Britain, Balfour, and the Abrahamic Blessing and Curse Special

 

This week is the anniversary of the statement known as the Balfour Declaration that was issued by the British War Council on 2 November, 1917. It was a letter thyat was sent by Arthur Balfour who was the Foreign Secretary of the British Government, and it was addressed to Lord Rothschild and dated on November 2nd. The final wording was approved on October 31st, 1917 but it wasn’t publicized i9n the British newspapers until the next week on November 9th.

This particular Lord Rothschild was part of the Rothchild family, the British wing of the family, and was very much involved with the Zionist movement in Britain, along with a number of other Jewish leaders in the Zionist movement. This letter was really the result of several years of manouvering by different people within the British Government and the influence on them by the Zionists.

 

Foreign Office,
November 2nd, 1917.

Dear Lord Rothschild,


I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet:


"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country".


I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Yours sincerely
Arthur James Balfour

This letter is often treated as if this establishes the right of the Jewish people to return to their historic homeland and to establish a national state. But this is not a legal document, it was just a ;political document and it is nothing more than a statement that the British Government views with sympathy the goals and the aspirations of the Jewish Zionist movement to establish a national homeland. Its significance is what happens afterward, but the interesting story is what brought this about. How does this fit in the scope of history? It didn’t just happen; it isn’t just something that occurred in British history because they found themselves in the situation where their empire could expand at the end of WW I. They were concerned, of course, about protecting their lifeline, as it were, to the east through the Suez canal, but also a land route to India which was still a colony of the British Government at this particular time. A lot of people interpret this support for a national homeland for the Jews in terms of a political rationale and there were certainly political reasons for it and trade reasons for it, as well as their desire to gain territory in their competition with the French because the French had had various interests in the Middle East for at least 100 years since the beginning of the 19th century.

But the story is actually much more significant than that, and to understand the flow of history we have to look at it through the grid of what God has revealed in His Word. That always starts with the Abrahamic covenant. In the Old Testament God told Abraham to get out of his homeland, to go to a land that Gold would show him, and God made him a promise in Genesis 12:2, 3 NASB “And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

The significant thing in interpreting history is the third verse where God said: “I will bless those who bless you.” So whoever blesses the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will be blessed by God. This doesn’t have to do with any other spiritual factor, this is just a principle that is true for any people, any group down through history. It is as true today as it was in the Old Testament; it has never been countermanded by God. And further, God said: “I will cure him that curses you.” This is an interesting statement in the Hebrew because although English usually translates the word “curse” in both places here it actually reflects two different words in the Hebrew. The first word is the Hebrew word qelalah which means to treat something lightly or to disrespect. So God is basically saying anybody who disrespects or treats

 

lightly the Jews He is going to bring some sort of judgment on them. And the second word “curse” in the verse is the Hebrew word arar which means to judge harshly. So God is saying: “If you treat my peopl,e with disrepect, treat them lightly or casually or with contempt, then I am going to lower the boom on you.” So it is a very strong statement and it has been worked out down through history. There are three promises that God gave to Abraham in the Abrahamic covenant. One has to do with land, which is desac ribed in the Abrahamic covenant as being bordered by the Euphrates River to the north and east, the Meditarranean on the west, down to the river of Egypt (not the Nile, it is generally thought of as a waadi that goes through the Sinai Peninsula). So there are these three promises that are later expanded in additional covenants. This is foundational to God’s plan for His people Israel.

 

The next verse that is important for understanding how people are going to be judged by God in terms of their relationship to the Jewish people in Israel is found in Joel chapter three. The third chapter of Joel is a prophecy of what will take place when the the Davidic kingdom is finally established, when Israel is brought back to the land. There will be a judgement. Joel 3:2 NASB “I will gather all the nations And bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat. Then I will enter into judgment with them there On behalf of My people and My inheritance, Israel, Whom they have scattered among the nations; And they have divided up My land.” The judgment is on the Gentile nations for scattering the Jews and how they treated them, and secondly, for dividing up their land. That is important to remember. What we see in the Abrahamic covenant is that God promises the bless those who bless Israel and to bring a judgment upon those who treat Israel lightly, with contempt, or in a disrespectful manner. Part of that means dividing up their land.

