Middle East scenario: Heading for war or the coming of Messiah?
For this reason what happens in the Middle East is a constant subject of attention among those who believe we are living in the last days before the coming ‘Day of the Lord.’ Currently there are three items of interest relating to Israel which we will look at in this article.
- Netanyahu’s desire to annex territory in the West Bank.
- Iran’s ‘final solution.’
- Rabbis who say the Messiah is coming.
1. Netanyahu and annexation.
In April a coalition government was sworn in after three elections and over a year of political deadlock. Benjamin Netanyahu will now function as Prime Minister for 18 months after which his coalition partner Benny Gantz will take over for the next 18 months.
In his speech before the swearing-in ceremony, Netanyahu proposed extending Israeli law and moving towards annexation of Jewish settlements in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and the Jordan Valley. Netanyahu said, ‘It’s time to apply the Israeli law and write another glorious chapter in the history of Zionism.’
Netanyahu is keen to get this plan moving so he can create ‘facts on the ground’ along the lines of Donald Trump’s ‘Peace to Prosperity’ plan with Israel in control of the Jordan Valley, Jewish settlements in the West Bank (Judea – Samaria) including the area around Jerusalem. He may get support from the Trump administration in this, but not from a Democrat led administration, so he needs to act while Trump is still President.
Going ahead with this plan would cause a backlash against Israel from the Arab world. Jordan has threatened to abandon its peace treaty with Israel if this happens and King Abdullah of Jordan warned of possible conflict between Jordan and Israel. Palestinian Authority President Abbas has already voided all previous agreements with the United States and Israel. There is a danger of serious unrest in the West Bank if Netanyahu annexes these territories, which the PA wants for its proposed Palestinian State.
The Arab League described the plan as a ‘new war crime against the Palestinians.’ The EU has warned of sanctions against Israel if this happens. Russia, the EU and the UN are still insisting that the only solution is that Israel withdraws from all territories taken in the Six Day War (the West Bank / Judea Samaria) and sets up a Palestinian State on these territories with east Jerusalem as its capital.
The war threats may be just talk. King Abdullah of Jordan may make his public protest, but in reality he would be much more worried about the Palestinian Authority ruling the Jordan Valley next to his country than Israel annexing it. The same could be said of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. On the other hand it could be the spark that sets off the next war as radical elements in the Palestinian Authority incite violence and Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran use it as an excuse to attack Israel. Or it could be that Netanyahu backs off and does not actually go ahead with the annexation.
Whatever happens this tiny piece of land will continue to be in the news. The prophet Zechariah writing around 2500 years ago foresaw a time when this area, which happens to be the heartland of biblical Israel, Judea – Samaria, would be the centre of world attention:
Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of drunkenness to all the surrounding peoples, when they lay siege against Judah and Jerusalem. And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it.Zechariah 12.2-3.
Joel 3 says that the nations of the world will try to divide the land and this will lead to the last war before the Day of the Lord.
Zechariah 14 shows how the Lord will bring this to an end, when His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives to the east of Jerusalem (the place Jesus ascended into heaven from and to which He will return). He will bring an end to the war and establish the real peace for Israel and the whole world as He rules the world from a united Israel with restored Jerusalem as its capital (Zechariah 14, Isaiah 2).
2. Iran’s Final Solution.
Iran (Persia) is one of the countries listed in the coalition of countries listed in the War of Gog and Magog in Ezekiel 38-9. These countries will come against Israel in the latter days.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei posted online an anti-Semitic poster depicting a ‘free Palestine’ devoid of Jews in Jerusalem. The poster read: ‘Palestine will be free. The final solution.’ The final solution is the phrase used by Hitler for his demonic plan of annihilation of the Jewish people.
The poster shows a cartoon drawing of Palestinians and, what seem to be Iranian troops, waving Palestinian, Hezbollah and other Islamic related flags, in Jerusalem. The city appears empty of Jews, presumably killed or removed from the land. Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khameini, denounced Israel as a ‘deadly, cancerous tumour’ which will be ‘uprooted and destroyed.’
