Welcome to the Potter's House Salmon Arm podcast. We are a Bible-Believing Church located
in beautiful British Columbia, Canada. We are proudly part of the Christian Fellowship
Ministries with 3,000 churches around the world. We are a church focused on world evangelism,
discipleship and church planting. Here we will share recent sermons from P.H.S.A. Church
and other sermons from throughout our fellowship. I am Pastor David Bickford and I will be your
host for this podcast. I thank you for listening today and we hope these messages are a blessing
to you and bring you closer to God.
Hello and welcome back to the Potter's House Salmon Arm podcast. My name is David Bickford,
I'm the pastor here and today's message that I've put together is called, Wars and
Rumors of Wars. This is about clarity in times of crisis. I originally preached this back
in November and that will become evident as we go along with that message because it touches
on some current events that were from that period of time. But I still believe that this
message has something for us as that conflict continues on to today. I just want to make
sure that we go ahead and remember that we are called to be peacemakers but that does
not mean that we are called to stand idly by when the world is in calamity and yet we
need to be resolute in our service to Christ and helping those that we can help with the
gospel message.
So with that our text that we are going to be using as a jumping off point is Zechariah
12.10. What I want to end up here with is the recognition that the whole of humanity
has been wrought with war. If you were to look at the entire course of human history
as a spectator you would only be able to come to one conclusion and that is that war is
going to happen and that there is something intrinsically wrong with mankind or humankind
that causes us always to strive towards war. In Jeremiah 17.9 it says, The heart is deceitful
above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it? So ever since the fall
of mankind in the garden we have been tainted by sin which has corrupted everything on earth.
It was not just mankind that was affected by the first sin but all of creation, the
earth itself fights against us, thorns and thistles it says in Genesis 3.8. The judgment
that befell the world due to that first sin permeates everything that we deal with and
see today. The first murder that came about soon after the expulsion of Adam and Eve from
the garden, we see this story open up with a jealous rage as Cain slew his brother Abel.
And since this is at the root of humanity I find it surprising that so many people are
constantly caught off guard by the wickedness of mankind. The ability of mankind to be so
barbaric to one another is something that I believe confirms the word of God and we
are shown throughout the Bible this predilection to violence and hostility to each other and
to our God. So why then does this always surprise people? I believe this surprise reaction is
due to the blindness that many have to the word of God and to the revelation of Jesus
Christ of the Messiah. We are often told that we live in a more enlightened age, an age
of science. Many believe that through evolution we are becoming more civilized and more intelligent
than our forefathers. But you've got to really ask yourself is that true? Do you really think
that's what's happening with our with with society, with humanity? Are we getting more
intelligent? Are we getting wiser? Or are we simply putting up more distractions in our
will in the way of our view of God? Are we getting blinded to the truth of the gospel
and to the word of God? It seems the more enlightened using air quotes here, the world
gets the craziest, the crazier this world gets, the more vitriolic, the more hateful,
the more destructive and of course the more ungodly the world also becomes. Charles Spurgeon
said Austria and Prussia may go to war and Italy or France may join in the turmoil. Blood
may flow like water, but these things shake not the fact that Jesus loves you. Billy Graham
also said courage is contagious when brave man takes a stand, the spine of others often
stiffen. When we think of these these quotes in terms of what we're talking about today
and the idea of war and rumors of wars and the idea of armed conflict happening throughout
the world today, we have to remember that none of this changes the fact that Jesus loves
you and none of this changes the fact that we need to take courage and we need to make
a godly stands because by us doing that, we help others to take similar godly stands.
