Jerusalem!
"If I forget thee, O Jerusalem... cries the Psalmist, let
my right hand forget its skill!" (Psalm 137).
Why ? It was because God had
from the time of Moses declared that ONE PLACE would be found for Sacrifice
Central, Worship Way. Let us revert to The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, Chapter 9,
pp. 823ff., to see the city site in spiritual context, both its significance and
its message, both to the Jew and to the Gentile. Let us be informed, not
deformed by wanton ignorance or woeful antagonism. In this excerpt, since it is
such, some extensions and slight changes will be made for our present purpose.
The wonder of the divine mercy is this:
that anyone at any time may call upon the name of the Lord,
may come to the Lord Jesus Christ, and be saved. It is when the desire
to come is gone, that the consequences can ensue. That also applies
both and equally to Jew and to Gentile. Let us however revert to the Jewish
specifics, since they are required for our apologetic task.
It was in one place they were
authorised to perform their sacrifices on settling into their land. The
removal of that one place therefore is summary executive discipline,
one that makes a laughing stock of such solemn religious pretensions as
are based on the premiss that Christ is false.
God Almighty has not for more than a millenium forgotten to
maintain the central site of sacrifice, but deliberately brought into disrepute
the lingering beyond the time of birth on the part of Israel; for with the Lamb
of God has now been slain, and there is no more place for the Temple of
Sacrificial Symbol.
When the soldier comes home, the photograph
ceases to be central. When the Saviour came, to continue on the concept of
symbols is to void His salvation! Hence a Moselm mosque can indeed remind that
in this, Israel is like so many nations: not recognising the Saviour. However it
does it in another way: it does not realise WHY it is suffering so, WHY its
temple is gone. It has as a nation been forsaking the living Temple, now in
heaven and soon to return (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5).
In large measure, however, it will
(Zechariah 12:10 - 13:1); but so far, although it was Jews who were used in the
building up of the Christian Church at the outset, a fact never to be forgotten,
and they from whom the Old Testament with its formation, information and
direction to Christ has come, yet now they linger too long in the place of
birth, and have not as a people, as a nation come to their own Messiah.
Is it fully understood the enormity
which this constitutes ? If the Jewish nation, brought back to their own land*1as we see by
the grace of God - "not for your sakes do I this" (Ezekiel 36:22,32):
if this nation is to be a pivot of force in showing that God means
what He says, as He defends them; so too the Jewish nation has been prevented
from the authorised sacrifice in the authorised place for so many centuries
of time, equally confirming, yes no less, that their rejected Christ was
indeed authentic, so that they do indeed no longer need the Temple in Jerusalem,
or Jerusalem itself for the Temple.
Year by aching year, void by poignant
void, pogrom by vicious pogrom... the lesson has been taught. Nor let there
be any confusion: As to the pogroms - they are not guiltless who harry
the Jews (cf. Isaiah 52:21-23). It is God who disciplines, and requires the impact of the truth
to be maintained, so that Christ may receive His glory and the Jews be
recalled to repentance, as indeed must all the world for its sins... But
here with a specific people God has a specific point to be
made, and He makes it over and over in the prophetic scriptures, which
we now are seeing fulfilled in startling precision and accuracy, over and
over again ... in history.
What has been the witness of God through
history, to the Jews during the near to 1900 years without this one Temple,
denied to them?
You are wrong, you are wrong,
it goes. See the Almighty call you to sacrifice by the covenant
with Moses, until the Christ comes (Deuteronomy 18, Isaiah 53, 66).
When He comes, then soon you cannot, cannot year by year
make those old animal sacrifices in the appointed one place only prescribed
(Isaiah 66:3, 53:10); and you will stay unable to do so until a whole new
time like that of the period from Abraham till Christ is past. Will this
teach you how special you are (cf. the excoriating irony of Amos 9:7, therapeutic
irony), when and if you break the covenant and fail to recognise...
God!
How firmly God told them of that one
place for their covenanted sacrifice.
Review it, if you will in...
Deuteronomy 12:5-11, 14:23, 26:2, Joshua 9:27. I Kings 8:29, Psalm 78:68,
132:13-14, and II Chronicles 7:16, 33:4.
Not only does the God of Israel
choose a place - and that Jerusalem is that place in these
scriptures; but He goes considerably further. Having shown Solomon that
this is that place of which He has spoken, He gives a disciplinary
forecast which is also a teaching announcement for
all the world. lt would be near to criminal to neglect, from the only God
there is, an announcement of such clarity and high impact!
He says, in II Chronicles 7:16,19-21
that "I have chosen and sanctified this house"; and in terms of
the covenant then in force, the choice is announced as perpetual; and then...
"If you turn away and forsake My statues and My commandments... and
go and serve other gods..." (and Christ said: 'If God were your Father
you would love me'... John 8:42, and "You are of your father, the devil"
- 8:44, to those rejecting Him among the Jews)... then ? then ? what
does the divine King tell His people He will do, if they so forsake Him
?
"Then I will uproot them from My
land..." (done), "and this house which I have sanctified for My
name I will cast out of My sight..." (done), and "will make it to
be a proverb and a byword among all nations..." (done). All this is
painful; so was the crucifixion. The physical pain of it may have been
the least! It has however happened. To
have this Mosque denying the God of salvation, sacrifice and covenant central to
the lost place of the Temple, or its environs, is in itself a message: If you
deny the Messiah, and cling to the symbol, if you stay in the womb of the
symbolic and ignore the birth in Christ, as a nation, then God will ignore the
sanctity of the Temple, since the living temple, Jesus Christ, has replaced it
(Hebrews 7-10), by His ONE sacrifice now ONCE in the time to the end, in putting
away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. But HE must be accepted in this!
We must realise that it is not a matter
of comparative religions, kindly consented to by all men. God's honour and truth
and gospel and commands and demands and gifts for the world are at stake. When
the commanding officer is being lynched, especially when it is by people in
uniform, then it is necessary for each soldier to consider for whom he is
fighting, and to determine loyalty to whomever is around, on the one hand, or
to authority, on the other. And this authority is God, who makes all things
happen as He says, and makes a specialty of just that. Many Ukraine soldiers,
in 1991-1992, were analogically having slightly similar problems, when the
Ukraine government was demanding a commitment
of loyalty, while there is the Commonwealth of Independent States to consider.
When authority is assaulted, one must place one's fealty in view.
Yet there is more. The scripture continues,
this word given by the Jews who have indeed done so much in their time.
(It is a not a matter of racism, for which race has not failed ? but of
faithfulness to God, at whatever cost, to the truth. That is the
better blessing than leaving men to go astray and to hell, in their errors.
Would we not wish it for ourselves... ? a word in time; and that is indeed
the greater love... as Christ, who is love, showed in reproving
them, if by any means they might be saved.)
The word of God continues and so must
we. II Chronicles 7 verse 21 makes the point with the quiet, but dazzling
illumination of lightning:
And as for this house,
which is exalted, everyone who passes by it will be astonished and say,
'Why has the Lord done thus to this land and this house ?'
Such was the result if they turned away and
forsake what the Lord Himself had caused to be written (cf. Deuteronomy 18 and
its Messianic warning)..
In short, the whole thing is planned,
the impact is planned, the reproof is planned, the message is planned and
it becomes us to hear, while there is yet time; and to realise the truth.
