You still make the mistake of thinking the Jews are all the Israelites.
God knows who the ten Northern tribes are. They will be the dominant peoples of the new nation of Beulah, in all of the holy Land.
Not going to happen. The Land is irrelevant now.
What are we to make of the Old Testament prophecies about 'the land'?
THE CITY IN REVELATION
The NT shows us God expands his kingdom out into all the world. The irony is because the various Millennial futurists read Revelation literally, they think the dimensions of the Heavenly Jerusalem are literal - and therefore arbitrary. They're just those dimensions....
because! To them it i literal writing - therefore it's just a
fact that the New Jerusalem is that big. It's just arbitrary. It's just data. But this is not good enough. It's the most metaphorical book in the bible, and includes Jesus portrayed as a lamb with 7 eyes and 7 horns! It's not literal, it's metaphor. In other words -
the city size means something!
Basically, 12,000 stadia is the number of God's people - 12, times a thousand which is like us modern people saying 'a gazillion'. It's the complete number. It's saying the city will be big enough to house all of God's people. It's
also about the same dimensions as the whole known world back then. Take a map of the world from any Roman emperor and it's the same size. God's city for God's people will cover the whole land. The whole world is God's!
WHAT ABOUT THE LAND and CITY and TEMPLE PROMISES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT?
We cannot ignore the essentially spiritual nature of the OT prophets themselves. Amongst the sometimes strange imagery and apocalyptic language, it is clear that they saw that God's new super-temple will not be possible without his people being given a new child, a new sacrifice, a new saviour, a new heart, a new covenant, a new nation, and a new city that operates like a giant new temple. That is, the 'land' promises are often sketched out in terms of a larger, more idealised Holy Land than was ever owned by Israel even under king David. But in the context of all these other more apocalyptic and spiritual promises we can see that something else is going on - even for the land. How does the New Testament view the promises of the land? Are they unfulfilled? In Genesis we see the promises to Abraham that God's people will live God's way in God's land. People, God's way, God's land. That's all isn't it? No! Let's not forget that God ALSO promised Abraham that this special nation would also one day bless the whole world!
So in the New Testament - where is the temple, city of God, and all that situated - for surely those structures need a land to be in?
This is where ripping the OT land promises out of the spiritual promises actually starts to destroy the gospel. The land is all part of the one package. It's us - the Christian church.
1 Peter 2:9
"9 But you are a chosen
people, a royal
priesthood, a holy
nation, God’s
special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10 Once you were not a people, but
now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy."
In other words - you cannot rip the OT promises about 'the land' out of context and accuse God of not keeping his promises literally when he never kept the other promises 'literally'. As an Australian, I'm not a member of the nation of Israel - but I am in God's chosen people, his ROYAL priesthood, I'm his special possession, and I am in the people of God. Why? Jesus saved me. But how can I be in his people, priesthood, nation, special possession
if I'm not also in his land? Where's my temple, my sacrifice, my security? Joshua gave the Israelites security in the land. Where is my security? Where is my
rest from the worry and insecurity of this world?
Hebrews 4 explains:
"8 For if Joshua had given them rest,
God would not have spoken later about another day. 9 There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; 10 for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his. 11 Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience."
Joshua did not give them rest in the land. We're still on our way there! It's all quite clear - the land is in the new Heavens and new Earth where we will finally be secure. Even the OT patriarchs understood something of this.
Hebrews 11
"8 By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. 9 By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10
For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. 11 And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise. 12 And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.
13 All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance,
admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. 14 People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. 15 If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16
Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them."
God's promises about 'the land' are already fulfilled in that we are already seated in heaven. Indeed, to be a Christian is to have 'the land' guaranteed to us. You just cannot split the land promises out from all the other nationhood, temple, sacrifice, people, prophet, priesthood promises - it doesn't make sense of the flow of the whole bible! It destroys the gospel. There's only a problem when people try to read OT spiritual metaphors literally. They're not literal, and there are many more NT verses that show they are spiritual - verses OT 'literalists' probably miss because they're perceived to be 'boring', non-eschatological gospel verses. But there's eschatology all the way through!
EG: Where are the temple and land and people of God in Ephesians 2?
I'll make them bold.
EPHESIANS 2
"And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the
heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the
coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10
For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
11 Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)— 12 remember that at that time you were separate from Christ,
excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
14 For he himself is our peace, who has
made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the
dividing wall of hostility, 15 by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself
one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17 He came and preached
peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
19 Consequently, you are
no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit."
Where's the land? Where's the temple? Where are the people of God to live? In Jesus, by his spirit, we are being knit together to be the temple of God. 1 Corinthians 3:16 "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in your midst?"
Just as those OT prophets saw a heavenly city where daily life was like temple life, we are currently being built into that right now - with the promise of it being fully realised in the future. Now, but not yet. Eschatological tension. I cannot take one tiny paragraph from Revelation 20 and smack it across the overall thrust of the whole Bible to throw the vast forces of eschatological fulfilment in the very identity of the gospel people of God out of shape. Otherwise, I might start to doubt if an Australian slob like myself can really be in 'the land' if I'm downunder, and if I'm really part of the people of God, the priesthood, and all that. But according to the overwhelming thrust of the NT, I can only see that I AM in the people of God. The two have become one, and an Australian slob like myself can be included. Where I am now is being blessed and Satan being bound as I declare the gospel. The millennium is happening, right now, and has been for 2000 years. And I am both in God's land now as I declare the gospel to the ends of the earth, and longing for the real land, the real rest, of eternity. Amen and amen.
