We are going to be entering a study that I've titled, Israel, the Arabs, and Islam. And what we're going to be focusing in on is the origin of the dispute that's taking place in the Middle East between essentially now the Muslims and the Jews. And as an introduction, I've placed an overhead for you to look at that has six individual diagrams. Up in the upper left-hand corner, you'll see the Star of David, and up in the upper right-hand corner, you'll see the Islam half-moon. And that's from a cultic figure from the Sabians in southwest Saudi Arabia years and years ago. And on the left side, we've got three diagrams of the temple. The two on the top are from Solomon's temple, who built this first temple. And that was destroyed by the Babylonians. And then Herod, somewhere around 30 B.C. or so, started a program. It took over 60 years to complete. And that's the Herodian temple that Jesus walked in, at least that's the artist's depiction of it, because the Romans destroyed it in 70 A.D. The only thing left of that temple right now is the Temple Mount, which is Mount Moriah, where Abraham was told to sacrifice Isaac. Also, that's where Jesus was crucified on Mount Moriah. And that is where the Dome of the Rock is now. And over on the right-hand side, we've got the Dome of the Rock, which is that gold dome on the Al-Aqsa Mosque. And that mosque wasn't even built until 700 or 800. We'll go into that in a lot greater detail as we get deeper into this study on Islam. And the picture below it is the Kaaba. That's Islam's most holy site, and we'll talk about that in a lot more detail. That's in Mecca, and each Muslim is required to make what they call the pilgrimage, it's called the Hajj, H-A-J, and they must go there once in their lifetimes. So that's part of our introduction. What we'll be doing is looking at today, we're going to look at Noah's sons, the Abrahamic genealogy, we're going to look at the Ishmaelites, Esau's genealogy, the sons of Keturah, then we're going to look at the origin of the conflict. Where did it come from? How did it get started? Because the same thing is going on today. It hasn't changed. Then we're going to look at the migration of these Arab families that are specified in the Bible. And then we're going to look at today where the Arab Muslim countries are in relation to Israel. In AD 627, Muhammad, who was the founder of Islam, while he was fleeing a Meccan tribe, He decided to attack this Jewish tribe, the Qurayza, and they had refused to convert to Islam. And as you know, Islam is a religion that says, we are going to convert people by force to bring them into our religion. And that's what he was doing, and that's what he did, and that's what they're still trying to do. He dug trenches in the marketplace in Medina, and according to Muslim sources now, he beheaded somewhere between six and nine hundred Jewish men. Only one survived, and that was a guy that converted. He spared the women and children and their property, but he divided it all up and gave them to the Muslim men. Jihad is their term for a holy war and it's a permanent state of war within Islam. It never goes away, it never stops because that's how they spread their supposed gospel. They force people in and there is no possibility ever of any real peace, any real truth. They will pretend to be telling the truth but they will lie and say that they're not doing the things that they do. And so it's important to watch what they do as opposed to what they say. It's been this way from the inception of Islam and it's true today. And I'd like to make the statement that only the naive and the ignorant believe this untruth that Islam is a peaceful religion. It is anything but that and it never has been. It seeks to dominate the world and it's going to stop at absolutely nothing to achieve its ends. They would have dominated Europe in the first hundred years and probably on to the rest of the world if Charles Martel in France had not stopped them in the early 700s. He put together an army in France and he slaughtered thousands and thousands and thousands of these guys. Because what they had done is they went across the Mediterranean and North Africa, they went up into the Iberian Peninsula, where Spain and Portugal are today, and they went into France, and he mustered an army together and just slaughtered thousands and thousands and thousands of them, and that stopped them. And their quest for world dominance hasn't stopped, but they didn't have the wherewithal after Martel. And Martel is a wonderful general and just an incredible guy, but he stopped Islam back, I think it was around 715 or so. In 1948, The United Nations voted to give Israel statehood. The day that statehood was declared, five Arab armies, or Muslim armies I should say, Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon, and Iraq immediately invaded Israel. The Israelis had