When You Wanna be Left Behind?

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When You Wanna be Left Behind?

In Defense of the Faith
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Wendy Wippel

The apostle Paul, in Romans, spends three chapters explaining that Israel's failure to recognize their Messiah did not at all negate God's promises to His chosen people.

Paul said emphatically, in fact, that at some future point, "all Israel will be saved”.

The big question? Does "saved" mean physical or spiritual? The answer? Both.

There's a fair amount of confusion (and a long history of it) regarding the passage in question (Romans 11:25-26), which (in NKJV) says, specifically, this:

Quote :: "For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved", as it is written: “The Deliverer will come out of Zion, And He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob; For this is My covenant with them, When I take away their sins.” (Romans 11:25-27)

It's the "all Israel" part that perplexes a lot of people, with one author (Jason Staples) observing that Paul's "confident assertion was impenetrable" and that his further explanation was "a cure that was worse than the disease." Another commentator (Lee Irons) calls the question "highly controversial".

So what exactly does Paul mean? How is Israel defined? All those genetically Israel?

All those spiritually Israel? All Jews during a certain time period? Are they saved from defeat at Armageddon? Are they saved for eternity? And how is all Israel saved?

From the commentaries I looked at, the proffered opinions could be divided roughly into four camps:

The "ecclesiastical view” sees the reference to "all Israel" to be a metaphorical reference to the church (a popular viewpoint, because most of the "church" today believes Israel has been replaced, in general, by the church and has inherited all of Israel's promises.

Lee Irons’ paper, termed a “Non-Millennial” interpretation of Romans 11 (meaning he’s thrown prophecy out of his equation from the get-go), states that, in his opinon,

Quote :: “. . .careful exegesis of the Greek words and syntax of vv. 25-26 leads objectively to the conclusion that Paul has literally redefined the term “Israel” to refer to the New Testament church by arguing that God’s irrevocable promises to Israel are fulfilled by means of the salvation of both Jew and Gentile in the church age.”

In other words, the church is now Israel, and those “all saved” are those, either Jew or Gentile, that respond to the Gospel in this church age.

This premise is partially based (very loosely) on a statement Paul made earlier in Romans (9:6) that implies that Gentiles have become part of Israel. (We have, if we’ve claimed their Messiah as our own. But we’re still just grafted in.)

The "total national elect view” thinks that all of the elect Jews (the ones that receive salvation) will be saved, like the Gentiles, by the Deliver that comes out of Zion. This view depends on the fact that some versions translate the Hebrew as:

Quote :: "Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, 26 and in this way all Israel will be saved. As it is written: “The deliverer will come from Zion.”

By the numbers, the translators of most current versions of the Bible seem to hold this view. This view essentially believes that "all Israel" refers to everybody that ever has or ever will be saved by faith in Christ (both Jew and Gentile).

But the verse puts "all Israel will be saved" after "the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.

So that dog won’t hunt.

Their sins will, obviously, be taken away by the Messiah, but that's not what the verse is saying. We know that because the verses that precede this passage are not talking about spiritual salvation through the Messiah but about the Messiah’s deliverance through military conquests. (And Greek grammar involved that Israel will be saved in accordance with their promise of a Deliverer.)

The two-covenant view thinks the Jews will have a separate covenant that lets Jews be saved outside of Jesus and irrespective of any response to the Gospel.

Krister Stendahl, former Bishop of Stockholm and a proponent of this explains that, since Paul says that all Israel will be saved but doesn't specify that they are saved by accepting Jesus as the Messiah, the Jews must be saved by some other means than Jesus. Of course, the sentence that follows, “The Deliverer will come out of Zion, And He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob"; should make it clear where their salvation comes from. As do a couple hundred other verses.

But I digress.

The eschatological viewpoint at least recognizes the bulk of prophecy in support of a mass conversion of the Jews at the tribulation; but opinions still differ as to whether “all Israel will be saved" really means that every individual Jew will be saved, or whether the phrase is just an idiom used to euphemistically refer to the nation as a whole. James D. G. Dunn, a fan of this view, says that,

Quote :: “all Israel will be saved”… must mean Israel as a whole, as a people whose corporate identity and wholeness would not be lost in the event there were some (or indeed many) individual exceptions".

All means all and that’s all all means? Didn’t we all learn that on the playground? The thing is we can avoid the cacophonous confusion of commentaries by just taking the Bible seriously.

