Who Owns the Holy Land?

Interesting. Interesting. Alright. Alright.

Hopefully everybody's aware that we're just a little over three months ago. A number of us here from the Front Range Conservation Center are over in Israel. For the future time, we're going to close the Inn at the end of the city on the 8th day. A very horrible attack took place here in Israel. The Mo'er's were there, the Harle's were there, the Ko'leks were there, the Kellers, and Connie and I. And during that horrifying attack, some 1,200 people were murdered by the terror group Hamas and its supporters there from Gaza. About 250 people were taken hostage, of whom a number of them have died in the three months since that time. And this is not something that any of us who were there will, anytime soon, forget there, because of the chaos. We didn't see any of it directly, although we did hear the air raid sirens, the warnings from the missiles being launched toward Jerusalem, where we were at the time there. And some of the group people in our group saw the contrails from the rockets and heard the explosions, as I did off in the distance there. And in the aftermath of that horrifying attack there, and Israel's predictable response in invading Gaza, we've seen protests take place around the world that are still ongoing in support of Hamas and its terrorist attacks, with crowds chanting, From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. Essentially, I saw a news report written by someone who had interviewed a bunch of college students who were chanting, From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. And the journalists asked these college students, What river are you talking about? Three-quarters of them didn't know. What sea are you talking about? Three-quarters of them, again, did not know. They didn't realize it was talking about From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, which means, frankly, the genocide of the Israeli Jews and the extermination of the state of Israel there. They're calling for ethnic cleansing of that area, which is exactly what Hamas was trying to do. And the root of the problem in that part of the world is that both the Jews and the Arabs claim the same land. So who really owns the land there? Who has the valid legal claim to the property? Who has the moral and legal rights to the land? And since this is in the news so much these days, and it's still very much ongoing, I thought I'd take a look at this subject today and ask from a Biblical perspective, who owns the land? Who owns the land there? The Arabs have a grievance. They say that the Israelis came in and took the land from them. The Israelis claim that they were their first, or at least their ancestors were long before the Arabs laid claim to it. But someone had it long before either of those claims. So who legally has the land, owns the land? And how do you go about establishing whose claim is valid? And how do events that literally took place thousands of years ago, because the story begins about 4,000 years ago, and how does that tie in with what is happening today? And how does it tie in with Bible prophecy of certain events that are to happen at the time of the end?

So the title for today's sermon is Who Owns the Holy Land? And today, in the sermon time, we'll go through the origins of the struggle over this land, and how that continues to affect the headlines that we see on the news every day.

Now, how many of you have ever bought a piece of property? A show of hands here. And if you did, you probably were charged several hundred, several thousand dollars in fees, maybe, for what is called a title search and title insurance. Now, what's that about? What does that have to do? Well, in buying a piece of property or selling a piece of property, you have to establish that the seller actually has title to that land, that he or she is the legal owner of that land. And sometimes those claims can go back, very far back in history. For instance, here in Colorado, a southern part of the state, was at one time owned by the King of Spain.

And some of the earliest land grants in the southern part of the state literally go back to the 1600s and 1700s, when the King of Spain, who was the legal owner of the property, gave that land to whomever he wanted.

At that time, the King of Spain owned that land and did what he wanted with it. So legal ownership claims of property can go back literally centuries to whomever the original owner was, who either sold or gave that piece of land to. And the same thing is true of the Holy Land. The original title to the land was granted by the original owner, who in this case was God himself. And we find that story beginning back in Genesis 12. I'll be showing all the scriptures here on the TV screens here.

So Genesis 12 and verse 1, our story begins with a man by the name of a Brahm, whom we later know to be renamed as Abraham. And this story starts approximately 1900 B.C. or roughly 4000 years ago. So let's read about this.

So we see a couple of important points here. We see that God expected Abraham's descendants to be a blessing to the entire earth. And this is one prophecy that we understand to be dual, because the most important of Abraham's seed or descendants was none other than Jesus Christ, through whom the entire earth has been blessed and will be blessed in an even greater way. But it's also dual in the aspect that the entire earth has also been blessed by Abraham's descendants, the Anglo-Saxon peoples through whom the world has been blessed with so many great technological, scientific advancements and so on over recent centuries here. Continuing, so a Brahm departed as the Eternal had spoken to him, and Lot, Abraham's nephew, went with him. And a Brahm was 75 years old when he departed from Haran. So let's take a look at that on a map. Incidentally, all these maps we'll be showing are from our Middle Eastern Bible Prophecy booklet, so if you want to refer back to these, you can. Later on, if you don't have a copy, I'll be glad to give this one to you. So here's what we're talking about. Let's see, I'm not sure which screen to look at here. But we see on here the Mediterranean Sea off to the left of the screen. We see Israel just to the right of that, and Lebanon to the north of it, Turkey to the upper part of the screen, Iran over to the right-hand side, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to the lower part of the screen.

