NOTES ON THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE: YERUSHALAYIM, HAPPINESS & THE AMERICAN DREAM – (WITH VIDEO)

1. THE TEACHING

SCRIPTURE. “JERUSALEM, which is built as a city that is compacted together—To which the tribes go up, even the tribes of the Lord, as was decreed and as a testimony for Israel, to give thanks to the name of the Lord. For there the thrones of judgment were set, the thrones of the house of David. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem! May they prosper who love you [the Holy City]!” – PSALM 122:3-6, AMPC

KEY TERM: “PROSPER!” ‘Shalah’ [שָׁלָה]: From a primitive root, To be tranquil, quiet, or at ease; secure, successful; ‘to be happy (by one’s prosperity);’ to have a sense of safety [within and without]; to be favored [by God].”

QUOTATION. “To return to where we started, there have always been ‘Two Jerusalem’s,’ the Temporal and the Celestial, both ruled more by faith and emotion than by reason and facts. ‘And Jerusalem remains the Centre of the World.’” – SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE, Jerusalem: The Biography, 2011; edited

COMMENTARY. “‘Pray for the peace of Jerusalem’ – The prosperity, the welfare of Jerusalem – ‘For peace is everywhere the image of prosperity and happiness.’ Compare Psalm 51:18. This is the language which those who were ‘Going up to the City – to the House of the Lord’ – addressed to each other, ‘expressing the joyful feelings of their hearts at their own near approach to the City. It breathes the desire that all would prayfor the peace and prosperity of a City so dear to their own souls;’ Where the worship of God was celebrated; where God Himself dwelt; where Justice was administered: a City of so much importance and so much influence in the land. To us now it inculcates the duty of praying for the Church: Its peace; its unity; its prosperity; its increase.

‘[For] its influence on our country and on the world at large.’ It is a prayer that the Church [must] not be divided by schism or heresy; that its members may cherish for each other right feelings; that there may be no jealousies, no envyings, and no jars; that the different branches of the Church may regard and treat each other with kindness, with respect, and with mutual recognition; that prosperity may attend them all.

‘They shall prosper that love thee’ – Or rather, They shall have peace that love thee; or, ‘May they have peace that love thee.’ The word PROSPER conveys an idea which is not in the original. The Hebrew word means to be ‘secure,’ ‘tranquil,’ ‘at rest,’ spoken especially of one who enjoys quiet prosperity (Job 3:26; Job 12:6). The essential idea is that of ‘quietness or rest;’ and the meaning here is, that those who love Zion will have peace; or, that the tendency of that love is to produce peace.” – ALBERT BARNES, Notes on the Old and New Testament, 1834, 1884; edite.

II. THE AWAKENING

The primary reason I was led to this Commentary was due to my own wrestling with the meaning of “SUCCESS” – of which I don’t feel much these days, to be perfectly honest. You see, my generation (Boomers) was perhaps the first one to redefine “Prosperity” in distinctly ‘American’ terms, not in the ancient ‘Hebrew’ way.

When Jews refer to “Making Aliya,” for example, it is for them ‘the most glorious joy’ one can possibly experience in this present life, on this present earth. The EDITORS of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews Newsletter define it this way:

‘ALIYA is the Hebrew word used to describe Immigration to Israel’—bringing Jews from the ‘four corners of the earth’ to their [God Mandated] Biblical Homeland is the very backbone of the Jewish State. It’s the return of Jews to the Land of Israel from the Diaspora (Jewish communities outside of Israel). In Hebrew, ‘Aliyah’ means ‘to ascend’ or ‘to go up.’ This word was originally used to describe the Pilgrimage that Jews made three times a year to the City of Jerusalem for the biblically mandated Holy Days of Passover, ‘Shavuot’ (Pentecost), and ‘Sukkot’ (Feast of the Tabernacles). Since Jerusalem is located on top of Mount Zion, the pilgrims literally ascended to the Holy Temple” (ret. June 14, 2924; edited).

