The Jewish Diaspora and Israel

The Jewish Diaspora and Israel
Why Globalism is the Greatest Threat that the Jewish People have ever Faced
From 70 AD (the year of the destruction of the Jewish Temple) unto 1948 (the year in which the Modern State of Israel came into being), the Jewish people endured approximately 1,878 years of an exile that consisted of tremendous persecution; which included mass murders, indentured servitude, rape, pillage, multiple population expulsions from nation-states, second-class citizenship, and finally an industrial holocaust.
The Ten Commandments, the heart of Jewish Law and culture, begins with God’s proclamation that the God of their forefathers alone is the God that delivered them from 400 years of oppression in Egypt; therefore, the first commandment proclaims that the Jewish people shall have no other gods before YHWH their God. For the Jews, therefore, the keeping of the commandments and covenant incurred unparalleled blessings, while the breaking of the commandments and covenant incurred cursing and the expulsion from the Promised Land that God sanctioned for the Jews to govern by the Law.
The blessings that the Jews brought to Western culture are their monotheistic faith and God given Law: the very basis of Christianity, that is, non-Jews’ access to the Jew’s covenant with God. The curse that the Jews incurred upon the expulsion from the Promised Land is the jealousy of the nations, which is due to the cultural richness that the Jews enjoyed as they often segregated themselves from the lifestyles of the nations.
Thousands of years before the English Magna Carta; the American Declaration of Independence; and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen; the ancient Israelites enjoyed equality and the primacy of the Law under God. The Law commanded even the Israelite Kings to be subservient to the Law, equally with the common people. The Landscape of Truth’s chapter 7 details the theological significance of the Old Testament Law; however, we will only mention some key principles for our purposes:
The ancient Israelite law code entailed principles that we might recognize as progressive. For example, the Law of Moses forbade the oppression of foreigners. The Law commanded that debt must be forgiven after a specified period. The Law ensured the integrity of private property, i.e., the forbiddance of property seizure. Lastly, the Law commanded people to keep portions of their agrarian output for the poor.
Other portions of the Law of Moses that cover rites and ritual observances may seem arcane or superstitious to modern people; however, a learned person understands that the ritualistic edicts mask greater principles and foster psychological attitudes that cultured the people as a whole. Certain scriptural authors themselves plainly state that we are to look beyond matter-of-fact interpretations of the Old Testament Law for higher principles. For instance, the Apostle Paul observed that God’s commanding Israel not to muzzle that ox that treads actually implies that a workman is worthy of his living wage. Too, the Prophet Isaiah declared that rather than mere animal sacrifices, God requires the sacrifice of equitable judgment, the relieving of the oppressed; justice for the fatherless; and charity for the widow.
The Landscape of Truth’s chapter 7 pronounces that the actual marvel of the Law of Moses is the manner in which the Law portrays the worldly gains that we acquire through life as temporal and inferior to the eternal riches of righteousness that the fulfilled Law points to. The Law uses the tedious sacrificial system that regulates Israel’s agrarian economy to portray the relationship between our inferior earthly riches and the eternal riches of God: to confound the social prejudices that undermine the worldly civilization, the Law relegates the Israelites to sacrifice the best of their produce, live-stock, and such live-stock that represent their first born sons to represent the redemption of the heavenly riches, which the Law symbolized by sequestering the Ten Commandments’ tablets within the inaccessible Temple’s Holy of Holies. Like so, the Law inculcated in the Israelites the fact that the pursuit of the righteousness of the Law is of an eternal wealth that confounds the selfish pursuits that undermine human civilization. Only the Israelite kings’ breaking of the Law, after the kings sought their own riches above the people, led to Israel’s downfall.
Expelled from the Kingdom of Israel after the fall of their kings, the Jews began their centuries old endurance of persecution. The Jews no longer had their Temple as the center of the Jews’ agrarian life-styles in the Israelite Kingdom. The Jews, therefore, maintained their culture and civilization due to the Jews’ ability to abstract the principles of the Law to govern Jewish life in the many diverse regions in the world where the Jews’ where expelled.
The first century messianic Jews, who began Christianity, acknowledged Yehoshua (Jesus) of Nazareth as the Messiah: the eternal anointed King. By acknowledging his death and resurrection as an eternal sacrifice that replaced the Temple sacrifices, the first century Christian Jews professed a New Testament doctrine that enabled non-Jews to share in the blessings of the Jews’ covenant with God: essentially, in epistles to Jewish centers throughout the Roman world, the first century Jewish Christians professed that the sinless Lord Jesus fulfilled the Law through love and faithfulness and bequeathed the gift of salvation in an eternal Kingdom for those who simply desire his righteousness as a guide to conduct their lives, despite ineffectual religious works, kindred relations, social status, and male or female sex. With their New Testament, the first century Christian Jews abstracted the Old Testament bedrock agrarian principles to foster eventually the upward mobility of modern culture.
The majority of Jews, who did not recognize Yehoshua of Nazareth as the Messiah, began to create modern day rabbinic Judaism: Jewish sages abstracted the principles from the Law of Moses by codifying and systematizing the long-standing oral traditions that interpreted the Jews’ Temple-life observances: the sages compiled the oral traditions that accompanied the Torah, the five scriptural books that comprise the Law of Moses. The compilation of oral tradition, the sages called the Mishnah (a repeating of what has been learned): the sages divided the Mishnah into six orders, respectively covering agrarian laws; festival and Sabbath laws; marriage and divorce laws; civil and criminal laws; sacrificial rites and dietary laws; and laws of family, ritual, and purity. To accompany the oral traditions of the Mishnah, Jewish sages compiled ancient rabbinic analysis of the Mishnah, entitled the Gemara. Soon the joining of the Mishnah and Gemara together comprised the Talmud, the center of Jewish thought and custom that accompanies the Law of Moses.
The effect of the Talmud’s becoming the center of Jewish life in exile is a highly regulated and order society that compels literacy and a corporate sense of equality under the Law. Howbeit, the ill effect of Jews’ benefiting from the Talmudic tradition is an insular society, inviting the jealousies of the nations in which the Jews inhabited. As briefly mentioned above, the Jews endured profound levels of persecution, ironically at the hands of illiterate Christians, whose corrupt leaders ignored the Pauline New Testament scriptures that compelled true worshipping Christians to revere the Jews, because Lord Jesus the Christ died to incorporate the faithful amongst non-Jews into the Jewish covenant with God.
While in exile, the Jewish population segmented into three degrees of adherence to the Talmudic and Scriptural customs and Laws, which adherence, the Jews term Halacha: orthodox Jews distinguish themselves by their belief that the Talmud and Scriptures are divine; conservative Jews distinguish themselves by their belief that the Talmud and Scriptures are inspired; and Reformed Jews distinguish themselves by their belief that the Talmud and Scriptures are manmade.
Amongst all the nations wherein the Jews sojourned in exile, the Jews found their safest harbor in the United States of American, which championed religious freedom over its mainly Protestant populace. From the U.S., reformed and conservative Jews created Jewish charities that aided and rescued the persecuted mainly Orthodox Jews of Europe and Russia. The Jewish charities eventually became the powerful Jewish advocacy groups that champion Jewish causes today.
