Dear Friends,

There can be no serious doubt in the minds of Bible students that God judged the first century Jewish people because of their rejection of Jesus as their Messiah, as God Incarnate.  However, there are multiple ideas regarding the nature and extent of that judgment.  It is my belief, as outlined in this week’s study, that the judgment was on that specific generation.  Admittedly that single generational judgment set the stage for centuries of consequences.  We should distinguish the consequences of human behavior from the results of divine judgment.  In this case I believe the conduct of one generation, coupled with God’s severe judgment against them for their rejection of Christ, cast the die for all subsequent generations of Jewish people.

Will there be a return in large numbers of Jews to Christianity near the Second Coming?  I don’t know, and, at best, any prediction of such a return involves an uncomfortable degree of speculation.  My primary objection to the form of teaching that emphasizes this idea has more to do with a lack of balance than with the core issue in question.  When advocates of an en masse Jewish embracing of true Christianity so emphasize Jewish restoration that they leave the question of Gentile believers in doubt, they lose what I believe is a true Biblical balance on their idea.  Be they Jew or Gentile, New Testament teaching consistently affirms that every regenerate elect person who embraces the truth of Christ and His finished work shall be blessed alike in the gospel.  Jew or Gentile, cultural status from slave to emperor, New Testament teaching consistently affirms that one thing—and one thing only—should be regarded in our consideration of the blessings of the gospel.  That one thing is a person’s standing in the Lord Jesus Christ, along with that person’s cognitive embracing of the truth of the gospel.  If a person embraces the truth of the gospel regarding Jesus, His full deity, His life, death, resurrection, and victorious ascension, affirming His finished work, Scripture affirms that the gospel’s rich blessings flow to such believers with no secondary consideration regarding their race, culture, or other past and now irrelevant factors in their lives.  God has not—and shall not—rebuild the “middle wall of partition” that once separated Jews and Gentiles in public worship ( Ephesians 2:14 and context).

May we celebrate our oneness in Christ,
Joe Holder

Blindness in Part

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. ( Romans 11:25 )    

            God never excuses human pride and arrogance, particularly in the revelation of His gospel.  The mystery of Biblical truth is so profound that anyone who claims to have all the answers and to know all the mystery exemplifies incredible self-deceit.  It has been my personal observation over some fifty years that the more a person claims to have such infinite knowledge in the gospel the more he manifests his superficial ignorance of Biblical truth.  The men I’ve known who demonstrated in their lives their spiritual depth in Biblical teaching stood in genuine humility before God’s amazing Book and its equally amazing revelation.  

            How would you describe “…blindness in part…”?  We might reasonably interpret the term in one of at least two ways.

1.         Blindness fell on most of the Jewish people living in the first century, but not on all of them.  After all, Paul and the other apostles were Jews, as were many of the early believers in that first generation of New Testament churches.  Those Jews who refused to acknowledge Jesus as God Incarnate and as their promised Messiah and Savior fell under judicial blindness.  The blindness which fell on them was not arbitrary, but it was the result of God’s righteous judgment against they “willing ignorance” of the truth, the living, breathing truth ( John 14:6 ) that lived among them and taught in their synagogues.  Among them were some unbelieving elect; Paul refers to this fact in Romans 11:28 .  

2.         Blindness fell on first century Jews in judgment of their rejection of Christ, and remains, but at some future time many Jews, many of God’s elect among Jews living at that future time, will turn from their blindness and embrace Jesus and the truth of the gospel.  Although modern dispensational teaching generally embraces this idea, it is a very “young” error,(1)  the idea of a large number of Jews embracing Christianity in the last days of time is one of several historically affirmed beliefs in the Christian community from early in the history of the faith.  The general theme of this teaching is that near the end of time a large number of Jews will embrace the truth of the gospel, indicating that this era of judicial blindness has ended and that the Second Coming is near.  Advocates of this view rely heavily on our study passage for their belief.  

While I do not embrace the second view presented here, I do not object to it on any significant theological grounds.  I believe it is rather speculative, but not theologically alarming.  It tends to ignore Paul’s concise definition of a Jew as he used the term in the Roman letter ( Romans 2:28-29 ).  It also tends to ignore the clear Biblical truth that Jesus asserted to unbelieving Jews in Matthew 23:39 .  

For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. ( Matthew 23:39 )

Whatever racial or cultural makeup the future end-time church of believers may contain that church will never exclude believing Gentiles (non-Jews as the term appears in the New Testament).  Nor will it demote them to an insignificant role.  Advocates of the second view often become too enthused about Jewish restoration and logically ignore any Gentile presence in the future imaginary restored Jewish era of the New Testament age.  Thus they effectively reinstate the middle wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles, something that inspired New Testament writers fiercely reject ( Ephesians 2:14 ).  If advocates of this view presented a balanced cultural concept of believing Jews and Gentiles worshipping God together in that era, they would present a more balanced view of Scripture.  Jew or Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, New Testament teaching renders both ideas irrelevant to the culture of the Lord’s New Testament church, so why should we attempt to recreate a different church culture for a hypothetical end-times era?  

