Regarding
Senator Biden
And "Tasks From God"
By Eileen Fleming
20 September,
2008
Countercurrents.org
Recently Senator Biden spoke with Shalom TV and stated that, "There is this inextricable tie between culture, religion, ethnicity that most people do not understand…You don't have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, I am a Zionist." [1]
"Christian Zionism is a contradiction in terms…Zionism deviates from the heart of the New Testament…Christian Zionism is adding fuel to the tensions between Muslims, Christians and Jews…If the Christian Zionists' agenda is realized, it will mean the death of Palestinian Christianity in the Holy Land…Zionism is militarizing the church…Christian Zionists overwhelkmingly supported the war in Iraq and continue to support oppressive Israeli measures in the West Bank…the slaughter of [1,255,026 Iraqis*] goes virtually unnoticed and unchallenged because of their belief that President George W. Bush is a dedicated Christian who is carrying out the will of God…The 'blind spot' of Christian Zionists is the fact that the Palestinian people, every day and in every aspect of their lives are living under an oppressive military occupation…Unlike the prophets of the Old Testament Christian Zionists have no prophetic words of reprimand for the State of Israel." [2]
But Christians who understand that God is love and who strive to practice the Beatitudes, have a few and "Love is not the starving of whole populations. Love is not the bombardment of open cities. Love is not killing......Our manifesto is the Sermon on the Mount, which means that we will try to be peacemakers." -Dorothy Day
Zionism began as a nationalistic philosophy that developed among European Jews in the 19th century which aspired to create a safe secure homeland for Jewish people.
Christian Zionism is an extremist movement which supports the claims
of those who believe that the State of Israel should take control
of all of the land currently disputed between Palestinians and Israelis.
It views the creation and expansion of the modern state of Israel
as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy toward the second coming of
Jesus.
Christian Zionism is also a modern theological and political movement that embraces the most extreme ideological positions of Zionism, thereby becoming detrimental to a just peace within Palestine and Israel.
The Christian Zionist program provides a worldview where the Gospel
is identified with the ideology of empire, colonialism and militarism.
In its extreme form, it laces an emphasis on apocalyptic events leading
to the end of history rather than living Christ's love and justice
today.
Believing that God fights on the side of Israel, Christian Zionists call for the unqualified support for the most extreme political positions related to the Holy Land that preclude a just peace between all of its citizens. Some Christian Zionist spoke-persons have even attributed Hurricane Katrina to God's wrath over America's failure to stop Israel from 'disengaging' in Gaza. Many also consistently oppose any moves towards a solution to the conflict which would validate the political aspirations of both Palestinians and Israelis.
Christian Zionism is both a political movement and a way of interpreting current events with the focus on Israel and the Middle East and its promoters share many beliefs but are not organized through any one institution.
Throughout history Christians have at times twisted scripture to justify violence: for the Crusades, for Anti-Semitism, for slavery and the church has been too slow to respond to these biblical distortions with disastrous results.
Christian Zionists - particularly those with dispensationalist leanings – whose motives are couched in terms of compassion toward the Jewish people- adhere to a literal reading of scripture that promotes a political agenda of territorial expansion which has given the green light to injustices against Palestinians and added fuel to the fire of conflict in the Middle East.
However, some mainstream churches have spoken out against Christian Zionism which is an inherently anti-Semitic theology. The Presbyterian Church in the USA at its July 2004, National General Assembly issued a statement on Confronting Christian Zionism: "Christian Zionism promotes a theology that justifies grievous violations of basic rights of people who are also made in the image of God, and is contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ."
The United Church of Christ in July 2003, at its National General Synod offered An Alternative Voice to Christian Zionism: "We believe that the tenets of Christian Zionism neither reflect the intention of the teachings of Jesus and the prophets, nor promote peace in the Middle East, and respectfully recommend …an alternative voice to this theology."
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, in June 2005 at its Chicago Metropolitan Synod issued a Resolution to Encourage the Study of Christian Zionism: "the movement of Christian Zionism based on these biblical interpretations seeks to influence U.S. policy toward Israel in a manner that would arguably facilitate mistreatment of Palestinians, continued occupation of the land, opposition to a two-state solution, and exclusive Israeli control of Jerusalem."
