W W W W  World Wide Web Witness Inc. Home Page   Contents Page for this Volume  What is New

 

CHAPTER  ELEVEN

 

SERIOUS REFLECTION ? Israel or Obama or both!

News 424, June 2008, June 2009, July 2009 various sources

 

For other Chapters on related themes including the US new ventures, see

News 407, with The Uncomprehending Darkness and the Self-Revealing Light Ch.    7.
Christ the Citadel Chs.     9, incl. *3 ; 

The Unsearchable Riches of Jesus Christ ... Chs.  1,   2,    3 and   4, with special reference to Cairo, and in God's Gift of Grace in Christ Jesus Chs.    3 and   5, 
 

 

An interesting news article from Reuters, dated June 6, 2009 shows by contrast with a speech a year earlier, the mounting pressure from Obama towards the State of Israel. Let us first go back a little, to the election days.

HAARETZ June 7, 2008, we find this.

McCain calls for moving U.S. embassy to Jerusalem By Haaretz Service

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain on Friday said that he believes the American embassy in Israel should be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

"Jerusalem is undivided, Jerusalem is the capital and we should move the embassy to Jerusalem before anything happens," McCain said while campaigning in Miami.

McCain stressed, however, that the "subject of Jerusalem itself will be addressed in negotiations by the Israeli government and people."

The presidential hopeful was responding to comments made by Democratic rival Barack Obama, who told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Wednesday that he would not allow Iran to acquire nuclear arms, and that Jerusalem would remain the undivided capital of Israel.

"Let me be clear," Obama said, "Israel's security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable. The Palestinians need a state that is contiguous and cohesive and that allows them to prosper. But any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel's identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided," he added, in efforts to secure the Jewish vote.

But a campaign adviser clarified Thursday that Obama believes "Jerusalem is a final status issue, which means it has to be negotiated between the two parties" as part of "an agreement that they both can live with."

McCain took the opportunity to criticize Obama for changing his position on Jerusalem, as well as on "sitting down and talking unconditionally with Ahmadinejad and other dictators."
 

We move now to June 6, 2009, almost exactly  one year later. This is part of a Reuters news item, the whole concerning Israel.

Obama calls for end to M East stalemate

 

Posted Sat Jun 6, 2009 11:00pm AEST

REUTERS

US President Barack Obama says wants to see "serious, constructive" Middle East peace talks this year aimed at finding a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians.

Mr Obama, who sees Israeli-Palestinian progress as crucial to repairing the US image in the Muslim world, made the comments two days after giving a speech in Cairo^*1 in which he called for a "new beginning" between Muslims and the United States.

On the final leg of a brief tour of the Middle East and Europe, Mr Obama was asked to clarify what he meant the previous day in Germany when he said he was confident progress could be made between the Palestinians and Israel this year.

"Progress would mean the parties involved ... are in serious, constructive negotiations towards a two-state solution," he told reporters after a meeting with his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy in Normandy ahead of a ceremony to mark the 65th anniversary of the World War II D-Day landings.

"I do not expect that a 60-year problem is solved overnight but, as I have said before, I do expect both sides to recognise that their fates are tied together."

Mr Obama has called for a freeze in settlements and pressed for a two-state solution, both of which Netanyahu has resisted.

But he also said while the media had made much of his comments on settlements, he also wanted the Palestinians to renounce "violence and incitement".

"We have to move beyond the current stalemate," he said.

 

In the last few days, July 2009 now, a baleful, macabre or at least gaunt challenge was read in a local paper, in which we find Obama in direly ruminative style, telling Israel it must reflect deeply on its position. What is that position ?

It has three apparently objectionable elements to the match-maker, Obama. What, does it appear, that he wants and it what does he conceive there is failure ? It seems the following, or something close.

1) Both parties must unequivocally WANT two entirely independent States: Israel, and one other.

{The latter is to be made up of additional parts extracted from the tiny strip of the former Palestine which was to be addressed as a homeland for Israel, that afterbirth which was left it after international abortions, a small residue of the land^*2.

