The events of October 7th, 2023, where Palestinian Hamas operatives killed over 1,000 Israelis and took over 200 people hostage, followed by retaliation from Israel that have led to the loss of thousands of Palestinian lives, have once again brought worldwide focus to the tensions in Israel-Palestine. These events have also brought out differences in the church on how Christians should relate to modern Israel. Some Christians give the impression that support for modern Israel is a biblical duty, with a few churches displaying Israeli flags on their premises. Others denounce Israel, claiming modern Israel is guilty of long-term injustice and over-retaliation in how they have related to Palestinians. What should the church make of this?
Jesus and the Land: The New Testament Challenge to ‘Holy Land’ Theology by Gary Burge is a short but stimulating dive into the topic of the promised land in the Bible. Burge is a New Testament (NT) scholar who has a rich knowledge of the Israel-Palestine situation and has taken many trips to the area. In this book, he examines several biblical passages in order to construct a NT theology of the land. Along the way he critiques Christian Zionism. Zionism is the belief that Jewish people today should have a homeland within the ancient boundaries of biblical Israel. Christian Zionism refers to religiously motivated Christians who believe ethnic Israelites have a divine right to the historic promised land. Some of Burge’s points are pretty persuasive. Other times it seems like he is reaching, trying to download too much foreign meaning into a passage that is not evident from the immediate context. Still, I find him convincing in his overall project concerning how the land promises of the Old Testament (OT) are used in the NT. What follows is a survey of several biblical passages, largely following the contours of Burge’s book, culminating in a NT theology of the land and an evaluation of Christian Zionism.
The Old Testament on Israel in the Land
Land theology has its origins in the Old Testament. God promised the land of Canaan to Abraham for the first time in Genesis 13:14-17. Later in Genesis 17:3-8, the covenant with Abraham is called everlasting, and the land is said to be an everlasting possession for Abraham and his descendants after him.
Well, there you go. That should settle things in favor of ethnic Jews possessing the land, right?
It’s a little more complicated. In what follows in Genesis 17:9-14, the importance of obedience to God through circumcision is emphasized. The possibility of being cut off from the people and having the covenant revoked due to disobedience is also mentioned (17:14). There are warnings against defiling the promised land in other parts of the OT. In Lev. 18:24-30, Moses tells the people that the Canaanites were going to be vomited out of the land because they defiled it with their wickedness, and similarly he warns that Israel will be vomited out if they adopt the practices of the Canaanites (see also Lev. 20:22-24; Num. 35:34). If you know your OT, you know that Israel eventually took the land of Canaan through conquest in Joshua and Judges, with varying degrees of success. But you also know that Israel centuries later gets vomited out of the land due to their persistent unfaithfulness via the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles. This serves to illustrate that the gift of the land is conditioned upon Israel’s faithful obedience to God.
In other words, the land is not a possession that may be enjoyed without reference to God. Possessing this land is contingent on Israel’s ongoing faithfulness to God and obedience to his law. The land therefore is a byproduct of the covenant, a gift of the covenant. It is not a possession that can be held independently (Gary Burge, Jesus and the Land, pp. 3-4).
One difficulty the modern nation of Israel faces is that its people are mostly non-observant of OT law (see the religious demographics of Israel here). Could this put modern Israel at risk of being vomited out of the land according to OT standards? This is something of a hanging question for religious Jewish Zionists, though perhaps the idea of a faithful remnant could be invoked.
There also are promises of return from exile in the OT, from Moses prophesying that God would bring his people back to the land after the curse of exile (Deut. 30:1-10) to Jeremiah's letter to the exiles telling them they would spend seventy years in Babylon and then be brought back to the land (Jer. 29:10-14). Several Christian Zionists maintain that this pattern of land lost (exile, dispersion) and land regained is an ongoing paradigm for Jews. Further, some interpreters would point to prophecies that do not seem to have been fulfilled in Christ, like Ezekiel 40-48 concerning the temple and land allotments for the tribes of Israel. Does God have some promises to the Jewish people in this age that he has not yet fulfilled? I want to revisit these concerns at the end of this essay.
As Christians, our main interest, however, lies in the NT. How exactly do Jesus and the apostles engage the OT promises pertaining to the land?
