Opinion The Israeli lobby has undue influence due to corruption: Change my mind

So, just how powerful is the Israel lobby in the US?
What force is more powerful? Agents from what other foreign nation have the power to cover up their mass murder of Americans? What other nation's inhabitants cannot be legitimately criticized for their crimes against humanity? I mean, picture a nation guilty of such severe atrocities that they need to lobby our politicians for laws to protect them?

"The question to be asked is how long can the history of anti-semitism and the Holocaust be used as a fence to exempt Israel from arguments and sanctions against it for its behavior towards the Palestinians, arguments and sanctions that were used against other repressive governments, such as South Africa? How long are we going to deny that the cries of the people of Gaza... are directly connected to the policies of the Israeli government and not to the cries of the victims of Nazism? You cannot continue to victimize someone else just because you yourself were a victim once, there has to be a limit." Author: Edward Said

@abiG
Well, obviously I agree 100% with Said here. As far as "how long?" That's up to us.

Widespread Christian Zionism predates the modern state of Israel by several centuries (at least 1587 in the UK, and was later taken up by the Puritans). In fact to a large extent it was Christian Zionism (AKA the restoration movement) that revived Jewish desire for a state.
Premillenial dispensationalism took root in America in the early 1800s.
These days Christian Zionists are more numerous in the developing world, where it's spread mostly by the prosperity doctrine inclined Pentecostals (who did predominantly emerge from America).
I would love to see what sources you are using to come to this conclusion. I have studied the history of zionism and can't find much prior to around the middle of the 1800s. I think you are conflating biblical prophecy of God returning the biblical Jews peacefully as the world rejoices, with the European colonists, the ones truly most dangerous to the Jewish people, who have stolen Palestine and have been carrying out war crimes for the last several decades as the world has watched on in horror.

I would go one step further and predict that you would be shocked by the two men who began to push today's zionist narrative some 1/2 a century before Herzl and Rothschild's first zionist congress of August 29, 1897.
 
I would love to see what sources you are using to come to this conclusion. I have studied the history of zionism and can't find much prior to around the middle of the 1800s. I think you are conflating biblical prophecy of God returning the biblical Jews peacefully as the world rejoices, with the European colonists, the ones truly most dangerous to the Jewish people, who have stolen Palestine and have been carrying out war crimes for the last several decades as the world has watched on in horror.

I would go one step further and predict that you would be shocked by the two men who began to push today's zionist narrative some 1/2 a century before Herzl and Rothschild's first zionist congress of August 29, 1897.

Just look up any history of dispensationalism and premillenialism that extends prior to Darby.
Of course they didn't call it Christian Zionism, but it was similar eschatological ideas and belief in the restoration of Jews to Israel.
See "The Worlds Great Restoration" by Henry Finch in 1621.
Isaac Newton was a restorationist.
Look at the role of Hechler with Herzl.
 
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I did not know there was a large Palestinean diaspora in the other Moslem mid east countries. I literally thought the vast majority where trapped in the West bank, and GAza with just a few outside in refugee camps, or asylums.
It's complicated. They live in other countries but they do not get citizenship. The reasons are two fold:
Arabs do not want to give citizenship to palestinians because they're troublesome. See Black September, when Palestinians tried to take control over Jordan.
If given citizenship their claims to Palestine weakens.
Legally, they're still considered refugees.
 
Just look up any history of dispensationalism and premillenialism that extends prior to Darby.
Of course they didn't call it Christian Zionism, but it was similar eschatological ideas and belief in the restoration of Jews to Israel.
See "The Worlds Great Restoration" by Henry Finch in 1621.
Isaac Newton was a restorationist.
I think I nailed it above. I think you are conflating biblical prophecy of God returning the biblical Jews peacefully as the world rejoices, with the European colonists, the ones truly most dangerous to the Jewish people, who have stolen Palestine and have been carrying out war crimes for the last several decades as the world has watched on in horror.

If I'm understanding you correctly, by your logic, it seems that Christian zionism actually started with the creation of the old testament.

