Same old Story: Without a common Scapegoat (Israel), Arab Cultural differences don't get along.
It's not like the Eastern half of the World doesn't already know this, but to assume that Arabs all get along and Israel is the Big bad Wolf is to put alot of stock in fairy tales and bedtime stories.
The facts are; Arabic people groups don't like each other, so you can plan on a palestinian state, you can connive a palestinian state, you can blackmail a palestinian state but you will never get a paslestinian to live there unless he is a an american;
They just don't get along...
New Fatah leadership deepens West Bank-Gaza split
DEBKAfile Special Report
August 12, 2009, 2:41 AM (GMT+02:00)
Abu Maher Ghneim
After days of heated wrangling and vicious infighting, the 2,300 delegates to the Palestinian Fatah general convention confirmed Mahmoud Abbas, 74, as leader and awarded his chosen successor, the hardliner Abu Maher Ghneim, 71, the highest number of votes in the new Central Committee. But 14 out of the eighteen places up for election changed hands. The "old guard" which has ruled the movement founded by Yasser Arafat for decades was ousted and replaced by younger home-grown faces, notably Jibril Rajoub from Hebron, Mohammad Dahlan the former Gaza strongman, who was accused of losing the Gaza Strip to Hamas, and Marwan Barghouti, who is serving a life sentence in Israel for multiple terrorist attacks.
DEBKAfile"s Palestinian sources report that the rise of Dahlan, Hamas' sworn enemy, puts the lid on any imminent burying of the hatchet between Fatah and Hamas or the reunification of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The second obstacle to US president Barack Obama's Middle East peace program is Abu Ghneim. Abbas brought him over from exile in Tunisia to gradually take over the reins of Palestinian leadership. His approach to peace negotiations is negative. The newcomers to the Central Committee are likely to follow his lead.
None of the new leaders argued in favor of abandoning Fatah's traditional support for "resistance," amending its charter which like that of Hamas calls for Israel's destruction, or relinquishing any part of Jerusalem.
Final results of the Central Committee vote are expected Tuesday and of the 129-seat Revolutionary Council by the end of the week.
"I became an atheist to distance myself from people like you, but since becoming an atheist I’ve found that I don’t care – I honestly don’t care – if there is a God. I don’t care if there is an afterlife. I don’t care if I’m going to Hell. Oh, you can say all you want about that, I just don’t care. You can’t save me."
And I don’t believe a word you are saying. If you became an atheist to distance yourself from people like me, why are you writing to me? You may say that you don’t care, but you do, and so do I.
I care enough to get up on a soapbox thousands of times and look like a fool, to plead with people like you who either say that they don’t care about their eternal welfare, or show that they don’t by their godless lifestyle.
But the Bible teaches that sinful mankind doesn't "care" about God. He gave them life itself and they don’t care. He gave them eyes to see His incredible creation, ears to listen to incredible music, taste buds to enjoy incredible food, and they don’t care. As the Psalmist says, "God is not in their thoughts," and yet at the same time they vainly use His name as a cuss word.
If you had to give up one of those senses, which would it be? Sight? You don't care if you go blind? How about giving up your taste? Or your hearing? Imagine, never seeing a beautiful rose or a sunset, or the color blue ever again, or never tasting good food, or hearing the music of a bird in the early morning? If you are sane, you care.
But the loss of those precious senses are nothing compared to giving up your soul. You "soul" is the real you. It’s the interchangeable Bible word for your life. Your soul looks out the windows you call "eyes." It’s your soul that responds to the 10,000 friendly little taste buddies on your tongue. Your soul listens to the amazing sounds that are pulled into your inner ear. You don’t know what you have until it’s gone. Familiarity does breed contempt. Jesus said that if a man gained the entire world but lost his soul, he is the biggest of losers.
Yet, every day more than 80 Americans "don't care" enough to take their own lives. Life's circumstances have tragically driven them to that terrible point. Atheism is your first step in that direction. You owe it nothing.
