News 34
Religion in Israel
Unity only from a Former Sale#
Adversities and adversatives to come,
in what for the time
seems incapable of resolution:
before what will be for
many, the holy communion of Christ, taking His own land,
Immanuel, and placing it where it
will attest whose it is, amidst the nations, when
the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the
sea.
(See also News 33 and News 36.)
It is one of His prerogatives to render possible, yes
even to perform what to man is without hope. God, the Lord, is like that.
TIME
Magazine, this
first week of May 1998, has within it
a rather unusually
good article on Israel.
It sketches with some depth the various religious and
secular groupings (not in breadth, but with some 'nose' for the aromas). The
little more than 30% religious Jew estimate, with around 1/3 of that Orthodox;
and the resounding increase in secular Jews, following the huge influx from
Russia, of returning Jews: both are noted. Tensions are becoming very deep and
strong.
Thus, the DESIRE of some of the Orthodox Jews to MAKE
people respect the Sabbath on Saturday, itself of course an Old Covenant SIGN
for the reverence of the Lord, and have some ideas of things religious, on the
one hand; and the ZEST of the secular, to resist this, and to be a democratic
republic, is shown as a vigorous conflict. It is seen in something of its
uneven, unequal and uneasy match.
The GREATEST DIVISION, it reflects, following an
Israeli's viewpoint to that effect, is what ? In
modern Israel, it is RELIGIOUS!
There does NOT seem to be any ready resolution, the
article continues.
One
suggestion it notes from its survey ? It is not CALLED
apartheid, but it amounts to separate living for the two groups; another and
less constructive suggestion, civil war, is mooted.
There is however a very READY RESOLUTION of this
whole affair. Doubtless, this will eventually, and possibly
sooner rather than later, occur to many in the nation, to the point of
becoming a significant if not indeed a mass movement. It is very simple, very
straightforward and very necessary for peace and truth.
It is traced with that quite normal,
and entirely supernatural skill which belongs to Deity alone, in the OLD
Testament (surely an excellent resource for the Orthodox Jew!). In Zechariah
12:10 we read of it. It concerns SOMEONE whom they had PIERCED, an act of which
they are here PREDICTED to REPENT, in a very lively and very personal way,
family by family (12:12-13). The PERSON PIERCED, who is the speaker, is the
LORD. This SAME LORD is also noted in that 500 B.C. approx. prophecy, to have
been SOLD for 30 pieces of silver, and to be coming on the colt of an ass, into
Jerusalem, as the Jewish
KING, indeed, as one HAVING SALVATION. (Zechariah 11:4-12, 13:6, 9:9).
THAT is the ONLY and the PREPARED resolution of the
very UNDERSTANDABLE Jewish tension. It is a DIVINE SOLUTION, and it is THE
DIVINE REMEDY for this, as for all the imponderable problems (cf. Isaiah 9:1-7,
11:1-10; The Shadow of a Mighty Rock - SMR, Ch.9, and Balms, Arrows and Balms,
Ch.17).
Do not be
mistaken. Some people seem almost to love misunderstandings in this sphere, as
if to add mayonnaise to salad. The non-Jew world has much to repent of,
including much of its treatment of the Jews. The Roman Catholic heresy is
exposed in many places, such as in the lives and works of the vastly famous
Reformation scholars who peopled England and Europe for hundreds of
years; and it is also exposed in The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, pp.
946ff., 1036-1088G et al..
England, as some may even
recall, is FORMALLY (not formerly, in terms of law) a PROTESTANT country. One
could wish it acted more like it. Nevertheless, there it is; at the official
level, that is what it is. It has been so for over 400 years.
HENCE the horrendous Roman Catholic Inquisition,
which hit the Reformers hard and often as in Italy and Spain, yes and in
England, with unremitting cruelty and bloodshed, preying on those not defended
in these cases, was not a Christian phenomenon at all. In fact, it ALSO HIT THE
JEWS. The account in such a work as THE STORY OF THE JEWS, Ancient,
Medieval, Modern, by James K. Hosmer, Professor
at Washington University late last century, is almost enough to make the blood
curdle, the heart stop and the head reel. Yet it happened in such a style as
this, and the exultant St Bartholomew's Day Medal which the Pope had struck in
the 16th century, commemorating ... and following unmitigated and incredibly
lusty slaughter of thousands in France, is merely a famous
illustration.
It is important NOT to engage in racial hatreds,
religious prejudice; and hence to uncover the reality that the JEWISH race has
had a very hard time, and that without bias, but with
terrible truth, the Roman Catholic Religion was ONE of the chief ministers of
this evil. When truth falls in the street through fiction-makers masquerading
as peaceable, and THAT additional murder is perpetrated, we need no more talk
of hatreds (Isaiah 59:14). THAT is hatred itself. It is one contemporary slaughter
which is becoming almost as savage as the Inquisition in its former days. The
seduction of convenience becomes an altar to pretence, and truth is often despatched as though it were in a society of lies. It is a
secular specialty in which the spirit of man, so often willing to swagger as if
indomitable in this way or that, finds a current outlet.
