Israel, or rather the idea of Israel, has become an idol to some and a fulcrum to many more. The hatred of any people group absent their collective actions is sinful. The blind veneration of any people group is equally sinful. Jesus made it extremely clear that He is the way the truth and the life. We like to talk about way, truth and life, but we overlook the word “THE.” Jesus is exclusively, objectively, the only solution to mankind’s deepest need. Simply put, Jesus is the fulfillment of the people of God, so now all who are found in Him are the people of God. Those who reject Him will be rejected on the last day.
Not my words. The words of Jesus. Luke 10:16
People calling for the death of all Jews are just as demented as people who believe the entire universe revolves around Jerusalem in the same way that Muslims revolve around a cube at Ramadan. This is why I refer to Israel as a fulcrum. Israel does not belong in that pivotal role. They just don’t. In Romans 11, Paul makes it clear that the Jewish nation (with individual exceptions) rejected Jesus, so God rejected them. This is reinforced in the Revelation letters, some of which refer to them as “Synagogues of Satan.” Also in that chapter:
Romans 11:11-12 So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means! Rather, through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous. Now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean!
The means by which Israel will return to God will be their jealousy over Gentile believers who have been grafted into their spot. I ask you a simple question, how will they ever become jealous if we continue to tell them that God has two plans for two brides? How will this scripture be fulfilled if they are told by Christians that they are special and have no need of Jesus?
These are the kinds of things I was taught in a Dispensational setting growing up. Dispensationalism is the dominant worldview in American evangelicalism. Palestinians live on one side of the fulcrum. Dispensationalists live on the other. I say this as the son and grandson of Dispensationalists missionaries, pastors and evangelists. I have signed copies of “Left Behind” books in a box somewhere. I attended Dispensational training. I reject it all for the sake of the gospel and for the salvation of Jewish people everywhere who are being lied to by pastors in America.
At AD 70, Jewish people became like the rest of the nations. They are a mission field, desperately in need of something American evangelicalism says they can do without. Jesus and Paul both were able to make claims regarding their tribes, Judah and Benjamin, because their tribes were in the South nation of Judah after the split. The Northern ten records were destroyed by Babylon, so none of those tribes are mentioned in the New Testament to any person the same way the Old Testament is filled with people being introduced along with their tribe. They can’t be traced any longer. The remainder of the records were destroyed by Rome, so none of the tribes are known by those claiming to be Jewish today. And DNA? We’ll have that just as soon as someone finds Abraham’s hairbrush.
If you love your Jewish friends, you will openly enjoy your communion with the Father through the Son, applied by the Holy Spirit, and you will invite them to “come and see.”
Matthew 3:9 And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.
