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CHAPTER
FIVE
THE ENCOMPASSING FURORE OF FURY
AND THE COMING WRATH OF GOD
The Affair of Israel in 2013
and of others differently involved
BACKGROUND BEGINNINGS
History happens. That is one of the great things about it. It is not a matter of mere equations, showing the inter-relationship of forces, massive mathematical testimonies to the mind and thought of God who makes the entire difference between a universe ordered and organised, and nothing at all: for to be requires a cause (just as to cease to be on this earth does, as Hamlet was so aware), and the ONLY way this is possible is for the eternal Being on whom everything otherwise cause-free in a causally constructed universe, to bring confined and created things into existence, because that was the desire, so to act, to make history. When this which is mirrored in the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy*1, static now made, runs down, articulated in the Second Law of Thermodynamics, then that too is caused, the law reflecting that fact, so that it might BE a law. Laws like life, have a cause; and many operate in multitudes of manners.
Laws do not allocate themselves, make themselves, fashion universes to conform to themselves, institute the mathematical phases and facets in a system so that they might even be relevant. As with so much in life, it has to be DONE. There is no magic. What causes it has the power to do so, for without it, the lapse would occur, and our thought about it would be barren.
Thinking does not make causes for the universe; it formulates what it finds, and this is what it finds. Figs do not grow on thistles, and cause do not grow on nothing in its sublime ridiculousness, but need enactions, provisions, formulations and formulability in a setting where they can operate. When all this is done, you can have history in such terms. Laws are not all; confinements and constraints are not all; thought is additional, and it too has its laws if it is to be valid and hence operational; but these may be broken, a new element. Spirit in man may ELECT to break them and so speak gibberish, whether as ostensible 'science' or 'history' (in some historicisms) or in anything else. There is no limit to folly except the extermination of life, which is a limit.
History acts. It has facts. It holds results. They are both short term and long term. From the beginning, history has been ready to happen. It loomed, as it still looms but with rather less open face, much being now done. Yet the issues do not change in fact, only in form.
History held possibilities. Man's fall was one (Romans 5:1-12), and if the last 90 years have not sufficed to teach you
how FAR he has fallen,
so that perhaps some devils might almost aspire to reach
the sheer profundity of human devilishness for this excuse and that,shown to millions of suffering,
slammed, damaged, tortured, starved,
incarcerated, incapacitated,
bombed into oblivion, city by city,
psychically burnt with atrocious mind play,
food manipulation and confinement
in the midst of evils all but unmentionable,
and this
in experiments on living beings,
in duplicities and corruptions almost now bidding fair
to become normative filth in governments,in the misuse of the minds and bodies of children,
in forcible use of idolatries, from the Shinto shrines in Korea
to the Communist mindlessnessesso well illustrated by Solzhenitsyn in First Circle for example,
as in schools and universities in many democracies,
where spiritual truth is denied in principle, though often unstated,and the divorced remnant is rammed down throats in terms
which exclude it, in practice, where any but makeshift morals are mocked,
empty ideas made lordly,and then made the very criterion of the New Man in the New World,
which is not at all new, just depraved:
if, I say, all this and much more has not sufficed to show you how far beyond the merely bestial man has fallen,
then what would!
MESSING WITH MYTHS
and returning to the eternal maestro
Illusions became quasi-facts, myths about getting things gradually from nothing or just having them around without a cause, nicely ordered, organised, governed by laws, expressible in precise mathematical equations, interpretable by man, with precise and investigative thought, the mentality implicit in creation being searchable by the intellectuality of man, in intimate correlation, or else misrepresented because of the liberty even more wonderful than is the correlation of the mind of man and that found expressed in the highly governed universe: such things are de rigueur.
Moreover, the return to myths, it was predicted (II Timothy 4:14, II Peter 3, cf. Romans 1:17ff.). It was like a revolving merry-go-round, coming back perpetually where it began, because of the fixation underneath*1A. That has no choice; man does have it, and is thus responsible for his myths (cf. Secular Myths and Sacred Truth), such as the Greeks had, both in purely imaginative terms and in fallacious efforts to found all things on fire or water or change or changelessness*1A, as the mood and mode became popular from time to time. This, it is no better or worse than the case in modern philosophy, which often masquerades as science and occasionally seems to realise this*2, humbled even more by the fact that precisely this irrational and popular anomaly is all as predicted by the mind of the God. It is He who, being eternal, and having desire for those thinkers, speakers, reasoners, who misusing liberty might indeed often become deceivers, especially of themselves for various lusts, those called mankind, made them.
