One of the recurring features of popular evangelical eschatology is the almost unconditional support for the nation of Israel based on what is claimed to be Biblical prophecy. The argument goes something like this; since the Jews are God’s chosen people, and God gave the land of Israel back to modern day Jews in 1949, therefore, Christians are morally required to support the nation state of Israel, regardless…  Many Christians see the re-establishment of the nation of Israel in 1949 to be some sort of “prophetic” event signaling the beginning of the end times.  This led some writers in the seventies to predict that the Second Coming MUST happen sometime BEFORE 1988 (”88 Reasons the Rapture Will Happen in 88″) since that would be “one generation” (40 years) after Israel had been gathered out of exile.

This assumption about the prophetic significance of the modern nation state of Israel and its DIVINE claim to the current lands is held by so many that to even question it risks being accused of being either un-Biblical or anti-Semitic.  Thus, before we go any further in this discussion, let us be clear; in no way does the discussion which follows condone, support or encourage ANY form of anti-Semitism. The author does not subscribe in any way to any conspiracy theory that sees the Jews as being behind most (or any) of the world’s problems. We unreservedly affirm that Jews ought to have the same rights as any other people to live their lives and practice their beliefs without interference from oppressive governments or racist neighbors. Finally, clearly Israel has a right to exist in security and that as an American ally the United States has made a covenant that morally binds us to fulfill our obligations to defend them against unwarrented agression.

However, all the above is DIFFERENT from the issue of whether the modern nation state of Israel has any DIVINE claims to the land they presently possess or if the establishment of that state has any relevance to Biblical prophecy. The question that is seldom raised is whether the modern nation state of Israel is special to God (in a way that other national entities are not) and therefore must be protected and defended.

Eschatology is that branch of theology dealing with the “end of time.” There are several different positions held by sincere believers, the pre-millennial, the post-millennial and the a-millennial. There are two different forms of pre-millennialism, historic and dispensational. The dispensational pre-millennial position appears to be the most prevalent understanding today in broad evangelical churches of how God intends to wrap up things in history. In this view, God has two people in history, Israel and the church. It is stated that when Israel rejected Jesus as the Messiah, He essentially  put them on a back burner until the end of time while he worked in and through His other people, the Church. However, as the end of time approaches, it is asserted that He will “rapture” the Church OUT of history, making Israel His earthly people again, putting them and the world through seven years of terrible tribulation.  Just when it appears that Israel (now largely converted to faith in Christ) is about to be obliterated, Jesus returns to destroy the Antichrist and his legions, establishing an earthly kingdom based in Jerusalem from which He then rules the world for a thousand years.

Now, this essay is NOT intended to be a critique of dispensational pre-millennialism or an advocate of some other eschatological system. Here, we are simply concerned with one basic issue;  whether or not the modern nation state of Israel has any claim to God’s special blessing or any relevance to Biblical prophecy. And our answer is, “no.” Regardless of which eschatological view one believes to be the most faithful to Scripture, we will argue that Christians who affirm some special pleading for the modern nation state of Israel have not dealt adequately with the Biblical texts.

Our case can be summarized as follows;

• 1. The promises of the Land to ethnic Israel (the Jews) are conditional based upon obedience to the Divine covenant.
• 2. The Modern State of Israel does meet the conditions of that covenant
• 3. Therefore, the present existence of a nation called “Israel” and populated by Jews does not require unconditional support from Christians.

First, let us ask a basic question; do modern day Jews have a Biblical right to the land of Israel? Now that is quite different from whether or not Israel has a right to exist as a nation. Modern Israel came into being as a result of international treaties.  After the defeat of the Ottoman, Turkish Empire in World War 1, most of the modern nation states of the Mideast were carved out of its former provinces by the League of Nations. Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt (etc.) were territories that the Ottoman Empire had conquered in previous wars (mostly from other Islamic nations who had in turn conquered them from Christians). After the World War I, Western Jews had been promised that a portion of this land would be reserved for a Jewish state. This had been the culmination of the Zionist movement which had been working for a national homeland for Jewish people since the late 19^th century.

