What’s wild about the “I will bless those who bless Israel” belief is that this phrase is nowhere in the Bible. I liked your article, but I’m not sure you hammered this point enough. God says it to Abram, before he is Abraham, two generations before the man Israel is born! Logically, taking this verse out of context would be means ALL of Abraham’s children must be blessed, including the Edomites and Ishmaelites, WHO ARE THE ARABS AND MUSLIMS
Something Senator Cruz never bothers to delve into because he works for modern-day Israel from the moment he gets up to the moment he lays down. It's just a patina of religious belief, with a shmear of Christianity.
Schism is a sin against charity and puts one outside the Body of Christ. Happily while one is breathing one may convert.
A text from the 1920s 'Defense of the Catholic Church', states, regarding Oriental schismatics: lack Apostolicity because they renounce the Papacy; Oriental schismatics lack unity claiming authority amongst a plethora of schismatic sees; they lack Catholicity because they are national entities.
Pope Pius IX in his encyclicals Amantissimo humani (1862), Ubi urbaniano (1864), Levate (1867) and Omnem sollicitudinem (1874) addresses the enmity and violence against Catholics wrought by the 'orthodox schismatics'.
Recent martyrs of Holy unia: Bishop Nicholas Charnetsky (1884–1959), Bishop Vasyl Velychkovsky (1903–1973), Father Zenon Kovalyk (1903–1941) and Father
Your article is correct. However, the Middle East is not about bad theology. It’s about Islam and the their Satanic world view. Muslims hate anyone who is not Muslim. The Koran directs all Muslims to convert non-Muslims. If the non-Muslims do not convert, then they kill them. We cannot allow people this backwards to EVER develop a nuclear bomb. They would use it in a heartbeat against all Christian religions and peoples.
If we are at truly war with radical political Islam, then why, after every Western and/or Israeli military action in the Levant, the greater Middle East, and Eastern Africa, does the action result in extinction level purges of indigenous Christians, and leave the very Islamists originally targeted in control of the disputed territory? The music of Middle East conflict does not seem to match the words.
Your point is well taken. Islam is certainly not a theologically healthy offshoot of Christianity but pointing out their crazy theology in no way makes Talmudic Judiasm any less evil.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but from the founding of Israel in 1948 to modern day, the Christian population across the Levant and the Middle East overall has declined by over 90%. The Muslim population has maintained or increased. The declines correlate to Western military action, not necessarily to Muslim expansion, which tends to follow said military action.
Candace Owens is a lame polemicist. She conservatives for money. Her lack of Catholic catechesis as she dons her mantle as a new Catholic convert, Traditionalist at that, takes her mouth to places her brain has never been. She does more harm than good setting Catholicism politically against Judaism while her inch deep knowledge of the Bible and Catholic theology is still mostly set in her old evangelical upbringing. She needs to spend more time in from of the Blessed Sacrament and less time in front of the camera.
Yes, that's true. She does need to sit in front of the Blessed Sacrament more often, as we all do. However, Mrs. Farmer is a sincere convert. It didn't help her in any way, shape, or form (monetarily) to become Catholic. In fact, she is very circumspect about her new won Faith: she is very careful to not claim knowledge or experience she does not have (in the Faith). She did not have to tell anyone of her conversion, and yet, because she has proudly related the story of her journey to Catholicism, I think, she has been a quiet evangelist. Working as she did as a Catholic in a Zionist organization such as Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire must have been extremely trying, especially after October 7th. As a mother of several young children as Mrs. Farmer is, it must have been devastating to listen to grown men, fathers themselves, at the Daily Wire, cheer on the destruction of babies and other human beings, Christian or Moslem, who were all Palestinians and who had the misfortune of living in their ancient homeland and not having moved to New Jersey before October 7th.
I applaud my fellow Catholic sister in the Faith, Candace Owens Farmer on using her platform, not for $, but to speak boldly & clearly against the Zionists & their delusional supporters who see the destruction of all ancient peoples as a mere road bump on the modern pathway to Greater Israel.
I agree I went off on a Candace Owens tangent. Sorry. But my original point was that the purge of Christian’s from the Middle East doesn’t correlate directly with Muslim populations. It correlates to Western military action against Islamist groups, where said Islamists are left in charge to purge Christians. This has been the template for the extinction level erasure of Christianity from the Middle East for going on 80 years.
rapidly diminishing numbers of Christians in Palestine is due to the creation of Israel. Christians are constantly caught in the crossfire of Jews and Muslims. Israelis killed or ousted many Muslims from 1948 to 1963. Many went to Lebanon and offset the equilibrium and civil war ensued. Thousands of Christians fled to the US.
I agree with this. And as you pointed out - not because of “theology” but because of the Muslim’s outright HATRED of anything that reeks of the West. They are a frightening danger. Look at England!
I don't think most Protestants believe in dispensationalism or in the necessity of our defense of Israel. As a confessional Lutheran, I am completely opposed to Ted Cruz's view.
And then when I was in college, I read WILL CATHOLICS BE LEFT BEHIND? which really sealed the deal. That's when I realized how *new* premillennial dispensationalism was.
He specifically said *evangelicalism* not Protestantism.
