To examine why this is, and also to assist in understanding why there is such astonishing contempt for Israel among today’s anti-hoi polloi, a brief history lesson. ... //

Considering all the above, it is little wonder that progressives hate Israel and Jews with such passion. Progressives believe they must despise whatever, or whoever, the other side loves. Evangelicals, i.e., conservatives, love Israel and demonstrate no bias against Jews? We must do the opposite! And so, in its zeal to disdain everyone and everything held dear by those believed inferior, progressives have revealed the fatal flaw in their reasoning. They preach love and tolerance yet exhibit neither. Instead, they are miffed to the point of madness by the notion that the God in Whom they seldom believe has deemed someone other than themselves as His elect. As Jesus Himself said to His disciples just before His arrest and crucifixion, ironically speaking of the Jews in the psalmist’s words that today find themselves used against Jews, “They hated Me without reason.” //

anon-wyrw
8 days ago
Jerry,

While I agree with your basic review of the reasons that evangelicals support Israel, I believe that the progressive opposition to Israel vigorously defending itself runs much deeper than the typical knee-jerk reaction of the progs that whatever conservatives/evangelicals are for they are against. Time and again, the progs have sided with pure evil in all of its forms but have successfully masked their true intent. The attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7 has ripped off the mask. Now the world can clearly see that the progressives stand for evil in the same way that after Nazi Germany attacked Poland the world could see what they were actually about. Progressives hate the Truth because the Truth comes from God whom they also hate. They are against any authority that claims to be above and beyond their reach. If you begin with that premise, it explains much of why they behave the way they do and what groups and causes they support. //

Temujin
8 days ago
Evangelicals love Israel because of the Bible. Leftists hate Jews because of their "bible," which is Marxism. Marx wrote some of the most vicious anti-Semitic trash ever seen. Conservatives need to read Marx and Satan, by Richard Wurmbrand, a Jew who became an evangelical Christian.

Cosmic Charlie -> Temujin
8 days ago
And went thru hell for it. I was fortunate to see him once. He came to our synagogue.
We were all left speechless for days.
I have met few people who manifest in the moment the truth of love and hatred to such a degree. //

Cafeblue32
8 days ago edited
Why Evangelicals Love Israel and Progressives Do Not

Because Evangelicals who have read a bible know that their God is the God of Israel, created for Himself, and it is the Christian church that has been grafted into the family of Israel through the shed blood of the rabbi Christ's sacrifice and not the other way around. Christ didn't do away with Judaic law. He fulfilled all its points so we don't have to. But the standard of accountability is the same now as it was then: mess with Israel, and things will go very bad for you. Maybe not in our lifetime, but God will not be mocked nor tempted for long. If he takes his time with it, it is only to give the guilty a chance to repent before he goes all medieval on them.

Here's Gods take on it. Israelis the olive tree in this analogy.

Romans 11:17 ...

Free will

God created a perfect world, yet gave Adam and Eve a way to reject him by accepting something that would remove their innocence. Why offer them a choice? Why not leave it perfect?

Because without a way to reject God, their love would have been meaningless.

God goes to great lengths to make sure people can choose to love Him without violating their free will. That plays heavily into the idea of deus absconditus, or "hidden god". God is hidden, but wants to be found. Thus, you ensure that the majority of those who find Him are actually those looking.

Predestination

I think the confusion that surrounds this issue is largely rooted in the question of free will. If God wants us to be saved, will we not be saved? If God wants you condemned to Hell, will you not be condemned? There is some level of truth there, but it misses that God does not throw Free Will out the window to accomplish this.

God orchestrates the universe. He knows every decision that can be made, and what decisions will, in fact, be made. Take Luke 13

13 “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.

Jesus is speaking here, and this verse illustrates predestination perfectly. Jesus spent time doing miracles in two cities that bore no fruit. Indeed, we see Jesus do many things that do nothing to promote faith. What is positively mind blowing is that Jesus is saying that if he had done those same miracles in Syria they would have repented wholeheartedly. So... why not go and do those things there?

Jesus' ministry was primarily to the Jews. Other miracles will be done in those places later, but Jesus was trying to get the Jews to repent first and foremost. In other words, God was showing love to the Jews by giving them miracles He knew they would reject, so they could be seen from a different perspective later.

Music shapes our hearts and minds. What we fill our ears with—for better or worse—forms who we are and what we love. This is one reason why music has loomed large in Christian worship and catechesis throughout church history. In church, we don’t only rehearse our confession by speaking creeds and hearing biblical truths preached; we sing these confessions and biblical truths. And as we sing, God’s truth roots down deeper in our souls. //

New adult believers unfamiliar with (or understandably skeptical of) Christian music might not know where to start.

That’s why I put together this playlist of 100 songs with a catechetical flair to them: songs that teach Christian truth and yet do it poetically, with excellence.

[Deconstruction] has little to do with objective truth, and everything to do with tearing down whatever doctrine someone believes is morally wrong. //

it was very personal and it focused on the human beings who have come out of this, rather than on whether a certain kind of theology is right or wrong. //

If deconstruction means nothing more than changing your mind or correcting bad ideas, then I can say I deconstructed by switching from AT&T to Verizon. //

Deconstruction is not about getting your theology right.

What is worshipped is God’s conquering of death, which allows that bond to go on forever. The idea of a recognition of the community of the living and the dead, a spiritual community that exceeds the community we see in the material world of our present lives, is deeply consistent with Christianity.

The Christian underpinnings of the Day of the Dead are what make it of interest to those who are, for good reasons, uninterested in multiculturalism in its current relativist and divisive forms. For they reveal a ritual deeply consonant with the Christian view that death is not the end and that our loving bond to those who have gone before us is perhaps the most important social tie we have in this world.

A love for the past and for those who came before us is consistent with a holistic view of the human world. That world is made of three communities: those here now, those who have lived and died and await us, and those yet to come. Our unity is in the spiritual life that animates us all, and the truth of the Christian claims about life and death are not merely one more claim in Relativism Land. They are a truth that unites believers across cultures and time. Day of the Dead is a wonderful opportunity to recall this unity.