Jewish/Arab Reconcilliation

by James Jacob Prasch

In the Bible, God gave five promises to Abraham. The Lord appeared to him at various times, but the initial calling to Abraham is what is recorded in Genesis 12. The Lord said to Abram at this time before his name was changed, “Go forth from your country from your relatives, from your father’s house to the land which I will show you and I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great and so you shall be a blessing, and I will bless those who bless you and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

The five promises that God gave Abraham are.

1. God promised him a land. This promise was reiterated to his descendants Isaac and Jacob. Avraham, Yitz’chak and Ya’akov in Hebrew, (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob);
   
2. God promised to make him a great nation and God would bless him;
   
3. He promised him a great name;
   
4. God also said “the one who will bless you, I will bless and I will curse the one who curses you” ;
   
5. And last God said, “Through you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

At one time Spain was the number one world power. Spain was the super power of its era. She dominated what was then the New World at the close of the fifteenth century after Christopher Columbus planted the Spanish flag on the island of San Salvador. Spain retained that high position until Ferdinand and Isabella gave in to the Dominicans and permitted them to carry on the Inquisition. The Jews were targeted although they were not the only victims, but they were certainly the focus of much of the treachery. And, all of a sudden Francis Drake sinks the Armada and ‘Britannia rules the waves’. That went on quite well. Great Britain had a Jewish Prime Minister who was a Christian, Benjamin Disraeli. There were such things even then, Jews who believed in Jesus. Felix Mendelssohn the composer, or Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, or the historian Alfred Edelstein to name but a few. Britain was a great power and God blessed Britain.

Britain issued the Balfour Declaration promising Jews the right to return to the Holy Land but later reneged on it and allowed Jews to go to the ovens. Jews burned. So did Liverpool, Coventry and London.

Jews came out of concentration camps run by the Nazis and were then put into concentration camps run by the British even after the holocaust was known. Now there were some British generals like General Dobbie and General Wingate who supported Israel. Moshe Dayan was trained by Lord Wingate. But Glover and the others supported the Islamic Arab world against the Jews, revoking the Balfour Declaration. Britannia no longer rules the waves. It is interesting that after the blitz, after the war, nobody could believe that Sir Winston Churchill was anything less than invincible. Seven days before the election in 1945 he said, “I want nothing more to do with the subject of Zionism. Seven days later the world was amazed he lost the election.

“I will bless them that bless thee and curse them that curse thee.” Not for their sake but for the sake of God’s promise to their fathers. But then, through him all the families of the earth will be blessed. Of course, this is because of the seed of Abraham, the Messiah. Now, the biological seed of Abraham and the anthropological seed of Abraham became two nations, the Jewish nation and the Arab Nation. God would bless all peoples through Abraham’s descendants because of the Messiah.

It would be reasonable to think that the two nations and the two peoples who would be the first to accept Jesus and believe the Gospel would be Abraham’s anthropological descendants: the Jewish nation and the Arab nations. However, that is not the case. According to foreign missionaries, the two kinds of people most difficult to convert to Christianity are Abraham’s literal anthropological descendants: the Jews and the Arabs. The reasons for this are neither sociological or historical. It goes well beyond that. Even though there are intellectually explicable reasons, the reasons go well beyond that. The reasons are spiritual and theological. Through Abraham, salvation would come to all nations because the Messiah, the Seed of Abraham, would be the fulfillment of that prophecy. Yet Abraham’s kinsmen after the flesh, the Jews and the Arabs, are the ones who resist the Seed of Abraham the most.

The prophet Jeremiah gave a prophecy, “For My people have committed two evils against Me. They have forsaken Me the fountain of living water,” [the Messiah would give them the ‘chay mayim’, the fountain of living water as spoken by the prophet Isaiah in chapter 44 and what Yeshua in John chapters 4 and 7 says, Ruach HaKodesh, the Holy Spirit. They would reject the Messiah who would give the Holy Spirit.] And they would “hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that hold no water” (Jer. 2:13). They would invent another religion that would be spiritually bankrupt.

