Prophets in a time of war

The Hebrew prophets spoke God’s heart and perspective to those in power. But it was a dangerous livelihood; being a faithful messenger for the God of Jacob might cost one’s life. Such was the case when Michah-Yah (Micaiah) brought a divine warning to Ahaz king of Israel :

The nitty-gritty of the prophetic ministry was often played out in the courts of power as the word of the Lord was spoken to kings and generals. God used His prophetic messengers to demote and promote Israel’s leaders. This is one reason why the prophet Samuel exercised secrecy and plausible deniability when anointing David as heir apparent while Saul still reigned:

Another example of how prophets needed to walk with discretion and discernment is revealed in how Ahi-Yah (Ahijah) the prophet from Shiloh confronted King Solomon’s aide-de-camp Jeroboam alone in a deserted field, announcing to him that YHVH was raising him up in due time to replace Solomon as king over the Jewish people:

YHVH is actively involved in politics

Though it may be hard for some to believe, the God of Jacob is actively involved in the world of politics. From Hannah (the mother of Samuel) to Asaph (David’s seer), and from Miriam (Mary, the earthly mother of Messiah Yeshua) to Daniel (the diplomatic prophet in Babylon and Persia), the Scriptures take us behind the scenes to reveal how God is pulling strings, bringing down dictators and establishing new rulers (who are sometimes also dictators in their own right). YHVH is sovereign, and He uses many ways to fulfil His good promises to the sons and daughters of Jacob:

The prophetic virgin and power politics

God has been known to speak directly into the geo-political world, alternately counseling and exhorting, rebuking and pronouncing blessing or judgment to national leaders.

The world-famous prophecy regarding the birth of Messiah Son of David to a young virgin Jewish woman is found in the Scroll of Isaiah: “Therefore YHVH Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and she will name Him ‘Immanuel’” (Isaiah 7:14). There is military and geo-political background to this prophetic word; it brings both helpful context and proper understanding of current events at that time.

Ahaz (the young king of Judah) was facing threatening military maneuvers from the ten northern tribes of Israel, as well as from the Arameans [modern Syria]:

Ahaz was tempted to turn to super-power Assyria, asking them to attack Syria/Aram and the northern kingdom of Israel, thus relieving Judah of the military threat. Isaiah was given a cutting-edge prophetic message to Ahaz, promising him and his people divine protection if they trusted in the God of Jacob and not in a Gentile super-power:

The background to this Messianic prophecy was an explosive military threat from Syria and from the northern kingdom of Israel against the people of Judah and the House of David. Isaiah warned Ahaz king of Judah that if he did not trust the God of his father David but turned for military protection to Assyria, that super-power would eventually cause great damage also to Ahaz’s own kingdom:

The Assyrian super-power would exile Israel to northern Iraq and even threaten the survival of Jerusalem. Such was the blowback from Ahaz’s royal hutzpah, his spurning of the prophetic word of YHVH:

In the same way as King Ahaz ignored God’s prophetic promises regarding His will and strategies for the Jewish people, so in our day both Israeli leaders and leaders of super-powers are ignoring YHVH’s clear promises regarding the restoration of Israel to her biblical borders. This ‘politically correct’ world consensus is also hutzpah – hubris, spitting in the face of the God of Jacob – and He will settle accounts with these leaders b’agala u’bizman kariv, as it is said in Aramaic – speedily and soon.

The role of the prophetic in today’s Middle East

There is a lesson for us all to learn today from all of this. The blowback from ancient Middle Eastern battles and toxic political alliances with unfriendly super-powers resulted in the strong presence of non-Jewish enemies in Samaria. These enemies were later given the name ‘Samaritans.’ Today the West Bank still remains the home of enemies of the Jewish people, though today these enemies are called ‘Palestinians.’ Most of these are descended from the Edomites (see Ezekiel 25:12-14 et al. and my book ‘Jews, Arabs and the Middle East: A Messianic Perspective’), who claim these territories for themselves, scorning the prophetic promises of YHVH to the Jewish people. Here is a short ‘take-away’ of some prophetic lessons here:

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 

Hip-deep in the river

The prophet Ezekiel was taken up by the Spirit of YHVH and transported into the future, where he gazed upon the Messianic Temple (also known in theological terms as ‘the Fourth Temple’). The God of Jacob revealed to Ezekiel that one day this House will stand on what is today called the Temple Mount, though at present the Muslim shrines of the ‘Dome of the Rock’ and the al-Aqṣā Mosque are situated there. In Ezekiel’s prophetic vision, a Millennial river will flow out from under the threshold of this Temple during the Days of Messiah:

This amazing experience was highly positive for Ezekiel. But for many people in our day, this prophetic vision of a restored Jewish people and a restored Jewish Temple is disconcerting. Truth be told, the ramifications of YHVH bringing His Jewish people back to their own land (see Ezekiel 37:12-14) and to Jerusalem make some Jews, Christians and world leaders feel distinctly ill-at-ease. Why is this so?

The God of history past is also the God of history present and future

Charles Dickens’ famous novel ‘A Christmas Carol’ revolves around spiritual beings bringing revelation to Ebenezer Scrooge about his past, his present and that which is ‘yet to come.’ Dickens describes how past events in our lives shape our present beliefs and behavior – and a sobering danger exists that the deceptive stamp of sin may well color our eternal destiny.

The prophet Zechariah describes a similar dynamic in chapters seven and eight of his book, recounting Israel’s sinful disobedience to YHVH’s commands, followed by a prophetic reminder that these attitudes and actions triggered the Exile of the Jewish people from their Promised Land. The God of Jacob then calls out to the returning remnant of His people, urging them to repent, to build the Second Temple, and to “speak the truth to one another; judge with truth and judgment for peace at your gates. Also let none of you devise evil in your heart against another, and do not love perjury” (Zechariah 8:16-17).

Both God’s severe judgment of Exile on Israel, and His restoration of them to their Land in covenant faithfulness and love, speak volumes to us about what YHVH is doing in our own day – and what He is soon to do as His restoration process reaches a climax:

The restoration of the Jewish people to Jerusalem is an ongoing process happening in our day. The Return to Zion has not ended with the Jewish people being brought back just to Tel Aviv or Haifa, or to Tiberias and Beersheva. The God of Jacob prophetically promises that He is bringing us back to the fullness of the biblical borders – to all of Judea and Samaria (the ‘West Bank’); to all of Gaza; to what is now northern Jordan; to the Golan Heights including what is presently Syrian-controlled territory up to the Euphrates River; to southern Lebanon; to far-eastern parts of Egypt which presently border on Gaza; and to full control of all of Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount.

Let’s get the full prophetic picture

God’s strategy involves a total return to the whole Promised Land. Here are 18 biblical passages fleshing out that prophetic vision:

 These prophetic promises stir up our faith: the restoration of the Jewish people to the entirety of the Land of Israel is a future reality, one that we are walking into in our day – and one we can depend on.

The reality of restoring the kingdom to Israel

The God of Israel prophesied about a time when the Gentiles would be in the ascendancy. “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 30:17). Messiah Yeshua referred to those days, which are now drawing to a close: “And they will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled” (Luke 21:24).

During these times, the nations of the Christian world for the most part neither expected nor encouraged the Return of the Jewish people to their prophesied homeland. Their attitude toward the restoration of Israel was one of unbelief and scoffing. Typical of such attitudes were the words of a British op-ed in the 1861 magazine ‘Littell’s Living Age’ titled ‘The Restoration of the Jews:’

Both Catholic and Protestant theologians had buttressed these anti-Semitic theological foundations – the denial of Jewish restoration to their homeland – in spite of the overwhelming testimony of the Hebrew prophets to this sure future reality. John Calvin sums up this mindset in his commentary on Acts 1:6 (“So, when they had come together, they began asking Him, saying, ‘Lord, is it at this time that You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?’”):

The pernicious influence of Replacement Theology has extended its gnarled hand to some in our day, who deny the present Jewish Return to Zion as a benign work of God and see it only as a divine set-up for the slaughter of Israel.

Step right up and get your divine hernia à la Zechariah 12:3!

Nearly all the nations on this planet are actively supporting the dividing of the Land of Israel and the City of Jerusalem, known today as ‘the two-state solution.’ The clear edges of God’s prophecies regarding the biblical borders of the Promised Land have been obscured by the influence of Replacement Theology in both Christianity and Islam. They have also been ardently opposed by leftist and ‘woke’ political movements. Even former Israeli Prime Ministers, Generals and Heads of Security Services like Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, Ami Ayalon, Yaakov Peri, Carmi Gillon, Yuval Diskin, Amnon Lipkin-Shahak have come out in favor of dividing the Land of Israel and the City of Jerusalem. The current Hamas War against Israel has also seen the U.S. State Department amp up its official positions, calling for a Palestinian state confederacy led by the ‘reformed’ terrorist forces of the Palestinian Authority (with ‘plastic surgery’ probably done on some Hamas leaders as well).

 

Here is a brief reminder of the divine perspective on these matters:

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 

Good cop, bad cop

When a suspect is brought into a police station, a team of interrogators often questions the person, seeing if he can be persuaded to confess to the crime. Sometimes two different interrogators will question the suspect, each one adapting a different approach: one will threaten the suspect (the 'bad cop' approach), while the second interrogator will be kind and helpful (the 'good cop' approach), explaining how much he would like to help the arrested individual and 'rescue' him from the clutches of the 'bad cop.' Often the intimidated prisoner will respond more quickly and warmly to the good cop than to the bad cop.

The famous Italian Renaissance political philosopher Machiavelli once stated that diplomacy is war by other means. Most countries look at diplomacy this way, even today, and this even applies to relationships with their 'official allies.' Dr. Henry Kissinger once commented that "nations do not have permanent friends or enemies, only interests.”

Assyria played 'bad cop' and 'good cop' simultaneously

King Hezekiah son of Ahaz was faced with a clear and present danger in his day -- the world's strongest superpower Assyria was threatening the Jewish state. Only a few years earlier, King Shalmaneser had conquered the ten northern tribes of Israel, exiling them to what is today called northern Iraq. It sure looked like the kingdom of Judah would be next to face the sword of Nineveh.

· Now in the fourth year of King Hezekiah, . . . Shalmaneser king of Assyria marched against Samaria and besieged it. And at the end of three years they captured it . . . Then the king of Assyria led Israel into exile in Assyria . . . This happened because they did not obey the voice of YHVH, their God, but violated His covenant . . . They would neither listen nor do it. Now in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria marched against all the fortified cities of Judah and seized them (2 Kings 18:9-13)

An Assyrian military officer with the rank of 'Rabshakeh' addressed King Hezekiah and the Jewish people -- first as the bad cop, and then as the good cop:

· Then the king of Assyria sent . . . Rabshakeh from Lachish to King Hezekiah with a large army to Jerusalem. So they went up and came to Jerusalem . . . Then they called to the king, and Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was in charge of the household, Shebnah the scribe, and Joah the son of Asaph the secretary, went out to them. And Rabshakeh said to them, “Say now to Hezekiah, ‘This is what the great king, the king of Assyria says: “What is this confidence that you have? You say -- but they are only empty words -- ‘I have a plan and strength for the war.’ Now on whom have you relied, that you have revolted against me? Now behold, you have relied on the support of this broken reed, on Egypt; on which if a man leans, it will go into his hand and pierce it. That is how Pharaoh king of Egypt is to all who rely on him. However, if you say to me, ‘We have trusted in YHVH our God,’ is it not He whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has removed, and has said to Judah and to Jerusalem, ‘You shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem’? Now then, come make a wager with my master the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able on your part to put riders on them! How then can you drive back even one official of the least of my master’s servants, and rely on Egypt for chariots and horsemen? Have I now come up without YHVH’s approval against this place to destroy it? YHVH said to me, ‘Go up against this land and destroy it’” (2 Kings 18:17-25)

That was Assyria's 'bad cop' approach. Now came the 'good cop' approach:

· Then Rabshakeh stood up saying, “Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria! This is what the king says: ‘Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to save you from my hand. And do not let Hezekiah lead you to trust in YHVH by saying, “YHVH will certainly save us, and this city will not be handed over to the king of Assyria.” Do not listen to Hezekiah, for this is what the king of Assyria says: “Make your peace with me and come out to me, and eat, each one, from his vine and each from his fig tree, and drink, each one, the waters of his own cistern, until I come and take you to a land like your own land, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees producing oil, and of honey, so that you will live and not die.” But do not listen to Hezekiah, because he misleads you by saying, “YHVH will save us.” Has any of the gods of the nations actually saved his land from the hand of the king of Assyria? (2 Kings 18:26-33)

It is important to note that both the bad cop and the good cop approach used by Assyria in this diplomatic-military confrontation did not grapple seriously with the God of Jacob's covenant promises to the Jewish people.  YHVH's ability to rescue His people and His loving commitment to make good on His prophetic oaths to them were not discussed by that superpower. Not only that -- the Assyrian envoy falsely claimed to be speaking in the name of YHVH, the God of the Bible (see  2 Kings 18:25)!

This passage contains some timeless principles, some golden biblical nuggets. They apply to present-day diplomatic jousting between Israel and her allies, as the developing war between the Jewish state and the jihadi terrorist armies of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah rumbles forward in the Middle East.

We're totally on your side!

A sharp memory is required in order to keep track of all the different declarations being made in the current political dialogue, to decipher the strategies behind the scenes. Statements are often made for public consumption, but the actual policies and the realpolitik are quite different. Political leaders craft their appeals to certain segments of the population -- whether left, right or center; whether anti-Israel, pro-Israel or isolationist -- their statements are shaped with these constituencies in mind. We the listeners need to do the sleuthing, the detective work, in order to unpack the declarations or policies which often sound ambivalent or which seem to be at cross purposes with each other. Our recent newsletters have presented many such examples.

Here are two such examples:

One one hand, the US sanctions Iran, declares its commitment to standing with Israel and Saudi Arabia, and even (though infrequently) attacks the terrorist forces of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Iraq and Syria.

On the other hand, the US removed the oil trading embargo on Iran, allowing untold billions to flow into Iran's terrorism machine; released six billion dollars previously held as sanctions against Iran for its support of terror attacks; keeps its CENTCOM offices, air bases and connections in Qatar, which is the world's biggest supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. These pro-Iranian moves are of great concern to Saudi Arabia and of course to Israel, and they are Machiavellian to the extreme, They are a modern example of the principle 'divide and conquer.'

Britain used similar strategies in the early 1920's, when Whitehall made promises to both the ibn Saud armies and to the Hashemite dynasty regarding who would be allowed to control Mecca. Ultimately the ibn Saud tribes defeated the Hashemites, and that is why that land today is called Saudi Arabia and not the Hashemite Kingdom of Arabia. The British gave a consolation prize to the Hashemites -- the newly created countries of Iraq and Jordan. Iraq was soon overthrown by socialist revolutionaries of the Ba'ath movement. King Abdullah and later his son King Hussein functioned as a British quasi-colony in the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, until it came under the geostrategic influence of America.

