'Now Everything Changes' by Steve Maltz

Dear Church Council

I am reading Linda's book by the Messianic Christian and strong supporter of Israel, Steve Maltz who spoke at last weekend's conference she was at.

In 76 years of listening to sermons from my Dad first and, thereafter, from many evangelical and not so evangelical Christian preachers, I have never heard a message on the non-violence that Jesus preached and practised.  Les Hardwick came the nearest with references like, "killing is not the way" that I remember on one occasion.

Could one of you leaders have a go, perhaps?  I wrote this to Steve, yesterday:

'Now Everything Changes' by Steve Maltz

I am reading the book and would comment in this way:

Steve says he is searching for truth which is great.  However, unfortunately, often one person's truth is another person's falsehood.

Yet again, it is we Brits it seems, who are wholly to blame for the most unholy of Holy Lands.  We withdrew from Palestine in 1948 in the face of Zionist terrorism between 1945 and 1948 before the United Nations imposed borders for both and sent in an international Peacekeeping Force to keep the two sides apart, which never happened.

The Zionists/Jews/Israel are on our side.  Israel is part of the American-led West and sympathy with the Jews was high after the Holocaust.  Is this why we allowed them to profit from their aggression before an agreement with the Arabs was reached?  But an agreement is even more impossible now.

Everything changes must mean non-violence should be embraced for all sides, in my opinion. 

Nine months and 38,000 slaughtered with tens of thousands injured still means the Hamas defence wing is still able to fight back to kill and injure IDF soldiers.  It proves the futility of war and the ineffectiveness of killing your enemies - they just bounce back with yet more hatred.

I would expect a message on non-violence would include the Sermon on the Mount, the Good Samaritan and what Zaccheus did as regards repentance and reparations.  And, a remarkable book, 'I Shall Not Hate', by a world-class medical doctor and expert in fertility who worked in Israeli hospitals.  He and his family lived in a Gazan refugee camp.  Four months before the three weeks war in 2008/9 between Israel and Hamas, his wife died of cancer.  In that war, an Israeli tank shelled his home, killing three of his five daughters and his teenage niece. 

Could one of you prepare and deliver something on these lines, perhaps?