Rachel Boskey: the letter I didn't want to write - August 30 2020

August 30 2020

Shalom dear friend,

This is a letter I didn’t want to write.  Composing this letter over the last few weeks has been difficult. 

Yet I am compelled to tell you what I sense, writing as carefully as I can. 

For many years of our marriage and ministry Avner has been the one who has written the pertinent newsletters.  I have written the more personal Boskey ministry and family updates. 

This time I’m the one who has written a newsletter.  I’ve poured my anguished heart into this.  

Anybody who knows me knows that I desire to think, speak and live positively.  My default setting is wearing rose-colored glasses every day.  Most of the time I choose positivity as my temporal reality.  But joy is different.  True joy is from God and can be experienced in the most difficult, painful and even horrific times.  True joy can walk hand in hand with sorrow.

So this letter that I didn’t want to write is not a “happy” letter.  But it is a true letter as God is my witness and my helper.  I hope that this letter will encourage you to dive deeper to reach the ultimate source of unfailing joy.  What I desire for myself I desire for you.

2020 foreseen

Some years ago I felt that 2020 would be different than previous years.  I sensed that the movement of time itself, in a sense, would seem to accelerate.  On January 27 2020 I wrote these words to our whole mailing list:  “For the last few years I’ve sensed that the year 2020 would be a time of a quickening pace in the events leading to the Lord’s return.  Already I feel this is happening and it points to our increasing need for spiritual sobriety and prayerful vigilance.  We ask the Lord to keep our eyes focused on Him and on His call in our lives to see ‘all Israel saved’ and ‘Israel the exceedingly great army’ of Ezekiel 37:10.”

Trouble is coming and is here

Avner and I have traveled to over 35 countries in 41 years of marriage.  For the last several decades and especially for the last five years, we have been writing and speaking about unprecedented trouble coming on the earth.  We have spoken about steadily increasing persecution of the Jewish people, especially in the West.  We have consistently warned believers in Yeshua to be ready to help Jewish people when their lives are threatened.  We’ve constantly encouraged people to watch, pray and prepare. 

North America is one of the primary countries where our voices have been heard.  In the USA, every time I’ve spoken about coming persecution of the Jewish people there, I’ve felt disbelief at the words coming out of my own mouth.  I’ve usually said “I believe trouble is coming, but I honestly don’t see how it will come.  I can’t imagine what it will look like.  I can hardly believe it will happen.”  The last time we were in the USA was November 2019.  I warned then to prepare for coming trouble, especially for Jewish people, still hardly believing myself as I spoke. 

Yet I proclaimed the need to be alert and watching, based on my convictions about what I know of history, Bible prophecy, God’s covenants, character and commitment to His own Word and to His own people Israel.  At the same time I’ve struggled to accept how the prophetic scriptures detailing the end time events could touch the USA, especially juxtaposed with the goodness that has prevailed over the USA by the grace of God.

I just didn’t see how this trouble, which I knew would surely be coming to the USA, would happen.

My own history

I was born in 1957, a mere 12 years after the end of the Shoah.  Awareness of WWII and the Holocaust are of huge significance in my life.  I’m the oldest of seven children and grew up in a Bible-believing home.  I was born in Minneapolis Minnesota, formerly the headquarters of Billy Graham’s ministry and once a bastion of evangelicalism.  I grew up listening to Christian radio, going to church every Sunday, singing hymns, listening to recordings of Handel’s Messiah and hearing the Bible read every night by my father.  My parents also read other books to us.  We had no TV in our home.  One of the books my parents read was “The Hiding Place” by Corrie ten Boom.  Corrie’s story captured my heart.  These foundational elements marked and shaped me. 

My parents, today ages 94 and 88, love and pray for Israel and the Jewish people.  Both Christian and Jewish periodicals, music, art, literature and people were present in our home.  I was always in love with Israel.  I committed my life to the Lord at age 16 and knew unmistakably that Israel would be my destiny, my calling and my home.  I’ve been watching, studying, living beside and learning from Jewish people my entire life.  Jewish people of all kinds have shaped me.  I am beyond privileged to share in the destiny of the Jewish people, physically and spiritually.

My father often said that he desired for all of his children to have a sense of history, to grasp the importance of historical events, to live in light of the grand sweep of time’s movement and to have heaven’s view of what is to come.  I believe his desire has come true in my life.  Now, from my vantage point of living most of the last four decades in Israel, I am watching a massive paradigm shift take place in the USA.

In 1981 I remember reading “Our Dance has Turned to Death,” a book popular among some evangelicals at that time (referenced in the linked article).  The author identifies and explains the common pattern of family decline in civilizations which have crumbled, like the fall of the Roman Empire.  I thought to myself then — yes, all of this will happen in the USA.  I didn’t want to think too much about this decay, but I saw it coming almost 40 years ago.  Since then, of course, this decline and much worse have already happened.  Many faithful believers (including our respected friend and Messianic Jewish scholar, speaker and writer Dr. Michael Brown have correctly identified the downward spiral of the West and have offered the only solution to stop the decline:  repentance and return to the moral code given by the God of Israel. 

Yet, even with some measure of repentance, I believe the die has been irreversibly cast for the USA.  I grieve deeply even to write these words.

“If the foundations are destroyed what can the righteous do?”  (Psalm 11:3)

I love the land of my birth.  I love the freedom for Gospel preaching there and from there to the world.  I love the commitment to the welfare of the Jewish people and Israel.  I love so much about America.  But there has been a significant degrading of the biblical and moral foundations of the USA.  In my innermost being I sense that the damage to the foundations is beyond repair in either the near or the distant future.   

Here’s how I see it.  Picture the USA as a table with four legs.  Two of those legs are already broken. 

One broken leg:  since 1973 over 61,000,000 babies have been killed in their mothers’ wombs in the USA.  There is a lot of blood crying from the ground. 

The second broken leg of the table is the degradation, distortion and attempt to mutilate beyond recognition the foundational building block of humanity — God’s order for human sexuality — “male and female” He created them.  The broken parts and pieces of this foundation would include rampant pornography, human trafficking and the homosexual agenda being forced upon society in America.  A date I will never forget is June 26 2015 when homosexual marriage became legal in the USA.  I wept.  For some days I remember driving around in the Negev in my car, tears running down my face, grieving about the precipitous moral downward shift in the USA.  At that point I sensed that there was no going back, no retrieval of what had been, no way to reverse the trend picking up the speed of a tsunami-birthed tidal wave. 

The forces that maintain domestic law and order may be a third leg of the table which is disintegrating.  The protection of law-abiding citizens in the USA is being eaten by termites.  Lawlessness (Matthew 24:12) will damage any nation from within.

Dare I say that a weakened fourth pillar may be the spiritual status of Christians in the USA?  The moral compromise, watered-down message of the Gospel, lack of widespread true repentance and shortage of preaching on sin, righteousness and judgment is causing the partially broken structure of my illustration to lurch and reel.  

Writings from various sources about the current state of affairs in the USA

Here are some articles and quotes which have squeezed my heart.

1) “Yes, This Is a Revolution” written by Abe Greenwald, executive editor of Commentary Magazine. Here are some quotes from Abe Greenwald’s article:

2) “NYC is Dead Forever” article and video, both worth your time

“When the earth experiences Your judgments the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness”  (Isaiah 26:9)

I believe there are now two main objectives of the Lord regarding two groups of people in the USA.

1)     One purpose is to purify His bride, to prepare His own redeemed people dwelling in the USA for His coming and to work through them to bring revival wherever possible.  The USA, as a nation, is not the Lord’s priority in the same measure as Him preparing His people.   

2)    The other purpose is what the Lord said He will do regarding the Jewish people including those now living in the USA.  This is the primary focus of my letter. 

There is a ton of scripture written about and to the Jewish people in nearly every book of the Bible.  Since the time of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, God has consistently dealt with the people of Israel as His major focus.  He has prioritized the Jewish people throughout their history.  Their past, present and future judgments, their past, present and future successes and blessings are recorded in the Word.  God will always go after His people Israel, He will always remember them, He is always jealous for them and He will always have His way with them.  His faithfulness to His covenants and His uncompromising and particular love for them are unwavering.

Throughout their history the Lord has more than once scattered Jewish people from their land and regathered them back to their home.  We are now living in the unprecedented season of Jewish people returning to the land of Israel from every nation and land on the face of the earth.  Over the last 150 years Jewish people have returned to Israel in successive waves of Aliyah.  There are now 6.8 million Jewish people living in Israel.  More Jews are returning every day to escape increasingly anti-Semitic countries.

One of God’s purposes in shaking nations is to reach, move and ultimately save Jewish people who live in the midst of them, who hear and obey the voice of the Lord

Jeremiah describes specific geographical places from which the Lord would return the Jewish people to their land.  He speaks of (1) the land of the north and (2) from all the countries.

Since 1990 over 1,000,000 Jewish people have moved to Israel, from lands north of Israel.  When communism fell in 1989, the gates opened suddenly to let great numbers of Russian-speaking Jewish people out of the Former Soviet Union.  This is a major move of God in our day, massively eclipsing the return of 50,000 Jews to the land of Israel in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah.  Most of the church is unaware of this huge prophetic sign taking place in our generation.

Hatred of Jewish people is once again mushrooming across Europe.  There is ongoing movement of Jewish people from France, the UK and other European countries relocating to Israel to escape persecution.

My purpose in writing this letter is to alert you

Without a doubt this wave of Anti-Semitism is moving rapidly to the West and has already found fertile ground to spread its poison in the USA.

Anti-Semitic crimes in the USA are sky-rocketing.  Unprecedented in US history until just the last few years, Jewish people are being murdered in synagogues and beaten on streets in the US.  Their tombstones are being toppled, hate-based graffiti is marring their community centers and houses of worship, their lives are being threatened, they are being chased and hounded.

Four murderous assaults on multiple Jewish people in the last three years (two of these were by perpetrated by white-supremacists, two by black Anti-Semites, all were ideologically based hate crimes):

Just one news item among countless others is this July 15 2020 article: “Former NYPD commissioner warns US Jews:  protect your communities. We are in a dangerous place in history, Raymond Kelly warned”

There are approximately six million Jewish people now living in the USA.  The societal upheaval in the USA, called a “revolution” by Abe Greenwald of Commentary Magazine, is already awakening some Jewish people.  There is an increase in the number of American Jews seeking to make Aliyah.  

