Dear Friends:
I read with horror the reports of the three medical missionaries murdered recently at a Baptist hospital in Yemen. After serving our Lord with medicine and the message of the Gospel for over two decades, these faithful workers died at the hands of a Moslem terrorist roaming freely. Yemeni officials suspect a link to an al Qaida terrorist cell, though, sadly, the U.S. embassy there has been reluctant to link the missionaries’ murders to terrorism. Yemen, a hotbed of radical Islam and anti-American sentiment, officially signed on as a “coalition partner” in America’s war on terrorism. Really?
Interestingly, Yemen also recently received a shipment of scud missiles from axis of evil member North Korea, which is now restarting its nuclear weapons program. You will recall that American naval forces detained the North Korean vessel, discovered the missiles, and then allowed Yemen to unload its “merchandise.”
Is this any way to fight a war on terror? Should we create alliances with peoples who want to murder us? Allow our enemies to stockpile weapons that can be used against us or real friends like Israel? When will this administration get its priorities straight?
As we’ve said from day one of this war on terror, if the United States continues to dither around, embracing the Moslem world as friends and calling Islam a religion of peace, then attacks like these against the missionaries will only increase. I’m not saying that all Moslems are terrorists, but if only one percent of them are, then we are still faced with ten million Islamic terrorists! The true teachings of Islam are odious — and dangerous — to the rest of the world; it’s time to identify Islam honestly and confront it forcefully.
These news reports from Yemen are only two of the recent stories we withheld from publication in our recent Levitt Letter due to space considerations. I’d like to “catch up” with excerpts from several other articles we still feel are important for you to read.
Importing Islam
WorldNetDailyMore than three-fourths of Americans want U.S. immigration laws tightened to allow fewer immigrants from Arab or Muslim nations into the country. Instead, Washington pays to move Muslims to the United States.
…Under the Refugee Act of 1980, the government’s office of Refugee Resettlement has set aside $159 million in fiscal year 2002 for the resettlement of “refugees.”
Even though an overwhelming percentage of Americans think that there should be less Muslim immigration to the United States, the federal government and the refugee resettlement industry are importing Islam at $10,000 per Muslim.
Our Manifest Destiny
By Ronald M. Wade
Letter to the editor, the Dallas Morning NewsThe United Nations and our militarily weak European allies may hand-wring till doomsday over the administration’s policy toward Saddam Hussein. In the final analysis, their concurrence is irrelevant. The liberation of Iraq is the first step in the new manifest destiny of the United States, the world’s sole superpower.
We do not seek empire. We have only two ambitions: to generate wealth…and to enjoy our individual liberties. Our sweeping away the power-seeking evil that stands in the way of those ambitions means that despots and fundamentalist clerics clinging to 12th-century superstitions must become historical relics. Our destiny is to bring democracy to all lands by example, by moral suasion, by sharing of our treasure or by force of arms. Only then can we achieve a truly lasting peace and be free to enjoy our blessings without fear.
Beyond Dispute
By Etgar Lefkovits, The Jerusalem PostAlthough Islamic Waqf officials are currently denying any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, a 1930 booklet about the site published by the supreme Moslem body in Jerusalem during the British Mandate states categorically that the site’s identification with the First Temple is “beyond dispute.”
Published by the Supreme Moslem Council, the nine-page English-language tourist guide…states: “The site is one of the oldest in the world. Its sanctity dates from the earliest times. Its identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute. This, too, is the spot, according to universal belief, on which David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.” A footnote refers the reader to 2 Samuel 26:25….
[But recently] Palestinian Authority Mufti Ikrima Sabri, interviewed by the German [magazine] Die Welt said, “There is not even the smallest indication of the existence of a Jewish temple on this place in the past. In the whole city, there is not even a single stone indicating Jewish history.”
Witch Way to Pray
The Washington Times reported recently that the growing pagan cult Wicca is aggressively seeking acceptance in mainstream America. Cyndi Simpson, a Wiccan priestess, has asked to be included as a member of the clergy approved to offer invocations at the start of county board meetings in Chesterfield County, Va.
