Eric's Beijing Diary

Last May Safina and Jack both graduated from high school at about the same time. The graduations were on the same day, so I could not go to both of them, but there were a number of relatives who came for both graduations, so we were able to intermingle somewhat. As it happened, John and I were both staying at a condo that Heather and Jason figured out, so I took the opportunity to interview him while Melissa and David were at the beach.

For a lot of modern young people, it's perhaps a bit hard to appreciate the impact on the Six Day War on the mindset of the American public. John was born in 1950, and I was born in 54, so we were of an age where we could begin to appreciate the significance of that victory. To be fair to history, one should also consider the Yom Kippur War of 1973, because if you put those two together, the victory of 1967 is not quite so astounding. Still, regardless of how you look at the outcome of those wars, Israel clearly won the PR war in both cases. Perhaps that is partly what motivated Anwar Sadat to extend the olive branch, because he was immediately lionized as a peace hero. But it cost him. He was assassinated by extremists who did not like his friendship with the Jews.

When Sadat was assassinated in October of 1981, I was teaching in a small one room school on the prairies of North Dakota. I took the children outside the schoolhouse and lowered the flag to half mast. Why? Why do the best ones have to die? The simple reality is that peace has friends, but peace also has its enemies.

Having come of age in the audience of these momentous events, and having been a product of evangelical Sunday schools and Christian schools from my earliest memories, and also having been a strong believer in Horace Greeley's statement that “it is impossible to enslave, mentally or socially, a bible-reading people," I read the Bible throughout my growing up years.

We had another book around the house called "Egermeier's Bible Story Book." I took that thing and read through it to give myself a basic understanding of the stories of the Bible. As you can gather from what I am saying, Israel figures quite prominently in the literature of my childhood and youth environment. Not exclusively, of course. I read novels like the Hardy Boys, and the Little Women, Little Men series. So I was exposed to lots of literature as a child that had nothing to do with Israel. But I also lived and learned in an environment where Israel was talked about a lot. And of course my Bible reading put me in a place to know how Jews think. Every book in the Bible was written by a Jew, except for the Book of Acts, and the Gospel of Luke.

I think you will find this podcast episode very useful. John has studied the Middle East (mostly Israel) his entire adult life. I have too, but not to the extent that John has. I am interested in Israel, of course, but I also went through long periods when I studied stuff that had little to do with Israel, such as the ten year study I did of the American Civil War in the eighties and nineties and my study of the history of modern China back in the noughties before and after I moved to Beijing in 2004. And there was a period after I left the trucking industry in the late nineties when I read almost no history of any kind for a period of two years as I was teaching myself technology to become a technical trainer, spending hundreds of hours reading tens of thousands of pages of technical documents.

After that two years, I tried to balance my reading a bit, bringing back some reading of history, but I still continued to spend quite a bit of time studying technology as the university I worked for decided to train me as a database specialist. On top of that was my study of Mandarin as preparation for living in China. I hired my first Mandarin tutor in Arizona when I was two months shy of my 48th birthday, so you can imagine I had some catching up to do. What I am trying to say is that through those years I had lots of irons in the fire, so even though I had a high level of interest in the Middle East, I was busy with so many other things. I like learning. But learning takes time. There's no magic to it. It's a simple war of attrition. To understand a subject, you need to do a lot of reading over a prolonged period of time. So I am not nearly as well versed as John is on the various dimensions of the Middle East conundrum.

And what is that conundrum? Basically, it surrounds two main people groups who both have a right to the same piece of ground. To a Zionist, the land has always rightfully belonged to the Jews. And Evangelicals who are students of the Bible tend to agree with this. As I have said many times (mostly to myself), Evangelicals are basically uncultured Orthodox Jews. They have Bibles that disguise the name of Yahweh out of respect. In the Old Testament, wherever the original Hebrew says "Adonai," the English is "Lord," because that's what Adonai means. But wherever the original Hebrew is "Yahweh," the English is "LORD," which is incorrect, because that's not what Yahweh means. Yahweh is simply the name of God (Psalm 68). The best text I have found for this is Isaiah 6. There are several examples of each word.

I am a man. My name is "Eric." "Man" describes what kind of being I am. But Eric doesn't really describe being. It is simply my name. I don't mean that name meanings are not important. I think they are. But while a name may be given to indicate a particular quality the parents may hope for in their child, no parent feels a need to name their child "human" to make sure they don't become a dog or a cat.

If I were the only man in the universe, "man" and "Eric" might tend to be viewed as synonymous terms. But even then they would not be the same. One describes being. They other is the name of that being. In the same way, since there is only one God, and his name is Jehovah (another way to say Yahweh—the two words don't sound that different if you remember that the letter J has a Y sound in languages like German), people might be inclined to think that "God" and "Jehovah" mean the same thing. Not so. When you see the word "God" in the Old Testament, the original Hebrew is "Elohim."

Evangelicals are clueless about this sort of thing. As I said, every English Bible (except the old ASV of 1901) disguises the name of God in the Old Testament by writing LORD in stead of Yahweh. So Evangelicals carry Bibles that disguise the name of Yahweh. Then they go out and sit around the campfire with their guitars and sing, "Give me gas in my Nova keep me truckin' for Jehovah." Forgive them. They don't mean any disrespect. They just really don't know.

But that doesn't change the fact that Evangelicals are very Jewish.

"Jewish? But they don't keep the Old Testament laws!"

That's not what distinguishes them from the Jews. That's what they and most modern Jews have in common. As any honest Jew can tell you, most Jews don't keep them either. Have you ever met a Jew who kept all the Mosaic rules? I doubt it. There are over 600 of them. Most Jews couldn't even tell you what they are. As I mentioned in the podcast, Israelis I meet in China invariably say, "We're not religious."

