Welcome to Prophecy Q & A with Jimmy DeYoung!
This is a responsibility that we all, as Christians, have. When I say Israel, I am not talking about the secularistic, humanistic state of Israel today but Israel as the Jewish people. This is the nation that God promised to give to Abraham (Genesis 12 and 15).
Genesis 12:3 says, “And I will bless them that bless thee (focusing on the nation of the Jewish people), and curse him that curseth thee: (the Jewish people) and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. It is a principle that we need to abide by.
There are some qualifications. In Micah, the Lord is taking the Jewish people that He promised to give Abraham to task because they were not obedient to Him. We have a responsibility to support the Jewish people, but it does not mean that we don’t get concerned about what they are doing. We don’t stand with them on everything that they do.
For example, I do not believe that it would be appropriate for me, if I was living 2,500 years ago in the time when the Jewish people had not been obedient to the Lord, to stand with the Jewish people while the Babylonian army was moving into Jerusalem to take the Jews back into the Babylonian captivity. Jeremiah the prophet said that this would be the case, that they would be out of the land for a seventy-year period of time. God’s command to rest the land would be fulfilled. When God tells us to do something, we need to do it. If we don’t do it, He intercedes and does it, especially in light of the Jewish people. Should I have stood with the Jewish people when they were disobedient to God and the Babylonians were coming in to take them out?
What about in the times of the Romans. Deuteronomy 28:1-15 says that if you are obedient, I will make you a nation above all nations. In the last half of Deuteronomy, He says that if you don’t obey Me, I will put a curse on you and send you out of the land, make you a proverb among the peoples of the world, and be in fear of death. God will not let sin continue on. He will chastise those who are involved in sin. Should I have stood there on the Mount of Olives and tried to hold back the Roman army? The Lord was going to use it.
In the Olivet Discourse, Jesus said that there would not be a stone upon a stone on the Temple Mount because it would be destroyed. It was a prophecy of Jesus Christ. Should I have stood there with the Jewish people and said, “Wait a minute. You Romans can’t come in here. You aren’t going to fulfill the prophecy of Jesus Christ. You aren’t going to fulfill Deuteronomy 28. Just get out of here.”
No. I don’t think that I should have stood against the plan of God to deal with His chosen people. Deuteronomy 7:6-8 says that He chose them, not because they were going to be obedient all the time or soft-hearted and take everything into their minds and do what He told them to do, or because they are the greatest nation of the world, the largest in number in the world but the least; He said that He chose them because “I love you.” This is grace. This is why He chose us: because He loves us, not because we were going to be obedient all of the time. If we are not going to be obedient and because He loves us, He says that He will have to chastise us.
Three thousand five hundred years ago, the Lord Jesus Christ started to give the Jewish people when Joshua brought them across the Jordan River into the Promised Land, they captured Jericho first. The piece of real estate that they give back first to their enemies, the Palestinians, is Jericho. Should we stand and support that type of action?
What about in the 1967 war after these nations from every side except the West attacking the Jewish people decided that they would stand and defend themselves, and in six days, the Lord interceded and helped them to defeat all of these attacking nations?
When they took the Temple Mount, the most sacred piece of real estate in all of Judaism, they were supposed to have been building the temple according to the Word of God to prepare for the Messiah. Instead, the Israeli government decided to give the custodial responsibilities to the Islamic Trust. Should I stand and support Israel’s decision to do that? Absolutely not.
I love the Jewish people, and I think that my life is evidence of it. I lived in Jerusalem for twenty years and was there when 39 scud attacks took place on the nation, and all of the Christians were leaving.
Support for the Jewish people goes without saying. It is an absolute must. We do not need to support secularistic, humanistic people and some of their decisions, such as killing babies.
Jimmy DeYoung was a prophecy teacher and journalist who travelled the country and the world educating the Body of Christ of the future events foretold in God’s prophetic Word. His goal was to equip Christians with the knowledge and understanding of what God’s Word says will happen someday soon, so that they can make better decisions today. Dr. DeYoung went home to be with his Savior on August 15, 2021.
