WHO SHALL POSSESS PALESTINE?
“There  is no such  place  as Palestine, legally and diplomatically, it doesn’t exist. In the eyes of the world, if not the Palestinian people, it’s a would-be country, a state of mind, a nation in waiting.” -Associated  Press, writer Laura King, Gaza City, Gaza Strip. September 27, 1998.
Now Yasser Arafat says that wait is nearly over. In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly, September 27, 1998, the Palestinian leader made his boldest  bid yet to turn  the statehood dreams to reality a scant seven  months from then.
Arafat has said  for months that barring  some negotiating breakthrough, the Palestinians were likely to proclaim statehood as  soon  as  the interim  Oslo peace accords expire – on May 4, 1999, according to the Palestinian interpretation.
Arafat’s direct appeal for international support for an independent Palestine before the United Nations, carried  far more symbolic  weight  than any previous statement.
And it came only four days after  Prime  Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used  his own appearance before  the  world body  to deliver  a  blunt  warning: “Don’t do it.”
Oddly, those seeking an answer to the Palestinian enigma rarely raise the  question: who  are  the Palestinian  exiles consigned to the West  Bank and the Gaza Strip or endless refugee status as homeless pariahs among  the nations of Islam?
The Holy Bible is the only authoritative source of evidence  determining conclusively who shall posses Palestine. The claim  of any people or nation  to the Promised  Land is irrevocably linked to the Lord’s promise to Abraham  nearly 4,600 years ago.
Because Abraham obeyed  to the  Lord’s  Word, (Genesis 12:17) all the land of Canaan from the river of Egypt to the great river Euphrates was promised to Abraham’s seed  for  an  everlasting possession (Genesis 15:18).
When the distinctions the scriptures make among, the various  branches of the  seed  of  Abraham  are recognized it then becomes clear who are the rightful heirs to the Promised  Land.
It is generally understood that Christians, Jews and Muslims share  a common belief that Palestine  is the Promised  Land given by the Lord to Abraham:
“In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying,  Unto thy seed  have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great  river, the river Euphrates.” (Genesis 15:18)
But beyond this point  it is not generally understood that, in fact, neither the  Arabs nor  the Jews were ever  give title to the  Promised Land.
The patriarch Abraham had eight sons and among their descendants  are those who are indigenous to the land  of Palestine. They are the Palestinian Arabs who are descended from Ishmael, Abraham’s firstborn. But Ishmael was born of Hagar, the Egyptian handmaid. Thus,  his posterity  are  not “the seed of promise,” for the Lord said to Abraham:
“In  Isaac  shall  thy  seed be called.” (Genesis 21 :12
Although the son of the bondwoman was given no legacy  in the Covenant Promises to the seed  of Abraham – a fateful provision was made that Ishmael’s descendants would  multiply exceedingly and dwell in the presence of all his brethren. It was an ominous portent  of trouble  to come in Jerusalem-the epicenter of the Lord’s  coming  controversy in Zion.
A Legacy  of Violence
The  Lord characterized Ishmael as  the progenitor of a volatile people, whose untenable residence in Palestine can find  no  peaceful resolution:
”And  he  will  be  a wild  man; his  hand will  be against every man, and  every man’s hand  against him; and  he shall dwell in the  presence of all his brethren.” (Genesis 16:12)
Today, a whole generation of displaced Palestinians have known  only a precarious existence scattered among their brethren in five Arab countries.
Ishmael  has  indeed become “a  wild  man;  his hand against every man, every man’s hand  against him.” A man without  a country,  without  an army;  in fact, with no military resources other than small arms and explosives; his only recourse: terrorism.
The Zionist/Israeli State is no longer the sole target of Arab  reprisal. France  and  Britain  and  now  the United States  have  suffered  a series of devastating terrorist attacks. The West and particularly the United States,  having long aided  and abetted the Zionist usurpation of the  Palestinian homeland, are beginning  to reap a whirlwind.
Recent news reports indicate that  American retaliation against terrorist  suspects in Islam  only serve  to escalate the jihad  (holy  war)  against  the United States.
A Distinction of Great Significance
To this day, high caste Brahmins of India and many Muslim peoples and  nations  in Islam can trace  their lineage to Abraham. In our Saviour’s day, the Idumean Jews who  conspired against Him could claim Abraham as their father. Yahweh called  Isaac’s  seed out from among  the various  branches of Abraham’s descendants as recorded in Genesis 21 :12:
“In  Isaac  shall thy  seed  be called.”
This exclusive consideration for Isaac’s posterity is made abundantly clear:
“And the Lord said  unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy  wife, thou shalt not  call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be. And I will bless her, and… she shall be a mother of nations; kings  of people [kings of nations,  R.V.] shall be  of her  …And   the Lord  said,  Sarah thy  wife  shall bear  thee  a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name Isaac: and  I will establish  my  covenant with him  for  an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him.” (Genesis 17:15, 16&19)
Now the crux of the matter is the fact that neither the Palestinian Arabs nor the Jews are the rightful heirs to the Promised Land. When  the Lord called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees, He promised that his posterity would possess the land of Palestine forever.
