When fire consumes the cedars of Lebanon (Judges 9:15)

At 18:08 local time on August 4, an apocalyptic explosion mushroomed over the Port of Beirut, Lebanon’s capital. The official explanation for the cause of the blast is that the port’s Warehouse #9 (chock full of Chinese fireworks) somehow had caught fire and that within minutes the blaze jumped across to Warehouse #12, where 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer was sitting in storage. This highly explosive fertilizer (confiscated from a derelict Russian freighter six years before) was held ‘in limbo,’ stored at the port due to bureaucratic inaction on the part of Beirut's municipal judges.

Another distinct possibility is that the explosions were actually a terrible accident in Hezbollah-run underground weapons bunkers and munitions warehouses. The Iran-backed jihadi terror group stockpiles GPS guided rockets and missiles, rocket engines and fuel, high explosives and assorted weaponry in many places Lebanon, usually in the heart of major cities including Beirut and in civilian homes:

If  evidence points to Hezbollah responsibility for this massive destruction of Beirut, it’s a distinct possibility that a life and death struggle for control of Lebanon may explode, between Sunni Muslims (28.7%), Christians (36%) and Druze (5%) on one side facing off against Hezbollah and the Shi’ite community (28.4%) on the other.

 The blast of a storm against the wall (Isaiah 25:4)

The supersonic blast wave was felt as far away as northern Israel and Cyprus (240 kilometers away), leaving a crater between 140 and 200 meters wide. Jordan’s Seismological Observatory measured a seismological force equivalent to a 4.5 magnitude earthquake. Specialists from the University of Sheffield UK estimated that the blast had one-tenth the force of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, making it one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions in history.

So far there are 157 fatalities, 80 people missing, and more than 5,000 injured. Beirut Governor Marwan Aboud estimates that up to 300,000 people are left homeless by the explosions, which wrecked homes up to ten kilometers away. Three hospitals and 90% of Beirut’s hotels have been destroyed. Approximately 85% of the city’s grain reserves have been incinerated, and Beirut has declared a two-week state of emergency.

Lebanese leaders are likening this disaster to Hiroshima, and local media have coined a new word ‘Beirutshima’ to describe the severity of the damage.

Beirut has been ravaged. From its white snow-capped mountains (‘Lebanon’ is the ancient Hebrew word for ‘white country’) to its beautiful beaches, from its burgeoning Arabic music and media center to its Syrian and Hezbollah operated drug routes (heroin and hashish) and smuggling – this city used to be known as the Paris and Switzerland of the Middle East. The shock waves of this explosion are rippling across the Middle East. It is a sober time.

Howl, for the cedar is fallen (Zechariah 11:2)!

Beirut is the Arab world’s fifteenth largest city and the third largest in the Eastern Mediterranean. This disaster is a mighty blow, one that feels more suited to biblical prophecies over Lebanese cities like Tyre (Isaiah 23; Ezekiel 26-27) or Sidon (Matthew 11).

Lebanon has known terrible strife and civil war over the past 150 years. Recently Iran has seeded the country with a particularly venomous jihadi fifth column known as Hezbollah (‘the army of Allah’). Lebanese Islamist Shi'ite leaders who had studied in Najaf, Iran adopted Ayatollah Khomeini’s post-1979 Iranian Revolution strategies. Funded by Iran and trained by a core group of Pasdaran instructors, Hezbollah was established in 1985 to attack Israel, to bring religious and political victory to Lebanon’s  marginalized Shi'ite community, and to help spread Iranian jihadi control over the wider Middle East.

Since 2008 Hezbollah has for all intents and purposes annexed Lebanon, controlling its political, economic and military will. The jihadi group has initiated terror attacks against the Israeli army, rocket and missile attacks against Israeli civilians, and has built up a deadly arsenal of over 150,000 precision-guided rockets and missiles able to reach all of Israel’s population centers.

Israeli media regularly brings up the likelihood of a soon-coming all-out war between Hezbollah and the Jewish state. With 150,000 rockets and missiles aimed at every city in the Promised Land, Israeli citizens need to be constantly reminded to wrap our minds around the possibility of grave civilian casualties and destruction of essential infrastructure in this next round.

The destroyed buildings of Beirut are a sobering picture of what much of Lebanon will look like if Hezbollah begins to fire its rockets and missiles at Israel’s civilian population. Israel has clearly warned that in such an eventuality the IDF and IAF will need to take out all hidden rocket launchers and degrade or destroy Lebanon’s major infrastructure installations.

In one day

People today struggle with an overabundance of cynicism. The concept of God being sovereign even in times of disaster is summarily dismissed by most in the modern world. Politically correct wisdom says that when disaster hits a country, the entire society of that land instantly becomes an outstanding example of godly righteousness. God alone, they say, is the bad guy responsible for disasters. The concept of judgment or divine law enforcement is totally bankrupt, from this perspective.

The Scriptures speak of the speed of YHVH’s works coming in one day. These works can be positive:

The speedy works which come in one day can also be highly destructive:

We need to call out to YHVH, the God of the armies of Israel (see 1 Samuel 17:45), to have compassion on Beirut like He had mercy on Nineveh – that “great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals” (Jonah 4:11). Let us pray for Beirut’s overwhelming physical and spiritual needs.

If you would like to donate financially to help those in need in Beirut, here is a reliable ministry on the ground in Beirut:

go to https://tm-lebanon.com  - (no tax-deductible receipt)

CMJ USA - https://secure.accessacs.com/access/oglogin.aspx?sn=156636. Choose ‘Select Fund: C.C. Crossroads’ and then in the memo write: Beirut Relief Fund – (for a tax-deductible receipt)

A future prophecy about another major Arab city

The prophet Isaiah speaks about the future of Damascus, the ancient capital of Israel’s venomous enemy. Today it is the capital of Syria and the country’s largest city. In Arabic it is fondly called ‘the City of Jasmine’ (Madīnat al-Yāsmīn). Damascus has been a major cultural center of the Levant and the Arab world. It has also been the center (as has Beirut) of satanic strategic planning aimed at destroying the nation of Israel (see Genesis 12:3; Isaiah 42:11-16). 

In 1991 Rachel and I met a dear brother (now passed on) to whom God would give stunningly accurate prophetic dreams. The first time we met him, he told me that he had a dream of a death wind sweeping over Damascus. In that dream, chemical warfare stockpiles on the outskirts of Damascus exploded through some kind of accident. In that dream the death wind swept the clouds of nerve gas across the city. Then the Lord spoke to our friend that this was the fulfillment of Isaiah 17.

Syria has huge stockpiles of Sarin and VX nerve gas, and has repeatedly used these banned weapons against its own civilians:

Consider the speedy destruction that Beirut has just experienced. Then consider Isaiah’s prophetic word that even greater destruction will fall on Damascus, and that this “will be the portion of those who plunder and pillage” the Jewish people.

There are those who see peace breaking out across the Middle East (based on their unusual interpretation of Isaiah 19), along a highway between Egypt and Assyria. But both Isaiah 19:16-22 and Isaiah 17 actually describe intense warfare as the precursor to unshakeable peace. We are not yet in times of peace, but of tremendous shakings. Let us carefully discern the times and be on the watch.

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: www.davidstent.org

When Messiah comes, will He speak Yiddish?

Right after Israel’s First Gulf War in 1991 our family moved to California for a brief season. Our two oldest kids attended a mostly Black Lutheran primary school in Long Beach. Our sons would bring home Bible-themed drawings from school that they had made. I immediately noticed that the Jesus they drew was Black.

That experience was instructive for me. Every ethnic group develops ways of looking at the Scriptures (and traditions of interpretation and expectation) that may not always exactly reflect Bible days or Bible ways. The blond Jesus on the stained glass windows of the school’s chapel was not an accurate representation of Yeshua’s Middle Eastern context, just as much as the Black Jesus of my kid’s crayon drawings.

So let’s ask the following questions: can we recover a true picture of the Jewish Messiah? Do our eschatological hopes accurately reflect the vision of the Scriptures and the prophetic promises made to the Patriarchs?

Messiah looks like my great-grandfather

My father Zvi Hirsh was born on Manhattan’s Lower East Side to Orthodox Yiddish-speaking immigrant parents from Poland. He was his parents’ second son, the first one born in America. My grandfather Yoisef Arieh Efroyim had been an ‘ilui’ in Łódź, one who had been blessed with greater mental and intellectual capabilities than the average Torah scholar.

But in America his fate was to slave over a sewing machine in a Lower West Side sweat shop. Talmudic visions got blurry in the New York rain.

By the time I was born, my grandfather’s Yiddish world was passing off the scene. Less than a handful of his grandchildren could speak Yiddish, and only one or two remained Orthodox. Long white beards were no longer in vogue, and synagogue attendance became (maybe) a twice a year ritual. After I became a believer in Yeshua, a deep hunger rose within me to re-immerse myself in the Yiddish world of which I had once been a part. I started playing klezmer music again, reconnected with acting in Yiddish theater, studying Yiddish literature and history, and reading the Tenach (the Hebrew Scriptures) in Hebrew and Yiddish. Some of my big questions were, “How is a Messianic Jew to live with passion in this world? Should I adopt an Orthodox lifestyle? And where should I live – in North America or Israel?”

A vanished world

My fellow Messianic Jews were all asking the same questions. How could we reconnect with what had become for us ‘a vanished world?’ Roman Vishniac’s striking photographs of pre-Holocaust Poland conjured up memories of ancestors we had lost touch with. Would our renascent Messianic Jewish identity look something like these forgotten echoes of a destroyed world?

In the social ferment of the late 1960’s, a hippie ‘Bible’ – a guide to all things ‘hip, cool and spiritual’ – came out called the Whole Earth Catalog.

Within a few years, Jewish hippies released a Hebrew-friendly cousin called The First Jewish Catalog. Some Jewish hippies were on a mission to discover the Jewish roots of their identity. And their spiritual trek would carry them across the world from Newport Beach to Nepal looking for answers.

An Orthodox Jewish folk-rock group Megama was involved in ‘kosher outreach’ to searching Jewish youth. Their most popular song was called ‘My Zadie’, a lament for lost grandfathers and vanished traditional lifestyles, and a challenge to step up to the plate and be counted in this generation.

From secular to super-traditional Jew in a New York minute!

Most American Jews in the 1960’s and 1970’s were either secular or only faintly traditional. The Swinging Sixties trumpeted secularism, and most hippies and searchers were decidedly not followers of traditional Judaism. Those who came to faith in Messiah Yeshua slowly stumbled into the realization that the roots of our Messianic faith were genuinely Jewish. As we groped around in the slowly dispersing fog, hoping to touch something Jewish, we heard voices from some in the Orthodox Jewish community trying to draw us into their traditional world. They explained to us that the only reason we believed in Yeshua was because we knew nothing about real Judaism. Our deliverance, they opined, would come when we immersed ourselves in Talmudic study and in a rigorous Orthodox lifestyle. Anything less was not really Jewish, they declared.

This pull and push dynamic raised the painful topic of rejection for Messianic Jews – something which Jewish people have struggled with throughout our long history. Rejected by the nations, by the Church, by Islam, by Western secularism, by Communism, and by PC ‘cancel culture’ – we Jews actually know a fair amount about being rejected. To now be faced with rejection from our beloved Jewish community – that was a hard one. For some of us it took the air right out of our sails.

Some rising leaders in the burgeoning Messianic movement began to advocate for a Messianic Jewish expression resembling the bearded glory of our great-grandparents’ lifestyles. David Rausch ‘puffed’ the option of an Orthodox Messianic lifestyle and theology in his ‘Messianic Judaism: Its History, Theology and Polity’ (1982). Dan Juster, John Fisher and David Stern also championed a Mosaic ‘Torah-positive’ theology and practice in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Others like Mark Kinzer and Stuart Dauermann added their unique perspectives in advocating similar positions. The First Fruits of Zion ministry stressed Mosaic Torah observance for Jewish believers, and in times past even for some Gentile believers as well.

The overwhelming majority of these dear Jewish brothers grew up secular, not actively involved in the Jewish community, and certainly not speaking Yiddish or Hebrew. Today one could easily mistake some of them for Orthodox Jews. At present the vast majority of those attending Messianic congregations are not Jewish, yet some of these at first glance look like Orthodox Jews. It seems as if some in our movement have come full circle and look like our great-grandparents once again.

Messianic Torah from Zion

Most of our great-grandparents were followers of rabbinic Judaism. Every Shabbat they would go to synagogue (shul) and sing the words of Isaiah 2:3 “Ki miTziyon tetzeh Torah, u’devar YHVH mirushalayim! For the teaching will come out from Zion, and the word of YHVH from Jerusalem!”  I sang this song every time I went to synagogue. It is the emotional high point of the service, looking forward to Messianic days when the God of Israel will reign in Jerusalem over the entire planet.

When Orthodox Jews sing this verse, they envision a day when the Mosaic teaching (torah literally means teaching in Hebrew, though it usually is used to refer to the Mosaic covenant) will proceed from Jerusalem and be obeyed by all Jews and all Gentiles as well. But the prophet Jeremiah envisioned something a little bit different when he prophesied about Messianic days to come:

Jeremiah clearly prophesies that when the New Covenant comes to fruition, this New Covenant will “not be like the covenant … of Egypt” –  not like the Mosaic covenant. When Messiah Yeshua sits on David’s throne in Jerusalem, the religious matrix will be neither rabbinic nor Mosaic, but instead it will be a New Covenant framework.

Isaiah shed more light on those days:

Messiah Yeshua Himself will be teaching. He will be judging. He will be rendering international decisions for the nations. And He will be the mediator of a more excellent ministry, a better covenant built on better promises (Hebrews 8:6) – the New Covenant (Hebrews 12:24) of which He is the guarantor (Hebrews 7:22). The New Covenant can also be called the New Torah or the New Teaching. We have much to learn about this covenant, but we know for sure based on the more certain prophetic word (2 Peter 1:19) that Yeshua will be teaching us – our Judge, our Lawgiver, our King and our Savior (Isaiah 33:22; see also verses 17-24 which describe the beauty of that canal-filled New Covenant Jerusalem).

Isaiah 33:17, 21 tells us that “your eyes will see the King in His beauty . . . There the majestic One, YHVH, will be for us!”

Our Yiddish Messiah

Years ago, the words ‘Yiddish’ and ‘Jewish’ were interchangeable. My mother Esther of blessed memory would say “I speak Jewish” meaning that she spoke Yiddish. ‘An emeser Yid’ technically mean ‘truly a Jew’ in the Yiddish language, but it has the sense of meaning ‘a worthy or upright man.’ Paul in Romans 2:29 uses a similar figure of speech when he talks about the ideal type of Jewish person that YHVH is looking forward – not only physically circumcised, but also spiritually, one who lives to give glory and worship to the God of Jacob.

Whether or not Yeshua will speak Yiddish (and why not? I also speak Yiddish!), He will be the best Jew who ever lived, the best Son of Adam who ever walked this earth (see the flow of thought in Romans 5-8). And He will be the ultimate “Israelite in Whom there is no guile” (see John 1:47).

