March 7, 2024 • 44 mins
Could the ancient struggles and prophecies of Israel hold the keys to a future where peace reigns supreme? Join us as we traverse the spiritual and geopolitical landscapes that have defined Israel's place in history, and ponder whether current events could be signaling the fulfillment of biblical prophecies. With a compassionate eye, we consider the tribulations faced by both Israelis and Palestinians, and the role of the international community in shaping media narratives.
In this episode, we take you through a journey from the past to the prophetic future of the Middle East. From the covenant of the Israelites with God under Moses's guidance to their profound societal contributions, we explore the historical tapestry that has been woven through conflict, discipline, and resilience. We scrutinize the prophecies of Ezekiel 38, decoding potential alliances and adversaries, and discuss the intricate dynamics between Israel and nations like Iran and Yemen. The tensions surrounding Jerusalem, a sacred city to many faiths, are also dissected, along with the diplomatic endeavors to broker peace, including the commendable efforts of President Carter.
As we conclude, our heartfelt respect for the Jewish people and their prophetic destiny shines through. Embracing the scriptural promise of a miraculous epoch to come, we invite listeners to engage with the Israeli narrative with empathy and a desire for understanding. This episode is a tapestry of admiration, prophecy, and a shared hope for a time when all will celebrate the realization of ancient promises. Join us as we navigate these complex topics, seeking wisdom and insight into one of humanity's most enduring stories.
It is Near focuses on the alarming and the hopeful; the frightful and the forgotten; the blinding glare of giant problems, and the dark secrets that lurk even more menacingly in the shadows of global trends. "Amazing Grace" may have taught our hearts to fear, but for most Christians and non-Christians alike, divine grace as commonly conceptualized does not those fears relieve. It is Near will be informative, accessible, comforting, and challenging to every thinking person. It will call Christians to account and provide a breath of fresh air for secularists who, for once, would like to hear a conciliatory and intellectually honest message from a thoughtful Christian voice. Owen Kindig of Sitka, Alaska is your host, and is responsible for the content.
"Even the bad news is good news."
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Owen Kindig (00:00):
The things that are happening in Israel now -- in
terms of the thorny PalestinianJewish question -- those things
are predicted.
It's all about learning tounderstand what God intends to
do with the human race, and I'vesaid it before and I'll say it
again (00:21):
He intends to bless the entire human race.
He "preached the gospel toAbraham is how the apostle Paul
put it.
And what was the gospel?
That in Abraham and hischildren, all the families of
the earth will be blessed.
They will be blessed.
They will learn to live.
(00:42):
They will learn to be inharmony with each other.
They will learn to have life.
Those are the things that Godis making happen.
So let's look at some otherverses.
Welcome to.
It Is Near.
This is episode 7.
And I've done now threeepisodes 7.
This is the third one.
I hope it's the charm.
You'd think a podcast aboutBible prophecy would be all over
(01:06):
the events of October 7th, andI should have been, but I've
been trying to get it right.
I've been trying to studyprophecy and be sure that I
understand what the Bibleprophecies say.
I don't want to do a knee jerkreaction.
You know from my previouspodcast that I am a supporter of
and lover of Israel, and so mybias is deep- seated and any
(01:36):
Bible- believing Christian islikely to agree with me.
Any non-Christian member of theaudience is likely not to
assume that I'm on the righttrack, and so I'm trying to
present balanced evidence basedon not only the Bible but also
(01:57):
history and logic, and, frankly,I've been struggling with how
to handle it and I've been busywith the format change that
we've been working on, gettingit set up as a video podcast and
trying to get it so that I canmake the episodes be basically
(02:18):
self-edited as we go, and so,for all of that, it's here.
It's been over four months andI'm only now almost ready to
release episode 7.
And I have good material fromthe earlier attempts at episode
7 to share with you.
Some is on audio only, some isaudio and video.
(02:38):
I will be sharing that too, andthere'll be episodes that follow
along on this topic, but thisone I'm trying to show a
balanced view, and it happens tocome on a day when there was
another major nightmare, andthat was the very unfortunate
(02:59):
loss of life that occurred inGaza, when a bunch of people
were shot as they crowded aroundan aid convoy to try to get
food.
We've discovered over the lastfour months that Hamas is
excellent at selling a falsenarrative to the news media
consumers around the world, andwe need to wait and see just a
(03:23):
little bit longer to let aninvestigation unfold as to what
exactly happened.
It's very possible that thepeople that were shot were not
actually shot by the IDF.
They were shot by Hamas gunmen.
We don't know.
We know that Hamas gunmen haveroutinely been shooting
Palestinian citizens when theyhave attempted to leave the area
(03:47):
where battles are occurring.
There's concrete evidence ofthat and it's a very concrete
pattern that the soldiers andleaders of Hamas hide behind
civilians in hospitals, inschools, in the neighborhoods --
(04:14):
and use those people so-called"innocent civilians as human
shields.
And then there's another aspectof this that the Jewish
soldiers have been more and morestridently talking about and
doing their own kind ofunderground videos about, and
that is that they don't considerany of the Gaza people to be
(04:36):
quote innocent civilians.
Time and again they've beentrapped.
They've seen their comradeskilled and wounded because they
trusted civilians not to be inleague with the soldiers of
Hamas.
The soldiers of Hamas are notlike normal soldiers.
(04:58):
They don't wear uniforms.
They don't act like combatants.
It's difficult to be a soldierwho cares about human life and
who cares about innocence andwho cares about being humane.
It's very difficult for theseIsraeli soldiers to act in a way
(05:22):
that their ethics tell themthey should and, at the same
time, they're watching hundredsof their own men and women be
killed, and they're watchingwomen and children who are
working in cahoots with Hamassoldiers to call down sniper
(05:43):
shots, to hide guns in theirrobes -- and ammo -- and get
them to the soldiers who arepinned down in a house or in a
tunnel nearby.
Those are things that theIsraeli soldiers have had
trouble with, and so there's awhole underground of social
media presentations making thepoint that they can't trust
(06:08):
anyone, and if they're aPalestinian in Gaza, the
soldiers of the IDF don't seethemselves as safe around them
at all, and that makes it evenmore complicated and more
difficult.
So, anyway, if you want to havea balanced look at what is
(06:34):
really happening over there, Iencourage you to check your
sources and don't just assumethat just because somebody is a
quote journalist working for theBBC that they are reliable as
telling the truth.
Israel has found tunnels, andloaded with weapons.
(06:57):
They found weapons inside babybassinettes.
They found tunnels underhospitals.
They found the entire serverfarm, the entire server
operation of the Hamas computernetwork, under one of the
biggest hospitals in Gaza.
The hospitals were built asplaces where soldiers could
(07:19):
safely hide.
Hamas soldiers could safelyhide and attack from if they
were to ever have a street war,which is what they have been
planning for for the lastseveral years.
My belief is that the situationthat exists there today is
something that has beenpredicted and understood from
the ancient times in the Bible,and the Bible conveys the notion
(07:45):
that God himself, that there isa God and that he has begun a
process of blessing the entireworld through one family, and
that family is the family, thechildren of Abraham, and he has
only guided and taught that onefamily up till now.
And what is really amazing isthat the people who are the
(08:10):
worst enemies of Israel and ofthat family, that family that
was called by God to become ablessing of all the families of
the earth, that that familywhich was taught through some
very difficult experiences oftheir own by God, that family is
(08:34):
learning and is prepared to bea blessing to everyone,
including Palestinians.
And I know that people whodon't believe the Bible find
such a notion laughable.
