"Jesus said to them ("to the Jews who had believed in Him", John 8:31, 39 ESV) —

but it is a serious LIE that has been swallowed 'hook, line and sinker' by the modern evangelical community of Christians

around the world, and in the United States in particular.

(If this were true, Israel would never have been expelled from this land by God, as Israel's prophets had warned them would happen if they did not listen to God.)

But the Word of God tells us that He DID expel them – and He the Lord was fully justified – for their tenancy was NEVER unconditional!

and so the Spirit of God instructs us today of this through the inspired New Testament record, that –

fourteen-hundred-years before this statement, in the founding of Israel as a unique nation in Holy Covenant with God at Sinai,

God established the basis of their inheritance of His promise of the land which He had made to their Patriarchs.

the Land is Mine; for you [Israel] are but aliens and sojourners with Me." [That is, tenants/'guests'-of-God]

greatest king, knew this covenant principle profoundly, for he prayed –

under Moses and Joshua were then guests/tenants-of-God in Canaan/Palestine, even under God's unique Homeland Covenant with Abraham and his believing descendants, how much more so now then are our modern nations, everywhere, merely guests-of-the-Creator in their own respective national homelands, no matter who arrived in a country first, or how long they may have been there, or who conquered whom!

of our world today are generally occupied by those who in past times established their right by military power over aboriginal inhabitants. It need not be said that this is not how one loves one's neighbour as oneself as God had commanded as a minimum standard.

in dealing with the status quo in the Middle East, the issue has often been raised of Israel's Biblical and Historical right to Palestine.

deserves an answer in more detail, particularly so as –

To this must be added the special case of Jerusalem city, and the real grounds for a practical solution to the present tragic débâcle. Sadly, the current situation has been greatly aggravated by confusing three distinctly different realities (sometimes deliberately), namely: race, religion, and nationality; thereby allowing the creation of stereotypes for propagandistic purposes on either side.

Biblical claim for Israel's relationship to Palestine derives from God's promise to Abraham. What the Bible actually says is therefore vitally important to an objective understanding of this issue.

foundational Scripture behind this claim is Genesis 15 in which God establishes His covenant with Abraham concerning the Promised Land.

Much more than Israel today, Abraham the Friend of God deserved to settle in this land, build its cities, and harvest its crops. Yet, Instead he and his family are compelled by God to remain only a tent-dwellers within the promised land because –

'the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full'.

Therefore It is important to remember that the Arab population of present day Palestine, who have lived there since at least the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem in February 638 AD (for more than 1,370 years), have certainly a right of occupancy as much as any other community has to their land of residence anywhere.

Israel's absolute right to ownership of Palestine can never be greater than that of their patriarch Abraham, through whom they received the promise in the first place! As with Abraham, so no less with Israel today, these same divine conditions must therefore apply:

Let every Bible-believing Christian remember this!

More, even after the Lord had given Abraham's physical heirs this land by the hand of Joshua, the Lord retained the right to even reduce the territory of their occupancy according to the moral behaviour of the people:

"In those days the Lord began to reduce the size of Israel's territory." (2 Kings 10:32).

So, even a godly Israel today could not have an absolute right to the land. It would always be conditional on their behaviour. This also includes obedience to God concerning Israel's agricultural relationship to the land. Every seventh year is to be an agricultural sabbath of the land (Leviticus 25).

The precise length of Israel's first expulsion from their land by the Babylonians (70-years) was based by God on the number of years Israel had cheated the land of its agricultural sabbaths (490-years). (2 Chron.36:21; Jer.29:10; Zec.1:12). This condition remains today for Israel's presence in the land.

However, the historical background of Israel's present day position in Palestine has also been made a basis for Israel's exclusive claim to the land.

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636 AD/CE: The Jewish community welcome and assist the Muslim Arab invasion, in reaction to the continuing abuses Jews had suffered under Byzantine 'Christian' rule in Palestine. The following years sow wars between Muslim factions, and with Christian invasions at the behest of the pope, this leads to an eventual rise of the Ottoman empire of Muslim Turks.

March, 2000: Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat sends a decorated chest to Tekoa's Rabbi Menacham Fruman, and a gold necklace and bracelet to his daughter Shulamit, for her wedding. Rabbi Fruman meets with Arafat as head of a delegation of Jewish settlers who extend greetings to Arafat at his office in Gaza in honour of the Muslim feast of Id al-Adha. Fruman tells Arafat that it is possible to create a religious foundation between the two peoples, as "all of us are the sons of Abraham." Efrat Rabbi, Shlomo Riskin, writes that there is no reason that settlers cannot live together with Palestinians, extend mutual respect and build a socioeconomic future together. The letters from the rabbis were read to Arafat in Arabic and in return he expressed his gratitude in Hebrew.

