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Post by Daniel on Feb 22, 2016 8:38:29 GMT -5
Christ at the Checkpoint 2016: Scripture Ignored Promoting Anti-Israeli Views
By Dan Calic February 21, 2016
The fourth annual Christ at the Checkpoint conference is slated to take place March 5 – 13 near Bethlehem.
For the unfamiliar this biennial event, which began in 2010, brings together several hundred Christians, including leaders, from around the world primarily to proclaim the Arabs are victims of Israeli “occupation” and “injustice.”
The conference convenes under a banner of “peace, justice and reconciliation.” In reality the actual agenda is revisionist advocacy, promoting Arab victimization, while ignoring, and in some cases overtly rejecting what scripture says about Israel and the Jewish people.
They have taken replacement theology (supersessionism) to a more baseless level. Replacement theology in its classic sense is the belief that the Jews abrogated their covenants with God by not accepting Jesus as Messiah and the result is the Church has replaced them in God’s plan.
A simple look at Romans 11:1 confirms that view goes against scripture.
Jesus and the Church are Arabic
However, the Arabs have gone a step further. Not only are the Jews out as God’s Chosen, the Church as we know it as well as Jesus have both been re-invented. Jesus is not Jewish, but an Arab as is the Church itself. I wonder how many Christians worldwide are aware of this?
Rather than seeing Israel’s miraculous rebirth in 1948 as fulfillment of God’s promises to the Jewish people, CATC rejects this view, and uses the same terminology as the Muslims when referring to Israel , such as “occupation,” “apartheid state,” “colonial,” “racist,” etc.
Let’s consider the conference name -- Christ at the Checkpoint. This is meant to suggest that if Jesus were alive today he would be stopped at a checkpoint (as most Arabs are due to the terror attacks against Israel). He would be required to validate his identity to ensure he isn’t a terrorist, before being allowed entry into Israel. In essence they are implying Jesus is one of them, and would be humiliated by Israeli security.
Let’s unpack this a bit.
First off without getting into the theological differences between Jews and Christians about Jesus, there are some incontrovertible facts that are essential to this narrative.
Jesus is a Jew. He from the Jewish tribe of Judah.
He was raised Jewish. When he taught he did so in synagogues on Shabbat (the Jewish Sabbath). He never spoke in Christian churches on Sunday. Why? There were no Christian churches when he was alive. His message was for Jews. In fact what became known later as “Christianity” actually began as part of Judaism.
Yet the Arabs have painted over these facts and stolen his actual identity to promote a false revisionist agenda for their own gain.
continue reading www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/02/christ_at_the_checkpoint_2016_scripture_ignored_promoting_antiisraeli_views.html
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Post by Daniel on Mar 9, 2016 10:26:27 GMT -5
The subversion of American Evangelicals
Caroline Glick March 9th, 2016
Monday the Bethlehem Bible College, an Evangelical Christian college in Jesus’s hometown, opened its fourth biennial Christ at the Checkpoint conference. The conference, which is directed specifically toward US Evangelicals, will run through the week.
Today, Evangelical communities in the US number anywhere between 60 and 150 million people, depending on who is counting. They form the backbone of American support for the Jewish state. It is the support of the Evangelical community, rather than the Jewish community in the US that ensures that come hell or high water, no matter how Israel is demonized in the media and in academia, the majority of Americans continue to support Israel.
But will this support last? One of the more surprising aspects of the 2016 elections is Evangelical support for businessman Donald Trump. Trump in many ways personifies everything that people who take the Bible seriously are supposed to oppose. He owns casinos. He curses and uses profanity in his public appearances. He has donated to Planned Parenthood and forcefully supported abortions on demand.
Trump has also insisted repeatedly that he will be neutral toward Israel.
Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of Evangelical support for Trump is that he takes these positions as he runs against primary opponents who all wear their faith on their sleeves. All of his opponents have records of standing with the Evangelicals on social and other salient issues – including support for Israel.
What are we to make of this seemingly inexplicable phenomenon? At least as far as Israel is concerned, the readiness of Evangelicals to support the most anti-Israel candidate running for the Republican presidential nomination is no surprise.
To understand why this is the case, the Christ at the Checkpoint conference taking place this week in Bethlehem is a good place to look.
According to its website, the mission of the biennial conference “is to challenge Evangelicals to take responsibility to help resolve the conflicts in Israel/ Palestine by engaging with the teaching of Jesus on the Kingdom of God.”
The problem begins with the organizers’ interpretation of those teachings. College officials, among them keynote speakers at the conference, embrace and teach replacement theology. That theology maintains that God’s covenant with the Jews ended with Christianity.
In recent years, replacement theology has extended its biblical revisionism from Jews as people reviled for their rejection of Jesus and their supersession by Christians to Israel. The Jewish state is reviled as a religiously prohibited entity whose very existence is a sin against God.
According to current replacement theology, Jesus was not a Jew. He was a Palestinian. The Jews are not a people. They have no rights to the land of Israel.
Israel, it is asserted, has no historical or theological right to exist. Rather, according to the rewritten scriptures, the Palestinians are the chosen people.
Jews are colonialist invaders who have taken the land of Israel away from their rightful, biblically sanctioned owners.
This basic view is encapsulated in the very name “Christ at the Checkpoint.”
Today a Jewish Jesus would be prohibited from entering Bethlehem. Jews are barred from entering Palestinian population centers because Palestinians have a habit of murdering them. Indeed, just last week two IDF soldiers who accidentally entered a Palestinian village north of Jerusalem escaped a lynch mob by the skin of their teeth.
