Tit for tat for Palestinians

Palestinians are the modern-day descendants of the ancient Edomites found in Old Testament. A sub-group of the Arabs, the Edomites are from southern Jordan and Palestine over toward Gaza.

Richard Jordan (shorewoodbiblechurch.org) explains, “People are always talking about how the Palestinians need a state to have a country of their own, but, well, they’re Arabs. If they need a homeland, you’d think the Saudi Arabians or the Jordanians would take them in. But the Jordanians, for one, won’t let them in; they don’t want them.

“Literally, the Book of Obadiah, for one, is looking at, prophesying about, telling you what’s going to happen in the future to the people we today call the Palestinians.

“Now, the prophets use ancient terminology; they’ll talk about Teman, Dedan and mount Seir. They didn’t know how to say Jordan because there wasn’t a Jordan until after WW I. They couldn’t say Saudi Arabia because there was no Saudi Arabia, as the country, until the 20^th Century.

“Notice in Zephaniah 2:4, it says, ‘For Gaza shall be forsaken, and Ashkelon a desolation: they shall drive out Ashdod at the noon day, and Ekron shall be rooted up.’

“You know where the Gaza Strip is today. That verse is talking about the Palestinian territories. Verse 11 says, ‘The LORD will be terrible unto them: for he will famish all the gods of the earth; and men shall worship him, every one from his place, even all the isles of the heathen.’

“Now, if God famishes all the gods of the earth, what does that tell you about Islam? We’ll see as we go down through Obadiah the association between the Edomites and terrorism, religious-based terrorism, and how God’s going to set that right and destroy it.

*****
“It’s fascinating how this little one-chapter book has so much in it about, well, not current events because the things going on today in the ‘dispensation of grace’ aren’t the prophetic program, but before the tribulation can start, there are things that have to be in place. For example, Israel has to be in the land.

“You have to have some things in place that until the last 100 years, they didn’t exist. In 1947, Israel became a nation-state for the first time in two millenniums.

“All the prophecies about Israel being in the land have always been there, and Bible-believers have believed them, but then you see it happen and you say, ‘Well, that’s not the fulfillment of prophecy, but it certainly looks like a stage-setting,’ and as the stage is set, you can begin to see with some of these passages, ‘Oh, it’s going to look like THAT when it happens!’

“Obadiah and Jeremiah (both of which have some almost identical verses because they both are contemporary to the Babylonian captivity) look at the near-captivity and the far-captivity. That’s why in Obadiah verse 15, the key verse in the book, he says ‘For the day of the LORD is near upon all the heathen: as thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee: thy reward shall return upon thine own head.'

“That’s the future, prophetically. What happens in these minor prophets is they see the near and the far, but it’s all a continuous vision. What they see back there loops over and happens again.

 “The hatred you see today has been there since the Book of Genesis. God’s going to destroy them because of it. The Book of Obadiah is talking about that specific issue; about why it happens and what will happen in the future.

“There must be 15-20 people in the Bible named Obadiah and while the Book of Obadiah never identifies which one it is, you know the book’s written in light of the Babylonian captivity, so it’s got to be connected with that.

*****

“In Genesis 21, Abraham and Sarah have two boys—Isaac and Ishmael. With his wife Rebekah, Isaac has the twins, Esau and Jacob. The reason God talks about being the ‘God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,’ is because He’s the God of Isaac, not Ishmael, and Jacob, not Esau. There’s a selecting by God going on there.

“After Sarah died Abraham took a wife named Keturah and they had six kids. He winds up with a total of 16 kids, but the seed’s going to be through Jacob.

“Genesis 25 says that when Rebekah was pregnant with Isaac’s sons, 'the children struggled together within her; and she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to inquire of the LORD.
[23] And the LORD said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.
[24] And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb.
[25] And the first came out red, all over like an hairy garment; and they called his name Esau.

“Notice Esau is red. You know anyone else in the Bible who’s red? Revelation 12 talks about the great red dragon. You see the red heifer in Numbers 19. Same kind of association.

“Esau, in scripture, is going to be a type of the flesh, but he’s also going to be a type of the rebel that, instead of loving God’s plan and purpose for the nation Israel (God’s plan for Abraham and his descendants), hates it.

“People refer to Jacob as having stolen the birthright from Esau, but the truth is he bought it (with the pot of beans Esau traded it for). Obviously Jacob saw the value in being Abraham and Isaac’s heir. Jacob, for all his conniving, understood something about spiritual heritage that was being passed on from Abraham to his dad, Isaac, and would be passed on to Isaac’s heir. Esau, on the other hand, had no interest in it.

“Esau’s descendants are the Edomites and they populate the land on the eastern side of the Dead Sea, the land of Seir. It’s fascinating that there’s two dozen different passages about the Edomites as the thorns in Israel’s flesh.

