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CHAPTER 4
CULTURE, CHRIST and ISRAEL
News 371
The Australian, February 8, 9, 2006
ABC News Radio, February 10
Liberty and Democracy
In Ch 3, it was noted that "George W. Bush, in his 2006 State of the Union address, something of quintessential proportions in expectation, has made it clear that DEMOCRACY is to be exported, this great thing is to be paid for in its dissemination and insemination into other nations." It was added that for such enterprises, "vast numbers of billions are needed."
It was urged and explained there that the mere provision of freedom, in view of the nature of the divinely instilled commodity, one readily humanly polluted to become an erratic and uncontrolled engine that confines, is not at all the right export. It is good to HAVE, something to love, but without Christ, it was shown, it is like intelligence, a power that can oppress. It is not wrong: it is merely pathologically manipulable to a degree that has enslaved whole races, murdered millions and mad many regimes seem as if run by madmen, such is the dubious dynamic of their deluded paths. It was further shown that man without God is naturally vulnerable to such asininity as engulfs much of world history at this level, in stooks of lean-to dictators, hardly able to stand against the winds when their precarious holds are justly shown to be more chaff than wheat, more febrile even than chaff.
It is then of interest to note an article by Leon Hadar, in The Australian, February 9, 2006. Author of a book entitled Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East. Presumably, along those lines, he presents the view that the Bush policy in democratisation in the Middle East is a failure.
"What," he says, "is even more disturbing is that some of this anti-Western frenzy has exploded in places in the Arab Middle East - in the new Iraq and in Palestine - where the Bush administration has been promoting its campaign to spread freedom and where open elections were show-cased by Washington as highlighting its Wilsonian agenda of making the region safe for democracy."
In fact, he declares, members of the radical political Islamist groups have been elected to power during this US democracy emphasis there, and he cites Iraq's Shia clerics and Palestine's Hamas terrorist group. They, he indicates, have been acting as stimulants for mobs attacking Americans and Europeans, including Danish troops maintaining peace in Iraq and officers of the European Union in Gaza. There, he indicates, is the "main source of economic assistance for the Palestinians."
His view that trial and error bring nice institutions as in the US, and that this is not a transplanting matter appears jejune, but has some point. Thus it was anything but trial and error which led to the passion for liberty to WORSHIP GOD, one of the mainsprings of Western settlement in the USA. The place of God in the Constitution, in a manner not contrary to Christianity, though not declaring it, with various tolerances and cares and concerns for justice and equity and happiness, is by no means a trial and error matter, but was integumental to the construction of the USA at all! He does however at least perceive that democracy is merely enthroning vicious elements, where society is vicious. Democracy is no saviour, though it is a vast improvement on mere tyranny, with assorted fanatical oddments the dictator.
It is true, of course, that various institutions may be given more or less power, duplicated to some extent or not, and so on, but these are derivative rather than fundamental issues, which after all, are the arena of our current concern.
LIBERTY AND THE LORD
What is to the point is religion, and in that, God. As shown in the last Chapter, as in Predestination and Freewill, it is only from God that freedom CAN exist, freedom both to will and OF the will! Otherwise, there is always the container unit concept for man, and the containment of the unit itself. Thus if the god which is illusively chosen and delusively followed be one of force, as shown to be significantly applicable to the Islamic faith*1A , there is a highly specialised attitude to liberty for ANYONE.
Some have liberty to die (Surah 9:6-27). Others have liberty to be in subjection and support the religion, on account of force used against them. This iwas not a religion chosen by a country, but forced on it by power of arms, diplomacies, raids on caravans, intimidation and intrigue.
Thus in the days between Muhammad's living in Medina and coming back with power to control Mecca, he could require some pay taxes to the Islamic movement, in return for the permission to exist, as was the case at Khaybar, north of Medina. Muhammad led a force against this Oasis settlement, and made this exchange: they could stay if they paid. Whether or not in the form of protection money (cf. Surah 9:6-17), this use of power to gain power, from military action has been in vogue from the days of Muhammad. 10,000 men rather than any religious approach led to the change of government in Mecca, in some kind of theocracy. Another method of gaining power, more of this world than the next, was his demand of wealthy Meccans, that they supply loans.
Another was simply to attack and kill what constituted a problem, as in the case of the Jewish clan of Qurayzah. When they surrendered, we read from Encyclopedia Britannica, the men were all executed and the women and children sold as slaves. That is one way of dealing with those who plan to run things in some other way, and not to SUBMIT!
It is not that this is unusual in this world; but in the name of a RELIGION, it bears scrutiny, since it divorces it absolutely and entirely from the conditions of freedom and reality, as shown in Ch. 2 above, making a mockery of faith and 'conversion' to come in a situation where conviction is not so much of the spirit, but of the body, through harassment, death threat, intimidation, scooping of funds and the like. In Surah 48, you see the stress so often found, on battle and belief, thus finding ... "If the unbelievers join battle with you, they shall be put to flight ... Muhammad is God's apostle. Those who follow him are ruthless to the unbelievers...."
As we see in Surah 9, treaties are made, and as history shows, often of considerable encumbrance to those FORCED by military action to make them. IF they try to remove from this burden and obligation, then "Make war on them." War seems everywhere the determinant in practice, as seen no less in the continual harassment of those of his own disposition, who do not FIGHT. Great penalties are pronounced, just as great wonders if they PHYSICALLY FIGHT and so gain more for the joys of SUBMITTING. Those so fighting may look forward to streams of water and pastures (Surah 9:99).
This did not include the vanquished, such as the Qurayzah clan of Jews, whose men were executed for not helping Muhammad in his ... religiously oriented work. Bondage under Islamic rule, natural in a religion of submission, first of themselves to the invention called 'Allah', contrary to the evidential realities of God*1A, then of others to them, is high in the order of events, naturally, since it is a major theme of the religion.
Thus we read in the Koran that a levy was made on peoples who made much of what were called false revelations (Surah 9:6); and if they tried to escape this rule of force, then war was on the menu. Perpetual oversight and submission, with payment for costs, was the unpleasant reality, where life was spared, for many.
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"Make war on them: God will chastise them at your hands and humble them." |
This however has been far from the case! It has been a fish-bone in the Islamic throat for more than a generation, as they are not humbled!
Indeed, humbling other people has been one of its most fallacious aspects. It is one thing for GOD to humble man (as in Isaiah 2), but when man seeks to humble man in his own interests, or relative to himself, there arises a certain militancy most unattractive, as sinner seeks to vaunt his pride and power against sinner.
Thus there was an ABC News Radio, around 7.30 a.m., on Thursday, February 10, 2006, a rather interesting, not to say arresting, review. The Israeli Government Spokesman for Foreign Affairs, Mark Regev. was reflecting on what he had observed in the behaviour of Khaled Meshal, the 'supreme' Hamas leader. Now, he was noting that in a BBC interview Khaled has shown himself quite diplomatic. What did this portend ? One must not, he insisted, however, forget that some time before this very same Arab leader had spoken in a very different voice, tone, and style. He had in fact, we are told, declared as follows:
Before Israel dies, it must be humiliated.
