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CHAPTER SIX

I Kings 22

 

TIRESOME TROUBLES FOR DYING TRUTH

WHICH YET LIVES TO MAKE DEAD NOUGHTS OF DREADNOUGHTS

 

Miserable Misalliance Means Multiple Mischief

There was once a king of maleficent power and dizzy dynamic. To desire is to have, seems to have been his motto. His name was Ahab, and in I Kings 22 we find him, after first lusting for the land adjoining the palace of some commoner, receiving it through the lying fraud of his wife. She used slander against the owner and contrived to get the populace roused against him so that he was stoned. The property then being ... vacant, the King was free to take it. He did not hesitate to do so. He name was Jezebel and his name was mud.

In the vineyard to which Ahab, for that was the King's name, went to take possession, he was met by a faithful servant and prophet of the Lord, none less than Elijah, showing that the Lord took account of these regal dealings and reelings from righteousness as if it were a plague. In fact, in I Kings 21:18, He  sent him, and more than that, told him where to find the King, in the vineyard. He delivered a judgment, a sentence from God: The pith of it was this, at the practical level. In the place where dogs licked the blood of (slain, murdered) Naboth, the former owner of the vineyard, they will lick YOUR blood!

Ahab seeing Elijah, and having had experience of him in the matter of rain withheld for 3 years because of his woeful idolatries and rebellions against God, leading to the death of the false priests who had fostered it, indeed in the matter of rain returning when the menace was cleared from that theocratic land, at once expostulated! Have you found me O my enemy! he exclaimed. He would be found out by the God of righteousness in far more searching ways than this. SO if you are caught in any follies, disjoin from them as in a cancer operation. Cancer is safer than these.

Ahab was temporarily abashed, and was given a little more time by the Lord. In this, he pursued his rampant follies. In its outcome, this teaches us wisdom: from evil, don't just relent, but actually repent.

Three years passed.  So does wickedness polish its crown and smile smugly at its vision and wisdom, and many congratulate it, as some  now do the invasion of Israel in its little rump of land, left to it after the theft of most of it for Jordan, from the original Palestinian 'home' given by the League of Nations*1. Ahab had an idea. There had been peace with Syria for a while, and he had a notion to get some more land for the nation, and not this time, just for himself (I Kings 22:1ff.).

The needs of greed seemed not to diminish but rather to expand. Asking righteous King Jehoshaphat (by a terrible error of the same, Ahab's son-in-law) to help him, he decided to try to regain control of the location of  Ramoth in Gilead. This was to be his ruin.

Jehoshaphat, though an eminently sound King, was given to one weakness that was all but fatal. He had this trend to ally himself where he did not belong, both in marriage and now later in war. He agreed to accompany, with his own troops from Judah, King Ahab of the North (this then being called 'Israel' since its separation from the rest). In some four episodes he tried to accompany the wicked, in marriage, in this war, in another and in a commercial operation which failed miserably, in ship building for maritime enterprise.

Indeed on one later occasion, the prophet who met him and the foolish king of Israel declared that if it were not for Jehoshaphat being there, he would not even have SEEN the king of Israel (II Kings 3:14, as if he were invisible!). The horrified prophet played on music to still himself, before the Lord enabled him to meet the need of the foolish medley on that occasion.

Let us return, however, to this earlier occasion, with Ahab. Jehoshaphat is making alliance with a python, misalliance with a monster. Indeed, after the battle in which Jehoshaphat was miraculously delivered, the prophet Jehu came and said in immense rebuke: "Should you love the wicked and love those who hate the Lord!" he asked (II Chronicles 19:2), declaring that the wrath of the Lord was upon Jehoshaphat, though he would be spared.

 

Strident Self-Confidence Manufactures Eventual Ruin

Meanwhile, the fatal events unfolded, which brought this rebuke. Jehoshaphat marched off with his wicked and corrupt murderer father-in-law, to battle. The idolatrous Israel produced 400 prophets, a sort of WCC grouping*2, and they all declared that the battle would have a good outcome.

