The Struggle for the Birthright

The dispute over that thin strip of land called Palestine and Israel has been the single issue in the past fifty years that is dragging the world into disaster. Many Christians have seen this great conflict by reading the Bible, but very few really understand how God views it. The Birthright itself contains two parts, one given to Judah, the other to Joseph. The Struggle for the Birthright primarily focuses upon the portion given to Judah. It shows from the divine law and from history how God divided Judah itself into two groups pictured as baskets of figs, one obedient to God and the other disobedient. The prophet Jeremiah clearly tells us the mind and will of God and how the inheritance in the old land was conditional upon submission to the divine judgement for sin. The divine law itself gives the conditions by which they would be allowed to return to the land. These conditions were violated not only in Jeremiah’s day, but again in the first century, resulting in God’s judgement upon Jerusalem for a second time. This “iron yoke” captivity continued until the twentieth century, when the Zionist movement was formed. Modern Zionism advocated Jews reversing the dispersion without fulfilling the conditions laid down in the divine law for a lawful return. Hence, their return to the old land was not done in the spirit of Christian love and justice. The Middle East is soon coming to a violent climax that will resolve these issues and replace both sides of the conflict with an unexpected third solution, God’s Kingdom.