You are right about one thing though. I can’t save you. Only God can. So after you have read these words of mine, how about reading the words of God? Read Matthew chapter 5-7 and get a glimpse of His perfect holiness. Then think about how we all justly deserve Hell if God is that holy, and think about how Jesus cared enough to take your punishment upon Himself--to pay your fine so that the Judge of the universe could dismiss your case. What more could you want?
I was rather surprised to see a discussion on apologetics on a prophecy site, must be a slow news day...,
That alone warned me the article writers would miss the point of prophecy and get side tracked into religion and traditions...like arguing.
Faith does not need apologetics anymore than God needs Man to prove he exists. Jesus eliminated the need and the "debate" over religion and man made ideas.
God wrote Prophecy to tell us the end from the beginning so when we see it come to pass we know it is God speaking. Not a Pastor or teacher, or would be apologist but God.
God you can count on. God who said it, and did it. God who says Yes and No. God who can be understood and sought out and known.
Oddly, men want to get inbetween.
Why I don't know...., I stand back when they do and frankly, THD's PHD's, scholars and frankly modern teachers make fools of themselves when they get away from letting God be God.
You see, the reason is they make God less personal so YOU don't have the responsibility to Seek the Lord and find out the Bible is True and Man is not.
The Bile says about God: I will be found of them who seek me with all their heart.
Simple,
then some fool interpreter comes along and says we need to prove why God said what he did, they way he did, and make a long drawn out excuse for what he said and pretend we know why he said it and in the end we wind up: SPEAKING AS IF WE WERE GOD.
Helloooo,
My God is real, he is alive. I would not follow Christianity in a heartbeat and reject it outright if it were not for the fact, Jesus is real.
If He is not for you, quit wherever you are and go find the answer. You are being decieved.
Apologetics tries to do the same thing...it says you have to PROVE GOD and PROVE FAITH....,
ahhhhh WHY?????.....
God is........, and I know it........., so?
Do I have to prove hell exists? Should I become satanic to prove satan exists? No.
And I sure don't have to apologize for the fact My Lord and My God, confounds the snot out of scholars who want to read me the riot act for telling simple people they don't need scholars to tell them about God or how to witness.
They only Need to Ask Jesus...He will do the rest.
Your Faith is as the Bible you read. It says what it means and means what it says and if God can use a Jackass to save a man from running into an invisible angel with a flaming sword, I don't need a Prophecy Site which should prepare me to see Jesus, tell me I should know the in's and out's of what others want.
I have Jesus, I have taken people one by one alone and introduced them to Jesus by a simple foolish means, I sat with them prayed, opened a Bible and let God do the rest.
Whatever that person read came true between that person and God. I never asked what it was, never wanted to know, never beleived it would work, and felt like an idiot doing it...,
But you know what?
I stand as a Witness to every person I shared with, they Know God is real, they Know that part, they have no dount at all.....,
What they did after that was between them and God, I just introduced them. -----
You have the same gift, the same ability. Whatever you know, however you are, if you are introducing someone to Jesus, you just need to do it and the rest God will do.
If you use a Bible Far out, if not, who cares, God made the Universe and he made a donkey talk, you just start...,
Leave religion to religious, they like Pride and miss the mark more than they make it and think they are learning something new, when God said rejoice in that you know him, not about him.
Michael James Stone
-----------
By the way, my hermaneutic and homiletic is secure and eat scholars for lunch because I will admit the reality is Jesus and relationship tot he Father, the rest is commnetary and they always want to comment, not commit you into God's safe hands..., You will do fine if you Trust in the Lord and not apologetical linguistics...., MjS
For the average Christian, the word "apologetics" is a very strange and sometimes scary word. Does it mean the act of one who goes around and apologizes for the Christian faith? Can one be an expert in apologetics? So, just what is apologetics, anyway?