Two Rabbis

The Book of Acts introduces us to a rabbi named Gamaliel. Gamaliel was the apostle Paul’s tutor. He taught Paul how to be a rabbi. Gamaliel was the grandson of a very famous rabbi called Rabbi Hillel. There were two kinds of Pharisees, the school of Shami and the school of Hillel. Paul was from the school of Hillel, was tutored by Hillel’s grandson Gamaliel of whom Judaism, the Mishma, and Judaic history records his death. It was said of him that he was such a Tza-dok, such a righteous man, that righteousness perished from the earth when Rabbi Gamaliel died. That is how the rabbis viewed him; that is how they saw Paul’s tutor. The literary and hermeneutic devices that Paul used in his epistles come from Rabbi Hillel. Paul utilized the principles of Jewish midrash in his handling of the scriptures. Rabbi Gamaliel, this great Tza-dok according to the rabbis to this day, said, “If Jesus is not the Messiah Christianity would disappear.’ Well, it hasn’t disappeared; He must be the Messiah.

Rabbi Gamaliel had other very famous students. One was Onqelos, a descendant of Garim’ gentiles who converted to Judaism. Onqelos is famous because of a targum, a translation of the Hebrew Canon into Aramaic called the Targum Onqelos. There are two main Targamin: Targum Yana Tum and Targum Onqelos. He was a contemporary of two other famous rabbis:Rabbi Sha’ul of Tarsus, better known as Paul the Apostle and Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zak-kai called the Mighty Hammer. They were classmates essentially.

Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zak-kai was smuggled out of Jerusalem in 70 AD during the Roman siege prophesied by Daniel and Jesus in the Olivet discourse and recorded by Josephus and Yusebius. The destruction of the temple presented a big problem to the Jewish leaders at that time. Daniel had prophesied that the Messiah would have to come and die before the second temple would be destroyed. Now they had no high priest and no temple. So Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zak-kai convened a conference at a place called Yavney, not far from the modern city of Tel Aviv, to redefine Judaism and give a new interpretation to the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures. They rationalized, “But we have synagogues, we will replace the temple with the synagogue and we’ll replace the Levitical priesthood with the rabbis and instead of the Korbanim, instead of the sacrifices, we’ll replace those with good works.” A form of Judaism developed from that point, which later came to be known as Talmudic Judaism, or sometimes, Rabbinic. It was quite different from the Judaism of Moses and the Torah, which required the temple sacrifices, for without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

So Yochanan Ben Zak-kai thereby initiated Talmudic Judaism. The new Jewish religion was based on the old one.

A similar metamorphosis occurred in Christianity. Any newly born-again believer reading the Bible would realize that Roman Catholicism is not Biblical Christianity -- neither is Liberal Protestantism or the Greek Orthodox Church. And any Jewish person who is being honest with himself recognizes the fact that Talmudic Judaism is not the Judaism of Moses and the prophets. Jewish rejection of Yeshua, of Jesus, is not the problem; it is the result of the problem. Yeshua said “if you believed Moshe, if you believed Moses, believe Me also.” The problem of the Jews is not that they reject Jesus it is that they reject Moses and the Torah. If they really believed Moses and the Torah they would know He is the Messiah. The rejection of the Messiah is only the tragic consequence of the rejection of Torah.

Rabbinic literature tells us that on his death bed, Yochanan Ben Zak-kai, the man who began this other religion, began weeping and his disciples came to him and said, “Oh Mighty Hammer why is it that you weep?” And he responded, “I’m about to meet God, blessed be His name, and before me there are two roads, one to Paradise and one to Gehenna (that is hell). I know not to which He will sentence me.” On his deathbed, the Mighty Hammer, the founder of Talmudic Judaism, as it became known, died terrified and in tears, not knowing if he did the right thing or the wrong thing. Not knowing if God was going to send him to heaven or to hell.

In contrast, his classmate Rabbi Sha’ul of Tarsus on his deathbed said something else. “I’ve run the good race. I’ve fought the good fight. Henceforth I know there is stored up for me a crown of righteousness.” Every Jew will follow one of these two classmates. Every Jew will follow one of these two rabbis.

Now we come to Abraham’s other children, the Arabs.

