Chapter Two

Total Depravity and Irresistible Grace, Part 2

It is important that you have read the previous chapter before beginning this one, as this chapter builds directly on it. We will continue examining Calvinism’s first and fourth cardinal doctrines.

Does Being Dead in Sin Make Repentance Impossible?

Calvinists often ask: How can one who is “dead in his sins” possibly repent and believe? Is it not true that dead people can do nothing and are unable to respond to outside influences?

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Note to Readers: This e-teaching is the first of seven that are consecutive chapters of a book I wrote more than 30 years ago titled, Calvinism Considered. My hope then was to persuade Calvinists to abandon their Calvinism, but that has proven to be a more difficult task than I originally thought. Now I hope that this book will be more of a preventative than a cure, and I hope that will be the case for you! — David

Book Introduction

Calvinistic theology is usually explained by focusing on its five cardinal doctrines: (1) Total Depravity, (2) Unconditional Election, (3) Limited Atonement, (4) Irresistible Grace, and (5) Perseverance of the Saints. These are easily remembered by the acronym TULIP. All five points are interrelated, so that accepting or rejecting one typically leads a person to accept or reject the others as well.

This study is a respectful and scriptural examination of the five points of Calvinism. More specifically, it is a response to John Piper’s booklet TULIP: What We Believe about the Five Points of Calvinism. I have chosen Piper’s booklet only so that no one can claim I have misrepresented true Calvinism (an accusation with which I am familiar). John Piper is a respected, knowledgeable, and moderate Calvinist. He has not misrepresented mainstream Calvinism in his booklet, and neither have I in what follows.

My purpose is to examine Calvinism in the light of Scripture and logic, and to help seekers of truth arrive at a biblical understanding of how God saves people. As I see it, Calvinism is flawed on at least three levels: (1) by focusing on certain “supportive” scriptures while ignoring many others that clearly contradict the Calvinistic interpretation of those texts; (2) by offering unnatural and forced interpretations of scriptures that contradict Calvinism; and (3) by relying on faulty logic. When we consider the full balance of Scripture, accept the most natural reading of the text, and maintain consistent logic, the five points of Calvinism do not harmonize with what the Bible teaches about God and how He saves people.

I am certainly not the first to question Calvinism. Whenever its various doctrines have surfaced in church history, they have raised objections. For example, writing around A.D. 225, the well-known church father Origen wrote against a contemporary Gnostic sect, saying:

Certain ones of those who hold different opinions misuse these passages. They essentially destroy free will by introducing ruined natures incapable of salvation and by introducing others as being saved in such a way that they cannot be lost.

Origen’s words essentially contradict the first and fifth pillars of modern Calvinism.

I hope my comments will not be taken as an attack against Calvinists, but rather as a sincere and thoughtful examination of Calvinistic doctrines. I love and respect any Calvinist whose Lord is Jesus. I have, however, written passionately on some points because I am passionate for God’s reputation. When His sovereignty is emphasized to the point of diminishing His love and justice, the result is an obvious imbalance.

Near the end of his booklet, Piper quotes the legendary Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon, who said that he began as an Arminian (Arminians essentially disagree with all five points of Calvinism), like everyone else. That is a telling remark because it is true: no one begins as a Calvinist. No one reading the Bible on their own naturally arrives at Calvinism. People become Calvinists only as they are taught Calvinism by skillful teachers. Piper’s own testimony is no different. He admits “many years of struggle” (p. 1, para. 4) before he was able to accept Calvinism. Perhaps even more difficult than the struggle to accept Calvinism is the struggle to reject it after one has worked so hard to embrace it. Yet it can—and has—been done.

John Piper writes in his booklet, “We are open to changing any of our ideas which can be shown to contradict the truth of Scripture.” I am glad for his humble attitude. I am likewise open to scrutiny of my comments by anyone who presents an argument that harmonizes with the entire Bible, for I too sincerely desire to understand God’s truth. Although this teaching has been posted on my website for decades and viewed frequently, I am still waiting for the first comprehensive refutation. Calvinists have occasionally sent me short lists of proof texts (all of which I address in my examination of Piper’s booklet) or titles of books on Calvinism that they suggest I read. But what I am waiting for is a point-by-point response to the numerous arguments I have made. Sending one or two proof texts or a recommended book title is not a comprehensive refutation.

How difficult it is to remain truly open to truth that challenges our long-held beliefs! May God help us all, by His grace, to comprehend His great plan of salvation.

Chapter 1
Total Depravity and Irresistible Grace, Part 1

Points one and four of Calvinism’s TULIP—Total Depravity and Irresistible Grace—are intrinsically linked, making it nearly impossible to consider one without the other. The remaining three points rest on these two pillars; if they fall, the others must fall with them.

Concerning human depravity, all genuine Christians affirm that humanity is sinful by nature and born with a propensity to sin. This is easily demonstrated from Scripture (and confirmed by human experience). In Romans 3:9–12, for example, Paul records a sampling of God’s assessment of sinful humanity drawn from various Psalms: “There is none righteous, not even one… there is none who seeks for God… there is none who does good.” In Ephesians 2:1, 3 he writes that we were “dead in [our] trespasses and sins… by nature children of wrath.” Unregenerate people are “slaves to sin” (Rom. 6:6) and are “held captive” by Satan “to do his will” (2 Tim. 2:26).

Clearly, the Bible teaches that humanity is deeply corrupt and sinful. Apart from God’s initiative to draw us to Himself, we would never turn from our sins. No one can escape slavery to sin without God’s gracious help. I therefore affirm man’s depravity, God’s prevenient grace (grace that precedes regeneration), and His enabling grace that empowers believers to live holy lives after they are born again.

Calvinists, however, go further. They maintain that unregenerate people are so corrupt that it is impossible for them to submit to God or believe in Jesus; they are totally depraved. Unless God sovereignly changes their wills by an irresistible grace, they will never submit or repent.

According to this view, even though people may think they have the freedom to repent, they are mistaken. If they do not repent, they are simply doing the only thing they are capable of doing, because God has not granted them irresistible grace. If they do repent, they are doing what it would have been impossible for them not to do, because God is sovereignly changing them by irresistible grace. In reality, they make no genuine choice in the matter of salvation. God chooses them and makes them believers by changing their wills. Totally depraved people, according to Calvinism, would never—and could never—humble themselves or choose to repent.

Oddly, many Calvinists, including Piper, still maintain that unregenerate people possess free will to some degree. Piper writes:

There is no doubt that man could perform more evil acts toward his fellow man than he does. But if he is restrained from performing more evil acts by motives that are not owing to his glad submission to God, then even his “virtue” is evil in the sight of God (p. 5, para. 2, emphasis added).

If an unregenerate man could perform more evil acts but does not because he is restrained by some inward motive, then he is restrained by himself rather than by an outside force. He is making a moral decision by his own free will not to do further evil.

Piper also states, “Except for the continual exertion of saving grace, we will always use our freedom to resist God” (p. 9, para. 6, emphasis added). Notice his affirmation of free will in the phrase “use our freedom.” Yet he insists that, apart from continual saving grace, we will always use that freedom to resist God—because we are allegedly totally depraved.

This being the case, it is not too strong to say that Calvinists believe God causes people to believe in Christ and be born again against their wills. They would never—and could never—have chosen otherwise. Given the choice, they would have preferred to remain in sin. Moments before God bestowed His “irresistible grace,” if asked whether they wanted to repent and follow Jesus, they would have answered with a firm “no.” Moments later, God causes them to do what they had been resisting, what they never wanted, and what they could not have done. Thus every person God causes to be born again is born again against his or her will—this is what Calvinists believe, even if they deny it.

Piper explains that some influence of the Holy Spirit can be resisted, but that “the Holy Spirit can overcome all resistance and make His influence irresistible” (p. 9, para. 1). God, therefore, can send two kinds of influence: resistible and irresistible, whichever He chooses. Piper elaborates:

When a person hears a preacher call for repentance he can resist that call. But if God gives him repentance he cannot resist because the gift is the removal of the resistance. Not being willing to repent is the same as resisting the Holy Spirit. So if God gives repentance it is the same as taking away the resistance. This is why we call this work of God “irresistible grace” (p. 10, para. 6).

Immediately afterward he declares: “Note: It should be obvious from this that irresistible grace never implies that God forces us to believe against our will. That would even be a contradiction in terms” (p. 10, para. 7, emphasis added).

I must respectfully ask: How can irresistible grace act upon a totally depraved person without forcing him to believe against his will? If the unregenerate person is initially able to resist God’s grace while hearing the gospel, then God must at that moment be sending a resistible grace. According to Piper, the totally depraved person will always continue to resist as long as the grace remains resistible. The moment God bestows irresistible grace, the person can no longer resist (by definition) and is immediately born again and believes. Yet only a moment earlier he was resisting. How, then, can Piper claim it is “obvious” that irresistible grace never forces anyone to believe against his will? Far from being obvious, this claim directly contradicts what he has just affirmed.

Piper’s logic becomes still more strained:

On the contrary, irresistible grace is compatible with preaching and witnessing that tries to persuade people to do what is reasonable and what will accord with their best interests (p. 10, para. 7).

Piper recognizes that irresistible grace creates a serious problem for the necessity of persuasive preaching. Why must preachers attempt to persuade sinners to believe if those sinners are incapable of believing until God grants them irresistible grace? If man plays no part in his conversion, why must he hear the gospel in order to be saved, as Paul insists in Romans 10:14? Piper’s one-sentence disclaimer (quote above) only highlights the incompatibility.

A consistently logical Calvinist cannot claim that persuasive preaching influences an unregenerate person to yield to God, because that person will always use his freedom to resist God (Piper, p. 9, para. 6). The only way an unregenerate person becomes regenerate is if God sovereignly bestows irresistible grace. All the persuasive preaching in the world makes no difference. Indeed, attempting to persuade someone becomes an implicit attack on God’s alleged sovereign grace, for it implies that salvation rests partly on the hearer and partly on the preacher.

According to consistent Calvinism, preaching cannot have any persuasive power over one who is totally depraved. If it does, then we must admit that unregenerate man can do something (be persuaded) that contributes to his salvation.

Paul’s Persuasive Preaching

If man has nothing to do with his repentance because the ability to repent is solely God’s gift, why did Paul so often “reason” with the Jews from the Scriptures to “prove” that Jesus was the Messiah (see, for example, Acts 17:2–4)? Why did he attempt to “persuade men” (2 Cor. 5:11) and beg people to “be reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:20)? Why does Acts 28:24 record that as Paul reasoned with the Jews about Jesus, “some were being persuaded by the things spoken, but others would not believe”? Why did Paul write, “I have become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some” (1 Cor. 9:22)? Why did he say that the Jews hindered him from “speaking to the Gentiles so that they might be saved” (1 Thess. 2:16)?

Clearly, Paul believed that what he said and did affected the results of his evangelism because people’s wills played a real part in their salvation. A preacher’s attempt to persuade an unregenerate man is an admission that man plays a part in his repentance. If no one can be saved apart from God’s irresistible grace, such persuasion is an affront to God’s sovereignty.

In fact, trying to persuade an unregenerate person to yield to Christ is to mislead him into thinking he is not totally depraved after all—because he can choose to repent.

For the consistent Calvinist, persuasive preaching is ultimately ineffectual and useless. Any other conclusion would imply that salvation is not entirely the sovereign work of God. There is no escape: if people must hear preaching in order to be saved, then both preachers and hearers play a part in salvation. Preaching persuades them to do something, which means they must possess free wills capable of choosing to repent. This is further evidence that salvation is not solely the work of God. Man must play a part; otherwise there would be no need for preaching.

Calvinists sometimes reply that preaching the gospel is simply a means God uses in saving people. I must ask: Is it a meaningless means or a meaningful means? If it is meaningless, why call it a means? A means, by definition, serves a purpose toward a certain end. There is no such thing as a meaningless means.

If it is a meaningful means, then it serves a necessary purpose. According to Scripture, preaching the gospel is an essential means (Rom. 10:14), because through it God’s message is communicated to people who, if they are to be saved, must believe that message and repent. Thus people’s salvation depends on preachers preaching and hearers responding.

If salvation is purely a sovereign act in which God bestows irresistible grace on some, why do Calvinists not simply stand before unregenerate audiences and recite nursery rhymes? That would demonstrate the truth of irresistible grace as people are sovereignly born again. Yet Calvinists consistently appeal to the minds and hearts of their hearers in order to persuade them to repent and believe—something those hearers, by definition, cannot do unless God first regenerates them. The practice of Calvinist preaching contradicts the theology they claim to hold.

Many biblical examples illustrate the effects of persuasive preaching. Acts 17:11–12 states:

Now these [Berean Jews] were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so. Many of them therefore believed, along with a number of prominent Greek women and men (emphasis added).

The Bereans’ receptivity contributed to their salvation, just as Jesus taught in the Parable of the Sower (Mark 4:1–20).

If Calvinists are consistent, what gospel should they proclaim? Should they call on people to repent and believe, thereby misleading them into thinking they can do something regarding their salvation and thus increasing their spiritual pride? Or should they tell them the “truth”—that they are so depraved they are incapable of submitting to God, and that unless God grants them irresistible grace they can never be saved? How does “faith come from hearing” (Rom. 10:17) such a message?

Such a “gospel” leaves the hearer with nothing to believe in order to be saved. That is why Calvinists generally keep these distinctive doctrines hidden from the unregenerate and reveal them later to Christians who are considered ready for the “truth.” The five points of Calvinism function as a kind of “family secret.” Though claimed to be foundational truths of salvation, they dare not be preached to the unsaved. This fact alone exposes a serious flaw: Calvinists intuitively recognize that if they told unregenerate people their full doctrine, they would gain no converts. So they preach a functionally Arminian gospel, hope for a response, and only afterward explain “what really happened.”

Calvinistic Converts

I cannot help wondering how God takes pleasure in people who are regenerated against their wills by irresistible grace. They are essentially robots. If they love Him, it is only because they had no choice; they would have preferred to continue hating Him. Genuine love, however, is predicated upon choice. Pre-programmed affection is not true love.

Imagine placing a sock puppet on your hand, turning it toward yourself, and making it say, “I love you!” Does that produce the same feeling as when your spouse or child freely speaks those words? Of course not—because free will has been removed. The puppet says only what you force it to say.

Piper’s claim that unregenerate man will always use his freedom to resist God is easily disproved by observation. Consider an adulterer whose God-given conscience continually condemns him (Rom. 2:15), yet he continues in the relationship. He is using his freedom to resist God—exactly what Piper says is all he can or will ever do. But suppose he finally breaks off the adulterous relationship because of guilt. Can it still be said that he has used his freedom only to resist God? No. He used his freedom to repent of adultery and yield to his conscience. If he can do that, why can he not, with the help of the Holy Spirit, repent of a lifestyle of rebellion and humble himself before God?

How can someone who has the free choice to remain unrepentant lack the freedom to choose to repent? How can a person have the capacity to choose greater evil yet lack the capacity to choose lesser evil? Choosing not to become more evil is, by default, a choice for good.

If we can use our freedom to resist God but cannot use it to yield to God, we have no real freedom at all. We are robots programmed only for evil. It is impossible to possess freedom to resist God without also possessing freedom to yield to Him. Calvin himself acknowledged this, writing in the Institutes:

Nothing is more absurd than to think anything at all is done but by the ordination of God…. Every action and motion of every creature is so governed by the hidden counsel of God, that nothing can come to pass, but what was ordained by Him…. The wills of men are so governed by the will of God, that they are carried on straight to the mark which He has fore-ordained (Institutes, Book 1, Chapter 16, Section 3).

At least Calvin was consistent. He admitted (unlike many modern Calvinists) that there is no genuine room for free will in this system. If depraved man can do nothing other than sin, then he has as much free will as a bullet fired from a gun.

Calvinists add to Scripture regarding both humanity’s depravity and God’s grace. Although unregenerate people are indeed “dead in [their] trespasses and sins,” hundreds of passages clearly state or imply that spiritually dead people can choose to humble themselves and repent, especially under the gracious drawing of God’s Spirit. That drawing, however, never forces anyone to repent, nor does it change anyone’s will apart from the consent of the heart.

