The understanding of verse 26 of Romans 11 does not depend upon the verse 25 going before, but upon its own internal connection with the entire range of prophecy, and is to be considered not as an addendum to the 11th chapter of Romans but as the summation of three chapters of close reasoning, which in their turn express the New Testament and apostolic doctrine of prophecy.
It is surely a highly questionable theory which hinges so tremendous an issue upon such a slight procedure, and our criticism extends not only to the methods of our futuristic brethren, but to those of our friends who, while concluding rightly that the Israel mentioned in the verse is the spiritual Israel, the Church, make no attempt to prove their case by a thorough exposition of the text from Isaiah 59:20, which Paul makes the ground of his assertion: “And so all Israel shall be saved”.
This paper attempts to rectify that serious omission, and at the same time to present a clear and consistent interpretation of Romans 11.
THE TWO ISRAELS
AN EXPOSITION OF ROMANS 9 – 11
“The Christian Church being then the legitimate and proper continuation of Israel, to it must belong most of the promises which, superficially examined, are supposed to furnish a pledge of the future salvation of the Jews. They have already found their fulfillment in the victorious career pursued by the Church through all the past centuries, in its irrepressible tendency to spread out to the very ends of the earth, in the spirit of reformation by which it is swayed, and in the light which arises to it ever afresh out of the darkness. In a word these promises are being fulfilled every day before our eyes.
“It is a sad denial of the grace vouchsafed by God to His Church, to refer the glorious promises of Scripture almost exclusively to the future, not to be able to follow out the hidden traces of divine blessing, both in the past and the present, to fail to discern in the Church the true Israel, and in its place to dress up an Israel of the fancy, out of the Jews, to speak slightingly of the Church, and contrast it with that Kingdom of God which is first to come when the Jews are converted.
“This is one of the many subjective aberrations of the present day, which must vanish as soon as the Church has been awakened to a sounder estimate of its position and privileges. Indeed one might prophesy the downfall of these opinions from the circumstance of their late origin: they have against them the consentient voice of all the various sections of the entire Christian Church.
“A recent writer has said, ‘It is not to be denied that, for the Church as a whole, the Old Testament is of comparatively little use’. But then, by way of set-off we can console ourselves with the thought, that we are a community of heathens, and that is the necessary consequence of setting the Jews in the place of the Church of Christ. But the apostle teaches us that all scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness. The scriptures of the O.T. to which these words primarily refer must have been differently interpreted by him who could speak in such a way.”
Dr. E. W. Hengstenberg, Berlin.
“The Jews and the Christian Church”
(Edinburgh translation, 1860).
This celebrated theologian, whose strong sledgehammer blows pulverized the theological Rationalism of Germany a century ago, has been described by Dr. B.B. Warfield as, “The greatest Old Testament exegete of all time.” His searching words quoted above are all the greater rebuke to the specious prophetic interpretations current among evangelicals today, because in fact he was a friend of the teaching of a future (spiritual) restoration of earthly Israel. The present writer does not follow him there, but with all the greater readiness acknowledges the debt he owes to the mighty Biblical scholarship of this celebrated man whose name is almost unknown today in the land of his birth, though if they had given due heed to him, German rationalism would have been strangled in its cradle and a century of history would have taken a different course.
That God did not permit this to be so must be regarded as a judgment upon our age, but this does not excuse the evangelical expositor for ignoring the greatest treasure house of Biblical exposition available since the Reformation. We hear that an American agency is planning to reissue the whole of the English translations of Hengstenberg. This to us is a far more momentous event than the recent landing of men on the moon.
HOW STRANGE!
If we needed a defense for taking up this subject of prophetical interpretation we have it in the words of the great doctor above. How strange that WE should be regarded as disturbers of peace for protesting vigorously against the unscholarly and facile views of Biblical exposition today, when the entire evangelical world is in a state of acute decline after several generations of increasing ineptitude in the handling of the Word of God and after a brief era of gargantuan “Crusades” at the cost of millions of money, the net result of which is to leave the churches very much weaker than they were even ten years ago.