After World War II, Britain finally turned over portions of what was then called Palestine to Jewish groups and the nation of Israel was born. Immediately after British withdrawal, the new state was attacked by various Arab nations intending on “driving them into the sea.” Israel won that war and then fought subsequent ones in 1954, 1967 and 1972 against her Arab neighbors: in the process conquering other territories such as the Golan Heights and the West Bank not included in the original United Nations mandate.

Now, in one sense, the reconstitution of the state of Israel can be regarded as one of the most remarkable events in history. The Jews lost their homeland in the Roman-Jewish war of 67-70 AD when Jerusalem was destroyed and most of the population deported as slaves throughout the Empire. The Bar Kobar Rebellion in the early second century essentially finished the job. So, for a people to retain their language, religion and culture while being dispersed throughout the known world is indeed, something amazing. For them then to RETURN to their ancestral homelands and build a new nation, seems, well, miraculous!

However, a strong argument can be made that part of the motivation for the creation of a home-land for the Jews in the Middle-East came from SOME Christian activists who had adopted some form of dispensational pre-millennialism.  In other words, the Zionist movement was aided by Christians who believed it was necessary that the nation of Israel be re-established for the next phase of what they believed to be Biblical prophecy. Thus, in one sense, the creation of modern Israel was a self-fulfilling prophecy. In effect, some Christians, misreading Matthew 24 and other passages, concluded that the nation of Israel HAD to be established, a new Temple rebuilt and for the new nation then to undergo persecution and tribulation BEFORE Jesus could return. Thus, they endorsed and actively supported the re-establishment of Israel as a nation so that history could unfold, as their preconceived theological paradigm required.  Added to this was Western guilt over the holocaust and the motivation was found to give European Jews especially a home-land of their own. Thus, perhaps it is not quite so miraculous after all; if people believe something to be a “prophecy” and then work to bring that prophecy to fulfillment, maybe it is not really supernatural? The issue of course, is whether or not God actually promised that He would first disperse and then return the Jews to the Promised Land and if the event in 1949 was a fulfillment of that prophecy.

Many people have been conquered by other nations, dispersed throughout their empires and other peoples taken possession of their lands. Every nation on earth has seen waves of conquerors, settlers and immigrants invading their traditional homes. Thus, it must be asked, what gives Jews any more right to return to the land of Israel that they LOST to conquerors two thousand years ago, than any other group that might have settled on it since then?

The usual answer is that since God Himself gave the land of Israel to the Jews, then they, unlike any other people group in the world, have a divine title to that land. After all, God did not specifically promise in His Word that the Scots should have Scotland, or the Britons, Angles and Saxons have a divine right to England, or the Gauls to France or the Germans to Germany. However, God DID promise the land of Israel to the Jews and therefore they literally have a divine right to live there-right? Most Christians implicitly argue this way; God gave this land to the Jews and therefore they have a divine right to reclaim it.

However, this assumption fails to deal with the fundamental fact that God’s promise of the Land of Israel to the Jews was ALWAYS conditional to their faithfulness to the covenant! Jews, just because they are Jews do NOT have a divine right to the land of Israel apart from the conditions that God Himself set. Perhaps this is the reason why Christians would rather not think through this issue; the Jews have suffered terribly during the past twenty-five hundred years; first by the Assyrians, then the Babylonians, then the Greeks, until dispossed by the Romans. After that, they suffered oppression and  perseuction under various “Christian” princes until finally, the Nazis tried to exterminate them. Even mentioning the fact that the Jewish claim to the “Holy Land” is conditional may seem to be harsh, judgmental and adding even more burdens to a people who have already suffered so horribly.

Yet to be faithful to God’s revelation in Scripture, Christians MUST acknowledge that Israel’s right to live in the Land is conditional. These conditions are clearly stated in Deuteronomy 28. Here Moses reminds the people, shortly before entering the land to begin the conquest, that their right to live in the Land was dependant upon their faithful obedience to God. Furthermore, He specifically warns them that if they refuse to obey His covenant that He will REMOVE them from the land (Deut 28:63ff).