In the modern era the nation that probably had the strongest philo-Semitic (the opposite of anti-Semitic) attitude towards Israel in the 19th century was the British empire, and it is the British empire because of its interest in the Middle East that issued the Balfour Declaration. But the English were not always so kind and warm and welcoming to the Jewish people. The first time that we have a historical record of a Jewish community in England is at the time of the conquest by William the Conqueror in 1066. William the Conqueror encouraged Jewish merchants and artisans and businessmen to move to England, and Jews came to England from Normandy, from France, from Germany, Italy and Spain, primarily to escape the anti-Semitism that was already flourishing in western Europe. Jewish communities were established in the English cities of London, York, Bristol, Canterbury and other key areas.

The Jews became bankers and money-lenders, which was common also in Europe because the usury laws—which was a misunderstanding and misapplication and misinterpretation of the Old Testament laws against charging interest—the harsh usury laws of the Roman Catholic church. In this interpretation of the Old Testament laws against charging interest the Roman Catholic church wouldn’t allow anyone who was a Christian to charge interest on any money loans and this had the effect of stifling economic development of western Europe, so Jews became the bankers and money lenders because the usury laws did not apply to them. However, the kings and Rome taxed them heavily for the privilege of charging interest.

Persecutions had existed for some time in western Europe. They would come in various waves. There had been various times of localized massacres of Jewish people as they lived in isolated ghettos and and various cities and villages. In England one of the worst times of anti-Semitism against the Jews was in Norwich in 1144 when they brought a charge of blood libel. This is the origination of the blood libel slander against the Jews. It was that in order to make unleavened bread for Passover the Jews would cannibalize young children and use their blood to make the unleavened bread. This rumor would spread and stir up the English peasants and they would then go out and start killing the Jews and destroying their property, things of that nature. Then with the development of the crusades just after that the third crusade brought increased anti-Semitism in England and following the death of Henry II who had protected the Jews a riot in York took place leading to the massacre of the Jews there. Richard I found out about this a day later and ordered the Jews protected, and then when he left for the crusades the riots and massacres broke out once again. Anti-Semitism continued to develop in England until 1290, at which time they were expelled from England by an edict of expulsion by Edward I. There were a few who stayed that claimed to be converted to Christianity but they could not observe anything in public, but there were very few Jews in England at this particular time.

As an aside, we need to answer the question of what caused this development of anti-Semitism in western Europe. What is the root of it? A lot of people will lay blame to what is called “replacement theology.” But little is said, more than a basic definition of replacement theology. It is important to understand what replacement theology is and what the underlying causes of it are. In summary replacement theology is simply the belief that God has replaced the Jews who were called His chosen people in the Old Testament with someone else. Within the history of Christian theology there is a Christian replacement theology and there is also a Muslim replacement theology, because the Muslims think that everybody has been replaced by them, basically. But replacement theology is the belief that God originally chose the Jews as His people through whom He would reveal His plan, they would be the custodians of the holy Scriptures, they would be the ones through whom world-wide blessing would come through the Messiah. But when the Jews rejected Jesus as the Messiah God said He was done with them and swept them into the dustbin of history and replaced them with the church.

There is something more insidious than that which underlies replacement theology. Remember that every theological system is based on a system of interpretation, and we have to understand the system of interpretation that gave birth to replacement theology and only then can we really see where it is today, because after the holocaust which was clearly built on replacement theology which basically sowed the seeds for ant-Semitism within western Europe, and replacement theology came to its most evil fruition at the holocaust. After the holocaust nobody wants to identify with any belief system that under girded the holocaust so even the Roman Catholic church which is still replacement theology to its core denies that it is. When they say they reject it they are rejecting the most extreme forms of replacement theology but they still believe that the Jews have been replaced by the church. Any theological system that believes that the Jewish people are no longer the chosen people of God is a replacement theology system—whether that is the covenant theology of the Calvinist Presbyterians or the system of Lutheran theology or some of the other theological systems in Christendom that denies a future for Israel and a future kingdom for Israel.

This came about because by the mid part of the third century AD under the influence of neo-Platonism—which talked about the literal not being important but the ideal was what is important—there was a rejection of literal interpretation. Literal interpretation just means that you interpret the Bible in terms of the normal plain use of language. But with neo-Platonism there was a shift to an allegorical or symbolic approach to interpretation. In normal plain used of language Israel means Israel, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The church means the church, i.e. those who believe that Jesus is the Messiah in the Old Testament, and those who have trusted in Him as their savior. Those who believe that are Christians and are members of what is called the church, and the church didn’t begin until the day of Pentecost. In plain  normal use of language the promised land is real estate that was promised by God to Abraham and his descendants in perpetuity that is bordered by the Euphrates River, the Mediterranean Sea and the river of Egypt. Also the Jordan River is viewed as the literal river that flows from the Sea of Galilee down to the Dead Sea, and crossing the Jordan River means that you are entering into the land of Israel proper. But in an allegorical, non-literal interpretation Israel doesn’t mean Israel, the church doesn’t mean the church, the promised land doesn’t mean the promised land, and crossing the Jordan doesn’t mean crossing a literal river into the land of Israel.

