The Israel of God: Future
“For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved” (Rom. xi:25, 26).
Had the proposal been that he should discuss the future of any other people than Israel I, for one, would not attempt it. And for this sufficient reason: our task in that case would be purely a speculative one. At the best our conclusions be but plausible probabilities, having worth and weight in the precise degree of the breadth of fact upon which our generalizations were based, and of the soundness of our reasoning upon them; and sure at last to be upset by the constant intrusion into human affairs of the unforeseen. Who, for example, forecasting the course of European affairs from the point of view of 1793, could have foreseen the overthrow of probabilities by the tremendous appari-. tion of Napoleon Bonaparte?
But, it is the unique distinction of Israel that she has for a historian the Holy Spirit of God. Speaking by many voices, through many ages, it has invariably been His method to make the record anticipate the event; and, since. to Him past and future are one eternal present, He has been pleased always to publish the story of Israel’s destiny in advance of its accomplishment.
We are not, then, to indulge in idle and profitless speculations, but to study the inspired and therefore inerrant history of Israel’s future. My task is but to gather up into orderly sequence the testimony of the Holy Spirit, through the prophets. The method is as simple as the result is sure. The testimony is ample and unambiguous, and we shall have only ourselves to blame if we do not know with absolute certainty, in all its broader outlines, at least, the future toward which Israel is hastening. It matters nothing that to many this future is unwelcome; each of the nations of earth, and every unit of those nations, is moving irresistibly towards a rendezvous which God has fixed, and when the hour strikes, nations and individuals will be there.
If, therefore, God has decreed the reconstitution of the nation of Israel upon the sacred soil of Palestine, no reluctance of the people will avail to delay it an hour. May I be permitted to say that it-is to me an inscrutable mystery that any should feel this reluctance; that any Jew should willingly turn from the magnificent picture of Israel’s beneficent primacy among the nations which the prophets declare to be her destiny.
Permit me also a prefatory word as to the true law of prophetic interpretation. I am of course perfectly aware that there is a school of interpretation, having disciples among both Jews and Christians, which insists that, unlike all other writings, unfulfilled prophecy is to be interpreted, not in the natural and unforced sense of the words themselves, but in an allegorical, or so-called “spiritual” sense. Christian exegetes of this school follow the simple plan of literalizing all the curses and bestowing them upon the Jews; while spiritualizing all the blessings and claiming them for the church. Thus all difficulties in prophetical interpretation are neatly avoided and Gentile conceit goes unwounded.
Our Jewish brethren of the spiritualizing school apply the allegorical method to the Messianic predictions, interpreting them of the nation, and not of a personal Messiah. In this way the Messianic element, properly speaking, is eliminated from the prophetic writings. Passages which seem to speak of Messiah’s humiliation and sufferings are said to refer to the sorrow and sore travail of dispersed and persecuted Judah. The glowing strains in which the spirit of prophecy describes Messiah’s reign over the redeemed and delivered earth, with restored Israel at the head of the nations, and the word of the Lord going out from Jerusalem, are interpreted of the present prosperity of the Jews in some lands. Ah, my hearers, I do not wonder that Russian Jews are orthodox! Suppose we were to go to the sorrowful victims of the persecution in that land and tell them that “the nineteenth century is the Messiah?”
Of this allegorical or spiritualizing method whether employed by Christian or Jew it is enough to say that God himself has, for thousands of years, been disproving it. He has been expounding prophecy by fulfilling it. It would be difficult to point out a chapter in the prophetic writings of which a part has not been reduced from foresight to fact, from prediction to history. The question, therefore, is a simple question of fact, “How does God fulfill prophecy?” Does the event answer to the prediction in some figurative, allegorical or “spiritual” sense, or in literal and exact detail? When, for example, Jehovah said to Abram (Genesis XV:13-14), “Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; and afterwards they shall come out with great substance,” what did He mean? Did He mean that Abram’s seed should enter another phase of spiritual experience which would cause them mental disquietude and heart searching, out of which they would emerge richer in spirituality; or did he mean what the words naturally imply? Let the monuments of Egypt and the ruins of the treasure cities answer. There was nothing allegorical in the whips of the Egyptian taskmasters, nor spiritual in the double tale of bricks. When
Jehovah warned Israel that the effect of disobedience in the land would be a world-wide dispersion, with terrible and unremitting persecutions, what did He mean? Put the twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy by the side of Jewish history and find your answer. He meant precisely what He, said.
