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CHAPTER 4

THE LORD'S OWN WILL

will in fact BE DONE

Mapping with Man and with God

MAKING man's map and READING God's map

The ROAD MAP and the CATNAP

NEWS 272 June 10, 2003

The Advertiser June 6, 9

Hamas, indicates the Palestianian Foreign Minister, Nabil Shaath (Advertiser June 9), would not have to face force from Mahmoud Abbas. The country, it seems, would not discipline deviants from the new restraint policy. It might and presumably would make pious noises, but as to dealing with the murderers in its midst, so long as they were to be Israeli lives, it would decline to agree, on the one hand, and to stop the process by the arm of the law, on the other.

No, he indicated, if negotiation, in which he hoped for success, did not work, then the Road Map might have to be abandoned. In short, it would become a WRONG WAY, GO BACK sign.

It is of course the wrong way in any case.

What is wrong ? it is this process of having Israel restore even more of its little, surrounded land to the bullies outside it, for whom areas many times its size, do not suffice. These, who have often sought its extinction, without success, but with actual loss, now want an international body to supervise its renewed butchery, bloodless (modern style). The pre-1967 situation is referred to, and that would include the gift of part of Jerusalem to Arabs, together with what amounts to something like ancient Judea and Samaria. Such international surgery on the victorious midget, in favour of the oil-rich land-owners of much of the Middle East! Rough justice ? It is rough: but no more!

Further, and even more crucially, the Bible makes it clear that God has rights of primacy over Jerusalem and Israel in view of the little consideration that He PHYSICALLY MADE THE PLACE! The 'lease' (Matthew 21:33-42) to Israel led to a forfeiture TEMPORARILY as prescribed in the covenant (Leviticus 26), with provision in terms of precise prediction, for a restoration after a long, wearisome, torturous, psychically gruelling exile (Deuteronomy 32). On this, see Trust God, Mate! Forget about Fate... Ch. 5, and SMR Appendix A with The Biblical Workman Ch. 1, *3 and Ch. 3, *1.

It has happened. They successively

	broke the covenant,
	were disciplined as predicted, and eventually passing all bounds,
	crucified the WORLD's ONLY MESSIAH, past, present or future (Psalm 2, 72, Ephesians 1:10, Acts 4:11-12) which naturally enough - as the last of the line of punishments predictively promulgated from Moses -

 led to their long continued and gruesome exile.

It was to be one reaching a dreadful culmination (Jeremiah 30:5-10), from which however there would be, as specified, a deliverance. This was predicted in considerable detail in Zechariah 12-14, one feature of which is yet to come, namely the conversion of a large consignment of Israel, amid warring conditions, to the CRUCIFIED CHRIST. To Him, therefore, many of them in a notable scale, are to come, to Him  who was by this same prophet predicted as receiving such a vicious treatment, half a millenium before it happened. Here, then,  Zechariah is predicting the long delayed Israeli repentance for the deed. As to the prediction of Jeremiah, that of the "day of Jacob's trouble", when "all faces turn pale", that day which is "great, so that none is like it, and it is the time of Jacob's trouble, but he shall be saved out of it": such a day has assuredly come already.

Hitler, not monolithically alone by any means, but as the coping stone, or top of the arch of the often fiendish European persecution of Jews over CENTURIES - as by Russia in its pogroms - in death camps run like factories of mortality, manufacturing morgues, removed in the cruelest way, millions of Jews, estimated at some 6 million. Specialists in death, like human plagues, applied their pseudo-religious ferocities to the task, in some ways, the jihad of their day; and the industry grew great and weighty, leading amongst other things, to large amounts of Swiss gold, some of which has recently been repatriated, after so long a time...

The JEWS HAVE SUFFERED, and let not self-righteous critics growl and gripe, many of whom are just as rebellious against the divine covenant now applied to all the earth, as the Jews EVER were against their own, which blossomed, again according to prediction, into this New Covenant in the slain Jesus Christ (cf. News 121, SMR pp.  699ff.)

In fact, as Paul declared, in Romans 11, in speaking of the movement from the Old Covenant, for breach of which the Jews were bypassed for a time with the Gospel to the Gentiles, in the New Covenant predicted by their own prophets (Jeremiah 31), this is no occasion for Gentile boasting. WHY, the apostle here asks, why did the Jew lose his place ? It was because of unbelief (Romans 11:15-22). Why then should the Gentile peoples imagine that they are better placed when they in their own particular and peculiar species of unbelief, DO JUST THE SAME!