Many theologians and bible scholars have written about the “time of Jacob’s trouble” (Jeremiah 30:7, Zechariah 13:8).   It’s not my purpose to explain or give my views about this doctrine in this letter.  My hope is that Jewish lives will be saved.  

Shouting out a warning that more trouble is coming

In the 1930’s a famous man named Ze’ev Jabotinsky repeatedly warned and shouted to Jewish people to get out of Europe. 

The following is a translation from Yiddish of Jabotinsky’s touching and sad speech in Tisha B’Av, October 24, 1938, Warsaw, Poland.  It was his prophetic warning to his people, to the masses of his brothers and sisters:

Corrie ten Boom is a model for me.  Corrie, her family and many other righteous people risked their lives to save Jewish people during WWII.  One-third of the Jewish people alive at that time perished in the Holocaust.  Even more than 6,000,000 Jewish people would have perished if righteous people had not acted to save them.  Like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, many who opposed the Nazi regime perished.

Tragically most Jews didn’t escape from Europe and they perished.  There are not enough words.  Only fountains of tears will touch the incalculable grief of this calamity.  

Right now there are about six million Jewish people living in the USA 

Avner and I rarely watch films.  Yet at the recommendation of one our sons we recently watched the six-part mini-series “Plot Against America.”

This film describes a dystopian scenario in which an extreme right-wing Nazi-allied candidate wins the US presidency in 1940.  We see the story develop through the eyes of one extended Jewish family.  The realities portrayed in this mini-series are disturbingly believable and ring out a prophetic warning. 

Often mainstream writers and artists have their fingers on the pulse of history.  Many accurately analyze the present and predict the future.  This film describes what would have happened to Jewish Americans if extreme far-right or fascist forces had ascended to leadership in the USA in the 1940’s. 

I believe the very same type of scenario could develop if just the opposite result took place — that is, if the far left ascended to leadership in the USA.  Far-left/Marxist/Communist leadership in the USA would be as dangerous for the future of Jewish Americans as if the far-right were to be in charge.

With sorrow I write that I believe that whichever candidate wins the US presidential election in November 2020 — whether the right or the left prevails — the moral compass of the USA has already been severely damaged.  In the last years I have seen America as a speeding car, dangerously careening to the left and to the right.  I’ve seen an enormous ship in a severe storm, pitching severely toward the port side, swaying precipitously toward the starboard side.   

I do not believe the future of American Jews is secure.  If the Jewish people continue to have false hope of safety in the USA, their future will be jeopardized.  This causes much grief. 

The God of Israel is a covenant-keeping God.  He fulfills His Word.  His Word and history prove that He has always moved the Jewish people back — back to Him, back to their land, back to their promises, back to their destiny. 

Jewish people who have sought to find safety in allegiance to godless or political or totalitarian systems have suffered.  Forgetting or ignoring their covenant relationship with God and the privileges, responsibilities and callings He has given them as a people have often caught them up short and landed them in dire straits.

Totalitarianism of the left or the right ends up in the same spot.  Seeking to find refuge in a political system is like hoping to find water in a cracked cistern. 

Jewish people who hoped in flawed leftist and rightist systems

In the 20th century Jewish people of Germany were some of the most faithful German citizens, loyal to their land, government and way of life.  Their loyalty was not rewarded.  In France, Jewish Colonel Alfred Dreyfus, falsely accused of treason against the French government he served and then subsequently imprisoned, awakened Theodore Herzl to the need of a homeland for the Jewish people. In Russia, many Russian-speaking Jews rose to the top of the communist regime and ended up betrayed, persecuted or dead.  These are just a few illustrations of Jewish people who put their confidence in political systems, both left and right, which ultimately betrayed them. 

The present leadership of the USA has a plan on record to divide the land of Israel.  This plan is in opposition to God’s future plans for the land of Israel.  Concessions will be forced on Israel by either type of US administration, by the left or by the right.  This increasing pressure on Israel will sift hearts and require Americans (believers in Yeshua, Jewish people and others) to consider the ramifications for their own lives.  The present leadership of the USA is already compelling Israel to prepare for both the formation of a Palestinian state in the heartland of Israel and dividing the city of Jerusalem.  

Whether the right or the left takes leadership in the USA, in the end the US government will not stand with God’s covenant purposes and promises for the Jewish people (Zechariah 14:3, Joel 3:2). 

Here are some recent writings which illustrate potential dangers inherent in both the political left and right, from both left-wing alliances and right-wing alliances in the USA.  

On the left:

On the right:

Jewish people in the USA are on both sides of the divide, though most side with the left.  Most Jewish people who choose to side with the political left do so because they believe this will land them on the politically-correct side of future US history and will insure them some measure of safety.  Without question I believe they are badly and dangerously deceived.  Orthodox Jews tend to vote according to their conservative values: “the two outbreaks Orthodox Jews fear most are a breakdown of law and order and rising Anti-Semitism”).  Yet, either way they lean, Jewish people’s lives will be altered by seen and unseen forces influencing events in the USA in the future.  Ultimately all Americans will have to choose where they stand.   

Revolution and civil war

We are witnessing an unprecedented and breathtaking display of hatred in the USA.  At this point extreme left-wing forces are outdoing themselves in violence, intimidation, the cancel culture and historical revisionism in the media and on the ground (again Abe Greenwald’s “Yes, This is a Revolution” article in Commentary Magazine is the best analysis I have seen). 

Along with others I hope for even a temporary return to some semblance of sanity and normalcy.  However, I don’t think there will be a slowdown or course correction in the paradigm-shifting American scene. 

Even more, I sense that extremist elements on the right side of the divide will not long remain as subdued as they are now.  Remember, my whole point in writing this letter is to alert anyone who can be alerted that trouble is coming to the Jewish people of America.

Extreme right-wing forces may well raise their ugly heads in backlash against what they see as a flood of left-wing based violence, bullying and menacing threats.

Vivid and chilling dream that America was no more

In 1993, while staying with friends in Jerusalem, I had a short dream that I have never forgotten and indeed remember now more than ever.  It is more relevant to me now than it has ever been. 

I dreamed that Avner and I were in rural Kansas in what had been a small and poor town.  Darkness and chaos prevailed.  It was night.  I could not see anything very well.  The atmosphere was electric with danger and I knew that my life could be ended at any moment.  There was no government.  There were armed vigilante gangs roaming the countryside.  No one was safe.  Avner and I were in mortal danger.  I entered a small convenience store at night looking to find food on shelves which were mostly empty.  There was really no food to buy.  There was no electricity and no light in the store.  There were neo-Nazi signs against Jews on the floor of the store.  I met just one man who had a gun.  He said to me “all this has happened and the Jews are to blame.”  I ran out of the store and said to Avner that we must flee from that place as quickly as possible. 

My heart’s desire is the salvation of Israel and to see Yeshua sitting on His throne in Jerusalem

Some of my close friends know that I love to talk about the return of the Lord.  I sometimes ask my friends “when do you think Yeshua is coming back?”  Even knowing that no one can answer this question, I love to talk about His return.  Lately I’ve sensed the Lord saying to me “don’t ask when,” but “just ask Me to come back.”  

“Daughters of Jerusalem, help me find my Lover! And if you find my Lover, tell Him I am lovesick” (Song of Solomon 5:8)

I believe there is a myriad of lovesick lovers of Yeshua across the face of the earth who are increasingly desirous to see His return.  I believe He is hearing our cries, prayers, petitions and pleas to Him to come back and fix this world.  I believe He is counting our tears and hearing our wordless groans.  I believe He is just as hungry to be with us as we are to be with Him.  Creation is groaning.  I believe the earth is experiencing birth-pangs leading to the Second Coming of Yeshua in a whole new way in these very days. 

What can we do now?

Feel free to forward and to share this letter with people who can help and pray.

With a sober but warm heart I send my love in Messiah Yeshua,

Rachel Boskey

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

Donations can be sent to:

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BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

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Putting together the jigsaw puzzle

There is something inside of man that delights in solving problems. For example: in a marriage, when a wife shares with her husband about a problem she’s having,  the husband immediately tries to solve the problem for her – though she may be looking for something more relational than his proffered solution.

Some people have spent years trying to solve Bible problems. Calvinists and Arminians, Pretribers and Posttribers – some have dedicated the lion’s share of their energies trying to become ‘the Bible Answer Man’ on one (or all) of these subjects.

There can be an aspect of godliness in this searching. “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, and the glory of kings to thoroughly figure out a matter” (Proverbs 25:2).  On the other hand, there can sometimes be a restless striving to be the one who has everything figured out: “I have seen that every labor and every talented deed is the result of envy that a man has of his neighbor. This too is vanity and striving after wind” (Ecclesiastes 4:4). Professional jealousy and obsessive-compulsive tendencies are handicaps that preachers and teachers (and even apostles) also struggle with.

Middle East experts

American stage cowboy, humorist and social commentator Will Rogers said that an expert is “a man fifty miles from home with a briefcase.”  Danish atom scientist Niels Bohr described an expert as “a person that has made every possible mistake within his or her field.” Surfing the internet, I’ve run into a fair number of experts about prophecy, Israel and the Middle East.

Recently I’ve been receiving e-mails from puzzled friends and baffled acquaintances asking for my read or clarification about some new teachings circulating on the web. Subjects raising red flags include new and detailed eschatological scenarios; a unique interpretation of Isaiah 19 and its potential prophetic connection to Jewish-Arab relationships; surprising suggestions of Last Days roles for Ishmael and Egypt; and teachings about End of Days timelines supposedly encrypted in poetic portions of the Hebrew prophets.

Since the community of those who write about the prophetic destiny of the Jewish people and the Middle East is not that large, and since nearly all of these writers are also my friends, I will stay away from mentioning names, book titles or other identity markers. What follows are two sections:

Much could be written on these subjects. I’ve written one book which touches on some of these specific matters: ‘Jews, Arabs and the Middle East’ (https://davidstent.org/product/jews-arabs-the-middle-east/).

SECTION ONE: a compilation of some of these new teachings

Egyptian eschatology, Isaiah 19 and Israel

A teaching gaining traction in some streams of Christianity proclaims that Isaiah 19:18-25 is God’s paradigm for soon-coming Middle East unity, a prophetic guideline for revival in Egypt which will occur prior to Yeshua’s return. According to this teaching, it is essential that houses of worship and prayer be established in Egypt and Assyria (defined as the broader Middle East – wherever the ancient Assyrian Empire ruled). These Houses of Prayer will catalyze a revival among young Egyptian believers.

