On Oct. 7, 2023, pictures of devastation flashed across the television screen. Hamas militants launched a massive surprise attack against Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking civilian hostages. We watched God’s people once again face pain that was humanly impossible to understand.
Why are all these horrific acts being done to Israel? We have had to turn our eyes away. We can’t stomach to see the things that are happening to Israel. Our hearts cry out for them.
It looks like God is against Israel and has allowed her to go through all sorts of hell, but she is the apple of His eye. The mystery is in the spiritual goal of bringing God’s people back to the Lord. None of it make sense except understanding it in the spirit realm.
Life at its best is a mystery. Mysteries move behind all human events and can’t be explained in the natural. Only with spiritual eyes can we understand hard things, see a loving God and trust him for what we do not know. God is trustworthy and he requires our faith.
Throughout history, this land and its people have been ravished with heartbreak, loss and wars — the only place on earth that has been given a title deed from God. These are God’s people.
Only by the eyes of faith can we see God’s faithfulness. God says that He will be like the dew to Israel. Israel shall grow like the lily and its root will be entwined and lengthen like cedars of Lebanon. Its branches shall spread, and those who dwell under his shadow shall return. (See Hosea 14:5-7).
I picture the root of a fragile flower wrapped around the strong root of the cedar tree. God and his people entwined together. He refuses anyone to pluck Israel from His hand. It looks like they have already been plucked and destroyed. Looking closely by faith, the mystery continues as He regathers and restores the land.
God calls Israel his wife. He loved her in the days of her youth when God made a covenant with Moses and they were joined together as one. Hosea was instructed to take an unfaithful woman as his wife in order to show Hosea’s unconditional love for her, thus displaying God’s love for Israel.
Accounts were written of Israel in bondage as a young child when the people of Israel left their land during the days of Hosea. God in his faithfulness drew them with gentle cords, with bands of love back to their land. As a caring father, he brought his people like a child to his cheek.
God promised, “I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death … Pity is hidden from My eyes” (Hosea 13:14,15). As the hostages are brought out one at a time, and the bodies of loved ones carried out, God said He hid pity from his eyes and will ransom his children once again.
In 1948 we saw the regathering of a people to their homeland. The First Arab-Israeli War and the Palestine War of Independence where they experienced victory, until the Six-Day Miracle and the resounding Israeli victory in the 1967 war.
Through the direction of God, Isaiah wrote about the Kingdom’s blessings for a regathered Israel, “The wilderness and the wasteland shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose; It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice, even with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the excellence of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the excellence of our God” (Isaiah 35:1, 2). Isaiah saw the land of Israel by faith as the glory of the Lord, the excellence of God.
Christians are joined to Israel’s history. Every word in the Bible represents a part of our history. Believers have experienced some of Israel’s story in their own stories. God has been faithful to regather and restore the believer also.
“For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery … blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in … And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written” (Romans 11:25,26a).
What has happened to Israel can either be viewed with natural senses or by the Spirit of the Divine. We can act with our emotions or by faith in what God has said. He said He has ransomed Israel and the believers.
Final brushstroke: A spiritual Israel exists within the national Israel. This is the mystery revealed. Through all the adversity, a spiritual Israel is being regathered and restored again.
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Views expressed do not necessarily represent those of The SUN.
