Replies

I appreciate the good will of the Christian community. It plays a big part in American politics and America’s relationship with Israel.

But that good will did not always exist. Peter the Hermit spread his ‘good will’ up and down the Rhine Valley leaving death and destruction to thousands, then attacked the Muslim Empire and his entire makeshift host was destroyed in short order. But he returned to Europe with the loot he had acquired on the Rhine, and used it to build a monastery, where he lived out his life in pious devotion.

I cannot blame present-day American Christians for his crimes, any more than I can blame Greek Orthodox Christians for the depredations of Bogdan Chmelnicki.

At the same time, these crimes were committed in the name of your savior, which is part of the reason he is not mine.

But let’s separate our theological perspectives, which is all that is about, from the relationship between present-day American Christians and the State of Israel.

I like and respect American Christians, and their support for my chosen home is a good thing. But if that support is predicated on the notion that because of this good will, I will eventually accept Jesus as my lord and savior, the answer is no, for reasons best left to a discussion of theology. If that alters our relationship for the worst, so be it.

Now as for the United States telling the Muslim states “Do what you want. We will not lift a finger in response,” that already happened in 1948. The Arab states closed in for the kill. The outgoing British, then under the leftist Labour government, said “do what you want” and didn’t lift a finger in response, other than to allow their officers to stay at their respective commands in the attacking Arab League. The UN put an arms blockade around the Middle East which the Arab states easily circumvented, and the infant State of Israel, hard put to find adequate arms because of the blockade, was expected to be smothered in its cradle. But it was not. The conflict was bloody, but Israel survived and even won a few. Why is too complicated a mix of theology and pragmatism to get into. But in sum it wasn’t because of any support by any temporal power.

I am a Jewish believer in Jesus (Yeshua). Belief in Jesus rests solely on the credibility of the accounts of Jesus as compiled in the New Testament - His resurrection being of particular importance. A good deal of the evil done to Jews was by the Roman Catholic church. FYI the Roman Catholic church also murdered millions of Christians - in theory in the name of Christ. It's irrelevant to the issue.

Quite a few books have been written by people who had set out to disprove the historicity of the NT, and as a result of their investigations became Christians. For example,

Sir William Mitchell Ramsay, a 19th Century English historian and prolific writer, held a pervasive anti-Biblical bias. He believed the historical accounts in the Book of Acts were written in the mid-2nd Century. Ramsay was skeptical of Luke’s authorship and the historicity of the Book of Acts, and he set out to prove his suspicions. He began a detailed study of the archaeological evidence, and eventually came to an illuminating conclusion: the historical and archaeological evidence supported Luke’s 1st Century authorship and historical reliability:

“(There are) reasons for placing the author of Acts among the historians of the first rank” (Sir William Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveler and the Roman Citizen, p. 4).

Ramsay became convinced of Luke’s reliability based on the accurate description of historical events and settings. Ramsay wasn’t the only scholar to be impressed by Luke’s accuracy:
“One of the most remarkable tokens of (Luke’s) accuracy is his sure familiarity with the proper titles of all the notable persons who are mentioned . . . Cyprus, for example, which was an imperial province until 22 BC, became a senatorial province in that year, and was therefore governed no longer by an imperial legate but by a proconsul. And so, when Paul and Barnabas arrived in Cyprus about AD 47, it was the proconsul Sergius Paullus whom they met . . .’ (F.F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?, p. 82).

Josh McDowell also set out to disprove the NT and became a Christian. He ended up authoring one of the most authoritative Christian apologetics, Evidence That Demands a Verdict. Besides the Book of Acts, Luke wrote one of the four Gospel accounts.

Another book by a one time atheist is Lee Strobel. He was stunned when his wife became a Christian and decided to investigate it (in order to disprove of course). As a lawyer, he analyses the question as one would a legal case in The Case for Christ. As he relates in the introduction:

I plunged into the case with more vigor than with any story I had ever pursued. I applied the training I had received at Yale Law School as well as my experience as legal affairs editor of the Chicago Tribune. And over time the evidence of the world—of history, of science, of philosophy, of psychology—began to point toward the unthinkable.