Hypocrisy #6: Israel = the church

A teaching, in this series, concerning the “hypocrisy of false words”, should not omit the classical-church view that the church is ‘spiritual Israel’. Where Scripture speaks about the glorious future of the people Israel and the promised land, we should, according to this view, think of ’the church’. In other words, when they read Israel or Jerusalem, they mean the church. This procedure they follows only if it concerns blessed announcements, but when it concerns announced curses and judgments, they are taken as being for Israel… It is this theological belief that has dominated ecclesiastical thinking, since the time of the church father, Augustine (430AD). How did it come to this? When the Jewish nation, in the first century of our era, “disappeared off the map”’ and Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed, Christians lost sight of Israel. After all, God had set this people aside (Rom.11). When in the days of Emperor Constantine (beginning 300) the persecution of Christians came to an end and Christianity became the state-religion, the idea developed that the Kingdom, that had been announced by Israel’s prophets, had in the meantime become reality. Judaism had definitely succumbed, and see, Christendom now ruled the world. In other words, what ever was promised to Israel by the prophets was now being fulfilled to the church. This is how the doctrine of “spiritual Israël’ gained popularity. With this, the church stole the promises that were given to Israel, and appropriated for herself the role assigned to Israel. Completely in line with this, Christianity adopted various Jewish features in her religious life. The temple became a church building, there came a priestly-class (clergy) with blessing-formulas and vestments, the ten commandments became the Christian rule for living, the Sabbath became the Sunday, circumcision became baptism, and so on. That God’s grace-gifts to the people of Israel (“theirs is the glory and the covenants and the legislation and the worship and the promises”; Rom.9:4) are irrevocable, the church denied by imagining herself to be Israel. This is not only theft, but also a failure to recognize and appreciate what is for her, namely, the teachings of Paul, the apostle and teacher of the nations. During recent decades, this centuries-old role playing is being challenged. Earlier, the church could assume her false identity, because of the downfall of the Jewish nation and also claim that the West had been “Christianized”. Whole tribes were driven into the river in order to come out of it as baptized Christians. But this role is now a basket case. The West is no longer the Christian Occident. The church is now confronted with a people that they had written off. Since 1948, there is a Jewish state, that since 1967, has had Jerusalem as its capital. And almost daily, this little country seems to be the pivot of world politics. In Scripture: Israel = Israel and Jerusalem = Jerusalem. With that nation, with that city and with that country, before long, God will resume His work,, by establishing His Kingdom on earth. God, in Scripture, means what He says. “The hypocrisy of false words” (Israel = the Church) will then be, definitely and publicly, declared to be wrong and evil.

Delen: