History has a nasty way of repeating itself. And it’s happened again. Those of us who remember 1938 recall Britain’s then-Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain triumphantly waving a paper while disembarking from his flight home after meeting with Adolf Hitler. His declaration turned out to be a colossal show of naiveté.

“Peace in our time” were his words. He had made a deal with Hitler, trusting the Nazi fuehrer was a man who would keep his word to the Free World. The very next day, the Germans took the Sudetenland; and history shredded Chamberlain’s paper, along with the delusion that wishes come true if one wishes hard enough.

In April, a senior U.S. State Department official stunned us by announcing, “The war on terror is over.” Sound familiar?

Furthermore, he was quoted in the National Journal as saying, “Now that we have killed most of al Qaida, now that people have come to see legitimate means of expression, people who once might have gone into al Qaida see an opportunity for a legitimate Islamism.”

Although the word terrorist has been expunged from America’s official description of bad guys, this declaration seemed more than a little much. The irony is that, as absurd as it may sound, it is no laughing matter. Nor can the comment be dignified as an expression of some new vision of American foreign policy that reads, “If you want to end war, just declare peace.”

Things don’t work that way. “Legitimate Islamism” does not exist, and merely coining the phrase does not alter reality for the millions of oppressed people living under the brutal dictates of Sharia law.

Try to sell the idea that terror has subsided to Christians in Sudan, under attack for weeks by Muslim extremists. A frenzied crowd of terrorists armed with clubs, iron rods, a bulldozer, and fire stormed a Christian compound in Khartoum in April, determined to destroy a Bible school, clinic, home for the elderly, classrooms, and living quarters.

In Jos, Nigeria, Christians were watching a soccer match in a television-viewing center when Islamic extremists threw an explosive into the crowd, killing one person and seriously injuring others. It was the second time in two weeks the Christian area had been bombed by terrorists.

These incidents are the tip of the iceberg. Islamic terror afflicts Africa, the Middle East, and numerous other spots around the globe. Ignoring or minimizing it or making bizarre statements like the State Department representative’s not only aids and abets the enemy, but is morally reprehensible and dangerous. In fact, such actions pacify people, making them complacent and unwilling to do anything to stop the ongoing war against those who want little more than to live peacefully and practice their faith in a safe environment.

Of course, bomb-throwing, radical Islamists are more than happy to be labeled “legitimate Islam.” The terminology translates into cash and prestige within the international community. However, terminology changes nothing. They are fundamentalist Islamists.

And while the sycophantic West panders to their so-called desire for democracy, these Islamists continue to make war on everything un-Islamic in an attempt to establish a global caliphate with the as yet unrevealed 12th imam, or Mahdi, on the throne. After all, they believe their holy book teaches the Mahdi ultimately will lead the armies of Islam to victory over all non-Muslims.

A fatal failure of secular analysis of the war on terror is its dismissal of religion as a central factor in the conflict. The fact is, if religion is removed from the picture, the true image is lost. Ask yourself a few simple questions:

1. Why the relentless war on Christians across the Middle East and Africa?
2. Why the obsession to destroy Israel?
3. Why the demographic strategy to flood Europe with Muslim immigrants and create an Islamic continent?
4. Why the rush to build ballistic missiles to reach Europe and America?
5. Why the attempts to force Sharia law into countries and communities that are non-Muslim?

The issue is not land or a pluralistic world peace. It is world conquest by force and intimidation, and that reality will not change because the non-Muslims unilaterally declare peace.

The prophet Isaiah spoke of a future day when people “shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore” (Isa. 2:4).

No premature, impulsive declaration will bring about that day. God alone will do it. And unfortunately, it is not today.

The heat is up on the idea of a two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian dilemma. The current offensive touts a single state that eliminates Israel in favor of a Palestinian fiefdom allowing a smattering of Jews to remain as a disenfranchised minority.

Adli Sadeq, the Palestinian Authority’s ambassador to India, has been quoted as saying both the terrorist Hamas organization and Fatah, led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, utterly reject Israel’s right to exist:

They [Israelis] have a common mistake, or misconception by which they fool themselves, assuming that Fatah accepts them and recognizes the right of their state to exist, and that it is Hamas alone that loathes them and does not recognize the right of this state to exist. They ignore the fact that this state, based on a fabricated [Zionist] enterprise, never had any shred of a right to exist.

