Just about every president that has held the office since before Jimmy Carter thought they could bring peace to the Middle East. President Donald Trump is no different. After flying from Saudi Arabia to Tel Aviv, Trump said that he has found new reasons for hope. He said, “We have before us a rare opportunity to bring security and stability and peace to this region and its people, defeating terrorism and creating a future of harmony, prosperity and peace, but we can only get there working together. There is no other way.” So the peace process, which has pushed the “restart” button by every modern president begins anew. The may be hope in Trump making a deal, but it’s not the hope in what the politicians think.
During my travels in Israel, I noticed something upon which most Israelis agree: they want peace. Trouble is, there can be no peace when the surrounding enemies won’t take the first step and recognize Israel’s right to exist in the first place. It has to start there-that Jews have the right to self-determination in their own land. The political Arabs don’t recognize this right. When President George W Bush essentially forced former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to evacuate Gaza to the so-called “Palestinians,” there was no peace. Gaza turned into a terrorist state, a staging ground for missiles and acts of violence, proving to the world that a two-state solution is only division of land to create more hostility toward Israel.
Trump, like any other US president who tries to lift the peace of Jerusalem as a burdensome stone, will soon find that there is a reason that peace has not been achieved despite the earnest efforts of many a sincere leader-prophecy. Those who are students of the Bible in its prophetic context know that while we are to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, true peace will not be attained until the return of the Messiah, the total defeat of Israel’s enemies, including the antichrist and his coalition of the very nations who broker terrorism against Israel in this modern day. They include Turkey, Iran, Sudan, Libya, and parts of Saudi Arabia where Trump just completed a $110 billion arms deal. No peace in that.
As the Lord says in Ezekiel 39:27-29 of Israel and her people, “When I have brought them again from the people, and gathered them out of their enemies’ lands, and am sanctified in them in the sight of many nations; Then shall they know that I am the Lord their God, which caused them to be led into captivity among the heathen: but I have gathered them unto their own land, and have left none of them any more there. Neither will I hide my face any more from them: for I have poured out my spirit upon the house of Israel, says the Lord God.” Prophetically and scripturally speaking, the only one that is going to bring peace to the land of Israel is the Prince of Peace, not a mere mortal. Until then its window dressing and positioning that may bring the prophecy clock forward, but it won’t be the real deal.
