Musings on Israel
Lately I've been listening to both Christian and non-Christian friends who have had things to say about either the nation of Israel or in general, the Jewish people. Their understanding of what is going on disappoints me. The folks at the church I belong to have a handle on it, but the more that I talk with people outside of that setting the more I am curious about how they arrive at their particular perspectives on what Israel is, and about what significance it has, or the role it plays in Biblical prophecy. I chat online with folks too, both in live chat and on chat boards, and the opinions vary wildly.
Setting the prophetic perspectives aside, Israel is a tiny country, just over eight-thousand square miles in size, maybe just a little smaller than the state of New Jersey, and their prospects do not look good from a worldly standpoint. With a population of under six-million people, it is dwarfed by the 322 odd million Arab peoples that surround her. Those 22 Arab nations, which cover lands over a five-million square mile area, share a bond, in that they all wish to see the Jews wiped out, erased from the face of the earth. If that seems far-fetched to anyone, there are still Jews walking around with concentration camp tattoos to remind us that more than Israel's current population were targeted and slaughtered by the Nazis in WWII. Just a couple of days ago, it was reported that (a shocked) Paul McCartney was warned that if he went ahead and performed in Tel Aviv on September 25th, that he would be targeted for terror, threatened by Muslim extremists.
Israel is not even getting much support from its own current leadership. Ehud Olmert said just yesterday, "The notion of a Greater Israel no longer exists, and anyone who still believes in it is deluding themselves." It is reported now that the Prime Minister has discussed transferring 98.1 percent of the West Bank to the Palestinians. When will people learn that appeasement does not work when violent and petty dictators are the target for appeasement? That sort of policy didn't work in WWII with Hitler. It only emboldened him to press his insane agenda even harder. It achieves the same result with Israel's enemies, and all they will only continue to want will be more and more submissive responses from the Israeli government until Israel is no more.
The rest of the world seems to be blindly trying to force Israel's hand as well.
International political and religious organizations, from the United Nations to the Vatican are all in favor of Israel turning over significant portions of its lands to the Arabs. They are in favor of Israel giving up half of its capital city over to the Arabs. Even the United States and Russia are in agreement that there should be a Palestinian state in what is now Israel. This kind of short-sightedness baffles me. Such a state would simply become a strategically advantageous base of operations for the complete take-over of Israel.
International political and religious organizations, from the United Nations to the Vatican are all in favor of Israel turning over significant portions of its lands to the Arabs. They are in favor of Israel giving up half of its capital city over to the Arabs. Even the United States and Russia are in agreement that there should be a Palestinian state in what is now Israel. This kind of short-sightedness baffles me. Such a state would simply become a strategically advantageous base of operations for the complete take-over of Israel.
This type of thinking comes at what I see as a bad time for Israel. She is wearing down a bit. Her Prime Minister's attitudes bear that out. He has apparently lost whatever Zionist vision he may ever have had. Sixty years of constant hostilities have also tired the citizenry of Israel out. It isn't easy for dad's and moms to have to take shifts aboard school buses while carrying Uzis and M-16s, and Israel's non-Arab neighbor, Iran waits in the wings, led by a president who has all but announced that as soon as his country is nuke capable, he will lob bombs on them. That has to be wearing, plus there are diplomatic threats against Israel almost every day.
Bringing prophetic perspectives back into the discussion, there are Christians cannot see the significance of Israel in Biblical prophecy. Part of that comes from the fact that certain mainstream denominations have had historic missions in that geographical vicinity for centuries now, and the current nation of Israel has never played well for them there. Sad, but true. Replacement theology has shifted Israel from its factual place in biblical prophecy, to a sort of insignificant political sideline position as an accident of history. Such theology pretends to understand Israel as something other than what it is. Unfortunately, because the prophecies about Israel become spiritualized in order to explain them away, one can't tell the players without a program.
It isn't that Israel is the "key" to prophetic revelation, but that it is a component. As with the rest of Biblical prophecy, one cannot pick and choose. Take the virgin birth of Jesus for example. Some believers for some reason can't accept it. So they spiritualize the passages in the Bible that refer to it, or ignore it altogether. The problem with that is that there is a cascading effect, which causes problems with one prophecy to the next. The Bible's prophecies are either one-hundred percent accurate, or they are worth nothing.
I realize that the subject of whether or not God's promises to Israel were unconditional or not will come up, but that really doesn't hold water. There are fulfilled prophecies in the Bible, and there are unfulfilled prophecies in the Bible, and a number of unfulfilled prophecies have to do with Israel, and with her eventual restoration to God through Jesus Christ. It is clear presently, from today's headlines that that has not happened, and through the Bible's prophecies, that it will.
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