SIGNIFICANT LEADERSHIP ROLE OF IMPLEMENTING GOD’S WORD CORRECTLY
U.S.President Donald Trump's Middle East peace plan will be announced soon after 9th April. It is speculated to call on Israel to turn over most of Judea and Samaria to the Palestinian Authority to establish Palestinian State. If this is the case, how will God react to this so-called "deal of the century" peace plan?
In the first month the whole Israelite community arrived at the Desert of Zin, and they stayed at Kadesh. There Miriam died and was buried. Now there was no water for the community, and the people gathered in opposition to Moses and Aaron. They quarrelled with Moses and said, ‘If only we had died when our brothers fell dead before the LORD! Why did you bring the LORD’s community into this wilderness, that we and our livestock should die here? Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to this terrible place? It has no corn or figs, grapevines or pomegranates. And there is no water to drink!’ Moses and Aaron went from the assembly to the entrance to the tent of meeting and fell face down, and the glory of the LORD appeared to them. The LORD said to Moses, ‘Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so that they and their livestock can drink.’ So Moses took the staff from the LORD’s presence, just as he commanded him. He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, ‘Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?’ Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank. But the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, ‘Because you did not trust in me enough to honour me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.’ These were the waters of Meribah, where the Israelites quarrelled with the LORD and where he was proved holy among them. NUMBERS 20:1-13.
Numbers Chapter 20 begins with the death of Miriam and ends with the death of Aaron, followed by conflicts with Edom, the Canaanite king of Arad, Sihon king of the Amorites, and Balak king of Moab in the next few chapters. These chapters seem to demonstrate God’s chastisement of Israel’s persistent disobedience and mistrust of God. Thus, Israel’s last year in the wilderness, the fortieth year after the exodus began with a series of sad events.
If we can learn one lesson from Chapter 20, it would be the significant consequence of disobedience to God.
The majority of the Israelites who had been delivered from Egypt and who had complained about the bread from heaven in the wilderness had perished in the previous thirty nine years because of their rebellion, and now their children were voicing their complaints just before entering into Canaan. Moses’ accumulation of anger, tiredness and frustration over forty years of constant complaining from the Israelites blew up in the form of his violation of God’s specific instructions.
This seemingly understandable offence of striking the rock two times with the rod instead of speaking to it was taken very seriously by God and Moses was denied entrance into the promised land and resulted in his death before the Israelites’ actual possession of the land.
What was the justification for such harsh judgment here? Moses misrepresented God to the nation by giving an impression that God Himself was upset. He failed to show respect to God’s words and his action reflected his own emotion and not God’s nature. Thus he had discredited God’s holiness. Moses also took credit for the miracle of water from the rock as if it were Aaron and himself who had performed it, saying: ‘Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?’
The perspective and lesson that this event gives is very significant for all believers and the nation of Israel today, emphasizing the importance of trusting in Gods’ words and complete obedience.
Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin had signed the Oslo Ⅱ interim peace accords with Yasser Arafat and Bill Clinton in September 1995, which was concluded to continue a process of giving more governing power to the PLO as part of a plan to create a Palestinian state. Shortly after this, the prime minister was assassinated. The assassin confessed his motivation saying: ‘Rabin wants to give our country to the Arabs’, regarding Rabin as a traitor.
The following article: ‘Rabin Code - Hidden Prophecy Fulfilled’ relates Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination in 1995 to his disregard of God’s ancient promise to Abraham and points out that his destiny had been coded into Genesis Ch.15 in the Hebrew Scriptures by equidistant letter sequence (ELS).
The article puts it:
“And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces.” (Genesis 15:17) Yitzhak Rabin was prime minister in Israel until he was suddenly assassinated after a peace rally in Tel Aviv on November 4, 1995, by Yigal Amir, a Jewish radical. The day before the assassination was the Jewish Sabbath. In the synagogues, the verses being read were from the story of God passing between the sacrificial offering, confirming Abraham's covenant for the land. They saw the verse above in the Hebrew text and noticed that if you simply change the spacing between the letters, a message would be formed that is known today as the Rabin code. The passage reads: "...fire which passed between these pieces" (Gen. 15:17). When the spaces are changed between the Hebrew words in the Genesis 15:17 phrase, it reads, esb esb ra' b'rabin, or, "fire, evil fire against Rabin." The prime minister was shot twice, an allusion to the firing of two bullets. What a coincidence! (Line added)
Needless to say, these ELS codes cannot be used to tell the future, nevertheless, they are understood to show hidden messages of God.
In 2005, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon made a decision to unilaterally withdraw Israel from the Gaza Strip and removed thousands of Israeli settlers from their homes in order to bring stability to the region. However, the withdrawal only allowed Arabs to see it as their own victory and since then sadly, more civil wars within the Gaza Strip have taken place. The fact that Sharon was hit by a stroke in 2006, a few months after the withdrawal, and finally he passed away in 2014 seems to be regarded by many as God’s own judgment for his denial of Israel’s right to the land.
Israel celebrated her 70th anniversary in 2018 and until today she has been divinely protected and continues to be stable and prosperous, which will be so in the future as well as long as she is obedient to God and His Word.
For the present, what will be brought about by the Trump administration plan, the so-called “deal of the century” peace plan after Israel’s 9th April elections, which is supposed to call for a Palestinian state in most of Judea and Samaria, is worthy of note.