The Basis of the Gospel—Abraham’s Promise
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PRAISE FOR ONE KING
One King constitutes one of the best reads I have yet seen on this most critical issue. It has shown how the ancient promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with its three key divine promises, dominates the redemptive plan of God all the way through Scripture, showing at once the priority of sharing the Gospel with Israel and Israel’s call and election to bless all the nations of the earth. My only wish is that this book may fall into the hands of every serious Bible student and pastor. I highly recommend this book to the blessing of all who want to get the biblical story right.
—DR. WALTER C. KAISER, JR.
President Emeritus, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary
Whether we like it or not, until Jesus returns, the controversy of Zion is only going to increase in its relevance, prominence, and impact, forcing itself onto all of us. Understanding this, it is imperative that responsible Christians take the time to gain a solid understanding of the underlying biblical foundation of this controversy. Samuel Whitefield is one of the clearest thinkers on these matters. During an age when the writings of many Christians bring more fog than clarity, One King is a crisp breath of clean air.
—JOEL RICHARDSON
New York Times best-selling author, speaker, and filmmaker
Samuel Whitefield has written a powerful book on Israel and its destiny. He handles the Scriptures with accuracy and provides a very compelling overall framework. Those who struggle with new presentations that deny ethnic Israel an important place in the plan of God and its inheritance in their ancient Land would do well to read this book.
—DR. DANIEL JUSTER
Author and Founder, Tikkun International
Israel is mentioned over 2500 times in the Scripture. An improper understanding of this most important theme will lead to an improper understanding of Scripture. I highly recommend One King, as it will challenge the reader to grapple with God’s heart and plan for Israel’s past, present, and future.
—SCOTT VOLK
Founder, Together for Israel
Without a doubt there are historic and emerging controversies in the body of Christ surrounding the subject of Israel and the church, and writings like this are so helpful to God’s people during this hour! Samuel Whitefield is unafraid to dive into the tensions regarding Israel and the nations, while at the same time bringing clarity and confidence to the reader about the vision that Scripture gives for the people and the land of Israel. One King will inspire your heart and open your eyes to the invitation the church has in this hour to enter into the storyline of Israel’s salvation and redemption in our generation … exciting!
—JIM STERN
Lead Pastor, Destiny Church, Saint Louis
We are living in a time when the controversy concerning Israel and the destiny of the Jewish people is increasing. This is a subject with many conflicting sentiments and opinions. Yet Paul tells us that it is imperative for the church to grow in the knowledge of God by understanding God’s eternal plan (mystery) concerning Israel. Samuel Whitefield, with excellent skill and insight, makes the subject accessible and returns it to its proper context where it belongs—the gospel of the kingdom.
—STUART GREAVES
Senior leadership team, IHOPKC
Christians are increasingly being forced to ask the question of how they should relate to modern Israel through a New Testament and gospel-centered lens. That question requires us to understand how the New Testament understood Old Testament promises and the nature of the Kingdom of God. This question is increasingly inescapable and has serious implications for how we understand the mission of the church in our generation, especially the mission to the Muslim world. It is important that we get this issue right and that we take a gospel-centered approach, and this is one of the best resources I can recommend on the subject.
—DR. JOSHUA LINGEL
President, World Apologetics and Discipleship Institute Founder and President, i2 Ministries
ONE
KING
One King—A Jesus-Centered Answer to the Question of Zion and the People of God by Samuel Whitefield
Published by Forerunner Publishing
International House of Prayer
3535 E. Red Bridge Road
Kansas City, Missouri 64137
ihopkc.org/books
Forerunner Publishing is the publishing division of the International House of Prayer, which exists to partner in the Great Commission by advancing 24/7 prayer and proclaiming the beauty of Jesus and His glorious return.
© Copyright 2016 by Forerunner Publishing
All rights reserved.
This book or any parts of this book may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.
ISBN: 978-1-938060-35-9
eBook ISBN: 978-1-938060-36-6
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked (NKJV) are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked (NASB) are taken from the New American Standard Bible® (NASB), Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973,1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)
All emphasis in Scripture quotations is the author’s.
