On January 28, United States President Donald Trump unveiled his peace plan for the Middle East. It was 180 pages and covered an enormous number of specifics. President Trump called it “the most detailed proposal ever put forward” and “the deal of the century.” It received support from Israel: President Trump announced it at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by his side. But Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas responded, “We say a thousand times: No, no and no to the deal of the century.”
Does anybody really think this plan will bring peace? I don’t suppose many people do.
The Bible tells us to beware when you are hearing a lot about peace. The Prophet Jeremiah wrote of false prophets “saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14; 8:11). Isaiah the prophet foretold of a time when “the ambassadors of peace shall weep bitterly” (Isaiah 33:7).
Diplomats run around talking about peace, peace, peace—but we never have lasting peace. This has been true throughout history.
When they keep talking about peace, you know we are about to have war—war like you have never seen!
Did you know that Jerusalem means “city of peace”? You would almost think that is a sick joke. There has been no lasting peace in that city. In fact, Jerusalem has flowed with rivers of blood!
Why do man’s peace plans always fail? There is a reason—a cause we need to understand. Jerusalem provides a stunning example of this reason. Many of the most arduous peace efforts have centered around this city. For years, many nations have labored to bring it peace and have failed.
We desperately need to understand this fundamental point. If ever there was a time we need to be concerned about how to bring peace to this world, surely it is now. The number one problem the world faces today is human survival! Many nations are acquiring nuclear weapons and honing their nuclear power! We are facing a nuclear war that stupefies the imagination!
Isaiah said, “The way of peace they know not” (Isaiah 59:8). There is a way of peace—but mankind does not know that way! Man keeps trying to somehow generate some kind of peace, but never can.
This is a deadly dangerous issue. If we are to avoid great suffering, we must understand how to have peace. We need peace not only in nations, but in our own homes. How do you have peace in a home?
There is a way, and you can absolutely prove it. In fact, even the name Jerusalem, “city of peace,” is prophetic, telling us that we will have peace—in spite of man, not because of him.
‘Peace’ Process
For almost 30 years, the United States and Britain have pressured the Jews to accept a peace process that has repeatedly failed. Clearly America and Britain, like the rest of mankind, do not know the way to peace.
The “former prophets” include the biblical books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. These books were written by prophets and, like virtually all biblical prophecy, contain forecasts intended primarily for this end time.
Notice this stunning statement in the prophetic book of Kings. When God decided to strip the kingdom of Israel away from Solomon for his terrible sins, He said: “Howbeit I will not rend away all the kingdom; but will give one tribe to thy son for David my servant’s sake, and for Jerusalem’s sake which I have chosen” (1 Kings 11:13). God has chosen Jerusalem. He has chosen no other city in the world—only Jerusalem.
This has everything to do with our having peace in this world!
When the modern State of Israel came into being in 1948, the Arabs immediately attacked. The Jews had no real army. Within three weeks, they were losing the war. Then the Arabs strangely agreed to a temporary United Nations-sponsored truce. This is just what Israel needed to rearm and train its weary troops—many of them civilians who carried guns. Soon after, the Arabs started attacking again. This time the Jews were well prepared and quickly won the war. It was a miracle from God.
The Jews experienced many miracles in the following years. The Six-Day War in 1967 was a major clash between the Jewish nation and Egypt, Jordan and Syria. In that short but intense conflict, the Jews captured all of the Sinai, the Suez Canal, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights—in six days! Study that history and you will see they were aided by miracles.
In late 1973, the Arabs attacked again, this time on the solemn Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. With much aid from the Americans, the Jews won the war in three weeks—another miraculous deliverance.
At some point, however, the Jews decided to stop looking to God for help. They decided, prodded by America and Britain, to seek security by negotiating with the very people who wanted to destroy them.
In 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat made a pact in which Israel gave up land for promises of peace. Arafat, before he led the Palestinians in the peace process, was the number one terrorist in the Middle East! Does it make sense that you could somehow achieve peace by making a deal with a famed terrorist? There is no logic in that!
Even as Arafat talked about peace to the Israelis and to the world, in private he would often tell people of his plan to take over Israel and destroy the Jews completely! That was always his ambition! Yet somehow we thought that simply handing him land would soften him or convince him to abandon that goal. Such reasoning shows terrible weakness and only encourages an enemy who thinks like that. Swapping land for peace has never brought peace.
The Dangerous Trump Plan
Since the start of that peace process, the Jews have given up Gaza, Jericho, Bethlehem and the other parts of the West Bank to the Arabs. Think about that: Arabs attacked the Jews on multiple occasions with a goal to annihilate every one of them! Where in history can you find a war where the victors later gave the land back to the aggressors who tried to wipe them off the map?
President Trump’s plan differs in one critical area from the previous attempts to bring peace such as the Oslo Accords and the uniliteral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. In those cases, Israel was encouraged to give up land for the promise of peace. As Israeli commentator Ruthie Blum put it, Trump’s plan is “peace for peace.” In it, a Palestinian state would only be established if Palestinians renounce funding and glorifying of terrorism, stop paying salaries for convicted terrorists sitting in Israeli prisons, and show other proofs that they no longer want to destroy the Jewish state. The plan gives the Palestinian Authority four years to enact these and other reforms. As soon as they do, they’ll receive a state.
