ISRAEL – A NATION OF GOD?
PART I
ISRAEL – A NATION OF GOD?
JAN LILLEBY
Christian Zionist camp in the world today, as well as the greater part of Jewry, is trying to portray Israel as a nation of God. As if nothing ever happened in history saying otherwise.
They say that ‘God gave them the land’ – but the Bible shows us that God took it back, and He returned His disobedient people back to where they came from: Egypt.
This article will show you that God no longer (at present, 2024) is one Who has Israel as His representative for Himself, like, as when Moses took the Hebrews out of Egypt around 1450 BC, reported in Exodus. Neither has He in the continuation through the centuries, which we find thoroughly described in the prophetic books of the Bible.
What happened, or rather, what did the Jews do to make God separate Himself from Israel and no longer want to be their God?
THE THREE DEPORTATIONS OF JEWS
The Bible as well as world history points to three major punishments instigated by God Jehovah. Each one of these contained serious deportations which were enforced on the nation because of Israel’s sinful disobedience and opposition against Jehovah. Idolatry was a substantial factor to make God angry with His elect nation. Who does not remember to have read of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel as they were chastised by Elijah for their grave idolatry with Baal worship?
His election of the Hebrews (as a future nation) at the foot of Mt. Horeb, can be found in Exo. 19:4-8, NASB,
“4 'You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings, and brought you to Myself.
5 'Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine;
6 and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.' These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel."
7 So Moses came and called the elders of the people, and set before them all these words which the LORD had commanded him.
8 All the people answered together and said, "All that the LORD has spoken we will do!" And Moses brought back the words of the people to the LORD.”
Thus it is clearly proven that God’s election of them to become His holy nation on earth, CAME WITH CERTAIN CONDITIONS, and was in no way a free ‘forever’ golden unbreakable promise.
Notice my emphasize of verse 5 – the word IF – a word which the entire Christian Zionist camp overlook…as if it never was written at all. Thus they actually must answer to Christ why they willfully choose to twist and pervert the Word of God! Doing so, they actively support the enemies of the Lord, which are the Zionist-Jewry (fallen Pharisaic Jewry). They are blaspheming His Holy name. The Babylonian Talmud proves this, as Jesus is called a bastard, son of a whore who got pregnant with a Roman Centurion. Jesus is now ‘boiling in hot excrement in Hell’ according to Talmud.
For not to mention the stunning fact that the recipients of these words spoken to them via Moses below Mt. Horeb, the Hebrews, answered back to the Lord by making a PROMISE, verse 8 quoted above emphasized in Red color. They promised before the Lord to do as He had commanded them!
History bluntly proves to us that the nation broke their promises, in all three instances! First He took the Northern Kingdom, later He punished the Southern Kingdom, and finally He destroyed – not only deported – the entire nation of Israel in 70 CE when she was under the Roman Empire. Israel was guilty as Hell.
Jesus characterization of the unbelieving Jewry in John 8:44 still holds true – after almost 2000 years!
"You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (NASB).
The first incident was when they broke their promise to the Lord, in 722 BCE, and God punished the Northern Kingdom, the ten tribes, 2 Kings 17:6, 18, 23, NASB,
6 “In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and carried Israel away into exile to Assyria, and settled them in Halah and Habor, on the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.
18 So the LORD was very angry with Israel and removed them from His sight; none was left except * the tribe of Judah.
23 until * the LORD removed Israel from His sight, as He spoke through all His servants the prophets. So Israel was carried away into exile from their own land to Assyria until this day.”
(See my article on the Ten Tribes of Israel)
The second incident was when Judah, the Southern Kingdom, was taken (the final deportation of two) by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar in 589-587 BCE.
This deportation was happening on the very same calendar day as when Rome destroyed Israel in 70 BC, which was 10 September in our calendar. Flavius Josephus made a remark of this in his book on the Jewish War. I have clipped in from Wikipedia a little notice,
“The siege of Jerusalem (circa 589–587 BC) was the final event of the Judahite revolts against Babylon, in which Nebuchadnezzar II, king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, besieged Jerusalem, the capital city of the Kingdom of Judah. Jerusalem fell after a 30-month siege, following which the Babylonians systematically destroyed the city and Solomon's Temple.[1][2] The Kingdom of Judah was dissolved and many of its inhabitants were exiled to Babylon.»
The king of Judah, Zedekiah, refused to pay taxes to the Babylonian king, which resulted in that second deportation mentioned above. In other words, it was an act of rebellion, and the disaster fell on Israel.
The first temple was destroyed, as was much of the city.