But the thesis of thescriptures of the Bible, the
(08:54):
governing operation, thegoverning idea behind the Bible,
is that there is a God.
He made the world, he enteredthe human history through one
family.
His goal is to restore theentire human race to fellowship
and peace with each other andfellowship with him.
And this one family, the Jewishpeople, the children of Israel,
(09:21):
that family is designed, isintended to be a blessing to
everyone else.
When we look at the Bible, whatwe're going to see is that the
strongest enemies of the Jewishpeople are actually their
nearest kin and their nearestrelatives.
So let's look at a psalm firstof all.
(09:41):
This is Psalm 83.
Here's what it says oh God, donot keep silence, do not hold
your peace or be still.
For behold, your enemies makean uproar, those who hate you
have raised their heads.
They lay crafty plans againstyour people.
(10:02):
They consult together againstyour treasured ones.
Who are those treasured ones?
Those are the children ofAbraham.
They say come, let us wipe themout as a nation.
Let the name of Israel beremembered no more, for they
conspire with one accord Againstyou.
(10:25):
They make a covenant, and thenit starts listing the combatants
in this covenant the tents ofEdom and the Ishmaelites.
That's the first group.
I'll come back and discuss whoeach of these are Moab and the
Hagarites, ghebal and Ammon andAmalek.
(10:47):
Philistia, with an inhabitantsof Tyre, asher also has joined
them.
They are the strong arm of thechildren of Lot, okay so.
And it also mentions Midian.
Okay, so what are these groupsof people and what is the time
(11:11):
period referred to here as whenthese folks are dead set against
the Jews?
Okay, all right, the tents ofEdom.
The story of Jacob is familiarto many of us, no matter what
our views of religion.
(11:32):
Now, most of us have gonethrough some sort of Sunday
school experience.
And there was Abraham, and thenhe had a son, isaac, and then
he had a son, jacob, and at thesame time, a moment before Jacob
was born, his twin brother,esau, was born.
Okay, so Edom is the biblicalterm, the Hebrew term, for the
(11:56):
children of Esau.
That would be the twin brotherof Jacob and the person who was.
He was actually a few minutesolder, but there's an amazing
and interesting Bible storyabout how Jacob convinced his
father that he was Esau, theolder brother, and then Isaac
(12:18):
gave the blessing, the privilegeof being part of this Abrahamic
promise to bless the world.
Through a subterfuge, israelgot that promise himself.
It's a very amazing and almostcomical story of how somebody
(12:41):
wanted to be a blessing so muchhe was willing to cheat to get
it.
And his mom was in on thesubterfuge Rebecca, the mother
of Jacob and Esau.
So the tents of Edom isreferring to the twin brother of
Jacob.
In future episodes we'll talkabout this feud, this family
feud between, like the Hatfieldsand McCoys, between the
(13:04):
children of Jacob and thechildren of Esau.
But the thing to understand isthat the people who were the
children of Israel, of Jacob,had a completely different set
of experiences.
They became the people of abook taught by a law giver,
moses, taught by 400 years ofslavery and 40 years of
(13:27):
wandering and a wilderness.
They were taught by atabernacle and priesthood
arrangement that gave themmethodologies by which they
could find themselves at peacewith God and also how they could
learn to identify.
There's actually 17 differentwords, I believe, in Hebrew for
sin, all different shades ofmeaning of sin.
(13:48):
When Amos the prophet talked tothe Jewish people in his day,
much later he delivered amessage from God to the Jewish
people which said you only haveI known of all the families of
the earth.
They were the only nation thatGod made a covenant with.
(14:10):
That God established atheocracy, with that God became
the leader of their nation.
And I recognize I understandwhy people who are skeptical
about the Bible would say well,yeah, that's what their book
tells them.
But we're going to be seeing,as these next few episodes
(14:33):
unfold, that the evidence inhistory is actually quite
supportive of the claims thatthe Bible makes in this regard.
But at any rate, when Amos wasspeaking to the Jewish people,
he said God says you only have Iknown of all the families of
the earth.
And then he goes on to sayTherefore, I will punish you for
(14:58):
your iniquities.
In other words, if God is theirfather, they are the only child
of the human race that has afather who is present and who
teaches them and disciplinesthem.
And the discipline that theJewish people have received has
been at times ferocious, attimes horrendous.
(15:19):
And yet when we look around theworld today, we see primophatia
, evidence that the Jewishpeople are a blessing to the
world in terms of the knowledge,the creativity, the ethical
(15:40):
nature.
Jewish people are the largestphilanthropists in the world.
They are the largest NobelPrize winners, they are
inventors, mathematicians,scientists, and lately they've
also been quite good at runningarmies, fighting, fighting,
because they've had to do a lotof fighting in the last 75 years
(16:01):
for their own survival.
So you've heard my argument.
I hope you'll stick with me asI present other evidence to
support and buttress the claimsthat I'm making.
Let's go back to the Psalm for amoment.
Okay, the tents of Edom and theIshmaelites.
(16:23):
Who are the Ishmaelites?
Well, ishmael was the first sonof Abraham, the one who was
born to him through his wife'sservant, hagar, who was an
Egyptian.
So Ishmael had 12 sons.
I believe Esau also had 12 sons.
There were a bunch ofIshmaelites, and all of the
(16:44):
Arabian nations traced theirlineage to Ishmael, moab.
And then, skipping down, acouple of words, ammon.
Moab and Ammon were twobrothers and they were both the
children of Lot, which wasAbraham's nephew.
Lot was the relative of Abraham, who settled and lived in the
(17:08):
town of Sodom for a while, whichwas destroyed by a meteor that
came in, and I did a podcastabout that in one of my earlier
episodes.
But Moab and Ammon were twobrothers, sons of incest, who
founded nations, entire nationsthat have always been sworn
(17:33):
enemies of Israel, and there's astory in the Book of Numbers
about the Moabites wanting tohave a prophet curse Israel, a
prophet named Balaam, and that'san interesting story in the
Book of Numbers.
Ammon became the nation of theAmmonites, who also fought
(17:57):
Israel.
When Israel came towards thepromised land from their
wandering in the wilderness,they asked the Ammonites if they
could just pass through,because God told them that the
Ammonites were promised land oftheir own.
And the Israelites said wedon't want any of your land, we
(18:19):
just like to bring our peoplethrough your land because your
land is in the way.
The Ammonites said no way, sothey ended up having a war
against each other.
Today, the descendants of Ammonare many of the people who live
in the nation of Jordan, andthe capital of Jordan is Ammon,
which comes from the same word,ammon, amalek.
Amalek was a son of Esau,jacob's twin brother.
(18:42):
The story goes that Esau wentout and married a woman contrary
to his parents' wishes.
Jacob went to the Kindred lands, the lands where Abraham had
come from, to find a wife, andit wasn't until Esau got around
to his third wife that he didthe same.
(19:03):
Amalek was the sworn enemy ofthe Jewish people, his nation,
the Amalekites in biblicalhistory and prophecy has come
down to prophetic writings asthe land of Gog, the Agagites,
and it was the nation that Saulfought against, that David
(19:25):
fought against.
Again and again, the Israelipeople have come up against the
Amalek tribes and in fivebattles that go all the way back
to Abraham's day and go forwardall the way till the end of the
millennium described in thebook of Revelation.
In every case of these fivebattles, amalek loses.
(19:46):
They hate Israel and theyalways lose to Israel, and
that's kind of what's happeningright now.
It appears Hamas is losing.
They might be winning thepublic relations battle and
that's prophesied as well butthey are losing the actual
struggle on the battlefield.
