Those TV commercials aimed at Protestants to finance Jewish immigration to Israel

[Lepanto]

I'm sure you've seen the commercials which typically run on Protestant TV stations. Although compassion for forlorn Jews is ostensibly the selling point used to raise the funds, I believe that there is also a theological motivation for (most) Protestants to have all the Jews back in Israel. Something about the Second Coming of Christ will occur when all the Jews are in Israel. Can someone explain this? (But of course, the Jews don't believe in the Second Coming, so is Rabbi Eckstein taking advantage of the Protestant contributors?)

The TV commercials don't address this theological motivation, nor does their website.

http://www.ifcj.org/site/PageServer

[Chris_McAvoy]

I have seen this same infomercial on either TBN or ISPN cable tv channel. My lebanese maronite friend Charbel Touma "had a fit" when I showed him it.

What we have witnessed is the heresy of Christian Zionism. Rev Stephen Sizer, a protestant minister, has a fine presentation titled "Christian Zionism - Road-map to Armageddon" which you can easily find through searching google.

for a typical example of the heresy of Christian Zionism:

"CUFI's advice to the Bush Administration reflects the Armageddon-based foreign-policy views of its founder, John Hagee. Hagee is a fire-and-brimstone preacher from San Antonio who commands the nearly 18,000-member Cornerstone Church and hosts a major TV ministry where he explains to millions of viewers how the end times will unfold. He is also the author of numerous bestselling pulp-prophecy books, like his recent Jerusalem Countdown, in which he cites various unnamed Israeli intelligence sources to claim that Iran is producing nuclear "suitcase bombs." The only way to defeat the Iranian evildoers, he says, is a full-scale military assault.

"The coming nuclear showdown with Iran is a certainty," Hagee wrote this year in the Pentecostal magazine Charisma. "Israel and America must confront Iran's nuclear ability and willingness to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons. For Israel to wait is to risk committing national suicide."

Despite his penchant for extreme rhetoric, or perhaps because of it, Hagee endeared himself to key members of the Israeli right. With the help of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who once spoke at a massive pro-Israel fundraiser at Cornerstone Church, Hagee has raised at least $8.5 million for Israeli social work projects. And as a result of Hagee's influence in the Lone Star State, reflected by his enormous wealth--he reportedly rakes in more than $1 million a year from his television ministry--and his close relationship with the previously omnipotent and now disgraced former House majority leader Tom DeLay, Washington's Republican leadership is just a phone call away.

Hagee recently united America's largest Christian Zionist congregations and some of the movement's most prominent figures--including the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Gary Bauer and Rod Parsley, an Ohio preacher instrumental in launching Republican Ken Blackwell's gubernatorial campaign--under the banner of CUFI, creating the first and only nationwide evangelical political organization dedicated to supporting Israel. Hagee says he would like to see CUFI become "the Christian version of AIPAC," referring to the vaunted pro-Israel group rated second only to the National Rifle Association as the most effective lobby in Washington."

Above it mentions mostly Republicans. Although Democrats probably have less Christian Zionism they have more of the regular Jewish/secular Zionism personified in my own Maryland state Senator Benjamin Cardin.

Let us hope that the future USA foriegn policies with Israel are imbibed with love for our fellow near eastern Catholics and Orthodox Christians rather than tainted with Protestant or Jewish heresy.

[Chris_McAvoy]

http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/12...or-couple.html

"$350 for One Jew, $700 for a Couple"

Counterintuitive as it may seem to some, a large majority of Zionists in the world are not Jewish, and most of the Zionists do not live in Israel. They are fundamentalist evangelical Christians of the apocalyptic persuasion -- Christian Zionists -- in the United States, who, as Mark Ames puts it, "hope to bundle every hairy Jewish *** up, air-freight them to the West Bank and East Jerusalem (once those areas have been cleansed of Muslims), and use the Jews as bait to bring upon the Rapture, as kindling in the Apocalypse, the final battle that will bring Jesus back to Earth. None of this can happen until every last Jew is penned into the occupied territories -- and the Jews won't get there unless the far-right runs Israel and America" ("Save a Jew, Save Yourself!" New York Press 17.41, October 12, 2004).

Apparently unable to simply put their faith in Providence, Christian Zionists are doing all they can to hasten the Rapture. How? By putting Jews on sale on TV.