The prophet Jeremiah pointed to this rebellion as if it was a rebellion against God, and not just the Babylonian king! And he prophesied that Judah would be in captivity for 70 years (Jer. 25:11, 12).
It is this second deportation which is the basis for Daniel’s book. He became a eunuch as he was taken into the royal court by Nebuchadnezzar as a teenager. Most Bible students has some knowledge of the Book of Daniel, which was one of the Scriptures Jesus quoted from in ministry.
The third and final incident, was when Israel made rebellion against the Roman Empire in 66-70 CE, and was utterly destroyed, and actually returned back to Egypt as slaves according to Deuteronomy 28:68. Flavius Josephus recorded this in his books.
In this total disaster the second temple (restored by the released Jews under king Cyrus the Great of Media-Persia) was burnt and torn down, just as Jesus prophesied to them, not leaving any stone-on-stone. It was literally flattened entirely. There is no theologian or scholar who can explain to the world how it is that this terrible disaster is not recorded in the Bible Canon – that is, the Acts of the Apostles. And I certainly cannot explain it either. We do not have any proofs of the writer Luke whether he was alive, right before, during or after the great rebellion in those critical years for Israel. All we can do is guess. But we have a word in Colossians 4 that Luke was with Paul in Rome in around 63-64 CE (verse 14).
This third punishment is an all-time-high (or rather, bottom) regarding Israel as a nation under God’s severe punishment. They have been out for almost 2000 years. In Ezekiel they are seen as dead bones filling a valley, and in Hoseah 6, we find the nation likened with dead, since he prophesied that God would revive them back to life after ‘two days’ –which are not days, but two millennia.
He actually did not only deport them – as prisoners of war – but He annulled the entire existence of the nation, as He had them sent by sea vessels to Alexandria to be sold as slaves to the mining works in Egypt. But as Moses prophesied, NO ONE WOULD BUY.
A huge number (historians says about 90 000 prisoners) were taken, and of which many later on were used to build the enormous arena Coliseum in Rome. Ruins are still standing as a museum of the Roman Empire’s era.
Those who did not become war-prisoners were crucified along the main roads in Judea, as a brutal horror-scenario to anyone who tried to oppose the Roman powers! From biblicalarcheology.org I have clipped in a quote regarding the end of the Jewish war,
“Initially, crucifixion was known as the punishment of the slaves. Later, it was used to punish foreign captives, rebels and fugitives, especially during times of war and rebellion. Captured enemies and rebels were crucified in masses. Accounts of the suppression of the revolt of Spartacus in 71 B.C. tell how the Roman army lined the road from Capua to Rome with 6,000 crucified rebels on 6,000 crosses. After the Romans quelled the relatively minor rebellion in Judea in 7 A.D. triggered by the death of King Herod, Quintilius Varus, the Roman Legate of Syria, crucified 2,000 Jews in Jerusalem. During Titus’s siege of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., Roman troops crucified as many as 500 Jews a day for several months.”
This was a lot of crucifixions!
JESUS WARNED OF THE COMING DISASTER IN ISRAEL
Jesus foretold of this disaster, using a parable-form, the Wedding Feast for the son of the King, Mat. 22:7 in particular, the utter destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, - since the ones who were invited to the feast persecuted and killed the servants who went out to invite the guests,
"But the king was enraged, and he sent his armies and destroyed those murderers and set their city on fire.”
Jesus characterized the Jewish persecutors as murderers, and the Roman army was characterized as ‘His armies’ – God’s punishing troops. The destruction of Israel, with its city and temple, was a pure justified revenge seen from God’s side of the line.
This status – of Israel’s total annulation/destruction still stands in the eyes of God and of Christ, in spite of the political manipulations made in 1948 when UN had Israel verified as a new nation. In the eyes of God that tricky move is a theft of His land. And with the coming ‘Great Tribulation’ prophesied by Jesus, God will serve His stern payback!
(See my article on Jesus’ prophesying in Mat. 12 of the future illegal Zionist take-over of Palestine). He actually ‘demonized’ the future Zionist movement. Meaning, it is a move made by Satan, not God!
PRESENT DAY JEWRY
The present day Jewry, with their synagogues in many nations in the world, are using Moses as a ‘mantra’ but they obviously do not care that Moses actually prophesied of their final destruction so far, Deu. 28:68, NASB,
"The LORD will bring you back to Egypt in ships, by the way about which I spoke to you, 'You will never see it again!' And there you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves *, but there will be no buyer."
