A prophetic thought on the ancient Jewish-Muslim enmity
The present crisis in Israel must be seen in the context of biblical understanding. It is the drama of a Jacob people called to be the Isra-el of God so as to bless all the families of the earth. The blessing is the impartation of, and witness to, the one, true, living God who creates and redeems by the same omnipotence; who reveals His righteousness in judgment (i.e., the summation of what He is as God); and His mercy in restoration and return!
Arab indignation against Israel presumes a virtue greater and other than Israel’s. But Israel’s predicament reveals the Arab heart-condition [and that of all nations]!
Thus says the Lord, “For three transgressions of Edom [Esau’s descendants] and for four I will not revoke its punishment, because he pursued his brother with the sword, while he stifled his compassion” (Amos 1:11).
Esau [Arab] is a ‘humanity’ that despises its brother; it’s a hatred that delights and takes glee in his brother’s destruction! Without knowing it, Israel is suffering that Esau might know its need of salvation. In being saved, only then can the Arab help Israel to their salvation! By Arab acknowledgment of Israel’s choseness, the Arab becomes chosen in the process, that God might be glorified and be all in all!
The issue of Jerusalem is not whether it belongs to Israel or the Arabs. Jerusalem happens to be God’s chosen sanctuary. It is a sanctuary that is contingent on Israel’s resurrection as a nation, “…what will their [Israel’s] acceptance [return to God] be but life from the dead?” (Romans 11:15b). Israel’s national resurrection (predicated upon Christ’s) goes beyond the question of nationalism and religion, or any of its present rivalries. The end of those systems is death, not life! At stake is the greater Kingdom of God!
And the Lord will be King over all the earth; in that day the Lord will be the only one, and His name the only one (Zechariah 14:9).
Then it will come about that any who are left of all the nations that went against Jerusalem will go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to celebrate the Feast of Booths. And it will be that whichever of the families of the earth does not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, there will be no rain on them (Zechariah14:16-17).
All nations will come up to Jerusalem, not to the center of Jewish nationalism, not to any ethnic superiority, but to the broken, contrite, and messianic glory as epitomized in the character of its Christ! Thus the promises of God to the Patriarchs, to Abraham and David, as well as the prophecies of Moses and the Prophets of all ages must be fulfilled if God be God! This will validate the Bible itself as the testimony of the Creator God who has prophesied all this, and who alone is God, and will not share His glory with another!
If we do not desire His glory on the basis by which His wisdom has ordained it, we identify ourselves as wicked and deserving of an eternal judgment, both as Jews and Arabs! God Himself is the Author of the ultimate crisis which has come to the Land, the epicenter of which is Jerusalem.
The whole Zionist enterprise is predicated upon a faulty premise. It was birthed out of the Nazi Holocaust, and brought a return, which in turn, raises the issue of the Land – and with it, the specificity of God. This humanly-contrived return, however, raises the issue of God as God, and calls men to choose for or against God! The Zionist return raises the issue of who the one true God is: Allah or Yahweh? It raises the issue of which bible is true: the Koran or the Torah? It raises the issue of who, in His mercy, has taken the initiative to bring His perspective into the Jewish and Arab consciousness: Allah or Yahweh?
The Jew must die to his prejudice against Christ, and to any hope of success for Israel that is performed independent of God! The Muslim must die to his hatred for his brother, the Jew, and, in acknowledgment of Jewish choseness by the sovereignty of God, surrender to God’s choice!