The Gospels
Debates about the land of Israel under Roman colonization were volatile, dangerous topics in the Judaism of Jesus’ day. “Jesus’ contemporaries knew three alternatives that witnessed regular debate: cooperation, separation, or resistance” (Ibid., 26). If you were too cooperative with Rome, you’d gain the ire of several Jews who’d view you as a sellout and enemy of your people. If you were too revolutionary and opposed to Roman rule, you could end up skewered by Roman soldiers. How does Jesus operate in such a strained context, and what of the promised land?
It seems clear that Jesus was not in favor of violent revolution as a means to purify the land. Jesus heals a Roman centurion’s servant (Mat. 8:5-13), tells his followers to love their enemies and to go two miles instead of one when a Roman soldier conscripts you to carry his gear (Mat. 5:41, 43-45), and is not opposed to paying taxes to Rome, though he trivializes the importance of taxation in the grand scheme of what God desires (Mark 12:13-17). Unlike some of his contemporaries, Jesus was not in favor of armed resistance against Rome.
But does Jesus engage the land promises? Jesus either speaks obliquely concerning the question of the land–which would be wise when dealing with politically charged questions–or he doesn't really address it at all. Burge brings forward several teachings of Jesus in the Gospels that he believes impinge on the land promises. I think Burge is at his weakest here. Some of his exegesis amounts to him downloading too much that's simply not there into the texts and making some dubious connections. Perhaps Jesus' language from John 4:21-24 on a time coming when worship would not be focused on the mount of Jerusalem but would be done in Spirit and truth has significance. But it would be more responsible to say that Jesus does not directly address the land claims of the OT.
What about the rest of the NT?
Acts
Acts 2–There are several moves in the NT that universalize the promises of Abraham and membership amongst God’s people to Gentiles. In Acts 2, the Holy Spirit empowers tongues of fire where people praise God in many languages, not just Hebrew or Aramaic. This highlights the universalizing of membership in the people of God to people to many tribes, tongues, and nations. Further, Peter preaches that God’s promise of salvation in Christ is for “you and your children and for all who are far off–for all whose the Lord our God will call” in Acts 2:39 (NIV, emphasis mine). God’s salvation isn’t going to bring people into the promised land of territorial Israel, but is going to radiate outward to the world. Instead of being centripetal–pulling all people from the margins of the world to the center of the land of Israel and Jerusalem–Christianity will be centrifugal–spiraling from the center of the land of Israel to the margins of the world (Ibid., 62).
Stephen in Acts 7–Stephen’s speech in Acts 7 is the longest speech in the book of Acts, so Luke wants readers to pay attention to what he says. Stephen is brought on trial before the Sanhedrin, and the charges brought against him in 6:13-14 are that he “never stops speaking against this holy place and against the law. For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs Moses handed down to us” (NIV, emphasis mine). The “holy place” that Stephen’s opponents are referring to is certainly the temple–Stephen addresses this directly in 7:44-50–but the earlier parts of Stephen’s speech hint that he may also have had an implicit critique of holy land theology.
Every Old Testament hero Stephen refers to in his message is addressed and used by God outside of the promised land. Here is Burge on Stephen’s speech:
In each story important themes are sounded. God has not abandoned these lands beyond Judea. Although Abraham is in Mesopotamia, God speaks to him there (7:3). Although Joseph is in Egypt, “God is with him” (7:9). Moses is born in Egypt and is “beautiful before God” (7:20). Midian and Sinai are outside the Land of Promise and still, God can speak there too (7:30) and perform miracles (7:35). Even when Israel travels through remote deserts, God is with them and speaks at his tent (7:44). Most important, the ultimate revelation of God (his name) takes place at Mount Sinai far from Jerusalem. This new land in the desert of Sinai is called “holy land” (7:33) in stark contrast with the Land of Promise. It is as if Luke is showing us that holy land can exist outside the Holy Land itself. […] Stephen’s martyrdom should come as no surprise to those who understand the passion and anger that can fuel those who defend a territorial theology. Stephen has questioned the wedding of religion and land, or perhaps the synthesis of faith and nationalism. And it costs him his life (Ibid., 64-66).
