CHAPTER SIX

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE REBIRTH OF ISRAEL

The most definitive and conclusive sign that we are living in the era the Bible calls the last days was the miraculous rebirth of the State of Israel in 1948, the return of millions of Jews to the Holy Land after centuries of exile, the wars and rumors of wars that have engulfed the Jewish state for the last half century and more, the rebuilding of the ancient ruins in Israel, and the increasing international focus on the nation of Israel as the epicenter of the momentous events that are shaking our world and shaping our future. Some Bible scholars have described the rebirth of Israel as the “super sign,” and I agree.

Many people did not see the modern resurrection of the Jewish state coming. Many thought it would never happen and shouldn’t. For centuries, world leaders had cruelly scattered and persecuted the Jewish people and denied their right to return to their ancient homeland. Sadly, even many church leaders throughout history came to believe in a pernicious doctrine called “replacement theology,” which denied the veracity and legitimacy of Bible prophecies that said Israel would be reborn in the last days. Such replacement theologians, and the pastors and laypeople who read and followed their conclusions, said God had rejected the Jewish people and would no longer honor the ancient covenants to give the Jewish people the heretofore “Promised Land.” Unfortunately, many people in the United States and around the world also vigorously opposed the creation of the modern State of Israel. Indeed, most of the Arab and Islamic world was willing to use any means necessary, including war, to strangle the reborn infant nation in her cradle, as they demonstrated time and time again.

Yet those who were watching events through the third lens of Scripture knew Israel would one day be reborn. What’s more, those who believed the ancient biblical prophecies were true and valid often did much to assist the young nation of Israel. In this chapter, we will take a look back at the early days of Israel’s modern rebirth and see how the United States played a key role in the Jewish state’s resurrection. We will also take a look at some of the Bible prophecies fulfilled by Israel’s rebirth and what they might mean for the future of our own nation.

Showdown in the Oval Office

Over the past six decades, the United States has been Israel’s best friend and chief ally. That warm and strategic relationship began with President Harry Truman’s official and highly public decision to be the first world leader to recognize and support the newly declared State of Israel on May 14, 1948. Yet few Americans realize the tectonic struggle that took place at the highest levels of the U.S. government and almost prevented Truman from making or implementing that decision.

Until recently, despite decades of studying Jewish history, traveling to Israel, and working with various Israeli leaders, I had no idea just how close the Jewish state came to being denied early and critical recognition by the American government. Not long ago, however, an Israeli friend recommended that I read Counsel to the President, a book that takes readers inside the Oval Office and describes the political infighting against Israel in vivid detail. What I found absolutely fascinated me.

The book is the memoir of Clark Clifford, a highly respected Democrat who served as senior advisor for and special counsel to President Truman. Later, Clifford served as chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board for President John F. Kennedy, as secretary of defense under President Lyndon Johnson, and as an informal but highly trusted advisor to President Jimmy Carter before retiring from government and later passing away in 1998 at the age of 91. Clifford’s memoir explains his up-close-and-personal role in some of the most dramatic moments of American history in the post–World War II years, from advising Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, to helping Johnson seek an exit strategy from the Vietnam War, to counseling Carter during the darkest days of his presidency, to playing poker with Winston Churchill on a train bound for Fulton, Missouri, where Churchill was set to deliver his “Iron Curtain” speech.

Yet Clifford didn’t begin his 709-page tome with a description of any of these events. His first chapter, titled “Showdown in the Oval Office,” begins like this:

May 12, 1948—Of all the meetings I ever had with presidents, this one remains the most vivid. Not only did it pit me against a legendary war hero whom President Truman revered, but it did so over an issue of fundamental and enduring national security importance—Israel and the Mideast.[124]

Clifford noted that Truman regarded then–secretary of state (and decorated Army general) George C. Marshall as “the greatest living American,” yet Truman and Marshall were on “a collision course” over Israel that “threatened to split and wreck the administration.”[125] Simply put, “Marshall firmly opposed American recognition of the new Jewish state,” opposition that was “shared by almost every member of the brilliant and now-legendary group of men, later referred to as ‘the Wise Men,’ who were then in the process of creating a postwar foreign policy that would endure for more than forty years.”[126] President Truman, in contrast, was a strong supporter of Israel, in large part because of his belief in the Bible.

Among the secretary of state’s allies in opposing recognition of Israel was James V. Forrestal, the secretary of defense. Some months before, Forrestal had told Clifford, “You fellows over at the White House are just not facing up to the realities in the Middle East. There are 30 million Arabs on one side and about six hundred thousand Jews on the other. It is clear that in any contest, the Arabs are going to overwhelm the Jews. Why don’t you face up to the realities? Just look at the numbers!”

