Category Archives: Topics

July 22, 2016

Dueling Narratives: Zionism #5

By Clarke Morledge
The extent of the Zionist vision of the Promised Land, according to Genesis 17:7-8. The current borders of Israel are but a fraction of this area (image credit: The Balfour Project, Stephen Sizer)

The extent of the Zionist vision of the Promised Land, according to Genesis 15:18-21, from the Nile(?) River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in Iran. The current borders of Israel are but a fraction of this area (image credit: The Balfour Project, Stephen Sizer)

By the time war broke out in Palestine in 1948, there was already an emergence of two different, dueling narratives describing the advent of Zionism in the Middle East. These narratives have continued to operate in conflict with one another to the present day. This is where a conversation about this topic can go off the rails rather quickly, as it can generate a lot of emotion. Everybody has their own choice of news sources and Internet sites they follow to get their information about the situation in the Middle East. Nevertheless, these differing narratives are difficult to ignore, so I will try to address them as fairly as I know how, particularly for those who know little about recent and current affairs in Israel, and then allow the Veracity reader to come to their own conclusions.

One story tells about the modern miracle of a genuine homeland for the Jews, a people who have endured centuries of persecution and hatred. The other story is about the colonial ambitions of Western powers, interfering with the principle of self-determination among the Arab peoples who themselves had lived in the land for centuries. These competing narratives have, at various times among various peoples, provided both uplifting encouragement as well as devastating sadness, injecting a good measure of confusion to outsiders, like myself, who are trying to understand what is going on.

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July 17, 2016

Theodor Herzl’s Quest: Zionism #4

By Clarke Morledge
Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), one of the chief visionaries behind modern Zionist, the desire for a Jewish state in Palestine (credit: Wikipedia)

Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), one of the chief visionaries behind modern Zionist, the desire for a Jewish state in Palestine (credit: Wikipedia)

Was biblical prophecy fulfilled when the modern nation state of Israel was founded in 1948? Well, the story in its historical context is rather complex. Efforts to establish a Zionist state in the Holy Land began many years before 1948, and the impact of that history continues to be felt today.

The best place to start this part of the story is with a young Austria-Hungarian Jew in the late 19th century, Theodor Herzl.

Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) had gone to France to embark on a career as a journalist. There he followed the sensational Dreyfus Affair, where a French Jewish army officer was falsely accused and convicted of spying for the Germans. It was evident to many, including Herzl, that antisemitism was behind the entire trial, and that the future for Jews in Europe was rather bleak. As we saw in an earlier blog post, antisemitism was a terrible stain on traditionally “Christian” Europe.
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July 13, 2016

Racism, Police Authority, and the Misinterpretation of the Bible

By Clarke Morledge
FBI posted looking for three civil rights workers in Neshoba County, Mississippi, June 21, 1964.

FBI poster looking for three missing civil rights workers in Neshoba County, Mississippi, June 21, 1964.

Ferguson, Missouri. Baltimore. Minneapolis. Baton Rouge. Dallas. Black Lives Matter.

America is caught in the middle of racial conflict, as tensions between law enforcement and African American communities have erupted in violence. However, the problem has deep roots in history. An understanding of these roots will go a long way towards healing and reconciliation. Some of these roots go back to misinterpretation of the Bible.

In June, 2016, the Mississippi attorney general officially closed a 52-year old case involving the murders of three civil rights workers, in the summer of 1964. Members of the Ku Klux Klan in Neshoba County had killed two white men and one African American who had traveled to Mississippi to help segregated African Americans register to vote. The Klansmen feared that the efforts of these three men would lead to the “mixing of the races,” so they sought to teach the civil rights workers “a lesson.”

The Klansmen were aided by one of their number, a local deputy sheriff, Cecil Price, who arranged for the abduction of the three men after a supposed traffic stop and afternoon in jail. The three were taken to an earthen dam, where they were shot and buried, one of them still breathing as the bulldozer shoveled the dirt over them.

Deputy Cecil Price was never convicted of murder, but he was tried and sentenced to six years in prison on civil rights violations, in 1967. The ringleader of the Klan group, Edgar Ray Killen, was finally convicted of manslaughter and put in jail thirty-six years later in 2005, as part of this infamous “Mississippi Burning” case.1

Edgar Ray Killen was a part-time Baptist preacher. Killen had been put on trial back in the 1960s, but he escaped conviction back then due to a hung jury. One of the jurors in that early case claimed that they could have never convicted a preacher.

