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Clarifying the prophecy

In spite of the huge casualties brought about by the Israeli bombing of the cities in Gaza, the war is not going well for the Israelis. Hundreds of their soldiers have been killed, along with Hamas fighters. But the war is now nearing 3 months and the Israelis have not even come near to their goal of eliminating Hamas. They have succeeded only in committing countless war crimes and are fast losing political and financial support from around the world.

More and more, it appears that my early assessment is correct that Esau has reached the end of its God-given time to prove itself worthy of the birthright. Recall that Jacob stole the birthright from Esau before Esau had time to prove himself unworthy. Jacob tried to secure the prophecy given before their birth that the elder would serve the younger, but he did so in an unlawful manner by lying to his father.

He did not realize that you cannot justify sin by citing prophecy. Prophecy is something that God does, and when it looks like prophecy is about to fail, man cannot correct the situation by giving God some fleshly help along the way. We must have faith that God has not lost track of things and that He is able to fulfill His word without man’s help.

So Jacob had to give back the birthright to Esau in 1948 in order to give Esau his due. It is now clear that Esau was given another 76 years, the biblical number of cleansing, and that his time expired on November 29, 2023 on the anniversary of UN Resolution 181 partitioning the land and calling for a 2-state solution.

The Gaza war started after the Israeli forces were told to retreat and to stop monitoring the border. This allowed Hamas to cross the border unchallenged—the most closely monitored border in the world. How did Hamas know? It seems like a coordinated plan from both sides of the conflict. If that is the case, then it provides evidence that the Israelis actually control Hamas and have used it to unite the Israeli people against “terrorists.” This is a common tactic.

Regardless, the war itself, from the standpoint of biblical prophecy, has provided a final opportunity for Esau to prove his worthiness before God brings all the judgments upon Edom that are prophesied in Isaiah, Ezekiel, Obadiah, Malachi, and other places. The key, as always, is to know that Esau-Edom was conquered in 126 B.C., and the Edomites then merged with Judah and became Jews. Virtually all historians agree on this fact. Most of them, however, view this event only in terms of historical fact and do not see its prophetic significance.

The Gaza war can be seen as Esau’s attempt to retain the birthright (and the name Israel) beyond his allotted time. Just as Jacob had attempted to fulfill true prophecy by unlawful means, so also Esau is now doing the same with his false interpretation of prophecy, known as Zionism.

Many in the church, following the same lawless example, support the Zionists, thinking that they can help God fulfill prophecy by committing genocide. What Christians would normally find abhorrent, they allow the Israelis a free pass to do. Why? Because they support Old Covenant methodology and think that the Palestinians are the ancient Canaanites. So instead of asking themselves, “What would Jesus do?” they simply follow the pattern of Joshua’s conquest.

Does anyone seriously believe that Jesus condones the genocide of Palestinians—including the thousands of Palestinian Christians living in Gaza? Why do some Christians throw away the sword of the Spirit and take up carnal swords to help God fulfill their perceived view of prophecy? The only answer I can see is that the church as a whole dropped their spiritual sword within the first few centuries after Christ.

That spiritual sword was returned to many of them in the early 1900’s with the rise of the Pentecostal movement. However, Zionism was already on the rise, and this brought confusion as to the mission of the church. In my view, the church was given the choice of following the New Covenant or the Old Covenant, each having its own sword.

Much of the church was blinded by Zionism, which gave the appearance of prophetic fulfillment. So just as Isaac was blind, allowing Jacob to steal the birthright from Esau, we see this repeated in the past century, where the church was blind, allowing Esau to take back the birthright for a season. The blindness in the past century, passed to the church through Darby and Scofield, was the other end of a longer story dating back to the book of Genesis.

This problem is now reaching its prophetic climax. Will the church repent of its Old Covenant belief system? Will they come to realize that the physical sword is not the answer? Will they cease trying to help God fulfill His will according to their own carnal understanding?

I find it interesting that God is opening the eyes of the world at large. This, it seems, is because God has empowered the nations to judge the mount of Esau. Recall from Isaiah 29 how God is pictured as the great General who directs the foreign armies laying siege to Jerusalem, where God’s “enemies” are entrenched. God does not hesitate to use nations that do not even know Him. That seems to be happening today. We see it everywhere in the news.

But when will the church be healed of its blindness? I have believed for decades that this blindness will remain until the Old Covenant woman and her child of the flesh is cast out, according to Galatians 4:25-31. In other words, when Jerusalem is destroyed, the church will have no choice but to find the truth and to discard its Old Covenant prophetic model.

In other words, events themselves will correct our views of prophecy. Our advantage, then, is to take up the sword of the Spirit, which is His Word. If we have an understanding of His Word, we will remain on God’s side in all things—this conflict in particular.

Church blindness was patterned after “the church in the wilderness” (Acts 7:38) under Moses who told the Israelites in Deuteronomy 29:4,

⁴ Yet to this day the Lord has not given you a heart to know, nor eyes to see, nor ears to hear.

Moses spoke these words after the Israelites had been in the wilderness 40 years. It was nearing the time for them to cross the Jordan. Yet they were still blind. The same blindness persisted during the 40 Jubilees in the wilderness since the time of Christ to the present day. The pattern of present-day blindness was established in the days of Moses. We are experiencing Part 2 of the blindness story.

It is for this reason we ought not to seek to be part of the church but to be part of the body of Christ. We are not followers of any church as such; we are followers of Jesus. The church is under a sentence of blindness, but the overcomers are those who are not blind. Paul discusses this very thing in Romans 11:1-7, where he shows how God’s “chosen” ones did not include all of the Israelites but (in the days of Elijah) just 7,000 of them. Being “chosen” was based upon their faith, not their genealogy.

⁷ What then? What Israel is seeking, it has not obtained, but those who were chosen obtained, and the rest were hardened [“blinded,” KJV].

During the days of Elijah, men could be part of Israel which failed to obtain the promise of God—or they could be part of the body of people that God had actually “chosen.” The same two choices are presented to us today. If we are among the “chosen” ones, based upon New Covenant faith, then the birthright is ours, and we have the legal right to call ourselves according to the birthright name, Israel.