Abraham was the major focus of the middle East until Jesus Christ of Nazareth came on the scene. Jesus broke the barrier that held the promise of Abraham bound to the Jews alone and made it available to everyone that believes in His name. This was not the expectation of the Jews in their messiah. Their thought of the promised messiah was a person that would make them world power like in the days of David.
The work of Jesus gave birth to a set of people referred to today as Christians and the religion known as Christianity. So, Jesus gave Christians a legal claim to the promise of Abraham and it has been evident in the history of the church that there is truly a covenant of Abraham functioning in the lives of Christians. This is much to the chagrin of the Jews who still hold on to the religion that came out of the old testament- Judaism.
Jesus is considered by many Jews as simply a brother. At best, they regard Him as one of the persons who claimed to be the Messiah. They are still expecting a Messiah after the order of king David who conquered many lands and made Jacob supreme among the nations. The disciples of Jesus expected that from Him, but He seemed to have another agenda. So,Jesus is the separating factor between Judaism and Christianity.
Islam began 600 years after the birth of Jesus and the religion took it root in Abraham's blessing, claiming that the promised child was not Isaac, but Ishmael. according to the bible, Ishmael is the son of the Egyptian slave- Hagar. By this distortion, Islam claims that they are the true heir of the promise of Abraham and not the Jews. The coming of Jesus which didn't disenfranchise the Jews, however exempted the Muslims from the covenant completely.
This is a major bone of contention between the lovers of Jesus and Muslims. Jesus made it clear that if you will partake of the promise of Abraham, you have to go through Him. This is considered offensive by Islam that eventually came up many centuries later. The religion pioneered by a man from Mecca (present day Saudi Arabia). Islam is constructed in a manner that it regards Jesus as a prophet and nothing more.
So, the battle of the Middle East has shifted from just land and supremacy among brothers to supremacy of religion. It's no longer battles between Abraham and Lot, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, it is now between lovers of Jesus and haters of Jesus. Jesus has become the dividing line in the present day middle East. For the sake of Abraham and David, the Jews still carry a shadow of the covenant, but the substance of the covenant now belongs to the Christians. In the next post, I will write on the importance of the Jews in the last days
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