Open your doors, O Lebanon – that fire may destroy your cedars! (Zechariah 11:1) – Part Three

Our previous newsletter (Part One) presented biblical teaching regarding Lebanon; the origin and theological strategies of the Islamist terror organization Hezbollah; and concluded with a survey of its venomous anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli and anti-American perspectives and goals. Part Two unpacked Hezbollah’s role as an Iranian proxy and ‘fifth column’ within Lebanon. Part Three deals with the specifics of Hezbollah’s military threat to Israel; and Israel’s probable military response both to Lebanon and to Hezbollah, the ‘Rasputin’ of the Land of the Cedars.  

The Prince of Persia is still on the move

“So Jacob came close to his father Isaac, and he touched him and said, ‘The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau’” (Genesis 27:22). There is a modern Middle Eastern parallel to Jacob’s utterance: In the present war between Lebanese Hezbollah and Israel, the voice may seem to be the voice of Hezbollah, but the hands are without question the hands of Iran/Persia. Iran’s long-term strategy to destroy Israel (and after that, Saudi Arabia and America) involves:

These are not disconnected ‘whack-a-mole’ wildfires; they are a controlled and deliberately kindled international forest fire planned and triggered by the Ayatollahs in the arsonist jihadi state of Iran

Iran’s geopolitical strategies are rooted in its control over Syrian territory, the crucial land connection to Lebanese Hezbollah. Hezbollah’s Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah, has clearly stated that his organization is completely reliant on Iran for all of its financial expenses and its weapons. During the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad allowed Iran to transfer arms to Hezbollah. After Assad's death in 2000, his son President Bashar al-Assad approved the increased traffic of Iranian weapons through Syria – including Scud and Fateh-110 surface-to-surface missiles. Today, Iran and Hezbollah have access to Syrian Army facilities and storehouses. Syria is not only a bridge between Iran and Lebanon; it has become the logistical and operational focal point of the Iranian-led ‘Axis of Resistance’ (Arabic, Miḥwar al-Muqāwamah). This axis is an Iranian-led political and military coalition in West Asia and North Africa, including the Iraqi Shiite Islamic Resistance, the Syrian government, Lebanese Hezbollah, the Yemeni Houthi terror organization Ansar Allah and Hamas.

Arms deliveries to Hezbollah start out from Iranian military depots and then run through Syria. Civilian and military Iranian flights carrying ordnance fly into Damascus International airport or into Beirut’s Hariri International airport. Civilian-marked trucks transfer these weapons (including advanced rockets, surface-to-surface missiles and anti-aircraft systems) from the Iranian logistics center in Damascus Airport to the Lebanese border, where they are handed over to Hezbollah, and later dispersed throughout Lebanon.

Between 2013 and 2015, Iran attempted to move precision guided missiles via Syria into Lebanon. Most of these efforts were interdicted by the IDF. Between 2016 and 2018 Iran’s strategy shifted: they now attempted to smuggle precision guided missile parts into Lebanon for assembly by Hezbollah – either by land (via Syria), by air (via Damascus to Beirut Airport in Beirut), or by sea (via the Port of Beirut). This program was not rewarded with a high rate of success. In 2019 Iran redirected their efforts, attempting to manufacture such missiles entirely on Lebanese soil, in a number of locations throughout Lebanon.

Lessons from Lebanon 2006

The upcoming war between Hezbollah and Israel is not the first in the Levant’s chequered history. The year 2006 saw major clashes between Lebanon and Israel, with Hezbollah dragging the weakened and spineless state of Lebanon along into its pitched battle with the Jewish state. Most media outlets downplay or even sidestep the fact that Lebanon is a sovereign state which has signed agreements (like UN 1701) requiring it to disarm Hezbollah and move the Iranian proxy away from Israel’s border where it continues to threaten and attack.

At the outbreak of the 2006 hostilities, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora promised to rein in Hezbollah in an effort to stop Israel's offensive. Siniora said that there could be no sovereign state of Lebanon without Hezbollah being disarmed. The former President of Lebanon Amin Gemayel, a longtime critic of Hezbollah, said, “The government is helpless. Hezbollah took a unilateral action, but its repercussions will affect the entire country.” Nevertheless, international law holds the Lebanese government responsible for whatever attacks come against Israel from Lebanese soil. Ehud Barak, former Israeli Chief of Staff, remarked on November 24, 2009: “We will not accept the equation whereby a UN member state is home to a militia in possession of 40,000 rockets but also parliament members and ministers. The Lebanese government is responsible for any clash rather than [just] the Hezbollah, and all of Lebanon's systems will be held accountable.”

The Second Israel-Lebanon War began with a surprise Hezbollah cross-border attack on July 12, 2006, resulting in the murder of five IDF soldiers patrolling the border fence, and the kidnapping of two of their bodies, to be later used as bargaining chips. Israel’s counter-offensive Operation Just Payback/Change of Direction, lasted for 34 days. A thorough analysis of the decision-making steps and strategic issues involved can be read in Benjamin Lambeth’s excellent September 1, 2011 article ‘Behind Israel’s 2006 War With Hezbollah.’

During the war, Hezbollah fired close to 4,228 rockets into civilian areas of Israel (more than 100 per day). Most of these were 122 mm Katyusha artillery rockets, carrying warheads of up to 33 kg/ 66 lb. Approximately 23% of the rockets hit cities and built-up areas in northern Israel. Cities hit included, Kiryat Shmona, Tiberias, Bet She’an, Safed, Karmiel, Shaghur, Ma’alot-Tarshiha, Nazareth, Afula, Acre, Haifa, Hadera – as well as smaller towns, kibbutzim, moshavim, Druze and Israeli-Arab villages, and the northern West Bank. Fires caused by Hezbollah rocket attacks destroyed 16,500 acres (67 km2) of forest and grazing fields, which will take 50 to 60 years to rehabilitate, according to the Jewish National Fund.

On July 16, 2006, eight employees of the Israel Railways were killed by direct Hezbollah rocket hits on the Haifa train depot. In southern Lebanon, Hezbollah jihadis fought IDF ground troops from well-fortified positions, often in urban areas, attacking in small, well-armed units. These fighters were highly trained, equipped with flak jackets, night-vision goggles, communications equipment, and sometimes with Israeli uniforms and equipment. An Israeli soldier who participated in the war said that Hezbollah fighters were “nothing like Hamas or the Palestinians. They are trained and highly qualified. All of us were kind of surprised.” One million Israelis were instructed to stay near or in their bomb shelters or security rooms, with approximately 250,000 Israeli civilians evacuating the north and relocating to other areas of the country, A total of 44 Israeli civilians and 119 IDF soldiers were killed in this war.

On July 13, 2006, and again on July 15, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) bombed the Jiyeh power station, 30 km (19 miles) south of Beirut, resulting in the largest-ever oil spill in the Mediterranean Sea. The plant’s damaged storage tanks leaked an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 tonnes (more than 4 million gallons) of oil into the eastern Mediterranean. A 10-kilometre-wide (6.2 mi) oil slick covered 170 km (105 statute miles) of coastline, and threatened the coastal areas of Turkey and Cyprus. The Lebanese government estimated it would take 10 years to recover from the damage of the strike. The UN guesstimated the cost for the initial clean-up at $64 million. Large parts of Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure were destroyed, including 640 kilometers (400 miles) of roads, 73 bridges, and 31 other targets such as ports, water and sewage treatment plants, electrical facilities, 25 fuel stations, 900 commercial structures, up to 350 schools and two hospitals, and 15,000 homes. Some 130,000 more homes were damaged. Beirut’s Rafik al-Hariri International Airport was bombed and forced to close, but was quickly repaired and came back on line.

Hezbollah used the same tactics of civilian shields in 2006 as Hamas has been using in all it clashes with Israel: the firing of rockets from Gazan or Lebanese civilian areas into Israeli civilian areas – a double war crime. The Qatari Muslim Brotherhood/pro-Hamas station al-Jazeera reported at that time: “Foreign journalists based in Lebanon also reported that the Shia militia chose to fight from civilian areas and had on occasion prevented Lebanese civilians from fleeing conflict-hit areas of south Lebanon. Al-Manar, Hezbollah's satellite channel, also showed footage of Hezbollah firing rockets from civilian areas and produced animated graphics showing how Hezbollah fired rockets at Israeli cities from inside villages in southern Lebanon.” Images obtained by the Australian Sunday Herald Sun show that “Hezbollah is waging war amid suburbia. The images ... show Hezbollah using high-density residential areas as launch pads for rockets and heavy-caliber weapons. Dressed in civilian clothing so they can quickly disappear, the militants carrying automatic assault rifles and ride in on trucks mounted with cannon.” Some things never change with jihadi combatants, it seems.

On August 27, 2006, Nasrallah said in an interview with al-Jadeed TV (Lebanon): “If there was even a 1% chance that the July 11 capturing operation would have led to a war like the one that happened, would you have done it? I would say no, absolutely not, for humanitarian, moral, social, security, military, and political reasons.”

Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld stated that Israel's war against Hezbollah was “marked by a long series of failures” but he also noted that Hezbollah was “thrown out of South Lebanon,” and was replaced by “a fairly robust United Nations peacekeeping force” to prevent its return. The Israeli Winograd Commission reported that “Security Council Resolution 1701, and the fact that it was adopted unanimously, were an achievement for Israel.” But both of these ‘achievements’ were quickly reversed within a year or two of the war’s conclusion.

