6
THE REDEMPTION OF THE JEWS AND KINGDOM BLESSINGS What then? Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded (According as it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear;) unto this day. And David saith, Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumblingblock, and a recompence unto them: Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see, and bow down their back alway. I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy. 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 fulness? (Rom. 11:7-12).
The theocentric focus of this passage is God's providential administration of Israel: Old Covenant Israel and New Covenant Israel. It raises a secondary issue: God's providenial administration of the Jews in between the demise of Old Covenant Israel and their incorporation into New Covenant Israel.
Separation and Integration A continuing theme in Romans is the separation of Christians from the covenant-breaking world. This raises a question that Paul deals with in the first two chapters in Romans: On what basis can separated Christians be part of the general culture? His answer is two-fold: common humanity and common general revelation. All men are made in God's image. They have all been given common revelation. They see nature, and nature testifies to God (Rom. 1:18).(1) There is also a common judicial revelation: the work of the law written on all human hearts (Rom. 2:14-15).(2) Because of their shared humanity in Adam, Christians and non-Christians can cooperate. All men possess a common revelation in nature and a common understanding of God's ethical requirements. Covenant-keepers and covenant-breakers are covenantally separate, but mankind is still united, almost as competing half brothers are united, Paul preached in Athens: a shared father. God, he said, "hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation" (Acts 17:26). Also, the dominion covenant that God made with Adam is still binding (Gen. 1:26-28). It still unites humanity.
In Romans 9-11, but especially 11, Paul raises a related issue: the separation of the Jews. The Old Covenant separated Jews from gentiles. The New Covenant separates Christians from non-Christians. But what of the disinherited (Matt. 21:43) sons of the Old Covenant? The Jews were still a political force when Paul wrote to the church in Rome. At the Jerusalem council, the church had formally broken with the "taste not, touch not" aspects of the Mosaic law (Acts 15), but a final break with the Old Covenant did not take place until A.D. 70, when the temple was destroyed by soldiers in the victorious Roman army.(3)
What of the covenantal separation after A.D. 70? Paul did not know when this separation would come, but he knew that it would be soon. The Old Covenant order would soon perish, he taught (Rom. 13:12).(4) Were Jews then going to be dealt with by God as just another covenant-breaking people? There would be only two kinds of people, as always: covenant-keepers and covenant-breakers. But would there be covenantal distinctions among covenant-breakers? Would the Jews, as covenant-breakers, be dealt with by God as a separate people, analogous to the way that He had dealt with them under the Abrahamic Covenant and those covenants that followed, which were all part of one covenant: the Old Covenant? If so, how could a clear-cut distinction be made between covenant-keepers and covenant-breakers?
This was another aspect of the separation-cooperation issue. The issue that Paul raises in Romans 11 is this: How will the church and Judaism interact in the future? Judaism would no longer be Old Covenant religion, for the Old Covenant was about to perish. After A.D. 70, Phariseeism triumphed over Sadduceeism, for the Sadducees had been associated closely with the administration of temple sacrifice. Judaism replaced the religion that Christians refer to as Old Covenant religion. The Jews recognized this change, for the temple was no more. Their religion had to change, and it did change.
Paul was writing before this final separation had taken place, perhaps a decade before Nero's persecution of the church in A.D. 64 separated the church from Judaism in Roman law.(5) Paul raised this question: What would be the future relationship between Jews and Christians? In asking this, as well as by answering it, Paul recognized that there would be a three-way covenantal relationship in history, at least until the conversion of the Jews: New Covenant, Adamic Covenant, and Jewish Covenant. The Jews would continue to be dealt with by God as a separate people -- separate from Christians, but also separate from covenant-breakers in general. Paul's teaching has complicated covenant theology by inserting a prophetic element into it.
Paul teaches in Romans 11 that there will be a three-way separation for an unspecified period of time. But, at some point in the future, this three-way separation will become two-way, just as it was before Christ's ministry. Jews as a separate people will be absorbed into the church. Jews will no longer be dealt with by God as a separate people.
God's Covenant People, Emeriti Paul speaks here of Jews as a covenantal, corporate entity. In crucifying Jesus, Jews had rebelled against God as a corporate unit -- nationally -- although not all of them did. Paul had been one of these rebels. Paul teaches in Romans 11 that Jews will someday be redeemed as a corporate unit, though not necessarily all of them.
