Posted on 06/03/2010 3:17:15 PM PDT by GiovannaNicoletta
The Rabbinical Council of Judea and Samaria issued a statement Thursday in which it said that the results of the incident in which Israel intercepted a flotilla trying to break the naval blockade of Gaza seem like the Biblical description of "the beginning of the Gog and Magog process where the world is against us, but which ends with the third and final redemption."
The statement explained that while secular Zionism always wants Israel to be beloved by other nations, “the legitimacy of our people is not derived from the nations of the world and their poisonous traditions, rather from the Torah of Israel which teaches us that [Israel] 'is a people that shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations'" (Numbers 23:9). They emphasized that there is no reason to be alarmed by the world's condemnation as it is a predicted result of fear of Israel's success.
(Excerpt) Read more at israelnationalnews.com ...
This incident is a catalyst.
No offense, but already posted: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2527172/posts
Thanks.
That often happens to me as well...
So it’s gog, magog and Cynthia McKinney AKA Ugly gog.
Holy Moly!
You can at least glean from my tag line that I am into this. I need to read the specifics they are talking about.
“’the legitimacy of our people is not derived from the nations of the world and their poisonous traditions, rather from the Torah of Israel which teaches us that [Israel] “is a people that shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations”’ (Numbers 23:9). They emphasized that there is no reason to be alarmed by the world’s condemnation as it is a predicted result of fear of Israel’s success.”
While I agree with the rabbis about the parallels to the Gog/Magog reference, I think their confidence is misplaced.
It sounds a lot like the Jews of the Old Testament (Torah) times who were certain destruction would not come near them because they were “God’s chosen people”. Unfortunately, both Biblical and secular history is a sad testimony against this view.
Continue to pray for Israel and the peace of Jerusalem.
Evil thoughts out of the abundance of the hateful heart of humanity and Islam pour out a river of condemnation upon Israel. The Lord pours out a river of divine Spirit upon Israel. Guess what spirit wins out in end times?
Those who curse Israel shall be cursed. Pray that America overcomes the usurper in its own White House and blesses Israel, that comes in the name of the LORD God.
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Satan has always had a special hatred for the Jewish people because it was through them that God brought forth the Messiah and when He died on the cross, Satan was defeated for all eternity. He has used various human fools and tools throughout the centuries to try to obliterate the Jews once and for all and he has always failed.
Satan will try one last time, during the Tribulation, to exterminate the Jews using the Antichrist as the tool this time. And again he will fail.
The suffering of the Jewish people is not over. The time will come, however, when many of them will come to know their Messiah as Savior and the time is also coming when the Jewish Messiah will rule from Jerusalem and the Jewish people will be very highly esteemed.
But Israel HAS been destroyed more than once. The people will never be finally destroyed but how do we know the current state of Israel will continue in perpetuity?
I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. The WHOLE land of Canaan , where you are now an alien, I will give you as an everlasting possession to you and to your descendants after you; and I will be their God. (Gen 17:7,8)
Jacob Said to Joseph, “God Almighty appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan, and there he blessed me and said to me, ‘I ma going to make you fruitful and will increase your numbers. I will make you a community of peoples, and I will give this land as an EVERLASTING possession to your descendants after you. (Gen 48:3,4)
God promised Abraham that out of him would come a great nation. God is not going to let that nation be destroyed. In Jeremiah 31:35-37 God said something very important about the nation of Israel. In this passage God tells us that one of three things must happen if the nation of Israel is to be destroyed. If none of these three things happens, then the nation of Israel will never be destroyed and will never stop being a nation. Let’s see what these three things are:
We see from God's own Scripture that Israel will never be destroyed.
And I don’t disagree with any of that. But those Scriptures had to be referring to Israel as a people because they were physically ejected from the land twice.
I tend to agree that they won’t be again but I don’t see a blanket promise in Scripture guaranteeing this.
Regardless, there is nothing in Scripture that says Iran, Syria or any other state can’t detonate a nuclear device in an Israeli city killing millions. The Temple wasn’t the guarantee of safety that the false prophets claimed and neither is a Christ-less Torah (and even Christ would be only a guarantee of spiritual safety not a carte blanche physical protection).
But God doesn't say He's talking about people and it's not our place to try to read our own agenda into Scripture when there is nothing in that Scripture to indicate that God means anything other than what He said.
The Scripture I posted talks about Israel as a nation, not Israel as a people.
We have to take Scripture as it's written and take God at His word. He says what He means and means what He says. It's not up to us to put in there what we'd like to see there. God specifically and repeatedly promises that Israel will never be destroyed and so Israel will never be destroyed. Simple as that.
I tend to agree that they won’t be again but I don’t see a blanket promise in Scripture guaranteeing this.
There is not one shred of Scripture which indicates that after Israel becomes a nation for the last time, and after God brings His people back to their land, both of which have happened in our generation, that the nation of Israel will be destroyed. Not one iota of Scripture even hints at this.
