"Area of Attack into Israel by Hezbollah,
and Former Territories of Israel Occupied by Lebanon Arabs," With August 2008 Update on Israel Prime Minister Ehud Omert's Resignation (See Postscript #6)
by Ronald Ginther
God gave through Moses this territory, and you see Mount Carmel on the coast, which is Haifa now, being attacked with Hezbollah rockets.
In the Tribe of Naphtali's northern territory, just to the right of the Tribe of Dan's God-given territory (please see the map at the bottom of this page), there we see the heartland of the Hezbollah's grip on southern Lebanon. This is not their territory, and, in truth, it still belongs in God's eyes to Israel. The Gifts of God, as the Bible says, are without repentance (that means, God is not going to renege on his gifts and agreements and covenants--not ever). God's Covenants, which are not like man'sagreements and contracts which all have a time limit, are given everlastingly. And this follows: He will never, never, never recognize the claims of others on what He has given solely to His People of Israel. Israel acting outside God's Covenants and His will for them has given it up, but it is not given up by God to anybody else. It will be returned to Israel by Christ himself when He soon returns to rule from Jerusalem, according to the Bible.
I am like anyone else, except for the Bible, the Word of God, which I respect above man's word and his human interpretations of events. They are bound to be faulty and misleading at best (at worst they are preconceived, premeditated lies designed to deceive people). God's word, on the other hand, is always TRUTH. You can always bank on what the Bible says is truth, nothing but the truth. But you can always doubt what man says, or how he interprets things. Science itself, a pursuit of truth with physical means and physical verification, is man-created and, thus, riddled with man's short-comings and lack of total knowledge and understanding. Only God possesses total knowledge and total understanding of everything in the Universe that He created. Man is always a seeker after truth and facts. Fortunately, we have something better than science, good as it is within its limited perimeters. We have God's own everlasting Truth, embodied in Jesus Christ, and written down in the Bible. Everything we need to know is in the Bible and in Jesus who embodies it in Himself and His deity and manhood.
How then should we view the conflagration in southern "Lebanon"? God does not, according to His own geography recorded in the Bible, recognize such an entity in the first place. Nevertheless, He died for the people of that region--of all backgrounds, it matters not what they are. He wants to see them all accept His beloved Son, Jesus (Yeshua, Issa), as their only Savior and Lord. The fighting now going on, He has allowed, all to the purpose of driving people, like the befuddled sheep they are, to the Lamb of God! Only the Lamb of God will save them, not from the Israelis who are not their true Enemy, but from the Devil who will destroy them once this life is ended.
With this larger, true context of salvation in Jesus Christ in mind, we can more sensibly view the fighting in southern Lebanon. We know that, in part, it is a response from the Israelis against the Hezbollah threat and the active kidnappings and provocation of the Hezbollah of late. I support the Israelis in this mission--it is entirely justified, as the President of the U.S. has told the world. The Hezbollah are the clear aggressors. The media of this country, on the contrary, disagree. They hold Israel, despite the Hezbollah attacks, to be the wanton aggressor, and despite everything Hezbollah does, Israel will never be justified in fighting back, since they have "stolen" the Palestinian lands that make up the present State of Israel. This is blatantly untrue, a libel against the State of Israel and its people.
This is a completely false view of the international press and U.S. media as well, as we know from God's Covenants with Israel, the re-affirmations by Moses of the land grants involved in those Covenants, and the subsequent support of God when Joshua, the leader of the Israelis after Moses, went in and took the land away from the heathen peoples then residing there--the Girgashites, Hittites, Amorites, and the others "-ites."
