W W W W  World Wide Web Witness Inc.  Home Page   Contents Page for Volume  What is New

Power in its emplacements might be considered porcine in this, that it tends to be less than delicate with its diet and rummaging. Powers, the nations, in their dealings often seem foxy in this, that they deceive one another, press for what they can get instead of righteousness, and war constantly, sometimes using pious sounding, but gravelly talk in the process.

This is far from saying that no nation ever does good: for some good governments have undoubtedly existed. Nor is it to presume that just because a group of nations opines something, it also cannot have good elements. However when nations gather together, with some passionately pronouncing evil against Israel, relatively fresh from the hanging pantries of dear Adolf, but now in the name of Allah, who does not achieve existence except in propaganda (cf. More Marvels... Ch. 4), it is a day for grief.

This, it is not only for Israel, but for its stormy, would-be bosses (Zechariah 12:3). Now we have new zealots who slaughter, and have slaughtered over the Ages, starting with Muhammad, with extraordinary facility, and who in many nations, to this day, talk of slaughter relative to Israel: unless of course she is willing to dismember herself ...

The case is not good. It reeks of the fox.

Far also is this from a questioning of the sincerity of many Moslems: who but God can know the state of their hearts! However, a student who fails to get the right answer, is not passed on account of his sincere confusion. He is passed because

a) he shows an understanding of the issues
b) he has the right answer or something so close to it that it shows his tractability to the task and
c) of the elegance, or at least rationality in principle of his methods.

So is the case here. You do not have standing with God, by mere self-assurance;  though you may well achieve it for a time with man, whose manners these last two centuries would not qualify for much in the national sphere. It is not helpful before the Judge of man, to have this for your credential, that you believe this or that, that is false! This may give more credibility to your credulity than to your place before God.
God is not false. His word is not false. Its testimonials are not false, His predictions are not false, His Christ was not false, and is not; His law is not false, His anger at intractable insolence against truth is not false.

Consider, on this, the prophet Nahum, the first chapter.

• A) "God is jealous, and the Lord avenges;

The Lord avenges and is furious.
The Lord will take vengeance on His adversaries,
And He reserves wrath for His enemies;
The Lord is slow to anger and great in power,
And will not at all acquit the wicked.
 
• "The Lord has His way

In the whirlwind and in the storm,
And the clouds are the dust of His feet.
He rebukes the sea and makes it dry,
And dries up all the rivers.
Bashan and Carmel wither,
And the flower of Lebanon wilts.
The mountains quake before Him,
The hills melt,
And the earth heaves at His presence,
Yes, the world and all who dwell in it.
 
• "Who can stand before His indignation?

And who can endure the fierceness of His anger?
His fury is poured out like fire,
And the rocks are thrown down by Him.
 
• B) "The Lord is good,

A stronghold in the day of trouble;
And He knows those who trust in Him.
But with an overflowing flood
He will make an utter end of its place,
And darkness will pursue His enemies.
 
• "What do you conspire against the Lord?

He will make an utter end of it.
Affliction will not rise up a second time.
For while tangled like thorns,
And while drunken like drunkards,
They shall be devoured like stubble fully dried.
From you comes forth one
Who plots evil against the Lord,
A wicked counselor.
 
• "Thus says the Lord:

 
 ‘Though they are safe, and likewise many,
Yet in this manner they will be cut down
When he passes through.
Though I have afflicted you,
I will afflict you no more;
For now I will break off his yoke from you,
And burst your bonds apart.

‘The Lord has given a command concerning you:
'Your name shall be perpetuated no longer.
Out of the house of your gods
I will cut off the carved image and the molded image.
I will dig your grave,
For you are vile.'
 

•  C) "Behold, on the mountains

The feet of him who brings good tidings,
Who proclaims peace!"

Now would be a good time to learn one's ABC from the above: the letters having been provided purely for simplicity of reference, visually. We turn to Nahum.
 
 

The term, in the first quotation,  'jealous' of course, relates readily to the frequently used divine dictum concerning marriage as an expression of due relationship to God. He is the Lord, and the 'wife' is expected to keep the commands. The term 'zealous' would, without imagery, provide much of the content of this, except of course that there is a further element.

What is this element ? It is this. Since God has made us all, a thing wise to remember (cf. That Magnificent Rock Ch. 1, A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9, SMR Ch. 2, and p. 999),  and His love is not that of the permissive society, but that rather of a husband whose intense desire is for purity in his wife, for her loveliness and her due fulfilment: then there are results. Accordingly, He is offended by wreckage of the household, the nominal household of faith, when this is carried out with false premisses built on false promises, from false prophets with no validation whatever from any source, but the whim, caprice, desire or existential affirmation of the devotees.

Islam, with its code word very justly 'submission', but very unjustly wrought, for it is not to the true God that submission is here pursued, has set itself up with an 'Allah': no Son, no Saviour, no Redemption, no History to Confirm, no Prediction to Prevail, no Logic to establish, and no Development over centuries to Illustrate,  a vision ex-Validity (cf. More Marvels ... Ch. 4). Not surprisingly, force has been used and is being used, ad nauseam, to secure results. It was so with the wars initially of Muhammad, and it has been so in the centuries in which Islam nearly enslaved Europe with its scimitars and its discrimination; and it is so now in those nations which banding together, constantly utter threats against Israel, as in the Pan-Islamic Alliance.