This is the very point at issue. The very second class citizenship situation, if indeed it is not third class as it was under the Taliban, so pure in their 'faith' in Afghanistan, is here shown in an underlying phase or attitude. It is not enough that Israel, God apart, must die (and 'God apart' is not the Meshal message, merely a necessary qualification). It is not enough that the Arab and Muslim world having swallowed up around 2/3 of Palestine, per gift to Jordan, contrary to international agreement, are still abundantly interested in gaining yet more of it, and murder is not barrier, whatever the age group of those to submit.
It is not enough that partial death has been imposed by selective invasion of Israel through the work of many Palestinians and their allies or heirs, on that small population daring to exist in their presence; nor is it sufficient that Israel has freely given back to Egypt with no small Muslim population, much in the Sinai peninsular, or that it has handed back Gaza, territories, like that of Jerusalem, obtained under the noses of those working for the allegedly Almighty Allah, who failed abysmally despite such support in such jihad action.
He has failed, this Allah, since 1948, to exterminate, to secure submission, though indeed the efforts, those of violence*1B, have been deplorable. Islam has failed as was pointed out by the departing Malaysian PM not so very long ago, for a long period in the recent past, in its intent. Indeed, it has in fact done so now, just as it did initially in its vast international tilt, in the 8th century, and beyond, and at the end of World War I, when Palestine was liberated. Turkey for example is now not part of the Ottoman Empire but seeking zealously for entry into the European Union.
Jihad, we observe, called holy but otherwise in what it has been inflicting on many in many countries, has failed (cf. SMR pp. 829ff.).
It has not failed to cause grief in the tiny residue left to Israel, to cause agonies innumerable, to tax the very existence of Israel vastly by its intrusions and wars, always bent on the extermination of the nation. As has been pointed out, if they lose, they are free from their very numerous power bases and with their vast financial resources, to fight again; but if Israel lost, it would be a matter of SUBMISSION, originally in the Nasser days, to be one of doing so to the waves over their drowning heads.
All this however is not enough for the submission program. It cannot fail to remind one of Hitler or Napoleon, in this, that it never has enough.
Nor is it enough that parts of the West Bank are slotted by current Acting PM in Israel, Ehud Olmert, for gift to the Palestinians, despite all their lawless oppression of Israel. It needs to be realised that a small and tricked nation, Israel, which has made enormous investments of time and money in its residue from the stolen territories of Palestine, has given back large tracts to those who so maltreated it; and that much of the Israeli activities vis à vis the Palestinians (apart from the time when the latter fled Israel, in the 1948 war, to avoid trouble and not to give help to Israel, when its very life was threatened), has been simply to prevent the destruction of Israel.
LIBERTY AND INTERNATIONAL ARBITERS OF IT
When London is attacked, does it not respond ? The evidence even of late, is that it does, when terrorists come close.
Does Washington ? The evidence in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and that of multiplied billions of dollars, is that it does with considerable vehemence and emphasis! Is Condoleezza Rice to tell Israel to forget about any unilateral decisions, whatever the case with Hamas, just simply to forget it, in view of the USA approach not so long ago, to Iraq ? Is Islam not alone then, in the submit program ? If the reasons differ, the clamour has something in common. Let us be fair: the USA has helped Israel enormously; we are not speaking of the past, but of the present.
Do you forget about the hands clasping your throat while someone else tells you that negotiation is the name of the game ? Are terrorists to be negotiators, and to say, as is now happening, that while they will not RECOGNISE your existence as a nation, they will be kind enough to take some of your land, which you took in war as you fought to prevent your EXTINCTION, yes, to take it from you as a gift now, freely, and in view of this trifle, to have a truce for quite some time ? If this is not war, what is ? This is war by a combination of words, deviousness and delayed extinction. What has no national existence cannot lose it, so why have war ? You have deleted it already.
This however is precisely what is the reported ... mollification ? of the Hams leader, as reported in the Press, as we shall see later.
Is then Jerusalem to respond not at all in its own defence ? Is indeed the multiple and repetitive Press nonsense, to be taken and received, despite its mere propagandising thrust ? What repetitive thrust ? It is the presentation as if the Palestinians, in fact given much despite their alien sympathies, their intensely murderous actions, sparing neither child nor woman, and with enormous support from wealthy nations around which do not however wish to house them (in view, not least, of the Jordanian abuse of hospitality of inveterate terrorists, using that land as an attack base), were yet the victims to be aided to gain more and more! credited ? If this were to be credited, then a loan is an asset, and debt is wealth.
To be sure, when you are not ALLOWED to go where your submission religion holds sway, as to adjoining or nearby Moslem lands, and do not act right in the one country that would let you do so, then there is a problem; and such came to Palestinians abusing the 1960 offer from Jordan, leading to civil war through its abuse for terrorist purposes, on the part of many who thus came into Jordan.
If, further, you act in opposition to your hosts when they are attacked, then it is unlikely they will regard you with confidence, especially when you for long periods seek to eliminate them while with them. Such problems however are not the same as provision of grounds for having Israel entirely cease to exist, because it is both victorious and small, in the very face of the powerful Allah-boosted armies which consistently fail before so tiny a nation as Israel, when in violent confrontation at their own good pleasure, invading, invading, invading, even on occasion choosing an Israeli holy day for the delectation. There is talk of disrespect and offence: but what of that! It is the truth which matters, and double standards as a weapon of war and intimidation deserve no more adulation than in other fields!
If someone has a pain, you need a palliative, not the destruction of the home of the host. If people want peace, and submission, then let them submit to themselves if they must; for the export of submission, unlike that of democracy, however inadequate the latter, is actually ... war. Such has been no small part of the turmoil in the Middle East, and continues to be so.
However, as earlier observed, Mark Regev in the Press has noted the view of Khaled Meshal, of the land of the Palestinian, as desiring NOT ONLY the death of Israel, but its humiliation, apparently in fitting tribute to Allah or something like that. He apparently wants this BEFORE it 'dies', so that it can feel more than death - perhaps submission ? However Allah is simply not managing it. It is necessary to be objective, rational, to face actuality if religion is to be taken seriously. IF a religion has the use of force in such ways as a testimony, then the failure is the anti-verification, before all other measures are applied to test its validity (as in Ch. 2*11A, cf. *1A below).
So now the international forces of the Madrid Quartet*1, including such minuscule powers as the EU, the USA and the UK, with Russia, a small force ? are trying to 'help' the mighty mouse of Israel to be quiet before the massed nations of Islamic kind which have constantly sought to overthrow it, en masse, without pity and to the point, without result.
SWAGGER, DAGGER AND THE LIBERTY OF THE LORD
What is this then ?