Do men not scurry here and there, by air and sea, to spread their latest
technology which, they consider, is truly so and accords with reality,
quite often? Will we as a race then be so blind as to ignore this teaching
of God, provocatively and pointedly made in advance, authenticating that
there is indeed a planner back of our history, as back of our biological
cells; that there is One whose Son was indeed by lawless hands slain on
this earth, as also was predestinated (Acts 2:23). Now how
all that comports: this is given some expression
here, to remove possible difficulties some may find in grasping it all,
in Chapter 6, in
Appendix B, in PREDESTINATION BEFORE PROPHECY, at the
commencement of Chapter 8 and in Chapter 9 - e.g. pp.
774 ff. and 816 ff. supra.
To the point now is this: It is said,
it is written, and it has occurred in such a way as to put beyond all doubt
that the God of the Jewish scriptures has repudiated the Jewish repudiation
of Jesus Christ, and has performed with precision all that He said He would
do; and He has done it gloriously, amply, abundantly and indeed strikingly.
From those scriptures come these results,
in other words, both in history and in implication for the Jews.
Sad indeed the suffering, both of Jew
and Gentile, as jointly from different grounds so many of each category
ignore or reject the only God there is, whose voice is yet not wholly stifled
in conscience, nor in the evocative enduring of calamity, nor yet in His
patience and appeal; AND HERE HE TELLS US (II Chronicles 7:21-22).
Listen.
They shall say, He says,
"Why has
the Lord done thus to this land and this house ?"
It is because "they
forsook the Lord God of their fathers...,
took other gods and worshipped
them and served them;
therefore He has brought all this calamity upon them."
So it is also predicted in Moses (Deuteronomy 28:45-68, 29:23-28, 31:26-27,
32:29-43, Leviticus 26:38-46). How poignant and exact is the very tone
and tenor of the prediction indeed:
And among these nations
you will find no ease ... but the Lord will give you there
a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and pining
of soul: and your life will hang in doubt before you;
and you will fear day and night, and will have no assurance of your
life: in the morning you will say, Would God it were even! and at
even, you will say, Would God it were morning! for
the fear of your heart which you will fear, and for the
sight of your eyes, which you will see (Deuteronomy
28:65 ff.).
Alas, for the Jewish grief and the
predicament of Israel. It is not some mystery, but forecast and predicated
on departure from His word. And what departure is greater than this, that
the Messiah sent through this very nation, was rejected (Isaiah 49:7), and
the word "abhorred" is used! The type of death provided for Him
illustrates this (Isaiah 52:13-53:12).
Zechariah it is who foretells a vast national
repentance to come, one associated with the crime of piercing a human form of One speaking
as and called by the name of God (Zechariah 12:10); just as Isaiah
49:7 had foretold the pivotal servant of God being rejected by God's
'chosen people', the Jews, as a nation; and in Zechariah we find the result of
this repentance, which is yet to come at a national level, is to be a mourning for Him!
So profound is the offence offered
that in the context of the Jewish nation selling their King (Zechariah
11:8-13), God personally not only speaks with simply profound irony ("a
goodly price with which I was prized by them!"), but clearly foretells
His action to "break My covenant which I had made with all the people".
While the unconditional territorial provisions (Genesis 17
cf. SMR Appendix A) are not altered
(Matthew 5:17-19), what supervenes (cf. Isaiah 6:1-13) is in fact the New
Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31, cf. Isaiah 61:1ff.), instituted by the very act by which they
defied their King; for the sale led to sacrifice, by which (Isaiah 53:10)
a man might be saved, not by the blood of animals (Isaiah 66:1-4),
but by that of Christ (Isaiah 53:10-12).
They, the people had torn it up! ripped
the document of the covenant, in its final, irreplaceable and fleshly
form (indeed doing it with remarkable gusto - Matthew 27:25, and scant
care for posterity!); they had humiliated it, sold it, and as Isaiah 65
shows, were to be replaced as those who should show forth God's praise,
His people, by a people of the Lord who would bear a new name!
Such became the Christian Church which also, has
been attacked by wolves (Acts 20:29ff.), misled by misty maestros. Thus, while
riches and power have gone to many falsely using the name of Christ (II Peter
2:1ff.) as predicted (cf. Matthew 24:24), yet the people of the Lord continue
faithful in the earth. It is to this body, the body of Christ, that Zechariah
predicts a large and sudden segment of Israel is to be added as they come to ONE
LORD, ONE SAVIOUR (for there is no other - Isaiah 43:10-11), who has PAID for
the peace to be wrought, the meadows of rest to be found (cf. Isaiah 63:14 cf.
Matthew 11:28ff.), and the pardon available (Isaiah 53:10-12, cf. Acts 4:11-12).
What more profound outward insult,
execration? No more final or explicit affront to the Lord is possible than
this, of seeking His Person, afflicting His face and piercing His incarnate
body! The ultimate penalty for the ultimate affront, mentioned by Moses
in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy Chs. 28-32, is dispersion; and this the Jewish
people have suffered (e.g. Deuteronomy 28:63, 29:22-28, Leviticus
26:30-33), this people with all the details, as foretold, of their
soon-to-come, and long-to-continue international sorrows.
This is seen in Deuteronomy 32:31-2, 32:26, and in
Leviticus 26 as noted, but their tenor, again, is striking, as we consider their
1900 years of exile till 1948:
And the generation to come
of your children that shall rise up after you, and the foreigner who shall
come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land,
and the sicknesses which the Lord has laid upon it, and that the whole
land ... is not sown ... like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah ... which
the Lord overthrew in His anger and in His wrath: even all the nations
will say: Why has the Lord done thus to this land ? what does the heat
of this great anger mean ? Then men will say, Because they forsook the
covenant of the Lord, the God of their fathers, who brought them out of
the land of Egypt: for they went and served other gods whom they did not
know... (from Deuteronomy 29:22,26).
The irony, the pitiable and poignant,
but still called-for irony ... ? It is this. This people necessarily
lost the chance to sacrifice in their appointed Temple, in the very act
of slaying that sacrifice who came so willingly (Psalm 40:1-3); for the
ultimate penalty being dispersion, and their error being as ultimate as
rebellion can well be, and dispersion removing them from the land and hence
from the place appointed, Jerusalem, they neither COULD perform
this old covenant preliminary to the New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31), nor
SHOULD. Having completed unknowingly the staging for the NEW
COVENANT by a rebellion which blinded them to the fact that the Old
was past... BY THEIR OWN HANDS! they simultaneously ensured the
removal of the means for formal rebellion, the TEMPLE and
its SACRIFICES.
Nor is that all. They used the
Gentile Romans to rid them of Christ; and it was this same race,
the Gentile Romans who wrecked their city, salted it down, ploughed it,
and destroyed utterly their temple, just as Christ, lamenting but real,
in a judgment now inevitable had predicted (cf. Daniel's prophecy, 9:24-27)!
Thus it was that further animal sacrifice
became not merely grossly abusive, having no call:
"He who... sacrifices a
lamb (is) as he who breaks a dog's neck ..." (Isaiah 66:3),
but it also grew to be prodigious waste
and wholly irrelevant (Isaiah 65:l5-l6). In fact it became a blasphemous
denial of God's own and most personal dealing (Isaiah 53:3-5), which led
to a forbearance so prodigious as to have impressed many generations. (Thus,
in Isaiah 53:12 - God Himself as man, makes intercession
for the transgressors, part of whose transgression was to depict God as
a wrongdoer and to crucify the body of His incarnation - Micah 5:1-3.)
Pitiful ? The thing is of the most profound pity,
poignancy itself weeps; but such is the penalty when reality is disdained, or
despised or lost; and the more so, when it has come so close and this so
clearly.
