The body of Messiah is going through a paradigm shift – a new Reformation – regarding a proper understanding of the Bible. The Jewish book called the Bible (95% written by Jews, 95% about the Jews – both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Covenant) is not simply a book of devotional teaching for personal encouragement. It is chock full of life-saving information about who is the God of Israel; what He is doing through the restoration of Israel; and how He is sifting and judging the nations based on their heart attitude and response to the Jewish people.
Mocking Moses
But many people still don’t get it. They see the Bible as Sunday School fairytales, and they mock God’s gifts to Israel (including their homeland) and God’s calling on Israel (as a chosen and priority nation) as fables and superstitions which superpowers should definitely ignore. As the Book of Jude warns us, “In the last time there will be mockers, following after their own ungodly lusts. These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly-minded, devoid of the Spirit” (Jude 17-19).
In Nehemiah’s day, talking heads like Sanballat the Samaritan and Tobiah from Ammon, mocked the ongoing Jewish restoration to their Promised Land and capital city. Those talking heads urged ancient Persia (modern Iran) to cut off any connection with the work of Jewish restoration. His exact words are given:
- And he spoke in the presence of his brothers and the wealthy people of Samaria and said, “What are these feeble Jews doing? Are they going to restore the Temple for themselves? . . . Can they finish it in a day? Can they revive the stones from the heaps of rubble, even the burned ones?” Now Tobiah said, “Even what they are building – if a fox were to jump on it, it would break their stone wall down!” [Nehemiah responds to YHVH:] “Hear, O our God, how we are an object of contempt! Return their taunting on their own heads!” (Nehemiah 4:1-4)
As Ishmael and Hagar mocked Isaac the son of promise in Genesis 21:8-10, so some ‘woke’ conservative political commentators mock the word of God and scorn God’s chosen Jewish people, pressuring POTUS Trump to abandon Israel.
Jeremiah talked about a similar dynamic in his day, where people “no longer remember the pronouncement of YHVH, because every person’s own word will become the pronouncement, and [they] have perverted the words of the living God, YHVH of armies, our God” (Jeremiah 23:35-36).
The scriptural principle here is laid out in Exodus 14:31, in the Second Book of Moses: “When Israel saw the great power which the Lord had used against the Egyptians, the people feared YHVH, and they believed in YHVH and in His servant Moses.” When the entire Jewish people saw how YHVH fought for them and destroyed the cream of Egypt’s special forces chariots in Exodus 14:13-14, they believed God, God’s word and God’s messenger. That is the context which Messiah Yeshua referred to in John 5:46 when He declared: “For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me.” Those internet pundits who mock Israel’s calling while advocating for jihadi supporters and states are mocking the God of Israel as well. The phrase “Christ is king” when used by these people – who deny Christ’s choosing of the Jewish people and His love gift to Jacob of the Promised Land – they are twisting the word of God and using it like some anti-Semitic silver cross amulet to ‘chase away vampires’ – God’s chosen people, the sons and daughters of Jacob.
As our dear friend Ricky Skaggs often says, you can’t shake Jesus! And it is Jesus (or Yeshua, as His mother called Him) who speaks to us across the length and breadth of Scripture about His love, His calling and His protection over Israel.
As Jeremiah prophesies regarding a similar context:
- Therefore all who devour you [O Israel] will be devoured, and all your adversaries, every one of them, will go into captivity. And those who plunder you will become plunder, and all who plunder you I will turn into plunder. For I will restore you to health and I will heal you of your wounds, declares YHVH, because they have called you an outcast, saying: “It is Zion; no one cares for her” (Jeremiah 30:16-17).
