Is Middle East peace an oxymoron?* It certainly seems so. Jerusalem (meaning, the city of peace) has heard the march of earth’s armies through her streets perhaps more than any other. As Charles Gulston writes in his classic Jerusalem: the Tragedy and the Triumph, “It has been said that if blood were indelible, Old Jerusalem would be red, all red. The words, weighed against the stark facts of history, appall in their degree of accuracy. But of course the city is not red. The sun and the rain have erased the scarlet stains. It is tawny-colored, ‘the colour of a lion skin,’ as H. V. Morton describes it.”
The mind can hardly contain the fleeting ghosts of the past while viewing Jerusalem: Joab taking it for David; Solomon displaying it “in all his glory” to Sheba’s queen; Isaiah and Hezekiah fortifying it for the coming invasion from the north; Jeremiah weeping over its foretold destruction; Daniel and his friends taking one last, wistful look as they left for faraway Babylon.
Then the treading underfoot during the times of the Gentiles: the glory of the golden-headed Nebuchadnezzar; the proud Persians; the haughty Greeks; Ptolemies and Selucids; and the iron heel of Rome. Then followed the fulfillment of the Saviour’s prophecy as He wept over the city that knew not the day of its visitation, “[They] shall lay thee even with the ground” (Lk. 19:44), He lamented.
But Jerusalem was rebuilt–by strangers. Hadrian the Roman, Omar, Saladin, Suleiman–Mongul, Mamaluke, Egyptian, Ottoman and British, they were all here. Yet in spite of good intentions and mighty armies, there has been little of real peace here. And the reason? “If thou hadst known,” the Lord addresses the city, “even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace!”
Gulston concludes: “Instead, you remember, if you are a believer, only that the Prince of Peace died here, and that the full significance of this is beyond human comprehension. Only from a distance, and in retrospect, does the other side of the picture take shape. Stretching back to Abraham, there emerges the portrait of a city unique in its vicissitude of fortunes, its fury and its violence, its perfidy and its glory. And in contemplating a historical record that never fails to amaze and mystify, there comes also the realization that it was on a hill outside these walls that violence climbed to its most awful height. When man put to death the Son of Man, God hid the deed from human eyes for three hours. Nothing could ever again equal the terribleness and monstrous iniquity of that act. Yet in it lay the secret and means of man’s redemption.”
Almost two millenia have swept their sullen waves against Jerusalem’s ramparts. Yet little has changed. The Gentiles still determine, in large part, what happens in The City. The Temple Mount echoes to the cries of a thousand Moslems’ prayers. World leaders exert tremendous pressure on the Israeli government to give back Judea, Samaria, Gaza and the Golan. Most countries refuse to acknowledge Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, leaving their embassies in Tel Aviv (see news report in What’s Going On, p. 10, on the move to bring the American Embassy to Jerusalem by May of 1999).
Today tension is at fever pitch in Israel over the “land for peace” initiative. Although the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin has been roundly condemned by most across the political spectum, there are many (some polls indicate most) who do not want what they consider their land to be given back to the Palestinians. One Israeli told me: “Give them Tel Aviv. Give them Eilat. These places mean nothing to us. But don’t give them Judea and Samaria; this is our biblical land.”
Unfortunately for the sons of Abraham, this land is where the majority of the other sons of Abraham live. And it is not only the territory being given “back” (when did the Palestinians ever have it?), it is also the strategic high ground. If Israel returned to pre-1967 days, their land would return to a strip ten miles wide along the coast joining Galilee with the south, a thoroughly indefensible position.
However, it should be noted that many of the Christians in the Middle East are Arabs living in these territories. The Arab Emmaus correspondence work is sent out from Samaria. If the peace process continues, more than likely one of the first things to happen would be the establishment of a Moslem state and the curtailing or ending of any Christian activity. A lot is at stake.
Please intercede for the believers, whether Jew or Gentile, in this region today. It is not easy. Pray for the Christians’ children who must stand virtually alone in the military, in college, in their neighborhoods. Pray for the growing work among Russian Jews and Moslems, both curious to understand what the Bible is all about.
There is a peace being offered in Israel, the only lasting peace. Through quiet witness, book shops, correspondence courses, clinics and charity works, ambassadors for Christ offer men and women God’s peace initiative: “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1). Blessed are the peacemakers.