By MUNIR AHMAD, Associated Press Writer–6 mins ago
ISLAMABAD – A missile fired from a suspected U.S. unmanned plane destroyed a suspected militant hide-out in northwestPakistanon Friday, killing at least nine people in a stronghold of a jihadi leader blamed for attacks inAfghanistan, intelligence officials said.
The United States has launched more than 40 missile strikes onal-QaidaandTalibantargets close to the Afghan border since last year, reportedly killing several top commanders, but also civilians. Earlier this month, one such strike is believed by U.S. and Pakistani officials to have killed the Pakistani Taliban chief,Baitullah Mehsud.
The attack Friday was on a housing compound in the village of Dande Darpa Khel, nearMiran ShahinNorth Waziristan, three intelligence officers said condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media. They said several people were wounded.
Authorities stepped up security in the region following the attack and the officials said efforts were under way to get details about the victims.
Dande Darpa Khel and surrounding areas are strongholds of Afghan Taliban leader Siraj Haqqani whose network is powerful in eastern Afghanistan. He has a large Islamic school in the village that was hit by a U.S. missile in October 2008, killing about 20 people.
Siraj is the son of senior Taliban leaderJalaluddin Haqqani, a veteran of the fight against Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s, who American commanders now count as a dangerous foe. Haqqani is alleged to have close connections to al-Qaida and to have helped funnel foreign fighters into Afghanistan.
The Haqqanis have been linked to attacks in Afghanistan, including an attempt to killPresident Hamid Karzaiand asuicide attackon a hotel in Kabul, both last year. Haqqani network operatives also plague U.S. forces inAfghanistan's eastern Khost provincewith ambushes and roadside bombs.
Pakistan's border region is remote, mountainous and there is little government or military control there. Al-Qaida's top leadership, includingOsama bin Laden, are believed to be hiding in the area.
The U.S. occasionally fired missiles into the region beginning in 2006, but dramatically stepped up the attacks last year.
The strikes have targeted militants behind surging attacks inPakistan, those blamed for violence in Afghanistan, as well as al-Qaida and other foreign terrorists allegedly using the area to plot or train for terrorist attacks around the world.
The missiles are fired from CIA-operated drones believed to be launched from across the border in Afghanistan or from secret bases inside Pakistan. They are reported to be piloted by operatives inside the United States. U.S. officials rarely — if ever — acknowledge the airstrikes.
The Pakistani government publicly protests the attacks, which are unpopular among many in this Muslim country of 170 million people, many of whom see the United States and its allies as prosecuting an unjust war against co-religionists in Afghanistan.
Despite this, it is assumed to be cooperating with the strikes and providing intelligence on them.
The government says Washington should give the technology toIslamabadas its military is capable of using the drones.
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Associated Press writer Hussain Afzal from Parachinar contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — From a secret division at its North Carolina headquarters, the company formerly known asBlackwaterhas assumed a role in Washington’s most important counterterrorism program: the use of remotely piloteddronesto killAl Qaeda’s leaders, according to government officials and current and former employees.
The division’s operations are carried out at hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the company’s contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft, work previously performed by employees of theCentral Intelligence Agency. They also provide security at the covert bases, the officials said.
The role of the company in the Predator program highlights the degree to which the C.I.A. now depends on outside contractors to perform some of the agency’s most important assignments. And it illustrates the resilience of Blackwater, now known as Xe (pronounced Zee) Services, though most people in and outside the company still refer to it as Blackwater. It has grown through government work, even as it attracted criticism and allegations of brutality in Iraq.
A spokesman for the C.I.A. declined to comment for this article.
The New York Times reported Thursday that the agency hired Blackwater in 2004 as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top Qaeda operatives.
In interviews on Thursday, current and former government officials provided new details about Blackwater’s association with the assassination program, which began in 2004 not long afterPorter J. Gosstook over at the C.I.A. The officials said that the spy agency did not dispatch the Blackwater executives with a “license to kill.” Instead, it ordered the contractors to begin collecting information on the whereabouts of Al Qaeda’s leaders, carry out surveillance and train for possible missions.
