Should Christians support Israeli military action?

[shaberon]

Posted by Mike Gorman (here)
Really the central teaching of Jesus Christ is to embrace love, to treat one another as we would like to be treated...

On this aspect, is it thought he said anything specifically about Jews? Or the kingdom of Judea?

The only difference that I am aware of is relatively minor. The way you just put that is already taught in the Torah. I have heard that the minor addendum from Jesus is to extend it to include "your enemies".

I have not analyzed it; given the subject, does anyone know his specific context for "Jew" or "enemy"?

[Faylin]

honestly, im a firm beliver in self defense. i think it's part of the grand design. i also belive for there to be war one must be good and one must be bad, to be more specific, one is right and one is wrong.

I don't think ocupation of space is worthy of one being punished by persciution and death. I think if we are going to advance to have relations with aliens and time travelers were going to have to deal with people showing up where they aren't wanted without being put to death or hated. That applys to linear occupation of space as well, by inhabitants of the same spehere. To suggest otherwise is tyranical.

I hope this clears things up for you all and puts things into perspective for those of you warhungry.... no shame, i get there sometimes too

[Rizotto]

Sorry Faylin, but I'm not clear at all about what you are trying to say. In reality, there's at least 100,000 civilians in Palestine and Lebanon whose lands are being stolen, who have been killed, injured, imprisoned and tortured by zionist Israelis, who refuse a ceasefire. These Palestinian and Lebanese civilians have ancestry on those lands dating back thousands of years. Zionists are newcomers. Are you saying that Palestinians and Lebanese should just allow Israelis to steal their lands and kill them?

[Richter]

I keep on wondering how it is possible that Israel can blow up Hezbollah leaders in Tehran and plant thousands of exploding pagers, but did not see the attack of October 7 , 2023 coming.

We’re talking about at least 150-200 Hamas ‘soldiers’ that must have had contact with each other about tactics, etc. before they crossed the border.

And we are to believe that they kept this whole operation100% secret and not a single piece of relevant information has ever reached Mossad.

Not even a hint.

Curious, to say the least.

Of course it would turn the whole story upside down and put Israel's retaliation war in Gaza in a totally different and rather macabre perspective.

The oppressed have become the oppressor.

[161803398]

The oppressed have become the oppressor.

In light of what has happened since 1948, I think you don't have the whole picture. But if October 7 is decisive for you, in spite of the entire picture since 1948, and everything that has happened in Palestine over the last year here you go:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Li164lMRR48

As if it wasn't pretty clear from the start.

[Richter]

Posted by 161803398 (here)

The oppressed have become the oppressor.

In light of what has happened since 1948, I think you don't have the whole picture.

I think I have a pretty good picture for as far that's actually even possible because this is such a complicated problem that it's easy to lose oversight.

I also have friends in Israel who keep me posted every now and then.

(And) 'Grasshopper, you should not think for others.'

[161803398]

Hannibal directive:

https://x.com/i/status/1810675316261838968

[161803398]

(And) 'Grasshopper, you should not think for others.'

Wasn't trying to think for you. I was not sure what you were saying about the "whole story" being turned upside down. The whole story isn't Oct 7. I have friends in Palestine and Israeli friends and evangelical Christian friends in Canada....which doesn't matter because people, being people, have different points of view wherever they live. I believe I understand the problem in some depth, if not in all details.

[161803398]

Deleted because somehow duplicated (see post below).

[161803398]

I have not analyzed it; given the subject, does anyone know his specific context for "Jew" or "enemy"?

Having quit Sunday school when I was 8 because I learned that they were always talking about some place that was "thousands of miles away" and things that happened "thousands of years ago" I concluded that they have nothing to say to me. So I am not an expert on the Bible. However, I did read the new testatment later on because I was interested in what Jesus actually said and my understanding is that Jesus had tried to change the religion which is where we got Christianity. Of course, some of the Christians thereafter went about acting like ISIS but that is another story. Anyway I got this from Quora:

"Originally Answered: Did God say “love your enemies”?
here are just a few:

Matthew 5:44

But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,

Matthew 5:43-48

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? ...