That we should have to explain ourselves to such an age as this, and defend ourselves against the charge of being disturbers of the peace (however false that peace may be) is to us a pathetic symptom of the sickness which prevails.
We have not sought this battle. Others have thrown down the gage. We have but taken it up, with much reluctance, but being persuaded that it is a task which has to be done, we intend with the help of God and the support of friends who long for the end of these days of famine, to press the battle to the gates.
THE EXPOSITION
PAUL’S PROPHETIC AGONY PROVES ISRAEL’S REJECTION
We now begin our exposition of Romans 11, but we commence at the natural beginning of the chapter, that is, with the first verse of chapter 9. This is where Paul begins, but it is not usually where our opponents begin.
The period commences with five intense verses in which Paul voices a mysterious agony over the rejection of the Israelitish nation. He could wish himself accursed from Christ, if his own rejection could bring about the salvation of his fellow-countrymen.
The attempts throughout history to make sense of this solemn exercise in the depths of the apostolic spirit have been mournful in the extreme. The simple truth has been overlooked. It is this: PAUL’S AGONY OVER THE REJECTION OF HIS PEOPLE WAS PROPHETIC IN ITS NATURE. Like the agony of Jeremiah in his 20th chapter, it was the direst possible indication of the divine purpose totally to reject and disinherit the unbelieving nation which for a thousand years had killed the prophets and stoned those sent unto them with the message of God. There was to be no respite in that rejection, NO RESTORATION OF ISRAEL.
The entire process of reasoning leading up to the words in the 11th chapter, “And so Israel shall be saved”, begins here. If Paul knew that within minutes of writing this description of his agony in which he was ready to surrender his own hope of salvation, his pen would be describing the exact opposite of Israel’s rejection, and even (according to our opponents) foretelling a future for Israel, so grand and glorious that it would not only excel all their previous history, but even dim the glories and the conquests of the Christian Church for the last 2,000 years, his distress was meaningless. He was wrestling with a phantom.
Is this what our friends’ wish the Christian Church to believe? They set up our great apostle as a mere man of straw, with an extravagant style of useless rhetoric. We repel the suggestion. Paul’s agony was the greatest of proofs against any restoration of the earthly nation of Israel and we challenge all comers to make sense of Paul’s statement by declaring otherwise.
Toward the end of this paper we have reason to refer again to this matter.
THE TWO ISRAELS
The intense sorrow of Paul for rejected Israel, his “kinsmen according to the flesh”, does not prevent him from declaring his confidence in the promises of God to Israel. But these promises, he tells us, were not made to the earthly nation as such, nor were they confined to any portion of that nation considered as worthy of the heavenly inheritance. The apostle introduces a totally new conception of Israel. Not all are Israel who are of Israel. Here are his words:
“Not as though the word of God hath taken no effect,
FOR THEY ARE NOT ALL ISRAEL WHICH ARE OF ISRAEL. (Romans 9:6)
Our readers will notice Paul’s use of the term ALL ISRAEL, and make a due comparison with that text in Romans 11:26, which our opponents regard as the keystone of their structure. “ALL ISRAEL SHALL BE SAVED” is their slogan, and they wave their banner, with that sentence upon it, in the faces of those who disagree with them, as though this were the end of all argument.
Alas for their confidence. We on our part breathe a hearty Amen, and declare, “All Israel SHALL be saved, but which Israel?” For Paul speaks of two Israel’s, the one of the flesh and the other of the spirit. “They are not all Israel which are of Israel”. The one is rejected and the other accepted. The one is blinded and other receives its sight.
