Greetings to all: Have you ever wondered what is the purpose of your life? Do you ever feel that even your closest friends do not understand you in your deepest depths? Almighty God wants you to be restored to hope. Hope comes from worship of a merciful, faithful, righteous, holy, forgiving, just, and loving God.  Or maybe you say, "I'm a positive person. I'm already hopeful.  I don't need to be 'restored to hope'."  This teacher/writer is replying to you that there is hope and there is also Hope with a capital "H."  Hope with a capital "H" is more than enjoying life. It's more than a positive attitude. It is rooted in salvation. 

As a psychology intern in Canada years ago, my supervisor, a psychotherapist specializing in short-term psychoanalysis, asserted to me that "there is no such thing as salvation." He insisted that humanity's cycle of life was rooted and based entirely in natural process.  Though I was myself an atheist, I found myself asserting at the time that there was salvation.  Why was I indignant at his naturalism?  I couldn't understand myself.  Yet, without any impulse to study the Bible, to pray, or to inquire of any clergy, I emphatically stated and was certain that indeed there was something in this universe worthy of being called "salvation."  Since then, I was invited into His kingdom.  I received the call on my life.  I have experienced His saving love, and desire to communicate it to others. We shall reach out to you in friendship and caring.  Jesus, second person of the Trinity, came as the Incarnate God to offer a true path of SALVATION to whomever will receive Him as their Savior and Lord.  In Hebrew, He is "Yeshua." We teach and preach our wonderful and beautiful Savior and Lord under the rubric of "By grace alone, by faith alone, by Christ alone, by Scripture alone, and for the glory of God alone."< 

 

We are now having services at 3:00 pm on Sundays in Brooklyn, NY. Please write for location at philprof3@aol.com.

 

A True Narrative of Jews in Israel

Who is the real David in the Middle East?

July 9, 2014 by Jeff Ludwig  

 In a remarkable article, “Grand Larceny,” Chloe Valdary powerfully reminds the reader that the Palestinian Arabs have succeeded in reversing the true narrative of Eretz Yisrael. They have to a great degree succeeded in convincing people around the world that their land was stolen from them by Israel and the Jews. But Valdary points out that the reverse is closer to the truth. The land that is present-day Israel – including Judea and Samaria – was land that was brutally taken away from the Jewish people after 70 AD, and was only rightfully restored in 1947. The story of Jewish deprivation and suffering for thousands of years is the true story of Middle Eastern “larceny.” Valdary suggests that Israel and the Jewish people need to “re-package” the narrative of the history of Israel to replace the narrative that has gained traction among so many people.

Let us then consider the possible basis for this “new” narrative:

The Romans, Arabs, European Catholics, Seljuks, and other groups persecuted the Jews in their God-given homeland for 2000 years. The Jews remained in the land of their forefathers even though they were officially kicked out by the Romans. A remnant clung to its historical homeland in spite of the so-called diaspora of Jews throughout the world. They endured everything to live and breathe in the homeland of their ancestors assigned as a homeland by Almighty God.2

The ancient Jewish kingdom was dealt a severe blow by the Assyrians and the Babylonians. Most of the Jews were taken into exile by the Babylonians. However, the Persians conquered the Babylonians, and recognized that Judea, which included the capital city of Jerusalem, was Jewish land. Under the Persian King Artaxerxes, a large contingent of Jews were allowed to return.3 The Persians in turn were overcome by the Greeks led by Alexander the Great. Alexander recognized that Judea was Jewish land, and showed a lot of respect for the Jewish leadership. Later, other pagan Jew-haters like the Seleucid King Antiochus IV Epiphanes wanted to wipe out the Jews and the Jewish religion and steal their land, but he was repulsed miraculously by Judah Maccabee and his brothers. The Romans succeeded to power over Jewish land; however, even though they heavily taxed the Jews and treated them as a conquered people, the Sanhedrin (high level rabbinical court) under the Romans still had some authority. Governors, appointed by the Roman Emperors, along with the Roman military legions, had the ultimate governing control.

The great catastrophe for Jewish civilization was having the Second Temple, the center of Jewish spiritual life, destroyed in 70 AD and having precious Judea and Samaria renamed “Palestina” by the Romans and Jerusalem renamed “Aelia Capitolina.” Despite the Roman carnage, a remnant of Jews remained century-after-century clinging to their hope of restoration, but living as a minority and as second-class citizens in the land of their forefathers. What endurance! They demonstrated the perseverance of the brokenhearted.