So, for the religious or observant Jew, this is the ‘Supreme Earthly Happiness,’ to share in the thousands of years old “GOING HOME TO GOD’S CITY” from foreign lands where their people were for thousands of years so often considered not only unwelcome, but persecuted and even slaughtered for their merely, ‘Being Jewish.’

For Today’s Christian. there is the New Testament Counterpart of our eagerly straining toward our own ‘Going Up’ to meet Christ in the air at the Rapture (1 Cor. 15:51-53; 1 Thess. 4:16-18). Or is there, beloved, or is there? For us, ideally at least, this ‘Promises to be our Supreme Joy’ as we transfer from the Earth to God’s Abode to be with the Lord forever and ever.

A RUPTURE IN THE TIMELINE. For the ‘American Christian,’ however, something has gone catastrophically wrong in just the last several years: ‘An unprecedented assault on the Doctrine of the Rapture and Christ’s Return’ launched more viciously then at any other time in Church History. If I were to apply the thinking of American theologian JAMES SIRE to this Crisis, I would propose the following.

The American Church has gradually at first then aggressively rejected the importance of a Heavenly Kingdom to come for an Earthly Kingdom now, to be built and dominated by a Ruling Christian Elite or Cult headed by a Supreme Leader that the Scriptures call, ‘Antichrist.’ – Scripture Twisting: 20 Ways the Cults Misread the Bible, 1980

This takes us back to our Founding, and the baseline Promise to be able to experience “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” (Declaration of Independence, 1776), significantly – here on the Earth! So now we are instantly deep into the weeds of the Oirigns of the nearly sacrosanct, “American Dream,” so prepare to have your nascent nationalist feathers (and mine too!) rustled by a somewhat less Anglicized version of its meaning.

I base these next remarks on a piece by the daughter of Robert and Ethel Kennedy, former Democrat Lt. Governor of Maryland, KATHLEEN KENNEDY TOWNSEND, in her essay for The Atlantic some time ago, “The Pursuit of Happiness: What the Founders Meant-And Didn’t” (June 20, 2011; edited).

Please, please listen carefully.

AMERICAN HAPPINESS. “Jefferson declared that the ‘Pursuit of Happiness’was an inalienable [God ordained] right, along with ‘Life’ and ‘Liberty.’ The story goes that JEFFERSON, on the advice of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, substituted the phrase ‘Pursuit of happiness’ for the word ‘Property,’ which was favored by GEORGE MASON [notably, who vigorously opposed Slavery]. Franklin thought that ‘Property’ was too narrow a notion.

But what exactly did ‘Happiness’ mean to the Colonists? It was a topic of lively discussion in pubs, public squares, broadsheets, and books. Was Happiness individual prosperity, or something else? … ‘George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had nice houses [and they owned slaves]. They could have enjoyed contented private lives. But it was not just about their property. They believed that you attained Happiness, not merely through the goods you accumulated, or in your private life, but ‘through the good that you did in public.’ People were happy when they controlled their destiny, when their voice was heard, when they participated in public events, when the government did not do things to them, or even for them, but with them.”

‘And they had nice houses, and they owned slaves.’

THE POINT. Nowhere in our Founding was embedded the idea that “Happiness” was to be defined Biblically – whether we anchored it to “Property” or to earthly “Freedom.” No! It was entirely defined in terms of ‘Material Gain,’ top to bottom, side to side. This as drastically differentiated from the Jewish concept of ‘Aliya,’ or essentially, ‘Going up to God’s Home to be with Him!’