“The actual pulling of a trigger in some ways is the easiest part, and the part that requires the least expertise,” said one government official familiar with the canceled C.I.A. program. “It’s everything that leads up to it that’s the meat of the issue.”
Any operation to capture or kill militants would have had to have been approved by the C.I.A. director and presented to the White House before it was carried out, the officials said. The agency’s current director,Leon E. Panetta, canceled the program and notified Congress of its existence in an emergency meeting in June.
The extent of Blackwater’s business dealings with the C.I.A. has largely been hidden, but its public contract with the State Department to provide private security to American diplomats in Iraq has generated intense scrutiny and controversy.
The company lost the job in Iraq this year, after Blackwater guards were involved inshootings in 2007that left 17 Iraqis dead. It still has other, less prominent State Department work.
Five former Blackwater guards have been indicted in federal court on charges related to the 2007 episode.
A spokeswoman for Xe did not respond to a request for comment.
For its intelligence work, the company’s sprawling headquarters in North Carolina has a special division, known as Blackwater Select. The company’s first major arrangement with the C.I.A. was signed in 2002, with a contract to provide security for the agency’s new station in Kabul, Afghanistan. Blackwater employees assigned to the Predator bases receive training at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada to learn how to load Hellfire missiles and laser-guided smart bombs on the drones, according to current and former employees, who asked not to be identified for fear of upsetting the company.
The C.I.A. has for several years operated Predator drones out of a remote base in Shamsi, Pakistan, but has secretly added a second site at an air base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, several current and former government and company officials said. The existence of the Predator base in Jalalabad has not previously been reported.
Officials said the C.I.A. now conducted most of its Predator missile and bomb strikes on targets in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region from the Jalalabad base, with drones landing or taking off almost hourly. The base in Pakistan is still in use. But officials said that the United States decided to open the Afghanistan operation in part because of the possibility that the Pakistani government, facing growing anti-American sentiment at home, might force the C.I.A. to close the one in Pakistan.
Blackwater is not involved in selecting targets or actual strikes. The targets are selected by the C.I.A., and employees at the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Va., pull the trigger remotely. Only a handful of the agency’s employees actually work at the Predator bases in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the current and former employees said.
They said that Blackwater’s direct role in these operations had sometimes led to disputes with the C.I.A. Sometimes when a Predator misses a target, agency employees accuse Blackwater of poor bomb assembly, they said. In one instance last year recounted by the employees, a 500-pound bomb dropped off a Predator before it hit the target, leading to a frantic search for the unexploded bomb in the remote Afghan-Pakistani border region. It was eventually found about 100 yards from the original target.
The role of contractors in intelligence work expanded after the Sept. 11 attacks, as spy agencies were forced to fill gaps created when their work forces were reduced during the 1990s, after the end of the cold war.
More than a quarter of the intelligence community’s current work force is made up of contractors, carrying out missions like intelligence collection and analysis and, until recently,interrogationof terrorist suspects.
“There are skills we don’t have in government that we may have an immediate requirement for,” Gen.Michael V. Hayden, who ran the C.I.A. from 2006 until early this year, said during a panel discussion on Thursday on the privatization of intelligence.
General Hayden, who succeeded Mr. Goss at the agency, acknowledged that the C.I.A. program continued under his watch, though it was not a priority. He said the program was never prominent during his time at the C.I.A., which was one reason he did not believe that he had to notify Congress. He said it did not involve outside contractors by the time he came in.
SenatorDianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who presides over the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the agency should have notified Congress in any event. “Every single intelligence operation and covert action must be briefed to the Congress,” she said. “If they are not, that is a violation of the law.”
On Aug. 17, President Barack Obama made the obligatory presidential pilgrimage to the conclave of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, this time on Sen. John McCain’s home turf. The Phoenix speech, carried live on cable networks, captured a VFW audience often surly and seemingly uninterested in the president’s remarks. But at one point, he predictably brought even his recalcitrant audience to its feet when he made a pitch for his health care proposals: “One thing that reform won’t change is veterans’ health care. No one is going to take away your benefits. That’s the truth.” No doubt.
Away from the convention, the president and his spokespersons spent much of the day backing and filling on health care. Did he or didn’t he favor a public option? How much would “his” package (did he have one?) cost? And what about those “death panels”?
