The Three Israels of Scripture

Part 1: Interview with Mottel Baleston

Tim Moore: Mottel, as always, I’m delighted that you could join us today on Christ in Prophecy, my friend.

Mottel Baleston: Well, Tim, I’m glad to be here with you. These are momentous times. We’re seeing an acceleration of world events and biblical prophecy events. Believers need to be awake to what is happening, and so I’m very glad for your program.

Tim Moore: Well, I appreciate exactly what you just said, Mottel. It feels like prophetic events are actually accelerating all around us. We touched on that with the frequency, and intensity, and the convergence, but one of the most alarming things we are seeing right now is a dramatic rise in antisemitism, even here in the United States.

But before we jump into that specific Satanic hatred, let’s discuss the word, Israel. I emphasize my own preference for the term, the House of Israel, pulled directly from Ezekiel 36, but you teach that there are three Israels in the Bible. What do you mean by that?

Mottel Baleston: Well, the House of Israel is a perfectly acceptable phrase, and it’s often appropriate, but I think it’s often important for believers to understand that the word, Israel, is used in at least three distinctive ways in Scripture, and really, they’re time delineated.

For instance, you have the term, Israel, as the nation, the theocratic nation that God established with Moses and Joshua bringing the people into the land. And so for approximately 1,300 years, you had this nation of Israel which was governed by the Torah, the five books of Moses, and that is the first Israel that I like to speak of, which basically existed for 1,300 years, as I said, and only came to an end at the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 AD. So that would be the first Israel that we like to speak of.

Nathan Jones: Well, if Israel can refer to the people, the nation, and the land, let alone the current government of the nation state of Israel, then how can we be clear when we’re talking about, when we simply say Israel?

Mottel Baleston: And that’s such an important question, because if you’re doing a Bible study, you might be talking about the Israel of the Old Testament. However, if you’re talking about modern politics and the world situation, obviously, the current secular state of Israel, which was reborn in the year 1948, that certainly is a very controversial subject today, a lot of misinformation from various political groups on that.

And so you have to then pose the question, are we talking about the biblical Israel before 70 AD? Are we talking about the modern secular state of Israel that exists today? Or are we talking about the future state of Israel in the Millennium?

And while these three Israels are separated by time periods, here’s the most important thing. It is the same group of people, and there is Tim’s phrase, House of Israel. So it’s the same people. We don’t fall for the nonsense and the conspiracy theories that somehow the Jewish people of today are not the Jewish people of the Bible. That’s been debunked. The DNA shows that it’s the same group of people, and more importantly, God’s promise that He would preserve them shows that it’s the same people.

But you need to ask the very simple diagnostic question, which time period are we talking about? And yet, as Tim, it’s a wonderful phrase, House of Israel, because it gives sort of an arc of the way that God is using this people. But ask the question, be a good Bible student, what time period are we talking about?

Tim Moore: Yeah, I appreciate you affirming that it is the people in addition to the nation as it existed in the past, the present, and the future. I actually find that those who would argue, “Well, what is Israel?” They’re echoing a lie of Satan himself, who would at one time have said, “Did God really say?” And so they’re trying to undermine God’s faithfulness to His promise to preserve this people. Ironically, all the antisemites know who they should hate, even though they claim, “Well, these aren’t really the Jews of the Old Testament.”

Well, I do believe also there’s something telling in the very name, Israel. So Mottel, what significance do you place on God first assigning that name to Jacob based on his personality and character? And what do you think it says to realize that God referred to the chosen descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob collectively as Israel? That the original name meant what? And how does that still bear significance today?

Mottel Baleston: Well, sure, as many of your listeners and viewers will understand, the name, Is ra el, the last phrase, el, is short for Elohim, which means God, but Is ra is essentially the one who strives with. Jacob held onto the angel of the Lord, which is a whole other story. He held onto the angel of the Lord, and “I will not let you go until you give me your blessing.” In other words, he strove with God. He would not let go of God.