Ugly ? but it was, and the babe was as good as dead when Israel got to it. Yet in battle directed at its extinction, as surely as did Hitler so act, it won in 1948, though without anything like the territory originally in view, or more particularly, the historic heartland to be homeland. Thus the babe, as good as dead in the operation of perfidy, lived in the intensive care unit of battle.}

	2) Jerusalem must be an open question, Israel being assured not of all, by any means.
	3) First of all, economic self-sufficiency with independence altogether, for both States, must be in mind. Any necessary limits will be imposed from outside.

Thus (a), peace on any available terms is obligatory, (b) reservations must be disarticulated from the body of thought, and (c) it must become a go-go situation  - perhaps similar to a yo-yo situation, which goes up and down and gets nowhere, though of course this is not the ostensible objective.

What then ? Why then the USA can stomp about for oil, and have less trouble in the area, and Jew stuff will no more so inflame the super-sensitive Arab hatreds. Hence the thought of 'the catastrophe' with which many Islamic people label Israel's new presence after so long an exile, can die down and let everyone live a little.

What if the Gaza syndrome repeat itself, like someone insisting on having the same indigestible meal, by some kind of trance ? What if the new land gained and the new State permitted degenerate as did Gaza, as did the earlier presence of poor Arabs in initially accommodating Jordan, into a war zone, forward attack base.

Too bad.

Yes, that appears a correct analysis: too bad. Hence it is not on the books, except of those whose valuation of ludicrously stripped Israel, summoned again and again before the international bar, to be disrobed further, is a small affair. The international tenacity of purpose for the oil rich appears in direct opposition to their laxity of faithfulness to either the spirit or the word of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, or even the historic heartland concept which was given scope later ^*2 .

What reflection then, and by whom appears appropriate to question ?

Is Israel graciously to be made indefensible, and is a hostile State of religious activation which does not fail to be susceptible to terrorists of similar religious background, to be permitted in ever increasing closeness to Israel, to parade its militias, ground it rockets and prepare its air-force with the multiplied millions and billions of the oil-rich, all too ready in some cases to become accomplices in intimidation!

Is the 'international community' to continue its endeavours to 'help' the Arabs with much influence already in Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and don't forget Syria and elements of Lebanon like Hezbollah: is it to do this so that they may have yet more ? Are the bones to be picked ? Is Israel, with divine and predicted aid (as in Zechariah 12) not because it has been faithful as a nation but despite its record (Ezekiel 36:22, Deuteronomy 32), to be given more of this ludicrous lip, this admirable inanity, as if it were really expected to 'reflect' itself into self-destruction by even listening to such persiflage!

Maybe; but not with realism or wisdom. Beyond Israel is the Maker of the nations, and His word.

It might be thought however that the serious thought, reflection, recommended for Israel by one who appears an increasingly exasperated and obstinately determined US President, in view of his views or what appears to be his desire (as the above shows, in this he changes so), is not a little misplaced. That is, this seems so, except for destructive analysis.

What then ? The need to reflect,  with which he charges Israel, seems rather to devolve upon himself.  The serious and constructive thought which might save the USA enormous cost in prestige, money and perhaps even manpower, is in his court. It is he who should move around a little and consider.

Consider then what ? First, how enormous was his swift shift as attested in the news item above, June 7, 2008; nor was it in the cited news source alone. It was a strident note announced to the world, how he whirled from one point to one which ALLOWED for something diametrically opposite. Alas, he had made in his first statement, what appeared enormously clear about Israel and Jerusalem, its undivided capital; and this gave world-wide impact, but more so, it did so in the USA during election time.

Perhaps some of that initial impact remained; it seems all but inconceivable that he simply had not thought the point through at that time, about others nations being  involved ... it is rather obvious, is it not, that this is so! The question was not how many were licking their lips, with an industry attested militarily in almost innumerable local, invasive, devastating, remorseless enterprises to crush Israel.

Moreover, this was on the part of enemies both vocal, filled with much expressed odium and devastatingly determined, not least on religious premises, to delete, or complete the deletion of that new-born nation (as in Isaiah 66:8ff.), so soon to be bursting its bounds (because of lack of space, a stringency now being increased in severity by such helpful international mentors, as far as they may - as in Isaiah 49:20^*3).