In response to the ongoing persecution of the Jewish Diaspora, the reformed and conservative Jews created the Zionist movement, a chiefly secular movement with the sole goal of repatriating persecuted Jews in their ancient homeland. After the Jewish Holocaust in which the German Nazi party sought to slaughter all the Jews in Europe, Zionists and other Jewish advocacy groups petitioned the American led United Nations to allow the organization of the Palestine region into a Jewish nation-state, which came into being in 1948. The newly created State of Israel then fought a succession of wars to defeat miraculously the surrounding Muslim nations that sought to destroy the Jewish state, on behalf of the displaced Muslim Palestinian population living in the midst of the Jewish State.
Now, one would think that the hostile Muslim nations that surround modern day Israel are the Jews’ greatest threat, but ironically the liberal forces that reformed and conservative Jews have allied with have become the Jews’ greatest menace. As the progressive forces of globalism integrate non-Christian populations into the West, the liberal institutes have become less tolerant of the West’s traditional Judeo-Christian religious groups. Increasingly, many secular progressives view the very nature of Judaism as prejudiced, sectarian, and an obstacle to true cultural integration. In this view, the secular progressives continually see the State of Israel, itself, as being racist in its very nature.
An even greater irony is the fact that Protestant Christian groups that are sensitive to the delicate relationship between Judaism and Christianity have become the Jews and the State of Israel’s greatest ally. The latter part of Landscape of Truth’s seventh chapter notes the burgeoning relationship between Christians and Jews, as both seek to defend themselves from the secular progressive threat, as seen in the rise of an increasingly autocratic and secular government.

How Understanding the Lord’s Prayer is Essential for Understanding the Meaning of Life, even including Science and Philosophy

Published May 3, 2021 – thelandscapeoftruth.com
Increasingly, today’s generation moves away from the Church and its description of God. A growing number embrace agnosticism or atheism (the beliefs that there is no universal truth or God). Now, people today have the same moral aptitude, integrity, and spiritual sensibility as their forbearers; however, today’s generation looks back upon millennia of religious strife; and they see how religious dogma has often undermined scientific understanding. And so, many scoff at the idea of revering Church doctrine. More and more, a greater number of people even take offence at the Church’s foundational belief that God alone is perfect and righteous: the only Holy One. People question how a perfect and righteous God could exist; while allowing the great evils that plague humankind. Moreover, people think that the Church’s belief in God’s sole righteousness disregards the great moral deeds of people who have fought for the oppressed.
Though we understand how religious strife has discouraged many; we find it unfortunate that many disavow an ethereal belief in a holy and righteous God. Unfortunately, many fail to see the necessity of a righteous God, because they cannot see past the shortcomings of those who hold religious belief.
Human frailty prevents us all from fathoming what pure justice looks like. And so, the purpose for the Church Apostles’ recognizing the fact that God alone is holy and righteous is because the Church Apostles understood that God’s person is a safeguard and guarantor that righteousness transcends our temporal faults.
For instance, human history’s most clear examples of peoples being unjustly oppressed fail to deliver concrete understandings of such justice and liberty that would inspire both the oppressors and the oppressed to embrace liberty for all. You see, often when seeing apparent acts of oppression, we cannot help but polarize the oppressors as being incapable of morality and the oppressed as being morally virtuous. And as a consequence, even our best moral role models grasp a shortsighted view of liberty to the end that civilization repeatedly falls prey to committing the same acts of injustice.
To grasp the most significant example of the true ideal of liberty escaping both the oppressors and the oppressed, we must consider the first century perspectives of the oppressed Israelites who dwelled under Imperial Rome’s rule:
From the Israelite and Roman conflict, we may see how shortsighted notions of justice result in the recurrence of unjust atrocities throughout history: in the conflict, we see that many non-Jewish peoples have wrongfully condemned the Jewish people for the killing of the Christ, the very embodiment of justice. Many in the non-Jewish, gentile, world still fail to see that the Israelites had the same shortsighted view of liberty and justice, as all have today. So in their condemning the Jewish people, they demonstrate their shortsighted understanding of justice, as exemplified by the 2 millennia of gentile genocide against the Jewish people: the years of persecution culminated in the mid-20th Century holocaust.
More than anything else, knowledge of such crimes committed in the name of misguided religious beliefs causes the younger generations to flee the Church, today. And so, the very message of the Christ seems lost because of the misjudgment of those who purport to be the Christ’s followers. Sadly, today’s generation fails to understand that religious faith is not the cause of the history’s sundry acts of injustice: human self-interests, which blights the universal good for all, is the source of the injustice.
We readily see the validity of this fact in our example. You see, the Roman Empire believed itself to be the height of government and civilization: the empire militarily consolidated Greek, enlightened culture and philosophy throughout the Mediterranean world. Roma used Egyptian grain to feed its masses. Roman rulers, therefore, forcibly reduced Judea, the ancient territory of Israel, to vassalage because the lands of Judea proved to be a natural thoroughfare between Europe and Africa, wherein Rome and Egypt, respectively, resided.
The Israelites, on the other hand, understood themselves to be God’s chosen people, the guardians of God’s laws and precepts; which the Israelites preserved through their religious practices and cultural traditions. The Israelites more fervently than any other Mediterranean people sought to liberate themselves from Roman rule. And so, many looked for a promised Messiah: a divinely inspired Israelite King, who would lead them to victory over the Romans.
Upon this backdrop, we may begin to understand the moral bewilderment that led some well-meaning Israelites to support the Christ’s crucifixion. And we may understand the moral shortsightedness of many gentiles that causes them to not understand fully the Christ’s necessary sacrifice to preserve righteousness.
Whereas Israel’s ruling elite and revolutionary zealots expected the Christ to be dreadful, powerful, and of military might; the Christ appeared as Jesus (Yehoshua) of Nazareth: a meek, lowly working-class carpenter, of no notable birth. Because of his lowly countenance, the only things that held the rulers and common people’s attention were the Christ’s otherworldly wisdom, the Christ’s palpable empathy for the downtrodden, and the Christ’s performance of notable miracles.
What discouraged the many revolutionary minded Israelites is that rather than rousing the people to fight against the Romans, Lord Jesus pleaded for the people to love their enemies and pray for those who despitefully used them. And even when asked how should the people pray, Lord Jesus explained that the people’s shortsighted understandings of their lives and God’s will did not yield to them the wisdom of what to pray for. Thus, the Lord gave His followers the manner and order of how to pray.
And so, finally, when the ruling Israelite elite crucified Lord Jesus because the Lord’s popularity had undermined their political power with the Romans; many of the revolutionary zealots and the general public indifferently accepted the Lord’s execution, because they could not see how the Lord would immediately affect their welfare and liberty.
But their indifference profoundly affected history as we can see by the centuries of persecution that the Jewish people have endured. And of course other peoples have endured gross persecution; all because of perverted notions of justice held by the persecutors. But we can began to overcome the endless cycle of strife, if we look within and consider that that which we personally hold dear may or may not reconcile with what is good for all: that is, the righteousness that God alone preserves. It is that good and righteousness that Lord Jesus taught His followers to pray for.
Indeed, our prayers reflect the things that we hold dear and strive for; as the things are beyond our immediate grasps. So from a landscape perspective, let us now recite and briefly study the Lord’s Prayer, knowing that it reveals the greater good that directs the aspirations for not only our personal lives, but also our quest for theological, philosophical, and even scientific understanding:
 Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.