It was not in vain. Freedom has crucial significance for love, and love for man, who can only die, and not live without it in reality, a deformed residue alas and alas. When not so, however, for what God also has provided, disaster is short-circuited and folly is abandoned.
Indeed, God made matter, mind and spirit in a trilogy in man, just as He Himself has eternal company, being a trinity in Himself*3, infinitely intimate, and glorious in holiness (John 1:1-4, Colossians 1:1-16, Hebrews 1, John 16-17, 89:58, cf. Deity and Design, Designation and Destiny esp. Sections 2 and 8). HENCE readily could He send, having made all things consonant with His own desire, including the freedom which can taunt and vaunt if it so will! Yet HOW would He send ? He would and did send His eternal Word and manifesting expression, as the Christ (John 1, 3, Hebrews 1, Isaiah 48:15ff.).
WHY ? It was, if you will, to bring earth back to earth: that is to say, back to its foundations, to have man not only given stark and direct expression of WHO it was who made Him, and could heal with multitudinous facility, all, but a performance which included BEARING the entire mess of mission in man, called sin, which kills, the visionless being vitiated, and the enlightened, freed. This He would do (as in Hosea 13:14 and Ezekiel 34, and as in Daniel, date as specified)
Penalty borne, God having sent His only begotten Son, freely in all justice and mercy, forgave those who received that self-same Son, the ONLY substitute for the idols in the heart of man, and here, the necessary sacrifice for his sin; and so instituted an Age of Grace in which ANY ONE might find Him, pardon free, peace endued, the restoration to God coming in the format of being adopted, as children, inhabited by His Spirit, enabled by His keeping kindness.
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In this process, |
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there was the creation, |
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the fall,
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the collection towards the salvation, |
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moving through Noah, Abraham, Moses,
Joshua, the prophets, |
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and the resurrection of His body |
THE SAGA OF SALVATION
IN THE BOSOM OF HISTORY, TO BE READ AND RECEIVED
It moved on to the performance of these things by the sent Saviour, so that not power, or wealth, or intellect or connections or aristocracy or any other claimant had any entrance at all to the kingdom of heaven, but only those whose hearts being pardoned, were regenerated and MADE into the children of God. God alone did the work of creation, and the work of salvation. These are the works of which He alone is capable, both to make the equipment called man, in the form of a person, and to restore it. In His image, it is too deep for man, and much wasted time is spent imagining the contrary, where men play God. It is not just that it is no 'playing matter', since it requires work, but this is at the demonstrable level of God, for no man can make man in creation. He can only participate in the programmatics for it, enshrined whether in love or hate or lust or ambition. God therefore Himself acted.
In the midst of these things, through Abraham and Moses very notably, there came a whole race, called Israel, which had a commission, first in judgment by divine writ on the people of Canaan (God waited 400 years before taking action against them, Genesis 15:13-17). According to the word of God, in the day of Abraham, the people of that land were not yet ready for this judgment, for He then declared, "the cup of their iniquity is not yet full." When however that time came, then the judgment via Israel, which, having by then as in the text noted, been in another land, actually Egypt, would take effect, and Israel would be able to act as a testimony to the true and only operative God, through the Exodus from the oppressing Egypt, and Entrance to the "promised land" (Genesis 17:1-8, Exodus 6:5-8).
In fact, Israel as in Romans 9:1-5, performed much in the name of the Lord, being the site for the prophecies noted, their collation, and for the arrival of the Saviour. As a servant people, they were enabled frequently to overcome massive difficulties through trust in their covenanting God; but also often they strayed as if wanting to imitate the very corrupted Canaanites whom they were to replace, in order to effect judgment, and to be a sounding board and site, indeed a sight for the work of God seeking man from his self-imposed miseries.
Leviticus 26 showed the prediction of ancient Israel's unfaithfulness, stage by stage, phase by phase, till they would be evicted even from the land to which they were led both in judgment as in Genesis 15, and for testimony. This happened. History is like that. It actually happens. You can see it, though some prefer a specious sort of blindness (cf. Matthew 15:13ff., John 15:21ff.).
Man is like that. He is free to do that; and often does it to his own destitution. Inordinate horrors often afflicting man are strenuously sought by many a nation, many a family, a caste, a religion; and indifference is an excellent shock stimulus. They tend to resent this; but it does not remove the invitation. It is not a high-sounding profile for yourself which delivers you, but the salvation of God; and THAT means not only rest and peace within, but being in His service and on mission for the testimony of His love, grace, power and salvation. How keep it from others, since God IS love (I John 4:7ff.)!