Which instantly reminds of PAUL’S WARNING:

“But if some of the branches were broken off, and you [Gentiles], being like a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among them to share with them the rich root of the olive tree, ‘do not boast over the [broken] branches and exalt yourself at their expense.’ If you do boast and feel superior, remember that it is not you who supports the root, but the root that supports you.” – ROMANS 11:17-18, AMP

The word for “Boast” here is from the Greek, ‘Katakauchaomai’ [κατακαυχᾶσαι], or: ‘To exult against another;’ properly, ‘to talk down,’ over-exalting one thing at the expense of another which results in wrong conclusions – i.e., that unjustifiably ‘downgrade’ by boasting with a sense of ‘false superiority’ (Ro. 11:18; Jms. 3:14).”

Remind you of anyone or anything, beloved?

DONALD JOHN TRUMP.  This uniquely wicked and violent man has come to epitomize ‘The American Dream, National Patriotism, and Happiness’ – thereby all the Darker Angels of our White Founders who were overwhelmingly highly educated, wealthy property and slave owners, were factually erudite enough ‘to deny full citizenship to Black people for 250 years.’

Selah. Selah. Stop and think about that and don’t let it be sniffed away one day longer!

My visits to the Plantations of the South when living in Virginia were profoundly awakening for my wife and me – though its impact was gradual at first. We both derive from Minority Cultures (Asian, Hispanic, Jewish), so we confess a ‘Different View’ of all things American. For us, it is a vastly simpler matter to grasp the explosive Rise of White Christian Nationalism in our land because – wait for it:

‘It has always been there! And it has been resurrected from the grave of Hitler’s Aryan Supremacy by the Maga Christian Nationalism of Donald Trump.

Now that’s a lot from an old-school theological conservative follower of Jesus Christ, but I must say as follow up: ‘Dearest Lord: Is your entire Church so asleep that it is about to become swallowed up in the toxic brew of White Supremacy on its way to becoming Babylon the Great?

It would seem so, my friends. It would tragically, almost breathlessly, seem so. And it is fewer than 140 days away. Selah.

III. LAST THOUGHTS: AN UGLIFIED AMERICA

I expect I have upset a number of you, but I cannot retreat from this THESIS that has been building in me during the past eight years of American Transformation from something ostensibly ‘Wonderful’ to now, something inarguably, devastatingly ‘Hideous.’ Or “Ugly”in the vernacular of Lederer and Burdick’s epic novel of 1958 that I recently wrote about regarding ‘The Ugly American.’

THE NEW ‘TRUMP AMERICAN.’ A sharp-edged analysis by Professor of History at SUNY-Albany has shoots several accurate holes in American’s near worship of our presumably uniquely Divine Heritage. DR. LAWRENCE S. WITTMER penned a piece titled, “The Ugly Origins of Trump’s ‘America First’ Policy’” (Foreign Policy in Focus, Mar. 19, 2024; edited).

Get ready for some more worldview-rending, cultural myth-busting truth. Quoted at some length due to its terrible importance.

“People’s choice of words can be revealing. That’s certainly the case with respect to one of Donald Trump’s favorite slogans, ‘America First.’ In April 2016, Trump initially used the term in a campaign speech, proclaiming that ‘America First’ would be ‘the major and overriding theme of my administration.’

The following year, in his Inaugural Address, he promised that: ‘A New Vision will govern our land. From this day forward, it’s going to be only America First―America First!’ Subsequently, he has employed the slogan frequently to describe his approach to foreign and domestic policy.

This approach is remarkable because, over the past century, ‘America First’ has acquired some very unsavory connotations.

Although the seemingly innocent slogan goes back deep in American history, it began to develop a racist, Anti-Semitic, and xenophobic tone after World War I. TheKU KLUX KLAN,which surged to some five million members at that time, employed it frequently for its terrorist mobilizations. Like the Klan, Nativist groups took up ‘America First’ as they used racist, eugenicist claims to press, successfully, for U.S. government restrictions on immigration.