“And it shall come about that as the Lord delighted over you to prosper you and multiply you, so the Lord will delight over you to make you perish and destroy you; and you shall be torn from the land where you are entering to possess it. Moreover, the Lord will scatter you among all the peoples, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth…”

The list of trials and travails that Israel will suffer in Deuteronomy 28 if they break God’s covenant makes gruesome reading; yet a reasonable knowledge of history demonstrates that EVERY SINGLE CURSE God predicted there eventually happened to the Jews. In fact, these prophecies are so precise and so accurate that many secular scholars insist that they MUST have been written after the fact!

Nevertheless, Deuteronomy, written before 1200 BC has been literally fulfilled on at least three distinct occasions in Israel’s history. In 721 BC, God judged the 10 Northern Tribes for apostasy and idolatry  by allowing the Assyrians to conquer and then depose them from the land, replacing them with the people who would later become the Samaritans. Please note that these 10 Northern tribes for all intents and purposes have ceased to exist. Despite those who want to claim that they eventually became the English (a heretical position called British Israelitism), these people, all descended from Abraham and circumcised, are gone! In 586 BC, God judged the remaining two tribes of Judah (which is why today we call them “Jews”) and Benjamin by the Babylonians, removing them from the land for 70 years. Then, because they repented, God brought them back to the land under Ezra and Nehemiah. The Babylonian Exile was supposed to be a final warning of what God would do if the people violated the covenant.

With the return from Babylon, Biblical history is silent for the next four hundred years which saw Israel being conquered by the Greeks and then later on, the Romans. It was during the Roman occupation that Israel was dispossessed from the land for the third time. Matthew 24 (for context, please carefully note Matthew 23:34-24:3) is VERY clear that the end of Israel’s possession of the land, the destruction of the Temple and the Diaspora in 70 AD was God’s judgment on the nation for rejecting Jesus as the promised Messiah (Matt 23:36-38). Thus the land was taken away from the Jews because of their lack of faith.

Now just because God warned of tribulation, adversity or persecution for the Jews does not in ANY way endorse or support Christians (or anyone else) treating them unjustly or unlawfully (a point which seems to have escaped certain “Christian” princes in the past). The curses of Deuteronomy 28 are something in the providence of God, NOT something Christians should try to bring about. The Moral Law of God requires us to treat ALL men with justice and equity (Gal 6:10). It is a sad commentary on our times that such a caveat as the one given above needs to be explicitly stated; but some will object to acknowledging the application of the curses of Deuteronomy 28 because they fear they will be misused to justify persecution or oppression of the Jews. However, we cannot let the fear of what some wicked men MIGHT do, to blind us to what God said HE would do.

Either there is a sovereign God who governs all of history according to His divine will, or we are the simply the victims of random events. As distasteful as some may find it, SOMETHING brought about the destruction of Israel, the dispersion of its people and the end of the Temple and the sacrificial system. If Christians are willing to face certain hard truths, they can find an explanation in Deuteronomy 28 (and many other passages); King Jesus, judging the nations with His rod of iron found Israel wanting. And modern Christians in America, England, France, Germany, etc., may also want to consider the implications; if God judged Israel so severely, a people for whom He had a special love, how much MORE harshly will He judge US if we do not repent of our national sins (cf. Rms 11:19-21)?

Granted, orthodox Christian theology has ALWAYS seen a time of great national revival for ethnic Israel (Romans 9-11) wherein, at the end of time, Israel WILL acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah and will receive great blessings, which in turn will greatly bless the entire world (cf. Rms 11:12). However, our point here is that the Jewish claim to the land of Israel was ALWAYS dependant upon their repentance and covenant faithfulness.

Thus, according to Deuteronomy 28, for modern Jews to have a divine claim on the land of Israel would require also acknowledging that the need for repentance of the sins that lost them the land in the first place. From a Christian perspective of course, we would see this as requiring them to acknowledge Jesus as the promised Messiah. Romans 11 especially, predicts just such a future awakening among the Jews. Thus orthodox Christian theology MAY see a national restoration of the Land to the Jews IF they repent of refusing Jesus as their Lord.

