Written by Don Veinot

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,
who put darkness for light and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!
Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes,
and shrewd in their own sight! 
(Isaiah 5:20-21)

Persuading others to embrace and perpetrate evil is not as difficult as we might think. All it really takes is a good marketing plan and an adept salesperson or, for a larger population, a committed sales force. Selling evil that appears evil can be a hard sell, but if it is repackaged as something that looks good or desirable, well, there are plenty of takers. This is not an altogether new concept. It is as old as the Garden of Eden. A crafty and evil sales rep just “happened” on the happy couple living in paradise. With just a few sneaky questions, he persuaded the unsuspecting woman that she had been cheated – something highly desirable had been withheld from her to her great detriment. Tradition says the “bait” was an apple, but nobody alive knows for sure. But whether it was an apple, pear, banana, or some other fruit, it certainly looked good.

You’ll remember that God had expressly forbidden the eating of even just one piece of fruit from a particular tree in the garden. The consequences of this disobedience were very clear, but to our knowledge, the why had not been explained, or if it had, the reason could not stand up to the wondrous beauty of the fruit. He implied that God had deceived the couple, holding back something from them that was extremely desirable and offered great wisdom. Eating it would, after all, make her like God, knowing good from evil! Yes, God had placed them in a beautiful, lush garden, but He certainly didn’t want them to have His knowledge or be His equal. How selfish!

The woman added to God’s prohibition, saying that not only the eating of the fruit would kill them, but even just touching it would be their downfall. God was a deceiver, selfishly keeping them from something wonderful that they rightfully deserved! God was certainly not good and kind after all! Who would not want to have God’s knowledge? She ate it, of course, and fed it to her husband, who also knew God’s prohibition but did not seem to have objected to her offering. But, no, it was the serpent who was the deceiver – not God. The couple’s disobedience resulted in death – immediate spiritual death and the beginning of the process of physical death – just as God had told them it would – for the first couple and all their progeny down to this very day.

Perhaps that is one of the reasons there is so much written in Scripture warning about the dangers of false prophets, false teachers, and deceivers. All that is needed is a good marketing strategy to sweep many right down the drain with them. This begs the question – why would false prophets and false teachers want anything to do with lies and/or wish to take anyone down with them? I mean, they are still going down, right? Why not try to save themselves, or at least to warn others away? Perhaps, in most cases, the deceivers are themselves deceived.

We could, and many have, written entire books and treatises on this subject. Even so, few seem to recognize the “problem with the sales pitch” until they have already signed on the dotted line and find themselves marching in lockstep with all of the other newly minted multi-level marketers of evil. We currently see this type of deceptive tactic used in the Progressive movement, Woke movement, Hamas, and so many others. Some might cry foul at our suggestion that there are similarities between these movements, but false prophets and deceivers often cry foul when their tactics are laid bare. A rather remarkable coalition between Hamas, Progressives, and the Woke publicly surfaced just this past week. How could there be a meeting of the minds between Woke “woman’s rights” and “LGBTQ advocates” and Hamas, a terrorist group that, besides being haters of Israel, subjugates women and kills homosexuals? It is really quite astounding. But you see, they have created for themselves what they imagine is a common enemy.

So just how is all the barbaric killing of innocent Jewish people, including babies and children, justified by Liberal groups – and what is the unifying lie? It’s simple, really. Just label the Nation of Israel “colonizers” along with other nasty epithets, and Voila, hatred of the Jewish people (anti-Semitism) and violence against them is not only approved but encouraged. This is the marketing plan used to justify the evil barbarity of last week and for who knows how long? The “colonizers” deserve it!

We’ve seen this type of justification of violence and mayhem, though not to this horrible extreme, thankfully, during the “mostly peaceful protests” in the United States a few summers ago. It is true that no babies were beheaded, thank God, but there was between $1–2 billion in insured damages to other people’s property nationally, not to mention the astronomical uninsured damages, which, of course, could not be recovered. Far worse than property destruction, more than 700 Police officers were injured across the US, and there were at least eighteen deaths. All justified, based on Leftist hatred of so-called “colonialism,” “white privilege,” and whatever is the popular outrage du jour. The victims were the “basket of deplorables” who deserved it. And the Israelis are the “deplorables” of this current murder and mayhem outrage and deserve it, whether they have personally harmed anyone else or not.

We all are aware of what is happening in Israel. Hamas launched an unprovoked assault on an unsuspecting population in Israel, killing over 1,400 and taking hostages, not only Jews but citizens of other countries who were visiting Israel. The response from students at the elite Harvard University?

Thirty-one Harvard organizations blame Israel for Hamas attack: ‘Entirely responsible’

That was shocking, to say the least. Two days later, however, the Harvard Hamas defenders suddenly ran for cover when they realized they might be sacrificing prospects for future employment¹ as “Harvard students scramble to take back support for letter attacking Israel as some CEOs look to blacklist them.”²

We’ve got to wonder about the big elephant in the room that the students, Progressives, and Woke likely did not consider here. The Hamas murderers they were defending would kill any of them who are in the LGBTQ movement, along with any others who do not submit and conform to their illiberal religious dogmas.

