Lapid’s Toughness?

Years ago at a book convention, I met an Israeli publisher. We were chatting about the Peace Process—who wasn’t the past 30 years—and even though I knew him to be liberal, even left-wing, I asked anyway, “So you support Barak; I assume that means you support giving up the Temple Mount?”

“Are you crazy?” he spat. He looked genuinely shocked/annoyed/enraged by my query. Maybe I was a little naïve, but I’d read enough about then-negotiators Yossi Beilin and Martin Indyk to know they were willing to go too far in advancing peace with the Palestinians.

However, my friend taught me a lesson and it is this: I believe the majority of Jews genuinely love their country and would not endanger her. I even think that as time goes on, they identify more and more with their ancient ancestors, even if they don’t say it out loud. I’ve had too many private conversations to think otherwise.

My friend was decidedly NOT for giving away the farm, as it were. Yet, as I said, he was most definitely a member of the Left.

So it was this week that I thought of him upon hearing about the meeting between new Israeli PM Yair Lapid and Joe Biden. The Biden Clownshow Tour of the Middle East had him hobbling around, appearing confused, but advancing the left-wing goals of his handlers. Part of that is restarting the Iran Deal.

Lapid though said to him something that Netanyahu might have said, or even Begin. Lapid told Biden that the best way to deal with Iran is to have a strong military option on the table.

My goodness, Ze’ev Jabotinsky might have said that!

Biden, in also meeting with the murderer, Mahmoud Abbas and his PLO, reiterated something no one in Washington would have said just a few years ago: he supports a two-state solution based on the pre-1967 lines. Meaning, Israel would return to a shrunken, virtually defenseless state. I’m not convinced Biden is the doddering, dementia-ridden goof he appears to be—it might be an act—but even when he was at full-strength (still mediocre even in his prime), he would not have said that. It’s possible he wouldn’t have privately supported it, although I don’t believe he has any guiding principles.

He read his talking points in Israel.

“Two states along the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, remains the best way to achieve equal measures of security prosperity freedom and democracy for the Palestinians as well as Israelis.

“The Palestinian people deserve a state of their own that is independent, sovereign, viable and continuous.”

Well, no, they don’t. And even Biden understands that in all of history, the Arabs have never had anything resembling democracy. It isn’t their culture, it isn’t their aim.

According to a report in the Jerusalem Post:

“Earlier in the day, Biden made waves when he visited an east Jerusalem hospital in an armored vehicle without an Israeli flag or the accompaniment of any Israeli officials. The visit, the first one by a President to an east Jerusalem location out of the Old City, was seen by the Israeli Right as a nod in the direction of acceptance of east Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

“Hours later the White House issued a statement, in which it clarified that Biden in his conversation with Abbas had underscored US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”

Biden’s word isn’t worth anything. He would sell-out Israel in a second, so his assurances about the Old City are false. As false as Bill Clinton’s or Barack Obama’s. These are evil men.

He’s also giving the Palestinians $300 million of our money for “relief.” Abbas, his boss Arafat and their minions have stolen literally billions from the U.S. and Europe in the last 40 years. Even this move by Biden, so unlike Trump’s position of strength, makes America look weak.

Reading Biden’s full comments is nauseating, as he repeats platitudes and falsehoods emanating from American foreign policy for two generations. The same empty, inane talk that goes nowhere.

On another front, there was a fascinating op-ed by Salman al-Ansari:

“However, Riyadh will not entertain any of those options until it is absolutely certain that Washington chooses to remain frustratingly hesitant to deter Iran, its militias and its nuclear ambitions. As has been stated by Saudi officials including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Kingdom would obtain nuclear weapons as soon as it could if Iran acquired it. This may trigger a Middle Eastern nuclear arms race, with regional powers such as Egypt and Turkey following suit.

“If this were to happen, then Washington can disband with the notion that it has any remaining influence in the entire Middle East. The reputation of America as a reliable ally in the region would be eroded beyond repair, as losing the respect of the Arab and Muslim world is a diplomatic blunder so grave and irreversible, it would not be an understatement to call it the mistake of the century.”

This refers of course to the years-long reality that one day, the West will have to deal with Iran’s nuclear threats. My main takeaway from this quote (there are several more!) is that the prospect of America becoming a minor bystander in the Middle East, and elsewhere, perhaps explains in part why we are not mentioned in Bible prophecy. As we advance farther down the road to complete fulfillment of prophecy, America’s superpower status is key.

If the above thoughts are the beginning outlines of an American stand-down, we can see how Gog-Magog could unfold…without American intervention.

(As an aside, history will one day brutally condemn Jimmy Carter’s maddening weakness in losing Iran on his watch. He is responsible for the mullahs taking power, and the result has been 40 years of worldwide murder and terrorism. Now we are faced with a nuclear Islamist regional power.)

All in all, while Biden’s Clownshow is embarrassing and humiliating for every American, perhaps there are still men in charge in the Middle East (Lapid?) that will confront the evil Iranians.

Jim1fletcher@yahoo.com

 

Arab Seminaries?

Somehow, in those heady days of the 1970s and 80s, when men like Adrian Rogers were in real leadership roles in evangelical circles, we didn’t do a good job of preparing upcoming generations to truly love Israel and the Jewish people. We are seeing the rotten fruit of those mistakes today.

Over time, Christian institutions, including whole denominations, and—critically—Christian media became infected and infested with liberalism. It then took a sharp turn into full-blown leftist ideology. My own personal research shows that this was the product of Soviet infiltration of our culture, especially religious circles.

