Trump, Israel, the Deal, and the Ever-Elusive Peace

Welcome back to a dear friend of this Blog, Bud Hancock. Bud is thankful for your prayers and is recovering well from his recent knee replacement operation. His comments in this post are insightful and bang up to date. You are all fortunate to be living in such amazing times, observing with bated breath Bible prophecy is revealed at ever increasing speed. Fasten your seatbelts. Be sure to read Bud’s remarkable testimony at the end of his outstanding article.

Gibber! Gibber!

Chugley

By Bud Hancock

In all my 82+ years, I have never witnessed such blatant antisemitism with so much unmitigated hatred toward the Jewish people being expressed openly, and it seems to be nearly everywhere now. I fail to understand just why so many Gentiles feel such animosity toward the Jews. In my growing-up years, some of them in North Carolina, but most in Michigan, I had few dealings with any Jews because most of the Jewish kids my age went to schools that were private. Not having considered, at that time, why that was, I now realize that most of the Jewish families I knew were quite wealthy and, and unlike the average non-Jewish families I knew, they could easily afford to send their children to private schools. However, the few Jewish kids I knew who went to public schools, other than being from Jewish families, were not any different than all the other non-Jewish kids I knew, nor were they treated any differently by the kids I hung around with. But that was seventy years ago, and those days of casual acceptance of Jews by non-Jews are now long gone and has been replaced by a vitriol that was once reserved for the most vile criminals; what is so alarming is that even pre-teen kids are now being taught Jew-hatred.

I can only state my opinion as to why this disgusting display of Jew-hatred is happening, now, in our time. The Jewish people, having been chosen by God to be a blessing to the world, were the vessel through which God provided His LAW, which was only a “schoolmaster”, and which never had the ability to save anyone, and the FULFILLMENT of that law with the arrival of the promised Messiah Who would replace the law with God’s saving GRACE. The offspring of Abraham and Isaac were guaranteed an unchangeable blessing from God (Genesis 12:2). If I am right, then Satan, the archenemy of God, will do anything in his power to oppose and destroy anything that God has blessed. Regardless of Satan’s actions to destroy Israel, rest assured, he will NOT succeed.

God stressed to His people that He, and He alone, is the protector and keeper of the Jewish people. He expects them to look to, and rely upon, Him alone for their protection and survival. He called them from paganism, equipped them with His Law, the Torah, and fully expected them to take what He freely gave them to the entire world.

Jacob, who was renamed Israel (Prince of God), obviously possessed some quality that made him acceptable to God for His own purposes. That explanation alone should suffice to put to rest forever why God chooses the people He does for specific tasks. Jacob/Israel was chosen to begin the nation from whom the Messiah would arise, and that decision was eternal, unchangeable, and it made Israel, the “Apple of God’s Eye”, a nation NOT to be trifled with.
However, even though God’s decision regarding Jacob/Israel is in the far-distant past, there appears to be a huge number of people in the present, especially some die-hard American MAGA patriots, who still believe that the United States of America has a place in world history equivalent to that of Israel. While our nation has been greatly blessed by God, mostly as a result of her founding on Judeo-Christian principles and faith, America still holds on (barely) to some of those principles, and I highly emphasize “barely”.

It should be noted that there has never been an American, who was hand-picked to be the father/leader of a nation that had not as yet been established, the nation that would produce the long-awaited Messiah, the God/man who would allow sinful men to sacrifice Him on the cross so that all humanity might be saved. That honor was solely reserved for Jacob, grandson of Abraham, the man who, because of his obedience to God, was called God’s “friend” (Isaiah 41:8). God’s choice of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is beyond question by any person, whether Christian or Jew. God, Who is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent, makes decisions based on a supernatural knowledge of people that no human has any right to question.

When a young “would-be” nation, later known as The United States of America, was embarking on a highly risky war against the British Empire to gain freedom from a tyrannical monarchy, the outcome of that war was by no means certain. It was only by the grace of God, and the strong desire, mostly the desire to worship God without being told what form that worship would take, that the ragtag rebels of the fledgling nation endured and defeated the strongest military on the planet. That victory, a victory of a small group of determined rebels, over the world’s foremost military, signalled that God had specific plans for the United States of America.

While the United States has been a strong supporter of individual freedom and liberty around the world, her most important mission, in my mind, has been her support for the nation of Israel. Since the founding of the modern state of Israel on May 14, 1948, the United States has stood with Israel against the hordes of enemies surrounding her, and in some cases, has prevented her from being overrun and destroyed. Our support for Israel is indeed admirable, but it does not entitle this nation to any special consideration from God. God Himself has, on numerous occasions, reminded the Jewish people that their help is from HIM, and Him alone. He also guaranteed, swearing by His own HOLY name, that He would always be the “salvation” of the Jewish people. No other nation in history has been given such a guarantee.

I sometimes wonder whether God looks disapprovingly at the efforts of Israel to seek help from America, or even at the so-called help that America now offers to Israel. It has been said many times that “nothing is free”. That holds true for any assistance that the United States has offered to Israel since her return to her ancestral homeland. God loves charity when it is offered in the correct way. True charity seeks only to bless the recipient and expects nothing in return. That cannot now be said of the aid “given” to Israel. Many administrations have touted the fact that, of the aid given to Israel, most of it ends up back here in the US, being spent on weapons and ammunition ordered by the Israeli government. While that may or may not be true, the greatest underlying motive for the “giving of aid” by the US remains the desire to enrich our weapons manufacturers, and NOT to truly help the Jewish people.

