Friday, December 30, 2011

Joshua 11

Joshua 11 - Conquest of the Northern Cities

Before we begin our study of Joshua 11, perhaps we need to consider the objections by many atheists and others to the slaughter of men, women and children by the Israelites in Canaan - was this "genocide" or was it God's judgment upon those living in Canaan?

  1. First, if the Canaanites were allowed to live, they would draw Israel away from worship of Yahweh to worship idols, Baal, practice temple prostitution, commit child sacrifices and all the rest that was so prevalent in Canaan. That would fit in perfectly with Satan's plan and, in fact, we find in later years, his plan succeeded, which resulted in the removal of the northern kingdom of Israel.
  2. Second, the Canaanites were grossly sinful people who were given plenty of time by God to change their ways. They had passed the point of redeemability, and were ripe for judgment.
  3. Third, God wanted to ensure the Israelites did not contaminate the seed line with the Nephilim, born of intercourse between fallen angels and human women. I list several web sites at: http://joshua-biblestudy.blogspot.com/2011/07/joshua-references-and-sources.html on this topic.
  4. I direct you to a further study of this subject which does not include reference to the Nephilim at:
    Yahweh War and the Conquest of Canaan - The Charge of Genocide by Rick Wade: www.probe.org/site/c.fdKEIMNsEoG/b.6479729/k.8890/Yahweh_War_and_the_Conquest_of_Canaan.htm

Below are images of Joshua's campaigns and maps of the areas.


Above image from Sermon/Study Guide: Joshua by Steve Hixon: www.hixonstudies.com/studyguides/joshua_sg00.asp


Source of above image: http://souljournaler.blogspot.com/2010/06/examining-scripture-xxxvi-divide.html

(1)When King *Jabin of **Hazor heard ***what had happened, he sent messages to the following kings: King Jobab of ****Madon; the king of Shimron; the king of *****Acshaph;

  • *Jabin means "intelligent." Jabin was a title like "Pharaoh" and "Caesar" rather than a person's name. The same name or title occurs in Judges 4:2.
  • **Hazor:
    •   
    • Historians believe that Hazor was the most powerful of all of these cities being located along the main trade route. The main highway to travel from Egypt to Europe or the western part of Asia ran through Hazor; so, this city was probably rich through trade along this route. This was the largest walled city of Canaan. Jericho covered about 6 or 7 acres while Hazor covered about 200 acres. Apparently the Israelis did not occupy this site because in Judges 4 it is a powerful Canaanite stronghold again.
    • Hazor has now been more thoroughly excavated than almost any other ancient site. Keller indicates that no fewer than 21 stages of development can be distinguished in the city Hazor, indicating that at least 21 cities occupied that same area, each one erected over the rubble of the previous cities.
  • ***what had happened: The southern and central campaigns: Joshua 10:40-43. Along with the defeat of Pharaoh, the defeat of Og and Sihon and their kingdoms on the east side of the Jordan River.
  • ****Madon was a Canaanite city on a hill overlooking Lake Tiberias. It is the mountain from which Christ delivered the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5.
  • *****Acshaph means “a place of sorcery”.

(2) all the kings of the northern hill country; the kings in the Jordan Valley south of Galilee; the kings in the Galilean foothills; the kings of Naphoth-dor on the west;

(3) the *kings of Canaan, both east and west; the kings of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites in the hill country, and the Hivites in the towns on the slopes of Mount Hermon in the land of **Mizpah.

  • *kings of Canaan:
    • The Canaanites were an evil, depraved people who engaged in child sacrifice. Is there any real difference between the Canaanites sacrificing their children to their gods and the muslims sacrificing their children to Allah and calling them martyrs? Listen to Muslim mothers hoping for more children to die for Allah. And, how about mothers aborting their children because they were "an inconvenience"? Canaan, because of its sin, was to be devoted to destruction. And Israel was to be the instrument of God for the carrying out His judgment.
  • **Mizpah: This place name means “watch tower”. This was a very common name and its location is uncertain, possibly related to verse 8.
  • Now, we see all of the people that God had promised to give Israel are gathered against Israel. They could all be classed as Canaanites. Each had their own tribal names like Amorite, Hittite, Perizzite, Jebusite and Hivite.
  • 24 cities are mentioned, but Jabin contacted virtually everyone who had not yet been conquered by the Israelites.
  • The important thing to remember here is that these groups were not all part of the same family. They were different "nations" with different backgrounds that happen to live in the same area. History teaches us that these groups constantly fought amongst each other. The only reason they were uniting was to fight a common enemy.

