A Little History on Israel’s Future
June 15th, 2007
(Compiled by Nathan Busenitz)
Will there be a mass conversion of ethnic Jews at the end of the age?
Matt Waymeyer’s two articles have answered “yes” to that question, based on Paul’s teaching in Romans 11:25–26.
For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery—so that you will not be wise in your own estimation, that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion, He will remove ungodliness from Jacob.”
But what do other exegetes from church history have to say in response to this question. Many others could be added to the following list, but here’s a “brief” survey of twenty five.(A word of thanks goes out to Michael Vlach for the first eight of these – see his website for bibliographic info.)
1. Justin Martyr (c. 100-165) held that the tribes of Israel would be gathered and restored in accord with what the prophet Zechariah predicted:
And what the people of the Jews shall say and do, when they see Him coming in glory, has been thus predicted by Zechariah the prophet: “I will command the four winds to gather the scattered children; I will command the north wind to bring them, and the south wind, that it keep not back. And then in Jerusalem there shall be great lamentation, not the lamentation of mouths or of lips, but the lamentation of the heart; and they shall rend not their garments, but their hearts. Tribe by tribe they shall mourn, and then they shall look on Him whom they have pierced; and they shall say, Why, O Lord, hast Thou made us to err from Thy way? The glory which our fathers blessed, has for us been turned into shame.”
2. Tertullian (c. 155-230) urged Christians to eagerly anticipate and rejoice over the coming restoration of Israel: “It will be fitting for the Christian to rejoice, and not to grieve, at the restoration of Israel, if it be true, (as it is), that the whole of our hope is intimately united with the remaining expectation of Israel.”
3. Origen (185-254) believed in “two callings of Israel.” The first calling of Israel refers to Israel’s calling before Christ that eventually led to their stumbling and falling. The second calling of Israel, however, is future and will take place after the period of the fullness of the Gentiles. In Origen’s words: “But when the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, then will all Israel, having been called again, be saved.”
4. John Chrysostom (349–407) said this in regards to Romans 11:26:
[Regarding the fact] that they [the Jews] shall believe and be saved, he [Paul] brings Isaiah to witness, who cries aloud and says, There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob.” (Isaiah 59:20.) … If then this has been promised, but has never yet happened in their case, nor have they ever enjoyed the remission of sins by baptism, certainly it will come to pass.
In his commentary on Matthew, Chrysostom also noted:
To show therefore that [Elijah] the Tishbite comes before that other [second] advent . . . He said this. . . . And what is this reason? That when He is come, He may persuade the Jews to believe in Christ, and that they may not all utterly perish at His coming. Wherefore He too, guiding them on to that remembrance, saith, “And he shall restore all things;” that is, shall correct the unbelief of the Jews that are then in being.
5. Augustine (354-430) concurred:
It is a familiar theme in the conversation and heart of the faithful, that in the last days before the judgment the Jews shall believe in the true Christ, that is, our Christ, by means of this great and admirable prophet Elias who shall expound the law to them. . . . When, therefore, he is come, he shall give a spiritual explanation of the law which the Jews at present understand carnally, and shall thus “turn the heart of the father to the son,” that is, the heart of the fathers to the children.
6. Cyril of Alexandria (378-444): Although it was rejected, Israel will also be saved eventually, a hope which Paul confirms . . . . For indeed, Israel will be saved in its own time and will be called at the end, after the calling of the Gentiles.”
7. Theodoret of Cyrus (393-457): And he [Paul] urges them not to despair of the salvation of the other Jews; for when the Gentiles have received the message, even they, the Jews, will believe, when the excellent Elijah comes, bringing to them the doctrine of faith. For even the Lord said this in the sacred gospels: ‘Elijah is coming, and he will restore all things.’
8. Cassiodorus (c. 485-585) [commenting on Psalm 103:9]: This verse can be applied also to the Jewish people, who we know are to be converted at the world’s end. On this Paul says: Blindness in part has happened in Israel, that the fullness of the Gentiles should come in, and so all Israel should be saved.
9. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274): It is possible to designate a terminus, because it seems that the blindness of the Jews will endure until all the pagans chosen for salvation have accepted the faith. And this is in accord with what Paul says below about the salvation of the Jews, namely, that after the conversion of the pagans, all Israel will be saved.
10. The Geneva Study Bible (16th century): He [Paul] speaks of the whole nation, not of any one part. . . . The blindness of the Jews is neither so universal that the Lord has no elect in that nation, neither will it be continual: for there will be a time in which they also (as the prophets have foretold) will effectually embrace that which they now so stubbornly for the most part reject and refuse.
11. William Perkins (1558–1602): The Lord says, All the nations shall be blessed in Abraham: Hence I gather that the nation of the Jews shall be called, and converted to the participation of this blessing: when, and how, God knows: but that it shall be done before the end of the world we know.
12. Elnathan Parr (d. 1630) [on Romans 11:26]: That all the elect shall be saved? Who ever doubted that? But of the calling of the Jews there is doubt. He calls their salvation a secret or mystery but there is nothing mysterious about all the elect being saved. He shows that there is an unbroken reference to Israel/Jacob, that is, ethnic Israel. [From verses 25-28 Parr concludes,] Before the end of the world the Jews in regard to their multitude will be called.
According to the Banner of Truth article on Parr’s interpretation of Romans 11:26: In this [Parr] is followed by Matthew Poole and Matthew Henry. . . . [More recent] expositors who endorse Parr’s interpretation are Charles Hodge, Robert Haldane, John Brown of Edinburgh, H G C Moule, Frederic Godet, W G T Shedd, Prof John Murray, Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones, C E B Cranfield, James Dunn and Thomas R Schreiner in his recently published commentary on Romans.
13. Matthew Poole (1624–1679): [On Romans 11:26] By Israel here (as in the precedent verse) you must understand, the nation and people of the Jews. And by all Israel is not meant every individual Israelite, but many, or (it may be) the greatest part of them. . . . These prophecies and promises [from Isaiah 27:9; 59:20 and Jer. 31:33], though they were in part fulfilled when Christ came in the flesh, (see Acts 3:26,) yet there will be a more full and complete accomplishment thereof upon the Jewish nation and people towards the end of the world.
14. Increase Mather (1639–1723): That there shall be a general conversion of the tribes of Israel, is a truth which in some measure hath been known and believed in all ages of the church of God, since the Apostles’ days.
15. Matthew Henry (1662–1714): Another thing that qualifies this doctrine of the Jews rejection is that though for the present they are cast off, yet the rejection is NOT final; but, when the fullness of time is come, they will be taken in again. They are not cast off for ever, but mercy is remembered in the midst of wrath.
. . . The Jews shall continue in blindness, till God hath performed his whole work among the Gentiles, and then their turn will come next to be remembered. This was the purpose and ordination of God, for wise and holy ends; things should not be ripe for the Jews’ conversion till the church was replenished with the Gentiles, that it might appear that God’s taking them again was not because he had need of them, but of his own free grace.
16. Cotton Mather (1663–1728): This day, from the Dust, where I lay prostrate before the Lord, I lifted up my Cries . . . for the conversion of the Jewish nation, and for my own having the Happiness, at some time or other, to Baptize a Jew that should by my ministry be brought home unto the Lord.
17. Thomas Boston (1676–1732): There is a day coming when there shall be a national conversion of the Jews or Israelites. The now blinded and rejected Jews shall at length be converted into the faith of Christ.
18. James Robe (1688–1753): Me thinks I hear the nation of the Jews (for such is the cry of their case) crying aloud to you from their dispersion, . . . we have now been rejected of God for more than sixteen hundred years, because of our unbelief, and for this long, very long while, wrath to the uttermost hath been lying upon us! There are many promises and predictions that we shall be grafted in again. . . . Pray therefore, and wrestle with God, that he may, according to his promise, pour forth upon the Spirit of grace and supplication, that we may look upon him whom we have pierced, and mourn. . . . Help us with your prayers.
