And here to talk about Zionism
is Dr. Thomas Ice. 
as always when we talk. is it
okay if I just call you Tommy? 
>>It sure is. >And we're going
to talk about your new
book which is called "The Case
for Zionism." A very 
simple title but freighted with
meaning. with history.
with details that you don't
know about. and you 
should. I think. let's just
start right there. There's a
lot of ignorance
about the history of Israel.
There's a lot of propaganda. 
And you cut right through it in
your book. >>Right. 
Zionism is simply a desire for
the Jews
to occupy or live in the land
of Israel. 
And Christian Zionism which we
argue for in this book
is Christians who believe that.
I remember a number of
years ago using the term
'Zionism' and somebody thought
I was a member of the 
SDS or something. you know.
>Ah. >>Some radical
term. and some Christians think
that. But the ???puritans 
used to call it 'resorationism'
and of course when the term
'Zionism'
came along 115. 120 years 
ago they've started using that
term. >You
know. there are a lot of
propagandists 
around today telling lies. Some
very intelligent lies that are
very hard to cut through.
>>Fake news. >Fake news. 
that's all in the news today.
When it comes to fake
news it's hard to top the news
that comes out concerning
Israel. right? >>Definitely. 
>I mean. people lie about
Israel. And the thing I 
like about "The Case for
Zionism" is the documentation.
I want to tell
you Tommy is a documentarian at
heart because
everything in this book goes
back to a statement
made by someone that can be
documented historically. And
you do this and you
quote people that most readers
will never have heard of. 
Going way back into the 16th
century. and we can talk about
that in a minute. But what I
want to talk about now
is the legitimacy of Israel. of
the state of Israel. 
That's on the table right now.
It's a big. big news item.
>>Well you
know the land promises alone
are repeated
twenty times in the book of
Genesis. 
And to Abraham. Isaac. Jacob,
and his descendants. Of course
the first promise is there in
Genesis 12 which
is the pivot for the book of
Genesis from the first eleven
chapters
of 'where did we come from' to
'how did the nation
of Israel begin?' and it began
with God calling
Abraham out of Ur the Chaldees
and bringing him into the
Promised Land
and all of this and repeating
that to him
for example he cut the covenant
in chapter 15
and Abraham. Isaac. Jacob and
his descendants. You go
to a book like Deuteronomy and
the land promises
alone are given like
sixty-eight times or something
like
that. And it's all throughout
the Bible. 
Do you know that every prophet.
the major prophets 
and the twelve minor prophets
mention a 
future return of Israel to the
land except for Jonah? 
Which was dealing with Nineveh.
Every one of those prophets
talk about this. 
And I just cannot understand
Gary. how in the world a person
can read the Bible and think
that God doesn't have
a future plan for Israel. >You
know. 
it's such an amazing thing. The
word 'Zion'
and you point this out in your
book. is found over 150 times
in the Bible. 
Very prominently featured. and
it's passionately
featured. like Psalm 87. the
Lord loves
the gates of Zion more than all
the dwelling places
of Jacob. >>That's right. and
He's going to dwell in Zion
with His
people. >And Zion is not a
made-up word. 
>>No. >It's a Biblical word. It
has meaning. 
As I understand it. and correct
me if I'm wrong but Zion
comes from a Hebrew root which
means
'a place marker' or 'a
designated spot.'
You probably know more about
that than I do. >>Well it was
originally referring to the
city of David. part of 
Jerusalem across the valley
from the Temple Mount where
King David 
built his palace eventually. 
And therefore it expands and
begins to refer to all of 
Jerusalem and sometimes even to
the land of Israel
itself. But it's a positive
word. What I mean by
that is Zion often has 
reference to the future. when
Israel is right
with God. dwelling in the land.
and experiencing the
blessing. And God is Israel's
God and He
is dwelling with them there.
That has not happened yet in the
history of the world. and
that's going to happen in the
future. That's why you cannot
have. people today in churches
talk about the kingdom 
as if it's here today. and it's
not. This is the church age. 
