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Q. Is there a spiritual and religious basis for the continual wars with Israel, or is it strictly an earthly, material dispute over land between militant people with differing land claims and interests?
A. The simmering conflict is spiritual and not just material. Those who miss that point will be unable to come to terms with it in the end. This seems to be the case in today’s anti-biblical world.
My wife’s chicken soup has been simmering and is starting to boil as I write. If you noticed the aroma and heard the bubbling and asked, “Hey, what’s going on in there?” everyone would agree that what you’re experiencing is the result of the stove’s heat.
Regarding “What is going on in the Middle East,” Israel’s existence in the kettle of human experience is heating up on the ancient stove of anti-Semitism. The Jewish State’s providential emergence—after nearly two thousand years of dispersal—has stimulated spiritual powers that are hellbent on the Jewish people’s demise.
The last-days account in the book of Revelation notes how the same spiritual forces that were bent on the Messiah’s destruction would unleash fury on those who brought Him into the world—the Jewish people.
In Revelation 12:1-6, a “fiery red dragon” stands waiting to “devour the [Christ] Child as soon as it was born.” Happily, despite the dragon’s best attempts, the Child is spirited away safely, and the beast turns its attention to the woman who brought the Child into the world. In haste, she flees to a “place prepared by God” for her safety. Much as psychiatrists used to blame everything on the mother, the Evil One goes after the mother when he can’t destroy her Son (Jesus Christ).
After the mother’s escape, “the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world.” Readers learn that the same spiritual personality that waged war in Eden, at the dawn of time, and went after the Son near the middle of biblical time, stealthily re-emerges at Day’s End, at the dusk of human experience. The final words in verse 12 seem written specifically for our day: “for the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that his time is short.”
The kettle is cooking... The clock is ticking... We are working still...
With biblical knowledge, we that have Messianic-Jewish values pity the militant anti-Semites and their hatred. They are driven by raging spiritual forces that they do not understand and cannot control. Unfortunately, our grave need to defend against demon-inspired forces allows little time to consider the plight of the unfortunates we must battle. Let’s pray, “Forgive them for they know not what they do” on the basis that the tensions are more spiritual than material.
