₦airaland Forum

frosbel: You are still dodging, show me the scripture to support our position !

I dey wait ooo !

chai...there is God oo....unless you don't go through the scriptures i gave to you....i said read Revelation 20:14...you will see they are two different things....and Luke that you called a parable which wasn't and Jesus don't joke with words even if it is.....you said GRAVE...whatever you call it....there is a place reserved for the saints that is safe&below are the place of torment for the sinners....But in the end of age...they will be released and Rev. 20:14 will happen.

frosbel: This is a Parable. However I asked you a question earlier which you dodged, bro. ( If it is truth then we must have at least 2 - 3 witnesses from the old to new testament ) , so I repeat my question ;

Where did the sinners who died in the old testament go to ?



But the bible calls all of them HELL , no ?



Nothing to do with this topic.


My advise is that you wait before replying because with each reply you make you are going deeper into error.

Thanks,

Scriptures didn't call of them hell....it was Frosbel that did according to his own interpretation.
And i answered your question unless if you missed it....i said the lower regions of hell which is a prison yard of torment....sinners went there....but the righteous went to the upper regions.

frosbel: Brother, you sound confused and are not making any sense, who told you Hell was 3 dimensional ?? Show me the scripture that supports this fable.

The other questions you decided to dodge them. smh.

Luke 16:19-26. If it is not the higher region,the rich man wouldn't have see Lazarus. What separate both regions is that gulf.

Check Revelation 20:14.... For you to know that Lake is that which is to come and superior to Hell.

1corinth 12:2-4.

frosbel: The Bible says in the mouth of 2 or 3 people a matter is established. The story of Lazarus and the Rich Man is a Parable but for the benefit of doubt can you show me from the OT where this Abraham's bosom was mentioned as a place to go to after death.



But the bible says that SATAN is not in Hell , in fact one day he will be tormented in Hell.

Currently this is where the devil and his devils are :

"The LORD said to Satan, "From where do you come?" Then Satan answered the LORD and said, "From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it." - Job 1:7

"Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:" - 1 Peter 5:8

There is nowhere in the bible that tells us Satan is in hell or in charge of Hell.




Where is the bolded statement in the bible , please quote scripture.



Which Hell is different from the Lake of Fire :

1. Hades
2. Sheol
3. Gehenna
4. Tartarus


Also, the rest of your comment is unintelligible , please rephrase.

Thanks.

i locked it for a reason......Have just explained to you the dimensions in Hell unless you don't believe in it,as per Revelation.....LAKE of Fire is superior to Hell.

And you talking of satan not in charge, you don't have to be physically present before you're in charge of something. Even in the natural realm of ours, we can see this.spiritual powers&authority are different.

Meditate on Rev 12. and cross check with Isaiah 14:12-17 Then,meditate on Psalm 110:2. Am using java phone to post.

This God made many worlds....LAKE is different from Hell.lake is yet to come.And it is in levels.That world have chambers.,it is where you can go now and come back. Just like you can travel to Heaven&come back.

jdilight: Theology is devils tool of keeping man in bondage. The day man knows his true father. Perfection to man become a way of life just like his father.

Am not teaching theology coz it can't touch death. Satan has put men in bondage before the advent of theology. That day may never come if not that God helped man and is still helping them(us.) The Father of all spirits has become darkened to man....to know Him is to be free. A software was implanted in him by satan never to come to the way of perfection not to even sniff it. And it will keep unveiling itself if not stopped by the Lamb.As many received Him will be given that ability/empowerment to detonate the time bomb satan gave to men.

frosbel: There are serious problems with this comment :

1. Where did the sinners who died in the old testament go to ?
2. Who is in charge of hell
3. Why is God's beloved MAN in this hell already and suffering while the demons are free to roam about and harass mankind ?
4. Do you admit that there are 2 Hells, i.e one before judgement and one after judgement


Thanks.