Look at the role of Hechler with Herzl.
I'm aware, but look at the contribution by Bush and Churchill. some 50 years prior.

George Bush (12 June 1796, Norwich, Vermont – 19 September 1859, Rochester, New York) was an American biblical scholar, pastor, abolitionist, academic and advocate for the restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land. He is distantly related to the Bush political family.[1]
George Bush (biblical scholar) - Wikipedia

Around 1830 this guy starts writing books about Islam that today would be considered disgusting (maybe not here). He sounds like some of the zionists on this board, pure hatred. He then writes in 1844, The Valley of Vision; or, The Dry Bones of Israel Revived. In it he denounced “the thralldom and oppression which has so long ground them (the Jews) to the dust,” and called for “elevating” the Jews “to a rank of honorable repute among the nations of the earth” by re-creating the Jewish State in the land of Israel.

This, according to Bush, would benefit not only the Jews, but all of mankind, forming a “link of communication” between humanity and God. “It will blaze in notoriety...". “It will flash a splendid demonstration upon all kindreds and tongues of the truth.”
George Bush, Biblical & Jewish Scholar

Although considered radical for those days, “The Valley of Vision” sold more than a million copies- an unheard amount for the era before the American Civil War, and it turned Professor Bush into a national voice calling for the restoration of the Jewish people to their historic homeland. His writing had a profound impact in shaping their views of the Jews and their homeland, including men of influence like Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt.
Professor George Bush (1796-1859) - FOZ Museum

Okay, that was pretty interesting, yes? Great, now stay with me here.

Colonel Charles Henry Churchill (1807–1869), also known as "Churchill Bey",[1][2][3] was a British army officer and diplomat. He was a British consul in Ottoman Syria, and he created the first political plan for Zionism and the creation of the state of Israel in the region of Ottoman Palestine.[4][5]

The proposal correspondence with Sir Moses Montefiore, the President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, in which Churchill proposed a strategy for the creating of a Jewish state, pre-dating formal Zionism by approximately half a century.
Charles Henry Churchill - Wikipedia


His letter to Moses and the Board of Deputies of British Jews that was written, 14 June 1841, and more the formal proposal dated, 15 August 1842, can both be read at the above link.
 
I think I nailed it above. I think you are conflating biblical prophecy of God returning the biblical Jews peacefully as the world rejoices, with the European colonists, the ones truly most dangerous to the Jewish people, who have stolen Palestine and have been carrying out war crimes for the last several decades as the world has watched on in horror.

If I'm understanding you correctly, by your logic, it seems that Christian zionism actually started with the creation of the old testament.

No, because it's a restoration movement based entirely on eschatology. Especially the eschatology of millennialism, which is based on Revelation. Including the interpretation of Old Testament prophecy through the lens of Revelation.

Revelation 20:1-6 said:
And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand.
2 And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years,
3 And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.
4 And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.
5 But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.
6 Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.

The belief in the restoration of the Jews to Israel was explicitly about the return of British/European Jews (and the rest of the diaspora) to Israel. It wasn't just a belief that it will happen, but something they believed should be actively pursued.
Hence the beliefs of the likes of Heschler. This idea of a literal restoration of Jews to Israel began with "The World's Great Restoration" by Henry Finch in 1621. It's been called, "the first Zionist book".
Charles Henry Churchill and George Bush were Restorationists.
It was a movement which began with the reformation, because the Catholic Church stamped out premillennialism and it's ilk as heresy. In fact the Catholic Church is still vocal against attempts to "immanentize the eschaton".

