JEPD?

I like to explore the roots of current situations, as you well know by now. For 25 years I have advocated for Israel in a variety of ways. My journalism degree and experience in Christian publishing has helped me understand why the American Church has become watered-down over the decades. I’m speaking of the “Church Visible,” of course, the big, megachurch movement. I’m not speaking of the thousands of still faithful Bible churches across the country.

Support for Israel, as a Christian, is extremely important to me. There are so many variables when discussing this topic, one can become dizzy. There are terrorism issues, politics, diplomacy (often the most mendacious element in this field).

But in my own community (I was raised Southern Baptist), I’ve become aware of a slippage in support for Israel. This didn’t happen overnight, and that’s the point of this week’s Israel Watch.

It is my opinion that the erosion of support for Israel began happening in this country more than 100 years ago, from theological sources. Now of course that has spilled out into the wider culture. In order to make modern Israel illegitimate, one must get rid of the nation’s history.

That means attacking the Bible.

Tom Rush, a trustee at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said recently that when he attended that institution in the 80s:

“One of the things that was being pushed really hard at Southeastern when I was there,” Rush said in a podcast, “is what’s known as the Documentary Hypothesis interpretation of the Old Testament. And some of the behaviors I saw among the students that were at the seminary were not Christian behaviors.”

The “Documentary Hypothesis” or JEDP (Jahwist/Elohist/Deuteronomist/priestly author of Leviticus). It sounds complicated, and it is. In short, the theory states that the first five books of the Bible were not written/compiled solely by Moses. There must have been later unknown editors, because at various stages in the Pentateuch, different words are used for “God.”

In fact, this was a clever tactic developed by unbelieving European Bible scholars that wanted to cast doubt about the historicity of these books, in particular Genesis. The JEDP view maintains that the final portions of these books were probably set down by Ezra in the 4^th century B.C.

 

To me this is very simple. By forcing much of Jewish history into the categories of myth or legend, the stage was set for disbelieving in the land promises to the Jews. I promise you this is playing out today even in the most “conservative” American churches. Almost unbelievably, the SBC is infected with this, as you can see from Rush’s statement.

A former professor at Fuller buys into all this.

“God is not a provable commodity.”—Tony Jones (In 2013, Jones announced he no longer believes in Original Sin)

But WorldNetDaily’s Joseph Farah knows otherwise:

“Prophecy is a reason for faith.”

Farah’s voice is in the minority now.

Millar Burrows, a key translator of the Revised Standard Version, wrote about predictive prophecy:

“For many events, to be sure, we have abundant evidence of their occurrence in addition to the biblical record, but unless the statement that they had been predicted is accepted on the authority of the Bible itself, there is nothing to prove that the supposed prediction was not written after the event took place.” THIS IS SATANIC Burrows wrote this in 1946! He also claimed that Noah’s Flood was a myth story.

In 1961, the Southern Baptists’ Sunday School Board published Ralph Elliott’s The Message of Genesis. There, he said that the Genesis accounts were inspired by Sumerian myth!

We lament the passing from the scene of men like Adrian Rogers (2004), but did we know as the rank-and-file that the SBC was off the rails on this subject 60 years ago?

I doubt it.

At the time Charles Darwin was hatching his diabolical theory on origins, there were still enough clergy to oppose him—although large swaths of that community were eager to embrace him. Darwin was clever enough to make some passing reference to a Creator in the first edition of On the Origin of Species, but he subsequently deleted it from future editions.

L.R. Croft wrote in 1988:

“Darwin’s dishonesty is apparent. He had long been an atheist and had inserted the above paragraph to lessen the tumult he knew his book would create. He no more believed in a Creator than he did in a flat earth.”

My point is, in part, that the undermining of both ancient and modern Israel has been going on for a very long time. It was opposed internally by too few.

If you want to know why teaching about Israel and Bible prophecy has fallen out of favor today, this is a big reason why.

Jim1fletcher@yahoo.com

 

 

Two States, Yair?

This week at the UN, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid reiterated his support for a two-state solution and, like any good political propagandist, claimed most Israelis agree.

I doubt it after 30 years of murder and mayhem coming from the Palestinians.

Even I get tired of pointing out the duplicity of the PA/PLO, and the Western diplomats that aid them in their quest to wipe Israel off the map. It is mind-boggling that leftists have gotten away with the “land for peace” hoax for three decades. A lot of the blame for this can be laid at the feet of Bill Clinton. In his two terms, if he’d had the moral fiber to say a clear No to the Palestinian leadership, I think the two-state solution con would have died 25 years ago. Instead, he enabled it.

This is a multi-layered problem. On the one hand, we have the international community exerting tremendous pressure on Israel to comply and slice-up the sliver of land they have had since 1948. On the other hand, you have the terrorists on the ground within Israel, including Judea and Samaria. Their constant (and I do mean constant) lethal activities have also put enormous pressure on the Jews. So much so that Israel has to spend a tremendous amount of time developing new and better ways to combat terrorism.

In the last week, Palestinian terrorists carried out five shooting attacks in Judea and Samaria. In one, an Israeli officer was killed.

At three of these locations, IDF military installations were targeted. Terror commanders in Hebron and Nablus were detained; they were planning mass-casualty attacks. It is the smuggling of weapons that is a major part of the problem.

Now, there is something of a rivalry between the Palestinian Authority and the more militant group, Hamas. The latter has been in control of the Gaza Strip since the Israeli pullout in 2005, and the PA hasn’t had an election since the following year (after the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004, Mahmoud Abbas has been “president” of the PA).

So it was this week that PA security forces captured a Hamas commander in Nablus. His capture prompted riots.

This proves what I have thought for a long time: while there are decent Palestinians in the Middle East, the vast majority of them have been radicalized, and not just for 30 years. The Arabs living there (I want to make this distinction, since the “Palestinians” were a political invention largely after the Six Day War) have been duped by their leadership for the last 100 years. At least.

What is most interesting about this latest round of violence is that it comes amid an effort to unify various factions. A Hamas delegation headed by Isma’il Haniyeh just got back from Russia. Another, led by Khalil al-Haya journeyed to Algeria for the same goal. Finally, Hamas announced a resumption of ties with Syria, after years of acrimony over the Syrian Civil War.

I doubt any lasting positive nature will come of this—the Arabs are good at maintaining their internal strife—but it does show a disturbing trend toward uniting against the Israelis.

Abbas spoke at the UN; he had promised an “extraordinary” speech, but it was anything but that. Just more bashing of Israel. But one more component of the Palestinians’ multi-pronged attack was their efforts in New York to get the international community to support their efforts to use only Arab curriculum in their schools (this curriculum has incited violence against Jews for generations).

With so many different kinds of attacks against Israel, it’s still difficult to understand why certain Israeli leaders insist on supporting two states.

It is a recipe for catastrophe.

Jim1fletcher@yahoo.com