Sabbath Services
This past week the world was consumed by Halloween. This is Satan’s world. Deuteronomy was written by Moses in the last weeks/months of his 12-year life. In chapter 31, we see Israel forget God, and in so doing, lose their foundation. We then see God’s punishment upon the nation because of their sins. Why is the current Israel-Palestine war such a big deal in prophetic, biblical, Christian terms? Mr. Fritts reviews the history of the conflict through a biblical lens and projects the outcomes of the war because of biblical prophecy. To start we examine Abram, and his families uproot to Egypt. Then we go through his and Lot’s amicable separation and division of land. Then through Sarai and Hagar’s dramatic home life, zeroing in on the births of two important figures- Isaac and Ishmael. Ishmael, son of Hagar and Abram, is sent away for the sake of his younger half-brother, Isaac (son of Sarai and Abram). Ishmael becomes a successful archer beloved by his people. Fast-forward to Isaac and his wife Rebekah’s struggle with infertility. Twins, Jacob and Esau, are eventually born. In trying to please his father Isaac, Esau adds a daughter of Ishmael to his trove of wives. Esau married an Ishmaelite. Abraham, after Sarah’s wife had married a woman named Keturah. Midian was a daughter of Keturah and Abraham. The Ishmaelites and Midianites intermarry so much over successive generations that the two names become interchangeable. The land promised to Israel (Abraham had Issaac who had Jacob, and Jacob’s name was changed to Israel) was inhabited by the Canaanites, Hivites, Jebusites, Hittites, etc. Those people were pagan and far from God. Ishmael’s inheritance involved displacing many people and killing many others. The land didn’t belong to those people. It belonged to God. And God gave the land to Israel. Israel’s taking of the land inflamed already tense relations with the related lineage of Ishmael. The Philistines and Israel have been at odds for thousands of years. The Philistines are the Palestinians among others. The sermon considers more on the origins of the Israelitish and Arab worlds, highlighting their complicated intermingling and near-constant conflict, an age-old struggle that will not end until Christ returns to establish His kingdom and order on this warring world.