The press, ignorant and contemptuous of the Word of God, being secular-humanist and anti-Christian, are presently, every hour, beating the drum of public outrage regarding the damage and loss of civilian Lebanonese lives due to the Israeli counter-attacks. They hope to pressure the U.S. administration to pressure Israel for a cease-fire based on a compromise with Hezbollah. Israel cannot compromise, as they are making crystal clear to the newsmen and newswomen interviewing the various army commanders. As an Israeli army commander told a newsman while picking up a handful of Israeli soil, Hezbollah aims at the total extinction of Israel (they care nothing for the "Palestinians", by the way), but they will never get one piece of Israel. Behind this we know is the deeper reality: Iran-back Hezbollah is ruled by an anti-christ, false messianic spirit which is akin or the same as the spirit of Haman that tried, back in the time of Mordecai and Esther and the Agagite Haman, to exterminate the Jewish race and, thus, destroy any chance of a Messiah being born of the Jews. This same spirit wants to stop Christ's return, which is inevitable, prophesied repeatedly in the bible. What a vain scheme! Yet this spirit will not give up, nor will its master, Satan, give up. They both know that millions of people will believe them, and thus fall prey to their deceptions, even though Christ will return as God has ordained He will.
Whoever is Arab and Moslem or Iranian and Shiite Moslem ought to consider this: the Devil continually manufactures false messiahs, vain and useless and destructive as they are. The only Messiah who survives the test of the Bible, who has fulfilled the hundreds of prophecies given in the Bible concerning what would happen to the true Messiah, has to be Jesus Christ, born in Bethlehem, raised in Nazareth, and crucified and resurrected in Jerusalem. He is the true Prince of Peace, not the anti-christ leader who will proclaim peace to gain the world's support but provoke a world war and a war against God for the seven years this world dictator is alive.
No other man, however holy as he may seem, fufills those hundreds of prophecies--except Jesus Christ. The others do not even come close. They do not even get into the running competition with Him. In other words, they do not qualify even to be considered. It does not matter what they accomplished, or how many millions they gathered together as followers, only Jesus fulfilled the prophecies. The mathematics or probabilities that one man would do so with all of them is beyond calculation, though many of the prophecies' probability of being fulfilled have been calculated. I am not a mathematician, but I can at least listen to mathematicians who have done the work for me.
Generally, scientists seem to evade their own science of probability regarding the Messianic prophecies. Stephen Hawkings is one that comes to mind--surely, he should consider, being a leading physicist and mathematician, the probabilities of the Messianic prophecies. Why don't the scientists do this, and settle forever the question? It would convert them on the spot to followers of Jesus Christ! The argument is over, for all claimants, when the Messianic prophecies and Jesus Christ are considered. The prophecies all point to Jesus Christ. Isaiah 53, for example, Psalm 22, contain prophecies and description of the Messiah that can only apply to Jesus Christ, they so particular, and are in such detail. Please go the Jews for Jesus Messianic prophecies link, for the prophecies in detail and how Jesus fulfilled them specifically and perfectly. We can know the truth, it is not outside our reach, concerning whether Jesus, not Buddha and his philosophy, not Mohammed and Allah and the Koran, not Vishnu and the Vedas, not the Korean leader Sun y Moon of the Unification Church, not the so-called Mahdi or Hidden 12th Iman of the Shiites, is the Messiah, the Savior, the Lord of all.
The fighting in southern Lebanon is politicized front page news, but it is actually a spiritual struggle between that Light and Darkness, the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world and the Devil, that is really involved. The U.S. media understands nothing of this fact, of course. They are using their non-Biblical, natural understanding. It cannot give them the Truth, for they are wearing chicken blinders--tiny clip on metal screens, so that they cannot see to right or left but only wherever the chicken is going. Men can wear mental blinders, to to speak, only able to see and consider what the natural man (unredeemed, unregenerate, lost in darkness) can see and comprehend. The natural man sees and walks in darkness, the Bible says.