The US Congressional Research Service found that although Hezbollah's military capabilities may have been substantially reduced, its long-term potential as a guerrilla movement appeared to remain intact: “Observers note that Hezbollah's leaders have been able to claim a level of ‘victory’ simply by virtue of not having decisively ‘lost.’”

Military analyst and former IDF Major-General Giora Eiland concluded that, though outgunned and outnumbered, Hezbollah managed to hold off Israel’s advanced armed forces and proved its ability to damage Israel by launching rockets at its territory until the end of the war. He estimates (“Hezbollah planning 'large raids' into Galilee, senior army source says”) that Hezbollah's destructive capabilities have increased in the years after the war and that the group is capable to inflict “far worse damage on the Israeli home front” than in 2006.

British military historian John Keegan states (“Why Israel will go to war again – soon”) that the outcome of the 2006 war was “misreported as an Israeli defeat” due to anti-Israel bias in the international media. He stated that Hezbollah had suffered heavy losses, and that a ceasefire came into effect before Israel could completely dislodge Hezbollah from its positions. He also noted that the casualties sustained by Israel during the war had alarmed the Israeli Government and High Command, because Israel's small population is acutely vulnerable to losses in battle.

Battle inventory

It is assumed that the news media of the world are not freely allowed into Hezbollah’s weapons warehouse to do a full inventory. Yet, it seems that the Israeli Mossad has been able to do just that at Iran’s nuclear archives.

Nevertheless, a combination of Iranian and Hezbollah disclosures combined with intelligence breakthroughs have revealed a basic understanding of what armaments Hezbollah has at its disposal.

Here are seven articles detailing the weaponry in Nasrallah’s hands. These include rockets, rockets with GPS, precision-guided missiles, drones, etc.:

August 10, 2021         https://missilethreat.csis.org/country/hezbollahs-rocket-arsenal/

           

February 21, 2022       https://israel-alma.org/2022/02/21/does-hezbollah-really-have-150000-missiles-and-rockets/

October 19, 2023          https://www.inss.org.il/social_media/precision-missiles-uavs-and-tens-of-thousands-of-fighters-hezbollahs-order-of-battle/

November 15, 2023    https://www.forbes.com/sites/erictegler/2023/11/15/hezbollahs-rocket-missile-and-drone-arsenal-is-huge-and-varied/

February 26, 2024       https://www.fdd.org/analysis/op_eds/2024/02/26/breaking-down-hezbollahs-rocket-strategy-the-short-range-threat/

June 6, 2024                https://www.inss.org.il/social_media/the-scope-of-hezbollahs-weaponry/

June 26, 2024              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah_armed_strength

   

For those who want a ‘fast food’ perspective, it is suggested that the link presents helpful graphics and a clear mini-summation: https://www.inss.org.il/social_media/the-scope-of-hezbollahs-weaponry/.

The paragraph quoted below also briefly sums up the available facts:

Apart from these, Hezbollah has networks of tunnels (some probably crossing under the border into Israel, through which ‘Radwan’ commando teams can move and attack).

Are you ready?

Messiah Yeshua shared some words of wisdom with Israel nearly 2,000 years ago:

Here are six articles reflecting the perspectives of some senior military, strategic and national security analysts, regarding the upcoming possibilities, scenarios and challenges facing Israel in the days soon ahead. They are thought-provoking and are a great impetus for intercession. Their points must be weighed and prayerfully considered. Not everything which is stated in these articles will come to pass. Consider their perspectives prayerfully:

The following is an excerpt from Dr. Ehud Eilam, a highly respected analyst of Israel’s national security. He is a contributor toIsrael Defense. His suggested scenario is an eminently possible one:

Staring down the cobra

According to updated assessments (https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/03/03/hezbollahs-precision-missiles-a-bigger-threat-than-irans-nuclear-program/), Hezbollah currently possesses between 120,000-140,000 short-range rockets (range of 25-28 miles), which cover Israel’s north, including Haifa Bay and Tiberias; several thousand medium-range rockets (range of 56 miles), which can reach the Sharon coastal plain and northern suburbs of Gush Dan; and several hundred long-range rockets and missiles (range of hundreds of miles), including Scud missiles from Syrian military warehouses, capable of hitting targets anywhere in Israel. Hezbollah’s rockets and missiles are dispersed throughout Lebanon. Its short-range rockets are mostly stored in the country’s south, in the area near the Israeli border, to maximize their range. They are hidden in homes in the 230 Shiite villages, ready to be activated at a moment’s notice. It is from here that Hezbollah intends to rain fire on the Galilee, and essentially paralyze it. If the IDF decides to enter these villages on the ground to stop this barrage, it will be met with an array of fortifications and ambushes.”

According to a recent IDF Home Front Command report (https://www.idf.il/en/mini-sites/hezbollah-and-lebanon-an-in-depth-examination-under-hassan-nasrallah-s-leadership/hezbollah-s-threat-to-the-israeli-home-front/) roughly 1,000-1,500 rockets and missiles will be launched into Israel per day. Thousands of homes will be hit and hundreds of Israeli civilians will be injured or killed. Hundreds of thousands are expected to be evacuated from their homes.

The majority of Hezbollah’s rockets, however, are ‘dumb’ rockets. One cannot control where they hit, and a large number of rockets need to be launched to inflict real damage. On the other hand, a key Hezbollah precision-guided missile is the M-600 (‘Tishrin’) of Syrian manufacture. Its range is 250 kilometers (155 miles); it carries a half-ton warhead and is accurate to dozens of yards from the target. Such missiles can strike IDF HQ (the Kirya) in Tel Aviv. Hezbollah’s goal in war would be to hit strategic facilities (power, electricity and water-pumping stations), air force and army bases, government buildings in Jerusalem, etc. The IDF would hit similar structures in Lebanon, as well as national sewage systems, bringing that country ‘back to the Stone Age’ as has been repeatedly warned by top Israeli brass.

Hezbollah has made use of what are called its ‘nature reserves’ – fortified networks of underground tunnels, hidden rocket launchers, and interconnected passages allowing Hezbollah fighters to pop out and destroy IDF ground forces. These are sometimes connected to civilian housing with newly constructed ‘extra’ garages. These challenging threats to Israeli security will need to be met by powerful and neutralizing counter-responses.

On August 8, 2023 Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant publicly addressed Hassan Nasrallah while visiting the Har Dov region of Mount Hermon (overlooking Hezbollah forces in South Lebanon): “You have made mistakes in the past, you have paid very heavy prices. If an escalation or conflict develops here, we will return Lebanon to the Stone Age. We will not hesitate to use all our power, and erode every inch of Hezbollah and Lebanon if we have to.” On June 27, 2024 he repeated that same threat while visiting Washington DC: “We do not want war, but we are preparing for every scenario. Hezbollah understands very well that we can inflict massive damage in Lebanon if a war is launched.” Gallant stressed that Israel’s military is capable of taking Lebanon “back to the Stone Age.”

Standing with the armies of YHVH of armies

As the seconds tick off in Israel and Lebanon, as the populations of both countries face the very real possibility of a massively destructive clash, it is a good time to intensify our prayers for this situation.

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

Open your doors, O Lebanon – that fire may destroy your cedars! (Zechariah 11:1) – Part Two

Our previous newsletter (Part One) presented biblical teaching regarding Lebanon; the origin and theological strategies of the Islamist terror organization Hezbollah; and concluded with a survey of its venomous anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli and anti-American perspectives and goals. This newsletter (Part Two) unpacks Hezbollah’s role as an Iranian proxy and ‘fifth column’ within Lebanon. Part Three will deal with the specifics of its military threat to Israel; and Israel’s probable military response to Lebanon and to Hezbollah, the ‘Rasputin’ of the Land of the Cedars. For a more in-depth look at Lebanon’s spiritual history, see: https://davidstent.org/a-day-of-reckoning-for-the-cedars-of-lebanon/

Exporting the Iranian Revolution

On November 2, 1969 Lebanese Army General Emile Bustani signed ‘The Cairo Agreement’ with Yasser Arafat, Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman. This agreement surrendered Lebanese sovereignty to the PLO in districts adjacent to Israel, by removing local Palestinians from the control of Lebanon’s Deuxième Bureau and placing them under the authority of the PLO. After 1969, these Palestinian refugee camps became key bases for the Palestinian terror movement. The Agreement gave the right to Lebanese Palestinians “to join the Palestinians revolution through armed struggle” and become a state within a state in Lebanon. Within five years the Lebanese Army became incapable of controlling PLO activity, especially terror attacks on Israel and PLO attacks on Lebanese Christians. In April, 1975, the Lebanese Civil War broke out between the PLO and the Maronite/Phalange Christians. This led to Lebanese President Suleiman Frangieh asking Syria to intervene from the East in May 1976, while in March 1978 and then again in June 1982 Israel invaded from the South – after bloody PLO attacks on Israeli civilians and diplomats.

At that time, Iran was going through turmoil which eventually led to the overthrow of the Shah in January, 1979, and the establishment of a Shiite dictatorship under the control of Ayatollah Khomeini. But before that Islamist revolution, anti-Shah activists from Iran began arriving in Lebanon, and promptly received military training from the PLO.