Recently i told in one thread that if you said this in BC, i will agree with you.
1. First you must know that Hell are in levels....there is one that is a prison yard,there is one above it in that region that is safe....Jesus call it the Bosom of Abraham.Satan have no right over such men in the latter because they obeyed God while still in earthen vessel. But the sinners go into torment(prison) as seen in the parable.

2. That which i answered in (1), satan is in charged of it.i mean the lower regions.Hell doesn't pain evil spirits,it's like a natural home.

3. Demons roam until the appointed time when judgement shall come....God will raise an army from men that will thrown satan down that old serpent.

4. People don't understand this concept Hell is different from Lake of Fire....LAKE is what these spirits are afraid of. Even Hell will be cast into the Lake as seen in Revelation. HELL is what some men are passing through right now...LAKE is yet to come....Satan will be tormented there. Every man have been blessed above hell but people there are been held down there by ignorance.
Thanks

bolaino: The last couple of months have been devastating for our fellow human beings in the middle east, with Isis killing people in Iraq and syria, families have been put in mourning, and lots of people have lost their lives, and with the recent massacre of over a thousand palestinian women and children a question comes to mind, from a religious perspective, I would like to ask my christian brothers and sisters, where they think the souls of the palestinians would go? Would the palestinians go to hell or heaven, given the fact that they did not believe in Jesus christ while alive, will the dead palestinians go to hell? I would like to hear your opinions,

Hell is just for the moment....it's a prison yard for now....at the end of this age,Hell will still give them up.
They might go through a lot,satan doesn't care,there are rules in the world of these spirits...if you're ignorant,you're ignorant.
With the person bombed&the person bombing another....all together are going to the same place if their work is not right before Him.

jdilight: When you say Adam was our father before Jesus came, your now saying Jesus is our father. No Jesus is not our Father, but Jesus Father who is Adam Father is our father. When Paul referred to Jesus as the second Adam, he was making a comparison.

The first Adam cut the connection between God and man. If you study your Bible well you will see that men began to call on God again after Adam gave birth to Seth. That mean till set came Adam had nothing to do with God again. Jesus said I am the way to the father. Jesus reconnected man back to God.

We inherited only the image and likeness of God from Adam. Sin is an act it cannot be inherited.

You say Adam is son of man? if you read your Bible very well you will see that Adam was mainly referred as son of God, while Jesus referred himself as the son of man.

Now man is immortal, man cannot die. What you see people bury is not the man but his flesh. The real man is gone.

And on the last note also,as i said above which i'll say in another understable manner: IMMORTALITY is higher than ETERNAL LIFE. This are food for the mature....i don't normally divulge secrets if not that i want folks to move up......In other words, IMMORTALITY gave birth to ETERNAL LIFE. How much more ADAM who was just a LIVING SOUL.

jdilight: When you say Adam was our father before Jesus came, your now saying Jesus is our father. No Jesus is not our Father, but Jesus Father who is Adam Father is our father. When Paul referred to Jesus as the second Adam, he was making a comparison.

The first Adam cut the connection between God and man. If you study your Bible well you will see that men began to call on God again after Adam gave birth to Seth. That mean till set came Adam had nothing to do with God again. Jesus said I am the way to the father. Jesus reconnected man back to God.

We inherited only the image and likeness of God from Adam. Sin is an act it cannot be inherited.

You say Adam is son of man? if you read your Bible very well you will see that Adam was mainly referred as son of God, while Jesus referred himself as the son of man.

Now man is immortal, man cannot die. What you see people bury is not the man but his flesh. The real man is gone.