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded: ‘Khamenei’s threat to carry out ‘The Final Solution’ against Israel brings to mind the Nazi ‘Final Solution’ plan to annihilate the Jewish People.’ He warned that ‘any regime that threatens the destruction of the State of Israel faces a similar danger.’
Iran’s Islamic regime has frequently stated its desire to destroy Israel. Iran is a present danger to Israel, supplying its enemies with missiles, setting up bases in Syria from which to attack Israel and developing drones and other missiles capable of flying all the way from Iran into Israel. Recently Iran mounted a cyber attack on Israel, which threatened to poison its water supply. Thankfully it failed.
Despite its bravado, things are going badly for Iran. An Israeli security official said Iran has begun pulling troops out of Syria for the first time since its involvement in the civil war as Israel mounts successful raids on Iranian targets and Russia begins to see the Iranians as a liability rather than a help in their plans for Syria.
Iran has also suffered greatly from coronavirus. The Iranian regime is accused of mishandling and hiding the full scale of the Corona pandemic. It may be that as many as 50,000 have died there. Iran is accused of spreading the disease to other Middle East countries. Iran is also now affected by the locust plague, decimating crops in its south western region and threatening to put more pressure on the regime as it fails to provide the basics of life for so many of its citizens.
Large numbers of people now live below the poverty line and disillusion with the Islamic Regime is growing all the time. Many Iranians are disillusioned with Islam and some are turning to Christianity, despite suffering persecution if they do. Many Iranians want nothing to do with the regime’s Middle East wars and fight against Israel.
All this lessens the likelihood of an Iranian attack on Israel in the short term. The ayatollahs haven’t given up their ambitious plan to eliminate the Jewish state, but they are currently pre-occupied with far more pressing internal affairs.
In the Ezekiel prophecy Iran / Persia is a junior partner in the coalition, not its leader. Its leader is ‘Gog, of the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal’ (Ezekiel 38.2). Prophecy teachers generally assume this leader to be coming out of Russia, which is located to the far north of Israel as the prophecy says. Russia has recently involved itself in Middle Eastern wars in ways it has never done in the past, moving into Syria on Israel’s northern border, to help Assad stay in power there. Russia is also involved in the Libyan civil war now, backing General Haftar in his attempt to take power from the Libyan government in Tripoli. Libya also features in the line up of countries in the Gog and Magog war.
Nevertheless Russia may not be anxious to get involved in another Middle East war at present. President Putin has actually been friendly to Netanyahu and Israel, although he is critical of Israel’s move to annex the territories in Judea and Samaria. Russia has also been hit badly by the Coronavirus and by the slump in oil exports, which are its main source of income.
Some other prophecy teachers say that the leader of the Gog and Magog alliance has to be an Islamic leader coming against Israel and point to Turkey as the most likely candidate. Turkey today has an Islamic leader who has taken a very anti-Israel position, Erdogan, and whose supporters have called for a united Islamic army to come against Israel. He also has ambitions to revive the Ottoman Empire which ruled over Jerusalem from 1517 to 1917. Turkey is already involved in the Syrian conflict, supposedly helping Russia and Iran to sort out Syria, but at the same time supporting anti-Assad forces in Syria.
This nearly caused a conflict between Turkish forces and Syrian ones backed by Russia in Idlib at the end of last year. Turkey has intervened in support of Libyan government forces in Tripoli, on the opposite side to Russia. If you put all these factors together on a political level it makes a war against Israel led by Russia with Iran and Turkey on board as allies less likely in the immediate future.
Coming back to Iran, we are reminded that God told Abraham way back in Genesis ‘I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.’ Genesis 12.3. Iran’s current troubles are a sign of judgement coming on the nation if they persist in their hatred of Israel and persecution of Christians. This may make them less likely to want to attack Israel at present. Nevertheless a wounded beast can be dangerous. Whatever happens the leaders of Iran would be well advised to read Ezekiel 38-9 because it will tell them the fate of Gog and the army that invades Israel in the latter days:
I will call for a sword against Gog throughout all My mountains,” says the Lord God. “Every man’s sword will be against his brother. And I will bring him to judgment with pestilence and bloodshed; I will rain down on him, on his troops, and on the many peoples who are with him, flooding rain, great hailstones, fire, and brimstone. Thus I will magnify Myself and sanctify Myself, and I will be known in the eyes of many nations. Then they shall know that I am the Lord.”Ezekiel 38.21-23