While Scripture repeatedly describes the sinful condition of humanity, it simultaneously calls all people to repent. It is therefore evident that spiritually dead people still possess the capacity to repent. Paul publicly proclaimed, “Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent” (Acts 17:30). If Paul believed people were so depraved that they had no capacity to repent, he would not have announced that God was calling all people everywhere to do so. Moreover, if it were impossible for spiritually dead people to repent, God would be unrighteous to command them to do what they cannot do and then hold them guilty for failing.

Like Paul, John the Baptist, Jesus, and the other apostles preached the gospel and called all people to repent (Matt. 3:2; 4:17; 11:20; Mark 6:12; Luke 5:32; 13:3, 5; 24:47; Acts 2:38; 3:19; 5:31; 11:18; 20:21; 26:20; Rom. 2:4; 2 Pet. 3:9).

Several times in Revelation, John records his amazement that unregenerate people refuse to repent even while suffering God’s judgments (Rev. 9:20–21; 16:9, 11).

Jesus pronounced woe on the people of Chorazin and Bethsaida because they did not repent, clearly indicating that He believed they had the capacity to do so (Matt. 11:21). He further declared that the wicked people of Tyre and Sidon would have repented had they seen the miracles performed in Chorazin and Bethsaida.

In both cases Jesus treated those who did not repent as people who could have repented and should have done so. Calvinism, by contrast, holds that unregenerate people have no capacity to repent unless God changes their wills and forces them (which He does only for some). This portrayal makes Jesus appear to be a deceiver, for He spoke as though people could do what—according to Calvinism—He knew they could not. It likewise makes the Father a deceiver, since Jesus spoke only the Father’s words (John 12:49).

Jesus expected His entire generation to repent. He stated that the men of Nineveh, who repented at Jonah’s preaching, would rightly condemn His generation for its failure to repent. If His hearers had no capacity to repent, He could not justly condemn them. The people of Nineveh would have no moral standing to condemn Jesus’ generation, for the latter could reply, “How can you, who by God’s sovereign decree could do nothing other than repent, condemn us who by the same decree could do nothing other than remain unrepentant?”

Thus Calvinism, by holding that God condemns people for failing to do what they are incapable of doing, makes God appear grossly unjust—comparable to a parent who punishes an infant for not walking, yet infinitely worse, because the punishment is eternal.

Calvinism also makes God ultimately responsible for all the evil in the world. According to this view, God could end all evil by granting everyone His irresistible grace, yet He sovereignly chooses not to. Evil therefore persists only because of God’s choice. Depraved people can supposedly do nothing but sin unless God restrains them by irresistible grace; the ultimate reason for evil is that God does not prevent it.

In response, Calvinists often accuse non-Calvinists of making man solely responsible for his own salvation (an absurd charge). Yet Calvinism makes God solely responsible for the damnation of billions. The God of this system determines people’s eternal fate before they are born. If God is solely responsible for the salvation of some, He is equally responsible for the damnation of the rest, for only He could have rescued them, yet He chose not to. That decision was not due to any inability but to an unwillingness to stop sin. In this framework, God wills sin in the lives of the non-elect. Man continues in sin not merely because he has no choice, but because God, who could stop it, chooses not to.

Calvinists should not object to this conclusion, for Calvin himself taught that Adam fell not by his own free will but because God ordained the fall:

God not only foresaw that Adam would fall, but also ordained that he should…. I confess it is a horrible decree; yet no one can deny but God foreknew Adam’s fall, and therefore foreknew it, because he had ordained it so by his own decree (Institutes, Book 3, Chapter 23, Section 7).

Calvinism further portrays God as working against Himself—hating sin while creating people who have no capacity to do anything but evil and who are predestined never to change. It also portrays Him as hypocritical, practicing forms of partiality and deception that He condemns in others.

In summary, Calvinism presents God as a being who is ultimately responsible for the world’s evil, who creates people for the purpose of eternal torment, and who holds them accountable for failing to do what He has rendered them incapable of doing. If any human being acted in the ways Calvinists attribute to God, he would be judged morally reprehensible. The question must therefore be asked: Is it the non-Calvinist who diminishes God’s glory by affirming that people must freely yield to the Spirit in order to be saved, or is it the Calvinist system that distorts the character of God?

Unlike Calvinists, who place the responsibility for lack of repentance on God, Jesus placed the blame on the unrepentant people themselves. Weeping over Jerusalem, He said:

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling (Matt. 23:37, emphasis added).

Jesus loved them and desired their repentance, yet they refused. Calvinism, however, makes Jesus say, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her, proving that you are totally depraved. I never wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, thus I chose not to grant you My irresistible grace, and I predestined you to eternal damnation. I’m weeping now, not for you, because I’ve hated you from the beginning. Rather, I’m weeping for no good reason. Perhaps I’m weeping for Myself, an unrighteous hypocrite, because I expect people to do what they can’t do and I command people to do what I don’t practice Myself.”

Jesus also rebuked the religious leaders: “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life” (John 5:39–40). Clearly, Jesus believed that people, including religious Jews, possessed the capacity to choose whether or not to come to Him. No honest reading of the text can deny this.

More on Total Depravity and Irresistible Grace in the next chapter.

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]]> https://www.davidservant.com/calvinism-considered-1/feed/ 0 https://www.davidservant.com/true-peace-false-peace/ https://www.davidservant.com/true-peace-false-peace/#respond Thu, 20 Aug 2026 13:55:31 +0000 admin https://www.davidservant.com/?p=36091 Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 5:1). This well-known, oft-quoted verse is packed with wonderful truths. First, people can be justified before God. That is, they can be forgiven of every sin they’ve ever committed and become innocent in God’s eyes. As has been […]

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Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 5:1).

This well-known, oft-quoted verse is packed with wonderful truths.

First, people can be justified before God. That is, they can be forgiven of every sin they’ve ever committed and become innocent in God’s eyes. As has been rightly said, the word justified can be defined as “just-as-if-I’d never-sinned.”

Second, that justification is “by faith.” That stands in contrast with the idea that one is justified “by works.” The only way one could be justified by works would be by never committing a single sin. In such a case, one would not need to be forgiven. One would be innocent. But, since all have sinned, our only hope of becoming innocent in God’s eyes is through His grace that offers justification. That grace is received by faith.

Faith, of course, must have an object. In Romans 5:1, Paul does not directly mention that object, but he certainly indirectly mentions it in the final four words: “our Lord Jesus Christ.” Elsewhere he directly says that the Lord Jesus Christ must be the object of saving faith (Acts 20:21; Eph. 1:15). And this is where so many people are mistaken, because they make the object of their faith a doctrine about salvation, or even a doctrine about Jesus. For example, they believe they are saved because they believe that justification is by faith and not works. But the object of saving faith must be, not it a doctrine but in a person, the Lord Jesus Christ.

And who is He? He is, as we just read, the Lord. Those who truly believe in Him treat Him like He’s Lord. So they strive to obey Him. Only when we do that do we have “peace with God.”

The implication in Romans 5:1 is that, prior to being justified, we did not possess peace with God. We were actually His enemies (see Rom. 5:10), as indicated by our lack of submission to Him, and we were destined to suffer His wrath. We were rebels who deserved hell. But, once we are forgiven and made innocent in God’s eyes, we are at peace with Him. Hallelujah!

Now, just stop and think for five seconds about how silly of an idea it is to imagine that one who is forgiven could then continue in his disobedience and maintain peace with God. That would require God to change His essential character. He would no longer be righteous if He is OK with sin. The idea is also silly because of its impossibility—as if faith can be void of works. As James challenged his readers, “Show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works” (Jas. 2:18).

All of this is to say that Romans 5:1 only applies to those who have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and who consequently are striving to do His will. Recall that John wrote, “By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother” (1 John 3:10). That’s quite plain. John said people’s spiritual state is obvious by their righteousness and love. (That’s the exact opposite of the common claim that, because we don’t know what is in anyone’s heart, we can’t judge their spiritual state.)

Let’s read Romans 5:1 again: “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Justification and the subsequent peace with God only belong to those who believe, and thus follow, the Lord Jesus Christ. Anyone who imagines that they have peace with God who aren’t following Jesus are self-deceived.

Romans 5:1 is like most of the promises in the New Testament epistles—in which we find the phrases “our Lord” and “my Lord” a total of about 70 times. The phrase “Lord Jesus” is found about 80 times. In the book of Romans alone, Paul mentions Jesus as Lord 16 times. If Jesus is not your Lord, the New Testament epistles have no relevance to you. They were all written to people who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

In contrast, Jesus is mentioned as “Savior” less than 20 times in the New Testament epistles. Thank God that He is indeed Savior, but He is only Savior of those who have believed in Him as their Lord. Yet so many oddly claim that we are saved by “accepting Jesus as Savior” (a phrase found nowhere in Scripture and a concept that is a contradiction, as Lords aren’t “accepted”), after which we have the option of making Him Lord.

If Jesus is not your Lord, you don’t believe in Him, at least not yet. You can, of course, change that right now.

And don’t be duped by the standard straw man argument that I’m claiming you must attain sinless perfection in order to claim that Jesus is your Lord. Anyone who actually has read the New Testament epistles knows how silly that idea is. If Jesus is your Lord, pleasing Him in the most important thing in your life, which is characterized by the daily practice of righteousness (1 John 3:10). But we still “all stumble in many ways” (Jas. 3:2). To “stumble” implies non-intentionality. Genuine Christians oppose all sin in their hearts, and because they do, it shows up in their lives.

Beyond that we are promised, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Obviously, Christians sometimes need to be cleansed from “unrighteousness.” And when they do, it shows they obviously don’t possess a permanent state of perfect righteousness as is advocated by some.

Being truly born again is wonderful and miraculous. If it hasn’t happened to you yet, it can! But you must stop imagining that Jesus is your Savior if He is not your Lord. Jesus cannot be divided: “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Phil. 3:20). You must stop thinking that Jesus is your friend even though He is not your Lord. Jesus has never offered friendship apart from lordship. He said, “You are My friends if you do what I command you” (John 15:14).

Jesus died and rose again to be Lord: “For to this end Christ died and lived again, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living” (Rom. 14:9). How absurd it is to think that one could benefit from Jesus’ death and resurrection apart from Him being Lord!

“If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved” (Rom. 10:9).

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]]> https://www.davidservant.com/true-peace-false-peace/feed/ 0 https://www.davidservant.com/calvinist-explains/ https://www.davidservant.com/calvinist-explains/#respond Sat, 15 Aug 2026 13:55:40 +0000 admin https://www.davidservant.com/?p=36084 “Little Johnny, God has predestined a small minority of people to be saved and go to heaven forever, and so it is obvious that He has predestined the majority of people to be eternally damned and burn in the fires of hell. Your mother and I have no idea if God has predestined you to […]

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“Little Johnny, God has predestined a small minority of people to be saved and go to heaven forever, and so it is obvious that He has predestined the majority of people to be eternally damned and burn in the fires of hell. Your mother and I have no idea if God has predestined you to be forever damned or forever saved. We love you, son, but God might not love you, and He may have plans to send you to hell for your future sins. If you do find yourself one day burning in hell because He hasn’t elected to save you, just remember that we will always love you, even if God abhors you.

“Also, you must always remember that we will be in heaven forever only because we were unconditionally chosen for salvation before we were born. That would be the only reason that we won’t be in hell with you if you find yourself there. It won’t be because of anything we did. Take comfort in knowing that. It may not seem fair, but who are we to judge God?

“We would, of course, pray for you that you will go to heaven, but that would be senseless since God has already decided before you were born if you will be saved or damned. So please understand why we don’t pray for you to be saved.

“So again, if you find yourself in hell, remember that we will always love you as we forever worship the God who loved us but who hated you, the God who sent His Son to die for us but not for you. Please, if you find yourself in hell, don’t let it bother you that we love the God who hated you and showed you no mercy. We accept the fact that God is sovereign, and He does what He pleases. If you spend eternity in hell, it will be because you deserve it—just as we also do. But salvation is all of grace, and God shows grace to whoever He wants to.

“OK, head upstairs now to get ready for bed!”

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]]> https://www.davidservant.com/calvinist-explains/feed/ 0 https://www.davidservant.com/israel-ancestry/ https://www.davidservant.com/israel-ancestry/#respond Sat, 08 Aug 2026 13:55:56 +0000 admin https://www.davidservant.com/?p=36076 I keep attempting to write the final article in this series on God’s view of modern Israel, but friends and facts aren’t allowing it. This will be the sixth (and hopefully final) article. The fourth article, titled “The Future Gathering of the Ten Lost Tribes,” sparked interest from readers who were not aware of the […]

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I keep attempting to write the final article in this series on God’s view of modern Israel, but friends and facts aren’t allowing it. This will be the sixth (and hopefully final) article.

The fourth article, titled “The Future Gathering of the Ten Lost Tribes,” sparked interest from readers who were not aware of the fact that the 20th- and 21st-century regathering of Jews from around the world to Israel has primarily consisted of descendants of the tribes of Judah and two tribes that assimilated into Judah—Benjamin and Levi. That fact is hidden in plain sight by the reality that all modern descendants of Israel/Jacob who consciously trace their ancestry back to him don’t generally refer to themselves as Israelites, but as Jews (although they are indeed Israelites, but from the tribe of Judah).

The original Hebrew word Yehudi referred specifically to a member of the tribe of Judah—one of Jacob/Israel’s twelve sons. Throughout most of the Old Testament, especially during the period of the divided kingdoms, the word “Jews” refers specifically to the people of Judah and does not designate the full twelve tribes of Israel. In fact, the earliest reference to Jews in the Bible is 2 Kings 16:5–6, where it specifically distinguishes the people of the southern Kingdom of Judah from the northern Kingdom of Israel, who at the time were at war with each other.

A Little History

Recall that the ancient nation of Israel split north and south after Solomon’s reign around 930 BC (see 1 Kings 12 and 2 Chronicles 10). It was a divine division according to 1 Kings 12:15, 24.

The Northern Kingdom consisted of ten tribes that together were called Israel or Ephraim (the dominant tribe). Their capital was Samaria. The Southern Kingdom consisted of two tribes that together were called Judah (the dominant tribe). Their capital was Jerusalem, which explains why the non-territorial priestly tribe of Levi was part of the Southern Kingdom, since Jerusalem was the center of spiritual life.^[1]

God dealt with each kingdom separately, but both were held accountable to the same standards. Both failed and refused to heed the call of God’s prophets to repent, and both suffered the promised consequences. Each fell to foreign invaders and suffered deportation—first the Northern Kingdom and then the Southern.

More specifically, the Southern Kingdom fell to Babylon beginning in 597 BC, with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 586 BC. Much of the population was deported to Babylon during those years (see 2 Kings 24–25 and 2 Chronicles 36).

When Persian king Cyrus conquered Babylon in 539 BC, he issued a decree allowing Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple (Ezra 1). Between 538 and 445 BC, a relatively small portion of the exiles returned in waves. Most remained in Babylon and other parts of the Persian Empire. Today, their descendants live primarily in the U.S. and Israel.

The Northern Kingdom, after a prolonged siege of Samaria, was conquered by the Assyrians in 722 BC, who deported most of its population to various places within the Assyrian empire:

Then the king of Assyria invaded the whole land and went up to Samaria and besieged it three years. In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and carried Israel away into exile to Assyria, and settled them in Halah and Habor, on the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes (2 Kings 17:5–6).

The places mentioned were located in a region that includes modern northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, and northwestern Iran.

The Bible does not tell us the number of Israelites who were deported. Sargon II of Assyria recorded that he deported 27,290 people from Israel’s capital, Samaria. Earlier deportations under Tiglath-Pileser III would increase the total. Still, that total would not have represented all of the northern kingdom’s population. Some Israelites were not deported but remained in the land (2 Chron. 30:1–11, 18; 34:6–9). Some fled south to Judah before the Assyrian conquest (2 Chron. 15:9).

In any case, it is safe to say that 2,700 years ago roughly 27,000 descendants of Jacob/Israel were deported from Israel and resettled in a known region where they assimilated with the local populations. Their genealogical descendants live today among the general populations of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Turkey, the broader Middle East and Central Asia. Further migrations over the centuries carried some ancestry into other parts of the Islamic world, the Caucasus and, through later movements, into Europe and beyond. All of those people have Jacob/Israel as an ancestor.