Will Yeshua have a long white beard? John the Revelator tells us that “His head and His hair were white like white wool, like snow; and His eyes were like a flame of fire” (Revelation 1:14). Let us look forward to seeing His face on that day! “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known!” (1 Corinthians 13:12)

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: www.davidstent.org

God came in a dream of the night

In Bible days God spoke to the patriarchs through the Hebrew prophets in many different parts of the Land and in many diverse ways (see Hebrews 1:1). On occasion, the God of Israel shared His heart with Gentiles like Pharaoh Neco (2 Chronicles 35:20-22), King Cyrus (2 Chronicles 36:22-23) and King Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 4:34-37).

YHVH wants to speak to us too: “Indeed God speaks once, or twice, yet no one notices it. In a dream, a vision of the night, when sound sleep falls on men, while they slumber in their beds. Then He opens the ears of men and seals their instruction, that He may turn man aside from his conduct, and keep man from pride. He keeps back his soul from the pit, and his life from passing over into Sheol” (Job 33:14-18).

It was a dream given by God to Babylon’s king that rocketed Daniel the prophet into public ministry.

The God of the Exodus shared secret intelligence from Heaven’s courts with Daniel. The prophet promptly declared that YHVH speaks directly to the hearts of men, even to Gentiles. Jacob’s God also reveals divine strategies about what He’s planning to do on the earth:

Never underestimate the power of a dream.

God still gives dreams

The Bible is Israel’s history book. It inerrantly shows us that God gives dreams to people. From Abimelech (Genesis 20:3) to Jacob (Genesis 31:10), from Laban (Genesis 31:24) to Egypt’s cupbearer and baker (Genesis 34), from Pharaoh (Genesis 41:25, 32) to the unknown Midianite soldier (Judges 7:13-15), from Joseph (Genesis 37:9-11) to Job (Job 7:14) – dreams are part of the currency of God. And He spends that currency freely on the sons and daughters of Adam.

Last Days dreams are part of God’s upcoming prophetic scenario. Joel tells us on high authority that the day is coming when YHVH will pour out His Spirit on all flesh. In that day the sons and daughters of Israel will prophesy, old Jewish men will dream dreams, and young Hebrew men will see visions (see Joel 2:28). Peter in Acts 2:15-18 declares that there is a correspondence between the promise of Joel and the power-wave of the Holy Spirit on the original Day of Shavuot (Pentecost). The God of Isaac guided Joseph (Yeshua’s step-father) by giving him five different dreams (see Matthew 1, 2). In our day YHVH continues to speak to His people through dreams. Dreams are a healthy part of our biblical and spiritual inheritance.

The three riddles

Over thirty years ago a friend of ours had an unusual dream. It came in the form of three riddles/dark sayings/prophetic parables (see Ezekiel 17:2, Numbers 12:8, Proverbs 1:6, Psalm 78:2 where riddles, prophetic parables, dark sayings, wise words and proverbs are used in similar or parallel contexts). Each of these three riddles will be explained here.

The first riddle was, “Bush went hunting for quail, but the quail was found hiding behind the bush.”

The year was 1988, and President George H.W. Bush was US President. His hobby was fishing.

Since the President was a fisherman, the meaning of the phrase ‘hunting for quail’ was puzzling. But our friend had been told that the fulfilment of each riddle would be the key to the fulfilment of the next one. Then, on August 16, 1988, at the Republican Convention in New Orleans, Louisiana, George H. W. Bush announced his choice of Dan Quayle as running mate in the 1988 United States presidential election. The ‘Bush’ had indeed been hunting for ‘Quayle’ all along (see the same word play in www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1993/06/18/quayle-under-glass-indiana-home-town-boasts-veep-museum/81db7e74-822b-4d43-a808-28778bac37d6/).

Within a short time, however, political attacks were leveled against certain aspects of Quayle’s military record:

Bush’s choice of Dan Quayle had been a surprise to many. The resulting media pounding caused Bush to come out strongly in defense of Quayle (hence the interpretation of the last part of this first riddle – ‘the Quayle was found hiding behind the Bush’).

The second riddle

The second riddle/prophetic parable our friend was given was this: Within a year of the first riddle coming to pass, Communism would become ‘Commu-wasm.’ This play on words indicates that Communism would soon become ‘a thing of the past.’

This prophetic parable was also hard to understand.

The first riddle came to pass in August 1988. Exactly one year later in August 1989, as many as 300,000 East Germans crossed the border into Hungary, fleeing the Communist oppression of the German Democratic Republic (DDR), according to Stasi (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit) official reports of August 31, 1989 (MfS, ZAIG B/215, Berlin). On September 10, these refugees were permitted to pour into West Germany. On October 4, nearly 6,000 East Germans refugees holed up in the West German embassies of Prague and Warsaw were permitted to board one-way trains to West Germany. At Leipzig’s Nikolaikirche huge ‘Prayers for Peace’ (Friedensgebete) gatherings had been taking place on Monday nights. Finally on November 9, 1989, on the 51st anniversary of Kristallnacht (the Nazi pogrom against German Jews), East Berliners flowed through the open gates of the Berlin Wall into West Berlin. Communism in East Germany had become ‘Commu-wasm.’

But even the West’s top intelligence minds were caught off guard.

During the 1980s, the CIA’s top brass discussed the outlook for the Soviet Union at a special meeting. The Deputy Director of the CIA Robert M. Gates declared at that meeting that there was no way the Soviet Union was going to break up – not in his lifetime, not in his children's lifetime.  Gates later became Director of Central Intelligence (DCI – head of the CIA) under President George H. W. Bush (1991-1993) and then US Secretary of Defense (2006-2011).

Former CIA DCI Stansfield Turner (1977-1981)  wrote in the American journal Foreign Affairs (Fall, 1991), “We should not gloss over the enormity of this failure to forecast the magnitude of the Soviet crisis . . . I never heard a suggestion from the CIA, or the intelligence arms of the departments of Defense or State, that numerous Soviets recognized a growing, systemic economic problem . . . The corporate view missed by a mile” (Milo L. Jones, Milo; Philippe Silberzahn (2013). Constructing Cassandra, Reframing Intelligence Failure at the CIA, 1947–2001. Stanford University Press, p. 108).

Communism’s collapse into ‘Commu-wasm’ took the U.S. Intelligence community by complete surprise. But not so with the God of Israel! YHVH is the One “who changes the times and the epochs. He removes kings and establishes kings. He gives wisdom to wise men and knowledge to men of understanding. It is He who reveals the profound and hidden things.”

The God of Jacob had other hidden purposes here connected to the collapse of world Communism. Some of them were certainly connected to the release of Soviet Jews, imprisoned for just over 70 years in a hostile country. Now they would be free to come home to Israel, in a foreshadowing of Jeremiah 16:14-15.

There are other divine purposes in the collapse of Communism. And one of the reasons is seen in why the God of Jacob gave these three riddles to our friend: He wants to share some of His specific upcoming strategies with followers of Yeshua – across the entire planet – in our day. That strategy will be more clearly seen when the third ‘riddle’ is explained.

The collapse of Communism in the Russian and East European spheres has created international shock waves which continue to ripple across the globe. The USSR has been officially dissolved, but Communist China (the People’s Republic of China - PRC) still carries the torch of hoped-for world Communist domination. 

The third riddle

Last but not least comes the third riddle. It was emphasized to our friend that no specific time frame would be given to accompany the fulfillment of this third riddle. He was told that the first two prophetic parables helped to validate the accuracy of the third riddle. The purpose of the third riddle was to focus people’s attention on what’s coming and so to be on the lookout. In other words, the third riddle is a prophetic warning. It will only be of benefit for those who take that warning seriously. Yeshua’s parable of the ten virgins in Matthew 25:1-3 makes use of a similar dynamic in its approach. 

This third riddle is more properly a prophetic declaration: Communism will resuscitated. It will return as an active and powerful force on the earth. Our friend was told that the process could be compared poetically to the healed ‘mortal wound’ in Revelation 13:3 – a temporary resuscitation from what seemed to be undeniable death. He was told that this return of Communism wouldn’t be a prophetic fulfillment of Revelation 13:3, but at the same time it would definitely not be a positive development.

The concluding declaration that he was given was this: a reborn Communism would join up with the jihadi Islamist movement, with the Islamist part being the stronger of the two. This blended movement would be horrendously evil, he was informed.

Counterfeit life from the dead

I’ve been meditating on these prophetic parables for more than thirty years. I and my family live in the Middle East, and I was once raised in a Communist home, so I have more than a passing interest in this matter.

I had assumed for a long time that the center for such a resurgent Communism would be Russia. And indeed, the rise of former KGB Lieutenant-Colonel Vladimir Putin

www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/mrputin_chapter-1.pdf

https://en.putin.kremlin.ru/bio/page-5

https://archive.wilsonquarterly.com/essays/two-worlds-vladimir-putin-kgb 

to Director of FSB (the successor to the KGB), Prime Minister and President of Russia, shows some real shades of ‘life from the dead’ in his professional achievements. But without question, the renaissance of Russia’s global political ambitions is a real threat and one worthy of sober consideration.

There seem to be three quickly developing centers of gravity in the approaching ‘Commu-wasm’ / ‘Communism’ bloc:

The rise of Communism in the West would once have been inconceivable – twenty years ago. Today it is the elephant in the living room and the shadow on our collective doorstep.

The red-green show

In this newsletter, the color red represents the resurgence of Communism, while the green refers to a mighty jihadi wave. The joining of these two forces would geographically be located across the Eurasian Belt, where both movements have had historic strongholds.

Communism has solid roots in China and in the Asiatic formerly-Communist ‘Stans’ – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan. Islam also has deep roots in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Jordan as well as in most of the ‘Stans.’

Jihadi Islam is active in all of the above countries (either above ground or underground), as well as in all the countries/territories surrounding Israel. From full-blown Salafi and ISIS movements to zealous Muslim Brotherhood revolutionary terror groups – the entire Middle East is a quivering and jumping jambalaya of Islamist ferment. Sunni targets include the Christian and post-Christian West, the Jewish people and their Israeli state, Arab military dictatorships deemed not sufficiently jihadi or religious, and Shi’ite countries. Shi’ite targets include all of the above, but also actively oppose all Sunni expressions of Islam.

The prophetic descriptions in Psalm 83, Ezekiel 38-39, Psalm 137, etc., describe a broad swath of Middle Eastern countries including the ‘Stans’ – and all of them are coming against Israel to destroy her.  Zechariah 12 and 14, and Joel 3 add a comprehensive international dimension to other battles and campaigns.

This Communist and Islamist consortium will home in on the Jewish people and attempt to plunder their state. But this is what YHVH of armies says, “After glory He has sent me against the nations which plunder you, for he who touches you, touches the apple of His eye” (Zechariah 2:8). The graphic visuals and computer-generated imagery in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings movies offer some sense of the world-shaking events coming down the pike. This horrendously evil force is going to run face first into YHVH, the Lord of the armies of Israel. God’s army of Ezekiel 37:9-10 will have its finest hour (see Zechariah 12:5-9; Psalm 110:1-3).

The intertwining of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Black Lives Matter movement

There are developments underway in the USA to cultivate a solidarity between revolutionary strategies from Marxist leadership in the Black Lives Matter movement (on the one hand) and Muslim Brotherhood-related movements (on the other hand).

The joining of Communist/Marxist activists and Islamist activists is an American manifestation of the ‘third riddle’ mentioned earlier in this newsletter. This is a trumpet blast for those who have an intercessory burden for these issues.

Be prepared, always faithful

In Mark 13, Yeshua exhorts His disciples five times in a row: “But be on your guard . . . Take heed; behold, I have told you everything in advance . . . Take heed, keep on the alert . . . Therefore, be on the alert . . . What I say to you I say to all, Be on the alert!” (Mark 13:9, 23, 33, 35, 37). God in His goodness lets us listen in to the strategies of His heart – in advance of what is about to happen.

Our calling is to be prepared, like good Boy Scouts. Our goal is to be like the U.S. Marines –  to always be found faithful (‘Semper Fi’) to our Messiah, to His ways and to His plans.

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: www.davidstent.org

Paint it black – Black Replacement theology today

In 1966 Mick Jagger and Keith Richards released their huge hit ‘Paint it black:’ “I see a red door and I want it painted black. No colors anymore, I want them to turn black . . . Black as night, black as coal.” What happens when White Replacement Theology gets painted Black?

Students of Christian theology have usually bumped into something called ‘Replacement Theology’ in the course of their studies. This term refers to is a way of interpreting the Scriptures. It takes references to Israel and the Jewish people and re-interprets them as referring instead to the Gentile Church. Any seeming connection with the Jewish people and the physical seed of Jacob is now seen as overshadowed and altered by Christ’s work on the cross. All those ‘primitive Jewish’ blessings  have evolved (according to this teaching) and morphed into ‘God’s original intent’ – which means that the blessings come only to Gentile followers of Jesus. Of course, the curses spoken over Jewish disobedience (according to this interpretative system) still apply to the Jews. Here are three articles that may help to flesh out what’s involved here:

Replacement Theology studies have focused on the thoughts of Western (and therefore white-skinned) theologians. This newsletter broadens the scope, looking at how Black permutations of this ‘White’ theology have influenced Black communities not only over the years (both Christian and non-Christian), but some recent expressions in today’s Black communities as well.

Black American Christian origins

America’s first Black churches were founded in the forty year period between 1774 and 1813. The ministers were usually freed slaves. The very first Black congregation (First Baptist Church, Petersburg, Virginia) was founded in 1774, part of the spiritual fruit of the Great Awakening movement connected to George Whitfield. Other first fruits included  First African Baptist Church, Savannah, Georgia (1777), Free African Society, Philadelphia PA (1787), the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Philadelphia (1793), and the Union Church of Africans, Wilmington, Delaware (1813). These congregations were broadly evangelical in theology, and were established at a time when segregation and racial prejudice were ‘the law of the land.’

British Israelism becomes Black Israelism

In the 1890’s a teaching known as British or Anglo-Israelism began to spread throughout the United Kingdom and America. It emphasized that the original inhabitants of Britain were direct descendants of the ancient Israelites. Pseudo-Celtic and pseudo-Druidic elements peppered this movement. As this teaching spread throughout the northeastern U.S.A., some Black leaders took this new teaching and altered it, saying that it was actually the Blacks and not the Anglo-Saxons who were the original Israelites. This mutation of White Replacement Theology would leave a pronounced spiritual scar on American Black communities (see Genesis 12:3).

Masonic influence started impacting Black American communities in the 1790’s (see Jacob S. Dorman, Chosen People: The Rise of American Black Israelite Religions, 2013). The two main spokesmen of Prince Hall Masonry (the original Black Masonic Lodge) John Marrant and Prince Hall taught in Boston (1789, 1792, 1797) that “the legacy of ancient Egypt and the biblical destiny of Ethiopia belonged to African Americans” (Joanna Brooks, ‘Prince Hall Freemasonry: Secrecy, Authority, and Culture;’ Boston, Massachusetts; 2007). Freemasonry cultivated a tradition of doctrines, passwords, and symbols – symbolic rituals which supposedly were derived from Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem.  These Arabesque symbols and Arabic-sounding names brought an esoteric quasi-African/Middle Eastern flavor to Black Masonic rituals. It also set up a sympathetic open door to things Islamic, which would later be unpacked by Black movements in the 20th century. Black Israelism would access these Masonic pseudo-legends ‘of the ancient Israelites’ and build an African-Israelite synthetic hybrid which has strong influence to this day.

