Reversal of Fortunes

Well, well, well.

Now that Trump has encouraged North Korea’s Blofeld to “modify” his behavior, terror regimes the world over are quaking in their jackboots.

Now comes word that the Iranian people—no enemies of America—are holding massive protests, with an eye toward toppling the jihad regime in Tehran.

A recent tweet from journalist Sohrab Ahmari tells the tale:

“MUST-WATCH: Crowds in Iran are chanting “Death to Palestine!” Not to Israel. Not to America. But to Palestine. Hamas and Hezbollah and Palestinian Jihad can kiss their Iranian funding goodbye if the regime falls.”

He believes Iran and Turkey are “switching places.”

From a piece he just published in Commentary:

“Bernard Lewis issued a startling prediction in 2010: Iran—the land of scowling ayatollahs and flag burnings—would abandon Islamism by the end of the decade, while Turkey—Washington’s stalwart Cold War ally—would turn away from the West and burrow deeper into its Muslim identity. Lewis is no longer with us, and there are still a few years left in his wager, but events in both countries are proving him remarkably prescient.”

Erdogan in Turkey “won” his election over the weekend, and his increasingly strident, Islamist tone is dangerous. He would no doubt love to replace the mullahs of Iran as the preeminent thug government in the region.

According to Ahmari:

“It is high time to recognize that, for now, Turkey is lost to the West.”

Notice how responsible he is in his opinion writing; he says “for now.” No dogmatic insistence that Turkey will do this, this, and this for the next 50 years. Just a reasonable observation in the present. Many prophecy teachers could take a lesson.

Now he turns his attention to Iran:

“The latest slogan: ‘Death to Palestine!’

“You read that right. In a country that has become synonymous with Holocaust-denial cartoon contests and threats to wipe Israel off the map, people are chanting ‘Death to Palestine.’ Iranians don’t have a beef with Palestinians, of course. But they have had it with their regime’s decades-long underwriting of Hezbollah, Hamas, and other Palestinian terror groups. Why is our national wealth going to Gaza, they ask, rather than to Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz? The regime has no good answer to such questions. It has to resort to the truncheon, and that may work for a time, perhaps for many more years. But not forever.”

Iranian truck drivers, teachers, steelworkers, hospital staff, and railway employees are on strike. You can bet they didn’t see a penny of the $150 billion Obama gave the mullahs.

Ahmari makes a very interesting point. Even if the mullahs are overthrown, no one is really sure what will follow. And, historically, modern Iran has been a socialist-type state, where land ownership for the citizenry is almost unheard of. Still, seeing the Islamist fundamentalists thrown into the trash bin would be wonderful for all involved.

It is all very similar to pre-and-post-Czarist Russia. The czars were either average or beastly, and yet the Bolsheviks that followed were catastrophically evil.

So while no one knows what is coming down the pike, we can look forward with glee to the day the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism globally comes crashing down.

Thanks for nothing, Jimmy Carter.

Jim1fletcher@yahoo.com

 

Battle of the Burge Continues

A reader was kind enough this week to alert me to the fact that Dr. Gary Burge is no longer at Wheaton, as I have been writing. In fact, more than a year ago, he moved to Calvin Seminary.

So let’s talk about that.

Before leaving Wheaton, Burge was interviewed by a student reporter from The Wheaton Record. Among the answers he gave:

“For 25 years, two things have been important to me. The first is, I have been an advocate from the very beginning of affirming women in leadership and in ministry. And so I have spoken many times at the Christian Feminist Club in order to give guidance to students who are wondering how to read the Scriptures and still affirm women in leadership.

“The second thing that I hope is part of that story is I have had an extensive number of experiences in the Arabic speaking church. And the Palestinian community has been prominent among those experiences. And I have wanted to let students know that there are two stories in this conflict between Palestine and Israel. Evangelicals tend to gravitate toward the Israeli side of that story. Here at Wheaton, that’s historically how we’ve seen it. And so, I have tried to represent the Palestinian side of that story, which in some cases has felt awkward in our community.”

Besides his advocacy for the Palestinian/PLO narrative, Burge is also a left wing activist for other causes:

“My most cherished memory is when I participated in one of Wheaton’s best moments. In 2006, a bus of LGBT Christian students was travelling across the U.S. advocating for their views of theology and inclusion. They were sorely mistreated at Christian colleges from California to Illinois, but we decided bravely as a college that we weren’t going to participate in that mistreatment. When they arrived in 2006, we welcomed them on campus, we fed them generously, we had an entire chapel gathering in Coray gym in which we confessed initially how we in the church we have hurt this community, and then we listened to their stories and we invited them into our classes. We had an enormous public gathering in King Arena, and we had a real dialogue. We were respectful and civil in our disagreements and I think what we did was model the college Wheaton really wants to be. And we shocked the folks that came to campus.”

Five years ago, I wrote about an email exchange I had with Burge, in which I asked him to comment on a withering report from Malcolm Lowe at the Gatestone Institute.

Malcolm tore apart Burge’s theological claims regarding the Jews and the Old Testament (Burge has referred to the Old Testament as “Jewish theology.” Not Scripture or the Word of God, but “Jewish theology”).

So I emailed Burge and asked if he wanted to comment; I’d sent him the link to Malcolm’s article.

He responded first with some flattery, telling me I’m a good writer. He then totally ignored my question and redirected to an unrelated story that he suggested I report on.

Wow.

This is what the Left does. Obfuscate.

I then emailed again:

“That’s all very interesting, but is irrelevant to what I asked. I asked you to comment specifically on the essay by Lowe. Are you able to do that?”

He never did answer it.

Do you see what’s going on here? This is a hallmark of the Left: when confronted with factual information, they redirect, ignore, etc.

What that tells us is that more than generally, their assertions and worldviews are simply false.

And they know it.

Did you hear that? They know it.

Gary Burge is a PLO-style propagandist. By not answering Malcolm Lowe’s critique, Burge exposes himself as an “evangelical” professor who can’t back up his claims.

It is astonishing, and a big deal.

This is, in a much larger sense, what is going on with change agents sent to infiltrate the Evangelical community. I would suggest you follow people like Jonathan Merritt on social media and notice how they are aggressively pushing left wing agendas…to evangelicals.

Burge does the same thing with regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict. As I’ve said many times, many evangelical “leaders” simply do not like Jews. That’s the bottom line.

The most arrogant individual you’ll ever meet is one of these leaders. Their smug assessment of all things Jewish is odious.

I now wonder if there was some pushback at Wheaton for Burge. I had assumed that the faculty and administration (and students, for sure) were of the same mind. Perhaps he felt more freedom with the opportunity at Calvin Seminary (after all, Calvinists are not pro Israel).

Poor Calvin Seminary students.

Jim1fletcher@yahoo.com