One For Israel

Guest (Male): This ground is the soil from which our hopes spring forth.

Danny Herman: Just imagine, 2,900 years ago, but there's no Ark of the Covenant here.

Dr. Erez Soref: Even in Israel's unfaithfulness, God has remained faithful.

Salim Shalash: He lives in this land, and this land was given to the Jewish people by a promise from God.

Dr. Erez Soref: I am Dr. Erez Soref. I was born and raised in the heart of Israel, but I never heard the gospel message until on a journey abroad my eyes were opened to the Jewish Messiah. From that point, my life has been dedicated to bringing this gospel back to my people Israel, equipping them to reach Israel and the world. Together, as Jews and Gentiles, we are one in Messiah, One For Israel.

The land is precious to God's heart. God's love for this place is like His love for a person. This is the land that God cares for, that depends on God. Why? Because He chose it to be the center and launching pad of His kingdom on Earth. Israel is the stage and setting of God's love story to Israel and love story for the world.

But it's more than just a historical setting. Yeshua cared deeply about the land, and the land is still part of God's plan. Our Messiah will redeem the Jewish people and restore the Jewish homeland. Isaiah said, "No longer will they call you deserted, or name your land desolate. But you will be called Hephzibah, and your land Beulah; for the Lord will take delight in you, and your land will be married.

As a young man marries a young woman, so will your Builder marry you; as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you." The land is further personified in the Torah when God designated rest not only for the people on the Sabbath, but also the Shemittah seventh-year rest for the ground. The scripture also speaks of the land expelling people out because of its sensitivity to sin. God said that it does not just belong to the people, but to God Himself. He has a special relationship with this land.

So we see God cares personally for this place. But why this place precisely? Why Israel when He could have chosen Switzerland or Japan as His dwelling? I see it in the same way God chose to love us. God didn't choose this land for its inherent beauty or resources. He chose to display His name, His faithfulness in this place. The position of the land was important.

The land God promised to Abraham was at the center of the world, between Africa, Europe, and Asia, right in the middle of the trade routes and the birthplace of civilization. God positioned Abraham and his descendants to be a witness in this place. God's kingdom in this land was to be a beacon, that flag on a hill demonstrating God's world, God's way.

When Moses was leading the Israelites to the land, God called them a kingdom of priests. Priests are mediators between God and the people, and in this land, God called Israel to be a mediator between God and the surrounding world, to say, "This is what God looks like. This is His word, His way, His faithfulness."

Less than a hundred years ago, this land looked hopeless. Visitors like Mark Twain famously said, "There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country." I wish he could see what God has done today. Many in his day doubted Israel would ever return as a nation. It seemed impossible for this once barren land to flourish, even more impossible that our Jewish people scattered and persecuted in exile could ever return to reclaim this land.

But as you look around today, we have seen this ground bloom and flourish again. We have seen cities, innovation, technology, and a blossoming economy sprout up overnight. Here is the point of it all: it's for God's glory. We see part of this prophesied in Ezekiel as he said, "But you, mountains of Israel, will produce branches and fruit for my people Israel, for they will soon come home.

I am concerned for you and will look on you with favor; you will be plowed and sown, and I will cause many people to live on you, yes, all of Israel. The towns will be inhabited and the ruins rebuilt. I will increase the number of people and animals living on you, and they will be fruitful and become numerous. I will settle people on you as in the past and will make you prosper more than before. Then you will know that I am the Lord."

In our day, we are truly without excuse. Our generation has witnessed this rebirth, this restoration, and God is calling out to the nations, "Do you see my faithfulness to the hills of Israel? Do you see my faithfulness to my word?" God is showcasing His great power and His great name here through the mountains and fields, through the restoration of this land. When I look at the restoration of Israel today, I think of a good principle in prophecy: already, not yet. While Israel today is a modern miracle, this land is still looking for the fulfillment of what God promised. There is a greater hope, a greater restoration to come.

God led the Israelites into the land through Joshua. They conquered and dwelt here, but things were never quite settled. This land is still waiting for its King. As Yeshua entered Jerusalem, the people cried out, "Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!" And Yeshua said that if those people had not said it, the stones themselves would have cried out, welcoming the coming King. The rocks and all creation groan for that day of salvation to come.