But let us rather have a prophet of the Lord, said righteous Jehoshaphat, blind to the fact HE SHOULD NEVER have been even in earshot of this synthetic and godless muddle. Micaiah, a prophet of the Lord came and pretended to agree, ironically, with the 400. Challenged by Ahab, who realised the bite in the sound bytes, the  Lord's  prophet  Micaiah declared that these prophets were lying, that the Lord had sent to Israel in this thing a lying spirit, for an evil king, and that he would remove him from Israel. Thus careless mutiny against the word and ways of the Lord can produce a delusion! (II Thessalonians 2). This is one form of self-indulgence which is not indulged.

Ahab made it clear that Micaiah would be dealt with on his return from battle; but Micaiah, full of the Spirit of God, roundly retorted that if Ahab came back from the battle AT ALL, then the Lord had not spoken by him! That is faith, that is confidence; but the false confidence of Ahab was to be his last!  From Deuteronomy 13, we see Micaiah risked his life for his faithful rebuke.

 

The Word of God Cannot be Lynched

As if all this was not enough, Ahab tricked and all but trapped his so readily spiritually seduced son-in-law, made a partner in madness for the occasion. Seemingly humbly, deferring to Jehoshaphat, he said he would go into battle as if merely a common soldier, leaving King Jehoshaphat in fact as the most visible presence for enemy arrows.

However, the Lord had His own providential answer, and never under-estimate HIS actions! A bowsman seeing a medley of fighting, fired an odd arrow into the midst of it. Staggeringly (and this literally for Ahab), it 'happened' to hit him, and he died during the fighting, and the dogs licked the blood where his chariot came to rest, when it was washed, for it was taken back to Samaria. The city that saw the blood of murdered Naboth found, seeping for the dogs no less, that of his exalted murderer, who died slowly, while the victim, whose property he took, died fast under stoning. 

 

Smitten, He Revives, Murdered He Rises even from the Dead

Like lies and fraud against the Lord, Ahab died. In providence, puny assassins of truth are exposed, and the certainty of take-over of innumerable evils becomes but a tarnished memory. How much more when all these trials and tests are over, does the Lord, whom death could not break, who even brought some of the beauties of heaven to earth after the resurrection, expose after all is past, the pith. This He may do by the long shot of His supervision of all, the arrows of events, amid the forces of ruin against righteousness, however many may be the kings, cults and frauds who like a mice plague, seek or act to overcome the church, do violence to truth and murder man in the image of God, or seek to make of him a puppet for survival at the sound of folly. Psalm 2 has denounced it all long ago! It has moreover announced its outcome, advising the 'judges' to beware.

It is time that all people who name the sacred name of Jesus Christ, re-append the title, LORD, and DO what they are told, re-affix the term Saviour, and rely on Him for the Rest-Not-In-Peace provision for the invasive sins that seek to overthrow the rule of  righteousness. It starts by being personal; it proceeds by His return to rule the earth before its dismissal (Acts 1:7ff., Psalm 2, 98:9, Isaiah 11, Micah 4). It is time to trust vitally in Him, not in misalliance whether with worldly politics, or savvy sophistication, to seek spirituality not recline amid haughty hollowness, heeding a great mouth seeking to engulf and even commandeer morals amid amoral rebellion against the God of righteousness, using HIS name to mislead HIS people.

Depart therefore from your Ahabs, and the fraudulent spiritual professionals who re-do the dizzy act of false prophet Zedekiah, even using visual aids. Do not seek to arouse the fury of the Lord, whether by exalting folly, in the UN, the WCC, the anti-Israel gang who violate everything to gain nothing, ignoring the Lord's appointment; for these will not come blameless from their alliance with Israel's annihilatory foes*2. They are but human Babels of the 21st century, awaiting the arrow of the Lord.

As to Israel, convenient crushing of this land might gain ready oil outside the Gulf of Mexico, and seem to reduce Islamic menace; but it does not make for righteousness. Setting false prophets on high, to which in words on the Koran, President Obama has contributed,  does not make for any national cleansing, but rather a befouling, as of the very seas. The fast-flowing Gulf of Mexico events may be a divine comment on Obama's comments, in his fast-flowing speech, lauding the Christ-defiling Koran. As to  Israel, it is underwritten, though they did indeed smite Christ, as a nation. Does not the whole body of the Christian Church come from repentant people! If some Gentiles have become converted since, does this mean that Israel may not repent! Indeed just such repentance is predicted in Ezekiel 36-39, Zechariah 12 and Romans 11 in large measure, as is the desolation of the desolators, who seem in anti-Semitic riot to be invading even the counsels of this our own land, Australia. Take heed therefore! Be not highminded as Paul challenges in Romans 11:20.

