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SECTION  10

Iran has a lot to say for itself.
Indeed, at the time of writing, June 2009, millions seem
to mill in public places and to endure beatings and some are killed
as if the anti-Shah riots were coming all over again,
and the movement into strict and stringent Islam, ruled by ever so many authorities and councils,
a religious person at the top, with religious personnel strong in various committees and the like (The Australian June 18, 2009), were under populist review.

With an election lost, people swarm in protest at suspected fraud,
the apparent opinion of France's Sarkhozy. Some, stricken for their protests, yet go out again to demonstrate, we read, still wearing the bandages of beatings from last time. The nation seeks in the persons of many, a liberation and not to be a libation to the religious concepts of some.

Before this, there was plenty for sufficient concern, Ahmadinejad delighting to taunt Israel
with the concept that its removal from this earth would be an excellent plan, a thing to be desired, while he works so unremittingly for the atomic power which in a relatively short time
could become atomic weaponry.

The convergence of this atomic delight and anti-Israel spite does seem rather an impressive anomaly ... or on the other hand, convulsion of circumstances.

When the cat sharpens its claws, the mice would not be likely, could they think, to consider this an irenic movement.

It is scarcely surprising then that President Peres of Israel had a few words to say
concerning the verbal antics of Ahmadinejad, and that even Hilary Clinton noted that it was possible Israel might see fit to attack. Its so-called 'existential threat' is surely there.
But then, so it has been since May 1948,
when God fulfilled the promise from some 3,400 years ago,
that after their removal in discipline (Leviticus 26, Deuteronomy 28-32)
they would be brought back in divine faithfulness:
and how many of the prophets echoed that theme,
such as Hosea, Amos, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah!

It had to happen, despite numerous theologians, and as written, so it came to pass
(cf. SMR Appendix A). God does not listen to theology when it is mere philosophic rubrics.

He DOES fulfil His word.

The threat to abduct, extinguish Israel, to make it defunct, a former country, deformed or deleted, this is not able to be performed, for God, not because of favouritism
but because of His long-announced plan for history in all its portions,
wishes it that way.

Thus does He show His love

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first in calling Israel as a source for the instruction of the world on His will and ways,
 

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then in disciplining her as a miscreant
one even engaged in idolatrising for its own part (as prominent and dramatic in Hosea),
 

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 then presenting her with opportunity, as one to come to the Messiah but not doing so,
 

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then seeing her reluctantly off, as one travelling over the lands without home (Luke 19:42ff.),
 

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then sustaining her very life, as one discounted by man, yet planted again in its place,
 

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then in aiding her, put back in her land  when made a target by the nations,
and finally - a thing to come -
 

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and at last, in providing for her such an outpouring of the Holy Spirit as in Zechariah 12,
that there is an entire change in this world.

No more, then,  is Israel the odd man out,
but the new man brought back, while God fulfils His eschatological conclusion,
and man learns from many parts, the meaning of life all over again, in Jesus Christ.

It is He and He alone who will be exalted, and what exalts itself against Him,
whether in witless extravaganzas of pretentious power,
or foolish unfaithfulness of recklessness of religion,
or in feckless heckling,
will be brought low (Isaiah 2, Micah 7, I Peter 5:5 with Matthew 23:12).

It is HE

who will reign,

even the Saviour

without whom man becomes more and more messy,

and He will reign for ever (Daniel 7, Revelation 20-22, Psalm 72),

first in this world, a vindication and verification to the blind,

then over all His redeemed creation (Revelation 22),

such as have received Him (John 1:12)

in the cloisters of compassion, the energies of delight
and the fashion of holiness forever. 

 

 

  Contents Page for this Current Volume 

 

 

Chapter Three

 

HITLER MARK II ?

Peres compares Ahmadinejad to Hitler ...

and also to Stalin. An unusual extension for an irrational outburst, duly rebuked,
but one making atomic malice more explosive.

The word of God ... and of man

 

News 418

The Australian, April 22, 2009

THE VERBAL BOMB PREPARING

Naturally, the dubbing of some person or party as a 'Hitler' is part of the cultural provision for denigration, personal plunder or traducement, but especially to stigmatise, to be pejorative or to disturb the complacency of the force-minded manipulators of men, when they act with some show of power. 'This Hitler,' someone might say, with no chance of being misunderstood. The days of dear Adolf have left a memory for horror which admits of little denigration, since it is already in the depth of blackness. In other words, this name is a ready assault weapon for use on the riotous with power, and the unfeeling with forces at their disposal.

The astute reader may naturally want to know what it is that bears this comparison with the ways of Hitler. This phrasing comes in reference to the speech of Ahmadinejad in the UN anti-racism conference, which might as well, for this outburst, have been called the Racism Realisation Conference for Ethical Retardees. It is made by Israel's President, Peres, not noted as war-mongering but rather as a peaceable influence in consort with the new Cabinet - if a President may be so conceived. His overseeing role is here then, being exercised. Here he compares Ahmadinejad's role to that of Hitler.

What sort of a speech did this Iranian President then make, that it drew fire from such an unexpected quarter ? To this we will plan to return shortly, but the issue is one on the books since 2001 when there was a UN effort to relate Zionism to racism in one of the most ludicrous misuses of terminology available on this planet. The President of 'destroy Israel' Iran, as it currently appears from his words, has opened the verbal throttle and rammed into the brick wall of fact with a vehemence which is not unusual in the dealings of some foreign sovereigns with Israel in times past.

 

Really, his inflammatory words in this UN meeting this month of April, 2009, almost remind one of those of the imperial Sennacherib of Assyria to King Hezekiah. Recipient ? the same, Israel.

Let us gain some perspective for the event, by first acquainting ourselves with a little history. Israel is, as its enemies well know, a little different. There are reasons for this, to which in due course we will hope to come.

But what of the ancient case of Sennacherib and HIS words of ecstatic triumphalism and assault on Israel ?

When that vaulting imperial puffer with pride sought to deflate Israel with a menace by no means surreal, but which before the Lord might as well have been, he intimated a few points designed to intimidate! Had he not swallowed up nation after nation, together with their ineffectual gods, and would Israel hope to survive his dynamic derogation where force lay just millimetres away, and triumph over this puny nation was assured! You  see these militant mouthings in Isaiah 36-37, though we use modern measuring units to make it have current impact!

The first imperial utterance of Sennacherib misread Hezekiah's purging of multiple sites for unauthorised worship and made it seem to have been an offence against God, thus weakening any hope Hezekiah might have had from Deity. In other words, he accused Hezekiah of removing religious sites, and surmised that hence he would not be popular with his God. In this, he was precisely wrong, reminding one of the sort of misconception often found of Christianity, by those who want to roll their own God, and smoke him.

This propaganda of the imperial monarch, then, though not well researched, still sounded great as an intimidation tactic. In fact,  from the day of Moses, it had been part of Israel's mission, in due course to have (as happened in Solomon's day), just ONE patterned site for worship which in symbolism stood for the ONE Saviour (none is Saviour but God - Isaiah 43:10-11), who in ONE PLACE would perform the work of salvation for mankind, being a blessing to all nations (Genesis 12,  Deuteronomy 12:5-11, 14:23, 26:2, cf. Joshua 9:27, I Kings 8:29, Psalm 78:6, 132:13-14, II Chronicles 7:6, 33:4).

One for One God was the spiritual statistic: not many for many gods, or all sorts of gods or any kind of god, or make your own god.

Hezekiah had in fact been removing a cultural accretion, a multiplication of illicit places of worship often defiled with synthetic spirituality, other gods, and was abiding closely in the Lord. Sennacherib, seeing multiplicity as strength, and hence Hezekiah's purging of it as weakness, could not have been more mistaken.

When it comes to God, HE is one and His salvation is one and His word is one, and those who imagine that multiplicity is spiritual strength merely dig their own spiritual graves. To be sure, as in Isaiah 48:16, there is a trinity in unity, God the sender, God the sent and God the Spirit, but this majesty of grandeur, where the very expression of God in totality is Himself a Person, not merely a set of propositions, is so intensively unitary, that it merely emphasises the glory of the one God who acts in accordance with His word and blesses the pure in heart (cf. The Bright Light and the Uncomprehending Darkness Ch. 10, John 8:58).

Thus Sennarcherib's first verbal assault and appeal for surrender on the part of Israel, was flagrantly beside the point.