Cover design by George Estrada
Typesetting by Lala England
Printed in the United States of America
To the King who gave Himself for us when we were still His enemies.
May this work in some small way cause the nations to love Him more.
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Part 1
The Basis of the Gospel—Abraham’s Promise
1
God’s Promises to Abraham
2
The Progression of the Promises in the Old Testament
3
The New Testament Affirmation of the Promises
4
Abraham’s Promises Have Not Been Fulfilled
Part 2
The New Testament and the People of God
5
Israel’s Promises and the Body of Jesus
6
The New Testament, the People of God, and Israel
Part 3
Understanding the Election of Israel
7
Paul’s Dilemma and God’s Election
8
Israel’s Historical Challenge with God’s Election
9
The Challenge of Election
10
Paul’s View of Israel’s Election
Part 4
Israel’s Future in the New Testament
11
The Fulfillment of Israel’s Promises in the New Testament
12
Is AD 70 the End of Israel’s Story?
Part 5
The Kingdom
13
King Jesus
14
The King of Israel and the Nations
Part 6
The Church, the Jewish People, and the Modern State of Israel
15
The Church and the Jewish People
16
The Complexity of the Modern State
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
FOREWORD
The establishment of the modern State of Israel in the aftermath of the Holocaust produced theological shockwaves throughout the church. First, there was the theological shockwave of the Holocaust itself, since the mass slaughter of European Jews could not have taken place without centuries of “Christian” anti-Semitism in Europe. And it was replacement theology—the teaching that the church was the New Israel and that it had replaced the old Israel in God’s scheme of salvation—that opened the door to this plague of church-sponsored anti-Semitism. Second, there was now irrefutable proof that God’s promises for Israel remained and that the church had not, in fact, replaced Israel, since the Jewish people were now back in the land with their own sovereign state.
In the years that followed, culminating in 1967 with the Six-Day War and Israel’s recapture of the Old City of Jerusalem, it seemed clear to many Christians that God had indeed restored His people back to their ancestral homeland and that Old Testament prophecies were literally coming to pass.
But things are changing now. 1948 was a long time ago; even 1967 was a long time ago. Where is the culmination of God’s plan? If the rebirth of the nation of Israel is an end-time marker, why hasn’t Jesus returned yet? And since Israel seems to have as many shortcomings as any other nation, why should the church stand with Israel rather than with the Palestinians? Could it be that the rebirth of Israel really wasn’t such an important scriptural event? Could it be that Israel is just like any other nation, meaning that, while Jews can be saved like any other individuals, no national promises remain for the people of Israel as a whole? Could some form of replacement theology be true, be it called fulfillment theology or expansion theology or something else?
Through a careful and systematic study of hundreds of relevant verses, Samuel Whitefield comes to four irresistible conclusions: 1) God always keeps His promises; 2) there are promises that remain for national Israel; 3) God will fulfill these promises based on His righteousness rather than Israel’s righteousness; and 4) those promises to Israel include both national salvation and physical restoration to the land.
In a study of this kind where so much Scripture is discussed, readers might come to different conclusions about specific points of exegesis. But Samuel builds a devastatingly clear case because, in my judgment, the Word itself builds a devastatingly clear case, and it is the cumulative evidence of Samuel’s exegesis that I refer to as “irresistible.”
What I find particularly edifying about this study is: 1) the focus on Jesus—the One King of the title—in whom everything is centered; and 2) the recognition that God’s purposes for Israel include a massive harvest of Gentiles. Israel’s redemption is the redemption of the world, and Israel’s redemption—and identity and purpose and meaning—is found in Jesus the Messiah.
This book, then, calls every believer to recognize the importance of God’s purposes of Israel, explaining why there is such massive controversy over the Jewish people having their own state on their ancient homeland. And it reminds us that the battle is ultimately a spiritual battle, meaning that God wants the entire church to work together in prayer for Israel’s ultimate salvation, a salvation that ties in directly with the return to earth of that glorious King.
Samuel himself has spent many hours in prayer for Israel, and this book was birthed out of prayer. May this study stir the hearts of many believers, especially in this younger generation, to give themselves to prayer and intercession for the Jewish people as well, and may that intercession be built on the rock-solid theological foundations found in the pages that follow.