The Amalek principle
The battles of Joshua are not simply nice children’s stories for Sunday School. They are real events. They reveal to us how YHVH (who is called ‘the Commander of the armies of Israel’; see 1 Samuel 17:25,46) ordered the people of Jacob to conquer and occupy the Land He promised to Abraham. Jacob was no stranger to such military matters:
- Then Israel said to Joseph, “Behold, I am about to die, but God will be with you, and bring you back to the land of your fathers. And I give you one portion more than your brothers, which I took from the hand of the Amorite with my sword and my bow” (Genesis 48:21-22)
When YHVH revealed to Ezekiel that the entire Jewish nation will be His Last Days mighty army (see Ezekiel 37:9-10), He was not speaking of something hitherto unknown. The God of Jacob had spoken to Moses years before, instructing him to conquer the land between the Sea beside Gaza up to the Syrian Euphrates River:
- “YHVH our God spoke to us at Horeb, saying, ‘You have stayed long enough at this mountain. Turn and set out on your journey, and go to the hill country of the Amorites, and to all their neighbors in the Arabah, in the hill country, in the lowland, in the Negev, by the seacoast, the land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon, as far as the great River, the river Euphrates. See, I have placed the land before you; go in and take possession of the land which YHVH swore to give to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, and their descendants after them’” (Deuteronomy 1:6-8)
Edom (also known as Esau) had descendants living in what is modern-day Jordan. One of his grandsons was a tribal chieftain named Amalek, who tried to block Moses and Joshua from entering the Promised Land:
- “These are the chiefs of the sons of Esau. The sons of Eliphaz (the firstborn of Esau) are chief Teman, chief Omar, chief Zepho, chief Kenaz, chief Korah, chief Gatam, and chief Amalek. These are the chiefs descended from Eliphaz in the land of Edom” (Genesis 36:15-16)
- Then Amalek came and fought against Israel at Rephidim. So Moses said to Joshua, “Choose men for us and go out, fight against Amalek. Tomorrow I will station myself on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand.” Joshua did just as Moses told him, and fought against Amalek; and Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. So it came about, when Moses held his hand up, that Israel prevailed; but when he let his hand down, Amalek prevailed. And Moses’ hands were heavy. So they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it; and Aaron and Hur supported his hands, one on one side and one on the other. So his hands were steady until the sun set. And Joshua defeated Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword (Exodus 17:8-13)
The God of Jacob commanded Moses to write out a special scroll as a memorial to remember that YHVH has unfinished business – war – with Amalek:
- Then YHVH said to Moses, “Write this in a book as a memorial and recite it to Joshua, that I will utterly wipe out the memory of Amalek from under heaven” (Exodus 17:14)
One of the last orders that YHVH gave to Moses before his passing, was to charge the Jewish people with finishing off this specific tribe of Edomites once and for all:
- “Remember what Amalek did to you on the way when you came out of Egypt, how he confronted you on the way and attacked among you all the stragglers at your rear when you were tired and weary; and he did not fear God. So it shall come about, when YHVH your God has given you rest from all your surrounding enemies in the land which YHVH your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, that you shall wipe out the mention of the name Amalek from under heaven; you must not forget” (Deuteronomy 25:17-19)
The prophetic perspectives of Moses and David
The God of Jacob, the Commander of the armies of Israel past, present and future, lays out this prophetic principle in Moses’ last prophetic Song:
- “I will make My arrows drunk with blood, and My sword will devour flesh, with the blood of the slain and the captives, from the long-haired leaders of the enemy. Rejoice, you nations, with His people! For He will avenge the blood of His servants, and will return vengeance on His adversaries, and will atone for His land and His people.” Then Moses came and spoke all the words of this song in the hearing of the people, he, with Joshua the son of Nun (Deuteronomy 32:42-44)
The gifts and calling of YHVH on the nation of Israel are irrevocable and without repentance (see Romans 11:29). This is our God, and this is how He relates to nations who raise weapons against the people of Jacob. David son of Jesse sums up the spiritual principle which was true in the Valley of Elah when he faced Goliath, and it is true for David’s people as we face enemies who still occupy Persia/Iran and are energized by the Prince of Persia (see Daniel 10:13-20):
- But David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword, a spear, and a saber, but I come to you in the name of YHVH of armies, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day YHVH will hand you over to me, and I will strike you and remove your head from you. Then I will give the dead bodies of the army of the Philistines this day to the birds of the sky and the wild animals of the earth, so that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that this entire assembly may know that YHVH does not save by sword or by spear; for the battle is YHVH’s, and He will hand you over to us!” (1 Samuel 17:45-47)
Believing and praying!
The biblical principles that YHVH lays out in Scripture are not just for Moses and David’s time. They are for the whole people of Israel today. And all who believe in Yeshua (and who also believe in Moses’ words) can take these promises and apply them in intercessory prayer – for Zion’s sake.
- “They make shrewd plans against Your people, and conspire together against Your treasured ones. They have said, ‘Come, and let’s wipe them out as a nation, so that the name of Israel will no longer be remembered.’ For they have conspired together with one mind; they make a covenant against You” (Psalm 83:3-5)
- “The high praises of God shall be in [the Jewish warriors’] mouths, and a two-edged sword in their hands – to execute vengeance on the nations, and punishment on the peoples; to bind their kings with chains, and their dignitaries with shackles of iron” (Psalm 149:6-8)
- “For YHVH has a day of vengeance, a year of retribution for the cause of Zion” (Isaiah 34:8)
- “There is a sound of fugitives and refugees from the land of Babylon, to declare in Zion the vengeance of YHVH our God” (Jeremiah 50:28)
- “The Spirit of ADONAI YHVH is upon me, because YHVH anointed me to bring good news to the humble. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim release to captives and freedom to prisoners; to proclaim the favorable year of YHVH and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn in Zion” (Isaiah 61:1-2)
How shall we then pray?
- Pray that Iranian jihadi plans to destroy Israel and to cause great casualties will be nullified
- Pray that divine wisdom, strategies and discernment be given to the leaders of Israel and the USA
- Pray for the raising up of Ezekiel’s prophetic Jewish army throughout the earth
Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.
In Messiah Yeshua,
Avner Boskey
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