This is really the point that Peter was trying to make in the 15th chapter of Acts:

Acts 15:7 And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up, and said unto them, Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel, and believe.  
Acts 15:8  And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us;  
Acts 15:9  And put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith. 
Acts 15:10  Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? 
Acts 15:11  But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they. 

Historians will tell you that Evangelicalism is a product of the revival movements of the last couple centuries. That's the short story. But in fact, Evangelicalism is a product of the original apostles deciding to receive Gentile believers into the family of faith without imposing the ceremonial laws of Judaism on them. That's why Acts 15 is so important.

But don't Jews know more about the Old Testament? Not necessarily. You see, Jews typically study the Talmud, which is a collection of medieval commentaries on the Torah. So what is the Torah? The word "Torah" means "law." So "Torah" is the word used by the Jews for the first five books of the Old Testament (often referred to as "the Pentateuch" by Christians). Evangelicals tend not to study them as much as they do the New Testament. And the prophetic books. Evangelicals love Isaiah. Jews tend to focus on the Torah, and the Talmud, which, as I said, are commentaries on the Torah. In fact, Ittay Flescher in his book The Holy and the Broken, said, "The Torah is the Hebrew Bible, consisting of the Five Books of Moses."

That's an astounding statement, coming from an educated Jew who was brought up under the shadow of the menorah.

Listen to me: The Torah is not the Jewish Bible. It is only one small part of the Jewish Bible. The Jewish Bible is called the Tanakh." It's basically the same as the Christian Old Testament. But Jewish seminarians tend to focus on the Torah, and the Talmud. Back in the summer of 1972, after I graduated from high school in Salem, Oregon, I hitchhiked across the country--first to Dallas, Texas, where I attended Explo 72, then on to my sister's place in Tennessee, and then to Florida to join a bunch of Christians at the Democratic Convention. While there, I met a Jewish guy. He was a messianic Jew. He had a big star of David--if I remember correctly, it was an Israeli flag. I said to him, "How did you become a Christian?"

He told me that he had been in a seminary studying to be a rabbi. He said, "Everybody was studying the Torah. I started studying the prophets, and I saw Jesus."

So...

Question: Why do the Jew not believe that the Old Testament prophecies concerning the Messiah refer to Jesus?

Answer: They've never read them.

Some Jews are as ignorant of the prophetic books as some Christians are of the Torah. In fact, many of them, even educated Jews like Ittay Flescher, are not even aware that the prophetic books are part of their Bible. To be fair to Flescher, he does say quite honestly that he is not religious, so perhaps one cannot expect him to be knowledgeable about a book he does not read.

You see, this is why I said in the podcast that if you want to study the Old Testament (except maybe the Torah), you might be better off going to an Evangelical seminary. I actually think it would be really good for some Evangelical Christians to go to Jewish seminaries and for Jews to go to Evangelical seminaries. Why not? They're all Jews in one way or another.

But let us get back to the real issue. Who does the land belong to, the Jews, or the Palestinians? It belongs to both of them, and they have to learn to share it. And Christians have a role to play in defending the rights of BOTH Jews and Palestinians to live in that area.

"The land cannot be shared!" That's what the Jordanian graduate student told me (as I shared in the podcast).

Wrong. The land must be shared. Does this mean a "two state" solution?" I don't really want to get into that, but it may be one way to address this problem for the present. I personally do not believe that it is a workable long term solution, but I am not principally opposed to it. But the bottom line is that if you believe God has promised you a land, you need to stand back and let him give it to you. Then once he has, of course you will defend it with your life if you are a true patriot.

So I do not blame the Jews for being in Palestine. They are supposed to be there. But I do blame them for not caring for the Palestinians. There are exceptions, of course. And interestingly enough, more often than not, the most caring Israelis tend to be on the left side of the political spectrum (such as Ittay Flescher). I can't help noticing that, and I have seen it time and again. I may not agree with them on much, but I do appreciate their sense of compassion for the Palestinians. I will be coming back to this subject often, because it is central to why Israel has so much trouble with Palestinians. They don't care about them.

We talked about the ten tribes. i don't have a lot to say about this, and i am not really worried about it--when God ordains that they shall reappear, they will surface. It's interesting that not long after I recorded this interview with John, I heard a report that the government of Israel is planning to bring the Bnei Menashe to Israel. I think we are going to be hearing more stories like this in the future.

There is some confusion about the tribe of Simeon. You can see that Simeon is surrounded by Judah. So how did it get to be part of the Northern Kingdom the got taken away by the Assyrians? One source I read said that Simeon was northern by alignment, not by location. But that doesn't make sense, because how would Sennacherib have been able to reach them if they were sheltered within Judah? So there must have been some migration. I have put a link under the External Links below to an article that attempts to explain this. Read it and see what you think.

We also talked about the Ashkenazim. This is a much more contentious issue, because they really are the power base in modern Israel. I tend to agree with John that they are actual Jews, even though they have obviously intermarried considerably over the years. But I don't spend a lot of time stressing over this, because if they really are Jews, DNA is going to eventually make this more and more evident. DNA doesn't lie. People can use DNA to lie, I guess, so we shouldn't trust just one study. But I just think the truth about this will become more and more clear as time goes on. I will only say that if it really could be proven that they are not ethnic Jews, then they clearly do not belong there. But I just don't think that's going to happen. Time may prove me wrong, but I don't think so. We shall see.