Notice also the dates in here, because nearly all of these countries are less than a century old, because they gained independence from the British or the French who were ruling over these territories that were before that part of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire collapsed in the wake of World War I. The British and the French took over those areas, and then subsequently they gained their independence. So that's why most of these countries have been in existence for less than a century here. So that's what the modern lay of the land is. Back in Brahm's day, there were no borders like that. There were no nations, as we understand the concept today. What there were were what are called city-states, that would be where there'd be a fairly good-sized city, a good-sized city in that time, maybe with five, ten thousand people at best, and they control the territory around them to the extent that they could. So, so, Abram's story begins up at...you can see the red lines there that's indicating Abram's journeys, going south through the Holy Land and eventually to Egypt, and then returning from Egypt back to the Holy Land there. So I'll show some close-ups of this a little bit later on, so you can see that more clearly. So continuing with the story, Genesis 12 and verse 5, is right outside the present-day city of Nablus, which you'll occasionally hear about in the news because it's a hotbed of Arab uprisings and rebellion against the Israeli forces there. It is in the West Bank, West Bank referring to the western side of the Jordan River there. So, Nablus, this particular area, is one of the regular hot spots that you'll see about if you follow the news. Continuing here, it says, and the Canaanites were then in the land. So, Canaanites are already there when Abraham, Abram, starts coming into the land. But were they owners of the land? No, they weren't. They were. The term we would use today would be squatters. They had simply come in and occupied the land. They had apparently moved there after the dispersal of the nations from the Tower of Babel. They moved there from the Fertile Crescent and took over the land. So, they had no legal right to the land because the land belonged to God. They just simply moved in. Continuing in verse 7, So, again, we see the true owner of the land, God, giving the land to Abram and his descendants. And it's interesting, this is the first time we read, we'll see this repeated several times, where Abram builds an altar to God in that spot. Why does he do that?

The Bible doesn't tell us. Presumably, this is in thanksgiving because you build an altar to offer sacrifices. So, Abram is apparently giving thanks to God there. But another possibility is this may be viewed as a way of establishing the legal claim to the land. You might think of it in modern-day terms of putting out surveyor stakes, or planning a flag, maybe, to claim the land. Or here in the West and in Colorado, when a miner would establish a claim, he would have to put something on the land, some type of marker, to establish that he was the one who had the legal claim to that gold field or whatever. This plot of land out on the prairie to Homestead or something like that. That seems to be what is going on here. We're not told, but presumably that's what's happening. Verse 8, continuing the story, Jerusalem is right below Bethel. Bethel is 8-10 miles north of Jerusalem, something like that. So quite close. Again, all of these areas are in what is today called the West Bank, the land that was captured from Jordan by Israel in the 1967 war. God later expands his promise to Abram in Genesis 13. We'll read about it beginning in verse 14, just a few verses down. And the Eternal sent to Abram after Lot had separated from him. Lot goes down to settle near Sodom. So God says to Abram, Lift your eyes now and look from the place where you are. Northward, southward, eastward, and westward, for all the land which you see I give to you in your descendants forever. So all the land that Abram could see from this area there, God promised that to him and his descendants forever. That's how long the claim goes, forever. From the time this agreement is entered into, the time of possession for Abraham and his descendants would be forever.

Verse 16, And I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth, so that if a man could number the dust of the earth, then your descendants also could be numbered. Arise, walk in the land through its length and its width, for I give it to you. So no one else has a claim to that land. The original owner, God, grants the land to Abram and his descendants. And he tells Abram to get up and walk through the land, north, south, east, west, to see the land that God was giving him.

Verse 18, Then Abram moved his tent, and went and dwelt by the terabeth trees of Malmri, which are in Hebron, and built an altar there to the Lord. So again, he builds another altar. Hebron is the southernmost green dot on the left side there. Hebron also is another place you see fairly regularly in the news, because it's another spot where there's ongoing conflict between the Israeli Jews living there, surrounded by Arabs all around them. So again, Abraham builds an altar. This is the third time we've seen that mentioned in these verses here.

So in Genesis 15, let's skip down a little bit now, and we continue, and we see here the extent of the territory that God promises to Abraham.

Genesis 15, verse 18, On the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates. So here's the land grant. Here are the boundaries of the land. What does that look like? Well, let's look at our modern map again, the river of Egypt. You can see Egypt there, the pinkish-orange-ish territory at the bottom left, and you see the blue line that is the Nile River, the river of Egypt referred to here, to the Euphrates River. And the Euphrates runs through Syria and Iraq. There's two blue lines. The upper one is the Tigris River, the lower one is the Euphrates. So what Abram is promised here is from the eastern bank of the Nile River, the Sinai Peninsula, the Arabian, Saudi Arabia, all of the nations of the Middle East, as we understand them, up into modern-day Syria and Iraq.

Approximate in round numbers, roughly a thousand miles square, so roughly a million square miles in this land that God promises to Abraham.

Now we need to understand that while all this land is promised to Abraham, not all of it is promised to Israel.

The land was given to Abraham and his descendants, but his descendants include more than just Israel as we know it. Abraham left different parts of his property to different sons. So now we come to the next generation of players after Abraham.

Who was the first claimant to property from Abraham? Well, I automatically think of his son Isaac, but it's actually Ishmael. Ishmael was the firstborn son of Abraham through Hagar. So let's skip down now to Genesis 16 and see how this story develops and who was given what.