God's name was in the slain Messiah,
the sacrifice which made the former Temple ritual passé, like Primary
School teaching when one is at University. If God's name was in His temple,
how much more was it incarnate in His son. As to the Temple, He supplanted
it, surpassed it, as God surpasses symbols which express Him (cf. Hebrews
10). How little is He known when symbols are preferred to what they
symbolise; but how far worse when that, it is God Himself!
There lies the miraculous message through
the Jews in their adversity; as the Gospel is the miraculous message to
the Gentiles. Just as God has said He should call His people
by another name - not to forget those of His pledges which were unconditional
(Leviticus 26:44-45, Deuteronomy 30:3, Ezekiel 36-37), but to fulfil the
wholly unconditional Gospel promise to all men (Isaiah 49:6, 65:1-13, Zechariah
2:11) - so the Jews performed their dramatic cycle, eventually to
see them returned to their own land and to the New Covenant (Isaiah 65:16,
53:10, Ezekiel 37).
Jerusalem ? Its importance ? Its
has not ceased. Firstly, then by the Mosque it pours scorn on the scorn poured
on Jesus Christ, for the TEMPLE SIGNIFICANCE is now fulfilled and a false
prophet can have his house precisely where the symbolic house of the true God
had for so long been placed. The Gentiles can indeed scour out the Temple, set
up their own, mock the God of salvation in so doing, despise the Christ, and in
the case of Muhammad, dare to use His name for a creation without ground,
historical basis or attestation of any kind, a new Jesus*1A, stripped of glory. All
this can be and has been done and led to enormous suffering to those responsible
and to others who play games with them for any reason, as now.
Thus Jerusalem, the noble city, it has served
in symbol, became the site for the movement from symbol to ultimate
sacrifice in Jesus Christ, the predicted Messiah at the predicted time (cf.
Daniel 9:24-27 cf. Highway of Holiness
Ch. 4), is the place where God paid. To it, this same Jesus is to return
(cf. Zechariah 14), and to this world He will return (Micah 4) using
Jerusalem not now as a place of spiritual pageant, a site for crucifixion
for the ultimate sacrifice - all that is now past forever - but as an
administrative capital, for Jew and Gentile, for the world. It will be
ground into the vision of man, like multiplication tables in the Primary
school of the past (and a good idea at that!), that God did indeed use this
city for His glory under David, for the gore with Christ and to exhibit the
vainglory of man, as in the Mosque.
He indeed had ONE PLACE because there is ONE
SAVIOUR where first in animal picture and then in human reality, sin is
covered. It is to this site of His own crucifixion in human format that He
comes, with the geological results shown in Zechariah 14. He has indeed
foretold that this same Jerusalem, part of the inalienable heritage promised
to Abraham (Genesis 17:7-8 cf. Galloping Events Ch. 4), should be of this
central character as a site for His salvation, where the payment actually
occurred, and that the Jewish people would reconstitute their nation,
Israel, precisely here and regain their city. Even this was to be given a
prelude, half the city (Zechariah 14:1ff.), the more to illustrate the
intensity of His intent!
When therefore the nations, as also predicted (Zech. 12:1ff.) wish to make
contention in the matter, whichever Gentiles, they merely await the results
(Ezekiel 38ff., Micah 7, Deuteronomy 32:30,36ff.) foretold. There is small
blessing in interfering here; rather a curse is being begged for, and
perhaps, it is now being found!
Consider now a word from a former PM of Israel,
David Ben-Gurion, concerning his own nation, and in the light of the above,
you will be the better able to see WHY this amazing result has occurred. God
planned it, did it, and its singularity is from HIS!
NO OTHER PEOPLE
"I know of no other people
that was exiled from its land,
dispersed among the nations of the world,
so hated, persecuted, expelled, and
slaughtered
(in your days and mine alone 6 million Jews were destroyed by the Nazi),
yet did not vanish from history,
did not despair nor assimilate (although many did),
but yearned incessantly to return to its land,
and believed in its messianic deliverance for two thousand years;
and indeed did return to its land in our day and renewed its independence.
And I know that here never was a people in this land -
called always in Hebrew the Land of Israel -
that was so entirely identified all of its life with this land.
Although there were many conquerors (Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians,
Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Seljuks, Crusaders, Mamelukes, Ottomans, and
British)
this country was never the one and only homeland to any people other than the
Jews.
"I am aware that there is no other case in
human history
of a people returning to its land after eighteen hundred years.
This is a unique fact, but one that operated in every generation,
for there was no generation when the Jews did not try (although not all of them
succeeded) to return to their Homeland.
A second fact is that the Christian world and the League of Nations,
which was composed almost entirely of Christian peoples,
recognized the historic link between the People of Israel and the Land of Israel
and endorsed the Balfour Declaration."
JERUSALEM THE SIGNIFICANT
Now in David Ben-Gurion's large work, ISRAEL,
there are some interesting
features on Jerusalem and Israel, in its conflicts and formation. He covers a
long period up to 1971, and we garner details of much value from this work.
First however, let us site the matter of Jerusalem in the prophetic scriptures,
and relate to contemporary history.
Thus it was
indeed 1967 that saw the capture of the whole of Jerusalem by Israel, as it
found itself confronted by perilously and aggressively inclined forces, and took action to deliver
itself from an extermination war. It was this that 1948 threatened to enshrine
for the nation, Jerusalem. Acting and divinely enabled, it managed to
avoid the sad but spectacular fate of becoming
a famous but melancholy shrine for Israel: for staggeringly, against all comers, it was that nation which quite
miraculously won that war (as foretold in the divine plan in Zechariah 12:3ff.).
In the process, of course, in 1948, Israel
took just half of Jerusalem as Zechariah 14:1ff. foretold in an overall context
from Chapters 9-14, that relates
first to the coming of the Messiah as Saviour
(Zechariah 9), with the ass's colt for detail,
then to His betrayal, sale for 30
pieces of silver (Zechariah 11) for more verifiable detail, and
then to a
severely ironic, prophetically spoken question,
concerning the wounds in the Messiah's hands. .
It has the betrayed figure focussed in Zechariah 11, the sold Saviour, in a dialogue, an ironic prophetic
question and answer session. We move to the 13th. chapter.
"What scars,"
goes the question in Zechariah 13, " are these between
Your hands ?" (Keil).
"Those," He replies,
"were inflicted upon Me in the house of My loves"
or "friends"! ...
You recall, perhaps, that
Jesus, betrayed at Gethsemane by Judas, asks him this:
"Friend, why have you come ?" (Matthew 26:50), and emphasising it still
further, queries - "Judas, are you betraying the Son
of Man with a kiss ?" (Luke 22:48).
There is plenty of room for a
piercing irony, therefore, in this prophetic preview, dramatised in this
exquisite manner to bring out the force of the folly.
It is in Zechariah 12, in this Messianic
context, which touches both His first advent for suffering and that for glory to
come (Luke 24:25ff.,39ff.); and as in Luke later, it similarly dwells on the wounds
in His hands, and that half a millenium before it happened.
It is there that we
read of the wars to come to Israel, the divine rescue with dynamic thrust, the
burden to attach to those seeking to occupy themselves with the renewed Jewish
State, and the time to come, of repentance. Whose ? Why as in Romans 11:25, the
thing in both Testaments, that of many in Israel, like a great swathe to be cut
in its midst, who will "look upon Me whom they pierced"
(Zechariah 12:10). This is foretold to come for Israel, as has all the
rest been foretold as in Amos 3:7 GOD SAID HE WOULD FORETELL. Even that was
foretold, the foretelling!