In the early 1980’s, the long hand of the Islamic regime in Iran reached out toward Lebanon and created Hezbollah – a new organizational framework serving as a tool for spreading the Iranian revolution in Lebanon. Khomeini’s Iran persuaded prominent Lebanese Shiite leaders to abandon Amal, the previous leading Shiite organization in Lebanon, and to join Hezbollah’s ranks. Iran quickly became Hezbollah’s main source of economic, military, and political support. They dispatched 2,500 members of the Revolutionary Guards, who arrived in Lebanon in 1982. Two-thirds of them remained in Lebanon in the following years, solidifying Hezbollah’s power. To the present day, the Revolutionary Guards have been the principal channel connecting Iran’s Islamist revolutionary regime with Lebanese Hizbollah.

On November 5, 1989, the Taif Agreement was signed in Saudi Arabia, enabling Hezbollah to remain armed until ‘Israeli withdrawal’ which happened in 2000. Hezbollah then refused to disarm or withdraw, in violation of the Taif Accords.

The Agreement ‘established a framework’ for a complete Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, scheduled for 1991 – though it only came to pass in 2005. The Agreement was supposed to end the 15 year-long Lebanese Civil War and reassert Lebanese governmental authority over South Lebanon. Rafik al-Hariri (later Lebanon’s Prime Minister) was the major catalyst in getting this agreement off the ground. Sixteen years later, in 2005 al-Hariri was assassinated in Beirut by Hezbollah. Seventeen days after signing the Taif Agreement, Lebanon’s President-elect René Moawad was assassinated in a West Beirut car-bombing near the Raml el-Zareef High School in November 22, 1989 as his motorcade returned from Lebanese Independence. Day ceremonies. Syrian Military Intelligence seems to have been involved here.

Iran-Hezbollah communication is conducted through the al-Quds Force, an elite Revolutionary Guards unit whose purpose is to export the Islamic revolution beyond Iran. This secret branch also guides Hezbollah and Hamas. Hezbollah terrorists and paperwork captured by Israel during the Second Lebanon War reveal that the al-Quds Force established and operated a training network to train Hezbollah members in the use of Iranian-supplied advanced weapons – even in Iran itself. This perspective is summed up in Hassan Nasrallah’s recent February 13, 2024 pronouncement: “The front in southern Lebanon is a front of support, assistance, solidarity, and participation in weakening the Israeli enemy until it reaches the point where it is convinced that it must stop its aggression. This front will only stop when the aggression against Gaza stops within an agreement with the Palestinian resistance.”

Subsidizing the Iranian Revolution

In America, the watchmen on the walls include the CIA and the NSA. The majority of those employed at these two august organizations do not see events through a biblical framework, nor do they have a grid for God’s heart and calling on Israel. Nearly no one understands YHVH’s Last Days vision for the Middle East as laid out in the Hebrew prophets. The viewpoint of Robert Baer, former CIA case officer in the Directorate of Operations from 1976 to 1997 (serving in Iraq, Lebanon, Dushanbe, etc.) provides a fair representation of the perspectives that typify the American intelligence community. The movie Syriana starring George Clooney is based on experience Baer gained as a spy:

In another interviews, Baer elaborates:

The fact is that Baer and others in the US intelligence community have a certain sympathy for Iran and Hezbollah. These same perspectives influence both Presidents and State Department officials in their Middle East realpolitik. Quite recently, both POTUS Barak Obama and POTUS Joe Biden released billions of dollars ($71.02 billion according to one investigative reportage) to Iran through deception, money which went straight to Iran’s support of Hezbollah and other terror groups, in a classic case of diplomatic obfuscation and fungibility.

The following quote is from Hassan Mneimneh’s October 29, 2020 article ‘Iran in Lebanon: A Fatal Occupation’:

Encouraging the Iranian Revolution

The current events roiling the Middle East are mostly connected to Iran’s ravenous hunger to once again rule this region. It has carefully crafted a strategy which requires much patience. The strategy of encircling Israel – based on the Arabic term ‘Wahdat al-Saha’at’ (unity of the arenas) – lies behind Iran’s effort to gather its allies and all armed Islamist forces arrayed against Israel under a single Persian umbrella. Today Iran controls a contiguous area of control stretching from Syria’s Quneitra Province adjoining the Golan Heights, through southern Syria and into Iraq, where Tehran dominates the government and controls the Kata’ib Hezbollah Shiite paramilitary jihadi forces, and the Quwwāt al-Ḥashd ash-Shaʿbī or Popular Mobilization Units. Add to this the Houthi jihadi pirates in Yemen, and the picture sharpens in clarity.

Hamas’ and Hezbollah’s gnarled hands may be what the media and the diplomats see, but the voice is the voice of Iran (see Genesis 27:22). The policies taken by Western diplomats which dovetail with Hamas’ war strategies show a criminal lack of understanding in dealing with these jihadi forces and their cunning built up over the centuries. Though it seems that these are simply appeals for humanitarian aid, or mock horror at Hamas/civilian casualties, or the flipping of facts in accusing Israel of cruelty and genocide – these feckless political moves pour fuel on the jihadi fire and encourage the gray eminences of the Iranian Revolution.

One such example is Western diplomatic efforts to strike a deal with Hezbollah, allowing de-escalation of military tensions. Such a deal was signed on August 11, 2006; it is called UN Security Council Resolution 1701. It insisted that Hezbollah withdraw northward 18 miles from the Israeli border to the Litani River, and that it demilitarize. How did that work out? No part of the resolution was ever carried out by Hezbollah, while Israel fulfilled its obligation one-sidedly.

After the October 7, 2023 Hamas pogrom on Israeli civilians living in kibbutzim near Gaza, jihadi groups in southern Lebanon (including Hezbollah and Hamas) have been routinely firing rockets at Israeli cities and on IDF positions on the Israel-Lebanon border. On November 21, 2023, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen warned the UNSC that a regional war was likely if UNSCR 1701 was not fully implemented. On January 8, 2024, Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib called for a diplomatic solution to the Israel-Hezbollah conflict through “full implementation” of the Resolution 1701 . . .

Resisting the Iranian Revolution

Those Lebanese who resisted Iran’s salami-slice annexation of Lebanon often paid with their lives for their bravery. Bachir Gemayal, Lebanese Forces Supreme Commander and later President of Lebanon,  was assassinated in Eastern Beirut on September 14, 1982 by a member of the Syrian Nationalist Party. It is conjectured that Syria’s President Hafez al-Assad was party to the planning and execution of Gemayel. Phalange Christian response to the assassination was the massacre of Lebanese Palestinians in Beirut’s Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.

On August 13, 2023, Lebanon’s top Christian cleric, Patriarch Bechara Boutros al-Rai spoke guardedly in his Sunday sermon, rebuking Hezbollah as a ‘state within a state,’ an irresponsible actor causing damage to Lebanon: “It is not possible to live on one land with more than one state, more than one legitimate army, more than one authority, and more than one sovereignty.”

On August 13, 2023 Samy Gemayel, the leader of the Lebanese opposition al-Kataib Party, said in a al-Hadath TV interview that “the Lebanese state has surrendered to Hezbollah. There is a green light for Hezbollah to transport weapons, also via residential areas. There is a great danger. What if the truck had contained explosives and the incident led to a huge explosion and hundreds of people were killed? We are not prepared to coexist with an armed militia in Lebanon, and this will be followed by practical steps, opposition meetings, and decisions.”

In October 2023 MP Fadi Karam of the Lebanese Forces party on told Radio Free Lebanon: "The decision on war [in Lebanon] is currently in the hands of Iran. [Iran’s principle of] 'the unity of the fronts' means revoking the sovereignty and the independence of Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.”

On November 1, 2021, Saudi Arabia banned all imports from Lebanon. Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, said his country’s disengagement from Lebanon was prompted by “Hezbollah’s continuing dominance of the political scene.” Over that weekend, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain asked the Lebanese ambassadors in their capitals to leave as well. “Lebanon has been captured,” Ali Shihabi, a commentator close to the Saudi government, said about Riyadh’s thinking. “Nothing can be done except cut Lebanon off so its people also see the price of Iranian domination.”

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

Open your doors, O Lebanon – that fire may destroy your cedars! (Zechariah 11:1) – Part One

The world’s media is focusing a fear-filled spotlight on the tinder-box of Lebanon. Those who turn on the nightly news are shown to a ringside seat and where they can gaze at what may well be a coming bloody confrontation. Even some Christian sites are engaging in a measure of prophetic voyeurism about what may happen on the Israel-Lebanon border.  Here are questions currently being raised on TV:

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel once stated: “Wir lernen aus der Geschichte, dass wir überhaupt nichts lernen” (‘We learn from history, that we mostly learn nothing at all’). Yet some things can be learned from history, from understanding religious motivations, and from mining biblical and military strategic contexts.

“From the River to the Sea”

In Deuteronomy 4:44-46, Moses coaches the Jewish people, recounting to them the entire Mosaic Covenant as they camp in modern Jordan, waiting to invade and conquer Canaan. Moses pronounces to Israel, on the authority of the God of Jacob, that “every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours. Your territory shall be from the [Negev] desert to the Lebanon and from the River – the river Euphrates – to the western [Mediterranean] Sea” (Deuteronomy 11:24). According to the God of Jacob, ‘from the River to the Sea’ means the borders of the Promised Land that YHVH gave to the Jewish people – from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. No other people has sovereign and divine right to those territories. These territories include Gaza (Joshua 15.47), what is known today as the West Bank (Numbers 34:1-12), northern Jordan (Deuteronomy 3:11-18), a large section of modern Lebanon (Joshua 12:7) and part of modern Syria (Genesis 15:18; Joshua 13:1-5).

