Now the Lord had said to Abram:
“Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Genesis 12:1-3
This passage has become something of a “clobber text,” meaning that it is used to clobber anyone who has reservations about America’s ever-increasing support for the modern state of Israel. “If you don’t support Israel, God will curse you,” they say. “And you must bless Israel if you expect God to bless you.” This is an endlessly repeated mantra among the dispensationalists, whose millions include notable figures such as San Antonio pastor John Hagee, Senator Ted Cruz and the U.S. ambassador to Israel, and former Arkansas governor, Mike Huckabee.
The idea that the Jews who founded the modern state of Israel should be the inheritors of God’s promise of thirty-five centuries ago is quite a remarkable claim, especially given that the founders of modern Israel were communists. A kibbutz is a collective farm, just like the ones in Soviet Russia. Zionism was mainly driven by atheists and socialists of one stripe or another. The Jewish scholar Schlomo Sand, writing about the founding of Israel, says:
“Zionism, as a national movement that rebelled against historical Judaism, was mainly atheistic. Most of its leaders and activists [had] ceased believing in redemption through the coming of the Messiah, the long-standing essence of Jewish belief, and took their fate into their own hands. The power of the human subject replaced the power of the omnipotent God. . . . For the atheistic Zionists, God was dead and therefore the Holy Land became the homeland; all the traditional holidays became national holidays; and Jerusalem stopped being a heavenly city and became the very earthly capital of an eternal people.”
Ultimately, the atheistic Zionists were forced bring the religion of Judaism into the Zionist project not because they wanted to, but simply because there is no way to determine who is a “Jew” using only secular criteria. Biology cannot tell us who is a “Jew”:
The problematic nature of defining the “Jew” according to secular criteria – cultural, linguistic, political or “biological” (despite all efforts, it’s still impossible to determine who is a Jew by means of DNA) – was what eliminated the option of a [completely] secularized identity.
Perhaps that particular issue with the modern state of Israel is worth delving into at a later time, but we can put it aside for now.
We Christians who are not of the dispensationalist persuasion believe that the promise to Abraham in Genesis 12 (and others like it) apply to spiritual Israel. Spiritual Israel consists of people of any race or ethnicity who have put their faith in Jesus Christ.
“The real children of Abraham, then, are those who put their faith in God. What’s more, the Scriptures looked forward to this time when God would make the Gentiles right in his sight because of their faith. God proclaimed this good news to Abraham long ago when he said, ‘All nations will be blessed through you.’ So all who put their faith in Christ share the same blessing Abraham received because of his faith.” (Gal. 3:7-9, NLT)
“If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” Gal. 3:29. NIV
We Christians are Israel. It is the Christian Church to whom the promise to Abraham now belongs, not the modern state of Israel. We reject categorically the outlandish notion that God commands anyone to bless the modern state of Israel.
What is more, the blessing was supposed to go in both directions: others were to bless Abraham, but Abraham and his descendants were to be a blessing to everyone else. Through Abraham “all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
God placed Israel in the Levant, the crossroads of the ancient world, with Assyria, Babylon and Persia to the east, the Hittites to the north, Egypt to the southwest, and Greece and Rome to the northwest. By establishing Israel in this central location, God intended that Israel should have maximum contact with the ancient nations, and be a blessing to the entire world. Ellen White writes:
“The children of Israel were to occupy all the territory which God appointed them. Those nations that rejected the worship and service of the true God were to be dispossessed. But it was God’s purpose that by the revelation of His character through Israel men should be drawn unto Him. To all the world the gospel invitation was to be given. Through the teaching of the sacrificial service, Christ was to be uplifted before the nations, and all who would look unto Him should live. All who, like Rahab the Canaanite and Ruth the Moabitess, turned from idolatry to the worship of the true God were to unite themselves with His chosen people. As the numbers of Israel increased, they were to enlarge their borders until their kingdom should embrace the world.” Prophets and Kings, p. 19
But Israel’s repeated rebellion, moral failure, and bigotry against the gentiles—and their murder of the prophets whom God sent to correct them—meant they were seldom a blessing to other nations.
“By refusing to keep His covenant, they would cut themselves off from the life of God, and His blessing could not come upon them. . . . more often in their history they forgot God and lost sight of their high privilege as His representatives. They robbed Him of the service He required of them, and they robbed their fellow men of religious guidance and a holy example. They desired to appropriate to themselves the fruits of the vineyard over which they had been made stewards. Their covetousness and greed caused them to be despised even by the heathen. Thus, the Gentile world was given occasion to misinterpret the character of God and the laws of His kingdom. Prophets and Kings, p. 20 (emphasis added)
I note that the besetting sins of this people have not changed over the millennia: “Their covetousness and greed caused them to be despised even by the heathen.”
Carnal Israel failed abysmally to reflect God’s character and achieve His purpose for their nation. The Vineyard was taken away from carnal Israel and given to spiritual Israel. Nevertheless, God’s promises do not fail; all the families of the earth were to be blessed through Abraham. But the Apostle Paul tells us that the promised blessing to the world would come not through carnal Israel but through Jesus Christ:
Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. . . . [Christ] redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit. . . . The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,” meaning one person, who is Christ. (Gal. 3:8, 14, 16).
Peter tells us the same thing (as recorded by Dr. Luke), that the promised blessing comes through Christ, and that blessing went to the Jews before the gentiles:
Indeed, beginning with Samuel, all the prophets who have spoken have foretold these days. And you are heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers. He said to Abraham, “Through your offspring all peoples on earth will be blessed.” When God raised up his servant [Christ] he sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways.” (Acts 3:24-26)
Christ is the blessing who blesses “all the families of the earth.”