Price was the “law man,” and Killen had the Bible. Thankfully, men like Price and Killen are an exception, and do not represent in any way all law enforcement authorities or Christian preachers. Yet I sincerely doubt that Price would have been able to self-justify his actions if Killen, the preacher, had not somehow signaled that the terrible actions they ended up all taking were somehow, “Okay with God.”

So, what goes through the mind of someone, like “Preacher” Killen, who can justify such brutality, a man who claims to be guided by the Word of God? How can a law enforcement official, like Cecil Price, go along with such actions? Where do people get the idea, that the “mixing of the races” is something contrary to the Bible, to begin with? Continue reading

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July 9, 2016

Luther’s Deadly Error: Zionism #3

By Clarke Morledge
Martin Luther (1483-1546), by Cranach (credit: Wikipedia)

Martin Luther (1483-1546), by Cranach. Zealous champion of the Gospel, but with a horrific personal flaw  (credit: Wikipedia)

“To forget the victims means to kill them a second time. So I couldn’t prevent the first death. I surely must be capable of saving them from a second death. “

— Elie Wiesel, holocaust survivor, died July 2, 2016

“Antisemitism”, commonly understood to be the discrimination against the Jewish people, has never, ever been approved doctrine by any orthodox branch of the Christian church. After all, Jesus Himself was Jewish.

However, there have been a number of very terrible instances when antisemitic sentiment found itself promoted by a supposedly “Christianized” culture, and even supported by some practicing and prominent Christians themselves. As we continue this blog series on Christian Zionism, we take a closer look at one of the greatest tragedies in Christian history, stemming back to the famous Protestant reformer, Martin Luther.
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July 7, 2016

Noah’s Ark Comes to Kentucky

By Clarke Morledge

There is a good chance that you might be hearing quite a bit about Noah’s Ark in the near future…

Today, Answers in Genesis, will be opening a brand new museum, ArkEncounter, in Williamstown, Kentucky. Ken Ham, the visionary behind the project, believes that the story of the Bible teaches that a global flood cataclysm enveloped the earth less than 6,000 years ago. To drive home this interpretation of the Bible, Ham’s team has built a full-sized replica of the original ark, as a type of educational, Christian-themed amusement park.

Contrary to the quaint, Sunday-School description of cute giraffes sticking their heads out of the top of the ark, the primary message behind Noah and the flood is deadly serious. Humanity is sick with sin and rebellion against a holy and loving God, and apart from the Good News of Jesus Christ, we all deserve to perish underneath the waves of His holy judgment. While those who believe the Bible embrace these truths, not every believer interprets the scientific details of the flood in the same, precise manner as presented by ArkEncounter.

For example, ArkEncounter promotes the interpretation that the great mountains of the world, such as Mount Everest, were a great deal shorter just a few thousand years ago, prior to Noah’s flood. Therefore, God would not have needed five miles high of water to envelope the planet. Nor would have the animals required oxygen at such a great height, aboard the ark. This presupposes that once the great flood began to recede, a rapid series of plate tectonic movements resulted in the creation of mountains, like Everest, even though no such event is clearly described in the Bible, and no scientific evidence of such catastrophic tectonic movements has been found. Other Christians, on the other hand, believe that Noah’s flood was more local in scope to the Mesopotamian area, though sufficient enough to wipeout the then known, “world of the ungodly” (2 Peter 2:5). Such a large scale flooding event, though not global, does find support within current scientific research.

Several years ago, John Paine and I put together a bunch of posts examining the flood from a biblical point of view:

  • Noah, featuring the ministry of Hugh Ross and Reasons to Believe
  • Flood, Faith and Russell Crowe, a look at how different Christians view the biblical teaching on the flood.
  • Noah vs. Noah, more on the flood, and how Hollywood often gets the story wrong.

Also, Old Testament scholar Tremper Longman has a few blog posts, at Biologos.org, looking at the question of what is the ancient and proper literary genre of Genesis 6-9, as the key to understanding Noah and the flood. His answer, briefly? The flood story is “neither literal history nor myth.” It is something far more interesting.

Here is a flyover of the ArkEncounter exhibit:

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