The British Protestant Era.
The path that led to the widespread belief in the end-time restoration of the Jews to Israel started with the study of the Bible, first in the original languages, followed by the influence of the newly acquired English translations.
When both scholars and laymen alike, for the first time in the history of the church, had the text of Scripture (both Old and New Testaments) more readily available, it led to greater study, a more literal interpretation and a greater awareness of the Israel of the Old Testament. This provided the atmosphere in which a major shift occurred in England (also on the Continent to a lesser degree) from medieval Jew-hatred, which led to the expulsion of all Jews from Britain in 1290, to their invitation under Cromwell to return in 1655. “From such a context and from among this people,” notes Douglas Culver, “now growing more and more intimate with things Jewish, the early millenarian protagonists for the restoration of the Jews to their Palestinian homeland arose.”
However, it would be a tough road to get to the point where belief in a Jewish restoration to their ancient homeland would become so widespread. It wasn’t just any group of English protestants that provided a fertile soil for Jewish Restorationist doctrines, it was out of the English Puritan movement that this belief sprung. “Starting with the Puritan ascendancy,” notes Tuchman, “the movement among the English for the return of the Jews to Palestine began.”
Why the Puritan? Puritans were not just dissenters, they were a Protestant sect that valued the Old Testament to an unprecedented degree in their day. Tuchman tells us: They began to feel for the Old Testament a preference that showed itself in all their sentiments and habits. They paid a respect to the Hebrew language that they refused to the language of their Gospels and of the epistles of Paul. They baptized their children by the names not of Christian saints but of Hebrew patriarchs and warriors. They turned the weekly festival by which the church had from primitive times commemorated the resurrection of her Lord, into the Jewish Sabbath. They sought for precedents to guide their ordinary conduct in the books of Judges and Kings.
One of the first Englishman to put forth the view that the Jews should be restored to the land of Israel was a scholar who had taken two degrees from Cambridge named Francis Kett. In 1585 he had published a book entitled The Glorious and Beautiful Garland of Mans Glorification Containing the Godly Misterie of Heavenly Jerusalem (one of the shorter titles of the day). While his book primarily dealt with other matters, Kett did have a section in which he mentioned “the notion of Jewish national return to Palestine.”
This notion, which some think was likely gaining many followers, was deemed heretical to the English establishment of the day and Rev. Kett was quickly burned at the stake on January 14, 1589, for expressing such views about the Jews return to their land, an idea he claimed to have received from reading the Bible.
About the same time as Kett, strict Calvinist, Edmund Bunny (1540–1619) taught the Jewish restoration to Palestine in a couple of books: The Scepter of Ivday (1584) and The Coronation of David (1588). As the 1600s arrived, a flurry of books advocating Jewish restoration to their land began to appear. Thomas Draxe released in 1608 The Worldes Resurrection: On the general calling of the Jews, A familiar Commentary upon the eleventh Chapter of Saint Paul to the Romaines, according to the sense of Scripture. Draxe argued for Israel’s restoration based upon his Calvinism and Covenant Theology.
Two great giants of their era were Thomas Brightman (1552–1607), (likely a Postmillennialist) and Premillennialist Joseph Mede (1586–1638) who both wrote boldly of a future restoration of Israel. Brightman’s work, Revelation of the Revelation appeared in 1609 and told “how the Jews will return from the areas North and East of Palestine to Jerusalem and how the Holy Land and the Jewish Christian church will become the centre of a Christian world.”
Brightman wrote: “What, shall they return to Jerusalem again? There is nothing more certain; the prophets do everywhere confirm it.”40 Brightman went so far as to predict that the Jews would be converted to Christ in 1650.
Joseph Mede’s contribution was released in 1627 in Latin and in 1642 in English as The Key of the Revelation. The father of English premillennialism was also an ardent advocate of Jewish restoration to their homeland. Following Mede in many ways, Thomas Goodwin (1600–1680) also saw the Jews one day returning to Israel. In An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (1639), he taught that the Jews would be converted to Christ by 1656.
Momentum was certainly building toward widespread acceptance of English belief in Jewish restoration, but a few bumps in the road still lay ahead. Giles Fletcher (1549–1611), a fellow at King’s College, Cambridge and Queen Elizabeth’s ambassador to Russia wrote a work advocating Restorationism.