In an allegorical, non-literal interpretation Israel really means the church. It is a code word, a spiritual code word that only the “enlightened” can figure out. So Israel means the church, the church means spiritual Israel, the promised land is really heaven, and crossing the Jordan means going in to heaven. All those negro spirituals that we’ve heard that talk about crossing the Jordan, crossing over the river, is all based on allegorical interpretation. This is like when Stonewall Jackson died and made an allusion to crossing over the river. He was Presbyterian; that is the metaphor that he is using. He is using a non-literal interpretation. In the Bible when they are crossing the Jordan they are crossing a literal river going into the land. That is what literal interpretation means. Once we get into allegorical interpretation like this and Israel doesn’t mean Israel, it really means the church, then anybody who is against Christ is a bad guy. So that just gave a justification for persecuting, murdering, stealing from the Jews in Europe and painting them as the bad guy of history, and whenever there were problems they would blame everything on the Jews. This was their theological justification for hatred, jealousy and violence against the Jews.

In terms of overall history of British relationship to the Jews we will just summarize this a little. From 1290 with the edict of expulsion from Edward I until Oliver Cromwell in the middle 1600s, a period of a little less than 400 years, the Jews cannot legally be in England. What causes the change? Why is it that Oliver Cromwell suddenly is open to letting the Jews return to England? There was an event in 1517 over in Germany which we call the Protestant Reformation. It had several little slogans that are all expressed in the Latin and begin with the word sola, meaning “only”— sola gratia, only by grace, sola fide, only by faith, sola deo Gloria, only for the glory of God, and sola scriptura, only by the Scripture. In other words, they rejected the Roman Catholic view that after the first century with the death of the last apostle revelation from God continues and it comes through the pope and through the tradition of the church. So in Roman Catholic theology the truth about God is determined not by the Scripture alone but by the Scripture plus tradition. The Protestant Reformation came long and said tradition is not part of the authority from God and they got rid of tradition and returned to a sola scriptura view and a literal interpretation.

But they didn’t change the whole realm of theology based on a literal interpretation over night; it took time. Martin Luther was focused on the doctrines of salvation, and as soon as he articulated the view that salvation was by faith alone the Roman Catholic church put a bounty on his head and a target on his back and he spent a good bit of the rest of his life just defending his interpretation of salvation. He didn’t have time to work out the implications of a literal plain meaning of the text in every area. Martin Luther at the end of his life was extremely bitter toward the Jews, he was under the impression that because he had discovered the truth of salvation that the Jewish people would just flock to him in conversion and when they didn’t do it he got mad at them, calling them the devil’s spawn and many other things. So he instigated a lot of anti-Semitism. This became embedded within German Lutheran thought and it reached its ultimate flowering in the holocaust. That is laid at the feet of Martin Luther in terms of his influence.

By the early 1600s, especially in England where the children, the grandchildren and the great grandchildren of the Reformers began to work out logically the implications of a consistent literal interpretation of Scripture, they began to recognize that the Bible teaches that Israel is Israel and the church is the church, that the church is not Israel and Israel is not the church, and that when God promised a piece of real estate to Abraham it was a piece of real estate on this earth and can’t be twisted into saying that it is heaven. So it is this return to Scripture and a literal interpretation of Scripture that is so important.

Here we lay down a principle, because within the Jewish community there is a suspicion and a resistance to evangelic Christians and the evangelic right because they fear that as the source of ant-Semitism. This is because historically anti-Semitism has come out of the right. The use of the terms Left and Right goes back to the French Assembly where on the right hand side sat the aristocracy and the church and on the left hand side sat the representatives of the people. The right was the conservatives because they wanted to conserve their authority and power and hold the people basically in subjugation under their tyranny. The Left was where the Liberals were in the classic sense of liberalism, meaning that they were looking for liberty. These terms have really shifted in their meaning over the last 100 years or so. In the French Assembly the right was the king and the church. Guess who was the source of anti-Semitic violence towards the Jews. The aristocracy and the church. So this set a pattern where Jewish people feared the right because the right was the source of anti-Semitism. There is this latent fear and suspicion among Jewish people that the evangelical right is really, even though they seem to be nice to Jews right now, going to turn on them eventually and can’t really be trusted.