America's Machiavellian approach in the Middle East explains something about events behind the current war between Israel and Hamas.

Another example: after the brutal murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi on October 2, 2018 at the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul, the US gave the Saudis a cold shoulder on 'ethical grounds.' But recently those grounds have melted away in the stark light of realpolitik -- the need to get all available Middle Eastern players back into the American orbit.

We totally back you up but . . .

In Franklin Foer's recent book 'The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future,'   he explains President Biden's strategy in dealing with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. During the May 2021 clash between Hamas and Israel, Biden told his advisors that he was going to "hug Bibi tight" rather than publicly express censure, knowing from experience that criticism would push Netanyahu away. "Smother Netanyahu with love!" was his 'secret strategy' and it remains so today -- even though Biden has leaked this 'secret strategy' to world media.

In May 2021, President Biden pressed the Israeli leader to swiftly agree to a ceasefire in order to end the May 2021 Gaza hostilities with Hamas: “Bibi, I gotta tell you, I’m coming under a lot of pressure back here . . .  I’m getting squeezed here to put an end to this as soon as possible.”

History shows us that, when Israel attempts to reclaim its God-promised land and its biblical borders, or when the Jewish state’s IDF attempts to decisively crush its enemies, various superpowers quickly step up to reign in Israel from achieving those goals. Russia used the threat of nuclear weapons in 1956 and 1973. America ordered Israel to stand down or retreat in 1991, 2006 and 2021. In 2021 POTUS Biden made many calls to PM Netanyahu during May’s 'Operation Guardian of the Walls.' During their fourth phone call, on May 19, 2021, Biden was unhappy that Israel was insisting on administering its death-blow to Hamas. “Hey, man, we are out of runway here. It’s over!” said Biden. Times of Israel reports: “Netanyahu agreed to a ceasefire two days later. The longtime Likud leader was replaced one month later by a short-lived unity government headed by Naftali Bennett and Ya'ir Lapid.”

US State Department and Presidential statements over the past two months reveal something striking: positive declarations and actions in support of Israel have been immediately nuanced or walked back by both POTUS and the State Department. This modus operandi in the past two decades is the basic reason why the 15 previous military clashes with Hamas had inconclusive results, with Israel pressured into retreating from decisively destroying Hamas. The same dynamics were brought to bear during the 2016 war with Lebanon, and in the Kissinger shuttles in 1973-74 after the Yom Kippur War.

Those who have not been aware of the existence of this good cop-bad cop dynamic, are puzzled or even shocked to grasp that America is supporting two sides of a conflict in order to increase its own clout and influence as a world power. Yet Assyria and Egypt used exactly the same tactics over 2,500 years ago, and the Bible does not flinch from letting us know about these political machinations. This is how the nations of the world "take their stand, and the rulers take counsel together against YHVH and His Anointed" (Psalm 2:2).  As it was then, so it is today: "Those who hate You have exalted themselves. They make shrewd plans against you people, and conspire together against Your treasured ones. They have said, 'Come and let us wipe them out as a nation that the name of Israel be remembered no more.' For they have conspired together with one mind; against You they make a covenant" (Psalm 83:2-5).

Brass tacks and double-speak

Some clarifying examples of these principles might help here. Here are a few salient points:

· Hamas is firing rockets at Israeli civilians from Gaza -- which is an area not under Israeli control, and which has one border facing Egypt. In order to interdict Hamas rocket fire, Israel must remove the rocket squads and rocket launchers and weapons storehouses. Hamas has positioned these right in the middle of Gaza's civilian population, making some civilian casualties unavoidable. If Egypt were willing to work with Israel to pressure Hamas, the situation could be solved with much less loss of life. But that is not happening. Not only that -- the UN, the US and the EU all insist that the Gazan population must remain as sitting ducks and hostages of Hamas during this war. In any other such situation (Syria, Jordan, Libya, Eritrea and Somalia, etc.,) the local population would be helped to move away from the battlefield while being housed and fed as long term refugees in other neighboring countries. Both Egypt, Jordan, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Yemenite Houthis declare that such a moving of refugees would be for them tantamount to a casus belli -- a cause for war.

· In order for Hamas to be forced to stop firing rockets and sending jihadi terrorist gangs into Israel, it would need to be totally destroyed. Hamas' commitment to jihad is unto death, as per its Islamist Charter.  As long as Hamas soldiers or irregulars remain in Gaza, the conflict will go on and Israelis will continue to be murdered, raped, tortured and kidnapped. Israelis have sanely decided that this option is not a feasible one. But to clean out the Hamas rat's nest in Gaza requires intensive non-stop military action lasting for months. Were Egypt to allow Gazans into Egypt as refugees, there would be greatly reduced casualties. But that does not fit in well with Hamas' war strategies, which call for a captive Gazan civilian human shield. Rather than pressuring Egypt to take in refugees, the US is pressuring Israel to step back (once again) from decisively defeating Hamas. VP Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken have both repeatedly declared that it is an American red line -- Gazans are not to flee the battlefield but must remain as cannon fodder and human shields to benefit Hamas; Israel cannot remain in Gaza for too long, maybe not even for the time it takes to destroy Hamas; Israel will very soon be punished by world opinion and censured for its bombings of Hamas bases and terrorist infrastructure; the wildly inaccurate casualty rates fed by Hamas to the world media are to be used as a guideline of accuracy, even though Hamas does not allow independent collaboration of its figures, and even though it does not admit that most casualties are actually Hamas terror operatives.

Why are the nations taking counsel together?

The United Nations General Assembly has voted in a non-binding resolution (153 to 10, with 23 abstentions), calling for an immediate unconditional ceasefire, allowing Hamas to remain in charge and weaponized in Gaza. No mention was made in the UN Resolution of the jihadi pogroms of October 7, 2023 with the over 1,200 murders of Israelis, the mass rapes (many of which simultaneously included savage torture and murder), other torture of civilians, over 240 kidnappings, etc.  The UN Security Council also voted for a similar ceasefire, which was vetoed by the US as part of its 'founding member' prerogatives. It is only a matter of time before such measures will pass in world forums. Only a resolute stand by the US and any other pro-Jewish nations could succeed in blocking such moves, and only a steel backbone would keep such countries standing with and supporting the Jewish State in the face of a tsunami of world anti-Semitism.

The continuing public rebukes from the US administration directed at Israel and the IDF, focusing on reducing Gazan civilian casualties, are another example of the 'good cop, bad cop' syndrome. The IDF is the most praiseworthy army in the world in avoiding enemy civilian casualties, and is significantly better in this regard than the US military, according to a recent 'good cop' statement by US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby. The strategy behind these criticisms of Israel (see POTUS Biden's December 13, 2023 accusation that Israel is guilty of "indiscriminate bombing" in Gaza) is the desire to also play the 'bad cop,' thereby currying favor with the Islamic world and anti-Israel forces elsewhere. The ratcheting up of pressure on Israel to give in and allow a Palestinian terror state-consortium to be established simultaneously in Gaza and the West Bank, led by Palestinian terrorists from both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority -- this has long been the diplomatic-military 'end game' here. It is being prosecuted with renewed passion by the West in general and the US administration in particular, even before the blood of 1,200 Israeli victims has dried on the ground; even while Israeli kidnap victims are being subject on a daily basis to rape, torture, starvation and murder; even while Hamas rockets are being fired at Israeli kibbutzim, farms and cities; even as scores of dead Israelis are being held as bargaining tools by demonized Islamist jihadis.

How should we then pray?

Pray for the physical rescue of the approximately 135 Israelis (including babies) kidnapped by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and PFLP/PLO.  Hostages are being tortured, raped and starved (this based on testimonies of recently released hostages). Hamas is holding onto many corpses as well for bargaining power.

Pray for Hamas’ cruel terror dictatorship in Gaza to be finally shattered and all chains broken off the Palestinians living there

Pray for jihadi deception, dissimulation and anti-Semitism to be understood and rejected by world leaders

Pray for justice, clarity, moral courage, discernment and divine strategies for Israel’s leadership in utterly destroying the jihadi threat in all of its aspects

Pray for minimal loss of life on Israel’s side and for those Gazans who are truly innocent

Pray that the outstretched arm of YHVH will not return before it brings justice to God’s enemies

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

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

Understanding the times

The Jewish tribe of Issachar was given a special gift by the God of Jacob:  “The sons of Issachar [were] men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do” (1 Chronicles 12:32). The tribe of Issachar was given unusual discernment so that they could guide the Jewish people in the military, governmental and spiritual challenges they faced.

Today a similar gift is urgently needed: believers in Messiah Yeshua need deeper understanding regarding God’s heart for the Jewish people, and how we need to be prepared for what’s coming down the pike in light of Israel’s prophesied return to their Promised Land.

Various worldly perspectives have blurred the vision of many – the influences of political correctness, wokeness and what is inaccurately called ‘the social justice movement.’ Some followers of Yeshua have been swept along by strident demonstrations of rowdy youth on the march – those who have taken to the streets championing the jihadi savagery of Hamas, the al-Aqsa Brigades of the Palestinian Authority, and Hezbollah. This new resurgence of hatred is built on ancient foundations – the primeval storehouses of anti-Semitism. These gnarled roots of Jew-hatred are wrapped around the early historical worldviews of Christianity, Islam and communism.

Political wisdom and foolishness

Solomon the wise tells us that “the fear of YHVH is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding” (Proverbs 9:10). But world leaders who do not walk with God or know His word will end up fleshing out King David’s observation: “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, and have committed abominable injustice. There is no one who does good” (Psalm 53:1).

The Apostle Paul repeats this truth in the New Covenant: “But a natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14).

Getting to be a world leader does not guarantee wisdom or godly policies, for “foolishness is set in many exalted places” (Ecclesiastes 10:6).  Political strategies fashioned by godless leaders usually bring destructive results: “YHVH knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are useless” (1 Corinthians 3:19-20).

When a God-based and Biblical foundation is lacking, geopolitics end up being a political exercise in futility: “Dead flies turn a perfumer’s oil rancid, so a little foolishness is more potent than wisdom and honor” (Ecclesiastes 10:1).

Anyone who tries to ‘lift up the Jerusalem stone’ without God’s wisdom and without a heart for the people of Jacob, will suffer political hernia and spiritual shipwreck: “It will come about on that day that I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples. All who lift it will injure themselves severely!” (Zechariah 12:3).

Returning to the Land of Israel – what about the neighbors?

Isaiah prophesies that the Jewish people would return a second time to the Land of Israel. The first return occurred the period during the times of Ezra and Nehemiah (sixth century B.C.) and lasted until the destruction of Herod’s Temple (70 A.D.). Today we are living in the times of the Second Return:

The Second Return is a developing process – just like the First Return was a process in the period between Ezra and Nehemiah. This Second Return will hit its zenith when all the Jewish people still remaining in the Exile come back to Zion:

Two things will characterize the fullness of this Return (according to these scripture passages): one, Israel will reconquer Gaza as well as southern and central Jordan; two, the entire Jewish nation will follow Yeshua and will be filled with the Holy Spirit. It is worth noting that Israel’s conquering of Gaza and Jordan is described as happening during the same time period as Israel’s being filled with the Spirit. From a biblical and prophetic perspective, these two events are not in opposition. The current clashes in Gaza are a pre-figuring of this prophetic fulfilment, and our prayers at this time need to be illumined and guided by God’s prophetic word.

Returning to the Land of Israel – cold eyes and even colder hearts?

Some Christians look upon the return of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel as spiritually suspect. They feel that since modern Israel is a mostly secular entity, it is simply not the same people as Biblical Israel. According to this view, all the prophecies about Israel in the Bible are on hold for now, and do not apply to the amazing Return of the sons and daughters of Jacob to their Promised Land in our day. This cold-eyed and cold-hearted attitude was crystallized over a hundred years ago in the fascinating historical encounter between the father of secular Zionism, Theodor Herzl, and Pope Pius X. Their conversation on January 26, 1904 was recorded in Herzl’s diaries (Raphael Patai, The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl; New York/London: Herzl Press, Thomas Yoseloff, 1960; pp. 1601-1605). Herzl had come to ask for the Vatican’s support in the creation of a homeland for his persecuted Jewish people. Here are some excerpts from the Pope’s statements during that dialogue:

These quotes reveal an attitude that leaves no room for a warm-hearted God to restore His Jewish people back to their Promised Land in covenant love. Such an attitude demonstrates a stark refusal to recognize God’s restoration-love for Jacob’s sons and daughters. Sad to say, some spiritually stony hearts find cold refuge in these dark anti-Semitic caves.

From their point of view, the Jewish people can’t win on the world’s stage. According to this viewpoint, Jewish people are suspended between heaven and earth, not allowed to return to their homeland without Christian theological permission. According to this judgmental viewpoint, the Jews may have a past and a future – but they certainly do not have any hope in the present. For such frozen theologians, all that the Jewish people can look forward to is to “this present darkness.” From this point of view, Israel’s defense of its citizenry and elimination of its jihadi enemies are simply a case of ‘two wrongs don’t make a right.’ The world-renowned historian Dr. Jules Isaac called such an attitude ‘the teaching of contempt’ in his book of the same name.

Returning to the Land of Israel – adulterating and impeding the process

To adulterate something means ‘to corrupt, debase or make something impure, by adding a foreign or inferior substance to the mix.’ The goal of all superpowers today (and nearly all member countries of the United Nations) is to adulterate the Jewish people and their homeland by:

*    shrinking its God-given, biblically defined, militarily achieved borders, as per Henry Kissinger’s declaration to Iraq’s Foreign Minister:

*   dividing its geographical and biblical integrity into two sections (or even three sections, if Gaza is joined to the West Bank as per recent American and Security Council declarations):

*  establishing and guaranteeing international security to governmentally corrupt (the Palestinian Authority) and spiritually impure jihadi terrorist forces (PA-Hamas future cooperation)

For a good background in the areas of Islamist terror, Nazi influence, Western support of these movements, etc., see the following articles:

A recent example of this would be Nihad Awad, the executive director of CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) who spoke at the American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) convention in Chicago on November 24, 2023: “The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege, the walls of the concentration camp, on October 7. And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land, and walk free into their land, which they were not allowed to walk in. And yes, the people of Gaza have the right to self-defense, have the right to defend themselves, and yes, Israel, as an occupying power, does not have that right to self-defense.”

Returning to the Land of Israel – opposing the process

The vast majority of Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank are in favor of Hamas’ murder, torture, mass rape and kidnapping of Israelis on October 7, 2023 (see the recent Palestinian polls in my November 24, 2023 newsletter; https://davidstent.org/in-order-that-secrets-of-many-hearts-be-revealed/).

