“And so all Israel will be saved,as it is written:
The Deliverer will come out of Zion,
And He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob;” (Rom. 11:26)

“Following our recent meeting, I gathered the below. Feel free to add to these lists.” – Maor S.

Verses about All Israel saved in the day of the Lord after the GT being the remnant that survived the Sword of the Covenant:

Isa.4:3 (“For those of Israel who have escaped”) also see Isa. 66:19
Isa. 10:20-21 (“such as have escaped…”)
Isa.11:11 (“to recover the remnant of His people who are left”)
Isa. 26:1-2 (“In that day…the righteous nation…”)
Isa. 27:12-13
Isa. 30:26 (“…seven days….binds up the bruise of His people…”)
Isa. 32:15 (“Until the Spirit is poured…”)
Isa. 41:8
Isa. 44:3
Isa. 45:17, 25 (“But Israel shall be saved by the Lord…”)
Isa. 53:6 (“All we like sheep…[All the Jewish people who are left will say this])
Isa. 54:7-10,13 (“For a mere moment…”)
Isa. 59:20-21
Isa.60:15-16,21 (“also your people shall all be righteous…”)
Isa. 61:1-11.
Isa. 65:23
Isa. 66:8
Jer. 30:22 (“you shall be My people…”)
Jer. 31:1-2 (“all the families of Israel ” “survived the sword”)
Jer. 31:33-34 (“for they all shall know Me…)
Jer. 32:37-42
Eze. 20:40-44 (“…there all the house of Israel, all of them in the land, shall serve Me;”)
Eze. 28:24-26
Eze. 34:25 (“I will make a covenant of peace with them”)
Eze. 36:33 (“Thus says the Lord GOD: “On the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will also enable you to dwell in the cities, and the ruins shall be rebuilt.”)
Eze. 37:23-25 (“Then they shall be My people, and I will be their God”)
Eze. 39:22-29 (“‘And I will not hide My face from them anymore; for I shall have poured out My Spirit on the house of Israel,’ says the Lord GOD.”)
Hos. 1:10 (“…you are the sons of the living God”)
Hos. 3:5 (“Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the LORD their God and David their king. They shall fear the LORD and His goodness in the latter days.”)
Hos. 14:4-7 (“I will heal their backsliding…”)
Joe. 2:18-19
Joe.3:16
Mic. 7:18-20
Zeph. 3:12-20
Zech.8:7-8
Zech. 10:6-12
Zech. 12:10 + Rev.1:7
Psa. 14:7 (“salvation of Israel “)
Dan. 2:44 (“…and the kingdom shall not be left to other people;”)
Dan. 12:1-2 (“…And at that time your people shall be delivered, Every one who is found written in the book…”)

All Israel never to depart after the everlasting righteousness of the everlasting covenant is realized:

Isa. 59:20-21
Jer. 31:34
Jer.32:40
Eze. 36:27 – They will be persevered in holiness

Verses related to the Hiding of the Face theme:

Deut. 31:17-28
Deut. 32:20
Job 13:24
Job 34:29
Isa. 8:17
Isa. 45:15
Isa. 54:8
Isa. 57:17
Isa. 59:2,9
Isa. 64:7
Jer. 33:5
Ezek. 39:23,24,29
Psa. 10:1
Psa. 13:1
Psa. 30:7
Psa. 44:24
Psa. 89:46

Blessings,

Maor

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If we can interpret and establish Rom. 11:15 “……what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?” to be the same time that the “dead in Christ” are raised, then is it settled that there can be no pre-trib rapture, since the resurrection of the “dead in Christ” is, by all accounts, the rapture, which is, of course, contemporaneous with the resurrection?

We can establish that the national resurrection / birth of the beleaguered nation takes place at the moment of Christ’s return (Isa 66:8; Eze 39:22; Zech 3:9; 12:10; Mt 23:39; 24:30; Lk 21:24; Acts 3:21; Ro 11:25-26; Rev 1:7; 11:2 et al.) But even after we prove the intersection between the national resurrection of the nation and personal resurrection of the saints, we have proven nothing against the rapture, at least not to their peculiar kind of thinking. Let me explain why.

