Did God Give Israel to Abraham?

Gary:

Please stay with us and at the end of the program we’ll let you know where to send your questions for Dave and Tom to respond to in a future Contending for the Faith.  You are listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call.  Now our final segment.

           UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES

And we resume our excursion through the Book of Acts.  Here again are Dave and Tom.

           Tom:

In this, our Understanding the Scriptures segment, and we’re in the Book of Acts, Acts 7, and we’re at verse one, “Then said the high priest, Are these things so?” And these were accusations made against Stephen. 

           Dave:

Back in the previous chapter is says, they “set up false witnesses, which said, This man ceaseth not to speak blasphemous words against this holy place, and the law: For we have heard him say, that this Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place, and shall change the customs which Moses delivered us.  And all that sat in the council, looking steadfastly on him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel.”  As they make these false charges and so the high priest says, well are these things true?

           Tom:

Dave, can I just go back to, “and shall change the customs which Moses delivered us.”  Now, they had mixed so many of their traditions, and so many of their own customs, they didn’t really know what Moses taught.

           Dave:

I would say that would be true in many instances, yes.  And, Jesus pointed that out.  Matthew 15, for example, he said, “with your tradition you have made void the word of God.”  And they had.  They had changed God’s word.  Of course, I don’t want to harp on this again, but we have so-called translations, versions, paraphrases of the Bible today which literally change God’s word.  And, this is creating many problems in the church because people don’t know what the Bible says anymore.  They’ve got some man’s word, like The Message, by Eugene Peterson, or whatever it may be, and it’s not the word of God.

           Tom:

Verse two, “And he,” that is Stephen, “said, Men, brethren, and fathers, hearken; The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran, And said unto him, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall show thee.  Then came he out of the land of the Chaldeans, and dwelt in Haran: and from thence, when his father was dead, he removed him into this land, wherein ye now dwell.  And he gave him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on: yet he promised that he would give it to him for a possession, and to his seed after him, when as yet he had no child.”

You just jump in any time you want to.

           Dave:

Yeah.  Well, Tom, he’s giving an indirect answer.  Are these things true?  And, now he’s showing that he is, you could say an Orthodox Jew.  He knows the law.  He knows their history.  And, he’s going to lay it out for them and this is a wonderful chapter, because it give us a summary of God’s dealings beginning with Abraham right on through Isaac and Jacob.  It says he gave them “none inheritance in it.”  It was already occupied when he arrived.  For example, you have Arabs today, people who call themselves “Palestinians” over there.  They say Israel is occupying their land and they are descended from the original “Palestinians.”  Of course, it was not Palestine; it was the land of Canaan.  There were no original “Palestinians” there and the Arabs claim to be descended from Ishmael today.  Well, Ishmael’s father is a, it says right here was from Chaldea, he was a Chaldean. And his mother was an Egyptian, Hagar.  So, how can you be descended from the original “Palestinians” when Abraham and Sarah, his wife, and their maids and servants, etc., arrived in Canaan, the land was already settled.  They were not the original inhabitants.  And, certainly Ishmael was not the original inhabitant.  And he certainly was not a Canaanite or a Palestinian.  So, it’s a fraud.  They build their case against Israel on lies and the world accepts it.  So, Stephen is just giving them a little bit of the history of what happened over there.  But, he gave then none inheritance because at that time Abraham had no place.  Because he hadn’t.  He owned nothing.  Had not place to bury Sarah, his wife.  And when she died he bought a field from a Hittite who was one of the inhabitants, I don’t even know whether he was one of the original inhabitants.  And, he sold him this field and in the field was the cave of Machpelah, and in the cave of Machpelah Abraham buried Sarah.  Abraham was buried there some years later when he died.  So was Isaac and Jacob, their wives.  Only Jews were buried there, Israelites. There was not an Arab, no Muslim.  Ishmael was not buried there.  He was buried many miles away.  And, yet the Muslims have taken that over.  This is in Hebron, now, the cave of Machpelah.  And they have claimed that this is theirs.  They built a mosque there and they have had so many progroms against Jews, trying to destroy, trying to kill all the Jews.  They have slaughtered many Jews many times in Hebron.  And, today, the world says, oh, Jews get out of there, that belongs to the Arabs, to the Muslims.  No, it never was theirs.  It was a burying place for the Israelites, for their Patriarchs.  And, Tom, it’s like when Israel, in accordance with the agreement, signed there in Oslo, they vacated Novilace.  There was Joseph’s tomb.  What did the Muslims, the “Palestinians,” so-called, the Arabs, what did they do to Joseph’s tomb?  They smashed it, they ground it down to nothing.  They set it afire.  They desecrated it.  This is what they have always done.  When Egypt took over Gaza, and when Jordon took the so-called West Bank, what did they do?  They destroyed every synagogue. They destroyed the Torah.  They destroyed every vestige of any record that Jews had been there to try to claim that this had always been their land.  But, if Israel did anything like that, the whole world would be up in arms.

