Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem
The cyclical chaos that’s once again manifesting in the Middle East with attacks against the Jewish nation is proof that the Bible is true and that prophesy is trustworthy.
One thousand years before Christ, the psalmist described the sentiment in the Middle East this way: “Come,” they say, “let us destroy them as a nation, so that Israel’s name is remembered no more” (Psalm 83:4).
So antisemitism has been around a very long time—even before Israel occupied the Promised Land.
It was Pharoah who sent his elite forces into the Sinai wilderness to destroy the Jews as they made their mass exodus from the slave pits of Egypt. And they would’ve perished in the desert had God not miraculously intervened and provided a way of escape.
He parted the Red Sea for them and then closed it on top of the pursuing enemy.
The Lord told Moses to stretch out his hand over the sea and, “the waters flowed back and covered the chariots and horsemen—the entire army of Pharaoh that had chased the Israelites into the sea. Not one of them survived (Exodus 14:26-28).
And it’s been this way ever since—hostile regimes attack His people and God ultimately rescues them.
This recurring pattern over the ages has generated a joke (albeit morose) among American Jewish society. We see a similar theme in most of our holidays: “They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat!”
For example: Passover is “Pharaoh tried to destroy us, we won, let’s eat.”
Chanukah is “The Greeks tried to obliterate us, we won, let’s eat.”
And Purim is the same…
You’ll recall that it was that nasty Haman who duped the Persian King into ordering the destruction of every person of Jewish descent. The plan was set in motion throughout the then known world and God used courageous Queen Esther to step up and save the day, at the very last moment.
So Purim (quite literally) is “They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat.”
Interestingly… they’re at it again.
Ancient Persia is now modern-day Iran, whose Islamic regime wants to do what Haman wanted to do 2,400 years ago.
And they’re hoping to do that through a terrorist organization called:
HAMAS.
HAMAS is a “Palestinian” nationalist group that seeks to eliminate the nation of Israel, replacing it with an Islamic state.
HAMAS is an acronym for Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-Islāmiyyah, which in English translates to “Islamic Resistance Movement.”
I put quotation marks around the word Palestinian because the name Palestinian has an interesting origin that not too many people know about.
The Bible only has three terms for that tract of land: (ancient) Canaan, Judea, and Israel.
The term Palestine does not appear in the Quran, nor does it appear in the Bible.
So where did it come from?
In the year 135 AD, after a failed uprising by the Jews, Roman emperor Hadrian (full of spite) renamed Judea—Palestine—after their ancient enemies the Philistines—payback for their rebellion.
But the actual Philistine people (who came from Greece) had disappeared around the 6th century BC.
The people who live in Gaza don’t speak Palestinian; they speak Arabic because they are Arabs.
When Israel regained control over the land promised to them by God (the boundaries given here, Genesis 15:18–21), some Arabs refused to assimilate, and these are the ones (and their descendants) who live in the West Bank and in Gaza—still fighting against Israel’s statehood and right to exist.
Israel will always have enemies, as the Bible predicts.
But the source of the hatred isn’t HAMAS or Hezbollah or the Islamic regimes that openly state their desire to see Israel wiped into the sea.
It’s much more insidious than that.
The Bible speaks of forces of evil that are at work behind such hostile regimes (Ephesians 6:11-12).
Why such fierce and unjustified hatred?
God used Israel to bring Messiah into the world, a Savior (who, according to His human nature, is Jewish—descending as Christ does from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Matthew 1:1).
But who, according to His divine nature, is also God the Son, conceived of the Holy Spirit—equal to God in every way (Colossians 2:9; Hebrews 1:3; John 14:8-9).
The supernaturally inspired antisemitism in the world is because…
the fate of the world, the Coming of Christ, and the Lord’s future Kingdom here on earth are all inextricably tied to the nation of Israel.
If there were no Israel, it would mean that the plan of God had been defeated.
But there’s one Scripture God’s enemy hasn’t taken to heart:
There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan that can succeed against the LORD (Proverbs 21:30).
So, sadly, the rockets and hateful rhetoric will continue to be fired off until Israel’s Messiah says Enough. And in that day, “All Israel shall be saved” (Romans 11:26).
And at the time, the whole world will realize the truth of God’s word given 2700 years ago concerning the nation of Israel:
God says, “I will make Jerusalem like an intoxicating drink that makes the nearby nations stagger when they send their armies to besiege Jerusalem and Judah. On that day I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock. All the nations will gather against it to try to move it, but they will only hurt themselves” Zechariah 12:3-4 NLT
