by Ian Paul, Psephizo
Some years ago, Martin Saunders (of Youthscape) wrote an excellent article highlighting four issues which often prevent evangelicals from understanding what has been happening in the Israel/Gaza conflict—and these problems come up each time the conflict hits the news. It seems particularly pertinent at the moment.
First, he comments ‘It’s not as simple as good guys vs bad guys’—though interestingly who is now the good guys and the bad guys appear to have switched in the last year or two. This is something which I have commented on in the past, (11 years ago now!) though social media is not helping with this. Second is ‘The fear of accidental antisemitism’, something we need to take really seriously, as the rise of antisemitism across Europe highlights; this last week anti-Semitism has been reported as rising five-fold.
But Martin’s third point is that ‘We’re not clear what the Bible says’ about Israel and the land.
For many Christians (often termed Christian Zionists), the Bible clearly states that God has a special plan for Israel which includes a lasting covenant with the physical ‘land’. For others, that covenant was fulfilled by the cross (Matthew 5:17)…Whatever we believe, we can’t claim to hold a ‘biblical’ position if we haven’t read scripture. There are no short-cuts; you can argue anything with a proof text. Only by reading the Bible as a whole, and by understanding the grand narrative of Scripture, can we truly understand God’s relationship with the land and the people of Israel.
In the light of this, I offer some reflections on the status of ‘the land’ in Scripture. Two things need to be considered at the outset. The first is that it is simply not possible to identify ‘Israel’ in the Bible with ‘Israel’ the modern nation-state. Despite what the vast majority of commentators say, Israel is not a ‘Jewish’ state—you do not have to be a Jew to live there, even though it privileges immigration access to Jews in the global diaspora. (I am amazed how many people online have no idea that 2.1 million Arab Muslims (‘Palestinians’) live there with full democratic rights, something they would not enjoy in neighbouring Arab states.) Modern Israel is in fact constitutionally a Western-style liberal democracy, whereas biblical Israel was for most of its history a monarchical theocracy.