Free The Everlasting Hatred by Hal Lindsey

subjected to an affair over which she had no choice. But the LORD demonstrates that He loved her too, as He does anyone who calls out to Him and throws herself upon God’s mercy. The very name that God gives her for the son she is carrying is a memorial that the LORD heard her prayer of distress. He commanded her to name him “Ishmael,” which means “God hears.”
    A lone runaway female slave in that day was truly helpless and in danger. The LORD therefore tells her to return and be submissive to Sarah with the promise that He would bless her with descendants beyond numbering through her son. She is promised her own personal inheritance and blessing from the LORD through her son.
    Because Ishmael is also a son of Abraham, God promises to bless him and make him into a great multitude of people and nations. God loves Ishmael and his descendants, even though he foreknew his wild nature that would be multiplied in his descendants. The Lord made an amazing prophecy about the kind oftemperament and nature that would be in Ishmael’s genes and passed on to his descendants. It is fascinating to analyze each to see how accurately it has been fulfilled in the descendants of Ishmael—the Arabs.
    1. “He will be a wild ass of a man.” [Note: this refers to Gen. 16:12.]
    Hebrew scholars Keil and Delitzsch comment on how accurately this metaphor describes the Arab people. “The figure of a wild ass,’ they write, “that wild and untamable animal, roaming at its will in the desert … depicts most aptly the Bedouin’s boundless love of freedom as he rides about in the desert, spear in hand, upon his camel or his horse, hardy, frugal, reveling in the varied beauty of nature, and despising town life in every form.” 58
    God poetically describes the nature of the “wild ass” in His challenge to Job:
    Who set the wild ass free?
Who loosed the bonds of the swift ass?
Whose home I have made the wilderness,
And the barren land his dwelling?
He scorns the tumult of the city;
He does not heed the shouts of the driver.
The range of the mountains is his pasture,
And he searches after every green thing. 59
    This perfectly describes the genetic characteristics and nature of Ishmael and his descendents, the Arabs. Like the wild donkeys of the wilderness, they fiercely love their freedom and independence. They have always had a warrior’s temperament.
    2. “Whose home I have made the wilderness, And the barren land his dwelling.” [Note: this refers to Job.] This description from Job accurately describes how the wild ass illustrates theArab characteristics. God predicted that the Ishmaelites would live to the east of all their brethren. God gave them the Arabian Peninsula, which is to the east of all the rest of Abraham’s descendants. Philip Hitti writes about the Arab home:
    Despite its size—it is the largest peninsula in the world—its total population is estimated at only seven to eight millions. It is one of the driest and hottest countries in the whole world. True, the area is sandwiched between seas on the east and west, but these bodies of water are too narrow to break the climatic continuity of the Africo-Asian rainless continental masses. The ocean on the south does bring rains, to be sure, but the monsoons (an Arabic word, incidentally), which seasonably lash the land, leave very little moisture for the interior. It is easy to understand why the bracing and delightful east wind has always provided a favorite theme for Arabian poets. 60
    The migrant Arab is called a “Bedouin.” He loves the desert and the freedom to move about the vast desert regions from oasis to oasis with the seasons—always searching after every green thing.
    The Arabs call their peninsula an “island,” because it is surrounded on three sides by sea and ocean—and to the north where it connects to land, the great Nafud Desert isolates it even more than an