I very much doubt Palestine was a genuine attempt to seek "historical justice". My estimate it that it was a cynical piece of real-politik right out of Machiavelli's "The Prince" by all sides.
Then again I very much doubt today's historical justice movement is genuine either - except on the part of the useless idiots of course.
One question is: "When does justice become historical?". Are the Jews now entitled to Palestine, since they took most of it many decades ago and most of the original thieves/terrorists are likely now dead?
This was my exact question when reading the article. Matt has laid a solid argument for 1948 being an injustice based on historic injustice. But now that injustice has become historic, so where does that leave us? I guess in the same situation as Australia, America and many other countries. Needing Christs love to unite, forgiveness and moving forward. But for some they will never leave the past alone. Until there is forgiveness, there will continue to be war or continual grievances aired and demands for reparations from the wrong people.
This is true. I think the problem with the Middle East situation in Israel is that both sides have wronged each other so much and so continually, that only a supernatural force can bring peace. In fact, I think this is necessarily taught in the law, that until the people of Israel turn to God he will not grant them peace.
This is why I say the neither church, nor the West, should be supporting military intervention in the region. But instead missionary efforts.
The Jewish settlers are continually taking the land as we speak. So it is an injustice in the process of happening. So, I don't know if we can call it historical yet. But I have to think about this.
Yes I agree that clearly the ongoing behavior - land-grabbing / genocide / apartheid etc. is wrong and is a current injustice. I was thinking more of the activities which occurred through from the late 1940s up until - say - the 6 day war in the late 1960s.
I have to think about it. I think a case could be made that the pre-1967 borders are the only practical solution. But a case could also be made that because the current generation are continuing to take the land they have continued the sin and hence it is still current. By that I mean the current generation have chosen to own it, by continuing this.
I don't think its the job of foreign nations to interfere, either way.
I know people think that's how we should solve these things. But my observation is that the more other nations interfere in situations like this the worse they become and the more they are protracted and drag on.
Take away the foreign support and both sides probably would have come to an arrangement by now.
I wonder if it is history and "historical" justice which is really the problem here - or whether the problem you are writing about is just a manifestation of collectivism?
The actual problem that you descibe above seems to me not to be a result of justice being administered for "historical" crimes per se - but rather the simple absence of justice which results from administering justice on the basis of group membership (i.e. punishing the innocent alongside the guilty, and rewarding those who have not been harmed alongside those who have) and without applying any of the usual standards of evidence.
True justice is inherently individual. Individuals commit crimes and are therefore guilty and only individuals are harmed and are therefore victims. So it is not "all black people" who are harmed by slavery - it is those individuals who were enslaved. In many cases groups do exist and both act together to commit crimes and target all, or almost all, the people in another group - but - and here is the key - punishment and compensation is owed to each individual on the basis of his individual criminal acts and harms suffered not on the basis of membership of some group.
Thus justice should not be withheld based on some arbitrary period of time - but based purely on whether justice is still practically possible. Can the individual criminals and victims be identified with a reasonable certainty and the harms quantified. In other words - historical cases should be held to the same standard of justice to which we hold current cases. If that standard can be met, then justice can be adminstered. Obviously as time passes it becomes harder and harder to establish facts - and therefore history makes it harder and harder to apply justice - but where facts can be ascertained justice can still be applied.
In the case of Palestine for example that would mean that Palestinians are still entitled to their property back because stolen goods remain the property of the owner even when transferred. However it would not be fair to *punish* the son of the thief beyond the simple return of the stolen property and compensation for harm up to the amount of his inheritance - since that son did not commit the original crime (OK - maybe he knowingly received stolen goods so could and should be punished for that - but he did not commit the actual theft).
In the case of native Australians and Americans - it may indeed be that they are entitled to some compensation to the extent that they can still show direct theft and or harm and living descendants of the thief are still alive and can be taken to court and sued for the return of any stolen property.
Whether entire continents must be returned this way however is questionable because it is not at all clear to me that the indigenous people ever owned the land in the first place - certainly they wouldn't have claimed to do so.
So - in short - I think justice is justice - and as long as it is possible to do so, it should be administered. But there should not be a separate category of "justice" with different standards which applies when the regular standards of justice do not produce a "desired" result.
Do you have any links or references to what is happening? This is new to me and am surprised with all the pro-Palestinian media coverage that this isn’t big news.
“Weakest possible ground”! Really! So please explain these scriptures that are all mutually reinforcing and clearly prophesy a third Jewish temple in Jerusalem in end times. Daniel 9:27, Matthew 24:15, 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4 , Revelation 13:14-25!