Then again, one doesn't have to be a member of a non-denominational church with a charismatic leader (i.e. John Hagee, the living strawman of the "Christians want to start WWIII to make Jesus come back" critics) -- I believed in the LEFT BEHIND theology for several years in later middle and early high school and I was *Methodist.*
(What eventually broke me of that was a commentary on Daniel I read on a retreat as a HS junior -- the King in the North is Seleucus, the King in the South is Ptomley, and all this has already happened. If Daniel was written earlier it could still be prophetic, although that raises the question of whether Daniel is predicting Jesus as the Messiah or Judas Maccabeus. Of course there were cracks already -- I'd noticed how morbidly interested that crowd was in anything going boom between the Nile and China.)
Get in the coffin antisemite, Israel has the capacity to enrich their drawings, Americans actually do vote for these 🤡s and more Tucker Carlson vs. Ted Cruz smackdown & war with Iran memes!
I recently strained my relations with evangelical protestant friends over the current goings-on in the ME (Gaza, Syria, and now Iran). All of them, of course, are "rock solid" (i.e., cocksure) in their theologically novel and biblically insupportable beliefs about the <whisper on> Jews <end whisper> and their role in Christian eschatology. Facts, reason, and logic are impotent weapons against Christians (or anyone) who mistake intransigence for faith.
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I recently sent out the post below from Caitlin Johnstone, which provides a parodic summary of rules for discussing Israeli wars, a parody which is, unfortunately, all too true. While I am generally not a fan of Johnstone's oeuvre, she is occasionally right over the target. One of my evangelical friends apparently couldn't see the irony in Johnstone's post and responded to my email this way: "I am not interested", which I took to mean "I didn't read past the first line because it conflicted with my strongly held beliefs". This and similar responses demonstrate the extraordinary degree of cognitive dissonance that criticism -- any criticism -- of Israel creates in evangelical Christian minds. Christian Zionists become literally spittle-flecked with rage if you call what's going on in Gaza an ethnic cleansing of genocidal proportions, or the bombing of Iran as an obvious ruse to get the US involved in another war for "Greater Israel".
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What I find interesting is that the Koran and the Talmud are almost mirror images of each other. A "good" Muslim who follows the injunctions of the Koran is obliged to convert, enslave and tax, or kill non-Muslims. The Talmud, while somewhat more nuanced than the Koran, essentially enjoins the same thing: non-Jews have "inferior souls", and treating non-Jews as sub-human scum is a mitzvah (a religious duty), and a blessing to the person doing it. That is why Israeli soldiers taking potshots at Palestinian women and children, or raping Palestinian men in prison, is not considered a war crime by most Israelis. In fact, according to the Talmud, nothing done to a non-Jew is out bounds as long as it doesn't redound to the harm of Jews.
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While I am tempted to expound further on the Jewish "religion" (aka Talmudic Judaism), and the subject of exactly who counts as a "Jew", I would be repeating what others have well and better said. In particular, I offer the second link below for those who wish to dip their toe into this fascinating and eye-opening topic. To understand modern Talmudic Judaism is to understand much of what is going on in the ME.
Many, many thanks again, Chris, for enduring the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" on this and other topics essential to understand in our chaotic day and age.
So let me ask you this, bottom line, would you prefer to see Israel or Iran win this war? And if you would prefer to see Iran win this war, why? Don’t tell me that you would “prefer to see peace.“ Everybody would like to see that and, besides that, that’s a copout.
There is no "right" answer to this question, which you will, perhaps, interpret as a "non-answer" or an evasion. The fact is that both "sides" have geopolitical objectives that are being deliberately obscured by religious overtones. It is very easy to galvanize a set of warring parties when their religious sensibilities are threatened. It is altogether a different matter to get people spun up about "pipelines" and "duty free ports" and "oil and gas reserves". There are no "White Hats" in this scenario, only "interested parties". Viewed from that perspective, it matters not who "wins" this most recent confrontation. What matters is which set of transnational oligarchs get the upper hand over the others. It is that which will determine geopolitics in the region going forward.
Regardless of who modern Israel is, Israel's covenant with God was fulfilled by the coming of the Messiah. His coming was the fulfillment, and so the ending, of Israel's covenant with God.
He Himself said, at the Last Supper, "This is the chalice of My Blood; the Blood of the NEW and EVERLASTING COVENANT."
We hear this at every Mass we attend.
The Evangelicals have been duped by bad theology and seem not to have taken note of this Scriptural passage. It doesn’t take a Scripture scholar to understand once a covenant (contract, vow, promise) is fulfilled, it ends. Israel’s covenant with God ended 2000 years ago.
Looking back, I seem to remember one of the most adamant preachers promoting the idea that the current Israel still is under the Old Covenant was John Hagge. I'm now guessing he is a NWO infiltrator/plant to move the flock to the place where Ted Cruz is now.
How the Protestants never seemed to realize that what John Hagge and, as I recall others, like Pat Robertson of The 700 Club fame, were preaching was effectively anti-Christ, nullifying Jesus Christ as the Messiah and His establishment of a NEW COVENANT, and was actually Judaism.
How did people of true faith not see that? (Rhetorical question.)
Yes. The true Israel has always been spiritual. This is what Romans 9 teaches (starting at "..they are not all Israel which are of Israel", v 6). That, along with the rest of the NT, particularly Galatians 3, Galatians 6 v 15 - 16, Romans 2 v 28 - 29 and Romans 11. Your article is an excellent summary.
Romans 11 needs careful interpretation because it cannot contradict Romans 9. Paul was writing, as a saved Jew, about his desire for his fellow Jews to be saved (11 v 14, 23). When he says "..for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable." in v 29 there are a couple of aspects to this. First, the old Israel had many blessings and privileges (Romans 9 v 3 - 5), including inheriting the land at that time (the time-limited promises regarding the land were fulfilled). So those blessings remained regardless of whether they were saved or not. Second, when used in the spiritual sense, "called" refers to those who are chosen to be part of the people of God. Those who are called come to faith at some point or another. Even though Paul's fellow Jews at that time were enemies (v 28), a remnant of them would come to faith, because the Jewish nation was not totally cast off. Hence v 30 - 31.
