NO. 540 A REPORT OF EVENTS IN ISRAEL

          The following items on Israel are reports that one would not ordinarily get from the American Press and TV.

       “CONTEXT MISSING IN MEDIA REPORTS ON MIDDLE EAST:  Imagine for a moment that all reporting about the U.S. war on terrorism was presented without reference to September 11.  American attacks from the air using B-52s and F-16s against fighters armed with smaller weapons would seem quite disproportionate.  Our stated intention to kill as many members of al-Qaida as possible might be condemned, by our own Department of State, as ‘excessive’ and ‘contributing to the cycle of violence.’

       “But U.S. actions are never presented that way, because everyone acknowledges that we have the perfect right to defend ourselves against those who have done us grave harm.  Nor are we asked to sit by and wait for our enemies to do us even more catastrophic damage if they get the chance.

       “Daily threats:  But when it comes to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the context is removed.  Bleeding Israel is daily exhorted to stop contributing to the cycle of violence.  Her teen-agers are blown to bits at discotheques.

       “Her babies are approached outside a synagogue by a suicide bomber who waits until he is next to the strollers before blowing himself apart.

       “Her adolescent boys who wander off in the desert and get lost are torn to pieces.  And all of this is applauded and celebrated by Yasser Arafat and most of the Arab governments in the region.

       “Some Arabs (those among the minority who acknowledge that Arabs are responsible) condemned the bombing of the World Trade Center.  But not a single Islamic scholar or cleric has condemned the systemic policy of blowing up Israeli civilians.

       “Nearly every dispatch from the Middle East lacks basic context.  Here are some of the facts to keep in mind when reading these flawed reports.

•  “The PLO was not formed in order to secure a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza.  It was created in 1964, when both territories were under Arab sovereignty.  Jordan and Egypt did not create a state for the Palestinians because they preferred to keep the refugees angry and homeless.
• “It is not ‘Palestinian land.  There has never been an independent Palestinian state on the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.  The area - which always contained Arabs and Jews - was under Ottoman control for several hundred years until World War I, then British control under the League of Nations Mandate and finally under United Nations control. The United Nations approved a partition plan in 1947 that would have created two states, one Jewish and one Arab.  The Jews accepted this arrangement.  The Arabs refused.  Five Arab armies invaded the new state of Israel.  In the ensuing war, thousands of refugees fled.  Jews fled Arab nations for Israel, and Arabs fled Israel for Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon.  The Jewish refugees became full citizens of Israel.  The Palestinian refugees became pawns.  Israel came into possession of the West Bank and Gaza only because she was attacked again by five Arab armies in 1967.
• “If the Palestinians are fighting for a state on the West Bank and Gaza, why do their maps show Palestine as filling the entire territory that is now Israel?  Why do they marinate their people in Hitlerian anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism?  Further, why - when Ehud Barak offered just such a state, or 95% of it - did Arafat walk away and start this latest round of violence?  Palestinian spokesmen say it wasn’t everything they wanted.  But if they truly want a separate state on so-called ‘occupied territory,’ why did Barak’s offer not form the basis for further talks?
• “The Palestinians are said to be chafing under the ‘occupation.’  But in obedience to the Oslo process, Israel has given administrative authority over 98% of the Palestinians in the disputed territories to Arafat.  Israel has further permitted the Palestinian Authority to arm 40,000 ‘police.’
• “Why is it impossible for the Palestinian Authority to give Israel what Sharon has demanded - just three days of respite from terror attacks?”

(By Mona Charen, a columnist with the Creators Syndicate, Fresno Bee, March 15, 2002)

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ARAFAT’S ‘GOVERNMENT’ ALL PROMISES, PRETENSE

       “Gambling away the peace process on an insane war.  On July 1, 1994, Yasser Arafat entered Gaza to establish the Palestinian Autonomous Region - betwixt-and-between creation of the Oslo peace process that was supposed to become, under the guiding light of the Oslo peace process, the physical base of another ambivalent notion, the Palestinian National Authority.  I went as a reporter to Gaza a few hours before Mr. Arafat arrived, and I stayed there for about five weeks, observing the early days of life and governance under the Palestinian Authority.

       “Mr. Arafat’s entry into Gaza was an object lesson:  a purposely uncaring display of brute power.  He arrived from the Sinai in a long caravan of Chevy Blazers and Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs, 70 or 80 cars packed to the rooflines with men with guns.  The caravan roared up the thronged roads and down the mobbed street, with the overfed, leather-jacketed, sunglassed thugs of Mr. Arafat’s bodyguard detail all the time screaming and shooting off their Kalashnikovs to make their beloved people scurry out of their beloved leader’s way.

       “This was the whole of the Palestinian Authority from the beginning, an ugly little cartoon of Middle East despotism, a tinpot’s tinpot of a regime.  There never was any pretense of democracy, of rule of law, of a free press, of a working system of taxes or courts or hospitals.  There never was any real government.  No one ever bothered to build an economy or create jobs or even pick up the trash or pave the streets.  There were only security forces - many, many of these - and villas by the sea for Mr. Arafat’s cronies, and millions of dollars in foreign aid that seemed to always turn up missing, and prisons and propaganda.  And in the middle of it all:  ‘President’ Arafat sitting in a room - surrounded by waiting sycophants and toadies and respectful ladies and gentlemen of the press - and complaining.

       “That summer, I saw only three serious efforts at establishing functioning government:  the imprisoning of free-speakers and potential democrats, which began immediately; the likewise prompt establishment of daily anti-Israel broadcasts, and a British-run program to train handpicked members of Mr. Arafat’s Fatah group in riot control.

       “Of course, there never was any real peace, Mr. Arafat had promised to disarm Hamas, Hezbollah and his own Fatah gunmen.  There is no evidence he ever seriously tried.  The terrorists resumed lethal operations against Israel within a month of Mr. Arafat’s arrival.  Between the day Mr. Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin signed the deal that was to buy peace for Israel, and the day Mr. Arafat and Mr. Rabin won the Nobel Peace Prize for that accord, Palestinian terrorists killed 90 Israelis.  In five years after Oslo, Palestinians killed more Israelis than in 15 years preceding the accord.

       “Meanwhile, Mr. Arafat’s government has exploited Israel’s permission to establish a police force to instead build a guerrilla army.  Several months ago, some of Mr. Arafat’s most senior lieutenants were identified as the architects of an attempt to import an entire shipload of rockets, arms and high explosives into Gaza.  In occupying Palestinian Authority offices this week in Ramallah, Israel plausibly claims to have discovered two container-loads of prohibited SAM-7 anti-aircraft missiles and more than 200 LAW anti-tank missiles.

       “There is much that can be conceded in the issue of Israel and the Palestinians:  the Palestinians have, in their lost land, a great and real grievance; as a moral and practical matter, Israel should admit this, and should be willing to trade land for peace.

       “But this is the point:  Israel did concede these questions.  It has been nearly two years since Israel offered the Palestinians nearly all of the territories occupied in 1967.

       “Mr. Arafat’s response has redundantly proved his harshest critics right.  There never was any honest intent on the Palestinian part for peaceful coexistence with Israel; any more than there ever was any honest intent to establish a government in Gaza that would function toward that end and toward the creation of a decent life for the Palestinian people.  What the Palestinians seek - what Mr. Arafat has encouraged them to seek - is, as is now beyond dispute, the defeat and surrender of Israel.

       “Mr. Arafat and the Palestinians decided to gamble the peace process on a bet for bigger gains through war.  They bet - are betting still - that Israel, pushed beyond endurance by an unprecedented level of civilian deaths, would surrender to, in essence, the destruction of the Israeli state.  This is an insane bet.  It will end in the destruction of the experiment that Mr. Arafat subverted from the very first day.”

(By Michael Kelly, editor of National Journal, April 4, 2002)

       “Operation Defense Wall, as the Israeli army calls it, generated in its first days large-scale arrests of terror suspects as well as arms, munitions, and explosives.  In one location some 40 explosive belts of the sort used by suicide bombers were found.  In another place 600 rifles were seized in one building.

       “By last weekend the army had confiscated more than 1,200 weapons and a number of anti-tank rockets, mortars, and heavy machine guns.

       “The army estimated that 70 Palestinians were killed in the operation’s first five days and 150 wounded.  The army has arrested 1,250 suspects, 70 of them wanted for terror attacks against Israelis.

       “The army also said it found a crate of its own uniforms in Palestinian Preventative Security headquarters in Beitunya, northeast of Jerusalem not far from Yasser Arafat’s besieged headquarters, along with a cache of weapons, a few of which have been recovered so far.

       “At the end of a week’s ferocious fighting the Israeli army was in control of Ramallah, Kalkilya, Tulkarm, Behtlehem, Jenin, most of Nablus, and other towns.  By then, the diplomatic machinery was hard at work in an effort to bring Israel’s drive to a halt.”

(Jerusalem Post, April 12, 2002) 

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THE UNQUENCHABLE THIRST FOR MIRACLES

       “James McDonald, the first U.S. ambassador to Israel, once said Israeli policy-makers tend to rely on a certain percentage of miracles in their planning.

       “That same tendency has overtaken Israelis across the political spectrum.  Reeling from a seemingly unending spate of suicide bombers and series of incidents in which the Palestinians have bested the Israeli army, and seeing no way out of another 50 years of violence, they grasp at any and every straw.  On the same day, a majority of the public is capable of declaring its support for a return to the ’67 borders, if peace will be achieved, and the transfer of all Arabs across the Jordan.

       “I have heard both suggestions advanced by people of superb intelligence.  Yet both depend on miracles on the scale of those God did for our ancestors in Egypt.

       “The problem with returning to the 1967 borders for peace is that the return to those borders would of necessity precede peace, and would be irreversible whether or not peace followed.  The world would not recognize any form of terrorism against Israel as a causas belli.  Each incident would be attributed to Hamas or Hizbullah, and Israel would be told that the official Palestinian state must not be held responsible for rogue groups.

       “Palestinian demands do not and will not end at the 1967 border.  Arafat has repeatedly reaffirmed his strategy of conquest in stages, and as Camp David made clear, he has never prepared his people to live in peace with Israel within any borders.  Another generation of Palestinians has been indoctrinated in the belief that all of Israel is theirs, and that nothing could be more glorious than to die reclaiming it.  The last 19 months of war have only intensified Palestinian hatred for the Jewish state and upped the stakes for them.

       “Those who promised quiet on the northern border after Israeli flight from Lebanon have now been thoroughly exposed by the murder of six Israeli motorists by Hizbullah operatives last week.  And if the claim that Hizbullah would become a pussycat when it had ‘no more reason to fight’ was implausible, it is doubly so with respect to the Palestinians who have never renounced their claim to Israel from the Jordan to the Mediterranean.

       “Palestinians have continually cited Hizbullah’s successful guerrilla warfare against Israel as the noble precedent for their own current war, and another Israeli retreat within Israel itself would only confirm their conviction that Israel is weak and further whet their appetites.

       “The Karine A affare and the ongoing arms smuggling into the PA reveal that the promise of a demilitarized Palestinians state would not be worth the paper it was written on.  Perhaps in recognition of that, some Leftists now argue that no restrictions on armaments should be placed on the Palestinian state.

       “So war it will be, with Israel fighting from what Abba Eban called its pre-1967 ‘Auschwitz borders,’ against well-armed and determined foes.

       “Some ‘realists’ among those advocating withdrawal to the 1967 borders acknowledge this.  They prefer, however, a war for Israel’s very existence, in which everyone will fight, to a war today, in which as much as 30 percent of the country might not show up for what they would term a ‘War of Occupation.’  This is a rope-a-dope with a vengeance: Israel will make itself as weak and vulnerable as possible to fight with her back to the wall.

       “Those advocating transfer - the other popular nostrum - have to reckon with the fact that Israel doesn’t manufacture F-15s. Any attempt at transfer would place Israel in the same position as the Serbians and result in a complete American arms embargo.  To which transfer advocates respond: We will hint to America that if deprived of the means of defending ourselves, we will have no choice but do open-air testing of our nukes.  Well, that will certainly solve everything.

       “The common element behind these two plans is that they both rely almost entirely on miracles.  If we are relying on miracles anyway, my own more realistic suggestion is to admit that we are in the same position as our ancestors at the Red Sea.  Instead of hiding our faith via ostensibly practical solutions, let us openly proclaim our faith as did our ancestors.

       “The Talmud’s proposed solution to our current plight - If all Israel observes two Sabbaths in a row, the redeemer will come - is both easier and safer than all the alternatives being bandied about.  If we do that, maybe this Hebrew month of Nissan will again be the month of redemption.”

(In Good Faith, by Jonathan Rosenblum, The International Jerusalem Post, February 29, 2002)

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A SHORT, BLOODY WAR, THEN A WALL AROUND ISRAEL

       “No more hot and cold with the Palestinians.  ‘If you start to take Vienna - take Vienna.’ - Napoleon  Yes, military tentativeness is ruinous.  But what, for Ariel Sharon, is Vienna? 

       “Today’s war began 18 months ago when Yasser Arafat - a Goebbels echoed by gullible news media - said the violence he orchestrated was a spontaneous conflagration about Mr. Sharon visiting Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.  Now, the war may have become the first half of the only currently feasible formula for Israel’s self-defense - a short war, followed by a high wall.

       “Israel made the worst diplomatic miscalculation since Munich when it resurrected Mr. Arafat’s political life by bringing him back to Palestine from Tunisia a decade ago.  The culture of death that he assiduously has cultivated has produced a Palestinian population intoxicated with a pogrom mentality, and convinced that the results of 1948, not just 1967, can be reversed.

       “Israel’s policy of isolating Mr. Arafat in a room, clustered with a few henchmen around fluttering candles, is reasonable because it underscores his dependence on ‘world opinion,’ and especially Europe’s appeasement reflex, which is still strong 64 years after Munich.  But it is unreasonable to allow electricity into his compound.  Enabled to recharge his mobile phone, he continues to use the international media as his megaphone.

       “And when a gaggle of leftist European supporters of terrorists walks past Israeli tanks and into the compound, can Jesse Jackson be far behind?  Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s once and perhaps future prime minister, can say of Mr. Sharon, as Teddy Roosevelt said of his successor, William Howard Taft, that he ‘means well, but he means well feebly.’

       “The United States, too, has a record of resisting the logic of its judgments.  ‘I think the PLO has proven that it is a terrorist organization,’ said President-elect Ronald Reagan.  But after his inauguration, he allowed the PLO to maintain its office a few blocks from the White House.

       “Less than two years ago, candidate Bush said:  ‘A few years ago on a trip to Israel, General Sharon took me on a helicopter flight over the West Bank.  And what a trip that was.  What struck me…is the tiny distance between enemy lines and Israel’s population centers.  The general said that before the Six-Day War, Israel was only 9 miles wide at its narrowest point.  In Texas, some of our driveways are longer than that.’

       “Note the words enemy lines.  Mr. Bush knows that no Israeli leader can accept restoration of those 1967 borders, which were accidents of war.  Consider some history.

       “It has been 84 years since Britain’s General Allenby defeated the Turks at Armageddon, dooming the Ottoman Empire and opening Palestine to Jewish immigration.  It has been 46 years since the Suez fiasco ended European attempts to fill the vacuum created by the Ottoman collapse.  The vacuum hasn’t been filled by the barely legitimate regimes of Arab nations, many of which are well-described as ‘tribes with flags.’

       “There is no basis in international law or historic practice for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s assertion that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is ‘illegal.’  Israel’s 1967 borders are armistice lines from 1948, when the Arab nations, rather than accept Palestinian statehood provided by U.N. resolutions and accepted by Israel, tried to destroy Israel.

