Devouring the palaces of Ben-hadad

"The Gentile nations that tend to Israel and minister to them during the tribulation period get a blessing; the ones who don't get a curse and when you look at those who don't, they're around Palestine.

Amos 1: [2] And he said, The LORD will roar from Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the habitations of the shepherds shall mourn, and the top of Carmel shall wither.

"The reason Christ goes through Syria, Damascus the capital, and Gaza, the Philistines, Phoenicia where Tyrus is (verse 9), Edom (verse 11) and Ammon (verse 13) and Moab (chapter 2)--He's literally tracing the first leg of the Second Advent as He 'comes in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God.'

"This is one of the important passages that helps you see the flight path the Lord Jesus Christ is going to cover in that actual second coming of His, and He starts up in Damascus and comes down that sea coast.

"Amos 1 is picking up where Joel left off in chapter 3:

[3] Thus saith the LORD; For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they have threshed Gilead with threshing instruments of iron:
[4] But I will send a fire into the house of Hazael, which shall devour the palaces of Ben-hadad.

"Back in Jeremiah, He told Israel, 'I'm going to use the Gentile nations to punish you and when I'm through using them to punish you, I'm going to punish them.'

"Here's what He's going to do: 'because they have threshed Gilead with threshing instruments of iron . . .  ' In other words, because they persecuted Israel, the cruelty of their attack, they didn't just kill them--a threshing instrument is when you just completely destroy something and they used it in the most heinous attacks. They come in and defile God's land and God says, 'Because of the way you treated my land, I'm going to pour out my wrath; I'm going to send fire.'

"You see that little word 'Ben' in Ben-hadad? In Hebrew that means 'son.' Hadad, that's the god of the sun. You go to chapter 5 and you'll see Him talk about Molech.

"What He's going to destroy are the pagan gods those Gentiles are worshipping, that they've been following and that have been convincing them to destroy Israel. They hate Israel for a religious reason.

Verse 5: [5] I will break also the bar of Damascus, and cut off the inhabitant from the plain of Aven, and him that holdeth the sceptre from the house of Eden: and the people of Syria shall go into captivity unto Kir, saith the LORD.

"You bar the door to keep the enemy out and He said, 'I'm going to break the bar; I'm going to break their protection down and I'm coming in.' 

"When you cut off somebody you kill them. 'The inhabitant from the plain of Aven,' we saw that back in Hosea. Aven is the valley of wickedness.

"It goes on, 'and him that holdeth the sceptre from the house of Eden: and the people of Syria shall go into captivity unto Kir, saith the LORD.'

"The people who are in there ruling, trying to run things . . . It's interesting, by the way, this is one of the verses that helps you identify where Eden is. There's that phrase and you say, 'What did He put that in there for?' Because when God looks at that land being run by those Gentiles, that's the land that belonged to Him. Adam and Eve were placed in a garden eastward in Eden. Eden is the whole territory of the Middle East. It runs from the Mediterranean all the way over to the Euphrates. It's a crescent kind of shaped thing.

"If you take that word Eden and look in a concordance and find the places where it's mentioned, you'll find locations and then you can see the perimeters of where that land is.

"The reason He says it this way is they've taken this land that belonged to God that He's had this plan for and they've turned it into a den of wickedness. Satan has tried to take over; in Deuteronomy they're called the 'sons of belial', occupying the land.

"Now, Kir is where Syria originally came from. So, He's just going to beat them back into their original situations."

(to be continued and new article tomorrow)

"In the Bible angels have the appearance of men. When you see an angel depicted that looks like a woman with wings, angels in the Bible don't have wings. They don't have flowing hair and feminine features.

"The only creature like that in the Bible, a female with wings who is in the spirit world like that, has a name attached to her. In Zechariah 5, she's called wickedness. What you see depicted as angels, women flying around, the Bible says that's part of Satan's kingdom."