I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times what is still to come, I say, “My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.” (Isaiah 46:10 NIV)

A friend sent me these verses from his daily readings: ‘Is a trumpet blown in a city, and the people are not afraid? Does disaster come to a city unless the Lord has done it?’ (Amos 3:6) He was particularly pondering how this applies with regard to Israel’s attack on Iran. Israel sounded the attack on its trumpets, the Iranian people were certainly afraid, and disaster afflicted many.

How are we to interpret this verse that it is the Lord who has done this – especially in the light of Gregory Boyd’s warning that Christians are often too quick in accepting things that evil forces have done?* On the face of it, however, they certainly do imply that God is doing more than just allowing this mayhem to happen: that He is sending it Himself. And likewise therefore for the attacks on Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa?

God spoke very strongly to a number of us back in in 1980 through a number of the prophetic scriptures this way, challenging us to ‘integrate’ the sovereignty of God with the prophetic warnings of God, and seeing how utterly relevant they are to the world today. Many of those verses became the core of the message for our times.

The following verse challenged us then as it does now. ‘For the Lord God does nothing without revealing His secret to His servants the prophets.’ My friend therefore asked the question, ‘Were these attacks revealed to anyone beforehand?’

I have deliberately not been looking to see what the prophets are saying at the moment, largely I have become so weary of so many partisan and prejudiced ones, and seeking to sift out the genuine from the spurious. The simple answer is that I am not aware of whether it was forecast directly ahead of time, but knowing the Lord I am sure it will have been. This article in themedialine highlights just how central biblical prophecy is in peoples thinking in both America and Israel, including influential voices being raised in Christian circles to argue the case for launching attacks on Iran at this time, given how concerned people are at the thought of them acquiring a nuclear weapon.** cbn.com/news/

These are highly controversial matters, and believers are unlikely to have a common mind concerning them. The Lord loves it when we ask Him questions, but we are not always able to discern His answers. How far we should push these questions? Suppose we went back in time to 1939 to ask the question, ‘By what spirit did Germany invade Poland, and so unleash the Second World War?’

Humanly we can trace Hitler’s boldness in invading Poland to many things, not least the overly onerous terms and conditions of the Versailles treaty, and the subsequent failure of the Allies to take action when Germany took Alsace and Lorraine back. And it is only too easy to see how the powers of darkness, having acquired a place in Hitler’s heart, and through him throughout the nation through the National Socialist Party, would launch their war of expansionism and revenge. Very much the same forces are at work today in a the heart of Vladimir Putin, for all that he appears to present a more moderate face when he chooses to woo people to his side.

Some of the saddest words in Scripture are ‘If only.’ If only you had listened, heeded, then you would have been blessed and certain disasters averted. When the Spirit moved in power very early in the 20th century across the many nations, had the church at large seized the moment and fully embraced the Pentecostal revelation, one could posit that the spreading zeal for God might have served as a counterpoise to the rising tide of nationalism, and, who knows, thus restrained the Kaiser and others from plunging into war, and thereby avoiding both world wars. But that is speculation of a possibility of what might have happened had the path of repentance and humility been more widely chosen – and God undoubtedly alerted various people that these wars were going to happen. Somehow in God’s sovereign foreknowledge of the choices we humans will make, merge with His will and purposes; but we must forever be on our toes to discern the parameters of this, whilst being wary of being dogmatic unless the Lord makes something very clear – as He did for instance in warning believers to flee from Jerusalem before General Titus sacked the city, and Armenian Christians much closer to our own time to flee from their Turkish oppressors. It is at that point that we have to raise our voices and sound the warning very clearly.

Lord, help us to be so ‘in’ You that You can share what is going on to the very top level of our ability to understand. [improve phrasing##]

*G. Boyd. God at war – a biblical history of spiritual conflict.
** Rising Lion’ and the Hand of God: Is Prophecy Driving the War With Iran? This is informative for helping to understand how the biblical background to present tensions is being understood in both America and Israel.
*** See this 2015 article

Photo by Beth Macdonald on Unsplash