Of such a phenomenon, a  pillage by false prophets, Christ warned (Matthew 24:24 with 7:15ff.), and Peter and Paul spoke freely. It is a feature of the end time, both as predicted and as discovered now to be,  that it is gross and vast (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5).

The plethora of false prophets has not been limited to Islam, but has been marvellously augmented by the papacy, alike with Islam, rich in the blood, not of suitable sacrifice, for CHRIST ALONE is that (Hebrews 9-10 cf. SMR pp. 1032-1088H), but of the martyrs (cf. SMR pp. 946ff., 911ff., 950ff.); and it has been wonderfully fulfilled in the proliferation of the sects, as no less by the rationally obliterative, aggressive and yeasty Buddhist invasion into the increasingly existential, temperamental and detrimentally inclined Western society (cf. Things Old and New, Index, and SMR pp. 1011ff.).

What lacks life is always more susceptible to invasion: that is, the sick, the defective, the deficient, or the merely formal. To be strong, you need health; and to have health of heart, you need God, and to have God you need His word, His way and His witness, not the arbitrary irrationalisms of capricious creeds, invented by man, and ending with and on him. When he falls, they all fall together. The "God Almighty" (SMR pp. 915-916) of Romanism and Islam alike, has failed to show himself possessed of those qualities which relate to omnipotence or sustainable truth alike.

No more confinable to bread (cf. SMR pp. 1088Bff.) than to the divisive and unvalidated fulminations of Muhammad,God Almighty simply refuses to act on the imaginations of men.

Romanism tried hard, and for long it might have seemed that she had the number of the nations, especially in the days of that most unholy Holy Roman Empire, dripping with crime and blood alike, with extortion and revolting abuse of force, not only against Luther, but against Huss and countless martyrs. She failed. Mecca, if you will, this also tried hard, and Europe almost lay open to the scimitar before Tours in A.D. 732; but it did not yield, and Allah has been pushed back to smaller perimeters, by far. Now, however, with oil, his people are feeling expansive, and where better than in Israel... for a truly memorable putsch!

For more than 50 years this Allah has failed, because God has succeeded. It has been rather like a demonstration at the Royal Show, of some product, while the experts, attracted and present, watch intently. It flops. It fails. It does not go. Thus paraded like an idol, has Allah been unable to reverse the Biblical program for Israel.

Check the record (cf. SMR Chs 8 and  9). 9): this is HIS RECORD. God, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, NEVER FAILS! If you want science, start here. If you want attestation, data, confirmation, verification, actualisation, look here. If you want discrimination of kinds, empirical reality, no less than rationally unique validity, start here, and you will end here (cf. That Magnificent Rock Ch. 5, SMR Chs. 1-3). There is, quite simply, in these terms, nowhere else to go.

In a book by the popular author, Morris West, "The Tower of Babel", there is an interesting projection found. He has a character, Safreddin, a maestro of force in Syria, speaking about Israel and Islam, to an admiring (or ambitious) Captain, a subordinate. "Let me tell you something," he says.

• "I could as easily be a Jew as an Arab. My people came from the region of the great rivers, as the people of Abraham did. We are all Semites. They, like us, believe in one God. We are more like the Jews than we are like the Egyptians. As yet we are enemies of the Jews, because the Jew is always separate. He gives only to his own. From all others, he takes. He will not lend even his God, while we spend Allah like an alms upon the world. This little land which the Jew holds - we cannot live with it while the Jew is there, a separate man, a separate tribe, a separate God ... You see ?"

Let us, however, return to the assessment of West's Safreddin, concerning the Arab and the Jew. Now there is some wisdom in this. In his book, it appears that West did not appreciate the long range character of prophecy, even though apparently fascinated by the Jewish tortures under Hitler, and the rising of the Jewish State once more. He seemed to feel that Jehovah had gone silent, forgetting that the word of the Lord took hold, does take and will take hold, and has been doing so in the past 60 years in particular, with a routine precision, an inexorable procession and a detailed libretto, fulfilled by the performers (even by those not employed by the management, so vast is His wisdom and power); and that Christ having come, God has no one more to offer.

It is THAT offering covered sin, for those repentant and receiving it; there is no other (cf. Hebrews 7-10). That is IT.

As Hebrews 1 tells us, God who spoke in times past by the prophets has now spoken BY HIS SON. That is the last word. It is the ultimatum. There is nothing else but heaven or hell, truth or fiction, the word of God or the ravings of madmen, the routines of false prophets and the sucrose suggestions of invalid philosophy.

But let us ponder further the good point he made, West. There is a SEPARATENESS about the Jew, he has his Syrian strong-man musing. It is BECAUSE of this that the Jew is intolerable. There is a cohesion among the Jews (in some senses, beyond their endless bickerings and divisions). There is some unity of purpose. There is a prized history; there is ONE nation, there is ZIONISM, there is ONE place for them to be. Of this,  the so-called West-Bank is part, being in the confines of their original land, indeed, in some parts central to it.

They do not share their God: He is not, Safreddin seems to be opining,  on a leash, ready to sniff at every interesting canine who passes, of whatever gender. With Allah, there is a 'sharing' ? Sharing! It is like the sharing of machine gun bullets when Israel is concerned!