Loving the Talmud and hating the Jews

Frank S. Cherry in 1866 organized the Church of the Living God, Pillar of Truth for All Nations in Chattanooga, TN. He taught himself rudimentary Hebrew and Yiddish. According to Cherry, Jesus, Adam and Eve were Black, but White Jews deceitfully altered their blackness for nefarious purposes. Cherry stated that White Jews were interlopers and frauds, and that God hates White Jews because they are inherently evil and rejected Jesus (using Revelation 3:9 as his proof text; “Behold, I will cause those of the synagogue of Satan, who say that they are Jews and are not, but lie...”).

Cherry said that he received a divine vision that not all Blacks are Jews, but that all true Jews are Blacks of the lineage of Jacob. According to Cherry, the first white man was Gehazi (2 Kings 5:27) whose color changed to white when he was cursed. At other times Cherry argued that he and his followers “were part of the original Israelite tribes chased from Babylonia (and, they claim, into Central and Western Africa where they were later sold into slavery) by the Romans in 70 CE” (Janice W. Fernheimer, ‘Stepping Into Zion: Hatzaad Harishon, Black Jews, and the Remaking of Jewish Identity;’ University of Alabama Press, 2014; page 10).

Cherry taught that the earth is square, surrounded by three layers of heaven. He prophesied that Jesus would return in the year 2000, raising all the saints who kept the Ten Commandments and obeyed Cherry’s teachings (Eugene V. Gallagher; ‘Introduction to New and Alternative Religions in America; Greenwood Publishing Group, 2019). He accepted the Talmud as authoritative, forbade the eating of pork, the observance of Christian holidays, the use of pianos and speaking in tongues. Services began and ended with a prayer facing East toward Jerusalem. Meetings were held Sunday, Wednesday and Friday evenings, and all day Saturdays. Men wore skullcaps and women wore blue and white capes with tassels (Black Jews in Africa and the Americas, Tudor Parfitt, 2013).

Reverend William Christian in 1889 founded the Church of the Living God (Christian Workers for Fellowship) in Wrightsville, Arkansas. His catechism asks and answers the question: “Was Jesus a member of the Black race? Yes. Matthew 1 … Is this assertion sufficient proof that Jesus came of the black generation? Yes” (Moses, Jesus, and the Trickster in the Evangelical South, Paul Harvey 2012). In his book of essays ‘The Feeling Intellect’ (1990) Philip Reiff notes here: “What could more curious for one persecuted people to adopt the [history] that is another’s? . . . What is it to be a Jew? . . . It is to be a living expression of the highest ideals of human existence . . . [This sect] asserts the fiction of its Jewishness to assert its own dignity and equality.” The present attempt to place Black people at the core of Western history and religious narrative (as manifested through the Black Lives Matter movement) has its fledgling beginnings in these initial Black Replacement Theology declarations.

William Saunders Crowdy in 1896 founded the Church of God and Saints of Christ in Lawrence, Kansas. Crowdy was heavily influenced by Masonic symbolism and eschatology. He taught that Blacks are the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, the Chosen People, destined to play a central role in the narrative of mankind. Crowdy’s congregations kept a seventh day Sabbath, celebrated the Jewish feats, practiced circumcision and denied the deity of Yeshua. Crowdy dealt with issues of race-connected shame in an unusual way: he taught that modern ‘so-called Jews’ have breached God’s laws against intermarriage. As a punishment these Jews have become White. In so doing they have degraded themselves – now to be White is to be degraded! Instead of confronting the supposed shame of Blackness, Crowdy has turned the equation upside down. Now we have the shame of Whiteness. There are strong echoes of this dynamic today in issues pushed by the Black Lives Matter movement.

Leon Richlieu in 1899 established the Moorish Zionist Temple in Brooklyn. Richlieu maintained that he was of Ethiopian origin (from the supposed union of King Solomon and the Queen of Ethiopia), and that his congregation was composed of Black Jews from two or three Jewish tribes driven out of Israel and into Africa as a result of civil war. In 1929 it was re-organized under Mordechai Herman as the Congregation of the Moorish Zionist Temple of the Moorish Jews in Harlem (1929). An offshoot was Beth B’nai Abraham (House of the Sons of Abraham). They taught that they were descended from Black Jews in Carthage (modern Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya). Others taught that Black Jews come from Ethiopia, or from the Hausa tribe of Nigeria. This latter congregation also denied the deity of Yeshua but observed Ramadan.

Arnold Jossiah Ford in the mid-1920’s became rabbi at Beth B’nai Abraham. He was born in Barbados to a Nigerian father and a mother from Sierra Leone. He was part of the Harlem jazz world when he met Marcus Garvey of UNIA fame. He unsuccessfully tried to get Garvey to convert to Judaism and move to Ethiopia. His teachings were a cholent of Judaism, Pentecostalism, Islam, kabbalah and Freemasonry (Black Jews in Africa and the Americas, Tudor Parfitt, 2013). In November 1930 Ford traveled to Ethiopia to participate in the coronation of Haile Selassie as ‘Lion of Judah’ (Martina Konighofer, The New Ship of Zion: Dynamic Diaspora Dimensions of the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem, 2008). Ford died in Ethiopia in 1935. Though his Black Israelite colonization of Ethiopia had not borne much fruit, the Black Israelite engagement with Ethiopia proved critical to the formation of Rastafarianism, which lives today as Jamaica’s most visible artistic culture (Dorman, Chosen People). The Rastafari movement believes that they are the descendants of the original Hebrew Israelites, and that Haile Selassie is the coming Messiah of Judah.

On November 2, 1930 when Ras Tafari (Selassie) was crowned Emperor of Ethiopia, he received the rank of Negusa Nagast (King of Kings). His royal epithets ‘King of Kings,’ ‘Elect of God,’ ‘Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah’ – these titles are applied in the Book of Revelation to Yeshua (Revelation 5:5, 19:16). Ethiopian tradition claimed that the royal line in Ethiopia began with Menilek, first king of Ethiopia and child of the supposed union of King Solomon of Israel and the queen of Sheba. The king of Ethiopia was thus a descendant of the House of David. Jamaican Leonard Howell concluded that the oracle was being fulfilled in the coronation, and that the Messiah promised in Acts 2:29, “he shall come through the lineage of Solomon, and sit on David’s throne,” had arrived in the person of the Ethiopian emperor. Here is an amazing example of how Black Replacement Theology places an Ethiopian Gentile on David’s throne, wreaking havoc on some major Messianic prophecies.

Timothy Drew aka Noble Drew Ali in 1913 founded the Canaanite Temple in Newark, NJ  which was later renamed the Moorish Science Temple of America. He later moved to Chicago. Ali taught that he was a reincarnation of Jesus, the Buddha and Muhammad. He taught that Blacks are descendants of the Moabites aka Moorish, and are Islamic. Ali recounted that an Egyptian priest gave him a ‘lost section’ of the Quran. His 'lost section of the Quran' contains the first 19 chapters from an occult work published in 1908 called ‘The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ.’ Chapters 20 through 45 are borrowed from a Rosicrucian work, Unto Thee I Grant.

Noble Drew Ali believed that Chicago would become a second Mecca. Chicago did become the center of his movement. After Drew Ali died in 1929, a congregant named Wallace Fard Muhammad aka David Ford El claimed to be the reincarnation of Drew Ali. When his claim was rejected, Ford El broke away from the Moorish Science Temple and moved to Detroit, where he formed his own group that would become the Nation of Islam.  On February 26, 2014, Louis Farrakhan acknowledged the contributions of Noble Drew Ali to the Nation of Islam and their founding principles (Poray Sr Casimier, Islamic Impostors, 2004).

The deeply anti-Semitic teachings of the Nation of Islam are based on Black Replacement Theology. The Black racist teachings espoused by Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan have strongly influenced leading voices in both the Black Power movement and in the Black Lives Matter movement.

Radical Black nationalist and minister Albert Cleage was deeply influenced by Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam (see ‘The Creation of the Devil and the End of the White Man’s Rule: The Theological Influence of the Nation of Islam on Early Black Theology;’ Marjorie Corbman, 2020). The following quote from Cleage shows how Black Replacement Theology shaped his perspectives:

The recent (December 2019) murder of three Jewish shoppers at a kosher grocery store in Jersey City, NJ was carried out by members of a Black Israelite offshoot known as the Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ. This denomination is classified as a hate group. Their theology mirrors many of the developments sketched out in this brief historical overview.

Why Black Israelism?

Professor Jacob Dorman has charted three distinct generations of Black Israelism: the pioneer generation of Southern preachers from 1890 to 1916; a second generation from 1920 to 1930, which blossomed in the urban metropolises of the North and incorporated more modern Jewish elements; and a third generation from 1960 to 1980 of militant, black nationalist groups (Michael T. Miller, Black Judaism(s) and the Hebrew Israelites).

“At the heart of all black Israelite faiths was a radical reimagining of the black past, present, and future. It has been a religious . . . counter-discourse that places people of African descent at the very heart of history and civilization as God's chosen people with a unique racial mission to prepare the earth for the coming of the millennium” (Dorman, Chosen People: The Rise of American Black Israelite Religions; 2013, p. 80).

“African Americans appropriated and advocated Judaism, Jewishness, Jewish history, and often an Israelite bloodline in their attempts to counter oppression, gain approval, re-create lost history, revolt against white authority, and forge new, more useful identities . . . Blacks claimed Jewish racial identity to escape the stigma that came with being regarded as black” (Tudor Parfitt, Black Jews in Africa and the Americas; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013, pages 133, 72).

A more detailed analysis of the Black Israelite movement is available on-line.

Black Replacement Theology meets Marxist Liberation Theology

Marxist political scientists have given the world an ambivalent gift – a blend of Marxist dialectics and anti-capitalist revolutionary strategies. When this political philosophy moves into African American territory, it adopts the name ‘Black Liberation Theology’ or ‘Black Theology.’

On July 31, 1966 an ad hoc group of 51 black pastors (the National Committee of Negro Churchmen) bought a full-page ad in The New York Times to publish their “Black Power Statement." In 1969 James Cone released his ‘Black Theology and Black Power’ and in 1970 he published ‘A Black theology of liberation.’ These Marxist-rooted perspectives are an integral part of the political worldviews of the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement:

A New York Times article in 2008 concludes that at least one quarter of African-American churches follow Liberation Theology (Michael Powell, ‘A Fiery Theology Under Fire,’ New York Times, May 4, 2008).  Reverend Jeremiah Wright was former pastor to then-Senator Barack Obama at Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago (a successful megachurch following James Cone’s theology of Black liberation). Wright made headlines many times on a number of issues, including a public damning of America and his use of Malcolm X’s famous line (chickens coming home to roost) in blaming America for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He is also on record as having made many anti-Semitic public pronouncements.

Black Replacement Theology is as guilty before God as is White Replacement Theology, in the same way as Black racism is as reprehensible as White racism. The result of both Black and White Replacement Theology is the robbing of the Jewish people of their calling and gifts (Romans 11:28-29). Anyone – Black or White – who does this comes under God’s mandated curse of Genesis 12:3: “The one who curses/derides/belittles/scorns you, I will curse.” This is serious business, based on God’s promise in His word.

As we connect these dots it is sobering to see how deep the need is for urgent prayer and pro-active discernment here. Who will contend for the spiritual healing of America in general, and for Black America specifically?

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: www.davidstent.org

Discerning our future

It’s ‘time out’ on Planet Earth. Trains, planes and automobiles have ground to a screeching halt. The pause button has been hit on Hollywood, rock concerts and fancy weddings for right now. How long will this go on? Will society be able to endure?

Scripture verses which we’ve used countless times all of a sudden are taking on a deeper meaning:

The rapid increase of social temblors (pandemics, rioting, cultural upheavals, etc.) is not abating. Like the carnival/video game whack-a-mole, it seems that new problems are just going to keep popping up. The dynamic in that game: repeated efforts to solve a persistently occurring problem are frustrated by the problem reappearing in different forms. All attempts at a solution result only in temporary or superficial improvement.  Can we make sense of these troubling events? How are we to connect the dots here and discern patterns or solutions? What does the future hold for us?

Wisdom leads to discerning our future

Moses was not only a scribe, a military general and Israel’s national leader. He was also a great singer (see also Revelation 15:3). One of his last prophetic messages was in song:

Then Moses spoke in the hearing of all the assembly of Israel the words of this song –

“For YHVH’s portion is His people; Jacob is the allotment of His inheritance . . .

You neglected the Rock who begot you, and forgot the God who gave you birth ...

For they are a nation lacking in counsel, and there is no understanding in them.

Would that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would discern their future!

How could one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight . . .” (Deuteronomy 31:30; 32:9, 28-30)

Two bedrock principles are declared here – when Israel remembers God and His word, she will be able to discern her future.

Nearly 700 years later, King Uzziah came to the throne at the tender age of sixteen. “He continued to seek God in the days of Zechariah, who had understanding through the vision of God. And as long as he sought YHVH, God prospered him” (2 Chronicles 26:5). Uzziah’s prosperity was directly connected to his paying attention to the Scriptures (see Deuteronomy 17:18-20) and to the words of the Prophets.

Asaph the prophetic minstrel explains to us: “For I was envious of the arrogant as I saw the prosperity of the wicked . . . [But] if I had said, ‘I will speak thus,’ Behold, I would have betrayed the generation of Your children. When I pondered to understand this, it was troublesome in my sight until I came into the sanctuary of God. Then I perceived their end” (Psalm 73:3, 15-17). When Asaph meditated on the hard issues of life in the presence of the God of eternity, he was given prophetic insight into the future.

God’s hand is outstretched to every believer. He invites us to follow Him and receive both wisdom and prophetic insight (Proverbs 3-4). If we immerse ourselves in the Scriptures and invest time with Him, He will speak to us, lead us and direct us. He will even show us what is on His heart and His agenda for the future.

Not all that glitters prophetically is gold

The God of Israel has raised up men and women to speak His counsel to the Jewish people as well as to the nations of this planet. These prophets spoke directly to the nation, and some of their words have been enscripturated in the Bible. They sometimes described their experience as ‘standing in the council of YHVH.’  A man or woman who had that experience carried the purposes of God’s heart deep within. The reality of those visions, dreams and prophetic experiences affect us even today.

But there were others who prophesied visions only out ‘of their own imagination.’ God had not sent them but they ran and shared a message. God had not spoken to them but still they prophesied. These were false prophets who flourished like thorns in a wheat field. 

In our day the same principles hold true. All that glitters is not gold, and not all that is declared as a prophetic word is birthed from the council of God (see 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22).

Getting immersed in God’s word and getting pickled in His presence – these are biblical keys to hearing YHVH’s heart and discerning what He has to say about our future. Yeshua challenged the spiritual leaders of His day on these two points. He noted that some of them understood neither the Scriptures nor the power of God (Matthew 22:29; Mark 12:24). Today believers often choose to align themselves with one of these two camps – either the Scriptures or the power of God. Messiah wants us to choose both wings of the eagle.