Lamb & Lion Ministries interviewed one of today's foremost defenders of the faith, Eric Barger, the founder and director of Take a Stand! Ministries headquartered in the Dallas area. Dr. James Kennedy once told his congregation everyone needs to read Eric Barger's insights. And, the late national radio host Marlene Maddox called Eric one of the utmost authorities on the cults, the New Age, and rock music today. From his past as a former drug addict and rock n' roll musician who was deeply involved in the New Age movement, Eric has emerged since he gave his life to Jesus Christ to become one of today's greatest defenders of Christianity in America.
Eric was asked a number of question related to that curious word "apologetics."
What Does "Apologetics" Mean?
Well, I try to explain that every time I speak or mention that word, because there is always someone out there who doesn't understand. "Apologetics" is the Bible school term for the defense of the faith. In fact, the word that we get the English word "apologetics" from is found eight times in the New Testament and it is apologia. Maybe the most famous reference to apologia is 1 Peter 3:15, which says we are to be ready to give every man an answer. And, that's the word "apologetics," from apologia.
We are to be able to defend the faith, and that is what apologetics is — the defense of the faith.
What Do You Do in Apologetics?
I am going to throw out another term to you — "polemics." Polemics is often times exposing other religions for being worthless in order to save someone. So, polemics and apologetics move together. Apologetics is understanding Christianity and being able to defend that, and to explain it to the culture in such a way that people will understand orthodox biblical Christianity. Polemics then is the exposé about false cults. And that is a lot of what I do, dealing with cults, the New Age Movement, and the occult.
I have written about all of those things and, of course, speak about them full-time. This is our 25th anniversary in the full-time traveling ministry, so I have been out there doing it quite awhile.
What aspect of Christianity do you find needs the most defense?
Sound doctrine.
We see a church today with many people who believe, and they go to church every week, but I think there is a void in preaching and teaching the sound understanding of the elements of Christianity that make up Christianity, such as the virgin birth, blood atonement, salvation by grace, the inerrancy of the Scripture, who God is, who Jesus is, etc. I mean, we don't have a lot of teaching like that today. There is some and, of course, a lot of pastors are preaching that all the time. But, I think that in evangelical circles there is a void on these things, and I am concerned about that.
Doctrine is important. The word "doctrine" is used 50 times in the Scriptures. We ought to understand that if we don't have that, if we don't understand good sound Biblical doctrine, then we're really game for the cults, and we are game to become cultist ourselves.
Most people do not realize that most of the people that joined a cult over the years were Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterians and so forth. They are people who just grew up as cultural Christians, but really didn't know anything about the faith and could not defend anything. They just inherited the faith and that was it.
If we don't know what we believe, when the storms hit us or when other religions are before us and confronting us saying that they are "the way," then we won't know what to say. Not only will we not be any good to get through to them to present the real Jesus who can save them eternally, but we will fall prey to it, too.
The Mormon church has a huge promotional campaign going on to try to appear like a more enlightened Christian denomination today. They are preying on Christians who don't know their doctrine.
When people tell me that doctrine is really not all that important, one of the things that immediately comes to mind is the doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus. It is amazing how many Christian leaders there are today who would even deny the resurrection of Jesus. And you know, if He wasn't resurrected, we don't have a faith. We better find another religion, because He could have fulfilled all the other prophecies in the Scriptures about the Messiah, but if He didn't raise from the grave He wasn't the Messiah.
Also, perhaps the doctrine that has been dismissed the most as just being completely irrelevant is the doctrine of the virgin birth, but that is an important doctrine. I mean, Jesus was God in the flesh.
How Can Pastors Teach Doctrine if They Also Consider the Bible Isn't Inerrant?
If the Bible is filled with errors then you just can't teach doctrine. You will fall back on what many preachers today seem to be falling back to, and that is the self help type of study that it's all about you and not about God. Every sermon ends up being about you and what God can do for you. Too much of the preaching today is all about the here and now and not about eternity.
