“God said to Jacob, ‘Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there. Make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.’” (Ge 35:1)
Jacob ended up in big trouble when he returned to the Promised Land. His attempt to settle in among the inhabitants of the Land ended in a deep crisis. His entire family risked extinction from angry and hostile neighbors. He told his sons:
“You have brought trouble on me by making me stink to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites. My numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household.” (Ge 34:30)
The wise Solomon said: “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See, this is new’? It has been already in the ages before us.” (Ecc 1:9-10)
Israel is in exactly the same critical situation today as Jacob and his family were almost 4,000 years ago.
It was at this point that God spoke to Jacob to go to Bethel and “dwell there”. Bethel means “House of God”. In Bethel Jacob was asked to renew his covenant with God and fulfill the promise he had made to God before he left the Land:
“Then Jacob made a vow, saying, ‘If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then the LORD shall be my God, and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house. And of all that you give me I will give a full tenth to you.’” (Ge 28:20-22)
Jacob was to make an altar in Bethel to the God who appeared to him there when he fled from his brother Esau. Yeshua appeared to His people just before their long exile among the nations began. He said to Nathanael:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” (Jn 1:51)
Messiah is Bethel, the “House of God”.
“So the Jews said to him, ‘What sign do you show us for doing these things?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking about the temple of his body.” (Jn 2:18-21)
Jacob’s family repented, cleansing themselves from all foreign gods and put on new clothes, just as their descendants did before the divine encounter at Sinai. “And as they journeyed, a terror from God fell upon the cities that were around them, so that they did not pursue the sons of Jacob.” (Ge 35:5)
Secular humanism will never accomplish peace for Israel. The only way to peace is that Israel turns to God cleansing themselves of all foreign gods and acknowledging “the God who appeared” before the exile began. Israel must return to Bethel! Then a terror from God will once again fall upon their neighbors and they will no longer dare to harass them. A Muslim imam serving in the first mosque ever erected on American soil, said many years ago in a debate with a Jewish friend of mine: “If the Jews will serve God better than we Muslims do, we will follow them.”
“In that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the LORD of hosts has blessed, saying, ‘Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance.’” (Isa 19:24-25)