Thank you for illustrating my point for me in the article.
Daniel 9:27 and Matthew 24:15 have been interpreted consistently in Church history to refer to the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple being desecrated in AD 70.
It may be future too. But you see the problem is, if they rebuilt a temple it would not be a Holy Place. Because only if God's presence is in it, would it be holy. Hence an unholy building can't be desecrated.
In 2 Thess. 2:3-4, Paul refers to the temple of God, which we know in his theology is the Church. 1 Cor 3, 6, and elsewhere. So the man of lawlessness will take his place in the Church.
Revelation 13 does not mention a temple. Nor does it go up to verse 25. So are you meaning a difference passage?
Also, even if these passages all did refer to a rebuilt temple, that does not mean it happens in Netanyahu's Israel. It could happen a thousand years from now. Or 50. This is still no justification to overlook the injustice happening.
The temple was not only desecrated in AD 70 it was destroyed! So how can "ending sacrifice" and setting up in a "wing of the temple" the "abomination that causes desolation" for a period of time "until the end that is decreed" (Daniel 9:27) be fulfilled in a destroyed temple? Jesus Christ, Himself confirmed this exact prophecy (Matthew 25:15, Mark 13:14). In 2 Thess. 2:4 "sets himself up" (AI google: he phrase "sets himself up" in the English translation is a good way to convey the sense of the Greek, Greek - καθίσαι - “sit down”). Compare this to Daniel 9:27 "στησῃ ἐαυτὸν" literally translates to "will set himself up" or "will establish himself" in a "wing of the temple". You are contorting the plain reading of 2 Thess. 2:4 replacing a physical (known) place (obviously the temple mount) in the future with some theological speculation just like the return of Jesus will occur on the Mount of Olives (Zechariah 14:4). All of these world-shaking events will occur in and around Jerusalem. If Paul wanted to specify the Church he would have used "Church" (ekklesia) and not "temple" [In the Greek text of 2 Thessalonians 2:4, the word "temple" is translated as ναός (naos). This word refers to a place of worship or a shrine, particularly in the context of ancient Greek temples, AI Google]. Your reference to Cor 3, 6 are the gift of the Holy Spirit distributed to individual believers not a single location where the individual "man of lawlessness" could "set himself up", since only God is omnipresent.
Apart from all this, it is a clear principle in scripture that it is the outcome of an action that is used to judge the action as "good" or "evil" (Matthew 7:17-18). The creation of the modern state of Israel is and has been by any measure of human thriving overwhelmingly good for the middle east, and many Christians including myself believe it was God's sovereign will to bring this about to bring respite to the decay in the ME and more importantly to provide the physical location of the tumultuous and age defining events to take place in "the end times" involving Jews, Christians, and other Gentiles. What IS evil is the death cult of the false prophet that is driving the murder and mayhem and other gross violations of human rights in the Middle East. Those governments in the ME that are virtually exclusively arab cultures that can side-line that evil manifesto are willing to benefit their people though peace accords with Israel. Your historical rendering of the establishment and development of modern state of Israel is full of bias and a highly selective narrative to paint this as "evil". Many arabs living in Palestine in the Israeli partition in1948 agreed to stay and be part of the modern state, and you forgot to mention that the modern state of Jordan was also created at the same time. Early in the year of that dreadful Oct7 atrocity I walked from Nazareth to Capernaum. Nazareth and Cana where I stayed are overwhelmingly populated by Arab-descent citizens of Israel. So no ethnic cleansing/apartheid/genocide whatsoever AND arab citizens have full rights, but you conveniently ignore those very things that have happened and are happening to Christian communities since before 1948 in those arab nation states.
Back in 1969 I was in Year 9 (16 yrs old) in a high school in Randwick, Sydney, with a significant number of Jewish students including many of my friends and we had an Israeli exchange student. He spoke at times in Hebrew. I was captivated by this strange language! The resurrection of the modern spoken Hebrew language was a modern miracle and was prophesised in Zephaniah 3:9.
"As the Jews were scattered all over the world, the language of Hebrew had become extinct except for use in religious ceremonies. As Jews began to trickle back to Palestine in the late 19th century, one man named Eliezer Ben Yehuda had a vision to restore the ancient language of Hebrew back to a modern language. Currently the returning Jews were weak and divided, but a common language would be central in helping them to unite into a modern nation.