Yet, it is no secret that the modern nation state of Israel is a secular humanist nation. Granted, there are many sincerely religious Jews living in modern day Israel; yet even the ultra-orthodox ones insist that only the Messiah has the right to establish Israel as a nation (which is why the modern nation is sometimes called “Ersatz-Israel” or “Pseudo” literally “inferior replacement” -Israel”-a pun on “Eretz Israel” which means “land of Israel”). Modern day Israel even oppresses Christians, to some extent, by denying “Messianic Jews” the right of return. You can be a atheist Jew and return to Israel, you can be a religious Jew and return to Israel, but you cannot be a CHRISTIAN Jew and return to Israel!

Now, some may argue that our view above is being too “Christo-centric” and that if Jews simply practice their religion sincerely, this would be all that is necessary to obtain God’s renewed blessing. However, it is not being anti-Semitic to acknowledge that most Jews are more Jewish in culture, rather than religion. In other words, they value their customs, traditions, dietary regulations, etc., BECAUSE it connects them with their past and gives them a cultural identity; and there is certainly nothing inherently wrong with that. Not for a moment are we casting any aspersions on the sincerity of individual Jews nor criticizing their lack of religious beliefs. However, for the purposes of claiming a divine right to the Land which must be predicated on individual and national repentance and covenantal obedience, clearly, modern day Israel does not qualify. They are for the most part, a secular humanist society with all that implies.

And, there is an even bigger problem; even if ALL of modern day Israel were sincerely religious, it would STILL not qualify as true repentance so that they could lawfully reclaim the land. Even Christian leaders, who SHOULD know better, confuse the beliefs and practices of modern Judaism with ancient Hebrew religion. However, no matter how sincere the modern Jew may be in his faith, what he practices is NOT what God required in the Old Testament.

For example, at the center of Old Testament Hebrew religion, going back to Able, Noah and Abraham, was the necessity of a blood sacrifice. The laws governing the tabernacle (later applied to the Temple) encoded these required rituals (rituals which Christians believe were typological of Christ). Hebrew religion DEMANDS animal sacrifices to atone for sins, both individually as needed and at least once annually for the entire nation (”Yom Kippur” or “Day of Atonement”). Yet, no Jew has been able to offer a sacrifice in over two thousand years since the temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.

Without the Temple where the REQUIRED sacrifices could take place, Old Testament Hebrew religion underwent a dramatic transformation into modern Judaism; the synagogue, not the temple is the center of religious Judaism. Many Christians assume that modern day Judaism is simply a continuation of Old Testament Hebrew religion. However in reality, both Christianity and Judaism ought to be considered as outgrowths of Old Testament religion. Christianity took the sacrificial system and adapted it by the Lord Jesus’ command, into the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Modern day Judaism however had to set it aside altogether.

In fact, the religion practiced by the most religious Jews today ought to be called “Rabbinic Judaism” because the heart of their faith is the teachings of the rabbis contained in the Talmud and Mishna Torah. Essentially, this faith believes that along with the written Law, God also established a tradition of oral commentary passed down by the rabbis. This oral commentary is in effect, “higher” or more authoritative than the actual Old Testament. Modern day religious Judaism focuses on studying, discussing and debating this oral tradition. The emphasis then is on the traditions of the elders. If this sounds familiar, it should; Judaism has its roots in the religion of the Pharisees, the people with whom the Lord Jesus had the most controversy during His earthly ministry (e.g., Matt 5:43 wherein Jesus contrasts the teaching of the rabbis with His own divine authority). Hence, even the sincere, well-meaning Jew who “religiously” practices Judaism is in fact being faithful to a religious system that the Lord Jesus condemned! This hardly qualifies as repentance necessary for national restoration!

