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Chapter 8

OVER THE TOP
 

A letter of strange character has been received, and since its contents have a certain flavour, despite some good points, it seems best to share this in the hope it may help others.

The letter itself is printed below (at COPY), except for some personal details.

For the sake of the reader, headings have been introduced into the reply, which are not in the original response. *2,  *3 and *4 are  added to assist readers who may find this helpful.

Never before has this author been accused of holding several positions which he not merely does not hold, but has inveighed against with some force, for anything up to 50 years! While the experience of such false accusation as this is novel, it is wild, and only retraction could restart useful discourse. It is like having King George VI accused of leaving his land during the war!

Naturally, indications are given from our web site of the facts, mysteriously opaque to the accuser, whose words seem as if programmed, being contrary to what he attacks, like a missile fired into a pit!

Israel in fact has to come back to the same Christ as He whom that nation murdered; and in large measure, it will; and it by no means replaces the Church, but must join to that same body (and Christ has but one body) as that of the Gentiles. In so doing, it has a specific history as a nation to fulfil; and as in Romans 11:25ff., this vast  mass of conversions foretold by Paul for Israel, is looming (cf. Answers to Questions   5).

When the Lord returns, then this swath of converts in Israel, and the rest of the body of Christ (as in Isaiah 26:19, 63:13-15, 66) will as one (He is not two headed, or four-armed cf. Galloping Events Ch. 3) be raised in resurrection, just as He was (Isaiah 26:19, 49:6). So will they all, from this quarter and from that,  be with Him.

It is as vain and anti-scriptural to imagine that they will not be so brought as one, as if Christ would have his 'bride' in two segments (Revelation 19), and the glorious completion and consummation in one that Paul speaks of in Romans 11 were illusion, and the Gospel were divisible whereas it is immutable (Galatians 1), as it is to think that Israel will have some obsolete (as in Hebrews 8) form of pre-Christian government all on its lonesome self, on this earth.

To be sure God has something special for Israel, for its history is highly specialised and has been of great import. It has acted in covenant and rebellion, revised rebellions, from Moses to Samuel (cf. Exodus 30ff., I Samuel 8ff.), from Jeroboam to Hoshea, and from the non-luminaries, Ahaz, Manasseh to the desolatory ruin that followed the prime force of the Maccabees, leading to the crucifixion of Christ, and has been as filled with frequent and at last extended rebellion as the apostles, themselves Jews, were passionate in obedience.  It has as Paul declares in Romans 9, been much used, and despite these evil passions for false gods, in which it has been markedly joined by the mass of the Gentiles as the world approaches judgment on all nations, it has already in the faithfulness of God been restored to its land according to promise (cf. It Bubbles, It Howls, He calls Chs. 10-11).

Yet as Paul also demarcates, it has continued to go about to seek its own righteousness, not that to be found in Christ (Romans 10).

This coming and foretold change is reported clearly in Zechariah 12-13.

When God brings much of Israel back, not only physically as shown in Ezekiel 36-37, but spiritually as depicted in the vast parable to be found there, then it will indeed be as 'life from the dead' (Romans 11). That is very special.

It is also true that everyone found in Christ is very special, and every history is most kind in the end, that ends in Christ (in the case of Israel, so tellingly shown in Jeremiah 31:16ff, before the announcement of the New Covenant in 31:31). Each has its background and foreground; but for each the consummation is Christ, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, one Gospel, one condemnation for sin, one Bible with one transition from Old Testament to New, the Old becoming obsolete, as it is fulfilled in Christ, than whom none is to be more prominent. As God, His is a position unsusceptible to being surpassed, inviolate, He for ever to be worshipped with the Father as in Revelation 5 and Ephesians 1:10, Philippians 2.

Cutting out Israel from this phase of prophecy, in its return and restoration in a huge segment, specific to itself and remarkable, to the same Christ, for there is no other, to whom also the Gentiles have come, is a vast error, against which this author has inveighed for some half century, and done so from and in seminary at that outset. Making something of an icon of Israel, the people (Galatians 28), on the other hand, as if it were to come to something extra, rather than from something in one phase of God's operations for man now reaching Christ in His Gospel entry, represents a subtle reversion to vainglory, and alas, is as false as the opposite error.

It has been found, and shown in some detail, how this aweful tendency to go to unscriptural extremes has afflicted much in Christendom, and it is as much to be avoided here as elsewhere. The imagery of islands separated from the mainland of biblical reality has been used for such actions and reactions, extremes and insistences, where philosophy rather than exegesis has its intrusive place. The above would appear most closely in the land of the seventh island, below.

 As for other islands separated from the mainland of biblical exposition, see:

Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch.  2  (and considered list of  six misguided philosophic slugging matches):
including  End-note 1 on predestination - relationship to ism-itis, Questions and Answers 13, pp. 183-184 (added to the matter of singing, one of the six);
with Repent or Perish Ch.  1 pp.12ff., Questions and Answers  7, End-note 1;
 

the 7th island - millenialism, News 124,  SMR Appendix A, 506ff.; - and see Biblical Blessings Ch. 3;

also  guidance, the 8th island - Licence for Liberty Ch.  7, pp. 119ff.; followed by Isaiah, and

the 9th island, LL Excursion ... , Celestial Harmony for the Terrestrial Host  Ch. 6;  

What is the Wheat to the Chaff Ch.  1 provides islands 10-12.

For unity in the pure word of God minus evanescent intrusions and extremes of flesh with the entire scope of harmony presented, see as reference: CHH).

As to the letter itself, the reply to it now immediately follows.

REPLY

Greetings, Harry^*1.

Thank you for your extraordinary communication.

The Strange Idea

Your first apostrophe, starting  "Do you really think the God of Israel and the Lord Yeshua will come and rapture the church and not His Beloved Israel ?"  has a simple answer. No I don’t. Where did you get that idea, and why do you speak in this strange manner! This is your first error of false attribution.

I could not in fact agree more about your contention that the Lord is not coming to rapture the Church without what is there in Israel, that joins it as in Romans 11. There is no ‘separate’ rapture of the Church and the Jewish converts. The Lord does not take His ‘wife’ in two parts. Paul’s emphasis on the totality of the components in one Gospel in one grouping, and the regrafting back into a tree, a tree that is still there, and on the unity resulting: this is to the contrary.

He will take the elect from both portions, a remnant as Paul affirms (Romans 11:5-7, 9:27), and He will be removing them. It with all the saints that He comes, we read (I Thessalonians 3:13, Zechariah 14:5).

When the angels gather together His elect (Matthew 24), we are not to suppose that they miss some, or that the “ALL” Israel is not all. All the elect are taken in the first place  and come in the second as in I Thess. 3:13. Paul did not deal with the wonder of the newly restored branch to the tree, which becomes like life from the dead, in order to indicate that the tree is sent up in sections! Mathematics does not direct the word of God, for it directs itself.

It is strange that you seem to want to excoriate a position, in addressing us, which is not taken. There is a name for that. Please take more care in assertion. If you want to attack some position, that is your affair; but cease attacking what does not take it, if you want to be taken at all seriously. We are not a class, or a ‘scape goat for those who want to make attack, but actual persons whose teaching is found in writing and not in the mere imagination of anyone who wants to say this or that; imagining things without reading, or reading things by imagination. What is said is said, not what you prefer to think. WHEN you have rectified this multiple error, then further discussion may be useful; but not before.

One wonders if you have simply sent some sort of form letter.

The Political Impulse to Push what is not Written

Whether America will turn against Israel in such a singular way as you seem to have in mind,  is not obvious from the scripture, so you are welcome to your opinion as such. It may indeed fail to act with others (cf. Ezekiel 38-39), directly, indirectly, by restraint as one scripture suggests, or by other means. It is unwise however to speak of possibility as fact, or to signalizes what is West as all inclusive, or including what you want it to do. It is what it is, and not more specific than that.

Actually the Bible draws the net for returnees to Israel more broadly. Thus in Isaiah 49:12, it is from the North and the West, these being what in context the Lord wishes to designate. In Hosea, which without reference, you cite, it mentions the West, but then adds Egypt, to the South, and from Assyria, to the North and to the  East. Thus what you cite is merely a partial coverage by you, omitting facts. This is not good quotation, and as will be noted, it is not even applied carefully.  People will come from many places back, Egypt (famous case of an airlift is one example), from Assyria and from the West, the nearest example in a westerly direction being Europe and Africa. Your eyes seem everywhere except what is mentioned, and in what is near. You omit what is stated.

Your quotation from Isaiah 49:22 is in fact a reference to a most general proclamation about bringing them from the nations, from the Gentiles, and its amplitude is its point: it is a generic.

Indeed in that very chapter, 49:12, we learn that they shall also come from the North and the West. The capital of Russia is Moscow, not far from due North of Israel,  and millions have come from there.