It is no coincidence that Yeshua came to Jerusalem during the time of Passover. The biblical feasts are linked with the land in a powerful way. In order to find out more about these feasts, we offer a book that uncovers the connection between each feast and God's plan of salvation in Yeshua. Get your copy at oneforisrael.org/feasts.

This land is unique in many ways. It's in the middle of three continents, the cradle of civilization, and the epicenter of history. But the significance of this land goes much deeper. When God was bringing the Israelites up from Egypt, He told them, "The land you're entering to take over is not like the land of Egypt from which you have come, where you planted your seed and irrigated it by foot as in a vegetable garden."

Egypt has this enormous river flowing through it, the Nile, with all its tributaries and streams. It was easy to irrigate their gardens and crops. They could carve channels and build farms. They could do it on their own. Even though they had been slaves, some of the Israelites idolized these ways. But God said, "The land you're crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. It is a land the Lord your God cares for; the eyes of the Lord your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end."

This is that land that God cares for, that depends on God. If God doesn't send the rain, there will be no harvest. They couldn't do it on their own. They needed Him. It was actually a blessing for the Israelites to be absolutely dependent on God. If you look at Tel Dan in the northern border of Israel, you will see a beautiful climate, an excellent environment with water springs bursting forth, growth, and vegetation, a place of abundance.

Compare that to Jerusalem. While beautiful, you don't see streams and rivers, grass and growth. To the superficial eye, you may say that Dan is more blessed than Jerusalem. Yet in the Bible, it was the tribe of Dan with all its self-dependence and abundance that was the first to abandon the God of Israel. Dependence can be a blessing, and sometimes abundance can be a curse. We're speaking with Danny the Digger to learn more about Tel Dan in Northern Israel. We'll see from archaeology how self-dependence, outward prosperity, and isolation from God led to unfaithfulness and ruin in the northern tribes.

Danny Herman: This is truly one of the most amazing archaeological sites in the Holy Land. I'm at Tel Dan. My name is Danny Herman, but everyone knows me as Danny the Digger as I'm an archaeologist by education, hence the nickname. In the days of Solomon, the kingdom is united, but towards the end of his reign, one of his servants, Jeroboam, rebels against him and establishes in Tel Dan a rival cultic center.

The archaeological excavations not only uncovered a very significant religious center here at Tel Dan, but at its southern end, a very impressive complete gateway complex. For the first time ever, to this day, it's also the only time that an archaeological discovery from the Iron Age actually mentions David. And here I am at the site that was abandoned a long time ago. Archaeologists stepped in and what do they find? The very religious center.

In the back, the stairway leads to the foundation of where the temple used to stand, and here they reconstructed the size, the dimensions of the altar where animal sacrifice was conducted by the Northern Israelite kingdom. Here is a partially reconstructed foundation wall of the altar enclosure. Look how it includes Ashlar stones. This is definitely Phoenician influence. The Bible tells us the altar should be of unhewn stones, and we know that the northern kingdom had special ties with Phoenicia. Ahab was married to Jezebel. So you can see how she and the royal house of the Phoenicians introduced architecture and also religious behavior that is strange to the kingdom of Jerusalem.

The main advantage of Tel Dan is that, unlike Jerusalem, it's not up in the mountains with limited water resources. We are along a very significant international highway, the so-called Via Maris, the international highway that in antiquity connected the two edges of the Middle East: Pharaonic Egypt on one hand and all the kingdoms of Mesopotamia on the other. Just imagine, 2,900 years ago, priests walking up on the same stairway in order to reach the temple, but there's no Ark of the Covenant here.

Here, according to the Bible, Jeroboam installed a golden calf. The worst form of idolatry you could think of was actually placed here. One can only wonder its size, but this was the nature of the Israelite kingdom. The Bible is very illustrative in telling us how he created a religious center for pilgrimage for offering, but what does he place there? In Jerusalem, you have the Ark of the Covenant. At Tel Dan, the Bible tells us he places a golden calf, a pure act of idolatry.

Imagine the priests ascending up this stairway. The sacrifice is given over there, and perhaps on this very stone stood the feet of the golden calf, the main item of worship. We actually have here also evidence of a Hellenistic temple. We found a Greek inscription indicating there was a worship here for the god of Dan. He doesn't label it, but there was some sort of worship here also later in Hellenistic times, perhaps by the Itureans who lived around the corner here.