Rather seek the Lord with such a permanent and biblical alliance that NOTHING will seduce your spirit, enslave your soul or mar your body. Let YOUR arrow of desire seek and find the grace of the Lord, HIS arrow of retribution  in His own self (I Peter 2:22-25), secure your soul and mouth.  There is no replacement for redemption, nor alternative to abiding in Him and no future for revolt (Matthew 20:28, John 6:50ff., Matthew 22:1-14, Psalm 30:5-12). As revolt is revolting, so HIS grace and the holiness of His face is charming; and in His favour is life, even life eternal.

Consider moreover the sense of 'love' in the rebuke by the prophet Jehu, to Jehoshaphat, king though he was (II Chronicles 19).. To 'love'  the wicked in this case meant to foster their enterprises, to co-father their aspirations, to join them in their seekings and to find in their company a common cause.

That is a form of 'love', a kind of kinship and comradeship, so that you see as they see, act as they act, while they are threatening your project with doom because of their false vision; and there you find plenty of false prophets, misled leaders, who so act, as they did with Ahab's 400 professional religious officers (or false prophets). These are like the United Nations and the  World Council of Churches,  and those 'churches' which make their own rules and invent other christs by their own 'leadings', acting with another spirit (as in Galatians 1).

Remember Elisha speaking to the joint battle, later, of Jehoshaphat and Ahab's son, King Jehoram of Israel. If Jehoshaphat were not here, I would not see you! That was his impressive denunciation. Alas, this form of 'love' is a miscreancy, a love of evil which does not despise the flesh and seek for the deliverance of the spirit lost within it! Its indulgence is rather a hatred of what is good!

In II Kings 3, we find that once again, the King of Judah was with company he should shun, and though he was once again delivered, this time by another spectacular miracle, he muddied the pitch and put feet of clay on the ground. Land was not made for that, and man was not made for muddle, but for the service of one Master, one Lord, in one faith, not some concoction, some religious cocktail, made from the otupourings of diligent spiritual deviants, aggressively abreast with the latest spiritual inventions.

God, we read in Psalm 99:8,"took vengeance on their inventions." For me and for my house, the truth, the Lord, the Bible, the Christ of God, the crucified Saviour, His commands, resurrection in very body to life,  and His company suffice (cf. Psalm 17:15). In Him, is "all the fulness of the Godhead in bodily form." Brethren, let us pray for those who are tempted to acquiesce in our land and abroad, with synthetic spirituality and new bibles made from old philosophies and new lusts, to make of man a mechanism for control, not by God, but by deception: and remember this, that children learning,  are being systematically misled by their elders, as these storms rage.

As truth is smitten, so was Christ, its original declaration and eternal Word, smitten. As He was resurrected, so is it, and BECAUSE the God of truth is Almighty, so is it, not as if a proposition had eternal life in itself, but because Christ who does (John 5:26, 8:58, I John 1:1-4), has uttered it, and underwritten it, not only in its biblical Declaration (Matthew 5:127ff., Revelation 22, John 14:26), but with His life. Indeed, just as the crucifixion yielded but more power, in that the limitations of flesh were finished, so does the battle that now rages find for itself, sharers of the doom of the lie (Revelation 19:19ff.). Let us then triumph in the truth which has neither end nor contrivance, but like light itself, declares itself. This light cannot be diverted; and this truth from eternity to eternity, though smitten, is sovereign and does not lie (John 14:6, I John 2:22). Once gain Him who is the light of the world, and ALL things are yours (Romans 8:32, I Corinthians 3:21-23).

It is so, whether we speak of Paul or Apollos, "or Cephas or the world or life or death, or things present or things to come- all are yours, and you are Christ's and Christ 's is God's." Indeed, as Paul also declares, "Thanks be to God for His Unspeakable gift" (II Corinthians 9:15), that He, the Christ, who was in the form of God, and considered equality with Him not a thing to be snatched at (Phlippians 2:1ff.), should yet become man, and more than this, act as a servant!  not stopping at stooping to service sin that its unserviceability should be replaced with His dominion, that life might be full, abundant and what it was created to be.