To the point therefore: IF the Roman Catholic Church
repents, well; and if not, to masquerade suppression of truth as if it were a
friend of peace, is mere enormity. Love rejoices in the truth (I Corinthians
13:6); and in all truth, one forgives readily, but does not meddle with the
suppression of the truth. Repentance is not another name for a cover-up, but
for such a turning from the things in truth done, that Christ, in truth and for
truth bearing these evils, is able to purge and to pardon. Love and truth are
intimate friends and allies. Psalm 85 is eloquent on this:
"MERCY AND TRUTH HAVE MET TOGETHER; RIGHTEOUSNESS AND
PEACE HAVE KISSED. TRUTH SHALL
SPRING OUT OF THE EARTH..."
And when He did, in incarnation, look what they did
to Him, yes Roman Pilate and Jerusalem priests. They
have had a fine entourage from many nations ever since.
It is not possible to love if you do not love the
truth. God is love; Christ is the truth (I John 4:7-8, John 14:6). People are
never helped by guilty cover-ups, but by frank pardon on the basis of truth and
mercy.
The truth is here crucial. The Roman Catholic body,
as noted in the above reference (SMR where cited), and by the Reformers over
hundreds of years, is heretical; and that is precisely one reason why it acted
as it did, protecting amidst other claims to power, a worldly domain, which it
claimed and had claimed explicitly since the papal Bull, Unam
Sanctam in 1302 A.D..
Notwithstanding all this, CHRIST said,
"MY KINGDOM IS NOT OF THIS WORLD. IF MY KINGDOM
WERE OF THIS WORLD, THEN WOULD MY SERVANTS FIGHT" ( John 18:36).
What then do we conclude when this IS their way, when
somebody's servants as such, endorse the fighting model for physical
expression! In flamboyant contrast, this religion of Rome, for hundreds of
years, made fighting part of its formal 'church' program, spiritual mission, in
terms of religiously conducted and sanctioned murder. It is nothing to do with
Christianity.
THIS is important for the sake of love, to know. Thus
the systematically horrible treatment accorded to the Jewish people by this
body has nothing whatever to do with the love of Christ. It is true that the
Anglican Church in some of its phases, being CAPTIVE to a NATION which RAN it,
also erred in this direction at times. It was horribly oppressive to the Scotch
Presbyterians, whose nation could respond, understandably but unwisely, too
heavily at the political level to this torturously political, ecclesiastical
pressure. On the whole, they suffered immensely and intensely, bravely and with
often saintly beauty not least in the interest of preserving the church from
political, secular or hybrid domination outside the rule of Jesus Christ.
This assault however was not part of the Anglican
basic formulations of doctrine, as a Church! Heaven forbid! It was part of the
leprosy which results from being run by a governing body which is not AS SUCH,
Christian. For that it paid, and so did many others. It continues to pay, in
other ways for this national distortion of the Lordship of Christ. It is
nevertheless not PART of its doctrinal structure as a church so to act.
The Roman Catholic matter, however, to the point of
physical ambition and claim, is extensive, intensive, systematic and
incorporated in its own religious doctrine, in terms both of declared world
aspiration and of Inquisitorial practice (see SMR pp. 902-905, 923-924, 949-955, 969-970, 1033-1041). It was repeatedly formally authorised by the papacy. It has all the integral
presumption and invasive rule of Babylon of old, and is
not improved by this fact. (Cf. SMR pp. 728-731, 946ff.,
1031C.)
HENCE it is not with Biblical Christianity that the
Jews have any historical quarrel: with that form of the Christian faith which
is, in short, Christian, Christ-authorised and
Christ-governed. NEVER did Christ or the apostles authorise
crucifying people, burning them, stealing from the orphans left, as
"penalties", releasing souls from purgatory for the sake of money,
money for masses and the like. NEVER does the Christian Church, bound to the
Bible, do such things (see SMR Appendix D). We are, of course, not
speaking of some exemplary perfection in man; but of the principles and normal
practice of Bible believing Christians, who would abide in Him and in His words
(John 15) as commanded, loving not only in word but in deed (I John 3:18).
It is to this same
Christ who HIMSELF WAS CRUCIFIED
rather than become an
agent for crucifixion for the benefit of others;
who rather interceded
for His enemies, enemies so great that they were slowly killing Him,
and taunting while the
blood dripped, and the anguish seared:
than sought or bought
or brought down legions of angels to dispense with His vicarious distress:
it is to HIM
that the Jewish people
will need to come if they are ever going to resolve even their own internal
political and religious problems.
