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About Jesus - Steve
Sweetman
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Why
Support Israel?
The place of Israel
in prophetic history has been debated for centuries.
It's not my purpose here to defend my view that Israel
still has prophetic significance because I've done that elsewhere.
So, with this presupposition in mind, I ask, "why should
Christians support Israel
today"?
If you live in a western
nation, you should hope that your nation supports
Israel
for the sole reason that the west needs a friend in the
Middle East. Recent times prove that
what happens in the
Middle East
will affect your nation.
The Bible gives one
important reason why
Christians should support Israel. The foundation to this
discussion goes back to the day when God called Abraham out of
Ur
to become the father of Israel. God promised Abraham that
Israel
would be a great nation in Genesis 12:1-3.
Exodus 19:6 states the God's original intention for
Israel
was for it to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation who would
represent Him to the nations of the world.
Because Israel
has consistently failed in this respect, many people believe God has
given up on Israel. If you take God's promise
to Abraham at face value, you'll know that's not the case.
Ezekiel 36:22 and 23
states the reason why God has not rejected
Israel
and why He still supports Israel. The NIV reads as follows.
"This is what the Sovereign Lord says, 'It is not for your
sake, O house of
Israel
, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name,
which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone.
I will show you the holiness of my great name, which has been
profaned among the nations. Then
the nations will know that I am the Lord', declares the Sovereign Lord,
'when I show myself holy through you before their eyes'".
Due to their disobedience
to their God, since 70 A D Israelis have been banished to the nations of
the world. As Ezekiel states
here, while living in these nations Israelis have routinely profaned the
good name of God by living a life apart from Him, and, by failing to be
the priests to the nations they were meant to be.
Ezekiel tells us that
it's not for Israel's sake that God will do "these things".
In context, "do these things" refers to God restoring Israel
to His original purpose, which He will do for His name sake, not for
Israel
's name sake. In other
words, He made a promise to Abraham that Israel would be a great nation.
For the sake of His name; for the sake of His credibility, He
will keep this promise. He
never revokes a promise. (Romans 11:29)
If He did, He'd defame His own name and who could ever trust Him
after that.
We should take God at His
word. There's no need to do
some kind of theological gymnastics and twist His words around to mean
something they were never meant to mean.
If God promised Abraham that
Israel
would be a great nation, a great nation Israel
will be.
We don't support
Israel
for their sake or because Israelis are any better than the rest of us,
because they're not. We
support Israel
because we uphold the good name of our God.
We support
Israel
because of God's sovereign choice to show Himself holy to the nations of
the world through Israel, as Ezekiel predicted. When
Jesus returns to earth and restores
Israel
to His original purpose, He will rule the nations from
Jerusalem, thus demonstrating to the nations that He in fact is the Lord, just as
Ezekiel predicted.
I know I buck the social
and political trend these days by supporting Israel. I also know that this
trend will evolve into world wide hatred towards
Israel
that has never been seen in history, as the Bible also predicts.
Still, as seen in the book of Revelation, I'd rather uphold the
good name of our God than suffer the unprecedented judgments of God on
those who war against Israel.
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