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Israel and the Body of Christ

By Court Wood

Christians as "the rest of her offspring--those who obey God's commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus." The woman must be Israel.

 

The woman represents Israel, the dragon represents Satan, the child represents Jesus, and "the rest of her offspring" are those who believe in Jesus Christ.

 

From verse 7 to 12 we read of a great battle in heaven, and Satan and his angels are hurled down to earth.

 

For "the heavens," and "for those who dwell in them" this is a time of rejoicing. However, for the world, this is a time of woe. Verse 12 warns the world: "But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short."

 

Verses 13 to 16 describe Satan's furious assaults against the natural branch Israel, especially in the last days preceding Christ's return. (See Romans chapter 11 for understanding of Israel as the "natural branch")

 

In verse 14 the woman (Israel) is given "two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent." Could the eagle symbolize America, Israel's closest ally and friend in the world since her restoration as a nation in 1948? Is this more than coincidence?

 

Unable to succeed in his repeated attempts to destroy the woman (Israel), Satan (the dragon) finally turns his full rage and hatred against "the rest of her offspring," the Body of Christ.

 

"Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring--those who obey God's commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus." Rev. 12:17

 

The Jewish people have always, along with those who hold to the testimony of Jesus and the Word of God, been hated by Satan and his followers. In a Jewish body, Jesus Christ the Savior was revealed to this world. Not only was Jesus a Jew, but the Gospel was to the Jew first, and then to the Gentiles. And the first Christians were Jews, and the entire New Testament was written by Jewish followers of Jesus.

Jews are also hated by the world because of the extraordinary gifts God has given them, even in their unbelief. These divine gifts to the Jewish people have not only enabled their survival for their 2,000 year dispersal from the Promised Land, but have also caused the Jewish people to be a blessing to the entire world. Their scattering around the world followed their rejection, as a Nation, of Jesus Christ as their Messiah. Now God, in His mercy, has restored them to their land in fulfillment of prophecy, and in preparation for Israel's salvation as a people. See Romans 11

 

The Jewish people have been an extraordinary blessing to the world in their contributions in science, medicine, business, and education.

 

Compare the contributions of the Jewish people, who hold to the teaching and law of God found in the Old Testament, with the Arab/Islamic nations founded on the teachings of the false prophet Muhammad. A striking example of this comparison can be seen by noting Nobel Prizes, awarded to the Jewish world community and awarded to the Arab/Islamic world community.

 

Only Eight (8) ARAB/ISLAMIC NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS from a population of 1.2 billion people (about 20% of the world's population).

 

One hundred twenty eight (128) JEWISH NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS from a population of 14 million people (or about 0.02% of the world's population, or about the population of Nepal or Morocco.) (Source: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, IL., Britannica Book of the Year, 1999)

 

These awards were in the fields of literature, peace, chemistry, economics, medicine, and physics.

 

Islam has instead promoted terrorism, suicide bombers, slave traders, and religious leaders calling for "holy wars." Well did Jesus tell us “you shall know them by their fruits.”

 

Our response as Christians

 

· Pray for and love the Jewish people who are still ignorant of their Messiah Jesus. The love of Christians for the Jewish people will be one of the principle means that God will use to open the eyes of Israel. Many Jews today already are realizing that those who love them most are Christians “who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus.”

 

· Pray for the 1.2 billion people in the world who are enslaved by the tyranny and violence of Islam.

 

· Prepare yourself. Consider that the closer we are to the victorious second coming of Jesus Christ, the greater will be the persecution of Christians throughout the world (including Christians in America). And as Satan fails in his final attempts to destroy Israel, he will increasingly turn his full rage against the Body of Christ, the “offspring of the woman who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus.”

 

TWENTY IMPORTANT FACTS ABOUT THE MIDDLE EAST

 

By William Bennett, Jack Kemp and Jeanne Kilpatrick

 

The world's attention has been focused on the Middle East. We are confronted daily with scenes of carnage and destruc­tion. Can we understand such violence? Yes, but only if we come to the situation with a solid grounding in the facts of the matter - facts that too often are forgotten, if ever they were learned. Below are twenty facts that we think are useful in understanding the current situation, how we arrived here and how we might eventually arrive at a solution.

 

Roots of the Conflict

 

1. When the United Nations proposed the establishment of two states in the region—one Jewish, one Arab, the Jews accepted the proposal and declared their independence in 1948. The Jewish state constituted only 1/6 of one percent of what was known as "the Arab world." The Arab states, however, rejected the UN plan and since then have waged war against Israel repeatedly, both all-out wars and wars of terrorism and attrition. In 1948, five Arab armies invaded Israel in an effort to eradicate it. Jamal Husseini of the Arab Higher Committee spoke for many in vowing to soak "the soil of our beloved country with the last drop of our blood."