Your melodramatic reference to the United States is thus a grossly misleading selection, distorting the directional amplitude of scripture, and seeking to signalise what is a mere part, and distant at that. Trying to make the use of forces is Afghanistan by the distant nation of USA to fit into what is a multi-directional amplitude of return is mere excision of what is written, and assumption based on what is not written. The Jew will come back from North, from West, from South and from East. And this ? It shows something about the USA! Not by anything derivable from logic or scripture.

In the end, of course, as in Rev. 19:19, the nations will herd against the Lord.

Your question which you seek to base on scripture, about being on this or that side WHEN America does this or that is thus wholly erroneous, a mere invention. It is a further error of application, an insert and an addition to the word of God. What it says is not what you say, nor can what you selectively cite be made the basis for any such thesis, based on the word of God. In fact ALL, yes East and West and North and South will eventually be seeking war on God, as in Revelation 19:19. The final 'beast' site from Daniel is Europe, the base of the fourth kingdom (cf. SMR pp.886ff., His Wounds Opened Eternity Ch. 3, Dastardly Dynamics ...  Ch.  4 ).

Anyone can add readily to the drama of God, but the Bible is the only reliable source book, and what might be has to be distinguished from what is written.

 The Precision of Biblical Prophecy,
and the Divine Coup through Zechariah

What is sure is that when the nations attacked Jerusalem as in Zechariah 14, that is past. Jerusalem was duly divided into two, as predicted. The UN and many others surrounding it, assailed it, in various ways; just as in Luke 2:1, Rome taxed ‘all the world’ (but it did not in fact occupy all of it, so obviously what is the relevant cosmos is what is in view – cf. SMR pp. 818-819). Such a view of Jerusalem as the object for the nations was taken up, certainly in a partisan way, all too readily in 1948.

Citing from SMR,  we have this:

The surrounding nations, with their relatively vast resources of space and manpower, did gather against Jerusalem, with the all-nation council of the U.N. active in withdrawing from the Jews any legitimacy in the verbal part of the battle. Words, politics, arms, surrounding nations: all coincided in the assault on Jerusalem. On the other side, for the Jews, there seemed to be no allies in operation.

Poole also points out the idiom and nature of the case concerning Zech. 14 with its idiomatic

limits.

Similarly, in Jeremiah 28:11, the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar is to be removed from the neck of all nations. However, it is obvious that this again refers to the contextual concept, all being here all who are in view in the operation, all whom he conquered, the relevant matrix of hostile nations. He did not conquer the unknown world, but the known one.

Accordingly, if we say, ‘all the school was assailing him,’ it would depend on context whether we meant that kids from the infants’ department were in it, or that those with relevant access! In this case, the world of those, in one way or another, voting and isolating and ignoring or repudiating Jewish claims, adverse, hostile, armed with words or weapons of another sort, with diplomacy or averted eyes while not intervening in the gross and outrageous disproportion: all were involved.

Even Bevin, British Foreign Secretary made it clear that oil mattered, and that there was a policy concerning the Middle East correspondingly. The parley with the Arabs, and the point of it,  was quite explicit in this discourse. Indeed, British warships even intervened when Jewish ships tried in 1948 to make it to Palestine. Moreover, the term ‘battle’ in Zech. 14:2 means, ‘battle, conflict, eating up,' the last precisely what the UN was doing to Israel with almost incredible violence to international agreement wrought during and after World War I; while in I Samuel 17:47, we learn that “the Lord does not save with sword and spear: for the battle is the LORD’s and He will give you into our hands.”

Battles are in many phases, functions and dimensions. In the spiritual wars, there are phases and bases which abound (Ephesians 6), and these have always been there (as in Job 1), since the very Fall (Romans 5, Ephesians 6).

The pan-national pressure was on Israel from Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, the Arab Liberation Army and Arab Palestinian Forces, as historically described in Wikipedia. These surrounded Israel, just as the UN, a very multi-national body,  in its desire to internationalise Jerusalem and leave disjointed bits of Palestine to Israel, had already warred on it in 1947, surrounding it with dissolution by decree, almost eliding the grant of Balfour. Their fierce darts at the land continued to bring instability, vulnerability and to scourge the Jew. How varied were the assaults and how multiple was the battle.

There were kinds of war and degrees, but which of the nations stood for it!

Indeed, the case is irrefutable and must go further. As L.E. Snellgrove points out in his "The Modern World Since 1870":

"Wilson's League  had failed because some of the largest nations had not joined and because it had no armed force at its disposal.
Now all the winning or neutral countries were members."

The rest, who had lost, were as it were, in ward, under control. Thus the UN did indeed cover this world together with the actual physical troops from many nations all surrounding Israel; and what was defeated was in its control! It was this UN body which had proposed the infamous betrayal of the Balfour Declaration, and reduced Israel to a pittance without a capital of its own. It was here that the aggressive battle had been brought. It was horrendous, but even then,  the Arabs did not accept the proposal. Hence they made war, and did not find peace. All the nations failed in their multi-partite battle.

 It is necessary to point out that it has happened as in Zechariah 14:1. It is not a matter of "when" and "will" now. We are moving already on the fast track of Zechariah 14. Yet many seem asleep, not seeing the manifest fulfilment before their very eyes, in one of the most amazing victories of all time, that of 1948 when as witness has reported, there was indeed pillage and raping as foretold, and half of the city was taken, the other half not! It is all there.

It is rather like Christ telling the disciples that they were slow of heart not to believe, since He had fulfilled the specifications (Luke 24:25-26):

" 'O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?' And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself."

 

It is sad when the evident fulfilment of a prophecy is ignored, and parlayed. How many times does the Lord have to act before it is realised! The time is indeed near as events pulse towards Zechariah 14:5 (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5, SMR Ch. 8). What is to be done is not to look to this, or against that nation, in some seer-like addition to the actual words of the Bible, and to try to stir up hatred or contempt against a nation, such as the USA, which while in enormous fall, is merely coming to a common level amongst the nations!

Israel and the Church: Two Funnels, One Result, One Saviour, One Gospel

Instead, what is needed is to look for the coming of the Lord and to be ready for HIM! (Hebrews 9:28). That is no interpretative subjectivity, but bald and blatant fact.

We move to your contention that the declaration that  ‘all Israel will be saved’ has nothing to do with the Church. This seems bizarre and certainly has no basis in scripture. It has this to do with the Church, that Israel thus becomes part of it!

It is true of course that the  term ‘Israel’ is not here referring in the first instance to the Church, but not true that it is divorced from it. Thus, the Gentiles grafted in, are part of the Church. Israel to be re-grafted in becomes thereby part of the same Church. All Israel being saved deals with that sector, first, but also with the unity derived in the same ‘tree’, with the rest. The Israel of God^*2 can have various connotations, but ruling here is the concept of the non-Gentile Israel. All of its complement thus arrives. But to what does it, spiritually, arrive ?

Abraham was to beget one through whom all nations were to be blessed; and Israel is a nation. One with the other, and all for the one, that was the point.

Yes, ALL Israel is, as has been expounded repeatedly on this site, first of all, what ? It is all ISRAEL, the nation contradistinct as one of two major components, Israel and Gentile. That was the promise and premiss of Genesis 17, and nothing changes here: it was unconditional.

That is the fundamental point. The branches, they have as just pointed out, complementarity in their new unity; but they are separable in thought.

As to Israel, its entire contribution is not merely those individuals to be those taken by Christ,  in the passing years, while the nation is ‘blind’, but those to whom the differential enlightenment comes in large numbers when the time at last comes, an event which so changes things for the nation as in Zechariah 12-13, as well.

This makes it all for the nation, and so at last all Israel is in view, that component completed in the scope of the diversities of history which Paul has been tracing. Indeed, the Gospel is intimately tied to a repentant Israel, now including the residual elect, an Israel suddenly awakened in mass (Romans 11:25), and thus it comes to join with  the rest of the Church of Jesus, each in its branch in the tree: one tree. No wonder Paul exults in this blending and amending so that all come to the same basis in Christ, by faith, whether initially in a nation rebellious from the Lord, or eventually repentant, whether Jew or Gentile: so that all move toward the Lord, one Lord, one Gospel.

Romans 9:23-24 makes this clear, as Paul talks of “us whom He has called, not of the Jew only, but also of the Gentiles.”

Trying to persuade me of what I have written, by the method of assault is odd indeed.

An emphasis is not out of place here.

It is Israel, but it is all of Israel in the context of joining what it left, and what has been implanted into the same tree, in Christ, re-grafted, to whom it thus returns. The mercy on all is the same mercy, and there is no other Gospel (Galatians 1). Romans 1:16 tells us that the power of God for salvation is the Gospel, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile. So the times of the Gentiles being fulfilled, and all Israel collected, you have the unity of which Paul speaks, in which he exults.

Thus, the Pauline exposition there is speaking of TWO entities, Israel and the Gentile. The resultant theme is the unity in Christ of both components, those from rebellious Israel and those from otherwise rebellious Gentiles. The former came and went, being cut off, the latter came and are advised to take care, lest they also for the same basic reason be cut off. The former return, and in this correct position, in Christ whom they rejected, they are now one. Romans 10 expounds their ‘problem’ and Romans 11 its cure

Eventually (11:25), then,  the blindness of Israel as a category, is removed, and this occurs when the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. 