After, as predicted, the Israel of the time of 30 A.D., killed the Son of God (Isaiah 49:7, 50-55), they duly were evicted from their precious land, that of their birth as a stable nation. First, however, they were given one generation before the truth hit (between 30 and 70 A.D.), and when this time came, it was for some 1900 years they were out, only to be brought back, as in Ezekiel 36ff., Hosea, as equally promised by God repeatedly (Ezekiel 36ff., Micah 7, Deuteronomy 32, and implied in Genesis 17 and Zechariah 12-14, for example.
THE SUB-SAGA OF ISRAEL
The spiritual saga moved. The program was still far from finished (cf. Romans 11). Being back, and after mighty victories, prodigious and obviously the work of God (Zechariah 12-14), they would eventually come to their due repentance as in Zech. 12:10ff., and finding God as His Spirit reached and taught them, be delivered. Micah 7 specialises on the transcendent power of God in which this would be wrought (esp. 7:15), dwelling on the utter humbling of their arrogant invaders and would-be conquerors, with great force. This would be no trend. It would be explicitly on the scale of their deliverance at the Exodus. Moreover, it would be a work of God Himself, quite distinctly, just as that was (Deuteronomy 32:36-43). Seeing their strength is gone, He acts, as indeed He did for salvation for one and for all!
Therefore in the end, those who seek to exterminate the reconstituted nation of Israel are fighting God. He has His program, His reasons, and has given His word. To fight is to confront; and to confront God in terms of His word and provisions, is like a cancer. It kills because it becomes an inherent condition. When savagery and wickedness is added, and entire disregard for any concern or responsibility, there is an additive indeed for judgment, like petrol thrown on a house about to be bombed. It is so with any sin. INSIST on it, and you merely add fuel to folly.
I would infinitely rather confront a million men with thousands of atomic bombs, with 12 pistols pointing directly at my heart, than confront God. He, should He please, could remove them in one second. But with God is both mercy and truth, and nothing removes Him; nor would it be desired, for with Him is the peace of everlasting reality and a delightful reality at that. He is faithful, and in Him this has its epic eminence, and constitutive place of origin. His lovingkindness is better than life as Psalm 63:3 gattests and life shows; and even to those amid evil, He hears the cry of faith.
So Israel HAS HAD the most amazing victories as
predicted in Zechariah 12, for example, and is now surrounded by an immense
pounding of the collective fists of many nations.
First let us emphasise how great these have been.
saga seen in Current events in history
Now, having had these miraculous deliverances -
(some specified in the DVD set, Against All Odds, Israel Survives, Trademark Pictures with Michael Greenspan, including interesting direct reportage and data on these strange and marvellous events, and much as set out in some detail, in SMR Ch. 9),
they have amazed many. It was to be so (Isaiah 29:21, Micah 7:15), just as the Gospel has amazed more (Isaiah 29:14-15). T his is the genre of the Lord as His supernatural power is judiciously poured out on the earth, to provide testimony and truth, leading to mercy and salvation. Sometimes EYES inordinately shut, even open. Paul was one such.
In the initial 1948 case, when Israel RE-STARTED to exist as a State, on one day in May, amidst varied assaults, with all but no major weapons, yet they were enabled to win their way to gaining a small but vital part of the territory originally given them as a homeland by the League of Nations. NOTHING was what the enemies appointed to them despite the tiny UN allocation miserably offered to them, and rejected by devastating desire on the part of their enemies. They would have null opportunity, void land, empty national place. So by the order of the Islamic host of 7 nations (with many more in reserve on the earth!).
They were as good as gone in the eyes of many, prepared for pity at their ... impending lynching in history, a fitting end to Auschwitz ?
Indeed, the actual case, as distinct from the theoretical one, instead of what was deemed to be the impending and inevitable exhibition of history itself, rocked the world. THAT history did not happen. Allah demonstrably did not have the power. The God of the Bible, as always, being correctly and evidentially verified, DID (cf. SMR pp. 829ff.). As noted in this reference,
Might does not establish right; but when predictions are in point,
power deficiency does indicate error.
The issues were categorical, the names involved ultimate.
The God of the Bible, as ALWAYS, prevailed.
It was as with Elijah at Carmel.
After all, they STARTED to exist on one day during these assaults, with the local Jews as a subordinate people not in control of ANY State in this world, and with all but no weapons. They had been offered little plots of land in the treacherously reduced Palestine, most given to Jordan, with Jerusalem an international city. The ARABS REFUSED this, though they had most of it in their camp already, in the Islamic setting, and would have thereby denied Israel her historic capital. Even that was not good enough. Israel was still to be THERE.