God knows all and sees far beyond what the human eye can see, or the human brain can comprehend. He sees the true motives for all actions taken, either by individuals, or nations. He sees, not only the efforts of Israel’s neighbors, diligently working toward destroying Israel, but He also carefully watches those who claim to support Israel while masking another agenda in their relationship with the Apple of God’s Eye.

While most civilized western nations focus, at least somewhat, on the health and well-being of their citizens, spending hundreds of billions of dollars in that pursuit, on the other hand, Israel’s enemies, principally Iran, whose proxies, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and the “never having existed” Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, seem to exist for one purpose: the complete destruction of Israel and the annihilation of every Jew on the planet. The majority of the resources and oil revenues of these Islamic nations is spent on increasing their weapons arsenals and training new recruits in their effort to destroy Israel.

While God certainly sees the efforts of these nations, through their open threats to destroy Israel, and will certainly deal with them, what about the nations that claim to support Israel and then deal treacherously with them? Will He not mete out even harsher judgment because of their treachery? Even though God has used several nations to punish the Jewish people for their sins against Him, those nations were still under the control of God and were expected to cease their actions when God demanded it. However, when nations move against Israel simply because of their inherent hatred of everything Jewish (including the God of the Jews), and especially their hatred of a Jewish state on the ancestral homeland given to them eternally by God, his judgments against their actions have been, and will continue to be, meted out in total righteousness.
Currently, the United States has a president possessing a very strong personality, a man who acts very forcefully to accomplish the agenda that is most important to him. After seeing him in action for nearly ten years now, it becomes obvious that, likely because of his real estate/business background, what matters most to Trump is “making the deal”. In doing so, he jacks up his self-esteem to a level somewhere between the troposphere and the exosphere (pretty high up!). This has been seen in many of his dealings with international leaders of both our allies and our enemies. He seems to hold a great sway over the leaders of Israel, including PM Netanyahu, seemingly hoping that no leader of Israel will try to block his efforts to “make that deal”. Knowing Trump’s business/real estate background, it is easy to understand why making a deal is so important. A consummated deal brings potentially huge amounts of revenue into the United States, and also into the Trump family business and enriches all those in, or connected to, the family.

But what could be the greatest reason for Trump to doggedly chase a deal, one that is supposedly designed to “bring peace to the Middle East”? Every man who has been president of the United States has spent much time and effort, especially after leaving the Oval Office, working on organizing his presidential bona fides to add to his “legacy”. Surely a deal that would truly bring peace to an area that has not seen real, lasting peace in millennia, would cement Trump’s place in the political annals of, not only the United States, but the world. I am mindful that, assuming Trump would chase a deal with a bloodthirsty Iranian/Islamic regime whose chants of “Death to America”, and “Death to Israel”, simply to establish his legacy in history as the consummate “dealmaker”, makes Trump appear to be one of the most narcissistic leaders in world history. That appearance has already been established, and is constantly being reinforced, by Trump stating recently that HE, and NOT PM Netanyahu, calls all the shots in the relationship between the US and Israel.
I sincerely wish that POTUS Trump would take a few months off from his constant “negotiations with terrorists” and spend that time getting a real education about the Middle East. He appears dreadfully ignorant about the differences between the many cultures there, and the culture of the United States and global business world where he learned the “art of dealmaking”. Such an education would surely stir his thinking and understanding as to why he absolutely CANNOT make a deal with Iranian mullahs who exist solely to further their murderous ideology, and allow them to reach a place where they can not only pull the wool over Trump’s eyes, but can possibly throw him under six feet of dirt. They have sworn to destroy the United States and Israel, many times. The education Trump needs would also prove to him that, when a sworn enemy declares his intention to destroy you, it pays to listen carefully and take him at his word. The Jewish people learned that truth many centuries ago and that knowledge has helped them to survive many attempts to wipe them out.
Only time will tell whether the legacy that Trump seeks is an honorable one, one that truly seeks peace, with the well-being of the Jewish people the primary goal, or whether his legacy will be one that was only based on “Making That Deal”.
Blessings and Maranatha!

Bud Hancock

Born and raised in a small textile town in North Carolina, Bud’s family moved to Michigan in the hope of finding better employment with General Motors.  After graduating from high school, Bud began an apprenticeship with General Motors to become a Metal Modelmaker.  Retiring after a 30 year career, which included an eight year stint as a Metrologist (Science of high precision measurement), he and his wife moved back to North Carolina to be near his elderly parents.  Shortly thereafter, with both of his parents having passed, he began a new career in the bank security/ATM business, advancing from an entry level technician to one of two North Carolina customer service managers for his employer.  Retiring again after 13 years, he and his wife of 51 years relocated to Tennessee where Bud began writing articles emphasizing Biblical teaching and geopolitical issues.  At age 75, he and his wife relocated to South Carolina with their Miniature Schnauzer, Baxter.  Bud continues to study God’s word and write articles on Christian living and geopolitical issues from the Biblical end times  perspective.