modern versions–as James White claims–I am dealing in review video #7 with actual historical facts, based on actual information, not speculating on what woulda coulda shoulda happened if people who are not alive today were alive in a counterfactual world in my own imagination.) What does the “Translators to the Reader” says about the Authorized Version in comparison to earlier English Bibles?

 

The KJV translators were thankful for the earlier Textus Receptus-based English Bibles, but, building upon their foundation, they view the KJV as “better.” Variations from the Textus Receptus, even the relatively minor ones in the Latin Vulgate, were viewed as inferior to any Textus Receptus based Bible.  How much worse, then, would a modern version that varies far more from the Received Text have been viewed?  Find out in the video below!

You can also watch debate review video #7 in the embedded link above, or see it on Faithsaves.net, YouTube or Rumble.

 

Please subscribe to the KJB1611 YouTube and the KJBIBLE1611 Rumble channel if you would like to know when more reviews are posted.  Thank you.

 

TDR

James White-Thomas Ross Debate Review 6: LXX & Latin Vulgate

It was a blessing to debate James White on the King James Version / Textus Receptus vs. the Legacy Standard Bible / Nestle-Aland textThe debate when well.  I have been continuing to add additional debate review videos.  Dr. White claimed that the KJV translators, had they been alive today, would have been completely against their own translation and in favor of modern versions based on the minority Greek text.  His claim is astonishingly inaccurate, as the new debate review videos demonstrate.  The video below, #6, examines the KJV’s “Translators to the Reader” and what it claims about the LXX and the Latin Vulgate.  What the KJV translators say is exactly what I argued for in the debate with Dr. White, and exactly the opposite of what James White argued.  His claim about the KJV translators is invalid, and painfully so.

You can watch debate review video #6 in the embedded link above, or see it on Faithsaves.net, YouTube or Rumble. Please subscribe to the KJB1611 YouTube and the KJBIBLE1611 Rumble channel if you would like to know when more reviews are posted.  Thank you.

 

TDR

Calvinism, Unconditional Election and Baptismal Regeneration

Did you know that there is a connection between the heresy of the baptismal regeneration of infants and unconditional election and reprobation in Calvinism?  In the chapter “Calvinism is Augstinianism,” by Kenneth Wilson, in the book Calvinism: A Biblical and Theological Critique, ed. David L. Allen & Steve W. Lemke (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2022), Wilson notes:

 

The major influence on Augustine’s AD 412 reversion to his prior deterministic Manichaean interpretations of Scripture was the arrival of Pelagius and Caelestius near his North African home in late AD 411. Augustine previously admitted (AD 405) he did not know why infant baptism was practiced (Quant.80). But the conflict with Caelestius and Pelagius forced him to rethink the church’s infant baptismal tradition and precipitated his reversion to his pagan DUPED [Divine Unilateral Predetermination of Eternal Destinies, that is, unconditional election].26 Caelestius had argued that infants did not receive baptism for salvation from sin but only for inheritance of the kingdom. Augustine’s polemical response to Caelestius in AD 412 was logical: (1) Infants are baptized by church tradition; (2) water baptism is for forgiveness of sin and reception of the Holy Spirit; (3) some dying infants are rushed by their Christian parents to the bishop for baptism but die before baptism occurs, while other infants born of prostitutes are found abandoned on the streets by a church virgin who rushes them to the baptismal font where the bishop baptizes them; (4) these infants have no “will” and no control over whether or not they are baptized to receive the Holy Spirit to become Christians. Therefore, God must unilaterally and unconditionally predetermine which infants are saved by baptism and which are eternally damned without baptism (unconditional election).27 God’s election must be unconditional since infants have no personal sin, no merit, no good works, no functioning free will (incognizant due to the inability to understand at their age), and therefore, no choice.

In his next work that same year, Augustine concluded if this is true for infants, then unbaptized adults also have no choice or free will (Sp. et litt.54–56). The Holy Spirit was received in water baptism, transforming the person into a Christian with a free will. Since humans have no free will before baptism, God must unilaterally choose who will be saved and infuse faith into those persons. Augustine taught even when “ministers prepared for giving baptism to the infants, it still is not given, because God does not choose [those infants for salvation]” (persev.31). Infant baptism became the impetus for Augustine’s novel theology when he reinterpreted that church tradition and reached a logical conclusion. By doing this he abandoned over three hundred years of church teaching on free will. According to the famous scholar Jaroslav Pelikan, Augustine departed from traditional Christian theology by incorporating his prior pagan teachings and thereby developed inconsistencies in his new anthropology and theology of grace, especially his “idiosyncratic theory of predestination.”28[1]

 

So the Calvinist doctrine of unconditional election and reprobation is connected to Augustine’s doctrine of baptismal regeneration of infants and the damnation of all infants who are not regenerated in baptism.  Since the infants cannot choose whether or not they will be baptized and receive forgiveness through baptism, their eternal salvation and damnation is by God’s will alone; they have no free will to receive Christ or reject Him, as in the large majority of modern Calvinists who follow Jonathan Edwards in his work against the freedom of the will.  The infants that are tormented forever because they never were baptized are unconditionally reprobated, and the infants in paradise because they were baptized are the unconditionally elect.  Since this is (allegedly) true for infants, it must be true for everyone else as well—eternal salvation and damnation is by God’s unconditional choice alone—an Augustinian innovation in Christendom which was reproduced by John Calvin and the Reformed tradition.  (Of course, John Calvin also believed in baptismal regeneration.)