Undeterred by his diagnosis of deadly tubercolosis at age 18, Eliezer dedicated himself to bringing the ancient language back to life. From 1881 to 1921, Eliezer worked up to 18 hour days as he tirelessly researched ancient languages looking for fragments of ancient Jewish words. Combining this with his knowledge of Biblical Hebrew, Ben Yehudah began to piece together a modern and practical language, which he ultimately published in a mammoth 18 volume dictionary. By the end of his life, Eliezer’s efforts had paid off and Hebrew had become so widely used that it was recognised as one of three languages in Palestine.
The Bible text predicts many layers to the End Time restoration, and the prophet Zephaniah declared in this context “…I will restore to the peoples a pure language” (Zeph 3:9). While this verse definitely predicts the restoration of “a” pure language, which language is he speaking of?
The previous verse contains the clue. Zephaniah 3:8 is the only verse in the entire Hebrew Bible to contain every single letter of the Hebrew alphabet – including the special form of five unique letters that appear differently when they appear at the end of a word. It seems that this verse is a giant hint that the language prophesied to be restored in the very next verse, is none other than the Hebrew language itself."
True, but is there any other religion other than Islam that explicitly denies Christian foundational doctrine: Jesus is the Son of God ("The Christ"), He did die on a Roman cross, He died as an atonement for sin, He rose from the dead, He is not just a prophet He is the Son of God.
This is just a long comment proving the point of my post. You have taken a very niche reading of the text, redd one verse a special way, enforced modern context on the text, found a special bible code, and used it to justify undeniable evil happening now. Thanks for proving my point.
"enforced modern context on the text"! Really. So any eschatology is banned because it is yet to occur so it is in your words "enforcing a modern context"!
What I mean is you are assuming your reading means everything that has happened is justified, because it is prophesied. So rather than evaluate the history and current events in light of what the Bible says about justice. You create a feedback loop between the modern founding of a nation called Israel and tie it to your reading of debatable prophecies. It's a dangerous way to read the Bible, as it can be used to justify a lot of wrong.
I very much doubt Palestine was a genuine attempt to seek "historical justice". My estimate it that it was a cynical piece of real-politik right out of Machiavelli's "The Prince" by all sides.
Then again I very much doubt today's historical justice movement is genuine either - except on the part of the useless idiots of course.
A fair assessment, and why historical justice creates evil, it is inherently evil, and is used cynically by many.
One question is: "When does justice become historical?". Are the Jews now entitled to Palestine, since they took most of it many decades ago and most of the original thieves/terrorists are likely now dead?
This was my exact question when reading the article. Matt has laid a solid argument for 1948 being an injustice based on historic injustice. But now that injustice has become historic, so where does that leave us? I guess in the same situation as Australia, America and many other countries. Needing Christs love to unite, forgiveness and moving forward. But for some they will never leave the past alone. Until there is forgiveness, there will continue to be war or continual grievances aired and demands for reparations from the wrong people.
This is true. I think the problem with the Middle East situation in Israel is that both sides have wronged each other so much and so continually, that only a supernatural force can bring peace. In fact, I think this is necessarily taught in the law, that until the people of Israel turn to God he will not grant them peace.
This is why I say the neither church, nor the West, should be supporting military intervention in the region. But instead missionary efforts.
The Jewish settlers are continually taking the land as we speak. So it is an injustice in the process of happening. So, I don't know if we can call it historical yet. But I have to think about this.
Yes I agree that clearly the ongoing behavior - land-grabbing / genocide / apartheid etc. is wrong and is a current injustice. I was thinking more of the activities which occurred through from the late 1940s up until - say - the 6 day war in the late 1960s.
I have to think about it. I think a case could be made that the pre-1967 borders are the only practical solution. But a case could also be made that because the current generation are continuing to take the land they have continued the sin and hence it is still current. By that I mean the current generation have chosen to own it, by continuing this.
I don't think its the job of foreign nations to interfere, either way.
I know people think that's how we should solve these things. But my observation is that the more other nations interfere in situations like this the worse they become and the more they are protracted and drag on.
Take away the foreign support and both sides probably would have come to an arrangement by now.
I wonder if it is history and "historical" justice which is really the problem here - or whether the problem you are writing about is just a manifestation of collectivism?
The actual problem that you descibe above seems to me not to be a result of justice being administered for "historical" crimes per se - but rather the simple absence of justice which results from administering justice on the basis of group membership (i.e. punishing the innocent alongside the guilty, and rewarding those who have not been harmed alongside those who have) and without applying any of the usual standards of evidence.
True justice is inherently individual. Individuals commit crimes and are therefore guilty and only individuals are harmed and are therefore victims. So it is not "all black people" who are harmed by slavery - it is those individuals who were enslaved. In many cases groups do exist and both act together to commit crimes and target all, or almost all, the people in another group - but - and here is the key - punishment and compensation is owed to each individual on the basis of his individual criminal acts and harms suffered not on the basis of membership of some group.
