Israel and Hamas at War and Christians go Straight to the End Times Trope

this is Greg Lori and he's reading too much left behind because he's telling us that this Palestine Israel situation is a sign of the end times so this is Church of lame we're going to talk about uh how this breaks the church and what we can do to fix it so how you doing this morning Scott can I just kill myself [Laughter] now it cannot be that everything is the end times like oh like the groundhog didn't see a shadow it's the end times you know another country is at War it's the end times my cupboard is out of cereal it's the end times everything can't be the end times oh I know and like going through like the news feeds right you there's just no end of um largely Panic costal stuff but you get some Evangelical like regular I I maybe that I'm not trying to insult Pentecostal but saying they're not regular Evangelical but you know more low-key Evangelical stuff yeah um and yeah just just yeah everything is a sign of the end times um and of course you know uh gregl here is he's he's kind of piggybacking his statements he's kind of couching them too saying like well this is not necessarily a sign of the an but he goes like a whole rant but it's like he's he starts off like quoting like Ezekiel 37- 38 um and it's like okay so you saying that that this predicted the 1948 us establishment of a state of Israel from the the British Palestine mandate yeah um that's a really interesting take on you know this prophecy that Israel would be regathered especially since it was written when Israel was in Babylonian captivity and later on King Cyrus let them go back and rebuild the Temple giving us what we call the second temple period which is you know where you know the New Testament happens in that same period so it's like how is it that that regathering just can't have been like you know them leaving the Babylonian captivity history Mark you're talking about actual history and and we would like history or my own Notions of what the truth should be like forget about history yeah it's just it's just wacky Act of Jesus all around and that drives me nuts because you know that's I went to school for that um like but he goes on more and more and he's just like well you know you know Iran and Russia May attack them because one of them might be Gog or Magog from scripture which nobody knows what the heck those are so he's just you know really pulling fruit from the butt tree right there and it's just it's offensively um speculative and I can I can do without that um and you know of course then he uses this to criticize the current Administration about their policies around Iran it's like just get over it um and then just like like the last part of this that really drives me wacky is like he quotes Psalm 122 which is he's saying like isn't like a command for all of us to be praying for you know Jerusalem not the Palestinians just you know the Israelis I guess yeah um and and again this is one of those things it's like it's a Psalm of Avid um so you know it it doesn't have anything to do with our situation here but like when you read the psalm it's clear that what David's trying to say is like hey you pray for the Peace of the land in which we all live right and saying to pray for the Peace of Jerusalem is like pray that I don't have to go to war with anybody yeah and it's not a command from God it's it's a request from the king or for the King right yep and it just it it like this whole thing just it has the result to me of making Christians look fantastically anti-intellectual exactly well it's not that they look anti anti-intellectual words hard uh myself included most Christians are not

smart let me just say this as as before we go any further this is Church's lame and I usually say this at the end of the show and not the beginning this show exists to talk about how the church in America is broken so if you clicked on this video thinking that we are going to do a deep dive into the current conflict that's going on in Israel or if we're about to do a 30 minute uh history of the nation of Israel that's not what this episode is okay what it is is talking about how the church's response to what's going on in Israel actually breaks the church's mission of redeeming people to the to the cause of Christ and that's where we're going down this road and we hope you stay with us okay so I you gave us a great introduction to uh to Greg Lori pastor of Harvest Church and and this kind of cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs uh two-way street he wants right like he wants to be a mean underhanded you know jerk to uh to Hamas to uh Iran to Biden and then he wants to have it the other way and say oh but Pray for Peace like wait a minute you just spent the last half hour being a jerk to everybody everywhere but now you're going to kind of sum this up with Pray for Peace shut the heck up and go away is really yeah and you know and just one of those things like when we talk about you know so how does this break the church right it's like yeah the the nature sure the situation is you know like they're accusing Hamas of being not Palestine and every Palestinian broadly just Hamas but then you know Israel's response is affecting civilians and like if you are going to claim the moral High Ground then you need to be exercising you