In our study of the enmity between the serpent and his seed and the woman and her seed Gen 3:15; we are presently looking at the Assyrian attack on Hezekiah king of the nation of Judah at the time that Hezekiah was still childless.
Last time we saw that the Rabshakea was trying to get the Jews to surrender with a Maleficent Deception".
Isa 36:16; "Do not listen to Hezekiah because this is what the king of Assyria says, 'Make your peace with me and come out to me. Then each and every one of you will enjoy his own vine and fig tree and all will drink from his own cistern,
v17 until I come and take you to a land like your own, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards.'"
The Rabshakeh uses rhetorical veils to advance while concealing his hidden agenda.
After again demanding that Hezekiah be ignored, the Secretary of State offers a deal too good to be true. He paints a rosy picture of a future life in a land of milk and honey if only the people of Judah quietly surrender to the benevolent offers of Sennacherib.
His hidden agenda is to keep the masses in a state of mental bliss until the Egyptians are properly dealt with and then the Israelites will be deported to Assyria where their lives will be spent in slavery.
What politicians say in order to convince the masses to agree to their schemes for a better tomorrow is entirely different from what they intend to do once compliance is obtained.
For instance: the Rabshakeh quotes Sennacherib's conditions for a new tomorrow. Condition number one is, "Make your peace with me." The King James Version reads, "Make an agreement with me by a present." The Hebrew noun "berachah" that means "blessing" is used.
The noun has to do with prosperity, favor, gratuity, benevolence, or benefit. Such blessings are transmitted from one person to another or from God to individuals or nations. When man seeks to "bless" God he is actually involved in reciprocity through an expression of appreciation, thanksgiving, or praise. It is in essence a salute of respect for divine favor.
In the context Sennacherib is proposing that the citizens of Judah join him in manufacturing a blessing, or "Make your peace with me." The word "make" is the Qal imperative of the Hebrew verb "asah" that means "to make, construct, complete, or produce"
The idea here is that two parties, Sennacherib and the people of Judah are to enter into a negotiation which will result in making a "blessing."
What the Rabshakeh is proposing on behalf of Sennacherib is a Treaty of Peace or an agreement or contract made by belligerent powers, in which they agree to lay down their arms, and where they stipulate the conditions of peace and specify the manner in which it is to be restored and supported.
The second condition Sennacherib requires of the Judahites is that they "come out to me." The word for "come out" is the Qal imperative plural of the Hebrew verb "yatsa:"
This word is used in Exod21: 2; for the emancipation of slaves: "If you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve for six years; but on the seventh he shall "go out" (yatsa) as a free man without payment."
The Rabshakeh knows that the Jews were once in slavery to the Egyptians. He has taken the time to shame them for entering into a coalition with the Pharaoh in order to preserve their freedom.
What has resulted in their mental retreat back to Egypt is that Egypt has failed them and now they are in jeopardy of going into slavery to the Assyrians.
It is true that Egypt has failed them but in the Maleficent Deception this is not what the Rabshakeh says in his rhetorical veil.
He had also previously made the point that Judah's allegiance to the God of Israel will not protect them and that they would soon be in slavery to Sennacherib apart from his willingness to offer them a deal.
Thus he uses the very same word that was used by the Lord God in His instructions regarding master and slave relationships in Exodus 21 to imply that if the citizens of Judah "come out,"(yasa) to him that they will be made free.
This means that the conditions that Sennacherib is placing on Judah are that they are to negotiate a treaty of peace with him and then surrender to him in order to escape slavery.
This is indeed a Maleficent Deception since this is exactly what the king of Assyria plans to do with the Judahites. However, in order to continue the deception he must make them an offer to try to entice them into surrendering.
What Sennacherib proposes through the Rabshakeh is that if they do submit to these conditions then they will be allowed to go back to their homes and drink their own wine, eat their own figs, and drink water from their own reservoirs.
This obviously sounds too good to be true and what comes next is a bright red flashing warning light for anyone who has any discernment. The key word is "until":
Isa 36:17; "… until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and new wine, and land of bread and vineyards."
