When one looks at a map of the Middle East and looks at the size of the nation Israel and the surrounding nations does it occur to anyone that those countries close to Israel are not its allies?
The nations that surround Israel are Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. None of these nations or the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank are allies with Israel. Many of these are ancient enemies of Israel and have been in conflict for many years, even before 1948. So with all this oppression that surrounds Israel both physically and philosophically is God done with Israel? Will Israel fall into the hands of its enemies once again? I do not think the second question can be answered so we will deal with the first question.
Romans 11 very clearly instructs the church of that day, and ours, that God is not done with Israel in the large scheme of things. Yes throughout history God has had to reprimand them and then take away their privilege of existing as a nation until they repented of their sins and submitted to their proper potentate.
Paul the apostle has the ultimate hope for the nation Israel to finally receive the Messiah as the fulfillment of the Jewish Scriptures. Paul begins the chapter: “I ask, then, has God rejected His people? Absolutely not! (Romans 11:1a) Verse two tells us “God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew” (Romans 11:2a). He further tells us that even today there is still a remnant chosen by grace.
The United States has been Israel’s only faithful ally since 1948 because of our view of the Bible and our relations with our Jewish immigrants and respect for God allowing this country to exist. But in the last few years the alliance between our two nations has been denigrated and is now in great peril when the U. S. allows one of the ancient enemies of our national friend to be more dangerous than ever.
When you cross God’s people then you must begin to count the days until God takes His protective hand off of your country. Is that beginning to happen in this day as we enable Iran to continue to build weapons of mass destruction? And when attempting to appease a nation at the expense of a person’s rights to live in freedom in their home country, that country and its future is in peril.
The God of the Bible has an everlasting covenant with Abraham in the first book of the Bible entitled Genesis. In Genesis 12:2-3 we read: “And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (ESV). This covenant between God and Abraham was made approximately 2200 years before Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary.
Any nation that would dishonor Abraham and his descendants, the Israelites, would be cursed. God promised Abraham in Genesis 12 that those who bless him would be blessed or that is; “to endue with power for success, prosperity, fecundity (produce a lot of offspring), longevity, etc” (Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament [TWOT], Volume 1, page 132). The antonym of blessing here is cursing so those who would dishonor Abraham would not have the power to succeed, to prosper, to have many offspring or to live a long productive life.
So for a nation to dishonor Israel the ramifications are grave. The nation that turns against Israel or wants the downfall of Israel will fall itself in a short amount of time. The western church is obligated by Scripture to stand beside Israel for it is in the best interest of western nations, most specifically the United States.
The Church is to pray for the peace of Jerusalem and we are commanded to pray for our own nation. We must pray that the government would be for the good of the people and not for those in positions of power and most specifically that the government would leave the church alone to worship its God as the Bible teaches. It did not turn out well for Egypt in the book of Exodus when the Pharaoh would not allow the Hebrew nation to leave.
May the United States stand with Israel during these tumultuous days so that we can have the continued blessing of God. I understand that we have many national problems and that we may be under that judgment of God now, but no matter what we cannot and should not ignore the dire warnings of Genesis 12 because God is not done with Israel.
Thanks to our Guest Contributor:
Pastor Ray Peters
Harvest Alliance Church
