Israel & The Palestinians: Facts & Myths

This land was an unconditional covenant. Unconditional covenant means there are no conditions for the one that the promise is made to to perform in order to enjoy the benefit of the promise that is made. There's no condition. Sometimes you have conditions in a covenant.

If you do this, I'll do that. And God did make conditional covenant, but the land covenant was an unconditional covenant. Welcome to Connect with Skip Heitzig, where we will present the final segment in our Israel at War update. On this broadcast, Skip will present the message, Israel and the Palestinians, facts and myths. It can be hard to keep track of what is true during a crisis.

TV pundits throw facts around till our heads spin, but truth can be found when we know where to look. In this message, Skip Heitzig separates fact from fiction to get a clear understanding of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Now, let's join Skip Heitzig for this Israel at War update. Today I want to talk about the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

I want to give you facts and myths about this, hopefully dispel them. But to set it up, I interviewed a friend of mine in Israel who's a businessman and a pastor. He is also the president of TBN over in Israel. He's been a dear friend, runs the tour company Sar El Tours that we have been taking to Israel for years. So I interviewed him this week on this issue and frame the Palestinian-Israeli land conflict biblically. Let's get this interview.

Well, I have a special guest with us. We have Samuel Smaja. He is a messianic believer. He lives in Israel. He is the director of TBN in Israel, but he's also the president of Sar El Tours. So when we take tours to Israel, to the Holy Land, it is Sami's group that stages the land tours for us and does such a great job. Interesting background about Sami.

His father was a pastor of a messianic congregation in Jerusalem, and since he went to heaven, passed away, Sami now is the leader of that congregation. I've had the privilege of speaking to that group. Sami, thank you for joining us. Thank you. Great honor.

Thank you very much. Here's what I want to ask you today. Israel is in a very unique situation. Other countries have, typically, usually, we have friendly neighbors around us. You've been attacked by your neighbors time and time again since you came into the land officially in 1948, 1967, etc.

On and on and on. Tell us about the uniqueness of living in that kind of a neighborhood. First of all, there's no doubt that we live in the wrong neighborhood. Let's put it this way.

It's a tough, tough neighborhood, and our neighbors don't like us, and I don't think they don't like us because of who we are. When we speak about Israel and when we think about Israel, we have to speak about the plan of salvation for humanity. God chose a person by the name of Abraham. He chose a people. He took a people out of Egypt, not because they were perfect, not because they were impressive.

If I was God, I would probably choose the Egyptian, but he chose the Jewish people. He made them a people. He gave them the law. He gave them the prophet. Through them, he gave them the Messiah. So we're talking about a group of people that God has chose to bring, to introduce the plan of salvation to mankind. First of all, to show men and women that they're sinners, to talk about the holiness of God. And I believe what we see today, we see the devil.

I believe that we're living in the end time. I think that the devil just opened the gates of hell in unleashing any spirit of death against the people of Israel in order to cut this plan of salvation. Who are the Palestinians today? There was never a state of Palestine. There was never a prime minister of Palestine. There was never a president of Palestine.

The state of Palestine never existed as a state. We have a huge problem. It's a small land and we cannot, and we have two nations or two kinds of people. We have the Jews and we have the Palestinians. So we need to find a solution, but definitely not like they want a solution. Hezbollah, his only solution is that we live and they stay. And that's their solution.

And we better, according to them, we better learn how to swim or we should drown in the sea. It's a very tiny city, and I don't believe that there'll be a peace in the Middle East till the Prince of Peace comes. So it has to be a miracle from God to erase the supernatural hatred.

So we can take the weapon, we can take the missiles, but in 10 years I think we'll be standing in front of the same war. What can we do going forward as American believers to stand with Israel? I think, first of all, we pray. We're commanded to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, I think, now more than ever. But the surprise we had two weeks ago, I think, made people to be a bit confused in Israel. And I hope and I pray that God will visit them with dreams and that they'll see miracles and that God will remove the veil from their eyes and they'll see Him, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and they will see Messiah and will turn back to Him.