ALL the Moslem hatred and swagger at Israel (as BEFORE ISRAEL DIES, it must first ... be humiliated) and as abundant in the days of Colonel Nasser, is not enough to make deeds; so that despite their ludicrously great numerical superiority, this phalanx of Islam fails, fails, and fails gain (1948, 1967, 1973); and so it gets big brothers like the EU, UN, USA, and Russia to HELP it keep the tiny midget of Israel in order. What could be more ludicrous than having an almighty god who needs all that, when you yourselves already have a numerical and statistical superiority so great, that failure to achieve victory over Israel is almost an anti-miracle.
Indeed, that is what it is, let us be very clear; for God is not only not mocked, but very reliable in performing His word. You see that not only in history (as shown in some detail in SMR Ch. 9), but in Joel 2:11:
"The LORD gives voice before His army, For His camp is very great,
For strong is the One who executes His word ... ",
and in Zechariah 12, relative to the wars after the return of Israel to its land, and yet before its conversion (cf. It Bubbles ... Ch. 10):
"Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of drunkenness to all the surrounding peoples, when they lay siege against Judah and Jerusalem. And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it.
"In that day," says the Lord, "I will strike every horse with confusion, and its rider with madness;
I will open My eyes on the house of Judah, and will strike every horse of the peoples with blindness. And the governors of Judah shall say in their heart,‘The inhabitants of Jerusalem are my strength in the Lord of hosts, their God.’
"In that day I will make the governors of Judah like a firepan in the woodpile, and like a fiery torch in the sheaves; they shall devour all the surrounding peoples on the right hand and on the left, but Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place—Jerusalem.
"The Lord will save the tents of Judah first, so that the glory of the house of David and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem shall not become greater than that of Judah.
"In that day the Lord will defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; the one who is feeble among them in that day shall be like David, and the house of David shall be like God, like the Angel of the Lord before them.
"It shall be in that day that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.
"And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem
the Spirit of grace and supplication;
then they will look on Me whom they pierced."
God is not manipulable and is no respecter of persons. What the LIVING GOD says, goes! When Israel sinned, in adopting some of the idol gods to be found in the surroundings nations, they got precisely what God predicted in Leviticus and in Deuteronomy 32, and indeed, God apostrophises them, asking how one could chase a thousand except because of their Rock, which is not as other rocks, being GOD! Their eventual return to their land and their God is shown, in vast numbers, but in the interim there is predicted international mockery, as has of course happened.
Israel HAS been humiliated as few nations before it. It was humiliated in pogroms and extermination approaches before Hamas thought of that long-cherished anti-Semitic (in the sense of anti-Jewish) bomb in the heart, which in their case has so often led to the bomb in the hand and the splinters indiscriminately placed in the hearts of children. It was humiliated in the day of Auschwitz, and in the treachery of Britain with Palestine, and again, in 1948*2, when the nation which produced IN TIME OF WAR (1917), the Balfour Declaration*3, at that time GIVING Palestine to Israel, tried to stop Jewish immigration, their dregs from Hitler's drink in many cases, and to abort their return.
Was it not the British Royal Navy which did it! Was this perfidious Albion, as Shakespeare has it ?
Horror defies thought at such a time, for such a people, after such a suffering.
Now once more Britain is appealed to as part of the EU, by those of the allegedly omnipotent Allah, for help, along with that of Russia, the US and the EU itself, so strong a financial backer of this Palestinian State, which is so weak in funds apparently, in the very presence of so many nations of like faith in this Allah, to whom they statedly in many cases, give such fealty. Weak in funds ? was there not a Time Magazine report on some 800,000,000 dollar holiday for some Islamic potentate, in Spain ?
It is what funds are directed to achieve which is of interest, and one thing the Pan-Islamic Conference in Teheran in 1991 made clear, is that the non-survival of Israel is no small part of the aim, the objective at which money is to be pointed and fired.
LIBERTY, LOVE AND LOGIC
Very well: if democratisation of the Middle East is not doing well, it is not a result of some strange historical cleavage in itself. It is the result not least of what the AIM is, and at what force is supposedly to be aimed. If it is to gain SUBMISSION, then democracy bringing in the will of the majority, will act on that premiss, and seek it. If it be submission of women in some extreme facade of male domineering, or if it is to be in some second-grading of the non-Islam, and if it is to be in the excision from the map, of this nation or that, along the lines of the earlier Muslim tilt at control of Europe, thwarted at the Battle of Tours in 732 A.D., then clearly democracy is by religious PREFERENCE not going to give anything resembling liberty. It is then freedom to enforce submission. That is the point.
Small wonder therefore, that Israel - whom one might think to be some ogre ogling for control of Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, not to mention Egypt, in some empire-building regime, to judge by the normally astonishingly blind press it gets from many, betrayed by nearly all, though formerly helped in the Nixon and Reagan eras, by the US - is a nation setting about securing its borders.
If EVER anyone had reason to distrust what man can provide, surely more than any other nation, it would be Israel. Against overwhelming odds, apart from the divine miracle which God so clearly forecast for this day o their return to their land, before they eventually return in repentance at the crucifixion of Christ, their own Messiah, they have won again and again and again, not against one nation, but against many, many of one religion at that!
Now they are to have their victories, giving them a slight and slender portion of what was illegally removed from them, disembowelled, and their lands are even further to be taken from them, even though they have already given back much to the aggressors, from their triumphant possession. That they COULD do this, resulted from the power of God in DOING WHAT HE SAID WHEN HE SAID HE WOULD DO IT, a testimony to the power of God to declare and THEN DO, something not apparent in Allah, but there in these crucial affairs, rather the opposite.
More and more land is slated to go, by the sanctions of mighty powers of hundreds of millions of persons! What a ludicrous imposture and a strange disproportion; for when God is against you, who is for you ...
That, it is one of the many wonders of God's superb faithfulness and love, than even when HE is betrayed (and this has passed on to Israel, for what they did to Him, others now do to them!), He is yet graciously available to faith and repentance in His covenant. Indeed, it is not to Israel alone that He is so willing for those who, not even HAD a covenant (Ephesians 2:12), are coming in faith to Him, with repentance not a an afterthought or a modus operandi for manipulating God, but as an expression of realisation of profound wrong. Israel is one example, and others are in the billions... Israel, however, is one predicted for edification for this world, so it needs attention.
God has as stated again in advance, in Ezekiel 36, a desire to honour His promise and keep His word, and THEREFORE returned Israel to this eschatologically placed restoration (37:23ff,), moving in two phases (Ezekiel 37:7,10)! NOT for your sakes! do I this, He reiterates. It is not Israel's might which won, it is God's determination, even for those who as a nation STILL do not honour Him in the manner He has prescribed in their own prophets, as He is! That second phase of their end-time deliverance is yet to come, but how it yearns, just as did the first one, when in 1948 they were once more an exhibit before the pagan nations.
