Crisis in Israel - A Biblical Worldview - Part 2

Welcome to God First with Brian C. Thomas, a program committed to encouraging you to put God first while viewing life through the window of the Bible.

Now, in honor of the one and only true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, let's join Brian C. Thomas for today's message. I'm sitting here and, well, the phone's right here in my pocket and you're going to hear it buzz every once in a while. And when my phone buzzes, that means that rockets are being fired at Israel.

And there's a political, there's a spiritual, there's a historical, there's a lot of different ways that we're going to tie into this today, but there is also an emotional element that ties in because these are rockets that are being fired literally at my family. And I want to say thank you because most of the people don't understand what that means. Most of the people don't understand why that is happening. Most of the people don't really care. Most of the world doesn't care.

Most of the United States doesn't care. The reason I'm saying thank you is because I'm sitting in a group with a group of people who do care about what happens over there. Welcome to the program. My name is Brian Thomas and I am being joined by phone today by Dr. Bruce Logan. And he is coming on to continue with part two of this very important topic of the conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas.

And why is so important that we look at these things with a biblical worldview. So Dr. Logan, I want to thank you for coming on and joining us today. Amen. Thank you for having me. And the voice that you heard in the opening, that was, we played it last week in part one. That was the voice of David Towle. He was speaking at the 412 Church in California concerning this important topic. So Dr. Logan, what I want to do is begin with speaking about what we heard David Towle speaking on and just unpack, if you will, for us these components of how we should look at this issue when it comes to Israel and Hamas. Well, for starters, you know, he pretty much succinctly pointed out that there are various components to this conflict that most people are totally oblivious to.

That's including most believers, sadly to say. And the fact is that there is actually a political component. There is a spiritual component. There's also a historical component. And even though he didn't mention this, but there's also a prophetic component. And he said, you know, he referred to the emotional component, but that was, you know, in reference to, you know, obviously if you got rockets being fired at your family, there's going to be an emotional component to that. But just from a picture standpoint, you know, there's also a prophetic component to what's happening. And just to kind of give it a brief background is the truth of the matter. When you consider this Israeli and Palestinian conflict, there are basically two aspects that we should understand.

Number one is we have the aspect of the mainstream media, right? And then you also have the truth. Exactly.

That's a lot of it broken down. So basically it's two views. It's what you hear from the mainstream media.

All right. That's view number one, which that of course says that everything that's going on is Israel's fault. And the Palestinians are the victims. And so Israel needs to be condemned. That's the mainstream media narrative.

But then you have the other side of the coin, which is the truth. And the truth of the matter is that there is no country on earth that has a more legitimate claim to the territory than Israel, because their claim goes back not just hundreds of years, but thousands of years. Their claim goes back to God who actually promised them the land, who, for example, on the last episode, I believe I quoted the scripture Joshua 1 and 4, it says from the wilderness and this Lebanon, even up to the great river, the river Euphrates and all the land of the Hittites and unto the great sea, which is the Mediterranean sea and going down to the sun shall be your coast. And so in other words, if you can just picture this in your, or envision this on a map or just think of it in your head, we're saying that all the territory from the Euphrates river, which by the way is in Iraq, going all the way, it would be going west toward the Mediterranean sea and south to Egypt, all is the land that God has promised. But in the current iteration of the conflict, we're just talking about a strip of that land about the size of New Jersey. And so basically they're saying that Israel, we just want to have this little strip about the size of New Jersey. Now think about this, there are 22 Arab States, but there's not room for Israel to have their own state in an area the size of New Jersey. So when you think about it, there's a lot of it that we're not being told, but it's more to that land because God has said that that's his land. In Joel chapter three, verse 17, the prophet Joel says, so you shall know that I am the Lord your God dwelling in Mount Zion, the holy mountain, then Jerusalem shall be my holy city. I mean, so there's numerous passages of scripture, the references, how the land is the promised land. And, uh, so they, they have more of a legitimate claim that goes back thousands of years than anybody. And so why is there is the reason that, and I agree with you totally that the Bible makes it very clear that this land is promised to Israel. God said so, and God is the authority, the final authority. But why is there this, this, this push out there about this two state solution that there should be a Palestinian state and that there should be a, an Israel state now that kind of go back to give you a brief outline there, there's like a history behind that.