>Mhm. >>It's a time in which we
are preaching the gospel and
calling out people who
are going to reign and rule
with Christ in the kingdom
after He returns. 
So Zion is a reference or
connotation usually to that
future 
time when the Messiah is
reigning from Jerusalem
and God is happily dwelling
with His 
people. >Chapter one of your
book is a question: "What is
Zionism?" 
Zionism has received a lot of
criticism. a lot of false
criticism. I think. I'd like to
talk to you--
because this is a big part of
your book--about the
relationship between the church
and Israel. This has been so
freighted
with misunderstanding and with
emotion. and it still is. 
Relationship between the modern
church and 
Zionism. Let's talk about that
because that's a 
driving force behind this book.
>>Well from the times of the
early
church they believed that the
church had forever
replaced Israel. In fact. in
the early church.
you had people like Chrysostom
preaching an eight-sermon
series called "Against the
Jews." 
He kind of closes his final
sermon by saying 'if hating
Jews makes you a good
Christian. we're all good
Christians.'
Then you had Julian the
Apostate who was a
grandson of Constantine in the
300's. tried to
rebuild the temple. Why?
Because he wanted to return the
Roman Empire
to paganism. He believed that
the gods. plural. were
punishing Rome
because the empire had declined
by that
time. Because they had become
atheists by 
not worshiping the gods and had
become Christian. So 
he tried to rebuild the temple
and it was
destroyed. you know that didn't
work out. he was only emperor
for seventeen months and then
they went
back to the Holy Roman Empire
and all of that. 
So that shows you how tied in
in the early
church the idea that the Jews
were forever
finished. We call this
"replacement theology." 
that the church had forever
replaced Israel. 
So that goes way back to the
early church. Some call
it 'supersessionism' and that
has the idea of sitting
in another person's seat. I
remember when we were kids. I
had for 
sisters and we watched TV back
in the late fifties
and sixties. Somebody would get
up to go to the bathroom during
a commercial 
and someone else like myself
would take over the better seat
that they had vacated. See
that's supersessionism. >Uhuh. 
>>I would take over one of my
sister's seats
and she would come back. "that
was my seat!" "No. it's mine,
you left."
and we'd get in an argument.
That's what many people believe
about
the nation of israel. that the
church is forever superseded
them. But
they fail to study the mysteries
and the description in the New
Testament epistles of the
purpose of the church. The
purpose of the church
is where God has brought Jew
and Gentile together
in Christ into one body. While
Israel is in 
dispersion God is taking out
from among the 
gentiles as Acts 15 says. a
people for His name. Then He'll
return and
rebuild the fallen tabernacle
of David. In other words--and
that's why you have the
pre-trib rapture because it
ends the temporary
church age. period. Then you
have 
the completion of the
seventieth week of Daniel which
results in the
conversion of the entire
nation. Then that leads
to them calling on Christ to
rescue them when
the armies of the world have
come down to Jerusalem at
Armageddon and
God intervenes with the second
coming. Then 
we have the millennial period
where He reigns and rules and
we'll reign 
with Him and Israel will reign
over the rest of the
world as well. etcetera.
They'll be the head over the
nations
and you know. you'll have God
finally showing people
what it means to properly
fulfill the cultural mandate in
a 
way that glorifies God. >We're
talking today
about "The Case for Zionism."
Tommy Ice's
new book. I have to tell you
it's a good read
and by that I mean it's an easy
read. That is to 
say though. he is a scholar of
the
first rate. He is also just a
smooth writer. He's got a good
writing 
style and I love the footnotes.
This is so well 
documented. you don't make a
statement that you don't back
up. I love that. 
Having said that then. let's
talk
about some of the complexities
of Zion. 
Going back to the 19th
century. 
World War I. World War II. A
lot has transpired
that really gives us a lot of
insight
into Bible prophecy. In other
words things are happening in
the world but you 
look at your Bible and all
those things were predicted. in
a way. 
>>I'll tell you what. let's go
back to the Reformation. >Okay. 
>>And see what God started
doing among Protestant
Christians. 