(20:07):
Philistia was a nation that hadnothing against Israel other
than the fact that they wantedto have some land to grow corn.
They came from Crete and theysettled in the area that Abraham
was coming down into when Godsent him down, according to the
Genesis account.
And Philistia then has hadtribes and cities.
(20:31):
They had five cities along thecoast of the Mediterranean Sea,
and they have been a thorn inIsrael's side for millennia.
The Bible records seven majorbattles between Israel and the
Philistines, and they won mostof those, but the Philistines
kept bouncing back, and it's amatter of historical record that
it was the Assyrian Empire andBabylonian empires which subdued
(20:56):
the Philistines and of coursethey also had their way with
Israel.
The inhabitants of Tyre referto a group that were farther
north in Israel, just belowLebanon and up alongside Lebanon
.
That's where Tyre was.
It was a maritime peninsulacity, very wealthy traders.
(21:17):
They had ships that covered theentire Mediterranean and
perhaps beyond.
Asher refers to the AssyrianEmpire, which is farther north,
on the other side of theEuphrates River, and it says in
this prophecy that Asher joinedthem.
So they were told that Syriaand some of the tribes north of
(21:39):
Syria were involved in therivalry, this confederation
against Israel at the period oftime that this psalm is talking
about.
And it says that Asher was thestrong arm of the children of
Lot.
So that shows that there was aMoabite-Amenite axis along with
the Assyrians.
And then Midian is mentioned.
(21:59):
Midian was another son ofAbraham through Quturah.
He was, I think, the second sonof Abraham through Quturah, who
was the wife that Abrahammarried after Sarah died.
Let's jump now to anotherprophecy.
(22:20):
I would say that this prophecythat we've just been reading
about is a description of theConfederation the Arab League,
we might say against Israel formost of the 20th century, up
until very recently.
This confederation has beenbroken and it no longer stands.
(22:41):
There still are Palestinianswho are working against Israel,
but a number of the Arab tribesand nations have made peace with
Israel in the last few years.
This has been called theAbraham Accords, and some of the
people in this group, the youknow the Ishmaelites, the
(23:02):
Hagarites I didn't mention them.
They are the, the children.
Hagar had several childrenbesides Ishmael, and so
Hagarites are also kind ofEgyptian and Arab you might say
Bedouin tribes, and so some ofthese tribes would be the
Yemenites, the Saudi Arabiansand so forth, all of those what
(23:27):
we would call classic Arabtribes.
They were involved in the ArabLeague and they were involved in
the big wars that Israel foughtsince 1948.
They all said we are comingagainst you as a nation, we're
gonna drive you off the face ofthe earth.
The Hagarites, which came fromEgypt that fits with Gamal Abdel
Nasser who, when I was a boy, Isaw on TV say we're gonna drive
(23:51):
you into the sea.
Those are the people who wereinvolved in that original plot.
But that confederation is nomore, and that's not what we're
seeing here right now.
Most of the fighters againstIsrael now are not the Arabs,
they're not the Ishmaelites, theHagarites, they're not even the
Ammonites, which is Jordan.
And Syria is currently not thatactive.
(24:13):
They are avoiding as much asthey can any direct conflict
with Israel.
So who are they now?
To get an insight into that,let's turn to Ezekiel, the 38th
chapter, and we're not gonna seethe fulfillment of Ezekiel 38,
but we're gonna get someinsights into that conflict.
Okay, so here's Ezekiel, 38thchapter.
(24:35):
The word of the Lord came to me.
Son of man, set your facetoward Gog of the land of Magog.
Okay, I mentioned Gog a fewminutes ago.
Gog is the name for the enemiesof God, the enemies of Abraham
(24:58):
and the enemies of all ofAbraham's children, especially
well, the enemies of specificAbraham's children.
That would be Israel, thepromised seed, isaac, abraham,
isaac, jacob those are thepromised seed in there and then
the nation that came from Jacob.
Gog is their sworn enemy.
Remember the story of Esther?
(25:19):
You had Haman, the Agagite.
Agag is the name of their kingand Gog is from the same root,
and the land of Magog is justanother way of saying the same
thing.
We won't get into some of thedetails of this because they're
not in the scope of what we'relooking at today, but I want to
(25:40):
roll down and notice who comesagainst Israel in the final
conflict, which is not the onewe're having today.
But they are Persia, which isIran, kush, which is Northern
Africa, ethiopia and Somalia,probably, and Put are with them.
(26:00):
Put refers to Yemen, gomer andall his hordes and Beth Togarmah
from the uttermost parts of thenorth, that's Turkey, the
current battle that's happening.
Hamas would be a part of Gog.
They are in line with andworking with Gog, but they
(26:22):
aren't the whole thing.
And the thing that we see hereis that Persia, iran is in on
this, yemen is in on this, andso those guys are helping Hamas
by running interference against,giving Israel a two-front war
to worry about, even athree-front war to worry about,
(26:45):
and so this is a foretaste ofsome of the future battles that
we're going to see in thenot-too-far-distant future
between many nations and Israel.
But notice who's not in this.
Most of the people who were inthat last prophecy, the one in
(27:10):
Psalms 83, most of those folksare not there.
The Ishmaelites, the Ammonites,moab, those people are not in
this picture.
So the amazing thing that theBible tells is that Israel will
actually be at peace with almostall of the Arabs when their
(27:32):
final battle happens.
But Iran is going to beinvolved and is going to be an
active agent in trying to wipeout Israel in the final
struggles.
So just be aware that Iran andthe Yemenites are going to be in
(27:57):
the future in the final battlesthat Israel will be facing.
In the Ezekiel, the 38th and39th chapters, there's actually
four prophecies at least thatidentify this final battle, and
they are in the book of Joel.
They are in the book of Ezekieland several other places, and I
(28:20):
will be going through those infuture episodes, but I don't
want to get involved in that toomuch right now.
What I want to focus on rightnow is that the things that are
happening in Israel now are interms of the thorny Palestinian
Jewish question.
Those things are predicted.
(28:41):
They are actually works of God,they are actually acts of God.
If the Bible, if you can just Imean you just read it in the
Bible.
According to the Bible, thesethings are actually things that
God has prearranged.
He's like a, he's like adirector of a play and he is
providing an invisible hand thatmoves characters onto the stage
(29:03):
and off the stage to make thisplay dramatize the issues and
the conflicts that he wants tosee the human race struggle with
, so that they can learn somelessons in the process.
And that's what that's whatthis play that we're watching is
(29:28):
all about.
It's all about learning tounderstand what God intends to
do with the human race, and I'vesaid it before and I'll say it
again he intends to bless theentire human race.
He preached the gospel toAbraham is how the apostle Paul
(29:49):
put it.
And what was the gospel?
That, in Abraham and hischildren, all the families of
the earth will be blessed.
They will be blessed.
They will learn to live.
They will learn to be inharmony with each other.
They will learn to have life.
Those are the things that Godis making happen.
(30:09):
So let's look at some otherverses.
In Zechariah, the 12th chapter,the third verse, it says on
that day I will make Jerusalem aheavy stone for all the peoples
.
All who lift it will surelyhurt themselves, and all the
nations of the earth will gatheragainst it.
(30:32):
Okay, there are severalprophecies that say
substantially the same thing.
The idea is that if you watchhuman history, you're going to
reach a point where the Jews areback in their homeland, in
their promised land.
That itself is a miracle and isunprecedented in human history.
(30:52):
But after 2,000 years ofabsence, the Jews come back and
in 1948 they become a state andare recognized by the majority
of the nations of the world,able to have their own land,
their own nation.
