Years from now, when historians seek an overarching concept to define our times, they could do worse than refer to it as the Age of Dissimulation. Today our leading minds devote their energies and cognitive powers to figuring out new ways to hide reality from themselves and the general public.
Take US President Barack Obama’s senior counterterrorism advisor for example. On Sunday, John Brennan spoke on Fox News about the latest attempted Islamic terrorist attack on American soil.
Since the Obama administration has barred US officials from referring to terrorists as terrorists and effectively barred US officials from acknowledging that Islamic terrorists are Muslims, Brennan simply referred to the Islamic terrorists in Yemen who tried to send bombs to synagogues in Chicago as “individuals.”
Today, practically, the only individuals willing to speak honestly about who Islamic supremacists are and what they want are the Islamic supremacists themselves.
For instance, in an interview last week with Reuters, the Islamic supremacist Hamas movement’s “foreign minister” Mahmoud al- Zahar told the Christian West, “You do not live like human beings. You do not [even] live like animals. You accept homosexuality. And now you criticize us?”
Al-Zahar also made the case for Islamic feminism. As he put it, “We are the ones who respect women and honor women … not you. You use women as an animal. She has one husband and hundreds of thousands of boyfriends. You don’t know who is the father of your sons, because of the way you respect women.”
Finally, al-Zahar claimed that Westerners have no right to question Islam or criticize it. In his words, “Is it a crime to Islamize the people? I am a Muslim living here according to our tradition. Why should I live under your tradition? We understand you very well. You are poor people. Morally poor. Don’t criticize us because of what we are.”
Al-Zahar can sleep easy. The citizens of the West have rarely heard anyone in any positions of power and influence criticize Islamic supremacists “because of what they are.”
In fact, the most remarkable thing about al- Zahar’s interview was not what he said but that Reuters decided to publish what he said. By letting its readers learn what al-Zahar thinks of them, Reuters inadvertently gave Westerners a glimpse at the simple truth its editors and their counterparts throughout the Western media routinely purge from coverage of current events.
Rather than discuss the nature and threat of Islamic supremacism, the Western media along with nearly all Western political leaders and academics deny and dissimulate. Rather than address the threat, they accept the Islamic line and blame Israel for everything bad that happens in the world.
THE ONE group of people that can almost be forgiven for this crime against reality is the non-Muslims who live under Islamic rule. On Sunday, we received a grim reminder of the plight of such minorities with the Islamic terror attack on Baghdad’s largest church, the Our Lady of Salvation Catholic church.
As some one hundred worshipers celebrated evening mass, Islamic terrorists stormed the church. According to an eyewitness account, they walked straight up to the priest administering the mass and executed him. The Muslim terrorists then took the Christian worshipers hostage.
As Iraqi military forces stormed the church under US military supervision, the Islamic terrorists threw grenades at the worshipers and detonated their bomb belts. By Monday, the death toll had reached 52.
It will be interesting to see how Catholic officials in Iraq and throughout the world respond to this attack. At the Vatican’s Synod on the status of Christians in the Middle East last month, Emmanuel III Delly, the head of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Iraq proclaimed, “The population of [Iraq] …is 24 million, all Muslims, with whom we live peacefully and freely…Christians are good with their fellow Muslims and in Iraq there is mutual respect among them.”
As the noted Islamic expert Robert Spencer wrote last week in Frontpage Magazine, Emmanuel has not always been so outspoken in his praise of Muslim Iraqis. In 2008, when US forces were still in charge in Iraq, Emmanuel made a statement that more accurately reflected the plight of his co-religionists.
Then he said, “Christians are killed, chased out of their homes before the very eyes of those who are supposed to be responsible for their safety…The situation in some parts of Iraq is disastrous and tragic. Life is a Calvary: there is no peace or security… Everyone is afraid of kidnapping.”
Christian clergy in Muslim countries are so terrified of Islamic aggression that they systematically hide the truth of their oppression and often distort their own theology to win the tolerance of supremacist Islamic authorities. Spencer noted that the head of that Vatican Synod, Archbishop Cyril Salim Bustros, who presently heads the Eastern Catholic church in the US, and in the past served as archbishop of Baalbek in his native Lebanon follows a similar pattern of dissimulation.