World War I weapons that they had gotten from Czechoslovakia. Nobody would give them anything to help them. And the Jews were looking at this, trying to figure out how they were going to defend themselves, and they really trusted God, because they didn't have anything else. The stated purpose of the invasion was to push the Jews into the sea. In other words, genocide. There was a guy there named Assam Pasha. He was Secretary General of the Arab League, and he publicly declared their intentions. He said, this is going to be a war of extermination and momentous massacre, which is going to be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres in the Crusades. What Hitler didn't finish a few years earlier, the Arabs are going to finish once and for all. This is 1948. Hitler committed suicide on May the 1st of 1945. That wasn't that long after the Nazis were exterminating the Jews. A Nazi collaborator, Haj Amin al-Husseini, led the Arabs at a former organized land mass there called the British Mandate of Palestine. It was Israel today, but they called it the British Mandate because they were in control of it. He was charged with the Nuremberg Trials, but he escaped in 1946, so he didn't get tried. Al-Husseini actively supported Hitler's aim to exterminate the Jews during World War I. Now these are just two small examples of this enormous fight that's going on. It hasn't changed for thousands of years. It's the same fight that we're going to learn about in the Bible, how it started and who the players are. And we're going to develop this through centuries and centuries to see how it's manifested itself and realize that it's never going to stop until Christ comes back. When Christ comes back, it will stop. We're going to determine what the Bible says this morning or this afternoon about the exact text speaking to these specific events that formulated the animosity and how it got going. This is a slide that is the family tree of Noah. I don't know if you can see that or not. It's pretty small. I tried to make it as big as I could. Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham went down into Africa. Shem stayed in the Middle East. gave rise to the Jews and the Arabs, and Japheth went north up into Russia, Turkey, and so on, and then north and west off into Europe. And this is the migration where they went in the Middle East. You can see that Shem stayed right in the Middle East there. That's the Arabian Peninsula and Israel. Japheth went off into Europe, and Ham went down into Africa. About 2,000 BC, at the time of Abraham, these were the countries, the Canaanites, the Batanes, the Hittites, the Egyptians, and so on, that were in the world. This was the known world. This was the large people groups that were there at the time that Abraham was here. Now, since we've been in Genesis, we know a lot of these things, but I'm going to go over them anyway. So just to refresh your memory, in the early second millennium BC, Jehovah God left his domain outside of time and space, broke through, and gave direct revelation to a nomad in the Middle East, in the Mesopotamian area, named Abraham. And he contacted this guy a total of 10 times, as we see in the book of Genesis. And five of those times that he contacted him were to talk about this unique covenant he made with him. And throughout those meetings, he specifically said to Abraham that, I'm going to give you specific promises. I'm going to promise you a seed. In other words, there's going to be a lot of people that are going to be born from you. Land, and I'm going to bless you. The three major promises were personal promises to Abraham, national promises to Israel, and universal promises to everybody on the earth. God promised that He would bless him, make him a blessing to others, make his name great, give many descendants, and make him a father of a multitude of nations, give him the land of Canaan for always, and bless them that blessed Abraham, and curse them that cursed him. And he also made promises to the nation Israel, a great nation of his descendants. He's going to give them the land from the river of Egypt, which is the Nile Delta on its eastern boundary, to his descendants forever. And he's going to pass that covenant down from generation to generation to the Jews until someday it's going to affect everybody on the earth. Well, that covenant has affected everybody on the earth through the Lord Jesus Christ. The promise is intended to be applicable to the Jews for his blessing and cursing. And one example of this is that God did bless Abraham with wealth. He gave him wealth. He's an incredibly wealthy guy. His name is great. Israel is a great nation. And the blessings that they have received have been the oracles of God, the very speaking of God that has been given to this world. And they brought forth the Messiah, the Jewish Messiah. Promises of land haven't