The logic of Paul's argument rests on a temporal contrast between the ways that God deals with Jews as a corporate entity. The contrast is between how God dealt with the Jews in Paul's day and how He will deal with them in a future era. In Paul's day, a few Jews had been granted salvation by God, but most had been deliberately blinded by God. Paul writes that "God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear;) unto this day" (v. 8). As surely as God had hardened Pharaoh's heart, Paul says, so has He hardened the hearts of the majority of the Jews. Paul in this epistle had previously described what God did to Pharaoh. "For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy. For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth" (Rom. 9:15-18). The context of this discussion of Pharaoh was the blindness of the Jews in Paul's day.
What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory, Even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles? As he saith also in Osee [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. Esaias also crieth concerning Israel, Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved: For he will finish the work, and cut it short in righteousness: because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth. And as Esaias said before, Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we had been as Sodoma, and been made like unto Gomorrha. What shall we say then? That the Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith. But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumblingstone; As it is written, Behold, I lay in Sion a stumblingstone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed (Rom. 9:22-33)
There was another corporate entity involved: the gentile church. God had dealt with gentiles differently prior to Christ's advent. They were outside of God's covenant of salvation. This was corporate discrimination. Now some of them were being grafted into His covenant, Paul explains here. The question Paul raises is this: What of the future? Will God deal with redeemed gentiles differently at some point? Paul's answer is yes. God will bless them as never before.
Paul is using two sets of contrasts to make a point. The first contrast is between (a) Jews who were corporately excluded from God's kingdom in Paul's day, and (b) Jews who will be corporately integrated into the church in the future. The second contrast is between (a) those many gentiles who were corporately excluded from God's kingdom before the era of the church, and (b) redeemed gentiles, who will be corporately blessed by God in the future. If we do not acknowledge and then accurately apply the corporate aspects of both contrasts, we miss the point of Romans 11.
The Conversion of the Jews Paul in this chapter develops a unique argument. The Jews as a people have been cast aside by God, so that the gospel can come to gentiles as a people. The nation of Israel had long constituted God's visible earthly kingdom. In Paul's day, this visible kingdom was being transferred to a predominately gentile church, just as Christ had prophesied to the Jews: "Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof" (Matt. 21:43).
The Jews as a people are like a domesticated olive tree, Paul says. Its branches have been broken off, so that God can graft in wild olive branches.
And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert graffed in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree; Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee. Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that I might be graffed in. Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not highminded, but fear: For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee. Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off. And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be graffed in: for God is able to graff them in again. For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and wert graffed contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be graffed into their own olive tree? (Rom. 11:17-24).
God's goal here is two-fold: extending salvation to gentiles and extending unprecedented blessings to the church after the Jews as a corporate people are brought to saving faith. Paul uses a "how much more" argument. He is saying, "If redeemed gentiles have been blessed by God's cutting off of the Jews corporately, how much more will gentile Christians be blessed when the Jews are someday granted saving faith corporately by God's sovereign grace?" Paul says that it is unnatural that wild olive branches should be grafted into holes made by cutting off the natural branches. How much more natural than this grafting in of gentiles would be the re-grafting in of Jews? Far more natural. So, Paul says, gentile Christians should expect this re-grafting in to take place. Someday, Jews as a people will gain access to membership in God's kingdom once again. This will be unlike the situation in Paul's day, when a few Jews were entering into God's kingdom through membership in the church, but most were not.
The argument is not this: "Jews were cut off corporately for the sake of the gentile church, and in the future, individual Jews will be brought into the church, leading to great blessings." The reason why this is not Paul's argument is the fact that individual Jews were being brought into the church continually in his day. Paul knew this; he was one of them. There is a great change coming, Paul says: a drastic contrast from his day, which will produce unprecedented blessings for the church. What will this change be? The corporate conversion of the Jews, after the era of the gentiles' near-exclusivity in the church is complete, i.e., after the fulness of the gentiles. The conversion of the Jews as a people will mark the end of the gentile era of the church, when "the fulness of the Gentiles be come in" (v. 25).
Paul's point is, first, that God in his day was dealing corporately with the Jews: blinding their eyes. Second, that God will deal with them differently, but equally corporately, in the future. Someday, they will not be deliberately blinded by God for the sake of redeeming the gentiles. Jews will be given eyes to see. This will be beneficial for both them and the gentiles in the church. Conclusion: God retains in His prophetic plan a positive role for the Jews as a people. There remains one unfulfilled prophecy that must be fulfilled after the era of the gentiles has ended, but before the final judgment. Paul continues:
For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and wert graffed contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be graffed into their own olive tree? 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: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins. As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sakes (Rom. 11:24-28).