The apostle goes on (in Romans 9) to enforce this conclusion by the analogy of Abraham’s two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. The former was as much the child of Abraham as was Isaac, though born of the Egyptian bondwoman Hagar, but the verdict of inspiration is:
Neither because they are the seed of Abraham are they all children: but, in Isaac shall thy seed by called. (Verse 7)
Paul is pursuing an allegory, as he did also when writing to the Galatians (Gal. 4:22-31). He is treating Ishmael as the representative of all Israel after the flesh, though in fact no Jew was descended from Hagar’s son. Isaac is put forward as the representative of all Israel after the spirit, though these include a stupendous majority of gentiles who in fact never descended from Isaac.
It is indisputable that this is the apostle’s meaning, for he explains himself in the next verse (verse 8):
THAT IS, THEY WHICH ARE THE CHILDREN OF THE FLESH, THESE ARE NOT THE CHILDREN OF GOD: BUT THE CHILDREN OF PROMISE ARE COUNTED FOR THE SEED.
As in the allegory of Galatians 4, so here the apostle Paul makes a total distinction between the Two Israel’s, based upon the PROPHETIC SIGNIFICANCE OF ABRAHAM”S TWO SONS. The one (Ishmael) represents Israel after the flesh, to whom no promises are made and who are not considered as the Seed of Abraham at all. The other (Isaac) represents Israel after the spirit or the true Church of the Redeemed, and of the Firstborn, who are written in heaven, and these – Jew and gentile together – are the true Seed of Abraham to whom the promises were made.
Nothing can shake this position which the apostle takes up, and it is a position fundamental to the gospel which Paul preached.
Our friends who triumphantly flourish the sentence, “And so all Israel shall be saved” as though this proves beyond argument that an earthly future of special privilege belongs to Jewry on the ground that they, the Jews, are the natural seed of Abraham to whom the promises have been made, had better be careful what they are about, for they are confusing flesh and spirit, and it is small wonder that in the process they deprive the Church of every significant prophecy in the Word of God and reduce the present status of the Church to that of a mere twilight episode in the purposes of God. A great eclipse to the Church is due (according to them) when the Jewish future will outshine all the triumphs of Christ’s grace during the last two thousand years (including Pentecost itself) as life exceeds death.
Mr. Hulse, in process of arrogating to the cause of the future restoration of Israel the vision of Ezekiel 37 (the Valley of Dry Bones) says, “The prophecy applies to a period richer and fuller in scope than that of Pentecost” (“Restoration of Israel” page 90). To these dangerous lengths do the futuristic and carnal interpretations of prophecy inevitably lead.
“ALL THE SEED”
But compare the argument of Paul in Romans 9 with what he has already declared in Rom. 4:16: “Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to ALL THE SEED; not to that only which is of the Law (i.e. the Jew), but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham who is the father of us all (i.e. Jew and gentile).” We wave THAT banner before our opponents and ask them to tell us if “all the seed” be not the “all Israel” which is to be saved.
Paul obliterates the distinction between Jew and gentile in the gospel, and makes it impossible thereby to re-establish that distinction without assailing the foundations of the gospel.
Test the Pauline doctrine where we will, we discover that “all the seed” and “all Israel” mean “the election of grace”. Romans 11:26 is no exception as we shall see when we come to it.
In pursuance of his argument the apostle next adduces (Rom. 9:10-13) the example of the birth of Esau and Jacob, the two sons of Isaac and Rebecca, and attributes the rejection of the elder son and the preference for the younger to an act of free election on God’s part. He is demonstrating two things:
1. That a further large and important section (Esau) of Abraham’s natural seed is separated from the Promise and rejected from the inheritance though they are as much the natural descendants of Abraham as any Jew ever born.
2. That the true seed is determined not by natural birth but by election, according to the free pleasure of a sovereign God and consists of all the redeemed, Jew or gentile.
