Photo by Dave Herring on Unsplash

I am writing a book titled Becoming God Through Social Justice: How Mysticism is Dividing the Church. For clarification, by mysticism, I mean panentheism (God in all and all in God). How is this shift in worldview impacting culture and dividing the church? Perhaps a prepublication preview through a short series of articles will provide a glimpse of the changes and forces that are driving them.

This first article is part of a two-part series on the Palestinian problem. It will examine the lies (or, if you prefer, the more politically correct disinformation) being told about Israel’s history and its right to the land now called Palestine. While this article does not discuss mysticism, it will provide a historical foundation for a future article on panentheism within Palestinian Liberation Theology.

Introduction

According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), since October 2023, demonstrations involving students now make up more than 40% of all US demonstration activity related to the Israel-Palestine conflict.¹

Over 94% of the more than 1,360 student demonstrations held between 7 October 2023 and 3 May 2024 have shown support for Palestine. The arrest of over 100 students at Columbia University in New York around 18 April heralded a new wave of campus demonstrations across 36 states.²

Why is America becoming more and more anti-Zionist and more likely to support Muslim nations when so many of these Muslim nations blatantly shout, “Death to America?” Why is antisemitism so rampant on college campuses, and how is this impacting the church?

According to a 2021 study conducted at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke:

the rate at which young evangelicals declared their support for Israel went from 69 percent in 2018 to 33.6 percent in 2021. There was also an increase in young evangelicals’ support for the establishment of a Palestinian state—from 35 percent in 2018 to 44.7 percent in 2021.”³

With all-out war now raging in the Middle East, I wonder how these numbers look today. Will America abandon Israel like everyone else? Ezekiel 38 suggests we eventually will.

Was Jesus a Palestinian?

In July of 2019 I attended the 80th Annual Tekakwitha Conference in Sharonville, OH, which is about 35 minutes south of Dayton on the way to Cincinnati. The conference is named in honor of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, who in 1676 became one of the first American Indians to be baptized into the Catholic Church and in 2012 was declared a saint, canonized, by Pope Benedict XV.⁴ The primary focus of the conference is to encourage American Indian Catholics to meld their native culture in with their Catholicism as well as to campaign for the canonization of other indigenous Catholics.

Each day of the conference, they had a liturgy service led by a regional priest or bishop. The first day’s liturgy was led by Reverend Nelson J. Perez, Bishop of Cleveland. His sermon was focused on why the Catholic Church has a separate conference for the indigenous peoples of North America. According to Bishop Perez:

We want to celebrate our faith and we want to celebrate our culture. Our faith and culture can’t be separated. If we don’t understand culture we can’t understand our faith. Did you know Jesus was a Palestinian? . . . To understand Jesus you have to understand his culture – to understand what he said, why he said it, and the images he used – because the Word became incarnate at a (specific) time, place, and culture. . . So those of us who are not of Islamic background need to learn he encountered us through a culture.⁵

So what is wrong with the bishop’s statement? First off, nowhere in scripture does it say that God encounters us through multiple cultures. All that scripture says is that God revealed himself through the Jewish culture and that the Messiah will come from the Jews.

Secondly, calling Jesus a Palestinian is like calling him a tyrannical, pagan, Philistine King who worshipped Ashtoreth, Dagon, and Baal-Zebub. The reason for this is that Roman Emperor Hadrian (AD 76 – 138) hated the Jews and their rebellion against the Roman Empire so he made a decision that continues to plague the Jewish people today. He renamed the territory of Judea, the home territory of the kings of the United Kingdom of Israel, to Syria Palaestina.⁶

According to Bill Salus of Prophecy Depot Ministries:

“when the Romans ended the Jewish revolt of ‘Bar Kokba’ around AD 135 they advanced the name ‘Palestina’ to describe the subject territory.