It is in these terms that when we come to Zechariah 12:10, we see that after these victories (already now a thing of the past), Israel is to come to a repentance of great breadth, as a nation, for what it did to Christ, who after all Is the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:7), so that if peace be your aim, without Him, you are looking for oil in a banana plantation, or ice in a desert.
Thus God has already been glorified, and will be again, and Israel has already been humiliated, and will endure the buzzing of the nations, as in the first part of Zechariah 12, until they return in contrition to the Christ of the Cross, their own Christ, who in love for all came, in whose love alone is liberty (cf. Ch. 2 above), who is also the ONLY one for ANY nation! That is the biblical scenario, one that never varies from the script, a scripture which is not only investigable for confirmation, but exhorts men to check it out (Isaiah 41, 43, 48). God loves light, and spiritually, is it. Christ is not the 'light of the world' for a name, but for a fact.
As God fits all the pieces together, then we who observe, are asked to note it! For many, it is with relish, but for more, with disdain, based on rebellion, clouded with mistiness.
Meanwhile, then, Acting Israeli PM, Ehud Olmert is bravely stating,
not that he is about to attack Iran or take over Egypt,
things one might expect in view of the international pressure on Israel,
if justice had any part in this attitude:
but that he will take certain reasonable steps for the nation.
Thus we find, as in the report in The Australian, February 9, 2006, that he plans to keep an undivided Jerusalem, build the completion of the wall as fast as he can, near Jerusalem, give back parts of the West Bank but not the major population centres with some 250,000 in them; and in such ways he appears to be acting altogether in such a reasonable and humble fashion that it makes the bullying croneyism of the now massed international oppressors, seem more ludicrous than otherwise it might. Meanwhile, it is reported that Israel is moving towards refusal to regard Hamas (which now is set to govern the Palestinian organisation) as a negotiating partner while it refuses to recognise Israel as a State!
After all, if you were negotiating for the sale of your house, or its rental, you would scarcely find it a credible option to do so with a party who did not acknowledge your existence. The position is scarcely changed in this regard, by the recent Hamas point that it is willing to have a long-standing truce with Israel, WITHOUT acknowledging it, in return for land.
This is the reported statement or offer by Hamas cited in The Australian, February 8, 2006, that it is willing to have a long-term truce - although it will not recognise Israel - in exchange for land. While someone, then, wishes me to give him land, he will still not recognise my existence, but will graciously receive it, while not physically attacking me in the process, and for some time to come ? What a wonderful privilege!
It is scarcely appealing, and presupposes the main item on the agenda, without negotiation. In fact, Israel certainly exists as a nation; and the point at issue is this: Does the Palestinian group have this status ? It is seeking to slice off more and more of Israel, with international pressures from the EU, the UN, the US and Russia to help it, and while receiving and asking for more, it delays more war while more land comes in its maw.
It is a strikingly irrational posture, and the exemplification par excellence of the use of force rather than logic, intimidation more than intimation, and threat more than reality.
It is, then, apparent that the Moslem surge and urge to make others SUBMIT to them and to their Allah, is a destabilising element in world peace. It is one which will undoubtedly have much to do with a unifying response, leading eventually to a more humanist, though for all that, mystic move which will be oppressive on a far grander scale, with vaster and more generic aspirations for man that either Romanism or Islam or Communism have managed (cf. Highway to Hell, Aviary of Idolatry). These three forces have tilted at world domination, but manifestly not achieved it.
It is thus clear that there is a limit to what Israel can do in admitting Palestinians to its midst, lest by voting alone, there be no Jewish State at all, and the victories mean defeat in practice! A similar point is made, relative to other countries, by James Pinkerton in The Australian, February 9, p. 13, under the word Multiculturalism.
The message is that this can be tantamount to takeover. He speaks of Europe, where "millions of Muslims" have been allowed to immigrate" without much concern about the social and national implications. Noting the riots and unrest, deaths and upsets within Europe, following the cartoons, he emits the idea that "a nation allowing such hostile populations to flourish in it midst is not defending liberty. It is enabling its own national suicide."
Of those who would use various forces and torments, civil unrest and the like to mould their new lands, he has a word: "We might not," he declares, "be able to change them, but we can keep them from changing us."
The idea appears to be care in matters of assimilation, its results, its scope, its point, its intention and its results. That seems to be some of the point in view. Where force is in view, take-over is a possible result, whether directly or by a variety of means, international, as with Communism, propagandising, by exaggerating offence, by giving it and being unwilling to be understanding, and the like. It is not at all bad to be zealous of a good thing, and to take steps to preserve it in lands that abjure the force in faith ethic. Those whose heart does not allow this, on the other hand, have much of the world for their pleasure already.
Liberty indeed has a wonderful potential, and is far more human and functional for mankind, than is the unedifying submission program of a god who does not fulfil his own declarations, far less provide grounds for testing, and whose words, when they are tested, do not meet validity realities (cf. *3A, in Ch. 3 above).
Thus ANY religious element has to be taken seriously. The pan-religion amalgam approach, so wrong and irrational in 'combining' categorical contradictions, and yet so strong and so appealing to so many for some long in the Western nations, is now being shown to be a childish substitute for serious thought. It is not race, but grace, which is important here. If ANY body wants to use force to take you over, to attack the freedom of expression by reason, then it is making the nation hostile to truth.
Truth is not force, and force is not truth: lead in the head is not an argument, and decapitation is not a response to differences, which in any way resolves them, except in the arena of FORCE. The use of television to depict such decapitations, in particular, does nothing to bring reason to a head, but rather rampant irrationality.
ALL people in ANY land which values freedom should be required to DENOUNCE as well as RENOUNCE the use of force as a means of settling an argument, or meet or resolve, if possible, differences. It must always be remembered that differences are not necessarily resolvable, socially,
since truth,
such as 2+2 = 4
and untruth,
such as 2 = 2 = 5,
are incompatible and one
of these is in its inner self, wrong.
Hence the use of force can simply swallow up truth, if the wrong party has more lead and associated means of killing, maiming and disabling, and this makes adverse the association with those who like to rely on that kind of thing, like Hamas so far for so long. Hence it cannot be allowed. Those who want to co-opt free democracies, not intent on government of the mind by force, of the spirit by power, are not relevant to their operation, denying their very basis. Much in the world, however, has open arms for them, and indeed is willing to supply them with arms.
Force ? It was of course the ONLY answer to Jesus Christ, though His resurrection made of His killing too little, just as many make of their power to kill, too much. Force cannot prevail, though it is allowed by the Lord to show its teeth, fangs and futility in its various hypocritical or hyper-active forms, so that history may be a tutor!
It is only a temporary obliteration of difference by lead or whatever other alien element is used as a substitute for rational confrontation and reasonable attention.
This debases man.
If a country wants this, then giving those within it liberty to vote, simply formalises what debases him as a government, and this does not help too much.
A vessel commandeered by irrational forces who demand submission is no place to sail; and since man has made quite a practice of commandeering, and Islamic extremism is only one of the many waves of such violence and violation, it is important to avoid such craft.