Do the Jews seek to take over the historic lands of Ammon and Moah, now incorporated since 1920 as Jordan, though these were part of 'Palestine' ? Hardly.

Is this a fault ? Scarcely. They are where they were placed, were confirmed to be by the League of Nations, were assigned to be as a homeland, no less.

They show NO TENDENCY to expand beyond this. They even handed back Sinai when they felt sufficiently reassured, after breaking the deadlock via blockade of the Gulf of Aqaba, a Muslim action to harass Israel into submission. How eloquently Eban presented the Israeli position to the UN!

The UN, however, we read in the 22nd Edition of Information Please Almanac, was UNABLE to take any effective action when Egypt called for the removal of the UN Security force from the Egyptian border, to clear the way for invasion of Israel. Unable! All those nations in the security council and ability deserted them! How strange a disability, how distressing a forfeiture of power by the powerful! A tiny Israeli mouse is about to be scatted and catted with a purring paw and an angry mouth filled with a Moslem menace!

What then ? What followed such a situation, as the clouds of war boomed with thunder, and the lightning of hostile intentions to invade Israel, overran the world, like a burst dam ? The UN finds itself... unable. What magnificent debility is this!

The inability has extended itself grossly in more recent times. The UN seems equally incapacitated to deal with the frankly terrorist organisation, HAMAS.

When Israeli persons,
young and old, babes and grand-fathers,

were being blown to pieces, or into separable parts,
some to be trussed together again,
rent by bombs in civic or commercial centres, yes or near religious ones,
in actions well calculated to extend the gross defilement of Israel's synagogue heritage
performed by Jordan in the period 1948-1967:

did the UN then find itself so outraged that it brought in a commission ?

Did it INSIST, yes, that it must assemble people to come and seek out these criminals, these ultra-war criminals, who without war, make war, and make it on those at peace, in their markets and pizzerias! It is exceedingly hard to find the waiting UN assemblage, ardently imploring the PLO for access in order to make fact-finding tours prior to JUDGMENT.

Is this a farce ? Of course not, it is far worse than a farce. It is a tragedy all but incomprehensible, when you find newspapers aplenty, following the barren and near to incredible line, in effect if not in actual admission:  that the Jews should not have done what Britain did in 1940, and later, in its defence. No, they SHOULD have waited until invaded successfully, their nation in tatters, in order to have the unbelievably tender caress of Islam, as so often seen in so many countries for so long, and have subsided.

Why ? Is it so that oil might come to the waiting world, without trouble ? After all, ISRAEL IS SEPARATE. It does talk of a God who is not for sale, because HE IS. There however you come to the real Achilles heel of Israel. Its tendon is cut. It lies prostrate before folly, only delivered by the direct divine dealings of that faithful God, part of whose book they so well keep, and so well transmitted, for which the world should be so grateful: it is this God who keeps HIS WORD. He SAID He would bring them back and He did so. He said they would fight victorious wars on return, and they did so. He said that many nations would seek to punish them and pulverise them, and these did. He said that their arising would be divinely assured, and it was. He said that Jerusalem would be divided into two in the course of these wars, and it was, 1948-1967, long enough to breathe and think about it ? After all, 20 odd years give pause for thought!

Now however, there is the NEXT STEP, that of Zechariah 12:10 when they are to repent. It is not merely a STEP, which they must take. It is a return to their GOD, whose Son they killed, just as so many of Europe's sons have been killed because their nations did not follow Him, whom in many cases, they professed to worship, but rather sought national glory, commercial advantage, survival of the fittest vainglory of evolutionary miasmas.

As to these, as vain as any Jewish or Phoenician idol, they never work any more than any experiments ever work to induce advance in life without intelligence doing it, and indeed, there is little even human intelligence can do, even given the ground plans set forth so beautifully precisely and concisely in the DNA! except repair what several millenia have allowed to spoil.

For all this philosophic delusion, Europe has paid and will pay. It is not repentant. The USA in large measure follows, but chiefly among academia, still in ivory towers, yellowed with over-use and growing antiquity.

Israel has paid for its own version of rebellion, categorical as it was. However,  in vast numbers, it is predicted to RETURN to its God. This is the excellent scenario it has long been, as in the prophecies of Ezekiel and Zechariah, Isaiah (cf. With Heart and Soul, Mind and Strength) and the rest, for one main reason: Israel's God, the God of the Bible is not a cultural accretion, a psychological projection, a national emblem (like a flower, in some US and Australian States), but the proven and demonstrated God Himself. They are to return to God who is true, and what joy that will be, as Paul put it:

• "Now if their fall be the riches for the world, and their failure riches for the Gentiles, how much more their fulness!"

It is only then that insurgent Moab and Ammon (or more precisely, Jordan who now occupies much of those nations, and until 1967, occupied much of Israel's territory as well - namely the West Bank), will utterly fall in any more belligerence; and Egypt will not escape (Ezekiel 39:4-8,11, Daniel 11:42). These tumultuous seasons we have studied previously^*1, but the action is sure, and many are those nations specified who will fall in the attempt to shackle Israel once and for all.

