The Ancient Hatred
The Israeli/Palestinian Conflict
10/18/23
Genesis 12:1-3 “The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you. 2 I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others. 3 I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.”
In Genesis 15:18-21, God further defined the borders of the land promised to Abraham: “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.”
In both Numbers and Ezekiel, God even more explicitly lays out the borders of the Promised Land.
In Numbers 34:2, God explicitly states the Israelites were inheriting the land of Canaan. The western border of the Promised Land started with the coastline along the Sea of Galilee. The eastern border extended down to the Dead Sea. The southern border started with the wilderness of Zin on the east side of Edom and extended to the west side of the Dead Sea.
The entire territory was about 60,000 square miles, 144 miles in length from the north to the south, 40 miles across the southern border, and 20 miles along the northern border.
Today, the Arabs claim that the Israelites stole this land on which the nation of Israel resides. But the Bible clearly reveals that He did not give it to the offspring of Ishmael (father of the Arabs) but to the offspring of Isaac (the Jewish people).
Galatians 4:22-23 “The Scriptures say that Abraham had two sons. The mother of one son was a slave woman, and the mother of the other son was a free woman. 23 Abraham’s son (Ishmael) from the slave woman was born in the normal human way. But the son from the free woman (Isaac) was born because of the promise God made to Abraham.”
Vs. 29 “But the other son of Abraham (Ishmael), who was born in the normal way, persecuted the one who was born by the power of the Spirit. It is the same today.”
This is why I have called this message, “The Ancient Hatred.”
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Now, the land promised to Abraham was once called Palestine and still is by many today. It is also known as Canaan and the Promised Land.
Full occupation of the Promised Land did indeed become a reality under King David and King Solomon when the Israelites possessed all of the land that God had promised Abraham in Genesis 12, 15, 18, and 22.
But for various reasons it did not last.
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Now, jumping ahead in time we come to the NT and the year 70 AD when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Roman army under Titus. The Temple was also razed to the ground, and the Jewish people were either killed or dispersed throughout the world for 20 centuries.
Now, in Luke 21:24, we have a very important prediction from Jesus regarding the land:
“They (the Jewish people) will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.”
This is exactly what happened. For twenty centuries the land of Israel was occupied by various Gentile peoples—Arabs, Romans, the British, the Ottoman Empire, and so on.
But God miraculously kept the Jewish homeland from ever being declared another state, country, or nation by the several groups of people who occupied it.
It was not until the Jewish people declared Israel an official state in 1948 that it was ever declared an official state or country by anyone!
This means that God the Father kept His original covenant promise to the Jewish people that He had made to them back in the Old Testament—that He would bring them back to their homeland of Israel and that they would once more re-possess it as their own in the latter days.
So let’s take a brief trip through history of what has transpired with the Jewish people.
History
Following God’s promise to Abraham, his descendants (the Jewish people) became slaves in Egypt for 400 years. God called Moses to rescue his people by mighty signs and wonders.
They wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. Moses and everyone over 20 years of age failed to make it into the Promised Land due to God’s judgment.
Joshua and Caleb were chosen to lead the younger generation into the Promised Land (which, again, is the area of Palestine).
The Promised Land was inhabited by the Canaanites. Israel defeated and drove out the peoples who were on the land that God wanted to give them.
The Jewish people then apportioned out what became the biblical kingdoms of Israel and Judah to the twelve tribes.
From this time forward, the biblical kingdoms of Israel-Judah-Judea have been the ONLY independent sovereign nations or states that have ever existed in the land.
And no other groups of people ever managed to do so after the Jewish people were driven out in 70 AD.
After the Romans conquered Judea, Palestine became a province of Rome. After the western Roman Empire collapsed in around 425 AD, the land of Palestine was absorbed by the Christian Byzantine Empire (eastern Rome).
Then in 638 AD, an Arab Muslim caliph (a leader of the Muslims) took Palestine away from the Byzantine empire and made it part of an Arab Muslim empire. During this period, many of the people living in Palestine become Arab Muslims and converted to the religion of Islam.