Claims by Hamas or the Palestinian Authority to Gaza or to the West Bank, and claims by Hezbollah to southern Lebanon – these flagrantly violate YHVH’s word regarding the biblical borders of the Promised Land.  These are the vain imaginings of the nations that Psalm 2:1 mentions, and they run roughshod over God’s prophetic promises to His Jewish people:

In light of the fast-paced events now happening in Israel and the Middle East,  it’s worth remembering that the Bible does not ask the question: “How does Israel fit in with superpower strategies or Islamist jihadi plans?” Rather, the question that the Bible raises is: “How do all these superpowers and Islamist nations fit in to YHVH’s good plans for Israel?”

Psalm 83 notes prophetically that, at the End of Days, Lebanon (Gebal and Tyre) will be actively at war with Israel. Lebanon will join Edom, Ammon and Moab (Jordan and the West Bank), the Ishmaelites and Hagrites (Egyptian Sinai, Saudi Arabia), the Philistines (the region of Gaza), and Assyria (northern Iraq) in an attempt to commit genocide against the Jewish people:

“They make shrewd plans against Your people” (Psalm 83:3)

The present jihadi army in Lebanon is called Hezbollah (in Arabic, Ḥizbu 'llāh; the Party of Allah). It is also known as al-Muqāwamah Al-Islāmīyah fī Lubnān (‘The Islamic Resistance in Lebanon’). Hezbollah is a Shia Islamist jihadi group with two wings – a paramilitary/terrorist Jihad Council and a political party in the Lebanese Parliament known as the ‘Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc.’ The Secretary-General of Hezbollah is Hassan Nasrallah. The group was founded around 1982, toward the close of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990). That war was waged primarily between the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Lebanese Christian Maronites. Hezbollah’s administrative center gradually situated itself in south Beirut’s Shiite Dahieh neighborhood. Hezbollah’s training grounds eventually were located in the Bekaa Valley. And South Lebanon became their operational ground, from where attacks were made against Israel and the IDF.

Beirut was once known as ‘the Jewel of the Mediterranean’ or ‘the Paris of the Middle East.’ But the 15 year-long Lebanese Civil War reaped a grisly harvest of over approximately 150,000 dead Lebanese. Sniping, ambushes, kidnappings, car bombs and IEDs – life in Beirut gradually became a nightmare for many. Daily life in Beirut was characterized by cruelty and violence, and Hezbollah flourished and blossomed in that bloody soil.

The most famous/infamous terror operative associated with Hezbollah was Imad Mughniyeh, born in 1962 in the Lebanese village of Tayr Debba, not far from Tyre. He joined Yasser Arafat’s Force 17 special forces as a teenager and fought against Lebanese Christian and Druze forces in the 1970’s and early 1980’s.  After Israel expelled the PLO from Beirut to Tunisia in August 1982, Mughniyeh and four others helped found the Islamic Jihad Organization, a Shiite terror arm of Hezbollah under the tutelage of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (Pasdaran), in the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley. He was directly involved in or had responsibility for the following terror acts, often working as a team with Mustafa Badreddine. The two men were known professionally as ‘the ghosts of Beirut:’

‘Hajj Radwan’ (Mughniyeh’s professional alias) had his fateful encounter with divine justice on February 12, 2008, at approximately 22:15 hours. This master Hezbollah terrorist was blown up as he approached his Mitsubishi Pajero on a dark Damascus street in the fashionable Kafr Soussa neighborhood, not far from an Iranian school, a Syrian police station and a Syrian Intelligence office.

“They conspire together against Your treasured ones” (Psalm 83:3)

The goals and strategies of Hezbollah are based on their philosophy and principles. These have been clearly stated by the organization from the outset: “These are our objectives and these our enemies.” On February 16, 1986 Sheikh Ibrahim al-Amin publicly read the document ‘The Hizballah Program’ at the al-Ouzai mosque in West Beirut. It was simultaneously published in as-Safir, a leading Arabic-language daily newspaper in Beirut. The article was titled ‘The Hizballah Program, an open letter to all the Oppressed in Lebanon and the World.’ An English pamphlet was published in 1987. Here are some selections from the CIA translation of that document:

The unabridged version of the Hezbollah Program includes the following instructive paragraphs:

“The mouth speaks from that which fills the heart” (Matthew 12:34)

Hezbollah’s heart-attitudes (see Genesis 12:3) towards Israel reveal a virulent anti-Semitism rooted in classic Islamist texts.

In July, 1985, Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah (the spiritual mentor of Hezbollah) stated in an interview: “We believe there is no difference between the United States and Israel; the latter is a mere extension of the former. The United States is ready to fight the whole world to defend Israel's existence and security. The two countries are working in complete harmony.”

According to a video posted on Saudi news channel al-Arabiya, Nasrallah declared in a 1988 speech Hezbollah’s commitment to a worldwide Shiite Islamist Caliphate dictatorship: “Our plan, to which we, as faithful believers, have no alternative, is to establish an Islamic state under the rule of Islam . . . Lebanon should not be an Islamic republic on its own, but rather, part of the Greater Islamic Republic, governed by the Master of Time [the Shiite messianic figure known as the Mahdi], and his rightful deputy, the Jurisprudent Ruler [Persian: Velâyat-e Faqih] Imam [Ayatollah] Khomeini.”

In a 1998 speech marking the Shiite Day of Ashura, Nasrallah’s official website quoted him referring to Israel as “the state of the grandsons of apes and pigs – the Zionist Jews” and described the sons of Jacob as “the murderers of the prophets.”

Speaking at the Shi'ite Day of Ashura flagellation ceremony (tatbir) on April 9, 2000, Hassan Nasrallah declared: “The Jews invented the legend of the Nazi atrocities. It is clear that the numbers they talk about are greatly exaggerated. They can speak of fabricated or exaggerated massacres that occurred during the Second World War.”

On May 26, 2000, Nasrallah gave a speech in the Lebanese village of Bint Jbeil, from where the IDF had withdrawn a few days previously. Nasrallah crowed: “Several hundred Hezbollah fighters forced the strongest state in the Middle East to raise the flag of defeat . . . The age in which the Zionists frightened the Lebanese and the Arabs has ended . . . Israel, which possesses nuclear weapons and the most powerful air force in the region – this Israel is weaker than a spider's web.”

On September 4, 2002, Hezbollah-affiliated Ayatollah Fadlallah stated to the British newspaper ‘The Telegraph’: “I was not the one who launched the idea of so-called suicide bombings ... but I have certainly argued in favor of them.”

On September 27, 2002, Nasrallah spoke on al-Manar (Lebanese Hezbollah TV), proclaiming: “Let the entire world hear me. Our hostility to the Great Satan [America] is absolute . . . I conclude my speech with the slogan that will continue to reverberate on all occasions so that nobody will think that we have weakened. Regardless of how the world has changed after 11 September, Death to America will remain our reverberating and powerful slogan: Death to America!”

In an October 23, 2002 article in the Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star, journalist Badih Chayban quoted Nasrallah saying, “Among the signs . . . and signals which guide us, in the Islamic prophecies and not only in the Jewish prophecies, is that this State [of Israel] will be established, and that the Jews will gather from all parts of the world into occupied Palestine, not in order to bring about the anti-Christ (i.e., al-Masīḥ ad-Dajjāl) and the end of the world, but rather that Allah the Glorified and Most High wants to save you from having to go to the ends of the world, for they have gathered in one place, and there the final and decisive battle will take place.” Nasrallah’s speech is available in Arabic on Hezbollah's website. More recently, the relevant excerpt from the speech, along with Arabic transcription and English translation, have been published online.

In Jeffrey Goldberg’s October 14, 2002 article in ‘The New Yorker’ titled ‘In the Party of God’, Hezbollah spokesman Ibrahim Mousawi states that the “Jews are a lesion of the forehead of history.”

On February 18 and 19, 2005, Hezbollah-connected TV al-Manar aired Nasrallah’s speech of February 2, where he stated: “Israel is our enemy. This is an aggressive, illegal, and illegitimate entity, which has no future in our land. Its destiny is manifested in our motto: ‘Death to Israel!’”

In 2006, Sheikh Nasrallah said: “There is no solution to the conflict in this region except with the disappearance of Israel.”

On August 2, 2013, Nasrallah spoke on Quds Day in Beirut, saying that Israel was “a cancerous growth that must be eradicated . . . The only solution is to destroy it without giving it the opportunity to surrender . .  The elimination of Israel is not only a Palestinian interest. It is the interest of the entire Muslim world and the entire Arab world.”

On August 14, 2014, Nasrallah gave an interview to the Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar, stating that: “Israel is an illegitimate entity and it is a threat to the region. It is a constant threat to the whole region. We cannot coexist with this threat. That is why the ultimate goal of the [Arab and Islamic] nation is to end Israel’s existence irrespective of the problems, sensitivities and everything that has happened and could happen between Palestinians and non-Palestinians, Shia and Sunni, Muslims and Christians.”