19. The Puritans in General:
According to Ian Murray, The Puritan Hope, 43: This same belief concerning the future of the Jews is to be found very widely in seventeenth-century Puritan literature. It appears in the works of such well-known Puritans as John Owen, Thomas Manton and John Flavel. . . . It is also handled in a rich array of commentaries, both folios and quartos – David Dickson on the Psalms, George Hutcheson on the Minor Prophets, Jeremiah Burroughs on Hosea, William Greenhill on Ezekiel, Elnathan Parr on Romans and James Durham on Revelation: a list which could be greatly extended.
According to J. Van Den Berg, Puritan Eschatology, 140: For . . . virtually all Dutch theologians of the seventeenth century, ‘the whole of Israel’ indicated the fullness of the people of Israel ‘according to the flesh’: in other words, the fullness of the Jewish peole. This meant that there was a basis for an expectation of a future conversion of the Jews–an expectation which was shared by a large majority of Dutch theologians.
20. John Gill (1697–1771): And so all Israel shall be saved. . . . Meaning not the mystical spiritual Israel of God, consisting both of Jews and Gentiles, who shall appear to be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation, when all God’s elect among the latter are gathered in, which is the sense many give into; but the people of the Jews, the generality of them, the body of that nation, called “the fullness” of them, Romans 11:12, and relates to the latter day, when a nation of them shall be born again at once; . . . when they as a body, even the far greater part of them that shall be in being, shall return and seek the Lord their God, and David their King; shall acknowledge Jesus to be the true Messiah, and shall look to him, believe on him, and be saved by him from wrath to come.
21. Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758): . . . the Jews in all their dispersions shall cast away their old infidelity, and shall have their hearts wonderfully changed, and abhor themselves for their past unbelief and obstinacy. They shall flow together to the blessed Jesus, penitently, humbly, and joyfully owning him as their glorious King and only Savior, and shall with all their hearts, as one heart and voice, declare his praises unto other nations. . . . Nothing is more certainly foretold than this national conversion of the Jews in Romans 11.
22. Charles Hodge (1797–1878): The second great event, which, according to the common faith of the Church, is to precede the second advent of Christ, is the national conversion of the Jews. . . . The restoration of the Jews to the privileges of God’s people is included in the ancient predictions and promises made respecting them. . . . The future restoration of the Jews is, in itself, a more probable event than the introduction of the Gentiles into the church of God.
23. Robert Murray M‘Cheynne (1813–1843): Converted Israel . . . will give life to the dead world. . . . just as we have found, among the parched hills of Judah, that the evening dew, coming silently down, gave life to every plant, making the grass to spring and the flowers to put forth their sweetest fragrance, so shall converted Israel be when they come as dew upon a dead, dry world. The remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many people as a dew from the Lord, as the showers upon the grass, that tarrieth not for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men.
24. J.C. Ryle (1816–1900): It always seemed to me that as we take literally the texts foretelling that the walls of Babylon shall be cast down, so we ought to take literally the texts foretelling that the walls of Zion shall be built up—that as according to prophecy the Jews were literally scattered, so according to prophecy the Jews will be literally gathered—and that as the least and minutest predictions were made good on the subject of our Lord’s coming to suffer, so the minutest predictions shall be made good which describe our Lord’s coming to reign. And I have long felt it is one of the greatest shortcomings of the Church of Christ that we ministers do not preach enough about this advent of Christ, and that private believers do not think enough about it.
25. Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892): I think we do not attach sufficient importance to the restoration of the Jews. We do not think enough of it. But certainly, if there is anything promised in the Bible it is this.
(Spurgeon again): The day shall yet come when the Jews, who were the first Apostles to the Gentiles, the first missionaries to us, who were far off, shall be gathered in again. Until that shall be, the fullness of the Churches’ glory can never come. Matchless benefits to the world are bound up with the restoration of Israel; their gathering in shall be as life from the dead.
