This is the first in a series of articles explaining why the battle over “Zionism” that underlies all the wars of modern Israel is unfixable by anyone but Jesus Christ.
When in 1897 a group of Jewish would-be nationalists in Great Britain formally launched a political movement under the banner of Zionism, they usurped for themselves a vision for reclaiming the Holy Land that had previously involved a partnership of both Jews and Christians.
Indeed, that vision and process was centuries old, going back at least to the 1500s in Holland and the British Isles, embodied in the commonly held doctrine of “Millennialism” (the future thousand-year bodily reign of Messiah from Jerusalem) which took the form of world-shaping ideology in the historical and theological doctrine of British Israelism (BI). For the purposes of this article, the validity of the BI doctrine is totally irrelevant. What is most essential to recognize is that highly influential Jews and Christians believed it to be true and/or used it as a controlling narrative to steer British national and international policy by.
BI virtually disappeared from Christendom upon the completion of the Zionist plan to take physical possession of the Holy Land by military force in 1917, when (on their behalf) the armed forces of the British Empire wrested control of Jerusalem and much of the original territory of the Kingdom of David from the Ottoman Turks and legally established the Jewish right to resettle it with the Balfour Declaration. Instead of the long-anticipated joint venture of two houses – Christians and Jews – united in the Holy Land under the banner of Millennialism, the modern State of Israel was born as the exclusive possession of the House of Judah. The war in Christendom about whether to oppose or support one-house Jewish nationalism was engaged: Christian Zionism vs Anti-Zionism.
For the past decade, my primary focus of research has been the history of Christian and Jewish cooperation around the theme of Millennialism during the Age of the Gentiles. I view the present battle of Zionism from far above the battlefield as a blip on a very long timeline that begins with the Abrahamic Covenant in which the land rights were first granted, and tracks the parallel paths of the two houses (Leah’s and Rachel’s) between which those covenantal rights were divided when Jacob married two wives. That timeline ends somewhere in the near future with the second advent of Christ when He will finally end the family squabble by taking personal control of the land and re-establishing the “Throne of David,” which is symbolic of the complete unity of the two houses (two-house harmony in David’s kingdom being the only time it existed in all of Hebrew history – which is the primary reason David is a “type” of Christ.)
The truth of the conflict over the Holy Land and its resolution is found only in the Bible – in the history and prophecies of the two houses: Judah (Leah) and Joseph (Rachel), which represent two distinct but interrelated cohorts in perpetual conflict. That conflict began with Judah’s sale of Joseph (Israel) into slavery to the Gentiles in Genesis 37:26-27, continued through Joseph’s salvation at the cross of Calvary (creating Christianity) and will only end with Judah’s (the “Jews”) final redemption by Christ at the close of the Gentile Age (Romans 11:25, Zechariah 12:10). Again for emphasis – the sole exception to the rule of conflict between the two houses was the reign of David, which is why his “throne” is the model (Isaiah 9:7, Luke 1:32) for the harmony that will eventually exist in the Millennial Kingdom for the reunited family of the Abrahamic covenant (Ezekiel 37:15-31).
God bequeathed the Holy Land to Abraham in a series of expanding promises: First Shechem (Genesis 12:7), then “all the land you see” (Gen 13:15), then broad specific boundaries (Gen 15:18) and finally “all of Canaan – as an eternal possession” (Gen 17:8). But the right to physical possession was delayed until after a prophesied four hundred years of slavery in Egypt was completed (Gen 15:13), pending the full ripening of the wickedness of the Canaanites that justified God’s sentence of extermination (Gen 15:16, Leviticus 18:24-28).
Hebrew slavery began when Judah convinced his brothers to sell Joseph to Egypt-bound Ishmaelites (the ethnic and theological progenitors of Islam) in Genesis 37:26-27. Joseph soon rose to power second only to Pharaoh, wearing his ring and robe (a fact highly symbolic of the House of Israel in Jesus’ parable of the restoration of the Prodigal Son). His father and all his brothers ended up there too, under his domination in fulfilment of Joseph’s prophetic dreams (Gens 37:3-11).
As the firstborn of Rachel (Rueben, firstborn of the first wife Leah having been disqualified by sleeping with his father’s concubine – 1 Chronicles 5:1), Joseph took his father’s covenantal name – Israel – as part of his inheritance, and received a double portion of the land inheritance in that both his sons held one-twelfth of the Holy Land as tribes alongside their uncles. When it came Jacob’s time to bless the two boys, he broke tradition and chose the younger grandson to inherit his name and first-born rights (Gen 48:8-20). Thus the millennial prophecy of Jeremiah 31:9 states “For I [God] am Israel’s Father, and Ephraim is my firstborn.”
So, first under Joseph and then Ephraim, the House of Israel held leadership power over the 12-tribe Hebrew nation beginning in Egypt until the end of the period of the Judges, with one important interruption. When Joseph’s legacy no longer gave the Hebrews favor under the Egyptian monarchs, God raised up the Levitical priesthood under Moses as an alternative leadership structure that operated alongside the two houses from that time forward and served as the Hebrews’ bridge out of Egypt back to the Holy Land.
Importantly, when God told the tribes to immediately enter the Holy Land from the south, it was only Joshua the Ephraimite and Caleb the Judean of the twelve spies sent to scout the path into Canaan who voted to obey God. The rest rebelled and brought severe judgment on everyone (Numbers 14:36-36). The anniversary of that rebellion is the highly significant 9th of Av (the next being Tuesday, August 13, 2024 on the Gregorian calendar).
When Moses died, the primary leadership mantle fell back upon the House of Israel, led by Joshua, through whom God established the Israelite Republic/Commonwealth featuring a significant degree of tribal and individual self-government under the rule of law (the Mosaic code). Israel’s capital was at Shiloh, where the Tabernacle of God and its holy treasures resided, including the Ark of the Covenant, through the entire period chronicled in Joshua, Judges and the first part of 1 Samuel.
When the House of Israel failed in its leadership duty – allowing the Ark of the Covenant to be stolen by the Philistines – God transferred ruling power to the House of Judah, where it lasted only until David’s son Solomon’s sins caused the division of the two houses to dramatically widen into two opposing kingdoms – which remains the case to this day, visible in the theological conflict of Christians (House of Israel) and Jews (House of Judah), and in the political battle of Christian Zionists vs Anti-Zionists.