So what to do about the current struggle? As I have said many times, mostly to myself, my standard for how to deal with matters like this is the American occupation of Japan after World War II under General Douglas MacArthur. When held up against that standard, the Jews and the Americans both fail miserably, and the Americans appear to be ready to fail again in Iran. I hope not, I really, really hope not. But I am not optimistic. I will do a separate podcast on the Iran issue, because I don't want to get sidetracked, but I do need to just at least mention that the main reason for the whole Gaza situation is the complete failure of Israel to really care about the wellbeing of the Palestinians. It's only fair to point out that the Palestinians themselves are also to blame. After the devastation of the Gaza war became more apparent, Trump started talking about taking over the Gaza strip and moving the Palestinians to other Arab countries. I don't think that's going to work, but it is interesting, because it does point out that if a real estate mogul like Trump can see potential in that piece of real estate, just think what Hamas could have done with it. If they had developed it, like they could have, the Palestinians in Gaza would have been the envy of the world. Instead, they spent their time and money building rockets. I blame them for doing that, but I also blame the Israelis for letting that happen.

Imagine what would have happened to Japan if the Americans had just walled them off after World War II and said, "OK, stay out of trouble. Don't bomb us anymore." Hokkaido would have been taken over by the Soviet Union. And who knows what would have happened to the rest of Japan, and to Japanese culture. Thank-fully that did not happen. MacArthur ruled Japan as a dictator for five years. He wrote the constitution that the Japanese people are still using today. He made a plea for 10,000 missionaries and a million Bibles. And the MacArthur missionaries came in hordes. Not that much has been written about the MacArthur missionaries and the tremendous impact they had on the people and life of Japan. I happen to be aware of them because my parents were MacArthur missionaries, so I grew up in that in that environment.

Years ago, I was attending a Japanese fellowship in Beijing, and a guest speaker from Japan was visiting. We were having dinner after the fellowship, and this guy said, "In the old days, we had two kinds of missionaries, China missionaries and MacArthur missionaries. "

He's right. When the missionaries were kicked out of China by the Communists after 1949, many of them went to Japan. The German doctor who delivered me when I was born in Tokyo was a China missionary.

Mom told me that many of the China missionaries had a tough time adjusting to Japan. They didn't speak Japanese, and the Japanese people are somewhat more closed than the Chinese. The mission board my parents worked for dealt with this problem by opening a new field in Taiwan. So some of the China missionaries left. But the MacArthur missionaries were younger. They had never been to China. They knew only Japan. My parents were farm kids from North Dakota and Minnesota, but they both became near-native speakers of Japanese. They and many others like them had a huge impact on what Japan became in the years after World War II. MacArthur himself went to Korea for the Korean War, but not until he had put Japan on it's feet and left them with a whole generation of young missionaries who spoke their language and helped them to become a peaceful prosperous western country. Rudyard Kipling said, "East is east, and west is west, and never the twain shall meet." Japan has challenged that assumption over and over again in the years since the second world war. And this was made possible because Japan was set on the right path by a benevolent dictator.

I say all this about MacArthur to contrast with Israel, as I have mentioned—you know, letting that hornet's nest fester all these years, but also to contrast with the modern American notion of war with "no boots on the ground." It pains me to see Trump standing in America and saying "Okay you guys, here is your chance to take over your government." Seriously? Friends, the Revolutionary Guard is still very much in force, and they are armed to the teeth. To be fair, Trump has acknowledged that it would be tough for anyone to do anything at this point. But there just doesn't seem to be a solution for this. They did have a right to act, and I think Trump was right to help them. But there does't seem to be a clear idea how to bring about the peace after the war. I'll have more to say about that when I do a podcast about Epic Fury.

And Evangelicals. They are to be commended for supporting Israel's right to exist. But not for rubber stamping all of Israel's policies. Criticism of Israel is not antisemitism. And then there are Israel's critics. They are also to blame. I have seen them in Congress railing against Israel, but they cannot bring themselves to condemn what Hamas did on October 7th. If you can't bring yourself to condemn what Hamas did on October 7th, then you are not morally qualified to be criticizing Israel. Please don't get me wrong. I believe in freedom of speech. I fully support your right to speak. I just don't think anybody should listen to you until you take the time to watch the videos, do the reading...whatever it takes to become aware of what happened on that day, and then you can say something like "Of course I condemn what Hamas did on October 7th, but Israel..." Then I will be very interested in what you have to say, because you will have earned your right to speak. No. I shouldn't say that. Your right to speak is a given. I should say you will have earned your right to be listened to.

This is why this issue is so frustrating: Everyone is wrong. Why? Because we all live in our own little bubbles, never reading anything or listening to anything or anyone who does not feed our cherished biases.

So what to do. You need to start getting informed. We all do. So I recommend that you start with three books by the author I mentioned in the podcast (Chaim Potok):

1. The Chosen
   
2. The Promise
   
3. My Name is Asher Lev

Read those three books, and in that order. Don't read anything else Chaim Potok wrote, just those three. When you finish them, go on to other stuff.

When you get to My Name is Asher Lev, you will see the conversation I mentioned in the podcast. Here it is:

"Can you explain those paintings to me, Mama?"

"The first ones we saw?"

"Yes."

"They were about a man called Jesus."

"I know about Jesus. Jesus is the God of the goyim."

"Jesus was a Jew who lived in Eretz Yisroel at the time of the Romans. The Romans killed him. That was the way Romans executed people. They hung them from big poles, the way you saw in the paintings."

"Were many Jews killed by the Romans?"

"Thousands. Tens of Thousands."

"Why did the Romans kill Jesus?"

"He said he was the moshiach. They thought he would make a revolution against them."

"Was he the moshiach, Mama?"

