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39 results for “Israel's promises”
Clear searchFulfilment 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 →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 →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
…er Gentiles now share in Abrahamic blessing. It is whether Israel's disobedience annulled promises whose ultimate fulfilment rests upon God's faithfulness. Interrupted enjoyment is not cancellation The Mosaic covenant made Israel's continued enjoyment of the land conditional. Deu…
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 →Conditional blessing, irrevocable promise, and fulfilment in Christ
…ds partly upon a distinction Scripture itself makes. Not every covenant contains the same promises or places the same obligations upon its recipients. The Mosaic covenant made Israel's enjoyment of blessing in the land conditional upon obedience. The promises to Abraham and David…
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 →The olive tree, the natural branches, and the limits of the metaphor
…addresses the problem created by Israel's unbelief. If Israel received the covenants and promises, how can so many Israelites reject Messiah while Gentiles receive the gospel? Has God's word failed? Has God cast away His people? Paul answers both questions with "God forbid" (Rom…
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 →Israel's Messiah, Israel's Scriptures, and a gospel for the world
…That priority was covenantal, not racial favouritism. Israel had received the covenants, promises, temple service, and messianic hope. The King came first to the people whose prophets had announced Him. The title "Son of David" carried that history. Crowds used it when appealing…
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 →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 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 wicked husbandmen, the fruit-bearing nation, and what Jesus said afterwards
…herefore an abstract denunciation of Jewish ethnicity. Nor is it a declaration that God's promises had always belonged spiritually to a different people. It is a polemic against identifiable rulers at a decisive moment in Israel's history. The consequences nevertheless reach beyo…
Read article →Election within Abraham's family, the believing remnant, and the future of the nation
…t test case. God had foreknown Israel, called the nation, entrusted it with covenants and promises, and set His love upon the fathers. Yet much of Israel now stood in unbelief. If that history simply ended in permanent rejection, how secure could anyone be in the declared purpose…
Read article →Unity in Christ and distinction in God's purpose
…do believers possess in Christ?" It does not by itself answer, "Will God fulfil national promises made to Israel?" Israel existed before the Church Israel's national history begins with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, develops through the exodus and Sinai, receives a kingdom under Da…
Read article →The LORD, Zion, and the meaning of Beulah in Isaiah 62:4–5
…de there without inheriting it. Empires might administer it without possessing the divine promises attached to it. Israel’s relationship to the land is different. God appointed it as the geographical setting of Israel’s national life and vocation. It is the place in which the nat…
Read article →Isaiah, John, and the Divine Identity of Jesus Christ
…divine King coming to His people, with the landscape transformed for His arrival. Verse 5 promises the revelation of His glory; verses 9–11 announce His coming as ruler and shepherd. The consolation is God’s own presence. Then Isaiah 40:12–26 enlarges the horizon. Who measured th…
Read article →Why the final seven is unfinished, future, and centred upon Israel and Jerusalem
…spective of faith. God's continuing purpose for Israel therefore magnifies rather than compromises His faithfulness. If His covenant promises can be dissolved by human failure or transferred without remainder, no recipient of grace has grounds for confidence. Romans 11 instead ho…
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 →El, the Exodus, and the God Who Came from Sinai
…has just heard the name. He does not recognise Yahweh’s identity and authority. God then promises: “And the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I stretch forth mine hand upon Egypt.” — Exodus 7:5 Egypt will know Yahweh through His acts of judgment. Israel will know Him…
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 →A history of interpretation, polemic, and forgotten tension
…t Jewish people. Other evidence complicates the story. Writers who spiritualised Israel's promises could still expect a future Jewish conversion. Some anticipated a rebuilt Jewish temple and a final crisis centred upon Jerusalem. Early Christian thought was not a single system. T…
Read article →Jesus and the fountain of living water
…7:39 This is an invitation, but it is more than an invitation to temporary relief. Christ promises that the thirsty person who comes to Him will receive the Holy Spirit. The empty life does not merely receive a cup to carry away. God makes it the channel of a river. A cry on the…
Read article →A response to Hank Hanegraaff on resurrection, Daniel’s final week, and the Tribulation
…f 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 God simply abandons Jewish people to destruction after r…
Read article →The covenant son and the sacrifice that points to Christ
…and Ishmael leave Abraham's household, God hears the boy's voice, preserves his life and promises to make him a great nation (Genesis 21:17–21). This matters morally and exegetically. Defending Isaac does not require Christians to speak as though God hated Ishmael. He saw Hagar'…
Read article →The divine identity of Jesus across the Gospels
…surrection by itself is not a synonym for deity. Jesus raised other people, and Scripture promises a future resurrection of the dead. The significance of His resurrection lies in whose claims it vindicates and what follows it. The one who forgave sins, ruled the Sabbath, received…
Read article →Why the Trinity is not polytheism—and why Christians confess one God
…e Son prays to the Father, is loved by the Father before the foundation of the world, and promises that the Father will send “another Comforter” (John 14:16; 17:24). Their relations are real, not a drama performed for human observers. The Son shares the divine identity John opens…
Read article →Seth D. Postell, Eitan Bar & Erez Soref · Messianic biblical theology · 2017
…nt 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 and Israeli setting makes the discussion especially valuable, while the book's clarity opens ques…
View recommendation →Why a loaded label does not settle the question
…ls His disciples that He is going to His Father's house to prepare a place for them, then promises: “I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” —John 14:3 Christ comes and receives His people to Himself. The natural direction of the pr…
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 →Christianity, Islam and the verdict of the evidence
…ict Muhammad? The principal proof texts fail when restored to their contexts. Deuteronomy promises a prophet like Moses from among Israel’s brethren. The surrounding expressions locate him within Israel, and Acts applies the promise directly to Jesus Christ. Isaiah 42 mentions Ke…
Read article →Four popular claims tested in context
…is not. John 14–16: is Muhammad the Comforter? On the night before His crucifixion, Jesus promises His disciples "another Comforter". The Greek word is paraklētos, which can describe a helper, advocate or one called alongside. The Muslim claim Some Muslims argue that Jesus was pr…
Read article →Defining the position before testing it
…el no longer possesses a distinct future in the fulfilment of the biblical covenants. The promises reach their final meaning in Christ and the Church; any future conversion of Jewish people is their entrance into the Church, not the restoration of Israel as a nation with a distin…
Read article →Earth-dwellers, heaven-dwellers, and the literary structure of the Apocalypse
…r candlesticks, examines their doctrine and conduct, warns them, comforts them, and gives promises to the overcomer. "Church" or "churches" appears repeatedly because these assemblies are the stated earthly audience. The final promise to Philadelphia is especially relevant: "Beca…
Read article →A forensic reading of Christ's Olivet Discourse
…ting remains the organising centre. Clue seven: the gathering echoes Israel's restoration promises Matthew's gathering language has important Old Testament parallels. Moses told Israel: "If any of thine be driven out unto the outmost parts of heaven, from thence will the LORD thy…
Read article →The positive argument of the whole series, brought together
…escribes an hour coming upon the whole world to test "them that dwell upon the earth" and promises Philadelphia, "I also will keep thee from the hour" (Revelation 3:10). The earth-dwellers form a consistent moral company throughout the book: they rejoice over God's slain witnesse…
Read article →How Christians can think politically without surrendering conscience to a package deal
…power. Its programme will contain moral convictions, economic predictions, negotiated compromises, donor interests, historical traditions, responses to present events and calculations about what can win an election. No Christian should expect that mixture to reproduce the mind o…
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