Standing in support of Israel, Jews, and believers in all the nations, in the name of Jesus (Yeshua). Sharing biblical truth, encouragement, news, and messages by Steve Martin.
A GROUP of Jewish leaders issued a historic public statement affirming their desire to accept “the hand offered to us by our Christian brothers and sisters.”
Agroup of prominent Orthodox rabbis in Israel, the United States and Europe have issued a historic public statement affirming that Christianity is “the willed divine outcome and gift to the nations” and urging Jews and Christians to “work together as partners to address the moral challenges of our era.”
“Jesus brought a double goodness to the world,” the statement reads. “On the one hand he strengthened the Torah of Moses majestically” and on the other hand “he removed idols from the nations,” instilling them “firmly with moral traits.”
This year 2015 marks the 50th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, the declaration issued in 1965 by the Second Vatican Council, which marked a watershed in Jewish-Christian relations.
In language unusual for its day, Nostra Aetate stated that “God holds the Jews most dear,” stressed the great “spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews,” and condemned “hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.”
Now, a group of Jewish leaders has responded in kind, expressing their desire to accept “the hand offered to us by our Christian brothers and sisters.”
“Christians are congregations that work for the sake of heaven who are destined to endure, whose intent is for the sake of heaven and whose reward will not denied,” the text reads.
The statement bears the title, “To Do the Will of Our Father in Heaven: Toward a Partnership between Jews and Christians,” and is signed by over 25 prominent Orthodox rabbis, who invite fellow Orthodox rabbis to join in signing the statement.
“Now that the Catholic Church has acknowledged the eternal Covenant between G-d and Israel, we Jews can acknowledge the ongoing constructive validity of Christianity as our partner in world redemption, without any fear that this will be exploited for missionary purposes,” it says.
Echoing recent words by Pope Francis, the document states: “We are no longer enemies, but unequivocal partners in articulating the essential moral values for the survival and welfare of humanity.”
“Neither of us can achieve G-d’s mission in this world alone,” it says.
According to Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, one of the statement’s initiators, the “real importance of this Orthodox statement is that it calls for fraternal partnership between Jewish and Christian religious leaders, while also acknowledging the positive theological status of the Christian faith.”
“This proclamation’s breakthrough is that influential Orthodox rabbis across all centers of Jewish life have finally acknowledged that Christianity and Judaism are no longer engaged in a theological duel to the death and that Christianity and Judaism have much in common spiritually and practically. Given our toxic history, this is unprecedented in Orthodoxy.” said Rabbi Dr. Eugene Korn, Academic Director of CJCUC.
Core beliefs and values are being challenged across the globe. With such a major change of direction happening, where are we headed?
The following are the five major events that will likely define our immediate future and impact world affairs for the foreseeable future. These are listed in the sequence they occurred, not necessarily the sequence of importance or impact:
1. China stock market crashes
2. Falling energy prices
3. Russian military intervention into the Middle East
4. Paris and San Bernardino terrorist attacks
5. The Trump candidacy
We will look at each of these for the message they have, but first we will briefly discuss the most basic change factor in world affairs—initiative. In military operations and world affairs, having the initiative is necessary for success. The one with the initiative can control the battle or geopolitical situation, requiring their opponent(s) to react to them rather than the other way around.
Therefore, those with the initiative have a major advantage in the confrontation. For this reason, the most important factors to look for to discern the nature of events and where they are heading are:
Who has the initiative
What are their intentions or goals
What are their resources and strategies for sustaining the initiative
Now we'll look at each of the five events having a major impact on the world and their potential consequences:
1.The China stock market crash. China's economic growth has been a key factor impacting the world economy this century. Without it, the recovery after 9/11 or the crash of 2008 would have been more difficult if not impossible. China is now one of the biggest economic forces in the world, rivaling the impact of both the U.S. and Europe.
Factors
On June 12, 2015, The Shanghai Index lost one-third of its value. It rebounded, but this began the most turbulent volatility of a major market possibly in modern times, even eclipsing the 1929 crash. Understanding its cause and impact on the world economy is important for understanding what we can expect the world economy to do in the foreseeable future.