Maybe i should start lecturing you about stratas of sons....Adam was the highest son of man....lowest son of God...those are order in the realm of the spirit....most of the prophets were referred to such not for fun.
JESUS gave birth to us...He is our Father just as Yahweh gave birth to Him too....
"For to which of the angels did He ever say: You are My Son,today I have BEGOTTEN"

We are being conformed to the image of Christ for a reason....JESUS gave birth to us....He was born that He might born us

Man is not immortal. JESUS said fear not him who can kill the body but not the soul...BUT fear Him who after killing the body can DESTROY the soul in hell....we should ask what destruction is?

jdilight: From you post if righteousness was learn by Noah then unrighteousness was learned by the rest instead of it being their nature. God told me and l heard him clearly that Adam has no nature, that the nature of Adam was His.

i can't continue to teach about nature...it's a vast ocean of knowledge we can't finish here....and i will tell you again ADAM has. There are Natures in the order of creation....there is a nature of the created&there is a Nature of Him who doesn't have a beginning nor an ending. There is what is called Adamic Nature and what is called Fallen Adamic Nature.They are two different things. ADAM in Eden is different from Adam outside of Eden. GOD wants Adam to have His own nature: IMMORTALITY swallowing up(overiding) LIVING SOUL. That's the reason for the TREE OF LIFE.
Adamic Nature is the lowest among the sons of Yahweh....you can't compare the Nature of Adam to the Stars of God or the SERAPHS...neither can you compare the Nature of SERAPHS to that of CHERUBS...aren't all they made by YAHWEH? But are superior in better making. But the Nature of Him that sits on the throne gave birth to other Natures....Adam was supposed to come into it.

VantagePoint: Source?

check your scriptures@Genesis

frosbel: How can this be ?

- If they died will their spirits not go up to Jesus , why will he come for them ?
- Also they died at different times, did Jesus come for them individually or collectively

This is what happens when you read Scriptures with the light of the sun. What we all should ask ourselves is that what is the house of the Father?

jdilight: From what you say, you don't know what is nature. Before he walk with God, he walked like any other man. Till he choose to walk with God.

What will you say of Noah?

check my new post above....Noah was a sinner but with time learnt righteousness and found grace in God's eyes. We have Adamic nature which wasn't sinful in the beginning. Adam a living soul....but sir,there is a 'fallen Adamic nature'

jdilight: Adam is not our father. Jesus said call no one on earth your father. God is our father. Adam has no nature, the nature he has is that of his father God. That is what he passed to us. Adam choose to serve Satan and that choice did not include his children.
All have sin, yes because we all were born into a sinful world. We learn from Adam to sin. But it is not in our nature, we just learnt it.
Any one who has a sinful nature cannot repent.

That's not true. ADAM was our father until Christ came. I don't think you know why he is referred to as 2nd Adam.....we inherited something from Adam,that's sin....no one escaped that.It took another Adam at the end of age,someone who had the pedigree of glory Adam had in the beginning to turn it around and by obedience to the Father gave eternal life.
Jesus said that to bring us to the true Father....we have fathers but One Father which He want men to know....many kings but One King.
ADAM has the nature of a son of man....not the nature of God....he was made 'after God's likeness'....he need to come into the fulness. If not Christ would not have come. The nature of God is incorruptible....that nature doesn't respond to neither sin nor death....it is called IMMORTALITY. But Adam nature can still respond to corruption&he fell,that's why men died.
Anyone with a sinful nature of a certain degree can still repent. There is an arena satan wants to take and own man completely.....it will happen in 666. In the world of men,they can still repent until the sealing times when men will be sealed unto the name of blasphemy.

jdilight: What will you say of Genesis 5:24.

Enoch sojourned with a Spirit and walk against the nature in him. ENOCH was taught by God how to skip death for about 300yrs+....if not,he would have died because of sin...sin brought death. And he did it by faith because he believed and God lifted the judgement passed over men to serve as an example to others that even in your sinful nature,you can still be saved. My Life will swallow up the Life you got from ADAM.

