GOD'S DEALINGS WITH MEN continued

WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO ISRAEL

Deut 30:7

            The president of Iran has boasted that they will wipe Israel off the face of the map.  Is this a probability?  I say not.  In Psalm 83 beginning with verse 2 the Psalmist is praying to God and complaining to God that His enemies are making a tumult, and those that hate God have lifted up the head.  He continues in verse 3 to complain to God that the enemies of God have taken crafty counsel against God's people.  Then in verse 4 the Psalmist says concerning those enemies of God, "They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance."   Now I am sure that the Psalmist did not know what would be happening in 2014 AD.  Neither did the president of Iran know that he was fulfilling the prophecy of this Psalmist, when he boasted they would wipe Israel off the face of the map.  In the eternal counsels of God, however, these things have been known from the beginning.  God knew all this and He also knew all that the enemies Israel would face even in 2014 and in the future.  He knew it back, when Moses told the people of Israel in Deut. 30:7, that God will put all these curses upon thine enemies, and on them that hate God and persecute Him.  That is they shall be cursed in the city, in the field, in their harvest, in their children, in their cattle and sheep, in their going out and coming in, in failure, in pestilences, in the disease of consumption and fever, in war from their enemies, and, in mildew.  The Heaven will become to them as brass, and the earth shall become to them as iron.  Rain shall become as powder and dust.  Further curses will be the botch of Egypt, emerods (tumors; hemorrhoids), scab, itch that will not heal, madness, blindness, astonishment of heart, various failures in domestic life, and other things named in Deut.28:15-62.  Now I realize that these were pronounced as curses which would come upon Israel if they were disobedient, but in our text Moses told us that God would put all these curses upon the enemies of Israel.

            Isaiah says it very interestingly in 14:1, 2.  "For the LORD will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land:  and the strangers shall be joined with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob.  And the people shall take them and bring them to their place:  and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the LORD for servants and handmaids:  and they shall take them captives, whose captives they were; and they shall rule over their oppressors."  Points to notice here are first, that this is after the conversion of Israel, when God will have mercy upon them and yet choose them.  Second, the strangers, that is their former enemies, will cleave to Israel.  Third, Israel shall possess them in the land the Lord gave to Israel.  The former enemies will become their slaves.  The enemies will then be the captives.  Israel will rule over them.

            In Joel 3:1-8 the time is at the re-gathering of Israel from among the nations.  Those nations who persecuted Israel will be brought into the valley of Jehoshaphat.  This is often called the Valley of Decision.  Many missionaries have pictured it as multitudes of heathen waiting in the valley of Decision waiting to believe on Christ.  There is absolutely no grounds for that interpretation.  In the first place the Bible teaches us that there is none that seeketh after God.  The decision to be made in this valley is God's decision of judgment on the nations that persecuted Israel.  In Matt. 25:31-46 our Lord related the time, when He will sit on the throne of Judgment and judge the nations.  To the persecutors of Israel He will say that He was hungry and they fed Him not, he was thirsty and they gave Him no drink, He was a stranger and they did not take Him in, He was naked, and they gave Him no clothes, and He was sick and in prison but they did not visit Him.  They will ask when they so acted, and He will say, when ye did it not to the least of these, ye did it not to me.         

            Amos in Amos 9:11-14 describes, however, the prosperity that shall be to Israel in those days.  It will be great.