Home » Posts tagged 'Abraham'
Tag Archives: Abraham
The New Rising Hatred Against Israel in the United States
Jews are a relatively small group of people compared to the whole world. Israel is a tiny, little nation. They are a couple of gnats landing on a large person. Proportionally the Jews and Israel receive a very big, gigantic reaction from the rest of the world.
Admittedly, I notice the Jews every day even though almost all of my days now I speak to none, not a single Jew. I don’t have to go out of my way to ignore Jews. None live where I am.
On the other hand, during my time in California, on average Jews were more hostile to me than any other people. When I came to a door and saw a mezuzah shema (mezuzah means “doorposts”) on the doorpost, that meant a tough, very difficult situation was coming about 100 percent of the time. I want to have a good conversation with a Jewish person and it is very disappointing that most Jews treat someone like myself, who loves them, worse than anybody.
Even with the very poor treatment, I support Jews and Israel. My wife and I go out of our way to befriend Jewish people. I even understand their hostility. It isn’t merited, but it is understandable.
Why Israel and the Jews?
Maybe you have a hard time comprehending why so many people, especially young ones, right now are opposing Israel and the Jews. These are harsh and even dangerous times. It is widespread and many times violent. Maybe even stranger, Jews themselves are part of the opposition. Quite often the stories or the narratives contradict. The two or more sides or factions tell clashing stories.
My main point of writing this post is to answer why so much hatred for the Jews and for Israel, What could this be? What causes this? Here it is and not necessarily in this order: The most prevalent reasons, I think, I will present at and toward the end, not the beginning.
Contrasting Theologies
Supercessionism
One, differing and contradictory theological positions cause the hatred. Many Jews don’t participate in the theology that brings the incendiary treatment of them. They don’t believe anything, but it doesn’t make any difference. This as a section could be a very long explanation and discussion, almost an entire book.
I don’t think theology figures the degree of hatred that explains the present reaction to Israel and the Jews. Those who see Israel replaced by the church, called supercessionists, don’t hate Israel because of that usually. They aren’t still blaming the Jews for crucifying Jesus. Some Jews may think this engenders hot passion, but most people, even if they’re supercessionists, don’t care about this. They aren’t going to do what we see happening, just because of this theology. These people haven’t even heard of supercessionism.
Supercessionism could describe a theological position that forms a premise for violent activity against the Jews, but it doesn’t provide the main impetus for hostile activity against them. It can provide a kind of positional justification, but not the reason. I remember getting slapped in the face by a Sophomore, when I was a Freshman in high school, while on a field trip, looking at leaves for Biology class. When I asked him why, he said, “Because I wanted to.” Several reasons contributed to the slap I took from him.
Allegorization
The supercessionist allegorizes scripture. He can twist scripture by not taking it literally. Dozens or hundreds of positions arise from spiritualizing what God’s Words say.
A moderated form of supercessionism exists that supports Israel and the Jews. Those who take the attenuated position will support Israel, despite their Roman Catholic or Protestant ecclesiology. If someone is going to allegorize scripture, then he can take the direction of supporting Israel, despite thinking that God replaced Israel with the church.
Envy
Two, many unbelievers are flat-out envious of the Jews. They see Jews and Israel as a privileged caste. They’re jealous. On average they’re rich and successful by the world’s standard. Jealousy likes people losing what they have. Few to none are jealous of the Palestinians.
Satan’s Hate
Three, Satan hates Israel. This hatred manifests itself in Genesis 3 with the serpent bruising the seed of the woman. Sure, the seed is Jesus, but one cannot separate Jesus from the descendants of the woman and of Abraham. Satan gladly attempts sticking his thumb in God’s eye with the crushing of Israel and the Jews.
End Times
Four, we’re getting closer to the end. Let’s say that the future time when enemy nations surround Israel is December. The rising hatred of nations against the Jews is August. You’ve got to get to August to get to December. I’m not saying actual August and December, but a metaphor, like Thanksgiving coming before Christmas.
God’s Judgment
Five, God will bring more judgment on Israel. This goes back to Daniel 11-12. Israel didn’t want to go back to the land to rebuild the temple and the walls. They felt comfortable staying in captivity Yes, those people cried for the blame for Jesus’ death. The rest of history would give regular chastisement to Israel and the Jews. It would never be easy.
God is working His plan.with Israel to get the nation to the place where the enemies surround them. Now supportive nations like the United States hold back natural and supernatural world rejection of the Jews and Israel. More of that protection disappears, emboldening the opposition.
Woke Philosophy
Six, a woke philosophy dominates the education system. It’s a kind of zero sum game. Israel grabs and gets, and because it does, these other nations starve and diminish. It’s got a racial component to the darker skinned Palestinians. And there is a class warfare piece to it. Israel is upper class, getting favored status.