Paul is proving much more than a distinction between the Israel after the flesh and the prophetic Israel. He is introducing the high doctrine of Eternal Election, and he is applying this doctrine not merely to a distinction observed amongst Abraham’s natural descendants (elect Jews and non-elect Jews), but to the Lord’s eternal choice of the entire body of the redeemed in all ages, whether before or after Abraham. This is clear from his conclusion in verse 24: “Even us whom he has called not of the Jews only but also of the gentiles.”
Paul views the whole panorama of redemption on one grand historic sweep. He adduces the example of Pharaoh to show the sovereign liberty of God in hardening the hearts of proud and impenitent men that they might fall into the destruction their sins have incurred, while at the same time, the judgment which falls upon them magnifies the power of God so that His Name is declared throughout all the earth.
Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. (Rom. 9:18)
Jacob is loved and Esau is hated (v. 13); Pharaoh is hardened; it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God who shows mercy (v. 16); let no man question the right of God to act as He does: Who art thou, O man, that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour and another unto dishonor…
So the argument runs, taking us into the transcendental regions of the eternal purposes of God, fixes in the Divine counsel and wisdom before the foundation of the world.
This eternal purpose of redemption, the redemption of the elect, chose not according to their will but according to the divine will, is the dominating object of all prophecy. This is the Kingdom of Grace and the Covenant of Grace which is the central feature of the Inspired Word. This is what God has all along been working to. In pursuance of this, He invades history, selects one man (Abraham) to become the channel through which the historic purpose must be worked out; selects and divides among his seed, according to His pleasure, rejecting this branch or that, in the vastness of His wise designs, giving no account of His matters, being answerable to none in any of His mighty and eternal acts, making of the same lump of human clay, some to honour and some to dishonor; rejecting entire segments and almost whole generations of Israelitish people, so that unless He had reserved to Himself a remnant according to the election of grace, the entire nation would again and again have become altogether as Sodom and Gomorrah. (Rom. 9:29).
THE JEW NOT ABRAHAM’S SEED
Perish the thought that the inheritance was to Abraham as such or to the Jew as such. The inheritance is to Christ and Christ alone. The seed is not the Jew but the Seed is Christ.
(Gal. 3:16 – “And to thy seed, which is Christ”).
In pursuance of this sovereign purpose to glorify Christ and give Him a seed in which He, the Eternal Son should be eternally glorified and satisfied (see Isaiah 53), the Father in due time sent the Son according to promise, to be the Saviour of the world (1 John 4:14). That means, God sent Christ not only to be the Saviour of one race of men who were the natural descendants of Abraham, but to be for salvation to the ends of the earth, in a Kingdom of Grace which should know no boundaries, ethnic or geographic, but be composed of an election of grace drawn from every kindred, tongue, nation and clime.
The idea that after an experiment in this realm God will return again for the working out of His purpose to glorify the Son, to the narrow limits of one nation composed of those who claim natural descent from Abraham, is abhorrent to the New Testament, and a total denial of the nature of the Kingdom Christ came to establish. By the same token it is abhorrent to the Old Testament prophets, when those prophets are correctly understood.
The Jew served a temporary purpose in the plan of the Sovereign God, being privileged to bear the ordinances, exhibit the covenant, and be the custodian of the Word of God, till the time when Christ should come. Never was the earthly nation a converted people. In no generation were there many of them that were the true children of Abraham. Nor is that the case today. The Jew in Palestine is for the most part an agnostic. The Word of God and the Kingdom of God have been taken from them and given to an elect nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. (Matthew 21:43).
Paul’s doctrine that the Jewish phase of the divine dealing has passed from the earthly nation to a new nation composed of Jew and gentile indifferent as to birth, and irrelevant as to genealogical descent, is reinforced by a series of quotations from the prophets. These quotations serve not only to show the validity of gentile salvation outside the law and the nation of Israel, but also to lay down
THE RULE OF PROPHETIC INTERPRETATION
That rule is the spiritualization of Israel into its final form as the Church of Jew and gentile. This is clear from Paul’s first quotation, which is from the prophet Hosea:
I will call them my people which were not my people; and her beloved which was not beloved. And it shall come to pass that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there shall they be called the children of the living God.