In Norway we have only one real synagogue, which is found in Oslo. It was built in 1920, and is in Jewry considered as an Ashkenazy assembly. The estate sits on the part of Oslo called ‘St. Hans Haugen’. The area is one with residents as well as businesses combined. Wikipedia says so as well as other documents on the internet. As of 2022 they had only 626 registered members. See image here. In Norwegian they have named their congregation ‘Det Mosaiske Trossamfunn’ – which in English reads The Mosaic Denomination’.
The Ashkenazies are Gentile-Jews and thus not of Abraham’s gender, (dating back to 750 CE (disputed) as king Bulan of Khazaria had 200 Jewish Rabies come and turning his nation into a ‘Jewish’ one, regarding religion). Arthur Koestler wrote a book on this phenomenon, called ‘The Thirteenth Tribe’. The teaching received in that Gentile nation was of course based on the Babylonian Talmud plus the Tora rolls. Talmud is definitely an Anti-Christian writing, consisting of 17 books. As already mentioned above, Jesus is harshly blasphemed in that satanic book. It is a book of lies and Jewish fairytales mostly, says many critics.
Only about 3-4% of Israel’s population today is real Jews after Abraham’s lineage. The rest are simply Gentiles from several nations. Ben Gurion, when asked ‘Who is a Jew?’ – said that anyone who calls himself a Jew is a Jew. Can you believe it?
65% of Jewry in the world lives NOT in Israel. Chew on that fact for a while.
THE REAL WORLD FACTS ON ISRAEL
If you are a fanatical Israel-supporter, then you are guilty of supporting the worst thinkable enemies of the Lord Jesus Christ. They who, through their daily lives and false faith/religion of Zionism, go on like this will not be saved. Supporting satanic enterprises is not what a Christian should get busy with. On the contrary, he should go up against all such ungodly ideology and fanaticism. Supporting Israel is supporting Satan’s flock, the Jesus-haters found mostly in Jewry. Over 80% of Israel’s population has Talmud as their religion. They will not have salvation. As long as a person in our time does not believe on Jesus Christ, the Bible says he is lost forever.
As a true Christian believer you cannot expect to be saved, as long as you keep supporting God’s hateful enemies, such ones that actually are blasphemers of the Lord’s name. If a man says he is a Christian, but in his daily life he is a thief, or a robber or violent assassin, he is denying Christ by his evil life style. If a man says he is a Christian, but he go supporting Anti-Christian enterprises such as the illegal (in the eyes of God) nation of Israel, he is denying Christ. It simply is not enough to just calling yourself a Christian, as long as you go up against Christ, like I have described above!
IF YOU BELIEVE ON JESUS YOU MUST
BELIEVE ON WHAT HE TAUGHT OF ISRAEL
I am not letting you off the hook so easily: If you consider yourself a Christian Zionist, supporting Israel, you are way out of line! You are Christian by name, and not by lifestyle.
Jesus told another parable regarding Israel and her grave sin of disobedience and of unbelief. The Parable of the barren fig tree. This parable can be considered as the final ‘nail in the coffin’ for those who think God still let Israel have the land.
In the parable we find Jesus clearly CONDEMNING ISRAEL into destruction and oblivion! The nation was to be cut down and no longer take up the soil in that vineyard, since it had no fruit. It was barren entirely. Understood: It had NO FAITH in the Messiah of God, Jesus.
The parable’s main point is this: Without Israel FIRST believing on Jesus Christ, they CANNOT EVER POSESS THE PROMISED LAND.
The land cannot be given back to the disobedient Jewish people before Messiah returns from heaven, as we can see in Rev. 19-20 – the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great might and power, to quote Jesus. Until that happens, the land has been lawfully given over to other people than the Jews. Actually the Jews have been a longer period of time OUTSIDE their land, than inside of it. History proves it.
Luke 13:1-9, NASB,
1 Now on the same occasion there were some present who reported to Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices.
2 And Jesus said to them, "Do you suppose that these Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate?
3 "I tell you, no, but unless * you repent, you will all likewise perish.
4 "Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem?
5 "I tell you, no, but unless * you repent, you will all likewise perish."
6 And He began telling this parable: "A man had a fig tree which had been planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and did not find any.
7 "And he said to the vineyard-keeper, 'Behold, for three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree without * finding any. Cut it down! Why does it even use up the ground?'
8 "And he answered and said to him, 'Let it alone, sir, for this year too, until I dig around it and put in fertilizer;
9 and if it bears fruit next * year, fine; but if not, cut it down.' "
Here Jesus spoke straight forward, like in verse 3, saying unless you repent, you WILL ALL LIKEWISE PERISH. He pointed to what happened to the Galileans whom Pilate had killed due to an up rise, verses 1 and 2. So saying: You will all likewise, be killed by the Roman overlords unless you repent to Me, your Messiah.
