There is a strong controversy going on between Christians concerning the Millennium and the future of Israel. Are all of the promises to Israel fulfilled in the Church or does Israel have a future as a part of God’s people in the Millennium? Is Israel still in a covenant relationship with God or is she set aside for the present because of unbelief?
The Amillennial position states that Israel as a nation will never again be restored to the land by God and become the center of Messiah’s reign. God is finished with Israel as a nation. If Israel is back in the land it is her doing, not God’s. Brian Godawa writes:
So none of the promise to Abraham can possibly refer to physical Israel in the current national sense because it was all fulfilled in Christ. The physical nation of Israel is not God’s Chosen People; the Church of Jesus Christ is God’s Chosen People from every nation on earth.
Another point they would make is that most returning today are Gentile converts.
What does this imply? That most of the Jews returning to Palestine never came from Palestine in the first place; that they are not even of the lineage of Shem. They are Gentile converts.…In reality, upwards of 85% of today’s Jews are descended from the Khazars according to the respected Encyclopedia Judaica.
The Emperor of Khazaria in the steppes of Russia converted to Judaism in ad 740. He then declared his subjects Jewish, brought in Jewish rabbis from Babylonia and indoctrinated his people. They have been called by some the thirteenth tribe. It is an interesting aside.
Israel as a nation entered into a covenant relationship with God at Mount Sinai: “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me, above all people, for all the earth is Mine…Then all the people answered together and said, All that the Lord has spoken we will do” (Ex. 19:5, 8, nkjv). Both God and Israel agreed to the covenant.
THE CURSE OF A BROKEN COVENANT
Now this covenant was conditional. God said, “If you will indeed obey My voice…” Moses at the end of his life reviewed the covenant with Israel and reminded them: “Therefore keep the words of this covenant and do them, that you may prosper in all that you do” (Deut. 29:9). If they turned away from God and worshiped other gods, God would reject them and cast them out of the land. This warning was repeated by the prophets time and again.
Has Israel ever broken the covenant? The answer is “Yes,” many times. Hosea was instructed by God in the naming of a son: “Call his name Lo-Ammi. For you are not My people and I will not be your God” (Hos. 1:9). Lo-Ammi, “not My people.” Strong words, these. The covenant was conditional. Israel is described as married to Jehovah, His wife. Because of her unfaithfulness in going after other gods, God speaks of divorcing her:
Bring charges against your mother; bring charges; For she is not my wife, nor am I her Husband! (Hos. 2:2).
Isaiah, speaking for the Lord, proclaimed, “Where is the certificate of your mother’s divorce, whom I have put away?” (Isa. 50:1). Jeremiah, years later, speaks for the Lord, “Then I saw that for all the causes for which backsliding Israel had committed adultery, I had put her away and given her a certificate of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but went and played the harlot also” (Jer. 3:8). Ezekiel gives a most powerful picture of unfaithful Israel in chapter 16, a passage filled with the emotion of a grieving God.
To give Israel hope of a reconciliation Hosea is commanded to take his wife back. “Then the Lord said to me, Go again, love a woman who is loved by a lover and is committing adultery, like the love of the Lord for the children of Israel who look to other gods and love the raisin cakes of the pagans” (Hos. 3:1). When there is repentance, God is willing to take His people back. He took them back after the seventy years of exile in Babylon. He can do it again.
HEAR WHAT THE MESSIAH SAYS
Christ told several powerful parables predicting His rejection by Israel. He told of a man with a vineyard that he had rented out to farmers. At the time of harvest he sent servants to receive his portion of the fruit. They mistreated, abused and killed his servants. Finally he sent his son, hoping they would respect him. But they rejected and killed the son. In view of this Jesus said, “Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it” (Mt. 21:43). If they break the covenant, their relationship with God is broken. When Pilate brought Jesus out before the mob, he asked, “What then shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ? They all said to him, Let Him be crucified!” (Mt. 27:22) They also said, “His blood be on us and on our children” (Mt. 27:25).
The antagonism against Christ did not cease with His death. Persecution raged against the Christians by the Jewish leaders. In Acts, the Roman government is pictured as defending the Christians from the Jews. Paul could write strong words to the Thessalonians: “For you also suffered the same things from your own countrymen, just as they did from the Judeans, who killed both the Lord Jesus and their own prophets and have persecuted us, and they do not please God and are contrary to all men, forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they may be saved, so as always to fill up the measure of their sins, but wrath has come upon them to the uttermost” (1 Thess. 2:14-16).
