In an interview in Eternity magazine, author Hal Lindsey was asked, "If we had a president who was a Christian and who interpreted the Bible right down the line like The Late Great Planet Earth, how would his foreign policy be changed?" Lindsey's answer was, "Well, I think first he'd give all the support we could to Israel, because if you really believe the Bible, I think you realize that God is going to bless those who bless his people."
His statement undoubtedly reflects the sentiments of many evangelical Christians who believe that the modern state of Israel is the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. But in my judgment, a thorough study of exactly what the scriptures say demonstrates no support for the perspectives and political applications which Lindsey and many others advocate.
The first reference to Canaan (Palestine) as a promised land occurs in Genesis 12:7. When Abraham had arrived in Shechem, an ancient holy place in the heart of the land of Canaan, God informed him, "This is the country that I am going to give to your descendants." After allowing Lot to choose the fertile plain of the Jordan Valley for himself, Abraham was told to view the hill country where he was, in all directions. Then he was promised, "I am going to give you and your descendants all the land that you see, and it will be yours forever" (Genesis 13:15).
The Hebrew expression behind the translation "forever" is 'ad 'olam, "until long duration." The period of time covered by the term was relative to the horizon of the speaker. In other places it is used referring to the time of Moses, and the reign of David. With respect to the future, it can apply to the length of a person's life (Deuteronomy 15:17) or to the end of an age. The covenant and promises of God in the Old Testament were clearly understood to be valid for the foreseeable future, but there was no clear concept of how long that would be.
In Genesis 15:8, God made a covenant with Abraham in which he said, "I promise to give your descendants all this land from the border of Egypt to the Euphrates River." When Abraham was circumcised, as a sign of the covenant God repeated his promise: "I will give to you and to your descendants this land in which you are now a foreigner. The whole land of Canaan will belong to your descendants forever, and I will be their God" (Genesis 17:8).
When the Hebrews went to live in Egypt, the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham was delayed for an exceedingly long time--430 years, according to Exodus 12:40. But at the burning bush the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob appeared to Moses assuring him that he would deliver his people from Egypt and bring them to the fertile land of Canaan (Exodus 3:8,17).
The Conditional Covenant
Up to this point the promise of land seems to have been unconditional, but after the covenant between God and the Israelites at Mount Sinai, obedience became the prerequisite for a long occupation of Canaan: "You and your descendants are to have reverence for the Lord your God and obey all his laws that I am giving you, so that you may live in that land a long time" (Deuteronomy 6:2). When some of the Israelites rebelled against Moses because of difficulties in the wilderness, God informed him, "They will never enter the land which I promised to their ancestors."
After long, weary years in the wilderness and Transjordan, the new generation of Israelites arrived at the plains of Moab and prepared to fulfill the promise to Abraham. God instructed Moses to have them (1) drive out all the inhabitants of Canaan; (2) destroy all their idols and places of worship; (3) occupy the country; and (4) divide the land among the tribes (Numbers 33:50-54). Failure to comply with these directives would be disobedience, a breach of covenant, and therefore God would have to destroy his own people.
It is not clear that Joshua and the Israelites fully executed Moses' commands. In some passages it does appear that they were carried out to the uttermost (Joshua 10:40, 11:12-14, 12:9-24). But in other texts the conquest of Palestine seems neither rapid nor complete. God says to Joshua, "You are very old, but there is still much land to be taken" (Joshua 13:1). Judges 1:21-35 gives a list of the cities which the Israelites failed to conquer, stating again and again that the various tribes did not drive out the Canaanites and the Amorites, whose descendants still lived in the land. These descendants, together with an influx of Philistines, would continue to frustrate the hopes of the conquering Israelites.
The promise of the land came closer to realization during the reign of David. He conquered the Philistines, enslaved the Canaanite and Amorite remnants, nullified the threat of neighboring countries, and finally unified the northern and southern groups of Israelites. But David did not control Palestine completely. The city of Gezer belonged to the Pharaoh of Egypt.
The promise of land was literally fulfilled only during the reign of David's son Solomon. After Solomon completed the temple, the Lord appeared to him and warned, "If you will serve me in honesty and integrity, as your father David did, and if you obey my laws and do everything I have commanded you, I will keep the promise I made to your father David when I told him that Israel would always be ruled by his descendants. But if you and your descendants stop following me, disobey the laws and commands I have given you, and worship other gods, then I will remove my people Israel from the land that I have given them. I will also abandon this temple which I have consecrated as the place where I am to be worshiped" (1 Kings 9:4-7). Here, no less than at Sinai, the fulfillment of God's promises hinges on the obedience of his people.