BON VOYAGE
If however you take the real and only rational source of liberty, Jesus Christ, as noted in the preceding Chapter 3, and in Chapter 2 likewise, then ... Bon Voyage! You are sure to have it, though they may kill you for your love of truth, or seek to maim or manipulate you for your love of God (John 16:2). This has been common practice for millenia, just as Christ warned.
To take up your Cross, however, is the only way to follow Christ who died that you might live, and living, be a light in a dark place (Philippians 2:15); and the darkness, it does not like the light, like sensitive eyes, straining to escape illumination. Indeed, it does not comprehend it (John 1:1-3).
In the love of Christ, therefore, we seek to serve as He operates by His Gospel, if by any means the eyes of many being opened, they may see the way in the day, while it is still day, and escape the night where darkness is the normal medium; for as Christ declared, the darkness is coming in which no man can work (John 9:4).
If we love Him and so love the denizens of His world, what less could we do!
To go with Him is more delightful than any sorrow, more salubrious than any grief, more enlightening than any wisdom, more peaceful than any bower, more invigorating than any food, more refreshing than any liquid, more restful than any sloth, more productive than any mechanism, more personal than any principle, more propositionally clear than any system, in the Bible; and it is love which works by faith which is the fuel, the Holy Spirit the power and the atonement at Calvary which is the basis. To be raised in spirit is delight (Colossians 1:13); to await the resurrection at the end of the voyage, this is an expectation better than that for any holiday (Hebrews 9:28), for it is a consummation of grace for man, the acme of attainment by Christ.
NOTES
See for example, *11A, Ch. 2 above.
*1B
EXCURSION ON VIOLENCE, VIGOUR, VIRTUE,
AND FALLEN GIANTS
How often have fallen to ashes the arrogant dreams of all-dominating scientific and geographical knowledge, human elevation, whether of part or as now increasingly, of the race, vast Babel-like constructions of awesome seeming proportions! These have invested the minds or hearts of men, including Empires and famous persons! and then been ingested by the dust.
Alexander the Great, for example, had a fascinating career, and was credited with being one of the greatest generals, and a far-seeing searcher after knowledge and advance. Yet consider his temper, ruthlessness to those whom he no longer trusted; his innovative ideas, thrust imperiously on the people, as in the combination of the Greek and Persian elements in desires for a vast, superior, bi-racial dominance in the world; look with wonder on the dismissal of his entire army in 324 B.C., when they were affronted by Persian additions, the slaughters and devastations inflicted; and tender a look at Tyre, which he determinedly and innovatively reduced to ruin.
It is reported that while the siege of Tyre was in progress, Darius sent a new offer: he would pay a huge ransom of 10,000 talents for his family and yield all his lands west of the Euphrates.
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“I would accept,” favourite Greek General Parmenio is
reported to have said, “were I Alexander”; |
In the career of this extraordinary Alexander, consider again the case of Tyre, at last reduced to ruin with the famous causeway built to the island off the coast, to which the people had fled.
This in fact was in precise fulfilment of the prophecy of Ezekiel 26:12-14, where first Nebuchadnezzar and then such powers as would come, would lead to the removal of the very stones of Tyre, so that
1) she would be demolished
2) they would be cast into the sea and
3) she would never be rebuilt.
All this happened, part of it by Alexander in fact. His method was to use the stones of the former city, to built the way to the new island retreat, through the sea, and so destroy the new with the old! Innovative indeed, but the word of God had foreseen it in detail, leaving Tyre like the top of a rock.
When Tyre, therefore, through the causeway not least, was taken and destroyed by that same fast-moving king (the incredible speed of his international conquests, likewise, just as predicted in Daniel 8:4ff., 20ff.), there was huge slaughter and the sale not only of women, but of children into slavery.
It is easy to say such things, but gross and revolting to see them done; for if one pauses, just for a moment to consider JUST ONE of the lives, say one of a child of 7 years of age, and considers the anguish for life, and then adds to this many, many more, and then begins to conceive of the suffering and humiliation of the women, it begins at last to register; but when the slaughter of the men in this instant tyranny is pondered, then the whole payment for folly on the one hand, and the recklessness of the godless pseudo-divinity of Alexander, on the other, begin to mean somewhat more.
Horror can scarcely comprehend it! And yet, to take a parallel case, Hamas, in the year of the Lord 2006, is calling for humiliation for Israel! for Israel ? What nation on earth has ever been so humiliated, and alas calls for more trouble, though supported in its return by the Lord as prophesied (Zechariah 12, Ezekiel 36-37, cf. SMR Appendix A), until in a vast and wonderful movement, to be wrought by the Spirit of the Lord, it returns as also foretold, to the Lord.
Yet let us return to more ancient history, having by our movement to recent times, removed any sense of long ago times, with small application! Let us see further concerning Alexander the Great ...
NOTHING would stop his flexible mind and increasingly immovable spirit! that was the lure in no small measure: I will, and I do. Is it not rather like the famed chant of Caesar, I came, I saw, I conquered.
It appears very much the same spirit, and not in these two alone, nor in kings uniquely!
Through the irrational gods of unreason, man is often trying to project for himself such power (cf. SMR Chs. 1, 3); but the God of truth, the living God rejects the projections, says so, and tells repeatedly just how He will do it, as in the resurrection of Christ, the divine answer to the human sacrifice of the divine Saviour, Jesus Christ, in Psalm 16 (cf. Joyful Jottings 22-25). This was the summit of the autonomous spirit of man, and its depths of depravity were by the triumphant wisdom of God, as predicted for a millenium, turned to a necessary sacrifice so that He might with justice forgive those who availed themselves of the murder, used as an atonement for many! This sort of victory by God, with all patience and love and in mercy imponderable because so great, is His way.
It is not always however that the children of man have such a magnificence provided from the dregs of their follies; even though the redemption which that brought is always available to any and to all (cf. I John 2:2), as offered.
Alexander was in history's way to the Cross; but it was at that time, still to come, as was the untimely death of Alexander, as if to make a comic opera out of his outstanding attainments, by having him die at a feast at a little over 30 years of age! Where now the invincible, and where and to whom the spoils ? Even his wife from India, received small return!
But Tyre ? which he chastised ? That was merely one of the vast bloodsheddings needed to establish the scientifically zealous, zestfully exploring, politically dominating, militarily ruthless, sustained violence of Alexander. How many had to fall that he might rise and his imperial concepts of greatness be realised ?
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Violence was the way, and mixed with many accomplishments of
a high order, |
He came to conceive of himself as a deity, and seeking the realisation by all of his status, received from Sparta what appears an ironic reply, ‘Since Alexander wishes to be a god, let him be a god.’
In 324 B.C. then ? what occurred ? A ‘god’ as he made! The Greeks having no such understanding as given to Israel, of the magnificence of the Creator and His glory, allowed this for Alexander with his very and merely human body, now a centre of acclaim.