In the end, this plan still aims to create a Palestinian state not just next to Israel, but right in Israel’s midst. The Palestinians could get it even if they only pretend, in the short term, to make these concessions.
To think that giving the Palestinians a state will inspire them to abandon plans to destroy Israel is delusional!
To convince Israel to even consider such a deal, the United States is supporting Israel’s claim over 30 percent of the West Bank almost immediately. This includes much of East Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley, a critical area on Israel’s eastern flank that borders Jordan. Many in Israel support the deal because they will receive recognition of these territories right away, whereas the Palestinian state is conditioned on the PA enacting reforms that most Israelis don’t believe Palestinian leaders would ever agree to anyway. At worst, in four years Israel will be right where it is now, except with more of the West Bank declared as sovereign Israeli territory.
By this logic, many Israelis accept the deal because they are banking on Palestinians rejecting it as they have so many times before.
But what if they are wrong? What if the Palestinians do start negotiating the Trump deal?
Some signs suggest that Arab support for Palestinian rejection of the peace process is waning. In February, a Palestinian delegation led by Mahmoud Abbas went to the UN Security Council hoping to see a consensus vote condemning the peace plan. But the Palestinians realized their motion lacked enough support, and the vote didn’t even happen. It was a shock to the Palestinians. One member of the delegation said, “The sense is that we are coming back with our tails between our legs.” He said they received a “cold shoulder” from Arab states, including the Gulf emirates, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Unlike with other peace initiatives, the Arab world seems to be pressuring the Palestinians to negotiate with President Trump. If Palestinian leaders give in, Israel will feel obligated to go along with the process. This will prove to be disastrous.
Peace will not be gained by giving up land to the Palestinians! Never!
People often forget that Israelis have already withdrawn from over 80 percent of the land they won in the Six-Day War. Yet the Trump peace plan includes a map that shows a lot of Israeli territory becoming a new Palestinian state. This plan is a two-state solution in which Israel gives up claim to 70 percent of the West Bank. This area is the heartland of biblical history—the lands of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob! What does God think about it when Israel gives up land He gave them through miraculous victories?
If implemented, this plan puts a Palestinian state on the doorstep of Jerusalem and surrounding almost every Jewish settlement in the West Bank. It doesn’t create two states side by side with one continuous border: It is a series of roads, tunnels and overpasses connecting islands of Jewish communities in the West Bank, each surrounded by a historically hostile people.
David Ha’ivri lives in one of those Jewish communities inside the West Bank. On February 3, he spoke out about what this deal does to his and other West Bank communities. “President Trump says that in his plan, no Israelis or Palestinians will be forced to leave their homes. However, it also lists 15 Israeli towns that would become isolated enclaves deep within the proposed Palestinian state,” he wrote for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Some mistakenly take some consolation in the thought that the plan lists only 15 small towns to be isolated and cut off from Israel. A closer look at the Trump map reveals that another 40 larger Israeli towns, including my own, share a very similar fate. They will find themselves like isolated outposts connected to the rest of Israel by very narrow corridors, surrounded by Palestinian-controlled space.”
Such an arrangement wouldn’t bring peace. It would actually create a dangerous wound for the Jews!
These peace plans are a deadly delusion! We ought to see by now that they won’t work! Every time we have tried giving land for peace, or negotiating with terrorists to bring peace, it has only brought more war!
History proves that—and so does Bible prophecy.
Judah’s Wound
The book of Hosea was written as prophecy for the end time. The nation called Israel today is really biblical Judah. Hosea includes specific prophecies about Judah.
“When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wound, then went Ephraim to the Assyrian, and sent to king Jareb: yet could he not heal you, nor cure you of your wound” (Hosea 5:13). Studying this verse in the original Hebrew reveals that both Ephraim (Britain) and Judah go to Assyria (the prophetic term for modern-day Germany—to prove this, request our free booklet Germany and the Holy Roman Empire).
Why go to Germany? And what is Judah’s “wound”? Strong’s Concordance defines that word, “in the sense of binding up: a bandage, i.e. remedy.” Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon defines it, “the pressing together, binding up of a wound; here used figuratively of a remedy applied to the wounds of the state.” In other words, the remedy is the wound!
Another word for wound appears in Obadiah 7: “All the men of thy confederacy have brought thee even to the border: the men that were at peace with thee have deceived thee, and prevailed against thee; they that eat thy bread have laid a wound under thee: there is none understanding in him.” Gesenius’ Lexicon defines this “wound” as “falsehood; hence, fraud, insidious dealing … net, or snare.” It has the same root word as the word used in Hosea 5:13. In Obadiah the wound is directly related to being deceived by a peace pact!