On November 30, 2009 Nasrallah announced Hezbollah’s new ‘Manifesto’ at a live press conference in Beirut, 24 years after the publishing of its original ‘Hezbollah Program.’ The scholar and Neubauer Research Fellow Benedetta Berti at INSS, explains that “Hizbollah shows complete continuity both regarding its worldview and its strategic goals” in both documents.

“Certainly in the fire of My jealousy I have spoken against the rest of the nations!” (Ezekiel 36:5)

The prophet Jeremiah spoke forcefully about the divine judgment which will fall on every nation who disparages or dismisses YHVH’s calling on Israel and His love for His own Jewish people:

Hezbollah and Iran are not the first groups to find themselves blacklisted in the Bible. The divine gavel is about to come crashing down in the courthouse of the Most High.

 

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

 

The elephant and the flea

Sometimes the stout-hearted can learn from history. There are certainly enough examples which might grant wisdom to those who so desire. Indeed, the present superpower machinations and intrigue surrounding the Middle East – with the focus here on jihadi forces versus Israel – have some sobering lessons to impart, for those who have eyes to see.

But to take instruction, one has to clean out one’s ears and polish one’s spectacles. Preconceived ideas of which world powers are the heroes and which are only partly heroic – these perspectives may need to be deposited in the cubicles at the doors of the classroom, in order to more clearly discern what is truly taking place. Under the glare of history’s microscope, heroes sometimes turn out to be anti-heroes, while those who are universally castigated often turn out to be the true champions.

This newsletter examines five such cases:

“America is an elephant - Cyprus is a flea – Greece is a flea”

At one point in the career of the rough-talking Texan who became POTUS, Lyndon Baines Johnson addressed some fiery words to Alexander Matsas, Greece’s Ambassador to Washington. The context was a June 1964 US-Greek disagreement concerning the fate of Cyprus (as quoted in ‘I Should Have Died’ (1977), Philip Deane, pp. 113-114):

On April 21, 1967, a military junta led by three Greek Generals took over Greece in a coup. The CIA was certainly involved in encouraging these leaders, and LBJ’s earlier comments take on a more menacing air in this context.

“There is no American reason why the Turks should not have one-third of Cyprus”

In 1974, a fascinating document archived at the US National Security Advisor’s Memoranda of Conversation Collection (situated at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan) throws light on how the United States government views power politics and warlike moves against its own allies. The US at that time related to the Greek military dictatorship as an ally. Yet they also stationed nuclear weapons at Incirlik Air Base, Turkey after 1958. Today there are purportedly 90 B61 gravity bombs on site. The US strategic game-plan involved dealing simultaneously with two mortal enemies – Turkey and Greece. Yet ultimately, the American cards were stacked in favor of the Turks.

In Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s discussion with the POTUS Ford, Kissinger stated quite flatly:

“We would have our hands full to keep the Greeks from going to war. The Turks right now are extremely nationalistic. For a few years ago, the Turkish tactics are right – grab what they want and then negotiate on the basis of possession . . . But if the Turks run loose on Cyprus, the Greeks could come unglued. We certainly do not want a war between the two, but if it came to that, Turkey is more important to us . . . There is no American reason why the Turks should not have one-third of Cyprus.”

“We can reduce Israel’s size to historic proportions”

The long-term heart and strategy of the US State Department regarding its end-game for Israel is no secret. On December 17, 1975 US Secretary of State Dr. Henry Kissinger met S’adun Hammadi, Iraq’s Minister of Foreign Affairs at the Iraqi Ambassador’s residence on Rue d’Andigne, Paris. In that meeting Kissinger communicated a ‘no-nonsense’ US foreign policy regarding Israel:

This State Department realpolitik position still informs the thinking of American diplomats and politicians today: Israel’s borders must be shrunk in order to weaken its military and political standing in the Middle East, and a Palestinian state needs to be established on land which has been pried away from Israeli control. An awareness of these anti-biblical schemes can help intercessors to pray for leaders and diplomats in the US and elsewhere, for these talking points are part and parcel of British, European and Russian strategies as well.

The betrayal by the West

Adolf Hitler had plans to swallow up Europe piece by piece. One of the largest initial pieces was the Sudetenland – territories in Czechoslovakia to where a significant number of Germans laborers had moved, seeking work and new opportunities. The Führer threatened Continental Europe with war if Sudetenland were not given to him in appeasement.

Chamberlain believed that negotiations with Hitler could avoid a World War. His impression was that Hitler could turn out to be a man of peace. “In spite of the hardness and ruthlessness I thought I saw in his face, I got the impression that here was a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word.”

To avoid war, France and the United Kingdom permitted Nazi Germany to incorporate the Sudetenland. In meetings at the Munich Conference with Hitler on September 15th (Berchtesgaden, Bavaria), 22nd (Rheinhotel Dreesen, Rüngsdorf, Bad Godesberg) and 29th (the Führerbau, Munich), Chamberlain was manipulated and bullied into finally abandoning England’s Czechoslovak ally to the tender mercies of the Nazi juggernaut. The representatives of Czechoslovakia were not allowed to take part in any negotiations due to Hitler’s refusal to allow their participation, as their homeland was drawn and quartered by Europe’s Great Powers. Up to that point the Czechs had refused to bow to any form of diplomatic surgery, preferring to trust in their small though well-trained army and in their political alliances with France and the Soviet Union.

The Munich Agreement was signed at 01:30 on September 30, 1938 by Hitler, British PM Sir Neville Chamberlain, Italian Fascist PM Benito Mussolini and French PM Édouard Daladier. This Quartet’s meeting was known as the ‘Four-Power Conference.’ It sanctioned the immediate Nazi invasion and annexation of Czech Sudetenland. A few hours after having signed away Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain took a light nap, arose and asked Hitler to sign a peace treaty between the United Kingdom and Germany. Hitler happily agreed. The German High Command’s plot to stop Hitler was shelved, and Europe tumbled slowly into the abyss.

Czech politicians joined the newspapers in regularly using the term The Betrayal by the West (Czech: zrada Západu). All of the Czechoslovak border fortifications (the only viable defense against German invasion) were now in Nazi hands. Poland seized Trans-Olza; Hungary annexed and occupied the remainder of Carpathian Ruthenia. Chamberlain returned to Britain claiming he had established peace in our time. However, within a year of the agreement World War II had started. Czech poet František Halas published a poem with verse about the “ringing bell of betrayal” that occurred at Munich. MP Winston Churchill was said to have declared that “Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonor. They chose dishonor. They will have war.” To this day, the terms ‘Munich’, Sudetenland,’ Chamberlain and ‘peace for our time’ convey betrayal and diplomatic duplicity.

After Munich, Hitler no longer had any fear that the West would oppose his genocidal plans. His comments about Chamberlain and Daladier were telling on this point: “I did not think it possible that Czechoslovakia would be virtually served up to me on a plate by her friends.” Even more telling was Hitler’s conclusion: “Our enemies are little worms. I saw them at Munich” (“Unsere Gegner sind kleine Würmchen. Ich sah sie in München”). In March 1939 Hitler invaded and conquered the rest of Czechoslovakia.

On Friday October 5, 2001 Israeli PM Ariel Sharon gave an evening press conference where he said:

In a blunt response on October 6, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said: “The President believes that these remarks are unacceptable. Israel could have no better or stronger friend that the United States and no better friend than President Bush.” Yet the American push to get Israel to retreat from Gaza, the Golan, the West Bank and the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem continued full press from that day onward.

A banana republic in the desert

The present US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has been active in communicating State Department wishes and Presidential orders to Israel throughout the past eight months of the Israel-Hamas war. Little is known by most people about Blinken’s political role prior to his current office.

Blinken was functioning as Biden’s principal foreign policy advisor and spokesman for his 2020 presidential campaign. As senior campaign official, he reached out to acting CIA Director Mike Morell on or before October 17, 2020, and triggered him to organize 50 colleagues in the intelligence community to sign a letter “falsely claiming that damning emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop [just] published by The [New York]Post were Russian disinformation.” At 10:53 pm that night, “Blinken emailed Morell a USA Today article” dealing with the same theme. Over the next two days, Morell “gathered signatures from 51 former intelligence officials, including himself and four other former CIA directors, including John Brennan and Leon Panetta.” Morell also testified “that he sent an email telling Nick Shapiro, former chief of staff to Brennan, that the Biden campaign wanted the statement to go to a particular reporter at the Washington Post.” Morell testified that “he received a call from Steve Ricchetti, chairman of the Biden campaign, to thank him for writing the statement.”

Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio), chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, wrote to Blinken on April 20, 2023, requesting his assistance because they “have learned that you played a role in the inception of this statement while serving as a Biden campaign advisor. This concerted effort to minimize and suppress public dissemination of the serious allegations about the Biden family was a grave disservice to all American citizens’ informed participation in our democracy.”

When asked about Blinken’s role in the disinformation letter sent out by CIA acting Director Morell (according to his sworn testimony to the House Judiciary Committee), State Department spokesman Vedant Patel refused to answer directly, only stating that “It is not a State Department issue, and I don’t really have a comment on this from the State Department.” Morell was not a State Department employee, and at that time neither was Anthony Blinken.

Since moving to the State Department, Blinken’s statement and policies have raised concerns regarding his strategic perspectives on Israel-related issues.