been fulfilled yet. His descendants, the Jews, are in the land. They've got it. They fought for it. They kept it. We even see how Abraham bought a portion of it back around 1950 B.C. when he got the cave at Machpelah for his wife Sarah when she passed. These promises, through these promises, flow the entire plan that God has for mankind. Many people have already recognized this. There was a Jewish Prime Minister of England back in the 1850s, and he was making an address to Parliament. He said, there's no country in which the Hebrew race has been persecuted that has not suffered. whose energies have not withered, whose political power has not decayed, and where there has not been evident proof that the divine favor has been withdrawn from the land." And then he went on to cite Spain, the Inquisition, for example, and Portugal, and then Italy, the Romans. He's just basically saying, if you harm the Jews, you're going to get harmed. And he was telling that to Great Britain, because they were having a lot of issues about the Jews at the time. Now this is Abraham's genealogy as it pertains to the Jews and the Arabs. He had three sons. He had Isaac, who was the son of promise. He had Ishmael, who he had with an Egyptian handmaid, Hagar. And he had Keturah, Keturah was his last wife and may have been just a concubine, but he had sons with her too. And Abraham's wife, Sarah, had not produced a child like they had expected. So she gave her handmaid to Abraham and said, here, go into her and produce a child. And that child's name was Ishmael. Later, God affirmed that Abraham was going to have a child with his wife, Sarah, and his name would be Isaac, and that's who the covenant went to. In fact, God made it quite clear that he was going to be mighty, Ishmael, that is, an unnumbered amount of descendants, but he was going to be really problematic for Isaac. And what was going to happen was, listen to this. He said that, God said Ishmael was going to be as a wild ass among men, and his hand is going to be against every man, and every man's hand is going to be against him. Every man's hand is going to be against him. And then he finished that statement telling Abraham he would dwell over against all his brethren. And what that basically means is that he was going to live in the proximity to the Jews, his brother, and their progeny, and there was going to be this constant battle. It was because Ishmael wanted to be like that. Ishmael was not a peaceful guy. He was as a wild ass would be. Very unruly and trying to harm everybody, which resulted in everybody trying to harm him. So in essence, Ishmael and his descendants are going to be at war with the Jews forever. Now that was the beginning of part of the animosity, the Arabs and the Ishmaelites, should I say, toward the Jews and other people groups. Now this is a slide, I know you can't see this very well in the names and whatnot, but I am going to have handouts for you when we sit down for our discussion and you can look at this a little closer. This is the family tree of the Arabs that came from Abraham. The three wives that he had and the two of them that produced the Arab nations. And I'll go into this in a little greater detail in a few minutes. I want to read from the Bible on Genesis 25 verses 12 to 18 where the text says, Now these are the generations of Ishmael, Abraham's son, whom Hagar the Egyptian Sarah's handmaid, bear unto Abraham. And these are the names of the sons of Ishmael, by their names, according to their generations. The firstborn of Ishmael, Nebaoth, and Kedar, and Abdeel, and Mibsham, and Mishnah, and Dumnah, and Massah, Hadad, and Tema, Jetur, Napesh, and Kadima. These are the sons of Ishmael, and these are their names by their villages and by their encampments. twelve princes according to their nations, and these are the years of the life of Ishmael, a hundred and thirty and seven years. And he gave up the ghost and died, and was gathered unto his people, and they dwelt from Havilah unto Shur, that is before Egypt, as thou goest towards Assyria. He abode over against all his brethren." Now this is the called the Toldot of the Jews. This is the brethren against whom he was fighting. It says Isaac has Jacob. Jacob gets married and has 12 sons. And we'll look at this a little later in greater detail. These are the sons of Keturah. Keturah we're going to read in just a moment here. This is where the Ishmaelites migrated to. They migrated to north and west Saudi Arabia. That's where they settled after like several generations. Isaac eventually got married and his wife's name was Rebecca. She had twin boys. While those boys were in her womb, she was experiencing a very difficult pregnancy. Those boys were very active in her womb, and it was so unnatural that she got really worried about it. The expressive language of the Hebrew text really characterizes this