The principle to be laid down here is what makes the evangelical right the evangelic right is the believe that the Bible is the Word of God and that it must be understood and interpreted in a plain, normal, literal fashion; just the way we would interpret the directions for filling out our income tax forms, just as we would interpret the directions for putting anything together that we bought. The point is that the more Christian groups move to the right in terms of a consistent literal and plain use of language the more pro-Israel they became and the more philo-Semitic they became. So the evangelical right is the evangelic right because the Bible is the Word of God and they believe in a literal interpretation, and because they believe that they are philo-Semitic, very much pro-Israel and pro-Jewish. They will never become anti-Semitic because it goes against the very foundation of their belief system. This goes back to the Protestant Reformation.

Michael Pr [?] has written: “The growing importance of the English Bible, a concomitant of the spreading Reformation … and it is true to say that the Reformation would never have taken hold had the Bible not replaced the pope as the ultimate spiritual authority. With the Bible as its tool the Reformation returned to the geographic origins of Christianity in Palestine a love for the Jews. That especially took place among the English Puritans. It thereby gradually diminished the authority of Rome.”

So we see that by the early 1600s this shift has occurred strongly in favor of Jews and treating them as God’s chosen people. In the early part of the 1600s in England there was the rise of the Stewart dynasty, James I, then Charles I. Then there was a rebellion against Charles I led by the Puritans under Oliver Cromwell who became basically the ruler of England, the Lord Protector of England. Under Oliver Cromwell and during that time of Puritan ascendancy the Puritans came to just fall in love with the Old Testament. They preached all of their messages from the Old Testament and that is where they came to understand the basic divine institutions that we talk about, because of their study of the Old Testament and the Mosaic Law. That is what influenced and shaped English common law and laid the foundation for the British beliefs in liberty and freedom, and the limitations on the rule of the monarchy; all that was taking place during the period of the 1600s. They named their children Old Testament names, student pastors would find a local rabbi and ask him to teach them Hebrew later on in the century, but first they had to bring the Jews back to England.

Two people stand out in terms of the opening of England to Jews. The first is a brilliant rabbi from the Netherlands who had a European education, and he came to understand and believed with the discovery of America that the native Americans, Indians, were actually the descendants of the ten lost tribes. He believed this very firmly. His name was Manasseh ben Israel. He went to England to personally meet with Cromwell and appeal to him and convince him to allow the Jews to come back into England on the basis of Deuteronomy 28:64 which said that before the Jews would be restored to the land they would be scattered from one end of the earth to the other. The idea was that there were no Jews in England so we can’t get back to the land because we have to be scattered through all the countries and all the nations: so please let the Jews back in and we can go back to the land. The only other influence on Cromwell we’ve heard about to this point is the influence of Joanna and Ebenezer Cartwright who were two English Puritans who lived in the Netherlands. They petitioned the Cromwell government that this nation of England with the inhabitants of the Netherlands shall be the first and the readiest to transport Israel’s sons and daughters in their ships to the land promised by their forefathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, for an everlasting inheritance.

What we see here is that we not only have this influence from these English Puritans who are in the Netherlands but also from Mannaseh ben Israel. It was not just a Christian thing, it was also a belief among the Orthodox Jews that there would be a literal return of the Jews to the land of Israel and then the Messiah would come and they would enter into their kingdom. This occurred in 1655 as a result of Manasseh ben Israel going to Cromwell. Cromwell called a conference of nobles to meet at Whitehall to consider the whole question. However there was still a lot of anti-Semitism among those who were still influenced by replacement theology, even within the Puritan Presbyterian theological camp. But eventually Cromwell did bring about the return of the Jews to England.

Barbara Tuchman who has written the book The Bible and the Sword, a study of the influence of the Bible on the English and the Jews, stated that “Starting with the Puritan ascendancy the movement among the English for the return of the Jews to Palestine began.” That is in the 1600s. Earlier in the late 1500s Frances Kett, a Puritan Pastor (and medical doctor) who had gone to Cambridge, wrote a book called “The Glorious and Beautiful Garland of Man’s Glorification Containing the Godly Mystery of Heavenly Jerusalem.” In that book he mentions the notion of a Jewish national return to Palestine, for which he was burned at the stake on January 15th 1589 in Norwich. He advocated in his book the restoration of the Jews to Israel, claiming that he got the idea from studying the Bible. So we see that from the late 1500s until the late 1600s there is a massive shift that takes place in England’s view of the Jews, and it comes because of the influence of the Bible and its literal interpretation.

