Diving In Session 4 Covenant 6 The Land Covenant – Historical overview (NT – AD70 – 1947)

Was the first coming of Jesus the fulfilment of the promise of Messiah returning under the Land Covenant? Isa. 9:1-2 and Psa. 68:27 mention the areas of Jesus’ main ministry during His lifetime (and the passage in Isaiah goes on to prophesy the coming of Messiah). He would have gathered them, but they were not willing Matt. 23:37 – no repentance as required by Deut. 30:2 for a complete fulfilment (but that is indicated in the next verse v.38)

The complete fulfilment waits for the end of the Times of the Gentiles

In Luke 21:20-24, Jesus speaks of the time between His first Coming and His Second, which is triggered by the ‘end of hte times of the Gentiles’.

• v. 20-23 describes AD 70
• v. 24a  the third Dispersion (that we mentioned last week)
• v. 24b the end of the Times of the Gentiles (slide)

Lst’s look at what happened after AD70 during the Times of the Gentiles (next week, we will cover 1947 to 1967 and research whether that marks the end of “The Times of the Gentiles”)

(See also https://cmj.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Kelvin-Crombie-A5-Book-The-Foundational-Reasons-Version-2.0-1.pdf, which is quoted at various places below. He covers the same period and gives addiional information)

AD 66-70

• First Jewish uprising supressed by first Vespasian and then by his son, Titus (after Vespasian went back to Rome to be crowned Emperor)
• Resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem Temple, hundreds of thousands of Jews crucified and hundreds of thousands deported.
• The destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple marked a major turning point in Jewish history. The loss of mother-city and temple necessitated a reshaping of Jewish culture to ensure its survival. Judaism’s Temple-based sects, including the priesthood and the Sadducees, diminished in importance. A new form of Judaism that became known as Rabbinic Judaism developed out of Pharisaic school and eventually became the mainstream form of the religion. The city’s leading Christians relocated to Pella. (Wikipedia)

AD 130

Emperor Hadrian visits the ruins of Jerusalem and decides to rebuild it as a city dedicated to Jupiter called Aelia Capitolina. Hadrian abolished circumcision (brit milah), which he viewed as mutilation

AD 132–135

Bar Kokhba’s revolt – Simon Bar Kokhba leads a revolt against the Roman Empire, controlling the city for three years. He is proclaimed as the Messiah by Rabbi Akiva. Hadrian sends Sextus Julius Severus to the region, who brutally crushes the revolt and retakes the city, formally re-establishes the city as Aelia Capitolina, and forbids Jewish and Christian presence in the city. A couple of years later a Temple to Jupiter is built on the Temple Mount and a temple to Venus is built on Calvary.

Hadrian formally renames the land we know as Israel, as Syria Palestina, in commemoration of the Philistines, to remove all traces of Jewishness.

AD 135-636

Land remains under Roman, and subsequently (after the fall of Rome), Byzantine control with Jews still banned from living in the land.

Byzantine empire at its greatest extent:

In the year 610, a successful merchant called Muhammad reported hearing voices that recited passages to him, which he later recognised as revelations from God. Muhammad shared them with his wife and close friends, and gradually attracted a small group of followers from his home town of Mecca who began to practise a new religion. This new religion became known as Islam. People who practise Islam are called Muslims.

However, powerful people in Mecca felt threatened by Muhammad’s popularity and his Declarations that there was only one God, and they opposed him. He took his followers to Medina in 622, where he built an Islamic community around the mosque they constructed there. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/z4v6m39/articles/zw8nhcw#zbwx2v4)

Before long, Muhammad had gained so many followers that he was able to return to Mecca and conquer the city. The people of the surrounding areas soon became Muslims, and rulers and tribes from other areas of the Arabian Peninsula gradually accepted Islam.

By Prophet Muhammad’s death in 632, Islam had spread widely across the Arabian Peninsula. He was succeeded by four ‘rightly guided caliphs’, who had been among his companions.

