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Pioneering in Europe and Revelations in Israel |
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 "God doesn't love the Jews any more than He does anybody else! For God is no respecter of persons" |
After nearly a year in Texas, David and Maria
left for Europe. By this time several Children of God (COG) communities were flourishing
in the U.S., and David, ever the pioneering visionary, was already looking for new regions
to evangelize. They traveled extensively, scouting out possible locations for new
outposts. David and Maria spent several months in Israel, where David had hoped to establish a COG commune. He was soon disappointed to find, however, that there were actually very few similarities between his brand of Christian communalism and the cooperative lifestyle of the Israeli kibbutzim. Worse yet, the Jewish state was officially anti-missionary, and definitely not the place for his zealous young Christian evangelists. In early 1971 he wrote: "[Israel's] leaders are harder than ever, and have made it even more difficult, if not impossible, to preach the Gospel amongst them, so that Israel has become almost a closed nation to the Gospel. Any nation which forbids the preaching of the Gospel to its younger generation and closes its doors to new missionaries, freezing the status quo to the formalized, organized churches who are little or no different from themselves, is shutting out the true Gospel of Jesus Christ. … In Israel only Jews can be first-class citizens. The rest -- Christians, Arabs, and others -- are a discriminated minority, and on the bottom of the totem pole of Israeli society, living in fear and segregation." [41] While in Israel, David also realized that he had been seriously mistaken about one of his fundamental doctrines, namely that the Jews were specifically blessed of God and that they were still God's chosen people. So important was this belief to him that acknowledging it to be wrong nearly caused him to have a nervous breakdown. At the time he explained: "That had been my lifelong dream: to see Israel! ... You couldn't understand how my heart had been set for years on seeing Israel and seeing the fulfillment of prophecy! It was a dream that I just knew was going to come true some day! It's almost been a psychological wrench!" [42] "[God] is smashing one of the biggest idols I ever had -- the Jews! I almost worshipped them! I had idolized Israel -- the land of Israel, the carnal country! They were my own flesh and blood, and I was proud of them, and I bragged about them! "[God] doesn't love them any more than He does anybody else! For God is no respecter of persons -- flesh and blood persons -- flesh and blood Israel -- the Jews! "There's no such thing as a Jewish Christian, any more than there's such a thing as a gentile Christian, or a black Christian, or a white Christian, or a male or a female Christian, for all are one in Christ Jesus! You're only a Christian, that's all you are in God's eyes -- just a Christian! He doesn't see your color, your nationality, or your sex or any other damned fleshly characteristic! ... You either belong to Jesus or you don't! To hell with all the rest of the differences, discriminations, and prejudices!" [43] |