Strange though it may seem, facsimiles of Sadeq’s declaration are showing up across the United States. At the “One State Conference” held in March at Harvard, anti-Israel academic elites and their acolytes declared Israel’s right to life null and void. Professor Susan M. Akram of Boston University’s School of Law articulated the essence of the hatefest:

Israel’s claim of a state on the basis of exclusive and discriminatory rights to Jews, has never been juridically recognized. In other words, the concept of the Jewish people as a national entity with extraterritorial claims has never been recognized under international law.

Closer to home for Zionist Christians were remarks made at the 2012 National Penn Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Conference held at the University of Pennsylvania. Among the bevy of radical speakers was the Reverend Grayland Hagler, a Protestant minister and firebrand activist known for rallying anti-Israel elements to “stand up together until we dismantle the State of Israel.” With such a predisposition to Israel’s destruction, it is not surprising he told a questioner, “One of the things I am constantly doing is trying to disengage Christians from Hebrew Scriptures.”

Facts About Zionist Christians
Technically, anyone who believes God’s promises to the Jewish people are irrevocable is a biblical Zionist. Furthermore, you cannot disengage the Hebrew Scriptures from the rest of the Bible. The Old and New Testaments compose a unit with unbreak-able continuity—which is why Christian Zionists believe the following regarding Jewish rights:

Biblically. It is beyond dispute that, if you accept the integrity of biblical revelation, you cannot deny Israel’s central role in the scheme of things. When, for instance, God calls His promise of a land for the children of Abraham through Isaac “everlasting” (Gen. 17:7–8), He means everlasting. When He promises to bless those who bless Israel (12:1–3), He means precisely that. When He promises Israel will survive even under the most adverse circumstances (Ezek. 11:16–17; Rom. 11:2), there is no rational alternative for thinking otherwise.

The Bible says the Jewish people would return to their ancient land and experience a national resurrection (Jer. 32:37–41); and, against all odds, that promise is now a reality. What God says, He means. And if these promises are reduced to allegories, myths, and old wives’ tales, faith collapses—and we are without hope.

Historically. To argue, as revisionists do, that there has never been an appreciable Jewish presence in the Middle East, that there were no Jewish Temples on Mount Moriah, or that the Holocaust was a Jewish contrivance is hardly worthy of serious comment. The stones cry out, and their message certifies the facts of both Jewish and world history.

Morally. In view of centuries of dispersions and persecutions, deprivation, and slaughter, it is incomprehensible to argue the Jewish people do not have a right to their homeland. With at least 50 Muslim majority countries in the world, to rant against one Jewish country is beyond reprehensible; it is morally criminal.

Legally. Those who love to hate Israel and congratulate themselves on motivating crusaders to dismantle the Jewish state’s so-called apartheid occupation forces have inoculated themselves with a heaping dose of willful ignorance. Israel is a legal member of the international community. Witness the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the San Remo Conference of 1920, the UN Partition Plan of 1947. Astonishingly, accusations that the Jewish people stole “Palestine,” a never-has-been national entity, carry more weight than the certified credentials of the Jewish state.

Behind such twisted politics is a debilitating malignancy: anti-Semitism. Call Christian Zionists what you will, but they will never be associated with hatred of the Jewish people or denial of the Jewish right to the land of Israel.

There’s Good News Tonight.” That was the lead each evening on Gabriel Heatter’s national news broadcast during World War II. Known for exuding a “dignified optimism,” Heatter brought to the air human interest narratives that became, as some said, “a bright light in a dark time for America.”

More than six decades later, we often find it difficult to locate any good news. But something good almost slipped by most of us during the previous years.

On July 9, 2011, a new nation was born: the Republic of South Sudan, a region comprised mostly of Nuba Christians who had suffered systematic, genocidal persecution at the hands of Islamist Arabs who killed almost 2 million Nubas.

Now the remnants of this beleaguered but tenacious people have walked into what Mr. Heatter might have called the bright light of a better world. Among the first to recognize the fledgling state was Israel. In return, South Sudan President Salva Kiir Mayardit chose Israel for one of his initial presidential visits in a trip described as “low-key” and “under-the-radar.”

South Sudan not only has recognized the Jewish state’s legitimacy but reportedly plans to become the world’s only nation to do the right thing and place its embassy in Jerusalem. The gesture demonstrates there are still rare instances of national integrity, when leaders know how to say thank you to allies who have stood with them in their struggle for survival and independence.

With only hours in the land, President Kiir scheduled time to tour the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. All Western leaders should be required to do the same. Kiir is not tainted by revisionist teaching; he understands Yad Vashem because he has walked in the blood of his own fallen people.