Because of how human ancestry works over long periods, the number of living people who have at least one genealogical ancestor among those 27,000 deportees is immense. Realistic estimates by those who study such phenomena put the number in the tens, or hundreds, of millions of modern people.

Think about it: Tens or even hundreds of millions of ordinary people today—in Iraq, Syria, Iran, Turkey, neighboring regions, the wider Islamic world, the Caucasus, the Mediterranean, Europe, and the United States—possess genealogical descent from the deported Israelites from the northern tribes. That means they also descend from Jacob/Israel. These millions of people have no knowledge of any ancestral connection to the Ten Tribes or to Jacob, and that ancestry cannot be traced through DNA, as the shared genetic material after so many generations is vanishingly small. Commercial ancestry tests cannot identify or “prove” descent from the northern-tribe deportees.

Jacob lived at least 1,000 years before those 27,000 deportees/descendants, so his living descendants on the earth today no doubt number in the hundreds of millions. They could, in fact, even number a billion people, which would mean that one of every eight people on the planet has Jacob/Israel in their family tree.^[2] You could be one of them. My own DNA shows that my ancestry is mostly found in Europe, but it also contains a trace from the modern region of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

The Ramifications

All of this raises questions for Christians who believe that modern political Israel is the continuing embodiment of biblical Israel, and/or that it enjoys divine favor over every other geopolitical nation, and/or that Christians have a moral and biblical responsibility to support it.

If you hold to any or all of those beliefs, and they hinge on the genealogical connection of modern Jews to ancient Jacob/Israel, you’ve got a problem. What are you going to do with the hundreds of millions of people who are equally genealogical descendants of Jacob/Israel who live in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey?

If having Jacob/Israel as an ancestor somehow gives people special favor with God, as many as one out of eight modern people deserve that favor. To be consistent, those who believe that modern Israel has that favor have to start looking at Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey just as they look at Israel, because they all include masses of people who have Jacob/Israel as an ancestor. That would be a challenging course to navigate, since relationships between Israel and those four nations are openly hostile. Which descendants of Jacob/Israel should we support? I’ve always affirmed that modern Jews are genuine descendants of Jacob/Israel. Why can’t my detractors affirm that millions of Muslims in the Middle East are also genuine descendants of Jacob/Israel?

I suspect that some readers may be struggling with cognitive dissonance as they scramble to think of a way to cling to the idea that the modern nation of Israel is special to God because of its citizens’ ancestral connection to Jacob/Israel. Here’s one objection that I anticipate:

“But the Jacob-origin DNA of the Ten Tribes descendants is more diluted than the Jacob-origin DNA of the Two Tribes descendants.”

Actually, after almost 3,700 years, no descendant of Jacob/Israel possesses any more than an undetectable, vanishing trace of his DNA. That is because each person inherits half their DNA from each parent, so the expected genetic contribution for one specific ancestor halves with each generation. After 100 generations (at 25 years per generation), a person will only have 0.0000000000000000000000000000789% of the DNA from an ancestor of 2,500 years ago. That is the approximate percentage of DNA possessed by the current descendants of all 12 tribes of Israel. Jews may have more DNA from the ancient Israel population because they traditionally married within their tribe, but they don’t have more of Jacob’s DNA.

Let me say it again: Descendants of Judah living today in Israel and the U.S. have no more DNA from Jacob/Israel than do descendants of Ephraim living in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. And of course, not only do they not possess a greater genetic ancestry to Jacob/Israel, neither do they possess a greater genealogical ancestry. He’s in the family tree of hundreds of millions of modern people.

In my fourth article, we looked at specific, clear prophecies that foretell of a regathering of, not just Judah, but Israel (see Is. 11:12; Jer. 23:6; Ezek. 37:15-28). Although one might claim that Judah has been regathered by God, no one can claim the same for the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. And if even half of Ten Tribes descendants believe in Jesus and repent at His return, it could be hundreds of millions of people whom God will regather to Israel. Perhaps that is why the New Jerusalem will need to be 1,500 miles wide, long and high (see Rev. 21:16). Perhaps it will accommodate hundreds of millions of people!

Here is another way of looking at it: If God requires at least 1% of Jacob/Israel’s DNA in everyone from Judah and Israel whom He gathers in the future as He has promised, He won’t gather anyone. In fact, if He requires at least 0.00000000000000000000000000008%, He won’t gather anyone.

“But the descendants of Jacob/Israel in modern Israel practice Judaism, unlike the descendants of Jacob/Israel in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. Israel is a nation of Jews.”

So is God’s alleged favor then based on genealogy plus practicing Judaism? But don’t dispensationalists claim that God’s covenant with the descendants of Jacob/Israel was unconditional?

And are the people of Israel actually practicing Judaism?

19% of Israel’s population is Muslim. They certainly aren’t practicing Judaism. If you add all the people who live in Gaza and the West Bank (land that some evangelicals claim rightfully belongs to Jews), 46% of Israel’s population is Muslim. They certainly aren’t practicing Judaism.

41-44% of Israel’s Jews identify as “secular” (Hiloni) Jews. That is, they are not religiously observant. They generally do not follow traditional Jewish law in daily life. That is, they do not keep Shabbat strictly, do not observe most dietary laws rigorously, and rarely attend synagogue. Many are atheists or agnostics.

The truth is, no Jew has even been able to practice Judaism since the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. Then the sacrificial system and much of the priestly role became impossible. The Pharisees’ approach (emphasizing Torah study, oral tradition, and adapting the law to daily life) evolved into Rabbinic Judaism.

Beyond all of those facts, for the most part, the modern citizens of Israel have rejected their Messiah. How can they possibly be said to be practicing Judaism, which finds its fulfillment in the Messiah whom they have rejected? They are no more in sync with God’s will than are the millions of Muslims in the region whose ancestry can also be traced back to Jacob/Israel.

From a Christian standpoint, it could certainly be said that Iran is much more in sync with God’s will than Israel is, as there are an estimated 800,000 Christians there, among what many missiologists believe is the world’s fastest growing church. (Yet many American Evangelical Christians are cheering on Israel’s current war against Iran, thinking that by doing so they are “on God’s side.”)

Finally, if descendants of Jacob/Israel through Judah have a divine right to the land of Palestine based on God’s alleged “unconditional” covenant with Abraham, wouldn’t that also mean that the descendants of Jacob/Israel through any of the other tribes also have a divine right to the land of Palestine?

I hope you are seeing that dispensational ideas about modern Israel contain more holes than Swiss cheese. God loves the descendants of Judah, Benjamin and Levi. He also loves the descendants of Reuben, Simeon, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Ephraim, and Manasseh. God loves everyone. Jesus died for everyone. God “is not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). He’s not a racist. Neither should we be.

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^{[1] Obviously, that adds up to 13, not 12, tribes in total. The reason is because the tribe of Joseph became two tribes: Ephraim and Manasseh.}

^{[2] Please note the difference between genealogical ancestry (appearing in someone’s family tree) and genetic ancestry (detectable DNA contribution from an ancestor). The former is extremely widespread and the latter is vanishingly small in regard to Jacob/Israel and all ancient people.}

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]]> https://www.davidservant.com/israel-ancestry/feed/ 0 https://www.davidservant.com/the-olive-tree-isnt-israel/ https://www.davidservant.com/the-olive-tree-isnt-israel/#respond Sat, 01 Aug 2026 13:55:05 +0000 admin https://www.davidservant.com/?p=36068 One of the most important factors in Bible interpretation—if not the most important—is honesty. We Bible interpreters often struggle to remain honest when Scripture contradicts our well-entrenched beliefs. Yet we are interpreting a book that repeatedly warns against dishonesty. Our Bibles tell us that all liars will be cast into a lake of fire! In […]

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One of the most important factors in Bible interpretation—if not the most important—is honesty. We Bible interpreters often struggle to remain honest when Scripture contradicts our well-entrenched beliefs. Yet we are interpreting a book that repeatedly warns against dishonesty. Our Bibles tell us that all liars will be cast into a lake of fire!

In this final teaching about modern Israel, I will do my best to interpret Romans 11—oddly a favorite of dispensationalists—honestly. That requires reading the chapter in context with the rest of Scripture. The Bible can be made to say almost anything by isolating verses and passages.

For example, someone who is ignorant or dishonest could conclude from Romans 11 that God opened the door of salvation to Gentiles only because the Jews rejected Jesus. Had they not rejected Him, the door would have remained eternally closed to Gentiles. Moreover, God supposedly opened that door purely to make Jews jealous so they might open their hearts to Jesus. All of that can—and sometimes is—extracted from Romans 11.

That kind of view portrays God as a racist, as if He favors one special group above all others. Those of us who have read the rest of the Bible know He is not a racist. We have already seen in this series that God’s very first communication to Abram/Abraham did not promise him or his descendants land. Instead, God told him that in him all the families of the earth would be blessed (Gen. 12:3). God was already thinking about forgiving and saving people from “every tribe and tongue and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9) through Abraham’s special descendant, the Lord Jesus Christ.

John did not write, “God so loved the descendants of Jacob/Israel.” He wrote, “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son” (John 3:16). You would not know that if you listened only to some dispensationalists. To them, everything revolves around Israel. Worse, they often conflate the physical descendants of Jacob/Israel with a modern geopolitical nation (consisting mainly of descendants of Judah, Benjamin, and Levi) and its current political policies.

When Paul lists in Romans the advantages that descendants of Jacob/Israel have over Gentiles, he never includes “salvation.” In fact, one reason he wrote Romans was to counter the idea—held by many Jews—that uncircumcised, law-breaking Gentiles could not be saved.

Neither does Paul ever list “land possession” as an advantage. He knew that God gave land not only to the ancient descendants of Jacob/Israel but also to certain Gentile groups. God told the second generation of Israelites after the Exodus:

“You will pass through the territory of your brothers the sons of Esau [brother of Jacob] who live in Seir; and they will be afraid of you. So be very careful; do not provoke them, for I will not give you any of their land, even as little as a footstep because I have given Mount Seir to Esau as a possession”…. Then the Lord said to me, “Do not harass Moab [Jacob’s first cousin once removed], nor provoke them to war, for I will not give you any of their land as a possession, because I have given Ar to the sons of Lot as a possession…. When you come opposite the sons of Ammon [Jacob’s first cousin once removed], do not harass them nor provoke them, for I will not give you any of the land of the sons of Ammon as a possession, because I have given it to the sons of Lot as a possession” (Deut 2:3-5, 9, 19; see also Josh. 24:4; Amos 9:7).

Moreover, as we have seen in previous lessons, Abraham himself is still waiting to inherit the Promised Land—and so am I, one of his descendants through my Lord Jesus Christ. One day we will all live in New Jerusalem. Note that it will not be “New Chicago,” “New London,” or “New Nairobi!”

An Honest Look at Romans 11

When dispensationalists try to prove from Romans 11 that modern descendants of Jacob/Israel have a divine right to modern Palestine by virtue of God’s covenant with Abraham, they must add what simply is not found in the chapter.

Paul begins by declaring that God has not rejected the descendants of Jacob/Israel:

I say then, God has not rejected His people, has He? May it never be! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew (Rom. 11:1-2a).

That verse-and-a-half ends any notion of “Replacement Theology.” God’s salvation plan includes Jews—but only those who believe.

Paul offers himself as proof that God has not rejected “His people.” The proof is clearly Paul’s salvation, not land ownership. Everything in Romans 11 concerns salvation. Nothing concerns land. And everything concerns the people of Israel—the physical descendants of Jacob/Israel—not the modern geopolitical nation of Israel or the policies of its current administration.

Paul then explains that God has hardened those among the Jews whom He has not chosen. They are not unconditionally chosen, as some claim, but conditionally chosen, as the New Testament repeatedly affirms. God saves those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. They are the ones He has chosen; therefore they are His chosen ones.

God has not hardened unbelieving Jews against their wills, but in coincidence with their wills. It is an act of His righteous judgment. Yet that hardening is temporary. Near the end of the chapter Paul writes that “a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved” (11:25-26a). As we have discussed in previous articles, when Jesus returns there will be a great awakening among Jews when they look on Him “whom they have pierced” (Zech. 12:10).

The Two Olive Trees

Within Romans 11, Paul employs an analogy of two olive trees—an image very appropriate for his readers in Rome. Olive cultivation in Italy dates back to at least the 8th–6th centuries BC and remains a cornerstone of Italian culture today.

Before we examine the text, keep in mind that all analogies are imperfect. The two things compared are never identical in every way. Analogies highlight certain similarities for illustration, but they always break down at some point. For example, if I tell my wife her eyes are like pools, I mean they are blue, deep, and inviting. I do not mean that fish swim in them or that ducks land on them. We must therefore be cautious not to assign significance to an analogy that the author never intended. With that caution in mind, let’s read Paul’s olive-tree analogy:

If the first piece of dough is holy, the lump is also; and if the root is holy, the branches are too. But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive, were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the rich root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches; but if you are arrogant, remember that it is not you who supports the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.” Quite right, they were broken off for their unbelief, but you stand by your faith. Do not be conceited, but fear; for if God did not spare the natural branches, He will not spare you, either. Behold then the kindness and severity of God; to those who fell, severity, but to you, God’s kindness, if you continue in His kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off. And they also, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. For if you were cut off from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these who are the natural branches be grafted into their own olive tree? (Rom. 11:16-24).

In this analogy Paul identifies one olive tree as wild and the other as cultivated. A cultivated tree requires a cultivator—the one who prunes it so that it bears the highest quality and quantity of fruit.

Paul mentions that pruning. Some branches have been broken off (the Greek can also be translated “cut off,” as in 11:24 in the NASB) from the cultivated tree, and wild olive branches have been grafted in their place. This is standard practice in olive cultivation: unproductive, dead, diseased, overcrowded, or shaded branches are removed, and high-yielding cuttings are grafted in.

Paul’s contemporary readers would have understood that the cultivator is God (just as in Jesus’ Parable of the Vine and the Vinedresser) and that the olives represent the fruit God desires—holiness. Paul highlights this holiness at the outset: “If the root is holy, the branches are too” (11:16). We can therefore call the cultivated olive tree the “tree of holiness.” The tree and its branches are nourished by holy roots, so everything growing from those roots should be holy. The grafted-in branches are “partaker(s) … of the rich root of the olive tree” (11:17). They are alive, in contrast to the dead branches that have been cut off.

What connects the branches to the tree is faith. Natural branches were cut off because of unbelief; wild branches were grafted in because of faith. If the broken-off natural branches believe, they will be grafted back in. If the grafted-in wild branches stop believing, they will be cut off (11:17-24). It is all about faith.

We could also call the cultivated olive tree the “tree of faith.” True holiness always springs from heart faith. Paul affirms this at both the beginning and end of Romans when he speaks of “the obedience of faith” (Rom. 1:5; 16:26).

Combining these truths, it is accurate to refer to the cultivated olive tree as “the tree of faith and holiness.”

To claim that this cultivated olive tree represents the geopolitical nation of Israel—whether ancient or modern—is simply dishonest. Nothing in the analogy or its context even hints at such an idea. It would be like claiming that every ancient descendant of Jacob/Israel walked with God, or that every modern descendant believes in the Lord Jesus Christ. Furthermore, if Paul’s olive tree represented the geopolitical nation of Israel, what would the broken-off branches represent? (I am waiting for some dispensationalist to claim they represent Arab nations or Christians who do not enthusiastically support every political decision of modern Israel’s current administration.)

Clearly, the “broken-off branches” represent unbelieving and unholy descendants of Jacob/Israel. They are not part of the living olive tree. They are dead branches, destined to be burned.

To admit that the cultivated olive tree does not represent a geopolitical nation, yet still claim it represents all physical descendants of Jacob/Israel, is equally wrong for the same reasons.

Moreover, heart faith and the holiness that flows from it predate Jacob/Israel. They go all the way back to Abraham, Noah, Enoch, and Abel (see Heb. 11:4-12). All of them are at least lower branches—and perhaps even roots—of Paul’s olive tree.

