Messianic Perspectives

Guest (Female): With media attention focused on Israel and the people of the Gaza Strip, hope for a peaceful solution to the Middle East situation seems almost hopeless. Yet the ancient prophets told us thousands of years ago how everything will turn out. Stay tuned as we talk about Bible prophecy today right here on Messianic Perspectives.

Liz Aiello: Shalom, and welcome to Messianic Perspectives, a daily program where we look into the Scriptures from a distinctive first-century Jewish point of view. This is Liz Aiello. Today, Dr. Gary Hedrick is talking about Bible prophecy. His subject is Egypt and the Arab Nations in Prophecy. Here on Messianic Perspectives, we usually focus on prophecy as it relates to Israel, but today we’ll be looking at the future of the Middle East from the viewpoint of the Arab nations. Because, believe it or not, Israel is not the only nation in the Middle East that God has a plan for. I’ll be back a little later with information about a special offer, so have your pencil and paper ready. And now, with today’s installment, here’s Gary.

Dr. Gary Hedrick: Thank you and welcome, listening friend, to this edition of the program. It's good to have you with us today as we continue this series of studies dealing with Egypt and the Arab nations in prophecy. On the last program, we were talking about the relationship between the Jews and the Arabs. We saw that they are cousins. The Jews are the descendants of Abraham through his son, Isaac, and the Arabs are the descendants of Abraham through his other son, Ishmael. When you trace the origins of the Jewish and Arab nations, it takes you back to Genesis chapter 12, and we're going to turn there today.

In the first three verses, you have the origin of the Jewish nation because that's where God said to Abraham, "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee. And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing. And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee, and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed."

Now we said a couple of programs ago that certain numbers have a special significance in Scripture. We said, for example, the numbers seven and ten signify perfection and completion in Scripture. And here again, we see the number seven because the Abrahamic covenant is a sevenfold promise. Notice what He says. Number one, "I will make of thee a great nation." Number two, "I will bless you." Number three, "I will make your name great, Abraham." Number four, "You will be a blessing." Number five, "I will bless those who bless you." Number six, "I will curse him who curses you." And number seven, "All people on earth will be blessed through you."

Of course, that Abrahamic covenant became the basis for all of God's promises to Israel and to the world. As God amplifies that promise in later chapters like chapter 15 and chapter 17, you begin to see that God selected Abraham to establish a nation through whom He could bless the world. That was Israel. He would use Israel to give the Bible to the world. He would use her to give the Messiah to the world. He would use her as the pivotal point of His plan for the ages, and she would be His timepiece for the world.

Israel is the clock we must keep our eyes on if we want to know what time it is on God's prophetic calendar. Listen, the clock always stops ticking when Israel is out of the land, but in 1948, it started again. The prophetic clock is ticking again as we approach the end of this age. So in chapter 12 of Genesis, we have the origin of the Jewish nation. That's verses one, two, and three.

Then we also have the origin of the Arab nations in verses 10 through 20. I'm not going to have time to read all this, but it's where there was a famine in Canaan after Abraham got there. Verse 10 says, "And there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was grievous in the land." Now God had promised to bless Abraham where he was, but instead of staying in Canaan and trusting the Lord to meet his needs, he pulled up stakes and went down to Egypt.

Let me give you a principle here. It's very simple and it goes like this: where God guides, He always provides. Did you get that? Let me say it again. Where God guides, He always provides. Remember that. When you and I obey God and follow His leading, He is honor-bound. Listen, He is absolutely committed to taking care of us and to providing for our needs. God would never lead Abraham to Canaan only to let him starve there. That's not the way God operates.

Because where God guides, He always provides. Don't get me wrong, Abraham was a great man of faith. He's listed in Hebrews chapter 11 along with that roster of the great heroes of faith. It took a tremendous amount of faith for Abraham to leave Ur of the Chaldees in Genesis chapter 12 verse 1 without even knowing where he was going. He was a great man. But when the famine hit, he lapsed into unbelief.

Do you have periods when you lapse into unbelief occasionally? Maybe God has led you to step out in obedience to do something for Him, to exercise your faith, and you can be going along just fine, and then one day you start feeling like Peter, who was walking along on the water and he looked around and saw the wind and the waves and suddenly he was impressed with the impossibility of what he was doing. "I'm walking on water! This can't be done!" And when he lapsed into unbelief, he started sinking.

Have you ever had that experience? I have. You see, that's the litmus test of faith. When the going gets tough and the wind is blowing and the waves are billowing all around you, can you keep on trusting God? Can you keep on trusting God in spite of what your emotions tell you, in spite of what your circumstances seem to indicate, in spite of what others are saying?