The 'separateness' of the Jew, then, of which West speaks ? To the extent it is present, it is partly and perhaps chiefly the result of the intense Old Testament insistence on cleanness, the division and the distinction between the clean and the unclean, on the faithful ZEAL of the Lord God, of His utter detestation on idolatry and on sharing the idols of the land into which Israel, at His undertaking came, on business from the Lord. It was, then,  NOT FOR PREDILECTION THAT HE PUT THEM THERE.

Theirs was to be a life! It would show the world, and allow it to find again the God of creation, in the glory of redemption! But Israel of old, in this, it was for failure. So long, protracted and aggravated was this failure, and such a crisis did it portend,  that HE REMOVED THEM  FROM THERE! (cf. Romans 11:19-20, II Chronicles 36); for He desired a people to glorify Him and show His truth to this earth (cf. Isaiah 43:21), whose invitation to the Promised Land was conditional on faith. In the end, not for 70 years in Babylonish exile, but for some 1900 years of world exile, they have suffered the breach (cf. Zechariah 11:6-13).

We need to consider the severity of the case. As to that, after Egypt, the miraculous Exodus, and after many miracles of deliverance, Israel failed right at the first, when they reached the land after such a saga - Numbers 14, cf. I Corinthians 10. They trembled and did not even enter it. God requires faith. Hence it was not till the next generation that He suffered them to enter. It was then, over hundreds of years, that God tested them forgave them often (cf. Psalms 78, 105-106); and many were the revivals (as under Hezekiah and delightful Josiah, so zealously pure in heart and keen in mind). However in the end, it was their inveterate SHARING of their religion and their ways, intolerable to truth as is error in a mathematics examination, which brought their downfall.

So it is NOT primarily the separateness of the Jew which is the problem, as if it were racial. It is the FAILURE to be separated to the LIVING GOD which is their problem. In reaction, they have indeed tended (partly in self-defence before a voracious and lustfully plundering world, which pays, and continues to pay for its wallowing crimes against the Jew (cf. Jeremiah 30:16, Genesis 12:2-3), to be separate. However the separation is not religious to reality, and gracious toward God; for they still do not acknowledge their OWN MESSIAH, which is the only one this whole world is going to get.

THIS is the real horror of Israel to Arab. It is in so much RIGHT. And this is the real weakness of Israel, that it is in so much wrong, even against its own book (cf. SMR pp. 52-59, Ch. 9 ). It has ditched the deity, left the Lord and while now receiving the delicious and gratuitous bounties of His insistence on KEEPING HIS PROMISES (cf. Ezekiel 36:22), and so back victoriously in its own land, it has yet to receive Jesus Christ. This Son of man, it is He who is the hinge of its destiny, the source of its greatness, the culmination of their book, that prophet who was to come and who came on the date specified in Daniel, and in the way particularised by Moses (Daniel 9:24-27 cf. SMR pp. 886ff., Deuteronomy 18). To be cut off from the people was the penalty, and Israel HAS suffered. HE is to be heeded. End of story.

When in Israel HE IS HEEDED, it is the beginning of new chapter of the libretto. THEN Israel's destiny in Christ, in the case of many individuals and a significant section of the nation, along with other Christians, will be wrought in kindness and covered in power.

Meanwhile all suffer, Jew and Arab, European and Russian, so needlessly since Jesus Christ has already suffered, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God! (I Peter 3:18). Accordingly, in the midst of false prophecies, from false prophets, disastrously incapable of rational competition with God, and providing fake food for the deluded, trouble bubbles in the Middle East in particular, that concourse of error.

Again and again, way back in the day of Isaiah, we find the divine challenge to be rational, empirical, alert if nothing more, to face facts, and respond to reality (cf. Isaiah 41: 21-29 - contrasted with the all-proficient and comforting Messiah, in 42:1ff. , and again, Isaiah 43:4-15, 48:2-9). It was not then heeded sufficiently by the nation, which spurred on by misconception, activated by idolatry, seeking in superficiality, went on to its discipline of 70 years of exile. When it killed Christ, admittedly according to explicit divine plan (Isaiah 49:7, 52-55), its lapse coursed it further from home, and longer away! But it is not alone, in this, that its provocations to God, these are paralleled in modern times, by many, by very many indeed, as far as they are able, in spirit and in life!

Thus, there is international trouble that will not, because it CAN NOT depart. It is ordained (Zechariah 12:1ff.), and that Jerusalem be a burdensome stone is likewise ordained. God did not have His Son's death there (the funeral could not occur of course, God being God), so that He might be indifferent to the murder squad and to their premisses. God did not have His temple there, so that He could be indifferent to a Mosque, even if the death of His Son made all such temples unnecessary and indeed profane (cf. Hebrews 2, 4, 7-10, SMR pp. 829ff.).

The Mosque is a rebuff to Israel's unbelief, since it is Christ who has replaced the temple (cf. Jeremiah 3:16, John 3:16), rendering it unnecessary. Were it built, it would be almost as flagrant a blasphemy as is the Mosque! The Mosque therefore is a piquant reminder to seek the truth where it is to be found - in the rejected Messiah, who, after all, was predicted to be rejected, in the first occasion, by ... Israel! (Isaiah 49:7 and inferentially in 52-53).

There are more things that the Lord has forecast.

