As Israel Goes So Goes the World
Part 1 0f 5
What Does October 7, 2023, Mean?
When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, President Theodore Roosevelt referred to it as a Day of Infamy. The same epitaph may be stamped upon October 7th, 2023, when Hamas terrorists’ hand-glided into the Gaza Strip and murdered over 1,400 Israeli men, women, and children. For a so-called civilized nation this was a most uncivilized act of barbarism akin to King Herod’s “Slaughter of the Innocents.” They also kidnapped over 150 people now held as bargaining chips in a war they will never win. Israeli President Netanyahu said that the war will not end until Hamas is destroyed, and all the hostages returned.
As Christians, one of the first questions ask is, how does this fit in with end-time Biblical prophecy. One must tread cautiously here but I will give my perspective. One thing for certain is that it is but a harbinger of a more barbaric war yet to be released in the whole Middle East with the destruction of Israel being the main target. One thing that must not be lost in the interpretation of events is the religious connotations that simmer below its surface. This is where the secular press swings and misses every time. When you see and hear the lions roaring on college campuses you wonder what moral insanity some of these journalists and professors learned in university themselves and are now passing on to their readers and students. One can almost feel the Judeo-Christian foundations shaking beneath their feet.
Like many of my Evangelical partners we stand with our shields locked together with the brave soldiers and civilians of Israel. We pray with you and feel your pain and share your sorrow.
As Evangelical’s we believe that the birth of modern-day Israel is a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. In Amos 9:15, God says, “I will plant them in their land.’ Our sorrow is that many Jews are returning to their homeland in unbelief. But as we will see later, it is also prophesied that Israel as a nation will one day turn to Christ. And until that day comes the Covenant promise of God is that he will preserve them and protect them against all enemies no matter how incredible the odds.
The Hamas attack was a stab in the back to Israel, though not fatal it was a reminder that the intentions of her enemies have not changed one iota. Who can forget that when Israel was born as a modern nation on May 14, 1948, the next day the Islamic world went into a panic and like King Herod with Jesus still in his cradle sought to kill him. The revenge of blood repeated itself in 1956, 1973 and 1967. The gloves are still off to this day as blood spats never cease to exist. The unknown factor is will this raging fire become impossible to put out and cause the hidden snake in the grass Iran to raise its ugly head and cause many more deaths. The even greater danger is that Hamas terrorists have a kamikaze mentality and care little for their own people who are innocent sufferers. The fall-out that is just as bad is that when Israel starts pushing back and the killers blood starts flowing the other way, they all cry Antisemitism!
What is even more shocking is that the innocent suffering Palestinians are treated like Pariahs as many innocent people are treated in southern India. Fellow surrounding Arab Muslim nations such as Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon treat them as rejects, refugees. They bar their gates against them as refugees. The reality is that these leaders are using their own as pawns, thorns in Israel side to make her look in the public eye as a mother who has deserted her children.
The sadness just keeps getting sadder. After seventy years many Palestinians are still living in refugee camps, tent cities. One can only imagine the sanitation, poverty and hopelessness that lives in every tent, lingers down every garbage strewn street.
The historical truth is that before the Jews started returning to Israel in the 1900s, the land was vacant of people. There were no prosperous villages, no fertile farmlands, no pure water source, no sanitation, no proper roads, no rich orchards. Those were the living conditions for the average person when Palestine was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. Poverty and prosperity did not begin to trickle in until 1922 when the Ottoman Empire was no more.
When in 1948 Israel became a new nation and a group of loyal farmers became an army and defeated them, it rocked them to their core. The Palestinian invaders left, and as no Arab nation wanted them, Palestinians built their tent cities. To this day they are still used as pawns by their merciless neighbors to black eye Israel’s public image.
Israel is a legitimate nation with its own constitution and flag, language, and currency. It was sanctioned by the UN’s Resolution 181 as of May 1948 and its people are back in the land to stay. Geographically it is about the size of New Jersey, but one day it shall stretch from the Euphrates to the Nile. That is another prophecy that will be fulfilled when Christ returns and sets up Israel final borders.
But here is the best part, Israel does not get its legitimacy to exist from a UN Charter but from the eternal Word of God (Genesis 12:1-3). More than once in its eternal pages God promised Abraham and his descendants the promise that Israel is theirs to possess forever.
Respectfully,
Dr. Robert Bryant