 BUSH TALK by Rev. Bruce Lieske Founding Executive Director Lutherans in Jewish Evangelism
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“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9)
King Solomon, the alleged writer of Ecclesiastes, suggests that we study history because it presents strong clues to the future. This of course is more than Jewish wisdom; it is God’s wisdom. Someone once said, “He who refuses to study the past is condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past.” Today we are faced with the daily threat of Islamic terrorism, much of which seems to swirl around Muslim hatred for the Jews and the modern state of Israel. Is this anything new? Not really. The first foreign war that the United States fought was against the Ottoman regencies of Tripoli, Tunis and Algiers — an area of the Middle East collectively called Barbary. Muslim pirates, actually city-state sponsored terrorists, preyed on European shipping in the Mediterranean for hundreds of years, and when the United States came into being, our ships were captured and crews held hostage or sold into slavery. Vast sums of money were paid to ransom ships and crews. In December 1790, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson agonizingly recommended war against the Barbary states. The Senate rejected his recommendation and instead earmarked $140,000 (a huge sum at that time) for ransoms and tribute. The piracy continued. In Power, Faith and Fantasy, Michael Oren says that by 1797 our government was “diverting as much as 20 percent of its yearly revenues to the Barbary states, paid out in gold or precious stones or, more perversely, in cannon, powder and gunboats — the very wherewithal of piracy.” (p 38) Abd al-Rahman, the representative of the pasha of Tripoli, once conveyed to the U.S. President this message: “It was ... written in the Koran, that all Nations who should not have acknowledged their [the Muslims’] authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find and to make Slaves of all they could take as prisoner, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.” (Power, p. 27). |
Finally, President James Madison (who established a tradition of appointing American Jews to Middle Eastern diplomatic posts) convinced Congress to declare war. Stephen Decatur led a squadron of 10 ships to North Africa and by the summer of 1815 had not only crushed the Barbary states, but received financial indemnity and release of American prisoners, thus ending three decades of struggle.
Madison said: “It is a ... settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute ... The United States, while they wish for war with no nation, will buy peace with none.” (Power, p. 74). King Solomon said, “There is nothing new under the sun.” The story of our involvement in the Middle East has many surprising — largely unknown — twists. In the 1800s Christian missionaries began to travel to the Middle East to share the Gospel with Arabs and Jews in the Holy Land. One outstanding biblical scholar and distinguished professor of Hebrew at New York University was George Bush. He advocated Jewish evangelism and that the USA do everything possible to re-create a Jewish state in the region of Palestine (then part of the Muslim Ottoman Empire). In his 1844 book, The Valley of Vision; or, The Dry Bones of Israel Revived, Professor Bush said that such a restitution would benefit not only the Jews but all of mankind. (Yes, this George Bush was a forbear of our current president.) It is crucial that we see the Middle East through the lens of the Bible, through God’s eyes, and that we understand that the real source of peace is in Messiah Jesus who has torn down the dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile, between Jew and Jew, between Gentile and Gentile (Eph 2:11-22). Our proclamation of the Gospel to Jew and Muslim must be done and be supported. It is not only true that the Middle East impacts the security and the well-being of all of us, but the souls of many for eternity hang in the balance. We may be tempted to “do a Moses” and respond to God’s call: “O Lord, please send someone else to do it” (Ex. 4:13). A better answer is that of Isaiah: “Here am I. Send me!” |