They are instant to grant that Israel’s experience of tribulation ends in national resurrection at the return of Christ, which is simultaneous with the resurrection of OT believers and the martyrs of the tribulation who will come to faith AFTER the rapture. According to their view, everyone saved before Pentecost and after the pre-tribulational rapture belong to a distinct people of God, separate, not only from unbelieving Israel, but even from the regenerate saints of Israel who died before Pentecost, with those who come to faith after the rapture, thus dispensationalism’s famous theory of ‘two peoples’ of God. These groups are thought to belong to different economies or dispensations, thus the term, dispensationalism.

According to pre-tribulational dispensationalism, God’s “foretold” prophetic program for Israel is resumed only after the present ‘mystery’ dispensation (parenthesis / intercalation) that ends with the rapture. Recognizing that the books of Daniel and Revelation depict saints in the tribulation, so-called ‘church saints’distinguished from so-called ‘tribulation saints’. The former are removed by secret translation before the tribulation can begin. They acknowledge that the national resurrection of Israel comes with the end of the times of the gentiles and the sudden regeneration of the nation that Ezekiel and Hosea represent as a resurrection and Isaiah will depict as the moment of birth (Isa 66:8; Eze 37; Hos 6:2). Scripture is clear that the national rebirth or resurrection of the nation is contemporaneous with the post-tribulational resurrection of ‘those who sleep in the dust of the earth’ (Isa 26:16-21; Dan 12:1-2; Job 14:14 with 1Cor 15:52 & Job 19:25-27 with Zech 14:4, 7-9). This does not stop their theory because they simply assign the post-tribulational resurrection of OT saints to another dispensation that begins after the church has been removed. That is to say that saints who died before Pentecost do not go up in the rapture but continue to sleep in the dust of the earth for seven more years.

In contrast to God’s prophetically foretold purpose for Israel, it is believed that the church occupies an entirely distinct and completely un-foretold dispensation that was a mystery in other ages, the so-called, ‘church age’. Of course, we believe this is a complete misinterpretation of what Paul means by his use of the term, ‘mystery’. He is not using the term to dissociate the new revelation that has come to light in Christ from what stood written in the prophets. On the contrary, what has come to light in the gospel, though hidden until the appointed time of revelation, was fully foretold. That was the hallmark of its authenticity and verification that makes the world accountable (Acts 26:22; 1Cor 15:3-4 with Ro 16:25-26; 1Pet 1:11). That something has been newly revealed or brought to much fuller light, does not necessarily mean that it is newly existent. For example, the mystery of Christ and His pre-existence and co-eternality in the Godhead has come to much greater light since the revelation of the gospel. You see the point. I believe the same could be said of the church. It could not have been conceived as the body of Christ prior to the revelation of the mystery of Christ and the gospel, of course, but this does not mean that the church had no prior existence before Pentecost, as believed by dispensationalists.

Dispensationalists believe the mystery is the church as a new organism that has nothing to do with what was foretold in prophecy. Only after God’s mystery program for the church has been completed with the rapture does the focus turn again to God’s prophetic program for Israel (their words). Then begins the Day of the Lord, which they make to include the entirety of Daniel’s last week (another untenable claim). All who are saved after the rapture belong to another, completely distinct people of God. Not only the redeemed of Israel, but all who come to faith after the rapture, and all from among the nations that will be saved throughout the millennium, are NOT to be reckoned as belonging to the body of Christ, which belongs distinctly to the interim between Pentecost and the pre-tribulational rapture.

Dispensationalists will be the first to tell you that unless the body of Christ is restricted to those who are indwelt by the Spirit between Pentecost and the rapture, the case for a pre-tribulation rapture falls apart. Indeed, if the saints depicted in the tribulation in Daniel and Revelation belong to the body of Christ, then the conclusion cannot be avoided that the church is in the tribulation. Therefore, dispensatinalists would probably have no problem acknowledging that ‘life from the dead’ for national Israel coincides with the resurrection of Daniel and all the saints who died either before Pentecost or after the rapture. They know there is a spiritual resurrection of Israel at Christ’s return to establish the kingdom, they just don’t think this interferes with the inferences that they have built around the presupposition that the church, by definition, cannot be in the tribulation. That is what they do. They define the church out of the tribulation by a definition that was unknown until it was first proposed by John Nelson Darby as a break through insight from his sick bed in 1836.

