Posted on 07/26/2007 6:41:46 PM PDT by Zionist Conspirator
The National Council of Churches (NCC) is distressed that not all Christians share its animosity towards Israel.
Preferring not to address its own demographic implosion, the NCC periodically lashes out at more demographically robust Christian movements, especially conservative evangelicals. In its latest fusillade, the NCC denounced the “Christian Zionism” of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), which recently convened its second convention in Washington for pro-Israel evangelicals. Newt Gringrich was among the speakers.
“CUFI's position of uncritical support for Israel separates it from the Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox, and traditional Protestant Churches, all of whom support Israel while at the same time advocate for a Palestinian state,” insisted the NCC’s news release, which mostly quoted Associated General Secretary for International Affairs and Peace Antonios Kireopoulos.
The NCC official asserted that “most Christians” do not share CFI’s stated goals. CFI’s objective, as its website describes, is to increase support for Israel among evangelicals by emphasizing the “the Jewish contribution to Christianity and Israel’s biblical mandate to the land through Bible teachings.”
CFI warns that “with every passing day, the threats to Israel and the Jewish people are growing,” specifically referencing Iran’s nuclear plans and Hamas’ popularity among Palestinians. “Millions of Christians across America have a deep love for Israel and the Jewish people and want to stand with them during these difficult days,” notes the CUFI website, which cites the “threats to Judeo-Christian civilization from radical Islam.”
Speaking unpleasantly about radical jihadists, of course, is unacceptable to the NCC and the Religious Left. "CUFI's ongoing vilification of Islam is also unacceptable," fretted Shanta Premawardhana, an NCC interfaith relations official. "The NCC continues to urge Christians to build relationships with Muslim people, the vast majority of whom are peace-loving, law-abiding people." What the NCC never considers is that refusal to address radical Islamists is no favor to moderate Muslims who are “peace-loving.”
According to the NCC, the CFI has “advocated going to war with Iran,” which is “totally unacceptable,” Premawardhana claimed. "The NCC believes that high-level dialogues with Iran and other Middle Eastern partners is the proper method of dealing with Iran." The NCC believes in high toned denunciations for Christians who disagree with its political agenda. But radical Islamists and other often very savage adversaries of Western Civilization always merit endless respectful dialogue, according to the NCC mindset.
The NCC, like the rest of the Religious Left, prefers to dismiss all pro-Israel evangelicals as “Left-Behind” fanatics whose support for the Jews is merely a crass and self-serving preparation for the end-times. CFI’s “efforts are the latest in a century old apocalyptic movement that began in earnest in the 19th century,” the NCC asserted. “Sometimes called Christian Zionism because of its uncritical support for the State of Israel, it is based on a literal reading of Biblical apocalyptic texts.”
Actually, Zionism and philo-semitism have a long history in Christianity, arguably dating back to the New Testament, whose writers were themselves Jews who followed a Jewish messiah, obviously. But more specifically among Western Protestants, a mystical attachment to the Jewish people and a belief in their connectedness to the land of Israel originated at least with the English Puritans. Zionism of some sort has nearly always resonated among some religionists in America over the last 400 years.
The NCC's founders and early leaders were themselves ardent supporters of Israel. It was not until after the radicalization of the 1960's, and the advent of Liberation Theology, that leftist Protestant prelates suddenly realized that Palestinian insurrectionists were actually God's revolutionary vanguard against Zionist imperialism. Today, the NCC and its allies insist that they support Israel, within its pre-1967 borders. Naturally, these clerics prefer not to acknowledge that those borders are largely indefensible, and that an unrestricted "right of return" for Palestinian descendants would likely erase the Jewish state demographically.
According to Kireopoulos, the CUFI "message differs greatly with what theologians have taught for centuries" about Israel. Apparently, the NCC believes itself a mouthpiece for orthodox theology, instead of the shrinking pulpit for heterodox liberal Protestantism that it actually is. That the restoration of the Jews to Israel may serve some Providential purpose is hardly a belief confined to freakish evangelicals, as the Religous Left, sitting inside its insulated and largely empty churches, prefers to imagine.
"The NCC advocates for a two-state solution, with a secure Israel alongside a viable Palestinian state," declared the NCC news release, sounding so very reasonable. "The NCC has stated the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories is unsupportable. This position is shared by Churches worldwide, and is counter to the position espoused by CUFI."
According to Kireopoulos, "CUFI stands apart from the historic Churches still present in the Holy Land." These churches for Palestinian Christians are "adversely affected by the policies supported by...CUFI." The NCC prelate blamed pro-Israel evangelicals in the U.S. for the plight of Palestinian churches, which are "diminishing and are threatened with extinction."
Of course, the NCC will never mention that Christian populations from throughout the Middle-East are declining, thanks largely to pressures from radical Islam. For the Religious Left, the Islamists themselves are never at fault but are merely the understandable consequence of endless Western oppressions dating to the Crusades. Almost hilariously, Kireopoulos frets about the de-emphasis on Jesus Christ by CUFI's pro-Israel evangelicals.
"The Christian Gospel is clear that salvation came through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ," Kireopoulos intoned. "To supplement this message is to prevert the Gospel" that CUFI claims to preach. Naturally, the NCC and the Religious Left prefer not to mention inconvenient topics such as the resurrection of Christ in their various outreaches to Muslims. In fact, the Resurrection, which for leftist Protestants is typically just a poetic metaphor for social justice, is not a topic on which the NCC typically focuses.