"No, he was not the moshiach. The moshiach has not yet come, Asher. Look how much suffering there is in the world. Would there be so much suffering if the moshiach had really come?"

This is classic Judaism, and contains the two most important aspects of classical Jewish view of Jesus and of the Messiah.

1. Jesus was crucified by the Romans because he wanted to lead a revolution against the Roman Empire.
2. Jesus could not be the Messiah, because he did not bring world peace.

I am not sure where the first one came from, but it is a very commonly held view among Jews. But there is not a shred of evidence to support this, and of course the New Testament clearly refutes this. The whole reason so many people turned away from following Jesus is because he refused to lead a revolution. He said, "My kingdom is not of this world." I first heard this expressed many years ago in a documentary series on PBS by Abba Eban, foreign minister during the Six Day War. I was astounded. But this bizarre notion is still around. I heard Ben Shapiro express it just recently. Again, I have no idea where it came from, but it is completely unhistorical. It was not the Romans who wanted Jesus dead. And it was not the common people. The Bible says that "the common people heard him gladly." (Mark 12:37)

It was the corrupt religious elite who wanted him dead. And isn't this always the case? Can you imagine that there might have been the same kind of corruption among the Jewish religious elite in the time of Christ as there was among the Catholic religious elite in the time of Martin Luther? You see, it's not about one religion or another. It is just the case that ALL religions tend toward corruption over time. This is because religion is man made. It is man's attempt to reach God. So throughout history there have been times when religion became corrupted, and a reformer would arise who rebuked the religious elite and brought about a reform which liberated the common people. Go to a Bible book store, buy a cheap red letter edition of the Bible, and read through the sermons of Jesus in the four gospels. He said nothing about the Romans. But he was ruthless in his rebuke of the corrupt Jewish religious leaders. That is why he was crucified. Pilate, the Roman governor, said, "I find no fault in Him."

But what about the second item? It is expressed pretty much like this. "Would the world be in such a mess if the Messiah had come?"

As a Christian, I would say, "Yes and no." Why? Because we as Christians understand that the Messiah comes twice, not once. He came the first time to redeem mankind. He will come the second time to rule with a rod of Iron. Many Jews are not aware of this, so they imagine that Christians view Jesus only as a savior. But we as Christians see the second coming of Christ on the Mount of Olives as the establishment of a world political order which will bring a reign of righteousness that will last for a thousand years. So the turmoil around us does not tell us that the Messiah hasn't come yet. It tells us that he has not come back yet.

Now I want to give you some recommendations of resources that will help you, but just before I do, I want to clear up the confusion about Israel that comes from an ambiguity of terms in describing a Jewish country.

Consider the following two terms:

1. Arab state
2. Islamic state

Do those two mean the same thing? No, not at all. Not every Arab state is an Islamic state. And Arab state defines a state where the majority population is Arab, so Arabs are not discriminated as a persecuted minority. An Islamic state is a state ruled by the religion of Islam. Some Americans seem to think that all Arab states are Islamic. Not so. Kuwait, for example, has a basically secular government. Turkey did too, under Ataturk, but under Erdogan it seems to be changing. Now consider the following two terms:

1. Jewish state
2. Jewish state

Do these two mean the same thing? No, not at all. One of them defines a state where the Jews are the majority people, so they are not discriminated against as an oppressed minority. The second term defines a state dominated by the Jewish religion.

So is modern Israel a Jewish state, or a Jewish state? It is definitely a Jewish state, NOT a Jewish state. How could it be a Jewish state if so many, many of its citizens say they are not religious?

You see how hard it is to explain this? In the Arab case, it is very easy to talk about the difference between an Arab state and an Islamic state. But in the case of the Jews, the term that defines a state populated by ethnic Jews and the term that defines a state dominated by Judaism—those two terms look and sound exactly the same. This creates a lot of confusion.

When we talk about the need for a Jewish state, we are not talking about a country dominated by Judaism which is focused on spreading Judaism to the world. We are talking about a state where the Jews as a people can be free from oppression as a persecuted minority, as they were in Germany. After World War II, there was a strong felt need for this among the United Nations and many others, because of the holocaust. Look at a map of the Middle East. Look how much of this is taken up by Arab states. Only tiny Israel is a haven for the Jews, who were exterminated by the millions before the UN set up a country for them.

In my comments I said that I was the only one of my siblings who lived in Williston as an adult. This isn't quite true. John lived in Williston for a short time during the old boom of 1981. He moved there a few months before I did, and was actually the one who gave me the information about job opportunities in the rural school district. Perhaps I would not even have moved there if he had not moved there first. But in all the years I lived in Williston, it never occurred to me to make a comparison between a Norwegian Lutheran community like Williston, and a Jewish Jewish community like New York City. Norwegians and Germans and Poles tended to stick together for purposes of language and convenience. But Jews have historically lived in communities of their own kind to keep from being wiped out.

So we must support the right of the Jews to live in peace in their own country. But we must not do this at the expense of the Palestinians who were in that country, and who have a present right to be there, which should be honored just as much as the Jews' historic right to be there. Neither group's right should be trampled on by the other.

I will have much more to say about this in future podcasts, but for the present, I want to give you some resources to help you start getting up to speed on this momentous issue (after you have read the three books I just mentioned).

Internal Links

Jews in China

This is a collection of blog posts that I have written over the years about Jews in China. I notice that there are some dead links. Some of them are to YouTube videos that have been pulled because of copyright issues. But some of them are photos that show up if you click on them, but not until you click on them. Something about the way I used to code this doesn't work anymore. But I found a YouTube tutorial that shows how to do this through Blogspot, so I will get on this. Fortunately, though, the pictures are not lost, just not immediately visible. You have to click on them to see them.