That's the biggest victory that can come out of it. I believe that in the next two weeks your government will be attacked. Everybody that will stand with Israel will be attacked. I believe in two, three weeks we'll see many more demonstrations against Israel around the world. I think it's the time of the church not to be silent.

I'm very sorry to say there were some heroes in the Holocaust, Christian heroes in the Holocaust, like Corrie Temboom, which I personally knew, I stayed in her home, and many others. But in generally, in generally, the church, I said the church, I'm very careful, was silent. Let's not be silent this time. Amen.

You can get the full interview on the website. We have a special little section dedicated to this war in Israel. And as I said, this is the third and final week.

We're going to be going back to our more regular routine in teaching unless something else develops, but we'll be doing that in the future. Now, I want to talk to you about, in the time remaining, facts and myths regarding this age-old conflict that to most people seems enigmatic, impossible to unravel, impossible to understand. Every generation speaks about rights, human rights, civil rights, women's rights, now gender rights. Everybody's got rights that they want upheld. When you talk about anyone's right to do anything at all or have anything at all, who is it that gets to say who is right and who is wrong? Who gets to be the final authority? Who has the right to say, you have a right to this or that? Is it the person with the most money?

Is it the group with the biggest army? Is it the people group who are suffering the most or have the greatest need? Who is it that determines?

Well, different people, different determinations. But for the Christian, we have one source of authority, God and His Word. Not what culture says, not what our government says, not what their government says, not what demonstrators or college professors say, it's what God says in His Word. Well, God has something to say about this particular land that is in dispute. In fact, it is a verse that I share often with our tour groups, the last 40-some times that I've taken them to Israel. On the very first day of the tour, I often like to pull out Deuteronomy 11, verse 12, where God Himself says, it is a land for which the Lord your God cares.

The eyes of the Lord your God are on it from the beginning even to the end of the year. That's the land we're talking about. It's a land that God's eyes are always upon, He has great care and concern for, and He has a lot to say about it. Now, we know how it all started. It started with one man, a Mesopotamian by the name of Abram, later called Abraham. He lived out in the valley in the country called Ur of the Chaldees, it was a city in that valley. God told him to leave his country, his family, his city, his people, and go to the land I will show you.

And so he made a journey, and so he made a journey, as you know. He went to Haran, then he went down into what we today call the state of Israel, and God promised that he would occupy that land, and God even gave to him the title of that land known at that time as the land of Canaan. The land of Canaan was to be given to Abraham and his descendants. So fact number one, the land is God's land. The land of Israel is God's land. For that matter, the whole earth is God's place, right? He alone can lay claim to every square inch of every country in the world. The earth, the psalmist said, is the Lord's, Psalm 24, and its fullness, or the fullness thereof.

It all belongs to him. So God, like our friend Sami Smadja just said, the title deed is the Bible, and God has the title deed to that land. Because it is God's land, I think you will agree, if the Lord says the land is mine and you believe God, so you believe that, then God has the right to do whatever he wants with the land that is his, right?

So that's fact number one. Fact number two, God gave the land to Abraham and his descendants. In chapter 12, when the Lord called Abram out of Mesopotamia and said, go to that place, that land of Canaan, I'm going to bless you there and multiply you, you'll be a blessing to the world. In chapter 12 verse 7, the Lord appeared to Abram and said, to your descendants I will give this land, and there he built an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him. So it's God's land. God says, I'm giving it to you and to your descendants. He repeated that promise again in chapter 13 of Genesis after he and Lot separated over an argument, a land dispute. God said to Abram, lift your eyes up now and look, for all the land which you see I will give it to you and your descendants forever. So he promised it, he repeated the promise, then he repeated the promise to Abram again in chapter 15, to you and your descendants I have given this land. Well, who are the descendants of Abraham?

Well, he has a lot. That would include 465 million Arabs, potentially, and 16 million Jews. That's how many are alive on earth right now.