Just as the NCC is almost never interested in persecuted Christians anywhere, except when the supposed perpetrators are Israel and its American evangelical supporters, so too the NCC will not usually cite the Resurrection, except as a polemic against both Israel's Jews and their Christians friends.
John, You have to seriously fast and pray for the truth regarding the Old Testament from God Himself. None other. God the Father revealed Himself to the world through His loving relationship with the Jewish people of Israel, and He will again. Your hatred of the Talmud makes me think you don’t like authority. I have to ask you this. When Jesus returns (He does so only once) and saves Israel and the faithful from the beast, He is very angry and destroys the beast’s followers. He then sets up His government in Jerusalem. What kind of government will He establish? Will it be a turn the other cheek, or an eye for an eye establishment? Do you not know that Jesus obeyed the Old Testament Law perfectly? He fulfilled the law. We are told to love our enemies because we want to be forgiven, but Jesus doesn’t have to love His enemies.
What "parts of the Tanakh" are you referring to???
That's fine but did "True G-d if the TaNaKH" also give you "the Noachide Laws" or "The Talmud"??? don't think so.
Thus aren't you making the same mistake so many who call themselves Christians make by adulterating and diluting the truth of the Scriptures with extraneous writings that do not issue forth from the hand of the True God, the God of Israel???
It’s s*mple, Z*-n*st C-nsp*rat-r.
Fundamentists are Christians, not “chr*stians,” and they don’t want to throw out the Christ with the “chr*stianity.”
Perhaps you need to visit a slaughterhouse some day --- that "barbarism" and "bloodbath" has been going on since the beginning of time and still puts meat on your plate.
Would you suggest that the priests of Temple should have let the animals go and fail in their duty before the God of Israel???
The Crucifixion was likewise bloody. Perhaps you have forgotten that "without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin". You'll find that not only Paul's last letter, the one to the Hebrews, but also in the TaNaKH --- Leviticus 17:11. Or is that the part of the TaNaKH that you don't consider to be inspired by the God of Israel???
You are an apostate.
Richard Dawkins’ latest book ‘The God Delusion’ has an almost identical critique of the Old Testament G-d that you put forward. He basically asserts that the G-d of the OT is ‘the most hateful character in all of Western Literature’ Just amusing that Dawkins’ atheist polemic would match the rhetoric of a devout Christian. Nothing personal just an observation.
Registering my disgust with the “God” of the Tanakh for answering the prayer of his prophet to slaughter 40 children who were making fun of his bald head is the same as me renouncing my Lord and Saviour who warned against harming children?
If anything, I could turn this around on you and say you are blaspheming the Holy Name of Christ by associating Him with that Beast.
Yes very funny. Apparently one of the charges leveled against devout Christians by the ancient Pagans of Rome were that they were atheists. History repeating itself?
I couldn’t make it past book II or III, I don’t remember. I found it quite boring. The only passage I like (and is still somewhat in my memory) is the clash between Abdiel and Satan. Aside from that, the less said about Milton and his work, the better.
Sorry, for some reason I saw that and thought Milton. No, I’ve never read anything by Blake. I didn’t even know of his religious views till you mentioned it.
Do thousands of innocent children not die every day of natural causes?
Whose responsibility is that?
You don't quibble over the deaths of untold millions of innocents over the millenia, but you are concerned over 40 who were guilty of sacrilege?
Bizarre perspective - but not unexpected in someone who claims the ability to judge God.
If anything, I could turn this around on you and say you are blaspheming the Holy Name of Christ by associating Him with that Beast.
The same Christ who affirmed that the Scriptures of his Jewish people testified of Him?
That would be an equally bizarre strategy.
Unfortunately JP is avowedly (see his home page) under the influence of Marcionism, and ancient heresy that insists that the Jewish G-d is not that of chr*stianity. Wideawake will know better than I whether he also taught that the gnostic doctrine that the created universe is itself evil.
[Do thousands of innocent children not die every day of natural causes?]
The children in question didn’t die of natural causes. Elisha prayed to “God” to curse the children and “God” obliged him by sending 2 she bears to slaughter them. All because they made fun of his bald head. CHILDREN.
[Bizarre perspective - but not unexpected in someone who claims the ability to judge God.]
I wouldn’t dare think I could judge any member of the Godhead (not the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit), but disapproving of Satan’s vile actions is not something I’m ashamed of.
[The same Christ who affirmed that the Scriptures of his Jewish people testified of Him?]
The same Christ who came to free us of the Curse of the Law and it’s lunatic author? Yes that Christ.
Unfortunately for you, G-d is ultimately in charge of everything. Satan is not in rebellion; he is doing his job! And even evil is under the ultimate control of G-d. I realize you believe that there are two "gxds," one who is good and one who is evil, but that is dualism, not monotheism. Perhaps you are not so much a Marcionite as a zoroastrian, Cathar, or Theosophist.
At any rate, please stop pinging me with your childish and blasphemous notion that you can sit in judgement on A-mighty G-d. If you continue to annoy me, I assure you that I will report you.
[If you continue to annoy me, I assure you that I will report you.]
Go right ahead. I never attacked you personally or used foul language on this thread. If you consider sticking up for my religion against YOUR blasphemous garbage “harassing” you, then I can’t help you.
And just who, in God's name, do you think your "lunatic" author of the Law was???????? Yes that Christ ----- and His Father.
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