Part 7 The Millennium New Heaven & New Earth
God's Promises to Israel
Though at first blush this may seem out of place in these pages, this is a critical mater. It gets tiresome to repeat the same mantra, but by no means can we fully address the subject and do it justice. And why is this important? Because beginning with the Roman Catholic Church there has arisen this notion called Replacement Theology. Today's Replacement Theologians have become uncomfortable with the term because it sounds derogatory, though we should wonder why as it precisely describes what they believe; that Israel in their rejection of their Messiah Jesus, God has replaced them with the church, and that all the promises ascribed to Israel now belong to the church.
Now these theologians prefer to call it supersessionism. On the face of it, not only does it completely ignore Paul's entire argument from Romans 9 – 11, but it removes the sovereignty of God. It says God's plans failed and He had to opt for a Plan “B” instead, and we are it. Can we do anything to surprise God and catch Him off guard? Is man really capable of spoiling God's plans so that He must concoct alternatives? Do we really want to believe God can be blind-sided and did not see this coming?
But of course we are aware that it was prophesied that Jesus would go unto his own, but his own would know him not (Ps. 69:8; Is. 6:9-10; 8:14; Zech 11:9). Before Israel's rejection, Jesus spoke of “other sheep” in John 10:16. Isaiah 42:5-9 hints at gentiles coming to light. So God at least knew.
This is key for this paper because I intend to show how that God is faithful to His promises to the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and will hold up His contract. In fact, He wrote an entire book in the Old Testament featuring Hezekiah and Gomer about this very thing, just to foretell what was coming and the nature of His relationship with unfaithful Israel. We will visit some of those promises as they inform how we interpret Revelation 21 in connection with 2 Peter 3, so I beg indulgence here.
So Paul in his argument begins his conclusion on the matter of whether God is finished with Israel by asking whether grace still means grace:
1 I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! For I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. 2 God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel? 3 “Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.” 4 But what is God's reply to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” 5 So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. 6 But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace. -Romans 11:1-6
So the argument falls on its face. In fact, God not only gave promises, but God is the one Who set up their “stupor” concerning Jesus (verse 8):
as it is written, “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day.” -Romans 11:8
Paul goes on to describe how merciful is our God and how that part of the whole reason He gave Israel this “stupor” was for the very purpose that we gentiles might be grafted in for a season! And when this “time of the gentiles” has run its course, Paul says Israel will again be grafted in (verse 25). And then we see not only was this all by the Lord's design, but He has already planned to “bring them back in.”
26 And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob”; 27 “and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins.” -Romans 11:26, 27
If God intended to replace Israel with the church, where is that passage in the Old Testament concerning the future promises and Kingdom for Israel that says God really intends it for the church? The burden of proof is for the supersessionist to demonstrate that textually. We simply get nothing from the Old Testament in a normal, literal hermeneutic that permits for an interpretation from any of those promises that God really has someone else in mind. During a Q&A, MacArthur (1995) responded to the question this way:
“One way to understand that is to ask yourself a question. In the Old Testament . . . and if you wanted to get sort of a general sense of what the Old Testament is about, it's simply about this--it reveals God and His Law, and it tells what's going to happen to you if you obey it, and what's going to happen to you if you don't--and then it gives you a whole lot of illustrations of that--right? It reveals God and His Law and it tells you what's going to happen to you if you obey it, and if you don't--blessings and cursing. Now, when Israel sinned, disobeyed God--what happened? Judgment, chastening, cursing, slaughter--was it literal? Yes. Was it Israel? Yes. So if Israel received all of the promised curses, literally, why would we assumed they would not receive the promised blessings literally? Because some of those are in the same passages? And how can you say in this passage the cursing means literal Israel, but the blessings means the Church? There is no exegetical basis for that and you now have arbitrarily split the verse in half--you've given all the curses to Israel and all the blessing to the Church--on what basis exegetically?"
So as Paul indicated, God intends to keep His promises to Israel. If it is for the church, why are we not over there? If it is for us, why don't we just go and claim the land? The elephant in the room called supersessionism is God's fulfilled promise of Ezekiel 36 & 37 that the valley of dry bones would again be inhabited by the people of Israel and flourish. What other ancient tribe has all but died off, or been killed off, after being forced from their homeland, only to return hundreds of years later and be established as a nation once again?
John Walvoord (1991) in observed:
“The fact is, however, that in the midst of Israel’s apostasy and sin, God gave them additional revelation concerning their future restoration. The prophet Jeremiah recorded that Israel would come back to their home after seventy years of captivity in Babylon (29:10). This was literally fulfilled, though Israel at the time was in apostasy and was spiritually unprepared to fulfill God's purpose. It is also true that through Jeremiah, in the midst of Israel's apostasy, God gave promises of Israel's ultimate blessing (see 23:5-8...)... In other words, it is clear from Scripture that the certainty of the ultimate fulfillment of the prophecy was such that even Israel's apostasy would not thwart God's ultimate purpose.”
After all, as Paul indicated in Romans 11, if Israel, outside God's mercy and grace, can lose their promises through disobedience, what makes Christians think the same cannot become true of them? Therefore, if God Who is faithful to His promises intends to do as He has said, by grace, then we are not only justified in visiting these passages to examine how they inform our argument, but we would be derelict to do otherwise in every case.
Consider; If the promises made to Israel now belong to the church, then why are we not now in Israel? Why have we not occupied the land God promised Abraham would belong to his children? Your assignment is to read the entire second half of Isaiah. That is a great place to begin. You may find many cross-references to Jeremiah, the Minor Prophets, etc. Feel free to follow those links. God's many promises to the people of Israel, tie them to the land of Israel, forever and ever!
Next, we will see how the Fourth Temple (aka Ezekiel's Temple) is an example of such an eternal promise.