Jesus added one more example of the same sort, in verses 4 and 5, of the killing of 18 Jews as the tower of Siloam fell upon them.
And with this grim back curtain He delivered to them the Parable of the barren fig tree, which is directly pointing to Israel as a nation which did not repent to Messiah.
Verses 6 and 7: The owner of the vineyard had been looking for three years, but still could not find any fruit. He told the keeper, CUT IT DOWN! WHY DOES IT EVEN USE UP THE GROUND?
Jesus had been ministering to Israel for 3 years, but the nation rejected Him. He was the owner of the land – and he gave the keeper an order to cut that bad fig tree down! He found no fruit there, He found NO FAITH there except a minority.
Then we find the keeper of the vineyard speaks up (thus representing the apostles of Christ) – verses 8 and 9 – Let it alone, sir, for this year too, until I dig around it and put in fertilizer; and if it bears fruit next year, fine; but if not, CUT IT DOWN.”
The voice of the vineyard keeper represent the apostles of Christ in this Parable. They were sent out into THE VINYARD, Israel, to put on fertilizer, that is, preaching Jesus Christ to them so they could come to faith and repent to Him. Jesus pointed to a ‘ONE MORE YEAR’ to perhaps have the barren fig tree come up with fruit. This ‘one more year’ is the 34 years we find in Book of Acts.
The use of such a year, rested on what Isa. 61:2 wrote of the ‘Favorable year of the Lord’ – leaving out the last half of verse 2 – like Jesus did when preaching this in Nazareth,
“1 The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, Because the LORD has anointed me To bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted *, To proclaim liberty to captives And freedom to prisoners;
2 To proclaim the favorable year of the LORD…..”
Jesus 33 years of lifetime when speaking this parable, was the first year of the fig tree, and thus the ‘one more year’ (or season) was that same length of time found with the apostles in the Book of Acts.
After those years with the apostles for Israel, we find proven that Israel as a nation DID NOT REPENT TO JESUS, and so consequently the barren fig tree was cut down, by the Roman battle axe. The tree was NOT allowed to use up the soil when it could not produce any more fruit.
This is still true today, and so the establishing Israel as a nation in 1948 was an illicit operation – and it was NOT of God. He has not changed the terms for them regarding possession of the land. They must FIRST, THE ENTIRE NATION ALL AT ONCE, take to faith and repent to Jesus so they can lawfully enter the ancient grounds. This will not happen before Jesus Messiah returns from heaven!
Thus we find that the Parable of the barren fig tree also proves to us that the Book of Acts are telling of their mission to Israel as a nation, and not to the Gentile world. The vineyard was Israel. This is fully in line with the teaching of Peter and the others. Peter as he addressed the Gentile guests in Cornelius’ house, Acts 10:34-39, NASB, especially verse 36 is hard evidence to this,
“34 Opening his mouth, Peter said: "I most certainly * understand now that God is not one to show partiality,
35 but in every nation the man who fears Him and does what is right is welcome to Him.
36 "The word which He sent to the sons of Israel, preaching peace through Jesus Christ (He is Lord of all )-
37 you yourselves know the thing which took place throughout all Judea, starting from Galilee, after the baptism which John proclaimed.
38 "You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.
39 "We are witnesses of all the things He did both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They also put Him to death by hanging Him on a cross.” Editor’s emphasize.
Only Paul was sent to us Gentiles outside of Israel, and never the twelve.
He concluded his ministry to Israel in this manner, Acts 28:28, NASB,
"Therefore let it be known to you that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will also listen."
These were the very last words spoken to Israel as a nation, by a prophet of God. Since this day in the summer of 60 CE, Israel has NOT been the nation of God. She fell from God when Paul confronted the Sanhedrin at Rome. It was the end station for Israel, the Point-of-no-return if you like. And just ten years after this final meeting with Paul, Israel was entirely destroyed and utterly annulled as a nation.
Israel today is the early platform made ready to receive the Anti-Christ of the Bible (Rev. 13) – a false ungodly ‘messiah’ trying to steal the position which only Jesus Christ can occupy.
That evildoer will soon enter the world-arena, just wait and see. He is already in this world, making his way in the politics in a silent or at least a disguised manner.
Let us rather take to heart Paul’s exhortation in Eph. 5:5-7, NASB,
“5 For this you know with certainty, that no * immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.
6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.
7 Therefore do not be partakers with them”.
The emphasized lines are Paul’s characterization of the unbelieving Jews in his time. And we must NOT be partakers with such a bunch of evildoers! Separate yourself from such beliefs and such congregations, whether in the USA or elsewhere in this world. You must not be found as a supporter of the blasphemers of Christ!
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