I echo the words of Paul that “all Israel shall be saved” (Romans 11:26)!
Michael L. Brown, PhD
As the redemptive story unfolds in the Bible, it sets our hope on a King and His kingdom. This kingdom is ultimately associated with a place—Zion. Zion enters the Bible as a small mountain in Jerusalem, a stronghold taken by David and subsequently associated with the City of David. Mount Zion in Jerusalem comes to be a symbol for the glory of David’s reign as a prophetic picture of a coming Messiah who will be King.
In the Psalms we find majestic descriptions of Zion that go far beyond David’s reign, and the glory of Zion’s future is set forth as the hope of the nation. After David’s reign, the prophets elaborate on this hope. They describe a future day when Mount Zion is the most glorious mountain on the earth and the dwelling place of God. Zion quickly becomes something far bigger than the small mountain David conquered. The glory of this future Zion becomes deeply connected with God’s work of redemption, and its future glory becomes one of God’s promises to the people of God.
With the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 and the subsequent Diaspora, the hope represented by Zion shifted primarily to the hope of heaven. With that shift the word Zion began to take on a universal meaning: a type of shorthand reference for God’s universal rule over creation. Because the predictions of Zion’s future glory are so grand, this shift seemed to make sense, and most Christians think of Zion in terms of the heavenly kingdom of God, as the concept of Zion became separated from its earthly beginnings.
Key to the question of how we understand Zion is the question of how we understand Israel. For centuries, the church has wrestled with the question of how she and “Israel” relate to one another. Throughout church history, most Christians have assumed God replaced Israel with her—with the church, that is—and God is no longer committed to a literal fulfillment of the promises He made to the Jewish people. Zion remained our hope, but Zion became divorced from Israel. However, a number of key events in the twentieth century have forced Christians to reconsider how we understand both God’s promises to Israel and His global mission that began after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem.
The first of these key events was the Holocaust. The Holocaust was one of those shocking events that challenge all our understanding of what it means to be human. As the historian Robert Wistrich said, “Staring into the Holocaust is like staring into an abyss and hoping it doesn’t stare back.”1 While the Holocaust is processed many ways, it is rarely processed theologically, but the reality is that it had immense theological implications. If God were “finished” with the Jewish people, then why, after two thousand years, was a madman’s attempt at their extermination one of the most defining events of the twentieth century?
The second key event was the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948. From its very beginning, the modern state has been a global controversy and has created a theological controversy, too. Though it is essentially a secular democracy, the fact that a Jewish Israel emerged after two thousand years of absence has caused the church to reexamine everything it thought about Israel and to ask serious questions about how modern Israel relates to ancient Israel, the Bible, and the modern church. In our generation, the controversy that began in 1948 continues to escalate.
The third key event was the expansion of the gospel throughout the nations to the point where, for the first time in history, it is possible that the gospel may be preached to every people group within our lifetime. The preaching of the gospel to every people is one of the key milestones in global missions (see Matthew 24:14; Revelation 5:9; 7:9). The fact that this milestone is now within reach forces us to examine the gospel mission in light of Paul’s conviction in Romans that the success of the gospel in the nations ultimately exists for the provocation of Israel and for her salvation:
So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means! Rather through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous. Now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean! Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them. For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? (Romans 11:11–15)
Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob.” (vv. 25–26)
If the success of the gospel in the nations is ultimately intended to bring salvation to Israel, how then do we understand the present condition of Israel and the ultimate aim of God’s mission to the Gentiles?
As the church has been forced to reexamine the relationship between Israel and the nations, there are serious questions that must be answered:
• How do we reconcile the promises made to the Jewish people with the expansion of the gospel to the Gentiles that is so clear in the New Testament?
• How does a modern, secular Israel—frequently referred to in terms of “Zionism”—relate to the saved Israel the Bible speaks about? Is there any connection at all?
• How do Old Testament promises relate to a New Testament church?
• Who are the people of God?
• How are the biblical promises of Zion fulfilled?
