TheSamKeys

“I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the Government. And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.“ —Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address (1861)

BREAKING: LeBron James is LEAVING Los Angeles Lakers in bombshell NBA move

DOES THE BIBLE SAY THAT GOD WILL BLESS THOSE WHO BLESS ISRAEL? Tucker Carlson has made something of a hobby out of mocking the idea that God blesses those who bless Israel and curses those who curse her. When Senator Ted Cruz could not cite the verse on the spot, Carlson declared victory in what became a viral moment for him. But winning a theological debate on a technicality against a non-theologian is not the same as being right. Let us look at what the Bible actually teaches — and then let the history books add their own testimony. THE FOUNDATIONAL PROMISE The foundational passage is Genesis 12:1–3. God speaks to Abraham and declares, "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." Tucker’s counter-argument is essentially: fine, that was a promise to Abraham personally, and Abraham is dead, so case closed, or maybe, that was a promise to the future church! But this reading does violence to the entire arc of Scripture. A DYNASTY PROMISE, NOT A ONE-MAN DEAL Any serious Old Testament scholar understands that the Abrahamic covenant was not a one-man arrangement — it was a dynasty promise. The covenant God made with Abraham and later reaffirmed with Isaac and Jacob is of transcendent significance, containing promises that were explicitly everlasting — even through “a thousand generations” (Psalm 105:8–11). The Lord reaffirmed through oath His commitment to bless Abraham and his seed — understood as the corporate physical progeny (meaning his actual physical descendants) — and the covenant came through Isaac and Jacob as well.[1] The Scripture makes this extension of the covenant unmistakable. When God appears to Isaac in Genesis 26:3–4, He says: "Sojourn in this land, and I will be with you and bless you, for to you and to your offspring I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath that I swore to Abraham your father. I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and will give to your offspring all these lands. And in your offspring all the nations of the earth shall be blessed." The same covenant. The same nations. Now addressed to the next physical generation. Then God reaffirms it again to Jacob at Bethel in Genesis 28:13–14: "I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed." Abraham, Isaac, Jacob — three generations, one unbroken covenant. Psalm 105:8–11 seals the case: “He REMEMBERS his covenant FOVEVER, the word that he commanded, for A THOUSAND GENERATIONS, the covenant that he made with Abraham, his sworn promise to Isaac, which he confirmed to Jacob as a statute, to Israel as an EVERLASTING COVENANT, saying, ‘To you I will give the land of Canaan as your portion for an inheritance.’” This is not a personal promise to one man. It is a covenant made to Abraham, renewed to Isaac, confirmed to Jacob, and declared everlasting to the nation of Israel. BALAAM AND THE BLESSING OF THE NATIONS Most strikingly, in Numbers 24, a pagan diviner named Balaam is hired by the Moabite king Balak specifically to curse Israel. But what came out of Balaam’s mouth instead of a curse was this: “Blessed are those who bless you, and cursed are those who curse you”— spoken over the twelve physical tribes of Jacob wandering in the wilderness.[2] Commentators note that Balaam’s blessing formula deliberately echoes the original words of Genesis 12:3 and Isaac’s blessing of Jacob — confirming the assurance of divine favor to the righteous and their seed forever.[3] By Numbers 24, Abraham has been dead for centuries. But the blessing-and-cursing principle is applied without hesitation to the living nation of his descendants. Tucker's argument — that the modern nation of Israel (which DNA proves are the descendants of the Israelites) has no connection to the biblical promises — cannot survive contact with the text. NOTE: I do not believe that the modern nation of Israel is guiltless or should not be held accountable like any other nation. Wherever there is injustice, it should be called out. But that also means in Russia, which attacked Ukraine without cause, and in Iran, where 50,000 citizens have been murdered for protesting. It seems that people like Tucker are fixated on Israel's sins while making excuses for the Islamic world. What the Bible teaches is that believers should contend for Israel's salvation in order to provoke her to jealousy (Romans 11:11). That doesn't mean unquestioned support and no accountability. THE CHURCH IN GENESIS 12 Before we turn to history, a reasonable question must be answered: what about the Church? If the Abrahamic covenant extends to Israel as a nation, where do Gentile believers fit in? The answer is not complicated — it is actually hiding in plain sight in Genesis 12 itself. God makes two distinct promises to Abraham in those opening verses. First, He says He will make Abraham into a great nation — that is, Israel, the physical descendants through Isaac and Jacob. But then God says something broader: "in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." Those are two different things. One is a nation. The other is the multitude of nations. The promise is not either/or — it is both/and. Israel is the vehicle through which the universal blessing travels. This is why God changes Abram’s name to Abraham in Genesis 17 to indicate that he will be the father of a multitude of nations. And we know exactly what that blessing is. Paul makes it explicit in Galatians 3:8, where he quotes Genesis 12:3 and says that God was preaching the gospel in advance to Abraham — that through his seed, meaning, ultimately, the Messiah Jesus, all nations would be blessed with salvation. So the Church is not in competition with Israel in Genesis 12. The Church is the fulfillment of the second half of the promise. Gentiles who believe in Jesus are the "all the families of the earth" God was already talking about when He first spoke to Abraham. That does not cancel the covenant with the nation of Israel — it completes the picture. NOW, LET THE HISTORY SPEAK In 1917, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, expressing its support for the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine — an act many believe represented divine favor at work, and which historians describe as among the last great acts of the British Empire.[4] Britain was then the world’s dominant superpower, controlling roughly a quarter of the earth’s landmass. It was said that “the sun never sets on the British Empire” because it had lands all over the globe. For several decades, under leaders with strong evangelical sensibilities, Britain had championed Jewish restoration to their ancient homeland. Then Britain turned. In May 1939, the British government issued the White Paper, heavily favoring Arab demands: it limited Jewish immigration to 75,000 over five years, ended Jewish land purchases, and effectively declared that Britain had fulfilled its obligations to the Jewish people — closing the Holy Land’s doors even as Jews were fleeing Nazi persecution across Europe.[5] It was a breathtaking betrayal, and it came precisely when the Jewish people needed refuge most. The timeline of what followed is striking. In 1940, the British Empire still contained a quarter of the world’s population and a fifth of its landmass. Yet within the following two decades, more than twenty British territories gained independence, and by 1980, only a handful remained under British control.[6] The sun, so to speak, began setting on the empire almost immediately after Britain slammed the door on the Jewish people. Meanwhile, the United States stepped into the void. America had long been shaped by a deep biblical heritage and a Puritan identification with Israel’s story. America championed the founding of the modern State of Israel in 1948 — Harry Truman, himself a student of Scripture, recognized Israel eleven minutes after independence was declared at 9 AM EST on May 14. In the decades that followed, the United States became the undisputed dominant world power in every category: economic, military, cultural, and technological. For nearly a century now, no nation on earth has come close. ANECDOTE OR EVIDENCE? The cynic will note that empires rise and fall for many reasons — wars, economics, nationalism. That is true, and no honest theologian claims the blessing-and-cursing principle operates as a simple vending machine. But the trajectory is undeniable. The nation that championed Jewish restoration rose to global preeminence. The nation that betrayed the Jewish people and locked them out of their homeland as the Holocaust unfolded lost its empire within a generation. That is not merely anecdote. That is a pattern consistent with what the Scripture promises — a promise that did not die with Abraham, but was passed to his seed, renewed through Isaac and Jacob, reaffirmed through a pagan prophet named Balaam, and written across the history of nations ever since. Tucker Carlson is free to dismiss that pattern. But dismissing it does not make it disappear. Dr. Ron Cantor