Harbin, China 2009

One of my students invited me to join her family in the north of Heilongjiang Province for Chinese New Year in 2009. After spending a few days with her family, I took a very crowded train down to Harbin, where a friend of mine in Beijing who was from Harbin met me and helped me to find a small neighborhood guest house for 30 kuai a night. I stayed there for ten days, and tried to find out as much as I could about the Harbin Jews. I learned a lot.

Concise History of the Middle East

This is a book review for a book that I read at the National Library of China in Beijing. Written by left-wing American Jews, it treads pretty lightly when talking about the history of Islam, but is still very informative.

Why Israel Keeps Having Trouble

This is a previous podcast I did on the Israel question.

External Links

Gathering of Israel

This is basically a compendium of Old Testament prophecies about the return of the Jews to Palestine. This includes the ten lost tribes, who were taken in 722 BC by Sennacharib. Particularly note the quote by Maimonides, which looks like it could have been written by a modern Evangelical Christian Zionist.

Statement from the Qu'ran Regarding Israel

Scroll down to verse 19 and read through verse 21. This text clearly shows that Allah gave the land to the Jews.

Three Main Views of the Millennium

This article outlines the three main millennial positions. Not immensely informative, but it's a good brief summary of the three theological schools of thought on the matter.

Everyman's Talmud

Many years ago, when I was in Denver visiting my sister, I went to visit a rabbi. I walked into the synagogue and asked to speak to the rabbi. I asked him if there was any place where a gentile could go to study the Talmud. He said, "If you speak Yiddish."

Yiddish! Oy vey! I did not know until that minute the Yeshiva boys actually study the Talmud in Yiddish. Do they still do that? I just asked Doubao, and Doubao said they still do that quite a bit. So I gave up on the idea. But several years later I was in a bookstore in Bismarck, and I saw a copy of a volume of the English language Talmud by Rabbi Steinsaltz. Then some years later, I discovered this little jewel. It is a one-volume compendium of the Talmud. The Talmud covers some 60 odd volumes, so this is quite a condensation. If you're not interested in the Talmud, you don't need this, I guess, but if you are, this would be a good place to start. I don't know if the one on Amazon is the same edition as the one I had, but it is basically the same thing. I bought mine for three dollars at a thrift store in Seattle, but I left it in a coffee bar somwhere.

Bnei Menashe

The Bnei Menashe are a group of people in India who believe they are descended from the Lost Tribe of Manasseh. If they are actually brought to Israel, and if it turns out that they are, in fact descendents of the tribe of Manasseh, they would be the first people from the lost tribes to return to Israel.

Al Jazeera World

This is a weekly documentary program with will help you to get up to speed on Arab culture in the Middle East. Americans can really benefit from watching culture shows like this. Try one and you'll see what I mean.

Whatever Happened to Simeon?

If you scroll up and look at the map above, you will see that the tribe of Simeon was completely surrounded by Judah. So how did they get to be part of the Northern Kingdom? This article attempts to explain that. Read it and tell me what you think.

Fifteen Characteristics of Life in the Millennium

This contains of list of fifteen characteristics of the Millennium. As I mentioned in the podcast, once we accept the truth of Revelation 20, all the vivid descriptions from the book of Isaiah will come to life.

The Abrahamic Covanant

John talked about conditional and unconditional covenants. This reminded me of an article I discovered several years ago on this subject. Why does this matter? The reason it is important is because some are saying that since the Jews rejected the Messiah, the covenant no longer pertains to them, and has passed to the Christians. This view is commonly called "Replacement Theology." But I don't care what label you put on it, it is false teaching, needs to be rebuked. Barnhouse (a Presbyterian) does a good job of it in his message on the subject (next link). This article here shows that the Abrahamic Covenant was clearly unconditional.

Exposition of Hosea 1

I excerpted a five minute segment of this message in my post-interview comments. I am including this link in case you want to listen to the whole thing. It is somtimes good to hear from somone who is focussed on what the Bible says, and not just pushed around by the events of the latesst moment. Donald Grey Barnhouse died in 1960, so you can be sure that his comments here were not merely a response to the evening news. The portion I exerpted was from about minute 12 to about minute 17.

Nassar Family

This BBC feature story is dated 2014, and that is probably when I first saw it, I think. It is a story about a Christian Arab family in the West Bank who were brutalized by cruel Israeli neighbors. But don't overreact. Not all Israeli settlers are cruel and heartless. But some are really evil. This is a must read about a family that refused to hate.

James Tour on Judaism

This is really excellent. Every previous YouTube video I have watched by this guy as been on the subject of evolution, because he is a professional chemist, and aguably the top nano-scientist in the world. But everything he puts out is excellent, so I was really intrigued when I saw his name. He talks here about what it is to be a Christian, a Jew, and how they relate to each other, as well as the millennial reign of Christ. Give Dr. Tour a listen. You won't regret it, and you will want to see more of his videos.

Al Jazeera Op-Ed

Fascinating editorial from Al Jazeera discussing the pros and cons of Trump's latest venture, which is now hotly debated in the United States. I am so tempted to enter the debate, but I don't want to distract from the general question before us. I will discuss the Iran War later in a separate podcast.

Comments:       Facebook       LinkedIn       Podcast Site

Labels: Israel, Middle East, Millennium, Palestinians

So many thoughts. So many feelings. So many ideas. So many conflicts. How can we make sense of it all?

If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that? —David Ben-Gurion

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free! Do people really know what they’re saying when they utter that phrase? One wonders.

