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Two peoples
claim the same land in the Middle East. The competing
claims of the Jewish people and the Arab and Islamic
peoples have led to a series of wars. Disagreements
over the land may lead to further wars, and possibly
involve other nations. Israel is a focal point
of world tension that threatens the stability
of the whole world. Whose land is it? Does the
land belong to Israel or the Palestinians, or
to both peoples? Who has the right to decide to
whom the Land belongs? Israel? The Arab League?
The United States? The United Nations Security
Council? The United Nations General Assembly?
How should it be decided? By the Koran? By the
various competing claims of history? By voting?
By war? When the Word of God speaks authoritatively
on any subject, that is the final word. The Creator
of the Earth has much to say about the Land and
people of Israel in His supernatural revelation,
the Bible, which is the very Word of God.
The
Jewish people are the Chosen People: After
Adam and Eve sinned, humanity deteriorated so
badly that the Lord God destroyed the early world
of men with the Great Flood. Noah and his family
knew the Lord, and were spared, but after they
came out of the Ark and started repopulating the
world, their descendants abandoned God, became
idolatrous, perverse and evil. Then God created
a special nation to be a light to the other nations,
to bless the other nations, to teach the other
nations about the one true God who alone can redeem
them, and how to be reconciled with Him and receive
salvation. Through Israel came the patriarchs,
prophets and apostles, the covenants and promises
and the divinely inspired Scriptures, which teach
us everything we need to know to please God and
live a genuinely successful life. Through the
Jewish people came the Messiah, who enables us
to experience atonement, be reconciled to God
and live forever!
The
Land of Israel belongs to God: The Earth
is the Lord’s and all it contains, the world and
those who dwell in it (Psalm 24:1). Since
the entire world belongs to God, He has the right
to apportion it as He chooses.
To
fulfill our calling to be a light to the nations,
the Chosen People needed a Chosen Land; and so
the God of Israel strategically chose the Land
of Israel for the People of Israel: This
is Jerusalem; I have set her at the center of
the nations, with lands around her (Ezekiel
5:5 and also 38:12). The Land that God chose for
us is located in the center of the nations, connecting
the continents of Europe, Africa and Asia. Because
of this strategic location, the Jewish people
had ample exposure to all the nations of the world.
The Creator specifically gave the nations their
lands based on the Jewish people’s right to be
in the Land of Israel! When the Most High gave
the nations their inheritance, when He separated
the sons of man, He set the boundaries of the
peoples according to the number of the sons of
Israel (Deuteronomy 32:8).
The
Land of Israel was given by God in an everlasting
covenant to Abraham and his descendants as an
everlasting possession: The Lord appeared
to Abram and said, “To your descendants I will
give this Land” (Genesis 12:7). God further
said to Abraham: I will establish My covenant
as an everlasting covenant between Me and you
and your descendants after you for the generations
to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants
after you. The whole land of Canaan, where you
are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting
possession to you and your descendants after you
(Genesis 17:7-8).
Even
though Abraham had many sons, the Land of Israel
wasn't given to Ishmael, or to any of the other
sons of Abraham, but only to Isaac: Abraham
said to God, “Oh that Ishmael might live before
You!” But God said “No, but Sarah your wife shall
bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac;
and I will establish My covenant with him for
an everlasting covenant for his descendants after
him” (Genesis 17:18-19). God rejected Abraham's
request that Ishmael be the heir of the covenant,
and appointed Isaac instead. Years later the Lord
God appeared to Isaac and said: To you and
to your descendants I will give all these lands,
and I will establish the oath which I swore to
your father Abraham. And I will multiply your
descendants as the stars of heaven and will give
your descendants all these lands; and by your
descendants all the nations of the Earth shall
be blessed (Genesis 26:3-4). Knowing that
Isaac was the heir of the covenant, which included
the Land of Israel, Abraham gave all that he had
to Isaac. He gave gifts to his other sons, but
he sent them away to the lands of the east, not
wanting the heir of the everlasting covenant to
have rivalry over the Land of Israel from his
siblings (Genesis 25:5-6).
Even
though Isaac had two sons, the Land wasn't given
to Esau, but to Jacob: One night Jacob had
a dream while fleeing from his brother Esau. In
his dream the Lord said to him, I am the Lord,
the God of your father Abraham and the God of
Isaac; the Land on which you lie, I will give
it to you and to your descendants (Genesis
28:13). God later appeared to Jacob and said to
him: dthe Land which I gave to Abraham and
Isaac, I will give it to you, and I will give
the Lan to your descendants after you (Genesis
35:11-12). This promise deeds the Land of Israel
to the descendants of Jacob - the Jewish people
of today.
