In a statement on Christian Zionism, the Church of Norway Bishops Conference said that Christian Zionism is “theologically unacceptable and incompatible with human rights.”
A just and sustainable peace in Israel and Palestine must respect international law and safeguard the security and rights of both peoples, the statement notes.
“There is disagreement about how the land promises in the Bible should be interpreted,” reads the statement. “But we find it unacceptable to interpret the Bible without regard to the ethical consequences.”
“The promises of the Old Testament concerning the Jewish people and the land, cannot be used to legitimize the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes or their rights,” the statement reads. “They also have historic roots in the country and belong there.”
The Church of Norway Bishops Conference: “therefore finds Christian Zionism theologically unacceptable and incompatible with human rights.”
Bishop Emeritus Munib Younan, a Lutheran church leader from the Middle East, expressed gratitude for the timely statement.
“It is very important that the Church of Norway takes such a lead at this time in history,” said Younan. “Christian Zionism is not only harmful to Christians but also to Jews and Muslims as well as all humanity.”
Younan was grateful that the Church of Norway addressed this subject in a Christian way. “Christian Zionism uses our Holy Bible to develop their own unfounded scenarios of injustice and challenging Christ’s message of love and justice to all humanity,” he said.
Source: https://www.oikoumene.org/news/church-of-norway-christian-zionism-is-theologically-unacceptable
‘American Truth‘ puts it in stronger words:
‘Exposing treason in America‘ hit even harder:
Christian Zionism is a belief that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land and the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 were in accordance with Bible prophecy. Propaganda from anti-Christian interests persuaded many Christians that they needed to ‘atone’ for ill-treatment of Jews. They clearly had not read ‘The Nameless War’ by Archibald Ramsey nor listened to the ‘Freedman Speech’
The English Christians, from the early modern period onwards, believed that their nation had a special mission to restore the Jews to Palestine. There was English support for Jewish restoration from the Whitehall Conference in 1655 through to public debates on the Jerusalem Bishopric in 1841. Rather than claiming to replace Israel as God’s “elect nation”, England was “chosen” to have a special, but inferior, relationship with the Jews. Believing that God “blessed those who bless” the Jewish people, this national role allowed England to atone for ill-treatment of Jews.
The above is a fifteenth-century German woodcut showing an alleged host desecration. In the first panel the hosts are stolen. In the second the hosts bleed when pierced by a Jew. In the third the Jews are arrested. In the fourth they are burned alive. This is also the subject of Shakespear’s ‘Merchant of Venice’.
Here are five rapidly chosen paragraphs from ‘The Jewish Communities of Medieval England’ by Dobson to illustrate that there were riots against money lenders and against the king’s tax collectors because of the misery created amongst the citizens of England.
The pogrom in York in 1190 was against tax collectors, usurers, and money lenders — the same mob that Jesus threw out of the temple. It just so happened that the usurers were Jewish and the citizens were Christians. If the Jewish people had not been usurers and tax collectors, there would have been no pogrom and ‘New York’ would have some other name. New York was named after the death of tax collectors in York.
I don’t see how anyone can reconcile Zionism and Christianity. Jesus was a rebel. He came along and effectively told the Hebrews of the time: “You are doing things wrong. You need to start being good to each other.” He carried this through with some rewards such as going to heaven. If you flick through Deuteronomy which is the speeches of Moses, you will find that it is very negative with heavy punishments. “If they do this — hang them from a tree until dead”. “If they do that, bury them up to their necks and throw rocks at them. The rules are all negative. Our nation state has expanded these negative rules of Moses and turned them into the laws of the nation-state. Jesus told the people of the region to follow his new ways and reject the old.
God was not around for the caveman, so when did he suddenly say that the inhabitants of Palestine could be driven into the desert and replaced by people that originate from Kazachstan. the Palestinians are Semites, the Kazars are not Semites. There is no god for the caveman. The god of the old testament was a genocidal maniac. In the book of Joshua, the God of the old testament commands the Hebrews to slaughter the Canaanites in order to occupy the land taken from them. It was the old testament god prescribing ‘ethnic cleansing’. This is not the conception of the Christian God, it is the god described by Moses and Moses is the man that the Jewish religion reveres.