“I am a witch and I am fine with that,” she stated. “I have something good to share, and I think they should let me [pray].”
I think Ms. Simpson has been watching too many reruns of Bewitched, and so far the Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors has denied her request. But don’t think this couldn’t happen in your community. Satan is the master deceiver and seeks to infiltrate and influence individuals and communities alike. Is this happening in your city?
“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8).
Civilizing the Nations (see Genesis 12:3)
“I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations. If I were an atheist of the other sect, who believe or pretend to believe that all is ordered by chance, I should believe that chance had ordered the Jews to preserve and propagate to all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise almighty sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization.” — John Adams, 2nd U.S. President, 1806
Campus Hate Parade
By John Leo, U.S. News and World ReportIs America’s campus culture becoming anti-Semitic? Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League says no. A recent ADL survey reported that the percentage of anti-Semites on campus is low — 3 percent of students and 15 percent of faculty. (Why the teachers should be five times as bigoted as their students is an interesting question.)
On campus, a different question is being asked: Can’t you oppose Israel’s policies without being called an anti-Semite? Of course, but anti-Israel rallies at colleges often bristle with contempt for Jews, and anti-Semitic incidents seem to be on the rise. If this were happening to Muslims, there would be a national uproar.
Consider some signs of the times: a pig’s head left at the door of the Hillel building at Indiana University, swastikas on a Jewish structure at the University of Colorado, a Hillel center window smashed with a cinder block at the University of California-Berkeley, and expletives written on the building. At the University of California-San Diego, an annual “Anti-Zionism Week” (recently given a more upscale name — “From Oppression to Liberation Week”) is supported by student fees. “Very, very anti-Semitic stuff” circulates on the San Diego campus, one Jewish student said, including the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and a fake Talmudic quotation giving permission for Jewish males to violate any non-Jewish female over the age of 3. At the University of Chicago, a Jewish student group said, “Jews are being mistreated and intimidated on campus…anti-Semitism has been made acceptable, even fashionable, by a long process of academic delegitimizing of Israel and Judaism.”
No room on the bus. An op-ed writer at the Detroit News asked, “When did anti-Semitism lose its seat on the bus of political correctness?” He meant, why doesn’t the PC culture protect Jews? The answer is that seats on the PC bus are reserved for certified victim groups, but Jews don’t count. They have been historic victims for centuries but are doing too well in America to qualify as officially aggrieved. And as Muslims have been welcomed into the grievance culture, the status of Jews on campus, the stronghold of PC, has become problematic.
Israel itself is often seen as an intolerable colonial outpost, planted in the historically victimized Third World by the West. The thing that most Americans admire about Israel, that it has many of the same features as the United States — free speech, an open society, democratic institutions — makes it a natural target of America-hating campus sentiment. Hostility to Israel was a strong feature of the New Left in the Sixties as it is of the campus left today. And as Boston Globe columnist Cathy Young pointed out last week, sympathy for the Palestinians, even when they are blowing up Israel’s women and children, “stems largely from the knee-jerk instinct to romanticize the ‘wretched of the Earth.’”
Anti-Israel activism on campus is mostly the work of Muslim students and the far left. Some of the ugliest incidents have occurred in the San Francisco Bay area, where the left is unusually strong. At Berkeley, Silver says, “Instead of rallying behind Iraq, the hard left here tends to keep focusing on Israel.”
So do the sponsors of an anti-Israel conference…at the University of Michigan. They condemn the “racism and discrimination inherent in Zionism” (which seems to mean that Israel is an illegitimate state that will have to go) and refuse to criticize the suicide bombings because “it is not our place to dictate the strategies and tactics adopted by the Palestinian people.”
The primary carrier of the “Israel is illegitimate” message on campus is the movement to get universities to stop investing in corporations that do business in Israel. Divestment won’t happen, but a slanderous point is being made, that Israel is a hopelessly racist state, the one nation in the world that must be singled out for financial punishment. The divestment movement is the successor to last summer’s atrocious U.N. conference on racism, which surveyed the entire world but chose to focus on only one “racist” state, Israel. For the backers of divestment, political opposition to Israeli policies isn’t nearly enough. No, the only open, democratic nation in its part of the world must be isolated as a pariah. Is this what people on campus really want?