One of the emphases in Stephen’s appropriation of these OT figures is the universality of God’s presence, that God cannot be confined to the temple or even to the promised land. A universalizing move is being made in Acts that acknowledges Jesus can bless and work through any ethnicity, language, and land, and that those who insist otherwise are neglecting parts of the OT that showcase this. Too much insistence on the holiness of territorial Israel and the temple have caused the Sanhedrin to miss what God was doing through Jesus and the Spirit. They are resisting the Holy Spirit and what God is wanting to do through the church, and they actually are going against the right use of the law (7:51-53).
Paul
Paul on “God’s People”
Before looking at how Paul addresses the land, I briefly want to highlight how Paul speaks about God’s chosen community, the people of God. One of the most challenging arguments Paul made to the Judaism of his day was that being a child of Abraham is defined by the faith of Abraham, not physical descent from Abraham or adopting certain outward identity markers like circumcision, Sabbath observance, kosher laws, festival observance, temple worship, etc. (this is one way to interpret what Paul means by “works of the law” in Rom. 3:20, 28; Gal. 2:16; 3:2, 5, 10). The faith of Abraham was a faith that God could bring life out of the dead reproductive potential of an elderly couple beyond childbearing years, and this faith should now find its home in God bringing life from death in the crucified and resurrected Jesus (Rom. 4:18-25). Being a true child of Abraham is marked by faith in Christ. Christ and the Spirit have fulfilled the law, and the law foreshadowed in several ways the greater work and ministry of Christ and the Spirit. This permits Paul to say that Jews and Gentiles together who put their faith in Jesus are now children of Abraham (Gal. 3:7-9; Rom. 4:9-17), and Paul even goes so far as to call Jews and Gentiles who believe in Jesus “Israel” in Gal. 6:16. For Paul, Jesus now defines Israel. Jesus now defines who is truly “God’s people.” This is why Peter says the church is “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession” (1 Pet 2:9, NIV), titles given to the people of Israel in Exodus 19:4-6. Jews who reject Jesus, while loved by God and possessing knowledge and honor from their heritage (Rom. 9:3-5; 11:28-29), have missed God’s salvation in Jesus (Rom. 9:30-10:4), and are like branches that have been broken off from the olive tree of God’s people (Rom. 11:11-24). Though ethnically descended from Israel, they are not truly Israel in terms of being saved and empowered as God’s chosen community of blessing in the world, “For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel” (Rom. 9:6, NIV). This is why Paul as a Jew himself converted to Christianity, why he evangelized Jews in synagogues in his missionary journeys in Acts, and why he writes in Romans 10:1 that “my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved” (NIV).
In highlighting this, I don’t intend to give some sort of tacit endorsement of antisemitism. The church has unfortunately had enough of that in its history, where rather than insisting on the equality of all people, Christians maligned, mistreated, and sometimes even killed Jews. New Testament faith will tolerate none of this. Antisemitism is an aberrant stain on moments of Christian history, and it is a stain wherever it persists in the world today. With the Holocaust still being in living memory, and in a time where Ivy League presidents have given evasive answers around appropriateness of violent language toward Jews on college campuses, the church is called not to repeat the mistakes past or present concerning antisemitism. My intention is simply to see how Paul deals with Jewish exceptionalism and how Christ levels the playing field between Jews and Gentiles, for with God there is no favoritism (Rom. 2:11). Jews and Gentiles should relate to one another on equal footing according to Christian theology. And Paul claims that the church, not unbelieving ethnic Israel, is God’s people.
Now, on to how Paul conceptualized the land.