(4) All these kings came out to fight. Their combined armies formed a vast horde.
And with all their horses and *chariots, they covered the landscape like the sand on the seashore.

  • This is a much superior force than the armies of the southern kingdoms and much larger and vastly superior to Joshua's forces. When we win battles against Satan, he brings out his "big guns" in an attempt to defeat us and our testimony.
  • Such an army should be able to easily defeat Joshua's forces, but they were to discover, as others both before and since have done, that "the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong" (Ecclesiastes 9:11).
  • The size and might of this assembly only made its overthrow the more notorious and demonstrated more evidently that it was the Almighty who fought for Israel.
  • *chariots: Chariots were the ultimate military weapon of that day. In the light of Judges 4:3, it is highly probable that the chariots commanded by Jabin were of iron and armed with terrible scythes like the Persian scythed chariots below, to cut down men as they drove along. They were effective only on relatively flat ground with plenty of room to maneuver such as a large valley, not in the area Joshua fought them.
  • Deuteronomy 20:1,4: “When you go out to fight your enemies and you face horses and chariots and an army greater than your own, do not be afraid. The Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, is with you! ... For the Lord your God is going with you! He will fight for you against your enemies, and he will give you victory!’
  • Judges 4:3: Sisera, who had 900 iron chariots, ruthlessly oppressed the Israelites for twenty years. Then the people of Israel cried out to the Lord for help.

(5) The kings *joined forces and established their camp around the water near **Merom to fight against Israel.

  • *joined forces: The reason they were willing to fight together is, they knew individually they had no chance against Israel.
  • **Merom was a shallow lake about 5 miles west of the Sea of Galilee in a mountainous area about 4,000 feet in elevation which was drained in the early 1950's. It was not a location where chariots could be used in battle - chariots couldn’t maneuver in the hills. It was probably a chosen as a good place to gather and develop strategy before attacking the Israelites in a valley area. Below is a picture from Wikipedia of the drained area in modern times - an area where chariots couldn't well function:

(6) Then the Lord said to Joshua, “*Do not be afraid of them. By this time tomorrow I will hand all of them over to Israel as dead men. Then you must *cripple their horses and burn their chariots.”

  • *Do not be afraid. Would you be afraid if you were facing an overwhelmingly large well-equipped army determined to exterminate you? Is this command starting to sound familiar? This is YHWH’s battle and victory, not Israel’s. But, Joshua must act quickly - God helps and directs but expects the Israelites to act.
  • *cripple their horses and burn their chariots: "Hough" (Hock) in the KJV, means hamstring or exterminate.
    • God did not want His people to come to rely on horses and war chariots in the future.
    • Some like to think that the horses were just crippled, but a blow with a sword that severed the key tendon would also have severed the artery. Partial hocking would have required much more time and patience. It was this hocking of the horses that deprived the enemy of their chance to escape. They fled on foot and were no match whatever for the hardened soldiers of Joshua.
    • Deuteronomy 17:16: “The king must not build up a large stable of horses for himself or send his people to Egypt to buy horses, for the Lord has told you, ‘You must never return to Egypt.’
    • 2 Samuel 8:4: David captured 1,700 charioteers and 20,000 foot soldiers. He crippled all the chariot horses except enough for 100 chariots.
    • 1 Chronicles 18:4: David captured 1,000 chariots, 7,000 charioteers, and 20,000 foot soldiers. He crippled all the chariot horses except enough for 100 chariots.
    • Psalm 20:7: Some nations boast of their chariots and horses, but we boast in the name of the Lord our God.
    • Psalm 33:16-17: The best-equipped army cannot save a king, nor is great strength enough to save a warrior. Don’t count on your warhorse to give you victory - for all its strength, it cannot save you.
    • Proverbs 21:31: The horse is prepared for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord.

(7) So Joshua and all his fighting men traveled to the water near Merom and attacked *suddenly.

