What 'yea and Amen' in Christ means for Israel and the covenants
Do All God's Promises Transfer to the Church? What "yea and Amen" in Christ means for Israel and the covenants Paul makes one of the most comprehensive statements about the promises of God: "For all the…
Read article →Conditional blessing, irrevocable promise, and fulfilment in Christ
Has God Abandoned Israel? What Do the Covenants Say? Conditional blessing, irrevocable promise, and fulfilment in Christ Israel broke God's law, rejected the prophets, and nationally refused its Messiah. Jerusalem was judged, th…
Read article →Fulfilment in Christ, the inclusion of the Gentiles, and Israel's future mercy
Does the New Testament Reaffirm Israel's Promises? Fulfilment in Christ, the inclusion of the Gentiles, and Israel's future mercy The Old Testament repeatedly promises Israel preservation, regathering, cleansing, the kingdom of Dav…
Read article →Unity in Christ and distinction in God's purpose
…harply of distinction that the Church appears detached from Israel's Scriptures, Messiah, covenants, and hope. The biblical answer requires both unity and distinction, each defined by the texts which teach it. The Church is one new man in Christ Gentiles were once "aliens from th…
Read article →What God's faithfulness to Israel means for everyone who trusts His promises
No Shadow of Turning What God's faithfulness to Israel means for everyone who trusts His promises This series has examined covenants, prophecies, apostles, thrones, tribes, branches, seeds, kingdoms, and the difficult words upon which the debate turns. We have tried to hear the…
Read article →A response to Michael Horton on the land promise, Amos 9, and the people of God
No Holy Land? Covenant Discipline, Gentile Blessing, and Israel's Future A response to Michael Horton on the land promise, Amos 9, and the people of God Michael Horton's essay, “No Holy Land: Does Israel…
Read article →The covenant son and the sacrifice that points to Christ
Isaac, Not Ishmael The covenant son and the sacrifice that points to Christ Did God choose Isaac or Ishmael? This is not a tribal debate. It is a covenant question. The answer does not require hostility towards Ar…
Read article →The question reaches beyond prophecy to the faithfulness of God
…may prefer words such as fulfilled, transformed, or expanded. They believe that Israel's promises have reached their true meaning in Christ and now belong to the multinational Church. Others maintain that Jewish and Gentile believers are one in Christ while national Israel still…
Read article →The LORD, Zion, and the meaning of Beulah in Isaiah 62:4–5
…e both affirmative and qualified. Israel is not married to the land in precisely the same covenantal sense in which she is married to the LORD. Throughout Scripture, the LORD is Israel’s covenant husband. The land, by contrast, is Israel’s covenant inheritance. Nevertheless, Isai…
Read article →One Messiah, one gospel, and God's continuing purpose for Israel
The Unshaken Truth of God's Promises One Messiah, one gospel, and God's continuing purpose for Israel This series began with a question: has the Church permanently replaced Israel in the purpose of God? The answer cann…
Read article →Why Israel's failure cannot make the word of God fail
…y rebelled and, when Messiah came, the nation did not receive Him. What happens to divine promises when their recipients prove unfaithful? Scripture does not answer by minimising Israel's sin. Nor does it conclude that God's purpose must be transferred to a more deserving people.…
Read article →The wicked husbandmen, the fruit-bearing nation, and what Jesus said afterwards
…f the kingdom is removed? Who is the fruit-bearing nation? Does the sentence revoke God's covenants with Israel, or does it pronounce judgement upon the unfaithful rulers and generation then entrusted with the vineyard? The immediate context identifies Jesus' targets. The parable…
Read article →Christ the promised Seed, Gentile inheritance, and Paul's final blessing
…f the strongest arguments for identifying the Church as Israel. First, Paul says that the promises were made to Abraham and his singular Seed, Christ. Everyone who belongs to Christ is then called Abraham's seed and an heir according to the promise (Galatians 3:16, 29). If Christ…
Read article →The olive tree, the natural branches, and the limits of the metaphor
…n either separation or replacement. Gentiles really do enter blessings rooted in Israel's covenant history. They do so by grace and faith, alongside the believing remnant of Israel. Yet Paul continues to distinguish wild branches from natural branches and describes Israel's event…
Read article →Responding to five common criticisms without defending what Scripture does not require
…progressive revelation, the distinct identities named in the text, and the unconditional promises God made to Israel. It affirms one way of salvation by grace through faith, centred in Christ. It distinguishes Israel and the Church without teaching two gospels or two redeemers.…
Read article →Seth D. Postell, Eitan Bar & Erez Soref · Messianic biblical theology · 2017
…Moses, Seeing Jesus because it treats the Torah neither as an embarrassing relic nor as a covenant code which the Church must simply re-enact. The authors read its narratives, patterns, promises, and commandments as a coherent witness whose goal is found in Yeshua. Their Jewish a…
View recommendation →Defining the position before testing it
…nise. Supersessionism is the view that the Church has permanently succeeded Israel as the covenant people of God, so that national Israel no longer possesses a distinct future in the fulfilment of the biblical covenants. The promises reach their final meaning in Christ and the Ch…
Read article →Israel's Messiah, Israel's Scriptures, and a gospel for the world
…ws, and its Jewish Messiah has often been presented with little connection to the people, covenants, and hopes into which He was born. That history cannot be denied. It can, however, obscure the world of the New Testament itself. The New Testament is the story of Israel's God ful…
Read article →Regathering, national rebirth, and the spiritual renewal still to come
