All eyes on Israel - Part 1

You will recall in the ‘why the Flood happened’ blog I mentioned that God had me in Genesis chaps 1-11 for a long time. Prior to that, at the beginning of the year, I spent a lot of time in Genesis chapter 2 specifically, in verse 10-14. It didn’t matter how many times I tried to move on in my reading the Lord kept bringing me back to it. Has that ever happened to you? Then you’ll know when this happens, it’s because the Lord is trying to show you something.

In my time of studying, I found I spent a lot of time in the Garden of Eden. Remember, what we read in the Bible is not for entertainment value, it is for us to understand, learn and grow in the knowledge the Lord wants to impart to us, but also to understand his character. 

I don’t profess to be a Theologian, I never attended seminary school and I’m not a Teacher - I’m just someone who loves reading His word. My Teacher is Jesus Christ, and His Holy Spirit imparts wisdom and knowledge on what He wants me to learn. Yes, Jesus is still teaching today, just like He taught His disciples back then. Jesus uses His Holy Spirit to guide, speak, lead and teach us. That is why it is so imperative to be in the Word of God - because without being in His word, it will be impossible for you to hear when the Holy Spirit is speaking to you, He can confirm whether that decision you are making is the right one. Yes, Prayer & fasting is key, but to be in the Word will build up the Spirit within you, it’ll open your spiritual eyes and ears, and you will know without a doubt when Jesus is speaking.

If you are one of those Christians that do not read the Word of God or just read it occasionally, then you will forever be caught up by what people say, you’ll hold preachers higher than Jesus himself, and you’ll constantly be making wrong decisions, because you’ll think you’re being led by the Spirit when in fact you are being led by your own emotions. It is important to be in the Word of God for yourself, because He is the only one to confirm whatever is being said is true or heresy - your spirit can pick up when incorrect information is being shared, because through reading His word, you know who He is. You can’t know who God is without reading the Word of God for yourself. The other issue is, if you are not in the Word, you can easily be swept away by false narratives and be deceived. 

Today, there are some Christians who are not prepared for what is currently happening or about to happen, because they’re not seeing things with their spiritual eyes - their natural eyes are being deceived therefore, they become tolerant of things that is blasphemous to our Lord and Saviour, which leads them to live a life of compromise, it says in Hebrews 13:8 “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”

People are looking at what is happening in the news right now, and there are some who don’t realise this has been prophesied in the bible. I pinpoint just some of the things in my previous blog - 'Are you ready for the coming Rapture'. Again, unless you are in the Word, you will not understand what you’re seeing in the news or why there is a war in Israel.

As I said, I spent a lot of time on the Garden of Eden - let’s read Genesis 2: 8-14 “The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it parted and became four riverheads. The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one which skirts the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good. Bdellium and the onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one which goes around the whole land of Cush. The name of the third river is Hiddekel; it is the one which goes toward the east of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates.” So, you can imagine what I started to do, I began to research where these rivers were today. Now, I know the flood came as judgement on the earth, and scientists have said that the Flood would have changed the positioning of the river beds, mountains and lands. Nevertheless, as I mentioned before, God did not ask Moses to put this in the Torah if He did not think this would be a significant information we needed to know - God is all knowing and is the one who positions things in it’s place - even after the Flood. Scientists are humans and made by God!

Eden was a place big enough to have four riverheads - it also had a Garden, which is where Adam and Eve was, until they fell into sin, and God expelled them from the Garden - not Eden! Before we touch on the four riverheads, think about the river it came from, the Bible does not name that one river, but it does name the four riverheads that flow from it. Have you ever pondered on that river? I believe it to be Jesus Christ “the fountain of living waters” (Jeremiah 2:13), we see this same river again in Revelation 22:1 “And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb.” In Ezekiel, we see he goes into more detail about that river as he is shown the New Jerusalem in a vision (Ezekiel 47). It’ll make sense why this “river” has not been found, if you read what the New Jerusalem is in Revelations and again in Ezekiel, it mirrors what would have been, in the Garden of Eden.