So that FreshGreen fit born pikin

jdilight: passed upon all men is the mystery. It is like a baton given to others to continue. It is passed to all men through teaching or learning. Sin is learned. That is why no kid goes to hell until after the accountability age.

yes,satan taught men sin....for the reason that Adam fell made everyone from him a sinner...the child of a leopard will resemble a leopard...we all are after the transgression of Adam until the coming of 2nd Adam. It's that nature that Jesus dealt with. All have sinned and fallen short of His glory.

jdilight: I do believe Romans 5:12. I want you to read it again. It says "wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sin sinned.

It did not say, sin entered into man or Adam but into the world.

you forgot to say it passed upon all men and because of that all have sinned.

jdilight: Neither first nor the last man can transfer his sin to anyone.

The day God spoke to me about this issue, He asked me "whose nature do Adam have?" I said Adam and He said, Adam has no nature, the nature Adam has is mine. When Adam disobeyed God, God didn't take His nature from Adam.

Every sin is hellish in nature.

If I have time I will write on this issue in details.

Then you don't believe Romans 5:12.

jauntty: pls how many gig does glo give

3gig.

jdilight: Before I go into details, please can you answer me this question.

Do you father's sin : I mean your present father, make you a sinner?

we are talking of the sin of the first man which was hellish in nature. That was why eternal life was given.

frosbel: everybody is going to hell when they die, both the good and the bad.

Hell is the GRAVE.

if you said this in BC....I will agree with you but AD...no,not everyone.

jdilight: Adam sin did not turn all men into sinners please.

it did.

They don't. They were made like angels, not born. But after the fall, genetic make-up was altered by sin....like someone said above, Cain,Abel,Seth&other offsprings have.

Are you "pro-Israel" or "pro-Palestine"? It isn't even noon yet as I write this, and I've already been accused of being both.

These terms intrigue me because they directly speak to the doggedly tribal nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You don't hear of too many other countries being universally spoken of this way. Why these two? Both Israelis and Palestinians are complex, with diverse histories and cultures, and two incredibly similar (if divisive) religions. To come down completely on the side of one or the other doesn't seem rational to me.

It is telling that most Muslims around the world support Palestinians, and most Jews support Israel. This, of course, is natural -- but it's also problematic. It means that this is not about who's right or wrong as much as which tribe or nation you are loyal to. It means that Palestinian supporters would be just as ardently pro-Israel if they were born in Israeli or Jewish families, and vice versa. It means that the principles that guide most people's view of this conflict are largely accidents of birth -- that however we intellectualize and analyze the components of the Middle East mess, it remains, at its core, a tribal conflict.

By definition, tribal conflicts thrive and survive when people take sides. Choosing sides in these kinds of conflicts fuels them further and deepens the polarization. And worst of all, you get blood on your hands.

So before picking a side in this latest Israeli-Palestine conflict, consider these 7 questions:

***

1. Why is everything so much worse when there are Jews involved?

Over 700 people have died in Gaza as of this writing. Muslims have woken up around the world. But is it really because of the numbers?

Bashar al-Assad has killed over 180,000 Syrians, mostly Muslim, in two years -- more than the number killed in Palestine in two decades. Thousands of Muslims in Iraq and Syria have been killed by ISIS in the last two months. Tens of thousands have been killed by the Taliban. Half a million black Muslims were killed by Arab Muslims in Sudan. The list goes on.

But Gaza makes Muslims around the world, both Sunni and Shia, speak up in a way they never do otherwise. Up-to-date death counts and horrific pictures of the mangled corpses of Gazan children flood their social media timelines every day. If it was just about the numbers, wouldn't the other conflicts take precedence? What is it about then?

If I were Assad or ISIS right now, I'd be thanking God I'm not Jewish.

Amazingly, many of the graphic images of dead children attributed to Israeli bombardment that are circulating online are from Syria, based on a BBC report. Many of the pictures you're seeing are of children killed by Assad, who is supported by Iran, which also funds Hezbollah and Hamas. What could be more exploitative of dead children than attributing the pictures of innocents killed by your own supporters to your enemy simply because you weren't paying enough attention when your own were killing your own?