Thus, speaking of Israel as an olive tree, with branches cut off for unbelief, he thunders with divinely granted warning:
 

	"Do not boast against the branches. But if you do boast, remember that you do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, 'Branches were broken off that I might be grafted in.'
	"Well said, Because of unbelief they were broken off, and you stand by faith. Do not be haughty but fear; for if God did not spare the natural branches, He may not spare you either. Therefore consider the goodness and severity of God..."

Is it then imagined that Palestinian or United States, or European Gentiles are in some special class, as if God did not bring judgment to all, and fulfil His word with complete fidelity, upon all, or as if Jewish sin were worse than Gentile sin, and Jewish unbelief resided in some austerely different category from that of the Gentiles, whose abuse of all morality grows beyond almost anything one can contemplate

(cf. From Grace Triumphant to Face Divine Ch. 6, for example,
with SMR pp. 671ff., 664ff., 685ff., 860, 836ff., 232ff.).

The atrocities of the Gentiles are not at all deficient, when compared to the evils from the Jews. ALL have sinned, and ALL have shown much attestation in many phases, fields and applications of these sins!

None is exempt: where 'high moral qualities' are found, often pride is amongst them, and self-trust, the unutterable folly of making 'one's own covenant with God' explicit or implicit, much as the Jews did. This, Is it not fanatically popular with those who often pride themselves on their neutrality, maturity and poise ? What then are they so frequently found doing, except BELIEVING that any good God would know such a good thing as they conceive themselves undoubtedly to be, so that He would HAVE to accept them. This, is it neutral ? any more than an examinee prescribing to the examining authority, what his mark should be!

What then of the Gentiles in vast numbers ? In this quintessential pride and presumption, or else in slatternly seductions of mind, body and spirit, creating their own morals and then marking themselves by them, or ignoring them altogether, like vagrant fuel-gauges, then, do they barefacedly go to meet their Maker, despising His word (in practice, as some patients despise the antibiotics prescribed, and so do not take them), and expecting His approbation. Do you smack the face of the Queen and expect congratulations ?

What then!

THE MAP THAT FAILS

Thus this endeavour of Palestinian and Russian, European and American diplomats (Russia - once USSR - EU, USA and the UN (what a lot of UNITEDs in that!), the Quartet as they are called (Earth Spasm... Ch. 5), with its requirements and disposals of territories, what is it ? and their product, their will, what has been created ? If George is pushing the formal Road Map, no doubt the concept is the same for the key concept of the reduced Israel! It is a map of mines!

Consider what was said in the above volume in July 2002 (slightly adapted), in the light of the then current news...

The movement in the EU is continually that reported this week of one of its functionaries, that Israel is categorically astray in its treatment of the Palestinians. This Europe it is which so gives voice, itself centre for foul centuries of obvious, disastrous, gross and outrageous defilement of the Jewish population with pogroms and cunning laws to exploit them, with rampagings and killings, destructions of synagogues and the like.  (Not all are 'guilty' of this, it is in the past, to be sure, but it is there, and was there for centuries, part of the loathsome ferocity of the Inquisition as well.)  is it not then lacking in a little measure of reticence now, in its new EU clothes, about further insensitivity to the small land of those who escaped its strangely shown kindness of the
past ?

Would not some considerate tenderness be preferable to unfeeling disregard in such a situation!

What however of the UN, another member of the quartet ? Does not its song go back to 1947 when in shameless defiance of ethics, of agreement, of the past agreement for Palestine to be for Israel, it dis-assembled the booty, and instead of demanding why part of Palestine, a LARGE part had been given in the 1920's to Jordan when it had already been arranged for Israel, it decided that the (relatively) small part remaining should NOT be one territory, but BITS, and that Jerusalem should not be Jewish, but INTERNATIONAL! Such an affront must rarely have been gratuitously offered to any nation.

This then is the ethical sensitivity of the UN, which as one of the Quartet, has little quarter to give to Israel, being more interested, by all appearance, in insulting the afflicted Israel, victim of endless inhuman terrorist attacks in its tiny residual domain, than in rebuking and seeking the extradition of the terrorists who so boldly claim responsibility for endless seeming atrocities, and confronting the country which before the rebukes from Israel, did so little to prevent such things, even releasing some of the more violent of them from prison!.

Are such people, then, actively sought by the UN, those like Hamas, as war criminals, and are they being looked for that they might go to the War Crimes Tribunal or any coming modern equivalent ? It is not, to say no more, very noticeable that it feels that way. Its emotions at this level seem rather levelled at the butt of the terrorist, to rebuke the victim, than at the aggressor.

Yet, you say, Israel is the aggressor for daring to take ANY land in the Middle East ? Taking! Was not far MORE than it took, GIVEN to it, only to be recklessly removed without due law, without right, without ethics, without reliability, responsibility or dependability ?

