Whose Land is it Anyway? (Part 2)
The dual claim to the land and the eternal presence of the Jews
The first post in this series was an argument for the Jew’s right to the land of Israel based on their ancient nation-state status stretching back over 3,500 years.
This is only one aspect of the Jews right to the land. There is a second, more compelling claim, which is the supernatural revelation of God to Abraham and his descendants that He was giving the land to them.
Finally, there is a third piece of evidence of God’s hand is still on the Jews and that is their miraculous survival as a people over their 4,000 year history, despite repeated attempts by the nations to stamp them out.
When God called Abraham
The Jew’s claim of ownership of the land is bound together with the calling of the Jews as God’s people. If the supernatural claim on the land for the Jews is void today, then so would be the call of the Jews as God’s people, because they are bound tightly together. Yet that is the claim that some make. The belief is that the Body of Christ, believing Christians throughout history, has replaced Israel and the Jews, a belief known as supersessionism.
If supersessionism is correct, then what do we do with God’s repeated assertion to Abraham that His call to Abraham and his descendants and His giving of the land was “forever”?
Genesis 12 gives the call of God to Abraham (at this point still called Abram):
Then the LORD said to Abram, “Leave your country, your kindred, and your father’s household, and go to the land I will show you. 2 I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you; and all the families of the earth will be blessed through you.”—Genesis 12:1-3
In Genesis 13 God tells Abraham:
After Lot had departed, the LORD said to Abram, “Now lift up your eyes from the place where you are
and look to the north and south and east and west, 15 for all the land that you see, I will give to you and your offspring forever.—Genesis 13:14-15
God doubles down on the promise that the land belongs to the descendants of Abraham, the Jews, in Genesis 17, telling Abraham he will be the father of nations, and that his covenant with Abraham, and the land are everlasting:
I will make you exceedingly fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will descend from you. 7 I will establish My covenant as an everlasting covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. 8 And to you and your descendants I will give the land where you are residing—all the land of Canaan—as an eternal possession; and I will be their God.”—Genesis 17:6-8
But after Christ, whom the Jews rejected, has the Church become the new Israel?
Did the Jews forfeit the calling of God, and with that, claim to the land, when they rejected Christ and had Him crucified? The answer to that comes in two parts. First, the Apostle Paul deals at length with this very question in the book of Romans. Second, example after example is presented in scripture of God using flawed, faithless, failing people to carry out His work. That is the essence of the Gospel message: that in our own strength we are nothing, but God is everything.
First, Paul’s teaching in Romans.
Is the call of God revocable?
Paul mentions very briefly in chapter three of Romans the question of the Jews unfaithfulness, when he describes the advantages the Jews had and says:
…To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means! Let God be true though everyone were a liar…”—Romans 3:2b-4c
But the question of whether the calling of the Jews still stands is not his main objective this early in the book. He takes up the question in depth in chapters nine through eleven. It is a lengthy passage, so I will treat it in sections by summarizing.
In chapter nine of Romans, Paul builds on his comment in chapter three that the fulfillment of God’s plan through Israel is not daunted by Israel’s unfaithfulness. In explaining that, he gets to the very heart of the Gospel message itself: that God’s plan of salvation is carried out regardless of man’s actions. Paul cites Jacob and Esau and how God predetermined which He would use to further His plan while they were both still in the womb! He chose to work through Jacob and the record of Jacob’s life is very checkered. The man was a conniving scoundrel. Yet, God chose Jacob to carry out His plan.
Paul’s point is clear: God will see His plan to completion in spite of man’s faithlessness and in fact more glory is given to God because His sovereignty turns man’s failures into God’s triumph.
Additionally, Paul explains that God’s plan through Israel was the salvation of the world, the Gentiles, not just the Jews. The calling of the Jews for God’s purposes was grander than they could grasp. This is what was meant by the promise to Abraham that “through you, all people of the earth will be blessed.” Paul explains that it is the believing people of faith, Jew and Gentile, who are the “children of Abraham” through the covenant of God.
Gentiles were brought under the redeeming promise of Christ through the Jews, not in place of them.