This creates an insolvable dilemma for Christians defending the modern Jewish right to the land. Possession of the land is conditioned on obedience to the covenant. Most modern day Israelis are secular and non religious; hardly qualifying as convenantly faithful. Yet even the most “religious” Jews fail to practice the heart of true Hebrew religion (the sacrificial system) and emulate the Pharisees! Therefore neither secular nor religious Jews qualify as “repentant” and therefore they can have no divine claim to the land.

Now, again, we are not saying that Jews do not have a right to practice whatever religious beliefs they want, in any way they want. Remember, our main purpose here is NOT to criticize the Jews, but rather analyze a widespread assumption amongst Christians - that Jews have a divine, unconditional right to the land of Israel. However, basic Biblical theology insists that the divine claim on the land can only be made when the Jews repent of the sins that lost them the land in the first place. However, such repentance has NEVER occurred, and even the ones who are faithful and sincere in their religious beliefs (as opposed to the majority who simply embrace some of the cultural manifestations of being Jewish) have adopted a system that was judged deficient by the Lord Jesus. Therefore, they can have NO divine claim to the land, and there can be no prophetic significance to the reestablishment of the modern nation of Israel.

Some have argued that we MUST protect Israel because the present nation state, though secular, is STILL Israel and God will bless those who bless His chosen people. Leaving aside for a moment the theological issue of whether the Church (composed of both Jew and Gentile) is in fact the “new” Israel, there is a distinction between treating people humanely and justly, and whether we are bound to support a particular nation, REGARDLESS of how it acts in the world. If the Jews have a right to the Land ONLY after they repent, then therefore the people living in modern day Israel are only there on God’s sufferance. Thus, their national policies, actions, wars, etc., must be judged by the same standard that every other nation’s actions must be judged - the impartial, unchanging moral law of God. When Israel does what is right as a nation, they ought to be commended, defended and supported. When they break the Law of God, they should be condemned.

Some support Israel because they believe that we must be living in the last days and if anything happens to Israel it would somehow mess up God’s prophetic time clock. Leaving aside the issue of limited men interfering with the providential acts of a sovereign God, just consider this; if some horrible tragedy happened (say a nuclear war with Iran) and the entire population of Israel were destroyed, God COULD repopulate the land with Jews overnight because until fairly recently, there were more Jews living outside of Israel than within it! More Christians ought to meditate on Psalm 2 wherein God and His Anointed LAUGH at all the foolish conspiracies of wicked men. His will, WILL be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. If the nation of Israel needs to be established to fulfill Biblical prophecy, there is NOTHING in Scripture that requires the CURRENT nation of Israel to be THE nation of Israel God will work with. It is only the preconceived belief that we ARE living in the last days that sees the modern Israeli state to be so important. But those who assert this are assuming what needs to be proved (i.e., are we in fact living in the “last days?”).

Do you see the problem here? Christians who already BELIEVED we were living in the “last days” asserted that the nation of Israel needed to be reestablished before the Lord could return. They then worked with Zionists and International groups to create a Jewish state in the Mid-East. When successful, they then cry “See, we were right, we ARE in the last days because Israel is now a nation!” Yet if in fact the nation of Israel is to be reestablished before the Lord’s return, what is to say that THIS “incarnation” of Israel is the one that God intends to use? Maybe the current nation will cease to exist and God intends to bring OTHER Jews back at some OTHER time in the future?

The point of this essay has not been to in any way deny the right of the modern nation-state of Israel to its peace and security. Rather, it has been our purpose to demonstrate that American Christians in particular have allowed a sub-Biblical theological blinder to influence our understanding of both God’s Holy Word as well as its application in the real world. As long as this discussion was simply an “in-house” debate, we could disagree amongst ourselves with no harm, no foul. However, now Christians are finding themselves in greater and greater positions of influence in the world. We really DO have the opportunity to influence national policy (on some level). Thus, before we speak to the world, “Thus sayeth the Lord” we had better make sure that WE are not being false prophets, claiming things that God never actually said.

