historyscoper.com

1. All of anything that is of any importance for Israel - even the name Israel - comes from the Bible, the Tanakh, and portions of the Talmud (the Talmud contains corruption by ancient Babylonian culture and religion).

2. The patriarch Abraham, the guy on whom the whole of the Bible and Israel religion-state was founded, was given his position by God because Abraham believed God. That's it. He wasn't super-human. He wasn't the best thinker. He didn't twist God's arm. He simply believed God. And his faith in God is the thing that moved God to found the nation of Israel on Abraham.

3. Descendants of Abraham, from God's standpoint, are NOT people who genetically have Abraham in their line of ancestors... although many of Abraham's descendants ARE physically descended from Abraham. Rather, in God's sight, Abraham's descendants are those who believe the God of the Bible - the same God that Abraham believed - with a faith like Abraham's. Genetically speaking, because of intermarriages, multitudes upon multitudes of people around the world have the genes of Abraham within them, and have Abraham as one of their ancestors, no matter what they believe or don't believe about God.

4. Strike 1: God's destruction of Israel the first time - because of their unfaithfulness to Him - occurred in 588 B.C., with the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians. It lasted 70 years, the destruction of Israel as a nation. After the 70 years ended, Israel returned as a nation with the rebuilding of Jerusalem, but it never had the strength that it displayed prior to it's fall in 588 B.C..

5. Strike 2: In 70 A.D. Israel as a nation fell with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. The fall to the Babylonians lasted 70 years, and longer if you want to consider that it took awhile for Israel to regain a semblance of strength. The second fall - by the Romans - lasted 1,800+ years.

6. Strike 3: Strike 3 hasn't happened... yet. The point is that God said to Isaac, Abraham's son, Genesis 26:4,5 (NIV): "I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because Abraham obeyed me and did everything I required of him, keeping my commands, my decrees and my instructions.”

7. If Israel doesn't recognize that God is the God of all nations, and that blessings come to all nations through Israel, rather than that all nations other than Israel are to necessarily be "Goyim," Strike 3 just might happen. If it happens, it will be forever this time. Bible prophesy seems to say that it will not happen.

8. If Strike 3 doesn't happen, it will be because Israel truly returns to the God of their fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Jacob's other name is Israel). Any people who want to be counted as God's people need to return to God as well. Get into the Bible to find out about God, and become a descendant of Abraham spiritually, if you are not one already through faith in God.

NOTE: Lots of Jews, when writing about God, write God like this: G-d. They do this because they have been instructed to NOT misuse the name of God. So they don't want to even use the NAME, because they might accidentally misuse it. But "God" or "G-d" is not His NAME. There is one NAME of God. It is the NAME that God gave to Moss on Mount Sinai. Even the "nicknames," scattered throughout the Bible, and that God accepts, are not really His NAME. The true NAME of God, even though it can be spoken, is really a spiritual communication between the spirit of the user and the Spirit of God.