“ABRAHAM OUR FATHER, JERUSALEM OUR MOTHER” Conclusion

This will be concluded with Alan Morrison’s closing thoughts. This has been a lengthy essay, one I’ve only shared a portion of. Because I omitted entire sections, I encourage you, if time permits, to read it all. What I personally found of interest was the fact this was originally written in 1998. I can honestly say the situation has only grown much worse since the writing of this essay.

If you’re inclined, you can find the entire essay posted at;

Messianic Good News: “ABRAHAM OUR FATHER, JERUSALEM OUR MOTHER”

Folks, this has been posted in order to battle the deception and lies which have been taught in many Churches for decades. If you have taken the time to read through the portions I have posted, then you know everything which was brought forth as truth by Alan Morrison, was backed up by the very word of God. In the west, false teachings and unbiblical doctrines surround the topic of Israel, and for too long this has been seen as a sacred cow:

“something that has been accepted or respected for a long time and that people are afraid or unwilling to criticize or question” (Webster’s Dictionary).

As a blogger for (almost) eight years, I’ve had a ring-side seat to just how much of a sacred cow it is. Most teachings (or news articles) posted here on the topic of Israel, are met with “crickets”. And I will also add personally, whenever I take this topic on I can expect extreme spiritual attacks. And I do mean extreme. It never fails. All the more reason we need to finally “tip this particular cow” and lay aside what we have always heard and dig (personally) into the word of God in search of the truth. 

Let me end by saying, if this series is the cause of one person laying aside what they “think” they know on the topic, and dig into God’s word in search of the truth, then it was worth the time and effort posting it. If not, either way I am confidant I’ve obeyed the Holy Spirit…

Conclusion

 Having covered all this ground, readers may still question whether it matters what we believe about Israel today. Is it not merely a ‘secondary issue’? On the surface, it may not appear to matter and, in a sense, is is a secondary issue. Christians have always had minor differences about things which do not affect the Gospel or the foundational truths of Christianity. But there are some profound problems here.

First, although the place of Israel is technically a secondary issue — that is, one’s eschatology would not normally be counted as a fundamental of the faith — the problem is that what one believes about Israel has indeed been given the status of a primary issue in some circles today. For example, one well-known propagator of the Jewish Messianic teachings wrote to the present writer as he was preparing this paper, warning:

“You are likely to lose many of the friends you made among Charismatic and Pentecostal moderates if you proceed on this ill-contrived course”.

Frankly, such a statement highlights the sinful schism which lies at the heart of the pro-Israel movement among evangelicals today. Why should a man lose friends simply because of what he knows the Scriptures teach about Israel? For this reason, we believe that this issue now matters very much, as it has become unnecessarily and harmfully divisive, not to mention inculcative of other false teachings.

Secondly, there is the question of our stewardship of funds. If Israel today is not God’s chosen people, and that cruel country in the Middle-East is not a fulfilment of Bible prophecy, then is it right that we should be siphoning our treasury in the direction of such an anti- Christian earthly nation? Surely this is another reason why our beliefs on this subject do make a difference.

Thirdly, we have noticed that a fascination with Israel and Jewishness usually becomes progressively obsessive, leading to an almost cultish mentality, in which one shuns other Christians who do not share these beliefs. This regularly happens to a greater or lesser degree. But where it becomes an obsession, there is always spiritual damage and the pursuing of harmful delusions. The present writer recently received a communication complaining of people on a Jewish Messianic style newsgroup on the Internet asking

“if they should wear beards, where they can buy prayer shawls from, guidance on blowing the shofar (a Jewish trumpet made of a ram’s horn) and so forth”.

Such redundant Judaising has become increasingly widespread in recent years and has plainly come about because of a failure to understand the transition from the Old Covenant to the New. One could be forgiven for such confusion in the first half of the first century AD; but twenty centuries later there can be no excuse for such ignorance among professing Christians.

Fourthly, the whole subject of Israel and the Jews has come to consume an inordinate amount of unnecessary prayer-time in the lives of many. There are a number of organisations today which are solely devoted to this issue, with many folk being drawn into wasting hours of valuable prayer-time about an obsolete situation. We would certainly advocate prayer that Jewish people will come to a saving knowledge of Christ; but not to waste time praying about the country Israel as if it is the answer to the world’s spiritual problems.

Fifthly, we must always remember to distinguish Zionism from Judaism. Zionism is a crusading movement which believes that Jewish people have a divine right to the land of Israel and that they are still God’s chosen people. But not all Jewish people automatically believe that. Many Jews will have no truck with the Zionist movement. They await their Messiah patiently in whatever country they are in and will not recognise the state of Israel as having any divine permission to be the restoration of O.T. Israel. One organisation with such a view is Jews against Zionism and it is well worth reading their material.