Carrying on from this then, the key to understanding "all Israel will be saved" in v 26 is linked to the end of the passage, in v 32, where Paul says " For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all." Now the Bible doesn't teach universalism. Nor does it teach that there is a second chance after death (as far as I know). Those who are saved are saved in this life. So v 32 can't mean "all people". What it means therefore is those of whom Paul is speaking. All those who are called to faith, whether Jew or Gentile (non-Jew). Hence in another place Paul calls the elect the "Israel of God" (Galatians 6 v 15 - 16). And in another place, when James is writing to the "twelve tribes scattered among the nations" (James 1 v 1), he is writing to Christians (both Jew and Gentile converts). It was just another way to refer to them using Old Testament language.
The question of whether there will be some "mass revival" among the current day Jews in relation to Chapter 11 is debatable. However the Bible cannot support the notion that the whole modern state of Israel is chosen by God, even if one thinks it still bears some relation to Israel in the Old Testament.
Iran has Christians and Jews already living there in relative peace with the Muslim majority. I'm sure they'd be wiped out in the aftermath of a jew/us destruction of the country (if such could be accomplished).
Also Pakistan has had the bomb for years and haven't nuked anyone yet so there's that.
By your standards, MLK violated separation of Church and State, as does the Moral Monday crowd in North Carolina. They're black Protestants who believe the best Christian political policy is basically social democracy in the name of helping the poor and marginalized. There's also Catholic social teaching, which overlaps heavily with traditional Democratic priorities in terms of economics, the welfare state, etc.
And that's just Christians. Ever heard of tikkun olam? That drives a lot of left-wing Jewish political activism, even if many Jewish liberals aren't religious. One of their magazines is even called TIKKUN. There're also the Muslims in Dearborn and other parts of Michigan who don't want the Pride flags on city facilities or the gay books in schools, although to be fair local Democrats have opposed them.
The current jurisprudence is the Lemmon Test. Laws must have a clear, secular purpose. "Keeping a known state sponsor of terrorism from developing nuclear capability" is a purely secular reason to support Israel, even if it's also in alignment with the premillennial dispensationalist belief system the article is criticizing.
That, to put it politely, is equine excrement. When the gospels and the epistles were written, they were circulated widely among Christian communities in the eastern Mediterranean. Those communities consisted of slaves, farmers, shepherds, merchants, soldiers, the wealthy, the poor, men, women, Jews, Gentiles, etc. The vast majority of these people had no special theological knowledge, yet they were able to understand what those documents meant and put their ideas into practice. Besides, in Acts 17, the Jews of Berea “ search the Scriptures” (I. E., The Old Testament)) to find out for themselves whether Saint Paul’s claims about Jesus as Messiah were true. You think all of them had tremendously sophisticated theological knowledge?
So who in the bloody hell are you to say that the common man cannot understand scripture?
There’s a difference between passively listening to scripture being read and commented on, and taking the initiative to study it for oneself. Read Acts 17: 10-12.
Of course; but Catholics - at least before the anti-council - read Scripture within the context of the Church’s interpretations and dogmas. They never read Scripture to grapple with the question of orthodox interpretation, but rather they read it to augment and enrich their spiritual life. Before the anti-council, as long as Catholics stayed with approved Bibles and commentaries, they were well provided for. The problem comes in with the chaos of the novus ordo, which plunged Catholics into error and apostasy en masse. It is only after the fake council that we see all these “Catholic Bible study” groups popping up, and also the glut of self-appointed laymen posing as teachers of the Faith and interpreters of both Scripture and Tradition.
In fact, the Gospels were written down like a paperback, so they could fit into a cloak or a satchel, easily transported from place to place. The Gospel has always been a direct message to us, the peasants.
Based on Joe H's comments above and below, it looks like the (D)eformation is still alive and well, Dorothea, not to mention the Endarkenment, which was its logical corollary. Each one of the tens of thousands of protestant denominations has its own Penny Catechism, and their members memorize them as thoroughly as Catholics used to memorize the Baltimore Catechism back in the day, a practice which, alas, has long since lapsed into desuetude.
Anyway, Joe H. has obviously memorized his Penny Catechism very well, and he has pat and ready gotcha! answers for anything a poor soul not fluent in the Catholic faith might say. But comparing Penny Catechisms and caviling over this or that scriptural prooftext is a protestant's game, not a Catholic's.
High Church Anglican John Henry Newman tried to disprove the Catholic Church's claims to authority not by proof-texting but by studying her history and ended up studying his way right into the Catholic Church. An extended quote from the Introduction of his "Essay On The Development Of Christian Doctrine" is apropos here:
"...this one thing at least is certain; whatever history teaches, whatever it omits, whatever it exaggerates or extenuates, whatever it says and unsays, at least the Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this."
And then the kicker: "To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant."
Joe H. may be deep in history, but it is clearly a history colored by a priori notions and prejudicial assumptions. The gotcha! approach to ecumenical dialogue may win plaudits in some evangelical circles but at the end of the day it is really just a form of mental self-abuse.
