(November 01, 2023) Dr Jim McClure shares … 

Over these past few weeks we have been shocked, sickened and stressed by the horrendous events that have been taking place in Israel. We have been confronted by the graphic details of unimaginable acts of human depravity.

This has not just a battle between Gaza and Israel about ‘land rights.’ It is intrinsically much more profound than that.  What lies behind all this hatred and hostility which has caused such unimaginable carnage?  Why is this tiny nation of Israel the focal point of so much animosity?

Let’s consider some basic facts about the nation named Israel.  It is only a tiny country. Its size is just over 22,000 square kilometres.  That number does not really mean very much unless we compare it, for example, with the State of Victoria which is 10 times bigger than Israel!   The population of Australia is almost three  times larger than that of Israel.

The word Palestine originally referred a small area in the South-western costal area in southern Canaan. It was named after the Philistines, a non-Arab, Greek seafaring people from Crete.  By the late 5th century BC they had lost their distinct  identity and disappeared from the historical record. They are not to be identified with those who today who call themselves Palestinians.

In the early 20^th century Eastern European and Russian Jews began to migrate to the land that in now called Palestine. Following the slaughter of millions of Jews during World War 2, Jewish immigration to the region increased and the Jews were opposed by the Arabs who lived there. However, on May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was declared and the following day it was attacked by the Islamic states of Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan and Syria. Despite being very ill-equipped, the new state defeated their enemies. In 1949 the State of Israel was recognised by more than 50 governments throughout the world and it also joined the United Nations.

This is, of course, a very brief review of some of the background to the conflict in Israel today. But the dynamics behind it are very profound.

1. Promises
(i) Concerning the place
The history of the people of Israel began around 3,700 years ago when God spoke to a man named Abram (Abraham) who lived in the city of Ur which was likely in the area that of southern Iraq.  At that time Abraham and his wife, Sarah, were childless.

God said to Abraham, ‘Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.’ Then God made this promise to Abraham and his childless wife, ‘I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great and you will be a blessing.’  He added this commitment, ‘I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you’ (Genesis 12:1-3).

Under God’s direction Abraham headed west to the land of Canaan. When he arrived at his destination, ‘The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land”’ (Genesis 12:7). God clearly promised that particular geographical location specifically to the descendants of Abraham. But to which of his descendants?

(ii) Concerning the people
Abraham was impatient. He was well advanced in age and decided to hasten God’s promise of a son by having a child with his wife’s servant, Hagar. The child who was born was named Ishmael, However, it was  Abraham’s second son, Isaac, who was the son of God’s promise, not Ishmael.

Later God made this promise to Isaac, ‘To you and your descendants I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham’ (Genesis 26:3). 

This promise was then repeated to Isaac’s son, Jacob in Genesis 28:13-14, ‘I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying.  …  All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.’

About 1400 years ago Mohammed, the founder of Islam, claimed to be a descendant of Ishmael, the elder son of Abraham.  He further claimed that that Ishmael’s descendants, and not the descendants of Isaac and Jacob, were Abraham’s true inheritors.

It is notable what the Bible says about Ishmael. Genesis 16:12 reads, ‘He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.’

Two years after Mohammed’s death in 632 AD a Muslim army invaded and took possession of the city of Jerusalem. It was claimed than Mohammed had visited Jerusalem, not in reality, but in a dream!

However, in the scriptures God’s promise is quite clear and often repeated – the land of Israel is the inheritance of the people of Israel and only a deliberate contradiction of God’s Word would claim otherwise.  After 2000 years of exile the Jews are back in the land that God had promised them. The Jews, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, have a historic and divine claim as inheritors of the land and that claim is rock solid because it is based on God’s promise.

2. Privilege
What a privilege to be described by God as ‘My people’ In the Old Testament we find that description is used by God more than 200 times to describe the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  God made this solemn promise to Solomon, ‘I will not abandon my people’ (1 Kings 6:13).  Despite the many traumas the Jews have experienced during these past 2000 years and despite the Nazi’s attempt to wipe them out of existence during World War II, God has not abandoned ‘His people.’