In the context of your letter, it is right to observe that this is noted and expounded in Galloping Events Chs.   2 and   3, this refers specifically to Israel. Thus we find in Galloping Events Ch. 3, slightly adapted, the following:

' "And SO all Israel shall be saved," as Paul declares.

'It is IN THIS WAY that this premiss is executed (Romans 11:26). It is not in some other way. It is as declared, secured in bits: then standing in a sudden enlightenment, this way or that, all Israel is saved. It does not mean that everyone in Israel will be saved; but in context, that the bipartite collection is thus complete because the time of the Gentiles is fulfilled (1), and now all Israel is complete (2). It is manifest that failure has been a hallmark and many were lost; but the elect will be saved (cf. Isaiah 11:11, 65:9), and the addition of the last profound restoration to the Lord will bring up the plenary sum

Blind for a season, and so removed from their tree, they are delivered from this condition at a time,  UNTIL, says Paul, the blindness goes,  "and SO all Israel will be saved".

Again in Galloping Events Ch. 2, we have this:

PROGRAMMATIC HISTORY

Actually ‘ALL Israel’ means what a context in question will require (for example in Romans 11). If you take Israel in some metaphorical sense, then it can mean the body currently doing what Israel failed to do, as may be in Galatians 6:16. If, on the other hand, you take it in a context of terms uniquely tenable for the descendants of Abraham, then it is that.

When the context is JEW and GENTILE in their DIVERSITY, and the immediate context is the removal of blindness, it is apparent that the major emphasis of such a phrase, is on the completion of what had hitherto been incomplete, but is completed by the removal of the stipulated blindness, at the stated time. Thus comes the tally of the Jews WHO WILL BECOME CHRISTIANS. Red and Black, if taken as two sides, do not suddenly mean the opposite when the TOPIC, as in Romans 11,  is distinguishing them and showing their history. If here it also extends to a contextually new embracement of Gentiles by the ‘term’ Israel at the end, so often used to refer by contradistinction to the Jews in this context, then so be it.

It would however be hard to show such definitional variability in such a context! It would in general be rather like showing orange pips in an apple! We do not find them here. It becomes an intrusion into defined terms by mere predilection. It is necessary to let the author distinguish his terminological changes, if He so desires. To alter what He has defined already, becomes co-authorship. This is unwise!

Overtones may be sensed by some, and some terms may indeed have multiple meaning and intimation, so that "those that have ears" can hear; but this is the core meaning, and it is set down on our site as such repeatedly, with grounds for it, quite often, as I have just found by reviewing cases! This is the basic teaching on the topic. There is never any question of Jew and Gentile Christians being raptured separately. If you are interested in dispensationalism, we are not, and you can find teaching on this at the indexed place, in the following file. You may see exposition concerning Romans 11 also in The Biblical Workman Ch. 3 at *1A.

As then to all Israel being saved, this is the fashion of it; and after so long a time, when the blindness passes, a vast change is to come in a heap. This is to perform the task. It is constitutive of their history to be, the manner of it. Indeed, WHEN Israel in large bulk does return to the Lord, having already returned to their land as Ezekiel foretold in 36-37 (It Calls ... Ch. 10), it will become part of the Christian Church, so that in the largest sense it will then become, not a a displacement of name, but as an arrival to fame, part of it.

There is accordingly no question of Israel the nation becoming the Church, as I have so often laboriously reasoned; but there is no question of Israel coming to anything but to the Church, the body of Christ, in coming to Christ. He DOES have a body, and it is not two.

There is thus a possible overtone to the effect that the whole of what was once the mouthpiece for the Lord, is now such on an extended basis, so that not a displacement or replacement but a Gospel merger occurs, completing the work of Israel in a newer and broader 'Israel', the prince who prevailed. Any such extension^*3 however does nothing to remove or affect the base; and such usages are common, but merely apply a concept (as with Babylon), and have nothing to do with any change^*4.

In no way does this not alter the basic sense of Israel completing its contribution at last, so that all of it arrives en scène at last, into the Messianic community, the Christian Church. This, some of it, called, claimed, converted and sent by Christ,  were used to start; and now at last we learn from Romans 11 for example, to this much more of it will come to belong. In the meantime, many Gentiles have come, and in the inscrutable but beautiful planning of God, all then come together. Paul is delighted and who would not be! (Romans 11:30-36), showing it as part of the omniscient and glorious God whose will is not perforated but implemented.

Because of the tenor of your letter, however, there is room for emphasis and to this we turn.

There is thus no way in which Israel is equated with the Church, no way rapture is to be in two sections, or the West in differentially indicated as to direction for returnees. There are three errors which you have made, two in false attribution of teaching which is not made, and a third in your own. The exhortation made on the false basis represents a fourth error.

The place of this salvation, Christ provides, Zechariah depicts in their looking to the crucified Saviour (12:10); and the spiritual character of it is manifest, distinctive from, but not contrary to or other than, anything served and provided for the Gentiles; for that one Gospel is not going to become a multiple bomb, or MIRV. On the contrary, it remains single, singular, differentiated for none, for as to it, "there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free ... for you are all one in Christ Jesus." It proceeds to show the basis of all spiritual inheritance: "And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise."

It depends, in this passage,  expressly on being "Christ's". That eternal being, the express image of the deity (Hebrews 1), who is and was God, in His earthly sojourn, came from heaven and in the flesh, through Abraham, and indeed before that through the seed from Eve (Galatians 3:15 as seen in the protevangelion). It is He who bruised the heel in crushing the serpent's head, one being as Abraham had one ram, and Isaiah has one Saviour.

This was the seed of Abraham through whom all nations would be blessed. As Paul declares, it was of one (Galatians 3:16ff.), Christ. That is here the seed in view, explicitly. As to the physical, the land, it was unconditional to the generations of descendants, though discipline and even exile were part of the program, as the case should require (Leviticus 26 cf. Galloping Events Ch. 4). Spiritually, they all participate in Christ and hence in the promise to Abraham of Genesis 12:3, in the Christ who in the flesh came through Abraham.

Thus does the whole result come to one Gospel, and the breeding ground from just two categories, Israel - and Gentiles. It comes to one place, one Gospel, one way. Any other ? - only the Lord, who also is one, Father,  Son and Holy Spirit. Thus does much come to one, and in one to One, and does diversification come to unification, and unification to congregation.

This does not seem particularly difficult, but in view of your strange attack, as if blasting a fort that is not there, or a lawyer attacking a party who is not on trial, for murder, it seemed best rather amply to cover it. Yet there is a  question to be asked.

Why then do you harass us with such illicit statements ? You are again, in a number of things but not in all, right to the specific point, but wrong in your attack. You have written three times, so I repeat in retort. It is so: "all Israel" in Romans 11 refers immediately, primarily and distinctively to ISRAEL, and is an historical coming fact concerning it, following its specific period of enlightenment when 'blindness' departs. The Church as such does not act as a replacement for Israel, but Christ, the site for the Gentiles, acts as the spiritual and ultimate base for Israel also: and in so doing He acts as the replacement for all their rebellion (as specific in Zechariah 12-13). They come back to the same promised land, and have already done so as predicted (cf. Luke 21:24), and to the same promised and premised Gospel.

Here in Christ is the site in consummation of Israel's call, precisely that, spiritually, which is for the Gentile too.

In Sum

It is useless to castigate us for what we agree on; but you are wrong, for the fourth time, in your idea that these imaginary errors require various constraints which you see fit to impose, impart or solicit, on another person.

In fact, as we count up, it is found that you make three false attributions in a dramatic and abrasive manner, and these are not ‘truths’, but farcical errors, based on nothing; and then a spurious request.  You have made a non sequitur exhortation as well.

Your reference to the holding of 'replacement theology' is even more ludicrous, the fifth error, and the fourth error in attribution or indexing: since the thing has not been done on which such a designation would putatively rest. How remarkable to be charged with holding what for so long one has had to reject, argue against and expose ...

What a comedy of errors your charges represent! Indeed, you make a further all but incredible request at the end, based on this nothing, and it too is false in its implications. That, six errors of a categorical character, and within this,  no charge true: it makes quite a show, like an Air Show in which all planes crash.

The sixth error appears as this: towards the end of your note you see fit to perform what seems to be a corrective in intention, advising that God still loves the descendants of Abraham, and you later advise one to read Genesis 12:3. All this seems odd once again, as this type of point is made strongly in Galloping Events Ch. 4, and the mercy and love of God towards Israel is expounded not a little on this site. This tangled wrangle is yet another error, urging one to do what one has already expounded forcibly and often enough.

The actual constraint is that you talk to straw men if you want to, but do not confuse it with real people, also precious to God, for Israel has no monopoly on the love or direction of the Creator, but simply a specialised place.

Thus you say this.