Ironically, however, just as the promise of the land of Canaan was being fulfilled, Solomon entered into numerous treaty marriages which undercut the spirituality of Israel (1 Kings 7:8, 9:24, 11:2-8). Solomon's son, Rehoboam, was similarly heedless of the conditions of God's promise. As a result, the northern tribes formed their own kingdom of Israel under Jeroboam (1 Kings 12:1-20). Without doubt, the disobedience of David's dynasty led to the division of the promised land. Consequently, for centuries the promise to Abraham was lulled to a dream.
Israel in Exile
After the fall of the northern kingdom in 722-21 B.C., the prophets of the southern kingdom expressed the hope that someday all nations would find religious truth in the Jerusalem of a reunited Israel. But these Judean prophets saw that the moral condition of Jerusalem was so poor that judgment or repentance would have to occur before the dream could become a reality. Micah, the country prophet, considered Jerusalem sin city, predicting, "Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become a pile of ruins, and the temple hill will become a forest" (Micah 3:12).
Isaiah, the urbanite, was not ignorant of Jerusalem's sins either: "Your leaders are rebels and friends of thieves; they are always accepting gifts and bribes. They never defend orphans in court or listen when widows present their case" (Isaiah 2:23). Concerning the people, he commented, "Israel, your head is already covered with wounds, and your heart and mind are sick. From head to foot there is not a healthy spot on your body" (Isaiah 1:5-6). Yet Isaiah also announced to King Hezekiah, besieged by the Assyrians, that God would defend and protect Jerusalem because of the promise made to David (Isaiah 37:35).
When Judah itself was later overrun, the people naively believed that God would spare the city of Jerusalem because he was enthroned in the temple. But the prophet Jeremiah preached a sermon in the temple court in which he warned, "Stop believing those deceitful words, 'We are safe! This is the Lord's temple'.... Change the way you are living and stop doing the things you are doing. Be fair in your treatment of one another. Stop taking advantage of aliens, orphans, and widows" (Jeremiah 7:4-6). When the rulers and people refused to repent, God said through Jeremiah, "I am going to send for...my servant, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia...I am going to destroy this nation and its neighbors and leave them in ruins forever, a terrible and shocking sight" (Jeremiah 25:9).
Following the first captivity in 598 B.C., the exiles had a difficult adjustment. They wept when they thought of Jerusalem and their captors tormented them by demanding, "Sing us a song about Zion." The exiles replied, "How can we sing a song to the Lord in a foreign land? May I never be able to play the harp again if I forget you, Jerusalem!" (Psalm 137:3-5).
Ezekiel, the prophet with the exiles in Babylonia, shared Jeremiah's conviction that God was no prisoner in the temple in Jerusalem. He had a vision of the glory of the Lord leaving the temple and moving east over the mountain known later as the Mount of Olives (Ezekiel 10:4,18; 11:23). Without repentance of the people and without the presence of God, the temple and Jerusalem were both destined to destruction by the Babylonians.
Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel were convinced that there could be no holy city without God's presence, and they were equally certain that there could be no holy people without a genuine covenant with the Lord. Jeremiah looked forward to such a time because the Lord told him, "The time is coming when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah.... I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people" (Jeremiah 31:31,33).
A Light to the Nations
Ezekiel also had a dream of a new future, but the Lord's motivation was different. Ezekiel was instructed to inform the Israelites, "What I am going to do is not for the sake of you Israelites, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have disgraced in every country where you have gone.... I will use you to show the nations that I am holy. I will take you from every nation and country and bring you back to your own land.... I will give you a new heart and a new mind. I will take away your stubborn heart of stone and give you an obedient heart" (Ezekiel 36:22, 23-24, 26).
Isaiah (in the second part of the book) had a message of comfort for the Jews because the Lord had informed him, "Encourage the people of Jerusalem. Tell them they have suffered long enough and their sins are now forgiven. I have punished them in full for all their sins" (Isaiah 40:2). When the exiles returned to Jerusalem, it was in order to take up a role as agents in winning the nations for God. Accordingly, God said to his servant, "I will also make you a light to the nations--so that all the world may be saved" (Isaiah 49:6). God made it absolutely clear that the return to the promised land was allowed to make possible a universal witness: "I will guard and protect you and through you make a covenant with all peoples. I will let you settle once again in your land that is now laid waste" (Isaiah 49:8).