Now one gains the feeling that the UN would like Israel to be investigated, indeed they had their committee of counsellors actually physically in WAITING to GO to Israel to make just such an investigation, not many months ago. Is Hamas, the terrorist organisation, not rather to be,
with its many allies, such as Iraq, reportedly engaged in giving BOUNTY for killings, to be investigated ?

Or is the United States, then, also to be 'investigated' about Afghanistan, because it sought to eradicate the terrorists who hit it ? It is not very noticeable. To be sure, the US is not as rabid as the UN appears, as utterly indifferent to the whole concept of terrorism in its aggressive initiatives in this region; but it is weakening with the oil, with the joint work with Islam, the latter itself rife with jihads and threats of violence, this being declared now here, now there, with now this statement of support (as has repeatedly occurred since Teheran in 1991, among many major Moslem nations) for the Palestinian, in which, as formerly in Afghanistan, lies the terrorist!

Yet is the US to be heeded because it INSISTS that there MUST be a Palestinian State, that is, a FURTHER carving out of some of the tiny residue now accorded to the Jews, and even from what they WON, DESPITE the other nations; for it was forced to act without their aid in 1948, and in the face of UN discrimination of an order which itself comments on the nations of this world!

The nations ? they are but men, and their aggregation - although in the days of the Atlantic Charter and the newly formed UN, after the heady days of World War II victory, and the vision of Churchill, there were many moral aspects, drawn not least from a Christian background in Britain and in the USA - is one which has little to commend itself morally. It has divorced morals from God, and is run from the nations of many gods, and is no more reliable than any other atheist-polytheist admixture.

Its words do not accord with those of the League of Nations, and its mandate is no more moral than its deeds declare.

The last reference is to the League of Nations, in the early 1920s, validating the word of Britain, via Lord Balfour, in 1917, and therefore according the LAND OF PALESTINE to the JEWISH PEOPLE. So then, it is 'illegal' for the Jewish people to occupy their small fraction of the land of Palestine, after some 77% of it was given to Jordan, made independent from the former Turkish territories, lost in the World War I ? It is NOT ILLEGAL for the Palestinians, who after all are NOT the "Jewish people" to occupy MOST OF IT ALREADY ?

There are times that it is only with difficulty that one can distinguish sanity in the world of international affairs and diplomacy, from its reverse.

Such is the prodigious propaganda from the Press (only very rarely does one find an article such as once appeared in one major paper, indicating that after all, the large multiplied populations of the MANY Arab and  Muslim nations round about Israel, with their large territories, refusing to TAKE the Palestinians into their midst, a large girth already glutted with most of Palestine, were only USING 'the Palestinians' as a catspaw for their own hostile intentions). The Pressin large measure: It asseverates, it languishes, ir cries - 'the poor Palestinians!'

Why are they so poor ? Is it because Israel allows so many of them - perhaps a million - to be citizens of their flourishing land ? or does not do what the USA did in Afghanistan, a land which dared, if only by a dictatorship, to be the apparent base for a hostile action!

And is it strange that Israel sometimes 'reacts' when for the nth time some more of its own industrious citizens are murdered by the illicit occupants of Jewish territory, the Palestinians ?

Ilicit ? Is then morality time-governed, and are solemn obligations null, so that what has been internationally, formerly granted, is now to be so no more, what has been the basis of large-scale operations is now lost to all knowledge or acknowledgement, so that those Jews who use still a SMALL PART of the land accorded, are in some strange way OCCUPYING IT ? Am I 'occupying' my own lungs !

Moreover in natural justice, is Israel to have so little, when the Arabs and Muslims in the IMMEDIATE vicinity, have so much ? and so much of what was already GIVEN TO THE JEWS, while their own lands,  duly established and given freedom after World War I, which might have dealt very differently with them,  are to be subject merely to INCREASE, and not decrease!

This, it is justice ?

It is not natural justice, nor is it divine.

God has told Abraham that the land was his to ALL succeeding generations (Genesis 17, Galloping Events  Ch. 4 ) and it is God Himself who specified the limits of discipline in exile to be followed by restoration as may be seen in Genesis and Leviticus with Deuteronomy as noted above. It is keenly dramatised in Ezekiel 36-37 (It Bubbles ... Ch. 10, The Biblical Workman Ch. 8 ). Further, He has indicated both extensively and repeatedly that there is a payback day for the arrogant utilisation of Jewish things by the effrontery of the Gentiles (Isaiah 49:24-26, Micah 7, Obadiah, Ezekiel 36-39, Joel 3:14ff., Habakkuk 3, Deuteronomy 32 cf. SMR pp. 502ff., Galloping Events Chs.  1,   8, More Marvels ... Ch. 5).