To understand the context of the Lord’s Prayer, one must understand that the prayer is a prayer of consummate faith; therefore, to access the Lord’s Prayer’s power, one must believe as the scripture says that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrew 11:1).”
Or as our doctrinal treatise, the Landscape of Truth, puts it, one must have an eye of unrelenting and selfless faith, “which is a persistent look past human comprehension and ingenuity by believing on the necessity of metaphysical things that we cannot readily perceive or understand.”
Such faith by default confounds one’s self-will with humility, preparing one’s heart for a greater understanding. Thus, if we consider the Lord’s Prayer in the spirit of selfless faith, we must consider the context of the Lord’s Prayer in terms of one’s praying and acknowledging a Holy sanctuary—a preserved reservoir of righteousness—that one seeks to reconcile the difficulties of one’s life with. In this sense, we may grasp the personal, theological, philosophical, and even scientific context of the Lord’s Prayer as a guide to establishing meaning and purpose for every aspect of our lives.
Indeed, in this sense of selfless faith, we may consider the personal and theological context of the Lord’s Prayer like so:
From the Lord’s Prayer’s opening sentence—“Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name”; we see an expression of the Old Testament’s theological description of God: we understand that the Father is YHWH, absolute being; which means absolute power, presence, and knowledge and therefore whole and complete in and of Himself. Thus, we understand that the Father is the only source of righteousness and truth.
From the next sentence—“Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven”— we observe two important points from the context of selfless faith: first, we understand that for the Father to remain all powerful and all knowing, any world that He expresses must be a reflection of the Father’s absolute. The prayer observes this truth when it says “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” For the second point, we observe that any possible world can only reflect, within time, the Father’s timeless wholeness and absolute as a Kingdom, which of course a righteous King governs: even the Father’s expressed person, a Messiah.
As we keep in mind the context of selfless faith, we may understand the remainder of the Lord’s Prayer. We can see how the remainder of the prayer demonstrates how we must practice our faith and how the surety of our faith rest upon the finished work of the resurrected Christ, who preserves righteousness in an eternal Kingdom that reflects the Father’s absolute.
When the prayer says, “Give us this day our daily bread”, the prayer invokes one’s faith to believe that the Father is the true sustainer and source of the sustenance for life, that is, food, shelter, health, and the well-being of ourselves, families, and the greater community in which we dwell.
Next, when the prayer asks, “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors”; the prayer reflects one’s acknowledgment that our personal aspirations, in ignorance of the Father’s greater good, often undermines not only our neighbor’s good, but also cloaks the Father’s good and glory over all.
In fact the prayer’s subsequent sentence, “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”, reflects one’s acknowledgement that our selfish pursuits of coveting another’s property and welfare beyond our sustenance are responsible for the evils of civilizations.
Finally, the Lord’s Prayer ends with the culmination, fulfillment, and power of our faith. The prayer’s ending preaches and proclaims the good news that is the gospel: when the prayer closes by saying, “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever”, the prayer reflects that the Father has resurrected and embodied the Christ’s selflessness, humility, meekness, charity, and love in an eternal righteous King, the Father’s person, who bequeaths to us His Holy Spirit who reconciles and encourages our faith.“Amen.”
The Lord’s Prayer ends with what many consider to be a doxology, which is a liturgical formula of praise to God:
 For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.
The ending is not found in many early manuscripts, except the Didache treatise, a first century writing. As a consequence, many continue to question the doxology’s authenticity.
Whether the doxology is an authentic record of Lord Jesus’ prayer or not, the doxology reflects and upholds the very spirit of the prayer. We must consider the context in which Lord Yehoshua gave us the prayer: he indicated that we do not know what exactly to pray for; therefore, we must pray after the manner (that is, the conventions) that his prayer follows. And so, while we appropriately reverence the exact recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, we must likewise remember that he wanted us to reconcile the form and spirit of the prayer to the circumstances that we face that provoke us to pray. In this sense, the questioned doxology is appropriate in all circumstances.
From the context of selfless faith, we can appreciate the theological understanding that the Lord’s Prayer yields for us to conduct our lives. Though a full explanation is beyond our brief presentation, here, we may make some brief observations of how the selfless faith context of the Prayer yields philosophical and scientific understanding, as well. It is these understandings, today’s generation thinks the Church lacks.
To grasp the philosophical understanding that the Lord’s Prayer yields, we have only to understand that the underlining search of philosophy is what we call the quest for epistemological understanding. Simply put, the study of epistemology is the search to understand the extent that our environment impresses knowledge upon us. Likewise, epistemology is the search to understand the extent that our anatomy grasps knowledge from our environment. Thus, to resolve philosophy’s epistemological pursuit is to resolve our deepest theological, philosophical, scientific, political, and even [our] personal questions.
For example, when we perceive the world, we without thinking perceive categories and types of colors, textures, sounds, animals, and even emotions. Essentially, the distinct structures of the world impress knowledge upon us, automatically, by shaping our perceptions.
What is seldom noticed is that the Lord’s Prayer actually signifies how God the Father upholds the structure of our knowledge. The Prayer begins by signifying God’s absolute, which transcends the space and time of our environments. Then when the Prayer longs for the Father’s Kingdom and will’s fulfillment, the Prayer implicates the theological understanding that the Kingdom’s charitable righteousness, which is universally intuitive to all individual persons, will overcome the succession of our failed governments, in which all individual persons are not presently united.
Finally, to grasp how the selfless faith context of the Lord’s Prayer yields scientific understanding; we must employ Immanuel’s Law: a scientifically provable hypothesis that reconciles epistemology with contemporary science by demonstrating that the worlds are an expression of God’s absolute power to cultivate our understanding. We have only to note how the Prayer, at first, reflects the Father’s absolute power and being when the Prayer acknowledges that the Father is hallowed (that is, sanctified/set-apart in the heavens). Next, we may begin to see that the world is an expression of the fulfilled being of the Father, when the Prayer acknowledges that the Father’s will will be done, since the Father holds all power and glory.
Then, by considering some basic understandings of contemporary science in the light of the Lord’s Prayer, we may see that the world is in fact an expression of God’s being: first as we recognize that God is absolute power as the Prayer suggests; we must note that contemporary science understands that the universe’s existence does not contain absolute power. Instead, the universe exists through energies that scale God’s absolute power in finite quantities that enable the measured categories of things to emerge. Like so, the measured constraints of our normalized environments arise.
To conclude, let us but mention that while Immanuel’s Law demonstrates how God expresses the worlds to structure our minds; Immanuel’s Law also demonstrates how God designed the brain to formulate representational models of the world that it encounters. Immanuel’s Law demonstrates that the mathematical representational models constitute our first person cognitions. Moreover, the theory of evolution cannot encompass the brain’s mathematical capacity.
Essentially, what we may conclude from the Lord’s Prayer is that the amazing prayer systematically captures a theological, philosophical, and scientific understanding of God’s expression of life. For a broader understanding of all that we have discussed; please obtain a copy of our doctrinal treatise the Landscape of Truth: an Orthodox Understanding of the Biblical Testaments for the True Worshippers.
In seven chapters, the Landscape discusses the emergence of contemporary science; the emergence of western government; and finally the manner in which the biblical Testaments demonstrate how God brings forth the Kingdom of Heaven as a resolution to the world’s injustices.