This doesn't, by any means, excuse the recklessness, negligence, and sometimes outright cruelty of Israeli forces. But it clearly points to the likelihood that the Muslim world's opposition to Israel isn't just about the number of dead.

Here is a question for those who grew up in the Middle East and other Muslim-majority countries like I did: if Israel withdrew from the occupied territories tomorrow, all in one go -- and went back to the 1967 borders -- and gave the Palestinians East Jerusalem -- do you honestly think Hamas wouldn't find something else to pick a fight about? Do you honestly think that this has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that they are Jews? Do you recall what you watched and heard on public TV growing up in Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Egypt?

Yes, there's an unfair and illegal occupation there, and yes, it's a human rights disaster. But it is also true that much of the other side is deeply driven by anti-Semitism. Anyone who has lived in the Arab/Muslim world for more than a few years knows that. It isn't always a clean, one-or-the-other blame split in these situations like your Chomskys and Greenwalds would have you believe. It's both.

***

2. Why does everyone keep saying this is not a religious conflict?

There are three pervasive myths that are widely circulated about the "roots" of the Middle East conflict:

Myth 1: Judaism has nothing to do with Zionism.
Myth 2: Islam has nothing to do with Jihadism or anti-Semitism.
Myth 3: This conflict has nothing to do with religion.

To the "I oppose Zionism, not Judaism!" crowd, is it mere coincidence that this passage from the Old Testament (emphasis added) describes so accurately what's happening today?

"I will establish your borders from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, and from the desert to the Euphrates River. I will give into your hands the people who live in the land, and you will drive them out before you. Do not make a covenant with them or with their gods." - Exodus 23:31-32

Or this one?

"See, I have given you this land. Go in and take possession of the land the Lord swore he would give to your fathers -- to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob -- and to their descendants after them." - Deuteronomy 1:8

There's more: Genesis 15:18-21, and Numbers 34 for more detail on the borders. Zionism is not the "politicization" or "distortion" of Judaism. It is the revival of it.

And to the "This is not about Islam, it's about politics!" crowd, is this verse from the Quran (emphasis added) meaningless?

"O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are [in fact] allies of one another. And whoever is an ally to them among you--then indeed, he is [one] of them. Indeed, Allah guides not the wrongdoing people." - Quran, 5:51

What about the numerous verses and hadith quoted in Hamas' charter? And the famous hadith of the Gharqad tree explicitly commanding Muslims to kill Jews?

Please tell me -- in light of these passages written centuries and millennia before the creation of Israel or the occupation -- how can anyone conclude that religion isn't at the root of this, or at least a key driving factor? You may roll your eyes at these verses, but they are taken very seriously by many of the players in this conflict, on both sides. Shouldn't they be acknowledged and addressed? When is the last time you heard a good rational, secular argument supporting settlement expansion in the West Bank?

Denying religion's role seems to be a way to be able to criticize the politics while remaining apologetically "respectful" of people's beliefs for fear of "offending" them. But is this apologism and "respect" for inhuman ideas worth the deaths of human beings?

People have all kinds of beliefs -- from insisting the Earth is flat to denying the Holocaust. You may respect their right to hold these beliefs, but you're not obligated to respect the beliefs themselves. It's 2014, and religions don't need to be "respected" any more than any other political ideology or philosophical thought system. Human beings have rights. Ideas don't. The oft-cited politics/religion dichotomy in Abrahamic religions is false and misleading. All of the Abrahamic religions are inherently political.

***

3. Why would Israel deliberately want to kill civilians?

This is the single most important issue that gets everyone riled up, and rightfully so.

Again, there is no justification for innocent Gazans dying. And there's no excuse for Israel's negligence in incidents like the killing of four children on a Gazan beach. But let's back up and think about this for a minute.

Why on Earth would Israel deliberately want to kill civilians?