When you say “all Israel will be saved” and it refers to the “church” you know this is “replacement theology”. You’re are way off base.

Israel, and I mean the true physical descendants of Abraham are still loved for the sake of the patriarchs. READ ROMANS 11 in context. They are precious in His sight.

I will ask you kindly. If you do know anything about Israel please do not be offensive by talking about the nation of Israel or the precious Jewish people.

Write back. I would like to know your response to these truths.

Your protestations here are right in what they affirm, desolatory in error in the assumption that this requires correction. It is rather like telling a mathematician that 2 plus 2= 4 and asking him that if he knows anything about mathematics he will recognise this and suggesting he stops talking about maths. The mathematician might indeed wonder what has become of the mouth of his gratuitous assailant. It would seem way off base, speaking into the air.

You ask, then,  that the team should not talk about Israel. NO reason has been given, but a series of false accusations. That is not good enough. There is another reason why I cannot listen to such a monstrous false conclusion from false premises. It is this. It is my BUSINESS in my calling for Christ to expound ALL scripture, and there is much about Israel; and Romans 11 is in the Bible. Moreover, I have a keen love for the Jewish people, and to cease to present accurately from the Bible itself, the very messages, large and small, that are for it would be a gross and vile thing.

Indeed, as called by Christ, to preach, teach, expound from His word, freely and without fear of or favour from man, is a part of a mission for Him, of whom with Paul one can say, "for me to live is Christ," and so has it been these 55 years. To cease to do, in any part, this duty or to cease to fulfil this obligation and divinely accorded responsibility, to preach the word, exhort, rebuke with all authority, would be betrayal (II Timothy 4:2). To do so, indeed, because multiple suggestions irrelevant to the case, are being made, errors almost unbelievable in odd charges, what is this ? It is a thing not only impossible, since one is constrained and called to it: but for any one even to ask it on such false grounds would seem to move from the erroneous to the erratic.

To be put into some such category on the basis of false charges is rather rich.

On the contrary, following Paul, I can say, that I seek  to act "according to my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death" - Philippians 1:20. We are all sinners, but if the Son will make you free, you will be free indeed, and in that freedom is function for service according to His word - ALL of it. To do otherwise would be like walking on one's nose, or chopping with one's little toe.

I would therefore exhort you to be far more careful in making assault on people’s views, if this is any example; and to be making sure that you are speaking to the right people, accurately: not about fictitious ideas, but about what they actually have said and taught. To criticise is one thing; to invent what you criticise is rather different. The word of God is not bound and all of it is for application, on its own basis, without addition, or subtraction, understood within itself.

In this connection, let us return to an earlier point.

As to your idea, that the USA is West of Israel, the point may seem small, but it is in this also wise to be both accurate and careful. Europe is also West of Israel, so is Africa in  general direction, indeed a lot is West of Israel, and you could even keep on going till you went right around the world. Of course, this is not intended, but it behoves you to keep to what is written, for many neighbours are near at hand and in a westerly direction. The East, North and South are also shown to be relevant in these context. It is like 'going West' to forget the other cited directions!

A possible explanation or application is not a certain one. What is written is written, and what is imagined is imagined. The first stands and is bound; the second fails if it is insisted on, since only God knows, and what is written is as specific and as general as He desires.

Never insert your own ideas into the text, just because it fits a theory. Apply the text as it is, and let it speak as it is written, not in some amplified or reduced fashion.

Therefore I would kindly ask you to learn, and so be careful to avoid telling people what you think they say, objecting without ground based on their teaching, but to find what they do say first; and not to tell people called by Christ, what parts of the Bible they are to omit, since Israel is largely in the Bible, and the whole counsel of God is our mission.

When God sends, one does not dare decline; when man asks one to desist in any part, one dare not for Chris's sake desist. There is a holy constraint which no man can touch; and as to the book, the Bible, it is written and does not shrink for any, or for the work of the ministers of the Lord.

What we have presented is open for all to see, and it is far from what you have with strange inaccuracy presented.

May the Lord bless you, and help you to do well, to act with much care and assiduity, for your welfare is, despite these events, of no small concern to us; and there is no personal offence.

In Christ,

Robert Donaldson

for World Wide Web Witness Inc.

A Copy of the letter received follows: the answer is as above.

Do you really think the God of Israel and the Lord Yeshua will come and rapture the church and not His Beloved Israel? You need to be prepared to be here and to help get the Jewish people back to the land of Israel as they will come trembling from the West. What is west of Israel – United States of America.  “Thus says the Lord God I will raise up My Hand to the nations, and raise my signal to the peoples; They shall bring your sons in their arms, and their daughters shall be carried on their shoulders”.

 

Why does America have forces in Iraq and Afghanistan? Zechariah 12:3 – “All the nations of the world will come against Jerusalem”.

 

When America turns against Israel who’s side are you going to be on? You better say Israel or you will be fighting against God. “Pro Israel - Pro God”

 

Where does it say in the Bible that Jesus will come three times? There is only one second coming.  He comes at the last trumpet to gather the elect from the earth.

 

The salvation of the church, elect, body of Messiah, called out ones, is intimately and directly tied into the Salvation of God’s chosen people Israel.

 

By the way “all Israel will be saved” has nothing to do with the church. You have taken that totally out of context in Romans 11. Saul is speaking only – I mean only about the nation of Israel His firstborn.

 

When you say “all Israel will be saved” and it refers to the “church” you know this is “replacement theology”. You’re are way off base.

 

Israel, and I mean the true physical descendants of Abraham are still loved for the sake of the patriarchs. READ ROMANS 11 in context. They are precious in His sight.

 

I will ask you kindly. If you do know anything about Israel please do not be offensive by talking about the nation of Israel or the precious Jewish people.

 

Write back. I would like to know your response to these truths.

 

 

“READ GEN. 12:3”

 

In His Service ...

 

OVERVIEW

For a large overview of this with many contextual issues: see

The Bay of Retractable Islands Chs. 18 and 19.

With this, see Grand Biblical Perspectives Chs.   3 and   4.

The Note *2 below has been extended to help more find more obtrusively the follies of the joint extremist ways, amillenialism and dispensationalism, and to see the biblical perspective in which each sees one thing, but neither is willing to take all. As so very often, the reality is in neither extreme, but has affair with some elements of each, for each has taken off from a basis which is not warranting the result. Imagination taking wings, soars where it is not granted to be, and each imagination oppresses the other.

Reality as presented in the Bible embraces not air but Rock.

 FOR THOSE WHO SEEK THE WORD OF GOD FIRST

AND ARE SATISFIED WITH NOTHING LESS THAN ALL OF IT, 

SELF-INTERPRETING AND SECURE

A matter of intense interest both psychologically and spiritually, it is this: that some become so entrenched in combative positions about their ideas on the Bible, that they grow nearer to automatic responses (in politics: the parallel would be, If it is not Labour it must be Liberal, in logic, it is the case of the excluded middle).

Thus if someone does not CONFORM in every way to their concepts,
which may be extreme and beyond or below
the careful exegesis of the text, then they attack. That they miss the actuality in the excess of unruly emotion and fighting camp zeal does not seem to occur to them. 'You are really ...' this or that, they say. What the carefully construed position presented actually is, this appears to be beyond thought.

So is justice defiled and accuracy maligned, so is striving honoured and the scenario of mere conflict and fruitless allegation advanced.

It is not 'this, our position' and -ism, which matters, but the substance to be found by considering ALL that the Bible says, rightly dividing the word of God,
excluding nothing and using all of it to interpret each part, that matters.
That is the biblical workman, and naturally impatience is not always satisfied
with this; but in the end, patience triumphs
because the word of God is true and righteous altogether.

Replacement and Defacement Theologies

After completing the Notes below, add to the illustrations of the distinctive and primary definition of the term 'Israel' in such sites as Romans 11, in its elemental application,

Highway of Holiness ... Ch. 5.

Now see Appendix.

See also Deity and Design, Designation and Destiny Ch. 9, as marked,

Glory, Vainglory and Goodness, Ch. 7,

but especially the Excursion at *2 in that Chapter, and
Bay of Retractable Islands ... Ch. 19, from which the following citation is given here.

It deals with REPLACEMENT,  DEFACEMENT and DEALING WITH THE DISCIPLINE OF THE WHOLE COUNSEL OF GOD. All these references should be read as one.

 

Enemies because of their gospel rejection, as at Paul's time was the plight of the nation of Israel (cf. Romans 10), they yet are remembered because of the patriarchal promises (11:28ff.).God does not RENEGE! The gifts and calling of God are "without repentance" (Romans 11:29). What He lays down in the scope of history, He does. What He promises, He performs. What He eliminates, goes. It is all, not some, of His word which He graciously and reliably applies, and He makes no additions, let alone cancellation of always operable principles. He does not apply philosophical replacements or defacements, the one or the other: but what is written, this He applies.

Now there is parity. How ? The Gentiles were enemies of God, when Israel being faithful, they did not know Him; and relaying the sin of Adam, they continued spiritually anaesthetised to the true knowing of the living God. They were OUT, Israel was IN.