And I'm just want to just share it just in brief because it's kind of, it's kind of expensive and I, and I don't want to just spend too much time talking about that particular aspect, but they're talking about a two state solution. But the fact of the matter is, is that there have been offered on at least five different occasions where, where the world community has offered a two state solution and each time the Palestinian authority have declined. But even going back before that, we need to get kind of get a brief understanding of this area known as Palestine. So how did it become, you know, as we know it as, or as, you know, biblically it was the land of Israel and to now it became the land of Palestine. Of course, when they were, they were, they were conquered by the Romans and the Romans divided into territories of the land that called it Judea. And but Israel had a series of where they would revolt against the Roman authority because in the Roman authority it was involved a lot of emperor worship, which was a no, no to the Jews. And then also there was a lot of polytheism. So eventually they revolted and in 19, I'm sorry, 134 AD, the Roman emperor Hadrian decided he had enough of these Jews. And so he went and pretty much wiped them out.

But I mean, he, he massacred thousands of the population and those that he didn't kill, he enslaved or sent into exile and all the remaining Jews that were in the land at the time were forbidden in order to come back to the city. And so from that point on, just over, if you fast forward through history, the area was occupied by numerous different empires, century after century, you know, different, different groups gained control of the territory. And prior to World War I, it was under the authority of the Ottoman empire. The Ottoman empire were defeated at the end of World War I and the area became known as, I'm sorry, the area became occupied or controlled by the British.

All right. So now let me just pause there because I need to go back real quick and talk about something that Hadrian did. Hadrian, once he took over the land and exiled all the Jews, he changed the name of the land to Syria, Palestine. That's what he called it, Syria, Palestine.

And that was basically in honor of the former enemies of Israel who were the, who were the Philistines who were actually at this time didn't exist anymore. So then bringing it back to, to, to modern times that after the British took control of the area after World War I, they tried to on several different occasions to partition the land and offer a two state solution. So the first time was in 1937.

In 1937, the British formed what was called the PEL commission, P E L, the PEL commission. And the answer was to, the reason for it was to answer the Jewish and Arab problem that continued to up rise because of the dispute over the land. And the plan was to form a two state solution. Now here are the, here were the terms of the agreement. This was in 1937. The British offered the Arabs 80% of the disputed territory, 80%.

Now just think about that for a second. The Jews, the remain, were offered the remaining 20%. Now, despite the disproportionate size of the suggested split, the Jews voted to accept the offer, but the Arabs rejected it. Now they rejected 80% to 20%, which basically that tells you that they wanted it all or nothing. So they rejected that.

They rejected it outright. So then later in 1947, the UN, that's 10 years later in 1947, they, they voted on the UN. It was called the UN partition plan.

And it, to an idea was to create a two state solution with the same parameters as the previous agreement. The creation of a two state solution where it was 80-20 split and the Jews accepted it again. And again, the Arabs rejected it.

That was in 1947 and 1948. Of course we know that that's when Israel was declared as a nation. And you got to remember like in between all this time that thousands, tens of thousands of Jews were migrating back into the area of Israel because they were fleeing persecution by the Nazis.

So you got to, got to keep that in mind because, because for you, for thousands of, for over a thousand years, the, you know, they had pretty much been disbanned from the land due to the being exiled. So fast forward again, in 1967, there was a, there was a, the six day war occurred in 1967, where it was a coalition between Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. They attacked Jerusalem, tried to destroy them, but in six days, which miraculously they were defeated. And about a month later in that same year, the Arab league summit occurred in Sudan and they issued what was famous, and your listeners can look this up, they issued what was called their famous three noes.

Here are the three noes. No peace with Israel, no negotiation with Israel, and no recognition of Israel. So now this is the third time a plan or an idea of a two state solution was offered and then rejected. And this was after they won, Israel was attacked and they won in six days and offered this petition plan and they still rejected it with their famous three noes.

And then again, and there was a lot of, you know, and I'm just going over this real brief because there's a lot of other details that's in between these occurrences. But in 2000, the Israeli prime minister, A.U. Barak, met at Camp David with the Palestinian liberation chairman who at the time was Yasser Arafat. And the idea of this Camp David summit was to offer another two state solution. The Israeli prime minister offered Arafat, a Palestinian state, all of Gaza, and 94 percent of the West Bank. And to add to that, he wanted to give Jerusalem, well East Jerusalem rather, as its capital. But Arafat rejected that offer.

And it was interesting because Bill Clinton was the president at the time and he gave these famous words. He says, the Arafat was here for 14 days and said no to everything. So instead of accepting the offer, they went back and a wave of suicide bombings that killed over a thousand Israelis and maimed a thousand more.

That happened shortly thereafter. So rather than accept 94 percent partition, they sent kids out and men out to strap on bombs and go blow up buses and blow up buildings instead of having 94 percent of the territory that was offered for them. So in other words, long story short, that they could have had a two state solution years ago. As a matter of fact, if they, if that was the truth of what they really wanted, we wanted a two state solution and that was all this was about and nothing else. They could have a two state solution tomorrow, but that's not what this was all about. So in other words, the Palestinians really don't want a two state solution. They want a one state solution and that one state to be the Palestinian state. They want Israel to be wiped off the map and for all of the nation's leaders.

