Is the Mask of Christ at the Checkpoint Slipping? - Ariel Rudolph ISRAEL TODAY

Is the Mask of Christ at the Checkpoint Slipping?

Sunday, March 06, 2016 |  Ariel Rudolph  ISRAEL TODAY

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Topics:

Messianic Jews

At the Christ at the Checkpoint (CATC) conference in 2014 an invitation was extended to Rami Hamdallah, Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority and president of An-Najah University in Nablus, to give the opening address. It was under Hamdallah's presidency that a grotesque Hamas-sponsored recreation of the Sbarro Pizzeria terror attack was celebrated. In this attack, 15 civilians were murdered, including children and a pregnant woman, and another 130 wounded.

If the invitation extended to Hamdallah was not enough to warn of the affiliations and heartfelt allegiances of the CATC conference organizers, then this year's speaker lineup should remove all doubt.

This year's speakers, almost without exception, are an impressive lineup of hard-core ecumenical supporters and supercessionists. They will no doubt clamour to take the limelight in denigrating Israel for her "humanitarian abuses" and the "illegal occupation of the Land of Israel", the right of which has long passed from the natural offspring of Abraham to the "spiritual" offspring of Abraham.

Despite the fact that all the speakers claim to be "peacemakers" and protagonists of "reconciliation" based on "biblical principles of peace, justice, and love", this year we have a new face making an appearance at CATC.

There is an old Aesop adage that says "you are known by the company you keep". This adage is based on Proverbs 13:20 "Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm." (NIV)

The new face at CATC this year is in the personage of Mustafa Abu Sway. A Muslim scholar, Islamic apologist and theologian. His association, activities with, and support of Hamas institutions are well known and documented. He is an overt Islamist. His activities on and around the Temple Mount are also well known.

This year the noticeable absence of any notable Israeli Messianic leadership as speakers, with the exception of Lisa Loden, is not a coincidence either. Loden serves as an advisor to Musalaha, whose founder has sympathized with and downplayed the uses of, and reasons for, Hamas terror tunnels.

Loden authored a 2007 article "Reconciliation - against the wall in Israel / Palestine", in which she states:

"As the wall continues to be built, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the believers who live on opposite sides of the wall to meet one another."

And in another statement:

"The situation in Israel/Palestine today is one of separation, animosity, hostility and destructive conflict and imbalance of power. Walls will not aid the situation."

The fact is that acts of mass terrorism, initiated from the areas of Judea & Samaria, have effectively been reduced to a trickle since the highs of the second Intifada by the erection of the security barrier.

It seems as if the Messianic Jewish community have understood the primary purposes of CATC, despite previous attempts at presenting the biblical rights of the Jewish people to inherit and inhabit the Land of Israel, and have decided to heed King Solomon's admonition.

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Islamists Murder Man Who Converted to Christianity, Leave His Wife to Die

8/28/2015 JESSILYN JUSTICE  charisma news

Christians protest in Pakistan. (YouTube)

Join us on our new podcast each weekday for an interesting story, well told, from Charisma News. Listen at charismapodcastnetwork.com.

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An Islamist group murdered a Christian man and attempted to kill his wife after she converted from Islam. 

The young couple, both in their 20s, married last year and have been fleeing her family ever since. But over the summer, her family hunted them down and attempted to brutally murder both. The wife, however, survived.

"The Muslim men first brutally tortured the couple with fists and kicks and then thrice shot (husband)—one bullet hit him in his ankle, the second in the ribs while the third targeted his face," the wife's attorney, Aneeqa Maria Anthony, tells Morning Star News. "(The wife) was shot in the abdomen."

The Vatican Insider reports one of the wife's cousins is now bragging about the slaying, believing he has restored the family's honor. 

Christians have long been targeted in Pakistan, a staunch Muslim nation. Pakistani courts abide by "blasphemy laws," which carry life sentences for those who speak against the Quran. When tried, Christians are often sentenced to death row. 

The British Broadcasting Corporation reports most Pakistanis support the laws and believe the edicts come straight from the Quran and are not man-made. 

They report more than 147 Christians have been killed through the court system since the laws were enacted in the late 1980s. These numbers do not include "honor killings," where Christians are brutally attacked by Muslim mobs. 

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Islamist Assault: 'Saturday Kill Jews, Sunday Kill Christians'

By Julie Stahl and Scott Ross

CBN News Jerusalem Bureau

JERUSALEM, Israel -- Persecution of Jews and persecution of Christians: Is there a link between the two? Journalist Lela Gilbert says yes.Gilbert has written extensively about the global assault on Christians around the world. She recently spoke with CBN's Scott Ross about her latest book, Saturday People, Sunday People.