What you had during the
Reformation 
with Calvin and Luther is a
return. theoretically at least. 
to literal interpretation. In
other word the Bible means what
it says and says
what it means. >Yeah. >>They
began
to move in the right direction.
I do not know of
any of the reformers that
really were pro-
Israel. so to speak. But they
laid the groundwork and
the post-reformation era. the
late 1500's and early 1600's
all of a sudden you had this
huge rush of
people discovering that
Israel--that Israel and God
had a plan for Israel. >Mhm.
>>Why? Because you had
the academic people learning
Greek and Hebrew basically for
1.000
years hardly anybody in the
church knew Hebrew and so 
they start studying the Jews
and all of this and learning
Hebrew
at the academic level. Then you
had
the beginning of the
translation of the Bible into
common languages like
German and English and stuff
like this. The 
average person. and literacy
was on the rise. 
arising in the middle class and
they could afford Bibles and
they start reading the
Bible and they're finding all
these details that they didn't
know about. 
And Israel's all over the
place. So people like Francis
Kepp
who had two degrees from
Cambridge 
and he was in England 
and he wrote a book and had a
few
pages about the restoration of
Israel
and he was burned at the stake
in 1589
Shows you the mentality.
Because see in 1290
England had kicked the Jews out
and they were very anti-Semitic
at that point. But by the time
you get to the
1650's with someone like
Cromwell there passing
a resolution to bring the Jews
back into England
and a guy named John Owen. a
famous theologian preached
in Parliament that if we--the
Bible says that
the Jews will be scattered to
every country in the
world and then they'll be
regathered in the end times and
then the Lord will come. He
argued
that we're preventing the
second coming of Christ because 
England doesn't allow Jews in
their country. And
so in 1655 Parliament voted
money
and sent a boat to Amsterdam
and brought Jews back in and
repopulated 
the country with Jewish people.
I'm just saying that's the
impact of Protestant
Christianity. You have a guy
named Sir Henry Finch in 1621 
who--have you ever heard of
Blackstone's legal commentary?
>Oh. sure. >>Okay. well Finch 
is the originator of that back
in the 1600's where 
he had studied and had shown
the 
--all the places where the
Mosaic law had influenced
English law. 
>Mhm. >>And he was the
greatest--and so in the
process of studying that. he
realized that Israel had a
future. He wrote a whole
book that was published in 1621 
about Israel returning to the
land. King James
was very upset and put him in
jail. He died seventeen months
later. 
>So Anglo-Saxon's 
case law and the laws of the
nation
Israel find a common ground.
>>Right. 
Exactly! Judeo-Christianity. 
That came from the Puritans. It
certainly didn't come from
mid-evil Catholicism. 
>Yeah. True. >>That's for sure.
Guess who comes to
America? Well the Puritans who
were very pro-Israel. 
You have the Mathers. for
example. You have Richard Mather
the father. he was a Cambridge
graduate who came. He makes a
statement
that almost all of the Puritans
in America were pre-millennial. 
His son. Increase Mather.
who was the second president of
Harvard. 
He wrote a book on the
restoration of the Jews. He
only wrote
125 books that were published.
but this was his
first book and his favorite
book. with the seven editions.
He looked
for the return of the Jews.
Increase Mather married
John Cotton who was the most
famous Puritan pastor
in Boston in the day and they
had a son named Cotton Mather
and he was a big
pre-millennialist. He only had 
425 books published. many on
multi volumes. 
They all believed in a
future for Israel. In fact
Cotton Mather talks about how
he 
would consider it the greatest
blessing of his life if he could
lead one Jewish person to Jesus
as Messiah. 
So our country was founded on
this mentality 
and that's why we ended up with
six. seven million Jews
at one point living in the
United States
because we realized that and
developed what we call 
Judeo-Christianity. which is a
similar 
social and law code. >Yeah. We
tend
to think of "Judeo-Christians". 
as like having
always been the case back
through the church age. but
that's-- >>Not at all
>a late development. >>And then
you have in the 1880's
the Jews. there were movements
among the Jews that
began to return to Israel. >Hm.