So the current Israeli government is in the midst of war, right? And again, this this
sermon originally was was produced or created back in November. This stuff was all very
fresh, so I'll interject with updates and just current thoughts to this war. But we
want to make sure that we understand that this is nothing new. There are wars and rumors
of wars there is and then there is this altogether different attention getting reality of war
in and with the nation of Israel. So what is about this tiny nation of just over nine
million people that so captivates the rest of the world? Is this the beginning of the
end for them? For us? Is this the start of World War three or Armageddon? So I'm pulling
this from an excerpt from the remnant newsletter and you know, I just want you to think about
these words as I as we read through this as we kind of go through this and we'll jump
into our text here shortly. There's something more spiritual going on than simply a war
between two parties. So let's jump into this towards the end of his life. The spiritually
uncertain Frederick the Great King of Prussia. He reigned between 1740 and 1786 asked his
physician Johann George Zimmerman Zimmerman. Can you give me a single proof of the existence
of God? Zimmerman replied, your majesty, the continued existence of the Jews. Amazingly,
this reply came almost 200 years before the Jews against all likelihood once again formed
a nation state in the land that we know as Israel. Had Dr. Zimmerman known the reformation
was coming in 1948, he would have been even more adamant in his response. Gone are the
Midianites, the Edomites, the Hittites, the Parasites, the Moabites and scores of other
people groups from ancient times. But today, despite seemingly endless persecutions, numerous
attempted Holocausts like the one that we can read about an Esther 313, the efforts
to eliminate Israel from the face of the earth have continually failed. Let's jump into our
text of Zechariah 12 10. And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants
of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and please for mercy so that when they look on me on
him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him as one mourns for an only child and
weep bitterly over him as one weeps over a firstborn. So this is what we're going to
use as our jumping off point is this text from Zechariah that gives us cues about how
the burden of Jerusalem and the fact that there's going to be mourning. You know, because
it's that they end it, you know, because they persecuted Christ and eventually Christ was
was crucified. So there's this mourning over the children of Israel in this period of time.
So let's look first at the conflict in Israel. On October 7th Hamas led Palestinians waged
a surprise attack on Israel. The attack from most accounts targeted the Jewish civilian
population. I'm going to exemplify this. I'm going to draw your attention to this. The
targeted attack was mostly on civilians. There was the goal of disrupting and terrorizing
the civilian population. Many have described the attack as akin to a Viking raid. The primary
focus seemed to be destruction, rape, plunder, and hostage taking. These techniques are nothing
new to the world. Describing them to be Viking like is a pretty accurate description when you
see any of the videos that have come out not from the Israelis, but from the Hamas militants that
were in the raiding parties. Al Jazeera describes the attacks in somewhat a clinical way. They say
Palestinian group Hamas launched Operation Alaska Flood inside Israel killing dozens and taking
hostages in a shocking assault. So they gloss over this fact, but this is what they kill on
and continue to say. A surprise attack by Palestinian group Hamas on Israel combining
gunmen breaching security barriers and a barrage of rocket fired from Gaza was launched at a dawn
during the Jewish holiday of Sinchat Torah. Saturday's attack came 50 years and a day after
the Egyptian and Syrian forces launched an assault during the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur in an
effort to retrieve territory Israel had taken during a brief conflict in 1967. Covering rocket
fire at 6.30am Hamas fired a huge barrage of rockets into southern Israel with sirens heard
as far away as Tel Aviv and Beersheba. Hamas said it had launched 5,000 rockets in an initial barrage.