Rom. 9:25-26; from Hosea 1:10 and 2:23.
Pause, brethren, and see this mystery.
HOSEA AND SOLOMON’S SONG
Hosea has always been regarded as THE FIRST OF THE WRITING PROPHETS. There had been an interregnum since the great days of Elijah and Elisha who worked miracles but did not write books. Now there came, in the twilight years of the Dual Kingdom of Israel and Judah, when the two were hastening on to the awful calamities which befell them in the days of the kings of Assyria and Babylon, a period of tremendous prophetic activity. Great prophets were contemporary with each other, overlapped each other; one third of the Old Testament was written in a few generations during which the prophetic voice was never silent.
Hosea began where the Song of Solomon left off. Israel, the bride of the Lord is about to be beaten in the streets of the city (Song of Sol. 5:2-7). She wakens in the dark night of her soul to despise the voice of Christ. She wanders into the streets. The watchmen – the prophets of the Lord – find her and chastise her with words of solemn denunciation and warning. Her veil is taken away. That judgment overtakes her which is only a prelude to the greater judgment when in fact the Heavenly Bridegroom comes to earth, is despised and rejected, comes to His own but His own receive Him not, is crucified and slain, and through His death of deaths and glorious resurrection brings in a new order. The Church enters the full blaze of the gospel day. She is released from the bondage of dead works and identification with the rotting corpse of carnal Israel, and emerges from the tomb, raised again with Christ, a new and holy people, endowed with all the promised graces and mercies which the old Israel despised.
THE CHURCH IS THE LAWFUL SUCCESSOR OF ISRAEL: INDEED SHE IS THE TRUE AND ONLY ISRAEL THOUGH COMPOSED FOR THE MOST PART OF THAT ELECT SEED FROM THE GENTILES WHICH TRACES NO NATURAL DESCENT FROM ABRAHAM.
Her words are, “Doubtless thou art our father though Abraham be ignorant of us and Israel acknowledge us not.” (Isaiah 63:16)
HOSEA’S MARRIAGE THAT NEVER WAS
After Solomon in his mystic and mysterious Song of Songs, Hosea takes up the theme. He becomes in himself, the bridegroom, just as Solomon before him. He speaks in the name of Christ; is involved in marriage with a mystic women who is an adulteress. That woman is earthly Israel. The children of the adulterous wife, who are born to the prophet in spirit, are the descendants of Abraham according to the flesh. They are given the names Jezreel, Lo Ammi and Lo Ruhamah to denote their utter and final rejection. Jezreel, with slight modifications of the Hebrew orthography, is Israel, as anyone acquainted with the language sees at a glance. Jezreel is associated with the apostasy of Ahab, the destruction of his house by Jehu, and the appalling failure of Jehu’s house, now to be judge in its turn in the person of its last representative, Jeroboam II, who was on the throne at the time Hosea began to prophesy (Hosea 1:1). Lo Ammi means, as the chapter explains, “Not my people”. Lo Ruhamah is, “No longer mercy.”
The last two verses of the chapter are a vision of the true Israel expanded into a number which cannot be measured (Rev. 7:9). Paul spiritualizes this in Romans 9 and says it is the election of grace, Jew and gentile.
Let our opponents wrestle with this passage in Hosea. Let them ponder over the divine commentary upon it in Romans 9:24-26. Let them humbly face the conclusion, and accept the downfall of their prophetic edifice, for the Israel which is to be restored even as the sands of the sea for multitude is not the earthly Israel, but the heavenly, the Church of the Redeemed, Jew and gentile together, those who are contemptuously thrust aside by the earthly Israel as not being the people of God and not being in the field of the divine mercy.
