By Walid Shoebat

Every day something pops up bringing us closer to the end. Now the Jerusalem Post is reporting the Arab Muslims want to divide Israel and create a Palestinian state. I also find many many claiming Christians who hate Israel (from Catholic and Orthodox) and I find many claiming Christians who also hate Rome (mainly from Evangelicals and Calvinists).

At times I wonder why the Muslim behaves like some of these Catholic and Orthodox, he hates Israel, and he also behaves like some of these Evangelical, Messianic and Calvinist crowds and he hates Rome. What I find most of the time are half-breeds between Muslim and Christian and they all say that they love Christ even including the Muslim who says he loves Jesus and Mary. Perhaps some of these would agree to what is on the news these days:

“Moderate Sunni Arab governments in the region have communicated to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu their willingness to engage in negotiations with Israel over possible changes to the Saudi peace initiative so that it may serve as the agreed-upon basis of renewed talks with the Palestinians, Channel 10 is reporting on Friday.”

“Arab regimes led by Egypt and the wealthy Gulf sheikhdoms have signaled their desire to publicly change their posture toward Israel, according to Channel 10.”

Officials in Arab capitals are now awaiting Netanyahu’s response to their offer of substantive discussions on the Saudi initiative so as to make it more palatable for Israel.

“One of the questioners asked him in Arabic about the 2002 Saudi Initiative, otherwise known as the Arab Peace Plan, which calls for a two-state solution on the pre-1967 lines with a just settlement for Palestinian refugees. In exchange the Arab world would offer Israel normalized relations.”

This means “dividing the land for gain” as predicted in Joel three in the Bible.

Netanyahu responded, also in Arabic, that an updated initiative which “addresses our concerns merits further discussion. Israel will always seek peace.”

In Arabic, Hebrew and English, the prime minister fielded a number of questions about the two-state solution and the peace process with the Palestinians has been frozen since April 2014.

The Jews are anxious to establish peace. In response to Sam Rubinstein from Brown University, Netanyahu said in a short video response, “I am willing to meet President Abbas today, right now. He can come to my home here in Jerusalem or I can go to his home here in Ramallah. Now I want you to forward that question to President Abbas and see what he says, #askAbbas.”

This is the Saudi plan. In addition, Arab capitals expect the Israeli government to take confidence-building steps on the ground in the West Bank so as to enable them to change their public stance toward Jerusalem.

This will be the deal changer. Israel will never give up an inch of Jerusalem.

Yet as the Jerusalem post stated “Israel, instead, experienced a political earthquake in the wake of the news that Avigdor Liberman, the hawkish former foreign minister from the right-wing Yisrael Beytenu faction, would assume the role of defense minister.”

In other words, while Israel is somewhat liberal, the military is ran by a conservative. This is what will be needed to respond to the coming war.

“There is currently an Arab initiative, a French initiative, there are American efforts and there is the Quartet that are all working toward a solution to this issue. In Egypt, we do not intend on playing a leading role or to be leaders of this issue, but we are prepared to exert all efforts that will contribute to finding a solution to this problem,” Sisi said.

But whatever initiative, it all mandates Israel given up on parts of Jerusalem.

I do not think any of these initiative will succeed. Turkey will divide the land as described in Daniel 11.

THE PROPER CHRISTIAN POSITION ON ISRAEL
You cannot be a Christian and hate any of God’s ordained places where God moved through the Holy Spirit to change the world. As Christians we must not forget Jerusalem, Constantinople and Rome where Peter and Paul established the Holy Catholic Church (now I just ticked off all the Calvinists). To say otherwise would not be Christian.

So what must I do? I consulted my son’s work from his new coming book, Theodore’s six years magnum opus that shatters the skeptics on how Christianity was militant throughout the ages. With Theodore, my beloved son whom the God of Israel, the true God Who visited me when I was a Muslim wretched scum sinner, and He rescued my son from Muslim hands at the end of 1991. The apple of my eye did not fall far from the tree. Although Theodore brings in a different much richer perspective than mine. Here, lets reveal what the Catholic Church saw the situation and how different the popes were in the yesteryears and how God can change a sleepy pope for a valiant one. It reveals to many of the modern who are antagonistic towards Israel. As Christians we MUST focus on preserving Jerusalem from Muslim hands. Anyone who says otherwise is not a Christian and is an impostor. For how can we pray “next year in Jerusalem” or to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” or “if I forget thee O Jerusalem let my right hand forget its cunningness”?