Is this proclamation a call for genocide? No. It could be, of course—surely there are those who would be willing to see all Jews exterminated. But you don’t have to exterminate Jews to remove them from power. So is it then a call for ethnic cleansing? Maybe. Generally, yes, people who scream this mantra want the Jews to go somewhere else. But the main thing is that they want the Jews removed from power. It’s much more an issue of control than an issue of presence. Now, I don’t want to get sidetracked by the issue of genocide—Perhaps I will address this in a separate podcast episode later. But while I do not believe that this protest slogan is necessarily a call for genocide, or even ethnic cleansing, you can’t say that it doesn’t mean anything, or that it means whatever you want it to. Clearly it at least means, as I have said, that Israel as a Jewish state should be wiped out. I do not agree with this slogan. I think it is unhistorical and largely emotional, but I also don’t waste a minute of time worrying that it might happen. My main point is that it is not effective to complain about the way Israel behaves (especially toward Palestinians) if you don’t even allow Israel to exist as a country. So it seems that the first thing to do is to declare our support for Israel’s right to exist as a country, and then we can move on to constructive criticism of Israel’s approach to minority people living within her borders. Give the podcast a listen, and then consider the points I have made that follow. I welcome your thoughts on this very troubling issue.

First of all, I made a mistake when I referred to the Palestinian American journalist as Helen Douglas. And she wasn’t Palestinian. Her parents were from Tripoli, but she was born in the United States. Her name was not Helen Douglas, it was Helen Thomas. I think I probably got her mixed up with Helen Gahagan Douglas, the woman who lost to Richard Nixon in the 1950 California US Senate race. By the way Nixon said that during that campaign, JFK came to him with an envelope:

My father wanted you to have this.

It was a one thousand dollar contribution to his campaign. It was a very sensitive time in America, and politicians who were seen as socialist or sympathetic to communism were viewed with suspicion. More about that some other time. Anyway, back to my story. Helen Thomas was asked about the conflict in the Middle East, and particularly about Israel. In an unguarded moment, she let loose with her real feelings on the issue:

She was fired immediately. Oh, well. She was already 90 years old at the time, but it was a foolish thing to do. Nevertheless, it revealed the strong feeling about this issue that existed then and still exists now: Do the Jews belong in Palestine?

Special guest Donald Grey Barnhouse in his remarks mentioned Jezreel, Loruhamah, Loammi. This is a reference to the Book of Hosea. The way Hosea works is that the prophecy is given in the first chapter, and then the book goes on to tell the story. But the important verse to pay attention to is Hosea 1:11.

And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint for themselves one head. And they shall go up from the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel.

To appreciate the significance of this verse, it is important to understand some very critical events in the history of Israel. The key word is “Diaspora.” When I am talking about this in my Bible studies, I tell people that there were three of them. The first was the capture of the northern kingdom in 722 BC. The second was the Babylonian captivity, which only involved the southern kingdom, since the northern kingdom had already disappeared, and the third began with the destruction of the second temple in 70 AD. But since the last stand at Masada was not taken until three years later, if you want to say that the third diaspora began in 73 AD, I won’t argue.

Anyway, Israel was divided under Rehoboam, the son of Solomon. He had asked for advice from the old men, and they advised kindness. He then asked advice from his buddies, the young guys. They advised toughness. He ignored the wisdom of the old men and followed the brash stupidity of the young men, and the northern kingdom rebelled. The nation was never united after that.

Then the northern kingdom was taken away by Sennacherib and never heard from again. This was the first Diaspora. Who knows where the ten tribes are? The Mormons believe that the American Indians are the ten lost tribes. Many believe that the Pashtun people of Afghanistan are the 10 lost tribes. Nobody knows. The Assyrians also threatened the southern kingdom (Judah), but Hezekiah’s prayer saved the nation.

But later, the southern kindom (which was the only kingdom now) was taken away in the Babylonian captivity, and the first temple was destroyed. But they didn’t disappear. They came back after 70 years. The temple was rebuilt and eventually added to by Herod.

List of Israel's wars with her neighbors (from Wikipedia):