Thus justice should not be withheld based on some arbitrary period of time - but based purely on whether justice is still practically possible. Can the individual criminals and victims be identified with a reasonable certainty and the harms quantified. In other words - historical cases should be held to the same standard of justice to which we hold current cases. If that standard can be met, then justice can be adminstered. Obviously as time passes it becomes harder and harder to establish facts - and therefore history makes it harder and harder to apply justice - but where facts can be ascertained justice can still be applied.
In the case of Palestine for example that would mean that Palestinians are still entitled to their property back because stolen goods remain the property of the owner even when transferred. However it would not be fair to *punish* the son of the thief beyond the simple return of the stolen property and compensation for harm up to the amount of his inheritance - since that son did not commit the original crime (OK - maybe he knowingly received stolen goods so could and should be punished for that - but he did not commit the actual theft).
In the case of native Australians and Americans - it may indeed be that they are entitled to some compensation to the extent that they can still show direct theft and or harm and living descendants of the thief are still alive and can be taken to court and sued for the return of any stolen property.
Whether entire continents must be returned this way however is questionable because it is not at all clear to me that the indigenous people ever owned the land in the first place - certainly they wouldn't have claimed to do so.
So - in short - I think justice is justice - and as long as it is possible to do so, it should be administered. But there should not be a separate category of "justice" with different standards which applies when the regular standards of justice do not produce a "desired" result.
Do you have any links or references to what is happening? This is new to me and am surprised with all the pro-Palestinian media coverage that this isn’t big news.
There are widely reported articles on the issue from many sources:
https://www.bing.com/search?q=Israel+taking+Palestinian+land&setmkt=en-AU&PC=EMMX01&form=LBT003&scope=web
Here is a good video series on your question. The bloke is Canadian so I listened at 1.5x speed.
https://youtu.be/dTbwzu27-Sk?
“Weakest possible ground”! Really! So please explain these scriptures that are all mutually reinforcing and clearly prophesy a third Jewish temple in Jerusalem in end times. Daniel 9:27, Matthew 24:15, 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4 , Revelation 13:14-25!
Thank you for illustrating my point for me in the article.
Daniel 9:27 and Matthew 24:15 have been interpreted consistently in Church history to refer to the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple being desecrated in AD 70.
It may be future too. But you see the problem is, if they rebuilt a temple it would not be a Holy Place. Because only if God's presence is in it, would it be holy. Hence an unholy building can't be desecrated.
In 2 Thess. 2:3-4, Paul refers to the temple of God, which we know in his theology is the Church. 1 Cor 3, 6, and elsewhere. So the man of lawlessness will take his place in the Church.
Revelation 13 does not mention a temple. Nor does it go up to verse 25. So are you meaning a difference passage?
Also, even if these passages all did refer to a rebuilt temple, that does not mean it happens in Netanyahu's Israel. It could happen a thousand years from now. Or 50. This is still no justification to overlook the injustice happening.
Hence, yes, the weakest possible foundation.
The temple was not only desecrated in AD 70 it was destroyed! So how can "ending sacrifice" and setting up in a "wing of the temple" the "abomination that causes desolation" for a period of time "until the end that is decreed" (Daniel 9:27) be fulfilled in a destroyed temple? Jesus Christ, Himself confirmed this exact prophecy (Matthew 25:15, Mark 13:14). In 2 Thess. 2:4 "sets himself up" (AI google: he phrase "sets himself up" in the English translation is a good way to convey the sense of the Greek, Greek - καθίσαι - “sit down”). Compare this to Daniel 9:27 "στησῃ ἐαυτὸν" literally translates to "will set himself up" or "will establish himself" in a "wing of the temple". You are contorting the plain reading of 2 Thess. 2:4 replacing a physical (known) place (obviously the temple mount) in the future with some theological speculation just like the return of Jesus will occur on the Mount of Olives (Zechariah 14:4). All of these world-shaking events will occur in and around Jerusalem. If Paul wanted to specify the Church he would have used "Church" (ekklesia) and not "temple" [In the Greek text of 2 Thessalonians 2:4, the word "temple" is translated as ναός (naos). This word refers to a place of worship or a shrine, particularly in the context of ancient Greek temples, AI Google]. Your reference to Cor 3, 6 are the gift of the Holy Spirit distributed to individual believers not a single location where the individual "man of lawlessness" could "set himself up", since only God is omnipresent.