NOT ONLY does God state HIS intentions for the land, but HIS PURPOSE (that it should house the temple, itself the type of Christ, who in the temple of His own body, offered as a sacrifice HIMSELF, in the holy place of divine acceptance, without spot, by the Spirit - Hebrews 9:12-14, Hebrews 10, Deuteronomy 12:5-11, 14:23, 26:2, Joshua 9:27. I Kings 8:29, Psalm 78:68, 132:13-14, and II Chronicles 7:16, 33:4., SMR pp. 823ff.). Israel was to be the site for the blight of Christ, who in the place of all those of ANY race who would believe, should by His death, atone for sin and by His Spirit, make new lives; and specifically, Jerusalem, to which He is duly scheduled to return (Zechariah 14:5).

Again NOT ONLY does God state His intentions and His purpose in the land, but His additional purpose of making, as it were, a minor theme, yet one filled with significance in terms of His faithfulness and the fidelity of His word, as well as the intensity of His CARE, of bringing the Jews back to it. This was to be and has been, by this time, in circumstances on which we have often enough dwelt, since their fulfilments are one of the most amazing things about the 20th century! (cf. SMR Ch.  9). This return of Israel to HIS land appointed to them, it was NECESSARY before HIS OWN RETURN (Luke 21:24); and IN this return of the wandering nation, it was to be to the site once by His own prediction when on earth, first to be rendered desolate.  This has all occurred, the victory of divine word over human pertinacity, rebellion and intelligence, so that they can learn all over again, that the victory of the cross like all the other victories of the Lord, is irrepressible, contested only in vain.

This devastation, then, of Jerusalem, it was scheduled, proclaimed and written, before its restoration (Matthew 24, Romans 11, Isaiah 59, Zech. 14:5), as of course all has happened). Further, as you see in Ezekiel 37ff., there is a tempestuousness forecast for the days following Israel's return, as in Zechariah 12!

This now IS happening.

As often pointed out on this site previously, let us again note it, in the context of the current discourse, that those who seek to deal with Israel, to take it apart, at this time following its return,  to dispose of it, have a special experience detailed for them. They are to find it a "burdensome stone", a heavy weight, an undesirable tension. They did find it, they have so found and they will.

This brings us back, from God's map, to man's current version, the "roadmap for the Middle East".

You might as well, but indeed much rather, give a roadmap to lions fighting.

Worse, it is God, in the time of His own election and appointment,  who will at length fight for them (Ezekiel 37ff.). It is HIS plan and HIS land for HIS purpose and in HIS faithfulness He has made it abundantly clear in all the scriptures (cf. SMR Appendix A), that this is to be done; and unfortunate are those who seek to direct the Director, to supplant HIS road-map with their own, and to dispose of the Middle East as if they were the true rulers of this world, and God a bystander.

Such a procedure is not only fraught with peril, it is an arrogance which is only made the worse, by its seeming ignorance of the word of God so clearly written for  so long.  Did not Caiaphas and co., high priestly though their presence and retinue undoubtedly were, yet not their hearts: did not these become the taunt of the ages, who sought to eliminate what was in fact God's long announced plan, to the point of murdering the greatest man who ever lived, in the midst of His mission of salvation, indeed the man who came as GOD to MANHOOD (Micah 5:1-3), by their own scriptures (cf. Joyful Jottings 22-25 cf. Isaiah 50-55, 61),  in order to liberate man from the sources of His spiritual squalor and bring reconciliation with God!

How long does it take to realise that fighting with God is profitless, unnecessary, like fighting with the only doctor in the midst of a plague! (cf. Micah 3:5, Revelation 19:19!).

It was necessary to warn, previously, before the September 11 disaster ( August 2001, The Pitter-Patter of Prophetic Feet Ch. 4, *2 cf. Lord of Life Ch. 3), that the hardness of heart of the USA in not treating the ISRAEL-ASSAULTING terrorists as they would terrorists against themselves, but rather seeking simple placation, that this was most improper and provocative to the word of God. The plain point is that the thing is grossly, horrendously, perilously wrong in terms of Biblical principle. The Bible being the word of God (cf. SMR), this is the most fatal enemy to obtain. In all concern for the land of some of my ancestors (Europe and Britain, both), and of some of my theological training, one must say this NOW.

This way is like proceeding on a highway WRONG WAY, GO BACK traffic route. You do not need to be any prophet to announce that the procedure is not only wrong, but in potential,  traumatically ravaging in its footsteps, or should one rather say, its route.

The pre-September approach, 2001 was perilously wrong. So too is this road-map. Enough said.

NOTE: For further developments in this theme, see VICTORY  5.