And so I might go on taking up one after another of the prophecies which have been fulfilled, and find in every instance the same truth, that prophecy invariably receives a literal fulfillment. Not one exception can be found. Figures and visions, of course, abound in these writings, but when the thing signified by the figure is ascertained we may be sure that thing will come to pass. History answers to prediction as the wax to the seal.
We have then a divine law of prophetical interpretation. It is not open to dispute. Please observe that it is established by the identical processes employed in the exact sciences for the discovery of natural law. Natural law rests upon unvarying phenomena, The law of gravitation rests upon the fact that ponderable substances always fall to the earth. The law of prophetic interpretation rests upon the immutability of the divine counsels. We turn, then, to the prophets, not as those about to decipher hieroglyphics or force a sphinx to speak, but as to an open and unambiguous word, which an apostle of Jesus declared to be “a light that shineth in a dark place.” “Surely,” says Amos, “the Lord will do nothing, but he revealeth his secrets unto his servants, the prophets.”
The first of the prophetic passages which I shall quote is Deut. xxx :1-8.
It will be remembered that these were.among the last words of Moses before he went up into Nebo to receive / the kiss of death from God. In chapters xxviii and xxix the people were solemnly warned that the consequence of disobedience in the land which they were about to enter would be dispossession, dispersion among all nations, and unexampled sufferings.
“And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest; but the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind; and thy life shall hang in doubt before thee, and thou shalt fear day and night and shalt have none assurance of thy, life; in the morning thou shalt say, ‘Would God it were even,’ and at even thou shalt say, ‘Would God it were morning, for the fear of thy heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see.”
Now against this dark background there flashes out the glorious promise to which I refer:
“And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before thee, and thou shalt call them to mind among all the nations whither the Lord thy God hath driven thee, and shalt return unto the Lord thy God, and shalt obey His voice according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy children, with all thine heart and with all thy soul; that then the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all nations, whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee. * * * And the Lord thy God wili bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it, and He will do thee good and multiply thee above thy fathers. And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live. And the Lord thy God will put all these curses upon thine enemies, and on them that hate thee, which persecuted thee. And thou shalt return and obey the voice of the Lord, and do all his commandments which I command thee this day.”
Observe in this passage three points:
1. It does not refer to the Babylonian captivity, for the dispersion here spoken of is “among all nations.”
2. Jehovah gathers His people “from all the nations.”
3. He brings them into the land which their fathers possessed.
Every one knows what that land is. Here, then, if there were no other passage, is a plain declaration of the purpose of God to plant again His ancient people in their own land.
Passing wholly by the Psalms, so many of which are undeniably millennial and prophetic of the same event, we come to Isaiah. Here, and in the remaining prophetic books, we shall be simply embarrassed what part of the copious testimony to select for quotation. Leaving out the history of the times, and those utterances of the prophets which had a local and near fulfillment, it may be said that of the remaining predictive parts, fully five-sixths relate in some way to the restoration. Take as an example of the testimony of Isaiah such passages as Isaiah ii:1-4.
As is well known, the “spiritualizers” interpret this passage of the Church. The,sufficient reply is that Isaiah expressly says that it concerns Judah and Jerusalem.
In chapter xi:11, 12, the prediction becomes more definite.
“And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set His hand again the second time to recover the remnant of His people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea. And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.”
Comment upon a passage so explicit should be superfluous. I will ask you only to note that the prophet declares the restoration here predicted to be the “second;” that it cannot refer to the partial restoration under Ezra and Nehemiah, from the Babylonian captivity, because, first, it is not a deliverance from Assyria merely, but the regathering of a world-wide dispersion, and second, because both Israel (the ten tribes) and Judah are gathered. Ezra and Nehemiah, as is well known, led back only a remnant of Judah with a few Levites.
In chapter xvi:1-3, a very important point of detail, henceforth always insisted on, is added, viz., that the restoration is to be to “their own land.”
