Physical wars will happen up until the last day, and they all happen under God's sovereign control. However "end-times" physical wars, are not what the Prophets had visions of and wrote about. The prophets did not prophesy the Civil War, or Vietnam, or the Gulf War, or this war in Iraq now, or any future physical war with Syria.
We must know that God uses countries and lands as types and shadows in prophecy. Whether it be Edom, Egypt, the land of Israel, Euphrates river, etc. All are portraying a signficant spiritual picture, and we must have spiritual understanding as we read all these prophecies, or we will be easily led off track.
For example, have some of Esau's physical descendants been saved? Absolutely. Have any of the spiritual house of Esau been saved? No. So if we read a verse like Obadiah 1:18 without spiritual understanding, we will be way off track, and come to some racist view about who can be saved.
Obadiah 1:18
And the house of Jacob shall be a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau for stubble, and they shall kindle in them, and devour them; and there shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau; for the LORD hath spoken it.
It's imperative that we have spiritual understanding as we read the prophecies of the word of God. In Isaiah 17 which was quoted.. I believe God is using Damascus as a portrait of the Apostate church, which is to be judged. We see this greatly as we compare scripture with scripture. One of the best examples is Jeremiah 49, where we see God speaking of the falling away of Damascus.. and calls it formerly the "city of praise".
Jeremiah 49:24-27
Damascus is waxed feeble, and turneth herself to flee, and fear hath seized on her: anguish and sorrows have taken her, as a woman in travail.
How is the city of praise not left, the city of my joy!
Therefore her young men shall fall in her streets, and all the men of war shall be cut off in that day, saith the LORD of hosts.
And I will kindle a fire in the wall of Damascus, and it shall consume the palaces of Benhadad.
And again we read in Isaiah 17 that with the Judgment of Damascus the glory of Jacob (believers) shall be made thin, and the olive tree shaken (church, Romans 11:17), and there shall only be two or three berries left in it's branches. I believe this speaks of the small number of believers left on the earth, during this hour of the great falling away. The branches are being shaken as we speak, and only a few true believers are to be found, as God casts away the branches which brought not forth fruit (John 15:2). We are the two or three berries that are left, when the Son of Man returns to an almost faithless earth.
Isaiah 17:3-6
The fortress also shall cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus, and the remnant of Syria: they shall be as the glory of the children of Israel, saith the LORD of hosts.
And in that day it shall come to pass, that the glory of Jacob shall be made thin, and the fatness of his flesh shall wax lean.
And it shall be as when the harvestman gathereth the corn, and reapeth the ears with his arm; and it shall be as he that gathereth ears in the valley of Rephaim.
Yet gleaning grapes shall be left in it, as the shaking of an olive tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost fruitful branches thereof, saith the LORD God of Israel.
In Christ,
David