know some sort of biblical morality or restraint um in the matter and it kind of makes I think it makes you know anybody who's like going to support that kind of um you know War AC is going to make us look like warmongers um and really you know when we have you know ver is like blessed are the peacemakers um you know it's it's really difficult for me to get behind any kind of aggression outside of just self-defense and you know I'm sorry but you know children walking around the streets of the Gaza Strip aren't the aggressors so you're not defending yourself against them and you know thus ends my rant about that right the situation is between Palestine and Israel it goes back a long time and is very complicated particularly throughout the 20th century so it's like we can't really labor all those points exactly which is why we should try to avoid it and and really just kind of talk about the silliness going on in the church right at the moment yeah but you know this end times thing basically causes a lot of Christians um to support everything Israel does um without question and and that's a problem you know nobody should be supporting any you know any government just uncritically um it it's it's just not a good idea um we need always to be comparing okay well what is our government doing compared to what God is commanding us to do and if my government's not doing that then I cannot stand behind them or any other government um and so like there's that element of hypocrisy that pops up through the whole thing right and this actually goes back to what you were saying earlier about um Christians seeming um unintellectual or anti-intellectual um one of the big problems we have with the lack of biblical literacy in America is we read the Bible and we think that the Israel written about in the Bible is the Israel that exists today right who couldn't be um have any less to do with each other you know and so without going into the political stuff that that's something we need to that's an umbilical cord we need to sever of thinking of modern Israel and biblical Israel as one and the same um because the geopolitical economic military Powerhouse that is modern Israel has nothing to do with God's people who were lost without a home for hundreds of years it's it's it's a story that that was severed in reality but in the minds of Christians we never severed it you know and that's that's something we need to wean ourselves from yeah and I think like like a critical point to kind of back up you know what you're saying is that when we look at if if we're just looking at the the Old Testament right we're not going to look at the New Testament because we're we're speaking of like the home of of the Jewish people yeah um you know going back to 70 AD with the destruction of the temple and that just kind of ended the state of isra in any meaningful sense for for a long long time but I me there's conditions that need to have been met I mean like you're talking about like a a regathering of the people in a um in a prophetic sense so then then you're looking for a a prophet um you know perhaps a prophet like unto Moses as um you know the the King James translates that right yeah you know we would generally say that that was Jesus was that Prophet but there should at least be some sort of prophet taking that action it's not like Babylon you know which was controlling that territory just letting the people go back this is a territory that hasn't been you know a territory I I guess the land has been there the whole time but it's like yeah like those political boundaries haven't been there for couple thousand years almost right um and so it's like this just this weird fervor and and so for me it really makes it just seems like it's a bunch of islamophobia that that's just poking itself back out from the church like we can't just stand that there are Muslims in the world right okay yeah so once again I really want to avoid talking the politics of it like that that's so let's let's kind let's bring it back to let's see where where's our second Point here end times Obsession serves nothing more than to excuse the inaction of Christians to love others and that's that goes hand inand with what you just said but it takes it out of the realm of the geopolitical and puts it back in the realm of the hearts and minds of Christians right yeah it seems like in a structure where we keep reminding each other that the highest laws are to love love God and love one another we keep looking for excuses to hate and Destroy things instead whether it be our neighbor who is gay or our other neighbor who is divorced or our other neighbor who is um addicted to drugs we seem to keep looking for reasons to destroy relationships destroy community and that is the opposite opposite something whatever the hand gesture is for opposite of the redeeming work that the church was supposed to be doing on this Earth and sorry if I'm if I'm if I've deviated and gone too political it wasn't my intention I I was trying to keep it kind of you I can't tell you how much I want to go there like there's so much to talk about and it's so bloody interesting it is really like this whole the whole story of Israel is so interesting and you and I could spend days on this but yeah yeah that's not what the show is right yeah I know um but I just I was trying to