Andrew Meredith’s Reviews > Paradise Restored: A Biblical Theology of Dominion > Status Update

Israel consistently rejected God's Word and mistreated His prophets, as Stephen accused them just before he too was murdered by them (Acts 7:51-52). This, of course, culminated in the rejection and murder of God's Own Son. What will God, the owner of the vineyard, do to them? In Matthew, the Jews pronounce their own doom: He will utterly destroy them and take away their kingdom, giving it to someone else. Jesus agrees, "I say to you, the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you, and be given to a nation producing the fruit of it" (Matt 21:43).

Who is this "nation"? Peter gives us the answer: The Church (1 Pt 2:9-10), and he does so by directly quoting what was once said to Israel during their founding at the foot of Mount Sinai (Ex 19:5-6). The Jews, by and large, were to be cut off, and Gentiles were to be grafted in to the covenant promises (Rom 11).

In Jesus's day, Israel was a Vineyard, a garden, without fruit. They were a worse than useless, barren "fig tree" cursed by the Lord to never bear fruit again (Matt 21:18-19), and thus Christ came to warn the Jews that they were on the clock, scheduled to get "cut down and thrown into the fire" (Matt 3:8-10; Lk 13:6-9). Their rejection of the Son sealed their fate. And furthermore, the judgment would not be long delayed. "All these things will come upon this generation" (Matt 23:29-36). (A generation in the Bible is 40 years, more on that next chapter)

"The Jews, who both killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and do not please God, and are hostile to all men, hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved; with the result that they always fill up the measure of their sins. But wrath has come upon them to the utmost." (1 Thess 2:14-16). The promised curses of Deuteronomy 28 were coming, and "the wrath" began with the hardening of their hearts. God was beginning to "hand them over" for the last time.

Yet, there was still a chance for mercy as the Old Covenant with its Temple, Priests, Sacrifices, and purity code was coming to an end (Heb 8:13; Acts 2:40): The one generation (40 year) long overlap between the Old and New Covenants the Apostles called The Last Days (as in the "last days" of the Old Covenant; AD 30-70). But the time was short, and in AD 70, the bill finally came due. Israel was conquered and slaughtered en masse. Jerusalem was completely overrun and handed over to the Gentiles, the Temple was torn down, and "few were saved" in the cataclysmic event known as The Great Tribulation.

Andrew's Thoughts: The faith practiced in Israel prior to the Great Tribulation did not survive it. Judaism today is not the same religion as the one practiced by Israel. Even the most cursory reading of the Old Testament (Temple, Priest, Sacrifice) will prove my point. What remains, and is practiced by Jews throughout the world, is Phariseeism taken to it's ridiculous legalistic conclusions.

Already in Jesus's day, the Pharisees and the Scribes (Law lawyers) were making up and following silly, demonic rules (known as the Tradition of the Elders) to "build a fence around the Torah," and time and time again we see Jesus attacking them for this practice, because they were following man's laws instead of God's and "laying heavy burdens on the people" by doing so. After losing Jerusalem, the Temple, and, by extension, the Priesthood and the Sacrificial System, the Pharisees with their Synagogue system took over mainly by being the only remaining (non-Christian) viable option.

A couple ramifications of this:

First, historically Christianity is older than Judaism. Now, I would argue that Adam and Eve were Christians, along with Abraham, Moses, and all the OT saints, seeing as they all looked forward in faith to the Messiah (the Serpent Crusher), but even with a narrow definition, Christianity is Judaisms older brother.

Second, Judaism was developed specifically and intentionally as a rival interpretation of the OT. It has been antagonistic toward Christianity from the start. Think of it this way: there is an unbroken line of The Faith leading up to the coming of the Messiah. When He came, those who "believed the Scriptures" (Lk 24:25) stayed on the line, and those who rejected their Messiah diverged off of it to start a new ethnic-identity focused, legalistic, works-based religion we now call Judaism.

Third, there is no Judeo-Christian heritage anymore than there is a Hindi-Christian heritage, a Islamic-Christian heritage, or a Odinic-Christian heritage. The Jews, from their post AD 70 foundation, have always worshipped another god.