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The Future of Israel (part 1)
Part 2
According to almost all Biblical expositors, Romans 11 predicts a future
conversion to Christianity by the Jews as a nation. Premillennial expositors see
this event as occurring during the tribulations they believe will come just
before our Lord's return. Amillennial expositors hold the same view.
Postmillennialists see the conversion of the Jews as the event that inaugurates
the "latter-day glory."
There are a few who hold out against this interpretation of Romans 11. Some
go with the opinion that the phrase "thus all Israel will be saved" in verse 26
refers to the Church, the new Israel of God. In general, this view holds that
since the history of Old Testament Israel is fulfilled by the transformation of
Israel into the Church, this is what verse 26 is referring to. This
interpretation has relatively few advocates, however, since throughout Romans
9-11, "Israel" means the Jews. It is unlikely that Paul changes his meaning in
Romans 11:26.
Others hold that the conversion of Israel as described in Romans 11 is not an
event, but simply points to the fact that throughout the history of the New
Covenant, Jews will be converting all along the way, and in this way the total
sum of "all Israel will be saved." The problem with this view is that throughout
the passage, events are what is being discussed. It is unlikely that Paul
suddenly shifts to a generality in 11:26.
Thus, the "future conversion of Israel" interpretation continues to hold
sway.
About three years ago I began to question this interpretation. It seems to me
very odd that this is the only place in New Testament where a future conversion
of the Jews is predicted. Almost every book in the New Testament speaks of the
destruction of Jerusalem. Many speak of the gospel's going out to all the world
and transforming it. Many also speak of our Lord's Final Advent at the end of
the present age. But nowhere else is anything said about a future conversion of
the Jews.
It occurred to me that perhaps Romans 11 predicts an event that was future to
Paul, but not future to us; to wit: that Romans 11 predicts a conversion of many
Jews to Christ just before the destruction of Israel in A.D. 70. The more I
thought about it, the more sense this interpretation made.
As I shared my thoughts with several theologian-friends, I found that others
had begun to think along the same lines. I was encouraged to write up my new
thoughts and publish them in this newsletter. I have been reluctant to do so,
however, because so many other friends have strongly propounded the futurist
view of Romans 11. Finally, however, I have been persuaded to share my thoughts
with a wider audience.
Of course, for years I have taught the futurist view of Romans 11, arguing
that the Jews and all the nations of the world (though not every individual)
will be converted to Christ and that this event will usher in a period of
prosperity (not perfection) for Christendom. This is the "Puritan"
interpretation, and I have been an advocate of it for years. Now I no longer
think it is correct. I ask my fellow "Puritans" to grant me the space to set out
my thoughts, and to consider these things with me.
I believe that a postmillennial, or optimistic, view of the future course of
Christian history is taught or assumed in many passages in the Bible. I used the
entire second half of my book Through New Eyes to argue that an expansive
view of the kingdom of God is woven into the warp and woof of Biblical
revelation. The parables of the leaven and of the mustard seed are enough to
show that Christianity is destined to grow and grow. And such Biblical
predictions as that all nations will come to Zion to receive the truth, and that
the knowledge of God will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea, establish
in my mind that there will be a long period of gospel prosperity before the
Lord's final return. All nations will convert eventually, and this includes the
Jews.
What I now question is whether the Bible predicts a time when suddenly all
nations will turn to Christ, an event capped off by the conversion of the Jews.
All I see in the Bible is general progress over time. It may be that the
Christianization of the world will proceed along the same lines it has for the
past two millennia, gradually building toward the latter-day glory. On the other
hand, there may be a crisis that ushers in the golden age; but if there is, I
don't think Romans 11 has anything to do with it.
I hope that I have set my postmillennial and Puritan brethren's minds to rest
by these comments.
Preterism
Before going further, I need to explain for any new readers that I am
committed to the "preterist" approach to the interpretation of prophecy. The
preterist school holds that most of the predictions in the New Testament concern
the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Anything spoken of as "near" or "at
hand" was fulfilled in the first century, as was anything connected with special
signs. Matthew 24-25 make it clear to me that there are no special signs of the
Final Advent; the Master returns without warning "after a long time."
