(Zechariah 12:2-3) “Behold, I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that causes reeling to all the peoples around; and when the siege is against Jerusalem, it will also be against Judah. It will come about in that day that I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples; all who lift it will be severely injured. And all the nations of the earth will be gathered against it.”

Yesterday in the Online Edition of the Australian Jewish News it was reported that Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid slammed Australia’s announcement on Tuesday that it would no longer recognise West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, as the Foreign Ministry summoned Canberra’s envoy to clarify the matter. “Jerusalem is the eternal capital of united Israel and nothing will ever change that,” he said. The Foreign Ministry, which Lapid also heads, said Israel “expresses its deep disappointment” over the decision, calling it the result of “short-sighted political considerations.”

Australia’s Foreign minister Penny Wong announced the decision to reverse the policy of the Morrison government late on Tuesday morning while members of the Jewish community were celebrating Simchat Torah. “The Government has reaffirmed Australia’s previous and longstanding position that Jerusalem is a final status issue that should be resolved as part of any peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian people. This reverses the Morrison Government’s recognition of West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” she said. “Australia is committed to a two-state solution in which Israel and a future Palestinian state coexist, in peace and security, within internationally recognised borders. We will not support an approach that undermines this prospect.”

It follows assurances by her office right up until earlier that morning that the former government made the decision to recognise West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. No decision to change that has been made by the current government, after The Guardian reported on Monday night that text referring to the Morrison stance had been removed from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s website. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) said it was “extremely disappointed by the Government’s decision to withdraw Australia’s recognition of west Jerusalem as the capital of Israel without public consultation or opportunity for public debate, and in a conspicuously opaque manner”. Aside from being poor policy, the withdrawal of Australia’s recognition that Israel’s capital is in Jerusalem is a gratuitous insult to a key economic and strategic ally,” the ECAJ said.

The Palestinian Authority has applauded the decision. “We welcome Australia’s decision with regards to Jerusalem & its call for a two-state solution in accordance with international legitimacy,” the Palestinian Authority’s civil affairs minister, Hussein al-Sheikh, said on Twitter. The Walla news site reported that Israel was taken by surprise by the decision, which came just months after the head of the Middle East Division of the Australian Foreign Ministry visited Israel and made clear to his counterparts that there was no change expected in Australia’s policy on West Jerusalem. As for Anthony Albanese, according to a report in the Australian Jewish News back in 2013 it stated; “Anthony Albanese is unashamedly pro-Palestinian. A founder of the federal Parliamentary Friends of Palestine, the new Deputy Prime Minister is, by his own admission, very critical of a lot of Israel’s policies.”

While he has condemned the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, a Palestinian-led movement promoting boycotts, divestments, and economic sanctions against Israel, he fully supports this two-state solution from hell. Recently after winning the Federal election earlier this year the Albanese left-wing socialist government gave the Palestinian Authority $20 million dollars as aid to the Arabs living in the Gaza Strip but inevitably it will go into the coffers of Abbas and his terrorist forces such as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist organization both hell-bent on the conquest of Israel and Jerusalem for the Arabs and the wholesale exile of the Jewish presence from Israel. This is the truth! Abbas will never accept a two state solution.

The irony of this whole two-state solution from hell is that the Arabs had a state of their own in the Transjordan established in 1921 under the British mandate and when the Arabs living there sided with Israel’s enemies in the six-day war in 1967 the Israeli forces took control of the area. If the Arabs living in the Transjordan had sided with Israel then they would still have their state today. As for Jerusalem it has been the capital of Israel for at least 3,000 years from the time of King David who marched on Jerusalem and attacked the Jebusites who lived there and took up his residence there calling it the City of David which still exists today in Jerusalem. And we are told in the Word of God that David became more powerful, because the Lord God Almighty was with him (2 Samuel 5:6-10). God Himself has also said; “But now I have chosen Jerusalem for My Name to be there, and I have chosen David to be over My people Israel” (2 Chronicles 6:6). The whole ‘Palestinian’ cause is anti-Semitic and anti-God at its core.

God gave the whole land of Israel to the decedents of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to be for the nation “an everlasting possession.” He did not give it to Ishmael and Esau the fathers of the Arab nations (Genesis 17:7-8, 17-22). God gave the decedents of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob the land from the Wadi of Egypt to the Euphrates River and everything in between and sealed the deal through a blood covenant which no one violated in the days of Abraham (Genesis 15:17-19). The nation was given the name Israel by God Himself through the Patriarch Jacob (Genesis 32:28). God never called the land ‘Palestine,’ a name invented by the Romans seeking to destroy the Jewish identity as a nation. Those political leaders of the nations that seek to carve up Jerusalem and the land of Israel will bring upon themselves and their respective nations the judgement of God! (Joel 3:1-3, 12-16).

The prophet Zechariah tells us that at the end of this present age, which is fast approaching, that the armies of those nations that want to see the dissolution of Jerusalem will be ripped apart because they have wilfully sought to move Jerusalem from its divinely allotted place designated by God to be at the centre of the nations. As the prophet Ezekiel writes; “This is what the Lord GOD says: ‘This is Jerusalem, which I have set in the centre of the nations, with countries all around her” (Ezekiel 5:5). Jerusalem itself will be the future headquarters of the Messiah our Lord Jesus after He has come back, destroyed all opposition and established His Messianic kingdom at Jerusalem from which He will govern the nations of the world that have survived his Second Coming.