Other widespread views in this stream that various people teach:

Some in this movement teach that young Egyptian believers will be living a life of such purity, spiritual fullness and power than the Jewish exiles will be moved to jealousy and come to faith in Yeshua. Egypt (in this scenario) is the key to Israel’s salvation, and will trigger life from the dead for Israel. When Israel calls out to Yeshua, the Messiah will return to Egypt, free the Jewish people from their concentration camps and then lead these exiles in victory procession back to Israel. Secret literary keys to decrypting and unpacking some of these detailed End Times events are said to be concealed in poetic passages of the Hebrew prophets.

Advocates of this teaching proclaim that the salvation of Egypt, Israel and greater Assyria will come to pass prior to Yeshua’s return, and the these three countries will have equal future standing, bringing amazing blessing to the whole world.

Ishmael and covenantal standing

Another stream of teaching has recently been circulating, stating that Ishmael has an equality of covenantal standing in the Abrahamic covenant due to his physical descendance from Abraham. Ishmael is called the father of the Arab world and all Arabs are described as descending from Ishmael. Sarah is guilty of ‘an original sin’ against Hagar and Ishmael by pushing for their departure from Abraham’s camp – thus causing a ‘wound in the original family.’ This wound needs to be healed by repentance prayer on the part of Messianic Jews standing in for Sarah. There also needs to be the championing of equal standing for ‘the three mothers’ (Hagar, Sarah and Keturah) at the Abrahamic Covenant table. Jewish believers need to request pardon from the descendants of Ishmael and Hagar, asking forgiveness for the ‘sins of Sarah.’ When Messianic Jews extend an invitation to Ishmael to sit down and join in as a full participant at the Abrahamic Covenant table, the ‘spirit of rejection’ which affects Arabs will be healed, and ‘the orphan spirit’ hanging over the international Arab community will be dealt with as well.

This multifaceted message is being spread through conferences and Zoom meetings where Messianic Jews and believing Arabs meet (along with tens of thousands of non-Jews and non-Arabs), bless each other, repent to each other, testify to God’s working in their lives, and listen to teachings from leaders in this movement.

SECTION TWO: bringing a measure of biblical balance to these issues

Text, context and pretext

The late Bible scholar David L. Cooper of the Biblical Research Society would often say that a text apart from its context is a pretext. That is why the Holy Scriptures challenge us to use the highest care and accuracy as we unpack God’s word:

The original Messianic Jewish movement was birthed 2,000 years ago having a profound respect for and interest in Messianic prophecy. John believed that “these things Isaiah said because he saw His glory, and he spoke of Him” (John 12:41). Philip also communicated the same when he shared with the Ethiopian eunuch:

John and Philip were not speaking visions birthed out of their own imaginations. They spoke forth visions given to them from the mouth of YHVH (see Jeremiah 23:16). But not all Bible teaching today is being carried out with accuracy. That is why we’re called to pay attention, to weigh teachings with respect but also with discernment:

The prophetic words which we find in Scripture are actually ‘breathed out of the very lungs of God’ (Greek, theopneustos – breathed out from God) as Paul teaches in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 – “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.”

Many of us have discovered that there’s a difference between God’s inerrant word and human beings’ interpretations of that word. Paul notes, “According to the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building on it. But each man must be careful how he builds on it . . .  Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident. For the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work” (1 Corinthians 3:10-15). Our interpretations of Isaiah, Genesis or any other book of the Bible need to be guided by what the texts say. The God of Jacob still has things He wants to communicate to us through His word. And we are challenged to be faithful and accurate as we explore what He is saying in the Scriptures.

Hebrew highways and Egyptian houses of prayer

Recently I gave a series of lectures in Warsaw, Poland on the Book of Isaiah. My students had many lively questions regarding Isaiah 19 (https://davidstent.org/the-isaiah-19-highway-prophecies-amidst-the-potholes/).

Isaiah 19:1-15 starts off with a prophecy of an approaching Egyptian drought. Other prophets brought similar prophecies: Zechariah 14:17-19 (a future drought on Egypt after Yeshua returns), and Jeremiah 50:35-38; Jeremiah 51:11, 59 (a Babylonian drought coming in his own day).

Isaiah 19:16-22 details six prophecies (all identified by the phrase “in that day”) – some of them prior to Yeshua’s return, some of them after Yeshua’s return. These include:

Verses 23-25 prophesy that after both nations (Assyria and Egypt) repent and after Yeshua returns, a physical highway will be constructed between the two grizzled superpowers.  Tiny Israel, the Jewish nation which suffered much throughout history at the hands of Assyria and Egypt (cruelty, enslavement and exile) will impart blessing (see Genesis 12:3; 26:4; 28:14; Acts 3:25) to both superpowers, smack dab in the middle of that superhighway. The Hebrew wording in 19:24 clearly emphasizes that it is Israel who will be the blessing to the other two nations, and not that a synthesis of the three nations will bring blessing.

Parts of Isaiah 19 are prophecy past (verses 1-15). Other parts are definitely future (verses 16-17 – military defeat, much destruction). Verses 18-25 prophesy a peaceful future after Yeshua returns. But there are no biblical descriptions in Isaiah 19 (or anywhere else in the Bible) of Egyptian houses of prayer bringing Israelis to faith.

The term ‘House of Prayer’ is only used once in the Hebrew Scriptures (in Isaiah 56:7). Yeshua is quoted three times in the gospels referring this to the Temple in Jerusalem.  But a network of houses of prayer across the Middle East is not mentioned anywhere in Isaiah 19. There are those who say that this concept can be spiritually discerned in the text. But it seems that somehow they have inserted this concept into their interpretation of this passage (a process known as eisegesis). As a result it seems to me that this End of Days scenario lacks biblical authority. Like the description of Egypt in Isaiah 36:6, this scenario of a powerful prophetic role for Egyptian houses of prayer vis-à-vis Israel may end up being a bruised reed to those who lean on it for support.

Houses of prayer and worship are important to God and to the body of Messiah. Some of our dearest friends are involved in these endeavors, and we are as well. But it is my appraisal that the ‘house of prayer’ paradigm cannot be forced as a hermeneutical grid onto Isaiah 19 without doing damage to the biblical text.

Assyria by any other name

Those who champion this unusual interpretation of Isaiah 19 regularly interpret Assyria as including any countries over which the Assyrian empire ruled. This allows them to interpret Assyria is representing the entire Middle East. At the same time, they differentiate between Assyria, Egypt and Israel, seeing them as three separate countries.

There are two basic problems with this allegorical-mystical approach:

If we define Assyria as all the countries included within the borders of the greater Assyrian Empire, the countries of Israel and Egypt would actually disappear from the prophecy, since at one point in history they too were defined as part of the greater Assyrian Empire. Such a broad interpretation would make the prophecy of Isaiah 19:23-25 unintelligible.

In Bible days Assyria and Egypt were not Arab countries. The Bible (Genesis 10:11-12) says that Assyria was founded by Ham’s grandson Nimrod. Its capital city of Assyria had a distant connection to Shem, but that was through Shem’s son Ashur and not Abraham’s line through Arpachshad (1 Chronicles 1:17). In the prophet’s days Assyria and Egypt were pagan empires not related to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob or Ishmael, and were spiritually unconnected to the covenants YHVH the God of Israel had made with the Jewish patriarchs (see John 4:22).

Slicing the Ham really thin

God wants us to know our roots – where we’re from, who were our forefathers, what people-group we belong to, and what is the destiny of our people-group. That why the Book of Genesis establishes these principles at the beginning of recorded human history: “Now these are the records of the generations of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah; and sons were born to them after the flood (Genesis 10:1). John tells us that national origins are also connected to national prophetic destinies:

The national origins of Egypt are non-Semitic and non-Arab. “Then Israel entered Egypt, Jacob resided as a foreigner in the Land of Ham” (Psalm 105:23, 27; 78:51; 106:22). Ham was one of Noah’s three sons, the others being Shem (father of the Semitic peoples) and Japheth. Scripture tells us that Ham’s descendants moved into Ethiopia, Sudan (Cush), Libya (Put), Egypt and Canaan (Genesis 10:1, 6–20).

According to the Scriptures, Egypt was never an Arab land. It was a land given to the sons of Ham. A dear Egyptian pastor friend told me something that most Egyptian Christians only discuss freely in the privacy of their homes — that the original Coptic Christians (who survive to this day in Egypt) are not Arabs at all. The word ‘Copt’ was probably the Greek word for ‘Egyptian,’ linguistically mangled by Arabic-speaking jihadi invaders. Modern Egyptians are a mixed blend — mostly Hamitic (Copts and Sudanese) but also partly Arab (as a result of the jihadi invasions). But the original Egyptians in Isaiah’s day had no racial connection with Abraham or Ishmael.

Arabs predate Ishmael

Before Ishmael was born, the Arab peoples existed. Today those Arabs who are descended from Ishmael are a minority in the Islamic world. The Arabs of the Saudi-dominated Arabian Peninsula are commonly divided into two groups:  those whose historical origins traditionally begin with Shem (Al-‘arab al-‘āriba – ‘the Arab Arabs’/‘pure Arabs’ from Yemen), and those whose historical origins traditionally begins with Ishmael (Al-‘arab al-mustaʿribah – ‘the Arabicized Arabs’ from central and northern Arabia). Some ramifications here:

The Scriptures clearly teach that the Abrahamic covenantal status and its related blessings come exclusively through Isaac and Jacob, not through Ishmael or Esau: “And Abraham said to God, ‘Oh that Ishmael might live before You!’ But God said, ‘No, but Sarah your wife will bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; and I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him’” (Genesis 17:18-19).

An errant claim is sometimes made that, because Ishmael was born to Abraham and was circumcised, he is a full partaker in the Abrahamic promise and a true son of the Abrahamic Covenant. The Apostle Paul explains why such a conclusion is in error:

French historian and Orientalist Maxime Rodinson points out that some Christians make much “of the fact that the Arabs are supposedly descendants of Ishmael.” As a result, they conclude that Ishmael “was therefore a party to the first covenant . . . [They believe that] certain of God’s promises apply to him.”  Those who hold these positions have “a tendency to go beyond what is given in the texts with very bold interpretations that reflect their own passions and inclinations.”

