Israel

Who Are God’s Chosen People?

By Andrew Isker on February 23, 2024

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“We must give eleventy gazillion dollars to Israel because ‘they are God’s Chosen People’ and ‘those who bless you I will bless’” is a refrain Christians have been told their entire lives. There is no single theological issue that is the cause of greater confusion among Christians than what the status of Israel is in the New Covenant.

Christians are in the New Covenant. Most Christians understand this. But the confusion begins when we consider the Old Covenant. What was the point of the Old Covenant?

When God made a Covenant with Abraham and then developed it further with his descendants under Moses, what was the purpose of it?

How is the New Covenant made in Jesus’s blood so radically different?

These are questions that were sorted out throughout the New Testament. And despite much of the New Testament dealing with this issue, and millennia of Christian tradition extrapolating from it, confusion reigns today.

Israel’s Second Chance

Israel’s Second Chance

By Andrew Isker on December 7, 2023

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by Pastor Andrew Isker

Introduction

In each of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), as Jesus preached against the wicked and perverse generation in Israel, He made a statement that has puzzled many Christians even to this day. “Blasphemy against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, that will not be forgiven.” Many people hear this and are terrified, “what if I committed the unforgivable sin? What if I have blasphemed against the Holy Spirit? How do I know my sins can be forgiven or not?”

If blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is an unbeliever speaking against the work of the Holy Spirit on earth, no one who doesn’t believe in Jesus could ever be forgiven. So, surely that is not it. But then what does this mean? What is this sin?

Re-Considering Doug Wilson’s “Covenant with Hagar” Part 2

Re-Considering Doug Wilson’s “Covenant with Hagar” Part 2

By Guest Post on December 4, 2023

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by Gabe Harder

Defining the Covenant

To this point, it should be clear that the “covenant with Hagar” is key to Wilson’s brand of soft supersessionism. What’s equally clear, however, is that this particular covenantal arrangement evades precise definition, and what elements have been made plain at times appear entirely incompatible with a historic Reformed covenant theology.

A historical reading of the “covenant with Hagar” is, of course, impossible. Although God makes prophetic promises to both Abraham and Hagar concerning Ishmael’s future, “nothing is clearer [in Genesis 16-21] than the singularity of the covenant God made with Abraham and the passing down of that covenant through Isaac and not through Ishmael. There is, thus, no Hagar covenant.”¹ Paul simply does not teach that “unbelieving Jews are in covenant with Hagar.” The phrase used by both Wilson and Sumpter, “the covenant with Hagar,” appears nowhere in the passage. Paul is clear that his appeal to Genesis is allegorical; the covenant, therefore, is not with Hagar, rather Hagar is the covenant (Gal. 4:24).

Re-Considering Doug Wilson’s “Covenant with Hagar” Part 1

Re-Considering Doug Wilson’s “Covenant with Hagar” Part 1

By Guest Post on December 1, 2023

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by Gabe Harder

Introduction

Doug Wilson’s “American Milk and Honey” is now available. There’s a great deal in the book worth commenting on, and I anticipate engaging with that material more broadly in the near future. In the lead-up to its release, however, Moscow has not been silent concerning Israel, the Jews, and antisemitism. Not only has Wilson himself blogged extensively on these issues, but just the other week Toby Sumpter threw his hat in the ring with a blog post¹ largely affirming many of Wilson’s convictions. Then Canon Press published a video of Pastor Wilson and company discussing right-wing Twitter’s response to all this with Andrew Isker.² While a number of Wilson’s arguments deserve further analysis, I’d like to dedicate this article to examining one of the more curious features of his account; the so-called “covenant with Hagar.”

Pentecost Was The Greater Crossing of the Jordan

Pentecost Was The Greater Crossing of the Jordan

By Andrew Isker on November 29, 2023

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The Christian Story Takes Israel’s History and Fulfills It

by Pastor Andrew Isker

Introduction

The Day of Pentecost is one of the greatest events in the entire Bible. There is a reason that the church throughout the world has celebrated it yearly for the better part of two thousand years. It is the event that establishes the authority of the church of Jesus Christ, laid on the foundation of the apostles and Christ the chief cornerstone. It is from this event that the army of God goes forth into the new and greater promised land—the entire world—to conquer.

It is not random that the narrative structure of the Book of Acts parallels the conquest of Joshua.—what you must understand is the New Testament deliberately takes the history of Israel and shows that something even greater has come in Jesus Christ.

Just what IS Israel?

Just what IS Israel?

By Guest Post on November 17, 2023

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The Relationship Between Christians and Jews

by Ronald Dodson

It is a question that is suddenly quite relevant, as the cyclical violence that has plagued the Levant has sparked again after the attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7^th. It was a brutal move by the operative wing of the political leaders of Gaza, the enclosed refugee camp that has housed Palestinians since 1949. In recent years it has become completely enclosed with extremely limited egress and ingress. Both Israel and the Gazans have killed mercilessly in attacks and “defensive actions” in recent years, with this last move by Hamas the largest in scope and brutality in recent history. As a result, politicians are eager to make proclamations of unity with Israel, a unity of utmost vigor. To wit:

The Church Is Israel

The Church Is Israel

By Guest Post on November 6, 2023

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by TheUncreatedLight

A common belief in some American Evangelical circles (not all) is that the nation state of Israel is the Israel spoken about in the Bible, these are the “true Israelites” so therefore it must be supported at all costs, etc. But does that align with the Bible? Who really is Israel? And why? May God grace my words in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.