Yet with privileges goes responsibility!  Regrettably that has been something the people of Israel have consistently failed to grasp. In Hosea 4:6 we read God’s verdict on the people of Israel about 2,700 years ago, ‘My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests.’

God was not referring to a lack of intellectual knowledge, academic knowledge or theological knowledge.  The Hebrew word for ‘knowledge’, as  it is used in this context, is not referring to the brain but to a relationship with God. ‘Knowing God’ is a reference to a deep and personal relationship with God and a wholly committed intimacy with Him.  One day Jesus spelled out how such ‘knowledge’ is worked out in our lives. He said, ’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength’ (Mark 12:30). But how easy it is for us to be so caught up in the many commitments and demands of life that God is sidelined, ignored and forgotten.

While the people of Israel have often failed to reflect the responsibility that their privilege of being ‘God’s people’ has placed on them, that is equally true of Christians!  As those who have been brought into God’s family through Jesus Christ, we also are required to live in ways that honour and reflect Him.

Repeatedly God sent His prophets to challenge His people to return to Him. On Mount Carmel Elijah confronted the Israelites who were so caught up in the culture, morals and practices of the society in which they lived. He declared, ‘How much longer will you try to have things both ways? If the Lord is God, worship Him! But if Baal is God, worship him’ (1 Kings 18:21CEV).

That same challenge also confronts Christians today as we are pressured to embrace the secular culture and the distorted values of a God-rejecting world.   However our relationship with Him must be committed and evident.  John wrote, ‘Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him’ (1 John 2:15).

3. Penalty
Moses had been called by God to lead His people from Egypt to the land He had promised them through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Later, through Moses, God shaped those people into a nation in the wilderness and, just before they entered the ‘Promised Land.’ Moses told them, ‘He (God) will never leave you nor forsake you’  (Deuteronomy 31:16).  God, therefore, has never left His people Israel but regrettably His people have frequently left Him!  And over the years they have suffered the consequence of that!

After the death of Solomon, when the tribes of Israel divided into two nations – Israel in the north and Judah in the south – the ten northern tribes were overthrown by the armies of Assyria in 721 BC.  Many people were killed, others were deported and some moved south into Judah and the nation ceased to exist.  Judah resisted the attacks by Assyria but in 586 BC Jerusalem fell following a 30-month siege by the armies of Babylon. Its walls were destroyed and the Temple was levelled. We read, ‘He (Nebuchadnezzar) set fire to the temple of the Lord, the royal palace and all the houses of Jerusalem. Every important building he burned down’ (2 Kings 25:9).  That was the end of the monarchy in Judah.

God had repeatedly called on His people to repent. He had warned them through the prophets but they had ignored His appeal and mocked the prophets.  God had pleaded with them: ‘Turn from your evil ways. Observe my commands and decrees … But they would not listen … They rejected His decrees and the covenant He had made with their fathers and the warnings He had given them … and they did the things the Lord had forbidden them to do’  (2 Kings3-15).

Later the Jews were permitted to return from Babylon  to Judah and they rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem. But four centuries later Rome invaded and took control of the land. Eventually many Jews were killed, sold into slavery or forced to flee.  They were banished from their land and in 70 AD the temple was destroyed and never again rebuilt.  Their sufferings were a consequence of their disobedience to and disregard of God. But God, nevertheless, did not abandon them!

2000 years after their displacement by the Romans, the Jews again reclaimed the ‘Land of Promise’. Now they are back home again, living in the land God gave them some 3,700 years before.

But sadly, it appears that Israel today has not learned the lessons of its past. Today Israel is largely a secular country and the moral and spiritual values of many Jews who are living there are the same decadent and distorted values that are evident in Western societies. Israel is in need of a great awakening and we need to pray that that will happen. God has not and never will forsake His people. He is still their God!