The idea too is that an international money cabal, led by the Jews, money grubbing and hungry, leaves other people without the privilege. The university types see themselves as with some revelatory enlightenment. They see through the deceit into the Jews. Jewish people join these in this, feeling ashamed to be a Jew. This is the main narrative being pushed to result in the widespread Jew and Israel hating.
A religious component enters from the Palestinian or Hamas, that accompanies the class envy. What they think is a true religion, Islam, Judaism discredits it. Their anger becomes its own self-fulfilling prophecy. And yet it hasn’t worked. Powerful nations try to annihilate the Jews and yet they go down in flames.
God Still Has a Plan for Israel
The Abraham and Davidic Covenants are still intact. They are operational. God still has a plan for Israel. Those who attack Israel do so against a warning from God. These nations haven’t been blessed and won’t, because they won’t accept these promises God made. They should favor God with favor for Israel, even if they don’t like what Israel believes and does.
Israel is not a threat to the world. Overall Israel provides great blessing to the world. I’m not saying Israel is saved. They will be. God will save Israel. In the meantime, we should hope Israel thrives.
My Take on the Complicated World Scene That Includes Ukraine, Russia, and Israel (part two)
Israel-Palestinian Conflict
From a biblical viewpoint, the Israel-Palestinian conflict started when Abraham sinned with Hagar, who bore Ishmael. Ishmael fathers the Arab people and Isaac the Jewish. Complicating this further, 93% of Arabs are Muslim of some kind. Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook in “Kill a Jew – Go to Heaven: The Perception of the Jew in Palestinian Society,” published in Jewish Political Studies Review 17:3-4 (Fall 2005), write:
The Palestinian religious, academic, and political elites teach an ideology of virulent hatred of Jews. The killing of Jews is presented both as a religious obligation and as necessary self-defense for all humankind.
This assessment of the Jews among Arabs or Muslims goes back centuries before the Zionist movement ever began.
No Jews live in Gaza. Two sides dispute Jewish settlement in the West Bank. There are 144 Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Neither a majority of Palestinians or Jews back a two state solution with the addition of the creation of a separate Palestinian state. Half of Jews desire complete expelling of Palestinians from Israel — that doesn’t include Gaza or the West Bank. 75% of Palestinians want the annihilation of Israel. A large majority of all Palestinians support Hamas.
Having traveled to Israel and in the Jewish and Palestinian territories, it’s very tense there. It cannot work like it is. The Jews need a place of their own. A two state solution will never succeed for obvious reasons. Very good arguments say that Israel should have all the land and the Palestinians find someplace else to live with Arab people. Jews should have their own, safe country.
Israel and the Land
Americans would never tolerate what the Jews do in Israel. A certain psychology for the Jews not only allows them to concede to their conditions, but also causes many Jews to advocate for the Palestinians. Many Jews lay a lot of blame on their own people for their problems. I do feel for Israel because of the deep hatred from so many across the world for the Jews.
God still has a plan for Israel. Even if Israel does not own the whole Holy Land, they continue possessing a right to it, based upon scripture. God gave Israel the land, which is why it is called, “the Promised Land.” This supports Israel’s statehood, its formal establishment, and perpetuation. Palestine never had statehood. It didn’t announce it’s own statehood until 1988. The Palestinian territories are not recognized by the US, France, or the UK as a state. At least four Palestinian organizations are designated as terrorist on the United States list, including Hamas.
My assessment of Israel is not some carte blanch acceptance of the policies of Israel. I still pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States with its rampant ungodliness. Support for Israel acknowledges God and the truth of scripture.
Two Wars
Because of world politics, the war in Israel associates with the one in Ukraine. Some of the same characters appear in different roles in both conflicts. I attribute both wars to the Biden administration in the United States. Neither would have occurred with Trump as president of the United States. Many would agree with that, less that would say it in public, but I also want to explain why I think it’s true.
More to Come
The Law Enhances, Does Not Conflict, With Grace
Relationship Between the Law and Grace or Faith
In Galatians, the Apostle Paul argues for salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. He opposes the alternative, adding even one work to grace. Paul provides several arguments in Galatians 3 for the churches of Galatia to combat corruption of a true gospel.
To understand the right relationship of the law to grace and faith, Paul gives a great clue with a question in Galatians 3:21.
Is the law then against the promises of God?
This is a rhetorical question as seen in his answer in verse 21: “God forbid.” The law is not against the promises of God. It does not conflict with the promises of God. In saying the law does not conflict with the promises of God, he says that the law does not conflict with grace and faith.