In his ups and in his downs, we see that Jacob later named Israel was holding on to God. He wasn’t perfect. He was an individual just like any of us, but he held on and he strove with God. So Is ra el literally means he who strives with God, and that has been the characteristic of our Jewish people since that time. Through ups and downs, and Roman conquests, and the diaspora, and then the return to the land, we strive with God, holding on to Him, asking Him for the return of Messiah. And so this phrase of holding on to God really does characterize it.

Tim Moore: Do you think there’s any significance to the land itself being given the same name, the Land of Israel?

Mottel Baleston: You know, no human being could have come up with this. If you would’ve written this in a book, they’d say, “No, no, it’s just too farfetched,” but the land is also called Is ra el, meaning there is… There’s a wonderful Hebrew word and the word is “kesher.” It means a connection, or it means a bridge or a connection. And there is an absolute eternal connection between the people of Israel and Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel, because God has placed His name there.

Just as an aside, there’s an amazing thing that happens if you see a topographical map of Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, there are a series of hills and valleys, and you’re making this sign right now of the Hebrew letter shin. If you look at the topography, the letter shin is illustrated in the hills and valleys, and that is the first letter of the Hebrew word, Shaddai. El Shaddai is one of the titles of God, and in the Scripture, God says, “I have placed my name in Jerusalem.”

Jerusalem is His chosen place to manifest Himself. It’s the place where the prophets went to to announce the coming of Messiah, and it’s the place where our salvation in Jesus Christ, the Messiah, was accomplished. His name is there, and the efforts of the nations to try to separate the Jewish people from the Jewish land is indicative of a satanic conspiracy. Not being overly dramatic, folks, that’s literally what it is.

Nathan Jones: Well, as a student of Bible, many students have wondered about this, shortly what happened after the time of David and Solomon, Israel became two nations. You had Israel in the North and Judah as the Southern Kingdom, and Judah was the favorite between Judah and Benjamin in the South.

But then in the New Testament, the land was divided into different regions. You had Judea, and Samaria, and Galilee, but the national identity seems to have returned to a singularity. And then again in 1948, the name chosen to identify the modern Jewish state, even by secular founders, was Israel. Why is the land now Israel and not Judah? And is the word, Jews, from Judah?

Mottel Baleston: The name, Israel, is more indicative of all 12 tribes, whereas if they had named it Judah, it would seem to be just the southern two tribes. Here’s something that many of our evangelicals misunderstand. There is not this idea that Jews are just representing the tribes of Judah or Benjamin, and they don’t represent the 10 northern tribes. My understanding of scripture history is that there were people from all 12 tribes who returned to the land.
In the New Testament, you have Anna who is said to be of the Tribe of Asher. And so there were many in the 12 tribes, all 12 tribes, who returned to the land, but because the kingship was invested in the Tribe of Judah, David is from Judah, Judah became the most prominent tribe.

So for instance, in the memory of some of our older viewers here, just as the name Frigidaire became synonymous for all refrigerators, or Kleenex became synonymous for all tissues, the name Judah was just kind of stretched over all 12 tribes, but it represents all 12. And that’s why it’s used that way, because even the apostle Paul says, “Am I not an Israelite?” And then of course, what tribe was he from? He was the Tribe of Benjamin.

And so the name is used, by the year of Jesus’ birth, the name became synonymous with all of the Jewish people, and that’s the way it remains today.

Tim Moore: So Mottel, just to follow up, you said the name, Judah, was stretched across the nations. Obviously, Israel now signifies all of them, but because Judah was stretched across, that probably is a root of the name, Jew.

Mottel Baleston: And so today when people refer to the Jewish people in shorthand, they’ll just say, “Oh, the Jews,” and that can be done either in a positive way or in a negative way, and it’s simply and only because the Tribe of Judah was the most prominent, and the Tribe of Judah produced the kings, and so it became the most prominent, whereas today, all Jewish people are representative of all 12 tribes.