Pre-tribulationists view the time between Pentecost and the rapture as ‘the dispensation of the church’ (the so-called, ‘the church age’). This is based on the belief that the church did not exist in the OT. They will cite Mt 16:18. “Upon this rock, I will (future tense) build my church.” They will point out that only with the pouring out of the Spirit (after the glorification of Jesus as Messiah; Jn 7:39) did the Spirit begin to baptize believers into the newly revealed body of the one new man. We take great exception to this view, but there are many besides dispensationalists who believe (I think incorrectly) that Pentecost was the ‘birthday’ of the church. But quite apart from that discussion, here is what is especially obnoxious to their system: It is the radically baseless inference that they haste to draw from 2Thes 2:7. The restrainer is held to be the Holy Spirit and His removal permits the Antichrist to be revealed. That is not the only interpretation for the identity of the restrainer, but even if it is allowed (though I do not allow) that the restrainer is the Holy Spirit, it would not necessarily follow that when He is withdrawn from His ministry of restraining evil, every believer who is indwelt by the Spirit is also taken away.

This is an inference based on a presupposition that leads to absurd conclusions. Those who take this view do not blush to call this event “a reversal of Pentecost” (Walvoord and many others). I call it a ‘retraction’ of Pentecost, because that’s what the theory implies. They argue that since the Holy Spirit did not indwell saints before Pentecost (on the contrary, saints were indwelt by the Spirit), He will no longer indwell those who come to faith after the rapture. They will be born again but not indwelt (how is that?). Tribulation believers will sustain a relation to the Spirit that they assume (I think falsely) existed before Pentecost. It is believed (quite incorrectly) that the Holy Spirit did not indwell believers before Pentecost. Until Pentecost, He only resided “with” them. This view is built on what can be shown to be a faulty interpretation of Jn 14:17.

The two pillars of dispensationalism that are indispensable to its defense is first the doctrine of imminence and secondly their definition of the church as restricted only to this age. The second pillar is based on two principle presuppositions that are essential to its support: 1). Their own new view of Paul’s use of the term, mystery as applied to the new revelation by the Spirit, and 2), their view that Holy Spirit’s indwelling is restricted to saints living only between Pentecost and the pre-trib rapture. Touch either one of these pillar points and the whole edifice of modern dispensationalism starts to crumble. But that is only if one knows their own system well enough to know what is absolutely necessary to its support.

Most who embrace the pre-trib theory (with its doctrine of an any moment return and new and novel ecclessiology) might give pause if they only knew what the academic defenders of their position must teach in order to hold the system together, things so obnoxious to the normal believer as the thought that none of the righteous who died before Pentecost can participate in the marriage supper of the Lamb. Why? Because it is believed that no one living before Pentecost can belong to the body of Christ. All the righteous of the older dispensation continue their sleep in the dust of the earth for an additional seven years. This is clear from Dan 12:1-2 and a number of other scriptures that show that the resurrection of the OT faithful takes place only AFTER the tribulation at the time of Israel’s deliverance. Not only so, but Jesus said that those who would believe on Him would be raised, not at an undisclosed, pre-trib rapture, but ‘at the last day’ (Jn 6:39-40, 44, 54; 11:24; 12:48).

Such observations may not dissuade those who have deeply imbibed academic dispensationalism, but few things could be more obnoxious or theologically untenable to the average believer than the imaginative notion that the Spirit who has been once and for all given (as based on the once and for all glorification of Jesus; Jn 7:39), that His indwelling presence should also be taken away at the rapture, so that He will no longer indwell those who become saints after the rapture. Not only does this so-called ‘reversal of Pentecost’ obtain throughout the last seven years of this age. By the same principle, all who come to faith all throughout the millennium cannot be indwelt by the Spirit. He is with them but not in them, because that distinction is what makes the body unique to this dispensation. Believest thou this? Such is the price of consistency.