When you make an assertion worthy of a response I will address it. As it is, your view of Christian history is a warmed-over farrago of jaundiced tropes long-since dispatched by serious historians less concerned with stirring up combox controversy than with an accurate portrayal of the development of the Christian religion. In short, me taedio afficis.
You know, whenever I hear Catholics talk about Christianity, not being a “religion of the book,“ it usually means they’re devaluing the divine revelation within scripture to promote an esoteric, pseudo-sacramental theology — much of which contradicts the basic thrust of divine revelation — that justifies the existence of an isolated clerical class.
Ms. Ludwig-Wang conveniently forgets that most of the New Testament was written before 70 A.D., with the lone exception being John’s contributions (his gospel, three epistles and the Book of Revelation), which were written by 100 A.D. She also conveniently forgets that in the immediate decades following Jesus‘s ascension, liturgy as Catholics and Eastern Orthodox define it did not exist. That’s because the vast majority of the earliest Christians were Jews who were familiar with a completely different type of worship. For example, when Peter healed the lame man in Acts 3, Peter and John were heading toward the Jerusalem temple to worship.
The kind of liturgy that Catholics and Eastern Orthodox use did not develop immediately after the ascension, but took centuries to develop.
In fact, the earliest controversy in the church had to do with whether Gentiles needed to become Jews and follow the Mosaic Law before embracing Jesus as Messiah. That right there tells you that liturgy as Catholics and Eastern Orthodox view it had yet to be implemented.
Take transubstantiation, which was not dogmatized until the 13th century (thereby calling into question how the earliest Christians actually did view communion before the 13th century).
That dogma takes Jesus' words out of their historical, cultural and theological context. There's no way Jesus could have meant his words in terms of literal flesh and blood because had he done so, he would have been disobeying the Mosaic Law (and would have been encouraging his followers to do likewise). Consuming blood was perhaps *the* biggest religious taboo among the Jews. That's the reason for the disbelief among the crowd and even his disciples.Had he violated the Mosaic law, Jesus would have forfeited his status as the only perfect sacrifice acceptable to a holy, righteous God to atone for human sin.
Besides, John consistently portrays Jesus as using natural metaphors to describe supernatural facts: being "born again" (which Nicodemus took literally), providing "living water" (which the Samaritan woman took literally), being both the "good shepherd" and the "sheepgate" (which his hearers could not understand). Given that framework, Jesus likely did not mean what Catholics claim he meant.
The key to understanding lies in John 7:37-39 because John gives an interpretation confirming how Jesus used physical metaphors to communicate supernatural truths. Now if he did that in John 7, why would he be any different in John 6?
The key to that whole passage is John 6:63: "My words are spirit and My words are life; the flesh profits nothing." He is saying that his words can't be interpreted in a conventional, natural manner. They're referring to supernatural facts. Moreover, the church sabotages its own theology when its states that the Real Presence vacates the body before the host is digested. If that's true, then what's the point? See https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/64057/on-the-eucharist-and-human-digestion
So what did Jesus mean? Read John 14:23. He meant the *supernatural* residence of the triune God within the believer. St. Paul alludes to this when he talks about "Christ in you" being "the hope of glory" in Colossians. The whole idea of people being "in Christ" and of Christ being "in" believers points to a supernatural reality, not a physical one.
Moreover, Ms. Ludwig-Wang, though she is right about literacy being low in the first century, disregard the fact that the earliest copies of the epistles and gospels were *read* to groups of believers and circulated widely among the various Christian communities. So her description of “reading a text“ is inaccurate and disingenuous. Besides, such authors as Paul, Peter and James made such a point of practical application that it would be impossible to ignore for anyone who wish to do so.
In trying to criticize what she views as Protestant ignorance, Ms. Ludwig-Wang merely exposed her own.
I invite all Protestants to explore the website Eternal Christendom, which explores the writings of the Early Church Fathers (https://eternalchristendom.com/becoming-catholic/articles/ then scroll down to “Browse Articles by Topic“).
I also should assume that your “response” means that you would prefer people to believe religious propaganda — or any propaganda — rather than find out truth for themselves.
Well, you *are* a traditionalist Catholic — which means you expect us peasants to offer blind deference and obedience to clerical authorities, no matter how hypocritical or corrupt they are, and to never, ever think for ourselves or use the minds that a holy, righteous God who created the human race in his *free* image gave us.
By the way, thanks for the compliment. Literacy truly is a fantastic thing. You actually should learn to read. It might teach you to disregard the illogical nonsense and superstition that people of your ilk promote.
What’s wild about the “I will bless those who bless Israel” belief is that this phrase is nowhere in the Bible. I liked your article, but I’m not sure you hammered this point enough. God says it to Abram, before he is Abraham, two generations before the man Israel is born! Logically, taking this verse out of context would be means ALL of Abraham’s children must be blessed, including the Edomites and Ishmaelites, WHO ARE THE ARABS AND MUSLIMS
Something Senator Cruz never bothers to delve into because he works for modern-day Israel from the moment he gets up to the moment he lays down. It's just a patina of religious belief, with a shmear of Christianity.
Great work! I’m Eastern Orthodox and (for what it’s worth) endorse your article.
Schism is a sin against charity and puts one outside the Body of Christ. Happily while one is breathing one may convert.
A text from the 1920s 'Defense of the Catholic Church', states, regarding Oriental schismatics: lack Apostolicity because they renounce the Papacy; Oriental schismatics lack unity claiming authority amongst a plethora of schismatic sees; they lack Catholicity because they are national entities.
