By Walid Shoebat (Early Sunday Special)
In spite of Trump’s comments on Jerusalem, only seven countries — other than Israel and the U.S. — voted in line with Washington’s interests: Togo, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Marshall Islands, Guatemala and Honduras.
Only seven insignificant nations decided to support Jerusalem being the sole property of Israel while the rest of the world through the United Nations either abstained or went against it.
Then to add more, Israel’s parliament snubbed the world and passed a law on Tuesday that bars ceding any part of Jerusalem to a foreign power without the approval of a supermajority of lawmakers, a move that will lead the nations to resort in the future to take east Jerusalem by force:
“And I will gather all nations to Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken, and the houses shall be rifled, and the women shall be defiled: and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the rest of the people shall not be taken away out of the city.” (Zechariah 14:2)
And archeology is also yielding treasures that increase the tensions over the contested city’s governance and control; seven pieces of archeological evidences that were discovered which prove that Jews governed Jerusalem 2700 years ago.
The seventh seal, a stamped piece of clay is an artifact from Israel’s First Temple period (1006–586 B.C.) that was owned by the governor of the city of Jerusalem – the highest-ranking local title held in the city during biblical times nearly 3,000 years ago.
Governors of Jerusalem, appointed by the king, are mentioned twice in 2 Kings, which refers to Joshua holding the position, and in 2 Chronicles, which mentions Masseiah in the post during the reign of Josiah.
The small object portrays two men in striped robes facing each other above the Hebrew inscription that reads “lesar ha’air.”
When Turkey’s Erdogan insists to make Jerusalem the capital of an Ottoman caliphate, he is simply fulfilling scripture and proving its claim. God clearly said that He will “make Jerusalem a trembling cup to all the surrounding peoples” (Zechariah 12:2).
The fight over Jerusalem, Erdogan proves, is over beautiful Jerusalem and not the arid Mecca. They even contribute in the coming of Christ: “So shall the LORD of hosts come down to fight for mount Zion, and for the hill thereof.” (Isaiah 31:4)
The Bible clearly predicts that before Christ’s second coming that Judea will be governed by Jews “In that day will I make the governors of Judah like an hearth of fire among the wood” (Zechariah 12:6). Israel will recapture the city after Christ returns “And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced” (v.10).
Only then will Israel recognize her Messiah.
People search for evidence of God, yet such proof is everywhere. Was Israel established by a people who were interested in self-fulfilling biblical prophecies? Was Jerusalem recaptured in 1967 because Jews wanted to self-fulfill biblical prophecy?
This is a Jesus style question that is not easily answered by naysayers. For Israel to self-fulfill this prophecy about gaining east Jerusalem, one must answer: how was such prophecy self-fulfilled by the Jews?
It was a war declared on Israel which Israel won in the 1967 Six Day War and as a result East Jerusalem was given to Israel. If one insists about self-fulfilling prophecies, it was the Muslim Arabs who accomplished such mission. After two thousand years, East Jerusalem was back in the hands of the Jewish people, just like the Bible said it would be (Zechariah 12:6). The Bible also predicts Jerusalem’s soon-coming war to force the division of Jerusalem.
While the world accuses God’s people of being apocalyptic, in reality, it is God’s enemies who usher in the fulfillment of biblical prophecies.
In other words, these prove the very thing they are trying to debunk.
But there is another issue to deal with: Christians who do not support God’s plan, that Jerusalem is for the Jews.
These need to visit the Temple Mount and read what is written on the Dome of the Rock: “Far be it from God that he should have a son!” These words encircle the inside of the Dome of the Rock Mosque in Jerusalem.
Is this the side to take?
The Christian will argue that the Jews too, like the Muslims do not see Jesus as “the Son of God”.
True. However, the Muslim book has no historic link to any concept of God having a son while the Jewish book does. Ancient Judaism and Christianity had very similar interpretation when it comes to the Messiah. People of ancient Israel during the temple era were not your typical followers of today’s ‘rabbinic Judaism’. In those times they clearly recognized that God did have a Son, even if they didn’t fully understand it. In ancient Israel, the Son, was understood as being the promised Messiah and today much effort is put by rabbinic Judaism to allegorize the ‘son’ as Israel/Jacob and his suffering.