Fairly long stories, so we'll hit some of the high points and skip over other parts. Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had born him no children, and she had an Egyptian maidservant whose name was Hagar. So Sarai said to Abram, See now, the Lord has restrained me from bearing children. Please go into my maid, perhaps I shall obtain children by her. And Abram heeded the voice of Sarai. They've been promised a son, a number of years have gone by, and that hasn't happened. So like most of us would do, we try to take matters into our own hands with disastrous results here. So they try to give surrogate motherhood a try. And Sarah decides that maybe they aren't doing enough on their own, that there's another way that God's going to work this out. So she comes up with a solution that sounds outrageous to us today, but we know from archeological evidence, from clay tablets, from that area at that period of time, that this was something that was done during that time. Where if a woman could not bear children, if she had a handmaid, the handmaid could have children by the husband. And those would be legally considered the sons or daughters of the wife. So it sounds, again, outrageous to us, and we see it was not a bright idea, but it was something that was done to have a child through a servant girl. So we're familiar with this story. I won't go into the gory details. Obviously, things did not work out all that well.

And it comes to the point where Hagar, because she is now pregnant by Abraham or Abram, and she comes to think that because she is now bearing the child that she is more important than Sarai is. So Sarah becomes jealous and treats Hagar badly. So there's some attitude back and forth between the two women there, and it ends up with Hagar fleeing into the desert. Now, it's easy to assume that Sarah is the one who is in the wrong here, but that's not what is pointed out here. Sarah is apparently trying to put Hagar back in her rightful place because Hagar is the servant, not the head of the householder, the wife of Abraham. But Hagar was not content with that anymore now that she is bearing the son by Abraham. So when Sarah disciplines Hagar, she simply runs away into the desert. So pick up the story in verse 7.

So, Sarah has put Hagar in her place, and Hagar is resisting that, doesn't want to do that, so she runs away. So the angel had to put Hagar in her proper place there. Verse 10, Then the angel of the LORD said to her, I will multiply your descendants exceedingly so that they shall not be counted for multitude. So we see here that Hagar's son, the son of her and Abraham, was to become a great nation as well.

Verse 11, And the angel of the LORD said to her, Behold, you are with child, and you shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael, which means God will hear, because the LORD has heard your affliction. And now we come to a prophecy about Ishmael and his descendants. This is very, very important in light of what has happened for the last four thousand years in that part of the world.

Verse 12, He shall be a wild man. His hand shall be against every man, and every man's hand against him. And he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren. This last verse isn't translated all that well. Several other versions translate it better, like the NIV here.

He will be a wild donkey of a man. You might think of the desert burrows here in the American Southwest. His hand will be against everyone, and everyone's hand against him. And he will live in hostility toward all his brothers. This is certainly an appropriate description of the descendants of Ishmael, who are the Arab peoples of today.

They have throughout their history have seldom been able to get along. Basically, the only time they cooperate or work together is when they're under a real strong man ruler. You might think of somebody like Saddam Hussein, who ruled Iraq with an iron fist, or other individuals like that throughout history.

Another time they're united against somebody else, like is happening today with the State of Israel. Moving to the next chapter, in verse 20 we find out more about the descendants of Abraham through Ishmael. Here God is talking to Abraham, and he says what is going to happen with Ishmael's descendants.

Verse 20, And as for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly. He shall begat twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation. But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this set time next year.

So we see here that Ishmael's descendants are to become a great nation, but not as great as the descendants through Isaac, who will be the recipient of God's covenant here. So Ishmael is then sent away from Abraham, and Ishmael's sons inherit what is today what we basically call Saudi Arabia, the Arabian Peninsula there.

Ishmael had twelve sons, twelve princes, as it is called here. They would be the head of twelve Arab tribes. And the Arabs today are their descendants. And essentially, if you travel to that part of the world, you talk to Arabs. They are very proud, and they will proudly tell you, we are the sons of Ishmael. They know who they are.

And that is true to this very day. And this prophecy of what would happen with Ishmael is also very true as well, that he would be a wild ass of a man, a wild donkey of a man. His hand will be against everyone, and everyone's hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers. So that also has been fulfilled throughout history, that the Arabs, the sons of Ishmael, have a long history of fighting and conflict, of not getting along with others. They also have a long history of conflict against the western nations. It was Arabs, mostly from Saudi Arabia, who flew the jets into the twin towers in the 9-11 attacks in the Pentagon, and so on there. It was Arabs who moved into Afghanistan and formed the Taliban. There, Taliban is an Arabic word that means students, students of Allah, learning Allah's way and so on. They corrupted, took over the government, and basically turned it into a terrorist state. And now it has returned to that kind of state there. The Arabs have fought multiple wars against Israel and lost all of them. And again, basically they're not united at any time unless it's under a real strong man or they're fighting against somebody else.