The simple reason is this: the Orthodox Jewish
segment, with whom one can have some sympathy in their
intense desire to be religiously pleasing, nevertheless have not changed gear
with the hill of the A.D. world. The Old Testament had the Christ as its focus,
and He has come at the date prescribed (SMR pp. 886ff.). He has done all He had to do,
and no-one, with all the motive and desire in the world, has EVER been able to
show ONE single failure on His part, from the annals of history, to meet ALL
that the Messiah had to do in His earthly life. (With the motives then, and
now, that is a monumental testimony! See also SMR Ch.6, and pp. 931ff.-
starting back slightly. )
Hence to keep NOT ONLY to the Old Covenant, but to
the TRADITIONS added to them in terms of human 'interpretation' or reflection
(see Mark 7:7), is unwise.
It is similarly unwise to discount the Lord God who
made us, as do so many in the secular category. A nation run on these lines, as
increasingly is apparent in America, also fails to be
blessed in the rich, deep texture of its national being. Decline comes like
rats in the basements of New York sky-scrapers,
which, with all else in this present regime, age. It becomes horrid, laughable,
ludicrous and like excessive obesity, incapable of
cover-up. It blares in the behaviour of misled, mistaught children, erupts in the chilling exploits of
ungoverned teens, reeks in the unrelished deeds of
many in high authority, as if to shout and taunt: "WE are the generation
of the free, who know no freedom from sin."
With the Jewish nation, it is well to be old where
age is truth, and it is better also and equally, to be fresh and new, where
newness is age-old in its predictions and quality, fulfilling the word of the
Lord from of old, as in Jesus Christ.
ONLY IN RETURN TO THE MESSIAH IN REPENTANCE AS BOTH
PRESCRIBED AND PREDICTED will the Jews find peace.
The same, incidentally, in the more extensive and
general sense, applies to the Gentile world. BOTH sides need to
come to the place where peace is to be found. It will never be found elsewhere
in the Middle East,
in the human heart or in the whole world in its government (Isaiah 9:7, Ezekiel
21:26-27).
That is what the word of God says; and that is what is going to happen.
Actually, the world will tremble as God acts, and Armageddon, itself prescribed
for the Middle East,
which is earnestly living up to the program! comes to
be.
It is better, whether Jew or Gentile, to see the
writing on the wall, and read the writing in the BOOK which
God has kindly given for our EYES and EARS - in addition to the one He has
placed in our nucleated cells throughout our bodies - for us to KNOW and to
TEST and to SEE and to REPENT and to BELIEVE and to RECEIVE what GOD HAS
PROVIDED. That ? In a word: Jesus Christ, His only
begotten Son, and Him crucified, yes, rather risen
bodily from the dead, who provides life, life for evermore.
NOTE
Before leaving this topic, let us ponder further the
state of the case. It is a ground for jubilation, not consternation. The coming
renewal and reconciliation is paid for in advance, so that merely its
outpouring (Zechariah 12:10) is to be looked
for. The payment is past, the procurement is to come on this earth, which will scarcely
be able to contain when it arrives, the wonder of this new unity, not in some
antichrist without law or love, but in the truth. As Paul put it,
"If their being cast away is the reconciling of
the world,
what will be their
acceptance, but life from the dead?" - Romans 11:15.
The apostle Paul talks of the making of ONE NEW MAN.
"BUT NOW,"
he says, inspired by
the God of all truth, peace and comfort,
"IN CHRIST JESUS YOU WHO ONCE
WERE FAR OF HAVE BEEN BROUGHT NEAR BY THE BLOOD OF CHRIST.
"FOR HE HIMSELF IS YOUR PEACE,
WHO HAS MADE BOTH ONE, AND HAS BROKEN DOWN THE MIDDLE WALL OF SEPARATION,
HAVING ABOLISHED IN HIS FLESH THE ENMITY, THAT IS, THE LAW OF COMMANDMENTS
CONTINED IN ORDINANCES,
"SO AS TO CREATE IN HIMSELF ONE
NEW MAN FROM THE TWO, THUS MAKING PEACE,
"AND THAT HE
MIGHT RECONCILE THEM BOTH TO GOD IN ONE BODY THROUGH THE CROSS, THEREBY PUTTING
TO DEATH THE ENMITY.
"AND HE CAME AND PREACHED PEACE
TO YOU WHO WERE AFAR OFF AND TO THOSE WHO WERE NEAR.
FOR THROUGH HIM WE BOTH HAVE ACCESS BY ONE SPIRIT TO THE FATHER." (Ephesians 13-18.)
With what did he begin all this ?
With these words:
"At that time you were without Christ, being
aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of
promise, having no hope and without God in the world" - Ephesians 4:12.
YOU, he says to the Gentile church, were OUT OF IT.
