Is this just symbolic or real? Peter is speaking to all Christians here.
1 PETER 2:9
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.
It is in Paradise, where they have permanent incorruptible bodies. You even deny that fact. You deny your own proof.
There is a physical Kingdom in Paradise. There is going to be a physical Kingdom on earth. Right now the physical Kingdom in Paradise is the main event. The Second Coming will end the church. Paradise will be made complete. Then God will set up the physical Kingdom on earth. It will not be the church. If you read the Bible instead of symbolize all of Scripture, it is right there in black and white.
If you take away any physical aspect of a Nation on earth, you are replacing the earthly Covenant with the Atonement. The first century Hebrews needed that explained to them symbolically. After 2000 years of Gentiles trodding all over the Holy Land, that should not be hard to figure out literally.
The Law was not the Covenant. The Law was as Paul put it a school master pointing out how bad sin is. The Atonement covered the church from Abel, through the time of the Law of Moses, to Christ, until now. The church had nothing to do with Jacob being called out as a physical Nation on earth while the church was a Nation in Paradise. Most of the citizens accept Enoch, Elijah, Moses, had to sit in sheol in Abraham's bosom until the Cross. Then Paradise was opened physically for all of the church to enter.
How you all interpret or see that is besides the point. You are stuck in the views presented by a pagan, theologically driven point of view that a harlot religion passed down century after century, or Jewish mysticism. God did not replace the church, with Jacob as a Nation, nor did He then turn around and replace the Nation of Israel, with the church. The church has been around since Enoch. Cain killed the church, but God brought her back.
The Nations were the Steward of the vineyard. Then Jacob was the Steward, and finally the church was the Steward. If you do not want to apply the parable of Jesus with historical fact, no one is forcing you to.
Being a Steward is not a spiritual dispensation. It is being responsible for God (the Gospel) being spread throughout the earth. All major religions today came from the Babylonian captivity, and Daniel influenced all of them. Like the theory of evolution of today, denying God's Word, the religions will claim they evolved over the span of human history. Nope, they all started with the influence of one man, named Daniel. Daniel was shown the political and religious development of all time after Babylon. The Hebrews gave the whole world their belief system. What the world did with that is history, and no one wanted God to dictate their lives.
The church is now fractured in millions of more ways than the original Hebrew influence birthed. The "church" is, in the last 400 years, responsible for all forms of Government as well. What the church binds and looses does happen and more times for the bad than the good.
Yes, Israel has been set aside. That is a fact. No where does the Bible say permanently. The church is not the regathering of national Israel. The church is the gathering of Adam's family, not Jacob's. What God does with Israel is not the concern of the church.
25 “Now his older son (the church) was in the field. As he (the church) came close to the house, he (the church) heard music and dancing.
26 So he (the church) called one of the servants and asked, ‘What’s going on?’
27 The servant told him, ‘Your brother (Israel) has come back, and your father has slaughtered the calf that was fattened up, because he has gotten him (Israel) back safe and sound.’
28 But the older son (the church) became angry and refused to go inside.
“So his (the church's) father came out and pleaded with him (the church).
29 ‘Look,’ the son (the church) answered, ‘I have worked for you all these years, and I have never disobeyed your orders. But you have never even given me a young goat, so that I could celebrate with my friends.
30 Yet this son of yours (Israel) comes, who squandered your property with prostitutes, and for him (Israel) you slaughter the fattened calf!’
31 ‘Son (the church), you are always with me,’ said the father, ‘and everything I have is yours (the church's).
32 We had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours (Israel) was dead but has come back to life — he (Israel) was lost but has been found.’”