In the second mouthing, that recorded in Isaiah 37, we read of that same bad ruler authorising a speech of rampage against Israel, when Assyria, in excess of prancing libido,  foolishly hit the delete button for their own folly. That imperial leader actually left that earlier piece of propaganda and took the direct  line that no nation and no god with any nation had ever stood up to him, as they lay strewn as mementos of his might, relics of his triumphs and victories. Should Israel imagine that facing the massive army that had been evidenced, ready to invade, it would do any better!

Such a fluster of bluster merely hid the fact that the King of Assyria, since speech No. 1, had become engaged in another conflict. God acted in answer to acute, poor-in-spirit prayer from King Hezekiah, and sent the prophet Isaiah with an answer which likened Assyria to a bellicose bull about to be led off scene by a ring in the nose;  and then as follow-up you might say, He destroyed a massive amount of the Assyrian army. It is always unwise to take on the Almighty; for though as with Hitler, He may enable a region to feel the force of affront from some specious, invading sovereign, diligently glorifying himself/his theories or whatever, yet the end is neither to be desired nor sought, even in this world.

As to that, the judgment which is to come  in the end can amend anything left over! God is not mocked. In the end, the  savageries of hatred are met, and this is especially so in the case of Israel, even on this earth! without reference to what is to come! (cf. Micah 7, Deuteronomy 32, Ezekiel 38ff.).

But is God at all being mocked in these savageries of utterance, now being mouthed by Ahmadinejad in his untiring tirade against Israel ? It is here that a little research is valuable. First, let us look at the immediate past.

If ever racism reared its inward parts without restriction, this would be a prime example. Earlier, we read this in The Australian, a few hurried days before the conference:  "Iran chokes on Holocaust".

That was written a little before April 22, 2009, and its burden was this: the UN people were feverishly working on what could perhaps be a nice conference IF ONLY they could persuade the Iranian President to remove a linkage of the Holocaust to other matters which were deemed oppressive. It failed when it came to the point, in the first of the 5-day meetings planned for the Durban Review Conference. He did not diminish his verbal assault forces at all. Whatever went, much more came!

In fact, this current conference followed on from the Durban Declaration and Program of Action of 2001. In this, the US and Israel walked out at a gross action of calumny, as those then present sought to liken Zionism to racism. In fact, this meeting was covered on this site, relevant to the religious and spiritual issues involved.

Thus when the Racist Conference on Racism,  as it might well be called, did meet in 2001, there was kefuffle, an inelegant imbroglio of words and walk out, fury and fulmination, folly and manipulation which was described in our 2003 publication, Of the Earth, Earthy, Ch. 13. Part of this reads as follows, though slightly revised for our present pursuit.

 

When the draft resolution for the UN Conference on Racism in 2001 was exposed, even the EU demanded immediate removal of anti-Israel references. The US walked out, as did Israel. It was only then that the "equation of Zionism with racism" became taboo; for it was BECAUSE of this that the withdrawal statedly occurred.

A re-draft had to be made. What however does this imply of the DRAFT! Its anti-Israel attitudes provoked a storm. Where did it come from ? Venus or Mars ? or the UN ?

In fairness, Kofi Annan did deplore the 1975 UN resolution "equating Zionism with racism", but the underlying bias has been evident in the ludicrous UN decision to give Israel little tracts of Palestine and to make Jerusalem an international city, in 1947, and its follow-through actions. These include its relentless and remorseless pursuit of the plan to carve still further from the tiny residue of Palestine called Israel, the rest robbed from Israel despite the international accord of the victors in World War I that ALL should go to it, in accord with the Balfour Declaration of 1917 (in a suitable environment to be sure - see It Bubbles, It Howls, He Calls... Ch. 10).

What then is it set to carve from this fractional residue ? A "Palestinian State" as if Jordan had not already been  given some 77% of Palestine "illegally" if you want to use this word of contravention of an international agreement (op.cit., and Trust God ... Ch. 5). Strange is it that when it comes to questions of a tiny addition in terms of the "West Bank" containing what PM Sharon has recently been reported as describing as heartland for the Jews, in terms of Biblical history, here is furore. No the percentage to the Moslem hosts on all sides in their numerous countries, this is not yet enough! More, more and yet more ...

Despite this heartland status, Sharon specified sites such as Bethlehem, which he might be willing to give up, though it cost him agony so to do. Questioned, his spokesman made it clear that Bethlehem was not specified as such, as that could lead to negotiations in which it became a starting point: the matter was generic, at this stage, not specific. Nevertheless, in the tormented Jewish State, assailed by other nations and the UN alike, the former physically and verbally, the latter verbally with censorious scissors, this is its current position.

And yet they talk disparagingly of Zionism, when the Jews are giving up to Egypt what they won in internecine conflict in the days of Nasser, much of the Sinai peninsular, yielding some control of Gaza and negotiating for its possible gift to the Arabs, who have nevertheless been using it to attack and kill Jews in their own country, while setting about adding this and that from the West Bank as well, from Israel's territories of right from the early twentieth century, of history, of heartland, of acquisition when the world denied it what had been given!

Zionism ?

·       is it not rather pan-Islamic alliance against the pittance taken by Israel, compared with the original gift designated.

·       Is it Zionism to want your own country, and accept a small part of it, and be murdered in masses for the privilege, by what appears as a kind of post-Hitler anti-Semitism confined to Jewry!  

·       Is it Zionism to give back what was yours in the first place, and to so much as permit an Arab presence in Israel of those not in the normal way, willing to co-operate with the State at least in its security ?  

·       Or is it Zionism to have to make relatively minor incursions into the territories granted to Arabs, whose lands are all about Israel, in order to reduce summary, flagrant and noisy terrorism ?

Would the US permit terrorists to lurk in Texas, and to boast of their intentions ? Why, as was pointed out in the recent news coverage from Israel, the USA has gone some 10 000 miles to PROTECT itself and ensure its security! Is Israel to be criticised, then, for covering some of ITS OWN territory in such a way as to reduce the mad rush and rash of murderous insurgents who use the accommodation provided within Israel to assault it!

No, it is not Zionism to which all this amounts: it is anti-Semitism, if you can confine that term to the Israeli branch of the Semitic peoples. It is in some of its major and famed  clothing, aspiration to regional genocide in the Middle East, as in the express case of Nasser, and in the attitude of Hamas which DOES NOT AGREE with the Jewish State's existence! Indeed, the Pan-Islamic Alliance of 1991 was troubled by its existence. For many, it is referred to in inimical peoples, as "the catastrophe" that it did not die in birth so that it ... is!

To be sure, the homeland of the Balfour Declaration, made by Britain, confirmed by the victors, and the League of Nations, was a homeland IN Palestine, but it had to take due allowance for the cultures of those already there.

Let us read it here.

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"His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine
of a national home for the Jewish people,
and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object,
it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done
which may prejudice the civil and religious rights
of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine,
or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
[1]

It would, to say the least, be peculiarly misleading if the homeland IN  Palestine, WHERE there was to be due allowance for other peoples,  accorded BY this homeland-to-be people, were in fact not a homeland equating to Palestine; for what sort of a homeland is to be, if merely some speciously select and diminutive bit of Palestine when EVEN THAT was to be careful about transnationals so that their culture should not be too affronted! A homeland at that ? it would almost be a land pocket.

 

RIGHTS AND WRONGS, FACTS AND SONGS

Indeed, what have 'rights' to do with the Jews once ensconced in their announced homeland, rights of others, if the Jews simply have a slice of the place. What have existing non-Jewish communities IN Palestine to do with Jews as grantors of rights, if the Jews have no dominion, office, place or site in those OTHER parts of Palestine ? It is ONLY when Israel has a homeland in Palestine, which IS home and not a billet, that the question of 'rights' to be granted so much as arises, for others IN Palestine. Where IN Palestine are to be found those whose rights are thus to be protected ? Why ANYWHERE in Palestine, for if any culture, people or race is to be found anywhere in Palestine, then it is true that this is IN Palestine, could claim the concessions in view and hence the spread of the grant to the Jews IS Palestine.

You cannot have it both ways. Either the Jews are to have an enclave, where it is their own, a homeland, or all Palestine. If it is an enclave the others have no rights to be protected outside that enclave, for there Jews are irrelevant per homeland. Yet those rights are SPECIFICALLY protected. Hence as they are 'rights', and to be protected, it is from the Jews in this that they are to be protected, for the issue is the translation of Jews to their new homeland in Palestine. Hence the ambit of the occupation IS Palestine, in order to make the safeguarding not of peoples but of RIGHTS even to be meaningful. As broad as are the 'rights', so broad is the gift. The rights being for ALL of Palestine, so is the gift.

