God’s Plan for Israel (Pt. 1)
Introduction
What is God’s plan for the nation of Israel? This topic has always evoked passionate responses. To ask a broader but related question, do current events (i.e., events that are post A.D. 70 and up to the present time) have anything to do with biblical prophecies or are they irrelevant to God’s wider eschatological (i.e., end-time) purposes for mankind, Israel included?
On the one hand, there are some who think that current events, including something like re-emergence of Israel as a nation in 1948, have nothing to do with biblical-prophecies. On the other hand, there are others who believe that God is not finished with the nation Israel and that in the future He is going to work in a direct way with the nation Israel as part of His eschatological purposes. Those who hold this latter position have differing views on whether or not current events should be looked at as being prophetically significant, but they do agree that God’s promise for a future restoration of Israel still stand. Those who believe that God has a distinct plan for national Israel typically believe that in the future biblical prophecies about Israel will have a literal fulfillment. This would include events like Israel’s permanent restoration to its land, its protection from enemy annihilation during a future seven-year tribulation period, a spiritual renewal and restoration that leads to massive conversions of Jews to faith in Jesus as the Messiah, and the enjoyment of 1,000 years of spiritual and material blessings on this present earth as when Jesus exercises a global rule from His capital in Jerusalem. This position would fall under what is called a dispensational, premillennial view of eschatology.[2]
There are other theologians who do not believe that God is going to work with Israel in this fashion in the days to come. They take the position that God is effectively finished with working with the nation of Israel in a direct way as described above. Many who hold this kind of position say that God actually does fulfill His promises to Israel, and presently is, but that He is fulfilling them to a spiritual Israel. By this, they mean that the church is a new (spiritual) Israel in whom OT promises have fulfillment (hereafter, OT). With this kind of explanation, such theologians believe that they are upholding the integrity of God’s promises, even though this fulfillment certainly does not include a specific restoration to national Israel as previously described.
The fact is that there are multiple kinds of eschatological systems which do not contain a future for Israel. The purpose of this article is not to give a lengthy explanation or refutation of such positions.[3] What is important to note is that the common denominator in those various systems is that they all deny a literal fulfillment of restoration promises for national Israel.
Bruce Waltke provides a good illustration of how covenant theologians (who characteristically deny a future for national Israel and say that the church is a new or spiritual Israel) accept the literalness of OT warnings and punishments to Israel, but deny that prophecies of restoration and blessing relate to national Israel.[4] Waltke is quite candid when explaining the methods and presuppositions of those who deny a premillennial position and believe that OT “kingdom promises are comprehensively fulfilled in the church, not in restored national Israel.”[5] As he puts it, people need to learn the rules for interpretation, rules that he believes are “self-evident,” ones which he says go “beyond the widely accredited grammatico-historical approach.”[6] As Waltke puts it, to hold his views of eschatology one has to abandon or, as he puts it, “go beyond,” the very form of hermeneutics which has characterized Protestant Christianity, literal, grammatical, historical hermeneutics. To put it bluntly, Waltke is just plain wrong in his theology and wrong in his methods. To his credit, though, he certainly is candid in telling it like it is.
As a further example of how faulty methods and presuppositions produce erroneous theological conclusions, Waltke goes on to say that there must be a “priority of New Testament interpretation” over the OT.[7] In other words, says Waltke, one cannot know what the OT means without having the NT tell one what it means. This is an outrageous claim, but again one must applaud Waltke for his frankness in explaining how and why covenant theologians arrive at their conclusions. This kind of assumption is tragic, though, for it essentially means, according to their system, that the OT has no real meaning on its own. The words are there, but the language has no intrinsic meaning by itself. This is a very dangerous view of language and communication.
To be continued…
[1] Tim Dane serves as president, and one of the professors, at Front Range Bible Institute in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He holds a Master of Divinity and Master of Theology from The Master’s Seminary in Sun Valley, CA and is a Ph.D. student at Bible Baptist Seminary in Clarks Summit, PA. He was a senior pastor in Torrance, CA for 10 years before helping establish Front Range Bible Institute.
[2] A dispensational, Premillennial eschatology would be one that (1) believes that there is a distinction between Israel and the church, (2) believes in a future seven-year tribulation period that follows the rapture of the church, (3) believes the millennial kingdom begins with the second coming of Christ, (4) believes that national Israel will experience a realization of all of its OT biblical promises during the millennium, and (5) believes that the restoration of Israel in the millennial kingdom will also usher in an age of perpetual blessing to the entire human race, not only in the millennium but eternally in a new heavens and new earth.
[3] Among these positions would be the following: Amillennialism, Postmillennialism, Preterism, and in certain cases Historic Premillennialism.
[4] Bruce Waltke, “Kingdom Promises as Spiritual,” in Continuity and Discontinuity: Perspectives on the Relationship Between the Old and New Testaments, ed. John S. Feinberg (Wheaton: Crossway, 1988), 280. Waltke, appealing to the dubious claims and methods of Form Critics, makes the assertion that the woe proclamations of the OT “were hurled against national Israel,” but the “oracles of weal” (i.e., promises of blessing) are to be seen as referring to “the spiritual kingdom” (i.e., the church). In other words, when the OT proclaims a judgment on Israel it is always literal and refers to the nation; however, if it is a promise for restoration and blessing it must not refer to national Israel but rather to the church. With these kinds of arbitrary, pre-determined conclusions, covenant theologians have made the a-priori theological determination that restoration promises to the nation cannot refer to the nation, but must be referring to the church.
[5] Ibid., 263.
[6] Ibid. As Waltke has made clear, his position (which is representative of virtually all who deny a future for Israel) is one which demands a departure from grammatico-historical hermeneutics. In other words, for one to deny a future restoration for Israel, one must approach the Bible with a figurative, allegorical methodology. This was, historically speaking, the kinds of methodological errors that slowly crept into the church in the third and fourth centuries and persisted for many centuries. Eventually a variety of influences caused allegorical methods to dominate theological thinking, e.g., the non-presence of the nation Israel since A.D. 70, widespread anti-semitism, the influence of Greek philosophy with its general opposition to the material realm, the popularity of allegorical methods as a way of making the Bible seem appealing to the non-Christian world, and finally, the impact of certain influential Christian theologians whose writings cemented in allegorical methods which denied a future for Israel. Allegorical methods came to dominate during the Dark Ages and it was not until the Renaissance, and eventually the Reformation, that a literal, grammatical approach finally reclaimed its proper role in popular interpretation. Interestingly, even though the Magisterial Reformers embraced a literal, grammatical approach by and large, they characteristically did not do so in the area of eschatology. The result is that they continued to embrace a Roman Catholic method in their eschatology. Furthermore, those who have followed in the theological footsteps of these same Reformers have held to the same Roman Catholic eschatology which denies a literal future restoration for Israel.
[7] Ibid., 264.
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