That's a lot of descendants. So you've got both Arabs and Jews who are descendants of Abraham. So fact number one, it's God's land. Fact number two, God gave the land to Abraham and his descendants. But fact number three narrows it just a bit. This land was an unconditional covenant.

Now this is going to be important because I'm going to tie a few things together. This land was an unconditional covenant. Unconditional covenant means there are no conditions for the one that the promise is made to to perform in order to enjoy the benefit of the promise that is made.

There's no conditions. Sometimes you have conditions in a covenant. If you do this, I'll do that. And God did make conditional covenants, but the land covenant was an unconditional covenant.

This is Genesis 17 verses 7 and 8. I will establish my covenant between me and you. I'll do it. Not you and I'll do it.

I'll do it. I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you in their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and your descendants after you. Also I will give to you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan as an everlasting possession and I will be their God. And what I want you to notice is two times in the passage that we just read, two times God calls it an everlasting covenant, an unconditional unbreakable covenant. This is important because some people will say, well, God did give them the land originally, but it was a conditional covenant. It was based upon Israel's faithfulness to keep their end of the deal.

Not so. Yes, God promised that if they disobeyed Him, He would judge them. And they did disobey and God did judge them, sent them into captivity.

But it's not true that their disobedience would cause a permanent forfeiture of the land that He gave to them, because it's an everlasting covenant. The land was given not only to the descendants of Abraham, but they were given to the descendants of Isaac, not Ishmael. Isaac, not Ishmael. Abraham had two sons. Actually, Abraham had more sons after these two, but his firstborn son was Ishmael. And because Ishmael was the firstborn son, the firstborn son typically has the right of the firstborn, gets the inheritance, including a land inheritance.

But you know there's a twist in the story, right? God said it won't be through Ishmael, it will be through Isaac that your seed will be called. So God takes the right that the firstborn son would typically have and gives it to the secondborn son, and you should also know it's not the first and only time that happens. It happens again with Esau and Jacob. Jacob will get the inheritance, not Esau. And then with the sons of Joseph, Joseph had a couple of sons, one named Manasseh, one named Ephraim. Manasseh was firstborn, Ephraim the secondborn got the right of the firstborn.

So often God will do this. So Ishmael is born, God promised it would be through Isaac, not Ishmael. That Ishmael was also promised blessings from God too. It's not like, well poor Ishmael, God didn't promise him anything, he gets the raw end of the deal. God promised that Ishmael would be a great nation. In fact, just as Jacob would have 12 tribes, Ishmael would also have many peoples that would come from him. But the land covenant, the land covenant that God promised to Abraham, continued not through Ishmael, but through Isaac. So it's pretty clear, right? God promised it to Abraham because it's God's land.

He can give it to whoever he wants. He promised it to Abraham and his descendants, but he narrowed the descendants down to Isaac and Jacob. It was an everlasting covenant, and captivity did not change it because it is an everlasting covenant. Now this brings us to the myths.

I said this is going to be a study on the facts and the myths, and there are so many myths, but I have narrowed it down to just three for this study. Myth number one, Israel is historically Muslim territory. Well, Israel doesn't have a right to it because, yeah, they've been there for 75 years, but before that, the Arabs were there, the Muslims were there. It's always been an Arab country.

Well, we just spent the last little while showing you how that isn't true. God promised it to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the 12 tribes. Then Joshua entered the land crossing the Jordan River in 1400 BC.

Then God promised them a kingdom, and David became the king over the entire country in about a thousand BC, followed by Solomon, followed by a series of kings both north and south, then a captivity in Assyria, then a captivity in Babylon, then a return to the land under Ezra and Nehemiah and Zerubbabel. Then we have the New Testament. We open the New Testament. We have Jerusalem, the land of Israel, all the same places that we read about in the Old Testament. Jews are occupying the land from the Old Testament into the New Testament. Now listen, we also have archaeology. So if you are here or you're listening to this and saying, I don't care what the Bible says about this conflict, I'm not a Bible believer, I don't believe the Jews have the right to the land, it's always been an Arab land, it's always been a Muslim land, I don't believe the testimony of Scripture.