” .. and relates to the latter day, when a nation of them shall be born again at once; . . . when they as a body, even the far greater part of them that shall be in being, shall return and seek the Lord their God, and David their King; shall acknowledge Jesus to be the true Messiah, and shall look to him, believe on him, and be saved by him from wrath to come.” -Gill
I would think all who love Christ would love to behold such a sight. To see Israel worshipping the Father in Spirit and truth in the name of Christ Jesus would truly be a great day of joy. I pray that I would see it.
But today, this nation is a nation which despises Christ, and knows only Baal.
But there is a remnant. There’s always a remnant. Israel is not cut off completely, for my partner in business was born and raised in Israel, and he loves the Savior with a fervant love. And it’s a bold love. He reminds me of what Peter would have been like.
If anyone would want to prayer for my partner, Meir, I’d appreciate it, for he is headed back to Israel for three weeks, and I’m certain he will be preaching the Gospel to his brethern, according to the flesh, in their own language Hebrew.
Thanks.
“I would think all who love Christ would love to behold such a sight. To see Israel worshipping the Father in Spirit and Truth in the name of Christ Jesus would truly be a great day of joy. I pray that I would see it”…………….AMEN!!
Having the Lord Jesus rejected by His own people and the Jewish people still believing that Messiah is yet to come for His FIRST coming due to their “blindness”, IS NOT THE END OF THE STORY. God must complete the story! Messiah will come again but not as a humble servant, no this time He will come as KING and the Jewish people will finally acknowledge it and God in the Heavens WIll be glorified!
No, God is not done yet with His covenant with Israel………..
Thank you for a meaty discussion. Always finding that here at Pulpit. I want to make it clear that I don’t find your view without merit at all, I just don’t happen to be entirely sold on it. But I’ll keep after it. In that regard, I wonder if you could possibly append the names of the works from which these quotes come (esp. the early ones). It’s important to check out the contexts.
For example, I had to hunt for the Tertullian quote, but did find it, and see that it is a parenthetical within a discourse on the Prodigal Son story. Here’s a larger clip from the online text of “De Pudicitia”–
“For when has the Jew not been a transgressor of the law; hearing with the ear, and not hearing; holding in hatred him who reproveth in the gates, and in scorn holy speech? So, too, it will be no speech of the Father to the Jew: “Thou art always with Me, and all Mine are thine.” For the Jews are pronounced “apostate sons, begotten indeed and raised on high, but who have not understood the Lord, and who have quite forsaken the Lord, and have provoked unto anger the Holy One of Israel.” That all things, plainly, were conceded to the Jew, we shall admit; but he has likewise had every more savoury morsel torn from his throat, not to say the very land of paternal promise. And accordingly the Jew at the present day, no less than the younger son, having squandered God’s substance, is a beggar in alien territory, serving even until now its princes, that is, the princes of this world. Seek, therefore, the Christians some other as their brother; for the Jew the parable does not admit. Much more aptly would they have matched the Christian with the elder, and the Jew with the younger son, “according to the analogy of faith,” if the order of each people as intimated from Rebecca’s womb permitted the inversion: only that (in that case) the concluding paragraph would oppose them; for it will be fitting for the Christian to rejoice, and not to grieve, at the restoration of Israel, if it be true, (as it is), that the whole of our hope is intimately united with the remaining expectation of Israel [citing Ro. 11 here]. Thus, even if some (features in the parable) are favourable, yet by others of a contrary significance the thorough carrying out of this comparison is destroyed; although (albeit all points be capable of corresponding with mirror-like accuracy) there he one cardinal danger in interpretations—-the danger lest the felicity of our comparisons be tempered with a different aim from that which the subject-matter of each particular parable has bidden us (temper it).”
So within that framework, I don’t know if Tertullian is truly arguing for the particular eschatological version espoused in this space. The “restoration of Israel” and what it means is still not entirely clear (as is often the case with parenthetical remarks, like this one.) That is, it could be consistent with view #2, the “remnant view.”