So we see here the first claim of territory of what was promised to Abraham. His descendants, through Ishmael, have a legitimate claim to the Arabian Peninsula. Saudi Arabia, the other nations around there. But nothing else. If you want to follow on to that, study it a little more. You can find in Genesis 25 it lists the 12 sons of Ishmael and where they settle, which again is today's Saudi Arabia. Now, what about the promise here that they would become a great nation? That promise was fulfilled historically more than 13 centuries ago. Let's take a look at a map, another one from the Middle East booklet here. What this map is showing is there were two great waves of Muslim or Arab conquest. In the 600s AD, I'm just using round numbers here, but in the 600s AD, Muhammad founded the religion of Islam and claimed to be its great prophet. I've given a number of sermons on that in the past. If you want to learn more about the history of Islam and its teachings and backgrounds, the Quran and so on. The Arabs took that religion from Saudi Arabia here, and in a wave that lasted roughly a century, spread that throughout. This is the area that's indicated in the dark orange color here throughout the Middle East. It took over the Holy Land, the entirety of the Saudi Arabian Peninsula, went eastward all the way to what is today India, and went northward taking part of Asia Minor or modern-day Turkey, went westward all the way across North Africa, took over Spain, and it essentially stalled out until the 1400s and 1500s. Then there was a second great wave of expansion in Islam, and that's indicated in the lighter orange color here. It took over basically the northern third to half of Africa, spread way up into Eastern Europe, Southern Russia, a stretch of India, spread along the east coast of Africa, down to Indonesia, the islands down to the lower right there. Both times he had what has been called the greatest or the most effective evangelistic technique in history, which is you put a knife to somebody's throat and you say, accept Islam or die. So these areas became permanently Muslim, and they are to this day. So this is basically the Muslim world today. They're not all Arabs. A lot of people tend to think all Arabs are Muslims, and that's true about 99, 98, 99 percent. But not all Muslims are Arabs. Many African tribes, even Indonesia, oddly enough, the islands at the lower right, is the most populous Muslim nation in the world, with about 250 to 300 million Muslims just in Indonesia. Pakistan and India, India, oddly enough, has, I think, the second largest Muslim population in the world. We see here a map showing the Arab League countries. These are, in my contrast to the previous map, and the Arab, these are the nations that are Arabs, and they are overwhelmingly Muslim as well. And you can see tiny Israel there, the little yellow area, and inside the circle there, it's far less than 1 percent of the lands that are controlled by the Arabs or the Muslims there.

It's interesting how the Arabs are constantly accusing Israel of taking over Muslim land, but look at this on a map like this, and it kind of puts that into perspective. These lands were forcefully taken over by Muslims centuries ago and have never been relinquished, and they have eradicated basically all other religions from this area. So after this first wave of Islamic expansion for several centuries, Europe was in what is commonly called the Dark Ages. Well, why is it called the Dark Ages? Well, the map helps explain it, because on the southern side and on the eastern side, Europe was cut off from the rest of the world by hostile Muslim armies.

And there was no trade, there was no commerce between those areas. They were shut out. Europe was isolated. What you had to the north was the Scandinavian countries and a lot of ice and a lot of snow. And to the west was the Atlantic Ocean. So on the two critical sides, south and east, Europe is isolated. And thus the Dark Ages, they were cut off intellectually, culturally, trade-wise from the rest of the world. And during this time, Ishmael's sons did become a great nation. They ruled much of the world, as we can see from the map here. They developed a lot of the sciences like astronomy, geometry, algebra, mathematics, things like that. You won't find these things in history books. You won't find this being the cause of the Dark Ages in Europe in the history books. But this is actually what is going on here. So the Arabs at this time did become a very successful civilization. And part of the reason for the Arab hostility toward the western world today is frankly jealousy. Because the Arabs remember their greatness as a civilization, how much of the world they controlled, and how advanced they were in these sciences like astronomy, geometry, mathematics, and so on. But their time in the sun came and went centuries ago. And since that time, the western nations have controlled the world. And they see that, and they're envious of it because the Quran, their holy book, promises them that Islam is destined to conquer and rule the world. But they don't see that. They see the western nations, the infidels, controlling the world. So that is totally contrary to their worldview. And that is a source of their ongoing hostility toward the west, particularly toward the United States and Britain and Israel there. And that is why people like Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, leaders of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, and so on have for decades labeled the United States as the Great Satan. Satan meaning the enemy, enemy of Islam. And Britain and Israel as the little Satans because if they can overthrow the United States and Britain and Israel, then they can attain the rightful place of ruling the world. So this jealousy and envy actually goes back, all the way back to the jealousy and enmity between Ishmael and Isaac and between Jacob and Esau, as we'll see shortly here. What about other relatives of Abraham? Do they have a claim on the land? We won't turn there for lack of time, but Genesis 19 tells us the origin of two other peoples in this part of the world. And this ties in with Sodom and the destruction of Sodom because when that happens a lot, and as two daughters flee, hide out in caves. From their perspective, they think maybe the world has ended because their home, the whole Jordan Valley, is just a smoking heap of ash at that time. And lots, two daughters, understandably, think the world has ended. And if the human race is to continue, the only man they have around is their father, Lot. So they get them drunk, sleep with them, and become pregnant. And that is the origin of two sons, one named Moab, the originator of the Moabites, and Ben Ami, who is the originator of the Ammonites here.

So these two peoples, we see two kingdoms that are fighting the Israelites and the Judaiic kings during their history are Moab and Ammon. Ammon is shown in orange on the right side of the map, and Moab is in purple just below that. So these are the Moabites and the Ammonites, descendants of Lot.