Israel's military said 2,500 rockets were fired, smoke billowed over residential Israeli areas,
and people sheltered behind buildings as sirens sounded. At least one woman was reportedly killed
by the rockets. We announced the start of Operation Alaska Flood and we announced that first strike,
which targeted enemy positions, airports, and military fortifications, exceeded 5,000 missiles
and shells, Mohammed Deif, head of Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, said. The dawn
infiltration started. The rocket's attack served as a cover for the unprecedented multi-pronged
infiltration of fighters with the Israeli military saying at 7.40am the Palestinian fighters had
crossed into Israel. Most fighters entered through the breaches in the security barriers,
separating Gaza and Israel, but at least one Hamas soldier was filmed flying over in a powered
parachute. A motorboat carrying fighters was seen heading to Zakim, an Israeli coastal town with a
military base. One video showed at least six motorcycles with fighters crossing through a
hole in the metal barrier. A photograph released by Hamas showed a bulldozer tearing down a section
of fence. So much of the reporting is used to justify the violence without any regard for the
brutal tactics used against the unarmed civilian Jewish populace. You have to go to other sources
to piece together a better understanding of these events and the cruelty that was perpetrated. Even
CNN has reported the horrifying details of the opening stages of this conflict. Their report
says is titled Israel Festival Revelers Shot at Point Blank Range Videos Shows. Gaza militants who
attacked an all-night music festival in southern Israel shot and killed revelers at Point Blank
Range, then looted their belongings, a new Kardashian video verified by CNN reveals. The video
began circulating on social media on Sunday and alongside footage of harrowing kidnappings from
the same event has been scrutinized by her horrified families desperate for news of loved ones,
missing since a series of coordinated attacks triggered Israel's declaration of war on Sunday.
Israeli officials counted at least 260 bodies near the site of the Nova Festival outside Riem,
where earlier footage showed carefree partygoers from Israel and overseas dancing in the desert
soon after sunrise on Saturday. Some survivors are among more than the 100 hostages that the
militant group Hamas claims to be holding in Gaza, according to friends and family who have seen them
in videos shared on social platforms. The dashcam video gives a glimpse of the tear as militants
took over the festival, preventing some partygoers from leaving with deadly force. The first clip
begins at 929 according to its time code, just under three hours after the first explosions
were reported at the Nova Festival. The other part of this article that starts off
is more touching in some ways and horrifying than the rest of this article. But before we jump into
that, we have to interject here and say there is a very big difference with a militant group
targeting civilians who are unarmed and killing them in cold-blooded murder at point-blank range.
Point-blank means you could pretty much reach out and touch somebody. You can see that they're not
armed. You can see that they're not a threat. And you go ahead and you kill them in cold blood anyway.
There's a big difference between that and what a lot of the media wants us to believe with now
with the way the war is being waged currently. Strategic military attacks or targets with buildings
like hospitals and stuff of that nature under the rules of war become reputable targets
when being used as military bases during a war. As horrifying as that is, it is not the Israeli
military's fault that these buildings are being used as military strongholds. When I was served
in the United States Marines, part of our rules for engagement were that if a mosque or a hospital
were to become an actual active part of the war, then they become a valid military target.
If you think back into any of the major wars in the past, World War I, World War II,
you did not protect the populace when the populace was part of the war machine.
So when we were going to war against Nazi Germany, we would target factories and facilities that aided
and helped the German army, the Nazi army, to fulfill its goal of world domination. There was
the firebombing of Dresden. That was a horrendous event that occurred, but was at the time necessary
in order to push back the totalitarian threat that was coming from Nazi Germany. If you think of
the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and you use a per capita count on the death toll that was at
Pearl Harbor versus the US population and the death toll that was in the October 7th attack
in the Israeli population, the attacks on Israel were far worse by per capita counts. You can
blow that off if all you want, but we still went to war for years against Japan and we ended up
deciding to drop two atomic bombs on Japan. In order to bring that war to a conclusion,
we had to totally defeat the will of the people of Japan because they were worshiping
their emperor as a god-king and they would not have backed down. If we would have gone in to invade
mainland Japan for the purpose of being strategic and only attacking back to military, there would
have been a million plus more dead for us to try to overcome the Japanese military at that time.