Today  Abraham’s seed  of  promise are the descendants of Isaac and  are called  by their family name, “Saxons,” a derivation of the Hebrew,  ‘Saac’s sons’. Isaac  had two sons, Esau and Jacob. The birthright was given to Jacob, not Esau. The Lord gave Jacob a  new  name, or  title,  ISRAEL, meaning “a prince,  or ruler with the Lord”:
“And  the  Lord  said  unto him, I am  the  Lord Almighty: be  fruitful and  multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be  of thee, and  kings shall  come out of thy  loins. And the  land  which I gave  Abraham and  Isaac, to thee  I will  give  it, and  to  thy  seed  after thee will  I give  the  land.” (Genesis 35:10-12).
The 48th and 49th chapters of Genesis record  that Jacob/ Israel had  twelve sons who became  the progenitors of the twelve tribes of Israel. Jacob, now called  “Israel,”  called  his sons  together and  divided the inheritance among  all twelve (Genesis 49: 1&2).
But a most extraordinary birthright  blessing  of a national pre-eminence was  given  to the sons of Joseph: Manasseh was destined to become a great people, or republic, and  Ephraim  to become even greater as  a great  kingdom and  a  “company,” or “multitude of nations” (Genesis 48:19-20).
Manasseh became the great people, or republic: the United States  of America. And Ephraim,  became even  greater as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and the Commonwealth of British Nations. Moreover, Jacob’s very  name, ISRAEL, was given to his grandsons, Ephraim and  Manasseh,  as the patriarch blessed Joseph saying:
“God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which  fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel which redeemed  me  from all evil, bless the lads; and let my name be named  on them, and the name of my  fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them  grow  into  a multitude; in the midst of the earth.” (Genesis 48:15-16).
As the leading  birthright  nations  in Anglo Saxon Israel, Great Britain and  the  United  States have a crucial  stake  in the final resolution of the Promised Land. But national  blindness which is responsible for our pro-Zionist  bias in Palestine  reflects  the spiritual blindness of the  church in Western Christendom. Unmindful  of our  heritage  as God’s  witnesses and His servant people, Israel – successive  U.S. Administrations have sanctioned and supported the Zionist-Israeli occupation of the Palestinian homeland for over 50 years.
All during the Cold War, the U.S. State Department insisted that  American  interests in the  Middle East depended largely on the preservation of our friend, and strategically: Israel must be kept strong and viable as a bulwark against Soviet expansion in the region.
The collapse  of the Soviet Union notwithstanding, fears  of a Russian  offensive  in the  Holy Land were well-founded perhaps more than anyone in government then, or now, may realize. In the “Day of the Lord,” Russian-led  armies of the great  anti-God confederacy of prophecy will move against the Holy Land (Ezekiel 38:16), and  against Israel in the West (Ezekiel 38:1 0-13).
Jerusalem Trodden Down
To understand why Palestine is embroiled – in seemingly interminable conflict, we need to look back to Israel’s long estrangement from the Lord in exile among the  Gentiles.  It should  be  recalled that  130 years  after  the  twelve tribes  were  taken  captive  by the Assyrians in a series of deportations; a remnant of Judah  still in Jerusalem was taken  captive  by the Babylonians when  the city fell in 604 B.C. This date marked the beginning of the “times of the Gentiles.”
The reign of Nebuchadnezzar began the Babylonian  succession of World Empires:  Babylon, Medo-Persia,  Greece and  Imperial  Rome,  and  later subdivisions of the Roman Empire into the nations of Continental Europe.  In the latter years,  the Empire’s seats of power moved  from  Rome  to  Berlin  and Constantinople to Moscow.
In the  Great War of 1914-1918, the defeat  of the last Kaiser and  Czar marked the  termination of the prophetic “times of the Gentiles.”
The Great  War also  marked the  end  of another phase of the “times of the Gentiles” foretold  by our Saviour in the New Testament (See Luke 21 :24).
Jerusalem Liberated
“Seven times,”  i.e. 2,520 years* after the fall of Jerusalem in 604  B.C. brings  us  to 1917 A.D. (*A prophetic ‘time’ is found to be 360 years. ‘Seven times’ 360 years is 2,520 years). December 9, 1917 the Turks surrendered the  Holy City to British forces  led  by General Allenby. General  Allenby, who later became Viscount Allen by, was a serious student of the Bible. According to his own record  he was awed  by the tremendous responsibility at his command. As he led his British Army into Jerusalem, he dismounted from his white  horse  and  walked  into the city. Not a shot was fired.
The overwhelming numbers of Turkish forces abandoned Jerusalem through  the rear gates  of the city. The Lord’s  time  was  up and  another major prophecy  was fulfilled. Jerusalem was delivered by an  army  of  Ephraim  Britain. The  “times of  the Gentiles” was fulfilled.
Looking back to the deliverance of Jerusalem a DESTINY Editorial in December 1947 commented: “The taking of Jerusalem should have been a trumpet blast  to Christendom that  the  end  of the  age  has come.”  How then could an event of such  magnitude pass virtually unheralded and unheeded?