            Another fallacy of the Jewish restoration concept appears in our consideration of the character of God’s judgment.  On occasion in the Old Testament God imposed multi-generational curses.  The sins of the fathers were indeed visited on their children for up to ten generations.  However, the Old Testament examples of this curse typically involved specific roles as with Judah’s tribe being judged for Judah’s sin ( Genesis 38 ) so that God would allow no member of Judah’s tribe, his offspring, to serve as king in Israel for ten generations ( Ruth 4:17-22 ).  

            This limited judgment against Judah should be considered along with God’s final and irrevocable temporal judgment against those who knowingly turned from Him and His ways never to be restored to the place of blessing.  Lot and his offspring serve as just one of many similar examples.  In 2 Peter 2:7-9 Peter clearly defines Lot as a “just” man, but his sinful course terminates any Biblical record of his subsequent family, a pattern that appears more than once in the Genesis record of families.  If I read the Genesis account of Lot ’s life, particularly his last moments recorded in Scripture, I do not like the man or consider him to be a righteous man.  However, the Holy Spirit directed Peter to give us another insight into Lot , despite his utter failure to maintain that righteous walk.  We could hardly say that Lot “persevered” in holiness!  

            It is my belief that Paul’s language here finds stronger support in the first of the two explanations above than in the second.  At the very time Paul wrote his letters the Jews of whom he wrote were under divine judgment, the blindness of which he wrote.  From that generation forward God’s blessings in the gospel fell, and continue to fall, individually on those who believe the gospel and walk the walk of faith, regardless of their past race or culture.  In the New Testament era race or past culture are wholly irrelevant.  All are one in Christ.  All equally stand in need of a Savior.  And God blesses all of His regenerate elect children alike, race or culture notwithstanding, on the condition of their belief in His Son and the related truth of the gospel.  For God to revert to racial preference in gospel blessings would be for Him to take a step backward into the Old Testament form of worship and administration, something God never does.  

            I believe history will prove that the “fullness” of Gentile acceptance of the gospel was more dramatic in the first century than it has ever been since that time.  How many times since then have three thousand people embraced the gospel truth from a single sermon?  How many times have preachers and future believers received divine revelations from God that brought them together so that a rigid Jew preached to a Roman Gentile soldier and he, along with his family, immediately embraced the gospel (as in the tenth chapter of Acts with Cornelius)?  

            This point raises a notable observation.  While the New Testament book of Acts is the only divinely inspired history text of the New Testament era, and it thus reports all the pertinent historical facts accurately, the book of Acts is not in all points to be viewed as the norm for subsequent New Testament church practice.  Acts records a unique era of transition and of rich Providence establishing and affirming the truth of the gospel for all future generations till the Second Coming.  New Testament believers today should look to the subsequent epistles for authoritative instructions regarding their beliefs, expectations, and practices of Biblical Christianity.  For example, God does not perpetuate the phenomenon of tongues as that “gift” was practiced in Acts.  Contrary to the belief of contemporary believers in “tongues,” the spiritual gift of tongues in the book of Acts had to do with God providing immediate translation of one known human dialect into another ( Acts 2:7-11 ).  A literal reading of this passage affirms that God miraculously provided direct and immediate translation from one known dialect into other known dialects so that the apostles spoke in their native Galilean dialect, but people from some seventeen different dialects all heard in their native tongue.  New Testament speaking in “tongues” is not uttering nonsensical and admittedly mystical gibberish.  

            The first generation of unbelieving Jews who brought divine judgment in the form of blindness onto themselves doomed their offspring to the consequences of that blindness.  From that era forward till the Second Coming, the blessings of the gospel flow freely to any and all regenerate elect who embrace it and walk by faith, regardless of their race or cultural origin.  

            Jesus’ warning to the unbelieving leaders in Matthew 23:39 not only reveals God’s rejection of unbelieving Jews in the first century, it also reveals the basis of God’s gospel blessings to His children of all races and cultures for all future times till the Second Coming.  In recent years I have been blessed to baptize people into the faith of the gospel from the Orient, from India , as well as a man who was born and raised in a Jewish home.  They all embraced the gospel alike.  They all enjoy the blessings of the gospel as one.  God did not manifest any form of preference to one over the other.  This, I believe, is the point that Scripture consistently makes regarding the spread of the gospel in the New Testament era, a dynamic that I believe Scripture affirms shall continue without material alteration till the Second Coming.  Regardless of your racial or cultural past, regardless of your past conduct, what is your present view of the Lord Jesus Christ?  In the gospel He gives His children the same promises and blessings.  Claim your blessing!  

(1)  Dispensational eschatology was first taught by J. N. Darby in 1827.  It has no relationship to historical premillennialism that was believed early in the history of Christianity.  Both on historical and Biblical grounds, this late arrival makes dispensationalism too late to be an authentic Bible truth.