What about the Land?

A very hot topic of today is the Israeli Palestinian 'issue'. I don't wish to take sides about the political issues. The conflict is complicated and like any argument, a two way street. In America we always get one side of the story. Muslims are guilty of horrendous things, but so are the Jews. I don’t have any problem with Israel being a state today, I believe in a 2 state solution to the mess over there. Iran is an anomaly in wanting to drive Israel into the sea… they are wrong. On the biblical side of things, I lean towards the dispensational bent… The Jews have an eternal promise of God to the land. However, I distinguish the political entity called Israel today, from the faithful remnant that God is speaking about in the promises. I don’t think that everything God promised to Israel should be applied to the secular political body called Israel today… this is a fine line.

Many believe this problem exists because Israel didn't drive out the inhabitants of Canaan like God said. This is based on the false assumption that all the inhabitants of the land were the ancestors of Ishmael… this isn’t true. The ‘ites’ who inhabited that land were descendants of Shem, Ham and Japeth… the Ishmaelites at the time of the conquest lived ‘to the east’ in the Arabian peninsula which is not part of the promised land. Of course, if Israel obeyed God, there would be less problems today, but we would still have problems. The modern day Palestinian is a mix of Shem, Ham, Japeth and Ishmael… it’s too distant to blanket categorize the situation.