Guarding His Flock Ministries

On the possibility of peace for the Middle East.

“Even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined.” Daniel 9:26b, NASB

Along with other Middle East terrorist groups like Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas remains dedicated to Israel’s extermination as a nation. Hamas, a reporter noted, has a “leadership unyielding, determined and increasingly confident of achieving their goal: the eradication of Israel as a Jewish state.” [1] Terrorist groups want “no” negotiations with Israel and will not be satisfied until all Israeli settlements are dismantled and four million displaced Palestinians, living in surrounding nations like Jordan, are granted a full right of return. After that, says one Hamas leader, “Jews could remain, living ‘in an Islamic state with Islamic law’.” [2]

As much as many in the West might want to pretend it isn’t happening, a Holy War is raging in the Middle East, a war that threatens the availability of oil and as a result, the stability of western economies which are dependent upon that oil. Fronted to be democratic revolutions of the people, Islamic extremists are using these political and military crises to enhance their influence in Syria, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and to a lesser degree, Jordan. Maybe Saudi Arabia is next, and who knows where the current crisis in Syria will lead?

With the storming of US Embassies in Egypt and Libya, and the killing of our Ambassador to Libya and three other embassy workers a few days ago, we now know what the overthrow of  governments in the name of “democracy” will bring to that region of the world. In every crisis exists an opportunity, and the political revolutions taking place are the bad fruit of an Islamofacist conspiracy which has viewed most Arab regimes to have been too western in their orientation and hence, too tolerant of Israel’s existence as a nation. But our interest in the Middle East, along with that of our European allies, is motivated by the fear of how an interruption, or even cutoff, of the oil supply might impact western economies which are so dependent on it.
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Egypt in Crisis: A Prophetic Perspective

“In that day there will be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar to the Lord near its border. And it will become a sign and a witness to the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt; for they will cry to the Lord because of oppressors, and He will send them a Savior and a Champion, and He will deliver them. Thus the Lord will make Himself known to Egypt, and the Egyptians will know the Lord in that day.” (Isaiah 19:19-21a, NASB)

Egypt in the Present
Egypt is in the news. Mass public demonstrations against Hosni Mubarak’s régime have turned violent as demonstrators, the majority of whom are against the current government, a minority of whom are for it, throw rocks and Molotov cocktails at each other. Mubarak has offered to step down in September after an orderly transition, but the demonstrating mobs want him out now. Sniper fire has also been heard from rooftops over Liberation Square (Tahrir) in Cairo, Egypt’s capitol city. A few persons may have been killed; all of which is to say, the political situation in Egypt, a country formerly aligned with the United States and tolerant of Israel’s existence, has turned dicey. Nobody, not even the expert talking heads on network newscasts, dare to forecast where this anarchical mess might lead. So far, the Egyptian military, having been trained in the West and carrying some western values, has remained neutral. How long it will remain so is unknown. But why, it might be asked, is all this happening?

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“For, behold, Thine enemies make an uproar; And those who hate Thee have exalted themselves. They make shrewd plans against Thy people, And conspire together against Thy treasured ones. They have said, ‘Come, and let us wipe them out as a nation, That the name of Israel be remembered no more’.” (Psalm 83:2-4, NASB). 

In the over half-century since the conclusion of World War II, there has resided in the Jewish community a tendency to blame Christianity for the rise of Nazism and the unspeakable evil that befell the Jewish people during the tyrannical reign of, and the Holocaust conducted by, the Third Reich. The senior inter-religious advisor at the American Jewish Committee, Rabbi James Rudin once expressed this conviction: ”Christianity and Christian teachings over the centuries created the seedbed for Nazism to grow in.” [1] Wrongly, I believe, some historians assign blame for the rise of modern European anti-Semitism to Martin Luther. [2] Lately however, such linkage is being questioned.

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