Angelic Conflict part 116: Human history – Dan 9:24-27; Mat 24:15-28; Deu 32:8-9; Mal 3:6; Jer 31:35-37; Gen 25:19-34.

Title: Angelic Conflict part 116: Human history - DAN 9:24-27; MAT 24:15-28; DEU 32:8-9; MAL 3:6; JER 31:35-37; GEN 25:19-34.

 

 

Arab Israeli Conflict, GEN 16:7-16; 21:8-21.

 

The biblical cause of anti-Semitism is satan. God permits it; and the reason it is within His permissive will is Israel’s sins, which ultimately leads to God’s glory through their survival.

 

DAN 9:24 "Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy place.

 

70 weeks: 69 weeks [seven years] until Messiah and then the 70^th week is the Tribulation [mystery CA intercalated], which will finish the transgression.

 

DAN 9:25 "So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks [49 years to rebuild] and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress.

 

A prophecy given here just cannot be overlooked: stated briefly:

Decree to rebuild Jerusalem: 14^th March, B.C. 445.

69 weeks of prophetic years of 360 days = 173,880 days.

Days from decree = 6^th April, A.D. 32

 

DAN 9:26 "Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood [of Romans]; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined.

 

DAN 9:27 "And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week [70^th week], but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate."

 

More detail concerning this great, worldwide increase in anti-Semitism is given by our Lord in the Olivet discourse.

 

MAT 24:15 "Therefore when you see the abomination of desolation which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand),

 

Written for the future reader to put Christ’s message and Daniel’s together and come to an understanding, which is he has broken his covenant with Israel - something Christ will never do - and anti-Semitism is worldwide and at an all time high.

 

If a Jew at this time does not believe in Christ as the Messiah then he would not heed this warning. Those who do believe will have acknowledged the unfaithfulness of themselves in the past and of their forefathers and they will have also pleaded for the return of the Messiah. These actions are natural products of faith in Him and since the Abrahamic Covenant is unconditional, they will not be disappointed.

 

MAT 24:16 then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains;

 

MAT 24:17 let him who is on the housetop not go down to get the things out that are in his house;

 

MAT 24:18 and let him who is in the field not turn back to get his cloak.

 

MAT 24:19 "But woe to those who are with child and to those who nurse babes in those days!

 

MAT 24:20 "But pray that your flight may not be in the winter [mountain passes flood], or on a Sabbath [no public transportation];

 

MAT 24:21 for then there will be a great tribulation [last 3 ½ years], such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever shall.

 

MAT 24:22 "And unless those days had been cut short, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect those days shall be cut short.

 

MAT 24:23 "Then if anyone says to you, 'Behold, here is the Christ,' or 'There He is,' do not believe him.

 

MAT 24:24 "For false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect.

 

MAT 24:25 "Behold, I have told you in advance.

 

MAT 24:26 "If therefore they say to you, 'Behold, He is in the wilderness,' do not go forth, or, 'Behold, He is in the inner rooms,' do not believe them.

 

The anti-christ is attempting to lure them out of hiding.

 

MAT 24:27 "For just as the lightning comes from the east, and flashes even to the west, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be.

 

MAT 24:28 "Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.

 

Don’t be fooled by those who are dead [spiritually], you will know them by their fruit, and vultures are around them; also, when Christ returns He will produce carnage that the world has never seen.

 

The biblical cause of anti-Semitism is satan. God permits it; and the reason it is within His permissive will is Israel’s sins, which ultimately leads to God’s glory through their survival.

 

Nevertheless, satan is the cause and the Gentile nations are the means he uses. God, in the CA, has always provided a Gentile client nation as a safe haven for the Jews.

 

Much has been said about the Abrahamic Covenant, but we have hardly exhausted all the implications involved in it.

 

On the issue of anti-Semitism, the key verse is GEN 12:3 [Abrahamic Covenant]:

 

GEN 12:3

And I will bless those who bless you,

And the one who curses you I will curse.

 

As observed in this covenant, God has promised Abraham three things: first, that from him will come forth a people or a nation, second, to this nation God will give a land, and third, God will bless those who bless this nation and curse those who curse it. It is the third point with which we are concerned.

 

Very early in human history this principle was set down to control the relationship of the Jews with the Gentiles. [God’s foreign policy to Gentiles]

 

Politically speaking, this statement is God’s foreign policy to the Gentiles in their relationship with the Jewish people. It is restated in wider terms in DEU 32:8-9.

 

DEU 32:8 "When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance,

When He separated the sons of man [tower of Babel],

He set the boundaries of the peoples

According to the number of the sons of Israel.

 

Starting with Abraham and Lot Israel was separated from others and boundaries set which culminated in Joshua’s campaign that conquered the Promised Land.

 

DEU 32:9 "For the Lord's portion is His people;

Jacob is the allotment of His inheritance.