When Ezekiel thought of the return to Palestine he saw the glory of the Lord return to the new temple (Ezekiel 43:2-5) located in the center of Jerusalem. The city would be ruled jointly by a priest and a descendant of David. The group of Jewish exiles which was led back by Joshua and Zerubbabel tried to carry out Ezekiel's plan. The prophets Haggai and Zechariah were equally convinced that the plan was God's. But the Persian authorities took Haggai's prediction that Zerubabbel would be king as a threat to the stability of the empire and they had Zerubabbel removed. (See Zecharaiah 6:11-13 and Ezra 6:14-15.) Not only did Ezekiel's dream fade away, but there was no evidence that God had given the Jews a new heart with a desire to live by his law. Despair settled over the Jews and we hear nothing more about them until the time of Malachi, Ezra, and Nehemiah.
At best, the Jews were a small group surrounded by enemies. Although they managed to fortify Jerusalem, they did not occupy all the former territory of Judah, let alone all the land of Palestine. During the rest of the Persian empire and into the Greek period, a number of Jews gave up the dreams of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and exiled Isaiah, and went to live in other Near Eastern and Mediterranean countries. They enlarged the Diaspora (the groups of dispersed Israelites and Jews who had remained in Babylonia, Syria, and Egypt) because they doubted the necessity of returning to Palestine.
Those who remained in and around Jerusalem kept the old dreams alive and looked forward to the coming of God's new kingdom. But when Judas Maccabeus captured and rededicated the temple, aspiring to be another David ruling supremely over all of Palestine, many pious Jews (including the Hasidim) refused to follow him. They had achieved their goal of religious freedom and had no desire to establish a kingdom. (Most likely the Essenes at Qumran had their roots in this segment of Judaism.)
More and more, differing interpretations of the dreams of the prophets became prominent in Jewish politics. Those who took the dreams literally, as referring to a physical kingdom with a king ruling over special people within specific boundaries, became violently frustrated when the Romans incorporated Palestine into their empire. These zealots followed the example of Judas Maccabeus in numerous attempts to overthrow the government.
Other Jews, however, interpreted God's promises in figurative or spiritual terms, while many faithful Jews in the Diaspora were learning that it was possible to worship Israel's God in a foreign land, inasmuch as he was not confined to Palestine and the temple in Jerusalem. In fact, the Diaspora diffused the light by bringing God's truth to the nations where they were.
History had forced Judaism to understand the prophetic dreams figuratively. Jerusalem was still important historically because it had served for centuries as the city from which God's message emanated. But since that truth had been dispersed throughout the Greek and Roman world, it was no longer necessary for Israel to be in Jerusalem to serve as a light to the nations.
The same understanding of the prophetic dreams and the hope of a promised land is carried into the New Testament. John the Baptist, (who had some dealings with the Essenes) believed in a more spiritual and universal interpretation of God's purposes. When Pharisees and Sadducees came to him for baptism, he lashed out against them: "You snakes--who told you that you could escape from the punishment God is about to send? Do those things that will show that you have turned from your sins. And don't think you can escape punishment by saying that Abraham is your ancestor. I tell you that God can take these rocks and make descendants for Abraham" (Matthew 3:7-9). Not race, but true repentance was the basis for God's forgiveness. John was simply expanding on the experience of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other prophets who found many of Abraham's descendants hardened and callused beyond redemption.
After John, Jesus came preaching the same message: "Turn away from your sins because the kingdom of heaven is near!" (Matthew 4:17). Never did Jesus equate God's kingdom with Jewish rule of Palestine. When the Samaritan woman questioned Jesus as to whether Mount Gerizim or Jerusalem was the proper place to worship God, he answered, "Believe me, woman, the time will come then people will not worship the Father either on this mountain or in Jerusalem" (John 4:21). Jesus' requirements for members of God's kingdom appear in Matthew 5-7. Not one of them is dependent on a special sanctuary or specific territory. The risen Jesus commissioned his disciples, "Go then to all peoples everywhere and make them my disciples: baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you. And I will be with you always, to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:19-20). At the ascension Jesus informed the disciples, "But when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will be filled with power and you will be witnesses for me in Jerusalem, in all of Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8). Like the Jews in the Diaspora and John the Baptist, Jesus set forth the conviction that God's purpose of redeeming the nations would not be limited to the temple in Jerusalem and the real estate of Palestine.
