Who are "God's Chosen People"?

[jasoncran]

Fundamentally, I don't disagree with any of you, BTW. It's just that most do not agree with me because to use the example again, everyone's seeing heads face up on the ground and adamantly believe that's all there is to the coin. I just understand that there's a tails, too. Maybe heads is all that's needed to "win" by definition, but that does not discount the need for and existence of tails to make a complete coin.

Chosen does not always equal salvation. At least not in this age. The question was not "Who are God's saved people?" And here's another thought. For those that have salvation, what is the fundamental purpose, just to save from sin, or is there a job to do in being chosen not only now, but the age to come? I'll just sit back and watch the diversity of opinion now and as a reminder, remember the OP.

we dont know much after the millenium or if amil in nature, what is after the final judgment of man. its speculation that i care not to engage. God will tell us when we get there by him taking us/judging men when he comes to that , or when stand before him in the ressurection. either way thats for him to know and me to be told.:yes

 

[savedbygrace57]

Any People, no matter what ethnicity, if not Chosen in Christ, they have no hope with God.

 

[tim-from-pa]

Any People, no matter what ethnicity, if not Chosen in Christ, they have no hope with God.

Agreed.

 

[warhorse]

Agreed.

So if you agree that the abrahamic covenants are by faith.

And the mosaic covenants are fullfilled.

1 kings 8v56 Blessed be the LORD, that hath given rest unto his people Israel, according to all that he promised: there hath not failed one word of all his good PROMISE, which he promised by the hand of Moses his servant.

Then you must be refering to a literal davidic fullfillment ... am i correct.

 

[tim-from-pa]

So if you agree that the abrahamic covenants are by faith.

by Abraham's faith. His offspring would be the recipients of that faith whether they believe or not, otherwise the covenant to Abraham would be conditional which Paul emphatically denies.

And the mosaic covenants are fullfilled.

The Mosaic Covenant spoke (foreshadowed) of Christ. In addition they gave the standards of righteousness which are in effect yet. The difference between the old covenant and new is that in the old, it was understood that a person had to attain that level of righteousness. In the new, Christ took the penalty for breaking the Law so we go by His righteousness instead.

1 kings 8v56 Blessed be the LORD, that hath given rest unto his people Israel, according to all that he promised: there hath not failed one word of all his good PROMISE, which he promised by the hand of Moses his servant.

Then you must be refering to a literal davidic fullfillment ... am i correct.

If you are trying to corner me into agreeing that all the covenants were fulfilled at that time by this verse so that you can now say "they no longer are in effect", think again. The prophets VERY CLEARLY spoke of the promises to Abraham AFTER this was uttered, so they are still in effect, today! To use this verse to say they were fulfilled and nothing further is needed is clearly taking it out of context.

A simple case in point.... Christ WAS NOT yet born. That is one of the Messianic covenants. If this verse means that nothing further is needed, and the promise to King David was fulfilled, then Christ is a sham since he was born AFTER this passage. Yet, Christ is VERY MUCH part of the Abrahamic covenant, and so are the other promises which were at that time unfulfilled.

 

[n2thelight]

We are told to "rightly divide the Word of God", and this includes not only who the book is written by, but also who it is written to. It includes the time that it was written and for what time period it is addressed. The book of James was written between 65-69 A.D., in Jerusalem. This was just prior to the fall of Jerusalem to the Roman general Titus, and the scattering of the Jews from Jerusalem. So it is important to notice that it is addressed not just to the tribes of the House of Judah, and the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, but to all of the tribes, including the ten tribes that made up the "House of Israel". Those ten tribes of the the House of Israel were scattered prior to 722 B.C by the Assyrians, and were not part of the captivity of the House of Judah [called Jews], in Babylon.


