Sons of Issachar: September 9th, 2026

Written By Justin Scaggs

"He changes times and seasons; he removes kings and sets up kings; he gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding; he reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with him." Daniel 2:21-22, ESV

Four areas Scripture tells the church to watch moved this week but the movement was small again. Rosh Hashanah begins Friday at sundown, and the argument over who may pray on the Temple Mount that day went to the High Court, while Arab foreign ministers met Monday to say the hill is not Israel's to open. On Israel's three borders the Gaza plan is running in reverse, Israel took a ridge in Lebanon and stood on Hermon to say it is not leaving Syria, and the Arab League told Hezbollah its weapons belong to the state. The war with Iran went back to sea, and on Wednesday the nuclear agency's board reported Iran to the Security Council for the first time in twenty years, with Russia and China voting no. And the church buried more of its own in Nigeria. With no major changes I will keep this short again. There is teaching to get to.

Headlines:

1. Two days to the feast, and the question went to court

Rosh Hashanah begins at sundown Friday, and its first day is the Sabbath, when the police keep the Mount closed to Jews. Nothing changed on the hill this week; what changed is the paper. Two Temple Mount activists asked the High Court for an urgent order opening the Mount on the Sabbath days of the fall feasts after the district police commander refused, the committee chairman's letter we reported last week is still unanswered, and on Monday the Arab ministerial committee on Jerusalem, chaired by Jordan with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Qatar at the table, called Jewish prayer on the Mount an unprecedented escalation and rejected any division of the compound. The same Thursday the petition was filed, Jewish visitors sang Lecha Dodi, the hymn that welcomes the Sabbath, on the Mount, a thing unthinkable a few years ago and now both common and the potential catalyst for war. As of this writing there is no ruling, no shofar permit, and no police announcement. Because the first day is the Sabbath, the shofar sounds on Sunday, which is also the first morning the Mount reopens to Jews. Sunday morning is the morning to watch, and next week we will tell you what happened.

Why the church watches this hill at all: Daniel was told that the last seven years of his prophecy turn on a covenant and on sacrifice and offering being stopped, Jesus told his disciples to watch for the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place, and Paul wrote of a man who takes his seat in the temple of God. There is no temple, and a shofar is not a sacrifice. But every one of those texts assumes Jewish worship on that mountain, and for fifty-nine years the arrangement that kept it off the mountain has been eroding by increments too small to refuse: a visit, a silent prayer, a prayer book, a sung hymn, and now a petition to open the gates on the feast itself. The increments are the thing to watch, not the feast day. Rosh Hashanah is the Feast of Trumpets, and some of you have heard teaching that ties its trumpet to the trumpet Paul says will raise the dead. Paul's trumpet is the trumpet of God, and it will not need a permit from the Jerusalem district police. So we watch the hill for what the prophets said would happen on it, and we refuse to read a court ruling as a countdown. If the court opens the gate on Sunday, that is one more increment. If it does not, the pressure that produced the petition is still there, and it is not going away.

Blow the trumpet at the new moon, on our feast day, for it is a statute for Israel, a rule of the God of Jacob. The trumpet on that hill was never a police commander's to grant. God wrote the statute, and no court in Jerusalem can repeal it or enforce it. But read the next verses of the psalm. The trumpet was a memorial: I relieved your shoulder of the burden, your hands were freed from the basket, in distress you called and I delivered you. It calls Israel to remember a rescue, not to take a summit. And Hebrews tells the church where we have already arrived, not at a mountain that can be touched but at Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, and innumerable angels in festal gathering. Pray for the officers who will stand between worshippers on Sunday morning, for Jews who love a hill they may not pray on and Muslims afraid of losing one place they have, and that both would find the God who does not live in temples made by hands and needs no permit to be worshipped.

"Blow the trumpet at the new moon, at the full moon, on our feast day. For it is a statute for Israel, a rule of the God of Jacob." Psalm 81:3-4, ESV

"But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel." Hebrews 12:22-24, ESV

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2. Israel's three borders: a plan in reverse, a ridge above Nabatieh, and a promise on Hermon

Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, in one paragraph. The Gaza plan is running in reverse: Israeli security officials say Hamas is back in its weapons depots, the envoy says a two-state outcome becomes practically impossible without the plan, and none of the three things the plan requires, a transitional government, decommissioned weapons, and an Israeli withdrawal, has happened. The hinge of the plan is being opened the wrong way. Two Israeli ministers spent the week talking about moving Gaza's population out by sea and by air, eight Muslim-majority governments condemned them by name, and the foreign minister walked it back. In Lebanon, Israel took the Ali al-Taher ridge above Nabatieh and said it had completed its security zone, its strikes killed at least twenty-seven people in three days including two children in Kfar Reman, and the same Monday the Arab League backed Beirut's decision that weapons belong to the state alone and rejected Iranian interference. In Syria, a United Nations commission called Israel's presence a belligerent occupation that may involve war crimes, and the next day the Prime Minister and the defense minister stood on the Syrian side of Hermon and said, we are not moving from here. And twelve Western governments, Britain, France, and Canada first among them, committed to ban trade in settlement goods.