Just as a reminder, “God forbid” is the strongest negative in the Greek language. “God forbid” in a technical sense is idiomatic. An idiom is “a phrase or expression that typically presents a figurative, non-literal meaning attached to the phrase.” The translators decided a literal translation could not convey the original Greek, so they used the idiomatic expression, “God forbid.” In the context of Galatians 3:21, Paul says no way the law conflicts with the promises of God.
The Law Must Not Conflict with Grace and Faith
For someone to take the correct position on the law, it must not conflict with grace and faith. What position will create a conflict? In the second half of verse 21, Paul says that it is the one that makes the law necessary for life or righteousness. The law does not give life. Neither does it make someone righteous. Only grace or faith does that.
Number one, if the law gives life and righteousness, then grace does not. Number two, if grace gives life and righteousness, then the law does not. If the law and grace or faith do not conflict, then one must take choice number two.
Paul gives several other related arguments for grace alone and faith alone. (1) The salvation of Abraham came by grace alone through faith alone 430 years before the Mosaic law came. (2) When the Mosaic law came, it did not replace (“disannul,” verse 17) grace alone through faith alone, but enhanced it. (3) When the seed (Jesus) arrived 1500 years after the Mosaic law in fulfillment of the promises, He superseded the law. Jesus wouldn’t supersede the law if it was necessary for life and righteousness. It wasn’t.
How Does Jesus Supersede the Law?
Superseding is not abolishing or destroying. I like the word as a description. One might use fulfilled or transcended. The law continues enhancing the promises even with the arrival of the seed. How?
Galatians 3:22 says. The law concludes all under sin, so that they will believe in Jesus Christ for life and righteousness. Galatians 3:23 says that faith does not come to someone until the law locks him up. The law still concludes a person under sin. It still locks up a sinner, so that he looks to Jesus Christ as His only possible deliverance, and believes in Him. Christ comes into the prison of sin and redeems the prisoner who believes in Him.
Unconditional and Unilateral Promises
As you’re reading, you might be asking, what are these “promises” of which I write? They are the promises of the seed made by God that would bring blessing to Abraham’s descendants and all the nations of the earth (Genesis 12:1-3, cf. Genesis 3:15). Also, God will impute righteousness to those who believe the promises (Genesis 15:6).
The promises of God of which Paul speaks are unconditional and unilateral. Abraham was asleep (unconscious) when God made that contract, agreement, or covenant with Abraham. Abraham did nothing, no works. This is the point of Galatians that the promises were superior to the law in that they required no mediator. Angels and Moses were mediators of the law. The promises involved only one — God.
When denominations say, “No, you’re involved, people,” they conflict with grace and faith. Now their adherents are required to continue “in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them” (Galatians 3:10, cf. Deuteronomy 27-28). They add a mediator to the promises, when there are no mediators for the promises. This brings conflict between the law and grace, to which Paul writes, “God forbid.”
A Right Understanding of the Law
What you hear from me is not a rejection of the law, but a right understanding of it. The law continues. Christ superseded it, but it still enhances the promises of God. The rest of Galatians 3 and into chapter four lays that out. Everyone still needs and should want the moral law of God and the spirit of the ceremonial and judicial laws.
Galatians 3:19 says the law “was added because of transgressions.” John Gill wrote that the law
was over and above added unto [the promises], for the sake of restraining transgressions; which had there been no law, men would not have been accountable for them; and they would have gone into them without fear, and with impunity; but the law was given, to lay a restraint on men, by forbidding such and such things, on pain of death; and also for the detecting, discovering, and making known transgressions, what they are, their nature and consequences; these the law charges men with, sets them before them, in their true light and proper colours; and convicts them of them, stops their mouths, and pronounces them guilty before God.
Saved men, those who received the promises of God, are not under the law. That means they are not under the condemnation of the law. It does not mean they are free to disobey the law. Grace frees us from the condemnation of the law, not the law. Unsaved men still abide under the condemnation of the law. Since the law does not give life and righteousness, they must receive the promises. In other words, they must by grace alone believe alone in Christ alone.
Scripture Is Science
Science
The English word “science” occurs only once in the New Testament, referring to “science falsely so-called” (1 Tim 6:20). What is often called “science” really is “science falsely so-called.” What is science? Merriam-Webster online gives the following definitions:
1 a : knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method
b : such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena
2 a : a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study
b : something (such as a sport or technique) that may be studied or learned like systematized knowledge
3 : a system or method reconciling practical ends with scientific laws
4 : the state of knowing : knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding
“Science” translates gnosis in the King James Version, a Greek word that appears 29 times in the Greek Textus Receptus. Every other time, the KJV translators translated it “knowledge.” The English word “science” comes from the Latin scire, “to know,” and so science lays claim to knowledge. That doesn’t clash with definitions that I see for science in Merriam Webster, unless someone wanted to get more technical. I’m especially talking about the definition that includes obtaining and testing something with the scientific method.