But for the VFW, Obama concentrated on the expanding war in Afghanistan—the war he now proudly asserts as his own. After in effect declaring victory in Iraq to justify the removal of American troops, Obama promised he now would “refocus” our efforts to “win” in Afghanistan. As Obama made abundantly clear in his presidential campaign, this was his war of choice, the one he consistently has said is necessary to eliminate al-Qaida, which had taken refuge in the desolate Afghan mountains.
During the campaign, he seemed at pains to demonstrate he was not the caricatured soft liberal when it came to American military power. Although Obama consistently has admitted, as he did before the VFW in Arizona, that military power alone will not be sufficient, he nevertheless has insisted that his “new strategy” has the clear mission “to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaida.” Obama knows that defeat of the Taliban is essential to this strategy. “If left unchecked,” he has remarked, the Taliban insurgency will bring “an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaida would plot to kill more Americans.” It is not, he maintains, a “war of choice,” but “a war of necessity.”
In 1991, following the defeat of Saddam Hussein and Iraqi forces in Kuwait, President George H.W. Bush proudly announced that we had “kicked the Vietnam Syndrome.” His successor son, propelled by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, heady with 2003’s lightning rout of Iraqi forces, believed he had restored the “can do” notions of World War II for the military component of American foreign policy.
The same day President Obama spoke to the VFW, The New York Times carried a dispatch from Afghanistan in which a villager talked about his security and the difference between night and day: “When you [the Americans] leave here, the Taliban will come at night and ask us why we were talking to you,” a villager named Abdul Razzaq said. “If we cooperate [with the U.S.], they would kill us.”
Whatever “syndrome” we kicked, Vietnam’s primary lesson remains intact: American power is not without limits, both in terms of defeating an enemy and in terms of its domestic support. The primary lesson of Vietnam seems to be that it is a lesson lost. And now we have some of the same intractable problems in Afghanistan.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke recently called Vietnam War historian Stanley Karnow for advice. After the conversation, Karnow told the AP that the main lesson to be learned from Vietnam was that “we shouldn’t have been there in the first place.” We apparently don’t know what was said on the other end in Karnow’s talk with the general and the envoy, but McChrystal has asked for more troops.
As Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson expanded the American commitment in Vietnam, their deputies regularly insisted that the insurgency had Chinese support and backing. “Peiping,” as Secretary of State Dean Rusk said in blatantly demeaning the Chinese, was to blame. If the government had had any historians with the courage to speak truth to power, they would have pointed to a millennium of historical enmity between the Chinese and the Vietnamese. As if to prove the point, the Chinese launched war against the victorious Vietnamese in 1975, only to suffer an embarrassing defeat.
The historical lessons for Afghanistan are clear. The British readily acknowledge their defeat. Surely the Russians know that Afghanistan was their Vietnam—with some not-so-covert intervention by the CIA. Afghanistan has been a graveyard for imperial ambitions, however noble and ostensibly good the ventures may have been. Long after the Guns of Health Care Reform are stilled, Afghanistan apparently promises to be with President Obama—and us—for a very long time.
We thought we defeated the Taliban once before; and now it is back again. President Obama believes we must do more to roll back the Taliban. But what can we do with the ethnic and tribal rivalries, the corruption and inefficiency in Kabul, all of which are related to the place of the Taliban? Will the U.S. be able to destroy, everywhere in the country, the Taliban’s grip on power? Does anyone in Obama’s circle ask “why?”
We can ponder the alternative. If successful, the Taliban might offer “an even larger safe haven” for al-Qaida and similar groups. But now, without Taliban control of the Afghanistan government, “safe havens” persist in the mountains of the country and in the northwest provinces of Pakistan. The situation is not much different than it was in 2001, except that the safe area for terrorists may be smaller. But what is different is our intelligence, our use of it, our vigilance and our capacity to strike with sophisticated air weapons.