The Messianic motif, the obvious fact that
in the context in Zechariah 12, the slaying of the Messiah is a thing of the
past for which they now come to repent, the repentance itself with the washing
in the water of salvation (Zechariah 13:1ff.): all these things site the
situation. It is in the era after Christ's slaying, where it is looked back on
as a thing to repent of, a travail of the past, an event done and to be reviewed
with a just mourning.
Just as Zechariah 14 gives the historical
item that Jerusalem was to be
divided into two in the midst of these near to terminal events for this vast and
rolling history of this sacred (because so divinely used) city, so are the vital
saving events displayed, beyond all this.
Indeed, the prophecy of Zechariah moves
on from that, fulfilled in 1948, with the Mandelbaum Gate division of the city,
to the actual return of the Messiah to Israel and in particular to the Mount of
Olives in an event of great geological impact! These then being background
prophetic and historical, indeed merging facts, we turn once more to recent
history as found in massive volume of the former Israeli PM.
In David Ben-Gurion's ISRAEL (a personal
history, since he was personally involved in a staggeringly large section of
early developments prior to the book's publication in 1971), there are enormous
quantities of detail, reflections and memories from review of the vicissitudes
he experienced, watched and evaluated. These were like a stream: robust
when in full flow, but at times it appears dispersive, yet again, determined,
dynamic or dramatic. At other times, its course, that of his participation in
these historical affairs, is seen as requiring patience or even gentleness.
Towards the end of this vast volume, he
characterises certain features of Jewish history.
Although this has been cited above, it is
convenient to see it once more in our present context.
On p. 795, he said this, and in this
presentation, it is set for impact at this later date, in lines that will bring
out more impactively, the content. A good title for it would be,
NO OTHER PEOPLE
"I know of no other people
that was exiled from its land,
dispersed among the nations of the world,
so hated, persecuted, expelled, and
slaughtered
(in your days and mine alone 6 million Jews were destroyed by the Nazi),
yet did not vanish from history,
did not despair nor assimilate (although many did),
but yearned incessantly to return to its land,
and believed in its messianic deliverance for two thousand years;
and indeed did return to its land in our day and renewed its independence.
And I know that here never was a people in this land -
called always in Hebrew the Land of Israel -
that was so entirely identified all of its life with this land.
Although there were many conquerors (Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians,
Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Seljuks, Crusaders, Mamelukes, Ottomans, and
British)
this country was never the one and only homeland to any people other than the
Jews.
"I am aware that there is no other case in
human history
of a people returning to its land after eighteen hundred years.
This is a unique fact, but one that operated in every generation,
for there was no generation when the Jews did not try (although not all of them
succeeded) to return to their Homeland.
A second fact is that the Christian world and the League of Nations,
which was composed almost entirely of Christian peoples,
recognized the historic link between the People of Israel and the Land of Israel
and endorsed the Balfour Declaration."
THIS, he declared, is a unique
fact. So no doubt it is.
The other unique fact to
realise in parallel, is this:
that this continuity of the race, of the Jewish people, amidst exile and
taunting, when the heavens would become as brass and the earth a vast trial, was
in detail prophetically declared from the day of Moses onwards, and reviewed not a little
(Deuteronomy 32, Leviticus 26, Ezekiel 36-38, Hosea, Micah 7). A deep overall
treatment occurs also in the New Testament (Romans 11), of events leading up to
the present.
What Ben-Gurion finds by
reflection, God first stated for inspection. Let us review it here in our
present flow of thought.
The plan ? In part it was this.
GOD would ensure, that in the midst of repeated and chronic revisionism, revolt
against Him, formalism and unreality, that they would after preliminary
warnings, be exiled, subjected to reverses, but would endure, would be
returned to their land, would succeed in being planted there against vast and
overwhelming forces against it (Zechariah 12). In the midst of these events, and
crucial to them, they would reject and slay the Messiah (Isaiah 49:7, 49-55).
Yet He would not ignore the final outcome, for in Him would be found a Gospel, a
New Covenant (Isaiah 53-55, Jeremiah 31:31ff., Jeremiah 16). This they would not
at first accept, but ultimately, returned gratuitously, ex gratia, to their land
by the Lord (Ezekiel 36ff., Micah 7 cf. SMR
Appendix A), they would in large numbers return to the
Lord, even the nation which (with Rome) slew Him.
In this milieu, HE would
deliver them from forces so alien, so hostile, so inveterate, that HIS OWN POWER
would be used to do so (Zechariah 12:4ff.). If HE disciplines, yet IN PRINCIPLE, He does not approve of
others who like unruly school children, try to add THEIR OWN additives to the
troubled nation (Isaiah 51:22-23 cf. Jeremiah 51:34-39).
The whole plan was His and
announced part by part, detail by detail, for over a millenium before Christ
came; and it is now over two millenia since much of this was first set to
record, prophetically, to be discovered anew when, as now, it has happened. In
SMR Chs . 8 - 9, there is much detail on this; and it need not be repeated here.
The point of all this ?
What BEN GURION OBSERVES in terms of
a unique national history is one aspect, the
empirical one.
What GOD both described and prescribed in
writings over 3400 years before some of these events, with more later, is also
unique. This is thus also a unique predictive series
for any nation. There is none like it in all history. It is alone in
kind, and in the mind of God for man, in His word, and in ANY WORD.
This, it was meant to be. It was intended
that as He unfolded His plan with divine dynamic to make the results come
(rebellion was one of the CAUSES), so the nations would take note and become
instructed (Ezekiel 38:23, 39:22-23).
It was in detail appointed, and it came. By
nature it is unique, for it so much as to happen.
It is doubly so for it to be so foretold. If
any have ears, then it is time to listen. With one error of estimation spoiling
vast futures, for anyone seeking to predict such things, if it were a question
of preliminary survey, and with a vast array of whole questions of national and
international action, reaction, persecution and assault, as history developed,
there could be nothing sure, let alone detailed to be foreseen in the entire
multiplying milieu of developments. In the case at hand, every little detail is
sure, right up to those of the 20th and 21st century; and the schema is outlined
like an opera sheet for inspection, before it comes on stage.
JERUSALEM THE
SPECIFIED,
THE SOUGHT, THE DETERMINATE
In that stage, Jerusalem has had a divinely
appointed place, in various depths and dimensions, and continues to have one,
though not now the same as before. As the site of the crucifixion of the Lord of
glory and the place appointed for His vindicating return in glory, as the place
where the misuse of the temple became an object of mockery, it becomes that
where its equal misuse by other unbelief, will meet its end with all other
pretensions. It will end with HIS coming who made the earth and appointed how it
was to be used. Ownership ? from eternity.
It was not, then, some adventure in history that
brought all this to pass; and it was not some lapse in historical kind that
brought Israel's fall. It came because of rebellion from a mutually agreed post
as testifying of God to man, in pre-specified manner (Isaiah 43:21 with Isaiah
1). There were decisive, incisively expressed causes for the evils they
suffered, just as in mercy there is an overwhelming and ultimate grace to
overcome their default and bring back first the nation to its site, and then many of them back to Himself, in peace and
pardon, joy and happiness of heart (as in Isaiah 51:11) in that same Christ to
whom many of the Gentile people have come.