Fletcher’s book, Israel Redux: or the Restauration of Israel; or the Restauration of Israel exhibited in two short treatises (shortened title) was published posthumously by the Puritan divine Samuel Lee in 1677. Fletcher cites a letter in his book from 1606 as he argues for the return of the Jews to their land. Fletcher repeatedly taught the “certainty of their return in God’s due time.”
A key proponent for Israel’s future restoration was Henry Finch (1558-1625) who wrote a seminal work on the subject in 1621, called The World’s Resurrection or The Calling of the Jewes. A Present to Judah and the Children of Israel that Ioyned with Him, and to Ioseph (that valiant tribe of Ephraim) and all the House of Israel that Ioyned with Him. Finch, at the time of the publication of his book was a member of Parliament and the most highly respected legal scholars in England at the time. “The book had been published for a matter only of weeks when the roof caved in on the author’s head,” notes Culver. “In the persecution which ensued, Finch lost his reputation, his possessions, his health—all precipitated by his belief in Jewish national restoration.”
“Finch’s argument may be considered the first genuine plan for Restoration.” Finch taught that the biblical “passages which speak of a return of these people to their own land, their conquest of enemies and their rule of the nations are to be taken literally, not allegorically as of the Church.” King James of England was offended by Finch’s statement that all nations would become subservient to national Israel at the time of her restoration. Finch and his publisher were quickly arrested when his book was released by the High Commissioner (a creation of King James), and examined. Finch was striped of his status and possessions and then died a few years latter. “The doctrine of the restoration of the Jews continued to be expounded in England, evolving according to the insight of each exponent, and finally playing a role in Christian Zionistic activities in the latter part of the nineteenth and in the first of the twentieth centuries.”
Many Puritans of the seventeenth century taught the restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land. One of the greatest Puritan theologians in England was John Owen (1616–1683) who wrote, “The Jews shall be gathered from all parts of the earth where they are scattered, and brought home into their homeland.”
“From the first quarter of the seventeenth century, belief in a future conversion of the Jews became commonplace among the English Puritans.” Many who believed in the conversion of the Jews also came to believe in Jewish restoration as well. Peter Toon, speaking of Puritans of this era says: Of course, those who expected the conversion of the Jews added to Romans other proof-texts from the Old and New Testament. Furthermore, a large proportion of those who took “Israel” in Romans 11:25 ff. to speak of Jews, also taught that there would be a restoration of Jews to their ancient homeland in the Near East either after, or at the same time as, their conversion to Christ. There was a similar Restorationist movement throughout Europe where the Reformation was strongest, but on a smaller scale. There were a number of Restorationists in Holland during the time of the Puritan movement. Isaac de la Peyrere (1594–1676), who served as the French Ambassador to Denmark, “wrote a book wherein he argued for a restoration of the Jews to Israel without conversion to Christianity.”
In 1655, Paul Felgenhauever, wrote Good News for Israel in which he taught that there would be the “permanent return of the Jews to their own country eternally bestowed upon them by God through the unqualified promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”
The Dane, Holger Paulli (1644–1714) “believed wholeheartedly in the Jewish Return to the Holy Land, as a condition for the Second Coming.” He even “lobbied the kings of Denmark, England, and France to go and conquer Palestine from the Ottomans in order that the Jews could regain their nation.”
Frenchman, Marquis de Langallerie (1656–1717), schemed with the Turkish Ambassador in the Hague on a plan defeat the Pope and trade the papal empire for a return of the Jews to the Holy Land. Langallerie was arrested in Hamburg, tried and convicted of high treason and died in prison a year later.
Other European Restorationists of the era include: Isaac Vossius, Hugo Grotius, Gerhard John Vossius, David Blondel, Vasover Powel, Joseph Eyre, Edward Whitaker, and Charles Jerran.
The mid-1600s witnessed “the sudden explosion of millenarian publications,” which predisposed the British to also consider the future fate of the Jews in the holy land. James Saddington lists the following seventeenth century English individuals as holding to Restorationist views: John Milton, John Bunyan, Roger Williams, John Sadler and Oliver Cromwell.
“The doctrine of the restoration of the Jews continued to be expounded in England, evolving according to the insight of each exponent,” concludes Ehle, “and finally playing a role in Christian Zionistic actiivities in the latter part of the nineteenth and in the first of the twentieth centuries.”
 