Moses is the most important Jewish prophet. He is credited with writing the Torah and with leading the Israelites out of Egypt and across the Red Sea. After Moses and the Jews leave Egypt, God gives him the Ten Commandments, which become the foundation of Jewish law and thought. Unfortunately it contains:
Deuteronomy, chapter 7
1: “When the LORD your God brings you into the land which you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Gir’gashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Per’izzites, the Hivites, and the Jeb’usites, seven nations greater and mightier than yourselves,
2: and when the LORD your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them; then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them.
3: You shall not make marriages with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons.
4: For they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods; then the anger of the LORD would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly.
5: But thus shall you deal with them: you shall break down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and hew down their Ashe’rim, and burn their graven images with fire.
6: “For you are a people holy to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth.
16: And you shall destroy all the peoples that the LORD your God will give over to you, your eye shall not pity them; neither shall you serve their gods, for that would be a snare to you.
Deuteronomy, chapter 20
16: But in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God gives you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes,
17: but you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Per’izzites, the Hivites and the Jeb’usites, as the LORD your God has commanded;
18: that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices which they have done in the service of their gods, and so to sin against the LORD your God.
Jeffrey Tigay has an interesting discussion in The JPS Torah Commentary: Deuteronomy by Jeffrey H. Tigay 1996
“The Proscription of the Canaanites (7:1-2, 7:16and 20:15-18)
“According to Deuteronomy 7:1-2, 7:16 and 20:15-18, when the Israelites enter the promised land they are to wipe out the Canaanites living there. The terms referring to this requirement are the verb haHarem, “proscribe,” and the noun Herem, “proscription,” “a thing proscribed.” Deuteronomy states this as an unconditional mandate and leaves no room for sparing any Canaanites in the promised land. Modern critical scholars and traditional Jewish exegesis hold, each for different reasons, that at the time when Israel entered the promised land there was actually no such policy of unconditional proscription of the Canaanites. Traditional exegesis holds that Deuteronomy in fact does not require unconditional proscription. Modern scholars hold that it does, but that this policy is purely theoretical and did not exist when Israel entered the land.
“In 7:1-2, 7:16, the command to doom the Canaanites is clearly unconditional and offering them terms of submission is prohibited. That 20:15-18 is also meant unconditionally is indicated by its opening clause, “Thus you shall deal with all towns that lie very far from you,” that is, with foreign, non-Canaanite cities. “Thus” refers back to verse 10, which requires Israel to offer to spare cities that surrender. Verses 15-17 indicate that this offer is made only to cities outside the promised land and that the Canaanites in the land are to be denied this option. This interpretation of the law is consistent with Joshua 6-11(except for 11:19-20, mentioned below), according to which surrender was not offered to the cities of Canaan when Joshua conquered them.
“According to 20:18, the aim of this unconditional requirement is to rid the land of Canaanites, who might influence Israelites to adopt their abhorrent rites, such as child sacrifice and various occult practices (12:31;18:9-12). Note that it is particularly abhorrent rites, and not beliefs, that prompt this policy. By itself, worship of astral bodies and other gods by Canaanites and other pagans is not counted against them as a sin, since Deuteronomy holds that God assigned such worship to them (see 4:19; 32:8; and Excursuses 7 and 31). Exodus, too, requires ridding the land of the Canaanites to prevent them from influencing Israel, though it prescribes expulsion rather than annihilation. 1 The aim of these policies is defensive, and no action is prescribed against idolatry or idolaters outside Israelite territory. These policies are not based on ethnicity; Deuteronomy prescribes the same treatment for Israelite cities that lapse into idolatry (13:13-19).
We are talking a massive propaganda coup to get Christians to accept this and support the displacement and killing of Palestinians. You can perhaps see that it is dangerous to follow such thinking or people that do not openly reject this thinking. We must reject the old testament and all those that accept it. It is ‘hate speech’. It encourages hate for other ethnicities. So why are African Jews not welcome in Israel? We will all soon be treated like the Palestinians.
We will all be ‘Palestinians’ soon.