Amid all this is JERUSALEM. It is NOT just
that Jews have been in Israel than any other people (God's Gift of Grace
in Christ JesusCh. 5); nor that they have
had events of a spectacular kind that have arrested mankind again and again. It
is that God specified the city for His teaching, sacrificial, spiritual
depictions and actions at the Cross, and used it in a context national in kind,
cohesive in character, to bring reality not to Israel alone (Isaiah 42:6, 49:6),
but to the race. He did it in terms made clear, as the Gospel, before He paid
for them at Calvary, with a life made fitted for it preceding, in Isaiah for
example. He declared His coming, His going and His return; their going, their
return and the coming spiritual change, for many of them to come in their
hearts in precisely the current milieu. As to that, it could happen at any time since all the preliminaries are now in place.
A focus of hatred (cf. Deuteronomy 32:21,
Leviticus 26:17, Jeremiah 24:9, Ezekiel 5:15), Israel has tried again
and again to make peace. One must realise also that in 1947 when the
UN put up a partition plan*2 so that Jerusalem would be an international city,
and Israel would get some sectors of Palestine in a sporadic seeming manner, while the
Arabs would gain the rest, this was rejected.
By whom ? by the Arabs. They did not WANT
Israel. The most favourable terms were not enough. God declared Israel would
endure despite all; they did. HE said they would return. They did. He declared
that they would win amidst staggering assaults, in which HE would guarantee
their survival (later their revival). They did.
ALL the subsequent wars could have
been avoided, at this level anyway, that is in terms of Arab aggression as in
1948, 1973 and in the intifada, by acceptance of what was then on offer, and is now far from their lot.
Ben Gurion, in his ISRAEL, indicates that it was with grief of heart that Israel
was willing to
accept that 1947 betrayal by the UN of the League of Nations determination for
Israel. They WERE to have a land of which they could be proud, one in which they
could have - without being rampant against those there - a homeland, for their
very own. Could they have a homeland when assailed continually from those in
another part of Palestine ? could they take pride in an apportionment which
Arabs studiously refused to acknowledge in practical affairs, even to the point
of seeking its demise ?
Nor has this been a sudden development, but
one of longstanding. In what follows, red will be used simply to make it easier
to see relevant points for our present interest.
From Palestine Facts, the British Mandate in Palestine, we
have the following.
The 1922
White Paper (also called the Churchill White Paper) was the first official
manifesto interpreting the Balfour Declaration. It was issued on June 3, 1922,
after investigation of the 1921 disturbances. Although the White Paper stated
that the Balfour Declaration could not be amended and that the Jews were in
Palestine by right, it partitioned the area of the Mandate by excluding the
area east of the Jordan River from Jewish settlement. That land, 76% of the
original Palestine Mandate land,
was
renamed Transjordan and was given to the Emir Abdullah by the British.
The White Paper included the statement that the British Government:
... does not want Palestine to become "as Jewish as
England is English", rather should become "a center in which Jewish people
as a whole may take, on grounds of religion and race, an interest and a
pride."
The mandate to Britain concerning
Palestine was a useful source for characterisation of the intention. We gain
this from
Research - Library of Congress Country Studies
The Mandate's terms recognized the "historical connection of the Jewish
people with Palestine," called upon the mandatory power to
"secure
establishment of the Jewish National Home," and recognized "an appropriate
Jewish agency" for advice and cooperation to that end. The WZO, which was
specifically recognized as the appropriate vehicle, formally established the
Jewish
Agency (see Glossary) in 1929. Jewish immigration was to be facilitated,
while ensuring that the "rights and position of other sections of the
population are not prejudiced." English, Arabic, and Hebrew were all to be
official languages. At the San Remo Conference, the French also were assured
of a mandate over Syria. They drove Faysal out of Damascus in the summer; the
British provided him with a throne in Iraq a year later. In March 1921,
Winston Churchill, then colonial secretary, established Abdullah as ruler of
Transjordan under a separate British mandate.
Let us look a little further.
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.
In 1925, the British added 60,000 sq. km. of desert to eastern Transjordan
forming an "arm" of land to connect Transjordan with Iraq and to cut Syria off
from the Arabian Peninsula. The British continued to favor exclusive Arab
development east of the Jordan River by enacting restrictive regulations
against the Jews, even when Arab leaders sought Jewish involvement in the
development of Transjordan.
This prodigious apportionment for
the Arabs appears to have been forgotten in normal journalistic belligerence (it
is not a total nescience, for some still refer to such things). Is about three
quarters of the Palestine which was to serve as a homeland for Israel, so that
it could be productive in peace, fulfilling its history of long association, not
enough to lose in this absolutist and unilateral British fashion ? If not, why
not! Jordan, moving from the earlier appointed name of Transjordan as it took up
nationhood, exists as a special entity by virtue of an apportionment from
Palestine, that land in a British Mandate with a Jewish homeland connotation,
one in which it was clear that there was to be such a pervasiveness for Israel,
that she was to be cautioned NOT to be disruptive but to make due allowance for
the peoples living there!
Due allowance ? This is to be found
in removing some three quarters of the land from it altogether, and then having
this same Jordan in 1948, seize more in military style, while Israel was in
danger of having its appointed homeland annulled by violence ? THIS, this
'West Bank' as it is mischievously called, this extra grab to add to
three-quarters, recognised by only two nations when it happened, it is to be
made irrelevant. It is like cutting off two arms from someone, and then in a
meeting of minds for peace, deciding precisely how much more is to come, with a
convenient loss of reference to a couple of arms already negotiated away, and in
fact lopped off, and kept for everyone to see, in the assailant's home! The
image is not excessive; the truancy from the spirit of the gift and the taunting
for Israel so much as to be there provide an climacteric character to the thing,
making it almost surreal.
It is therefore of the utmost
significance, as history is reviewed in the light of the prophetic background
and contemporary foreground, to realise that the continuation of the capital of
Israel in terms of its homeland is not an issue of novelty and interest. It is
part of the very nature of recognising Israel's past in this land and the
character of homeland accorded to it, such that others should be allowed to have
a reasonable time in their midst, WHILE they have a HOMELAND and not a
negotiating strip.
There is no other nation which has
made for thousands of years, Jerusalem its capital; some have used it, handled
it, but have not so accorded this site. The only people to put up so much as a
religious shrine on its Temple Mount, were not the first to do so. Nor is it so
much as their chief religious site. To imagine that Israel would surrender not
only 3/4 of the territory in which it was to practice care for others, and then
an indent into the 'West Bank', and then allow the Capital and chief religious
centre, in a combination no other people has had for thousands of years, to be
severed in part or whole from it, is to imagine that the League of Nations never
existed, the World War I never happened, Allenby had never conquered and taken
the area, and that the homeland concept meant a flaming con-dominion, not a site for
pride.
It is not just that it is so
lopsided, nor is it merely
that it is so incremental and continual a force and
dynamic
to divest more and more from Israel, the UN for example,
not taking
action against those seeking to remove Israel from its appointed homeland;
nor
is it only the fact that we are talking of a sovereign nation's capital
in a
territory appointed for its homeland,
where force was used to grab some of the
territory about it by Jordan,
already more than replete with its dictated share:
it is that to divest Israel of its SOLE capital, that of the ONLY nation
so to
use the place for millenia, in that way, and which has used it so for many
centuries,
it is a very special action.
It is like removing the head, as well as two arms from the assaulted
body, and asking it to continue to offer no resistance to these ... shall we
call them 'operations' ?
Apart from seeking not to be
obliterated as multi-national bodies repeated make war on it, and trying to
discourage rocket assaults on its very minor territory, to the tune of thousands
of them, Israel has been not only careful to maintain religious access for
others coming peaceably, but has
done so in marked contrast to what happened when Jordan had the Old City form
1948 to 1967.