Netanyahu is not even a practicing Jew.

The Israelis are really good at bombing nuclear reactors in secrecy. Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007. Neither country went to war with Israel. Trump has them slotted for an Iranian bombing in 2019. No need to put our boys (Americans) in dangers way...

Which is really the core of the relationship, Israel is a proxy for western influence in the middle east.

That doesn't mean corruption(on both sides) doesn't exist as well of course but it provides the environment for it to grow.
 
Of course they didn't call it Christian Zionism, but it was similar eschatological ideas and belief in the restoration of Jews to Israel.
I think you are conflating biblical prophecy of God returning the biblical Jews peacefully as the world rejoices...

Neither really matters. What was God's covenant with the Israelites according to the Hebrew Bible?

"God promised to make Abraham the father of a great people and said that Abraham and his descendants must obey God. In return God would guide them and protect them and give them the land of Israel."

The covenant between God and the Jewish people is a thread running throughout the early parts of the Bible, and one of the vital pillars of Judaism. The covenant between God and Jews is the basis for the idea of the Jews as the chosen people. The first covenant was between God and Abraham.

Well, the Jews broke that covenant when they handed God's son, Jesus, to be crucified by the Romans. So, with that act, the promise of the land of Israel is gone. Jesus was not what the Jews wanted or expected. Did the Jews think the covenant was still intact? Was it naivety or stupidity? Either way, no, the promise of Israel is gone forever and worst is to follow...
 
Neither really matters. What was God's covenant with the Israelites according to the Hebrew Bible?

"God promised to make Abraham the father of a great people and said that Abraham and his descendants must obey God. In return God would guide them and protect them and give them the land of Israel."

The covenant between God and the Jewish people is a thread running throughout the early parts of the Bible, and one of the vital pillars of Judaism. The covenant between God and Jews is the basis for the idea of the Jews as the chosen people. The first covenant was between God and Abraham.

Well, the Jews broke that covenant when they handed God's son, Jesus, to be crucified by the Romans. So, with that act, the promise of the land of Israel is gone. Jesus was not what the Jews wanted or expected. Did the Jews think the covenant was still intact? Was it naivety or stupidity? Either way, no, the promise of Israel is gone forever and worst is to follow...
Religious Jews would argue that what you have posted is a drastic oversimplification of how our covenantS (not just one) with God work. Basically, it is an ongoing deal and this is really what infuriates religious Jews no end about the entirety of the zionist war machine.

No, because it's a restoration movement based entirely on eschatology. Especially the eschatology of millennialism, which is based on Revelation. Including the interpretation of Old Testament prophecy through the lens of Revelation.



The belief in the restoration of the Jews to Israel was explicitly about the return of British/European Jews (and the rest of the diaspora) to Israel. It wasn't just a belief that it will happen, but something they believed should be actively pursued.
Hence the beliefs of the likes of Heschler. This idea of a literal restoration of Jews to Israel began with "The World's Great Restoration" by Henry Finch in 1621. It's been called, "the first Zionist book".
Charles Henry Churchill and George Bush were Restorationists.
It was a movement which began with the reformation, because the Catholic Church stamped out premillennialism and it's ilk as heresy. In fact the Catholic Church is still vocal against attempts to "immanentize the eschaton".