The word "until" is the preposition "ad" that is used to indicate a continuation of an event from a point in the past to the present or a future event
In other words, the people of Judah could stay in their homes and return to their normal lives but only for a while. "Until" indicates that Sennacherib would be back and when he arrives the Jews are going accompany him back to Assyria where he contends they will live in a land that is filled with grain, new wine, bread, and vineyards.
But notice something very important about the description of their circumstances in Assyria as compared with those in Judah. In verse 16 the Jews would be free to drink their own wine, eat their own figs, and drink water from their own cisterns.
Verse 17 lacks the use of the personal pronoun "your". The Rabshakeh simply says that on Sennacherib's return he will take the Jews to a land like their own land. He then describes the land's bounty but does not refer to it as belonging to the people of Judah.
The land has grain, new wine, bread, and vineyards but the Judahites will not be able to call any of it theirs. Instead they will be the ones providing the slave labor to plant, tend, and harvest these crops and manufacture their products.
They will harvest the grain and then bake the bread, they will tend the vineyards and produce the wine and according to the parallel passage there will be even more for them to do
2Kings 18:32; until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees and honey, that you may live and not die.
So in addition to the duties already mentioned, they will also harvest olives and make olive oil and attend the hives and fetch honey for the Assyrians.
Thos who are listening carefully will discern from the Rabshakeh's proposal that the personal possessive pronoun "your" is missing and once the Jews arrive in Assyria the only benefit for agreeing to this Treaty of Peace is that "They will live and not die."
Sennacherib grants unheard of concession to the Jews while he is organizing their deportation back to Assyria. He will systematically select those he thinks will make good slaves and tell them they won't believe how good life is in Assyria.
The others will either be executed or allowed to remain alive to eat their own dung and drink their own urine.
The principle we get from this is that when someone says they are from the government and it doesn't matter what government and that they have come to help you, tell them thank you anyway but you don't want their help.
The Rabshakeh is a harbinger of prophets who will falsely lead the people of Judah into error over the next century. Those who follow their teachings will be the cause the cycles of discipline that will ravage the land.
In 586 b.c. Nebuchadnezzar will attack Judah and the client nation will suffer the fifth cycle of discipline and some of her selected citizens will be carried away to endure seventy-years of captivity in Babylon.
Jeremiah, a true prophet of the Lord, railed against the false prophets and one of his condemnations of them is found in Jer 23:16; Thus says the Lord of the armies, "Do not listen to the words of the prophets who are prophesying to you. They are leading you into futility; they speak a vision of their own imagination, not from the mouth of the Lord.
v17 "They keep saying to those who despise Me, 'The Lord has said, "You will have peace"'; and as for everyone who walks in the stubbornness of his own heart, they say, "Calamity will not come upon you."
Jer 23:21; "I did not send these prophets but they ran to you. I did not speak to them, but they prophesied."
The Rabshakea's ninth Propaganda Objective is if you smile, speak sweetly, and promise peace and prosperity while being careful to phrase your promises cleverly, then the people will eagerly agree to exchange freedom for slavery.
The Rabshakeh is a heathen Assyrian who took the position of a prophet when the claimed in verse 10, "The Lord said to me, "Go up against this land, and destroy it." He now returns to this subject as he again denounces Hezekiah's leadership and blasphemes the Lord.
Isa 36:18; 'Do not let Hezekiah mislead you by saying, "The Lord will deliver us." Has any one of the gods of the nations we have fought delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria?
v 19 'Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Have they rescued Samaria from my hand?
v 20 'Who among all the gods of these countries have delivered their land from my hand, that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem from my hands?'
Satan, the father of lies always assaults the truth. This is confirmed in the Garden of Eden, the Rabshakeh confirms it, and it is consistently being confirmed today. Those who tell the truth in opposition to the devious and nefarious plans of the dark side will find themselves assaulted for their efforts.
In Isaiah 36 it is Hezekiah who is telling the truth both Hezekiah's integrity and his message must be attacked. This is the fourth time in the Rabshakeh's speech that he has challenged the Judahites faith in divine protection.
In verse 7, he warns the people not to place their "trust in the Lord," for Hezekiah insulted the Lord by taking away His high places and altars. In verse 10, the Rabshakeh claims falsely that the Lord has personally commanded him to attack Judah.