In Bustros’s case, his prevaricating goes beyond false depictions of the plight of Christians. In his bid to win the favor of his Islamic supremacist overlords in Hizbullah, Bustros has regularly engaged in theological revisionism.
At last month’s synod, Bustros repudiated the teachings of the Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council and embraced the discredited supersessionist theology that Vatican II denounced. Bustros claimed that God’s covenant with the Jewish people and his promise to give us the Land of Israel “were nullified by Christ.”
In his view, “There is no longer a chosen people.”
Bustros did not simply assert a theological view at odds with the doctrine of the Catholic Church. He used his replacement theology to politically delegitimize Israel. Bustros said, “The theme of the Promised Land cannot be used as a basis to justify the return of the Jews to Israel and the expatriation of the Palestinians.”
Bustros is set to return to Lebanon soon to serve as the archbishop of Beirut. The fact that he used his position as the head of the Vatican’s synod on the plight of Christians in the Middle East to earn him the protection of Hizbullah when he returns is made clear when his statements at the conference are compared to a speech he made in 2006, when he was still comfortably ensconced in the US.
As Spencer notes, in a speech Bustros made at St. Thomas University in Florida in 2006, Bustros minced no words about the plight of Christians in the Middle East. Addressing the Islamic precepts on relations with non-Muslims, Bustros said, “The doctrines of Islam dictate war against unbelievers….[T]he concept of nonviolence is absent from Muslim doctrine and practice….Peace in Islam is based on the surrender of all people to Islam and to God’s power based on Islamic law. They have to defend this peace of God even by force.”
FEAR OF Islamic massacres of Christians – like the one in Baghdad on Sunday – goes a long way towards explaining anti-Jewish and pro-Islamic pronouncements by Christian clergy in the Islamic world. But what can explain the West’s embrace of lies about Islam?
Why would people who do not live under the jackboot of the likes of Hizbullah, Hamas or their sister groups in places like Iraq obsequiously parrot untruths about Islamic history and theology and deny the very existence of Islamic supremacism?
The most notable case of such behavior in recent weeks came with the UN Educational, Science and Cultural Organization’s Executive Board’s declarations about Israel and Jewish history. At its October 21 meeting, the governing board of the UN agency charged with naming and preserving world heritage sites engaged in a shocking episode of historic revisionism in the service of Islamic supremacism.
UNESCO’s board issued five declarations regarding Israel. In addition to its routine condemnations of the security fence, Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem and Israel’s refusal to give Hamas control over its border with Israel, UNESCO’s board asserted that the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, where Abraham, Issac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca and Leah are all buried, is a mosque. Rachel’s Tomb, where Rachel is buried, is also a mosque, according to UNESCO’s governing body.
It is not surprising that UNESCO’s Muslim members pushed for these declarations. Islam is a supersessionist religion. It claims that all the Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs as well as all the Jewish prophets, kings and judges were Muslim. It similarly claims that Jesus, Mary and the apostles were Muslims. It is standard Islamic practice to transform Jewish and Christian holy sites in lands conquered by Islam into mosques.
It is this Islamic practice that led Yasser Arafat to shock and disgust Yitzhak Rabin in July 1995 when he proclaimed that, “Rachel was my grandmother.”
Arafat’s statement was the first time that a Muslim leader in modern times claimed Rachel’s grave is a mosque. Arafat made his preposterous claim in the course of negotiations about the disposition of Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem. Due to its significance to Jews, Israel demanded full security control over the tomb. Arafat based his counter-claim on standard Islamic historical revisionism.
While Rabin rejected Arafat’s baseless assertion, last month UNESCO’s executive committee, whose membership includes France, Belgium, Spain, Japan, Poland, Germany, Greece, Haiti, Italy, the US and India accepted Arafat’s wholly false rendition of the historical record. In so doing, they collaborated with an Islamic attempt to eradicate Jewish history.
Why would they do this? They are not bishops who have to worry that their communities will be annihilated if they step out of line.
No doubt, fear of Islamic terrorism fuels some of their behavior. But fear can’t be the full explanation. Most Westerners have no contact with Muslims. And Islamic terrorist attacks in the West are not a daily occurrence.