Like II Timothy 2:16:

Quote :: Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

And the first step is to, instead of cherry-picking verses; see what the Bible says, comprehensively, about the subject. And when we do that, what God meant when He said “all Israel will be saved” becomes pretty clear.

First of all, Paul makes it clear in Romans 11:1 that God will save His people;

Quote :: “I say then, has God cast away His people? Certainly not! … but that same of Israel will be saved but some will not: Even so then, at this present time there is a remnant according to the election of grace. … Israel has not obtained what it seeks; but the elect have obtained it, and the rest were blinded. (Romans 11:1, 6-7)

Some are blinded, and some are not. Let’s move on. The promised salvation of Israel is described in lots of other passages, one being Jeremiah 50:

Quote :: "I will bring back Israel to his home, And he shall feed on Carmel and Bashan; His soul shall be satisfied on Mount Ephraim and Gilead. In those days and in that time,” says the Lord, “The iniquity of Israel shall be sought, but there shall be none; And the sins of Judah, but they shall not be found; For I will pardon those whom I preserve. Jeremiah 50:19-20

Did you catch that? He will pardon those whom He "preserves". After the fullness of the gentiles has come in, at the end of tribulation.

He will pardon those who He preserves through the tribulation.

An apparently little recognized resolution of the apparent conundrum in Romans 11:25-26, but one, which is, actually, reflected in a good number of other verses, starting with one from the Lord’s own mouth in Matthew:

Quote :: "Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake. ….13 But he who endures to the end shall be saved." (Matthew 24:9,13)

The Hebrew word translated "preserve" here is the word "sha'ar". And if you investigate sha’ar on Blue Letter Bible you can find (in one place) how that word is translated in other verses: those who survive, those who remain alive, those who are left as a remnant, those who are spared, those who remain. And one more:

Those who are left behind.

And they got left behind by a process also not hidden, but specified in Scripture. They “passed under the rod”:

Quote :: I will bring you out from the peoples and gather you out of the countries where you are scattered, with a mighty hand, with an outstretched arm, and with fury poured out. And I will bring you into the wilderness of the peoples, and there I will plead My case with you face to face. Just as I pleaded My case with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so I will plead My case with you,” says the Lord God. “I will make you pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant; I will purge the rebels from among you, and those who transgress against Me; I will bring them out of the country where they dwell, but they shall not enter the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am the Lord. (Ezekiel 20:34-38)

(A metaphor that relates to Leviticus 27:32, in which sheep are “passed under the rod” to determine which belonged to God.)

And the rebels? Why do they not enter the promised Messianic Kingdom? God speaks redemption to them, but like those in Jerusalem that Jesus addressed in Luke 19:41, they did not know what would bring them peace, and thus it is hidden from their eyes.

They are frm that point blinded, and on them the fury or God in verse 34, above, is poured out. And that’s described in metaphors all through the scriptures, mostly the metallurgical metaphor of something being refined in a crucible:

Quote :: “He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver; He will purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer to the Lord An offering in righteousness.” (Malachi 3:3)

Quote :: “The word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Son of man, the house of Israel has become dross to Me… therefore behold, I will gather you into the midst of Jerusalem. … so I will gather you in My anger and in My fury, … I will gather you and blow on you with the fire of My wrath, and you shall be melted in its midst … then you shall know that I, the Lord, have poured out My fury on you." (Ezekiel 22:17-22)

And there are lots, lots, lots of parallel passages (some use the agricultural metaphor of winnowing); I’ll let you explore on your own.

Ultimately, that’s how Zechariah 13:8-9 is fulfilled:

Quote :: And it shall come to pass in all the land,” Says the Lord, “That two-thirds in it shall be cut off and die, But one–third shall be left in it: I will bring the one–third through the fire, Will refine them as silver is refined, And test them as gold is tested. They will call on My name, And I will answer them. I will say, ‘This is My people’; And each one will say, ‘The Lord is my God.”

Each one. All Israel, because God saves those whom He preserves. The remnant that remains.

The ones left behind. The sheep that, passed under the rod of tribulation, are counted as God’s own, because His sheep hear His voice. And they call on Him, and He answers them, and He brings them into the bond of the covenant.

That’s what Paul meant when he said that, after the fullness of the Gentiles had come in, “all Israel will be saved”. All of them, because they are the only ones that remain.

That wasn’t so impenetrable, was it?

http://www.omegaletter.com/articles/articles.asp?ArticleID=7868

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