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Each year we mourn the destruction of the Bais Hakmikdash, but there is no doubt that from our vantage point in current society, where we live comfortably and enjoy religious freedom, it is difficult to mourn the loss of something that we never personally experienced. Is the loss of our holy temple nothing more than a sad chapter in the annals of history that we commemorate each year? Or even now, centuries later, is it something that truly has a place in our lives?
Silver Linings traces the roots of the Bais Hamikdash, starting long before the first stone was ever laid to rest in Jerusalem. The story begins with a single rock, a unique stone that played a pivotal role in our patriarch Jacob’s journey as, divinely inspired by a vision of angels ascending and descending a ladder, he laid the foundation for the Jewish nation. That same stone became a foundation of another kind, imbued with a special holiness as it became part of the first temple and then the second. Against all odds, that single stone survives the destruction that engulfed Jerusalem’s holiest site, not once, but twice, ultimately enduring to bear testament to the eternity of the Jewish people.
Starring Adam Margules and Chaim Leibtag, Silver Linings, a Sparks Next production directed by Daniel Finkelman, and co directed by Aharon Orian, in conjunction with American Friends of Ateret Cohanim shares the journey of the rock, from biblical times through today. This touching story testifies poignantly that even today, we remain firmly connected to the Bais Hamikdash and our forefathers and is an emotional reminder that those who truly mourn Jerusalem will one day merit seeing the city rebuilt in all her glory with the coming of Moshiach.
While David Brody enjoys some much-needed R&R, I'm filling in for him. I had a chance to interview Donald Trump in Orlando Thursday after he spoke to pastors at a gathering of the American Renewal Project.
I asked him if he felt like he'd been placed in this position as part of a higher calling—referring to Esther 4:14 in the Bible.
Browder: You know a lot of Christians believe that you have been chosen for "such a time as this." Do you believe that's true? Have you ever considered that maybe this is a divine calling?
Donald Trump: Well, you know I've heard that from others, and I've heard it from pastors. I've heard it from others. You know I really don't even want to think about it because it's too big of a burden. But I can say this, that if I can do what I say I can do, and I'm not only talking with the military and building it up and safety and security, because our country is in bad shape in so many ways, I'm talking ... we can open up the voices of great people and the pastors and the ministers, and the priests and the rabbis and the people of religion. I think that will be something I will be so proud of.
Video/Audio Courtesy CBN News/The Brody File. Reprinted with permission fromCBN.com. Copyright The Christian Broadcasting Network, Inc., All rights reserved.
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Many of today's Evangelicals have joined world opinion against Israel. (Flickr )
Why Christian Zionism Is Vanishing in the American Church
Evangelical Christians in the United States have loved and supported the State of Israel because they believe the Bible, take its prophecies literally, and see the modern State of Israel as a first flowering of God's prophetic promises to the Jewish people.
They have shown their love for Israel by placing political pressure on U.S. foreign policy and by standing up for Israel in the court of world opinion. Evangelical Christians have marched under the slogan, "We stand with Israel." It's a well-known phenomenon called Christian Zionism.
The Christian Zionist movement is the matrix from which much of modern Messianic Judaism emerged, including First Fruits of Zion.
All that is changing.
As the Millennial generation takes positions of leadership in the evangelical churches of America, we may see Christian Zionism and support for Israel vanish. It is a process that is already underway.
Today's 20-year-olds and 30-year-olds think of themselves as well-informed about Israel's role in the Middle East and its struggle with the Palestinian people. They are likely to feel strong empathy with the oppressed Palestinian people, and they unanimously join the rest of the world in condemning the State of Israel.
In reality, today's Millennials are only marginally informed on the issues. They know only the side of the story fed to them by a biased media and anti-Israel activists. Most of them know nothing of the real history of the conflict, the Nazi influence over Palestinian Arabs that sparked the conflict, the repeated attempts of the Arab world to annihilate Israel and the Jewish people, or the more recent history of Israel's attempts to establish peace with an unwilling Palestinian leadership.
Today's 20- and 30-year-olds have no memory of how Yasser Arafat threw Israel's concessions from Oslo back in the face of the international community while secretly funding and supporting an ongoing campaign of terror and evil. Today's generation of youth places the blame for Middle East unrest squarely on Israel. They are seemingly unaware of or unconcerned about how the Palestinian people and the larger Arab world maintain a constant propaganda campaign of agitation to terrorism, murderous incitement and hateful anti-Jewish rhetoric, which will insure peace in the Middle East only through the annihilation of the Jewish people (God forbid).
