Zionism Meets Christmas as Nuclear Confrontation Looms
David Haggith
 Plans are being discussed by Trump and Netanyahu to destroy Iran's nuclear threat as the peace of Christmas surrounds us in song and celebration.
In this time when the news today says that Donald Trump has been talking with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about blowing up Iran’s nuclear facilities, as I wrote here would be a likely scenario to happen around the transition of power from Biden to Trump, perhaps it is wise that we remember the real Christmas story and what even the Old Testament prophecies had to say about Israel now that days of biblical-scale actions loom over the new year for all of us today.
In the Book of Psalms, composed largely by Israel’s most famous king, David, we find a prophecy—or a covenant between God and David—about what was to come from and for Israel, and it is not necessarily the simple Zionist promise that many assume it is:
Psalm 89 begins:
1 I will sing of the Lord’s great love forever;
with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known
through all generations.
2 I will declare that your love stands firm forever,
that you have established your faithfulness in heaven itself.
3 You said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one,
I have sworn to David my servant,
4 ‘I will establish your line forever
and make your throne firm through all generations.’”
That “line” of decent from David is what Christmas is all about. It does not, of course, include the whole Jewish race as there are many Jewish lines that do not descend from David. You’ve probably heard the line about the line of David in familiar Christmas carols and plays:
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. (Luke 2:11)
What was promised was not that the nation of Israel would endure forever but that the line of David—his lineage—would endure as the establishment of a covenant that would endure through all of earth’s history through his heir. It still endures today. It endured before Israel became a nation again in 1948, and it will endure even if the nation of Israel ceased to exist.
26 And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth,
27 To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary….
30 And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.
31 And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.
32 He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:
33 And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. ( (Luke 1:26-27, 30-33)
A little further down, the psalm written by David, extolling this covenant to come from his line, continues …
19 Once you spoke in a vision,
to your faithful people you said:
“I have bestowed strength on a warrior;
I have raised up a young man from among the people.
20 I have found David my servant;
with my sacred oil I have anointedhim.
21 My hand will sustain him;
surely my arm will strengthen him.
22 The enemy will not get the better of him;
the wicked will not oppress him.
23 I will crush his foes before him
and strike down his adversaries.
24 My faithful love will be with him,
and through my name his horn[f] will be exalted.
25 I will set his hand over the sea,
his right hand over the rivers.
26 He will call out to me, ‘You are my Father,
my God, the Rock my Savior.’
27 And I will appoint him to be my firstborn,
the most exalted of the kings of the earth.
28 I will maintain my love to him forever,
and my covenant with him will never fail.
29 I will establish his line forever,
his throne as long as the heavens endure.
30 “If his sons forsake my law
and do not follow my statutes,
31 if they violate my decrees
and fail to keep my commands,
32 I will punish their sin with the rod,
their iniquity with flogging;
33 but I will not take my love from him,
nor will I ever betray my faithfulness.
34 I will not violate my covenant
or alter what my lips have uttered.
35 Once for all, I have sworn by my holiness—
and I will not lie to David—
36 that his line will continue forever
and his throne endure before me like the sun;
37 it will be established forever like the moon,
the faithful witness in the sky.”
Jesus was born from the line of David, according to the Gospels. Two lineages are given in the New Testament. One is of his adoptive father, Joseph. The other mentions that Joseph was thought to be his father but then gives a different line of descent from David. Many presume that was Mary’s lineage.
Jesus’ legacy has clearly endured and spread in a message of love, peace, mercy and forgiveness around the world ever since the day of his birth. In 2,000 years no individual has staked a stronger claim to be the rightful heir in the line of David than the one who extended the love of God to the whole world. And, yes, the church has many times violated that love and peace to try to force the message of the one who told his disciples to lay down the sword because that is not how his kingdom was to spread through the earth. The church was wrong and sinned whenever it did so. But Jesus’ constant message of love, humility, kindness and mercy continued outward anyway through those who did not choose the path of force.
He was the firstborn of Mary, a Jewish woman; so, salvation came to the world from the Jews, but that does not mean the nation of Israel will always endure as the legacy of David has. What was promised was that David’s “line” would endure along with the promise to that line. Israel, as a nation, has come and gone many times and can go and come again. Thus, we read the following plea to God from David as the very next lines in this prophecy about God’s covenant with David …
38 But you have rejected, you have spurned,
you have been very angry with your anointed one.
39 You have renounced the covenant with your servant
and have defiled his crown in the dust.
40 You have broken through all his walls
and reduced his strongholds to ruins.