In particular, the preterists maintain that the Book of Revelation was
written around 65 A.D., and that it is mostly concerned with the destruction of
Jerusalem. My own lectures through Revelation are available from Biblical
Horizons. A thorough study of the dating of Revelation is available in Kenneth
Gentry's Before Jerusalem Fell, an excellent commentary on Revelation is
available in David Chilton's Days of Vengeance, and a fine introduction
to the preterist view is Chilton's Paradise Restored. These three books
are available from the Institute for Christian Economics, Box 8000, Tyler, TX
75711. (As my lectures on Revelation show, I don't agree with Chilton at every
point, particularly in his interpretation of Revelation 14:14-20.)
Preterism takes note of the fact that the Temple and Jerusalem are related
typologically to the Church. In Revelation 2-3, Jesus promises to visit and
inspect His churches from time to time. Each church is said to be in a city.
Jesus threatens to eliminate churches that have apostatized, and to judge their
cities. Then Revelation 4-19 show what Jesus is talking about by describing the
destruction of the church (Temple) in the city Jerusalem. Moreover, the coming
of Christ to pass judgment on the old covenant and the old creation in A.D. 70
is typologically related to His future coming to judge the new creation at the
end of time. Thus, the view that most New Testament prophecy has been fulfilled
in A.D. 70 does not make it irrelevant for us today at all.
There is a school of thought that goes by the name "consistent preterist."
Advocates of this view hold that every prophesied event in the Bible was
fulfilled by A.D. 70, and that the Bible does not teach any Final Advent of
Jesus Christ. The "consistent preterists" deny the resurrection of the physical
body, and hold that this present world will continue forever and that there will
be no such Last Judgment as the Church has taught.
This view was proposed by a few exegetes of the last century, most
prominently by J. Stuart Russell, whose book The Parousia has been
reprinted by Baker Book House. The most noted advocate of this viewpoint today
is the Church of Christ theologian Max R. King. The Church of Christ is a
largely preterist denomination, and many of their theologians have done good
work in the area of interpreting prophecy. Most are very unhappy with King's
extreme position, and within Church of Christ circles there is a growing body of
literature arguing against "consistent preterism." I have dealt with the
"consistent preterist" viewpoint in my lectures on "The A.D. 70 Question," and
my lectures on Matthew 24 can be consulted for my thinking on that chapter.
I mention King because his recent book The Cross and the Parousia of
Christ (Parkman Road Church of Christ, 4705 Parkman Road, Warren, OH; 1987)
contains within it a helpful exposition of Romans 9-11. King's theology is badly
confused, and I cannot give a good recommendation to his book, but his
discussion of Romans 9-11 I have found to be of some help. Since King believes
every New Testament prophecy was fulfilled in the events around A.D. 70, he
naturally sees Romans 11 as fulfilled then as well. On this latter point I think
he is correct, though my interpretation of Romans 11 differs significantly from
his.
Who Were the Jews?
Most Christians think of the Jews as a race of people descended from Abraham.
In this section of this essay I want to call this assumption into question, by
looking at the history of Israel in the Old Testament.
When God called Abraham and made him a priest to the gentile nations, He
commanded him to use the sign of circumcision to mark out the Hebrews from the
other nations. Abraham's household at this time included at least 318 fighting
men (Gen. 14:14), as well as their wives and children, and possibly many more
servants. All of these men were circumcised. We see these servants mentioned in
the book of Genesis several times (Gen. 26:19ff.; 32:16), and when Jacob went
down to sojourn in Egypt, so many people went with him that he had to be given
the whole land of Goshen to dwell in. Genesis 46 provides a list of only about
70 actual blood descendants of Abraham who went into Egypt. Thus, from the very
beginning, the Israelites were defined by covenant, not by blood and race.
The same was true for each of the tribes within Israel. A Levite was not
necessarily a blood descendant of Levi, but more likely was a descendant of one
of the patriarchs' servants who was part of Levi's company. Only a small
percentage of Levites would actually have been descendants of Levi.
These several thousand people became over two million by the time of the
Exodus 215 years later. Only a small percentage of the people who came out of
Egypt had any racial connection with Abraham. Moreover, added to the company of
Israel at this time was a vast mixed multitude, many of whom became circumcised
members of the nation, and therefore members of individual tribes as well.
