Israel and the Fulfillment of End-Times Prophecy
Half of evangelicals support Israel because they believe it is important for fulfilling end-times prophecy. Southern Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress spoke at the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem May 14, and he offered tangential insight into why he and many evangelicals think the move was so important.
Palestinian and Israel History: The Land and Prophecy
There is a common narrative that Israel’s protesters seem to repeat at every rally and in every social media post. They believe that Israel and the Jewish people are occupying the land that belongs to the Palestinian people. Many today believe that this conflict is based on Israel’s illegitimate existence in the land, and Hamas is trying to take it back for their people and for the Islamic cause. To know what is true, we need to study the history of the land and the people, both Palestinian and Israeli.
Archeological Evidence and Indigenous Roots
The Jews are the indigenous people of the land of Israel who have been living in this land 2,100 years before anyone even called or referred to it as “Palestinian.” The Jewish people were living in this land millennia before Islam was ever a religion. For those who don’t want to embrace or believe the Bible as a historical record, then at least look at archeological evidence:
- There is an Egyptian stele—an ancient stone slab with markings on it—from the 13th century B.C. that speaks of Israel by name as “the land.”
- There’s also a Canaanite stele from the 9th century B.C. that refers by name to King David as “the king of the land of Israel.”
So, if you don’t want to believe the Bible, there are thousands of years’ worth of well-documented artifacts that confirm the Jews lived in this land.
Historical Claims to the Land of Israel
The history of the land has been complicated, and it started already in biblical times. In 586 B.C., the Babylonians attacked and besieged Israel. Since then and until 1948 of our era there was no sovereign Jewish state in this land. In that period—from 586 B.C. to 1948, so roughly 2,500 years—the Jews were dispersed from their land. They have been oppressed and discriminated against. The Jews who managed to stay alive in their homeland were dominated by other world empires.
Here is the list of empires that dominated the region:
- The Babylonians
- The Persians
- The Greeks
- The Romans
- The Byzantines
- The Arab Islamic Empire
- The Catholic Crusaders
- The Mamluks
- The Ottomans
- The British Empire
The Origin of the Name “Palestine”
From where did the Palestinian people come? To answer this question, we need to first understand where their name came from. In A.D. 135, the Roman Emperor Hadrian, in order to quash a Jewish revolt, dispersed the Jews from Jerusalem. And then, he renamed the entire region “Palestina.” He chose this name because it was the Latin term for the Philistines. Why would Hadrian choose to do that? Because the Philistines were the perennial enemies of the Jews. So, Hadrian, to dishonor the Jewish people after the revolt against the Roman Empire, not only took away their land, but also named it after their worst enemy.
From that day on, the people living in the land were known as “Palestinians.” The Arabs living here were called Palestinians, but so were the Jews! Yes, the Jews were also called Palestinians until 1948. If you were a Jewish person born in this land before the establishment of modern-day Israel, your birth certificate would state “Palestinian”.
The Land and the Biblical Promise
God promised a son to Abraham – Isaac, so that, according to Genesis 15:18, God could give his descendants the land from the Nile to the Euphrates River. God’s original intent for the Jewish people was to occupy a territory that stretched from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in today’s Iraq and Syria. Israel never occupied this much land! As we fast forward through history, we see the Babylonians storm in, the Greeks, then the Romans… later, the Mamluks arrive, and more recently the Ottoman Turks.