Reflect then on the extortion of half or thereabouts of the famous Capital City of Israel, which by all available information has NEVER been the capital of ANY other nation, as ONE possibility. Such reflection might be the more acute, in view of the former of the two notable election announcements of Obama,  with all its positive force as if he understood the position, before his backing down in so momentous a swirl and  flurry. This is as seen in the news items listed above.

Yes, it may be well if  Obama for his part, should engage in the reflection, first of all on that.

Secondly, before deciding on this point,  it might be nice to consider having Washington (never the capital of any other nation ?) halved in honour of some displaced nation, say Mexico ? THEY! you may so, they HAVE their capital. So do the Palestinians, have had since the 1920s, it is Amman. Jordan received some two-thirds of Palestine, surely a goodly share, so that this part was at the beginning or near it, pre-empted from the place, from Palestine previously cited and announced and ACCORDED for a homeland occupation in it,  of Israel. This was to be done with due regard to its historical roots in the place, with care for existing population.

The idea was not to have a ring of steel, as we see in the data, but a place of peace where the home so long denied Israel, might be available, its historic ties countenanced, and its place assured. What then of a capital for some of the occupants ? Is it to be that of the homeland ? One would hardly have thought this at all homish, to give up your sitting room to invaders. What better capital then, if another nation wants to live there too for some reason or other, especially when there has already been more than half of the place given away to those of this kind of religion in the spectrum on offer,  than that of the large parcel of Palestine let out to others!

As for dividing Washington into the capitals of two peoples, or Jerusalem, that requires a little moral reflection; indeed quite a lot.

Thirdly, he might reflect on his Secretary of State's rather rambunctious sounding insistence on what could and could not be ALLOWED to existing cities or settlements of note in what is regarded as the core of Israel of old (to which the League of Nations, in endorsing the homeland in Palestine for Israel concept, made reference). What is that ?

Why it is Judea and Samaria. But what, you may ask, has that to do with it ? Why, just this, that since the League of Nations was so keen on noting the historic ties of Israel to the land, and this is the CORE and CENTRE of that connection, and this has induced many Jews to act as if it were not all a trick or exercise in infamy, fictitious fables and gross manipulation, but hopefully to return to their accorded land, then the LAST place from which Israel should be shooed away by the 'international community' including the USA, playing along with it, is this same core.

What of it ? one may ask. Why, it is just that the other name for it appears with some considerable substance, to be THE WEST BANK.  Off the bank, you Jews, off you get, says Obama or his official; don't get ideas about it. More precisely: DON'T YOU DREAM of even  allowing natural increase in that small section of your undoubted historic homeland to occur in any city which you currently have managed to set there!

Each city in that area MUST NOT allow to expand, be this natural or any other thing! (did you hear there, Benjamin ? I say, did you hear! says Hilary or Obama or whoever was behind this unswerving Arab emphasis from the US). It was a very emphatic, not to say dramatic utterance that was made. NO MORE ROOM, NOT EVEN TO EXPAND BY NATURAL INCREASE. GET OFF! Is there a dog on the golfing green ? off you get then!

This, the third point deserves a little reflection by Obama, by those with him, by all who would push Israel further and further into ... into what ?

What ? Why it is a push which in the end could only end in its being an entirely indefensible entity, except by a miracle as in the Exodus. Now let us be clear here. It is true that the Bible MOST clearly indicates that in the end of the game, the LORD HIMSELF is going to act in just that kind of way, that is, with overwhelming power to deliver Israel as in the so famous Exodus from Egypt. Micah 7 tells us this (v. 15), on the way to its final chapter's rehearsal, at its end, of the promise to Abraham (cf. Genesis 17 and see Galloping Events Ch. 4). It speaks of the rebuke to come to the nations occupied with occupying themselves with or in Jerusalem and Judah. Of these nations, it speaks in terms of snakes retreating to their holes... The Lord has plans. After all, it is HIS assigned real estate, despite the fact that so many seem to imagine they have bought it, or made it, or have its title deeds in their hands.

