I believe it is crucial at this juncture to distinquish between God's earthly people the Jewish nation, and God's heavenly people, the Church.
Yeah, while we don't agree on everything, I'm firmly with Keras on this one.
The Church IS the Jewish Nation.
It existed all the way back in Moses' time. Acts 7:38 speaks of "the church in the wilderness" with Moses. The "church" is not something separate from Israel, but rather is the remnant of the faithful within Israel.
Isaiah pointed out that in times of Israel's great apostasies, the faithful of the nation were reduced to a tiny remnant of elect ones (
Isaiah 1:8-9). So it was in the first century, where Paul identifies himself as an example of the faithful remnant (
Romans 11:1-5).
The apostles continually say that the members of the Nazarene sect (at first all Jewish but later with converts added in to their numbers) are the true elect ones (2 Tim 2:10; Col 3:12;
Galatians 6:15-16;
1 Peter 1:2;
1 Peter 2:9-10 ).
Israel survived *exclusively* in the sect of the Nazarenes. They received with joy their promised New Covenant and obediently rejected all former biases against the non-Abrahamic families of earth so that
Genesis 12:3 might finally be attained (Gal 3:7-9/Rom 4:13-18)---via the work of the Jewish Messiah.
This sole surviving form of covenant Judaism is known worldwide as Christianity, the Jewish church gone global. The church always was the covenanted Israel, the church continues to be the covenanted Israel. The only difference is that the NEW covenant of Israel enabled Jewish fullness to be bestowed upon gentile people groups (Gen 12:3).
Replacing the everlasting Gospel and eternal Church of Israel with a future temple Judaism, complete with blood animal sacrifices and forced circumcision is the TRUE replacement theology of BACKWARD REDEMPTION.
A concept that, according to the apostles, is a rebuke against the Blood of Christ, a falling away from salvation.
Why should we think in strange if in the Millennial reign of Christ the Jewish nation, now purged of her unbelief and grafted back into the Olive Tree once again, would once again use a Temple ritual to commemorate the great spiritual event of her embracing as her Messiah the One she initially rejected in unbelief.
Well, if we apply a LITERAL rendering as you insist, we can not escape the fact that the temple sacrifices and required physical circumcision in Ezekiel 40-44 are the very proprietary sacrifices of the Mosaic Law for the atonement of sin and acceptance by the Lord, and can not be "spiritualized away" into some sort of "memorial sacrifices" that "commemorate" Christ's once for all sacrifice on the Cross.
One can not claim literalism while spiritualizing away the sacrifices and circumcision in Ezekiel 40-44