The British Protestant Era.
The path that led to the widespread belief in the end-time restoration of the Jews to Israel started with the study of the Bible, first in the original languages, followed by the influence of the newly acquired English translations.
When both scholars and laymen alike, for the first time in the history of the church, had the text of Scripture (both Old and New Testaments) more readily available, it led to greater study, a more literal interpretation and a greater awareness of the Israel of the Old Testament. This provided the atmosphere in which a major shift occurred in England (also on the Continent to a lesser degree) from medieval Jew-hatred, which led to the expulsion of all Jews from Britain in 1290, to their invitation under Cromwell to return in 1655. “From such a context and from among this people,” notes Douglas Culver, “now growing more and more intimate with things Jewish, the early millenarian protagonists for the restoration of the Jews to their Palestinian homeland arose.”
However, it would be a tough road to get to the point where belief in a Jewish restoration to their ancient homeland would become so widespread. It wasn’t just any group of English protestants that provided a fertile soil for Jewish Restorationist doctrines, it was out of the English Puritan movement that this belief sprung. “Starting with the Puritan ascendancy,” notes Tuchman, “the movement among the English for the return of the Jews to Palestine began.”
Why the Puritan? Puritans were not just dissenters, they were a Protestant sect that valued the Old Testament to an unprecedented degree in their day. Tuchman tells us: They began to feel for the Old Testament a preference that showed itself in all their sentiments and habits. They paid a respect to the Hebrew language that they refused to the language of their Gospels and of the epistles of Paul. They baptized their children by the names not of Christian saints but of Hebrew patriarchs and warriors. They turned the weekly festival by which the church had from primitive times commemorated the resurrection of her Lord, into the Jewish Sabbath. They sought for precedents to guide their ordinary conduct in the books of Judges and Kings.
One of the first Englishman to put forth the view that the Jews should be restored to the land of Israel was a scholar who had taken two degrees from Cambridge named Francis Kett. In 1585 he had published a book entitled The Glorious and Beautiful Garland of Mans Glorification Containing the Godly Misterie of Heavenly Jerusalem (one of the shorter titles of the day). While his book primarily dealt with other matters, Kett did have a section in which he mentioned “the notion of Jewish national return to Palestine.”
This notion, which some think was likely gaining many followers, was deemed heretical to the English establishment of the day and Rev. Kett was quickly burned at the stake on January 14, 1589, for expressing such views about the Jews return to their land, an idea he claimed to have received from reading the Bible.
About the same time as Kett, strict Calvinist, Edmund Bunny (1540–1619) taught the Jewish restoration to Palestine in a couple of books: The Scepter of Ivday (1584) and The Coronation of David (1588). As the 1600s arrived, a flurry of books advocating Jewish restoration to their land began to appear. Thomas Draxe released in 1608 The Worldes Resurrection: On the general calling of the Jews, A familiar Commentary upon the eleventh Chapter of Saint Paul to the Romaines, according to the sense of Scripture. Draxe argued for Israel’s restoration based upon his Calvinism and Covenant Theology.
Two great giants of their era were Thomas Brightman (1552–1607), (likely a Postmillennialist) and Premillennialist Joseph Mede (1586–1638) who both wrote boldly of a future restoration of Israel. Brightman’s work, Revelation of the Revelation appeared in 1609 and told “how the Jews will return from the areas North and East of Palestine to Jerusalem and how the Holy Land and the Jewish Christian church will become the centre of a Christian world.”
Brightman wrote: “What, shall they return to Jerusalem again? There is nothing more certain; the prophets do everywhere confirm it.”40 Brightman went so far as to predict that the Jews would be converted to Christ in 1650.
Joseph Mede’s contribution was released in 1627 in Latin and in 1642 in English as The Key of the Revelation. The father of English premillennialism was also an ardent advocate of Jewish restoration to their homeland. Following Mede in many ways, Thomas Goodwin (1600–1680) also saw the Jews one day returning to Israel. In An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (1639), he taught that the Jews would be converted to Christ by 1656.
Momentum was certainly building toward widespread acceptance of English belief in Jewish restoration, but a few bumps in the road still lay ahead. Giles Fletcher (1549–1611), a fellow at King’s College, Cambridge and Queen Elizabeth’s ambassador to Russia wrote a work advocating Restorationism.