Obviously, the terms imply that Palestine being multi-cultured, should be a homeland where diversity should be tolerated by those whose homeland in that place had been specified. Nevertheless, as so often in political and diplomatic fields, what begins in strength and simplicity, ends in weakness and complicity.

Some 70% of Palestine went to the new-named Jordan, almost as soon as Britain took up her mandate after the war with authority in the League of Nations, and the Balfour Declaration was formally included in the mandate. Was not even this enough to allow trans-nationals and multi-cultural pressure groups to have their own Moslem and Arab ways, as was the chief concern ? Is seven tenths for THE REST not a sufficient donation from a homeland, where this 'rest' was an enemy from far away, and near at hand, both!

Such was the anti-Semitic thrust, or better anti-Jewish, that this was merely the beginning of pillage, such as pogroms had made a cultural 'must' for so long in so many places. Theft from Jews was almost an international sport, grim as gallows.

Was 70% of the land enough for the others ? Not at all, this diminished offering of a residual homeland was to be conceived as overdone. Thus came the ludicrous 1947 UN offerings, which constituted a simple bitza of land strips, with Jerusalem to be an international city. This, even this,  the ARAB-MOSLEM moiety REFUSED as inadequate!  It was felt to be too much for Jews, not enough for them. On the heads of those who refused the offer to Arabs, Palestinians, those concerned on the other side, therefore, is all the war and horror and striving since that time. The engulfment is always the practical aim, judging from every move and shouting from this petty potentate time and again. The Iranian President is not doing a lot more than allowing the internal dynamic of this assault on Israel to come into verbal form.

By that time, World War I was long over and the British gratitude and international goodwill was eroded like a valley, no more a mount. Britain even blocked by the British Navy old hulks helping to convey remnants of Jewry from Europe and elsewhere to their 'homeland'. Small wonder Britain has so fallen as a major power, so subjecting itself to racial tensions and the like in the process, while Charles would like to be a defender of all 'faiths', no making a travesty of the meaning of the phrase, by verbal circumvention - defender of the faith ? rather as an amender of the Constitution of England's grand freedom and commitment as a nation, does he appear, while the land which has so acted, despite earlier grace and courage, suffers for these follies.

Israel, then, after the Arab refusal to accept nearly all in 1947, gift of the UN, in manifest betrayal of the original League of Nations promise of a homeland, not a segmented slither ex-Jerusalem, was left alone, except for the work of the Almighty. That however is always sufficient in itself. His word has long indicated what would happen, in Zechariah 12, as a lead-up to a virtually national time of repentance for the piercing of the Messiah, the LORD, as seen in 12:10-13:1. It showed massive victories; they came. Massive trouble to those dealing roughly with Jerusalem was there foretold. It is now past history, news that has come, while the word of God has gone out like a bugle call, and the results show.

What then ? Even though the multi-national Arab-Moslem countries fought hard to EXTERMINATE the Jewish presence in 1948, and though their religious and national affinities were vast, and those of the Jews tiny, in fact not even including ONE SINGLE established nation, as a dispersed people, without State formal institutions, they won. There was no Israel then; for it had to be manufactured by a people dispersed throughout the mini-Palestinian remnant.

On May 10, 1948, however, as annihilation - or is the word 'extermination' from the new paradigm of Hitleresque fulmination ? - faced them, they decreed a State and God gave the victory, EVEN TO A PEOPLE still at odds with Him.

Such is grace, and such was the prediction, for the promised outpouring of the Spirit to bring repentance to them, as seen in Zechariah 12, comes AFTER these victories. Scriptural scenarios are inevitably correct, down to the detail, or to the 'jot and tittle' as Christ put it on this point of faithfulness and reliability of His word (Matthew 5:17ff.).

Test! Man has tests on all sides and as the test is, so is the result, whether*1 it be biology, politics, diplomacy, Israel (its forecast forecasted! as in Amos 3:7).

It is hard to beat God; the wise do not try, and the true do not desire it. Certainly, the situation is not simple. Israel, to whom God gave a significantly larger portion than that now occupied by Israel, is at war with God still, at the national level. However, this is a very special war. God is giving specific, indeed specified protections, despite the divine disciplines foretold in Leviticus 26, to a people still at war with Him concerning salvation; and the raucous ruminations and fulminations of those like Ahmadinejad, and there have been many, are as the noise of crickets in the Summer night. They are contained in the atmosphere, which goes on with its season.

Yet the disciplines, these have been substantial. How often as in Jeremiah 2, you see the prolonged divine challenge, or as in Jeremiah 9, 13, the lament! Truth cannot be contained, for it is limitless in its application; and what insists on afflicting it may in liberty do so, but in the end reality bites. It has to: or it would not be real. It determines the outcome. God would diminish and has acted to delete the punishment (I Peter 2:22ff., Galatians 3); but what ignores His offer and despises His sufferings, puts aside His provision, is without mercy, as would be a nation that had power to disperse the clouds, avoid the rain. It is a sombre power, and a grievous result; but it is achievable, but the godless. Even these, as Christ showed on the Cross, crying, Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing! He would deliver. Yet He does not dictate.

Thus the long estrangement of Israel from the Lord of glory has been both a sad and a grievous matter. Many have tried to exploit the nation as it has suffered; but God does not forget (cf. Genesis 12, Jeremiah 51:34-35).

The result of this needless and gratuitous estrangement has been as prescribed. Even if reality, the Lord Himself, should die, yet does it live, just as He was resurrected. He IS the truth.It is always true that there is one God, one salvation, one offer, one Gospel (Galatians 1) and one death to be met by sinners who refuse it, one inscribed word of God, validate, verified, active and incapable of subordination.

The way for Israel then, has been hard in its rebellion, merely epitomised at the Cross! (cf. II Chronicles 36).

As the nation has pursued this way, it has had its casualties, and because Israel was willing to forego God's protective covenant, in fact killing the Prince of Peace, their own Messiah (since God chose to use the nation for His incarnation). These losses have been both great and prolonged. They have moved through pogroms in Russia and elsewhere, the Romanist Inquisition in Europe, and in that power-pressurising cultural centre of millenia, they have been treated with little more mercy than President Ahminadejad now proposes, in his riotous remarks about the demise of Israel as a thing to be sought!

It was thought that Hitler was the coping stone of a reckless folly on the part of Europe, not least, in its rabid persecution of Jews, first by this means, method, nation, and then by that. After all, a six million tally amounting to something moving towards half of that Jewish race is not a bad effort for one European nation, which according to promise, has suffered vastly for it, both in Berlin and in East Germany,  and in the utter humiliation and horror which these phases entailed.

On such results as this, see Genesis 12:3 and its promise; and consider the principle in Jeremiah 51:33-35 - where the TYPE of exterminative action against Israel, which was in view, is exposed at that time, with wrath. Babylon, the perpetrator that time, is here given its come-uppance. Because especially of what it did to Jerusalem and Israel, there is a determination for its devastation, even that of the great. Thus came vast loss for guilty Babylon, itself a ruin and a relic now, as for so long, its grandeur in the dust.

Much the same is in store in days to come (Micah 7, Ezekiel 38ff.), when the next wave of terrorist triumphalism which clamours against Israel is to be met in a highly personal way by God Almighty. Bullies are never popular, except with sycophants.

It is partly for this reason that Ahmadinejad is on the rim of ruin in his fiery fulminations, uttered while atomic activity is moving with such speed that nearer and nearer estimates arise, as to the time when he might hope to have a means to destroy Israel to hand, to match the mind that talks of its extermination. It is not his intention ? then his call for this is poetry ? a figure of speech ? removing them means keeping them ? A needful act is not one to be done ? It is unconvincing as an interpretation...

 

DIVINE DETERMINATION AND HUMAN EXTERMINATION -
A LITTLE TEST

Another reason for the coming failure against Israel, to exterminate it ? It is this. For all Israel's two millenia of living, which has gone past the unrepented crucifixion of their Messiah (the heart of the divine covenant with them cf. Deuteronomy 18, Isaiah 42, 49, 52-53, 55), God has not forgotten them; nor does He intend to do so. We know this from His word which divulges His mind.