The second one, Caliph Umar the Great (634-644AD) spread Islam far outside the Arabian Peninsula during this time; he conquered present-day Iran and Iraq.

Quote from Crombie: “The basic Islamic worldview is very well expressed by Bat Ye’or who wrote in her profound book Understanding Dhimmitude:

The aim of jihad is to expand the rule of Islam over all non-Muslim lands throughout the world. Hence the concept of jihad divides the world into two forever hostile camps: the dar al-Islam, that is the regions under Islamic rule; and the dar al-Harb, the land of war, because being still under non-Muslim control, it is targeted by jihad till its incorporation into the dar al-Islam.”

AD 636

Siege of Jerusalem (636–637) Umar the Great conquers Jerusalem and at the request of Jerusalem’s Christian Patriarch, enters the city on foot, following the decisive defeat of the Byzantine Empire at the Battle of Yarmouk a few months earlier. Jerusalem becomes part of the Arab Caliphate under Islam. For the first time since the Roman period, Jews were once again allowed to live and worship in Jerusalem, although as oppressed second-class citizens.

So the land promised to Abraham and his descendants had become part of dar al-Islam and must forever remain under Islamic control, or Allah is not Supreme and the Quran is not true.

Side note: the Quran actually says that the land was promised to the Jews. One interpretation is that they are only allowed by Allah to be there when the Muslims are unfaithful to Allah. But another Islamic interpretation is that the land belongs to the Jews for all time. (See notes at end for summary of these two interpretations.)

AD 636 – 1098

The King of the North held power over the land through various Islamic factions and empires.

661 – 750 the Umayyad ruled from Damascus (Assyria)

750 – 1055 the Abbasids ruled from Bagdad (Babylonia)

There was some small immigration of Arabs to live in the land, but mainly nomadic Bedouins. In the 9^th and 10^th centuries there is thought to be more settlement by Muslim Arabs: “During these years Bedouins (Arab nomad tribes) from the deserts of Arabia, Trans-jordan, Syrian desert, Sinai and Egypt invaded the country and gradually settled in deserted villages after they robbed and drove out the local peasants, many of them Jews”.

1055 the Seljuk Turks (Assyria) took lands from the Abbasids, and defeated the Byzantines taking Anatolia (Turkey). The Seljuk Turks began seriously persecuting Christians living in and visiting the Holy Land (while allowing Jews to live there are ‘dhimmis’ – second, or even third, class citizens subject to high taxation). This gave rise to the Crusades – a dark blot on ‘Christian’ history, as they massacred Muslims and Jews alike – something that lives on in the memories of both Muslims and Jews.

AD1098-1291

• The period of the Crusades
• Crusader Kingdom established
• Islamic leaders from Sunni and Shi’ite factions at conflict with each other
• 1171AD Saladin defeats Shi’ites
• 1189 AD Saladin defeats Crusader Army and takes control of the Kingdom of Jerusalem
• During the next century, the Land changed hands several times until
• 1291AD the Egyptian Mamluks conquered the Kingdom of Jerusalem

Map: Amitchell125, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

AD1291 – 1516

The Crusaders were finally defeated in 1291 by the Muslim Mamluks from Egypt and the Land is now controlled by the King of The South.

The Population during Mamelukes’ Rule

As Kelvin Crombie eloquently says:

With the reinstitution of Islamic control the resident Christian peoples returned to their previous subservient status as dhimmis, while the surviving Jewish people retained their ages old status of being at the bottom of the social ladder.

The Mamelukes had conquered most of the country from the Crusaders in 1260. They destroyed the cities along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea between 1260 – 1290. These cities were populated mostly by Christians of Greek- Macedonian origin or Syrian – Aramaic origin. Many were massacred or ran away before the Mameluke army arrived.

