Dispy PreMil V: Israel is the Issue

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While the discussions between the different eschatological camps tend to revolve around specific eschatological issues like the rapture, the Millennial Kingdom, the Antichrist, the Great Tribulation and how to best understand the book of Revelation, the issue at the core of all of these debates is actually something much more basic and central to the entirety of the Bible: namely, what do you do with Israel?

All groups agree that the nation of Israel was divinely chosen and established by God to be His covenant people, unique amongst all the other peoples of the earth. The division comes when you begin to discuss how to think about the nation after Christ’s life, death and resurrection (and their rejection of Christ as Messiah), through the rest of the New Testament, into the modern Church Age and beyond into eternity.

Most of the rest of your eschatology will flow naturally from how you handle the topic of the nation of Israel. While many of us do not begin our consideration of eschatological issues in this regard, after just a short amount of time it becomes clear that the two issues are inextricably linked.

Dispensational Premillennialism holds that the nation of Israel remains unique in the economy and redemptive story of God. While Israel has been set aside for a time while God focuses His gospel energies towards the Gentiles (Romans 11, Ephesians 3:1-10), Israel will eventually see the fulfillment of all of God’s prophetic promises to them of restoration, redemption and the establishment of an eternal, Messianic kingdom (Zechariah 12:10, Zechariah 13:1, Ezekiel 37).

Conversely, the other eschatological positions contend that the Church is the new, true Israel. While many of them bristle at the term “replacement,” they would instead opt for words like “supersession” or “fulfillment.” They hold that the Church can now lay claim to the promises and commitments made to Israel in the Old Testament and, consequently, that the Gentile Church is the only institutional mechanism that will enable Jews to see the fulfillment of God’s covenant promises. They reject the idea that national, ethnic Israel retains any kind of unique commitment from God.

From these disparate understandings flow also the different eschatological positions. For instance, one reason Dispy PreMils hold to the doctrine of the rapture (other than its explicit teaching in places like I Thessalonians 4, I Corinthians 15 and John 14) is that the book of Revelation is almost entirely focused on the people of Israel. After Revelation 5, the Church disappears until chapter 19 and the vast majority of the book’s prophetic words have Israel in view. Revelation abounds with references to the Old Testament with explicitly Jewish and Israelite language (consider the 144,000 sealed in chapter 7 or the names inscribed on the twelve gates of New *Jerusalem* in chapter 21, for instance.) In short, one reason to believe the rapture will occur is because Revelation is primarily focused on the purification and redemption of the nation of Israel and on how God will fulfill His promises to them: the Church is not in the book because we are not here on the earth as the object of those events.

By contrast, doing away with a premillennial and pre-tribulation rapture (or a rapture altogether) is an imperative for those who think Israel has become the Church. Revelation is about Israel; so if the Church is Israel, then the Church must experience the tribulation that Revelation describes. (Consequently, all of those Jewish tribes and names used in Revelation must be an analogy for something pertaining to the Church Age.) It becomes incoherent to believe in a rapture that delivers believers from a tribulation they are destined to endure.

Our eschatology flows from our understanding of Israel.

To that point, I would like to offer the following observations*:

  • Roughly speaking, the Bible contains 600 pages of history (Genesis to Esther), 250 pages of prophecy (Isaiah to Malachi), 110 pages focused on the life of Christ (Matthew to John), 120 pages focused on the Church (Acts to Jude) and 20 pages on Revelation: fully 79% of the Bible is focused on Israel’s history, Israel’s calling, Israel’s chastisement and Israel’s restoration.

  • Israel is the third largest topic in the Bible, behind only God Himself and salvation.

  • Every book in the Bible was written by a Jewish author; we Gentiles are members of a Church founded by Jewish leaders.

  • Israel is mentioned in the Bible 2,900 times, Jerusalem more than 700 times and the Church 111 times.

  • Over 200 times God introduces Himself as the God of Israel, 17 times as the God of Abraham, 25 times as the God of Jacob.

  • Each time an Old Testament prophet explains the future, they all begin with the people of Israel and all of the prophetic details revolve around Jerusalem and the land.

  • Each time Jesus discusses the end of the world - Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21 - He focuses on the nation of Israel and Jerusalem. He even says regarding the events of the end, “Pray it does not happen on the Sabbath.”

  • Every time Paul and John discuss the end of the world, they begin with Israel and focus on Jerusalem.

Israel is the issue.

And to treat the Bible’s deliberate, emphatic focus on the people of Israel, the nation as an institution and the promises God has made to them regarding their land and their future as somehow disregarded and irrelevant is misguided in the extreme.

I want to close with a reminder of Christ’s interaction with a Canaanite woman in Phoenicia:

And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.” But He did not answer her a word. And His disciples came and begged Him, saying, “Send her away, for she is crying out after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before Him, saying, “Lord, help me.” And He answered, “It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table.” Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly. - Matthew 15:21-28

Our role as Gentiles is completely ancillary to God’s primary focus on His covenant people of Israel. This is what the Canaanite woman recognized and admitted that earned her both praise from Christ and deliverance for her daughter.

We Gentiles would be wise to adopt the same posture and to recognize that our salvation is both an overflow of the grace of God and a mechanism to spur His covenant people toward their own repentance (Romans 11:11). We have replaced nothing, we have superseded nothing. We are saved by the grace of the Jewish God via faith in the sacrificial atonement of the Jewish Messiah. As Paul said, we are grafted in.

And, as Paul also said, we should “not become proud, but fear,” (Romans 11:20). I can think of no prouder position than to conclude that we are the covenant nation itself, that we can now lay claim to their exclusive promises and that their disobedience is somehow terminal in a way our many sins are not.

Israel is the issue. We will not get our eschatology right until we get Israel right. The Bible is abundantly clear on the topic, both implicitly and explicitly. It is up to us to remove interpretive lenses and see past tradition to hear what the Bible has been clearly saying all along.

* - I am indebted to Dr. John Barnett for this list.

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“You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.” - John 4:22

Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means! - Romans 3:1-4

So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means! Rather, through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous. Now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean!
Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them. For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? - Romans 11:11-15