Again, the virgin birth and the resurrection in my opinion are the two most attacked doctrines and the ones most marginalized. The virgin birth, for example, if Jesus wasn't born of a virgin then we've got errors in the Scripture because Matthew 1 is very clear that He was born of a virgin. Isaiah talks about the virgin birth as one of the prerequisites for the Messiah. And so, Jesus either was, or He wasn't. And, the same is true with the Resurrection, either Jesus was or He wasn't. These are two things that I talk in detail about.
For instance, we have a major Christian University in the Dallas area and a few years ago the Professor Emeritus of New Testament at that University gave an Easter sermon and it was so revolutionary. The Dallas Morning News posted the whole sermon. It went like this: after Jesus died the disciples sat around the table and they just remembered things Jesus said and it was kind of like the followers of Martin Luther King after he died. They sat around and drank coffee and said, "You remember when Martin said this, you remember when Martin said that." And, as they talked about Martin, he came alive in their hearts. And, that is all there was to the Resurrection — Jesus just came alive in their hearts. Sounding just like Oprah, this example shows a feeling experience and not a believing experience, with no literal interpretation.
Without a belief in the inerrancy of the Scriptures, you can teach doctrine, but it won't be right doctrine. ------------------------------
Apologeticsis the whole of the consensus of the views of those who defend a position in an argument of long standing. The term comes from theGreek wordapologia(απολογία), meaning a speaking in defense.
Early Christianwriters (c120-220) who defended their faith against critics and recommended their faith to outsiders were calledapologists[1]
In hisApologeticus, he was the first who qualified Christianity as the 'vera religio' ("true religion"), and symmetrically relegated the classical Empire religion and other accepted cults to the position of mere 'superstitions'.
An additional early use of the term, isAugustusCaesar's apologia or defense of his accomplishments asRoman Emperorinscribed outside of his tomb, at his death in 14 A.D. on pillars of bronze, called theThe Deeds of the Divine Augustus(in Latin:Res Gestae Divi Augusti). They were widely copied and distributed throughout theRoman Empire. It is regarded as one of the more important apologias of the ancient world.[3]
Arngrímur Jónssonwas anIcelandicscholar who wrote the bookBrevis commentarius de Islandiain Latin as a "defense of Iceland" where he criticized the works of numerous authors who had written about the people and the country of Iceland.
John Henry Cardinal Newman(February 21, 1801 – August 11, 1890) was an English convert toRoman Catholicism, later made acardinal, and in 1991 proclaimed 'Venerable'. In early life he was a major figure in theOxford Movementto bring theChurch of Englandback to its Catholic roots. Eventually his studies in history persuaded him to become a Roman Catholic. When John Henry Newman entitled his spiritual autobiographyApologia Pro Vita Suain 1864, he was playing upon both this connotation, and the more commonly understood meaning of an expression of contrition or regret.
The termapologeticsetymologically derives from the Classical Greek wordapologia. In the Classical Greek legal system two key technical terms were employed: the prosecution delivered thekategoria(κατηγορία), and the defendant replied with anapologia. To deliver anapologiathen meant making a formal speech to reply and rebut the charges, as in the case of Socrates' defense.
This Classical Greek term appears in theKoine(i.e. common) Greek of the New Testament. TheApostle Paulemploys the termapologiain his trial speech toFestusandAgrippawhen he says "I make my defense" (Acts 26:2). Acognateterm appears in Paul'sLetter to the Philippiansas he is "defending the gospel" (Philippians 1:7 & 16), and in1 Peter 3:15believers must be ready to give an "answer" for their faith. The word also appears in the negative inRomans 1:20: unbelievers are αναπολόγητοι (anapologētoi) (without excuse, defense, or apology) for rejecting the revelation of God in creation.
The legal nuance of apologetics was reframed in a more specific sense to refer to the study of the defense of a doctrine or belief. In this context it most commonly refers to philosophical reconciliation. Religious apologetics is the effort to show that the preferred faith is not irrational, that believing in it is not against human reason, and that in fact the religion contains values and promotes ways of life more in accord with human nature than other faiths or beliefs.
