Friday, November 10, 2023
Since the Hamas / Israel war began last month, there’s been a lot of harsh blow back against believers like myself for affirming a neutral position between those warring peoples. Why is that? It’s because non-discerning believers allow false teachers telling them to show partiality.
God is not partial, Acts 10:34, Rom. 2:11, Eph. 6:9, Col. 3:25, 1 Tim. 5:21, James 2:4, James 2:9, nor shows favoritism, Luke 20:21, Gal. 2:6. So why, regarding this war between Israel and Palestine, are many Christians showing partiality? Why do many act like the unbelieving world? Why do so many believers side with unbelieving, Christ-hating Israel? Here’s why: because they have been taught harmful and errant dispensational theology (DT) that says unbelieving Jews of Israel are still God’s “chosen people”, but by the authority of scripture they absolutely are not! And if you actually believe the God of the Bible and not DT, the truth will make you free.
Raging divisions among unbelievers is quite normal, but not so among true believers, the “elect” of Christ. By new-birth circumcision of heart there must be a difference between God-honoring believers and the unbelieving world. But DT has destroyed much biblical truth and has divided the “one body” (Eph. 4:4) of Christ, which includes true believers from the beginning to present.
Understand that Jews of Judaism and Muslims of Islam, (Israel and Palestine) both vehemently deny the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who purchased our salvation…if we are indeed a born-again Christian. As a true believer, ask yourself who in this life do I represent, who do I emulate? In whom do I find my commission to ambassadorship? Are you not an ambassador of Christ? Yes! The Spirit said “Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:20). What business is it of ours to show partiality between two unbelieving peoples who disavow Jesus? None! 1 Cor. 5:12.
Millennia ago, God conditionally said to ancient Israel, “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel” (Exo. 19:5–6). But that promise was conditioned by God saying “if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant”. But it’s biblical truth that Israel repeatedly rebelled, repeatedly went whoring after nations around them until God said “I saw that for all the causes for which backsliding Israel had committed adultery, I had put her away and given her a certificate of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but went and played the harlot also” (Jer. 3:8). [Italics added] Yet, many side with Israel!
Though apostate Israel was “cut off” (Rom. 11:22) by God’s divorce, God continued His call of true Jews post-Calvary, Rom. 2:28–29, because “the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Rom. 11:29). God said of true Jews “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy” (1 Peter 2:9–10). Let us then be in unity with God, not showing partiality between unbelievers, but pray that both come to true faith in Christ. To every professing Christian out there, we must understand that Israel and Palestine as nations literally denounce the Lord Jesus Christ, and we must have no participation in that!
The war that was lit on Saturday, October 7, 2023 between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas, of Palestine, will not soon go away. This war has every potential to draw many non-Middle East nations into its sordid decades-long conflict of rage, brutality and hatred. Dear true believers, we must have nothing to do with that, that’s not our calling. This war will escalate until the end and then God will fight His enemies according to His will for the land He promised Abraham and his descendants. Our fight is not against flesh and blood Eph. 6:12 “but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places”. But not discerning that God in Christ will never violate or contradict His own Word, many believers think they’ve been called to fight flesh and blood of their fellowman.
The violent warring spirit in professing believers almost always seeks justification from the OT when God said things like “and when the LORD your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them” (Deut. 7:2); and “Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey” (1 Sam. 15:3); and again “But of the cities of these peoples which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, but you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, just as the LORD your God has commanded you” (Deut. 20:16–17).
But understand that, God’s command for ancient Israel to utterly destroy those enemy nations was because those nations were races of giants and offspring of the Nephilim, non-redeemable beings, “lest they teach you to do according to all their abominations which they have done for their gods, and you sin against the LORD your God” (Deut. 20:18). Ancient Joshua’s military campaigns were specifically to wipe out those wicked nations. Not so today, for “the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He [God] has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day” (Jude 1:6). God shut down their evils.
On the New Testament side, there’s a glaring and obvious absence of any of Jesus’ disciples or apostles who gave themselves to war in the defense of their resident nation. In fact, we find the exact opposite of the national warring spirit in born again believers wherein Jesus taught “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven” (Matt. 5:44–45), and “I say to you who hear: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you” (Luke 6:27–28).
We must ensure that we are living in the righteousness of Christ, not mired in the ways of this evil world. God does not show partiality or favoritism between unbelieving heathen nations and peoples, nor should His blood-bought saints. God’s call upon a believer’s life will never violate the “it is written” truth that God’s people are ambassadors for Christ. But what occurs too often is that many believers account their own will as God’s will for their life. But this aught not be. St. Augustine is credited with saying, “If you believe parts of the gospel you like, but not the parts you don’t, then it’s not the gospel you believe but yourself.” That’s a perilous position!
Marlin J. Yoder