The West’s newfound obsession with Islamophobia probably also has something to do with it. Western elites are terrified of being accused of racism. This is particularly true when – as is the case with Islamophobia – the charge is leveled on behalf of people who were oppressed in the past by Westerners.
But while fear of the charge of Islamophobia does play a role in Western kowtowing to Islamic supremacists, the West’s aversion to the perception that it is oppressing those it once oppressed fails to provide an adequate explanation for its willingness to collaborate with Islamic supremacist attempts to blot out Jewish history. The West’s history of oppressing Jews is far bloodier and longer than its record of oppressing Muslims.
In the end, there is only one credible explanation for the West’s willingness to lie about the nature and goals of Islamic supremacism. There is only one credible explanation for the West’s willingness to collaborate with Islamic supremacists as they purge the historical record of the Jewish roots of Western civilization. There is only one explanation for the West’s willingness to accept the Islamic supremacist assertion that Israel is to blame for Islamic aggression against Jews and Christians alike.
But if I mention anti-Semitism, I will be attacked as a paranoid Jew.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.
And when the dragon saw that he was thrown down to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male child.
Revelation 12
Israel is that woman and the child is Israel’s only hope,Moschiach.
I commend you for your bravery in writing on a subject deemed taboo by the fearful,decadent,weak,capitulating and crumbling West.
When those who are comissioned to uphold the light are in surrender and retreat to the darkness,the time is very,very late.
We have sown the seeds of our own destruction as the walls which once kept out the invaders have crumbled down.
The walls of truth,morality and goodness are long gone and the enemy easily attacks thru the countless breaches.The US and Turope feed on delusions and lies now and the poison has done it’s work.
This is how Empire’s fall.
The Judeo-Christian foundations of our culture have been forsaken with this rejection of the bright light of truth an ever growing darkness has filled the void.
The darkness that is Islam is enveloping everything and nothing can stop it except for the light which the West has thrown overboard in their quest for a brave new world. The dragon has overtaken the West and they act openly on his behalf against Israel as does Islam.
Ans all this time Israel sits on it’s hands and waits for others to act and allows itself to be restrained in dealing with this dark,evil destroying force.
Appeasement has only strengthened this monster.
Israel’s failure to cut the head off of Hezbollah and Hamas in order to appease the useless,defeated over run West has only emboldened this dragon which the West in incapable of stopping. The God of Israel has positioned Israel in the middle of Islam for one reason and one reason alone and that is to deal a death blow to the dragon, Islam. No compromise or peace is possible with the destroyer and his evil followers.
Caroline, there are still many people here in the US, a good number of them Jews, who refuse to see the path radical Islam is taking. I will say it for you. anti-Semitism is alive and doing better than ever. If I am a paranoid Jew so be it.
While I follow your argument all the way, I fail to reach the same conclusion. Residual antisemitism, maybe; however I tend to subscribe to Daniel Pipes view that since Khomeni pronounced his death sentence on Salman Rushdie, it has been seen as a social faux pas to criticise Islam, Mohammed,Allah or the Koran with the consequence being retribution.
Caroline…your analysis and comments are accurate for the most part but the root cause of the west’s immoral handling of totalitarian Islam is lacking. I recommend the following book (http://winningtheunwinnablewar.com/) to you and your readers because until the ideological foundation of these issues are identified and corrected the end will be universal Sharia.
George Orwell, writing the novel, 1984, after WWII, suggested how language can be used to distort reality in order to manipulate and control the ordinary citizen. What he did not envision, however, given the facts of the then-recently-ended Holocaust, was how his fictionalized view of distorting reality could be used, not to control a population, but to drive yet another generation of vicious Jew-hatred. And yet, we should remember that, at the same moment that Orwell wrote about a fictionalized western/caucasian world gone amok , the Musilm religious leader in Jerusalem, Palestine (the Jewish part of the British Mandate)was giving the world a lesson of his own, to show us all how Orwellian distortion works, in the form of his uniquely anti-Jew pronouncements.
Say this much for the Arab: he has not changed his tune.
The difference between then and now, of course is, back then, the non-jewish world had the proper sense to ignore such hatred.