In Micah 7, in fact, you see a sort of soliloquy presenting the mind of a hated and humbled people, guilty before God, but seeking His mercy: you see that Israel which has hope and looks for deliverance. By the action of the Almighty, which resembles that shown in Isaiah 2. Israel is not to be exalted as some mistakenly imagine (NO flesh will be - Isaiah 2:11 - and remember what the elders did with their crowns - Revelation 4:10); but its Messiah will be exalted (Philippians 2:10ff.),  and His site of crucifixion will be a centre of grace and teaching, namely Jerusalem (Micah 4).

It is quite useless for any to lust after it, as a continuing emblem of their power or pride. God has determined otherwise. For a period, some sort of compromise may work; in the end there is a total sweeping aside of presumption, and what God has given is confirmed, explained, shown in Jesus Christ to be the whole point and criterion, whether for Jew or Gentile. What God accomplished in Jerusalem is the New Covenant, and from this, there is no departing (Galatians 1).

Indeed, as Paul puts it, EVEN IF HE, as an apostle, preached anything different, then HE would be accursed. Truth does not melt because of wilfulness; but the apostle was not wilful, and kept to the truth (II Timothy 4:6-8,17-18).

His people of whatever extraction will have the glory of the Lord seen upon them (cf. Isaiah 60-61, Galatians 3:26ff.); but it is HIS! God does not go backwards in His redemption, but moves forward (cf. Hebrews 8:13, Ephesians 1:10) to the great consummation (Revelation 20-22) for those from every nation (Revelation 7), washed in the blood of the Lamb. .

Those therefore who have other plans for what God has appointed, be it land or people or Gospel to include the finale,  are awaiting a divine reference, in forcible form after so long a time.

They may neither know it (being blind to His word), nor desire it (being closed to His love). Yet it comes as do all His words.

It is a sequence, a scenario, an outcome, an application which applies NOT ONLY FOR ISRAEL, that it is TO REPENT;  but it is for OTHER NATIONS AS WELL who attack the same God as did Israel! They are no better. Their ruin, they need not expect, to be less severe. Indeed, in the case of Israel, as noted, it is foretold that there will be what appears tantamount to a national repentance, certainly a massive public one (Zechariah 12:1-13:1), so that the blood of Christ will become a cover there for many, also. Those with hand-made gods should beware; for though in God is vast patience, and His longsuffering is outstanding, yet He is not mocked.

But it is time to consider the audacious, Sennacherib-like verbiage of Ahmadinejad, at the racist meeting, where racism was exhibited and exemplified in his speech to such an  extent that European nations walked out, just as Israel, the US and Australia did not participate because of the preliminary rumblings of abusing such a conference for purely, or rather impurely propaganda purposes. Indeed, ABC Radio National, breakfast section has this for April 20, 2009:

bullet Australia has joined the US, Canada, Israel, Italy and the Netherlands
in boycotting a major UN conference on racism which opens in Geneva later today.
 
bullet Foreign Minister Stephen Smith wants to avoid a repeat of
an earlier UN racism conference which he says,
was used as a 'platform to air offensive views, including anti-Semitic views'.

Australia is to be congratulated on some even-handed realism here; and it is a mark in the right area, that servility to popular views did not this time erode its wisdom. May God be praised for that, and remember this land for good for that; for folly is unbecoming in any nation, and we have had enough. This however, it is cause for rejoicing.

 

THE SPEECH ITSELF,

AT THE SPIRITUAL LEVEL

A number of features may simply be itemised, for as in any fire, it is best to contain it.

I. First, we read in the account found in The Australian, April 22, 2009, that Iran's President ignored the pleas of the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, who had urged him not to use this speech on the opening day. In fact, Ki-Moon declared this:

"I deplore the use of this platform by the Iranian President
to accuse, divide and even incite"

2. The Iranian President, Ahmadinejad (henceforward provided with the convenient acronym, IPAD) decided it fitting to characterise Israel, a sort of report-card effort by a non-headmaster. It went like this: Israel is "the most cruel and repressive racist regime."

It is a little hard to find how a ... regime, which was assembled not least from left-overs from the outcast status so well provided in so many ways by Europe for millenia, and by willing working settlers who improved land vastly, could as it were, flower in a cruel and repressive, yes even a racist body, which could be typified as a 'regime'. Certainly, the hatred and assaults so common from some surrounding countries would assist a more warlike footing (rather than inviting elimination), but the step is still vast from victim of multinational hatred incorporations, to vicious malefactor. Verbally, it is much easier than in reality. Perhaps, there is frustration, as in the earlier case of Dr Mahathir, at failure to consume the victim, or despatch it; but this does not entirely render it a racist regime. Should it apologise for existence, revoke territorial grant at the international level, and cease to resist oppression, on pain of a verbal spanking ? I think not.

In Iran, to be sure, regime would be a good word for the invasive religious totalitarianism which has ruled with no small rigour since the overthrow of its President some decades ago, working to instal a repressive, religion-ruled government. How Israel could be called this is less clear. Interesting, is it not, however, that it is not to Iran that IPAD is referring in this case, but as if by a slip of the tongue, to Israel! This can happen, especially as one grows older, but IPAD does not seem particularly old, and the rest of his speech did not suggest that he really meant Iran when he said this.

Now racism ? what is this. It is the concept, when used with a certain ethical ferment, that some race considers itself better, to be more select, better designed to rule, called to disparage other races, perhaps to oppress them, perchance intern them or seek to obliterate them. Again, it is little puzzling how it is to Israel he seems to have brought these remarks, instead of providing a sort of nice opening day performance in mea culpa repentance for the plight of Iran. That is a kind of religious racism, where what is not Islamic has in many ways been the one to SUBMIT, and what is Islamic, is to one to CAUSE TO SUBMIT. When it is allied to certain nations, then it can become national racism, and when it is a basis for assault on Israel, as so very often, then it becomes repressive national racism. It fits, but not to Israel so much as to its tormentor, threatener, detractor, assailant, Iran.

However, while Israel is far from perfect - a feature applicable to all nations - it is not noticeably declaring that it is better, than Iran and Co. It does not seem to be indulging in this sort of religious or secular racism, based on verbal assurances, not facts. It does not declare that Iran MUST submit and preferably be exterminated. That is plain racism. Is it in a novel newspeak, defined, this racism, to MEAN any attitude or approach which does not submit to Moslem mouthing, or Iranian denunciations ? If so, then it means nothing to the point. 

Again, mirabile dictu, IPAD in his denunciation of the nation he wants to cease to exist, was not making a national confession as a prelude to giving a good example and making a vast change in the mode of government in Iran. He did not say, as far as one is aware, WE, the government making this bombast, are racist, oppressive.

The plot thickens. It is very strange. A Moslem power of might, aspiring for more, which wishes PER SE, to exterminate (if the President is not a farce, but a national feature, which we should assume) Israel, with a national cum religious racism, is accusing Israel, which does not wish to exterminate Iran, of being what it is showing evidence to be itself. It is not just the pot calling the kettle black, it is the pot calling the stainless steel kitchen utensils black. It is ludicrous. Again, this is not to highlight Israel, but simply to be just. Whatever Israel is, racist it is not.

It does not appreciate people with foreign allies seeking to overthrow it, kill its citizens,  maraud against its villages, and even shows inclination from  time to time, to weaken such assault from such sources. Racism ? Rather, as with Britain in WW II, it is self-defence. It is not keen to incoporate these murderous assailants as citizens ? Would it be likely then ? On the other hand, it has ALREADY incorporated not a few in the economic boon which is Israel, and many not of Israel have greatly gained in this, from the superior infrastructure and concentrated, industrial and medical care.

Indeed, the extent to which Israel has given hospital and medical treatment to those who have been fighting her, and has even GIVEN AWAY massive amounts of land won WHEN it was being threatened with partial or total extermination by burley neighbours, who actually were invading her, is remarkable. Give us peace and we will return land acquired when you tried to divest us of our land, they say;  when indeed, you who have vast nations and a good part of this earth for your religion and national bodies, wanted more of our comparative pittance.

That was not very racist, but indicated that Israel would like, even if on a still smaller scale, to exist as a people.

Is it racist to want to exist ?  to have a country ? to prefer not to be subjected to foreign, alien, invasive, hostile activities on the part of those who BY so targetting Israel, nation of a race, are racist in inclination.

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Is it racist to be a race ?
 

