About two years ago I had lunch with one of the Pastors of a church that had subtle leanings toward the area of replacement theology which, in essence, purports that the Jewish people had been replaced by the "Church". He asked me "Do you really believe that the Israel of today is the same as the ancient people of the Bible?" My response to him was "If you don't believe that the Jewish people of today are the Israel of the Bible you don't understand the depth of the nature of the love of God. That's what the Book of Hosea is all about... the passionate unrelenting love of a man spurned by his unfaithful wife as an illustration of the passionate pursuit of a God who never gives up on the people He loves."
Today we are witnessing some the fruit of God's unfailing pursuit of His people. Israel, half of her people with trowels and half of them with spears (Nehemiah 4) has created, without doubt, the most compassionate army in the history of the world.
War is a product of evil. Evil draws good people into war out of necessity. Israel has been drawn into a war which, upon her success hinges the very survival of the Jewish people.
Israel's enemy is motivated by an ideology of evil and a cult of death. The leaders of this enemy band seek only to murder. They seek to kill any Israeli be he young, old, male, female, military or civilian with absolutely no strategic plan. Their only goal is to destroy. Furthermore the very people they have allegedly been entrusted to govern, the Palestinians, are used as expendable pawns to be "martyred" for the cause of their false god heralded by their pseudo prophet Muhammad. The deaths of these poor people are put on display before the television sets of the world so as to arouse international hatred for their Israeli enemies.
Israel has absolutely no recourse but to defend herself. She has gone through great lengths to provide protection for her citizens, and although not perfect, she has done her utmost to spare the lives of Palestinians. She has used phone calls, leaflets, dud bombs and other advanced warning methods to implore Palestinians to get out of harms way in advance of a pin-point attack to destroy a weapon or a specific enemy combatant. She has also hospitalized wounded Palestinian including those who were enemy combatants.
Statistics from Al Jazeera (a not-friendly-to-Israel news organization) reveal that the majority of Palestinians killed in this conflagration have been men between the ages of 18 to 38. In light of the fact that the average Palestinian age is 14 and that the enemy combatants use women and children as human shields, this truly reflects Israel's extraordinary efforts to spare life. If Israel had the same mentality as her enemies she could have simply carpet bombed Gaza and gotten over with it.
The contrast between the attitudes of Hamas and Israel are breathtaking. The former wishes to promote death. The latter wishes to preserve life. The former is egged on by a phony god promulgated by a phony prophet. The latter is a people whose history has been guided by the God of Israel who has used Torah, history, millenia of persecution, galute (diaspora), rabbinic tradition and even rejection of rabbinic tradition to create a "segula"... a people who are a prized possession regardless of their belief or unbelief. They have become an exemplary but imperfect people with an imperfect but nevertheless comparatively compassionate army.
We are now stepping into a new age where it will be more and more obvious that the nations of this world will be judged by their acknowledgment or lack thereof of the contrast between Israel and her enemies. Woe to those who do not see that contrast.
I can also say with relative confidence in light of Romans 11:17-21 "Woe to the local church that would seek to keep the Jewishness of Jesus off the metaphorical front page headline of the Bible" and assume that the Church has replaced the Jewish people. What is going on today is further evidence that the Church has not.
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