Mohamed grew up next to the well of Zumzum. The Hajj already existed. The worship of Allah the Arabian moon god was already in the Kaabah. The hajj was there, Allah was there, the well of Zumzum was there. How did Mohamed begin anything? His father’s name was Abdullah the servant of Allah. What he did was go into the Kaabah and removed one stone for each day of the Lunar year and left the Kaabah one black stone. All Mohamed did was under the influences of Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism, attempt to monotheize the pagan religions of ancient Arabia. He saw that, at that time, Christians did not fight with each other and Jews did not fight with each other. He thought that he could stop the Arabian tribes from slaughtering each other by having one monotheistic religion. As is pointed out, Mohamed, it is a fact recognized by Islam, was a pedophile. He married, at the age of fifty four, a six year old girl and took her virginity at the age of nine. They call him a prophet but common sense calls him a sex criminal

Several years ago there was a TV news documentary that featured wealthy Saudi Arabians with private jets going to India buying impoverished girls for a few hundred dollars, some of them as young as nine, taking them back to harems in Saudi Arabia. “How can you do this?” They were asked. “What’s wrong with it, our prophet did it,” was the reply. Now, to them, this is a prophet. I don’t think God sees pedophilia as holy. He deflowered a little girl? The guy could have been ordained as a Catholic priest these days. Why? Just look at it.

In Timothy, Paul says forbidding marriage is a doctrine of demons. You outlaw what’s natural, people will do something unnatural. In the United States archbishops, bishops and cardinals were caught, not only covering it up, but protecting these sex criminals at the expense of not protecting the children whose lives they were destroying. And when they were caught they didn’t resign; the pope didn’t defrock them. This is Holy Mother the Church? Not my mother. That is not biblical Christianity. Islam is not the worship of the God of Christians and Jews and Rabbinic Judaism is not the Judaism of the Torah.

“Then Abraham said to Lot, ‘let there be no strife between you and me, your herdsmen and my herdsmen for we are brothers’” (Genesis 13:8). Schism continually plagued Abraham’s family and his people and his tribe, with Lot, then between Ishmael and Isaac and ultimately his grandchildren Esau and Ya’akov (Jacob).

There is a theological term some of you may have heard called the corporate solidarity. That’s the theological expression for when one person represents a larger group of people. The name of the patriarch becomes a metaphor for the nation that comes from the patriarch. That is why, for instance, the great tribulation is called the time of Jacob’s Trouble. Jacob wrestled with the Metatron, the Angel of the Lord, Yeshua, an Old Testament manifestation of Christ, and his name was changed from Jacob to Israel.

You and I have two names. The name we were born with before we met the Lord and the name we were given when we met Him, the name in the Book of Life, according to Revelation. When we behave like new creations, God calls us by our new name. When we revert to the flesh, He calls us by our old name. And so it is in Genesis when Jacob behaves like a spiritual man, God calls him Israel. When he is back to his old carnal ways he is called Jacob.

When Jacob wrestled with the Angle of the Lord, it was the dark night of his soul, when he split his family into two tribes, mahaneim meaning two camps in Hebrew. Jacob wrestled to the end of the night. In biblical typology the night is the most common metaphor for the great tribulation. “Watchman, watchman how far is the night?” “The sun and moon did “not give their light. “Work while you have the light, for the night will come no man can work.“ “He is coming like a thief in the night.” The wise virgins needed oil in their lamps to see in the night. In the Song of Solomon, the bridegroom comes for the bride in the night. Jacob wrestles to the end of the night. Unbelieving Israel goes through the whole tribulation. Church is rescued out.

“The Angel of the Lord said to her further, behold you are with child and you shall bear a son and call his name Ishmael (God has heard – Ish-ma-el) because the Lord has given heed to your affliction. The lad will be a wild donkey of a man, his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand will be against him. He will live to the east of his brothers. (Notice the east.) His seed will be divided to be a man of conflict.). His seed will be divided” (Genesis 16:11&12). That’s Ishmael. God would later tell Abraham, “Take your son, your only son.” God recognizes nothing that is done in the flesh. He only recognizes what is done in the Lord. He does not recognize Ishmael. Yet, because he is Abraham’s descendant, God gives him a promise of the land to the east, but there is more to that than this.

“But an uncircumcised male, who is not circumcised in his flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from the covenant he has broken” (Gen. 17:14)…“Then Abraham took Ishmael, his son and all his servants who were born in the house and all who were bought with money, every male among them in Abraham’s household and circumcised the flesh of their foreskin, that very same day, as God had said to him” (Gen. 17:23). Notice Ishmael was included in the covenant at that point.