Much of the religious strife that today’s generation witnesses throughout history could have been prevented if the majority of the population possessed the biblical literacy that our doctrinal treatise entails and the Lord’s Prayer beautifully captures. We will continue to champion biblical literacy in the pursuit of the Lord Jesus the Christ’s peace. Until then, let us commit the Lord’s Prayer to heart, along with some of its principles that we have discussed.
“That’s right, I said it!” Defend Mark Levine’s Bunker: How to Champion Judeo-Christian and Conservative Principles, while Defeating Right Wing Racist Groups
Published February 15, 2016 – thelandscapeoftruth.com
“He’s here, he’s here,” a commanding voice bellows.
“Now, broadcasting from the underground command post. Deep in the bowels of a hidden bunker; somewhere under the brick and steel of a non-descript building; we’ve once again made contact with our leader, Mark Levin,” the announcer eagerly proclaims.
Melodic alternative rock music then plays with slow and steady guitar riffs, ushering the radio audience into the presence of a vibrant outpost for disgruntled constitutional, fiscal, and social conservatives who feel betrayed by the established conservative Republican Party of the United States. In the broadcast bunker, we find the forever vigilant and furious Mark Levin, a premier conservative radio host. Mark Levin is a proven conservative because Levin served in President Ronald Reagan’s administration by advising several cabinet members as well as serving as the chief of staff to the attorney general Edwin Meese. Despite his impressive credentials, Levin’s repute rests upon his ability to secure the respect of his well informed and growing conservative audience: an audience that despises how the establishment of republican law-makers regularly compromise conservative principles to make backroom political deals, only to advance their careers. Levin is a champion to his conservative audience because Levin does his homework, regularly keeping his audience informed with historical and philosophical perspectives. Holding true to principle, Levin engages governors, senators, congress members, other notables, and callers; taking all to task.
Mark Levin is Jewish; therefore, the greatest proof of Mark Levin’s unyielding embrace of conservative principles is not Levin’s service in the Reagan administration or Levin’s hosting a thriving nationally syndicated radio show. Rather, the proof of Mark Levin’s conservative convictions is the manner in which Levin’s principled beliefs separate him from the gross majority of his Jewish brethren, who traditionally champion progressive liberal platforms, to defend themselves from anti-Semites who traditionally flock to conservative political movements.
During the 2016 Presidential Campaign, Mark Levin faced head on the harsh reality that racist groups often blight the conservative movement. During the campaign, Levin criticized presidential candidate Donald Trump for Trump’s non-issued based and flagrant insults against a very principled conservative, Senator Ted Cruz, also a presidential candidate. During the campaign, Trump became popular with European American racist groups, because Trump often spoke out against illegal immigration and the disproportionate immigration of non-European and non-Christian peoples to America. Racist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, began to threaten and insult Levin on their websites. True to form, Levin did not back down. He simply responded by pointing out that Donald Trump himself was far from being supportive of the groups’ anti-Semitic insults, since Trump’s beloved daughter converted to Judaism to marry a Jewish man.
Though Mark Levin may have blunted the personal insults against him by racist groups, Levin and other principled conservatives are far from preventing liberal progressives from slandering the conservative movement as a racist movement. The very strength of liberalism is the integrating of a variety of cultures and belief systems under a strong centralized government that undermines individual rights in order to manage the motley crew of peoples. In order to save conservatism and the free Protestant Church that has upheld it, we must divorce conservatism from any particular ethnic group and demonstrate how all ethnicities many flourish under its principles. Let us take a look.
Modern Western civilization has achieved what no other civilization has: the West has enfranchised the lower classes. The 18th and 19th centuries’ founders of the modern state built Western democracies upon the framework of ancient Greco-Roman government; however, only Judeo-Christendom has empowered unlearned Western peoples to make the critical step of overcoming kindred prejudices, in order to recognize the sovereignty of the constitutional state over family and faction. Only the educated elite grasped the enlightened philosophy that drew the modern states’ political structure from Greco-Roman government. In contrast, the Church alone united the waring Germanic kindred groups with the legal fiction of one kindred Christian brotherhood, adhering to equality under the Law, like the ancient Israelite’s corporate adherence to the Torah (the Law of Moses).
Europeans have been so successful at adopting Judeo-Christian culture and Greco-Roman government that Europeans’ efforts to combat some Europeans’ sense of racial superiority threaten to confound the Christian culture and constitutional freedoms that have liberated the West. Since the dawn of the modern nation-state, liberal progressive movements have sought to centralize power in government, in order to seize power from established Westerners as the liberals seek to integrate the peoples whom racist Europeans have oppressed and exploited. Indeed, the liberals’ assumed justification for action has been to combat racial oppression and the ills of Western colonialism. Thus, the challenge for conservatives is to distinguish the Judeo-Christian and libertarian principles from the racist groups that wrongfully think that they only have unique access to the principles. As the post-Cold War global economy integrates a global culture; conservative, libertarian, and Judeo-Christian principles face unparalleled threats as centralized governments grow, in order to manage the desperate peoples.
The Jewish conservative radio host Mark Levin is an excellent example of a racial and religious minority who grasps the value of conservative and Judeo-Christian principles, despite the few racist groups’ perverted claim to the principles. Though Levin is not a Christian, he often acknowledges the critical contribution to Western freedom that the Protestant Church has made. Many Christians are ardent fans of Levin’s show.
Mr. Levin was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1957. He often reflects upon his being inspired by the trips he took to Congressional Hall to view where the American Founders ratified the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Levin earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and a juris doctor, law degree before serving in the President Ronald Reagan administration. Levin has written several best-selling books expounding upon his conservative views and his contempt for the judges and law-makers who pervert the Constitution and their enumerated powers. Levin’s critics and fans, alike, agree that Levin is an originalist, in regards to Levin’s strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution from the perspective of the framers’ original intent.
We may highlight key historical events that caused conservative and liberal lawmakers to struggle over the original intent of the Constitution, as liberal lawmakers sought to secure progressive understandings to ensure the enfranchisement of minorities and the economically oppressed: first, the Civil War saw an extension of full Constitutional rights to African Americans, except in the Southern states: of course, the liberation of the slaves was just; however, the federal government managed to secure powers besides its securing of the slaves’ freedom. Next, 19th Century Church charities inspired progressive social organizations to assist the mass immigration of non-Protestant Europeans to the Northern states. These new immigrants began to challenge the political hegemony of the Protestant Anglo-Saxon founding Americans, regardless of the conservative principles that empowered the Anglo-Saxons. Following, the early 20th Century’s Great Depression saw a dramatic growth in the federal government and its intervention into the U.S. economy. Soon after, the Civil Rights movement of African Americans inspired other movements around the world, in which former European colonies sought national liberation under socialist, communist, and tyrannical regimes.
Presently, upon the fall of the Soviet Union, American and European powers seek to extend free-trade zones to the West’s former colonies and other non-Western countries; however, most if not all of these nations retain cultural traditions that have not overcome the kindred prejudices and other factionalisms that undermine the upward mobility of lower class individuals and religious minorities. The speed at which the global economy comes into being prevents the mass of un-Western peoples from assimilating under Western values.