Let’s have a look at where those four riverheads would have been and why this is important to the grand scheme of things where Israel is concerned. Before we delve in, it is important to reference that the names of Havilah and Cush happen to be the same names of Noah’s descendants. Where the Lord is concerned, there are no coincidences. A lot of the earlier men, their offspring’s names happen to be locations in the Bible.

There are differing opinions from several scholars who have investigated where they believe the land Havilah may have been positioned, thus what the river Pishon may have been. One example is the Historian Josephus, he believed Havilah was in the place of India - I don’t quite believe that, because as you read throughout the bible, it is very much fixated on the Middle East for most of the Old Testament. There are two hypotheses that Havilah could be associated with places like Ethiopia, and regions towards Somalia and across the Red Sea into Yemen; another hypotheses is that it associates with the Arabian Peninsula. Regardless, I believe Havilah is still very much fixated in the Middle East regions.

There is a wide spread opinion on Cush being the now country of Ethiopia and the river Gihon is the Blue Nile river which flows from the River Nile - we know that this river is the river of Egypt. The name of the third river Hiddekel, which was eventually changed to the Tigris river, flowed towards the east of Assyria. The land of Assyria was a large region that later on was called Mesopotamia. This covered part of several countries known today as Syria, Lebanon, parts of Turkey, Iraq and Iran.

Finally, you have the Euphrates river, known as the Great River in the Bible (Joshua 1:4). This river runs in parallel with the Tigris river and then eventually meets, connecting the previous countries mentioned.

Now, if Eden and the four riverheads covered the countries mentioned, then it’ll make sense when God told Abraham in Genesis 15:18 “On the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying: “To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates;” it also says in Deuteronomy 11: 24 “Every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours: from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the River Euphrates, even to the Western Sea, shall be your territory.” I genuinely believe this land was once the land of Eden, and why the Lord had promised this to Abraham, because this is where His Chosen People would be born.

After the expulsion of Adam and Eve, we see their son Cain and his wife has just been separated from his parents for killing his brother Abel. In fact, I don’t believe it was a separation from just his parents, I believe it was a separation from God. That is the worst kind of judgement - to be separated from the Almighty Father, is death, and this is a result of not being in His Will. I pray you all, if you don’t know Him, come to know Him or if you’re playing church, get it together and surrender your all today!

Cain started to build and multiply in the land of Nod, which was east of Eden (Genesis 4:16-17). His son, Enoch begat Iran, who begat, Mehujael, who begat Methushael, who begat Lamech. Lamech who became the great, great, great grandson of Cain, was the first person to have multiple wives, which was not what the Lord ordained, he also boasted about anyone trying to take vengeance on him for murdering someone, he would prevail (Genesis 4:19-24). We can see here the clear wickedness of his heart, there is no remorse for the life he took. After this we start to see the wickedness of the world and soon after we read the judgement on the world, where the Lord brought forth rain and flooded the earth (Genesis chaps 6-8). You can also read why this happened in the blog ‘Why the Flood happened’ along with scriptures quoted.

After the flood we see where Noah’s son’s offspring went to, as I mentioned before their son’s names became names of ancient places. Ham’s descendants were the start of these following nations:

Cush is Ethiopia 

Mizram is Egypt

Put is Libya

Canaan is Israel

Cush’s son Nimrod went to a land called Shinar (not long afterwards was called Babylonia) and began to build kingdoms for himself. He eventually went to Assyria and built Nineveh and other cities (Genesis 10:8-12), which will later fall under the name Mesopotamia. We see in Genesis 11 Nimrod was wicked and evil. The historian Josephus suggested that Nimrod’s motives was to come against the plan’s of the Lord. He tried to elevate himself as someone of importance (Genesis 11:3-4). The Bible describes him as “a mighty hunter” (Genesis 10:9). Josephus describes that Nimrod was able to convince the land of Shinar to make the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-4), to avenge himself against God, should He decide to flood the world again. He turned the minds of the people from the fear of God to depend on his power due to his strength and reputation. This will not be the first time we see this rebellious behaviour against God - throughout centuries we see a rise of nations/Empires coming against God and his Chosen Nation and People. In this blog, I outline the empires which reigned over this world throughout time, one always seeking ownership of the world, trying to be equal to God, they display characteristics of Nimrod’s rebellious behaviour. What is interesting is, the masses of people they garner to follow them, the deception in the message to the nations, yet people can’t see the truth. Sound familiar, this is exactly what Lucifer had in his heart before he and his fallen angels fell - he wanted to exalt himself above God (Isaiah 14:12-15). The devil has not stopped in his conquests and uses such leaders of these empires to rise against God and his people.