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Is it racist to continue in its special modes ?
 

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Is it racist to allow a culture to consummate ?
 

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or is it rather racist
 

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to resent this and
 

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to seek by force to overcome it, dilute or diffuse it, operate by force to wither it, silence it, destabilise it,
 

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to deploy to its disadvantage, whatever it gives
in the way of land to assuage the hateful hostility and to overturn the racist vehemence
of those so hostile for so long!
of those seeking by so many means to ruin what is being built,
just as Hitler sought in his own version of racist religion,
which in fact was with him the very essence of such a category!

 

DOES IRAN BELONG TO THE IRANIANS ?
ISRAEL TO ISRAELIS  ...
RACES AND RACISM

Does Iran belong to Iranians ? Is this racism ? Is it willing to be occupied by some other nations ? If not, is this racism! Is there something wrong with the subject-complement grammatical configurations in this speech ? When it says, YOU are the CULPRIT, O Israel, does it really exhibit confusion and mean, WE are the CULPRIT, O Israel. This might seem rather more accurately to fit the content.

To be sure Israel would like to occupy ONE country, but it seems Iran, for the purposes at least of religious or national racism, or something very much akin, would like to occupy at least two. Is there a certain racism in wanting to occupy a small country, if only with what blights it ? It is not obvious at all, that this would be so.

Is there a measure of a cruel and repressive racist regime, when Israel does not want those who sought to destroy her,  to become such a large part of its population, that though they failed in MOST unequal warfare, to  destroy her,  they will  do so at the voting polls ? It seems that for IPAD, then, to construe this speech with any care, that he would like Israel to cease altogether to be a place for Jews, and certainly not in the Middle East, as if to replace the British, international and indeed League of Nations accord and determination.

Is he then to become a sort of new IPAD League of Nations ? in himself ? all by himself ? or does he want Iran to join with him ? and other nations ? whose tolerance and goodwill is so great that they do not cease to be involved in attacks on the Jewish race, in its tiny home.

Is it to him  to determine that the place for Israel is NOUGHT, and that this is because ISRAEL is racist ? The point would appear an inversion of the most ludicrous kind.

But what of the Palestinians ? Certainly, some of them or their forbears lived in what is now Israel, a people who as shown in God's Gift of Grace in Christ Jesus Ch. 5, occupied the territory for a longer period than did Moslem entities. However, when a multi-national force of Islamic peoples sought to remove Jews from the land in 1948, and again in 1967 and 1973, and failed, and many left the nation hoping to return as victors, in internecine and religiously racist mode (to use the term IPAD likes so well in the context), it becomes clear that prudence has a place. If then menacing powers wish (as they have wished) to take back some of the land which with God's direct and predicted assistance Israel gained (cf. Zechariah 12, leading on to Jewish repentance for piercing Christ, 12:10), and then to use it (as they have used it) to bombard Israel, there is a certain question.

This needs to be settled. Israel has asked for it to be settled, but the request has been disdained.

What is the settlement in view ? It is this. Israel is a little weary of giving lands from the Palestinian homeland accorded it by international consent, and withheld from it in 1947  by the ludicrous strip and tease offer of the UN, to satisfy those who continue ruthlessly to bombard it and to seek to convert it into a ruin, by terror. It perhaps likes even less giving lands for peace in order to have these very lands used for war, and to have children used to assist that war, and then find complaints because of the heartless ruses that are deployed in the dramas of publicity, as many modes, all in the propaganda regimen, are used to add to force to overthrow it.

Lie down Israel! we want to walk over you.  Is this it ? Does the Iranian object because it refuses to be funk, and debunk from the arena ! Is it frustration that causes this inversion of modes and definitions ?

Now consider: Is it an oppressive regime which gives land away in order to have peace on the part of those who wish to invade it, who then use vastly powerful foreign powers to achieve this end, and employ the land grant to assail those who give it ? Is it oppressive if a nation does not seek to possess another land, but to be left in peace in its own!

The answer would  seem perfectly clear. It is the neighbours who are religiously racist as far as Israel is concerned, to the extent they wage such wars, and the Palestinians are, as one writer in The Australian referred to it long ago, being used by many as a catspaw.

This makes them a complex case. It is demonstrable that foreign arms have arrived for this cause against Israel, and indeed it appears foreign helpers also. The Russian tanks and air force supply for 1973 was merely a more obvious example.

If then Israel is to be removed from existence, is this an oppressive act, in fact ? It would appear so. Non-existence, prima facie,  is rather repressive as an aim for anyone  to have concerning anyone else. Is it the act of a regime, Iranian in this case ? So far, it appears so. Is it cruel ? a sort of post-pogrom, post-Hitleresque confrontation, to complete the work of generations of racist horror which is hard to duplicate in the case of any other nation as target for rampaging racism: its category seems eminently cruel. Does then cruelty tend to afflict the eyes so that those who operate in this way, attribute their feelings to their victims ? It may often be so, for out of the fulness of the heart, the lips often speak.

What then is vehement, forceful, threatening  opposition to a culture-religion-history-compact, that has invested itself once more in a national integral reality ? This is the case. Israel has been a specialised nation for some millenia. There is nothing new either in its mode of existence (except for its departure from its own Lord at Calvary and beyond), or its being a country.

Such insurgent desires against it seem cruel in the extreme, as are the many bombs which hit Israel's youth, children and people. If you want to be part of Israel, it does not seem particularly hard to understand, that the way to do it is not to bomb it first. This could look to be the work of a cruel, oppressive, racist regime, operating against Israel; and who would want as co-partners in any land, those who are, or who act in terms of such a regime. You would have be near to insane to tolerate such a mode of destruction, and such partners.

However, facts seem in short supply.

 

UNHOLY HOLOCAUSTS, VERBAL AND ACTUAL

Next, the Holocaust is described, in the past, by IPAD as a myth.

The testimonies however are too numerous, from too many armies, survivors, inspections of concentration camps, liberating moments almost beyond bearing, of those who found survivors in conditions far too bad for beasts, and those who have written on these subjects, as on the part of Germany, who gave hundreds of millions of dollars worth of reparations. This kind of denial meets a check from every historical checkpoint and is ludicrous. Indeed the work of some in Sweden and Denmark who helped in an organised and longstanding way many of those mauled and threatened (as IPAD now threatens in his own case, not willing to acknowledge his predecessors, it seems), is of great historical interest and substantial detail, secured by a multitude of histories, writings, records, memories and involvements by many.

This erratic effort on the part of IPAD, this endeavour to falisfy what is not only undeniable in truth, but truly heinous to an almost unique degree,  is provocative, unsustainable and ludicrous. It bears witness to a racist rush of the provocateur who cannot stand fact as it is, in this region. Hatred does that; racism can often be a form of hatred.

Hence the speech would seem to have a political, or racism, or oppressive aim, since this has been the stance of Iran against Israel for some time. It merely makes the grotesque direct, and the publicity for ranting, international, the podium a pulpit, racism the dynamic, truth the victim first of all.

It is sad. It is not good to be so deluded. One never wishes to see anyone grow into a morbidity from which there may be no return. ALL flesh is in danger, and it is only in the Lord Jesus Christ that one has that direct access to God which enables deliverance from such woes. Many even use His name for their own words, and ignore His commandments. But SUBMISSION is not His aim, nor is force His method. Surrender is His wish (Luke 14), but it must come from within, for the kingdom of God IS within (Luke 17:21).

Any externality is secondary, though its day will come when tests past, judgment is ready to sit.

Is it to gain re-election, by no means sure now, by acting as if a militancy had reduced the need to be factual ? It is possible. Is it to act  as a prelude for  another  Hitler-type assault, as in his case on Poland, in the company of much to gain Russia, in 1939 ? It might be pleasing to have a pseudo-moral case at least, to seek to justify invasion, expropriation, intimidation and theft of land. We do not know. The facts and the speech however, and its setting from this source, make it necessary to consider what is behind this blackballing, pejoration!

We find next in IPAD's speech, as reported, this: "Following World War II, they resorted to military aggression to make an entire nation homeless under the pretext of Jewish suffering. They sent migrants from Europe, the US and other parts of the world in order to establish a totally racist government in the occupied Palestine." 

