Israel is Not the Church and the Church is Not Israel

 I remember when I told an old ELCA Lutheran that I was going to visit Israel and her response was, “That’s nice!  I hope you can see Italy and France too!”  The point she was making was backing up her belief learned at the ELCA;  Israel has nothing to do with anything of God.  The church has REPLACED all the promises God made to/about Israel.”  That’s why it’s called “replacement theology”.

Of course the Catholics are into this belief.  And of course it’s a total false teaching that can really drive you off the rails as you read prophecy.  Israel IS God’s timepiece.  Jews today don’t come to salvation through any other name except Jesus.  After the rapture and the Bride is in eternity with the bridegroom, then God the Father will fulfill all his promises to the Jews and the Promised Land.  And some of these won’t be fulfilled until Jesus is on the throne in Jerusalem for 1000 years.

Check out this passage in Hebrews 8 and imagine how you would have to twist it to make it say that “God is done with Israel”.

“The days are coming, declares the Lord,
    when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
    and with the people of Judah.
9 It will not be like the covenant
    I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
    to lead them out of Egypt,
because they did not remain faithful to my covenant,
    and I turned away from them,
declares the Lord.
10 This is the covenant I will establish with the people of Israel
    after that time, declares the Lord.
I will put my laws in their minds
    and write them on their hearts.
I will be their God,
    and they will be my people.
11 No longer will they teach their neighbor,
    or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
    from the least of them to the greatest.
12 For I will forgive their wickedness
    and will remember their sins no more.”[c]