In
addition to the everlasting covenant (which includes
the Land), God swore an oath to give the Jewish
people this Land: Keep in mind that it's absolutely
impossible for the faithful God to break an oath
(see Hebrews 6:16-18). In the Holy Scriptures,
this oath is reiterated more than forty times.
Here is just one example: He has remembered
His covenant forever, the word which He commanded
to a thousand generations, the covenant which
He made with Abraham, and His oath to Isaac. Then
He confirmed it to Jacob for a statute, to Israel
as an everlasting covenant, saying, “To you I
will give the land of Canaan as the portion of
your inheritance” (Psalm 105:8-11). There
is no other passage in which there are so many
words used to describe God's unyielding commitment
to Israel: covenant, word, oath, confirm, commandment,
a thousand generations, statute, everlasting covenant.
A person has to have a terrible bias or a wilful
ignorance not to understand that God is assuring
the Jewish people the perpetual right to the Land
of Israel in the strongest possible language.
There
is no doubt about Israel's God-given borders because
they are described for us in detail in the Holy
Scriptures: The Lord said to Abram after
Lot had separated from him, “Now lift up your
eyes and look from the place where you are, northward
and southward and eastward and westward; for all
the land which you see, I will give it to you
and to your descendants forever... Arise, walk
about the land through its length and breadth;
for I will give it to you” (Genesis 13:14-17).
The Lord made a covenant with Abraham, saying,
“To your descendants I have given this Land, from
the river of Egypt as far as the great river,
the river Euphrates" (Genesis 15:18-21).
I will fix your boundary from the Red Sea to
the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness
to the River Euphrates (Exodus 23:31). Therefore
we must conclude that the entire Land of Israel,
including Judea and Samaria (the so-called "West
Bank"), Gaza, the Golan Heights, and all
of Jerusalem, was given by the God of Israel to
the people of Israel in perpetuity. We, and we
alone, have been given the title to the Land of
Israel as a permanent inheritance by the Lord.
No human government or coalition of governments
has the right or authority to cede portions of
the Land of Israel to anyone else.
Israel's
sin and resulting exile from the Land of Israel
never annulled God's covenant with His Chosen
People, nor did it permanently abrogate our right
to the Land of Israel: Yet in spite of
this (Israel's disobedience), when they
are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject
them, nor will I so abhor them as to destroy them,
breaking My covenant with them; for I am the Lord
their God. But I will remember for them the covenant
with their ancestors - which includes the
Land of Israel (Leviticus 26:44-45). The Lord
promises us that our exile from Israel will be
temporary!
In Deuteronomy
30:1-5, Moses specifically predicted that we would
experience a time of obedience and blessing within
the Land, followed by a period of disobedience
and exile from the Land, followed by spiritual
restoration to God and physical restoration to
the Land: So it shall be when all of these
things have come upon you, the blessing and the
curse which I have set before you, and you call
them to mind in all nations where the Lord your
God has banished you, and you return to the Lord
your God and obey Him with all your heart and
soul according to all that I command you today,
you and your sons, then the Lord your God will
restore you from captivity, and have compassion
on you, and will gather you again from all the
people where the Lord your God has scattered you.
If your outcasts are at the ends of the Earth,
from there the Lord your God will gather you,
and from there He will bring you back. And the
Lord your God will bring you into the Land which
your fathers possessed, and you shall possess
it. The same people whom God scattered, He
promises to regather to their ancestral homeland.
The people who have been regathered are the Jewish
people.
In
His prophetic Word, God promised to regather us
to "our own Land": I will take
you from the nations, gather you from all the
lands, and bring you into your own Land... And
you will live in the Land that I gave to your
forefathers (Ezekiel 36:24, 28). Again Ezekiel
predicts: Thus says the Lord God, “Behold,
I will take the sons of Israel from among the
nations where they have gone, and I will gather
them from every side and bring them into their
own Land ” (Ezekiel 37:21). The Lord considers
this special land to be uniquely belonging to
the Jewish people. Jeremiah adds: “Behold days
are coming” declares the Lord, “when it will no
longer be said, ‘As the Lord lives, who brought
up the sons of Israel out of the land of Egypt,’
but, ‘As the Lord lives, who brought up the sons
of Israel from the land of the north and from
all the countries where He had banished them.’
