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It is sad in a way. When a potential breaker, surging along and about to break, fails to do so, it may seem like a lion that did not leap, a hawk that did not drop to its prey, a rainbow that tinged but did not declaim its colours: non success is so unfashionable.

In Time as above, we read of President Clinton's great aspirations, sleepless days on end, or a close approximation, of energies and enterprises, experts and inter-personal relationships, endeavours most clever and dialogues most prolonged. What, however, we do not read of is this: success.

It is like trying to rescue the Titanic when it is half way down, instead of doing so with the passengers, FROM IT! It will not work because it cannot work. It cannot work because it is the wrong solution.

Back in 1992, when The Shadow of a Mighty Rock was first published, even then, we had a reference on p. 835 to the extraordinary way in which ONE man resigned to stop Peres from being able to compromise Jerusalem's Jewish voting integrity. He was not willing to be a participant in ANYTHING which could threaten that integrity. Hence Peres did not get in, and Jerusalem was neither rendered nor surrendered, in part or in whole.

Again and again, we read of this meeting and that, the approach to Egypt, to Saudi Arabia, to Jordan, all as Time reminds us, in receipt of much US largesse (August 7), without any positive result, if by positive you mean in the direction of securing Arafat's acceptance of an amazingly flexible Israeli provision. Rather, we see, they fortified his position.

It appears from the report, that Clinton's camp had managed to bring about some sort of positive response from Barak of Israel, to a concept of giving to Arafat's party, a combination of religious site jurisdiction and municipal government in East Jerusalem, with perhaps some provision for limited Palestinian return (limited lest they govern by sheer democratic numbers). But to this from Arafat, NEIN! if one may Germanise the concept because the word, in German, does have a certain resonance. NYET! then. Anyway, it was in the negative with emphasis.

Thus once again, Jerusalem stays intact. Is it not wonderful to behold, how this swell never breaks. It is not only the event noted above in SMR, relating to April 1990, but the long preceding UN proposal of 1947, giving Jerusalem an international status and the Jews portions of territory here and there, in a most desultory and insulting manner, to any convinced of the Biblical picture. (On this, see Barbs, Arrows and Balms 13, SMR pp. 755ff., News 39, 41, 111, The Frantic Millenium and the Peace of Truth Ch. 10, Repent or Perish Ch. 3, SMR  pp. 816ff., 822ff., *4 on p. 832, for example; and in particular Genesis 17:1-8, Ezekiel 36 as in SMR Appendix A.)

How marvellous have been the Arab opportunities! With all the world (in the form of UN) against the Jewish integrity, Britain in arrears with the Balfour^*1 agreement, dividing and conquering, turning back Jewish vessels, protecting Palestine ... for ? well, not for the Jews, with the Arab legion taking control as Britain left in 1948, with a mass of Arab or Moslem nations crouching for the spring to bring the prey, with the Jews assigned to the Mediterranean, but not for the land part, what happened ? The Jews took part of Jerusalem and Zechariah 14:1-2 was literally fulfilled (it is well to be literal when you are dealing with divisions of a city of note! it is hard to divide a myth in two!).

With Peres poised for compromise, a Jewish voter resigns in 1990, and another chapter is written: same theme!Of course, in the meantime, in 1967 to be precise, the Israelis took the rest of Jerusalem.

Then to the present ? With Clinton in his many endeavours, Albright in her sedulous safaris in the Middle East, the visits, the interviews, the methods, the personnel, the time, the effort, there is nothing to show! With Arafat cosily given princely status, with his whim and will considered, the enormity of the whole affair notwithstanding, so that Barak is to give now this, now that in the slender piece, the slithering sliver of territory the Jews can now call their own, what happens ? This - it fails! Why ? Is it because Arafat did not really want to take it from the Jews, in view of the enormous tracts of Arab land, and the oil-built monuments to Arab power which surround in nation after nation in that camp ? Was it because he had pity on them ? Was it then because other Arab states opened their doors to the Arabs and said, Listen, you left, many of you, because you were against Israel, and so are we, and so come to our lands!

No, and no again. It was for none of these reasons, feasible though they might be. It failed, we learn from these reports, because Arafat was NOT satisfied. It was not that he COULD not take SO MUCH, that shame embarrassed him or reality prodded; it was that he WOULD not take SO LITTLE! He wanted more control of East Jerusalem, capital to be, he deemed it, of Palestine to come... and IF NOT, then why not found the Palestinian State in September anyway!

So it goes. But it does not come. The wave does not burst into that cascading white and green of the turbulent breaker. No doubt the attack is to come. We have often enough indicated this and the relevance of Ezekiel 38-39 and Zechariah 12-14 to these impending events. But that is another matter. In that, the outcome is guaranteed as the scriptures just cited indicate. Indeed, it is to be dramatic: the enemy is not necessarily merely an Arab one, but certainly it is to be composite, and its place appears as noted in SMR (pp. 506-519) in the northerly direction, and to relate to the Caucasian area, where now there are so many Moslem states, formerly simply part of the USSR.

