Israel

Israel is one of the mostly disputed and least understood subjects in Christianity.  It is seldom one reads an exposition on 'Israel' that is in accordance with the Bible. At least two enormous mistakes concerning Israel can be discerned:

1. Israel is something of the past. Since the people of Israel have rejected their Messiah, had there temple destroyed and were for three years banned from the region around Jerusalem (135AD - 138AD), they have themselves thrown away any future for them as a people. As a people, they have been abandoned by God and they will never again be a people with a future within the bounds of the old testament appointments of God. Every promise that God made through his prophets has to be applied to the church, which has become 'the new Israel', the 'new Jerusalem'.

2. Israel is something of the present. Since the beginning of the 19th century and certainly from the Second World War, we see God's promises, which He gave through his prophets in the old testament, coming to fulfillment. The foundation of the state of Israel in 1948, the cultivation of the holy land, the victories of Israel over its enemies in the Arab world in 1949, 1967, 1973 must all be seen as the blessings that God is again bestowing upon his people. The building of the third temple can start any moment for the building plans, the temple attributes and even the stones are all ready for use.

Both these views on Israel are distorted and wrong and contradictory to what the Bible tells us in very plain words. In short: Israel is not something of the past, nor something of the present. Israel is something of the future. It cannot be said any clearer than the way the apostle Paul states it:

^'For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins.'

What we learn from these words of Paul is the following:

(1) The truth about present day Israel is a mystery. It was hidden in the Old Testament. Is has come to light through the ministry of Christ and his followers.

(2) Those ignoring this truth are 'wise in their own conceits' - in other words: deceive themselves by holding falsehood for truth.

(3) Present day Israel is partly blind, namely the part that still has not acknowledged Christ. The part that has accepted Him as Son of God and Savior is no longer blind but has become part of God's church of the present age, consisting of all peoples of the earth.

(4) Present day Israel is temporarily blind, namely until the fullness of the gentiles be come in, that is: until God ends the church age (through the rapture of the church - all believers of 2000 year church history 'going in' to heaven)

(5) Israel as a complete people, consisting of all 12 tribes of old, will be saved (which is not to say that all Jewish individuals will be saved for each of them has to make his or her own choice and many will make the wrong choice and perish - as Jesus warned his Jewish contemporaries: if ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins).

(6) The moment of salvation of Israel is the coming of the Deliverer out of Sion, a moment which is still future, the second coming of Jesus Christ. This is also foretold by Jesus in his last words the the pharisees on the temple precincts: 'Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord.'

(7) Their is a new covenant or testament with Israel, replacing the old covenant of the law, which was established at the last supper but effectuated at the cross, according to the words of Jesus: 'For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.' Later this new covenant with Israel is mentioned in the letter to Hebrews: 'For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people'. This is a citation of Jeremiah 31:31.

 

All of the above is enough proof that the first position on Israel, that it would have no future in God's plans as a people and as a nation anymore, is contradictory to scripture. And also the second view, that present day Israel is fulfillment of God's promises, is completely refuted. The present situation of Israel can at most be seen as preparation for fulfillment of Bible prophecy about God's blessings on the nation of Israel - but not as the fulfillment of promised blessings. This is not the place to investigate the moral quality of the people living in the 'holy land' but whatever corner is looked from, present day Israel must be considered a nation that is further away from God's principles than any other nation on earth. And that is precisely what the Bible predicted on the status of the people and the land in the Endtime, once Jesus would return: much as the rest of the world: in complete and total enmity toward God and his Christ.

 

The preparation toward the fulfillment of Bible prophecy must absolutely not be seen in the cultivation of the land or the building of cities or the erection of a government and not even in the plans for rebuilding a temple. The preparation toward the reentering of Israel into God's promises and blessing could perhaps have been seen in the preaching of the gospel throughout the holy land and the enormous masses that would accept the rejected Jesus of Nazareth as their Lord and Savior. Alas! That is totally not the case. Almost the complete Jewish population in the land of Israel keeps rejecting Jesus and is totally not interested in Him. The only thing that interests them is the solution to the Palestinian problem and the total confiscation of the land.

 

But was there no value in the cultivation of the land, the building of Jewish cities and the installation of a government? No, there was not. The land was already cultivated long before there was any European Jew that had emigrated to Palestine. There was abundant cultural life in many cities and villages. Palestinians of the Jewish and of the moslim and of the christian faith lived harmoniously together. That is, until zionism arrived and destroyed all harmony, killed thousands of Palestinians, moslims and christians alike, driving the surviving rest from their homes and lands and chasing them into refugee camps by the hundreds of thousands, where they and their children and their grand children have remained till this day - this day in which the grand children are faced with even greater horrors than those of the 1948-Nakba and the 1967-war and are killed by the tens of thousands through the most advanced military apparatus in the world, delivered and financed and diplomatically covered by the strongest world empire that ever existed, the USA.