Paul on the Land
Gal. 4:21-31–One of Paul’s more enigmatic lines of argumentation is found in his allegorical interpretation of Hagar and Sarah in Galatians 4:21-31. Paul says Hagar represents the old covenant and bears children who are slaves. More pertinent to our topic, not only does Hagar represent the law, she also represents “the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children” (4:25, NIV). Paul maintains that the present, earthly Jerusalem is in slavery, missing out on the freedom God gives. That freedom does not come through sacralizing the earthly Jerusalem or through liberating it via military action. Paul goes on to say in 4:26 “But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother” (NIV). The freedom God desires to give comes through citizenship in an unseen, heavenly Jerusalem, which Sarah represents. Paul uses the present tense to describe Christians being members spiritually of the heavenly city of God. This implies that the Jerusalem theology of the Old Testament (as in Psalm 48, for example) and the land promises are now a present spiritual reality for those who trust in Christ. Paul goes on to mention that only the free children receive the inheritance and not the slave children (4:30). Inheritance has land connotations in the OT (see Ex. 21:13; Lev. 20:24; Num. 26:52-56; Deut. 4:21). The coming New Jerusalem, which the Apostle John describes as descending from heaven above (Rev. 21:2), comports nicely with Paul describing it here in Gal. 4:26 as “the Jerusalem that is above.” These connections indicate that the promises concerning the land and the city of Jerusalem have also been futurized as an ideal end-time hope for followers of Christ.
Rom. 4:13–I’ll let Burge take the driver’s seat here:
What Paul says next is striking. Romans 4:13 is the only place where the apostle refers explicitly to the promises for the land given to Abraham and in this case Paul fails to refer to Judea. Paul writes that the promise to Abraham indicates that the patriarch would inherit the world (Gk kosmos). The universalizing intent of Paul has now shifted from the Gentiles to the domain of Gentile life. In Genesis Abraham was to inherit the Holy Land. In Romans 4:13, his claim is on the world. […] For Paul, Romans 4:13 is a unique return to Israel’s highest calling for the world. Abraham and his children–defined by Paul as people of faith–now discover God’s program not simply for Canaan or Judea, but for the world. The formula that linked Abraham to Jewish ethnic lineage and the right to possess the land has now been overturned in Christ. Paul’s Christian theology links Abraham to children of faith, and to them belongs God’s full domain, namely, the world. Wright compares the land to the law in Paul’s thinking:
The Land, like the Torah, was a temporary stage in the long purpose of the God of Abraham. It was not a bad thing done away with, but a good and necessary thing now fulfilled in Christ and the Spirit. It is as though, in fact, the Land were a great advance metaphor for the design of God that his people should eventually bring the whole world into submission to his healing reign. God’s whole purpose now goes beyond Jerusalem and the Land to the whole world (Ibid., 85-86; quoting from N.T. Wright, “Jerusalem in the New Testament,” 67).
In essence, in Romans 4:13 the OT land promised to Abraham has been expanded and universalized to include the entire earth.
2 Cor. 6:16–Paul in 2 Cor. 6:16 cites Lev. 26:12–“I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people” (NIV). What’s interesting is that Leviticus 26:12 is a promise God gives for Israel dwelling in the promised land in its original context. Paul here is applying it to a church that most likely has uncircumcised Gentiles in it who were living hundreds of miles away from the ancestral boundaries of Israel. He is using it to make the case that the church is holy through its union with Christ and should avoid compromised partnerships with unbelievers. This is another example of the benefits of the land being spiritualized and given presently to those who are connected to Jesus and the Spirit. In essence, when you trust in Jesus and have the Holy Spirit, God is walking with you, and you are in his land and space, spiritually speaking.
The General Epistles and Revelation
Hebrews 4:1-11–The promise of rest in Hebrews 4:1-11 echoes the idea of Israel conquering and being at rest in the promised land (e.g, Deut. 3:20; 12:10). This is why the leader of the conquest of the promised land, Joshua, is mentioned in Heb. 4:8, though he is described as not giving Israel rest. The passage implies that God’s true rest is no longer connected to seizing the territory of ancient Canaan. Having rest is described as a present reality for those who believe in Jesus (4:3) and also a fuller future reality that we should strive to enter (4:8-11). Here you see both the spiritualizing and futurizing approaches related to the land promises and rest.
Hebrews 11:8-16–Perhaps an even more shocking passage in Hebrews is how the author speaks about Abraham in 11:8-10, which reads:
By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God (NIV, emphasis mine).
A bit further on the author takes a break to review those mentioned in the “hall of fame of faith” speech thus far and to emphasize certain points in 11:13-16–
All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country–a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them (NIV, emphasis mine).