like hopefully give like a like enough history to be to be useful um but hey you know I think you're right I think I just started aan um but you know when we're talking about like this this this end times Obsession I think it's it's really critical to note that um that Obsession I mean this Greg Lor's just feeding into it and that's no good but that obsession is saying like oh well the end times is it's it's here and it's now it's happening like when people think that then basically you know it's like you're packing your suitcase like you're not trying to treat the world as if there's necessarily going to be a world tomorrow that you have to deal with you're G to be like I need to prepare because Jesus is about to come back or the Rapture is about to happen and and I just don't need to worry about this anymore anymore but the the fact of the matter is that you know again blessed are the peacemakers this is a situation in which we have uh you know two Nations two people groups that are you know at logger heads with one another and they are just ready to Smite each other yeah where are the peacemakers you know it's like praying for peace is not good enough you know we need to make peace and and that kind of you know it's like that you know that that coded language of I'll pray for you which is the you know hey um that's my way of saying that I can feel good about myself but I don't have to actually do anything for you yeah I can wash my hands on this yeah yeah watch hands just no thumbs up please just no thumbs yeah yeah I I told I I I couldn't agree with you more that let's see what's how do how do I want to say this um loudly in angry angry I really do Rob Bell does a much more eloquent job of of of enunciating uh that whole like if we think all we've been saved for is that great mansion in the sky with streets of gold and all the funnel cake you can eat then you've totally missed the plot the like the big idea is not what's next on the horizon the big idea is what have you been saved for what right how what what did God's washing of our Spirits like what was that for and that wasn't so you could enjoy you know Eternal cotton candy you know with with lines that don't bite you that it was so we could be the redeeming force in the world we could we used to do this we used to build hospitals to heal people we used to be the driving force in food shelters in homeless shelters like in clothing shelters that all used to be the purview of a church on a mission but we like you said we've done this now I'll pray for you we've done this and now I'm G to make a ton of ton of money selling you books on how to live your best life now and how to be Purpose Driven you know now now we are we have so we are such Bottom Feeders about our own book of faith that like the idea of of sifting through the Nuance of how to respond to complex situations in the world is so beyond the purview of any professional Christian at this moment you know yeah and and and going into uh the talking about how this is gonna like how we can fix it right you know yeah yeah um I'm going to go with with like as a first point here we I mean as Christians we're all saying that you know hey Christ is going to come back to to judge the living and the dead right like that's just one of the things that we affirm and we have affirmed it for a couple thousand years but we have to live our lives with two things in mind one that Jesus could return tomorrow and two we have to assume he won't right because if we assume he will then again like I said before you we we give up the mission um I think I think you using the word mission was just beautiful because like that's what it is it's the mission of the church to to you know to to love the world and to and try to be part of God's redeeming work and there's nothing Redemptive about any this nonsense and so like we need to be thinking of that it's like well if Jesus doesn't come back if this is not a sign of the end times if Jesus doesn't come back tomorrow we just sit here with our thumbs up our something you know that that then we'll have done no work um and and I'm not saying that we isn't like all of us like you know just folks wandering around but I mean it's like there's something that has to happen um the church as a whole needs to come together and rise up and be like hey we need to fix this we need to stop this we need to we need to to get we need to get people safe and in peace and we need to try to like make peace in this in this place yeah and so I I think that's just like that first thing and then my my second point would be like maybe it leads into that it's like we need just need to execute scripture better that's the big one yeah um before you go down that road why don't you define for people ex and ex Jesus yeah I know I use those words all the time because like I went to school for ex aesus so ex aesus e ex e g s i s because people always have to ask me how to spell it yeah that just like the process of you know looking at any text it can be a current text or an ancient text was looking any text and being able to situate it in its context like why it was written where it was written what was going on when it was written to whom was it written Etc analyzing language and and grammar and all that kind of good stuff um and that's a especially important with ancient languages