       “The occupied territory on the West Bank is an unallocated portion of the Palestinian Mandate, to be allocated by negotiations.  Jordan was the military occupier from 1948 to 1967.  In 1951, Jordan tried to annex the West Bank, but no Arab nation recognized the annexation.  Israel took the West Bank when repelling aggression from there in 1967.  Under settled international practice, Israel is entitled to hold the land until made secure by negotiated arrangements.

       “But Arab nations have nurtured conditions inimical to regional stability, partly by the novel invention of four-generatic ‘refugee’ families.  In 1945, there were many millions more refugees in Europe than there were in the Middle East in 1948.  By 1950 Europe’s problem had ceased festering.  But 54 years after the founding of Israel, Palestinian ‘refugee camps’ - cities, actually - exist because Arab nations have been unwilling to absorb Palestinians and want cities that are hothouses for irredentist fanaticism.

       “Mr. Sharon reportedly wants to exile Mr. Arafat, the chief formentor of such fanaticism.  If so, why the tentativeness?  Mr. Sharon should ship Mr. Arafat to Europe, where there is much official sympathy for him.  Mr. Arafat would like today’s France, where he could place his phone calls by the light burning synagogues.”

(By George Will, who is a columnist for The Washington Post, April 4, 2002)

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UNDERESTIMATING ISLAM

       ”The Rev. Patrick Sookhdeo, an expert on Islamic history and politics, directs the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity in London and the Barnabas Fund, a charity.  Of Pakistani descent he grew up as a Muslim in Guyana, then converted to Christianity, eventually becoming an Anglican priest.  In November 2001, he was awarded the Coventry International Prize for Peace and Reconciliation.

       “I think we have a greater problem in Islam than we realize.  Much as I understand why politicians in the U.S. and UK have made the kinds of affirmatory statements they have made, I think time will show they have made a mistake.

       “In dealing with Islam, you have to tell the truth.  And you have to meet it head on.  It understands power and only power.  And so you have to know how to exercise power.

       “I believe we face a much greater threat from Muslim communities within our own countries than we realize.  What we are dealing with is the increasing radicalization of groups within our societies that would have their own agenda.

       “The Muslim world sees itself as under threat.  Far from being unified, it is heavily fragmented.  But there are certain challenges they will face [together].  And that is Western globalization, which they blame for everything.  Western neocolonialism arising out of old colonialism - that too, they blame for everything.  Their massive corruption of their own leadership structures, their autocratic leadership rules that exist - all of this has tended to create new forces within the Islamic world.

       “And the church opted for interreligious dialogue.  They desperately wanted a relationship with the Muslims.  So it meant the Christian minorities had to be sacrificed on the altar of community relations.

       “With the advent of Islam in the West, the Western countries have to come to terms with a minority and they didn’t know how to do it because of civil liberties.  We have got societies that are strong liberal democracies. Our own legal framework stops us from dealing with extremist religion.

       “Historically, Islam has never learned to live as a minority because its basis exists in power.  Therefore, how does it reconstruct itself in Western societies?

       “As for the church in the West, I see a real dilemma in that it works on the basis of pluralism.  Difficulties arise in three areas.  The first is the uniqueness of the Christian faith.  Can we hold onto uniqueness in the contest of pluralism in society?  And what if government and church leaders say, just for the sake of peace in our society, Christianity must sacrifice its unique role?  That is an issue already in Britain.

       “Secondly, there is the question of evangelism.  Will we have the right to evangelize Muslims?  The Samuel Zwemer Institute [an American missions organization] just said that since September 11, more than 34,000 North Americans have converted to Islam.  In Britain, phenomenal numbers are moving towards Islam.  It seems strange that a religion whose followers could propound such heinous crime has actually come out on top.  That is unanswerable.  Why is it that the church is losing ground and not Islam?

       “The third great question is conversion.  Islam sees conversion as a fundamental attack against their religion.  So will we have to deny that?  Overall, I think we are going into very difficult waters.  The question is what policies Western governments take vis-à-vis toward Islam?  I think we must drive Islam to have a reformation, which is what Salman Rushdie is saying, that Islam unreformed will be brutal and barbaric.  Its only future is in having a Martin Luther.  But the question is:  Who is going to be that leader?  And will he be allowed to survive?

       “If all the West does is support conservative Islam, then they are actually simply putting off the evil day.  The policy of the British government, the monarchy and the church has been to sell Islam.  In fact, the most conservative, rightwing paper, the Daily Telegraph, did a 16-page supplement on how wonderful Islam is.  And everyone accepted the article.  No one was allowed to criticize.  I was one of the few that did…I was simply massacred.  The only line permitted is that Islam is peaceful, it is tolerant, it is a wonderful religion.

       “If your president, your church - in our case the monarchy - if everyone sings in tune for the media, what is the average person in the street going to say?  We have sold a lie and people have bought it.

       “[British] Muslims realized at a very early stage [after September 11] they would capitalize on this.  They sent out a Koran, and Muslim holy books to every member of the House of Lords, to every member of the House of Commons… They swamped the country and they succeeded.  They then sent out their speakers.  Muslims have approached all churches and said, ‘Why don’t we instruct you on Islam?’  Now our government is considering creating a booklet on Islam for all institutes and structures to study.

       “Here I am highly critical of church leaders.  I think they failed their own country because they did not have the courage to break with what was going on and they did not have the insight to see what needs to be done.  The Muslims found a very vulnerable people who were open to their ideas.       Meanwhile, Christianity was painted in a particular light.  Melanie Phillips, writing in Britain’s Sunday Times, said that Christianity is the only religion that has extended itself through mission, colonialism and the Crusades.  In other words, Christianity was conceived as a white man’s religion - brutal, barbarous and evil - whereas Islam is a noble religion based on peace.

       “If I say the history of the West has been infinitely superior to [that of] the Muslim world; that freedom, democracy, human rights and religious liberty have come out of Christianity and the West; that we have something to offer the Muslim world - that is viewed critically.  How are we now going to educate the average person out there that there is something very good about the West and Christianity?”

(By The Rev. Patrick Sookhdeo, The Jerusalem Connection, March 2002)

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       “MATTHEW 21:43 AND THE FUTURE OF ISRAEL:  While giving several parables in Jerusalem, Jesus said, ‘Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing the fruit of it.’ (Matt. 21:43)

       “Matthew 21:33-46 is part of Jesus’ indictment of the religious establishment in Jerusalem, whose franchise to lead Israel would be forfeited to Matthew’s Christian Jewish community.  The ‘nation’ in verse 43 speaks of the Matthean community as an eschatological messianic remnant, whose leaders will replace the current Jerusalem religious establishment and lead Israel in bearing the fruit of righteousness to God.  Thus the parable of the recalcitrant farmers is about ethics, not ethnicity, and a Jewish remnant, not a Gentile replacement.  This remnant is pictured as a repentant son (v. 30), as responsible farmers (v. 41), and as responsive guests (22:9-10).  None of these parabolic details need be interpreted as speaking in ethnic terms.

       “Matthew 21:33-46 is a parabolic presentation of Israel’s rejection of the prophets, which is the reason for Jesus’ final pronouncement of woe on the scribes and Pharisees in 23:29-36 (cf. 5:12).  It should be noted that Jesus’ woes in Matthew 23 were pronounced on the fruitless religious leaders only after He had spoken to His disciples about a proper model for fruitful servant leadership in 23:1-12.  Surprisingly He acknowledged the authoritative office held by the leaders (vv. 2-3), but denied their role as proper models for ethical behavior.  A new group of leaders who would exemplify humble service to their brothers and sisters in God’s family was needed (cf. 20:20-28).  The new ‘nation’ of 21:43 would include these leaders.

       “The parable of the recalcitrant farmers should not be interpreted as a transferal of God’s redemptive program from the nation of Israel to the church.  To read this passage as Israel’s rejection and replacement by the Gentile church is to read into it a later theology of supersession.  Such a view is dubious exegetically and has contributed, perhaps unwittingly in some cases, to anti-Semitism.  The theology of supersession may not lead inexorable to the practice of anti-Semitism, but the connections are there in all too many cases in the history of the church.  A dubious view that also supports a theology that is often complicit in anti-Semitism should be rejected.

       “Matthew 21:33-46 should be interpreted as referring to a transfer of leadership in the kingdom from the fruitless Jerusalem religious establishment to the fruitful Matthean Christian Jewish community, led by Jesus’ apostles.  This community will be the eschatological remnant of Israel, which will continue its mission to Israel while expanding its horizons to all nations.  Although the church will eventually expand primarily by winning Gentiles to Jesus, its roots in the promises of God to the seed of Abraham must not be forgotten.  Jesus’ words to the Samaritan woman - ‘Salvation is of the Jews’ - warrant repeating (John 4:22; cf 10:16; Acts 24:14, 28:20; Rom. 11:16-24; 15:7-13; Eph. 2:11-22; Rev. 21:12).”

(By David L. Turner, Bibliotheca Sacra 159, January-March 2002)

LETTER OF GENERAL INTEREST

Dear Emily and all other Brethren,

       We want to send our greetings to all of you from a beautiful green and flower spangled Galilee.  This has indeed been one of the longest and most beautiful springs we can remember in years.  This is due to the good rains we have had in January/February, then again over the Passover/Easter week, and even some wonderful latter rains last week.  It has kept the Galilee so green and you see the difference water makes for the land.  All has helped the Sea of Galilee as well although it is still lower than normal to start the dry season.

       How is your winter been there in Florida?  We hear from many areas of the U.S. that they are in drought conditions due to the dry and mild winter.  It seems Israel experiences things first and then it goes to the nations like our drought conditions and now in the States.  Also the terrorism has been with Israel a long time and now goes out to the nations.

       We do hope this finds you well, Emily, as well as all those there in your area.  Lev did not go down to the Dead Sea this spring for treatment for his skin, as it was a difficult time here.  So it was nice for me that he has been here this year.  However we have not been too busy with the Bed/Breakfast rooms except the week of Passover.  Not only are there very few tourists, but even local people are not traveling too much these days.

       March was a very difficult month here with over 125 killed in the suicide bombing attacks.  It got to the point that you did not want to hear the news as it was about attacks or more funerals.  In a small country like this it seems these touch everyone’s lives.  We were no exception as the bomber that blew himself up in Haifa on March 31st was at the restaurant run by the cousin of our cook at the YMCA.  We know all of this extended family well having worked with various ones of the family, visited in their homes in the village of Juran (between here and Nazareth), and shared many wedding celebrations with them.  So five from this Arab Moslem family were hurt in the blast, and the nephew of our cook was killed.  He was a young man of 30 years old leaving his wife eight months pregnant and a four year old boy.  So we went to the village during the mourning period (for Moslems this is for three days), and it was very sad.  They were very angry that these suicide bombers, as they just want to kill as many people as possible - Jews or Arabs.

       So with all these terrible attacks, and many deaths on a daily basis, Israel had to do something.  They declared war on the terrorists and went in to clear out the nests of terror activity that Arafat promised to do over and over.  There were so many weapons, bomb factories, etc, etc that they found.  It was indeed a set-up for war on the Israeli people, and still is.  How all the money spent on these weapons could have helped the Palestinian people!!

       Even though Israel was so careful to avoid civilian deaths, the world has jumped on the hate bandwagon of massacres.  Anything Israel does is bad, but the terrorists can go on and on killing with no U.N. resolutions passed against them.  We are seeing how fast the world can turn against Israel, and that the old spectre of anti-Semitism rises out of the dust with such shocking force in Europe once again!  The Israelis have been stunned by the events in so many nations of Europe not only against Israel, but also all Jews!!  They do feel alone again!

       Sadly the U.S. policy has been swinging back and forth with Bush’s statements of late.  I doubt he would pull out of Afghanistan now when he wants to “achieve his objective against the terrorists”!  Why is Israel not allowed the possibility to capture their enemies?

       Well, needless to say these are heavy times for all Israelis, but they do stay behind the Sharon government in their decisions to do something about the terrorists.

       Where are the Catholic Church and all the Christians now that the terrorists have taken over the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem?  Not only have they taken hostages, stolen the holy things there and desecrated the church, but no one cares.  The blame comes on Israel for trying to prevent this.  A sick world!!

       That is why in these days we need to look up and be thankful for the hope of God’s plans and purposes.  Events are moving so fast now, and what a time to be living in to see God’s hand moving the affairs of Israel and all men!  So we indeed feel it is a time to be here to “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people!”  This they need and we can do with God’s Word!

       Thank you for your long and informative letter of January.  We are amazed that God gives you strength to continue on in His service!  Greetings to all there!

Love, Lev and Hava Bausch       (ISRAEL)

NO. 539B THE OATH-BOUND COVENANT SURE - HEBREWS 6:17-20

       The various covenants discussed in the Bible have been very well defined by the Harvest Messenger - That Servant; and a clear understanding of the covenants may be compared to a clear understanding of the Tabernacle.  If the covenants are clearly understood, the possessor of that knowledge is not likely to go very far astray from the Truth.  In fact, the Tabernacle is the central feature of the Law Covenant, which latter is typical of the New Covenant.  Every antitype is greater than its type; thus, we should expect the New Covenant to overshadow the Law Covenant as the sun outshines the moon.  Much of what follows is taken directly from past writings; but, not being word for word, we have omitted the quotation marks in much of it.

       The Old Covenant was unsatisfactory in its results; but the New Covenant will bless all the willing and obedient with eternal life.  There were two Old Covenants - the Grace, or Sarah Covenant, and the Law Covenant.  Which did the Apostle mean has become old, valueless, and would pass away and give place to the New Covenant?  Surely there can be no doubt on this point - he meant the Law Covenant, for he says so.  He did not mean the Grace or Sarah Covenant, for he points out that our claim to relationship with God is under that original Covenant. (Gal. 3:29)  Our Lord Jesus, by His obedience, became heir of all, heir of the original Covenant and heir also of the Law Covenant.

       Of the people there was none with Him, neither Jews nor Gentiles.  But by the Grace of God there was provision made, as we have seen, that any Jew, seeing that the Law Covenant was dead, nailed to the cross, might become betrothed to Christ.  They did not need to wait for the New Covenant, the provisions of which apply only to those on the earthly plane.  Instead, by a faith justification and a consecration unto death, they were counted worthy of begetting to the new nature - betrothed to Christ.  And similarly, Gentiles favored of God by the hearing ear and seeing eye of faith, were subsequently privileged to go through the same process, except that they did not need to reckon themselves dead to the Law Covenant, because they never were under it.  Otherwise, recognizing Christ’s death as the blood of the original Covenant, typified by Abraham’s offering up his son, these also were reckoned justified and, presenting their justified bodies to the Lord as sacrifices, they were begotten of the same Holy Spirit as the Jews, to be follow-members of the same Body - the Body of Christ.

