The Everlasting Hatred

by Hal Lindsey

  These two examples show the pull of the Islamic view of government upon those who take literally the teachings of the Koran. This Koranic pull is why, in my view, the efforts of the United States to democratize Iraq and Afghanistan are misconceived and futile. Instead, we need to destroy their war making capability and leave. And then warn them that we will destroy them if they are complicit in further terrorist attacks against us. This is the only language that Islamic fundamentalists understand.

  Probably more important than anything else is that the West, especially the leaders of the United States, understands Muslim beliefs and practices.

  Who Is the Terrorist “Du Jour”?

  Because of a lack of true knowledge about what Islam’s sacred books teach, Western leaders are proceeding unknowingly down an impossible path. The mantra constantly repeated by our “politically correct” government leaders today is that “Islam is a religion of peace and love.” I am sorry—that is just not what the Koran, the Hadith, and the history of Muslim conquests clearly teach. It is true that the majority of Muslims are not fundamentalists, thank God. But when any one of them gets serious about his faith and becomes zealous about what his holy books teach, he is a candidate for becoming what we know as a terrorist.

  Under the Obama Administration, things have gotten even worse. Our government will not allow terrorist acts to be labeled Muslim acts of terrorism. The liberal media have bowed to this folly as well. Acts of terrorism clearly motivated by Islam are called instead the acts of mentally unbalanced individuals.

  I believe the only reason the United States has not suffered more horrific terrorist attacks is because of the grace and mercy of God. There have been a number of attacks that would have killed hundreds of people if only the bombs had functioned properly.

  On Christmas Day 2009, Umar Abdulmutallab, a twenty-three-year-old Nigerian man, attempted to blow Northwest Flight 253 out of the sky. Had his underwear bomb functioned correctly, 289 people would have been blown out of the sky. Al Qaeda took credit for the attempted terrorist attack. It was later found that he was trained and supplied by al Qaeda, which is the most dangerous Muslim terrorist organization facing the West.

  In addition, consider the following challenges we still face:

  Our borders are as porous as Swiss cheese. In 2009, more than 56,000 non-Latin people were caught illegally crossing into the United States via the undefended Arizona-Mexican border. Most of these illegals were from the Middle East. We don’t know how many successfully got into the United States. And we certainly don’t know how many may have been trained as terrorists.

  Airport security remains a joke primarily because of the fear of being “politically incorrect.” There is no way to correct this apart from using profiling techniques and firing many people that are not suited for this kind of work. The world’s best airport security is Israel’s. They use aggressive racial profiling and hire their brightest and best to man security. Machines will not take the place of these measures. Minimum wage, poorly educated people cannot “psych out” a trained terrorist.

  Our nuclear plants are vulnerable to terrorist attacks because they are not properly prepared to defend against coordinated Islamic suicide assaults by highly trained terrorists. According to military intelligence, a suicide plane could hit them. Terrorists using scuba gear could infiltrate them from adjacent waterways and launch an attack.

  Our drinking water and food-supply chain are vulnerable to biological/chemical attacks.

  WE ARE IN DEEP POOH-POOH!

  I continue to report on my TV show, The Hal Lindsey Report, on the imminent threats facing the world. The following are just a few of them:

  A holocaust will occur in the Middle East if Iran is allowed to get nuclear weapons.

  Iran has formed a binding pact with Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Gaza to launch a coordinated attack against Israel as soon as they have nuclear weapons.

  Iran has slipped an estimated 100,000 rockets and missiles into Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza to be used against Israel if it attacks their nuclear facilities. This makes it possible for every population center in Israel to be bombarded with lethal missiles.

  Israel has long had a carefully prepared contingency plan known as the “Samson Option.” This plan provides that in the event Israel is hit by biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons, Israel will launch a massive nuclear strike against the cities of every enemy state attacking her.

  To make matters worse, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a devout believer in an Islamic prophecy that says the Muslim messiah known as the “Mahdi” is ready to return and only awaits the beginning of an Armageddon-type war to break out that will cause him to return and lead Islam to world victory. Ahmadinejad believes that Allah has chosen him to start that global conflict. I believe this is why he is so determined to get nuclear weapons. As he has warned, he will blow Israel off the map as soon as he can—and this, Ahmadinejad believes, will start the war that will cause the Mahdi, also known as the “Twelfth Imam,” to return and lead the Muslims to world domination.

  At this moment in history, Islam represents the single greatest threat in the world to the survival of Western civilization.

  RELEVANCE OF AN ANCIENT FAMILY FEUD

  I believe all of these clear and present dangers can be understood only by learning how this conflict began between the descendants of the Biblical patriarch Abraham four thousands years ago. There is a perfect word that describes the Arab’s virulent feelings toward Israel. It is the word enmity. The dictionary defines enmity as “the extreme ill will or hatred that exists toward an enemy.” It infers a state of hatred that has been nurtured over a long period of time.

