October 7, 2023 became known as Black Shabbat or Black Sabbath. My wife and I had been in Israel less than a week before this event. We travelled from Mt. Hermon in the far north all the way down to Eilat at the Red Sea in the south. We travelled from Tel Aviv and Caesarea on the Mediterranean Sea in the west to Masada and the Dead Sea in the East. We visited Shiloh, the Galilee, Hebron and Jerusalem just to name a few places. We loved being there, it was our second trip. This is all to set the stage for what will be written below. We love Israel and really would like to go back.
I was sickened by what Hamas (meaning violence in Hebrew) did that day. No one should ever be subjected to such barbarism. It was inhuman. It was demonic. All of that said, this is a battle that has been going on since the children of Israel entered the promised land (It’s really a battle going back to the garden, but we won’t go that far here). The Palestinians are the modern-day Philistines. Consider Numbers 33:50-56. “On the plains of Moab by the Jordan across from Jericho the Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘When you cross the Jordan into Canaan, drive out all the inhabitants of the land before you. Destroy all their carved images and their cast idols, and demolish all their high places. Take possession of the land and settle in it, for I have given you the land to possess. Distribute the land by lot, according to your clans. To a larger group give a larger inheritance, and to a smaller group a smaller one. Whatever falls to them by lot will be theirs. Distribute it according to your ancestral tribes. “‘But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land, those you allow to remain will become barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides. They will give you trouble in the land where you will live. And then I will do to you what I plan to do to them.’””
I want to reiterate something I wrote in my post about The Holidays, Malachi 3:6a says, “I the LORD (Yehovah) do not change.” Go deeper into this in The Holidays. He promised 3,500 years ago that if they didn’t dispatch the current occupants of the land that they would give them trouble and that God Himself would inflict on the children of Israel what he had planned for the then current occupants of the land because of their iniquity. His promises don’t change, He doesn’t change.
In Leviticus 26 we read of the blessings and the curses. You should read the entire chapter, but I will highlight a few verses here. In verses 3-8 we read of the possible blessings, “If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees their fruit. Your threshing will continue until grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting, and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land. I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down and no one will make you afraid. I will remove wild beasts from the land, and the sword will not pass through your country. You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall by the sword before you. Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand, and your enemies will fall by the sword before you.” Now, the potential curses in verses 23-25, “If in spite of these things you do not accept my correction but continue to be hostile toward me, I myself will be hostile toward you and will afflict you for your sins seven times over. And I will bring the sword on you to avenge the breaking of the covenant. When you withdraw into your cities, I will send a plague among you, and you will be given into enemy hands.”
Here is the question, are they experiencing the blessings? It says, “I will grant peace in the land,” and “the sword will not pass through your country.” October 7th makes me think that they are not experiencing the blessings. Why are they not experiencing the blessings? It says in order to experience the blessings that they must follow His decrees and obey His commands. If we take God at his word, since they are not experiencing the blessings and are experiencing the curses, He is saying that they are not obeying Him, hence the curses will be applied. Why the Curses? The curses are to correct them, just as a parent disciplines a disobedient child.
I also believe that Exodus 34 speaks into this situation. I believe that Exodus 34 actually has the covenant that is written on the stone tablets that were put into the Arc of the Covenant. I believe that because the text says that! Read this chapter, at least up to verse 28 a couple of times and see if you don’t see that as well. All of that being said, verses 22-24 are applicable here, “Celebrate the Festival of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Festival of Ingathering at the turn of the year. Three times a year all your men are to appear before the Sovereign Lord, the God of Israel. I will drive out nations before you and enlarge your territory, and no one will covet your land when you go up three times each year to appear before the Lord your God.” Yehovah God requires all adult males (the army!) to go up to Jerusalem three times per year for the Feasts (moedim). This would leave the cities vulnerable to attack from invaders. God Himself says that he will protect their land while they come to worship Him. In Israel, on October 7, 2023, they were celebrating Shemini Atzeret (שְׁמִינִי עֲצֶרֶת), part of Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles). But, I believe, October 7 wasn’t the correct day. I won’t dig deep into this topic now, I will in a future post, but the Jewish people count time on the Hillel II calendar created in 359 C.E. (AD). This is not the calendar that God is referencing when he sets dates in Scripture. Are they being disobedient using this man-made calendar? In their view, they were celebrating a Feast day, doesn’t Exodus 34 say that God should have protected their land? That didn’t happen. They should have been in Jerusalem for the Feast but they were in the south near Gaza. Either we believe the Bible or we don’t.
Yehovah is allowing these things to happen in order to correct the Jews in the modern nation state called Israel, the currently visible portion of the children of Israel.
On May 15, 1948, Israel became a nation in a day, right out of Isaiah 66 verse 8. They created their own government, we say, the only democracy in the middle east. But, is that supposed to be their form of government? Where do we find democracy in the Bible? The Torah isn’t some religious rule book. It is the instructions on how to govern a nation! The Torah was to be their constitution. They decided to do things their own way. Might this be part of the reason that the correction is being given?
This correction will continue until it has the desired result, repentance, Teshuvah (תְּשׁוּבָה). Time is short, the intensity will increase if there is no repentance.
New here? Consider reading the introduction here.