       We come now to the other part of the question:  What provision has God made for those Jews who bound themselves under the Law Covenant, from Moses’ day down to the First Advent: and for those who since then have not discerned the death of the Law Covenant, and who will not be made aware of it until after the spiritual seed shall have been completed and glorified?  If they have not lost all share and privileges in connection with God’s special mercies, where do they come in?  We answer that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and others before the Law Covenant were not bound by it, yet they were not in the fullest sense justified to life until the Abrahamic Covenant had been established at Calvary.  Their faith, then, entitles them to a share in the merits of that sacrifice.  Likewise throughout the period of the Law Covenant, before it was annulled at the cross, there were Ancient Worthies (Hebrews, Chapter 11) who lived by faith, living above the masses of their time, and who, although bound by the Law, had above it a living faith in the original Oath-Bound Grace Covenant.  These in the Divine records were entitled to their share of that Grace when the merit of Calvary’s sacrifice had been presented on behalf of believers, when Jesus “ascended up on high, there to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.”  Although they lived while the Law Covenant was alive, they foresaw its death and trusted not in it, but in the superior Covenant of Grace.  They realized that no matter how much they tried, they could not keep the Law Covenant, because of inherited human frailty.  Hence these in due time will come forth to a life resurrection - not because of their relationship to the New Covenant, of which they knew nothing, but because of their relationship to and faith in the original (Sarah) Covenant of Grace.  Thus the Scriptures account for the faithful ones of the past under the Covenant of Grace.  (See Hebrews, Chapter 11)  But what now shall we say respecting those earthly Israelites, who lived not on that higher plane of faith, but of whom the Apostle says, “Our twelve tribes instantly serving God day and night hope to come unto this promise.” (Acts 26:7)  Were they all deceived?  Will they get those special blessings?

       God’s Gifts and Callings Sure - Romans 11:29,32:  Nay, we answer, “the gifts and callings of God” are things not to be repented of.  He knew the end from the beginning - knew exactly what Israel would be and do, and was not disappointed; and all of the plans and promises to that nation were made from the standpoint of this knowledge.  Although the chief feature of the Sarah Covenant was secured by our Lord Jesus as a trophy of His victory over sin and death, and although He laid down His human nature completely to this end, nevertheless, the Divine arrangement is such that the blood of Christ, the merit of His sacrifice of all earthly things, must accrue to the benefit of the natural seed of Abraham, because it all goes to seal the New Covenant, which belongs exclusively to fleshly Israel.

       Thus, while natural Israel had been counted enemies for our sakes, for the Gospel’s sake, our only opportunity for gaining the great prize is in connection with the sealing of a New Covenant between God and Israel.  (Jer. 31:31-33)  How beautifully the features of the Divine program balance!  Their loss was our gain, and our gain through sacrifice becomes their gain; and, altogether, the Lord will be glorified!  As already shown, the New Covenant will not be sealed, ratified, until the sacrifice of The Christ shall have been finished.  And the finishing of these sacrifices closes the work of this great Day of Sacrifice and Atonement.  With the second presentation of the blood of Atonement in the Most Holy, at the end of this Age, the New Covenant with Israel will be sealed and the blessing of the Lord will begin to Israel.  “For this is my Covenant with them, when I shall take away their sins.” (Rom. 11:27)

ABRAHAM’S TWO SEEDS

Not only did the original promise indicate two seeds of Abraham - one as the stars of heaven, and the other as the sands of the sea - but St, Paul elaborated this thought, saying of the promise, “It is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end that the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all [including you who are Romans]; as it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations.” (Rom. 4:16)  “Salvation is of the Jews.” (John 4:22)

We have seen how Abraham, as a type of God, is the father of the spiritual seed and how through Christ by provision of the New Covenant, the Jewish nation, dead under the Law Covenant, is to be regenerated by The Christ, the Mediator of the New Covenant; and that this regeneration will commence at the close of this Gospel Age and the opening of the Millennial Age.

But these are only two - “the [Church] holy nation,” and the (Jewish) chosen nation.  How do all nations come in?  It will not do to say the Body of Christ, the bride class, fulfils this prophecy, because, although they were taken out of the nations, they are not all nations, and do not represent all nations.  Each first died to his earthly estate and nationality before he was begotten of the Holy Spirit - to be a member of the Holy nation, the New Creation - a member of spiritual Israel (Rev. 7:4).  The Scriptures distinctly show that Christ and His Church, spirit beings, must constitute the Kingdom class, but they also show that the Worthies, and through them the nation of Israel under the New Covenant, will become the representatives of the Heavenly Kingdom amongst men.

HOPE FOR MANY NATIONS

Since God’s favors are thus marked out for the Heavenly and Earthly seeds of Abraham - the earthly through the heavenly - it follows that the blessing of the other nations will come about through their affiliation with these.  In other words, we may understand that the Divine Government established in Israel in the hands of the Worthies will be the center of Divine favor, and the people of other nationalities must come to this center for their supplies of Truth and Grace.  Thus the Prophet represents the matter, saying, “Many nations shall go and say, Come and let us go up to the mountain [Kingdom] of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths; for the law shall go forth from Mount Zion [the spiritual kingdom] and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem [the center of the earthly kingdom].” (Micah 4:2)

And thus all nations, peoples, kindreds and tongues shall be brought gradually to an appreciation of the Divine plan, they shall all be blessed with restitution privileges and opportunities and with an enlightenment from the rays of the Sun of Righteousness, which then through the appointed channels (the Worthies and natural Israel) will be flooding all the earth.  Thus will the original Covenant have its amplified fulfillment; first, in The Christ, the spiritual Israel; secondly, under the New Covenant with Israel after the flesh; and through these bless all the families of the earth, so that all the willing and obedient may gradually attain to the standards of the children of God and be possessed of the “liberties of the sons of God” - freedom from sin, sorrow, pain and death (Rev. 21:4).  As the Old Law Covenant was with Israel only, so the New (Law) Covenant will be with Israel only.  Other nations will share it by becoming Israelites, “Proselytes of the gate,” not under the Old but under the New Covenant (Ezek. 16:60,61).

Perversions - Past and Present - Often have we directed attention to the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Laymen’s Home Missionary Movement regarding their attempt to displace the Jews as the chief earthly class among Restitutionists under the New Covenant and the Worthies.  During the Dark Ages the Roman Church pursued much the same policy - except with much more force and abuse.  Often they concentrated persecution against the Jews - much the same as they did against the Gentile Christian protesters.  But in recent years, recognizing that their dominion is tottering, they are beginning to read the unmistakable “handwriting on the wall” - and their attitude toward the Jews has softened considerably.

However, there are other “Christian” organizations besides the above making themselves heard in our day by their antagonism toward the Jew.  Just recently one such sect returned our paper on the Jewish situation, with which they enclosed one of their booklets.  They take caustic exception to our Scriptural interpretation concerning the present and future status of the Jews.  Here is a little of what their booklet contains:

“The evidence proving the present-day ‘Jews’ are NOT ‘The house of Israel’ is endless.  History gives abundant proof that the White, Caucasian Race sprang from dispersed Israel.  WE ARE ISRAEL.”

In substance, the Witnesses teach the same; They are God’s Israel; they are the “chosen people.”  They are ready to proclaim Brother Russell as the founder of their movement, and boast about him (See Isa. 4:1 and 5:13, and Berean Comments) even as they grossly and persistently revolutionize against his clear and persuasive interpretation of those prophecies that emphatically designate “to the Jew first.”  Likewise, although in lesser degree, the Laymen’s Home Missionary Movement teaches the same, with the exception that they apply these Jewish promises to their new converts since 1954; they teach that their present-day converts will be “first and chief” next to the Worthies, instead of the Jews - thus taking away from the Jews their God-given promises, as they usurp those promises.

Perhaps it is well to recall here the usurpers all during this Age have prevailed in numbers, power and prominence (“In Thy name… done many wonderful works - Matt. 7:22); but this will all be changed under the benign Kingdom reign.  “He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear!”

THE EVERLASTING COVENANT

Both the Abrahamic Covenant and the New Covenant are Scripturally styled “The Everlasting Covenant” in contrast with the Law Covenant, which passed away - a failure because of its “unprofitableness.”  However, not unprofitable in its precepts, because they are perfect, which precepts will be incorporated in the New Covenant when man will be able to keep them. (Heb. 7:18 and Gal. 3:24,25)  The one is perpetuated in the other, even as the spiritual seed (spiritual Israel) will rule and bless thru the earthly seed (fleshly Israel).  Note the Scripture testimony that the original Grace (or Sarah) Covenant is everlasting (Gen. 17:7,13,19; 2 Sam. 23:5; Psa. 105:8-10).  Also note other Scriptures, which apply the same term prophetically to the New Covenant: Jer. 32:40; 31:31,32; Ezek. 16:60.  Note carefully the context in each instance that reference is to the Millennium.

The Blood of the Everlasting Covenant - The blood of the Everlasting Covenant is the “blood of Jesus,” under the Grace or Sarah Covenant (not by the New Covenant which does not yet exist and which is to be made only with Israel).  And the blood or sacrifice of Jesus is “the blood of the New Covenant,” yet to be established with fleshly Israel, just the same - only that by the Father’s good pleasure Jesus has now accepted the “little flock” as his members and counted their sacrifice or blood as a part of His own - the sin offering in two parts.

Note how this is set forth in Isaiah 55:1-3.  Here believers of this Gospel Age are described as those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. Under the Father’s drawing they come to Jesus now.  They are not of those who, blind and deaf under Satan’s power, love darkness rather than light and will need the Kingdom regulations and corrections to make them bow and confess, under the New Covenant arrangement with Israel and indirectly with all nations.

Come now to Hebrews 13:20:  “Now the God of peace who brought again from the dead the Great Shepherd of the sheep [Jesus], through the blood of the Everlasting Covenant make you perfect.”  Does this refer to our justification from Adamic guilt and reconciliation to God?  Not at all!  The Father will have nothing to do with us (except to draw us to Jesus for justification and consecration) until after our justification.  Then His mighty power, which brought our Great Shepherd from the tomb to glory and immortality, begins to mightily “work in us to will and to do His good pleasure.” (Phil. 2:13)  If we abide in His love, He will perfect as New Creatures by the privilege granted to those who shared in the sufferings of Christ - participated in the shedding of the blood of the Everlasting Covenant, which as the New Covenant will bring blessing to Israel, and then to the world.  The Greek word here rendered “perfect you” signifies “knit you together,” that is, make you completely one with the Shepherd as His “members” both in sufferings and in glory to follow.

Other pertinent texts - Let us now briefly refer to some Scriptures, which mention the New Covenant, that we may note their full harmony with the foregoing.  We have already examined the one statement connected with our text and see that it applies to the establishment of the Kingdom, as the foundation of the New Covenant blessings to the world during the Millennium.  There are just eight other texts in the New Testament which refer to the New Covenant:

        (1) “For this cause he is made mediator of a better covenant [not better than the Grace or Sarah Covenant, but better than the Law Covenant], which was established upon better promises.” (Heb. 8:6)  Our Lord Jesus had already begun the work necessary to His fulfilling this office of Mediator of the New Covenant.  He had laid the foundation, but he had not yet accepted to Himself all the members the Father intended and foreknew and predestinated.  We notice from the context that the contrast still is between the Law Covenant and its mediator Moses, and the New Covenant, superior because of its better mediator, the Messiah.  Moses could offer only imperfect sacrifices, but Christ, by antitypical sacrifices of the bullock and goat (Himself and His Body), makes satisfaction for the sins of the whole world, and prepares to mediate the New Covenant, which, God has promised shall be His channel of blessing Israel and the world.

          (2) In the succeeding verse (8) the Apostle supports his argument by a quotation from the Old Testament promise to Israel of a New Covenant, saying, “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a New Covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.”  Clearly this does not refer to spiritual Israel, or to any others during this Gospel Age.

          (3) Neither does the next reference to the New Covenant, which is a part of the same quotation from Jer. 31:31, refer to spiritual Israel.  “Not according to the covenant I made with their fathers’… and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people.” (See Heb. 8:8-10)

          (4) “In that he saith, a New Covenant, he hath made the first old.  Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.” (Heb. 8:13)  Notice that the Apostle is not saying one word about the New Covenant being for the Church of Christ.  His readers understood very well that they came in under the Sarah Covenant.  But certain Judaizing teachers insisted that they must be under the Hagar Covenant, as well as under the Sarah Covenant.  And this is what the Apostle is disputing.  He is making clear that the (Hagar) Law Covenant would not continue, but perish, and that, in God’s due time, He would provide a New Covenant to take its place with Israel.

          (5) It was necessary that Jews be redeemed from the “dead works” of the Old Law Covenant and that a New one be made for them by Christ - Head and members.  The Old one was sealed by the blood of bulls and goats, but the New one by “better sacrifices.”  Antitypically the blood of the bullock has been offered, and events in the world today indicate that of the goat has been presented also. (Heb. 9:14-23)

          (6) “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts and in their minds will I write them; and there is no more offering for sin.” (Heb. 10:16-18)  The Apostle is arguing along general lines.  He would have his readers understand that when an acceptable sacrifice has been offered to God for sins, the transaction is a closed one, and the sacrifice needs no repetition.  He shows that this will be so in the future for the world.  When the “better sacrifices,” sealing the New Covenant, shall have been offered by God by our Redeemer, and accepted by Him, it will mean the cancellation of all condemnation.

          (7) “For this is my Covenant to them, when I shall take away their sins.  As concerning the Gospel they are enemies for your sakes; but as touching the elect, they are beloved for the fathers’ sake.” (Rom. 11:27,28)  There is no room to doubt that the Apostle here is referring to Israel’s Covenant, the New Covenant, which God will make with them after this Gospel Day.  The time for their deliverance is nigh - the time when He will mediate that New Covenant; satisfy the demands of Divine justice on behalf of the world.  Then he will become, as previously intended and declared, the great Mediator of the New Covenant between God and mankind in general.  Then will He begin His Millennial Kingdom:  “For he must reign until he shall have put all enemies under his feet, and the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” (1 Cor. 15:25,26)

          (8) “But ye are approached unto Mt. Zion… to the New Jerusalem… to the general assembly and Church of the firstborn… and to Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant and to the blood of sprinkling.” (Heb. 12:24)  Here spiritual Israel is pictured as an army marching, and the things at the farther end are seen and to be reached.  Jesus is the Mediator, but He has accepted the Church as His bride, His body, and waits her arrival.  The picture shows that the New Law Covenant will be established as the Old Law Covenant was, only on a higher plane and through a greater mediator and by better sacrifices (Acts 3:23).

          Much of the foregoing is by That Servant - Reprints 4319-4322 - which we continue to believe and teach.  If any are inclined to criticize us because we attack and refute the errors that set aside these Truths, we comfort ourselves with the assurance that so long as we “contend for the faith once delivered unto the saints,” we will not only get the criticism of the errorists themselves, but also the “reproaches” of those who prefer peace rather than stand the “heat of the day.”  The Truth is not for easy-going Christians.  “For even Christ pleased not himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me.” (Rom. 15:3)  The September 23 Manna Comments by That Servant are pertinent here:  “This will mean our willingness to stand for the Truth at any cost and against any number of assailants - against the creeds and theories of men, which would misrepresent the Good Tidings of Great Joy which the Lord and the Apostles have announced, and which, thank God, yet be unto all people.  As the Apostle again says, ‘I am set for the defense of the Gospel.’  We can do no less than defend the Truth.  The Truth is God’s representative, Christ’s representative, and hence our standard, and as true soldiers we must defend our standard, even unto death.”

          A firm stand for the Truth always costs something; and we are admonished by the Lord to “count the cost” before embracing it.  “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth:  I came not to send peace, but a sword.” (Matt. 10:34)  Thus, we often lose friends as we “fight the good fight” and wage warfare for the Truth.  But,

                                                 What matter if I stand alone?

                                                  I wait with joy the coming years;

                                                  My heart shall reap where it has sown,

                                                  And garner up its fruit of tears.