One such "Jews-for-Sale" infomercial dumbfounded a Harvard blogger:

[T]onight I am really confused. Sitting here in a hotel in rural Georgia, I came across an infomercial for the "International Fellowship of Christians and Jews" (in partnership with the Jewish Agency for Israel). For at least a half an hour, the program urged Christian viewers to donate money to help Russian Jews emigrate to Israel: "$350 for one Jew, $700 for a couple" was the frequent refrain. (www.wingsofeagles.tv) ("Late Night TV's Strange Bedfellows," RF Modulator, July 12, 2004)
According to Ruth Conniff, prizes are offered for Christians who pledge to buy Jews for Israel: "As in a fund drive for public television, the evangelists were giving out prizes to viewers who called up to pledge. In this case, the premium was a genuine shofar" ("Public Piety," The Progressive, March 2003). The wackiness of the show beggars description, even in the able hands of the veteran journalist: "An enthusiastic evangelical Christian dressed as King David in a gold crown played a harp and sang Hebrew songs in front of the Western Wall. A Jews for Jesus couple in Florida sat in a living room crammed with Stars of David, loaves of challah, and various Jewish tchotchkes, reading Christian Bible verses" (Conniff, March 2003). Notwithstanding the wackiness of its infomercials, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews claims to have "contributed over $100 million in recent years toward Jewish immigration, resettlement and social welfare projects in Israel" (International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, "A History of Helping"), and it counts Joe Lieberman among its pitchmen:

The image is jarring: Sen. Joseph Lieberman, presidential candidate, appears on an infomercial asking Evangelical Christians to donate money to "rescue a Jew." "'On Wings of Eagles' is a modern-day fulfillment of Biblical prophesy," the voiceover in the infomercial says, over images of huddled Russian Jews at the airport, smiling as they presumably wait to leave Russia for Israel.

The half-hour appeal aired on the afternoon of Jan. 2 on Paxson Broadcasting (PAX) stations across the nation (locally on WHPX, channel 26), according to the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), the Chicago-based nonprofit that paid for the spot. Alongside Lieberman, testimonials come from stars of the Christian Right, including convicted Watergate felon Charles Colson, Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson, and Moral Majority head Jerry Falwell.

Critics of the Christian Right say the IFCJ's appeal to "prophesy" in their infomercial is a thinly veiled reference to Armageddon, the Second Coming of Christ and the moment when nonbelievers -- Jews included -- will be cast into the lake of fire. Jewish critics of the IFCJ say the group demeans the dignity of Jews.

Yet from 1994 to 1999, Lieberman, who on Monday announced his bid for the presidency, served as co-chair of one of IFCJ's projects, the Washington-based Center for Jewish and Christian Values.

Lieberman's long association with the IFCJ is, if not a secret, a little-known detail of his biography. No examination of it was made during Lieberman's bid for the vice presidency in 2000. The secular, mainstream press has taken no notice. (Edward Ericson, Jr., "What About Those End Times, Mr. President? Sen. Joe Lieberman Announces his Candidacy, But Not His Association with Lunatic Fringe of Biblical Prophecy," Hartford Advocate, January 16, 2003)
To the disappointment of Christian Zionists, American Jewry (like overlapping categories of Blacks, Arabs, Muslims, Queers, and the poor) once again resoundingly -- three to one -- rejected George W. Bush. To their delight, Bush got re-selected anyway. Besides, End-Time Christians, who are eager to "save" Jews for Israel, have many friends on both sides of the aisle, if not among ordinary Jewish Americans.

[Chris_McAvoy]

Update:

Here are a couple of little known facts. Many of the best-educated Russian Jews that Zionists (the majority of whom are End-Time Christians rather than Jews) "saved" for Israel have sought to use it as a stepping stone to "America, Canada or other Western countries" or even gone back to Russia itself because of "high unemployment and a stagnant economy" as well as "the fear of terrorism" in the Holy Land. A more ironic paradox is that only one third of the Russians "saved" for Israel are Jewish and some of the non-Jewish Russians who made "Aliyah" to Israel turned out to be anti-Semites, neo-Nazis, and even Holocaust deniers who hate both Jews and Arabs!

[DL82]

I'm sorry, but where in the Bible does it say that all the Jews have to be back in Israel before the Judgment comes? I don't see it in Revelation. There are references in the Prophets to the messiah gathering all Israel to himself, but surely that's about the conversion (or rather, the fulfilment of the fullness of the Jewish faith in Jesus as Messiah), not the physical location, of the Jews. Where do these people get this idea?