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Behold The Fig Tree

Behold The Fig Tree
By Jack Kinsella

The supreme spiritual authority of the Palestinian Authority, Sheikh Taisar Tamimi, ruled that Arabs who work in Jewish construction are ‘traitors’ deserving of imprisonment.

The ruling also includes Arabs who take part in archaeological digs by the Israel Antiquities Authority in eastern Jerusalem, or who work with other Jewish organizations in the old city of Jerusalem.

The fatwa also forbids Arabs from doing business or working with “settlers” – Jewish residents of Judea, Samaria or eastern Jerusalem.

Sheikh Tamimi is the President of the PA’s Sharia Moslem religious courts. His fatwa, or religious edict, gives special emphasis to the archaeological digs on the Temple Mount.

Tamimi’s fatwa declared that “traitors to Islam and to their homeland” must be punished with “severe and difficult prison sentences,” saying Israeli construction and archaeological works are designed only to “Judaize Jerusalem.”

Last August, Tamimi condemned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as “all Jewish rabbis and extremist organizations,” for lying and asserting that Jerusalem was a Jewish city.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas threatened a “religious” war against Israel. The reason? Because Israel added the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb to its list of heritage sites to be preserved and protected.

Why would the PA freak out over Israel wanting to preserve the burial site Abraham, Isaac and Joseph? Because Islam claims the same three patriarchs as theirs, as recorded in the Old Testament.

Hmmm. Makes the whole concept of two states living side-by-side and at peace somewhat problematic, doesn’t it?

Nobody on either side is even pretending anymore.

The Palestinians have stopped pretending the objective was ever peace with Israel and the Israelis have stopped pretending they believed the Palestinians weren’t pretending all along.

Last week, Israeli archeologists reported the discovery of a wall dating to the time of Solomon and David.

The current secular historical view is that King David and King Solomon never actually existed, but were mythical figures, sort of like King Arthur and Sir Lancelot.

That is the view championed by the Palestinians and their apologists.

The discovery of this wall running as close as it does to Temple Mount supports the Bible’s account of a powerful kingdom centered in Jerusalem near Temple Mount 3000 years ago, when the Bible says David bought the Temple Mount from Araunah the Jebusite (Samuel 24:24).

That argues against the popular depiction of Israel as an invading and occupying force bent on stealing ‘traditional Palestinian’ land.

Assessment

Taking advantage of this generation’s willingness to rewrite history without a backward look, organizad Islam only recently started denying the pre-existence of a Jewish state in the land of Israel.

I am personally astonished at how many people have actually come to believe that modern Israel ‘stole’ the land from the ‘indigenous’ Arabs.

There are entire Christian denominations that have divested themselves from all things Israeli — in solidarity with the Palestinians as if Israel had no legitimate claim whatsoever.

If today’s Israel is not the Israel of antiquity, then where did all these Jews come from? Israeli Jews aren’t like Americans — there was no such people as ‘American’s 300 years ago.

Americans are the descendents of settlers from all countries and all races who immigrated to this continent from their mother countries.

That doesn’t describe the Jews that immigrated to Israel from the Diaspora. There were Jews that populated all of these mother countries. There were Jews before America’s mother countries even existed.

If those Jews didn’t originally come from Israel, where did they come from?

It sounds like a bone-headed question. Like asking, “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?” But contained in the answer is the solution to the entire Middle East peace process — if anyone were actually interested in solving it fairly.

The issue in contention is the legitimacy of the Jewish state. If the Jews didn’t come from Israel, where did they come from? Roman records say there was an Israel.

Insofar as it is possible to make comparisons, there is no historical contradictions between official Roman records and the historical record offered by the Bible.

The Romans say there were Jews in Judea, later renamed ‘Palestina’ by the same Romans. There were Jews in AD 70 that were scattered into the Diaspora by the Romans. There have been Jews that have popped up in the historical record of every nation throughout history.

There is no possible way to sever the Jews from Judea in AD 70 or to recognize it’s renaming as ‘Palestina’ without acknowledging what it was renamed from — “Judea” named for the Tribe of Judah, the survivor of David’s Israel, forever after known as Jews.

I’ve read lots of fanciful attempts to do so, all of which require impossible numbers of conspirators acting over generations and centuries to steal the identity of Jews.

They stole the identity of the Jews — and the ghettos in medieval Europe, down through the eastern pogroms and of course, the European Holocaust. Yeah. Right.

But that’s one theory. There are as many others as credulity will allow. There is no historical people of antiquity whose origins, history, customs, culture and religious identity is more carefully documented or uniquely defined than that of the Jews.

Every argument that advances the theory that today’s Jews aren’t the Jews of antiquity simply ignores the question, “where did these Jews come from?” as if it were irrelevant.

And if today’s Jews aren’t the legitimate possessors of their mother country, then where IS their ‘mother country?’ Is there ANOTHER historically defined race of people that DON’T have a mother country?

Every people can point to where their ancestors came from. It is what defines them. The Irish are from Ireland — that’s why they aren’t called Norwegians — because Norwegians are from Norway.

All this should be painfully obvious to those Christian denominations that stand against Israel and support divestiture and so on. And since it should be, then it is — and they choose to ignore it for reasons inexplicable in the natural.

The only remaining explanation falls more into the category of supernatural. That Israel is hated is without question. But nobody is hated without cause. Except Israel.

Israel has given the world no cause to hate her. Throughout her history, she has simply reacted — there is even a word for hating Jews without cause. It’s called antiSemitism.

There are those who would try to draw a line or a distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. That line only exists in academic theory.

An anti-Semite doesn’t like Zionists and not many anti-Zionists like Jews. That there are exceptions only reinforces the existence of the rule.

As I said from the outset, it is inexplicable in the natural. But it is the situation predicted by Scripture, not just for the last days, but for the past two thousand years.

Jew-hatred transcends the natural because it is supernatural. The world hates Israel because it stands as a visible reminder of the existence of the God of the Bible.

Israel’s existence forces the world to consider the possibility of God’s existence, and therefore of their own accountability before Him.

So the world hates Israel with a supernatural hatred, inexplicable even to themselves.

“And He spake to them a parable; Behold the fig tree, and all the trees; When they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your own selves that summer is now nigh at hand.

So likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand.

Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled.” (Luke 21:29-32)

There is to my mind no more powerful argument favoring the reality of Israel’s God or the soon return of His Son for His Bride than the impossible scenario that exists today. Which means the Lord is coming.

It’s the only explanation that makes sense.

Note: Originally Published in February 2010.

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