GOD did not announce the present wars and their bloodshed, and His coming to the Mount of Olives, once again in the format of the Christ, in order to let the world have a romp, per courtesy of the United Nations or any other profane and presumptuous body, in effect imagining as in Acts 4:25ff., that its rancid rancours could intimidate God Himself. As to the Lord, He has said and He does. It is always the same. He has said and He is now doing it. We are witnesses of the profound meaning, precision and panache of the presentation to our eyes, called contemporary history, but long foreseen and foretold in His word.

We have now dealt with some of the theme of the A) section from Nahum. God is zealous for His word, determined for His people, will not at all acquit the wicked, deems it wicked to ignore Him who made us and to take His gifts as if we made them, and though slow to anger, CAN AND DOES ACT, at length, as at the flood, as in Egypt at the Exodus. In fact, positively He did this,  in sending His Son surrounded with prophetic identikit, like a soldier with wreaths; and negatively He did it in disciplining the nation of Israel, in returning them, but also in harassing their enemies and making them weak, that His program in all things stands firm.

Now He will act in their deliverance, for many, in restoration to the Faith in the only true God, whose testimony is incomparable, both personally and logically, and in the rescue of their soon to be invaded land. He does as He says: always. He may test; but when He pronounces, He performs (cf. Isaiah 45:24-28). His word, like the engine of some theoretical perfect car, never misses.
 
 

These things being observed, let us note the rest of the points needed from Nahum, as cited above. First B):

"The Lord is good,
A stronghold in the day of trouble;
And He knows those who trust in Him.
But with an overflowing flood
He will make an utter end of its place,
And darkness will pursue His enemies."

The sheer marvel of a faithful person, or of some such,  on earth is scarcely credible, so hard is it to find them; but they are there. When you look to God, however, He is always the same, and His faithfulness does not even know how to fail. He never fails. Good, He is reliable; a stronghold, His power knows no end. Goodness is such a fabulous thing; but it is more than fable, it is able to act, when it is in God. Here goodness knows its source, from this Power it comes pure, and in Him, it is perfect. He is not indifferent. He does not kill as an example, those who trust in Him, or suffer their faith to fail (cf. Luke 22:32). If one is to die for Him (as Stephen, Acts 7), then the lustre is not lost. It is but a transition to Himself, from earth to heaven. As for death, it is beaten, because sated with blood, His. Justice is done, and mercy is won (Romans 3:23ff.).

These things, they are applicable: but where ? Where saving faith is found, there they apply. What is saving faith ? it is a trust in the objective God, in His objectively true word, in His objectively infinite power, in His objectively sincere love, for His objectively organised and authorised purposes. What does this involve ?

It means that you accept what He has said, the sole authenticated word, the Bible, accept what He has done on your behalf, and taking it a step further, make it applicable to yourself, through grace alone, by RECEIVING it. Therefore it is a matter of receiving Christ as Lord and Saviour according to His word, blood covering covenanting God, merciful and pardoning person, in the trinity the executive of death's destruction, and the judge of all.

FAITH is not opinion; it is not effort; it is not works; it is not hope; it is TRUST in the living God, the actual One. It is a covenantal thing, since His word has expressly made a NEW covenant, that in Christ's blood. It is not a form or formality; it is a faith functionality. If you do not trust the revealed God, forget it, it is not applicable to you. If you do trust Him, then you now it, as Paul put it:

"I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him against that day" - the day of final judgment (II Timothy 1:12).

However, the intractable, the intolerant and hence intolerable, those for whom truth is alien and God unknown, who cherish His absence and devote themselves to idols, gods who have no credentials, no Son to show, no works to attest, no predictions to propel their words into this world, no ability to satisfy logic, mere lords of invention, their own arbiters of destiny, direct or duplicitously via false prophets: the end is bleak.

What would you! Truth does not prevail merely because it is better; it prevails because it is true. Reality is insuppressible. God is back of OUR reality, and He is the FINAL and ORIGINAL reality. He made, rules and will judge, when this precious pilgrimage is over. He even joined it, as Christ, a root out of a dry ground, who broke death, since eternal life IS HIS (I John 1:1-14).

Thus "darkness will pursue His enemies", as Nahum attests.  For a time in their delusions, they think that the trials and the testings, in this race for the race, attest them; but they fail. Look at the litany of national disasters as programmed by the Lord, for the sins of recalcitrance and vainglory.
Take first Nahum 3:8-10:

"Are you better than No Amon
That was situated by the River,
That had the waters around her,
Whose rampart was the sea,
Whose wall was the sea?
Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength,
And it was boundless;
Put and Lubim were your helpers.

"Yet she was carried away,
She went into captivity;
Her young children also were dashed to pieces
At the head of every street;
They cast lots for her honorable men,
And all her great men were bound in chains."

As to the portent of His word: In its time, majestic in splendour, sure in utterance, practical in performance, it comes. It misses less than the most expert marksman (cf. Isaiah 49:2, 51:16). It does not miss at all. As to Him, He never fails (Zephaniah 3:5).

Let us indeed see something of this fact in its historical setting from Zephaniah:

"Her prophets are insolent, treacherous people;
Her priests have polluted the sanctuary,
They have done violence to the law.
The Lord is righteous in her midst,
He will do no unrighteousness.

"Every morning He brings His justice to light;
He never fails,
But the unjust knows no shame.