right but to understand what it was meaning we're trying to find out there's a meaning that somebody put into that we're trying to draw it out and that's like literally what ex Jesus means to draw the meaning out right yep so I I would just say to to to sum it up like uh interpreting the Bible responsibly and well yes yeah okay so now now continue on yeah uh and then like I I just I feel like you know I mean I feel like with people like you and me and I'm sure most people that you know are paying any attention to us right um don't really tolerate you know the end times fervor that much or at least not to this kind of a degree and I just feel like you know we need to maybe be more vocal uh when people start getting all end timesy about stuff yeah and just kind of make the points like we're still on a mission and we still have to do that and and let's put the end times stuff to the side because until you know Jesus comes on the clouds we still have that responsibility absolutely love it love it love it I'm going to say this that the church as evidenced in this latest conflict with Israel is Star Spangled terrible when it comes to knee-jerk reactions if you were to look at the um the news feeds in the last week like Mark and I have been doing you would see um for those of you who don't believe in spectrums a whole spectrum of responses to Israel right on the one hand uh like the end times is coming the end is near um on the other hand um there's like there's the whole like I I think I hear it a little bit in your response but there's like really people like we need to find find peace now it's like that ship has sailed like Israel has declared war they have declared war yes so so like we need to accept that when Christians are looking at things short terms especially when they're in the professional Med media space they're terrible at responding to things right and so we need to get out of the business of knee-jerk reactions and we need to get back into the business of Timeless truth like you were saying we have a Timeless truth that peace is better than war that love is better than hate that charity is better than indifference right and these are Timeless truths that are always how do I want to say this that will never fail any biblical test that you put to it right because if you're going to try to argue that that war is just like the the the goal of War even in God's um economy is not to be a Perpetual War yeah the goal of war is to find peace you know and so I think you know that you've so well stated the church's idiocy in this all thing and I you know I think that the cure to idiocy is to get back to things that never stop being true yeah and and I think the one thing that is the most true is that we are committed to to love our neighbors our s and to love our enemy you know so a lot of these responses that I've seen in the news articles are like well they're like oh well well pray for you know pray for Israel and and then maybe they'll concede that well I mean we should pray for like you know just like regular old Palestinians too yeah um because like we're not saying that like you know you're ranking Palestinian they're saying Hamas you know so it's like yeah well but the thing is that we need to be working uh we need to not just be praying we need to be supporting actions to do actual work to create peace and to just to love everybody as as best we can it's going to look different you know in a time of War than in a time of Peace yeah and I'm not saying that it's going to be an easy task but it's still we need to do that and I mean I think you know if we're you know from that goddess love then we need to do our best to love just everybody who is being affected negatively by the situation regardless of their religion their ethnicity Etc yeah there it is all right so we are Church's Lan you may have watched this video and thought to yourself man Mark and Scott really have it out for the church or maybe you think Scott and Mark are anti-israel or Pro PL none of that could be further from the truth okay okay we love the church we serve the church we are pro-human we are we are pro peace we are pro love and so what we do on this show is we talk about the crazy things that Christians do that that make it hard for reasonable people to look at the church and kind of go yeah I'm on board with that I can I dig it yeah so there are lots of times like right now where the church is not that where the church is just a mess of conflicting opinions and kind of breaks the whole thing and we document that here on Church's lame so if you have anything you want to say by all means you know leave us a comment uh leave us a review Send us an email churches L podcast gmail.com and leave us all those thumbs up and likes and thanks and um what am I forgetting bias of coffee and all those other kind of things oh yeah coffee is super important and we we can't forget that coffee helps but with that you know what um don't just pray for peace but definitely pray for peace but don't just pray for peace pray that God will guide you in making peace amen amen and hey if you like this episode and you want to see more content just like that just like this words is hard yeah somewhere up here is a poster for a theological theater a playlist of ours with similar themes so by all means click it enjoy thanks so much