None of this should be a surprise to anyone. According to the Hamas Covenant 1988, Hamas declared themselves to be the righteous descendants of the prophet because they have adopted “Islam as its way of life.” (Article Five) In Article Eleven, they describe how Islam came into possession of the land. It was by conquering its occupants, and therefore, it rightfully belongs to them (Hamas) in perpetuity for having adopted “Islam as its way of life.” In Article Seven, we read:

Moreover, if the links have been distant from each other and if obstacles placed by those who are the lackeys of Zionism in the way of the fighters obstructed the continuation of the struggle, the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realisation of Allah’s promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:

“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).

Okay, let’s examine this: Islam came into possession of the land by conquering the occupants. Wait just a minute! Would not that make the Muslims themselves hated “colonizers?” But we digress. Does the land of Israel belong to Hamas? Did it EVER belong to Hamas? The short answer is NO. The simple adoption of the faith and practices of those who had conquered the land centuries earlier provides no ownership rights, much less ownership rights in perpetuity. If we look at the religious claims on the land, it was promised to Abraham and his descendants, Isaac and Jacob, BY GOD centuries before Muhammad was even born. The land has changed hands many times down through the centuries as the Nation of Israel had been taken as slaves or dispersed. However, the biblical promise was that the Nation of Israel would return to the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Relative to the express question concerning the perpetuity of Israel as a nation, the promise given to Abraham in Genesis 17:7, 8 is of special importance. Here the covenant with Abraham is declared to be an everlasting covenant, and the land is promised to Israel as an everlasting possession. It would be of course impossible for the covenant to be everlasting and the possession of the land to be everlasting unless the nation also continued forever. The Hebrew expression for “everlasting” is olam, meaning “in perpetuity.” While it might not quite be the equivalent of the infinite term “everlasting,” it would certainly mean continuance as long as this present earth should last. It is the strongest expression for eternity of which the Hebrew language is capable. Inasmuch as these promises are reiterated to Isaac and to Jacob and are constantly referred to throughout the Old Testament, the nature of these promises confirms the continuance of Israel as a nation.³

Aside from the religious question, let’s examine the legal claims of the land’s possession from a secular standpoint after the end of the First World War:

the British and French formed a joint “Occupied Enemy Territory Administration” in what had been Ottoman Syria. The British achieved legitimacy by obtaining a mandate from the League of Nations in June 1922.

After the Second World War:

The 1947–1949 Palestine war ended with the territory of Mandatory Palestine divided among the State of Israel, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan which annexed territory on the West Bank of the Jordan River, and the Kingdom of Egypt which established the “All-Palestine Protectorate” in the Gaza Strip.⁴

Gaza has been in a state of flux for generations and, until 1959 was under the control of Muslim nations.⁵

Those who live in Gaza have been suffering, but we must ask why? Were the Israelis preying on them? NO! The terrorists among them were continually committing acts of terrorism in Israel.

such attacks fell from 73 between 2000 and July 2003 (the completion of the first continuous segment) to 12 between August 2003 and the end of 2006⁶

In the United States, the chief apologists for the Hamas violence were and are the legacy media. They largely control the flow of public information. The legacy media decries ‘bothsidesism’ except when it involves Israel and Hamas, in which case, it always condemns the Israelis and excuses the Arabs. It has the same blurry focus when it comes to American issues. For example, the Progressive and Woke groups DID NOT and generally DO NOT engage in “mostly peaceful protests” here in America. But we have all come to understand how the mainstream media shapes the narrative to the advantage of their chosen “side.”

Last Monday, an Israeli mother of two children who were kidnapped by Hamas pushed back when MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell asked her what she thought about the “attacks against Gaza,” alluding to civilian casualties in the Hamas-controlled territory.

“You’re looking for a symmetrical situation,” the mother told Mitchell. “I can’t be sympathetic to animal human beings — well, they’re not really human beings — who came into my house, broke everything, stole everything, took my children from their bedrooms and took them to the Gaza Strip. Israel has never done that, and it will never do [it]. So there is no symmetry.”⁷

There is a great deal of suffering in the world. It can all be traced back to the first gifted marketer of evil in the garden and will continue until the Prince of Peace returns and sets all things right. And He will. But for now, we live in this ugly reality where good is called evil and evil is called good. Those with the newest marketing of evil strategy will always use their wiles to market evil and destroy good, as well as to persecute – and urge their followers to persecute – the people of God. Jesus spoke to this:

indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor me. But I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes you may remember that I told them to you. (John 16:2b-4)Ω

This article was originally published by the Midwest Christian Outreach, Inc.