Jedwabne

1941 Jedwabne¹

Against the backdrop of Poland's new law criminalizing the mention of Polish complicity in the Nazi genocide. Poland's prime minister today essentially blamed "Jews" for the shoah. A far different reflection than in July 2001 when Polish president Aleksander Kwaśniewski came to Jedwabne to redress a dreadful "Day of hatred and cruelty" that occurred there exactly Sixty years earlier, on 10 July 1941:

May be we will never learn the whole truth. But.... We know enough to stand here in truth — facing pain, cry and suffering of those who were murdered here. Face to face with the victims' families who are here today. Before the judgment of [our] own conscience. ...

This was a particularly cruel crime. It is justified by nothing. Among the victims, among the burned were women, there were children. Petrifying cry of people closed in the barn and burned alive - continues to haunt the memory of those who witnessed the crime. The victims were helpless and defenseless. ...

We cannot have any doubts - here in Jedwabne citizens of the Republic of Poland died from the hands of other citizens of the Republic of Poland. It is people to people, neighbors to neighbors who forged such destiny. ...

We are standing on a tormented land. The name Jedwabne, by a tragic ordain of fate had become for its today's citizens a byword recalling to human memory the ghosts of fratricide.

It is not only in Jedwabne that superstitious prejudice was enkindled into the murderous flame of hatred in the "furnace era". Death, grief and suffering of the Jews from Jedwabne, from Radzilow and other localities, all these painful events which lay a gloomy shadow on Poland's history are the responsibility of the perpetrators and instigators. ... Every man is responsible only for his own acts. The sons do not inherit the sins of the fathers. But can we say: that was long ago, they were different? ...

And this is why we have to look the truth into the eyes. Any truth. And say: it was, it happened. Our conscience will be clear if the memories of those days will for ever evoke awe and moral indignation.

We are here to make a collective self examination. We are paying tribute to the victims and we are saying - never again. ... 

Aleksander Kwaśniewski


Today, unlike that day in July 2001, "people to people, neighbors to neighbors" once again forged a destiny as Poland once again "passed by on the other side." ." 

 "Willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?" (Luke 10:29).

¹By Fotonews - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A-438_Mogi%C5%82a-pomnik,_na_cmentarzu_%C5%BCydowskim,_1941_Jedwabne.jpg, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45409017 ©2017 Christian. Textual content may be copied and distributed, but it may not be sold.

The Ways of God

This post remains under construction!

Downing of Israeli F-16 a ‘game changer’

IAF F-16I Sufa1, Operation Cast Lead (Oferet Yetzuka - עופרת יצוקה) 

The violation of Israeli airspace by an Iranian military drone and sequent Israeli retaliation is an unprecedented escalation of regional instability.

Previous confrontations were facilitated by Iranian-proxies — the Syrian regime or Hezbollah. Today's clash constitutes the first direct engagement between Israel and Iran!

This time, Israel did not emerge unscathed. An IAF F-16I Sufa was downed, and a high percentage of missiles launched against Syria, were intercepted. A vulnerability that will be exacerbated by "all" Israel's enemies— foreign and domestic.

"No need to worry," evangelicals say! — "No weapon that is formed against thee [Israel] shall prosper" (Isaiah 54:17).

Unfortunately, the church, more often than not, misinterprets Scripture by failing to discern "determinant" context, e.g., the book, the author, the passage, the verse, the recipient, and most "critically," the "dispensational" context:

Prophecies concerning Israel will not be fulfilled during the Church Age, and prophecy concerning the church will not be fulfilled during any other age but the Age of Grace.

Supersessionism, commonly called "replacement theology," exemplifies the consequence of failure to discern "determinant" context, i.e., spiritual confusion "without remedy."

Therefore, the "No weapon... formed against thee" prophecy written during the Dispensation of the Law, regarding Israel and contemporaneous nations, will "not" be fulfilled during the Church Age.

Moreover, the context of this prophecy precludes fulfillment until Israel's "baptism of fire" when Israel's "righteousness" is of the "LORD,"

"No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their righteousness is of me, saith the LORD" (Isaiah 54:17).

"And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the LORD, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein.

And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The LORD is my God" (Zechariah 13:8-9).

¹By Yosi Yaari (יוסי יערי) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

©2017 Christian. Textual content may be copied and distributed, but it may not be sold.

The Body of this Death

In the seventh chapter of Romans, the apostle Paul laments:

"For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. ... For I delight in the law of God... . But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity..." (Romans 7:19-22).

And then a heart-rending cry from the depths of despair:

"O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Rom 7:24).

Paul here is referring to a contemporary form of execution described in Virgil's Aeneid, he tells of a "curs’d" king who, in a fatal hour:

Aſſum'd the crown with arbitrary pow'r 

What words can paint thoſe execrable times... 

The living and the dead, at his command, 

Were coupled, face to face, and hand to hand; 

Till choak'd with ſtench, in loath’d embraces ty'd, 

The ling’ring wretches pin’d away and dy’d.

Such is the "loath’d embrace" of the "flesh" that "literally" consumes us — unless we walk not after the flesh, but after the "Spirit of Life":

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. ... 

For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. ... 

But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his (Romans 8:1-9).

¹By Ardfern (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons
©2017 Christian. Textual content may be copied and distributed, but it may not be sold.

A Fiery Stream

The power of the "righteous" is principle, and the principle of the "reprobate" is power. Understand this and you will understand the conflict of the ages. It also explains the struggle between light and darkness, good and evil, and Truth and error that has continued unabated from the beginning, and will continue until that Day when "Righteousness and Justice" will ultimately prevail, but not through politics!

"I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened. ...

I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed" (Daniel 7:9-14).

¹ByBy unbekannt (National Park Service - http://www.nps.gov) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
©2017 Christian. Textual content may be copied and distributed, but it may not be sold.