3. Messiah coming?
In our last edition we put in an article about Rabbis saying the Messiah is coming. We quoted Rabbi Amar who said ‘All the great rabbis of this generation are saying that the Messiah is about to reveal himself. All the signs the prophets gave, all the signs predicted in the Gemara, the Mishnah, the Midrash, everything is taking place, one by one. All we need is to remain strong for a little bit longer.’
It seems quite a lot of rabbis in Israel are saying something like this. We agree that the Messiah is coming, but we add one little word which makes a huge amount of difference: The Messiah is coming back.
The Coronavirus was traumatic for Orthodox Jews, coming as it did shortly before Passover. Lockdown rules meant no synagogue meetings and no gatherings in homes outside of immediate family. At the time Israel’s health minister was Yakov Litzman who was also the head of the ultra Orthodox party in the coalition government. When asked in March about the chances of Israel continuing to be under complete shut-down until the Passover holiday, Litzman offered a rather unconventional response saying: ‘God forbid! We are praying and hoping that Moshiach (messiah) will arrive before Passover as it is a time of our redemption. I am sure that the Messiah will come by Passover and save us the same way God saved us during the Exodus and we were freed. The Moshiach will come and save us all.’ But the Messiah did not come and he caught the virus (and recovered).
Another rabbi who has spoken about this is Rabbi Fish. He said the coronavirus crisis is the ‘first pangs of childbirth’ before the dawn of the Messianic era. The birth pangs is a common image used for the troubles that hit the world before the day of the Lord. He said this was coming because God wants to fix the divisions among the Jews and bring them all back to Israel to await the coming of the Messiah. He issued this warning to all Jews in the diaspora to return to Israel and prepare for this event. ‘This announcement must be spread to the entire world. This is an imminent emergency. All Jews in exile around the world must come to Israel immediately. They are all in grave danger.’
So do all Jewish people in the diaspora need to go to Israel to be safe? We agree that there is increasing anti-Semitism in the diaspora, although for the most part the Jewish community in the area where we are in London lives quite safely at the moment. However there are dangerous signs of instability in the USA and Europe. The extreme left and radical Muslims are joining up in hatred of Israel and Jewish people, as well as wanting to make a radical change in western society. If war were to break out and Israel killed a lot of Arabs this could lead to violence against Jews in the diaspora. Irrational hatred of Jews is surfacing with some even blaming them for the Coronavirus. Of course Israel is not exactly safe either. Therefore Christians need to pray for Israel and stand by the Jewish people.
The scriptures do imply that the coming of the Messiah will be associated with the gathering in of the Jewish people to Israel:
It shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall set His hand again the second time to recover the remnant of His people who are left … He will set up a banner for the nations, and will assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.Isaiah 11.11-12.
Israel’s present regathering is the beginning of this process and a sign that the day is not so far off that the Lord will bring it to completion. God’s purpose is not just to change where Jewish people are at physically, but where they are at spiritually in order to prepare them for the coming of the Messiah.
Rabbi Fish bases his teaching on Jewish mystical teaching concerning the Shekinah, the presence of God. He says the presence of the Shekinah is being withdrawn from the Jews in diaspora and now only protecting Jews in Israel. He says, ‘All the protection has moved to Israel to protect the Jewish people there. If the Jews do not return from exile now, all the gates will be closed to them.’
The word Shekinah (שכינה ) does not appear in the Bible, but it is considered to be the presence of God, place where God dwells, derived from the Hebrew word שכן
‘shachen’ = to dwell. In the Bible it applies particularly to the visible presence of the Lord in the midst of His people, the glory cloud that came into the tabernacle in Exodus 40 and into the Temple in 1 Kings 8.