Pope Pius IX in his encyclicals Amantissimo humani (1862), Ubi urbaniano (1864), Levate (1867) and Omnem sollicitudinem (1874) addresses the enmity and violence against Catholics wrought by the 'orthodox schismatics'.
Recent martyrs of Holy unia: Bishop Nicholas Charnetsky (1884–1959), Bishop Vasyl Velychkovsky (1903–1973), Father Zenon Kovalyk (1903–1941) and Father
Ivan Ziatyk (1899-1952).
Your article is correct. However, the Middle East is not about bad theology. It’s about Islam and the their Satanic world view. Muslims hate anyone who is not Muslim. The Koran directs all Muslims to convert non-Muslims. If the non-Muslims do not convert, then they kill them. We cannot allow people this backwards to EVER develop a nuclear bomb. They would use it in a heartbeat against all Christian religions and peoples.
If we are at truly war with radical political Islam, then why, after every Western and/or Israeli military action in the Levant, the greater Middle East, and Eastern Africa, does the action result in extinction level purges of indigenous Christians, and leave the very Islamists originally targeted in control of the disputed territory? The music of Middle East conflict does not seem to match the words.
Your point is well taken. Islam is certainly not a theologically healthy offshoot of Christianity but pointing out their crazy theology in no way makes Talmudic Judiasm any less evil.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but from the founding of Israel in 1948 to modern day, the Christian population across the Levant and the Middle East overall has declined by over 90%. The Muslim population has maintained or increased. The declines correlate to Western military action, not necessarily to Muslim expansion, which tends to follow said military action.
You should check out Darryl's series on this: https://www.martyrmade.com/featured-podcasts/fear-loathing-in-the-new-jerusalem
Exactly.
Candace Owens is a lame polemicist. She conservatives for money. Her lack of Catholic catechesis as she dons her mantle as a new Catholic convert, Traditionalist at that, takes her mouth to places her brain has never been. She does more harm than good setting Catholicism politically against Judaism while her inch deep knowledge of the Bible and Catholic theology is still mostly set in her old evangelical upbringing. She needs to spend more time in from of the Blessed Sacrament and less time in front of the camera.
Yes, that's true. She does need to sit in front of the Blessed Sacrament more often, as we all do. However, Mrs. Farmer is a sincere convert. It didn't help her in any way, shape, or form (monetarily) to become Catholic. In fact, she is very circumspect about her new won Faith: she is very careful to not claim knowledge or experience she does not have (in the Faith). She did not have to tell anyone of her conversion, and yet, because she has proudly related the story of her journey to Catholicism, I think, she has been a quiet evangelist. Working as she did as a Catholic in a Zionist organization such as Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire must have been extremely trying, especially after October 7th. As a mother of several young children as Mrs. Farmer is, it must have been devastating to listen to grown men, fathers themselves, at the Daily Wire, cheer on the destruction of babies and other human beings, Christian or Moslem, who were all Palestinians and who had the misfortune of living in their ancient homeland and not having moved to New Jersey before October 7th.
I applaud my fellow Catholic sister in the Faith, Candace Owens Farmer on using her platform, not for $, but to speak boldly & clearly against the Zionists & their delusional supporters who see the destruction of all ancient peoples as a mere road bump on the modern pathway to Greater Israel.
She's an asset.
I agree I went off on a Candace Owens tangent. Sorry. But my original point was that the purge of Christian’s from the Middle East doesn’t correlate directly with Muslim populations. It correlates to Western military action against Islamist groups, where said Islamists are left in charge to purge Christians. This has been the template for the extinction level erasure of Christianity from the Middle East for going on 80 years.
rapidly diminishing numbers of Christians in Palestine is due to the creation of Israel. Christians are constantly caught in the crossfire of Jews and Muslims. Israelis killed or ousted many Muslims from 1948 to 1963. Many went to Lebanon and offset the equilibrium and civil war ensued. Thousands of Christians fled to the US.
Exactly.
Hello, Pakistan?
I agree with this. And as you pointed out - not because of “theology” but because of the Muslim’s outright HATRED of anything that reeks of the West. They are a frightening danger. Look at England!
This is such a well written and concise article I can't believe it is free. Thank you for publishing it.
I don't think most Protestants believe in dispensationalism or in the necessity of our defense of Israel. As a confessional Lutheran, I am completely opposed to Ted Cruz's view.
And then when I was in college, I read WILL CATHOLICS BE LEFT BEHIND? which really sealed the deal. That's when I realized how *new* premillennial dispensationalism was.
He specifically said *evangelicalism* not Protestantism.
Then again, one doesn't have to be a member of a non-denominational church with a charismatic leader (i.e. John Hagee, the living strawman of the "Christians want to start WWIII to make Jesus come back" critics) -- I believed in the LEFT BEHIND theology for several years in later middle and early high school and I was *Methodist.*
(What eventually broke me of that was a commentary on Daniel I read on a retreat as a HS junior -- the King in the North is Seleucus, the King in the South is Ptomley, and all this has already happened. If Daniel was written earlier it could still be prophetic, although that raises the question of whether Daniel is predicting Jesus as the Messiah or Judas Maccabeus. Of course there were cracks already -- I'd noticed how morbidly interested that crowd was in anything going boom between the Nile and China.)
