Dr. Brown is joined by some special Christian guests from China and then focuses on the latest developments in the Middle East and takes your Jewish questions on this Thoroughly Jewish Thursday. Listen live here 2-4 pm EST, and call into the show at (866) 348 7884 with your questions and comments.
Hour 1:
Dr. Brown’s Bottom Line: Just as it is in China, just as it is in America, so also it is in Israel. The situation spiritually and socially is very complex, and Jesus is the only abiding answer!
Hour 2:
Dr. Brown’s Bottom Line: There is so much today that can be learned from Jewish tradition and from the Jewish people, and yet we can teach them about Jesus the Messiah.
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I agree that we should not have invaded Iraq. People need to know that we did not invade Iraq because of WMD. That was a smokescreen. The Bush administration began making plans to take out Saddam Hussein within the first 100 days of Bush’s presidency. One reason was payback for Saddam Hussein’s assassination attempt on Bush Sr. Many don’t know this. It was brought out in Richard Clarke’s book “Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror.”
Anytime a dictator like Hussein makes a play for territory that produces so much of the world’s oil, it becomes a concern for this nation. We didn’t want to say it was about oil though did we?
Wow! A couple of anti-war posts here! I’m a little surprised.
There are a lot of lessons to be learned from the disastrous Iraq war.
One is for the church to take a very cautious view of supporting war.
I lost track of how many commissioning services I attended sending off soldiers with a church blessing. I participated because I wanted to bless the individual soldier but I cringed when the service would almost invariably go into blessing the war itself.
But, as you may remember, the Southern Baptists and other major Evangelical groups officially decreed that the Iraq war was a “just war” according to Christian doctrine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_letter
Many Muslims perceived the Iraq war as religiously motivated by Christian aggression.
This official support by key Evangelicals gave them good reason to believe it.
Ray, you’re right, it was for oil. We enslaved Blacks to grow cotton, the most profitable cash crop of that time. They thought Cotton Is King instead of Jesus Is King. So we’ll definitely kill for oil.
Greg, we didn’t learn any lessons from the more disastrous Vietnam War so we’re not going to learn lessons from Iraq. War won’t cease until the Prince of Peace returns to Jerusalem to set up His kingdom, and violence will only increase until then. I believe Jesus taught nonresistance, and I know other believers who think so too, along the lines of Anabaptists. The opposite of you, I’m always somewhat surprised to see Christian warmongers!
Amy,
>> War won’t cease until the Prince of Peace returns to Jerusalem to set up His kingdom, and violence will only increase until then.
I LOVE your general outlook on this issue. I suspect that you and I agree on most of it.
However, you seem fatalistic. Yes, sin and violence will be forever in the world but, I believe, we Christians are to resist sin.
This includes the sin of violence.
>> I believe Jesus taught nonresistance, and I know other believers who think so too, along the lines of Anabaptists.
I’m an Anabaptist. (although I attend a mainstream church right now.)
I find it dismaying that, when it comes to war and guns, these “biblical literalists” so easily blow-off the peace teachings of Jesus.
Conveniently, they become all pragmatic about violence and self-defense! It strikes me as such hypocrisy.
China seems to me to have changed rather dramatically in some important ways concerning freedom, most noticeably freedom to worship together.
That’s a big freedom, and others are likely to follow, it seems to me.
So what caused that to happen? The gospel?
Along with liberty, often comes prosperity.
Ray,
>> Along with liberty, often comes prosperity.
Not peace?
Don’t most people link peace with prosperity?
Ray,
If I understand properly, except in the darkest days of the Cultural Revolution, China has usually allowed worship in state-sponsored churches.
I think the opening is that the government has allowed more officially recognized churches and been less hard on the house churches. Obviously, this is a good thing but not what we Americans would consider full religious freedom.
Here is the most recent State Department report I could find (Ignore the past tense — they are referring to the immediate past before the report.)
>> The Constitution and laws provide for freedom of religious belief and the freedom not to believe, although the Constitution only protects religious activities defined by the state as “normal.” The Constitution states that religious bodies and affairs are not to be “subject to any foreign domination,” and that the individual exercise of rights “may not infringe upon the interests of the state.” The Constitution also recognizes the leading role of the officially atheist Chinese Communist Party.
>> The Government restricted legal religious practice to government-sanctioned organizations and registered religious groups and places of worship, and sought to control the growth and scope of the activity of both registered and unregistered religious groups, including “house churches.” Government authorities limited proselytism, particularly by foreigners and unregistered religious groups, but permitted proselytism in state-approved religious venues and private settings.