  • *suddenly: Joshua got there quicker than the Canaanites had expected and caught them unprepared and by surprise. Joshua doesn’t do what he’s supposed to do. He surprises the alliance. He does it in the mountains where the chariots are useless. God must have alerted Joshua to get there quickly before they had a chance to organize and develop a plan. How did Joshua know the alliance had gathered there?
  • Taken by surprise, and hemmed in between the mountains and the lake, the chariots and horses would have no time to deploy and no room to act effectively; and thus, in all probability, the unwieldy host of the Canaanites fell at once into hopeless confusion. Israel’s sudden attack and the tight quarters made the chariots and horses more of a liability to the Canaanites. There apparently were routes of escape, and the Israelites were able to chase them down.

(8) And *the Lord gave them victory over their enemies. The Israelites chased them as far as Greater **Sidon and Misrephoth-maim, and eastward into the valley of Mizpah, until not one enemy warrior was
left alive.

  • *the Lord gave them victory: The victory was as result of the Captain of the Lord's army, not just Joshua. Without Him, Joshua would have been sent back over the Jordan and out of the Promised Land - if he and his army had even survived.
    • Romans 8:31: What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us?
  • **Sidon was the major city of the Phoenicians who were basically at that time Northern Canaanites. Sidon was the contemporary capital of Phoenicia, but later it was Tyre. It was from Sidon that the apostle Paul sailed for Rome (Acts 27:3-4)
    Sidon

(9) Then Joshua crippled the horses and burned all the chariots, as the Lord had instructed.

(10) Joshua then turned back and captured *Hazor and killed its king. (Hazor had at one time been the capital of all these kingdoms.)

  • *Hazor was destroyed first because they were the ones who had put this coalition army together against Israel. It seems that this city, though burnt, was built again and inhabited by Canaanites, who had a king over them of the same name in the times of Deborah, (Judges 4:2).

(11) The Israelites completely destroyed every living thing in the city, leaving no survivors. Not a single person was spared. And then Joshua burned the city.

(12) Joshua slaughtered all the other kings and their people, completely destroying them, just as Moses, the servant of the Lord, had commanded.

  • It appears, that some of the cities Joshua had already destroyed all the people in, had been repopulated with other people. He now burns Hazor with fire to keep this from happening here.

(13) But the Israelites did not *burn any of the towns built on **mounds except ***Hazor, which Joshua burned.

  • *burn: The only cities listed in Joshua to be burned were Hazor, Jericho and Ai.
  • **mounds is the Hebrew term “tel” (as in Tel Aviv) or "ruin". The largest "tel" in Israel is Hazor.
  • ***Hazor: The archaeologist Garstang found the ashes of this fire, with pottery evidence that it had occurred about 1400 B.C. An Amarna Tablet, written to Pharaoh, 1380 B.C. by the Egyptian envoy in north palestine, says, "Let my lord the king recall what Hazor and its king have already had to endure." Great layers of ashes were also found from Joshua's time in Jericho, Bethel, Lachis and Debir. Even though Joshua burned Hazor, it was later rebuilt and continued to harass Israel during the days of the judges. It was later part of Solomon's kingdom (1 Kings 9:15) and was eventually captured by the Assyrians (2 Kings 15:29). A vast metropolis of 40,000 people, many times the size of Jerusalem in David's day.

(14) And the Israelites took all the plunder and livestock of the ravaged towns for themselves. But they killed all the people, leaving no survivors.

(15) As the Lord had commanded his servant Moses, so Moses commanded Joshua. And Joshua did as he was told, carefully obeying all the commands that the Lord had given to Moses.

  • This is the key to Joshua's victories.

(16) So Joshua conquered the entire region—the hill country, the entire *Negev, the whole area around the town of **Goshen, the western foothills, the Jordan Valley, the mountains of Israel, and the Galilean foothills.

  • *Negev is the dry semi-desert region in southern Canaan. It was uninhabited except for shepherds and flocks.
  • **Goshen refers to an area in the hill country of Judah, not the area in Egypt where Joseph's family was allowed to live.
  • Deuteronomy 1:6-8: “When we were at Mount Sinai, the Lord our God said to us, ‘You have stayed at this mountain long enough. It is time to break camp and move on. Go to the hill country of the Amorites and to all the neighboring regions—the Jordan Valley, the hill country, the western foothills, the Negev, and the coastal plain. Go to the land of the Canaanites and to Lebanon, and all the way to the great Euphrates River. Look, I am giving all this land to you! Go in and occupy it, for it is the land the Lord swore to give to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to all their descendants.’”

