COURAGE & HOPE: More ideas on things to come w/ a focus on Israel by analysis 4 NOV 2015

The title reflects my approach: we need the courage to face our problems with hope. I am not talking about passively being an optimistic day-dreamer, but rather a spirited force for future good. Four forces shall affect the future: leadership, technology, resources & demographics. They will be discussed in the context of today’s complex World Order with its “fault lines”. Those that manipulate the world as a stage will manipulate the hate in the World. It takes courage & hope not to hate.

ACCURATE PREDICTIONS BASED ON ANALYSIS. There have been long list of books that accurately predicted the future. In 1925, the entire scenario of the Pacific War of WW 2 (1941-45), incl. a surprise attack by Japan, and how aircraft carriers would be used was written up in the book The Great Pacific War by a Hector C. Bywater. The Japanese high command used the entire book to help plan their strategy. In 1898, (the English version was 1899) the book “Is War Now Impossible?” by Ivan Stanislavovich Bloch (aka Jan Gotlib Bloch, a Polish banker) accurately predicted how the WW 1 would start, how the attacker would not have a swift victory, & how a stalemated trench war would develop, where vast numbers of men would be caught in the open to die without seeing anything. It described a war between Germany & Austro-Hungary against France, the U.K. & Russia where armies of millions of men fight over enormous fronts. In 1920, a French historian Jacques Bainville predicted exactly how the Versailles treaty would lead to WW2 in 1939. In 1907, MO5 (the forerunner of MI6) made surveys of Belgium where the British Expeditionary Force might have to fight in case of a war with Germany, as well as accumulated info on German subs & Zeppelins. Marx (connected to the Illum.) & Engels lived in Brussels from 1845-48 (along w/ others like George Weerth). Marx & Engels believed in centralized power, discipline & hierarchy, even though they wrote about ‘free associations of producers’. Their ideas were copied & put into effect by their future disciples. In 1887, Engels envisioned a “world war of never before seen extension and intensity…eight to ten million soldiers will slaughter each other and strip Europe bare…all over the continent; famine, epidemics, general barbarization of armies and masses, provoked by sheer desperation; utter chaos in our trade, industry and commerce…”(A) I wonder if these prescient men had inside info or just made good analyses of the world.

LEADERSHIP. The World will continue to be led by the dark forces that motivate it. The people of God will continue to be led by His Spirit. Of the 4 forces, leadership at the top will be the most constant element. God has delegated much of His active force to His people, lovingly allowing us to participate in His work. When Moses went to see God, His glory was too great to behold. God is not directly before & in our faces, He is using great yet limited people like Moses. So it is crucial to see how Christ is leading & working through the Body of Christ, and how people are struggling & wrestling with/against God. Can we work with God to make the future He wants, or will we try to resist?

ISRAEL STILL IMPORTANT TODAY, FOR GENTILE BELIEVERS WERE GRAFTED INTO THE REMNANT OF ISRAEL (B). We Christians are part of an age old faith, the story of the Bible. Romans chapter 11 is very revealing. It explains how the blindness of the Jews & Israelites was prophesied long before Christ & his church came. It points out that through all the indifference and apostasy, God always preserves a remnant, and that the Christian gentile believers were grafted into the spots where those branches of Israel were broken off by apostasy. In Christ’s day there were an estimated 8 million Jews worldwide & today that number has only increased to 13 million. But that number is increasing, as many discover their Jewish roots. In Spain, the forced Jewish conversions during the inquisition created the “Marranos” (Bnei Anousim). Genetic tests have revealed that around 13% of Hispanic Americans have unrealized Jewish blood via the Marranos. Both the Jewish people & the Christian people have endured incredible persecution numerous times in history and survived. Both will survive the future. There are Jews who secretly believe in Messiah. There are Jews who want a personal connection with God and pray & act to receive His presence. The Word prophecies, “…in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of YHWH shall be established…and he will teach us of his ways,…for the Torah shall go forth of Zion…”(C) Also it says something positive about Israel, that it has an extremely low suicide rate.