On p. 789, Ben Gurion (op.cit.) speaks on Arab
refugees:
"When after the renewal of the State of
Israel twenty years ago the IDF took control of cities in our land whose
inhabitants were non-Jews - Moslems, Druze and Christians - in no place were the
inhabitants harmed. Not one of the inhabitants of these towns and villages was
expelled, evicted, or taken captive. The Arab refugees who take up so much world
attention left the country during the Mandate period on the instructions of the
Arab High Command in those days which promised them that as soon as the Arab
armies invaded thee projected State of Israel, they would regain not only their
homes and property but that of the Jews as well and that the Jews themselves
would be thrown into the sea.
"Since the creation of the State of Israel
not one person, Arab or Druze, Moslem or Christian, has been expelled. Yet when
the Arab Legion overcame the small Jewish community in the Old City, not a
single Jew was allowed to remain, the synagogues were destroyed and razed, all
the men were taken captive and those women and children who remained alive were
driven out to the eastern side of the city. Even the promise embodied in the
Armistice agreement with Jordan - to permit every Jew free access to the Holy
Places in Jerusalem and the surrounding area - has been violated all this time.
The Jewish community was permitted no access to its Holy Places, which preceded
in time all the places holy to Christians and Moslems and even these religions
themselves. No Jew was allowed to approach the Western Wall or any other place
in the Old City until the IDF redeemed it and opened wide its gates to all Jews
or non-Jews who thirsted to set eyes on the Eternal City of King David."
Let us for a moment return to this 1947 refusal by the
Arab powers, of the extraordinarily generous disposition, from their point of
view as receptors, that the UN was about to make, always remembering the
take-over of most of Palestine by Jordan and its West Bank additives.
On the 1947 Arab rejection of the UN plan, from
Palestine
Facts, to be found at -
we have this (once again, red colouring is used
to bring attention to our particular course of interest at this point):
Why did the Arabs reject the UN plan?
Arab rejection of partition in 1947 reflected a crisis of leadership in a
community whose identity as Palestinians was not yet fully crystallized.
Indeed, at the start of the British mandate, the Arabs of Palestine were
profoundly ambivalent about the appropriate focus of their political
loyalties--should they identify with the overall Arab nation, consider
themselves Southern Syrians, or call themselves Palestinians in conformity to
boundaries artificially drawn by imperial powers?
The responsibility for resisting British rule and confronting an influx of
Jewish immigrants fell upon a Palestinian political elite drawn from
traditional urban notable families. The tensions between the two foremost
families--the Husaynis and Nashishibis--came to a head during the Arab Revolt
of 1936-39. This uprising did yield British restrictions on Jewish immigration
and land purchase, but not a secure route to Palestinian self-determination.
As noted by Palestinian scholar Rashid Khalidi:
The Palestine Arab Revolt...was in many ways the decisive
episode in the efforts of the Palestinian Arabs to resist the British
mandate's support for a Jewish National home in Palestine....[It] has been
glorified in much Palestinian historiography but...ultimately the revolt
must be judged a failure....[D]uring this episode [the Palestinians']
already divided leadership was fragmented further....These divisions
contributed to the failure of the Palestinians to capitalize on [their]
potential advantages.
As the partition vote in the UN approached, it became clear little hope
existed for a political solution to a problem that transcended politics: the
Arabs' unwillingness to accept a Jewish state in Palestine and the refusal of
the Zionists to settle for anything less. The implacability of the Arabs was
evident when Jewish Agency representatives David Horowitz and Abba Eban made a
last-ditch effort to reach a compromise in a meeting with Arab League
Secretary-General Azzam Pasha on September 16, 1947. Pasha told them bluntly:
The Arab world is not in a compromising mood. It's likely,
Mr. Horowitz, that your plan is rational and logical, but the fate of
nations is not decided by rational logic. Nations never concede; they fight.
You won't get anything by peaceful means or compromise. You can, perhaps,
get something, but only by the force of your arms. We shall try to defeat
you. I am not sure we'll succeed, but we'll try. We were able to drive out
the Crusaders, but on the other hand we lost Spain and Persia. It may be
that we shall lose Palestine. But it's too late to talk of peaceful
solutions.
The categorical rejection of partition by the Arab Higher Committee led by
Haj Amin al-Huseini
as well as the newly created Arab League represented an all-or-nothing
attitude that was ultimately counterproductive. It resulted in the utter
defeat of Palestinian dreams for independence, for at least half a century.
The Arabs not only rejected partition, but attacked Israel from all sides.
The armies of Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon and Iraq invaded Israel on
May 15, 1947, the day after Israel's Independence Day, with the clear
intention of killing the infant state in its cradle.
On May 15, 1947 Azzam Pasha called for "jihad", saying:
This will be a war of extermination and a momentous
massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the
Crusades".
Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, agreed with Pasha:
I declare a holy war, my muslim brothers! Murder the Jews!
Murder them all!
In a letter to the United Nations, the Transjordanian Prime Minister was
quoted:
Our position is clear, and has been proclaimed on every
occasion. It is never to allow the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine
and to exclude partition. And our object is to cooperate with the other Arab
States in her deliverance. Once this aim is attained, the determination of
her future status is the right and concern of her own people. Theirs alone
is the last word. We have no other object or aim in view.
Such thoughts, enshrined in the well-known
designation of the return of Israel to her traditional and famous land, as THE
CATASTROPHE in various Islamic and Arab circles, and seen again and again in
the unwillingness of Hamas so much as to recognise her as a nation, and
reflected in the fact that the Oslo Accord provisions evidently did not require Israel so much as to be accepted
as a nation as a condition, all point in one direction. There is a vast
body of Arab opinion and desire which does not want what is termed Allah to suffer an alien
people in the Middle East, and they find that having such a strong Islamic
participation in Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and
Pakistan is NOT ENOUGH.
As Arab League Secretary-General Azzam Pasha is
reported (above) to have told the Jewish Agency representatives in September
16, 1947: It is NOT a
mater of reason or logic; being reasonable is evidently not the trait in
view. That is beside the point.
What then ? What is desired by many is that
Israel be not there, that 'the catastrophe' collapse. Just as this has long been felt thus by
multitudes of militants, so al Qaida is on
record as resenting the US in its endeavours to sustain Israel in place*3. Huge
wartime episodes now depend on this, as more and more cleavages continue their
ravages in the world.
Melanie Philips, Jewish World Review, May 7, 2009,
has this to say.
It is of course, by any sane standard, quite fantastic that
America is behaving as if it is Israel which is
holding up a peace settlement when Israel has
made concession after concession – giving up Sinai, giving up Gaza, offering all
the territories to the Arabs in return for peace in 1967, offering more than 90
per cent of them ditto in 2000, ditto again to Mahmoud Abbas in the past year --
only to be attacked in return by a Palestinian terrorist entity, backed in its
continued aggression, let us not forget, by the countries of the Organisation of
the Islamic Conference, which has made no concessions at all
and is not being pressured to do so.
JERUSALEM THE SURROUNDED
It should be rather obvious, therefore, from a
number of considerations, that pressurising Israel to make grants is not a
particularly productive, instructive or irenic action, when security of the
nation has any consideration or concern at all.
1) Consider the FACT that when Gaza was ceded to the Palestinians by Israel, in
one of its many GIFTS to the alien and alienated parties, it was then used by
the recipient party with a strange gratitude. If you prefer, a
strange response!
It was deployed as a
bombardment centre.