          It is our conviction that the Lord’s promises to the Jews are essential doctrine for our day - because we stand at the very threshold of their fulfillment.  The terse summation of those promises is that they will be “first and chief” of the afterborns under the New Covenant (“beloved for the fathers’ sake”) - “to the Jew first.”  Thus, we “count it all joy” if cantankerous brethren - “the unstable and unlearned” - cast abuse at us because we champion the Jewish promises in like manner as did That Servant.  Any who attempt to “take from” (See Rev. 22:18,19) those promises belonging exclusively to the Jews, and appropriate them for themselves are engaging in Satanic usurpation - whether wittingly or unwittingly; and those who have once been enlightened in present truth, who appropriate those promises belonging to the Jews, are not only engaging in Satanic usurpation, but they are grossly revolutionizing against the Truth.  (Psa. 107:11; Rev. 22:18,19)

          Not too long since, we exchanged some considerable correspondence with a Doctor in the Ministry of Religion in Jerusalem; and he was warm in his praise of our papers, and of the Epiphany books we sent to him.  Although he is no longer among the living, we are persuaded that he was one of those Jews who possessed “the faith of Abraham.”  He had the Six Volumes of Scripture Studies; was an ardent admirer of That Servant; and was quite caustic in his resentment of those groups who claimed to be faithful to Pastor Russell’s teaching, but who openly revolutionized against his teaching on the Jewish promises.  Because of his knowledge of Parousia Truth, his exposures and refutation of the Witnesses’ errors were among the best we have yet seen.

          In Reprint 5689, May 15,1915, That Servant says this:  “Those who have been for some time drinking from the fountain of Truth, and feeding at the table of the Lord, where the food is pure, unadulterated, nourishing, should be fully established in the first principles of the doctrine of Christ.  Much of the superstructure of “gold,” silver and precious stones should be already erected and the good work of character building should be progressing steadily day-by-day.  We should be firmly rooted and grounded in Christ, so that nothing can move us.  We should be able to discern clearly between truth and error on every important point [such as the Jewish promises, etc.]  We should know what we believe and why we believe it, and be courageous and uncompromising in declaring the Truth which has blessed our own hearts and lives.”

          “Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, and for the love of the spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for me; that I may be delivered from them that do not believe in Judea; and that my service which I have for Jerusalem may be accepted of the saints.” (Rom. 15:30,31)

(By John J. Hoefle, Reprint No. 320, February 1, 1982)

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OPINION

          “Open Up The Vatican’s Archives:  In what appears to be the latest in a series of stalling tactics, the Vatican recently announced that it would not open its controversial World War II archives for at least another three years.  This unfortunate decision, which is certain to cast a pall over Catholic-Jewish relations, comes less than a year after a joint commission of historians investigating the Church’s wartime role was forced to suspend its activities as a result of the Vatican’s unwillingness to cooperate.

          “By further dragging its feet on granting free and unfettered access to its archives, the Vatican is once again raising serious doubts about its commitment to pursue the truth and clarify the historical record.

          “In recent years, a slew of popular and scholarly books has generated new interest in the subject, in the process shining the spotlight on the Vatican’s stubborn refusal to open its wartime archives, which are believed to contain a treasure trove of invaluable historical documentation.  In October 1999, the Church finally agreed to the establishment of a commission of six historians - three Jews and three Catholics - to study the Vatican’s role during the Holocaust and the question of Pope Pius XII’s behavior.  But by July 2001, Hebrew university Prof. Robert Wistrich took the extraordinary step of resigning from the commission in protest, saying, ‘The Vatican has not been cooperative at all up until this point… The Vatican is not really interested in allowing us to pursue our work further.’

          “What the Vatican does not seem to fully appreciate is the damage that the archives issue has caused to efforts to mend Catholic-Jewish relations.  For centuries, the Jewish people suffered unimaginable persecution at the hands of the Church, from the Crusades to the Inquisition to the blood libels of the Middle Ages.  If Jews and Catholics are to succeed now in forging a relationship of mutual respect, it can come about only through a full and open accounting of the past, one in which the sins of the Church are neither minimized nor ignored.  Sadly, by delaying this process still further, the Vatican has succeeded only in fueling, rather than healing this unfortunate rife.”

(Excerpts by Michael Freund, who was a media adviser in the Prime Minister’s Office, The International Jerusalem Post, March 8, 2002)   

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LETTER OF GENERAL INTEREST

Dear Emily,

          Your wishes for the New Year were such a welcome sign of life!  Thank you!  Myself, this Christmas I did not send out greetings, simply because the tension here is so great that everybody just does the absolutely necessary in order to cope.  Even this little is not easy.  Jerusalem, too, is very much affected:  Hardly a day passes without some frightful, as well as cowardly, terror attack, murder from behind, etc.  Life has become unsafe.  And the worst of it is that the outlook is gloomy.

           And what is so very much depressing is that on the Palestine/Arab side there is no sign, no hint, of ever looking ahead to some rudimentary base of neighborly relations.  It’s always, again and again, Jihad, Jihad and again: Jihad - meaning: Out with the Jews!

          But this is, needless to say this to you, utterly illusionary:  We have our Faith and our lasting Promise.  This here is where we came from, where our culture was created and where we are going to stay and to live our life.

          Personally I am OK, my health cooperates, and this is what I wish for you also!  Be well and do go on with your vital mission!

                                                               With ever good wish, Michael Pragai (ISRAEL)

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          Excerpts from the Nixon tapes:  “Look at the Justice Department, it’s full of Jews… The lawyers in government are damn Jews.”

          Richard Nixon, to Treasury Secretary, John Connally

          “… a wild orgasm of anarchists sweeping across the country like a prairie fire.”

          Richard Nixon, on the antiwar movement. (Time, March 11, 2002)       

NO. 539A THESE THINGS WERE TYPES

       The above heading is taken from Reprint 5267, July 1, 1913, from which article we shall use some in direct quotations, some paraphrase, and some additions of our own.  Immediately under the subject we have this statement:  “Now these things were our examples [Greek tupos - types], to the intent that we should not lust after evil things, as they [typical Israel] also lusted… Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples [Greek tupos - types]; and they are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come.  Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” (1 Cor. 10:6-12)

       St. Paul’s words carry great weight with all who are “established in the Present Truth” (2 Peter 1:12); and, while we may be deeply impressed with the King James Version, its force is multiplied when we notice that in the Greek the word type is used - a type being a very exact pattern of the antitype, which is on a larger scale.  Every antitype is greater than its type, as witness, for instance, the Atonement-Day bullock, which typed the sin offering of our Lord Jesus.  The gravity of St. Paul’s statement should be readily recognized when we notice that the ends, or harvests, of the Ages are referred to, considering that we ourselves are now in the final years of the Gospel-Age and the beginning of the Millennial Age, the two ends of the Ages.  “The harvest is the end of the Age.” (Matt. 13:39, Dia.)  Literally, St. Paul says, “They are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages press down.”

       Then the article proceeds to say, “A dear brother in the truth writes us at considerable length concerning the five different experiences referred to by the Apostle as ‘our types.’  The brother thinks he sees double fulfillments of these types during this harvest time.”

       The first of these is mentioned in 1 Cor. 10:6:  “We should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted.”  The reference is to the actions in Num. 11:4-35; and David comments thusly on the matter:  “He gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul.” (Psa. 106:15)  Verse 7 gives the second type:  “Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them,” the type for which is found in Ex. 32:1-31.  Then the third one in verse 8:  “Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand.”  The typical record is found in Num. 25:1-18.  Verse 9 describes the fourth:  “Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed of serpents.”  Num. 21:4-6 gives the details on this episode.  The fifth type is given in verse 10:   “Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer.”  This type is recorded in Num. 15:37-16:10.

SOME GENERALITIES

       If “these things” were typical, as stated, then it would be of first importance to understand who is involved in the antitype; and we would say it involves the fully faithful among God’s people, the measurably faithful, and the fully unfaithful.  In 1 Peter 4:17,18, the Apostle emphasizes this conclusion:  “Judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end of them be that obey not the gospel of God?  And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?”  The “us” in this text clearly reveals that St. Peter included himself in his query, and we are assured that he was among the fully faithful.  Also, “the sinner” has reference to the measurably faithful, those that become involved in a “path of error.” (James 5:20 - See Berean Comment:  “He that was once a member of the Royal Priesthood”)  The third class is “the ungodly,” the fully unfaithful.

       In this review we shall give only passing notice to “the ungodly,” our chief concern being with the fully faithful and the measurably faithful - the “sinner.”  Before offering details, we would observe that one of the proofs of human depravity is the rise of corruption after a season of good development in most human movements.  While this has been true in the world, we shall concern ourselves only with its action in the Church.  And in this connection, we would say that all the Little Flock movements during the entire Gospel Age have been followed by more or less current Great Company Movements; and we have outstanding and compelling type for this in the case of Samuel and Saul.

       In the Samuel-Saul record Samuel is a type of the Little Flock, especially in its leaders; and we notice of him that he is one of the few Old Testament characters against whom no criticism is offered.  Thus, he would be a fitting type for the Gospel-Age saints, who also stand “unblameable and irreproachable” in the judgment of the house of God.  “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?  It is God that justifieth.” (Rom. 8:33)  And note the Berean Comment:  “It is God…The firmness of whose justice can no more condemn the redeemed than it could previously excuse the guilty.”

       However, the case of Saul is the opposite to that of Samuel.  He went from good to bad, from bad to worse, his first important offense being his offering of a burnt offering without proper authority to do so (1 Sam. 13:8-13).  Samuel’s rebuke of the offense was a mild one:  “Thou hast done foolishly.”  But from “foolishness” he quickly went to rebellion and stubbornness (1 Sam. 15:23); and in final desperation he sought counsel from the Witch of Endor (1 Sam. 28:7-25).  Saul is a type of the crown-lost leaders (the measurably unfaithful).  In his first major offense he attempted to usurp an authority that had not been given him by the Lord; and this has been one outstanding transgression of crown-lost leaders all during this Age.  Note the comment on this:

          “Our Pastor once remarked that according to his observation 95% of the leaders who have fallen fell through pride.  In every case of Great Company leaders they have been guilty of power-grasping and lording.  When we pass them one after the other in review we will see this to be the case.  From first to last they want more than the Lord gives them; hence under Satanic temptation they grasp for power and lord it over God’s heritage, which makes them fall under God’s disfavor.”

          A few outstanding examples of the foregoing, which we feel no well-informed Truth person will question, are to be found in the Roman and Greek Catholic Churches.  And both of these organizations claim foundation for their systems in the teachings of the Apostles and Jesus Himself - the Roman Catholic laying hold of the coattail of St. Peter, and the Greek Catholic that of the Apostle John.  We now regard these perversions as more or less of ancient history; and in taking that position we are often prone to overlook similar performances that are proceeding in like manner in our own day.  We have in mind specifically the case of the Society leaders after That Servant’s demise, who quickly ridded themselves of “the opposition” by whatever means seemed expedient to them.  Their thinking was in exact duplication of the Roman Church when it was grasping for power:  The end justifies the means!  And descent into error has been much more rapid than either of the two Catholic systems.  And true to their forerunners’ conduct, they are the loudest in consigning to destruction all who do not embrace them and their system of error!

          The course of such individuals and systems is adroitly concealed in Psa. 75:6,7:  “Promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south.  But God is the judge: He putteth down one, and setteth up another.”  Here is outlined the course of the sun in its daily orbit - rising in the East, swinging to the South, and setting in the West.  The sun was the visible representation of the God Baal, who is involved in so much of Old Testament doings.  Baal means “lord or possessor,” thus fittingly depicting those who would lord it over God’s heritage as power graspers.  He is first mentioned in Num. 22:41, during the journey of the Jews from Egypt to Canaan.  He is denounced by Jeremiah, and especially by Elijah in his encounter with the Prophets of Baal as given in 1 Kings Chapter 18.  That engagement was a test between the true God of Israel, Jehovah, and Baal the sun god.  And it will be noted that Elijah gave the Baal worshipers every advantage, allowing them to call upon their god at high noon, when the sun is brightest and warmest, and continuing until 3 p.m.  And, when it was apparent that Baal was “either talking, or pursuing, or on a journey, or peradventure taking his noon nap” (1 Kings 18:27), and thus giving no answer to his prophets, that Elijah set up his offering, pouring thereon four barrels of water - to allow Baal every advantage - after which he called upon Jehovah, who sent fire from Heaven and consumed his sacrifice.

          Baal is an excellent type of power-graspers during the Gospel Age, who have striven for the preeminence - just as Lot sat in the gate of Sodom (Gen. 19:1), the place of prominence.  It is such “sinners” who have built Big and Little Babylon, who have marred their characters and spotted their robes (1 Cor. 5:1-13; Jude 23; Rev. 7:14); have fellowshipped with the world (2 Tim. 4:10; James 1:8); have accepted and spread various false doctrines, as they were carried away by the “error of the lawless” (1 Cor. 3:12,15; Matt. 25:3,8); and have usurped the office and persecuted the persons of their faithful brethren (Isa. 66:5).  Ultimately they experience weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth.

          Such power-graspers and their biased supporters are permitted to imbibe more or less of error; in fact, the Lord actually “sends to them an energy of delusion.” (2 Thes. 2:11, Dia.)  While the Truth is received through the mind, its purpose is to create in its possessor a “good and honest heart.”  But unholy ambition for power works just the opposite, generating in such people “the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.” (Luke 12:1)  Such a bad heart condition has a very deleterious effect upon the mind, so that such often accept error for “advancing Truth,” and pervert or lose altogether the Truth which once gladdened their hearts and minds and made them “clean.”  Thus they pay a terrible price for deceptive present advantage.

          Their lust for power is well given in the parable of the penny (Matt. 20:1-16), wherein verse 11 tells us that they “murmured against the goodman of the house” for not giving them more than they had agreed to accept at the outset of their service; and verse 12 clearly reveals that such do not want others to be equal to them.  While this parable applies specifically to the end of this Age, its principle has been operative all during the Age since the Apostles passed out of the picture.  Any one with even a meager knowledge of church history has no difficulty in recognizing this evil in both the Catholic Churches.  Their course has been one of much error and fall from grace, as they made fearful wreck of the Truth left in their charge.  We shall present more on this later in this article.

THE SIX SLAUGHTER-WEAPON MEN

          In Ezekiel 9:1-11 we have the record of the man with “a writer’s inkhorn by his side” - clothed with linen (“fine linen represents the righteous acts of the saints” - Rev. 19:8, Dia.).  Prior to 1914 it was the general impression among Truth people that this referred specifically and individually to Brother Russell; but a little analysis should convince us that such is not quite the truth.  The “man clothed with linen” was told to go “through the midst of the city… and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abomination that be done in the midst thereof.”  The facts of the case are in direct conflict with the interpretation that this man was an individual, because it would have been impossible for any one man to do what was commanded to be done.  And all of us know that Brother Russell did not accomplish that great task all by himself.  Quite a few who came into the Truth during his ministry never met him at all; and of those who did make personal contact with him, many of them received the Truth through others before meeting him.  Furthermore, the six men with slaughter weapons cannot possibly be identified as six individuals, but represented six classes of people; therefore, the logical conclusion comes that the man with the writer’s inkhorn must also represent a class.  While Brother Russell did put the “Mark” (the Truth) upon many more than any other one person, yet it is also probably true that he did not put it upon even a majority of those in the Truth movement.

          In the Bible the number six is used to reveal evil or imperfection.  Thus, the six men with slaughter weapons in their hands would do an evil or destructive work; and the facts of the case prove this to be true.  While the Apostle Paul names only five evils in 1 Corinthians 10:6-12, this is due to the fact that he was discussing only the period from 1874 to 1914; whereas, the sixth evil (the sixth slaughter-weapon man) did not begin to operate until after 1914, and has been continuing even to this day.  The procedure here is in keeping with the general course of the Bible on every important teaching:  “Precept upon precept… line upon line… here a little and there a little.” (Isa. 28:10)  None of the important features of the Bible are completely discussed in any one place; each subject requires substance from more than one Bible writer, often from many more than one, to completely provide a clear understanding.  Once this point is fully understood, it will discourage any group from attempting direct Bible study verse by verse in any book of the Bible.