Fletcher’s book, Israel Redux: or the Restauration of Israel; or the Restauration of Israel exhibited in two short treatises (shortened title) was published posthumously by the Puritan divine Samuel Lee in 1677. Fletcher cites a letter in his book from 1606 as he argues for the return of the Jews to their land. Fletcher repeatedly taught the “certainty of their return in God’s due time.”
A key proponent for Israel’s future restoration was Henry Finch (1558-1625) who wrote a seminal work on the subject in 1621, called The World’s Resurrection or The Calling of the Jewes. A Present to Judah and the Children of Israel that Ioyned with Him, and to Ioseph (that valiant tribe of Ephraim) and all the House of Israel that Ioyned with Him. Finch, at the time of the publication of his book was a member of Parliament and the most highly respected legal scholars in England at the time. “The book had been published for a matter only of weeks when the roof caved in on the author’s head,” notes Culver. “In the persecution which ensued, Finch lost his reputation, his possessions, his health—all precipitated by his belief in Jewish national restoration.”
“Finch’s argument may be considered the first genuine plan for Restoration.” Finch taught that the biblical “passages which speak of a return of these people to their own land, their conquest of enemies and their rule of the nations are to be taken literally, not allegorically as of the Church.” King James of England was offended by Finch’s statement that all nations would become subservient to national Israel at the time of her restoration. Finch and his publisher were quickly arrested when his book was released by the High Commissioner (a creation of King James), and examined. Finch was striped of his status and possessions and then died a few years latter. “The doctrine of the restoration of the Jews continued to be expounded in England, evolving according to the insight of each exponent, and finally playing a role in Christian Zionistic activities in the latter part of the nineteenth and in the first of the twentieth centuries.”
Many Puritans of the seventeenth century taught the restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land. One of the greatest Puritan theologians in England was John Owen (1616–1683) who wrote, “The Jews shall be gathered from all parts of the earth where they are scattered, and brought home into their homeland.”
“From the first quarter of the seventeenth century, belief in a future conversion of the Jews became commonplace among the English Puritans.” Many who believed in the conversion of the Jews also came to believe in Jewish restoration as well. Peter Toon, speaking of Puritans of this era says: Of course, those who expected the conversion of the Jews added to Romans other proof-texts from the Old and New Testament. Furthermore, a large proportion of those who took “Israel” in Romans 11:25 ff. to speak of Jews, also taught that there would be a restoration of Jews to their ancient homeland in the Near East either after, or at the same time as, their conversion to Christ. There was a similar Restorationist movement throughout Europe where the Reformation was strongest, but on a smaller scale. There were a number of Restorationists in Holland during the time of the Puritan movement. Isaac de la Peyrere (1594–1676), who served as the French Ambassador to Denmark, “wrote a book wherein he argued for a restoration of the Jews to Israel without conversion to Christianity.”
In 1655, Paul Felgenhauever, wrote Good News for Israel in which he taught that there would be the “permanent return of the Jews to their own country eternally bestowed upon them by God through the unqualified promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”
The Dane, Holger Paulli (1644–1714) “believed wholeheartedly in the Jewish Return to the Holy Land, as a condition for the Second Coming.” He even “lobbied the kings of Denmark, England, and France to go and conquer Palestine from the Ottomans in order that the Jews could regain their nation.”
Frenchman, Marquis de Langallerie (1656–1717), schemed with the Turkish Ambassador in the Hague on a plan defeat the Pope and trade the papal empire for a return of the Jews to the Holy Land. Langallerie was arrested in Hamburg, tried and convicted of high treason and died in prison a year later.
Other European Restorationists of the era include: Isaac Vossius, Hugo Grotius, Gerhard John Vossius, David Blondel, Vasover Powel, Joseph Eyre, Edward Whitaker, and Charles Jerran.
The mid-1600s witnessed “the sudden explosion of millenarian publications,” which predisposed the British to also consider the future fate of the Jews in the holy land. James Saddington lists the following seventeenth century English individuals as holding to Restorationist views: John Milton, John Bunyan, Roger Williams, John Sadler and Oliver Cromwell.
“The doctrine of the restoration of the Jews continued to be expounded in England, evolving according to the insight of each exponent,” concludes Ehle, “and finally playing a role in Christian Zionistic actiivities in the latter part of the nineteenth and in the first of the twentieth centuries.”
Thank-you! That was informative, but are you claiming that in the NT there is no discussion of Jews being returned by God to their promised land?
 