 

 

NOTES

 

*1

Homeland league of nations

Overflight in Christ Ch.   1.  It Bubbles ... Chs. 10, 11, Israel  4, Ch. 11.

 

*2

WCC, UN, not the Best Bequest ...
 

Things Old and New,  Epilogue 10, 

Overflight in Christ Ch.   1 (WCC and the UN), NEWS 152

Of the Earth, Earthy ... Ch.  13, SMR p. 743.

 

Here you see progressively that truth is threatened by convenience, aspiration is deluged with spiritual swamp water of pragmatism and as in Psalm 2, increasingly the nations roar and rage against the Lord and His Messiah. They even take unkindly to a nation formerly appointed as a messenger through its prophets, that of Israel, and taking on the power of God who is faithful, are finding all things are coming as He said, and they do not desire.

This leads to a desperation which now mounts. They act and act again to allow, endorse, seductively move towards the obliteration of Israel; but it does not go. They will not for all that dismount from their high horse, and the end of the matter is as in Revelation 19-21.

The culmination of Micah 7 awaits them, and the learning experiences of Ezekiel 36-39, where both Israel and the nations have lessons to digest, are prepared for them.

As the quarrel elevates, so the methods degenerate, till there appears little in the way of hatred to surpass this treatment appointed to the yet unrepentant Israel. Yet when the Lord apportions results, it is not without knowledge of the unmitigated vomit and virulence to which that nation has been treated, the lordly deceits used for her downfall.

She has asked for it ? yet of the Lord, not of  man. Of these things the Lord takes notice (Isaiah 49:25-26, 51:21-23, as in Jeremiah 51:35, for the thing is not new); and to these enormities He gives their due judgment (Micah 7:15ff.), when the nations lick the dust, crawling about their holes, as He forecasts of the splendour of His judgments and the rescue of His people, at last themselves in a sudden rush (Romans 11:25ff.), finding Him from whom they had themselves, deeply revolted (Zechariah 12:10-13:1).

The Lord  alone will be exalted in that day (Isaiah 2:17-22, 2:19),  and His faithfulness, divine in name and in deed, exhibited in all its profundity of wisdom and understanding (cf. Ezekiel 36:22), just as His purge of the passions of those who depart from Him, and seek their own will in all their ways on this earth, will not linger, as Psalm 2 and 110 make so awesomely clear.

From  The Pitter-Patter of Prophetic Feet Ch.  4, *2, we have this to the point here (revised and extended for this purpose), which follows.

 This is allied to the failure of many who seeking to find the church as a substitute for Israel - rather than an ingrafting until (as the Scripture has it, in Romans 11) in due course,  Israel is in large measure turned back in spirit  to its Lord, before He comes as King - would ally to this error, that of acting as if to bring in a defalcation of the covenant.

The word of God cannot be thus manipulated.  God will BOTH make the Old Covenant obsolete as He says in Hebrews 8, AND restore His people as He said (in Micah 7, Deuteronomy 32, Ezekiel 36-39), by means that include the power of judgment, as again in Isaiah 59 and 66, with Joel 3. He does not toss up as to which part to secure and which surrender. In the word of God there is no surrender, never indeed surrender. It is man who must surrender. Nor is there falsification of principle. There is here not a contest as to which extreme revision of the word of God to take,  amillenial or dispensational.  The fulness surpasses both; the precision permits neither. (Cf. Bay of Retractable Islands, Mission for the Mainland ... Chs.   4,   5,   6, for the avoidance of unbiblical extremes and resolution in harmony with the word of God in this field.)

The scripture is emphatic and repetitive that this is precisely what will NOT be permitted to occur (e.g. Ezekiel 36-39 taking us to the King in His rule within Israel, an Israel never again to return to idols, but to be assailed from a particular direction, namely the North, by a huge multi-national host).  It will not be able to boast of itself (Isaiah 19), nor will its enemies be able to flourish their corruption and villainy as cards to depict the results of force. It is very clear that their hunger will not be met, their envisagements and programs, whether in Sennacherib or in Stalin, whether in Hitler.Nor will there be succour for their theologies of disenfranchisement, evacuation of repetitive divine promises, counsels and concepts dependent on NON faithfulness to contextually precise forecasts and assurances (cf. Galloping Events Ch. 4) on the part of the Lord.