Reviewing the text from Josephus and the biblical account of Nimrod, a man that was called mighty, was able to turn all people against God and build an empire. Those nations still have demonic spirits of rebellion, adversity and strife against God’s people today. Throughout, the Bible these nations are consistently coming against Israel and through captivity influencing them to serve other gods.

Mesopotamia was in two parts - the southern part was Babylon, now called Iraq today, and the northern part which was Assyria (Syria, Lebanon, parts of Turkey, parts of Iraq and Iran (which was once called Persia). Have you noticed these are the countries that surround Israel today!

Most of Ham’s descendants migrated and populated the Northern and Eastern parts of Africa. Japheth’s descendants are believed to have migrated to areas of the black & Caspian Sea (Asia Minor (Turkey) Greece and surrounding islands). According to Josephus, Japheth’s descendants populated areas in Asia and Europe. Steven M. Collins did research on the lost tribes of Israel - and suggested that Gomer (Japheth’s son) developed nations like China, Magog (Japheth’s son) developed what we call today Russia and Javan’s descendants (Japheth’s son) migrated to what we call today Japan.

Japheth’s descendants gave rise to peoples historically referred to as cimmerians, Scythians and the Medians and Persians (who would later form the Medo-Persian Empire ruled first by Cyrus the Great).

Fast forward to the books of Deuteronomy and Joshua, we see that the Israelites have been instructed to take the land which was promised through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Lord knows the hearts of those that love Him and those who are against Him. His chosen Nation is Israel, and all those that are reconciled through Christ are His! The Lord knows that Satan is after His children and will do all that he can to deceive many, with the lust of the eyes, making people believe that sin is good, without sharing the full consequences of sin. And because we are all sinful by nature, the Lord knows we will be swept with our own desires, so God warns us time after time before we commit that act. He warns us because he knows the devastation we will encounter. He does not want us to go outside of His Will, because to go outside of Him is separation, hurts, pains, devastation and death. That’s why we see throughout the Bible and even in our own lives the Lord is constantly speaking to us, maybe through His word or through people He has sent. He did the same thing for the Israelites, He warned them if they did not possess the Promise Land and follow his commandments and statutes the following would happen in Deuteronomy 4:26-31“I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that you will soon utterly perish from the land which you cross over the Jordan to possess; you will not prolong your days in it, but will be utterly destroyed. And the Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the Lord will drive you. And there you will serve gods, the work of men’s hands, wood and stone, which neither see nor hear nor eat nor smell. But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in distress, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, when you turn to the Lord your God and obey His voice (for the Lord your God is a merciful God), He will not forsake you nor destroy you, nor forget the covenant of your fathers which He swore to them.”

God later warned them in Deuteronomy 28 (a few excerpts from this chapter) “But it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you: “Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country. “Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. “Cursed shall be the fruit of your body and the produce of your land, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks. “Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out. “The Lord will send on you cursing, confusion, and rebuke in all that you set your hand to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, because of the wickedness of your doings in which you have forsaken Me. The Lord will make the plague cling to you until He has consumed you from the land which you are going to possess. The Lord will strike you with consumption, with fever, with inflammation, with severe burning fever, with the sword, with scorching, and with mildew; they shall pursue you until you perish. And your heavens which are over your head shall be bronze, and the earth which is under you shall be iron. The Lord will change the rain of your land to powder and dust; from the heaven it shall come down on you until you are destroyed. “The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies; you shall go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them; and you shall become troublesome to all the kingdoms of the earth. Your carcasses shall be food for all the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and no one shall frighten them away. The Lord will strike you with the boils of Egypt, with tumors, with the scab, and with the itch, from which you cannot be healed. The Lord will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of heart. And you shall grope at noonday, as a blind man gropes in darkness; you shall not prosper in your ways; you shall be only oppressed and plundered continually, and no one shall save you.”