Then Israel fell, Gentiles came to the Gospel which was presented by many, chiefly at first and decisively by the JEWISH apostles, and so the Gentile contingent was IN, and figuratively GRAFTED in, to the tree which GOD created, in which the Jewish people had been resident.

Just - says Paul, as YOU Gentiles were disobedient, and gained mercy "through their disobedience" (Romans 11:30), that is, the Gospel being relayed even when Israel the nation rejected it, so NOW, Paul continues, Israel has become disobedient, that through the mercy of the one Gospel being presented to them by the very Gentiles who were once OUT, they might come IN once again. It is one Gospel, one faith, one inclusion zone, one exclusion zone, one God, one word of mercy, applicable to any, exclusive for each.

Thus ALL, being sinners, are shown up as such; and to all, God being merciful, provides ONE mercy in one glorious principle, one costly principle, shown in ONE Gospel which is the ONE way for ANY (as in Galatians 1).  From this, any who depart by plus or minus, so changing it, so far from being a SPECIAL select elect, such as some Israel with new individuality in some new formulation of old things, are merely ACCURSED. This, quite specifically,  Galatians REPEATEDLY affirms, starting notoriously in Ch. 1. Israel then has nothing new coming to it; nor has the Gentile. ALL is then fulfilled, the word and the work and the one Gospel which makes Israel, through lack of it, to wail, and the Gentile through lack of it to be all but incredibly defiled (Isaiah 65, Romans 1).

If Paul himself would be accursed if he, a Jew, preached any other, as he states, so would any other Jew who preached any other, at any time, so that if any 'millenial state' imagined, were to have such waywardness, then what would follow ? It is this, and let it be here stressed: such an imagined State, instead of being a special elect, would be especially cursed.

Indeed, the devil will try to bring in, even as the millenium progresses, a new urge and surge, and as you see in the sects, this can take almost any cheeky form and format; but this one Gospel will not budge or alter or suffer accretion or decrement as in Galatians. Indeed, it is in this same Christ in this same Gospel, that there is neither Jew nor Gentile, and all things (Ephesians 1:10) are to be gathered together in ONE in this same Jesus Christ.

Thus the REPLACEMENT THEOLOGY, a useful taunt perhaps to those who imagine that God will NOT honour His promises to Israel (including that in Jeremiah 3:16 where the very sources of Old Testament worship will not come to MIND, and where the sacrifice of a lamb would then, because of Calvary, be as breaking the neck of a DOG - Isaiah 66), moves into realms as ridiculously off-beat as amillenialism. It becomes as far out from the word of God as if, on the other hand,  God there forgot what He said in Revelation 20, to say no more. You simply ignore the parameters of the road of faith and holiness, laid down in the word of God, this way or that.

The idea of removing from Israel its carefully painted part in things, both in coming and going and coming back, defined in Romans 11,  is as monstrous as that of improving on things, and granting it SOMETHING MORE. This is DEFACEMENT THEOLOGY, which impacts negatively on the Gospel of the Grace of God, with neither Jew nor Gentile headquarters and pre-eminence or pride, neither change nor moderation permitted, its distinctness as stated by Paul in Galatians intact in its integrity, with no combination, no permutation, no nice little history of Gentile and Jew anything but a romance of unity AFTER their return to the Lord to receive Him as crucified for their sin, as in Zechariah 12:10.

It is this same tendency to swing like some ape on a vine, from extreme to extreme, which defiles theology again and again, throughout history, each inventing for its side, some defiling tag, some sour distaste. Yet tags and truth are not as one!

Thus does it come about that the universal principles which are so clearly traced, are ignored, and some symbolism which MUST be interpreted in those terms, is left as if a witless extravaganza, while its message is not applied. Replacement of Israel by the Church as it stays outside in the Age of the Gentiles, is indeed a foolish failure to see the specificity of scripture. Replacement of the Church in its 'age',  by an Israel which loiters around on earth after the wedding in heaven, which brings ALL the saints back with the Lord, is just as bad. If the symbolism of Zechariah 14 is made to continue past its due date, instead of being interpreted as to its meaning by the ineluctable biblical principles of New Testament pre-eminence in the crucified and risen Christ,  and no return to the obsolete, that is so much the worse, the more morbid and mordant misuse of Covenantal times and purposes.

In each case, what God specifies, man denies. Displacement of the overall inclusiveness and exclusiveness of the Gospel in every way, when in fact, the Jew back, the tree being one, it is for all: this becomes violation of the most fundamental principle.

The agony of Christ becomes extended, in such a position, His pervasive pre-eminence as all things are gathered together in one to Him (Ephesians 1:10, Colossians 1:17-18, Ephesians 1:19-22), becoming a subject of reversionary recidivism of precisely the type assailed in Hebrews (cf. Glory, Vainglory and Goodness Ch. 7, *2). The Gospel can become obsolete instead of the Old Covenantal symbols (Hebrews 8:13) and the paraphernalia which pointed to Christ can be restored in a gamut of disgrace which parallels the Seventh Day Adventist harrowing of the Day of Rest, so that it falls back to the creation selection, and ignores the greatest work of all of God, from which the rest came with far more agony, that of the Cross.

Defacement theology is appalling, replacement theology is short-sighted. The Bible endorses neither, each stuffing the folds of flabby philosophical ideas into the elegant and controlling word of God, and neither doing anything like justice to the entire depiction found there. It is that sad case, of extremism, where tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee fight away, to no point or effect. Textual care is needed, not vaunting -isms, partial and then inflated.

The age of Israel was noted in Romans 11, before their cutting out. The age of Gentiles is noted in Romans 11, in their grafting in. It is simple, profound, explicit, clear, without possibility of confusion or addition or subtraction. It is specified. The restoration of Israel to the tree from which it was cut out is occasion for rejoicing not in diversity, but in unity, not in extensions of what is foregone (Zechariah 11) in blessing, reviled, ruined, blindly ignored in its fulfilment, but precisely in return to the reality which was ignored (Zechariah 12:10ff.), without which there is nothing.

Those are the two authorised phases, stages, and there is the partition. Then it goes, and Paul exults.

THUS the awakening of Israel, removal of its ophthalmic failure, anointing of eyes not only with sight, but with the sight to FAITH of the atoning death of Christ is specified.

Thus Paul speaks of the two phases, Jew in, Gentile out, Gentile in, Israel out, followed by the restoration of Israel, like life from the dead (Romans 11:15), and praises God for the unification following diversity and so the consummatory wonder of the grand plan which having abased all, in stages, Jew and Gentile, then restores all. Will we build another skyscraper on top of the appointed one which is consummatory, in order to exalt the builder ? The builder is God, and here is the end in a unity which only provocation of the divine, can breach.

Now  none is proud, or capable of being taking pride in separable specificity of holiness, none higher, each having suffered and learned: for all is restored both to God and to one another in Him, in parity of total grace, with all merit and power, glory and composure of Him, who at infinite cost made this one way to ANY place in His side at all.

It is ONE mercy on all in the precincts of ONE tree, to which ALL come. Thus the exhibit is this: there are two sets of people involved in this symbolically in this one arboreal basis. It has symbolism and reality both, reaching on to the fulfilments of the former in the totality of the latter, as shown so distinctively in Hebrews 7-10, where substance replaces shadow in Christ's atonement.  How great is the God in whom are all things, from whom all comes, to whom is glory forever! Such is the spiritual surge witnessed through Paul in Romans 11.

It is well to ensure reference to Glory, Vainglory and Goodness Ch. 7, *2 for further exposition in considerable depth and breadth on this whole topic.

NOTES

*1

For privacy purposes, the name has been changed.

*2   EXCURSION ON 'ISRAEL'

The term 'Israel' can of course be extended on occasion, just as it can be applied even to the Messiah, the final exhibit definitive of God Himself (as in Hebrews 1:1-3); and you see this in Isaiah 49:3, where He who is to be a light to the nations, is called 'Israel', as Professor E.J. Young of Westminster Seminary pointed out.

Thus this Messianic passage, which says of Israel the nation, that it will abhor the Christ (49:7), speaks 49:3 of the one who will truly serve. It is He who will NOT so defile the truth, but BE the salvation of God personally (42:6, 53:1-4). It is He, the Messiah, who is bringing spiritual service that is faultless and efficacious: and not something else. What else!

It is that of which the prophets continually speak, with contrasting glory, as Israel fails and fails: it is not merely DIS-service but rebellion, and as far as flesh allows, deicide! (cf. Zechariah 11, Isaiah 42, 49-55, Psalm 69:23, Psalm 2, 22). It is seen  especially clearly  in Isaiah 41:26-42:7 and 51:18-52:15), in that enormous contrast between the Messiah's perfection, elect and effective,  and the misled nation of Israel, appalling in their abhorrence of the Messiah, breaking the covenant, wholly and statedly incompetent to secure what only the Messiah in mercy and love, triumphantly achieves.