BROKEN OLIVE BRANCHES
What then is Israel’s relationship to God at present? Paul describes the witness for God, the people of God, as a great tree with trunk and roots reaching back into antiquity, including all the saints of old. Unbelieving Israel is pictured as being branches which have been broken off and now believing Gentiles are being grafted in. “Because of unbelief they were broken off, and you stand by faith. Do not be haughty but fear” (Rom. 11:20). In fact John describes the gatherings of unbelieving Jews now as “a synagogue of Satan” (Rev. 2:9), hardly viewing them as God’s people at present.
Peter states that in this age the Church has taken the place of Israel as the people of God: “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light, who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy” (1 Pet. 2:9-10). Similar language is used of Israel at Mount Sinai when the covenant was made with Jehovah (Ex. 19:5-6).
“But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as He is also Mediator of a better covenant which was established on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second” (Heb. 8:6-7). Jesus said as He instituted the remembrance of the Lord’s Supper, “For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins” (Mt. 26:28). “In that He says, ‘A new covenant,’ He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away” (Heb. 8:13). Shortly after this was written, Titus, with the Roman armies, ruthlessly destroyed Jerusalem and their glorious temple. God was through with the old covenant and its sacrificial system.
GOOD NEWS FOR JEWS
Now the gospel goes out freely to all, Jew and Gentile. God shows no partiality to the Jew; James plainly states that partiality is sin (Jas. 2:9). God taught Peter that vital lesson in a vision on the housetop of Simon the tanner. When Peter later entered the house of Cornelius, the Roman centurion in Caesarea, he testified, “You know how unlawful it is for a Jewish man to keep company with or go to one of another nation. But God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean” (Acts 10:28). Only God could have convinced Peter of this truth.
Today the gospel has a universal message: “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son…” (Jn. 3:16). God’s love has no limits but embraces all of mankind. The death of Christ on the cross for sinners has universal efficacy: “And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world” (1 Jn. 2:2). Jews and Gentiles are equally precious to God and offered salvation.
WHAT OF THE FUTURE?
But does Israel have any future with God as a nation? Before His ascension the disciples questioned our Lord Jesus, “Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). This would have been the perfect opportunity for Christ to clarify their thinking. He could have said, “There is no future kingdom for Israel. The Church will be My kingdom from now on.” But Jesus said, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority” (v. 7). He implied the kingdom will be restored to Israel but they could not know the time.
Earlier Jesus had promised them, “Assuredly I say to you, that in the regeneration, when the Son of Man sits on the throne of His glory, you who have followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Mt. 19:28). How else can this be interpreted but to mean that there would be a future for Israel and that the apostles would have positions of authority under His kingship? If Jesus did not mean that, He surely misled His apostles—and Matthew was an eyewitness of the event.
Israel is back in the land as a nation after 2,000 years of dispersion. But they are back in unbelief, still as a nation rejecting their Lord and Saviour. If you say you are a Christian you cannot immigrate to Israel, regardless of your physical lineage. The Talmud still blasphemes the name of Jesus and reeks with hostility toward Christ. There is a move by a group in Israel to rebuild the temple and to re-institute the sacrificial system. If this is done it will be a further repudiation of Christ and His sacrificial death on the cross. “But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God.…For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified” (Heb. 10:12, 14).
But is there any hope for Israel in the future? Certainly today Jews who turn to Christ can be saved and become members of the Church, where there is neither Jew nor Greek (Gal. 3:28). But will there ever be a national turning to Christ? Paul speaks of them as branches broken off, but he also states, “And they also, if they do not continue in unbelief, will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again” (Rom. 11:23). He also promises “that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written” (Rom. 11:25-26). Paul believed in a future for Israel but it was conditioned on repentance and faith.
ALL ISRAEL SHALL BE SAVED?
An amazing prophecy was written 2,500 years ago: “In that day that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son and grieve for Him, as one grieves for a firstborn…” (Zech. 12:9-11).
When Christ returns in glory, they are smitten with the realization that the One they rejected long ago as their Messiah truly is King of kings and Lord of lords. At His trial, Jesus testified to the high priest, “Hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right of the Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Mt. 26:64). After this time of brokenness and intense repentance there is cleansing from sin (Zech. 13:1). The adulterous wife is restored to her Husband. And the earth will know the blessing of Christ’s perfect reign on earth. “And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years” (Rev. 20:4). All of the redeemed will share in that glorious time and the earth will blossom like a rose under the perfect reign of Christ.
Written by Donald L. Norbie