As the official Christian Ambassador to the Holy Land, Pat Boone has been standing with Israel for more than 50 years. During that time, he’s donated countless hours and dollars to support the nation. But on Wednesday, the legendary entertainer’s latest gift took on a decidedly prophetic twist he believes only God could have orchestrated.
Boone visited Yad Vashem in Jerusalem this week to donate the Christmas card on which he scribbled the original lyrics for “This Land Is Mine”—the song from the 1960 movie Exodus and a tune that has become like a second national anthem for many Jews. Alongside former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and other dignitaries, Boone presented the historic item to Shaya Ben-Yehuda, Yad Vashem’s managing director of the International Relations Division, during a ceremony.
The prophetic words on that card—“This land is mine / God gave this land to me”—are now coming to pass as Boone partners with an Israeli company selling government-sanctioned parcels of land between Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee. For the first time, Israel supporters can literally buy a piece of the Holy Land, starting at $110 per square foot, and own the title deed through the Holy Land Dream, which in turn donates a portion of proceeds to Israel charities.
“I believe that anyone who has this piece of land will be blessed for it because it’s a blessing to Israel,” Boone told Charisma News. “It’s not something you bought in a curio shop; you bought something that you now own—you are now bonded with Israel, you have cast a decided vote for the existence of Israel by buying a piece of the land. But it’s also an expression of your faith that God is who He says He is. … We are a part of God’s prophetic expression concerning Israel.”
Boone says his connection with the Holy Land Dream was equally prophetic. His first encounter with the company’s founders came shortly after reading Jeremiah 32. That’s the Scripture in which God commanded the prophet to purchase land back from his family, despite the Jewish people being led into Babylonian captivity. Boone specifically points to the prophecy in Jeremiah 32:43-44: “And fields will be bought in this land … Men will buy fields for money, sign deeds and seal them, and take witnesses, in the land of Benjamin.”
The 78-year-old Boone believes that although this refers to the “official purchasing of land after coming back from [Babylonian] captivity,” the prophecy is once again being fulfilled today in the “modern-day miracle that is the State of Israel.” But he admits he wasn’t thinking about this when he penned the lyrics to the Ernest Gold melody on a Christmas Eve more than 50 years ago.
That wasn’t the case with Holy Land Dream co-founders Asaf Har-Gil and Idan Deshe, both of whom were unaware Boone had written the lyrics for “This Land Is Mine” when they first met him.
“The very moment that he read those words out loud to [us], we all realized that that seemed to be none other than a prophetic vision, written decades ago, and now we were bringing the opportunity to Pat to actually realize and fulfill those very words to evangelical Christians around the world,” Har-Gil said. “This seemed to Pat to be divine intervention and biblically founded from the very words of the prophet Jeremiah.”
As part of the partnership, Boone and the co-founders created a business model to benefit Israeli ministries and charities. Through the Pat and Shirley Israel Charitable Fund, the company currently gives 25 to 30 percent of each plot purchase to a handful of organizations that include the Jewish National Fund and Heart to Heart, a program of Israel’s local Red Cross—though Har-Gil says they intend to expand the list.
Holy Land Dream currently has approximately 10 acres of land available and is working to develop partnerships with Christian television networks and organizations that support Israel. Though Boone recognizes some will criticize his support of this project—“We put somewhat of a target on our back when we become this identified with Israel”—he says he’s choosing to “identify with the prophet Jeremiah” by crying out to his countrymen and urging them to recommit themselves to the Lord by standing with the Jewish people.
At Yad Vashem, that alliance will now be permanent via a Christmas card with some scribbled lyrics.
“To think that Jewish kids are being taught those words that a Christian guy from Nashville wrote out of my very strong sense of identification with Israel … is amazing to me,” Boone says.
For more information about the project, visit theholylanddream.com.
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