As a result, today's young evangelical Christians are far more likely to march under the slogan, "End the Occupation," than the slogan, "We stand with Israel." They are following in the footsteps of mainstream denominations such as the Presbyterian Church in the USA, which sponsors boycotts on Israeli products and has published statements condemning the State of Israel for their occupation of Palestine.
The drift away from Christian Zionism finds inspiration from voices like Wheaton College Professor Gary Burge, author of Whose Land? Whose Promise? What Christians Are Not Being Told about Israel and the Palestinians. Burge's teachings attempt to undermine the basis for evangelical political support of Israel. He challenges the theology of an ongoing covenantal status of the Jewish people.
According to his perspective, Israel forfeited that status, and with that forfeiture, they forfeit claim to the land of Israel. In the view of anti-Zionists, Israel is unworthy of Christian support because it is home to Jews who have rejected Jesus as their Messiah. Anti-Zionist evangelicals contend that support for Israel thwarts efforts to share the Christian faith with Muslims in the Middle East. (In other words, Christianity would be more attractive to Islam if we could present it to them as anti-Jewish and anti-Israel.)
Evangelicals who sympathize with the Palestinian cause emphasize the Christian obligation to show concern for human rights violations, but they fail to call upon Christians to stand up against the human rights violations that characterize the policies of governing bodies within Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel's enemies in the Arab world. Instead, from the point of view of the anti-Christian Zionists, it would appear that Israel is the world's chief offender in crimes against humanity.
An article in The Times of Israel titled "Evangelical Anti-Zionism Gaining Traction" calls attention to the concerted effort of anti-Israel activists to turn American evangelicals against Israel. The anti-Israel message finds warm welcome with today's Millennial Christians who have already bought into the notion that blanket condemnation of the State of Israel is a moral obligation incumbent upon every thinking, ethical human being.
The new evangelical struggle with Israel is not a new struggle. It is the same old struggle. For most of two thousand years, the Christian church has been on the wrong side of the fight against anti-Semitism and the wrong side of God's relationship with the Jewish people. Perhaps Christian Zionism was just a brief anomaly sustained by a generation old enough to remember World War II, to have witnessed the miracle of the birth of the State of Israel, and to have seen the revealed miracles of God's intervention that sustained the young state.
Daniel Thomas Lancaster is a writer, teacher, and the Director of Education for the Messianic ministry First Fruits of Zion (), an international organization with offices in Israel, Canada, and the USA, bringing Messianic Jewish teaching to Christians and Jews. He is the author of several books about the Jewish roots of Christianity, the Jewishness of the New Testament, and he is the author of the Torah Club Bible study program. He also serves as the teaching pastor at Beth Immanuel, a Messianic Jewish synagogue in Hudson, Wisconsin.
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A falsely accused Jewish nobleman survives years of slavery to take vengeance on his Roman best friend, who betrayed him. Ben-Hur is based on the 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace and has been termed a "re-adaptation", "reimagining" and "new interpretation" of the novel. Prior film adaptations of the book include the 1925 and the 1959 films of same name. The film stars Jack Huston, Morgan Freeman, Toby Kebbell, Nazanin Boniadi and Rodrigo Santoro.
Tears well up in the eyes of my friend Everett Stenhouse when he talks about his daughter Judy, whose life was taken instantly in an automobile crash several years ago. He tells about the time when Judy was a 3-year-old.
Everett, then pastoring a church, was working in his office when Judy showed up in the doorway. When she had his attention, she asked for a nickel to buy a bag of potato chips. He told her he was busy, and she needed to go back to their house next door.
She returned a second and third time, repeating her request. On the last visit, Everett sternly warned her not to bother him again—that he was very busy.
Time went by, and he heard his office door creak open. He pretended not to notice her standing in the doorway. She remained there silent, looking at him. Finally, he slammed his large hand down on the desk and brusquely demanded, "Well, why are you here again?"
Tearfully, she stretched out her hands and said, "Daddy, I just wanted to love on you."
Everett held out his arms and cradled his darling daughter in his lap. When she slipped away, she had the nickel nestled tightly in her little fist.
In Psalm 135, the writer is simply inviting us to love on the Lord.