The cities along the shore, Acre, Arsuf, Jaffa, Ashdod, Ashkelon, except Gaza, remained deserted during the Mameluke Period. The valleys of Jezreel and Beit Shean were densely populated by some Arab villages and nomadic Bedouin. Also, there were few Arab villages along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The Greek Orthodox population lost its majority in the 14th century after consisting the majority of the population since 135 AD, first as pagans and as Christians since the 5th century AD.

The rate of Palestine’s population decreased dramatically because of the massacres, the emigration of Christians, the Black Death, and the economic situation. A certain number of Christians were forced to convert to Islam.

(from https://www.rslissak.com/content/arab-muslim-waves-immigration-palestine-land-israel-drrivka-shpak-lissak/)

AD1517-1917

The King of the North fights back! 150 years earlier, in northern Turkey, a new Muslim faction from the Ottoman tribe was developing political power and ambitions. They rapidly became ascendant and expanded as shown:

The King of the North had taken back control of the Promised Land!

At its greatest extent, the Ottoman Empire looked like:

Maps: <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

The Ottoman Empire expanded due to its need to keep conquering new territories. When it conquered a new area, it took all the natural resources from that area until it had reduced the area to complete poverty, then took neighbouring territory to keep itself going until it had depleted that area, and so on. This would be the eventual undoing of the Empire as, when there were no more territories it could conquer, its lack of investment and development of its territories caused the whole economic and political systems to collapse, as seen in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries, when Turkey (its hub) was known as ‘the sick man of Europe’.

During the 16th and 17th centuries, Arabs, mainly Bedouins, and Muslims from Lebanon, and Syria came to settle in the Galilee. According to the Turkish census, by the 16th century, there were about 200,000 people in the country of Western Jordan, mostly Muslims. But the economic situation and the lack of personal security caused people to leave, Muslims included.

During the 18th century the population became smaller and smaller. Tourists from Europe and the United States who visited the country described an uncultivated deserted land.

The cities along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea remained deserted until the Ottoman government started to restore their ruins and invited Arabs and Muslims to settle there. This happened during the 18th- 19th centuries.

Most of the land was farmed by Arab Fellahin with ‘tax’ paid to the local Sheikh or migrant Bedouin who were entitled to a form of tribute from the farmers in return for not attacking their crops and cattle! The farmers were continually moving around to get better terms from another Sheikh but that generally only applied for a year or two before becoming excessive. They began leaving the fields seeking a better life in the cities. 19^th century travellers to the Holy Land report a barren, desolate land, with the Turkish rulers having no control over the nomadic Bedouin. Land that was fertile and productive at the beginning of the 19^th century had turned into wasteland and malaria-ridden swamps by the end of the century.

Stirrings in the world

The Evangelical Awakening of the 18^th and 19^th centuries caused many Christians in the West to become aware of God’s promises of restoration to the Jews. Study of prophecy commenced with the Puritans in the 17^th century and anticipation of the Millennial Reign of Christ from Jerusalem grew. Evangelism of Jews started in the early 1800s.

Arab and Jewish nationalist movements were also developing during this time. This is explored in more detail in Kelvin Crombie’s book.

Across Europe

The European nations also started being interested in Middle East, particularly as a route to India with France backing Egypt and Britain backing Turkey in the ‘Syrian Crisis’ of 1829-30. In 1832, Egypt under Muhammad Ali Pasha (an Ottoman Albanian commander), had risen up against the Ottomans with French sponsorship, and ousted them from Palestine. The Ottomans fought back with British, Prussian, Austrian and Russian help (as they didn’t want the French to control so much of Middle East!) and ousted the Egyptians in 1840. In recompense, the Ottoman Turks issued an edict of toleration which technically gave better rights for non-Muslim residents.

The British government then proposed to the Turkish government that Jews be restored to the land of Israel. But the Ottomans, as protectors of Islam, couldn’t allow such a thing. A change of government would be required!

There was no possibility of obtaining support and endorsement from the Ottoman Turks. The Sultan was the Caliph of Islam, and Islam could not endorse any form of Jewish national autonomy in the region known as Palestine and which Muslims regarded as part of dar al Islam. The Jewish leaders then turned to Great Britain, which initially was not at all interested in supporting their goal as they too were seeking to maintain a good geo-political relationship with the Ottoman Turks.