June 2000: In an interfaith meeting in Milan sponsored by the European Union, Israel's Chief Sephardic Rabbi, Bakshi-Doron, supports continued Palestinian administration of Temple Mount, even after a permanent settlement is reached. He conveys his position in a letter to Christian and Muslim Palestinian clerics stating, "for peace, we shouldn't let the holy sites become a reason for quarrel and fighting. They must not turn into a weapon in the hands of those fighting against the peacemakers." In the same month the Israel Security Agency warns Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak of radical Jews who may try to break into the Temple Mount area. (Rabbi Doron later retracts this view under pressure from Jewish nationalists).

however, more than 120 000 Jewish settlers live on Arab land conquered in the 1967 conflict, some of whom represent the most aggressive nationalists on the Israel-Palestine political landscape. Yet, there is hope!

In March 1999, Israel Justice Minister Hanegbi appoints Judge Abdel Rahman Zuabi, a 66-year-old Israeli-Arab to Israel's Supreme Court for a nine-month term of office, saying: "[Zuabi's] appointment highlights the successful integration of the Arab community into the life of the state." In this same month, a 21-year-old Israeli-Arab, Miss Rana Raslan of Haifa, was named Miss Israel. Following her victory, Rana said, "It does not matter whether I'm Jewish or Arab. We can live in co-existence, and I will represent Israel in the most appropriate way."

Today there are more than 1.2 million Arab Israelis, about 20% of the population of the State of Israel..

what of Jews in Palestinian territory? Jewish settlers in the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza are an explosive element in the current mix of issues. During Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on Resolution 242, Ariel Sharon publicly encouraged Jews to settle illegally on Palestinian land to assert their claim to Arab land before final implementation. This had some sinister shades of Hitler's use of the German settler factor in Eastern Europe to justify his aggression that led to our world's worst war.

Palestine cannot afford to be an exclusively Muslim state any more than Israel is exclusively Jewish, even though Israel defines itself as such. As much as Israeli Arab citizens have rights in Israel, no less must the Jewish settlers of Palestine be offered, and required to accept Palestinian citizenship – or leave! These communities, Arab-Israeli and Jewish-Palestinian, which so reflect the indelible history of this little land, hold the real hope for a peace that is more than an unworkable paper reflection of international strategic interests.

no peace without Jewish-Palestinians!

is generally believed among Christians that Jerusalem is Israel's capital city by Biblical promise as well as historical right. But this is seriously misleading and untrue to its history.

• Jerusalem was special to God before Israel existed!
• Jerusalem remains special to God apart from Israel!

The sacredness of Jerusalem is associated with Israel but its sacredness has essentially nothing to do with Israel or with Christianity!

Jerusalem is introduced to us in the Bible as Melchizedek's city. Melchi-zedek was an Amorite of Jebus whom God recognized as a godly and faithful priest-ruler of his people (see Genesis 14:18-20). The New Testament draws attention to the fact that Abram honoured Melchizedek as greater than himself by giving him tithes (Hebrews 7:4,7).

This man's little city was characterized as 'Peace' (Salem) under his rule and its inhabitants gave him the title 'Righteous King' (Melchi king, zedek righteous). Sadly however, by the time of Joshua, when the iniquity of the 'Amorites' was 'full', this title had become nothing more than a tradition in Adoni-zedek whose arrogance God punished by the men of Judah (Jud.1:8), but who never made this city part of their heritage until David came.

It is therefore to the north of Melchi-zedek's small city that Abraham, God's faithful nomad, is sent by God to offer his beloved Isaac in sacrifice. Why there? It was not the hill of Moriah that God respected, but the character of the godly Gentile – Melchizedek.

Many centuries later, the young shepherd boy, David of Bethlehem, after killing Goliath, takes the head of the giant to this same Jebusite Jerusalem (1 Sam.17:54) as a trophy of his victory – even though no Jew yet lived there! Why? Even though this city was not yet occupied by Israel it had a sacred significance to God which David recognized (the man after God's own heart). It is therefore here that David, years later as Israel's king over a united nation, chooses to make his political capital.

David drive out and destroy the Jebusites, the descendants of Melchizedek's people, as most Canaanite cities were treated by Israel? No! Jebusites prospered under David. In David's later years he buys the choice site of the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite for sacrifice, upon which the Temple was eventually built by Solomon. And even the greatest high priest of Israel under David carried a Jebusite name – Zadok. The honouring of Mechizedek continued in those who knew God.

It is this same spiritual significance of Jerusalem (neither its political nor its religious status) that makes this city the place to which the Lord Jesus Christ Himself will descend at His Second Coming (Zechariah 14:4); at least to it's eastern flank on Olivet. One could argue that then it will be Christ returning to the nation Israel, but this city's part in Israel's own history is a derivative of the sacred geography of Melchizedek (the man whom the New Testament uses as a symbol of Christ through meaning of his title, city name, and lack of genealogical record, Heb.7).

Jerusalem of Israel, to which Christ will return, is not at that time triumphant in any sense. It is to a Jerusalem torn apart by the corruption and violence of an Antichrist honoured in its Jewish Temple (Mat.24:15ff; see also Zechariah 14).

See: For The Sake of Melchizedek

Some have said that Jerusalem has only ever been the capital of Israel, and so by implication no other political group has a legitimate historical association. After the Arab Muslim invasion of Palestine in 638 AD Jerusalem became a regional capital and their third holiest city, and in 661 the first 'Umayyad caliph, Mu'awiyah, was proclaimed caliph in Jerusalem. 'Umayyad rule lasted until 749 after which Baghdad became capital of the Muslim Arab Empire and Jerusalem went into economic and social decline.