Western politicians dismiss those who decry the mass assimilation as racists and closed minded bigots. The only way to preserve the West’s conservative and Judeo-Christian values is to delineate how the other cultures retain values that undermine modern government. For example, the Church itself must emphasize how the Protestant Reformation returned to the apostolic tradition that understands that religious works do not justify a person before God. Rather God elects an individual’s faith indiscriminately, regardless of a person’s kindred relation, social class, and male or female sex. The Church must emphasize how Protestants further understood from their return to the apostolic traditions that not all will adhere to their faith and that the faithful must love all as being equal to them. Like so, the Church must demonstrate how the Protestant Church laid the fertile ground upon which secular and public society walks hand in hand with a religious society, even upon principle, regardless of race.
The post American Civil War period of Reconstruction demonstrated that non-European Americans with Judeo-Christian values can thrive and secure conservative and Judeo-Christian principles. During a brief “radical reconstruction” period, former African American slaves swiftly exploited their new found freedoms. They became wage laborers and sought to rebuild their families, by searching the nation for displaced loved-ones. They secured public offices, even winning a seat in the U.S. Senate. The former slaves enlisted in public schools or built learning centers to accommodate the masses of slaves who sought literacy. The former slaves’ enfranchisement and liberation was so swift that some racist European Americans quickly oppressed the former slaves, stifling their growth until the mid-20th Century Civil Rights period.
The global economy is currently extending into Asia, Africa, and India: lands that are only now transitioning from agricultural to market economies. The countries are rife with religious and factional prejudices, holding minorities and women as second class citizens. Constitutional equality is alien to these peoples; however, multinational corporations often exploit the downcast peoples for cheap labor to the peril of Western citizens who have lifestyles that cannot afford to compete with cultures whose traditions accept the impoverishment of certain “undesirables.”
The doctrinal treatise, the Landscape of Truth, is a systematic theology of the biblical Testament for laypeople. The work highlights the history of government and economy, showing how Western government has developed alongside the biblical epic. The work demonstrates how the biblical Testaments answer human government’s shortfall: the work ultimately shows how Lord Jesus the Christ’s eternal government of a Holy Marriage in the Kingdom of Heaven enfranchises all in eternal fulfillment.
To substantiate the biblical Testaments, the Landscape’s chapter three also delineates the rise of modern science. The chapter overcomes current creationists’ failure to make scientific predictions. The chapter gives substantial, predictive, and demonstrative proof for not only the existence of God, but also God’s extension in three persons.
Though not all conservatives are people of faith, the Protestant Church is the only international organization that can protect Western liberty. Unfortunately contemporary Churches are not organized to empower its congregants with relevant lesson plans that demonstrate how Protestantism has secured the West’s liberties. Thelandscapeoftruth.com will endeavor to turn the tide.
“Death to America”: the Controversial Iran Nuclear Deal Exemplifies How Modern Western Nations cannot Categorically Entrust Economic and Military Power unto Non-Western Totalitarian States
Published November 02, 2015 – thelandscapeoftruth.com
For months, the reunion was all he could think about. “I just have to win her back,” he exclaimed.
He thought about what he would say to her when he saw her: he wanted to show her what he had accomplished in the big city, during their years apart. He wanted to demonstrate how he has grown as a person: more responsible, more patient, more sensitive. He bought new cloths, picked out her a gift, and practiced his speech. But then when their eyes met, approaching one another in the crowd, all he could say was “uh . . . hey.”
She too wanted to say more, but all she could do was restrain her emotions (her frets, her sorrow, her love) behind a restrained smile. Still, through a fumbled greeting and a hesitant smile, the couple communicated volumes in mere seconds: they both knew that their lives apart were so unfulfilling that their individual struggles made them feel ashamed that they had split over petty issues. So with his brief salutation, the couple sealed their future, entailing 37 years of marriage, a beloved daughter, and two grandchildren.
The level of communication between loving couples is unparalleled, in terms of communicating sincerity, the willingness to listen, the study of patience, the overlooking of errors, and the preparedness for second chances. As with all communication, a loving couple’s successful communication stands upon trust, familiarity, and a fruitful history of relating to each other.
One cannot unwarrantedly assume the intimacy of a loving couple’s successful level of communication without falling prey to heartbreak, suspicion, misunderstanding, exploitation, and vulnerability. Often our religious, scholastic, professional, and political leaders (whose jobs are to establish communicable relationships) see good ends before their subjects do, only to find disappointment when their subjects fail to grasp their more visionary perspectives.
Misjudging your capacity to communicate and the willingness of your audience to receive your perspectives can have devastating consequences, unless one builds and ensures a viable relationship to the benefit of all parties. We see a devastating effect of miscommunication on the national stage as Western nations engage the non-Western world, politically, economically, and technologically: all in the effort to establish peaceful communications between estranged nations. The misguided expectation, which holds that non-Western nations will assume Western values after the non-Western nations gain access to economic prosperity, is a fatal outcome of Western leaders’ inability to communicate, effectively, with the non-Western world.
The Iranian Nuclear Deal, for instance, is a profound instance of Western leaders’ shortsightedness: a miscommunication with devastating consequences. We shall, therefore, take a closer look at the causes for the lack of communication. A better understanding, we shall seize.
No government in human history has universally secured amongst its people the fidelity and trust that loving couples, family members, and intimate friends share. Only the Holy Marriage of Jesus the Christ and his redeemed Church secures eternal fidelity in the world to come, so the scriptures proclaim. In every civilization unto our current era, degrees of oppression and liberty persist amongst all classes.
What sets modern Western government apart from historical civilizations and the non-Western world is that today’s government stands to guarantee a framework in which individuals can exercise their talents and gifts and gain property, regardless of their class, creed, religion, sex, or kindred relation.
Effectively, modern government does not guarantee the enriching fulfillment and personal security that we experience with our loved ones: modern government provides an umbrella for the amicable communication that we seek to express in our social, economic, and religious aspirations, without our undermining another’s aspirations. Modern government champions constitutional liberties and personal rights; wherein individuals exercise their natural gifts to acquire goods and services, while the constitution prohibits the government or religious overlords from arbitrarily seizing one’s personal property. Modern Western government guarantees such constitutional rights like the freedom of association, the freedom of speech, and the freedom to practice one’s religion or to not practice a religion.
In the Western world, the government does not restrain free commerce; the government partners with industry only to ensure that individual citizens are free from industrial exploitation. The government only regulates industry to ensure workers’ rights; protect the environment; and establish social safety nets for the economically downcast. Like so, Western free governments and free industry have ushered in unparalleled levels of innovation in technology, medicine, housing, transit, banking, and military weaponry.
In the Western world, the government does not restrain free commerce; the government partners with industry only to ensure that individual citizens are free from industrial exploitation. The government only regulates industry to ensure workers’ rights; protect the environment; and establish social safety nets for the economically downcast. Like so, Western free governments and free industry have ushered in unparalleled levels of innovation in technology, medicine, housing, transit, banking, and military weaponry.
We may trace the emergence of free Western government from many sources, like the signing of the Magna Carta: a document that held the crown to be subservient to the same law as the crown’s subjects. Yet, we chiefly trace Western notions of international law, which observes the human rights of individuals, from the Peace of Westphalia, October 1648: the treaties that comprise the Westphalian peace stepped toward the respecting of the nations’ individual customs and religions, without interference from foreign powers. With the tradition of respecting all nations’ customs and beliefs, Western governments currently seek to engage the non-Western world, economically, scientifically, and socially in the interest of growing Western free markets and the establishing of international peace.