What has changed, as Ms Glick points out in her essay (The Age of Dissimulation), is the attitude of the Western world.
It’s a sea-change, this growing fashion of permitting and/or supporting without question or pause all expressions of Islamic religious xenophobia.
It is also a dangerous sea-change–but not just for Jews.
Yes, I believe that Jews can suffer as a consequence of these attitudes. There is ample historic evidence to support such an argument. But history also teaches a much more cruel lesson: as much as the Jew suffers as a fallout of Jew-hatred, those who promote or allow without question these falsehoods ultimately suffer ten-fold. Indeed, history is quite brutal: it has never accepted silence or fear or a desire for self-preservation as an excuse.
The cruel math changes from generation to generation, but for every Jew that dies–as the culminating result of Jew-hatred– as many as ten non-jews can die.
Perhaps six million Jews died between 1932-1945, but alongside that tragedy, the rest of Europe was brutally raped, with as many as 55 million non-jews dying during that same period.
So the non-jewish world would be wise to look carefully at going down this shame-filled road, yet again. It may feel safe and fashionable today, to support or allow Jew-hatred; but the bitter historic truth is, the Jew is the lone canary in the mine: kill that canary, and your entire world can be engulfed in flame.
It has happened before; and to listen to our Muslim friends, it will happen again — unless the non-jewish world stops it, and saves itself.
Hi Caroline, I’ve just watched a video of you on youtube – great points on the refusal, in the USA, to acknowledge the nature of the enemy, on the refusal to look at Islamic doctrine, on choosing to engage in a “war on terror” without looking at the roots of the terrorism, namely a religious doctrine.
And now I’ve read this piece. You end with “there is only one credible explanation for the West’s willingness to lie about the nature and goals of Islamic supremacism … But if I mention anti-Semitism, I will be attacked as a paranoid Jew.”
I think there is another explanation. I have been thinking, exploring and writing about the West and Islam – and especially about widespread Western refusal to see anything negative about Islam. I see the cause as much larger than anti-Semitism. I teach college students. Location: Montreal, Canada. They insist that all opinions, cultures and religions are equal. Who are we to judge? And so on.
I have gong on to write about the new taboo, more taboo than incest – namely, looking at reality if it goes against a politically correct view. I don’t see the cause as anti-Semitism – but a dangerous stage of development, when those who have been in dominant positions (men, Christians, etc) lose certainty of their rightness – and have not come to some other way of judging.
You might find some of my points interesting. I’m just completing a book, the Un-Doing of Dominance – Stages and Secrets. Some points can be found at:
Political Correctness Gone Mad
and at
Hear See Speak No Evil – But What If There Is Evil
You will be in Montreal in a few days. Your talk promises to be very interesting. I hope we have a chance to meet.
I wonder: do some of our conclusions differ as I come from the perspective of a Western non-Jew seeing the massive denial around me, and also as someone with an almost lifelong interest in the pitfalls of social movements for progressive change (French Revolution, Russian Revolution, feminism, racial rights, gay and lesbian rights, etc). I see what is happening at present in the West as part of this.
[Bustros claimed that God’s covenant with the Jewish people and his promise to give us the Land of Israel “were nullified by Christ.”]
[The theme of the Promised Land cannot be used as a basis to justify the return of the Jews to Israel and the expatriation of the Palestinians.” ]
Caroline, Bustros is wrong on both counts.
Most Catholics believe G-d led the Jewish people back to the Holy Land.
It is not by chance they returned and since returning have had to successfully defend themselves against much larger and equipped armies of the Arab world..
I venture to say it was through Devine Intervention.
Let’s not forget the majority of Catholics don’t always agree with the Pope and the hierarchy of the church. Remember they are not elected by the parishioners.
Let us not forget the Palestinians are nothing more than an anti-Semitic tool used against the Jews and Israel by her enemies.
Before WW1 psychologist Carl Jung had a dream that Jerusalem was being covered by the shadow of the wing of Satan. In our time the West is willingly allowing itself to be dragged by Muslims into the darkness.
I could not help reply to this article of you both here and in the j post page.
I agree that the west does turn a blind eye to islam aggressive behavior.