The Palestinian Authority is an active supporter of jihadi terrorism, both financially and through its two jihadi terrorist organizations Fatah-Tanzim and al-Aqsa Brigades.

The United Nations and its subsidiary UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine) have set up a framework to perpetuate the Palestinian refugee problem, insisting that it cannot be solved in the same way as every other refugee problem has been solved in other countries like Ukraine, Syria, Sudan, Eritrea, Libya, Jordan, etc. UNRWA is the only organization that exists to serve only one group, the Palestinians. Their mandate allows for no resettlement of refugees in any other country except in Israel – which is another way of saying ‘over Israel’s dead body.’ An excellent 38-minute video of Caroline Glick throws much light on the history and strategies involved here. Also, five links are below, explaining the anti-Israel strategies behind UN and UNRWA activities, which by and large are reflected in all Western countries’ policies and strategies vis-à-vis Israel, including that of the US:

Back in 1960 the Soviet Union was able to pass a UN Resolution supporting anti-Western guerilla warfare and terrorism  (www.un.org/en/decolonization/declaration.shtml). Within a few years the word ‘terrorism’ was redefined: Israeli self-defense and counterterrorism operations were now defined as terrorism, while PLO violence against Jewish civilians was defined as a national liberation movement combatting colonialism.

Since the combined military forces of the Arab world were not able to crush Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, a strategic decision was taken to move the struggle to the UN. It has been said that diplomacy is war by other means. The Arab world concluded that perhaps Israel could be defeated at the UN through ‘collective delegitimization’ and lawfare. The Arab refugees would be labeled by the United Nations as an indigenous native people who were victims of colonialism – ‘the Palestinian people’ – while Israel was transformed into a ‘colonialist, imperialist and racist state which occupies another people’s land.’

Lately, it seems that diplomatic winter is upon us. A flurry of declarations has blown out of the White House like a sudden snowstorm, with US Vice-President Kamala Harris racing through the Middle East ‘on a one-horse open sleigh,’ declaring to all and sundry (Egypt, Jordan and Dubai) the five new talking points of the Biden Administration regarding Gaza-Israel realpolitik. The first four points in her quote are in line with the strategies and declarations of the PLO Covenant and the Hamas Charter:

The official US position is that Gaza, an integral part of the territory which God promised to Judah in Joshua 15:47, shall not belong to the Jewish people, but to avowed enemies of the Jews. Gaza is bounded on its west side by Egypt, but Egypt does not permit Egyptians free access to Hamas-controlled Gaza, nor does it allow Gazans to freely travel to Egypt. The first four points of this latest US declaration seek to preserve the status of Gaza as a jihadi ‘aircraft carrier’ aimed at destroying Israel. The fifth and last point comes off nearly as an afterthought, mentioning Gaza as a platform for terrorism – the real cause of this latest war. Yet this terrorist role for Gaza has a venerable history: Egypt established Gaza as a fedayun terror nest between 1948 and 1967; the PLO carried out attacks in Gaza against Israel between 1968 and 2005; Hamas began to attack Israelis in 1989 and intensified their terror up to the present. The first four US points stressed by VP Harris ensure that the last point (Islamist terrorism) will never disappear from Gaza – unless Israel refuses to cooperate in its own destruction.

Returning to the Land of Israel – encouraging the process

The nations of this world have placed themselves on record as adversaries of God’s restoration of Zion. They oppose the Jewish people living in the Biblical Land; they oppose the biblical borders of the Jewish homeland; they oppose the Jewish people decisively defeating their sworn enemies; they oppose the Jewish nature of Jerusalem; etc. 

What would it look like if the nations did an about-face, and encouraged the process of the Restoration of Zion? Here are four passages from the Hebrew Scriptures which can help to expand our vision regarding what that process will look like. Let us pray to understand the times we are living in, and to be ready for the Day of Zion’s Visitation!

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 

The nightmare of jihadi rape and murder

There is a yawning gap between Hollywood movies and real life. Nevertheless, many prefer the drug of cinematographic fantasy to the simple truth, and lots of people in the West have been blinded by the silver screen, shying away from the hard facts.

It seems that a significant amount of people are willfully ignoring some uncomfortable truths – the brutal atrocities of the jihadi terrorist organization Hamas.  Instead, some are choosing to support anarchist marches calling for ‘jihadi justice.’ They are participating in anti-Jewish demonstrations calling for genocide against Jacob’s sons and daughters. Sometimes it feels like the inmates have taken over the asylum, and that the Nazis’ spiritual descendants have taken over the United Nations. What’s next as this world’s dance turns into death?

On October 7, 2023 Hamas proudly filmed its slaughters, tortures, beheadings and mass rapes, broadcasting them live on social media. This monstrous footage is available on the internet, though many have not seen it. But to see such things is to look directly into the abyss, and I do not advise it. However, due to much of the world’s incredibly short span of attention and its propensity to be so easily distracted, it is important to be aware that these atrocities actually happened. They are real. And they are an irreplaceable key to help people understand why Israel’s population is unreservedly committed to wiping out – down to the last jihadi – that demonized evil called Hamas.

This newsletter takes a look at God’s biblical perspective on rape, and then briefly describes Hamas’ satanically motivated atrocities against Jews in their murderous pogrom of October 7, 2023. If you would prefer not to be exposed to descriptions of these events, feel free to only read the first part of this newsletter. But do pray with us based on the prayer guidelines at the end of the newsletter, in any case! 

The punishment for rape is death

Moses instructs us: “But if the man finds a girl . . . in the field, and the man seizes her and rapes her, then only the man who raped her shall die . . .  For just as a man rises against his neighbor and murders him, so is this case. When he found her in the field, the . . . girl cried out, but there was no one to save her” (Deuteronomy 22:25-27). The penalty for rape is the death sentence, says the God of Israel.

The rape of Jacob’s daughter Dina happened 400 years before Moses, yet it was treated by her brothers Simeon and Levi as deserving of the same judgment. Unfortunately, it seems that her father Jacob was more concerned about how the Canaanites might react to divine justice, than about defending the honor of his own flesh and blood:

A few hundred years after Moses, certain wicked Benjaminites from the town of Gibeah attempted to gang-rape a male Levite who was spending the night in their town as a guest. Hospitality has nearly sacred dimensions in the Middle East; there are parallels between this incident and how the men of Sodom attempted to rape the angels visiting Lot (see Genesis 19:4-16):

The entire nation of Israel was shocked at this atrocity which has carried out on one Jewish women – she was raped to death by a group of wicked Jewish men. The entire army of Israel gathered together to insist on justice, “so that when they come to Gibeah of Benjamin, they may punish them for all the vile sin that they have committed in Israel:” 

In the battle which followed, triggered over the rape and murder of one Jewish woman, a total of over 60,000 Jewish fighting men were killed. This was a very sober price to pay to purge out wickedness in the Jewish nation.

In 2 Samuel 13:14, David’s son Amnon raped his half-sister Tamar (see 1 Chronicles 3:1-9). In due time, Absalom arranged for his half-brother Amnon (the perpetrator of the rape) to be killed:

In Bible times, whether rape was carried out by Gentiles or by Jews, the death penalty was the same for both – the death sentence. The honor of God demanded holiness and purity of sexual intimacy from God’s people. Sexual violence and impurity were anathema both to the God of Israel and to His Jewish people.

A fountain of tears

The prophet Jeremiah wept over how anti-Jewish enemies murdered and raped their way through the cities of Judah. His tears mingle with those of today’s Israelis who have suffered similar atrocities at the hands of Hamas jihadis:

Dedicated to the one I hate

The God of Israel commanded Joshua to raze Jericho to the ground due to its idolatries and abominations. The Hebrew word used in Joshua 6:17-18 is cherem (חֵ֫רֶם); it means dedicating or appointing something to utter destruction. To put Canaanite cities ‘under the ban’ meant that they would be dedicated to total destruction (see Leviticus 27:28-29; Number 21:2-3; Deuteronomy 7:1-5; 13:16-17; 20:16-17; Joshua 11:14).

Dr. Gleason Archer notes in his A Survey of Old Testament Introduction: “In view of the corrupting influence of the Canaanite religion, especially with its religious prostitution . . .  and infant sacrifice, it was impossible for pure faith and worship to be maintained in Israel except by the complete elimination of the Canaanites themselves” (see Revelation 18:20-21). God’s severe mercies are far removed from ‘politically correct’ and ‘woke’ perspectives. His judgments on Canaan, on the world in the days of Noah, and on Hamas might not be the same as that of the United Nations, the European Union, or Qatar – but they are 100% God’s take on what needed (and needs) to be done.

YHVH made an oath that He would have war with Edom from generation to generation. He also took a vow to blot out the people descended from Edom’s son Amalek. In our day we are observing this ancient biblical promise coming into fulfilment. Though many do not know either Biblical teaching or history in this regard, the majority of today’s Palestinians are descendants of these Edomite forefathers (see https://davidstent.org/yhvh-will-have-war-against-amalek-from-generation-to-generation/ and ‘Jews, Arabs and the Middle East: A Messianic Perspective’).

Part two: Hamas atrocities

“God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him. Male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27). One of the main goals of Satan is to disfigure, mutilate and destroy anything or anyone who reflects the image of God. Messiah Yeshua taught that “the thief comes only to kill and destroy” (John 10:10). The atrocities that Satan catalyzed (through Hamas and its partner Palestinian Islamic Jihad) had a triple purpose – to release a wave of fear and terror throughout the world; to catalyze a tsunami of anti-Semitic hatred across the face of this planet; and to blot out the image of God by desecrating that image through murdering, torturing, raping and mutilating Israelis on that day.

In Judges 5:28-30 the mother of Israel’s Canaanite enemy is anxiously waiting for her son General Sisera to return from his slaughter and plunder of the Jewish people in the Jezreel Valley. She waxes poetic about how he will bring with him the spoils of war, including rare colored fabrics and a few Jewish women to rape:  “Out of the window she looked and wailed, the mother of Sisera through the lattice: ‘Why does his chariot delay in coming? Why do the hoofbeats of his chariots delay?’ Her wise princesses would answer her – indeed, she repeats her words to herself – ‘Are they not finding, are they not dividing the spoils? A womb, two wombs for every warrior!’” The Hebrew word for ‘womb’ here is  ‘rachama /rechem’ (‘uterus’ or ‘vagina’). Rape as part of Middle Eastern warfare has ancient roots. Though rape may still be common practice throughout the Middle East, it is not the case with the Israel Defense Forces, who have no reputation for raping Arab women.

The following are links from news media sources considered responsible and accurate in their reporting. They can be consulted for more details about Hamas atrocities on October 7, 2023:

  1. https://www.ynetnews.com/article/s14ccafrp
  2. https://www.ynetnews.com/article/hjhumxb4t
  3. https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/gaza-news/article-776347
  4. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_and_gender-based_violence_in_the_7_October_attack_on_Israel
  5. https://www.christianpost.com/news/hamas-raped-women-grandmothers-children-israeli-official-says.html
  6. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ten-hamas-fighters-were-raping-the-woman-she-begged-for-death-6ldlmh8sp
  7. https://www.timesofisrael.com/kill-behead-rape-interrogated-hamas-members-detail-atrocities-against-civilians/
  8. https://www.timesofisrael.com/global-womens-rights-groups-silent-as-israeli-women-testify-about-rapes-by-hamas/amp/
  9. https://www.dailywire.com/news/israeli-official-hamas-raped-women-grandmothers-children-so-violently-they-broke-victims-pelvis
  10. https://www.israelhayom.com/2023/11/08/she-was-gang-raped-then-they-executed-her-horrific-testimonies-from-oct-7-atrocities-emerge/
  11. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/report-police-receive-witness-testimony-of-gang-rape-murder-of-a-woman-during-oct-7-onslaught/
  12. https://www.timesofisrael.com/taken-captive-naama-levy-spending-first-shabbat-on-army-base/?fbclid=IwAR31zvM6MjTSeunluigX2boan9x--DFKAHgcDt9R8VZ9iuz4g4X-B1FH7EA_aem_Ae9kMbY5IDC1R6GbWwuyTLTmkz5P8GlG2xsIoaTik_NahOQ80rMHjIS8jIuTr_GUxmY
  13. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-776654?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Israel-Hamas+war%3A+IDF+readies+to+flood+Gaza+tunnel+network&utm_campaign=December+5%2C+2023

These articles describe in greater detail interviews with eyewitnesses to Hamas massacres, gang-rapes, tortures and murders. There are interviews with medical professionals – those who found the bodies of victims; those who applied forensics to the vast crime scenes; those pathologists who performed autopsies on bodies, pieces of bodies, and teeth, etc.

Without going into great detail, the credible eyewitnesses, medical professionals and Hamas video footage reveal:

  1. gang rapes, one of which involved ten Hamas men against one Jewish woman. In most cases the rape was followed by murdering the victims. In some cases, the woman was murdered during the rape
  2. corpses found of rape victims of both sexes and all ages with broken pelvises
  3. necrophilia (sexual relations with the corpses of murdered Israelis)
  4. rape of men and women and children of all ages, followed by castration and mutilation of private parts, limbs, faces to the point that one could not tell if the victim was a man or woman
  5. decapitation of people who were still alive
  6. murdering victims with hammers
  7. women shot in the crotch, or having their breasts cut off and kicked around like a soccer ball, before being executed
  8. rape and murder of teenage girls in their own bedrooms
  9. Arabic notes found on Hamas terrorists clearly indicated that the raping of Jewish women was a direct operational goal
  10. Hamas jihadis explaining that they were given instructions by commanders to kill, behead and crush the skulls of everyone, and to cut off people’s legs
  11. Jihadis were instructed to kill young men and teenagers, and to kidnap the elderly, women and children
  12. An unborn baby was cut out of her mother’s womb and then beheaded with the umbilical cord still attached – and then the mother was beheaded – all of this filmed live

Violating the daughters of Zion

“They violated the women in Zion, the virgins in the cities of Judah” (Lamentations 5:11). History sometimes repeats itself. What was common in Jeremiah’s day, was common on October 7, 2023 when Hamas jihadis raped, tortured and murdered innocent women, teenagers, babies and pensioners of both sexes as they carried out their pogrom in the Israeli farms and kibbutzim bordering Gaza.  At a US State Department briefing, Spokesman Matthew Miller was asked a question by a reporter: “The Israeli Government is conducting this investigation to look at Hamas using rape as a weapon of war against Israeli women and girls on the 7th. They say they’ve now collected more than 1,500 eyewitness accounts of sexual assault, sexual violence, including rape against women and girls that day.” Miller responded:

Part of the reason Hamas violated its hostage deal mid-way is connected, said Miller, to its damage-control course correction. Hamas has no problem raping, torturing and murdering Israelis or all ages and sexes. But when it realizes that it might lose some public sympathy over blowback issues here, it has no problem making use of what Goebbels and Hitler called ‘the big lie.’ In Mein Kampf Hitler explains:

Yesterday, according to the Saudi al-Arabiya channel, Hamas dismissed claims by women and advocacy groups regarding documented eyewitness, medial forensic and video proofs of rape, murder, torture and sexual war crimes against Israelis on October 7, 2023.  Hamas charged that the allegations were part of “Zionist campaigns which promote unfounded lies and allegations to demonize the Palestinian resistance,” and that they are part of “a series” or Israeli “lies” since the start of the war.