Because the Bible presents the kingship of Messiah in the context of Israel and her salvation, the emergence of modern Israel also raises a couple of related questions:
• What does it ultimately mean that Jesus is King both of Israel and the nations?
• How do we understand Jesus’ kingdom and its relationship to Israel?
• What does it mean to have a Jesus-centered view of Israel and of Zion?
More and more, believers across the earth recognize Israel is of great significance, not just in the past, but also in the present and the future. At the same time, many are wrestling with how to reconcile Israel’s importance with the real transitions that take place in the New Testament. The key to understanding this biblical tension is realizing that the first coming of Jesus did not fulfill most of the Bible’s promises. What His first coming did was secure those promises, making their fulfillment possible in the future. Many promises that the church assumed for generations were fulfilled are in fact promises that remain to be fulfilled in the future by the glorious return of Jesus. Examining all that this means helps us to understand what is meant by Zion and where our future hope really lies.
If we remove the artificial divide between the Old and New Testaments, we can be faithful and loyal to the gospel and the great transition the New Testament brings, while also being faithful to Paul’s exhortation that the gospel mission in the nations would ultimately end in the salvation of the Jewish people. When we view the Old Testament and New Testament together, we can both recognize and celebrate the unique election of the Jewish people and the offer to the Gentiles to be full members of the people of God, because Jesus is both the King of Israel and the King of the Nations.
To understand how Israel and the nations are joined in God’s plan, we have first to reexamine Old Testament foundations and recognize how deeply Paul’s gospel is rooted in the Old Testament. The Old Testament is not simply part of our history. It contains the theological foundations of the New Testament gospel. Not only is the Old Testament the foundation of our gospel, it ultimately declares specific promises that have not yet been fulfilled—promises that are driving where redemptive history is going.
As the crisis of Israel increases and the mission to every people group nears completion, it is going to become even more critical that the global church clearly understands both the original foundations of the gospel in the Old Testament that remain in force and exactly how the first coming of Jesus shifted the trajectory of redemptive history. In order to understand these two things, we have first to examine where Paul’s gospel begins in the Old Testament and then examine how the New Testament teaches the promises to Israel and the nations will be fulfilled by God’s King. The controversy of Israel, and of Zion, is not going away. We must have a Jesus-centered answer to Zion and the people of God.
1
R. S. Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust. (New York City: Modern Library, 2001), 18.
PART 1
THE BASIS OF THE GOSPEL—ABRAHAM’S PROMISE
GOD’S PROMISES TO ABRAHAM
GLOBAL CRISIS
Genesis 1 opens with the well-known phrase, “In the beginning,” as it begins to describe both what happened to put the earth in the condition it is in and how God intends to redeem the earth. After briefly describing creation, Genesis 1 through 11 sets the stage for God’s plan for world redemption. It tells us how sin and tragedy were introduced into the human experience. As time passes, we see the full effects of humanity’s sin, as humanity’s situation grows increasingly grim. Families are destroyed. Sons are murdered, and not long into the story, wickedness escalates so rapidly that God releases a global flood to stop its growth. Even after the flood, the earth is still left in a crisis because, while the flood swept away most of humanity, it was unable to resolve the issues in the human heart that caused the crisis in the first place. No leader, even Noah, ultimately is capable of redeeming humanity. The earth needs a new leader, a new “Adam,” to redeem and restore the human race.
Genesis 11 describes a pivotal event in early human history that serves to illustrate the human condition. While the flood is still a recent memory, humankind decides to set up a challenge to God’s authority on the plains of Shinar. Construction begins on a tower that is intended to give humanity access to spiritual power in an effort to challenge the One who flooded the earth. In this pivotal moment, God steps in and breaks the power of humankind by separating the people through confounding their speech. Thus begins the story of the nations of the earth.
However, the crisis of the nations is not the only story of Genesis. There is also a promise of redemption. Beginning with Genesis 3:15, God promises that Someone is coming who will redeem and restore the human race. The same God who creates the nations in Genesis 11, also promises ultimately to redeem them. To do this, God sets a plan into motion in Genesis 12, choosing one man who will become the father of one particular nation. He will use this man Abraham in a pivotal way in His plan to redeem all the nations.