Jeremiah to today's Israel: No 2-state solution!
An absolutely excellent commentary:
Posted: June 26, 2009
1:00 am Eastern
By Bill Salus
© 2009
Presently, there is an unprecedented push for peace in the Mideast. President Obama, Pope Benedict XVI, along with a significant host of other powerful world leaders, clamor once and for all for a two-state solution. They have heightened concern that the writing is on the 403-mile wall currently protecting Israeli's from Palestinian terror that a Middle East war is imminent.
As the clock rapidly ticks toward what will likely be the prophetic Psalm 83 showdown, Israel circles the wagons in preparation for a multi-front confederate conflict with its ancient enemies, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu loosens his grip from the thorny Obama olive branch of "Engagement."
Currently, the international prescription for two states comprised of Jews and Palestinians living autonomously and peacefully side by side requires Israel to destroy outposts, freeze settlements, forfeit land acquired after 1967, divide Jerusalem and allow Palestinian refugees to homestead the Holy Land. These refugees number in the millions, cannot obtain citizenship in the surrounding Arab nations and represent a second-generation population that hates and blames the Jews for their impoverished existence. The ploy of Israel's enemies has been to banner the plight of these Palestinians as the justification for Islamic jihad against Israel and her supporters.
It is quite apparent that the world has become empathetic to the Palestinian plight but apathetic to God's foreign policy contained in Genesis 12:3 and the one-state solution prescribed in Jeremiah 12:14-17. Genesis 12:3 bestows blessings upon those that bless the Israeli descendants of Abraham but conversely must curse those populations that oppose them. Jeremiah 12:15-17 follows stride by declaring that God would have compassion on the pro-Israel populations, but "will utterly pluck up and destroy" Israel's neighbors who fail to operate in compliance with God's roadmap for peace.
God's peace plan
The Bible foretold in Isaiah 11:11, Ezekiel 37:12, Deuteronomy 30:3-5 and elsewhere of a time when the Jews would be brought back into the Promised Land from the nations of the world. This regathering began 61 years ago on May 14, 1948, and is ongoing today. Possessing omniscient foresight, God foreknew that an Arab-Israeli conflict would erupt as a result.
Jeremiah 12:14-17 tells us that as the time drew near for the return of the Jews into Israel the landscape of the Middle East would undergo a geopolitical facelift as God intended to restore Arabs, Persians and Jews back into the historical homes of their ancestral heritages. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1917, we see this turn of geopolitical events take place as one by one the Arab, Persian and Jewish states emerged.
more...
See also:
From Haaretz, "Full text of Netanyahu's foreign policy speech at Bar Ilan"
From Fox News, "White House Calls Netanyahu Speech 'Important Step Forward' in Peace Process"
From the Christian Science Monitor, "Netanyahu's speech prompts anger from Palestinians, praise from the White House"
From the New Republic blog, "The Plank", "Decoding Netanyahu's Speech"
posted by Dr. Denice Hanley, DPM, M.Div. @ 3:01 PM
3 Comments:
The Promised Land is not the political entity of modern day Israel. The Promised Land is the Church.
I disagree, the Church does not replace Israel, for, although He is "already present in his Church" (Catechism #671), "until all things are subjected to Him...Christ's reign is nevertheless yet to be fulfilled...".
Jews scattered throughout the earth and within their physical homeland of Israel who are waiting for their Messiah to come, will not recognize Him in the person of Jesus, until He appears in glory to them
in His second coming. For in His first coming many Jews did not recognize Him, because He came to them in humility as the Suffering Servant, according to Philippeans 2:5-8 (NAB). For:
5
Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus,
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Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.
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Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in
appearance,
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he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.
(See http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/philippians/philippians2.htm.)
As the Catechism #674 then states:
The glorious Messiah's coming is suspended at every moment of history until his recognition by "all Israel", for "a hardening has come upon part of Israel" in their "unbelief" toward Jesus. St. Peter says to the Jews of Jerusalem after Pentecost:
"Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom
heaven must receive until the time for establishing all that God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old." St. Paul echoes him: "For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?" The "full inclusion" of the Jews in the Messiah's salvation, in the wake of "the full number of the Gentiles", will enable the People of God to achieve "the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ", in which "God may be all in all".
See the Catechism, #668-#677 (see http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s2c2a7.htm#674).
See also the excellent series on EWTN, "The Last Things: In Time and Eternity" by Colin Donovan and Desmond Birch at http://www.ewtn.com/vondemand/audio/searchprog.asp. and many of the offerings by Desmond Birch on eschatology at http://www.ewtn.com/vondemand/audio/searchprog.asp.
But what does the return of all Israel mean? Surely it does not mean the reestablishment of the modern political nation of Israel? The stump of Israel referred to in the prophets seems to me to be those Jews who were born into the nascent Church, and continues today with all the Jews who come into the Church - and it seems most likely to me that what St. Paul speaks of refers to Israel being saved through the Church. I don't see how the modern political entity of Israel is referenced by the prophecies of the Old Testament or of the New.
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