In verse 15, he implores the people to reject Hezekiah's advice to trust in the Lord's power to deliver them and the city of Jerusalem from the Assyrians. Then again in verse 18 the Rabshakeh cautions the Judahites to ignore Hezekiah's claim that the Lord will deliver them.
We see from this that the constant theme of the Rabshakeh's propaganda is to destroy the people's faith in Hezekiah and the God of Israel and to replace it with faith in the word of Sennacherib.
To justify the former, the Rabshakeh dips into Assyrian military history to give examples of how the gods of nations invaded by Assyria have failed to deliver the peoples who looked to them for protection.
These examples include the gods of Hamath, Arpad, and Sepharvaim. These are cities located to the north in Syria. The assertion is that if their "gods" were not able to deliver them how can the people of Jerusalem expect the Lord God to deliver them?
The Rabshakeh viewed the "gods" of the nations Assyria invaded as mere inventions that assuaged the fears and soothed the emotions of the people but were nothing more than illusions to be destroyed by Assyrian power.
This same viewpoint has emerged in our increasingly progressive culture. The allegation that all religions are based on mythology and that the "gods" worshipped by the followers of these religions are no more real then the "gods" worshiped by the people of ancient cultures.
The self-anointed progressive elite conclude that all religions are simply inventions designed to support and sustain the values, morals, and traditions of various cultures and since diversity and multiculturalism demand tolerance of all cultures then all religions must be tolerated as well.
However, the power of any religion is neutralized when they are all accepted as being equal. This lends credence to the claim that religion is a characteristic of all cultures and that in the end all worship the same "god."
Further, since all cultures are equal then all religions are equal. But should one religion assert that it is superior to all others, as is the claim of most, then it must be silenced or discredited so in the interest of diversity all religious discourse is judged as being unfit for public discussion.
Therefore religions are not only forbidden to be the government, which is a biblical principle, but they are also forbidden to even influence the government, which is the sine qua non of the survival of the client nation.
Religion is "tolerated" as long as it is personal, exercised privately, and its teachings are never introduced into the marketplace of ideas. This results in the false hope that the socialist utopian ideal of world peace, free of religious friction and conflict, is attainable.
This explains why so much time, effort, and resources are spent on opposing such apparently benign and insignificant issues as the Ten Commandments in courthouses, the singing of Christmas carols in public schools, the pledging of allegiance to the flag, the wearing of religious symbols at work, or praying of invocations at graduations or sporting events.
This opposition seems to be nitpicking to traditionalist but it is a central issue for progressives because they have identified religion and especially the establishment principles in Christianity as being the source of absolute principles and absolutism must be destroyed at any cost because according to the progressives there are no absolutes.
The Bible is divine revelation of principles, guidelines, and mandates designed to create order within the chaos of the devil's world by establishing a framework for the protection and survival of the human race.
This framework establishes the authority structures that have the delegated power from God to keep the sin nature in check. The progressive anti-authoritarians resent any system of authority other than their own especially from a source that they firmly believe is a myth.
Those who choose to worship their "god" are allowed to do so if they don't make waves or subscribe to some written standard they claim to be divine revelation.
Those who do claim divine revelation are characterized as radical fundamentalists whose literal interpretation of the Bible results in the development of an authoritarian personality that is the source of totalitarianism.
This exposes the true motivation and incentive behind political correctness, multiculturalism, diversity, and globalism. They are all methods that satan deploys to tear down all systems of traditionalist authority in order to install his own globalist totalitarian society.
Satan is the first anti-authoritarian. But satan and all anti-authoritarians who followed him are not opposed to all authority they are just opposed to those systems they do not control.
In fact, progressives promote the removal of all systems of restraint except those that would restrain them. And the authoritarian systems that restrain satan in the Church Age are Bible Doctrine, advancing believers, and client nations. Consequently, these become his primary targets in the Invisible War.
Believers without doctrine quickly fall under the influence of the doctrine of demons and a client nation that has been robbed of the influence of mature believers will quickly fall under the influence of satan's ambassador demons.
The Bible clearly reveals that human sin is inspired by a genetically formed OSN and is committed in complicity with the free will.