           Tom:

Well, we just had this point at Guantanamo, with the Qur’an.  How absurd.

           Dave:

So any way, Stephen is given them, he’s showing them he’s a Jew.  He knows the history of his people, and he’s building up to something.  In other words, God did not give any part of this land to Abraham at that time because his descendents, Genesis 15, he very clearly says, the descendents, your descendents who will inherit this land, they must be the slaves in a foreign country for 400 years where they will be abused and then I’m going to bring them out and I will give them the land at that time because the inhabitants of the land then will be so evil that I will be forced to wipe them out.  Now, we know who spent 400 years as slaves in Egypt.  We know who was delivered at the Passover.  We know who keeps the Passover today as proof that they’re ancestors were delivered from Egypt, etc.  These are the ones to whom that land belongs.  And, it is very clear.  And, Stephen is going back over some of this history for them.

           Tom:

Verse six, “And God spake on this wise, That his seed should sojourn in a strange land; and that they should bring them into bondage, and entreat them evil four hundred years.  And the nation to whom they shall be in bondage will I judge, said God:  and after that shall they come forth, and serve me in this place.  And he gave him the covenant of circumcision:  and so Abraham begat Isaac, and circumcised him the eighth day; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat the twelve patriarchs.”

           Dave:

Tom, let me go back over that again for just a minute to emphasize it.  We have proof, absolute proof, that it was the Jews who were slaves in Egypt.  That they were delivered from Egypt.  They keep the Passover today.  Exodus 12:14, God say, “you’ll keep this throughout all your generations.”  And, later on in that chapter, it says, “when you’re children in years to come ask you what does this mean?  You will tell them this is the Lord’s Passover.  It’s a commemoration of our deliverance from Egypt.”  And when you have an event that was witnessed by a multitude of people, and it was commemorated with a memorial beginning right at that point, and it has been kept up down through history, you know for certain that this event happened.  The keeping of the Passover by Jews today is absolute proof that it actually happened, that they’re the ones to whom this land was given.  And the Arabs don’t keep it.  The Muslims don’t keep it.  The Jews keep it.  And, we have the evidence from history.

           Gary:

Dave and Tom will continue their discussion on the topic of salvation next week. We hope you can tune in.  This is Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call. And now, to tell you more about our ministry, here’s TBC Executive Director Tom McMahon:

Tom:

The name, The Berean Call, is taken from the Book of Acts, Chapter 17, Verses 10 and 11, where we find the apostle Paul entering the synagogue in the Greek city of Berean after he had just come from Thessalonica.  To these Bereans he preached that Jesus was the long awaited Messiah sent from God.  They were commended for being noble, or fair minded, not only for their willingness to hear what Paul had to say about the matter, but more specifically, because they searched the scriptures daily to find out whether or not what the apostle was saying was found in God’s Word.  That’s what we hope to encourage through this ministry.  Our mission is to alert believers in Christ to unbiblical teachings and practices impacting the Church.  We want to exhort believers to give greater heed to Biblical discernment and truth regarding what they are accepting as spiritual.  We hope to supply those who profess to be Biblical Christians with information and materials that will encourage the love of God’s truth. Hopefully, we can help mobilize believers in Christ to action in obedience to the Scriptural command to earnestly contend for the faith found in Jude 3.  And finally, our prayer is that we can be used of God to stimulate Christians to look to the Bible alone as their rule of faith, authority and practice in living lives pleasing to our Lord and Savior.  Gary.

            Gary

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Next week we will continue our series of programs entitled, “Selections from Beyond Seduction,” and, “Is the Gospel a positive message?”  In Religion in the News, “Muslim setback in Canada?”  We’ll take a look at that story and address the question:  “Do today’s Evangelical leaders lack discernment?”  We hope you can join us.  If you have questions or comments about this program we urge you to contact our offices.  Search the Scriptures Radio Ministry is made possible by God’s grace, your prayers and your financial support.  I’m Gary Carmichael and for Dave, Tom and everyone here at The Berean Call, I would like to thank you for tuning in and invite you join us again next week.  Until then, if you desire to know God’s truth, search the scriptures daily.