Are the Jews still God’s chosen people? Was the establishment of modern Israel a fulfillment of Bible prophecy? The persistence of Judaism since the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70 has been a perpetual conundrum for Christian theologians.
A chapter from The End of Israel: Jesus, Paul & AD70.
History would have been so much simpler if God had never called Abraham. Theology would be so much easier if God had never established the nation of Israel. The Jewish people have been the targets of inordinate hatred, the subjects of inordinate love, and also the cause of endless conflict over the correct interpretation of many prophetic statements in the Bible, especially those of Jesus and Paul.
Whether the subject matter is the Creation Week, the Prophets, the Olivet Discourse, Paul’s theology, or the Book of Revelation, there is no admission of ignorance more subtle than the publishing of a book whose title begins with “Four views on…” As usual, the reason for the debate is not any ambiguity on the part of the Bible itself.
Certainly, charitable discussion and debate is part of God’s intention for us, since the process brings the saints to maturity both in theory and in practice. But as in the realms of mathematics and empirical science, the theories and opinions that were necessary tools along the path to discovery must give way at last to certainty once the “internal logic” of the divine order is understood. Johann Kepler realized that research into the order and harmonies of the natural realm would deepen our knowledge—and our worship—of God. The chief aim of all such investigations was to enable us to “think God’s thoughts after Him.”
Although the cause of honest theological disagreement is not the sort of self-serving heresy condemned by Paul, we still ought to labor not to be like those who were “always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7). Every work of God in history has an “end” in sight because it is a process of transformation. Likewise, God expects us to ultimately resolve our strifes and move beyond proof-texting squabbles to a more profound understanding of God Himself through the discovery of the order and harmonies of His Word.
So, in order to end the conflict over those texts that remain mysterious, we must first discern what is the internal logic of the Bible, the “divine order” or “mind of God” that we might think God’s thoughts after Him in the realm of theology. All of the differing views on “the end of Israel” can be tempered or dispelled when greater light is shone upon them, and that light is an apprehension of the consistent way in which God works in the world. To grasp that Way, we must begin at the beginning.
Despite the frustrating brevity of the early chapters of Genesis, this primeval world where everybody was “in the same boat”—or out of it—was easy to understand. The shift in gears to greater narrative detail and the shift in focus to one man and his household at Israel’s beginning has given rise to untold confusion about its end. Were God’s expressed favor for Israel and His parochial attention to the Jews and their immediate neighbors signs of a permanent demarcation? Have the Jews been put “on hold” now for two millennia in the same way that the Gentiles were put “on hold” for two millennia between the call of Abraham and the preaching of the Gospel to the Gentiles? Or was something else going on, something far wiser and grander than most Christians—including theologians—seem to be able to fathom?
The answer lies in that fact that all of God’s works are stamped with the same pattern, an architectural “signature” that is established in Genesis 1 and subsequently orders the shape of everything that follows. Comparing scripture with scripture is helpful and necessary, but God works in processes of transformation, patterns of cultivation that bring men, families, and entire nations, to full maturity. This means that unlocking the purpose of the various acts of God throughout history requires us to move beyond comparing isolated verses to comparing entire sequences of events with others that share the same pattern. This is the key to the internal logic of the Bible.
God uses this development of maturity to qualify people to represent Him. He works through legal representatives because He is a king, but also because He is a Father. The most important of these representatives is, of course, the Son, who is the image of the Father. As the Son represents the Father in heaven, God created Man to represent Him on earth. Adam was accountable to God in a way that no other man, until Jesus, was accountable. Each of us is “in Adam” until, by faith, we are “in Jesus.” No individual has ever existed, and never will exist, without a representative, sacrificial “head.”
When the original global order failed, God created a local order, a nation that, like Adam, would mediate between heaven and earth as a sacrificial “head.” Israel’s High Priest mediated on Israel’s behalf, but Israel itself was a corporate go-between that would represent God to the nations and advocate for the nations before God. This role was the “end”—that is, the purpose or job—of Israel.
This explains why Israel was not only beloved in a way that no other people was beloved but also accountable to God in a way that no other people was accountable. Just as Adam’s preparation for authority involved a test related to a prohibition upon “kingly” food, so also the nation of Israel, when “physically mature” (in number), was given laws pertaining to certain foods. Since the Levitical Law was temporary, we know that the Law of Eden was also temporary. In both cases, submission to the “priestly” law of heaven would result in a graduation to kingly power over the earth. The end of the Law was a coming of age that left the rules and regulations of “childhood” behind.
Our failure to understand the “tabernacle” of Judaism as a necessary stage of development, like a protective screen around a sapling tree—or at least, to extrapolate to history this requirement for an impermanent social circumvallation—has resulted in a failure to understand the temporary nature of the Jew-Gentile division as well as the covenant context and legal purpose of the New Testament concerning its permanent removal.