“The alien who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower. He shall lend to you, but you shall not lend to him; he shall be the head, and you shall be the tail.”

“The Lord will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you will not understand, a nation of fierce countenance, which does not respect the elderly nor show favor to the young.”

““Then the Lord will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you shall serve other gods, which neither you nor your fathers have known—wood and stone. And among those nations you shall find no rest, nor shall the sole of your foot have a resting place; but there the Lord will give you a trembling heart, failing eyes, and anguish of soul. Your life shall hang in doubt before you; you shall fear day and night, and have no assurance of life. In the morning you shall say, ‘Oh, that it were evening!’ And at evening you shall say, ‘Oh, that it were morning!’ because of the fear which terrifies your heart, and because of the sight which your eyes see.”

If you read the whole chapter of 28, you see this is what led the Israelites to their devastation over time because they did not listen to God. We start to see chronicles of the their lives over centuries because of their unwillingness to acknowledge their one true God. Even with their rebellious and stubborn behaviour, God still reached out to them, through various prophets to turn from their ways because he did not want them to perish. God sent His Son, the Messiah, to come in a form of Man to give them “hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11) everlasting life with their one true God, that they may be saved through the blood that was shed for them on the Cross, just like they were saved in Egypt using the lamb’s blood - but they still couldn’t see. So God allowed the Gospel to be shared with the Gentiles (us) - thus the beginning of the Church Age, so that we may spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the ends of the Earth, until Jesus comes to take his children home at the end of the Church Age, and as I said in my last blog, we are at the end of the church age! This does not mean that God is done with the Jews, far from, the coming tribulation will be the time that they will come back to God and acknowledge once and for all who their one true God is.

Of course we see that the Israelites come back to their land, which I will detail in part 2 of the blog, something that God advised them of in Deuteronomy 30 and then later again in Ezekiel 36,37. In Deuteronomy 30: 1-10 it says “Now it shall come to pass, when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God drives you, and you return to the Lord your God and obey His voice, according to all that I command you today, you and your children, with all your heart and with all your soul, that the Lord your God will bring you back from captivity, and have compassion on you, and gather you again from all the nations where the Lord your God has scattered you. If any of you are driven out to the farthest parts under heaven, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you. Then the Lord your God will bring you to the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it. He will prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers. And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live. “Also the Lord your God will put all these curses on your enemies and on those who hate you, who persecuted you. And you will again obey the voice of the Lord and do all His commandments which I command you today. The Lord your God will make you abound in all the work of your hand, in the fruit of your body, in the increase of your livestock, and in the produce of your land for good. For the Lord will again rejoice over you for good as He rejoiced over your fathers, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which are written in this Book of the Law, and if you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.”

Reading the scriptures of what was promised to Abraham, the land was vast, and if we compare it to the description of Eden, I believe this was initially the Lord’s land. As we know the devil is out to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10), and as people, because we think we know better, and rather than follow the instructions the lord has given us, we fear, we overthink, over complicate and soon enough we take alternative routes. Therefore, it opens the doorway to allow the enemy to distract us from what the Lord is trying to do and we fail, thus experiencing the consequences of our actions. The Israelites did not conquer all that they were supposed to, because they chose not to be in the Will of God, as a result we see in part 2, everything that was warned to them in Deuteronomy 28 is played out over centuries. The enemy is still waging against His Nation as we see today - he is waging against those who love the Lord. Despite the choices that man has made, God is still in control, and all is ordained through Him, even when we mess up, God will still has victory over the enemy. The devil knows his time is coming to an end, and is doing all that he can to promote fear and anxiety. With everything we see that is happening in the news, if you know the Lord, this is not the time to fret, but a time to be in prayer for our fellow body of Christ because the spiritual warfare is ramping up, pray for the nation of Israel for they need the body of Christ to be lifting them up in prayer - this is a biblical mandate (Psalms 122:6), pray for unsaved souls that their hearts will be open to the Gospel of Jesus, because they do not know what is about to happen to this world. Israel is the key to these last days, keep watch and be in prayer (Mark 13:33). Amen x