Not to such ideas does the word of God yield. Neither Israel nor the nations of dispossession will be able to glory, for the one will be cleansed and shown to be dependent in entirety on grace, and the other will be rebutted and shown as was Pharaoh, to have no counsel against the Lord. 

As to the nation of Israel, they may fail; He will not! The nation may abhor their Messiah when He comes, and they did just that AS a nation (though part of them, and His word did not fail to exhibit this from the first, starting with Moses and continuing in David, at Psalm 2. Even that exhibition is one further example of God's unfailing verification of His word (as in Isaiah 41, 48, He protests is His way). In Amos 3:7 God tells us that He DOES deliver forward notice to Israel, on the events to be disclosed concerning its future. It is part of His plan. He does not abrogate it, or anything else that is written from His hand. He does not summon a hearing to find what He is going to do for the nation, in order to dismiss its content. It is by no means HE who will be embarrassed or harassed by history, but as He assures us, all His counsels will be fulfilled. This is in marked and demarcated contrast to the words of those who, unlike Himself, speak seductively and not productively, not knowing that of which they speak.

Of this we learn in Isaiah 44, for it is He who "frustrates the signs of the babblers and drives diviners mad, who turns the wise men backward and makes their knowledge foolishness." On the other hand, with this we learn by contrast that it is He who "confirms the word of His servant and performs the counsel of His messengers". Again in Isaiah 46:10, He makes the point concerning His wisdom and His way, that it is He who is:

 "Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure."

He is not in the business of strange speech and seductive outcomes.

Cyrus, as in Isaiah 44-45, as coming deliverer of Israel, was indeed a TYPE of Christ, but all the less for that, was he a dream. He came and did it. Sennacherib to be sure, as in Isaiah 37-38, was a TYPE of evil self-assertion, self-assurance and lust against the Lord, but for all that, his announced devastation in arms was fulfilled to the last jot.

When God speaks of war and force and bloodshed, He does not mean peace and plenty and solace as in Isaiah 66; and when He speaks of retributive justice for the harassment of Israel and the divine action in store for her enemies, who try to take the baton of judgment from the Lord, and run with it themselves, He does not mean that in fact, He will forget the entire national equation. Nor for that matter does He mean that in rebuking the sinning nation, and correcting it, He will glorify it. He means what He says, neither one philosophical extreme, nor another. It is as it is written. It is God who speaks, not some politician.

He is not allowing some kind of counterpoint, contrast of the most blatant kind with His speech in alleged interpretation under cover of some irrelevant talk about literal and symbolic. There is nothing symbolic about blood, war, vengeance and the nations at last knowing what God has done, and Israel likewise (as in Ezekiel 36-39), one of the themes. You do not lose sight of the way because of the end of the road. You travel, but do not babble. God's maps do not map imagination, though they greatly use it; it is for a purpose that is clear (Proverbs 8:8), not obfuscatory (cf. SMR Appendix A).

In contrast then, to any such concept of the divine word, God will in fact fulfil it in the very matter of nations and power (as in Isaiah 59, 65, Micah 7) with results correlative (as in Isaiah 65, 2, Micah 4, Hosea 7), and is at pains to demonstrate this in the prophetic depictions of Ezekiel 36-37 (cf. SMR Appendix A and Galloping Events Ch. 1), as was Christ in His insistences on the very words given, those to have complete fulfilment (Matthew 5:17ff., 26:54). Christ to the very last detail insisted that the precise circumstances and mode relative to Himself MUST occur. "HOW," He asked - "How otherwise could the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must happen thus ?"

With just the same message, justly famed amongst the annals of Israel, are these words of Asa, when he overcame a massive array set against him:


The vast Ethiopian army was quelled. The same disproportion was nothing to the Lord, when Israel, for that matter, was taken through Moses under direct divine guidance, from the ruling power of then dominant Egyptian empire! So was the justly famed and often recounted Exodus (cf. Psalm 105, 106, Exodus 12ff.). By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God (Hebrews 11:3). Thus we find the result: "so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible". This is the line of emphasis repeatedly provided, in the midst of many diversions and errors.