Those who aspire to speak forth the heart of God are reaching for a high calling. This requires getting in harness and remaining yoked to God’s word and heart.

The gold standard for discerning the future is connected to understanding Israel

Micah makes the same point to the leaders of the nations:

The calling of Israel and God’s destiny for that people is one of the most important issues for the nations of the world to understand. Even as they raise their hand to strike and divide Jerusalem, they have no idea how the God of Jacob sees matters, and how YHVH will soon use the mighty Hebrew army of Ezekiel 37 to pulverize unjust nations (see Zechariah 12:6-9 et al.).

These are the Days of Noah

A popular song sung among believers over the past 20 years is ‘These are the Days of Elijah.’ Perhaps even more timely right now is the fact that we are living in what Yeshua called “the Days of Noah.”

God spoke to Noah, a righteous man – blameless in his time – who found favor in the eyes of YHVH (Genesis 6:1-18). He shared with him that the earth was filled with violence; that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.  God revealed to Noah that He was about to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life, along with the entire planet. Only Noah, his sons, his wife and his sons’ wives would survive.

When Yeshua spoke to His disciples privately on the Mount of Olives (Matthew 24:3), He also revealed something: “the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away – so will the coming of the Son of Man be” (Matthew 24:36-39; Luke 17:22-36).

The Messiah’s emphatic point here is that most people will not understand that judgment is about to happen until it kicks in, even as the world’s population in Noah’s day did not grasp the extent and severity of God’s Flood judgment until it began to rain (Genesis 2:6; 7:4).

Yeshua challenged His disciples and He challenges us to be ready, to be on the alert – even today:

The writer of Hebrews tells us that “by faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in godly fear prepared an ark for the rescue of his household” (Hebrews 11:6-7). Noah’s faith was manifested in two ways – in believing God that judgment was at the door, and then in preparing the ark over the course of months or even years. He is an example for us of what faith involves when the rubber hits the road.

Peter tells us that God “did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly . . . The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment” (2 Peter 2:4-9).

Let’s sum up those principles:

The God of Israel adds a special note of encouragement aimed at the Jewish people. On the day that He sweeps the world with fiery judgment, He will never forsake His covenant promises to the sons and daughters of Jacob. His covenant with Israel will never be shaken:

The sons of Issachar knew

In days of great trial, Israel’s mighty men of war “came to Hebron with a perfect heart to make David king over all Israel. And all the rest also of Israel were of one mind to make David king” (1 Chronicles 12:38). Among them were the warriors from the tribe of Issachar, “men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do” (1 Chronicles 12:32). What an amazing description is given in the Scripture to these men! They discerned the times – what was going down around them – and they had received from God’s council a knowledge of what needed to be done.

When God fed Israel with manna, He commanded the head of each household to daily gather enough for the total number of persons each man had in his tent (Exodus 16:16). In the same way, each one of us needs to get with God and with His word, receiving the manna of discernment and strategy for our own individual household. We need to gather this for ourselves and not depend on ‘big name’ suppliers of manna. We need to be like the sons of Issachar at these times of shaking so that we can receive knowledge of what our families should do.

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: www.davidstent.org

God’s SWAT team and the nations

On November 4, 1979, at 06:30 in the morning, 500 Iranian students gathered close to Tehran’s U. S. Embassy to receive an adrenaline-filled briefing. A hastily assembled organization ‘the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line’ set up by Islamic university associations would oversee the violence that followed. A female student concealed a pair of metal cutters in her black chador; her task was to cut the chains locking the gates of the American Embassy. At 10:30 am the storming of the embassy began. Within a few minutes busloads of screaming demonstrators arrived and over 3,000 clambered over the gates. Approximately 90 people were taken hostage, including 66 Americans. The U.S. Marine guards and embassy staff were bound, blindfolded and paraded before shouting mobs and the world’s TV cameras.

It took the U.S. military five and a half months to attempt a hostage rescue mission on April 24, 1980 (Operation Eagle Claw). It failed dramatically resulting in the death of eight American servicemen and one Iranian civilian. For a total of 444 days the 53 (later 52) American hostages were imprisoned and/or tortured. The shock waves of that event continue to ripple across the globe to this day.

Two other appalling hostage situations in recent years were:

Hostage-taking – it’s what enemies do

The word ‘hostage’ comes from the Latin word for ‘stranger’ – hostis. That word later morphed into meaning ‘enemy’ – from where we get the word ‘hostile.’ A hostage is a person seized in a hostile, criminal or enemy action under threat of serious physical harm or death. In the above three examples Islamist terrorists took non-Muslims hostage in order to further Islamist jihadi strategies.

Hostage-freeing – it’s what the good people do

Security forces around the world have raised up special forces whose specific job it is to free hostages with a minimum loss of life. They are often called SWAT teams (acronym for ‘special weapons and tactics’).

The U.S.A. has highly trained Special Operations Forces groups like Delta Force and Navy Seals for such tasks. The FBI also has its crack Hostage Rescue Teams (HRT) based in Quantico, Virginia at the FBI Academy. Its motto is Servare Vitas (‘to save life’).

England has a dedicated division of its Special Air Service (SAS) called the Special Projects Team, one part of which deals with hostage situations.

Germany has its GSG9 (Grenzschutzgruppe 9 - Border Guard Group 9), formed after the disastrous Munich Massacre of Israel’s Olympic team.

France is famous for its GIGN (Groupe d'intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale; National Gendarmerie Intervention Group) whose motto is ‘S'engager pour la vie’ (‘To join the fight for (the sake of) life’). GIGN was called in by Saudi Arabia in December 1979 to oversee the freeing of hostages at Mecca’s Grand Mosque.

The gold standard of SWAT teams

Israel has been dealing with hostile neighbors for at least 3,800 years. The 20th century has seen the Jewish state develop military responses to hostage taking, raising up what its neighbors grudgingly describe as “the world’s gold standard” in SWAT teams. Its YAMAM (Yechida Merkazit Meyuchedet; ‘Central Special Unit’) is considered tops for its Close Quarter Battles doctrine and real-time applications regarding hostage rescue and counter-terrorism operations. YAMAM’s motto is taken from Psalm 18:37: “I pursued my enemies and overtook them, and I did not turn back until they were consumed.” YAMAM operators see their calling as saving lives – to rescue hostages and surgically neutralize terrorists before innocent civilians are murdered.

Most Israeli young men and women see these SOF soldiers as heroes and role models. Motivation to enter these units is strong, and competition is fierce to get in.

YHVH is a One-Man SWAT team

The God of Jacob describes Himself in Isaiah as being a SWAT team all by Himself as far as Israel is concerned:

God is prepared to sacrifice other nations – even superpowers like Egypt and Cush (Ethiopia) – in order to rescue Israel. He would gladly pay a kingly ransom in order to buy His people out of enemy slavery or exile. The God of Jacob is committed to spiritually and physically free His Jewish hostages, and to restore them to the Promised Land – by any means necessary.

Today some Americans see the U.S.A. as being polarized over racial issues. Others see the division as more politically based, between Left and Right ideologies. It may help to consider the latest census and demographic studies done in the U.S.A. They reveal that Whites are 60.1%, Hispanics are 18.5%, Blacks/African-Americans are 13.4% of the total U.S. population.

It may come as a surprise to some to discover that the God of Jacob’s census taking starts from a totally different presupposition. YHVH’s covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob delineates the way He looks at the world:

God’s heart and strategy touches all nations. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have life everlasting!” (John 3:16).  At the same time, YHVH proclaims that He has a special strategic priority and heart for the Jewish people. They are His firstborn nation: “Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says YHVH, “Israel is My son, My firstborn” (Exodus 4:22).

This firstborn status is explained in the Bible (Deuteronomy 21:15-18; Romans 1:16; 9:1-5; 11:28-29) as being a continuing priority in the outworking of God’s kingdom. Though all are created by Him – red and yellow, black and white – God draws a redemptive plumb line through mankind: on one side are the Jewish people, and on the other are all the nations (the Gentiles). These Gentiles includes Caucasians, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Arabs, etc.

Most Bible believers have not grasped this clear biblical teaching about God’s priority dealings with the Jewish people. This is due to the malignant influence of Replacement Theology both in the Christian Church and in Islam. Most Whites don’t grasp this truth. Most Blacks don’t get it either.

A measure of sanity could be restored to all if we could grasp God’s revelation that, according to Scripture, Jewish lives are a priority matter to God and therefore Jewish lives and destiny should matter to all believers. This priority is not something fleeting or limited to the Old Testament. It continues in our day and into the Days of Messiah, because “the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:28-29).

For more information

The Bible is often the last place we turn to when we are lost. If you are interested in learning more about why God has a priority calling on the Jewish people, and how that should affect our lives both spiritually and physically, I encourage you to read the book ‘Israel the Key to World Revival.’ It is available in English at https://davidstent.org/books/ and also in Spanish (follow the Spanish flag on our website). It is also available in German (www.amazon.co.uk/Israel-Schl%C3%BCssel-weltweiten-Erweckung-German-ebook/dp/B00CNDP8QS).

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: www.davidstent.org

Annexation for dummies

Years ago Steve Stills penned a song in response to the November 1966 protest-riots on Sunset Strip. One of rock’s classic protest songs, its first line goes, “There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear . . .  You better stop! Hey, what’s that sound? Everybody look what going down.”

A lot is going down. COVID-19 has morphed into protests/riots in major American cities. Riots then mutated, vandalizing America’s cultural icons. “I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring).

Bounding toward us down the primrose path is the fast approaching date of July 1, 2020. On May 4, 2020 Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and Alternate PM Benny Gantz signed a coalition agreement. Paragraph 29 of that agreement reads: “After discussions and consultations are conducted between the Prime Minister and the Alternate Prime Minister based on the principles outlined above, the Prime Minister will be able to bring forward the agreement reached with the United States on the application of sovereignty for debate by the cabinet and government and for approval by the government and/or the Knesset as of July 1, 2020.”

July 1, 2020 has become a ground-zero date. What will happen on that date? Will Israel annex up to 30% of the West Bank (including Jewish cities and towns in Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley) according to the guidelines of President Trump’s ‘deal of the century?’ Will the PLO then establish a Palestinian state in the remaining 70% of Judea and Samaria aka the West Bank?  Is this process a dividing up of the Land of Israel spoken of in the warnings given by the Hebrew prophets? Does the Bible shed any light about how this relates to Israel, the Middle East and the future? What follows is rough seven-point sketch of the issues involved.

Biblical milestones

Today no modern country bases its foreign policy on the Bible (see Deuteronomy 17:18-20). What carries the day for most politicians is realpolitik –  a German word referring to diplomacy based on pragmatic considerations of given circumstances, rather than on moral and ethical premises. But the Scriptures have much to say regarding the Land of Israel and its borders:

Based on these signposts, all nations – including the Jewish nation – should stay far away from dividing up any part of the Land of Israel. They should instead champion her God-given borders (Genesis 15:18; 17:8; Numbers 34:1-15; Deuteronomy 11:24; Joshua 15:1-12; etc.)

Waltzing without a partner

Politically correct wisdom at the United Nations and the European Union declares that the Israel-Palestinian conflict will only be solved by face-to-face negotiations between the two parties. But the unappetizing fact is that there is no trustworthy Palestinian negotiating partner available. All Palestinian groups either refuse to negotiate with Israel (Hamas, Islamic Jihad) or refuse to accept any Israeli offers (PLO, PA). The Palestinian bare minimum would still result in Israel’s fatal dismemberment. Negotiations with all of the Palestinian groups are a non-starter.

Two lucid examples of this reality:

On July 1, 1994 Yasir Arafat crossed from Egypt into Gaza after signing the Oslo Accords. His ‘peace entourage’ of limousines was simultaneously smuggling terrorists into Gaza (Mamduh Nawfal, Jihad Amarin, etc.) who had the blood of many Israelis on their hands. Unregistered weapons and night vision scopes were hidden in the same vehicles:

Throughout the Oslo Accords period (1993-2000) PLO President Arafat repeatedly declared that violent Islamic jihad would continue, and that the Palestinians would eventually destroy and replace the Jewish state. Stipends to terrorists (the ‘pay to slay’ martyr’s fund) increased during this period:

The goal of Palestinian terror – Israel’s destruction – continues to this day:

Former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Zalman Shoval once said that “the Palestinians have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” The Palestinians are now missing a ‘golden opportunity’ – this time under U.S. auspices – to receive 70% of the West Bank. U.S. conditions in ‘the deal of the century’ insist that the Palestinians must abandon terror and violence for the deal to go forward. Similar conditions were blatantly violated by the PLO and Hamas during the period of the Oslo Accords. These conditions will not be followed by the Palestinians at this present time either.

What the Palestinian Authority leadership is counting on is European and Arab pressure to significantly alter Trump’s plan. Instead of 30% of the West Bank going to Israel, Europe would push for the Jewish state receiving less than 10%. The Europeans would not insist on a realistic end to Palestinian terror. The nations of the world are pressuring Israel with malice to hand over 90% of the West Bank to Palestinian terrorists sworn to bring about the Jewish people’s destruction. America (on the other hand) is cajoling Israel to hand over 70% of the West Bank to Palestinians who (they hope) will change their spots and begin to sing kumbaya.

When your neighbor is of the jihadi persuasion

Israel is surrounded by Islamic countries on all sides. Two of them (Egypt and Jordan) have peace treaties with the Jewish state. Nevertheless, strong jihadi Muslim Brotherhood movements fester just below the surface in those countries, waiting to overthrow those governments:

Jihadi forces move about and operate effectively between the countries of Libya, Egypt, Gaza, Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Iran.  These are serious people, highly motivated in desiring to destroy Israel. Both Sunni and Shi’ite, they also have plans to overthrow pro-Western Sunni Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE, Jordan, etc. Some of the abovementioned countries pay protection money to the jihadis to keep the Islamists off their backs. Others (like Qatar) play both sides of the coin. These kingdoms live in fear of being bulldozed by Iran’s jihadi Revolutionary Guards. At present, Sunni countries are willing to secretly cooperate with Israel because their fear of Shi’ite Iran overshadows their own Sunni desire to see Israel’s destruction.

Israel cannot afford to let down its guard in the face of these threats. Were Hamas jihadis given the chance to run in West Bank elections, they would soundly defeat the Palestinian Authority (PLO) and establish a new Hamastan in Ramallah, Jenin and Hebron. The presence of so many jihadi groupings in such a close proximity to Israel illuminates why, for Israel, having truly defensible borders is not merely an intellectual or philosophical exercise. It is a matter of survival.

Iran and ISIS

Iran’s jihadi ‘Shi’ite crescent’ is spreading, wrapping its cold revolutionary fingers around Iraq, Syria, Lebanon (Hezbollah), Yemen, Gaza (Hamas) and Egyptian Sinai. ISIS (the Sunni jihadi movement) is waiting in the wings, working toward the establishment of its own jihadi caliphate in Syria and Iraq, while infiltrating into North Africa and other countries. The dangers facing Israel are increasing. Establishing a Palestinian state on 70% of the West Bank (America’s idea) or on 90% of the West Bank (Europe’s idea) at this time is a very bad idea indeed. 

