'I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you’
But to whom does Genesis 12:3 refer to? Let’s explore some scriptural facts and historical evidences
On one particular morning recently, my Twitter feed was filled with what I sometimes call “Israel worship”. I am reproducing two samples here (no, they were not directed at me): "If you have a problem with God's election of Israel then He has a problem with your problem”; and “Israel is a stumbling block to the nations is something even the nations cannot deny. Just watch the news...there it is.”
I thought the US government was the biggest stumbling block to nations everywhere, when it was not acting as a stumbling block to its own citizens? Just ask the man in the street from Rio de Janeiro to Cairo to Moscow to Kampala to Tokyo and all the way back to conservative suburbs in the United States. This cannot be denied; just watch the news… there it is.
But this is not a disquisition into the apocalyptic worldview of “trailer trash evangelicals” as my Israeli acquaintances once dubbed this species. Israelis do not want to burn like a national effigy in an End Times fire. The “blessings” they routinely receive is supposed to hasten this process. Israelis counter this Jesuit-inspired futurist worldview by quoting Proverbs 27:14:
He that blesseth his friend with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, it shall be counted a curse to him.
Unfortunately, this heretical theology is metastasizing like cancer as we enter the End Times. It is one where the modern state of Israel supplants the body of Christ in the eschatological scheme of things. I liken the adherents of this doctrine to the actions of Esau who cheaply forfeited his firstborn rights for a pot of stew. The Christian’s rights as a firstborn; as a firstfruit offering before God; as one circumcised in the heart; and a Jew by faith alone (1 Corinthians 15:21-23) means squat under this worldview.
This dogma also induces its adherents to ignore the persecution of Christians while it focuses on any offence, real or otherwise, directed against Israel. When a nation suffers an earthquake or a calamity, the “prophetic” purveyors of this theology will frantically scour the news to see whether it had sent food or medicines to Gaza or whether it had abstained from a toothless UN vote over Israel.
Think I am taking this rant a tad too far? I remember attending one particular church in Malaysia where the congregants, upon learning of my Jewish antecedents, actually thought I was “doubly blessed”! I didn’t know Christianity had a caste system.
Underpinning this heretical belief system is the first part of Genesis 12:3 which forms the headlines of this article. But here is what the full verse reads.
And I shall bless those blessing you, and those cursing you I shall curse, and in you and in your seed all the generations of the Earth shall be blessed.”
I am quoting from a version called the Aramaic Bible in Plain English since I am feeling “doubly blessed” and supremely Chosen right now. Besides, my ancestors spoke Aramaic — as Jesus did — and the language still features prominently in traditional liturgical services (which I do not attend anyway).
More to the point, who or what was that verse referring to? It was a promise made to the patriarch Abraham way before the 12 tribes of Israel came into existence and the seed was none other than Jesus Christ. As the apostle Paul clearly stated in Gal 3:16: “Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He does not say, ‘And to seeds,’ as of many, but as of one, ‘And to your Seed,’ who is Christ” (Gal. 3:16). This is the promised “seed” of the woman that would crush the serpent’s (satan’s) head (Gen. 3:15).
This clearly establishes the true identity of the Messiah and to whom the blessings and curses of Gen 12:3 are applicable. Therefore, any entity or nation that blesses Christians would be blessed by God. Leaving Christians communities alone to practise their faith is indeed a blessing. Persecuting, abetting or celebrating their persecution invites divine wrath.
So, is Israel still being blessed by God even as it curses Christians each day? According to the Judaizers in the organised church, whom Paul repeatedly censured in his epistles, the answer appears to be an emphatic yes. But Paul condemned these “influencers” as dogs! (Phillipians 3:2).
But isn’t what I have written thus far just my loaded opinion? Can I really disprove this tendentious theology by juxtaposing historically observable blessings and curses with regards to Jews and Christians? I will provide two or three national examples for the sake of brevity as I know the seeker will keep seeking while fools will continue to despise wisdom, facts and instructions (Proverbs 1:7).
Germany’s Divine Curse
False preachers regularly invoke Genesis 12:3 to condemn certain nations according to the geopolitical whims of the day. If that verse specifically referred to Jews, and in particular the modern state of Israel, then all of Western Europe would have been cursed into oblivion centuries ago and the United States would have never come into existence. But let us take a more specific example. Germany is an excellent petrie dish to test the veracity of this verse.