This is quite a surprising statement when you consider that Abraham is included among those who did not "receive the things promised." If you read Genesis, you know that Abraham in fact came to the land God promised and dwelt there (see Gen. 13 and following, or just Heb. 11:9 for that matter). But the author of Hebrews maintains that Abraham actually did not receive the things promised by God. How could the writer say this about Abraham unless he saw the promise of the land as a foreshadowing of the “better, heavenly country” and “heavenly city” that is to come? This represents a strong futurizing move concerning promises about the land and Jerusalem. In fact, every mention of “the city” of Jerusalem in Hebrews is of a heavenly city, not an earthly city (11:10, 16; 12:22; 13:14). 12:22 in particular implies a present spiritual reality, while the other three mentions pertain to an end-time hope. “…Hebrews says that our ‘homeland’ has changed. It is not on earth” (Burge, Jesus and the Land, 101). To insist on a homeland in this present age is to miss our true dwelling place in the new heavens and new earth. We are called to live as pilgrims journeying to the promised land of the new creation and the new Jerusalem.
1 Peter 1:1–Peter addresses his letter to “God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout…” Israel was God's elect/chosen nation in the OT. Further, Peter goes on to refer to his audience as exiles and foreigners a couple more times (1:17; 2:11). It is important to note that being an exile/foreigner implies being away from one’s homeland. Peter is hearkening back to Israel's experience of exile and being ripped away from the promised land in the OT, and he is creatively applying it to the church in his day. Peter does not go on, however, to make a case for Christians or Jews returning to Judea, retaking it as their rightful homeland, and thereby getting rid of their exiled status. Instead, in 1:4-5, he speaks of them having “an inheritance [inheritance had land connotations in the OT as mentioned above] that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time” (NIV, emphasis mine). Christian exiles will find their true land, their true home at the return of Christ, not in grasping for land in our present existence. A futurized interpretation of the land promises is utilized in Peter's language of exile and inheritance.
Revelation 21:1-4–Here, there is the establishment of a new heaven and a new earth, and the New Jerusalem descends from heaven to earth. Significantly, John writes in 21:3, “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God’” (NIV). The voice here is echoing the same OT passage of Scripture that Paul quoted in 2 Cor. 6:16 above, which is Leviticus 26:12, a promise given about God dwelling with Israel in the land of Canaan. There also are echoes of God dwelling with Adam and Eve in Genesis 1-2. In essence, the promised land, our true home, and the blessed harmony represented in the garden of Eden, is coming in the future. This is perhaps the most significant futurizing move concerning the OT land promises. Further, the New Jerusalem comes not through violence or earthly human striving, but it descends as a gift from God after the judgment of Christ. We don’t get to engineer the coming of the New Jerusalem by trying to purify the earthly Jerusalem from wickedness; it is something God brings about in his sovereignty and timing.
Concluding Thoughts
To summarize, the OT land promises have been transfigured in Jesus, and the authors of the NT variously spiritualize, universalize, and futurize them. The benefits associated with the promised land–God dwelling with his people, fruitfulness, freedom from slavery, rest from oppression, and harmonious community–are present spiritual realities available through Christ and the Spirit to the church. The land promises have been universalized to include not just the ancient boundaries of Canaan, but the entire world. And the promises of the land are futurized to point to a glorious end-time hope: a heavenly city of Jerusalem that descends like a bride, a better country, an inheritance kept for us, a new heavens and a new earth, a place where God will dwell with and walk with his people, where we will be his people and he will be our God. Receiving these transfigured land promises is contingent on trusting in Jesus and persevering in love and faith in him.
What about the OT paradigm of Israel being exiled from the land followed by Israel being restored back to the land? Is that an ongoing paradigm for ethnic Israel today? I do not see the authors of the NT use the OT land promises to encourage anyone–Jew or Gentile, Christian or otherwise–to move to the territory of ancient Israel. We see no calls to participate in the violent revolutionary movements in Judaism that were seeking to purify the land from Roman occupation. Christians in the early church did not participate in the violent conflicts between the Jews and the Romans in AD 66-70 that resulted in the destruction of the temple and much of Jerusalem in AD 70, nor in the Bar Kokhba revolt in the 132-135 (Ibid., 57). The onus would be on Christian Zionists to demonstrate how the NT shows that OT land promises are still in effect for non-Christian Jews today.
