TEACHING

Israel and the Road Map to Peace

Ladies and gentlemen, Israel is the spiritual capitol of the world. This is what God calls the navel of the earth in the Old Testament. Why are all of the nations so concerned about Israel? Because it is God's outpost, and it would be, in a sense, a black eye against Him if his plans were frustrated by human beings. And He will not let people frustrate His plan.

When you look at the map you see what is known as the West Bank territory. And this is what the Palestinians want. Down along the Mediterranean Sea is what is known as Gaza. It is virtually impossible to link these two parts through Israel, so just in that you have a problem. But if we see the tiny nation of Israel in relation to the vast amount of land that is here, Israel is maybe three-tenths of one percent of the land mass of the entire Middle East.

You can see the enormous the amount of land in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq. The people of these nations have so much land, and yet they want to crowd all of the Palestinian people into this tiny little area that will not support them.

Now let's see what the West Bank looks like. Here are the cities you have been hearing about. Hebron is a famous town in the Old Testament. Bethlehem is the birthplace of Jesus. Ramallah is another one of the key cities along with Nablus and Jenin in the so-called West Bank.

Now if the Palestinians get this, look what is left of Israel. It is seven to nine miles across the smallest section of Israel, and that is all they have between this territory in the Mediterranean Sea. And the thought of Yasser Arafat is to squeeze the Israelis as hard as they can and push them into the sea.

Now assume the Israelis have to call up of their forces. They don't have a standing army -- it is a citizen's army. What will happen is that you will have terrorists moving across the West Bank and frustrating every single attempt to mobilize the Israeli army in this tiny area.

Now Jerusalem is the capitol of Israel. The Jews took East Jerusalem in fulfillment of a prophecy by Jesus Christ. It was made 2,000 years ago. He said, "Jerusalem will be trodden under the foot of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled." (Luke 21:24)

Yasser Arafat told me personally that he was looking for an accommodation from Israel on Jerusalem. Benjamin Netanyahu, then the Prime Minister of Israel, said the status of Jerusalem is non-negotiable. Now the quartet says we're going to negotiate it and split it up, depending on the interest of the parties.

I am telling you, ladies and gentlemen, this is suicide. If the United States, and I want you to hear me very clearly, if the United States takes a role in ripping half of Jerusalem away from Israel and giving it to Yasser Arafat and a group of terrorists, we are going to see the wrath of God fall on this nation that will make tornadoes look like a Sunday school picnic. We have not begun to see how bad it's going to get if we are leading an attempt to do that.

Now I want to show you some Scriptures from the Bible that talk about this, and there are literally dozens of them. Here is God's promise to Abraham approximately 1,800 years before Christ.

I am going to give all this land to you and your offspring as a permanent possession (Genesis 13:15, NLT).

O our God, did you not drive out those who lived in this land when your people arrived? And did you not give this land forever to the descendants of your friend Abraham? (2 Chron. 20:7, NLT).

This is a permanent possession given by God to Abraham, and all of this territory is the land of Israel. There is no such thing as a Palestine state, nor has there ever been. Now we're going to make something that never happened before in contravention to Scripture. God may love George Bush. God may love America. God my love us all. But if we stand in the way of prophecy and try to frustrate what God said in his immutable Word, then we're in for a heap of trouble. And I think this is a warning we should all take.

This road map, as it is set up now, with the United Nations, with the European Union, and with the Russians coming together in the so-called quartet, these are all enemies of Israel. If we ally ourselves with the enemies of Israel, we will be standing against God Almighty, and that's a place I don't want us to be.