But if one is to understand how ancient Israel understood the Messianic passages one needs to read the ancient sources that reveal how Jews interpreted scripture in the Targums. So if one reviews today’s rabbinic Judaism regarding, lets say, Isaiah 9:6, they would gymnastically claim its regarding Hezekiah. However, according to Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Isaiah 9:6 is interpreted,
“The prophet saith to the house of David, ‘A child has been born to us, a son has been given to us; and He has taken the Law upon Himself to keep it, and His name has been called from old, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, He who lives forever, the Messiah, in whose days peace shall increase upon us.'”
So here are the ancient Jews clearly attributing these titles to the Messiah and not Hezekiah. While Hezekiah is a partial fulfillment, he is not the ultimate fulfillment. The wise must include the depth and types and different facets on how God hits several birds with one stone.
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan interprets Micah 5:2 like this:
“Out of thee Bethlehem shall Messiah go forth before me to exercise dominion over Israel . . . he whose name was mentioned from before, from the days of creation.”
The ancients recognized that Messiah will come from Bethlehem. And if the Jew today is awaiting a messianic coming, and his Messiah is to be a Jew born in Bethlehem, such a Messiah would be Palestinian, since there are no Jews living in Bethlehem today.
There is another problem for the Jews who deny Jesus as Messiah. It was widely recognized in ancient Israel the Jews would retain the ability to govern Israel and only when the Messiah comes will they lose the scepter:
The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, Nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, Until Shiloh come: And unto him shall the obedience of the peoples be. (Genesis 49:10)
So who is this Shiloh? It is the Messiah. In other words, Jews will rule Israel and will not lose the kingly scepter until the Messiah comes. Well, Israel lost the scepter two millennia ago. So the Messiah must have come already.
Yet if one examines the interpretations from before Christ came, they agree with Christianity. In Targum Onkelos Gen 49.10 is interpreted:
“The transmission of dominion shall not cease from the house of Judah, nor the scribe from his children’s children, forever, until the Messiah comes, to whom the Kingdom belongs, and whom nations will obey.”
This ‘Shiloh’ is the Messiah, the rightly ruler of Israel whom the scepter belongs to.
In fact, both the Targums and the New Testament disambiguate the messianic texts of the Old Testament. The Targums truly open the window for us to see how the ancient fathers, the temple era Jews viewed the scripture. As it turns out, it is different from what we see in today’s ‘rabbinic judaism’.
Indeed there are allegories, but there are also plain literals. Detractors will always use one interpretation while excluding the other meaning. This is how a detractor is usually recognized. He is a dog with a single bone in his mouth. He chews on it. He buries it. He sustains his life on it even though it has no meat.
Throughout the Targums, most often, they do not interpret the “Son” as rabbinic Judaism does today, where they switch the ‘son’ to mean ‘Israel’. In the Targums it is not ambiguous. The “Son”, the “suffering servant” “Shiloh” “Mighty God” … are all interpreted as “the Messiah”.
So in essence, the way to recognize truth from error is to compare by taking oneself back to history and compare one’s religious practices and interpretations back to the Holy Spirit guided fathers. For a Jew today, they need to compare how Jews viewed scripture and tradition in a time before their temple was destroyed. Keep in mind that without a temple there is no Judaism.
For a Christian, to evaluate oneself, imagine yourself sitting with Policarp and discussing your worship services/interpretations and compare notes.
But there is always a divide between the true and the false, the virgins with oil and the virgins without, and that is; a continual successive set of interpretations prior to any major schism. In other words, if the lid does not match the pot, it should be rejected.