Excerpts from the DESTINY Editorial offer the following explanation: “With the ending of World War I, the house of Israel  had  come into  possession of their ancient homeland. However,  because of their blindness, and  particularly the blindness of Israel’s spiritual leaders to the Israel identity of Great Britain, they failed to recognize that Palestine belongs  to her as a gift from the Almighty … Thus  Great Britain must repudiate the  mandate as the first step  toward  the ultimate solution to the  present problem. From the inception of this mandate there has been nothing but turmoil  and  trouble, bloodshed and  murder as  the Jews challenge the British right to rule in Palestine.”
The Mandate That  Failed
Great  Britain had  taken  unilateral possession of the Promised Land. But as a member of the League of Nations, created at the Treaty of Versailles  in 1919, she accepted a mandate from the League  to govern the land. When the League was dissolved in 1946, the mandate’s authority dissolved with it.
At the end  of thirty years,  Britain’s heroic but thankless mandate to govern  and  maintain peace, despite relentless Zionist atrocities, was abandoned when  the League  of Nations was superseded by yet another godless organization- the United Nations.
Great Britain, oblivious to the fact that Palestine belongs to the House  of Israel  as an everlasting inheritance, was led providentially to repudiate the Gentile  League  of Nations  mandate and  withdraw from the land.  But in the final disposition of the Promised  Land, the House of Israel will return- this time  according to the  Saviour’s Sanction and  His Authority.
Political Zionism
A diverse  people  whom Yahweh calls “an hypocritical nation and  the  people of my wrath” (Isaiah 10:6) and “the tabernacles of Edom” (Psalm 83:6), are of an historic  Esau/Edom/Idumean cabal.
In Jeremiah’s day they were  of a minor faction in Judah whom  the Lord characterized as bad figs, they were  so evil (Jeremiah 24:1-3). The prophet Ezekiel identified them as “the inhabitants of Jerusalem” who said to the house  of Israel wholly:
“Get you  far from the Lord: unto us is this land given in possession.” (Ezekiel 11:15).
The  prophet foresaw the  present day “inhabitants of Jerusalem” oppose the  house of Israel’s right to govern Palestine because the Zionist Jews are not descendants of Judah much less of Israel.
Mr. Benjamin Freedman, a Jew, explains: “Political Zionism is almost exclusively a movement  by the Jews of Europe:  But these  Eastern  European Jews  have neither a racial nor a historic connection with Palestine. Their ancestors were not inhabitants of the Promised Land. They are direct  descendants of the people of the  Khazar Kingdom  which  existed  until the 12th century.
The  Khazars  were a  non-Semitic ,  Turko-Finn, Mongolian tribal people who, about  the first century A.D., emigrated from Middle Asia to Eastern Europe.
About 7th century A.D., the  King of the  Khazars adopted Judaism as  the  state religion, and  the majority of inhabitants  joined him in the  new allegiance. Before that date  there was no such  thing as a Khazar who  was a Jew.  Neither then  nor since was there such a thing as a Khazar whose ancestors came  from the Holy Land.
“The  Eastern European, Yiddish-speaking Jews have no historic  or racial  connection with Palestine or, for that  matter,  with  other  Jews  who  existed  in other  countries for thousands of years  prior  to the Khazar conversion.”
The Barren Fig Tree
Our Saviour used the parable of a barren fig tree to depict  Jewry ‘s failure to show  forth the fruits of the Kingdom. Because  the Jews  rejected  Him, the Lord declared  that all rights to the Kingdom would be taken from them and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof (Matthew 21:43). The Jews  refused  to accept the Lord of the House of David as King (Luke 1 :31-33), and  nearly two thousand  years later  they refused  to accept the sovereignty of the Throne of David as represented in the Crown of Great Britain.
Our generation has seen the fig tree beginning  to put  forth leaves in the  aspirations of Jewish nationalism (Matthew 24:32-23). With the liberation of Jerusalem in 1917, a vanguard of Jews had already moved into Palestine ostensibly as the chosen people returning to the Promised Land.
Ironically, Ephraim-Britain made possible the incursions of the Turks who are a major part of Edom in the world today. The British military action was a partial fulfillment of the Lord’s ultimate judgment upon Edom:
”And I will lay my  vengeance upon Edom by the  hand of my  people  Israel.” (Ezekiel 25:14).
The progeny  of Esau/Edom  together  with various heterogeneous proselytes in Judaism are the present-day inhabitants of Jerusalem and the greater part of Palestine. The Lord foretells how the House of Israel will be returned to the land of their inheritance (Jeremiah 3:14-18):
“I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion: And I will give you pastors according  to mine  heart,  which  shall  feed you with knowledge and understanding …At that time they shall call Jerusalem the  throne of the  Lord; and  all the nations shall be gathered  unto it, to the name  of the Lord, to Jerusalem: neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their evil heart.In those days, the house of Judah shall walk with the house oflsrael, and  they shall come  together out  of the land of the north to the land that I have given  for an inheritance unto your  fathers.” AMEN.