If Germany had invited a divine curse for its role in the holocaust, then why did it rise like a phoenix from the ashes of WWII to become an economic and technological superpower? The Wirtschaftswunder, as it is called, rocketed off like a V-2 iteration even before post-war Germany could fully rebuild its devastated cities. Is it because the Nazis had played a sinuous role in the creation of Israel through the Haavara Agreement and therefore God was obliged to “bless Germany”, holocaust or not? I think I have just heard a few evangelical heads popping upon reading this. But for those keen on learning more about this alliance, try downloading Lenni Brenner’s 312-page opus on the subject.
Germany however had indeed faced a prolonged curse for another sin that was inextricably tied to Gen 12:3. As someone who has devoured more historical material than scientific ones by a thousand-fold — I am currently in the field of Artificial Intelligence governance — I had always wondered why Germany had to suffer decades of death, misery and ruination in the first half of the 20th century, in the period between WWI, the Weimar hyperinflation and WWII.
The answer lies in Germany’s proactive role in three simultaneous genocides against Christians in the Ottoman Empire beginning in 1914. These were specifically the Armenian genocide; the Assyrian genocide; and the Greek genocide. The total death toll was estimated to be over 2 million, with an innumerable number of women suffering rape, enslavement and forced conversion to Islam along with their fatherless children.
The Germans were delirious over the Ottoman Empire’s ruthless “triumph of the will”. This phenomenon was called Turkenfieber (Turkish fever) and it was a disease that was wholly embraced by the German Reich. Along with ideological support, Germany had provided the Ottoman Empire with materiel, weapons and advisors for these genocides.
Nearly all references to the Turkenfieber have been expunged from the Internet. After much attempts to fool various search algorithms, I did find a useful post on this subject, although the term Turkenfieber was somewhat mistranslated into “Turkish fire”.
The mastermind behind these genocides was Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who eventually became the father of modern Turkey. The Germans had nothing but praise for him while Adolph Hitler viewed him as an ideal role model. The foot soldiers who perpetrated many of these massacres were the Kurds — a stateless breed that was subsequently condemned to serve new masters in Tehran, Ankara, Baghdad and Damascus. Talk about divine curses!
Israel which gets all frothy and apoplectic over what it calls “Holocaust denial” however has refused to recognize the Armenian, Greek and Assyrian genocides. The Turks, after all, are their closest kins; constant genetic infusions from European converts (including someone with family connections to Hitler himself) notwithstanding.
It is my opinion that God is not done dealing with Turkey yet, much like how He allowed the sins of the biblical Amorites to run its full course before its destruction. After all, Turkey is the land of Gog, Magog, Tubal and Meshech etc. which all play an End Times eschatological role. I have gamed out several Middle Eastern geopolitical scenarios over the years, and it is always Turkey that ends up being the mortal enemy of Israel.
The Ottoman genocidal spirit is still alive. The West’s ongoing genocidal campaign against the people of Syria, including its support of Islamist terror groups, is a continuation of this century-old quest. Why, you may wonder? I can only proffer a theory. Christians have been in Syria for 2,000 years and the term “Christian” was first coined in Antioch (Acts 11:26). Which preponderant ethnicity do you think they were before (and briefly after) they had embraced their long-awaited Messiah?
My theory is that the occultists who rule the West and Israel want to wipe out the physical/genetic remnants of the House of Jacob before a wholly counterfeit grouping takes over.
India’s ‘Blessings’?
If Genesis 12:3 is only applicable to Israel, then India would be the most blessed nation on earth. There are one billion Hindus who inhabit India today and they are almost universally, and I must say rabidly, pro-Israel. When the Israel-Gaza war broke out, hordes of Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) proponents trolled the Internet in support of Israel. It seemed like the Hindu pantheon had found a new supreme deity in the form of Israel.