For I will restore them to their own Land which
I gave to their fathers” (Jeremiah 16:14-15).
The Lord promises that He will return the scattered
Jewish people to our ancestral territory - Israel,
and this regathering to our own Land will be greater
than the Exodus out of Egypt!
God,
speaking to us through the prophet Ezekiel, informs
us that this Land is specifically reserved for
the Jewish people: You O mountains of Israel,
you will put forth your branches and bear your
fruit for My people Israel; for they will soon
come. For behold, I am for you, and I will turn
to you, and you will be cultivated and sown. I
will multiply men on you, all the house of Israel,
all of it; and the cities will be inhabited and
the waste places will be rebuilt (Ezekiel
36:8-10). 2,500 years ago Ezekiel told us that
in the Last Days the Jewish people would be restored
to our Land. The Land would begin to prosper and
the Jewish population would greatly increase.
In the past century these prophetic words have
been coming to pass. Just as the Lord said, the
Land of Israel, which lay barren for centuries,
has seen increasing numbers of the sons of Israel
returning to our ancient homeland, repopulating
the cities and cultivating the Land.
In
His prophetic Word, God calls this restored Land
"Israel" - not "Palestine":
I will open up your graves and cause you
to come up out of your graves, My people; and
I will bring you into the Land of Israel (Ezekiel
37:12). The name "Palestine" comes from
the Philistines, the ancient enemies of the Jewish
people. "Palestine" was the derogatory
name given to the Land of Israel by the Romans
after they conquered us. But throughout the Word
of God, this Land is always called Israel - never
Palestine.
The
Word of God prophetically tells us that before
Messiah Yeshua returns, the Jewish people would
be brought back to our land in a state of unbelief.
Physical restoration to the Land of Israel would
then be followed by spiritual restoration to the
God of Israel. The Lord promises us: I
will take you from the nations, gather you from
all the lands and bring you into your own land.
Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you
will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your
filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover,
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit
within you; and I will remove the heart of stone
from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
I will put My Spirit within you and cause you
to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful
to observe My ordinances. You will live in the
land that I gave to your forefathers; so you will
be My people, and I will be your God (Ezekiel
36:24-28). The vision of the dry bones (Ezekiel
37:1-14) gives us the same message. The dry bones
represent the Jewish people. We are in a state
of spiritual death among the nations. The Lord
promises to take us from our grave among the nations
and restore us to Israel. After we are back in
our Land, the dry bones come together, and sinew,
flesh and skin cover the bones. That represents
the physical restoration of the Jewish people
and the reestablishment of the nation of Israel.
The problem is that the restoration will not be
complete. There are bodies, but the bodies are
without breathe - not fully alive. Then the breathe
came (the Holy Spirit) and the bodies became fully
alive. This represents spiritual restoration and
spiritual life. So, first comes physical restoration
of the Jewish people to our Land. After that we
receive the Holy Spirit, who gives us spiritual
life and reconnects us to God. It is God’s
stated intention to first restore us to our Land,
and after that, give us new spiritual life. No
individual or nation should dare oppose or interfere
with this God-ordained plan for the Chosen People
and their Chosen Land.
The
New Testament teaches these same truths. Son of
God Himself predicted that because the majority
of Israel did not believe He was the Messiah,
Jerusalem would be destroyed, and we would be
exiled among the nations, but eventually, we would
return to the Land of Israel (Luke 21:23-24).
This prophecy began in 70 AD when Jerusalem was
destroyed, and then again in 135 AD, when the
Second Jewish Revolt against the Roman Empire
was crushed. We were scattered to the nations
and lost political control of Jerusalem and Israel.
However, over the past 2,000 years, there were
always some Jewish people who remained in the
Land of Israel. Starting in the 1880s, this prophesied
regathering of Jewish people to Israel picked
up speed, and now there is a reborn nation of
Israel, with Jerusalem as its capital, with 5.5
million Jewish people regathered from more than
70 countries - just as Israel’s Messiah predicted.
And amazingly, even though our original language,
Hebrew, died out as a spoken language, it has
been resurrected and is once again the spoken
language of the Jewish people of today. This restoration
of a language is unique in human experience. It's
no coincidence that after two thousand years of
exile, the Chosen People are being restored to
the Land that our fathers possessed, and simultaneously,
we are being spiritually restored to God through
the Messiah, as is evidenced by the growth of
the Messianic Jewish movement in Israel and around
the world. This is not a historical accident,
but the plan of God!