          “Now these things were types of us (upon whom the ends of the Ages have come - verse 11) to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted.” (Verse 6)  In these words St. Paul points out, type and antitype, the First Sifting in “the ends of the Ages,” which is typified in Numbers 11:4-35.  Shortly after leaving Egypt the people received Manna for their food by Divine provision (Ex. 16:1-36).  About a year later, shortly after leaving Mount Sinai, the people began to weary of the Manna and to pine after foods they had had in Egypt.  Although their ungrateful murmuring displeased Jehovah, He gave them according to their desire by sending them copious supplies of flesh in the form of quails from across the east arm of the Red Sea.  But their gluttony brought upon them a plague - perhaps a heavy head cold caused by too much nitrogenous food - which wrought much distress and death among them.

          Manna is used in the Bible as a type of food for heart and mind - the Truth (1 Cor. 10:3,4); and, as Christ is the Truth (John 14:6) it types Him, especially as the Ransom (John 6:31-58).  Just as the Israelites wearied of the literal Manna and longed for the fleshpots of Egypt, so antitypical Israelites “in the end of the Age” began in the spring of 1878 to weary of the Truth, especially as respects the Ransom.  Among Truth people Mr. Barbour was the first openly to display such weariness, soon joined by not a few Truth people.  However, those who still retained the Truth vigorously defended it, refuting the disputants, thus causing them to reject one truth after another - until they were pushed into complete darkness.

          THE SECOND SIFTING St. Paul describes in verse 7, and relates to the making and worshiping of the golden calf, etc.  “The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.”  The calf was an idol; and an antitypical idol is anything, apart from God, to which one devotes himself in active service - the chief one here mentioned being a creed idol.  A creed idol is a false religious belief; and the one here in question first appeared among the Truth people in 1881, being sponsored by Messrs. Paton, Adams, Jones, etc.  Their views were an infidelistic repudiation of the Plan of God and the substitution of a theory of self-atonement without a Ransom.  In this they perverted almost every important doctrine, and caused many to serve their golden calf.

          Infidelism was also the second slaughter-weapon of Ezek. 9:1-11 - even as the Ransom deniers had been the first slaughter-weapon man.  With this vicious vagary they slew in the Temple (the Truth Movement of saints - 1 Cor. 3:16).  They began this slaughter work just shortly after Food for Thinking Christians had been published - that is, “go ye after the man with the writer’s inkhorn by his side, and smite.”

          THE THIRD SIFTING is outlined in verse 8.  It began in 1891, and has to do with symbolic fornication.  “Neither let us in the ends of the Ages commit [figurative] fornication, as [in the type] some of them committed.”  The great Papal System is described in Revelation as the “great whore” because of that Church’s unholy union with the evil governments of earth - “the great whore that sitteth upon many waters; with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication.” (Rev. 17:1,2)  Certain ones in the Truth Movement at that time started a drive to combine Truth and Babylonish methods into the Harvest work.  This effort is described historically and thoroughly in the 90-page booklet A Conspiracy Exposed, which detailed the offenses and refuted the erroneous charges of the sifters.

          These perverters are well typified by Balaam (2 Peter 2:15,16; Rev. 2:14), the Berean Comment on these texts being, “Type of a class that teach error for profit.”  And certainly at that time the great majority of the clergy in Babylon came under this condemnation, as they endeavored to unite the various denominations in a Federation of Churches; but more especially was this true with the World’s Congress of Religions at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, as they sought to unite the Christian religion with the heathen religions of earth.  Their argument was a most insidious one:  The Fatherhood of God for all men; the brotherhood of all men; the equality of all religions; and the acceptableness of all religious service to God, provided it is honestly given.  This contention was thoroughly excoriated in the 1893 Watch Tower, pp. 323-349, under the caption, Echoes from the World’s Great Parliament of Religions.  And we believe it is a fair appraisal that this spirit of Combinationism is more apparent and active today than it was then; so we would accent St. Paul’s admonition:  “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.”  The third set of sifters is represented in the third slaughter-weapon man of Ezek. 9:2.

          THE FOURTH SIFTING is described in verse 9, the same beginning in 1901:  “Neither let us [in the ends of the Ages] tempt Christ, as some of them [typically] tempted and were destroyed of serpents.”  Because the Edomites refused them permission, as a short cut to Palestine, to pass through Edom, the Israelites had to make their way around Edom.  The journey was a dreary and trialsome one; and they began to assail Moses (type of Christ) by blaming him for their lot and adding to his difficulties, in punishment for which the Lord sent fiery serpents among them, and many of them died.

          Edom types Christendom; and in the effort begun in 1901 many of the Lord’s people had become weary with the burden and heat of the day.  Thus they were readily vulnerable to a plan whereby they could use Christendom’s highways as a short cut to gain the Heavenly Canaan without persecution.  They readily forgot St. Paul’s conclusion:  “All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” (2 Tim. 3:12)

          And we observe that now this contagion is very widespread among the various Truth groups.  During that Servant’s life the Morning Resolve was a morning resolve.  It was a prominent part of the morning service in every home of Truth people; and its various parts were studiously considered, one outstanding part being “faithful to the Lord, the Truth, the brethren.”  And those of us cognizant of the facts know “faithfulness to the Truth” usually brought plenty of persecution.  The generation that has arisen since 1914 knows little or nothing about that; and it merely confirms the fact that the fourth sifting - the fourth slaughter-weapon man - is yet accomplishing its purposes.  “When the Son of Man comes, will He find this belief on the land?” (Luke 18:8, Dia.)

          This spirit of reform also involved order in the Church.  Some of the sisters’ resented Paul’s dictum, “Let the woman learn in silence [in the Church] with all subjection” (1 Tim. 2:11), and some of the brethren with more superficial gallantry than “the spirit of a sound mind” upheld them in their protests.  But That Servant’s adamant stand on that subject caused bitterness among many.  The “fiery serpent” of rebellion bit them, and many of them died.  Thus the fourth slaughter-weapon man “went after him… and defiled the house.”

          THE FIFTH SIFTING is set forth in verse 10:  “Neither murmur ye [in the ends of the Ages] as [typically] some of them also murmured and were destroyed of the destroyer.”  The antitype began in 1908 with the offering of the Vow, which elicited strenuous protest from men like Henninges, McPhail, Williamson, etc.  No sound basis could be presented for their objection to the Vow, since it merely put into writing and repeated what every one of them had agreed to do at the time of consecration.

          However, the Vow was just the beginning.  Extensive controversy was instigated over the Sin Offerings, the Covenants, the Ransom, the Mediator, etc., all of which they gave vicious twists to uphold their position, one of their arguments being that the Sin-offerings’ doctrine contradicted the Ransom.  But it was they who were guilty of Contradictionism; and, as is so often true in such situations, the errorists manifested much more zeal for their errors than they ever did for the Truth.  However, those who retained the Truth on these subjects were more than a match for the murmurers; they refuted them thoroughly with sound logic and sharp pertinent scriptures, clearly revealing them as those described by St. Paul in Heb. 10:29:  “They counted the blood of the [sacrificial - Psa. 50:5) covenant wherewith they were sanctified [not justified] an unholy thing” - a thing not belonging to the altar.

          When the uproar finally subsided in 1911 all the leaders among the murmurers had been driven from the Truth Movement.  “The earth [the present social order] opened her mouth, and swallowed them up… They went down alive into the pit, and the earth closed upon them: and they perished from among the congregation.”  So completely was this done that very little was heard about them after they left the Truth Movement.  When the Vow was offered in 1908, its type was established in Num. 15:35-16:50:  “Bid the children of Israel make them fringes in the borders of their garments… and put upon the fringe of the borders a ribband of blue… that ye may look upon it, and remember all the commandments of the Lord… that ye seek not after your own heart, and your own eyes… that ye remember, and do all My commandments, and be holy unto your God.”  Certainly the Vow said nothing more than is embraced in this Scripture; yet the fifth slaughter-weapon man would do his destructive work in full measure.       

THE SIXTH SIFTING is not mentioned by St. Paul, for reasons already given, but we have a hint of it in Matt. 20:8-16:  “When even was come… they murmured against the goodman of the house.”  The “even” in the parable is the evening of the reaping feature of the Harvest (in the end of the Age), which did not arrive until 1914; thus, could not be a part of the fifth sifting that ended in 1911.  But it does coincide very well with the sixth slaughter-weapon man, who did not begin his work until sometime after 1914.

          In this parable of The Penny it was not the Fully Faithful that murmured against “the goodman of the house”; it was rather the Measurably Faithful.  These latter wanted more than had been agreed, which revealed in them a wrong spirit.  Such grasped for power, and attracted to themselves many partisan supporters, although this was not done by words, but by acts - after That Servant’s demise.  The contest then became very animated as to which of them should be greatest.  David says of such in Psalms 107:11:  “They rebelled [revolutionized] against the words of God [those clear Truth teachings that had been brought to light during the forty-year reaping period], and contemned the counsel of the Most High [disdained the Church order, etc., that the Little Flock Movement had established].”

          Those of us familiar with the facts know that J. F. Rutherford, et al, had hardly usurped control of the Society until they began to do this very thing.  They advised the various classes to establish a Sunday school for children, which would be taught by the sisters of those classes, etc., which in turn caused very sharp differences among them, eventually leading to a complete rupture of relations.  This revolutionism - the sixth slaughter-weapon man - was clearly “contemning the counsel of the Most High” as it has been given through That Servant.  This revolutionism has continued unabated over the past 80 years, so that the Witnesses have perverted or rejected entirely most of the important doctrines that they had previously accepted from the Lord through That Servant, so that today they no longer know themselves.

          And this has been true, but in much less degree in some groups so that they can no longer have class study of the six Parousia Volumes without much disputation among themselves.  And since the Epiphany Messenger’s death, the same process has been developing in the Laymen’s Home Missionary Movement - although not nearly so pronounced as was true immediately after That Servant’s death.

          Lest any of our readers presume that we have simply drawn upon our imagination in the statements aforegoing concerning “these things as types,” we now quote from Parousia Volume 2, pp. 201-204:

          “God’s dealings with the nation of Israel were of a typical character; yet few have any adequate conception of how fully this was the case.  It has doubtless been observed by many that the Apostles, particularly Paul, in instructing the Christian Church, frequently refers to some striking features of type and antitype in the Jewish and Christian dispensations… He calls up the whole Jewish system as Divinely instituted… and shows that in all its features it was typical of the then dawning Christian dispensation…

          “The whole Jewish nation during that Age was unwittingly engaged, under God’s direction, in furnishing for our instruction [“on whom the ends of the Ages have come”] a typical view of the plan of salvation… It is by drawing upon this storehouse of truth, so abundantly and specially provided for the Church, that the spirit of God feeds us an leads us gradually into a more and complete understanding of His plan… and is now supplying much of the special light and food needful to us in this harvest time at the consummation of the Age… How important in His estimation must be that knowledge to us, and how eagerly we should avail ourselves of it.”

CONCLUSION - “A just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again.” (Prov. 24:16)  This text is better emphasized by Rotherham:  “seven times may the righteous fall and yet arise, but the lawless men [those that revolutionize against the Truth and its arrangements] stumble into calamity.”  The “just man” here is the Fully Faithful Little Flock during the seven epochs of the Gospel-Age Church.  At the outset of each of these epochs the pure Truth was presented; but at the death of the reformers the “lawless men” (those who “rebelled against the words of God”) were quick to pervert or reject much of what had been given.  Most of our readers know that this was pointedly true after the death of the Apostles; but it was also true as respects the various reformers.  Of the 95 theses that Luther nailed to the church door at Wittenberg only a few now are advocated by the Lutheran system.  And the same may be said for John Wesley and others.  The working of “the just man” in all these instances soon fell into disarray through perversion of “the lawless men,” who “rebelled [revolutionized] against the words of God.” (Psa. 107:11)

          And surely those of us who view the happenings since 1916 with a critical but unbiased mind must recognize that this same situation has been pointedly true since the death of That Servant.  Yes, while the evil features of the text are brought to mind, we may also take great consolation in the clause, “and riseth up again.”  After the falling during the sixth epoch, the “rising up” was markedly accentuated during the period from 1874 to 1914 - more so than after any previous falling.  But, though the falling is present with us, we may be certain that the “rising up again” is also sure of accomplishment.  Thus we would emphasize that those “established in the present truth” (2 Peter 1:12) will effect a sturdy and victorious endeavor that will not fall the eighth time.  “The just man” falleth only seven times - not eight times - thus, the final rising up will prevail without defeat.

          It is our hope and prayer that what has been presented herein will bless, comfort and strengthen the Lord’s people in the “things they have learned and been assured of.” (2 Tim. 3:14) “Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it; except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.    (By (John J. Hoefle, Reprint No. 257. November 1, 1976)

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THE FOUR ELECT CLASSES

          The first of these four elect classes are the Ancient Worthies as given in Hebrews, chapter eleven; the next is the High Calling of the Saints; third the crown losers, those who failed to make the High Calling, which we call Great Company, but are designated the great multitude in Rev. 7:9, and last the Youthful Worthies, a class mentioned by That Servant in Reprint 5761, col. 2, September 1, 1915 under Those Consecrating Between The Ages.  That Servant did not give a name to this last class, but we call them Youthful Worthies in contrast with the first class of Ancient Worthies, also because they will be associated together in the Kingdom.

          We believe That Servant was more matured and alert at the time of that 1915 writing and had a clearer understanding about the end of the High Calling. He corrected his mistake about 1914 being the end of all things.  He must have realized that at the end of the High Calling a great Time of Trouble would occur to make preparation for the Kingdom on Earth. 

          That Servant may have given us this fourth class because he observed that the Apostle Paul gave four elect classes in 2 Tim. 2:20: “But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold [Little Flock, Mal. 3:3] and of silver [Great Company], but also of wood [Ancient Worthies] and of earth [Youthful Worthies, the fourth and last of the elect classes].”  This is the class That Servant mentions in Reprint 5761. This class will continue to be won until the Earthly Kingdom is established.

THE ANCIENT WORTHIES AND THE YOUTHFUL WORTHIES

          The Ancient Worthies were under a faith Covenant and therefore required to be faithful.  The early Ancients included Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham and Sarah, among others. By faith Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; by faith the harlot Rahab did not perish when she received the spies; Gideon, Barak, Samuel and the prophets were faithful, also. And others had trials of cruel mockings. “They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.  And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.” (Heb. 11: 37-40) 

          The Ancient Worthies were not required to witness truth, because they all knew the truth.  The Youthful Worthies are under a faith Covenant also, but in addition they have to witness truth. Both of these elect classes will be rewarded with perfection as human beings in the beginning of the Kingdom on Earth. They will have close communion with The Christ who will give them the Law for the Jews to teach all the people.   Then at the end of the Kingdom, after they have given the Law to the Jews, they will be rewarded with a heavenly home.  “But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.” (Heb. 11:16)

          What a wonderful reward the Worthies have!  They will be resurrected perfect human beings in the beginning of the Kingdom and after serving the earthly Kingdom; they will be rewarded with spirit-begettal and a heavenly home.  The two things they do not receive are a reign with Christ and immortality. They will have everlasting life, as do the angels and others in Heaven.  As for the world, all must become Israelites.