War on these obliterative terms, to get rid of the catastrophe as it was known, was a fait accompli in the minds of many. Seven nations versus some nationally deprived Jews, facing the Arab League already set up and given place by the British as they departed, and the other nations: it was grim. It seemed the consummation of Auschwitz; but it did not happen. It seemed the final blight of unfeeling cruelty, those who already possessed vast tracts of the earth in allied nations or religious groupings, wanting NONE for Israel, and this tiny strip of land as well. It was not just the gobbling; it was that God had said otherwise for some 2500 years, and does not vacillate (cf. Joel 2:10-11).
As He says, so He does, "for strong is the One who executes His word," as in Joel 2:11. Indeed, as in Isaiah 44:24 - 45:6, He takes pleasure in showing up the futile prognosticators, the human know-alls in their bombast, and executing and fulfilling just what He has said. HE is the ROCK and there is no other. You see that ... in history. Some of the testimony to this fact, found in the Bible, is seen in Ch. 2 above. Isaiah 44 has this, that it is He...
"who frustrates the tokens of the babblers, and makes diviners mad, who turns wise men backward and makes their knowledge foolish;
who confirms the word of His servant, and preforms the counsel of His messengers, who says to Jerusalem, You will be inhabited, and to the cities of Judah, You shall be built, and I will raise up its decayed places."(The term for 'babblers'l may be rendered, 'boasters'. False prophets had this unenviable position of focussing on what was not there, as if it were, and making much of what had no power - cf. Jeremiah 10:11 and Ch. 23).
As He acted after Babylon so in His immutable principles and consistent counsel will He do for the ultimate return, now in operation, because His word says so, His power is adequate and His counsel of salvation has this as a testimonial indication. What He has said to man or nation, will be. When mercy is set, it is not unsettled; when it is pronounced and when granted, it is not cancelled. Hope may be; divine declaration of mercy is not.
So has God acted through Israel, an important part of His multi-faceted but critically clear plan of salvation. He confirms it as in Isaiah 44, He applies it in His salvation appeal, as in Isaiah 45.
Certainly, He disciplines, but He does not break His word. When politicians manoeuvre, even manipulate, lie, deceive, practise fraud, seek to install their own visions by counterfeit methods, it is always refreshing to find the God, the only one, the Rock, who does not move, so utterly reliable that millenia do not even alter His word. History happens, and in all the involvements of liberty and delusion, illusion and reality, faith and disfaith*3A, He yet knows precisely how to have happen, what He foretold moved into position like a sun suddenly rising, or setting. It is, to be sure, much easier when you know the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10), and have even constituted all that is to come, including liberty and its sanctions and situation; but it is still incomparable wisdom and power so to act. He HAS so acted. You simply see it happen. In God is the counsel for it; and when He speaks, the will.
You see NOW, in history, that Israel is in an enormous CRISIS. What meant miracle in its founding in 1948, in this case, the overpowering of an immoderately vast military disproportion on the part of the seven nation consortium, one of massive might, seems certain to be called for in even greater measure, if that is possible! What happened in the undoubted miracle of its coming to exist (rather like a baby living when 1000 rats attacked it on arrival), to live once again amid the nations, not sinking into burial sands, this was a prelude! In this small nation's overcoming of the Russian-Egyptian axis of 1967, and in its triumph in the near debacle of 1973, when their holy day was defiled by the assault of many to exterminate them, there has been more of the frankly miraculous, the timing, the power, the application, the events singing as in an opera, but one of works, not words. There has been in effect, a continuing and multitudinous assault-insult for Israel to imbibe, one which many seem to regard as just and equitable, for no known reason, but what lies in some kind of darkness.
Diverse groups are even adding their uncivil assaults, or at least unmilitary, at the commercial level, even seeking to penalise Israel for some obscure notion or other, meaning perhaps that they should allow their now ensconed enemies, sitting on territory freely given by Israel, to bring their knives nearer to its already readily available heartland and heart. While all this goes on, and war cascades in Syria, inviting Lebanon, interesting Russia, intriguing Hamas, drawing Hezbollah, the crescendo in the opera is close. Now, once again, comes full force into the arena of events. History waits for its day.
Consider just some of the features of this crisis. Is it not enough that Israel has gained only about a quarter of its originally given land (by God direct, first, and then by the League of Nations in a large allotment, from which robbery was later effected); that it has given back land, gained in the face of a fight explicitly bent on its extermination (Hitler had the same idea, and his own methods), bequeathed it to enemies, who then used it to pound it with rockets, as if neither peace nor meaning could be involved. Not surprisingly, in so acting, they gained restrictions. A curb on this vile violence from gifted territory were necessary; for it is as if Victoria gave Geelong to enemies, who pounded the State from it.