 

2. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded in 1964, three years before Israel controlled the West Bank and Gaza. The PLO’s declared purpose was to eliminate the state of Israel by means of armed struggle. To this day, the Web site of Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority (PA) claims that the entirety of Israel is "occupied" territory. It is impossible to square this with the PLO and PA assertions to Western audiences that the root of the conflict is Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

3. The West Bank and Gaza (controlled by Jordan and Egypt from 1948 to 1967) came under Israeli control during the Six Day War of 1967 that started when Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran and Arab armies amassed on Israel’s borders to invade and liquidate the state. It is important to note that during their 19-year rule, neither Jordan nor Egypt had made any effort to establish a Palestinian state on those lands. Just before the Arab nations launched their war of aggression against the State of Israel in 1967, Syrian Defense Minister (later President) Hafez Assad stated, "Our forces are now entirely ready...to initiate the act of liberation itself, and to explode the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland...The time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation." On the brink of the 1967 war, Egyptian President Gamal Nassar declared,

"Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel."

4. Because of their animus against Jews, many leaders of the Palestinian cause have long supported our enemies. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem allied himself with Adolf Hitler during WWII. Yasser Arafat, chairman of the PLO and president of the PA, has repeatedly targeted and killed Americans. In 1973, Arafat ordered the execution of Cleo Noel, the American ambassador to the Sudan. Arafat was very closely aligned with the Soviet Union and other enemies of the United States throughout the Cold War. In 1991, during the Gulf War, Arafat aligned himself with Saddam Hussein, whom he praised as "the defender of the Arab nation, of Muslims, and of free men everywhere."

5. Israel has, in fact, returned most of the land it cap­tured during the 1967 war and right after that war of­fered to return all of it in exchange for peace and normal relations; the offer was rejected. As a result of the 1978 Camp David accords, in which Egypt recognized Israel's right to exist and normal relations were established between the two countries, Israel returned the Sinai desert, a territory three times the size of Israel and 91 percent of the territory Israel took control of in the 1967 war.

 

6. In 2000, as part of negotiations for a comprehensive and durable peace, Israel offered to turn over all but the smallest portion of the remaining territories to Arafat. But Israel was rebuffed when Arafat walked out of Camp David and launched the current intifada.

 

7. Arafat has never been less than clear about his goals, at least not in Arabic. On the very day that he signed the Oslo accords in 1993, in which he promised to renounce terrorism and recognize Israel, he addressed the Palestinian people on Jordanian television and declared that he had taken the first step "in the 1974 plan." This was a thinly veiled reference to the "phased plan," according to which any territorial gain was acceptable as a means toward the ultimate goal of Israel’s destruction.

 

8. The deceased Faisal al-Husseini, a leading Palestinian spokesman, made the same point in 2001 when he declared that the West Bank and Gaza represented only "22 percent of Palestine" and that the Oslo process was a "Trojan horse." He explained, "When we are asking all the Palestinian forces and factions to look at the Oslo Agreement and at other agreements as ‘temporary’ procedures, or phased goals, this means that we are ambushing the Israelis and cheating them." The goal, he continued, was "the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea," i.e., the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, all of Israel.

 

9. To this day, the Fatah wing of the PLO (the "moderate" wing that was founded and is controlled by Arafat himself) has as its official emblem the entire state of Israel covered by two rifles and a hand grenade, another fact that belies the claim that Arafat desires nothing more than the West Bank and Gaza.

 

10. While criticism of Israel is not necessarily the same as "anti-Semitism," it must be remembered that the Middle East press is, in fact, rife with anti-Semitism. More than fifteen years ago the eminent scholar Bernard Lewis could point out that "The demonization of Jews [in Arabic literature] goes further than it had ever done in Western literature, with the exception of Germany during the period of Nazi rule." Since then, and through all the years of the "peace process," things have become much worse. Depictions of Jews in Arab and Muslim media are akin to those of Nazi Germany, and medieval blood libels including claims that Jews use Christian and Muslim blood in preparing their holiday foods have become prominent and routine. In a sermon broadcast on PA television Sheik Ahmad Halabaya stated, "They [the Jews] must be butchered and killed, as Allah the Almighty said: ‘Fight them: Allah will torture them at your hands.’ Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them."

 

11. Over three-quarters of Palestinians approve of suicide bombings, an appalling statistic but, in light of the above facts, an unsurprising one.

 

THE STATE OF ISRAEL

 

12. There are 21 Arab countries in the Middle East and only one Jewish state: Israel, which is also the only democracy in the region.

 

13. Israel is the only country in the region that permits citizens of all faiths to worship freely and openly. Twenty percent of Israeli citizens are not Jewish.