2,500
years ago the Lord also told us that the Jewish
return to the Land would provoke a reaction from
Israel's neighbors: Because the enemy has
spoken against you “Aha” and “The everlasting
heights have become our possession” ... Surely
in the fire of My jealousy I have spoken against
the rest of the nations, and against all Edom,
who appropriated My Land for themselves as a possession
with wholehearted joy and scorn of soul, to drive
it out as a prey (Ezekiel 36:2-5). Even though
the nations surrounding Israel would claim possession
of the Land of Israel for themselves, and try
to drive out its rightful Jewish inhabitants,
God repudiates the claims of these nations. Even
though the majority of the Jewish people were
exiled from our Land (there always was a remnant
of Jewish people who remained within Israel),
that doesn't give anyone else the right to claim
the Land of Israel for themselves. If a landlord
has some bad tenants that he evicts from his property,
he does not expect anyone else to enter his vacant
property and claim it for their own. Due to our
sins, the Landlord of Israel evicted most of us
from the Land, but that didn't give the Romans,
the Byzantines, the Crusaders, the Ottomans or
the Arabs the right to claim God's holy Land for
themselves. Aren’t they mere squatters?
Eventually
this conflict over the Land of Israel will entangle
the entire world: God, speaking through the
prophet Zechariah in 12:1-3, in the sixth century
BC, predicted: Behold I am going to make Jerusalem
a cup that causes reeling to all the peoples around
(the nations will react to the regathering
of the Jewish people with senseless behavior and
irrational hatred); and when the siege is against
Jerusalem, it will also be against Judah.
And it will come about in that day that I will
make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples
(Israel's neighbors want to destroy the hated
"Zionist Entity" because the Islamic
worldview teaches that the entire world will ultimately
come under the control of Islam. A Jewish state
in the midst of the Moslem Middle East is by its
very existence an insult to Allah and Islam, and
must be destroyed. Islam can have no true and
lasting peace with Israel - only a temporary cease-fire.
Hostilities will once again be renewed when Islamic
strength is renewed. At its core, this is a religious
conflict - not a political or economic one); all
who lift it will be severely injured.” (The
nations of the world will be drawn into this conflict
and try to remove the Jewish presence and authority
from Jerusalem. However, be warned - every nation
that tries to remove the Jewish people from our
Land and capital city will be severely injured).
And all the nations of the Earth will be gathered
against it. (The world’s united nations will
wage a final world war in the Middle East, directed
against Israel).
It's amazing
to see this 2,500-year-old prophetic scenario
shaping up before our very eyes! Zechariah’s prophecy
continues and informs us that the army of the
united nations will be completely defeated; the
All-Powerful God will destroy all those nations
that fight against Israel; Israel will be miraculously
saved from destruction, and also be spiritually
saved by recognizing the One whom we have pierced
- the resurrected and glorified Messiah Yeshua!
This
will be a time of great difficulty for the Jewish
people, but we will be miraculously delivered
out of it: Alas! for that day is great,
there is none like it; and it is the time of Jacob's
distress, but he will be saved from it (Jeremiah
30:7). As the world turns against Israel and the
Jewish people, and sides with our enemies, the
fires of anti-Semitism will reach their hottest
point, but with God's help, we will come through
our fiery trials to a time of unparalleled salvation.
Israel’s salvation and blessing will then overflow
to the other nations of the world!
The
Almighty God will severely judge any nation who
defies Him and His Word and dares to divide any
part of this special Land: In those days
and at that time when I restore the fortunes of
Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all the nations
and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat.
Then I will enter into judgment with them there
on behalf of My people and My inheritance Israel,
whom they have scattered among the nations; and
they have divided up My Land (Joel 3:1-2).
When Messiah Yeshua returns, the fortunes of the
Jewish people will be fully restored, and the
nations will be summoned to Jerusalem, where they
will be judged for scattering the Jewish people
and dividing up our Land.