I have one of my great grandparents is a Levite, but the others are from various other tribes, which we don’t even know. And so don’t be fooled by the idea that we use the term, Jew. It means people of all 12 tribes, and the term, Israel, also means people of all 12 tribes.

Tim Moore: Well, obviously, we worship the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, which signifies His royal designation. Well, obviously, Mottel, today, scoffers and some agenda-driven commentators like Tucker Carlson like to point out that the modern nation of Israel, the nation state, remains an overwhelmingly secular state, yes, with a heavy sprinkling of Orthodox Jews who skew some government policies to their own favor.

And yet the promises of God were not contingent on the Jews’ ability to be faithful to Him. As cited in Ezekiel 36 & 7, “His faithfulness to His promises was for His own namesake, not because the Jewish people had deserved to receive His favor,” and quite frankly, that’s the same Good News of the Gospel. He’s not going to pour out His blessing on us because we deserve it, but because He has promised and for His own namesake. That’s the grace that is extended even to us.

Mottel Baleston: It’s amazing the people who try to make that argument, if you turned it back on them and said, “Well, that means that a person is only in God’s favor when they’re perfectly obedient,” Well, my friend, look at yourself. You know that you’re a sinner. You’ve been saved by grace. And so this false idea that somehow what God does is somehow dependent upon us being good is the opposite of the Gospel. The Book of Romans says, “While we were still yet sinners, Messiah died for us,” and that’s the good news.

Tim Moore: Well, obviously, we also realize that there’s a lot of pushback today against the modern state of Israel. You would argue that’s the number two Israel in your sequence of timeline-identified nations of Israel. Do you think that’s because Satan realizes that his time is so short? You mentioned it earlier, this is not some conspiracy theory, this is straight out of Scripture that Satan is going to become more and more enraged as his time grows short, and quite frankly, he has always had a target on the Jewish people.

Mottel Baleston: That is absolutely true. Think of it this way. The first arrival of Messiah Jesus was dependent upon the existence of the Jewish people. Satan tried to cut off that line. That’s why we have so many wars in the Hebrew scriptures, but he was unsuccessful. God protected the Jewish people so the Messiah can be born.

And now, here’s the thing that most people don’t realize. In Matthew 13, we have the leadership of the Jewish people rejecting Jesus Yeshua as Messiah, and what is the response of Jesus to them? He said, “Okay, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'”

So the same people who rejected the king and sent the king away, according to Messiah Jesus, He said, “You are the people who now need to repent of that,” and “look up to heaven,” as Zechariah says, and say, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”

So the return of the Messiah has a major component where the Jewish leadership need to recognize who Yeshua is. If there’s no Jewish leadership, or if we’re able to turn them away from Messiah, then you drive a wedge between the Jewish people and Jesus. And that is what Satan wants to do, and Satan is using uninformed, misled people who imagine they are Christians to push these conspiracy theories.

Nathan Jones: What about those Christians who are out there saying that Israel is an accident of history? It’s not godly because the Jewish people there don’t believe in Jesus as their Messiah?

Mottel Baleston: Well, the very simple fact that when Jesus promised to return, He didn’t promise to return to Washington, DC or to Wheaton, Illinois, or Salt Lake City. He promised to return to Jerusalem. Over and over again, in the New Testament, we see the promise of the return of the Messiah of Israel to return to Israel, and it says that the Jewish people will recognize Him.

And so this is God’s design. This is not an accident of history. In order for the events of the last days to occur, in order for our people to recognize Messiah, there’s going to be a Jewish government in place in the holy land, and that was intentional. God orchestrated it. All of the players are assembling on the stage and we are about to see a dramatic event.

Tim Moore: You know, you mentioned that some Christians are misinformed, and I’ve pointed out that it is not beyond the scope of even scriptural narrative to think that a professing Christian could speak words that are actually satanic, and you think, “What?”

But when Peter confessed that Jesus was the Christ and was lauded for the Father Himself revealing that to him, just a few verses later, Peter became a mouthpiece of Satan when he said, “No, Lord, you will not die,” and the Lord rebuked Peter and said, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” So my prayer is that I never become an unwitting stooge or just a mouthpiece for uttering things that are satanic and that are contrary to the will of God.