Observe, also, the exaltation which is in this passage predicted for long dispersed and persecuted Israel. By no accommodation of language can this be interpreted of the restoration at the end of the seventy years of Babylonian captivity. So far from the house of Israel ruling over their oppressors then, or having rest from fear, Nehemiah describes the condition of the remnant as most miserable:
“Behold we are servants this day; and for the land that thou
gavest unto our fathers, to eat the fruit thereof and the good thereof, behold, we are servants in it” (Nehemiah ix :36).
Turning now to Jeremiah, and passing over much that is pertinent, J quote from his prophecy, xvi:14, 15:
“Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall ne more be said, the Lord liveth that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt, but the Lord liveth that brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the lands whither He had driven them; and I will bring them again into their land that I gave unto their fathers.”
An advance will be noted here. The restoration is now compared with the deliverance out of Egypt, and the assertion is made that, marvelous as was the exodus, this final work of God for Israel will so transcend it in majestic power that “it shall no more be said, the Lord liveth that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt.” Here again, also, I must ask you to note that the restoration is from a world-wide dispersion, and the “land” is identified beyond peradventure as “their land that I gave unto their fathers.” Not the United States, not England, not any land where the Jews may have temporary peace and prosperity, but Palestine.
It is impossible seriously to pretend that this prediction has been fulfilled in any sense. Who, for example, ever referred to the return to Palestine under sufferance of a heathen king of less than fifty thousand men of Judah as an event so supremely wonderful as to efface by its greater splendor the amazing events of the exodus?
The same comparison is repeated in Jer. xxiii:7, 8.
The restoration is repeatedly the theme of Jeremiah, the “prophet of tears.”’ It would seem that, called to a most sorrowful ministry, it pleased Jehovah to comfort him by oft repeated visions of the final glory of Israel.
I can but refer, without pausing for comment, to the magnificent visions of Ezekiel, of which this event was the theme. Characteristically he often sees it associated with Jehovah’s purifying judgments, and to him was committed the prophetic picture of Israel restored, and in the land, rather than of the process of the re-gathering.
“And I will bring you out from the people, and will gather you out of the countries wherein ye are scattered, with a mighty hand, and with a stretched out arm, and with fury poured out. And I will bring you into the wilderness of the people, and there will I plead with you face to face. Like as I pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so will I plead with you, saith the Lord God. And I will cause you to pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant. And I will purge out from among you the rebels, and them that transgress against Me: I will bring them forth out of the country where they sojourn, and they shall not enter into the land of Israel; and ye shall know that I am the Lord. For in mine holy mountain, in the mountain of the height of Israel, saith the Lord, there shall all the house of Israel, all of them in the land, serve Me; there will I accept them, and there will I require your offerings, and the first fruits of your obligations, with all your holy things..I will accept you with your sweet savor, when I bring you out from the people and gather you out of the countries wherein ye have been scattered; and I will be sanctified in you before the heathen. And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall bring you into the land of Israel;into the country for
“the which I lifted up mine hand to give it to your fathers” (Ezk.
XX 134-38, 41-44). The vision of the valley of dry bones is self-explanatory, if the context be noted. The bones are expressly declared to be the “whole house of Israel,” at the precise time when they shall say: “Our hope is lost.” Do you wonder that I think of this vision when I hear some of my Jewish friends say “we no longer look for the Messiah!’ What is it but the fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prediction that before the wonderful restoration the national hope would be given up — ‘“our hope is lost!” The vision closes with this explicit promise:
“And David My servant shall be king over them; and they ail shall have one shepherd; they shall also walk in my judgments, and observe My statutes, and do them. And shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob My servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt; and they shall dwell therein, even they and their children, and their children’s children forever; and My servant David shall be their prince forever.
“Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them, and I will place them and
multiply them, and will set My sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore.
“My tabernacle also shall be with them; yea, I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
“And the heathen shall know that I the Lord do sanctify Israel, when My sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore” (Ezk. xxxvii:19-28).
Here you will not fail to observe the reference to the restoration of the Davidic monarchy; the promise that the ten tribes and the two shall no longer be divided into two kingdoms, and that the earthly center of the worship of God shall be in Jerusalem. Rome is in a very real sense the religious capital of the world now. When Israel is restored Jerusalem will be that center.
