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Living in peace. seems to me to be symbolic of innocence as Jesus was. Not unsuspecting or naive. A parallel to the image of a lamb. Land of peace. Netanyahu has also stoked domestic division among Israelis as he has pushed a judicial reform that would weaken Israel’s Supreme Court, a move that sparked mass protest across the country. One of the difficulties with blog comments, is trying to be concise, to encapsulate wide-ranging theology in short form comment without do justice to the whole counsel of God. Not only did God bring Israel into being as a miracle nation, but God keeps Israel as a miracle nation. Psalm 89 shows God’s heart on this. Amos, whose oracles against the northern kingdom of Israel have been misunderstood as reflecting a negative attitude toward cultus per se, simply did not consider the royal cult of the northern kingdom at Bethel to be a legitimate Yahweh cult. Rather, like the prophet Hosea after him, Amos considered the Bethel cult to be Canaanite.
This raises questions of how to understand Rev 4-20. At the moment I tend to see John (or Jesus) as pulling together biblical prophecy into one final revelation. In his first advent the End had begun and since it has begun it cannot be long until it is completed. Ch 4-20 are the elements that have yet to play out as the Lamb brings history to a conclusion. In Galatians 3:16, the apostle Paul writes, “Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring; it does not say ‘And to offsprings,’ as of many; but it says, ‘And to your offspring,’ that is, to one person, who is Christ” (NRSV). Paul argues from the singular noun in Genesis to show that the promises to Abraham point to Christ. Christ is the locus of the promise of land! The promises to Abraham have been realized in Christ. He holds everything Judaism desired, and knowing him gains access to such promises. The political momentum to facilitate the movement of Jews to the promised land gained pace in Victorian England, largely due to the advocacy of eminent philanthropists like Lord Shaftesbury and leading figures in English Evangelical circles who vigorously campaigned for the restoration of Jews to Palestine by lobbying the British cabinet on foreign policy decisions. There is also a Zionism for Christians which can come from another, theological place. Catholic scholar Gavin D’Costa argues for a minimalist Catholic Zionism. It’s based on the idea that in Catholic thought the fact that Gd’s covenant with Israel (Jewry) is not revoked has come to mean the affirmation of rabbinic Judaism as an expression of that covenant. Indeed, in the above, the difference between the covenants *superseded* and the covenants *fulfilled* must have some real content: there must be a Jewish Israel which is (in Gd’s eyes) not superseded by the Church. It follows that the heart-beat of Revelation which Jews rightly honour still has force. And in that Revelation, there is no doubt that the Land is a divine Gift to the People (conditionally, though), and is a character in its own right. Christians (in this argument) can affirm this theologically as well as pragmatically. But! But nothing to do with End Times (unless and until such End Times unfold). ReplyThe word “Jew” and its modern meaning did not even come into existence until the 17th Century when the letter “J” was first invented. And at the time the word “Jew” was first put into the Bible (in the 2nd draft copy of the KJV Bible in the 18th Century…. the 1st edition of the KJV Bible in 1611 used the word IEWE to describe Judahite Hebrews – not “Jews”) it was to be understood in one context only – the word “Jew” was an abbreviation for Judean. Reformed theologians believe something decisive happened in Christ. His covenant affected not simply the covenant of Moses, making a new and timeless form of salvation, but also every other Jewish covenant, including Abraham’s covenant. Christ fulfills the expectations of Jewish covenant life and renews the people of God rooted in the Old Testament and Judaism. Thus, Jesus is the new temple, the new Israel.
When we grasp that the church is eschatological ‘Israel and the Gentiles’ then the absolute distinction between Israel and the church disappears. Further the church is then not Israel forsaken but Israel fulfilled. All of this is ‘in Christ.’ Christ is the Son of Abraham, of promise, in whom ultimately the salvation of all is found. Evangelicals make up an influential part of the Republican party base, and have a strong number in Congress. More than 100 members of the current Congress can be broadly identified as evangelical, and that was on display in recent days. I saw how Jesus in choosing 12 was consciously reconstituting Israel around himself. Or if you will the 12 were the basis of a restored eschatological Israel to which Gentiles would be added. They would constitute the new ‘congregation’. It would be in direct continuity with the old ‘congregation’ but also in discontinuity as it belonged to fulfilment (the age of the new covenant, Spirit, Kingdom) or maturity not promise or childhood (Gals 4). New wine requires new wineskins. Over the last couple of years I have been looking a little at Isaiah, Daniel, and Revelation and have discovered how little I know. It’s humbling. Reply And that’s been a long tradition of sort of hedging your bets and getting whatever you can in terms of sort of interest and eyeballs, by declaring that there’s something significant here, but once you start saying specific things and you’re sort of on the hook, it doesn’t turn out that way.”
On the subject of Israel being singled out, I would contest that there is a lot more criticism of China than there is of Israel, despite many of the crimes being committed by the two nations being readily comparable (in type if not scale). The crucial difference is that while we accept that China is aloof and thoroughly dismissive of any international leverage on how it behaves internally, we see Israel (a broadly progressive, liberal democracy*) as somehow much more ‘like us’ than China, so we more readily expect it to engage and listen, and that empathy drives the news cycle that gives it prominence. It’s not as simple as Israel being ‘singled out’ on the count of antisemitism. Reply For someone who was raised, trained and steeped in USA dispensationalism but came away from it, with some wrestling, to a reformed position see Baptist Dr Sam Storms book, Kingdom Come. In it he sets out the main eschatological positions and draws out a conclusion from scripture, a conclusion you may disagree with (amillenialism), but as he does he dispells dispensationalism. Trying to work out a complicated timeline and place these texts into it is difficult task and leads (I think) to a view of the bible that would be for the initiated only. Reply Israel: the spiritual center. In Bethlehem Jesus was born. In Nazareth He grew to maturity. In Galilee He walked and taught on the mountainsides and beside the Sea. In Jerusalem our Lord was crucified, buried and rose from the dead. From the Mount of Olives He ascended. And to the Mount of Olives He will return; His feet will first touch down upon the Mount of Olives ( Zechariah 14:4). And we, the Americans, don’t want to be the next Empire or the next great power to fall because we didn’t sufficiently bless the Jewish people.’”
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