That was 324. What of the next year ? In 323 B.C., that same body was a corpse, reminding one of the quip, cited once by Time Magazine,
God is dead, signed Nietzsche; followed by the more factual sequel,
‘Nietzsche is dead, signed God.’
So died another calamitous erraticism and folly; making no difference to God, except perhaps for the pity of it, for as He proclaims with a deep pathos in Ezekiel 33: WHY WILL YOU DIE ?
"I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked!" the Lord declares.
He went so far there is no farther to go (Philippians 2); yet some still want to glory with an incredible passion for unrealism, in the flesh which God so carefully built.
But as to that 'signature' on Nietzsche ? That, it is a signature none can resist, and which can be overcome only by the same massive sovereignty of Him who is actually divine, and whose word in the Bible, to which in writing He consigned it, actually rules, for all it says happens – as with the treatment of the arrogant majesty to which Tyre, like Alexander was drawn
Indeed, God makes the point succinctly in Ezekiel 28:9, concerning such divine illusions on the part of members of the creation realm:
“ ‘Will you still say before him who slays you, ‘I am a god’ ?
But you will be a man and not a god, in the hand of him who slays you.
You will die the death of the uncircumcised by the hand of aliens,
for I have spoken,’ says the Lord GOD.”
As noted in SMR p. 713, Tyre suffered the predicted fate, and was not rebuilt on its prime and well-watered site, just as happened to Nineveh by the word of that same living God (Nahum).
The Lord revokes any imaginary licence of man to play God, but man tries again ... and then as if possessed, again.
Thus, while God as Teacher deals as He will with the lessons accorded to mankind and deploys the ironies that help man awake when he slumbers spiritually, as if he were dead, even in the midst of carnal passions like those of Alexander the Great, man constantly seeks for more advice, and yet further lessons, like someone stuck in Year 7 for a decade!
This irony is a facet shown mightily in Psalm 2’s retort to the effort to rid the universe of the Messiah: He who sits in the heavens will laught! it proclaims of the coming resurrection when man sought to break the 'bonds' of truth! His King He will set in the midst, irrespective of mere death imposed! So He said, and so He did, none able to withstand it, Christianity the result, the curves of history the exhibit (cf. SMR Chs. 8-9, Answers to Questions Ch. 5).
Yet man seeks ever and again, divine or pseudo-divine honours for himself. It was done by Alexander, and accepted by Julius Caesar as we have seen (* 7, Ch. 3 above); it was implicit by courtesy of Stalin for the Party, but was killed off like Lysenko, its prophet, by reality.
After all, despite the hilarious hype, man did not change the laws of ‘nature’ after all, nor was he a god, whether
v
by the Communist myth, which instead of making a heaven on earth,
made something nearer hell, or
v by the might of arms,
as
with Hitler, who would confer that honour more nearly on the Aryan race, or
as with Napoleon, whose glamorously, insanely humanistic principle from the
Revolution,
with its ‘goddess of reason’ echoed at his forlorn grave, where lay the body
poisoned by his own, it seems; and there it was left alone.
Reason, part of the image of God in man, within the fullness of his being made in His image, is great to use, and it attests God categorically (cf. Reason, Revelation and the Redeemer); but ONLY IN GOD is their deity! Whatever, however exalted, tries a take-over of heaven has the same result, whether in heaven (as in Revelation 12:7ff.), or on earth.
In Japan, the Japanese Emperor, with some god-like status, found in 1945 that it was not really divine at all, but subjectible to other human powers, by God at His pleasure.
The use of force, really the god of forces as Daniel designates the illusion, seems over and again, irresistible; but it is not, and the ‘god’ dies or is disgraced. So is it also with the Moslem pretensions, which reaching to the skies, will be brought down to the earth, as they have been at the Battle of Tours in 732, in the loss of Constantinople, which had seemed to give it a site for ever, in the dispossession of Palestine in 1917, the ruin of the Ottoman Empire and the like.
Now since 1948 it is learning again that it is but that of man, who would make a spiritual but also a very mandatory empire through a prophet who raided caravans, and claimed to dispossess Christ of deity, who ignored the only redemption this world has, and bypassed the only salvation ever verifiably presented to it (cf. SMR Chs. 1, 6), setting up a religion of his own (cf. More Marvels... Ch. 4, Divine Agenda Ch. 6 and indexes; SMR pp. 50ff., 90ff., 829ff., 1080ff., Lord of Life Ch. 3).
Israel, its butt against which it appears to sustain a vast passion, has most significantly endured past all possible human options. It has continued despite what may be the view of a billion persons, and it has done so upon its return to Statehood in 1948 (as predicted, SMR Ch. 9, Appendix A), in the face of all but inconceivable odds. It continues to do so despite the implicitly obvious and added enmity of the UN, and now the obloquy of being dissected still further by the Madrid Quartet.
It is not enough for the UN to conspire to Israel's increasing decline; but now even the US, for its own part involved with its Middle East horrors, the EU with its growing trends to be the next ‘god’, Russia with its honours for Hamas and its bankruptcy, living by loans and foreign aid, must add themselves. This they do, as if Muslim rage, often exhibited, and UN negativity were not enough. As to the UN, drawing money from the rich in order to disperse it in its strange ideology, where it will, it is often too late to help in calamity, and as Shirley Hazzard put it, it has become itself, a site for the Defeat of an Ideal! How many now can rejoice in the hollow words and costly apparatus, the questionable dealings and repeated ineptitude in world peace, of this often so tardy body!
Yet, whatever may be the defects and difficulties of all these bodies, added to the Islamic host, they combine in squalid dealings further to reduce Israel, harassing, exerting pressure, demeaning.
In view of such opposition, obstruction and insult to its sovereignty, how then is it that Israel then endures at all ? The reason is not hard to find. It has been out and about for two and one half millenia, written in the Bible clearly for any to see. It is because, this endurance, God has foretold it in terms of His own honourable zeal (as in Ezekiel 36), intending to fulfil His word as promised, and to donate land at His own pleasure to whom He will.
Naturally, though improperly, this continuation of Israel in its place, is a horror to Islam; for its own part, it has nothing such as this verification of the word of the living God, unchanged these more than three millennia, but only defeat since 1948, to disrelish, as it makes repeated efforts to demolish, dismiss and destroy this Israel.
Moreover, Israel's continuation is a nightmare to humanism and an offence to all who secretly desire to dispatch God and rule the universe for themselves, the ultimate embezzlement.
However, it all ends in one place: ruin, with agony and anguish for garnishings, if you insist.
Sad is the folly of man, and the ‘god of forces’ naturally has a lot of dynamic, and loves to be overweening in its pride; but its end is always the same.
It may say that is god is ‘great’, whether it be a secular-mystic-humanistic god of irrationality, or a false god from a false prophet, secure in its devotees: but whichever false god is constructed, it is but destined for oblivion (as in Jeremiah 10:11, with 16:19-20, Isaiah 45:18-22). That is because only God is God, and making images of Him where He is not, is wholly ineffectual as well as consistently repugnant to Him!