As the OSS (precursor to the CIA) stated in their psychological profile of Adolf Hitler: “His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”

Israel cannot live with Hamas or the equivalent next door

The horror of having demonized neighbors living next door who are murderers at the level of the SS and ISIS, makes some points crystal clear, at least for Israelis:

 

 

 

 

 

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 

Feasting in the midst of darkness

A popular expression describes what Jewish feasts are all about: “Our enemies tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat!” 

The Feast of Esther (also known as Purim) certainly fits the bill. The genocidal Haman had his murderous cards in order – the date and planning for the Hebrew holocaust had been chosen based on the best horoscope (see Esther 3). An international massacre of all Jews in the Persian Empire (where most Jews lived) was planned and moving forward. But at the last moment, on a very strategic night, the God of Jacob gave King Ahasuerus insomnia (see Esther 6), and the rest is history. In a brilliant explosion of Genesis 12:3 grace, YHVH caused the wicked Haman to be hanged on his own gallows (Esther 7:9-10), along with his Jew-hating sons (Esther 9:13-14). The Jews of Persia “assembled to defend their lives and rid themselves of their enemies, and to kill 75,000 of those who hated them” (Esther 9:16). Mordecai and Esther then established a Jewish national holiday – a feast of thanksgiving to God – and called it Purim (in Hebrew, lots or dice):  They decided to celebrate this feast annually, “because on those days the Jews rid themselves of their enemies. And it was a month which was turned for them from grief into joy, and from mourning into a holiday; that they were to make them days of feasting and rejoicing, and sending portions of food to one another, and gifts to the poor” (Esther 9:21-22).

The Festival of Lights, also called Hanukkah or the Feast of Dedication [of the Jerusalem Temple], was also a nationally ordained celebration, thanking God for His strength, strategy and victory in defeating the anti-Semitic Greek Seleucids led by Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Starting in the 160’s B.C., the Jewish people added this feast to our national calendar. Hanukkah took its place along with Purim, celebrating how the God of Jacob granted His people strategic victory, both in diplomatic spheres and on the battlefield. And once again, the Jewish proverb fits the narrative: “They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat!”  

The Nazi-led attempted genocide of the Jewish people – where approximately six million sons and daughters of Jacob were starved, tortured, kidnapped, gassed and burned – did not result in the Jewish people establishing another Jewish festival.  This time, Jewish blood and suffering were not to be transformed into a happy holiday with special foods and toys. It is true that the Jewish State of Israel was reborn three years after the defeat of Hitler, but today in Israel Holocaust Remembrance Day is colored in somber tones and with great seriousness.

On earth as it is in Heaven

The threat to the Jewish people at the Feast of Purim was national genocide – the full destruction of all the seed of Jacob in both the Exile and in the Land of Israel (which in those days was called ‘Babylonia and Eber-Nari’ [‘beyond the River’] by the Persians. The threat to the Jewish people at the Feast of Hanukkah was the destruction of Jewish spiritual identity – by making the Bible and obedience to the covenants of Abraham and Moses illegal on pain of death.

YHVH’s heart and strategy for the Jewish people involves restoration and redemption of both the material and the spiritual – the body on earth, and the spirit moving back into a living relationship with God. Eden will be restored, but not as a Garden. This time it will become the seat of Messiah’s throne in a City called Jerusalem. And those who follow Messiah Yeshua “shall not rest ‘til God has built Jerusalem in David’s green and pleasant land.”

After God restores and rescues, He calls for a feast

God loves celebrations, parties and feasts. That is the message of the Parable of the Prodigal Son: “But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet; and bring the fattened calf, slaughter it, and let’s eat and celebrate! For this son of mine was dead and has come to life again. He was lost and has been found!’ And they began to celebrate” (Luke 15:22-24).

The celebration of Jewish feasts usually involves rejoicing, eating and drinking, according to Scripture:

A Feast on the battlefield

King David rejoices in the fact that the God of Israel set up a feast table for him at a highly unusual venue – on the battlefield! “You prepare before my presence [Hebrew, my face] a table facing my enemies” (Psalm 23:5). David, like YHVH, was a man of war (see Exodus 15:3) and was accustomed to combat. But it takes faith in God’s protection and deliverance to lay down an M-16 and pick up a fork and knife in the middle of a raging war!

God throws a party in unexpected places – like the Sinai Desert. Some of those who mocked Moses and YHVH in the desert “spoke against God, saying, ‘Can God [really] prepare a table in the wilderness?’” (Psalm 78:19). The God of Jacob responds that He has no difficulty throwing a banquet in the sands. God can prepare that festive table, and He will turn into the Triumphant Enemy against our sworn enemies: “But if you truly obey [My Angel’s] voice and do all that I say, then I will be an Enemy to your enemies and an Adversary to your adversaries” (Exodus 23:22).

The time has come

In the words of the famous song by Jewish musician-and-satirist Tom Lehrer (‘Hanukkah in Santa Monica’), it’s that time of year once again! But unbeknown to most Jews and Gentiles, Hanukkah is not really about a miracle which never happened (see https://davidstent.org/hanukkah-the-fake-news-the-real-news-and-the-kosher-message/ ). It’s about the ‘pre-IDF IDF’ – the ancient Jewish army led by the High Priestly family of Matisyahu who defeated the Grecian superpower operating out of Syria. The Maccabees were godly warriors who knew how to fight on the battlefield and how to call out to YHVH à la Numbers 10:9. These people “who knew their God did exploits,” preserved the faithful remnant of the Jewish people – those who worshipped YHVH and waited for the coming of Messiah (see Daniel 11:30-33).

Today the nation of Israel faces jihadi forces like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood in Qatar, the Houthis in Yemen, the Islamic Republic of Iran (the original abode of Haman), etc. All of the above terrorist groups are actively planning our destruction. They are encircling the Land of Israel with murderous jihadi forces. They are being cheered on by criminally ignorant gangs of woke demonstrators, who chant for Israel’s and the Jewish people’s destruction. On top of that, all superpowers of the world are united in the Machiavellian goal of shrinking the Jewish state down to what Abba Eban called in 1969 ‘Auschwitz borders.’

The prophet Ezekiel spoke through the mists of time, prophesying of a day when the God of Jacob would regather His Jewish people back to their own land:

So according to YHVH’s biblical declaration, the Land of Israel is not Palestinian land or Arab land. It is the Land that the God of Jacob bequeathed to the sons and daughters of Jacob alone.

When the Jewish people come back home to their homeland – a work activated by the Holy Spirit even though the Jewish people are not yet filled by the Holy Spirit – Ezekiel prophesies that they will come alive and be filled with the Ruach HaKodesh. That infilling will transform the entire nation into something even greater and more magnificent than the Maccabean army: the Ezekiel 37 Army.

Happy Hanukkah, one and all!

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 

How to pray for Hamas – God’s way

In 70 A.D. the power of Rome crushed the Jewish Revolt and destroyed Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem, as well as all architectural symbols of Jewish independence. Bronze, silver and gold commemorative coins celebrating the defeat of the Second Jewish Commonwealth were issued across the Roman Empire in Latin and Greek, under the reigns of three Caesars – Vespasian, Titus and Domitian.  Three inscriptions predominated:  IUDAEA CAPTA (‘Judaea is conquered’); IUDAEA DEVICTA (‘Judaea is defeated’); and DE IUDAEIS (‘[from the booty] of the Judaeans’). From the perspective of Rome (and later, of Roman Catholicism) the Jewish state would never rise again. Similar to subsequent jihadi views, the Roman Christian perception was that the Jewish people have been decisively knocked out of the boxing ring of history. Their fate would be to remain wanderers forever. A chosen people? Yes, but chosen now as a symbol of divine rejection (according to Saint Augustine of Hippo), and cursed for the crime of deicide.

The re-establishment of a Jewish state in the Promised Land caused some Christian theologians to do a double take. If the Jewish people were being restored physically to their homeland according to the prophecies in the Old Testament, could it be that God has not abandoned or rejected His people? Of course, such a radical thought would have been no surprise to the Apostle Paul, who made this a central pillar of his Messianic gospel in Romans 11:1-2: “I say then, God has not rejected His people, has He? Far from it! For I too am a son of Israel, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew.”

As the Roman Empire Christianized, the Roman army became the army of the Holy Roman Empire. Jews no longer had an army, though. Christians assumed that Israel would never again have military might. Such a thing could only be carnal and a reversal of what God (and the Church) wanted. The restoration of the Jewish state and the restoration of a sovereign Jewish army – these were thoughts considered anathema, heretical, cultic.

The enemy in the garden

One of the first prophetic words spoken by YHVH refers to e lasting enmity between the Serpent (and the devilish power behind him) and a descendent of Eve: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed. He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise Him on the heel” (Genesis 3:15).  The unfolding of history would flesh out the ramifications of this Messianic prophecy. But one thing for sure – there would be war between mankind and the great serpent until the final coming of Messiah.

The enemy of the Jews is the enemy of God

A next important key in this battle comes with YHVH’s prophetic promise over Abram: “And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who dishonors/curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). The enemy’s strategy would be to curse Abraham and to curse his covenant descendants. YHVH established a covenant shield around Abraham, speaking a curse over any party who would wickedly harm the Jewish people.

Wicked people really do wicked things, and God has both the power and the authority to condemn and punish them. What God has chosen to love and bless (that is, the Jewish people), the Serpent has chosen to hate, kill and destroy (that’s Satanic anti-Semitism). The Abrahamic Covenant declares that God will curse Israel’s enemies. When we agree in prayer with this aspect of the divine covenant promise, our prayers are called ‘imprecatory prayers.’ To imprecate is to invoke judgment, calamity or curses upon the enemies of God. God lets us know early on in the Great Story called ‘history’ that those who are the enemies of Israel are immediately considered by Him to be enemies of God as well. YHVH declared this truth to Moses and commanded him to tell the same to the Jewish people:

King David echoed the same truth four hundred years later:

Asaph the seer and psalmist repeats these thoughts of God’s heart when he prophesies about the coming Middle East war. He declares that to conspire against the Jewish people is to conspire against the God of Israel:

The Angel of YHVH prophesied to Abraham that the Jewish people would possess the Land of Canaan and would gain total control over any enemies in that land: Then the Angel of YHVH called to Abraham a second time from heaven, and said, “ . . . Indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand, which is on the seashore. And your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies!” (Genesis 22:17).

Balaam, a man who cursed people for a living, met his match when he tried to curse the Jewish people. YHVH filled his mouth with the Holy Spirit and commanded him to speak out a prophetic word against the enemies of Israel:

Is the God of Jacob a ‘peacenik’?

Moses unpacks God’s heart to the Jewish people as they prepare to enter the Promised Land of Israel:

King David was not only a sweet psalmist in Israel; he knew much about hand-to-hand combat on the battlefield. And God taught him how to bring divine judgment on Israel’s enemies:

The cry in the night

David’s son Solomon, a wise man, adds his imprecatory prayer to the mix: “May [the king] vindicate the afflicted of the people, save the children of the needy, and crush the oppressor!” (Psalm 72:4).

Asaph adds his perspective and imprecatory prayers in Psalms 74, 79 and 83:

The Angel of YHVH, another name for Messiah Yeshua, raises His intercessory cry to the Father, the Lord of the Armies of Israel: “Then the Angel of YHVH said, ‘YHVH of armies, how long will You take no pity on Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, with which You have been indignant for these seventy years?’” (Zechariah 1:12).

The imprecatory cry from Heaven

The Revelation of Yeshua tells us of a future moment in Heaven, when the imprecatory prayers of those who have been martyred because of the word of God will take stage front and center at the breaking of the Fifth Seal:

A nameless angel comforts believers – which includes all saints and prophets – with the good news that God will answer these imprecatory prayers: “Rejoice over [Babylon], O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets, because God has pronounced judgment for you against her” (Revelation 18:20).

A great multitude in Heaven will shout out with a loud voice, shaking creation:

Be prepared and be praying!

Many believers in the West have been raised in a Pietist and pacifist tradition. Some of the roots of those traditions come from believers who were persecuted and martyred by State Churches who brooked no opposition to their pet theologies. The only option in such empires was to take a pacifist and non-militaristic stance. Yet the Bible does not take a pacifistic or non-militaristic stance, as the above Bible passages clearly demonstrate.

For those who understand Biblical teaching about the restoration of Israel – both physical and spiritual – we recognize that the return of the Jewish people to the Promised Land comes at a cost. The enemy of God, who is also the enemy of the Jewish people, is pulling out all the stops to crush the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We Jewish people, and those of us who stand with the Jewish people, need to stay alert on the walls of Jerusalem: “On your walls, Jerusalem, I have appointed watchmen! All day and all night they will never keep silent. You who proclaim YHVH, take no rest for yourselves, and give Him no rest until He establishes and makes Jerusalem a praise on the planet!” (Isaiah 62:6-7)

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 

When justice and intercession are absent

God’s perspective on kidnapping and hostages

The tense negotiations between a murderous jihadi group (Hamas) and the Israeli government have been playing out nightly on TV screens across the planet. Innocent Israeli babies, children, teens, mothers, retirees – all were brutally kidnapped from the safety of their homes and beds by terrorists who murdered or tortured their parents in front of them, or decapitated their brothers or sisters, or burned their families to death. The kidnapped victims were imprisoned in the dark underground for over 40 days, some in solitary confinement, terrorized, and barely given enough food to survive. Three quarters of those kidnapped have not been ransomed – they are still enslaved by the Gazan gangs of Hamas or Islamic Jihad or the PLO/Palestinian Authority spinoff ‘The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.’

The God of Jacob is very angry about such things. He instructed the prophet Isaiah to write down exactly what He feels about those enemies of Israel who kidnap Jews and take them hostage:

Surprising to many, God lays out a hierarchy of priorities here: He sees the ransoming of Jewish captives as of a higher priority in a crisis situation than hostages from other nations – whether Egypt, Cush (Ethiopia) or Seba (Yemen). And the Scriptures teach that this divine ‘hostage rescue protocol’ is based on His covenant love for the Jewish people. This applies not only to hostage rescue, but also to YHVH’s international relations and priorities as well.

