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NOTE: This article or series has not been updated recently. As such, it may possibly contain some outdated information, and/or ideas and beliefs which I no longer embrace, or which have changed to some degree.



While King David may have learned his lesson, on the whole, as I pointed out in part one, sadly, the Jewish people just never seem to learn their lesson for very long. As Jesus said in the Gospel of Matthew, He longs to embrace and love the Jews, similar to the hen who leads her chicks. However, they just refuse to have anything to do with Him, and have disobeyed Him, and have continuously rebelled against Him, for literally millennia. This tragic truth is made so very clear in the following verses:

"Surely none of the men that came up out of Egypt, from twenty years old and upward, shall see the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob; because they have not wholly followed me:"


"Nevertheless the LORD raised up judges, which delivered them out of the hand of those that spoiled them. And yet they would not hearken unto their judges, but they went a whoring after other gods, and bowed themselves unto them: they turned quickly out of the way which their fathers walked in, obeying the commandments of the LORD; but they did not so. And when the LORD raised them up judges, then the LORD was with the judge, and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge: for it repented the LORD because of their groanings by reason of them that oppressed them and vexed them. And it came to pass, when the judge was dead, that they returned, and corrupted themselves more than their fathers, in following other gods to serve them, and to bow down unto them; they ceased not from their own doings, nor from their stubborn way."


"And the LORD said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them."


"Neither will I make the feet of Israel move any more out of the land which I gave their fathers; only if they will observe to do according to all that I have commanded them, and according to all the law that my servant Moses commanded them. But they hearkened not: and Manasseh seduced them to do more evil than did the nations whom the LORD destroyed before the children of Israel."


"Now therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and the terrible God, who keepest covenant and mercy, let not all the trouble seem little before thee, that hath come upon us, on our kings, on our princes, and on our priests, and on our prophets, and on our fathers, and on all thy people, since the time of the kings of Assyria unto this day. Howbeit thou art just in all that is brought upon us; for thou hast done right, but we have done wickedly: Neither have our kings, our princes, our priests, nor our fathers, kept thy law, nor hearkened unto thy commandments and thy testimonies, wherewith thou didst testify against them. For they have not served thee in their kingdom, and in thy great goodness that thou gavest them, and in the large and fat land which thou gavest before them, neither turned they from their wicked works."


"Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work. Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways: Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest."


"They have not known nor understood: for he hath shut their eyes, that they cannot see; and their hearts, that they cannot understand."


"And I brought you into a plentiful country, to eat the fruit thereof and the goodness thereof; but when ye entered, ye defiled my land, and made mine heritage an abomination."


"For my people is foolish, they have not known me; they are sottish children, and they have none understanding: they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge."


"O LORD, are not thine eyes upon the truth? thou hast stricken them, but they have not grieved; thou hast consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction: they have made their faces harder than a rock; they have refused to return."


"Hear, O earth: behold, I will bring evil upon this people, even the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not hearkened unto my words, nor to my law, but rejected it."


"But this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people: and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well unto you. But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went backward, and not forward. Since the day that your fathers came forth out of the land of Egypt unto this day I have even sent unto you all my servants the prophets, daily rising up early and sending them: Yet they hearkened not unto me, nor inclined their ear, but hardened their neck: they did worse than their fathers. Therefore thou shalt speak all these words unto them; but they will not hearken to thee: thou shalt also call unto them; but they will not answer thee. But thou shalt say unto them, This is a nation that obeyeth not the voice of the LORD their God, nor receiveth correction: truth is perished, and is cut off from their mouth."


"But they obeyed not, neither inclined their ear, but made their neck stiff, that they might not hear, nor receive instruction."


"Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Behold, I will send upon them the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, and will make them like vile figs, that cannot be eaten, they are so evil. And I will persecute them with the sword, with the famine, and with the pestilence, and will deliver them to be removed to all the kingdoms of the earth, to be a curse, and an astonishment, and an hissing, and a reproach, among all the nations whither I have driven them: Because they have not hearkened to my words, saith the LORD, which I sent unto them by my servants the prophets, rising up early and sending them; but ye would not hear, saith the LORD."


"And they came in, and possessed it; but they obeyed not thy voice, neither walked in thy law; they have done nothing of all that thou commandedst them to do: therefore thou hast caused all this evil to come upon them . . . And they have turned unto me the back, and not the face: though I taught them, rising up early and teaching them, yet they have not hearkened to receive instruction."


"Therefore thus saith the LORD God of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will bring upon Judah and upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem all the evil that I have pronounced against them: because I have spoken unto them, but they have not heard; and I have called unto them, but they have not answered."


"And I will punish him and his seed and his servants for their iniquity; and I will bring upon them, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and upon the men of Judah, all the evil that I have pronounced against them; but they hearkened not."


"Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Ye have seen all the evil that I have brought upon Jerusalem, and upon all the cities of Judah; and, behold, this day they are a desolation, and no man dwelleth therein, Because of their wickedness which they have committed to provoke me to anger, in that they went to burn incense, and to serve other gods, whom they knew not, neither they, ye, nor your fathers. Howbeit I sent unto you all my servants the prophets, rising early and sending them, saying, Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate. But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear to turn from their wickedness, to burn no incense unto other gods."


"Thus saith the Lord GOD; This is Jerusalem: I have set it in the midst of the nations and countries that are round about her. And she hath changed my judgments into wickedness more than the nations, and my statutes more than the countries that are round about her: for they have refused my judgments and my statutes, they have not walked in them. Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Because ye multiplied more than the nations that are round about you, and have not walked in my statutes, neither have kept my judgments, neither have done according to the judgments of the nations that are round about you; Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I, even I, am against thee, and will execute judgments in the midst of thee in the sight of the nations. And I will do in thee that which I have not done, and whereunto I will not do any more the like, because of all thine abominations."