Fine. At least believe the testimony of archaeology, because the testimony of archaeology has the name of Israel inscribed on many of the ancient stone documents that we have in museums going all the way back before there were ever Palestinians or Arabs or before Muhammad was ever even born in the 7th century AD. It goes all the way back. So it's not historically Muslim territory. It was occupied by Jewish people from the time of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the 12 tribes. Where did the name Palestine come from? Because you heard Sammy say in the video, and I concur with him, and scholars will agree with him, there never has been in the history of humanity any nation, any country called Palestine. Palestine was the name given to the land by a pagan emperor named Hadrian in 135 AD.

Hadrian came in after the destruction of the temple 135 AD. He changed the name of the city of Jerusalem from Jerusalem, Yerushalayim, the city of peace, the historic name, to Aelia Capitolina, a pagan name. He then designated Judah, the country of Judah, that southern portion, and called it Palatina. He was using the ancient name of the Philistines, Palatina. Palestine means land of the Philistines. He called the name Palestine as a slur against the Jews to disparage the Jews because they were stubborn in his takeover of their land. So he gave them that name to insult the Jews by naming it after their historic enemy, the Philistines.

Now get this, check this out. Anyone living in that land because of that name change, anyone living in that land up until 1948, anyone living there was called Palestinian. Arab and Jew. If you were Arab, you were a Palestinian in 1947. If you were a Jew in that land, you were a Palestinian. If you had a birth certificate up until 1948, your birth certificate would read Palestinian. So it was a name given to Jews as well as Arabs. So against all odds, as I've said on many occasions, the Jew still thrives in that land, but now there is an international turning against Israel. We knew this would happen, we called it even as it was happening, and all of a sudden all the liberal news broadcasts were saying, oh, you know, we're against the horrible things that happened against Israel this week. I just said, hold that thought, wait a minute, because it's all going to change.

A couple days later it started changing. And if you look at God's promise to Abraham and God's promise through Paul in the New Testament that God still has a plan for Israel, it's no wonder. It's no wonder, as we heard from Sami, that all the forces of hell, the dragon as we saw last week, poised before the woman to destroy the plan of God. But we are Christians, we are biblicists, we look at the Word of God, that's our authority. And with that authority, we pray for the peace of Jerusalem, we pray for those who are going to be innocently in the crossfire of terrorism or armies, we pray for Palestinian populations. Israel is very good at discriminating in their targets, not perfect, no war is perfect, it's war.

But we keep praying. You've been listening to a special series of messages from Skip Hyten about Israel at war. Today's edition was Israel and the Palestinians, facts and myths. We didn't have time to bring you all the content from our message today on this broadcast, but you can find this and all the Israel at war teachings and interviews at connectwithskip.com.

Now let's hear about a special resource package we are offering this week. When events on earth become increasingly confusing and disturbing, we need to understand what the Bible says about the days we live in and what's ahead. The book of Revelation speaks strongly about both of these issues, but many are reluctant to consider the Bible's final book. As part of this special Israel at war series, we're offering Skip Heitzig's book, You Can Understand the Book of Revelation. The signs that we're dealing with are signs of that future period, the tribulation period, seven year period, whereas the rapture is a sign less event. In other words, it can happen at any time, but future events often cast their shadows before them. You can understand the book of Revelation and you need to.

Only God can accurately predict the future. We aren't told everything, but we need to understand what is revealed. Also included in this package is Skip's booklet, Are We Living in the Last Days? Get this booklet and the book, You Can Understand the Book of Revelation, when you make a donation of $50 or more to support Connect with Skip. Your gift will go toward the financial costs of this teaching program. Request your package online at connectwithskip.com or by calling 1-800-922-1888.

That's 1-800-922-1888. When you order this package, your donation will support and help expand this program. Connect with Skip Heitzig. Join us next time when we will resume our scheduled series, Give Peace a Chance with the message, Peace Stealers. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.