This is a point where they stand most to be embarrassed. For the sake of those who might give pause, love bids that we endeavor to educate the unwary of what the academic defenders of dispensationalism admit to be necessary to support the doctrine of an imminent, and therefore pretribulational rapture.

Not only was the Spirit given on the basis of Jesus’ once and for all glorification, which can NEVER be reversed, but as you so well asked, “how will the outpouring / baptism of the Spirit that will come to the penitent Jewish survivors ‘in that day’ NOT also baptize them into the body of Christ?” Exactly! How can the Spirit not put one in the body in that day no less than this? How can one be in Christ and not be in His body? And how can the Spirit who will be poured out upon the the penitent Jewish survivors of tribulation produce a lesser result than Pentecost, particularly when Pentecost was the first fruits of that which is to come? How is it that He baptizes believers now into the revealed body of Christ but He will not do the same for those who receive the ultimate promise made to Israel? Absurd! Not only is this poor eschatology; it is disastrous theology! It belies a terribly deficient understanding of the inward working and abiding union of the Spirit as the basis of that union with the divine nature that is salvation. And, though impossible apart from the cross and resurrection of Jesus, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is certainly NOT something that began only after the cross, as witness Jesus’ reprimand of Nicodemus for not recognizing that just as a nation cannot be born apart from the Spirit, neither can a person, and so on we could go in demonstrating by many scriptures and evidences too plain to dispute that the Spirit of Christ indwelt, not only the prophets (1Pet 1:11) but all the children born of the Spirit (Gal 4:29 etc.), but that’s another discussion, albeit a needful one.

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Nevertheless, Israel in its apostasy also continues to be called Israel, and, as a corporate entity (not every individual, of course) remains the object of both special discipline and special election (the “double for the double;” compare Isa 40:2; 61:7 with Jer 16:18; 17:18; Zech 9:12). Israel is divinely regarded as a corporate national son of special election, and though presently prodigal, is promised ultimate return and blessing, since only then will the covenant oath be publicly and openly vindicated in the sight of all the nations. He has bound up His very Name and Word with the self-assigned ‘mission impossible’ of recovering this very people to covenant favor. “This is My covenant with THEM …”

Israel in this sense is the people of the long exile that has been condemned by its covenant failure and rejection of Messiah to endure an age long blindness and hardening of special suffering and exile among the nations. However, this is never forever, but only “until …” (Ps 110:1-3; Isa 26:20; 32:15; 62:1, 7; Jer 23:20; Jer 30:24; Hos 5:15 thru Hos 6:1-2; Mic 5:3-4; Eze 21:27; Dan 7:9, 11, 22, 25; 9:27; 11:36; 12:9, 13; Zeph 3:8; Mt 23:39; Lk 21:24; Acts 3:21; Ro 11:25; 2Thes 2:7; Rev 6:11). That “until” is invariably the great day of the Lord that ends a final tribulation of unparalleled severity. Israel, as a nation, is never promised deliverance until that time. After that, they are preserved forever as an ALL righteous nation in the Land free and eternally secure from further threat of exile or judgment (Isa 4:3; 45:17, 25; 54:13; 59:21; 60:21; Jer 31:34; 32:40; Eze 39:22, 28-29; Zeph 3:13 etc.) This is what Paul had in mind when he spoke about the time when “ALL Israel would be saved” (Ro 11:26). The time is always the day of the Lord when, after a time of unequaled trouble, a deeply beleaguered surviving remnant, brought to an end of their power (Deut 32:36; Dan 12:7) “will look upon Me whom they pierced …,” and go apart to mourn and weep (compare Zech 12:10: Mt 23:39; 24:30; Rev 1:7). It will be as Paul was arrested on the road to Damascus, and when Joseph revealed himself to his estranged brethren.