Evenso, though Israel is totally justified to defend its people as it is doing presently, aren't you sick and tired of war and all the chaos and suffering it brings? Israel (though its atheist founders did not know it) exists to be a blessing to the nations. Up until the Intifada, the people called Palestinian Arabs were blessed by the State of Israel--and the whole region was rising economically. I was there on two occasions at that time, so I can say this. They would have been richly blessed if they had not decided to follow false shepherds who led them into the ditch, economically and spiritually. They finally got a combination terrorist-pirate by the name of Yassir Arafat,* who stole them blind, to the tune of hundreds of millions, given by Europe and the U.S. to aid the people to build an infrastructure and provide basic medical facilities and care and also provide food and shelter. These things were given in only token measure by the PLO, and PLA--while instead they concentrated on building blood-thirsty, ruthless, paramilitary terrorist organizations, which are too numerous to mention here. They eventually reached the insanity of training and sending out homicide bombers with backpacks of explosives, and Prime Minister Netanyahu turned over to our president documents Yassir Arafat signed authorizing suicide bombers to go into Israel, documents taken when the Israelis shelled and took over his headquarters temporarily. This is the end result of following false shepherds, who can only bring the people death, destruction, and abject poverty and hopelessness. The people under Arafat did not go forward, they slipped back and back, thanks to such a bad choice by so many of the Moslem Arabs in the midst of Israel or on the Left Bank or in Gaza. We also know the sad story of how these pathetic, misguided sheep of Abraham are being manipulated to this very minute by powerful, rogue regimes in Syria and Iran. Egypt too has done its share in this heartless manipulation.
I am not recommending that Israel seize southern Lebanon, though that may be necessary for a military and security reason, until the area is completely purged of the Hezbollah organization. Israel has no desire to rule over areas largely or mainly populated by Moslem Arabs, since Israel is a Jewish state with Judaism pre-dominate if not the official religion (Israel is a secular state at present). Israel, on this point, is calling to Lebanon to deploy its troops and take control of the area. That would seem a reasonable demand--except that Lebanon is not a reasonable state right now. If they refuse to do so, if they refuse to govern their own territory and allow Hezbollah to set up an independent enclave from which to spring against Israel (something that they have already achieved), then Israel is forced to take the area and do what Lebanon's government is too weak and cowardly to do.
Refuge on the island of Cyprus:
Finding it almost impossible to get out of the country (is that a shock to an American in a foreign country--it shouldn't be, unless Americans are incredibly naive), the refugees are fleeing already by the tens of thousands to Cyprus, as we see in the newscasts. Some are very angry at Israel and the U.S. and scream and spit with fury into the cameras against the U.S. Why? They had repeated warnings to get out. They were ignorant (and ignorance is no excuse regarding the law, as we know when we break traffic rules and get hauled over), or they were complicit. They went to the area knowing that the anti-Israel Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed terorist militia and organization, was centered there. Hezbollah even has ten representatives in the Lebanonese parliament! How could any American not know that Hezbollah was king in southern Lebanon? How could they co-exist with such a thing--but they chose to. Now, alas, they must sleep in the bed they made, and they are angry. I cannot sympathize with such people. The children, who are innocent, are the victims of their adult parents who made such unwise decisions as to go and live in the shadow of Hezbollah guns and authority, with the Lebanonese government impotent to help them if any trouble came from Israel (and Hezbollah existed to make trouble happen, did it not?). So the adults who made the decision to vacation or live there are either grossly ignorant or complicit. Both ignorance and complicity come with a cost, sometimes a very high one.
The people I sympathize with are the Lebanonese civilians who lack a government that has the will to protect them and preserve Lebanon's integrity as a nation against foreign interlopers and brigands like the Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations. Lebanon has never been defendable--it has always been weak and preyed upon by others. No one, obviously, will fight for it. It has a vigorous but pleasure-loving mercantile society seemingly going back to the Phoenicians of Tyre and Sidon, but that is not enough to make a nation (good business sense and sensual pleasure do not make a backbone). The land is divided, being mostly nominal Christian in the south, and Moslem Arab in the north (as well as the south, where many Moslems live). This is mixing oil and water--and there is no real Lebanon in the hearts and souls of the residents. No wonder Syria could operate for so many years in the nation, directing its affairs, until it was forced out by the U.S. Syria is still involved, aiding Hezbollah, and attempting to come back in via Hezbollah. But now an infuriated Israel has had enough attacks on its citizens from across the border and has moved to protect itself. Israel is completely justified, no matter what the Hezbollah, Syria, Europe, and the liberal-dominated U.S. media say. They are wrong. It is God's Word that is correct in regard to this area, as it is correct in regard to the entire world. God owns the world, and He is above all its rulers and parliaments. He may well be orchestrating these events that are turning things upside down in Lebanon--all for the purpose of bringing the people of this region, Israel and Arab, Moslem and nominal Christian,** to the Lord Jesus.
