BLOG

The Israeli-Hamas war

We all tend to simplify our understanding of current events by failing to take into account the previous events leading up to the present. In the case of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 6, most westerners see this is as an “unprovoked” attack that came out of nowhere, constituting a fixed beginning point. But that is not so.

It is much like the old cartoon I saw many years ago of a boy coming home with a black eye. He explained to his parents, “Joe started it when he hit me back.” But was that the real beginning of the fight?

The conflict really goes back to 1948 when the Jewish state was founded. The UN had partitioned the land in November of 1947. The Palestinians and Arab countries objected to this and fought back. But the Zionists prevailed and took even more land than the UN had authorized. Many Palestinians were driven from their homes and villages into a big refugee camp that came to be known as the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli government turned the Gaza Strip into a giant open-air prison. They sealed it up and blockaded the sea, so that the people’s lives would be made as miserable as possible, hoping this would drive many to leave. They destroyed any attempt to build power plants, so that all of their electricity would have to come from the Israelis themselves. They calculated how much food the people would need and allowed only a bare minimum to be imported into Gaza.

This caused a great deal of discontent over and beyond the theft of their land, and this resulted in a perpetual state of resentment and hatred.

Christians, however, saw this as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, and so they actively supported any and all atrocities that the Jewish state saw fit to commit. Christians were long accustomed to think in Old Covenant terms, even while claiming the New Covenant. The problem is that they understood neither covenant, nor did they really know the difference. New Covenant thinking had long since disappeared. Old Covenant thinking prevailed throughout the period of colonization since the 1500’s.

Old Covenant Christianity

Hence, most Christians saw this conflict as a divinely justified repetition of Joshua’s conquest of Canaan. Genocide was part of that conquest (Deuteronomy 7:2), although God Himself, for reasons that few understood, prevented the implementation of this. So we read in Judges 3:1-4,

¹ Now these are the nations which the Lord left, to test Israel by them… ² only in order that the generations of the sons of Israel might be taught war… ⁴ They were for testing Israel, to find out if they would obey the commandments of the Lord, which He had commanded their fathers through Moses.

What was the lesson here? Why did God take the credit for leaving five Canaanite nations in the land? We are only told that it was to teach the Israelites the art of war and to see if they would obey the commandments of the Lord.

Most assume this means that the next generation of Israelites had to decide whether or not to continue the genocidal war. Yet when we read further, we see more precisely how the Israelites failed to obey God’s commandments. Judges 3:6, 7 says,

⁶ and they took their daughters for themselves as wives, and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods. ⁷ The sons of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asheroth.

In other words, the Israelites were influenced by the Canaanites and their religious practices, rather than the other way around. That was the real issue. God did not hate Canaanites; He hated their religious practices—in particular, their human sacrifice. In fact, when the Israelites adopted such practices, God judged the Israelites by that same standard (Deuteronomy 8:20; Jeremiah 19:4-7). God had no double standards based on race.

Under the Old Covenant, the main weapon given to the Israelites was a physical sword, and the mandate was to kill all the Canaanites. Under the New Covenant, our main weapon is “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:17) and which is far more powerful (Hebrews 4:12). As with the Israelites, Christians who lack the sword of the Spirit are left only with a physical sword, which they use with their Old Covenant mentality.

The simple fact is that at Mount Horeb God gave the Israelites a choice, but they refused to hear the word of God (Exodus 20:19). If they had been able to overcome their fear and to grasp the sword of the Spirit, they would have entered Canaan by the power of the New Covenant. The Canaanites would have been converted by the sword of the Spirit.

However, it was not until the day of Pentecost that the disciples received this spiritual sword. Only then could they fulfill, under a greater Joshua, the Great Commission. That Great Commission would have been given to the Israelites under the original Joshua—if they had been able to receive the sword of the Spirit at that time.

It was the failure of the Israelites at Mount Horeb that was the prior cause of the genocidal war against the Canaanites. One cannot merely blame the Canaanites, for they had little or no revelation of the mind of God.

From the day of Pentecost on, the church has been responsible to teach and baptize all nations (Matthew 28:19, 20)—not to kill unbelievers. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is sufficient to accomplish this, if Christians would only do so. The Jews as a whole rejected Christ and the sword of the Spirit, so Zionism is characterized by the same problem seen with the Israelites under Moses.

Christians have no excuse for advocating and supporting Old Covenant methods. But after the first century, Christians began to lose sight of the New Covenant and the spiritual gifts. More recently, there has been a revival of Pentecost and the implementation of the gifts, but most of it has focused on the gift of healing and tongues. Somehow the broader scope of the New Covenant has been missed or ignored. This has caused even Pentecostal believers to support Old Covenant Zionism, as if their methods were godly.

Hence, a greater revelation of the sword of the Spirit is yet to come. I believe this will be part of the revelation of the outpouring of the Spirit that so many anticipate.

Meanwhile, the lack of revelation in this regard has warped the view of many Christians in regard to their support of the genocidal policies of the Zionists. In fact, many Christians are even more radical than the Israelis themselves. I have heard many Christians advocate the full expulsion of Palestinians—even Palestinian Christians—on pain of death. Shame on them!

The Present War

Old Covenant Zionism itself is the root cause of the present war with Hamas. Yesterday the Israeli parliament officially declared war. The Prime Minister has threatened to destroy Gaza City itself and has already started that process. In other words, his intent is to drive the people out of Gaza by destroying their houses and making the place unlivable.

It is clear that his intent is to resolve the Palestinian issue by a policy of ethnic cleansing. I suspect also that this will be used as an excuse to make war on Iran as well. The media is already giving hints of this. Virtually all of the Islamic countries are being forced to line up against the Israelis. This could quickly turn into a world war as the situation escalates.

Some are saying that “Armageddon has begun.” That is a very real possibility. But if so, it may turn out very different from what they expect. Most Christians expect God to come and save the day at the last minute, but that presumes (incorrectly) that the state of Israel is actually the biblical House of Israel. It also assumes that God will save Jerusalem, when in fact, Jerusalem (also called Ariel) is destined for utter destruction (Jeremiah 19:10, 11; Isaiah 29:2-4).

So if this is indeed the start of the final battle, we ought to warn the Israelis themselves to get out before this destruction occurs. Unfortunately, most of them have a different interpretation of prophecy, encouraged by Old Covenant Christians. I have been publishing warnings for decades, so I am confident that I have discharged my duty as a teacher.

Years ago I published my book, The Struggle for the Birthright, where I show the history leading to this final conflict. When these things begin to come to pass, this book will be one of the most important books that one can read. It can make the difference between life and death.