Finally, the “arrogance” of the grafted-in Gentile branches toward the Jewish natural branches, against which Paul warns, is not arrogance toward geopolitical Israel. It is arrogance toward unbelieving Jews (half of whom today live outside Israel) who have been cut off, making room for Gentiles to be grafted in. Such arrogance toward unbelieving Jews can be a form of antisemitism. That is entirely different from disagreeing with Israel’s foreign policies or disagreeing with any Jewish person about anything. Believing Gentiles should view unbelieving Jews as Paul did—as dead branches cut off from the living tree of faith and holiness, yet still able to be grafted back in and made alive through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ by a Cultivator who loves them.

It is all so simple that only a theologian could misunderstand it!

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]]> https://www.davidservant.com/the-olive-tree-isnt-israel/feed/ 0 https://www.davidservant.com/future-gathering-ten-tribes/ https://www.davidservant.com/future-gathering-ten-tribes/#respond Sat, 25 Jul 2026 13:55:47 +0000 admin https://www.davidservant.com/?p=36062 This teaching is the fourth in a series regarding God’s view of modern Israel. I hope you read the first three before this one, as they lay a foundation that could well prevent any misunderstanding of what you are about to read. It is commonly believed among evangelicals that the restoration of the state of […]

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This teaching is the fourth in a series regarding God’s view of modern Israel. I hope you read the first three before this one, as they lay a foundation that could well prevent any misunderstanding of what you are about to read.

It is commonly believed among evangelicals that the restoration of the state of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent immigration of millions of Jews to their ancient homeland since then is the final fulfillment of God’s many promises through His prophets to regather the scattered descendants of Jacob/Israel. Thus, it is concluded that Christians should generally side with Israel since God is obviously favoring them—even when what Israel does harms others, including God’s own children through Jesus Christ. That, of course, is problematic, because it requires us to believe that God favors those who reject His Son over those who follow His Son. That, in my humble opinion, is the real “Replacement Theology”—a replacement of the Church by the modern nation of Israel.

It seems many Christians are unaware of the degree to which Christians have suffered as a result of the decades of turmoil in the Promised Land. Several years ago, when I was in Jordan, I spoke with a Christian friend there, a Palestinian by birth, whose grandfather was a successful businessman who owned 75 acres near Beersheba (in Israel). My friend’s Christian father, a church-planting pastor, inherited the land at the death of his father. When he and his family fled across the Jordan River in 1947, they hoped they might return to their land in a couple of weeks when hostilities settled. But their return was never allowed. They became refugees in Jordan. My friend’s family still holds the deed to those 75 acres near Beersheba, and that land is now worth millions of dollars. But their deed is worthless.

What happened to my friend’s family happened, to greater and lesser degrees, to 700,000 to 750,000 other Arab Palestinians from 1947-1949. And here is a fact that very few Christians seem to know: 50,000 to 70,000 of those refugees identified as Christians.

Very few among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees were ever permitted to return. Israel passed laws that transferred abandoned Arab land and property to the new state. How many of those tens of thousands of Christians who lost their homes and land do you suppose believe it was all orchestrated by God because He was favoring Jews over Christians? That is one reason Arab Christians are not dispensationalists.

All of this is to say, we must question if the events of 1947-49 in Palestine were orchestrated by God to fulfill prophecy. Was God returning to unrepentant, Christ-rejecting Jews their ancient homeland through confiscation of land that other people had been living on for generations, and in some cases, land owned by followers of Christ?

I must declare from the outset of this teaching that I’m not attempting to paint any side in the Middle East mess as the greater villains or victims. As Christians, we are all well-informed about Arab atrocities. Our job is not to take a side and thus alienate ourselves from the other side, only adding to all the hatred. Blessed are the peacemakers. Our job is to love everyone, proclaim the gospel to both sides, and make sure we don’t overlook our brothers and sisters on either side. I hope you can say, “Amen.”

There are other problems with the view that the 20th- and 21st-century Jewish immigration to Israel is the final fulfillment of prophecies that promise such a regathering. One is that, from Genesis to Revelation, God reveals Himself as a holy God. In keeping with that, he hinged Israel’s possessing the Promised Land to their obedience, and biblical history tells the story of their exile from the land He gave them because of generations of disobedience. Only a small repentant remnant ever returned, and they were under the rule of the Persian Empire. With the exception of a 77-year period from 140 BC to 63 BC, descendants of Jacob/Israel went 25 centuries without a sovereign homeland—until 1948. What changed that year? We can be sure it wasn’t God, who never changes. Obviously, God permitted everything that happened in 1948 and since then, but did He ordain it all, as some seem to think? As I clearly said in a previous article, the Bible presupposes an End Times nation of Israel and a Jewish temple in Jerusalem.

Another problem is Scripture’s foretelling of a yet-future conquest of Jerusalem when “all the nations” will be “sent by God,” according to Zechariah, to attack and capture Jerusalem (all of which we considered in my previous article). Israel will then be at the epicenter—according to Jesus—of the world’s worst-ever war. Zechariah foretold that half of the city of Jerusalem will be exiled, and Israel will obviously lose its sovereignty to the antichrist who will declare himself from Jerusalem to be God. Here’s the question that raises: If God has gathered the descendants of Jacob/Israel from around the world because of His favor upon them, why will He gather “all the nations” to attack Jerusalem, which ends with Jerusalem’s capture, foreign armies plundering Israeli households, the rape of many women, and a subsequent exile of hundreds of thousands, according to Zechariah 14?

Moses Foretells

All of this being so, it would seem wise for us to look at the prophetic foretellings of the regathering of the scattered descendants of Jacob/Israel to see if the details that are foretold line up with what has actually happened. When we do that, we discover significant details about the promised regathering that have not been fulfilled in the 20th- and 21st-century regathering.

Here’s one of the earliest prophetic foretellings, spoken by Moses:

So it shall be when all of these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you [see Deut. 28-29], and you call them to mind in all nations where the Lord your God has banished you, and you return to the Lord your God and obey Him with all your heart and soul according to all that I command you today, you and your sons, then the Lord your God will restore you from captivity, and have compassion on you, and will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you. If your outcasts are at the ends of the earth, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you back. The Lord your God will bring you into the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it; and He will prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers. Moreover the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live (Deut. 30:1-6, emphasis added).

God, through Moses, promised to restore them after He had previously banished them for their disobedience once they “returned” to the Lord and started obeying Him with all their hearts. Repentance would have to occur before restoration, not the other way around.

This harmonizes with all of Scripture, but our dispensational friends want to persuade us that the 20th- and 21st- century regathering is the fulfillment of regathering prophecy, but claiming that Israel’s repentance is yet to come. That, of course, contradicts what prophet Moses said.

Isaiah’s Amen

Let’s move on to Isaiah 12:

Then it will happen on that day that the Lord
Will again recover the second time with His hand
The remnant of His people, who will remain,
From Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Cush, Elam, Shinar, Hamath,
And from the islands of the sea.
And He will lift up a standard for the nations
And assemble the banished ones of Israel,
And will gather the dispersed of Judah
From the four corners of the earth (Isa. 11:11-12).

God promised to gather a remnant of both Israel (the ten northern tribes) and Judah (Judah, Benjamin and Levi) from seven specific ancient nations in the Middle East and Northern Africa. They are the rough equivalents of modern Iraq, Egypt, Sudan/South Sudan/Ethiopia, Iran and Syria. Between roughly 1948 and the early 1970s, around 850,000–1,000,000 Jews departed or were expelled from Arab countries, as well as Iran and other Muslim-majority nations in the Middle East and North Africa. The overwhelming majority resettled in Israel. In Iraq the Jewish population declined from 142,000 to less than 10 today. In Egypt it declined from 77,000 to less than 20. In Sudan/Ethiopia it declined from tens of thousands to a handful. In Syria, from 35,000 to less than 10. In Iran, from 90,000 to 9,000.

Naturally, many assumed all that emigration was the fulfillment of Isaiah 11:11-12. Isaiah even identified that regathering as a “second” one, an apparent reference to the first regathering of Jews during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. But there is a problem revealed by the context. See if you can spot it as I include the verses that precede what I quoted above:

Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse [David’s father],
And a branch from his roots will bear fruit.
The Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him,
The spirit of wisdom and understanding,
The spirit of counsel and strength,
The spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
And He will delight in the fear of the Lord,
And He will not judge by what His eyes see,
Nor make a decision by what His ears hear;
But with righteousness He will judge the poor,
And decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth;
And He will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth,
And with the breath of His lips He will slay the wicked.
Also righteousness will be the belt about His loins,
And faithfulness the belt about His waist

No one debates that everything we’ve just read is about Jesus and His future earthly rule. Isaiah continues:

And the wolf will dwell with the lamb,
And the leopard will lie down with the young goat,
And the calf and the young lion and the fatling together;
And a little boy will lead them.
Also the cow and the bear will graze,
Their young will lie down together,
And the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra,
And the weaned child will put his hand on the viper’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain,
For the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
As the waters cover the sea.

Obviously, all of that is yet to occur when Jesus rules the earth.

Then in that day
The nations will resort to the root of Jesse [irrefutably Jesus],
Who will stand as a signal for the peoples;
And His resting place will be glorious [no doubt, in Jerusalem, from which He will reign]

Then it will happen on that day that the Lord
Will again recover the second time with His hand
The remnant of His people, who will remain,
From Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Cush, Elam, Shinar, Hamath,
And from the islands of the sea.
And He will lift up a standard for the nations
And assemble the banished ones of Israel,
And will gather the dispersed of Judah
From the four corners of the earth (Isa. 11:1-12).

I’m sure you noticed that the timing of the regathering of the “banished ones of Israel” and “the dispersed of Judah” occurs during Jesus’ earthly reign (presumably near its beginning). That fact is inescapable. Isaiah describes restoration after repentance, agreeing with prophet Moses, since those “banished” and “dispersed” already will have “looked upon Him whom they have pierced” (Zech. 12:1) and believed. Isaiah’s prophecy also gives us some insight regarding the destination countries of the future Zechariah 14 exiles.

As an aside for now, notice also that God promised through Isaiah that He would regather, not just “the dispersed of Judah,” but also “the banished ones of Israel.” The second part of that promise has never been fulfilled. More on that later.

Jeremiah Jumps In

So far, in just in two Old Testament prophecies, given to us through Moses and Isaiah, we’ve uncovered two contradictions to dispensational eschatology. Unlike Moses, dispensationalist eschatology advocates restoration without repentance, and unlike Isaiah, it advocates restoration before Jesus is ruling the earth.

Let’s move on to three consecutive paragraphs in Jeremiah:

“I Myself will gather the remnant of My flock out of all the countries where I have driven them and bring them back to their pasture, and they will be fruitful and multiply. I will also raise up shepherds over them and they will tend them; and they will not be afraid any longer, nor be terrified, nor will any be missing,” declares the Lord.

“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord,
“When I will raise up for David a righteous Branch;
And He will reign as king and act wisely
And do justice and righteousness in the land.
In His days Judah will be saved,
And Israel will dwell securely;
And this is His name by which He will be called,
‘The Lord our righteousness.’

“Therefore behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when they will no longer say, ‘As the Lord lives, who brought up the sons of Israel from the land of Egypt,’ but, ‘As the Lord lives, who brought up and led back the descendants of the household of Israel from the north land and from all the countries where I had driven them.’ Then they will live on their own soil” (Jer. 23:3-8).

We just read three consecutive paragraphs with one consistent theme—the regathering of the scattered descendants of Jacob/Israel. Both Judah and Israel are mentioned. There are several items in those paragraphs that don’t fit the 1948-to-the-present regathering.

In the first paragraph, who are the “shepherds” whom God has raised up to tend the regathered flock in modern Israel? And is it true that, because of those shepherds, since 1948 no Jew in Israel has been afraid or terrified? I think we all know there has been tons of terror.

In the second paragraph, Jeremiah speaks about Jesus literally ruling as king, telling us that “in His days Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell securely.” That timing agrees with Moses and Isaiah. And in the second paragraph we find the same theme of “security” as in the first paragraph. The gathering described in the first paragraph results in the same outcome as does the ruling of Jesus described in the second paragraph. That leads us to think that the gathering follows, not precedes, the ruling of Jesus.

We learn in the third paragraph that the regathering described in the first paragraph is destined to be considered even more spectacular than when God delivered the Israelites from Egypt. Is anyone saying that about the gathering from 1948 (and before) to the present day? I doubt it.

And just like Isaiah, Jeremiah said that “In His [Jesus’] days” not only would Judah be saved, but “Israel will dwell securely.” As I will show shortly, that has not occurred yet.

Ezekiel Expounds

Let’s move on to Ezekiel:

Therefore say, “Thus says the Lord God, ‘I will gather you from the peoples and assemble you out of the countries among which you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.’” When they come there, they will remove all its detestable things and all its abominations from it. And I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them. And I will take the heart of stone out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My ordinances and do them. Then they will be My people, and I shall be their God (Ezek. 11:17-20, emphasis added).

Dispensationalists point to the first sentence and say, “Since 1948 it has happened just as God promised so, just like it says, it is God’s will that those whom He has regathered possess the land of Israel.” For some reason they never add, “even from Christians who lived there for generations.”

But what about the next verse? Has anyone noticed that, in 1948, or since 1948, returning Jews have removed all of Israel’s “detestable things and all its abominations”? God said through Ezekiel, “When they come there, they will remove all its detestable things and all its abominations.” That implies the removal will occur upon their arrival, “when they come.”

As I am writing this, it has just been one month since the Tel Aviv’s LGBTQ+ Pride Festival, held annually since 1979. It typically draws 200,000–250,000 participants, mostly locals from across Israel, but also attracts tens of thousands of international participants. Tel Aviv Pride ranks among the world's largest Pride events, and the city markets itself as a top LGBTQ+ tourist destination. I think most Christians consider such things to be abominations to God.

Is there anything else in modern Israel that, by biblical standards, could be considered “detestable” or an “abomination” in God’s eyes? What about every building that represents a false religion that denies that Jesus Christ is the Son of God?

The next two verses in this passage in Ezekiel speak of the spiritual regeneration of those whom God regathers. Obviously, that hasn’t been fulfilled either. That is why dispensationalists have to insert decades between 11:17 and 18 and claim that regeneration will eventually follow restoration. But reading the passage at face value does not leave that impression. Actually, just the opposite: “When they come there, they will remove all its detestable things.”

What will motivate them to remove everything that is offensive to God upon their return? It will be because they have already believed in the Lord Jesus Christ when they “looked upon Him whom they pierced” (Zech. 12:10) at His return. When anyone believes in Jesus, God puts “a new spirit within them” (17:19). When dispensationalists point to Ezekiel 11:17-20 to prove that “restoration occurs before regeneration,” they have to ignore many scriptures like those we’ve already considered. That’s interpretation by eisegesis (reading one’s own preconceptions into the text) rather than exegesis (drawing out the original meaning of the text based on its context, historical background, grammar, and authorial intent).

God Speaks Again Through Ezekiel

Dispensationalists similarly insert decades between certain verses of Ezekiel 36:24-29 and ignore the certain judgment and exile that other scriptures promise modern Israel:

For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances. You will live in the land that I gave to your forefathers; so you will be My people, and I will be your God. Moreover, I will save you from all your uncleanness; and I will call for the grain and multiply it, and I will not bring a famine on you. (Ezek. 36:24-29).

If that passage was the only relevant passage in the Bible to our subject, I might be a dispensationalist and assume there must be decades between the first and second sentences. But here’s how dispensationalists must read the first two sentences of that passage: “For I will take you from the nations because of My special favor upon you, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land, and once you are settled there will be no invasion by the nations, no unprecedented tribulation, and no exile of hundreds of thousands of Jews as foretold by Jesus. Then, decades after I regather you (at the expense of tens of thousands of Christians), I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean.”

Dispensationalists carry the same kind of eisegesis into Ezekiel’s next chapter, telling us that

Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones foretells of Israel’s national restoration that is eventually followed by spiritual awakening. But nowhere is Ezekiel’s vision interpreted that way in Ezekiel or anywhere else in Scripture. On the contrary, the vision itself shows that regeneration will precede restoration:

Therefore prophesy and say to them, “Thus says the Lord God, ‘Behold, [1] I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves, My people; and [2] I will bring you into the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves and caused you to come up out of your graves, My people. [1] I will put My Spirit within you and you will come to life, and [2] I will place you on your own land. Then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken and done it,’ declares the Lord.” (Ezek. 37:12-14).

