Should Christians be pro-Israel? What do we make of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that have been displaced to make room for an Israeli state? Does the Bible mandate that the land is for Israel alone? These are legitimate questions and just the tip of the proverbial iceberg concerning Israel, the land and the Bible. Today, many Americans, especially those who adhere to a Dispensational position or Zionism answer those questions in the affirmative on the basis of a biblical interpretation. And I must confess, an appeal to sacred Scripture is powerful and binding. For example, many have gone right to the first book of the Bible where God strikes a covenant with Abram, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." (Gen. 12:3 NIV) and they apply that verse to today or for all eternity. We’ll explore that verse and a few more later; but that’s a stern warning from Scripture that has been applied to those who may not necessarily see eye to eye with Israel that if you mess with them, then you’re messing with God. So I want to take a closer look at these questions through a historical biblical lens and see if those claims are true.
Perhaps at this point you’re thinking I’m anti-Semitic (hate Jews) which would mean I’m racist, but nothing could be farther from the truth. As a Christian that would be acting in direct opposition to what Jesus and Scripture teach. So this is by no means an attempt to undermine Israel as a nation, or to fail to appreciate the fact that Israel is a geo-political democracy in the Middle-East and a great ally to the United States. Neither is this blog intended to say that Israel cannot occupy or have a right to land or that the Palestinians are innocent. Rather, this is a humble attempt to look deeper into the questions I initially posited. I think many, but not all Evangelical Christians have this sort of preconceived notion engrained into their theological grid that Israel is by default good; because she’s God’s chosen people, and therefore she is somehow incapable of wrong doing. Of course, some of this may have to do with the fact that the Jewish people have suffered from countless unwarranted atrocities through the centuries by the likes of the Romans, Muslims, Nazi Germany and Christians to name a few. Most are familiar with the Roman hoards under general Titus in A.D. 70 as he decimated Jerusalem and the sacred Temple as prophesied by the Lord Jesus Christ. While this attack was not completely unwarranted per se; as a rebellion had been festering for some time. The Jews nonetheless suffered tremendously under the Romans, and in my opinion, it was the worst carnage ever with incredible death tolls and the loss of their most sacred place of worship—the Temple. Josephus, who was an eyewitness to the events as they unfolded, details this event in his work, The Jewish Wars which should cause pause to anyone who reads the account. Many are also unaware of the holocaust of 627 A.D. as Muslims murdered the Qurayzah tribe of Jews. Some seven hundred Jewish men’s heads were severed from their bodies and thrown into ditches and their women raped by Muhamad and his men. Mind you this attack from the Muslims was completely unprovoked by the Jews in Qurayzah. Many other atrocities throughout the centuries have been committed against the Jewish people simply because of their identity. So there is definitely a deep sense of sorrow for these people. But sorrow for the Jewish people and what they have suffered is not an excuse to overlook what has happened to the hundreds of thousands displaced Palestinians who have occupied the Holy Land for some two thousand years. To help contextualize this better, prior to 1948 Palestine and 75% of the land was owned by Palestinians, while less than 6% was owned by Jews. Fast-forward a few short years later and most of the Palestinians are displaced and homeless. Contrary to what some think, Israel was not some vacated waste land sitting there up for grabs for anyone to take or take back, nor were they divinely directed by God to rid the land of those inhabiting it such as was the case with the Canaanites. Rather it was occupied by men women and children who were able to trace their homes and land back for centuries, demonstrating that the land they possessed was owned by their ancestors and passed onto them. So one must ask, was Israel justified to take the land away from those people? Of course, that question is far more historically nuanced than I can explain here, but the bottom-line is, the Palestinians that once lived in Palestine were suddenly uprooted and displaced from their homes to make room the Jews making the Palestinians the single largest displaced people group in the world. So thinking with a biblical mindset, is God more concerned with land or ethics? Of course the latter is true as Israel was called by God to be ethically different in the way they treated people (Lev 19:34; Exodus 23:9; Ezekiel 16:49). God specifically instructed Israel to take care of the poor, the orphan, the widow and the foreigner; and that His creation, created in His image, has much more value than real estate? And according to the New Testament, Jesus and the Apostles seem to have further solidified this in that the treatment of others is to supersede anything else. Jesus gave the command of His followers to bring the gospel and the love of God to the ends of the earth (Matthew 28), “for the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it” (Psalm 24:1). Also, in one of Jesus’s most dense clusters of teachings known as the Sermon(s) on the Mount, it is unambiguous that a primary concern of Jesus is the treatment of others. These sayings are permeated with teachings like: love your neighbor as yourself, love your enemies, comfort those who mourn, the meek will inherit the earth and the first will be last (Matthew 5-7). Jesus was also sympathetic to the Gentile’s that resided in the land alongside His fellow Jews, which was something the Jews