Now with these contexts in mind--the Bible, the Messianic Prophecies, the Covenants of God that cannot be changed or abridged or superseded or nullified concerning Israel and its boundaries--we do not have to be confused and misled by media reports but can understand exactly what is going on in present events in southern Lebanon.--Editor and the Emmaus Walk Founder, Ronald Ginther
Footnotes:
*Dr. Kenyon, a great man of God and formerly a pastor for twenty some years in a prestigious Westminster church in London before returning to the U.S. to minister, while on TBN, talked about his involvement with Yassir Arafat, witnessing to him about Jesus Christ. Kenyon stated that Arafat, who was very open to Dr. Kenyon's ministry to him, seemed close to accepting Jesus Christ as His Savior, but toward the last days of Arafat's, with his removal to a military hospital for treatment of his terminal illnesses, Kenyon lost contact with him and there was no "closure" of their relationship, which pained him because he knew Arafat was so close to the Kingdom of God. I listened with interest to this, because for in the past ten years or so I prayed a number of times for Yassir Arafat's salvation. I see that he had a real chance to be saved, after listening to Dr. Kenyon. This may have been Arafat's last chance to accept Christ, or nearly his last. We do not know, only God knows, when a soul has a last chance to repent and turn to the redemption of Jesus Christ for all his sins. I can only hope that Arafat, in his remaining moments, turned to the Lord in repentance, the true Lord, Jesus Christ, who is the Only One who can saved a lost, sin-sick soul. **Israel has a declining number of nominal Christians, who are mostly Arab. They are increasingly leaving Israel because of the difficulty of life and are settling over in the U.S., Canada, and elsewhere. Caught in-between--between Arab and Jew, Jew and Christian, Moslem and Christian--they are leaving. Arab countries have populations of nominal Christians too, though they also have evangelical, born-again Christians going back a generation or more. Nominal Christian families have been "Christian" for generations, usually. They are fine, well-educated, well-mannered people, but not necessarily saved. They are from a Christian culture (which is a sub-group or sub-culture within the general Moslem culture). It is all they have known until recently. But the Gospel is going forth to them, and they are turning to Christ too along with Moslems. The Gospel, with the satellites broadcasting it, cannot be kept from the people by their religious authorities and Moslem governments. The people are able now, for the first time in many hundreds of years, able to decide for themselves Who is the Truth, Who is the Savior. This, despite all the turmoil, is an ideal situation, thanks to modern cellphone, TV, satellite communications systems--just as the Roman Empire was, for that time, an ideal petri dish for the cultivation of the Christian faith and its rapid spread.
Everybody soon will hear the words of Jesus, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one comes to the Father but by Me," and then the End will come.
Postscript #1: This is the area God ceded to the tribes of Napthali and Dan, a huge and lush, fertile valley set between the two high mountain ranges of Lebanon, is the prime staging ground for Hezbollah, since this area has always been inacessible or nearly ungovernable by governments in the north of the country, cut off by the difficult mountain-girt terrain. Here the Hezbollah can freely train, set up their arsenals and missile platforms, provide some humanitarian aid to the neighboring people for good PR, then shoot their rockets and missiles right down the throat of Israel. For that reason, Hezbollah chose to center their operations here. We shall see how long they hold it. Lebanon is like the foolish man who, out of pity, saw a snake clinging forlornly to a rock by the brookside and took it to his bosom and crossed the stream, only to be bitten for playing Boy Scout. Why did you bite me? the poor man cried to the snake. "Did I not carry you across the stream like you asked me?" The snake replied, slithering away from the dying man, "But you knew I was a snake."