Thank-you! That was informative, but are you claiming that in the NT there is no discussion of Jews being returned by God to their promised land?

There's discussion, but it's open to interpretation. Historically it's been a matter of whether the references to Israel and a new Jerusalem are seen as literal or a metaphor for the Church.

The idea of proactively preempting the end times by restoring Israel seems counter-biblical though.
When Jesus was asked whether he would restore the Kingdom of Israel:

"It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.
But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."
 
Did Iraq or Syria retaliate after the Israelis bombed them? No.
Iran won't do anything either. They are all bark and no bite. They know the Israelis would nuke them with U.S. support.

North Korea is the same story. Their nukes are not capable of flying yet. The bomb is still too big to fit in a missile. Shit, even Pakistan has already mastered that technology for their nukes.

Iraq and Syria couldn't.

Iran and NK would act insane if given no other choice. If we tried to invade them.

The question is, why wouldn't Iran block the straight of Hormuz if they were invaded?

Why wouldn't NK use nukes on it's own lands, on invading forces?

I can't come up with a good reason.
 
Widespread Christian Zionism predates the modern state of Israel by several centuries (at least 1587 in the UK, and was later taken up by the Puritans). In fact to a large extent it was Christian Zionism (AKA the restoration movement) that revived Jewish desire for a state.
Premillenial dispensationalism took root in America in the early 1800s.
These days Christian Zionists are more numerous in the developing world, where it's spread mostly by the prosperity doctrine inclined Pentecostals (who did predominantly emerge from America).

Wow that's interesting.
 
As soon as I hear someone mention "Russian collusion" I will ask them what about the Israeli collusion. It is met with a stone cold glare.<mma3>
 
Thank-you! That was informative, but are you claiming that in the NT there is no discussion of Jews being returned by God to their promised land?

I know this is addressed to Ruprecht, but I'll answer: No.
 
As soon as I hear someone mention "Russian collusion" I will ask them what about the Israeli collusion. It is met with a stone cold glare.<mma3>

Well see, it isn't the same, because Israel is our ally, and Russia is the enemy.

Pay no attention to the fact, that we are a nation of laws, and that no law exists that allows for this distinction.
 
Let's start with a basic argument for why presidents and party members of both sides have bent their knee to AIPAC more then any other organization, when Jewish people make up 1.4% of US population?

Really? So they have bent a knee more than the Military Industrial Complex that has gotten us into a war every 15ish years and have kept conflicts going well beyond what they should have since the Korean War?!?

All Lobbies have way too much power.
 
You're not wrong. Like they getting a bipartisan bill passed to shut people up in another country up about their human rights abuses. That's incredible influence. I'd say both parties bases, more in the Dems but a majority in both are opposed to Israel's behavior at least in part but like the MIC that influence overrides this. They are also using the moral high ground from being historically oppressed to oppress others and they've been very successful equating anti Israel(a relgious ethno state supposedly at odds with all America's founding principles) to being anti Semitic despite a large minority of their own Jewish population agreeing with the supposed anti Semites(not a majority but must be known Bibi winning the last election was a surprise). Of course the fact actual anti semites are going to go into an anti Israel movement gives them enough substance to continue that bs.

Yeah they have the firmest grip of any lobby. Wall Street and MIC and to a lesser extent the health insurers have two party monopolies on lobbying and influence but at least there the people are still able to elect nominal opposition to those lobby's. On Israel-Palestine, Obama/Kerry's frustration at building more settlements and supporting the international community on things like the Iran Nuclear deal is as far as it goes.
 
Netanyahu is not even a practicing Jew.

The Israelis are really good at bombing nuclear reactors in secrecy. Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007. Neither country went to war with Israel. Trump has them slotted for an Iranian bombing in 2019. No need to put our boys (Americans) in dangers way...

Pretty sure iran is stronger and more prepared than 81 iraq and current syria. Current syria has shot down israeli planes

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-middle-east-43014081
 
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