God has enmity against those who divide my land. [Sharon] was dividing God’s land, and I would say woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the European Union, the United Nations, or the United States of America. God says: “This land belongs to me. You’d better leave it alone.”

Robertson pointed to the Bible to make his case about the land of Israel not being divided: “In the book of Joel, the prophet Joel makes it very clear that God has ‘enmity against those who divide My land.’” It’s obvious that there is a context to Joel 3:2 that does not refer to modern-day Israel. Dispensationalists seem to believe that the only way prophecy can be fulfilled is through bloodshed. Why did God punish Sharon and not the Palestinians? They are the ones who are pushing for a divided Israel. Why doesn’t God strike down the president of Iran who believes Israel should be “wiped off the map”?

We’re back to eschatology and why it matters. Jesus Christ is the focus of history, not the land of Israel. Jesus is the fulfillment of prophecy, not ethnic Israel. Our salvation comes by way of Jesus’ shed blood, not the shed blood of Jews (Zech. 13:8) or anyone else. Dispensationalism has created a foreign policy nightmare with its insistence that Israel is still the center of history, geography, and redemption.

Charles Ryrie states that Israel is to have “permanent possession of the promised land.”2 John Walvoord concurs: “A literal interpretation of the Abrahamic covenant involves the permanent existence of Israel as a nation and the fulfillment of the promise that the land should be their everlasting possession.”3 If something is permanent, there can’t be a postponement, especially one that’s been in effect for nearly two millennia. As we stand right now, the Abrahamic covenant has been in its postponement phase longer than its fulfillment phase since dispensationalists claim that Israel never had full possession of all the land promised to them. The Israelites did enter and possess the land that God promised to give to them:

So the LORD gave Israel all the land which He had sworn to give to their fathers, and they possessed it and lived in it. And the LORD gave them rest on every side, according to all that He had sworn to their fathers, and no one of all their enemies stood before them; the LORD gave all their enemies into their hand. Not one of the good promises which the LORD had made to the house of Israel failed; all came to pass (Josh. 21:43–45).