When civilians die, Israel looks like a monster. It draws the ire of even its closest allies. Horrific images of injured and dead innocents flood the media. Ever-growing anti-Israel protests are held everywhere from Norway to New York. And the relatively low number of Israeli casualties (we'll get to that in a bit) repeatedly draws allegations of a "disproportionate" response. Most importantly, civilian deaths help Hamas immensely.

How can any of this possibly ever be in Israel's interest?

If Israel wanted to kill civilians, it is terrible at it. ISIS killed more civilians in two days (700 plus) than Israel has in two weeks. Imagine if ISIS or Hamas had Israel's weapons, army, air force, US support, and nuclear arsenal. Their enemies would've been annihilated long ago. If Israel truly wanted to destroy Gaza, it could do so within a day, right from the air. Why carry out a more painful, expensive ground incursion that risks the lives of its soldiers?

***

4. Does Hamas really use its own civilians as human shields?

Ask Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas how he feels about Hamas' tactics.

"What are you trying to achieve by sending rockets?" he asks. "I don't like trading in Palestinian blood."

It isn't just speculation anymore that Hamas puts its civilians in the line of fire.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri plainly admitted on Gazan national TV that the human shield strategy has proven "very effective."

The UN relief organization UNRWA issued a furious condemnation of Hamas after discovering hidden rockets in not one, but two children's schools in Gaza last week.

Hamas fires thousands of rockets into Israel, rarely killing any civilians or causing any serious damage. It launches them from densely populated areas, including hospitals and schools.

Why launch rockets without causing any real damage to the other side, inviting great damage to your own people, then putting your own civilians in the line of fire when the response comes? Even when the IDF warns civilians to evacuate their homes before a strike, why does Hamas tell them to stay put?

Because Hamas knows its cause is helped when Gazans die. If there is one thing that helps Hamas most -- one thing that gives it any legitimacy -- it is dead civilians. Rockets in schools. Hamas exploits the deaths of its children to gain the world's sympathy. It uses them as a weapon.

You don't have to like what Israel is doing to abhor Hamas. Arguably, Israel and Fatah are morally equivalent. Both have a lot of right on their side. Hamas, on the other hand, doesn't have a shred of it.

***

5. Why are people asking for Israel to end the "occupation" in Gaza?

Because they have short memories.

In 2005, Israel ended the occupation in Gaza. It pulled out every last Israeli soldier. It dismantled every last settlement. Many Israeli settlers who refused to leave were forcefully evicted from their homes, kicking and screaming.

This was a unilateral move by Israel, part of a disengagement plan intended to reduce friction between Israelis and Palestinians. It wasn't perfect -- Israel was still to control Gaza's borders, coastline, and airspace -- but considering the history of the region, it was a pretty significant first step.

After the evacuation, Israel opened up border crossings to facilitate commerce. The Palestinians were also given 3,000 greenhouses which had already been producing fruit and flowers for export for many years.

But Hamas chose not to invest in schools, trade, or infrastructure. Instead, it built an extensive network of tunnels to house thousands upon thousands of rockets and weapons, including newer, sophisticated ones from Iran and Syria. All the greenhouses were destroyed.

Hamas did not build any bomb shelters for its people. It did, however, build a few for its leaders to hide out in during airstrikes. Civilians are not given access to these shelters for precisely the same reason Hamas tells them to stay home when the bombs come.

Gaza was given a great opportunity in 2005 that Hamas squandered by transforming it into an anti-Israel weapons store instead of a thriving Palestinian state that, with time, may have served as a model for the future of the West Bank as well. If Fatah needed yet another reason to abhor Hamas, here it was.

***

6. Why are there so many more casualties in Gaza than in Israel?

The reason fewer Israeli civilians die is not because there are fewer rockets raining down on them. It's because they are better protected by their government.

When Hamas' missiles head towards Israel, sirens go off, the Iron Dome goes into effect, and civilians are rushed into bomb shelters. When Israeli missiles head towards Gaza, Hamas tells civilians to stay in their homes and face them.

