A Story Behind the Story of Israel’s Current War
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Over the last five days Israel has suffered atrocities not experienced since the Holocaust.
Former Israeli Defense Force international spokesperson, Jonathan Conricus, called it Israel’s “Pearl Harbor type of moment.”
Hamas said they initially launched five thousand rockets into Israel. The IDF claimed twenty-five hundred were launched.
While writing this blog the number of civilian casualties from the October 7th and 8th attacks are 1,300+ dead and 3,000+ wounded.
Children were murdered in front of their parents and parents were murdered in front of their children.
Bodies of babies and toddlers were found at Kafar Aza, a kibbutz in southern Israel, with their heads decapitated.
Men, women, and children with their hands bound had been murdered by gun shot.
Fifteen teenage girls, in the village of Be’eri were placed in the same room and a grenade was tossed into the room murdering the innocents.
These are not acts of war but of terror.
Yes, every war experiences the loss of civilian lives, not from intentional planned murder, but casualties from bombing and being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
These acts of terror took place by Hamas troops going door to door with planned intention of murdering men, women, children, toddlers, and babies. This is evil spawned in the depths of hell.
One cannot help but stop and remember, Israel’s war of Independence in 1948; the Six Day War of 1967; and the Yom Kippur War 1973.
Fifty years to the day, plus one after the surprise attack October 6, 1973, Israel was again, amazingly, caught completely surprised by the massive invasion by Hamas.
What in the world is going on? Has the Lord forgotten or abandoned the “Apple of His eye?”
Not at all. Psalm 83 describes.
Do not keep silent, O God!
(Psalm 83:1-4 NKJV).
Do not hold Your peace,
And do not be still, O God!
For behold, Your enemies make a tumult;
And those who hate You have lifted up their head.
They have taken crafty counsel against Your people,
And consulted together against Your sheltered ones.
They have said, “Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation,
That the name of Israel may be remembered no more
Look who is involved in this attack described by the Psalmist.
For they have consulted together with one consent;
They form a confederacy against You:
The tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites;
Moab and the Hagrites;
Gebal, Ammon, and Amalek;
Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre;
Assyria also has joined with them;
They have helped the children of Lot.
(Psalm 83:5-8 NKJV)
The combatants are:
- Edom (Jordan)
- Ishmaelites (Saudi Arabia)
- Moab (Jordan)
- The Hagrites (Syria)
- Gebal (northern Syria)
- Ammon (Jordan)
- Amalek (Egypt)
- Philistia (Gaza, Hamas Palestinians)
- Tyre (Lebanon)
- Assyria (ISIS- flags of ISIS have been found among the HAMAS forces)
- The children of Lot (Turkey).
Psalm 83:9-18 makes it very clear, God has not forsaken Israel. He will deal with Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, and ISIS the same way He has dealt with all the enemies of Israel.
God will be the defender of Israel and the enemy combatants will be totally defeated and wiped out.
Let them be confounded and dismayed forever;
Yes, let them be put to shame and perish,
That they may know that You, whose name alone is the Lord,
Are the Most High over all the earth.
(Psalm 83:17-18 NKJV)
The Prophet Zephaniah made it even clearer.
For Gaza shall be forsaken,
And Ashkelon desolate;
They shall drive out Ashdod at noonday,
And Ekron shall be uprooted.
Woe to the inhabitants of the seacoast,
The nation of the Cherethites!
The word of the Lord is against you,
O Canaan, land of the Philistines:
“I will destroy you;
So there shall be no inhabitant.”
The seacoast shall be pastures,
With shelters for shepherds and folds for flocks.
The coast shall be for the remnant of the house of Judah;
They shall feed their flocks there;
In the houses of Ashkelon they shall lie down at evening.
For the Lord their God will intervene for them,
And return their captives.
(Zephaniah 2:4-7)
There is a deeper story happening as Israel again defends their right to exist.
It is illustrated for us in year 1967, when guerrillas from Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan made several incursions into Israel in the fall of 1966 and spring of 1967, forcing Israel to defend herself and her right to exist.
Egypt moved military forces into the Sinai and closed the Gulf of Aqaba in May of 1967.
Jordan, Iraq, and Syria signed agreed to unite with Egypt and moved forces to the eastern boarder of Israel number 465,000.
The Israeli Defense Forces were facing this Arab coalition 275,000. Almighty God gave victory to the “Apple of His eye” in just six days.