I salute those Jews. Although they are not really open to the truth about Christ, they are devout within the scope of their religious aspirations and will not be side- tracked into setting up impostor nation-states. This writer has a strong feeling that, as the time of the end draws near, many such Jews as those will realise the truth and become true believers.

Sixthly, let us be quite clear here: we are not saying that the present state of Israel has no right to exist at all as a nation. That would be to misunderstand this paper entirely. Most countries in the world have been arbitrarily drawn on a map or have been established through violent events and each has as much right to existence as the other.

What we are saying is that although the earthly nation Israel has a right to exist, it never had the right to jettison unwanted peoples from the land, which is the root of so many of the problems of today in the Middle-East.

How the country established itself amid so much bloodshed is one of the banes of modern history. The massacre of the inhabitants of the village of Deir Yassin near Jerusalem on April 9, 1948 by a mixture of Jewish forces and militant Zionist groups spread terror among Palestinians as a result of which hundreds of thousands fled to Lebanon, Egypt and the area now known as the West Bank, where they became refugees.

It is the treatment of the Palestinians as pariahs by the Zionists and the hate-filled legacy of those refugee camps which has continued to fuel the conflict there to this day.

Thus, although the earthly nation Israel has as much right to exist as any other country, it has no right to be championed as God’s land, as if it was the same as the Israel of the Old Testament of the Bible.

Put simply: It is an impostor.

Finally, it is a real concern that so many have become grounded in a crass over-literalistic form of biblical hermeneutics. For this naturally colours one’s general Bible interpretation and leads to erroneous hermeneutics in other aspects of Christian doctrine. Furthermore, it has serious ramifications for the way that we understand modern politics and governance.

The blame for the proliferation of these over- literalistic ideas lies squarely at the feet of the C.I. Schofield and his Study Bible. Since 1909, this tendentious work has been hugely influential in shaping the eschatology of generations of Christians, by placing its notes in the pages of the Bible to make them seem as much a part of the Bible as the Word of God itself. Especially the teaching about the restoration of Israel to the Middle-Eastern land.

This false understanding of Israel by so many professing Christians today has meant that millions all over the world have been completely hoodwinked: centred on the restoration of earthly Israel. This has led to a massive deception involving the majority of evangelicals and fundamentalists. That is why so many of them backed the illegal and amoral invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. So intense is their deception that they will support any act of barbarism and cruelty so long as it is seen to be to the advantage of Israel.

We must not see any of this as an earthly battle but a spiritual one. We need to understand that so many have been deceived about the modern state of Israel because they have been the victims of spiritual deception. This is serious because it has caused a completely false hermeneutic to be applied to prophetic Scriptures such as the Book of Revelation.

As an example of the way that this false hermeneutic works, consider the fact that countless millions of Christians believe that the “Armageddon” mentioned in Rev.16:16 refers to an actual geographical location on this planet (i.e. the actual Valley of Megiddo or Jezreel in Israel). To believe that is to misunderstand the spiritual nature of the term under the New Covenant and the highly symbolic nature of the Book of Revelation. Surely, what we have in Rev.16:16 is what Philip E. Hughes described as:

“A term of symbolical significance, denoting worldwide revolt rather than a particular territorial locality”.

A rule that we constantly find in Scripture is that for evil to be ripe for Divine judgement it must fill up the cup of its iniquity. We saw it at the Flood — we saw it at Babel. And those alive at the end of this age will see it again — only that time it will be forever, with no going back. Armageddon is the climax of a process which has been at work throughout this Age but which quickens as the end of the Age and the return of Jesus Christ approaches. But if we adhere to the prevailing false understanding of Israel today, we will fail to understand this properly and be open to manipulation and deception.

The darkness is gathering for the ultimate battle. When the Scripture speaks of a battle against “the camp of the saints and the beloved city” (Rev.20:9), it is not a reference to some onslaught against national Israel, as most evangelicals and fundamentalists believe and teach today. It is instead the battle by the forces of darkness against the New Jerusalem, the true church of Jesus Christ, the sum of all true believers — also known as “Mount Zion… the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem… the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven” (Heb.12:22-23).

The ‘camp of the saints” today is not the city of Jerusalem in the earthly country Israel. It is the true church. All the venom of Satan is directed towards faithful spiritual believers rather than an earthly multifaith city. This is a spiritual battle who’s lines are being drawn up even now.

Thus, true believers can expect to become increasingly suppressed and persecuted today — especially by the false church.

Nevertheless, in spite of all that we have said above, however much the neo-Judaisers/Christian Zionists of today desire to fossilise the redemptive plan of God in an Old Covenant mould — however hard they try to make nicknames such as “replacement theology” stick and become vogue terms — the Bible is clear about the true place of “Israel” today, and the nature of the real Jerusalem. The true Church is Israel today (Gal.6:14) and the individual believer has that indelibly stamped on his heart. As the Lord Jesus Himself confirms:

“He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more. And I will write on him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God. And I will write on him My new name. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (Rev.3:12-13)