While Israel's government urges its civilians to get away from rockets targeted at them, Gaza's government urges its civilians to get in front of missiles not targeted at them.

The popular explanation for this is that Hamas is poor and lacks the resources to protect its people like Israel does. The real reason, however, seems to have more to do with disordered priorities than deficient resources (see #5). This is about will, not ability. All those rockets, missiles, and tunnels aren't cheap to build or acquire. But they are priorities. And it's not like Palestinians don't have a handful of oil-rich neighbors to help them the way Israel has the US.

The problem is, if civilian casualties in Gaza drop, Hamas loses the only weapon it has in its incredibly effective PR war. It is in Israel's national interest to protect its civilians and minimize the deaths of those in Gaza. It is in Hamas' interest to do exactly the opposite on both fronts.

***

7. If Hamas is so bad, why isn't everyone pro-Israel in this conflict?

Because Israel's flaws, while smaller in number, are massive in impact.

Many Israelis seem to have the same tribal mentality that their Palestinian counterparts do. They celebrate the bombing of Gaza the same way many Arabs celebrated 9/11. A UN report recently found that Israeli forces tortured Palestinian children and used them as human shields. They beat up teenagers. They are often reckless with their airstrikes. They have academics who explain how rape may be the only truly effective weapon against their enemy. And many of them callously and publicly revel in the deaths of innocent Palestinian children.

To be fair, these kinds of things do happen on both sides. They are an inevitable consequence of multiple generations raised to hate the other over the course of 65 plus years. To hold Israel up to a higher standard would mean approaching the Palestinians with the racism of lowered expectations.

However, if Israel holds itself to a higher standard like it claims -- it needs to do much more to show it isn't the same as the worst of its neighbors.

Israel is leading itself towards increasing international isolation and national suicide because of two things: 1. The occupation; and 2. Settlement expansion.

Settlement expansion is simply incomprehensible. No one really understands the point of it. Virtually every US administration -- from Nixon to Bush to Obama -- has unequivocally opposed it. There is no justification for it except a Biblical one (see #2), which makes it slightly more difficult to see Israel's motives as purely secular.

The occupation is more complicated. The late Christopher Hitchens was right when he said this about Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories:

"In order for Israel to become part of the alliance against whatever we want to call it, religious barbarism, theocratic, possibly thermonuclear theocratic or nuclear theocratic aggression, it can't, it'll have to dispense with the occupation. It's as simple as that.

It can be, you can think of it as a kind of European style, Western style country if you want, but it can't govern other people against their will. It can't continue to steal their land in the way that it does every day.And it's unbelievably irresponsible of Israelis, knowing the position of the United States and its allies are in around the world, to continue to behave in this unconscionable way. And I'm afraid I know too much about the history of the conflict to think of Israel as just a tiny, little island surrounded by a sea of ravening wolves and so on. I mean, I know quite a lot about how that state was founded, and the amount of violence and dispossession that involved. And I'm a prisoner of that knowledge. I can't un-know it."

As seen with Gaza in 2005, unilateral disengagement is probably easier to talk about than actually carry out. But if it Israel doesn't work harder towards a two-state (maybe three-state, thanks to Hamas) solution, it will eventually have to make that ugly choice between being a Jewish-majority state or a democracy.

It's still too early to call Israel an apartheid state, but when John Kerry said Israel could end up as one in the future, he wasn't completely off the mark. It's simple math. There are only a limited number of ways a bi-national Jewish state with a non-Jewish majority population can retain its Jewish identity. And none of them are pretty.

***

Let's face it, the land belongs to both of them now. Israel was carved out of Palestine for Jews with help from the British in the late 1940s just like my own birthplace of Pakistan was carved out of India for Muslims around the same time. The process was painful, and displaced millions in both instances. But it's been almost 70 years. There are now at least two or three generations of Israelis who were born and raised in this land, to whom it really is a home, and who are often held accountable and made to pay for for historical atrocities that are no fault of their own. They are programmed to oppose "the other" just as Palestinian children are. At its very core, this is a tribal religious conflict that will never be resolved unless people stop choosing sides.