When you come to God, there is infinitude versus the finite, and it is a waste of time to argue; for His truth is impregnable as is His power, but He is patient … yet not frustrated. In love He acts, and intemperate models of man’s making fail like Autumn leaves, to disintegrate in the end. It is better to see this in the beginning that AT that end, as all who tread the path come to see, and will see, often having seen as the word of God fulfils itself abundantly throughout history (cf. Isaiah 14:27).
God has given to man a model, a masterpiece, the truth, in writing in the Bible, and His own definitive expression in Jesus Christ, and is not keen on substitutes which do not die on the Cross, were not sent, do not redeem and yet dare to use His own name (Galatians 1:6-9, Acts 4:11ff.).
It is not just that God is one, which is to the point. It is necessary to find WHICH ONE ! Would a man marry just one ? Does it then not matter at all WHICH ONE!
It is of course the One who alone verifies and validates His claims, as in the Bible and in Jesus Christ He has done these millennia past, without stopping to the present day, or once being stopped. HE is unstoppable, and for that, give thanks, for He is also merciful and alone pardons in justice, having sent His only begotten Son to cover the indebtedness of those who receive Him (Romans 3:23ff., II Corinthians 5:17ff.), and bring to His peace and gracious enablement, those who love Him.
It is not the god of forces but the God of truth and reason, of righteousness and redemption, of power and performance, who does what He says and demands that we check it out, who matters. Force is a misnomer in this area, and efforts to use it to make people 'believe' are not merely exotic and erratic, but irrational. Faith does not work like that, any more than does love. You merely kill the thing when you try to use force. Rape and rapacity are alike in that.
Some may be interested in relishing the account of the 'god of forces' in the Bible, and so two excerpts follow from two different works.
As to that effort of man, the ‘god of forces’, then, to which Daniel refers in Daniel 11:36-38, see SMR pp. 707ff. (A below), and Highway of Holiness Ch. 10, (B below).
A
Daniel's 'god of fortresses' -
the 'personification of war',
as Professor E.J. Young puts
it ... Three predictions that fulminate like radio-active cancer tracers.
These advances in technology, in fact, fit into another prophecy - that of Daniel (12:4): that
knowledge (1) would increase, while international
travel (2) (*20) would boom.
These too were to be signals for Christ's return. That is startlingly fulfilled in executives - and others - flitting across the skies and earth and seas, in tourist travel (Queen Elizabeth II suite with butler, some 90 days, was cited at some $400,000 to secure); and in the explosion of knowledge which now occurs at a rate quite unprecedented. Computers are of course heavily involved in the knowledge explosion, and in turn form part of it. Just as the acceleration of the atomic cyclotron equipment moves particles and helps power for war, virtually deified in the Communist use of political and social conflict as the very means and essence of their 'dialectical process' (SMR 750B)... so computers accelerate the accumulation of knowledge.
The former point - the near deification of war (3) for many decades by one of the super-powers, which it has set forth quite systematically as a very means of 'life' in theory and in practice, as an essential principle of its very existence - this itself fulfils another prophecy: though we seemed merely to stumble on it, in considering the computer as an aid to the predicted Knowledge Boom! The Russian missionaries have long sold the doctrine of their warfare throughout the globe, almost an ultimate in incitation to arms by aims, whilst the mother country has profited in vast technical enrichments through stolen secrets and sequestered talents. And despite such theft, in its atheistic folly, it now wallows...
How ignominious is this current position of the State which told God to get out, bag and baggage! Satan however may yet ignite the residues, while Russia is fed for the time, from international aid. Communism, in this phase, is close and intimate with the Darwinian 'survival of the fittest' cult ... so irrelevant to creation; for it has to explain arrival (see Macbeth: Darwin Re-tried, a lawyer's analysis of the term and its connotation).
The intriguing aspect before us, however, is this: the communist doctrine of striving, warfare and programmed forces accurately fulfils the prediction of Daniel 11:38-39, in terms of the coming antichrist. As E.J. Young interprets this scripture in his commentary on Daniel, concerning the 'god' the coming evil power will worship: 'He is a god who is characterized by fortresses or strongholds. In other words, he is the personification of war... For religion, he will substitute war, and war he will support with all that he has...' In knowledge and the gentle art of this so developmental war ... the stage is being set. So the trio, knowledge, travel and war philosophy stridently stride the earth, clamorously calling for their synthesis of destruction. Perverted purity becomes a prop for destruction; for virtue and vigour, investigation and interest become in evil perspective, a calamitous company. And the ''god of fortresses''?
As far as the former U.S.S.R. is concerned, the Red Army is reported (January 16, 1992), in the Adelaide Advertiser as greatly concerned at the prospective division of armed forces in the new Commonwealth of Independent States, seeks nuclear power for itself alone and is holding a meeting of many army officers to examine the situation, while putting much pressure on President Yeltsin to secure for them a monopoly on nuclear arms, citing the danger of their division among the other (satellite, independent, subsidiary ?) States. Some days earlier, an Army Major declared that Gorbachev should be put on trial, evidently for treason, while characterising the failed putsch leaders as heroic rather than seditious.
The philosophy of war is not about to commit suicide... It has long been pampered not only in Russia but in other Communist States, being part of the underlying ideology of that corrosive system of hate. Nor is it the only exemplar of strident force, amorally mouthing its cadaverous cunning.
The principle of war and the practice of war alike seem to sear the globe (*21). It is not at all a mere matter of legitimate defence of a people, assaulted from without, but of tyranny; of war as a fever, a festering in the minds of the race, and in particular, of its philosophic and ultimately spiritual drive and dynamic: indeed the quasi-religious furore of its folly. As to knowledge, that explosion is so vast and famous an event that the very phrase 'knowledge explosion' - has come to be part of our language! Its misapplication is a scene in the scenario of 'being as gods'; for the restraints of God become the complaints of the flesh (Genesis 3:8, II Thess. 2:4).
All this, then, fulfils the prophetic scenario in breath-taking fashion. With knowledge and travel has come increased aspiration too, to invade space, in turn helped by computers. Here is travel in the truly 'grand manner' - grandly fulfilling the predictions of the prophet Daniel for man's roving mandate over the planet, in the frenzied pursuit of all things, even the territories not provided for his rule (Psalm 115:16). In multitudes not knowing God, man uses might and main to explore and exploit knowledge with all the lust that might animate a deprived child: except that, in this case, it is self-deprivation.
B
Who is this king of Daniel 11:36ff., who at the end, to which his career comes, even to the resurrection in 12:1ff., is an epic of eviction, a romance of ruin and a bathos of word and wit, in puny seeming dismissal in punishment at his termination date ?
