Hosea 9:12 Do not rejoice, O Israel, with exultation like the nations! For you have played the harlot, forsaking your God. You have loved harlots’ earnings on every threshing floor. “
from Google News, 8/29/11
By DANIEL ESTRIN, Associated Press
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel is tired of Hollywood filming Jesus’ crucifixion in Italy and the Crusader invasion of the Holy Land in Morocco.
So Israeli officials are promising better tax breaks, terror attack insurance and handouts of up to $400,000 to lure international movie producers to the holy city of Jerusalem. They want to cash in on the multi-billion-dollar industry, and want the real Jerusalem on the silver screen — not Mediterranean stand-ins
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Does any one else see the irony in Israel recognizing Christ Jesus of the Gospels portrayed on movies, but only in so far as they can make money off of His story? They can’t see the salvation story in their Messiah bearing the sin of the world according to their own scriptures, and being resurrected from the dead so that man might live, but they can see the disappearing dollars that are not coming into the Holy Land because film crews and production companies go elsewhere make their movies. It is lost revenue, not a lost relationship with their God that is their concern. Just as depicted in scriptures, they are always more concerned with everything else in this world except the One who had given it all to them in the first place.
How do they miss this bizarre twist of irony?
[Scriptures taken from the New American Standard Bible © 1995]