Volume 52 | Number 5 | September–December 2024

Inglés Español

The Place of God’s Choosing for His Name


By Dr. H. T. Spence

In the last thirty days of his life, Moses both orally preached and penned the Book of Deuteronomy with a burden to the second generation. Thirty-eight years of continued deaths among all who came out of Egypt from the age of twenty and upward have concluded. With the exception of Joshua and Caleb, the first generation has died. A second generation is preparing to enter the Holy Land of promise. Within his many reflections on the past and warnings for the future, Moses includes the following declaration:

But unto the place which the Lord your God shall choose out of all your tribes to put his name there, even unto his habitation shall ye seek, and thither thou shalt come (Deut. 12:5; also 12:11, 14, 21).

This place chosen by God was Jerusalem, finally captured by King David as historically presented in 2 Samuel 5:9–12, and spoken of centuries later by Ezra in 1 Chronicles 11:4–9. Both the land of Canaan and specifically the city of Jerusalem became the divinely appointed place where God chose to place His name in the earth.

Recent Events

In November 2024 the United States of America became one of sixty nations during this year to hold elections for their top national leadership. The election in the United States resulted in a vote for a new administration that gained both the electoral and popular votes in an unprecedented manner. The nation truly voted for a philosophical mandate of government to do away with the ongoing powers promoting the literal dismantling of America, both politically and economically. A new leadership now is called upon by the majority of Americans to return to principles and values that had placed our country in the forefront of independence, rather than the ongoing pursuance of becoming a third-world country escalating into the dark powers of socialism and communism. Our nation was becoming interdependent upon the globalist authority of the United Nations. For several decades our nation was being forced by its leadership to the precipice of total collapse in every aspect of our national existence. This political vote, however, has brought an existential hope to many that our country’s future can be and will be improved. Even a few other national leaders are looking to this hope.

This presidential epochal event is of global proportion, one way or another. It is not only a humanistic hope for our nation but also an ongoing assistance to Israel at this time in history. Considering the past 150 years, one can first observe a lull in the public perspective of prophecy in the 1800s. But around the first world war, God’s saints became increasingly aware of the importance of prophecy. The second world war especially brought to the forefront the Jewish world; six million Jews were killed by one man’s influence. The world was suddenly forced to confront this horrific reality. Quickly the word holocaust was heard around the world; a holocaust is an offering given to God as a sacrifice from the world—a “burnt offering for humanity.”

Another word that arose at the end of the twentieth century is the Arabic word intifada, meaning “to shake off.” An intifada became a strong denunciation against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. We must remember that the land received the name of Palestine from the Philistines who dwelt on the sea coast millennia ago. It was also called Judea and has been termed the Holy Land throughout history.

Oh, the Jewish people! They have a 3,700-year history with the land of Israel, or Palestine, and a 3,000-year connection with the city of Jerusalem. Jerusalem is mentioned 812 times in the Bible. Every world power that has attempted to control and occupy the land of Israel has become a former world power or has lost power (such as Britain). Israel first became a nation when God delivered them from the bonds of Egypt. Israel became a nation a second time on May 14, 1948. Her neighbors have instigated wars against her in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, and during the Intifada of 2000–2004. In all these wars Israel has providentially won. In 1967, God performed a miracle for Israel in the conquering of all the land, including all of Jerusalem. After the war much of that land was eventually given back by Israel to those Arabs who resided in the land, eventually leading to a Palestinian Parliament. The notorious Hamas took control by its founding in 1987 with the intent to overthrow Israel’s right to even exist. Remember, Israel is a very small nation, the size of New Jersey, and makes up less than one percent of the land of the Middle East. From present hostilities, leading back to 1948, it is evident that the ongoing conflicts of Israel will be unending until just before the public coming of Christ to earth (Zech. 14); Israel and Jerusalem will be a perpetual hotbed of history.