You might EXPECT that Victoria would then take some vital steps to prevent this bombardment from bringing entire ruin! This is not to sanctify Israel; it is to show the disdainful follies of its persecutors and their allies among the children of men, who do not cease to bring reproach on themselves, as if the actualities of the case were not ... history. As to the REFUSAL of the Arab wing to accept the 1947 gift, which would have made Israel, ex capital, without control over Jerusalem, composed of bits, a mere mockery: in the face of the later assaults on the land, this merely aggravates an already gravely genocidal case.
Before we consider, however, just how MUCH the recently renewed State of Israel is in crisis, let us review for a moment, their basis. As nations go, it is unique.
Though they were given liberty (you see it very openly in Joshua 24), yet they desired to continue their covenant with the Lord. That was the lie of the land as they entered what was to become Israel in the first place. But it was not their desire, but rather willingness which was to the point, since the results were foreknown to God, AS was their willingness and its variations.
History mirrors man; but it also is subject to such direction by God that its smallest crannies are able to be predicted precisely, and often have been and that, it is in a systematic manner. Israel has been a people of vast drama and intensity; but far beyond all this, has been their birth, their calling, their commission in the Lord from Genesis 12, 17, 22, Joshua 1, 5:13-15) and on.
Even when they would fail (as foretold), God would not. Even when they failed crucially, as foretold in Isaiah 49-55, crucifying the Prince of Peace (as in Isaiah 9 leading on to Isaiah 53), God had still His plan. THAT human failure, indeed, though exceedingly grievous and sad, was the extent to which He allowed human liberty to rebel. For all that, He had the resolution, and indeed, made this crucial rebellion against Himself, one even wrought against His only begotten Son, to be PART of the atonement for peace. You can never outwit God, who has many "witty inventions." He made your wits, your spirit, your mind, and provisions for continuation over thousands of years.
But the condition as always was there: BELIEVE in Him or you will not be established. It meant more troubles. He would not force; but He knew (Romans 8:30ff.). It was so clearly stated over and again, as from the lips of King Jehoshaphat (II Chronicles 20:20)."Believe in the Lord your God and you shall be established. Believe His prophets and you shall prosper." In a sense, verbally, there is a sense of movement like this: Become and sound and you will be grounded. Get sound ground in the Lord, and you will stand.
So the case was foretold and became history. Israel had access to their Rock and yet turned away, as in Deuteronomy 32:18,30; and this despite all that He had done. Yet when they confided and abided in Him, there was no limit to the grace and goodness the Lord provided.
Here was a Rock*4 who stated blessing, and cursing (Deuteronomy 27-28), and fulfilled both, though the cursing was not to be the end (Romans 11Jeremiah 30,33); who foretold not only their removal but free restoration to land with circumstances focussed for the latter (such as the restoration in ONE DAY, as in Isaiah 66:6-8, and recovery of Jerusalem, one half, then all as in Zechariah 12-14). In their return, He allowed Israel to be an all but intolerable burden to the nations set on FIXING things to their own wills (Zech. 12:3). Powerful nations tend to forget that they are there by the will and for the plan of God and to act as if blinded by unbelief, despite formal professions which they may make. You see that with the case of Nebuchadnezzar most explicitly (Daniel 3 and especially 4, cf. Tyre and Egypt as in Ezekiel 26-29). In the case of Nebuchadnezzar you find it both negatively and positively (Ezekiel 29:19-21), and indeed there is a very positive flavour even in Daniel 4, for him. So do the nations go, one by one, in groups as now (as in Matthew 24, Luke 21).
History has seen this happen just as He said, to a degree to stagger even the imagination.
The late stage return of Israel to its divinely accorded heritage (so far only part, for Israel has not yet repented and come back to its Saviour, as a nation), does present a problem to this world. It cannot STAND, the secular or the Islamic, the presence of this blatant fulfilment of the word of God to the point, in all its precision and application. It is ... unsettling.
Jerusalem meanwhile, IS a burden to these nations clustering about, from near and far (Russia is now deeply involved, as indirectly with Egypt even in terms of the Aswan Dam and later). The USA is not next door. Rattling swords attest the appetites of those nearer. The death of nearly half of the world-wide Jewish people is not enough. They must be reviled, slandered, ludicrously assaulted when their democratic and caring record in their land far surpasses anything near.