As with Job, who lost his wealth in order that he might learn some theology and then become even wealthier, so with the Jews. Individual Jews today are excluded from God's kingdom, except by abandoning their own people covenantally. In the future, they will join the church in such large numbers that there will be hardly and Jews remaining behind in their status today: members of a broken national covenant. They will come into the church en masse. Paul is arguing for the conversion of corporate Israel. John Murray comments:
If we keep in mind the theme of this chapter and the sustained emphasis on the restoration of Israel, there is no other alternative than to conclude that the proposition, "all Israel shall be saved", is to be interpreted in terms of the fulness, the receiving, the ingrafting of Israel as a people, the restoration of Israel from unbelief and repentance. When the preceding verses are related to verse 26, the salvation of Israel must be conceived of on a scale that is commensurate with their trespass, their loss, their casting away, their breaking off, and their hardening, commensurate, of course, in the opposite direction. This is plainly the implication of the contrasts intimated in fulness, receiving, grafting in, and salvation. In a word, it is the salvation of the mass of Israel that the apostle affirms.(6)
It is worth noting briefly at this point that the refrain, which has been taught for decades to students in dispensational theological seminaries, that covenant theologians have no place for corporate Israel in New Testament prophecy, applies accurately to continental Calvinists in the amillennial and Dutch traditions, but it has not applied accurately to Calvinists in the Scottish Presbyterian tradition. The Scottish Presbyterian tradition has been the dominant Reformed ecclesiastical tradition in the United States. William Hendriksen, a Dutch-American amillennialist, refers to this Scottish interpretation of the conversion of the Jews, which he does not accept, as the most popular theory.(7) Decade after decade, dispensational seminary professors have steadfastly ignored comments on the conversion of the Jews that appear in commentaries by Charles Hodge, Robert Haldane, and John Murray -- comments that refute the accusation that corporate Israel plays no role in the eschatology of covenant theology.(8)
Postmillennialism Romans 11 has long been viewed by Scottish Presbyterians as supporting postmillennialism. In the nineteenth-century commentaries on Romans by Hodge and Haldane, this view is presented clearly. In John Murray's 1965 commentary, the language is more guarded. The comments are less forthright. But Murray did acknowledge that an era of blessing for the church will follow the future conversion of the Jews. Had he wanted to defend an amillennial interpretation of Romans 11, he could have written, "This era of future blessings describes the post-resurrection New Heaven and New Earth." He did not do so. Instead, he wrote: " 'The fulness of the Gentiles' denotes unprecedented blessing for them but does not exclude even greater blessings to follow. It is to this subsequent blessing that the restoration of Israel contributes."(9) Even more forcefully, he wrote:
The 'fulness' of Israel, with the implications stated above, is presupposed and from it is drawn the conclusion that the fulness of Israel will involve for the Gentiles a much greater enjoyment of the gospel blessing than that occasioned by Israel's unbelief. Thus there awaits the Gentiles, in their distinctive identity as such, gospel blessing far surpassing anything experienced during the period of Israel's apostasy, and this unprecedented enrichment will be occasioned by the conversion of Israel on a scale commensurate with that of their earlier disobedience. We are not informed at this point what this unprecedented blessing will be. But in view of the thought governing the context, namely, the conversion of the Gentiles and then that of Israel, we should expect that the enlarged blessing would be the expansion of the success attending the gospel and of the kingdom of God.(10)
Murray kept returning to this theme in his commentary on Romans. "This restoration of Israel will have a marked beneficial effect, described as 'life from the dead'. Whatever this result may be it must denote a blessing far surpassing in its proportions anything that previously obtained in the unfolding of God's counsel. In this respect it will correspond to the effect accruing from the fulness of Israel (vs. 12)."(11) Murray presented a postmillennial interpretation of Romans 11 in the tradition of Scottish Presbyterianism and Answer 191 of the Westminster Larger Catechism, where Christians are told to pray for the conversion of the Jews.(12)
God's New Covenant kingdom operates in history. It was present even before Christ's crucifixion. Jesus said, "But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you" (Matt. 12:28). He repeatedly cast out devils. Then what about a future millennial era? How will it be different from today? Unlike today, large numbers of people will give Jesus Christ full credit for historical progress. There will be enormous progress in every realm of life, as there has been in our day, but most people will no longer attribute this progress to anything but Jesus Christ, who works through His redeemed people to extend His kingdom in history.