The British Puritans during the 1600s are very closely affiliated with the Puritans who went over to the American colonies, especially Massachusetts, and throughout this period was seen a huge shift in terms of understanding prophetic events. Many of the Puritans moved from being amillennial, the view that there is no future kingdom, to pre-Millennial, the view that there is a literal future kingdom, that it will be located geographically in Israel and that Jesus the Messiah will return and reign in the future from Jerusalem. One of those who believed this was Increase Mather who was very pro-Israel and believed that the Jews should be allowed to return to their land because that is what the Bible taught. This is what gave birth to a movement called British Restorationism.

One of the key figures in British restorationism was an ancestor of Winston Churchill, Charles Henry Churchill (1814-1877). He was stationed in Damascus when there was another blood libel charge against the Jews and a riot where many Jews were killed, and he supported the Jews against the non-Zionist Christians of Damascus. It was through his help that Jews were acquitted of the charge. John Adams and John  Quincy Adams believed firmly in the restoration of the Jews to their homeland in Israel, as did Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln met with a Canadian Christian Zionist by the name of Henry Monk in 1863 and he said that restoring the Jews to their homeland is a noble dream shared by many Americans.

Another major figure was Lawrence Oliphant (1829-1888), a mixed bag theologically. For a while he moved to New York and he and his wife just flit around in a number of strange groups. He was raised in an evangelical home so he had a very strong belief in the Jews and their restoration to the land. He was an officer in the British foreign service, a writer, a world traveler, and he was able to act as a broker between various Jewish groups and the rulers in Constantinople and various other rulers in Europe. He and his wife were very influential in helping the Jews get permits to go back to the land.

Another influential Anglican was William Hechler (1845-1931), and he made himself a close friend of Theodore Herzl who is the founder of modern Jewish Zionism. After reading Herzl’s book he immediately went to meet with him and he said that because of his contacts and the people he knew he could introduce Herzl to a number of influential leaders in Europe and gain their support for the Zionist cause. Hechler was a pastor and a missionary. He was the Anglican chaplain at the British embassy in Vienna which is where Herzl was from. He was able to introduce Herzl to Kaiser Whilhelm and European rulers, and he was involved with many other Christian Zionists in collecting and distributing clothing and other things that the Russian and Romanian Jews needed as they were victimized by the Russian pogroms.

Some of the other Christian Zionists included a man by the name of William Blackstone was a businessman and an evangelical minister and he circulated a petition which was to be presented to President Benjamin Harrison in 1891 to convene an international conference in support of Jewish claims to Palestine, several years before the first Zionist conference. This is about the same time that Theodore Herzl is at the Dreyfus trial and begins to realize that Jews will never be truly assimilated into European culture and that they needed to have a national homeland. He also wrote a book called The Jewish State which came out in 1896 and then convened the first Zionist conference not long after that in Zurich, Switzerland. But William Blackstone preceded that and, in fact, Louis Brandeis who was a major Zionist leader in America and later a US Supreme Court Justice, actually stated that Blackstone rather than Herzl was the true father of Zionism since his work preceded Herzl’s.

After the rise of Jewish Zionism in the late 1890s there was a major event that took place on the world stage, and that is World War I. It was started because of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, and because of the web of alliances between the various nations the dominoes began to fall and the next thing was the Europe was all split up between the allies and the Austrian-Hungarian empire and Germany, and they go to war with each other. The Ottoman empire is just on the edge of things and they are trying to decide just where they are going to fall out in terms of this war that is taking place in Europe. Their chief enemy is to the north, the Russian empire, and since the Russians were allied with France and Britain the Ottoman empire entered into the war on the side Austria, Hungary and Germany. The issue at the end of the 19th century is the rise of Arab nationalism. We see that portrayed to a certain degree in Lawrence of Arabia: the adventures of T. E. Lawrence working through the British trying to get the Arab tribes to align themselves with the British against the Ottoman empire, leading to its collapse. The Arab revolt which occurred between 1916 and 1918 was a major part of the allied move.