Sadly,
many Christians won’t accept these facts because
they accept "Replacement Theology",
the erroneous teaching that God is finished with
the Jewish people, and has replaced Israel with
the Church. Speaking to us through the prophet
Jeremiah, the Lord specifically warns against
having a theology that denies Israel's future
destiny: Have you not observed what this people
have spoken, saying, “The two families which the
Lord chose, He has rejected them”? Thus they despise
My people, no longer are they as a nation in their
sight. Thus says the Lord, “If My covenant for
day and night stand not, and the fixed patterns
of Heaven and Earth I have not established, then
I would reject the descendants of Jacob and David
My servant, not taking from His descendants rulers
over the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
But I will restore their fortunes and will have
mercy on them” (Jeremiah 33:24-26). This tells
us that all of God’s promises to the Jewish people
will literally be fulfilled!
Christians
must repudiate “Replacement Theology.” No one
who claims to follow the Messiah ought to teach
or believe that the Jewish people have been lost,
destroyed, replaced, superseded, permanently set
aside or continually exiled from our Land.
Don’t ignore the admonition given by Rabbi Paul,
the Apostle to the Gentiles, specifically directed
to Gentile Christians, which I paraphrase here:
Do not be arrogant toward the natural branches,
the Jewish people. God chose them to be the root
of the Tree of Salvation. They support you - you
don’t support or replace them! Only some of them
were broken off from the Tree of Salvation - not
all of them. Moreover, it is God’s plan to graft
the entire Jewish nation back into the Tree of
Salvation, so don’t be arrogant or conceited toward
the Jewish people. Be respectful to them, lest
God punish you! (Romans 11:17-24).
Knowing
that God will not break His covenant with the
Jewish people, even in spite of our sins, should
be reassuring to every Christian. If God broke
His covenant with the Jewish people (which includes
the Land of Israel) due to our sins, what about
the sins of individual Christians? What about
twenty centuries of sin in the Church? It's true
that there has been a faithful remnant within
the Church, just as there has always been a faithful
remnant of true Believers within Israel, but there
has also been an endless succession of anti-Semitism,
heresy, apostasy, greed, immorality, division,
and ceaseless struggles for power and prominence
within the Church. Professing Christians have
subjected fellow Christians to torture and death
in the name of Christ. If God can annul His covenant
with Israel, then He can just as easily annul
His covenant with the Church or with individuals!
But the faithful God will never break any of His
covenants - with Israel or the Church.
If you
are a Christian you need to stand by Israel and
support Israel as much as possible. God’s ancient
promise in Genesis 12:3 is still very much in
effect: I will bless those who bless you, and
the one who curses you I will curse. And God,
speaking to Israel, promises: Behold, all those
who are angered at you will be shamed and dishonored;
those who contend with you will be as nothing
and will perish. You will seek those who quarrel
with you, but will not find them, those who war
with you will be as nothing and non-existent
(Isaiah 41:11-12). Christian churches should regularly
pray for the peace of Jerusalem,"
asking God to protect Israel and the Jewish people
and send Yeshua - the Prince of Peace, back to
Jerusalem - the City of Peace, so He can rule
on the throne of David, bringing peace and prosperity
and justice to Israel and the other nations. There
will never be peace in the Middle East, or on
Earth, until Prince Yeshua is ruling from Jerusalem
over a restored Israel populated by Messianic
Jews! We also need to pray for our Arab brothers,
that they too might come into relationship with
the God of Israel through Messiah Yeshua.
Rather
than persecuting us for the death of Yeshua, and
engaging in any form of anti-Semitism, and embracing
Replacement Theology, true Christians must reach
out to the Jewish people with love and mercy,
and help us find God and the Messiah. Because
of the way that God has used Israel to bring salvation
to the other nations (salvation is of the Jews),
every true Christian is under a special obligation
to help the Chosen People, who have stumbled,
come into a right relationship with God, which
includes Messiah Yeshua. Rabbi Paul, the Apostle
to the Gentiles, declared: Salvation has come
to the Gentiles to make Israel jealous (Romans
11:11). True Christians should have compassion
on us, love us and make us jealous of their relationship
with the God of Israel. Your peace and joy, your
love and mercy, and your knowledge of God and
Messiah and the Bible should challenge us to reevaluate
our rejection of Yeshua!
Finally,
Christians need to support those who are reaching
out to the Jewish people with the Good News about
Messiah Yeshua, supporting those that not only
bless Israel, but also those who bring us the
Good News. The God-ordained priority for world
evangelism demands that the Good News about the
Messiah must go to the Jewish people first (Romans
1:16).
[This
article is based on "Seven Facts About
Israel." The author is unknown at this
time].
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