The California author arrived in Israel during the 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon for a three-month visit. Today, she spends much of her time in Jerusalem. She shared with Ross about radical Islamic plans to first rid the Middle East of Jews and then of Christians.But first, she said she has noticed that persecution by Islamists is not the only challenge for Christians in Jerusalem.

Disunity Among Christians
Ross: There are many Christian sects, denominations, etc, in this Land, how are they doing with one another?

Gilbert: Not too well. They're not doing much better than the ones in America.

Ross: It was Nehemiah that said, look we're divided on the wall one from another and how are they going to do battle if they don't have one mind and one strategy, one approach to everything? One! Jesus prayed it.

Gilbert: You know you've got Christians arguing about prophecy, I mean, evangelicals arguing about all kinds of things, much less the old churches who have ancient rifts within themselves - that go back to the fourth century. So it's not surprising but what we know is that we all look pretty much the same through a jihadi rifle site. And maybe we need to remember that.

Ross: Are you hopeful?

Gilbert: I'm hopeful because of my faith in the Lord and in His way of working things out. Politically, I can't understand what's going to happen…my hope is in Him…He's worked in my life in so many miraculous ways that I have to believe He's going to work amongst His people and bring them together and protect them.

Her New Book
Ross: And now out of all this, a book. I was fascinated by the title define that significance.

Gilbert: It's graffiti from radical Islamists that appears throughout the Middle East. In the best terms it says, "First comes Saturday, then comes Sunday." But there's a flag, a photo of a flag in the book that says, "On Saturday we kill the Jews, on Sunday we kill the Christians." And that's where I got the title.

Gilbert said even though many of the world's Muslims are not violent, their voice is drowned out by radical elements.

Video with Gilbert on CBN News

Israel Marks Six-Day War's 46th Anniversary

By Tzippe Barrow
CBN News Internet Producer - Jerusalem
Wednesday, June 05, 2013



JERUSALEM, Israel -- Forty-six years ago Wednesday, Israeli pilots carried out a preemptive strike on the Egyptian Air Force, effectively grounding the entire fleet.

For the next six days, the Jewish state would fight a fierce war against Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, which joined two days into what became known as the Six-Day War.

When the fighting ended on June 10, 1967, Israelis had much to be thankful for.

After 2,000 years, Jerusalem was reunited under Jewish sovereignty, along with the Golan Heights and Judea and Samaria -- called the West Bank under Jordanian occupation, a label that persists today.

No longer would Jews be denied access to the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City. No longer would Syrian snipers target Israeli farmers in the Hula Valley.

Israel also captured the Sinai Peninsula, but despite investing heavily in its development for more than a decade, ceded the peninsula within the framework of the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty.

The modern nation-state had shown the world it could and would defend its right to exist.

More wars would be fought and won over the next 46 years. Yet today, neighboring Arab countries -- and much of the world for that matter -- harbor seemingly unending resentment against the Jewish homeland.

For many, Zionism has become a dirty word. Israeli towns and cities outside the 1948 armistice lines, along with Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem, are called "settlements," as if they were some kind of illegal, transient thing instead of home to 350,000 Jewish residents.

Late last month, Jordan announced it would exclude Israel from its upcoming military drill whose purpose is "to increase the level of coordination among civil, military and humanitarian organizations" as well as boost "cooperation among the participating states…," The Jordan Times reported.

According to Amman, some 15,000 soldiers from "friendly countries," including the United States, Great Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Czech Republic, Poland, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates, will take part in "Eager Lion 2013."

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Paul Hirschson told CBN News Israel wasn't meant to participate in this exercise. The real question, he said, is why Jordan felt the need to emphasize Israel's exclusion.

"Beyond the rumors, there is security cooperation between the two parties on various issues," Hirschson said. "We were never meant to be part of this drill. We weren't going to be from the beginning."

Nonetheless, many of these "friendly" countries would see Israel return to the pre-1967 borders (1948 armistice lines), which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu labeled "indefensible," and Tourism Minister Uzi Landau called "Auschwitz borders," a concept put forth by the late Abba Eban.

"Before 1967, they [Palestinian Arabs] didn't have Katyusha rockets and missiles to the extent owned today by Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, which constitute a strategic threat to Israel," Landau said in a recent interview.

Meanwhile, Iran is moving toward nuclear weapons capability as it continues to arm, train and fund Islamist groups in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, while vowing to wipe Israel off the map.

While no one wants peace more than Israelis, history has shown that has never come easily.