This is their origin here. Below them, in the yellowish color, you see something called the Kingdom of Edom. And this is another people who originate around this time. Edom is another name for Esau.

And we'll get into that in just a few minutes here. Esau is Abraham's grandson, and he also is a rightful heir, along with his fraternal twin brother Jacob, or Israel.

So to kind of catch us up here so far, we have looked at what the two sons of Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac were given. Ishmael was given a huge swath of land, the Saudi Arabian Peninsula, which is basically sand and rock, and about a third of the world's supply of oil.

So Isaac is given everything else that we talked about, from the river Euphrates to the Nihal River. So now we come down to the next generation. We've gone through Abraham and Isaac, and now we come to Jacob and Esau in Genesis 25 and verse 20.

So what did the two of them inherit, and who gets what's left? So picking up the story, Genesis 25 verse 20, Isaac was 40 years old when he took Rebekah, his wife, the daughter of Bethuel, the Syrian of Paddan Aram, the sister of Laban, the Syrian. Now Isaac pleaded with the Lord for his wife because she was barren, and the Lord granted his plea, and Rebekah, his wife, conceived.

But the children struggled together within her, and she said, if all is well, why am I like this? So she went to inquire of the Lord, and the Lord said to her, two nations are in your womb. Two people shall be separated from your body. One people shall be stronger than the other, and the older shall serve the younger.

So God determines that the two twins that Rebekah is bearing, that the younger would be greater than the older. And this is backwards from what is normally done, because normally the first one born, if it's a first born, as in this case, would inherit the birthright and the promises, and so on. And the blessing. So God determines before they're born that this would be reversed.

So verse 24, so when her days were fulfilled for her to give birth, indeed there were twins in her womb. And the first came out red. He was like a hairy garment all over, so they called his name Esau, which means Harry. H-A-I-R-Y, not H-A-R-R-Y.

Afterward, his brother came out, and his hand took hold of Esau's heel. So his name was called Jacob, which means Grasp-er or supplanter. And Isaac was sixty years old when she bore them. So the boys grew, and Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, but Jacob was a mild man, dwelling in tents. And Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob. So between these two twin boys, Isaac loves Esau, the outdoor guy. The most, and Rebekah loves Jacob, the one who prefers staying in the tents there. So like you see among brothers at times, they are very different from each other. Verse 29, Now Jacob cooked a stew, and Esau came in from the field, and he was weary. And Esau said to Jacob, Please feed me with that same red stew, for I am weary. Therefore his name was called Edom. So we see Edom and Esau are the same person. Edom means red after the red stew. So that's where he gets his name, after a bowl of stew. And the land of Edom, which you'll see referred to in the Bible, is named for him. A variation of that you'll find if you read history books is Idomea. You can see Edom, Idomea. During the Greek and Roman times, his land was called Idomea. The people were called Idomeans. Why is this significant? Well, the biblical king Herod the Great, who built the Jerusalem temple, was half Idomean. He's an Edomite by birth from this area, from the Idomeans. He also built Masada and Caesarea Maritima and other great places there. These people are the ones who also built Petra, whom you've all probably heard of. And we visited here on the most recent feast trip here. So this is the origin. This is the land of the Idomeans, in the sentence of Esau or Edom. So continuing the story back here in Genesis 25, verse 31, here we see where Esau sells his birthright to his brother. But Jacob said, Sell me your birthright as of this day. And Esau said, Look, I am about to die. So what is this birthright to me? Then Jacob said, Swear to me as of this day. So Esau swore to him and sold his birthright to Jacob. So here we see in the biblical record how Esau sells his birthright, his blessings. His rights is the firstborn to his younger twin brother, Jacob, here, for a bowl of stew. So it was an agreement that is legal. It was agreed to by both parties. The bowl of stew for the birthright. And Jacob thus becomes the legal owner of the birthright, from Abraham to Isaac and now to Jacob. Verse 34, And Jacob gave Esau bread and stew of lentils, then he ate and drank a rose and went his way. And then we see God's judgment on this, which is that thus Esau despised his birthright, treated it as something that was utterly unimportant, and exchanged it for a bowl of stew. Now let's get forward to Genesis 27 and see more of what this entails.

Genesis 27 verse 1, Now it came to pass, when Isaac was old, and his eyes were so dim that he could not see, that he called Esau his older son, and said to him, My son. And he answered him, Here I am. Then he said, Behold, now I am old. I do not know the day of my death. Now therefore, please take your weapons, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field, and hunt game for me, and make me savory food, such as I love, and bring it to me that I may eat, and that my soul may bless you before I die. So now, he's apparently unaware that the birthright has already been sold some time before, in the agreement we just read about for the bowl of stew.

So, we'll skip over now the part of the story where Rebecca overhears this, and conspires with her son Jacob. And Rebecca has Jacob put on Esau's clothes, and even wraps the goat skins around his arms, so he feels hairy like his brother, and so on. And then we'll pick up the story down in verse 17.