For that, dear reader is the meaning of Hosea. And in our next issue, God willing, we intend to show it is the meaning likewise of that strange word of Ezekiel in his chapter 11, verses 15-20: a word which none of our opponents has even begun to understand and which we very much question whether they have even attempted to study, so eager are they to seize upon every text where Israel and Jerusalem are mentioned, and appropriate it to the rejected nation: ”SON OF MAN, THY BRETHREN, THE MEN OF THY KINDRED AND ALL THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL WHOLLY, ARE THEY WHOM……(the people of Jerusalem reject)”.
Hengstenberg warns us that the term “Israel” in Scripture is very subtle and may not be understood but by careful and painstaking study and spiritual receptiveness, which alas, most present-day commentators do not possess.
Before we leave Hosea, we take the opportunity of refuting the absurd theory that Hosea actually contracted a marriage – two in fact – which were in their nature adulterous. The marriage of Hosea to Gomer the daughter of Dibliam (1. verse 3) was in prophetic vision only. There was never a woman named Gomer. Her name and that of her father Dibliam contain a subtlety which is beyond most commentators. Gomer is Israel and Dibliam is Ephraim, and in the second chapter the visionary marriage of the prophet disappears altogether, and is lost entirely as it merges into the marriage of Jehovah with adulterous Israel.
Brethren, let us speak plainly. The adulterous wife is the earthly people. God breaks the marriage and divorces the wicked nation, and there appears in her place the true bride, the mystic Israel, the Church of the Redeemed and the Firstborn. Let us not haggle, but rejoice in the rapture of that sovereign grace which has made us His and made Him ours, forever and forever.
If our opponents would only discard their prejudices for a moment and consider in these terms the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out, they would discover the true wealth of the Word of God and preaching would be transformed. God’s people would no longer get stones for bread, or the front page of tomorrow’s newspaper as exposition of that divine revelation which the surface and literal theological are incapable of understanding.
PAUL AND ISAIAH
Paul now travels on through Isaiah, to assure us that it was always the subject of prophecy that Israel would be rejected as a nation, a remnant only of them saved, and the gentiles admitted in their room, to eternal salvation as promised through Abraham.
Hosea’s doctrine lays the foundation for all the writing prophets. His definition of Israel must be accepted as the key to all that the subsequent writers have to say upon the same theme. The Isaiah quotations at the end of the ninth chapter of Romans confirm the calling of the elect nation, Jew and gentile, on an equal footing, as the true Israel of God.
From these passages in Isaiah Paul teaches (verse 30-33) that the gentiles have attained to the blessing of free justification by faith, while the earthly Israel has fallen on the stumbling stone of Christ’s righteousness imputed to all who believe.
Our readers will observe how Paul proves everything by appeal to the O.T. Scriptures. Yet our futuristic friends tell us the Church is not found in O.T. prophecy! And even our “post-millennialists” endeavor to convince us, that in effect, Paul is an inspired meddler who puts the Church in where we ought to read “Jew”.
We travel on with the apostle through his 10th chapter, noting as we go how Paul disavows any hostile feelings towards unbelieving Israel and professes his prayerful concern in their salvation. But he forbids the error that the Jew has any precedence over the heathen in the matter of the grace of the God. On the contrary God is rich in mercy to all who call upon Him, for WHOSOEVER shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved (10:11-13).
He leaves the earthly people to ponder over the judgments of God in their rejection, by closing the chapter with references from the prophets the conversion of the gentiles, and the righteous condemnation of unbelieving Israel to whom God declares (as cited from Isaiah 65:2), “All day long I have stretched forth my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
All this is the prelude to the question which is proposed and answered in chapter 11: HATH GOD CAST AWAY HIS PEOPLE?
No, replies Paul, else how comes it that I a Jew, am converted? If Israel has been wholly cast away, I myself would be cast away with them. My individual salvation proves this great fact:
GOD HATH NOT CAST AWAY HIS PEOPLE WHICH HE FOREKNEW.