Indeed, this idea seems clearer in another Tertullian quote [note the “remnant” language] –
“Being questioned by His disciples when those things were to come to pass which He had just been uttering about the destruction of the temple, He discourses to them first of the order of Jewish events until the overthrow of Jerusalem, and then of such as concerned all nations up to the very end of the world. For after He had declared that “Jerusalem was to be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles should be fulfilled,” —meaning, of course, those which were to be chosen of God, and gathered in with the remnant of Israel—He then goes on to proclaim, against this world and dispensation (even as Joel had done, and Daniel, and all the prophets with one consent), that “there should be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars, distress of nations with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring, men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth.” “For,” says He, “the powers of heaven shall be shaken; and then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds, with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh.” [On the Resurrection of the Flesh, XXII]
One further caution with regard to the church fathers on this issue: they sometimes relied on non-canonical writings, such as the Book of Enoch, the Apocalypse of Baruch, 4th Esdras, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and the Sibylline Books.
Further still, quoting Catholic writers like Cassiodorus means you’ll have to consider the abundance of Catholic thought contrary to the “eschatalogical position”, which may overwhelm your quotes. (I found this at Catholic Apologists International online):
“Along with Scripture, the consensus among the early Fathers is that there is no divinely mandated future glory for national Israel. Divine promises made to Israel are said to have been already fulfilled in the Old Testament. Remaining prophecies concerning “Israel” are said to be fulfilled in the New Testament Church, or in the eternity of the New Heaven and New Earth. There are only a few personalities who even address the issue of Israel in the future. Some give commentaries on Romans 11:25-27, e.g., Origen, Theodoret, Chrysostom, Jerome, Cyril, Augustine, Pelagius (not the heretic of the same name, of course).
Of those, Origen admits that he does not know what “all Israel” means. He writes: “What all Israel means or what the fullness of the Gentiles will be only God knows …”
Chrysostom refers only to a spiritual restoration: “God’s covenant will be fulfilled not when they are circumcised … but when they obtain the forgiveness of sins… it will certainly come to pass.
Augustine states that Romans 11:26 applies only to the remnant of Israel, and spiritually to the Church: “Not all the Jews were blind; some of them recognized Christ. But the fullness of the Gentiles comes in among those who have been called according to the plan, and there arises a truer Israel of God … the elect from both the Jews and the Gentiles.”
Theodoret takes the same track as Augustine: “All Israel means all those who believe, whether they are Jews, who have a natural relationship to Israel, or Gentiles, who are related to Israel by faith” (Interpretation of the Letter to the Romans, Migne p. 82, col. 180).
Pelagius challenges those who interpret Romans 11:25-27 as applying to the future, stating that if it does, what does that leave for those Jews in the present: “Some interpreters regard all these events as future. To them one must reply … what will become of those who are now perishing as unbelievers?”
Only two Fathers hold out for any future large restoration of faith in Israel. Jerome states: “… because when the Jews receive the faith at the end of the world, they will find themselves in dazzling light, as if Our Lord were returning to them from Egypt.” (Commentary on St. Matthew, Ch. 2) Cyril of Alexandria says: “Yes, one day, after the conversion of the Gentiles, Israel will be converted, and the Jews will be astonished at the treasure they will find in Christ.” (Commentary on Genesis, Bk. 5) But although Jerome and Cyril look for a spiritual movement in the future, neither of them specify or imply that such movement includes a national and physical restoration of Israel to the land of Palestine, and neither did any other Fathers.
Indeed, the earlier Fathers do not even envision a large conversion of Jews.”
Again, thanks for this discussion and for taking comments.
The question should have been “WAS there a mass conversion of ethnic Jews at the end of the age?”
The disciples asked Jesus, “Tell us… when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” Read Matthew chapter 24. Jesus was very clear about the nature of the end of the age.
