My dear readers,

All Israel Shall be Saved!

Romans 11:25-32: “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. 26 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: 27 For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins. 28 As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sakes. 29 For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. 30 For as ye in times past have not believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief: 31 Even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy. 32 For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.” 

“Salvation is of the LORD” (Jonah 2:9) is a very blessed truth because no one would be saved if salvation is of man. Men squabble and are prejudiced. They base their judgment on personal relationships and lack objectivity in judgment based on truth and righteousness.

Take Israel as a case in point. How many of us would think like God regarding Israel’s rejection of Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah, where God said that now Israel is blind, but one day Israel will see? We would have written Israel off for her stubborn blindness in refusing to see Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ all these centuries. God gave the people of Israel everything since her founding to see Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of God who became the Son of Man to be their Saviour and the Saviour of the world. Yet despite giving them the perfect Word of God and many prophets to rebuke, warn and encourage them, they refused to listen.

God also gave Israel many prophecies regarding Christ’s first and second comings in the Old Testament, and when the prophecies of His first coming were fulfilled to the jot and tittle, Israel turned her back on the truth. For example, God prophesied in Micah 5:2 that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem Ephratah (because there were two Bethlehems), “But thou, Beth-lehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.” It was fulfilled according to Matthew 2:5-6: “And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet, 6 And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.” Micah’s ministry was around 750 B.C. Prophecies fulfilled precisely to their exact details are conveniently ignored by the Jews! Isaiah’s ministry began around 740 B.C. and he prophesied in Isaiah 7:14 the virgin birth of Christ, “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” God fulfilled this prophecy when Jesus was in Bethlehem born through the virgin Mary (cf. Luke 1:26-38).

We cannot overestimate the tragic nature of their rejection after the LORD has so patiently and with much long-suffering cared for Israel, including giving them numerous prophecies throughout Israel’s history of Christ’s first coming as the suffering Messiah. When the fullness of the Gentiles comes, i.e., a reference to the time of the end of the seven years of the Great Tribulation, God will save all of Israel (cf. Rev 7:1-8). Israel will comprise 144,000 Israelites, but it is not limited to them only. For the first time in the history of Israel, all Israelites and many Gentiles with them will be believers of Jesus Christ. This “Christian” nation will enter the Millennium and rule with Christ for 1,000 years (cf. Rev 20:1-6). God has made this covenant with His people to take away their sins. The eyes of Israel will be open and will see Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah, just as Gentiles today have done.

God bestowed on Israel a burdensome and daunting task when He called Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to be part of the messianic line and to be a holy witness to a world that is dying in sin. God prepared Israel to succeed with all He provided them via the dietary, civil and religious laws and His presence through the Tabernacle and, later on, the Temple. Sadly, Israel failed on many occasions, as the Old Testament reveals. Her failure culminated in her rejection of Jesus Christ at His first coming as the suffering Messiah, as Isaiah 53 delineates, which Israel rejected, as clear evidence of their spiritual blindness.

For the sake of the gospel, Israel’s rejection of Jesus as the Messiah disqualified them from preaching the gospel to the rest of the world. They have been made enemies of God today. Gentile believers are now the witnesses of Christ. However, for their fathers’ sake, i.e. God’s promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (note the plural for “father”), God says Israel remains His beloved because of the election of grace. Israel, like all of us, does not deserve to be chosen by God. By His grace alone, He chose us for salvation. The “gifts and calling of God are without repentance” (Rom 11:29), i.e., God will never change the spiritual gifts and call to salvation. Once He has decreed them to be so, they will undoubtedly come to pass.

Gentiles were unbelievers and did not believe God, yet by the grace and mercies of God, we are His children today. God says that we obtained mercies through Israel’s unbelief. It means using the argument of “the lesser to the greater” to teach us God’s mercies. Gentiles were enemies of God and became children of God, whereas Israel was the people of God who now have become the enemies of God for the gospel's sake. One day, God will make Israel His people again with the same mercy that He made Gentiles His people. If Gentiles who were so much more profound in blindness for millenniums than Israel has been all these centuries, are saved by God in His great mercy, how can He not save Israel according to this same great mercy?

Thankfully, God has not given up on Israel because of His mercy. God foreknew everything about Israel from her inception to the end when He will save her, when the fullness of the Gentiles comes. As children of God by His mercies, let us not be proud or arrogant but be grateful and thankful that we can be God's witnesses wherever He sends us and for as long as He gives us life.