Regardless, there is nothing in Scripture that says Iran, Syria or any other state can’t detonate a nuclear device in an Israeli city killing millions.
God tells us exactly what will happen with Israel and the Jewish people after they become a nation again and there is nothing whatsoever about Iran or Syria dropping a nuclear bomb on Israel.
In fact, you can read about what will happen to Syria in Isaiah 17:1 and you can read about what will happen to Iran in Ezekiel 38 and 39. It won't be Israel getting destroyed by those nations - quite the other way around.
The Temple wasn’t the guarantee of safety that the false prophets claimed and neither is a Christ-less Torah (and even Christ would be only a guarantee of spiritual safety not a carte blanche physical protection).
There is nothing in the Bible about a Temple protecting the Jews or, as you put it, "a Christ-less Torah". That sounds to me like manmade anti-Semitism.
God is the protector of His people and God will personally destroy the nations that try to invade Israel, including the aforementioned Iran.
I wrote: But those Scriptures had to be referring to Israel as a people because they were physically ejected from the land twice.
You responded: But God doesn't say He's talking about people and it's not our place to try to read our own agenda into Scripture when there is nothing in that Scripture to indicate that God means anything other than what He said.
My response: Umm, I said “physically ejected from the land”. I didn’t say anything about annihilation. Israel was judged and removed from their place as a nation even after God made the promise that Israel wouldn’t be destroyed.
You responded: The Scripture I posted talks about Israel as a nation, not Israel as a people.
My response: They’re one and the same. The New Testament also refers to the church as a “holy nation”, in fact the true Israel yet I can’t find the “Christian Nation” anywhere on my map.
You responded: We have to take Scripture as it's written and take God at His word. He says what He means and means what He says. It's not up to us to put in there what we'd like to see there. God specifically and repeatedly promises that Israel will never be destroyed and so Israel will never be destroyed. Simple as that.
My response: “What we’d like to see there”? Are you meaning to say that it is my desire to see Israel destroyed? I hope that’s not what you intended.
Again, you’re making a straw man argument that I didn’t claim. Destroyed means exterminated. Even your own dispensationalist model claims that there will only be a remnant that survives the future Great Tribulation. The only argument I have made is that Israel has been removed from the land as a nation at least twice which would seem to negate the promise of God if God was indeed promising they would never be removed. We know this isn’t true because God Himself is the One Who removed them.
But if we’re going to take “Scripture as it's written and take God at His word” and agree that “It's not up to us to put in there what we'd like to see there”, then we can do away with the pre-tribulational secret rapture, the European Union as a new Roman Empire, Gog and Magog as a modern day Russian/Iranian/Syrian/et al. alliance, a two-thousand year gap between Daniel’s 69th and 70th week, etc. because none of these things are to be found in Scripture. They are brought into the narrative by those who would “like to see them there”.
I wrote: I tend to agree that they won’t be again but I don’t see a blanket promise in Scripture guaranteeing this.
You responded: There is not one shred of Scripture which indicates that after Israel becomes a nation for the last time, and after God brings His people back to their land, both of which have happened in our generation, that the nation of Israel will be destroyed. Not one iota of Scripture even hints at this.
My response: How do you know this is the last time? And the Jews were brought back to the land after that prophecy and were removed in Christ’s time. And again, they never were destroyed. And I never said they would be (although millions died).
I wrote: Regardless, there is nothing in Scripture that says Iran, Syria or any other state can’t detonate a nuclear device in an Israeli city killing millions.
You responded: God tells us exactly what will happen with Israel and the Jewish people after they become a nation again and there is nothing whatsoever about Iran or Syria dropping a nuclear bomb on Israel.
I respond: Okay, you got me there! Nukes aren’t mentioned in Scripture. There’s nothing in there about the Holocaust, September 11 or heck, even the founding of America (makes you wonder if the writers were really writing about this future end-times that everyone is so obsessed with).
You responded: In fact, you can read about what will happen to Syria in Isaiah 17:1 and you can read about what will happen to Iran in Ezekiel 38 and 39. It won't be Israel getting destroyed by those nations - quite the other way around.
My response: Damascus was destroyed by Sargon II in 722-721 B.C. Whether there is a future destruction, I don’t know. Ezekiel 38 and 39 says nothing about Iran or even Persia. You are simply reading into the text.
I wrote: The Temple wasn’t the guarantee of safety that the false prophets claimed and neither is a Christ-less Torah (and even Christ would be only a guarantee of spiritual safety not a carte blanche physical protection).
You responded: There is nothing in the Bible about a Temple protecting the Jews or, as you put it, "a Christ-less Torah". That sounds to me like manmade anti-Semitism.
My response: Oh, put a cork in it. There is nothing “anti-Semitic” (do you even know what that means?) in my statement. First off, there are plenty of references in the prophets, specifically Jeremiah where the false prophets told the king that they would be saved because God would never let His Holy Temple be destroyed. Jeremiah dispelled them of that hope.
Jeremiah Chapter 7
7:1 The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 “Stand in the gate of the Lord's house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all you men of Judah who enter these gates to worship the Lord. 3 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place. 4 Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’
5 “For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another, 6 if you do not oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own harm, 7 then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers forever.
8 “Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. 9 Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, 10 and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—only to go on doing all these abominations? 11 Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the Lord. 12 Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it because of the evil of my people Israel. 13 And now, because you have done all these things, declares the Lord, and when I spoke to you persistently you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer, 14 therefore I will do to the house that is called by my name, and in which you trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to your fathers, as I did to Shiloh. 15 And I will cast you out of my sight, as I cast out all your kinsmen, all the offspring of Ephraim.
16 “As for you, do not pray for this people, or lift up a cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you. 17 Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? 18 The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven. And they pour out drink offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger. 19 Is it I whom they provoke? declares the Lord. Is it not themselves, to their own shame? 20 Therefore thus says the Lord God: behold, my anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place, upon man and beast, upon the trees of the field and the fruit of the ground; it will burn and not be quenched.”
21 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat the flesh. 22 For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. 23 But this command I gave them: ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.’ 24 But they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and the stubbornness of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward. 25 From the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt to this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day. 26 Yet they did not listen to me or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck. They did worse than their fathers.
27 “So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you. 28 And you shall say to them, ‘This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the Lord their God, and did not accept discipline; truth has perished; it is cut off from their lips.
30 “For the sons of Judah have done evil in my sight, declares the Lord. They have set their detestable things in the house that is called by my name, to defile it. 31 And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. 32 Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when it will no more be called Topheth, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for they will bury in Topheth, because there is no room elsewhere. 33 And the dead bodies of this people will be food for the birds of the air, and for the beasts of the earth, and none will frighten them away. 34 And I will silence in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, for the land shall become a waste.
As far as “Christ-less Torah”: Accepting the Torah as God’s word but rejecting the Christ as Messiah and the New Testament as the Word of God would of necessity make that Christ-less. Even an Orthodox Jew would claim to be Christ-less and not see that as an insult. How is that anti-Semitic?
Your response: God is the protector of His people and God will personally destroy the nations that try to invade Israel, including the aforementioned Iran.
My response: Of course God is the protector of His people and God is not done with Israel (Scripture makes that clear in Romans 10-11). One thing we can be sure of is that God is in complete control and there is nothing that happens that His Sovereign Hand doesn’t control and He is working everything according to His good and perfect counsel and to our eternal benefit if we are truly His.
In fact, the very book you’re quoting from (Jeremiah) is God’s promise not to completely destroy Israel as a people (nation) though He is sending them into exile and to re-gather them to the land in the future. Why is 1948 that future time of regathering and not the time of Nehemiah when Cyrus issues the edict for them to return? In fact, we have every reason to believe the Scripture is referring to that not to distant future regathering because the end of Chapter 31 culminates in the promise of the Spirit which was given by Christ at the birth of the church.
The New Covenant
31 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
35 Thus says the Lord,
who gives the sun for light by day
and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night,
who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar—
the Lord of hosts is his name:
36 “If this fixed order departs
from before me, declares the Lord,
then shall the offspring of Israel cease
from being a nation before me forever.”
37 Thus says the Lord:
“If the heavens above can be measured,
and the foundations of the earth below can be explored,
then I will cast off all the offspring of Israel
for all that they have done,
declares the Lord.”
38 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when the city shall be rebuilt for the Lord from the Tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate. 39 And the measuring line shall go out farther, straight to the hill Gareb, and shall then turn to Goah. 40 The whole valley of the dead bodies and the ashes, and all the fields as far as the brook Kidron, to the corner of the Horse Gate toward the east, shall be sacred to the Lord. It shall not be uprooted or overthrown anymore forever.”
Now unless you think that the modern state of Israel has partaken in the New Covenant, then there may be a problem with your current hermeneutic.
To be fair: I don't even believe modern Israel will be removed from the land as nations don't take other nations into captivity any longer. My only point was that's it's foolish to claim thus and thus can't happen because of God's protection when God has clearly (according to the Torah) used such means before to judge ancient apostate Israel and when we have the horrendous Holocaust in our own recent history. 6 million Jews sure sounds like near destruction to me.
In World War II, many in the Polish church were teaching that Hitler was the Antichrist and Mussolini the false prophet but, no worries, they would be raptured before Hitler invaded Poland.
God has chosen the church as a “holy nation” for 2000 years and it has seen horrendous persecution.
We (and Israel) must base our foreign policy on reason, what we know to be right and true AND put our faith in God. We cannot blissfully pretend these threats don't matter because we assume Scripture makes blanket promises that simply can't be extracted from the text.
Israel, and America, and any other western nation that is at war with radical Islam are capable of losing a city to a weapon of mass destruction. In fact, the conditions are favorable for this to happen.
She said that maybe the catalysis is not the corner stone being laid at the western wall in Jerusalem, but the corner stone that "starts" things off is the mosque at ground zero in Manhattan. I'm not sure she is wrong, bur it gave me an odd feeling when she said it.
5.56mm
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