On the other hand, a Palestinian Jesus can be in Bethlehem. But to leave he has to go through an Israeli checkpoint (to ensure that he isn’t a terrorist, to be sure, but whatever).
So the image evoked by the name “Christ at the Checkpoint” ignores the reality of Palestinian terrorism.
And it leaves us with an image of the repression of a Palestinian Jesus at the hands of the Jews.
The replacement theology at the heart of the conference was made explicit by Rev. Jack Sara, president of the Bethlehem Bible Conference, at the 2012 conference. In his speech Sara edited Chapter 37 of the book of Ezekiel to transform the dry bones prophecy. That prophecy, of course, is one of the most Zionist passages in the Bible. God speaks to Ezekiel and tells him that the people of Israel will be reborn. They will be gathered from the four corners of the earth, return to Israel and restore the Davidic kingdom.
Yet in Sara’s revised version, the people of Israel, the descendants of Jacob, are replaced by the Palestinians.
Sara preached, “The hand of the Lord was on me and He brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and sent me in the middle of the West Bank – Bethlehem, Jenin and Salvit and Nablus and Ramallah.
“It was full of bones…. He asked me, ‘Son of Man, can these bones live? Can the Palestinian people live?’ Then He said to me ‘prophesy to these bones and same to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.’” Sara then said, “You see, the Palestinian people were and are a lot like this valley of dry bones that is in need of the Church to come and prophesy life on them.”
Last March the Bethlehem Bible College posted a promotional video ahead of a summer Christ at the Checkpoint conference directed toward young adults.
continue reading carolineglick.com/the-subversion-of-american-evangelicals/
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Post by Daniel on Mar 15, 2016 10:43:54 GMT -5
Christ at the Checkpoint or Crisis at the Checkpoint?
By Olivier Melnick March 12, 2016
I recently reviewed the current Christ at the Checkpoint (CatC) Manifesto point by point from a biblical perspective. As a result, I found myself either agreeing, disagreeing or a bit of both. The whole breakdown was part of a pre-conference review I did. One apparent core value of the CatC Manifesto–rightfully so– is reconciliation:
1. The Kingdom of God has come. Evangelicals must reclaim the prophetic role in bringing peace, justice and reconciliation in Palestine and Israel. 2. Reconciliation recognizes God’s image in one another.
On one hand, I do not agree on the point that the Kingdom of God has come (Kingdom Now Theology claims among other things, that Yeshua’s Kingdom was inaugurated at His first coming while Scripture states that He will reign as Messianic King on the throne of David from Jerusalem in a yet to come Millennial Messianic Kingdom as validated by Psalm 72:8, 11, 17; Isaiah 9:7, 11:6-11; Jeremiah 23:6, and Zechariah 3:10 among other Scriptures). But on the other hand, as a believer in Yeshua, I see the great need for peace, justice and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. Furthermore, as proposed in Article 2 of their Manifesto, I agree that we are created in God’s image and should look at each other from that perspective only (God created man and woman in His image, regardless of ethnicity as seen in Genesis 1:27; 5:1; 9:6; 1 Corinthians 11:7; and Ephesians 4:24.)
Reconciliation is indeed critical, as long as real reconciliation is sought.Biblical or not, proper reconciliation requires: 1. Identify the issue 2. Identify the protagonists 3. Recognize the need to reconcile 4. Recognize shortcomings 5. Seek forgiveness and unity
These five steps can be used in any context, but when it involves believers, it must be on the firm foundation of God’s word, based on a consistent and literal approach to the Bible. Anything less brings man’s opinion into the equation and reveals our inability to be unbiased and just. In the context of CatC 2016, it was hardly the case. the scale was tipped in favor of the Palestinian and Palestine from the word go!
It is obvious to Israelis and Arabs, as well as the rest of the world that there is a crisis/conflict in the Middle East. The issue has been identified as a disputed piece of land the size of the state of New Jersey. Some will claim that this sliver of real estate belongs to the Jewish people based on a covenant that God made with them through Abraham, going back to Genesis 12 and further ratified through Isaac and Jacob in Genesis 12:1-3, 7; 13:15;17:7-8, 19; 25:5-6; 26:3; 28:3-4 and 35:9-15. Others will argue that the land belonged to the Palestinians and was stolen, colonized and now suffers from an apartheid policy by Israel. Identifying the issue could be done by saying that opinions differ on whom the land belongs to.
The protagonists–for lack of a better word– are the Arabs and the Jews. The fact that Arabs in the region are now called Palestinians only exacerbates the issue. Before 1967, the word “Palestinian” simply described inhabitants of Eretz Yisrael also known back then as Palestine. It was then inhabited by Palestinian Arabs and Palestinian Jews. So technically, anytime Israelis and Palestinians are described as the two main protagonists, it is a misnomer and it results in setting-up a false premise. It would then be proper to describe the protagonists in the context of an “Arab/Israeli” conflict.
All sides speak of the obvious need to reconcile and bring peace to the region. CatC claims that the model for that reconciliation is Yeshua and His Gospels, yet the vast majority of the conference is spent describing Israel as the occupier and the enemy. There were so many instances where Israel was called the enemy during CatC, yet no mention was made of Palestinian terrorism, stabbings or any other feats of Islamic terror. They actually even invited a Muslim scholar who is linked to Hamas. CatC’s definition of reconciliation doesn’t seem to include the recognitions of both sides’ shortcomings and really seems to emphasize Israel need to apologize and stop the invasion of “Palestine.”
continue reading www.newantisemitism.com/antisemitism/christ-at-the-checkpoint-or-crisis-at-the-checkpoint
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