Their resurrection (coming out of their graves) is not analogous to God’s bringing them into the land of Israel. Their resurrection occurs so that He might bring them into Israel. God will put His Spirit within then so they “will come to life” and then God will place them on their own land. All of this is obvious to honest readers.

The Clincher

The remaining verses of Ezekiel 37 (verses 15-28) prove beyond any shadow of doubt that the regathering foretold in the entire chapter did not occur in 1948 or any time since then. Let’s read those verses and then I will explain;

The word of the Lord came again to me saying, “And you, son of man, take for yourself one stick and write on it, ‘For Judah and for the sons of Israel, his companions’; then take another stick and write on it, ‘For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim and all the house of Israel, his companions.’ Then join them for yourself one to another into one stick, that they may become one in your hand. When the sons of your people speak to you saying, ‘Will you not declare to us what you mean by these?’ say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God, “Behold, I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel, his companions; and I will put them with it, with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they will be one in My hand.”’ The sticks on which you write will be in your hand before their eyes. Say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God, “Behold, I will take the sons of Israel from among the nations where they have gone, and I will gather them from every side and bring them into their own land; and I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel; and one king will be king for all of them; and they will no longer be two nations and no longer be divided into two kingdoms. They will no longer defile themselves with their idols, or with their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions; but I will deliver them from all their dwelling places in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them. And they will be My people, and I will be their God.

My servant David will be king over them, and they will all have one shepherd; and they will walk in My ordinances and keep My statutes and observe them. They will live on the land that I gave to Jacob My servant, in which your fathers lived; and they will live on it, they, and their sons and their sons’ sons, forever; and David My servant will be their prince forever. I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will place them and multiply them, and will set My sanctuary in their midst forever. My dwelling place also will be with them; and I will be their God, and they will be My people. And the nations will know that I am the Lord who sanctifies Israel, when My sanctuary is in their midst forever”’” (Ezek. 37:15-28).

This passage repeatedly promises the return of not just the descendants of Judah (along with the descendants of Benjamin, who were absorbed into Judah, as well as descendants of Levi), but also of the descendants of the ten northern tribes, known after the 930 BC division as “Israel” (or “Ephraim” as the dominant tribe of the ten). Recall that the northern kingdom was conquered by the Assyrians and deported in 722 BC. The exiles largely assimilated into the peoples where they were exiled, becoming the "Lost Ten Tribes.” The southern kingdom of Judah was conquered and exiled by Babylon in 586 BC, but a remnant returned after the Persian conquest of Babylon.

The fact is, modern Jewish identity and ethnicity largely trace back to the southern kingdom of Judah, which is why they are referred to as Jews (“from Judah”). The vast majority of Jews who immigrated to Israel since 1948—from Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, North/South America, Ethiopia, India, and so on—are descendants of communities that historically originated from Judea (the southern kingdom). Generally speaking, the “Lost Ten Tribes” are still lost. They haven’t been regathered to modern Israel at God promised, not only in Ezekiel 37, but also in Isaiah 11 and Jeremiah 23.

God, however, who knows how many hairs are on our heads, has not lost track of all the “Lost Ten Tribes” DNA, and one day, after Jesus returns, He will gather all their descendants.” To the suspected chagrin of dispensationalists, those folks are going to also have a lot of Gentile DNA mixed in with their Jacob/Israel DNA! You never know…you may have DNA from one of the Ten Lost Tribes!

And There is Always Amos…

It is not just the minor prophets who disagree with dispensationalists. Here’s Amos:

“Also I will restore the captivity of My people Israel, and they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them; they will also plant vineyards and drink their wine, and make gardens and eat their fruit. I will also plant them on their land, and they will not again be rooted out from their land which I have given them,” says the Lord your God (Amos 9:14-15).

There isn’t any way that Amos could have been prophesying about the 20th- and 21st-century regathering of Jews to Israel, because we are certain that half of Jerusalem is going to be exiled, so they will “again be rooted out from their land.”

This is another teaching that is longer than I wanted it to be, but I want to be thorough in order to be convincing. I am aware that there are other Old Testament prophetic passages that may be relevant. I have, however, chosen those that seem most relevant. I’m really only attempting to tackle one big misconception and not answer every question about the End Times, many of which I can’t answer to my own satisfaction. In my next, and hopefully final, teaching on this subject, we will take a close look at Romans 11. That teaching is tentatively titled, “The Olive Tree is Not Israel.”

Finally, if you agree with me or not, I still love you. And if I’m right, I’ll still invite you to my apartment in the New Jerusalem for coffee!

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]]> https://www.davidservant.com/future-gathering-ten-tribes/feed/ 0 https://www.davidservant.com/coming-conquest-of-jerusalem/ https://www.davidservant.com/coming-conquest-of-jerusalem/#respond Sat, 18 Jul 2026 13:55:36 +0000 admin https://www.davidservant.com/?p=36051 There was a time in my young Christian life when I was sure, along with many others, that Jesus would return by 1981. It was easy to prove. Jesus said in the Olivet Discourse, “This generation will not pass away until all these things take place” (Matt. 24:34). A generation is 40 years. The modern […]

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There was a time in my young Christian life when I was sure, along with many others, that Jesus would return by 1981. It was easy to prove. Jesus said in the Olivet Discourse, “This generation will not pass away until all these things take place” (Matt. 24:34). A generation is 40 years. The modern nation of Israel was born in 1948. So, add 1948 and 40, and you arrive at 1988. Then subtract 7 years for the Tribulation. Bingo! Jesus will return by 1981. We were sure our eschatology was watertight!

Looking back, it appears we were slightly off. Where did we go wrong? We made many assumptions. One of them was thinking we could predict the year of Jesus’ return.

In this article, which is a continuation of the previous two, I hope to question some assumptions about modern Israel that have been widely embraced by evangelical Christians who have been influenced, either knowingly or unknowingly, by Israel-centric dispensational theology. I have already shown in my previous article, God’s purpose in entering into a covenant with ancient Abraham was not centered around God’s love for the descendants of one of his grandsons, but God’s love for all the families/nations of the earth. That is an undeniable fact. A special descendant of Abraham—who would also be God’s Son—would die for the sins of the entire world (1 John 2:2).

Perhaps the most common assumption I hear is this: “God gave Canaan’s land to the descendants of Israel. Ever since then, it has belonged to them by divine right. So, as God’s people, we should support that right.”

Of those three sentences, only the first one is correct. The second one, according to the Bible, is dead wrong. And since the third sentence is the logical progression from the second wrong sentence, it too is wrong.

Here’s the biblical view: God gave Canaan’s land to the descendants of Israel (Josh. 1, 21:43–45; Deut. 1–3, 6–9). He warned them if they ever started acting like the Canaanites whom they dispossessed, they would forfeit the land (Lev. 18:24–30; 20:22–24). They started acting like the Canaanites and God kept His promise. The large majority of Jacob’s/Israel’s descendants became exiles in foreign lands between 722 BC and 586 BC (2 Kin. 17:5–6, 18–24; 24:10–16; 25:1–21; 2 Chron. 36:15–21). Most of them never returned except for a small repentant remnant primarily from the tribes of Judah/Benjamin/Levi (Ezra 1:5; 2:64–65; 4:1; 9:8–9, 15; 10:9; Neh. 1:2–3; 9:32–37; Zech. 8:6, 12; Isa. 10:20–22; Jer. 23:3; Ezek. 11:13–17). During the ensuing centuries, including during Jesus’ earthly life, Israel was subject to foreign domination and, except for a brief period between 140–63 BC, never regained sovereignty as a nation. By and large, the Jews rejected their Messiah, Jesus, and in AD 70, God’s judgment fell upon them at the hands of the Roman legions (Luke 19:41–44), something Jesus wept over decades before it happened. Jewish historian Josephus wrote that over a million Jews died during Jerusalem’s siege (although some think he exaggerated). As many as 97,000 Jews were exiled. The temple in Jerusalem was completely destroyed, which made the continuation of Israel’s sacrificial system impossible, and it has never been rebuilt to this day. From AD 70 until 1948, there has been no Jewish state.

No one can intelligently argue against any of those historical facts.

Clearly, if the descendants of Jacob/Israel possessed a divine unconditional right to the land of Canaan, history would be different. But history confirms what the Bible repeatedly declared: The divine right given to Jacob/Israel’s descendants to Canaan’s land was conditional. It hinged on their obedience. And, as history shows, no alleged “unconditional” land promise in the Abrahamic covenant superseded or suspended that condition through more than 25 centuries.

All of this helps us to better interpret what happened in 1948 when Israel became a modern state, followed by decades of immigration by Jews from around the world. I am not going to go into the historic details of what led up to 1948, because I have done that in great detail in the past. (If you want to read that history, visit https://www.davidservant.com/the-20th-century-regathering-of-jews-to-israel-a-fulfillment-of-prophecy-1/). But because we have reams of revelation in the Bible about God, His unchangeable character, and how He has historically related to people, both descendants and non-descendants of Jacob/Israel, we should interpret Israel’s birth as a modern state in 1948 and the subsequent Jewish immigration in that light of all that. If God suddenly started favoring descendants of Jacob/Israel without any reference to their obedience, God changed in 1948. But He didn’t change. He never changes (see Mal. 3:6; Heb. 13:8; Jas. 1:17).

An Objection

“But what about the fact that Old Testament prophecies foretold of a future restoration of Israel and gathering of descendants of Jacob/Israel? Surely, that is what we have been seeing since 1948. God must be favoring the Jews, even if it has caused harm and suffering to others.”

Those last two sentences, albeit often spoken by well-meaning people, are assumptions that cannot be proved. Although the reestablishment of the state of Israel in 1948 after ancient Israel’s fall 1,800 to 2,500 years earlier is certainly unusual and amazing, it is not entirely unprecedented, as the histories of Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and Armenia reveal. All four nations experienced long periods of foreign domination but preserved their ethnic, linguistic, and religious identities to emerge once again as independent states, and no one is claiming any of it was miraculous. On the other hand, I would say that God’s hand was involved in Israel’s 1948 rebirth, if for no other reason than the fact that Paul once said, “He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God” (Acts 17:26-27a). As has been so often said, “History is His-story.”

There were many explainable historical, political, and human factors that led up to Israel’s rebirth as a nation in 1948. No one can claim, “It was all the miraculous hand of God,” as they could, for example, of God’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt. Yes, I know there are many anecdotal stories of miracles during Israel’s various wars since its declaration of statehood. They may or may not be true. Keep in mind, however, that God’s intervention is not necessarily proof of His approval or great favor. It could simply be proof of His mercy.

Without writing a dissertation, God has revealed Himself as being both merciful and just, two things that are inherently always in tension. Justice calls for just recompense, while mercy calls for, patience and even pardon. We have all experienced the inner conflict between justice and mercy every time we’ve disciplined one of our children. In God’s case, recall that Jesus wept when He thought about Jerusalem’s coming destruction in AD 70 (Luke 19:41-44). That’s mercy displayed. But in AD 70, He poured out His wrath in the form of a Roman siege in which hundreds of thousands perished. That’s justice. As Paul wrote, “Behold then the kindness and severity of God” (Rom. 11:22).

We should not conclude that God’s feelings toward the people of modern Israel are positioned at either extreme. Dispensationalists are likely to err on the side of His kindness, to the point of believing God favors descendants of Jacob/Israel over everyone else on the planet. Non-dispensationalists are likely to err on the side of His severity as they point out the evidence of modern Israel’s transgressions. The truth is somewhere in the tension of the middle, and it fluctuates over time, all depending on God. Plus, He not only judges people as members of groups, but as individuals. It’s complicated!

Dispensationalists often quote Romans 11:28 (which follows six verses after 11:22, that I quoted above): “From the standpoint of the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of God’s choice they are beloved for the sake of the fathers.” Erring on the side of the “kindness” Paul mentioned in 11:22, dispensationalists say, “See, they are beloved, and God’s love for them is not based on their behavior, but on God’s love for their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. So God’s love for them is unconditional, which is why He favors them over Arabs.”

However, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have always been “beloved for the sake of the fathers.” They were beloved when they were conquered and deported to Assyria in 722 BC. They were beloved when they were conquered and deported to Babylon in 587 BC. They were beloved when they were conquered, slaughtered, and deported throughout the Roman Empire in AD 70. I could go on and on to reference every time God’s mercy was overwhelmed by His justice. To claim that God would never judge descendants of Jacob/israel now because they are “beloved for the sake of the fathers” is not only unbiblical, but antibiblical.

All of this is to say, God may well have mercifully intervened at various times over the past century-or-so to establish and maintain a national homeland for descendants of Israel/Jacob. Perhaps He did have mercy on them after the Nazi Holocaust (which no one can deny He allowed.) Whose heart does not feel sympathy for what Jewish people have suffered over the centuries (and which I elaborated upon in my above-referenced article)? But it is quite clear from Scripture that, if people whom God has shown mercy don’t repent, when they die, He will cast them into hell where there is no mercy. From what we can tell, that is the path the majority of Jews in Israel are currently on. But, as we will shortly see, there is yet another judgment coming to Israel that will be followed by a tidal wave of mercy.

The Prophetic Problem

As we try to correctly understand God’s feelings toward modern Israel, we should also take into consideration the many Bible prophecies that foretell of a certain future Israel-centered war, a certain future exile, and a certain future national spiritual awakening. Some of those prophecies were uttered from the lips of Jesus Himself. For example, in the Olivet Discourse, Jesus made it very clear that things are going to be very difficult in Israel just prior to His return:

Therefore when you see the abomination of desolation which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then those who are in Judea [southern Israel, which included Jerusalem] must flee to the mountains. Whoever is on the housetop must not go down to get the things out that are in his house. Whoever is in the field must not turn back to get his cloak. But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days! But pray that your flight will not be in the winter, or on a Sabbath. For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will. Unless those days had been cut short, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short… For just as the lightning comes from the east and flashes even to the west, so will the coming of the Son of Man be… But immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory. And He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other (Matt. 24:15-22, 27, 29-31, emphasis added.)

Unless you subscribe to a theology known as Preterism, you don’t believe everything Jesus foretold in His Olivet Discourse was fulfilled in AD 70 (when Jesus, according to Preterists, “returned in wrath” rather than personally and visibly as He Himself described He would). So, note that Jesus’ foretelling of events just before His return presuppose a Jerusalem temple (otherwise there would be no “holy place” for the “abomination of desolation” to stand), which presupposes a national Israel. It also presupposes Christian believers living in Judea. We’ve currently got everything except the temple.

The apostle Paul identified the “abomination of desolation” standing in the “holy place” as the antichrist when he “takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God” (2 Thes. 2:4). That singular event is the sign for Christians in Judea to flee, presumably to preserve their lives. If the antichrist claims to be God, obviously those who don’t believe in him will become targets of his persecution. Earlier in the Olivet Discourse, Jesus foretold that in those final days, many believers would become martyrs: “Then they will deliver you to tribulation, and will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of My name” (Matt. 24:9). That sounds like world-wide persecution.

My main point, however, is this: That one event marks the beginning of, according to Jesus, the worst tribulation the world has suffered or ever will suffer. That means worse than WWI, when 15 to 22 million people perished. Or WW2, when 60 to 85 million died. In fact, if it were not for the fact that God will cut short that worst-ever tribulation, “no life would have been saved.” It will be cut short “for the sake of the elect,” who are not unbelieving Jews, as some claim, but believers in Jesus, whom God’s angels will gather “from the four winds” and who will not be misled by false signs and wonders performed by false prophets and Christs (Matt. 24:24, 31).

And the epicenter of it all is Jerusalem and obviously Israel. Do you suppose anyone in Israel will perish then? Will Israel maintain its sovereignty? If the 20^th– and 21^st-century return of Jewish people to Israel from all over the world is a sign that God favors them to the degree that dispensationalists claim, why will He allow their ancient homeland to become the epicenter of WW3?