"You are my Servant," says verse 3, "an Israel in whom I will be glorified." There is the difference: as to Him, He is a light to the Gentiles. For Him, it is too little to secure the restoration of the elect in Israel the nation (Isaiah 49:6). Instead,  He,  the Prince of Peace (literally 'Israel' is prince of God) will do what Israel failed to do as so disastrously shown in Isaiah 1 and 65:13-15. Though He will be esteemed stricken by God and the faces of His people will be turned away from Him, yet will He  not only live without sin (Isaiah 53:9, I Peter 2:22), but secure salvation for those who receive Him, THOUGH they be but sinners, one and all!

The disaster of Israel becomes the triumph of the Prince of Peace and Lord of Life, the everlasting word of God incarnate (cf. Hebrews 1, John 8:58); and He is willing for those who come to Him ON THOSE TERMS. It means you bring NOTHING of your pride or race or weight into the equation, but freely receive His gift (Romans 6:23, 10:1ff.!).

Thus ALL as part of the body of Christ, that One who is 'an Israel in whom I will be glorified' as the Lord says, are IN that Israel. We are all part, in that sense, of Israel, the One who counts infinitely and ultimately. We are part of His body who is so gloriously called in contradistinction to the Israel which as a nation failed, being replaced by the substitutionary Saviour Himself, who calls all both Jew and Gentile to Himself. It is, indeed,  just as vast a confusion if not delusion to dismiss Israel as now the Church, as in amillenialism, confusing the categories,  as in dispensationalism or otherwise to segregate Israel in the Church. It is all one when all is done, as in Romans 11:26ff., where the integrity of that unity is so felicitously and enormously stressed to the glory of God who has made it so (cf. Galatians 3:28).

It is useless to cling to former distinctives in view of Isaiah 65:13-15, 30:8ff., and acutely awry to try, since it cost that One who is 'an Israel in whom I will be glorified' in the very context of the national Israel which fails (Isaiah 41:28-29, 48:18ff., 51:18ff.) what Isaiah 52-53 described in anguish and in action: what ? It was His life.

To be sure, He broke death (Acts 2:23-24), but equally surely it cost that for Him, on behalf of all, Jew or Gentile, who come; and the race of that name failing, His grace prevailed in place of that name and possessing it ultimately, so making all who are His part of the Israel who DID prevail, indeed His body who is SO CALLED.

Thus it is all one and all part of that ultimate 'Israel' who ultimately prevailed where neither man nor nation did nor could, who take the acme of place, of name and of grace and distributes from His fulness to the emptiness of all; and what is not empty, needs to be emptied, which is a grievous process (cf. Isaiah 48:11). Thus it all becomes one in the context of the fulfilment of the totality of history as sketched in Romans 11, and this is the thrust of the entire passage. Clinging to what is becoming obsolete becomes rapidly mere rebellion (Hebrews 8:13ff.), so that the tweedle-dee of amillenialism and the tweedle-dum of dispensationalism merely grow to illicit extremes that distort, though each tends to some extent to correct the other. As we move to the next episode in this vast historical perspective, it is necessary to reflect on the panorama of events.

The national rejection of the Messiah has had many catastrophic results. The real 'catastrophe', however, it is not as many in Islam conceive it, the restoration of Israel to the land irrevocably given to it, from the day of Abraham (Genesis 17), but its failure to act to glorify the Lord (Isaiah 43:21). Its killing of the Christ was the climax, but many a preliminary preceded this atrocity, and much in prelude was accomplished as seen in II Kings 17, II Chronicles 36 and Malachi, before that day of travesty of truth, and literal effort to KILL it!

In Galatians 6, you see another reference, one to the 'Israel of God', which appears to be speaking of the Church as a body which would perform the function of glorifying the God, whom in human form, Israel the nation had so abhorred as to crucify. This action so featured in Isaiah 49-53, relates to the acme of the denunciation and renunciation of Isaiah 65:13-15, and how vivid, how utter and ultimate that is. It is so scarcely less, in the scorching divine irony to be seen  in Zechariah 11:5-14.

Of course, this does not revoke irrevocable because unconditional promises, as to the land (Genesis 17); but it does mean that having broken the covenant categorically (as in Zechariah 11:9-13), Israel became spiritually defunct as a nation: not spiritually meaningless, for its coming history, restoration and the salvation of many in it were not meaningless: but spiritually defunct. No more could it lead in the proclamation of the human pilgrimage and the saving grace of God. That is now done by all who are Christ's, race or no race.

ONLY by return to the new Covenant as in Zechariah 12-13 would there be any hope for any of them (as indeed for any Gentile, was there hope only in coming to this same covenant), in coming to the knowledge of God. But for such as did come, en bloc or individually, there was the breath for the bones, to use the imagery of Ezekiel 37; and there was spiritual life supplanting spiritual death. As Paul puts it in Romans 11, to have them back into the tree, re-grafted back, those of Israel the cut-out branch, this is as life from the dead!

Thus there can be overtones in which 'Israel' by extension can be used to refer to the whole testifying body, and to Christ. However to have the term 'Israel' = Church, and simply substitute 'Church' for 'the nation', in a context of differentiation between Jew and Gentile, so that the former BECOMES the latter, is not a possibility. The defined terms in Romans 11 are what they are shown to be throughout, and despite any overtone, this they must remain in core, so that as to each referent, no confusion is possible. Whatever the consequences of Israel's belated coming to the Lord, in major measure, the act of coming, by the grace of God, is its own.

Thus some confuse the fact in Romans 11, that "THUS ALL Israel will be saved", with an imagination that the basic meaning of this one national term as such,  is suddenly transmuted for the tripartite discussion: that of God, Israel and Gentiles. Others go to the opposite corner, and try to glorify Israel in some new-fangled spiritual fashion. Thus, some act to ROB Israel of its place; others to exalt it beyond it. Neither is just, neither follows the word of God, both are wholly at variance with the most fundamental principles of the promises and Gospel of God's own grace.

Some, then, act to abstract Israel from its place in the restoration in Romans 11, in 11:26.

Others, in a way just as erroneous, would imagine they can make the restored and repentant Israel, that comes back to the crucified Christ, seen in the vision of faith, as in Zechariah 12:10, something other than part of the one Gospel Church. This houses Jew and Gentile alike in one body. It does so whether many come or few, Gentile revivals rocket, or Jewish.

There is one Lord, one faith, one Gospel, and ANY other is not another as Paul advises us in the most emphatically dramatic fashion in Galatians 1. Frauds may develop frauds, but truth demands it on the authority of God, that this Gospel be inviolate for all, for any, and those who want more get far less!

Thus, there is no spiritual place for Israel except in Christ, as is the case for any other. God has no pets, and indeed, if it were a question of teacher's pet, who less so than Israel! For although prodigious patience, enormous love, tenderest mercies, vast endurance were shown by God to the nation (cf. Psalm 78, 106, Ezekiel 20), yet it could not learn, would not turn. Even the revivals became corrupted, the remnant overborne, and truth was subverted till the situation in Isaiah 59, that terrible fiasco of depravity, became not prediction only, but history.

Indeed, any variant whatever of the Gospel relative to the spiritual place, grace, character and destiny of the remnant of Israel, is a semi-Gospel, another Gospel, with semi-repentance, a masquerade, a disreputable attempt to chain anew, with or without understanding the Christ formerly crucified.

For Jew or Gentile, in this there is NO DIFFERENCE (Galatians 3:38). Contradiction of this fact spiritually, is like contradiction of Israel's promised inheritance geographically, each of these elements glorifying God.

Neither can be moved; each has its place, the one a simple fulfilment, the other an exposure to grace only, with no allowance for pride of race, place, flesh or performance (cf. Isaiah 19). The Gospel has no place for airs.

With the former, it is because despite their unworthiness (divinely protested in Ezekiel 36:22 in this regard, even AS the Lord is bringing them back to their land), GOD KEEPS HIS PROMISE. As it is put in Ezekiel 36, He had pity on His name.

With the latter, it is because, always withstanding man's impertinence and impenitence and pretence, GOD KEEPS HIS PREMISES.

What He states, gives, and declares to be as the highway of mercy and peace, and salvation, the very Gospel of peace to man: this remains unique, narrow, immovable, not subject to qualification, variation or adornment.

This is what He says and NO more and NO less for ANYONE!

See on the one hand, SMR Appendix A, and on the other, Deliver Us from Dispensationalism.

*3

Concerning an overtone in this "and so all Israel shall be saved" declaration, it is necessary to realise that the Lord is quite capable of having such, being infinite in comprehension, magnificent in expression. Just as a grand piano can have wonderful overtones which help to distinguish its outstanding quality, so here.

Thus in Romans 11:33-36, there is a reflection of what might be called an epi-exegetical character. Thus although without doubt, as argued several times on this site, the major thrust is that with this addition, spoken of in Romans 11:25-26 to the Israel of the context of Romans 11, there is a summation, this is the pith that does not exclude additional intimations.