(17) The Israelite territory now extended all the way from *Mount Halak, which leads up to Seir in the south, as far north as **Baal-gad at the foot of Mount Hermon in the valley of Lebanon. Joshua killed all the kings of those territories,

  • *Mount Halak (literally, "the bare" or "smooth mountain") is a mountain or mountain range in the central Negev. It seems to be between the wilderness of Zin and Seir. It was part of the boundary between Judah’s allotment and the nation of Edom.
  • **Baal-gad: Baal was the male fertility god of Canaan. Every town had its own worship altar. Many of the towns of Canaan had the male god Baal or the female Asherah or Astarte in their names. The term “gad” apparently meant “good fortune”. In reality, Baal is none other than Satan himself.
  • Verse 17 reveals the northern limits of Joshua’s conquest. More was given by YHWH, but not taken by Israel.

(18) waging war for a *long time to accomplish this.

  • *long time: About 7 years. Seven years can be calculated because the scripture gives us benchmarks with Caleb’s age at various points:
    • Caleb was 40 years old when the children of Israel came out of Egypt and rebelled against the Lord at Kadesh Barnea
      (Joshua 14:7).
    • 38 years passed from the rebellion in Kadesh Barnea until they crossed the Jordan River (Deuteronomy 2:14).
    • Joshua 14:10 say that Caleb was 85 years old when the conquest of Canaan was over. 85-38-47=7.

(19) No one in this region made peace with the Israelites except the Hivites of Gibeon. All the others were defeated.

(20) For the Lord *hardened their hearts and caused them to fight the Israelites. So they were
completely destroyed without mercy, as the Lord had commanded Moses.

  • *hardened their hearts:
    • Maybe this is why the Arabs and Palestinians and others cannot make peace with the Jews. Maybe their evil nature is pushing them in the path of their own destruction. How long will the Jews go on letting themselves be victimized and only retaliating in a limited fashion whenever innocent citizens of Israel are killed?
    • The hardening of men’s hearts is when God gives man up to the sin that is in his heart (Romans 1:24-28).
    • God hardened the Canaanites’ hearts, not to keep them from repenting, but to prevent them from surrendering to Israel in unrepentance. The examples of Rahab and the Gibeonites demonstrate the unchanging purpose of God that “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13). As in the case of Pharaoh, God may be said to harden the hearts of those who harden their own.
    • Paul mentioned this in Romans, and it appears that a course of wickedness willingly pursued by a sinner will result, even in these present times, in God's disabling, darkening or hardening his mind so that, having already chosen evil, the hardened soul is incapable of intelligent decisions. Even a fool, for instance, should have known better than to rush into the Red Sea following Israel's crossing, but Pharaoh, whose heart the Lord had hardened, went right in with his whole army, only to be drowned! Just so, here it seems that the "intelligent" Jabin should already have caught on from the instances of Jericho and Beth-horon that God Himself was helping Israel. Therefore, when this "intelligent" sinner formed his coalition against Israel, he merely proved what a fool he was! Just so, today, there are men with high positions of academic, political or social power who are BLIND indeed to the simple truth of Christianity. Why? They love evil; they have already elected evil as their preferred course. And God has hardened their hearts!
      • 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12: He will use every kind of evil deception to fool those on their way to destruction, because they refuse to love and accept the truth that would save them. So God will cause them to be greatly deceived, and they will believe these lies. Then they will be condemned for enjoying evil rather than believing the truth.

(21) During this period Joshua destroyed all the descendants of *Anak, who lived in the hill country of Hebron, Debir, Anab, and the entire hill country of Judah and Israel. He killed them all and completely destroyed their towns.