However, Palestine still was never declared an official state, nation, or country even under the rule of the Muslims.
Then in the year 1099 AD, Christian crusaders from Europe conquered the Palestine area and took it back away from the Muslims.
But again, the Christian crusaders failed to make Palestine an official state or country. They just basically used it as a military outpost.
Then later on, Palestine ended up in the hands of Syria. Then from Syria, it fell into the hands of the Ottoman Turks (predominantly Muslims).
Keep in mind that all of these temporary possessors of Palestine were Gentiles, just as Jesus predicted.
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Then after World War 1, the British took Palestine from the Ottoman Turks.
The British then temporarily governed Palestine under the League of Nations. Again, during all of these transitions and takeovers, not one of these peoples or countries ever made Palestine an official state or country!
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Now here is the intriguing part. Right around the late 1800’s, the Jewish people started to migrate back to Palestine in small droves. The land itself at this time was basically dry, barren, and desolate.
The Jewish people that came back in started to farm and cultivate the land and to make it flourish and prosper again.
The reason it was so desolate was because no other countries or peoples had ever claimed Palestine for its own and thus no one ever bothered to cultivate its true potential.
When the land started to flourish and prosper once again due to the farming and agricultural efforts of the Jewish settlers, other people groups saw this and started to migrate back into the land.
While some Arabs were already there, many more began to come from some of the surrounding Arab countries in the Middle East.
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The Palestinians have always complained that it was the Jewish people that dislocated them from this land. However, it was really just the opposite. It was the Jewish people who first came back and started to make the land flourish again due to their own farming efforts—not the Palestinians or Arabs.
Soon, the land of Palestine witnessed a great mix of people groups migrating to the land. But it was predominately made up of Jewish people and Arabs.
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Then when World War 2 started to break out in the early 30’s, even more Jewish people started coming back to Palestine.
And at the end of World War 2, after going through the horrors of the holocaust, many more Jewish people from all around the world began to migrate back to Palestine for security and independence.
Then a highly, Bible prophecy fulfilling day arrived. At midnight on May 14, 1948, a Provisional Government of Israel proclaimed a new State of Israel. On that same date, the United States, in the person of President Harry Truman, recognized the provisional Jewish government as an official state.
Palestine was then renamed Israel. Most of the Arab world wholeheartedly rejected this turn of events, and they insist that the land belongs to them, not to the Jewish people.
Shortly after Israel became an official state under Jewish rule, the displaced Arabs began gaining support from other Arab countries—Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
During this time, many of the Arabs in Israel were driven out and were forced to live in refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza.
The Arabs that were driven out call themselves Palestinians. For a while there was peace, but as we all know, that didn’t last.
Two major wars erupted—the war of 1967 called the six day war, and in 1973 the war of Yom Kippur. Both times the Jewish people won against all odds. And now we have a new one erupting as I speak.
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If you step back and look at the Biblical picture, we see what’s really going on. God the Father told His chosen Jewish people back in the Old Testament that He would bring them back to this land in the latter days, and that it would be their land as an everlasting possession, and that no one would ever take it away from them again.
This is why no other peoples or countries ever declared the land an official state, country, or nation during all of the takeovers. God Himself kept it from ever happening! He kept the land for His people until it was time to bring them back into the land.
The Bible says that the Jewish people and the land of Israel will be protected by God the Father until the Antichrist appears to start the last and final round of persecution of the Jewish people.
Until this last and final holocaust starts with the Antichrist, God will continue to protect Israel from all of the Arab countries and radical Muslims that would want to completely wipe her off the face of the map.
Israel will not be defeated until the Antichrist takes over in the middle of the 7-year tribulation and the real persecution of the Jewish people then starts.
And just when it looks like the terrible war of Armageddon will destroy mankind, Jesus returns, His feet land on the Mount of Olives, the nations of the world will be judged, and the millennium begins!