Children of Faith
In Romans 9-11 Paul agonizes over the disbelief of his own people, the Jews. Because of unbelief some branches of the cultivated olive tree (Israel) have been broken off and some branches from a wild olive tree (the Gentiles) grafted in. But the unbelief of the Jews is only a temporary condition because "God does not change his mind about whom he chooses and blesses" (11:29). "If the Jews abandon their unbelief," Paul notes, "they will be put back in the place where they were; for God is able to do that" (11:23). In short, the true children of Abraham are those who have his kind of faith.
This claim is made even more explicit in the third chapter of Galatians. In discussing whether salvation comes by means of law or faith, Paul argues, "Now, God made his promises to Abraham and to his descendant. The scripture does not use the plural 'descendants,' meaning many people, but the singular 'descendant,' meaning one person only, namely Christ. What I mean is that God made a covenant with Abraham and promised to keep it" (3:16-17). "It is through faith," Paul declares, "that all of you are God's children in union with Christ Jesus.... So there is no difference between Jews and Gentiles, between slaves and free people, between men and women; you are all one in union with Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are the descendants of Abraham and will receive what God has promised" (3:26-29).
The remarkable fact about Romans 9's repeated reference to the promises to Abraham is that the concept of the promised land is ignored completely. In reinterpreting the promises, Paul focuses on the primary factors of faith, salvation, and blessing. While he did not make an explicit statement rejecting the idea of the promised land, it certainly is strongly implied that this phase of the promise became obsolete under the new covenant.
The same can be said for the author of the letter to the Hebrews. He contends that the risen Jesus, serving as high priest in the Most Holy Place in heaven, has made human priests and animal sacrifices unnecessary for the atonement of sins: "Jesus has been given priestly work which is superior to theirs, just as the covenant which he arranged between God and his people is a better one because it is based on promises of better things. If there had been nothing wrong with the first covenant, there would have been no need for a second one" (Hebrews 8:6-7). After quoting Jeremiah 31:31-34 as the promise of a new covenant, the author of Hebrews comments, "By speaking of a new covenant, God has made the first one old; and anything that becomes old and worn out will soon disappear" (8:13). The Jewish Christians addressed by Hebrews look forward to a new city, to the heavenly Jerusalem. Nowhere in the whole book does the author mention the promise of land as a valid aspect of the new covenant. This is equally true for the apostle Peter and for the book of Revelation.
Thus it is clear from a biblical point of view that the promise of land made to the early Hebrews and Israelites served its purpose in the past. The qualification "forever" was understood to mean "until the end of the age of the first covenant." The church fathers accepted this view and therefore they showed little interest in the prophecies about the land.
This was true also of the Protestant reformers. Even mature Judaism has come to realize that the promise of the land of Canaan is not a vital part of the covenant to Abraham for our time. In 1885, Reform Judaism, under the leadership of Rabbi Isaac M. Wise, made its historic Pittsburgh Declaration: "We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor the restoration of a sacrificial worship under the Sons of Aaron, or of any of the laws concerning the Jewish State."
Yet a large segment of conservative Christianity contends today that the modern state of Israel is the fulfillment of the Old Testament promises. While claiming to be "Bible-believing" Christians, they ignore completely the New Testament rejection of the promised land as a legitimate aspect of new covenant.
In his book Prophecy and the Church (rev. ed., 1947), the late Oswald T. Allis grapples with the cluster of interpretations rooted in the conviction that the promises made to Israel apply only to the Jews. He cites the Scofield Reference Bible as a prime example of this point of view and observes correctly that two opposite principles of interpreting scripture are there employed. Historical statements tend to be treated figuratively, while prophetic passages are taken literally. "In dealing with prophecy, its treatment is marked by a literalism which refuses to recognize types and figures. Israel must mean Israel; it does not and cannot signify the Church."
In his conclusion Allis declares, "Whether the Jews are to return to the earthly Canaan is a matter of relatively little importance. That they may become citizens of the holy city, the New Jerusalem, is the only thing that really matters." "The hope of the world," Allis adds, "is not in the restoration of Judaism. The hope of the world is in the world-wide proclamation of that gospel of the Cross of Christ."
The light of the world is that truth which came through Judaism and then found expression in Jesus Christ. God's will for his children around the world is that they exemplify this good news by word and deed. The attempt of modern Israel to occupy the entire land of Palestine is a futile effort, not in harmony with God's ultimate purpose. It is equally unwise for Hal Lindsey and other like-minded persons to imagine that the Zionist dream can find ratification in the scriptures' fullest, overriding truths.
Dewey Beegle, the author of several books, including Scripture, Tradition, and Infallibility, was professor of Old Testament at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., when this article appeared.
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