Even When Life Is Tough
Psalm 135 is the first psalm following the 15 psalms of ascent, prayers which reflect the struggle and difficulty of our upward climb in life. It's as though this psalm recognizes that when God has delivered us from all our adversities, the appropriate response is for us to worship in His temple.
Thus, this psalm contains not even a hint of trial or sorrow. The battles have all been fought and won. God's work is complete, and His ways have been found perfect.
Perhaps you're not at the finish line in a present difficulty you're passing through. How then can you sing this psalm?
I had to break the news to the wife of one of our church's elders that her husband had died suddenly from a heart attack that day on a ski slope. Church members gathered in shock that next Sunday morning. The announcement time had been planned days before; and in promotion of some kids' event, one of the children's workers popped into the sanctuary dressed as a clown. The clown's appearance was a total disconnection from the somberness of the hour.
Nevertheless
Telling you to love on the Lord when your heart is heavy may seem as emotionally out of place as a clown at a funeral. You honestly don't feel like praising God at all.
That's why a psalm like this can be so helpful. When you don't have words of your own; when you don't feel like saying anything; when your gratitude reservoir is on empty—you can fall back on the written text of Scripture and pray these Spirit-inspired words. Let the Holy Spirit lift you out of your personal world of concern into the broad universe of everlasting truth. In your heart, remain within God's courts.
Praise Him (vv. 1-2). Earthly cares recede during the time we spend in His presence.
The Lord is good (vv. 3-4). His goodness is seen in choosing a people to serve Him. You are also chosen of God. You may not understand all the mystery of that, but for sure you are not some afterthought or a cheap nothing. You are God's treasured possession.
The Lord is great (vv. 5-7). He's got the whole world in His hands. Could He really have lost control over the events in your life?
The Lord redeems (vv. 8-12). He loves His people so dearly that He delivers them from bondage. He didn't just do it for Israel; He delivers His people for all generations (vv. 13,14). Have you thanked Him today for saving you?
Compare (vv. 15-18). You resemble what you worship. If it's an idol (whether metal or mental), you too become unseeing, unhearing, unfeeling and lifeless. Aren't you grateful you know the living God and that you are growing into His likeness?
Respond (vv. 19–21). The psalm closes as it began—"Praise the Lord." Will you employ these words as the bookends to the morning and evening of this day?
Are you a lot like Everett's little girl? You show up in God's presence most often only wanting a nickel so you can have His resources to satisfy your own appetites. This psalm tells us we should take occasions to come into God's presence with nothing on our mind except to love Him.
George O. Wood is the general superintendent of the Assemblies of God. For the original article, visit georgeowood.com.
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'Ben-Hur' Actors Reveal How 'Powerful' Crucifixion Scene Changed Them
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Acting can transform reality, according to the Ben-Hur actors.
In an interview published Tuesday, FlickDirect correspondant Judith Raymer interviewed Ben-Hur actors Jack Huston (who plays Judah Ben-Hur) and Rodrigo Santoro (as Jesus of Nazareth) about how the film changed them.
Taking place at the time of Jesus, the story follows Jewish prince Ben-Hur, who falls into slavery after his adopted brother, a Roman officer, accuses him of treason. When Ben-Hur later seeks revenge as a charioteer, he encounters redemption—and conversion to Christianity.
During the interview, Raymer brought up the movie scene of Jesus' crucifixion.
"There's that moment—the moment—there's no dialogue, and you're on the cross and—and your eyes, you just hold each other in your eyes," she said to Santoro, who plays Jesus. "When you're shooting that, what—what's going through your mind?"
That struck a chord with Huston, who interjected.
"We found each other, we actually did find each other. Very important," he said of him and Santoro during the scene. "I said, 'I'm here, man. I'm right here.' And whew, man that was powerful. No joking. When we were standing there, witnessing him up there and actually catching eyes and doing that."
That scene, he urged, will speak to all audiences.
"You don't have to be religious in any way to figure out how powerful that was," he said, "and it's been an incredible reaction to people watching that—it's been massive."
Santoro agreed. "Again, it's one of those moments that I will never be able to describe and be fair to what I felt," he said, before joking, "Besides cold."
Both Huston and Santoro found the scene "transcendent."
"The experience transcends, you know, given your craft as an artist—it goes much beyond that," Santoro added.
Earlier in the interview, Santoro heralded Jesus as a character that's "bigger than life."