In 1858, the Ottomans introduced the Land Code, a way of registering the ownership of land – prior to this, there were no official deeds. Title rested on tradition. The purpose was to increase state control over the empire, as well as increase taxation. The fellahin had learned by long experience to avoid contact with State officials! Apart from increased taxation, registered land owners became liable for military conscription.

The central government sold any land that wasn’t claimed (about 70%, especially in areas where the Bedouin raids took place) to the highest bidder. Huge tracts of land were taken over by absentee landlords and the land left to rot. Frequently land was registered by someone other than the family who had farmed it, and, as long as they were able to continue working the land, they didn’t worry about who legally owned it.

Registration was chaotic and caused endless headaches for the British when they took over responsibility for the land under the League of Nations Mandate in 1922. Only 25% of the land had been registered by the time the Mandate was relinquished by the British in 1947!

This is covered in a series of articles by Philip Wren in Sword magazine – see pages 24-25 of the following 3 issues:

• https://swordmagazine.net/FlipBook17-5/mobile/index.html
• https://swordmagazine.net/FlipBook17-6/mobile/index.html
• https://swordmagazine.net/FlipBook18-2/mobile/index.html

At the same time, Jewish immigration to Palestine was increasing, driven by increasing nationalism across Europe, seeing the Jews as outsiders, and subsequently, the pogroms of the 1880s. The Palestine (later Jewish) National Fund began raising money to buy land in Palestine from absentee Turkish Landlords, most of which was waste land for the reasons stated above. They start to make the land flourish and Arabs from surrounding nations start immigrating to enjoy the new prosperity!

This return got a significant boost with Theodore Herzl and the First Zionist Conference in Basel in 1897.

End of Ottoman rule over the land of Israel

Started with the outbreak of WW1. Despite British support in the 19^th century, The Ottomans sided with Germany against Britain, France and Russia. Buoyed up by their success over the British Allies at Gallipoli, they attempted to take control of the Suez Canal. Britain couldn’t allow that as it would cut us off from our Empire in India and the Far East. So a British led force captured the Sinai peninsular and moved up into Palestine.

They fought two battles around Gaza and were defeated. So, bypassing Gaza, they headed for Beersheba. Due to an amazing charge by the Anzac Light Infantry, they captured Beersheba overwhelming the Turkish army – before they could wreck the well there which was essential for water supply. This battle was fought and won on 31^st October 1917.

Meanwhile in London, a grateful War Cabinet was making a promise to Chaim Weizmann of their support for a Jewish Homeland in what was then Palestine. This decision was made on 31^st October 1917, and published 2 days later just as the news came through of the Allied victory at Beersheba! Just over a month later, British Forces under General Allenby, took Jerusalem without a shot being fired!

See https://www.balfour100.com/declaration/ for the series of drafts that led to the final Balfour Declaration, and the deliberate vagueness of the wording of the final version.

After WW1

After the War, the nations gathered at the Palace of Versailles to plan the way forward for the newly liberated Middle East. In the huge swathe of territory captured mostly by British, Australian, Indian and New Zealand soldiers, at great cost of life, the Arabic-speaking mostly Islamic nations of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Arabia (later Saudi Arabia) were formed. They were determined to have the capability to be self-governing after a handover period but Palestine (see map below) was not considered to have the social and political infrastructure to be self-governing. Discussions regarding the future of Palestine was postponed and discussed at a conference at San Remo in Italy in April 1920, which resulted in a Mandate for Palestine being entrusted to Britain.

The “Mandate for Palestine” was an historical League of Nations document. The legally binding document was conferred on April 24, 1920, at the San Remo Conference, and its terms outlined in the Treaty of Sèvres on August 10, 1920. (see http://mythsandfacts.org/conflict/mandate_for_palestine/mandate_for_palestine.htm for a detailed explanantion for this – maps below reproduced from that website)

1920 British Military officials stirred up a pogrom in the Old City (saying that only violence would get the British Government to abandon the “Jewish Home”) and withdrew their troops and the Jewish Police while it took place.