In theEnglish language, the wordapologyis derived from the Greek wordapologia, but its use has changed; its primary sense now refers to a plea for forgiveness for a wrong act. Implicit in this is an admission of guilt, thus turning on its head the "speaking in defense" aspect of the original concept. An uncommon secondary sense refers to a speech or writing that defends the speaker or author's position.
Christian apologetics is a field ofChristian theologythat aims to present a rational basis for the Christian faith, defend the faith against objections, and expose the perceived flaws of otherworld views.[4]Christian apologetics have taken many forms over the centuries, starting withPaul of Tarsus, including writers such asAugustine of HippoandThomas Aquinas, and continuing currently with the modern Christian community, through the efforts of many authors in various Christian traditions such asC.S. Lewisand speakers such asJosh McDowellorDr. Frank Turek. Apologists have based their defense of Christianity on favoring interpretations of historical evidence, philosophicalarguments, scientific investigation, and other disciplines.
As the world's religions have encountered one another, apologetics and apologists from within their respective faiths have emerged. Some of these apologetics respond to or fight back against the arguments of both Christianity andsecularism; some do not.
Apologists for Islam have defended theKoranusing rationalist and empiricist arguments, and using cosmological arguments to prove God's existence. Muslims have actually developed their own form of creationism,Islamic creationism. Islamic apologists have also challenged both Jewish and Christian beliefs. The late South African Islamic scholar,Ahmed Deedat, was a prolific popular writer who debated Christian evangelists by arguing over discrepancies in the Bible, and claiming theGospel of Barnabasis the only authentic record of Jesus' life.
One of the earliest Buddhist apologetic texts isThe Questions of King Milinda, which deals with ethical and intellectual problems. In the British colonial era, Buddhists in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) wrote tracts that challenged and rejected Christianity. In the mid-nineteenth century, encounters between Buddhists and Christians in Japan prompted the formation of aBuddhist Propagation Society. In recent times A. L. De Silva, an Australian convert to Buddhism, has written a text designed to refute the arguments of Christian evangelists. At a sophisticated academic level, Gunapala Dharmasiri has challenged theChristian concept of Godfrom aTheravadan Buddhistperspective.
Hindu apologetics designed to counter Christian missions developed in the British colonial era. Richard Fox Young has collated examples of these early apologetic tracts.[citation needed]
In a famous speech called Red Jacket on Religion for the White Man and the Red[5]in 1805,SenecachiefRed Jacketgave an apologist argument forAmerican Indianreligion.
At the end of the 19th and the beginning 20th Century a group of arch conservative American economists and social scientists appeared who have been called the American Apologists. In spite of their different theoretical orientations they were apologists for the status quo and rose to defend the new industrial age and condemn the unions and populist causes.[6]
Polemics(pronounced/pɵˈlɛmɪks/) is the practice of disputing or controverting significant, broad reaching topics of magnitude such asreligious,philosophical,political, orscientificmatters. As such, a polemic text on a topic is often written specifically to dispute or refute a position or theory that is widely viewed to be beyond reproach.
Polemic journalism was common in continental Europe whenlibellaws were not as stringent.[1]The Research Support Libraries Programme "Pamphletand polemic: pamphlets as a guide to the controversies of the 17th-19th centuries", co-managed by theUniversity of St. Andrews, theUniversity of Aberdeen, andUniversity of Wales Lampeter, collected and placed thousands of pamphlets on-line as a study of polemic rhetoric of that era.[2]There are other meanings of the word as well. Polemic is also a branch oftheology, pertaining to the history or conduct ofecclesiasticalcontroversy.[3]
The word is derived from the Greek wordpolemikos(πολεμικος), which means "warlike," "hostile".[4]Platouses a character namedPolemarchusin his dialogueRepublicas a vehicle to drive forward an ethical debate.
^Dvoskin JA, Heilbrun K. "Risk assessment and release decision-making: toward resolving the great debate."J Am Acad Psychiatry Law. 2001;29(1):6-10.PMID 11302389
