US President Donald Trump has announced to the world that the entirety of Jerusalem is the capital of the nation of Israel, thus endorsing the claims of Zionism.
This declaration has enraged many and it does confirm to me that that man is not given to thought or any kind of self reflection. But that is another question, beyond the purview of this piece.
The Holy Land, as they call it, raises all manner of passions, usually warlike and thus idoltrous , and this by its mere designation as Holy .
But speaking from my own christian perspective I will say clearly that this thinking is of the Old Covenant. Although I may in fact get to see Jerusalem from the air when I meet the Lord in the air as part of his visible and public escort at the time of His returning - this is the Rapture- where the Lord of Hosts walked during the days of his earthly ministry are of no real interest to me.
For if I had no relationship with His Holy Spirit then such an interest would be idolatrous, and could moroever be only idolatrous, and I would already be lost, for it is by abiding in Christ - ie staying with Him in person in one on one relationship via His Spriit, that we are saved at all.
I mus reiterate that it is the relationship with the Lord God through the Spirit of His Son Jesus Christ is what saves us, and this maintained in personal interaction. This has been the one issue that absolutely everything hinges on as regards christain living and no less than the Holy Spirit Himself has seen to it over decades that this is clear to me. To forsake this relationship even while venerating the sites where He once walked and worked, without even thinking of denying that He did indeed do things there, or to venerate the whole Land itself as part of His promise this is still to forsake the Lord for mere trappings and appurtenances
I could just as well say that the spot on my bedroom flooor where I met the Living God that night onow over 39 years ago, was holy ground.
But to venerate the spot would be the height of folly.
After all who lovingly looks at one's wedding photos to the exclusion of the spouse in the very room who would speak to you? Only a couple on the way to de facto if not de jure dicovrce where the memory was beter than the daily relationship. But such a relationship is in deep trouble.
In other words, to conciude this train of thought, if I have a relationship with the Spirit of Christ then all this concern over ancient Bible lands is not necessary except for providing a basic theological grounding in certain issues. Of a truth I can testify that a personal conversation with someone as wise, witty wonderful but HOLY, and which conversation has continued over 30 years now is infinitely more interesting than any religion anyone could offer without it
We christians are not citizens of this world, but are strangers and sojourners on this earth. We serve no rational or spiritual purpose embroiling ourselves in pointless disputes about holy places, or even in carnal wrangling over the Land of Israel itself.
Holiness, that absolutely necessary component to salvation whereby without it no one will see the Lord, is found where the Lord is, not in the empty place where He was. And if you are born again the Lord is with you. Wherever you are
Thus we have no business stirring the pot as regards tensions in the Middle East just because of our emotional infatuation with the Lands He walked in millennia ago. and neither do we have the right to cynically pretend to love Israel simply because we regard them as a pawn of prophecy and a marker for the ever approaching Second Coming of Our Dread and Sovereign Lord. And let us not pretend that we do in fact love them. Cheap floods of sentimentality never proved love and I am quite sure that a little introspection not to mention conviction of Sin by the Holy Spirit will reveal emotional anti semitism in our gushing hearts thus invalidating all our zionist action and rhetoric
Does He walk with you now? well and good. That is a far greater gift than any spot of land, even if He did indeed say he would give it to Israel and His people in the future. And let me add that I firmly believe that God will do this as He will not let it be said by anyone that He does not keep is Promises, and He did indeed make promises of that Land to Abraham and his progeny. But even so, presumptuous inference with the will of God, whether by Jew or Christian, is still flesh and it can cause disastert, as Abraham found out when he rashly agreed to sire the promised son off a concubine
We do not walk a tightrope. But we do walk a narrow road, and that road is relationship with the Lord. Forsake that such that He ceases to speak to us calling us back as we will have blasphemed the Spirit. We may be devout, religious even, passionately working for some cause, any cause, but without the Spirit who such have rejected, they are still lost
Let us actually pay attention to scripture. remembering, if we ever paid sufficient attention to it to recognize the context in the first place, that the passage immediately preceeding that describing the Rapture in I Thessalonians 4:17 was this: 4:11 : "live quite lives, mind your own business and do your own jobs with your own hands."
Conerning Israel we should back off. It is not our business and let us not inflame matters by presumptuous involvement. Some may be called to Israel, and well and good if they are, but I am not, and let those who think themselves called be entrely sure that they are not presumptuous hotheads, that they have the fruit, maturity in christ and the temperance to even handle being in such a cauldron of rage as the Land has become.