Jewish ‘original sin’

I have been hearing from a handful of friends (Jews and Arabs) that Sarah is guilty of ‘an original sin’ against Hagar and Ishmael, first by mistreating Hagar and then by forcing Hagar’s and Ishmael’s departure from Abraham’s camp, thus causing a ‘wound in the original family.’ This wound, I have been told, needs to be healed by repentance on the part of Messianic Jews standing in for Sarah. And then the ‘original family unity’ will be restored.

Biblical and historical facts don’t jibe with this statement. According to Middle Eastern laws from Abraham’s time, if a slave woman bore a son for her mistress and then tried to assert domestic equality with her, that slave would either be returned to a full slave status or expelled from the household. Hagar had violated the boundaries of Middle Eastern propriety, as it says in the Book of Proverbs: “Under three things the earth quakes, and under four it cannot bear up: under a slave when he becomes king, and a fool when he is satisfied with food; under an unloved woman when she gets a husband, and a maidservant when she supplants her mistress” (Proverbs 31:21-23).

As soon as Hagar conceived, she began to despise or mock Sarai (Genesis 16:4). The Hebrew verb used here is based on the same root used in Genesis 12:3 (“the one who mocks you” from the root qalal). Sarai responded to Hagar’s mocking with harshness (according to Genesis 16:16). Though that was grievous, this grief must be balanced by a clear-eyed appraisal of the reality of the situation. When a slave begins to usurp a king, the stability and security of the realm is in danger. When Ishmael began to manifest the same scorn to Isaac as Hagar his mother manifested to Sarai (Genesis 21:9), Sarai saw an upcoming threat to Isaac’s dynastic survival and insisted in no uncertain terms, “Drive out this maid and her son, for the son of this maid shall not be an heir with my son Isaac” (Genesis 21:10).

Hagar and Ishmael sadly had brought down upon themselves the ‘curse’ clauses of the Abrahamic covenant (Genesis 12:3) in this situation. They had mocked Abraham’s wife and Abraham’s covenant son. The biblical text is clear that the ‘original sin’ was Hagar’s and Ishmael’s mocking. Sarah is considered a stalwart woman of faith who believed God’s promises and conceived Isaac by faith (Hebrews 11:11). The Bible nowhere describes Hagar and Ishmael as part of Abraham’s family of covenant, and God takes the time to encourage Abraham (Genesis 21:12) not to be distressed in sending Hagar and Ishmael away.

So why would anyone want to level blame against Sarah? And why would someone tell the Jewish people that they must ask forgiveness from Arabs for the blowback of Hagar’s mocking? Sometimes, it is said, the issue is not the issue. Is there a key to unlock deeper issues of the heart here? I have heard some teachers declare that the Arab peoples have an ‘orphan spirit’ and ‘a spirit of rejection,’ and that this is all due to Sarah’s rotten behavior. It is true that some in the Arabic-speaking world struggle with such issues, and it is also true that some blame these dynamics on the Jewish people. But respect for biblical accuracy (and for the physical make-up of the non-Ishmaelic majority of Arabic-speaking peoples today) prevent us from taking that path. There is an Arabic proverb, “First he hit me, then he started to cry, and then he went straight to the judge to sue me.” Let’s remember that:

I must confess that something sounds fishy in the way this ‘dynamic’ is being presented – calling for ‘a healing in the family of Abraham,’ when the majority of the Arab world has no ties to Abraham, when the Scriptures never call Hagar and Ishmael part of the ‘covenant family,’ and when the Bible never presents a mandate to ‘heal this family wound.’

A more helpful focus might be an examination of some biblical leads. These might be valid spiritual wells worth peering into:

Three mothers at one table?

The call for equal standing to be given at the ‘Abrahamic Covenant table’ to ‘the three mothers’ (Hagar, Keturah and Sarah) is also a call with no biblical grounding. The biblical covenant was made between YHVH (one the one hand) and Abraham (and his seed through Sarah on the other hand). Hagar and Keturah are nowhere described in the Scriptures as partaking in Abrahamic Covenant promises. In point of fact, the angel of YHVH prophesies that Ishmael will live not in the Promised Land but to the east of it, in the desert (Genesis 16:12). Isaac prophesies to Esau that he too will live not in the Land of Israel but in the barren wilderness (Genesis 27:39).

These new teachings floating around the web involve a subtle yet significant tweaking of the irrevocable calling and gifts to Israel (Romans 11:28-29).

In Islamic theology, Isaac’s firstborn status gets replaced by that of Ishmael. This Islamic worldview may be spiritually influencing some people’s thinking here. The process we’ve been looking at begins with an understated watering-down of Jacob’s priority status, before segueing into a non-biblical view of Ishmael’s status and finally into a distorted interpretation of a Last Days vision regarding Egypt and Assyria. Years ago I remarked that “left unchecked, this distorted take on Isaac and Ishmael could lead to a new mutation of Arab Replacement Theology.” 

Apocalyptic visions of destruction, and hidden poetic keys

The gospel message has two indispensable elements – Yeshua’s death of the cross, and Yeshua’s resurrection (see Romans 6:23; 2 Corinthians 4:11; Philippians 1:20; Revelation 2:10). The Hebrew prophets declare that God’s ways involve not only Millennial joys, but also the judgments of the Day of Lord (see Hebrews 10:31). Believers in the West have tended to shy away from the reality of judgments. They are shocked to discover verses like this: “Rejoice, O nations, with His people! For He will avenge the blood of His servants, and will render vengeance on His adversaries, and will atone for His land and His people” (Deuteronomy 32:43). We salute those who preach the cross and not only the resurrection.

At the same time, it needs to be pointed out that it is a human tendency for some people to exaggerate and overstress aspects of specific judgments or even their extent. Not every ‘judgment event’ coming down the pike has been described for us in the Bible, but that does not give us the authority to ‘fill in the blanks’ here. Great care must be exercised, both regarding accuracy of interpretation and pastoral wisdom when it comes to teaching Middle Eastern eschatology.

The Scriptures talk about overwhelming judgment falling on Israel (Leviticus 26; Deuteronomy 28; Ezekiel 20; Zechariah 13-14; Joel 3; etc.) but also on the nations (Isaiah 24; Revelation 8-9, 11-12, etc.). Not all details of how these judgments will be actualized or their detailed timelines are given in the Bible. I have seen some teachers weave together scores of unrelated passages into complex eschatological scenarios – yet those passages are not clearly identified in Scripture as dealing with God’s final judgments, and these verses have no clear biblical markers connecting them to specific events. I believe that there is a cry in God’s heart for some Bible teachers to exercise greater care and demonstrate greater humility as they work out their eschatological convictions in the glare of the spotlight.

A new book is about to circulate on the web, teaching that poetic passages in the Hebrew prophets conceal detailed keys to Last Days judgments and intricate timeline events. The method used in this book again involves the weaving together of scores of unrelated passages into complex eschatological scenarios – which are then proclaimed as being the cutting edge of Last Days theology on the Middle East. This approach has been championed in years past by Art Katz. In his article ‘Israel in Flight’ Katz acknowledged that his theological perspectives are not easily arrived at from a simple reading of the Bible: “There are no systematic line-upon-line statements to make it easy for us to understand them.  We need, therefore, to be apprehended by the implicit pattern rather than by a methodical, chronological approach.”

What is being stated here is that clear, plain, systematic study of Scripture regarding Israel will not get one to the conclusions being offered. On the contrary, one must combine a mystical perspective and an eisegetical use of Scripture in order to bolster these peculiar eschatological views regarding the Jewish people’s destiny. In this case above, Katz’s perspectives of Jewish history ended up fixated on judgment and the punishment of Israel, downgrading God’s biblical emphasis on continuing grace, love and covenant faithfulness as demonstrated in the present ongoing regathering of the Jewish people.

Balancing the highway

The best way to reach a spiritual balance regarding the relationship between Jews, Egyptians and Assyrians is to start with what the Bible says about national callings. Scripture repeatedly emphasizes that the Jewish people have gifts and a priority calling which are different from any other nation (see Romans 11:28-29; Psalm 147:20). Israel is specifically called to be a light and a servant to all nations (Isaiah 49:5-6; Luke 2:32; Acts 13:47). Israel needs to be faithful to her calling, and surrounding nations in the Middle East would do well to recognize and honor that calling. The next step after that would be for each nation to faithfully fulfill its own calling. For example, the nations of the Middle East are also called to bless and serve the Jewish nation (see Isaiah 60-61; Psalm 117).

Isaiah’s vision in chapter 19 (a fellowship of worship between Egypt and Assyria, with Israel acting as the blessing between the two of them, after Messiah returns) can be a powerful impetus in our day for local believers throughout the Middle East to worship and pray together. It may come as a surprise for those who are new to the Middle East that activities of this nature have been going on in Israel since the early 1980’s, though it has not always been easy. When the First Intifada broke out in 1987, two years of meetings between Jewish and Arab pastors (in which we had also been involved) hit the deep freeze and never fully recovered. At present there are continuing modest contacts between Jewish and Arab believers within Israel, and occasional low-profile gatherings in other areas of the Middle East. The vision of Isaiah 19 can encourage us as we walk what is still a long and bumpy road into the Messianic future.

If errant interpretations of Isaiah 19 can be brought into a more biblical balance, some wonderful clear sailing could be experienced for those who focus on this chapter’s encouraging points. YHVH gives great honor to both Egypt and Assyria after their purifying judgment. It is then that the God of Israel uses terms of affection about his children, words that a happy father would tenderly use. Assyria is called “the work of My hands.” Egypt is called “My people.”  Israel still maintains her covenantal gifts and calling; she is called “My inheritance.” The story “is not over until it’s over.” And in this case, the end of the story is better than its beginning. What a day that will be!

When all else fails, read the Bible

Considering that over 90% of the Bible has been written by Jews, and that over 90% of the Bible is about the Jewish people, there is room available for all of us to deepen our awareness of YHVH’s prophetic plan for the Jewish people. Most of the prophetic writings in the Bible are Israel-centric, though it is sad to say that most believers (and that includes most Arabs and most Jews) still are barely acquainted with these amazing coming events. “Your servant meditates on Your statutes. Your testimonies also are my delight. They are my counselors!” (Psalm 119:23-24).