 

It is not only God’s program for Israel that centers around the Jews, but His program for the Gentiles as well. When God in His providence sets down boundaries for the Gentile nations, He somehow takes into account the number of Jews that will play a role in that nation’s history.

 

This brings us to an analyzation of man’s approach to history, with biblical revelation and without.

 

The history of philosophy is simply the retracing and reviewing of the ways man has tried to explain his being, knowledge, and other areas with which philosophy is concerned.

 

The philosophy of history, however, tries to extract principles from history by which history can be understood and provide a prospectus of how history will develop in the future.

 

It is the search for a unifying principle by which history can be understood. In the Abrahamic Covenant there is such a principle: A great nation forever, never forsaken, and those who bless the Jews will be blessed and those who curse them will be cursed. Understanding this principle will help to explain much in history that cannot be explained any other way. The Scriptures show how this principle works itself out both on the individual level and the national level. Many things in Jewish history begin to make sense only if God’s principle of His philosophy of history is clearly understood.

 

One thing history bears witness to many times over is that every nation that has ever dared to raise its hand against the Jew has fallen. The Jew “has stood at the graveside of all his enemies.”

 

Books on Jewish history written from a secular viewpoint are generally agreed that Jewish existence is an enigma. Historians with different philosophies of history find themselves at a loss to explain the Jews.

 

Oswald Spengler(1880 - 1936) was a German historian and philosopher of history whose interests included mathematics, science, and art. He is best known for his book The Decline of the West, published in 1918 and 1922, covering all of world history. He proposed a new theory, according to which the lifespan of civilizations is limited and ultimately they decay.

 

Arnold Joseph Toynbee(1889 - 1975) was a British historian whose twelve-volume analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations, A Study of History, was a synthesis of world history, a metahistory based on universal rhythms of rise, flowering and decline, which examined history from a global perspective. A religious outlook permeates the Study and made it especially popular in the United States, for Toynbee rejected Greek humanism, the Enlightenment belief in humanity's essential goodness, and the "false god" of modern nationalism. Toynbee in the 1918-1950 period was a leading specialist on international affairs, especially regarding the Middle East.

 

Since the history of the Jews did not fit into either Spengler’s or Toynbee’s system, Spengler ignored them and Toynbee reduced them to an occasional footnote, describing the Jews as fossils of history. [Max Dimont, Jews, God, and History]

 

Philosophies of history based on non-biblical presuppositions fail to provide any answer to Jewish survival. This is clear from the very writings of those who tried to explain history by a certain system only to have it crack down in the face of the Jews. Mark Twain wrote:

 

He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight, or have vanished.

 

The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality? [Mark Twain, “Concerning the Jews” in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and other Stories and Essays]

 

The materialist interpretation of history is a theory of socioeconomic development where changes in material conditions (technology and productive capacity) is the primary influence on how human society and the economy is organized.

 

A former communist by the name of Nicholas Berdyaev writes:

 

I remember how the materialist interpretation of history, when I attempted in my youth to verify it by applying it to the destinies of the people, broke down in the case of the Jews, where destiny seemed absolutely inexplicable from the materialistic standpoint. … According to the materialistic … criterion, this people ought long ago to have perished. Its survival is a mysterious and wonderful phenomenon demonstrating that the life of this people is governed by a special predetermination, transcending the processes of adaptation expounded by the materialistic interpretation of history. The survival of the Jews … their endurance under absolutely peculiar conditions and the fateful role played by them in history; all these point to the peculiar and mysterious foundation of their destiny.

 

Not only have Gentile historians, looking at the Jews, come to a dead end in trying to explain them, but the Jews themselves have not been able to explain their existence in any consistent way. The answer to Mark Twain’s question, “What is the secret of his immortality?” lies in the outworking of the Abrahamic Covenant.

 

The answer to the immortality of the Jew lies in this cry of the last of the Old Testament prophets:

 

MAL 3:6

"For I, the Lord, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.

 

The Bible, then, can give the proper explanation of the role of the Jewish people play in history. Their destruction is impossible. It is true that great parts of the Jewish people have been destroyed through various anti-Semitic campaigns, but the Jewish people as a distinct entity cannot themselves be destroyed.

 

For the anti-Semite who cannot be persuaded by the Scripture to drop his anti-Semitism, the Bible has some useful information.

 

The Bible provides the one method that will work in destroying the Jews. This method is found in JER 31:35-37; one has to destroy the sun, moon, and all stars first.

 

 

The message of the Bible to the anti-Semite is: if you want to destroy the Jews, then you must first destroy the sun, moon, and stars; then, and only then, according to the promise of God, can the Jews be destroyed.

 

Jacob and Esau: birth and struggle for birthright. Misconceptions about Jacob.

 

The prior conflict between Isaac and Ishmael resulted from two different mothers and one father, one child being of the flesh and the other of the Spirit, one child being of human scheming and the other of the promise. Yet also there is the faithlessness of Ishmael and the faith of Isaac.