The Lord has told us His plan; it is foolish to ignore it. However, the nations have long been stylised as precisely those who will do so to their own devastation. Is it wise to take on the Almighty  ? or to imagine that He will change His mind. In fact, in Jeremiah 33, in a survey leading on to the re-occupation of the place by the Lord of glory Himself (33:16) in His oft-noted time of vindication and glory on this earth (as in Isaiah 11, 32, 65-66, Psalm 72, Psalm 2, Micah 4, Isaiah 2), hardly a thing ... past, He makes His thought on all such points eminently clear.

IF, He declares, if you can break My covenant with the day and My covenant with the night, so that there will not be day and night in their season, then My covenant may also be broken with David My servant. Will you have Israel cast off, the TWO peoples (Judah and the North) so that they are no more a nation ? Try. Break His ordinances with heaven earth first, though, to show your so great power! So His irony erupts like light into darkness, to rebuke it.

His word, He keeps.

The LORD MADE this world, and Israel as a part. It has a place

1) as a herald of His coming in Christ via a virgin,

2) as a repository for the words of the prophets (cf. Isaiah 34, 59, Matthew 5:17ff.), and as an instruction lesson for this world (cf. Ezekiel 39);  and

3) as for the expression of the divine faithfulness and reliability (Ezekiel 36:22 on the way to 37:5 with the Messiah's rule on this earth). 

Is it not a subject for what one might term 'reflection' that to enter into conflict with the Almighty is rather overdoing it ? It is true that we have heard the ludicrous sludge talk of the 'almighty dollar' in former times, but it is not so mighty after all; and that was ludicrous. Money CANNOT buy life, or make it, or ensure its deliverance; but God can deliver.

He actually advises us in these terms:

"For the LORD of hosts has purposed, and who will annul it ?
His hand is stretched out, and who will turn it back? " (Isaiah 14:27).

Such is the endurance of His committed wisdom.

He advises us of these things with all the amplitude in His word, the Bible, now here, now there, which one might expect for a race so habitually hard of hearing! It is well to listen as Proverbs 1 advises us.

Is it not theft to seek to take from the appointed nation its promised place, which it lost for its follies and regained as drafted in the Lord's omnipotence, as in pure grace He supplies power to perform all needed ? and in the meantime, He assures us, a vast revival will meet Israel in the midst of its troubles. This is for example  in Zechariah 12 as reflected in Ezekiel 37 in its context. Here is a theft which HE foresaw, an outrageous presumption, an arrogant if not even disdainful insistence; and the result may be seen by surveying Micah 7:15 to the end of that Chapter. Reflect, O America, it makes interesting reading! One would not see a nation of such a past, in which such grand things were wrought once in the name of the Lord, to become a mere appendage to devastation on so unsound a basis as this current towards Israel.

Would a friend like to see you, O once so great nation when God was honoured more in the observance than in the breach, reduced to ruin by pure - or in this case, impure - folly ?

Let one assure you, NO! One would see more of the broad spirit of democratic support for this much begrimed and ludicrously scorned nation, as in the day of Presidents Nixon and Reagan. Now is a dark hour for the USA; it is wise to seek the light. Reflect on it! No more darkness is needed in the USA, but that bright shining light of Jesus Christ, of His word, the Bible, which elevates man and has done so much to make of the USA at one time, for all its faults, a place for liberty and an energy for aid. All this is not to be forgotten. But reflect! neither is the word of God to be forgotten.

Reflect then ? Yes, but the more especially it is the USA, specifically those who govern it,  which on this topic, needs to reflect. May you be assisted not to bring ruin on your country, as you do so. There may be a little time yet; yes, but what is a little time. It is the end which matters; and the way to it, it should be with garlands of praise, not talk of

	some heart-beat of civilisation without God, except in terms of some diffuse notion,
	a world without the word of truth from God*4, as if the ancient were divorced from God before the Fall, or as if, when they fell, they had not been told of the deliverance to come; indeed, almost
	as if the moderns were in alliance with survival like an idol, and religion were perhaps an exudation like that from bees in commotion!