The Nuremberg Trials perspective

In the opening statement before the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg Trials on October 18, 1945, the US Chief Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson soberly declared: “The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated.” These words spring off the page for those who love justice. They apply even more to the atrocities committed by Hamas and its jihadi partners.

Even though over 800 documents and more than 30 witnesses at the Nuremberg Trials referred to the persecution and murder of Jewish people, these anti-Jewish crimes were obscured behind a public relations curtain and were subsumed under other Nazi crimes. The Nuremberg Trials defined Nazi anti-Semitic policies as simply motivated by utilitarian considerations – the desire to achieve political control over German society, or to drive a wedge between the government and the populations of the Allied countries. Whereas Hitler saw his genocidal battle against the Jews in spiritual terms (as do Hamas and other jihadi terrorist groups), the International Military Tribunal side-stepped Isaiah’s divinely-breathed perspective on the matter, preferring to couch these matters in materialistic and socio-economic secular terms.

In our modern secular world, similar dynamics are at work. Whether it be describing Hamas kidnapping and Islamist murder as simply “a cycle of violence” as POTUS Biden did on November 24 in Nantucket, Massachusetts, or Hamas and PC demonstrators defending jihadi atrocities as simply ‘an understandable response to Zionist and colonialist occupation’ – the satanic nature of genocidal attacks against the Jewish people are not clearly communicated. Through this process, the hearts of men and women everywhere are being sifted and found wanting (see Luke 22:30-32).

Justice is fleeting

WWII ended and within a few short years, people lost interest in bringing Nazi war criminals to justice. The German churches, both Catholic and Protestant, were strong advocates of amnesty. The US moved to satisfy this tendenz, beginning early releases of Nuremberg Military Tribunal convicts in 1949. In 1951, High Commissioner John J. McCloy overturned most of the sentences and the last three prisoners, convicted at the Einsatzgruppen trial, were released in 1958. By the late 1950s, nearly all of those who had been convicted but not executed were released. “The German public took the early releases as confirmation of what they saw as the illegitimacy of the trials.” Many perpetrators of Nazi crimes were never brought to trial or punished. Most of the approximately 8,200 Auschwitz Camp Complex personnel who survived the war never faced trial.

The justice dispensed at Nuremberg to the perpetrators was never meant to be comprehensive. Nor were those Trials meant to bring justice to the victims, Jewish or otherwise.

Losing one’s appetite for justice

It seems that many in the world have ADD (attention deficit disorder)  – they cannot focus for more than a minute on what God wants them to focus on. This is the Last Days prophetic dynamic that the Bible describes as happening just before Messiah’s return:

 

Isaiah’s future End of Days perspective that the nations will not be treating Israel justly, but will actually be treating her unjustly. That causes the Ancient of Days to get angry, and to come down with burning vengeance – to right the wrongs, and to establish justice for the Jewish people. “But let justice roll out like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream!” (Amos 5:24)

How should we then pray?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212 – 1971 USA

Donations can also be made on – line (by PayPal) through: www.davidstent.org 

Bombing Auschwitz

The prophet Isaiah speaks of the emotional umbilical cord between the God of Jacob and His Jewish people: “In all their affliction He was afflicted” (Isaiah 63:9). This divine connection is not merely one of sympathy (‘I feel bad for you’) but of empathy (‘I feel exactly what you are feeling’). The Apostle Paul mirrors both this spiritual truth and this emotional reality when he declares, “I am telling the truth in Messiah; I am not lying! My conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit!” (Romans 9:1). 

When the Jewish people suffer, we have it on the highest authority that the God of the Jewish people also suffers. Theologically speaking, this means that Jewish suffering has scriptural priority to the heart of God. It’s not just an issue of how it fits into a Last Days scenario or onto an eschatological chessboard.

Yet in most cases the nations of the world have a cold heart vis-à-vis Jewish suffering. Jeremiah states it plainly: The nations “have called you an outcast, saying: ‘It is only Zion! No one cares for her’” (Jeremiah 30:17).

Doubtful efficacy

 On April 7, 1944, two Slovak Jewish young men, Rudolf Vrba (age 20) and Alfréd Wetzler (age 17) escaped Auschwitz and made their way to Oscar Krasniansky of the Slovakian Jewish Council in Zilina, Slovakia. They dictated their eyewitness account – the ‘Auschwitz Protocols’ – of the Nazi murder machine in Oświęcim, Poland (in German, Auschwitz). That report detailed the camp’s location, its geography, sketches and information about the layout of the gas chambers, and how prisoners lived and were murdered. It listed the death transports to Auschwitz since 1942, their cities of origin, and the numbers ‘selected’ for work or the gas chambers. It was a veritable ‘smoking gun’ – eyewitness proof of the Holocaust apparatus. These Protocols were later submitted as evidence of Nazi genocidal crimes at Nuremberg Trials (November 1945 – October 1946).

On July 29, 1944, Ernest Frischer of the Czechoslovak State Council forwarded a letter through the US War Refugee Board to John McCloy, Under Secretary of War. The letter sat unanswered until August 9, 1944 when Leon Kubowitzki, Head of the Rescue Department for the World Jewish Congress, sent an urgent appeal asking for the US to consider bombing the gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz in order to slow down Nazi mass extermination of European Jews. McCloy responded on August 14, 1944, turning down the request:

The military and strategic facts were markedly different than the War Department’s ‘officialese.’ McCloy was flat out lying when he referenced a study regarding the feasibility of bombing Auschwitz, as no such study had been undertaken. As far as practicability:  On August 21, 1944, a front page article in the New York Times described how “500 United States heavy bombers from Italy today . . . bombed the I.G. Farbenindustrie synthetic oil and rubber plant at Oswiecim in Polish Silesia.” 

In another example, former U.S. Senator George McGovern piloted a B-24 Liberator in December 1944, and his squadron bombed I.G. Farbenindustrie  factories (synthetic rubber based on oil) at Buna-Monowitz (Auschwitz III) less than five miles from the main Auschwitz crematoria. In a 2004 interview, McGovern stated: “It would have helped if we had bombed the railroad lines leading to Auschwitz. The purpose of those rail lines was to carry human beings to their death, and we might even have been able to use long-range fighter planes to get down right on the tracks and knock them out . . . We should have hit that junction and disabled it. We should have hit the rail lines, even if we had to go back several times.” In 2005, he added: “There is no question we should have attempted . . . to go after Auschwitz. There was a pretty good chance we could have blasted those rail lines off the face of the Earth, which would have interrupted the flow of people to those death chambers, and we had a pretty good chance of knocking out those gas ovens.”

Wolf Blitzer’s father David was a prisoner at Auschwitz. Here are his comments about the feasibility of bombing Auschwitz:

 

 

The indifference of the nations

 

In his cutting-edge work ‘The Abandonment Of The Jews,’ Professor David Wyman argued that the failure to bomb Auschwitz was a result of the Allies’ indifference to the fate of the Jews rather than the practical impossibility of the operation. As Jeremiah re-iterates: the nations “have called you an outcast, saying: ‘It is only Zion! No one cares for her’” (Jeremiah 30:17).

 

In September 1944 David Ben-Gurion addressed the issue of the hardness of the nations’ hearts, who quickly avert their eyes when Jewish people were being murdered, preferring to focus on other matters:

Freda Kirchwey, American journalist and social commentator, wrote these words in 1943: “In this country you and I and the President and the Congress and the State Department are accessories to the crime and share Hitler’s guilt. If we had behaved like humane and generous people instead of complacent, cowardly ones, the Jews lying today in the earth of Poland and Hitler’s other crowded grave yards would be alive and safe; and other millions yet to die would have found sanctuary.”

The same cold-hearted and anti-Semitic dynamics which characterized Western leadership in WWII are characterizing an increasing number across the globe. This is being seen in the speed with which public opinion has turned against Israel  – from shock at the Hamas savage atrocities of October 7, 2023, to demonstrators cheering jihadi terrorists and embracing them as freedom fighters (Freiheitskämpfer – a term reminiscent of the German terrorist Baader-Meinhof Gang [Rote Armee Fraktion] back in the 1970’s).

The indifference of Hamas

The Allies did not bomb Auschwitz, and so the Jews of Europe continued to be gassed and burned there. Yet those who made the decision to let Nazi genocide continue were able to sleep at night with a ‘clear conscience,’ not concerned about Jewish casualties. Similarly, in Gaza the jihadi terror group Hamas has made it their habitual ‘order of battle’ strategy to use Gazan human shields while attacking Israeli civilians with rocket attacks and jihadi fighter land attacks. After committing these double war crimes and atrocities, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are also able to sleep at night ‘with a clear conscience.’ They also are not concerned about Jewish or even Gazan casualties.

Hamas’ leaders are willing to fight Israel ‘to the last Palestinian Gazan,’ while they hole up in their rat’s nests of underground tunnels or in luxury hotels in Qatar. Hamas leaders’ willingness to sacrifice their own people reminds one of Adolf Hitler’s private declaration to Albert Speer at the end of his life on March 18, 1945: “If the war is lost, the nation will also perish. This fate is inevitable. There is no necessity to take into consideration the basis which the people will need to continue a most primitive existence.”

Here is an enlightening May 13, 2018 quote from former Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, Colonel Richard Kemp: “Hamas has followed this strategy many times in the past, firing rockets at Israeli civilian communities and constructing under the border sophisticated attack tunnels from which fighters would storm into the heart of Jewish communities and carry out mass murder and abduction. Thousands of Palestinians have died, including human shields that are so central to Hamas’ strategy, as the IDF has been compelled to forcefully defend its people. The world has often reacted with horror and outrage blaming Israel for the bloodshed provoked by Hamas – just as intended.”

Kemp also notes: “While political leaders such as Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak have so far consistently resisted calls for Israel to cease fire, they constantly say that Israel must observe the laws of war and minimize civilian casualties. They know that is exactly what the IDF is doing, and their words amount to posturing to appease elements of their electorates that oppose support for Israel. They should know better than to provide cover for Hamas and its supporters in this way.”

The speed at which the nations have pivoted against Israel, and the pustulating wound of anti-Semitic violence smearing across the planet – these are prophetic markers of both encroaching darkness and great spiritual harvest.

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 

Living in the shadow of World War III

On October 6, 1981, four Islamist Egyptians (two soldiers, one ex-soldier and an engineer) jumped out of military trucks in front of the presidential viewing stands during the Egyptian Army’s victory parade commemorating the eighth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. They threw four grenades into the grandstands and then opened up with four clips of AK-47 submachine gun fire at close quarters until their ammunition was exhausted. President Anwar al-Sadat and ten others were murdered, while 28 were wounded.

A pre-coordinated Islamist insurrection broke out two days later in Asyut in Upper Egypt, and the city fell under Islamist control for a few days. The revolt was quashed at the cost of 66 police deaths and 21 Egyptian paratrooper fatalities (who had been brought in from Cairo to mop up) as well as over 100 policemen wounded. On April 15, 1982 the two soldier-assassins (Khālid al-Islāmbūlī and Hussein Mohammed) were executed by firing squad at the al-Gaber al-Ahmar firing site, while the other two assassins (Abdel-Hamid Abdel-Aal and Atta Tayel Hemida Raheel) were hanged at Cairo’s Central Prison. A third man Egyptian was hanged – Mohammed Abd al-Salam Faraj, a 27-year-old engineer. He had provided ammunition to the assassins, and had written a jihadi booklet (Al-Farida al-gha’iba, The Neglected Duty [of jihad]) calling for the assassination of all Muslim leaders who were not sufficiently jihadi in their outlook and policies.

The Blind Sheikh and his followers

According to Tala’at Fuad Qasim, ex-head of the jihadi terrorist organization Gama’a Islamiyya (the Islamic Group) it was his organization that organized the assassination of Sadat and recruited the team-leader al-Islambuli. Members of the Islamic Group's ‘Majlis ash-Shura’ (‘Consultative Council’) were headed by the famed ‘blind sheikh’ Sheikh Omar Abd al-Rahman, who issued an Islamic ruling (‘fatwa’) in August 1981 excommunicating Sadat, thus paving the way to his assassination:

Sheikh al-Rahman was asked in a 1993 interview about Sadat’s assassination: “At your trial in the Sadat assassination case you told the judge it was lawful to shed the blood of a ruler who does not rule according to God’s ordinances.” The sheikh replied, “Yes, I told the judge that whoever does not rule as Allah orders is an infidel. And if you apply that rule to . . .  Sadat and [Hosni] Mubarak, they are all infidels.” To be branded as an apostate carries a death sentence in Islam. The blind Sheikh was closely related to the jihadi terror group Egyptian Islamic Jihad (also known as Islamic Jihad) which had been founded by Faraj, and which later merged into Al-Qa’eda.

On the fringe of Sadat assassination plot in 1981 was a prominent Egyptian doctor Ayman al-Zawahiri, He was arrested by Egyptian police after Sadat’s murder, and immediately became the spokesperson for the jailed plotters. Former CIA analyst and counter-terrorism expert Bruce Riedel notes that al-Zawahiri, as Osama bin Laden’s deputy and eventual successor, became the leading al-Qa’eda ideologue since its inception.

This ‘Who’s Who’ of notorious jihadi terrorists are spiritually connected to Gaza’s Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and all spring from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood movement. Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi (whose fatwas legalized Hamas suicide bombings) fills out the rogues’ gallery here, having had his home base for decades in Doha, Qatar – not far from the USA’s huge al-Udeid Air Base, where CENTCOM has its Combined Air Operations Center.

The prophetic timeclock – “takes a licking but keeps on ticking!”

Two of our dear prophetic friends separately shared things that they believe they heard from God. Both are worth chewing on.

One of these men told me that God spoke to him when Sadat was murdered, and told him that this jihadi slaying – the assassination of the leader of Islam’s largest country – was the beginning of World War III. The above jihadi master-terrorists described should give us pause for thought: is coming world war going to be connected to the Middle East – specifically, to the Jewish people and their state; to jihad and its armies; and to Middle East geopolitical factors?

Our other friend told me how the Lord told him to turn on his TV. It was the morning of September 11, 2001. As images of jet airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center, he felt the still small voice of God saying to him: “The time of the hunters has begun!” (see Jeremiah 16:16  and Jeremiah 30:6-8; both passages speak of hard times to come for the Jewish people, which will ultimately lead to national salvation and restoration).