Adding weight to these questions is Luke’s version of Jesus’ Olivet Discourse. Luke did not include Jesus’ words regarding Daniel’s foretelling of the “abomination of desolation.” But there are many parallels:

But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then recognize that her desolation is near. Then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains, and those who are in the midst of the city must leave, and those who are in the country must not enter the city; because these are days of vengeance, so that all things which are written will be fulfilled. Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days; for there will be great distress upon the land and wrath to this people; and they will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled under foot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

There will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth dismay among nations, in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting from fear and the expectation of the things which are coming upon the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. But when these things begin to take place, straighten up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:20-28, emphasis added).

The question is if Jesus was speaking in Luke 21:20-24 exclusively of the fall of Jerusalem that would occur about four decades after His Olivet Discourse, or of the yet-future fall of Jerusalem to the armies of the antichrist, or to both. In the four verses that follow 21:20-24 (the first paragraph above), there is little doubt Jesus was speaking of events that will directly precede His coming, which would lead us to think that, even if He was referring to Jerusalem’s fall in AD 70, they also have application to its future fall to the armies of the antichrist. From a non-physical perspective, it will be because “these are days of vengeance,” although we are not told who will be taking revenge. It could be nations that hate Israel or, because it was spoken through Jesus’ lips, God. It will also be, according to Jesus, fulfillment of prophecy. He also said there will be “great distress upon the land and wrath to this people,” obviously Jewish people. The word “wrath” is often associated in Scripture with God’s anger. Many will die, and many will be “led captive into all the nations.” Jerusalem will be controlled by Gentiles until God decides otherwise.

Again, if all of those things are applicable to the future fall of Jerusalem, they certainly cause us to question even more that idea that God has reestablished Israel and regathered Jews from around the world in order to favor and bless them above everyone else. On the other hand, if all those things only have application to the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, they at least teach us about God’s perspective of Christ-rejecting Israel in AD 70. His wrath resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of descendants of Jacob/Israel. And since He never changes, that gives us some understanding of His perspective today (although those who rejected Jesus during His earthly ministry have far more guilt, as they saw His miracles).

Even if Jesus was foretelling only of the AD 70 fall of Jerusalem, take note that the Abrahamic covenant that supposedly (in the mind of some) granted unconditional land rights to descendants of Abraham’s grandson didn’t prevent the loss of the entire city, and beyond, then.

Zechariah 14

The Olivet Discourse is not the only prophetic Bible passages that refer to the yet-future invasion of Israel just prior to Jesus’ return. Take a look at the first few verses of Zechariah 14:

Behold, a day is coming for the Lord when the spoil taken from you will be divided among you (Zech. 14:1).

The first verse is a summary of what Zechariah is about to reveal in more detail. It is a promise of victory after invasion, defeat, and confiscation of property.

For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city will be captured, the houses plundered, the women ravished and half of the city exiled, but the rest of the people will not be cut off from the city (Zech. 14:2.)

Note that God takes the credit for gathering “all the nations against Jerusalem for battle.” That isn’t blessing. That’s judgment.

As a result of that God-initiated invasion and battle, Jerusalem will be “captured.” The invading soldiers will then go through homes, taking what they want, and while they are at it, they will rape women. Zechariah 12 indicates that invasion will extend beyond Jerusalem: “When the siege is against Jerusalem, it will also be against Judah” (Zech. 12:2). Remember that in His Olivet Discourse, Jesus told all of His followers in Judea to flee.

But it gets worse. Zechariah foretold that half of the city will be exiled. The greater metropolitan region of Jerusalem is currently 1.3 million, of which approximately 62% are Jews, 36% are Muslim, and 2% are Christian. I wonder if there will be a religious test to decide who is exiled.

Will people from any other Israeli cities besides Jerusalem be exiled? What about Tel Aviv, with a current metro population of 4.5 million? (It didn’t exist when Zechariah and Jesus prophesied.) What about Haifa, at 1.2 million? It doesn’t seem logical that half of Jerusalem’s citizens would be exiled at the close of a war involving “all the nations” against Israel while other cities would be untouched.

To where will 650,000 people be exiled? Inside the borders of Israel but outside Jerusalem? To other Middle Eastern nations? We are not told. How will those exiles be treated? We are not told. In ancient times such folks would be used as slaves. Where will the United States be in this war? We don’t know.

Zechariah next launches into the good news. Although God won’t prevent the invasion of Israel (in fact, He will orchestrate it) or initially defend Jerusalem, after more than half a million people have been exiled, Jesus will return:

Then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations, as when He fights on a day of battle. In that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which is in front of Jerusalem on the east; and the Mount of Olives will be split in its middle from east to west by a very large valley, so that half of the mountain will move toward the north and the other half toward the south. You will flee by the valley of My mountains, for the valley of the mountains will reach to Azel; yes, you will flee just as you fled before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Then the Lord, my God, will come, and all the holy ones with Him! (Zech. 14:3-5, emphasis added).

Dispensationalists are dishonest when they describe Zechariah 14 simply as “God’s future rescue of Israel.” It is “God’s judgment on Israel in the form of an invasion by ‘all the nations’ followed by Jesus’ return and His judgment on those invading nations.” His return—which will be seen by everyone on the earth (see Matt. 24:30)—will spark an awakening and repentance in Israel and among Jews worldwide (and I assume many others), something Zechariah foretold a few chapters earlier in his book:

I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn. In that day there will be great mourning in Jerusalem (Zech. 12:10-11).

Returning to where we left off in Zechariah 14, we next learn that Jesus’ return marks the beginning of His rule over the nations:

In that day there will be no light; the luminaries will dwindle. For it will be a unique day which is known to the Lord, neither day nor night, but it will come about that at evening time there will be light.

And in that day living waters will flow out of Jerusalem, half of them toward the eastern sea [the Dead Sea] and the other half toward the western sea [the Mediterranean Sea]; it will be in summer as well as in winter.

And the Lord will be king over all the earth; in that day the Lord will be the only one, and His name the only one (Zech. 14:6-9).

A few verses later, Zechariah describes God’s judgment upon those who went to war against Jerusalem. It sounds like something out of the Indiana Jones movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark:

Now this will be the plague with which the Lord will strike all the peoples who have gone to war against Jerusalem; their flesh will rot while they stand on their feet, and their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongue will rot in their mouth. It will come about in that day that a great panic from the Lord will fall on them; and they will seize one another’s hand, and the hand of one will be lifted against the hand of another. Judah also will fight at Jerusalem; and the wealth of all the surrounding nations will be gathered, gold and silver and garments in great abundance (Zech. 14:12-14).

This sequence of divine judgment followed by judgment on the former tool of divine judgment is certainly not unprecedented. There are scores of biblical examples of God judging Israel/Judah by means of a wicked nation and then Him judging the wicked nation that was the instrument of His judgment on Israel/Judah. Regarding Israel and Assyria, see 2 Kin. 17:5-23 with Isa. 10:5-19; 2 Kin. 19:35–37; Isa. 37:36–38. Regarding Judah and Babylon, see 2 Kin. 24-25; 2 Chron. 36; Jer. 25:1-11 with Isa. 13-14, 47; Jer. 50-51; Dan. 5; Ezra 1.

I hope you are now seeing, if you never saw it before, how overly-simplistic it is to conclude: “Since Israel was reborn in 1948 and Jews from all over the world have immigrated there, that is sure proof that God favors them above everyone else on the earth.” I hope you are also starting to question if the 20^th– and 21^st-century regathering of Jews to Israel from many nations is a sure and final fulfillment of God’s many promises to regather the descendants of Jacob/Israel in light of the future exile of what could be millions of Jewish people who currently reside in Israel. When I hear dispensationalists claim that Jeremiah 23:6, “Israel will dwell securely” is being “fulfilled before our eyes,” I know they are ignoring Jesus’ Olivet Discourse and Zechariah 14.

Beyond that, when we consider the Bible’s many prophetic passages that actually speak of God’s regathering of Jacob’s/Israel’s descendants from foreign nations, we can’t help but question if the 20^th– and 21^st-century return of Jews from all over the world is the fulfillment. In my next teaching on this subject, we will look at a few of those passages—authored by prophets Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. You may be surprised by what you find in their prophecies that dispensationalists have been hiding from you!

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]]> https://www.davidservant.com/coming-conquest-of-jerusalem/feed/ 0 https://www.davidservant.com/abraham-isaac-and-jacob-were-gentiles/ https://www.davidservant.com/abraham-isaac-and-jacob-were-gentiles/#respond Fri, 10 Jul 2026 13:55:40 +0000 admin https://www.davidservant.com/?p=36032 This teaching is a follow up to my previous one titled, “Will I be Blessed if I Bless Israel? (And Cursed if I Don’t?)” Please don’t read this teaching without first reading that one, as it lays an important foundation. The overall feedback to that article has been mostly positive but, as I anticipated, there […]

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This teaching is a follow up to my previous one titled, “Will I be Blessed if I Bless Israel? (And Cursed if I Don’t?)” Please don’t read this teaching without first reading that one, as it lays an important foundation.

The overall feedback to that article has been mostly positive but, as I anticipated, there has been some pushback from dispensationalists. Many of those good folks don’t even know they are dispensationalists. I’m not saying that to make anyone feel bad. I, too, was once influenced by dispensationalism and did not realize it. So let’s start there.

Generally speaking, dispensationalism divides human history into seven dispensations in which God interacts with humanity in different ways. According to classic dispensationalism, we are currently in the Church Age, which is a parenthesis between two Jewish ages. They are the Age of Law (the Mosaic dispensation) and the future Millennial Kingdom (a restored age for national Israel). Dispensationalists gave us the idea of a “pre-tribulation rapture,” which marks the beginning of the next dispensation and God’s renewed plan for Jews. They also gave us the idea of the “two returns” of Jesus, separated from each other by a period of seven years.

Dispensationalism is a relatively new theology, emerging only in 1830 through the teaching of John Nelson Darby, one of the founders of the Plymouth Brethren movement. It gained massive traction in the United States via the Scofield Reference Bible, first published 1909, and later through books like The Late Great Planet Earth and the Left Behind series. It is now very influential in many evangelical, fundamentalist, and charismatic circles—particularly in North America—but it is still a minority view when looking at the full sweep of church history. It was not a view held by the apostles or early church fathers; nor has it ever been held by mainstream Protestants, Roman Catholics, or Eastern Orthodox churches.

Historically, Christians have embraced covenantal theology, which interprets redemptive history in light of God’s covenants, the first being His covenant with Adam. God promised him death if he ate the forbidden fruit (Gen. 2:15-16), thus implying a promise of eternal life if he didn’t. It was therefore a conditional covenant. We all know what happened when Adam failed to keep the single condition of his covenant with God.

Next was God’s covenant with Noah (Gen. 6:18), in which He promised to preserve him and his family from the coming judgment. The covenant was obviously contingent upon Noah building the ark, also making it a conditional covenant.

After the Flood, God made a covenant with every future descendant of Noah (which includes you and me). God promised to never flood the earth again (Gen. 8:22). That covenant is unconditional, praise God! It is, however, time-limited for only as long as “the earth remains” (Gen. 8:22). As Jesus told us, heaven and earth will one day pass away (Matt. 24:35). In any case, every time you see a rainbow, it is a reminder of that universal, unconditional, but time-limited, divine covenant (Gen. 9:8-17).

Next was God’s covenant with Abram/Abraham. Unlike the unconditional and time-limited Noahic Covenant, the Abrahamic covenant was conditional and eternal. It would potentially benefit not only Abram/Abraham, but “all the families of the earth” (Gen. 12:3), through Christ, one of Abraham’s descendants. The Abrahamic covenant will be the focus of this teaching.

I need to mention that, 430 years after God made His covenant with Abram/Abraham, He inaugurated the Mosaic covenant (Gal. 3:17). It was between Him and the descendants of Jacob/Israel only. It was intended to be temporary (Heb. 8-10, particularly 8:13), lasting only until the New Covenant, which was promised in the Old Covenant (Jer. 31:31–34), and which Jesus inaugurated at the Last Supper.

So we see that God’s covenants can be universal or particular, time-limited or eternal, and conditional or unconditional. That is why it is important to always know the terms of a covenant, lest wrong assumptions be made.

Perhaps the greatest distinction between dispensational and covenantal theology is the former is more Israel-centric, whereas the latter is more world-centric. To put it in simple terms, it is “God so loved Israel” versus “God so loved the world.”

If your pastor’s sermons are more focused on Israel than the thousands of unreached people groups in the world who are waiting to hear the gospel for the first time, he, and you, have been influenced by dispensationalism.

If you believe that Jesus is going to return twice in the space of seven years, the first at which the church will be raptured, you have been influenced by dispensationalism.

If you imagine that the future judgment of the sheep and goats to be a judgment concerning how you treated the modern nation of Israel, you have been influenced by extreme dispensationalism.

If you are mourning the approximate 1,200 deaths and 3,400 injuries of innocent people created in God’s image due to the barbaric events of October 7, 2023, but are not mourning the retaliatory approximate 70,000 deaths and 170,000 injuries of innocent people created in God’s image in Gaza, you have been influenced by dispensationalism. If you are inwardly saying right now, “Those figures regarding Gaza are inflated,” even if you are correct, your thoughts betray your dispensational bias. Is the life of an Israeli child more valuable than that a Gazan child?

When I listen to some dispensationalist Christians regarding the Israel/Palestinian conflict, I am reminded of a passage in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in which Huck fabricates a story to Aunt Sally of a steamboat boiler explosion, who then asks, “Good gracious! Anybody hurt?” Huck replied, “No mam. Killed a nigger.”

My observation is that dispensationalism is on the decline. Part of the reason is because Christians are waking up to the fact that God is not a racist. When Christians are perceived as being racist (as they are when they are dispensationalists), it doesn’t help our cause, nor does it glorify God.

My goal in this teaching, as always, is not to win an argument, but to help believers understand biblical truth, and in so doing, advance the kingdom of our Lord Jesus.

Am I a Second-Class Citizen?

It can be surprising how passionate some folks are on the subject of modern political Israel. It honestly seems that some think unregenerate Jewish people are more loved by God than everyone else—including His own beloved spiritual children who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. When I read, however, as a “Gentile Christian,” certain passages in the New Testament, I don’t get the impression that I’m a second-class citizen in God’s eyes. Actually, I get just the opposite impression. Here is one of those passages, written to Gentile believers like me, that comes to mind:

Therefore remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called “Uncircumcision” by the so-called “Circumcision” which is performed in the flesh by human hands [a reference to unbelieving Jews who, in Paul’s view, are not actually circumcised because their hearts remain hard to Christ]—remember that you [Gentiles] were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you [Gentiles] who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups [believing Gentiles and believing Jews] into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two [believing Gentiles and believing Jews] into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both [believing Gentiles and believing Jews] in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were far away [Gentiles], and peace to those who were near [Jews]; for through Him we both [Gentiles and Jews] have our access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit (Eph. 2:11-22).

Wow. It sounds to me as if believing Gentiles possess the identical standing with God as do believing Jews. So, as long as unbelieving Jews don’t have a higher status than believing Jews, I’m in good shape! To that end, did you realize that none of what Paul wrote in the passage above has any application to unbelieving Jews, except Paul’s labeling them “the so-called Circumcision”? That being so, why would any Christian think that unbelieving Jews have a higher status in God’s eyes because of their physical lineage than believing Gentile Christians? They do not. And that will become even more clear as we continue.

Here’s another life-changing passage penned by Paul—the “apostle to the Gentiles” (Rom. 11:13)—written to believing Gentiles:

And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise (Gal. 3:29, emphasis added).^[1]

How about that? As a believing Gentile who belongs to Christ, I’m a descendant of Abraham! That is an irrefutable biblical fact!

And that fact, among others, makes me wonder about the dispensationalist claim that descendants of Abraham’s grandson, Jacob/Israel, have an “unconditional divine right” to Canaan/Palestine by virtue of God’s (alleged) “unconditional covenant” with Abraham. Why then don’t all Gentile Christians, like me, who are also Abraham’s descendants, have the same “unconditional” right? Should I purchase a plane ticket to Israel so I can confiscate a piece of land currently owned by a Muslim or nominal Christian? Whether they will admit it or not, dispensationalists believe that Jewish descendants of Abraham have that right. Why not Gentile descendants of Abraham?