This certainly has the sort of phoney ring which one came to associate with the bombastic exercises in disinformation so much associated with the Fuhrer. Was it military aggression on the part of Israel when it did not exist as a nation, despite the broken League of Nations assignment of Palestine in terms of homeland, that it did not lie down to be murdered by INVADING multi-national forces, dedicated to their extinction as a people in that place ? Is a small section of Palestine 'occupied' when it is part of a grant ? Is one's home 'occupied' if one is living in it ? Is there no end  to pejorative misrepresentation ? Well, the words do end ... eventually.

What on earth is in mind here ? Is it aggression to fight against what is setting out to remove your duly granted site for homeland from existence, some nations fighting against what was accorded, when at that,  the opportunity had ALREADY been refused  to take almost all of Palestine from the Jews, with Jerusalem an international city! Israel was prepared to accept this travesty of the League of Nations decision; its detractors were not. The homeland is to be no home, and what is left of it is to be left not at all in peace.

Does history not matter ? Is this a sort of antithesis exercise, in which you must try to say exactly the opposite of the truth, in order to show you are capable of finding the right terms with which to do so! Quite frankly, it might genuinely appear so.

This is ... objectionable ? Reception of enemies as voters is wrong ? Subversion by endless methods and guile is to be ignored ? Wisdom is to exit ?

So the residues from Belsen and Hitler and centuries of oppression (fact) do not allow the war on their appointed national homeland to extinguish them and it, and in a remarkable exemplification of the power of the Almighty, as specified in His signature book*1, the Bible, they even win against incredible odds, and SO CONTINUED TO EXIST. National deletion is not achieved by one method, and it is undesirable that it should NOT be achieved by another, and only racist Israelis stop this iron fist, these provocative rocket blasts, from achieving the deletion desired ? This, it is an 'error' on the part of the victim nation ? Is it an error if a rabbit runs from a snake then ?

This is to make an entire nation homeless ? including those who went voluntarily, ready to pounce on victory.

Is it to make a nation homeless when you resist destruction by religious and national racism, and prefer not to give away ALL that you gain, either at the polls or in land gift back to the aggressors who SOUGHT YOUR VERY LIFE, and did so, if you are wanting sporting terminology, with the most unfair odds for the aggressors in 1948 were using established national forces to destroy a people who at that time DID NOT EVEN EXIST as a nation!

What more torturous expression of undisciplined thinking is possible ? Perhaps it might be invented; but it would not be easy to create it. This is high level misinformation, as indeed, you DO find in some wars. Perhaps this is the disinformation explosion, as in some other wartime scenarios. Notice then who is warmongering, and watch the eventual result.

But you cannot take that sort of thing seriously in its vociferation; and indeed, in general, it is doubtful that it is ever meant seriously, as a type, appearing to be a propaganda exercise by nations at war, in some cases.

 

HOME DUTIES - OCCUPIED AT HOME

Let us now attend to more of the IPAD statement. They, the Israelis presumably or some sort of people called Jews, almost too bad in type to mention, it might see: they sent, we read, people to go in in order to establish "a totally racist government in occupied Palestine."

You cannot send people into  occupied Palestine, however, when it does not exist. A home is not occupied; it is resided in: or else words become mere toys.

Without the promised homeland (which happened to be their home for millenia), there would be nowhere for them to go. That has been the case for millenia, and now some seem dissatisfied that this should ever be remedied.

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They in fact came to accorded, appointed Palestine, and indeed a tiny segment of it.
The Jews, be it recalled at this point, have been WILLING to receive
what the UN offered in 1947.
That would have been that.
 

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The enemies of the Jews were not willing and HENCE are responsible
for the entire NON-PEACE, having wanted more than ALMOST ALL of Palestine,
and then warred to grab the rest.
 

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Facts really need to be considered by those who deal in these matters,
and this speech by IPAD is not the place to find them.
 

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If it were an exercise in propaganda skill, it might have some merit;
but though the UN is often just the place for this sort of thing,
this is rather too blatant even to pass the test of competent propaganda.

As to the racist government, it cannot be a 'totally racist' one if it is not racist. As shown above, it is far from racist, and if Iran's current attitudes define racism, Israel is almost the precise opposite.


Land ? have more.

Peace ? if I give you land, will you make peace ?

War ? Would you stop killing our people with invasive, repressive rockets, intimidating whole areas, so that we can think about peace without making it equatable with submission, an idea your very religion is strong in advocating - submission, be it noted, on the part of your enemies, not of yourselves: a one-sided affair at best.

What more ? Vacate amid revilings, in the worst European tradition! Israel finds this a bit much ? ... Then more revilings! It is a strange culprit, who is the victim, and a strange racist regime which is the butt of religious and national racism on a multi-national scale, while many peoples combine to blow it up, in the very midst of its scientific expertise, enduring industry and efforts to prevent the continuance of long centuries of just such oppression and reviling, which took place in Europe.

Does IPAD want Europe to export its former attitudes ? Is it any surprise that so many of Europe did not participate in this hatred session, or else walked out! This is recidivism spreading like a disease, from one place to another.

Next, it almost seems as if mediations of IPAD about his own conduct were suddenly turned into an assault on Israel. What is this! He declares this, as if entering an application to be allowed to use the term 'racist' of himself: "The word Zionism personifies racism that falsely resorts to religion and abuses religious sentiments to hide their hatred."

 Is it racism to have a religious desire to dwell in the land appointed some 3.5 millenia ago, and occupied for longer than any Moslem people have occupied it, and that even leaving out the initial period of the patriarchs, whose promised position was in any case recorded and remains incapable of removal, all this time ? If the God of the Bible is not He, and is not Almighty, how is it that jihads to not eliminate Israel, though many nations with hundreds of times her land and people, seek to eliminate her, or various governments, groups and assassins, such as al Qaeda wage invidious, self-serving hostilities (on which see Lord of Life Ch. 8, *1) ?

What God says, goes. Authority acts. It is inspectable. It is empirical. It is testable. It is happening in this very Middle East, now.

GOD, the God of the Bible SAID this would happen. Think carefully - not only DOES it happen that the combined might of many vastly gifted territories, held by Islam, peoples amounting to billions, is not sufficient to 'remove' (is that the correct non-racist terminology ?) Israel from national existence in its non-cruel, non-regime. This is the people of the Islamic god Allah, who are supposedly representing his wishes in various declamations, invasions, jihads and the like.

The God of the Bible, the God and Father of the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, however, is committed to the continued existence of Israel (cf. Luke 21:24, Micah 7, Genesis 17). Indeed, although He has BY PROPHECY from the day of Moses, indicated a time would come, as it did,  when He would EXPATRIATE them because of a sequence of such godlessness that it despised mercy and repentance much as IPAD seems to do concerning his own attitude to them, in his ferocity of hatred (if hatred may be deduced from a desire to eliminate a people, as would seem in principle, rather likely): He has His own plan.

This is being carried out in precision, as always. They are back. Israel is restored to its land. Their triumphant and almost incredible victories w hen their national existence was threatened, are history, just as they were prophecy, and remain both written and fulfilled precisely (cf. SMR Chs. 8-9).

Israel, it is not yet a believing nation (as earlier they were). They have thus by mercy, foretold divine kindness,  having amazing victories over vastly equipped foes, which would have seemed sure to overwhelm them with ease. As Mahathir, former leader in Malaysia, declared however, despite this vast disproportion, victory is not obtained.

Those who want SUBMISSION of others, relative to their religion (even if some do not entirely proceed the way the Koran repeatedly indicates), are not getting it relative to Israel. Now is it some kind of love which WANTS this submission ? Is it, conversely, on the part of Israel, some kind of hatred which does not relish giving it, and thus falling down before those who would dominate it ?

Is it hate not to allow people to trample over you, though in masses and multi-national forces they TRY and TRY AGAIN, to do so ? Is it hatred to have a certain concern about being comrades of state with declared enemies who invoke help from other declared enemies, who with a largely common religion, want to suppress!

The case seems conclusive, but once again, in a manner entirely converse to what is being presented, so that it seems as if part of putative diary or soliloquy by IPAD had been 'lifted' and applied clumsily not to his own performance, and that of those seeking Israel's destruction, but to Israel. It is of course not unknown for repressive, odious oppressors to belabour their victims with blows as well as words, or in this case, it would be rockets as well as raucously degrading, infamously pejorative, insidiously seductive language.

 

THE ZIONIST CIVILISATION, THE BRITISH ... et al.

Zionism, even at its most religious rating as a term, means the desire to have the land God gave and which the Jews occupied longer than any currently contending power, which they left as foretold by the same God for very good reasons, namely inveterate sin, and to re-occupy therefore a place of their own.

