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Biblical Aspects Of The Middle East Crisis By Corbin M. Wright, Fri Dec 9th A POLITICAL CONCERN THAT HAS VERY IMPORTANT INTERNATIONALRAMIFICATIONS.
In Genesis 13:15 God tells Abraham "All the land that you see Iwill give you and your offspring, Forever" God never consideredIshmael (the founder of the Arabs) part of his offspring,because Ishmail came from Sarah's handmaiden, not his wife. InGenesis 17:8 it states "The whole land of Canaan, where you arenow an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to youand your descendents after you, and I will be their God" InGenesis 17:21 it states "But my covenant I will establish withIsaac, whom Sarah will bear to you this time next year." Jacob,Isaac's youngest son, who stole the birthright from Esau,Isaac's eldest son, struggled with God and was thereafter calledIsrael (He struggled with God) Genesis 35:10. And after the Jewswere led to Egypt to live, but eventually held in bondage, Godspoke to Moses and said in Exodus 3:17 "And I have promised tobring you out of your misery in Egypt into the land of theCanaanites". And when Joshua took over from Moses the leadershipresponsibilities, God spoke to Joshua and said in Joshua 3:10"This is how you will know that the living God is among you, andthat he will certainly drive out before you theCanaanites-----". But you notice, even in Scripture, theIsraelites were never constantly remaining on the land God gavethem. This is because that possession of the land came with acondition-Obedience to God. (Duet 4:1-2 and Duet 30:1-5). And today, even though they have had their land for more than 50years, it was founded on a secular, but cultural basis, andcontinues to be such with very little spirituality containedtherein, so they continue to struggle for their
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land, because ofeconomic jeolousies, or to put it another way, they continue tostruggle with God. (Article continued below)
Now the permanent restoration of Israel is not specificallymentioned in Scripture, but Jerusalem (the most important cityin Israel) is mentioned as being permanently restored. But this,is in reality the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21) coming out ofheaven and this would be the true City of Peace, which the nameJerusalem actually means. For Christians the restoration of thePromised Land now refers to the Kingdom of God (a SpirirtualRealm), which comes only through Jesus Christ as stated inGalatians 3:29 "If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham'sseed, and heirs according to the Promise". This promise is thePromised Land, and therefore, for a Christian, the Promised Landis really the Kingdom of God in the hearts of the Believers,regardless of where they lived. With this in mind, we should then recognize that Israel is onlya Sovereign State, just like any other Sovereign State.Therefore, the negotiations are really taking place between aSovereign State (Israel) and a potentially Sovereign People (thePalestines) and the negotiations should take place on aninterest-interest basis (win-win situation), but unfortunatelythese negotiations are intermingled with religious dogma whichdo not lend themselves to a win-win situation because of theinflexibility of much of the dogma. Thus the problems betweenIsrael and the Palestines which have to be resolved within thismixture are the current violence, the security for Israel, theIsraeli settlements, the 2 state issue, the refugee problem, theJerusalem situation, and the reconstruction of the Palestinianareas. But in order to do this, the religious dogma has to betoned down to make these negotiations much more of a win-winsituation.
About the author:Corbin Melvin Wright was born in New York City in 1931, grew upon Long Island, graduated from Roanoke College in Virginia witha BA in Political Science, and from New York TheologicalSeminary with a Masters in Religious Education. He worked as anaccountant in NYC for 21 yrs. and as an English teacher andChristian counselor in Argentina for 23 years. He was marriedtwice, widowed once, & has no children, E-mail address(corbinwr@yahoo.com).
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