THE BOOK

NAS Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible with Hebrew-Aramaic, and Greek dictionaries gives us:

Menachem Posner of Chabad.org, poses an interesting question in: “Who” named Jerusalem? He writes:

On a deeper level Posner says, Yireh Shalem has an alternate meaning: “Complete awe.” In his opinion:

(Note: The spelling, G--d, seems to be a common Jewish idiom --– online; but why, what’s the point? Reader: The reason eludes me completely.)

Posner is very emotional about Jerusalem here, though he probably reflects what many Jews and Christians also “feel”. However, it is really little more than an emotive ‘idea’, akin to the false notion of being ‘in love’ with the ‘idea’ of love. To be in “constant rapture” over a place and in a place to which history testifies in no uncertain terms where perhaps the most heinous crime in the history of the world took place seems to be a very strange and twisted form of ‘rapture’.

Despite the historical reality that Jerusalem has the distinction of being one of the most blood-soaked cities of the ancient world, and where today continual and bloody conflict still makes its home, it was the place where a brutal murder, preceded by the cruellest form of torture perpetrated against the most innocent of all -- The Son of God -- occurred. To feel rapturous over such a “dark” place and attempting to ascribe some kind of spiritual elevation to it surely smacks of blind, religious emotionalism, nothing more. At least Posner’s assessment of Jerusalem as “a patch of hilly earth” is blunt, direct, and absolutely correct, with little romanticism about it!

Whilst the name Jerusalem is associated with a specific place in the minds of most, another place name raises its head to add to the “enigma” that is Jerusalem; it is Zion. Two historically-significant words ostensibly forever primarily associated with Judaism and Israel.

WHAT IS ZION?

(*) “...and fulfilment of G-d’s commandments”. [?] Where and when in the long and unique history of knowledge of their One God and many more prophets to lead them into “righteousness” than probably all other religions combined, did the Jewish race really fulfil God’s Commandments? It is a religious, cultural and racial egotistical fallacy. It is arrogant rubbish. From the point of view of blunt, no-nonsense historical reality; here’s how it really is for the Jewish race.

You put to death many of your prophets because you would not accept The Truth and Laws of God --- as they were gifted to you by those especial Servants of God. Then, to crown your thoroughly deserved designation of a “stiff- necked” people, you brutally murdered a Part out of The Almighty, which deed this heinous crime against Him lost you the greatest treasure any people could ever be gifted with --- and from the very Highest Source of all.

As a consequence, you lost your so-called “holy city” through prophesied great death and destruction. To “top it off”, you were driven from your “holy land” out into the world. And ever since, you have cried “victim”! Hypocrites: Pharisees all. Just as The Son of God labelled the Pharisees of His time --- “full of dead men’s bones”!

Where in just those few but critical events in your history is there even a shred of obeying and fulfilling HIS WILL? Reader, libraries and the internet are weighed down with any amount of such information about the Jewish people not obeying The Laws of God, which they so stridently claim to have always done. In addition, not just claim to serve God, but almost to own Him; He in His unapproachable, Unsubstantiate Majesty.

Only a “chosen people” have any right to claim at least some affinity to The God of Creation as their own --- right? Well, reader, you can surely work that out for yourself.

Yes, the Jewish nation is certainly marked, but not for any kind of spiritual elevation on earth as still the “chosen before all others”. Yes, the prophecies may have been fulfilled in terms of the “diaspora” in reverse where the State of Israel is now a reality, but it also means that you are mostly all in one place now, not so scattered across the globe. Since our time now is the prophesied “time of reckoning”, perhaps the Knesset and all of Israel should seriously engage with that reality too and ask of themselves: “What might that really mean for us?” From the Prophet, Micah:

“But you Bethlehem ... from you a king will emerge.”
“From little Bethlehem will come a ruler in Israel.” (5:2.)

Yet you, the “chosen people”, did not take that into account at His sham trial. He was just the Nazarene, so you murdered Him. He, however, foretold the Coming of Another -- therefore One other than Himself -- Who would bring The All-Truth at the “End of Days”; which, if you haven’t noticed, is our time. You “chosen” missed that crucial event too. What will it take, we wonder, to finally “wake you” from your “Jewish sleep of spiritual death”? The near future will surely provide that answer.

Perhaps the singular, critical, event concerning Jerusalem that occurred in December 2017, might just turn out to be a deadly catalyst in bringing about a final “religious resolution” to that “blood-soaked” place. Donald Trump, President of the United States of America, arbitrarily declared Jerusalem to be the “Capital of Israel”! The eventual outcome from that singular recognition of the “chosen people” and their “claimed authority” to the city by the self-claimed worlds “only superpower” had thus to be “played out”.

Singular ownership of Jerusalem would have to be regarded as absolute anathema by Islam. Still, the prophesied complete collapse of the “big three religions” to begin with, might just have its final genesis in Mr. Trumps arbitrary decision. We will certainly all know the outcome, eventually! In the meantime, let’s continue with the name, Zion.

These are the best-known meanings and certainly the ones that Jews must promote for any kind of “authoritative religious claim” to the “land of the Chosen’; but what about the next two meanings?

To ensure that we maintain a spread of information, let’s look at what the great Oxford living Dictionaries (Online.) say:

The main meaning is standard, of course, but points 2 and 3 in the first part of the meaning/s of Zion take us away from the “religious standard” into a vastly different ‘possibility’, though we would replace ‘religious community’ with “Spiritual community”.