Israel also has impacts to bear, being itself enmeshed in wars; but it continues. Why are these things so ? It is because of pure grace, love and mercy on the one hand, and precious promise as a premiss for history, on the other (Ezekiel 36:22-38, Jeremiah 33:13-26). Much has happened as promised; the next major change comes in their turning to the Lord whom, as a nation, they crucified, in SPECIFIC repentance. This comes amidst wars, and following much, but precedes the end as in Zechariah, and Ezekiel 36-39.
Until therefore, this brave and tiny nation returns spiritually to the Saviour, the Messiah Jesus Christ, tense indeed is the plight of Israel. It needs its Rock, and was told so in the day of Moses, in the most eloquent and poignant of terms (Deut. 32). But in the interim, He cares, as the case develops, and has long predicted the intervening triumphs amid difficulties. How He has fulfilled that!
Not only was there the war of 1948, but more claimed their calamities; but for all that, they did not evict this people, placed there by God according to repeated assurance. The nations appear to be promising to return. God has already done so for several millenia.
As to Him, He always wins in the end, despite His amazing mercy, patience and insistence on liberty - and in accord with His truth, which being reality, unreels like a fishing line, into the water of events, and catches what He wants.
After 1948, for the next major war, directed by man to overthrow and exterminate Israel (1967), LIFE magazine gave an entire edition to commemorate and illustrate it. This was just one of these astounding wars of victory. Neither help from the then still current USSR (in 1967), nor in 1973, could abort the stated purpose of God. Just as 7 nations could not subdue them - in 1948, when they STARTED to exist on one day during these assaults, Israel with all but no weapons, and yet escaped and captured a part of the land that had been denied them, so again in 1967, they faced even a major power, Egypt masterminding joint assault against them. Again, with many enemies devotedly seeking Israel's destruction, they fought, and they did not lose. They increased the fraction of Palestine, as given to them, significantly.
Indeed, in startling triumph, they were an embarrassment in the scope of their victory, encircling an army over the Suez Canal, near to Cairo. It was not far from sudden take-over prospects. The major power, USSR, had to make militant noises for even that ignominy, to cease. In 1973, when nearly overwhelmed, they were saved as in a fight, near to knock down; and President Nixon wrought wonderful work to support them at the critical moment, to help them in the strangely unexpected crisis. The continued failure to fail has meant the continued ability to continue; but just as Israel's many enemies can try and try again, Israel needs to lose ONLY ONCE.
There is neither pity nor mercy from man here. Iran comes like a juggernaut, concerned at nought, to judge by the statements being made, but the destruction of this people, at genocide if they stay in their land. They are not to be; Israel must go: from their words, it appears just as simple as that. Like sin, however, it is not so easily removed. Calvary was a necessary preliminary for that, that the offer be covered and its freedom guaranteed in history; it worked, but it was not so easy.
Assault, also on Israel, is in this case first of all on the word and work of God, in His own chosen channels of testimony. This also is not so easy. No one has ever managed to do it, and our creaturely state makes the contest as ludicrous as massively arrogant, intrusive and invasive. Yet blindness will not see; and closed eyes cannot do so. Whether in things ocular, or spiritual, there is a veil which may be drawn down, and in the unwilling, it may even seep down like a mist; and even the most obtrusive things can be obliterated, even as if they were not there. Now it deepens its emphasis, on cloudy thought, regresses almost as in a second childhood, affirms what fact denies, anti-verifies what its theories demand*4A, progressing into disaster as if Captain of the Titanic, with this change, that he is willing it to happen, not merely hoping to avoid it. It is hypnotic, as if entranced in fables *5, there was a certain charm which cannot be denied. I must go down to the seas again, said John Masefield, a worthy thought, but here, it is down to the vagaries of fable again.
This world does not care to see. However, the sight is there to whomever. What then of contemporary Israel ?
Crisis after crisis has come. Deliverance upon deliverance has become like a series of themes in a symphony. Now it is as if the coda awaits.
Episodes have thrust down, only to be sent aside.
But now, the crisis has become immense and intense, a perfect test. Israel has long been pounded from the Gaza Strip, which they GAVE BACK to their antagonists, as if this were a mere nothing, even as if they should have capitulated long ago, instead of being a trouble to those who wanted to have freely given territory as an additional base for obliterative action. They do not withdraw the threat, these clattering for Israel's extinction. Instead, their cry is amplified. Moreover, it is amplified.
There is Hezbollah in Lebanon, breathing fire, and evidently equipped in no small way from Iran; there is Hamas in part of the land given back to the Arabs, threatening and making noises and seeking to gain international support for its desire to extract more land from Israel, its very own base a gift FROM Israel. No longer is Jordan willing to have automatic transfer of Arabs to the two thirds or so of Palestine which was given to IT; for when they came, they excited trouble, seeking not peace but to attack Israel, threatening the peace of that kingdom, so that Jordan did not want them anymore, a virtual army in residence, focussed evilly on Israel, not displaced persons seeking simple citizenship in that large part of Palestine given to those of their religion, gratis.
