The Deception About Palestine

How did the world and the church get into the habit of calling the Land of Israel "Palestine?" When Titus destroyed Jerusalem in 70AD, the Roman government struck a coin with the phrase "Judea Capta," meaning Judea has been captured. The term Palestine was never used in the early Roman designations. It was not until the Romans crushed the second Jewish revolt against Rome in 135AD under Bar Kochba that Emperor Hadrian applied the term “Palestine to the Land of Israel.” Hadrian, like many dictators since his time realized the propaganda power of terms and symbols. He replaced the shrines of the Jewish Temple and the Sepulchre of Christ in Jerusalem with temples to pagan deities. He changed the name of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitalina; and changed the name of Israel and Judea to Palestine. Hadrian's selection of Palestine was purposeful, not accidental. He took the name of the ancient enemies of Israel, the Philistines, Latinized it to Palestine, and applied it to the Land of Israel. He hoped in doing this to erase the name Israel from all memory. Thus, the term Palestine as applied to the Land of Israel was invented by the inveterate enemy of the Bible and the Jewish people, ROME.

Thus, the anti-Israel, anti-Christian name of Palestine was assimilated into the Universal Church's vocabulary as the Byzantine Empire was being established. The Church has, since that time, broadly used the term Palestine in literature and in maps to refer to the Land of Israel. It should be noted, however, that the Crusaders called their land the Kingdom of Jerusalem. When the British received the mandate after World War I, though, they called the land on both sides of the Jordan River, Palestine. This became the accepted geo-political term for several decades, and those who lived in the land were called Palestinians, whether they were Jews, Arabs or Europeans.

Even evangelical Christians who believe in the future of Israel casually use the term Palestine. It appears that Bible-believing Christians have either knowingly or unwittingly followed the world pagans and haters of Israel in calling Israel by the anti-Israel term Palestine.
The use of the term Palestine for propaganda and political purposes is devastating in the ongoing events of our time. The term, “Occupied Palestine” has incorrectly been assumed to lie at the heart of the Israeli-Arab Conflict. In truth, the term Palestine lies at the cornerstone of the propaganda war against Israel and the Jewish people. Should Christians utilize terms used by the enemies of Israel who desire to accomplish nothing less than the completed destruction of the Jewish people? I would think not. Christians should use the terminology of the Bible wherever possible. Why should we use any other term when referring to the Land, especially now that the Jews are back in the Land and have re-established the nation of Israel among the family of nations?

As we draw closer to the Second Coming of Christ, we should understand that Satan's fury against the Church and Israel will grow exponentially. Satan hates the Gospel of the crucified and risen Messiah, and he hates the reality of the Restoration of Israel as the nation that will ultimately receive Jesus as the Messiah at His return, and the nation that will be Christ's earthly headquarters. The only term we should use for the Land is Israel, or its subdivisons of Judea, Samaria, and Galilee, and not be sucked in to the propaganda word war developed to eradicate the name of Israel from its Land.
The Jewish people base their claim to the Land of Israel (Palestine) on at least four premises: 1) God promised the land to the patriarch Abraham; 2) the Jewish people settled and developed the land; 3) the international community granted political sovereignty in Palestine to the Jewish people and 4) the territory was captured in defensive wars.

By the early 19th century-years before the birth of the modern Zionist movement-more than 10,000 Jews lived throughout what is today Israel. When Jews began to immigrate to Palestine in large numbers in 1882, fewer than 250,000 Arabs lived there, and the majority of them had arrived in recent decades. No independent Arab or Palestinian state has ever existed in Palestine. Palestinian Arab nationalism is largely a post-World War I phenomenon that did not become a significant political movement until after the 1967 Six- Day War and Israel's capture of the West Bank. Israel's international "birth certificate" is validated by the promise of the Bible, and it specifies that its land is what the world now calls PALESTINE!

Joshua conquered the Land God promised the Jews over three thousand years ago. King David established Jerusalem as the capital of Israel around 1000 BC and King Solomon built the Jewish Temple about 96OBC. This was almost 1000 years before the beginning of Christianity and 1600 years before the rise of Islam. When Jesus came to Jerusalem to celebrate the feasts, he didn't come to a church or a mosque, he came to the Jewish Temple. It was not the Church Mount or the Mosque Mount, but the Temple Mount of Israel.

Before the birth of the State of Israel, Arab leaders themselves denied the existence of an Arab country called Palestine. In 1937, Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi said, "There is no such country as Palestine! 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. 'Palestine" is alien to us; it is the Zionists who introduced it." Yet today the whole world is heeding the demands of the Arab terrorists who insist upon having a new Palestinian State inside the land of Israel.

Recently (May 2006) an Islamic Palestinian cleric remarked that Christians who support Israel are distorting the true faith of Christianity, and have adopted Satan as god and comprise the greatest danger to world peace. The cleric, Hamed Al-Tamimi, the PA’S official cleric accused Zionist Christians of persecuting Palestinians and directing the war in Iraq. He further called for pro-Israeli Christian denominations to be expelled from the "World Church." As usual, the demonic inspired clerics of fundamentalist Islam have been led by Satan to turn things around 180 degrees. It is obvious that it is a top priority of Satan’s Last Days strategy to isolate Christian Zionism, (which did indeed help create an environment for Jehovah to bring a remnant of Jews back to the Promised Land) and to encourage the World’s False Church to eliminate Biblical teaching that is supportive of God’s providence with his chosen nation, Israel. Unfortunately, there are many so-called Christian denominations and Churches that are blindly following the demonic-rhetoric out of Satan’s anti-Zion theological camps.

Palestine Biblically

The term Palestine, although rarely used in the Old Testament, refers specifically to the southwestern coastal area of Israel occupied by the Philistines. As stated above, it is a translation of the Hebrew word "Pelesheth." The term is never used to refer to the whole land occupied by Israel. Before Israel occupied the land, it would be generally accurate to say that the southwestern coastal area (Gaza Strip vicinity) was called Philistia (the way of the Philistines, or Palestine), while the central highlands were called Canaan. Both the Canaanites and the Philistines had disappeared as distinct peoples at least by the time of the Babylonian Captivity of Judea (586BC), and they no longer exist. In the New Testament, the term Palestine is never used. The term Israel is primarily used to refer to the people of Israel, rather than the Land. However, in at least two passages, Israel is used to refer to the Land:

"Saying, Arise, and take this young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel: for they are dead who sought the young child's live. And he arose, and took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel" (Mathew. 2:20-21).

"But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say to you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man shall have come" (Matthew 10:23)

The first passage is when Joseph, Mary and Jesus returned from Egypt to Israel, and the second has reference to the proclamation of the Gospel throughout the Land of Israel. Jesus, Matthew and the angel speaking to Joseph use the term Israel with reference to the Land, even though the term was not then recognized by the Roman authorities.

It is clear, then, that the Bible never uses the term Palestine to refer to the Holy Land as a whole, and Bible maps that refer to Palestine in the Old or New Testament are, at best, inaccurate, and, at worst, are a conscious denial of the Biblical name of Israel.