God’s Covenant

Then God told Abraham, “Know your wife, Sarah shall bear you a son, you shall call his name Yitz-chak (Isaac) and I will establish My covenant with him, for an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him” (Gen. 17:19-20). Islam, of course, substitutes Isaac with Ishmael and it substitutes Christ with Mohamed. It actually says the Messianic prophecies about the Messiah in the Old Testament are about Mohamed not Jesus. However, verse 20 gives God’s promise to Ishmael, “And as for Ishmael, I have heard you, behold I will bless him and make him fruitful and will multiply him exceedingly. He will become the father of twelve princes and I will make him a great nation.” The Jews began with twelve princes, the descendants of Isaac through Jacob and so do the descendants of Ishmael. Ishmael is incorporated into the covenant by b’rit-mi-lah, by circumcision. There is a promise to both.

“The son of the maid, I will make into a nation also because he is your descendant. I will make him a nation” (Gen. 21:13-18). “And God heard the lad crying and the Angel of God, (the definite article) called to her. What’s the matter with you Hagar? Do not fear for God has heard the voice of the lad where he is. Arise, lift up the lad and behold, hold him by his hand for I will make him a great nation” (Gen. 21:17).

So, you’ve got the first split between the sons, Isaac and Ishmael’ with promises to both for the sake of Abraham. By continuing the line through Abraham and Isaac something else happens. Turn to chapter 25 verse 23: “The Lord said to her two nations are in your womb. Two peoples shall be separated from you body, and one people shall be stronger than the other. The older shall serve the younger. And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold there were twins in her womb. Now the first came forth red all over like a hairy garment and they named him Esau, and afterwards, his brother came forth with his hand holding on to Esau’s heel. So his name was called Jacob (from the Hebrew word a’kov. Ya’kov meaning heel.) And Isaac was sixty years old when she gave birth to them” (Gen. 25:23). Now look at verse 12 of that chapter. “These are the records of the generations of Ishmael.” Notice that Genesis, by divine inspiration, is keen to track the genealogy of both Ishmael and Isaac, with promises to both and nations from both beginning with twelve princes. But in verse 23, “Two nations are in your womb.” These twins are struggling in their mother’s womb.

This harkens back to the fall of man in Genesis 3. The husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church. Because of the fall of man, something has happened to us. Many things have happened. One of them is that because of the fall, men have become insensitive and women have become hyper-sensitive. When a husband and wife get saved, most of the time it’s the wife who gets saved first. There are exceptions to this however. If a husband gets saved first, water normally takes the shape of its container, the wife will usually, eventually get saved. However, if the wife gets saved first, it’s very often much harder to see the husband get saved. Why are women more likely to get saved? If a husband and wife pray together for direction, it will usually be the wife who hears the voice of the Lord first and clearest. Why? Men are insensitive. Men are reliant on female sensitivity.

However, anything God intends for good, the world, the flesh and the devil will always use for evil. Because it is easier for women to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit, because they are more sensitive, it is also easier for women to be seduced by a counterfeit spirit. Leadership is male because men are less vulnerable to spiritual seduction. Remember, the serpent beguiled the woman. Any time a man did not take responsibility spiritually for his marriage and family, there was a disaster. Not just for him, but something that was perpetuated; Adam and Eve, and Abraham and Sarah. She puts him up to it and after he gives in to her nagging - “Get that woman out of my house.” That principle will be true for us if the husband and father does not take responsibility for the spiritual leadership of the family. You are going to hurt not only yourself but you will perpetuate that into your own offspring, until it’s dealt with biblically.

That is partly what happened with Abraham, going back to the fall Satan uses the same tricks over and over but the ramifications of what you see in the middle east now date back to this conflict in a women’s womb all these centuries ago? Yes! Two nations, twins, they look so much alike. We can still see that today. Sephardic Jews and Arabs look so much alike. There are Jews in Israel who speak Arabic as their mother tongue. Sephardic music, Yemenite music, the cuisine, it’s almost the same as Arab culture.

“Then Isaac, his father, answered and said to him, behold away from the fertility of the earth shall be your dwelling and away from the due of heaven from above. By your sword you shall live and your brother you shall serve but it shall come about when you become restless that you shall break his yoke from your neck” (Gen. 27:39-41). So Esau bore a grudge.