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: www.davidstent.org

Sapphire foundations

One of God’s most precious promises to the Jewish people is found in Isaiah 54. Israel will undergo a process of  metamorphosis which will transform her from shame and humiliation, from barrenness and desolation, from being considered a rejected wife and a reproached widow. She will morph into a gloriously married woman, filled with joy and surrounded by her many healthy children:

The God of Jacob promises to anchor His blessing and restoration of the Jewish people on foundations carved out of precious jewels: “O afflicted one, storm-tossed, and not comforted, behold, I will set your stones in antimony, and your foundations I will lay in sapphires. Moreover, I will make your battlements of rubies, and your gates of crystal, and your entire wall of precious stones” (Isaiah 54:11-12).

Israel’s bejeweled restoration is also reflected in the depiction of the New Jerusalem, the city whose gates are named after the Twelve Tribes of Jacob, and whose foundations (crafted of precious jewels) are stunningly parallel to Isaiah 54:

How firm a foundation

Messiah Yeshua says that true disciples are those who don’t just listen to God’s words but act on them. The one who acts on His words is like a man who builds the foundation of his house on a rock. The house becomes impervious to the destructive power of flash floods (like those in the Negev; Psalm 126:4; the Hebrew afiqim [streams] refers to raging flash floods).

Building on a firm foundation, using solid materials and following a trustworthy architectural plan is how Paul describes our calling as Yeshua’s followers.  The work we do in our brief lifetime will be tested when we come face to face with God. Some of our works may be like gold, silver and precious stones. On the other hand, some of it may be wood, hay and straw.

A trustworthy architectural plan makes for a firm foundation. That plan is the apostolic and prophetic teaching of the Scriptures, anchored by Messiah Yeshua Himself:

The Scriptures are the foundation stone that Messiah Yeshua gives us. It is His plan to equip us all for ministry – not just a few special ministers.  Believers are meant to work together like a kosher construction crew, building up the body of Messiah qualitatively and quantitatively, bringing us to unity, catalyzing within us a greater maturity, and leading us into a deeper intimacy of relationship with Yeshua:

Just follow the instructions

The path is the same for all followers of Yeshua, whether you wear a collar or a t-shirt, silk or denim. The way we get equipped for a lifetime of productive and fruitful ministry is by getting to know and properly understand the Bible: “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

And this apostolic teaching needs to be fleshed out by us with accuracy. We must take pains to understand and apply the Scriptures correctly.  Paul exhorted Timothy: “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:14-15). We are called to build our life and ministry on an accurate handling of the Scripture, so that in the end we might not be ashamed about how we used the Bible. This spiritual truth may not be the front-and-center focus for many, but it’s highly important and precious to Israel’s God.

YHVH makes a special promise to all craftsmen, and it also applies to those who minister God’s word: “Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before boorish (or insignificant or obscure) men” (Proverbs 22:29; the Hebrew word here is ḥă·šuk·kîm).

Here are some suggestions for those who aspire to greater accuracy in interpreting the Scriptures – especially in dealing with the 95% of the Bible that focuses on the Jewish people. 

The Chosen People

God offends the mind to reveal the heart (see Luke 2:34-35). The choosing of one nation, the Jewish nation, to be God’s priority people (see Deuteronomy 32:8-10; Numbers 23:9; 1 Kings 8:51-53; Jeremiah 10:16; Zechariah 2:8; Romans 1:16; 2:9-10) has been a hard challenge for many non-Jews to accept (Jeremiah 30:16-17). But Paul adamantly emphasizes that this calling has not been done away with, nor has it been morphed into something different (Romans 11:28-29). The original conditions of the Jewish people’s calling remain steadfast (Galatians 3:15-18). It remains a holy covenant between two clearly defined parties – the God of Abraham and His nation Israel.

This priority calling is one of the main keys to accurately handling the Scriptures. It follows the journey of the Seed – from Genesis 3:15 through Romans 11:15 to Revelation 21:12, 14. An accurate understanding of what this Jewish calling means (and what it doesn’t mean) is vital in order to ‘accurately handle the word of truth.’

I have written a book on this subject – ‘Israel the Key to World Revival’ – which delves into this subject in greater detail. It’s available on line in printed or e-book versions.

Here are some foundational bullet points regarding the choosing of Israel:

The judgments of God

Most people don’t like to think or talk about God’s judgments, but this subject is very much a part of His biblical and historical dealings on earth. Mankind’s disobedience and his violation of a trust relationship with the Almighty – these have been a sad part of history from the Garden of Eden to Noah, from Sodom and Gomorrah to the Red Sea, from the destruction of two Jewish Temples on the same calendar day, to the fall of Babylon, both past and future (Jeremiah 51:60-64; Daniel 5:17-30; Revelation 14:8; 18:2). These judgments are actual space-time realities (Isaiah 24:5). The prophet tells us that some people have learned God’s righteousness though these judgments, while others definitely have not (Isaiah 26:8-11).

One often-ignored aspect of God’s judgments is connected to Genesis 12:3. There it states that, even on an individual level, the person who sneers at/disrespects/relates with condescension/scorns/holds in contempt (the sense of the Hebrew mə·qal·lel·ḵā, usually mistranslated as “the one who curses you”) to the Jewish people will himself be cursed. The Bible places much stress on this priority principle. Therefore this should have our full attention when we consider God’s judgments.

If we are to use the Scriptures accurately, our focus on the judgments on Israel needs to be balanced by focus on the judgment on the nations (e.g., Revelation 6-9; Isaiah 41:11-16). Natan Sharansky’s definition of anti-Semitism, includes the use of double standards in criticisms of Israel. The U.S. State Department has adopted this definition as well. A Bible teacher who stresses judgments on Israel while downplaying judgments on the nations would fit the U.S. State Department’s definition of being a purveyor of anti-Semitic teachings. Also, teaching that anti-Semitism and the Holocaust are deserved judgments on Israel, or that Israel is the nation most opposed to Yeshua, are also dangerously close to that same line. Here are a few examples of such inaccuracy:

When a harsh stress on God’s judgments against Israel becomes a major element of a man’s teaching, two questions should be raised here:

For a different and more biblical perspective, consider Ezekiel 37:8-14, where the entire nation is brought back to the Promised Land in unbelief, by God’s loving grace.

To use the Scriptures accurately when teaching about God’s judgments, means that one should not insert imported meanings into biblical texts (that’s called eisegesis). Also, texts which are only describing sad events involving Jewish people but which lack clear prophetic/historical markers about the End of Days, carry no weight in establishing a ‘judgment eschatology’. Unfortunately, I am aware of three new publications which are sadly inaccurate in their use of Scripture regarding aspects of Israel-related eschatology.

As one studies passages dealing with judgments on Israel, figuring out the contextual and exegetical meaning there, one should not twist these passages in an effort to conform them to an eschatological scheme one wants to prove. The ancient Greeks called this method a ‘Procrustes’ bed’ and ‘the bed of Sodom’ was the term used in rabbinical teaching (Sefer Ha-Yashar, Va-Yera; 58-62).

End of Days perspectives

The Scriptures aim a significant focus on Last Days prophetic events. Many prophecies were given through the Jewish people in order to prepare them and the rest of mankind for upcoming challenges. We bless those teachers who call believers to consider the importance of these prophecies! In light of the fact that over the years various cults and fringe movements have their origins in unusual and anti-Biblical eschatological outlines (Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, etc.), it is important to approach (and communicate) End of Days teaching with care, humility, measured cadence and accuracy.

Students of the Bible need to take time to consider and weigh what each passage in question actually says. No skating quickly across thin ice! If accurate equipping is to happen, it is important that people are given the opportunity to think, chew and to come to their own conclusions. The best forum for such interaction between teacher and student must by nature be personal – kind of like how Yeshua worked most intensively with only twelve of His disciples.

Whatever conclusions the student or teacher comes to about Last Days events – perhaps regarding timing issues or the order of Last Days events, or even concerning certain events themselves – it is essential for him to have wise and mature sounding boards as a safety measure, in order to avoid maverick conclusions or sectarian tendencies.

Straightening what is bent

“Consider the work of God, for who is able to repair what He has bent?” (Ecclesiastes 7:13). Some might say that I am an observant Jew. That would be true, in that that over the years I have observed how new-fangled teachings have breezed through town. Novel emphases which some new teachers feel are “the key to God’s real thrust to the Jews for the End Times” have had their heyday and then slowly faded away. Recently there have arisen unconventional focuses on (supposedly biblically based) ground-breaking roles for Ishmael and Egypt, trends which are sweeping through some charismatic and prophetic circles (see https://davidstent.org/the-isaiah-19-highway-prophecies-amidst-the-potholes/). Most of these above emphases lack biblical foundation and interpretational precision.  Not all that glitters is gold, and not all that trumpets ‘a new take’ on the Middle East or the Jewish people is necessarily accurate.  It’s good to remember that every man’s way is usually right in his own eyes, but it is YHVH who weighs our hearts (Proverbs 21:2).

As we study the Scriptures and aspire to faithfulness and accuracy, let us remember that teachers of the word are called to help build up the body of Messiah: “And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Messiah” (Ephesians 4:11-12). Our teachings about Israel – whether they be about Israel’s priority calling, the judgments of God, End of Days events, or the peoples of the Middle East – need to be based on accurate and careful interpretation. Shepherds are called to strengthen, guide and guard the flock of God toward greater balance, love and stalwart clarity: “Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the witness-community of God which He purchased with His own blood” (Acts 20:28).

“In all things show yourself to be an example of good deeds, with purity in doctrine, dignified, sound in speech which is beyond reproach” (Titus 2:7-8)

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: www.davidstent.org

Strange bedfellows in the Middle East

“The longer a blind man lives, the more he sees,” said Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem. Grandiose plans can lead to folly, and the blindness of politicians and kings may lead to disaster.

The recent peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) surprised the world’s media. Only the third country to enter into a political pact with the Jewish state, UAE is the first which has no contiguous borders with Israel. Two other countries – Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994) – have U.S.-brokered peace deals with Israel, but those treaties are tenuous, dependent on the political and social stability of both Islamic countries. Egypt’s Camp David accords and Jordan’s Wadi Araba Treaty are labeled by political scientists as classic examples of what is a ‘cold peace.’