These are those whom Paul calls the “natural branches” (Ro 11:16-19, 21, 24). “In that day,” they too will be the “Israel of God,” and true body of Christ on earth, no less than gentiles today who, according to the revelation of the mystery, have been grafted in to the root and fatness of the covenant tree in unexpected advance of the final tribulation and day of the Lord. Though presently blinded, the nation, as a nation of broken off “JEWISH” branches, have an appointment with destiny. The election has never departed from the nation. His love and their election are “irrevocable” (Ro 11:29). The time is clear: It is “when the fullness of the gentiles has come in (Ro 11:25). Then will the Deliverer come out of Zion and turn away ungodliness from Jacob (the natural branches). Jesus spoke of this point in time as the “times of the gentiles,” and the end of Israel’s long captivity and Jerusalem’s subjection to being “trodden down of the gentiles” (compare Lk 21:24 with Rev 11:2). The time of the Deliverer’s return from Zion was a term used in the OT for the great day of the Lord (compare Isa 59:16-21 with 63:4-7). It is the time that Peter refers to in Acts 3:21 as the “restoration of all things …” In 2 Thes 2, Paul will identify the Day of the Lord with the time of the gathering of the saints and the destruction of the Antichrist (“man of sin”).

All throughout the OT, the redemption and deliverance of Israel (the “natural branches”) is placed at the day of the Lord, which is the climax of an unequaled time of trouble (Isa 66:8; Zech 3:9; 12:10; Mic 5:3-4; Jer 30:7; Dan 12:1-2). This is precisely where Jesus puts His return at the end of this trouble (Mt 24:21, 29; Rev 19:19-20), which He, together with Peter, will equate with the Day of the Lord spoken of by all the prophets since the world began (Mt 24:29 with Acts 2:20; 3:21).

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Dear Reggie,

Would you agree with this short, non-detailed summary of Romans 9, 10 and 11? Feel free to modify or add to it as you see fit.

Summary of Romans 9, 10 and 11: The apostle Paul is not sorrowful because the Word of God is being nullified by Jewish unbelief (for in fact the Scripture is being fulfilled by their unbelief, as God is revealing His elective purposes in the salvation of the Gentiles and the stumbling of the Jews), but he is sorrowful for the Jewish people themselves, the seed of Abraham, because they are lost, and he prays for them that they might be become Abrahamic, the true people of God as they are meant to be. Paul knows that they are beloved of God and that God is not through with them yet. God has not cast away His people but has a glorious end for them, as He has promised. Sadly that end will be for but a few, for God’s judgments are at work in that nation, yet that few will at last be all. Paul’s heart breaks and longs for the salvation of His people, but his desire for them is not based upon national sentimentality. It is a Spirit-filled, Christ-like, prophetic desire that causes him to marvel and rejoice in the wisdom and purposes of God. Israel’s salvation will be life to the world and the final and greatest revelation of the mercy of God to mankind in Christ Jesus.

-Eli — www.timothyministry.com

That’s right! I love this. It is better than adequate; it is an excellent summary. I agree that Paul’s great sorrow is further explained in the tragedy of a people whose zeal for God does not gain them life (Ro 10:2), since the only thing that counts is a new creation (Gal 6:15). So this is correct. It is the sad state of the chosen people that evokes Paul’s longing and tears, as it did Nehemiah’s.

It is not only because the larger number of Israel is being lost. Tragic as that is, this is not the surprise that the mystery reveals. What is surprising is that the people of the ancient testimony should be estranged and blinded at the very time that the eschatological salvation has come to light in the gospel, and is now shining into the hearts of gentiles, while Israel remains in the grave of exile.

This is the great anomaly of the apostolic period that no one expected. Yet, as Paul shows, this too was foretold (Ro 10:19; Deut 31:17-18; 32:20-21, but see also Isa 8:17 with Ezek 39:29). This is the time between the comings that only God knew. It is the gap that is discovered in such places as Mic 5:3-4 and Hos 5:15-6:2, which also makes sense of the gap between the 69th and 70th weeks of Daniel, as comprehensive of both comings of Christ, a mystery indeed!

We can scarce conceive what a mystery it was that confronted Israel in Jesus. No one, not even Satan and the principalities of this world’s darkness knew about the cross (1Cor 2:7-8). It was a trap into which they fell to their utter defeat. If the mystery of Christ’s coming, departure, and return to Israel was hidden in other ages, we may be sure that the great parenthesis between the comings was equally unknown, particularly that this would the time and means by which God would fulfill His promise to bless the gentiles, “calling out from the gentiles a people for His name (Acts 15:14; Ro 15:18).