The miracles experienced in those six days are numerous.
That was not all that was happening.
1966 a small Episcopal church, St. Luke’s, in Seattle, Washington, under the leadership of Rev. Dennis Bennett had become a lightening rod of a fresh move of the Holy Spirit, the Charismatic Renewal.
February 17-19, 1967, the Chi Rho Society Bible Study group at Duquesne University was at a retreat.
Preparing for that retreat members of the Bible study had been asked to read the The Cross and the Switchblade, by David Wilkerson, They Speak With Other Tongues, by John Sherrill, and the first few chapters in the Book of Acts.
That weekend retreat became the launching site of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. The movement leap frogged to Notre Dame other east coast universities.
While guns and canons were blazing in Israel in June 1967, hippies and flower children were gathering in Haight Ashbury, San Francisco.
The radio stations were play a song written by John Philips of the Mamas and Papas and sung by Scott McKenzie.
If you’re going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
If you are going to San Francisco
You’re gonna meet some gentle people there
100,000 hippies and flower children followed Philips and McKenzie’s call. It was not just drugs and sexual liberation happening.
Ted Wise, a drug freak and sail-maker, and his wife Elizabeth had been transformed by the power of Jesus Christ. They opened a coffee shop, “The Living Room,” one block away from the corner of Haight and Ashbury.
Ted and Elizabeth, looked like and dressed like the Hippies and Flower Children, but they had something better than drugs and sex. They and their new converts became known as Jesus Freaks.
A new move of God was birthed.
The Jesus People movement was launched. United with the Charismatic Renewal the entire nation was under the powerful wave of a spiritual awakening.
April 8, 1966, Time magazine asked the question on its front cover, “Is God Dead?” June 21, 1971, Time magazine cover announced, “The Jesus Revolution.”
While Lucifer and his proxy armies were attacking the Covenant People of God and being thoroughly defeated by innumerable miracle, Holy Spirit was pouring out a spiritual awaken in America that would go around the world and plunder the very gates of hell.
Fast forward fifty years.
ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran began planning this attack at the time President Biden was pulling out of Afghanistan.
God has not been asleep or silent.
February 8, 2023, revival broke out at Asbury University. The spiritual fire spread to Lee University, February 17, 2023, as students began to spontaneously gather in the chapel, signing, praying and praying for each other.
The fire continued to spread to Christian universities, Western University Kentucky, Samford University, Campbellsville University, Oklahoma Baptist University, Cedarville University, Auburn University.
Then it began breaking out on secular university campuses.
Late February and early March Ohio State University and Texas A&M University, then in April 2023, the University of Oklahoma began experiencing a might outpouring of Holy Spirit.
It is not just on college campuses God has been bringing revival and spiritual awakening.
The weekend of August 6, 2023, Life Church, and pastor Craig Groeschel celebrated 2000 people being baptized in water, as 8,000 watched throughout their satellite campuses.
Pentecost Sunday, May 28, 2023, Pirates Cove, 250 churches united in a water baptism service at the historic location of the Jesus People Movement. 10,000-12,000 were in the congregation as 4,166 people were baptized.
July 8, 2023, the same location, Pastor Greg Laurie and his team baptized 4,500 people following a Harvest Crusade at Honda Center, Anaheim, CA. with 230,000 in attendance and 7,000 people making a profession of faith.
Just this week, a church in Texas reported baptizing 755 over the last twelve months, October 1, 2022, to September 30, 2023.
Almighty God is raising up a mighty army. His church, empowered by Holy Spirit attacking and crushing the very gates of hell.
While Lucifer and the armies of darkness are attacking with vengeance, seeking to steal, kill, and destroy Israel and the American culture, just as Israel defeated the Arab coalition in 1967 and the great spiritual awakening impacted the world, so it is happening right now.
Revival is not on its way. It is happening.
It is imperative for every pastor to lead his people to passionately seek the Lord. Conduct services of waiting on the Lord and renewing their first love.
Then mobilize the people of God to reach the unchurched and the lost of their community.
This is the hour.
This is the time for the church to crush the gates and plunder hell to populate heaven.
All for the glory and honor of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, Jesus Christ.
Take my course on how to discern where we are on God’s Timeclock. Learn more here
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A Story Behind the Story of Israel’s Current War