And here is even a greater inconsistency in dispensational theology: What about the tens of thousands of Arab Christians who, in 1948, were forced off of land that was owned by their families for generations? If any of those approximately 60,000 Arab Christians were genuine believers in Jesus, they were, according to Paul, all descendants of Abraham. Why don’t dispensationalists believe that those descendants of Abraham had a divine right to the land by virtue of God’s covenant with Abraham? (And what are the chances any of those descendants believed that the Israeli confiscation of their homes and land was due to God’s special love for the Christ-rejecting descendants of Jacob/Israel?)

Many Gentile Christians have been singing about the biblical fact that we are descendants of Abraham through Christ since they were children in Sunday School:

Father Abraham had many sons
And many sons had father Abraham
I am one of them, and so are you
So let’s just praise the Lord!

Should the final line of that Sunday School song be changed to, “So let’s go claim our land!”?

God’s Covenant with Abraham

Because it is irrefutable that God’s covenant with Israel through Moses tied the possession of Canaan’s land to Israel’s obedience, dispensationalists sometimes resort to claiming God made an unconditional covenant with Abraham to give his descendants the land. That, they say, explains why God has, since 1948, been giving land in Canaan/Palestine to unbelieving, often immoral, Christ-rejecting Jews, even at the expense of, not only Muslims, but also Christians.

If that were true, of course, it would mean the Abrahamic covenant contradicts the Mosaic covenant, which means that God contradicts Himself. That isn’t possible. God is not confused.

Beyond that, when we read God’s promises to Abraham concerning Canaan, it is clear they were not unconditional. Let’s survey those promises. There are at least seven relevant passages in Genesis where God communicated with Abram/Abraham about their covenant.

1.) Genesis 12:1-3 (which we considered in my previous article) describes God’s initial communication with Abram when he was 75 years old. God told him to leave Haran, journey “to the land which I will show you” and promised, “I will make you a great nation.”

In that first communication, God didn’t promise Abram any land. But He did promise him, “In you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” God intended to bless all the families of the earth through Abram. That sounds significant, even more so than anything else God told Abram about his future. Abram didn’t understand it then, but looking back, and by looking at the rest of the Bible, we are 100% certain God was referring to blessing all the families of the earth through Jesus, a future descendant of Abraham. From God’s first encounter with Abram, blessing all of earth’s families was on His mind.

2.) Abram obeyed God and journeyed to Canaan. There God appeared to him and gave him another promise, “To your descendants I will give this land (Gen. 12:7). It would have been easy for Abram to have wrongly assumed that God’s promise would be fulfilled sooner than it actually was. History tells that it wasn’t fulfilled for any of Abram’s descendants for about 470 years.

You may be surprised to learn that, as one of Abraham’s descendants through Christ, I’m looking forward to the fulfillment of that promise as it applies to me. I will one day live in the New Jerusalem, which I think is safe to assume will be generally located where Jerusalem has always been (although New Jerusalem will be huge by comparison).

I can only claim that future inheritance because I met the condition to be one of descendants of Abram/Abraham. That is, I believed/believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. So the promise God made to Abram that concerns me was conditional, not unconditional. That establishes the fact that at least part of the Abrahamic Covenant was conditional, so far as it concerns us believing Gentiles.

3.) Abram spent some time in Egypt because of famine in Canaan, but when he returned to Canaan, the Lord said to him:

Now lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land which you see, I will give it to you and to your descendants forever. I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth, so that if anyone can number the dust of the earth, then your descendants can also be numbered. Arise, walk about the land through its length and breadth; for I will give it to you (Gen. 13:14-17).

That’s another promise of the Promised Land, but one that is even better than the previous one. Not only would God give Canaan to Abram’s descendants (as previously promised), but He would give it to Abram himself. In his lifetime, however, which lasted another 100 years, Abram never possessed Canaan. The only land he ever owned there was a small field and cave, which he purchased in order to bury Sarai’s/Sarah’s body. But God didn’t give him that parcel. He bought it from those who owned it. Recall that Stephen reminded the Jewish Sanhedrin just before they stoned him:

Then he [Abram] left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. From there, after his father died, God had him move to this country in which you are now living. But He gave him no inheritance in it, not even a foot of ground, and yet, even when he had no child, He promised that He would give it to him as a possession, and to his descendants after him” (Acts 7:4-5, emphasis added).

Clearly, God’s promise to Abram to possess Canaan is yet to be fulfilled—just as it will be for you and me, two of Abraham’s descendants who have the identical promise he did.

In His third repetition of the promises to Abram, God promised to give the land to him and his descendants “forever.” As I have just pointed out, Abram never possessed it. His descendants who eventually did possess it didn’t possess it forever. They lost possession by virtue of their disobedience. And they all died. So there is a yet-future fulfillment of God’s promise for Abram and his descendants.

Are you realizing that God’s “forever” promise to Abram and his descendants was a promise of eternal life? If I possess land forever but don’t live forever, what good is that?

God also revealed to Abram in this Genesis 13 passage that he would have a great multitude of descendants, “as the dust of the earth.” Although I’m sure Abram was smart enough to figure out that it would require millennia for his descendants to multiply that much, I suspect he never imagined they would include anyone other than his physical descendants. But when God told him about his future multitude of descendants, God was thinking about people like you and me who would become one with Christ and thus be counted as a descendant of Abraham. We’re a part of that multitude. Praise God!

The author of the book of Hebrews (I assume Paul) had some Spirit-given insight into all of this. He wrote:

By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise; for he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God (Heb. 11:8-10, emphasis added).

So, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who all received the promise of the land never possessed the land. None even had a house in Canaan. They all lived in tents as “aliens in the land of promise, as in a foreign land.” Beyond that, as we will soon see, when the Lord appeared to Abram ten years after His first communication, Abram learned that neither he, nor his unborn heir, nor his grandchildren, nor many successive generations of his descendants would possess Canaan. For all of them, it would have to be in a future life. That must be why Paul wrote that Abram “was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God,” a reference to the New Jerusalem. God’s promise to Abram still hasn’t been fulfilled after 4,000 years. But it will be!

Paul continued in the book of Hebrews just three verses later:

All these (Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and Jacob/Israel) died in faith, without receiving the [fulfillment of the] promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own. And indeed if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them (Heb. 11:13-16, emphasis added).

I’m sure you noticed Paul’s second allusion in this same passage to the New Jerusalem, the city God has prepared (and that we can read about in Isaiah 60-62 and Revelation 21-22). Again, according to Paul, the three patriarchs all realized they would possess the land of Canaan in a future, eternal life.

Abram Believes in the Lord

4.) About ten years after the Lord spoke to Abram the first time, He spoke to him again in a vision, saying, “Do not fear, Abram, I am a shield to you; your reward shall be very great” (Gen. 15:1). Abram, however, was wondering, and perhaps doubting. He was now 85 and Sarai was 75. He said to God, “O Lord God, what will You give me, since I am childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?…. Since You have given no offspring to me, one born in my house is my heir.”

God graciously assured him that a future biological son would be his heir, and then took him outside so he could look up at the night sky. His descendants, God said, would be as numerous as the stars. You and I were represented by two of the stars Abram saw that night! Hallelujah!

Then the Genesis narrative informs us that Abram “believed in the Lord and He reckoned it to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6). Obviously, Abram already believed God existed before he looked up at the stars that night. He had heard the Lord speak and had obeyed His instructions. What became different about his faith that night as he looked up at the stars?

We might think that was the moment Abram believed God’s promise concerning his future descendants. However, note that the Genesis narrative does not say, “Abram believed God’s promise regarding his future descendants.” Rather, it says “Abram believed in the Lord.”

Although I wish it were clearer, when we consider the context of the entire Bible, we know that righteousness is reckoned to people when they “believe in the Lord.” When the Philippian jailer, for example, asked Paul what he needed to do to be saved, Paul told him, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31). As I have stressed for so many years, those who believe in the Lord Jesus submit to Him. Those who don’t submit, don’t believe. Perhaps that was Abram’s moment.

In any case, Paul taught that Abram’s being reckoned righteous by faith—and before he was circumcised—proves that uncircumcised Gentiles (like Abram) can be reckoned as righteous by faith (see Romans 4). Specifically, Paul wrote:

Is this blessing then on the circumcised, or on the uncircumcised also? For we say, “Faith was credited to Abraham as righteousness.” How then was it credited? While he was circumcised, or uncircumcised? Not while circumcised, but while uncircumcised; and he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while uncircumcised, so that he might be the father of all who believe without being circumcised [believing Gentiles], that righteousness might be credited to them, and the father of circumcision to those who not only are of the circumcision, but who also follow in the steps of the faith [believing descendants of Jacob/Israel] of our father Abraham which he had while uncircumcised….

For this reason it [salvation] is by faith, in order that it [salvation] may be in accordance with grace, so that the promise will be guaranteed to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the Law [the descendants of Jacob/Israel, all under the Mosaic Law], but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham [believing Gentiles], who is the father of us all [believing Jews and believing Gentiles], as it is written, “A father of many nations have I made you” (Rom. 4:9-12, 16-17).

So Abraham is the father of believing Gentiles. That’s me! And I hope you!

The Cutting of the Abrahamic Covenant

We next read in Genesis 15 that God said to Abram, “I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it” (Gen. 15:7, emphasis added). That was the second time God promised Abram what to this day has not been fulfilled for him.

Then God instructed Abram to bring three animals and two birds, which he was to kill, cut in half (except for the birds), and lay each half opposite each other. It was a covenant ritual. Some period of time elapsed. Abram fell asleep, and “terror and great darkness fell upon him” (Gen. 15:12). Then God spoke to him:

Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years. But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you will be buried at a good old age. Then in the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete (Gen. 15:13-16).

At that point, Abram gained more clarity on God’s plan. He now knew with certainty that he would not possess Canaan in his lifetime, which turned out to last another 90 years. He also knew with certainty that his unborn heir would not possess Canaan in his lifetime, nor would any of his grandchildren. In fact, it would be at least 460 years before any of his descendants would possess the land of Canaan.

Why the long delay? Only one reason was given: “The iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete” (Gen. 15:16). That is, the moral decline among the Amorites, just one of at least ten tribal nations in the Promised Land, had not reached its inevitable moral low point that would require God’s judgment in the form of an Israelite invasion. Think about that. God was planning the invasion of the Promised Land at least 460 years in advance by the army of a nation that didn’t exist yet. That was certainly a lesson to Abram about God’s mercy, holiness, and judgment. Do you suppose Abram thought to himself, “I’m glad that God’s core character fluctuates, and that He is going to give me and my descendants the Promised Land unconditionally, unlike the Amorites who obviously hold it conditionally, so that we never have to fear God’s wrath if we displease Him!”?

Of course, when God freed the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob from Egyptian slavery, He made a covenant with them that irrefutably tied their possession of the Promised Land to their faith and obedience. The first generation of ransomed Israelites failed to enter the promised land because of their unbelief and disobedience. The alleged “unconditional” Abrahamic covenant didn’t override the conditionality of the Mosaic covenant. And, of course, the God who never changes didn’t change between the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants.

At the close of God’s covenant ceremony with Abram, we read:

It came about when the sun had set, that it was very dark, and behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates” (Gen. 15:17-18).

The area described in that promise is, at bare minimum, ten times larger than modern Israel, and encompasses, not only all of modern Israel and the Palestinian territories, but all of Lebanon, significant portions of Syria, much of Jordan, fringes of Egypt, and small parts of northern Saudi Arabia and western Iraq. I’m waiting for dispensational Christians to start asking for donations to help arm the Israel militarily to invade all those nations in order to take “the land that belongs to them by divine right.” And why not? If the Abrahamic covenant described in Genesis 15 gives modern descendants of Abram’s grandson Jacob divine right to the current land defined by modern Israel’s borders, it gives them right to all the land described in Genesis 15.

And perhaps I, as one of Abraham’s descendants, should fly over to Saudi Arabia and kick some Saudis off the land that is mine by divine right! I wonder how that will go over?

5.) Fast forward another 14 years, to when Abram was 99 and Sarai was 89. (And Ishmael was 13.) The Lord again appeared to Abraham and repeated the old promises, some of which were now 24 years old. This time as you read, I hope you will look for what applies to you:

“I am God Almighty;
Walk before Me, and be blameless.
I will establish My covenant between Me and you,
And I will multiply you exceedingly.”
Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying,
“As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you,
And you will be the father of a multitude of nations.
No longer shall your name be called Abram,
But your name shall be Abraham;
For I have made you the father of a multitude of nations.

“I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings will come forth from you. I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you. I will give to you and to your descendants after you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God (Gen. 17:1-8, emphasis added).

I love those words “everlasting covenant.” It was a covenant between God, Abraham, and Abraham’s descendants, which includes all Gentiles who believe in the Lord Jesus. Obviously, unless Abraham and his descendants would be living forever, an “everlasting covenant” would not have much relevancy.

I also hope you noticed God’s words to Abram, the believer, “Walk before Me, and be blameless.” It was not a suggestion. It was a command. God expects obedience.

Again, God promised Abraham and his descendants “all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession.” To this day, both Abraham and I are waiting for that promise to be fulfilled. Moreover, all of Abraham’s believing physical descendants who, hundreds of years after Abraham, actually possessed some part of the Promised Land during their lifetimes, are waiting for that promise to be fulfilled as it was promised: “for an everlasting possession.” It is a sure eternal inheritance waiting for all believing Jews and Gentiles.

It is beyond me how anyone can extrapolate from these promises in Genesis 17 that the modern physical descendants of Abraham, through his grandson Jacob, who have rejected their Messiah and who are not born again, now have a divine right, over both Muslims and Christians, to the land that Abraham and everyone in Christ, Jew and Gentile, will one day inherit forever. I can’t find that in Genesis 17 or anywhere in the Bible, both Old and New Testaments. Why would unbelieving physical descendants of Jacob/Israel have a divine right now to land that they will have no right to in eternity?

During the same divine appearance, God promised Abraham that Sarah would give birth to a son whom they should name Isaac, concerning whom God promised, “I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him” (Gen. 17:19). God also instituted the covenant mark of circumcision at that time, similarly stipulated hundreds of years later in the Mosaic Law. From this point on in the Abrahamic covenant, circumcision was required, so we’re certainly not talking about an “unconditional” covenant. Moreover, circumcision was symbolic of a repentant, transformed heart. The concept of a circumcised heart is found, not just in the New Testament, but also the Old:

So circumcise your heart, and stiffen your neck no longer (Deut. 10:16).

Moreover the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live (Deut. 30:6).

Circumcise yourselves to the Lord
And remove the foreskins of your heart,
Men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem,
Or else My wrath will go forth like fire
And burn with none to quench it,
Because of the evil of your deeds” (Jer. 4:4).

Paul put it in perspective for us 2,000 years later:

For indeed circumcision is of value if you practice the Law; but if you are a transgressor of the Law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. So if the uncircumcised man keeps the requirements of the Law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? And he who is physically uncircumcised, if he keeps the Law, will he not judge you who though having the letter of the Law and circumcision are a transgressor of the Law? For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God (Rom. 2:25-29, emphasis added).

Personally, I’m not going to debate Paul about that. And to Gentile believers in Colossae he wrote:

And in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead (Col. 2:11-12).

6.) Not long after the Lord’s appearance to Abraham when he was 99, He appeared to him again, visiting him at his tent, along with two angels. The Lord then told him that within a year, Sarah would give birth to a son. Then the Lord asked:

Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, since Abraham will surely become a great and mighty nation, and in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed? For I have chosen him, so that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken about him (Gen. 18:17-19).

I want to point out two things from those two sentences. First, what made Abraham so important in God’s eyes so as not to have anything hidden from him? Primarily it was that “in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed.” Those words were the primary and redundant theme for 25 years of divine communication with Abraham, from start to finish. When theologians try to make the Abrahamic Covenant all about the descendants of Jacob/Israel (or worse, all about modern political Israel), they are completely missing the point. The story of Abraham is the beginning of the story of the redemption of all the families on the earth. That story continues through the entire Bible, and I could write a small book showing that. That great story of redemption ends in Revelation, where we read:

And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth…

After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands; and they cry out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb (Rev. 5:9-10; 7:9, emphasis added).