2) Another pertinent fact here: When Jordan
gave citizenship (as well it might, being part of Palestine, other than the
Jewish part) to Palestinians seeking it, it was so used in attack on Israel,
as a base, rather than a site for renewal, that that nation terminated itself as a site for those coming
in this manner. Thus open arms became a certain stringency.
3) War was involved, and not peace. Chronic,
toxic, inveterate war for extinction, exclusion from the homeland, devastation
of its peace. Thus there has been repeatedly a martial tonic instead of truth,
a force concept, so that more of the tiny residue of Israel in Palestine its
homeland site, is forever being sought. It has long past the stage of tragi-comedy,
obvious death by thousand cuts; it is now mere toxic tragedy, that such regard
for useful ingredients for Islam in its pursuits, now appears so to dwarf
justice, faithfulness and stability of concept. The UN, by its persistently
provocative actions (not excluding those on racism, one of the greatest
confusions of the century) seems intoxicated as do many others with the
fumes.
There can be no intention of having ANY
homeland of which Israel may feel proud, so long as more and more is taken,
and more and more intransigent, homeland denying parties throw arms around,
rabble rouse via the media, and misuse the facts by showing that those who
seek to destroy Israel are suffering. Did Germany suffer when it sought to
subdue England ? Is one to protect aggressors from their militarism and submit
to their slave-drives, to have one SUBMIT, SUBMIT to their forcible
intimations!
If so, why even mention such a concept as
justice, or such a consideration as equity ?
As to removing Jerusalem from being capITal of
the segment left to Israel, therefore, this is merely removing the face from
the incident-victim.
JERUSALEM
THE NEWSWORTHY
JERUSALEM THE NEWSWORTHY
Small wonder then that Netanyahu has made
recent announcements on the topic. HA'ARETZ has news here. Red again is used
to distinguish points especially pertinent to our current interest.
Last update - 00:43 22/05/2009
Netanyahu: Jerusalem holy
sites will remain Israeli forever
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Thursday that
all of Jerusalem would always remain under Israeli sovereignty, in
comments likely to spark consternation among Palestinians who hope to
make the city the capital of a future state.
"Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish
people, a city reunified so as never again to be divided,"
Netanyahu said at a ceremony to mark Jerusalem Day in the city's Mercaz
Harav yeshiva. "Our people's unparalleled affinity to Jerusalem has
spanned thousands of years, and is at the basis of our national
renaissance. It has united our people, secular and religious people
alike."
The Mercaz Harav rabbinic college is the most prominent yeshiva in the
religious Zionist world. It was central in shaping the evolution of
religious Zionism. In March last year, a Palestinian gunman gained
entrance to the yeshiva and killed eight students.
Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin also spoke at the
ceremony at Mercaz Harav. He said that Israeli
sovereignty of Jerusalem is not negotiable.
"The world must recognize our sovereignty, as
well as the primacy of the Jewish people in the holy sites, as our
inalienable right," Rivlin said.
Jerusalem Day celebrates the conquest of the city during the 1967 Six
Day War, before which Jordan controlled east Jerusalem, while Israel had
the western section. Shortly after the war, Israel annexed east
Jerusalem.
Earlier on Thursday, Netanyahu said similar things at a state ceremony
to mark the day.
"United Jerusalem is Israel's capital.
Jerusalem was always ours and will always be ours. It will never again
be partitioned and divided," Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu said he had made the same declaration during his recent visit
to Washington, where he met with United States President Barack Obama
over the peace process and Iran's nuclear program.
"Only under Israeli sovereignty will united
Jerusalem ensure the freedom of religion and freedom of access for the
three religions to the holy places," Netanyahu added.
The ceremony took place at Ammunition Hill in east Jerusalem, site of
one of the bloodiest battles in the city in the 1967 war, situated now
in a Jewish neighborhood.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said later Thursday that Netanyahu's
position on Jerusalem was a setback to the goal of a two-state solution,
which is strongly supported by the Obama administration.
"Mr. Netanyahu, by saying that, he's saying the state of conflict will
be eternal," Erekat said.
Rafik Husseini, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, issued a
similar rejection of Netanyahu's stand. He said the Palestinians have
accepted a two-state solution based on east Jerusalem as the capital of
their state.
"Israeli occupation of east Jerusalem is illegal," he told The
Associated Press, adding that an Israeli attempt to keep control of east
Jerusalem would be a major obstacle to peace.
In his speech, Netanyahu echoed remarks made by President Shimon Peres,
who said earlier at the ceremony that, "Israel
will never have another capital other than Jerusalem, and Jerusalem will
never be the capital of another people."
Peres stressed that Jerusalem was and remained Israel's capital, and
spoke of the days before the Six Day war when Jews had limited access to
the Old City.
"When Jerusalem was in non-Jewish hands, the Jews weren't allowed to
pray at the holy sites; but under Jewish control, it is open to all
faiths, and all prayers," he said.
It appears obvious that
since Israel
has never agreed in any mutual arrangement, to have Jerusalem divided,
since it is a
sovereign State, and
since the UN
has infamously departed from the arrangements
made by the League of Nations, the concept of a homeland,
one in which it was explained, Israel might feel proud,
since the
equity has been devastated by unilateral provision
of some three quarters of Palestine for Jordan, no longer
seemingly
even a party to negotiation on the point of its reception
of mainly Moslems into a significantly Moslem land,
since there
are inflammatory efforts, by resolutions or imputations,
for continual grabs for more from the tiny residue:
there is need
for something other than this legal-branding organisation,
the UN, to operate and restore the land to its people from these
growling houndings.
It appears unlikely any human source, in the
billowing of oil and massive billions of persons, will so act.
JERUSALEM THE
DIVINELY DIRECTED SITE
FOR SOVEREIGN
PURPOSES
In due course, God has undertaken to act. The
position has been outlined above. It is one of the greatest dramas of all
history: a disciplined people, directed to act for the Lord, receiving this
mandate, then reneging, receiving due reward, being shown mercy, being brought
back to the premises of folly, being delivered from military might, all as
foretold, much of it from the first, being helped by God Almighty while still
not returning to Him and His word as initially given, now attacked on all
sides by this world. It loses its friends, for it seems the USA is moving fast*4
from its reliability as an agent of deliverance or even reasonable
reconciliation, simply making more demands for expropriation of this or that
which while mellowed a little by considerations, are not changed for all that.
God will act when He is ready.
He has waited a long time. You see the exact configuration of things in
Deuteronomy 32. We appear to be growing rather close to verses 36ff. -
"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 ?...
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..."
This is the time
of dénouement
from the rigors of the realities that have visited ancient, and now modern
Israel, in different specific foci, but always in the same perspective.
The LORD, He will act - when
the appointed time has come.
Other nations, other empires (cf.
The Pitter-Patter of Prophetic Feet
Ch. 4),
these have maintained their might
and their glory,
but their vainglory has come at
last to appear what it is,
absurd.
Prayer for Israel no less than for
Gentiles is in order. The world whirls to its corruption complex, and awaits
with no small pomp, the diminution of its self-acclaim, and the bankruptcy of
its wisdom.
As Paul puts it in I Corinthians
1:
"Where is the wise? Where
is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age?
"Has not God made foolish
the wisdom of this world?
For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know
God,
it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached
to save those who believe.
"For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom;
but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block
and to the Greeks foolishness,
but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks,
Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men,
and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
"For you see your calling,
brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh,
not many mighty, not many noble, are called.