Meanwhile, pending that divine rebuttal of force by power, Jerusalem remains. Even its friends sometimes seem inclined to compromise it, but now here, now there, it stays. It stays Jewish.

Now some might think they discern or detect a certain partisan element in all this. Not at all! Let's face it, the Bible is eminently clear about the condition of the Jewish people as a NATION (cf. Isaiah 30:8ff.), but despite all this (Ezekiel 36:32), God is determined to honour His promise to Abraham, and He will do it. It means trials and troubles for the Jews before that glorious day breaks (Zechariah 12:10ff.) when their near to national repentance changes things, and they join quite simply the ranks of the Christians. Now let the blood pressure relax, if this concerns you. The MESSIAH WAS JEWISH. It is to THEIR OWN MESSIAH they thereby come. Yet it is as penitents, every bit as much as is the case of ANY Gentile penitent who in repentance receives Christ as His Lord. It is TOO LITTLE as God indicates in Isaiah 49, for the Christ to be for the repentant in Israel alone; He is to be ALSO a light to the Gentiles. In Him and in Him only is there to be any peace for the Middle East.

In the meantime, according to promise as in Zechariah 12, Jerusalem will STAY a BURDENSOME stone to all who activate themselves in its downgrading as Jewish. There will come a delusive time (I Thessalonians 5) before the finale, when peace may seem to have ARRIVED! It will be short. It is merely the final curl of the breaker before it (at last) really DOES BREAK. There will be wreckage then. There is SO MUCH wreckage. God has given us, meanwhile, ever so many WARNINGS, as all these approximations to complete Jewish control in Jerusalem occur (and the view of this writer, it is now so, for it is only by Jewish decision, not by force, that Jerusalem allows the Mosque on its summit, and in any case, the Temple is now irrelevant religiously speaking, since Christ has replaced it, as in SMR  pp. 822ff., Barbs, Arrows and Balms 13).

At all events, the time is ripe. The breaker will break; but it is not the one being sought. It is not the compromise of Jerusalem in Moslem power which is to come. It is another assault and a magnificent repulse such as you catch the sight of in Micah 7:15ff. (which follows on after the Micah 5 prediction of the incarnation of the Christ, and His rough treatment). That will bear much foaming.

It is sad, profoundly sad. It is God who appoints things. It is useless to indulge in futile struggles to re-write history on God's earth where God's word has already been given. After all, as to this earth, He made it, and it is HIS*2! It does not belong to indigenous peoples or to powerful peoples, to these or to those: it belongs to the Maker. It writhes because it will not follow HIS bidding, and this and that person, group, dominator, denominator feels, is convinced, that this or that should be done. But it is the will of God which will be done, including the abasing of pride and the reduction of pretence, and the return of the Lord Himself to rule (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 18, Answers to QuestionsCh. 5). But He is not heeded (cf. SMR pp. 623ff.).

So the collision is to come on this Middle East matter. It is not reality which cringes when it is hit. It hurts what assaults it. When will man learn ? Never, until he comes to the Lord in humble and contrite heart, with his sins on Christ, and his life in good hands.

Meanwhile history like a good doggie, moves on at the heels of the word of the Lord.
 
 

*1

Balfour ? See an assessment on this topic in News 108.
 

*2

Fascinating indeed is the corollary. God not merely made the earth (and it is the greatest material invention, as to its fabrications from matter) and the heaven for that matter! His Son, formed into flesh by His Spirit (Luke 1:35,Micah 5:3-5, John 8:58, 17:1-3), shed His blood in Jerusalem (surely outside the city wall, but it was a city affair, its … authorities and ways and despisings and castings out…). It is doubly His.

When therefore HE returns, it is to HIS city indeed (Zechariah 14). Nor is that a Jewish affair, as noted, in any racial sense, even though the Messiah took the format of Jewish flesh. THEY as a nation rejected Him. But HE, in fact of Jewish flesh, WILL RULE. His rule is as far beyond the rebelliousness of the Jewish NATION as it is beyond the other rebellions of other flesh. But it WILL epitomise His will, for the Old Testament covenant is sublimely, not sublimated but consummated, in the New. What God proposed in the Old Testament is then composed in the New, and the sacrifice not of animals (as rejected in Isaiah 66:1-4 proleptically and prophetically), but of the Son of God, is then the light that shines in darkness, because it is part, an essential and inalienable part, of the curriculum vitae of the Son of God, soon to be, upon His return with His saints, the King, reigning until this earth finished, and history finalised, a new heavens and a new earth supervene. How great and glorious that will be!

The territory then, has a prophetic and a symbolic significance; one of Making and one of DYING, and one of rule by the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. It is not well to interfere…