Or else get out of there
This declaration has enraged many and it does confirm to me that that man is not given to thought or any kind of self reflection. But that is another question, beyond the purview of this piece.
The Holy Land, as they call it, raises all manner of passions, usually warlike and thus idoltrous , and this by its mere designation as Holy .
But speaking from my own christian perspective I will say clearly that this thinking is of the Old Covenant. Although I may in fact get to see Jerusalem from the air when I meet the Lord in the air as part of his visible and public escort at the time of His returning - this is the Rapture- where the Lord of Hosts walked during the days of his earthly ministry are of no real interest to me.
For if I had no relationship with His Holy Spirit then such an interest would be idolatrous, and could moroever be only idolatrous, and I would already be lost, for it is by abiding in Christ - ie staying with Him in person in one on one relationship via His Spriit, that we are saved at all.
I mus reiterate that it is the relationship with the Lord God through the Spirit of His Son Jesus Christ is what saves us, and this maintained in personal interaction. This has been the one issue that absolutely everything hinges on as regards christain living and no less than the Holy Spirit Himself has seen to it over decades that this is clear to me. To forsake this relationship even while venerating the sites where He once walked and worked, without even thinking of denying that He did indeed do things there, or to venerate the whole Land itself as part of His promise this is still to forsake the Lord for mere trappings and appurtenances
I could just as well say that the spot on my bedroom flooor where I met the Living God that night onow over 39 years ago, was holy ground.
But to venerate the spot would be the height of folly.
After all who lovingly looks at one's wedding photos to the exclusion of the spouse in the very room who would speak to you? Only a couple on the way to de facto if not de jure dicovrce where the memory was beter than the daily relationship. But such a relationship is in deep trouble.
In other words, to conciude this train of thought, if I have a relationship with the Spirit of Christ then all this concern over ancient Bible lands is not necessary except for providing a basic theological grounding in certain issues. Of a truth I can testify that a personal conversation with someone as wise, witty wonderful but HOLY, and which conversation has continued over 30 years now is infinitely more interesting than any religion anyone could offer without it
We christians are not citizens of this world, but are strangers and sojourners on this earth. We serve no rational or spiritual purpose embroiling ourselves in pointless disputes about holy places, or even in carnal wrangling over the Land of Israel itself.
Holiness, that absolutely necessary component to salvation whereby without it no one will see the Lord, is found where the Lord is, not in the empty place where He was. And if you are born again the Lord is with you. Wherever you are
Thus we have no business stirring the pot as regards tensions in the Middle East just because of our emotional infatuation with the Lands He walked in millennia ago. and neither do we have the right to cynically pretend to love Israel simply because we regard them as a pawn of prophecy and a marker for the ever approaching Second Coming of Our Dread and Sovereign Lord. And let us not pretend that we do in fact love them. Cheap floods of sentimentality never proved love and I am quite sure that a little introspection not to mention conviction of Sin by the Holy Spirit will reveal emotional anti semitism in our gushing hearts thus invalidating all our zionist action and rhetoric
Does He walk with you now? well and good. That is a far greater gift than any spot of land, even if He did indeed say he would give it to Israel and His people in the future. And let me add that I firmly believe that God will do this as He will not let it be said by anyone that He does not keep is Promises, and He did indeed make promises of that Land to Abraham and his progeny. But even so, presumptuous inference with the will of God, whether by Jew or Christian, is still flesh and it can cause disastert, as Abraham found out when he rashly agreed to sire the promised son off a concubine
We do not walk a tightrope. But we do walk a narrow road, and that road is relationship with the Lord. Forsake that such that He ceases to speak to us calling us back as we will have blasphemed the Spirit. We may be devout, religious even, passionately working for some cause, any cause, but without the Spirit who such have rejected, they are still lost
Let us actually pay attention to scripture. remembering, if we ever paid sufficient attention to it to recognize the context in the first place, that the passage immediately preceeding that describing the Rapture in I Thessalonians 4:17 was this: 4:11 : "live quite lives, mind your own business and do your own jobs with your own hands."
Conerning Israel we should back off. It is not our business and let us not inflame matters by presumptuous involvement. Some may be called to Israel, and well and good if they are, but I am not, and let those who think themselves called be entrely sure that they are not presumptuous hotheads, that they have the fruit, maturity in christ and the temperance to even handle being in such a cauldron of rage as the Land has become.
Or else get out of there
