Preface....July 23, 2023: The Jerusalem Post has an article up right now....referring to former United States Ambassador To Israel David Friedman....where he thought it very bad timing to push the judicial reform issue on the eve of Tisha B'Av. The article then points out that during the Roman siege of Jerusalem....there was a major rift....to put it mildly....between the defenders in Jerusalem....half of them moderates....and half of them zealots....and the zealots purposely burned the food supplies....thereby forcing all the dfenders to fight.
This paragraph just below is taken from my latest DISPATCHES post. I'm adding it to this post because of the topic matter....
ISRAEL....Israel does not have a constitution. Their Supreme Court can override their Knesset....whereas our Congress can override our Supreme Court. Our judges....in America....if not directly elected....are nominated and approved by people who are elected....imperfect as those elections may have become. A nine member committee chooses judges in Israel. The charge from traditionalists in Israel is that the Supreme Court leans heavily left. Netanyahu's attempt at judicial reform has the country in an uproar. The one side says that it will put all the power in the hands of the government. The other says that it will take some of the power away from the unelected judiciary. The essence of this argument is that one side is determined to protect personal liberties.....while the other side is determined to protect the national security. What happens if a war breaks out tomorrow? Will the hundreds of thousand of demonstrators put the issue on hold in order to defend the country? We have the same concerns here.
Tisha B'AV starts on the evening of July 26 this year. In my albeit insignificant forty years of studying biblical prophecy....I would find it more problematic that God would not use signs in the skies....total lunar and solar eclipses.....and Jewish feasts...than that He would still use them....but more....after-the-fact....looking back and seeing what He has done rather than looking ahead. His use of certain specific times periods....forty years or days....seventy or four hundred years....even millenniums....is almost expected. The Jewish people for so many years would at the Passover Seder proclaim....'next year in Jerusalem!' Well they do not have to do that anymore. As for me....I for years now keep saying to myself....'next Lord's Day....the next Lord's Day at the foot of the cross'.....for God to begin to awaken His church and all of us....but that is just me....as I would think that He would begin His mercies towards us from those pulpits. 1948? Well....that is different. One could build their reputation around refuting the importance of that year....but I am convinced that they will find themselves mistaken. God was in as much as telling all of us through the events in the Middle East in that year....'It begins....begin to prepare!' These are things to be pondered in the heart. The following post was from July 29 of 2020.
Ninth Of Av
In a few hours from now....(about 1:40 ET)....the sun will set in Jerusalem....beginning the ninth day of the Hebrew calendar month of....Av....the Ninth of Av....Tisha B'AV....traditionally a day of mourning......because of the many disasters incurred by the Jews over the millennia....including the destruction of both temples. The Roman destruction of Herod's Temple reportedly collapsed the price of gold in Rome because the precious metal became so common.
The dates of the future feasts of Israel....(Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and Passover etc.)....are always only a click away for me or anyone who feels that surely major prophetic events will occur on these days. This isn't date setting for we do not know the years....but we do know that God's future plans for the Jewish people will most likely revolve around their feasts. To prognosticate on this is more than problematic....but to ignore it is being careless to God's warnings to us.
Israel today.....the people and culture....is similar to America....or England....or any of the Western nations.....in their rebellion to God.....for this glacier of disbelief and arrogance has not stopped on Israel's borders. At the very least we can use the yearly feasts to meditate upon and contemplate how Israel had miraculously come back into existence as a nation....and that for a purpose....just as America came into existence.....for a purpose....neither of which was for the glory of a nation-state.
Update: It is 5 o'clock PM in Jerusalem as I type this update....with a few hours left in the ninth of Av. Israel's Knesset has closed up shop for their summer....scheduled to resume in mid-October....after the high holy days. The country is torn apart over the judicial reform legislation that has only just started. Older evangelicals in America are surely concerned. We weren't really expecting Israel to be completely torn apart from within as we are.
Additional update....July 31....The Jerusalem Post is reporting the release of a peer reviewed archaeological article on the identifying of a large building that was most probably burned on the ninth of Av....586 b.c. During Babylon's destruction of Jerusalem.