And that includes our leaders, our presidents. We've had numerous presidents throughout time that have been advocating for a two state solution, but did not God warn in which he said, do not divide my land. He will bring judgment upon those that divide his land.

That, that's a hundred percent true. And the fact of the matter is, is that in spite of all of that, uh, remember we talked about the fact that there's a prophetic component to all of this, that God has said that there's going to come a point in time where Jesus is going to come back and set his kingdom up and reign and reign and rule from Jerusalem. That's a very, very important component, but there's also something else that I think is very important. And as we're referring to this and speaking through the lens of a biblical worldview, this is something that's very important. One of the, one of the components that's very significant to the Abrahamic covenant, and this is sometimes gets kind of lost or kind of forgotten. It says that I will bless them that bless you and curse them. They curse you.

Okay. That's very significant. The reason being is because that the United States historically has been the number one supporter of the nation of Israel, of any other countries like they may be in history. And honestly, and of course we can't, you know, approve this, you know, specifically, um, and this is just my speculation, but I believe that a large part of the reason why the United States grew so fast to become the greatest military and economic power in the history of the world is because of our undaunting support for Israel. And then when you take the fact that now you have administration that's coming that have been anti-Israel, we're seeing a lot of this corresponding dysfunction in the United States as a result. So now I'm not necessarily connecting dots, you know, I'm just saying, I'm just putting that out there that I honestly believe that there is a truth behind the fact that if you bless Israel, you're going to be blessed. I mean, I think that's, that goes without saying, but if you curse Israel, you're going to be, you're going to have problems.

It's going to have issues. If you come against Israel, you're going to have, you're going to have, you're going to have something to deal with. And that's why it's so important when you talk about having the biblical worldview, because there are people that go out and they cast votes at the ballot box and they are voting for politicians that are advocates for this two state solution that want to divide the land, which God clearly said, if you divide it, there'll be a judgment. He said, there will be a curse that will come, but you have a lot of Christians that they don't even realize apparently that what they're doing is they're doing something that's going against the word of God.

They're, they're putting people in office that are pushing an agenda to go against the word of God, which is in turn, bringing a curse upon our land. That's a, that's a a hundred percent. I believe that with all my heart that just to kind of give a, uh, an example of that, just our current president, well, this was in 19 in the 1990s, I believe he was doing a PBS interview and basically here's, here's a couple of brief quotes. He said that if the Palestinians had a state of their own, there would be peace. This was our, uh, Joe Biden and, uh, 2000 notices in 2019 as a matter of fact, a 2019 PBS news, our interview says if there was a Palestinian, uh, the Palestinians had a two state or a state of their own, there would be peace. And then he goes on in that same interview to say, there is no solution for Israel other than a two state solution.

It does not exist. There's no way to have peace without that. You said it's just not possible to have a Jewish state in the middle East without a two state solution.

Now think about it that, that we're talking about an Atlanta size of New Jersey. Okay. And who was willing to take that land, the size of New Jersey and give the Palestinians 94% of that. Right. Okay.

And they still turned it down on multiple occasions. So that's letting you know that there's more, that the two state solution idea is, is really wrong in and of itself. But also the, the, the, just the fact that the hype about the two state solution, in other words, the idea that there will be peace in the middle East. If the Palestinians had a state of their own, that's also as a, as to, to, to quote the modern phrase, fake news.

Okay. Because, because it's not about, it's, it's the Arab mindset, the mindset that says that Jewish, the Jews are the great Satan. They want Jews to be wiped off the face of the earth. I mean, the rallying cry is death to Israel.

Not only death to Israel, death to the U S because U S is the reason why there's so much middle Eastern hatred for the United States because the United States is the number one supporter of Israel. So that makes us the great Satan. So, but, but at the end of the day, we're talking about a mindset. We're talking about the Arab mindset.

There's programs into the, from the time that you're born. If you're born as an Arab state, I was reading about this incident that happened. It's been a while ago.

It's the 2016, I believe. And there was a, the Olympics in Brazil. There was a judo competition.

I don't know. Maybe we've heard about this incident and there was an Israeli heavyweight judo judo fighter named or Sasan, and he defeated his Egyptian opponent. His name was Islam El Shabaab, Shabaab. And their first round match, you know, the, the, the Israeli heavyweight judo fighter won the match. He stuck his hand out to shake his opponent's hand, but the Egyptian refused to shake his hand. He just walked away and refused to reach his hand out. Of course the audience booed, but that lets you know the mentality.

