I plan to share an update on our ministry in Japan sometime in the next few days. There are some exciting things in store for this Fall. As I say, more about this coming soon.
Today I feel compelled to share some thoughts about the current crisis in the Middle East. The perspective I come from is admittedly biased toward what the Bible teaches on end times. Actually, not just end times, but more generally on the plan God has for this world going back to the earliest days of world history. Shortly after the Fall, God promised to send a Deliverer-King to restore the earth under His rule. God narrowed the family line of the Deliverer-King to the nation of Israel as His plan unfolded, until ultimately Jesus was born and carried out his life and ministry, including his death, resurrection, and exaltation at the Father's right hand. We Christians believe without apology that Jesus is the one God promised to send from the beginning.
Jesus' rejection by the Jews on the occasion of his first coming and execution on the cross is well-known both to believers and non-believers alike. It is popular among Christians to refer to the subsequent turning to the Gentiles to build Christ's Church as God "setting aside the Jews." Unfortunately, that expression doesn't tell the whole story.
God has not set aside the Jews. He still has plans for Israel, plans, as Jeremiah 29:11 puts it, "for welfare, and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope."
When God first formed Israel into a nation, He made certain promises to them—some were unconditional, some were conditional. The conditional promises more or less boil down to each generation having to make a decision whether to trust and obey the Lord. Trust and obedience would result in blessing for that generation (blessing that was intended, by the way, to be a kind of witness or precursor to the blessing that would ultimately come in the promised restoration). Faithlessness and disobedience would result in God withdrawing His blessing and judging that generation. God might even reject a particular generation altogether if they were egregiously unfaithful, although He always maintained a remnant.
For these reasons we often see successive generations in Israel forming their own covenant with the Lord. Still, you can't read the Old Testament without noticing what looks like a vicious cycle of faith and obedience in one generation, with that generation being blessed by the Lord, followed by faithlessness and disobedience in the next, with that generation being judged by the Lord, followed by repentance and a renewed covenant to follow the Lord in faith and obedience, resulting in a new season of blessing.
God's solution to this seemingly never-ending cycle was to do something He revealed through OT prophets. First, He renewed His promises to send the Deliverer-King, and He went into a lot more detail about the blessing that His restoration would bring. Then He also promised that He would make a new covenant with His people, one that would be significantly different than the one He made with them at Sinai. The first time God gave the people the Law, He wrote it for them on tablets of stone and handed them to Moses. In the new covenant, God promised to write His Law on the hearts of the people and to put His spirit in them to enable their never-ending trust and obedience. Now here's the point, God ties these two promises together—the restoration through the Deliverer-King and the national regeneration of Israel. Both stand at the center of the event we Christians know as the Second Coming of Christ.
There are numerous Bible prophecies that describe what the world will look like prior to the Second Coming. One undeniably clear theme is the opposition of the world to Israel. There has always been a Satanically-driven conspiracy against the legitimacy and survival of Israel—always. This means the likes of Hamas, Hezbollah, Isis, and Iran, to name a few, are nothing new. Still, the Bible foretells a time when the nations of the world will come against Israel and seek to destroy her in epic and climatic fashion. That is the occasion when Christ comes again and steps in to miraculously rescue Israel and give her the promised indwelling Spirit and rebirth of faith and obedience.
I believe we are seeing the development of these events before our very eyes. We are watching the words of Psalm 2 unfold on the world stage. Voices of opposition to Israel will continue to rise from around the world, even from within our own country, an historical ally with Israel. But God will not let Israel be wiped from the earth. There's no way. Before it's all over, He will "set his King on Zion, His holy hill."
So I think it's important to put what is happening in the Middle East in context with what the Bible teaches about Israel, God's promises, and the end of the age. For these reasons, I support Israel. Don't get me wrong. I lament the loss of life, especially civilian life as things in the region continue to play out. And I pray for the missionaries who live in the region, that they might succeed in winning many to Christ, whether they be Jew, Arab, Palestinian, Syrian, et. Al. Still, I am for Israel. I pray for the peace of Jerusalem, knowing that true peace ultimately means the fulfillment of Jesus' promise to return and restore. And that is the day I long for.
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