Here we go again. Another Christ at the Checkpoint(CATC) conference is set to launch March 10-14. It’s another tragic event that tells half-truths and hardly the entire story. The theme is “Christ at the Checkpoint III: Your Kingdom Come.” It’s based on the Lord’s Prayer and how Christ would approach the Israeli-Palestinian conflict today.

Topics covered will include the Palestinian church, religious radicalism, Christian Zionism, Jesus’ teachings amid conflict, the Kingdom of God, peacemaking, and reconciliation. There will also be optional visits to the Bethlehem checkpoint every morning, as well as field trips around Bethlehem, Hebron and East Jerusalem.

On the Christ at the Checkpoint website they state, “Thus theCATC manifesto begins with: ‘The Kingdom of God has come. Evangelicals must reclaim the prophetic role in bringing peace, justice, and reconciliation in Palestine and Israel.’ We invite you to join us in Bethlehem this March to pray, worship, study scripture and seek this Kingdom come together.”

The event, sponsored by theBethlehem Bible College, is really all about blaming Israel and her evangelical supporters for most of the problems in the region. It is about hammering away at the “occupation” by Israel of the Palestinians. Those who criticize Christian support of Israel will get applause and even standing ovations. Theology that stresses Israel’s important role in biblical prophecy will be put down. Replacement Theology, which teaches that the church is the new Israel, will be an underlying theme although the leaders will deny that.

The group will gather frequently at the partition wall that separates Israel from the Palestinian territories to mourn the persecution of the Palestinians whose lives have been interrupted by this “checkpoint.” There will be little explanation that the wall was built to stop the brutal Palestinian terror incursions into Israel to slit the throats of innocent Israeli citizens. Or to plant bombs on buses that have taken scores of Israeli lives.

What you will hear will be empathy for Islamists and rhetoric about pacifism.  There will be endless calls for peace at theCATC conferences but no acknowledgment that Israel has negotiated for peace for decades. It’s just that she does not have a peace partner. Her Islamic neighbors want her pushed into the sea. She offered to accept 95% of Yaser Arafat’s demands at Camp David in 2000. He returned to Palestine rejecting the offer and chose more war.

There are certain voices the CATC folks don’t want to hear. One is Kay Wilson, a British born Israeli tour guide. She and a friend were brutally attacked by Palestinian terrorists in 2010. Kay, miraculously survived. Her friend, who was a Christian, did not. She writes in both The Times of Israel and Israel Today that she approached one of the Christ at the Checkpoint organizers about speaking at the 2012 convocation, only to be rebuffed because for the hundreds of other participants, to hear her story was “not what the Lord wants.”

The Israel Today publication states, “This revelation by Kay Wilson, is further evidence of what some in the Israeli Messianic body have been saying all along.  The reconciliation most of those involved with Christ at the Checkpoint want involves the Jews, on bended knee, begging for forgiveness for daring to hold fast to God’s promises regarding their inheritance of this land. Any voice that would too strongly challenge that outcome is, apparently, unwelcome.”+Wilson believes that at the CATC, they have little concern for Israel’s innocents, Israel’s murdered, and Israel’s maimed. She wanted to recognize her murdered friend who was a Christian.

Wilson states in The Times of Israel, “The CATC manifesto also states, ‘All forms of violence must be refuted unequivocally.’ However, they have no qualms about inviting violence into their room by giving the platform to the likes of personalities from the PA, that hateful organization which overtly sponsors terrorism. They also have no reservations in inviting Victor Batarseh, the mayor of Bethlehem. Batarseh is a supporter of the savage, Marxist terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PFLP’s armed division is the Abu Ali Mustapha Brigades, which has carried out many suicide bombings in Israel, murdering civilians.”

You also will hear little about the masses of Christians who have fled Bethlehem at the CATC event, the host city of this event. It is not the Israelis who have driven them out.