  • *Anak: The word means "long necked" or "tall". The Anakim were a race of giants, greatly feared by the 10 spies.
    • Genesis 6:4: In those days, and for some time after, giant Nephilites lived on the earth, for whenever the sons of God had intercourse with women, they gave birth to children who became the heroes and famous warriors of ancient times.
    • Numbers 13:22,33: Going north, they passed through the Negev and arrived at Hebron, where Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai—all descendants of Anak—lived. (The ancient town of Hebron was founded seven years before the Egyptian city of Zoan.) ... We even saw giants there, the descendants of Anak. Next to them we felt like grasshoppers, and that’s what they thought, too!”
    • Joshua 15:14: Caleb drove out the three groups of Anakites—the descendants of Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai, the sons of Anak.
    • The word "giants" in the King James version is "Nephilim". These are the descendants of the second incursion of evil angels (Genesis 6:4) through one, Anak. See Bullinger's Appendix 23 and 25. The term "Anak" occurs also in Numbers 13:22, Deuteronomy 3:2 and Joshua 15:14.
    • Consider, among many others, the legend of Hercules - the product of Zeus and a human woman. They still existed in the day of David, Goliath being one of them.
    • Here, the foes of 40 years ago fall. They were no match for an army that was blessed and directed by God.
    • There seem to be three names used in the Old Testament to describe these very tall people: (1) Nephilim (Genesis 6:4); (2) Rephaim (Genesis 14:5; 15:20; Joshua 12:4; 13:12); and (3) Anakim (Numbers 13:22,28; Deuteronomy 1:28; 9:2; Judges 1:20).
    • Joshua 12:21 lists Taanach and Megiddo as being among the cities captured by Joshua, showing that many military operations carried on by Joshua must have been passed over here in silence.

(22) None of the descendants of Anak were left in all the land of Israel, though
some still remained in Gaza, *Gath, and Ashdod.

  • These were three of the five principalities of the Philistines, and were never conquered and possessed by Israel.
  • *Gath:
    • Shuwardata, governor of Gath, is also mentioned in the following letter from a man named Milkilu, a prince of Gezer, with whom he was allied: “Let it be known to the king that there is great hostility against me and against Shuwardata. I ask the king, my lord, protect his land from the approaching Hapiru.”
    • The giant Goliath whom David fought was from Gath; so, Joshua and the children of Israel must not at this point in time have actually killed every single one of these Anakim, or giants, from the city of Gath:
      • 1 Samuel 17:4: Then Goliath, a Philistine champion from Gath, came out of the Philistine ranks to face the forces of Israel. He was over nine feet tall!

(23) So Joshua *took control of the entire land, just as the Lord had instructed Moses. He
gave it to the people of Israel as their special possession, dividing the land among
the tribes. So the land finally had **rest from war.

  • *took control of the entire land:
    • Their power has been broken and the main cities destroyed. Once the tribes were assigned their territories, they were to remove or destroy the remaining. In Judges chapters 1-3, there were more to be removed.
    • There were two parts to an effective conquest of Canaan:
      • 1. Joshua defeated the main military forces of the Canaanites and captured or destroyed the major walled cities.
      • 2. Each individual tribe had to possess its allotted land by faith.
  • **rest: Hebrews 4:8-10: Now if Joshua had succeeded in giving them this rest, God would not have spoken about another day of rest still to come. So there is a special rest still waiting for the people of God. For all who have entered into God’s rest have rested from their labors, just as God did after creating the world.
    • The time of peace and rest is not the final reality. This is a “dress rehearsal” for the ultimate Sabbath rest–heaven.
    • What Joshua could not yet see is that the greater Joshua, Jesus Christ, was yet to come. Through Jesus’ death on the cross, God conquers our great enemy, which is the guilt and power of sin. Through his resurrection, Jesus will conquer even death itself. The reality is that the Canaanites were not Israel’s greatest foe. No, sin and death are our greatest enemies, and Jesus Christ came and defeated them both, casting them forever from that good land where we at long last will receive everything God has promised to us. If God promised an earthly inheritance to Israel–the land–he’s promised a much greater inheritance to us, an eternal Sabbath and heavenly rest. And just as Israel’s great general, Joshua, oversaw the conquest of the land and the defeat of all the Canaanites, so too greater Joshua (Jesus) has conquered death and the grave and won for us entrance into heaven itself. And there we will enter our Sabbath rest, we will be at peace forever, as we dwell in the glorious presence of the Lord Jesus himself.
  • Joshua 13:1-7: When Joshua was an old man, the Lord said to him, “You are growing old, and much land remains to be conquered. This is the territory that remains: all the regions of the Philistines and the Geshurites, and the larger territory of the Canaanites, extending from the stream of Shihor on the border of Egypt, northward to the boundary of Ekron. It includes the territory of the five Philistine rulers of Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron. The land of the Avvites in the south also remains to be conquered. In the north, the following area has not yet been conquered: all the land of the Canaanites, including Mearah (which belongs to the Sidonians), stretching northward to Aphek on the border of the Amorites; the land of the Gebalites and all of the Lebanon mountain area to the east, from Baal-gad below Mount Hermon to Lebo-hamath; and all the hill country from Lebanon to Misrephoth-maim, including all the land of the Sidonians. “I myself will drive these people out of the land ahead of the Israelites. So be sure to give this land to Israel as a special possession, just as I have commanded you. Include all this territory as Israel’s possession when you divide this land among the nine tribes and the half-tribe of Manasseh.”
  • Later, problems developed because (1) Israel did not kill all of the Canaanites and they reasserted themselves and recaptured some of their old fortresses or (2) the individual tribes never fully finished the task of conquest. There are hints of this failure in Joshua 13 and Judges 1.
  • Joshua 17:13: Later, however, when the Israelites became strong enough, they forced the Canaanites to work as slaves. But they did not drive them out of the land.