There was another admixture of converts in the time of David and Solomon.
Think of Uriah the Hittite, for example. Then again, the book of Esther tells us
that during and after the Exile many more gentiles became Jews (Esth. 8:17).
What this means is that very few of the Jews at the time of Christ had any of
Abraham's blood in them. They were a nation formed by covenant, not a race
formed by blood. True, Jesus Himself was a true blood descendant of Abraham, and
His genealogy is important for theological reasons, but few other Jews could
trace their genealogy to Abraham.
What I seek to establish by this survey is this: With the passing away of the
Old Covenant, there is no longer any such a thing as a Jew in the Biblical
sense, unless by "True Jews" we mean Christians. There is no covenant, and
therefore there is no nation, no "race."
What, then, are modern Jews? Modern Jews are people who choose to think of
themselves as descendants of Israel. Most modern Jews are not semites, but are
descended from Eastern European tribes that converted to Judaism in the middle
ages. Arthur Koestler's The Thirteenth Tribe provides much information
about this. Modern Jews do not worship the God of the Old Testament. They are
either secular humanists, or else Talmudists, and the Talmud has no more
relation to the Old Testament than does the Quran or the Book of Mormon. Like
the Quran and the Book of Mormon, the Talmud and Mishnah are designed to add to
and reinterpret the Old Testament in such a way as to obliterate completely the
revelation of God through Jesus Christ (compare Luke 24:27). The "God" of
Judaism is as much a fiction as the "God" of Islam and the "God" of Mormonism.
It is entirely possible that there is not one drop of Abraham's blood in any
modern Jew. Of the tiny percentage of Israel that had Abraham's blood in the
first century, it is possible that all such either became Christians or were
slain in the Jewish War of A.D. 70. No one can know for sure about something
like this, and it does not matter in the slightest.
Modern Jews are a separate nation of people with a self-identity, spread out
among many other nations. The closest analogy to them are the Gypsies. The only
difference between Modern Jews and Gypsies is that the Modern Jews claim to have
a relation to the Biblical Jews, a claim I maintain is false.
An analogy may help. Mormons think of themselves as Christians, and call
themselves Christians, but they are not Christians. They are counterfeit
Christians. Just so, Modern Jews think of themselves as Jews, but they are not
Jews. They are counterfeits of Biblical Jews. I say this not to disparage them,
but to be accurate. In fact, I shall argue later in this paper that this
business of treating Jews as special is directly related to the persecutions the
Jews have so frequently experienced.
Transformations
Let us return to history for another slant on this matter. When God called
Israel out of Egypt, most of the people refused to follow Him and died in the
wilderness. The old Hebrew people ceased to exist and were transformed into
Israel, their new name. (I have discussed this succession of names in my book, Through New Eyes.) The Israel that entered the promised land was a new
people made up of a mixture of Hebrews and converted gentiles, the mixed
multitude. Their leaders were Joshua, a converted Hebrew, and Caleb, a converted
gentile Kenizzite (Gen. 15:19; Josh. 14:6). (By "conversion" I mean that they
entered the Mosaic Covenant.) According to Numbers 13:6, Caleb's family had not
only been adopted into the tribe of Judah, but had risen to prominence in it.
This event is directly analogous to the New Testament situation. The
wilderness wanderings lasted 40 years, as did the span between A.D. 30 and 70.
The Jews were called by Jesus and the apostles, and many converted (that is,
they entered the New Covenant). Some reverted to Judaism, turning into apostate
Judaizers, and like the apostates in Moses' day, they "died in the wilderness"
by A.D. 70. Meanwhile, many "mixed multitude" gentiles joined the kingdom. By
A.D. 70, it was time to enter the promised land, and the old Jewish people
ceased to exist, being transformed into Christians, their new name.
The same kind of event happened at the Exile. A study of the book of Ezekiel
will show that God called His people out of Judea into the wilderness of exile,
where He tabernacled with them. The people were given a choice: either move
forward with God or perish by looking backward to the old ways. During the time
of exile, as we have seen, many gentiles converted into the nation. By the time
the Exile was over, and the people returned to the Promised Land, the old Israel
ceased to exist, being transformed into Jews, their new name.
