WHY I DON'T PREACH ABOUT WHAT'S GOING ON IN ISRAEL (PART 2)
Every time turmoil in the Middle East makes the news, many conservative Christians get excited, certain that biblical prophecy is being fulfilled before their eyes because they believe the state of Israel is God’s chosen people, the center of God’s work on earth.
But I have come to believe the New Testament teaches that Jesus is the chosen One, and those who have faith in Him, Jew and Gentile, form the chosen people of God (1 Peter 2.4-10), “the Church”. The nation of Israel rejected Jesus and lost her special status, and as long as she continues to reject Him, Israel is no different from every other nation in the world.
That may raise some eyebrows because that’s not what most of us were taught in our Bible-preaching churches. I know I wasn’t taught that. I was taught the state of Israel was special, that God had two different programs for two different peoples –Israel and the Church. The Church was a temporary interruption of God’s program with Israel. But the future lay with Israel, and someday God would go back to His MAIN program and fulfill everything predicted by the Old Testament prophets.
I thought this was the old traditional stance of Christianity. Wanting to be a good conservative, defend tradition, and fight radical new ideas, I defended what I was taught in evangelicalism – that Israel, not the Church, was God’s chosen people. But the more I studied the Bible and church history, the more I learned that what I had been taught in evangelicalism wasn’t the old view at all. It was a very new view, arising only in the mid-1800’s and spreading through evangelical churches in the 20th century.
I was surprised to find that I was fighting the old and defending the new!
The old traditional view was that the program with Israel was the temporary one, set aside for good when Israel rejected Jesus. The Law and the Prophets are fulfilled in Christ, not in national Israel’s politics. God’s work in the world is the work of the body of Christ, not the modern state of Israel. Christianity has taught these things for 2,000 years.
Newness doesn’t make an idea wrong. Some new ideas are excellent. The roundness of the earth (as opposed to its being flat), its revolution around the sun (rather than being the center of the universe), germs as the cause of illness (rather than imbalanced bodily humors), and electricity as a safe source of power (people feared it at first) used to be new ideas about which people were initially suspicious but turned out to be better than the old.
But new things must be tested, and a few things bothered me about this relatively new idea that the unbelieving state of Israel (not the believing Church) is the true people of God. In particular I had (and continue to have) a problem with the idea that after Christ’s death put away the old system of animal sacrifices, after the curtain of the Holy of Holies was torn open at His death, and after the Temple and Jerusalem were judged and destroyed as Jesus predicted, that somehow all of these things that were intentionally discarded will be restored as the center of God’s program. The entire argument of the book of Hebrews is that animal sacrifices were mere pictures pointing forward to the perfect sacrifice of Jesus, and now that Jesus’ perfect sacrifice has been offered, there is no need for animal sacrifices ever again. They are finished forever.
Israel’s future is not bound up with a restored Temple, a restored priesthood, or restored animal sacrifices. If she has a future, it is bound up with her return to faith in the One who put the Old Testament away by His death on the cross and began a new creation by His resurrection.
And that’s why I no longer worry or get excited about or feel a need to preach about turmoil in the Middle East being indicative of the end times. When Israelis and Jews around the world start finding their hope in Jesus Christ just as He is ours – that’s when we better start paying attention to “the end times”.
But I have come to believe the New Testament teaches that Jesus is the chosen One, and those who have faith in Him, Jew and Gentile, form the chosen people of God (1 Peter 2.4-10), “the Church”. The nation of Israel rejected Jesus and lost her special status, and as long as she continues to reject Him, Israel is no different from every other nation in the world.
That may raise some eyebrows because that’s not what most of us were taught in our Bible-preaching churches. I know I wasn’t taught that. I was taught the state of Israel was special, that God had two different programs for two different peoples –Israel and the Church. The Church was a temporary interruption of God’s program with Israel. But the future lay with Israel, and someday God would go back to His MAIN program and fulfill everything predicted by the Old Testament prophets.
I thought this was the old traditional stance of Christianity. Wanting to be a good conservative, defend tradition, and fight radical new ideas, I defended what I was taught in evangelicalism – that Israel, not the Church, was God’s chosen people. But the more I studied the Bible and church history, the more I learned that what I had been taught in evangelicalism wasn’t the old view at all. It was a very new view, arising only in the mid-1800’s and spreading through evangelical churches in the 20th century.
I was surprised to find that I was fighting the old and defending the new!
The old traditional view was that the program with Israel was the temporary one, set aside for good when Israel rejected Jesus. The Law and the Prophets are fulfilled in Christ, not in national Israel’s politics. God’s work in the world is the work of the body of Christ, not the modern state of Israel. Christianity has taught these things for 2,000 years.
Newness doesn’t make an idea wrong. Some new ideas are excellent. The roundness of the earth (as opposed to its being flat), its revolution around the sun (rather than being the center of the universe), germs as the cause of illness (rather than imbalanced bodily humors), and electricity as a safe source of power (people feared it at first) used to be new ideas about which people were initially suspicious but turned out to be better than the old.
But new things must be tested, and a few things bothered me about this relatively new idea that the unbelieving state of Israel (not the believing Church) is the true people of God. In particular I had (and continue to have) a problem with the idea that after Christ’s death put away the old system of animal sacrifices, after the curtain of the Holy of Holies was torn open at His death, and after the Temple and Jerusalem were judged and destroyed as Jesus predicted, that somehow all of these things that were intentionally discarded will be restored as the center of God’s program. The entire argument of the book of Hebrews is that animal sacrifices were mere pictures pointing forward to the perfect sacrifice of Jesus, and now that Jesus’ perfect sacrifice has been offered, there is no need for animal sacrifices ever again. They are finished forever.
Israel’s future is not bound up with a restored Temple, a restored priesthood, or restored animal sacrifices. If she has a future, it is bound up with her return to faith in the One who put the Old Testament away by His death on the cross and began a new creation by His resurrection.
And that’s why I no longer worry or get excited about or feel a need to preach about turmoil in the Middle East being indicative of the end times. When Israelis and Jews around the world start finding their hope in Jesus Christ just as He is ours – that’s when we better start paying attention to “the end times”.