Here is what is worth discussing in that pile. Ezekiel says the invasion he foresaw comes in the latter years against a people gathered from the nations who dwell securely, all of them, in a land of unwalled villages without bars or gates. Israel this week is the opposite of that picture: a security zone in Lebanon, a security zone in Syria, most of Gaza held by the army, and a government telling all three neighbors it is not leaving. The teaching you hear that Ezekiel 38 is next in line has to account for that, and it is worth saying plainly that the ground does not look like Ezekiel's unwalled villages yet. Two alignments did move, and both are worth watching. The Arab League lining up against Hezbollah and Iran is not Psalm 83, where Israel's neighbors conspire with one accord to wipe her out; it is Arab governments choosing a side against Persia, and Ezekiel has Sheba and Dedan, whom the teachers put in Arabia, standing back and asking questions when the northern army comes rather than marching with it. And Zechariah's picture, Jerusalem a heavy stone and all the nations of the earth gathered against it, moved one increment closer when twelve Western governments put their position on the land in writing. Neither is a fulfillment. Both are direction. And the plan to empty Gaza gets the standard we read last week: the effect of righteousness is peace, and a people moved out for convenience is not a peace plan, whoever proposes it.

They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken. Look where Micah puts that promise: after the LORD judges between many peoples and decides disputes for strong nations far away. Nobody sat unafraid on any of Israel's three borders this week, not in Kfar Reman, not in the villages of Quneitra, not in the tents at Khan Younis, and not in the northern towns the drones flew over. Micah does not say a security zone gets a nation to the fig tree, or a directorate, or a council resolution. He says the LORD of hosts gets them there, when he judges. So we hold every government in this story to that standard, and that includes the one we love. And a room full of Arab foreign ministers telling a militia to give up its weapons is a smaller thing than swords into plowshares, but it points the same way, and we can pray it happens without another war to force it.

"He shall judge between many peoples, and shall decide disputes for strong nations far away; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore; but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken." Micah 4:3-4, ESV

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3. Persia: ten tankers, a vote in Vienna, and a funeral the regime forbade

The war went back to sea. By Wednesday the American command said it had destroyed ten Iranian tankers in a week after the Revolutionary Guard fired twice at an American warship, with some reports indicating the missiles might have gotten far too close for comfort; the crews were ordered off first, and no Americans were hurt. Iran answered with missiles at an American base in Jordan, nearly all intercepted, with claims of hits on two destroyers that the command called false, and with a captured underwater drone the Pentagon says had already died of its own malfunction; the Houthis hit four Saudi cities; no ceasefire, no talks. In Vienna the nuclear agency's board reported Iran to the Security Council for the first time in twenty years, twenty-three votes to three, with Russia, China, and Niger voting no. Inside Iran the regime executed a twenty-one-year-old rapper named Erfan Mirzaei for protest footage on his phone, told his family afterward, and buried him in a village far from Isfahan so there would be no funeral to gather at. And a correction: last week we said nobody outside Iran had confirmed the strike on a wedding in Kuhestak. Reuters and the New York Times have since verified the footage; four people died, two of them children, and the Vice President, asked about it, said he was skeptical and that sometimes things happen.

The tankers are not the prophetic item. The vote is. Ezekiel names Persia first among the peoples who march with the prince from the uttermost parts of the north, and for a generation the teachers you listen to have watched for Russia and Iran to be found on the same side of a line. On Wednesday they were, in a roll call, with China beside them, against the West, over Iran's bomb. I am not going to tell you a vote in Vienna is Ezekiel 38; the chapter describes an army on the mountains of Israel, not a board of governors. But the alignment the chapter assumes is now the ordinary arrangement of the world, and it took a vote to make it visible. Daniel's messenger was withstood twenty-one days by the prince of the kingdom of Persia; whatever that spiritual reality is, the earthly Persia is a regime that fears a funeral more than a navy, and it has told you what it is by burying a boy in secret. The other text is Jeremiah's oracle to Elam, southwestern Iran: a broken bow, a scattering to the four winds, a throne set against the king and his officials, and then, in the latter days, restored fortunes. Nothing about ten tankers fulfills it, and I will not pretend it does. But the shape of it is the shape of our prayer.

I will set my throne in Elam and destroy their king and officials, declares the LORD. But in the latter days I will restore the fortunes of Elam. The LORD's throne goes to Elam and it lands on the king and the officials. The people are not the target. The people are the ones he promises to restore, in the latter days, which is his phrase and not mine. That is exactly the shape of our prayer for Iran. We are not asking God to destroy a country. We are asking him to deal with the men who bury a boy in secret so his mother cannot grieve in public, and to keep the promise he made to the people of Elam, which the underground church in that country will tell you he has been keeping for a generation. Picture the sailors on the tankers and the mother in Isfahan when you pray, not the men behind the podiums.