Apart from all this, it is a clear principle in scripture that it is the outcome of an action that is used to judge the action as "good" or "evil" (Matthew 7:17-18). The creation of the modern state of Israel is and has been by any measure of human thriving overwhelmingly good for the middle east, and many Christians including myself believe it was God's sovereign will to bring this about to bring respite to the decay in the ME and more importantly to provide the physical location of the tumultuous and age defining events to take place in "the end times" involving Jews, Christians, and other Gentiles. What IS evil is the death cult of the false prophet that is driving the murder and mayhem and other gross violations of human rights in the Middle East. Those governments in the ME that are virtually exclusively arab cultures that can side-line that evil manifesto are willing to benefit their people though peace accords with Israel. Your historical rendering of the establishment and development of modern state of Israel is full of bias and a highly selective narrative to paint this as "evil". Many arabs living in Palestine in the Israeli partition in1948 agreed to stay and be part of the modern state, and you forgot to mention that the modern state of Jordan was also created at the same time. Early in the year of that dreadful Oct7 atrocity I walked from Nazareth to Capernaum. Nazareth and Cana where I stayed are overwhelmingly populated by Arab-descent citizens of Israel. So no ethnic cleansing/apartheid/genocide whatsoever AND arab citizens have full rights, but you conveniently ignore those very things that have happened and are happening to Christian communities since before 1948 in those arab nation states.
Back in 1969 I was in Year 9 (16 yrs old) in a high school in Randwick, Sydney, with a significant number of Jewish students including many of my friends and we had an Israeli exchange student. He spoke at times in Hebrew. I was captivated by this strange language! The resurrection of the modern spoken Hebrew language was a modern miracle and was prophesised in Zephaniah 3:9.
"As the Jews were scattered all over the world, the language of Hebrew had become extinct except for use in religious ceremonies. As Jews began to trickle back to Palestine in the late 19th century, one man named Eliezer Ben Yehuda had a vision to restore the ancient language of Hebrew back to a modern language. Currently the returning Jews were weak and divided, but a common language would be central in helping them to unite into a modern nation.
Undeterred by his diagnosis of deadly tubercolosis at age 18, Eliezer dedicated himself to bringing the ancient language back to life. From 1881 to 1921, Eliezer worked up to 18 hour days as he tirelessly researched ancient languages looking for fragments of ancient Jewish words. Combining this with his knowledge of Biblical Hebrew, Ben Yehudah began to piece together a modern and practical language, which he ultimately published in a mammoth 18 volume dictionary. By the end of his life, Eliezer’s efforts had paid off and Hebrew had become so widely used that it was recognised as one of three languages in Palestine.
The Bible text predicts many layers to the End Time restoration, and the prophet Zephaniah declared in this context “…I will restore to the peoples a pure language” (Zeph 3:9). While this verse definitely predicts the restoration of “a” pure language, which language is he speaking of?
The previous verse contains the clue. Zephaniah 3:8 is the only verse in the entire Hebrew Bible to contain every single letter of the Hebrew alphabet – including the special form of five unique letters that appear differently when they appear at the end of a word. It seems that this verse is a giant hint that the language prophesied to be restored in the very next verse, is none other than the Hebrew language itself."
https://olivetreeministries.org.au/restoring-the-lost-language-of-hebrew/#:~:text=The%20Bible%20text%20predicts%20many,(Zeph%203%3A9).
"
Also every religion that denies Jesus is the Christ is antichrist:
"22 Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son." 1 John 2:22.
True, but is there any other religion other than Islam that explicitly denies Christian foundational doctrine: Jesus is the Son of God ("The Christ"), He did die on a Roman cross, He died as an atonement for sin, He rose from the dead, He is not just a prophet He is the Son of God.
Yes, there is, think about it brother...
I know but i think the Messianic Jews would beg to disagree.
Correction: Jordan became independent of the British Mandate in 1946.
This is just a long comment proving the point of my post. You have taken a very niche reading of the text, redd one verse a special way, enforced modern context on the text, found a special bible code, and used it to justify undeniable evil happening now. Thanks for proving my point.
"enforced modern context on the text"! Really. So any eschatology is banned because it is yet to occur so it is in your words "enforcing a modern context"!
What I mean is you are assuming your reading means everything that has happened is justified, because it is prophesied. So rather than evaluate the history and current events in light of what the Bible says about justice. You create a feedback loop between the modern founding of a nation called Israel and tie it to your reading of debatable prophecies. It's a dangerous way to read the Bible, as it can be used to justify a lot of wrong.
I would be interested in your take on Joshua and the story of the religio-ethnic cleansing of Canaan.