Fair-weather friends and erratic allies

Dr. Majid Rafizadeh, president of the International American Council on the Middle East, and a board member of Harvard International Review, has published an incisive June 15, 2024 article: “As US Is Being Encircled by Enemies, the US Administration Wants Israel to Surrender to Terrorists.” Here are a few selected quotes:

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 the sons of Adam put God on trial

The spinner of the Narnia tales, British author C.S. Lewis once said:

Repaying Babylon

The modern world has a primitive understanding of the God of Jacob. Instead of acknowledging divine justice, today’s humanity treats evil murderers with kid gloves, while scoffing at Him who gave us the covenants. Yet even now, YHVH leaves a trail of Scriptural breadcrumbs for us, detailing how what He thinks about Israel’s enemies, and how His vengeance will soon erupt against them.

This divine viewpoint and these God-breathed values are rejected on a daily basis by the UN, the EU, the UK and the US, And it is no wonder: that is because, by and large, the world rejects both the Author of the Bible and His perspectives:  The Prophet put it succinctly: “To the Teaching [Torah] and to the Testimony! If they do not speak in accordance with this word, it is because they have no dawn!” (Isaiah 8:20).

Over the past eight months, the world’s media and street demonstrators have justified Hamas’ atrocities (its rape, torture, murder and kidnapping of the children of Israel) while throwing an accusatory spotlight against the IDF for its defensive actions (its attempts to free its hostages, stop rocket fire against its citizens, and destroy the jihadi armies attempting to burn and crush the Jewish state from all sides). As man puts YHVH and His Jewish people ‘in the dock’ – on trial, whether at the International Court of Justice at The Hague or at the United Nations in New York – the Bible puts the entire planet on notice: the curses of Genesis 12:3 are already descending on superpower and micro-state alike. This is YHVH’s prophesied response to the nations’ cold and cruel heart attitudes to both the Jewish people and their state.

The nations of Moses’ day – conquered and conquerors

The nations of the Middle East in Moses’ day were used to the reality that invading nations would conquer other peoples. The conquered nations then faded off the pages of history. YHVH Himself explained this realpolitik to Moses: the God of Jacob gave certain nations the command to conquer, dispossess and destroy other nations who were to be judged for their sins (see Genesis 15:16; Leviticus 18:24-28). In Deuteronomy 2, YHVH lists five nations which were to be conquered, dispossessed and destroyed at His divine command. Five other nations would do the invading, the conquering and the destroying.

This YHVH may not be a ‘politically correct’ God, but He is the One whom we serve:

Moses and Joshua, the commanders of Israel’s armies – on trial before the World Court?

The writer of the Book of Deuteronomy tells us: “Since that time no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom YHVH knew face to face, for all the signs and wonders which YHVH sent him to perform in the land of Egypt against Pharaoh, all his servants, and all his land – and for all the mighty power and all the great terror which Moses performed in the sight of all Israel” (Deuteronomy 34:10-12).

Moses’ commission to Joshua was to destroy all the nations living in Canaan and to dispossess them. One of the last things Moses ever said to all the people of Israel was the following: “I am 120 years old today; I am no longer able to go out and come in, and YHVH has told me, ‘You shall not cross this Jordan.’ It is YHVH your God who is going to cross ahead of you. He Himself will destroy these nations before you, and you shall dispossess them! Joshua is the one who is going to cross ahead of you, just as YHVH has spoken” (Deuteronomy 31:2-3).

Moses passed this divine commission on to Joshua, who carried it out faithfully, as the Scriptures bear witness: “So Joshua struck all the land, the Hill Country and the Negev and the Shephelah [Lowland] and the slopes, and all their kings. He left no survivor, but he utterly destroyed all who breathed, just as YHVH, the God of Israel, had commanded” (Joshua 10:40).

The only exception was the case of the inhabitants of Gibeon. The Gibeonites, a Hivite tribe living just north of Jerusalem (see Joshua 9:1-2,7), craftily deceived Joshua and his armies, pretending that they were ‘from a very distant country’ (see Joshua 9:9): “So they answered Joshua and said, ‘Since your servants were fully informed that YHVH your God had commanded His servant Moses to give you all the land, and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land before you, we feared greatly for our lives because of you, and did this thing’” (Joshua 9 :24).

How does God describe Moses, his commission and his leading of the armies of Israel against Egypt and the desert tribes? “Since that time no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom YHVH knew face to face, for all the signs and wonders which YHVH sent him to perform in the land of Egypt against Pharaoh, all his servants, and all his land – and for all the mighty power and all the great terror which Moses performed in the sight of all Israel!” (Deuteronomy 34:10-12).

Jephthah the Judge facing the Court of Ammon

The Palestinian desire to destroy the Jewish people and their state is not a new dynamic. Over 3,300 years ago the Ammonites of modern Jordan joined battle against the Jewish people, attempting to conquer, destroy and dispossess the Jewish people from formerly Amorite (and not Ammonite) lands. In their pre-combat negotiations with Jephthah the Judge, they claimed that the Jewish people had occupied territories which should rightly belong to the Ammonites. Jephthah’s envoys explained in semitic ‘diplomatese’ that these Ammonite assertions were actually ‘fake news,’ and that Israel had never conquered territories given by YHVH to the Ammonite (who were in fact distant relatives to the sons of Israel through Abraham’s nephew Lot). Jephthah’s diplomats rehearse recent 300-year-old Middle Eastern history to clarify this point:

The king of the Ammonites refused to accept the historical facts of the situation (like the Palestinians also refuse to do), and went to war against Israel. The battle was decisively won by the Jewish people, for YHVH had handed the Ammonites over to the sons of Jacob: “So Jephthah crossed over to the sons of Ammon to fight against them. And YHVH handed them over to him. He inflicted a very great defeat on them from Aro’er to the entrance of Minnit, twenty cities, and as far as Abel Kramim. So the sons of Ammon were subdued before the sons of Israel” (Judges 11:32-33).

Samuel the Judge rules on Amalek and Agag

Balaam of Mesopotamia had prophesied by the Holy Spirit in Moses’ day that “Amalek was the first of the nations, but his end shall be destruction” (Numbers 24:20).  Balaam also prophesied about Judah’s coming Messiah, proclaiming that he would be even greater than King Agag of the ruling dynasty of Amalek:

Four hundred years later, an Amalekite King also named Agag (probably a dynastic descendant of the Agag mentioned in Numbers 24) is spotlighted by the God of Israel. King Saul was given his first assignment in the days of Samuel the Judge, and the task was a similar one to those given to Moses, Joshua and Jephthah. Saul was to totally conquer, destroy and dispossess both the nation of Amalek and its king Agag. But the Bible reveals that Saul failed to carry out YHVH’s prophesied judgments – judgments which reflected God’s international guidelines as per Genesis 12:3: “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse:”

The God whom we serve, the God of Moses, Joshua, Jephthah and Samuel, is deadly serious about His justice coming to pass, and about bringing vengeance on those who harm the Jewish people. He sometimes waits patiently for the right time for His judgments to be carried out, as in the Days of Noah, or regarding the generation in the desert, or the years between the crucifixion and the destruction of the Second Temple. The microscope with which we consider rapidly moving present-day events needs to have a biblical view of time here – a marathon-man perspective.

 Repaying Babylon for all the evil they have done in Zion
 

We live in a day which mocks divine retribution and foams at the mouth with murderous hatred whenever the Jewish state makes war against its destroyers. World media shapes people’s thought and attitudes, shaping anti-Semitism and anti-Israel movements. These satanic minefields are even now exploding across the earth. Let us be on guard: YHVH’s vengeance against all nations who raise their hand to harm Israel is soon coming.

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

 

Pulling a Messianic rabbit out of a Pentecostal hat

Tonight marks the onset of the Jewish Feast of Pentecost (a Greek word meaning ‘fiftieth’). The original Hebrew name for the holiday is Shavuot (‘weeks’), referring to the seven-week counting period between Passover and Pentecost – seven weeks of seven days each, culminating in the celebration of the holiday on the fiftieth day (Leviticus 23:15-21). 
 

Hebrew harvest time
 
The first agricultural harvest of the biblical New Year (which occurs at Passover time, according to Exodus 12:1-2) is the barley harvest (see Exodus 9:31; Ruth 1:22). The Book of Ruth takes place close to Passover time, during the barley harvest.
 
The next harvest comes soon after, and it is the wheat harvest (see Exodus 34:22; Deuteronomy 16:9-12). The Feast of Shavuot/Pentecost celebrates the wheat harvest, as these above passages explain. Fifty days separate between these two harvests.
 
The Festival of Shavuot is also called the ‘Feast of the Reaping’ in Exodus 23:16, where we are told to celebrate “the reaping of the first fruits of your labors which you have sown in the field” (also see Numbers 28:2).
 
Shavuot is an agricultural festival in the Bible. The declaration of thanksgiving in Deuteronomy 16:1-11 was proclaimed by Jewish farmers (probably on Shavuot) when they brought their first fruits offering to the House of YHVH in Jerusalem.
 
Moses established that all Jewish men needed to come up to Jerusalem three times a year, to appear before YHVH’s presence with offerings (Exodus 23:14-17; 34:23; Deuteronomy 16:16). This feast was one of the shalosh regalim (sholesh regolim in Yiddish) – the three pilgrim feasts.

