Monday, August 28, 2006

Christians in the Middle-East Crisis

Christianity Today has a thought provoking post with quotes from Christians who are in Lebanon. The article is entitled: We're Not Spectators.

Here's a couple of juicy quotes:




Western Christians "who have but disdain for Arabs" weren't spared Accad's anger: "World events in the last few years—even decades—have had as their main catalyst tens of thousands of evangelical Christians … who believe that apocalyptic destruction of all but their beloved Israel will be a precursor to global salvation."

Less it be conceived as being anti-Israel, the article also makes mention of Hezbollah fighters shooting persons who tried to escape the Christian areas.

The Katyusha rockets that struck Nazareth, Mansour wrote, reminded the church there that their calling was obvious. "We had simply neglected it. Our calling as the remnant of Christians in the birthplace of our faith is to pray for the people of this broken land." Likewise, these voices call us not to throw up our hands, but to fall to our knees. Like the Katyushas, the comments sometimes miss the mark (yes, ours too). But they also remind us that as both Americans and Christians, we're already part of this conflict. We're not distant spectators.

1 comment:

Ted M. Gossard said...

Good thoughts. We so sorely need to hear this. Over at RBC Ministries, where I work, Mart DeHann is very responsive to this, and they have filmed where the Palestinians live (in their territory), as well as in Israel.

Unfortunately too many American evangelicals are wedded to Israel, by a fallacious eschatology. In a way that rubber stamps what they do.