Following a meeting in Cairo convened by Winston Churchill in 1921, the British decided to administer the territories east of the Jordan River as ‘Trans-Jordan’ (now known as Jordan) as a national home for the Palestinian Arabs (the original two state solution!). T. E. Lawrence claimed that Emir Faisal (King of Syria and Iraq) had supported the establishment of a Jewish State. (If he did, his support did not last long!)

The 1922 Churchill White Paper stated that “the terms of the declaration referred to do not contemplate that Palestine as a whole should be converted into a Jewish National Home, but that such a Home should be founded ‘in Palestine.'” So 77% of the land originally proposed for a Jewish Homeland was carved off.
Original proposal:

After 1921:

The Mandate’s terms were finalized and unanimously approved on July 24, 1922, by the Council of the League of Nations, which was comprised at that time of 51 countries (after WW2, it was subsumed into the founding charter of the UN – see below). It laid down the Jewish legal right to settle anywhere in western Palestine, a 10,000-square-mile area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, an entitlement unaltered in international law and valid to this day.

90% of the inhabitants of the territory covered by the Mandate with Muslim or Christian Arabs, who were not consulted (there were no political entities to consult under Ottoman rule).

The Arabs (90% of the inhabitants, Muslim and Christian) opposed the whole idea and objected, sometimes violently, to Jewish immigration, which, of course, was increasing with the Mandate in operation. But we should note that the “Mandate for Palestine” was not a naive vision, briefly embraced by the international community in blissful unawareness of Arab opposition to the very notion of Jewish historical rights in Palestine. The Mandate weathered the test of time: On April 18, 1946, when the League of Nations was dissolved and its assets and duties transferred to the United Nations, the international community, in essence, reaffirmed the validity of this international accord and reconfirmed that the terms for a Jewish homeland were the will of the international community, a “sacred trust” – despite the fact that it was patently clear that the Arabs opposed a Jewish homeland, no matter what the form.

“Unfortunately most of these residents, be they Muslim or local Christians, opposed this decision and promise. Like those opponents did after the first restoration from Babylonian exile they did not understand the principles of covenant and did not understand Almighty God’s plans and purposes for the redemption of the world. They did not realise that it is not advisable to oppose those with whom Almighty God has entered covenant!” (Crombie)

British Betrayal during the Mandate period 1922-1948

The British Parliament, Civil Service and Army were all opposed to Jewish settlement in the land and it appears did everything in their power to stop Jewish immigration, and reneged on the provision of the Mandate to create suitable institutions for an orderly hand-over of power to the Jews.

Highlights (or should that be lowlights!) The period is defined by Appeasement of Arabs

April 1921– Haj Amin al-Husseini, the instigator of the pogrom is pardoned for his involvement and appointed Mufti of Jerusalem by Herbert Samuel (First Jewish Civilian High Commissioner under the Mandate) with the promise of working for peace – three weeks later the Jaffa Riots break out leaving 43 Jews dead

On August 23, 1929, Arabs murdered 67 Jews in a massacre in Hebron. Three days later, the British evacuated the 484 survivors, including 153 children, to Jerusalem. After six days of rioting, the British finally brought in troops to quell the disturbance. Even though Jews had been living in Gaza and Hebron for centuries, following these riots, the British forced Jews to leave their homes and prohibited Jews from living in the Gaza Strip and Hebron to appease Arabs and quell violence.