Then what happens is that theworld is confronted with this
horrible diplomatic nightmare ofa problem.
(31:14):
What are you going to do aboutthe fact that Christians, jews
and Muslims all think ofJerusalem as their sacred place?
It's such an intractableproblem with overtones of well,
whose land is it and how didthey get it, and are we being
treated fairly?
(31:34):
And all this on both sides.
This issue has been anintractable problem.
Every leader of the world whotries to deal with this problem
fails.
The closest one to success wasJimmy Carter, when he got the
Egyptians and the Jews to agreenot to continue fighting each
(31:56):
other and killing each other.
And how did he get that tohappen?
Well, israel was willing togive the entire Sinai Peninsula
back to Egypt, even thoughthey'd found oil there.
That's why the Carter was ableto look like a great magician of
Middle East diplomacy, becausethe Jews were willing to give
(32:20):
back all this land that they hadconquered twice before and had
quickly given back this thirdtime when they fought in 1967
war, they said wait a minute,we're not going to keep winning
this land and then give it back.
What do you think we are?
We're not that stupid.
But they wanted peace so badlywith Egypt that they gave it
(32:44):
back.
And as a result, that's wherethe Gaza problem kind of really
had its origin, because up tillthen Gaza had been administered
by Egypt and Egypt didn't wantto handle Gaza anymore.
It was a nightmare.
So they gave the SinaiPeninsula to Egypt and then they
were stuck.
They were stuck with Gaza.
(33:06):
Every American president hastried in one way or another to
solve this problem and has notsucceeded.
Biden has struggled.
One of the things that DonaldTrump did that the Jews greatly
appreciated was that hetransferred the American embassy
to Jerusalem instead of TelAviv, and that was really
(33:28):
appreciated.
And he also was involved inhelping smooth the way for the
Jews to establish trade dealswith other Arab states, as I
mentioned earlier.
So the Abraham Accords beganunder Trump and have been
continued under, and evenexpanded a little bit under
Biden.
But Biden is really caughtbetween a rock and a hard place,
(33:52):
because his reelection chanceshinge on being able to attract
the young vote, and the youngvote in the United States has
overwhelmingly sided with thePalestinians on this issue.
That's happening right now.
So Biden wants to help supportIsrael and he's been supporting
(34:13):
Israel but he doesn't want to gotoo far and appear to be
favoring Israel at the expenseof the Palestinian people.
So he tries to make this artfulseparation between the Hamas
and the people of Gaza, and whatthe Jewish soldiers are finding
and the Jewish leaders aresaying is that, well, yeah, we
(34:39):
don't want to hurt thePalestinian people, the Gaza
people either, but they have adeep, violent, angry attitude
toward us.
And we also are frustrated withthe United Nations.
The United Nations is Unwa andthe Red Cross and all these
other organizations that aresupposed to be helping just
(35:00):
provide humanitarian assistanceare actually fighting for and
with Hamas, hiding Hamasoperatives in hospitals, in
schools and so forth.
So it's a very complex, mixedup situation, and this prophecy
in Zechariah is just one ofseveral that say that that's
(35:21):
exactly what will happen.
You can blame God for thishuman situation that we find on
the ground, here in Israel rightnow.
Let's look at one more verseabout what is happening today,
and this is in Zechariah, the12th chapter, the sixth verse.
So we're coming back toZechariah 12 again.
(35:43):
It says on that day, I willmake the clans of Judah like a
blazing pot in the midst of wood, like a flaming torch among
sheaves.
They shall devour to the rightand to the left of the
surrounding peoples, whileJerusalem shall again be
(36:05):
inhabited in its place inJerusalem.
Okay, so the first thing thatthis verse tells us is that
Judah is going, that's, theJewish people, israel, as we
know them today, are going tobecome very effective in their,
in their fighting thesurrounding neighbors, the
(36:30):
peoples around them.
It says, and it's talking aboutthe Palestinian people.
They will be like a a how's itput it?
A, a blazing pot in the midstof wood.
They will devour the, theenemies that they encounter, and
that's what's been happeningand it.
(36:52):
I think that they were muchmore deliberate, much more
measured in past conflicts thanthey are today.
Today, they are determined toabsolutely destroy Hamas and its
ability to wage war.
They're systematicallydestroying Hamas's capacity to
(37:15):
fight, to have, you know,soldiers, to have weapons, to
have ammo, to have tunnels.
They just are determined todevour the peoples around them.
And what's going to happen?
Well, it goes.
It feeds right into that lastscripture we just looked at.
It's part of the process bywhich Israel is going to lose
(37:37):
its public support.
It's going to lose, you know, Ijust read an essay by Thomas
Friedman and then last couple ofdays he's sympathetic towards
Israel and and he's he knowsthat Hamas was, was, they were
butchers and and rapists andthey were awful, but he's saying
that Israel is blowing.
(37:57):
He considers Israel to bemaking mistakes in in the way
they comport themselves in the,in the view of the public
opinion of the world.
Well, bible prophecy predictsexactly that.
That's exactly what will happen.
Israel is going to lose all herlovers, it says in Jeremiah.
(38:17):
Israel is going to lose all ofits support, as as if, as if to
say they can't survive withoutpublic opinion.
Part of the lesson that God, Ithink, is trying to teach the
world is that he's got a planfor the world of mankind and
he's got a certain amount ofland that he is devoted to the
(38:41):
children of Abraham, and he'sgot lands for all the rest of
the world to live in and he isgoing to reconcile all of the
Jews with all of the Arabs andall of the other enemies that
they have.
He's even going to reconcilethe children of Ammon and the
children of of Esau, you know,and the Moabites.
(39:04):
Those are all.
All of those people are goingto be reconciled with the Jews
in the future, but right nowhe's determined to show the
world that what he has predictedand what he wants to happen is
going to happen.
He is God and he is in, incontrol of human affairs, and
(39:26):
the Jewish people are going tofind themselves in a real pickle
in future years, to the pointwhere the four prophecies that I
mentioned, that include theEzekiel 38, 39 prophecy all of
them are pointing to a time whenevery nation of the world is
(39:48):
going to actively be involved orat least passively permitting
the Jewish people to be attackedwith the intention of their of
being eliminated.
There's going to be one lastattempt by the human governments
of the world to completelydestroy Israel, and that's what
(40:13):
the final conflict of the timeof trouble in the world
conditions will be the time ofJacob's trouble.
That is probably only 10, 12years away, but right now Israel
is going, is determined to wipeout Hamas, and they're going to
(40:35):
lose a whole lot of the supportthat they have around the world
now, and that is part of thefulfillment of prophecy.
I love the Jewish people, I loveIsrael.
I support Israel in my smallway of you know, talking in
these podcasts about why Israelis a valuable part of the human
(40:56):
race and going to be theblessing to the world that God
has promised.
But the reality is that Israelis going to go through one last
horrendous difficulty before thetime of peace and blessing can
come to the entire human race.
(41:16):
According to Psalm 44-3, it wasnot the sword of Israel that,
in the past or in the future,will defeat the enemies of
Israel, but God's favor upon theJewish nation.
They will not, in the end, beable to defeat their enemies on
the battlefield, and that's thelesson that the Jewish people
(41:41):
will be taught in the finalbattle that's described in
Ezekiel 38 and 39 chapters.
Even though up to that point,israel will be having its way
with its enemies that surroundthem on the battlefield, in the
end they will lose on thebattlefield but still be saved
(42:05):
as a nation by the favor of God,and the world will see this and
recognize that Israel is indeedfavored in a remarkable, indeed
miraculous, way by an invisiblehand in human history.