We are told about the sin of Esau in the New Testament. It’s reiterated. He despised his birthright. Now Jacob was a conniver who was always trying to appropriate the blessing and promise of God by his own scheming. But, every time he did, he wound up the man on the back of the proverbial eight-ball. He was slick! He was clever! When Laban tried to con him, he conned Laban. He was slick, but he kept ending up in the muck up to his neck.

The Birthright

Look at the history of the Jews. Why the holocaust? Why the inquisition? Why the pogroms? Why in their own land do they have no peace? The curse of the law! You either keep the Torah, which you can’t since 70 AD or you accept the Messiah who fulfilled it, otherwise you are under the curse. Every Jew is under one covenant or another -- no exceptions. If they say they don’t believe, it doesn’t matter. They are under the curse of the law. Mankind is accursed but Israel becomes God’s teaching tool. They couldn’t keep the Law of God. The purpose of the Torah was to point them toward the Messiah who would save them from the inability to keep God’s law. The law teaches us through the example of the Jews about our fallen nature, our need for salvation, and our incapacity to get redemption for ourselves. They’re under the curse of the law. I’ve read Hasidic rabbis who admit that. These things happen to us because we haven’t kept the Torah. What they don’t tell you is that they can’t keep the Torah. They have gone the way of Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zak-kai. That was Jacob. But his brother despises his birthright.

God gave the Arabs a lot more land than He gave the Jews. There are no more than fourteen million Jews in the world. And there are well over one hundred and forty million Arabs just in the nations that surround Israel. So, counting land and demographics, He blessed the Arabs a lot more than He blessed the Jews. But then there is wealth. The Kuwaiti government alone recycles fifty-five billion per annum alone in petro dollars through the city of London. In terms of wealth He has blessed the Arabs more than He has blessed the Jews. All that land, all those people, all that wealth and they despise their birthright. They covet a little strip of land.

How does God see this? Now notice what it says about Esau; “By your sword you shall live.” Mohamed’s goal was to see the Arabian tribes stop fighting each other. The only way for the Arabian tribes to stop fighting each other is to reverse the curse put on Ishmael and Esau. But that curse can only be broken in the same way the curse of the law can be broken for their Jewish brothers: the cross of the Messiah -- the one Jews call Yeshua Hamashia. The one Arabs call Yesua Hamasia. Mohamed however, tried to break that curse by putting a Sorah in the Koran called Umah, saying we are one nation and one people.

I used to live among the arabs in London and I used to preach among them every Sunday and when I was in seminary; I’d go down there with my stepladder. I was down there during the war in the Gulf and when the Moslems began to gather I would say, “If you are one nation and one people like the Koran says ,why did King Hussein of Jordan exterminate 18 thousand Palestinians in twelve days? I’ll tell you why. Because the Kepap is right and the Koran is wrong. Tell me, how come one and a half million Moslems died in the jihad, as they called it, between Iran and Iraq? You say, “it’s not jihad.“ Go to Iran and say it wasn’t a jihad. They will kill you. Let me tell you why one and a half million died, because the Bible is true and the Koran is false. You are not one nation and one people like the Koran says. You are a divided nation and a divided people like the Bible says and you will be until you accept the Seed of Abraham.

How come Kuwait has just been invaded by Iraq?” I asked them. I’ll tell you why, because the Bible is true and the Koran is wrong. By that time, I was surrounded by dozens and dozens of increasingly incensed Arabs and they began to scream louder. So, I began to praise the Lord, in Arabic, which only made them angrier. They were going nuts, vehement! One guy was spitting and saying they were going to kill me. And I said , “You’re not one nation and one people. I saw the king of Saudi Arabia on TV – “Help England! Help America! Help Christian nations! Save me from the jihad! Save me from my Moslem brothers! Protect the tomb of the prophet! Save the Kaabah!” From whom? Your Islamic brothers! “His sword will be against everyone, his seed will be divided.” There is no Umah. You want to break that curse? The only one who can break it is the Seed of Abraham.

And likewise, I say to my Jewish friends and family, Zionism is not the way of salvation. You lived in terror in Europe, now you live in terror in you own land. You want to break that curse? The Seed of Abraham, and believe me, they can get almost as angry.