“Jim, the president knows just as well as you do what the numbers are . . . but he doesn’t consider this to be a question of numbers,” Clifford replied. “He has always supported the right of the Jews to have their own homeland, from the moment he became president. . . . He is sympathetic to their needs and their desires, and I assure you he is going to continue to lend our country’s support to the creation of a Jewish state.”

“Well, if he does that, then he’s absolutely dead wrong,” the secretary of defense shot back.[127]

Now the moment of truth had come. The British Mandate for oversight of the land then referred to as Palestine (a term that dated back to the Greeks’ and Romans’ descriptions of the Holy Land) was set to expire in forty-eight hours. David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, was poised to announce the declaration of the Jewish state’s independence on May 14. That action, the administration knew, would almost certainly trigger a war between Israel and the surrounding Arab nations. Interestingly, Clifford noted that Ben-Gurion and his advisors had not yet decided on a name for the Jewish state. “The name ‘Israel’ was as yet unknown,” Clifford wrote, “and most of us assumed the new nation would be called ‘Judaea.’”[128]

At four o’clock in the afternoon on Wednesday, May 12, Marshall, Clifford, and several other advisors entered the Oval Office to meet with the president. Secretary Marshall explained that the creation of a Jewish state would be “dangerous.” He said he had told a representative of the Jewish Agency that if the Jews got into trouble and “came running to us for help . . . they were clearly on notice that there was no warrant to expect help from the United States, which had warned them of the grave risk they were running.”[129]

When Marshall and his colleagues were finished making their case opposing a Jewish state, the president turned to Clifford and asked for the case in support. Clifford noted a war between Israel and its neighbors was going to begin any moment and that delaying support would be tantamount to denying support. He said that the more quickly the president supported the Jewish state, the more likely it was for the new state to become friendly with—and hopefully eventually an ally of—the United States. If the Soviet Union, however, were the first to recognize the state, perhaps the Jews would form closer ties to Moscow. He continued by stating that in the Balfour Declaration, the British government had long before promised a state to the Jews and that “the United States has a great moral obligation to oppose discrimination” against the Jews and to create a “safe haven” for Jews escaping the Holocaust and Eastern European Communism. Finally, he argued that the U.S. should support the creation of democracies, that the Middle East had long been unstable, and that helping establish a democracy in the Middle East would be consistent with American values.

At that point, Secretary Marshall exploded. “Mr. President . . . I don’t even know why Clifford is here. He is a domestic advisor, and this is a foreign policy matter.”

“Well, General,” the president replied calmly, “he’s here because I asked him to be here.”

Marshall and his colleagues protested that Clifford was pressing for support in order to win Jewish votes in the next presidential election. Marshall then threatened that if Truman supported the Jewish state, he would lose Marshall’s vote. The room grew silent. The president ended the meeting by saying he would consider both sides seriously and make his decision soon.[130]

American Jewish Opposition to Israel

Actually, Truman’s support of the creation of the Jewish state was opposed by many American Jews, a fact unknown or forgotten by many friends of Israel.

“A significant number of Jewish Americans opposed Zionism,” Clifford wrote in his memoir. “Some feared that the effort to create a Jewish state was so controversial that the plan would fail. In 1942 a number of prominent Reform rabbis had founded the American Council for Judaism to oppose the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. It grew into an organization of over fourteen thousand members, which collaborated closely with State Department officials.” Clifford also noted that Arthur H. Sulzberger, the Jewish publisher of the New York Times, and Eugene Meyer, the Jewish publisher of the Washington Post, “opposed Zionism” as well.[131]

Nevertheless, Truman had spoken favorably of the creation of a Jewish national homeland since not long after taking office. In 1947, for example, Truman had publicly made it the policy of the United States government to back passage of the United Nations Partition Plan, creating the legal framework for the rebirth of the State of Israel as well as an adjoining state for the Palestinian Arabs. To succeed, the Partition Plan needed a two-thirds majority vote of the U.N. General Assembly. With just days to go before that historic vote on November 29, 1947, however, supporters of the plan were still three votes short. Some have suggested that President Truman personally called leaders of other nations to encourage them to support the American position. Others say he didn’t but that staff in his administration did; the record is not clear.[132] Either way, most historians—including David McCullough, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his extraordinary biography Truman[133]—acknowledge that Truman wanted the plan to pass and played a role behind the scenes.[134]