War is not pretty. War is not something that's nice, but we have to distinguish between the
nice and the bad. We don't want to equate what Israel is doing now as being equal to what
the Hamas did on October 7th. Hamas targeted civilians on purpose. There is a very big difference
to what is going on. So let's dive back into this article. Killed on the phone with his parents,
the parents of Alexandria Look, a 33-year-old Canadian, told CNN News partner CBC that they
were on the phone with him as he tried to escape the gunfire. Look and the others sought shelter
in a bunker without a door during the militant attacks, his parents said. And then I heard him
tell his friends they're coming back. There are a lot of them. And then all I heard was a lot of
gunshots, lots of rounds, and we heard nothing. Look's mother, Raquel Ohonona, Look told CBC,
Look's parents said he died trying to shield others from gunfire. This is very different
than the active war that's happening right now. This was murder. Many in the Western world are
appalled by the blatant attack on unarmed civilians. The targeting of civilians directly,
as caught on video and proudly shown by the attackers, sends shivers down the spines of
many Canadians, Americans, and Europeans alike. It was not the reaction of many, though. A large
number of Arab people across the world were celebrating the atrocities, committed in some
sort of perverse to-wrongs-make-a-right argument. The history of the region is being used as an
excuse for the killing of hundreds of civilians indiscriminately. And to caveat that, now that
they're on their heels, they're using the strategic fighting of Israel to say that enough has been
done. They need to go back to the way it was before they attacked on October 7. So now they want the
rights and privileges that were bestowed upon them, and being free of Israelis being in Palestine
or Gaza. They want to be free from this occupation that's currently happening now.
They want it to all go back as if nothing happened on October 7.
This is a very interesting thing, and a lot of the world's clamoring for that to happen now.
There's a sickness in society, and it's not just these wars and rumors of wars. There's a sickness
of this moral equivalency that's being asked of Israel to believe in, and for us to believe in as
well. In Genesis 16, 8-12, it says, and he said, Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from,
and where are you going? She said, I am fleeing from my mistress, Sarai. The angel of the Lord
said to her, return to your mistress and submit to her. And she said, I am fleeing from my mistress,
and submit to her. The angel of the Lord said to her, I will surely multiply your offspring so that
they cannot be numbered for the multitude. And the angel of the Lord said to her, behold, you are
pregnant and shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has listened to
your affliction. He shall be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone, and everyone's
hand against him. And he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen. This conflict has been going on
for a very long time, and nothing highlights this more than this verse from Genesis. The descendants
of Ishmael have been at odds with the descendants of Isaac for thousands of years, and this inbuilt
animosity is at root a spiritual battle. As Christians, we must remember that we do not
battle against flesh and blood, but rather powers and principalities. We can read that in Ephesians
6 to verse 12. That is why we have to understand that the conflict has been going on since the
beginning, and we have to apply the Word of God to these situations and pray for God's will to be
done. We of course want to have empathy for those caught in the middle of this conflict.
We want justice to be done, as Christians should want justice to be done, and we should be praying
for exactly that. Should we be praying for vengeance, for peace, or for judgment? This brings me
to my next point, which is compassion. Ultimately, our prayer should be one of reconciliation, not
just between Israel and the Arab people, but between man and God and Christ. I use the term
Arab people in place of the term Palestinian primarily for clarity. There is no Palestinian
ethnic group, ancestrally they are Arab people, most closely related to the Jordanian and other
Arab peoples. The reality is that the entire Arab community is at odds with the Israeli community
because of these ancient divisions that are rooted in spiritual warfare. Interestingly, both groups
are at odds with God the Creator, but in different ways. The God of the Arabs, Allah, is not the God
of the Bible. The rise of Islam happened hundreds of years after the death of Christ, and even while
they hold that Jesus is a prophet, they deny his deity. Allah is a preeminent power, according to
the adherence to Islam, but it is not the God of the Bible. He is the opposite of our God, a removed
God that does not allow man to have a direct relationship with him, but is more deistic and aloof
to man. The Jews, on the other hand, do worship the one God. After all, Jesus was a devoted Jew.
The issue for the Jews is that they missed their Messiah and have been lost ever since.
