Tony Campolo's sermon from Mission Fest Vancouver

THE VALUES of Jesus not only call us to respond to the needs of the poor. The values of Jesus call upon us to promote justice. Count them up! You will find that the number of times in the scriptures that justice is mentioned outnumbers the number of times love is mentioned. The word 'righteousness' in the original language is translated best with the word 'justice.'
Right now, we have to face the facts that the Christian church, in its proper zeal to support the state of Israel, has forgotten that there's a group of people called the Palestinians. And unless we stand up and speak for justice on behalf of the Palestinians, we are going to lose the missionary struggle in the next hundred years. It's about time we faced these facts . . .
I know somebody out there is going to come up and lay this on me: "Doesn't it say in the scriptures that whoever blesses Israel will be blessed?" Indeed it does. But you don't bless Israel by equipping them with guns and tanks and planes to suppress the Palestinian people. We need to say that. I know that doesn't go over big -- because we've forgotten that our God is a God of justice, and loves the Palestinians every bit as much as he loves Jews. It's about time we woke up to that fact.
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