In the end, Truman got his way. The Partition Plan dramatically passed at the last moment, thirty-three to thirteen, with ten abstentions.[135]

Truman’s Historic Decision

Given the president’s backing of the Partition Plan, it would seem in retrospect that his decision to formally support the new state was a fait accompli. But the political crisis inside the White House and State Department was real and festering for the next two days. Tensions mounted, and time was running out. Reporters were asking what the president would do on the issue, and the advisors closest to the president had no clue. President Truman kept his cards close to his vest. Clifford later wrote that he thought “the chances for salvaging the situation were very small—but not quite zero.”[136]

By May 14, neither the secretary of state nor the secretary of defense nor any of the Cabinet or senior advisors knew which side the president would come down on. Then, a few hours before Ben-Gurion’s scheduled announcement, an aide to Secretary Marshall called Clifford at the White House to say that Marshall still did not support the creation of Israel but would not oppose the president publicly if he declared in favor. This was a significant breakthrough. With less than an hour to go, the State Department aide called back to suggest again that Secretary Marshall hoped the president would delay making any decision for more internal discussions, presumably over the next few days.

“Only thirty minutes . . . before the announcement would be made in Tel Aviv,” Clifford recalled, “the American segment of the drama was now coming to a climax.” Clifford told the aide he would check with President Truman and get back to the secretary. He waited three minutes, then called the aide back, saying delay was out of the question. Finally, at six o’clock, the president formally announced his final decision to Clifford. The United States would recognize and support the State of Israel. Truman handed his statement to Clifford, who immediately took it to the president’s press secretary, Charlie Ross. At 6:11 p.m., Ross read the statement to the press, and thus to the world:

Statement by the president. This government has been informed that a Jewish state has been proclaimed in Palestine. . . . The United States recognizes the provisional government as the de facto authority of the new State of Israel.[137]

History had been made. Bible prophecy had just been fulfilled. After a long and painful labor, the State of Israel had miraculously been born in a day. “Who has heard such a thing?” the prophet Isaiah wrote more than seven hundred years before Jesus’ birth. “Who has ever seen things like this? Can a country be born in a day or a nation be brought forth in a moment? Yet no sooner is Zion in labor than she gives birth to her children” (Isaiah 66:8, NIV).

What’s more, the first world leader officially to recognize Israel’s legitimacy was a Christian who had been raised reading the Bible and believed it was true. Most of his senior advisors had vehemently opposed the creation of Israel. Much of the American Jewish community opposed it too. The Arab world would soon turn against the United States and move increasingly into the orbit of the Soviet Union. Yet Truman backed Israel anyway because he believed it was the right thing to do, the biblical thing to do.

“The fundamental basis of this nation’s ideals was given to Moses on Mount Sinai,” Truman once told an audience. “The fundamental basis of the Bill of Rights of our Constitution comes from the teachings which we get from Exodus, St. Matthew, Isaiah, and St. Paul. The Sermon on the Mount gives us a way of life, and maybe someday men will understand it as the real way of life. The basis of all great moral codes is ‘Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.’ Treat others as you would like to be treated.”[138]

That is not to say that Truman made all his decisions based on Scripture. Truman was an intensely private man when it came to spiritual and religious matters, and he did not often discuss what he believed about the Bible and how he connected those beliefs to public policy. The 1940s were a different age. Presidents rarely discussed such matters with the public. Truman even felt reticent about discussing his beliefs with Billy Graham, as Graham described in his autobiography.[139] However, it is not conjecture to say that Bible prophecy was a critical element in Truman’s decision-making process.

Clifford confirmed it in his memoir. “[Truman] was a student and believer in the Bible since his youth. From his reading of the Old Testament he felt the Jews derived a legitimate historical right to Palestine, and he sometimes cited such biblical lines as Deuteronomy 1:8, ‘Behold, I have given up the land before you; go in and take possession of the land which the Lord hath sworn unto your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.’”[140]

Bible Prophecies Foretelling the Rebirth of Israel

Are there really ancient prophecies in the Bible that point to the rebirth of Israel in the last days? There are.