Conflict	Combatant 1	Combatant 2	Results	Israeli commanders			Israeli losses
				Israeli Prime Minister	Defense Minister of Israel	Chief of Staff of the IDF	IDF forces	Civilians
War of Independence (1947–1949)	Israel	Egypt  Iraq Transjordan Syria  Lebanon Saudi Arabia  Yemen Holy War Army ALA	Victory Arab League invasion of former Mandatory Palestine repelled. Armistice Agreements; Israel captured 50% of area allotted to Arab state.	David Ben-Gurion		Yaakov Dori	4,074[4]	~2,000[4]
Sinai War (1956)	Israel United Kingdom France	Egypt	Victory Sinai demilitarized, UNEF deployed.			Moshe Dayan	231	None
Six-Day War (1967)	Israel	Egypt  Syria  Jordan Iraq	Victory Israel captured the Gaza Strip, Sinai, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights.	Levi Eshkol	Moshe Dayan	Yitzhak Rabin	776	20
War of Attrition (1967–1970)	Israel	Egypt Soviet Union PLO  Jordan  Kuwait	Both sides claimed victory Continued Israeli occupation of Sinai. Black September in Jordan	Golda Meir		Haim Bar-Lev	1,424[5]	227[6]
Yom Kippur War (1973)	Israel	Egypt  Syria Iraq  Jordan  Algeria Morocco  Saudi Arabia	Victory[7] Arab invasion repelled, UN ceasefire. Egypt–Israel peace treaty[8] Agreement on Disengagement			David Elazar	2,688	None[9]
Operation Litani (1978)	Israel FLA	PLO	Victory PLO retreat from South Lebanon.	Menachem Begin	Ezer Weizman	Mordechai Gur	18	None
First Lebanon War (1982–1985)	Israel SLA Lebanese Front	PLO Syria Jammoul Amal	"Tactical victories, strategic failure"[10] PLO expulsion from Lebanon.[11]		Ariel Sharon	Rafael Eitan	657	2–3
Security Zone Campaign (1985–2000)	Israel SLA	Hezbollah Amal Jammoul	Defeat[12] Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.[13]	Shimon Peres	Yitzhak Rabin	Moshe Levi	559	7
First Intifada (1987–1993)	Israel	UNLU Hamas	Oslo I Accord Palestinian Authority established.	Yitzhak Shamir		Dan Shomron	60	100
Second Intifada (2000–2005)	Israel	PA Hamas	Victory Palestinian uprising suppressed.[14]	Ariel Sharon	Shaul Mofaz	Moshe Ya'alon	301	773
Second Lebanon War (2006)	Israel	Hezbollah	Stalemate Ceasefire through UNSCR 1701	Ehud Olmert	Amir Peretz	Dan Halutz	121	44
Operation Cast Lead (2008–2009)	Israel	Hamas	Victory Rocket fire from Gaza reduced.		Ehud Barak	Gabi Ashkenazi	10	3
Operation Pillar of Defense (2012)	Israel	Hamas	Victory Cessation of rocket fire into Israel.	Benjamin Netanyahu		Benny Gantz	2	4
Operation Protective Edge (2014)	Israel	Hamas	Both sides claim victory Destruction of Hamas war tunnels.		Moshe Ya'alon		67	6
Israel–Palestine crisis (2021)	Israel	Hamas	Both sides claim victory Truce declared		Benny Gantz	Aviv Kochavi	1	14
Operation Iron Swords (2023)	Israel	Hamas	Ongoing		Yoav Gallant	Herzi Halevi	464+	859+

So after the second diaspora (Babylonian captivity) was ended when Cyrus of Persia declared that the Jews would be allowed to return, they existed as a people in their homeland (except for the 10 northern tribes) until the time of Christ, when they were basically a colony of the Roman empire, as depicted in the gospels.

Now to the third diaspora. When did it begin? Some time ago, John posted a video of Netanyahu addressing this issue. It is interesting, and worth listening to, but I totally disagree with his discussion of how it started. He says it began in the seventh century. He does not mention Islam, but we all know what the seventh century means.

He’s dead wrong. Jesus of Nazareth, in three of the four gospels, predicted the destruction of the second temple, which took place under Titus in 70 AD:

Matthew 24:2 But he answered them, “You see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”

Mark 13:2 And Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”

Luke 21:6 “As for these things that you see, the days will come when there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”

Jesus goes on to predict the destruction of the city of Jerusalem, but especially that Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the gentiles. Read this. It’s important:

Luke 21:20 "But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near.
Luke 21:21 Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are inside the city depart, and let not those who are out in the country enter it,
Luke 21:22 for these are days of vengeance, to fulfill all that is written.
Luke 21:23 Alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! For there will be great distress upon the earth and wrath against this people.
Luke 21:24 They will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive among all nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

The destruction of Jerusalem was devastating for the Jews. Christians were largely unaffected, because they had read this before it happened, so when they saw the Roman armies surrounding Jerusalem, they took the warning of Jesus seriously, and fled.

But the main point is the statement Jesus of Nazareth makes at the end of this prophecy, which is that “Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.” Clearly Jerusalem being “trampled underfoot by the Gentiles” began after the destruction of the second temple, not in the seventh century. So that’s 70 AD, not six or seven hundred AD. Read Josephus if you want the details.

So when will Jerusalem being “trampled underfoot” be over? I think you could say that this process began in 1948, but clearly Jerusalem is not yet free of Gentile control of Israel.

So when will that happen? Or should it happen? People tend to think that Christians and Jews believe that the land belongs to Israel, while the Muslims believe it does not. But both the Bible and the Quran state very clearly that the land was given to Israel by God. Genesis 15 gives the Biblical account of the Abrahamic covenant. And here is the Quran:

O my people! Enter the Holy Land which Allah has destined for you ˹to enter˺. And do not turn back or else you will become losers.

The statements in the Old Testament (which Jews call the “Tenach”) and in the Quran are not vague, interpretive statements. Both the Bible and the Quran state very specifically in clear, unambiguous language that the land was given to the Jews by God.

Interactivce map showing actual control of various areas in the West Bank and Gaza (from The Conversation).

So this is not really a matter of religion. In the most practical sense, it is a matter of the fact that two different peoples have an inherent right to occupy the same piece of real estate. The Jews have a right to be there. But the Palestinians do too. How could they not have a right to be there?

If you got on a sleeper train and discovered that some crook had sold your ticket twice, and there was little old lady already occupying your berth, what would you do? What gives you the right to muscle her out of there just because you also have a ticket for that berth. After all,she has just as much right to occupy that space as you do, and she was there first.

So what to do? In the podcast, I share my belief that Israel needs to occupy the Gaza strip and lead the people.

“But if we do that, people will call us occupiers.”

They already do. Haven’t you heard? So you might as well actually do what they are accusing you of.