Thus the point is that there will be in plan at least, a totalling of the contributory actions of the coming of Jews to the Lord, the one long and episodic, the other dynamic and grand, the one over time, the other just in time, the one in particles, the other in a great aggregate.

This however in no way excludes the overtone that this IN TURN makes up a vast totality of another kind, that of all that is in the manner of what Israel was supposed to do (Isaiah 43:21), all that conveys, ministers and missions, shows forth the truth concerning salvation. Thus IN the very act of ALL Israel, the nation, being thus saved in this sense, there is a broader consequence. This, Paul moves onto in verses 33-36. In these later verses, accordingly,  we see two specific aspects, then joined.

Thus "the gifts and calling of God are without repentance" becomes a new sub-topic of the thrust of the passage, and in this there are two illustrations. Firstly, the Gentiles were once disobedient, and then obtained divine mercy, with the default of Israel in killing its Messiah, the occasion for this mercy rushing to the world. Then Israel, this also, it was disobedient; but through the mercy shown to the Gentiles, who in a prolonged season preached the Gospel where some of them were converted, it at last received mercy from this self-same Gospel. Mercy in the Christ came to Israel but was in much, to flow on to the Gentiles as the gates of the nation were barred; so that Israel's time came to a fruition which was then sent on to the Gentile world with force. Then, this having been done, the mercy this time moving for long amid the Gentile nations, flows back to Israel when its time of sudden inspiration comes (as in Zechariah 12:10): and many in it suddenly are added to the roll-call of the ages, and become Christ's.

What was the divine procedure in the sovereign impartation of mercy in such a 'difficult', yes disorderly and disobedient earth ? one which had already suffered the deluge for its pan-disobedient self-conceits ? It was that in this sequential way, first one (the nation)_, and then the other (the other nations as to emphasis) would be disobedient, so that "He might have mercy on all."

This is the second 'all', and it is expressly expounded by Paul before he makes his paean of praise at the divine wisdom:

"O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God.
How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!"

Therefore the full scope of Paul's presentation includes BOTH the saving of ALL Israel, as the first emphasis, and then the saving of ALL from both camps. In this,  both achieved the divine rejection justly through their persistent disobedience, and each in a glorious ensemble of mutuality, received just that restoration in significant part, each according to plan, and the total according to wisdom, which leaving nothing of pride to any, and using features in both settings, results this time in ALL, both of Israel and the Gentiles, EXPLICITLY, being reached.

This is in the divine way, with its principles, empowerment and performance from Him! This is the end of the matter, with the paean of praise following; and the exclusion of a latent thrust in the use of the term 'Israel' not only decisively, for the Jew, but extensively for all of the body at last to come, cannot be excluded, any more than Galatians 6 can be deleted.

Therefore that such an overtone might appear as a latency in the initial statement cannot be removed from possibility, and as in great literature, such an interchange cannot be ruled out, any more than, to the contrary,  can any attempt to make 11:26 have this as its major meaning. Indeed, the thought does spill on in the succeeding verses, as the greater 'all' becomes explicit in due time in the whole instruction of the passage: and it is then not only all Israel in the limited sense, but all the people of God in the bipartite sense of Jew and Gentile components. This is empirical fact.

The apostle in fact is moved to expand what here would be an overtone into tonal command, in these later verses; and it is certainly a RESULT of the coming of all Israel in the major and basic sense, and one to which attention might justly be drawn, in the initial and overall context. Indeed, the coming reflection in verses Romans 11:30ff. is precisely to point out this feature of the whole exposition, the explication of what was at first merely implicit. With the Gentile fulness and Israel's, then of course there is total fulness, for anyone who can add. Explication and implication are both present, and where each has its place, it is mere bulk handling to ignore the differentiation.

There is such a desire on the part of some to have everything like glass-and-concrete office blocks, in English today, and in thought, as if man were tired of beauty and depth, in any construction, the pragmatic and the automatic the site of zeal, that some might obsessively seek to remove the measured thrust and development of an argument with such facility that a major part might within it, have the seed of a further aspect, soon to be developed.

Just however as a Shakespearean pun might be tripartite, so may a scriptural declaration have its major and minor meanings, or better, tonal command and overtoned spin-off, or supplement, both at once. Having said this, since it seems it is easy in such affairs, for many so fraught with emotion because of persecution and the like, to ignore what is stated, let us yet once more repeat as argued over and over on this site: the basic meaning of 11:26 at this point is simply the completion of the category of Israel, the long slow haul and the second vast splendour of the national action in which MANY come to Christ.

This gives occasion for a further reflection. Thus in a case where multiple misrepresentation occurs, in someone seeking to characterise the teaching of someone else, it is well known that 'typing' can occur. Thus if you are white, you are arrogant and proud and need abasement, but if you are black, you are uneducated or not sophisticated: these are ludicrous propositions, but some which may be used.

Thus if someone uses the term 'black', such is the racial tension (and persecutions such as slavery give understanding but not excuse for confusion) that someone may imagine this has overtones, and that it MUST be demeaning. Not so, really. This is typing, the policy of assuming that if something OFTEN accompanied by demeaning thoughts, is uttered, then it MUST be accompanied by them on this occasion.

Again, on this site we have the poly-potentiated coverage of prophecy. What does this mean ? It is simply that EACH CONTEXT is used to find the meaning in itself, first of all. We do not assume that thought never varies in its eliciting of aspects of a case, any more than we ignore it if the thought does varies in what it brings to light in two similar pr cognate passages. It is simply a matter of checking carefully what is said, not universalising as if in a fit or spasm, and being unable to read. You do not close your mind, because you belong to some 'school' of thought, and teach the context what to mean; you open the mind instead, to FIND what in precise particularity, the text is saying IN THIS CASE.

Thus for example as in Isaiah 60, there is a church emphasis in the most profound sense, in which Israel is the base and the Church is the conclusion, the very walls being salvation, and there being only one salvation, we are moved to this domain, so is it in Isaiah 66, where there is a dispersal of the Old Covenant in dramatic form, as the New supervenes. Such a thrust appears here, while in Isaiah 59 one finds the scope of the presentation flowing on from that of Isaiah 58, is more limited, though its results are broad in the end, so that it is to Zion that the Lord comes in remedy of these things (59:21).

It is to Zion's descendants first of all, that the riot act of verse 21 is then read. THERE IS NO CHANGE. The  Gospel, the Redeemer, the severity of the state requiring repair in Israel, it is all FIXED. There is no alteration and these things will be continued in kind, these very words, so that none may hide or abstract, deduct or seek renovation or removal. The words are to continue to all generations, we read. They obtain to the coming of the Redeemer, a thing of no small note in Isaiah 66.

We do not FIX on the fact that in some context one thing occurs, and then ASSUME that it must be identical in every other context. To be sure, contexts are compared, spiritual things with spiritual, but this very comparison is not only for identification of the same, but differentiation of the different, in case the Author has some further vista, aspect, element to reveal or emphasise. That is the nature of comparison: you do not foreknow the result before inspection! Your study is not trance-like but truth oriented. You do not close your mind with perfect foreknowledge, but open it with searching care to what is written.

Is there not just such case in Matthew 22:23-32!

There are thus the two levels, what is stated and what is implied, and the latter may be ignored, but not wisely.

So too here. Some point may be found, and it may be a CONSEQUENCE or implication that is being pursued in a given context of an author; but then it may be falsely assumed that this MUST be the point that is being made in every other reference. Not so: then had development, diversity and other emphasis and topic no meaning. An author may bring out in one case an implication in the flow of the passage, and in another the basic meaning, the one for instruction overall, the other for exegesis in particular. When the exegesis itself is expressly presented as such, with rejection of other meaning as its direct thrust, with argument for this, it is well to be instructed, lest words have no meaning, and fixed idea substitutes for understanding.

This is mere substitution for thought and automation instead of intelligent thought. That moves rather beyond mere typing: it is blind attribution that can ignore the exact opposite to what is said, and substitute a thrust of thought for the explicit and repeated exegesis of a passage, in direct contradiction of what is said. We then have what may appear a species of trance-like oblivion of what is written, taught and even argued. When such a thing occurs, as in the present case, multiply, there is no point in discussion without retraction.

To be harried for being white when you are black, for being black when you are white, for being rich when you are poor, or for being poor when you are rich, for saying yes when you said no, or for saying no, when you said yes, after a certain amount of repetition of this assassination of simple fact, one would move into the kingdom of confusion, and much worse than that. It is for those who are willing to live there.

*4

Thus Babylon in Jeremiah 50-51 is a city; but in the symbolic casting of the stone, we enter the world of symbolism. When Revelation takes up Babylon in terms of the city of seven hills in Revelation 17, this in no way prejudices the meaning in Jeremiah; but it does APPLY it and show the GENERIC character of that for which  Babylon stood, the spiritual thrust being of a kind which would develop and disadorn the world until its destiny came, and the finalities were met! Principles implicit in a preliminary cannot be excluded, especially when they are then used explicitly, and applied as such. The germinal then sprouts, and the generic thrust matures.