This is what Paul means when he speaks of God’s hidden intention to make the gentiles fellow heirs with the Jewish saints “by the gospel” (Eph 3:6). The emphasis should be on “by the gospel”, because it is the instrumental agency by which the gentiles are united to Christ, and therefore to all the covenants of promise, since ultimately there is only “one” seed that inherits anything (Gal 3:16). That’s why it is only by being “in Him” that anyone is counted for the seed.

The seed is Christ, but Christ is also the Word and Spirit. The believer is counted for the seed by reason of the divine nature, which is the indwelling Spirit of Christ. Peter says the “Spirit of Christ” was “IN” the OT saints (1Pet 1:11). They were as much born of the Word (and hence of the Spirit) as any believer today. When this gospel is quickened by the Spirit, it puts the old to death and creates the new nature. Whether Old Testament believer or NT believer, it is only through union with His / Christ’s divine nature that the promises are made sure to all the seed. He is the covenant surety. That’s how we are made partakers “by the gospel”. The gospel is the revelation of Christ that comes to Israel “at once” and “in one day” (Isa 66:8; Ezek 39:22; Zech 3:9; 12:19; Mt 23:39; Ro 11:26), just as Christ was sovereignly revealed to Paul on the Damascus road at the ‘set time’ (compare Ps 102:13; Gal 1:15-16).

It was well known that the gentiles would be blessed in the day of Israel’s national rebirth, but no one anticipated the great reversal that would bring salvation to the nations through Israel’s fall (Ro 11:12, 15), BEFORE the “great day” of national redemption. That is what is behind the imagery in Rev 12. BEFORE Zion’s travail (“the tribulation” of Isa 13:8; 66:8; Mic 5:3; Jer 30:6-7; Dan 12:1), the ‘man child’ (seed of the woman) would come first and win the victory over Satan. What we take so much for granted today, was to first century a mystery of first magnitude. To demonstrate that this had been all foretold was the basis of the apostolic “apologetic” to Israel, and should be ours in days to come.

The apostles presented the gospel as a revelation of a mystery that lay hidden in other ages amidst the prophetic writings (Ro 16:25-26; 1Pet 1:11). Though entirely foretold, the gospel was strategically concealed in the divine purpose until the appointed time (Isa 8:17-18; 1Cor 2:7-8). Only as the testimonium could be shown to be in agreement with what the prophets had spoken, could its validity be justified in first century Israel. The witness must show that the proclamation consists of “none other things than what Moses and the prophets did say should come” (Acts 26:22). That was its great evidence and claim to validity. The appeal was always to what stands written. That was the test. This was the apostolic approach to evangelism.

Prophecy was the properly required evidence for every truth claim, and even when the gentiles didn’t demand proof from prophecy, the apostles made sure they got it none the less, because they understood that this is God’s ordained method of revelation and confirmation of revelation (Ro 16:26), as He is especially glorified through the witness of “the spirit of prophecy” (Rev 19:10b). This justified insistence that all be confirmed in the prophetic scriptures was also a great safeguard against deception. Every truth claim had to pass through this filter. “What saith the Scripture?” This was the required divine imprimatur.

We need to see that the present mystery concerning Israel and the end times is part of the same Old Testament mystery that existed in puzzle form, “here a little and there a little” (Isa 28:10-13 KJV) in the Old Testament scriptures. It concerns, not only one, but both comings, and the full context of Messiah’s return to the place of His rejection (Mic 5:3; Zech 14:4).

So if a mystery has been revealed of an atoning first coming of a Messiah who comes twice (Acts 3:18-21), and if this mystery has been to Israel the foretold stone of stumbling (Isa 8:14-15), and the occasion by which Jews would be made jealous by a “not a people” (Deut 32:21), we may be sure that it is not only Israel that will be tested by this Old Testament mystery.

It is this inviolable covenant Word that is ultimately at stake in their return (Ezek 36:22, 32). So how say some that Jewishness counts for nothing? Paul did not say that. He said that only “in Christ” could anyone hope to inherit anything, since only a new creation counts for life (Gal 6:15).

