Wrong. The passage corrects the thinking that God had replaced the Jewish nation with Gentiles because they had become better. God now taught that His people were identified by faith, not by ethnicity. However, this was always God's intention, because He called Abraham the Father of God's People, identified by loyalty. Israel had been hardened so that the prophecy could be fulfilled.Acts 17:26 And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;
27 That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:
28 For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
Note that the desire to seek the omnipresent God is not in anyone before they become a Christian (Romans 3:11).
Romans 3:11
There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
And nonelect people are not considered by God to be His children, but the children of the devil (John 8:42-47, Matthew 13:38b-39), even though they can only exist because God exists, just as even the devil himself can only exist because God exists.
Wrong.
God created everything and said it was good. That means it was good for growth. As long as creation was not subdued, it was under the devil, worldly impulses. However, once men grew up, matured, could think, could choose, then they were God's children. It means the new nature was a product of men using the spiritual side of their mind, because of God's revelation. If men choose not to grow in spite of God explaining the situation to them in the hope they will grope for Him, then they remain the children of the devil, their worldly impulses.
John 8:42-47
42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me,p for I have come here from God.q I have not come on my own;r God sent me.s 43 Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. 44 You belong to your father, the devil,t and you want to carry out your father’s desires.u He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.v 45 Yet because I tell the truth,w you do not believe me! 46 Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? 47 Whoever belongs to God hears what God says.x The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”
Matthew 13:37-39
37And He said, “The one who sows them is the devil, and the harvest is the end of the age; and the reapers are angels.
John 10:26 But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you.
27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:
This means that those who are Jesus Christ's sheep (elect people) will hear His voice in His Word (the Bible), and will eventually believe in Him at some point during their lifetime (Acts 13:48b), while those who are not His sheep (nonelect people) cannot ever hear (accept) His Word and believe in Him (John 8:42-47). Elect people come to Jesus and get saved only because they had previously been given to Jesus by God the Father (John 6:37). And they come to Jesus only by God the Father drawing them to Jesus (John 6:44). Faith is a miraculous gift from God (Ephesians 2:8, John 6:65; 1 Corinthians 3:5b, Romans 12:3b, Hebrews 12:2). Elect people believe and are initially saved by God's choice, not their choice (Romans 9:16, John 1:13, John 15:16). But the ultimate salvation of elect people will depend on their choices subsequent to their initial salvation (Hebrews 10:26-29, Hebrews 6:4-8, Matthew 25:26,30). For salvation does not take away free will.
Wrong. All that is required to be known about God for the purpose of salvation is revealed by Him in creation, that He is holy and requires us to be holy. Those who agree are His spiritual children, and they recognize the shepherd because he has the same values as the Father.
James 4:4 Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
Revelation 21:2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
Revelation 21:9 ¶And there came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb's wife.
10 And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God,
Revelation 21:12 And had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel:
Note that this refers to Israel's twelve tribes in its description of the bride of Christ in Revelation 21:9. And the bride of Christ is the Church (Ephesians 5:30-32; 2 Corinthians 11:2).
Revelation 21 means that the physical structure of the literal city of New Jerusalem in heaven is a picture of the Church. Something can be literal and at the same time symbolically picture something else. For example, in Matthew 21:19 the fig tree was literal, and at the same time its being without fruit pictured unbelieving, Old Covenant Israel being without fruit (Matthew 21:43).
Just as New Jerusalem's literal wall foundations have the names of the twelve apostles on them (Revelation 21:14), so the Church's foundation is the apostles (Ephesians 2:20). And just as New Jerusalem's literal pearly gates have the names of Israel's twelve tribes on them (Revelation 21:12,21), so the Church consists of Israel's twelve tribes.
New Jerusalem is a literal city, 1,500 miles cubed (Revelation 21:16), with literal pearly gates and literal streets of gold (Revelation 21:21). It is God the Father's house in the third heaven (Revelation 21:2-3, cf. 2 Corinthians 12:2b,4, Revelation 2:7b, Revelation 22:2,14), in which house Jesus Christ left to prepare a place for the Church (John 14:2). All those in the Church, whether Jews or Gentiles, have figuratively come to New Jerusalem by coming under the New Covenant (Hebrews 12:22-24, Galatians 4:24-26), which is made only with Israel (Jeremiah 31:31-34), and which only the Church comes under by believing in Jesus' New Covenant suffering and death on the Cross for our sins (Matthew 26:28; 1 Corinthians 11:25; 2 Corinthians 3:6, Hebrews 9:15), the very heart of the Gospel (1 Corinthians 15:1-4).
The Church looks for Jesus Christ's future, Second Coming, from heaven (Philippians 3:20), and His setting up of the physical aspect of His Kingdom on the earth with the physically resurrected Church for 1,000 years (Revelation 20:4-6, Revelation 5:10, Revelation 2:26-29), a time period commonly called the Millennium. New Jerusalem will not descend from the third heaven to the earth until after the future, (Revelation 20:7-15). The Church will physically live and reign in New Jerusalem with God the Father and Jesus on the New Earth (Revelation 21:1 to 22:5). The Father and Jesus themselves will be the only temple in New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:22).
Wrong. The Holy City is Rest, the final destination, a condition when man can be a blessing to the world, as Adam was meant to be.
The Exodus never ended in rest, even when Joshua was the leader, because Adam himself never completed his journey. The Old Humanity was not only blocked in its tracks, it itself needed to be blessed because it was defiled by sin.
The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses
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The blood of the high priest has special value. In agreement with this principle, Zech. 3 uses all the symbolism of a defiled human high priest Joshua and then speaks mysteriously of the Branch in connection with which “I will remove the sin of this land in a single day” (Zech. 3:9).
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