The United Methodist Church, in June 2005 at its Illinois Conference on Unwrapping the Rapture warned, "Every household should give prayerful consideration as to how God will actually judge us for our silence about and complicity in the crushing of the Palestinian people."
The Episcopal Church, in November 2004 at its Diocese of Chicago Confronted Christian Zionism: "A partial response to Christian Zionism would be to say that we read Scripture in light of [Jesus'] two great commandments - to love God and our neighbor."
In 2006, The Nation reported that Christians United for Israel/CUFI pressed White House officials to adopt a more confrontational posture toward Iran, to refuse aid to the Palestinians and to give Israel a free hand as it ramped up its military conflict with Hezbollah.
The White House has not revealed the names of the officials who met with the CUFI lobbyists, which is a venomous tentacle from the Armageddon-based foreign-policy view of its founder, John Hagee. Hagee is a fundamentalist, fire-and-brimstone preacher who seeks to convert Jewish people to his understanding of God or see them perish in a nuclear holocaust that he believes he and his kind of Christian will be raptured/lifted out of.
False prophets like Hagge adhere to a 200 year old convoluted interpretation of disparate scriptures that they have chosen to weave together to support their fear based judgmental narrow minded doctrine. Hagee has mesmerized nearly 18,000 misled Christians at his Cornerstone Church and hosts a major TV ministry where he explains his views of how the end times will unfold. He blatantly ignores the philosophy of Jesus for he is a warmonger, not a peace maker of peace seeker.
I contend
that the cult of 'Christian' Zionism is what the concept of the Anti-Christ
is all about, and by anti-Christ, I mean anti/against Jesus' teachings
which are that God is love, God loves all of his creation and the
greatest command is that we love God first and then all of our neighbor
[meaning all people] as we love our self.
Fundamentalist Christians have come to worship a worship a punitive father as God; a god of Armageddon and not the God of love, forgiveness and compassion that Jesus spoke of. The theology that is promoted in the Left Behind fiction is a theology based on fear and punishment and its adherents do not have eyes to see that nature is God's primary temple, and war the greatest abomination, although they have been warned by Jesus:
"Violence breeds violence, those that live by the sword shall die by the sword."-Mt. 26:52
"Blessed are the Peacemakers; they shall be called the children of God."-Mt. 5:9
Christian Zionists often quote Genesis 12:3:"I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse: and in you all the families of the world are blessed."
It is irresponsible and anti-Christ [against his teachings] "to suggest that God will bless us materially if we support the largely secular State of Israel, especially when this invariably means ignoring the plight of the indigenous Christian population of Palestine." [3]
The indigenous Christians of the Holy Land have dwindled from 20% of the total population to less than 1.3% since 1948 when the British Mandate over Palestine expired and Israel became a state.
Talking with Shalom TV, Senator Joe Biden also called for leniency
for Jonathan Pollard.
"Pollard, a civilian intelligence analyst in the Navy, wanted to be a spy so badly that he even seemed to think he was a spy long before he actually was. As a college student at Stanford he boasted that he had contacts in the Israeli intelligence services and that his father was a CIA agent who worked in Prague. Both claims were false. He entered phoney education and employment information on job applications and mailed himself telegrams under aliases he made up for himself. Strangely, none of the odd details about Pollard's personality were noted on his Navy background check report.
