Poking God in the Eye
by Terry James
If you have ever caught a finger in your eye from someone while you were engaged in athletics, or if you have ever been poked there in some other way, you know the agony. Your whole body convulses because of the pain. The reaction is immediate, and violent.

The God of creation likens man’s dealing carelessly with Jerusalem to their jabbing Him in the eye: “For thus saith the LORD of hosts; After the glory hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you: for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye” (Zech. 2:8).

The world of nations is closing in on Jerusalem. Pressures are being brought to bear upon that city–the center of the earth, from God’s perspective.

God tested Abraham and Isaac there, providing a ram as substitutionary sacrifice just as Abraham was plunging the knife downward toward his son’s heart. Jesus Christ, who himself wept over Jerusalem millennia later, was sacrificed for the sins of mankind near the spot on Moriah where the ram was caught in the thicket.

Jerusalem, atop the Temple Mount (Moriah), is where God’s Law, the Ten Commandments etched by the finger of God in stone tablets, resided within the Ark of the Covenant. Jesus fulfilled the Law, with God’s sacrificial act of supreme mercy and grace for lost and perishing mankind. The veil covering the holy of holies in the Temple ripped apart from top to bottom at the moment Jesus voluntarily gave up His life on the cross at Calvary. Mankind has, since that most profound moment in human history, had direct access to the throne of God through prayer in the name of Jesus. Is it any wonder that the Supreme Being is sensitive about anyone who might act destructively against the one place on the planet where He chose to reach down to sin-blackened mankind and provide redemption by sacrificing His only begotten Son?

Yet, no consideration is given by the nations’ leaders to what God’s Word says about this strange geographical site that is a special contact point between lowly man and his Creator. The Temple Mount reportedly was on the table with regard to man-made peace efforts at the turn of the millennium, according to a news item of some years ago.

“…According to declassified Israeli government documents published today by Israel's Haaretz newspaper, during U.S.-led negotiations in 2000 at Camp David, Ehud Barak, then prime minister, agreed sovereignty over the Temple Mount would be either ‘ambiguous’ or control would be determined based on the bond of each party to the site. The Palestinians would therefore control the upper sections of the Mount, which houses the Al Aqsa Mosque and also is the site of the First and Second Jewish Temples…” (WorldNetDaily.com, "Revealed, Israel Agreed To Forfeit Temple Mount," Aaron Klein, Dec. 13, 2007).

Apparently, treachery at the highest levels of the Israeli government continues to be pervasive. The “doves” still are willing to give up everything just to achieve some degree of peace with the likes of what we see going on now with ISIS  and all other terrorist Islamists who are blood-vowed to push Israel into the Mediterranean.

The current American presidential administration–like others before–is in the process of wading in on the effort to push Israeli/Palestinian movement toward a peace the Lord of heaven declares will never stand.

Mr. President: Be aware, and beware while you take America into the three millennia-long fray. Be sure, in your “hands-on” actions aimed at making man-made peace that is doomed from its inception, not to poke the Almighty in the apple of his eye.

Here is God’s ominous forewarning to those who either overtly or covertly, whether through commission or omission, do anything to deleteriously affect His city, Jerusalem: “And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem” (Zech. 12:9).