Great is the Day of Ishmael

 It is well-known that you can never lose your ethnicity, no matter how many generations pass, or where you are on planet earth. The life of a scripturally designated forefather has its progeny in every generation.  Thus, when we read about the forefathers of the enemies of Israel in Psalm 83, we can be very certain that we are sharing this world and the nations with them.  This is why Yeshua was absolutely right about the last days’ wars and rumors of wars, nations fighting nations, kingdoms against kingdoms. If we were to view world history from His time all the way to ours, we would have to conclude that we have been in the last days for two thousand years.  The wisest man who ever lived declared that “there is nothing new under the sun” (ref. Ecclesiastes 1:9).

Since the war broke out in Israel, the Christian and Messianic communities have been associating this war with the ancient enemies of Israel.  How ironic, that many agree that the forefathers who are mentioned in Psalm 83 are alive and well in the present Arab world of Islam.  The latter themselves claim their ancestry from Ishmael, Esau, Amalek, Hagarites, etc.  And we too have no problem believing that they truly are the seed of Abraham and Ishmael.  However, when it comes to the descendants of the twelve tribes of Israel, we limit our understanding to a relatively small number of less than 20 million Jews worldwide.  We assume that all the tribes are included in that Jewish population.  This leaves a very anemic fulfillment of the promises of a multiplicity of the ethnicity of Abraham, through Isaac, through Jacob the father of the tribes: "By Myself I have sworn… indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens, and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies.  And in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice” (Genesis 22:16-18).

I mentioned a few weeks ago that the fulfillment of Joel 3 could be in the making in the present situation. There are many other scriptures that can be plugged into the current circumstances. But truly it is only YHVH who is responsible for the timing of their scriptural fulfillment, or even for the preliminary stages in the process of His overall plan to bring back the whole house of Israel. “And the sons of Judah and the sons of Israel will be gathered together, and they will appoint for themselves one leader, and they will go up from the land/earth, for great will be the day of Jezreel” (Hosea 1:11), or is it Ishmael's great day?

In 1983-84, a year or so after the Spirit showed me from Scripture the biblical history of the House of Jacob and the division into what has been labeled the two houses of Israel - “Judah and Ephraim/Joseph”, we left the kibbutz where we were living and moved to a new settlement in the Judean desert. For seven months I typed out all the scriptures that I could find of “Thus says the LORD” pertaining to this aspect of the history of Israel. After the Internet came in, we set up a website and I posted it.  If you are interested in reading from it, go to www.israelitereturn.com open the file “Thus says Elohey Israel” and go to the 6th chapter, “Concerning Israel and Her Enemies”.  After 40 years I’m sure I would be rearranging many of the scriptures differently, but this is what the Spirit gave me at the time. 

Shabbat Shalom,

Ephraim and Rimona