Americans are questioning the Afghanistan involvement as never before. A Washington Post-ABC Poll, published this week, for the first time showed a majority of Americans opposed to the war. Meanwhile, suicide bombings and other attacks mount in Kabul. U.S. troops can protect the citizenry only sporadically, and with limitations. But inevitably, Americans will ask how long we will remain in Afghanistan, how many troops will be needed, and whether the costs in lives and treasure justify the venture. As with the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese army, chances of our destroying the Taliban are slight. Eventually, the Afghans—Taliban or otherwise—will inherit their land and have to assume responsibility for governing. We, like the British and the Russians before us, will fade into Afghanistan’s history.
Stanley Kutler is the author of “The Wars of Watergate” and other writings.
The White House be having trouble selling America on the President's health care plan, but he might have gotten his first real victory in his battle to overturn the first Amendment right to free speech.
The TVNewser blog has talked to Tipsters inside Fox News who are telling them that Glenn Beck's vacation this week from his Fox News show was not planned. They reported that Beck was told to take this week off to let some of the heat surrounding him die down. That heat began July 28 on "Fox & Friends" when Beck said he thought Pres. Obama has "a deep-seated hatred for white people," adding, "This guy is, I believe, a racist."
Leading the charge against Beck is Van Jones , officially president Obama's special adviser for enterprise and innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (the green jobs Czar), Van Jones' group Colors of Change was instrumental in keeping the heat on Fox and Beck:
Of course Jones affiliation with Colors of Change was covered up right away.Immediately following NewsBusters report, Colors of Change scrubbed its site of any mention of Jones. However, a Google cache of the site lists Jones as a founder.
ColorofChange.org mobilized an effort to get advertisers to pull their spots from Beck's show. Earlier this month, a Fox News spokesperson told TVNewser that the advertisers simply moved their spots from Beck to other programs, "so there has been no revenue lost."
But the list of advertisers grew to 20 and so did the resolve inside FNC that something more should be done.
Insiders note the ColorofChange movement is new territory for FNC. Other opinion hosts, including Sean Hannity, have not experienced an advertiser backlash.
The cooling off period this week seems to be working. The opinion coming from media watchers is that, in the end, Beck's not going anywhere, that he's too valuable to Fox News right now. Others have written that these advertiser boycotts don't work in the first place.
Beck's show Monday was taped, while Judge Napolitano has been sitting in this week. And, what does Beck have to say about all this? We'll see on Monday when he returns to the Fox News airwaves.
Perhaps its time to call/write or email Fox News and give them your opinion of their "forced" vacation of Glenn Beck.
Japanese intelligence has learned that in late May, Iran, Syria and North Korea secretly test-launched in southern Syria a new short-range ballistic missile developed jointly by Pyongyang, Tehran and Damascus as a substitute for the outdated Scuds still in use in their armed forces, DEBKAfile's military sources report. In May, several new missiles were flown from North Korea and Iran to the Damascus military airfield and thence to Syria's southeastern missile-testing site at Jebel Druze near the small town of Salakhand.
After two weeks' preparation, two of the new projectiles had their first trial-launch - and failed with disastrous results.
DEBKAfile's sources report that they targeted an uninhabited desert area in the North, 500 kilometers away, just south of Ayn Diwar and east of Al Qamishli not far from the Syrian-Turkish-Iraqi border intersection.
(It was here that Syria and Iraq, with Russian help, interred Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction in 2001.)
However, one of the missiles strayed 350-400 km west of its projected course, indicating a problem with its guidance system. It exploded in the center of the small town of Manbij north of Aleppo near the Turkish border, killing at least 20 people, injuring 60 and badly damaging the market town.
The second missile exploded in mid-course in the South, over the north of the town of Abu Kamal and 200 kilometers from its launching site. Syrian military authorities closed the area around the stricken town of Manbij for more than a month, attributing the disaster to a gas explosion.
Japanese intelligence sources, who are anxiously tracking the growing missile collaboration between North Korea, Iran and Syria, do not name the failed new missile, but DEBKAfile's military sources suggest it was a short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) propelled by solid fuel with a range of 800-1,000 kilometers and fitted with a warhead containing between 800 kilos and one ton of explosives. This would be an improvement on most of the three nations' short-range missiles which are powered with liquid fuel.