Unfortunately, friends, this article hits the issue squarely on the head. The college campus today is seething with anti-Israel and even anti-America hatred. Views taught about Israel and the situation in the Middle East are often skewed by left-leaning faculty who feel no shame in bashing the long-standing policy our country has had to support Israel, the only democracy and true ally we have in that part of the world. Moslem groups, especially since 9-11, are ratcheting up their hate speech, which in turn leads to incidents as described in the article above.
American students are being fed a plateful of lies about Israel and the Arab world. And I believe the Lord is leading me to do something about it.
As reported in our January Levitt Letter, I am currently in the process of contacting many of the colleges and universities in the Midwest in order to arrange lectures with student and faculty groups alike. Secular, Christian, Jewish schools — any and every college that cares about the truth and is not afraid to host a Jewish teacher with 30 years experience in Middle East issues — are our target audiences. No fees. No travel expenses. My only goal is to combat the growing anti-Semitism at these institutions with the truth about the Chosen People and the Promised Land. And your help is needed.
If you know someone on these campuses in a position to host a speaker such as myself this summer, then please contact Claudia at (817) 417-0059 for special scheduling information on this vital project. We must not let our next generation of leaders be duped by liberal lies from the anti-Israel lobby in academia.
Also, if your church is located in the Midwest, Claudia is the person to call to arrange for Sandra and me to stop by and speak about Israel and Biblical prophecy during the summer. Ask for information on Zola’s Biblical Seminars.
At the beginning of the summer I’ll be hosting our second annual Father’s Day weekend tour (June 14-15) of the Passion Play and Israel sites at Eureka Springs, Arkansas. This weekend tour is packed with fascinating sites, teaching from the Word and a relaxing atmosphere with like-minded believers. Please call Tony at (214) 696-9760 for more information.
From May 29 through June 8, I’ll be leading my 76th tour to Israel. We call it our Pentecost Tour. This will be the perfect time to visit the Promised Land, your future home in the Millennial Kingdom! Tour with us for 10 days or extend your stay through June 11 to visit the red city of Petra. For your full-color tour folder, please call Tony at (214) 696-9760. Or you may also call 1-800-WONDERS (1-800-966-3377) any time. Once you’ve set foot in the Holy Land, your Bible never reads the same!
And coming up on Saturday, April 12, is our next Israel Solidarity Day in Dallas, where we’ll tour Israel and Bible sites beautifully replicated at the Biblical Arts Center, as well as have times of worship and teaching. Included in this one-day $49 tour is a visit to the “Miracle at Pentecost,” a dramatic 124-foot oil painting presented in a stunning light and sound show. Register early and receive a complimentary reservation at our Passover Seder on Friday night, April 11, with our own congregation, Shalom Shalom. We do this annually the week before Passover so that folks can learn it and then invite their Jewish and Gentile friends to their homes the following week. Seating is limited. Reservations are required. Please call Tony at (214) 696-9760 for tour and Seder information.
By the time you receive this letter, we may well be at war with Iraq…or even communist North Korea. What does this all mean? It means that the Lord is near! The prophetic stage is nearly set for the entry of the Antichrist and the beginning of the Tribulation. The Rapture of the Church — of every born again believer — could occur at any moment. “Look up,” as the Scriptures advise, “your redemption draweth nigh.” Are you ready? Are your loved ones ready? Will you commit yourself in 2003 to make evangelism of the lost — especially of the Chosen People — a priority in your Christian service? And will you pray for the peace of Jerusalem? May God bless you as you do!
Your Messenger,
P.S. Please feel free to set your VCR to record “Zola Levitt Presents” on our two national networks. ABC-FAM airs our program early-early on Monday mornings, 1:00 AM on both coasts and midnight Central Time. On TBN, you can see me on Monday mornings at 8:00 ET, 7:00 CT, 6:00 MT and 5:00 PT.
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