In Genesis 28 verse 9, Esau went to Ishmael and married. Anthropologically you have intermarriage between the descendants of Ishmael who are already cousins, and the descendants of Esau, and we know the nations which they settled, the lands to the east. So, how does God see this? One of the longest chapters in the Bible is Genesis 36. It is the lineage and pedigree of the Arab nations. Why does God give so much space in His Word to the Arabs? Only the Jews get more mention. Because they are Abraham’s descendants and He has a prophetic destiny for them but, there are terrible things prophesied to happen in the Middle East, to the Jew and the Arab. There are unfulfilled prophecies of devastation that are coming to both the Jewish and the Arab nations.

God sees the dispute over land and has determined whose land is whose. God told Moses, “Command the people saying you will pass through the territory of your brothers, the sons of Esau, and live in Seir and they will be afraid of you so be very careful. Do not provoke them for I will not give you any of their land even as little as a footstep, because I’ve given Mt Seir to Esau as a possession. You shall buy food from them, with money, so that you may eat and you shall also purchase water from them, with money, so that you may drink. For the Lord your God has blessed you in all that you have done. He has known your wanderings through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you and you have not lacked a thing. So we passed beyond our brothers the sons of Esau.” (In the eyes of God, Jew and Arab who live in Seir are brothers) and we turned through and passed through by the way of the wilderness of Moab. And the Lord said to me, ‘do not harass Moab or provoke them for I will not give you any of their land as a possession because I’ve given it to the sons of Lot’” (Deut. 2:4-9). These are your kinsmen. Don’t take your brother’s land. I’ve given you this land, that land to the east belongs to your Arab brothers. They are your brothers, that’s theirs, don’t you touch what belongs to them, God told the Jews. All that land, all that wealth, all those people -- Moab, Edom and Ammon are modern Jordan. Don’t touch it! Don’t take it! I gave it to them. God promised them land. He promised them a birthright. But like Esau they despise it. Instead of cultivating it they intentionally turned it into desert. But what comes next? Then they want to usurp what God gave to their brothers, the Jews

This is also recorded in the Book of Numbers. “From Kadesh, Moses then sent messengers to the king of Edom. This is your brother Israel, your brother” (Num. 20:14). Treat me like a brother and I’ll treat you like a brother. We’ll have trade, we’ll be good neighbors, we’ll be friends and we’ll be brothers. That’s what God wanted. But Jacob connives and Esau despises. Thus your brother Israel has said, “You know all the hardship that has befallen us, that our fathers went down to Egypt and we stayed in Egypt a long time and the Egyptians treated us badly and our fathers badly, but when we cried out to the Lord He heard our voice and He sent an Angel and brought us out of Egypt. Now behold, we are at Kadesh (it’s a word for holy in Hebrew) a town on the edge of your territory. Please let us pass through your land. We will not pass through your field or your vineyard. We will not even drink water from a well. We will go along the king’s highway (which is still there in Jordan to this day) not turning to the right or to the left until we pass through your territory.” Edom however said to him, “You shall not pass through us lest I come out against you with the sword.” And again, the sons of Israel said to him, “We shall go up by the highway and if I and my livestock do drink any of your water then I shall pay its price. Let us only pass through on our way, nothing else.” But he said, “You shall not pass through.” And Edom came out against him with a heavy force, with a strong hand. Thus Edom refused to allow Israel to pass through his territory. So Israel turned away from him.

Now when they set out from Kadesh, the sons of Israel, the whole congregation, came to Moses, and the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron at Mount Horeb, by the border of the land of Edom saying, “Aaron shall be gathered to his people and Aaron would die.” This was a bad time for Israel. Aaron was about to die. They were just trying to get by and their own brothers said you can’t come here. But we want good relations. You are our kin. We are descended from Abraham. If you don’t want to sell us water, fine. We just want to go by.” “No!”

Look what God said to the Hebrews concerning the Canaanites. “Wipe them out!” The Amalekites: “Wipe them out!” The Philistines: “Wipe them out!” The Arab, “Don’t touch him, he is your brother, I gave that to him. That’s his. He is not being too kind to you, but I’ll deal with him. Don’t you touch him.” Yet he despised his birthright and he despises it to this day. In the character of Jacob, in the character of Moses, Israel had tried and tried and tried to get along peaceably.