Christ was born "King of the Jews" (Mat 2:2), was called "King of Israel" and "King of the Jews" (Mt 27:11; Mk 15:2, etc.) and acknowledged both titles (Jn 1:49-50; 12:12-15). He did not renounce His claim to David's throne even though His own people (as the prophets had foretold) "despised, rejected" (Isa 53:3) and crucified Him (Ps 22:12-18; Isa 53:5; 8-10; Zec 12:10). All four gospels declare that "King of the Jews" was the accusation placed on the cross (Mat 27:37; Mk 15:26; Lk 23:38; Jn 19:19). Here is Mark's account of Israel rejecting her king and demanding His crucifixion:
But Pilate answered them, saying, Will ye that I release unto you the King of the Jews?...
But the chief priests moved the people, that he should rather release Barabbas unto them.
And Pilate answered and said again unto them, What will ye then that I shall do unto him whom ye call the King of the Jews?
And they cried out again, Crucify him (Mk 15:9-13).
The Hebrew prophets had foretold that Christ would rise from the dead and that He would come again to establish a kingdom that would never end (1 Kings 2:45; 9:5; Isa 9:7; 53:10-12; Jer 17:25; Dan 2:34-35; 44-45; 7:14, etc.). Christ has fulfilled only the first part, rising from the dead and ascending to the Father's right hand. If the remainder of those prophecies is to be fulfilled (and they must be, or God has lied) there must be a future restoration of the Kingdom to Israel as the disciples believed (Acts 1:6), as Peter affirmed (Acts 3:19-26) and as Christ acknowledged (Acts 1:6-7). Israel's future repentance, redemption and restoration are foretold often (Eze 39; Zec 12, 13, 14; Acts 5:31, etc.). Paul prayed for Israel's salvation (Rom 10:1) and declared that "all Israel shall be saved" (Rom 11:26).
If the Muslims and other nations in the world would understand these prophecies concerning Israel's right to her land and honor them and the God who gave them, there would be peace in the Middle East and throughout the world. Instead, they will persist in their desire to destroy Israel, resulting in Christ's intervention from heaven to rescue Israel at Armageddon and to destroy Antichrist, his followers and kingdom. Most Israelis themselves do not believe that God gave them their land and are trading it for a fool's "peace" with an enemy which has sworn to exterminate them.
Knowing that Israel would reject and crucify Him, Christ said He would build a new entity, the church. The word "church" or "churches" (ekklesia in Greek, meaning "called out"), occurs about 114 times in the New Testament. No Hebrew word in the Old Testament is translated "church" in the KJV. Pertaining to Israel, the major comparable words in Hebrew are edah, mowed and qahal, translated as "assembly" or "congregation." While Acts 7:38 refers to "the church [congregation of Israel] in the wilderness," the Bible makes a clear distinction between Israel and the New Testament church. The latter consists of both Jews and Gentiles and did not exist before Christ's death and resurrection. He continues to build that church even now. It was established by Him and specifically for Him:
"I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (Mat 16:18).
Here we have an obvious claim by Christ that He is God. Israel had been chosen by God. Who, then, but God himself, could establish another congregation of believers in addition to and distinct from Israel? Christ's statement regarding the church is similar to what He said to the Jews who "believed on him," and it has the same awesome implications: "If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (Jn 8:31-32).
The Jews must have been stunned. How could this one dare to use such terms as "my word" and "my disciples" and claim to set His followers free? Was it not God's word they were to follow, and were they not Moses' disciples? Was He claiming to be greater than Moses—even equal to God? Whatever it meant to be His disciple, He was obviously starting something new.
Nevertheless, no one imagined that this miracle-worker intended to dispense with Israel and replace her with some other entity. That heresy would come from Roman Catholicism; and many of the Reformers would be unable to extricate themselves from it, in spite of their clear understanding of salvation by grace through faith. The belief that the church replaces Israel remains today among Roman Catholics, among those of Reformed theology such as Presbyterians and Lutherans, and among many charismatics as well.
In its infancy, the church was composed only of Jewish believers. They had difficulty believing that Gentiles, too, could be saved through Christ and be in the church, even though the Old Testament prophets had laid that foundation (Ps 72:11,17; Isa 11:10; 42:1-6; 49:6; Mal 1:11, etc.). And even when they understood the "mystery" revealed by Paul "that the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel" (Eph 3:3-6), some of them tried to subject the Gentiles to the Jewish law. In effect, they were erroneously making the church an extension of Israel (Acts 15:1).