  At the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is hard to imagine how a four-thousand-year-old family feud could cause the whole world to become involved. Yet this is exactly what the Bible predicted would happen in the last days. These prophecies spell out an exact scenario of events that will come together shortly before the end of history as we know it.

  Central to this scenario is the re-igniting of the ancient conflict between the Israelites and Arabs. The conflict has risen and subsided at various times since the destruction and dispersion of Israel in A.D. 70.

  It is as a consequence of the rebirth of the state of Israel, the Bible prophets predict, that the whole world will become involved. The Bible specifically predicts what will be the final flashpoint that ignites the war of Armageddon. It will be an unsolvable dispute over Jerusalem between the sons of Isaac and Jacob and the sons of Ishmael and Esau. We know these people today as the Israelis and the Arabs.

  Who Would Have Dreamed?

  Who would have believed as the twentieth century dawned that a small, backward, neglected land that had become as desolate as the moon would become the center of a controversy so great that all the major world powers would be dragged into it? For centuries, world attention focused on the Gentile civilizations of Europe, the Americas, Russia, and the Far East. Until the middle of the twentieth century, many people couldn’t even find Palestine on a map. But today, the headlines aren’t about Western or Asian civilizations; they are about the peoples of the Middle East. For the first time in modern history, ancient Biblical names are making global headlines.

  One of the main predicted signs that the world is entering the “last days and the end of history as we know it” is that the strategic center of the world would shift back to the region where history began. Today, the world’s focus has returned to a place that had been bypassed by the modern developments of science and technology.

  Prepare to Be Shocked

  This book will reveal many vital facts about the Middle East conflict that are little known. It will take you into history and reveal the real causes of the growing world crisis that will seriously affect your life. Writing this book has been a great sobering adventure. So press on through the history and facts. I promise it will be rewarding. And I believe you will find a vital basis for hope in the c
oming perilous times.

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  FOUNDATIONAL IRREVOCABLE COVENANT

  “Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, while on his Palestinian campaign, asked one of his generals, ‘Can you give me a proof that the Bible is the Word of God?’ He replied, ‘Your Majesty, the Jew. Against all historical precedence, he has survived centuries of dispersion and yet has remained a distinct people—a nation in exile—though scattered over the entire world and terribly persecuted, just as the Hebrew prophets predicted he would be, patiently waiting for his promised return to the land of his fathers.’”

  — NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, A.D. 1798

  ISRAEL CHOSEN? WHY?

  Most of us have heard at some point in our life the saying that “the Jews are God’s chosen people.” But in view of their catastrophic history over at least the last two thousand years, one wonders, “If they are God’s chosen people, for what purpose were they chosen?”

  From the founding of Islam onward, Muslim Arabs have disputed the Jewish claims of being the chosen people. Ishmael, Abraham’s first-born son and the father of the Arabs, was angry over the foundations of the Jewish claim from the very beginning. This smoldering enmity toward the Israelites was passed along to his descendants from generation to generation. Mohammad enshrined this enmity toward the Jews in the Koran and teachings of the Muslim religion.

  So the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict really took root more than four thousand years ago. A man was called for a special mission that would forever change the course of human history and the destiny of mankind. It is impossible to understand the hatred behind the present Middle East crisis without knowledge of what exactly happened then and why.

  This all began at a time when all nations were determined to push the knowledge of the one true God out of their culture and memory. The Bible records that because of this, God chose a man for the purpose of creating a special nation. God’s purpose for this nation was to preserve a true revelation about Himself, to reach out to the world through it, and ultimately to provide salvation for all mankind. God’s great love for all mankind is what motivated Him to create this special people and nation.

  The Bible records how God chose a man named Abram, whom He later renamed Abraham, from an advanced civilization known as Ur of the Chaldeans. God made a special irrevocable covenant with him and his descendents to facilitate this purpose.

  In this covenant made with Abraham, God’s plan for all mankind is laid out in broad outline. In terms of its effect upon the history and destiny of mankind, nothing else can be compared. It is truly amazing, but the rest of the Bible is a commentary on the full meaning of this covenant. To put its importance into perspective, the main focus of the Bible message from Genesis 12 to Acts 2 are the recipients of its promises—Abraham and his descendents.

  IRREVOCABLE COVENANT

  The covenant is formed around God’s declaration of four direct and three understood “I wills.” This is the God of the Bible’s consistent formula for expressing an unconditional promise. When God makes a promise and says, “I will,” it is the end of all uncertainty as to its fulfillment. The one condition on Abraham’s part was to, by faith, leave his country, his home, and his relatives to travel to a land that God would show him.

  In response to that faith, God promised Abraham the following:

  Now the Lord had said to Abram:

  “Get out of your country,

  From your family and from your father’s house,

  To a land that I will show you.

  I will make you a great nation;

  I will bless you

  And [I will] make your name great;

  And you shall be a blessing.

  I will bless those who bless you,

  And I will curse him who curses you;

  And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

  — GENESIS 12:1–3, (emphasis added)

  So much is contained in these few words that they must be carefully analyzed. Let’s consider the passage above point by point.