As to Israel, yes it needs to reflect, but not on the wisdom of permitting further dismemberment and betrayal of the very core of the land promised. It needs to reflect on the reasons why the nations, such as the UK, Russia, EU and UN are baying at its heels, and allowed to do so with so much panache and self-assurance. WHEN, and ONLY WHEN Israel, its strength gone (as Deuteronomy 32:36), when at last they are back on side with their own Lord and God, en masse, restored to their crucified Messiah (Zechariah 12:10), then will the Lord be with them as of old.

What does Deuteronomy say of this finale ? Let us REFLECT a little by examining the passage with a preliminary section.

"Oh, that they were wise, that they understood this,

That they would consider their latter end!

How could one chase a thousand,

And two put ten thousand to flight,

Unless their Rock had sold them,

And the Lord had surrendered them?

 

"For their rock is not like our Rock,

Even our enemies themselves being judges.

For their vine is of the vine of Sodom

And of the fields of Gomorrah;

Their grapes are grapes of gall,

Their clusters are bitter.

Their wine is the poison of serpents,

And the cruel venom of cobras.

‘Is this not laid up in store with Me,

Sealed up among My treasures?

 

^" 'Vengeance is Mine, and recompense;

Their foot shall slip in due time;

For the day of their calamity is at hand,

And the things to come hasten upon them.’
 

"For the Lord will judge His people

And have compassion on His servants,

When He sees that their power is gone,

And there is no one remaining, bond or free.

He will say:

‘Where are their gods,

The rock in which they sought refuge?

Who ate the fat of their sacrifices,

And drank the wine of their drink offering?

Let them rise and help you,

And be your refuge.
 

‘Now see that I, even I, am He,

And there is no God besides Me;

I kill and I make alive;

I wound and I heal;

Nor is there any who can deliver from My hand.

For I raise My hand to heaven,

And say, "As I live forever,

If I whet My glittering sword,

And My hand takes hold on judgment,

I will render vengeance to My enemies,

And repay those who hate Me.

I will make My arrows drunk with blood,

And My sword shall devour flesh,

With the blood of the slain and the captives,

                   He will provide atonement for His land and His people."

Thus there is the spiritual rejoicing at the very time when the nations have found their talons clipped, their follies exposed and their effrontery shattered on this Second Front, that from the Lord, more powerful than any which ever left for Europe in World War II. Remember it is clear from Deuteronomy that it is the LORD HIMSELF who acts: none other gets the glory, but He gets the victory.

Remember Gamaliel, that wise Jew, who advised the Sanhedrin to be careful in their efforts to exterminate Christianity, lest they even be found to fighting God (Acts 5:33-43). With their lips, they agreed; but not with their actions. They were not wise. They did not heed the evidence, take the necessary action, find their faith focussed in the LORD who had been with them so long, but they avoided a change of heart and life. Keep away ? Do not oppress ? Read Acts 6-7 with 5:33ff.. We have already paid much attention to this deadly sequence in the case of Stephen, which occurred after the warning of Gamaliel,  in the first chapters of this volume ?

Alas, it was from the word of God that they absented themselves. It was not only the prophecies all but innumerable concerning the Christ they so vigorously rejected*4 (as foretold in Isaiah 498:7, 52-53), but their movement was from Him who IS the salvation to the end of the earth. Not here! their hearts cried.

They paid. There is no wisdom in attempted theft, whether of oneself from the God of the Bible, one's creator, or of land He has appointed to others. God has said what is what, and has brought Israel back as promised, and Christ to its rejection as foretold. It is now the Gentile era (cf. Luke 21:24), or it was until very recently; for with the recovery of Jerusalem by Israel, that era is fulfilled as Christ declared. It is indeed time to reflect. It is time for one and for all to reflect moreover personally, and to call upon the name of that same Lord Jesus Christ, who validated, verified and fulfilled the words of prediction concerning Him, and confirmed what is to be by those words, and in terms of His own. Heaven, He declared, and earth WILL pass away (so set no store on them, reflect again), but HIS WORD WILL NOT PASS AWAY (Matthew 24:35). It is meta-universal.

