Why Does Satan Hate Israel?

As Israel is chastised by the entire world for its tough response against Hezbollah rocket attacks from Southern Lebanon, some Christians want to know what this has to do with them. They wonder if God may be finally finished with Israel after all their years of stiff necked defiance and refusal to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. They see the United Nations, the EU, the Vatican, and other religious organizations calling for a ceasefire. Only the United States thus far has stood behind Israel’s right to defend itself against kaytusha rocket attacks against its civilians in the northern Galilee and Haifa.

 I wrote a similar article last year, “A Promise is a Promise”, when people were concerned about Israelis leaving their settlements in Gaza. Look what has happened. They left southern Lebanon in the year 2000 and were promised that the militias like Hezbollah would be disarmed. They left Gaza last year hoping that a land for peace strategy would work. Both withdrawals failed, as Gaza and southern Lebanon have both erupted in violence. I did a radio interview last week and was asked why the Jews and Muslims could not just get along. The reason is that Satan hates the Jewish people, especially the Israelis, and there would not be peace until the Prince of Peace returns (Isaiah 9:6).

Why is this? Paul summarized it best in Romans 9:4-5

“Israelites to who belongs the adoption

as sons and the glory and the covenants

and the giving of the Law and the temple

service and the promises, whose are the

fathers, and from whom is the Christ

according to the flesh, who is over all…”

God used His first born chosen people, the Jews (through the Patriarchs, Prophets, and Temple) to bring His word, the Law and morality, to the earth and then sent His Son in a Jewish body to save the world from its sin. Satan hates God and His word and he hates God’s chosen vessel, the Jews, from who came Jesus Christ. Satan used the Babylonians and the Persians and the Assyrians and the Hittites and the Egyptians to try and destroy this royal bloodline by destroying the Jews, but he failed.  Then after Christ died on the cross for our sins, he continued to try and see that the scattered Jews would not return to their homeland and reestablish their Jewish nation. He infiltrated the Church and helped instigate the Crusades and the Inquisition and the pogroms and the Holocaust in order to destroy the Jews so they could not create another Israel. Why was he so hell-bent on preventing that from happening?  Because Jesus Christ is to return to the Mount of Olives (Zech 14:4) to rule and reign from Jerusalem for a 1000 years from the rebuilt Temple. Recently he has infiltrated the Mosque and is using Islam to try and destroy the Jews and Israel. While once it was the Crusader and the Grand Inquisitor and the Nazi, today it is the Imam and the Islamic Cleric and the President of Iran who have called for the destruction of Israel and the Jews. Unfortunately, however, Satan is still alive and well in the body of Christ spouting such lies from the pits of hell as “replacement theology”, that the church has somehow replaced Israel. It is Satan trying to show that God’s word is a lie. He will of course fail but many souls will be lost in the process, Muslim as well as Jew as well as so called Christian.

What Christians fail to realize, is the fact that if God is finished with Israel then maybe He might be finished with them as well.

Ludwig Schneider wrote “Christians note the veil over the eyes of Jews that binds them from seeing the Messiah, but when non Jews don’t believe that God’s promises to Israel are still valid today, there is a veil over their hearts which encompasses all the nations. Whether Jew or Gentile, these veils must be removed.”

The Abrahamic Covenant gave ownership of the land of Canaan unconditionally to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It was an everlasting possession (Genesis 17:7-8). That means forever. This was reiterated when an Angel of the Lord said; “I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land which I have sworn to your fathers and I said I will never break my covenant” (Judges 2:1). God keeps His promises that He confirmed to Israel as an everlasting covenant (Psalm105:6-11) and He says that the offspring of Israel will cease from being a nation when the fixed order of the sun, the moon and the stars departs (Jeremiah 31:35-37).

If Israel ceases to be a nation on that land, then what was Paul speaking of when he said of the Jews that the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable (Romans 11:29)? Jesus Himself said that all the things talked about in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. It means the Temple must be rebuilt (Daniel 9:27). The House of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem must recognize Him that they have pierced (Zechariah 12:10). That will never happen if Jerusalem is ceded to the Palestinians. Paul in his Second Letter to the church at Thessalonica said that the antichrist will reign from the Temple (2Thess.2:4). The Temple will not be rebuilt under Palestinian control.

And finally Paul wrote that someday all Israel will be saved (Romans 11:26). This will not happen if Israel no longer exists.

What does all of this mean to Christians? If God promised Israel that land and reneges on His promise, then He might renege on your promise of salvation as well.  Paul wrote to Titus about “the hope of eternal life which God promised ages ago” (Titus 1:2). God cannot lie and His promises are faithful (Hebrews 10:23). Thus if God keeps his promises to Israel and the land, then He will keep His promises to you about eternal salvation. Watch God working with Israel and rest assured that He will keep working with you because a promise is a promise. And like He did not forsake a stiff necked rebellious Israel, God will not turn His back on you. God loves Israel and Satan hates Israel. God says that anyone that touches Israel touches the apple (pupil) of His eye (Zechariah 2:8). That means that anybody that messes with Israel sticks his finger in God’s eye. Why does Satan hate the Israelis? He hates them because God loves them in spite of their unbelief and one day is going to set up His kingdom in their midst for a thousand years as He gives them a new heart and a new spirit (Zechariah 12:10 , Jeremiah 31:33).