…y. It does force an important question: how should we read the many passages in which God promises to preserve Israel as a nation, gather its scattered people, restore them to the land, cleanse them, pour out His Spirit, and bring them under Messiah? The biblical pattern is not m…
Read article →Christianity, Islam and the verdict of the evidence
…e missing Islamic Injeel, the Qur’an’s miracle claim, alleged prophecies of Muhammad, the covenant line through Isaac, Daniel’s cut-off Messiah and the Qur’an’s relationship to the religious stories of late antiquity. The individual questions matter. But now we must ask what they…
Read article →How the Law reaches its goal and appointed end in Christ
…the law." —Romans 3:31 This does not mean that believers are placed back under the Mosaic covenant as the means of justification or covenant standing. It means that the gospel confirms the truth to which the Law bears witness. The Law's verdict upon sin is upheld, its demand for…
Read article →Why the final seven is unfinished, future, and centred upon Israel and Jerusalem
…Jeremiah's prophecy of Jerusalem's seventy years of desolation. Daniel confesses Israel's covenant rebellion and pleads for "thy city Jerusalem, thy holy mountain" (Daniel 9:16). Gabriel's answer retains those subjects: "Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy h…
Read article →El, the Exodus, and the God Who Came from Sinai
…ally rendered “God Almighty,” is God’s patriarchal designation in passages concerned with covenant promise, fruitfulness and His power to accomplish what appears impossible. The exact etymology of Shaddai remains disputed, so more should not be claimed than the contexts warrant.…
Read article →The gathering of the elect, one taken and one left, and Paul's revealed mystery
…of a great trumpet and the return of scattered Israelites (Isaiah 27:12-13). Deuteronomy promises that God will gather His dispersed people "from the outmost parts of heaven" (Deuteronomy 30:3-4). The wording provides a natural Old Testament background for Matthew's gathering fr…
Read article →Circumcision of the heart and the identity of Paul's inward Jew
…the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked." —Deuteronomy 10:16 The same book promises a future divine work in Israel: "And the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, t…
Read article →History, heresy, and the temptation of private Christianity
…a dramatic crisis, whose vocabulary differs, or whose tradition places greater stress on covenant nurture may be treated as obviously unreal. Assurance then rests partly on membership in the group that knows how salvation really works. The result resembles spiritual caste behavi…
Read article →A history of interpretation, polemic, and forgotten tension
…clusion which the apostles had not required—that national Israel had permanently lost its covenant future. Theological argument also hardened at times into collective accusation and degrading rhetoric against Jewish people. Other evidence complicates the story. Writers who spirit…
Read article →A response to Hank Hanegraaff on resurrection, Daniel’s final week, and the Tribulation
…and Gentiles are reconciled to God through the blood of Christ. The distinction concerns covenantal identity, historical vocation and prophetic promises—not whether one group is saved by Christ while another reaches God by a separate road. Nor does pretribulationism teach that G…
Read article →An unrequited love for the historic Church
…shallowness. Irenaeus immediately allows the learned teacher to explore the parables, the covenants, the purpose of the incarnation, the inclusion of the Gentiles, the resurrection of the body and the things to come. Theology may unfold the riches of revelation. Intelligence, elo…
Read article →The near was real. The far is still coming.
…not a detailed chronology. These chapters stand near the culmination of the warnings and promises of Isaiah 28–35, immediately before the historical account of the Assyrian crisis in chapters 36–39. Reading them as a sustained unit respects that arrangement without requiring tha…
Read article →Born, begotten and firstborn in the eternal identity and saving work of the Son
…ive: “By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son.” Isaac was not the only male whom Abraham had physically fathered; Ishmael had already been born. Yet Isaac was Abraham’s monogenēs: the unique son…
Read article →Four popular claims tested in context
…overrule the text's own identification. "From the midst of thee" Moses is addressing the covenant nation of Israel. He does not merely say that the prophet will come from a distantly related people. He says, "from the midst of thee, of thy brethren". The language is clarified on…
Read article →Election within Abraham's family, the believing remnant, and the future of the nation
…the Israel within Israel, while unbelieving ethnic Israel no longer possesses a distinct covenant identity or future. Paul certainly denies that physical descent guarantees salvation. He distinguishes outward privilege from participation in God's saving purpose and traces that p…
Read article →A forensic reading of Christ's Olivet Discourse
…urch doctrine in order to understand the term. Israel's Scriptures had already supplied a covenantal and remnant-shaped background. Matthew therefore does not place an undefined label into a neutral setting. He uses a familiar biblical term inside a discourse already centred upon…
Read article →A sign of Israel's renewal, not Israel's disappearance
…tself establishes less than either side sometimes claims. Read within Jesus' ministry and promises, however, it points towards renewal rather than erasure. Twelve means Israel Israel's twelve-tribe identity runs through the biblical story. Jacob's twelve sons became the heads of…
Read article →The positive argument of the whole series, brought together
…t off and Jerusalem is later destroyed. The final week therefore remains distinct, with a covenant, a marked midpoint, sacrifice, abomination, and desolation (Daniel 9:26-27). Jesus places Daniel's abomination before unparalleled Great Tribulation and His manifested coming (Matth…
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