But why low-key and under-the-radar? Whom do we fear? The radical thugs in Khartoum? The Arabs? Or perhaps the Islamist invaders of the West whose fearmongering intimidates politicians, journalists, law enforcement agencies, and ordinary citizens?

The principle issues recall the 1940s when Israel’s rebirth was prominent on the world stage. U.S. President Harry S. Truman’s character, political decisiveness, and strength of leadership were severely tested. In November 1947, the UN partitioned what was left of British Mandate Palestine into two states: one Jewish and one Arab. The Jewish people accepted the plan and announced they would declare their independence; the Arabs rejected the plan.

Arabists in the U.S. State Department, as well as other presidential advisors, demanded Truman not recognize the Jewish state, viewing such a move as catastrophic. Nonetheless, on May 14, 1948, Jewish statesman David Ben-Gurion stood in what is now the Israel Museum in Tel Aviv and read Israel’s Declaration of Independence. Defying his advisors, President Truman conveyed America’s official recognition of the State of Israel 11 minutes later.

America’s president had taken the long view. The United States became the first government to recognize Israel. Had Truman not been a man who knew how to honor a commitment, the Middle East would be a very different place today.

Why did he do it? First, he had made a promise to Chaim Weizmann, a brilliant Jewish scientist who would become Israel’s first president. Weizmann visited Truman at the White House in March 1948 in a meeting arranged by Eddie Jacobson, Truman’s former business partner in Kansas City, Missouri. Truman called Weizmann “one of the wisest men I’ve ever met” and gave him his word that, if a Jewish state was declared, he would recognize it.

The second reason was noted by Clark Clifford, special counsel to Harry Truman from 1946 to 1950, in his memoirs Counsel to the President,published in 1991. Truman, he wrote, “was a student and believer in the Bible since his youth. From his reading of the Old Testament he felt the Jews derived a legitimate historical right to Palestine, and he sometimes cited such biblical lines as Deuteronomy 1:8: ‘Behold, I have given up the land before you; go in and take possession of the land which the Lord hath sworn unto your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.’”

Despite the new winds of hardline secularism blowing through the halls of statehouses and the steeples of mainline churches these days, most Americans still agree with Truman. Thus the birth of a pro-Israel, pro-Semitic, pro-Christian nation in Sub-Saharan Africa should give us all a reason to feel good. Yes, we can say loudly, without apology or under-the-radar trepidation, a burgeoning South Sudan “is good news tonight.” I think Gabriel Heatter would be glad to hear it.

For people who doubt there is a war against God and Christianity in America, here is something to disabuse them of that notion. Last year, U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson (R-OH) sponsored a bill (H.R. 2070) to place a plaque at the World War II memorial in Washington, DC, bearing the words U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt prayed with the nation on June 6, 1944, the morning of D-Day.

The proposal seemed reasonable enough. After all, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s words to the invasion forces are etched in stone at the site. You might say the proposal corrects the oversight of neglecting the president’s words.

What appeared to be a given with representatives of the American people in both houses of Congress received a “not so fast” notice by the Obama administration’s Bureau of Land Management. Director Robert V. Abbey said the prayer would “intrude” on the monument and “dilute this elegant memorial’s central message.” Furthermore, he said, the prayer would detract from the memorial’s purpose to honor American troops in World War II and “commemorate the participation of the United States in that conflict.”

An excerpt of President Roosevelt’s “intruding” petition to the Almighty includes the following:

Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free suffering humanity. . . . Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister Nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace— a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil. Thy will be done, Almighty God. Amen.

At stake in this all-too-familiar attempt to throw God out of every aspect of our public life is the future of generations of Americans to come. When those of us who remember a different America are off the scene, our children, grandchildren, and their children will be doomed to dwell in a godless, pagan wilderness.

The administration’s recent mocking of the House of Representatives’ vote to consider legislation reaffirming the words In God We Trust as the national motto speaks to the heart of what we can expect in days to come.

Make no mistake. We are fully engaged in an all-out revolution to refashion America into a godless, humanistic, pseudo paradise that obliterates the past. Among the warning signs is the upturn of anti-Semitism in America. A recent survey confirms that 133 anti-Jewish incidents were reported in New York City alone in 2010. In addition, an Anti-Defamation League survey discovered that 15 percent of Americans, nearly 35 million adults, hold deeply anti-Semitic views—up 3 percent from 2009.