Earlier on there was a lot of argument among the allies as to whether or not they should be involved in the Middle East at all. One view was to go into Germany through France, but the other view was to go in the back door and come up from Egypt—remember the British held the Suez Canal—and through the Middle East by defeating the Ottoman empire and eventually going into Austria, Hungary and Germany through Bulgaria. Finally by late 1916 the British began to get serious about utilizing Arabs to foment rebellion against the Ottoman empire and this leads to a lot of maneuvering on the chess board, making deals with the various members of the Hussein family who ruled in the area of Saudi Arabia as to what territories they would have when the war ended.

There is a secret agreement that was entered into in 1916 called Sykes-Picot Agreement which was an agreement to divide the territory of the Middle East among the European nations after the war. The French were to control the south-eastern part of Turkey and much of what is now modern Syria. Another area was to be under British influence, and another was to be under direct British influence, and another was to be an international zone and that would be most of what would be modern Israel today and Jerusalem. This agreement was kept secret and at the same time there was a lot of pressure being put on the British government by Chaim Weizman who led the British Zionist Federation in England to authorize and recognize the right of the Jews to establish a national homeland. This is finally recognized in the Balfour Declaration. In 1917 Arthur Balfour writes the letter to Lord Rothschild, which merely states the Declaration’s sympathy with the Jewish Zionist. It is a political statement, it is not a legal statement.

There was a lot of debate among the war council about this particular document and it is interesting to recognize that this document did not come about by accident. There was a lot of influence by key players on the war council. Our contention is that to understand what happens here it is necessary to understand the hand of God in relation to the Abrahamic covenant and Biblical, evangelical Christianity. David Lloyd George was the Prime Minister at this time, from 1916 on. He was born of a Welsh family. Though he was born in Manchester, England, he was raised in Wales and was always thought of as Welsh. He was raised as a British Baptist and early in his career, in 1903 as a lawyer, he had been a British attorney for the British Zionist movement which made him one of the most qualified leaders in England to be pro-Zionist. He understood there aims, knew all of the people that were involved, and one writer states: “Lloyd George was the only man in his government who had always wanted to acquire Palestine for Britain. He also wanted to encourage the development of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. His colleagues failed to understand just how strongly he held these views. There was a background, he goes on to say, to Lloyd George’s beliefs of which his colleagues were largely ignorant: he was brought up on the Bible. That is the key to understanding Lloyd George.

Later on he said there were various other reasons but in private everyone who knew him understood that nothing was more important for him than what the Bible said. He frequently said that the place names of the places in Palestine were more familiar to him than the names of the battlefields in Europe. He later wrote that is not worth winning the Holy Land only to hew it in pieces before the Lord. Think of the passage in Joel three, that judgment upon the Gentile nations on the day of the Lord was going to be based on the Gentiles dividing up the land. So he was not in favor of dividing up the land.

But he is not the only person on the war cabinet that was influenced by evangelical theology. The war cabinet had ten members and only two of them were English. The others were non-English members from other parts of the British empire. Lloyd George was considered Welsh, four of the members were from Scotland—Arthur Balfour, Arthur Henderson, George Barnes and Andrew Bonar Law—Edward Carson was an Irish Protestant. Six of the ten men were from Celtic areas: Wales, Ireland, Scotland—Jan Smuts was born in Cape Colony and later on had quite an illustrious career in South Africa; German born Alfred Milner. There was only one English Gentile on the war cabinet and there was one Jewish member, Edward Samuel Montagu who was against the Balfour Declaration because he felt it was an anti-Semitic document. But he, like many Jews in Europe at the time, wanted to be defined by his Britishness, not his Jewishness. He had completely assimilated. The two English members of the war council were the only two who were against the Balfour Declaration. The eight that were for the Declaration had been raised in evangelical homes or they personally embraced evangelical beliefs. Six of them were raised in Calvinistic homes. Balfour was raised Church of Scotland (Presbyterian), Lloyd George Baptist, another was an evangelical Anglican, Andrew Bonar Law was from the Free Church of Scotland (Presbyterian), Jan Smuts was Dutch Calvinist, Edward Carson was Irish Presbyterian. Three of them were “preachers kids.” Arthur Henderson was a Scottish Methodist. So it is their religious training when they are young that teaches them the importance of the Jews and God’s views of the Jews, God’s promises to Israel, and so when it came to this time in history they are where God wants them to be.