By the 7th century AD, the violent hordes of Islam took over the lands of the Middle East. Jews, however, continued to live in the same land that had been occupied by Joshua since 1300 BCE. They lived as a beleaguered minority under the Arabs, and endured as dhimmis (second-class citizens). That meant they had to pay a jizya (tax on non-Muslims) and endure humiliations. Constantly the Jewish people were crying out to Almighty God – both the minority of Jews in their ancient land, and Jews living throughout the world – to restore their state, their full citizenship in the land given to Abraham for them, which they controlled for 1500 years.

What a great day for all the minorities of the world when World War I came to an end. After World War I, the rights of persecuted minorities began to be recognized. Just as Czechoslovakia was created for the Czechs and Slovaks, just as the Ottoman Empire was broken up to recognize the claims of Arabs living under their control (the Ottomans were Muslims, but ethnographically were not Arabs), so the British recognized the claims of the indigenous Jewish minority living in their ancient homeland, having lived there since long before the 7th century when the Muslim Arab claims to the land began.

The sweet smell of liberation for minorities and colonialized people was in the air for the first time in history. Jews began to rejoice. But the Arabs, despite their own liberation at that time under temporary British and French mandates, took a hateful look at Jews who had the same aspirations for liberation. Their liberation was okay, but Jewish liberation under the same set of principles was rejected. This abiding rejection of the principle of national self-determination that has been totally accepted beginning with the end of World War I, and continuing at a greater pace after the creation of the United Nations, is the key to understanding the hatefulness of the Arab mindset. If it meant that Jews could achieve self-determination by having only .01% of the land of the Arab nations, that was still too much for those selfish, unprincipled people, even though they hungered for the same goal as those Arab states.

Arab anti-Semitism has caused them to reject national self-determination as it applies to the Jews. Meanwhile, even the national self-determination of Czechoslovakia has been fine-tuned, and that country has been divided to become the countries of Czech Republic and Slovakia. The integrity of Poland after being split by the Nazis and the USSR in 1939 has been restored, and Yugoslavia has become Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo. The Arabs have accepted all these, but they will not accept Jewish self-determination. All the former republics of the USSR have become independent countries, all under the universally accepted principle of self-determination, but the Arabs do not accept Jewish self-determination. The Arab hatred for Israel is not only a rejection of Israel but is rejection of national self-determination, one of the key items of Pres. Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points and carried forward more strongly by Pres. Roosevelt, Pres. Truman, and their successors, as well as the United Nations. The Arab world should hang its head in shame (but they have no shame regarding non-Muslim principles and rights) as its behavior is disgracing every world leader, and every country that became independent after World Wars I and II.

Israel’s existence is not only a tribute to the tenacity of the Jews who persisted there during the 2000 years after Rome’s expulsion, not only to the prayers of Jews all over the world for 2000 years, but also to the triumph of self-determination as an idea whose time had come. It is thrilling to see the emergence of so many new national entities in the 20th century, among them Israel, India, Pakistan, and the others named above. But the Goliath that is the Arab world would snatch away the wonderful restoration that is Israel. Goliath would kill David. But “David” has already triumphed despite the malevolent intentions of its neighbors. The power to have overcome such overwhelming hatred speaks for itself. If you are for the underdog, an underdog that is exercising the same right as every indigenous people in the world, namely the right to sovereignly govern itself, then you have to praise, honor, and stand up for Israel in every possible way.

1 The Algemeiner, July 3, 2014, http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/02/grand-larceny/#comments

2 For a complete account of the Jewish presence (Yishuv) in the land of present-day Israel, see Jerome R. Verlin, Israel: 3000 Years, The Jewish People’s Three Thousand Years Presence in Palestine, Pavilion Press, 2010 and Jerome R. Verlin and Lee S. Bender, Pressing Israel, Pavilion Press, 2012.

3 See Tanakh, Nehemiah 2:1-10.

 

The Historical Enmity Between Spanish and English Culture

Past antagonisms keep repeating themselves.

January 6, 2025 by Jeff Ludwig  

Newsletter

 

The U.S. border crisis has an historical underlay that is generally disregarded in analyses of the  “illegal migrant crisis.” Unconscious as well as longstanding conflicts impact so-called current events.  Most of the “migrants” are from Mexico, Central and South America, although clearly with the  Biden-manipulated influx we also see cohorts of Chinese, Middle Eastern, and African “migrants.”  [The word migrants is in quotation marks because at one level they are migrants, but they also might  be referred to as invaders, illegal border crossers, Trojan horse warriors sent to undermine the politics  and economics of the U.S., or as pawns in a Democrat Party strategy to undermine Republican  strength in the U.S.]