History will repeat itself in future prophecy. Cardinal Bessarion, Bishop of Nicaea, awaited for help in Asia Minor where the devils had ravished the great city, but no one came. He wrote desperately and passionately to Doge Francisco Foscari of Venice who told the cardinal that he promised “war against the Turks.” The promise was not fulfilled and the Ottomans saw no obstacle. The pope persistently urged crusade, and he received nothing but pathetic excuses and cruel silence. England did not respond, Alfonso V of Aragon and Naples complained of an ulcer, Charles VII was indifferent, and the emperor Fredrick III did not even attend the Imperial Diet at Regensburg done to support the crusade. So far the only one who seriously cared was Hungary, and for good reason, since Antichrist Mehmet II was targeting that country as his next victim. Pope Nicholas V, on 1454, died, and a new pontificate needed to arise –one who would comprehend the threat without politics nor diplomacy. This was the Spaniard Alfonso Borja, mostly known as pope Calixtus III. He was a product of the Reconquest, who fully understood, on account of experience, the cruelty and expansionism of the Muslim. Because of his religious fervor and his grasp on the Islamic threat, Calixtus III was the only one at this time in Western Christendom to initiate a crusade with the uttermost of concern. At his papal consecration he declared:

“I, Pope Calixtus III, promise and vow to the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to the Ever-Virgin Mother of God [he just ticked of the Calvinists again], to the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and to all the heavenly host [he just ticked of everyone who does not believe we can pray to saints], that I will do everything in my power, even if need be with the sacrifice of my life, aided by the counsel of my worthy brethren, to reconquer Constantinople, which in punishment for the sin of man has been taken and ruined by Mahomet II, the son of the devil and the enemy of our Crucified Redeemer. Further, I vow to deliver the Christians languishing in slavery, to exalt the true Faith, and to extirpate the diabolical sect of the reprobate and faithless Mahomet of the East [he just ticked of all Muslims]. For there the light of faith is almost completely extinguished [he just ticked off Allah]. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem [he just pleased the God of Israel and ticked off everyone else], let my right hand be forgotten. Let my tongue cleave to my jaws, if I do not remember thee. If I make not Jerusalem the beginning of my joy, God and His holy Gospel help me. Amen.” *Carroll, A History of Christendom, vol. iii, ch. xiii, pp. 569-571*

To a Christian, Jerusalem, Constantinople and Rome are God’s. God will see to it that a righteous pope will replace the current, that Orthodox and Catholic will join as the two sticks of Judah and Joseph (Ezekiel 37:16).

For years the God of Israel set me up to see Him. The land was filled with signs of Christianity. Every place you looked, there was archaeology. My love of archaeology led me to do my own exploring of an area on the Wadi Nar road to Jerusalem where I found an ancient monastery, beautiful works in mosaic tiles, ornate columns underground, a Byzantine cross imprinted on a piece of clay chard. My first archeological finds were a blessed sign of the Cross and a coin of Constantine which I chose for my name when I was confirmed Catholic. Yesterday I was Walid, the new born (Isaiah 9:6) and today I am Constantine, a warrior for Christ.

Now I am proud to make the sign of the Cross.

Even my father, he would always like to communicate with Allah in Jerusalem at the Temple Mount, the place it seems Palestinians love more than Mecca.

Mom had been born into a culturally Christian family and had been heavily involved in activities at her Presbyterian church before marrying Dad. But stuck in a Muslim family in the Middle East, she felt very lost.

Her mental and spiritual renaissance came one day in 1975 when she ran into a couple of Americans—a Christian Evangelical minister from Texas named Edwin Davis and his wife. They were doing the typical missionary work in the West Bank region, building churches, and they were shocked to find an American living in Beit Sahour, Bethlehem. These two could see what mental anguish my mother was in. Mom would sneak off to Jerusalem to meet them and cry her eyes out, then trudge back home to Beit Sahour and her dreary life.

The Davises became Mom’s oasis of sanity as they helped restore her faith, morale and inner spirit. Within a short time, the Davises suggested she be baptized in order to rededicate her life as a Christian. Edwin was a Baptist and to him the only valid baptism was full immersion in water. Mom readily agreed.

The next problem was not only finding a location for the baptism, but doing it secretly without my Dad or his family finding out. Mom would have been beaten half to death if any of the family knew she’d turned her back on Islam and rededicated her faith as a Christian.

The Davises and a group of Christians first took Mom to a murky pond, but she took one look at that algae-covered water and flat out refused. She wanted clear, clean water. So Edwin suggested the swimming pool at the YMCA in Jerusalem.

Off they all went to the YMCA, only to have the manager there refuse to allow it.

“You can’t baptize a woman here,” he told Edwin. “This is a men’s club.”

“Let me tell you something, young man,” said Edwin, getting indignant. “YMCA stands for Young Men’s Christian Association. It’s a Christian association, not a men’s association. Kindly get these men out of the pool. I am going to baptize this woman.”

The men got out and my mother got baptized—full immersion.

Catholics accept Evangelical baptism since it was done in the Trinity. Who ever said that the Catholic official position is antagonist towards Evangelicals and Jews does not speak the truth. It is usually the other way around.

It was my mother whom the God of Israel ordained for me that showed me Joel three where it said God would judge the nations of the earth because they scattered Israel and divided the land. Joel also said the Jews and the people of Jerusalem would be sold into slavery to the Greeks and removed from their land.

But it also said God would rescue Israel from captivity and Egypt would be desolate. I went back to verse two where it said the land would be divided.

“There’s going to be a Palestinian State,” I marveled.