So Jacob went near to Isaac, his father, and he felt him, and said, because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau's hands, because the animal skins wrapped around him. So he blessed him. Then he said, Are you really my son Esau? And he said, I am. And he said, Bring it near to me, and I will eat of my son's game, so that my soul may bless you. So he brought it near to him, and he ate, and he brought him wine, and he drank. Then his father Isaac said to him, Come near now, and kiss me, my son. So we see through this that Isaac is clearly suspicious, because he doesn't think the voice is quite right, he feels his arms and hands, and they're hairy, but he doesn't realize it's goat skin that he's feeling, and he even smells him to determine whether he smells like his son Esau or not. So he wants to be sure who it is he's giving his blessing to. Verse 27, And he came here and kissed him, and Isaac smelled the smell of his clothing, and blessed him, and said, Surely the smell of my son is like the smell of a field which the Lord has blessed. So now he is persuaded, Yes, this smells like my son Esau. So what follows is the blessing that goes along with the birthright, the birthright that would have gone to Esau, except he sold it to his brother Jacob, years before it, and despised it when he was younger. So now we read about the blessings that are going to be passed on to Isaac, or excuse me, to Jacob.

Therefore may God give you of the dew of heaven, of the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and wine. Let people serve you, and nations bow down to you. Be master over your brethren, and let your mother's sons bow down to you. Cursed be everyone who curses you, and blessed be those who bless you. So we see here that Jacob is basically getting everything.

Now, whatever was left from the previous distribution of property is now being given to Jacob, and along with it not just the land, but these other wonderful blessings of agricultural abundance, and power, and wealth, and influence over the other nations, and so on. But no sooner does this finish happening than who shows up on the scene but Esau, the other brother. So continuing, verse 30, Esau, your firstborn, Esau. And then Isaac trembled exceedingly, and said, Who?

Where is the one who hunted game, and brought it to me? I ate all of it before you came, and I have blessed him. And indeed he shall be blessed. When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with an exceedingly great and bitter cry, and said to his father, Bless me, me also, O my father. But he said, Your brother came with deceit, and has taken away your blessing.

And Esau said, Is he not rightly named Jacob, the Grasper, the supplanter? For he has supplanted me these two times. He took away my birthright, and now look, he has taken away my blessing. And he said, Have you not reserved a blessing for me? And here we might rightly feel sorry for Esau, but he has no one to blame for himself. Because, as we read earlier, God's evaluation of this is that he despised his birthright, considered it nothing, and sold it for a bowl of stew.

He simply did not deserve it any longer. Verse 37, Then Isaac answered and said to Esau, Indeed, I have made him your master, and all his brethren. I have given to him as servants, with grain and wine I have sustained him. What shall I do now for you, my son? And Esau so did his father, Have you only one blessing, my father?

Bless me, me also, my father. And Esau lifted up his voice and wept. I'm going to switch now to the new international version, because it's a better translation here than the New King James. His father Isaac answered him, And this is a prophecy here of what would happen with Esau and his descendants. Your dwelling will be away from the earth's richness, in comparison to his brother Jacob, away from the dew of heaven above. You will live by the sword, and you shall serve your brother. But when you grow restless, you will throw his yoke from off your neck.

And Esau held a grudge against Jacob, because of the blessing his father had given to him. And he said to himself, The days of mourning for my father are near, then I will kill my brother Jacob. And the story goes on from there. We won't read the rest of it. You're familiar with the outlines of the story. Needless to say, Esau doesn't kill his brother, because his brother is the one through whom the promises given to Abraham are to be passed down. And Jacob would go on and have his twelve sons, who would be the originators of the twelve tribes of Israel.

But we do see here the continuing line of possession and promises of the property there in the Middle East. And we also see again the origins of the lot of the bitterness, and the jealousy, and the envy, and the hatred that literally goes back for almost four thousand years and is part of the world between the descendants of Abraham on both sides, through Israel and through Esau and the others there.

So Jacob would, as we see here, have the legal right to everything that was promised to Abraham from the Nile River in Egypt all the way to the Euphrates that was granted earlier to Ishmael.

They're the lands of Saudi Arabia. So let's take another quick look at our map that we looked at earlier here showing Abraham's travels. And what I want to point out here is where the descendants of Esau settled, the son who sold his birthright. Basically, if you look at the bottom, if you see the blue dot at the... where Hebron Mamre, where the black type is, that's the Dead Sea. If you go south from that, that would be the land of Ida Mia, or Edom, where Petra is located there.

And they were surely away from the dew and the fatness of the earth there. They lived down below the Dead Sea in what area that is now Jordan and Saudi Arabia. And here's what it looks like. We were able to visit there at the feast again this year. This area is called Wadi Rum. And it's pretty barren, pretty desolate there. There aren't even a lot of camels around, but the camel kind of shows the scale there.

Very, very desolate area there. Incidentally, if you've ever watched the movie Lawrence of Arabia, that's where this was filmed, right in this particular area here. So this gives you a good feel for the area to which the descendants of Esau would live. And then Jacob's 12 sons become the 12 tribes of Israel, and this shows the lands that they would inherit there when they re-entered the land after their enslavement there in Egypt.

So the land is deeded to Jacob, and then it's subdivided among his 12 sons. So each of these tribes does have a very clear legal claim recorded in the Bible going all the way back to when God promised that land to Abraham. So now, what does all this lead up to, and what are the implications of this today?