They were so angry at the Jews for revolting that they renamed the area ‘Palestina’ in honor of Israel’s greatest historical enemies the Philistines. ‘Palestina’ is the Latin translation of Philistia, from which today we derive the word Palestine.”⁷

Furthermore,

“the Philistines were an aggressive, warmongering people who occupied territory southwest of Israel between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. The Old Testament indicates that around the 13th century B.C., during the days of Samuel and Samson, the Philistines moved inland from the coast of Canaan. There, they built their civilization primarily in five cities: Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Gath, and Ekron (Joshua 13:3). These cities were each governed by a ‘king’ or ‘lord’ (from the Hebrew word seren, also rendered as ‘tyrant’). These kings apparently formed a coalition of equals. Each king retained autonomous control of his city, such as when Achish, king of Gath, dealt with David (1 Sam 27:5-7), but they worked in concert in times of national emergency (Jud 16:5).⁸

Thirdly, Jesus was a descendent of Jacob, not Esau (the father of the Edomite people of whom remnants of probably exist in the Palestinian population).⁹

Since the modern state of Israel was established in 1948, the Arabs have worked to establish a narrative where the Jewish presence in the Middle East, down through history, was either sparse or non-existent.¹⁰

“This was a favorite lie of Yasser Arafat, who used to say out loud in front of President Clinton that there never was a Temple in Jerusalem. He would even allege that the Temple had stood in Hebron!”¹¹

Hebron is where the descendants of Esau –– the Edomites –– moved to after Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and the temple in 586 BC.¹² There was never a temple in Hebron, and except for their 400 years in Egypt and their 70 years in Babylon, Jews have always lived in the land even if they didn’t have a “State” per se.¹³ They are not imperialists who stole the land from the Palestinians.

In 2016, all these lies led to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) denying Jewish ties to its most holy religious sites: the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.¹⁴ All this was done despite clear archeological evidence to the contrary. All one needs to do to disprove this lie is to travel to Rome and see the Arc of Titus, which commemorates the triumphal procession by the Roman army after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in AD 70.¹⁵

Bishop Perez’s statement also unintentionally affirms Islam by stating that “Palestine” and the religion of Islam existed during Jesus’ life. What he does not realize is that Islam bases its entire faith on the belief that Islam has always existed and that Judaism and Christianity, including the Roman Catholic Church, corrupted the one true message of Allah (god).¹⁶ Despite their claim, there is no evidence Islam existed before the early Seventh Century A.D.Ω

In Part two we will look at the question, “Where Will America Stand with Israel? Will We Stand for Truth or Fall for Lies?”

Stephanie Potts and her husband, Jim live in Dayton, Ohio, and have been married for 23 years. She worked with the federal government for 15 years as an intelligence analyst and then entered full-time Christian service in 2015. She first joined Haven Ministries in Denver, Colorado, in 2015 and then transferred to Midwest Christian Outreach, Inc in 2021. She received her Bachelor’s degree from Florida State University in Political Science and International Relations and received her Master’s degree in Geographic Information Systems from Penn State University. She is currently working towards her master’s degree in Christian Apologetics through Southern Evangelical Seminary. She specializes in evangelizing to people involved in the New Age, to Muslims, and Native Americans. Stephanie’s personal website: rainbowapologetics.com

6 Comments

J. Jackson on September 26, 2024 at 6:28 am

Great article, Stephanie! Thanks so much for writing it and sharing it!
- Stephanie Potts on September 26, 2024 at 1:11 pm
  
  Thanks so much! I’m glad you enjoyed it. Be sure to check out my book when it comes out. Hopefully it will be out around the turn of the year. God willing.
- David Blakeslee on October 5, 2024 at 10:35 pm
  
  And thank you, J. for sharing this article in the ApX newsletter. Can’t say “amen” loud enough.
Sabina on September 26, 2024 at 11:54 am

Excellent, foundational info for those of us searching! I am linking this to Jewish family members that feel the need to defend Palestine of today. Sad that US does not teach accurate history. Thank you, looking forward to your next article!
- Stephanie Potts on September 26, 2024 at 1:12 pm
  
  Thanks so much! I’m glad you enjoyed it. Be sure to check out my book when it comes out. Hopefully it will be out around the turn of the year. God willing.
  - Roland Calitz on September 26, 2024 at 1:50 pm
    
    Your posts are quite informative but it I think you should reconsider posting your understanding of Israel. You’re posting information about the error of progressive Christianity and yet you view if Israel may not be the biblical view at all. Please stick to exposing what you do instead of a bisdt understanding of the nature of Israel.

The Real History of Israel and Palestine – Pt. 1

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