“From the River to the Sea… Palestine will be free.” Many of you have heard that rallying cry of the Palestinian narrative from the far left politically and from Muslims around the world, especially in Europe and America. They are chanting to see a Palestinian state established not just in the pre-1967 borders of the “West Bank” and Gaza, but from the Jordan River in the East to the Mediterranean Sea in the West.
Even American congresswoman Rashida Tlaib was caught using this phrase which is essentially a call for the destruction of the state of Israel and a call to send all 7 million Israeli Jews for a big, long "swim" in the Mediterranean Sea. Do you know where the phrase comes from originally? The first chapter of Joshua.
“Moses My servant is dead. Now therefore, arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them – the children of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given you, as I said to Moses. FROM the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, THE RIVER Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and TO THE great SEA toward the going down of the sun, shall be your territory.” (emphasis added, NKJV)
So here’s God saying to Joshua that the Israelites are going to take possession of the land from the river to the sea, but the river is not just the Jordan River; it’s the Euphrates River which flows through modern day Syria and Iraq. This is one of the broadest biblical definitions of Israel’s inheritance – between the Euphrates River and the Mediterranean Sea to include what today would be sections of Jordan, Syria and Iraq. I'm not saying that this is what’s going to happen as a result of this war, but God is shifting things, and I believe we're going to see some major changes in the boundaries.
Let’s use this, all of us as believers, to point people to the Bible, to say:
“Hey, do you know where that phrase comes from? It comes from the Bible, in the Book of Joshua. Do you know that God promised the land to the children of Israel, the Jewish people, more than 3,000 years ago before there was ever such a thing as Palestine or the Palestinian people?”
According to every modern historical record the first mention of a Palestinian national identity just started in 1920. We can argue about who should have a state and where it should be and Palestinian people today, but it’s a fairly new thing. That doesn’t automatically make it right or wrong. Kuwait is a new thing. Jordan is a new thing. The boundaries of a lot of nations in the Middle East come from the early 1900s, but we want to point people to the Bible.
“From The River to the Sea” – it's all in the Bible. Come and see!
8 significant prayers we can all pray for our dear Arab friends and neighbors at this time:
Blessings over Arab believers
Freedom from demonic jihad
Protection for the innocent
Highest moral values to prevail
Right governmental solution for Gaza after the war
Light of Yeshua to shine
Salvation to be poured out
Cooperative relationships with moderate Arab nations going forward