Here is a pertinent example of this ‘tenuous cold peace’: When Muslim Brotherhood Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi came to power in 2012, Israel rapidly discovered that its ally was transforming into a jihadi Frankenstein’s monster. The same movement that birthed 9/11 and Osama bin Laden was now in charge next door. So peace treaties in the Middle East between Israel and her enemies are in the end only documents written on paper. Their staying power hangs on a very fragile balance of factors.  What are the factors involved in this latest peace agreement?

Rule Britannia!

“Britannia rules the waves” – words from the British Navy’s famous patriotic song reflect her imperialist strategies in the 1700’s, when it set its lion’s paw on a handful of small sheikdoms in Northern Arabia bordering the Arabian Gulf.  England’s ‘Divide and Rule’ policy homed in on the smallest possible political entities on the Gulf Coast and made a  truce with each one in 1820. The original name for the British Protectorate established in that strip of Gulf territory (which included present-day Oman as well) was ‘Trucial Oman’ (Rosemarie Said Zahlan, The Origin of the United Arab Emirates, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1978).

Rulers were set on thrones in each emirate: from the Bani Yas tribe – the Nahyan family in Abu Dhabi, and the Maktoum family in Dubai; and from the Qawasim tribe, the rulers of Sharjah and Ra’as al-Khaimah (Ono Motohiro, Reconsideration of the Meanings of the Tribal Ties in the United Arab Emirates: Abu Dhabi Emirate in Early ʼ90s; Kyoto Bulletin of Islamic Area Studies, 4-1&2; March 2011). The goal was to establish British centers of influence and control in an impoverished region whose main exports up to that time were pearling, fishing and date farming. The discovery of petroleum in Bahrain (1932) led to exporting abilities in Qatar (1949), Kuwait (1953) and Abu Dhabi (1962). Britain had literally ‘struck oil’ in its Gulf colonies.

In the 1960’s, in an effort to solidify UK access to intelligence, petroleum and political clout, the British secret service (SAS/MI6) replaced Abu Dhabi’s then Sheik Shakhbut bin Sultan Al Nahyan with his brother Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. In 1970 Timothy Landon (SAS) oversaw a bloodless coup replacing Sultan Said bin Taimur with his son Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said. The British GCHQ and later the NSA established sigint listening posts in the Gulf States. The UAE was now a strategically significant hub for geopolitics in general, and for Middle East events in particular.

Another example of ‘strange bedfellows’ is the neighboring Gulf State of Qatar, where the United States Central Command (USCENTCOM) has a forward HQ since 2002, now situated at Al Udeid Air Base. At the same time as serving the Americans, Qatar is the chief bankroller of much of the Middle East’s anti-American terror groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoot Hamas, Al-Qaeda, Syrian Jabhat Al-Nusra and ISIS/Da'esh, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, extremist groups in Iraq and in Libya. U.S. official policy continues, ostrich-like, to hide its head in the sand about these matters.

Anti-Jewish roots

The Emirate of Abu Dhabi is the capitol of the UAE. The previous Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan (died in 2004) held aggressively anti-Israel views.  He founded the Zayed Center for Coordination and Follow-Up (1999), a ritzy think-tank for the Arab League. The list of speakers included political glitterati like U.S. former U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, former Vice-President Al Gore, former Secretary of State James Baker, and former French President Jacques Chirac. Simultaneously the Center was a virulent platform for the dissemination of anti-American, anti-Semitic and extreme anti-Israel views. Here is a partial list of speakers and lecture topics at the Center:

In 2003 after Western protests, Sheikh Zayed himself shut down the Center, one year before he passed away in 2004.

This deep anti-Jewish heart attitude is wrapped around UAE’s spiritual roots. It has never been acknowledged, repented of or publicly forsaken. Investigative reporting stays far away from this subject, especially when peace deals are being trotted out. But anti-Semitism in the UAE is something that should trigger intercession in the hearts of those who love the Jewish people and their state.

Tribes with flags

“Tribes With Flags” is a phrase attributed to Egyptian diplomat Tahseen Bashir: “Egypt is the only nation-state in the Arab world. All the rest – forgive me – are just tribes with flags.” Bashir’s pride in his country Egypt shines through, though it is worth remembering that the Bible describes Egypt as a Hamitic country and not as a Semitic or Arab one (Psalm 78:12, 43, 51; 105:23, 27; 106:21-22).

The history of the UAE’s inhabitants is living proof of this ‘tribes with flags’ proverb. UAE has a total population of 9,890,402, of which only 11.6% are Emiratis. The majority of the working population are expatriates – South Asian 59.4% (Indian 38.2%, Bangladeshi 9.5%, Pakistani 9.4%, other 2.3%), Egyptian 10.2%, Philippine 6.1%, and other backgrounds12.8%.

Today’s Arab Emiratis come from an original mix of 44 migrating tribes (today 67 in number) who moved in successive waves of population movement from Yemen and southern Nejd [Al Yamamah and Riyadh regions in modern Saudi Arabia] into Oman and what is today called UAE. The predominant tribe in modern UAE is Banu Yas, an Arab but non-Abrahamic tribe whose Qaḥṭāni forefather was Elhaf bin Quda’a. Since many people assume that all Muslims (or all Arabs, or all Bedouin) are descended from Ishmael, a clarification of this matter is in order.

Scholars of Arab genealogy recognize that the majority of the Arab peoples predate Ishmael, and that those descended from Ishmael are a minority. Arabs are usually divided into two groups:

These ‘Surviving Arabs’ are furthered divided into two groups – those whose historical origins traditionally begin with Shem, and those whose appearance traditionally begins with Ishmael:

Al-‘arab al-‘āriba  – ‘the Arab Arabs’/‘pure Arabs’ from Yemen, traditionally descended from Ya‘rub bin Qahtan, are called the Qaḥṭāni (or ‘Yamānī’) group

Al-‘arab al-mustaʿribah or al-mutaʿrribah – ‘the Arabicized Arabs’ or ‘those who learned to speak Arabic’ or ‘those making themselves/seeking to be Arab’ – from central and northern Arabia, are called the ‘Adnāni’ group, traditionally descended from Ishmael

The majority of those who are Muslims in the world today are not Arabs. The majority of Arabs today are not related to Ishmael. And the majority of Emiratis see themselves as ‘Qaḥṭāni’ (‘pure Arabs’ of Yemenite background) – not descended from Ishmael. Nevertheless, the U.S.-brokered peace agreement between Israel and the UAE has been labeled ‘the Abraham Accords.” This goes over well in the West, where conjuring up the name ‘Abraham’ grants biblical patina and prophetic perfume to the agreement. A more accurate title for the treaty would be ‘The Isaac-Shem Accords.’

Who catalyzed this deal?

Politically correct wisdom is that the Arab world hates Israel and will remain at war with the Jewish state until the Palestinians raise Mohammed’s black jihadi flag over Jerusalem. This statement may be true of many Muslims, but there are some shades of gray here. It’s true that the Islamist roots of Jew-hatred are deeply embedded in religious texts, and these teachings are ardently believed by many in the Muslim world. Yet a popular proverb in the Middle East still notes that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Others add a dry postscript, “The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.”

So what has pushed UAE to the negotiating table, considering that Israel and UAE have had thriving clandestine relations for many years in areas of intelligence, military cooperation, trade, hi-tech and medical research? The answers are eminently clear.

Ebtesam Al-Ketbi, Founder and President of the Emirates Policy Center and Professor of Political Science at United Arab Emirates University, gets right to the point: “The United Arab Emirates and its partners . . . Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan, and Morocco have formed an alliance to counter the challenges that Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood pose . . . The UAE fears that Tehran interpreted the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on its nuclear programme as a signal that world powers would accept Iranian regional hegemony . . . As the nucleus of this alliance, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have the opportunity to create a new regional order . . .  The UAE faces a dilemma in that it wants to push back against Tehran’s regional expansion but also recognizes that Iran is its second-largest trading partner.”

The Sunni UAE sheep are deeply troubled by the ever-louder growling coming from the Shi’ite Iran wolf. Iranian nuclear weapons are a direct threat to UAE’s independence and survival. Former President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran truly frightened America’s allies, be they Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt or Israel.

UAE still feels the need to walk gingerly regarding Iran. Their Minister of State for Foreign Affairs recently took pains to stress that “the UAE-Israeli peace treaty is a sovereign decision not directed at Iran. We say this and repeat this.”  Official Iranian media responded that Iran threatens to attack UAE over the Israel deal. 

A popular Arab newspaper brings added insight that “the UAE wants to build a concrete axis against Turkey and Qatar” – both are major bankrollers of the Muslim Brotherhood and jihadi terror. Turkey, Qatar and Iran are  conspiring together against UAE, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt, Cyprus and pro-Western Libyan forces, using military proxies and threatening international shipping lanes and commercial activities.  

Meir Dagan, Israeli Mossad Director from 2002 to 2011, said in an interview before his death in 2016: “There is an intersection of interests, not a small one, between us and many of the Arab states . . . The interests of most of those states – Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf emirates, Morocco, and so on – did not correspond with those of radical Shiite revolutionaries or their allies in Damascus, let alone their heavily armed proxy militias. Those Arab states mostly feared the thought of Iran with a nuclear weapon, maybe more so than Israel.” The motivations for UAE to sign a peace treaty with Israel are existential and not emotional. And U.S. Presidential hopeful Joe Biden’s declaration that he will re-institute Obama’s pro-Iranian JCPOA has set the fuses burning again for Gulf Arabs.

Israeli commentator Moshe Dann adds that “the UN Security Council’s recent decision not to extend sanctions on Iran and the inability of UNIFIL to prevent, or at least contain Hezbollah’s hegemony are indications that the international community does not care about the danger to Sunni Arab states, and will empower Iran. Supporting Israel, therefore, as a bulwark against Iran and Hezbollah, makes sense.”

If Iran were not hell-bent on obtaining nuclear weapons, if ex-President Obama had not significantly strengthened Iran at the expense of America's traditional Middle Eastern allies, and if the Muslim Brotherhood were not striving mightily on the path of jihad to overthrow UAE’s leaders, there might never have been a peace agreement between Israel and UAE.

Political world

Bob Dylan sings that “we live in a political world, turning and a-thrashing about. As soon as you’re awake, you’re trained to take what looks like the easy way out.” Israel is an intensely political country. We have had three elections within 12 months and the possibility of a fourth is looming. November sees a U.S. election which still looks too close to call. Pulling off the first Middle East peace treaty in over 25 years looks good on anyone's CV. At a recent rally held at an airport in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, U.S. President Donald Trump declared, “And we moved the capitol of Israel to Jerusalem. That’s for the evangelicals!” Along with biblical principles and geopolitical strategizing, domestic politics in both countries remain a priority in the whole equation. 

