Weekly Update: Believing the truth
The spirit of the age is “confusion”. On all sides, there is chaos. As statues are pulled down, history is not being rewritten, it is being erased. There is no longer any history, no longer any truth. The whole idea there may be an objective reality is totally rejected. Every man, woman, transgender and whatever else you want to be for him/her/itself.
If this is not what Apostle Paul was talking about in 2 Thess 4, I don’t know what is:
“This man will come to do the work of Satan with counterfeit power and signs and miracles. He will use every kind of evil deception to fool those on their way to destruction, because they refuse to love and accept the truth that would save them. So God will cause them to be greatly deceived, and they will believe these lies. Then they will be condemned for enjoying evil rather than believing the truth.”
And so it is with Israel’s history. Few remember, or care to remember, that 100 years ago the world community acknowledged (and legally recognized) “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine”, in the Mandate for Palestine. Today, national leaders are falling over each other to condemn Jews for living in Palestine.
But it goes deeper than that. Israel’s “rights” don’t derive from what the Allied Powers decided in 1920, or the League of Nations in 1922 or the international community today. It’s not about law at all. The Jewish people don’t need “rights”, they don’t need our permission or our approval. The Jewish people are being brought home to the land because Messiah is coming, and they have a job to do: serve God and be a blessing to the nations. It’s as simple as that.
It’s up to the rest of us to decide whether or not to “enjoy evil”, or “believe the truth”.
Shabbat shalom,
Andrew Tucker
Editor-in-Chief – Israel & Christians Today
Aliyah from Ukraine
Koen Carlier and his team are assisting Jewish people in Ukraine who want to emigrate to Israel in a very practical way with transportation and arrangement of travel documents. With the current situation in Ukraine, the Jewish people are now listening more than ever to the call to return to Israel – the land of their forefathers.
Koen writes: Last Thursday (June 18, 2020) we got the news about the Aliyah of thirty-two Jewish men, women and children from Ukraine to Israel. On Monday June 22, these new olim left from Kiev. Read more..
In this moving account, Anemone Rüger explains how she went to Israel to bring love back to the Jewish people. “ God can use the broken pieces of our history and turn them into a blessing”. Today Anemone is involved in the work of Christians for Israel in Ukraine and coordinates the sponsor program for Holocaust Survivors. Read more..
Extension of Israeli law to parts of Judea and Samaria – whose land?
This week has seen a tsunami of initiatives in Israel and around the world to condemn Israel’s proposed “annexation” of parts of the West Bank.
Some lawyers (myself included) say this is not annexation at all, but a legitimate application of pre-existing sovereignty: Read more..
“A son” – Video teaching by Johannes Gerloff
Episode 29 in the series of teachings by Israeli-based Bible teacher and journalist Johannes Gerloff:
Hagar is promised a son. His character and future, however, seem ambiguous.
“Creation” – Video teaching by Rev. Willem J.J. Glashouwer
Rev. Willem Glashouwer helps us understand God’s prophetic word, and how prophecy is being fulfilled in our generation.
Planet earth looks like a spaceship where food supplies are running out, the air is no longer fresh, the fuel for the vital engines is running out, and where the crew is turning on each other to get whatever is still left.
Scripture for the week: 2 Thess. 2
Now, dear brothers and sisters, let us clarify some things about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and how we will be gathered to meet him. 2 Don’t be so easily shaken or alarmed by those who say that the day of the Lord has already begun. Don’t believe them, even if they claim to have had a spiritual vision, a revelation, or a letter supposedly from us. 3 Don’t be fooled by what they say. For that day will not come until there is a great rebellion against God and the man of lawlessness is revealed—the one who brings destruction.4 He will exalt himself and defy everything that people call god and every object of worship. He will even sit in the temple of God, claiming that he himself is God.
5 Don’t you remember that I told you about all this when I was with you? 6 And you know what is holding him back, for he can be revealed only when his time comes. 7 For this lawlessness is already at work secretly, and it will remain secret until the one who is holding it back steps out of the way. 8 Then the man of lawlessness will be revealed, but the Lord Jesus will slay him with the breath of his mouth and destroy him by the splendor of his coming.
9 This man will come to do the work of Satan with counterfeit power and signs and miracles. 10 He will use every kind of evil deception to fool those on their way to destruction, because they refuse to love and accept the truth that would save them.11 So God will cause them to be greatly deceived, and they will believe these lies. 12 Then they will be condemned for enjoying evil rather than believing the truth.
13 As for us, we can’t help but thank God for you, dear brothers and sisters loved by the Lord. We are always thankful that God chose you to be among the first to experience salvation—a salvation that came through the Spirit who makes you holy and through your belief in the truth. 14 He called you to salvation when we told you the Good News; now you can share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
15 With all these things in mind, dear brothers and sisters, stand firm and keep a strong grip on the teaching we passed on to you both in person and by letter.
16 Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal comfort and a wonderful hope, 17 comfort you and strengthen you in every good thing you do and say.
The goal of Israel & Christians Today is to help Christians to take God’s Word seriously, and study current events in the world in the context of the Bible.
Click here to subscribe.