So you really don't have to choose between being "pro-Israel" or "pro-Palestine." If you support secularism, democracy, and a two-state solution -- and you oppose Hamas, settlement expansion, and the occupation -- you can be both.

If they keep asking you to pick a side after all of that, tell them you're going with hummus.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-a-rizvi/picking-a-side-in-israel-palestine_b_5602701.html

frosbel: New one from twosquare :

you're darkening your own heart....the spirits of this age has caught up with you ; When trying to discuss certain truths that threaten their erroneous belief system and they do not have an answer.

since i asked you a question yesternight and you refused to answer......judging from your allergy to the truth and who told you it is erroneous and do you even know my belief?

MrKnowitall: It will happen in Nigeria, it's only a matter of time.

heads will roll&i hope American embassy will be prepared to jet out.

Dawdy: You people cannot be for real! I'm a yoruba and I love my tribe so much. All the same, truth must be told, irrespective of favour. the man captured here is yoruba pastor as headline states. what is wrong with that? If He were to be A muslim cleric, You guys will jump to the conclusion that All muslim are terrorists, despite the fact that there are million Muslims in nigeria who dont think evil against non muslims. let us (yoruba) people also feel the pain, so that we can come to our senses, and stop judging majority based on what minority do.

Eyin na lesope bi a ba sowipe igun palori, ti a so fun akala pe o yo gbegbe, o ye ka le fun ogongo pe orun re se gongo.

check previous posts made by the OP,you'll understand what folks on this thread are saying.

Sometimes i wonder....this Op&his likes that are drunk with the poison called bigotry do go to either church/mosque on service days.
Either they profess christianity or islam, they will pray &i wonder who they think is listening to their prayers. Forgetting that God is watching every action of ours. SMH...some are already a step away from hell without knowing it... just remain for them to remove their clothes and jump inside like a swimming pool.

When you hear these things,let not your heart be troubled.The end is not yet.just the beginning of sorrows.

shdemidemi: It all stopped at Paul... Paul was the last person He spoke to. Paul was not alone, he had soldiers and workers like Epaphroditus, Timothy, silas who did not have his kind of experience. They revert to Paul whenever they had issues regarding the faith.

Paul never taught us to wait and listen for our own revelations, he asked us to stay within the confines of what he had taught. Anyone who teaches anything outside what the bible teaches must be accursed. Personal revelations and experiences are not the gospel, they can't substitute nor add to Gods word. God's word is so full and it is sealed, it makes it needless for any personal additions today.

sometimes,some folks like you talk so much about the Scriptures that you didn't know that they are the experiences of christians like you who penned down what they have become on their journey into Life.....they're general things you should expect in your journey,they're foundations....not how God is going to deal with you in your personal life.
The way Paul spake differs from James,the Lord's brother....And that of Peter differs from John or Jude. If you are familiar with this folks, without knowing chapters,you will know who wrote a passage if someone just quote from any of them.
I should ask you who spake to the Seven churches....read Heb 1:1....except we're not in last days.

shdemidemi: It all stopped at Paul... Paul was the last person He spoke to. Paul was not alone, he had soldiers and workers like Epaphroditus, Timothy, silas who did not have his kind of experience. They revert to Paul whenever they had issues regarding the faith.

Paul never taught us to wait and listen for our own revelations, he asked us to stay within the confines of what he had taught. Anyone who teaches anything outside what the bible teaches must be accursed. Personal revelations and experiences are not the gospel, they can't substitute nor add to Gods word. God's word is so full and it is sealed, it makes it needless for any personal additions today.

You disappointed me with this.....so,if it stopped at Paul,who spoke to John the Beloved then,satan?