| As
predicted, two ancient peoples are at the center of the controversy, the Arabs and
the Israelites. |
There is no prophecy in the Bible predicting that
in the 21st century A.D. Arabs and Israelites would be involved in a controversy. |
| The
Arabs call the land Palestine. The Israelites call it by its ancient name, Israel.
There are unique and extraordinary circumstances in the history of these people,
which cause much misunderstanding by most people today. |
Before Israel occupied the land, it was occupied
by other people, and the Bible says it was called "Canaan."
This is its more "ancient name." It was given to Abraham under
"unique and extraordinary circumstances in the history of these people." |
| First,
they both originated from the same forefather Abraham 4,000 years ago. The
Israelites, commonly called "Jews" today, descended from Abraham through
Isaac and Jacob. The Arabs descended from Abraham through Ishmael and Esau. |
- Biblical
Horizons » No. 117: Call Me Ishmael, Part 1
- Biblical
Horizons » No. 118: Call Me Ishmael, Part 2
|
| Second,
God chose Abraham's line through Isaac and Jacob to be the recipients of several
covenants that established them as his special representatives on earth. Basically
they were chosen for the following purposes: |
Clearly God's choosing of Abraham and his
descendants is one of the most important facts in all of human history -- because
of what God accomplished through these people. |
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To
receive, write and preserve His Word to man, which we call the Bible. |
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America's Founding Fathers recognized
the importance of the Bible. |
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To
be an example of the blessing that comes from believing in and following the
true God. |
|
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The Jews were also examples of the curses that come
from rejecting the true God. In fact, Israel was more often an
example of cursing for disobedience than blessing for obedience. |
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To
be the physical race through whom the Messiah, the Savior of the world would
be born.
-------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - -- - |
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To
spread the revelation of how to know God personally. |
|
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The Jews truly are to be thanked for preserving the
Scriptures (Romans
3:1-2). |
|
| In
order to accomplish these purposes, God made unconditional
promises to them that involved making them a unique nation with an everlasting
title deed to specifically defined land. |
The promises were not unconditional. This is
where Hal Lindsey trips up. If the promised land was unconditionally promised,
then why is it these
Israelites didn't get to live in the promised land? Why didn't Moses
himself get to go there? It seems there are duties, responsibilities --
conditions -- attached to the promised land. There are hundreds of verses which
reveal the conditions attached to possession of the land. Download them here
(pdf). |
| Historically,
the descendents of Ishmael and Esau have felt that somehow they were cheated. This
created an enmity that has smoldered and burst into flames at various times in
history. |
This is an interesting claim. I've never met any
Muslims who felt this way. To feel this way one must believe the claims of the
Jewish Bible, accepting the historicity of the record of God choosing Israel and
having a relationship with the Jews that He didn't have with Muslims. |
| God
forewarned the Israelites through Moses that their nation would twice be destroyed
for failing to obey Him. The second destruction would be far more severe than the
first the people would be scattered throughout every nation under heaven. They
would be persecuted and have no assurance of life. This
was literally fulfilled, beginning with the Roman
destruction of Israel and Jerusalem in A.D. 70 (Deuteronomy
28:64-68 and Luke
21:20-24). |
This is generally true. This is also an
astonishing admission. It proves the promise was not unconditional.
Deuteronomy 28 is a catalog of the consequences of not meeting the conditions of
the Covenant. Verse 15 says, "it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the
voice of the LORD your God, to observe carefully all His
commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that all these curses
will come upon you and overtake you." Then the rest of the chapter contains
the curses, culminating in the complete destruction of Israel which took place in
AD70. The fulfillment of Deuteronomy 28 was a terrifying time. |
| This
dispersion began to draw to a close in May of 1948 when, against all odds, Israel
was reborn as a nation. |
"Reborn" is a truly ironic word. When a
Jewish leader came to Jesus, anticipating the replacement of Imperial Rome's
military occupation of Palestine with the establishment of the Kingdom of God, the
Rabbi Jesus told him, "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born
again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John
3:3). Is Hal Lindsey saying that all the Jews were born again in 1948? Suppose
Adolph Hitler, in 1940, after invading Poland, renamed Poland "Israel."
(But no Jews allowed, of course.) Would this nation of "Israel" have any
Biblical significance? No. Just because someone calls a piece of real estate
"Israel" doesn't mean the Kingdom of God has arrived. (in 1948, it was
Great Britain doing the name-changing). |
| This
has created unique problems for the world. Never before has a people been
scattered for almost 2,000 years, remained virtually a nation in exile, returned
to claim their ancient homeland and then been reborn as a nation. The Arabs and
all Muslims say Israel has no right to this land because they took it for Allah by
Jihad, or holy war, centuries ago. According to their belief, Mohammed ascended to
heaven from Jerusalem. Therefore, it is considered their third holiest place. |
This misses the point. Israel has no right to the
Holy Land because they violated the conditions of the covenant that God made with
them, and He kept His promises by kicking them out of the land. This promise
"was literally fulfilled," as Lindsey said above.