Gentiles are "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise" (Eph 2:12). When a Gentile is saved and is added by Christ as a "living stone" to the church under construction (1 Pt 2:5), he doesn't come under the Jewish laws and customs of the old covenant. And when a Jew is saved and added to the church, he is set free from the Jewish law (the "law of sin and death") and its penalties (Rom 8:1). Both the Gentile and the Jew who enter the church through faith in Christ are thereafter under a higher law, "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" (Rom 8:2). Indeed, Christ has become their life, living out through them this new standard of holy conduct—something that was unknown in Israel even to her greatest prophets (1 Pt 1:10-12).
No one can establish himself in that sacred temple; he must be placed there by Christ alone. The living stones which He is building together to form the eternal temple do not fall in and out of the structure. We are in Christ and eternally secure.
The church is Christ's body, nourished by Him. Believers are spoken of as branches in the true vine, depicting a continual flow of life and nourishment from Him to them. Christ is the head of the body, which is therefore directed by Him and not by a priesthood or hierarchy of men in some earthly headquarters. The headquarters of the church is in heaven. Yet today's denominations (like the cults) all have their earthly headquarters and their traditions. They have become organizations instead of being content with being part of the organism, His body.
In the church "There is neither Jew nor Greek [Gentile]...[but all are] one in Christ" (Gal 3:28). Gentiles do not become Jewish, but Jew and Gentile have become "one new man" (Eph 2:15). Through the cross, Christ "abolished" the "ordinances" which had separated Jew and Gentile. Therefore, we can confidently affirm that Gentiles are not to adopt those "ordinances." Would one of Christ's own adopt something which God has abolished?
Paul's epistle to the Galatians was written to correct the error of salvation partly through Christ and partly through works. A works salvation is the error of every cult, and Roman Catholicism has developed her system of religious ritual and works to the ultimate. In all of his epistles Paul comes back to the theme that salvation is all of grace and nothing of works. Herein is a major difference between Israel and the church: for the former, eternal life came through keeping the Law; for the latter, eternal life comes by faith.
The old covenant offered life to the righteous who kept the Law: "this do and thou shalt live" (Deut 8:1; Lk 10:28). But no one could keep the Law, for all have sinned (Rom 3:23). Under the new covenant (available from Adam onward), "to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness" (Rom 4:5). Human pride insists upon becoming righteous on its own—an impossible task. Paul mourned the fact that his people Israel, though they had "a zeal after God," yet "they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the rightousness of God" (Rom 10:3) through the new covenant. So it is with all the cults. Roman Catholicism, for example, attempts (through the sacraments, suffering and works) to make its members righteous enough for heaven. It is the error of the Pharisee who proclaimed his righteousness to God and was not heard, whereas the publican, who acknowledged his unworthiness, was justified (Lk 18:10-14).
One had to belong to Israel (with some exceptions) to be saved; but one must be saved (with no exceptions) in order to belong to the church. The church is not a vehicle of salvation. Making that claim is a major error of most cults such as Mormonism and Roman Catholicism. Each claims salvation comes through their church. In fact, salvation is for those outside the church and only then can one become a part of it.
Salvation has always been and still is the same for both Jew and Gentile; but God's plans are different for Israel than for the church. Jews (like Gentiles) who believe in Christ prior to His Second Coming (when He makes Himself known to Israel and all Israel is saved) are in the church. Jews who only come to faith in Christ when He appears to rescue them in the midst of Armageddon will continue into the millennial kingdom on earth and Christ will reign over them from the throne of David. Many Gentiles will be saved at that time also, but "all Israel shall be saved" (Rom 11:26).
The Galatian problem remains (in varying degrees) within some so-called Hebrew-Christian or Messianic congregations today. There is often a tendency to imagine that a return to Jewish customs (even by Gentiles) makes for greater sanctity. Extrabiblical traditions are honored, for example in the Seder ceremony at Passover, as though inspired of God. Scripture alone must be our guide, to the exclusion of manmade traditions, which Christ condemned (Mat 15:1-9; Mk 7:9-13), as did the apostles (Gal 1:13-14; Col 2:8; 1 Pt 1:18). Traditions developed over the centuries have led to great error within both Catholicism and Protestantism.