The ministry of Jesus and the first-century Church was not only the beginning of the new order but also a series of trumpets heralding the imminent end of the old. The “wall of enmity” (Ephesians 2:14) was finally coming down. The death of Jesus meant the “death” of the office of the Jew and thus also, logically, the office of the non-Jew.
The Gospels and the Epistles not only announce the fulfillment of the promises of God concerning salvation but also comprise a “serving of papers” upon the legal “heads” of the nation whose mediating role of sacrifice and praise was now obsolete. When understood in this light, the parables of Jesus and the warnings of His apostles concerning imminent judgment make perfect sense.
In Revelation 1, Jesus said He was coming “soon” because the prophecy was a proclamation of the execution of the sentence from heaven upon those who disobeyed the Gospel of Christ. This explains its mention of the testimony of Jesus and the requirement for “two witnesses” (in this case, the Law and Prophets in the guise of Moses and Elijah) to condemn the Israelite rebels in the court of God. The book thus served a similar purpose to the prophecies of Ezekiel, predicting the destruction of the Temple and the construction of a more “spiritual” one—an even newer Jerusalem than the holy city built by Ezra and Nehemiah.
The Gospel went “to the Jew first” because it was a legal testimony to Israel—an announcement that God was coming in Spirit to visit His representative hierarchy (with the “breath” of His coming, 2 Thessalonians 2:8) in the same way that He came to visit Adam (the original “man of sin”) in the “wind” of the Day (Genesis 1:2, 3:8). The armies of the Lord of Hosts were coming like swarms to administer the curses and blessings of the covenant. Revelation describes how the spiritual warfare between the true and false churches led to the physical Jewish War. This is why John the Baptist came with locusts and honey on his tongue: those who despised Christ would be cursed and devoured (the locusts). Those who hungered for His righteousness would be blessed and fed (the honey).
While scholars continue to debate the various possible meanings and motivations of the New Testament writers in search of some unifying theory, this legal, or rather, covenantal, aspect is the principle that unites the diverse parts of the canon as an integrated whole. Thus, all of the New Testament documents were deliberately structured after the legal-architectural patterns established in the Law and the Prophets, all of which, in turn, were expositions of the original pattern of commission, testing, and recommission found in the first chapters of the Bible.
This legal structure is the key not only to the New Testament but also to the Revelation, which can then be understood as a heavenly liturgy, a “Levitical” rite that decommissioned Israel according to the flesh and commissioned Israel according to the Spirit. But this Levitical understanding also answers those who condemn what has been called “Replacement Theology,” the idea that the Church has replaced the Jews. Since the prophecy is patterned after the “ascension” offering of Leviticus 1, the process actually cuts up the old carnal body and offers it to God, purifying it by fire—the Spirit of Pentecost. The Jews who rejected Jesus became the Adamic “dust and ashes” that fell into the brazen altar and the Jews who believed were transformed into fragrant smoke, a savor that pleased God. The truth is that the entire history of Israel—a sequence of death-and-resurrection events—was actually “transformation theology.”
At its root, ours is a failure of typology. A type is an image, not only a prefiguring but also a substitute. The ram caught in the thicket was a type of Isaac. Isaac, the son, was a type—an image—of Abraham, the father. Abraham was a type of Adam, the man who was promised a fruitful land and a fruitful womb. Without typology, there is no substitute, and without a substitute, there is no atonement. The “end of Israel” in AD70 was, like the cross of Christ, an act of atonement, one that “filled up” the work of the “head” of the sacrifice in the work of the purified “body.”
The first-century offering of the nation was, as it had always been, the “end” of Israel. Jesus’ perfect offering meant that human beings could now be acceptable “living sacrifices.” The entire nation of “Isaacs” was taken up the mountain (Zion was originally known as Moriah) because God always puts His darlings on the altar for the greater good. The Abrahamic era ended as it began.
Thus, the final prophecy is not only the culmination of the lawsuit of the Firstfruits Church against the “kings of the Land” but also the denouement of the entire Bible. Just as a neglect of the resurrection of Christ limits our understanding of the cross, so our neglect of the significance of AD70 in the ministries of Jesus and Paul limits our understanding of the entire New Testament.
The tragic events of AD70 have for too long been treated as a historical footnote rather than the final day of reckoning for Judaism. As the vindication of the kingdom of Christ, they are not tangential but crucial to discerning the covenantal standing of Jews today. To minister to them in truth and love we must share Christ with them as the salvation that not only came to bless all nations but also rendered the Jew-Gentile divide obsolete, null and void.
History became “simple” once again under the global rule of the Son, but that meant eradicating the old, divided local order forever. Everyone on the planet is once again “in the same boat.” Although salvation is not universal, humanity’s “covenant obligation” under the rule of Jesus certainly is. The promises are no longer limited to a segregated people but have been bestowed upon all. This fact is the beating heart of the Great Commission, the decree by Jesus which announced that Israel had served its end, both in Him and in them.
ART: Jesus calms the storm, bernardallenart.com
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