Appealing to an overheated Nationalism, WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST used his newspaper empire to campaign, successfully, against U.S. participation in the League of Nations. Soon thereafter, he became a booster of other Nationalist fanatics, the rising Fascist Powers. Hearst’s newspapers, with ‘America First’ emblazoned on their masthead, celebrated what they called the ‘great achievement’ of the new Nazi Regime in Germany.’ In1934, Hearst himself scurried off to Berlin to interview Adolf Hitler. Instructing his reporters in Germany to provide positive coverage of the Nazis, Hearst fired journalists who failed to do so. Meanwhile, the Hearst press ran columns, without rebuttal, by Hitler, Mussolini, and Nazi leader Hermann Göring.

This toxic brew of racism, Anti-Semitism, and xenophobia increasingly found its way into a growing Isolationist Movement that crested in 1940 with the ‘America First Committee.’ Bankrolled by several top corporate leaders, the America First Committee was determined to prevent the United States from becoming involved in what it labeled, disparagingly, ‘Europe’s Wars.’ And as Fascist military forces swept from triumph to triumph, it emerged as America’s largest Isolationist organization. Although the 800,000 America First members had a variety of political opinions, many of them held Anti-Semitic views and sympathized with the Nazis …

Given this record, when Trump revived the ‘America First’ slogan, the Anti-Defamation League urged him to reconsider, pointing to the slogan’s bigoted and pro-Nazi history.

But Trump has continued to invoke ‘America First’ in his statements. Why? It’s clear that he agrees with this slogan’s connotations. After all, Trump’s top emphases have been barring and deporting minority group immigrants from the United States, ‘attacking migrant crime,’ inflaming ‘Christian Nationalism,’ and ‘ridiculing international cooperation and organizations.’

When one adds his obsession with genetic superiority and blood purity, plus his admiration for dictators, it’s an all too familiar pattern.”

SLOUCHING TOWARD BABYLON. These are a few important reasons that America is resembling ‘Babylon’ more than ‘Jerusalem’ these days, beloved. OUR ROOTS ARE MIXED in both Judeo-Christian and Pagan Soil, thus despoiling the whole lot, as with “a little bit of leaven” (2 Cor. 5:5).

Then, it occurred to me that as with the Daniels Fourth (Last) Kingdom whose toes were “partly of iron, partly of clay,” America is “partly strong and partly weak” (Dan. 2:43).

My final evidence for this troubling Thesis comes from DR. BRANDON O’CONNER, Professor of US Politics and US Foreign Relations at the University of Sydney. He is the editor of seven books on Anti-Americanism and has also published articles and books on American welfare policy, presidential politics, US foreign policy, and Australian-American relations.

His essay, “6 Types of Ugly American, and Donald Trump is All of Them,” was published in The Conversation on November 2, 2016, just a few days before the momentous 58^th Quadrennial Presidential Election of November 8, 2016. 

1. TRUMP’S MANNERS. “In terms of manners, Trump is the schoolyard bully as CEO. Trump’s bad manners could generously be viewed as Anti-elitist Populism challenging the failing status quo. But many outside the US view them as the crude rantings of a Narcissist.”
2. ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM. “Forget Trump’s Wharton School MBA – and his boast that ‘I know words, I have the best words.’ When it comes to uncouth Anti-Intellectualism, Trump with his simplistic solutions, his lowest common denominator attacks on his political opponents, and his constant disregard for experts and their and their findings, makes him top of the class of loud-mouthed American bloviators for many. In an earlier American generation, such rhetoric was associated with the Know-Nothing anti-immigration movement.
3. BLAND LIVES. “The Third Stereotype – that Americans are sameish and live bland lives – would seem at first glance to miss the mark with Trump. This view of Americans is that their lives, to quote Alexis de Tocqueville, are particularly ‘Unpoetic’ and that they live by clichés and hollow catchphrases like ‘have a nice day.’ If one takes a deeper look at Trump and his enterprises, he has a remarkable talent for making glamour bland and soulless.”
4. TRUMP THE BOASTFUL PATRIOT. “When it comes to boasting, Trump is constantly self-congratulatory and arguably the biggest self-promoter in living memory. His ‘Patriotism’ is wrapped up in his claim that America will get so used to ‘winning’ everything under a Trump presidency it will get sick of winning. He vaingloriously promotes his poll numbers, his primary victories and the dismissal of his opponents as ‘so easy to beat’”
5. MONEY, MONEY, MONEY! “His claim to have ‘made it’ financially is central to Trump’s appeal to many Americans that one sees interviewed on television. However, outside of America, boasting about your wealth and fame is still largely seen as gauche.”
6. HYPOCRISY. “Lastly, the saying that ‘Those in glasshouses should not throw stones’ is something that never occurs to Trump. Being a hypocrite clearly does not concern him and this is one of those infuriating traits that makes him so strongly disliked from Norway to Chile.”