Chapter eleven is where Paul nails down the durability of the Abrahamic Covenant and how its complete fulfillment is in Christ. He emphatically states that God has not rejected His people Israel:
I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! For I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. 2God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel? 3“Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.” 4But what is God’s reply to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” 5So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. 6But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.—Romans 11:1-6
Paul then uses the metaphor of an olive tree, saying that Israel is the original tree and that we, the Gentiles were grafted in. He states that the original tree supports us, the grafted-in branches, not the other way around and warns about having arrogance against the Jews
do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you (Gentiles) who support the root (Israel-the Jews), but the root that supports you.—Romans 11:18
Paul then states emphatically that Israel will be saved “when the fulness of the Gentiles has come in”, that is when the unfolding of God’s plan is complete for the Gentiles and God turns back to the Jews to bring them fully into the Kingdom of Christ, “and in this way all of Israel will be saved.”
Finally, Paul puts to rest any doubt that Israel is still the called people of God when he says:
As regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. 29 For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.—Romans 11:28-29
This is in keeping with how God worked with the prominent figures throughout Bible history. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Peter, Paul and on and on. One after another were weak, fallible and fell in some way, yet God did not reject them. Even Peter, who flatly denied knowing the Lord Jesus at His trial, Christ restored and used to shepherd the fledgling church.
The supernatural preservation of the Jews throughout history
Finally, if you need further proof that God has continued to have His hand on the Jews, merely survey the countless…literally countless times that Jews have been targeted for persecution, massacre and genocide throughout their history, especially after the Romans expelled them from their homeland in the period 70 A.D.-135 A.D
Yet they still survive today when they could have been wiped out many times over.
It was my intention to give a short history of the persecution of the Jews up and through the present time. But that would be overwhelmingly lengthy.
The Jewish Diaspora, the homelessness of the Jewish people, persisted from the Roman expulsion until 1948. Some Jews lived in their homeland off and on throughout those millennia, but they were constantly hounded, killed and expelled from there and everywhere else they tried to settle down in the world. The Holy Land has been occupied by one empire after another since the Romans…the Byzantines, the early Muslims, the Ottomans, the British…and only the British made the Jews welcome back in their homeland in the last century and were instrumental in restoring the nationhood of Israel.
Most terrible of all, the Christian church committed some of the most horrific atrocities against Jews in the Middle Ages: all across the Middle East and Europe, beating them in the streets, torturing them, burning them at the stake, killing whole Jewish communities, burning down their homes and synagogues.
It was in the Middle Ages that some of the most horrific persecutions of the Jews were fomented by two false allegations: “Blood Libel”, the accusation that Jews kidnaped and killed Christians to use their blood in dark, secret rituals; and “Host Desecration”, the false accusation that Jews stole sacramental host elements from churches and abused them in their own rituals. These two demonic lies were used to massacre Jews.
Throughout history the Jews have been blamed for economic problems, pandemics, climate catastrophes and every other misfortune imaginable. As Lebanese Jewish writer Gad Saad says:
All calamities in the Middle East are ultimately due to the diabolical Jews. It rained today. Blame the Jews. The economy is weak. Blame the Jews. Tourism is down. Blame the Jews. You contracted a stomach bug. Blame the Jews. The Christians and Muslims in Lebanon are not getting along. You guessed it, blame the Jews.—Gad Saad, The Parasitic Mind
Yet through it all, despite repeated attempts to stamp them out, the Jews have survived as a people and…miracle of miracles…been restored to their rightful homeland.
The Catholic writer Walker Percy made the survival of the Jews through history a recurring theme, noting that of the tribes living in the land of the Canaanites alongside the Jews 4,000 years ago, only the Jews still survive today:
Where are the Hittites? Why does no one find it remarkable that in most world cities today there are Jews but not one single Hittite, even though the Hittites had a great flourishing civilization while the Jews nearby were a weak and obscure people? When one meets a Jew in New York or New Orleans or Paris or Melbourne, it is remarkable that no one considers the event remarkable. What are they doing here? But it is even more remarkable to wonder, if there are Jews here, why are there not Hittites here? Where are the Hittites? Show me one Hittite in New York City.—from “Messages in a Bottle” by Walker Percy
Mark Twain was equally astonished at the survival of the Jews while empires have risen and fallen for millennia, saying of the Jew:
He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?[4]—from the essay “Concerning the Jews” by Mark Twain
It is no secret. It is the preservation by the hand of God
The Jews are still called of God, He still has His hand on them for the eternal covenant He made with them, the Land of Israel still belongs to them and in the Last Days, when “the time of the Gentiles has come in” God will return the locus of His plan back to the original Chosen People, the Jews and as Paul declares, “Israel will be saved.”