The spirit of the century

There’s a line from a song by Al Stewart, 'On the border': : “Late last night the rain was knocking at my window   . . . I thought I saw down in the street the spirit of the century telling us that we're all standing on the border.” And another line from the Eagles: “I'm stuck on the border. All I wanted was some peace of mind. Don't you tell me ‘bout your law and order. I'm trying to change this water to wine!"

One of the pillars of the deal between Israel and the UAE is set on sinking sand – connecting the Abraham Accords treaty to Israel stepping back from applying sovereignty to portions of the Land promised by YHVH to Jacob.

This pillar buttresses goals which run afoul of biblical teaching, perspective and prophecy. Many in the world will either ignore or mock these biblical principles. Nevertheless, “the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).

The third and most recent Israeli election saw both major parties campaigning on record to extend sovereignty over 30% of the West Bank. This was in accordance with President Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century.’ Some big bumps in the road (COVID-19 pandemic, international economic shuddering, domestic U.S. and Israeli politics) have dialed down present White House appetite for such an Israeli step. And of course Trump’s deal involves the establishment of a Palestinian state on 70% of the territory promised by the God of Israel to the people of Israel. Though some (including some in Israel) feel that such an action would be a short-term step in the right direction, others are concerned that this move runs counter to God’s clear declarations in Scripture.

For behold, in those days and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat (Yehoshafat; YHVH judges). Then I will enter into judgment with them there on behalf of My people and My inheritance, Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations. And they have divided up My land” (Joel 3:1-2)

The sobering reality of this End of Days prophecy is a stark warning to all comers, “Stay far away from dividing up any part of the Land of Israel!"

From the geo-strategic angle, the United Arab Emirates have no common border with Israel. The native population of that country (apart from the 88% who are short-term workers) consists of desert Bedouin who migrated to that area of the Gulf Coast over the past millennium to engage in pearling, fishing and date farming. They are relative newcomers to the region now called the UAE. Why should they have been given a decisive say in determining Israel’s borders, and in causing Israel to step back from embracing the Land that YHVH promised to the sons and daughters of Jacob through the real ‘Abraham Accord’ – the Abrahamic covenant?

YHVH said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, “Now lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward. For all the land which you see, I will give it to you and to your descendants forever. I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth, so that if anyone can number the dust of the earth, then your descendants can also be numbered. Arise, walk about the land through its length and breadth; for I will give it to you” (Genesis 13:14-17)

And He said to him, “I am YHVH who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it.” It came about when the sun had set, that it was very dark, and behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces. On that day YHVH made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates: the Kenite and the Kenizzite and the Kadmonite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Rephaim and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Girgashite and the Jebusite” (Genesis 15:7, 17-21)

Some ambitious politicians (to paraphrase the Eagles’ lyrics) are “trying to change this Middle Eastern water into wine” – trying to strengthen temporary military and intelligence connections between the Gulf States and Israel, thereby blocking the expansionist jihad of Iran, Turkey and Qatar. But at the same time these politicians are brushing aside God’s burning promises to the Jewish people; they are ignoring His sober threats against anyone who would lend a hand to dividing up the Promised Land.

In the meantime UAE is hoping that Iran will now think twice before attacking it with an army of swarming drones. And many Israelis are excited about taking their next vacation (whenever that may be!) in Dubai . . .

There is an old Yiddish tale about an old beggar trudging along the country road with a heavy pack on his shoulders. A merchant came by with a wagon load of produce bound for the county market. He saw the old beggar, felt sorry for him and invited him to get into the wagon. After a few minutes of traveling together in silence, the merchant saw that the beggar was sitting quietly with the pack still on his shoulders. “Why don’t you put the pack down?” he exclaimed in surprise. The old beggar replied, “May the Highly Exalted One bless you! It’s enough that you’re carrying me! Do I have to burden you with my pack besides?” 

When you offer a ride to the Jewish people, you need to be also ready to help them carry their ‘backpack’ – their covenantal promises. Israel has been carrying the blessed ‘backpack’ of these gifts and calling (one of these gifts is the Land of Israel; see Romans 9:1-5; 11:28-29) for millennia across the face of this planet. But be careful: the burden of the Land must be correctly carried! If not, the stone of Jerusalem (see Zechariah 12:2-3) can cause a painful hernia and bring damaging pain to any nation who picks up this burden carelessly.

In Deuteronomy 32:8-10 YHVH declares that He alone establishes the borders of all nations, and His decisions are based on His priority of heart for Israel. The complete opposite of this divine principle occurs when the nations of the world attempt to define Israel’s borders according to their own wisdom. And that is exactly what the ‘Abraham Accords’ are attempting to do.

The Bible makes this point crystal clear: God is not at all pleased.  Psalm 2 reveals His reactions and His coming responses: He laughs. He scoffs. He speaks to the nations in His anger and terrifies them in His fury. He will break them with a rod of iron and shatter them like earthenware (Psalm 2:4-9). We need to get ready for serious days ahead.

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971  USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: www.davidstent.org

When fire consumes the cedars of Lebanon (Judges 9:15)

At 18:08 local time on August 4, an apocalyptic explosion mushroomed over the Port of Beirut, Lebanon’s capital. The official explanation for the cause of the blast is that the port’s Warehouse #9 (chock full of Chinese fireworks) somehow had caught fire and that within minutes the blaze jumped across to Warehouse #12, where 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer was sitting in storage. This highly explosive fertilizer (confiscated from a derelict Russian freighter six years before) was held ‘in limbo,’ stored at the port due to bureaucratic inaction on the part of Beirut's municipal judges.

Another distinct possibility is that the explosions were actually a terrible accident in Hezbollah-run underground weapons bunkers and munitions warehouses. The Iran-backed jihadi terror group stockpiles GPS guided rockets and missiles, rocket engines and fuel, high explosives and assorted weaponry in many places Lebanon, usually in the heart of major cities including Beirut and in civilian homes:

If  evidence points to Hezbollah responsibility for this massive destruction of Beirut, it’s a distinct possibility that a life and death struggle for control of Lebanon may explode, between Sunni Muslims (28.7%), Christians (36%) and Druze (5%) on one side facing off against Hezbollah and the Shi’ite community (28.4%) on the other.

 The blast of a storm against the wall (Isaiah 25:4)

The supersonic blast wave was felt as far away as northern Israel and Cyprus (240 kilometers away), leaving a crater between 140 and 200 meters wide. Jordan’s Seismological Observatory measured a seismological force equivalent to a 4.5 magnitude earthquake. Specialists from the University of Sheffield UK estimated that the blast had one-tenth the force of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, making it one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions in history.

So far there are 157 fatalities, 80 people missing, and more than 5,000 injured. Beirut Governor Marwan Aboud estimates that up to 300,000 people are left homeless by the explosions, which wrecked homes up to ten kilometers away. Three hospitals and 90% of Beirut’s hotels have been destroyed. Approximately 85% of the city’s grain reserves have been incinerated, and Beirut has declared a two-week state of emergency.

Lebanese leaders are likening this disaster to Hiroshima, and local media have coined a new word ‘Beirutshima’ to describe the severity of the damage.

Beirut has been ravaged. From its white snow-capped mountains (‘Lebanon’ is the ancient Hebrew word for ‘white country’) to its beautiful beaches, from its burgeoning Arabic music and media center to its Syrian and Hezbollah operated drug routes (heroin and hashish) and smuggling – this city used to be known as the Paris and Switzerland of the Middle East. The shock waves of this explosion are rippling across the Middle East. It is a sober time.

Howl, for the cedar is fallen (Zechariah 11:2)!

Beirut is the Arab world’s fifteenth largest city and the third largest in the Eastern Mediterranean. This disaster is a mighty blow, one that feels more suited to biblical prophecies over Lebanese cities like Tyre (Isaiah 23; Ezekiel 26-27) or Sidon (Matthew 11).

Lebanon has known terrible strife and civil war over the past 150 years. Recently Iran has seeded the country with a particularly venomous jihadi fifth column known as Hezbollah (‘the army of Allah’). Lebanese Islamist Shi'ite leaders who had studied in Najaf, Iran adopted Ayatollah Khomeini’s post-1979 Iranian Revolution strategies. Funded by Iran and trained by a core group of Pasdaran instructors, Hezbollah was established in 1985 to attack Israel, to bring religious and political victory to Lebanon’s  marginalized Shi'ite community, and to help spread Iranian jihadi control over the wider Middle East.

Since 2008 Hezbollah has for all intents and purposes annexed Lebanon, controlling its political, economic and military will. The jihadi group has initiated terror attacks against the Israeli army, rocket and missile attacks against Israeli civilians, and has built up a deadly arsenal of over 150,000 precision-guided rockets and missiles able to reach all of Israel’s population centers.

Israeli media regularly brings up the likelihood of a soon-coming all-out war between Hezbollah and the Jewish state. With 150,000 rockets and missiles aimed at every city in the Promised Land, Israeli citizens need to be constantly reminded to wrap our minds around the possibility of grave civilian casualties and destruction of essential infrastructure in this next round.

The destroyed buildings of Beirut are a sobering picture of what much of Lebanon will look like if Hezbollah begins to fire its rockets and missiles at Israel’s civilian population. Israel has clearly warned that in such an eventuality the IDF and IAF will need to take out all hidden rocket launchers and degrade or destroy Lebanon’s major infrastructure installations.

In one day

People today struggle with an overabundance of cynicism. The concept of God being sovereign even in times of disaster is summarily dismissed by most in the modern world. Politically correct wisdom says that when disaster hits a country, the entire society of that land instantly becomes an outstanding example of godly righteousness. God alone, they say, is the bad guy responsible for disasters. The concept of judgment or divine law enforcement is totally bankrupt, from this perspective.

The Scriptures speak of the speed of YHVH’s works coming in one day. These works can be positive:

The speedy works which come in one day can also be highly destructive:

We need to call out to YHVH, the God of the armies of Israel (see 1 Samuel 17:45), to have compassion on Beirut like He had mercy on Nineveh – that “great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals” (Jonah 4:11). Let us pray for Beirut’s overwhelming physical and spiritual needs.

