27 Nov THE LAND YOU DO NOT KNOW
Then the LORD said to Abram, “Leave your country, your kindred, and your father’s household, and go to the land I will show you. (Genesis 12:1)
The Jewish people were chosen by God to live out a story in which each of us might see our own story. God called Abraham to leave his father’s house to go to a land he did not know. Abraham’s father, Terah, was an idol maker. Ur of the Chaldees, his home, was a pagan civilization. But in Abraham’s story, God is coming to each one of us, urging us to leave our father’s house–where we’ve been taught what to believe–for a land we do not know. In Abraham we see the nature of the spiritual journey is to leave the error of our fathers, for the truth God wants to show us.
Throughout history, courageous sons of Abraham have chosen death rather than to bow before false gods. They have clung to the One God, keeping the light of monotheism burning in a world beset by paganism.. They have suffered in ways that we are meant to learn from. No other people have endured the degradation, cruelty, and persecution they have, but you don’t hear victimhood from them. No matter how many countries they’ve been expelled from, they have picked up and started over again. No people group has been recognized for their outstanding contributions more than the Jews.
Of the 965 individual recipients of the Nobel Prize between 1901 and 2023 at least 214 have been Jews or people with at least one Jewish parent, representing 22% of all recipients. Jews comprise only 0.2% of the world’s population, meaning their share of winners is 100 times their proportion of the world’s population. (1)
One cannot avoid the evidence that God has uniquely identified Himself with the Jewish people, for good and for ill. In their history God reveals the dangerous holiness that is His response to defiant sin .Through them we received the law, the prophets and the word of God. Through them God gave us Messiah. Scripture makes it abundantly clear that they are His beloved. For HIs Name’s sake, God is not going to allow Israel to lose its place in His purpose for her. He means it when He tells us to comfort Jerusalem, to speak tenderly to her that her warfare (with Him) is over, that she has paid double for all her sins. (Isaiah 40:1-2).
Then you will know that I am the Lord when I have dealt with you for My name’s sake, not according to your evil ways or according to your corrupt deeds, O house of Israel,” declares the Lord God.
Ezekiel 20:44
Therefore thus says the Lord God, “Now I will restore the fortunes of Jacob and have mercy on the whole house of Israel; and I will be jealous for My holy name.
Ezekiel 39:25
On December 9, 1917, General Allenby’s forces accepted the Turkish surrender of Jerusalem. Two days later, British forces officially entered the walls of the city. Jews all over the world just happened to be lighting their Hanukkah candles. Rabbi Hertz, chief rabbi of the British Empire, explained that the British entry into Jerusalem coincided with the same day on the Jewish calendar, 2,080 years before, when the Maccabees had freed the Holy City from their oppressors. (2) What is God showing us?
For the last several weeks I’ve been writing about God’s activity on behalf of the Jews in modern history, to show how it defies all possibility of randomness. He has gathered them out of the nations, causing them to return to the land, as He promised. He brought down the Ottoman empire and used the Ottoman Land Code to return the ownership of the land to Jews in Europe and America. Every step has been the result of orchestrated circumstances eerily echoing corresponding events that took place on the same day in ancient history. We have seen how Mark Twain fulfilled ancient prophecy on the same day that the prophecy of a stranger coming from a far land was being chanted in synagogues around the world. To fulfill His purpose, God is with Israel in these days, as seen in her miraculous victories of 1948 and 1967, (3)
Yet, a 2020 Pew research poll found that only one-third of U.S. Jews believe God gave the land that is now Israel to the Jewish people. And while 42% do not believe Israel was given by God to the Jews, one-quarter of U.S. Jews say they do not believe in God or a higher power. (4) The nature of the spiritual journey is to leave the error of our fathers, for the truth God wants to show us.
I write these blogs, believing that in the evidence they bring, some will hear God calling them to leave their father’s house for a land they do not know. I write for Jews who have not known comfort coming from a Christian.. I write for those who believe that Israel lost its place in God’s plan and the church has replaced her. I write for those whose fathers spewed anti-semitism. I write for. atheists and agnostics who have not considered the evidence that God is real.
I write because God is calling us out of the error we have believed, to bring us where we will be on the right side of history.
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(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_Nobel_laureates
(2) https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/12/09/remembering-hanukkah-1917-and-the-liberation-of-jerusalem/
(3) https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/17-miraculous-israeli-military-victories
(4) Pew Research Center’s 2020 survey of Jewish Americans.