>>1880's. 
1882 is usually when that 
orange grove was planted in
Haifa and stuff like that.
>Yeah. >>and they started
having colonies and there's a
whole prophecy in the
Bible in Deuteronomy about how
when the Jews are not
in the land it will always be a
wilderness. That has
been the case. >It has been! It
didn't rain at
all for like 1800 years when
the Jews were absent from the
land. we talked
with a Jewish gentleman who
actually documented
that in a book historically.
>>Yes.
You know there's all these.
I've read in detail these
painful things
about. they say the Jews stole
the land. They did not. They
paid for
it. Because the streams
and rivers had gotten clogged
up it created swamps. 
there's all kinds of stories in
the 1800's about
Arab groups who tried to settle
the land and they would all die
from malaria. In fact the first
generation of Jews in the early
1900's. a third of them died
from malaria 
as they were draining these
swamps. They've turned it into
the garden of Eden
of course. Everybody wants to
get the technology
for irrigation and farming
techniques. 
and all this kind of stuff that
the modern state of Israel is
developing. 
But it was then the British 
in 1919 during World War I
captured
Jerusalem during World War I
and took
it was away from the Ottoman
Empire. Before that
in November of 1917. and this
2017 is the
100th anniversary of the
Balfour Declaration where you
had a war
cabinet and they 
favored the establishment
of a Jewish state in the 
land of Palestine. as they
called it back then.
That was Israel. So you have
after
World War I the Paris Peace
Conference
where they divided the land up
among 
French and British and they had
mandates that oversaw
the re-establishment of nations
within what had previously 
been the Ottoman Empire. >There
is a lot of diplomatic perfidy 
in those days because Israel
was supposed to get a very much
larger segment of the land than
they ended up getting. >>Yeah.
They were supposed to get
all of i Israel west of the
Jordan and what is today
Jordan. >Yeah. >>All the way
back. And they then
took away of course through
different processes Jordan.
and then by the time you get to
1948
they've wanted to partition the
land into this weird
spaghetti looking thing. 
So you have the fact that
Israel gained
the legal right from the 
League of Nations in what at
the conference at San Remo
which was an appendage to the
Pairs Peace Conference. 
Even the Arabs had agreed to
this at that point. 
Britain was given a mandate in
1922 to
oversee Israel. or the Jewish
Palestine. as they called it.
becoming a 
nation. a Jewish nation as a
father oversees
a son. Now why did that not
happen? It happened with all
these other
mandates. Mesopotamia became
Iraq. Assyria became Syria. 
Lebanon had become a nation
under the French. you see. So
it was because of a guy named
the Grand Mufti of
Jerusalem named Al-Husseini who
in 1920 began today what we
know as Arab terrorism. He
would massacre 
on different occasions Jewish
settlements in Israel. As a
result
it created such a disturbance
that they weren't able
to transition this. Then around
1935 he precipitated what
amounted to a civil
war from 1935-1938. Over 108.000
people were killed in Israel. 
Most of them were Arabs but a
lot of thousands
were British soldiers. and I
think 8-9.000
maybe even 12.000 Jewish people
were killed. That was from
'35 to '38. He goes off and 
Mufti and lives with Hitler in
Berlin. Germany. 
He had a big role in the
Holocaust as well. He was
supposedly. if the Germans
won. come back and he was going
liquidate the Jews in the
Middle East. 
But it didn't quite work out
that way. >Didn't quite work
out. praise the Lord.
There's something I want to get
to. and we're running short on
time. I just looked
at the clock and. wow we need
another hour. 
But here's what I love about
your book. you not only
talk about the history of the
Jews. the relationship between
the church
and the Jews and prophecy to
some extent. but you also
talk about the reality of the
Jews. 
That is to say. are those
people who are back in the land
today
really Jews. or are they
counterfeits of some kind? 