2 Chronicles is perhaps the most ignored book of the Bible, yet it packs much prophetic meaning regarding this point. It elaborates on Abijah’s pre-battle speech in 2 Chronicles 13 (a war between Abijah and Jeroboam) which in itself is a prophecy that gives us some insight on how to recognize God’s true ordinances and how the church will split. Abijah said of Israel when it departed from Judah’s true practice:
And they [Judah] burn unto the Lord every morning and every evening burnt sacrifices and sweet incense: the shewbread also set they in order upon the pure table; and the candlestick of gold with the lamps thereof, to burn every evening: for we keep the charge of the Lord our God; but ye have forsaken him. (2 Chronicles 13:11)
Jeroboam selected priests who had no succession and were not descendants of the priestly authority of Levi (1 Kgs 13:33). Abijah reminds that a true form of worship had incense and shewbread and an altar “pure table”. The shewbread is the bread of the presence that God is with us.
Such verses are also prophetic regarding the divide within Christendom. There is a true form of worship with the Eucharist being a pillar of our faith and is set as a perpetual sacrifice forever. The split between north and south in ancient Israel is also paralleled by a split in Christendom’s south versus north and the further corruptions and defections from within the church.
Abijah condemned Jeroboam and all the northern tribes of Israel for driving out the priests of the LORD. Similarily the two forms of Christianity today are very clustered with Protestantism dominant in the north and Catholicism in the south. One (protestantism) split from the normal forms of worship that was recognized by the fathers. One can say that the north represents the northern kingdom of Israel. When the reformation swept through Northern Europe, it disrupted the delicate balance of power. Many nobles went for the church’s throat and dissolved the priesthood, especially in England where persecuting the priests was rampant. This is reminiscent to what Abijah said: “But didnt you drive out the priests of the LORD” (2 Chronicles 13:9).
This is exactly what happened throughout northern Europe.
All one has to do is search the scriptures for “north” and see how God divides north from south to even proclaim through Ezekiel, Zechariah and Joel that God’s enemies come from the north, while Christ comes with “the whirlwind of the south” (see Zechariah 9:13) Armageddon is definitely a divide between south and north.
Abijah is also a type of Messiah. He reveals how Christ will settle these issues when He comes. Christ sent Peter and Paul to Rome. We have the entire book (the Book of Romans) to prove it where Paul blessed Rome and prophesied that it will be called “the city of saints”. There, Christ established the center of Christendom. Yet like northern Israel did when Bethel became the center, Protestants made Geneva their center. They abandoned Rome. Abijah complained regarding northern Israel on how the services were conducted by self-appointed priests who had no succession and introduced wrong iconography. Also, Jeroboam’s kingship was illegitimate. So the cult at Bethel was not considered heterodox and did not follow a succession.
In other words, God is in the details.
The lesson for the wise is to monitor the changing face of Christian worship.
The Sacrifice of the Mass all have roots in the Bible and are the consistent practice of the earliest Christians.
And if one complains how Israel sins for not interpreting their Bible correctly, all one has to do is to review how many Christians also interpret the same book, incorrectly. Many Christians argue over the Bible saying that in many verses, “Israel” and “Jerusalem” are not literal. They point that these strictly signify the church. But the wise can see an assortments of allegory and literal. Sure, we can see that when God mentions Israel He also by extension is speaking of His people, the gentile Christians (God’s people). One can review these prophecies about Jerusalem and see that Christendom is falling away and “Jerusalem” has become “Sodom and Egypt”. Today we see a widespread of homosexuality and paganism no different from the golden calves set up by Jeroboam in northern Israel.
But such religious observation stems from ancient Egypt. This is very similar from what we observe rising today in what once was Christendom. How many of us are astonished these days to witness what we witness. We could have never imagined the decaying world we live in today.
And so we must ask: did Christendom fair better than ancient Israel? They in fact are repeating the same exact sins.
The paganism that stemmed from ancient Egypt whether now, or from the ancient times in northern Israel, will soon be dealt with by Christ. Isaiah 19 speaks of this ‘Egypt’:
Behold, the Lord rides on a swift cloud,
And will come into Egypt;
The idols of Egypt will totter at His presence,
And the heart of Egypt will melt in its midst
So is this “Egypt” strictly “Egypt” or is it speaking of the world steeped into the paganism of Egypt?
It is perhaps both. When it comes to scripture the best answer is “C” (all of the above).
Europe and many of the slavs are veering away from Christ’s church returning back in masse to pre-Christian paganism just as John predicted in Revelations. Their form of religion is all derived from Egypt. Why?
