News 32

"Israel tells US to play fair on pullout" -
The Australian , p. 16, March 28-29, 1998

This newspaper article involves us in some of the writhing ambiguities, interpretations or assurances which come into play in the Middle East "agreements", accords and dispositions between so many interested parties.

As Israeli P.M. Benjamin Netanyahu declares, there are indeed "vital interests" for Israel, as the most narrow-necked piece of almost imaginary real estate, vastly reduced from Biblical prescriptions, is actively considered for yet further reduction. This is in the interests of parties such as those who attempted to eliminate Israel in 1948, when it was composed not least of those who had escaped some of the tendernesses of others who also felt the Jews had really too much - as in the case of Germany.

The extreme disproportion between Arab land holdings and the minuscule slice which gives itself the name Israel is a constant reminder of the basic blindness of the UN. It was blind when, in 1947, it attempted to have the city of Jerusalem internationalised, as if Europe were to require such a thing of England's London: and this led freely on to the miraculous, prophetic war of 1948 (Zechariah 12,14)! The inconceivable became history and history groaned beneath the load, as still heard in UN proposals for Israel.

As the peace process grinds grimily on, one thing is sure, as it is always sure, always has been sure and will be: and that ? it is this:-

GOD WILL KEEP HIS PROMISES.

Till Christ come, those Jews will not be put out of Israel, and Jerusalem will be a "burdensome stone" to all those nations which seek to occupy themselves with her: this is predicted in Zechariah 12, in terms as clear as those of recent history, which has for some years been vigorously, even dedicatedly verifying it in the news.

This the Lord will do, whatever schemes Iraq holds. That nation has suffered not a little after announcing that it was, after all, still in 1991 at war with Israel, since 1948: it has been almost dismantled.

He will do it whatever the US does, and that body has suffered in queer nerve results for many who were near the Iraqis. The US has not suffered as Iraq did, but its assured statesmanship when it tells the Jews how the matter really is, and what must really be done, without being in the least apparently aware of, or else deeply concerned about fundamental issues of geographic peril, relative land proportions and divine decrees, as if God were first to be negated, and then crucial history ignored - such as the Arab intents on the Jews in 1948, and the withdrawal pending the Jewish defeat - which, unfortunately for some who left then, did not happen.

What is just as sure is this: that Israel needs salvation, not through Rabin or Peres, however estimable some of their efforts may have been; but through the Jewish Lord Jesus Christ,

• who will not go away
• for the very - and entirely - simple reason
• that having been resurrected,
• He does not have the physical tact often associated with murder victims,
• of staying dead and allowing the living to settle things between them in His absence.

The help will NOT come through ceding Jerusalem - the city of the King's murder - to those who worship another god, the city where in former time a Gentile governor left the term 'king' on the notice above Jesus, saying, "What I have written, I have written!" ... Surely it is one of the briefest encomiums of all time!

Governor Pilate's excuse for justice was small. But what GOD HAS WRITTEN concerning the King (Psalm 45, Zechariah 14, Isaiah 49, Psalm 2, 72) will be fulfilled as indeed was the prediction last time, when His death was the divinely directed scenario, which in a way, has received more oscars than any. In the end, truth is not necessarily stranger than fiction; but it is better. It has irresistible power, and its name is called Saviour, Lord, Jesus the Christ.