NO. 538B THE GIFTS AND CALLING TO ISRAEL

"For this cause he [Christ] is the Mediator of the New Testament [Covenant], that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first Testament [Covenant], they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance." (Hebrews 9:15)

 The Apostle, we must remember, was addressing Christian Hebrews who were in perplexity in respect to the Law Covenant.  That Covenant had existed for more than sixteen centuries, and the Jews had supposed all along that under it they were to be God's favored people and accomplish all the work that was first brought to light in the Covenant made with Abraham.  Many of the Hebrews, therefore, after coming into Christ, accepting Him as the Redeemer, felt that somehow they must still maintain their relationship to the Law Covenant, its ordinances, etc.  The Apostle, in his Epistle to the Galatians, attempted to counteract this erroneous theory, which he calls a Judaizing influence.  He told them that if any of those who were Gentiles by birth should in their mistaken zeal and earnestness become Jews by being circumcised, thus coming under the domination of the Law Covenant, they would thereby be indicating that they had forfeited their standing in Christ; and, as he pronounced it, Christ would profit them nothing. (Gal. 5:2)

In his Epistle to the Hebrews St. Paul wished the Christian Hebrew brethren to take the larger, broader, truer thought respecting the Law Covenant and everything pertaining to it — its sacrifices, its mediator, its Law.  He wished them to recognize it as merely a typical Covenant; that it prefigured a New Covenant; that its mediator typified a better Mediator, The Christ; that its bulls and goats of sin-offering typified the better sacrifices by which the New Covenant would become operative, the better sacrifices being those of the better Mediator — Jesus the Head and the Church His Body.

St. Paul had already pointed out that the privileges of this Gospel Age, so far as the Church is concerned, are chiefly those of sacrifice — that "if we suffer with Christ, we shall reign with him; if we be dead with him, we shall live with him"; that we must seek to copy Him in self-denial and share His Kingly honor, His service as the great Prophet, Priest, and King of the Millennial Age, to bless Israel and all the families of the earth.

In his endeavor to make this matter plain (Heb. 9:13,14), St. Paul points out that before the Law Covenant went into effect, it was necessary that blood should be shed; saying, "For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?"  Here is a contrast between the institution of the Law Dispensation, the Law Covenant, and the institution of the New Covenant.  And the first effect of this better blood which is to seal the New Covenant is to cleanse our consciences from dead works.  The Apostle does not here refer to it as having been for all Israel, but for those Jews who had become Christians but had been bound by the Law previously, that they might see that now the true sacrifice had come; that this was sufficient to satisfy all the claims of Justice and put away from their minds all consciousness of sin, to assure them that all of their sins were thus covered and that they might now render acceptable service to the living God.  "And for this same cause [that is, because His blood was sufficient to cancel all sin] He is the Mediator of the New Testament."  He has not only purged us from a consciousness of sin, that we may serve God and become members of the Body of Christ and accept Him as our Advocate and trust in His finished work on our behalf, but He has by the same sacrifice made such an arrangement with God and with Justice as will constitute Him the Mediator of the New Covenant for all Israel.  The Apostle is not here saying that the New Covenant is operative now, nor that we are under this Covenant; quite to the contrary.  He is speaking of the Jewish nation, as we shall see.

The remainder of the fifteenth verse (Heb. 9) declares, "By means of death for the redemption of transgressions that were under the first Testament [or Law Covenant], they which are called might receive the promise of the eternal inheritance."  We are not, therefore, to consider the ones here "called" as referring to those who receive the high Calling — joint-heirship with Christ, the Spiritual Seed of Abraham — but we are to understand the Apostle here to mean the Jewish nation that was called — all of this Jewish nation who would come into accord with the Divine arrangement.  The same Apostle (Rom. 11:29) says, "For the gifts and the calling of God are not to be repented of."  That is to say, God having called the Jewish nation to be His peculiar people, having made them definite promises respecting the blessing of all nations, has no thought or intention of abrogating those promises.  Every Covenant, every promise that God has ever made and everything that He has ever done, He has foreknown its full import and its results, and He has done nothing hastily.  Israel, therefore, is the nation which He has foreknown to be the one He will use in connection with His work of blessing all of the families of the earth; as the Apostle says (Rom. 11:27), "For this is my Covenant with them, when I shall take away their sins.”

THE BLINDNESS UPON THE JEWISH NATION IS A MYSTERY

In the 25th verse of the same chapter he informs us that the blindness upon the Jewish nation, until the fullness of the Gospel Church has come in, is a Mystery.  God is now gathering out only a special few of the Jews and a special few from all nations to constitute the Spiritual Israel, to whom appertain the highest feature of this Abrahamic Covenant or promise; and then, as soon as this Spiritual Israel, which will constitute the Prophet, Priest and King, is complete, the Deliverer — taken from Jew and Gentile — shall come forth.  That will be the fulfillment of the promise that "the Deliverer shall come forth out of Zion and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob," for this is God's Covenant with them, with the seed of Jacob; as we read (Jer. 31:31), "After those days, saith the Lord, I will make a New Covenant with the House of Israel and with the House of Judah."  This thought is confirmed when we consider the fact that the Gospel Church were not all under the first Testament or first Covenant, but only the Jewish nation.

The trend of the Apostle's argument, therefore, is that Christ, the Mediator of the New Testament, becomes such by means of death for the redemption of the transgressions under the first Testament, or Law Covenant.  In other words, the Jewish nation needed to be redeemed in a special manner before God could use it as His channel for blessing the other nations.

Since the Mediatorial work or the Millennial Kingdom is to be accomplished through natural Israel, and since all the families of the earth are to be blessed through them, it follows that nothing can be done until Israel shall have been recovered from their present outcast condition.  Then the blessing of the Lord will go forth and the Mediatorial work will be accomplished through natural Israel.  We are to distinguish between the work to be done through this nation and the One who will do that work.  It will be the Mediator of the New Covenant who will have the power to confer the blessings — the Great High Priest, the Great Prophet, the Great King, the Great Mediator.  There could be no blessing outside of this Great One; and this Great One, as the Apostle Paul and all the other Apostles clearly show, is composed of Jesus the Head and the Church His Body.

THE NEW COVENANT TO BE MADE WITH THE JEWS

No doubt many Jews are now faithless and unbelieving because of the long period of blindness upon them, and perhaps in their hearts are hungering after the promises.  When the light of the New Dispensation shall begin to dawn upon the world; when they shall begin to see the resurrected Ancient Worthies as recipients of Divine favor; when they shall see their brethren beginning to be blessed under the ministration of this new Kingdom, then many of the Jews who are now blinded and unbelieving will manifest true faith and be obedient and turn unto the Lord.  But we are not to understand that any one will become an Israelite unless he has the faith of Abraham, sincere faith, trust in God, faith that will be manifested by obedience.

Then as the people of the various nations shall gather themselves to the Lord and seek to come into harmony with Him, the way of approach will be by coming into accord with the Holy Nation — God's representative Kingdom in the world — and thus they will come into harmony with the Spiritual Christ, the Great Prophet, Priest and King.  Eventually, by the close of the Millennial Age, those who prove faithful will be turned over to God, even the Father.  Such will then be fully in accord with Jehovah and fully in Covenant relationship with Him.

The New Covenant is not to be made with any others than the Jews, for no others were in Covenant relationship with God.  The words "New Covenant" seem, therefore, to indicate the repetition of God's favor to Israel under the better Mediator, who will bring the glorious blessings that they had expected under Moses, but failed to obtain because of the inability of Moses to make satisfaction for their sins; for the blood of bulls and goats could never actually take away their sins.  The antitypes of these, the sacrifice of the Lord and the members of His Body, must first be accomplished before this New Covenant with Israel could supersede the old or Law Covenant, which it then will do.

Hebrews 9:16 reads:  "For where a Testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator."  In the case of Moses the death of the Testator was represented by the slaying of the bullock and the goat.  In the case of the Antitypical Moses, the death of the Testator is shown in the sacrifice of our Lord and the Church His Body.  The ability of Christ to give a Testament or Covenant, or to make a Covenant, should also be seen.  As the man Jesus He could not make this Covenant.  Why?  Because as a man — not Spirit-begotten — he could merely have given His human life for mankind and then would have had nothing left for Himself; or if He had retained His earthly life He could have established only an earthly Kingdom and never could have given eternal life to any one subsequently.  He might have blessed them with wise laws and regulations and improved conditions over the present time, but never could have given them life, and the perfections and blessings that He will be able to give under the New Covenant.

HOW THE LORD BECAME A TESTATOR

In order to be a Testator and give eternal life to the world, it was necessary that our Lord should carefully follow the Plan that God had arranged:  First, by His own obedience He should demonstrate His loyalty to God and receive life on the Divine plane as His reward; second, that then, by taking up His human life which He did not forfeit in anywise, He should have that human life and its rights to give to Israel and through them to all mankind.  He is thus a Testator.  He is thus one who bequeaths something to others.  He bequeaths it not while He is alive, as a gift, but He gives it as a Testator, as that with which He parts in death.  So our Lord Jesus, as the Great Mediator of the New Covenant, will give to mankind the human rights and privileges to which He had a right by virtue of His perfect obedience to the Divine Law.  He invites us, not to share those rights with the world, not to come under His Mediatorial reign and be sharers in restitution privileges, but, according to the will of God, to do something else, viz., to join with Him in becoming Testator, to lay down our lives and thus be sharers with Him in the spirit of His great work, that we may also share with Him in the actual features of that work during the Millennium.

The very first difficulty encountered is that we, unlike Him, have not perfect bodies that we could give as perfect sacrifices; hence God's arrangement for those who have this sacrificing attitude of mind is that they may be dealt with by the Lord Jesus and that He may, as their Advocate, impute to them His merit, His restitution rights, to make up for, to offset, their blemishes and imperfections, that they may offer unto God a sacrifice that would be pleasing.  We see that He does not give to these who are now called, either the Mediatorial blessing of the Millennial Age or the restitution conditions which that Mediatorial reign will confer.  He gives to them that which will serve His purpose for them much better; viz., an imputation of His merit for past sins, to allow their sacrifice to pass the Divine propitiatory satisfactorily.  Even then their sacrifice would prove imperfect and unsatisfactory because of inability to carry it out to a completion, did He not continue to be their Advocate.  With every blemish and imperfection that is unwillingly theirs they can go to Him as their Advocate and obtain mercy and have the cleansing from all sin through the merit of His sacrifice.

THE JEWS "WILL OBTAIN MERCY THROUGH YOUR MERCY"

Thus we see the great Testament which is in Christ's blood and to which He refers, saying, "This is my blood of the New Testament."  Instead of applying that blood of the New Testament to the world or to Israel, He applied it first for the Church.  It must all pass through the Church, so to speak.  "Drink ye all of it"; be ye all sharers in my cup, for unless ye are sharers in My cup ye cannot be sharers in My life.  It is His cup; and He gives us a share of it.  We are not worthy to have any direct dealings with the Father, but the Father, nevertheless, had us in mind from "before the foundation of the world," as the Apostle says (Eph. 1:4).  Hence we are not to understand the Mystery — the selection of the Church, the Body of Christ — as being an amplification of the original Divine Plan, but merely the carrying out of a part of that Plan not previously disclosed or revealed.

So, then, it requires all of the Gospel Age for the Church of Christ to drink of His "cup" and be "baptized into His death."  When the last member shall have drunk of this cup and shall have been baptized into His death, and shall have finished his course, then all the sufferings of the Priest, Head and Body, will have been accomplished — the sufferings to which the Lord refers through the prophets as "the sufferings of Christ and the glory that shall follow."  The sufferings began with the Head and have continued all the way down to all the members of the Body; and as soon as these sufferings shall have been finished The Christ will be crowned with glory, honor and immortality beyond the vail.

When we drink of this cup of the New Testament — His blood or sacrificed life — we have communion (participation) in the death of Christ (1 Cor. 10:16,17).  We are also to be participants in His special life on the Divine plane (1 John 3:2), and thus sharers with Him in this work of making the Testament, or Covenant, which will go to Israel and through Israel to the world.  This is further admitted by the Apostle in Romans 11:25-28.  Speaking of the time when Israel shall be recovered from their sins, when the Deliverer, The Christ, Head and Body, "shall come forth out of Zion and turn away ungodliness from Jacob," when God will make His Covenant with them and take away their sins, the Apostle adds, "They shall obtain mercy through your mercy." (Rom. 11:31)

This will be the mercy of God operating through Jesus and the mercy of Jesus operating through the Church.  So it will be God's mercy in one sense; it will be Jesus' mercy in another sense; and it will be the Church's mercy in a third sense.  This mercy will go to the Jews.  What mercy is this?  It is this New Testament.  How?  Through the death of the Testator, Christ the Head, and the Church the Body.  And what will Israel get by this Testament or Will?  The earthly life and earthly rights which The Christ laid down in sacrifice; all will go to Israel.  All those rights to life eternal, and all those things lost in Adam and redeemed by Christ, will go to Israel alone — in fact, to none of them but Israelites, indeed.  So during the Millennial Age it will be necessary for all mankind to come to these people of God to get eternal life and to share in this Testament or Will of Christ — in order to become Israelites indeed, that they may thus be heirs of this Will, which gives eternal human life and all the earthly rights which Jesus had and sacrificed, and which He imputed to us, and allowed us to join in sacrificing together with Him.

(By Pastor Russell, Reprint 4623-4625, June 1, 1910)

It should be noted that the above was written by Pastor Russell in 1910 before the High Calling was closed.  He stated in Reprint 5632, Col. 2 that the Kingdom was set up September 21, 1914.  The forty-year Harvest was closed at that time, because it had accomplished its design, the selection of all the Wheat class.  The year 1914 is particularly marked in the Scriptures as the end of the Gentile Times.  The stone was cut out of the mountain by that time which meant that all the Saints were sealed in the heart but not in the forehead.  By 1916 they were all sealed in the forehead, i.e., they had come to an intellectual understanding of the Truth.

It should also be noticed that Pastor Russell states in the above that all the Saints must be sharers in His "cup" and "baptized into His death."  So they all must suffer unto death with the same suffering that He suffered.  Whomsoever has not experienced that suffering since the end of the Harvest cannot be of the Saint class.

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CHRISTIANS AND ISRAEL

“Christians and Israel” is the caption of a significant article appearing on page one of Outpost, publication of “Americans for a Safe Israel,” December 2001 issue.

Written by Herbert Zweibon, this writer finds it historically important to review.  Mr. Zweibon is co-editor of Outpost, with Rael Jean Isaac and Ruth King.

“Christians and Israel:  An attitude of indifference toward Israel may have settled upon a segment of American Jewry - witness the significant decrease in recent months in the number of American Jews visiting Israel or choosing to study there - but the level of pro-Israel sentiment among Bible-believing Christians has remained as high as ever.  This is not merely ironic; it contains an important lesson about possible future sources of influence on American-Israeli relations.

“In a recent column in The Jerusalem Post, Jonathan Rosenblum pointed out that ‘many of Israel’s staunchest supporters in Congress have traditionally come from states with small Jewish populations, e.g. Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, Senator Tim Hutchinson of Arkansas, Attorney General John Ashcroft, formerly a senator from Missouri, and house Majority Whip Tom DeLay.’  Nor did they have close ties to mainstream Jewish groups, which are diametrically opposed to them on domestic issues.  Rosenblum continues: ‘These men support Israel not because of the mainstream Jewish community, but despite it.  Their views are shaped by their own consciences and reflect the consensus of their overwhelmingly Christian constituents.  Devout Christians constitute the bedrock of American support for Israel.  Such Christians number in the tens of millions.  Unlike American Jews, they are not embarrassed by criticisms of Israel in certain left-wing circles, and do not cancel tours to Israel after each terrorist incident… Christian supporters of Israel open up their Bibles and read that Israel is the Promised Land, promised to the Jews.’

