Date: December 2005 Series: - “I Want to be Left Behind” (XIV) Title: XIV - Who is the "Star" - the Jews or Jesus?

     Some time ago, I realized that it is often a waste of time to argue about religious/doctrinal/ philosophical/worldview “conclusions” with people.  Instead, you should focus on the primary assumptions, concepts, and definitions from which our various “conclusions” flow.

     If I were to identify the key “forks in the road” that serve to orient people in different directions concerning “end times” issues, I would mark out two “biggies” to begin with: (1) how one understands and views “Israel” in God’s plan and (2) how they understand the “kingdom of God.”  At ground level, dispensationalism is built upon the belief that God’s program is focused on the physical nation of Israel and that this physical Israelite nation must have a glorious, earthly, Messianic “kingdom age” in order to fulfill God’s prophetic program for this earth.  It is my firm conviction that these two notions are in error.

     Who is the "Star" of this show? – Early in my dispensational phase, I was taught by several paperback writers that all of God’s plans and purposes were built around the earthly, physical Jewish nation.  Here are few samples,

I begin with the Jew, because this is God's time-piece and key that unlocks every door into prophecy.^[1]

There are scores of passages that make it emphatically clear that the regathering and re-establishment of Israel in her ancient homeland occurs when Messiah is ready to return to this earth.  And we're witnessing it at this hour, indicating that the coming of Christ is very near.^[2]

 All prophetic truth revolves around the Jews.^[3]

     However, after learning what to believe from Hal Lindsey, I then started to read and search the Bible itself and gradually began to have some doubts about this notion.  Eventually, I came to see this as one of the major “wrong turns” that occurred in dispensational thinking – focusing more attention on the earthly Jewish people than on the Messiah promised to emerge from their ranks.  From Genesis 3:15 onward, it appeared that the Bible and God’s plan was focused not on the Jewish nation, but upon a particular individual that would arise from a well-defined genealogy – the Messiah!  Very early in the Gospel of John, Philip expressed his understanding of this - Israel had been waiting on someone very special to appear and Jesus was the One (John 1:45).  In the book of Revelation (19:10), the angel told John that the testimony concerning Jesus was the very "spirit of prophecy."  The Babylonian Talmud asserts the same,

All the Prophets have prophesied only for the days of the Messiah^[4]

We find the same coming from Paul - read Colossians 1:15-20 and answer this question, “what is central to God’s plan and purposes – national Israel or Christ?”  My conclusion and assertion is that the central character and “star” of God's plan and the Bible is the Messiah/Christ and not the Jewish people/national Israel!  In fact, national Israel’s whole “claim to fame” is that they were the genealogical/earthly group from which the Messiah came!  How did fleshly, national Israel ever displace the Messiah as the "star of this show"?  Simple - theological error!

     Whence "Israel"? – Of first importance, let's remember that God responded to the first human sin by laying out the plot-plan of His redemption program - focus is early placed on the coming "seed of woman" (one man – “he”) who would be wounded in his successful encounter with the Serpent (Genesis 3:15).  This plan proceeded in the book of Genesis with a specified genealogy that narrowed from Eve (3:20), Seth to Noah (4:25; 5:1-32), and then from Shem to Abraham (11:10-32).  God then revealed to Abraham the two phases involved in fulfilling this plan (12:1-3) – Abraham's descendants would be a nation in the promised land (Israel in Canaan under the Mosaic Law) and, ultimately, the promised seed would bring an international blessing (the current international Gospel age).

     In the book of Genesis, we are informed that the promised Messianic lineage proceeded with Abraham’s son Isaac (26:1-4), and then his grandson Jacob (28:10-14), whose name was changed to "Israel" (lit. "he who strives with God" – 32:28; 35:10).  This Jacob/Israel had twelve sons (49:1-27), with Judah being designated as the next to last step in the Messianic lineage (v. 10).  Eventually, David's family was the final divinely-designated genealogical road-marker for the Messiah (2Samuel 7), with the genealogies in Matthew 1:1-17 and Luke 3:23-38 to prove that both Joseph’s legal line and Mary’s actual bloodline come down from different sons of David to Jesus.  The twelve sons of Jacob/Israel became the patriarchal heads of “twelve tribes of Jacob/Israel” and the rest of the Old Testament traces their wanderings, exodus from Egypt and national origins, struggles in Canaan under the Mosaic Law (Joshua – 2Kings), exile to Babylon, and restoration to the Land (Ezra-Nehemiah).

       Eventually, when the time God deemed to be right and had predicted (Daniel 9:24-27; Galatians 4:4) arrived, the promised Messiah appeared and the Gospels focus on this.  But note this – "Israel" began as one man (Jacob) and became a nation through the physical seed of his twelve sons.  Throughout Israel's national history, Bible readers are reminded what the fleshly nation of Israel was like (Exodus 32; Deuteronomy 9:6) and why God continued to work with them until the Messiah appeared – God had promised Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David that He would bring the Messiah from their lineage and was keeping His promise.^[5]

       However, the question before us now is, “After the promised Messiah arrived, does national/fleshly Israel still hold some important, special place in God’s plan?”  (to be continued)