As clearly as it is possible for anyone to prove anything, Paul declares in his answer that THE ISRAEL WHICH IS NOT CAST AWAY IS THE ELECTION OF GRACE, AND THAT THIS IS THE ALL ISRAEL OF VERSE 26.
“Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace”. (verse 5).
Israel (the rejected nation) has not obtained that which he sought, BUT THE ELECTION HATH OBTAINED IT AND THE REST WERE BLINDED (verse 7).
The apostle uses the case of Elijah to prove that the true Israel always existed as a remnant, and not as a nation (verses 2-4). The nation was, and is, and always will be, composed on the one hand of those who are elected to glory, and on the other, those who are “blinded” (margin, “hardened”).
ISRAEL’S GRAVE
The hardening of earthly Israel because of unbelief is confirmed by quotations from Isaiah 29:10, and Psalm 69:22. God gives them the spirit of slumber that they should not see nor hear. Their table (that is, their Old Testament privileges, ordinances and promises) becomes a snare and a trap and a stumbling block to them. Thus was the unbelieving nation ensnared by its own privileges. They relied upon their birth certificates instead of repentance and faith. They proudly flaunted their national origin in Abraham – “We be Abraham’s children and were never in bondage to any man” (John 8:33). This their boast became their grave and will remain so, though every evangelical and futurist philosopher the world has ever seen, stand outside their tomb and shout down into the darkened vault the very texts of Scripture which put them there.
This is what our opponents have been doing all our lifetime and long before, and in the process have perverted the true study and understanding of Holy Scripture till it has become impossible for the most of our preachers to make any pretense at expounding the spiritual riches of the prophets.
Verse 11. Have they stumbled that they should fall?
That is, has God no other end to serve in the judgment which has overtaken them than that of their destruction? By no means, is the apostle’s reply. The product of their fall is the riches of the world. The removal from the program of God, of the special nation clause, has meant the opening of the door of grace on the grandest and most worldwide scale, to sinners of mankind everywhere.
“Through their fall salvation is come to the gentiles to provoke them to jealousy.”
This provoking to jealousy is not the provoking to emulation of verse 14, but is a judgment of God upon the willfully hardened as in chapter 10:19, “I will provoke you to jealousy by them that are no people and by a foolish nation will I anger you.”
HARVEST SHEAVES WITHOUT TEARS
Verse 12: Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the gentiles, how much more their fullness?
Our opponents make great play of this verse. They say it means that at some time yet future the Jews will be restored nationally to their former privileges, be converted as a nation, and as a consequence the gentile world will be enriched beyond anything that has ever taken place during the last two thousand years of Christian history. Mr. Hulse quotes Professor John Murray (a contemporary theologian for whom we have nothing but respect) as saying that ‘the fullness of Israel will involve for the gentiles a much greater enjoyment of gospel blessing than that occasioned by Israel’s unbelief... far surpassing anything experienced during the period of Israel’s apostasy…this unprecedented enrichment... and so forth.
Mr. Hulse himself goes on in great enthusiasm to say, “The prophecy applies to a period richer and fuller in scope than that of Pentecost.”
Now we have no hesitation in replying that the text says nothing of the sort. We go further, and say it is a shameful thing for any man to declare that the triumphs of faith and patience, of suffering and colossal achievement of the past 2,000 years of church history is going to be diminished into comparative insignificance by Jewish missionaries in a future time when by reason of a subdued or converted world, a golden millennium, a shacked devil and the crushing out from the earth of all dissent, blessing may be had without the cross and harvest sheaves without tears. What! Are the sufferings of the martyrs to be nothing beside the events of that easy time when according to the millennialists it is the evil doer (if any) who is going to suffer, and not the harried and persecuted believer?
“Greater enjoyment of gospel blessing,” writes Professor Murray. Really! And from the land of Samuel Rutherford and Robert McCheyne too.
