JERUSALEM DAY
I am in Jerusalem today just flying in yesterday from Hong Kong where I was at the global Chinese Homecoming which was awesome! But today
is "Jerusalem Day", the 43rd anniversary of the liberation of
Jerusalem according to the Hebrew calendar and the celbrating of the 3000 year old history of this ancient city of the Jews. Abraham came here almost 4,000 years ago when he offered up Isaac on Mount Moriah which is the modern day temple mount and where the mosque of Omar is. Please read the following asticle by Rev. Malcomb Hedding who is the
director of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem. The U.S. along with most of the world is trying to divide this city. Can you imagine if we divided New York or Washington DC with the Native American Indians? Historically the Native American Indians have more rights to that land then the Palastinians have a right to this land. What is wrong with this picture? Shalom, Clint
DENYING THE ANCIENT JEWISH CLAIM TO JERUSALEM
May
12, 2010
Benjamin Disraeli, Britain's prime minister at the turn of
the 20th century, had a special way to take on his detractors who heckled him
as a Jew when he rose to speak in parliament. "My people were kings in
Jerusalem while you were still scratching around in the fields for
mushrooms," he would say.
The point is, Jerusalem
was the Royal House of Israel long before London or Paris had regal palaces,
and Berlin or New York even existed. Yet it is these capitals in their
arrogance that seek, almost daily, to disinvest the Jewish people from their
ancient, biblical claim and connection to Jerusalem.
This is a people who
for thousands of years expressed their attachment to and longing for the city
by exclaiming every Passover: "Next year in Jerusalem!"
The city has been the
capital of only one people and that is the Jewish people. No other nation can
or should lay claim to it. "Jerusalem is not a settlement!" as current Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has recently declared. It is the City of
David, Solomon, the great Prophets and Sages of the Bible, and the city that
Jesus himself prayed for and recognized as Jewish.
Even the Hebrew
Patriarch Abraham, four thousand years ago, travelled to Moriah and the city of
Salem to worship God. It is from this divine encounter four millennia ago that
the city, even the modern one, takes its name. It is Jerusalem, the City of
Peace and of righteousness.
In contrast, when the
Ottoman Turks conquered the region and reigned over it for 400 years, they
never treated the city as anything more than a backwater provincial town. It
was no one else's capital and remained neglected and broken down. Even the
Islamic legend that Muhammad ascended into heaven from here is doubtful and
disputed by Islamic theologians!
Yet the great Israelite kings David
and Solomon wrote magnificent eulogies to the city three thousand years ago and
these can all be read in the poetry section of the Bible. The great Hebrew
prophets did the same as they called her Jewish inhabitants to account. The
Apostle Paul always returned to Zion to worship and had a great longing to be
in Jerusalem for the Biblical feasts. Jerusalem has always had a Jewish
presence, and a Jewish majority once more ever since the mid-1800s.
How strange it is then
that the world believes that the ancient biblical city should not be Jewish.
What nonsense is this?
The Jews have more
claim to Jerusalem than the French have to Paris or the Germans to Berlin or
the British to London. It is absurd to think otherwise and yet this is the
nature of the global political consensus today. It is nothing short of
shameful.
Jerusalem is the
capital of the Jewish people and those who contest this statement have to
either rewrite or totally ignore history. Yet sadly, this they happily do.
The sweet Psalmist of Israel, King
David, looked over the walls and ramparts of Jerusalem and wrote, "Pray
for the peace of Jerusalem, they shall prosper who love her." His great
prayer was for peace and joy to rain down upon the city as the Jewish
worshippers gathered to celebrate their prescribed festivals, and as the
nations also came to this "house of prayer for all peoples."
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