"They will not frame their doings to turn unto their God: for the spirit of whoredoms is in the midst of them, and they have not known the LORD."


"Woe unto them! for they have fled from me: destruction unto them! because they have transgressed against me: though I have redeemed them, yet they have spoken lies against me. And they have not cried unto me with their heart, when they howled upon their beds: they assemble themselves for corn and wine, and they rebel against me. Though I have bound and strengthened their arms, yet do they imagine mischief against me. They return, but not to the most High: they are like a deceitful bow: their princes shall fall by the sword for the rage of their tongue: this shall be their derision in the land of Egypt."


"Therefore say thou unto them, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Turn ye unto me, saith the LORD of hosts, and I will turn unto you, saith the LORD of hosts. Be ye not as your fathers, unto whom the former prophets have cried, saying, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Turn ye now from your evil ways, and from your evil doings: but they did not hear, nor hearken unto me, saith the LORD."


"But they refused to hearken, and pulled away the shoulder, and stopped their ears, that they should not hear. Yea, they made their hearts as an adamant stone, lest they should hear the law, and the words which the LORD of hosts hath sent in his spirit by the former prophets: therefore came a great wrath from the LORD of hosts."


"These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended. They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me."


"But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Esaias saith, Lord, who hath believed our report?"


"When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.) Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin."


What a sad, sad history of rebellion and unbelief. As I mention in the three-part series entitled "Accusations of Antisemitism: My Personal Response", almost two thousand years ago while standing in the Temple on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem, and after delivering what is undoubtedly one of His strongest rebukes that we find in the four Gospels, Jesus stated the following to the Jews. In fact, He said this to them right after comparing His desire for the Jews of Jerusalem to the mother hen with chicks:

"For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord."


Despite that pointed rebuke, and the many other rebukes that Jesus delivered to His Jewish brethren; despite the warnings that the Apostles delivered in their sermons and Epistles; despite the fact that the Lord utterly destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple for a second time along with the religious system that was associated with it in 70 AD; and despite the fact that in His great Love and Mercy, God has continued to reach out to the Jews for the past two thousand years, sadly, to this day, in their pride and arrogance, the vast majority of them continue to resist the conviction of the Holy Ghost. As the Martyr Stephen cried out just as those very same Jews were about to stone him to death:

"Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye."


What a sad and tragic tale! Even after all of that, most of the Jews today are still not ready to say "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." As I mentioned in part two, this is why I am convinced, that at some point in the future, if a major war does break out in the Middle East for whatever the reason, and if it centers around Israel, it may not end in the manner in which so many Christians and Jews seem to expect. Despite their current military might and the clear advantage which they possess over their Muslim enemies, in His unfathomable Mercy and Love, God may allow a period of Great Tribulation to occur, in order to rebuke the Jews once again, and to totally smash their pride and arrogance. Only in this way will they finally be willing to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior, and say "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.".

While some Jews and pro-Israel Christians may not like it, the fact of the matter remains that God purposely used the Jews throughout the pages of the Bible as a clear example of what not to do. That is why I tend to write about them so much. They were -- and still remain -- one dandy bad example. In other words, God expects us to learn from all of their grievous mistakes, and their sins of stubbornness, rebellion and pride. The Apostle Paul states the very same thing in the following verses that are found in two of his Epistles:

"For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be likeminded one toward another according to Christ Jesus:"


"Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come."


If God used the Assyrians, the Babylonians and the Romans to punish the Jews for their sins, and if He used these heathen armies to destroy Jerusalem and the Temple on two occasions, and to carry off the Jews to serve as slaves in foreign lands on three occasions, who is to say that He might not use the Muslim hordes in a great Middle Eastern war at some point in the future, to do the very same thing again? If you cannot see the plausibility -- and perhaps even the inevitability of such a scenario -- then you have learned nothing from this series. God has His methods, and some of His methods are made plain in the Scriptures.

In conclusion, I must again ask the question: Oh Israel, why will ye die? As He has done in the past, very soon the Lord may allow you to be judged by your enemies for your sins of rebellion and unbelief. You may think that your arm of flesh -- or military might -- will be enough to save you as it did in 1967 and 1973, but what if you are wrong? What if God is actually getting ready to crush your pride? As Jesus said to your unbelieving ancestors in His own day:

". . . O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?"


God is very patient; He is very longsuffering; but even He has a limit and a set time for everything that He does. What if your time has just about run out? What will you do about it?

With these thoughts, I will bring this article to a close. It is my hope that you have found it informative, enlightening, and I pray that it has been a blessing in your life as well. If you have an account with Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or with any other social network, I would really appreciate if you'd take the time to click or tap on the corresponding link that is found on this page. Thanks so much, and may God bless you abundantly!

For additional information and further study, you may want to refer to the list of reading resources below which were either mentioned in this article, or which contain topics which are related to this article. All of these articles are likewise located on the Bill's Bible Basics web server. To read these articles, simply click or tap on any link you see below.

Accusations of Antisemitism : My Personal Response
Arab Spring and the Birth of the Beast and the Islamic Empire
Palestinian Suicide Bombers and Middle East Peace
Psalm 83 War False Doctrine Exposed
Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth
The Fruits of Disobedience
The Great Tribulation and the Rapture
The Heavenly Vision: Have You Got It?
The Seven Heads
United Nations Confrontation: Abbas vs. Obama
Welcome to Greater Israel, USA

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