The following was originally posted on April:
Jews around the world celebrated the festival of Purim this past March 4th and 5th. Purim is a remembrance of the deliverance of the Jews from the lies and intrigues of the king's royal vizier Haman in the Persia of most probably Xerxes I, the story of which is the Old Testament book of Esther. The Obama administration's dialogue with Iran on an agreement which essentially gives legitimacy to Iran's nuclear program and secures a day of tragedy for Israel was nearing completion at the time. Some commentators including Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu brought up the similarity in hatred for Jews by Haman then and Iran today. The implied message is that God will today save Israel from such an enemy as He did with Haman.
Scripture tells us that God will indeed defend the Jewish people who come to recognize their Messiah well into the Tribulation period whether that period be very soon or for some time to come. It also speaks of wrath upon all those who hated the Jews simply because they were Jews. The miscalculation here as to the former is that the Israeli people today are not as those described as suffering near elimination in the time of Haman, for the people of Israel today suffer from the same blindness to God and His Word that America does. The warnings of Scripture to them are as terrifying as the warnings to us and ignored to the same extent. Neither Israel nor America should expect God's intervention. Without repentance, we... Israel and the United States... are on our own!
This is what makes Iran's unequivocating hatred for the two of us worthy of extreme concern. I should say here that by Iran I mean those ruling the people at this time, for those Iranians not eagerly looking to Armageddon as a catalyst for the return of their 'Mahdi' are in just as extreme straits as we are. In fact the whole world is at a precipice right now in this perfect storm where the Middle East is on the brink of nuclear warfare, a maniac stills rules with nuclear weapons in North Korea and Vladimir Putin does not hesitate in bringing up the possibility of a nuclear confrontation. All this while the world's bastion of freedom and bulwark of strength grovels under the tyranny of a communist Manchurian President who is bent on our downfall.
I'm inclined to believe that our sacrifices of worship today in America, for the very most part, are a stench in God's nostrils. This statement probably offends some if not most if not all readers but surely there is ample evidence of just such circumstances in Scripture and those in question then were offended also. Shouldn't we at least consider the possibility that we are as they were? We attend church and then retire to the mayhem of a football or baseball game, or we rush off to afternoons with the extended family with God no where in our minds. We probably read 100 times more of the sports pages or a popular novel over the course of a week than God's Word and when we do read Christian literature it may as well have "Got Milk?" written on the cover. And yet we say or sing or plaster on our bumpers 'God bless America' as if that is a password to God's heart.
No, we are on our own....and blissfully ignorant of it. The people in Israel today should be, at the very least, as vigilant and trepidatious as those who prepared for the worst at the moment when Israel in May of 1948 became the State of Israel....yet in reading their newspapers I see the same vapidity in their editorials and letters-to-the editor that we in American metropolitan centers have honed to perfection. These are perilous times that demand vigilance but we have responded with haughty disdain for any warnings, our motto being Vigilance Reprobari or Vigilance Rejected.
Jews around the world celebrated the festival of Purim this past March 4th and 5th. Purim is a remembrance of the deliverance of the Jews from the lies and intrigues of the king's royal vizier Haman in the Persia of most probably Xerxes I, the story of which is the Old Testament book of Esther. The Obama administration's dialogue with Iran on an agreement which essentially gives legitimacy to Iran's nuclear program and secures a day of tragedy for Israel was nearing completion at the time. Some commentators including Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu brought up the similarity in hatred for Jews by Haman then and Iran today. The implied message is that God will today save Israel from such an enemy as He did with Haman.
Scripture tells us that God will indeed defend the Jewish people who come to recognize their Messiah well into the Tribulation period whether that period be very soon or for some time to come. It also speaks of wrath upon all those who hated the Jews simply because they were Jews. The miscalculation here as to the former is that the Israeli people today are not as those described as suffering near elimination in the time of Haman, for the people of Israel today suffer from the same blindness to God and His Word that America does. The warnings of Scripture to them are as terrifying as the warnings to us and ignored to the same extent. Neither Israel nor America should expect God's intervention. Without repentance, we... Israel and the United States... are on our own!
This is what makes Iran's unequivocating hatred for the two of us worthy of extreme concern. I should say here that by Iran I mean those ruling the people at this time, for those Iranians not eagerly looking to Armageddon as a catalyst for the return of their 'Mahdi' are in just as extreme straits as we are. In fact the whole world is at a precipice right now in this perfect storm where the Middle East is on the brink of nuclear warfare, a maniac stills rules with nuclear weapons in North Korea and Vladimir Putin does not hesitate in bringing up the possibility of a nuclear confrontation. All this while the world's bastion of freedom and bulwark of strength grovels under the tyranny of a communist Manchurian President who is bent on our downfall.
I'm inclined to believe that our sacrifices of worship today in America, for the very most part, are a stench in God's nostrils. This statement probably offends some if not most if not all readers but surely there is ample evidence of just such circumstances in Scripture and those in question then were offended also. Shouldn't we at least consider the possibility that we are as they were? We attend church and then retire to the mayhem of a football or baseball game, or we rush off to afternoons with the extended family with God no where in our minds. We probably read 100 times more of the sports pages or a popular novel over the course of a week than God's Word and when we do read Christian literature it may as well have "Got Milk?" written on the cover. And yet we say or sing or plaster on our bumpers 'God bless America' as if that is a password to God's heart.
No, we are on our own....and blissfully ignorant of it. The people in Israel today should be, at the very least, as vigilant and trepidatious as those who prepared for the worst at the moment when Israel in May of 1948 became the State of Israel....yet in reading their newspapers I see the same vapidity in their editorials and letters-to-the editor that we in American metropolitan centers have honed to perfection. These are perilous times that demand vigilance but we have responded with haughty disdain for any warnings, our motto being Vigilance Reprobari or Vigilance Rejected.