"…In 1984 Pollard was promoted to a position as an analyst in the Naval Criminal Investigation Service (NIS)…He was placed in a new, high-priority unit, the Anti-Terrorism Alert Center, where he gained access to satellite photographs and CIA reports…Shortly after he began working at the NIS Pollard met an Israeli intelligence officer in New York named Avi Sella, who was posing as a graduate student at New York University. Sella requested classified information from Pollard -- any information he could deliver -- and told him that he would be paid for whatever he could provide…Pollard provided detailed information on chemical warfare manufacturing plants in Iraq. For this initial transaction Pollard was given a $10,000 diamond and sapphire ring for his fiancée, Anne Henderson, and paid over $10,000 in cash. Sella also agreed to pay Pollard $1,500 a month for his espionage activities as long as they continued. For about a year after the time Pollard met Avi Sella, he gathered computer printouts, satellite photographs, and classified documents from his department three times a week and brought them to various Washington apartments. There, they were copied and returned to Pollard, who restored them to the Navy the following day. In exchange for his services Pollard received, in addition to the agreed salary, a lavish collection of gifts for himself and his wife, including a honeymoon in a private compartment aboard the Orient Express.
"By his own estimates Pollard passed to his Israeli handlers more than 800 classified publications and more than 1,000 cables, probably the largest cache of materials ever passed through espionage…then Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger said, "It is difficult for me...to conceive of greater harm done to national security." [4]
Initially Israel denied Pollard was spying for them, but eventually admitted he was. Israel has given him citizenship and has repeatedly called for his release. The Jerusalem City Council, in support of Pollard, changed the name of a square near the official prime minister's residence from Paris Square to Freedom for Jonathan Pollard Square. The full extent of the information Pollard gave to Israel has still not been officially revealed.
A year after Pollard was arrested for espionage after walking out of his office with 60 top-secret documents in his briefcase, Mordechai Vanunu was kidnapped, clubbed, drugged, bound and gagged in Rome by the Mossad and transported back to Israel where he was convicted of treason and espionage treason for handing over to the London Sunday Times, 56 photos that documented Israel's clandestine underground WMD facility in the Negev where upwards of 200 nuclear weapons were being assembled.
In 1963, Shimon Peres, then Israel's Deputy Minister of Defense met with President John Kennedy at the White House. Kennedy told Perez, "You know that we follow very closely the discovery of any nuclear development in the region. This could create a very dangerous situation. For this reason we monitor your nuclear effort. What could you tell me about this?"
Peres replied, "I can tell you most clearly that we will not introduce nuclear weapons to the region, and certainly we will not be the first."
In September of 1986, Peres ordered the Mossad, to "Bring the son of a bitch back here," and Vanunu was, just a few weeks after being baptized a Christian. The London Times never signed a contract with Vanunu and he has not received any payment for the photos he shot because he listened to his conscience [another name for God] and wanted to avoid a nuclear holocaust.
In 1987, from prison Vanunu wrote that he was, "the secret agent of the people…the eyes of the nation. I have no choice. I'm a little man, a citizen, one of the people, but I'll do what I have to. I've heard the voice of my conscience and there's nowhere to hide."[5]
Prophets do not necessarily predict the future, but prophets who are inspired by God will point out danger ahead and provoke people to remember God.
"The word of God is living and active. Sharper than a two-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him whom we must give account."- Hebrews 4:12-13 t
Christians understand that individuals as well as nations will be judged, not on Bible trivia, but on our hearts.
"War is the greatest plague that afflicts humanity, it destroys religion, it destroys states and it destroys families…Any nation that year after year continues to raise the Defense budget while cutting social programs to the neediest is a nation approaching spiritual death." – Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
What the nations of the world so desperately need is a kitchen table meeting with the Prince of Peace who commanded his followers that in order to be forgiven, they must forgive, they must love all people, they are not judge any other and that it is the peacemakers who are God's children: not those that bomb, torture or occupy any other.
1.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
mZvypFPscP8&feature=related
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/
iraq/iraqdeaths.html
2. Rev. Alex Awad, Palestinian Memories, pages 244-248
3. Rev. Stephen Sizer, Zion's Christian Soldiers, page 46
4. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/venona/dece_pollard.html
LEARN MORE:
If Americans Knew What Israel Is Doing!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
ynWjYHP91gA&feature=related
Patriot
Follows the Money and Exposes Foreign Agents
The Vanunu Saga:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=660&Itemid=175
Eileen Fleming, Reporter and Editor WAWA:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Author "Keep Hope Alive" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory" Producer "30 Minutes With Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu"