Additionally, while well-intentioned, Christian Zionism often questionably appropriates the OT prophets, utilizing a "newspaper hermeneutic" that sees prophetic fulfillments in whatever is in modern media headlines:
Christian Zionism’s use of the Old Testament prophets is perhaps its most novel contribution. There is a surprising disregard for the prophet’s ethical exhortations about the quality of Israel’s national life, particularly its treatment of “aliens and sojourners” who live among them. Instead the prophets are lifted from their original historical context where they may have warned about an Assyrian conquest or questionable alliances with Moabites or predicted a return from Babylonian exile. Instead their warnings and predictions are given a timelessness and applied to the modern era with breathtaking confidence. Passages of comfort in Jeremiah or Ezekiel, which once reassured Israelites of life after exile, now reassure Israelis of life after 1948. Or 1967. Or 1973. Warnings about alliances with Moabites can be used to warn about alliances with modern Arab nations or peace consultations with Palestinian leadership. The prophetic message is no longer historically anchored and contextualized but instead refitted into a later application of the cycle of promise and loss and restoration (Ibid., 121).
Most concerning to me, I fear that Christian Zionism distracts from Jesus and the church, and implicitly rebuilds notions of Jewish exceptionalism that Jesus and the apostles sought to tear down. How does Christian Zionism lead people of all ethnicities, whether Jew or Gentile, Palestinian or Israeli, to the reality that we are one humanity in Jesus Christ (Eph. 2:11-22)? Are there promises God has made to non-Christian Jewish people that he has not yet fulfilled and don’t involve them coming to faith in Christ? If so, how would this cohere with Paul stating that all God's promises are "Yes" in Christ (2 Cor. 1:20)?
Here’s a good summarizing thought from Burge:
Therefore the New Testament locates in Christ all of the expectations once held for “Sinai and Zion, Bethel and Jerusalem.” For a Christian to return to a Jewish territoriality is to deny fundamentally what has transpired in the incarnation. It is to deflect appropriate devotion to the new place where God has appeared in residence, namely, in his Son. This explains why the New Testament applies to the person of Christ religious language formerly devoted to the Holy Land or the Temple. He is the new spatiality, the new locale where God may be met (Ibid., 129-130).
Do Christians have a biblical or theological mandate to support modern Israel out of some notion of divine favor and/or a divine land grant given to modern Israel? From what I see in the New Testament, the answer is no. To insist otherwise seems to make the interpretive mistake of not following the lead of Jesus and the apostles in the NT who spiritualize, universalize, and futurize the land promises of the OT. Christian Zionism seems to privilege the OT over the NT, which is a dangerous way for Christians to theologize and amounts to getting things backwards. While all of the Bible is God’s word, we always should let the NT take priority over the OT, not vice versa. Please let me know if I'm wrong or I've missed something.
This does not preclude people supporting Israel for other reasons (like the treatment of women in society, having a check on radical Islam, supporting democracy, etc.). But it also is a reminder that modern Israel is not above critique, having carte blanche from God to do whatever they want. Diving into the history of the modern Israel-Palestine conflict is a worthwhile endeavor for those who wish to learn more about the complexity of the conflict. In many ways, we should go further and wrestle with more important questions concerning the conflict between Palestine and Israel: Whose narrative is closer to the truth? Who has a more just cause? What should the various groups do instead of what they're doing now? What should be done from here to bring about a just peace and reconciliation?
My hope is that this essay gives us some questions to ask the next time we hear a sister or brother speak as though modern Israel has a divine right to the land, or that Israel is "God's people." The God of the nations deeply loves all who are mired in this conflict. I also hope we get on our knees and pray for a just peace in Israel-Palestine, where many lives have been lost in a long history of violence, and lives are still being lost as I write this. Pray for the gospel of Jesus to go forward and the church to grow in that land. Pray that God’s forgiving, reconciling grace will spread so oppression and violence will cease. And may we all remember that we are pilgrims in this present age, and that our promised homeland is in the new creation.
I'll end with the classic hymn “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks I Stand," itself a great example of futurized Christian land theology: “On Jordan's stormy banks I stand // And cast a wishful eye // To Canaan's fair and happy land // Where my possessions lie // I am bound for the promised land // I am bound for the promised land // Oh who will come and go with me? // I am bound for the promised land!”
