11 Sep RAHAB RISING
Everything we believe about what GOD is doing in history is on the line. For almost 2,000 years, Israel was scattered among the nations–exiled from the land of their inheritance. But GOD promised that in the latter days, “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 God has scattered you…. The LORD your God will bring you to the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall posses it.” (Deuteronomy 30:3,5) This does not refer to the return after the Babylonian Exile, but the return thousands of years later, after the Jews had been scattered among the nations. Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones adds more detail. God was not just going to regather the people to the land, He was going to resurrect her as a nation from the dead..
Then He said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Look, they are saying, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope has perished; we are cut off.’ Therefore prophesy and tell them that this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘O My people, I will open your graves and bring you up from them, and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. (Ezekiel 37:11-12)
“In a world still staggering from the Second World War, with the United States and Soviet Union beginning the first tense chapter of the Cold War, with the empires of Europe in a state of collapse, and with the Jewish people emerging from the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust, the ancient prophecies and visions of Scripture were about to come to fulfillment. The nation that had closed its eyes to a world of flaming arrows and Roman emperors now opened its eyes to a world of nuclear weapons and superpowers. (1)
The resurrection of Israel as a modern nation is God’s signature fulfillment of His promise fulfilled and His signature identification of Himself to the nations today..
The step-by-step orchestration of circumstances bear His fingerprints, unfolding in 50-year increments that point to the ancient Jubilee: when every Jew returned to his inheritance, when that which he had lost in the intervening years was restored to him. The last of many, The Ottoman Empire would hold the land for 400 years, but its release began in 1867, as the Ottomans sought to raise funds to pay their Crimean War debt. Jews around the world began to secretly purchase land they would never otherwise have been able to acquire. Fifty years later, 1917, the British General Allenby conquered Jerusalem, and The Ottoman Empire fell. Later that year, as the nations of the Middle East were being redrawn by the WWI victors, Great Britain recognized the Jewish people’s right to a nation in The Balfour Declaration. Fifty years later, 1967, The Six Day War resulted in the Jewish fighters gaining back Jerusalem. Fifty years later, 2017, Trump executed The United States Congressional act recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The resurrection of the nation unfolded in a choreography of divinely orchestrated circumstances pointing to the ancient mandate of God for His people–the Jubilee–their return to and the restoration of their inheritance.. (Leviticus 25, and 27)
But in this same time-frame, another resurrection was taking place–a pseudo-resurrection–that would not just imitate but try to nullify Israel’s resurrection. (2) Another ancient people were being brought back to life–Israel’s ancient enemy, the Philistines–the “sea people” who had settled on a strip of land running along the coast of the Mediterranean, which is Gaza today. The ancient Philistines have been resurrected in the modern-day Palestinians. no other people so continually warred against the Israelites..(2) On October 7, 2023, Hamas broke across the border to fulfill the virulent antisemitic spirit of their Philistine ancestors: demonstrating the same rage, the same desecration of bodies, the same brutality, the same bent toward terror without mercy, and the same contention for the same land. Pawns in the grip of a ruthless agenda, they do not realize that they are defying GOD, unwilling to accept anything less than Israel’s complete annihilation.
Written over the span of millennia by forty different authors in sixty-six books, Scripture uniformly refers to a cosmic figure it calls by various names: the dragon, the serpent, Rahab, the sea monster. The eternal Narrative tells us that It is crushed, it has been crushed, and it will be crushed by God. The pseudo-resurrection of the Philistines was empowered by this cosmic, virulent enemy of God–the dragon who tries to defy, deny and desecrate God’s purpose.
You rule the raging sea; when its waves mount up, You still them. You crushed Rahab like a carcass; You scattered Your enemies with Your mighty arm. (Isa 89:9,10) By his power he churned up the sea; by his wisdom he cut Rahab to pieces. (Job 26) Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD. Wake up as in days past, as in generations of old. Was it not You who cut Rahab to pieces, who pierced through the dragon? (Isaiah 51:9) And the dragon stood on the sand of the seashore. Then I saw a beast coming up out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads, … And the dragon gave him his power and his throne and great authority. I saw one of his heads as if it had been slain, and his fatal wound was healed. And the whole earth was amazed and followed after the beast; they worshiped the dragon because he gave his authority to the beast; and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast, and who is able to wage war with him?” (Revelation 13:1,3-4)
In Revelation 13, John describes a beast rising from the sea having seven heads and ten horns: It is the final world empire, different from all before it, pictured as multi-focal .This beast is not the dragon but empowered by the dragon. What intrigues me about this beast, is that one of its heads looks as if it had been slain, but its fatal wound is healed. I am possessed by the thought that this head is the pseudo-resurrection of Israel’s ancient enemy. Rahab rising would explain the sudden world-wide eruption of Palestinian sympathizers crying out for the genocide of Israel. The Palestinians have become the lighting rod for, the face of radical Islamism, “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free.” Rahab’s rising shook America twenty three years ago today. But 911 solidly belongs to God’s intricate orchestration of circumstances bringing His purpose in our day..
Each of us is choosing our part in the cosmic drama that reaches back before the chaos of a former destruction that settled into darkness over the face of the deep. All of history, what we know, what we don’t know, and what we speculate from the little that is written–all of it is being divinely orchestrated to bring God’s glorious resolution to the cosmic drama. Everything we believe about what GOD is doing in history is on the line. Do you see Israel’s resurrection as the signature fulfillment of God’s ancient promise? Do you recognize God’s signature upon history, identifying Who HE, its author, Is to the modern world?
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(1) The Dragon’s Prophecy, Jonathan Cahn, page 27 of 267, kindle edition
(2) The Dragon’s Prophecy, Jonathan Cahn, page 32 of 267, kindle edition
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