So with that I'm going to endepisode seven and I have some
(42:30):
more information that's in alittle more detail, just to
share.
That's already been cut and I'mstill editing and I will come
back with more prophecy insights, hopefully, that you will find
useful as you look to see whatGod is trying to accomplish and
what the Bible says about thefuture that's we're living and
(42:56):
watching right now.
Keep your eyes open.
Don't believe everything yousee on the internet or hear on
the internet, and listen to bothsides of some of the arguments
that are being made and you'llbe surprised.
And it's important to, I wouldsay, give more weight.
If you're inclined not to giveweight to the Israeli point of
(43:20):
view, give it some more weightand give it some more time to
try to understand, because oneof the facts of history is that
those who support and blessIsrael will be blessed.
Everybody who blesses Israel,blesses Abraham, will be blessed
.
So I wish you the best in thatregard and thank you for
(43:40):
listening to.
It Is Near.
The time is coming when all ofthe promises that God has made
for the human race are going tobe fulfilled and it is going to
be a very happy time, thanks.
The things that are happening in Israel now -- in
terms of the thorny PalestinianJewish question -- those things
are predicted.
It's all about learning tounderstand what God intends to
do with the human race, and I'vesaid it before and I'll say it
again (00:21):
He intends to bless the entire human race.
He "preached the gospel toAbraham is how the apostle Paul
put it.
And what was the gospel?
That in Abraham and hischildren, all the families of
the earth will be blessed.
They will be blessed.
They will learn to live.
(00:42):
They will learn to be inharmony with each other.
They will learn to have life.
Those are the things that Godis making happen.
So let's look at some otherverses.
Welcome to.
It Is Near.
This is episode 7.
And I've done now threeepisodes 7.
This is the third one.
I hope it's the charm.
You'd think a podcast aboutBible prophecy would be all over
(01:06):
the events of October 7th, andI should have been, but I've
been trying to get it right.
I've been trying to studyprophecy and be sure that I
understand what the Bibleprophecies say.
I don't want to do a knee jerkreaction.
You know from my previouspodcast that I am a supporter of
and lover of Israel, and so mybias is deep- seated and any
(01:36):
Bible- believing Christian islikely to agree with me.
Any non-Christian member of theaudience is likely not to
assume that I'm on the righttrack, and so I'm trying to
present balanced evidence basedon not only the Bible but also
(01:57):
history and logic, and, frankly,I've been struggling with how
to handle it and I've been busywith the format change that
we've been working on, gettingit set up as a video podcast and
trying to get it so that I canmake the episodes be basically
(02:18):
self-edited as we go, and so,for all of that, it's here.
It's been over four months andI'm only now almost ready to
release episode 7.
And I have good material fromthe earlier attempts at episode
7 to share with you.
Some is on audio only, some isaudio and video.
(02:38):
I will be sharing that too, andthere'll be episodes that follow
along on this topic, but thisone I'm trying to show a
balanced view, and it happens tocome on a day when there was
another major nightmare, andthat was the very unfortunate
(02:59):
loss of life that occurred inGaza, when a bunch of people
were shot as they crowded aroundan aid convoy to try to get
food.
We've discovered over the lastfour months that Hamas is
excellent at selling a falsenarrative to the news media
consumers around the world, andwe need to wait and see just a
(03:23):
little bit longer to let aninvestigation unfold as to what
exactly happened.
It's very possible that thepeople that were shot were not
actually shot by the IDF.
They were shot by Hamas gunmen.
We don't know.
We know that Hamas gunmen haveroutinely been shooting
Palestinian citizens when theyhave attempted to leave the area
(03:47):
where battles are occurring.
There's concrete evidence ofthat and it's a very concrete
pattern that the soldiers andleaders of Hamas hide behind
civilians in hospitals, inschools, in the neighborhoods --
(04:14):
and use those people so-called"innocent civilians as human
shields.
And then there's another aspectof this that the Jewish
soldiers have been more and morestridently talking about and
doing their own kind ofunderground videos about, and
that is that they don't considerany of the Gaza people to be
(04:36):
quote innocent civilians.
Time and again they've beentrapped.
They've seen their comradeskilled and wounded because they
trusted civilians not to be inleague with the soldiers of
Hamas.
The soldiers of Hamas are notlike normal soldiers.
(04:58):
They don't wear uniforms.
They don't act like combatants.
It's difficult to be a soldierwho cares about human life and
who cares about innocence andwho cares about being humane.
It's very difficult for theseIsraeli soldiers to act in a way
(05:22):
that their ethics tell themthey should and, at the same
time, they're watching hundredsof their own men and women be
killed, and they're watchingwomen and children who are
working in cahoots with Hamassoldiers to call down sniper
(05:43):
shots, to hide guns in theirrobes -- and ammo -- and get
them to the soldiers who arepinned down in a house or in a
tunnel nearby.
Those are things that theIsraeli soldiers have had
trouble with, and so there's awhole underground of social
media presentations making thepoint that they can't trust
(06:08):
anyone, and if they're aPalestinian in Gaza, the
soldiers of the IDF don't seethemselves as safe around them
at all, and that makes it evenmore complicated and more
difficult.
So, anyway, if you want to havea balanced look at what is
(06:34):
really happening over there, Iencourage you to check your
sources and don't just assumethat just because somebody is a
quote journalist working for theBBC that they are reliable as
telling the truth.
Israel has found tunnels, andloaded with weapons.
(06:57):
They found weapons inside babybassinettes.
They found tunnels underhospitals.
They found the entire serverfarm, the entire server
operation of the Hamas computernetwork, under one of the
biggest hospitals in Gaza.
The hospitals were built asplaces where soldiers could
(07:19):
safely hide.
Hamas soldiers could safelyhide and attack from if they
were to ever have a street war,which is what they have been
planning for for the lastseveral years.
My belief is that the situationthat exists there today is
something that has beenpredicted and understood from
the ancient times in the Bible,and the Bible conveys the notion
(07:45):
that God himself, that there isa God and that he has begun a
process of blessing the entireworld through one family, and
that family is the family, thechildren of Abraham, and he has
only guided and taught that onefamily up till now.
And what is really amazing isthat the people who are the
(08:10):
worst enemies of Israel and ofthat family, that family that
was called by God to become ablessing of all the families of
the earth, that that familywhich was taught through some
very difficult experiences oftheir own by God, that family is
(08:34):
learning and is prepared to bea blessing to everyone,
including Palestinians.
And I know that people whodon't believe the Bible find
such a notion laughable.
But the thesis of thescriptures of the Bible, the
(08:54):
governing operation, thegoverning idea behind the Bible,
is that there is a God.
He made the world, he enteredthe human history through one
family.
His goal is to restore theentire human race to fellowship
and peace with each other andfellowship with him.
And this one family, the Jewishpeople, the children of Israel,
(09:21):
that family is designed, isintended to be a blessing to
everyone else.
When we look at the Bible, whatwe're going to see is that the
strongest enemies of the Jewishpeople are actually their
nearest kin and their nearestrelatives.
So let's look at a psalm firstof all.
(09:41):
This is Psalm 83.
Here's what it says oh God, donot keep silence, do not hold
your peace or be still.
For behold, your enemies makean uproar, those who hate you
have raised their heads.
They lay crafty plans againstyour people.
(10:02):
They consult together againstyour treasured ones.
Who are those treasured ones?
Those are the children ofAbraham.
They say come, let us wipe themout as a nation.
Let the name of Israel beremembered no more, for they
conspire with one accord Againstyou.