It was a long time coming.

Until about the year 2000, there was still plenty of sound teaching in the churches. But Rick Warrenism/Bill Hybelism/Andy Stanleyism had taken root and by 2010 the tide had turned. I really believe sound Bible teaching was lost almost totally then. I’m speaking of the so-called Church Visible, of course. There are plenty of small churches doing good stuff. I think of Randy White Ministries, founded by a former SBC megachurch pastor, now happy shepherding a small flock in New Mexico.

In fact, it was Randy White that alerted me to the infiltration of the Southern Baptists by leftists like Russell Moore. Perusing columns on Moore’s website showed me that he is no friend of Israel. He is a Replacement Theology guy, and he took that attitude to the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission before landing at Christianity Today 18 months ago.

I’ve written often about the sad demise of Christianity Today magazine. In the 90s, I could see its leftward drift was fatal. The editorial leadership was proud of its liberalism, all the while intent on fooling readers that it was still evangelical.

Support for evolution, anti-Israel forces, totalitarians and a host of other problems surfaced. As of this moment, CT is no more representative of traditional evangelicalism than the Castro regime in Cuba.

This week I saw an article posted on the CT site touting Arab seminaries in the Middle East, including that mythical place leftists love, “Palestine.” Notice this opening:

“Unlike many American counterparts, evangelical institutions in Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine enjoy an influx of students as they serve beyond their ivory towers.”

If CT thinks seminaries in countries bedeviled by the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas and Islamic Jihad are advancing biblical thought…well, I don’t think they do believe that. Certainly not in “Palestine.”

Spotlighting an Egyptian seminary, CT provides some background:

“Founded in 1863 aboard a felucca, a traditional Egyptian boat, in the Nile River, ETSC’s floating campus served mission stations and fledgling churches associated with the then-American Presbyterian movement. The seminary has steadily supplied synod pulpits ever since.”

And that’s the problem.

Look, even American seminaries has been polluting pulpits for more than a century. The German Higher Critical Movement, which sought to show that the Old Testament was influenced by Sumerian myth, destroyed the faith of many with such outlandish lies. Sadly, too many pastors embraced such blasphemies.

Now, in order to understand why Middle East seminaries are less-than-stellar today, we need to understand history. Michael Oren’s masterful work, Power, Faith & Fantasy, looks at Western influence in the region over time. He spends some time explaining a key concept: “lack of success” (my words) in spreading the actual Gospel left seminaries in Beirut and elsewhere with a dilemma: What are we now doing here? Oren recalls the situation in the 1870s:

“Evangelists had negligible success in their efforts to convert Jews and remained forbidden, at the pain of death, from proselytizing to Muslims. “Mohammedans, Muscovites and Monks furnish their full quota of opposition [to us],” a Presbyterian report of the 1870s complained, but the preachers had little hope of recourse, not even from their own government. Maintaining David Porter’s original policy of avoiding unnecessary friction with the Porte, the State Department reminded missionaries that “no foreigner who objects to Ottoman law need live under it,” and those that do “must also take the peril of their position” into account. The depth of those perils was once again illustrated in 1862, when two American missionaries, one in Adrianople (Edirne) and another in Alexandretta, were murdered.”

Seminary leadership in essence gave up pure evangelism and decided to concentrate on social work in the region. The watered-down efforts as Christian institutions yielded results in terms of education and relief efforts, but they had lost their first love.

Today, they bear no resemblance to the roots of Western Christian education in the Middle East. Oren understands the kind of man sent originally by American churches, particularly a New Englander named Levi Parsons. In Boston’s Old South Church in the fall of 1818, Parsons preached a remarkable sermon:

“His name was Levi Parsons, and the topic of his sermon was not the Gospel, not the Resurrection, but the Jews. ‘They who taught us the way to salvation were Jews,’ Parsons began. They had faithfully preserved the Bible, had worked, suffered, and died defending ‘our’ religion, he attested. ‘Our God was their God. Our heaven is their heaven.’ Most crucially, Parsons recalled, they had provided humanity with its Savior. ‘Yes, brethren, he who now intercedes for you before the throne of God…is a Jew!’ To show their gratitude for the Jews’ munificence, he concluded, Christians must strive to restore that people to sovereignty in its ancestral and biblical home.”

Whoa. That is a long way from where Christian attitudes are today in the Middle East.

In the CT article, they seem to think the following is a good thing:

“Benefiting from generous local and international support, ETSC students pay very little. This has made the growth in enrollment since 2019 ‘an act of faith,’ said Wahba. All students receive an 80 percent scholarship; MDiv students receive 98 percent.

“Similar generosity is received in Palestine, where the $9,000 tuition at Bethlehem Bible College (BBC) is reduced up to 70 percent for the roughly 150 theology and ministry students. An additional 40 students obtain degrees through Nazareth Evangelical College, a sister institution in Israel.”

What even many CT readers are not aware of is, “generous local and international support” is often anti-Israel. They key question is: What is being taught?

My conversation years ago with a key leader at Bethlehem Bible College was disturbing. I asked about support for Jews and Israel, biblically. He answered that, in essence, Palestinians “don’t like” the OT promises to the Jews. So they ignore them or spiritualize them.

In fairness, their pals in American institutions have the same attitude, but it’s still dismaying to hear.

I do not believe there is any redeeming places like Christianity Today, because I believe we are in the era spoken of by the prophets: Apostasy abounds.

In any event, I hope information like this helps you discern when seemingly “evangelical” media like CT offers up their propaganda.

Jim1fletcher@yahoo.com