Right. Too late to change it now
So it becomes a game of defining Israel rather than just generally accepting that the Jews as the bible calls them are what we think of as Israel. You know, the guys who started a country over in the mid east?
OK, so your vote in the matter is that God did not restore them already. I guess you feel they restored their little selves, basically. I tend to agree, but of course God allowed it and knew it would happen.
Yes they woulda coulda shoulda. But God knows they are stubborn. So He arranged a special time in the end so that no matter how obstinate they are, they will say uncle. That does not include the Jews who get saved. They already said uncle the easy way.
Even before Jesus came to earth not all Israel was Israel. God still required belief and the heart to be right.
I do. That is the ones left alive! Since the vast majority of them will be killed by the evil king in the end that will only be a remnant. It will still be 'all Israel' though. I find it kind of sad. If Israel only knew that today before the night fell they could cry out to Jesus their Messiah and He would save them and destroy all their enemies in a literal sense, etc etc!! But He knows they will not. Imagine all the nukes and weapons they would not need, and armies, and wars etc.
Anyone of any race that accepts and believes Jesus is saved and part of the Bride. He is no respecter of persons. The thing is that there are special promises for Israel regarding the land. Those promises are not for me. I don't want that land, thank you very much. I am happy Jesus and us will rule from there along with the (saved) Jews who live there one day. I am also tickled pink that it seems likely we will live up in New Jerusalem and just commute down to the work of helping Him rule earth here.
I do not fully understood you, but see bits of agreement/disagreement. Without being sarky, here’s some response.
Mentioning multiple Israels it’s not a game, but a biblical insight. In fact, biblically, the Jews fought against Israel. The term
Israel is a code-word for God’s root plan. Many clues exist. Isaiah prophesied that Jesus would be Israel. Jesus saw himself as summarising Israel: eg he was its temple; the crowd rightly greeted him as King David’s son; his ‘coronation’ (
hupsos) would be to globally draw all peoples to himself (global mission), the light even to the gentiles. His followers were the true twelve-tribed Israel. Peter—and, once converted, the Pharisee Saul—saw the messianic community as twelve-tribed Israel, and their gentile historian Luke so noted it: adding Matthias made Israel public for the Day of Pentecost. The church became, as was messiah, the light to the gentiles (Ac.13:47). Wayne Grudem (
Systematic Theology) covers it well the NT usage of Israel themes for the panethnic church.
One thing in my dispensationalist years that puzzled me, was the idea that multiple generations of ethnic Jews would apparently not be saved (by God’s design), but the lucky nth generation all would be (by God’s design). Would he only save when it suited him? Was that love? I felt like Luther: if the pope can liberate all from purgatory (if assuming purgatory to be bad), why liberate penny by penny, person by person?
Rethinking in term of salvation Levels, I can understand God hardening ethnic Jewry as a people, from Level 3 (Christian salvation), without hardening them from Level 4 (Ultimate salvation):
apropos heaven (L4), they will be treated exactly like any other human beings, race irrelevant. As you rightly said, God is no respecter of persons. I’d add that he’s no respecter of races, though happily agree that he can make race plans, eg hardening/unhardening. My eschatology (no longer Historicism; never Futurism) also differs from yours.
Regarding the Promised Land, I’d recommend Elmer A Marten’s
God’s Design. [Land] is a biblical motif, which carries a prophetic package far beyond mere geography. Christians are in the true (αληθινος) Promised Land/New Jerusalem (L3), and await the next Level (L4): maranatha.
