Gentiles in Israel's God's Kingdom

By Philip Blom

The categorical statement in Romans 11:26 that "All Israel will be saved," represents the climax in Paul's painstaking explanation to Gentiles believers in Christ that they haven't taken Israel's place in God's heart. The Jews were still the people he had created to be his special people. Their not accepting Jesus as their Messiah, didn't disqualify them from that special place. He started the explanation by asking in Romans 11:1 "....Did God reject his people?" He then went on by answering the question himself: "By no means! I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew [chose from the beginning].

Paul continued by indicating that God will always preserve a righteous remnant from among the Jews for himself, that serves him.

Romans 11:2 Don't you know what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah--how he appealed to God against Israel. "Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars; I am the only one left, and they are trying to kill me". 4 And what was God's answer to him? "I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal. 5 So too, at the present time (First Century AD) there is a remnant chosen by grace. 6 And if by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace. 7 What then? What Israel sought so earnestly it did not obtain, but the elect did. The others were hardened.

To motivate his statement that the majority will be hardened, he quoted Isaiah's prophecy about it:
Isaiah 29:9 Be stunned and amazed, blind yourselves and be sightless; be drunk, but not from wine, stagger, but not from beer. 10 The LORD has brought over you a deep sleep: He has sealed your eyes (the prophets); he has covered your heads (the seers). 11 For you this whole vision is nothing but words sealed in a scroll. And if you give the scroll to someone who can read, and say to him, "Read this, please," he will answer, "I can't; it is sealed. 12 Or if you give the scroll to someone who cannot read, and say, "Read this, please," he will answer, "I don't know how to read. 13 The Lord says: "These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men. 14 Therefore once more I will astound these people with wonder upon wonder; the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish.  

Complementary to Isaiah's prophecy of this blinding, Paul then went on to quote what king David had to say (prophetically in Psalm 69) about those who were going to cause the Messiah to suffer.
Romans 11:9 And David says: "May their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them. 10 May their eyes be darkened so they cannot see, and their backs be bent forever.

Note that Paul didn't say that the hardened majority had been cut off, or needed to be replaced by others from others nations who did believe. Some Gentile Christians of Paul's day, nevertheless, obviously believed that God was done with the Jews. For that reason he addressed the matter in Romans 11:11:
Again I ask: Did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all! Rather, because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious. 12 But if their transgression means riches for the world, and their loss means riches for the Gentiles, how much greater riches will their fullness bring.

Paul, however, took great pains to explain that Gentile believers must not think that they have replaced Israel, that Jews who accept Christ become part of them (being Gentilized). And this is still generally very erroneously thought by Christians today. This misconception is to a large extent based on scriptures in which God stated that he was done with the Jews. But in no instance in the Bible is  this type of statement by God not followed by a retraction a little further on. The following is a typical example:
Isaiah 29:1 Woe to you, Ariel, Ariel (Jerusalem), the city where David settled! Add year to year and let your cycle of festivals go on. 2 Yet I will besiege Ariel; she will mourn and lament, she will be to me like an altar hearth. 3 I will encamp against you all around; I will encircle you with towers and set up my siege works against you. 4 Brought low, you will speak from the ground; your speech will mumble out of the dust. Your voice will come ghostlike from the earth; out of the dust your speech will whisper. 5 But your many enemies will become like fine dust, the ruthless hordes like blown chaff. Suddenly, in an instant. 6 The LORD Almighty will come with thunder and earthquake and great noise, with windstorm and tempest and flames of a devouring fire. 7 Then the hordes of all the nations that fight against Ariel, that attack her and her fortress and besiege her, will be as it is with a dream, with a vision in the night--8 As when a hungry man dreams that he is eating, but he awakens, and his hunger remains; as when a thirsty man dreams that he is drinking, but he awakens faint, with his thirst unquenched. So will it be with the hordes of all the nations that fight against Mount Zion.

The question therefore needs to be asked, "Where then do the Gentile believers fit into God's scheme of things if they haven't replaced Israel?" This in view, firstly of God's eternal covenant with the Jews, stated again and again, for example:
Jeremiah 31:35 This is what the LORD says, he who appoints the sun to shine by day, who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar--the LORD Almighty is his name. 36 "Only if these decrees vanish from my sight," declares the LORD, "will the descendants of Israel ever cease to be a nation before me.

Secondly, his passion to restore Zion.
Isaiah 51:2 Look to Abraham, your father, and to Sarah, who gave you birth. When I called him he was but one, and I blessed him and made him many. 3 The LORD will surely comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; he will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the LORD. Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of singing

And thirdly the special significance Isaiah had shown the Messiah was going to have in relation to the physical restoration of Israel and the return of the Jews to possess their inheritance.
Isaiah 49:7 This is what the LORD says--the Redeemer and Holy One of Israel--to him (Jesus) who was despised and abhorred by the nation, to the servant of rulers: "Kings will see you  (Jesus) and rise up, princes will see and bow down, because of the LORD, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you. 8 This is what the LORD says: "In the time of my favor I will answer you (Jesus), and in the day of salvation I will help you; I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant (a token and pledge) for the people (Israel), to restore the land and to reassign its desolate inheritances. (Living Bible: The Lord says, "Your request has come at a favourable time, I will keep you from premature harm [by resurrection from the dead] and will give you as a token and a pledge to Israel, proof that I will reestablish.

Notice how the Messiah's suffering and time of glory are mentioned in the same breath in verse seven as if his first and second coming is not going to be separated by at least 2,000 years - if his return is as imminent as many Jews and Christians think. This same ignoring of Isaiah 54 goes on to show that Israel will be restored physically - as if nearly 2,000 years had not passed between the two events. For example:
Isaiah 54:6 The LORD will call you back as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit--a wife who married young, only to be rejected," says your God. 7 "For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back. 8 In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you," says the LORD your Redeemer. 9 To me this is like the days of Noah, when I swore that the waters of Noah would never again cover the earth. So now I have sworn not to be angry with you, never to rebuke you again.

Click here to see Kenneth Copeland's testimony about the Gentile's sharing in the promise to Abraham