Well, from a prophetic point of view, we need to ask an important question. That is, are these same people that we've talked about, Edom, Moab, Ammon, Ishmael, still in the same areas that they were given that we talked about there? It's impossible to say with absolute certainty in every case because of all that has happened over the last 4,000 years in that area. There were Egyptian invasions from the south, there were Babylonian, and Assyrian invasions from the north, there was intermarriage, there were migrations, there were wars between the different people.

But in general, as I mentioned, if you go and talk to the people, the Arabs again, say, we're the sons of Ishmael, and they are. If you go to Jordan and talk with the Jordanians, they'll probably proclaim they are descendants of Moab and Ammon. What's the capital city of Jordan? Ammon, the name for the Ammonites, going back there to the son of one of the daughters of Lot there. So we'd have to conclude that in general, the peoples are very much in the same areas that they were, in form much of the non-Israelite population in that part of the world.

Now let's turn over to Daniel 11 and read a very familiar prophecy about events in the Middle East at the time of the end, in light of this history that we've talked about here today. Daniel 11, verse 40, at the time of the end, so this is the time marker, very clear time marker, at the time of the end, the king of the south shall attack him, the king of the north, and the king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind with chariots, horsemen, and with many ships, and he shall enter the countries, overwhelm them, and pass through.

So who's the king of the north and the king of the south? That goes back to, as recorded earlier in this chapter, you find these two people who change over time. It's more relative to whose ruling over the territories to the north of Israel and to the south of Israel, or specifically Jerusalem. So that changed over time. Eventually, the Roman Empire absorbed all the areas to the north of Israel, so that's why we think the king of the north in the end time is going to be associated with a latter-day revival of the Roman Empire, centered in Europe.

What about the king of the south? Well, the king of the south of Israel, as you've seen on the maps. What do you have? You have Saudi Arabia and Egypt. You have the heart of the Muslim world.

So we believe the king of the south to be a leader who will emerge out of the Islamic world, the Muslim world. And this will be part of a geopolitical war unlike anything the world has ever seen at the time of the end. Continuing, verse 41, He, the king of the north, shall enter the glorious land, another term for the holy land, or Israel, and many nations shall be overthrown, but these shall escape from his hand.

So the king of the north invades the holy land. But Edom, Moab, and the prominent people of Ammon are not affected by this, or are not invaded by this. So, obviously, who are the Edomites, the Moabites, the Ammonites? It's Jordan, modern-day Jordan. So the king of the north invades the glorious land, the holy land, but not Jordan. As we read here, He shall stretch out his hand against the countries, and the land of Egypt shall not escape.

So he also moves down into the land of Egypt. This is one reason also why we think this has got to be some sort of Muslim confederation, because he invades in the heart of the lands of Islam. So as we come to the time of Jesus Christ's return, in Daniel's prophecy, this area is the focus of end-time events.

We see these same people, Edom, Moab, Ammon, Egypt, they're in the same region. And again, they know who they are. They know who they're descended from. And the Arabs are more than happy to tell you that. Let's look at another prophecy not so familiar. This one is in Psalm 83, and a number of the Psalms are prophetic in various ways.

This is one of the more unusual, because I can't think of another Psalm that's quite like that. But it seems to be describing something that has never happened in history before. There's no record of anything like this in history happening. So it must, therefore, be referring to the end-time again. And this describes an end-time conspiracy by a group of different peoples, ethnic groups, cultures, nations, who set themselves against God's people in the end-time.

So I'll read through it, it's a fairly short Psalm. Do not keep silent, O God, do not hold your peace, and do not be still, O God. For behold, your enemies make a tumult, and those who hate you have lifted up your head. They have taken crafty counsel against your people and consulted together against your sheltered ones. They have said, Come, and let us cut them all from being a nation that the name of Israel may be remembered no more.

So we see these people are allied against the people of Israel. They want to commit genocide, that the name of Israel be erased from history and exist no more. But who are they really aligned against? They're really aligned against God, we see from the verses before that. Continuing in verse 5, For they have consulted together with one consent, they form a confederacy against you. They're actually aligned against God. So who is involved in this conspiracy against the physical people of Israel and against God Himself? Then we see them listed, the tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites, Moab and the Hagrites, Gebal, Ammon and Amalek, Phyllistia with the inhabitants of Tyre, Assyria also is joined with them, they have helped the children of Lot, Selah.

And that's the end of the song. Not a lot of detail, but what does this mean in light of the peoples that we've talked about so far in the sermon today? So let's look at this on a modern map here. And just imagine the yellow circle there in which Israel is enclosed. Just imagine that as a clock phase, so you may be sitting too far away to see the names of these different people. So let's go through them in order and see where they are on this modern day map. So Edom, as we saw earlier, is another name for Esau. We see Edom there at about, again, if the yellow circle is a clock phase, at about seven o'clock you see the word Edom there.

So these are people who settle to the south of Israel there. Some of these are spread out a little bit just to make them more clear. So they would be six, seven o'clock position on this map. As far as we can tell, these are a large portion of the Edomites, or what we would call today the Palestinians. Palestinians, historically inaccurate name. I could discuss that at length, but I won't for lack of time here.