One report estimated that 100,000,000 Chinese investors were virtually wiped out in a day. Many more than this number were also severely hurt by this crash. The Chinese economy had produced more millionaires and billionaires and created and expanded a middle class more quickly than any economy in history. It delivered more people out of poverty in a shorter time—a truly remarkable achievement.
China also created a huge number of consumers who drove industry around the world. The June crash, dramatic recovery and then a worse crash over a few-week period unnerved more than the Chinese—it alarmed everyone who understood the interconnection of world economics. This will no doubt majorly impact the rapid growth of the Chinese's purchasing of the world's goods, with huge ramifications.
The Western media hardly covered this remarkable event, possibly because only about 1.5 percent of Chinese stocks are held outside of China. Another reason is China's control over its media. In the free media, panic can be created and driven by the media. China clamped down on their media, likely preventing a far worse catastrophe. They also quickly shut down trading by major companies and stockholders.
This strategy can work in the short term, but the lack of transparency also breeds suspicion, long-term concern or fear that can hurt a free market even more. The Chinese leadership is smart enough to know this, but the potential for catastrophe in the short term was so great, they felt they had to take drastic measures.
Chinese authorities blamed the crash on rumors and fear mongering. If true, fear and rumors will be a continuing problem for the Chinese without transparency. Their markets stabilized because of the controls, but when those controls were lifted a little, the markets fell another 40 percent. They've recovered some, but the factors that initiated these shockwaves have not been addressed—the lack of transparent accounting and the true value of their currency, the Yuan, that was arbitrarily set by the government.
Although it's impressive how well the Chinese government handled the crash without prior experience in anything like this, the IMF's recent decision to designate the Chinese Yuan a reserve currency seems to be more political than economic. This was likely a move to help stabilize the Yuan, but this too could have a destabilizing effect on other world currencies—we'll see.
It is no secret that the Chinese would like to see their currency replace the dollar as the world's top reserve currency. Even with their problems, they are headed that way because of the over-regulation and over-taxation shackling the U.S. economy.
Bottom Line
This will not likely bode well for the U.S. dollar or economy. The potential effect of the Chinese market turmoil to destabilize the rest of the world is substantial. Again, Chinese economic growth, and the creation of such a huge middle class and consumer base, may be the single biggest factor sustaining the world economy after the 2008 crash. Basic economic indicators point to increasing weakness in the world economy at a time when one of its biggest economic engines, China, will slow down.
A slide into a recession in 2016 not only looks possible, but seems inevitable. The recovery since 2008 would not likely exist with China, and it has still only been a shallow, weak recovery. Now the world cannot count on growing Chinese consumption to bail them out.
The turmoil in China will impact the world economy negatively by slowing its consumer spending. At the same time, China is seizing the initiative to become the world's reserve currency, giving them increasing leverage over the world economy. This is not the result of strength in their economy as much as Chinese leadership and decisiveness. As Donald Trump accurately pointed out, "Their leaders have been smarter than ours."
Without a major change in U.S. economic policy, China is in the best position to take and hold the initiative in world economics for the foreseeable future. This is happening in spite of the fragile nature of the Yuan. Chinese equity markets have more to do with the incompetence of U.S. and European economic leadership than brilliance on the part of the Chinese. That China has seized the initiative in the world economy after suffering such dramatic turmoil in its own economy is a clear indication of the kind of jeopardy the world economy is in.
2. Falling energy prices. Along with the growth of Chinese consumerism, falling energy prices have been a major driver of the world's economy in recent times. The effect has been like having a trillion-dollar stimulus infused into the U.S. and EU economies each year. Combined with "Quantitative Easing" (QE), the artificial dumping of almost another trillion dollars into the economy each year, the U.S. economy is just barely inching along, indicating how gummed up the works are in our economic engine.
Falling energy prices may have bought us more time to fix serious issues in the economy, but without decisive leadership that will actually fix things, we will inevitably suffer the worst economic disaster in our history. Falling energy prices are mostly the result of falling demand for energy, a sure sign that much the world's economy is weakening.
3. Russian intervention in the Middle East. Russia's economy has been devastated because it is a petroleum-based economy, and falling energy prices have it near collapse. However, Putin has emerged as the most decisive world leader. He has seized initiative in world affairs and become a major player in world economics.