The Holy Land

Of all the books in the Bible, Deuteronomy speaks more of this promised land than any other book. In speaking to the second generation in Deuteronomy, Moses gives several declarations: “I have set the land before you” (1:8); “go in and possess the land” (1:8); “search ... out the land” (1:22); “a good land” (1:25); “the land that floweth with milk and honey” (6:3); “a land of brooks of water, of fountains” (8:7); “a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey” (8:8); “a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it” (8:9); “a land of hills and valleys” (11:11); “a land which the Lord thy God careth for” (11:12); “I will give you the rain of your land” (11:14); “the Lord shall greatly bless thee in the land” (15:4); “the Lord thy God … give thee all the land which he promised to give unto thy fathers” (19:8); and “thou shalt not cause the land to sin” (24:4).

Deuteronomy 12 is a classic chapter presenting the land of Canaan as the place that God will appoint, will choose, and will declare to be His place. More specifically, we know this eventually to be the very city of Jerusalem. Although the land of Canaan will be called “The Holy Land,” can a land be holy? The land upon which Noah’s ark rested after the receding of the Flood is called Mt. Ararat; the very name Ararat means “holy.” The ark landed upon a holy mount or land. Mount Moriah is also viewed as a holy mount and, Mount Sinai is called the holy mount of God, the place where God talked to Moses through the burning bush (Exod. 3:5) and the place where He spoke to Israel over a two-year period. Any place where God has manifested Himself, or where He chooses to place His name, becomes a land that is biblically viewed as holy. What makes the place holy? God’s manifested presence.

There is at least one place, biblically speaking, that the term can be used in the light of what God did and what He appointed for this piece of geography. The contrasts between the Promised Land and the Holy Land are like the heavens and the earth co-existing naturally in one realm. Is such a place (the Holy Land) to be called that today? Even amidst the apostasy of the Jewish people?

It must be acknowledged that the Jews are in apostasy today. They are not spiritually better today than what they were before Hitler’s hope of genocide through the Holocaust. They may be more religious but not in heart. Nevertheless, the land is still a part of God’s choosing, where God revealed Himself, and also where we know God will be in the prophetic future. In that context the land is qodesh, as the Bible calls it. This Hebrew word qodesh declares something or someone that has been set apart, or separated unto God for His specific use and ownership. And though the thing or person is separated unto God, it or he may not be holy in heart. Though Canaan today is modernized in many ways, it still is filled with many sights of antiquity that are ever declaring and pronouncing a purpose of its past. The technological advances of the kibbutz in the Negev region have made possible the arid desert to miraculously bloom, which is part of the prophecy for that land in the End Time. There are groves of hundreds of millions of trees. Though a land of death and desolation, yet the springing up of life is vividly evident in parts of this Holy Land (Isa. 35).

Canaan today is also the land where three historic monotheistic religions call their home: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This land is where Abraham, Jesus, and the early followers of Muhammad all lived and walked. It is a place of revered shrines and prayer, of minarets and steeples that act as a human invocation to heaven. Over the many centuries, deserts have been chosen as a place for religious ascent of professed worship, and this land has become one of the most visited destinations for pilgrims.

Simultaneously, it has also become a land of epochal wars, which have seen the encountering of swords, the spilt blood of Crusaders and Ottomans, sieges and massacres, conquests and destruction. This is true even leading up to and including the most recent painful conflicts that are still without solution.

Yes, the Holy Land has become today known as “the front door of humanity,” and even the door that Western civilization must go through to understand the mysteries and complexities of the East, and vice versa. For thousands of years the East and West have met between the Nile and the Euphrates, either as warriors or merchants, and even as pilgrims.

In Roman times, the spice route leading to China began here, and this tradition has continued into the last century. The Suez Canal opened a new, revolutionary commercial corridor for the world in a variety of ways. Yet, the coming together of these three religions all converge at the Holy Land, and more specifically, this converging in tension and at times in oppression has taken place at the Holy City named Jerusalem.

How often throughout the centuries Jerusalem has become the commentary of not only the Jew but also of the Gentile world and even Christianity. We must remember that Jerusalem was birthed into Israel at a precious time of revival. Early in its history it was possessed by the Jebusites. We first read of Jerusalem in Genesis 14, with Melchizedek as its king; he becomes a type of Christ (Heb. 7). The name of Mechizedek’s city was Salem, the “city of peace.” We then read in Joshua 10 of the ruler named Adoni-zedek; he is declared as the king of Jerusalem during the time of Joshua and the entrance into Canaan. This is the first mention of the city by the name Jerusalem.

