A recent BBC headline, based upon the words of its International editor, Jeremy Bowen, reads as follows:—
‘ISRAEL IS ACCUSED OF THE GRAVEST WAR CRIMES – HOW GOVERNMENTS RESPOND COULD HAUNT THEM FOR YEARS TO COME’
He claims that the ‘rules of war’, set down by the ‘Geneva Conventions’ are being broken by Israel in its war against the terrorist group, Hamas.
He writes, ‘Israel wanted us to see what Hamas had done. The conclusion has to be that it does not want foreign reporters to see what it is doing in Gaza.’
Furthermore, he writes, ‘Boaz Bismuth, a parliamentarian from Netanyahu’s Likud party, repeated his leader’s positions: that there is no famine in Gaza, that Israel respects the laws of war and that unwarranted criticism of its conduct by countries including the UK, France and Canada incites antisemitic attacks on Jews, including murder. . . Rival politicians inside Israel accuse Netanyahu of presiding over war crimes and turning Israel into a pariah state.’
I believe that there is little doubt that the ‘haunting’ the journalist refers to is that which he feels will follow a failure to act against Israel!
Accusations
There can be no doubt that nations are getting ready to follow through on their accusations of ‘war crimes’ against Israel and there are members of the press urging them on.
Little do such journalists realise that such comments and observations are but the beginnings of that which long ago was foretold in God’s precious and infallible Word!
END OF THIS AGE
At the end of this age, Israel will become the target of bitter hatred by many nations and its annihilation will be sought by them. I have said in earlier articles that undoubtedly Israel’s defiant and uncompromising response to the ongoing attacks by Palestinian terrorists has aggravated those nations that know little of what she has suffered and, in truth, care little about that suffering!
LAWLESS
Today is a day in which governments pour sympathy on the lawless to the detriment of the lawful. The ongoing controversy here surrounding the IRA and its murderous republicanism and the sympathies shown to it and its supporters and the financial pampering of the illegal immigrants flooding ashore in England and the government’s impotency to act against the scourge, are prime examples of this.
The Bible refers to a day when men shall “call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” Isaiah 5:20.
Men should remember what the wise man said: “He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even they both are abomination to the LORD,” Proverbs 17:15.
FALSE PROPHETS
We have certainly seen that spirit rise and engulf the ‘powers that be’. It is, of course, the consequence of those false prophets in the pulpits who for generations now have been supplanting God’s infallible Word with their own perverted notions and doctrines.
The nation has lost contact with the wisdom of God set forth in Holy Scripture and have been drinking at the polluted fount of ‘man’s wisdom’!
The folly of apostatising Judah in the days of Jeremiah is the folly of our nation today.
“Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? but my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit. Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid, be ye very desolate, saith the LORD. For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water,” Jeremiah 2:11-13.
CARELESSNESS
True believers have resounded to the situation with carelessness and indifference. They are in a state as foretold by the Saviour.
“Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins . . . While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept,” Matthew 25:1, 5.
Do the pulpits of orthodoxy ring out with the truth of God as the faithful prophets responded?
NO! Most ministers are dealing with mere spiritual ‘coughs and sniffles’ while an epidemic of evil rages around them, devouring the nation!
VENGEANCE OF THE LORD
This response angers the Lord. Christians should take note of this!
“Shall I not visit for these things? saith the LORD: shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this? A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land; the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?” Jeremiah 5:29-31.
What Judah ‘did’ was to go into captivity to Babylon, see their city and temple destroyed and endure some 70 years of misery and suffering.
There is a price that must be paid for despising the TRUTH of God and embracing error.
ORIGIN
This then is something of the origins of the present state of confusion, ignorance and utter helplessness in the face of the increasing lawlessness we see in the homes, schools and streets of our nation.
It is this casting aside of God’s truth that will one day, and I suspect that it is not that far off, see nations combining to assault Israel as foretold by the prophets.