Those two passages in Revelation show us that God’s plan through Abraham and his seed will be fulfilled. Abraham’s spiritual descendants, both Jews and Gentiles from all of earth’s families, “will reign upon the earth.” It won’t just be the Promised Land that we will inherit, it will be the entire world. “The meek shall inherit the earth” (Matt. 5:5). Paul referred to Abraham as “heir of the world” (Rom. 4:13). The New Jerusalem is 1,500 miles wide by 1,500 miles long (Rev. 21:16). That’s about the distance from Philadelphia to Denver.

The second sentence of that passage is the final nail in the coffin of the idea that the Abrahamic Covenant was unconditional. God declared: “For I have chosen [Abraham], so that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken about him” (Gen. 18:19, emphasis added). It can’t get any clearer than that. The covenant was conditional. A few years later, God tested Abraham by commanding him to sacrifice Isaac on an altar. When Abraham was about to follow through, the Lord stopped him and said:

By Myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this thing and have not withheld your son, your only son, indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of their [or his] enemies. In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice” (Gen. 22:16-18, emphasis added).

And what was it that the Lord decided not to hide from the man with the conditional covenant? If we keep reading in Genesis, we soon see it was God’s intention to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, two wicked cities within the Promised Land that Abraham is still destined to inherit. As I asked similarly earlier, do you think that when Abraham saw the smoke of Sodom and Gomorrah’s destruction, he thought to himself, “I’m so glad God’s standards of righteousness are different for me, and will be different for all my future descendants, since we have an unconditional covenant”?

For Now

The Bible’s grand story of redemption doesn’t start with Jews or Israel. It started in the Garden of Eden, where God promised that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head (Gen. 3:15). Adam and Eve weren’t Jews. There would be no Jews for more than 2,000 years. There were 22 generations from Adam to Jacob/Israel. And there were no Jews on the earth until after the days of Judah, Jacob/Israel’s fourth son. The word “Jew” is derived from the word “Judah.” The first time we find the word is in 2 Kings 25:25 (in the NASB).

That redemption story continues with the calling of Abram, a man from Ur of the Chaldeans. The ruins of that ancient city can still be visited—in modern Iraq. Not Canaan. Not Israel. Abram wasn’t an Israelite. He wasn’t a Jew. He was a Gentile. The fact that he is the first person in the Bible who is called a “Hebrew” (Gen. 14:13) lends itself to that fact, as it is derived from a semitic word that means “to cross over, pass through, or traverse.” Abram crossed over from Mesopotamia (Ur of the Chaldeans) into Canaan. And he received, as an uncircumcised Gentile, a promise that all the families of the earth would be blessed through his seed. That seed was the incarnate Son of God, who most often referred to Himself as the “Son of Man” and who once, while commending the great faith of a Gentile said:

Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel. I say to you that many [Gentiles] will come from east and west, and recline at the table with [Gentiles] Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; but the sons of the kingdom [descendants of Jacob/Israel] will be cast out into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt. 8:10-12).

Patriarchs Isaac and Jacob were just as much Gentiles as Abraham. They each inherited the promise to carry the seed that would bless all the families of the earth (Gen. 26:2-5, 24; 28:13-15; 35:9-12), which are comprised of mostly Gentile families. We can, of course, refer to all of Jacob/Israel’s descendants as Israelites, but as I’ve already pointed out, neither Israel nor any of his descendants for more than 380 years after his birth inherited any land in Canaan.

For those who utilize the argument that Abraham’s modern physical descendants through Jacob/Israel have a right to Canaan/Palestine “because their ancestors were the original inhabitants,” I hope you realize now that they were not. Pre-dating them were at least ten tribal nations. By the way, are you returning your land in North America to the descendants of the Native Americans “because their ancestors were the original inhabitants?”

“OK, but God used the nation of Israel to dispossess those original inhabitants. God gave Israel that land.”

Indeed He did, but He warned them that if they ever started acting like the pagans whom they dispossessed, He would similarly expel them from the land (see Lev. 18:24-30; Deut. 8:19–20; 28-30). Eventually, they started acting like the pagans whom they dispossessed, and God expelled them from the land. Only a repentant remnant of those folks ever returned. This is Bible History 101.

There is much more that could be said. I will write one more article in this series in which we will consider the premise that Israel’s birth in 1948 and the subsequent return of Jews to Israel from all over the world is a sure fulfillment of the prophetic final return of Jews to their ancient homeland and a sign of God’s favor toward Israel, which we should imitate. We will also look at Romans 11, a favorite of dispensationalists.

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^{[1] The Greek word translated “descendants” here in the NASB is sperma, which is why some translations say, “You are Abraham’s seed.”}

 

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]]> https://www.davidservant.com/abraham-isaac-and-jacob-were-gentiles/feed/ 0 https://www.davidservant.com/will-bless-israel/ https://www.davidservant.com/will-bless-israel/#respond Sat, 27 Jun 2026 13:55:30 +0000 admin https://www.davidservant.com/?p=36022 It is often said within Christian circles that whoever blesses the nation or people of Israel will be blessed, and whoever curses the nation or people of Israel will be cursed. For that reason, supporting the modern nation of Israel—economically, politically, and militarily—is presented as a sacred moral obligation for Christians. To do otherwise, it […]

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It is often said within Christian circles that whoever blesses the nation or people of Israel will be blessed, and whoever curses the nation or people of Israel will be cursed. For that reason, supporting the modern nation of Israel—economically, politically, and militarily—is presented as a sacred moral obligation for Christians. To do otherwise, it is often implied or claimed, is “antisemitic.”

Modern Evangelicals—in contrast with the historic Christians, Mainline Protestants, Catholic, and Orthodox Christians—are the only group within Christendom (generally speaking) to embrace this idea, essentially due to a rather novel theology. The result is hundreds of millions of dollars donated annually to “bless Israel,” a nation that consistently ranks in the top 30 among the 193 nations and territories listed on the United Nations’ Human Development Index—alongside France and Spain. Meanwhile, Christians in Malawi, ranked 172nd, endure what they call the “hunger season” every year as they wait for the next harvest. Why is it easier to raise money for well-off Jews than for starving Christians? (Has Israel replaced the Church?)

If you ask those who advocate “blessing Israel” where this principle is taught in the Bible, they will not be able to tell you. That is understandable, since it is not taught in the Bible. In the New Testament epistles, for example—all written during a time when a nation called “Israel” existed—there is not a single admonition by Paul, Peter, John, James, or Jude for Christians to bless or support the nation of Israel or stand with it against their enemies and so on. That was not a facet of following Christ in the early church. Christians outside of Israel did indeed raise money for poor, persecuted Jewish Christians living in Jerusalem, but that was something entirely different, similar to helping starving Malawian Christians today. It was caring for the “least of these” (Matt. 25:31-46). It had nothing to do with supporting a geopolitical nation because of its “prophetic significance.”

In addition, there is nothing in the New Testament epistles that even hints about “Israel’s sovereign right to their ancient homeland given to them by God that is now unlawfully occupied and controlled by a foreign power.” That, too, was not on any Christian’s radar.

Recall also that God Himself visited the nation of Israel for 33 years in the form of a man and spent more than three of those years in a public ministry. He never said a word about “blessing the nation of Israel” or “Israel’s right to their ancient homeland.”

Should not all of this give us pause and cause us to ask if all the modern evangelical focus on Israel is a little misguided? Do we have right what Jesus and apostles had wrong?

The “Biblical” Defense

On occasion, some will point to Genesis 12:3 to defend the idea of blessing the nation and people of Israel. There we find a promise God made to Abram before He renamed him Abraham:

And I will bless those who bless you,
And the one who curses you I will curse.
And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.

If we are honest, we must admit that these promises were given to a single person, Abram. The promise expressed in the final clause could also be viewed as a promise given to “all the families of the earth.” Genesis 12:3 is not about the nation of Israel, ancient or modern, other than the fact that people descended from Jacob/Israel are part of “all the families of the earth” who would be blessed through Abram. That’s it.

This becomes even clearer when we consider the full context of Genesis 12:3. Here is God’s entire promise to Abram recorded in Genesis 12:1-3:

¹ Now the Lord said to Abram,
“Go forth from your country,
And from your relatives
And from your father’s house,
To the land which I will show you;

² And I will make you a great nation,
And I will bless you,
And make your name great;
And so you shall be a blessing;

³ And I will bless those who bless you,
And the one who curses you I will curse.
And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed” (emphasis added).

Note in verse 1 that the Lord was speaking to Abram. God used the word “you” seven times and the word “your” four times in all three verses. So verse 3 had direct application to anyone who blessed or cursed Abram personally—a man who lived about 4,000 years ago. To claim that God was speaking about blessing or cursing a small, select minority of Abram’s descendants 4,000 years later is a stretch, to say the least.

In addition, nowhere in the New Testament is it stated or implied that Genesis 12:3 applies to blessing or cursing the nation of Israel. In fact, nowhere in the New Testament is God’s promise to “bless those who bless you” and “curse those who curse you” quoted or even mentioned. This common evangelical idea isn’t New Testament theology.

Taken together, all of this stands in contrast to the idea that God’s promise to Abram to “bless those who bless you” and “curse those who curse you” has application to the nation of Israel, either ancient or modern.

The final sentence of God’s promise to Abram, however, does receive attention in the New Testament as having application—to everyone in the world. God said to Abram, “In you all the families of the earth will be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). God repeated that promise to Abraham in a more specific way at least 25 years later: “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 22:18).

So Genesis 12:3 and 22:18 revealed that all the families/nations of the earth would be blessed through Abraham’s seed. As God made His promise to Abraham, He was thinking about everyone in the world, not just one small group of his descendants.

But was God saying—as is sometimes claimed—that the “seed” of Abraham is the modern nation of Israel that has somehow blessed the entire world through the work of its fourteen Nobel laureates? For reference, the U.S. has produced about 425 Nobel laureates. No, not if we believe the New Testament. There, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the apostle Paul emphatically declared that “Abraham’s seed” mentioned in God’s promise to Abraham refers to Christ:

Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as referring to many, but rather to one, “And to your seed,” that is, Christ (Gal. 3:16).

Indisputably, the “seed” God was referring to in Genesis 22:18—and alluded to in Genesis 12:3—is Jesus. For that reason, God’s promise could be paraphrased, “In your descendant, Christ, will all the nations of the earth be blessed.”

The Modern Descendants of Abraham

Today there are hundreds of millions of physical descendants of Abraham. They include not only Jews, descended from Abraham’s grandson Jacob/Israel, but also Arabs descended from Abraham’s son Ishmael. Among the modern descendants of Abraham, only a small minority are Jews. The majority are Arabs.

Mathematical genealogy models also suggest that anyone living 3,000–4,000 years ago who has any living descendants today is likely an ancestor of most or all modern humans. This would make virtually the entire world population genealogical descendants of Abraham.

As Paul pointed out, in Genesis 22:18 God was thinking of a single descendant of Abraham. That singular seed would bring God’s blessing not just to one group of people, but to all the world’s people. So, God is not a racist—as it seems He is so often portrayed. He loves the world. Jesus is the Savior of all. That was God’s plan since at least Genesis 12:3!

By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul referred to Genesis 12:3 and 22:18 as “the gospel” preached beforehand to Abraham—a gospel for Gentiles as well as descendants of Jacob/Israel:

The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “All the nations will be blessed in you” (Gal. 3:8, emphasis added).

The gospel is a message of God’s blessing for anyone and everyone. That blessing hinges on believing in the Lord Jesus—for both Jews and Gentiles. There is no other way to have a relationship with God. This is why Peter referenced the same promise when preaching to a Jewish audience in Acts 3:

It is you [Jews] who are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, “And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” For you first, God raised up His Servant and sent Him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways (Acts 3:25-26, emphasis added).

A Few More Proof Texts

On rare occasions, advocates of “blessing Israel” appeal to Isaac’s prayer over Jacob—whom he thought was Esau:

May peoples serve you,
And nations bow down to you;
Be master of your brothers,
And may your mother’s sons bow down to you.
Cursed be those who curse you,
And blessed be those who bless you (Gen. 27:29).

Clearly, this was a prayer for a single person, not for his future descendants. The words “you” and “your” appear seven times in that verse. Isaac’s prayer for Jacob was not a divine declaration that, from that time forward, everyone who blesses that nation or people of Jacob/Israel, will be blessed. And of course, such an idea is taught nowhere in the New Testament.

There is also Balaam’s prophecy regarding Israel in Numbers 24:9:

Blessed is everyone who blesses you,
And cursed is everyone who curses you” (Num. 24:9).

From this verse, should we conclude that God’s attitude toward a group of people remains constant regardless of their behavior? If you don’t know the answer, read Deuteronomy 28, in which God enumerates the blessings of obedience and the curses of disobedience. Actually, read just about any chapter in the Bible.

Balaam, of course, was prophesying specifically about the second generation of Israelites—the generation whose parents had wandered in the wilderness for 40 years because of their disobedience. Were the first generation—who all perished in the wilderness—blessed or cursed?

Should we conclude that, because God’s blessing was temporarily upon the descendants of Israel/Jacob more than 3,400 years ago, that guarantees His blessing on all of their future descendants who have at least a tiny fraction of their DNA, regardless of their behavior? Does God have different standards for different people? Is He actually “a respecter of persons,” even though the Bible says He is not (see Acts 10:34; Rom. 2:11; Eph. 6:9)?

There is much more that could be said, but I hope I have provided some food for thought for those Christians who believe they have a biblical duty to support modern political Israel because they’ve heard that the Bible says they will be blessed if they do and cursed if they don’t. I sometimes refer to those who are championing the “bless Israel” idea as “believers in Replacement Theology,” not because they believe the church has somehow replaced Israel—of which they sometimes accuse me—but because they have replaced the church with Israel. Caring for well-off Jews in Israel is immensely more important to them than caring for suffering Arab Christians or starving African Christians. If that isn’t replacing the church with Israel, what is?

Worse, some accuse me of being antisemitic because I do not support every policy of Israel’s current administration. If that makes me antisemitic, it makes more than half the Jews living in Israel antisemitic.

This all reminds me that the word “Semitic” actually means “descended from Shem,” not “descended from Jacob/Israel.” Arabs are Semitic people, just as Jews are. Both are descended from Abraham, who was descended from Noah’s son Shem. The irony is striking when professing Christians call those of us who do not support every policy of the current Israeli administration “antisemites,” while cheering on the death of Arab Semites—including Arab Christians. If cheering on the deaths of innocent Arab Semites doesn’t make you antisemitic, what does?

All of this is not to say that God does not have a plan for a future spiritual awakening among those who identify as Jews. But that has nothing to do with the subject of this article. God also has plans for a future spiritual awakening among Egyptians and Syrians. It is just as certain as the future spiritual awakening in Israel. God said through Isaiah:

In that day Israel will be the third party with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the Lord of hosts has blessed, saying, “Blessed is Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel My inheritance” (Isaiah 19:24-25).

But that doesn’t mean Christians have a sacred duty to economically, politically and militarily support modern Egypt or Syria.

When the church began it was comprised 100% of descendants of Jacob/Israel. Since about AD 36-40, it has included believing Gentiles, and the door has been open ever since to anyone from either group—if they will believe. Unbelieving Jews are outside the church and the new covenant just as much as unbelieving Gentiles. There is no salvation for them outside of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, their Messiah. The old covenant is now obsolete (Heb. 8:13) and all Christian believers, both Jew and Gentile, comprise a “chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation” and “a people for God’s own possession” (1 Pet. 2:9). Together they are “the Israel of God” (Gal. 6:16). Paul wrote, “For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God” (Rom. 2:28-29). Jesus Himself referred to first-century Jews who were persecuting Christians as a “synagogue of Satan” (Rev. 2:9; 3:9). Was Jewish Jesus antisemitic? Gentile believers have not only been grafted in to the olive tree of faith whose roots are in Judaism (Rom. 11:17-24), they have also become “Abraham’s descendants” (Gal. 3:29) by virtue of them becoming one with Christ. All these truths are in your New Testament!

Food for thought!

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