The question is: When will this awareness become widespread? The obvious answer is this: "after the conversion of the Jews." This may not be the correct answer, but given Paul's arguments in Romans 11, it is the obvious one. Those who reject this answer ought to suggest and then defend exegetically a better one. And it ought to be consistent with the rest of biblical prophecy, especially Isaiah 65:17-20, which prophesies an era of rejoicing by God's covenant people and the advent of long lives for all mankind (pro-postmillennial), and the parable in Matthew 13 of the tares and the wheat, which says specifically that no separation between them in history (the field) will take place until the day of final judgment (anti-rapture).
Economic Blessings
Will the blessings of the post-conversion world be limited to spiritual matters? Or will these blessings include economics? Paul does not say in this passage. What he says is that the blessings will be unprecedented: "how much more." God's casting away of the Jews has brought the gospel to the entire world. Paul wrote to the church at Colossae: "And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight: If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister" (Col. 1:21-23). His words are clear: "preached to every creature which is under heaven." These words were not meant to be taken literally. The gospel had not literally been preached to every worm, mosquito, and tiger on earth. Then what did Paul mean? He meant that the gospel had been carried across the earth. It had spread fast. Representative people in the tribes of man had heard it. The kingdom of God was no longer bottled up in Palestine.
The Jews were steadily losing the kingdom of God, which was being transferred to the church. The final transfer came in A.D. 70.(13) Did this kingdom involve economic blessings? Of course. The positive sanctions attached to corporate obedience were in part economic.
Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store (Deut. 28:4-5).
The LORD shall command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thine hand unto; and he shall bless thee in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. The LORD shall establish thee an holy people unto himself, as he hath sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the commandments of the LORD thy God, and walk in his ways. And all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the LORD; and they shall be afraid of thee. And the LORD shall make thee plenteous in goods, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers to give thee. The LORD shall open unto thee his good treasure, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and to bless all the work of thine hand: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow. And the LORD shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath; if that thou hearken unto the commandments of the LORD thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe and to do them (Deut. 28:8-13).
Why should covenant-keeping gentiles expect anything less than this? Why would the transfer of the institutional kingdom of God from national Israel to the church strip away the desirable economic benefits that had been offered to the nation of Israel? Why should these universally acknowledged economic benefits not be part of God's inheritance to His church, the heir of His earthly kingdom? There are no good biblical reasons.
God had told the Israelites that corporate obedience to His specially revealed law would bring them corporate economic blessings. Paul says here that the Jews someday will corporately come to Christ and thereby re-enter the kingdom through membership in the church. Why should this corporate act of covenant-keeping not re-establish their access to the original covenantal promises given to them through Moses? Why should their temporary removal from membership in the visible kingdom during the era of the gentiles forever remove from them the blessings that had been available to them under the Mosaic Covenant? Paul is prophesying that their conversion will produce unprecedented blessings. If these blessings do not include the realm of economics, then these blessings will not only not be unprecedented, they will be inferior. The Mosaic Covenant will then be shown to the world as having provided greater blessings to ancient Israel than the New Covenant provides to covenant-keepers, even during its most glorious time in history as a result of its combined gentile-Jewish membership. In short, "how much less." This is not what Paul is arguing.
Jealous Jews What will be the great motivation for the Jews to convert corporately to saving faith in the work of Jesus Christ? Paul says it will be their jealousy regarding the gentiles as members of the church. "And David saith, Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumblingblock, and a recompence unto them: Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see, and bow down their back alway. I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy" (vv. 9-11). But this jealousy in Paul's day had not produced their conversion. Rather, it had produced their wrath against the church. Paul himself had been an active agent of this wrath.
There must someday be sufficient jealousy that the Jews, as a nation, will conclude, "The kingdom inheritance that was once ours has been transferred by God to the gentiles. We must affirm our faith in Christ and abandon hope in the restoration of kingdom blessings apart from Christ." This has not happened. Most Jews for almost two millennia believed that their messiah would come and restore dominion to them as a people. This faith began to wane only after Napoleon gave Jews full citizenship after 1800. Jews subsequently divided into three main camps: Orthodox,(14) Reform, and Conservative. Reform Jews have sought worldly success through participation in the economic life of Western capitalism, but they have increasingly been assimilated into the non-Christian gentile world. Jewish birth rates have dropped in the second half of the twentieth century. Intermarriage with gentiles in late twentieth-century America steadily decreased the number of young Jews who were raised to observe their ancient traditions.(15) Most of the adult Jews who do still observe a few of the more famous traditions do so mainly for cultural reasons, not religious reasons, which produces a far less powerful commitment. The trappings of religion are not a long-term corporate substitute for a shared faith in a confession that specifies God's dealings with man.