 

14. While Jews are not permitted to live in many Arab countries, Arabs are granted full citizenship and have the right to vote in Israel. Arabs are also free to become members of the Israeli parliament (the Knesset). In fact, several Arabs have been democratically elected to the Knesset and have been serving there for years. Arabs living in Israel have more rights and are freer than most Arabs living in Arab countries.

 

15. Israel is smaller than New Hampshire and is surrounded by nations hostile to her existence. Some peace proposals, including the recent Saudi proposal, demand withdrawal from the entire West Bank, which would leave Israel 9 miles wide at its most vulnerable point.

 

16. The oft-cited UN Resolution 242 (passed in the wake of the 1967 war) does not, in fact, require a complete withdrawal from the West Bank. As legal scholar Eugene Rostow put it, "Resolution 242, which as undersecretary of state for political affairs between 1966 and 1969 I helped produce, calls on the parties to make peace and allows Israel to administer the territories it occupied in 1967 until ‘a just and lasting peace in the Middle East’ is achieved. When such a peace is made, Israel is required to withdraw its armed forces ‘from territories’ it occupied during the Six-Day War, not from ‘the’ territories nor from ‘all’ the territories, but from some of the territories."

 

17. Israel has, of course, conceded that the Palestinians have legitimate claims to the disputed territories and is willing to engage in negotiations on the matter. As noted above, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered almost all of the territories to Arafat at Camp David in 2000.

 

18. Despite claims that the Israeli settlements in the West Bank are the obstacle to peace, Jews lived there for centuries before being massacred or driven out by invading Arab armies in 1948-49. And contrary to common misperceptions, Israeli settlements, which constitute less than two percent of the territories, almost never displace Palestinians. The area of the West Bank includes some of the most important sites in Jewish history, among them Hebron, Bethlehem, and Jericho. East Jerusalem, often cited as an "Arab city" or "occupied territory," is the site of Judaism’s holiest monument. While under Arab rule (1948-67), this area was entirely closed to Jews. Since Israel took control, it has been open to people of all faiths.

 

19. Finally, let us consider the demand that certain territories in the Muslim world must be off-limits to Jews. This demand is of a piece with Hitler’s proclamation that German land had to be "Judenrein" (empty of Jews). Arabs can live freely throughout Israel, and as full citizens. Why should Jews be forbidden to live or to own land in an area like the West Bank simply because the majority of people is Arab?

 

20. In sum, a fair portrayal of the Middle East reveals that one nation stands far above the others in its commitment to human rights & democracy and its commitment to peace & mutual security. That nation is Israel.

 

ANTI-SEMITISM INCREASING IN THE U.S.

A poll released a few weeks ago by the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) and published by Arutz Sheva found that 17% of American citizens can be classified as "hardcore" anti-Semites. 1000 Americans participated in the survey, which shows an increase in the number of Americans with anti-Semitic attitudes, reversing a ten-year decline. ADL National President Abraham Foxman says that the poll proves that, "an undercurrent of Jewish hatred persists in America."

According to the poll 35% of the Hispanic population as well as 35% of African-Americans are "strongly" anti-Semitic. In addition, 3% of U.S. college and university students can be classified as such. In regard to the Hispanic population, Foxman said: "It is distressing that one of the fastest growing segments in America holds strongly anti-Semitic views."

 

The poll suggests that for the first time, negative attitudes toward Israel, and concern that American Jews have too much influence over U.S. Middle East policy, are helping to foster anti-Semitic beliefs. 42% of those described as the "most anti-Semitic" Americans were four times as likely to believe that American Jewish leaders have too much influence over U.S. foreign policy. 73% of the "most anti-Semitic" Americans said they felt the U.S. has been tilting too much towards Israel.

There have been a significant number of anti-Semitic attacks within the U.S. which are not being reported in the media. Just recently, a Rabbi in a southern state reported that three synagogues in his area had been at­tacked, but there has been hardly a mention of it in even the local media.

 

Top

"Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring--those who obey God's commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus." Rev. 12:17

The 12th Chapter of the book of Revelation gives a clear picture of Satan's hatred for the Jewish people, especially from the birth of Jesus Christ, and culminating in the last days as the final fury of Satan will be unleashed against Israel, and the Body of Christ—"the rest of her offspring."

Chapter 12 begins by describing this extraordinary woman, “…clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth." Rev. 12:1-2

In verse four, Satan is pictured as standing before the woman "so that he might devour her child the moment it was born." Verse five clearly describes the child as Jesus by stating that He: "will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child
was snatched up to God and to his throne."

Some scholars interpret the woman as representing Christians, however this is inconsistent with verse 17 which speaks of clearly

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