"I have cut off nations,
Their fortresses are devastated;
I have made their streets desolate,
With none passing by.
Their cities are destroyed;
There is no one, no inhabitant.

"I said, ‘Surely you will fear Me,
You will receive instruction’—
So that her dwelling would not be cut off,
Despite everything for which I punished her.
But they rose early and corrupted all their deeds.

“ 'Therefore wait for Me,' says the Lord,
'Until the day I rise up for plunder;
My determination is to gather the nations
To My assembly of kingdoms,
To pour on them My indignation,
All my fierce anger;
All the earth shall be devoured
With the fire of My jealousy.

“For then I will restore to the peoples a pure language ...' "

"The Lord has given a command concerning you:

'Your name shall be perpetuated no longer.
Out of the house of your gods
I will cut off the carved image and the molded image.
I will dig your grave,
For you are vile.' "

Nineveh was left as difficult-even-to-find rubble and ruin.

In SMR we trace such things further (cf. SMR p. 713). Indeed, we could look at Isaiah 13 on Babylon, Isaiah 34 on Petra, Ezekiel 29 on Egypt, 26-27,  on Tyre, Jeremiah 50-51 on Babylon, and right here in Zephaniah 3, at Israel. One finds here, however,  with this reference to "a pure language" much more of the restoration of the people to the ONE GOD whom they knew at the first, with the ONE MESSIAH who came in His time (Zephaniah 3:13, 17 as in Nahum 1:15, Isaiah 52:13-53:12, 40:10, Micah 4, Isaiah 2).

Yes, as in Romans 11, there is a TAKING ON of Israel, as if it were a tree, then a TAKING OUT, as if it were a removed branch, then a TAKING BACK, but this is to their own tree, no change! It is this last  -  in divine faithfulness, doing all His predicted promised performances as we have seen above, for the still disbelieving NATION (this is NOT a racial but a national thing, since many Jews have become Christians, like all the apostles!): it is this which shows the faithfulness of God.

It is here that we shall find the C) or final section of our Nahum reference above:
 

"Behold, on the mountains
The feet of him who brings good tidings,
Who proclaims peace!"

Check this with Isaiah 52:7-53:12 and you see the shape of things which came, and are yet to come. Flooding the prophets, like an Italian lake, high in the mountains, a reservoir bursting, the Messianic references cover the whole environment!
 

Peace is coming. War has come. The Middle East is its very navel.

One of the reasons is so simple. It is that Jordan has taken most of Palestine, and once took the West Bank as well, in 1948, keeping it till 1967; and yet, it does not take the Palestinians, though it took some for a while, and it has already gained far the greater part of Palestine, a land by the League of Nations presented as a homeland to Israel! Now the West Bank, or what was virtually much of Israel as of Palestine, is being treated as if the Jews INVADED it, when Jordan did, taking and owning it from 1948-1967; and this after being given most of Palestine already!
 

"Conquered from the Turks by the British in World War I, Jordan was separated from the Palestine mandate in 1920, and placed in 1921 under the rule of Abdullah Ibn Hussein.

"In 1929, Britain recognized Jordan's independence, subject to the mandate. In 1946, Britain abolished the mandate and recognized the independence of Jordan."

That, from the Information Please Almanac of 1968, tells the choice data so much needed, so often neglected and so vital. Now, Jordan, evidently the modern replacement of Moab and Ammon would like to keep all the Palestinian territory it already has, while other Arabs would like a large chunk of Israel, to add to their Palestine donation, already to the tune of more than three quarters of the whole! The West Bank is Jewish, is part of Palestine, of the small residual part which, despite breach of international agreement, is all that is left to Israel.

So Yasser Arafat is now using a Jordanian helicopter as he reviews his 'troops' in the West Bank! It makes sense; but not good sense...

The UN appears to think it very bad that Israel took some anti-murder action in the West Bank, so that it might not be a popular and populous harbour for ammunition, ammunition factories, murderers of children and the like. Why precisely ? Hamas has decided that it will not cease its murder machine methods on the Israeli domestic populace. The UN has not very obviously told Hamas that as terrorists they must now face a secular Inquisition, as they threatened for Israel, and that speedily. It did not seem to hurry with express mode, to do this during the years of these evil massacres. Again, the US has not told them that they must now become part of the butt for the anti-terrorist war. Why precisely ?

Is the world asleep ? But of course. Even some of the visible church is asleep, indeed much of it, as foretold in the parable of Christ found in Matthew 25, where some of the virgins awaiting the wedding, summed up as the return of the bridegroom - as noted above, a picture of the LORD, and here of Christ in particular as the returning Prince (Zech. 14:5), became slumbrous, comatose. They evidently had found the delay intolerable, the desire aborted or the duty unimportant ...

They simply forgot all about their appointment as bridesmaids, and slumbered. Possibly some of them snored, which would account for some of modern theology. Now the percentage of those who were in this plight ? it  was ... 50%. It is of course not possible to draw from this the conclusion that 50% of the visible church will be fake, asleep, inactive, unalert, ready for judgment (cf. I Peter 4:17). It is nevertheless quite apparent that a large slice of it will be in this position, as also seen in II Peter 2:1ff., where the popularity of false teaching is made explicit, in the predictions for times to come, expanded most fascinatingly in II Peter 3 (cf. Joyful Jottings  8).

