(Isaiah 17:12-14) “Alas, the uproar of many peoples Who roar like the roaring of the seas, And the rumbling of nations Who rush on like the rumbling of mighty waters! The nations rumble on like the rumbling of many waters, But He will rebuke them and they will flee far away, And be chased like chaff in the mountains before the wind, Or like whirling dust before a gale. At evening time, behold, there is terror! Before morning they are no more. Such will be the portion of those who plunder us And the lot of those who pillage us.”
Today Satan is raging and roaring like a lion as he roams to and fro across the surface of the earth (Job 1:6b; 2:2) (1 Peter 5:8). As he has already done since being kicked out of heaven, he is working spiritual deception, idolatry, sodomy, false religions, war and destruction, devastation, death, poverty, disease, earthquakes and other ecological disasters of one sort or another. Today, more than at any other time in history, Satan is raging against Israel and the Body of Messiah spiritually grafted into the Commonwealth of Israel.
Already faithful New Covenant believers are being maimed, imprisoned, tortured, divested of their properties and freedoms, imprisoned, and murdered for their faith in, and loyalty to, the Lord Jesus and to His Word the Bible. Having said this in these last days Satan is specifically ‘upping the ante’ on his oppression of Israel because he knows that God’s prophetic plan and purposes for the Second Coming of the Messiah our Lord Jesus depends on the survival of Israel as a nation. In his perverted and twisted and tormented mindset Satan thinks that if he can destroy Israel as a nation then the Lord Jesus, the king of Israel, will not have a kingdom to come back to. Of course we know that God has already outwitted him. Israel will remain as a nation above all other surviving nations and Jerusalem as the Capital of the world.
When you consider the nations that have suffered down through history, no nation has suffered more than what Israel has suffered from foreign armies determined to stamp them out as a people and destroy them as a nation (Psalm 83:2-3). While God has permitted these adversaries to assail Israel when His people turned away from Him, having embraced idolatry and the ways and customs of the pagan world, when He has brought His people back to himself through applied pressure He has made short work in destroying their enemies that have come against them. Where are the global empires today of Ancient Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome?
They are all gone, yet Israel remains today, having been reborn in a day as a nation in 1948 despite being attacked by Islamic nations bent on Israel’s destruction who did not want this to happen. After almost 2,000 years of exile the Jewish people are back in their land given to them by God to be for them as “an everlasting possession” (Genesis 17:7-8). As the prophet Isaiah wrote; ““Before she was in labour, she gave birth; before she was in pain, she delivered a boy. Who has heard of such as this? Who has seen such things? Can a country be born in a day or a nation be delivered in an instant? Yet as soon as Zion was in labour, she gave birth to her children. Shall I bring a baby to the point of birth and not deliver it?” says the LORD. “Or will I who deliver close the womb?” says your God” (Isaiah 66:7-9).
Today Israel is at the centre of world affairs and the nations are like a gathering storm ready to be unleashed upon the Jewish people. Already there are protests in the nations globally over Israel’s God given authority that was ratified through a blood covenant God made with Abraham and for his descendants to possess the whole land of Israel from the Wadi of Egypt in the south all the way up to the River Euphrates in the north, God’s real estate including the Sanai Peninsula, Gaza, Samaria and Judea (the west bank), north, central and southern Jordan, Lebanon and a portion of Syria including the Golan Heights, and to have Jerusalem as its capital all for His people Israel to possess (Genesis 15:17-19).
The historical background of these verses in Isaiah 17:12-14 refers to the time when God destroyed the Assyrian army laying siege to Jerusalem in the time of King Hezekiah, who sought the LORD, and consequently saw the LORD do a mighty supernatural work to deliver His people from the threat of the Assyrian invaders hell bent on pillaging the city of Jerusalem. Today Jerusalem is at the very heart of Israel’s conflict with Islam. The escalating war with Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran and other Iranian proxies is a war with Islam and with the whole Muslim Arab world.
God never made a covenant concerning the Land of Israel with Ishmael and his descendants, but with Isaac and his descendants, the people of Israel (Genesis 17:19-22). God called them “Israel”, giving them that name through the patriarch Jacob (Genesis 32:28). As for the name ‘Palestine’ it was a name concocted by the Romans who sought to eradicate the Jewish identity after the Bar Kokhba revolt, the large-scale armed rebellion initiated by the Jews of Judea, led by Simon bar Kokhba, against the Roman Empire in 132 AD. Lasting until 136, it was the third and final escalation of the Jewish–Roman wars.