Keil in his Daniel volume, in the Commentaries on the Old Testament, a set co-authored with Delitzsch, makes the point elegantly that not only is there an ANNOUNCEMENT that we move to the end, but there is no way of fitting Antiochus with the data which follows Daniel 11:36 and on from there.
Thus, it is not meant to be prophetically pre-announced history of continuity, at this point; rather it announces itself in an area that is future even to Antiochus, namely the end, whereas he is back, stuck in the 3rd Empire of the oft-repeated series presented in Daniel. As we proceed, then, to 11:36ff., and hence to the 4th. Empire, having had the distinction made with care in Daniel often enough, what do we find ? The surge is from the prototype to the archtype, the outcome, the consummation of the preliminary, the proud vessel that sails into the sunset, only to find that it is his own sun that has set, the orb remaining aloft.
What then, in verification, does not fit with the 3rd Empire petty tyrant who went so far, but no further, in 11:36ff. ? The point is that Antiochus Epiphanes is noted for his Zeus statue in the temple, for his emphasis on that alleged deity, and that was his weapon of offence. He did not put himself above all gods (as the king for the end does Daniel 11:37), nor of him is it known that he did "not regard any god", far less this for the reason that "he shall magnify himself above all". Paranoid and pretentious he seems to be; but this is not the same as becoming God in intention or intensity or both!
Farcical indeed the desire to be thus; but not far-fetched the evidence of it!
However, in the eventual antichrist aura there depicted as Ch. 11 ends, we do indeed find one set to ignore ALL gods, the antichrist figure at this end of the Age epoch, willing himself to be above EACH of the gods men might have, and to be himself, the ULTIMATE display, not just in this world, but in the next.
The news today, February 11, reported on ABC News Radio, is that President Putin of Russia has taken a few steps, verbal ones so far, which are characterised in Israel as a stab in the back.
The designation would seem apt if it were to be assumed that the EU has anything at all to do with justice in Israel; but this has not so far been made clear. At all events, it is typical of the disregard of Israel, in any area of justice and sobriety, which seems to characterise the Madrid Quartet. Moreover, in a way not entirely unusual, Putin seems to be going that step further, and this time, in the wrong direction.
The reason for this statement becomes clearer when one learns more from the news report. He has never, he is cited as directly declaring, regarded Hamas as a terrorist organisation.
In view of
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Hamas' continued
non-recognition of Israel as a national entity, |
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its endless indiscriminate mass
murders in that land, |
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its use of force to induce the gift of land,
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the not so successful endeavours of the new President of the Palestinians
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the
rejection of Hamas as terrorist by the US, |
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the endeavours to remove Israel from
the last remnant of the Palestine |
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the invective with social violence used constantly against Israel by Hamas, and that to a notorious degree: |
the choice of non-terrorist as a tag for this group is of no mean interest.
It simply removes the definition of the term from having any application. If this is not terrorism, then the term has no case, there is no example of it.
If there is worse terrorism, it would be a close thing to determine, who exhibits it. Who could advance on this ? Who could better than such groups as Hamas illustrate it ? Who could more effectively exhibit this use of force to intimidate without colloquy or consideration, the aggressor regarding the victim in view beyond the path of reason, with intimidation the only obviously operative weapon, and this while not making war as a nation (for the case of Hamas, where it earned its reputation was precisely the case when it was not a nation!) ? Who could better exemplify the case ? If it is al Qaeda, it is hard to see on what basis it would wear the baneful crown! At best, it would be a tussle for top place.
It is indeed a choice piece of confusion for what was no nation to regard what is, as not a nation! Nor has the position wholly changed, the President and those elected in uneasy combination; so that what has been until recently, at least, a non-nation is attacking a nation, deleting its name and requiring the deletion of its existence, giving advance instalments of its will by turning from time to time, parts of the victim nation into a slaughter yard: Israel its own abattoir, the call.
Putin thus has shown what is the temper of the Madrid Quartet, not a little; for after all, this dictator, as his position more and more clearly comes to be, is that of one quarter of the Quartet, and though his words outdistance (so far) those of the threesome left, the deeds are not so far different.
Thus he has invited Hamas people to Moscow, with this verbal blandishment in their pockets. Indeed, France, no small part of the EU, has indicated that it approves of the invitation, in its normal rather pro-Arab fashion, making it clear that it thinks good can come of it.
Can good come of calling Israel's chief murder group, its chief intimidation by social slaughter agency, by mischievously mistaken names, which presuppose the evil of Israel or the good of its murderers ? If it is some part of the process which is in view, then what is NOT in view needs careful definition!
It is of course true that Israel has at times retaliated at this or that mass murder in their towns, by Hamas; but then, as noted in the text, this is precisely what the USA did, and what many nations do, seeking to minimise slaughter by attacking the slaughterers. Israel has consistently claimed that its intentions have been to single out terrorists, before they do more slaughter, and not to harm others, though of course, as in all war, some do get hurt as preventive measures are taken.
The point has been made, in Israel, that one could question the act of Putin on these grounds, by a comparison.
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What would President Putin think
if Israel invited leaders of Chechen rebels |
This was the question reportedly put. It needs to be pursued. Would Putin regard this as a friendly, or solicitous act, a non-interfering and thoughtful work of goodwill, or an intrusive act of mindless violation, presuming into an area neither understood nor properly evaluated, and in fact, close to an act of war ?
The Quartet does not always sing in harmony, but the general tone of their voice is LESS FOR ISRAEL and more for those who have already gained most of Palestine, together wth more yielding of the miraculously successful Israel, which has escaped destruction in ways which have all but stunned the world, and have as reported above, been predicted - in fact foretold for some two and one half millenia in Zechariah.
The world is now whirling in its increasingly close to ultimatum requirements:
You, little mouse which defeated the crew of cats that yowled at your doors, when we did little or nothing to help you, listen!
You defeated the cat crew, but now you will have to listen to the whole neighbourhood of cats, or we will do sundry things which you may imagine.
GIVE BACK MORE of the slender inheritance gained when these nations sought entirely to disembowel you as a nation. We DEMAND it. Are you listening, Israel ?
It is strange is it not, that the word of God in Zechariah 12, which straightly declared that at this phase Israel would become a cup of drunkenness and a weighty stone for the nations, is not understood by those still seemingly seeking to inherit the divine curse!
It is becoming to an increasing degree MAN versus GOD. It is not of course all of men precisely, for many thousands and perhaps some millions do not approve of this gross violation of reason and justice, or of the words far from oily, in the midst of such a mass of oil. Nevertheless, it is a weighty assemblage which moves to thrust its multi-national arm into the midst of that little land.
The action of Russia is close to the case of Ezekiel 38-39, and one awaits the dénouement with considerable interest, and some concern for those so foolish as to try to govern without God and in violation of His clearest intimations, as if justice and truth were mere wormwood, and gain the trumpet.
*2 On Britain's action in that immediate post-war period, see Regal Rays of Revelation Ch. 1.
*3 See SMR pp. 779ff..