This writer saw about 20 “migrants” from Bangladesh and Pakistan being interviewed as they trekked into their new life. The interviewer asked them how they got here, and to a man (they were all men) they said they had walked. The interviewer was incredulous and asked, “From Pakistan?! How could you have walked from Pakistan?” But the migrant stuck to his guns and answered with a straight face, “Yes, we walked.” The role of NGOs was not mentioned, nor flights, nor pocket money, nor meals, etc.

Tensions over our Southern border with Mexico extend back to the 19th century. Mexico actually invited Americans to come settle in what was then Mexican territory in what is today northeastern Texas. Sam Houston and various frontiersmen accepted Mexico’s offer, but conflicts arose and Texas became independent of Mexico in 1836, which included the major defeat at San Jacinto of the Mexican forces, led by Santa Ana, by Gen. Sam Houston, who led the Texans. Texas became an independent Republic of Texas from 1836 to 1845.

By 1844 President James Polk came into office and was committed to a doctrine of Manifest Destiny which promoted the idea that U.S. territory should expand dramatically across the continent beyond the vast territory that had been added by Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase. This ideological position was based on a vision of democratic ideals and rights-based political philosophy that were uniquely American being put in place throughout the North American continent. Manifest Destiny was not a mere power-play ideology as leftists often portray it.

The phrase “Manifest Destiny,” which emerged as the best-known expression of this mindset, first appeared in an editorial published in the July-August 1845 issue of The Democratic Review. In the editorial, the writer criticized the opposition that still lingered against the annexation of Texas, urging national unity on behalf of “the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.” Here the key word is not “power” but “Providence.” This word is now rarely used, but the Founding Fathers and others following them were fond of this word because it communicated a sense of God-wrought expansion of the principles of sound governance based on biblical values that were the hallmark of our founding and success as a nation.

The crisis between Mexico and the U.S. came to a head in 1846 when U.S. troops crossed the Nueces River into the land area between it and the Rio Grande. The U.S. claimed the Rio Grande was the boundary between us and Mexico, while Mexico claimed the Nueces was. Thus, the crossing of the Nueces by U.S. troops was adjudged by Mexico to be an act of war and the Mexican-American War began. Mexico lost the war and about one-third of its territory was taken by the U.S., including nearly all of present-day California, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona.

For this writer, the expansion of democratic political ideals claimed by Manifest Destiny actually pre-dates the 19th century and goes back to the adversarial relationship between Spain and England in the 16th century. That tension reached its climax during the reign of Elizabeth I, who was intensely evangelical (Protestant) in her spirituality. Plots were formed against her and after she supported the Protestants in the Netherlands in their revolt against Spain, the opposition of Spain intensified.

Spain directed its fleet (armada) to attack England in 1588. As History.com notes,

Just after midnight on August 8, the English sent eight burning ships into the crowded harbor at Calais. The panicked Spanish ships were forced to cut their anchors and sail out to sea to avoid catching fire. The disorganized fleet, completely out of formation, was attacked by the English off Gravelines at dawn. In a decisive battle, the superior English guns won the day, and the devastated Armada was forced to retreat north to Scotland. The English navy pursued the Spanish as far as Scotland and then turned back for want of supplies. Battered by storms and suffering from a dire lack of supplies, the Armada sailed on a hard journey back to Spain around Scotland and Ireland.

That defeat of the Spanish marked the ascendancy of England as a great power.

Lastly, we should recall the Spanish-American War. Spain resisted the Cuban desire for independence, and this resistance threatened U.S. investments in Cuba at the end of the 19th century. In April 1898, Spain declared war on the U.S., but by December they had lost the war. Under the Treaty of Paris signed in December 1898, Spain renounced all claims to Cuba, ceded Guam and Puerto Rico to the United States and transferred sovereignty over the Philippines to the United States for $20 million.

If we look at our southern border conflict within this wider historical context of a longstanding conflict with Catholic, Spanish-speaking people and English-speaking Protestants, we see a deeper dimension of our so-called “immigration crisis.”  Certainly, the Democrats are looking for more voters who are dependent upon government and will cling to their left-wing programs and superficial philosophy. However, their interest has a deep historical context.

Our differences with the Spanish-speaking world are longstanding and real.

Reader Interactions