This city of peace eventually is taken by King David at a time of the unification of the tribes into one name, one kingdom. It is at this time that the city becomes the fulfillment of God’s place where He would put His name. Born in revival, the city became the capital of David’s kingdom, continuing to the end of Zedekiah’s reign. It became the resting place of the Tabernacle Ark and eventually where Solomon’s Temple was built on one of its hills—Moriah. This is where God chose to place His name and the fulfillment of the prophecy of Deuteronomy 12. It is here that Hashem, “The name” would be placed. The city would also be known as Ariel, in Isaiah 29:1, “the Lion of God,” and eventually as Jehovah Shammah, meaning “the Lord is there.” It was the qodesh place—separated; it is the center of the earth and will be so for all of eternity.

Land in History Where God Chose to Place His Name

God has chosen to place His name in a number of places throughout history. Harvard College, named after John Harvard (1607–1638), was one. Mr. Harvard was an English-born clergyman who bequeathed his library and half of his estate to this struggling college at Cambridge, Massachusetts. He came to Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637, where he became the teaching elder of the small congregation at Charlestown. Sad to say, he lived only one year in the New World, dying of tuberculosis as a young man of thirty-one. He left his 400 books and half of his inheritance and possessions to the new college started only two years prior. Harvard was founded upon the need for preachers in the New World. It was a place where God chose to place His name; but alas, by the 1700s it had become a noted institution infiltrated with Unitarianism.

Because of the eventual apostasy of Harvard, Yale College was established. It originally began with the founding of the New Haven Colony in 1638 by a group of 500 Puritans who fled from persecution in Anglican England. It was the hope of Reverend John Davenport, the colony’s religious leader, to establish a theocratic colony with a college to educate its leaders and to prepare young men for the ministry. The school officially became Yale College in 1718, when it was renamed in honor of the Welsh merchant Elihu Yale, who donated much of his money to this institution. During the Second Great Awakening in America (1780–1840), several educational institutions experienced a move of God in spiritual revival. One of these schools was Yale College under the presidency of Timothy Dwight.

Eventually, Yale drifted into apostasy. This decline led J. Gresham Machen to depart and start Westminster Theological Seminary on the outskirts of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Sadly, Westminster today is Neo-Evangelical at best.

There was also the Methodist movement of England in the 1700s. Although Methodism contributed much to the spreading of the Gospel throughout England and during the 1800s in America, by the time of the late 1800s, Methodism had become a spiritually desolate land; it still is so today.

There have been other places that experienced a move of God. The Keswick movement in England during the 1870s knew the preaching of great revivals, camp meetings, and godly living. Such “holy ground” revivals also include Northfield, Massachusetts, and its conferences over the latter part of the 1800s. Although Keswick continues today in rank contemporary Christianity, Northfield closed down a number of years ago after ending up in Neo-Evangelicalism.

The Fundamentalist movement was another movement in which God chose to place His name, especially in its stand against Liberalism, Modernism, and even the compromising powers of Neo-Evangelicalism. Many of its citadels of learning, however, have gone the way of all flesh. Would God leave the places that He had built in the past? Or have these places left the God that built them?

In Scripture, a nation is different than an individual. A nation’s history is made up of many generations, whereas an individual’s life is only one generation. A nation can enter apostasy when a whole generation falls into a national rejection of God. This does not mean that every citizen must become a rejector of God; however, the leadership and majority of its citizens enter that rejection. There is a possibility, though, of a later generation of that nation returning to God through deep repentance. If this happens, He in turn will visit that land again. Prophecy has declared this possibility for Israel. A generation of Israel, sometime in the future (as foretold in Romans 11) will return to their God; they will not always remain in unbelief. An individual, on the other hand, has only one life to live; it is how that individual ends his life that determines his standing before God. If that person leaves the Lord, will he come back to God? Or will he remain away from God to the end of his days? The end is most important in an individual’s and a nation’s existence, according to Scripture.

