WHAT THE N.T. TEACHES AS TO FUTURE MERCY FOR THE JEWS

Let us recall, moreover, that the covenant relations between God and “Israel after the flesh” were ended, even as had been foretold by their own prophets, beginning with Moses and Joshua (Deut. 4:26; 6:14, 15; 8:20; Josh. 23:15,16); the old covenant was dissolved and “ready to vanish away”; every vestige of it was shortly to be obliterated; and therefore, of necessity, all promises based upon that covenant, had there been any as yet unfulfilled, fell to the ground. But beside all that, God has now brought clearly to light, as we have seen, what He had but dimly revealed in times past, that the name ISRAEL belongs properly to His new-covenant people.

Therefore, it is not enough, for the settling of the question of God’s future purposes for the Jews, that prophecies concerning Israel be found which apparently have not yet been fulfilled; for we must needs conclude, as to all such prophecies – unless the contrary plainly appears – that they pertain to the true “Israel of God,” and that their fulfillment is in the realm of things spiritual and unseen.

What then does the New Testament say as to the reconstitution hereafter of the Jewish nation; as to the re-occupation by that nation of the land of Canaan; as to its exaltation to the place of world-supremacy and headship over other nations; as to the re-building of the temple and the re-constitution of bloody sacrifices &c.? Not one word.

This silence is itself sufficient to dispose of the question before us; but there is much more than that to be learned from the New Testament; for there are statements in it which make it utterly impossible that there should be any such future in store for the Jewish nation. Some of those New Testament statements have been quoted in the preceding portion of this volume, and other will be cited hereafter.

Again it is particularly to be observed that, in “the manifold wisdom of God,” and because of His foreknowledge of the rejection of the Messiah by His nominal people, He saw fit to conceal for a time, in the form of “mystery” (Eph. 3:1-12 and “allegory” (Gal. 4:22-26), the fact that the things historical and prophetic pertaining to “Israel after the flesh” were but the temporal foreshadowings (Heb. 10:1) of things eternal and spiritual; which mystery therefore “in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit” (Eph. 3:5).

That “mystery” (which is not a mystery any longer) comprised several elements, whereof the most prominent (and the hardest for the Jewish mind to grasp) was the place which believing Gentiles were to have in “the commonwealth of Israel,” and the share that was to be theirs in “the covenants of promise” (Eph. 2:12); that Gentiles were in the eternal purpose of God, destined to be “joint-heirs” (with natural Israelites), “and a joint-body, and joint-partakers of His promise in Christ, by means of the gospel” (literal rendering of Eph. 3:6). And what is particularly pertinent to our present inquiry is the previously hidden, “but now clearly revealed, fact, that the true “Israel of God” (Gal. 6:16), the true “seed of Abraham” who are the heirs of all the promises of God (Gal. 3:7, 29; 2 Cor. 1:20) are a body composed of all those – whether by nature they are Jews or Gentiles – who are “of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all” (rom. 4:16).

Because of this “mystery of Christ” (Eph. 3:4) which Paul was specially commissioned to explain, it is most needful that we, in attempting the interpretation of the O.T. prophecies concerning Israel, Zion, Jerusalem, etc., should take pains to ascertain whether it was the earthly and natural people (or locality) the prophet had in view, or the heavenly and spiritual counterpart thereof. Happily it is generally possible, in the light of the explanations given in the New Testament, to do this with some degree of certainty.

Moreover, it will be found that, when we have set aside first all the O.T. prophecies and promises concerning Israel that have been already fulfilled, second, all that were conditional in character and hence have become null and void for failure by the Jews to perform the conditions on which they were based, and third, those that belong to “the Israel of God,” there remains for the natural Israel no promises of blessing except “the common salvation” (Jude 3) which is proclaimed by the gospel of Christ, and which God bestows freely upon all – Jews and Gentiles – who fulfill the conditions of “repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21).

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