“And these are the words that the LORD spake concerning Israel and concerning Judah. For thus saith the LORD; We have heard a voice of trembling, of fear, and not of peace. Ask ye now, and see whether a man doth travail with child? wherefore do I see every man with his hands on his loins, as a woman in travail, and all faces are turned into paleness? Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he shall be saved out of it,” Jeremiah 30:4-7.
“Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem. And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it,” Zechariah 12:2-3.
“Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city,” Zechariah 14:1-2.
But that is not the end of the story! God has a purpose in this terrible affliction that will come upon the nation which, some two thousand years ago, crucified its long promised Messiah and rejected His message of love and redemption.
Yes, the day of ‘Jacob’s trouble’ is fast approaching BUT “he shall be saved out of it.”
“In that day, saith the LORD, I will smite every horse with astonishment, and his rider with madness: and I will open mine eyes upon the house of Judah, and will smite every horse of the people with blindness,” Zechariah 12:4.
His purpose is to break and humble rebellious Israel and turn it unto Himself by the sufferings He will send upon them. That is the method that the Lord has had to use many times upon His stubborn and defiant people.
“For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?” Hebrews 12:6-7.
The book of Judges gives us many instances of the Lord chastising His people when they turned in disobedience against Him and His Word.
RETURN OF CHRIST
Israel’s final chastening will end in the return of Christ, visibly, gloriously and for Israel, savingly.
“In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness,” Zechariah 13:1.
“Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle. And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south. And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains; for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azal: yea, ye shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah: and the LORD my God shall come, and all the saints with thee. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not be clear, nor dark: But it shall be one day which shall be known to the LORD, not day, nor night: but it shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall be light. And it shall be in that day, that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem; half of them toward the former sea, and half of them toward the hinder sea: in summer and in winter shall it be. And the LORD shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one LORD, and his name one,” Zechariah 14:3-9.
I draw attention to the BBC’s news report simply because I believe it indicates, to those who believe the Bible, that the day of the Lord is fast approaching. It is the Bible and its prophecies which ALONE can give meaning to the lawlessness that is manifested UNIVERSALLY!
We are witnessing the ‘PERILOUS TIMES’ of which Paul spoke in 2 Timothy 3:1-5. As I often said, the word ‘perilous’ is translated in the only other place where the underlying Greek word appears, as ‘FIERCE”.
“And when he was come to the other side into the country of the Gergesenes, there met him two possessed with devils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way,” Matthew 8:28. The ‘fierceness’ of these two men was the result of them being “possessed with devils”.
That is what is going to make the last days ‘perilous’. It is a time when God will, as He did in the time of Job’s trial, give the devil freedom to do that which he hitherto has been restrained from doing!
“And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man. And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them. And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men. And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions. And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle. And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months. And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon,” Revelation 9:1-11.
There are quite a few ‘figurative’ expressions in this passage. The terms are used in order to convey to us the nature and the impact of this satanic assault. We commonly use figurative expressions in our conversations. ‘As dark as night’! ‘As hot as an oven’! ‘A damp squib’! ‘A dark horse’! ‘Food for thought’!
I need not mention more. This being evident in our common conversations, it is surprising that ‘learned theologians and preachers’ dismiss the use of figurative terms in the Bible, and make out that such a use renders the passage impossible to understand or place a meaning upon!
What that view implies is that the Lord is unable to inspire His servants to write that which is easily understood by the ‘sheep of His pasture’!!
That is a mere deception of the devil who would have us believe that it is all an unsolvable mystery! The devil being believed, men are left without a map or a compass to the future purpose of God and are blind to its unfolding before our eyes.
No, Christian, we are to ‘understand’ the times by reading today’s news in the light of Holy Scripture.
The Saviour rebuked such inability to grasp the significance of events around us.
“ He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?” Matthew 16:2-3.
I repeat, the BBC’s Mr Jeremy Bowen, unwittingly, has pointed to an approaching fulfilment of the prophetic words of Holy Scripture.
Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd)
Wednesday, 11th June 2025