They are still wandering in a spiritual desert denying the divinity of Christ. In our text in
Zechariah, where we read earlier, it talks about the house of David, the inhabitants of Jerusalem,
and the spirit of grace and the pleas for mercy, but yet it talks about how they pierced their
Messiah and how they would be mourning because they're going to realize what they've done,
but it's too late. In Luke 23, 34-43, it says, and Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they know not
what they do. And they cast lots to divide his garment, and the people stood by watching, but the
ruler scoffed at him, saying, He saved others, let him save himself. If he is the Christ of God, his
chosen one, the soldiers also mocked him coming up, and offering him sour wine, saying, If you
are the king of the Jews, save yourself. There was also an inscription over him, This is the king of
the Jews. One of the criminals who were hanged rallied against him, Are you not the Christ,
save yourself and us? But the other rebuked him, saying, Do you not fear God, since you are under
the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our
deeds. But this man has done nothing wrong, and he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your
kingdom. And he said to him, Truly I say to you, Today you will be with me in paradise.
Both the Jew and the Arab need to be reconciled to the Creator, to our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Conflict in the world will never cease until man finds himself in right relationship with Jesus.
Both of these groups are at odds with God currently. Clearly Hamas and the Arab nations are more
visibly and violently at odds against us, because they are both current, but they are both currently
inactively kicking against our Lord and Savior. In Acts 9, 3-5, it says, As he journeyed, he came
near Damascus, and suddenly a light shone around him from heaven. Then he fell to the ground, and
he heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And he said, Who are you,
Lord? Then the Lord said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. It is hard for you to kick against
the goats. Israel is not free from persecuting others, especially Christians. Christians,
this comes from an article that I found back in April of 2023, so far way before this attack
that happened in Israel. The title of it is, Christians are in danger under Israeli government,
says Holy Land Patriarch Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing policies are emboldening attacks
on the 2000-year-old community, says a Catholic regional leader. So again, this comes from the
Thursday, 13th of April, 2023. The head of the Roman Catholic Church in the Holy Land has warned
in an interview that Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right government has made life worse for
Christians in the birthplace of Christianity. The Vatican-appointed Latin Patriarch said that the
region's 2000-year-old Christian community has come under increasing attack, with the most right-wing
government in Israel's history emboldening extremists who have harassed clergy and vandalized
religious properties at a clicketing pace. The increase in anti-Christian incidents comes as
the Israeli settler movement, galvanized by its allies and the government, appear to have seized
the moment to expand its enterprise in the contested country. The government is now
the contested capital. This brings me to my final point, which is as Christians we need to remember
our calling. And the final point is salvation. We are called to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ
to the masses. That means even though we side largely with the nation of Israel because they
are God's chosen people, it does not mean we do so blindly. The Jewish state needs Jesus just as the
Arab nations do. We also need to hold to the truth that the gospel can reconcile even the most
unlikely people to a right relationship with God. Just like Saul was a persecutor of the early
believers, but when confronted with Christ was redeemed. He became one of the most important
believers in history. We can have faith that God can rise up believers from the midst of Israel,
from the midst of Palestine, and even within the midst of Hamas. There's an article I found here
from the son of Hamas leader turns back on Islam and embraces Christianity. So this came from
Jonathan Hunt back in August 12th, way back in 2008. And there's a bit of an update in here from 2015.
Mossab Hassan Yosef is an extraordinary young man with an extraordinary story. He was born the son
of one of the most influential leaders of the militant Hamas organization in the West Bank and
grew up in a strict Islamic family. Now at 30 years old, he attends an evangelical Christian church
on Arabus Road in San Diego, California. He renounced his Muslim faith, left his family
behind in Ramallah, and is seeking asylum in the United States. The second son of Hamas leaves a
terror group exposing corruption and Turkish spying. So this is a different article, but it's
the second son, Sheheb Yosef, son of Hamas co-founder and brother of the Green Prince,
who secretly worked for Shin Bet, opens up to Israeli TV after also fleeing group and urges his
father to resign. It isn't every day that a Hamas member turns his back on the terror organization,
flies to Southeast Asia, and decides to expose the corruption and inner workings of its operations
in Turkey in an interview with an Israeli TV journalist. It's even more incredible when he's
the son of one of Hamas' founding members, and it's almost unthinkable when he is the second of
that founder's sons to escape the clutches of the Islamist group and go public with his story.