Chris, I linked and quoted your post since you know more about theology than I do :)
𝐖𝐖𝟑𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐚: 𝐁𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐓𝐮𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐫 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐯𝐬. 𝐓𝐞𝐝 𝐂𝐫𝐮𝐳 𝐒𝐦𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧 & 𝐖𝐚𝐫 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐈𝐫𝐚𝐧 𝐌𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐬
Get in the coffin antisemite, Israel has the capacity to enrich their drawings, Americans actually do vote for these 🤡s and more Tucker Carlson vs. Ted Cruz smackdown & war with Iran memes!
https://covidsteria.substack.com/p/ww3steria-best-tucker-carlson-vs-ted-cruz-smackdown-war-with-iran-memes
Thanks!
Excellent summation…. I pray for the demise of dispensationalism to accelerate… please oh Lord…
The cultic dispy/zionist/evangelical industrial complex is strong out there.
I recently strained my relations with evangelical protestant friends over the current goings-on in the ME (Gaza, Syria, and now Iran). All of them, of course, are "rock solid" (i.e., cocksure) in their theologically novel and biblically insupportable beliefs about the <whisper on> Jews <end whisper> and their role in Christian eschatology. Facts, reason, and logic are impotent weapons against Christians (or anyone) who mistake intransigence for faith.
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I recently sent out the post below from Caitlin Johnstone, which provides a parodic summary of rules for discussing Israeli wars, a parody which is, unfortunately, all too true. While I am generally not a fan of Johnstone's oeuvre, she is occasionally right over the target. One of my evangelical friends apparently couldn't see the irony in Johnstone's post and responded to my email this way: "I am not interested", which I took to mean "I didn't read past the first line because it conflicted with my strongly held beliefs". This and similar responses demonstrate the extraordinary degree of cognitive dissonance that criticism -- any criticism -- of Israel creates in evangelical Christian minds. Christian Zionists become literally spittle-flecked with rage if you call what's going on in Gaza an ethnic cleansing of genocidal proportions, or the bombing of Iran as an obvious ruse to get the US involved in another war for "Greater Israel".
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What I find interesting is that the Koran and the Talmud are almost mirror images of each other. A "good" Muslim who follows the injunctions of the Koran is obliged to convert, enslave and tax, or kill non-Muslims. The Talmud, while somewhat more nuanced than the Koran, essentially enjoins the same thing: non-Jews have "inferior souls", and treating non-Jews as sub-human scum is a mitzvah (a religious duty), and a blessing to the person doing it. That is why Israeli soldiers taking potshots at Palestinian women and children, or raping Palestinian men in prison, is not considered a war crime by most Israelis. In fact, according to the Talmud, nothing done to a non-Jew is out bounds as long as it doesn't redound to the harm of Jews.
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While I am tempted to expound further on the Jewish "religion" (aka Talmudic Judaism), and the subject of exactly who counts as a "Jew", I would be repeating what others have well and better said. In particular, I offer the second link below for those who wish to dip their toe into this fascinating and eye-opening topic. To understand modern Talmudic Judaism is to understand much of what is going on in the ME.
Many, many thanks again, Chris, for enduring the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" on this and other topics essential to understand in our chaotic day and age.
https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/refresher-on-the-rules-for-discussing-israeli-wars-3dc9b4857c6a
https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-oddities-of-the-jewish-religion/
So let me ask you this, bottom line, would you prefer to see Israel or Iran win this war? And if you would prefer to see Iran win this war, why? Don’t tell me that you would “prefer to see peace.“ Everybody would like to see that and, besides that, that’s a copout.
Joe:
There is no "right" answer to this question, which you will, perhaps, interpret as a "non-answer" or an evasion. The fact is that both "sides" have geopolitical objectives that are being deliberately obscured by religious overtones. It is very easy to galvanize a set of warring parties when their religious sensibilities are threatened. It is altogether a different matter to get people spun up about "pipelines" and "duty free ports" and "oil and gas reserves". There are no "White Hats" in this scenario, only "interested parties". Viewed from that perspective, it matters not who "wins" this most recent confrontation. What matters is which set of transnational oligarchs get the upper hand over the others. It is that which will determine geopolitics in the region going forward.
And who are the "transnational oligarchs" in question?
Well said! I look forward to reading your article. Thank you!!!
Regardless of who modern Israel is, Israel's covenant with God was fulfilled by the coming of the Messiah. His coming was the fulfillment, and so the ending, of Israel's covenant with God.
He Himself said, at the Last Supper, "This is the chalice of My Blood; the Blood of the NEW and EVERLASTING COVENANT."
We hear this at every Mass we attend.
The Evangelicals have been duped by bad theology and seem not to have taken note of this Scriptural passage. It doesn’t take a Scripture scholar to understand once a covenant (contract, vow, promise) is fulfilled, it ends. Israel’s covenant with God ended 2000 years ago.
Looking back, I seem to remember one of the most adamant preachers promoting the idea that the current Israel still is under the Old Covenant was John Hagge. I'm now guessing he is a NWO infiltrator/plant to move the flock to the place where Ted Cruz is now.
How the Protestants never seemed to realize that what John Hagge and, as I recall others, like Pat Robertson of The 700 Club fame, were preaching was effectively anti-Christ, nullifying Jesus Christ as the Messiah and His establishment of a NEW COVENANT, and was actually Judaism.
How did people of true faith not see that? (Rhetorical question.)
Yes. The true Israel has always been spiritual. This is what Romans 9 teaches (starting at "..they are not all Israel which are of Israel", v 6). That, along with the rest of the NT, particularly Galatians 3, Galatians 6 v 15 - 16, Romans 2 v 28 - 29 and Romans 11. Your article is an excellent summary.
