Mike’s Musings … Which Israel?
Since WWII, (by 1948), the land area known as Israel has seen numerous wars throughout that region, all in an attempt to reclaim land masses that both Israelis and Arabs believe are theirs. Even today, war ravages that area; and while it is not my attempt to be either political or historical in this musing, the fact is there is no longer a physical nation of Israel that God recognizes as a nation of “His chosen people.”
While I will avoid the history of the Holocaust and the involvement of the United States in helping to form a “state” for these displaced people, one of the reasons this came to fruition is due to a wrongful mixture of Biblical thought and man’s desires. Most have never considered the fact that the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, removed the spiritual relationship of God and physical Israel and “made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26). Paul in showing the Ephesians that via Christ’s death, burial and resurrection, there is now no difference between the Jews and Gentiles wrote, “For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: And came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh.” (Ephesians 2:14-17) Further, when the Temple was destroyed in AD 70 (as Jesus prophesied would happen – Matthew 24), the records revealing the unquestioned heritage of any living Jew back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were destroyed. Thus, there is no factual way of proving today that those who claim to be direct descendants of that once “chosen people of God” exist after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ!
Most importantly, from the spiritual perspective, we note Paul’s statement to the Romans: “Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel: Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, they which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.” (Romans 9:6 – 8, emp. mjd) What is TRUE ISRAEL today? The church of Christ; the children of God who comprise the church of Christ (1 Peter 2:1-10; Ephesians 2:11-22); those who have obeyed the gospel of Christ by hearing, believing, repenting, confessing Christ as the Son of God and being immersed into Christ for the remission of sin. THIS is the REAL “Israel of God.”