The Arabs found rioting to be a very effective political tool because the British attitude toward violence against Jews and their response to the riots encouraged more outbreaks of violence. In each riot, the British would make little or no effort to prevent the Arabs from attacking the Jews. After each incident, a commission of inquiry would try to establish the cause of the riot. The conclusions were always the same: the Arabs were afraid of being displaced by Jewish immigrants. To stop the disturbances, the commissions routinely recommended that restrictions be made on Jewish immigration. Thus, the Arabs came to recognize that they could always stop Jewish immigration by staging a riot. (https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/arab-riots-of-the-1920-s)

Husseini was sacked after the 1936 riots and fled to Germany, (where he ultimately sided with Hitler and promised to help him implement the Final Solution in Palestine after the War). The revolt escalated but was finally contained with the help of Britain’s regional allies in Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

One high point – A British Officer, Orde Wingate, pro-Zionist and a Christian, organized Special Night Squads of Jewish volunteers to help quell the revolt and began to train what would eventually become the IDF. His superiors thanked him for this by sending him to Burma (where he used the same tactics successfully against the Japanese in WWII) and forbidding him from ever setting foot in Palestine again!

It resulted in the Peel Commission and the 1938 White paper which proposed partitioning the western part of Palestine, creating an Arab State alongside a Jewish state – rejected by both Arabs and Jews, although the Jews agreed in principle to partition.

Another conference at Evian to ‘solve the Jewish Problem’, with Germany as an observer. No country wanted to accept Jewish refugees. Canada said they would take 3,000. The German representatives reportedly went back to Hitler and told him, you can do what you like to the Jews, no one wants them.

Jewish population now around 400,000, but another White Paper was issued in May 1939 which, in violation of the Mandate, limited Jewish immigration to just 75,000 people over the succeeding 5 years! Thus condemning hundreds of thousands of Jews to die in the Holocaust.

After the War, even as what the Germans had done became known, the British blockaded Israel from any Jews coming to Palestine. At least 3,000 Jews died trying to run the naval blockade. Those that did arrive were deported to Cyprus and interned in detention camps – on February 14, 1947, when Britain informed the United Nations that it would no longer administer the mandate for Palestine, some 28,000 Jews were still interned in the camps of Cyprus. Some of them would not be released until 1949, and finally get to Israel.

In one atrocious incident, a worn out leaky boat, the Exodus 1947, sold as scrap but bought by the Haganah (Jewish underground movement led by David Ben Gurion) left France with over 4,500 survivors of Hitler’s concentration camps. Before it even reached Palestine’s territorial waters, British destroyers surrounded it and one rammed it. On July 18 a struggle ensued between British naval forces and passengers on the ship. A Jewish crew member and two passengers were killed. Dozens suffered bullet wounds and other injuries.

Attempting to make an example of the Exodus 1947, the British towed the ship to Haifa and transferred the passengers [by force] onto three navy transports which returned to Europe. The ships first landed at Port-de-Bouc, France, where the passengers were ordered to disembark. When the French authorities refused to forcibly remove the refugees, British authorities, fearing adverse public opinion, sought to wait until the passengers disembarked of their own accord. The passengers, including many orphaned children, forced the issue by declaring a hunger strike which lasted 24 days. Mounting pressure from international media coverage pressed British authorities to find a solution.

The ships sat for three weeks in the sweltering summer heat, but the passengers refused to voluntarily disembark and the French authorities were unwilling to force them to leave. The British government then took the ship to Hamburg, where the people on it were interned in camps in the British zone of occupation in Germany.

Displaced persons in camps all over Europe protested vociferously and staged hunger strikes when they heard the news. Large protests erupted on both sides of the Atlantic. The ensuing public embarrassment for Britain played a significant role in the diplomatic swing of sympathy toward the Jews and the eventual recognition of a Jewish state in 1948. (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/exodus-1947)

Observers from the newly established United Nations had been sent to investigate the problems with the British Mandate and were at Haifa as this unfolded. They watched, with horror, what the British did. This was undoubtedly one of the triggers for the UN to step in with its Partition Plan under UN Resolution 181

Seven and a half minute trailer for “The Forsaken Promise” video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNXKc5jgYyY
Purchase and watch all three parts of the full film series here https://vimeo.com/ondemand/theforsakenpromise