4. Prophecies
In the past God had warned His people through the prophets. Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, for example, had prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem but their warnings went unheeded.  They also prophesied the return of the people to the  Judah and that also was fulfilled. They also prophesied about some future events.

Prophetically the city of Jerusalem will play a significant role in the events of the last days and will be the focal point in future events. In Zechariah 12:2-3 God had declared, ‘I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the surrounding peoples reeling.  Judah will be besieged as well as Jerusalem. On that day, when all the nations of the earth are gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations.  All who try to move it will injure themselves.’

Remarkably the prophecies about ‘End Times’ events do not centre on any of the world’s major cities but on the city of Jerusalem in the small country of Judah.

The name ‘Jerusalem’ means ‘city of peace’ however throughout its history Jerusalem has enjoyed few periods of peace.  Almost 50 years ago, at Yom Kippur, it was attacked by many Islamic countries led by Egypt and Syria. Miraculously, despite being taken by surprise, Israel won that war in six days and extended its territory.

In 2005 Israel gave independence to the area known as Gaza and shortly after that the terrorist organisation known as Hamas was voted into power and has been in control of Gaza ever since.  Hamas was formed in 1987 with the explicit purpose of obliterating Israel.  For years Israel has suffered daily rocket attacks.  Following the attack by Hamas a few weeks ago the world has been plunged into a perilous condition.

Are we living in the days of the ‘End Times’?  Frankly I do not know and am not prepared to speculate.  But what I do know for certain is that we are 2000 years closer to the days described by Jesus when His disciples asked Him, ‘What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?’ (Matthew 24:3).  Jesus replied in verses 4-13, ‘”Watch out that no one deceives you.  For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many.  You will hear of wars and rumours of wars but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come.  Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places.   All these are the beginning of birth pains. Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me.

At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.  Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.’

Note some of the things Jesus highlighted regarding the ‘Last Days.’

• Deception is one of the signs – and how much of it there is in the world today!
• False teachers – and there are plenty of those. Sadly there are many pastors and preachers around today how do not declare God world but often twist it and deny its integrity.
• Truth is a victim in the secular world (and in some churches) and has been largely abandoned and replaced with deceit that is persistently thrust at us in current political agendas, deviant moral teaching and woke philosophies.
• Denial of reality. Deception flourishes and we have arrived a sad time in which many people find it difficult to define what a woman is or what a man is and the killing of unborn children is portrayed as acts of compassion.
• Growing cold in faith. This is the inevitable consequence when Christians compromise their commitment to God by resigning to contemporary standards that consistently confront us from many quarters, especially the media and celebrities.
• Wars and rumours of wars.  We are right in the middle of that now. The coalition of hostile nations threatens us and makes us feel unsafe. The world is presently in a very unstable condition.
• Wickedness abounds. The recentincredibly vile and inhumane and nauseating acts of the Hamas terrorists in Israel serves as a vivid example of extreme wickedness.  Also, of course, moral perversions regarding the sanctity of life and sexual deviation are now accepted as ‘normal.’

5. Prospect
Jesus is coming back for His people! And ‘His people’ include Gentiles who belong to Him through faith. Peter wrote, ’Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy’ (1 Peter 2:10).  Jesus promised. ‘At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory’ (Matthew 24:30). 

Despite these dark days – and even darker days yet to come – the prospect for all who have put their faith and hope in Jesus Christ is this – there is a great day coming!  Jesus is coming back in triumphant glory. The last promise Jesus made, which we find at the end of the book of Revelation, was, ‘Yes, I am coming soon.’ And with great assurance we can respond ‘Amen. Come Lord Jesus.’

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Dr Jim McClure, author of several books and Bible studies, offers them free in electronic version in EPUB, Kindle and PDF formats.

Looking for Answers in a Confusing World is particularly recommended. Questions seeking enlightenment on biblical perspectives are welcomed. Link: jbmcclure@gmail.com
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