It is high time to be at peace with the God of creation and redemption, the God of the Bible, with the Lord Jesus Christ and with HIS WORDS! It is time to FOLLOW them and Him, not in a preferred invented module, but altogether. It is He who said it: capitulate, surrender altogether to Him. It is not possible to be His disciple otherwise. How does one know ? Why, it is He who said it and He is the truth (John 14:6, Luke 14:27ff.).

What then to the point on this issue before us this day ?

Meddle without immunity if you must; but for your own sake and for all the hope in wisdom for you, take care you do not find yourself with unwise company, strenuously involved in telling Israel where precisely to get on and to get off, when the land is already conveyanced to them by divine fiat. Be careful, heed Gamaliel in this, that you do not find yourself in confrontation with God.

 

 

NOTES

 

 *1

From The Unsearchable Riches of Jesus Christ ... Ch. 3, we find this excerpt from the unhappy speech of Obama in Cairo.

This truth transcends nations and peoples, a belief that isn't new, that isn't black or white or brown, that isn't Christian or Muslim or Jew. It's a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization and that still beats in the hearts of billions around the world. It's a faith in other people. And it's what brought me here today.

This is the Mein Kampf of religion, with the stress not to undervaluing Israel, for once, but God! Here is the syncretistic human racism beyond explicit revelation, with other people the criterion. It is the intolerance BY MAN for his kind. It is the ultimate in racism, human racism which raises its head and sneezes here.

God is not other people. Notice the Cairo claim: it is that the TRUTH is a BELIEF that ISN'T CHRISTIAN. The Twin Towers were destroyed, and it still does not heed ? The building of Babels is not enough for their fall to teach ? Atrocious as was the evil that did this shameless deed, foolish is the provocation of the Lord which allows for such things! What is being built in this Cairo speech as it is recorded ?

It is a 'truth' which is 'a belief' primordial, that isn't Christian, or Jewish. In other words, since Christ is the incarnation of God, the Creator, and created (Colossians 1:15), His definitive expression (Hebrews 1), and is the Messiah, which is what the term means, and has been proclaimed from the first as to come (Genesis 3:15), and His spirit moved the prophets to write (I Peter 1:10ff.), so that Christianity is the fulfilment of His actions and prophecies, yet the truth is NOT Christian!

HE is the truth (John 14:6), but the truth is not Christian! Here is confrontation alredy.

'Truth' in these philosophic clothes, it is not, we learn from Cairo's claims,  to be identified with the specific utterances of the Maker in one place in one way in one structure integrated with the Cross. It is NOT this. It pulsed in a cradle, was not uttered by the Mind of the Almighty, but pulsed away being not this or that. Such is the dichotomy. On the one hand is the self-revealing God, on the other is the rest. Here they are to be blended, vitamised, correlated, bypassed, subjected to philosophic invention to mean anything as the opposites rattle.

Such is the denial, and it is mere derogation of revealed deity in the interests of sanctified humanism, with provision for gods here or there, from the diversified sources of man. It is "faith in other people" and it is not Christian. A sniper has shot out Romans 5; yet it remains.

Here is the ultra-God, the non-revealed God, or if you will, the confusedly contradictory rubbish of religions, made into some kind of attestation, linked to the present in the most manifest anti-Christian testimony you could wish. But you say, Surely he MENTIONS Christianity with the rest. Indeed he does; but so to mention what has its core in the only begotten Son of God, who said that all who came before were thieves and robbers (John 10) and of those to follow, there would be many false prophets and Christs (Matthew 24:24), and whose word has for millenia (I Peter 1:10ff.) told of His coming and of His necessary and inevitable salvation* for those not to be lost to God (Acts 4:11-12), what is this ? It is as in ancient Israel, a certifiable liability for ruin.