One had not noticed, entirely, that all the nations have no desire to have a land of their own. Is the USA happy to vacate and ... submit ? Is Britain ? Is France ? Really, one had not noticed. Is it racism to desire one, and is it a false sense of religion to desire the one given by the God of one's traditional and long past ? It would not seem at all obviously so.

Is it a false desire to have it, in any case, as the traditional place of the past ? It would seem entirely understandable... or as the place the international League of Nations gave it ? That would seem reasonable. Is it some devious religious pretence that would make Israel want to take up what was given, and to use it rather than be meat for invasive forces of religious intolerance who, not content with ruling in force in their own land, want to duplicate the proceeding, it seems, by eliminating Israel and having more of their own take yet more of the world which is in part or totally theirs from Morocco to Pakistan, at least to a very substantial degree ?

If there is such a thing as a political nightmare in which the most ludicrous things happen, as if this is the purpose of the dream, then this would appear to be it! If now Israel were to reply:

Listen Iran, it seems best in view of your contrapuntal, contra-factual ranting to eliminate your means of invasion, repel your seeking for religious submission, as a sort of crusade, to remove your atomic weapons, as we removed aircraft in Egypt in a kind of parallel ...

 would this be hatred, or the equivalent of Spitfire fighters counter-attacking Hitler before he gained ... what word will we use  ? ah yes, submission of Britain. 

The cases are different ? True, but they have much in relevant commonness. In each case, a hostile, vehement, threatening, powerful, inimical power is trying to overcome one more moderate, and not seeking geographical extension at all. Again, in each case, there is a type of philosophic or religious zeal which prompts the desire to overcome the nation (whether Britain then, or Israel now). Thirdly, there is a desire that the victim nation capitulate (it is cheaper), but a determination that if it does not do so, something must be done to overthrow its power entirely.

There is a certain parallel. It is better for the aggressor to depart the martial scene and to compose itself.

Did Britain in that case, by refusing to submit to the tyrant, exhibit hatred (certainly for Nazism with its flair to make others submit by force, without conviction, the very opposite or religious faith, which is by conviction not compulsion) ? Who however loves tyranny imposed!

Did it falsely resort to religion and abuse religious sentiments to hide hatred ?

In fact, there was rather a resurgence, it seems, towards churches, seeking deliverance for a people oppressed by the then tyrant, Hitler. Was it false ? It is for the Lord to judge that sort of thing; but that there were many sincere is sure. Who is this that judges ? Is IPAD to become a god, to know the heart then! The idea is superfluous, but necessary for such judgments. Are those who differ on his powers in this regard, falsely hiding their religion, or categorically exposing it!

Netanyahu announced, perhaps with some knowledge of the type of speech to come:

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"We will not allow the Holocaust deniers
to carry out another Holocaust against the Jewish people."

This does not seem unreasonable; but it would be far better if Israel returned to their own God, who chose them for the presentation of His biblical revelation in the Old Testament and for reception of the Christ, God incarnate. They however choose their path.

In fact, as all salvation is by grace, it is the Lord who acts to deliver them, both spiritually in repentance (or a huge segment of them - cf. Zechariah 12:10 - 13:1); and in terms of deployment of force, to rescue those threatened with annihilation, once and for all to stop brutal victimisation, ludicrous misrepresentation by those who affect to act as judges. At that time, He will, as He foretells, show the nations the truth in ways even they can understand (as in Ezekiel 39:26ff., 36:33-37, 38:23, 39:23-27).

 

GOD, THE FATHER OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST,
HE ALONE WILL GET THE GLORY

Everything else is the overflow of His radiance whose is reality

Meanwhile, see that this is NIL glorification of Israel: Ezekiel 36:22! What is foretold many times is rather the exposure of hatred and abuse of power, making contest concerning His own use of His own real estate. Indeed, it is this fact that the God of the Bible, although magnificent in liberty and grace, has kept a small part of the earth for certain exemplary purposes, that seems to have the proverbial fish-bone effect on the throats of many who cry out against what He has caused to be written ... and DONE!

 There is no question of exalting Israel, but of exalting Christ, and bringing through Him glory to HIS people, whether Jew or Gentile (Revelation 7, Galatians 3).

It is God who rules as we have been seeing throughout the millenia of His speech in the Bible and its forerunners as they were assembled (cf. Isaiah 57:21, 34:16ff.).

It is He who in my own 81 years has been making so many successive fulfilments of precisely what He said, that it is a glorious experience to be an observer who can participate, and one thanks God for this eminent privilege, shared by those who care to look to the Bible and history in combination (cf. SMR Chs. 8-9).

It is God who has protected Israel (by GRACE, as noted, despite the fact that in the midst of these things, as shown in Zechariah 12, they still do not believe in Him who protects them, even while He is initially delivering them).

It is God who gives liberty but not licence, and makes peoples pay, however graciously governed is He in His temperance, for their racial, religious, civil, philosophic, pseudo-scientific or other aspirations to be as god; a thing that routinely fails.

What God says, goes. What IPAD says, will be gone, unless of course, like anyone else in contradiction of the God of the Bible, who alone has verification, vindication, and demonstration at His hand*1, He repents.

God, the God of the Bible and the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ thus has said WHAT HE WILL DO,  WHY He will do it and in some cases when. In the case of the end of this, our Age, it is no different. It is fascinating, intriguing to see the various actors in the opera, arrive en scène and disport themselves, like IPAD, as also others with various programs, pogroms or whatever. They come in order to go; but God comes in order to rule, and with the vast period of liberty past, the restoration of righteousness on this earth is but a prelude to its entire removal (Matthew 243:35, Isaiah 51:6, II Peter 3), which in view of the follies inbuilt now into so much of it, is just as well.

It is like what ? It is like an examination room where you have scribbled hard for hours. But now ? well that is past. It is not for ever. Tests come for a time, and actors strut for a period; but the end draws near. Tests are not forever. Their RESULTS are the point of it all.

It will be great when purity with peace rules, and when a new heavens and new earth (Revelation 20, Isaiah 65) are created. It is great even now when a new heart is created (II Corinthians 5:17ff.), without which there is no peace for man (John 3, Galatians 3, Isaiah 57:19-20). Meanwhile, let us love our enemies, if we love the Lord Jesus Christ as He has required, and not allow this to make us their own ruin, by abetting their follies, but rather assist them to realise what they do, before it is too late. Often, it is the scalpel which removes the disease; and only afterwards is health to be found. With God, it is in the heart that the change must be made; and it is made ONLY by Him, though He may use His servants to proclaim His word and will, in that grace which with truth, is profoundly and ultimately His.

 

NOTE and EPILOGUE

*1

See for example the trilogy

SMR
with TMR initially;

and then in specialty on redemption and remedy, see  

The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy;

then on verification,

the two volume (2 million word) work,

        Light Dwells with the Lord's Christ

        WHO ANSWERS RIDDLES

        AND WHERE HE IS, DARKNESS DEPARTS.

On nature-worship and its various evolutionary and degenerative programs,  see

the tetrad of volumes, 

The gods of naturalism have no go!

while on design, see 

the (approx.) 2.7 volume work,

 Deity and Design ...; and

on Predestination, see

the HEXAD of volumes on this topic,


On Presdestination and Foreknowledge,
Liberty and  Necessity,
Responsibliity ,
Duty and Creativity.

On Science which becomes no more than scientism,
when the scientific domains are invaded  in religious areas,
to make them arenas of the scientistic, and irresponsible musings,
which replace verifiable facts and logical realities: see

SCIENTIFIC METHOD, SATANIC METHOD

AND THE MODEL OF SALVATION

There is, again in marvellous fulfilment of biblical truth, as might be expected of what is enunciated by God (cf. I Corinthians 2:9ff., I Peter 1, II Peter 1), a move not only among nations and religions, but in the secular area, where it is not just Israel, or even distinctively this nation, but the entirety of what God has said, that is challenged with what is more than liberty.

As shown for example in Secular Myths and Sacred Truth, though many are the scientists who both love and venerate God, and show the truth of creation and kind: yet there is a ground swell, despite the ludicrous nature of Darwinism (cf. The gods of naturalism have no go!), to make SUBMISSION to 'science' the going thing.