You see this is the root of my bitterness. I have a hard time forgiving Israel for leaving Hamas in power all these years. There is just no excuse for allowing those monsters to hold the people of Gaza captive for so long. The leaders of Hamas are corrupt. They don’t even live in Gaza. They live in abject wealth in Doha. How obvious does it have to be? Now, some in Israel say that the common people of Gaza are to blame, because they support what Hamas is doing. Nobody really knows the answer to that question. I suppose we can imagine it would be true to a certain extent. As I said previously, when I talk to people from the Middle East, they often express their opposition to the existence of Israel as a country. But that is largely because they have never seen anything about the way Israel leads that actually benefits them. I am strongly convinced that the thinking of the people would be radically altered if they were allowed to benefit from compassionate leadership.

After the Japanese surrendered to the Americans, there were signs all over Japan urging women ot volunteer themselves as comfort women for the benefit of the country. You see, they were convinced that the American soldiers were going to come in and rape their women. But when that didn’t happen, their thinking began to change. Japan became a strong ally of the Americans.

What about a two-state solution? Well, I have never believed that this woud be a long term solution, but I was open to it as a “for the time being” approach. But it will never happen. This is the plight of the Palestinians. The Israelis don't care about them (as long as they stay in their rabbit cage), and their own leaders are corrupt. I heard the leadership in Gaza say that the people of Gaza are refugees, so it is the United Nations’ responsibility to take care of them. I felt like saying, “Really? Then what, pray tell, is your responsibility?”

We all know the answer: build tunnels and fire rockets at Israel. And it’s not any better in the West Bank. Mahmoud Abbas has been in power basically since the death of Arafat and remains in power by refusing to hold elections. He is also reported to be worth $100 million. Elliot Abrams has revealed what Arab leaders told him personally when he urged them to help Palestine: “Why should we give them money when they just steal it?” And Abbas himself has admitted that he turned down an offer from Israel to form a Palestinian state on 95% of the West Bank. He is a far cry from the kind of benevolent leader the Palestinians need. You see, nobody really cares about them.

But what about the many demonstrations in support of Palestine? They don’t impress me. I don’t see genuine love for the Palestinian people. I just see hatred for Israel. The proof of this is that, as I mentioned in the podcast, when these demonstrators are asked specific questions about the issue, they are completely clueless. They know nothing about the situation. They just know that they hate Israel.

And Evangelical Christians are no better. Several times on the 700 Club they have shown some of the families in Israel that they have helped. That’s good, of course, but Israel is a developed country that has the wherewithal to help her own people. How many times have you turned on the 700 Club and seen them helping a Palestinian family? Don’t expect it any time soon. Nobody cares about them. I know, I know. It’s on Hamas.

I have to say this one more time: Nothing excuses what those Hamas “freedom fighters” did on October 7th. If you cannot bring yourself to condemn that, you are sick. But that does not mean that we should not be cognizant of the factors that have encouraged deep resentment toward Israel on the part of the common people of Palestine.

Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country. … Behind the terrorism [by the Arabs] is a movement, which though primitive is not devoid of idealism and self sacrifice. —David Ben-Gurion

I want you to watch the video below. This is an evangelical Christian pastor who happens to be ethnic Palestinian. Hear him out. He absolutely does not believe that the Ashkenazim are actually Jews. Most evangelicals are completely unaware how widespread this belief is. The cynical side of me tends to think that the reason people who oppose Israel convince themselves that the Ashkenazi Jews are not actually Jews, is because then they can call for them to go back to Germany and Poland without being considered anti-Semitic. But try to keep your cynicism at bay and listen to what this guy has to say. After all, we don’t have Abraham’s DNA. So it’s hard to prove either way.

Anyway, you’re probably not going to agree with everything he says, but he is a decent man, and he deserves to be heard. As you listen, try to think how you would respond to him. You can disagree, but if you disagree, do so as a brother, and do so with objective reference to information, either historical or Biblical.

If we support the right of the Jews to be a people, and to have their land as a people and as a country, we must also support the right of the Palestians to be a people and to have their land as a people and as a country.

"But it's the same land!"

I know. I know. That's the problem. What's your solution?

Book Review : A Concise History of the Middle East

Very fortuitous that I wrote this book review back in March, because this current blog post would have had to be a lot longer if I did not have this book review to refer to. The book is also good. But at least read the review, because it address exactly the issues we have all been talking about since October 7th.

Jewish vs. Non-Jewish Population of Palestine

This is for those who say that the Jews have "always had a presence" in Palestine. In fact, Jewish population in Palestine was miniscule until the end of the 19th century.

Who are the Ashkenazi Jews?

Most Americans have no idea how widely believed is the idea that the Ashkenazis are not really Jewish. The reason I am skeptical of this is because the numbers seem unlikely. You don’t hear that much about people converting to Judaism. Once in awhile, when someone marries a Jew or something, but not that often. In contrast, American Evangelicals hold large crusades where they fill huge stadiums with thousands of people and you can see hundreds of people streaming forward to become Christians. So they’re asking me to believe that at some point in the past, Jews had huge crusades to convert mass numbers of Europeans to Judaism and these became the Ashkenazi Jews? Just doesn’t seem likely. Now some say that the Ashkenazi Jews actually start from a very small population. Call me cynical, but I tend to think such conclusions are motivated by the desire to discount the Ashkenazim as Jews. One can easily believe that there was a significant European admixture, as Wikipedia says, but the idea that there is no genetic connection whatsoever between modern Ashkenazi Jews and ancient Israelites seems a bit far fetched.

But fact that I do not subscribe to this idea does not mean that I am not interested in the subject, or that I am not willing to hear arguments on either side. This should be a matter of keen interest to everyone, because if the Ashkenazi Jews are not really Jews, but interlopers from Europe who have no business being in Palestine, there is no Israel.

Comments:       Facebook       LinkedIn       Podcast Site

Labels: Hamas, Israel, Middle East, Palestinians, Prophecy