Did not Jehoshaphat, that noble king, cry to the Lord when in national trouble ? His words again are glorious in the history of Israel: "O our God, will You not judge them ? For we have no power against this great multitude that is coming against us; nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are upon You" - II Chron. 20:12.
 

ANTI-ZION RACISM becomes VOCAL and SLANDEROUS

In that case, as in the current slander of 2001 being made on the UN stage, pronouncing*1 racism against the concept of Zionism, there was a just case put first to the Lord. The Israel of Jehoshaphat's day had in fact NOT fought against these now invading people on the way into the land, for the Lord had forbidden it, said Jehoshaphat. The evil was lustful and real. "Here they are rewarding us by coming to throw us out of Your possession which You have given us to inherit. O our God, will You not judge them ?"

Thus in that day,  these same people were rewarding Israel by seeking to destroy it! Accordingly,  the King made careful protestation to the Lord. So the Lord intervened.

It is a matter of name, not numbers; the name of the LORD, not the numbers of the participants.

It is never a matter of human power, or number, that is cause for rejoicing; rather is it one of purity and principle, of love and mercy, of truth and justice. Thus in this current folly, the endeavour is to characterise Israel as racist, per Zionism, because it wants a home! It is to denigrate in racist fashion, a race which has one of the smallest possible strips of the former home, and which has only a fraction of the homeland accorded it after its distinguished services in World War I, via Chaim Weizmann, whose chemical work had aided the Allies. Much of the land assigned to Israel was 'given away' to Jordan, and what is left is continually a cause of verbal raids by the UN since 1947 indeed, when the capital, Jerusalem was to be internationalised, and segments with disgraceful grace, given to the Jews, here and there.

It is of God, as in the days of Jehoshaphat, that the answer has come. Without numbers, lacking force, in this way and that by mighty military triumphs wrought in weakness, in miraculous deliverances achieved in 1948, they have endured. Thus it was that, when a scattered segment of Palestine arose to subdue mighty Arab nations, they prevailed. In that day, the Lord did indeed "defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem"  (as in Zechariah 12:8), and the feeble began to seem like David in their efficacy. Such has been the observable fulfilment of His word in our own time. It is not such as to exalt Israel, for it suffers as it is denounced when not pounced on; nor is it such as suffers the nations to re-write prophecy. He acts precisely as He said He would both toward the nation of Israel, and those who jabber at it, when the javelin is put aside for a time.

It was in 1967 when the might of Russia, given to Egypt in the measure deemed apt, was broken in a counter-insurgence, and in 1973, when a raid on a holy day became a war that could have eliminated Israel, that the thing grew into statuesque proportions, the victories, astounding triumphs for the 'underdog' as humanly they appeared to be. In fact, of course, they were the Lord's long predicted conspectus of Israel's return and divine protection. Again and again, so fulfilling Zechariah 12:3, have the insurgences come, as Arabs and Islamic zeal constantly seek to invade in many cases and large aggregates.

Yet however aggressively they have sought to subdue, each army assault has led  to entire humiliation of the boasting invasion armies. Allah has had to suffer in silence; but where he is, there is nothing to suffer, since he is biblically, merely an idol, a false prophet, and as such the Lord delights in the exhibition of his inadequacy for life (as in Isaiah 44:24-26 cf. SMR pp. 828-836, 986ff., 50ff., 91). In His kindness, this is one of His ways of alerting people to their spiritual need, being misled by their ignorance, their confusion or their waywardness, if not indeed in many a case, all three.

Now by civilian brutality, using children in the front line and then complaining, bombing children in Israel, and then complaining, claiming need to occupy more of the tiny residue which Israel now has, with their Moslem ways and their warlike jihad clamour, masses of 'Arabs', or 'Palestinians', such people still seek to surge into the Israeli sliver, act to dispossess Israel altogether, or even obliterate her as with Iran, acting with an imperial manner very often in terms of the Moslem body. As to these militants,  judging from their own repeated declarations, they often show the lust. They want more than merely Iran, Iraq, and much in Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia, not to mention Syria, Lebanon and Libya, which was reported to be aiming to cause uprising of jihad nature in Zimbabwe. In all these sources,  there is land and Islam. They are not without land in absurd disparate multiples of that being eroded and grasped for, in the tiny residue of Palestine left to Israel. They lay siege and rocket  the bit left, and complain if Israel tries to stop it. They lampoon and desire, but it does not come to them. There is still a little bit left. May it not be left ?

