<p>13:12 <i>And brother shall deliver up brother to death, and the father his child, and children shall rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death</i>- Again, the final sufferings of the Lord Jesus will be experienced within natural and spiritual Israel. Mic. 7:2-9 is a clear prophecy of Christ's sufferings. But embedded in it are words which are quoted in Lk. 21:16 and Mt. 10:36 concerning the latter day tribulation of the believers: &quot;The son dishonours the father... a man's enemies are the men of his own house&rdquo;. In similar manner, some of the prophecies of Israel's latter day sufferings speak in the same context of those of Christ. Mic. 5:1 is an example: &quot;...he hath laid siege against us: they shall smite the judge of Israel (Christ) with a rod upon the cheek&quot;. The whole of Amos 5 can be scanned for connections with both the future tribulation of Israel, and also the sufferings of Christ.</p><p>&quot;Deliver up&quot; is a term used about the Lord&rsquo;s delivering to death, just as &lsquo;to cause to be put to death&rsquo; is used of His death (Mt. 26:59; 27:1; Mk. 14:55; 1 Pet. 3:18). Our sufferings in the final tribulation, and for preaching the Gospel generally, grant us a fellowship with our Lord&rsquo;s sufferings. Given the close knit nature of Middle Eastern families, the language of family breakup used here would&rsquo;ve been far harder for the initial hearers to accept than it is for many of us. The family was seen as sacrosanct, somehow your family would always be there for you. But the Lord is teaching that the dislike of Him and His message would be such that it would unleash a social and psychological force of hatred such as had not been known previously. Judaism taught that it was only Gentile families which were like this- only Gentiles betrayed their brother, their parents and their children. But the Lord is teaching that through Israel&rsquo;s rejection of Him and His people, Israel were acting like Gentiles and thus becoming as them in God&rsquo;s sight.</p><p>This prophecy did not have major fulfilment in AD70, at least not betrayal &quot;unto death&quot;. The scale of the rift within families, unto death, was not seen then within the Christian community. We are left to envisage a situation where family members are pressurized to hand over their other family members to death for the sake of their loyalty to Christ. This sounds like Islamist domination of areas, with this demand made; and that is developed further in Revelation.</p>