The case is becoming tense, taught, and the participants, it seems, never taught. It is excellent for vision, as for review, for here is the matter not of mere congestion, as in any battle, but of outcome; and that depends on income, the spiritual input from the only Almighty God there is or ever has been or will be (Isaiah 45Z:18-25, 43:10-11). Time is His implement; His profile and finger in it, is His prerogative (cf. Luke 11:20). Not knowing, refusing to realise, merely means ruin in the end (cf. Revelation 19:13-18, Micah 7).
Russia once again is interested. That is a significant addition, for it is by no means certain that its main thrust at present is more for glory, to add to that of the Tsars, of the Communists, as seen through undiscerning eyes, so that power and glory might be hers. The Mediterranean port, what a gift from Syria for Russia's deployments. This Syria, then, must stand. Enemy of Israel ? Why not, if that is the way it feels!
Does Russia not now have a base in the Mediterranean Sea, in which to project power and importance at will ? and is this not a gift of the current Syrian regime, which has proved ... co-operative Let it go, this port ? Hardly. So it is insisting on sending to Iran advanced ground to air rockets which might remove the technical advantage of Israeli aircraft, and so enable, as far as it is concerned, its destruction. Israel is reported to have given an answer: when these weapons come to bear, then we will know what to do!
Once again, what is close to a super-power is on the other side to Israel, in addition to various other nations in the area, all together making a bloc - or nearly all, Saudi Arabia and Qatar being aloof from it.
With a naval base in the Mediterranean, Russia has now a far greater scope for effective power projection. Consider what you can float from there, and at what direct such things! Meanwhile, Syria is looking to make war on the Golan Heights, as it squirms amid the devastation of its people, FROM WITHIN its caring self. There is Hamas from the South, Hezbollah from the near North, neither feeling particular kinship with inventive Israel; there is Egypt, deeper South, now run in a one-way democracy, which appears to stop being so after the first election, so betraying many. There is a formerly favourable land, made so by treaty in the day of Sadat, one now alive with inflamed Islamic ambitions, and persecutions. All this seems to be bumbling like wild bees, but sweetness appears as absent as eau-de-cologne in a hide factory.
To the North and East,
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Iran with its perpetual declaration for genocide against Israel, |
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further West from there, |
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Iraq in turmoil, and |
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various sects of Islam in devious wars amongst each other, |
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all afire, with present inflammation, degradation, defamation, |
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rockets, threats, in combinations, |
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with plans, assaults in the making, |
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like the promise of an inferno. |
These affairs, with weapons pouring in from Russia and other sources amongst the intensely Islamic Middle East, they mount as to the skies, while the weaponry is in some cases, just a few kilometres from striking the land of Israel.
When all this fails however, as in time it will, many will STILL not believe, and so will NOT be established (the other side of it as in Isaiah 7:9). Indeed, Christ indicated before His death, that even if one were to rise from the dead, the settled alienation from God would be such that they STILL would not believe. That became a prediction fulfilled immensely!
The fulfilment of THAT principle has had much to do with the entire matrix and making of modern history, where many nations, amidst oil and ambition, power and desire for greatness, hatred and guile, unreliability and unfaithfulness, religious innovations and mythologies wedded to what is only falsely called 'science' in many basic instances, are alive and active. With what ? not least, it is with grasping and gasping, assembling themselves, ideation and ideology as mutant as the seas, rejection of God as sure as the mountains. It is far from being ONLY the Middle East, but there are the cross-roads, with all sides involved. Israel itself is spreading out to the Orient in business, and many are its spreading ties in technology, leading edge works aplenty.
Included more broadly, but not absent from mind or minding, are Russia not long from atheism, major nations like Britain and the USA, moving far from God and of course, China still under orders from an oligarchy, but long ceased to have any viable relationship to Communism: for after all, it works no better than did the USSR, fallen after little more than 80 years, to the ash heap of history. Pakistan in Islamic flush, death to many, vies with India, more versatile, but with few following the Christ of God, diversifies the forces in view.
Many, but not all, are those who have a focus around Israel, its enemies plainly or in the outcome when tested. Incresingly, the USA appears tro be moving to that part of the force schema in this world, for to exalt Islam (death to Christ Jesus the Lord, written all over it), in itself is a disjunction from Israel; and this is what the USA has done. If its movement of power towards Islam in the last few years has not been positively purposeful, it is an outcome that could readily have been reversed, by showing less than the anti-Christian adulation for Islam, that seeped from Bush, and made turbulent floods from Obama. So the parallelogram of forces, to use the terminology of physics for the matrix of man's machinations in these debased fields, changes its vectors for this case.
