Who Is Entitled to Jerusalem?
A Lecture by David Pawson
Introduction
Pawson opens with a personal note: he had asked the Lord many years earlier whether he could preach until he was 80, and this year — having now completed his 80th year — that prayer was answered.
He then sets the scene with a vivid personal memory. In June 1967 he was in Jerusalem, on the first bus to cross from West Jerusalem to East Jerusalem in twenty years. The road was rough because it ran across what had been a minefield. That morning the ground was bare and broken. By the time his group returned from Jericho that evening, the same stretch had been transformed into a tarmac road complete with pavements and lampposts — the whole city reunited in the space of hours.
Background: 1948 and 1967
Twenty years before 1967, the newly declared state of Israel had been attacked immediately by three Arab nations. Jordan won the battle for Jerusalem and took control of the entire old city, including the Jewish quarter. The synagogues were destroyed. The Wailing Wall — the only remaining section of the platform on which Solomon had built the temple — fell under Jordanian control. Jews were cut off from their most sacred site for twenty years.
In June 1967 the three nations attacked again. Israel launched a pre-emptive strike that destroyed the air forces of Syria, Egypt and Jordan before they could take off. The Six Day War ended in a decisive Israeli victory. Pawson was there to witness it: thousands of Israeli soldiers, still in uniform, weeping as they touched the stones of the Western Wall for the first time in a generation. The wall was running with tears.
The Human Claims
1. The Historical Claim: Who Had It First, Most, and Last?
Jerusalem was occupied as early as 2500 BC by people whose descendants are unknown. When the biblical record opens, it was held by the Jebusites — who have left no surviving descendants. King David then took the city and made it the Israelite capital, where it remained for the next thousand years.
The Israelites held Jerusalem for approximately one thousand years — five hundred years as an independent capital, and another five hundred under occupation by Egyptians, Seleucids, Greeks and Romans. In AD 135 the Romans destroyed the temple stone by stone, ploughed up the temple mount, and renamed the region Palestina — the origin of the modern name Palestine.
The Romans were followed by Byzantine control, then Muslim Arab rule beginning in the seventh century. The Muslims held it for approximately six hundred years, then the Ottoman Turks — a total Muslim tenure of approximately seven hundred years. The Balfour Declaration in 1917 promised the Jews a national homeland in the same territory. These conflicting pledges have generated much of the trouble ever since.
2. The Political Claim: Justice and Peace
In 1948, approximately 500,000 Palestinians fled what became Israel during the War of Independence. Many were told by Syria, Jordan and Egypt to leave temporarily, with promises that the Arab armies would destroy the new Jewish state. Those promises were never fulfilled.
At the same time, approximately 850,000 Jews were forced to flee from Arab countries. The difference, Pawson argues, is in how the two groups were treated. The Arab nations kept the Palestinian refugees in camps as a political tool, refusing to resettle them. Israel took in all the Jewish refugees and gave them homes, land and work.
3. The Religious Claim
Jerusalem is the focus of three of the world's major religions. The Jewish claim is both historical and religious — the site of the temple, the city of David, the centre of their faith for three thousand years.
Christians today make no territorial claim to Jerusalem as a city — what they legitimately defend is their property and their right to free access as pilgrims.
The Muslim claim is that Jerusalem is Islam's third holiest city. Significantly, Jerusalem is never mentioned by name in the Quran — not once, compared to approximately 800 times in the Bible. The Muslim connection rests on a single account: a night vision in which Muhammad is said to have ridden from ‘a distant place’ to heaven and back, subsequently identified as the Temple Mount.
The Divine Factor
All of the arguments surveyed so far operate at a purely human level. Pawson now turns to what he considers the decisive factor — one that the world's political discussions entirely ignore.
The Bible or the Quran?
The two books with the greatest influence in the world today are the Bible and the Quran. They cannot be harmonised — they contain too many direct contradictions. Pawson states clearly his view that Allah is not the God of the Bible. His reasoning: the God of the Bible is three persons in love with one another. Allah is a single person, alone. The two words never used of Allah are ‘love’ and ‘father.’ That is not a minor theological difference; it is a fundamental one.
Who Is Entitled to Entitle?
When asked who is entitled to Jerusalem, Pawson answers with a question: who is entitled to entitle? Who has both the authority and the power to give it to anyone?
The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it. God alone is entitled to entitle. And what follows immediately from that is that he has already given the title deeds — to the Jewish people. Permanently. Irrevocably.
Every empire that has ever overrun Jerusalem — Assyria, Babylon, Greece, Rome, the British Empire — has vanished from history. Israel alone remains. That, Pawson argues, is not explicable by purely human factors. Twice expelled from their land, without their own language, army, currency or flag for centuries, the Jewish people have returned to the centre of the world's attention.
The Future of Jerusalem
The Bible does not merely describe Jerusalem's past. It describes its future — and that future is unambiguous. God has plans for his people that will persist to the very end of history. The gifts and calling of God are irrevocable.
Jesus is returning. And the Bible is clear about where: not to Washington, Moscow, Rome or Canterbury, but to Jerusalem — specifically, above the Mount of Olives. When he returns, the Shekinah returns with him. And when he reigns, it will not be merely over the twelve tribes of Israel but over every nation on earth.
Full Circle: Melchizedek
Pawson concludes with an observation that brings the whole story of Jerusalem back to its beginning. The very first thing the Bible records about Jerusalem is that it was ruled by a king who was also a priest — Melchizedek, who met Abraham and blessed him. There has only ever been one other person who combined the offices of king and priest in that way: Jesus Christ, the Melchizedek of the New Testament.
Jerusalem began under a priest-king. It will end under a priest-king. God has brought the whole story full circle.
Conclusion
If Jerusalem in the past belonged to the Jews for the longest period of any people, and if Jerusalem in the future belongs to a Jew — the Son of David — then the Jewish claim in the present is the strongest. They must be in Jerusalem for Christ's return, because he told them he was coming back to them.
Pawson closes by saying he looks forward to the day when Jerusalem is in the hands of the Son of David again — the day when the title God gave to the Jewish people forever is finally, visibly, and permanently recognised by the whole world.