"and I will set my throne in Elam and destroy their king and officials, declares the LORD. “But in the latter days I will restore the fortunes of Elam, declares the LORD." Jeremiah 49:38-39, ESV

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4. The church under pressure: three Nigerian states, and a pastor missing in Ji'nan

Nigeria, in three states, and a correction. Pastor Gabriel Dipak, whom we reported held last week, was freed the same night after a ransom his church and family paid, and he says the men killed Pastor Hills in front of him when Hills tried to run. Five more Christians died around Mangu in Plateau, more than thirty in that district in a month by one count; suspected Boko Haram fighters killed twelve at Dzangola in Adamawa on Sunday and burned the church; and in Kaduna a watchdog reported that three of eleven villagers taken from Awon in April have died in the forest camp where they are held with thirty-seven worshippers seized from three churches: a mother named Joy Samuel, who gave birth there and died with her baby, and a father named Yusuf Bawa with his five-year-old son, of sickness and hunger. A three-year-old girl is critically ill, and two fourteen-year-old girls lived for months on river water. In China, Pastor Wang Sanyuan, seventy-three, of a registered church in Ji'nan, has been missing since police took him from his home in March, and his family does not know the charge. On the rest of the list, Krasnogorsk, Myanmar, Maharashtra, Kenscoff, nothing moved, and they stay on it until it does.

A word about why this is here, and why it is not a sign. Christians have been killed for being Christians in every century since Stephen, and the level we see now is roughly the level the church has always lived with. It is not an escalation, and I am not going to read it as one. Jesus did put persecution on the list, they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake, but read it the way he said it: a thing to endure, not decode, and a description of something worse than Plateau, when all nations hate us and not some. Expect that. What we have now is the ordinary cost of the gospel in ordinary places, and the reason it is on this page is not that it proves anything about the hour. It is that these are our people, in one Body by one Spirit, and Scripture tells us to remember them as though we were in the camp with them. They should be in our prayers, not only that they be rescued and comforted, but that their witness would be used powerfully by God. If the situation in this nation changes, I pray they will do the same for us, just as Jesus did for Peter. Revelation tells us what heaven does with the ordinary cost Christians have paid for millennia. Under the altar the souls slain for the word of God ask how long, and they are not given a date. They are given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their brothers who are to be killed as they were is complete. God is watching and counting, and the count is not finished. Pastor Hills is in it, and so is a mother who died in a forest camp with her newborn. That is not a comfort in their physical situation, but it is the one the text gives, and it is enough if you trust God's promises.

It means two things for us. The first is that the church in Plateau is not losing. It is being counted, by a God who knows the number and has already handed out the robes. The second is that we do not get to shrug at a number because it is an old one. Remembering means their names in our prayers on Wednesday night and money where money reaches. We are not going to make the dead of Nigeria into a sermon illustration or a sign of the times. They are our people, and we pray for those who remain.

"Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers." Luke 22:31-32, ESV

"When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been." Revelation 6:9-11, ESV

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Watch and Pray

Let us pray for Jerusalem in the two days before the feast: for the police who will stand between worshippers on Sunday morning, for the judges holding the petition, for Jewish families who love a hill they may not pray on and Muslim families afraid of losing the one place they have, and that the holiday would pass without a body count. Ask that on both sides of that wall people would find the mountain no one can close.

"But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel." Hebrews 12:22-24, ESV

Let us pray for the people on Israel's three borders who cannot sit unafraid: the families of Kfar Reman burying eleven, the villagers of Quneitra under a promise that nobody is leaving, the children of Khan Younis a second year inside a ceasefire that keeps killing, and Israeli soldiers on a ridge and a summit their government says they will hold. Ask that the plan would run forward again, that no government would move a people for convenience, and that Hezbollah's guns would be laid down without another war to force it.

"He shall judge between many peoples, and shall decide disputes for strong nations far away; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore; but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken." Micah 4:3-4, ESV

Let us pray for the men on the tankers and the warships, who did not vote for any of this; for the mother of Erfan Mirzaei, who was told after and buried him where no one could come; for the inspectors who cannot see what they were sent to see; for the wounded in four Saudi cities; and for the believers in Iran who are the down payment on a promise the LORD made to Elam. Ask for restraint in Washington and Tehran, and for the men who order strikes to remember whose throne it is.

"Some went down to the sea in ships, doing business on the great waters; they saw the deeds of the LORD, his wondrous works in the deep. For he commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea. They mounted up to heaven; they went down to the depths; their courage melted away in their evil plight; they reeled and staggered like drunken men and were at their wits’ end. Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed. Then they were glad that the waters were quiet, and he brought them to their desired haven." Psalm 107:23-30, ESV

Let us pray by name: for Scholastica Hills, widowed on the Bokkos road, and for Pastor Dipak, who watched it; for the families of Awon and Ariko, and for Silvia Samuel, three years old and sick in a forest camp; for Dzangola, burying twelve and a church; for Pastor Wang Sanyuan and the family that cannot find him; and for the ones who did not move this week, in Krasnogorsk, Chin State, Maharashtra, and Kenscoff. Ask that the witness of every one of them would be used powerfully by God, and that they would pray the same for us.

"Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints." Psalm 116:15, ESV

Maranatha,

— Sims Corner Church

Justin Scaggs https://simscornerchurch.com
Next

Sons of Issachar: September 2nd, 2026