After reading my recent reflections concerning the Battle of Franklin and the Civil War, an African-American brother in Georgia responded with some pertinent observations of his own. I found his comments insightful and provocative, so I share them with you today. My original remarks are quoted first, followed by his responses in italics. I have added two further comments in brackets. * * * "No visible signs remain that this yard . . . once witnessed a carnage so terrible that battle-hardened soldiers were sickened by the slaughter. . . . The only remaining evidence of war lies beneath … [Read more...]
REFLECTIONS FROM A BATTLEFIELD
The battle began about 4:00 p.m. on November 30, 1864, and it raged for five hellish hours. Some 20,000 Confederate troops, commanded by the egotistical and miscalculating Gen. John Bell Hood, launched a suicidal, frontal assault along a two-mile front, across 400 yards of open fields. Their target -- the considerably smaller but well-entrenched and heavily-armed Union Army that earlier had captured the picturesque village of Franklin, Tennessee, a dozen miles south of Nashville. When the sun rose the next morning, more than 6,200 Southern soldiers and nearly 2,500 Union men lay dead on those … [Read more...]
KILLING IN WAR
A gracEmail subscriber who is a U.S. military officer asks how he should view killing in war. "I have an allegiance to Christ and to my country," he writes, "with the latter subordinate to the former. Can you provide any guidance?" * * * The Old Testament distinguishes between criminal homicide (murder, punishable by death), accidental homicide (for which asylum was provided in the Cities of Refuge), and justifiable homicide (self-defense and holy war). The New Testament forbids murder and makes no provision for "holy war" by the church, which is a spiritual rather than … [Read more...]
ISRAEL AND PROPHECY
A gracEmail subscriber asks if the return of Jews since 1948 to the modern state of Israel is a fulfillment of biblical prophecy and a sign of Jesus' soon return. * * * The Old Testament prophets repeatedly anticipate a time when God will gather Jews who have been scattered around the world back to their ancestral homeland (Isa.11:10-12; 52:1-10; Ezek. 36:22-24; 37:1-12; Zech. 10:6-12; 12:3,6). Many biblical scholars believe that these prophecies will be fulfilled literally. Other scholars note that the New Testament sometimes explains such literal-sounding promises in … [Read more...]
JUBILEE
A gracEmail subscriber who is reading through the Bible has come to Leviticus 25 and God's instructions for observing the Year of Jubilee. "Did Israel practice Jubilee?" he asks. "If so, for how long? I don't recall any mention of it in Judges, Samuel, Kings or Chronicles." * * *As you know from your reading, Jubilee was part of a group of ecological instructions that God gave to Israel long before "green" was fashionable (Lev. 25). Every seven years, the Israelites were to give the farm land a sabbath (rest) year by not planting any crops or working the soil. The year after the … [Read more...]
ISRAEL’S PROMISES AND OUR CROPS
A gracEmail subscriber writes: "God told the Jewish nation if they obeyed him, he would bless their fields and orchards. I believe as an individual Christian that I am a 'true Jew.' Does this mean that God will protect my garden and fruit trees from rabbits and deer if I do not put up a fence?" * * * We believers in Jesus from among the nations are spiritual descendants of Abraham, but we are not "true Jews," in my understanding of the Bible (Rom. 4:9-18). Jews are Jews -- although not all Jews are God's elect as evidenced by their lack of faith -- and Gentiles are Gentiles (Rom. 9:6-7; … [Read more...]
2 CHRONICLES 7:14
A gracEmail subscriber asks whether God's conditional promise in 2 Chronicles 7:14 to forgive his people and to heal their land applies today to Christians living in the United States of America. * * *In this passage King Solomon has just dedicated the Temple and God appears to the king at night to assure him that he will hear prayers offered from this place (2 Chron. 7:12-18). For example, suppose that God's covenant people Israel commit sin and God punishes them with drought, locust or disease. If they then repent, turn to God and reform their ways, God will forgive them … [Read more...]
GENTILES
A gracEmail subscriber writes: "My husband and I were discussing that all persons are descendants of Adam and Eve. Since Isaac and Ishmael are the fathers of the Jews and the Arabs, we were curious as to what descendent of Adam and Eve was the father of the Gentiles?" * * * That would be Noah, who with his wife, their sons Shem, Ham and Japheth and the sons' three unnamed wives were the only humans who survived the Flood (Gen. 7:13, 23). Everyone born after the Flood descended from one of Noah's three sons (Gen. 9:18-19). In the Bible, the Gentiles (literally "the peoples" or "the nations") … [Read more...]
THE TRUE ISRAEL
A gracEmail subscriber asks whether "true Israel" today consists of both Jews and Gentiles (non-Jews from all nations) who are part of Christ's kingdom and his spiritual body. * * * On this subject the Bible presents a variegated picture and we must include the complexity if we accurately describe that biblical picture. There is a larger sense in which Abraham is "father" of all believers, whether Jews or Gentiles (Rom. 4:11-12), and all believers are Abraham's spiritual "descendants" and "heirs" (Rom. 4:16-18; Gal. 3:29). All who trust in God as Abraham did are blessed … [Read more...]
JEWS STILL ‘CHOSEN PEOPLE’
A gracEmail reader in Eastern Europe asks, "Are the Jews still God's 'chosen people?' Why they did not receive the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ?" * * * The Apostle Paul struggles with the heart-wrenching situation of Israel's present rejection of Jesus in Romans chapters 9-11. Along the way, he notes three important points. First, not every descendant of Abraham is one of God's "chosen," as even the Old Testament story makes plain. God counted Abraham's offspring through Isaac, not through Ishmael (Gen. 21:12; Rom. 9:7). When Isaac's wife Rebekah had twin … [Read more...]