Or are they really from another
bloodline and they're just
calling themselves
Jews? You spend quite a bit of
time on this. >>Yeah. We have a
whole
--I have a whole chapter in
there about things like
the Khazar theory and there was
a
answering it because a lot of
people will write you and
me and other who are pro-Israel
and say. 'well Jews really
aren't Jews. They don't have
the blood
of Abraham. Isaac. and Jacob
running through their veins.' So
you can disprove that
historically. but you can also 
disprove it by DNA analysis. 
Both of them show that the Jews
really are the
Jews and all this other stuff
from people
out there think that the
Khazars are really Gentiles
and they are. you know. invaded
the
Jewish bloodlines and diluted
the Jews. 
So we show both historically
and through
DNA analysis that that is just
not the case. 
These people actually. the
Ashkenazi Jews which are
85% of the Jewish world
actually have Middle Eastern
genes in them and are
descendants 
of Abraham. Isaac. and Jacob.
>Even though they were
dispersed and 
lived. many of them lived in
Europe and other places. they
somehow remained
genetically more or less pure.
>>It's basically the 
same approach as the Holocaust
denial. Where they get
off on a theme or two and they
corrupt those--you know it's
fake news. All I can
say. Fake news has been going
on since Genesis 3 from Satan.
>You know it's called
fake news now. but it's always
been around. >>Yes. it's always
been around.
>Let me just stop for a moment
and say that I really
appreciate Tommy Ice's work in
this. 
I recognize good work when I
see it. The documentation
is worth the price of admission
here. This book 
"The Case for Zionism" is
something that should be on your
bookshelf because you need to
be able to converse
with you fellow Bible-believing
Christians and 
make the case for Israel. We
all should be able to make the
case for Israel. This
book will really help you to do
that. By the way
I should mention while we're
talking that you're going to be
speaking at our Blessed Hope
Prophecy Forum
October 13-15 2017
this year. We're really glad
you're going to be there.
>>Well I hope I can do one talk
at least
on Israel. >I hope so. By that
time you'll really be fired up. 
>>Right! >I suspect that this
year is going to be a very
telling year
for Israel at the rate things
are happening right now. 
By the way. we also are offering
"Charting the Bible
Chronologically." This is a 
wonder--I call this a coffee
table book. This is a wonderful
book. Ed
Hindson. Thomas Ice. they have
collaborated on this
book and you need this on your
coffee table so that when
friends come
over you can start the
conversation about Bible
prophecy. This is 
just a super layout. charting
the Bible
chronologically past. present.
and prophetically. >>Yes. 
>It's a wonderful book. 
We have a package. as we do
things around here. You can
purchase
"The Case for Zionism" or The
Case for Zionism Package
which will be the book
"Charting the Bible
Chronologically" 
and we're going to just toss in
this DVD absolutely free. "Join
us in 
Jerusalem." Our trip to
Jerusalem with a lot
of facts and interesting
happenings
and some exciting things that
we learned while we were in
Israel. 
By the way. ask how you can get
a free magazine with every
order we would like to give you
a free copy of
our magazine "The Prophecy
Watcher." So Tommy. 
I wish we had more time. we've
got about another minute. "The
Case
for Zionism"
in a few words. what do you
want people to know? >>I want
people to know
that the Bible. the original
owner of the land. God
gave the land to Israel in 
perpetuity. In spite of what we
see going
on. in fact I have a whole
chapter on Revelation 12
which shows the future history
of Israel and how
God is going to intervene.
What's really behind
the hatred for Israel and
anti--Semitism
is Satan himself. It says that
in verse 14
that Satan is the one who stirs
up people to 
hate Israel. And you see this
in 
our everyday life because it's
totally irrational 
a lot of the hatred people
have. >The Lord loves
Jerusalem. The Lord loves
Israel. and so do I. 
I love your book. "The Case for
Zionism"
Psalm 122 is often quoted. pray
for the peace of Jerusalem.
they shall prosper 
that love thee. That's a nice
little
parting line. they shall
prosper >>Amen. >that love
thee. 
Thank you very much. It's been
great! I'm Gary Stearman. Hey.
you
keep watching. We are!
---Thanks for joining us! You
can
find us on the web at
prophecywatchers.com.---