The book of James is written to the twelve tribes. These twelve tribes came from the twelve sons of Jacob. Jacob was the grandson of Abraham, through Isaac, and Jacob's name was changed by God to "Israel". While in captivity in Egypt the family of Jacob, or Israel grew into a nation, and all the families of Israel became known as the children of Israel. And in due time, as God had prophesied to Abraham, his family came out of Egypt as a nation. While in the wilderness, Moses had all the families separated into their individual tribes, and established their own individual banners to identify themselves personally. Though each of the tribes was allocated their own lands in the promised land, the tribe of Levi was established as the priestly tribe and was scattered amongst all the other tribes. Yet because of Joseph's birthright, a double portion was given to him, and given to both of Joseph's sons, Ephraim and Manasseh.


These tribes conquered their promised land, and lived under the rule of the Judges from about 1440 B.C. until the monarch was set up by Samuel the prophet, when Samuel anointed Saul as the king. After Saul's rule came king David and then his son Solomon. When Solomon died, the kingdom of the twelve tribes called Israel was split into two separate nations, called "Houses". These houses were the "House of Israel", which was made up of the ten tribes to the north, and the "House of Judah", which at a later time in Babylon became known as "Jews". Each of these two nations had their own line of kings, rule of law, and God dealt with each of them separately.


The "House of Israel" are those ten tribes which were taken captive by the Assyrians to a location in northern Iraq for relocation, and shortly after their relocation from their Palestine area home lands, they continued their migrations through the Caucasus mountains, and on into Western Europe, and the Americas. The one thing that these ten tribes never lost in their identity, was this single event of their earliest migrations. That trip through the Caucasus mountains, for this marked them as "Caucasians", even to our present generation. Though most Caucasians simply don't know who they are, or how they came to be identified, they do know that they are Caucasian, but they think that they think Caucasian is in reference to the color white.


God used the prophet Hosea to tell the people of the children of Israel that not only would the two nations be separated, and form two nations, but He would divorce one of the nations or houses, and stay married to the other. The example [ensample] was given through the marriage of the prophet Hosea to a daughter of whoredoms named Gomer, and they had three children. The first child was named "Jezreel", and the name of this son was used to tell the kingdom of the "House of Israel" [not the Jews], of the prophecy of God's divorcement to them. This name of Jezreel had two meanings in the Hebrew tongue. The name is prophetic of the "coming judgment and future mercy".


The knowledge of the "House of Judah" is quite common knowledge to most Christians, however the House of Israel is cloudy and unknown to them. The prophet Hosea gives us the knowledge of where these tribes are in the end times, and what they will be known by in Hosea 1:10.


Hosea 1:10 "Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, `Ye are not my people,' there it shall be said unto them, `Ye are the sons of the living God.' "


We know that the "House of Judah" is not as the sands of the sea, for most of their people are either sheltered by the United States, or in their tiny nation called "Israel" today. But these ten tribes have grown to a number that we simply can't count. It is in the places that they are located, not in that tiny nation of Israel, but wherever they are, Hosea is telling us exactly what they will be identified as. "Ye are the sons of the living God." The "living God" is Jesus Christ who arose from the dead on the third day and and ascended into Heaven. Those that identify with Christ are called "Christians". Hosea is telling us that the "House of Israel" will call their nations "Christians Nations", and we can also identify them to be "Caucasians".


The House of Judah, or commonly called the Jews, are made up of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and part of the tribe of Levi. Heavily mixed in with these Israelites are the foreigners or Orientals called the "Nethinims" by Ezra and Nehemiah, which are the "Kenites" that had taken over the duties of both the scribes and the priests, and changed much of the laws which God gave to Moses. I Chronicles 2:55 tells us that three families of Kenites took over the duties of the scribes, and thus they fused themselves into the records of the House of Judah, from the time of their captivity in Babylon. In fact, when the Jews came out of Babylon, Ezra stopped to take account of those people and the things that were going back to Jerusalem to re-establish the Temple and the city. Ezra records in his records:


Ezra 8:15 "And I gathered them together to the river that runneth to Ahava; and there abode we in tents three days: and I viewed the people, and the priests, and found there none of the sons of Levi."