Okay. That, that spoke volumes about the, about the middle Eastern mentality that, that for that, just that utter hatred of Israel. Yeah, it's, it's definitely spiritual because as you said, the, the land of Israel, that is where Jesus Christ is returning. And that is why you quoted in the book of Genesis chapter 12, when, when God promised the land to Abraham, he said also that all the nations of the earth would be blessed because of you. And we know Jesus Christ came through the nation of Israel.

He came from the tribe of Judah. So all the world has been blessed by Jesus Christ, the, the opportunity for salvation. And not only that, when you just look throughout the world at the way the Jewish people, the contributions that they've made throughout history, I mean, it's just disproportionately on the plus side, as far as what they've contributed.

So it shows the hand of God is on them, even though most today are not believers in Jesus Christ, as far as the Messiah goes, but, but we see that is definitely a spiritual battle behind it. And when you look at, when you were talking about the fact that Israel is about the size of New Jersey, if you look on a map, when you see a depiction, I encourage my listeners to go and look up a map that shows Israel highlighted in red, and then it shows the colors of all the Arab States around it, the Arab nations, and you see how disproportionate it is. And yet they're fighting over this tiny nation, the size of New Jersey.

And at some points it's only seven miles across. I mean, you can literally run from one coast to the other, or one border to the other in Israel. And yet they're fighting over this small piece of land, but it's a spiritual battle. It's because of Jesus Christ and the promises that God has made to the, to the Jewish people. So Dr. Logan, in the last couple of minutes, um, if you could give us your final thoughts concerning, again, the history with the Israel, this conflict and why it is so important that we have a biblical view worldview when we look at this issue. Well, um, to summarize, I would say that one of the things as believers that we have to, first of all, as believers, it's important that we have a biblical worldview just in that we have to be able to distinguish or discern the difference between the coverage that we're seeing in the media and what the word of God actually says.

And it's clear. I mean, there's nothing really more clear in scripture that Israel is God's chosen land and the Jews are God's chosen people and that Jesus is going to return on top of Mount of Olives. Um, I mean, there's so much other data that I could talk about over the years is for an example, from a prophetic standpoint, that we were familiar with this passage in Zechariah that talks about literally when Jesus returns to the Mount of Olives and where he's going to, when his feet land, that is going to say that it's going to, the Mount is going to split in a great valley is going to open up and things, and it's amazing because archeologists have discovered at that very location of, uh, a fault that exists that they didn't know existed before.

Let's just kind of give you an example. The land is preparing for the return of the Messiah and he's going to return and reign and rule right from Jerusalem. And it's going to be at a time that we think not. And the thing that's important as believers that we ought to understand that these events are not just happening in a vacuum. These events are being orchestrated. These events are, are, are because God said that he knows the end from the beginning. And so these events are being mapped out, being planned out in a spiritual realm.

It's a spiritual battle because the enemy knows that he has a short time and that he is doing all he can to try to defeat God's plan and defeat God's people. But at the end of the day, Jesus Christ is going to come and be victorious and set up his kingdom. And we as saints of God are going to reign and rule with him, which is a very important for us to keep in mind. And the land of Israel is the key. Even when you study Bible prophecy, what's happening in the Middle East is key to understanding and being able to discern the signs of the time. Very, very vital as believers that we develop a biblical worldview in order to be able to discern what's happening or have a better ability to discern what's happening from a cultural, social standpoint. When you, when we listen to what's happening in the world through the lens of a biblical worldview, it's amazing how much more perspective that we have, uh, surrounding the events that we're seeing.

Wow. Dr. Logan, how can our listeners find, follow you if they want to find out more about your ministry and your materials that you have? They can check out my website, drbrucelogan.com, or they can go to my Facebook page at DBL ministries. They can Google me or Dr. Bruce Logan ministries, and they can find me there. I'm on Twitter at, at Dr. Bruce Logan one, or you could email me at B R the number two, Logan at aol.com.

That's B R two, Logan at aol.com. And you could also find me on me, we and parlor. I haven't posted anything on parlor in a while because they've been down, but I'm understanding they're back up. So I'm going to go back and look at them again.

Uh, so you can search from your own parlor. All right. But Dr. Logan, I want to thank you for blessing us again this week with this great word. And I love how you concluded things that this is all pointing to the return of the Messiah. The world is getting prepared for it and he is coming again, folks. And that should be something that should get us excited. That should be something that makes us want to shout. And so I'm excited about what is happening.

I'm excited about the fact that I do believe in my heart, that we truly are the generation that will see the return of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. So Dr. Logan, many blessings to you. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me again.

Anytime. God bless. Amen. Thank you to our listeners. Please come back again and join us next week. Until then, remember to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Bless God's great nation of Israel until the only wise God be glory through Jesus Christ forever. Amen.