The most famous of these, perhaps, are found in the book of Ezekiel, chapters 36 through 39. Here, the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel, writing more than 2,500 years ago, describes in great detail, in chapter after chapter, how “in the last days” (Ezekiel 38:16) the Lord will remember the Jewish people, resurrect the “dry bones” of the Jewish people who seemed left for dead (Ezekiel 37:1-14), remember the land of Israel, bring the Jewish people back to the land, cause the land of Israel to flourish again, and help the Jewish people rebuild the ancient ruins of Israel. The prophet also describes how the Lord would help the Jewish people survive and multiply and be blessed again in a resurrected land of Israel—which Ezekiel describes as “the center of the world” (Ezekiel 38:12)—even though their enemies would repeatedly seek to destroy them.

Consider a few excerpts from these important passages:

• Ezekiel 36:8-10—“But you, O mountains of Israel, you will put forth your branches and bear your fruit for My people Israel; for they will soon come. For, behold, I am for you, and I will turn to you, and you will be cultivated and sown. I will multiply men on you, all the house of Israel, all of it; and the cities will be inhabited and the waste places will be rebuilt.”

• Ezekiel 36:22-24—“It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name. . . . For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands, and bring you into your own land.”

• Ezekiel 37:1, 11-14—“The hand of the LORD was upon me, and He brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of the valley; and it was full of bones. . . . Then He said to me, ‘Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel; behold, they say, “Our bones are dried up and our hope has perished. We are completely cut off.” Therefore prophesy and say to them, “Thus says the Lord GOD, ‘Behold, I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves, My people; and I will bring you into the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves and caused you to come up out of your graves, My people. I will put My Spirit within you and you will come to life, and I will place you on your own land. Then you will know that I, the LORD, have spoken and done it,’ declares the LORD.”’”

• Ezekiel 38:8, 12—“After many days you [Gog, a key enemy of Israel] will be summoned; in the latter years you will come into the land that is restored from the sword, whose inhabitants have been gathered from many nations to the mountains of Israel which had been a continual waste; but its people were brought out from the nations, and they are living securely, all of them . . . the people who are gathered from the nations, who have acquired cattle and goods, who live at the center of the world.”

Ezekiel and Auschwitz

In January 2010, my wife, Lynn, and I traveled to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, where I was to address an evangelical Christian conference. I was teaching on the prophecies of Ezekiel 36–39, on the centrality of Israel in God’s plan and purpose for mankind in the last days, the threat of radical Islam, and the importance of building a global movement of Christians committed to showing the people of the epicenter unconditional love and unwavering support. As I prepared to teach, I happened to read news coverage of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address in Poland, commemorating the sixty-fifth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Speaking at the actual site of the Nazi death camp, the prime minister delivered a major address warning the world of new genocidal threats against the Jewish people and the importance of acting early enough to prevent such devastations. He also declared to the people of Europe and the world that the prophecies of Ezekiel had been fulfilled.

The most important lesson of the Holocaust is that a murderous evil must be stopped early, when it is still in its infancy and before it can carry out its designs. The enlightened nations of the world must learn this lesson. We, the Jewish nation, who lost a third of our people on Europe’s blood-soaked soil, have learned that the only guarantee for defending our people is a strong State of Israel and the army of Israel. We learned to warn the nations of the world of approaching danger but at the same time to prepare to defend ourselves. As the head of the Jewish state, I pledge to you today: we will never again permit evil to snuff out the life of our people and the life of our own country.

[After the Holocaust,] the Jewish people rose from ashes and destruction, from a terrible pain that can never be healed. Armed with the Jewish spirit, the justice of man, and the vision of the prophets, we sprouted new branches and grew deep roots. Dry bones became covered with flesh, a spirit filled them, and they lived and stood on their own feet. As Ezekiel prophesied, “Then He said unto me, These bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, our hope is gone; we are doomed.’ Prophesy, therefore, and say to them, Thus said the Lord God: I am going to open your graves and lift you out of your graves, O My people, and bring you to the land of Israel.” I stand here today on the ground where so many of my people perished—and I am not alone. The State of Israel and all the Jewish people stand with me. We bow our heads to honor your memory and lift our heads as we raise our flag, a flag of blue and white with a Star of David in its center. And everyone sees. And everyone hears. And everyone knows—that our hope is not lost.[141]

It was an extraordinary moment. Rarely has any world leader given a major address on an international stage declaring that End Times prophecies from the Bible have come true. Yet that is exactly what Netanyahu did.

Other Hebrew Prophets Foretold Israel’s Rebirth

Ezekiel was by no means the only Hebrew prophet who foretold Israel’s miraculous rebirth and the Jews’ return to the Holy Land after centuries of exile. Consider several other key passages of Scripture:

• Isaiah 66:8-9—“‘Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Can a land be born in one day? Can a nation be brought forth all at once? As soon as Zion travailed, she also brought forth her sons. Shall I bring to the point of birth and not give delivery?’ says the LORD. ‘Or shall I who gives delivery shut the womb?’ says your God.”