Putin's move into the Middle East was not just about propping up the Assad, a man Putin has shown disdain for, in Syria. Neither is his alliance with Iran the result of his love for that regime. He has brilliantly positioned Russia to use both of them in a bold move to threaten Saudi Arabia and the other oil producers in the region. This will drive up oil prices, thereby saving the Russian economy.
This is bold and brilliant, and a decisive man such as Putin will likely carry it out. The recent shooting down of a Russian plane by Turkey gave him more cards to play. Cutting off Russian tourism to Turkey can devastate that country's economy. It also has the potential to create major turmoil in NATO, ultimately securing the Russian southern flank by bringing a capitulating Turkey under Russian control. Putin is smart enough to play the cards he's dealt, and it's not likely the Russian/Turkish crisis will go away until Putin has gained a great deal.
Another factor is that almost all NATO countries are dependent on Middle Eastern oil. If Putin is ambitious (and he seems to be), he could break up NATO and bring many of the nations under Russian influence. This would force the E.U. to stand down and not interfere in his actions against Ukraine or other former Soviet states while freeing him for other adventures.
America alone has the power to counter Putin, but his decisiveness combined with the ineptness of American leadership could not be setting the tables better for him. The U.S. and Canada could now be producing enough energy to support the E.U. so that it does not have to depend on Saudi Arabia or Russian energy sources, strengthening NATO at a time when it is increasingly needed. Policies such as killing the Keystone Pipeline could have bad consequences. At the very least, this will likely prove a major missed opportunity strategically.
Bottom Line
Expect energy prices to rebound in 2016, though they could drop even more before this happens because of the weakening world economy. When they start back up, they could return to previous levels faster than they fell. This will be like a reverse of the stimulus at the worst time for Western economies, wreaking economic havoc on the U.S., the EU and many other countries.
Russia does not need energy from outside sources, but they do need the price of energy to go up. China is desperate for dependable and cheap energy. They did not join Putin's Middle East adventure without a purpose. China will likely soon have virtual control over Saudi Arabia as part of this deal.
Understanding the power of the Russian/Chinese alliance combined with weak American resolve has much of the world looking to Russia and China for leadership. The end result could be the worst economic disaster in history for the U.S. and the EU At the same time, Russia can get back on its feet economically and China will be the most powerful economic force in the world as the stable source of cheap energy (for them).
Together, Russia and China are systematically and effectively seizing the initiative in the world economy, and by that world affairs. No other leadership in sight can counter it. This is the extraordinary geopolitical shift now taking place. Its implications are as far reaching as the fall of the Iron Curtain, but this time to the advantage of the former communist states. This leads us to the fourth factor to have a major impact on the trajectory of world affairs.
Tune in Wednesday for finale of this two-part series.
Rick Joyneris the founder and executive director of MorningStar Ministries and Heritage International Ministries and is the senior pastor of MorningStar Fellowship Church. He is the author of more than 40 books, including The Final Quest,A Prophetic History, and Church History. He is also the president of The OAK Initiative, an interdenominational movement that is mobilizing thousands of Christians to be engaged in the great issues of our times, being the salt and light that they are called to be. Rick and his wife, Julie, have five children: Anna, Aaryn, Amber, Ben and Sam.
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The Psalmist's words are a modern day plea for the world to wake up and
“see the affliction” of Christians and other minorities who are being persecuted, driven and wiped out, and their places of worship destroyed. Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, once said “We must take sides. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” Yet the world remains quiet in the face of ISIS’ declared campaign to eradicate Christianity. “Faithkeepers” is an upcoming documentary film about the violent persecution of Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East. Support an urgent crowdfunding campaign to distribute the film and educate America about the plight of persecuted Christians in the Middle East and mobilize people to action. Inspire the world to stop the genocide of Christians.
The Clarion Project, a nonprofit organization founded in 2006, is working to wake up the sleeping masses with a new, groundbreaking film about radical Islam called “Faithkeepers – Sound the Alarm on Christian Genocide”.
Can you guess where Ilan Rosen took this incredible photo in Israel? (Hint: it's a geological landform considered unique to Israel's desert.) Send me an email or post your answer on Facebook!