And yet they prosper, they succeed. The northern kingdom seems to be doing better than the kingdom of Judah with Jerusalem as its capital, but not for long. In the 8th century, the Assyrians from Iraq of today come and give the final blow. Tel Dan will be completely destroyed. They were sinners and they were exiled.

But most fascinating, in the excavations of the courtyard around here in 1993, archaeologists found the actual stele, the victory stone placed by Hazael, the king of Aram, after he conquered Tel Dan one more time in 835. He tells us that he not only defeated and killed the king of Israel, but also the king of Judah, except that he doesn't label him as king of Judah but as king of the House of David.

Jeroboam went in a different direction for political reasons mostly. But abandoning the God of Jerusalem led him only for temporary prosperity, and eventually, Tel Dan suffered from repeated attacks and conquest and a final blow by the Assyrians, which led to the complete abandonment and exile of all the Israelites living here. I'm a result of generations of early Israelites, the specific tribe of Judah, that has followed its God, has suffered a lot, has been exiled from this land twice, the second time for nearly 2,000 years, and yet we are back. There are so many fascinating links to what the Bible tells us, and to think that archaeology will actually find the traces in such convincing amount of what the Bible tells us of a worship center for a golden calf of the Israelite northern kingdom, it's mind-blowing. It's still one of the most significant finds ever made in the context of biblical archaeology.

Dr. Erez Soref: When we go through trials or times of lack, sometimes we look at them as a curse, but maybe we need to look at these seasons as an invitation to be totally dependent on God. Yeshua warns us how difficult it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Why? Because it's so easy to trust in riches and influence when we have them. It's so easy to get self-dependent. It's like the parable of the seed in the thorny soil; the cares of this world can choke out your very life.

Abundance can be an idol. We are not advocating for poverty, but it's important to see God's heart and presence in every pressing trial. The first time God exiled the Israelites from the land of Israel, the prophet Hosea said God was leading her into the wilderness to allure His bride, to speak tenderly to her. Our trials often are not punishments, but opportunities. It may be God trying to restore relationship, and in the place of this restored relationship is where true abundance comes.

James said, "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." This land longs for her King. The kingdom of God is both spiritual and physical. As Yeshua said, "The kingdom of God is among you," but the kingdom of God will also come in a visible way.

Yeshua taught us to pray, "Your kingdom come on Earth as it is in heaven." We must not explain away the promises of God just because we don't see them yet. He's not just God of the invisible, but also the visible; not just the spiritual, but also the physical. We're here in a studio with Pastor Salim Shalash to discuss what Yeshua spoke and prophesied about this land and the continued relevance throughout the ages today and in the future.

Pastor Salim, shalom and thank you for coming to talk to me again. We want to talk today about the land of Israel, the land itself. My late grandparents when they came to Israel from Europe as young adults in the early part of the 20th century, my grandfather was studying to be a lawyer in Europe and his sister who had already come here wrote to him. She told him, "Who needs another Jewish lawyer? There's so many Jewish lawyers. Come and work the land."

So he came here and he started working in the fields. That was the beginning, the pioneering period as it's called in Jewish society. We live in a period where more than 50% of all the Jews in the world reside in the land of Israel. This has not been the case at least since the time of Jesus. So I guess what I want to ask you, there's a lot of debate not only in the Middle East but around the world. Is the fact that the Jews are coming back to Israel something that some council of Jews planned? Were they sitting in Poland or somewhere and planning this? Is this something that is a historical mistake, or is it something else? I mean, how do you see that, especially because you are an Arab, you're born here, your family lived here for years?

Salim Shalash: Understand what happened in 1948 and you can hear different opinions. Understanding the Bible, the reestablishment of the State of Israel in 1948 is not a coincidence. So if you read your Bible, we are not in the real borders, Dr. Erez. If you read the book of Joshua, you understand that's not even 20% of the promised land.

So what is happening today in the Middle East, it's not a human decision. It's God's plan and it's going to be fulfilling His plan. That gospel starts from Jerusalem, through a Macedonian man to Europe. Europe adopted the word of God and the word of God moved to the US. From the US, where? To Asia. Look what is happening now in China, Taiwan, India, all these areas. And it's coming back where? To Jerusalem.