POSTSCRIPT #2: SCRIPTURES CONCERNING THE LAND OF CANAAN GIVEN TO ISRAEL BY THE GOD OF ABRAHAM, ISAAC, AND JACOB:
The Lord God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob declared to Moses his servant at Horeb the mountain:
Deuteronomy 1:6-8 "The Lord our God spake unto us in Horeb, saying, Ye have dwelt long enough in this mount; turn you, and take your journey, and go to the mount of the Amorites, and unto all the places nigh thereunto, in the plain, in the hills, and in the vale, and in the south, and by the seaside [The Great Sea, called now the Mediterranean Sea], to the land of the Canaanites, and unto Lebanon, unto the great river, the river Euphrates. Behold I have set the land before you, go in and possess the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give unto them and to their seed after them."
Dan's inheritance, in the blessing of Moses:
Deut. 33:22: "And of Dan he [Moses] said: Dan is a lion's whelp; he shall leap from Bashan [Bashan was a well-known, former pagan kingdom in northern Canaan and including southern Lebanon, and it was conquered by Israel, defeating Og, the giant who ruled it--recorded again in Deut. 3]."
Napthali's inheritance, in the blessing of Moses:
"And of Napthali he said: "O Naphali, satisfied with favor, and full with the blessing of the Lord, possess thou the west and south."
POSTSCRIPT #3: It is clear that those who do not believe God's Word is the Bible and claim their own scriptures, be they the Vedas, or Koran, or Book of Mormom, or whatever book they have in place of God's Word, will not accept these scriptures among the many the Bible gives us concerning Israel's land granted them by the Almighty God in an everlasting covenant. That makes no difference in the least, before God's eyes. His Word is eternal, and will stand forever. They and their so-called holy books will not stand; they will all be burnt up one day. God's Word says: "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My word will not pass away." What people need to hear, even beyond these scriptures, is GOD LOVES ALL MEN, REGARDLESS OF RACE OR BACKGROUND IN RELIGION and has sent His Son Jesus Christ to fix the sin problem that divides them from God and condemns them to just eternal punishment. God is love and mercy! He wants to save all men, and it is for men to repent of their sins and surrender to the love and salvation provided by God only in His Son's death and substitution on the Cross as the sinless, perfect Lamb of God who took the full penalty for all their sins. If you, reader, need to get right with God your Maker, do so right now. It must not be put off. "Now is the day of salvation," says the Lord.
A prayer: "Dear God, I confess I am a sinner and I have sinned against you. I ask your forgiveness right now, and I believe that Jesus Christ has taken all my sins away, taking the complete penalty for my sins by paying the price of my sins, suffering what I would have suffered, FOR ME__________________[say your name] on His Cross, and dying for me as the perfect, sinless Lamb of God, making perfect atonement for me. I am now reconciled with you, O God! Thanks be to you and Jesus my Lord and Savior. I will serve you with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, until you take me unto yourself in heaven, where you ascended after your resurrection from the dead. I will take your holy Word, the Bible, as truth, and apply its truth and lessons to my life, and walk in Your holy ways from this day forth--all by the power of Jesus Christ living in my heart, who will strengthen and guide me from this day forth to the end. Amen--Editor
POSTSCRIPT #5: Until I draw my own maps for these regions, I will use the ones provided by the Bible of my late departed friend who died at the age of 87. It is her Bible, signed by her, from her childhood days, a small print version printed by Henry Frowde at the Oxford University Press (no date). Permission to reprint these maps here is requested, if there exists any copyright regarding this old version of the Bible.--Editor, The Emmaus Walk, July 2006
POSTSCRIPT #6: This is an an update to this article. Ehud Omert, Prime Minister of Israel, just announced his resignation, after a scandal concerning his accepting bribes from an American totalling over $100,000. He had already been criticized for his weak, ineffectual, no-win policy in the Hezbollah campaign Israel made with its army and primarily its air force. The "victory" was Hezbollah's. The terrorists of Iran dug in at southern Lebanon and the northern Israeli border (where they were constantly firing rockets into Israeli border towns, but later were reaching as far as Haifa with them) were not dislodged by Israel. Ehud Omert's weak handling is responsible, most everyone would agree. After all, he was prime minister during the entire offensive against Hezbollah, start to finish. Israel was right to respond, but not if it did not meant to root Hezbollah out completely, and do a thorough job. As it is, Hezbollah was hurt, but it soon recouped its losses, and thousands of rockets are back in place to begin another bombardment of Israel, as far as Haifa and possibly as far as Jerusalem and Tel Aviv--all thanks to Ehud Omert. It took months and months to get him to resign, as he refused, and only the widely publicized scandal of his being bribed has forced him to do what he should have done after his Hezbollah campaign showed it had not succeeded, and he was responsible for that poor showing--as Israel then appeared weak to its enemies, and weakness invites coming, more ferocious, and determined attacks, not less.
