“I will curse those who curse you” was not an empty statement

A founding principle of Christian Zionism is the biblical understanding that God will bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse Israel.

When God made a covenant with Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, He said to him:

Genesis 12:1-3:

Now the Lord had said to Abram:

“Get out of your country,
From your family
And from your father’s house,
To a land that I will show you.
I will make you a great nation;
I will bless you
And make your name great;
And you shall be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
And I will curse him who curses you;
And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

This same blessing was passed down to Isaac and Jacob and to their descendants. It was a promise from God and it has stood the test of time.

Quite simply put, this Bible fact is that what you do to the Jewish people, God will do it to you. And God is always watching. “He that keeps Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps,” Psalm 121:4.

God watched as the Jewish people were persecuted in Egypt. He sent Moses to warn Pharaoh, but he ignored the warnings. God sent plagues as signs of his power, each plague undermining the power of different deities in Egypt. Due to the final plague, in almost every home in Egypt, someone was dead because God sent the angel of death on the night of the Exodus to kill the firstborn, because Phraoah did not allow the children of Israel to leave peaceably. Finally, Pharoah was killed because God Almighty dealt with him. Just as Pharoah drowned Jewish babies in the Nile River, God drowned Pharoah and his army in the Red Sea. He was the most powerful man on planet earth and as Pastor Hagee puts it, he was “turned into fish food in about two minutes.”

Egypt was the most powerful country on planet earth at that time and Pharoah was the most powerful man. The plagues upon Egypt wiped out its economy, its military force, its wealth and its ruler.

This should have been a warning, but empires and rulers have failed to heed God’s warning throughout the ages. The Greeks, the Romans, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Nazis and others. Each one of these empires persecuted the Jews or sought to take the land of Israel for themselves. Each one of these empires is just a footnote in history. None of them exist today because what they did to the Jews, God did to them.

Recently, a Turkish politician, Hasan Bitmez, was giving a speech at the Turkish Parliament. He ranted against Israel and declared, “Israel will suffer Allah’s wrath.” Seconds later he suffered a heart attack, collapsed and hit his head on the stairs. He was rushed to hospital and the next day he was pronounced dead.

Was this an act of God’s judgement upon him? Was it simply a medical situation that occurred with impeccable timing? We don’t know exactly, but we do know that God’s Word is as true today as it was 3,000 years ago when God made that covenant with Abraham.

Those who bless Israel will be blessed and those who curse Israel will be cursed.

This was not an empty phrase, this was a promise from God.