Romans 12:14

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.

Romans 12:20

To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.”

Luke 23:34

And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And they cast lots to divide his garments.

Luke 6:27-28

“But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.

Luke 6:35

But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.

1 Peter 3:9

Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.

Acts 7:60

And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

Luke 6:27-36

“But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. ...

Proverbs 25:21-22

If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink, for you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you.

1 John 4:7

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.

Romans 12:14-21

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. ...

So why does God torture His for all eternity in brimstone and fire ?

He does not

God is sovereign and creator of all things. He could make anything they way He wants. He is creating man to be overcomers of evil,sin and death.

Man must experience evil to overcome it. Man is made sin and death .Man overcomes sin through Christ living in him."

My thoughts are this is good advice because hatred and all the emotions that come with it will kill you (eventually) as well as other people. Genocide is suicide.

[shaberon]

Posted by Richter (here)
I keep on wondering how it is possible that Israel can blow up Hezbollah leaders in Tehran and plant thousands of exploding pagers, but did not see the attack of October 7 , 2023 coming.

As a clue, I'm willing to go with the resignation of Yossi Sariel, 8200 chief, saying they failed to react to intelligence due to prevailing notions.


My guess is that was the assumption they would blow through Hamas in two weeks.



Now, if it is pretty easy to find "love your enemy" references in the New Testament, this is where we find diverging ways of applying it, which is where we ask...what is Christianity...and as it arises in the Roman sphere, this is in the same context as the rise of Roman Oligarchy. I would suggest Jesus is more like Caesar, not oligarchy.

At least temporarily, the other dioceses probably didn't know much about the independent ways of Rome or who its benefactors were. Nominally, Rome and the Orthodox are both Nicene. As I have personally learned it from Orthodoxy, there is this feeling, because you have this belief that a Jew is committing the worst possible sin which is to reject the savior. Like he's making a voluntary choice to go to hell. The conundrum is that it is not a problem for God to love him the same way as he loves you--can you be like this?

And so, ideally, in Heaven on Earth, you aren't allowed to make any laws that segregate or oppress him. In all likelihood, there were usually attempts to charge them higher tax, but that's about as far as it went. And they seemed to do fine around North Africa and Asia Minor.

In Roman areas, we *do* find standard legal implementations to form ghettoes and restrict their professions. This becomes typical. They are materially oppressed to a noticeable degree, but these same lawmakers are the ones who allow them to charge usury. It sounds like a process of "making enemies" where there might otherwise be none.

It is not until later times that those places who "protest" the church of Rome by newly translating the Bible, do so in a way with interpreters who open the door for Zionism.

The Pope contradicts the Nicene Council by installing his personal view of the Spirit. The Protestants contradict the Nicene Council by granting favoritism to the Jews. At that point, we have a contrived social conflict that is not present elsewhere. If they have *another* conflict with Islam, I have no idea how Christianity could possibly take sides on that, although it should compel you to an honest view on genocidal war crimes. As far as I can tell, it cannot support Zionism to begin with, but should accuse it.

[161803398]

I am tired of the OOPS excuse. The more they get away with it the more they do it.
But can you tell me about this?:

It is not until later times that those places who "protest" the church of Rome by newly translating the Bible, do so in a way with interpreters who open the door for Zionism.

[arjunaloka_official]

Should Christians support Israeli military action?

I first suggest abstracting it to remove at least some of the emotions. So we get:

Should Christians support military action?

The answer to this question is quite simple: No.

