Did God Give Israel to Abraham?

Tom: In this our Understanding the Scriptures segment, we’re in the Book of Acts:7:1Then said the high priest, Are these things so?
See All...: “Then said the high priest, Are these things so?” And these were accusations made against Stephen. 

Dave: Back in the previous chapter it 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 his face is shining like the face of an angel as they make these false charges, and so then 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 is not the word of God.

Tom: Verse 2: “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 gives 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 that 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, as 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, and so forth, 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 them “none inheritance” because at that time, Abraham had no place. Because he hadn’t - he owned nothing; had no 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, [and] 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 pogroms 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 Nablus. 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 anyway, 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 descendants - Genesis 15 - he very clearly says, “The descendants - your descendants 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 their ancestors were delivered from Egypt, and so forth. 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 6: “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:12:14And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the LORD throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever.
See All..., God says, “You’ll keep this throughout all your generations.” And later on in that chapter it says, “When your 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.