It moves to a lethal direction.
On what radically does this multitudinous thrust rest, for heaving ? Not least is the oil and the glories schema, religions aplenty, parts of them, segments sometimes like pieces of broken bone, piercing the flesh, syntheses, lust and paranoia, self-fulfilment of persons and nations, contrition collapsed, truth withered, equity forgotten.
What is followed very largely ? It is the same as in the day of ancient Israel, though there are some new names with distinguished relatives from long ago. It is bound up with what from that day, and IN that day, were called mere nothings as Deuteronomy declares it, or else illusion and emptiness. WHEN that is the position, the result is sure to be a vast one. God so depicts it in Isaiah 66, Micah 7, and in the finale, in Revelation 19. There was a beginning. There is an end. Both have been described in some detail by the word of God. It is like knowing the stock-exchange market in advance. Truth rests on Rock*4. That is where ancient Israel went wrong, and most of this world still does, till the hurt will not heal, and judgment alone sits.
History. It is a fascinating thing. It is far more so when it is seen in terms of what the Maker of man has said; and done. It is better still when you know and understand Him (Jeremiah 9:23-24), and what in His own terms, is to be (II Peter 1:19).
NOTES
See TMR, Creation as marked.
See Spiritual Refreshings ...
Ch. 13.
See -
The Splendour of the Biblical Coverage of the Meaning and Matrix of Man Ch. 3, entitled The Morbid Fascination with Myths,
Repent or Perish Ch. 7.
See also Wake Up World! ... Chs. 4-6.
For perspective, see for example the Epilogue of Wake Up World! ...
See:
All this Rot about Not Believing,
Grand Biblical Perspectives Appendix,
SMR pp 532 -560
The Magnificence of the Messiah
Serenity not Serendipity ...Ch. 12
Disfaith is a term apparently first used in SMR (published 1992, 3rd Edition 1997), and there defined. It is in effect, a disproportionate disbelief, one with a spiritual dynamic divorced from reason, and aligned to persistent perversion of the truth, displacement of the living God and an ingrained enmity to what concerns Him. Different degrees of it, different levels of consciousness of it, of course exist. In some cases, it may be directly aligned with the studious purpose of deception for which the devil is famed, as the father of lies (John 8), and in which he holds many captive (II Timothy 2:26). Gentleness is an underlying desideratum in such cases, though when the confrontation is intense, Paul's example when in Cyprus gives an example. Surgery is necessary in some cases; medicine often does instead (Acts 13:8-12).
The Bible uses this figure in major ways, and this has been compiled substantially in Chapter 2, above. The features of utter reliability, everlasting strength, entire faithfulness, personal concern and deep involvement by the only God who has the only salvation for man, and has made the only plan for this, and has executed it, are prominent. Applied to Israel, as one of the components in the plan, with all its faults and all its performances (the latter as in Romans 9:1ff.), with a covenantal relationship with God, which is set to endure, though to be fulfilled in much in the Messiah - one section of the two-part promise of Genesis 12, 15, 17, there is just one more certainty.
Israel has received just what was promised, and in our generation, fascinating mixtures of power and mercy, even before its conversion as a people in large measure, as foretold in Zechariah 12-13 and Ezekiel 36-37, back to the Lord whom their nation slew, even the Prince of Peace, with no small result accordingly! Their Rock as in Deuteronomy 32 is decisively determined from thousands of years ago, on the entire plan, of which we in this 2oth -21st century of time are privileged to see, as HISTORY, that delightfully objective thing that simple comes and goes in this world. Part of the plan is their return (done), in circumstances as described prophetically (done), and in an enduring situation of great weight and difficulty for the officious and marauding nations (done), leading to their eventual return to the Lord (to come), and the overturning of a profound and lustful assault to come, upon them, one vast in kind, and vast in overthrow specifically by the POWER of their ROCK (Micah 7, Isaiah 66, Deuteronomy 32).
See SMR pp. 140ff., with Ch. 4 above, *7.
II Timothy 4:2 with II Peter 3:5, though short, speak volumes concerning the presumptive assumptions which grip like unpurged cancer. The set of volumes The gods of naturalism have no go! deals with the question in full. Logos Uncreated, Chapters 4 and 6 give some recent treatment, though these are included in the larger volumes. Secular Myths and Sacred Truth gives further specialised approach. .