The false prophets would indeed often MENTION God, the Lord with the rest, and even presume to speak in His name, in their conjunction of religions. That was merely part of their betrayal, a deadly one indeed before the Lord as you see so amply in Jeremiah 23, Ezekiel 14, again Jeremiah 29:19ff! Such combinations were not only insulting, confused, but anathema to the One who created this world and TOLD man what to do, and what to do about what he had done, when he fell (Romans 5:1-12). Imagine someone speaking of the American Presidents,  Carter and Nixon and Obama and Reagan and so on, and speaking of all in the name of one of them, or in a name beyond them which somehow stoops towards them, as if to concoct a presidential mulch, or to  speak in one's own name of all of them, as if to make a presidential lunch! It would seem an incredible lapse.

Each is what he is, each speaks for himself and they vary greatly. With Presidents, this would be remiss; with God it is antipathy, often divinely condemned, the cause of ruin to a nation, to mix, to blend, even to amend, to be superior to any particular one,  and to make of each a conjoint member of a divine venture! Remember the case of Micaiah and Zedekiah, before the battle in which Ahab engaged (cf. I Kings 22) ? Zedekiah was brazen in confrontation with Jeremiah who INSISTED that the Lord was one, knew His own mind and had revealed it in one way and not in another.

The false prophet in overweening self-assurance spoke of his own presumed focus as speech writer in religion. "Which way," asked the importunate Zedekiah of the prophet Micaiah, "did the Spirit of the Lord go from me to speak to you ?"

In other words, he was saying that he had the truth, his was the ear that heard, he was speaking FOR THE LORD, and anything poor old orthodox, stuffy Micaiah, not used to novelties (II TImothy 4 gives our present parallel) but staying put with the God of revelation, clear and unchanging, this was derivative, secondary.

Micaiah's answer bears reflection: "Indeed, you shall see on that day when you go into an inner chamber to hide!"

In other words, while God is patient and merciful, when it comes to the complete confusion of His character by illicit links to vain gods who are to be starved to extinction, or reduced to nothing, as God declares (Zephaniah 2:11), so that people are in danger of being made impure, polluted, and the atmosphere of their spirits is poisoned, then God will act.

In the Reformation He did just that, in amazing and sustained ways. While worse if possible is to come than what occasioned this (cf. Revelation 17, II Thessalonians 2), yet the principle of purity is the same. The world will GO before it is finally able to be arrested into the oblivion of follies which denies God and gets away with it! Often it moves as if to a finale; the eventual fulminations are being prepared (cf. News 121, 122); but for all the seemingly inevitable thrall (as in USSR with Stalin and Europe with Hitler, with a good foretaste even for that in Napoleon), it passes. God remains (Zechariah 9:7 - the verse after the famous 9:6!). His word He sustains, His Gospel, it does not vary.

While the world is to limp into foolish denial of His lordship, to the point of actually confronting Him (Revelation 19:19), it is never wise to confront Him; for truth cannot be held by death (Acts 2:23-24), and He who is it, though slain, took time to break death itself in His own resurrection (Hosea 13:14), this result a major cause of His vicarious offering of Himself (I Corinthians 15). Eternal life is not a human construction but a divine gift; given on His premises and promises and not elsewhere (Acts 4:11ff., Romans 6:23, Galatians 1:6-9).  It cannot be generated by culture, let alone degenerate culture (cf. II Timothy 3), the form predicted for the end of this Age.

Yet with the Lord, man can brazenly presume to speak of Jesus Christ amid a morass of religions, as if there were some common bond with Him who declaimed against just such, and indicated there was NO WAY to the Father but by Him (John14:6). God is not a concoction of religions or philosophies, but the Creator who speaks. You listen or you do not (Proverbs 1, John 8:46). As to the latter, hear it then:

"Which of you convinces me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do you not believe me?
He who is of God hears God’s words: you therefore do not hear them, because ypu are not of God."

If you however want to rouse His ire and His protection for His people, then REVIEW God and make of Him who made you, an intro to the music of your ideas about gods, conjoin them and let them become a new Parthenon (cf. Lead Us Not into Educational Temptation Ch. 4). Like the other Parthenon, that other temple, however, this will not stand; for God will not stand for it or with it. He is Himself, not the creation of the minds of His creation.

Here, to conjoin is not to correct, it is to reject.