After all, what better place than Egypt’s preserved history (Egyptology) can these relearn about paganism?
Isaiah 19 speaks of neopaganism spread from Egyptian mythology which will be the hallmark of the world prior to Christ’s coming. The ultra-nationalist movements from Europe all the way to slavic nations derive from Thor, the sun god in Norse mythology was also the Egyptian Osiris and Kneph, the Phœnician Bel or Baal, and it is accepted freely when slavic neopagans call upon the same God when they invoke Perun.
The American and European Alt-Right’s obsession with a mythical ancient Egyptian deity, Kek, is also Egyptian, while “the Hindus, Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Celts have all yielded striking comparisons [to each other], and the Norse Gods display significant resemblances to members of other pantheons” (A History of the Vikings, Oxford University Press, P.p, 319).
These are the days we live in. And the rest of Isaiah 19 warns of impending civil war where city will fight against city and neighborhood against neighborhood and nation against nation. The world including the west will witness tremendous civil unrest.
The wise few need to take heed and prepare. They need not to fall for the fads of history. Israel lost its nation for focusing more on nationalism instead of observing their Messiah’s coming. God did not spare them and had Jerusalem studded with crucifixes as far as the eye can see.
The unwise virgins without oil simply focus on one aspect of interpreting scripture while they ignore the other. A confused virgin interprets Israel as strictly ‘the Church’ and the other confused virgin interprets Israel ‘without the Church’.
One says Zion is Israel, and nothing else, and the other says that Zion is the Church and nothing more. Each side argues with a half truth while missing the most crucial event: His second coming.
The virgins that miss this one are locked out without a honeymoon. Such are the virgins with lamps, but without oil. In other words, one can carry a Bible (carry a lamp) but he could be completely blind since his lamp is not lit.
There is a Jerusalem on earth and then there is a Jerusalem from above. God made a deal with Abraham and He will keep it. In Ezekiel 36 God promised to bring Israel back to the land. Many argue ‘how could this be if they reject Christ’?
Yet God answers and says that He will bring the Jews back with a clarification:
“I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for mine holy name’s sake, which ye have profaned among the heathen, whither ye went. And I will sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the heathen, which ye have profaned in the midst of them; and the heathen shall know that I am the Lord, saith the Lord God, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes. For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 36:22-25).
This proclamation reads like a newspaper. It is as clear as the sun and needs little or no interpretation. “Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you”. God will ‘sprinkle clean water’ on the Jews. Here it is mass baptism by sprinkling, not dunking.
Why so many foolish people make an issue about dunking versus sprinkling is beyond me. Why so many focus on the stiff necked Jews as being ‘stiff-necked’? God will soon soften these stiff necks by persecution through the Muslim sword.
Persecution is the greatest blessing for God’s people. It is Christ Who will take away the heart of stone out of the Jew, not us. It is not for us to decide their fate. “I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.”
In the meanwhile, we should all work on our own hearts.
For decades, East Jerusalem, especially the 144,000 square meter estate known as the Temple Mount was seen as the future capital of a Palestinian state. How could anyone deny that God exists when He promised that only 144,000 meters out of 196.9 million square meters become the bone of contention for the whole earth?
This land is .0007% of the whole earth.
It perhaps represents the ratio of who enters this ‘narrow gate’ and indeed it is extremely narrow.
Last month, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution criticising America’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and launch the process of transporting its embassy there. The move radically reversed decades of US policy in the region and the majority of observers said it would hinder attempts to establish peace in the Middle East.
But who is objecting? Turkey and the Muslim nations believe that a caliphate is the only legitimate power to rule over Jerusalem. These insist that Trump yield and give Jerusalem to them. In other words what we see is that Christendom is yielding to Islamdom. There is no other way to explain it.
It is practically the whole earth that is going after a false peace and are ‘dividing the land for gain’ (Daniel 11:39). But this is the hallmark of Antichrist. All this while we continue to witness the great falling away which comes first, before Christ comes and judges these nations. With Jerusalem on the mind of nations, the time is nearing and war is on the horizon.