Auschwitz borders

Abba Eban once referred to the U.N.’s efforts to shrink Israel back to its 1948 borders/cease-fire lines as a move to return the Jewish state to ‘Auschwitz borders’ – indefensible front lines that could lead to its annihilation.  Yet at this very moment the vast majority of the nations insist that Israel must abandon large chunks of its biblical and historical homeland or face punitive international sanctions, both political and economic. Most nations are opposed to the U.S. annexation plan which calls for a Palestinian state on 70% of the West Bank. Instead, they want Israel to hand over at least 90% of Judea and Samaria (aka the West Bank) to Palestinian terror-diplomats.

Some Israelis argue (based on this pressure) that it would be better not to move forward with American annexation plans at this time:

On the other hand, Israelis on the Right and among the religious believe that now is the time for reclaiming the Jewish people’s heritage even if only in part:

Israeli statesman Abba Eban adds a thoughtful comment: “Nobody does Israel any service by proclaiming its ‘right to exist.’ Israel's right to exist, like that of the United States, Saudi Arabia and 152 other states, is axiomatic and unreserved. Israel's legitimacy is not suspended in midair awaiting acknowledgement . . . There is certainly no other state, big or small, young or old, that would consider mere recognition of its ‘right to exist’ a favor, or a negotiable concession” (New York Times, November 18, 1981).

The obsessive fixation of the nations of the world on shrinking Israel’s borders has dark echoes of Joel 3:2: “I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. Then I will enter into judgment with them there on behalf of My people and My inheritance, Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and they have divided up My land.”

Tremblings in a distant land

U.S. President Trump is considered by Israelis to be the most pro-Israel President in recent history. Here are some of the reasons:

One of President Trump’s goals has been to “do the deal of the century” – to achieve a peace treaty between Israel and Palestinians that no other President has managed to pull off.

Though recent events in the U.S.A. have weakened Trump’s power, many Evangelicals strongly support him in the ‘deal of the century.’

Trump’s deal is based on the presupposition that both Israel and the Palestinians will sit down to negotiate. Israel has been willing to talk, but the Palestinian Authority has refused to meet. In the likely event of such a zero-sum scenario, the shapers of the deal gave Israel the right to unilaterally apply Israeli law on up to 30% of its ancestral homeland in the West Bank. The other 70% of those territories would then be earmarked for a Palestinian state, and Israel would be forbidden from building or operating there.

Technically it is not accurate to define Israel’s move here as an annexation for three simple reasons:

Many Orthodox Jews (including the settler movement) and many Christian evangelicals are hesitant about any moves to establish a Palestinian state under any circumstances, based on three reasons – the Bible’s teaching; the refusal of all Palestinian groups to recognize Israel as a Jewish state; and Palestinian refusal to turn away from terrorism.

Ironically at this juncture the most positive pro-Israel U.S. government in history is also pushing for a dividing up of the land of Israel. The Hebrew prophet Zechariah warns all nations to be careful about these matters:  “It will come about in that day that I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples; all who lift it will be severely injured” (Zechariah 12:3).

Could the increasing divisions happening right now in U.S. society be a Genesis 12:3 result of America’s pressure (even if enacted with finesse) to divide the Land of Israel?

What will the nations say?

Jewish people in Exile always found themselves at the mercy of the nations. Every important decision (and many less important ones) needed to be weighed against the potential negative consequences that unfriendly Gentiles might aim against Jacob’s family. In the same way as one would not want to annoy a hungry bear, so it was important not to irritate non-Jewish kings and princes.

Prime Minister Ben Gurion went against conventional wisdom when he said, “It matters not what the Goyim (the non-Jews) say, but what the Jews do” (The Windsor Star, Canada, December 3, 1973). Ben Gurion meant that the Jewish people could probably count on Gentile opposition to Jewish restoration. In light of this, his counsel to the resurgent Jewish nation in her soon-to-be-sovereign homeland was that she would need to make decisions based on prophetic vision and not on fear.

The climate of fear is very present in many discussions concerning applying Israeli law to portions of the West Bank. The following questions are raised: What happens if Trump is not elected? Will Biden and the Democrats then take revenge on Israel? Will the European Union boycott and apply bone-crushing sanctions against Israel? Will the fledgling under-the-table connections with Arab Gulf states evaporate in the hot desert sands? Even some Zionists who acknowledge the age-old connection between the Jewish people and their ancient cities and farms in the West Bank are deeply concerned that this whole scenario could easily turn the world against us – kol ha’olam negdenu, as it is said in Hebrew.

In 1948 there were many learned voices who urged Ben Gurion NOT to proclaim the Jewish state. Annihilation at the hands of foreign armies was a real possibility. The combination of international pressures, the after-effects of Nazi mass murder, and British cold-heartedness were all too real. But in the end David Ben Gurion proclaimed the Jewish state on May 14, 1948. The rest is history.

Physical and political abuse

A woman who has suffered physical abuse from her husband is afraid of doing anything which might trigger more beatings. Similarly, Israelis realize that an international consortium could arise and do damage to the Jewish state if we try to hold onto our historic homeland. More than anything else, this dynamic reveals that the Hebrew prophets’ End of Days vision is not so far-fetched after all.

Pray with us about all these above points. Lay them before the God of Jacob in earnest prayer. Ask Him to establish His purposes over His Jewish people and His Promised Land in these matters, speedily and in our day. And let’s stay away from dividing God’s Promised Land!

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

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My name is called Disturbance

A shudder went through Obi-Wan Kenobi’s spirit. Staggering, he collapsed in a chair and whispered, “I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.” He had just sensed the destruction of Alderaan by Darth Vader’s Death Star (www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W2sUwujekU; Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope). Some of us have also felt a shudder go through our spirits in the past months and days. We are aware that there is ‘a disturbance in the force.’ What is going on? What does it mean? Where is it all going?

Revolution with the Rolling Stones

In March 1968 Mick Jagger penned the lyrics of ‘Street Fighting Man’ after watching an anti-Vietnam war rally at Grosvenor Square in London. Tariq Ali and Vanessa Redgrave led the demonstration in front of the U.S. Embassy (which eventually became quite violent; www.marxists.org/history/erol/uk.secondwave/grosvenor-square.pdf). This was Britain’s sixth largest demonstration ever with over 10,000 protesters, 300 arrests, 75 hospitalized; www.britishpathe.com/video/grosvenor-square-anti-vietnam-riots). The Stones’ sizzling rock song encapsulated the adrenaline rush of the rioting crowd: “ Everywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy, ’cause summer's here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy . . . Hey! Think the time is right for a palace revolution . . . Hey! Said my name is called disturbance. I'll shout and scream, I'll kill the king, I'll rail at all his servants!”

Tariq Ali led that demonstration. Today part of “the royalty of the British left,” the former Trotskyist candidate for Parliament commented in 2015 that “the original radical segment of the African-American population [including] Malcolm X and the Black Panthers were destroyed . . .  But the young people who came out in Black Lives Matter have this older spirit” (www.truthdig.com/articles/tariq-ali-the-time-is-right-for-a-palace-revolution/). Ali worries, though, that they “lack an understanding of their own history and that very few are literate in basic revolutionary theory, from Karl Marx to Rosa Luxemburg” (ibid.).

What does the sound of marching, charging feet in recent American riots signify?

Rotten to the core

One of the main messages that the Black Lives Matter movement (BLMM) hammers into the floorboards of America’s consciousness is this: the established order (and especially the police) are corrupt to the bone and rotten beyond redemption with systematic White racism. There is a burning need to defund, dismantle and destroy such systems, with special focus on the police. Another message in their political manifesto deals with the need to redistribute wealth based on an anti-capitalist and anti-bourgeois worldview, as well as a call for White Americans to pay financial reparations to African-Americans.

A glance at youth movements over the past hundred plus years (see Professor Walter Laqueur’s ‘Reflections on youth movements’; 1971; The New Left and the Jews; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Laqueur) reveals that the BLMM tactics of ‘removing rotten systems’ are not new:

The Jacobins (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobin_(politics)) were a left-wing anti-Christian organization during the French Revolution which conducted the blood-soaked ‘Reign of Terror’ (16,594 official guillotine-based death sentences; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror). Under the leadership of Maximilien de Robespierre, they set about to destroy the final remnants of what they labeled corrupt and traditional authority. They hoped that this would pave the way for the rise of man’s natural virtue. The terror they unleashed opened the gates to Napoleon’s police state.

The German Youth movement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Youth_Movement) began in 1896 as an anti-industrialization and Romantic movement. The Wandervogel and Bündische Jugend grew to nearly 8 million participants by 1938.  But “by 1930 the youth movement was displaying an incontinent eagerness to rid Germany of democracy. Almost all its members shared the assumption that anything at all would be better than the detested old regime” (Laqueur, ‘Reflections’). Between 1924 and 1932 the Hitler Youth movement (Hitlerjugend; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Youth) rose to overshadow the German Youth movement as it asserted an iron grip over all German scouting organization. The shunning of liberal democracy in Germany opened the gates to Hitler’s police state.

The French youth movement in 1931 was characterized as having totally rejected the existing order. There was a “tremendous wave of revolutionary enthusiasm, of holy frenzy and disgust” (Laqueur, ‘Reflections’). Many of these leaders ended up as Nazi collaborators during WWII.

The matrix out of which these dictatorships was born was a profound pessimism about present-day culture (in German kulturpessimismus). For the younger generation at that time, the world was in a mess, filled with cultural and social uncertainties. Morals and authority systems were breaking down. Decadence in music, theater and the arts fostered the angst of purposelessness, boredom, anger and finally violent political expression.

Red and Black violence

Prior to WWII, Communists carried a primarily red flag in street protests, while Fascists favored the black swastika flag. Both budding dictatorships channeled the common people’s deep insecurities and massive resentments and directed them against the whole superstructure of the culture within which they lived.  And there was fertile soil: France’s young philosopher leaders of the 1890’s were “forever complaining about the evils of corporate guilt” (Laqueur, ‘Reflections’). In 1890’s France, national self-degradation was the most popular national sport.

Both Red and Black held European democracy in disgust. Their goals involved the destruction of the existing order and its replacement with a dictatorship of a radical elite.

Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini explained that revolutionary violence is morally justified when it leads to the destruction of Fascism’s enemies. In a speech on September 20, 1922 in Udine, Italy, he declared: “There is a violence that liberates, and there is a violence that enslaves. There is a violence that is moral, and a violence that is immoral.”

On the Marxist side, Dr. Herbert Marcuse, Professor of Political Theory at Columbia, Harvard and Brandeis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse), justified the use of violence by the oppressed against the oppressor – or to say it another way, by the communist revolutionary against the capitalist.

Fascist and Marxist agree – violence is legitimate in the pursuit of one’s political goals. This foundational principle was an axial meeting point for Marcuse and Black Power advocate Stokely Carmichael, (www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/60spubs/67dialecticlib/677DialectLibIntro.htm) who incorporated Marcuse’s arguments into his own. The New Left movement presents the radical revolutionary conclusions: “There is a worldwide class war between imperialism (led by the United States), and the third world of revolutionary nations. In this international class war it is the Left’s job to weaken, disrupt and help destroy the main enemy which is the American government” (Irving Howe, ‘Political terrorism: hysteria on the left’; The New Left and the Jews, 1971).

Here is where revolutionary Marxism and the goals of the Black Lives Matter movement intersect: they both declare that the established order (and especially the police) are corrupt to the bone and rotten beyond redemption. BLMM would then point the finger on its take that systematic White racism is the prime culprit. According to this synthesized Marxist/BLMM perspective, there is a burning need to defund, dismantle and destroy such systems. This hybrid strategy is being played out on a daily basis across the TV screens of America and the world.

The radical Sixties revisited

The ‘Swinging Sixties’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swinging_Sixties) were not only known for Carnaby Street fashions and pop groups. They also birthed the hippie counterculture and the revolutionary Left (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterculture_of_the_1960s; www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/the-secret-and-violent-history-of-sixties-underground-radicals-200866/). Many of the strategic goals of the Black Panthers seemed revolutionary back then, but have become mainstream in the BLMM today (https://archive.thinkprogress.org/most-of-the-radical-ideas-the-black-panthers-had-are-now-totally-mainstream-5c575897310d/).

Part of the negative fallout in the Sixties was a turning away from critical thought, analysis and careful consideration. Instead, there came an embrace of the primacy of experience, personal affirmation and hedonism. One side-effect is that a whole generation has grown up with no sense of history, and no awareness of the consequences of social violence. Many are pathologically afraid of appearing unfashionable or being perceived as representative of older ways and more traditional truths. Values are on the outs, replaced by a frantic desire to fit in with whatever is avant garde. The Zeitgeist – the spirit of the age – is all the rage, even though whatever is currently ‘in’ will morph within a few years into something barely recognizable to any of us today.

Post-modernist thinking – that there are no objective and timeless truths – is what dominates today’s public square. This popular belief system road marries skepticism and subjectivism to relativism. It also is highly suspicious of reason and facts. Whatever perspective does not meet the current definition of ‘politically correct’ is axed and censored in what is now called ‘the cancel culture’ (https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/06/15/rolling-stone-editor-unloads-on-media-says-the-american-left-has-lost-its-mind-n531675; www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jun/17/black-lives-matter-leverages-george-floyd-death-cu/). The widespread destruction and defacing of both the symbols of America and the fathers of American history show how mob violence is blending with anti-Americanism in a classic display of the Marcuse/Carmichael/Panther ideological strategy.

1984 revisited

The tsunami of censorship, called the ‘cancel culture,’ is sweeping the internet and the media. Wear the wrong t-shirt, use the wrong noun, speak out the name of certain historical figures – and you can easily find yourself blackballed, shunned and without a job. George Orwell described such a society in his (then) science fiction novel ‘1984.’ Today truth is stranger than fiction.

The ‘cancel culture’ has roots and they are not all communist/fascist. What we are seeing is actually the outworking of the Abrahamic Covenant’s curse in Genesis 12:3. The one who mocks/scorns /disses the Jewish people (that is the meaning of the Hebrew word meqalelecha), will be directly cursed by YHVH. For years the world has generally tolerated the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), a Marxist-energized attack on the Jewish state. All of a sudden, the Western world finds itself wounded from within, with citizens boycotting and sanctioning each other. As Lutheran German pastor Martin Niemöller said after the defeat of Nazism: “First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Niem%C3%B6ller; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...).

Neo-barbarism

Professor of Hebrew Literature Dr. Robert Alter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Alter) in his article ‘Revolt and the Democratic Society’ explains that the rebellion being seen in today’s streets can justly be labeled ‘neobarbarism.’ It is in many cases “a rebellion against restriction, against the disciplines of culture and the mutual restraints that are necessary if men are to live their lives together.” The jejune revolutionary desire to dismantle, destroy and dehumanize which has characterized much of both BLMM’s public pronouncements and its rioting fellow-travelers, leads step-by-step to the collapse of social protections and ultimately to totalitarian dictatorship. 