CONCLUSION. “Trump therefore is not merely an ‘Ugly American’ but is an amplification of commonplace cultural trends. Those that Trump exemplifies, such as narcissism, self-centredness, gnat-like attention spans, obsessive self-regard, preoccupation with the number of followers one has and a lack of interest in listening to others, are trends that are easy to pass off as particularly ‘American.’ But if we are honest, this behaviour is all around us. ‘To prevent the next Trump – and there will be more – requires challenging the sources of Selfishness in much of Modern Culture that are everywhere and seemingly on the rise.’”

CODA. As I have increasingly argued rather intensely this past year, America and her Church have been cajoled, sweet talked, hate-talked then fully seduced into following a Beast who I am convinced, for now at least, is ‘The Beast’ of Scripture:

“Then I stood on the sand of the sea. And I saw a beast rising up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and on his horns ten crowns, and on his heads a blasphemous name. Now the beast which I saw was like a leopard, his feet were like the feet of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion. The dragon gave him his power, his throne, and great authority. And I saw one of his heads as if it had been mortally wounded, and his deadly wound was healed. And all the world marveled and followed the beast. So they worshiped the dragon who gave authority to the beast; ‘and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast? Who is able to make war with him?” And he was given a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies, and he was given authority to continue for forty-two months.’” – REVELATION 13:1-5, NKJV

Worst of all, beloved, if my proposals and interpretations of these events are reasonably accurate, what is coming soon is nearly unfathomable: ‘We the people of American Christendom are rapidly becoming ‘Donald John Trump, and will reap the Consequences of this Betrayal of Christ.

And if that is even partially true, there is only One Fate awaiting us:

“After these things I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was illuminated with his glory. And he cried mightily with a loud voice, saying, ‘Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and has become a dwelling place of demons, a prison for every foul spirit, and a cage for every unclean and hated bird!” … [And the people] threw dust on their heads and cried out, weeping and wailing, and saying, ‘Alas, alas, that great city, in which all who had ships on the sea became rich by her wealth! For in one hour she is made desolate.’” – REVELATION 18:1-2, 19, NKJV

Yet do I again ask: Is anyone in the American Church listening, beloved? Anyone, anyone at all. No? ‘Therefore, The Whirlwind!’ So make ready, beloved. It is still the wise man who prepares his household for war and listens to the stirring Voice of God who shouts another FINAL WARNING TO THE SHEPHERDS.

“They have healed also the wound of the daughter of My people lightly and neglectfully, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace. Were they brought to shame because they had committed abominations (extremely disgusting and vile things)? No, they were not at all ashamed, nor could they blush [at their idolatry]. Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; at the time that I punish them they shall be overthrown,’ says the Lord.” – JEREMIAH 6:14-15, AMP

CODICIL. Without massive repentance from the Church, America is about to be consumed on the fiery rocks of ‘IDOLATROUS HUBRIS’ – the very First Sin that brought down the entirety of the human race Eons ago.

It has returned to us, beloved, and IT has a name: The very ‘Beast of Babylon.’ Selah. Selah.

YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/P6pG_9cWcNk