detested. Since the year 63 B.C., Roman occupation of Israel was seen as revolting, and we see this in the New Testament. In Acts 5 we read about an individual named Theadus who tried to reenact Joshua by crossing the Jordan to remove the Canaanites (Romans) from the land only to soon be defeated and beheaded by the Romans. And Josephus’s works are permeated with many first century zealots or insurgents who sought to overthrow Roman occupation of the land, but Jesus is silent on the issue. Even after the resurrection on the Emmaus Road (Luke 24) some disciples upon encountering Jesus (unknowingly) state that they were under the assumption that they thought Jesus was going to “redeem Israel”. That did not mean they believed He was the sinless Lamb of God that was going to make atonement for their sins, rather they believed He was going to restore Israel by removing Roman occupation and cleansing the land. Contrary to that understanding, Jesus saw things differently. Also, when we read in Matthew 8 we see that Jesus heals a Roman centurion’s son and says He has not seen any in Israel with as much faith as the centurion! There doesn’t seem to be tension between Jesus and the Roman occupation. And going back to Jesus’s famous Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “If your enemy asks you to go one mile, go two with him.” Many are unaware that a Roman solider could tell any Hebrew to give up their donkey and carry their load for up to one mile (again, something the Jewish people detested, and rightfully so). So my point here is, Jesus does not seem to have shared this inner struggle about the land that many of His counterparts did. At the very best, Jesus did not see violence as a means of getting the land back. So how does one biblically justify the upheaval of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians (thousands of which are Christian) to make room for the Jewish people? Within a dispensational view it’s easy, the land is for the Jews and the Jews alone and if you challenge that, then you come under God’s curse Genesis 12:1-3. So this is where theology or a theological view comes into sharp focus. There was a view that developed in the nineteenth century by an Englishman named, John Nelson Darby. Darby was almost singlehandedly responsible for developing what would later be called, Dispensationalism or the notion that God has two distinct people (Jews & Christians). This theology would soon spread like wildfire in the United States with the likes of C.I. Scofield and DL Moody and eventually work its way into the educational system where it would then become sort of an official doctrine. Now the sexiest thing about Dispensationalism is its eschatology (end times), and the reason it became so enormously popular was because it dealt with the end of the world and the return of Christ. I mean who doesn’t want to see that happen in their lifetime. Now according to this teaching, before the second coming (Rapture) can take place, Israel must return back to the land, and in 1948 Israel became a sovereign nation. Naturally this lit the fuse for end times speculation, particularly in America, and something dubbed newspaper eschatology was born, where virtually every bad event that happens is somehow linked to the end of the world with the rapture soon to follow. So every time something evil happens in the News or there is a wicked world leader, people will say, the Rapture is so close. Of course the Church never held such a position until Darby introduced it. So for 1800 years not a single Church Father knew of such a view, but in an attempt to get historical support from the Fathers, Darby searched high and low for a single mention of his new theology, but when the Fathers didn’t mention anything remotely close to his teaching, he came to believe that the Father’s didn’t preserve what the original Apostles taught regarding this view, so they lost it and Darby recovered it--kind of what the Jehovah’s Witnesses do. Nevertheless, with so much traction in the States even to the present day, you’ll be hard pressed not to find this view taught from pulpits and Sunday School rooms. But what about those that disagree with view, well, they are dubbed, Replacement Theologians or those that believe God only has one people and the Jews are no longer necessary as they have been replaced by the Church—which is completely fallacious. Now I should add here that just because the Fathers didn’t teach this view or perhaps they somehow missed it (was is highly unlikely), doesn’t necessarily make it wrong or false, but it should be closely examined and tested against what the Church has taught historically. Now aside from all the fanciful theology that comes with Dispensationalism, Darby taught as I previously stated that God has two distinct people, the Jews and the Church. So when God called Abram from his homeland and promised to make his offspring a great nation there was a promise attached to that. In Genesis 12:2-3 we read, “And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (ESV) This verse has been applied as a proof text that if you dare to interfere with Israel in any capacity, then you are trying to undermine God and you will be cursed. Several things can be mentioned here. First, notice in this passage there is no mention of land whatsoever, so attaching land to this curse would be incorrect. Of course, in the next chapter Abram does scan the land and enter it, but it is not until Genesis 15 where the land covenant begins to take shape. And while God does promise to give the land to Abraham’s descendants as an everlasting possession, it is contingent on the basis that they remain obedient to the covenant. So, the land and the possession of it are always dependent upon faithfulness to the covenant. Second, how do you take a 3000-year-old promise to Abraham and apply that to modern day Israel? Well answer that question and several others next week.
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