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The Covenant that Refuses to Die: What the Bible Teaches about Israel

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Every interpreter approaches Scripture with an internal map and my map is Restorationism. This framework teaches that God is restoring the people of Israel and the land of Israel exactly as the prophets declared with no need for symbolic or spiritual substitution. I choose this grid because it allows Scripture to speak in its original voice and requires no revision of divine intent. It is the only approach that preserves the integrity of God’s spoken word by allowing promises to remain addressed to the people to whom they were given. Psalm 105 states that God remembers His covenant forever and gives the land of Canaan as an everlasting possession. A grid that demands no alteration of the plain text is the grid that honors the God who speaks truthfully.

This conviction shaped Christian leaders who refused to treat Scripture as a flexible symbol system. For example, Puritans Thomas Brightman, Joseph Mede, Increase Mather, and Cotton Mather believed that the restoration of Israel was inevitable because the prophetic texts pointed directly toward it. Robert Murray M Cheyne and Charles Simeon proclaimed the certainty of Jewish restoration long before it was conceivable. Lord Shaftesbury and Laurence Oliphant moved belief into action by supporting the Jewish return to the land on biblical grounds. William Hechler became the most influential Christian Restorationist of his era and encouraged Theodor Herzl, helping to position Restorationist belief within the early Zionist movement. These men trusted that God would keep His covenant not only in Scripture but in public history.

There are moments when the Bible refuses to remain a private document and instead steps into the center of global affairs. Israel has become the arena where God demonstrates whether His word governs history or whether human power does. Ezekiel declares that God restores Israel to vindicate His great name before the nations in Ezekiel 36:23. Isaiah writes that Israel is the servant through whom God will be glorified (Isaiah 49:3), meaning God is exercising his sovereign hand in real-time, which means that Israel is not merely evidence of God’s faithfulness, they are God’s chosen instrument for world redemption. This is great news because, through Israel, God makes His character visible and........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)