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche spoke about the rise of mob movements in history which leave destruction in their wake. His original context referred to the riotous vengeance carried out by Alexandrian slaves against ancient Egypt: “There is nothing more terrible than a class of barbaric slaves who have learned to regard their existence as an injustice and now prepare to avenge not only themselves but all generations” (Nietzsche; The Birth of Tragedy III:18).

The kangaroo court images of BLMM spokespersons attacking and accusing America on our TV screens are flashing out their warning. What kind of people will we all become if we turn to such methods? Nietzsche again notes, “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you” (Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146).

For every action, there could be an equal and opposite reaction

The recent riots in America are a form of domestic terrorism. Calling it for what it is seems to be beyond the capabilities of most in the media today. Nightly news is taking its talking points from the BLMM playbook. The rioters’ and semi-violent protesters’ threats have been heard by Americans across the board – even by those Americans who are strongly opposed to Marxist justifications for revolutionary rioting. It is also quite possible that more radical elements in the White community may eventually respond to these events with violence of their own. We need to to remember that there are intelligent and determined people on both sides of this raging river. The presents tensions have the very real possibility of escalating into ethnic clashes across America. This scenario should move us all to our knees in fervent prayer, asking for God’s oil to anoint and heal the United States of America.

The penetrating Jewish writer Irving Howe spoke these words fifty years ago which still ring true: “Human beings will tolerate almost anything but the threatened loss of authority in the social order – the authority of law, custom, convention . . . Every state must react against terrorism, otherwise it ceases to exist . . . In a democratic society minorities have no right to inflict damage on property simply because they oppose [capitalism]. The aim of socialists [should be] to socialize the control of property, not to vandalize or destroy it” (Howe, Political Terrorism)

Self-hating Jews

Jews who know their own people’s history and culture hit a wall when they come face to face with Karl Marx. According to classical Marxism, Zionism is an outmoded expression of nationalism and a bourgeois non-progressive political philosophy. It is ‘old and in the way.’ Jewish people who believe in the continuity and restoration of the people of Israel to their own land can expect short shrift from the Communist and Socialist worlds.

These anti-Semitic tendencies and positions were examined in detail in our last newsletter (https://davidstent.org/a-time-to-be-silent-a-time-to-speak/). An anti-Semitic snake path wends its twisted way from the PLO to the Nation of Islam/Malcolm X, from Stokely Carmichael to the Black Panthers, and up to the present in repeated official anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist declarations by BLMM spokespersons. These issues are very much alive and of great concern to all Jewish people and Bible believers today.

A sorry phenomenon exists among some Jewish people. A minority of Jews are ‘self-hating.’ They are knocked off balance by their encounter with racist anti-Semitism, and in fear they attempt to escape from their own Jewish identity and community by assimilating into the universalistic Gentile world. This phenomenon was widespread among Left-leaning German Jews before the Nazi period. It is becoming a major problem for today’s American Jewish community. Some modern examples follow.

One of the leaders of the New Left Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was Michael Kazin, a Jewish radical. In 1969 he explained that “SDS has consistently supported the political viewpoints and actions of the most militant segments of the black movement . . .  from Malcolm X to SNCC to the Black Panther Party” (Kazin, American Scholar; ‘Some Notes on S.D.S’; August 1969).  Here is an example of a Jewish leader trying to build his mass radical movement among fellow Jews by getting them to follow the political path of Black extremists, while ignoring the virulently anti-Semitic propaganda of its founders.

Berkeley Rabbi Michael P. Lerner (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Lerner_(rabbi)), founding editor of Tikkun, declared that “the synagogue as currently established will have to be smashed . . . The demands of the Jewish radical must be: ‘Shut down the synagogues, so that Judaism may have a chance’ . . .  [The Jewish community is] racist, internally corrupt, and an apologist for the worst aspects of American capitalism and imperialism” (www.nytimes.com/1970/01/10/archives/editor-of-judaism-quits-in-protest.html). He added that modern Black anti-Semitism “is rooted in the concrete oppression by Jews of blacks in the ghetto. In short, this anti-Semitism is in part an earned anti-Semitism” (Lerner, ‘Jewish New Leftism at Berkeley’; Judaism; Fall 1969).

Today it is not hard to run into American Jews who combine left-wing outlooks with right-wing lifestyles. A famous Jewish thinker (and friend of Martin Luther King) described some of these Jewish people as sitting in quite nice homes in “Scarsdale, Great Neck and Beverly Hills, discussing what an awful corrupt, immoral, undemocratic and racist society the US is” (Seymour Lipset, ‘The socialism of fools: the left, the Jews, and Israel’; 1970). This unsettling scenario calls us to redouble our prayers for a spiritual wake-up call to come to Jacob’s children, especially in America.

Once there were strong bonds and deep friendships between the broader Jewish community and the Black civil rights leaders and movement. Today, these have been dealt a severe blow by a myriad of influences, including the PLO, the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael and the Black Panthers, The latest link in this venomous chain can be found among some of the spokespersons for BLMM.

American pogroms

The riots in May and June 2020 saw an unusual amount of attacks on Jewish synagogues, temples, kosher food stores and Jewish owned shops. Here is a small list, mostly from the Los Angeles area:

Specific attacks on Jewish houses of worship and places of business are a serious red line to cross for American society. For the most part this story has gotten lost in the U.S. media. But it is speaking loudly (to those who have ears) of dangers lurking in the BLMM and in the hearts of other ‘non-violent protesters.’ This is a wake-up call to American Jews that our people’s time in the U.S.A. is drawing to a close.

‘Go home Jacob, go home!’

An event which has prophetic significance occurred in Minneapolis on Saturday June 6, 2020. Mayor Jacob Frey (who is Jewish) came out to speak with protesters from Black Visions Collective (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Visions_Collective; www.thrillist.com/news/nation/how-to-support-the-black-community-where-to-donate-resources) an organization involved in BLMM. A spokeswoman from BVC asked Mayor Frey publically if he would defund and disband the Minneapolis Police Department, threatening him that a ‘no’ answer would cause his defeat in upcoming elections (www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/chants-shame-boos-protest-minneapolis-mayor-jacob-frey-1011261/ ; www.newsweek.com/minneapolis-mayor-booed-out-protest-after-saying-hes-not-favor-abolishing-police-department-1509214).

When Frey said that he would not abolish the Minneapolis police department, chants of “Black Lives Matter,” “shame, shame” and “get the f*** out”  were yelled at the mayor. Frey then began to walk slowly away through the profanity-shouting crowd. The mob all of a sudden began to chant repeatedly: “Go home, Jacob, go home! Go home, Jacob, go home!” (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Suz_HC0XG00). These mocking protesters were castigating their Jewish mayor (see Genesis 12:3). But like Caiaphas in John 11:49-51, it seems as if they were unwittingly prophesying God’s strategic heart over all of America’s Jews: “Time’s up. That’s it! Time to leave what has been the land of the free and the home of the brave. Follow God’s pillar of fire, because He’s leading you back to the land of your forefathers!”

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

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A time to be silent, a time to speak

Three thousand years ago King David’s son spoke these words in Jerusalem: “There is an appointed time for everything, and there is a time for every event under heaven – a time to tear down and a time to build up; a time to throw stones and a time to gather stones; a time to search and a time to give up as lost; a time to tear apart and a time to sew together: a time to be silent and a time to speak; a time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8).

This newsletter is longer than usual. It takes a serious look at recent events in America catalyzed by the murder of George Floyd, and then asks the question “How did we get here?” There is insight to be gained through examining specific developments over the past hundred or so years which have contributed to the present situation. It is not light reading. The conclusions here call for much thought and prayer. Take the time to chew on this newsletter. We are living in significant days.

Murder in the Twin Cities

On May 25 America and the world were shocked as they watched the video of the asphyxiation murder of 46 year old African American George Floyd by a White Minneapolis police officer. Floyd’s last words were “I can’t breathe!” Anyone who watched the video was overwhelmed by the trauma and agony of this senseless killing. Bishop T.D. Jakes described his own response after watching the video, “It’s hard to be balanced when you’re angry.” He also added a warning, “Anger without effectiveness leads to destruction” (www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynfCnXOhxXU&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR26WLqfTwK_m6GsKVitBIx6RjeHhVCFmj-1hNctqH5RbXaEa6hYju6Qcnw).

What began as tears of grief quickly morphed into tears of rage. Within one day, thousands of Minneapolitans were protesting, and the four policemen involved in Floyd’s killing were fired. On Wednesday May 27 protests spread to Los Angeles and Memphis. But quickly a new development raised its violent head – vicious looting, arson and rioting broke out in South Minneapolis.

A senior Justice Department official said that the disciplined nature of the arson and looting (“very organized coordination from professional agitators”) raised FBI suspicions that Antifa and Antifa-like groups were involved. Attorney General William Barr said at a press briefing that “three different sets of actors” were involved in the demonstrations – peaceful protesters, looters and “extremist agitators that hijack protests.” By Thursday Barr could add (based on SIGINT – signals intelligence) that there was a "witches brew" of extremists with varying ideologies, including anarchists and those seeking to incite a civil war.

The Attorney General noted that “one of the difficulties is that while there are peaceful demonstrators and participants in these protests, it is the instigators, those committed to violence who basically shield themselves by going among them” (https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/ag-barr-evidence-antifa-foreign-actors-involved-sowing/story?id=71066996).

Chauvinism?

The police officer who murdered Floyd has an unusual name – Derek Chauvin (https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/01/us/derek-chauvin-what-we-know-trnd/index.html).  That family name has French roots. French tradition has it that a Napoleonic soldier named Nicolas Chauvin manifested “a form of extreme nationalism and a belief in national superiority” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvinism). Today chauvinism is defined as “an irrational belief in the superiority or dominance of one's own group or people.” This sobering linguistic connection is beyond the ability of mortal men to plan.

Casting the first stone

Two questions here: does Floyd’s murder reveal anything about American society, and are there any unrighteous dynamics here which need to be changed.

Most of the media’s interpretations and proffered solutions to these questions tend to stay close to the talking points of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Most people know little about the historical and ideological foundations of this movement. What are those origins?

Solomon tells us that “the first to plead his case seems right until another comes and examines him” (Proverbs 18:17).  Isaiah adds “The crooked will become straight and the rough places plain” (Luke 3:5; Isaiah 40:3-5).

Regardless of one’s stance about these issues, all should be able to agree that the open murder of a handcuffed Black man on the streets of an American city is a horrific travesty of justice. Before people take up battle positions over the ‘correct interpretation of the underlying causes’ of this injustice, for just one minute, first things first: let’s make sure that we get in touch with our hearts, and give ourselves time to grieve. That would be a normal, healthy and open-hearted first response. Tears have a way of cleansing the doors of perception.

Roots and shoots

The roots of American history are intertwined with slavery, though Europe, Asia and Africa have had much longer involvement in these matters. While it’s politically correct to target White Americans regarding slavery and racism, history’s unblinking eye shows that the main on-site operators of the African slave industry were Arab Islamic slave traders and Black African tribal leaders. The biggest slave markets in times past used to be the Islamic countries. Up to the present day Islamic countries are connected to the phenomenon of slavery:

Slavery’s effects on African Americans were huge – families ripped apart, social cohesion destroyed, widespread poverty. African cultural roots and tribal connections for the most part disappeared, except for some aspects of music and dance. Slavery’s power was eventually broken, starting with the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 which in principle freed all Southern slaves (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_Proclamation;  www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation/transcript.html). But to make that Proclamation a reality, approximately 854,000 mostly White Union soldiers died in battle for Black freedom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War#Costs). 

Yet slavery’s collateral damage to African Americans lingered on. Congressional decrees do not automatically create brotherhood or change human hearts. As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King said, Black Americans continued “to live with the agony and the continued existence of racism, . . . the constant hurt, the constant insult and the constant disrespect” (‘The Other America,’ Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Grosse Pointe High School - March 14, 1968; www.gphistorical.org/mlk/mlkspeech/).

In the same way as Jewish people remember Pharaoh, Haman and the Crusades, so African Americans remember some bloody milestones on their path. The lynching of 4,000 to 4,800 U.S. Blacks between 1877 and 1968 is a somber reminder how racist hearts can catalyze racist hands:

Dare to be a Daniel

The blowback from slavery, lynching and racism still loiters on the outskirts of American society. Yet a balanced approach notes that nearly every people group in the world has its own rancid inheritance of hatred, prejudice and murder.  Solzhenitsyn reminds us that the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. Repentance from sin is a divine calling on all human beings, not only on Whites, not only on Americans. Racist anti-White responses heart attitudes and actions are also sin.

Dr. King once said that “voting is not the key that will unlock the door to racial equality . . . I do not believe that (the problem) will be solved until there is a kind of cosmic discontent enlarging in the bosoms of people of good will all over this nation” (www.apa.org/monitor/features/king-challenge).

There is a place for believers in Messiah Yeshua to enter into identificational repentance under the leading of the Holy Spirit for sinful deeds of previous generations in their own land. Americans can grapple in prayer before the God of Israel, asking Him to forgive and heal national sins in the past and present connected with racism and violence against African Americans.  Daniel 9:20, Nehemiah 1:6; 9:2, 2 Samuel 21:3-4 and Psalm 80 are biblical examples of such prayer in a Jewish context.

Many believers already understand this dynamic vis-à-vis repenting for sins against the Jewish people. A helpful book here is James Goll’s ‘Father forgive us’ (www.amazon.com/Father-Forgive-Us-Jim-Goll/dp/0768420253).

The red pill or the black pill?

The 20th Century witnessed many Black leaders proffering solutions to what was then called ‘the Negro problem’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_Problem_(book)). Here are some of their names, analyses and endgame suggestions:

West Indian Edward Blyden (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Wilmot_Blyden) viewed ‘a return to the homeland’ – colonizing Liberia – as the solution. In 1898 he published a pamphlet ‘The Jewish Question’, two years after the publication of Herzl’s ‘Der Judenstaat’ (which Blyden read and admired). There he stated, “The Jewish question, in some respects, is similar to that which at this moment agitates thousands of descendants of Africa in America, anxious to return to the land of their fathers.”

Jamaican Marcus Garvey (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Garvey; www.Blackpast.org/african-american-history/1921-marcus-garvey-address-second-unia-convention/) organized a Black nationalist movement in 1920’s America with nearly one million followers (Universal Negro Improvement Association). Known as ‘the Negro Moses’ he preached the racial unity and purity of all Black Africans, Black pride and separatism, anti-colonialism, institution building and self-sufficiency. Garvey advocated against intermarriage and integration, and preached a massive return of all Blacks to the African homeland under his rule. He  had a strong influence on the next generation of Black leaders, especially on Malcolm X, the Nation of Islam and Stokely Carmichael (leader of SNCC – Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee). He designed the flag flown today as the Black Liberation or Pan-African flag (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-African_flag). His UNIA convention in August 1924 canonized the Virgin Mary as a Black woman of Ethiopian extraction  (see Marcus Garvey: Life and Lessons, Roger Hill, p. 408). Vietnamese Communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh stated that Garvey’s strategies shaped his political outlook during Ho’s stay in America. African American writer Ta-Nehisi Coates has described Garvey as the “patron saint” of the Black nationalist movement (see also www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/ta-nehisi-coates-revisits-the-case-for-reparations).