Romans 11 needs careful interpretation because it cannot contradict Romans 9. Paul was writing, as a saved Jew, about his desire for his fellow Jews to be saved (11 v 14, 23). When he says "..for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable." in v 29 there are a couple of aspects to this. First, the old Israel had many blessings and privileges (Romans 9 v 3 - 5), including inheriting the land at that time (the time-limited promises regarding the land were fulfilled). So those blessings remained regardless of whether they were saved or not. Second, when used in the spiritual sense, "called" refers to those who are chosen to be part of the people of God. Those who are called come to faith at some point or another. Even though Paul's fellow Jews at that time were enemies (v 28), a remnant of them would come to faith, because the Jewish nation was not totally cast off. Hence v 30 - 31.
Carrying on from this then, the key to understanding "all Israel will be saved" in v 26 is linked to the end of the passage, in v 32, where Paul says " For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all." Now the Bible doesn't teach universalism. Nor does it teach that there is a second chance after death (as far as I know). Those who are saved are saved in this life. So v 32 can't mean "all people". What it means therefore is those of whom Paul is speaking. All those who are called to faith, whether Jew or Gentile (non-Jew). Hence in another place Paul calls the elect the "Israel of God" (Galatians 6 v 15 - 16). And in another place, when James is writing to the "twelve tribes scattered among the nations" (James 1 v 1), he is writing to Christians (both Jew and Gentile converts). It was just another way to refer to them using Old Testament language.
The question of whether there will be some "mass revival" among the current day Jews in relation to Chapter 11 is debatable. However the Bible cannot support the notion that the whole modern state of Israel is chosen by God, even if one thinks it still bears some relation to Israel in the Old Testament.
I live in Texas, the one star state. Sent this substack to Ted.
Iran has Christians and Jews already living there in relative peace with the Muslim majority. I'm sure they'd be wiped out in the aftermath of a jew/us destruction of the country (if such could be accomplished).
Also Pakistan has had the bomb for years and haven't nuked anyone yet so there's that.
Great work. It also does not help with the separation of Church and State mandate.
By your standards, MLK violated separation of Church and State, as does the Moral Monday crowd in North Carolina. They're black Protestants who believe the best Christian political policy is basically social democracy in the name of helping the poor and marginalized. There's also Catholic social teaching, which overlaps heavily with traditional Democratic priorities in terms of economics, the welfare state, etc.
And that's just Christians. Ever heard of tikkun olam? That drives a lot of left-wing Jewish political activism, even if many Jewish liberals aren't religious. One of their magazines is even called TIKKUN. There're also the Muslims in Dearborn and other parts of Michigan who don't want the Pride flags on city facilities or the gay books in schools, although to be fair local Democrats have opposed them.
The current jurisprudence is the Lemmon Test. Laws must have a clear, secular purpose. "Keeping a known state sponsor of terrorism from developing nuclear capability" is a purely secular reason to support Israel, even if it's also in alignment with the premillennial dispensationalist belief system the article is criticizing.
See what happens? This is why the Church didn't want peasants reading the Bible.
That, to put it politely, is equine excrement. When the gospels and the epistles were written, they were circulated widely among Christian communities in the eastern Mediterranean. Those communities consisted of slaves, farmers, shepherds, merchants, soldiers, the wealthy, the poor, men, women, Jews, Gentiles, etc. The vast majority of these people had no special theological knowledge, yet they were able to understand what those documents meant and put their ideas into practice. Besides, in Acts 17, the Jews of Berea “ search the Scriptures” (I. E., The Old Testament)) to find out for themselves whether Saint Paul’s claims about Jesus as Messiah were true. You think all of them had tremendously sophisticated theological knowledge?
So who in the bloody hell are you to say that the common man cannot understand scripture?
I mean, the Scriptures are read and commented upon at Mass and the Divine Liturgy - places peasants frequent.
There’s a difference between passively listening to scripture being read and commented on, and taking the initiative to study it for oneself. Read Acts 17: 10-12.
Of course; but Catholics - at least before the anti-council - read Scripture within the context of the Church’s interpretations and dogmas. They never read Scripture to grapple with the question of orthodox interpretation, but rather they read it to augment and enrich their spiritual life. Before the anti-council, as long as Catholics stayed with approved Bibles and commentaries, they were well provided for. The problem comes in with the chaos of the novus ordo, which plunged Catholics into error and apostasy en masse. It is only after the fake council that we see all these “Catholic Bible study” groups popping up, and also the glut of self-appointed laymen posing as teachers of the Faith and interpreters of both Scripture and Tradition.
In fact, the Gospels were written down like a paperback, so they could fit into a cloak or a satchel, easily transported from place to place. The Gospel has always been a direct message to us, the peasants.
Based on Joe H's comments above and below, it looks like the (D)eformation is still alive and well, Dorothea, not to mention the Endarkenment, which was its logical corollary. Each one of the tens of thousands of protestant denominations has its own Penny Catechism, and their members memorize them as thoroughly as Catholics used to memorize the Baltimore Catechism back in the day, a practice which, alas, has long since lapsed into desuetude.
Anyway, Joe H. has obviously memorized his Penny Catechism very well, and he has pat and ready gotcha! answers for anything a poor soul not fluent in the Catholic faith might say. But comparing Penny Catechisms and caviling over this or that scriptural prooftext is a protestant's game, not a Catholic's.
High Church Anglican John Henry Newman tried to disprove the Catholic Church's claims to authority not by proof-texting but by studying her history and ended up studying his way right into the Catholic Church. An extended quote from the Introduction of his "Essay On The Development Of Christian Doctrine" is apropos here:
"...this one thing at least is certain; whatever history teaches, whatever it omits, whatever it exaggerates or extenuates, whatever it says and unsays, at least the Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this."