While it is a tangent, perhaps part the problem goes back to the way that evangelicals have done Bible study now for more than a century. Too many of us have taken a “proof-text” approach to Scripture wherein we tie unrelated passages together because it fits our preconceived theological constructs. This has led many sincere men to be misled. Rather than allow the clear passages of Scripture to interpret the more complex, some Christians have built entire eschatological systems from complicated, difficult, prophetic passages that have stumped some of the greatest minds in Christian history. And in the process, somehow, all the books, prophecy conferences and television specials on the “end times” have missed that the modern state of Israel has NO divine rights to ANY land in the Mideast according to the conditions under which God GAVE them their land originally (Deuteronomy 28) and dispossessed them from it in 70 AD.

Personally speaking, I have always had a great deal of sympathy for the tiny nation of Israel surrounded by vicious enemies, taking on all comers and winning war after war. Furthermore, modern Israel IS a western style democracy as opposed to the Islamic dictatorships of most other middle-eastern nations and therefore deserves if nothing else our moral support. We have made a covenant with Israel and in so far as they keep their end of the treaty, we are  accountable before God to support our ally. Yet, at the same time, if they commit an atrocity (such as murdering US military forces) we should not fear to hold them accountable.

An argument can even be made that by conquest, Israel has obtained land in excess of the original United Nations treaties and they have a right to keep it; much the same way that we gained land in our wars against the British, Spanish and Mexicans. Wars are fought, peace treaties are signed, and the loser usually pays with lost land. Every nation in the world has had its borders changed through wars. Hence, both the legality and the morality of that ownership must be established by international law as well as whether the reasons for the war are justifiable under God’s Law. Thus, whether Israel retains the West Bank, Golan Heights or Gaza strip or chooses to give or all of them up are matters of pragmatics, not prophecy.

Finally, Christians are often inconsistent in their support of Israel. If evangelical supporters of a divine right of Israel to her historic lands actually worked out the consequences of their view, than significant portions of the nations of Turkey, Lebanon, Syria Iraq and parts of Egypt could ALSO be claimed by Israel! God promised Abraham that all of the land from the Euphrates to the Nile would belong to his descendants (Gen 15:18)!

“On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram saying, ‘To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates; the Kenite, and the Kenizite and Kadmonite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Rephaim and the Amorie and the Canaanite and the Girgashite and the Jebusite.”

It does not take a geographer to look at the atlas in the back of his Bible and compare it with a map of the modern Mid-East. Clearly, the land promised to Abraham, greatly exceeds the current boundaries of the nation established by the United Nations. Therefore, if Israel has a divine right to the land BECAUSE God promised it to them, then logically, they have a divine right to ALL the land from the Euphrates (modern day Iraq) to the West bank of the Nile (Egypt) all the way to the borders of the Hittites (which extended down from modern day Turkey, through Lebanon and parts of Syria). Historically, because of lack of faith, Israel never conquered ALL the land that God had promised to her, even under the reigns of David and Solomon. But if modern day Christians insist that the present nation state of Israel has a divine right to the land they currently occupy, then logically such people should also be supporting a policy of aggressive expansionism so that Israel can possess ALL the land that God promised to Abraham!

Yet, most Christians who write or preach on these issues simply equate the modern nation state of Israel with God’s promises, never acknowledging that those promises were ALWAYS conditional on covenantal obedience; and that her United Nations established borders were always arbitrary. Worse yet they bind the consciences of other Christian to require unconditional support for Israel or risk God’s judgment.

The modern nation of Israel was a creation of international treaties and as such has a right to self-determination, freedom from foreign invasion and security from terrorism. I have a great deal of sympathy for a tiny nation forced to balance their own national security with the constant pressures of the rest of the world; a world whose economic and military support is vital to their own national survival.

Yet, God is a God of truth and only the pursuit of truth honors Him. Pious untruths, no matter how sincerely held, cannot lead to His blessing. The assumption that the modern day state of Israel is somehow related to Biblical prophecy is a position that cannot sustain scrutiny. What God has given He CAN take away. And what He has taken away, cannot be restored, unless sinful men meet His conditions.

“If my people who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray, and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from Heaven, forgive their sins and heal their lands.” 2 Chronicles 7:14