God then called him Abraham!  (Genesis 17:5)

Abraham had Isaac!  (Genesis 21)

(Abraham also had Ishmael - who is a pain for the rest of history! -  (Genesis 16)

Isaac had Jacob!  (Genesis 25)

Named after Jacob, renamed Israel by God!  (Genesis 32:28)

Jacob had twelve sons who became the famous 12 tribes of Israel!  (Genesis 49)

God gave them a land (Palestine - Joel 3:4) so they could live separated from the heathen peoples in order to fulfill God's purposes to win the world.  A wall was built by them and God between themselves and the Gentiles. Genesis 17:4-8; Exodus 19:3-6; Ephesians 2:11,14; Matthew 7:6; 15:21-28; Romans 10:19 and Romans 9:4,5 compared with Ephesians 2:11,12

Jews eventually fell down to bondage as they continued to ignore and reject God's words!

God delivered the scriptures to the world through the Jews!  (Romans 3:1,2)

The Messiah was prophesied many times.

God brought the Saviour into the world through the Jews, and lest we forget, it was all for the Jews first.  (Romans 9:4,5; Gospels)

The Jews rejected Him many times!  (Gospels; Acts)

God goes on to the Gentiles (Acts transition with Paul to Philemon)

God creates a special body of saved people composed of both Jews and Gentiles to be the Bride of Christ!  (Romans 3:9; 29; I Corinthians 12:13; Ephesians 2:13-15; Ephesians 3: Acts 15:14-16)

(At the same time, God sends them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. - II Thessalonians 2:11,12

Finishes off Satan and his army!  (Revelation 19,20)

Zionism - The modern movement which began in earnest after the Jewish persecutions of World War I and II, and which led to the creation of the modern state of Israel. For those readers interested (this is not in the audio sermon) the following history is from the New 20th-Century Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge:

After the Roman expulsion of the Jews from Jerusalem in A.D. 135, this `Zion' idea [being identified with Jerusalem] was never divorced from Jewish thinking, and Jewish prayers (both individual and corporate) reiterated the desire to return to their homeland.

The actual term `Zionism' was not used until the 1890s. . In the latter decades of the 19th century, the rise of Hebrew literature, Jewish nationalism, and a fresh outbreak of anti-Semitism stimulated groups such as Hoveve Zion (`Lovers of Zion') to raise money to send Jewish settlers to Palestine (a name the Romans had given the land to sever its connection with Judaism).

By the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Jews had purchased more than 100,000 acres from large landowners and had reclaimed fertile cultivated areas from marsh areas and deserts. Jewish urban areas also expanded, and in 1909 a group of Jaffa Jews founded Tel Aviv, destined to become modern Israel's largest city.

Pre-modern Zionism emphasized a religious motive and quiet territorial settlement. With the publication of the small booklet entitled Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution to the Jewish Question) by Theodor Herzl in 1896, however, political Zionism was born and with it the modern conception of Zionism.

In Der Judenstaat and subsequent articles and speeches, Herzl expounded political, economic, and technical efforts that he believed were necessary to create a functioning Jewish state. The First Zionist Congress met in 1897 and over 200 delegates from all over the world adopted the Basel Program.

This program stressed that Zionism sought to create a legal home in Palestine for the Jewish people and would promote settlement, create worldwide organizations to bind Jews together, strengthen Jewish national consciousness, and obtain consent of the governments of the world.

Herzl's thinking was purely secular; in fact, he was an agnostic. The majority of his followers, however, were Orthodox southeastern Europeans. ... Shortly after his death in 1904, approximately 70,000 Jewish people had settled in Palestine. ... Zionism would be transformed into a mass movement and political power during World War I.

The British issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917 which bestowed favor upon the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish national home.

Zionism was a minority movement and encountered opposition within the Jewish community. American Reform Judaism, for example, claimed that Palestine was no longer a Jewish land and that the USA was `Zion.' ... it was only the horror of the murder of 100,000 Jews by Russian army units from 1919 to 1921 and, ultimately, the horror of the Nazi Holocaust during World War II in which 6 million Jews were exterminated, that drew Zionists and non-Zionists together in support of Palestine as a Jewish commonwealth--a haven for the persecuted and homeless.

In November 1947, a partition plan creating a Jewish state was endorsed by both the USA and the Soviet Union. It was passed by the General Assembly of the United Nations.

The State of Israel was formally recognized on May 14, 1948, when British rule ended.           D Cloud

I Thessalonians 5:3  For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.
Daniel 8:25  And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand.
Daniel 11:21  And in his estate shall stand up a vile person, to whom they shall not give the honour of the kingdom: but he shall come in peaceably, and obtain the kingdom by flatteries.