This submission thing is by no means invented by Islam. Slavery has this motif; triumphalism of ego, has much the same; and what is wrong often has the most impressive and impactive thrust to FORCE others to obey it PRECISELY because reason does not accompany it, and only force is left.

Misuse of power in science, when politically applied, is to be seen in TMR Ch. 8 and Beauty for Ashes Ch. 3, for example, and in all those intolerable submit-or-else efforts by governments to FORCE schools to teach these trivial substitutes for truth, along with actual verifiable science, in one package. Amazingly, in Australia recently, one governmental authority required the independent schools to accept, sight unseen, the coming curriculum, in order to gain funds.

That any independent school could do this is ludicrous. It is - if the report be accurate - a DEPENDENT school, which can or does so act, and it seems  some did so. Is it not vital to avoid what is wrong ? hateful ? unacceptable in all truth and  conscience biblically for a biblical school ? Is neither truth nor conscience to speak ? is the State already in the business of being emulous with God ? It would assuredly seem so, not only in this, but in what it has been doing for some 20 years in the case of South Australia (cf. TMR Ch. 8 as above).

The movement to the antichrist who MUST have all obey him, this post-Hitler exercise in power thrust and lust, this anti-God force to make a new religion (cf. Revelation 13, 16, 19), and a new earth: it is being displayed in ever increasing mind-sets and popular propaganda wounds, by which many fall to the side, as if mechanised infantry had smitten them for folly.

It is sad ? Yes, it was sad when France fell in World War II, and when Napoleon called on others to submit; as was the ludicrous case of Alexander the Great, whose whole life from young manhood seemed to be an exercise in self-will (religiously dressed up, as is the way with many), until having gained much of the world centres of civilisation, he simply died in early thirties.

So goes the tyrant. Truth lasts.

Here is food for thought. Here is drink to refresh. Consider what the Lord has to say (and in His case, it is followed by doing)...

 

"Wisdom calls aloud outside;

She raises her voice in the open squares.

She cries out in the chief concourses,

At the openings of the gates in the city

She speaks her words:

"How long, you simple ones, will you love simplicity?

For scorners delight in their scorning,

And fools hate knowledge.

Turn at my rebuke;

Surely I will pour out my spirit on you;

I will make my words known to you.

 

"Because I have called and you refused,

I have stretched out my hand and no one regarded,

Because you disdained all my counsel,

And would have none of my rebuke,

I also will laugh at your calamity;

I will mock when your terror comes,

When your terror comes like a storm,

And your destruction comes like a whirlwind,

When distress and anguish come upon you."

 

It is understandable, that. Why ? indeed,  if God offers wisdom in a verified volume, the Bible,  which always comes true and has the entire validating expression of the answer to man's life problems in testable terms, and man refuses it, making another god or gods, or life, or way, or idea, or concept, and then applies his drab, defeatist dereliction to this world, which God made:  results are to be expected ...

Naturally the outcome will be cruel in consequence. In what sense ? In the sense of ruin of hope, except there be repentance, as when any delicate thing is mauled by folly. In this case, alas, it is  man-made). Does that seem oppressive in character ?

Use a fountain pen as a hole puncher and you get the same sort of thing. If you insist, what would you expect ? A miracle to make the absurd all right ? Would you then attack the maker of fountain pens ? In the most literal fashion, this is for man who does it so often, simply a case of "you forget yourself".

The problem, in such a case, it is of your own making. When love and sacrifice has proceeded to give you an outing from this fallacious inwardness, at unlimited divine cost from the Creator, who is also the Redeemer, the One who made and gives scope for rescue, and He has given unanswerable self-identification, and you still reject it though pains are taken to demonstrate its truth: then darkness being preferred, it is found (John 3:19).

It is never nice, that. But again ? what would you!

 

11. Spiritual Food and Spiritual Drink

Ch.   3,  3 EPILOGUE   

May 2009

 

 

 

 

Israel! An independent nation with an independent policy - thus spake Liebermann.

You must do this and that, so spake Obama.

The ideas and ideals are becoming very mixed; but then, what could you expect with would-be nannies on the one hand, and savage wolves on the other, biting at the ankles and with longing eyes seeking the face of the Jew, with the primal lust to kill that is so common when truth is forsaken and the curse of God is mistaken for His mode of creation. Again, there are the watches, the eyes of whom seem to flit, now here, now there, often averted while they speak.

Israel however remains just as surely as it was exiled by divine decree earlier in history, indeed until 1948, at the national level. What God says comes to pass, the outings and the innings, and sequence and the reason, the salvation whether utilised for His glory or dismissed at Calvary: and His faithfulness to His word is far more invariant than physical laws, since these were created, and operate as man imagines, only to find, quite often, that not they but man's understanding needs adjustment. So with the word of God, it is not this but man's understanding that needs adjustment.

They will say, "Arise and save us."
 

'But where are your gods that you have made for yourselves?

Let them arise,

If they can save you in the time of your trouble;

For according to the number of your cities

Are your gods, O Judah.

 

'Why will you plead with Me?

                    You all have transgressed against Me,' says the Lord."

Israel of old fell apart in folly, and paid; and now the Gentiles blindly thrash
like an angry crocodile newly in captivity, now killing millions in USSR, now in China, now in
Cambodia of an earlier day, and now trying their hand in the Sudan, now torturing, now discarding
truth like old clothes, and trying on new suits that do not fit, suits dedicated to 'nature', a god without power, intelligence or hope, but a creation showing the power of God and the intelligence and wisdom of God, to which those blinded by superstition close their eyes, as they invent a 'nature' which neither is nor ever has been which has all the attributes of God, just as a junk yard has all the attributes of cars, except that they do not go, being merely former creations (cf. The gods of naturalism have no go! Deity and Design ...).

The cause of current strife is first of all categorical: the avoidance of the Designer, Creator, Redeemer, the Author and original of love and the basis and fountain of power, the presenter and potentate of wisdom evident throughout all the earth both in the marvels of His minute and grand constructions and in the results of its absence in hearts which refuse to know Him, and bomb and maim and invade and terrorise and seek pleasure, immoral lust and fanciful notions of non-morals despite their evident design. It is a two-edged sword: What His wisdom has done and what man's refusal of it IS DOING!

In the Middle East the time will come (cf. Isaiah 19), when the internecine strife will seek. Israel, humbled and helped, will be in its land, but not as rulers and great, being redeemed in many just as many of the Gentiles are, but nevertheless back in place where the grace of God first DECLARED it; for God has a mind and keeps to His will. It is He who is the Ruler (cf. Isaiah 11).

It is its land. It is small; but it is sovereignly decreed. Contesting with God is like trying to save an aircraft, newly made and original, able to go at 5000 miles per hour, and at that speed currently one millimetre from the earth at which it is directing itself vertically ... It is not a situation to be desired; but it is one to be found amply on this erring earth. Then there is complaint about the aircraft, though it is magnificently made, or desire to worship it, even in its destruction; or to build more, limping things of sorrow and folly, in order to do it again.

The missing link is the love of God in the context of the power of God with the provision of the peace of God, amid the enthralling depositions of the doctrine of God, the wisdom of the word of God, all given and secure these millenia.

Without that, flames and fury are the messages of man to man in multiplied myriads on missions of death. It is neither profitable nor wise, neither sound nor sanctified, the mere bluster of flesh.

Peace will never come without God (except politically and superficially for a little time, the better to contrast its end in truth as in I Thessalonians 5:1ff., with such results as in II Thessalonians 1).

God is merciful, but not befuddledly mellow. Nor is He watching with fitful interest, as some weary of this earth , might watch a cricket match, listlessly. He has already appointed the times of war and peace, the latter when His advent brings its offer as at Calvary and in the resurrection of His body, which none could ever find but His disciples because He had it, and took it where He wanted to be; and when at last He comes (cf. II Peter 3:9), not lax in all this time, but longsuffering and giving to many the grace to find Him before He is here (cf. Zechariah 12-13, Acts 2:17ff.), then it will be, the profundity of peace as the earth is filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11, Habakkuk 2:14). .

There is a time for peace for nations and for individual hearts. The latter may find it at any time, by seeking the Lord and His cancellation of sin at the Cross by faith, and relying on the power of His resurrection through grace, that they might be saved; and the former ? it comes with His advent which draws nearer and nearer, like an ocean liner, showing with every move the intent of its Captain, at first with tugs, and then with swirling waters and movements this way and that, it approaches the wharf appointed (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5, SMR Chs.  8-9).