NATURAL ISRAEL. The modern secular socialist nation of Israel is not Biblical Israel, but the nation of Israel is still an important piece of what is going on now that will change the future. Jews in Israel and in America both number approx. 6 million. But the trends in American Jewry and Israeli Jewry are different. American Jews have a low birth rate & are increasingly turning their back on the Scriptures. Israeli Jews have a high birth rate (over 3) and the younger generation are turning back to their religious roots. (The exception in America are the religious Orthodox Jews (Haredi) who have a high birth rate & reject secular America & secular Israel. (Some Haredim in Israel would like to secede from Israel.)(By the way, the repeated incidents of rabbinic sexual abuse of children are evidence that t.b.m.c. extends into those communities also.) The Orthodox Jews, the Old Order Amish, and Latino immigrants to America all have high birth rates. (By the way, having been Amish & talked w/ the Haredim, there are many similarities, in fact, the settlement I lived in bought their oil heaters from Israel.) If you study genealogy charts & demographics, when members of these groups quit their cultures to join other denominations & mainstream culture, the statistics show they take on the low birth rates of mainstream America. They also take on the ethos of individualism that is the compass of independent selfish modern persons & reject discipline & sacrifice for the common good. You will note that non-Orthodox American Jews, like mainstream Americans, are reducing their time & commitments to formal institutions. (The Haredim & Hispanic Americans are examples of demographics affecting the future.) Like so many ethnic groups in America, Jews are assimilating, and their distinctiveness melting away.

Throughout history, Jews have been seen as different, malevolent & powerful. Those familiar with history view their rivals, Islam, as potentially homicidally barbaric, with a long history of deception, gang-raping, beheading, stoning & enslaving. We are watching at present the escalation of a dangerous situation by the embedding of American troops into Syria. (Hillary, possibly America’s next president is in favor of this.) Rather than restraining the worst of Islam, Obama has been encouraging it. The choices in the near future will have significant impact on the future. The govt. of Iran, which is secretly loathed by the common Iranian, got a facelift by its recent nuclear treaty with the U.S. Why would our Congress including its Jewish congress-people, which has in the past supported Israel, turn & support this Iranian treaty? Will America someday be embarrassed by an Iranian nuclear bomb explosion?

RESOURCES. While most global attention towards the Middle East is focused on military technology and fighting and violence, there is a major crisis that is creeping up…resources…esp. water. The Dead Sea has been widely drained to provide Israeli irrigation. James Calhoun, a local Christian who heads a think tank, has developed a desalination project called Abraham’s Well. His group’s desalinization plant will have a 95’ dome on it (will look like a nuclear plant) and will produce perhaps 11 million gallons of water ec. day per plant. His group is in the preliminary stage in working with Jordan, and if the project goes through will take ocean water and refill the Dead Sea in a way that the environment will not be damaged. Water collection tanks & the hydroelectric power for the plant will be supplied by gravity. Israel’s export of natural gas & shale oil will prevent Arab oil pressure. (Even during periods of tension, oil tankers quietly ran from Saudi Arabia, et al to Israel. The elite need their profits.)

AMERICA & ISRAEL. American support has made the nation of Israel (Am Yisrael) possible. Jewish participation in running America has been major: for instance, one third of America’s Supreme Ct. is Jewish, etc. Hillary is considered “Jewish” by some Jews…and indeed her grandmother’s 2nd husband was a Russian Jew, Max Rosenberg. Like a good politician, Hillary told Jews that Jerusalem is “the eternal and indivisible capital” of Israel. The problems that America faces are also Israel’s problems. If America’s dollar becomes worthless, Israel can buddy up to China (which they have begun to do), but China will never be the bulwark for Israel that American aid has been. The military aid that America has given has made the difference at times. In the Yom Kippur war, anti-tank weapons that were emergency speed rushed to Israel (authorized by Gen. Haig) made the difference at the last moment to win. China’s friendship will never be on that level. The increase in Moslems in Europe will put more pressure on European Jews, and in line with this, Jews have been leaving Europe for several years. Most of the readers are familiar with fault lines such as the Dome of the Rock and the Jewish desire to build another temple where it stands. There is no way that the tension in the area is going to melt away—no matter what people want to wish.

Conclusion: This look on the future was to be brief & informative. The reader can expect those who identify themselves as Jews to be increasingly more religious. One can expect that Christians & Jews will survive in the future—but there are already plenty of indications that both groups are in for major challenges in the near future. The globe has entered into a dangerous time of tension. Hate will be exploited. I expect there is some book that accurately predicts how the next major war will occur, just as WW 1 & WW 2 were described ahead of time…unfortunately, I don’t know the title to such a book.

REFERENCES.
(A) Foerster, Stig. Unpublished paper presented at the Augsberg Conference, 1994, pg. 4. (B) ROM 11 (C) Micah 4:1-2