Earlier, in Matthew 16:27-28, Jesus tells his disciples, “For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done. I TELL YOU THE TRUTH, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
The Romans recorded their destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in AD70:
“Prodigies had occurred, which this nation, prone to superstition, but hating all religious rites,
did not deem it lawful to expiate by offering and sacrifice. There had been seen hosts joining battle in the skies, the fiery gleam of arms, the temple illuminated by a sudden radiance from the clouds. The doors of the inner shrine were suddenly thrown open, and a voice of more than mortal tone was heard to cry that the Gods were departing. At the same instant there was a mighty stir as of departure. Some few put a fearful meaning on these events, but in most there was a firm persuasion, that in the ancient records of their priests was contained a prediction of how at this very time the East was to grow powerful, and rulers, coming from Judea, were to acquire universal empire.” (Tacitus, The Histories, Book V)
Jesus has come in power, and is now seated at the right hand of the Father. Read Matthew Chapter 21:33-43. The old tenants have met a wretched end, and “the Kingdom of God has been given to a people who will produce its fruit.”
Yeah, don, there’s a remnant, the gospel was first told to me by one of it! Thanks for allowing us to enter in to the ministry of Meir.
JSB,
Thanks for your lengthy comments. I found the church father quotes from Dr. Vlach’s website (the link provided in the above article) which contains all of the bibliographic data for those quotes. In many cases, it also provides additional quotes and explanations.
A couple quick thoughts in reply.
1) The purpose of the quotes above was to demonstrate a common belief that, at the end of the age, there would be a mass conversion of Jews. Whether or not one believes this can be supported from Tertullian and Origen, I believe it is explicit in the writings of Justin, Augustine, Chrysostom, Cyril, Theodoret, Aquinas, and those who followed. This is not always dependent on (or even necessarily consistent with) their specific interpretation of Romans 11:26. Augustine and Theodoret, for example, do express a belief that Elijah is still coming (in keeping with Matt. 17:11), and that when he comes there will be a widespread conversion of the Jewish people (their interpretation of “all Israel” in Romans 11 notwithstanding).
2) The Catholic Apologetics information you provided is helpful (though arguably a bit biased, since Rome tends to emphasize those parts of church history that agree with their present-day positions). Nonetheless, even they recognize that there existed, within some of the fathers, the expectation of a future spiritual salvation for national Israel. That is all that this article was attempting to establish … that there is evidence throughout church history that anticipated a future mass conversion of Jews at the end of the age.
3) I would be happy to provide you with bibliographic information for any of the later quotes (since the information for the earlier quotes is found on Dr. Vlach’s website).
Thanks again for your comment. It is always a pleasure to dialogue about these things.
- NB
Just a note on Augustine. He actually appears to have abandoned earlier millennial interpretations. As Schaff says:
“Augustine, who himself had formerly entertained chiliastic [”chiliaism” is another term for the literal 1000 year view] hopes, framed the new theory which reflected the social change, and was generally accepted. The apocalyptic millennium he understood to be the present reign of Christ in the Catholic church, and the first resurrection, the translation of the martyrs and saints to heaven, where they participate in Christ’s reign. It was consistent with this theory that towards the close of the first millennium of the Christian era there was a wide-spread expectation in Western Europe that the final judgment was at hand. From the time of Constantine and Augustine chiliasm took its place among the heresies, and was rejected subsequently even by the Protestant reformers as a Jewish dream.”
Dear Pulpit Magazine Brothers, Thank you for this blog.
We were talking about a mass conversion of Israel and I wanted to gain more understanding, so we made a visit to pulpitmagazine. But, I would like you to consider some other topics, especially realted to the last days. Who are the players, what will last days spirituality look like, what is the “strong delusion” that the Lord will send, what could that possibly be, how will people just accept “the man of peace.” I have been searching around the blogsphere and no one is teaching on the last days. With all the new spirituality and new age recycling going around and shifts, are these the tools being used by Satan to deceive and brainwash people, so they will accept the lies? Thanks, Alan and Karie