Good riddance to the compromising, weak-spined, corrupt, self-serving, dishonest Ehud Omert! He did not deserve the name of "Ehud," for Ehud was a deliverer of Israel in the time of the Book of Judges, and he went as single operative into enemy Moabite territory, right into the palace of the Moabite tyrant who was oppressing much of Israel with his army's attacks, and slew him. What a brave man! What a man of God! What a saint! He got away too with his life (not a hand was laid on him), before the tyrant's death was discovered. His exploit can be read in Judges, and does eternal credit to the Lord, as it shows that the Lord God is forever watchful and faithful to his covenant with Israel. God sent Ehud to deliver Israel from the Moabite tyrant, and Ehud did all God sent him to do. Israel was then safe from Moab for forty years, and there was peace in Israel.
We Christians now need to pray for Israel, now that Omert is gone. Israel needs a godly, wise ruler, with backbone to defend his nation from its deadly enemies--not another Omert! Another Omert would bring total destruction, simultaneous attacks from all sides that would overwhelm Israel's defenses, including rocket attacks from southern Hezbollah-overrun Lebanon, Hamastan or Gaza, and, of course, Iran. The rockets might have chemical-biological warheads on them too, and possibly nuclear warheads (as Iran is getting closer to nuclear weaponry every moment as we write this in the middle of August 2008.
Can we learn anything from this? Does it show God's hand in any way? I believe it does!God turned the killing of two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah from within Israel--which precipitated Israel's military and aerial bombardment of Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon--to good, in that Prime Minister Ehud Omert's power was weakened by his weak and ineffectual handling of the campaign against Hezbollah, and soon after that the scandal of his illegal finances and bribe-taking finished the job of removing his from his position so that a much better leader can come forth to lead and guide and protect Israel and her courageous people. Character does matter! Omert's corrupt character must have weakened his resolve and commitment to defend his own nation, of which he was so honored to serve as head. He failed in that responsibility in a number of most important ways, but his character was no doubt at the bottom of his failure. How can a leader do right for his country when enemies attack if he is taking bribes on the sly from a foreigner? It was most shameful and compromising to him, and he covered it up as long as he could, and resisted his removal until the evidence was shouting his wron-doing to the entire Arab world and could not be ignored in Israel where the free press refused to ignore the facts, even if they involved the head of state in a terrible scandal. We Americans do well to consider Ehud Omert's fall. William Clinton was full of scandalous lust and used the White House for his escapades with interns and young women he brought in to serve his lusts. Can we suppose he could defend U.S. security any better than the bribe taking, dishonest Omert? No, it is most unlikely. There are many indications he used the office of President of the United States to enrich himself, taking campaign contributions and gifts from China and other countries, while conducting his immorality in the White House under the eye of his wife Hillary Clinton who continued to support him, even though he was compromising national security by allowing the sale of prime missile guidance technology and know-how to China. Wholesale raids at Los Alamos laboatories run by the government of top secret material on our nuclear capability also went to the Chinese operatives there, as we know from reports about them. William Clinton severely compromised our nation's security, all because he chose to be immoral while in office if he could get away with it, and his wife turned a blind eye to it. So too with Omert, who is just like William Clinton. With such self-serving immoralists and political shysters, they come first in their own reckoning, and their nation's welfare not next but far down on the list.
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