The problem that Western nations face in maintaining Western freedoms is that Western leaders mistakenly assume that they can transfer Western notions of individual freedoms to the non-Western world, which has cultures and traditions that undermine individual rights. Secular-progressive Western leaders overlook the significant contributions of the Protestant Reformation, which played a key role in the formation of secular constitutional government. Immediately preceding the Peace of Westphalia, Protestants rebelled against the religious hegemony of the Catholic Church. Many Protestants championed individual religious liberty, fostering a culture of the separation of Church and State. Unto this day, the most successful capitalist and democratic states, such as the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and Germany, have a rich Protestant cultural history.
Far from fostering free government, free commerce, and individual rights; non-Western nations fail to secure Western style government as they industrialize. Europe’s former colonies that obtained their sovereignty after World Wars I and II have adopted corrupt socialized governments. India, for instance, have maintained a highly classist culture, dehumanizing hundreds of millions of so-called untouchables and other second-class darker skinned Indians. The Arab States continue to oppress religious minorities and women. And China’s Communist Party has grown more autocratic in the interests of stifling all opposition.
Even though most recognize that democracy and the free market has failed to adhere in many non-Western states, market interests compel Western leaders to seek commercial and military ties with the non-Western states. Failed international policy and cultural conflicts ensue as the non-Western nations fail to adopt Western power equitably with their neighbors and other nations on the world stage: the People’s Republic of China’s growing economic strength has only incited China to use its military to intimidate its neighbors, as China categorically claims seafaring and other territorial rights. Even though Western nations have lifted economic sanctions on Iran and established a nuclear deal with her, the Islamic Republic of Iran has so far only responded by further denouncing the United States of America and staging provocative military exercises to frighten Iran’s neighbors.
The greatest fallout of Western leaders misjudging and miscommunicating with non-Western states is the undermining of Western freedoms as non-Western peoples immigrate to the West, without respecting hard-won freedoms. The fallout sees continued cultural and international conflict.
The Protestant Church plays a vital role in enunciating the difference between its contributions to Western society and the other belief systems’ undermining of the same. Though the Church faces an uphill battle in reestablishing itself as a pillar of Western culture, the Church will increasingly find open ears as the fallout from multiculturalism increase.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has a nationalized oil company, the Saudi Arabian Oil Company, that boasts having the world’s largest crude oil preserve. In the early 1920s, a United States’ oil company, Standard Oil of California (SoCal), sought to discover and develop oil in Saudi Arabia. Soon another American oil company, the Texas Oil Company (Texaco) discovered a drill site in 1938. Other American oil companies developed Saudi Arabian oil fields, until the Saudi Arabian King Abdulaziz threatened to nationalize the nation’s oil industries, unless the American companies shared the profit. By 1980, Saudi Arabia nationalized its oil industry, making Saudi Arabia one of the world’s wealthiest nations, despite the fact that the nation’s wealth does not result from its indigenous, oppressive culture and traditions.

Before being elected the 44th President of the United States of America, then-presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama promised to have open talks with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The newly elected President Obama was heralded as a peace maker around the world for his efforts to reach out to the Muslim world. President Obama even received the 2009 Nobel Peace prize, even before the President accomplished anything with his outreach efforts.
Unfortunately, President Obama found that many traditional American adversaries remained staunch opponents to the Obama administration, despite Obama’s outreach. What the olive branch waving President failed to understand is that non-Western leaders, such as the Muslim leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, maintain their power over their people by painting America and the West as adversaries. Now that the Obama administration has not prevented Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons, the religious leadership in Iran is further empowered with the world’s most devastating weapon, the nuclear bomb.
The doctrinal treatise, the Landscape of Truth, is a systematic understanding of the biblical Testaments, detailing the manner in which God’s justice prevails over the shortfall of human government. Chapter one introduces the reader to the progressive nature of human society, from its inception. Chapter two introduces the reader to the necessity of obtaining a systematic understanding of the biblical Testaments. Chapter three introduces the reader to the shortfall of Christian theologians’ understanding of modern science and how an objective understanding of systematic theology adapts modern science. Chapters four through seven details the nature of human government and its emergence unto modernity upon which God prevails upon all in a Holy Marriage that stands by grace alone.
Conflict prevails over the horizon of the coming years as Western leaders perilously intertwine the future of Western citizens with peoples who do not respect Western liberties. A recommitment to the pillars of Western culture, namely the free Protestant Church, stands as a bulwark against the further erosion of Western lifestyles. Of course, thelandscapeoftruth.com endeavors to champion these ends.
The Peace Process between Israel and the Palestinians actually depends upon the Greater Peace Process between Israel and American Evangelicals (Part 2)
Published August 03, 2015 – thelandscapeoftruth.com
A tremendous goal was achieved realized by the clasped hands of those who shared a common sense of humanity, despite race or religion. A bright future seemed invincible, as Doctor Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” poeticized the justice of the civil rights movement. Dr. King not only articulated an African American dream, but also articulated a social progressive dream as he said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character . . . . when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing . . . the old Negro spiritual: ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, We are free at last!’”
While African Americans endured the overwhelming brunt of the labor and reprisal of the civil rights movement, their European-American liberal peers played a significant role in making the dream become a reality, as European Americans helped push and lobby for civil rights legislation. Chief among the liberal peers where Jewish Americans, who traditionally championed progressive policies in the effort of achieving equality for themselves through equality for all: American Jews historically struggled to ensure their equal status in a predominately white Protestant population. So successful was the Jewish and African Americans’ brief collaboration that some Jews romanticized the period as the “golden age.”
Tragically, the Jewish and African Americans’ relationship took a turn for the worse. The relationship broke apart as Jews gained entrance into the burgeoning development of the American suburbs: a development that bereft old urban areas (where African Americans still resided) of tax revenue, reinvestment, and public works. Also, many civil rights leaders began openly to side with the primarily Muslim Palestinian population as the State of Israel fought and won wars in the Middle East. During this period, a small but significant number of African Americans begin to leave their Christian roots and embrace Islam, their feeling that Christianity was the religion of their oppressors.
Like no other, a Muslim minister, Louis Farrakhan embodied the rift between African and Jewish Americans. Throughout his career (primarily beginning in the late 1970s), Louis Farrakhan fomented anti-Jewish rhetoric to the degree that the bluster of Farrakhan’s hateful rhetoric against European and Jewish Americans matched the eloquence of Dr. King’s pronouncements by being an antithesis to them. At one point, even Minister Farrakhan conceded that his fury against the American Jews warranted some measure of restraint. So as a consolation to the offended Jews, Farrakhan (a somewhat accomplished violinist) publically performed a violin concerto by the Jewish composer Felix Mendelssohn. Though Farrakhan's performance was proficient but not exactly capital, Farrakhan failed to erase the sour note that he had struck in Jewish hearts.
