The various stages of the Jewish nation throughout their chronological history: It began with Abraham. God called him to fulfill His plan. He blessed Abraham to be His servant and the patriarch of His chosen people. The covenant relationship began with Abraham and continued with his son Isaac, then with Isaac’s son Jacob and in the descendants of his twelve sons. They were the first Israelites chosen by God. The grandson of Abraham, Jacob, received from God the name Israel, in connection with the so-called “wrestling of Jacob”: “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.” (Genesis 32:28, KJV). God blessed them and their descendants and gave them the great and wonderful land of Canaan. How vast it is: Genesis 15:18-21: From the region of present-day Turkey a straight border line to the river of Egypt, from there to the river Euphrates, and thence directly back to the middle region of present-day Turkey, near the city of Hattusa, which was the capital of the Hittite kingdom in the time of Abraham. These, then, are the boundaries of Israel as set by the Bible. The blessing given by God to Abraham (Genesis 12:1-4; 22:15-18) continued in Isaac (Genesis 26:4) and then in Jacob (Genesis 28:14). At the end of his life Jacob blessed his twelve sons to carry out God’s plan (Genesis 49). From that time, about four thousand years ago, Israel has been God’s peculiar people, “the apple of his eye.” (Zechariah 2:8, KJV).
In the time of Jacob, because of famine, the people of Israel came into bondage in Egypt for about four hundred years. But under the leadership of Moses the people departed from there back toward their own land. “He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.” (Deuteronomy 32:10, KJV). Then Joshua divided the land of Canaan to the twelve tribes “according to the number of the children of Israel.” (Deuteronomy 32:8, KJV). A symbolic victory was first gained when the walls of Jericho fell: “Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses. From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast.” (Joshua 1:3-4, KJV). But the original borders of Israel were already declared in Genesis 15:18-21.
For the last time, the descendants of Jacob were from about the year 70 A.D. until 1948 in the diaspora, scattered among all the nations of the world and at the same time apart from the goodness of God. The blessing hand of God had for that time been withdrawn from upon them. “The kingdom of God shall be taken from you…” (Matthew 21:43; 24:1-2; Revelation 2:9; 3:9, KJV). But that was not the final state. Neither were they forgotten by God, but were waiting under all His promises for a new time of blessing. God has never cast away His people (Jeremiah 31:35-37, KJV). About three thousand years ago, Israel’s great king David made Jerusalem the undivided capital of Israel. It remains so to this day.
NOW is the era in which God is gathering ALL the Jews of the world into Israel (Ezekiel 37:21-22, KJV) and into His blessing. The good hand of God is thus again upon them. The final fulfillment is in Romans 11:25-27. Then “all Israel shall be saved” and shall receive the forgiveness of sins in Jesus and in the grace of His atoning sacrifice. They will not receive any church-religion or the like, but the same faith and doctrine which Jesus and the apostolic congregation gave to us all (Ephesians 2:11-22, KJV). Follow the faith of the first Christians. (Hebrews 13:7; 1 John 2:24-25, KJV). The love of God encompasses the whole Jewish nation and, among them, also us who have turned from heathendom (Ephesians 2:11, 22, KJV). And when Israel has received her Messiah Jesus, the word shall be fulfilled: “there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.” (John 10:16, KJV; Galatians 3, KJV).
Weijo Lindroos, from the Turku Congregation
Maariankatu 2
20100 Turku
Finland
Email: weijo.lindroos@pp.inet.fi