We must ever remember that Christ intended the church to be something new and separate from Israel. It would neither partake of nor interfere with God's promises to His earthly people, promises which will be fulfilled in their time. The church would be separate, too, from Israel's religious ordinances. Here, again, the cults have gone astray.
Mormonism, for example, pretends to have both an Aaronic and Melchisedec priesthood. Roman Catholicism claims to have a sacrificial priesthood that offers Christ continually as a sacrifice upon its altars. On the contrary, in the church every believer is a priest (1 Pt 2:9) and the sacrifices offered are "praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name" and "to do good" (Heb 13:15-16).
In fact, there are no longer any propitiatory sacrifices offered for the forgiveness of sins because the church was made possible by the one sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. That sacrifice is never to be repeated because it paid the full penalty demanded by God's justice and made it possible for God to "be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus" (Rom 3:26). Consequently, "there is no more offering for sin" (Heb 10:18).
Israel broke the covenant God made with her. She demonstrated that "by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin" (Rom 3:20). Her sacrificial system could not take away sin, but looked forward to the unique "Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world" (Jn 1:29). The establishment of a "new covenant" with Israel (Jer 31:31) is foretold. Animal sacrifices had opened the way for the Jewish high priest into the earthly sanctuary which was patterned after the heavenly reality (Heb 9:1-10). When Christ died on the cross, "the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom" (Mk 15:38), ending the animal sacrifices. Now we have a "great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God" (Heb 4:14), who, "by his own blood...obtained eternal redemption for us" (Heb 9:12, 24).
Israel was given a land on earth (Gen 12:1; 13:15; 15:18-21; 17:7-8; 26:3-4; 28:13-14; Lev 20:24, 25:23, etc.), her destiny is tied to it, and she will never cease to exist there (Jer 31:35-40). Numerous prophecies promise her restoration to her land, with the Messiah, upon His return, ruling her from the throne of David (2 Sam 7:10-16; 1 Kings 9:5; Isa 9:6-7; Eze 34:23-24; 37:24-25; Lk 1:31-33, etc.). The promise is clear that God will pour out His Spirit upon His chosen people, after which they will never pollute His holy name again and He will never again hide His holy face from Israel (Eze 39:7, 22, 27-29; Zec 13, 14).
Israel must endure forever (Jer 31:35-38) or the prophecies of the Bible and Christ's promises to her could not be fulfilled. Christ referred to the cities of Israel in existence at His Second Coming (Mat 10:23), proof enough that the church has not replaced her. As further proof (though not needed), Christ promised His disciples that they would rule over Israel with Him in His millennial kingdom (Mat 19:28; Lk 22:30).
The church cannot fulfill the prophecies to Israel, never having belonged to a specific land nor having been cast out of it or returned to it. Rather, the church comes "out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation" (Rev 5:9). The hope of the church is to be raptured to heaven (Jn 14:3; 1 Thes 4:16-17, etc.), where we stand before "the judgment seat of Christ" (Rom 14:10; 2 Cor 5:10) and then are married to our Lord (Rev 19:7-9) and are eternally with Him wherever He is (Jn 14:3; 1 Thes 4:17).
That being the case, in love with our Bridegroom and longing to see Him face to face, let us hold the things of earth lightly and live for eternity. Let us please Him alone, not following men or organizations, by faith allowing our Head to nourish, sustain and direct us and to live His life through us to His glory.
Obama and Netanyahu close to settlement construction accord - Jerusalem excluded
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
August 20, 2009, 10:05 AM (GMT+02:00)
George Mitchell, live wire behind understanding
US Middle East envoy George Mitchell and Yitzhak Molcho, special adviser to Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, are tying up the last ends of an understanding on West Bank settlement construction between the Obama administration and Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, DEBKAfile's Washington sources disclose.
The two officials have been meeting in the US capital.
Our sources report that the understanding rests on four principles:
1. Israel will maintain a freeze on new settlement construction. (This week, transport minister Eliahu Atias said that all new projects for West Bank settlements have been "on hold" in the five months since Netanyahu took office.) In the next three years, the prime minister's office and defense ministry will only grant permits for some hundreds of building projects appearing on an agreed list. A joint US-Israeli team is now working on the final list.