West Indian Frantz Fanon of Martinique was a political radical, Pan-Africanist, and Marxist writer whose themes included the psychopathology of colonization and the consequences of decolonization. He was a member of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), a Pan-Arabist, socialist and Islamic group responsible for breaking the colonialist rule of France over Algeria at the cost of approximately 100,000 killings (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerre_d%27Alg%C3%A9rie). His perspectives on violence and revolution (“having a gun is the only chance you still have of giving a meaning to your death”) have inspired radicals including Malcolm X, Che Guevara and the Black Panther Party (Fanon’s books were required reading for all Panthers, and six of their Panther Ten Point Program were based on Fanon’s teachings). Fanon's work Wretched of the Earth is quoted approvingly in the preface of Stokely Carmichael (aka Kwame Ture) and Charles Hamilton's book, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967; https://mygaryislike.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/Black-power-kwame-ture-and-charles-hamilton.pdf).

W. E. B. Du Bois (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._E._B._Du_Bois) was a sociologist, Pan-Africanist and civil rights activist who fought against lynching, Jim Crow laws, and discrimination in education and employment. He believed that capitalism was a primary cause of racism, supported socialist causes throughout his life, and thought that Communism had the solutions to racism. He opposed Marcus Garvey’s racial separatism, while Garvey denounced Du Bois’ efforts to achieve equality through integration. He was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.) was a Christian minister who became the most visible spokesperson and leader of the Civil Rights Movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. His strategy was the advancement of civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience. He was America’s most famous advocate for integration. He was inspired by both his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi. King won the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. In 1965, he organized the Selma to Montgomery marches. Before King’s assassination he strongly organized against poverty, capitalism, and the Vietnam War.

Malcolm X (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X;https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/malcolm-x) was an American Nation of Islam (and later) Muslim minister who advocated for Black supremacy, Black empowerment, and the separation of Black and White Americans. He publicly criticized the mainstream civil rights movement for its emphasis on nonviolence and racial integration, advocating instead that Black people should defend themselves from Whites by force of arms. Malcolm X “made clear the price that White America would have to pay if it did not accede to Black America's legitimate demands.” He is largely responsible for the spread of Islam in the Black community in the United States. The Black Power movement traces its roots to Malcolm X. Malcolm X taught that Blacks were the world’s original inhabitants, that Whites are a race of devils created by an evil scientist, that Blacks are superior to Whites, and that the demise of the White race is imminent. He advocated the complete separation of Blacks from Whites, and the establishment of a separate country for African Americans in the southern/southwestern United States as an interim measure, until African Americans could return to Africa. Malcolm X declared that the U.S. government owed reparations to Black people for the unpaid labor of their slave ancestors. He was assassinated on February 21, 1965 by three members of his former denomination the Nation of Islam.

Malcolm X laid a foundation stone for the Black Power movement when he stated that the entire political system was responsible for Black citizens’ ongoing economic exploitation and political repression. In his “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech (April 1964; https://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/Blackspeech/mx.html), Malcolm X stated that the federal government had failed Black citizens. In a veiled warning to government officials, Malcolm X suggested that, if Blacks didn’t receive the political representation they deserved, they would take up arms to defend their rights.

In an article ‘Zionist Logic’ (September 17, 1974; www.globalresearch.ca/zionist-logic-malcolm-x-on-zionism/12385) Malcolm X declared, “The number one weapon of 20th century imperialism is zionist dollarism, and one of the main bases for this weapon is Zionist Israel. The ever-scheming European imperialists wisely placed Israel where she could geographically divide the Arab world, infiltrate and sow the seed of dissension among African leaders and also divide the Africans against the Asians.”

Trinidadian Stokely Carmichael (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stokely_Carmichael) was a Black activist and advocate for violent revolutionary change in America. 

Stokely Carmichael’s legacy has strongly influenced the present Black Lives Matter and related movements. Quotes from his speeches are presented below, revealing some significant ideological links.

According to FBI files (https://vault.fbi.gov/Stokely%20Carmichael), Carmichael said in a February 5, 1966 interview to The Independent in San Rafael, California:

“Our country does not run on reason; it is run on violence. That’s the reality of how things are done here. It is to my benefit to get the Negro out on the streets to stop the machine which is keeping me from my rights. Whether they do it by marching or singing or dancing or fighting is irrelevant . . . Being non-violent is a personal thing; I might be non-violent but I wouldn’t try to push that on to people I am trying to organize. If the people were out there, ready to fight for their rights, I certainly wouldn’t say that they should all be very nice and not hurt anybody. I’d tell them to get what they deserve . . . This nonviolence bit is just a philanthropic hang-up. I don’t see why people keep thinking about that. The violence is inevitable. I don’t try to stop the fight. I try to prepare the people I am organizing so that when the fight comes they will be able to win it.”

“To fight to control the basic institutions which perpetuate racism by destroying them and building new ones. That's the real question that faces us today . . . This country is a nation of thieves. It has stole everything it has, beginning with Black people . . . This country cannot justify any longer its existence . . . It seems to me the institutions that function in this country are clearly racist and that they're built upon racism” (UC Berkeley  October 29, 1966; https://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/Blackspeech/scarmichael.h).

“A ‘non-violent’ approach to civil rights is an approach Black people cannot afford and a luxury White people do not deserve” (Black Power: The Politics of Liberation; Ture, Kwame; Hamilton, Charles, 1967; Random House. p. 53).

Carmichael stated that Blacks’ self-defense from White violence was both legitimate and ethical. At UC Berkeley in November 1966, he compared U.S. law enforcement to the German Gestapo under Hitler, asserting, “Because this is not 1942. And if you play like Nazis, we’re playing back with you this time around. Get hip to that” (www.crmvet.org/info/stokley.htm).

In a Garfield, Seattle speech on April 16, 1967, Carmichael sharpened Malcolm X’s definition of Black Power: “Black Power is the coming together of Black people to fight for their liberation by any means necessary. Now we want to talk about violence. Because I understand now that some of your so-called Negro leaders have been saying that we violent. I won't deny it. Yeah, I'm violent. Somebody touch me, I'll break their arm. But the problem isn't one of violence, see. The problem is one of hitting back White people when they hit you. That's the real problem 'cause we've never done that all our lives. They've been able to walk over us, bomb our churches, beat us up, shoot into our houses, lynch us, and do everything they wanted to do and we would just sit there and whisper about it behind closed doors. It's a new day today! It's a new day today!” (https://aavw.org/special_features/speeches_speech_carmichael01.html).

In 1967 Carmichael revealed that SNCC’s founders had chosen the acronym SNCC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_Nonviolent_Coordinating_Committee) with subterfuge: “We used the name ‘nonviolent’ because at that time Martin Luther King was the central figure of the Black struggle and he was still preaching nonviolence, and anyone who talked about violence at that time was considered treasonable . . . so we decided that we would use the name nonviolent, but in the meantime we knew our struggle was not about to be nonviolent, but we would just wait until the time was right” (“We Must Destroy the Capitalistic System Which Enslaves Us: Stokely Carmichael Advocates Black Revolution”; https://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6461/).

Dr. King was critical of Carmichael, stating in an August 1967 speech to the Southern Christian Leadership Convention: “Let us be dissatisfied until that day when nobody will shout ‘White Power!’ – when nobody will shout ‘Black Power!’ – but everybody will talk about God's power and human power” (August 16, 1967; Address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/where-do-we-go-here-address-delivered-eleventh-annual-sclc-convention). He added that the label ‘Black Power’ “connotes Black supremacy and an anti-White feeling that does not or should not prevail.”

NAACP Executive Director Roy Wilkins also drew a clear line: the Black Power movement was “a reverse Hitler, a reverse Ku Klux Klan”  (The NAACP, Black Power, and the African American Freedom Struggle, 1966–1969; Simon Hall; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1540-6563.2007.00174.x). The slogan ‘Black Power’ was “the father of hate and the mother of violence,” and Wilkins predicted that Black power would eventually mean ‘Black death’ (Hard Road to Freedom: The Story of African America; James Oliver Horton and Louise E. Horton, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001).

After Dr. King (America’s prime advocate of non-violent protest) was assassinated, Carmichael announced to Black Americans, “Go home and get your guns. When the White man comes, he is coming to kill you.” In the wake of King’s assassination, 168 U.S. cities and towns experienced rioting, looting, arson and sniper attacks. There were 2,600 fires and 21,270 injuries. Arsonists in  Washington D.C. set 711 fires, including some just blocks from the White House.

Carmichael told a 1966 Cleveland audience “When you talk about Black Power, you are talking about bringing this country to its knees. When you talk of Black power, you talk of building a movement that will smash everything Western civilization has created” (In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s; Clayborne Carson; 1981; pp. 206, 221; www.davidgarrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/DJG2015RAHStokely.pdf).

In April 1996, Carmichael said: “We want to economically destroy capitalism because capitalism goes hand in hand with racism and exploitation” (https://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6461/ ).

Carmichael had a warm relationship with Louis Farrakhan (www.mcall.com/news/mc-xpm-1998-11-16-3225176-story.html) and his Nation of Islam (www.c-span.org/video/?c4718374/user-clip-snccnation-islam-jewish-proble).

Over the years Carmichael said many times that “the only good Zionist is a dead Zionist” (Stokely Speaks: Black Power back to Pan-Africanism; 1971).

Since Stokely Carmichael exerted a strong influence on the Black Power movement and on the Black Lives Matter movement, it is not surprising that “a growing number of scholars conceive of the civil rights and Black power movements as one interconnected Black Freedom Movement” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Power).

Carmichael died November 15, 1998 at the age of 57, mourned by many African American leaders, including Louis Farrakhan, Maxine Waters and Jesse Jackson. Jackson eulogized, “He was one of our generation who was determined to give his life to transforming America and Africa. He rang the freedom bell in this century” (www.caribbeanlifenews.com/prime-minister-of-the-Black-panther-party/).

On a personal note: I was raised by Yiddish-speaking communist parents who were Stalinists. As an 8 year old boy, my heroes were the Freedom Riders (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Riders#:~:text=Freedom%20Riders%20were%20civil%20rights,ruled%20that%20segregated%20public%20buses) and I wanted passionately to head down South in order to march and work with them in 1961. Brother Stokely was a personal hero, and when he came to McGill University, Montreal for the Congress of Black Writers in October 1968, I was there in the front row listening to every word he said. I spoke with him after his speech, asking for advice as to what a Jewish kid could do to lend a hand. His response was curt and rude: “We don’t need or want your help.” Carmichael had already made his decision at SNCC during the Atlanta Project to take a Black separatist approach (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stokely_Carmichael#Chair_of_SNCC_and_Black_Power). White kids – Jewish or otherwise – were not needed on the other side of the color line.

The original Black Panther

In 1966 Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale established what is today known as the Black Panther Party (BPP). Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver soon joined the leadership. “These Black Power activists - like their contemporary Black Lives Matter activists - identified racism as a structural issue. They viewed it as part of spectrum of social, political and economic inequality that made America less of a democracy . . . The movement's panoramic critique of institutional racism anticipated the Black Lives Matter protests” (Black Professor Peniel E. Joseph; www.reuters.com/article/us-social-race-Blackpower-commentary-idUSKCN0Z7329).

The Black Panthers did not discount the use of violence, but embraced Malcolm X's philosophy of self-defense “by any means necessary.”  The Panthers made use of their constitutional right to carry arms in order to shadow and patrol the local Oakland Police Department – “patrolling the pigs” was their term. They taught from a Marxist perspective that “the economic and political roots of racism were in the exploitative capitalist system and that the Black struggle must be a revolutionary movement to overthrow the entire power structure” (www.socialistalternative.org/panther-Black-rebellion/the-Black-panther-party-for-self-defense/). The revolutionary book that most influenced Panther leaders was Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth.

In light of this revolutionary goal of overthrowing the entire capitalist power structure, here is a quote from well-known Houston rapper Trae Tha Truth (a longtime friend of George Floyd) at a recent march in memory of Floyd: “We’re gonna represent him right . . . We are gonna tear the system from the inside out . . . George Floyd is looking down at us now and he’s smiling” (www.reuters.com/article/us-minneapolis-police-protests-houston/george-floyd-a-gentle-giant-remembered-in-hometown-houston-march-idUSKBN2392ZK).

The Panthers campaigned for prison reform, held voter registration drives, organized free food programs and school breakfast programs in several cities, opened free health clinics in a dozen cities and created Freedom Schools in nine cities.

Huey Newton explains: “Malcolm (X), implacable to the ultimate degree, held out to the Black masses . . . liberation from the chains of the oppressor . . . Only with the gun were the Black masses denied this victory. But they learned from Malcolm that with the gun, they can recapture their dreams and bring them into reality.” The Panther appeal to Black youth was directly connected to its willingness to challenge police power by asserting the right of armed self-defense for Blacks (https://archive.lib.msu.edu/DMC/AmRad/essaysministerdefense.pdf).

Cleaver spoke of the Marxist goals of the Panthers, which involved transforming the government into a Marxist state: “We had a strong economic place in our program … we were also Marxist in our orientation, which is like totally economics… we understood the relationship to our freedom and our access to our economic remuneration victory in those terms would have meant that we would have been able to have a group of people who could get control of the government and administer it . . . We never dreamed that we would be able to overthrow the American government. We didn't see that as our task. We saw that as the task of the survivors. Our job was to tear down the status quo and leave it to other people on how to rebuild because it was not possible to seize control of the government and install our people” (PBS interview with Eldridge Cleaver, Spring 1997; www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/race/interviews/ecleaver.html).  This goal of social destruction finds expression in a way similar to how the devil speaks, “All that exists deserves to perish” (quoted from Goethe’s Faust in ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,’ Karl Marx, 1852).

Saul Alinsky, radical community organizer and activist famous for his influential relationship with Hillary Clinton, agrees with this Panther paradigm in his ‘Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals’ (page 10; https://chisineu.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/saul-alinsky-rules-for-radicals-1989.pdf):

In May 1969, three members of the New Haven BPP tortured and murdered Alex Rackley, a Black 19-year-old New York chapter member, because they suspected him of being a police informant. Popular support for BPP in the Oakland area waned after reports of the group's alleged criminal activities, such as drug dealing and extortion of Oakland merchants. An investigative journalist-filmmaker says regarding the Panthers that “among their own senior ranks were pathological killers, ideological madmen and depraved opportunists” (www.theguardian.com/film/2015/oct/18/Black-powers-coolest-radicals-Black-panthers-vanguard-of-the-revolution-stanley-nelson-interview).

Accolades from leftist academia include the following: “The Panthers have left us with an invaluable experience. Their dedication, will and bravery in the face of what might have appeared as insurmountable odds is an example which any serious Black activist or revolutionary should be proud to follow. They were the highpoint of the civil rights movement” (www.socialistalternative.org/panther-Black-rebellion/the-Black-panther-party-for-self-defense/). In Huey P. Newton: The Radical Theorist (2202), Professor Judson L. Jeffries of Purdue University calls the Panthers “the most effective Black revolutionary organization in the 20th century.” Bloom and Martin posit that the Panthers were “the strongest link between the domestic Black Liberation Struggle and global opponents of American imperialism” (Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party; 2013; Joshua Bloom, Waldo E. Martin).