As the prophet Isaiah writes; “Now it will come about that In the last days The mountain (kingdom) of the house of the Lord Will be established as the chief of the mountains (kingdoms), And will be raised above the hills (all earthly kings); And all the nations will stream to it” (Isaiah 2:2). God tells us in His Word that He has placed His name in Jerusalem (2 Chronicles 6:6) (Psalm 132:13-14) (Psalm 76:2). In fact He has placed His name forever in His Temple (1 Kings 9:3) (2 Chronicles 7:16). Even though the first Temple in 586BC was destroyed by the Babylonians and the Second Temple in 70AD by the Romans God has always had His temple on earth.

Firstly, the Messiah our Lord Jesus was the complete and perfect manifestation of God’s Temple in the flesh (John 2:19). All of the fullness of the Triune Godhead dwelt in Him in bodily form (Colossians 2:9). The physical temple at Jerusalem was all about Him and all of the furnishings, the sacrifices and especially the Ark of the Covenant all pointed to Him. They were the shadows pointing to the reality of the temple fully revealed in the Messiah.

Secondly, God still has His temple on earth being the bride of the Messiah, the faithful Body of the Messiah corporately, in which He dwells by His Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16-17) (1 Corinthians 6:15-20) (2 Corinthians 6:14-18) (Ephesians 2:19-22) (1 Peter 2:5). Having said this there will be a future Temple on earth which will be the Millennial Temple where indeed God will have placed His name forever as Israel must fulfil its divine destiny on earth as a nation.

On the Day of Pentecost David’s fallen tabernacle was spiritually restored partially and the Gentiles who believed in the Messiah were spiritually grafted into the Olive Tree being the Commonwealth of Israel (Amos 9:11-12) (Acts 15:16-18) (Romans 11:17-18) (Ephesians 2:11-22). God never intended to establish a Gentile denominationally structured Church separate from Israel! There is only one Body of the Messiah, only one bride, and together the remnant of Jews and Gentiles as the believing elect community will co-reign as a kingdom of priests with the Messiah on earth after He has returned to establish his Messianic Kingdom (1 Peter 2:9) (Revelation 1:6; 5:10).

At present Israel as a nation are spiritually alienated from God, from the Messiah and strangers and aliens to their own covenants of promise fully established for them in the Messiah our Lord Jesus. However, the hardness over their hearts towards the Messiah is a partial hardness and will be removed because He has put His name forever in His Temple and their complete spiritual and national restoration will come at the ends of this present age and in that day “All Israel will be saved! Because “the gifts and call of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:25-29). In that day every Jew still living on earth will be saved! Whether it is the governments of the United States, Great Britain, the European Union, the United Nations, Russia, the moderate Arab states, or Egypt or Australia and New Zealand all pushing for a two-state solution, they all have their faces against God and God has His face against them because they all seek to divide up His inheritance. Of course Satan is behind all of this but God always checkmates Satan on the chess board of the nations!

If Israel goes back to its 1967 borders then it would be indefensible against its implacable malevolent antagonists both in the Western and Islamic world. Satan has always tried to destroy Israel because He knows that the Second Coming of the Messiah depends on the survival of Israel as nation. Of course he will not succeed! Satan also knows that he experienced his first defeat at Jerusalem and will experience his last defeat there in the future. God’s prophetic time-clock for the nations is Israel.

When the Lord Jesus has come back and the surviving nations stand before Him the sheep nations will be separated from the goat nations in relation to the way they have treated the Jewish People, His brothers and sisters in the flesh. Those sheep nations that have defended and befriended the Jewish people will go into their everlasting reward in the Kingdom of God. However, those goat nations that have defiled, denigrated, persecuted and murdered the Jewish people will be consigned to the flames where forever they will be in conscious torment (Matthew 25:31-46). One cannot claim to love the Messiah our Lord Jesus yet not love His Jewish brothers and sisters in the flesh! While we are saved only through faith in the Messiah our Lord Jesus our good shepherd and not by works of righteousness we do, if we are truly saved then we will befriend and defend Jesus’ brothers and sisters especially those Jews who are as yet to come to saving faith in Him. As Paul writes; “To the Jew first” (Romans 1:16).

Those who seek to attack and destroy Israel and remove the divine status of Jerusalem will find that God Himself “will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples; all who lift it will be severely injured.” Every truly born again, blood washed, blood redeemed Spirit filled New Covenant Bible believer in the Messiah our Lord Jesus will see God’s prophetic purposes for Israel and that if Israel did not exist neither would the Body of the Messiah. Furthermore, in the Time of Jacob’s Trouble where Israel as a nation will be centre stage in world affairs, the only true friends the Jewish people will have in their darkest hour to come will be the Body of the Messiah who will stand with the Jewish people against all the odds!

The decision of the Albanese government in Australia to deny that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Israel and, to side with, and financially support the so called ‘Palestinian’ state, is an affront to God, and will bring with it His judgement on the nation. In the long term will Australia be a sheep nation or a goat nation? The dire consequences of choosing not to side with Israel is beyond all human comprehension. It does not pay to muck around with Israel as they are still the apple of His eye!

As God declares through the prophet Joel; “Come quickly, all you surrounding nations, and gather yourselves. Bring down Your mighty ones, O LORD. Let the nations be roused and advance to the Valley of Jehoshaphat, for there I will sit down to judge all the nations on every side. Swing the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, trample the grapes, for the winepress is full; the wine vats overflow because their wickedness is great!” (Joel 3:11-13).

Ultimately every nation on the planet will either be a goat nation of a sheep nation. Has Australia now become a Goat nation? Only time will tell, and time is rapidly running out for the nations and when it runs out they will find themselves in the valley of Decision! (Joel 3:14).