Jews must be "born again." |
| The
secular world, especially Europe, sees the state of Israel as a nuisance that
hinders the free flow of oil from the Arab nations. So they mostly side with the
Arabs for economic reasons. |
Look at this
map. How does Israel hinder the flow of oil from oil-producing nations like
Saudi Arabia? Don't the oil tankers sail up the Red Sea and into the
Mediterranean? |
| There
are two different attitudes toward Israel's right to statehood in the Holy Land
among Christians. One group interprets Bible prophecy in an allegorical sense and
says that Israel forfeited its covenant rights when it rejected Jesus as Messiah.
A few in this group say that Israel in any event can never be given the land by
God until they repent and believe in the true Messiah. |
Yes, but what does "allegory" have to
do with it? Where have I treated any Bible verse as an "allegory?" I'm
treating the Bible as literal history. (See more below.) |
| Then
there are those Christians (and I am one of them) who simply take at face value
what God has promised the Israelites. The prophecies of Ezekiel chapters 36
through 39 are one example. They all focus on the present Arab-Israeli conflict,
which closely precedes the Messiah's coming to set up God's promised kingdom to
Abraham's believing descendents. |
Reading these chapters and taking them at face
value couldn't possibly lead an objective reader to the conclusion that nuclear
war in the 21st century is being described. These verses simply are not focusing
on "the present Arab-Israeli conflict" in 2008. Read
them here.
- The
Nonsense of Plain Sense
- The
Problem of Ezekiels Temple/City Vision
-
- Ezekiel is describing an ancient war, fought with
wooden spears and bows and arrows. How Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye find nuclear
weapons in these chapters is astonishing, especially after they criticize
others for "allegorizing." Taken at face value, in its plain
meaning, or "literally" as some like to say, Ezekiel is probably
prophesying the great attempt to wipe out Israel which is recorded in the
little-studied Book of Esther.
|
| First,
God warns all of the nations that surround Israel, "Thus says the Lord God,
'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 with scorn of soul, to drive it out for a prey.'" (Ezek.
36: 5) "Edom" refers to the Arabs descended from Esau. The surrounding
nations are all Muslim today. |
"Arab" should not be equated with
"Muslim." If all the nations surrounding modern-day Israel were anti-semitic
Catholics descended from Esau and bent on destroying the Jews, it wouldn't
make Ezekiel 36-39 apply to the 21st century. The reference to "Edom" is
a reference to genetic heritage, or to a non-Jewish enemy, but not a particular
religion which didn't even exist in Ezekiel's day. "Edom" can
represent Haman
in the Book of Esther. |
| Note
that God says, "My Land." The Muslims don't own it, neither do
the Jews God owns it. He gives it to whom He chooses and not on the basis of
human merit. |
"Not on the basis of human merit," but
on the basis of keeping the conditions of God's Covenant. |
| Second,
God declares to whom and why He is going to give the Holy Land,
"Therefore, say to the house of Israel, 'Thus says the Lord God, 'It is
not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy
name, which you have profaned among the nations where you went. And I will
vindicate the holiness of My great name which has been profaned among the nations,
which you have profaned in their midst. Then the nations will know that I am the
Lord
" And then, "For 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 give you a new heart and put
a new spirit within you.
" (Ezek. 36:22-26) |
- Those descendants of Abraham who were born again received a new heart, a new
spirit, and entered the New Jerusalem (Hebrews
11:16; 12:22; Romans
2:29; Galatians
4:6). The Hebrews were told (Hebrews 8) before the destruction in A.D. 70:
- 8 For He finds fault with them
when He says:
"Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord,
when I will establish a new covenant with the house of
Israel
and with the house of Judah,
9 not like the covenant that I made
with their fathers
on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of
the land of Egypt.
For they did not continue in My covenant,
and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord.
10 For this is the covenant that I
will make with the house of Israel
after those days, declares the Lord:
I will put My laws into their minds,
and write them on their hearts,
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.
11And they shall not teach, each
one his neighbor
and each one his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,'
for they shall all know Me,
from the least of them to the greatest.
12For I will be merciful toward
their iniquities,
and I will remember their sins no more."
- 13 In speaking of a new
covenant, He makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and
growing old is ready to vanish away.
- The
Church is Israel Now
|
| The
Bible clearly shows that God is going to give "His Land" to Israel. Not
because they deserve it, but because His great name is at stake God cannot
break a promise. It is after this that God will bring the Jews to
repentance and give them a new heart. He will accomplish this through delivering
them from a coming war that will almost destroy the world. |
The Bible clearly shows that God gave the entire
planet to His People: those who were sprinkled with the water and the Word, given
a new heart, made true sons
of Abraham. God has kept His promises, and Abraham
looked forward to that day. There is nothing in the Bible that speaks of a war
in the 21st century. |
| God
disciplines His own for disobedience, but He never disowns them. We who are
Christians can thank God for that, or we would have all been disowned. God has
thrown his gauntlet into the arena with His promises to Israel. And Hell will
freeze over before He fails to fulfill them, though the whole world tries to
prevent it. |
America was once dedicated to fulfilling Christ's
command to be "a City on a Hill." In 1892
the United States Supreme Court described this Christian dedication to be a
Christian nation. The federal government is now spending $3 Trillion to
protect a nation that rejects their Messiah. Thousands of Americans have died,
more than a million Iraqis have been killed. All this because of a mis-reading of
the Bible. |
| |
|
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Who Owns Palestine? by John M. Frame |
By
Hal Lindsey
A
Response to Hal Lindsey by Kevin Craig