Jerusalem

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

The president declared today that the United States will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, against almost universal warnings by people who have a burden for the peace of Jerusalem (Psalms 122:6).

With all the Baptist end-times preoccupation I soaked up as a kid, I've long regarded Israel as key in God's end-time plans (sorry, American nationalists); and Jerusalem as the apple as His eye.
 
In 1967 (certain of God's destiny for Jerusalem, though at best a superficial believer) I eagerly wrote the Israeli embassy in Washington, volunteering for the Israeli Army when the Six Day War began.  (The war was over by the time I got a reply.)

When I became a Christian, it was under the ministry of Derek Prince, a man whose "dangerous privilege" (he said) it was to have lived in Jerusalem during the War of Independence, and who maintained a home in Jerusalem all his life.

Brother Derek was the most profoundly scriptural preacher I have ever heard.  All his life he taught that we owe a debt of gratitude to the people whom God chose as His own, through whom He gave us the Torah and Jesus; and that we must recognize Israel's special place in God's affection.

(I'd hasten to add Brother Derek also preached that God repeatedly said His laws in the Torah, and the just society He enjoined on Israel, were for both the Jews and "the alien [alternatively "stranger"] who sojourns among you:" and that "...the aliens who stay in your midst...shall be to you as the native-born among the sons of Israel..." [Ezekiel 47:22].  His love for Israel was entirely based in scripture, and not in nationalism.  His family comprised Jewish, Palestinian, and Kenyan orphans.)

When I went back to college in the mid-70s, U.M.K.C. had a new program in Judaic Studies.  I was a new Christian, and wanted to know as much as I could about everything in the faith: so I took as many of its courses as I could, and graduated with a minor in Judaic Studies.  My wonderful Hebrew teacher, Tzivia Gaba, was the wife of a man who'd helped smuggle arms to Palestine before the War of Independence, whom I was honored to meet one time.

I consider myself a staunch long-time friend and admirer of the Jewish people and nation.

I am nonetheless conflicted by Trump's rash action today.

And I have to say I'm greatly put on guard when a world-leader who's established himself as a "man of lawlessness" (II Thessalonians 2:3) postures, for his own self-glorification, about the status of Jerusalem, the city of the Great King.