Interestingly enough they do not represent what has come to be the primary views of the English people. That’s why it is important to recognize that eight of the ten are not English. By this time England is beginning to shift away from its historic pro-Jewish position, and this is primarily influenced by the worldview shift that occurs after Darwin published Origin of the Species. These are older men who are on the war council, with the exception of Jan Smuts. The younger ones, like T. E. Lawrence, are becoming more and more pro-Arab. So when the leadership in England really shifts to the next generation in the 1920s that next generation is going to be much more pro-Arab and less pro-Zionist. This has very significant consequences in England.

In 1919 there was a conference that occurred at San Remo. In early 1919 there was the Paris peace conference, which meant the first six months of the year, where five countries were represented. There was the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers and their job was to decide what to do with the territories that had been conquered by the Germans, Austrians and Hungarians during the war. Various groups and their territorial claims came to them and presented their claims: the Zionists came and requested the right of return to their national homeland; Feisal, the son of Hussein who was the ruler of Saudi Arabia at this time, requested an Arab nation at this point. The Arabs were pro-Zionist and they made a deal with the Jews to support them in their claims to the land and the Jews to support them in their claims to Arab independence.

At the Paris peace conference they were only deciding what land in Europe, so they called another that met in San Remo in Italy. San Remo is important because the San Remo resolution which was adopted on 25 April, 1920 incorporated the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and Article 22 of the covenant of the League of Nations into the San Remo decision. That shifted the Balfour Declaration from being a political statement to now being a legally binding international legal decision that is irreversible. That is foundational for understanding the rights of Israel to their land. The relevant part of the resolution reads: “The high contracting parties agree to entrust the administration of Palestine with such boundaries as may be determined by the principle allied powers to a mandatory authority that will be responsible for putting into effect the Balfour Declaration.” The nation that was given the mandate was Britain. The territory that was to be given to Israel included not only the present land of Israel that is west of the Jordan but also all of the land that is now part of the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan. This was the legal statement made in the San Remo Treaty. The treaty had the statement that “Nothing should be done which would prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” Nothing is said about their political rights, only that nothing can interfere with their civil and religious rights.

The San Remo resolution was also based on Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations which declares that it is a sacred trust of civilization to provide for the wellbeing and development of colonies or territories whose inhabitants were not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world. So the mandatory powers, Britain, and France in the north, was viewed as being only a temporary condition until they were able to rule themselves.

In 1919 the Arabs suddenly did an about face and decided that they didn’t want all of that land going to Israel and so the British mandate was split up. This is because the Hussein family was kicked out of the Arabian peninsula with the Wahabi revolt. Feisal is left without a place to call home and so the British decide and Churchill under extreme pressure is forced to give up the territory east of the Jordan and give it to Hussein, and that established it as the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan. Israel was left with a small strip of land up until the UN petition plan in 1947. They are going to subdivide it again, and so constantly Britain is involved in subdividing the land of Israel until they are not left with very much.

Britain violated Joel 3:2. At the beginning of the 20th century the sun never set on the Union Jack. By 1919 there is still pretty much the same territory, but watch the slide. By 1938 it diminishes, and by 1945 it diminishes yet again. By 1959 it diminishes even more, until we get to the present time where all that there is left is basically England and Scotland and Wales. Not only that but the most popular name for the past several years given to male babies born in England is Mohammed. England is under extreme judgment since the end of World War I because they have been violating the principle of dividing the land of Israel, and they are then under judgment because they have been treating Israel disrespectfully.

What is the warning? The warning is for the United States, because the United States, though not as actively as Britain, is on the verge of trying to enforce and two-state solution on Israel, dividing up the land without the insistence of the Netanyahu government that the Palestinian Authority recognize the legitimacy of the state of Israel. If the US continues in this course of action we are going to see the same kind of judgment because you don’t treat Israel lightly and you don’t participate in dividing up the land. The US should not be involved in the decisions that the Israeli government makes but should be in the position of supporting them. Whatever decision it is that they make we should not be forcing them to make a decision.

What we learn from all of this is that God indeed controls history, and the outworking of the blessing and cursing statements of the Abrahamic covenant and statement in Joel 3:2 lay over history exactly as God intended. Those who treat the Jews lightly will be judged by God and those who bless Israel will blessed. We need to take this as a historical illustration of the outworking of these principles in history to heart. Understand then that we use the Bible to interpret and understand the trends of history so that we don’t get rolled over by the trends of history.       

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