How else would the coming of Christ be like a thief by night (II Peter 3:10). Thieves, do they blow a fanfare, or activate an alarm ? The picture is impossible to suppress!
 
 

Yet not all sleep, and not all snore. Thus the action of the US Senate and Congress, both, in affirming that the Israeli people face TERRORISM wholly parallel to what the US now faces, and approving their action to obviate it, is welcome. It is at least factual.

The administration has not done very much to implement such a policy, though it is not at present, legally bound to do so. Nevertheless, it would seem likely that they would be at least aware of the theme and view of both houses of their parliament! One would imagine that they would not simply disregard the views of those elected to represent the nation. Truly, the President also was elected, though in rather doubtful circumstances, perhaps, and very narrowly for sure. However, the law does make provision; and if it came to the point, a large majority would be needed to override any veto he might impose, if the parliamentary bodies acted more firmly. At least, they are MOST CLEAR. In these two houses, much of America has spoken. Will they however let their leader speak most differently ? and will he continue to want to do so ? Time will show it. For America, undoubtedly, much depends on this.

In Psalm 11, we read, accordingly: "The LORD is in His holy temple,

"The LORD's throne is in heaven;
His eyes behold,
His eyelids test the sons of men.
The LORD tests the righteous,
But the wicked and the one who loves violence, His soul hates."

From its own words, Hamas, and not they alone by any means, appears to love violence; and perhaps many young Palestinian children will be taught, instructed, to do the same. Human nature, being sinful, seems more readily to be warpable and teachable; though in God, all things are possible. Will the US, IN EFFECT, allow it all ?

ISRAEL FACES TERRORISM and does well so to regard it. This is the message of Senate and Congress in the USA.

Israel faces it as does the USA.

The DIFFERENT FACES OF THE FACE THAT FACES THINGS

The USA however does NOT face the terrorists against Israel as it faces those against itself. Whatever the complexities of government, in the end, any State does this or that. You can talk for hours, but act in minutes. It does, or it does not, do well. The USA has done horribly badly in some things, in its pulsating pressure on Israel to capitulate to more and more of the Arab pressures of extortion to get even more of Palestine, the large majority of which they already illegally have. Other laws, other times ? Is this the honour of the world ? It is no honour whatever, but speechified fraud which so acts in the face of the original "homeland" gift to Israel.

The US administration,  however has amended its ways just a little, Bush noting something far nearer the truth, after at first maintaining wrongly, that it was very IMPORTANT to see the difference between the Arab assaults on Israel and terrorism. Now, more recently, he has used at least the word 'terror' in the Israeli context, and not against Israel, but its tormentors.

However, at best, the US administration has been to all appearance, oilily circumspect, and cautiously pushy about Israel, to get it to disburse more land and so buy a peace, which in fact could be no peace, since the 'catastrophe' which to the Arab Israel is supposed, in general, to represent, is not removed by making it less. It is removed by making Israel less, and then striking. Or if possible, it would be. Any school child, one would hope, at least by year 11, might be able to see that. If you want to bully someone, first remove his knuckle dusters. It all helps.

The action of the united Arab front has repeated and explicitly been anti-ISRAEL. Why is it imagined that when it is fed, it will lose all appetite ?
 

• Why is it imagined that the voracious Allah

 
• (as exposed in the words of the Koran and the military actions of Muhammad, to whose paradise it is stated that celestial keys may be obtained in certain valorous battles on his behalf, for his acclaimed presence),

 
• will be satisfied if so seldom sated, with only a little of Israel.

Is it not found better that all acclaim him, as bin Laden so explicitly seems to seek, at least to the extent of the former 'glorious' empire which was enslaved to this religion and its militant suppressive tactics, in history seen too often for comment, and too awfully for acceptance even civilly!

Dreams contrary to fact do not make good strategy, nor do they advance peace.
 
 

Another party - and this time, literally a party, is awake in some respects also. It would seem that in those regards, it is WIDE awake. Netanyahu, we find from ABC News Radio May 14, 2002, is gently explaining an important fact. A meeting of Likud preceded. In this, there was a vociferous, enthusiastic and large acclaim for the concept that the Palestinian State concept is not to go on, but off stage (left). NO! NO! NO! was the obvious fervour of the televised vote. The room seemed almost to erupt with sky-reaching hands. It was like an army presenting arms!

Netanyahu, who has been the leader of Israel before now, a man of considerable accomplishments, explained for the Press. All that has happened, he indicated, is that there has been a refusal to have the Palestinian State implemented, on the part of the Party. IF, he continued, there is a Palestinian State, there can be no Israeli State. If there is an Israeli State, there can be no Palestinian State. The latter would simply provide a base for terror.

It certainly HAS provided that, and this demonstrably in the recent past.

Another interesting and pertinent program came earlier, on TV, which presented a survey of American Jewish opinion concerning Israel. Various parties were interviewed. The result from that US Jewish base was this. In times past, there had been considerable division over the point, should Israel cede land for peace. This was now becoming a vanishing view. The failure, said one, of Arafat at Camp David, with Clinton, to accept exceedingly generous terms for a settlement was one thing. The other ? It has been the SUBSEQUENT mass murdering techniques of Islam, against Israeli citizens.

