Promise to Abraham?

[thistle93]

The following verse is used by many American Christians (especially dispensationalists/zionists) to say that American must defend Israel:

Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1-3 ESV)

Now first let me say that I do think America should stand with Israel as an ally but it is not because of this verse. Second I think this verse has been taken out of context. It was addressed to Abraham as an individual not to Israel as a nation. This was long before Israel was to come into being. I know that Abraham was the father of Israel but I think that dispensationalists/zionists ignore verses like the following when using this verse as reason for unquestioned defending of Israel:

No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. (Genesis 17:5 ESV)

So even if the blessing/curse statement did apply to Israel (which I believe it does not) the following verse would show that it would also apply to many other nations as well an not Israel exclusively. I do not believe it is addressed to nations as a whole but only applies to the redeemed from those nations (the true children of Abraham). I know that Israel was exclusively chosen in OT above all other nations but, this never included all Jews, rather only those whose hearts were circumcised. Also the election of Israel was to be a type of the election that would come to also include the believing Gentiles, with the coming of Jesus Christ and his work of reconciliation (not only to man and God but Jew and Gentile). So then Israel no longer just refers to people born of a particular race (Jewish) and the land of Canaan/Palestine (Israel) but rather refers to and includes all who are in the family of God (Jew and Gentile). So that the verse of Genesis addressed to Abraham actually ties into how Christians as a whole are addressed in Romans:

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31-39 ESV)

Thoughts? Resources that deal with topic? Thanks!

For His Glory-
Matthew

 

[Bill The Baptist]

"Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not,and to seeds,as of many; but as of one, and to thy seed, which is Christ."-Galatians 3:16

 

[Andres]

This is an excellent resource - The Israel of God: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow by: O. Palmer Robertson. I taught on chapter 2 in Sunday School this morning.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

[23]*When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. [24]*And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, [25]*who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit,
“‘Why did the Gentiles rage,
and the peoples plot in vain?
[26]*The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers were gathered together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed’—
(Acts 4:23-26 ESV)

We were just meditating on Acts 2 yesterday at Church and I made the observation that Psalm 2 applies to those who think they are in the Church but, because they refuse to kiss the Son, perish in the way.

As I noted in http://www.puritanboard.com/f15/church-grafted-israel-incorporated-76571/#post974288]here, dispensationalism errs fatally in divorcing historical types from God's eternal purposes so that they become an end to themselves. We need not despise anyone who is descended physically from Abraham and we ought to pray for them but, if they are not in Christ, they in bondage. They are not, spiritually in Zion, but they are in bondage and slaves of the freewoman. Even as they may be physically in the land of Promise they are spiritually outside in Sinai subject only to its Curses. We need to pray for them because it is they, in fact, that persecute the child of the freewoman and consider the Servant of the Lord a cursed man.