Restoration and vengeance

Messiah Yeshua’s message blends together two seemingly opposite ingredients – suffering and joy: “Therefore, since we also have such a great cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let’s rid ourselves of every obstacle and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let’s run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking only at Yeshua, the Originator and Perfecter of the faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the Throne of God” (Hebrews 12:1-2).

YHVH the Avenger

In a similar fashion, YHVH brings together two seemingly opposite ingredients in a major End of Days scenario: He brings restoration to the Jewish people while simultaneously bringing vengeance upon all those who have cursed Israel and shed her blood:

• “And on that day the mountains will drip with sweet wine, and the hills will flow with milk, and all the brooks of Judah will flow with water. And a spring will go out from the House of YHVH, and water the Valley of Shittim. Egypt will become a wasteland, and Edom will become a desolate wilderness – because of the violence done to the sons of Judah, in whose land they have shed innocent blood. But Judah will be inhabited forever, and Jerusalem for all generations. And I will avenge their blood which I have not avenged, for YHVH dwells in Zion” (Joel 3:18-21)

The Bible drives home this message throughout the pages of Scripture: YHVH will avenge the Jewish blood which the anti-Semitic nations of the world have spilled, still are spilling and will spill in days soon-to-come. The God of Jacob will restore the sons and daughters of Isaac by His grace (to the Land and to Himself), while simultaneously judging the nations who unrighteously condemn Israel.

• “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 [Hebrew for ‘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 Valley of Vengeance is also the Valley of Judgment

This divine ‘double whammy’ – restoration for Israel and judgment upon the nations – is, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, God’s ‘slow train coming.’ And that train is picking up speed as it comes rolling down the track. This is not a new improved version of Cat Steven’s ‘Peace Train.’ The Heavenly Locomotive is about to pile into both superpowers and Western pagan democracies, into Middle Eastern nations and jihadi armies. All these nations are about to enter the Valley of Decision and tread the sobering soil of the Valley of Jehoshaphat.

• “Let the nations be awakened and come up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat [Hebrew for ‘YHVH judges’]. For there I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations. Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, tread the grapes, for the wine press is full; The vats overflow, for their wickedness is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the Valley of Decision! For the Day of YHVH is near in the Valley of Decision. The sun and moon have become dark, and the stars have lost their brightness. YHVH roars from Zion and utters His voice from Jerusalem, and the heavens and the earth quake. But YHVH is a refuge for His people, and a stronghold for the sons of Israel” (Joel 3:12-16).

Waving the red flag – a revived anti-Semitism

Nearly 2,000 years ago, Messiah Yeshua spoke about the significance of red skies from a prophetic viewpoint:

• The Pharisees and Sadducees came up, and putting Yeshua to the test, they asked Him to show them a sign from heaven. But He replied to them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘There will be a storm today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to discern the appearance of the sky, but are you unable to discern the signs of the times?” (Matthew 16:1-3)

What would Yeshua say to us in our day? Are we able to discern the signs of the times? Truly, YHVH is trying to get our attention now. The red banner of anti-Semitism is wildly waving – a sign for all the world to see and take note of. All across America, violent students carrying clenched-fist banners join with ANTIFA anarchists in assaulting Jewish students and citizens, beating up those who wear stars of David, Israeli jewelry or Jewish skullcaps/kippahs. Extreme-left Democrats join with jihadi advocates in cursing those who stand with Israel; they call for genocidal attacks on the very Jews who are resisting genocidal and jihadi attacks. And even dead Jews are being hounded, as Jewish cemeteries in the Western world are being desecrated, their silent tombstones toppled. Dead Jews can’t run. ‘Anti-Israel’ and ‘anti-Zionism’ are the new buzz-words of Jew-hatred. These bloody train tracks are leading the world to a resurrected Auschwitz. These are the signs of the times. Are we discerning them?

• “Therefore all who devour you will be devoured. And all your adversaries, every one of them, will go into captivity. And those who plunder you will become plunder, and all who plunder you I will turn into plunder. For I will restore you to health and I will heal you of your wounds, declares YHVH, because they have called you an outcast, saying: ‘It is Zion; no one cares for her”’ (Jeremiah 30:16-17).

