“SHALL ALL ISRAEL BE SAVED?”

(modern religious Jewish attitude)   - Romans 11:26

The third temple anticipated ⁱ

Why are they rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem? ⁱⁱ The Jews have been almost 2000 years without a sacrificial temple in Jerusalem. In fact, Jews have been forbidden or restricted in entering the temple area during this time! ⁱⁱⁱ But now, there are red heifers lined up for the purification. Some Jews are bringing goats.^iv Meanwhile, the “Christian community” is being threatened by the Jewish zealots in Israel.^v

Some relative questions. Are the Jews predicted to rule the world when a new temple is built? Will there be animal sacrifices again on the Temple area? Is there really a Biblical prophecy that all Israel will be saved? Why are Christians being asked to send support to the Jews?

CONTRIBUTIONS AND SUPPORT. I was somewhat surprised during a funeral in North Carolina a few years back. The “Christian” building used for the funeral services had promotions in the vestibule urging financial support for the “Jews.” This financial support was for specifically helping people strictly because they are Jews. These were not “believing” Jews but “unbelievers.” Apparently, this is the zealous Jews that live today in the country of Israel who want to assign even jail time persecution for those of the nation's “Christian community.”

One religious reasoning for support is because of Abraham. “God expects us to help His chosen (?) people.”

IS GOD PREJUDICED? Why is it that people perceive that God is prejudiced for Jews in the flesh? Did He not choose and appoint Israel to preserve His teachings for the other children of Abraham and other nations that were multiplying in the world? But those in the flesh represent the same who rejected the True Messiah Jesus and who afterwards historically when having civil power have persecuted and sought to destroy Jesus' disciples.

GOD WARNED THEM. What was the warning given to the Jews originally through Solomon about the temple? “But if you and your people ever disobey the laws and commands I have given you and then I will remove you from the land that I gave you, and I will abandon this Temple that I have consecrated as the place where I am to be worshiped” (2 Chronicles 7:19, 20).

Where do “Christians” of today get the idea that God is partial to the Jewish race who rejected Jesus, the promised Messiah? Did not God “divorce” the “lost tribes” of northern Israel (Jeremiah 3:8, KJV)? And did God not likewise warn the remaining “Jews” of doing the same to them? And John the Baptist came admonishing these remaining “Jews” to repent while Jesus said that if they did not, they would likewise perish. “I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3). Did not Jesus condemn "all the unrepentant"? What will happen to them?

MODERN JEWS AND PHARISEES. We should respect the lives of all peoples. However, that should not make us a sympathizer nor one to finance the admittedly Pharasaic believers which power, by the way, along with the Sadducees opposed the true Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ. “After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Pharisaic beliefs became the foundational, liturgical, and ritualistic basis [my emphasis] for Rabbinic Judaism.” ^vi Today, “it is Orthodox Jews who [have] revived the Sanhedrin, the religious body that supervised the halachic (legal) issues related to the Temple and who intend to see it rebuilt in a proper way.” ^vii Were these not the same who rejected Jesus and had the Romans crucify Him and who was removed by God from Jerusalem thousands of years ago?

THE TEMPLE HAD BEEN A SHADOW OF WHAT WAS COMING. We should appreciate that the temple of the Old Testament was a shadow of the ultimate efficacious sacrifice of Jesus as the book of Hebrews points out. Salvation is not due to the slaughter of bulls and goats in any temple but by the sole sacrifice of the Son of God Jesus which has been fulfilled. Hebrews 10:4-7 quotes the Old Testament Psalm 46: “For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins." “Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened: burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required.” Further the Psalm is quoted: “Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second (covenant)” (Hebrews 10:7).

Colossians 2:16, 17 (GNB Version): “So let no one make rules about what you eat or drink or about holy days or the New Moon Festival or the Sabbath. All such things are only a shadow of things in the future; the reality is Christ.”

ROMANS 11:26. Does this passage really teach that all Israel will be converted? (KJV): "And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob."

INTERPRETATION by groups. Some misread and therefore pervert this passage. The Roman Catholics are one group. In its Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions of 1965, the Second Vatican Council and 1975 Vatican guidelines recall “in moving terms the 'spiritual bond that ties the people of the New Covenant to Abraham's stock,' the Fathers of the council remind us of the special place Jews hold in the Christian perspective, for 'now as before God holds them as most dear for the sake of the patriarchs; he has not withdrawn his gifts or calling.”^viii

Among the Protestant groups, commentator Albert BARNES also misinterprets: “But the time would come when, as a people, they would be recovered; when the nation would turn to God; and when it could be said of them that, as a nation, they were restored to the divine favor.” Adam CLARKE misinterprets the passage: This was written after Jesus ascended and “as no remarkable conversion of that people has since taken place, therefore the fulfillment of this prophecy is yet to take place.”

Not all groups misapply the passage. “And so all Israel shall be saved.” For example, the Popular New Testament commentary: “it is not implied that every individual Jew will be converted.” Jamieson-Fausset-Brown says: "To understand this great statement, as some still do, merely of such a gradual inbringing of individual Jews, that there shall at length remain none in unbelief, is to do manifest violence both to it and to the whole context."

The GOOD NEWS BIBLE VERSION is clearer for us, 'And this is how all Israel will be saved. As the scripture says, "The Savior will come from Zion and remove all wickedness from the descendants of Jacob"' (Romans 11:26). The context is how all peoples are saved. Including the Jews. Going back to the Law of Moses won't do it.

The passage stresses how that all Jews in order to be saved must become Christians. Its message is taken out of the context which stresses the formula of how all mankind including all Jews will be saved.

HOW ARE THEY TO BE SAVED? Are not the Jews to be saved the same way as everyone else? There is no special exemption. As the "nations" (Gentiles) were instructed in Acts 11:14, by the angel messenger to listen to the apostle Peter, "Who shall tell thee words, whereby thou and all thy house shall be saved." This is the same message the apostles had proclaimed as the universal "good news" to Jews on that memorable Pentecost, "Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you [Jews], and to your children [Jews], and to all that are afar off [nations], even as many as the Lord our God shall call” (Acts 2:38,39). As is the promise, so is the means of salvation.

CONSISTENT TEACHING IN ROMANS. The book of Romans declares the same promise and same words for all the world. "... for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin" (Romans 3:9). Both Jew and Gentile are under sin and condemned. There is no difference. "Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference” (Romans 3:22). There is no difference. "And by the same means all Israel must be saved."

Isaiah 59:20, “And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob [Israel], saith the LORD.” The redeemer promised is proven to be Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah when He came to Jerusalem in the first century. Jesus prophesied the destruction (abandonment) of the Jerusalem temple in passages as Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21. What hope do they have now when they have rejected the Redeemer, the Messiah?

You are invited to read the article on the restoring church temple worship on my website: https://www.biblestudylessons.net/articles/music/ekklesia6.html.

--GAYLON WEST

THROW OUT THE LIFELINE

                        - edited by Janie Ward and Mary West