Wound in Hosea means bandage. It’s as if a bandage is hopelessly applied to an open, running sore. From the beginning of the peace process, the Jews have looked to men, often their enemies, for help—not God. That is the unseen wound.
So little trust in God—so much trust in their enemies!
The real wound is spiritual: a lack of faith in God. The Jews keep trying to heal themselves by making peace pacts. They were strong when they trusted God.
The Israelis will finally see that their peace agreement with the Palestinians has failed. They really only see the effect of their wound, not the cause. That is why they turn to Germany for another peace pact, placing their trust in an even greater enemy! Once again they will fail to trust God. This will lead to the worst disaster in the Jews’ long history of suffering.
That is where this peace plan is leading.
Where Is Their Faith?
Something is terribly wrong with man’s reasoning. “The way of peace they know not.” Men are trying to work the problem out themselves and are even looking to their enemies to make a peace pact with! But how much are they looking to God?
The truth is, nobody can bring peace in a family or a nation apart from God! God must be involved if you are to have real peace. You will never have peace any other way.
These leaders seem to have more faith in their enemies than in God! How much faith do we have in the all-powerful God who could instantly bring us peace if we would look to Him? That shows you what the real problem is!
How insulted must God be when men trust somebody like the top terrorist in the Middle East rather than trusting in Him?
Jeremiah 17:9 says the human mind is “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” That is human nature, and we can never have peace as long as we have human nature. Man must be rid of human nature before we can ever have peace!
Iran has created a presence and influence in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. It has surrounded the Jews, and it hates the Jews more than anybody in the Middle East. Yet today, Israel is proffering a peace pact with, essentially, an Iranian proxy! That will never work!
Anybody should be able to understand that. But when you look at Bible prophecy, the danger involved becomes even more exceedingly clear.
Zechariah 14:2 says that in the end time, half of Jerusalem will be captured by the Arabs: “For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city.”
Yes, the efforts to make peace with the Palestinians are prophesied to fail catastrophically!
This peace agreement could encourage the Arabs to make a grab for half of Jerusalem. Zechariah shows they will end up taking it by force!
I explain this prophecy in Chapter 3 of Jerusalem in Prophecy, and it is a crucial end-time prophecy to understand. But notice: In this context God says that all nations will be gathered “against Jerusalem to battle.” Many other prophecies provide detail about this climactic battle. All these nations, with all their militaries, are going to gather in Armageddon before marching on Jerusalem! And what will happen then?
“Then shall the Lord go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle” (verse 3). Jesus Christ is going to return personally to fight them! Revelation 14:18-20 show that this battle will be so fierce, the blood of these armies will be flowing deep enough that for 200 miles in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, at the foot of the Mount of Olives, it will rise to the level of the horses’ bridles!
This clash in Jerusalem will be the decisive battle in the bloodiest war in human history. Many prophecies show that the death toll will be horrific all over the Earth. The Bible warns soberly that the horrors of World War ii—with Germany’s extermination camps, Russia’s gulags and other nightmares including nuclear bombs incinerating whole cities—were only a rehearsal for the Tribulation to come!
Why such butchery and warfare? Because this is what it will take for God to get man’s attention! We have to recognize and acknowledge what a disaster results when we try to solve our problems on our own, without God!
And this is what is going to bring peace to this world!
Peace Is Coming
Despite the lack of peace in Israel today, numerous prophecies tell us that God will give us peace!
Leviticus 26:6 says that if you turn to God, “I will give peace in the land,” nobody will “make you afraid,” and “neither shall the sword go through your land.” This is what God says if you will do what He says! What a promise!
Zechariah 1:17 says that God “shall yet choose Jerusalem.” And He is going to cause the whole world to look to Jerusalem! He will bring peace to all mankind in just a few years.
“And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem” (Isaiah 2:3). Clearly this hasn’t happened yet! It is a prophecy that is about to be fulfilled.
Isaiah 66:10 and 12 say, “Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that love her: rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for her …. For thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river ….” Instead of a river of blood, there will be a river of peace flowing from Jerusalem! God is going to bring the wonderful peace and joy man has sought for 6,000 years but has never been able to find because he hasn’t looked to God.
Watch Jerusalem! So much is going to be happening there! Events are serious and sobering, yet at the same time, they are filled with the hope of God!
What hope God gives through His peace plan. What a vision this is! How does that compare with President Trump’s peace plan?
Henry Kissinger once said there is no other choice than the peace process. That is terribly wrong! That is not a choice of life.
Moses wrote that there are two ways before us: life and death. Choose life! (Deuteronomy 30:19). Man is choosing the wrong way. We are choosing the way that God is not involved in. God is telling us what we should be doing, but we are not following His instructions. That needs to change and change quickly.
More than a hundred scriptures tell you how to bring peace! We need faith in God. We could save ourselves so much suffering if we would listen to God today and turn to Him! God says, “[T]urn ye, turn ye … for why will ye die, O house of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:11). He wants you to choose life—choose His way and trust Him. When you do, He will give peace in your individual life, and in your nation. And very soon, He is going to give peace to this whole world!