Poems were written in horrendous English; discordant renditions of Hatikvah were posted online; and slogans and exhortations were raised on behalf of what Indian trolls called their “Israeli brothers”. That is when they were not trolling Muslims, Xtians (their derogatory term for Christians), the West (their beloved migration destination), China, Korea, Africa and pretty much the rest of humanity. All with a sense of impunity. When the favour was returned in kind with a mockumentary such as the one posted below, these trolls suddenly wanted censorship and restraint. I thought these guys believed in karma?
(Warning: This mockumentary is highly denigratory and dehumanising but it yet manages to hit multiple bullseyes. Watch at your own discretion and if you do, ask yourselves if India is indeed blessed).
India no longer has any excuses for its pathetic state of affairs. Unlike much of Africa, India has enough scientific talent, wealth and wherewithals to fix its multiple social malaises. It is also the fifth largest economy in the world. Yet, large parts of India resemble the poorest parts of Congo, sans the human empathy element. I have been to India several times and I know what I am talking about.
Curiously, Christianity arrived in India 2,000 years ago, in what is today the state of Kerala, and local rulers allowed Christians to prosper thereafter. Can the promises of Genesis 12:3 be validated via the case of Kerala? Absolutely. The literacy rate among Kerala natives (excluding migrant labourers) is 100% (as compared to 50-60% for hardcore Hindutva states); it has the highest percentage of university graduates in India, and it is a relatively clean place. This trend might change as Christians in Kerala embrace religious syncretism and pseudo-scientic rationalism. But for now, Kerala is a safe place for Christians while India, as a whole, is not.
Overall, I dare say that Christian converts are safer in Iran — a mortal enemy of Israel — than in most parts of India. While instances of persecution do happen in Iran, you won’t find Iranian Christian women being gangraped, and paraded naked in public as it occasionally happens in the Indian subcontinent.
In fact, Iran is a stark contrast to India in nearly every way but I will stick to the parameters of Gen 12:3. Here is a relevant excerpt from Wikipedia.
According to scholar Ladan Boroumand, “Iran today is witnessing the highest rate of Christianization in the world.” According to scholar Shay Khatiri of Johns Hopkins University, “Islam is the fastest shrinking religion in there [Iran], while Christianity is growing the fastest”, and in 2018 “up to half a million Iranians are Christian converts from Muslim families, and most of these Christians are evangelicals.” He adds that “recent estimates claim that the number might have climbed up to somewhere between 1 million and 3 million”.
Now, if this rate of End Times propagation of the gospel were to happen in the Hindu-majority regions of India, expect a highly-organised top-down bloodbath.
Christians are THE Stumbling Block
Now, we come to the issue of who constitutes a “stumbling block to the nations”. When entire nations conspired together over the coronavirus farce, enslaving entire populations in the process, which grouping threw a spanner into the works of this global machination?
I remember some of the earliest warnings and counter-arguments posed by dissident medical experts in the West, beginning with the likes of Dr Jane Ruby, Dr Sherri Tenpenny, Dr Lee Merritt and so on and on. What do they have in common? They were either professing Christians or ones who espoused worldviews which were unmistakably informed by Christianity (e.g. Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi). While their scientific arguments may not entirely align with each other — for the simple fact that vaccine-related data remains incomplete — their dire warnings may have saved many lives throughout the world.
Au contraire, the then Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet went full Nazi in 2021 with his national vaccine mandates and had even hinted that the vaccines will hasten the arrival of the Jewish messiah.
Once again, who proved to be a “stumbling block to the nations” during the pandemic?
Finally, I have exceeded my self-imposed commentary limit of 2,000 words. But I urge the reader to investigate the blessing-curse dynamics of Gen 12:3 via the lens of Christian treatment. The deeper you dig, the deeper the evidential clarity of God’s promise to Abraham and his seed.
Here is a well written article on the same subject that I touched on in my commentary:
On Distinguishing The Jerusalem That Is Below From That Which Is Above
https://heidelblog.net/2017/12/on-distinguishing-the-jerusalem-that-is-below-from-that-which-is-above/
Outstanding work Matthew. As a born- again believer I am indeed a child of the promise. This is the mystery of our grafting, in Romans 11. Zion stands, and we are part of it, wherever we live. YAH’s prophecies stand for Israel, including us, not the apostates within its borders. Rev 6-19 is all about Israel, the 70th week of Daniel 9, but we will be resurrected prior.