Now, you are from Nazareth. When you come to visit Nazareth, you're going to visit Mary's house, you're going to visit the workshop of the carpenter Joseph, and if you read your Bible, you'll understand. If you just stand in that area and remove all the walls today and see the synagogue about five minutes walk from his home, seeing all this, understanding that he lives in this land, and this land was given to the Jewish people by a promise from God. So it's not me, it's not you, it's not anyone else. It's the plan of God, and He is going to fulfill His plan.

But staying in Nazareth, my family is from Tiberias and they passed to Nazareth. All what is happening, it's not about me, it's not about you, it's not about anybody else or a human decision. It's about God's plan. It's about God's plan for the salvation of Israel. And the Bible says in the book of Romans that all of Israel will be saved.

Dr. Erez Soref: There's a lot of prophecies, both in the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament, that talk about the return of the Messiah. In Zechariah, His feet are going to be on the Mount of Olives. In the prophecy of Daniel, and we see that in Revelation, Jesus Himself is talking about it in the gospels that there's going to be the temple and this very evil figure called the Antichrist in Revelation will go into the Holy of Holies, the abomination.

So that assumes that one day there's going to be a temple. We don't know how it's going to happen, but it also assumes for that to happen, Jewish people have to have control of the land of Israel and especially Jerusalem. Now, if you would have looked at it as this was looked upon in church history, it didn't make any sense. The Jews are spread all over the world, they're persecuted, they're not speaking the same language. Hebrew is a language of prayer but nobody speaks Hebrew. It just can't be, right? But here we are. We live in the country, majority of the Jews live here, Hebrew is a living language. We speak Hebrew. If you and I didn't have to speak English, we would speak Hebrew now between us. So it's happening, and so the land itself is important to God.

Salim Shalash: For sure. And this is one of the two important things that we talk about: the land and the salvation, the descendants of Abraham. You can't separate them. No way. If you separate them, you are creating your own theology, not the Bible theology. We can discuss it for hours and hours, but what I think is that God is protecting this land because the Lord is coming back physically to the land of Israel, to Mount Zion.

Everywhere that I travel, I find the places, I find the history, and I find historical places that show me the Old Testament and the New Testament. So can you imagine that losing this land is losing the history? I do believe that God still protects this land and He is coming back to the Mount of Zion. I know that some people don't like the word Zion, but it's okay. He is coming to this place.

Dr. Erez Soref: After Yeshua rose from the dead, His disciples asked Him, "Are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel? Is this the time we're going to see the physical kingdom in this land?" He answered them by saying that it was not for them to know the times or dates that the Father has set by His own authority. Does this mean that God was never going to do it? Has the land lost all significance? Absolutely not. He was saying that there is a time and a date for this, just not that time.

Now, He said, was the time for the Holy Spirit to empower them to be His witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the Earth. The kingdom had to expand to the hearts of mankind before we see its return in an exterior way. This concept was a stumbling block for the disciples and many today. We want God to fix our situation, bring peace and justice to the world. If Yeshua is the Messiah, why don't we have peace on Earth?

That day will come, but Yeshua stated it's important to clean the inside of the cup and dish, then the outside will be clean also. We understand the concept with our dishes, but we forget when it comes to our lives. God starts first with our hearts, but will surely also come again to restore Israel and the nations. There are promises in the Hebrew Bible that are yet to be fulfilled, that can't be spiritualized away. Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and the book of Revelation all see the same picture of God's restoration of our people and land.

At the very end of days, when John foresaw a new heaven and a new earth, he also saw a bride coming down from heaven. And what was that bride? It was Jerusalem, a city, people, and the land, heaven and earth. So we've discovered what it means for land to be married to God: His attention, its dependence, and the home base of His kingdom on Earth, His stake in the ground.

God's relationship to this land proves that His faithfulness extends beyond spiritual relationship to physical realities. His covenant with Abraham concerning this land cannot be broken. He cares about it, and we should care about the things that God cares about. But God's choice of Israel was never meant to exclude everyone else. Next time, we'll explore how a Moabite woman named Ruth shows us God's heart to include all nations in His covenant family. Her beautiful love story with Boaz reveals how God grafts outsiders into His people and how that includes you.