• Jeremiah 16:14-15—“‘Therefore behold, days are coming,’ declares the LORD, ‘when it will no longer be said, “As the LORD lives, who brought up the sons of Israel out of the land of Egypt,” but, “As the LORD lives, who brought up the sons of Israel from the land of the north and from all the countries where He had banished them.” For I will restore them to their own land which I gave to their fathers.’”

• Jeremiah 31:3-9—“The LORD appeared to him from afar, saying, ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness. Again I will build you and you will be rebuilt, O virgin of Israel! Again you will take up your tambourines, and go forth to the dances of the merrymakers. Again you will plant vineyards on the hills of Samaria; the planters will plant and will enjoy them. For there will be a day when watchmen on the hills of Ephraim call out, “Arise, and let us go up to Zion, to the LORD our God.” . . . Behold, I am bringing them from the north country, and I will gather them from the remote parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, the woman with child and she who is in labor with child, together; a great company, they will return here. With weeping they will come, and by supplication I will lead them; I will make them walk by streams of waters, on a straight path in which they will not stumble; for I am a father to Israel.’”

• Amos 9:11-15—“‘In that day I will raise up the fallen booth of David, and wall up its breaches; I will also raise up its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old; that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations who are called by My name,’ declares the LORD who does this. ‘Behold, days are coming,’ declares the LORD, ‘when the plowman will overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes him who sows seed; when the mountains will drip sweet wine and all the hills will be dissolved. Also I will restore the captivity of My people Israel, and they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them; they will also plant vineyards and drink their wine, and make gardens and eat their fruit. I will also plant them on their land, and they will not again be rooted out from their land which I have given them,’ says the LORD your God.”

Jesus and the Rebirth of Israel

The Lord Jesus himself repeatedly reaffirmed the teachings of the Hebrew prophets from the Old Testament. Indeed, he challenged people for not having read or understood the Scriptures.

• Matthew 5:17—“Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.”

• Matthew 19:4 (NLT)—“‘Haven’t you read the Scriptures?’ Jesus replied.”

• Matthew 22:29 (NLT)—“Jesus replied, ‘Your mistake is that you don’t know the Scriptures, and you don’t know the power of God.’”

By reaffirming the truth and the value of the Old Testament Scriptures, the Lord Jesus reaffirmed the truth and the value of God’s promises to resurrect the people and the land of Israel in the last days.

What’s more, Christ specifically spoke of the rebirth of Israel in Matthew 24:32-33. “Now learn the parable from the fig tree,” Jesus said. “When its branch has already become tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near; so, you too, when you see all these things, recognize that He is near, right at the door.”

What is the “parable from the fig tree” to which Jesus referred? The fig tree repeatedly symbolizes the nation of Israel throughout the Old Testament. In Jeremiah 24, for example, the Lord referred to the Jewish people as figs—some good, some bad—as he promised to bring them back from captivity to the Promised Land. Hosea 9:10 says, “I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness; I saw your forefathers as the earliest fruit on the fig tree in its first season.” In Micah 4, in a passage specifically about the last days and people coming to Jerusalem to visit the Lord’s Temple, Micah writes that when it comes to the Jewish people in the last days, “each of them will sit under his vine and under his fig tree.”

When the Lord Jesus spoke of the “parable from the fig tree” in Matthew’s Gospel, he was referencing these and similar passages. He was saying that when you see the State of Israel reborn, and Jews coming back to the Holy Land, and the land of Israel turning green and flourishing again—and when you see this happening in the context of all the other signs, all the other “birth pangs”—then you should know we are in a special and distinctive moment in history, a moment unlike any other. At that time, while we won’t know the day or hour of Christ’s return, the Lord Jesus told us to “recognize that He is near, right at the door” (Matthew 24:33).

The Apostles and the Rebirth of Israel

The apostles believed the prophecies about Israel would one day come to pass. In Acts 1:6, they asked the Lord Jesus after his resurrection if he was now going to bring the prophetic promises to fulfillment, end the Roman occupation, and rebuild the kingdom of Israel. It is reasonable to believe they expected Israel to be reborn as a politically independent state at any moment.

“Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?” they asked. Jesus did not say that theirs was a stupid question. He did not say those prophecies about Israel’s future rebirth were inaccurate or irrelevant or canceled by Jewish unfaithfulness to God, or that his followers were misinterpreting those passages. Rather, he said to them, “It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority” (Acts 1:7). For Christ and his apostles, it was not a matter of if the Father would fulfill his promises to Israel and the Jewish people, but when. And since the Lord Jesus knew the promises would not be fulfilled for more than 1,900 years, he mercifully chose not to give the disciples any details, for it may well have discouraged them.

The apostle Paul also repeatedly affirmed the truth and value of all the Hebrew prophecies in the Scriptures. In so doing he reaffirmed the rebirth of Israel and the regathering of the Jews in the last days. In 2 Timothy 3:16, for example, Paul wrote, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching.” That certainly covers all the prophecies in the Old Testament, including those describing the future resurrection of Israel. In Romans 9:3-4, Paul writes about his deep love for “my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites” and explains that to the children of Israel “belongs the adoption as sons, and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law and the temple service and the promises.” When he speaks of “the covenants,” Paul speaks of all the covenants. He does not exclude the Abrahamic covenant, in which the Lord unconditionally promised the land of Israel to the Jews, his chosen people according to Genesis 12 and 17, among other passages. What’s more, when Paul speaks of “the promises,” he speaks of all God’s promises to the Jewish people. He does not exclude the promises of Ezekiel 36, 37, 38, or any of the other promises of resurrecting the nation of Israel or regathering the Jewish people to Israel.

Implications for the United States

There is another critically important passage of Scripture we must consider in this context of the prophetic rebirth of the State of Israel and its implications for the future of the United States.

Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you; and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

GENESIS 12:1-3

Later in the Bible, these promises to Abram were passed down to his grandson Jacob, who was renamed Israel.

Then his father Isaac said to him . . . “Cursed be those who curse you, and blessed be those who bless you.”

GENESIS 27:26, 29

Still later in the Bible, the Lord again explicitly repeats these promises. “Balaam saw that it pleased the LORD to bless Israel. . . . Balaam lifted up his eyes and saw Israel camping tribe by tribe; and the Spirit of God came upon him,” we are told in Numbers 24:1-2. Then the Lord spoke through Balaam:

The oracle of him who hears the words of God. . . . How fair are your tents, O Jacob, your dwellings, O Israel! . . . Blessed is everyone who blesses you, and cursed is everyone who curses you.

NUMBERS 24:4-5, 9

The Bible’s message is clear: God promises to bless individuals and nations who bless the Jewish people and the State of Israel, and he promises to curse those who curse Jews and Israel.

The good news is that America has been Israel’s most faithful friend and ally for the past six decades, since helping to bring about the prophetic rebirth of the Jewish state. We have blessed the Jewish people here at home and around the globe. And in so many ways, the Lord has, in fact, blessed the United States of America as a result. If we remain faithful allies of Israel and continue to bless the Jewish people in real and practical ways—while we increasingly turn our hearts back to the Lord, who made this promise in the first place—then I believe God will continue to bless America and help us recover from our many challenges and our many sins. God made this wonderful promise, and we can depend upon him to be true to his Word.

But let us make no mistake: if the United States stops blessing Israel and the Jewish people and either abandons them or begins actively working against them, then we will no longer be eligible for the blessings of God. Rather, we will face God’s curse. This is a fate no nation can long endure. Certainly not ours. Indeed, given all the other enormous and existential economic, fiscal, spiritual, and moral challenges we face, I have no doubt that America will most certainly implode if we stop actively and consistently blessing Israel and the Jewish people.

God will not be mocked. One way or another, America will reap what she sows.

Bottom Line

Do there remain skeptics, cynics, opponents, and enemies of Israel here at home and around the world? Yes.

Will their numbers grow and their hatred of Israel and the Jewish people intensify as we go deeper into the last days? Unfortunately, yes.

But does their skepticism or cynicism or opposition nullify the truths of the Bible that Israel will be reborn and the Jews regathered to the Holy Land in the last days? Not at all.

Indeed, the rebirth of Israel is a remarkable development in our time. Some scholars have described it as the definitive sign—the “super sign,” as it were—that we are not merely living in an interesting or extraordinary period of history but, in fact, living in what the Bible calls the last days before the return of Christ. I believe that. Furthermore, I believe God’s promises that if we as Americans continue to bless Israel and the Jews—God’s chosen people—then God will bless us. But if the U.S. abandons or works against Israel and the Jewish people, then God will curse us.

Given the unprecedented challenges we already face as a nation, the stakes could not be higher.