Published on Sep 16, 2012 by benzion888

 

Deadly protests, riots and the storming of American embassies that started on September the 11th in Egypt have quickly spread to Libya, Tunisia, Sudan, Yemen, Lebanon, Gaza, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Morocco, Israel, Iraq, India, Indonesia and others. Welcome to another edition of the Bible in the News, this is John Billington with you this week.

Ironically the worst of violence is originating from the many of the countries that were involved in the "Arab Spring" and where America and her allies supported the transition to democracy. Libya is one such place where the American ambassador and a number of others were killed. All this was apparently in response to a low budget film insulting the prophet Mohamed that was posted on the internet, although many doubt that pointing to the level of the organized protests and the timing on September the 11th.

The long term results and lasting impact of the events taking place are hard to predict. We do know however that nations such as Libya are not destined to be pro American, quite the opposite in fact. We have looked many times on the Bible in the News at the final line up of the nations at the battle of Armageddon in Ezekiel 38. There we find a northern confederacy of nations lead by Russia and the Catholic Church and a southern confederacy of nations lead by Britain. There we find for example that Libya is with the Northern confederacy of nations, so no matter how much help America, Britain and Canada give them in turfing out Gaddaffi they are not destined to be friends. What we find when we go through the list of Middle Eastern nations in Ezekiel we find them split, some with the Northern Confederacy and some with the Southern.

To understand the Arab world and where it came from and where it is headed we go back to Genesis and the account of Ishmael, Abraham's son through Hagar. We do not have time to go into this in detail here but we do find that God had a purpose with this family. It was not through Hagar that the promises of a chosen seed etc. would be realized but through Sarah and Isaac. That said in Genesis 16:12 we find very significant promises regarding the future of the Ishmaelites

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