(10:25):
They make a covenant, and thenit starts listing the combatants
in this covenant the tents ofEdom and the Ishmaelites.
That's the first group.
I'll come back and discuss whoeach of these are Moab and the
Hagarites, ghebal and Ammon andAmalek.
(10:47):
Philistia, with an inhabitantsof Tyre, asher also has joined
them.
They are the strong arm of thechildren of Lot, okay so.
And it also mentions Midian.
Okay, so what are these groupsof people and what is the time
(11:11):
period referred to here as whenthese folks are dead set against
the Jews?
Okay, all right, the tents ofEdom.
The story of Jacob is familiarto many of us, no matter what
our views of religion.
(11:32):
Now, most of us have gonethrough some sort of Sunday
school experience.
And there was Abraham, and thenhe had a son, isaac, and then
he had a son, jacob, and at thesame time, a moment before Jacob
was born, his twin brother,esau, was born.
Okay, so Edom is the biblicalterm, the Hebrew term, for the
(11:56):
children of Esau.
That would be the twin brotherof Jacob and the person who was.
He was actually a few minutesolder, but there's an amazing
and interesting Bible storyabout how Jacob convinced his
father that he was Esau, theolder brother, and then Isaac
(12:18):
gave the blessing, the privilegeof being part of this Abrahamic
promise to bless the world.
Through a subterfuge, israelgot that promise himself.
It's a very amazing and almostcomical story of how somebody
(12:41):
wanted to be a blessing so muchhe was willing to cheat to get
it.
And his mom was in on thesubterfuge Rebecca, the mother
of Jacob and Esau.
So the tents of Edom isreferring to the twin brother of
Jacob.
In future episodes we'll talkabout this feud, this family
feud between, like the Hatfieldsand McCoys, between the
(13:04):
children of Jacob and thechildren of Esau.
But the thing to understand isthat the people who were the
children of Israel, of Jacob,had a completely different set
of experiences.
They became the people of abook taught by a law giver,
moses, taught by 400 years ofslavery and 40 years of
(13:27):
wandering and a wilderness.
They were taught by atabernacle and priesthood
arrangement that gave themmethodologies by which they
could find themselves at peacewith God and also how they could
learn to identify.
There's actually 17 differentwords, I believe, in Hebrew for
sin, all different shades ofmeaning of sin.
(13:48):
When Amos the prophet talked tothe Jewish people in his day,
much later he delivered amessage from God to the Jewish
people which said you only haveI known of all the families of
the earth.
They were the only nation thatGod made a covenant with.
(14:10):
That God established atheocracy, with that God became
the leader of their nation.
And I recognize I understandwhy people who are skeptical
about the Bible would say well,yeah, that's what their book
tells them.
But we're going to be seeing,as these next few episodes
(14:33):
unfold, that the evidence inhistory is actually quite
supportive of the claims thatthe Bible makes in this regard.
But at any rate, when Amos wasspeaking to the Jewish people,
he said God says you only have Iknown of all the families of
the earth.
And then he goes on to sayTherefore, I will punish you for
(14:58):
your iniquities.
In other words, if God is theirfather, they are the only child
of the human race that has afather who is present and who
teaches them and disciplinesthem.
And the discipline that theJewish people have received has
been at times ferocious, attimes horrendous.
(15:19):
And yet when we look around theworld today, we see primophatia
, evidence that the Jewishpeople are a blessing to the
world in terms of the knowledge,the creativity, the ethical
(15:40):
nature.
Jewish people are the largestphilanthropists in the world.
They are the largest NobelPrize winners, they are
inventors, mathematicians,scientists, and lately they've
also been quite good at runningarmies, fighting, fighting,
because they've had to do a lotof fighting in the last 75 years
(16:01):
for their own survival.
So you've heard my argument.
I hope you'll stick with me asI present other evidence to
support and buttress the claimsthat I'm making.
Let's go back to the Psalm for amoment.
Okay, the tents of Edom and theIshmaelites.
(16:23):
Who are the Ishmaelites?
Well, ishmael was the first sonof Abraham, the one who was
born to him through his wife'sservant, hagar, who was an
Egyptian.
So Ishmael had 12 sons.
I believe Esau also had 12 sons.
There were a bunch ofIshmaelites, and all of the
(16:44):
Arabian nations traced theirlineage to Ishmael, moab.
And then, skipping down, acouple of words, ammon.
Moab and Ammon were twobrothers and they were both the
children of Lot, which wasAbraham's nephew.
Lot was the relative of Abraham, who settled and lived in the
(17:08):
town of Sodom for a while, whichwas destroyed by a meteor that
came in, and I did a podcastabout that in one of my earlier
episodes.
But Moab and Ammon were twobrothers, sons of incest, who
founded nations, entire nationsthat have always been sworn
(17:33):
enemies of Israel, and there's astory in the Book of Numbers
about the Moabites wanting tohave a prophet curse Israel, a
prophet named Balaam, and that'san interesting story in the
Book of Numbers.
Ammon became the nation of theAmmonites, who also fought
(17:57):
Israel.
When Israel came towards thepromised land from their
wandering in the wilderness,they asked the Ammonites if they
could just pass through,because God told them that the
Ammonites were promised land oftheir own.
And the Israelites said wedon't want any of your land, we
(18:19):
just like to bring our peoplethrough your land because your
land is in the way.
The Ammonites said no way, sothey ended up having a war
against each other.
Today, the descendants of Ammonare many of the people who live
in the nation of Jordan, andthe capital of Jordan is Ammon,
which comes from the same word,ammon, amalek.
Amalek was a son of Esau,jacob's twin brother.
(18:42):
The story goes that Esau wentout and married a woman contrary
to his parents' wishes.
Jacob went to the Kindred lands, the lands where Abraham had
come from, to find a wife, andit wasn't until Esau got around
to his third wife that he didthe same.
(19:03):
Amalek was the sworn enemy ofthe Jewish people, his nation,
the Amalekites in biblicalhistory and prophecy has come
down to prophetic writings asthe land of Gog, the Agagites,
and it was the nation that Saulfought against, that David
(19:25):
fought against.
Again and again, the Israelipeople have come up against the
Amalek tribes and in fivebattles that go all the way back
to Abraham's day and go forwardall the way till the end of the
millennium described in thebook of Revelation.
In every case of these fivebattles, amalek loses.
(19:46):
They hate Israel and theyalways lose to Israel, and
that's kind of what's happeningright now.
It appears Hamas is losing.
They might be winning thepublic relations battle and
that's prophesied as well butthey are losing the actual
struggle on the battlefield.
(20:07):
Philistia was a nation that hadnothing against Israel other
than the fact that they wantedto have some land to grow corn.
They came from Crete and theysettled in the area that Abraham
was coming down into when Godsent him down, according to the
Genesis account.
And Philistia then has hadtribes and cities.
(20:31):
They had five cities along thecoast of the Mediterranean Sea,
and they have been a thorn inIsrael's side for millennia.
The Bible records seven majorbattles between Israel and the
Philistines, and they won mostof those, but the Philistines
kept bouncing back, and it's amatter of historical record that
it was the Assyrian Empire andBabylonian empires which subdued
(20:56):
the Philistines and of coursethey also had their way with
Israel.
The inhabitants of Tyre referto a group that were farther
north in Israel, just belowLebanon and up alongside Lebanon
.
That's where Tyre was.
It was a maritime peninsulacity, very wealthy traders.
(21:17):
They had ships that covered theentire Mediterranean and
perhaps beyond.
Asher refers to the AssyrianEmpire, which is farther north,
on the other side of theEuphrates River, and it says in
this prophecy that Asher joinedthem.