Scripture Is Scientific?
In an earlier piece, I wrote, “Scripture is scientific.” After a friend challenged me, I changed that to, “Scripture is science.” I’m not sure I would want to call scripture, scientific, because that means something different. That is based on the principles and methods of science, which I don’t think is true of scripture.
One usage of gnosis is Colossians 2:3, which speaks of Jesus Christ, saying: “In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Paul reveals that all the treasures of knowledge are in Jesus. Obviously Jesus knows everything, all mysteries and all knowledge (1 Corinthians 13:2). When we listen to Jesus, and He says nothing in scripture about something, it is less important than other knowledge. He still knows it all and gives whatever someone needs.
Is observation or the testing of the scientific method the only way of knowing what we know? Someone might challenge the Genesis account of creation as science, because it isn’t observable or testable. In that way, scripture isn’t scientific. However, if science is knowledge, can we say we know the origin of everything? I’m not saying, believe it, but know it. We do know it from reading Genesis 1. Scripture is science.
The Hearing of Faith
Scripture says a lot of “I know,” “we know,” and “ye know.” What scripture calls the “hearing of faith” (Galatians 3:2, 5) is knowledge. Faith comes by hearing the Word of God. Scripture is the superior means of knowledge and the basis of faith. What God says in His Word is always true. What God says, we know, because it is true. He wants us to believe what we know from scripture, and belief comes after knowing.
Abraham questioned God’s covenant because he and Sarah were childless and old. God reaffirmed His promise in Genesis 15:4-5, and Abraham “believed in the LORD” (Genesis 15:6). God “counted it to him for righteousness.” God promised, “I will make of thee a great nation” (Genesis 12:2) and “in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 12:3).
Abraham questioned God in Genesis 15:1-2 because his empirical “knowledge” said “no children.” If he went to a doctor, a scientist of sorts, that doctor would say, “No on child birth for you and Sarah.” How would he know? After God spoke to Abraham, Abraham believed what He said. God counted it for righteousness. What God said was science.
Was Abraham righteous? Did he know that? Yes, because God said he was. When Abraham was to offer Isaac in Genesis 22, he would offer him. Why? Hebrews 11:19 explains. He knew God was able to raise Isaac up. He knew that. Is that science? Would an empiricist have raised the knife to sacrifice his son? God Himself also offered his own Son and raised Him up.
True Science
If one considers empiricism, Eve saw that the tree was good for food (Genesis 3:6). Scoffers in 2 Peter 3 thought highly of their knowledge, mocking the truth of the second coming. God prohibited the tree to Eve. And He promised the second coming. Those are knowledge. 2 Peter begins with this teaching on science (knowledge) [1:3]:
According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue
In Genesis 22:18 God said, “And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” The Apostle Paul comments on this promise from God in Galatians 3:16:
Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.
Paul reports that “seed” is singular. It’s speaking of Christ, which parallels with Genesis 3:15:
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
Incorporate Galatians 3:8 with the above:
And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed.
God would justify the heathen through faith. The heathen would believe in the seed, that through the seed they shall be blessed. Their faith also counts for righteousness.
The way to blessing for the world is through Jesus Christ. That’s not what science says. Science says population decline, one world government, the center for disease control, and reducing emissions in farming. The hearing of faith proceeds from knowledge. Knowledge informs of the truth of eternal blessing.
10,000 Out of 10,000
God backs up scripture with mathematical probability. Everything He said would happen, happened. All that He says will happen, will happen. 100 out of 100. 1,000 out of 1,000. 10,000 out of 10,000. Nothing else brings that kind of record. We know what He says. It’s why the Apostle Paul could and should say (2 Timothy 1:12):
For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.
This isn’t a leap in the dark. We know. God holds us accountable, based upon knowledge.
Transcendent
Transcendental truth, goodness, and beauty are outside of what men call the “scientific method,” process, and peer consensus. Someone can know the transcendentals, but they come by means of the revelation of God. They are self-evident, because God revealed them. They dovetail with the miracles of the Bible. God upholds all things. He intervenes in what He made and according to His will or His purposes.
As one example, God commands us, “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth” (Ephesians 4:29), without informing us what corrupt communication is. The Lord assumes we know what it is. Some still deny it, but this is truth suppression. God reveals this knowledge and requires another hearing of faith.
Pleasing God requires knowledge. The knowledge informs the faith that pleases God. This is not a secret knowledge, but it won’t be found by those who refuse to seek it with their whole heart (Jeremiah 29:13-14).
Recent Comments