"I have my own relationship with the figure of Jesus," he stressed, "I grew up hearing stories about Jesus."
To best portray Jesus, he researched films, literature, paintings and Gospels and found one similarity in their portrayal of Christ: "[A]ll the references were His heart—love."
To identify with Jesus, he went "within myself" to experience an "intimate, spiritual, transforming, inspiring journey."
"I'm not going to be Jesus. That's not happening," he admitted. "I just tried to do it with my heart. That was the most I could do."
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When I sit down to write a novel, I don't set out to predict the future.
Rather, I set out to write about worst case scenarios that could come to pass if our leaders are blind-sided by evil they ignore or misunderstand.
This was the case when I began writing my first novel, The Last Jihad, in January 2001. That was a novel that opened with a group of Radical Islamic terrorists hijacking a jet plane and flying a kamikaze mission into an American city, an attack that sets into motion a U.S. war against Saddam Hussein.
That was also the case when in the fall of 2013 I began writing The Third Target, the first installment in my latest series of political thrillers. After doing months of research, meeting with two former CIA directors, a former head of Israel's Mossad, the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Jordan, and numerous of military and intelligence experts, I set out to write a novel about a New York Times reporter named J.B. Collins who hears a rumor that ISIS has captured a cache of chemical weapons from a military base in northern Syria.
As that novel, and the second in the series -- The First Hostage-- unfold, Collins and two colleagues slip into hellish, war-torn Syria to track down and interview an ISIS operative to confirm the story. Along the way, Collins and his team not only discover that the terror group has these horrific weapons but that the leaders of ISIS hold to an End Times theology that is driving them to wage genocide against Christians, Jews and any Muslim that doesn't follow their brand of Apocalyptic Islam to establish and expand their so-called Caliphate or Islamic kingdom.
That was fiction when I wrote it -- but no longer. Unfortunately, this worst-case scenario appears to be coming to pass.
Abu Ahmed told us about how the Islamic State of Iraq & the Levant (ISIS) came to acquire some of the world’s most fearsome weapons, which were claimed as spoils of war from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces months before its creation.
Roughly four months before the split between the Nusra Front and ISIS,in December 2012, dozens of Syrian jihadi fighters climbed a hill toward Regiment 111 — a large army base near the town of Darat Izza, in northern Syria. That town had been taken roughly five months earlier by a coalition of rebel groups. But while they had besieged Regiment 111 since the summer of 2012, they still had not succeeded in capturing the base from the troops loyal to President Assad.
The weather had turned bad in winter, however, making it more difficult for the Syrian Air Force to hold off the rebels with airstrikes. Moreover, the base was huge, sprawling over almost 500 acres, and difficult to protect from all approaches.
Syrian Army soldiers inside Regiment 111 successfully defended their base during the first rebel attack in early November 2012, killing 18 Nusra fighters in the process. But the cold December wind only fortified the rebels’ resolve. The base was a goldmine: home to guns, artillery, ammunition, and vehicles. And deep inside Regiment 111’s bunkers lay something even more valuable — a cache of chemical weapons....
Within a day, the combined jihadi forces had broken through the lines of the Syrian Army. Shortly after, Regiment 111 was fully under jihadi control. They found large stocks of weapons, ammunition and, to their surprise, chemical agents. They were, according to Abu Ahmad, mainly barrels filled with chlorine, sarin, and mustard gas.
What followed was the distribution of the war spoils. Everybody took some ammunition and weapons. But only the Nusra Front seized the chemical weapons. Abu Ahmad watched as the al Qaeda affiliate called in 10 large cargo trucks, loaded 15 containers with chlorine and sarin gas, and drove them away to an unknown destination. He did not see what happened to the mustard gas.
Three months later, both the Syrian government and rebel groups reported an attack in Khan al-Assal, near Aleppo. The international media said that 26 people had been killed, among them 16 regime soldiers and 10 civilians. Both the Syrian regime and opposition claimed that chemical weapons had been used — and both accused the other of having carried out one of the first chemical weapons attacks in the Syrian war.....
To misunderstand the nature and threat of evil is to risk being blindsided by it. Let us pray our leaders wake up to the true magnitude of the threat posed by ISIS and stop taking half-measures. It's time to declare war on ISIS, take the gloves off, and do everything in our power -- in close cooperation with our allies, especially those in the region -- to end this scourge of evil once and for all.
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