But no! The one little sheep must be slaughtered, subdued, submit, lose its integrity, lose its autonomy, lose face, status and peace. Meanwhile, the so just United Nations must have more of Israel taken away, calling it for some reason by the name of 'peace' not invasion, which by international agreement was accorded to Israel from the Balfour Declaration and onwards, and now is sought for ... other purposes.

As if in an intoxication of folly, the UN has been seen as seeming to favour the racism charge. Is Zionism racism ? It is perhaps arrogance for a man to go home ? It is racism for the Jews to want a nation, though here they were for some one and one half millenia, in their now long evacuated homeland in the day of their mercy, long ago. It is invasion for people to return to their land ? A Briton going back is to be accused of racism, for wanting his home back ? It is as if nothing if the White House has bombs land near it, or 10 Downing St. ? The response is too excited ? If Jerusalem and its headquarters are near to destruction by the odd bomb launched, left or lofted, why, let us not consider it so very much. It is but little, a bomb. Is this then the attitude, the approach of other nations to their current capital cities ?

It is 'justice' for what has been decades ago,  internationally accorded now to be removed until it is all but a joke in its territorial parsimony ? It is then just to accuse the deprived, when Islam and its terrors of jihad are all about, to denounce them for  racism because they would like not to be internationalised, islamicised, beaten into some unholy seeming submissiveness to the SUBMIT meaning in Islam itself!  Is it just to demand that the Jews left from Hitler, should fawningly co-operate or be coagulated, and is it right that Islam gets such a help from the UN ?

Is it peace to grant to some, various nations since World War I, and to grant to Islam such a territorial vastness, and then to grab back from what Israel, threatened alike with extinction VERBALLY and with menacing military might despatched to that stated end, what it gained when it fought to retain something of the homeland which the nations had accorded ? Is it right to give so much to some, so little to others ? to intervene against the tiny membere menaced, on behalf of the prodigious proportion of the surrounding territories accorded to its enemies, not least to Jordan which took most of the Palestine internatinally accorded to Israel  ?

 Is it right to co-operate with the threats and thoughts of invasion, of extinction by the MANY against the so few ? Does justice bow to oil lords, and does peace cater to jihad mentality! Is rapacity to be accorded rule ? Are denizens of a nation to capture it by destroying its streets one by one, while the world condemns those who would rather have it otherwise, and seek to prevent this misuse of the territories granted to them!

Now it is of course true that Israel the nation is in this harassed position only because of what it did to the Prince of Peace, without whom of course there will be and can be none. Nowhere is this more obvious than in Jerusalem, the place where He was slain. Certainly, that was according to plan; but it was not the less wickedly for that. It was the Jewish Peter who at Pentecost spoke of the wicked hands which slew Him  (Acts 2:23), so that the matter is far from racial, their own prophet having read the riot act on the matter, as God did long before (as predicted in Psalm 2!).

This fault of Israel however, in no way eliminates or alters the fact of the persecution of bodies such as the UN, and of forces such as Islam. We see the divine scorn of people acting as self-appointed pseudo-divine agents to punish the Jews (Obadiah 12-16, Zechariah 1:15, Isaiah 47:5-9 cf. Galloping Events Ch. 1 End-note 1). Indeed, as these cited scriptures show, the Almighty holds in reserve the power to punish the punishers, and virtually to obliterate the task-masters who would even dare imitate the Pharaoh of old, and trifle with a people called to be sure, and in revolt, yet commissioned for a purpose,  and slated to be restored (Micah 7 cf. SMR Appendix A). They have had long to consider, to meditate, and ... to read what the Lord has written.

Nor, on the other hand, does it repeal the promise of Genesis 12:3, Numbers 24:9.