So they were told that Syriaand some of the tribes north of
(21:39):
Syria were involved in therivalry, this confederation
against Israel at the period oftime that this psalm is talking
about.
And it says that Asher was thestrong arm of the children of
Lot.
So that shows that there was aMoabite-Amenite axis along with
the Assyrians.
And then Midian is mentioned.
(21:59):
Midian was another son ofAbraham through Quturah.
He was, I think, the second sonof Abraham through Quturah, who
was the wife that Abrahammarried after Sarah died.
Let's jump now to anotherprophecy.
(22:20):
I would say that this prophecythat we've just been reading
about is a description of theConfederation the Arab League,
we might say against Israel formost of the 20th century, up
until very recently.
This confederation has beenbroken and it no longer stands.
(22:41):
There still are Palestinianswho are working against Israel,
but a number of the Arab tribesand nations have made peace with
Israel in the last few years.
This has been called theAbraham Accords, and some of the
people in this group, the youknow the Ishmaelites, the
(23:02):
Hagarites I didn't mention them.
They are the, the children.
Hagar had several childrenbesides Ishmael, and so
Hagarites are also kind ofEgyptian and Arab you might say
Bedouin tribes, and so some ofthese tribes would be the
Yemenites, the Saudi Arabiansand so forth, all of those what
(23:27):
we would call classic Arabtribes.
They were involved in the ArabLeague and they were involved in
the big wars that Israel foughtsince 1948.
They all said we are comingagainst you as a nation, we're
gonna drive you off the face ofthe earth.
The Hagarites, which came fromEgypt that fits with Gamal Abdel
Nasser who, when I was a boy, Isaw on TV say we're gonna drive
(23:51):
you into the sea.
Those are the people who wereinvolved in that original plot.
But that confederation is nomore, and that's not what we're
seeing here right now.
Most of the fighters againstIsrael now are not the Arabs,
they're not the Ishmaelites, theHagarites, they're not even the
Ammonites, which is Jordan.
And Syria is currently not thatactive.
(24:13):
They are avoiding as much asthey can any direct conflict
with Israel.
So who are they now?
To get an insight into that,let's turn to Ezekiel, the 38th
chapter, and we're not gonna seethe fulfillment of Ezekiel 38,
but we're gonna get someinsights into that conflict.
Okay, so here's Ezekiel, 38thchapter.
(24:35):
The word of the Lord came to me.
Son of man, set your facetoward Gog of the land of Magog.
Okay, I mentioned Gog a fewminutes ago.
Gog is the name for the enemiesof God, the enemies of Abraham
(24:58):
and the enemies of all ofAbraham's children, especially
well, the enemies of specificAbraham's children.
That would be Israel, thepromised seed, isaac, abraham,
isaac, jacob those are thepromised seed in there and then
the nation that came from Jacob.
Gog is their sworn enemy.
Remember the story of Esther?
(25:19):
You had Haman, the Agagite.
Agag is the name of their kingand Gog is from the same root,
and the land of Magog is justanother way of saying the same
thing.
We won't get into some of thedetails of this because they're
not in the scope of what we'relooking at today, but I want to
(25:40):
roll down and notice who comesagainst Israel in the final
conflict, which is not the onewe're having today.
But they are Persia, which isIran, kush, which is Northern
Africa, ethiopia and Somalia,probably, and Put are with them.
(26:00):
Put refers to Yemen, gomer andall his hordes and Beth Togarmah
from the uttermost parts of thenorth, that's Turkey, the
current battle that's happening.
Hamas would be a part of Gog.
They are in line with andworking with Gog, but they
(26:22):
aren't the whole thing.
And the thing that we see hereis that Persia, iran is in on
this, yemen is in on this, andso those guys are helping Hamas
by running interference against,giving Israel a two-front war
to worry about, even athree-front war to worry about,
(26:45):
and so this is a foretaste ofsome of the future battles that
we're going to see in thenot-too-far-distant future
between many nations and Israel.
But notice who's not in this.
Most of the people who were inthat last prophecy, the one in
(27:10):
Psalms 83, most of those folksare not there.
The Ishmaelites, the Ammonites,moab, those people are not in
this picture.
So the amazing thing that theBible tells is that Israel will
actually be at peace with almostall of the Arabs when their
(27:32):
final battle happens.
But Iran is going to beinvolved and is going to be an
active agent in trying to wipeout Israel in the final
struggles.
So just be aware that Iran andthe Yemenites are going to be in
(27:57):
the future in the final battlesthat Israel will be facing.
In the Ezekiel, the 38th and39th chapters, there's actually
four prophecies at least thatidentify this final battle, and
they are in the book of Joel.
They are in the book of Ezekieland several other places, and I
(28:20):
will be going through those infuture episodes, but I don't
want to get involved in that toomuch right now.
What I want to focus on rightnow is that the things that are
happening in Israel now are interms of the thorny Palestinian
Jewish question.
Those things are predicted.
(28:41):
They are actually works of God,they are actually acts of God.
If the Bible, if you can just Imean you just read it in the
Bible.
According to the Bible, thesethings are actually things that
God has prearranged.
He's like a, he's like adirector of a play and he is
providing an invisible hand thatmoves characters onto the stage
(29:03):
and off the stage to make thisplay dramatize the issues and
the conflicts that he wants tosee the human race struggle with
, so that they can learn somelessons in the process.
And that's what that's whatthis play that we're watching is
(29:28):
all about.
It's all about learning tounderstand what God intends to
do with the human race, and I'vesaid it before and I'll say it
again he intends to bless theentire human race.
He preached the gospel toAbraham is how the apostle Paul
(29:49):
put it.
And what was the gospel?
That, in Abraham and hischildren, all the families of
the earth will be blessed.
They will be blessed.
They will learn to live.
They will learn to be inharmony with each other.
They will learn to have life.
Those are the things that Godis making happen.
(30:09):
So let's look at some otherverses.
In Zechariah, the 12th chapter,the third verse, it says on
that day I will make Jerusalem aheavy stone for all the peoples
.
All who lift it will surelyhurt themselves, and all the
nations of the earth will gatheragainst it.
(30:32):
Okay, there are severalprophecies that say
substantially the same thing.
The idea is that if you watchhuman history, you're going to
reach a point where the Jews areback in their homeland, in
their promised land.
That itself is a miracle and isunprecedented in human history.
(30:52):
But after 2,000 years ofabsence, the Jews come back and
in 1948 they become a state andare recognized by the majority
of the nations of the world,able to have their own land,
their own nation.
Then what happens is that theworld is confronted with this
horrible diplomatic nightmare ofa problem.
(31:14):
What are you going to do aboutthe fact that Christians, jews
and Muslims all think ofJerusalem as their sacred place?
It's such an intractableproblem with overtones of well,
whose land is it and how didthey get it, and are we being
treated fairly?
(31:34):
And all this on both sides.
This issue has been anintractable problem.
Every leader of the world whotries to deal with this problem
fails.
The closest one to success wasJimmy Carter, when he got the
Egyptians and the Jews to agreenot to continue fighting each
(31:56):
other and killing each other.
And how did he get that tohappen?
Well, israel was willing togive the entire Sinai Peninsula
back to Egypt, even thoughthey'd found oil there.
That's why the Carter was ableto look like a great magician of
Middle East diplomacy, becausethe Jews were willing to give
(32:20):
back all this land that they hadconquered twice before and had
quickly given back this thirdtime when they fought in 1967
war, they said wait a minute,we're not going to keep winning
this land and then give it back.
What do you think we are?