I ask where are the voices at this event of Pastors Naim and Steven Khoury, evangelical Arab pastors in Bethlehem who believe and teach Israel’s rightful inheritance of the land? Naim Khoury has been shot three times and the church bombed fourteen times. Steven Khoury has been beaten bloody on more than one occasion. Following the 2012 Christ at the Checkpoint, the Khoury’s church received various sanctions from the Palestinian Authority that limited their ministry. Was this instigated by the folks running the CATC?

But you will very often hear the voice of Vicar Stephen Sizer at this event. He has a checkered history of troubling associations. He has authored blatant anti-Semitic books.He has even befriended the daughter of the Ayatollah Khoumeni, Zahra Mostafavi. She translated his anti-Christian Zionist book into Farsi.

Like all the conference protagonists, Sizer claims that he is a peaceful Christian activist advocating for justice on behalf of the Palestinians. History has not been kind or fair to the Palestinians he claims. It has not been kind to the Jews, either. It would be nice if the whole CATC crew paid a visit toYad Vashem, the memorial to those who died in the Holocaust. Let’s learn of fairness there.

The film “The Stones Cry Out” will be shown at this year’s CATC. It talks about the “Nakba of 1948.” That’s the “catastrophe” of 1948, or Israel’s re-birth. If this doesn’t reveal the true heart of those behind  this event, I do not know what does.

The coordinators of the 2014 Christ at the Checkpoint do not know they have empathy for evil. They are deluded that peace is possible with further Israeli concessions and that the whole political climate would change if evangelicals would get off their pro-Israel soapbox. They will not talk about Palestinian terrorism. It’s “see no evil, speak no evil,” when it comes to that topic. They reflect the essence of what goes haywire when one’s eschatology, or doctrine of the last days, is off base.

And they are winning. More than ever, evangelicals are abandoning Israel for the pro-Palestinian agenda. Call it delusion, deception, or a sign of the times. The fact is it’s the tragic truth. The distortions presented by outfits like Christ at the Checkpoint have been effective.

The CATC group wants Christ’s Kingdom to come. That’s the title and theme of the 2014 event. Yet Christ’s Kingdom will be headquartered in Jerusalem. It will be a very Jewish experience. It will center around the Jewish Messiah. It’s called the Millennium. And while the Palestinians need the Messiah just as much as all people do, they are not God’s Chosen People. The Land of Israel was never promised to any descendents of Ishmael. It was promised to the Jewish people as an everlasting covenant (Genesis 17:7-8). And “Palestine” is hardly the focus of Christ’s Kingdom to come.

The conference is supposedly all about “reconciliation.” True reconciliation between Arab and Jew is likely possible only through the blood of Jesus and praying towards this goal would be wise.

You can change history if you want but you cannot re-write the Bible and get away with it. Outfits like this try to do this with regularity.

The evangelical church needs to stand up, and speak up, and not capitulate.  Someone needs to checkmate the Checkpointevent.

What is John Kerry doing? Have you heard the term, “the most dangerous man on earth?” Well, maybe that’s a stretch and maybe it isn’t. But the wreckage he is creating is staggering. Sure, much of it is coming down from his boss, Barack Hussein Obama.

The Obama/Kerry locomotive has been trying to jam a peace deal down Israel’s throat. They threaten that if Israel doesn’t accept the ludicrous terms, it would de-legitimize Israel. They leave out of the equation the fact that Israel has no peace partner. Time after time the “peace partners” walk out as has Arafat, Hamas, and Abbas.

In Bill Koenig’s most recent Koenig’s Eye-View from the White House, he quotes columnist Caroline Glick. She states:  “Once again, on Saturday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry tried to extort Israeli concessions to the PLO by threatening us with a Western economic boycott.

“Kerry is obsessed with Israel’s economic success. Last May, he told us that we’re too rich to surrender our land. Now he’s saying we’ll be poor if we don’t do so.

“The anti-Semitic undertones of Kerry’s constant chatter about Jews having too much money are obvious. But beyond their inherent bigotry, Kerry’s statements serve to legitimize the radical Left’s economic war against the Jewish state.

