Many people insist that in Bible prophecy, the many promises made to “Israel,” actually meant “the church.” This doctrine is defended by a wide spectrum of ideas. One end of this spectrum is a claim that all the promises of God are conditional, and that “Israel,” having failed to meet the conditions of the promises made to her, lost them, and they were transferred to “the church.” At the opposite end of ths spectrum is a claim that there has only been one single “people of God” throughout all the ages. So this one “people of God,” which were called “Israel” in the Old Testament, are the same people that are now called “the church.” But however this doctrine is reached, the people who teach it insist that it is clearly taught in the New Testament. This claim, however, is factually incorrect. There are, indeed, a few places in the New Testament that can rationally be INTERPRETED to mean that “the church” is “Israel.” But there is NOT EVEN ONE passage, anywhere in the entire Bible, that actually SAYS that. So this doctrine is UNQUESTIONABLY based on INTERPRETATION, rather than on EVEN ONE actual statement of scripture.
But while they INTERPRET the name “Israel” to mean “the church,” this INTERPRETATION falls down when we come to the many other names used by God in making the many promises found in the Old Testament. For God did not JUST promise end time blessings to the NATION of Israel. (And, yes, He actually did specifically use the word “NATION.”) He also made similar promises to each of the ancient sub-nations of Ephraim and Judah, and to each of the twelve tribes of Israel by name. And no scripture even HINTS at an idea that ANY of these fourteen other names means “the church.”
This INTERPRETATION also breaks down when we come to God’s EXPLICITLY STATED promises concerning a PLOT OF REAL ESTATE in the Middle East. Ezekiel 36:1-10 promises the “mountains of Israel,” along with “the hills, the rivers, the valleys, the desolate wastes, and the cities that have been forsaken,” that they will again be “inhabited” by “all the house of Israel, all of it.” Further, Ezekiel 47:13-20 SPECIFICALLY defines the borders of this PLOT OF REAL ESTATE, and the following chapter, Ezekiel 48, specifies how this PLOT OF REAL ESTATE will be divided among the twelve tribes of Israel, naming each tribe, and specifying the location of its individual PLOT OF REAL ESTATE. There is no rational way to even PRETEND that all this refers to “the church.”
The end result of this doctrine is that these people are using THEIR INTERPRETATIONS of the MEANINGS of some scriptures that NEVER, EVEN ONCE, actually SAY what they INTERPRET them to MEAN, as an excuse to DENY that other scriptures MEAN what they EXPLICITLY SAY.