But I completely disagree that the reason for such attitude does lie in antisemitism.
Muslims are over one billion.
25% of the world population is muslim.
You start a war with 25% of the world population ?
Besides muslims control the oil.
Oil does move the world.
Furthermore many western countries have sizable muslim populations. (And western leaders need to be elected by popular vote).
The dissimulation you talk about is real but the real cause is not antisemitism , it is real politik.
World powers need the muslims.
Countries need saudi oil.., so there is no point of picking a fight with 25% of the world population.
The reason is not simply antisemitism, though it helps.
The reason is TRADE.
The West wants to have their trade with the Muslim World. It is THAT simple.
Were the West to address the Muslim World properly, it would mean severing any and all ties with it, as the bare minimum.
But they want to have trade with it, to make their billions upon trillions of dollars out of trade with it, or in service to it (like the big oil companies do).
Israel should HAVE made it its priority since the 70s to excell in space exploration, to create the near-Earth solar power station that would beam the energy down and sell this energy/technology VERY CHEAPLY to anyone willing to STOP ALL TRADE with the Muslim World.
Or make the Western trade with the Muslim World otherwise non-expedient.
The philosopher Andre Glucksmann comes to a similar conclusion in a discussion entitled “Existe-t-il une nouvelle question juive? (pp. 95-99)” in his book “Discours de la Haine,” (Paris: Plon, 2004) and it’s very much worth reading. He won’t call it antisemitism, a term he believes was discredited years ago along with the doctrine of racial superiority, but rather hatred of the Jew, which seemingly cannot be eradicated. I’ve excerpted parts of his discussion below (sorry for the absence of accents):
Reste une question que je vous soumets. Une simple question entre mille, une question tellement grossiere qu’on ne le pose et qu’on ne se la pose jamais. Demandez-vous: pourquoi, seul entre tous, le terrorisme palestinien trouve grace au jugement de l’opinion publique mondiale qui l’explique, l’excuse, le justifie, quand elle ne l’applaudit pas?
Est-ce parce que les Palestiniens sont musulmans? Les Tchetchenes le sont aussi qui subissent un sort incomensurablement plus effroyable et seculaire dans une indifference planetaire totale.
Est-ce parce que les Palestiniens pratiquent un “bon” terrorisme? Ils tuent sans discrimination des civils, des femmes, des bebes en se faisant exploser dans les bus et les cafes[….]
Pourquoi seule la violence palestinienne echappe-t-elle a la condamnation universelle?
Est-ce parce que les Palestiniens s’affirment, non sans motifs, opprimes, offenses, misereux, humilies? Ils ne sont ni les premiers ni les seuls. Tant de peuples en voient d’autres, autrement epouvantables.
Qu’est-ce qui leur donne le droit de tuer au hasard en estimant leurs peches d’avance redimes?
La reponse, c’est le Juif. Il n’y pas d’exception palestinienne, mais bien une exemption.Pas d’exception dans la douleur, mais une exemption en matiere de crimes[…] La difference entre le Palestinien, honore, et le Tchetchene, discredite, se resume au fait que le premier affronte des Juifs et leurs allies. Tuer un civil juif pese moins lourd et parait plus pardonnable que tuer n’importe quel autre etre humain.”
As usual Caroline Glick has hit the nail on the head” Its pure anti-semitism”, The origination and the why of anti-semitism is however, not understood by Jews. Anti-semitism is about two opposing forces the God of Israel and the other false Gods of this world, all Satanic deceptions of the same inspiration.Its a war about two opposing Wisdoms and the world is going to see an increasing polarization of these two wisdoms as the climax of the End of the Age speedily approaches.These self-same forces of wickedness do not desire to relinquish their power and will go to any lengths to annihilate Gods chosen people, if they succeed the Messiah will not return and the God of Israel in their eyes will be proven to be a liar. Something that is off course wholly impossible. The end of the age is all about Israel and the Jew and the Gentile nations will be judged in accordance with where they stand on this issue. So Israel is going to experience an increasing hatred and Jews will become increasingly perplexed and puzzled about what is happening, since they have failed to comprehend the spiritual and entirely Biblical nature of this war.