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I am enjoying Israel365 from my job desk in Harrisburg, PA. It is really a blessing to know what is happening in my beautiful Jerusalem and be able to pray for everyone out there. Blessings to all in Israel!.-Luz Rivera
Israel and our Jewish brethren have been through extremely challenging times this year. With a rise of global, genocidal anti-Semitism, our response at PJTN has dramatically risen as well.
I am reminded in Leviticus 19:16, "You shall not stand aside while your brother's blood is being shed."
Because of your past financial support:
We were able to reach Christians in over 200 countries and 900 million homes through the distribution of our award-winning films and programs at our annual event at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention (NRB)
We were able to reach Christian ambassadors, delegates and staffers at our annual UN symposium in New York
Our anti-BDS global campaign spread to 45 states and 9 countries
We were able to educate and mobilize more parents/citizens to action through our K-12 initiative, exposing the anti-Semitic, anti-Judeo/Christian, pro-Islamic indoctrination in our children's textbooks throughout the U.S.
But we can't stop now!
That is why I am personally contacting you today.
With the end of the year fast approaching, I am asking you to help us with a generous end-of-the-year donation. The threats we are facing with our Jewish brethren and Israel are facing are real. Will you stand with PJTN too?
PJTN is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. PJTN was established to educate Christians about their Biblical responsibility to stand with their Jewish brethren and Israel, utilizing powerful film and video presentations, a variety of grassroots rallies, events and speaking engagements to facilitate dialogue between the Christian and Jewish communities in support of the State of Israel.
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Earlier this month, the annual Christmas tree was adorned once again in Bethlehem as Palestinians gathered under the starlit pine in Manger Square, a reminder of the peace and light that Jesus brought to the world.
What a wonderful time to celebrate the goodness and hope that we have in Jesus Christ, especially in that marvelous Little Town of Bethlehem, lying so still under the starry winter night.
Let’s listen to the speaker, as he stands before the manger and addresses those gathered in honor of the birth of the Little Boy Jesus, circumcised the 8th day by his Israeli Jewish parents, asleep in the hay.
“From the land of Palestine, which has long been home to the coexistence of human beings, religions and cultures, and their children taught the values of tolerance embodied by Jesus, the messenger of love, we bring the message that, in Palestine, people yearn to live in freedom and peace, and that the time has come to unite the world, to lift the historical injustice done to them, and it is time for the implementation of UN resolutions on Palestine, and end the Israeli occupation.
"As in every year, Palestine is celebrating the glorious festivals, while it is reeling from the injustice of the Israeli occupation, and experiencing a serious Israeli escalation, with the intent of murder and torture, and holding the bodies of the martyrs (sic terrorists). [Palestine] is facing the worst deportation schemes and forced displacement, turning towns and villages and towns into ghetto, and the destruction of their houses and confiscation of their land and violation of holy places. [Israel] prevents worshipers, Christians and Muslims alike, to have access to their churches, mosques, and the practice of worship and religious beliefs.
"As we light the holiday Christmas tree, we remind the world that the city of Bethlehem represents the story of the Palestinian (sic Jewish) people and their history and their struggle. Despite our wounds and general pain and suffering and tyranny we remain steadfast, and we are still vibrant with joy despite the walls and settlements which encircle us, and Israel is trying to stifle hope and to confiscate the necessities of life from us. We hope the valued guests here will be ambassadors of the truth, and to relay to their countries and their governments how much sorrow and injustice that they have seen, and how much resilience and hope the people of Palestine have...”
Wait just a minute! This is a celebration of the life of Jesus Christ? This is their way of bringing Glad Tidings proclaiming that Christ has come into the world? By spreading lies and stirring up more anger and hatred towards Israel and using a celebration of the most precious and pure light that will ever come into the world to spread deceitful rumors and call the Jewish people evil?
And who is this messenger and Bearer of Sad Tidings? Why it is Rami Hamdallah, Palestinian Prime Minister, and known collaborator with PLO terrorists. His pronouncements confirming once again, for Palestinians, that they have no responsibilities and Israel is evil.
O, little town of Bethlehem, how still we see you lie.
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