2. Obama will stop demanding a total freeze.
3. The two governments agreed to disagree on construction in Jerusalem, including the eastern side, which will continue uninterrupted - as will Washington's criticism on this point.
4. The Obama administration has made it clear that any confrontation with the Netanyahu government is undesirable; relations between the White House and PMO will henceforth revert to their normal friendly level.
The two parties also agreed that the US-Israel understanding on the settlements and their limited expansion will not be published or brought before the government in Jerusalem for endorsement.
Defense minister Ehud Barak will be the only minister with full knowledge of its contents and in Washington, only Vice President Joe Biden, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and Mitchell - seven individuals in all in both capitals.
Mitchell was the live wire pushing for an accord and smoothing away the obstacles and differences, according to one Washington source. It was he who prevailed on President Obama to step away from a showdown with Netanyahu.
Netanyahu and Mitchell will finally approve the draft when they meet in London on Aug. 26, a date insisted on by Obama because he has set Sept. 10 as the deadline for his own team to finish their Middle East policy review (which was first revealed by DEBKAfile).
The prime minister's approach to an understanding on the settlement dispute with the US president has caused unrest among some ministers, especially in the right wing. It prompted deputy prime minister Moshe Yaalon to meet the Jewish Leadership Division, the most nationalist faction of the ruling Likud party Wednesday, Aug. 19. He was applauded when he described the opposition Peace Now group and other "Israeli elites" as "viruses" because of their antagonism to settlements and settlers.
"I hold to the position that Jews are at liberty to settle and build in every part of the Land of Israel," he stated with emphasis.
That night, Netanyahu's office issued a reprimand saying that the prime minister finds Yaalon's words and style unacceptable.
37:7 So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and suddenly a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to bone.
37:10 So I prophesied as He commanded me, and breath came into them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet, an exceedingly great army.
Here, Ezekiel is given a vision by God of the promised restoration of Israel to their homeland, followed by the most fearsome invasion Israel would ever face. This vision uses the imagery of a valley of dry bones. These bones that upon hearing God's prophetic word are gathered from all over the world to their lost homeland has literally been fulfilled in our own time. Though Israel had been scattered throughout the world for nearly 2,000 years, they have once again been brought together to Palestine.
Never before in human history has a nation been so displaced and then restored to their land and to their nationhood. The political climates of the nations that represent the regions referred to in chapter 38 that will attack Israel in our own time are ripening their passion to destroy Israel in our own time.
Living in a time when prophetic events seem to be playing out before our very eyes is amazing. What we also see in this vision is a figurative picture of what God is doing throughout the world as He is sending out His Word, calling people to become a part of the Body of Christ. A people are being built together that God is breathing His Spirit into, making them an "exceedingly great army" (37:10), a spiritual army to in whom God has breathed the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit that Jesus promised would enable us to boldly proclaim God's word to the uttermost places on Earth (Acts 1:7).
And just as Israel will rise victoriously when faced with the most horrendous attack ever unleashed upon them, so too will God's people rise in everlasting victory over every force that resists them. Victory is promised for God's bride, the church. Nothing will be able to silence its voice or hold back its light. We live in a time like never before in human history, a time when prophetic history is converging and bringing us to the climax of Christ's return. A thorough knowledge of the progressive fulfillment of prophecy in human history should be a vital part of every believer's understanding of where they are in God's timetable. Not only will our confidence in God's word be strengthened, but our sense of what our own lives should look like will be strengthened.
It's hard to explain the lack of investment among many Christians in bringing the word of God to a world that is like a valley full of "dry bones" (spiritually dead) that He is gathering from all over the world as His word is proclaimed. It's also strange that so many who claim to believe that Christ will return to bring victory to this fallen world also seem to be thoroughly rooted in this world whose god is the devil.
God is working and His prophetic word is unfolding all around us. Let us rise up now and join in proclaiming God's word to a world that is soon to be judged. May our own roots go deep into His Kingdom, not into this world that soon will be no more.
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37:7 So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and suddenly a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to bone.