Waving the green flag – a jihadi tsunami of Islamist Israel-hatred

Virulent anti-Semitism is being joined on the world stage by a rabid Western support (especially among university and disaffected youth) for jihadi slogans, pro-Hamas dress and anti-Israel street-action demonstrations. Cheered on by an unlikely combination – ex-Pink Floyd’s bassist Roger Waters, media commentators Candace Owens (here, here, here and here) and Tucker Carlson (here, here and here) – the world is witnessing a pseudo-revolutionary ‘uprising’ similar to the August 26-29, 1968  Democratic National Convention riots in Chicago, and the May 4, 1970 Kent State shootings. The Hamas mujahidin (jihad warriors) who raped, tortured, kidnapped and committed genocidal murder on Israeli farmers and teenagers on October 7, 2023, are being glorified, morphed by world media into ‘Che Guevara’-type heroes on the campuses of Ivy League American universities. Calls to destroy the state of Israel and to carry out genocide on its Jewish inhabitants have become both commonplace and politically correct in the Western world.

• “God, do not remain quiet; Do not be silent and, God, do not be still. For behold, Your enemies make an uproar, and those who hate You have exalted themselves. They make shrewd plans against Your people, and conspire together against Your treasured ones. They have said, “Come, and let’s wipe them out as a nation, so that the name of Israel will no longer be remembered.” For they have conspired together with one mind; they make a covenant against You” (Psalm 83:1-8)

The green banner of world conquest

The vast majority of secular and post-Christian Western demonstrators are stunningly ignorant of the Islamist worldview held by jihadis. It was impossible to come to a peace agreement with Hitler in his day; in the same way, it is impossible to establish a viable deal with those truly committed to jihad.

According to classical jihadi Islam – think Muḥammad, Usāmabin Lādin, the Taliban, ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran’s mullahs – the world is divided into two basic groups: Dar al-Islam (the House or Territory of Islam) and Dar al-Harb (the House of Territory of War) or Dar al-Kufr (The House of Unbelief/ Infidels).

According to classical Islamic scholars, this concept goes back to Muḥammad, who demanded from Persian, Abyssinian, and Byzantine emperors to choose between conversion to Islam and jihadi war. If those leaders bent the knee to Islam, their territory became part of Dar al-Islam (the Islamic Caliphate), and Islamic law (Shari’a) prevailed. The classical jihadi use of the term Dar Al-Harb teaches that all non-Muslim lands should be considered as at war with Islam until they come under the rule of Dar al-Islam.

Most classical scholars of Islam agree that the Quran clearly teaches that the Islamic state is destined to conquer the entire world; therefore, it is not permitted by Allah for Muslims to ratify treaties with Dar al-Kufr – the House of Infidels. A 10-year maximum limit on any such agreement was tolerated in unusual circumstances only. Under classical Islamic doctrine, every Muslim ruler is duty-bound to bring Dar al-Harb (Christians, Jews or pagans) under Islamic sovereignty. In the meantime, a state of war is presumed to exist between Dar al-Harb and Dar al-Islam,

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the recently deceased doyen of jihadi scholars, issued a ruling in Qatar (where he resided, not far from US CENTCOM’s al-Udeid airbase), defining non-Muslim countries that attack or conquer Muslim territories as Dar al-Harb. Based on his ruling, Israel, the USA, the UK, Germany, Canada, Australia, etc., are all part of ‘the House of War.’ No treaty is to be signed with them; no such treaty can be considered Islamically ‘kosher.’

These Islamic beliefs may not be trumpeted in the super-glitzy malls of Dubai, but they form the foundations of the what the classical Muslim madrasas teach and propagate in the mosques of the Middle East. They are accurately reflected in the declarations of Hamas, Hezbollah and the PLO.

• According to Islam’s authoritative oral tradition’ – the Hadith (Sahih al-Bukhari 1:25) – the highest calling a Muslim can engage in is armed jihad: “Muḥammad once was asked: ‘What is the best deed for the Muslim next to believing in Allah and his messenger?’ His answer was: ‘To participate in jihad in Allah’s cause.’”

• Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, co-founder and former leader of Hamas, agrees: “Make no mistake. There will be no peace as long as there is a Zionist-Jewish state. Our holy goal is to liberate all of Palestine, and if the Jews do not go, they will die. All of Palestine is Islamic land – every inch!”

• The former President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declared on October 26, 2005 at ‘The World Without Zionism conference:’ “Our dear Imam (Khomeini) ordered that the occupying regime in Jerusalem be wiped off the face of the earth. This was a very wise statement. The issue of Palestine is not one which we could compromise on . . . This would mean the defeat of the Islamic world.”

