Dave Hunt
Israel is the major topic of Bible prophecy, mentioned more than 2,900
times, nearly twice as many times as her Messiah. Without Israel there would be no Messiah and no salvation for anyone, Jew or
Gentile. The first mention of His coming is in God's rebuke of the guilty
parties involved in man's fall in Eden: the serpent (an identity that Satan retains from Genesis to
Revelation) and Adam and Eve. The Bible account is not myth but history. In
many places around the world, archaeologists continue to find ancient
representations of three figures appearing together: a woman, a serpent, and a
tree.
God foretells a long conflict between the serpent and the Messiah and
the latter's ultimate triumph that would occur in a way Satan could never have
imagined. An old hymn tells it beautifully:
In weakness like defeat,
He won the victor's crown;
Trod all our foes beneath His feet
By being trodden down.
He Satan's power laid low;
Made sin, He sin o'er threw;
Bowed to the grave, destroyed it so,
And death, by dying, slew.
God's declaration to the three guilty parties is simple and to the
point. To the serpent He said, "I will put enmity between thee [serpent] and
the woman, and between thy seed and her seed [the Messiah]; it [the woman's
seed] shall bruise thy head [a death blow], and thou shalt bruise his heel" (Gn 3:15).
The fact that God does not say "thy seed and Adam's" must indicate
that no man would be involved. From that moment, Satan was eagerly
awaiting
this virgin birth in order to kill the babe. Watching closely as events
unfold,
Satan learns that the Messiah will be of the seed of Abraham. Ishmael
(father
of the Arabs) is Abraham's firstborn, but by Hagar, Sarah's maid 7.
Finally, Abraham is given a second son by his wife. He is Isaac,
"the son of promise." It seems a miraculous birth because for 90 years
Sarah
had been barren though not a virgin. Satan watches and waits.
Both Ishmael and Isaac were born "in the land of Canaan" among Canaanites who had lived there for centuries (Gn 11:31; 12:5-6; 13:7, etc.). There was no such place as "Palestine" nor any people called "Palestinians." No Arabs would live in
so-called Palestine until the savage Islamic conquest of the world began in the seventh
century, and they would not claim descent from "the original Palestinians"
until the 1950s. Anyone making such a claim via descent from Ishmael is deluded
by tradition. Ishmael's father (Abraham) was a Chaldean (Gn 11:31; 15:7) and his mother (Hagar) was an Egyptian (16:1).
President Obama continues to apply pressure upon Israel to deal justly with the "Palestinians." He asks
these misnamed people to cease their violence against Israel. He must know that this is like pleading with a
hurricane for mercy. Since long before the days of Arafat
and his partner, Mahmoud Abbas, the PLO Charter's call for Israel's annihilation has been the sworn purpose of
every Islamic government in obedience to Muhammad and has been reiterated
hundreds of times throughout the Muslim world.
As Mortimer Zuckerman, in his U.S. News and World Report editorial of June 9, 2009, recently
reminded world leaders demanding that Israel make "peace" with the Palestinians, the latter's violence is fueled
by "the incessant spewing of hatred against Israel in schools, mosques, and the media, especially TV. This poisoning of
the mind of the next generation is not just the stock in trade of Hamas and
Hezbollah but also of the schools and media controlled by Fatah and reporting
directly to Abbas."
In spite of the facts, political and church leaders
persist in avoiding any mention of Islam or Muslims when referring to their
violence. That is always blamed on "extremists." In fact, Muhammad himself
began this trail of death, and his followers have obeyed, as supported by the
Qur'an. The simple truth of history is brushed aside by the UN and almost the
entire world, including the church and, sadly, our own president.
Being repeatedly condemned by the world for trying
to defend itself against suicide bomber attacks that were costing the
lives of
hundreds of Israelis, including women and children, Israel's only
alternative was to build a barrier that
would cut off the attackers from entering her homeland. World opinion
expressed
outrage. The World Court ruled 14-1 that construction must cease
immediately and
everything be dismantled, with compensation to the Palestinians. The
United
Nations General Assembly passed a resolution on July 20, 2004, 150-6,
calling on Israel to respect the World Court ruling. Only the United
States, Israel, Australia, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau
voted against the resolution. Israel rejected world opinion and, from
necessity, has
proceeded with construction. Though the barrier has not been completed
as of
this date, it has already almost totally cut off the infiltration of
terrorists.