 

With Jacob and Esau there is also a faithlessness of one child and the faith of the other. Yet here, there are one set of parents, they are twins born practically at the same time, and the older son is the one to which the inheritance and the family worship or priesthood will go, but it is rejected.

 

In both cases the younger is promoted over the older, showing that God does not need to always follow established protocol; as Sovereign God He can do what He chooses, but always in justice and righteousness.

 

GEN 25:19 Now these are the records of the generations of Isaac, Abraham's son: Abraham became the father of Isaac;

 

GEN 25:20 and Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel the Aramean of Paddan-aram, the sister of Laban the Aramean, to be his wife.

 

Isaac married right: Aram is the fifth son of Shem from whom Abraham is the ninth generation. Rebekah’s grandfather Nahor was Abraham’s brother.

 

In other words, Isaac had married as he was instructed and not from the women of Canaan.

 

GEN 25:21 And Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was barren; and the Lord answered him and Rebekah his wife conceived.

 

Isaac prays for his wife to conceive after twenty years of marriage. He did not resort to concubinage as Abraham did to produce the seed.

 

This is a great decision by Isaac and his prayer is answered.

 

GEN 25:22 But the children struggled together within her; and she said, "If it is so, why then am I this way?" So she went to inquire of the Lord.

 

This is not to say that the twins each had a conscience and they already had animosity toward each other and they are wrestling and slapping in Rebekah’s womb. The soul is imputed at birth and so there is no consciousness yet. Fetus’ move and kick and there are two of them. Rebekah didn’t go for a sonogram. She has no clue she has twins. This is her first pregnancy that she has desired for 20 years and the unusual activity in her womb has given her cause for fear of miscarrying or even dying herself. So she also makes a great decision - she prays.

 

It would seem that both of them have learned from Abraham and Sarah’s mistakes. She also receives an answer.

 

GEN 25:23 And the Lord said to her,

"Two nations are in your womb [not fighting in there];

And two peoples shall be separated from your body;

And one people shall be stronger than the other;

And the older shall serve the younger."

 

We have the source of another conflict: Jacob will be Israel and Esau will be Edom. Edom greatly opposes Israel but Edom at times will be ruled by Israel and eventually destroyed by Babylon.

 

Edom is destroyed around the same time that Jerusalem is destroyed and by the same Babylonians, however, Judah returns and rebuilds while Edom is gone forever.

 

GEN 25:24 When her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb.

 

GEN 25:25 Now the first came forth red, all over like a hairy garment; and they named him Esau.

 

Esau means hairy or hairiness. His future nation will be Edom, which means “red.”

 

GEN 25:26 And afterward his brother came forth with his hand holding on to Esau's heel, so his name was called Jacob; and Isaac was sixty years old when she gave birth to them.

 

The meaning of Jacob’s name is interesting.

 

“Jacob” - the root means “heel,” which came to mean “follow closely” and then “to guard or protect.” Technically it means “God protected.”

 

Now you’ve probably heard that it means deceiver or supplantor. And while it is true that Jacob did deceive his father at his mother’s prompting, it was Esau that actually gave him the name deceiver in his great anger.

 

GEN 27:30 Now it came about, as soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, and Jacob had hardly gone out from the presence of Isaac his father, that Esau his brother came in from his hunting.

 

GEN 27:31 Then he also made savory food, and brought it to his father; and he said to his father, "Let my father arise, and eat of his son's game, that you may bless me."

 

GEN 27:32 And Isaac his father said to him, "Who are you?" And he said, "I am your son, your first-born, Esau."

 

GEN 27:33 Then Isaac trembled violently, and said, "Who was he then that hunted game and brought it to me, so that I ate of all of it before you came, and blessed him? Yes, and he shall be blessed."

 

GEN 27:34 When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried out with an exceedingly great and bitter cry, and said to his father, "Bless me, even me also, O my father!"

 

GEN 27:35 And he said, "Your brother came deceitfully, and has taken away your blessing."

 

GEN 27:36 Then he said, "Is he not rightly named Jacob, for he has supplanted me these two times? He took away my birthright, and behold, now he has taken away my blessing." And he said, "Have you not reserved a blessing for me?"

 

The name Jacob, “follow closely,” can also be stretched to mean “overtake” or “supplant” and in this case a deception was used. It is bitter Esau who gives this nuance to his name.

So Jacob, in many theological circles and pulpits has been given a bad rap.

 

GEN 27:37 But Isaac answered and said to Esau, "Behold, I have made him your master, and all his relatives I have given to him as servants; and with grain and new wine I have sustained him. Now as for you then, what can I do, my son?"

 

GEN 27:38 And Esau said to his father, "Do you have only one blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father." So Esau lifted his voice and wept.

 

This shows how serious the blessing of the father was. It was not a flippant kind of ceremony that could be or should be undone. In fact Isaac makes the hall of fame for this decision to stick by his first blessing upon Jacob even though he discovered that he was deceived.

 

HEB 11:20

By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau, even regarding things to come.