If you want to invent a new religion with beating hearts at first and at last, where Jesus Christ can be mentioned, and the diversity of colour of skin is made an entrée for a diversity of gods (for the God of redemption is not the God of non-redemption, and the God who sent His only begotten Son to the Cross is not the god who did not do so), then DO NOT USE HIS NAME (Exodus 20:7). It is HIS, and as to that, He earned its fame not only by WHO He is but by WHAT He did on this earth, both before and after His incarnation, and DURING it. To speak directly or inferentially  to deny His SPECIFIC and DISTINCTIVE claims as God utterly. and to use His name and works and testimony at all, in some species of syncretism is like plagiarism, spiritual plagiarism. You take what is not your own and use its name for what is.

When man fell at the first, his place was the worst. It is NOT the ground for the construction of a god of contentment for all who move this way and that, from this desecration to another. That is merely to act as to construc tone more false god. Imagine the invented inventing the Inventor! It is far better not. It is mere illusion.

To act in the name of such considerations is not to act in the name of Him who condemns them all, except for the word He spoke, which He designates, specifies and sustains over millenia. Man may invent; but the invention or acceptance of gods in terms of man's inventive capacities, this is mere abuse of privilege, such that lèse-majesté becomes almost chaste by comparison.

This, it is not wise, not wise at all. One would urge those who engage in such practices, or those allied to them, to ... reflect on what they do. Is this to condemn the President ? Of course not: let God be God, His is judgment. Yet it is not to be discountenanced. One would hope that in profound mercy God might yet deliver from this confusion and rankness of speech, and He will deliver those whom He has appointed with the wisdom of eternity and the foreknowledge of time.

The task is to deal with the truth of Christ, however, on the basis of His word, and thus to condemn roundly what this President has said on this topic in Cairo, as likewise such things said by many for many years and in many places, now heralded in this fateful setting at last. If one does not warn, what is that ? This way is in the vanguard of ruin, as Proverbs 1 meticulously exhibits. There you find the exact texture of the divine response to such wayward non-wisdom, such refusal of the specific word of God, which is not another, nor a site for mutation. If one does not warn, what is that but failure ? (Proverbs 24:11-12).

With this sort of syncretistic overview, now openly, now secretively, Israel fell in ancient times (II Kings 17:7-20,29-41). Israel ? It is not only a testimony in providing the Old Testament and being the site for the incarnation; it is also a warning in what befell it. For all that, God has plans for its future and they will not tarry (Micah 7, Deuteronomy 32, Isaiah 65-66, Psalm 72 and ... Psalm 2).

 

*2

From Track of Truth ... Ch. 7, the following gives relevant data for this purpose also.

From the Preamble of the 1922 Mandate for Britain re Palestine, we have more. Red is used as above, to feature points of particular interest to us.

 

1922 Text: League of Nations Palestine Mandate

The Council of the League of Nations : 

Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have agreed, for the purpose 
of giving effect to the provisions of Article 22 of the Covenant of the 
League of Nations, to entrust to a Mandatory selected by the said 
Powers the administration of the territory of Palestine, which formerly 
belonged to the Turkish Empire, within such boundaries as may be 
fixed by them ; and 

Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the 
Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration 
originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His 
Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favour of the 
establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, 
it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might 
prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non- Jewish com- 
munities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by 
Jews in any other country ; and 

Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection
of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for 
reconstituting their national home in that country ; ...

Palestine was re-designated as that approximately 24% of the original land of the Mandate, which Britain did not unilaterally provide for Jordan, making the latter a separate people in 1946. It was intended, we learn, not at first to be such, but to be a site to which Arabs could go, as the Jews settled the promised land of "Palestine" minor, as one could call it, the rump.

From Palestine Facts we find a useful datum, confirming this point.

According to Sir Alec Kirkbride, the British representative in the area, Transjordan was:

• ... intended to serve as a reserve of land for use in the resettlement of Arabs once the National Home for the Jews in Palestine, which [Britain was] pledged to support, became an accomplished fact. There was no intention at that stage of forming the territory east of the River Jordan into an independent Arab state.

*3

 See Ch. 5 above. See also on the Isaianic references: With Heart and Soul, Mind and Strength Ch. 5.