APPLICATION and LESSONS to LEARN:

  1. We must look to the Lord to fight our battles.
  2. We must be obedient to the Lord’s commandments if we are to walk in the blessing and victory which is our inheritance in Christ.
  3. While the "war tactics" is interesting from a historical aspect, it is not the focus of this lesson. The important point is that the Israelites trusted in God and He led them to victory over their enemies. The idea for us is that we can win over situations that are way too big for us to handle on our own if we are willing to turn it over to God.
  4. At the end of our life, God wants us to look back at our life and say "we have made a difference for Him." The idea is that we have accomplished what God wanted to do through us. This generation of Israelites has done "just that" by conquering the land as God required them to.
  5. God called Joshua to conquer the land and for the most part, and by the end of this chapter, Joshua has accomplished this assignment. God may call on you or me to be involved in some project for Him. The question is not so much the "what", but are we being loyal to what God called us to do.
  6. The point for us is that in the things we do for God, the ultimate victory is guaranteed. As the battles are being won for God in our life, the point is we do achieve victory for God whether we see the end results or not. We are to be loyal to what God has called us to do and let Him worry about the results.
  7. The Bible is full of stories of people winning battles that "without God's help" they never would have won. David defeating Goliath comes to mind. The point is this chapter in Joshua is not an isolated example of the Israelites taking on "something" that is bigger than them.
  8. The lesson of this chapter is about trusting God with a situation that is "too big too handle" on our own. It is another way of showing our complete dependence upon God especially when whatever is in front of us is way to big to defeat on our own.
  9. Remember who's the "power behind the throne" with these northern kings - Satan himself. And our battle too is - "...not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places." (Ephesians 6:12).
  10. Joshua’s confidence lay not in his own military skill, nor in the valor of his men, but in the sure promise of the One whom he served. The assault which he made upon the Canaanite northern kings was in compliance with the orders which he had received from the Lord.
  11. The secret for Joshua was knowing and following everything that God had commanded through Moses in the first five books of the Bible, the Torah. In Joshua 1:8-9, God spoke to Joshua: "This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall have good success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; be not frightened, neither be dismayed; for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." The key is to play by his rules and submit ourselves to his authority in our lives.
  12. The secret of Joshua's remarkable success from the human viewpoint was his consistent obedience to the Lord (verse 15). We too will experience victory over our spiritual enemies—the world, the flesh, and the devil—to the extent that we do God's will as He has revealed that in His Word.
  13. We read Ezekiel chapter 38 and the first few verses of 39 that show this same pattern of warfare being used in a time that lies ahead for those of us living today, in a battle better known as Armageddon. And the pattern is that the armies of those nations that do not wish to submit to the authority of God, and who will be determined that Israel must be wiped out, will move their armies into Israel (the Valley of Jezreel) to attack the forces led by Messiah. This will prove to be as foolish and full of destructive bravado then as it did long ago for the kings of (first) the south, then the north, of the Land of Canaan.
  14. When we win battles against Satan, he brings out his "big guns" in an attempt to defeat us and our testimony.

NOTES:

Posted by at