Given American Jews’ horrible history with Minister Louis Farrakhan, some thought another commonality between Farrakhan and Jewish Americans to be surreal as some observed that Farrakhan not only shared a love of Mendelssohn with the Jews, but also shared a fervor for then-presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama. Both Farrakhan and Jewish Americans loved how candidate Obama emphasized that the United States of America is not a Christian nation. Both loved how candidate Obama championed the liberal policies of redistributing wealth and universal healthcare for the poor. Even so, we come to the point, showcasing the greatest irony of Farrakhan and Jewish Americans’ fervent support for Barack Obama: candidate Obama emphasized that his presidential administration would openly deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran, a nation that seeks nuclear weapons and a nation that is the State of Israel’s greatest nemesis. As to be expected, Minister Farrakhan, knowing candidate Obama’s Muslim and black Chicago background, read between the lines and bristled with glee over Obama’s announcement. Yet, to explain the cause for Jewish Americans’ continued support for candidate Obama, we must first say that we know that the danger posed by Obama’s dealing with Iran was not lost upon Obama’s Jewish supporters: a schism began to arise between liberal Jewish supporters of Obama in American and conservative Jewish opponents in Israel, who understood the significance of the threat. In view of Jewish and African Americans’ contentious relationship, what Jewish Americans’ support for then-candidate Barack Obama reveals is that the American Jewish Diaspora is equally (if not more) concerned with the equal status of Jews in the West as the Jewish Diaspora is concerned with the health and endurance of the State of Israel.
The question that confronts the Jewish Diaspora is the following: can conservative Judaism and Israel maintain their current wellbeing, even as liberal Jews in America and Europe confront a break in their partnership with non-Jewish social progressives that are currently turning against the Jewish people, to a greater extent than African Americans turned in the 1960s?
Since their first century expulsion from the Roman province of Judaea, the Jewish Diaspora has been championing liberal principles such as secular humanism, social tolerance, internationalism, and multiculturalism in an effort to secure the Jews’ equal place in a Western culture that has been historically dominated by Christians, who had often relegated the Jews to second-class citizenship. Nevertheless, today as the Church’s strength wanes, many secular progressives, such as college elites and news media personalities, are turning against Jewish people, chiefly because of the State of Israel’s growing unpopularity, amongst liberal Americans and Europeans.
Strains are also showing in the relationship between opposing Jewish groups in Israel and the Western Jewish Diaspora, as the Jewish people struggle to assess how best to deal with the growing rift between the Jews and the West’s liberal elite. We see Jewish tensions as we note how rival Jewish factions tried to determine who was responsible for the fallout between President Barack Obama and the Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu. Conservative groups in Israel blamed President Obama for his holding tough criteria against the State Israel, even as he maintained dovish policies for the Islamic State of Iran. On the other hand, liberal Jewish groups blamed Prime Minister Netanyahu for openly criticizing President Obama and openly lobbying for the help of the American Republican Party.
Unfortunately, both conservative and liberal Jewish groups fail to recognize that the Obama administration’s policies rather reflect a growing liberal sentiment that the exclusivity of Judaism and the Jewish state is antithetical to social progressives’ liberal ideals. As a consequence, the Jewish groups fail to observe that the Jewish lobby will decreasingly find advocates for the State of Israel in liberal circles, especially as Asian lobby groups grow in political and economic importance in the West. The Jewish leaders do not foresee the reality that liberal ideals will compel American liberals to become just as belligerent as European liberals in their political stance against the Jewish Diaspora and Israel. Regretfully, Jewish groups believe that their strife with President Obama is an anomaly in their long and cooperative relationship with secular progressive groups.
Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s flagrant rebuke of the prominent evangelical and Republican presidential candidate Governor Mike Huckabee is evidence that many Israelis still believe that their long term democratic and liberal support is sure. As they fail to see that non-Jewish liberals’ socially progressive ideals will increasingly cause a schism between Jews and the Western liberal elite, the State of Israel will out of necessity depend upon American evangelical supporters who accept Judaism’s exclusivity as a religious inevitability.
Israeli political leaders are not wholly unaware of their growing dependency upon American political support, however. What prevents them from fully accepting evangelical help is that Israel somewhat justly believes the evangelical support to be disingenuous if not entirely dubious. The Israelis recognize the fact that Christian evangelicals consider the modern State of Israel’s coming into being as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy, heralding the second advent of the Messiah, the Christ. Likewise, Jewish scholars and theologians are fretful about of the prospect that their supposed new found evangelical friends still hold the belief that Christianity is a successor to Judaism, with the consequence of rendering Jewish adherents to Judaism as second class peoples.
The Israelis concern about evangelical support is well-grounded; however, an open dialogue that expresses the concerns, in the effort to gain mutual respect will bridge the divide and bring sobriety, calming any excessive alarm. For instance, the agnostic branch of Judaism, that is, Reformed Judaism has a sustained and working relationship with the devout Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox branches of Judaism, even as the Ultra-Orthodox hold the Reformed Jewish adherents as little better than cursed gentiles. Many Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox Jews believe in the return of the Messiah, no differently than Christians believe. Yet, Reformed Jews respect the Orthodox believers’ religious convictions, as all sides unite for the defense of the Jewish State.
The silver lining in the Israelis’ embracing evangelical support is that they can expect a continuance of the evangelical support until the Christ appears. Though they do not believe in the Christ’s return, the Israelis’ dependence upon evangelicals is surer than the Jews’ temporal political relationships, such as the Jews’ failed relationships with African American civil rights leaders and Western liberal elites.
The heart of the Jewish people is Judaism. Principally, Judaism holds the belief in an omniscient and omnipresent God who created the Heavens and the earth, leaving commandments to uphold in civilizations’ governing. Judaism maintains that the Torah, the Five Books of Moses, codifies these commandments, alongside oral traditions that interpret them.
In modern times, as social progressivism allowed Jewish people to assimilate into Western society, liberal factions of Judaism arose, marked by their measured adherence to Jewish religious law and government. Reformed and Conservative Judaism arose in Germany, the United Kingdom, and America, holding that Jewish Law and an adherence to it should be reconstructed to being guidelines that allow Jewish people to integrate into Western culture.
As in ages past, liberal practitioners of Judaism in the Diaspora still remained mindful of the plight of their Orthodox peers in the Diaspora. Liberal Jews, supportive of many Western governments’ social progressive policies, organized charity and aid organizations to rescue their persecuted Orthodox brethren caught in hostile regions in the world.
The biblical story of Esther best captures how assimilated Jews felt the necessity to help their persecuted brethren of the Jewish Diaspora. The story reports how the Persian King Xerxes I married and favored a Jewish damsel Queen Esther who became persuaded by her beloved older cousin Mordecai to use her influence to rescue her people the condemned Jews. In his persuasive petitions to his cousin Queen Esther, Mordecai said, “Who knows whether you are come to the Kingdom [the throne] for such a time as this?”
Like many assimilated Jews who would follow her lead, Queen Esther helped to deliver her Jewish brethren. To this day, Jewish people commemorate her charitable act in the festival of Purim.
According a Gallup poll conducted in April of 2015, Jewish support for President Barack Obama is still higher than the national average, though their support has decreased due to President Obama’s nuclear negotiations with the Islamic State of Iran. According to Gallup, Jewish people’s weekly religious observance is half that of Christians. The minority of religiously observant Jews do have a low approval of President Obama’s policies, similar to the low approval of Obama’s policies amongst evangelical Christians.