“We at Americans For a Safe Israel have long recognized the political significance of the fact that tens of millions of conservative Christians feel deeply, even passionately, about the importance of preserving the integrity of the Land of Israel and protecting the Jewish state against its enemies.  They are outraged by American pressure on Israel to withdraw from its Biblical heartland, Judea and Samaria.  They understand that the Oslo accords have been a disaster for Israel.  They know Arafat is an unrepentant terrorist, that there is no real difference between Arafat, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and these Christians have demonstrated their sentiment, over the years, by repeatedly undertaking joint political action projects with AFSI.

“In November, the Christian Coalition and other Christian Zionist groups took part in AFSI’s ‘Don’t Sell Out Israel’ rally outside the State Department, followed by meetings with dozens of members of Congress.  At these meetings we made it clear that the Christian conservatives represent tens of million of voters, and an abandonment of Israel could have real electoral impact - because the issue of Israel is important to them in a deep and personal way.

“On page 3 of this Outpost, we have reprinted the text of a Christian Coalition appeal to its members, urging them to flood the White House with calls and letters opposing the establishment of a Palestinian state.  How many Jewish organizations are doing anything comparable?”  (By David Horowitz, The Jewish Press, January 11, 2002)

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“ISRAEL REELS IN DEADLY DANCE:  Escalating violence, old enmities bode all-out war. JERUSALEM - Gloom hangs like a cloud over this corner of the Middle East after a week of unrelenting violence.  Just when it seemed as if the Palestinian-Israeli conflict couldn’t get worse come dire warnings of greater atrocities ahead.

“More terrorist attacks.  More military operations.  With rhetoric escalating, attacks surging and no prospects for negotiations, the parties stand ‘on the brink of the brink,’ said one dejected diplomat.  The prelude, said a recent Israeli newspaper headline, to ‘a future all-out war.’

"The new year brought a three-week lull in the violence.  Then, in the course of a week, it all unraveled.  End the violence, say the Israelis.  End the occupation, say the Palestinians.  And every day, each side, deaf to the other’s cries, buries its dead.

 “’You have the Israelis saying, ‘No negotiation under fire.’  And the Palestinians saying, ‘Negotiations only under fire,’ because otherwise Israel doesn’t listen,’ Ascherman, a Pennsylvania native who lives in Israel and directs Rabbis for Human Rights, said.

 “Another obstacle to peace, many analysts say, is the personal enmity between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, sworn enemies whose feuding goes back more than 20 years.

 “Adding to the current stand-off are Arafat’s mistakes.  After a series of Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians last month, he capitulated to international pressure by declaring a cease-fire and arresting some militants.  Then his credibility plummeted January 4 after Israeli commandos captured a ship under Palestinian command, smuggling 50 tons of weapons to the Gaza Strip.  Israel maintains Arafat was personally involved.

"If peace talks are to resume, it may be in spite of these intractable adversaries, not because of them.  ‘These leaderships are blindly and imperiously leading the two peoples to disaster,’ Haaretz, the Israeli daily, wrote last week.  ‘Yasser Arafat issues empty slogans.  Ariel Sharon [talks] about readiness for painful concessions without presenting any plan.’

 “So Palestinian militants pledge more attacks until the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, which began 35 years ago, is no more.  Israel pledges to defend itself without compromise.  And the gloom intensifies.

(Excerpts, By Michael Matza, Philadelphia Inquirer, January 27, 2002)

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 “Be of good courage, and he will strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord.” (Psalms 31:24)

That Servant wrote this Scripture and comments from the Daily Heavenly Manna for January 22 especially for the saints of the 40-year Gospel Age Harvest.  That Servant was given the text Psalm 50:5, “Gather my saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice.”  In the First Advent Jesus appointed the 12 Apostles and in the Second Advent appointed Brother Russell as That Servant of Matthew 24:45-47.  The Apostles wrote from Divine inspiration, as did some of the Old Testament prophets.  The Apostle Paul, who learned more of the Plan of God than anyone else, said it was unlawful for him to tell it to anyone, including the other Apostles.  The Apostles asked Jesus how long it would be until the Kingdom, and He said: “It is not for you to know the times or the season, which the Father hath put in his own power.” (Acts 1:7)

In the Second Advent more light was due and That Servant was given sufficient light to know that the Jewish Age is typical of the Christian Age.  This caused him to study the 16th chapter of Leviticus, a type of the Atonement Day sacrifices.  It also gave him a clear understanding of the doctrine of Restitution, which had been lost for years.  It caused him to write Tabernacle Shadows, which some have characterized as the biggest “little book” that was ever written.  No one with a clear understanding of that book will ever be confused on the Plan of the Ages.

This 16th chapter of Leviticus caused Brother Russell much difficulty.  He spent three days in intense prayer and study; at the end of which he had a clear understanding of The Plan of the Ages.  He gave us Tabernacle Shadows, the six volumes of Studies in the Scriptures, the different books he wrote, and the Watch Towers, the Reprints of which are seldom quoted, copied or read.  However, if we read 1 Cor. 10:11, Dia.: “But these things occurred to them typically, and were written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the Ages have come,” we will understand that the Jewish Age is typical of the Christian Age.      

When the Apostles teachings were given to them by inspiration of God, none of them understood what was given to them.  The Apostle Paul knew more than any one at that time, including the other Apostles, but it was unlawful for him to tell, as it was not due until the Second Advent.  He gave us the Scripture 2 Tim. 2:20, “But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth,” which gives us the four elect classes.

The light had come for That Servant to interpret the Scriptures.  It was his task and no one else’s.  So he “searched” the Scriptures.  He made mistakes, but he corrected them later.  One big mistake was his belief that all the trouble would be over by 1914 and the Kingdom blessings taking place.  He correctly taught that the World War should begin in 1914, and the beginning of the Kingdom (Acts 17:31) would be set up.  The Kingdom was Set Up to reign with Christ in September 21,1914, i.e. all the saints were sealed in the heart by that time.  All saints were not in the 40-year Harvest, but the last members were to be gathered in that Harvest.  The Harvest wasn’t to “make” saints, but to gather those already made.  Of course they had to be sealed in the forehead (learn the Truth before they could reign with Christ).

NO. 538A CHRIST OUR PASSOVER

“For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till he come.” (1 Cor. 11:26)

Every year the celebration of our Redeemer’s death seems more full of meaning and more impressive.  The very fact that the date changes, and must be reckoned after the Jewish method of calculations, adds to the impressiveness, and brings a fresh fulfillment in the death of the Lamb of God - “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” (1 Cor. 5:7)

The correct date for celebrating this momentous event this year is March 26 after 6:00 p.m.  Here at 2501 Morningside Drive, Mount Dora, Florida we will assemble at 7:30 p.m. and all who have faith in the Redeemer are welcome.

There is only one Passover, the one in Egypt - when the Angel of Death passed through Egypt and slew every firstborn of man and beast.  The annual observance of that occurrence is simply a memorial of the original one - “ye shall observe this day in your generations by an ordinance for ever.” (Ex. 12:17)  And self-evidently, the memorial should be kept on the same date as the original - just as birthdays, weddings, etc. are observed once a year.  The Jews were told, “When ye come to the land which the Lord will give you, according as he hath promised, that ye shall keep this service.” (Ex. 12:25)  And we have the evidence abundantly with us to this day that the Jews have scrupulously attempted to “keep this service.”  And so should we keep the Memorial of Christ our Passover on the 14th day of Nisan each year - even as Jesus and the Apostles had done with their Passover.

But our Lord and the Apostles kept that memorial for the last time the night before He died, at which time He gave us the “Lord’s Supper” - the bread and the wine, which was to replace the lamb and unleavened bread that Jesus and the Apostles ate that night before he was crucified.  And certainly our antitype is supremely greater than was the type in Egypt.

When Jesus said, “this do in remembrance of me” He was telling His followers to discontinue the memorial of the Passover in Egypt, and thenceforth to use the bread and the wine in memory of Him.  And there is no record that the Apostles ever again partook of the lamb and the unleavened bread in observance of the Passover in Egypt.

The Scripture which refers to our Lord as the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world indicates to us that all the details of the Passover were clearly in the mind and plan of God, not only since the Fall of Adam under the death sentence, but from long before Adam’s creation.  It thus assures us that although the Justice of God only was manifest for centuries,  Divine Love was not “manifested” until the first Advent of Jesus, nevertheless love was in God’s heart toward His creatures from the beginning.

The Master enjoined all His disciples, to “keep the feast,” saying, “As often as ye do this [as year by year ye shall frequently do this] do it in remembrance of me”; and no longer in remembrance of the typical lamb and the typical passing over the typical firstborn of typical Israel.

For centuries the adversary blinded the Lord’s people to this simple custom of the early church, persuading them first of all that the Roman Mass was the same thing, and later that the quarterly, monthly and weekly celebrations of Protestants would do as well.  How much we were losing under those delusions we never knew until graciously brought to see the truth respecting “Christ our Passover, sacrificed for us,” on whose account we celebrate.

“In The Same Night”

How much more impressive and inspiring it is to celebrate an important matter on its anniversary; to recall the deeds and words and looks, and place ourselves with the chief actors of that greatest of all dramas which over twenty centuries ago ended at Calvary.  It even strengthens our general faith in Divine providence to note that the very day, the very hour, as well as the very year of this tragedy God had predetermined, so that although previously the Jews sought to take Him to put Him to death, no man laid hands on Him, because “his hour was not yet come.”  The precise time of this great event had not only been typified for centuries with careful precision as to the very day, but our Lord with equal exactness declared, “Mine hour is come,” and when instituting the bread and wine Memorial of His own death as the antitypical lamb He waited, “And when the hour was come He sat down” with His disciples to eat the Passover Supper, saying “With desire have I desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” (Luke 22:15)

“Let Us Keep The Feast”

With equal carefulness to that shown by our Lord and His apostles, let us keep the feast, the Memorial of His death, as He directed - not at any time, morning, noon or night, but only as a supper - not any day but only on its anniversary - if we would “do this” rather than commemorate something else on some other date.

Our Lord instituted the Memorial Supper, which He requested His followers to celebrate, after six o’clock on the evening before He was crucified, “in the same night, in which He was betrayed.”  This was on the 14th of Nisan, the very same day on which He died - God having provided the Jews a custom for counting their days from 6 p.m. to 6 p.m., from sundown to sundown.

Jesus and His disciples, being Jews, were obligated to keep the Jewish Passover Supper, and ate together a literal lamb with herbs and unleavened bread, and wine; but we are no longer interested in those typical matters, which have forever passed away by being fulfilled in Christ.  It was after the Jewish Passover Supper that our Lord instituted the new, the Memorial Supper, commemorative of His own sacrifice. 

“This Is My Body”

Apparently it was just when the regular Jewish Passover Supper was ended that our Lord took some of the left-over unleavened bread, blessed it, broke it into pieces, and gave them to His disciples saying, “Take eat this is my body given for you; this do in remembrance of me.” (Matt. 26:20; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19)

These words, “This is my body” have caused endless disputes for centuries amongst the Lord’s people, the basis for the disputes being the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Mass, which claims that under the priest’s blessing the bread is changed into the actual flesh of Jesus, which the priest then adores and proceeds to break (a fresh sacrifice) for the sins of those for whom the Mass is said.  To have this procedure resemble that of our Lord, great stress is laid on the words, “This is my body,” thereby to prove the body is in the bread and the possibility of its sacrifice.  But the whole matter is very quickly settled when we remember that our Lord had not yet died when he said these words.  Hence He must have meant, “This bread represents my body,” for any other interpretation or meaning would have been untrue - for He was still flesh, His change not having yet come in any sense.

But the picture is complete when we recognize that the unleavened (pure, unfermented) bread represented our Lord’s sinless flesh - leaven being a symbol of sin under the Law, and especially commanded to be put away at the Passover season.  On another occasion Jesus gave a lesson which interprets to us this symbol.  He said, “The Bread of God is He which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.”  “I am the living Bread which came down from Heaven; if any man eat of this Bread, he shall live forever; and the Bread that I will give for the life of the world.” (John 6:33,35,51)  In order to appreciate how we are to eat, or appropriate, this living bread, it is necessary for us to understand just what the bread signifies.  According to Our Lord’s explanation of the matter, it was His flesh, which He sacrificed for us.  It was not His prehuman existence as a spirit being that was sacrificed, although that was laid down and its glory laid aside, in order that He might take our human nature.  It was the fact that our Lord Jesus was holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners - without any contamination from Father Adam, and hence free from sin - that enabled Him to become the Redeemer of Adam and his race, that permitted Him to give His life “a Ransom for all, to be testified in due time.” (1 Tim. 2:4-6)

When we see that it was the pure spotless nature of our Lord Jesus that was laid down on behalf of sinners, we see what it is that we are privileged to appropriate.  The very thing that He laid down for us we are to “eat,” appropriate to ourselves; that is to say, His perfect human life was given to redeem all the race from condemnation of death to enable them to return to human perfection and everlasting life, if they would; and we are to realize this and accept Him as our Savior from death.  The Scriptures show us, however, that if God would consider all past sins canceled, and should recognize us as having a right to human perfection, this still would not make us perfect, nor give us the right to eternal life.  In order that any of the race of Adam might profit by the sacrifice of Jesus, it was necessary that He should rise from the tomb on the Divine plane of life, that He should ascend to the Father and impute the sacrificial merit of His death deposited in the hands of Justice on our behalf and receive from the Father the position of exercising “all power in heaven and in earth.”  As relates to the world, it was necessary also that in the Father’s due time He should come again to earth, a glorious Divine Being, then to be to the whole world a Mediator, Prophet, Priest and King, to assist back to perfection and harmony with God all who will avail themselves of the wonderful privileges then to be offered to all mankind - dead and living.

Taking our Lord’s words in their simple obvious sense, how beautiful is their lesson.  Unleavened (pure) bread henceforth would at this Memorial represent our Lord, the bread from heaven, of which we may eat and have everlasting life.  The next thought is that this heaven-supplied “bread” must be “broken” in order to be appropriated.  And so we see that it was necessary not only for our Lord to come from heaven as the “bread”; but necessary also that He be broken in death - sacrificed for our sins - else we could not appropriate His merit and enjoy everlasting life.

Jesus exclaimed: “The cup which my Father hath poured for me, shall I not drink it.”  It had in type been foretold of our Lord that He should be lifted up, even as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness.  He knew that He was to be the great antitypical Sin-offering; that He was to be “made sin” for fallen man.  Yet this cup that the Father had poured for Him He declared Himself very willing to drink.  He continued to drink of that cup until the end - He drank the dregs of the cup.

As we ponder over our present understanding of the bread and the wine, we may delight in the words of the Psalmist (119:100): “I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy precepts.”  The word translated ancients in this text is the Hebrew zaqen; and it is the same word to be found in Joel 2:28, where it is translated “old men,” and where the Ancient Worthies are given their Kingdom standing and blessing from God.  And those of us who do “keep the precepts” can say of a surety, “I understand more than the ancients” (Ancient Worthies; and we may rejoice in the knowledge that maketh wise unto salvation).