Let me tell you what I believe. I believe that if Abraham had planted himself there in the Promised Land and dug in, and when that famine hit, if he would have said, "Lord, I know You led me here. I trusted You, and I obeyed You, and I left everything that was precious and dear to me back there in Ur of the Chaldees, and I followed You here to Canaan. Now Lord, there's a famine. And I have a lot of people who depend on me. I have livestock who need feed, hundreds of farmhands and family members who need food and who need to be taken care of. And Lord, we're just going to trust You. If You want us to starve, we'll starve. But make no mistake about it, no matter what happens, we are not budging from this land. You promised it to us, Lord, and we are possessing it by faith."

My friend, you talk about something that activates the power of God, that's it! When God finds someone who's willing to trust Him unconditionally, unequivocally, unreservedly, a man who says, "Lord, I'm standing on Your promise, sink or swim, eat or starve, no matter what," my friend, that will unleash the power of Almighty God in a way that few people have ever seen.

Wasn't it Billy Sunday who said you could tie a rope to the promise of God, tie a corncob on the other end, grab hold of it, swing out over hell, and spit in the devil's eye? Listen to me, my friend, I believe that if Abraham had stood on the promise of Almighty God, God would have provided for him in the most incredible and miraculous way. After all, it was just a few hundred years later, in the time of Moses, God led the Israelites through a desert wilderness for 40 years and provided their needs down to the smallest detail.

Their shoes didn't wear out. They had manna to eat every morning. They got water out of a rock. He took care of them, and there were several million of them by that time, so He could have done it for Abraham when there were only a few hundred of them. But instead of standing his ground and trusting God, Abraham left Canaan and went down to Egypt.

Now, that was a temptation because in those days, Egypt was the breadbasket of the entire world. Egypt almost always had good crops because it had a dependable water source, the Nile River. They weren't always at the mercy of the rains like other countries in the Middle East. So it was a temptation and Abraham went for it. That trip to Egypt is the origin of the Arab nations because it was while Abraham and Sarah were in Egypt that they acquired an Egyptian handmaiden named Hagar.

Then in Genesis chapter 16, after they returned to Canaan, Sarah remembered that God had promised them a son. He was to be the son of promise, the one through whom all those promises would be fulfilled. You know the story. Sarah gave Abraham her handmaiden, Hagar, and he had a son by her, and the son's name was Ishmael. Ishmael is the progenitor of most of the Arab people we have today.

I say most because some of the Arabs trace their ancestry back to the six sons of Abraham who were born to him, not by Hagar, but by his other wife, Keturah. We'll talk about that a little later in this study. Then there are still other Arabs who come from Esau, Jacob's twin brother. But most Arabs come from Ishmael, whose father was a Hebrew, Abraham, and whose mother was an Egyptian, Hagar.

His father was Semitic, and his mother was Hamitic. One was a descendant of Shem, and the other was a descendant of Ham. And then Ishmael himself took an Egyptian wife in Genesis chapter 21, and he became the father of 12 tribes, just like Jacob, or Israel, became the father of 12 tribes. Ishmael became the father of 12 tribes.

The 12 tribes descended from Ishmael formed the nucleus of what we call today the Arab nations. They are a mixture of Semitic and Egyptian blood, which means the Jews and the Arabs are cousins. This great conflict in the Middle East is a family fight. Do you know what? People today are talking about finding a solution to the Middle East problem, finding an answer to the Middle East conflict, that conflict between the Arabs and the Jews that goes on and on and on, and nobody seems to be able to solve it.

But do you know what? There's only one answer, and that's Yeshua HaMashiach, Jesus the Messiah. It's in Jesus Christ—listen—it's in Jesus Christ that the middle wall of partition is broken down, and Jews and Arabs become one in Christ. Oh, I wish you could visit Israel and see our congregations where Jews and Arabs who are believers in Jesus all worship together. They sing together, they love each other, they fellowship together. Well, we'll continue with this next time. See you then.

Liz Aiello: Thank you, Gary. And thank you, listening friend, for tuning in today. Gary Hedrick’s subject today has been Egypt and the Arab Nations in Prophecy. Now on a program like ours with Messianic emphasis, you might think it’s rather odd to be talking about Egypt and the Arab nations. However, it’s important to understand that God has a prophetic plan for the Arab people, just like He has a plan for Israel and the Jewish people. He has not forgotten the sons of Ishmael, and the prophetic Scriptures tell us that Arab believers will have a prominent place in the coming millennial kingdom.

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And as always, when you're in touch with us, please mention the call letters of this station. If you're listening to our webcast or podcast, we need to know that too. This is Liz Aiello. Join us next time, won't you, as Dr. Gary Hedrick continues our series on Egypt and the Arab Nations in Prophecy, right here on Messianic Perspectives.