There are those who will argue otherwise; but to Bible-believing Christians, a foundational aspect of America’s success has been its fundamental, historic hospitality toward the Jewish people. When Emma Lazarus penned, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses” in her poem “The New Colossus,” later inscribed on the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, the call was to her Jewish brethren and to the masses of stifled Gentiles yearning to breathe the free air of the New World.

God-fearing freedom produced the greatest nation in the history of humanity. Are we now willing to stand aside while it is demolished brick by brick, to be replaced by who knows what? Perhaps by a spiritually dead, morally compassless, neosocialist idiocracy?

Most notable is the pervasiveness of the anti-God aggression. It is not limited to America but is widespread throughout the Western world—evidence of the conflict’s true nature. This is a spiritual war—a Satan-God issue that is precisely spelled out in God’s Word:

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places (Eph. 6:12).

When Scripture admonishes us to be discerners of the times, we should not take it lightly. It is God’s call to action. In the end, the battle is for the soul. And for that fight, believers come armed with the right stuff—the simple message of the gospel, committed to us 2,000 years ago: Jesus born, crucified, risen, and coming again. “And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith” (1 Jn. 5:4). No matter how others see it, we are on the victory side.

During the fiasco over the Palestinian Authority’s all-out push at the UN in September for a unilaterally forged Palestinian state, the implausible morphed into the incomprehensible. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon eloquently illustrated how far off the table reality had fallen when he admonished Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He told him to “act with restraint” and invoke “wisdom” regarding the Palestinian bid to begin, essentially, the destruction of Israel.

Others joined the fray. They insisted Israel forfeit “occupied” land it allegedly swiped from the Palestinians and now rules (so they claim) with apartheid-like oppression. Israel must be prepared, they insisted, to make significant concessions, with no evidence the Palestinian Authority (PA) will reciprocate.

All of America’s fumbling efforts, along with those of a few weak-kneed Europeans, to cajole PA leader Mahmoud Abbas into thinking twice before going it alone were slapped down. Interestingly, the insult didn’t seem to ruffle a feather of indignation among the countries (chief of which is the United States) that annually pour billions of dollars into the PA’s ill-managed coffers.

Why would Abbas—former lieutenant of Yasser Arafat, the late terrorist leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)—eschew negotiations in favor of a course that may well lead to war? It doesn’t make sense—unless one realizes that, in essentials, Abbas is an unreconstructed PLO devotee. The perceived difference between his persona and Arafat’s is more one of image and style rather than substance.

Unfortunately, Western societies fail to evaluate substance and underlying ideology. Instead, they fall for altered images and readjusted externals that give the illusion of change. But make no mistake: Behind the smiles, wardrobe makeovers, and retooled rhetoric lies the same old stuff.

No recognition ever of the right of a Jewish state to exist. A massive “return” of Palestinian “refugees” to Israel would do in a few short years what Arab armies could not do in a succession of wars. If you want proof, log on to www.weeklystandard.com and check out Anne Bayefsky’s exposé on the logo of the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the United Nations. The logo displays the flag of “Palestine” with an image of the proposed country stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. No Israel anywhere. Why? Because according to the plan, Israel will no longer exist.

Judenrein Bounces Back
Judenrein, a German word meaning “clean of Jews,” was thought by most to have hit the dustbin when Adolf Hitler and his Third Reich fell to the allies in 1945.

American attorney Alan Dershowitz recently expounded on the duplicity of the PA’s claim that it would create a “secular democratic state.” The draft constitution for a state of Palestine, he said, declares, “Islam is the official religion in Palestine”; and Sharia law will be the “major source of legislation.”

Furthermore, the Muslim state would prohibit Jewish people from becoming citizens or owning land—or even from living there. Furthermore, when the Palestinian ambassador to the United States was asked whether “any Jew who is inside the borders of Palestine will have to leave,” his answer was, “Absolutely!”

All this sounds exceedingly familiar. When the Jordanians used military force to occupy Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and East Jerusalem in 1948, they played by the same rules. In defiance  of UN entreaties, they systematically destroyed 58 Jewish synagogues; removed 38,000 Jewish tombstones from the Mount of Olives, which they then used to pave roads and floor latrines; and barred Jewish access to the Western Wall and Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. Jerusalem became a divided city until the Israelis liberated it during the 1967 Six-Day War.

What makes people believe that an Islamist Palestinian state—which boasts the added dimension of wanting world domination—would be a better, more benevolent neighbor to a Jewish state than were the Jordanians?