These two examples show us the power of God and how it is bigger than the hate of the world. We
need to contend in faith that both sides of this conflict will be reconciled to Jesus.
So what can we do? We can stand united behind Israel in the sense that they are God's chosen
people, that they are the prodigal son that God so very much wants to come home. We can pray for the
Palestinians to come to Christ and see the power of the true God and the truth that they can know
him as a father. Even the war is a reality and will likely continue. We have to have faith that
God will use this work, that he will use this to work out his plan and purposes in the region and
in the world. Let us put our faith in God. He has the power to save the lost. Let us not fret over
the ups and downs of this time, but remember that it is all in God's hands. It is all in Jesus' hands.
So with that, I would like to have every head bowed, every eye closed, wherever you are listening at
today. Obviously, if you are driving, keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes open.
But if this message resonated with you, I want you to remember that this is not really about
Israel versus Palestine or Israel versus the Arab states. This is about God in man.
And the Messiah, Jesus Christ. This is about turning away from God, making other things your
own gods. For right now, Israel as a country is very anti-God in a lot of ways. They persecute the
Christians that live within their own borders, some of which those Christians are Palestinians
who live in Israel. I will make a note that they typically even persecuted as Christians in Israel
live a better life than under the hard iron rule of Hamas in Palestine. But needless to say,
Israel has a lot of flaws and they need Jesus Christ. But that doesn't take away the egregious
reality of what happened on October 7th and the need for the Arab people to turn to God.
To turn to Jesus Christ. We need to be a people focused on salvation and reconciliation.
That is what we need to be as Christians. We need to pray that Israel returns
to God. We need to pray that the Arabs come to God and that we're all united in fellowship
with Jesus Christ. If that message resonates with you and you know that you're not right with God,
but you want to be, I want you to signify that with an uplifted hand wherever you are.
If you rose your hand and you meant it, I want you to repeat after me, dear Lord God,
I know that I'm a sinner, but I know that you sent your son Jesus Christ. He died for my sins.
He rose from the grave. I want to accept him as my Lord and Savior. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.
That simple prayer of acknowledgement sets you into the Lamb's Book of Life. Now the next steps
is you got to get a Bible, start reading, start in John. Start praying, crying out to God your
Father because you can have that direct relationship with him. And come to a Bible
believing church like ours in Samonarm. If you're local, reach out the contact info is in the show
notes. If you're not, we have 3,500 churches worldwide. I can find a church for you where
you can lock in and serve with others as we strive to be sanctified by Jesus Christ
and to help others to see the light and to see the grace that comes from giving your life to Jesus
Christ. I want to thank you for listening to me in this message. I know this message might be a little
bit polarizing. And you know what, if you want to talk to me about it offline, by all means reach
out and I'd be happy to talk to you. Because I do believe that God wants us to refocus and put him
first. Everything evil that happens in this world is due to the fall of mankind. But we can be
reconciled back to our creator through Jesus Christ. So again, I want to thank you for listening. If
these messages mean something to you, I'd like you to like the podcast or the show. I'd like you to
subscribe and please share it with someone else that needs to hear these messages. I preached a
message today that you'll eventually hear here on the podcast about being the salt in the light of
the world. We need to be the salt. We need to add zest. We need to prevent corruption and we need to
preserve our Christlikeness in Jesus name. But we also need to do it with a kind, caring, and loving
way. We need to be the light to this world so that people can look to us and what they see is a
reflection of Christ. With that, I leave you. I just pray, dear Lord God, that you would bless
people as they go with the rest of their week. Help them Lord in Jesus name we pray. Amen.
Thank you for listening and I can't wait for you to come back next time.
Thank you for listening to the P.H.S.A. Potter's House Salmon Arm Podcast. Be sure to follow us
on Instagram at pottershouse underscore salmon arm to keep up to date on what we are doing.
Join the conversation and discover how Jesus Christ can revolutionize your life.