• Sheikh Husayn Abbas al-Mousawi, former head of Hezbollah, minced no words: “We are not fighting [you, Israel] so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you.”

A Charter Member

According to Hamas’ 1988 Charter:

• “The Islamic Resistance Movement (ed., Hamas) draws its guidelines from Islam” (Article #1)

• “The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of the Muslim Brothers (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin)…the largest Islamic Movement in the modern era” (Article #2)

• “The Platform of The Islamic Resistance Movement (ed., Hamas): Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors

• “Allah is its goal, the Prophet its model, the Qur’an its Constitution, Jihad its path and death for the case of Allah its most sublime belief (ed. this is also the slogan of the Muslim Brotherhood)” (Article #8 – The Slogan of the Hamas).

The original Palestinian vow

Here are some selected articles from the 1968 PLO Charter:

• Article 9: Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. This it is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase. The Palestinian Arab people assert their absolute determination and firm resolution to continue their armed struggle and to work for an armed popular revolution for the liberation of their country and their return to it.

• Article 10: Commando action constitutes the nucleus of the Palestinian popular liberation war.

• Article 15: The liberation of Palestine, from an Arab viewpoint, is a national duty and it attempts to repel the Zionist and imperialist aggression against the Arab homeland, and aims at the elimination of Zionism in Palestine.

• Article 19: The partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of the state of Israel are entirely illegal.

• Article 20: The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.

• Article 22: Zionism is a political movement organically associated with international imperialism and antagonistic to all action for liberation and to progressive movements in the world. It is racist and fanatic in its nature, aggressive, expansionist, and colonial in its aims, and fascist in its methods. Israel is the instrument of the Zionist movement, and geographical base for world imperialism placed strategically in the midst of the Arab homeland to combat the hopes of the Arab nation for liberation, unity, and progress. Israel is a constant source of threat vis-a-vis peace in the Middle East and the whole world . . .  The liberation of Palestine will destroy the Zionist and imperialist presence and will contribute to the establishment of peace in the Middle East.

• Article 30: Fighters and carriers of arms in the war of liberation are the nucleus of the popular army which will be the protective force for the gains of the Palestinian Arab people.

PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat declared on May 10, 1994 at a closed-doors speech secretly recorded in a Johannesburg, South Africa mosque: “The permanent state of Israel? No! The permanent state of Palestine! You have to come and to fight and to start the jihad to liberate Jerusalem, your first shrine.”

Get with the (Hezbollah) program!

The goals and strategies of Hezbollah are found in their 1986 document ‘The Hizballah Program.’ Here are some selections from the CIA translation of that document:

• “For the sake of the truth, we declare that the sons of Hizballah’s nation have come to know well their basic enemies in the area: Israel, America, France and the Phalange.”

• “Our objectives: Our sons are now in a state of ever-escalating confrontation against these enemies until the following objectives are achieved: Israel’s final departure from Lebanon as a prelude to its final obliteration from existence, and the liberation of venerable Jerusalem from the talons of occupation.”

The unabridged version of the Hezbollah Program adds the following:

• “Necessity for the Destruction of Israel: We see in Israel the vanguard of the United States in our Islamic world.  It is the hated enemy that must be fought until the hated ones get what they deserve.  This enemy is the greatest danger to our future generations and to the destiny of our lands, particularly as it glorifies the ideas of settlement and expansion, initiated in Palestine, and yearning outward to the extension of the Great Israel, from the Euphrates to the Nile.”

• “Our primary assumption in our fight against Israel states that . . . our struggle will end only when this entity is obliterated.  We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated. We vigorously condemn all plans for negotiation with Israel, and regard all negotiators as enemies.”

In 2006, Hezbollah’s leader 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.”

• There is no possibility of honestly negotiating with such jihadi organizations. Their belief system does not allow them to agree to anything less than total enslavement and destruction of their enemies. Those in the Western world, in Israel, or in the Muslim world who blindly insist on forcing such illusionary ‘cease-fires’ or ‘cessations of hostilities’ on Israel, show that they either do not understand Islam or are cunningly content to sign off on a false peace which is not peace (see Jeremiah 6:14)

 

Thorns – Israel’s unfinished business

The God of Israel warned the Jewish people not to allow mortal enemies to co-exist with Israel in the Promised Land: “But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from you, then it will come about that those whom you let remain of them will be like thorns in your eyes and like pricks in your sides, and they will trouble you in the land in which you live” (Numbers 33:55). YHVH declares that this is a serious matter, one which has long-term geo-political and military consequences. It should be stressed that the same demonic powers which operated through the Canaanites and Philistines have not disappeared and their hatred of the Jewish people has in no way slackened.