The Ishmaelites, you see that down at about the five o'clock position in Saudi Arabia. We talked about that, how the twelve sons of Ishmael settled in what is today Saudi Arabia. Moab, you see that at about the three o'clock position on the clock face. This is the area and inhabitants of central Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan today. The Hagrites are mentioned only a few times in the Bible, but they are people who lived, and you see them up above the Ishmaelites, at about the four o'clock position, and up at about the one o'clock position there.

They apparently lived in the northern part of Saudi Arabia, and then spread from there with the spread of Islam up into Syria, what is today modern-day Syria. Gable has two possibilities, referring to either the area of the Lebanese coast, we see that at the twelve o'clock position just above the top of the circle, or a mountainous region of southern Jordan, so down around the five or six o'clock position there. Then we see Ammon mentioned, and that is about the two o'clock position here, what is today northern Jordan.

Amalek is mentioned north, next. It is a branch of Edom, again, descended from one of Esau's grandsons, who was named Amalek. We see them, I've put them just below the arrow there, at about the three o'clock position there, although they would have been spread over a broader area there.

The Amalekites are apparently also a predominant part of what are today called, erroneously, the Palestinians. God, in the biblical record, utterly despised the Amalekites and told the Israelites to wipe them out. Why did he do that? Because, frankly, they were the terrorists of their day. If you read the account of the Israelites sojourned from Egypt, they leave Egypt, they start traveling up, circling around to go through the Promised Land, and what do the Amalekites do? The Amalekites attack the end, the tail end, of the Israelite column as it's traveling. Who is in the tail end? The weakest of the Israelite people, the elderly, the sick, the infirm, the children. So the Amalekites are the terrorists who are killing, preying on the weakest of the Israelites. And that is why God tells them, very clearly, to wipe them out. He told King Saul that explicitly. He won't go into that story, but Saul disobeys God and God removes him as king for his refusal to do what God had commanded. Continuing back in Psalm 23, and I... yeah, let me finish a thought there. Yeah, there are certainly parallels between the Amalekites of that day and the Arab terrorist groups of today. And this is why he thinks there's a connection between the two. And why do I say that? Well, again, just look at what Hamas did. And butchering 1,200 people there at the end of the feast this year, and taking another 250 captives, and apparently murdering a number of them, and just horrible atrocities against the people they killed, and the captives as well. So, let's... going back to where we were here in Psalm 23, in the identification. After verse 7, after the mention of the Amalekites, it mentions Philistia. Where is Philistia? Philistia is at the three o'clock position on the map, is today what we call Gaza, which is where the war is taking place as we speak, where Hamas took over that 18 years ago, after the Israelis withdrew, took it over, given complete autonomy. They vote Hamas into power, and it's been a terrorist state ever since. And a lot I could say about that, but don't have time for, so it's Gaza, or the Gaza Strip is Philistia. Tyre is also mentioned, that is up at the top of the map, above the 12 o'clock position. It's a city in what is today Lebanon. Lebanon today is ruled by its own terror group, known as Hezbollah, Arabic for party of Allah, party of God, party of Allah. And then it also mentions they have helped the children of Lot. We've talked about Lot a lot today, Moab and Ammon there. Now what's interesting is, you look at this map here, what you see is the state of Israel, surrounded by people who are dedicated to the genocide of the nation of Israel today. And what do we see in the world today? This exact situation here. Is Israel getting support from any of its neighbors? No, they're not. It's interesting, I read of an interview, one of the leaders of Hamas was interviewed by Russian TV the day after the October 7th attacks.

And he boasted that Hamas had called Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, and Russia an hour before the attacks and told them what is coming.

On paper, Israel is allied with Egypt and Jordan and to some extent Turkey and Russia. Did they bother to warn Israel what was coming? No. They sat back and let 1,200 Israelis be murdered. 250 more taken into captivity. So there's very much parallels. I forgot to mention one area, Syria. Syria we see the green label at the upper right. Syria may be referring to two possibilities here. One, it may be referring to the ancient inhabitants of Assyria, whom we understood to have migrated over to Central Europe. And are a lot of the Germanic people of today, or it may be referring to the territory of ancient Assyria, which is largely modern day Iraq. It wasn't that long ago that Iraq was ruled by the ISIS terrorist group, the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. And dedicated, of course, to the eradication of Israel as well. So there are two different possibilities there to consider, or maybe it's both. So we do have to be cautious and careful in how we interpret Bible prophecy, but if we don't pay any attention to the history and the Biblical record, we don't have any hope of identifying who the players are in the end time when it comes to prophecy. The Bible says that particular things are going to happen, and by studying the historical background as we've covered today, we can better understand who the players are, who is involved, and actually going back 4,000 years as to what their motives are. The hatred and the jealousy and the envy that takes place there. So that's a reason behind this whole exercise of establishing who the land who has valid claim to the ownership of the land currently occupied by the State of Israel and the other peoples who are nearby. Because the ownership of the land is crucial to the events that are playing out before our eyes right now in the Middle East. And as we also see from these two prophecies in Psalm 83 and Daniel 11, it's also a key to understanding how those things might play out in the end. And we do all need to be closely paying attention to these because they are a key to understanding in-time prophecy as it is fulfilled. And we'll have a Q&A afterwards, so that is the end of our sermon for today.