Change you can’t believe in

The Five Books of Moses present exact and clear days when to celebrate feasts. Here are some examples:

But when it comes to the date when the Mosaic Covenant was given, the God of Israel does not give an exact calendar date for the event, nor does He command the Jewish people that they should celebrate that event as a Feast or on a certain day.

In search of the lost date

The Scriptures do not give an exact date for the Giving of the Mosaic Covenant. That event happened somewhere within a two-month period, but the Bible does not specify when (Exodus 19:1, 16; 24:4, 16; 34:28; 40:17). It’s a little like Christmas: December 24/25 was chosen not because of a specific date given in the Gospel records, but because of pre-existing pagan Roman traditions. People tend to like dates and, when the Bible is silent about such things, folks tend to choose dates anyway – ‘everyone does what’s right in his own eyes’ (see Judges 21:25).

In the Books of Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, God communicates a threefold emphasis of keeping the Feast of Shavuot:

In all these passages, the Bible is utterly silent about a date for the Giving of the Mosaic Covenant, or about any connection between the Feast of Shavuot and the Giving of the Mosaic Torah.

Here is the timeline given in the Bible of the events which transpired between the first Passover in Egypt and the Giving of the Decalogue in the Sinai Desert. This biblical timeline shows that it is impossible to make dogmatic declarations regarding the Giving of the Torah as happening on the same day as the Feast of Shavuot/Pentecost.

Jumping Jubilee!
 
Over one hundred years before the birth of Yeshua, Jewish scribes translated the Bible from Hebrew into Greek. Their translation is known as the ‘Septuagint’ (a Greek word meaning ‘the seventy’ – referring to the traditional number of seventy scribes who did the translation work). The Septuagint uses the Greek word Pentēkostē when translating Leviticus 25:10, to refer to ‘the fiftieth’ – in this case, the 50th year of Jubilee. In Yeshua’s day, Jews would call the Feast ‘Shavuot’ when speaking Hebrew,  or Pentēkostē (Pentecost in modern English) when speaking Greek.
 
Paul the Apostle marked his personal calendar, taking note of Shavuot/Pentecost. He wanted to come up to Jerusalem in time to celebrate the Day of Shavuot/Pentecost (Acts 20:16). His apostolic faith was recognizably Jewish as well (Acts 21:24; 28:17).

When I studied Second Temple Jewish History at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, my professor Dr. Menahem Stern (the top world scholar of that discipline) pointed out how Acts 2:9-11 was an excellent description of the extent of the Jewish Diaspora in those days – the countries to which Israel had been exiled and still remained in Exile:
 

Shavuot meant that Jews from all over the world would come up to Jerusalem to honor YHVH’s commandment. Though a few proselytes (Gentile converts to Judaism) also came up, it was Jews from across the Roman world – from Arabia to Asia, from Egypt to Elam – who all got together for a national Thanksgiving Day celebration in Jerusalem. This happened every year – Jewish people celebrating a Jewish feast in a Jewish city.
 

The message of Messianic Pentecost
 
Shimon (better known today as Simon Peter) is filled with the Holy Spirit in Acts 2, as are his spiritual comrades. Flames danced like togues of fire on their heads, and they all begin to speak in unlearned languages – the languages of the countries of their Exile (Acts 2:6-8). The good news of Messiah Yeshua and His resurrection is being proclaimed in the very heart of Jerusalem!
 
Peter said that these amazing manifestations were a reflection of Joel’s Last Days prophecies. Earthquakes, world-shaking signs and the outpouring of the Ruach HaKodesh would characterize these Last Days. In the same way, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2 was a down payment, a promise that all these events will one day come to pass, and that all the Jewish people will be filled with the Spirit of YHVH.
 
Eight years later, the Good News of Messiah Yeshua was still only being preached to Jewish people. But three breakthrough events occurred in Acts 8-10: Philip was led by the Spirit to share the Message with an Ethiopian eunuch; Saul was miraculously brought into the Kingdom; and Peter was brought up to Caesarea to share his Jewish message with the family of the Roman centurion of the Italian Cohort. That whole Roman family repented, came into the kingdom, and spoke in tongues – but as Gentiles who had never converted to Judaism.
 

Messianic Gentiles or converts to Rabbinic Judaism?
 

This business of allowing Gentiles to have access to Jewish New Covenant blessings and to have equal fellowship with the God of Israel alongside Jews (Paul’s gospel) – this was shocking to the majority of Pharisees as well as to the other streams of Judaism. Most Jewish religious leaders feared that this new upstart Messianic movement, by allowing Gentiles in, would overwhelm rabbinic Judaism’s role as ‘watchman on the Mosaic walls.’
 
Whereas Messianic Jews such as Paul declared that Gentile followers of Yeshua could now be fellow heirs of the same Messianic body and fellow-citizens with the Jewish saints (Ephesian 2:19-3:6) without converting to Judaism or being circumcised, the rabbis countered that Shavuot would now have a different meaning and emphasis: the hero of Shavuot would actually be a heroine. Ruth was now moved from the Barley Harvest time (as per the Book of Ruth) to the Shavuot wheat harvest season. The rabbis turned their spotlight on Ruth, tweaking the narrative and morphing her into a convert to Rabbinic Judaism.

Rabbinic pushback – the New Covenant is not new; it’s simply a refurbished Mosaic Covenant
 
The rabbis had an even more serious objection to apostolic Messianic teaching. Though Paul’s lifestyle was Mosaic in practice (see Acts 28:17) as was the pattern of all Messianic Jews at that time (see Acts 22:3; 23:6; 26:1-7), Paul taught that one of the main purposes of the Mosaic covenant teachings (Torah in Hebrew means ‘teaching’) was to lead the Jewish people to Messiah Yeshua. Paul adds that when the Jewish people come to Messiah Yeshua, they are no longer under the guardianship of the Mosaic covenant. Paul uses the Greek term paidagogos, which referred to a bodyguard who would take the child from his home through the Greek streets, protecting him and bringing him safely to the Greek school. Paul calls the Mosaic covenant a paidagogos (often translated ‘a tutor’) which would lead Israel to Messiah and His New Covenant:

The Rabbis understood that Paul was interpreting the Hebrew of Jeremiah 31:31-34 literally, to mean that the New Covenant was ‘not like’ the Mosaic covenant. Their counter-reaction involved closing down open discussion of Jeremiah 31, insisting that Jeremiah must have only meant ‘a renewed covenant.’ But this rabbinic decision violated the peshat, the clear exegetical meaning of Jeremiah 31:32, “not like the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the Land of Egypt.” Jeremiah was clearly prophesying: the New Covenant was a Jewish covenant, and that the New Covenant was not like the Mosaic covenant.

 
So the rabbis, like Mary Poppins, reached into their magic carpet bag and pulled out a newly morphed date on the Jewish calendar – they proclaimed that, from now on and based on their own authority, the Feast of Shavuot actually occurred on the same day that the Mosaic Covenant was given. From now on, Shavuot would be morphed into a holiday celebrating the Mosaic Torah and not the Inauguration of the New Covenant. The Rabbis would now champion the Giving of the Law, and the New Covenant Messianic movement’s main message would be undercut.
 

Pulling a non-kosher rabbit out of a Messianic hat
 

Most Messianic leaders and teachers have been taught by both the Jewish community’s leaders and by their own Messianic leaders and teachers, that the rabbinic perspectives on Shavuot and the rabbinic perspectives on the Mosaic covenant are the only kosher story in town. I have dear Messianic friends and leaders who deny that the New Covenant is actually a New Covenant. Instead, they teach that it is simply a new and improved Mosaic Covenant.
 
I have dear Messianic friends who believe, as the rabbis teach, that Shavuot is when the Mosaic covenant was given and that Ruth is the poster child for friendly Gentiles – and that Gentiles who are friendly to Jewish things should convert to rabbinic Judaism.
 
It is my conviction that these dear friends err (see Matthew 22:29) not knowing what the Scriptures say (or don’t say, in this case!). They seem to be unaware of both Jewish and rabbinic history – and also unaware of the early clashes between Messianic apostolic teaching and rabbinic opposition to the Messianic message on these points.
 

Tradition!

My dear friend now with the Lord, Dr. Louis Goldberg (former Professor of Jewish Studies at Moody Bible Institute; www.messianicjewish.net/products/fire-on-the-mountain-past-renewals-present-revivals-and-the-coming-return-of-israel-by-dr-louis-goldberg), often taught what has been explained above: that the rabbinic connecting of Shavuot/Pentecost to the Giving of the Mosaic covenant on Mount Sinai is not based on biblical foundations, but on rabbinic desire to shift focus away from the amazing Messianic events of Acts 2.

The accepted Rabbinic perspective refuses to accept an Acts 2 connection with Shavuot/Pentecost, since that would involve accepting the inauguration of a New Covenant – one which would include Gentiles in the Jewish Body of Messiah through faith in Yeshua alone. Instead, rabbinic Judaism tried to weld the inauguration of the Mosaic covenant into a pre-existing Shavuot/Pentecost. Rather than accepting Gentile salvation as coming about through faith in the Jewish Messiah Yeshua, rabbinic commentators now made the Book of Ruth do double duty: Ruth herself would now be presented as a convert to rabbinic Judaism, and Shavuot would be highlighted as the day of the Giving of the Sinaitic Covenant.

