In my ministry among Palestinian Arabs, they express passionate feelings of disinheritance and injustice. How can we respond to such a personal and emotional dilemma? Often, my response is to share “His story,” which is encapsulated in Numbers 24:17: “There shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Scepter shall rise out of Israel.”As I see it, the short version is this: Jesus appeared the first time as the Star, to give light to this darkened world; He will come a second time as the Scepter to rule with a rod of iron, assuring truth and justice for all! But since the situation is complicated, I always pray for wisdom, according to James 1:5, because God promises to give wisdom liberally.The key to arriving at the truth of this conundrum is the authority of Scriptures.While it does seem unfair that even a Jewish atheist can benefit from the Law of Return, we must take into account the utterly faithful covenant-keeping nature of God. He promised that He would bring the Jewish outcasts back to Eretz Yisrael not because of their righteousness or lack thereof, but for the sake of His own reputation. It’s not about them; it’s all about Him.“This is what the Sovereign Lord says: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of My holy name.” (Ezekiel 36:22) The most mature Arabs I know pay a big price by placing the Word of God above their personal situations or ambitions. Meanwhile, there are undeniable admonitions and demands in the Torah to deal justly with all people in the Land. On the other hand, after the Jewish people receive double for their sins through dispersion, holocausts and pogroms, God said in the latter days, because of His faithfulness, a set time would arrive to “favor Zion.” That time is now. It’s utterly fruitless for the world to withstand God’s will and seasons. When Arabs, Muslims, Christians – whoever – do not support the Jewish state’s right to exist, they are opposing God’s eternal purposes to their own detriment, just as Saul of Tarsus persecuted the early Church. After being exiled from the Land for nearly 2,000 years and having survived holocausts, pogroms and recent wars, the Jewish people are still a wounded nation. The Arabs are wounded in different ways, and with a spirit of rejection, but until this sibling rivalry is healed, Ishmael can never live in heart-felt peace with his half brother Isaac. God has called Evangelical believers to bind up wounds in intercessory prayer! We Evangelicals must learn to pray for both the house of Israel and the house of Islam. Some of the bitterest conflicts start in families. Abraham’s family could be described as dysfunctional. Ishmael’s honor suffered a terrible blow when he and his mother Hagar were cast out by Abraham. Today in Arab society, honor is still a highly important commodity. Allowances must be made for this. If we cannot honor Arabs with respect, we get nowhere with them. Barren Sarah experienced a lapse of faith and could no longer wait on God for a baby, so she manipulated Abraham to impregnate her Egyptian handmaid, Hagar, and Abraham didn’t even argue about it. He was amazingly compliant! But this union produced Ishmael. And, as Diana, Princess of Wales, once said, “There were three people in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.” Hagar, the mother of Ishmael, was a bondwoman, a slave to the free woman Sarah. For 13 years, Abraham was content to accept Ishmael as his first-born. When Abraham was 99 and Sarah was 90, God said they would conceive Isaac and that God would establish His covenant with him. Abraham’s heartfelt response was, “Oh, let Ishmael live before you!” That was the loyal cry of a father’s heart. The Lord graciously promised, “As for Ishmael, I have heard you; behold, I will bless him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly. He shall become the father of 12 princes, and I will make him a great nation.” (Genesis 17:20) To keep the peace with his wife, Abraham expelled Hagar and Ishmael into the desert with scant provisions – bread and a skin of water. How humiliating! It was no picnic. The Bible says they wandered, no doubt staggering in shock at the cruel rejection. Discrimination leaves scars; divorce is one of the most painful manifestations of rejection. The lyrics of the popular worship song, “El Shaddai,” refer to Hagar’s sorrow: “To the outcast on her knees, You were the God who really sees…” We are instruments of God’s mercy to bind rejection and to loose deliverance to Ishmael, whose name means “God hears,” so that Ishmael will hear the Gospel and be reconciled to his Father in heaven. In fact, Islam memorializes and perpetuates Ishmael’s rejection, since one of its “mantras” is that God has no son and therefore cannot be a father. From my childhood, I was unusually concerned for the destiny of Israel. God has given me a unique ministry to love and minister mercy to my forebears in the faith – Israel – and to bless them by ministering reconciliation to their half brothers. A lot of professing Christians have not understood or appreciated this calling to minister the waters of life to Ishmael, who was forsaken by his earthly father in the desert. “Then God opened her eyes and [Hagar] saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.”(Genesis 21:19) Even some Christian Zionists have disregarded the work of reconciliation among the Arabs... but God sees the bigger picture. Although Israel is “the apple of God’s eye,” when the Almighty looks down from heaven, He doesn’t regard only Israel, but also envisions a Messianic league of nations that will share a Highway of Holiness. “In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria… Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing on the earth whom the Lord will bless, saying ‘Blessed be Egypt My people, Assyria the work of My hands and Israel Mine inheritance.’” (Isaiah 19:23-25) That’s the bigger picture! Recently, I received a letter from an intercessor in England who wrote, “I read your book, Let Ishmael Live!, and it helped me to understand the bigger picture. I had a dream of two Muslim men walking in the Old City of Jerusalem. I was hidden behind them, and as I watched, these men were approached by two Orthodox Jews. All four sat down and began talking in a friendly way. I asked the Lord in the dream what was my part, and He said, ‘Pray, and as you pray, see what I will do for these enemies, who will become brothers again.’” Christine Darg is a Christian author and broadcaster who can be contacted at christine@jerusalem.com