The word ‘Palestine’ was derived from the world ’Philistine,’ the ancient enemies of Israel who lived in Gaza. The Romans, in a fit of spite, reapplied the term “Palestine” to the Land of Israel after they defeated Bar Kokhba in 135 AD. In effect, the Romans sought to erase the association between the Land of Israel and the Jewish people. The “Palestine” moniker continued to be used long after the Roman Empire fell. When Muslim armies conquered the region in 629 CE, they Arabized the name to “Filastin.” This term cannot be found in the Quran, while the name “Israel” is mentioned several times.
The regional name “Palestine” endured. During the middle ages, it became common in early modern English and was employed by the Crusaders. But for nearly 2,000 years, it never referred to a country or a group of people. In short, for most of recorded history, there were never any “Palestinians.” The modern “Palestinians’ today are displaced Arabs living in Israel or Israeli citizens. The Triune God Himself calls the land Israel, the writers of the Old and the New Testament call the land Israel and the Messiah our Lord Jesus calls the land Israel. Those who argue about this argue with God!
The whole ‘Palestinian’ cause is a weapon Satan is using to attack and to destroy the Jews. People around the world can hold rallies and protests as much as they like about the so called rights of the Palestinians, calling the Jews occupiers, accusing them of war crimes and calling for them to be gassed, but these anti-Semitic protestors know nothing about Israel’s history as revealed in God’s Word and even in the writings of secular historians concerning the Jewish people and the fact that the land is called Israel. Let’s see what Isaiah has to say about the nations ‘roaring’ against Israel.
(Isaiah 17:12-14)
“Alas, the uproar of many peoples Who roar like the roaring of the seas, And the rumbling of nations Who rush on like the rumbling of mighty waters! The nations rumble on like the rumbling of many waters”
God’s Word says that when the enemy comes in, like a flood the LORD will raise up a (battle) standard against him (Isaiah 59:19). As we also read in the psalms “The LORD sits enthroned over the flood; the LORD is enthroned as King forever. The LORD gives His people strength; the LORD blesses His people with peace” (Psalm 29:10-11). Satan may stir the nations against God’s people but it is the flood of God’s power that sweeps the wicked nations away (Proverbs 10:25) (Psalm 28:3) (Zephaniah 1:2-3) (Proverbs 21`:7) (Psalm 73:19) (Psalm 58:9) (psalm 90:5) (1 Samuel 12:25) (Matthew 24:36-41). And then we read;
“But He will rebuke them and they will flee far away, And be chased like chaff in the mountains before the wind, Or like whirling dust before a gale. At evening time, behold, there is terror! Before morning they are no more. Such will be the portion of those who plunder us And the lot of those who pillage us.”
The nations are ‘roaring’ at Israel right now as we see the rising storm of Anti-Semitism among the nations of the world. However, when the Lion of the Tribe of Judah roars, the jungle of this world will tremble, terror will grip all the nations that have sought the destruction of the Israel of God, His redeemed people! At the sound of the Messiah’s roar people from every walk of life from kings and princes down to the common people will seek to hide from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the lamb of God descending to earth at His Second Coming, because the day of His wrath upon them has come (Isaiah 13:6-11) (Revelation 6:12-17). Those who dare to touch Israel touch the apple of God’s eye.
He has the sovereign right to do with His people what is the very best for their spiritual and physical welfare. He is the divine potter and His people Israel the clay, and the potter’s wheel, the circumstances of life. The Potter knows what the finished product will be like and works to shape and to mould it to that end whatever it takes to do this. He throws the clay onto the wheel of circumstances and without taking his eyes off of the clay, starts to mould the shapeless clay according to the purpose and finished shape He has in mind (Jeremiah 18:1-7). Even if the clay does not mould He perseveres with it for a long time, and even if He has to re-fashion it into another vessel, the clay will always end up being what it’s moulder has desired.
He is still moulding Israel and the Time of Jacob’s Trouble is still looming on the horizon. Israel has been stubborn on the wheel of the pervading circumstances but in these end times God will fully restore Israel nationally and spiritually, not because they have earned or deserved it, but because the LORD remembers His covenant with our forefathers of faith Abraham, Isaac and with Jacob and their descendants and will do it for the sake of His holy name.
As He said through the prophet Ezekiel; “Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus says the Lord God, “It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you went. I will vindicate the holiness of My great name which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord,” declares the Lord God, “when I prove Myself holy among you in their sight” (Ezekiel 36:22-23). When the Lion of the Tribe of Judah roars the jungle of this world will shake and its inhabitants tremble with fear and their roaring against Him and His redeemed people will be silenced forever!