Conclusion

Some fourteen years ago, my wife and I were part of a tour group that traveled to the Holy Land for 10 days. Our tour guide was an impressive, knowledgeable young man, perhaps in his late thirties or early forties. He was raised in a strong orthodox Jewish home; sixty-seven of his relatives had died in the Holocaust. As we spent some personal time with him over the course of our days together, he revealed that at seventeen he had left his Jewish orthodox legacy and had gone into the ways of the world. As the years unfolded in progressive waywardness, he eventually saw he needed to save himself from a permanently damaged life into which he was heading. His solution was to return in some degree to his orthodox legacy. As I inquired about his return, he claimed that he decided to create his own form of Judaism. Thus, his religion became a synthesis of old Judaism with his own personally forged-out religion. He returned somewhat to his Jewish roots while creating his own form of Judaism. Perhaps this is the perspective of the End-time Jewish religion and the understanding of Jerusalem today. Sad to say, this has become the perspective of contemporary Christianity as well.

If we as Christians ever turn away from the Lord, we will do one of two things. Either we will turn to the world’s pleasures and permanently leave any relationship with God, or we will create our own Christianity. Any newly created Christianity will not be a Christianity of the Scriptures; it will be a created Christianity by self. Man tends not to make full repentance and recovery; therefore, he tends to create doctrine that permits his leniency to not fully return in heart to God. Oh, the diversification of present-day Christianity! It is the most elastic religion on the earth today; of all world religions, it has the broadest acceptance of sin and carnality.

Among the three major religions in Jerusalem today, modern Judaism has had its own religious mongrelization. Things that should be dead from the past have only contributed to dead orthodoxy and outward forms of Judaism. In contrast to the Scriptures, mere outward form is what is preeminent in Judaism.

Also prominent in Jerusalem is the religion of Islam. The word Islam means “submission.” It is a submission to what its mutating religion has created; it is a submission to Mohammed’s “self” religion that is ever mutating. Islam has become a part of the religious structure of Jerusalem and the Holy Land.

And finally in Jerusalem, there is the contemporary mixture of modern-day Christianity. Such Christianity is based on an existential philosophy, mainly the Charismatic and Neo-Evangelical mixture that includes contemporary Christian music, its worldly dress, its broad compromises with the world, the apostasy, and all the trappings that have been interwoven by the world and its identification with the Christ.

However, a biblical Christian life can only be of God’s choosing. Within God’s Promised Land, there is a Holy Land. It is in the Holy Land where God wants His people to live. This land is a land of great spiritual provisions, and yet a land that is His, a land of His grace, a land of the life of His Son, His Spirit, and a temple to His glory.

Ezekiel’s description of the glory of the Lord departing from Israel reveals it was not an immediate departure. With the Babylonian Captivity there were three deportations. In 606 bc, Daniel and the choicest of the children were taken away down into Babylon. In 597 bc, workmen such as Ezekiel were taken and scattered across the Babylonian Empire as slaves. And, in 586 bc, Nebuchadnezzar came and destroyed both the Temple and the city. In Ezekiel’s prophecy the glory of the Lord made its exodus from Jerusalem gradually. The first stage of departure was from the cherubim in the Holy of Holies to the threshold of the Temple (Ezek. 9:3; 10:4); then, it departed the threshold of the Temple (Ezek. 10:18); and finally from the Temple and the city, it departed unto the Mount of Olives east of Jerusalem (Ezek. 11:23).

We will not read of this glory returning until the Millennium (Ezek. 43:2–5). This is how apostasy comes to a ministry; the Lord lingers and withdraws gradually until finally He is gone for good. This has been the pattern of denominations that  began on a biblical foundation; it is also seen in the decline of churches and local ministries, including Christian institutions. We must be warned as remnant churches of this potential in the End Time, amidst the shiftings and shakings of God now taking place. The remnant, its churches and parishioners, and its academies and colleges, will all be affected by the powers of the End Time just before the secret coming of the Lord.

Jerusalem—the center of the earth—is a city where God chose to place His name, a city of peace, of righteousness, and where He is! I, too, must keep myself in His love, and abide in Him, or else my life will become a contemporary Jerusalem. Sad to state that when a place that once knew God’s dwelling—a place where He chose to put His name—leaves the principles that made it such a place, and gradually compromises and eclectically blends with the contemporary, it will be lauded for becoming such a place. Yes, the great danger to our lives is the danger that Jerusalem knows today.