 

Present day Israel has everything to do with Bible prophecy but not in the way that most Christians see it, as fulfillment of promises of blessing which they should support. On the contrary, present day Israel is the fulfillment of what the Lord warned about, when He said: 'Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence comes!' Israel is nothing but a continual source of offenses, and those that stumble most over it, are the Christians that support it. Zionism had proven to be the great delusion of the Endtime for great parts of Christianity, so much so, that they do not discern the worst of evils that are being perpetrated by the entity that they keep supporting vehemently. And the more cruel the state of Israel displays itself, to the point of committing genocide in the mos evident ways possible and the more abhorred by it normal citizens of the world become, the more these evangelical zionists feel obliged to defend their beacon of hope in the Middle East.

 

But that beacon of hope will, to their greatest of all shocks, be completely wiped off the map during the Endtime. Yet it should not come to a surprise for Jesus has spoken: 'Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord.'

 

The name 'Israel' originates in the struggle of Jacob with an obscure man, at the brook called Jabbok. Jacob had been obedient to God in returning to the land that God had promised to his grandpa an father to give unto their offspring. The angels of God had appeared to him, encouraging him. He had sent messengers to his brother Esau, whom he was very afraid of because of having wronged him in a distant past, in order to let them greet him. He had split his household into two bands in order to reduce the risk once his brother with his 400 men would turn against him. He had sent a humble penitential prayer to God, asking Him for protection and guidance. He had sent gifts toward Esau in order to appease him. When he had sent his complete household over the brook, he found himself alone as the last still to pass the brook. Then the man came to wrestle with him. The struggle lasted till dawn. When the man saw he couldn't overcome Jacob, he touched his thigh which caused Jacob to become limp. Then the man asked Jacob to let go of him 'for the day breaks'. But Jacob wants the man to bless him. Then the man asks for his name. At Jacob's answer the man says: 'Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with god and with men, and hast prevailed'. Asked for his name, the man answers: 'Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name?'At last the man blesses Jacob.

 

Who was this man? Was it God? Would God suddenly start wrestling with his own? Would God act under the cover of darkness? Would God recoil from making Himself known? Would God be overcome in a fight by his own small creature? Would God slay his creature on the hip with lameness? Jacob was firmly on the road of obedience. Why would God suddenly come against him? Jews believe it was 'the angel of Esau', the brother that totally went his own way and is attached to the devil. We strongly believe this was the devil. The devil saw a tightening of the bond between God and his elected man. That would greatly thwart his possibilities of taking again hold of the earth, as he had done before the flood. This was Jacob's 'Eva-moment'. Remember: 'For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil'. He can appear as a snake. He can appear as a man. 'Being as gods - knowing'. That is also in the name 'Israel' - 'as a prince hast thou power with god and with man' - Being as gods, having power. But God takes that which is the outcome of mans failure and through all of Israel's history He calls Himself 'God of Israel' on too many occasions to give all references here. But after the coming of Messiah, the name 'God of Israel' fades away. In the whole of the New Testament is named only twice.

 

Eva was tempted to break through the limits of her own knowledge. Instead the knowledge of man was broken. The contact with the source of all knowledge - God - faded away.  Jacob was tempted to break through the limits of his own power. Instead he was crippled and so was the future of his people. And all of this is in the name 'Israel', a name that is given, not by God, but by the devil. Like Eva, Jacob had to have fled - not willing to have anything to do with this occult being of whom he didn't know the identity. And yet - he entered into a fight with him and afterwards even asked this obscure person to bless him. And the worst of all is that the devil did actually bless him. What kind of a blessing that was, we see in the ongoing history of Israel - a history of death and destruction until this very day. That is why the name 'Israel' is completely absent from THE book on the restoration of God's people, the book of Zechariah. That book speaks about Jerusalem, about Judah and about Zion but nowhere about Israel. We believe the name Israel has had its longest life and won't be mentioned again in the very near future. In sight of man's conscience, the name Israel is already long overdue.

 

The essence of it, is Israel's rejection of their Christ. Instead of Him, they chose the Roman emperor: 'We have no king but Caesar', were their last words in front of Pilate. It is therefore the empire that time and again got the opportunity to siege Jerusalem and destroy it. This will continue until the 42-months Endtime has passed: 'But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.' The reason for the treading under foot of Jerusalem can be found in the same chapter 11 of Revelation: 'And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.' What started with the crucifixion will go on in Jerusalem until the return of the Lord: the killing of the holy people of God, while displaying the most immoral of behavior. Instead of a warrior for God, the Israel of the Entime will have turned into a warrior against God, i.e. a warrior for the god of this age, satan. That is why Revelation 13 depicts this modern state of Israel as  a beast, 'And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.' On these pages on Israel we hope to show that the present state of Israel is not fulfilling the delightful promises that were made long ago, but the scaring and incomprehensible prophecies of the most tyrannical and diabolical of powers conceivable.

 

Between the chapters 11 and 13, which shows the enemies of God within the state of Israel, we see the other side of God's people in Revelation 12. Chapter 12 shows us those of God's people that chose for God and that want to serve Him and cannot but testify of Him. They are representative of the people that brought forth the Messiah, the Redeemer of mankind. Therefore they are pictured as a woman that was pregnant - brought forth the Child that would rule the earth - the woman that was persecuted by the dragon and his empire once her Child was born and caught up to God and his throne.