Am Yisrael Chai
Rachel was Arafat’s grandmother?!?!? To make this claim Arafat should have changed his name to Ben-Oni (son of my trouble/sorrow).
Since the 57 member OIC wants to make it illegal for anyone to criticize Islam in the United Nations I wouldn’t expect any rational decisions from UNESCO regarding Jewish historic sites.
God Bless Israel
‘Countries need saudi oil.., so there is no point of picking a fight with 25% of the world population’ -peter
My dear ignorant one,It is Islam which has picked a fight with Israel
It’s not about right or wrong,good or evil with these greed motivated prostitutes who sell their souls for profits and trade.
They’d sell their mothers for profit.
The peter’s makes good dhimmis as they also made good apologists and supporters for Adolph Hitler and his Third Reich.
Trade is all that matters and is their only Creed and reason for living.
It is Islam which has picked a fight with Israel and said loudly that they have no right to live in their land and it is the West who are assisting this evil force in dismembering Israel under the lie of peace.
The naive,secular Jew is blind to this reality.
The cowardly and perverse West will reap the judgment they deserves for choosing expediency(trade) over doing the right thing in standing up with Israel against evil Islam.
Instead,President’s on the Right and the Left have boldly lied and told us this evil ‘religion’ is one of peace and all of you let them get away with these lies.
“”And it will come about in that day that I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples;all who lift it will be severly injured “”…
Zechariah 12:3
The one thing America can look forward to after this election is severe injury because her politicians on the Left and the Right have chosen to meddle with Jerusalem for their bogus peace.
I was at Allen West’s Victory Party, which took about 4.5 hours to be evident that he won… solidly by over 10 percent.
The above is the embedded video of West celebrating the Jewish new year in Broward County, FL. I think it encapsulates the heart and the soul of USA’s extension of grace from our gratitude to Israel for setting our laws, for suffering for principle and honor. Who in their souls, even every DNA strand that has emanated from all the Disporia of Israel… comes home to recognize that Israel is g_d’s gift to his most faithful… and this ensures that everyman who accepts this will be welcome to Israel and Israel’s partner, USA.
May our hearts and strength find you encouraged in this New Year of Political Reality, November 3, 2010. It is a new day…standing together.
Caroline said,
“Christian clergy in Muslim countries are so terrified of Islamic aggression that they systematically hide the truth of their oppression and often distort their own theology to win the tolerance of supremacist Islamic authorities. Spencer noted that the head of that Vatican Synod, Archbishop Cyril Salim Bustros, who presently heads the Eastern Catholic church in the US, and in the past served as archbishop of Baalbek in his native Lebanon follows a similar pattern of dissimulation.
In Bustros’s case, his prevaricating goes beyond false depictions of the plight of Christians. In his bid to win the favor of his Islamic supremacist overlords in Hizbullah, Bustros has regularly engaged in theological revisionism.
At last month’s synod, Bustros repudiated the teachings of the Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council and embraced the discredited supersessionist theology that Vatican II denounced. Bustros claimed that God’s covenant with the Jewish people and his promise to give us the Land of Israel “were nullified by Christ.”
In his view, “There is no longer a chosen people.” ”
+++
The age of dissimulation?
IMO, all mankind do seem to hold close to their hearts a pre-occupation with lies and falsehoods.
And an unwillingness to confront truth, where [we perceive that] truth does not serve us.
[IMO, confronting truth always serves us, and brings us closer to God.]
“There is no longer a chosen people.”???
IMO, the Jewish people remain the identifiable remnant of the original covenant people.
And imo, if God is God, then ‘the land’ belongs [or will belong] to whom God says the land belongs.
The scripture, if we can believe it, relates that a holy God, brought the children of Israel out of a land of bondage, and brought them into a land which was holy to God.
And, the law of God was given [through Moses] to the children of Israel, so that they could maintain a holy and sanctified relationship with their holy God.
“Ye shall therefore keep all my statutes, and all my judgments, and do them: [b]that the land, whither I bring you to dwell therein, spue you not out.”[/b]
Leviticus 20:22-24, 26
But it is recorded in scripture that, soon the children of Israel [although they were the ‘chosen’ covenant people] proved that they were men.
Who does ‘the land’ belong to?