Name of the Game: Win It All
Clearly, Palestinians and Islamist radicals throughout the region believe their time has come and that they are now positioned to take it all. We hear as much in their not-so-veiled threats that rejecting the imposition on Israel of a Palestinian state will likely mean war. This calculated tactic is designed to create a panic response among weak leaders who would rather capitulate than fight to ensure security and stability. Like it or not, sometimes you have to fight; and this is a battle we can ill afford to lose.

A grisly discovery was made in Norwich, England, recently. Seventeen Jewish skeletons, apparently from the same family, were found at the bottom of a medieval well. Archaeologists theorize  the Jews were forced down the well by pogromists for refusing to convert to Christianity.

Ten centuries later, five members of the Udi Fogel family of Itamar, Israel, were savagely stabbed to death in their beds, demonstrating that time does not alter the hatred against the Jewish people and Israel. The “plague” is still with us—the attempt to find a “final solution to the Jewish problem”; but now it focuses on the destruction of Israel.

As Christians who fully support the Jewish people’s legitimate right to their homeland of Eretz Yisrael, we were appalled to read that well-known Italian priest Mario Cornioli flippantly declared, “What is Itamar? An illegal Israeli colony built on stolen land.”

Why would anyone under any circumstances brush off the unspeakably horrific slaughter of an innocent family because he disagrees with where they lived?

Unfortunately, the priest’s attitude is not limited to a few bigots operating on the fringe. A whole range of vaunted Christian organizations have taken to the idea that Israel must be squeezed until it either disappears or is so emas -culated that it survives only as a disheveled, discredited clan of Jews forced back into ghettos by emissaries of pseudo-Christian love and/or Muslim “humanitarianism.”

Here is a sampling of those who have come to the forefront as next of kin to the Presbyterian Church USA and other mainline denominations that tout divestiture as a means of posturing Israel as an apartheid, pariah state worthy of being hauled into the economic woodshed and whipped into shape.

Lutherans from the United States, Catholics and Protestants from Bethlehem and Nazareth, Orthodox Christians from Greece and Russia, lecturers from Lebanon, and Copts from Egypt gathered at a conference recently to declare the Jewish state “a sin” and occupying power that dehumanizes Palestinians; they called for resistance (jihad) as “a Christian duty.”

An influential, international Catholic peace movement, Pax Christi, promotes boycotting Israeli goods “in the name of love.” Even Christian groups funded by the European Union, the Dutch Interchurch Organization for Development Cooperation, and the Irish-Catholic group Trócaire are reportedly campaigning for divestiture. They are going so far as to include the popular Ahava cosmetics company as a collaborating offender. South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu added his influence by convincing the University of Johannesburg to sever all ties with Israeli fellows.

This discriminatory hostility is morphing into increasingly militant rhetoric and incitement. A popular Vatican magazine recently declared that “ethnic cleansing” by Israel created the Palestinian refugees and that “the Zionists were cleverly able to exploit the Western sense of guilt for the Shoah [Holocaust] to lay the foundations for their own state.”

Archbishop Cyrille Salim Bustros added his bit by saying, “We Christians cannot speak about the Promised Land for the Jewish people. There is no longer a chosen people.” Furthermore, an important papal envoy called Israel an illegitimate “foreign implant,” unscrupulously Judaizing Jerusalem and illegally occupying Arab land.

This radical denunciation of Israel’s legitimacy paves the way for the next step: physical intervention to remove the “foreign” object. Joining the ranks of Muslim jihadists who have long sought the opportunity to attack and destroy Israel are hordes of idealistic, but uninformed, Europeans and Western zealots who are volunteering for flotillas and fly-tillas and are serving as foot soldiers seeking to invade Israel as champions of the downtrodden. With mobs screaming for change in the region and the West supporting that scream, one can almost predict an upturn in violence in the near future.

We must ask ourselves, Why are professing Christians who are in the vanguard of such a phenomenon so clearly unchristian in every respect? The answer is Replacement Theology. It was the excuse for viciously throwing a Jewish family down a well in medieval times, and it is at the heart of the excuses used today to demonize and delegitimize Israel. Archbishop Bustros spoke for all who see themselves as the “new Israel” when he said, “We Christians cannot speak about the Promised Land for the Jewish people. There is no longer a chosen people.”

His statement is a pristine definition of the theology that confiscates what God created (the Jewish people) and despises those whom God loves. It also explains the lamentable religious arrogance that would work to dismantle a nation and persecute its people.