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Ezekiel’s visions of the restoration of Israel led to a glorious climax in the temple in which God was going to ‘live among the Israelites for ever’ (43.7) and in the city whose name would always be ‘The Lord is there’ (48.35). If we believe, therefore, that it was uniquely in Jesus that God has come to live among us, we should not be looking to see the fulfilment of Ezekiel’s visions either in the twentieth-century return of Jews to the land, or the establishment of the state of Israel, or the present city of Jerusalem or in a future millennial reign of Jesus in Jerusalem. Perhaps Ezekiel, the priest turned prophet, was using the only language and imagery that were available to him at the time (related to the land, the nation, the city and the temple) to hint at something much more glorious than a return to the land, the revival of the nation and the restoration of a building. Perhaps God was using him to prepare his people and to open their minds for what it would mean when, ve centuries later, ‘the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us’ (John 1.14) and ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself’ (2 Cor. 5.19). And the Book of Revelation tells us that the best is yet to come—not in the land or in Jerusalem, but in ‘the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God’ and in ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ (Rev 21.1–4).
true king, true prophet, true inheritance, true resurrection, true Ascension, true presence of God, true Shekinah Glory and more, But when we look at the history of the people in the land after the return and in the next four centuries, it is hard to see much evidence of the national and spiritual renewal and revival that Ezekiel had envisaged. It was not surprising, therefore, that in the intertestamental period people began to dream of a time when God would intervene in miraculousways to ful l the visions of the prophets. Some of these hopes centred round the gure of a messiah, who would be either a supernatural figure coming on the clouds or a military figure overcoming oppressive foreign rulers and restoring Israel’s independence.Ever since The American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) – a major lobbying group advocating pro-Israeli policies – realigned itself with Christian conservatives in the 1980s, Christian Zionists have been among the most vociferous critics of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and today they are unconditional partisans for Israeli statehood at government level. Incidentally, CMJ still exists today .It is active in Israel and , moreover, is a bona fide organization within both the C of E and the C of I. Two further points about CMJ: it is manifestly not dispensationalist and , more significantly , it upholds as a central tenet that salvation is only through Jesus Christ – for “Jew and for Greek.” For a second resource, I turn to Gary M Burge, who is a theologian in the Christian Reformed Church in the US, and in 2019 wrote this helpful assessment of Christian Zionism.
The future of that remnant (Israel) lay in the reign of an ideal king (as described in Isaiah), indicating that the prophets were not antiroyalists. Though they could and did oppose individual kings, the prophets could not make a separation between Yahweh and the reign of his chosen king or dynasty. Their messianic ideology, referring to the messiah, or anointed one, is based on old royal ideology, and the ideal king is not an eschatological figure (one who appears at the end of history). In that respect, the prophets were nationalistic. They believed that the ideal kingdom would be in the promised land, and its centre would be Jerusalem. Any Christian can of course be a Zionist as a political stance, and there’s a strong case for saying they should be (using the core definition only, not how the word is used is polemics). The first portion of reform passed in March after The Knesset, the Israeli parliament, enacted a law that protected a prime minister from being removed from power. It stipulated that the prime minister could be ousted only for health or mental health reasons, and only the leader and their office could make that decision. The period 33-70 conceivably, then, provides in its principles (though not necessarily in all particularities), a template against which we are to interpret the period 70 – parousia…. When discussing the current crisis the majority of news outlets have omitted any discussion on the key role played by a central tenet of settler ideology in the ongoing aggression.My dear friends Yahusha (aka our Lord Jesus Christ) is NOT a “Jew”, He is a Hebrew Israelite from the tribe of Judah and Benjamin. But it is short-sighted to think of the publication of the Yinon Plan as the impetus for Israeli expansionism. Israel’s ambition for power through territorial expansion predates any outline of such an aspiration in the Yinon Plan. In fact, ever since the international community became receptive to the idea of “Israeli sovereignty,” the political and human rights implications of striving for the integrity of the Jewish homeland were ominous. Thou shalt arise and have mercy upon Zion, for the time to favor her, yea, the set time is come. For Thy servants take pleasure in her stones and favor the dust thereof. So the heathen shall fear the name of the Lord and all of the kings of the earth Thy glory. When the Lord shall build up Zion, He shall appear in His glory." Psalm 102:13-16 On the demand that I withdraw my comparrison with China, I accept and apolgise. It was not my intent to suggest that Israel is guilty of genocide when it plainly isn’t, thought I think you reading something I didn’t say.
They want to suggest that essentially everything that literally happened in the period 33-70 will literally happen again on the same scale in the same part of the world: Palestine. The emergence of classical prophecy in Israel (the northern kingdom) and Judah (the southern kingdom) begins with Amos and Hosea (8th century bce). What is new in classical prophecy is its hostile attitude toward Canaanite influences in religion and culture, combined with an old nationalistic conception of Yahweh and his people. The reaction of those classical prophets against Canaanite influences in the worship of Yahweh is a means by which scholars distinguish Israel’s classical prophets from other prophetic movements of their time. Essentially, the classical prophets wanted a renovation of the Yahweh cult, freeing it from all taint of worship of Baal and Asherah (Baal’s female counterpart). Though not all aspects of the Baal-Asherah cult were completely eradicated, ideas and rituals from that cult were rethought, evaluated, and purified according to those prophets’ concept of true Yahwism. On the subject of Israel being singled out, I would contest that there is a lot more criticism of China than there is of Israel, despite many of the crimes being committed by the two nations being readily comparable (in type if not scale). The crucial difference is that while we accept that China is aloof and thoroughly dismissive of any international leverage on how it behaves internally, we see Israel (a broadly progressive, liberal democracy*) as somehow much more ‘like us’ than China, so we more readily expect it to engage and listen, and that empathy drives the news cycle that gives it prominence. It’s not as simple as Israel being ‘singled out’ on the count of antisemitism. Reply Ever since secular cultural trends took root on American soil from the second half of the 20th century, the Christian Right slowly abandoned their long tradition of quietism by naturally aligning their interests with the Republican Party, given its traditionally conservative stance on topics like abortion, homosexuality, pornography and marriage.
Criminally” what? I am supposed to have condemned “a lot of of faithful godly Biblical Christians -when in fact I never mentioned one.
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