Herein lies and intercessory challenge for those who accept that these spiritual realities are still influential and significant.

• Therefore ADONAI YHVH says this: “Certainly in the fire of My jealousy I have spoken against the rest of the nations, and against all Edom, who appropriated My land for themselves as a possession with wholehearted joy and with contempt of soul, in order to make its pastureland plunder.” Therefore prophesy in regard to the land of Israel and say to the mountains and to the hills, to the ravines and to the valleys, “This is what ADONAI YHVH says: ‘Behold, I have spoken in My jealousy and in My wrath because you have endured the insults of the nations’” (Ezekiel 36:5-6)

Waving the flag – black for a capitalist-totalitarian world dictatorship

Spy agencies like the OSS, the CIA, the NSA, the DIA, the GCHQ, etc., make use of the intelligence they monitor and mine from the internet superhighway. Edward Snowden and others have shown that such organizations do not always make use of such information in benign ways. Great power in the hands of ungodly men can result in great potential evil, as well as the loss of basic civil liberties and the encroachment of the police state. One man’s good technological discoveries may inadvertently end up also having dangerous ramifications for mankind – and not only good results.

Recent world events have highlighted how computer micro-chips, QR codes, and Central Banking Digital Currencies (here, here and here) are being used to give countries broad new surveillance powers. These in turn are leading to enhanced control of their own civilian populations. This will lead to the deterioration of both financial privacy and economic freedoms (freedom of expression and association); increasing limitations of political expression, shopping and travel; as well as the trimming away of the individual’s freedom to make his or her own health-care decisions. Such massive power will result in dictatorial social developments, similar to what is now seen in modern China or in George Orwell’s classic book ‘1984.’ Orwell’s dystopian vision of the future ranks as one of the greatest 20^th century prophetic warnings. Our planet is on the cusp of a totalitarian make-over, and loud whispers straight out of the Book of Revelation are being quietly rehearsed by actors waiting in the wings.

Another 20^th century prophet is Hal Lindsey, whose book The Late Great Planet Earth sold more than 28 million copies immediately on being published. Lindsey spoke a powerful message to his generation when he stated that the return of the Jewish people to a regathered State of Israel (according to the promises of the Hebrew prophets) is the most significant event of the 20^th century.

The rise of bone-crushing evil in our day is being positively paralleled by YHVH’s restoration of Israel’s sons and daughters of Israel to the entirety of their Promised Land. This amazing Return is materializing before the eyes of the world. Coming prophetic attractions include the soon-coming spiritual resurrection of the Jewish nation, and the imminent return of Messiah Yeshua to establish His Davidic throne in Jerusalem and to rule over the entire planet. 

Whispers and megaphones

It has been in vogue in some circles to focus on the future shaking of the House of Jacob as the main eschatological event coming down the pipeline. While it is biblically true to note that both Jews and Gentiles will be greatly shaken in the Last Days, it is important to remember the words of C.S. Lewis: “God whispers to us in our pleasures . . .  but shouts in our pains. It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world” (The Problem of Pain).

Suffering and joy are meshed in the Good News of Messiah Yeshua. God’s simultaneous restoration of the Jewish people and His divine judgment on Israel’s mortal enemies are also part of the Scripture’s End of Days vision. We are standing on the threshold of these mighty events.

• “And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light!” (Romans 13:11-12)

How should we then pray?

 

• Pray for divine revelation for the body of Messiah regarding the prophetic significance of events in our days, especially as it concerns Israel and the Jewish people

 

• Pray for the physical rescue of the approximately 116 Israeli hostages (including babies) kidnapped by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and PFLP/PLO.  At this moment some hostages are being tortured, raped and starved (this based on testimonies of recently released hostages). Sadly, many of these hostages are dead; Hamas is holding on to the corpses of Israeli citizens in cold storage to be used by them as bargaining chips

 

• Pray for Hamas’ cruel terror dictatorship in Gaza to be decisively shattered and for all chains broken off the Palestinians living there, and for Iran’s role in jihadi deception, dissimulation and anti-Semitism to be exposed and opposed by world leaders

 

• Pray for the raising up of Ezekiel’s prophetic Jewish army throughout the earth

 

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
 
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