“I have just read your latest blog and although I am far from being any kind of Biblical scholar, a few words from a ‘modern day Israelite’.
What/who is that anyhow? Today”s ‘Israelites’ are Israelis…citizens of the State of Israel. We don’t use the KJV name for the ancient people of the Biblical Land to refer to ourselves.
There are many thousand born-again Jews in the Land today and we refer to ourselves as Messianic believers who are witnessing and teaching and praying for the unbelieving Israelis big time.
Do we believe that all the Jews of the world…not just of the Land …will have to be saved before the Lord’s Return? Yes, I think the majority do which spurs us on to work and pray more assiduously.”
My Rejoinder (to all)
A critical point to ponder is this, if Israelis or ethnic descendants of the ancient Israelites are to be specially blessed with salvation in a way different from all other humans then how would we answer the following questions;
- What promise has God made to the biblical Israelites that a) God has not kept b) the said Israelites have not forfeited by disobedience and c) that has not been superseded/abrogated by the New Covenant at Calvary?
- What in context would/could Paul mean by “the Israel of God” in Galatians 6:16, in a book where he consistently argues about the radical superiority of faith in Jesus above works of the law?
- What in context could Paul ( an ethnic Jew) possibly mean in Rom. 2:28-29 which reads in the New King James Version?: “28 For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; 29 but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose [a]praise is not from men but from God.”
Ponder as well Paul’s (the converted Jew) declaration in Gal 3.27-29. This rejoinder has nothing at all to do with the ill-named/erroneous ‘replacement theology’!