Let us return to the Mosaic transition and examine the phenomenon of "falling
away." At Mount Sinai, all the people accepted the new Mosaic Covenant. Before
too long, however, a large group of people were objecting to one of the most
distinctive features of the Mosaic Covenant. During patriarchal times, any man
might offer sacrifice at an altar to God, but the worship of the Tabernacle was
"closer" to God and therefore holier and more dangerous. It is dangerous for a
sinner to get too close to the Consuming Fire, and so the only people allowed to
approach the new Mosaic altar were the priests, who were specially ordained and
anointed for this purpose. God forbade all sacrifice except that conducted at
the Tabernacle, which meant that the Hebrew people were no longer permitted to
build and sacrifice at altars. As it became clear that the people had "lost"
this "right," those who did not perceive that the Mosaic Covenant was in fact
more glorious than the Abrahamic Covenant had been, rebelled. Their argument was
that "all the people are holy and all are priests" (Ex. 19:6) and that Moses and
Aaron were exalting themselves over the congregation (Numbers 16-17). They were
drawing the wrong inferences from Exodus 19:6 because they were clinging to the
older covenant.
This group of rebels is closely paralleled by the Judaizers of the New
Testament era. The Judaizers were people who became Christians, and then
realized that the leaders of the Christian community were changing the rules on
them. Just as Korah, Dathan, and Abiram did not want to give up the old Hebrew
ways in order to become Israelites, so the Judaizers did not want to give up the
old Jewish ways in order to become Christians. Just as Korah and Company accused
Moses and Aaron of inventing their own religion, so the Judaizers accused Paul.
Just as many of the Israelites in Moses' day wanted to return to Egypt, so the
Judaizers wanted to return to Judaism. This is the "falling away" to which the
New Testament refers a number of times.
Korah and his followers were killed, and the rebels of Moses' day died during
the 40 years in the wilderness. Their beliefs, however, continued to find
expression in Israel. From the time of the Conquest under Joshua to the Exile
under Nebuchadnezzar, there were many people who insisted on worshipping "God"
on high places. They insisted that they, and not those who served the
Tabernacle/Temple, were the true Hebrews. They insisted that they were the true
sons of Abraham, and that the promised land belonged to them. The worshipped
God, they claimed, in the same way Abraham and the patriarchs did: at altars
they made themselves with sacrifices they offered themselves. They claimed that
they were preserving the old ways, but the prophets said they were idolaters who
had become corrupted with paganism.
How true was the claim of the "high placers"? It was not true at all. The
true sons of Abraham were those who accepted the Mosaic Covenant. The true
owners of the promised land were those who moved into the new covenant at Mount
Sinai, and who set aside patriarchal worship for something better. At the Exile,
God removed the "high placers" permanently from His land, and gave it to those
who would be loyal to the Temple worship.
The same is true in the New Covenant. The Judaizers and those Jews who would
not accept Jesus were killed at the end of the 40-year "wilderness" period from
A.D.30 - 70. Their beliefs, however, continued to find expression among the Jews
who survived. The Ebionites carried on the heresies of the Judaizers, and the
Talmudic Jews carried on the heresies of the Pharisees. They insist that they,
and not the Christians, are the true Jews. They insist that they are the true
sons of Abraham, and that the promised land belongs to them. They worship God,
they claim, in the same way the Jews of Jesus' day did: through Passover and
synagogue. They claim that they preserve the old ways, but the New Testament and
the Christian religion say that they are idolaters who have become corrupted
with paganism.
How true is the claim of post-New Covenant Judaism? It is not true at all.
The true sons of Abraham, and of the Biblical Jews, are those who accept the New
Covenant. The true owners of the promised land are those who moved into the New
Covenant with Jesus, and who set aside Passover and synagogue for something
better. At the Holocaust (A.D. 70), God removed the "Jews" from His land, and
gave legal title to it to those who would be loyal to Him. (Notice that Modern
Jews occupy the land of Palestine only because the Christian West supplies them
with money, arms, technology, and legal treaties. The Promised Land belongs to
the sons of Abraham -- Christians -- and the only reason Modern Jews are there
today is because Christians let them be.)
Part 2
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