And then the kicker: "To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant."
Joe H. may be deep in history, but it is clearly a history colored by a priori notions and prejudicial assumptions. The gotcha! approach to ecumenical dialogue may win plaudits in some evangelical circles but at the end of the day it is really just a form of mental self-abuse.
That is an excellent job of not addressing any of the assertions I made. You have refined the exquisite skill of by saying a lot, you saying nothing.
When you make an assertion worthy of a response I will address it. As it is, your view of Christian history is a warmed-over farrago of jaundiced tropes long-since dispatched by serious historians less concerned with stirring up combox controversy than with an accurate portrayal of the development of the Christian religion. In short, me taedio afficis.
I will leave you with the following, <i>pace</i> Newman:
"To be deep into Scripture is to cease to be a Catholic."
Completely and profoundly agree.
Beautifully said!
You know, whenever I hear Catholics talk about Christianity, not being a “religion of the book,“ it usually means they’re devaluing the divine revelation within scripture to promote an esoteric, pseudo-sacramental theology — much of which contradicts the basic thrust of divine revelation — that justifies the existence of an isolated clerical class.
Ms. Ludwig-Wang conveniently forgets that most of the New Testament was written before 70 A.D., with the lone exception being John’s contributions (his gospel, three epistles and the Book of Revelation), which were written by 100 A.D. She also conveniently forgets that in the immediate decades following Jesus‘s ascension, liturgy as Catholics and Eastern Orthodox define it did not exist. That’s because the vast majority of the earliest Christians were Jews who were familiar with a completely different type of worship. For example, when Peter healed the lame man in Acts 3, Peter and John were heading toward the Jerusalem temple to worship.
The kind of liturgy that Catholics and Eastern Orthodox use did not develop immediately after the ascension, but took centuries to develop.
In fact, the earliest controversy in the church had to do with whether Gentiles needed to become Jews and follow the Mosaic Law before embracing Jesus as Messiah. That right there tells you that liturgy as Catholics and Eastern Orthodox view it had yet to be implemented.
Take transubstantiation, which was not dogmatized until the 13th century (thereby calling into question how the earliest Christians actually did view communion before the 13th century).
That dogma takes Jesus' words out of their historical, cultural and theological context. There's no way Jesus could have meant his words in terms of literal flesh and blood because had he done so, he would have been disobeying the Mosaic Law (and would have been encouraging his followers to do likewise). Consuming blood was perhaps *the* biggest religious taboo among the Jews. That's the reason for the disbelief among the crowd and even his disciples.Had he violated the Mosaic law, Jesus would have forfeited his status as the only perfect sacrifice acceptable to a holy, righteous God to atone for human sin.
Besides, John consistently portrays Jesus as using natural metaphors to describe supernatural facts: being "born again" (which Nicodemus took literally), providing "living water" (which the Samaritan woman took literally), being both the "good shepherd" and the "sheepgate" (which his hearers could not understand). Given that framework, Jesus likely did not mean what Catholics claim he meant.
The key to understanding lies in John 7:37-39 because John gives an interpretation confirming how Jesus used physical metaphors to communicate supernatural truths. Now if he did that in John 7, why would he be any different in John 6?
The key to that whole passage is John 6:63: "My words are spirit and My words are life; the flesh profits nothing." He is saying that his words can't be interpreted in a conventional, natural manner. They're referring to supernatural facts. Moreover, the church sabotages its own theology when its states that the Real Presence vacates the body before the host is digested. If that's true, then what's the point? See https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/64057/on-the-eucharist-and-human-digestion
So what did Jesus mean? Read John 14:23. He meant the *supernatural* residence of the triune God within the believer. St. Paul alludes to this when he talks about "Christ in you" being "the hope of glory" in Colossians. The whole idea of people being "in Christ" and of Christ being "in" believers points to a supernatural reality, not a physical one.
Moreover, Ms. Ludwig-Wang, though she is right about literacy being low in the first century, disregard the fact that the earliest copies of the epistles and gospels were *read* to groups of believers and circulated widely among the various Christian communities. So her description of “reading a text“ is inaccurate and disingenuous. Besides, such authors as Paul, Peter and James made such a point of practical application that it would be impossible to ignore for anyone who wish to do so.
In trying to criticize what she views as Protestant ignorance, Ms. Ludwig-Wang merely exposed her own.
I invite all Protestants to explore the website Eternal Christendom, which explores the writings of the Early Church Fathers (https://eternalchristendom.com/becoming-catholic/articles/ then scroll down to “Browse Articles by Topic“).
May God bless and guide you & your loved ones.
I also should assume that your “response” means that you would prefer people to believe religious propaganda — or any propaganda — rather than find out truth for themselves.
Joseph Goebbels would have loved you.
Well, you *are* a traditionalist Catholic — which means you expect us peasants to offer blind deference and obedience to clerical authorities, no matter how hypocritical or corrupt they are, and to never, ever think for ourselves or use the minds that a holy, righteous God who created the human race in his *free* image gave us.
By the way, thanks for the compliment. Literacy truly is a fantastic thing. You actually should learn to read. It might teach you to disregard the illogical nonsense and superstition that people of your ilk promote.
Then again, I guess you would be out of a job.
😂😂😂
"You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you are talking about. War is a terrible thing." William Tecumseh Sherman.
U.S. milit involvement in Middle East