  The Promise of a Nation: “I will make you a great nation.” This statement implicitly contains the promise of a son through whom this nation would be created. It also implicitly promised the land to which Abraham was ordered to go, since you can’t have a nation without a land.

  However, there was one major problem—Abraham and his wife were childless. Yet everything God promised Abraham depended upon him having a son. Now since he was seventy-five years old and his wife was sixty-five years old, Abraham understood that it would take some kind of divine intervention for him to have a son. But Abraham had a lapse of faith when God delayed fulfilling this promise. He kept checking his biological clock, thinking the promise was becoming more impossible by the day.

  The Promises of Special Personal Blessings: “I will bless you and [I will] make your name great; and you shall be a blessing.” God promised to bless Abraham in three ways: First, God blessed him with special protection, great wealth, with vibrant health even into old age, and made him successful in all his dealings. Second, God promised to make Abraham’s name great—and his name has been reverenced all over the world for more than four thousand years. He is recognized as a spiritual father by three of the world’s major religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And third, God promised to make Abraham a blessing. Untold millions of people have recognized him as the father of their faith. The example of Abraham’s faith, permanently recorded in the eternal Word of God, has been a blessing to countless millions throughout history.

  PROMISES THAT ANTICIPATED ANTI-SEMITISM

  The Promises of Divine Protection: “I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you.” These “I wills” anticipated that Abraham and his descendents would be the objects of special attack. In view of their special mission of redemption to the world, it is only logical that they would be singled out as prime targets by the devil. Anti-Semitism has been a relentless fact of history.

  Abraham and his divinely chosen line of descendents through Isaac and Jacob have been consistently persecuted and attacked. There is a mystical quality behind the intensity of hatred toward the Israelites. This is especially true of the descendents of the Southern Kingdom, which is composed of the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and Levi. The Israelites were first called “Jews” while in Babylonian captivity, the word Jew being derived from the name of their geographical origin, Judea. The Jews have been singled out for special hatred since they were driven into global exile after the destruction of Israel in A.D. 70. The name Jew has come to be indiscriminately applied to survivors of all twelve tribes of Israelites in recent centuries.

  Only a person who understands the one the Bible calls “the god of this age” (2 Cor. 4:4) can begin to understand this mystery. Any objective study of the irrational outbreaks of hatred all over the world toward the Israelites—the mindless slaughter of them in every century—will reveal that there is a malevolent spiritual force behind it all.

  The Promise of Blessing upon All Who Bless Israel: “I will bless those who bless you.” Individuals, groups, and nations that have sought to help Abraham and his descendents in their times of need have all been blessed by God. The United States has received, helped, and protected the dispersed Israelites. The United States has stood for Israel’s survival as a nation from its rebirth in 1948. I believe this is one of the main reasons God has so blessed America in the past. But as we will see, our attitude toward Israel is changing—to our peril.

  The Promise of Judgment upon All Who Curse [Harm] Israel: “I will curse him who curses you.” Since God chose to create the nation of Israel for the special mission of redeeming the rest of mankind, beware of mistreating or harming the Jewish people. God’s promise of protection to Abraham and his seed serves as a warning to the nations or Gentiles —“I will curse him who curses you.” All attacks upon Israelites will ultimately bring retribution from God. When Gentiles attack them, they are attacking God’s chosen instruments of their own re
demption.

  This promise of God’s protection was confirmed by Isaac when he passed on the divine blessing to his son Jacob, “Cursed be those who curse you, and blessed be those who bless you.” (Gen. 27:29)

  Almost four hundred years later, God made even the apostate prophet Balaam pronounce this solemn warning to King Balak, who had hired Balaam to curse the nation of Israel. “How shall I curse, whom God has not cursed? And how can I denounce, whom the LORD has not denounced? … Blessed is everyone who blesses you, and cursed is everyone who curses you.” (Num. 23:8 and 24:9, emphasis added)

  This account is extremely important. These verses prove that the promise of God’s protection included all the descendents of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

  To illustrate how seriously God takes this promise, note that the Hebrew prophet Zechariah, sixteen hundred years after Abraham, warns that the Messiah’s first action when He comes to set up God’s kingdom on earth will be:

  For thus says the Lord of hosts, “After glory He has sent me against the nations which plunder you, for he who touches you, touches the apple of his eye. “For behold, I will wave My hand over them, so that they will be plunder for their slaves. Then you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent Me. “Sing for joy and be glad, O daughter of Zion; for behold I am coming and I will dwell in your midst,” declares the Lord. “And many nations will join themselves to the Lord in that day and will become My people. Then I will dwell in your midst, and you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent Me to you. And the Lord will possess Judah as His portion in the holy land, and will again choose Jerusalem.”6 (emphasis added)

  We know this event as the Second Coming of Jesus the Messiah. It is certain that this refers to the time of the second coming because the Messiah sets up His throne in Jerusalem and dwells among His people. According to this prophecy, the first thing He will do is judge all of the Gentiles who have mistreated His people, Israel.