It has almost seemed as if Hitler had not really died, but continued as able.

If more power were present (with the Palestinian State envisaged), would there be less deaths ?
It would appear virtually a self-contradiction of the explicit policy of murder as harassment towards Israeli surrender, massively increasing itself all the time.

What is it, that is being handed out to Israel ? Auschwitz by instalments ? Are arms ships to come freely to a sovereign territory, a new PLO State of some kind, like the teeth of the wolf, being all the better to eat you with, my dear! It would not seem provident to provide such an aid to iniquity. Likud is NOT about to consent to the apparent intention of its leader, Sharon, who interestingly has an extreme right-wing type of reputation, though now his party is clamouring for far more realism, and less concession in the face of slaughterous intimidation, even if the UN does not appear, like a drowsy lion, to notice these things.

That 'lion' ? It is the flies, the Israelis, which seem to bother it. Perhaps there is too much oil on its face. If not, now is an excellent time to remember the principles of justice.
 
 

Meanwhile, it is keenly interesting to see Netanyahu coming again to the fore at such a time, and most gratifying to see his astute political care in preventing needless appearance of a split with Sharon.

It is just an expression of the will of the Party, he indicated. That is all.

Perhaps the recollection of the prophecies of their own seers will re-appear in the midst of many in Israel soon, and they will see more: that the real reason why they should be there is nothing less than divine, and the real action they should take, first and before all else, is to repent of the murder of Christ, in the midst of these contemporary murders. It is not as if God refuses to forgive; but He insists on repentance, as Zechariah so gravely stresses and predictively features.

For that matter, the followers of Islam will have to realise, if they are to live in the presence of God at all, that they are given many lands, and have huge territories, but Israel is not for sale, extortionately or otherwise. All will have to come to the Lord Jesus Christ, slain by Israel, rejected no less by the throng of this world's princes (possibly with the occasional exception, at the personal level), and distorted:  as in the body, by Israel, so in the depiction by the Moslem. It is all distorted, and it is all needlessly costly.

The truth will not alter; but it will alter those who fool with it. Proverbs provides a severe warning, which is far better to read than it is to attempt to seize God and make Him a prey^*2. Your mouth is not wide enough, nor your mind your own, when you assail your Creator, rejecting His salvation in favour of pretence which neither works, could work nor deserves to work.

God has spoken. History follows like a lamb. It is better to follow Christ like a lamb likewise. There is no other shepherd for man - oh! except the evil one, mentioned in Nahum above:

"From you comes forth one
Who plots evil against the Lord,
A wicked counselor."

These are readily available, and such a one will perform his prodigy of perfidy at the end (II Thessalonians 2:4ff.). For more on that, see for example, News  5.

As to the proven shepherd of peace and truth, precisely in accord with the word of God, itself precisely outperforming all without comparison even meaningful: it is this Shepherd who is required for the Muslim, the Roman Catholic, the Sect follower, the unbeliever in any and every form, in any and every nation, in any and every situation, without limit, without exception and without truce. Truth has no truce.

Why try to kill it ? Listen to Isaiah 42 concerning Him who is the only Saviour, the Lord and the Friend of sinners, companion of His people and arbiter of destiny:
 

• “Behold! My Servant whom I uphold,

My Elect One in whom My soul delights!
I have put My Spirit upon Him;
He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles.
He will not cry out, nor raise His voice,
Nor cause His voice to be heard in the street.

"A bruised reed He will not break,
And smoking flax He will not quench;
He will bring forth justice for truth.
He will not fail nor be discouraged,
Till He has established justice in the earth;
And the coastlands shall wait for His law.”

It is simply not available elsewhere (Acts 4:11-12, Colossians 1:19-21, SMR Ch. 1, Barbs, Arrows and Balms 17).

It is this lesson which the world needs most!
 
 

*1 See on this:

SMR Appendix A; 510ff., 814-815; The Biblical Workman Chs. 1,  8, and esp.  pp. 140ff.;
It Bubbles, It Howls, He Calls... Ch.   10; Galloping Events Chs.  1, 2 , 3; More Marvels ...Ch.   3; The Impregnable Tower Ch.   6.

*2 For this see below:
 

"Wisdom calls aloud outside;
She raises her voice in the open squares.
She cries out in the chief concourses,
At the openings of the gates in the city
She speaks her words:

“ 'How long, you simple ones, will you love simplicity?
For scorners delight in their scorning,
And fools hate knowledge.
Turn at my rebuke;
Surely I will pour out my spirit on you;
I will make my words known to you.

" 'Because I have called and you refused,
I have stretched out my hand and no one regarded,
Because you disdained all my counsel,
And would have none of my rebuke,
I also will laugh at your calamity;
I will mock when your terror comes,
When your terror comes like a storm,
And your destruction comes like a whirlwind,
When distress and anguish come upon you.

“ 'Then they will call on me, but I will not answer;
They will seek me diligently, but they will not find me.
Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord,
They would have none of my counsel
And despised my every rebuke.

" 'Therefore they shall eat the fruit of their own way,
And be filled to the full with their own fancies.
For the turning away of the simple will slay them,
And the complacency of fools will destroy them;
But whoever listens to me will dwell safely,
And will be secure, without fear of evil.' ”