The reason for this is:
- You shall honor life (Ten Commandments)
- You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Golden Rule)
- If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other one to him as well (Sermon on the Mount)

Turning the other cheek is ultimately a karmic consideration. Unfortunately, when you see violence, it is deserved - because if it were not deserved, it could not happen. This is very hard for many people to swallow. This does not mean that you should not resist violence. However, it does mean that you should not try to fight fire with fire (or violence with violence). Your resistance to violence should be peaceful. Because if you add violence, everything will get worse. At worst, it means that you must accept violence against yourself - like Jesus did. Jesus did not fight against the Roman Empire by using violence, because by killing the murderers, you become the murderer yourself and thus the thing you were trying to avoid. I am fully aware that this sets the bar very high - on Jesus' level. So I understand anyone who chooses self-defense in the face of violence. However, Jesus would not, I believe, choose violence.

How did Jesus get into such a difficult situation? Most of us enter this reality due to karmic debt. But Jesus entered our reality through a virgin birth – that is, without karma, only through his free will to teach us.

As Jesus said:
"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

[shaberon]

Posted by 161803398 (here)
I am tired of the OOPS excuse. The more they get away with it the more they do it.
But can you tell me about this?:

It is not until later times that those places who "protest" the church of Rome by newly translating the Bible, do so in a way with interpreters who open the door for Zionism.

Naturally.

There were a few "English Bibles" by Tyndale and Wycliffe that were not very big or in circulation, i. e. pre-printing press.


In the 1500s you get the Protestant Reformation by Calvin and Luther primarily. So the major, printed effort is in the time of their successors.


This is self-encrypted on a page called Christian Zionism:

Puritans and Presbyterians spent some time in Geneva in the 1560s under Calvin's successor Theodore Beza and developed a translation of the Bible called the Geneva Bible, which contained footnotes in reference to the Book of Romans, specifically claiming that the Jews would be converted to Christianity in the end times and reorientating attention to Palestine as a central theatre. This view came to be taken up strongly by English Puritans, Lowland Scots Presbyterians, and even some Continental Protestants.

On Beza's page, nothing is really expressed about this. He does however write a book which is defining religion as the exact opposite of Dharma:


Concerning the Rights of Rulers Over Their Subjects and the Duty Of Subjects Towards Their Rulers


Now, you see what happened. It was the same Latin Bible, until this printed translation for the Protestants, which slips radicalism into a footnote.

This only multiplies as you go through the King James Bible, and then around the 1890s there is the "Scofield Concordance" which makes all these zionist remarks easy to find.

The problem was that King James did not like the insinuation of Israel as more powerful than Britain. In terms of the King James Bible:


It pioneered several innovations in content and translation. For example, it used the word “church” when rendering the Greek ekklesia instead of Tyndale’s and Coverdale’s “congregation.”


It moved "Acts" from the end to the middle, and has a few stock ideas such as:


Antichrist as the Pope



as for it becoming standard in England:


Puritans with such hopes were seriously disappointed when King James I rejected the GB altogether. In his estimate, the GB was the worst on the market, as he made clear at the Hampton Court Conference in 1604 (“I think that of all, that of Geneva is the worst.”). Of course, his comments were not directed towards the translation as they were towards the marginal annotations. According to King James I, he saw these notes as “very partial, untrue, seditious, and savoring too much of dangerous and traitorous conceits.”


And between 1642 and 1715 five or more editions of the KJV used the Geneva annotations!


King James's objection was along the lines of the two possible authorities:


Bishops <--> republicanism


Geneva was a republic; the suspicion is obvious.

The annotations challenged the “divine right of kings,” a doctrine advocated by King James.


But on a popular level:


“England was a Protestant nation, and the Geneva Bible was its sacred book.”


Then, as we see, the Stuarts were deposed by Oliver Cromwell. He is the first known head of state to plan on using the Jewish diaspora for hegemony, and all British governments have carried this policy ever since.

The Geneva Bible’s notes on Romans 11:25 and 11:28 jump out as being light years ahead of their time with regard to the future prophesied for the Jewish people.

And it turns out this is mostly promulgated by the followers of John Knox.


What am I supposed to say about Beza and the Puritans? They're not Apostles??

There are a million thousand and two other details after that, but, it is recognizable if someone just sticks something in a Bible and a king reacts vehemently, this does not happen in Orthodoxy. Instead, Protestantism has to fight the Catholics. Since then, we have countries that are almost exclusively existentially defined by this argument, and in the rest of the world, there is simply no such thing.

