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BULLETIN ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FOUR

The Reason for and the Resolution of
The Israeli  Election Problem of 2019

Few may be those who do not know of the dangerously near 3rd election problem in Israel. Once ? It did not work in practice, so try again. Hence the second election. Notoriously, it did not work, and loggerheads if not log jam issues arose, as insoluble as diamond in water.

What might be a way, this ? that ? No, it will not do. So does each say. They even want a solution, but no it disappears like fingers of mist in a fog, into the general obscurity.

Iran rumbles, parallels of weaponry for Israel and Iran appear on the Web, although nowadays with exotic innovation in such things, from the realm of the mini- or even micro- to the mega-, these abound. Iran's declarations against Israel seem the very epitome of militancy, self-pre-occupation and rage. It is of course precisely as predicted in Ezekiel and is parallel to the prophecy; and the nearer Iran gets to atomic action and the nearer Russia gets to be a supplier of weaponry to Iran, and hence to proxy warfare with Israel by these means, the closer is the parallel to the Ezekiel 38-39 prophecy concerning what will happen to Israel, when the time comes in the Lord's appointment book. Comes for what ? When it comes for a multinational invasion which appears rather clearly to include both Russia and Iran.

But that is not our topic: merely the unusual and morbidly threatening situation, not only in itself, but in its appearance in close parallel to the noted prophecy, which in much is amplified in type at least, in Deuteronomy 32, Micah 7 and Isaiah 66. The point is made in the biblical text again and again, that in so acting when the time comes, not very far from the return of Israel to its forsaken land, the Lord God, the very same Lord God of Jacob, the One who promised a particular land and blessedness for the whole world (Genesis 12, cf. Genesis 15, 17,22) for and through Israel, will show Himself indeed as the Saviour for Israel.

The nations will know, Israel will be convicted in heart and conscience and convinced. The Lord's long-standing (over three millenia old) promises, being fulfilled, will show the more practical that what He means is His business, that He said it, and that He will do that business. But He will not change; nor will His word move one iota or jot (cf. Matthew 5:17-20, Isaiah 34, 59).

How then do these facts relate to the current electoral difficulties in Israel ?

The major parties successful in the recent elections have one major distinction. One INSISTS on retaining its (substantial) connection with the religiously oriented parties in Israel. A practical exhibition of this resides in the exclusion of certain of the Orthodox from military service, which appears utterly acceptable as a continuing practice, to one of the Parties. The other retains the religious connection and prefers the secular.

In this, biblically, BOTH are wrong, and one of the more usual results when this is so, in a contest, is division and confusion, which appears to be growing.

From the biblical perspective, according to the divine Mind, that has revealed for the last few thousand years by the Maker of that mentally and spiritually alert nexus which is called mankind, what He wants, and has given quite adequate alert. Israel was chosen by Him for a task (cf. Isaiah 43:21), and it has been deflected from doing it, has defected from its Lord and been delivered to precisely  those negative results spelled out for such actions in Leviticus 26.

Its return nevertheless, to the land from which in consequence (Micah 5:1-3) God evicted it for a time (and a time ONLY, cf. Jeremiah 31:18-37, 33:12-18, Isaiah 49:8ff.), is repetitively predicted in a post-Messianic setting as indeed is the Jeremiah reference, where restoration of Israel to its land and thence to its Messiah (as in Zechariah 12), is in view.

Indeed, in Jeremiah 31:28 in its context, the Lord shows that not only is there to be a change in the divine action, when the purge on their sin ceases its negative thrust, but a COMPLETE reversal, is purposed by the King of Israel. AS He had been bringing Israel DOWN, in discipline, now He will proceed with the next Act: He will decisively and activistically BUILD them UP! (Jeremiah 31:10,28).This is not to congratulate them (Ezekiel 36:22), but out of His divine faithfulness and mercy. In Zechariah 12-13 we see the predicted giant victories over antagonistic forces which occurred in and following 1948 in fulfilment, and the details of the conversion to become so vast a change in the nation.

Which conversion and to what ? one might ask.

Why that to Jesus. Which Jesus ? the relevant One, Jesus the Christ whom, as Zechariah points out in this place, they pierced; and he proceeds in predicting that they will mourn in repentance and seek (and obtain) remission for their guilt in doing so. They will in vision "look upon Me, whom they pierced", the text of the prophet declares, some 500 years before they even did it, in one of the greatest prophetic 'scoops' of all time, to use the newspaper term.

Reverting briefly to the contemporary electoral fog, then, in Israel, we see one side insists on a religious aspect in government (rightly in this case, for so from the first it was designated), but it excludes the very source of their religion in Jesus Christ, Messiah whose very death date was predicted from Daniel (Daniel 9:24-27, cf.  Christ the Citadel ... Ch. 2). Hence it has a certain drag as Israel faces a vast, highly armoured, Russian supplied, Iran touting series of co-operative forces, which some regard as surrounding it. You need to be right about God then, even more dramatically than usual!

Its religion has failed to continue in their own word of God, with the insistence of the prophets. The nation has not yet repented. The religious aspect now in view is therefore not the divine solution. In a crucial aspect, the religion is not the right one, as prescribed in their own Book.

The other major electoral party, wants no religious 'bondage'.  At least, they are not conserving what has become an obstruction in the field; but secularity is not the destiny designed for Israel as a nation for God, distinctively so. Indeed, their wanderings as expressed for example in Psalm 78 at the religious level, achieved enormous provocations against the Lord, and it was repetitive.

In this case, biblically a change is required in Israel, as in Zechariah, at which the vast powers of God will decisively operate against its inveterate, chronically contemptuous enemies (cf. Isaiah 51:21-23, Micah 7, Deuteronomy 32).