Only after the Babylonian Exile does Israel again identify Jerusalem as its capital, and even then most of Israel did not return to their Land. It was the capital of a representative minority.

Israel itself has for most of its political history not, in practice, regarded Jerusalem as it capital, except in its attempt to create a mythical past of lost glory. It has been its religious significance that has made Jerusalem Israel's idealized capital.

Remember, it was Jewish Jerusalem that provoked the LORD to say,

What does this mean?

When Jerusalem becomes spiritually true to its name (City of Peace) then, and then only, can its future begin,
and then –

Jerusalem: "shall be rebuilt for the Lord ...it shall not be plucked up, or overthrown any more forever"!

So politics confers no 'right' whatsoever in Israel's relationship to Jerusalem, just as it also does not in her inheritance of the land of Palestine itself.

Bible, nationality in Israel was to be based on residence and NOT on ethnicity, as nationality is in modern Israel today.
For the Lord had commanded Israel –

national restoration to the Land promised to Abraham is described in the Bible as a New Exodus from across the world. But this is the result of Israel's spiritual conversion! (read Isaiah 35:9-10; 51:11; 66:20).

This is the promised future (and no other) which is underwritten by the God of Melchizedek, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – the true God of Israel's Torah.

Jewish fascism has been fed to almost inflammatory levels in recent years by emotive claims on Jerusalem. Violence is therefore an unavoidable part of the future until the heart of this nation repents from its own ways in a surrender to the claims of God over the personal character of its people.

The much hyped 'two-state' political solution to the competing claims of Jews and Palestinians regarding Israel's position, pushed by America and its allies, is in essence a racist solution and no different at its root to the South African attempt to keep Afrikaner independence in the face of a black majority. The difference in the world's hypocrisy is simply one of vested interests.

When the Lord Jesus Christ came to them the first time, Israel was not an independent state. Apart from their diaspora across the Mediterranean and Near East, in the land itself the Jewish people lived under several different jurisdictions – Herod over Galilee, Rome over Judea, and Philip over Perea. There is no basis whatsoever for Christians to assume that when Christ returns to the Mount of Olives in power and glory Israel will be an independent state.

Therefore, the spiritual hype associated with the independence declaration of Israel as a state in 1948 is utterly irrelevant to Biblical end-time issues concerning Israel.

The Israel which our New Testament speaks of was not an independent political entity. It was and is the people of Abraham, toward whom the resolute faithfulness of God will restore the promised blessings of Abraham when they share the faith of Abraham in his God.

many pro-Israel Christian preachers quote, in violation of its context, that –

'God will bless those who bless/support Israel and curse those who curse Israel'.

But across the world today, a new kind of terrorism continues to kill the innocent and drain national economies which did not exist a hundred years ago when the State of Israel did not exist.

This judgment is not the justice of God. That is more terrifying than anything which this world can ever represent. But, indirectly it does represent God's judgment or displeasure by the withdrawal of His protection from that which displeases Him, and those who 'fear the Lord' will take note of this.

terrorism exists today in direct response to the West's support for the State of Israel.
So then, either God is unfaithful to His Word, or God thinks otherwise than the pro-Israel preachers,
    for 9/11 and every other tragedy at home or overseas in Iraq or Afghanistan is part of the West reaping what it has sowed for its unconditional support of a State which, from its very beginning, identified itself in racist (Jewish) terms (unlike David's kingdom), and in disregard of the nationhood of more than 20% of its non-Jewish citizens, apart from its basic disregard of non-Jewish human dignity in the blatant injustice of its collective punishment of Palestinians, and other policies.

judgment on the West for its support of Israel is morally justified, and every Christian is without excuse for not recognising it, for it was clearly stated in the Bible concerning the impartial Judge of All, that –

'God so loved the world [kosmos]...'

and He expects every Christian to echo His attitude impartially!

addition there are about two thousand Christian Palestinians in Gaza (Christ's brothers, Matthew 12:50; Mark 3:35) who continue to suffer under Israel's economic blockade, which is supposedly to prevent weapons imports, but actually seriously hampers commercial exports from Gaza, causes much bitterness in the population and helps fuel conflict.

God's Election of Israel

The Victim Mentality Cycle

200 AD, Christian scholar Tertullian wrote:
Christianum enim de restitutione Iudaei gaudere et non dolere conueniet, siquidem tota spes nostra cum reliqua Israelis expectatione coniuncta est. –
'For it will be fitting for the Christian to rejoice, and not to grieve, at the restoration of Israel, if it be true, (as it is), that the whole of our hope is intimately united with the remaining expectation of Israel.'

The Palestinians are descendants of the Arab invasion of the land (descendants of Abraham's son Ishmael, of whom God had promised he would become "twelve princes" Genesis 17:20) after Palestine had become part of the Byzantine Empire, and whom the Jews of the land then welcomed about 636 AD and helped them subdue, and among whom today there are counted Muslims, Christians, Druze, etc...

See: The Israel Heresy

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