Good morning!

It was two years ago on the holy day Shemini Atzeret, October 7 that year, that Hamas chose to launch its massacre of Jews. Today on the sacred calendar is that same annual observance—also called the eighth day of the Feast of Tabernacles, the Last Great Day (Leviticus 23:36; John 7:37-39).

It seems like a changed world, with Israelis and Palestinians celebrating a peace deal that marks an end to immediate hostilities and the freeing of 20 living Israeli hostages and some 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.

Our first story this morning notes the contrast between this Israel-Hamas peace and that pictured by this holy day. This day, properly understood, provides a stunning picture of a world truly at peace—the culmination of God’s brilliant master plan for humanity.

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‘A great, glorious and lasting peace’: President Trump traveled to Egypt yesterday to formally sign the Gaza peace agreement. He urged the region’s assembled leaders to seek “a great, glorious and lasting peace.” “We have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to put the old feuds and bitter hatreds behind us,” he said.

• “The war in Gaza is completely over, and with the hostages back home, the Middle East is entering an era of eternal normalization and prosperity under my plan.”

These truly are bold declarations for the implementation of the first stage of an agreement with a defiant and unrepentant terror regime.

• Hamas has already violated the terms of the agreement by failing to release the bodies of all the deceased hostages, yet Israel overlooked this and freed the Palestinian prisoners anyway.

• Hamas has reemerged on the streets of Gaza with armed fighters patrolling areas, manning checkpoints and violently clashing with rival clans and groups accused of collaboration. Public executions and shootings have been reported.

The notion that a genuine deal could be made with this murderous Islamofascist organization was always naive and foolish. But these early signs underscore the fallacy that what has been negotiated is a long-term solution to this conflict.

• Another foreboding sign was the hundreds of thousands of people who filled streets in London, Montreal and other cities yesterday to protest the deal shouting “Free Palestine” and “Death to the idf.” Clearly, the deranged movement to destroy Israel lives on.

Still, President Trump told the Knesset yesterday, “Peace has arrived in the Holy Land.” Israelis are being encouraged to celebrate the end not just of the war with Hamas but of the entire Arab-Jew conflict. Yet history and current reality plainly show how unrealistic this notion is.

More importantly, Bible prophecy is absolutely clear that far worse violence awaits this beleaguered nation.

It was two years ago on this day on the sacred calendar—the holy day of Shemini Atzeret—that Hamas unleashed the horrors of October 7 on the Jewish state. The contrast is stark between that appalling bloodshed and the promises of peace being published on this holy day this year. But prophecies warn that the immediate future looks far more like Oct. 7, 2023, than Oct. 14, 2025.

Human efforts to secure peace apart from God are always fated to fail. In the end, “the ambassadors of peace shall weep bitterly” (Isaiah 33:7). God is still allowing mankind to try to bring about peace his own way, but soon those labors will culminate in world war.

At that time God will intervene and initiate the next phase in His plan to bring peace to mankind. This holy day, the eighth day of the annual Feast of Tabernacles, represents the culmination of that plan. It is well worth your study, through the pages of the Bible, to come to understand how God will bring that about.

• When this holy day is fulfilled, God will for the first time open salvation to all mankind. He will judge them according to their sins and then reeducate them in His ways, codified in His laws.

That is the only way to truly bring about “a great, glorious and lasting peace.” It is a far cry from the illusory promises being made today. But it is sure and about to be realized by Jesus Christ, ruling as King of kings under God the Father. Their plan includes not just all living but all who have ever lived—including the 1,200 massacred on October 7 and the dozens of thousands of Palestinians who have died in the Gaza war since. They will rise in a great resurrection, promised in the sure Word of God.

Begin your study of this inspiring future by reading about it in the final chapter of Herbert W. Armstrong’s booklet Pagan Holidays—or God’s Holy Days—Which?