If you would like to donate financially to help those in need in Beirut, here is a reliable ministry on the ground in Beirut:

go to https://tm-lebanon.com  - (no tax-deductible receipt)

CMJ USA - https://secure.accessacs.com/access/oglogin.aspx?sn=156636. Choose ‘Select Fund: C.C. Crossroads’ and then in the memo write: Beirut Relief Fund – (for a tax-deductible receipt)

A future prophecy about another major Arab city

The prophet Isaiah speaks about the future of Damascus, the ancient capital of Israel’s venomous enemy. Today it is the capital of Syria and the country’s largest city. In Arabic it is fondly called ‘the City of Jasmine’ (Madīnat al-Yāsmīn). Damascus has been a major cultural center of the Levant and the Arab world. It has also been the center (as has Beirut) of satanic strategic planning aimed at destroying the nation of Israel (see Genesis 12:3; Isaiah 42:11-16). 

In 1991 Rachel and I met a dear brother (now passed on) to whom God would give stunningly accurate prophetic dreams. The first time we met him, he told me that he had a dream of a death wind sweeping over Damascus. In that dream, chemical warfare stockpiles on the outskirts of Damascus exploded through some kind of accident. In that dream the death wind swept the clouds of nerve gas across the city. Then the Lord spoke to our friend that this was the fulfillment of Isaiah 17.

Syria has huge stockpiles of Sarin and VX nerve gas, and has repeatedly used these banned weapons against its own civilians:

Consider the speedy destruction that Beirut has just experienced. Then consider Isaiah’s prophetic word that even greater destruction will fall on Damascus, and that this “will be the portion of those who plunder and pillage” the Jewish people.

There are those who see peace breaking out across the Middle East (based on their unusual interpretation of Isaiah 19), along a highway between Egypt and Assyria. But both Isaiah 19:16-22 and Isaiah 17 actually describe intense warfare as the precursor to unshakeable peace. We are not yet in times of peace, but of tremendous shakings. Let us carefully discern the times and be on the watch.

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: www.davidstent.org

When Messiah comes, will He speak Yiddish?

Right after Israel’s First Gulf War in 1991 our family moved to California for a brief season. Our two oldest kids attended a mostly Black Lutheran primary school in Long Beach. Our sons would bring home Bible-themed drawings from school that they had made. I immediately noticed that the Jesus they drew was Black.

That experience was instructive for me. Every ethnic group develops ways of looking at the Scriptures (and traditions of interpretation and expectation) that may not always exactly reflect Bible days or Bible ways. The blond Jesus on the stained glass windows of the school’s chapel was not an accurate representation of Yeshua’s Middle Eastern context, just as much as the Black Jesus of my kid’s crayon drawings.

So let’s ask the following questions: can we recover a true picture of the Jewish Messiah? Do our eschatological hopes accurately reflect the vision of the Scriptures and the prophetic promises made to the Patriarchs?

Messiah looks like my great-grandfather

My father Zvi Hirsh was born on Manhattan’s Lower East Side to Orthodox Yiddish-speaking immigrant parents from Poland. He was his parents’ second son, the first one born in America. My grandfather Yoisef Arieh Efroyim had been an ‘ilui’ in Łódź, one who had been blessed with greater mental and intellectual capabilities than the average Torah scholar.

But in America his fate was to slave over a sewing machine in a Lower West Side sweat shop. Talmudic visions got blurry in the New York rain.

By the time I was born, my grandfather’s Yiddish world was passing off the scene. Less than a handful of his grandchildren could speak Yiddish, and only one or two remained Orthodox. Long white beards were no longer in vogue, and synagogue attendance became (maybe) a twice a year ritual. After I became a believer in Yeshua, a deep hunger rose within me to re-immerse myself in the Yiddish world of which I had once been a part. I started playing klezmer music again, reconnected with acting in Yiddish theater, studying Yiddish literature and history, and reading the Tenach (the Hebrew Scriptures) in Hebrew and Yiddish. Some of my big questions were, “How is a Messianic Jew to live with passion in this world? Should I adopt an Orthodox lifestyle? And where should I live – in North America or Israel?”

A vanished world

My fellow Messianic Jews were all asking the same questions. How could we reconnect with what had become for us ‘a vanished world?’ Roman Vishniac’s striking photographs of pre-Holocaust Poland conjured up memories of ancestors we had lost touch with. Would our renascent Messianic Jewish identity look something like these forgotten echoes of a destroyed world?

In the social ferment of the late 1960’s, a hippie ‘Bible’ – a guide to all things ‘hip, cool and spiritual’ – came out called the Whole Earth Catalog.

Within a few years, Jewish hippies released a Hebrew-friendly cousin called The First Jewish Catalog. Some Jewish hippies were on a mission to discover the Jewish roots of their identity. And their spiritual trek would carry them across the world from Newport Beach to Nepal looking for answers.

An Orthodox Jewish folk-rock group Megama was involved in ‘kosher outreach’ to searching Jewish youth. Their most popular song was called ‘My Zadie’, a lament for lost grandfathers and vanished traditional lifestyles, and a challenge to step up to the plate and be counted in this generation.

From secular to super-traditional Jew in a New York minute!

Most American Jews in the 1960’s and 1970’s were either secular or only faintly traditional. The Swinging Sixties trumpeted secularism, and most hippies and searchers were decidedly not followers of traditional Judaism. Those who came to faith in Messiah Yeshua slowly stumbled into the realization that the roots of our Messianic faith were genuinely Jewish. As we groped around in the slowly dispersing fog, hoping to touch something Jewish, we heard voices from some in the Orthodox Jewish community trying to draw us into their traditional world. They explained to us that the only reason we believed in Yeshua was because we knew nothing about real Judaism. Our deliverance, they opined, would come when we immersed ourselves in Talmudic study and in a rigorous Orthodox lifestyle. Anything less was not really Jewish, they declared.

This pull and push dynamic raised the painful topic of rejection for Messianic Jews – something which Jewish people have struggled with throughout our long history. Rejected by the nations, by the Church, by Islam, by Western secularism, by Communism, and by PC ‘cancel culture’ – we Jews actually know a fair amount about being rejected. To now be faced with rejection from our beloved Jewish community – that was a hard one. For some of us it took the air right out of our sails.

Some rising leaders in the burgeoning Messianic movement began to advocate for a Messianic Jewish expression resembling the bearded glory of our great-grandparents’ lifestyles. David Rausch ‘puffed’ the option of an Orthodox Messianic lifestyle and theology in his ‘Messianic Judaism: Its History, Theology and Polity’ (1982). Dan Juster, John Fisher and David Stern also championed a Mosaic ‘Torah-positive’ theology and practice in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Others like Mark Kinzer and Stuart Dauermann added their unique perspectives in advocating similar positions. The First Fruits of Zion ministry stressed Mosaic Torah observance for Jewish believers, and in times past even for some Gentile believers as well.

The overwhelming majority of these dear Jewish brothers grew up secular, not actively involved in the Jewish community, and certainly not speaking Yiddish or Hebrew. Today one could easily mistake some of them for Orthodox Jews. At present the vast majority of those attending Messianic congregations are not Jewish, yet some of these at first glance look like Orthodox Jews. It seems as if some in our movement have come full circle and look like our great-grandparents once again.

Messianic Torah from Zion

Most of our great-grandparents were followers of rabbinic Judaism. Every Shabbat they would go to synagogue (shul) and sing the words of Isaiah 2:3 “Ki miTziyon tetzeh Torah, u’devar YHVH mirushalayim! For the teaching will come out from Zion, and the word of YHVH from Jerusalem!”  I sang this song every time I went to synagogue. It is the emotional high point of the service, looking forward to Messianic days when the God of Israel will reign in Jerusalem over the entire planet.

When Orthodox Jews sing this verse, they envision a day when the Mosaic teaching (torah literally means teaching in Hebrew, though it usually is used to refer to the Mosaic covenant) will proceed from Jerusalem and be obeyed by all Jews and all Gentiles as well. But the prophet Jeremiah envisioned something a little bit different when he prophesied about Messianic days to come:

Jeremiah clearly prophesies that when the New Covenant comes to fruition, this New Covenant will “not be like the covenant … of Egypt” –  not like the Mosaic covenant. When Messiah Yeshua sits on David’s throne in Jerusalem, the religious matrix will be neither rabbinic nor Mosaic, but instead it will be a New Covenant framework.

Isaiah shed more light on those days:

Messiah Yeshua Himself will be teaching. He will be judging. He will be rendering international decisions for the nations. And He will be the mediator of a more excellent ministry, a better covenant built on better promises (Hebrews 8:6) – the New Covenant (Hebrews 12:24) of which He is the guarantor (Hebrews 7:22). The New Covenant can also be called the New Torah or the New Teaching. We have much to learn about this covenant, but we know for sure based on the more certain prophetic word (2 Peter 1:19) that Yeshua will be teaching us – our Judge, our Lawgiver, our King and our Savior (Isaiah 33:22; see also verses 17-24 which describe the beauty of that canal-filled New Covenant Jerusalem).

Isaiah 33:17, 21 tells us that “your eyes will see the King in His beauty . . . There the majestic One, YHVH, will be for us!”

Our Yiddish Messiah

Years ago, the words ‘Yiddish’ and ‘Jewish’ were interchangeable. My mother Esther of blessed memory would say “I speak Jewish” meaning that she spoke Yiddish. ‘An emeser Yid’ technically mean ‘truly a Jew’ in the Yiddish language, but it has the sense of meaning ‘a worthy or upright man.’ Paul in Romans 2:29 uses a similar figure of speech when he talks about the ideal type of Jewish person that YHVH is looking forward – not only physically circumcised, but also spiritually, one who lives to give glory and worship to the God of Jacob.

Whether or not Yeshua will speak Yiddish (and why not? I also speak Yiddish!), He will be the best Jew who ever lived, the best Son of Adam who ever walked this earth (see the flow of thought in Romans 5-8). And He will be the ultimate “Israelite in Whom there is no guile” (see John 1:47).

Will Yeshua have a long white beard? John the Revelator tells us that “His head and His hair were white like white wool, like snow; and His eyes were like a flame of fire” (Revelation 1:14). Let us look forward to seeing His face on that day! “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known!” (1 Corinthians 13:12)

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal or credit card) through: www.davidstent.org

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