Israel subsequently "gave back" Gaza, which historically belonged to her. She generously left operative
the huge greenhouses that had fed Israel and much of Europe with fresh vegetables and could have done the same for the new
"owners." Instead, these new owners tore the structures apart, and the mob
carried off the materials for their individual use, thereby losing the
potential income from exports that Israel had derived as well as the ability to feed themselves.
Going back to history, in 135 A.D., the Romans destroyed
1,000 Jewish villages, killed 500,000 Jews, and enslaved thousands.
Furious
that they'd been forced to bring in more legions to quell the
rebellion, the
Romans angrily renamed what had for more than 1,500 years been known as
Israel. They called it Provincia Palestina after the Philistines,
Israel's ancient enemies. Those living there became known as
Palestinians.
Who lived there? Jews! So Jews, ironically were the first
"Palestinians." This
is what they were called (along with many derisive names that have
followed
them as they've been hunted from country to country). Only in the 1950s
did the
Arabs begin to call themselves "Palestinians" in order to gain
worldwide sympathy
for their acts of terrorism even as UN pressure squeezed Israel into an
ever-smaller corner in order to facilitate her destruction.
(We document all of this and much more in Judgment Day.)
Since 1948, Israel has been arming herself and fighting back. Her vow of "never again"
will be fulfilled but not before Jewry worldwide suffers the worst horror of
her history. Under attack by all of the world's armies (Zec 12:3; 14:2; Jl 3:2, Ezk 38:8,9 etc.), Israel will call upon the Messiah, and He will rescue her. It is all
declared plainly by the ancient prophets of Israel in the Old Testament (the Tenach).
It has taken the Lord many years and many circumstances to open my
eyes to these prophecies. It was all there in His Word, but I didn't
understand. How blind I was!
In 1966-67, my wife and I, with our four young children, were
living
on the third floor of a small seventeenth-century castle in
Switzerland. That year was to have been an intensive time of ministry
to
university students, but God had something far different in mind.
Suddenly, an
overwhelming urgency to pray for Israel came upon me toward the end of
1966. Even when giving thanks to God
at mealtime, I was compelled to include this prayer, "O Lord, I pray
that you
will defeat, confound, confuse, and frustrate all those who plot the
destruction of Israel; turn their counsel into foolishness and protect
your ancient people
from their evil designs. In Jesus' name, Amen!"
I didn't understand that prayer at the time, but my naiveté was
soon
dispelled. In Cairo, Egypt, I went into a travel agency and asked, "How
can I get to Israel?" The man waiting on me took me aside and
whispered, "If you mention
that [expletive] word again in this country they'll kill you!" I was
shocked. I
knew the Bible well but had never realized the significance of Psalm
83:
"...thine enemies...that hate thee...have taken crafty counsel against
thy
people, [saying] let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name
of Israel may be no more in remembrance." This destruction has been the
determined goal of Islam since it was founded by Muhammad.
Muslims are fighting against the God who calls
Himself the "God of Israel" 203 times in the Bible. What an embarrassment it
would be if Israel could be destroyed! It could never happen, for that act
would destroy "the God of Israel" as well. He will not allow it.
Interacting with the very friendly
people our family met as we drove the length and breadth of Egypt in
our VW minibus in late May 1967, we repeatedly
heard the words, "The 19-year war." What war was this? It took a while
for that
cryptic phrase to sink into our dull understanding. From the so-called
1948 cessation of
hostilities until 1967 was 19 years. Even as they professed peace, but
inspired
by Egypt's dictator, Gamal Abdul Nasser, the 40 million Muslims
surrounding Israel had been arming nonstop to achieve her destruction.