 

Let me add that the book Calvinism: A Biblical and Theological Critique, ed. David L. Allen and Steve W. Lemke is valuable for mature Christians and church leaders, and it contains many valuable and Biblically sound criticisms of Calvinism.  However, there are a diversity of viewpoints represented in the book, including not just non-Calvinist Baptists who still believe in eternal security, for example, but full-blown actual Arminians such as Wesleyans who affirm the terrible false teaching that true believers can be eternally lost.  Because some chapters in the book are written by actual Arminians, I would not recommend the book for new Christians who might over-react against Calvinism and adopt Arminian heresies.  Pastors or other mature Christians who are simply not going to become Arminian can gain a good deal of profit from the book.

 

TDR

26 Wilson, 285. See also Chadwick, Early Christian Thought, 110–11.

27 Augustine, Pecc.mer.1.29–30. In contrast, ca. AD 200, Tertullian had rejected infant baptism, stating one should wait until personal faith was possible (De bapt.18).

28 Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 1, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 278–327, quotation at 325.

[1] Kenneth Wilson, “Calvinism Is Augustinianism,” in Calvinism: A Biblical and Theological Critique, ed. David L. Allen and Steve W. Lemke (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2022), 222–223.

 

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Creationism & KJV: James White / Thomas Ross Debate Review 5

Should creationists, advocates of young-earth creationism, use the King James Version? Dr. Henry Morris certainly thought so. When I recently debated James White on the preservation of Scripture, Dr. White claimed that the KJV translators, had they been alive today, would have been “completely” on his side in our debate, standing for modern Bible versions based on the Nestle-Aland Textus Rejectus and opposing the Received Text and their own translation.  His claim is astonishingly inaccurate, as the new debate review videos demonstrate.  The video below, #5, examines the KJV’s “Translators to the Reader,” where evidence is provided that the KJV translators were young earth creationists–something that a very high percentage of modern Bible version translators are not, and something that positively impacts the translation of the King James Bible.

 

You can watch debate review video #5 in the embedded link above, or see it on Faithsaves.net, Rumble, or YouTube. Please subscribe to the KJB1611 YouTube and the KJBIBLE1611 Rumble channel if you would like to know when more reviews are posted.  Thank you.

 

TDR

Ruth 3:15: “he” or “she” went into the city? 1611 & 1769 KJV

Ruth 3:15, in the widely-used 1769 revision of the King James Bible, reads:

“Also he said, Bring the vail that thou hast upon thee, and hold it. And when she held it, he measured six measures of barley, and laid it on her: and she went into the city.”

However, the 1611 edition of the KJV reads:

“And he said, Bring the vaile that thou hast vpon thee, and holde it.  And when she helde it, he measured sixe measures of barley, and laide it on her: and he went into the citie.”

 

Scrivener’s 1873 edition of the KJV likewise reads:  “Also he said, Bring the vail that thou hast upon thee, and hold it. And when she held it, he measured six measures of barley, and laid it on her: and he went into the city” (The Cambridge Paragraph Bible: Of the Authorized English Version [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1873], Ru 3:15.)

 

The New King James Version-which is not just a new King James Version, and which here does not follow the 1611 KJV’s reading-has “she”:

 

 Also he said, “Bring the shawl that is on you and hold it.” And when she held it, he measured six ephahs of barley, and laid it on her. Then she went into the city. (NKJV)

 

Other modern Bible versions are likewise divided between “he” and “she.” For example, the NIV and NRSV read “he,” while the ESV, LSB, and NASB read “she.”

 

Which is correct? How do we know? We have discussed various features of the Hebrew Massoretic text on this blog before, such as whether the Hebrew of the name “Jehovah” hints at the incarnation of the Son of God.  What do Hebrew manuscripts and Hebrew printed texts read?  What about the LXX, the various editions of the Latin Vulgate, other ancient sources, and English Bibles before the KJV?  The picture below, from the Hebrew Textus Receptus, the Masoretic text edited by the Hebrew Christian Jacob ben Chayyim, gives the answer (Matthew 5:18):

 

Ruth 3.15 Hebrew Massoretic text Boaz he went into the city not Ruth she

 

While both readings in Ruth 3:15 are doubtless factually accurate, since both Boaz and Ruth actually entered the city, the inspired reading, the one dictated by the Holy Spirit to the original penman of Scripture, is “he,” not “she.” Why? Please read my analysis of the passage in this link to find out, and feel free to comment upon it here (but please read it first before commenting). Thank you.

TDR

AUTHORS OF THE BLOG

  • Kent Brandenburg
  • Thomas Ross

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