An unprecedented situation has developed since 1948: Jews today live mostly in the United States and the State of Israel. In the United States, Reform Jews are steadily being assimilated into the gentile culture. They constitute the majority of Jews, so Jews are disappearing statistically. In the State of Israel, Jews are vulnerable to a military defeat. It will take only one such comprehensive defeat to threaten their survival as a people. There are very few European Jews in reserve, either in urban ghettos or rural ghettos, as there have always been before. From the days of the Babylonian Empire until the European phase of World War II began on September 1, 1939, they were never threatened as a people by persecution by any one nation or alliance of nations.(16) Now they are. Never before have they deliberately concentrated their numbers geographically. Now they have. Their decision to return to Palestine after World War II has placed half of their eggs in one basket.
Intermarriage and humanism's assimilation processes are systematically reducing the number of eggs in the other basket: the United States. Their greatest threat is not persecution; it is acceptance, but on this basis: "Welcome aboard! Don't maintain a separate economy. Take advantage of the division of labor. Here is a scholarship. Go to college." But in college, the rule is clear: "Leave your religious presuppositions behind." Pluralism is Judaism's greatest enemy, the one which Jews have not successfully resisted as a people.
The same temptation faces Christians. Jews and Christians alike have been seduced by pluralism. The lure of higher education and participation in the general economy and culture has offered Christians and Jews a Faustian bargain -- not directly with the devil but indirectly: with the humanist kingdom of man. Jews are still not strongly tempted to become Christians, but they are strongly tempted to abandon Judaism. They are not yet jealous of Christians. They are jealous of humanists. The humanists have lured them out of Judaism by promoting a lie: "A religious person can be equally pious even after he has abandoned his religion's supernatural assumptions about God, man, law, sanctions, and the future. Supernatural religion, when stripped of its kingdom in history, is still equally valid." This has been an enormously successful lie.
Millions of Christians in the United States have resisted this lie by turning their backs on the benefits of participation in the general culture. Those denominations and congregational associations that have experienced the fastest growth through evangelism are least likely to have members who plan to attend the best universities or attend graduate school. Those denominations whose members are more likely to attend the best schools have been growing more slowly or actually shrinking since 1926, the year after the Scopes trial.(17) The cultural choice that took place in 1925 -- Darwin vs. the Bible -- led to a self-conscious rejection by most American fundamentalists of any desire to exercise leadership in the general culture. The humanists' offer of participation on humanism's terms was less effective among fundamentalists, who concentrated on expanding their numbers. The fundamentalists made people this offer: "Come out from among them!" Millions of Americans did so, 1926-1976.(18) Whenever American fundamentalists have sought political influence, they have done so far more self-consciously as members of a non-loyal opposition. The recent political/ethical issue that has made this non-loyal positioning ethically mandatory in the eyes of millions of Christians has been the Supreme Court's legalization of abortion in 1973. There is no middle ground of compromise between a dead baby and a live one. It was the abortion issue, more than any other, that persuaded a minority of fundamentalists to adopt the slogan, "there is no neutrality." They do not really believe this, as their continuing opposition to biblical law indicates, but at least they now say it.
Jews today are not jealous of Christians. They are jealous of gentiles. Pluralism offers them the legal right to compete in the quest for the things of this world. They compete very well. Their problem is, they surrender their covenantal identities when they surrender their supernaturalism. As soon as they see success as the fruit of aggressive competition rather than the fruit of adherence to Talmudic tradition, they have abandoned the covenant of Judaism. They have done this by the millions, and they have justified this decision by telling themselves that to be a good Jew does not require personal faith in the authority of the Torah, the prophets, the Talmud, and rabbinical law. Yet these are what served as the core of Judaism after A.D. 70. What kept Jews together as a separate people were its claims regarding God's supernatural dealings with the Jews as a people, which involved, above all, a messianic future. Remove Jews' faith in a literal messiah, and Judaism becomes a cultural religion. Insert Zionism, and Judaism becomes a political religion. Political religions do not last for millennia. Neither do nations that rest on political religion.