The ‘hooks in the jaws of the nations’ (see Ezekiel 38:4) could very well be virulent Islamic anti-Jewish jihadi hatred – the same kind evidenced in Hamas’ pogrom atrocities of October 7, 2023. This could act as a magnet for the Muslim world, drawing it down. The words of Ezekiel 38 are strikingly similar to events that the world has just witnessed:

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 

Reversing jihad

The shedding of blood is serious business in the Bible. God instructed Noah and his sons: “But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. I certainly will require your lifeblood; from every animal I will require it. And from every person, from every man as his brother I will require the life of a person. Whoever sheds human blood, by man his blood shall be shed – for in the image of God He made mankind” (Genesis 9:4-6). The death penalty for murder is one way that the God of Jacob uses to instill fear in the heart of mankind – to fan into flame a reverence for life.

YHVH declares to Moses in Deuteronomy 32:35: “Vengeance is Mine, and retribution.” Retribution is the deserved and severe punishment inflicted on someone as vengeance for a wrong or criminal act. God promises to visit His divine vengeance on the enemies of the Jewish people, those who cause harm to and shed the blood of His Hebrew servants. He even commands the nations to rejoice with the Jewish people as YHVH avenges the blood of the sons and daughters of Jacob by punishing anti-Semites:

In Psalm 94:7 the psalmist even calls the God of Jacob the ‘God of vengeance:’

Biblical vengeance

Biblical vengeance is rooted in God’s justice and has a special connection with violence committed against the Jewish people who under the protection of the Abrahamic Covenant (see Genesis 12:3). God’s wrath is kindled against the hatchers of anti-Semitic schemes; the Scriptures say that He will turn wicked plots against the evil people who devised them. Judges 9:56 describes this dynamic as ‘God repaying wickedness by returning all their wickedness on their heads.’ It is a major theme in the Bible:

When we read the Bible as if it really means what it says – especially when it talks about times of war – we discover that it is a Jewish book, one wherein the God of Jacob passionately defends His Jewish people and destroys their enemies. Some followers of Yeshua find it difficult to accept this: they prefer to focus on how Jews are sinful and thus are deserving of judgment. Certainly, all descendants of Adam and Eve do sin, but our observation is that a cold-hearted imbalance has affected some Christians in this area. They choose to do PR work for Israel’s enemies rather than to labor ‘for Zion’s sake’ (see Isaiah 62:1, 6-7) – for defending, protecting and interceding for the Jewish people.

God’s enemies hate both the Jews and the God of the Jews

The majority of Christians see the Bible primarily as a devotional book and not as a book or history and prophecy about the Jewish people, written to inform all people of YHVH’s ways and priorities. Certainly, the Scriptures have wonderful applications to us and to our lives – but not at the expense of the Body of Messiah ignoring what God wants us to see: YHVH’s priority choosing of the Jewish people –

Here are eight Scripture passages which shine a divine spotlight on how the God of the Hebrews opposes those who seek the murder, torture, rape and kidnapping of the Jewish people. He commands those who believe in Him to call out to Him, beseeching Him to scatter, curse and destroy these enemies:

These above aspects of God’s character are things that many Westerners have never seriously considered. But men and women who have served in combat forces often have an easier time relating to the reality of these truths. Exodus 15:3 tells us: “YHVH is a Man of war; YHVH is His name!”  The God of Jacob understands that spiritual warfare also involves the enemy trying to physically destroy the Jewish people and their land. These realities do not take YHVH by surprise. As He revealed to Moses on the Eve of Passover: “For I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and fatally strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the human firstborn to animals. And against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments. I am YHVH!” (Exodus 12:12)

Jihadi conquests will soon be annulled

Muslims who believe the Qur’an also believe in and are committed to jihad – physical and violent war against Jews, Christians and secularists – until these three groups either bow the knee and declare their belief in Islam, or submit to a second-class slave-like status as dhimmi (‘protected ones’) under Islamic dictatorship, or are beheaded for opposing jihadi armies. All lands conquered by Mohammed’s armies are considered by Islamic jurisprudence to be ‘waqf’ – Muslim-controlled endowments forever.  Those who long for the triumph of the mujāhidīn (the jihad warriors’ army) ardently look forward to the day when all countries will be in submission to the green banner of Mohammed. For them this is an article of faith; that is what they expect from history future.

Over 100 different ethnic groups were brutally conquered by the armies of Islam in the original jihadi invasions. National freedoms were taken away; people were forced to convert to Islam at the point of the sword or be slaughtered; women were raped; native languages were made illegal and the speaking of Arabic was required of all. All the North African ethnic populations (including Berbers like Saint Augustine) were forced to now define themselves as Arabs, Muslims and descendants of Ishmael – even though nearly none of them were Arabs or descendants of Abraham or Ishmael (see my book ‘Jews, Arabs and the Middle East: a Messianic perspective’ for more background here).

Today in the Middle East, Islam is the beating heart of Replacement Theology.  It has borrowed Samaritan and Christian expressions of Replacement Theology (where Jews are no longer considered the chosen people and their gifts and callings have now been transferred to ‘the new religion’) and Islamized them: Ishmael replaces Isaac; Mecca replaces Jerusalem; the Qur’an for all practical purposes replaces the Bible; Mohammed replaces Yeshua as the highest Messenger; etc. However, one thing remains constant throughout – whether Samaritan, Christian or Islamic: anti-Jewish hatred. If anything, anti-Semitism gets amplified through Qur’anic teaching and through jihad:

The God of Jacob unequivocally declares that He will undo the effects of jihad when He restores the Jewish people. There will be a restoration of the people of Jacob to their own Promised Land. He will use Israel as a war-club to defeat all His Middle Eastern enemies. In the end, the Jewish people will destroy their destroyers:

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 

In order that secrets of many hearts be revealed

The CIA, the SVR-RF (formerly KGB), the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), the Service de documentation extérieure et de contre-espionnage (SDEDE; formerly le Deuxième Bureau), the German Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND),  the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Israel’s ha-Mosád le-Modiʿín u-le-Tafkidím Meyuḥadím (the Mossad – Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations) – all of these national security organizations make it their business to uncover the secret thoughts of many hearts. The lifeblood of intelligence analysts is to penetrate into the heart and mind of their target – to understand their worldview and their habits, their motivations and their way of thinking. This often involves more art than science.

The famous Louis Agassiz (Professor at Neuchâtel, Harvard and Cornell) explained to his students, “Facts are stupid things unless brought into connection with some general law.” The most brilliant intelligence analysts, even if they have access to the most reliable sources, can sometimes walk right by the very thing they are looking for, without being aware of it. An outstanding example was James Jesus Angleton, Chief of CIA Counterintelligence for more than 20 years, who failed to discover Soviet double-agents living in Washington, D.C. That included his especially close friend Kim Philby, a KGB master spy who was simultaneously chief British liaison to US intelligence agencies.

A wilderness of mirrors

The English author T.S. Eliot once asked: “In a wilderness of mirrors what will the spider do?” His question: should the spider attack what seems to be an incoming threat, or is that threat only a mirrored reflection of himself? The term ‘a roomful of mirrors’ describes a confusing or disorienting situation in which it is difficult to distinguish between truth and illusion, between competing versions of reality. James Jesus Angleton liked Eliot’s term ‘wilderness of mirrors’ and used it to describe the “myriad of stratagems, deceptions, artifices, and all the other devices of disinformation which the Soviet bloc and its coordinated intelligence services use to confuse and split the West . . . an ever fluid landscape where fact and illusion merge.” At the end of his life, Angleton, having somewhat lost contact with reality, succumbed to paranoia regarding the issue of Soviet double-agent penetration of Western intelligence agencies. He had become a prisoner of his own ‘wilderness of mirrors.’

The October 7, 2023 jihadi mega-atrocity terror attack by Hamas is connected to another ‘wilderness of mirrors,’ even apart from it being Vladimir Putin’s birthday. Various sources are being uncovered by Israeli Hebrew-speaking media and social media, revealing that concrete information of the pending Hamas terrorist onslaught had made its way into the hands of IDF signals intelligence prior to the October 7 ‘Black Saturday’ attacks. A Hamas manual with full battle plans for the October 7 terror attack was one of these items. It included plans to conquer IDF positions in southern Israel bordering the Gaza border region; capturing kibbutzim and moshavim in the area; murdering and kidnapping residents; and attacking the three regional cities of Sderot, Ofaqim and Netivot.  It described how pick-up trucks would launch the invasion along with motorbikes and hang-gliders, and how a barrage of Hamas anti-tank missiles, rockets and mortar fire would prepare the way for the attack. This is exactly how the jihadi terror attack unfolded on October.

Israeli journalist Avishai Grinzaig gave a presentation about this on Kan Channel 11 Israeli TV on Thursday, November 23, 2023; Channel 12 broadcasted a similar report that evening. Later that evening Grinzaig’s clip was edited by the IDF military censor and shrunk from 3:44 minutes to 2:32 minutes. Other cases have also come to light: a senior and experienced non-commissioned officer as well as a junior officer in the IDF’s prestigious UNIT 8200 (signal intelligence) alerted a senior IDF officer well in advance of October 7, of what looked like drills by two companies of Hamas’s elite Nukhba force for a major terrorist operation – a highly organized and meticulously planned mass invasion of Israel. The drills included conquering a model of a kibbutz, of the Erez IDF checkpoint, and of IDF armored vehicles. That senior officer dismissed their warnings as “fantasies.” He stated that a distinction needed to be made between what Hamas could plan and what it could accomplish in reality. He then threatened them with military punishment if they persisted in shouting out a warning: “I don't want to hear again about this nonsense. If you all bother us again with these things, you'll be court-martialed.”

The Hamas manual also sketched out a taqiyya strategy of deception based on Islamic principles, whereby Israel would be lulled into complacency in various ways:

A similar dynamic occurred in Israel’s history exactly 50 years and one day prior to the October 7 attack – on October 6, 1973. The Yom Kippur War (also known in the Arab world as the Ramadan or October War) surprised an unprepared Israel. Eleven hostile Arab invaders (Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Kuwait, Sudan), as well as six supporting nations (Soviet Union, East Germany, North Korea, Pakistan Lebanon and Cuba) broke through into Sinai and the Golan Heights.

Amazingly, just before the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War in October 1973, AMAN (Israeli military intelligence) and the MOSSAD had received the entire Arab order of battle as well as many concrete warnings, including from a Mossad double-agent who was President Anwar Sadat’s son-in-law. But the military, intelligence and political shomrei hasaf (Hebrew, watchmen or gatekeepers) had let their guard down. The prevailing perspective (konseptzia in Hebrew) was that the Arab world would never dare to attack Israel and if they did, they would be quickly and soundly broken on the battlefield. But in the meantime, Soviet military and intelligence forces analyzed Israeli weaknesses and came up with deadly battlefield strategies. These included new battlefield weapons like the anti-tank AT-3 Sagger, the latest SAM 6 anti-aircraft missiles, jamming equipment, etc., as well as strategic military disinformation. Israel’s false assumptions and lack of preparedness cost the IDF dearly in military casualties: an estimated 2,800 dead; 8,800 wounded; 293 captured; 400 tanks destroyed and 663 damaged or captured; 407 armored vehicles destroyed or captured; 102 aircraft destroyed.

Waiting for shawarma

A few years ago, Rachel and I went out to buy fast-food shawarma near Jerusalem. A former head of Israel’s Shabak/GSS (Israel’s FBI) came in to order take-out. For many years I had hoped to meet this man and ask him a question or two. I went up to him, engaged him in conversation and then asked him: Is it possible that the General Security Services and the Mossad underestimated an important factor in their fight against jihadi Islam – the spiritual dynamic of jihad? Could it be that this underestimating of the enemy hobbled the security services from being more effective in dealing with these people? He agreed that they may well have underestimated the power of jihadi beliefs in the equation. Yet this man and many other Israeli ‘gatekeepers’ basically believe that it is possible to cut a deal with the PLO, the Palestinian Authority and perhaps even Hamas – and that a Palestinian state is something with which Israel can co-exist. All problems are solvable – if Israel makes it financially worthwhile and stays out of Gaza’s way.

Of course, this man is probably not a believer in God; he certainly doesn’t give that impression. He and most of his fellow gatekeepers – heads of Mossad, GSS, IDF Chiefs, AMAN (IDF military intelligence) – seem to look upon religious faith as something for less evolved and more simplistic people. Spiritual beliefs are a side issue when considering geopolitical realities, they would probably say. These gatekeepers’ blindness is anchored in their secular worldview, one which ignores or mocks the biblical reality of Satan and the demonic. For them, Islam is simply one of the three great monotheistic faiths. The murderous anti-Jewish teachings of Islam’s source documents should simply be dismissed out of hand as ‘bad form.’ See my book ‘Jews, Arabs and the Middle East: a Messianic perspective’ for more background, available at https://davidstent.org/.

The threats that jihad pose to Israel are all too real. Yet they have been ignored by a predominantly secular Jewish country more in tune with Starbucks than with Shabbat. Many of our gatekeepers failed to adequately guard the gates of Israel, and 3,000 jihadi rapists and murderers just flooded into the kibbutzim and towns of the Western Negev. Blurred vision not only characterizes the security services; it also finds a comfortable armchair among Israeli politicians and diplomats, professors and oligarchs. Instead of warning Israel and preparing for the clash with international jihad, these gatekeepers have become ‘partners in peace’ with our mortal enemies. They have fallen asleep on the job. October 7, 2023 was a massive wake-up call.

Gazan and West Bankers – partners in jihad

The rumbling of lies is increasingly heard in world media as brazen statements abound about how Gazan Palestinians are ‘mostly peaceful innocents’ and how West Bank Palestinians ‘want nothing but to live a quiet life and be reconciled to Israel.’ These two points could not be further from the truth. Here are some US Administration statements which make some false declarations which do not meet the test of reality, and then two recent Palestinian Public Opinion Polls taken in Gaza and the West Bank by Palestinian organizations which set matters straight:

According to the November 14, 2023 Public Opinion Poll conducted by the Arab World for Research and Development (AWRAD) and published by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) in Ramallah, West Bank, here are some results:

According to the previous September 2023 poll (#89):

Here are some conclusions which can be drawn from the above statistics:

A majority of Palestinians want to replace Israel with an Iran-backed terror state, one which would feel comfortable burning, beheading, torturing, raping, murdering and kidnapping Jews.

 

Any country whose leaders advocate establishing a two-state solution which would incorporate such a populace is pushing – not for a solution – but for ‘a Final Solution’ for the Jewish people. Such behavior does not come from those who ultimately seek our best interests.

 

Insistence that Israel must commit national suicide by submitting to such international pressure, and threats against the Jewish state unless it accepts this solution as ‘the only path to peace’ and ‘the best we can do’ – these are false and evil claims, and they are based on satanic deception.

 

World leaders in Spain, Belgium, Russia, France, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc., are pushing hard for a ceasefire. Buch a step would result in two nefarious results: one, Hamas and its jihadi advocates would declare that they have defeated Israel, and this would increase the strength of jihadi forces worldwide. Two, Israel would still have a murderous Hamas-ISIS army on its borders, actively seeking to carry out more mega-pogroms like October 7, 2023. Those world leaders who advocate such solutions are not our friends and allies.