But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the
wise,
and God has chosen the weak things of the world
to put to shame the things which are mighty;
and the base things of the world and the things which are despised
God has chosen, and the things which are not,
to bring to nothing the things that are,
that no flesh should glory in His presence.
"But of Him you are in
Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God -
and righteousness and sanctification and redemption -
that, as it is written, 'He who glories, let him glory in the Lord.' "
None but He will be glorified; nor in the whole
scope of His salvation is there any other way, Gospel or glory. It is He who
will act for one as for all, till ALL that He has said, to the jot and to the
tittle is fulfilled. IN HIM, will a mass in Israel then glory, and in His
Cross where the Lord of glory was crucified, as Zechariah 12:10-13:1 shows so
clearly, as does Romans 11:25ff..
He fulfils ALL His word, to show He is
faithful, reliable and true; and in so doing, He applies the Gospel, now here,
now there, not to this people or nation, now to that, if by any means any
should seek Him as in Acts 17 is shown from the lips of the apostle Paul. His
sovereign control, His unremitting love, His inflexible truth, these things
are back of the security of His salvation and the enormity of His mercy.
Nothing is left to chance. No one is lost by chance. He has predestined with
foreknowledge, in wisdom, fulfilling there ALL His principles, and applying
them, will perform His word.
The evils will then be blighted in their futile
finales, and the graces and the salvation of God will without competition, in
a tested and fallen world, have reached His own. The marvellous thing is
always this, that Jew or Gentile, Chinese or Russian, those in this or that
focus, feature or special plight, there is ONE GOD with ONE SALVATION, given
in ONE BOOK, for ALL TIME, and its word never varies in control of history,
performance of promise, provision of peace to those who receive Him - as He
is, according to His word, and hence, in Christ Jesus.
NOTES
*1
See Galloping Events Ch. 4, SMR
Appendix C, and Israel in indexes. When the Creator of earth and the
universe, designates in testable terms a land for a purpose, not to believe will
alter nothing but the status of those who so speak.
Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch.
8 (in perspective), see also
*1,
Divine Agenda Chs.
6,
3 (an overview of religious truancies, including Marx, Darwin and
Koran);
Highway to Hell (Koran citations in both, with ideational parallels
in perspective, in the former; and in the latter, futile depravities in
endless ideologies such as
Sudan
has shown so significantly, Islam ablaze without glory),
cf. Overflight in ChristCh.
1(and the Koran's musings);
1493 (esp. Britain and sharia);
News
138,
Beauty for Ashes Chs.
4,
7
Jesus Christ,
Defaced, Unfazed ... Ch.
5,
Acme,
Alpha and Omega: Jesus Christ ...
Ch. 9 ,
Great Execrations ... Ch. 3,
SMR
p.
1O88D
- three major religions in some ways in concert, astray.
(These latter show this religion, with the other three major conspiracies towards
the ultimate - why conspiracies ? It is because men conspire, or breathe
plans together for a control, rule or oversight not ordained by God: these
are breaths of man, and the breath that matters is that of God, in and by
which all scripture is inspired by Him (II Timothy 3:16, Isaiah 8:20), in
the Book of the Lord (Isaiah 34:16), the Bible, and sustained and
implemented by Him (Matthew 26:54ff.). Other ideas for rule are always
unruly, since they always tend to use power for what neither reason nor
truth compels.).
This we see illustrated by the sheer
undiplomatic force of the Secretary of State's oral remit to Jerusalem. If
it had been an occupying power, it might not have been too different. No,
says she, no!
"He (Obama) wants to see a stop to
settlements.
Not some settlements,
not outposts,
not natural growth exceptions."
Where angels may fear to tread, Obama is here
tramping with heavy boots on. This strange item appears in a news report in
The Australian, May 29, 2009.
This seemingly imperial flash of temper, or
at least of a steely and tempestuous seeming response, made public,
announced like an edict, sounds bad both for America and Israel. However,
Israel is nearing the time when God again intervenes, as He did in 1948 and
1967 as well as 1973, with amazing grace, to work works like dreams, but
into history. Playing with fire might be safer. These things, they often go,
they grow, and then there is ... a response.
Ha'aretz May 28 adds a little, to show the
firmness with which Israel is meeting demands, allied to efforts to be
reasonable.
Earlier Wednesday, an
Israeli official said that the American administration shows no signs of
backing down from its demands that Israel totally freeze settlement growth
in the West Bank and open the Gaza border terminals to allow the
rebuilding of the Strip.
These conclusions were drawn from talks held in London on Tuesday by
Intelligence and Atomic Energy Minister Dan Meridor and advisers to Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with American diplomats, led by U.S. special
envoy George Mitchell.
According to the official, the Israeli side claimed in the talks that
construction in settlements must be allowed to continue, due to natural
growth. They suggested construction be limited to the existing outlines of
the settlements, and to define in advance areas in which such construction
will be authorized. They also said the demand of Israel to completely
freeze the settlement construction was out of order, as the Palestinians
have failed to fulfill their part in the first phase of the road map, in
particular in combating terrorism.
The American side did not agree to the Israeli suggestions, and in
addition to the settlement issue, repeatedly brought up the matter of
opening the Gaza terminals to aid and construction materials necessary for
rebuilding the Strip.
The same Jerusalem official also said Netanyahu was interested in
reestablishing the ministerial committee on illegal outposts, to speed up
negotiations with the settlers and allow for the dismantling of 22
outposts constructed after March 2001.
It is interesting that a power so far away
should direct with such intimacy events in the land grab of Jordan in 1948,
now that Israel has re-secured this part of the land West of the Jordan
which was the reduced 'Palestine' over which Britain had mandate and which
was clear on this at least, as for Israel. Let us make a little
excursion into the preamble of that Mandate:
The Mandate for Palestine
July 24, 1922
The mandates for Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine
were assigned by the Supreme Court of the League of Nations at its San Remo
meeting in April 1920. Negotiations between Great Britain and the United
States with regard to the Palestine mandate were successfully concluded in
May 1922, and approved by the Council of the League of Nations in July 1922.
The mandates for Palestine and Syria came into force simultaneously on
September 29, 1922. In this document, the League of Nations recognized the
"historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine" and the "grounds
for reconstituting their national home in that country."
Text:
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 communities 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; and
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have selected
His Britannic Majesty as the Mandatory for Palestine ...
Since most of Palestine was gone to
Transjordan, Jordan to be, in Palestine was then to be a national home for
Jewish people ... and IN SO DOING the nations gave recognition to the
historical connection of the said people with Palestine, the point at issue,
and to the GROUNDS for reconstituting their national home in that country.
There was no indication at this point that even in the residue, there had to
be a joint rule, as by the US or the UN, but a mandate to INSTITUTE a
homeland for Israel, that particular country. Its purpose was not
dictation, but living, and that in such a way that they could take pride in
it, as was explained.
The Mandate was not to institute
subservience, but a land to be thought of as home; not a Municipality under
intrusive controls to satiate the desires of those wanting to limit and
surge into it. If they were to take care of needless offence - and they have
been careful with allowance for religious visits, to the point of leaving
the Mosque in Jerusalem on the Temple site! - yet it was home, not a homette,
a contrivance always pounded with rockets, or dictates concerning breaking
off some of the bedrooms.
It should not be necessary to placate those
who have already taken some 3/4 of Palestine, or any who made land grabs, to
have the thing now called the West Bank, which happens to include much of
the historical connection of Israel with the land, given such sterility even
to existing settlements.
This is becoming more like a national
servant, in a Neo-Reserve! much more.