And I fear that many Christians are being deceived right now about the proper attitude toward Israel as a House of Israel, as the people group, even the nation, but definitely we should ascribe to what Paul describes as wanting to make the Jewish people jealous of the relationship we have with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Mottel Baleston: And I’m so glad that you pointed that out. We are not infallible. We’re easily swayed by propaganda. That’s why it’s so important to stay in this book. We have to stay in God’s Word and not be swayed by all of these commentators. I have a friend from Texas who said about the commentators, “Hey, they’re just common-tators.”

Nathan Jones: Sounds like Texas.

Tim Moore: Well, speaking of Texas, we have some great resources that were written by a man from Texas, Dr. David Reagan, regarding Israel in Bible Prophecy, and The Jewish People: Rejected or Beloved? And he makes a dramatic and very biblical case that Israel is throughout God’s prophetic Word, and that the Jewish people indeed are not rejected. God has not washed His hands of them, but instead they are beloved.

And because God loves the Jewish people, all of us as followers of Jesus Christ, if we want to be godlike or godly in our attitudes, should also love the Jewish people.

Mottel Baleston: I’m glad you said that, and this does not mean that we give carte blanche to all the actions of the current secular state of Israel. I’ll tell you, even among Jewish believers in Jesus and among my own peers, there are different feelings and debates about whether the current government is doing the right thing, whether things should be done slightly differently.

However our enemies simply want to have us destroyed, and that’s the big picture, and so we need to keep our eyes on that big picture.

Tim Moore: Well, Mottel, I don’t mean to take all the questions, but one thing that’s burning in my mind is you’re from Brooklyn, New York, and so you grew up right there in the big city, the Big Apple, and of late, there’s been a very dramatic political dynamic where we’ve seen an avid socialist, actually, I think he’s an Islamist, ascend to be the mayor, and I have to believe that that has caused some degree of angst in the Jewish community.

Do you see this perhaps as God motivating the Jewish community there in New York, probably the largest enclave outside of Israel, to finally realize they need to go home, they need to make Aliyah, and not just to Florida, but to Israel?

Mottel Baleston: Just two days ago in Brooklyn, not far from my old neighborhood, maybe a mile or two away, there was an invasion of hardcore…a grouping of Islamists and hardcore socialists. There is this incredible grouping of people who are hardcore socialists, who are very liberal in their politics along with hardcore Islamists who would, given half the chance, would persecute them.

And so you have this symbiosis that is only satanic, but these people invaded a Jewish neighborhood in Flatbush, New York just two nights ago. And they were intimidating, they were yelling threats at the homeowners, and they were on their way to a synagogue that was a few blocks away, and they sat down in the road outside the synagogue, blocking traffic, inflammatory intimidation.

And because we have a current mayor who is both an avid Muslim and a socialist, very strongly to the left of things, he has sort of stepped back, whereas other mayors would’ve condemned this. So we see a concerning situation, and yes, to your point, there is increased talk of immigration and to Israel, because the seminar at that synagogue was on that very topic. It was on the idea of making Aliyah, making immigration to Israel.

More and more American Jews were thinking of it. There was a meeting a week ago in France where several dozen medical professionals, doctors, surgeons, all were there for a meeting with the Israeli medical establishment which were offering them jobs, because France is becoming an Islamic stronghold. So yes, friends, we’re seeing the culmination of things and prophecy. You’d have to be blind or in absolute denial to not see the way that God is bringing about the culmination of these things.

Nathan Jones: Well, Mottel, here at Lamb & Lion Ministries, we’re in the Dallas area, so we’re at the heart of what a lot of the news has been all over the nation, that the Islamic world is trying to build an epic community. They’re trying to build colleges. We see just our own, where we live, that the neighborhoods are quickly becoming Islamic. I know mine is, too, and the persecution of the Jews spreads, especially on the college campuses.

