Israel and the Promised Land

It is a tale of two nations—one clearly God-ordained, the other artificially invented on demand. Ethnic Israel dates back thousands of years to the call of Abraham when he was in what is modern Iraq. The Palestinian State is somewhere in the birth process.

Major world figures contribute their support for either or both, and the tension persists. The Pope visited the area and suggested that passions would be soothed by the formation of a new Palestinian State. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with U.S. President Obama, who clearly assured Abbas of support and pressured Israel to be like-minded. In today’s speech in Cairo, President Obama again reiterated his support of a Palestinian State. Meanwhile rabbis in Israel meet in defiance of surrendering the West Bank, which is the area of biblical Judea and Samaria, in view of God’s assignment of this area to Israel.

While I am a supporter of Israel, I have a biblical ambivalence regarding Israel’s present unconditional land rights in all areas of the original land grant. Israel’s land rights were conditional upon obedience, as Deuteronomy 27 & 28 outline—blessings if they were faithful, curses if the were unfaithful. Specifically, regarding other ethnic peoples in their land grant area, which stretched from the Euphrates River to the Mediterranean Sea (Gen. 15:18), disobedience would mean sharing the land with these other groups.

Judges 1 traces the incomplete displacement by Israel of native peoples. Judges 2:21, 22, outlines the consequence. "‘I also will no longer drive out before them any of the nations which Joshua left when he died, so that through them I may test Israel, whether they will keep the ways of the LORD, to walk in them as their fathers kept them, or not.’ Therefore the LORD left those nations, without driving them out immediately; nor did He deliver them into the hand of Joshua."

Of the several indigenous peoples Israel was unable to displace, Judges 3:3 specifies the Philistines, from whom we get the term "Palestinians." They lived in the present Gaza Strip area, the hotbed of current tension. Another people they failed to drive out were the Jebusites (Joshua 3:5) who lived in Jebus, actually modern Jerusalem. Today, the Philistines of Gaza and the Muslims of East Jerusalem are constant problems to Israel.

Modern Israel is still disobedient in rejecting Christ as Messiah. The original land grant can only be totally theirs when national repentance occurs and Messiah is accepted as Zechariah 12:10 anticipates. "And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn."

According to Isaiah 11:14, during a period of a second restoration of Israel to the land in the future (Is. 11:11), Israel will retake the land of the Philistines to the west along with Moab, Edom and Ammon to the east. This end-time verse presupposes the existence of the modern kingdom of Jordan. It further indicates that Israel has none of these areas before the attack, although they are part of the original land grant. Israel recently gave up Gaza, and it lost the areas of western Jordan centuries ago.

Another problem with advocating full land grant rights to present Israel is that it means former Egyptian territory and present Jordanian, Syrian and Lebanese territories would have to given back to Israel. Such demands are a formula for raging Middle East war.

One day Israel will recognize her Messiah as He returns to the Mount of Olives, and then in obedience she will fall heir to all her Promised Land. Israel can no more have it all now than any Christian could have God’s full blessing while living in disobedience.

Repentance and confession are prerequisites for experiencing God’s best.

Dave Virkler