This was in 1976 and these days its a headline. At that time the West wasn’t supporting the establishment of anything called a Palestinian State. Even the Western media was against Arabs. Palestinians were having demonstrations, but no one was listening to us. CNN didn’t exist yet (it was started in 1980) and the BBC didn’t seem to care. Nobody cared about establishing a Palestinian state.

“Yes, but God is going to be angry because there’s a Palestinian State,” she said.

It didn’t matter. I was still focused on the Bible predicting a Palestinian State. That stayed with me.

“The Bible says God is going to plant Israel in this land right here and no one’s ever again going to move them,” continued my mother. “Yes, you’ll have a Palestinian State, but you will fail in removing Israel from this land forever. God brought them back.”

God throws Christians out and Jews out and brings Muslims in whenever Jews and Christians disobey God [I just pleased the Muslims]. He also brings Jews and Christians together at times under the greatest calamities.

During Nazi Germany it was Rome who mainly rescued Jews while Geneva slept at the wheel. Was the Chief Rabbi of Rome, Israel Zolli a liar? He was a devout and serious Orthodox Jew as well as a learned scholar of the Talmud and of Semitic literature converted to Catholicism after witnessing the love of the Catholic Church for Jews, described his experiences as follows:

“It was from my father that I learned the great art of praying with tears. During the Nazi persecution, long years afterward, I lived near the center of Rome in a small room. There, in the dark, in hunger and cold, I would pray weeping: ‘O, Thou keeper of Israel, protect the remnants of Israel; do not allow this remnant of Israel to perish!’”

Of course, like Pacelli, he too endured much slander. Whoever seeks God will be slandered. Likewise, many Jews for his conversion hated Zolli. The Jewish community in Rome (Signor Foa) and Zolli argued, as to who was at fault for allowing the Nazis to obtain the list of Roman Jews. This list was used when they were gathered, deported, and murdered. Foa blamed Zolli; Zolli blamed Foa.

Fact is Zolli offered himself as a hostage to the Nazis, in exchange for the lives of other Jews. The Nazis preferred gold. It was Rabbi Zolli who approached the Vatican for help in collecting. Pius XII stood ready to give the gold required, and Rabbi Zolli memorialized his help later when the rabbi chose Pius’s Christian name of Eugenio for his own baptismal name.

Rabbi Zolli had long been attracted to Christ, even to the extent of writing a book about Christ from a Jewish point of view that was so sympathetic to the Catholic viewpoint of Christ that a bishop told Zolli that the bishop could have given it an imprimatur. He had wanted to convert before the war, but felt obliged to share the suffering of his people.

It was Pope Pius XII secret instructions to the clergy “to save human lives by all means”.

Perhaps the slanderers should have asked the 40,000 Italian Jews and others who managed to flee to Italy and were hidden and saved by humble priests, monks, farmers and labourers, dozens of whom lost their lives for sheltering them.

So many are the examples on Pope Pius’s aid and heroic acts for the Jewish people. On June 15th, 1940, some 500 Jews embarked at Bratslaba on a leaky Danube steamer headed for Palestine. Four months and untold deprivations later, the ship tried to enter the port of Istanbul. When the Turkish coast guard refused to admit them, their ship headed southwest—to be captured two days later by an Italian patrol boat, which led to their imprisonment in a camp on Rhodes. When rumors spoke of an imminent handover to the German authorities, Herman Herskovich, the son of one of the group leaders, managed to reach Italy, and in Rome obtained an audience with the Pope. The latter’s intervention resulted in the transfer of all 500 refugees to a hastily improvised camp in Southern Calabria near the tip of the Italian boot.”

Pope Pius XII is condemned for “not speaking out”.

But heroism is not only “speaking out” but doing action work without letting your left hand know what the right hand is doing.

But if the Vatican’s so-called silence is anti-Semitic, how could the critics answer; was it not partly due to Vatican pressure that 20,000 Jewish refugees from central Europe were brought into Italy?

In fact, the representative of these rescued Jews requested an audience with the Pope stating:

“Allow us, said their petition to ask the great honor of being able to thank personally His Holiness for the generosity he has shown us when we were persecuted during the terrible period of Nazi fascism.”

Were all the rescued Jews from 79 concentration camps lying when they came to thank him? They even gave him a Menorah, a Torah scroll and an album of photographs in appreciation for his work. Pacelli even prophetically told this group on November 29th, 1945:

“you will soon have a Jewish State,”

He added that:

“you will receive your Jewish state”.  (see Pinchas Lapide, Three Popes and the Jews, Chapter IV, Pp. 130)

How could Pope Pius XII know this and prophecy it to the Jews?

It is because He loved the God of Israel and he read the prophets.

To all who hate Israel, you hate God, for God is called “The God of Israel” where Jew and Gentile is finally united under Christ. The Lord rebuke you, you are disobedient to God and to the righteous popes. As for Israel, get ready, you will all soon convert to believe that Jesus is the Messiah [I just ticked off all the Jews].

I pray that God bring us a Zolli a Pius and a Borja to correct your wicked ways, be you Muslim, Jew, or Christian.

And if anything I said here ticked you off, I’m glad, I always make sure that my job is to tick off everybody.