THEY, the Jews, were up to the neck in it. But you both had to have your eyes
opened to the CREATOR in your midst, leaving the torrents of symbols on the one
hand, for the reality who at length came, and leaving the cold unbelief,
hopeless ignorance, on the other, and meeting where you should meet. In Christ, bringing you BOTH BACK TO GOD.
Thus we see the great apostle to the Gentiles, focussing their divergence and in vision apprehending their
coming convergence. As to those to be rescued (cf. Isaiah 66:19) from the
Jewish (1) and the Gentile world (2), what is it that had to come
?
· The one (1)
leaving the pedagogic preliminaries, the early forms of tuition by which their
thoughts were patterned into the forms and formulae, the realities: these would
come to Christ.
· The other (2),
leaving the lax liberties
· which callow and
careless, came to be their lot -
· either all but formless or else invaded by mere violence or
foolish hope, as in the evolutionary follies of Hitler, or the systematic
political stereotypes of Stalin - what of these Gentile escapees ?
· These also, in
one common theme by diverse pathways: they likewise would come to Christ.
The two all but opposite thrusts would thus be closed
in community in Christ.
Laxity (2) with or without indulged viruses to sap its
strength; and legality (1), far removed from its original purpose to prepare
for Christ, the predicted Messiah, and adorned with perhaps as much
ornamentation as the Gentile world for its part, added in the wild follies of
unsuccessful philosophy: these the two extremes. They come together. Now there
is in Christ liberty (II Corinthians 3:17), together with
inward transformation (3:18), love of truth
and obedience to Him and to His word (Luke 14:33, John 14:21-23), with room for growth with an initiative born of the
motivating, activating, grooming presence of the One of whom Abraham was called
the friend!
What! impossible, you cry!
Surely you know little of the Jewish traditionalists on the one hand, or the
Gentile world of philosophy on the other, if you even for one moment imagine
that ANYTHING or ANYONE (force for a time excepted), could bring them together.
Not so! There is a name above every name. It WILL
take THAT name. This one will most readily concede. There is NO OTHER that will
do it: and that name? The Lamb, the Messiah, born in due time as predicted,
sacrificed to a world not prepared to listen, whether Jewish priest or Roman
Governor, pierced à la mode, as prescribed in the
book which claims to cover in advance what is to be, so that this is that to
which it refers, for in 2000 years there is no other; and NO ONE has done the
things required, nor did God predict someone who would appear to do so.
The case is covered. The need is repentance, nor
reason. God has spoken, and the case is as clear as if a murder appeared in
Court before the very face of the Judge.
It is time to repent, receive, believe and return to
the Lord. The world cannot - and of course will not - repent; but many is the
thousand of individuals, Jew and Gentile, who have done, who will do so. Small
wonder that this Christ said this:
"I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours...
"I do not pray that You
should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil
one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of
the
world. Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is
truth" - from John 17:9-17.
Yet there is not all. Not merely is there this
already visible reconciliation of Gentile Christian with Jew. There is also
that reconciliation of Jew with Jew. If then one phase of the Jewish people is
more weighted with passé legalities of form, of pattern than he should be,
faced with the new Covenant of Christ, so often predicted (see No. 17 above);
and if another phase is the liberal, the radical, the secular Jew: THIS is no
barrier to Christ. THAT, the latter phase, may appear almost at one with the
Gentiles, except for a cultural past, and perhaps, a national vision secularised and pragmatised.
Religiously, however, this Jew of liberal religion is
as lost as his more rigorous fellow, as indeed is his non-seeing brother Jew. These two - almost a sub-species of Gentile on
the one hand, and of 'orthodox' Jew on the other, as surely as they come to
Christ - can be reconciled. To each other ? But of course; but equally assuredly NOT by any process of human
computation, power broking or harmonious philosophy. We have had about
enough of those plagues, which nearly ended the world. Also surely, not few are
the Jews who will so come to the peace and unity which is in Christ (Zechariah
12-13, Isaiah 66, Romans 11).
ALL can be, and in significant if not substantial
measure, MANY DIVERSIFIED JEWS WILL BE reconciled to that same Messiah, jointly
murdered by Jewish power and Gentile law, in Pilate and priests, according to
plan, that in Him they should become one new man. For that matter, within Israel, there were
thousands of believers in Christ, along with thieves who railed and high priest
who failed, on the other. His cry for them, if by any means, they yet might be
forgiven, rent the air about them all.
Looking upon this swelling amplitude of convergence
to come, Paul has two great exclamations in which we must join in our own
understandings.
For who has known the mind of the LORD?
or who has become His counsellor ?
Or, who has first given to Him, and it shall be repaid to him?" - Romans 11:33-34.
And not small will be the geological trumpet blast
heralding His coming. That, however, is slight compared with the inner peace
which will greet Him, on the part of His redeemed, when first He comes, for Jew
or Gentile who have come to Him who said,