Passing now to the book of Daniel we find, appropriately in a prophet whose ministry was among Gentiles (and in some sense to Gentiles), a view of the whole course of “the times of the Gentiles.” Indeed, we have in this book two views, both in vision form. Nebuchadnezzar, the Gentile monarch with whom the “times of the Gentiles” began, sees the history of Gentileism in the vision of the great image, the monarchy colossus. Daniel interprets the vision. The head of gold is Nebuchadnezzar himself; the breast and arms of silver represent the Medo-Persian empire which followed Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian kingdom; the thighs and body of brass, the Grecian empire of Alexander; the legs of iron, the Roman world-empire. The feet and toes, “part of iron and part of clay,” are explained to mean “ten kings that shall arise,” who shall be confederated under an imperial head (the “Beast” of Revelation xiii), and the statement follows that “in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom.” That, as we shall see in the address on the millennium, is the Davidic kingdom of Ezekiel and the other prophets. Gentile domination, then, begins with Nebuchadnezzar and goes on until Israel is restored.
The second monarchy vision was that of Daniel. To him Gentile domination over the world in these four successive forms was revealed in four wild beasts. That gives the character of the Gentile power, as the monarchy colossus gives its duration and outward magnificence. What is that character? What, it may be asked in answer, is the character of wild beasts? Rapacious, selfish, bloodthirsty. Did you ever think how, unconsciously, we have accepted God’s mark? Every Gentile power has for its symbol a beast or bird of prey! The lion, leopard, eagle. Never the lamb or the dove. Ah! my sh when God puts his mark on wefan 1h sticks. i
This is Daniel’s story. It is-only in his last chapter (xii:1) that Daniel sees full national deliverance, and then in connection with the “Great Tribulation:
“And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation) even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one
that shall be found written in the book.”
In the other prophets please read Joel iii:1, 2, 17-21, and Amos ix:11-15; Micah iv:1-7; Zephaniah iii:16-2o.
Zechariah* presents the result rather than the fact of the restoration, though this is explicitly stated. He teaches clearly what is elsewhere in the prophets abundantly intimated, viz.: that not until after the restoration of Israel will the Gentile nations be converted to God. Read Zechariah Vili :20-23. 7
It now remains to show that the restoration of Israel is a New Testament as well as an Old Testament doctrine.
In the lament of Jesus Christ over Jerusalem (Matt. xxiii :37-39), he expressly limits the time of her treading down till she shall say: “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.” In Luke xxi:24, he uses the following language:
“And they shall fall by the edge of the sword and they shall be led away captive into all nations; and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles until the time of the Gentiles be fulfilled.”
This is not a mere implication, but an explicit assertion, which limits the time of the treading down of Jerusalem.
In Acts xv:14-17, the apostle James, speaking for the church, declared the divine program for this dispensation and the beginning of the next.
The order of events is clear. God is now taking out of the Gentiles a people. After that, according to James’ quotation from Amos, the Messiah will return, and re-establish in his own person the Davidic dynasty, after which will occur the conversion of the Gentiles. Zechariah shows us that this conversion will be through Jewish agency.
The eleventh chapter of Romans is an elaborate discussion of the relation of Israel to this dispensation in view of the promises to the fathers, It is expressly asserted that God “hath not cast away his people,” that “blindness in part
*For a complete exposition of Israel’s coming restoration as revealed through Zechariah, see “Studies in Zechariah,” by A. C. G, hath happened to Israel until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in,” and that “all Israel shall be saved” by the appearance of the Deliverer out of Zion.
It would be interesting to trace in connection with this fascinating theme the time indications, thus demonstrating, as I could easily do, that all the signs indicate the solemn nearness of the regathering. I would like, also, to show the indissoluble connection of this restoration with the presence and direct agency of David’s divine Son, the Messiah; but here I will stop, not adding the prophetic proofs that this people, so long “scattered and peeled,” “afflicted and tossed with tempest,” the true ‘Niobe of nations,” shall yet be the first of nations and not the last, majestic and holy, the channel, as always, of light and blessing from God to the nations of the millennial earth.