For the past 4,000 years, the Jewish people have faced relentless persecution, opposition, and attempts to annihilate and destroy them; and in the future, the attacks against Jews and the Jewish state of Israel will greatly increase.
The Big Question is - WHY?
In Genesis Chapter 12, God called Abram (later renamed Abraham) to take his wife Sarai (later renamed Sarah) and his flocks and leave his people and his father’s household in the land of Ur of the Chaldees and go (by faith) to a distant land that only God would show him. Because Abraham obeyed God's request without hesitation, God made this eternal covenant with him.
Genesis 12:1-3
“I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you.
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse:
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you."
Genesis 17: 7-8
7I will set up my covenant with you and your descendants after you in every generation as an enduring covenant. I will be your God and your descendants’ after you. 8 I will give you and your descendants the land in which you are immigrants, the whole land of Canaan, as an enduring possession. And I will be their God.
God promised that Abraham's descendants - known as the 12 sons of Jacob - would become a great nation. God also promised that Abraham's descendants would possess the land of Canaan (renamed Israel) and that God would use the tiny nation of Israel - to be a blessing to the entire world.
When God called Abram out of Ur of the Chaldees, He promised (made an eternal covenant with Abraham) that his seed (future descendants) would:
1. become a great nation,
2. possess the land of Israel,
3. and that God would use the nation of Israel to bless the entire world.
In Genesis 12:1-3, God promised Abraham that He would multiply his descendants as the stars in the sky. He would be their God and give them a specific piece of land forever.
Satan, the devil, understands the God's plans for Abraham's descendants, the Jews, better than any human.
He has read the Bible, God's Word, from cover to cover. Because He knows the plans of God from beginning to end, the Jewish people have become public enemy number one in the kingdom of Satan!
Satan has strived mightily to destroy Israel through the centuries up until this present time so that there would be no Israel to invite Jesus to return to the Earth. Why hasn’t Satan been able to accomplish his repeated purpose to kill off this small nation of only a few million people? It is because God has promised to preserve His covenant nation forever.
There have been many past attempts by Satan to annihilate the Jewish people throughout history.
Passover, Purim and Chanukah are also Jewish holidays associated with Satan's past attempts to wipe out the Jewish people.
The devil is forcing today's believers to assimilate with the world as he did to God's people shortly before the first Chanukah in 168 B.C.E.
The Holocaust, between 1941 and 1945, was the genocide of over 6 million European Jews during World War II. Of the about 6 million Jewish people who were murdered and incinerated in ovens in six difference Nazis death camps, 1.5 million were innocent children.
At the age of 10, Rose Price, a Polish Jew, was taken captive by the Germans and placed in a Nazi concentration camp. Watch one of the most powerful stories on forgiveness. Please share this true story with all of your Jewish friends!
For Satan, the destruction of Israel is a matter of self-preservation.
How can this be?
Because when all Israel finally repents and nationally invites Yeshua Ha Mashiach, the Lord Jesus Christ, to be its own Redeemer / Messiah, that entire generation of Israelis will be saved and Satan’s plan to destroy the Jews will be finally defeated.
Satan wants to destroy Israel so that he can keep God from sending him into
the eternal Lake of Fire, forever and ever. (Rev. 20:10)
Just prior to the start of Daniel's 70th (recorded in Daniel 12:1), God puts out this prophetic warning:
Psalm 83 was not written during a time of war. It was written some 3,000 years ago by King David’s worship leader, Asaph. It was written during a time when Israel was experiencing great prosperity, liberty, and peace.
Asaph goes on to list all the 'future surrounding countries' conspiring to carry out Satan's end-time plans to finally destroy God's covenant land, Israel.
“The Hebrew prophet Ezekiel wrote 2,500 years ago that in the ‘last days’ of history, Russia, Turkey and Iran will form a military alliance to attack Israel from the north,” “Bible scholars refer to this prophesied conflict, described in Ezekiel 38–39, as the ‘War of Gog & Magog.
Ezekiel 38:14
“Therefore, son of man, prophesy and say to Gog: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: In that day, when my people Israel are living in safety, will you not take notice of it? You will come from your place in the far north, you and many nations with you, all of them riding on horses, a great horde, a mighty army. You will advance against my people Israel like a cloud that covers the land. In days to come, Gog, I will bring you against my land, so that the nations may know me when I am proved holy through you before their eyes.”
The word “Armageddon” appears only once in the entire Bible and is found in Revelation 16:16
"And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon."
Biblical scholars believe the Battle of Armageddon will take place in the valley of Megiddo located in central Israel.
#1.
The Battle of Armageddon concludes Jesus' judgment upon Israel.
Daniel's 70th Week represents a time of divine cleaning of the sins of the people of Israel, the people who rejected their Messiah, the people who repeatedly failed to heed the corrective and punitive judgment of God. It is no accident that this future period is often referred to as "the time of Jacob's trouble."
Jeremiah 30:7
"In all history there has never been such a time of terror.
It will be a time of trouble for my people Israel.
Yet in the end they will be saved!" ~ NLT
#2. Armageddon marks the final judgment upon the countries that
have persecuted the descendants of Abraham and God's covenant nation, Israel.
Joel 3:2
"I will also gather all nations, and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat; and I will enter into judgment with them there on account of My people, My heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations; they have also divided up My land."
Zechariah 12:3 also confirms this:
“On that day, when all the nations of the earth are gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations. All who try to move it will injure themselves.”
#3. Finally, Armageddon constitutes a formal judgment by God on all the nations that have rejected Him.
(Revelation 19:15)
"Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God"
Israel did not know its great “hour of visitation” when Jesus came the first time,
but when He comes again, the Jewish people of nation Israel, those who survive the last half of Daniel's 70th Week (the Great Tribulation), will at last be ready, willing, and eager to receive Jesus (Yeshua ha Mashiach) as their Savior and Lord. Jesus will return to earth from the same place that He ascended -The "Mount of Olives", which faces Jerusalem on the east.
"Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses. Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS."
Christ will return to the Earth, destroy the satanic anti-Christ and his armies at Armageddon, establish His Millennial Kingdom over Israel and the entire world for 1,000 years.