Paul says that Jews will survive as a self-consciously separate people until the fulness of the gentiles arrives. This means that today's political-cultural Judaism cannot dominate Judaism indefinitely. Birth rates and intermarriage rates indicate that liberal Judaism has no future. Unless liberal Judaism does what liberal Protestantism has failed to do -- recover its lost growth -- Orthodox Judaism will replace liberal Judaism until the fulness of the gentiles.
Conclusion Romans 11 is an important eschatological passage. It tells us that an event must intervene before Jesus brings the final judgment. This event is the conversion of the Jews. God will someday redeem the Jews as a people, meaning that a large percentage of them will, in a brief period of time, abandon Judaism and convert to Christianity, which will vastly increase God's blessings on His church. Future positive sanctions on God's church are tied prophetically to God's special grace shown to the Jews as a people.
This conversion will be an act of corporate inheritance analogous to God's act of corporate disinheritance that was taking place in Paul's day. But there would be a difference. If the cutting off of the Jews corporately has brought the blessing of redemption to gentiles corporately through membership in the institutional church, how much more should gentile Christians expect when the Jews are at last brought back into the kingdom corporately through membership in the church? They should expect far greater blessings, Paul says -- far greater blessings than gentiles now enjoy as members of the church.
Footnotes:
1. Chapter 1.
2. Chapter 2.
3. An Israeli fringe group, Temple Mount and the Land of Israel Faithful Movement, is attempting to begin the rebuilding of the temple on the property of the Dome of the Rock, the Arab mosque in Jerusalem. The group sees this as prophetically necessary. www.templemountfaithful.org
4. See Chapter 11, below.
5. The date of A.D. 55 is common for this epistle. John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1959, 1965), I, p. xvi.
6. Murray, Romans, II, p. 98.
7. William Hendriksen, New Testament Commentary: Exposition of Paul's Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1982), p. 379.
8. When three Dallas Theological Seminary students in 1985 came to Tyler, Texas to interview me and Ray Sutton on videotape, the interviewer's first question was: "Why do you hold that God no longer deals prophetically with Israel?" When we both said that we believe that God will deal with corporate Israel before the final judgment, he told the student who was operating the video camera shut it off. Then he told us that they had been specifically taught that covenant theology, including Christian Reconstruction, denies any future to Israel as a people. I had made my position clear in my book, Unconditional Surrender: God's Program for Victory (Tyler, Texas: Geneva Press, 1981). He was stunned that he had been misinformed on this point, which he regarded as a central issue. I do not blame him.
9. Ibid., II, pp. 95-96.
10. Ibid., II. p. 79.
11. Ibid., II, pp. 81-82.
12. His postmillennialism was not acknowledged by most of his students at Westminster Seminary. This was because his lectures on systematic theology did not take a postmillennial position. In the spring of 1964, I audited his class in senior systematics, on eschatology, and his class on Romans 9-16. I noticed that he was presenting a postmillennial position in the latter class and an apparently amillennial position in the former. He did not take a preterist position on Matthew 24:1-34.
13. David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (Ft. Worth, Texas: Dominion Press, 1987).
14. Originally, "Orthodox" was a term of opprobrium applied by liberal, assimilating Western European Jews to Talmudic Jews in the early nineteenth century. The intellectual leader of the Talmudic Jews in Western Europe, Samson R. Hirsch, decided to accept the term and build on it.
15. Gary North, Inheritance and Dominion: An Economic Commentary on Deuteronomy, electronic edition (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1999), Appendix D: "The Demographics of American Judaism: A Study in Disinheritance."
16. During the war with Rome, there was a large community of Jews in Persia, descendants of those Jews -- a large majority -- who did not return to Israel under Ezra and Nehemiah.
17. Gary North, Crossed Fingers: How the Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1996), ch. 7.
18. In 1976, the Presidential candidacy of Southern Baptist Jimmy Carter lured fundamentalists back into the political arena as self-conscious Christians. When Carter turned out to be no different from other humanistic political liberals, Ronald Reagan's 1980 candidacy attracted large numbers of fundamentalists. After Reagan decisively defeated Carter, he retained the support of fundamentalists during his eight years as President. In private conversations with fundamentalist pastors, Reagan indicated that he believed in Christ as his savior, but he was never open about this. Prior to his 1966 election as Governor of California, he had attended Bel Air Presbyterian Church in the West Los Angeles area, whose pastor, Donn Moomah, was an evangelical.
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