Let’s remember that YHVH never established a biblical feast commemorating the Giving of the Mosaic Covenant. There is not even a clear date in the Scriptures as to when that blessed event happened. The rabbinic plastic surgery done of Shavuot/Pentecost (morphing it into a feast celebrating the Mosaic Covenant) occurred at least 1,600 years after Moses, and perhaps a century or two after Acts 2.

In light of all of the above biblical and historical information, could it be that the emphasis on Shavuot/Pentecost as a ‘Mosaic Covenant Day’ is actually a distraction? Could it be that this rabbinic tradition is in fact undercutting what YHVH is trying to teach us through the Holy Scriptures, and de-emphasizing what the God of Jacob would like us to understand?

 

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

 

History repeats itself – the ten spies and their bad report

Saul of Tarsus – better known as Paul the Apostle – helps us in knowing how to apply principles in the Hebrew Scriptures to our own lives: “Now these things happened as examples for us, so that we would not crave evil things as they indeed craved them . . . Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. Therefore let the one who thinks he stands watch out that he does not fall” (1 Corinthians 10:6-12).

A burningly relevant example for us is found in the story of the Twelve Spies found in the Book of Numbers:

The bad report of The Ten – rebellion against God and fear of the enemy

YHVH the God of Israel commanded Moses to send out twelve spies – one for each tribe – on a special operation. They were to spy out the Promised Land in preparation for Israel’s invasion and settlement of that entire land. YHVH had commanded Moses and the Jewish people to conquer and remove all who were temporarily occupying that land – Canaanites, Amalekites, Hittites, Jebusites Amorites, etc. The spies started their journey from beside the present Egyptian border just south of Gaza (the wilderness of Zin – see Numbers 20:1; 27:14; 33:36; 34:3-4; Joshua 15:1-3) and moved east, all the way to the Salt Sea (today called ‘the Dead Sea’). They then headed straight north, passing the Lake of Galilee and Mount Hermon (see Joshua 13:5; Judges 3:3; 1 Chronicles 13:5) up to Levo Hamat (near Baalbek in present-day Syria) on the Orontes River (1 Kings 8:65; 2 Kings 14:25). The biblical borders of the Promised Land include this section of modern Syria, as well as segments of present-day Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt. Ezekiel 48:1 notes that Levo Hamat will also be part of the millennial borders of the Messianic Jewish kingdom.

The spies came back with glowing reports about the fruitfulness of the land (‘an exceedingly good land’), as well as accurate information on the enemies’ military installations and infantry which the armies of YHVH (see 1 Samuel 17:26) would soon confront. This first part of their report was helpful and based on good intelligence; it was not ‘fake news.’ But ten of the twelve spies added another perspective – their own personal opinion that the God of Israel lacked wisdom and military sense in sending the Jewish people in to conquer and possess the Promised Land.

Caleb and Joshua (the two good spies) declared that God’s calling and assignment was realistically attainable – that the ten Canaanite tribes (see Genesis 15:19-20) were bereft of YHVH’s protection, and that, instead, YHVH was with the people of Israel, and that the God of Jacob would bring His promises to pass regarding the Jewish homeland. But the other ten spies reported ‘the news’ differently: the Canaanite tribes were too strong – the Israelites would never be able to defeat them – indeed, the Canaanites “are a people of great stature.” The ten spies’ bad report declared that the Jewish people “are like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we are in the {Canaanite’s] sight.” The Ten added that the Land of Canaan would only bring a curse on the Israelites: “This is a land that devours its inhabitants!”

What was the effect of this bad report on the Jewish people? The entire nation cried out and wept. Then they grumbled against their leaders Moses and Aaron. They declared that it would have been better for all Israel to have remained slaves in Egypt or even to die in the desert rather than to follow Moses and Aaron. They ‘prophesied’ that the Canaanites would murder them all and kidnap their wives and children, if they foolishly held onto YHVH’s promise of trying to claim and hold onto the Promised Land. They then held a public rally and proclaimed that Israel needed to choose a new leader – in modern terminology, they called for new elections.

Spiritual warfare and the evening news

As it was in the days of Joshua, so it is in our day. Messages of unbelief – that the Israeli armed forces will not be able to defeat the enemy (in this case the Islamist savages, rapists, murderers and kidnappers known as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian Authority’s al-Aqsa Brigades) – flow like a polluted river from US spokesmen and American talking heads like Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, his deputy, POTUS Joe Biden, National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. On the Israeli side, there are also ‘ten spies’ who bring similar evil reports of unbelief. These include political enemies of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his coalition (some of these ‘spies’ possess intelligence, military and political credentials). These ‘Ten’ resolutely declare that Israel cannot defeat Hamas. They warn that Israel’s decision to enter Rafah in southwestern Gaza will only bring a defeat for Israel. They repeatedly proclaim that the PM is crazy and that new elections are immediately needed. They insist that Israel’s PM cannot be trusted in matters of security. Like Korah, Datan, Aviram and On (along with “250 leaders of the congregation chosen in the assembly, men of renown”), they repeated announce to Israel’s leadership “You have gone far enough!” (Numbers 16:1-3).

One of Israel’s top intelligence journalists and strategic affairs correspondents is Yossi Melman. On July 20, 2023 he wrote an analysis in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz: “A Military Coup Is Underway in Israel – and It’s Completely Justified:”

Top British journalist Melanie Phillips states that “we owe Ha’aretz a debt of gratitude for tearing aside at least one of the veils of obfuscation to call this crisis out for what it is – a military coup.”

“You shall not give a false report!”

The spreading of false or evil reports is nothing new. In the Book of Exodus, the God of Israel warns His people to stay far away from mass movements which, knowingly or unwittingly, pervert justice and stir up evil: “You shall not give a false report; do not join your hand with a wicked person to be a malicious witness. You shall not follow the crowd in doing evil, nor shall you testify in a dispute so as to join together with a crowd in order to pervert justice” (Exodus 23:1-2).

Another variation of this dynamic occurred in the days of Nehemiah, when he struggled to counteract evil reports brought by false prophets. The evil goals in this case were to strike fear into the hearts of Israel’s returning pioneers and cause them to abandon the struggle for national restoration, both spiritual and physical:

Today, many of the bearers of false prophecy are seated at the news desks of mainstream TV media, both in Israel and around the world. And many of the bearers of malicious witness are the writers of op-ed columns found in the most respected prize-winning newspapers which present ‘all the news that’s fit to print.’ We must all be cautious and careful when drinking from the wells of anti-Israel and anti-Christian news media. The best gold is never found on the surface of the earth!

Promises, promises – peace, peace – PLO, PLO

Over 2,600 years ago the prophet Ezekiel spoke of YHVH’s wrath against “the prophets of Israel who prophesy to Jerusalem, and who see a vision of peace for her when there is no peace” (Ezekiel 13:16). The God of Jacob soberly warned those leaders: “It is definitely because they have misled My people by saying, ‘Peace!’ when there is no peace. And when anyone builds a wall, behold, they plaster it over with whitewash. So tell those who plaster it over with whitewash, that it will fall” (Ezekiel 13:10-11).

Just before the destruction of Solomon’s Temple at the hands of Babylon, Jeremiah repeated the same prophetic warning with tears: “They have healed the brokenness of My people superficially, saying, ‘Peace, peace!’ But there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14).

Today, false declarations of peace and false roadmaps to peace abound. They are sprayed across the screens of our TV screens by the spokesmen and spokeswomen of superpowers without the slightest hint of accountability. These false news items and evil reports soon crumble before our very eyes:

Repeated evidence of Hamas theft of humanitarian aid has piled up since Blinken’s and Biden’s bold declarations: here (December 11, 2023), here (February 3, 2024), here (February 17, 2024), here (March 19, 2024), here (April 22, 2024), here (May 3, 2024), here (May 3, 2024) and here (May 30, 2024). Yet no action has been taken by the strongest superpower on earth – only the empty echoes of false peace murmur across the sands of Gaza.

Lying like a rug

The main talking points of politicians, diplomats and Hamas have all been converging over the past eight months. From their declarations, white is black and black is white:

A world-renowned military expert shares some wisdom here regarding Israel’s military track record and civilian casualties. Colonel Richard Kemp is a former British Army Commander of UK military forces in Afghanistan (leading Operation Fingal in Afghanistan from July to November 2003), Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Macedonia. He served with NATO and the UN, and participated in the Gulf War in Iraq. He is a consultant on international terrorism for the UK Government’s Joint Intelligence Committee, where he wrote the British forces doctrine on dealing with suicide bombings. Colonel Kemp recently addressed the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, stating that “no army in the world acts with as much discretion and great care as the IDF in order to minimize damage. The US and the UK are careful, but not as much as Israel.”

As the nations of the world champ impatiently at the bit to overthrow Israel’s present government and to set up another one more responsive to American diktats, the baying of the hounds gets closer. Mighty nations are calling for portions of the land promised by YHVH to Jacob’s children, to be divided among Ishmael’s and Esau’s descendants. This is in gross violation of Genesis 25:6, 18; 27:29; 36:6-9. 43; Deuteronomy 2andJoshua 24:4). YHVH surely promises judgment on those nations who set their hand to divide the land of Israel (Joel 3:2)

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) through: www.davidstent.org 

By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information

The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.

Close