We evangelicals have had it ingrained in us for fifty years now that Israel will be surrounded in the last of the last days. We never questioned that....but Israel has been....surrounded by enemies....in one way or another....since their very inception as a nation.
Today though.....it is a very different definition of being surrounded. Israel has never been in as precarious a situation as it is right now....not even close to it. It appears that the army is going to....raze....Gaza City. The Houthis are firing missiles from the South....and Syria is getting more problematic every day. Much of the world is increasingly turning against Israel because of the collateral deaths in Gaza....and now Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear that Israel will go anywhere to destroy their enemies.
The book of Psalms has an redemptive/historical chronological narrative to it. I don't think that there is any question about that anymore. O. Palmer Robertson's masterly interpretation in his book....The Flow Of The Psalms...demonstrates this very clearly. No...the Psalms were not placed in perfect chronological order....but there is distinct chronology of the five books within the Psalms....and it appears that we are living in the fifth book!
Psalm 117....the micro-short psalm in that fifth book seems to set the tone.....followed by the messianic Psalm 118 and the torah Psalm 119....duplicating the messianic Psalm 18 and torah Psalm 19.
Psalm 120 begins the....ascents....fifteen psalms....the title of which....can only be speculated upon. Psalm 122 tells us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem...followed by a couple of psalms where there is..."exceeding....contempt"....shown for David and Israel....with an intriguing verse 2 in Psalm 125...."....from this time forth and forever."
We in the church today seem to have....an exceeding....aversion....to proclaiming....although maybe not believing...that Jesus is returning....essentially right now....even though God's Word tells us in Amos 3:7...."For the Lord God does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets"....and Jesus emphasized in His Olivet Discourse...."For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect....See, I have told you beforehand." Matthew 24:24, 25. Yes....Jesus does say....eleven verses later...."But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven...."....but He then describes the days of Noah and completes His thought in verse 42...."Therefore....stay awake....for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming." Jesus rebuked those leaders for not recognizing His first coming...and rebuked the Pharisees for discerning the weather but not the signs of the times.
Even the more conservative of us admit that God uses certain numbers to at times come with a meaning....the number seven means this....and the number twelve means that....and so on....well there is also a prophetic element to the Jewish feasts. Even this last and most devasting event....October 7 of 2023...was on the last day of the feast of Sukkot! And God uses at times the sun and the moon and the stars. This blood moon phenomenon is not ridiculous speculation. There was a blood moon over Jerusalem only two days ago!
That epic four conservative total lunar eclipses....all on Jewish feasts....this from 2014/2015....came and passed....and people said that nothing important happened.....but in the middle of that tetrad Donald Trump came down that escalator....even into the middle of evangelicalism....the same Donald Trump that was born on a blood moon on June 14. 1946!
God is not giving us connect-the-dots games to play. What He is doing is letting His people know that something is about to happen....and to therefore prepare....and rejoice.. Is there abuse in studying biblical prophecy? Of course there is. There is abuse in doctrine and church polity and worship and evangelism and just about every area of God's Word. That doesn't keep us from studying His Word....rather it should make us....as did the Bereans....study it more.
Note: This past Lord's Day most of the world but particularly Europe and Asia and Australia experienced a blood moon....that rose brightly above Jerusalem,