[161803398]

I avoided learning about most of this finding it disgusting. I do know about the printing press and Luther. I was born a natural animist, my mother being the descendant of Vikings from Jamtland, formerly a Viking Republic. My father was Northern Irish/Scots from a sometimes Church of ireland and sometimes Methodist family but a natural Republican who had no interest in religion although a spiritual person. My Scottish aunt by marriage suggested a Prebysterian Sunday school as I was a spiritual person and I was excited about it because I thought I would learn about God. But all they talked about was war.....to children, my age. This prompted my question: Where is this place we are always talking about? Answer: "Oh, it's thousands of miles away." When? "thousands of years ago" I thought these people were out of their minds.

[shaberon]

Posted by 161803398 (here)
But all they talked about was war.....to children, my age. This prompted my question: Where is this place we are always talking about?

When I first heard of Sunday School, I had a meltdown. That's all they had to say was that such a school existed, and I ran and hid in a corner. It startled my natural animism.

Now, it seems to me, I get the rebound from millions of adults who were nursed on "Israel and war". Apparently these brains have been re-wired since infancy? Is it possible to ever see clearly after this trauma??


Well, transfer that same way of thinking to the next big one. You will again find around the 1700s, it is these British theologians who invent the phrase "Gog and Magog", and decide it must apply to the modern countries, Germany and Russia. Whatever Ezekiel was talking about--probably Baal Zaphon--was simply to his near north. Similarly why would you think John of Patmos was talking about anything other than his neighboring region and its near future??

The same obsession tracks through "Israelism", the belief that Europeans or especially the English are the remnants of the Lost Tribes.

So you get this bloodline devotion mixed with a type of drifting genocide.

Well, if I can agree with Luther at least to the extent that something was probably wrong with what the Catholics were doing, my question would be why you do not return to the religion of Jerusalem? Why would we take someone's interpretive footnotes and invent such a self-centered scheme??

Overall, I do not think there is any reason that ancient people remember an event from thousands of years ago, whether a meteor, prophet, etc., and their vision of the future is not thousands of years and thousands of miles away. That sounds like a complete contradiction to any "normal" way of life. The natural average implies you would learn from your grandfather, and teach to your grandson. I'm not sure human beings can successfully apply energy outside of that scope. That changes when you can print random ideas, instead of your mouth and brain tracking day-to-day existence and its priorities. If this was a lot harder with primitive technology, then, it seems to me you would be *less* interested in the grandiose.


All of those tweaks can be revealed, starting from the Romans footnote, and I can only imagine the children's version must be highly conducive to complicity.

[Kryztian]

Posted by shaberon (here)

Posted by 161803398 (here)
But all they talked about was war.....to children, my age. This prompted my question: Where is this place we are always talking about?

When I first heard of Sunday School, I had a meltdown. That's all they had to say was that such a school existed, and I ran and hid in a corner. It startled my natural animism.

Now, it seems to me, I get the rebound from millions of adults who were nursed on "Israel and war". Apparently these brains have been re-wired since infancy? Is it possible to ever see clearly after this trauma??


Well, transfer that same way of thinking to the next big one. You will again find around the 1700s, it is these British theologians who invent the phrase "Gog and Magog", and decide it must apply to the modern countries, Germany and Russia. Whatever Ezekiel was talking about--probably Baal Zaphon--was simply to his near north. Similarly why would you think John of Patmos was talking about anything other than his neighboring region and its near future??

Kim Iversen reviews the "Gog and Magog" prophesies for Ezekiel and how they are influencing our politicians. She also looks back at the original prophesy text and does some logical analysis of the parties involved in the prophecy and asks who they could be and concludes that the evil nations of Gog and Magog that God will come to destroy are probably the U.S.A and Israel! That is, if you believe in prophesy and I don't think Kim really does.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=SVB4rwHIbBo