In blunt terms, a Place of Abode on earth for the “Spirit of Truth” and His All-Truth --- and still fulfilling key meanings of the word, Zion --- could be any place on earth, in a country not even geographically close to the so-called ‘holy land’. Perhaps a place especially prepared for Him; a place of extreme natural beauty which would fit His Stature and Majesty; a place prepared for Him by the “Beings of Nature” –- true servants of God.

“The one who makes his angels winds and his servants a flame of fire.”
(Hebrews 1:7. Lexham English Bible.)

[Note: The word, ‘possibility’, in this case is purely for you to consider, for we are proclaiming what actually occurred, and thus what has now been on earth for close to one hundred years.]

So why should we believe that a dusty, rock-strewn, religious war zone be the “right place” for the “Abode of the Lord”? For the One Who did “come there” --- exactly according to Jewish prophecy as we will reinforce often --- was not only not accepted, but finally murdered. Therefore, to think that The Creator would send His Final Envoy to the same place, and amongst a people who showed themselves to be too “stiff-necked” to accept their own prophecies about His first Envoy is neither intelligent nor logical. It is, however, certainly religious in its ‘demand’, for it fits Christian and Jewish religious expectations of their “end-time” scenario with the believed return of Jesus to Jerusalem. Sorry!

Now even though we have definitively proclaimed that He and His Place of Abode was in a mountainous region of the earth, for the Christian and Jewish reader; from Old Testament prophecy, let’s still compare “hill” to “mountain”.

The problem here is that whilst the relevant prophecies may say Zion and Jerusalem, they are nonetheless adamant in their references to a “mountain” or “mountains” as the Abode of The Lord on earth. A dusty ‘hill’ versus a ‘mountain’; a ‘mountain of the highest standing over all others; what does this really mean? For the “dusty hill” upon which Jerusalem has always stood is certainly not a mountain in any sense of the word. Yet many Scriptures about Jerusalem state exactly that. If we use just one Old Testament Scripture as an example here, we might just discover a valid reason for the “prophetic-constant” of attributing the status of a “mountain” to a dry dusty “hill” called Jerusalem. The Prophet, Micah (meaning; “who is the Lord?”): Born 740 BC; Died 670 BC; clearly writes of “the highest of all mountains”.

Micah lived and prophesied in Israel and Judah around the same time as Isaiah. However, the contributor to (Biblehub.com) notes in seemingly derogatory tones:

Is that a fundamentalist Christian attempt to negate a prophecy so clear that it cannot possibly be misconstrued; a prophecy that does not point to Jerusalem? Unlike Paul the Apostle, who travelled widely for all of his “post- conversion” life, most of the Old Testaments prophets did not. Their place of life and prophetic work was basically in and near their place of birth. So, like the other prophets of his era, Micah’s geographical frame of reference was the ‘known world’ of the time. It was not a world of great mountain ranges. That was not the topography of the lands they were familiar with. Moreover, there was no access to immediate knowledge and visual presentations of “other lands and landscapes” as we have today at the touch of a button, or an international flight to confirm the fact of “mountain landscapes”.

The land of the Jewish prophets was primarily characterised by generally drier climatic conditions, scrubby desert and dry wilderness, with little in the way of “regular rainfall” to constantly “green” the land. Of course, as happens today, snow did occasionally fall on the highest hills, but they cannot possibly be described as the “highest of the mountains”; so what might we be looking at here?

The key question here in attempting to really understand ancient prophecy is: “What is The Will of God” in such matters? Should we accept that just because ancient prophecies exist on revered scrolls; that their content must be forever sacrosanct and therefore never subject to change or challenge? It would probably be correct to say that many religious scholars of monotheism believe -- otherwise they would surely be open to other possibilities -- that certain Old Testament prophecies are absolute. Such a view, however, does not consider that only The Will of God is Absolute.

If that Will, through Its servant Prophets, state that a thing should be so, then that is what The Creator Wills. However, if foolish human beings decide they want it to be different and change the course of what should have been, then what had been originally ordained as The Will of the Most High is completely negated --- (for the inherent human attribute of free-will, or self-will, is never taken from us). In most cases, therefore, human religious intransigence and “knowing it better” effectively renders God’s Will on earth null and void, and we stupidly wonder why the world is in such an incredible mess. Thankfully, precisely because of The Spirit of Truth’s entry onto the earth, we can readily see the societal “acceleration of collapse” really beginning to ratchet up now.

It is therefore pointless for any “religious believer” to try to sidestep this hard Truth of our problem-causing “free-will inanity” by saying if God really wanted a particular thing to be so He would make it happen. On the basis of that specious argument, we are not to blame for anything that has gone wrong -– and pretty much everything has. No: That argument does not wash. It is foolish in the extreme for it says –- once more --- that “God can do anything He pleases because He is GOD”.

Think, think, think; and if you think deeply and correctly enough, you will begin to understand that that notion is fallacious in the extreme. Perfect Laws -– sacrosanct, inviolate, and unchangeable -- decreed from out The Will of a Perfect God, cannot be changed to suit human religious stupidity!

So is it with the prophecies about Jerusalem and Zion in Israel. The Jewish race went against the Prophets of God and worse, The Son of God, and so altered forever the course of what should have been. Now, the reality for the Jewish people is far different; so different that by clinging to the ancient prophecies and the religious distortions that have been applied to them, the Jews, and by extension the great bulk of Christians -– as we must repeat here again –- have “Missed the Great Event”.

Exactly as prophesied, after the earlier Old Testament prophecies were not fulfilled by the people to whom they were given, they were “gifted” to the rest of humankind precisely so that The Will of GOD would be fulfilled for “all of global humanity”. Most unfortunately, for billions of human souls, it was not fulfilled when that opportunity came, and will not be in the future.