According to the online publication of Bibles for Israel.com in their latest email news update concerning Israel it stated; “As 2023 begins, Israel faces deadly threats from her enemies on all sides. Iran is not the only daily threat. We are fenced in by hostile Islamic regimes, and chaos here in Jerusalem is imminent! On December 28, 2022, Netanyahu’s new government passed a law giving the new Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, broad political control over the police who control the Temple Mount. Itamar, a far right Orthodox Jew believes that Jews should be praying on the Temple Mount which the Palestinians and the Arab world reject.
This will certainly cause a new Arab Uprising in 2023! Itamar Ben Gvir “For us Jewish Believers in Yeshua (Jesus) and our families, living here in Israel it is not easy. We always have to watch our backs as it could be a terrorist bomber at the grocery store or it could be missiles/rockets raining down on our houses,” said one of our ministry workers. Israel’s two main Islamic Arab enemies, Hamas and Hezbollah have joined forces, along with other “resistance groups” to destroy the Biblical Jewish Homeland! “We support the call for a new Palestinian intifada [uprising] and escalating the resistance,” said Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Nasrallah has said in the past and continues to let Israel know: “We’ve doubled the amount of our precision-guided missiles that can hit anywhere in Israel!” Hezbollah sits at Israel’s northern border with approximately 20,000 active soldiers, over 60,000 rockets, and a bank account funded by its illegal drug trade and by Iran.
Also on Israel’s northern border is Syria, which has formed the “Axis of Resistance” movement along with Hezbollah and Iran. Islamic fighters throughout the Middle East NOW have a renewed Jihad (holy war mandate) to defend the third most Holiest Place in Islam: the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. All of the Islamic armies are discussing how to wipe out their common enemy: the Jewish presence in Jerusalem and Israel!”
When you read this it reminds us of Psalm 83 which describes Israel’s immediate Islamic neighbours astir and rearing their heads with cunning as they conspire together and plot against those whom God cherishes as “the apple of His eye,” the nation of Israel, whom God has set at the centre of the nations” (Zechariah 2:8) (Deuteronomy 32:10) (Ezekiel 5:5). Israel’s enemies continue to seek Israel’s destruction as a nation and that the very name Israel itself might be erased from the very memory of man (Psalm 83:1-4). With one accord these Arab nations as well as Iran, Turkey and Syria and the terrorist organizations Hezbollah and Hamas are forming an alliance against Israel (Psalm 83:5-8).
The Abraham Accords is a farce realistically. The only reason the Arab kingdoms by and large on the Saudi Arabian Peninsula are seemingly willing to establish a relationship with Israel is because they are scared of Iran. The main Arab kingdom of course is the Saudis who know that they cannot depend on America anymore as they see the reality of the United States rapidly diminishing as a world power under Biden’s administration becoming a laughing stock to the leaders of the nations of the world.
In psalm 83 the Psalmist, seeing the imminent danger to Israel, cries out to the Lord to deal decisively with Israel’s immediate militant neighbours as He has done in the past when Israel was attacked by their implacable enemies on all sides (Psalm 83:9-18). The reality is for Israel and for the western democracies is that you cannot make peace with Islam. Surely Prime Minister Netanyahu realises this or does he? When you consider the acts of terror, the killing of innocent civilians and the hatred of Christians and Jews in every Islamic country it is clear that Islam has no room for those who will not submit to its ideology and creeds.
The real threat to Israel, to the faithful Body of the Messiah, to wider Christendom and the western democracies is Islam, not China or Russia. When one reads the history of Israel one can see that this ongoing conflict between the Arabs and the Jews traces its roots back to Ishmael and Esau the fathers of the Arab nations who are not the inheritors of the Land of Israel which was given to the descendants of Isaac and Jacob.
As for Jerusalem being the eternal capital of Israel it was given to them by God when He established Jerusalem as its capital under King David 3,000 years ago. As we read; “The king and his men marched to Jerusalem to attack the Jebusites, who lived there. The Jebusites said to David, “You will not get in here; even the blind and the lame can ward you off.” They thought, “David cannot get in here.” Nevertheless, David captured the fortress of Zion—which is the City of David… David then took up residence in the fortress and called it the City of David. He built up the area around it, from the terraces inward. And he became more and more powerful, because the Lord God Almighty was with him” (2 Samuel 5:7, 9).
The fact that Jerusalem is the undivided capital of Israel is a historical and Biblical fact and a situation that God ordained! Furthermore, God has ordained that once again in the future Israel will be called the Holy People, the Redeemed of the Lord; and be called Sought After, The City No Longer Deserted (Isaiah 62 12).
Behind the scenes in this whole scenario of Jew hatred is the spirit of antichrist which seeks to destroy anything and anyone associated with God and with the Messiah our Lord Jesus, the spirit that denies the eternal relationship between the God the Father with God the Son (1 John 2:22-23; 4:2-3). Satan is waging a war against the saints of God.
We know that in his fury he will seek to destroy Israel as a nation but will be prevented from doing so by God, and so Satan in his malevolence will go after the engrafted offspring of Israel, being faithful New Covenant believers who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus (Revelation 12:13-17) (Revelation 13:6-7) (Daniel 7:21, 25; 12:7b).
We also need to keep in mind that after three and a half years of Great Tribulation for Israel, for the faithful Body of the Messiah and for the world at large, the thrones of judgement in heaven will be set in place and the Ancient of days will take His seat and His awesome power and eternal splendour will be revealed to the whole world when He returns to earth in the person of the Messiah His Son to judge the world in righteousness and with justice!
The beast empire of the antichrist will be destroyed and the other beast empires subjected to the Messiah’s rule and at that time His resurrected and raptured saints will inherit the Messianic Kingdom on earth (Daniel 7:9-18, 21-22, 26-27) (Revelation 5:9-10). Israel is God’s prophetic time clock for the nations. It fell into disrepair in 70AD but after being repaired by the Lord it started to tick again in 1948 when “a nation was reborn in a day” (Isaiah 66:7-9). In these days God is making Jerusalem a cup that will send all the surrounding peoples reeling. Judah will be besieged as well as Jerusalem.
On that day, when the nations of the earth are gathered against her, God will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations and all who try to remove it from its God ordained place on earth will be torn and ripped apart at the seams (Zechariah 12:2-3).
As the psalmist writes; Why are the nations in an uproar And the peoples devising a vain thing? The kings of the earth take their stand And the rulers take counsel together Against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, “Let us tear their fetters apart And cast away their cords from us!” He who sits in the heavens laughs, The Lord scoffs at them.
Then He will speak to them in His anger And terrify them in His fury, saying, “But as for Me, I have installed My King Upon Zion, My holy mountain.” “I will surely tell of the decree of the Lord: He said to Me, ‘You are My Son, Today I have begotten You. ‘Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance, And the very ends of the earth as Your possession. ‘You shall break them with a rod of iron, You shall shatter them like earthenware.
’”Now therefore, O kings, show discernment; Take warning, O judges of the earth. Worship the Lord with reverence And rejoice with trembling. Do homage to the Son, that He not become angry, and you perish in the way, For His wrath may soon be kindled. How blessed are all who take refuge in Him” (Psalm 2).