What enjoyment of gospel blessing is there on this earth beyond beholding the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, which is the privilege of every believer now under the new Covenant of Grace? Is it numbers that will make the difference? But we refuse to believe that numbers of converts will make Christ more precious to the soul that leans upon Him now in days of famine. He whom our soul loveth comes in the nighttime as well as the day, and declares, “I am the Rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys”, and beneath his shadow we rest with great delight and find His fruit sweet to our taste.
No, we would not exchange our cross for any blessings upon earth without it, even though they be the millennial blessings of a world without thorns and hedges. THAT we shall soon enjoy anyway in a far, far better world. We would thank nobody for the easy time which our friends envisage in millennial world which even according to their theory, is still reserved for rebellion, death and flames.
But richer than Pentecost! It is that which makes us afraid to express ourselves too freely lest we say too much. What! All the labors of the apostle Paul and all the mighty spiritual music of the Beloved Apostle, John, to be eclipsed by the events of some coming age?
GOLD AND GODLINESS
Even the well-known connection between gold and godliness is not overlooked by our opponents. Mr. Hulse for example quotes with evident approval a saying of a certain T. V. Moore, “A general conversion of the Jews would throw an amount of wealth into the treasury of the Lord of which we now can have no conception…”
Again we only comment, “The Lord save us from this millennium, in which yellow bullion will bulk large in the economy of salvation.”
After all, Paul did it in an old coat, Peter never had any of the filthy lucre, and even John Wesley left little behind but those famous teaspoons.
But let us turn from these worldly involvements of our friends in money and numbers, and religion without crosses, to the true meaning of the verse.
It is small wonder, in the circumstances, that our friends should deprive the New Testament Church of every significant prophetical declaration of divine mercy and hand it all to the Jew, if, according to them, the coming days of Jewish dominance will exceed in ‘blessing’ anything known in the present era. At one time it was only the Jew who made this preposterous claim for himself, but now it is the gentile evangelical who says it for him.
Paul’s purpose is far otherwise. When Paul says, ‘How much more their fullness’ he is pointing not to a future race of Jews, but TO HIMSELF, as representing a part of that ‘fullness’ – a fullness then existing in his day; not something to be waited for till the end of 2,000 years.
His argument is, “If the national rejection of Israel has meant great blessing to the world at large, how much more blessing will it be when out of the wreck of Israel there comes a steady stream of Jewish converts, an election of grace to join the main stream of divine election flowing from the gentile world? Is this not indeed, Life from the dead?”
Verse 13: “…I magnify mine office”.
This statement by Paul proves that this is the true meaning of ‘their fullness’. Paul points not to a future generation of millennial Jews but to the elect remnant in Israel which was powerful then, and has endured in every generation since, and will to the end of time.
Paul presents himself to his hearers in this verse as the apostle of the gentiles, and magnifies his office therein, thus indicating the blessing bestowed upon the world by one Jew. His abundant labors, his fruitful ministry, his vast understanding of the mystery of God, his clear revealing of the gospel and his defense of gentile liberty against all the encroachments of sly Judaizers who crept in unawares to spy out and to destroy the peace and quiet of the churches by their Jewish pride and envy. This is THE FULLNESS of Israel coming into the gospel church. To this day we read the Holy Scriptures which came to us entirely through men of Israel whom Christ called and equipped and sent to establish the Church and lay its foundations in every land.
This is the riches of the world coming in through the “fullness” of Israel. We like it better than that load of contemptible bullion on which Mr. Hulse has his eye. We are tempted to say with the old prophet from Bethel when he followed the Men of God who was sent from Judah, and found his corpse lying at the wayside between the ass and the lion – “Alas, my brother…”
Let those who take a derogatory view of the Church History and give it an almost contemptible comparison with what may be expected when Jewry as a nation is converted, reckon with the labors of the apostle Paul. Let them come forward boldly and tell us that those apostolic labors will pale into insignificance beside the fabulous results of Jewish ministry in an age yet to come.
“SOME OF THEM” – NOT ALL