To promote common respect and understanding between Christians and Jews, the doctrinal Treatise the Landscape of Truth details Christianity’s Jewish roots and enduring foundation. The work uses Hebrew names, emphasizing how Jewish sensibilities governed the text of the New Testament. Chapter Seven briefly details Jewish history, underscoring the unjust causes of Christian persecution against the Jewish people. Also, the text shows how the social progressivism that some Jews champion often incites the ill works of gentile instigators that foment anti-Semitism. Lastly, the work notes the geopolitical situation that beckons Jews and Christians to work together for the peaceful preservation for their respective faiths.
Though many philosophical, political, and cultural obstacles prohibit the needed political union between Jewish and Christian conservative groups, the sheer necessity of self-preservation will eventually meld the two groups together. Only sustained demonstrations of good will and mutual respect will ease this process.
The Peace Process between Israel and the Palestinians actually Depends upon the Greater Peace Process between Israel and American Evangelicals (Part 1)
Published June 22, 2015 – thelandscapeoftruth.com
A horrifying choice! Fortunately, one that few have had to make. We see in the choice the profound strength of the human spirit: a strength that transcends awful circumstances. The choice is whether to leave one’s home and country to escape unspeakable violence and persecution or to give up the beliefs and customs that define who one and one’s dearests are. Exemplifying the strength of the human spirit for three millennia, the Jewish Diaspora has grappled with this choice for nigh two millennia of their sojourn in Europe.
Poignant is the fact that the Jewish people have also demonstrated that that which finally confounds the human spirit is not violence, personal loss, or persecution. The Jews have discovered that that which ultimately confounds the human spirit is bewilderment, in terms of being unable to grapple with the cause or source of the persecution to the end that one might prepare oneself for an appropriate response.
We may illustrate the bewilderment that the Jewish people face today by briefly relating an example of the many faces that their persecutors have taken: early in the 11th Century, the Jews endured extensive persecutions in France at the hands of King Robert II (972-1031), who sought to force the Jews to convert to Christianity or die. King Robert put many Jews to death and saw many Jews commit suicide, Jewish women choosing to drown themselves in the rivers to escape the crucifix brandishing mob. Today, however, in the early 21st Century, the Jews of France are again facing the familiar horrifying choice of leaving European countries in the face of persecution. What bewilders them is that their persecutors are not necessarily wielding crosses. Their persecutors are often the irreligious, liberal populace whom the Jews have spent the last two centuries building alliances with. Further still, the Jews have found that their greatest allies often wear the same crucifixes of their former persecutors in ages past. The question that the Jews now face is how can they trust their newfound Christian supporters who wear the emblems that are as horrific to many Jews as the Nazi Swastika.
An internal struggle exists between liberal and conservative Jews in Israel and America, both equally being the greatest Jewish population centers in the world, with France being third. The argument derives from the fact that non-Jewish liberals are decreasingly supportive of the State of Israel, in regards to Israel’s ongoing struggle to establish a lasting peace with the native Palestinians.
We may trace the Jewish political power in America and ultimately Israel from a letter written by George Washington, America’s first President. In 1790, Washington wrote to a synagogue, located in Newport, Rhode Island, stating that “the government of the United States of America, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”
Complementing the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, which disallows the U.S. government from establishing a state religion, Washington affirmed to the Jews that they would not be second class citizens, as they were in other Western Nations that assumed the identity of being officially Christian. From that point, Jewish Americans built organizations that fought in legal battles across the States to affirm and maintain their equal status, while denying the government’s intermingling of religion with policy. Establishing charity organizations, the Jews facilitated the immigration of persecuted European and Russian Jews. To continue the fight for their civil rights, the Jews established three powerful Jewish lobbying organizations: the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Chiefly working with the Democratic Party, the Jews proved to be key supporters for modern day American liberalism.
The appearing rift between Jewish liberals and non-Jewish liberals ironically results from the waning of the Church’s power over the younger generations in American. In response, the victorious social progressives increasingly become less tolerant of the exclusivity of religious identity in regards to policy decisions. More and more, social progressives view Jewish identity and the identity of the Jewish State of Israel as being antithetical to liberalism, especially as concerning the Israel’s dealing with the Palestinians.
After the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which abolished the national origins formula, the U.S. allowed many Asian peoples to immigrate to America. Prominent amongst the new immigrants were peoples from Muslim countries: nations that detested the Jewish State. The Muslim peoples too organized political lobbying organizations that today are gaining the ear of social progressives, effectively blunting the Jewish voice. Also, in Europe, liberal governments have allowed Muslim immigrants to settle. The Muslim populations in many places, such as France, outnumber the old Jewish populations 10 to 1, according to the French Interior Ministry.
As often happened throughout Jewish history, the Jews have found saving support in the most unlikely place. The American evangelical community has now become Israel’s greatest supporter. The evangelicals support stands upon their belief that Israel’s establishment fulfills biblical prophecy, concerning the return of Lord Jesus the Christ at the end of the age. Fortunately for the Jews, evangelicals overlook the liberal Jews’ lobbying for policies that actually undermine the welfare of evangelicals. The evangelicals consider the welfare of the State of Israel to be of greater importance than the trifle politics of some liberal Jews, whose politics are effectively harming the Jews, themselves. The question is how can the Jews and the evangelical community reach a sustained and respectful relationship, in the light of their polar views?
Historical examples of deliverers arising in the midst of those who persecute the Jews are numerous. The Torah (the first five books of Moses) gives the most rehearsed example in the story of the Egyptian mid-wives who saved Hebrew babies in defiance of Pharaoh’s orders to kill male Hebrew infants. In more recent history, Oskar Schindler gives a poignant example of deliverers arising from those who persecute the Jews. A member of the German Nazi Party, Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist who saved around 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust. Schindler had set out simply to make a profit, but after realizing the grave danger that the Nazis posed to his Jewish employees, Schindler bribed the Nazis to overlook his Jewish workers. Upon his death in 1974, the Israelis buried Schindler in Jerusalem on Mount Zion.
According to the French Interior Ministry, the Jewish population in France stands at approximately 475,000, comprising 1 percent of the French population. Yet, the French Ministry observes that French Jews endure 51 percent of race related attacks. Similar numbers appear in other European countries.
The foreign policies of President Barack Obama administration exemplify the realignment of Jewish political affiliation. Despite many Muslim countries professed denial of the right for the State of Israel to exist, the Obama administration (unlike others) have reached out to Israel’s worst enemies in order to force a working peace. In response, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has actively broke Israeli tradition of non-party interference and sought the support of the Republican Party, in opposition to President Obama’s Middle-East policy.
To facilitate friendly relations between Christians and Jews, the Landscape of Truth frames the biblical Testament, in regards to the New Testaments Jewish roots. The Landscape employs the Hebrew names of all biblical persons; moreover, the Landscape’s chapter 7 gives a brief history of the Jewish people and the political causes of their persecutions at the hands of professed Christians. Lastly, the Landscape of Truth’s chapter 7 details the rise and obstacles that the present global community poses for both Jews and evangelical Christians.
To realize a working relationship between Christians and Jews, both Christian and Jewish people must understand the nature of their respective liberal and conservative adherents to their faiths, and the resulting outcome of these respective beliefs. We will address the ways in which to strengthen the Jewish, evangelical relationship in our next article.