Nasser had sworn to lead the Arab world to a glorious victory.
The humiliating defeat of the Arab armies in "The Six Day War" of 1967
ended
Nasser's bombastic boast that he would destroy Israel. He subsequently
had a
nervous breakdown from which he never recovered.
In May 1948, Israel had declared its independence and was instantly attacked by the
combined might of 40 million Arab/Muslims surrounding her. This tiny nation of
600,000, with its hastily assembled, hurriedly trained, and poorly equipped
army of 60,000, with weapons smuggled in from Czechoslovakia (France, Britain,
America, et al., would sell them nothing) fought for its survival against an
enemy that had sworn its utter annihilation. They "crushed 600,000 soldiers of four Arab armies, well trained and
heavily armed [with tanks and planes, of which Israel had none], reinforced by units from seven additional Arab countries,
not to mention the active help of the British." This quote is part of the
lengthy endorsement of Judgment
Day by a retired Israeli General.
Three times God calls Israel the "apple of his eye" and warns: "He that toucheth you toucheth the
apple of his eye" (Zec 2:8;
Dt 32:10; Lam 2:18). The
statements that Barack Obama continually makes in favor of Islam are not only
alarming for his own sake and the sake of the United States but are a slap in the face of the God of Israel. I can only warn him
with what God himself told Abraham regarding the subsequent mistreatment of his
descendants: "I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth
thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed" (Gn 12:3).
In a hotel room in Tyre, Lebanon, the evening of June 3, 1967, our
family prayed for direction from God. We had
visas to drive through Syria into Jordan and then return by the same
route. The newspapers
the next morning gave the answer clearly. We immediately headed north
through Syria and had, by God's grace, barely gotten across the
border into Turkey when the war broke out.
In spite of hundreds of very clear declarations by Jewish prophets and
the promises that God has given to His people, about 30 percent of today's
Israelis claim to be atheists. He wants to bless them and protect them, but how
can He, when they continue to reject Him? The following is just a sample of
what God has repeatedly said to His people: "I should soon have subdued their
enemies, and turned my hand against their adversaries...fed them also with the
finest of the wheat: and with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied
thee.... But my people would not hearken to my voice; and Israel would [have] none of me"
(Ps 81:11-16).
Israel is both under God's judgment because of its continual rejection of
the God of Israel, but at the same time, He has not abandoned her, and woe to
those who take God's judgment into their own hands!
In the meantime, the nations of the world continue to become a party
to Islam's deception by attempting to force Israel into what can only be a false "peace." What Islam has in mind is not
what the peacemakers naively intend. It's called a hudna, the "peace" that Muhammad made with the Meccans for ten years. Long
before then, under a pretense, Muslims attacked and took over that "holy" city,
which had so long been the goal of the hajj (long
practiced before Muhammad's birth by most Arab tribes). Of course, this ancient
custom, along with others, such as the feast of Ramadan, have been taken over
by Muslims. Thus, history is perverted to make it seem that these had always
been Islamic practices.
Ramadan had for centuries been agreed upon by warring Arab tribes to
be 30 days of peace. At just the right time to allow him to attack a passing
caravan, Muhammad received a "new revelation" that Muslims could fight during
this time. Ramadan has become a time of the deadliest attacks of Shiites
against Sunnis (does this demonstrate to the world that "Islam is peace?")
These prophecies are so important for the strengthening of our own
faith, but what about those whom we want to bring into the faith of the God of
Israel? We need to provide to everyone with whom we speak (as I often do for
those with whom the Lord puts me in contact everywhere, but especially on airplanes)
first of all, proof of God's existence. How better to do this than to take the
approach of Zinzendorf with the King of Sweden, as we mentioned in Part I of
this article, using biblical prophecies about Israel?
We can talk to others about God and Jesus Christ, but
when we say "God," what do we mean? A "higher power" of some kind? We have to be sure that those whom we want to
introduce to the God of Israel understand who He is, why we believe in Him, and
why we think the most intelligent decision they could make is to believe in Him
as well. TBC
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