How does this end?

But, we know how it ends in Zechariah 12. However, it’s not the end of the story -- Zechariah 14 is. That speaks of the millennial reign of Jesus, when the nations will come to Jerusalem and celebrate Sukkoth, the Feast of Booths. The Feast of Booths is a picture of the millennial reign, according to Zechariah. That is why at the transfiguration, Peter wanted to build three booths. He thought it was the beginning of the millennium, the Messianic Kingdom. Here is Moses, here is Elijah and here is the Messiah. You’ve got a man who is raptured, a man who is resurrected and Jesus. This is the Millennium. “Let me build three booths.” He thought that this was the Messianic fulfillment of Tabernacles.

During this period, the nations will come and worship the Messiah in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is not even mentioned in the Koran. It is mentioned dozens and dozens of times in both Testaments. There is a place called Alkoots in Arabic but there is no proof that it is Jerusalem. No, it does not end with the return of Christ. Something else happens. This is what the Middle East will come to. The United Nations won’t bring this about. The United States won’t bring this about. The Arab League won’t bring this about. The European Union won’t bring this about. No man will bring this about. No man can bring this about. This will be brought about by one thing and one thing only, the return of Jesus to reign from the throne of David.

The 19th chapter of the book of Isaiah tells us what will happen during the millennial reign of Christ. “In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will come into Egypt and the Egyptians into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians. In that day Israel will be a third party with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth whom the Lord of Hosts has blessed saying ‘Blessed is Egypt my people, blessed in Assyria is the work of My hands and blessed is Israel My inheritance’” (Is. 19:23). Egypt, My people? Assyria the work of My hands? Israel My inheritance. That’s how it will end. There will be peace when the Prince of Peace reigns on the throne of David. Before that there may be a false peace and there will be a false peace, but this will be a real peace.

The Book of Genesis gives us a glimpse of what happens when Jacob is reconciled to Esau. Jacob is indeed reconciled to Esau, when he wrestles with the Angel of the Lord at P’ni-El. Something happens. Jacob is left alone at the darkest and most terrible hour of his history. He sees Esau coming, so he divides his children into two camps in case some get wiped out, others will survive. He thinks Esau is going to wipe him out. But instead, something happens. Esau runs to meet him, grabs his neck, and kisses him, embraces his neck and they wept and he lifts his eyes and sees the women and children. “Who are these with you?” “The children God has graciously given your servant.” Your servant? And the maids came near with their children and they bowed down. And Leah likewise came with her children and they bowed down. And Joseph came near with Rachel and they bowed down. And He said, “What do you mean with all this company?” And he said, “To find favor in the sight of my lord.” But Esau said, “I found plenty, my brother. Let what you have be your own.” And Jacob said, “No! Please, if I have found favor take my present for I see your face as one sees the face of God and you have received me in favor” (Gen. 33:4-5)

For centuries, the rabbis have said correctly, that as Jacob and Esau were reconciled, in the days of Messiah the Jewish and Arab nations will be reconciled. Can you imagine the Jew and the Arab calling each other brother, trying to outdo each other in grace, in righteousness and brotherly love? Can you imagine the Jews saying you take this and the Arab saying no, you take this? Can you imagine a Jew saying to an Arab when I look at you, I see the face of our Maker? That will come about one day. God cannot lie, but you know, I don’t have to wait for that to happen. I see that happen every time a Jew puts his faith in Yeshua the Messiah, the Seed of Abraham. Every time an Arab puts his faith in Yesua, the Seed of Abraham, that happens. I’ve seen Jews and I’ve seen Arabs walk in fellowship as brothers. Oh! It will happen some day, but it is happening this day.

Our ministry in Israel supports evangelism. The evangelists that we help sponsor witness to both Jews and Arabs. I don’t have to wait for it to happen. The Seed of Abraham is already making it happen. I don’t care what the Israeli government says. I don’t care what the Arab governments say. I don’t care what the UN says. I don’t care what the White House or Number 10 says. I care what the Bible says. I know what’s going to happen.

Governments will not have their way in the Middle East. International bodies will not have their way in the Middle East. And above all Satan will not have his way in the Middle East. God is going to have His way in the Middle East