“Administration supporters and fundraisers from Code Pink and other pressure groups, as well as the EU, understand that if they escalate their economic and political persecution of the Jewish state, their actions will be met with quiet understanding, and even support, from the Obama administration.

“This is so even if the State Department issues indignant press releases expressing fury [that] those Israeli elected officials have the chutzpah to object to Kerry’s behavior.

“Israel has been subjected to plenty of abuse from American secretaries of state. But Kerry’s incessant talk of ‘illusory’ Jewish money is unprecedented.

“Why does Kerry believe he can get away with this? The overwhelming majority of U.S. lawmakers oppose economic warfare against Israel.  The vast majority of Americans support Israel and believe that a Palestinian state will support terrorism and be hostile to Israel.”

Glick goes on to provide the troubling answers. “The answer is as infuriating as it is apparent. It is the Israeli Left, and through it, much of the American Jewish community that enables Kerry’s diplomatic aggression against the Jewish state. Operating under their cover, Kerry feels free to engage in anti-Jewish bigotry directed against Israeli society.

“He believes he is immune from allegations of ill will toward Israel even as he places the full weight of the U.S. government behind a plan that will endanger Israel, bring no peace, destabilize the Middle East, and fail to win the U.S. any friends or allies in the Islamic world.”

Some in Israel are comparing Kerry to Haman and warn that his plans amount to a war on God.

A group called Rabbis from the Committee to Save the Land and People of Israel sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry this Sunday, warning him to end his “antagonism” towards Israel. The rabbis sharply criticized Kerry for his plans to establish an Arab capital in Jerusalem for Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, and to have Israel withdraw to the 1949 Armistice lines.

Recently, Kerry threatened Israel with an international boycott if peace talks fail, in addition to previous threats of a “third Intifada” last year.

The Rabbis, although not believers, still made an accurate statement. They said, “Your incessant efforts to expropriate integral parts of our Holy Land and hand them over to Abbas’s terrorist gang, amount to a declaration of war against the Creator and Ruler of the universe.”

They concluded, “If you continue on this destructive path, you will ensure your everlasting disgrace in Jewish history for bringing calamity upon the Jewish people — like Nebuchadnezzar and Titus who destroyed, respectively, the first and second great Temples and the entire Holy City of Jerusalem, and who, by Heavenly punishment, brought eventual disaster upon themselves, too.”

Though they lack the light of the Holy Spirit, they have still spoken truth. America has endured a winter like no other. In my area, the Upper Midwest, the temps this winter have beencompared to that on Mars when factoring in wind chills. Wrap your brain around minus 70 degrees. The West is experiencing a 100-year drought. Forests will soon be aflame in a dozen states.  We do not know if there is a connection but it doesn’t hurt to ask.

There are consequences to continually pounding God’s land and people; making deals with her staunch enemies such as Iran; compromising her safety day after day; favoring her barbarian Islamic neighbors with back door deals; arming her enemies.

Israeli journalist Michael Freund calls Kerry a bully in a china shop. He states his arrogance is only preceded by his ignorance. He recently made up a country: Kyrzakhstan. One of the most powerful men in Washington and the world doesn’t know there is no such nation.

As Gary Bauer writes, the Iranian leader is responding to this kind of “give peace a chance” leadership by sending warships near our coast.  And the regime’s state-run media is treating its citizens to propaganda videos featuring the bombing of Tel Aviv and sinking of an American aircraft carrier.

John Kerry is conducting delusional diplomacy. It comes from a man and an administration that is drunk with power and that thinks they are world rulers when, in fact, they are utter fools.

His answer to his critics? He and Obama have a commitment to finding peace in the Middle East. Not true. They have an agenda that promotes every radical Islamic cause in the Middle East, that marginalizes every Christian in the region, and that would bring about a swift end to Israel and her people.

For such actions, there are terrible consequences. We are forcing our best ally to negotiate with a gun to their head.

The Bible’s references to end-time “strong delusion” are appropriate here. In fact, there is no other explanation. Yes, the Antichrist will specialize in that but before that