“God says in Ezekiel 25, ‘And I will lay my vengeance upon Edom by the hand of my people Israel: and they shall do in Edom according to mine anger and according to my fury; and they shall know my vengeance . . .Because the Philistines have dealt by revenge, and have taken vengeance with a despiteful heart, to destroy it for the old hatred.’

“Notice the phrase ‘old hatred.’ When Christ comes back He’s going to destroy these nations because of an ancient, perpetual hatred they have against Israel. Esau hated Jacob and he taught his descendants to hate Jacob and Jacob’s descendants.

“Obadiah verses 8-10, says, ‘Shall I not in that day, saith the LORD, even destroy the wise men out of Edom, and understanding out of the mount of Esau?
[9] And thy mighty men, O Teman, shall be dismayed, to the end that every one of the mount of Esau may be cut off by slaughter.
[10] For thy violence against thy brother Jacob shame shall cover thee, and thou shalt be cut off for ever.’

“The Book of Malachi begins with, [1] The burden of the word of the LORD to Israel by Malachi.
[2] I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob,
[3] And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.
[4] Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places; thus saith the LORD of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom the LORD hath indignation for ever.

“Malachi’s not talking about Jacob the man. He’s talking about Jacob the nation. Two nations are going to come of them. It’s brother fighting against brother in their descendants.

*****

“As Ezekiel 35: 5 says, [5] Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred, and hast shed the blood of the children of Israel by the force of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time that their iniquity had an end.’

“That’s a passage about the fifth course of judgment. When Israel is carried off into captivity, the Edomites are there, watching it, going, ‘Hee-hee, get ’em! They deserve it! Hit ’em again for us!’ They don’t just say, ‘Hey, glad you’re going’; they go in and plunder and rob them.

“Even the ones Nebuchadnezzar didn’t get, the Edomites tattle, ‘Here, now they’re hiding over here.’ So full and complete was their hatred of Israel that they wouldn’t let any of them try and escape.

“Psalm 137 says, [7] Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof.
[8] O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.
[9] Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

“People read that and get aghast, thinking, ‘How could these Jews say they were going to be happy when the Babylonians’ kids are punished and destroyed?!’

“Well, what the Israelites are saying is, ‘Him that curseth thee, I will curse.’ What the Babylonians are getting back is what they GAVE Israel, that’s all. They would come in and slaughter the whole family, babies and all.

“Remember Obadiah verse 15 says, ‘For the day of the LORD is near upon all the heathen: as thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee: thy reward shall return upon thine own head.’

“That is a statement of God’s foreign policy in connection with His client nation, the nation Israel. Israel is His nation in the earth, and His statement to all the other nations is, ‘You curse them, I’ll curse you in kind. What you do to them, I’ll do to you.’

“Psalm 137 is about curse-for-curse and that’s really what the Book of Obadiah is all about. There’s some sequences in it that are very helpful in ordering some of the events in the tribulation, but the functional issue of the book is, ‘He’s going to give them back what they gave to Israel.’

“Obadiah verse 3 says, ‘The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high; that saith in his heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground?’

“In other words, ‘You’ve exalted yourself and for that exalted position, I’m going to bring you down.’

“Notice how He does it in verse 7: ‘All the men of thy confederacy have brought thee even to the border: the men that were at peace with thee have deceived thee, and prevailed against thee; they that eat thy bread have laid a wound under thee: there is none understanding in him.’

“The Edomites get into a confederacy with other nations who use the Edomites’ pride to deceive them into being a vehicle to accomplish somebody else’s purpose. In other words, they’re overturned by treachery. Well, what did they do to Israel?

“They indulged in treachery against Jacob, so they’re going to be overturned by treachery of their friends. Obadiah verse 13 says, ‘Thou shouldest not have entered into the gate of my people in the day of their calamity; yea, thou shouldest not have looked on their affliction in the day of their calamity, nor have laid hands on their substance in the day of their calamity;’

So if you go back to verses 5-6: [5] If thieves came to thee, if robbers by night, (how art thou cut off!) would they not have stolen till they had enough? if the grapegatherers came to thee, would they not leave some grapes?
[6] How are the things of Esau searched out! how are his hidden things sought up!

“If you read down through the first 16 verses in Obadiah, what you see is the kind of tit-for-tat back and forth. And then you come down to verse 17: ‘But upon mount Zion shall be deliverance, and there shall be holiness; and the house of Jacob shall possess their possessions.’

“Now, that’s a famous phrase you hear from preachers about how Believers need to ‘possess their possessions.’ It’s sort of like the verse, ‘Salvation is of the Lord.’ I’ve hardly met a preacher who knows where that verse is. By the way, it’s in the very next book, Jonah.

“What are their possessions? Well, it’s the land. God takes it and gives it to Jacob. God has a specific solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict and that’s the kingdom. But inside that He has some very specific things to be done in order to resolve all of those territorial disputes in such a way that brings about a resolution to it all.”

(new article tomorrow)