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 

Deception, dissimulation and destruction

“The chief end of man is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever!”  This is the first statement that 120 British theologians came up with in their Long Parliament as part of ‘The Westminster Shorter Catechism.’ Many Christian children in the Western world memorized this confession as part of their church confirmation service.

According to 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.’”

9/11 is  nearly 1,400 years old

Osama bin Laden clarified jihad – this highest of all Muslim callings – in his letter responding to a group of prominent Muslims just after 9/11. He states that unchanging core convictions undergird and justify jihadi terrorism in both Qur’an and Hadith.

Nearly 1,400 years previous, in 634 A.D., a pre-battle conversation took place between Persian General Rostam Farrokhzad and Rabi’ bin Amir (the envoy of Muslim commander Sa’d ibn Abī Waqqas), recorded in ‘The History of a-Tabari, Vol. 12.’ Bin Amir lays out his military and religious goals for the coming clash in a manner strikingly similar to bin Laden, rooting them in fundamental Islamic doctrine:

Qur’anic Muslims see jihad as a religious duty, a universal missionary obligation to convert everyone to Islam – either by persuasion or by force. Expansionist jihad for them is an altruistic endeavor – to bring Allah’s rule to a world living in bondage. Islamic dictatorship under Shari’a [Islamic law] rule is seen as a supreme good for both Muslims and non–Muslims. The Qur’an and Hadith also encourage violent behavior while doing jihad (see Qur’an 8:60 and 47:4) – similar to Hamas terrorist actions on October 7, 2023 – rape, kidnapping, murder and torture (see my book at https://davidstent.org/books/ for more details: ‘Jews, Arabs & the Middle East – A Messianic Perspective’).

‘We hate you until you change’

Westerners find it hard to comprehend why hatred for non–Muslims is considered ‘kosher’ by most Islamic religious authorities. Since many Westerners have been influenced by a Marxist perspective of history, the consensus jumps to the assumption that Islamic hatred is a by-product of economic deprivation, of poverty. Then again,  others opine: perhaps it was something the West did – dismantling Turkey’s Caliphate in WWI; conquering Muslim nations from Casablanca to Baghdad; creating the sinful evils of Hollywood, McDonald’s, Madonna or the Beatles . . . But the unpalatable truth (one that upsets the secular ‘woke’ apple-cart) is that Muslim hatred of Jews, of Christians and of the West flows directly from Islam’s source documents:

In a recent article titled “Why We Hate You & Why We Fight You,” the Islamic State (ISIS) gives six reasons why Qur’an-obedient Muslims hate Christians::

In this ISIS document, reasons #5 and #6 mention ‘grievances’ against Western foreign policies – only to quickly clarify:

One of the main sources of jihadi hatred, violence and murder stems from the fact Muslims can’t accept the reality that Jews, Christians and secular people don’t want to become Muslims. This has engendered a spiritual unease which casts a shadow on Islam’s truth-claims: if Islam’s revelation is the last and final revelation and if Mohammed is the greatest prophet, how can it be that this fact is not accepted by the nations? It is interesting to note that the Islamic shout ‘allahu akbar’ (often yelled out during jihadi terror attacks) technically means ‘Allah is greater’ – greater than Jewish or Christian perspectives. A competitive one-upmanship lies at the root of this jihadi shout.

Muslims are supposed to do dawah – to do outreach and social welfare to non-Muslims – in order to bring them into the community of Islam.  But when the world spurns Islamic advances, what springs up in the hot Middle Eastern soil is a combination of fear, control and murderous hatred. The dynamic is like that of David’s son Amnon who tried to seduce his step-sister Tamar. When spurned, he ended up violently raping her and throwing her out of the palace: “Then Amnon hated her with a very great hatred. Indeed, the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her” (2 Samuel 13:15).

‘This declaration is for foreign consumption’

Back in 2002 Bin Laden sent a different letter out, this time to non-Muslim Americans. That communication focused on the presentation Western-friendly talking points and the airing of social-justice grievances. The reasoning behind these two different letters is instructive:

By framing ‘grievances’ to Western audiences in secular political terms, these jihadi armies are hinting that, if the West withdraws support from Israel, terrorism will cease in the West and peace will come to the Middle East.  This is deceptive rhetoric, giving the false impression that Islam can be tamed and controlled. Unfortunately, this propagandistic spin has been accepted at face value by many so-called ‘experts,’ including CIA thinkers, US State Department diplomats and White House leaders.

Yet when speaking to the Muslim world, jihadi terror groups like al-Qa’eda and Hamas speak plainly – in Israel we say “they are speaking in Arabic” – and boldly state their top priority – a zealous commitment to jihad as presented in Islamic holy texts. Their view of the Last Days is an Islamic one: they look forward to a full destruction of the Jewish people, to the crushing and enslavement of Christians, and to the murder of all secularists and pagans who refuse to bend the knee to Allah.

‘This declaration is for internal consumption’

For decades Yasser Arafat and the various streams of the PLO have declared their commitment to peace and reconciliation with Israel – when addressing Western English-speaking audiences. Yet when addressing Arabic-speakers, these same PLO leaders preach jihad and hatred for Israel. One outstanding example of many, is the May 10, 1994 closed-doors speech that Arafat gave at a Johannesburg, South Africa mosque (which was secretly recorded). Everything Arafat said in Arabic that day was a basic breach of PLO legal commitments under the Oslo Accords:

Abbas Zaki,  former PLO Ambassador to Lebanon and a member of Fatah's Central Committee, is a stellar example of a PLO leader whose many statements in Arabic reveal that the PLO is duplicitous (using taqiyya) regarding its commitments to the peace agreements that it has signed with Israel:

Lying like a rug in the Middle East

The sobering lesson from these examples is that jihadi declarations and ‘facts’ cannot be accepted as truthful. Lying and deception are baked into the public pronouncements of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, etc., because. As Mohammed declared, “war is deceit” (in Arabic, am-harb khid’ah). Hamas press releases regarding the number of casualties (as well as how many were women, children, etc.), the number of wounded Gazans, how many hostages there are, where they are, and how they died or were murdered – all of these figures are considered part of jihadi propaganda campaigns. From an Islamist perspective, what is happening cannot be described as ‘war and peace,’ but ‘war and deceit.’

Raymond Ibrahim, a widely published expert on the Middle East and Islam, draws a line in the sand here:

Taqiyya – by way of deception

The Arabic word taqiyya is related to the Arabic concept for ‘piety,’ Its root meaning is ‘to protect’ or ‘to guard against.’ The Qur’an advocate for taqiyya in Surah 3:28 and Surah 16:106, where the context deals self-preservation from persecution or murder. The late Dr. Sami Makaram, a Druze Islamic Studies professor at the American University in Beirut, was the world authority on taqiyya and the author of the only academic book exclusively devoted to it, states in his ‘At-Taqiyya fi’l-Islam’ (‘Dissimulation in Islam’) that “taqiyya [deception] is of fundamental importance in Islam. Practically every Islamic sect agrees to it and practices it. We can go so far as to say that the practice of taqiyya is mainstream in Islam, and that those few sects not practicing it diverge from the mainstream . . . Taqiyya is very prevalent in Islamic politics, especially in the modern era.”

The Islamic pedigree of this teaching is ancient:

Years ago, I was privileged to hear a series of lectures given by an American missionary to Muslims. He took great pains to explain that, while lying is a cause for shame in the West, that is not the case for taqiyya in Islam. For Muslims, he clarified, taqiyya (or lying to infidels in order to advance and protect Islam) is both a virtue and a duty. There is shame, however, in being caught in a lie. This basic understanding of accepted Islamic behavior is essential for anyone who wants to make sense of jihadi strategies, whether they be Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, etc.

Taqiyya forever as a weapon of war

Commenting on Qur’an 3:28, Ibn Kathir, a highly regarded authority on the Qur’an, writes in defense of taqiyya, “Whoever at any time or place fears … evil [from non-Muslims] may protect himself through outward show.” He then quotes the Hadith al-Bukhari where Mohammed’s close companion Abu ad-Darda said, “We smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them.” That same passage quotes al-Hasan, “Doing taqiyya is acceptable until the Day of Judgment.”

Honored Islamic scholars have stated unequivocally that deceit is integral to the waging of war:

The Qur'an describes Allah in various places (Surahs 3:54, 8:30, 10:21) as the best makar, that is, the best deceiver or schemer. The Arabic word used here is ‘ماكر’ (‘maakir’), comes from the root m-k-r.  The cognate word ‘makr’ meaning deception. In the Qur’an (Surah 3:54), referring to those who opposed Jesus/Isa, it says, “Then they schemed [against the Messiah], and Allah countered their schemes by schemes of His own. Allah is the best of schemers.”

Taqiyya in Gaza

In an Arabic interview on October 8, 2023 on Russia Today TV, Senior Hamas official and Head of Hamas Foreign Relations Ali Baraka boasted openly about how Hamas used taqiyya to deceive the Israeli military and security services:

The Islamist strategy of taqiyya is not only used by Hamas in Gaza. It is used throughout the world, including in the US, Canada and Europe.

On the morning of March 22, 2012, Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old French-Algerian – also known as ‘the Toulouse gunman’ – shouted out something to the RAID elite French anti-terror unit before he jumped out of his Toulouse apartment window and was neutralized. “It’s not the money, it’s the deception that’s critical!” he yelled. Merah’s ‘last will and testament’ may have seemed enigmatic to the uninformed, but it was chock-full of meaning for counterterrorism experts. Merah was referring to the role of ‘taqiyya’ in his ability to remain a ‘sleeper agent’ as an Islamic form of religious dissimulation as an act of jihadi deception. One of the best-known jihadi taqiyya sleepers was the al-Qa’eda ‘Hamburg cell’, the infamous group of jihadis who carried out the September 11, 2001, attacks, led by Mohamed Atta.

Taqiyya is “a radicalized version of concealment,” said French anti-terrorism judge Marc Trévidic in an interview with FRANCE 24. Intelligence agencies have been aware of the taqiyya dynamic since the mid-1990s, when al-Qa’eda began to advocate this technique among recruits plotting attacks on Western targets. “These people who took the path of taqiyya were called ‘sleepers.’ This is when we began to discover that after their passage through the jihadist training camps in Afghanistan, the recruits were sent home and directed to make a show of their ordinary, integrated lives - sometimes even masquerading as unbelievers,” said Trévidic.

A divine right to deceive?

Raymond Ibrahim contributes two sober suggestions to this discussion:

“At the most recent inter-faith conference in Madrid in July 2008, King Abdullah asserted: ‘Islam is a religion of moderation and tolerance, a message that calls for constructive dialogue among followers of all religions.’ Days later, it was revealed that Saudi children's textbooks still call Christians and Jews ‘infidels,’ ‘hated enemies’ and ‘pigs and swine.’ A multiple-choice test in a book for fourth-graders asks: ‘Who is a 'true' Muslim?’ The correct answer is not the man who prays and fasts, but rather: ‘A man who worships God alone, loves the believers and hates the infidels.’ These infidels are the same people the Saudis want dialogue with. This raises the question of whether, when Saudis call for dialogue, they are merely following Mohammad’s companion Abu Darda’s advice: ‘Let us smile to the face of some people while our hearts curse them’?”

“There is also a philosophical – more particularly, epistemological – problem with taqiyya. Anyone who truly believes that no less an authority than God justifies and, through his prophet's example, sometimes even encourages deception, will not experience any ethical qualms or dilemmas about lying. This is especially true if the human mind is indeed a tabula rasa shaped by environment and education. Deception becomes second nature . . . ‘Radical’ Muslims who closely observe sharia law, which splits the world into two perpetually warring halves, will always have a ‘divinely sanctioned’ right to deceive, until ‘all chaos ceases, and all religion belongs to Allah’ (Qur’an, Surah 8:39).”

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 

Telling the truth in the Middle East

“In war, truth is the first casualty,” said the Greek playwright Aeschylus. For the jihadi terror organization Hamas, it seems that truth is actually one of its first targets. The tsunami of disinformation, lies, propaganda and denials that is rushing out of the mouths of Hamas spokesmen and leaders catches many Westerners off-guard. But those who have followed Hamas’ bloodied trail of falsehood, atrocities and massacres over the years, none of this is surprising.

This newsletter examines some of the more outstanding deceptions that Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have engaged in over the last month.

Prophecies are not always bright and cheery

In 1 Kings 22 the Davidic king Jehoshaphat found himself manipulated into a military alliance with Ahab king of Israel against the king of Aram (modern Syria). Ahab was a wicked king (1 Kings 21:25). He and his Sidonian (Lebanese) wife Jezebel spread Baal worship (which included human sacrifice) throughout the land of Israel (1 Kings 18:19) and spilled much blood of YHVH’s prophets and servants (2 Kings 9:7).

Before setting out to war on the Golan Heights, Jehoshaphat felt uneasy and wanted prophetic confirmation from the God of Jacob. Ahab assembled 400 prophets in his court who officially were followers of YHVH, and this prophetic guild gave the kings a uniformly positive answer: “Go up, for YHVH will hand it over to the king!”  But Jehoshaphat was still uncomfortable: “Is there no longer a [true] prophet of YHVH here, that we may inquire of him?” And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “There is still one man by whom we may inquire of YHVH, but I hate him, because he does not prophesy anything good regarding me, but only bad. He is Micaiah the son of Imlah.”

Micaiah was summoned to the royal court post haste, but on his way there he warned Ahab’s courtiers, “As YHVH lives, whatever YHVH says to me, I shall speak it.”   When Ahab demanded a prophetic word from him, he said, “Go up and succeed, for YHVH will hand it over to the king!”  Evidently Micaiah spoke these words with heavy sarcasm, for Ahab then said to him, “How many times must I make you swear that you will tell me nothing but the truth in the name of YHVH?” Then Micaiah said, “I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains, like sheep that have no shepherd. And YHVH said, ‘These people have no master. Each of them is to return to his house in peace.’” Then the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “Did I not tell you that he would not prophesy anything good regarding me, but only bad?” (see 1 Kings 22:1-28).

Video is truer than fiction

When Hamas jihadi terrorists broke into neighboring Israeli kibbutzim and towns on the early morning of October 7, 2023, they recorded their mass rapes, tortures, murders and kidnappings on GoPro helmet cameras, streaming the atrocities live in real-time. We do not advise anyone to watch these jihadi snuff videos on social media. For those who are not aware of the horrors Hamas carried out, here is a link to one journalist’s description of those events, after he had watched Hamas video footage made available to journalists by the Israeli Press Office. The descriptions are shocking and graphic, describing the demonic activities engaged in by Hamas. And here is another article dealing with how Israel’s Forensic Pathology Center verifies the identities of Israeli human remains after bodies have been mutilated and burned alive by Hamas jihadi terrorists.