Here Ezra and the Jews were returned to build the temple and continue in the worship of God, and these Kenites or sons of Cain had taken over the priesthood. Is it any wonder that their offspring that filled those positions during the time of Jesus wanted to kill Jesus from the start of His ministry? For the next five hundred years under these Kenites, the traditions of these Kenites had replaced the laws of God. Even to the point where there was no agreement between the teachings of Christ, and that of the Kenite Jewish religious leaders. This is the reason that these Kenite Jewish leaders plotted continually to murder Jesus. As we know, they were successful in their deeds, for this entire course of events was prophesied from the beginning of the Word of God, through to the death of Christ on the cross. His death being that price which was paid whereby we could be drawn back to the Father, through our faith in Jesus Christ, and our repentance to the Father in Jesus name.

http://www.theseason.org/james/james1.htm

 

[warhorse]

by Abraham's faith. His offspring would be the recipients of that faith whether they believe or not, otherwise the covenant to Abraham would be conditional which Paul emphatically denies.



The Mosaic Covenant spoke (foreshadowed) of Christ. In addition they gave the standards of righteousness which are in effect yet. The difference between the old covenant and new is that in the old, it was understood that a person had to attain that level of righteousness. In the new, Christ took the penalty for breaking the Law so we go by His righteousness instead.



If you are trying to corner me into agreeing that all the covenants were fulfilled at that time by this verse so that you can now say "they no longer are in effect", think again. The prophets VERY CLEARLY spoke of the promises to Abraham AFTER this was uttered, so they are still in effect, today! To use this verse to say they were fulfilled and nothing further is needed is clearly taking it out of context.

A simple case in point.... Christ WAS NOT yet born. That is one of the Messianic covenants. If this verse means that nothing further is needed, and the promise to King David was fulfilled, then Christ is a sham since he was born AFTER this passage. Yet, Christ is VERY MUCH part of the Abrahamic covenant, and so are the other promises which were at that time unfulfilled.

Christ was abrahamic, and davidic, it was the mosaic that were fullfilled, as i already stated i do not believe the promise was ever meant to be by geneolagy, the Jews beleived that, but i do not believe that is what the bible teaches. see Hebrews 11. I am not tring to trap you into anything i just wanted to clarify your position. Thanks for your response.

 

[Sam21]

There's no shortage of threads about chosen people on this board and other Christian boards. The bible teaches there are chosen of race (genealogy, i.e. Israel) and there are chosen of grace (faith in Jesus Christ). I believe in both no matter how hard replacement theologians try to contort my words into claiming I'm saying that the former is saved.

The first of race is earthly, physical for the purpose of God (i.e. earthly blessings) to bring the latter, grace. There are those that say that since the former have in effect "done their job" (or lack thereof) that they (Israel) doesn't matter any longer. Only those of grace count in God's eyes.

While I agree that all must have grace to be spiritually saved, I disagree that the former chosen of race are ignored, and God (for want of a better term) is feverishly working to have them saved, and in addition will save them as well so that they become not only chosen of race, but of grace.

Also, I believe many of the chosen of race became dispersed (as in the lost tribes) and became Gentile, but still with the racial (earthly) blessings and indeed accepted the gospel, so many from Israel are also saved. The Jews are the ones that mainly held to their OT ways, not the Israelites. But God definitely wants the earthly chosen to become part of the heavenly chosen as well as there are no shortage of verses where God SPECIFICALLY addresses the house of Israel and the house of Judah claiming that one day they would have a new covenant. Likewise, after Christ did his atoning work, the apostle Paul mentions excessively in Romans 9-11 regarding the same thing about Israel.

I don't know how much clearer I can make it than what I just stated, but I think I'll make some popcorn now and watch the show because history attests that threads like this become long and drawn out as people put Preterist or replacement theology spins to what the bible teaches and will argue my straightforward answer as to who are chosen.

You pretty well nailed down what scripture teaches on the subject,good post.

 

[Eventide]

Israel is not only a nation....I'm talking the Israel of God!

I'm talking about the Israel of God also..