“Being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” (Phil. 2:8)  From this it is apparent that our Lord was subject to the same emotions as are we; and He was fully apprized of the impending events of the day ahead.  Yet, on that last night, when He instituted the Memorial of His approaching death, He spent very substantial time instructing, admonishing and encouraging the eleven Apostles who were to be representatives plenipotentiary of the Gospel Age Household of Faith.  And during this same night He offered up one of His most appealing prayers - as recorded in the 17th chapter of John - a prayer chiefly for the help and encouragement of those present, following which they sang the Hallel before leaving for Gethsemene.  Hallel is the Hebrew word for praise, and it is the root of our English word Hallelujah, meaning, “praise to God.”  The Hallel is Psalms 113 through 118, the first two of which are styled the Small Hallel, and the remaining four the Great Hallel.  As our Lord was praying in the upper room that last night He was able to declare truthfully: “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do” (John 17:4) - although the completion of that work had drained His physical resources to the breaking point.  Yet, our Lord was “found in fashion as a man” - even as all of us and the agony of the cross distorted His facial features, as the same experience would do to us.  Therefore, the prophet foretold of Him: “As many were astonied at thee [amazed that He would submit to such abuse if He were the Son of God]; His vision was so marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men.” (Isa. 52:14)  Physical exhaustion and the torture of the cross took their toll more than would be true of us, because of His sensitive physical perfection - a harrowing sight indeed to all with a normal degree of sympathy and mercy in their hearts and minds.

The Scriptures call the Church of Christ “the church of the first-borns,” “a kind of first-fruits unto God of his creatures,” “the first-fruits unto God and the Lamb.” (Heb. 12:23; James 1:18; Rev. 14:4)   These expressions imply that ultimately there will be others of God’s family later born; they imply after-fruits.  Christian people in general seem to have overlooked these Scriptures, so far as making application of them is concerned, and have generally come to believe that only those who are ever to be saved are those designated in the Bible as the first-fruits - that there will be no after-fruits.

But the Passover type indicates that it was God’s purpose to save all Israelites; and that as a nation they represented all of mankind that will ever come into harmony with God and be granted everlasting life in the Land of Promise.  Let us note that there were two phases of the Passover - the one in which only the first-borns were passed over; and another greater one at the Red Sea, when by Divine power the whole nation of Israel was miraculously delivered and led across the channel of the Sea, especially prepared for them by the accentuation of winds and tides.  These passed over dry-shod and were saved; while the hosts of Pharaoh, representing all who eventually will go into the Second Death, were overwhelmed in the Sea.  The Passover at the Red Sea pictures the ultimate deliverance from the power of sin and death of every creature of Adam’s race who desires to come into accord with the Lord and to render Him worship, all who will ever become a part of Israel; for not one Israelite was left behind in Egyptian bondage.

Blessed are those whose eyes of faith see that Jesus was indeed “the lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29) - that the cancellation of the world’s sin is effected by the payment of Adam’s penalty - that as the whole world lost the favor of God and came under the Divine sentence of death, with its concomitants of sorrow and pain, it was necessary before the sentence could be removed that a satisfaction of justice should be made; and that therefore, as the Apostle declares, Christ died for our sins - the just for the unjust, that He might bring us back to God.  Thus He opened up a “new and living way” - a way to life everlasting.

The Cup Of Joy In The Kingdom

On the occasion of the institution of the Memorial of His death, the Master in His conversation with the apostles said: “But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” (Matt. 26:29)  Our Lord was here contrasting two great days - the day of suffering and the day of glory.  This Gospel Age has been the day of suffering.  The Millennial Age will be the day of glory, and is especially spoken of as “the day of Christ.”

The fruit of the vine, the literal cup, represents two thoughts.  The cup of wine is produced at the cost of the life of the grape.  The grape loses its own individuality.  The juice is pressed out, and thus the fruit of the vine is made ready for use.  The cup of wine - the juice of the grape - represents, however, not only the crushing of the grape but also the exhilaration that comes as the result.  So it is also in our drinking of the figurative cup.  To us it symbolizes our Savior’s sufferings and death.  But wine also represents joy, gladness, and is thus used in the Scriptures.  So in the sense in which the Lord used the words “fruit of the vine,” quoted above, the cup represented the joys of the Kingdom.

In the earthly experiences of our Lord Jesus the Father marked out for him a certain specific course.  This course constituted His cup of suffering and death.  But the Father promised Him that after He had drunk this cup faithfully, He should be given a different cup, a different experience - glory, honor and immortality.  And then the Savior was authorized by the Father to make the same proposition to those who might desire to become His followers - that if they would suffer with Him, would drink His cup of death with Him, then they should participate with Him in His future cup of joy.

We exhort all the Brethren everywhere to join in observing the Lord’s Memorial on its proper anniversary.  We also recommend, as always, the reading of the chapter on the Passover Memorial in Volume Six of the Parousia Studies.

We trust that the celebration of the Memorial this year may be a very deeply impressive one, an occasion of rich blessing to all of the Lord’s people everywhere.  “For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast.” (1 Cor. 5:7,8)

“Now with the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well pleasing to his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.” (Heb. 13:20,21)

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WHAT THE RESTORATION OF ISRAEL MEANS FOR THE WORLD

(This is the preface to the article “Helping Israel.”  This article gives a rapid review of miraculous development in the Holy Land in the light of Bible prophecy, bringing to the attention of its readers outstanding facts that they cannot get through regular news channels.)

Did your grandmother or grandfather ever tell you that when the Jewish people would return to the Holy Land it would mean the blessing of all the families on earth?

Well, our forefathers had good reason for saying what they did because they read their Bibles and knew that its prophecies clearly pointed out the restoration of Israel and its tremendous significance in the destiny of the world.  Bible prophecy is history written aforetime.  It is His (God’s) story.

Now what is “His story”?  Ah, it is the sweetest story ever told! - because it has the happiest ending that man could ever dream of.  True, there has been much sorrow, suffering and pain, and there is to follow the last birth pain for the Messianic Age, as travail upon a woman with child, but the birth of a glorious new order will cause all the agonizing past to fade from memory.  Yes, the relationship of the Jewish people, the land of Israel, and the Bible, when rightly understood, constitutes a proof that there is a God, that He has a wonderful plan and method of dealing with mankind.

There is no denying that Divine intervention is imperative.  Look where you will, sickness and death on every hand attest to the fall of man.  So, the whole creation groans under the curse of sin.  But the grand hope lies in the emancipating merit of the supreme sacrifice of Jesus (the son of God, Psalm 2) who became not only a man, but a Jew, and died for all mankind, to provide the ransom price (Isaiah 53).  So, the Messianic hope is of Jewish origin, for Jesus himself said, “Salvation is of the Jews.” (John 4:22)  The restoration of Israel is very much related to all this and hence its great importance.

But why has there been such a long delay in the outworking of God’s designs?  Actually there has been no gap in the Divine program for human redemption.  Unbeknown to the world in general, during the nineteen centuries of Israel’s dispersion in exile and the continued permission of evil for man’s learning by experience - a grand work has been going on.  Under the skilled supervision of the Eternal, the Master Architect of the universe, there has been a mighty project underway of selecting and preparing a just, wise and powerful cabinet from the children of men to administer the laws of the impending Millennial Age of peace and righteousness (Rev 20:6).  Synchronized with the completion of this governing body that is to rule with the Messiah - the promised return of God’s favor to Israel is taking place (Acts 15:14-17).  Scripturally speaking, the times of the Gentiles have ended; their lease of dominion has expired (Daniel 2:27-48).  Therefore we are viewing the disintegration of the Gentile world powers, but the Star of Israel is on the ascendancy, for Israel restored will be the seat of the new world government (Isaiah 2:4-6).

Who Said the Age of Miracles is Past?

The Jews in Israel say, “He who does not believe in miracles is not a realist.”  And rightly so, for they are eyewitnesses of the greatest Divinely inspired phenomenon of our day - the miraculous rebirth of Israel.  We say: “It was the power of God which brought the new Jewish State into being - for how else could such victories have been won by a handful of untrained people in the face of overwhelming odds; with the surrounding states as enemies, and greater enemies supporting these in the background?  In the time of danger and threatened calamity the hearts of the Jewish people turned to God and they saw His wonderful protection.  Even the unbelieving were conscious of ‘miracles’ working on the side of Israel.”  Unfortunately, many of them did not maintain those valuable impressions.

A Miracle Indeed

For many centuries there seemingly was no marked indication that the Creator was in any way concerned about the fate of His ancient Chosen People.  However, now the hour has struck in the Divine Plan of the ages for the deliverance of His people.  The God of Israel is moving swiftly and mightily on behalf of Jacob’s posterity:  “It shall come to pass that the Lord shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.” (Isaiah 11:11)  Yes, they are going to Israel from 92 countries and already number over five million strong.  A miracle indeed!  An act of God!

Furthermore, simultaneous with the Divinely ordered homecoming is the productiveness of the land that for time immemorial had been barren and desolate.  For hundreds of years the Arabs and the Turks could barely eke out an existence in Palestine.  Why?  Because it is prophesied that the Land would wait for His people Israel, cursed by lack of rain (Ezekiel 35:2-12; Leviticus 26:32-34; Deuteronomy 28:24-42).  Therefore, with the return of the sons of Israel and their diligent cultivation has come the gradual restoration of the spring and fall rains - also prophetic.  The precipitation has been increasing with the years, a sure token of God’s blessing.

“And the desolate land shall be tilled, whereas, it lay desolate in the sight of all that passed by.  And they shall say, this land that was desolate is become like the Garden of Eden.  Then the nations that are left round about you shall know that I the Lord build the ruined places and plant that that was desolate: I the Lord have spoken it, and I will do it.” (Ezekiel 36)

In ancient day the Land of Israel was known as the “land flowing with milk and honey,” but God promised, “I will do better unto you than at your beginnings.”  Result - already the fruitage of the soil of Israel is excellent and taking on Edenic perfection.  And this is just the beginning.  The Negev, which had been a barren waste, is being tilled.  Israel planted forests in the Negev under conditions that no other nation succeeded.  Experts foretold that it is impossible to grow trees in that area - but their “wisdom” was refuted and prophecy confirmed.  So Israel became the only country which stopped the “desert process” and is turning desert into blossoming gardens.  However, it is not only what the Jew, by God’s grace, is doing to the Land of Promise that is important, but especially, what that land is doing to the Jew!  The Jewish people who have returned to Israel find themselves in an historical environment that impresses upon them their religious heritage.  Because of the large-scale excavation in Israel’s vast building program, archaeological discoveries are unearthed daily, bringing up the past.  The result - a confirmation of the Biblical record.  Therefore many Jews of Israel are becoming more and more Bible-conscious.  There is an intense feeling in the people for the past, which is linked in their hearts with the present and the future.  So “the people of the book” are returning to a deep appreciation of their Book - the Bible - for which there is a great demand.  Another restoration in Israel!

The Golden Age

Yes, your grandmother or grandfather was right - the blessing of all the families of earth will soon take place as a result of Israel’s restoration.  Yet this generation finds itself in the greatest time of trouble the world has ever known.  The spirit and acts of war, revolution and anarchy are rife; it is unnecessary to emphasize the fear and horror that grip the minds and hearts of man everywhere.  The hideous specter of another bloody global conflagration is petrifying.  But, prophetically, Israel’s restoration was to take place in these evil days.  Right at this time the prophets foresaw that many gentile believers from the Nations will help Israel in their regathering and by their restoration in their land.  For these God-obeying people a special Divine blessing and protection is prophesied in the near Great Day of God Almighty (Malachi 3).  The remainder of Nations, who have rejected the Creator’s call to help Israel will quickly reach a state of Anarchy, Chaos, war and destruction.  At the climax of this greatest catastrophe in human history, Divine intervention is promised.  God’s love will be made manifest by sending the Messiah.  Then times of restitution shall begin, as spoken by all holy prophets.  Isaiah gives us a graphic word-picture of what is in the offing when he says:  “And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain [kingdom] of the Lord’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.  And many people shall go and say:  ‘Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths’ for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.  And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” (Isaiah 2)

Above all, the restoration of Israel will mean “life from the dead.”  Our loved ones shall come back from the “land of the enemy.” (Isaiah 26:19; Daniel 12:2; Psalm 22:30)  What happy family reunions there will be!  Close your eyes for a moment to the scenes of misery and woe, degradation and sorrow that yet prevail on account of sin, and picture before your mental vision the glory of the perfect earth.  Not a stain of sin mars the harmony and peace of a perfect society; not a bitter thought, not an unkind look or word; love, welling up from every heart, meets a kindred response in every other heart, and benevolence marks every act.  There sickness shall be no more; not an ache nor a pain, nor any evidence of decay - not even the fear of such things (Isaiah 11).  Think of all the pictures of comparative health and beauty of human form and feature that you have ever seen, and know that perfect humanity will be of still surpassing loveliness.  The inward purity and mental and moral perfection will stamp and glorify every radiant countenance.  Such will earth’s society be; and weeping, bereaved ones will have their tears all wiped away, when thus they realize the resurrection work complete.  “There shall be no more death.” (Isaiah 25:8)

And this is the change in human society only.  We call to mind also that the earth, which was “made to be inhabited” (Isaiah 45:18) by such a race of beings, is to be a fit and pleasing abode for them, as represented in the Edenic paradise, in which the representative man was at first placed.  Paradise shall be restored (Ezekiel 36:36).  The earth shall no more bring forth thorns and briers and require the sweat of man’s face to yield his bread, but “the earth shall [easily and naturally] yield her increase.”  “The desert shall blossom as the rose.” (Isaiah 41:17, 51:13, 52:12, 35:1, 65:17-25)

Then for the ages of eternity God will be praised and glorified by a loyal and obedient human family.  This is the grand finale!

“They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.  Nation will not lift up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore… The wolf will live with the lamb the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together, and a little child will lead them… The infant will play near the hole of the viper… They will never harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” (Isaiah 2 and 11)  “Each of you will invite his neighbor to sit under his vine and fig tree - declares the Lord Almighty.” (Zechariah 3:10)  “They will build houses and dwell in them, they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.  No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat.  My chosen ones will long enjoy the work of their hands.  They will not toil in vain… for they will be a people blessed by the Lord, they and their descendants with them.  Before they call I will answer, while they are still speaking I will hear.  The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox.  They will never harm nor destroy in all my holy mountain, says the Lord.” (Isaiah 65)

(By Casimir Lanowick)

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Nobel giveth, and Nobel…?

“This column has not given out its Windmill of the Week award for good effort in the face of utter futility in some time.  The latest winner: www.revoketheprize.com.

“You may have received requests to sign the petition at this site, which is dedicated to persuading the Nobel Committee to rescind the Nobel Peace Prize given Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat after the signing of the Oslo Accords.  Arafat shared the prize with now Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

“The site was founded by Jonathan Bendheim of New York, Richard Demb, and others.  Bendheim, 25, says it’s a ‘constructive way for the general public to express their outrage and disappointment in Arafat’s inability to live up to the promises and commitments that afforded him the prize.’  The Nobel Peace Prize has never been revoked, and the Nobel statutes say the panel does not revoke prizes, Bendheim says.  So why try?  Bendheim says the Nobel panel did not strictly follow Alfred Nobel’s criteria for receipt of the prize.

“Nobel’s will and the commission bylaws say the prize is a reward ‘for the accomplishment of an individual or group during the past year in making the world more peaceful,’ Bendheim says.  In Arafat’s case, he says, ‘the committee took the unusual step of granting the prize with the hope that the award will serve as an encouragement to all the Israelis and Palestinians who are endeavoring to establish lasting peace in the region.’

“'Simply put, the prize was awarded to encourage Mr. Arafat to continue pursuing a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  He has failed to live up to the committee’s and the world’s expectations, [creating] a strong case to revoke the prize.’”

(The International Jerusalem Post, January 18, 2002)