There is no cancellation of promises with God; there is the splendour of the divine multiplicity of  plan to bring about the singularityh of the result. The plan does not fail; its parts do not collapse; and the result is sure, and indeed, Paul delights in just this fact at the end of Romans 11, following His exposure of the day in which a vast spiritual return to vision in Israel, will being it repentant to the Lord.

God rejoices in the faith which looks to Him, not to the foolish little bits and pieces which human arrogance imagines are the way to rule men, and overcome the world! This overweening conceit at all times asks for its own due reduction, for what exalts itself, as the Lord has said, will be humbled. HE ONLY is to be exalted, since He is Lord and Maker (Isaiah 2:17, 45:12,18), and we His products. Very costly are endeavours to show otherwise, as also very frequent; and they lie like litter, like the Russian built tanks taken out from combat by the Israeli air-force in 1973, when Egypt was with Allah to obliterate the land, and to expunge the people from it, like an incipient UN (whose troops, conveniently, got out of the way of the President of Egypt, so allowing the military their desired access to Israel!). In fact, the word of God being so, it led only to their greater disaster. Zechariah 12:2-3 is visible in dramatic fulfilment before our very eyes, as was 14:1-2, in 1948. The thing is progressive, not recessive.

Thus is power and thus are numbers in the Bible. Power belongs to God (Psalm 57:2, 62:11). It is a dangerous practice to stress it for man as individuals, nations,  groups, a perilous one in the extreme to trust in it, and beside the point to look to it. Mere human power is no criterion and God Himself is the judge. What He apportions, is His will, and what He speaks, it is His word. With others, it is not a thing of wonder that they speak; nor is it strange if they mean to fulfil what they say. When God is the author, the difference is this, He has known the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10), and has the wisdom and the power to accomplish what He says. What is to be, He knows already; and why He is to do what He does, He has likewise known. Since power belongs to God, the assertion of, reliance on or pursuit of power as a way to achieve without Him, is a contest most uneven, unwise and in the end, witless.

He is at no loss for speech.  As to man, He made him in His own image, as to Himself, the Son of God IS the word. Receptors for divine speech are as created, and the Lord is the Creator, and He is well able to communicate, and there is no loss either in logic or in language with Him (Proverbs 8:8), and the obfuscatory mechanisms of sin are not to be assigned as if they were actually a lordly inability to convey what He wants to what HE has made in HIS own image.

Any method to avoid it ?

Even Satan knows that his time is short (Revelation 12:12). His fury is in accord with this ...

Solomon brings out the same necessary relationship between number, power and spirituality, when he declares in I Chronicles 16:14-22:

"He is the Lord our God;
His judgments are in all the earth.

"Remember His covenant forever,
The word which He commanded, for a thousand generations,
The covenant which He made with Abraham,
And His oath to Isaac,
And confirmed it to Jacob for a statute,
To Israel for an everlasting covenant,
Saying, 'To you I will give the land of Canaan
As the allotment of your inheritance,'
When you were few in number,
Indeed very few, and strangers in it.

"When they went from one nation to another,
And from one kingdom to another people,
He permitted no man to do them wrong;
Yes, He rebuked kings for their sakes,
Saying, 'Do not touch My anointed ones,
And do My prophets no harm.' ”

Again, you see deity, not multiplicity, as criterion by FAITH in II Chronicles 16:7-10:

"And at that time Hanani the seer came to Asa king of Judah, and said to him: 'Because you have relied on the king of Syria, and have not relied on the Lord your God, therefore the army of the king of Syria has escaped from your hand.

" 'Were the Ethiopians and the Lubim not a huge army with very many chariots and horsemen? Yet, because you relied on the Lord, He delivered them into your hand.

“ 'For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him.

" 'In this you have done foolishly; therefore from now on you shall have wars.' Then Asa was angry with the seer, and put him in prison, for he was enraged at him..."

Such then, multiply are the attestations concerning numbers and rejoicing in them, when the question is power and capacity. In Matthew 5:17ff. is attestation of precision, in Isaiah 44-45 of straightforward testable reliability in the word of God, not in philosophical substitutes or intransigent usurpers. He needs no help from man, but will do precisely as He has said. While metaphors are net literal in anyone's intelligible speech, nor are  messages litter on the littoral when in context their referent and designation is plain and incorrigibly clear.

 

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