Now see Appendix.

See also Deity and Design, Designation and Destiny Ch. 9, as marked,

Glory, Vainglory and Goodness, Ch. 7, but especially the Excursion at *2 and
Bay of Retractable Islands ... Ch. 19, from which the following citation is given here. It deals with REPLACEMENT,  DEFACEMENT and DEALING WITH THE DISCIPLINE OF THE WHOLE COUNSEL OF GOD. All these references should be read as one.

 

Enemies because of their gospel rejection, as at Paul's time was the plight of the nation of Israel (cf. Romans 10), they yet are remembered because of the patriarchal promises (11:28ff.).God does not RENEGE! The gifts and calling of God are "without repentance" (Romans 11:29). What He lays down in the scope of history, He does. What He promises, He performs. What He eliminates, goes. It is all, not some, of His word which He graciously and reliably applies, and He makes no additions, let alone cancellation of always operable principles. He does not apply philosophical replacements or defacements, the one or the other: but what is written, this He applies.

Now there is parity. How ? The Gentiles were enemies of God, when Israel being faithful, they did not know Him; and relaying the sin of Adam, they continued spiritually anaesthetised to the true knowing of the living God. They were OUT, Israel was IN.

Then Israel fell, Gentiles came to the Gospel which was presented by many, chiefly at first and decisively by the JEWISH apostles, and so the Gentile contingent was IN, and figuratively GRAFTED in, to the tree which GOD created, in which the Jewish people had been resident.

Just - says Paul, as YOU Gentiles were disobedient, and gained mercy "through their disobedience" (Romans 11:30), that is, the Gospel being relayed even when Israel the nation rejected it, so NOW, Paul continues, Israel has become disobedient, that through the mercy of the one Gospel being presented to them by the very Gentiles who were once OUT, they might come IN once again. It is one Gospel, one faith, one inclusion zone, one exclusion zone, one God, one word of mercy, applicable to any, exclusive for each.

Thus ALL, being sinners, are shown up as such; and to all, God being merciful, provides ONE mercy in one glorious principle, one costly principle, shown in ONE Gospel which is the ONE way for ANY (as in Galatians 1).  From this, any who depart by plus or minus, so changing it, so far from being a SPECIAL select elect, such as some Israel with new individuality in some new formulation of old things, are merely ACCURSED. This, quite specifically,  Galatians REPEATEDLY affirms, starting notoriously in Ch. 1. Israel then has nothing new coming to it; nor has the Gentile. ALL is then fulfilled, the word and the work and the one Gospel which makes Israel, through lack of it, to wail, and the Gentile through lack of it to be all but incredibly defiled (Isaiah 65, Romans 1).

If Paul himself would be accursed if he, a Jew, preached any other, as he states, so would any other Jew who preached any other, at any time, so that if any 'millenial state' imagined, were to have such waywardness, then what would follow ? It is this, and let it be here stressed: such an imagined State, instead of being a special elect, would be especially cursed.

Indeed, the devil will try to bring in, even as the millenium progresses, a new urge and surge, and as you see in the sects, this can take almost any cheeky form and format; but this one Gospel will not budge or alter or suffer accretion or decrement as in Galatians. Indeed, it is in this same Christ in this same Gospel, that there is neither Jew nor Gentile, and all things (Ephesians 1:10) are to be gathered together in ONE in this same Jesus Christ.

Thus the REPLACEMENT THEOLOGY, a useful taunt perhaps to those who imagine that God will NOT honour His promises to Israel (including that in Jeremiah 3:16 where the very sources of Old Testament worship will not come to MIND, and where the sacrifice of a lamb would then, because of Calvary, be as breaking the neck of a DOG - Isaiah 66), moves into realms as ridiculously off-beat as amillenialism. It becomes as far out from the word of God as if, on the other hand,  God there forgot what He said in Revelation 20, to say no more. You simply ignore the parameters of the road of faith and holiness, laid down in the word of God, this way or that.

The idea of removing from Israel its carefully painted part in things, both in coming and going and coming back, defined in Romans 11,  is as monstrous as that of improving on things, and granting it SOMETHING MORE. This is DEFACEMENT THEOLOGY, which impacts negatively on the Gospel of the Grace of God, with neither Jew nor Gentile headquarters and pre-eminence or pride, neither change nor moderation permitted, its distinctness as stated by Paul in Galatians intact in its integrity, with no combination, no permutation, no nice little history of Gentile and Jew anything but a romance of unity AFTER their return to the Lord to receive Him as crucified for their sin, as in Zechariah 12:10.

It is this same tendency to swing like some ape on a vine, from extreme to extreme, which defiles theology again and again, throughout history, each inventing for its side, some defiling tag, some sour distaste. Yet tags and truth are not as one!

Thus does it come about that the universal principles which are so clearly traced, are ignored, and some symbolism which MUST be interpreted in those terms, is left as if a witless extravaganza, while its message is not applied. Replacement of Israel by the Church as it stays outside in the Age of the Gentiles, is indeed a foolish failure to see the specificity of scripture. Replacement of the Church in its 'age',  by an Israel which loiters around on earth after the wedding in heaven, which brings ALL the saints back with the Lord, is just as bad.

If the symbolism of Zechariah 14 is made to continue past its due date, instead of being interpreted as to its meaning by the ineluctable biblical principles of New Testament pre-eminence in the crucified and risen Christ,  and no return to the obsolete, that is so much the worse, the more morbid and mordant misuse of Covenantal times and purposes. There is no distinction for the future, but in the past, where the vast pilgrimages and punishments, exhortations and reviews, inclusions and exclusions, at last yield to the olive tree, planted as of old, with the regrafted Israel in it, newly chastened, newly accepted in the Christ without whom is nothing, from whom is all, in whom is unity and truth for all, one Lord, one faith, one baptism and one God.

In each case, what God specifies, man denies. Displacement of the overall inclusiveness and exclusiveness of the Gospel in every way, when in fact, the Jew back, the tree being one, it is for all: this becomes violation of the most fundamental principle.

The agony of Christ becomes extended, in such a position, His pervasive pre-eminence as all things are gathered together in one to Him (Ephesians 1:10, Colossians 1:17-18, Ephesians 1:19-22), becoming a subject of reversionary recidivism of precisely the type assailed in Hebrews (cf. Glory, Vainglory and Goodness Ch. 7, *2). The Gospel can become obsolete instead of the Old Covenantal symbols (Hebrews 8:13) and the paraphernalia which pointed to Christ can be restored in a gamut of disgrace which parallels the Seventh Day Adventist harrowing of the Day of Rest, so that it falls back to the creation selection, and ignores the greatest work of all of God, from which the rest came with far more agony, that of the Cross.

Defacement theology is appalling, replacement theology is short-sighted. The Bible endorses neither, each stuffing the folds of flabby philosophical ideas into the elegant and controlling word of God, and neither doing anything like justice to the entire depiction found there. It is that sad case, of extremism, where tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee fight away, to no point or effect. Textual care is needed, not vaunting -isms, partial and then inflated.

The age of Israel was noted in Romans 11, before their cutting out. The age of Gentiles is noted in Romans 11, in their grafting in. It is simple, profound, explicit, clear, without possibility of confusion or addition or subtraction. It is specified. The restoration of Israel to the tree from which it was cut out is occasion for rejoicing not in diversity, but in unity, not in extensions of what is foregone (Zechariah 11) in blessing, reviled, ruined, blindly ignored in its fulfilment, but precisely in return to the reality which was ignored (Zechariah 12:10ff.), without which there is nothing.

Those are the two authorised phases, stages, and there is the partition. Then it goes, and Paul exults.

THUS the awakening of Israel, removal of its ophthalmic failure, anointing of eyes not only with sight, but with the sight to FAITH of the atoning death of Christ is specified.

Thus Paul speaks of the two phases, Jew in, Gentile out, Gentile in, Israel out, followed by the restoration of Israel, like life from the dead (Romans 11:15), and praises God for the unification following diversity and so the consummatory wonder of the grand plan which having abased all, in stages, Jew and Gentile, then restores all. Will we build another skyscraper on top of the appointed one which is consummatory, in order to exalt the builder ? The builder is God, and here is the end in a unity which only provocation of the divine, can breach.

Now  none is proud, or capable of being taking pride in separable specificity of holiness, none higher, each having suffered and learned: for all is restored both to God and to one another in Him, in parity of total grace, with all merit and power, glory and composure of Him, who at infinite cost made this one way to ANY place in His side at all.

It is ONE mercy on all in the precincts of ONE tree, to which ALL come. Thus the exhibit is this: there are two sets of people involved in this symbolically in this one arboreal basis. It has symbolism and reality both, reaching on to the fulfilments of the former in the totality of the latter, as shown so distinctively in Hebrews 7-10, where substance replaces shadow in Christ's atonement.  How great is the God in whom are all things, from whom all comes, to whom is glory forever! Such is the spiritual surge witnessed through Paul in Romans 11.