‘Change we can believe in’?

The accession of a Black man, Barak Obama, to the highest office in the land in 2008 struck many as the final nail in the coffin of racism. Was it not now time to celebrate the collapse of all racial ‘glass ceilings’? Surely a new wave of believable change had crashed on the shores of ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave”? (www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/01/obama-Black-lives-matter-epilogue-170126073428660.html)

Yet within a brief time indeed, it became clear that President Obama did not support the view that a post-racist society had triumphed. “Throughout his tenure in office, Obama used the power of his position to resonate and legitimize positions on race that until then had been relegated to the leftist margins of American politics. Obama cultivated the view that far from being a post-racial society, America is inherently racist and that American racism is structural – that is, it was baked in and impossible to overcome. In so doing, Obama gave credence to the false claim at the heart of the riots: that Black Americans are under continuous, existential threat from the state as a whole and from law enforcement bodies first and foremost. Calls by Hollywood celebrities and Obama administration alumni to defund the police take this view to its logical endpoint” (https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-great-threat-to-america-and-to-american-jewry/).

The criticisms made by Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael and the Black Panthers against America – that it is endemically and systemically poisoned by racism – had now found a sympathetic resonance in the Oval Office. Eldridge Cleaver had once spoken wistfully of the dream of having ‘his people’ in the government who could carry out the aspirations and goals of the Black Power movement. Would Obama’s rule turn out to be the fulfilment of Eldridge’s dream?

Black Lives Matter

It was Black Power’s “panoramic critique of institutional racism [that] anticipated the Black Lives Matter protests” (“Commentary: ‘Black and proud:’ From Black Power to Black Lives Matter”; Dr. Peniel E. Joseph; June 22, 2016; www.reuters.com/article/us-social-race-Blackpower-commentary-idUSKCN0Z7329; www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/02/01/Black-lives-matter-Black-power-movement/78991894/); see also https://Blacklivesmatter.com/herstory/; https://Blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/).

In an article called “Why Black Lives Matter Still Matters” (April 6, 2017; https://newrepublic.com/article/141700/Black-lives-matter-still-matters-new-form-civil-rights-activism) Dr. Peniel Joseph outlines the origins, philosophy and strategies of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.

The unique blend that is BLM allow for both non-violent protest and violent demonstration to be carried out under the one ‘big tent.’ This blending of strategic positions leads to a difficulty for even BLM followers to know clearly where their movement stands  (www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-mind-of-Black-lives-matter). Marxist revolutionary strategies can join in with social engineering activism in ways which are diametrically opposed to what is commonly known as the Judeo-Christian ethic. This can and will lead to open ‘lawfare’ against biblical values (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawfare). The recent mash of violent looting/arson/attacks on police (on the one hand) with other protests more on the non-violent side (on the other hand) may well be a harbinger of things to come.

Specifically regarding defunding and closing down of police forces, it is instructive to read the words of Angela Davis (former Panther spokeswoman) regarding BLM’s strategies here:

Blacks Lives and Jewish matters

On August 2, 2016 ‘A Vision for Black Lives’ was released August 2, 2016 by The Movement for Black Lives, an umbrella group of more than 50 organizations, including the Black Lives Matter Network, the Black Liberation Collective, and the Center for Constitutional Rights. In the ‘Invest/Divest’ section of “A Vision for Black Lives,” classic anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist declarations were made. Since then the pertinent paragraphs on Israel been scrubbed from official internet websites, though they are still found in many secondary locations. The ‘A Vision for Black Lives’ platform statement includes a link to a website promoting the movement to boycott, divest and sanction Israel (BDS):

“The US justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people . . .  Israel is an apartheid state . . .  [BLM supporters should] build invest/divestment campaigns that ends US Aid to Israel’s military industrial complex.” 

In recently distributed BLM flyers there are calls for boycott of Israel which have historical echoes of Nazi times (www.juf.org/news/local.aspx?id=441953; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_boycott_of_Jewish_businesses).

The ‘Invest/Divest’ section of “A Vision for Black Lives,” was co-authored by Ben Ndugga-Kabuye and Rachel Gilmer. Rachel has an African-American father and a Jewish mother. A former member of Zionist youth group Young Judaea, She no longer identifies as Jewish and is an anti-Israel activist. She is the chief of strategy for Dream Defenders, a black community organizing group based in Florida. (www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Black-Lives-Matter-author-defends-genocide-accusation-toward-Israel-463709).

Dream Defenders released an August 12 statement accusing pro-Israel critics of the new ‘Invest/Divest’ plank of the platform of being “wolves in sheep’s clothing” for supporting the Black Lives Matter movement only as long as it supports Israel. It asserted that Israel committed genocide during its 1948 War of Independence. Fighting Israeli “apartheid,” the statement said, is inseparable from fighting racism in America. It called on its allies to join the BDS campaign:

Jewish Voice for Peace (www.ngo-monitor.org/ngos/jewish_voice_for_peace_jvp_/) is a leftist advocacy group which supports boycott, divesting and sanctions against Israel. On August 5, 2016 JVP released a statement unconditionally supporting the newly released platform of the Black Lives Matter movement: JVP “endorses the Movement for Black Lives platform in its entirety, without reservation.” Regarding the genocide accusation, JVP responded that “it is not our role to police the language of the ‘Vision for Black Lives’” (www.jta.org/2016/08/05/united-states/jewish-pro-bds-group-unconditionally-endorses-black-lives-matter-platform).

A long and winding road

If you are interested in understanding in greater detail how anti-Semitic and anti-Israel positions have infiltrated the Black Power and Black Lives Matter movements, here are four instructive articles:

Cultivating anti-Semitism

If you are interested in understanding in greater detail how Palestinian terror groups have cultivated Black movements with one of their goals being the release of anti-Israel statements and declarations, here are four instructive articles:

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. threw a spotlight on the underlying motives of these attitudes and statements when he noted, “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews, you are talking anti-Semitism” (“The Socialism of Fools: The Left, the Jews and Israel”; Seymour Martin Lipset; Encounter Magazine, December 1969; https://martinkramer.org/sandbox/2012/03/in-the-words-of-martin-luther-king/; https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/martinkramer/files/words_of_martin_luther_king.pdf).

Black opposition to the BLM declaration

Here are two articles revealing opposition within the African American community to anti-Semitic statements coming out of the Black Lives Matter movement:

Other opposition to the BLM declaration

Alan Morton Dershowitz is an American lawyer, a scholar of United States constitutional law and criminal law and a noted civil libertarian. His response to anti-Semitism within BLM minces no words:

Earl Bowen Jr., PhD, an African American associate rabbi at Congregation Temple Beth El in Philadelphia, states clearly: “BLM statements are anti-Semitic not only because they are false and modern versions of tradition anti-Semitic blood libel, but also because BLM selectively chooses the Jewish state out of all the states in the world to demonize” (www.meforum.org/7303/black-lives-matter-promoting-anti-semitism).

Gary Gambill presents a history-based warning for us and for BLM as to how the Boycott movement against Israel (BDS) ends up imploding just about every movement it touches (“Black Lives Matter's Anti-Semitic Bedfellows:; Gary C. Gambill; https://nationalinterest.org/feature/black-lives-matters-anti-semitic-bedfellows-17701).

Co-opting George Floyd for Palestinian terror

Russian communists came up with an important phrase – ‘agitprop’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agitprop). This term refers to political propaganda when spread to the general public through popular media. George Floyd has recently become the theme of street murals worldwide (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2020/jun/05/george-floyd-murals-worldwide-street-artists).

Palestinian anti-Israel propaganda has specifically co-opted the murder of George Floyd and turned it into agitprop against the Jewish state of Israel. Huge murals of Floyd surrounded by PLO-associated flags and keffiyeh headdress (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keffiyeh; www.arabamerica.com/may-11-world-keffiyeh-day/) with a backdrop of Israel’s anti-terror wall/fences (https://mfa.gov.il/MFA_Graphics/MFA%20Gallery/Documents/savinglives.pdf), have been hitting the internet in recent days:

Mark Ayash, Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Peace Studies Initiative at Mount Royal University, Calgary, ties these propaganda efforts all together:

An encouraging response to these false narratives is found in the work of African American Joshua Washington and his Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel (www.ibsi-now.org/; https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-palestinian-appropriation-of-black-pain/; www.youtube.com/watch?v=BglGY5cYMEA&feature=youtu.be).

Never let a good crisis go to waste

Sir Winston Churchill, UK Prime Minister during WWII, said “Never let a good crisis go to waste” towards the end of World War II as he considered the prospective alliance between the UK, the U.S.S.R, and the USA (which led to the formation of the U.N.). The quote was later adopted by Saul Alinsky in his 1971 book ‘Rules for Radicals.’  Rahm Emanuel, former advisor to President Obama and later Mayor of Chicago, modified and re-used the same quote. The quote is meant to encourage activists who have political strategies to always be on the lookout for helpful breakthroughs.

The Black Power movement and its offspring Black Lives Matter have a multifaceted agenda. A lot of people are not aware of some of these facets. People for the most part are also not tracking about how the agendas of leftist anarchists (who crashed the latest round of protests) can derail an entire group by moving them solidly onto the violent side of the street.

Some of BLM’s goals (if carried out) would lead to tragically destructive fallout for America. Yet at the same time, some of BLM’s grievances are all too real.

The solutions to real problems are not to be found in failed Marxist revolutionary methods – disastrous strategies including the crippling of government police forces and the forced redistribution of wealth. Another point: the cultic and threatening demands to Whites ‘to kneel before Blacks or be considered the enemy’ are spiritually bogus and have the potential to catalyze socio-racial conflict on a much greater scale.  A lot of ‘politically correct’ propaganda is circulating using fuzzy yet dogmatic buzzwords like ‘white privilege,’ ‘white fragility,’ ‘systematic police brutality’ and ‘American systematic racism.’ Many of these claims are overstated and under-substantiated. These are false narratives intended to paralyze Americans and to weaken productive discussion. America’s talking points at this time of crisis should not be those established and guided by the ghosts of Malcolm X, Brother Stokely and the Panthers.

For those who love America and what it could yet be in the sight of God, it’s time to take the knee – in prayer.

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: www.davidstent.org

The darkness, the glory and the flattened curve

Isaiah’s prophetic scenario cuts through the mists of time. There’s a day a-coming when gross darkness will cover the planet, and a heavy fog of spiritual pollution will hang over the entire earth.

That generation will witness a shocking nuclear explosion of spiritual light radiating out from the nation of Israel:

The streets of the Western world are racked by injustice, murder and riots. The casbahs of the Middle East are rocked by Islamist violence and hostilities. Plagues, locusts, drought and the sword are sweeping across this planet. But God calls us not to lose heart: “When you see all these things, recognize that He is near, right at the door” (Matthew 24:33).  Days of insurgence and uprising are causing seemingly stable governments to tremble. Persecution of Bible believers (a fixture of the Islamic and Communist worlds) is mushrooming in the vestiges of once-stalwart Christian empires. Family foundations are increasingly mocked and undermined. In the middle of this storm Messiah Yeshua speaks encouraging words to us: “Be glad in that day and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven” (Luke 6:23)!

Dark nations, radiant sons of Jacob

God wants us to prepare for what is barreling down the freeway. Though we may be walking through ‘the valley of deep darkness’ (the original Hebrew meaning of Psalm 23:4’s gai tzalmavet, often translated as the valley of death) – and it will get worse before it gets better – YHVH offers the nations a helpful bit of advice: when the going gets tough, look to Israel! When this present darkness starts exploding exponentially, know that the God of Jacob is about to shine His light on Israel in a world-shaking way.

God’s focus in Isaiah 60 is simple: His planetary solution will come through the Jewish people’s revival.

Life from the dead will be manifested through the sons of Jacob (Romans 11:15). The nations will receive even greater spiritual riches when the Jewish people come into the fullness of their divine calling (Romans 11:12). These Jewish gifts and the Jewish people’s calling will fill the Gentile world with spiritual and physical fruit (Isaiah 27:6).

As Hannibal Smith in the A-team would say, God “loves it when a plan comes together,” and this Jewish key is the plan. No need to be paralyzed by fear, depression or hopelessness. Instead, let’s remember that the God of Israel has not been taken by surprise, and that He wants us to trust in His sovereign oversight even now. God’s intercessory train is bound for glory:

We can be proactive in hope-filled prayer and in biblical vision when so many other foundations are built on shifting sand. Our prayers and our outreach help to birth the Jewish people into their ancient calling – to be a light to the Gentiles and to bring life from the dead to the entirety of our dark planet:

Isaiah prophesies about Yeshua the Messianic Servant in Isaiah 49:6 (see also Acts 13:47 where Paul also applies this prophecy to the Messianic Jewish remnant): “It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel. I will also make You a light of the nations so that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

The flattening curve?

In these days of COVID-19, doctors and world leaders speak of ‘flattening the curve’ (https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/new-cases; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flattening_the_curve) – the goal of slowing coronavirus infection rates so as not to overwhelm each country’s medical system. The nation of Israel has had marked success in flattening the curve, and has been positively affirmed for this across the globe, and for this we are thankful:

Though the curve may be flattening in Israel for now, there is an opposite curve which is peaking. The Jewish people and Israel are being blamed in some international circles for the creation and spread of COVID-19:

A viral spike in anti-Semitism is happening not only in Iran and the Islamic world. The University of Oxford published a recent survey in the journal Psychological Medicine on May 22, 2020 (https://jpost.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx) revealing that 20% of surveyed Brits believe that Jews created COVID-19 to collapse the economy for financial gain.

In a February 2020 polling of 3011 adults from across UK by Focaldata, the HOPE Not Hate Charitable Trust found that, in answer to the question “Do Jews have an “unhealthy control of the banking system,” 13% of the respondents agreed with this anti-Semitic propaganda, while 38% couldn’t say that this Nazi-like declaration was either true or false, or answered that they didn’t know (www.hopenothate.org.uk/2020/04/26/trust-no-one-findings/).

These British percentages show that fertile soil exists for a pandemic outbreak of anti-Semitism. The known British ‘stiff upper lip’ dynamic may actually point to the distinct possibility that this spreading anti-Jewish poison may be even more virulent in other less reserved nations.

The darkness of anti-Semitism was a benchmark indicator for the plans both of Nazi Hitler and Communist Stalin. The Book of Revelation reveals that Satan’s Last Days priority is the annihilation of the Jewish people (Revelation 12:1-13).

Stay on target

In Star Wars: A New Hope, Gold Five pilot Davish Krail exhorts his X-Wings as they race to the Death Star reactor port: “Stay on Target!” Every U.S. Marine knows the motto ‘Semper Fi’ (Latin shorthand for ‘always faithful’). Staying the course is the apostolic challenge:

We are coming face to face with ‘this present darkness,’ As the world trembles, let’s keep our eyes on the prize and hold on:

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: www.davidstent.org

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