The Hebrew word for tabernacle (משכן – mishchan) is also taken from the word ‘shachen’ to dwell. This means it is the dwelling place of God on earth. In Ezekiel 8-11 we read how the Shekinah, the glory, departed from the Temple before it was destroyed by the Babylonians. According to the Rabbis the Shekinah did not return to the Second Temple, despite the fact that Haggai prophesied concerning this Temple The glory of this latter temple shall be greater than the former,’ says the Lord of hosts. Haggai 2.9.
The glory of God did come into the Second Temple in the person of the one who Jewish people need to turn to now to find protection, Yeshua, Jesus the Messiah. John wrote about Him saying:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. … And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.John 1.1-3, 14.
John tells us that the one he calls the Word was there in the beginning with God and all things were made by Him, but He Himself was not made. The implication is that this One is a divine person Himself. He then says the Word became flesh (took on human form) and we beheld His glory. The word John uses in Greek for He ‘dwelt among us’ is an unusual word, skeeno, which means to pitch a tent or to dwell and may have a link to the Hebrew word shaken to dwell.
So God dwelt in the body of Yeshua, Jesus the Messiah, and wherever He went He carried the Shekinah, the glory of God with Him. This was recognised by the elderly priest Simeon, even when Jesus was a tiny baby as Mary and Joseph brought Him into the Temple to be dedicated to the Lord:
Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, according to Your word; for my eyes have seen Your salvation which You have prepared before the face of all peoples, a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of Your people Israel.Luke 2.29-32.
This means that the Shekinah is in Yeshua and for the Jewish people to find a place of peace and safety as Rabbi Fish encourages them to do, they must come to Yeshua.
Rabbi Fish says the Jews need to regather in Israel to await the imminent arrival of Messiah:
‘It is certainly a mitzvah to anticipate the arrival of the Messiah, to believe with absolute certainty that the Messiah is right outside the door, and to act accordingly. Just a few years ago, these rabbis and mystics were not speaking about the final redemption and the arrival of the Messiah in these terms. But now they are. World events are also turning in a way never seen before.’
World events certainly are turning in a way they have never done before. The prophecies of the last days of this age are being fulfilled in a way that has never happened before. The time of trouble prophesied for the whole world will soon be upon us and before that time each one of us needs to find peace and safety in Yeshua before the door into His presence is closed.
The Bible tells us that He will return in person and His glory will fill the restored Temple in Messianic age (Ezekiel 43-4). Jewish people in Israel or in dispersion need now to come under protection of Yeshua before the last days’ conflict begins. Yeshua prophesied both the dispersion and the regathering of the Jewish people. He said Jerusalem will be trodden down of the Gentiles until the time of the Gentiles is fulfilled. Luke 21.24.
He came the first time as the suffering servant Messiah of Isaiah 53, who bore the sin of the world upon Himself:
Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.… For He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgressions of My people He was stricken. … He poured out His soul unto death, and He was numbered with the transgressors, and He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. Selections from Isaiah 53, fulfilled by Yeshua.
This same Messiah is coming again with all power at His disposal to judge the world in righteousness and to bring in the Messianic kingdom, reigning in power from Jerusalem from the restored Temple as we see in Isaiah 2.1-4 and Ezekiel 40-48 and Zechariah 14.
The purpose of the last days’ programme will be to bring Israel to recognise Yeshua as the Messiah. Zechariah 12-14 shows that the time of war and desolation for Jerusalem will come to an end when Yeshua is recognised as Messiah as they ‘look on Me whom they have pierced and mourn for Him as for an only Son.’ Zechariah 12.10. He will then return to take up His place as King of Israel and the world in the Millennium (Zechariah 14). Jeremiah 30-31 shows that God will correct Jewish people in the coming time of tribulation and they will enter into the new covenant through faith in Yeshua and know sin forgiven and peace with God.
Jesus said to Jerusalem You will not see Me again until you say ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord – Baruch ha ba be shem Adonai, the traditional greeting for the coming of the Messiah. Matthew 23.39.
He is calling all now, Jew and Gentile to repent and believe the Besorah, the Good News, before the day of trouble begins. In Him we have safety wherever we are, and He will save Israel and the Jewish people in the last day. Baruch ha ba be shem Adonai.
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