What do you think will eventually lead to the world pushing the Jews out or making the Jews want to regather the diaspora back into the End Times and all the Jews to return to Israel?

Mottel Baleston: And you know, in nation after nation, the political temperament is becoming more and more hostile to Jewish people. For instance, in a place like Iceland, you know, they have very little to do with Jewish things, and yet they’ve been invaded by this hardcore nexus of both Islamists and socialists. And in Iceland, in Ireland of all places, there is such a fervent hatred for the Jewish people, that ordinary Jewish people, and this puts to the lie, the idea that you can be anti-Zionist alone and not be anti-Semitic.

My friends, there is a very slippery slope, and people who were only anti-Zionists a year ago are now demonstrating outside of synagogues that are not… This is not Israel, this is America. And so yes, the atmosphere is going to increasingly become such that more and more Jewish people outside Israel are going to recognize that this is the one homeland, and once again, it’s working toward the culmination of prophetic events.

Again, you cannot look at this with eyes wide open and not understand that God is bringing about all these promises, the people are coming back to the land. The Scripture itself says, “I will draw you from the four corners of the earth,” and that is literally what is happening. People who thought they were very happy and ensconced in a certain diaspora or community are now saying, “Let’s go back, let’s go home.”

Tim Moore: Amen.

Nathan Jones: Well, Mottel, you’re always a great guest. I’ve learned so much from you. How can viewers contact your ministry and access your powerful teachings?

Mottel Baleston: Sure, we have an organization that’s under a large evangelical mission board, and our website is simply www.messiahnj. We’re based here in New Jersey, so NJ, although we’re all over the place now, but messiahnj.org, or just type my name into Google Search Engine. You’ll find our website at the very top. We’re happy to answer questions.

We have a number of helpful articles on some of these very topics. We have a good article on the Khazar myth; that’s something that’s making the rounds in evangelical circles today. We have some articles on dispelling the rumors about Israel. We have a number of those articles easily downloaded in PDF formula. What I just realized as I’m talking to you about this, I need to put a link to your website on my website.

Tim Moore: Please do, we’ll do that mutually. Well, Mottel, thank you as always for joining us today and for blessing us and our viewers with your insights. I’m already looking forward to crossing paths with you in person again, whether here, there, or in the air.

Mottel Baleston: Amen.

Closing

Tim Moore: Well, there you have it. There’s much more to the name, Israel, than initially meets the eye, but what is not disputable from a biblical, and therefore, Christian perspective is that God has not washed His hands of the Jewish people or the Promised Land of Israel.

Nathan Jones: Absolutely not. So many prophetic promises are tied to Israel, which is why we refer to the nation, or what Tim has called the House of Israel, as God’s prophetic Time Clock. The fig tree that was cursed in Matthew 21 and Mark 11 is putting forth leaves and it’s beginning to bear fruit once again, just as Jesus prophesied in Matthew 24.

Tim Moore: That’s right, and today, more Jews profess faith in Jesus Christ than in the past 2,000 years. Some Messianic Jews claim that more Jews believe in Yeshua as Savior and Lord today than the past 2,000 years combined. All we can say is, Hallelujah!

Nathan Jones: If you’d like to see what God is doing in the land of Israel and among the Jewish people regathered there, then join us on a Lamb & Lion Ministries pilgrimage. We will soon post details of our trip next year. If you have the ability, go and see it with your own eyes or send someone, a loved one or a young person, on your behalf to come back and tell you what they have seen and experienced.

Tim Moore: Someday we won’t need an airline ticket to travel to the Promised Land. When the trumpet sounds, the Archangel cries, and Jesus shouts, all who have trusted in Him, Jew and Gentile, will meet Him in the air in anticipation of that instantaneous home going. We pray that you are already saying, “Baruch Haba B’ Shem Adonai,” Blessed is He who comes (and He who already came) in the Name of the Lord!

We’ll see you next week… Godspeed!

End of Program