If Jewishness counts for nothing, then why them? Why can the end not come, and the covenant not be complete until Jesus returns to “turn away ungodliness from Jacob”? God tells us why. “Because this is My covenant unto THEM when I will take away their sins” (Isa 59:21; Ro 11:26). Something concerning the covenant is not finished apart from their salvation. The church must learn the covenant to understand the mystery of Israel.

That there is neither Jew nor gentile in Christ changes nothing of God’s predestined purpose to bring them in at the appointed time. They are God’s self-assigned “mission impossible”. Through them, He will sanctify His name openly in the sight of all nations, as the God who raises the dead. Through them, He will publicly vindicate His sovereign prerogative to “have mercy on whom He will have mercy”, as foundational in defining His glory (Ex 33:18-19). For this end and purpose, a sufficient ethnic distinction of Jewish identity has been divinely preserved in the creation.

“In Christ” (in the Spirit) there is indeed no difference between Jew and Greek, bond or free, male or female. Still, in the creation, and for God’s purpose through them, the Jew is preserved as distinct people ‘set apart’ (Num 23:9; Amos 3:2). It is not in the first place for the sake of their personal salvation. That is open to all. Rather, Israel exists for both a test of the heart and for the sake of a glorious demonstration of divine grace and power. Their public and visible return, “their fullness”, will be “life from the dead” (Ro 11:15). It will be the open vindication of the everlasting covenant at the day of the Lord, which is the principal reason for a millennial interim before the final perfection.

Through them, every gainsaying tongue will be stopped. The return of Christ accomplishes the impossible event that begins the millennium, namely, the salvation of “all Israel”. This doesn’t only mean that God has intentions to save some additional Jews in the future. That is NOT the point. Rather, it means the time that the covenant is vindicated by the salvation of the nation in one day (Isa 59:21; 66:8; Jer 30:7; Dan 12:1). It speaks of that time after Jacob’s trouble when every Jewish survivor will be saved and all their children born after them, without the exception. Only such uniformity of Jewish salvation can confirm them in their Land forever (see 54:13; 50:21; 60:21; Jer 31:34; 32:40 etc). Only this can fulfill the explicit language of the “everlasting covenant”, as detailed in the prophets.

As inextricable to the mystery of Christ and the gospel, the mystery of Israel is central to the formation of that divinely ordained context that defines the overarching cosmic “mystery of God” (Rev 10:7). The Jew exists, and is divinely preserved, as the “beloved enemy” of irrevocable calling and election, for the sake of this mystery (Ro 11:25), which is ordained to level all pride and exalt God in the vision of the believer as nothing else (Ro 11:33-36). They exist to find out what we really believe about God and the nature of the grace by which we stand. They exist as final rebuke of that spirit that lifts itself up to ask, “Has God really said?” They exist for God! (Num 14:15-21).

Finally, I have this last thought: There is an old hymn that we sing, which asks, “must Jesus bear the cross alone and all the world go free? No, there’s a cross for everyone, and there’s a cross for me.” Well, I’d like to ask, “will Israel bear the tribulation alone, and all the church go free?” But what is even more, shall Israel alone be sifted by the mystery, a mystery so formidable that all unaided flesh and blood must stumble? Is Israel alone to be so deeply searched and sifted by the stone of stumbling?

No, even though revealed by the Spirit, the mysteries of God continue to elude pride (Mt 11:25; 1Cor 1:19-20). The stone that stumbled Israel in the mystery of a twice coming redeemer, will yet again stumble the nations in the form of the coming crisis of Israel, the foretold “controversy of Zion”. It is the same divine foolishness that is aimed to catch and dethrone pride.

I believe the same mystery that tested Israel, though finally revealed, still requires the mercy of divine illumination in order to escape the snare that it will be to an unsuspecting world at the last hour. That is why we believe that the same mystery that confronted Israel will take its last form in the impending “controversy of Zion”. The mystery of Israel is calculated to test not only Israel and the nations, but no less. In such things, the church is first (1Pet 4:17) The spirit that has for so long boasted against the branches must be fully exposed, in order that it might be broken forever.

Your brother, Reggie

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