Victory at Armageddon
Some say Israel’s existence threatens world stability. Eliminate Israel and the world will achieve peace. So say the misinformed. Yet this worldview is thriving. In fact, a day is coming when the entire world will want to eliminate Israel. But the world will find itself fighting against God Himself.
Hostility toward the tiny Jewish state began with its birth in May 1948 when five Arab nations attacked, intending to drive Israel into the Mediterranean Sea. When they failed repeatedly, such Islamic organizations as Fatah, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad sprang up, certain they could do better. These groups use dynamite and rockets to terrorize their enemy. Suicide murderers explode themselves in schools, restaurants, and hotels, killing and maiming thousands of Israelis. And Arab rockets indiscriminately pound Jewish cities.
Terror and murder are not the only tactics in this battle to crush Israel. Israel’s enemies are influencing companies and organizations to divest themselves of financial investments in the Jewish state. Many Western universities and liberal church groups have succumbed to this tactic, designed to choke Israel to death economically.
Yet through it all, Am Yisrael Chai! The people of Israel live! But with Israel’s enemies likely to obtain nuclear capability soon, will Israel continue to live? Will Israel’s enemies eventually win?
The Bible definitively answers these questions. A worse day is coming when the whole world will try to eliminate Israel. The prophet Joel called that time “a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness” (Joel 2:2), when God will “gather all nations, and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat” (3:2).
The world will focus intently on Jerusalem. Speaking through the prophet Zechariah, God said,
I will make Jerusalem a cup of drunkenness to all the surrounding peoples, when they lay siege against Judah and Jerusalem. And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it (Zech. 12:2–3).
God said, “I will gather all the nations to battle against Jerusalem” (14:2). The apostle John described the “battle of that great day of God Almighty,” when all the leaders of the world bring their armies “to the place called in Hebrew, Armageddon” (Rev. 16:14, 16).
Then Israel will face its darkest hour and its greatest victory. God, who is always faithful, promised His people through the prophet Jeremiah that Israel will never “cease from being a nation before Me forever” (Jer. 31:36). All the armies and weapons in the world will not destroy God’s Chosen People because God Himself will fight for them:
The Lᴏʀᴅ will go forth and fight against those nations, as He fights in the day of battle. And in that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east. And the Mount of Olives shall be split in two, from east to west. And in that day it shall be that living waters shall flow from Jerusalem, half of th m toward the eastern sea and half of them toward the western sea…And the Lᴏʀᴅ shall be King over all the earth. In that day it shall be—“The Lᴏʀᴅ is one, and His name one” (Zech. 14:3–4, 8–9).
God said, “Then they will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn” (12:10).
In that day Israel’s Deliverer will give the Jewish nation victory over its enemies and its transgressions. And instead of seeing Israel as an impediment to peace, the world will acknowledge Jerusalem as the city of peace where the Prince of Peace rules and reigns.