Today, moslems [by the ‘merit’ of their own law] consider themselves, exclusively, to be God’s holy people.
And many Christians [in adopting a doctrine called ‘replacement theology’] consider themselves, exclusively, to be ‘the’ holy people.
And, the Jewish people, identifying themselves through the lineage of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, consider themselves to be the descendants of the people ‘chosen’ by God, and thereby have a claim to be God’s holy people.
Q.
If there is a God, who is it that is holy before God, in God’s eyes???
If we consider the testimony of scripture as a guide [and imo, the Jewish people should!], it is clear that God was wholly unimpressed with the conduct of the bulk of those people, who had entered into a covenant with him, to maintain a holy relationship with him [God].
[b]”…they refuse to know me, saith the LORD.”[/b]
Jeremiah 4:22
For my people is foolish, they have not known me; they are sottish children, and they have none understanding: they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge.
Jeremiah 9:3
And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies: but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith the LORD.
4 Take ye heed every one of his neighbour, and trust ye not in any brother: for every brother will utterly supplant, and every neighbour will walk with slanders.
5 And they will deceive every one his neighbour, and will not speak the truth: they have taught their tongue to speak lies, and weary themselves to commit iniquity.
6 Thine habitation is in the midst of deceit; through deceit they refuse to know me, saith the LORD.
7 Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts, Behold, I will melt them, and try them; for how shall I do for the daughter of my people?
8 Their tongue is as an arrow shot out; it speaketh deceit: one speaketh peaceably to his neighbour with his mouth, but in heart he layeth his wait.
9 Shall I not visit them for these things? saith the LORD: shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?
Although these rebukes were given specifically against Judah, i think that it is clear [from the testimony of scripture] that all men [and not just the children of Israel] have proven that they are unclean and unholy, before God.
And all men, through their conduct, have demonstrated that they are unworthy through any merit of their own, to possess God’s holy land.
But the Jewish people do not stand before God though, on account of their merit.
The Jewish people are able to stand before God on account of God’s promise to Abraham, Moses, David, given through Moses and the prophets.
And God’s promise is that he will heal and redeem his people.
Psalms 135:4
Isaiah 43:1, 8-10, 25
Jeremiah 9:23
Thus saith the LORD, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches:
24 But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the LORD.
Me, i am one of those persons who is happy to say that i know that there is a God, and that he is the God of Israel.
And i know that in the fullness of time, God will give ‘the land’, to his servants.
What passes in the mean time, for ‘holiness’, are the machinations of men.
What path in this world, this wilderness, should we take?
What these verses declare [to me], is that in God’s eyes, we [mankind] should consider ourselves here, to be, strangers in a strange land;
Exodus 22:21
Exodus 23:9
Leviticus 19:33-34
Deuteronomy 1:16
Deuteronomy 10:17-19
Deuteronomy 24:17-18
Deuteronomy 27:19
Psalms 146:5
Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the LORD his God:
“…Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.”
Great article Caroline. The Catholic Bishops and their “Replacement Theology” could not be more wrong. Scriptures are full of God’s promises He would regather the Jewish people to Israel which He has done. The people of Israel should draw confidence from God’s promises. You are still His chosen people. We here in the USA are seeing first hand how Islam likes to erect it’s pagan monuments of conquest in the 911 ground zero mosque. The pagan mosque sitting on the temple mount in Israel only legitimizes the Islamic pagan religion. If the Islamics don’t want peace then it it time to take a wrecking ball to the mosque and for Israel to take back all her land given to her by God. I say to hell with what the misguided blind world says.
Your site is my first internet stop every time. I’ve learned more from you than all the others. Your analysis rings true. I think we understand the worldview that produces the desire in some to hide reality from themselves and the general public. It began with the “Enlightenment” or maybe in the Garden of Eden. It will end with the victory of Truth, but only after great tragedy. The only option for those, like you, who see the truth, is to try to tell it to as many as will listen. The battle is a daily one, but there is no great need for depression. True justice will prevail, and there is a deep joy in knowing the truth, regardless of the environment.
b”h dear caroline. you can sleep well. i promise you bibi + barack = 0 + 0 = 0 shabat shalom, shemon
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