Yet, even with these graphic videos circulating freely on social media, Hamas quickly began to deny that these terror events had actually happened. Hamas issued a blanket denial – the 1,200 murder victims were not actually civilians – they were really IDF soldiers. There were no beheadings of women, men and babies; no mass rapes; no burning of living families to death while tied together; etc.  Here are four examples of many, where Hamas flatly denies what can be clearly seen on Hamas video footage:

Marzouk’s claims, says the BBC, “are in stark contrast to the wealth of evidence of Hamas men shooting unarmed adults and children . . . A huge body of evidence has been gathered which documents the range of bloody acts committed by Hamas in Israel on 7 October. BBC journalists went to the scene of the attacks in their immediate aftermath and saw the bodies of civilians who had been killed. We have also verified CCTV footage which captured shootings by Hamas. Separately, footage from Hamas body cameras has been shown to the BBC and other journalists by the Israeli government. Other international news organizations have also pieced together, and verified, evidence of what happened on the day.”

The Palestinian Authority accuses Israeli helicopters of bombing an Israel music festival

In official statement released worldwide to foreign ministries and the UN on Sunday November 18, 2023, the Palestinian Authority’s Finance Ministry claimed that Israeli helicopters arrived at the Nova Music Festival near Kibbutz Re’im on October 7 and bombed Israeli civilians, causing the deaths of at least 350 participants. The Palestinian Authority denied in that statement that Hamas terrorists carried out the massacre at the music festival, even though there were many GoPro video clips taken by Hamas jihadis of their slaughtering of the Jewish festival attendees. The PA stated that Israel then used ‘fake news of a massacre’ “to justify its aggression against Gaza.”  Hamas released a statement as well, saying that an “Israeli fighter jet” bombed the area near the Gaza border, leading to the deaths of hundreds.

According to the Israel Police, the first Israeli helicopter reached the festival compound only at 11:12 a.m., hours after the massacre had begun.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to Abbas’ words, saying, “Today, the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah said something utterly preposterous. It denied that it was Hamas that carried out the horrible massacre at the nature festival near Gaza. It actually accused Israel of carrying out that massacre. This is a complete reversal of truth. Abbas, who in the past has denied the existence of the Holocaust, today is denying the existence of the Hamas massacre and that’s unacceptable.”

US puts the Palestinian Authority in a headlock

A US National Security Council spokesman said that the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ public statement denying Hamas’ massacre of Israeli civilians at the Nova music festival and blaming Israel instead, “does not respect the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives in the terrible terrorist attack carried out by Hamas in October 7. We understand that the Palestinian Authority removed it from their website, and we are glad that the Palestinian Authority has since clarified that this is not their official position.” Actually, the PA did not publish a public announcement correcting the false claims, but simply removed the false statement from its official website. Individuals who heard the phone call between the PA and the US discussing the matter noted that the American side was raising his voice a lot.

Israeli hostages, Gazan hospitals

Hamas has vociferously declared that it is not using Gazan hospitals for military purposes; that it is not hiding hostages, its own soldiers or weapons at hospitals; that it has no underground military infrastructure under Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital:

The BBC’s Jeremy Bowen, in an acid-tongued op-ed, states: “We have to remember that there is no independent scrutiny inside the hospital; journalists cannot move freely into Gaza, and any who are reporting from the site are working under the aegis of the Israeli military. The evidence Israel has produced, so far, I do not believe to be convincing . . . So, for Israel it's crucial to prove that it had no choice other than to use methods that killed thousands of civilians, so that its allies will continue to shield it from international pressure for a ceasefire.”

In the past two days the IDF released surveillance camera footage from al-Shifa Hospital, showing Hamas terrorists bringing two hostages (a Nepali and a Thai who were both abducted from Israel on the morning of October 7, 2023) into al-Shifa Hospital at 10:55 a.m. – four hours after Hamas’ attack on Israel had begun. Hamas terrorists are seen fully armed, and the hospital’s doctors are fully cooperating with the jihadis. Two Hamas terrorists are manhandling the Thai hostage through the hospital wards. Stolen IDF vehicles and Hamas pickup trucks used for the attacks and kidnappings are seen in al-Shifa’s courtyards. Al-Shifa was a pre-planned stop for the terrorists, and the first stop for some (or many) of the Israeli hostages.

The dead bodies of two kidnapped Israelis were found next to al-Shifa hospital, both of them murdered. So far three hostages have been identified as having being murdered by Hamas, with videos released by Hamas of the victims.

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 

The rage of the nations, the hooks of God

King David prophesied that in the Last Days, international leaders of this rebellious planet will unite together to oppose the God of Israel, the Messiah of Israel and the Davidic Kingdom:

Psalm 83 was written down by Asaph – a royal prophet (1 Chronicles 25:1-3), a seer (2 Chronicles 29:30), a worship leader (1 Chronicles 16:7-8, 37-38) and a percussionist (1 Chronicles 16:5). He took up David’s theme and expanded it, prophesying that the nations of the Middle East would form a conspiracy, a military union, with a dual purpose – to form a covenant against the God of Israel, and to totally destroy the Jewish people through genocide:

The shuddering jolt that this planet is now feeling, heralds the arrival of these prophetic days.

Hamas and Israel – two equal narratives? Two equal atrocities?

The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, recently visited Kibbutz Be’eri – where at least 85 of the 1,200 people were murdered on October 7, 2023, and from where about 30 of the more than 240 were kidnapped. With the blood of the Jewish victims still staining the ground, the Spanish-born Borrell stated: “Israel must be defended, but one horror does not justify another: innocent [Palestinian Gazan] civilians, including thousands of children, have died in recent weeks.”

Borrell is not disclosing an important context – something that is common knowledge to all the world media – the fact that Hamas does not allow free press and independent reporting in Gaza. Therefore, the casualty figures it feeds foreign media are have been and continue to be greatly exaggerated. EU representative Borrell’s talking points slavishly follow the diktats of Hamas’s proven propaganda campaign. Here’s how it all works out on the ground in real time:

Borrell compared Hamas’ slaughtering of Israeli citizens to the IDF’s pinpoint targeting of terrorist jihadi sources of fire. This is not only a grossly inaccurate comparison; it is morally reprehensible and innately evil.  To make a moral equivalence between an arsonist and a fireman is criminally malevolent.

The Bible presents us with a measuring rod in Judges 11:12-33 which helps to clarify such diplomatic dishonesty. The people of Ammon had been terrorizing and murdering Jewish people who had settled in formerly Amorite (not Ammonite) territories. Jephthah the Judge sent envoys to Ammon to see if a peaceful solution was possible: “What conflict do you and I have, that you have come to me to fight against my land?” The Ammonites responded with a falsified narrative, accusing Israel of stealing Ammonite land: “It is because Israel took my land when they came up from Egypt, from the Arnon as far as the Jabbok and the Jordan. So return them peaceably now.” Jephthah vehemently denied these Ammonite lies, recounted the actual biblical history and then declared: “So I have not sinned against you, but you are doing me wrong by making war against me. May YHVH, the Judge, judge today between the sons of Israel and the sons of Ammon!” But the king of the sons of Ammon disregarded the message which Jephthah sent him . . .  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 Avel Kramim. So the sons of Ammon were subdued before the sons of Israel.”

Using Jephthah’s same Bible-based approach, the historical account in the Book of Joshua shows that the God of Jacob gave the whole area of Gaza to Judah as part of their tribal inheritance: “This is the inheritance of the tribe of the sons of Judah according to their families . . . Ashdod, its towns and its villages; Gaza, its towns and its villages, as far as the Brook (Hebrew, nahal) of Egypt and the Great Sea, even its coastline” (Joshua 15:20, 47). Jihadi invading armies led by Amr ibn al-As conquered Gaza around 638 A.D.. That was when Arabs entered the Land of Israel. The original kosher occupants of the Land of Israel, according to the God of Israel, are the Jewish people – not the Arabs.

How to support terrorists while lecturing Israel about not getting mad

EU’s High Representative Josep Borrell, in his brief visit to the scene of Hamas’ slaughter mass rape, torture and kidnapping of Israeli babies, children, teenagers, fathers, mothers and pensioners, rebuked Israel for any anger they might feel at these atrocities, and warned them not to mete out justice on Gazan terrorists: “I understand your fears and your pain. I understand your rage. But let me ask you not to let yourself be consumed by rage. I think that is what the best friends of Israel can tell you, because what makes the difference between a civilized society and a terrorist group is the respect for human life.” Borrell is raising the threat of a blood libel against Israel; he is claiming that Israel’s destruction of terrorists, their weapons, their rocket launchers and HQs, is morally equivalent to Hamas’ atrocities against innocent Israeli civilians.

A glance at Borrell’s background is helpful here: he helped to draft the European Constitution that eventually led to the Treaty of Lisbon, and at that time opposed the inclusion of the term “Christian heritage” to describe Europe’s spiritual history.

The God of Jacob’s perspective on these matters is markedly different from that of the European Union. YHVH is angry at the nations’ casual and cavalier attitudes toward the Jewish people and their welfare, and He vows to respond with burning anger, with vengeance and fire against those who do not care for Zion, or who show more care for Hamas than for Zion:

At the annual IISS Manama Dialogue security summit in Bahrain, Josep Borrell stated: “Hamas cannot be in control of Gaza any longer. So, who will be in control of Gaza? I think only one could do that – the Palestinian Authority.” As pointed out in our November 12, 2023 newsletter, the Palestinian Authority is itself a terror group which subsidizes terrorists. It has Muslim Brotherhood and Nazi origins. Its leader denies the Holocaust. The PA/PLO is shot through and through with corruption, etc.

How to shrink Israel while strengthening Israel’s enemies

On December 17, 1975 then 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 volunteered, “We can’t negotiate about the existence of Israel but we can reduce its size to historical proportions … So, I think in ten to fifteen years, Israel will be like Lebanon, struggling for existence, with no influence in the Arab world” (https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB107/iraq04.pdf). This State Department realpolitik position still guides the thinking of many American politicians and presidents today.

On November 18, 2023 German Chancellor Olaf Scholz criticized Israel’s settlement policy in the West Bank on Saturday and repeated calls for dividing the land of Israel – a two-state solution. “We don't want any new settlements in the West Bank.”

This same goal is being incessantly repeated by most world leaders today, a sobering foreshadow of Joel 3:1-2 and Zechariah 14:1-3.

The IDF is striving with all its might to eradicate Hamas – both the terrorists and their infrastructure – from Gaza. It is grueling work. At the same time, the Islamic world and their Western sympathizers are turning the screws, put as much pressure as they can to stop Israel in its tracks – so that Hamas can live to fight and slaughter Jews another day. Hamas has stored food, medical supplies and gasoline to keep its organization going for some time. There are no shortages in this department – provided that Hamas stops stealing UN oil and allows ordinary Gazans access to their warehouses.

World pressure is now on Israel to open up the spigot so that Hamas can more easily resupply its forces from replenished jihadi stockrooms. These dynamics have been filmed and broadcast to the world, though ignored by much of the world’s media cartels. But the world is strangely silent regarding Israel’s insistent demand – first let all the hostages go free, and then humanitarian aid can be allowed. But the hostages do not seem to be the highest priority for the EU, the UN or the USA; the world is attempting to snatch that Ace of Spades from Israel’s hands, and instead is strengthening the hands of Israel’s enemies.  Imagine if during 1944 in WWII, the League of Nations insisted on sending humanitarian aid convoys to Berlin or Tokyo before an unconditional surrender was achieved. WWII would still be going on.

Two thought-provoking questions:

Ammon and Edom – mocking Jewish walls and Jewish armies

In Nehemiah’s day, an Ammonite leader who lived in what is today central Jordan, mocked Jewish efforts to restore their defenses and their homeland: “Now Tobiah (in Hebrew, Tuvya) the Ammonite was near him, and he said, ‘Even what they are building – if a fox were to jump on it, it would break their stone wall down!’” (Nehemiah 4:3). Tobiah’s mockery of Nehemiah’s construction work activated the cursing aspect of the Abrahamic Covenant (see Genesis 12:3), directed against those who mock or denigrate the Jewish people. Tobiah thus brought God’s judgment upon the people and country of Ammon.

In Ezekiel’s day, a prophetic word was given to the Edomites (ancient dwellers in what is today southern Jordan, who are today called ‘Palestinians’) foreseeing that these descendants of Esau would mock the Jewish people’s connection to the Jewish homeland, and would plunder the Land of Israel, claiming it for themselves:

Today in the country of Jordan, similar dynamics of mocking and cursing are occurring, just as they occurred in Bible days. Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, rather than sadly admitting that Hamas has slaughtered Israeli citizens and has taken innocent Jews hostage, sharply stated instead that “Israel is taking 2.3 million Palestinians hostage.”

Safadi mocks the IDF’s ability to achieve its war goals, and doubts that Israel’s army can achieve anything – just like Tobiah doubted that Nehemiah’s wall could keep out even a fox:

Brett McGurk, the White House’s National Security Council coordinator for the Middle East, also spoke at the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain, where he laid out the U.S.A.’s non-negotiables: “No forced displacement [of Palestinians from Gaza]; no reoccupation [of Gaza by the Israelis, regardless of God’s promise in Joshua 15]; no reduction in ]Gazan] territory [by Israel]; no threats to Israel [by Hamas]; no besiegement [of Gaza by Israel].” Once again, the US State Department has put itself at loggerheads with the God of Jacob over the dividing up of the Land of Israel.

For those who appreciate history, it is worth recalling some facts that reveal most of the above statements as hypocritical diplomatic posturing:

Though Foreign Minister Safadi opines that Hamas and ISIS cannot be placed in the same category, facts on the ground speak otherwise: Hamas’ terror tactics on October 7, 2023 were exactly those of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, while ISIS manuals and flags were found on the dead bodies of Hamas terrorists. Not every diplomatic declaration accurately reflects the truth.

God’s hooks in the jaws of the nations

Ezekiel prophesies about a Last Days war in the Middle East when the God of Jacob will put hooks into the jaws of Middle Eastern nations and, like a fisherman hauling in a huge catch, will draw those nations down to Israel for their judgement and destruction. From a jihadi perspective, Israel’s existence and its military victories over neighboring countries and jihadi terror groups are reason enough to invade and attempt to destroy the Jewish state.

The White House’s National Security Council Coordinator for the Middle East insists that a Palestinian state has a crucial place in any possible diplomatic deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia: “In this case, what was true before Oct. 7 is even truer now. That central issue must be addressed. And as Hamas is degraded, we are determined to help address it.” The hooks are already in place.

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

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