well. The Hebrew word for this unusual activity is Vayiroetsu. Vayiroetsu. And it means they crushed and thrust one another. Jacob and Esau, while they were yet in Rebekah's womb, were crushing and thrusting one another. Now this is a foretelling, if you will, of their future hostile relationship. Rebecca was inquiring before the Lord. She was praying, wanting to know why was this taking place. The Lord spoke to her and said, two nations, that is twin progenitors of two nations, are struggling in your womb. And they ended up becoming two entirely different people groups. One people are going to be stronger, the other people weaker. And what the Lord concluded by saying was that the elder will serve the younger. And the Israelis, who are Jacob's descendants, and the Edomites, are Esau's descendants, have fought continuously. Esau's descendants became more Arab people groups. So now we got the Ishmaelites, and we got those that came from Esau. The sons of Keturah are who we will look at next. I don't want to read the whole text for the sons of Edom because it's an incredibly long passage. But I do want to look at the sons of Keturah. The text says, well sometime after Sarah died, Abraham got married again. And we don't know exactly how long it was. But he married this woman named Keturah. Her origin and her parentage are not given in the Bible. Her six children are not in the seed line of the Jews. Their names were Zimran, Joksan, Midan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shua. They became additional Arab nations that have risen up against the Jews. I'm going to read the text where the Bible talks about this, and it says, And Abraham took another wife, and her name was Keturah. And she bare him Zimran, and Jokshan, and Midan, and Midian, and Ishbak, and Shua, and Jokshan begot Sheba, and Dedan. And the sons of Dedan were Asherim, and Letushim, and Lemumim. And the sons of Midian were Ephah, and Ephir, and Hanok, and Abida, and Adeah. All these were the sons of Keturah and this is where they migrated to. They migrated to essentially the Sinai Peninsula in that region between Israel and between Egypt. That's where they ended up. Now what is interesting here is that we've got a lot of good text that talks about where they'd gone and we have some subsequent verses in the Bible that talk about where these folks ended up. This overhead shows that the Moab region and the Edom region was where the sons of Esau went Now you may remember Moab was one of the children of Lot's daughter from that incestuous relationship. Ammon and Moab were the two daughters. They got a real bad start in life. They've been against the Jews too. Now these three nations though, Ammon, Moab, and Edom, are roughly where Jordan is today, and they are going to get favorable treatment in the end times because of the way that they have dealt with the Jews. They've been one of the best nations of the Arab families dealing with the Jews, and all the rest of them have been. And this shows us what those nations were. The Assyrians, the Egyptians, and the Lamites about 900-800 BC and then this is the same geography about 700 BC. We're moving forward in time and we can see some of the names of these regions and what these names are. This is where Esau's tribal territory was and it developed and it grew. He intermarried with the Ishmaelites and produce a stronger bond with the people that wanted to fight the Jews. Now, let's fast forward to today, and these are the surrounding nations that are around the nation Israel, and you can see how tiny little Israel there is vastly outnumbered by the Muslim nations. Those green colored countries on this map are the Arab Muslim nations. Actually, they're the Muslim nations. They're not the Arab nations anymore, because Islam has gone much farther out than just the Arab countries. It's gone out into all these regions in Africa and Malaysia and so on, and up into Russia. But the Jews are vastly outnumbered. Vastly outnumbered. And these Arabs want their land. They want that last little piece of real estate, and you know, they listen to all this rhetoric in the press today, and here it is, 2011, and they're still telling the Jews, the press is still telling the Jews, so is our federal government. Well, you've got to give up some of this land. You've got to let the Arabs have something. Look, this is what they've got. This is what they've got now. And this last slide shows you what the difference in land masses between the nation Israel today and our country, United States of America. As we move through this study over time, what we'll be doing is we'll be looking at the development of this conflict through the ages, right to today, and then we'll start looking at what the future is, because the Bible talks very explicitly in a number of books of how this conflict ends and how God judges these Muslim nations. Amen.