41 All who pass by have plundered him;
he has become the scorn of his neighbors.
42 You have exalted the right hand of his foes;
you have made all his enemies rejoice.
43 Indeed, you have turned back the edge of his sword
and have not supported him in battle.
44 You have put an end to his splendor
and cast his throne to the ground.
45 You have cut short the days of his youth;
you have covered him with a mantle of shame.
Modern Israel is young, as nations go, born in 1948, and the prophecy of the covenant says that, if the sons of David (the nation of Israel) turn their back on God, God will turn his back on them. There is no guarantee that God will protect them from their enemies and crush their foes before them if they do not follow God humbly and with rightful actions toward all. They have been crushed in battles many times in the past, even in their own scriptures, and the nation has been entirely overthrown more than once. There is no promise that gives anyone the right to say, “Just because I’m a Jew, this land is mine!”
The covenant has always been about faithfulness. It says right at the start it is to God’s faithful people, and God, alone, defines the terms of that faithfulness. The promised heir of David’s inheritance is called the “Prince of Peace” because only he—who lived meekly and humbly and demonstrated love and healing to humanity at every turn—can deliver the land in peace to those who follow him—Jew or Gentile.
God says, “I will not violate my covenant,” and he has not because the legacy of the one Jewish firstborn son who came from the line of David has spread throughout the world today and is believed in by hundreds of millions and, yet, by more all the time. The light of the promise to David through his heir has never been extinguished, even when the nation of Israel has been. God did say in the prophecy of this covenant with David, “I will punish their sin with the rod, their iniquity with flogging.”
So, while God will not violate his covenant with David and David’s line, the people he is speaking to will violate it, and they can expect, if they do, that their battles may not go so well for them. Israel’s severe failures in battle are, in fact, seen occasionally throughout the scriptures all the way back to the days right after Moses when the people of Israel first stepped foot into the promised land.
Thus, there have been times for Israel that fit the part of the prophecy just quoted above where the crown (ruler) of Israel has been defiled into the dust, where, as the prophecy stated, …
- Israel’s defensive walls have been broken down,
- its strongholds reduced to ruins that remain ruins to this day,
- where it has been plundered and become a scorn to its neighboring countries,
- where its enemies have rejoiced over damages inflicted on it,
- where its powerful offensive military has been turned back like the blunted blade of a sword and it has lost in battles, and
- where its splendor and ruler have been cast to the ground, short-lived and covered with shame.
All of that has happened and can happen again. There is no promise that Zionism in any particular period or form will endure or win any particular war. The promise was that a single Jewish offspring of David would establish a throne that would endure forever, and that is the Christmas message we might do well to hold close this Christmas as nuclear confrontation is weighed by the leader of Israel and “leader of the free world,” as some ostentatiously refer to the US president. The promise is to the firstborn heir of David’s throne and to those who are faithful to God through him.
The Christmas message is that Jesus Christ is the firstborn of God—one who will rightfully call God his “father” as is said in the prophecy—an even bigger miracle than anyone expected. It is not that Zionism will always win just because people are Jewish or that the people of Israel will not suffer huge losses in times when the nation is mostly secular anyway and, perhaps seeking their own glory and even proud of their own strength. There are deeper truths involved here.
The promise is to the singular heir of David’s throne and to the faithful—Jew and Gentile—and, therefore, it is to be delivered to the faithful by the promised heir of David’s throne in God’s time and God’s way. There is no assurance the sword won’t be turned back on those who use it unworthily or unjustly to seize by force what can only be gained by faith or who claim by race what can only be merited by righteousness. And who is there who is truly righteous???
We sing of this promise in songs of joy, peace and goodwill to all the world at Christmastime. Blessings on you.
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6)
With that, as we step into Christmas, I’ve decided not to write about the gloomy economic news that lies all around us today, but the headlines about all of that are there below and are worth noting for what they have to say about the things that I have had to say this year. There is a lot of confirmation of those things in today’s news. But then come back and reflect on Christmas cheer in the pathways of peace.
No Daily Doom will be published on Christmas Eve Day or Christmas Day, but I will be with you again before the New Year. Merry Christmas, and thank you to those who have supported The Daily Doom through this past year to keep the news arriving in your mail (about things the government doesn’t want you to pay attention to, such as the return of inflation) before it happens.
Thanks for reading The Daily Doom! This post is entirely public so feel free to share it widely.
Share
Economic, Social and Political News of Our Troubled Times -- a non-partisan daily collection of the most consequential stories about our complex times from multiple sources around the world.
www.thedailydoom.com
| 