We're not that stupid.
But they wanted peace so badlywith Egypt that they gave it
(32:44):
back.
And as a result, that's wherethe Gaza problem kind of really
had its origin, because up tillthen Gaza had been administered
by Egypt and Egypt didn't wantto handle Gaza anymore.
It was a nightmare.
So they gave the SinaiPeninsula to Egypt and then they
were stuck.
They were stuck with Gaza.
(33:06):
Every American president hastried in one way or another to
solve this problem and has notsucceeded.
Biden has struggled.
One of the things that DonaldTrump did that the Jews greatly
appreciated was that hetransferred the American embassy
to Jerusalem instead of TelAviv, and that was really
(33:28):
appreciated.
And he also was involved inhelping smooth the way for the
Jews to establish trade dealswith other Arab states, as I
mentioned earlier.
So the Abraham Accords beganunder Trump and have been
continued under, and evenexpanded a little bit under
Biden.
But Biden is really caughtbetween a rock and a hard place,
(33:52):
because his reelection chanceshinge on being able to attract
the young vote, and the youngvote in the United States has
overwhelmingly sided with thePalestinians on this issue.
That's happening right now.
So Biden wants to help supportIsrael and he's been supporting
(34:13):
Israel but he doesn't want to gotoo far and appear to be
favoring Israel at the expenseof the Palestinian people.
So he tries to make this artfulseparation between the Hamas
and the people of Gaza, and whatthe Jewish soldiers are finding
and the Jewish leaders aresaying is that, well, yeah, we
(34:39):
don't want to hurt thePalestinian people, the Gaza
people either, but they have adeep, violent, angry attitude
toward us.
And we also are frustrated withthe United Nations.
The United Nations is Unwa andthe Red Cross and all these
other organizations that aresupposed to be helping just
(35:00):
provide humanitarian assistanceare actually fighting for and
with Hamas, hiding Hamasoperatives in hospitals, in
schools and so forth.
So it's a very complex, mixedup situation, and this prophecy
in Zechariah is just one ofseveral that say that that's
(35:21):
exactly what will happen.
You can blame God for thishuman situation that we find on
the ground, here in Israel rightnow.
Let's look at one more verseabout what is happening today,
and this is in Zechariah, the12th chapter, the sixth verse.
So we're coming back toZechariah 12 again.
(35:43):
It says on that day, I willmake the clans of Judah like a
blazing pot in the midst of wood, like a flaming torch among
sheaves.
They shall devour to the rightand to the left of the
surrounding peoples, whileJerusalem shall again be
(36:05):
inhabited in its place inJerusalem.
Okay, so the first thing thatthis verse tells us is that
Judah is going, that's, theJewish people, israel, as we
know them today, are going tobecome very effective in their,
in their fighting thesurrounding neighbors, the
(36:30):
peoples around them.
It says, and it's talking aboutthe Palestinian people.
They will be like a a how's itput it?
A, a blazing pot in the midstof wood.
They will devour the, theenemies that they encounter, and
that's what's been happeningand it.
(36:52):
I think that they were muchmore deliberate, much more
measured in past conflicts thanthey are today.
Today, they are determined toabsolutely destroy Hamas and its
ability to wage war.
They're systematicallydestroying Hamas's capacity to
(37:15):
fight, to have, you know,soldiers, to have weapons, to
have ammo, to have tunnels.
They just are determined todevour the peoples around them.
And what's going to happen?
Well, it goes.
It feeds right into that lastscripture we just looked at.
It's part of the process bywhich Israel is going to lose
(37:37):
its public support.
It's going to lose, you know, Ijust read an essay by Thomas
Friedman and then last couple ofdays he's sympathetic towards
Israel and and he's he knowsthat Hamas was, was, they were
butchers and and rapists andthey were awful, but he's saying
that Israel is blowing.
(37:57):
He considers Israel to bemaking mistakes in in the way
they comport themselves in the,in the view of the public
opinion of the world.
Well, bible prophecy predictsexactly that.
That's exactly what will happen.
Israel is going to lose all herlovers, it says in Jeremiah.
(38:17):
Israel is going to lose all ofits support, as as if, as if to
say they can't survive withoutpublic opinion.
Part of the lesson that God, Ithink, is trying to teach the
world is that he's got a planfor the world of mankind and
he's got a certain amount ofland that he is devoted to the
(38:41):
children of Abraham, and he'sgot lands for all the rest of
the world to live in and he isgoing to reconcile all of the
Jews with all of the Arabs andall of the other enemies that
they have.
He's even going to reconcilethe children of Ammon and the
children of of Esau, you know,and the Moabites.
(39:04):
Those are all.
All of those people are goingto be reconciled with the Jews
in the future, but right nowhe's determined to show the
world that what he has predictedand what he wants to happen is
going to happen.
He is God and he is in, incontrol of human affairs, and
(39:26):
the Jewish people are going tofind themselves in a real pickle
in future years, to the pointwhere the four prophecies that I
mentioned, that include theEzekiel 38, 39 prophecy all of
them are pointing to a time whenevery nation of the world is
(39:48):
going to actively be involved orat least passively permitting
the Jewish people to be attackedwith the intention of their of
being eliminated.
There's going to be one lastattempt by the human governments
of the world to completelydestroy Israel, and that's what
(40:13):
the final conflict of the timeof trouble in the world
conditions will be the time ofJacob's trouble.
That is probably only 10, 12years away, but right now Israel
is going, is determined to wipeout Hamas, and they're going to
(40:35):
lose a whole lot of the supportthat they have around the world
now, and that is part of thefulfillment of prophecy.
I love the Jewish people, I loveIsrael.
I support Israel in my smallway of you know, talking in
these podcasts about why Israelis a valuable part of the human
(40:56):
race and going to be theblessing to the world that God
has promised.
But the reality is that Israelis going to go through one last
horrendous difficulty before thetime of peace and blessing can
come to the entire human race.
(41:16):
According to Psalm 44-3, it wasnot the sword of Israel that,
in the past or in the future,will defeat the enemies of
Israel, but God's favor upon theJewish nation.
They will not, in the end, beable to defeat their enemies on
the battlefield, and that's thelesson that the Jewish people
(41:41):
will be taught in the finalbattle that's described in
Ezekiel 38 and 39 chapters.
Even though up to that point,israel will be having its way
with its enemies that surroundthem on the battlefield, in the
end they will lose on thebattlefield but still be saved
(42:05):
as a nation by the favor of God,and the world will see this and
recognize that Israel is indeedfavored in a remarkable, indeed
miraculous, way by an invisiblehand in human history.
So with that I'm going to endepisode seven and I have some
(42:30):
more information that's in alittle more detail, just to
share.
That's already been cut and I'mstill editing and I will come
back with more prophecy insights, hopefully, that you will find
useful as you look to see whatGod is trying to accomplish and
what the Bible says about thefuture that's we're living and
(42:56):
watching right now.
Keep your eyes open.
Don't believe everything yousee on the internet or hear on
the internet, and listen to bothsides of some of the arguments
that are being made and you'llbe surprised.
And it's important to, I wouldsay, give more weight.
If you're inclined not to giveweight to the Israeli point of
(43:20):
view, give it some more weightand give it some more time to
try to understand, because oneof the facts of history is that
those who support and blessIsrael will be blessed.
Everybody who blesses Israel,blesses Abraham, will be blessed
.
So I wish you the best in thatregard and thank you for
(43:40):
listening to.
It Is Near.
The time is coming when all ofthe promises that God has made
for the human race are going tobe fulfilled and it is going to
be a very happy time, thanks.
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