WAS JESUS A FAILURE?
Even giving them the benefit of the doubt, if dispensationalists believe that Jesus came to offer a political kingdom to the Jews, and that his offer was rejected, they must believe that Jesus failed in His mission.
But our Jesus did not fail, nor will He ever fail. His offer was a Spiritual Kingdom, one not of this world. In fact, it was Jesus who rejected the Jews effort to make Him their political leader against Rome (John 6:15).
God did not need to change His plans, as the dispensationalist s claim, and send Jesus to the Cross as a substitute idea. Nor was the Kingdom postponed to a distant future date yet to come, the present Christian “era” but a parenthesis in the plan of God for His “chosen people”, the Jews.
Another question: Does God not know what He is doing?
Those who believe that God had to experiment with seven dispensations to salvation before He found one that worked must believe either that He is not sovereign, or that He does not know what He is doing, or both.
But our God knows exactly what He is doing, for it is explained in Acts 2:23 that Christ was delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.
In all human history only one people was/is qualified to be heirs of Abraham to whose seed the promise was made. This seed is Christ:
In Whom we live (Galatians 3:16).
And Who lives in us (Galatians 2:20).
Who Himself is our life (Colossians 3:4).
And because He lives, we shall live also (John 14:19). The only way anyone can escape the curse of the Law and receive the blessing God promised to Abraham, is to be joined by faith to Abraham some and only heir, our Lord Jesus Christ (Galatians 3:26,27).
The true hope of mankind has always been a spiritual hope (Hebrews11:10;13-16).
If those who so firmly believe that God has a different plan for the Jews would, as did the Bereans of Paul s day, search the Scriptures with an open heart and mind, they might discover the real truth.
For instance: Questions and answers –
Who now are Abraham s sons? They who are of faith are the children of Abraham (Galatians 3:7).
Who now are Abraham s seed? Those who are Christ s are Abraham s seed and heirs according to the promise (Galatians 3:29).
Who now is the Israel of God? They which are children of the flesh are not children of God, but the children of the promise are counted for the seed (Romans 9:8).
Who now constitutes the commonwealth of Israel? All who are in Christ Jesus are made nigh by the blood of Christ and are fellow citizens in the household of faith (Ephesians 2:12-16;19,20).
Who now belong to the chosen race? Believers of all kinds who, in times past were not a people, but who are now called the children of the living God (Romans 9:25,26) and who are now considered to be
“A chosen generation,
A royal priesthood,
A holy nation,
A peculiar people” (1 Peter 2:9).
Who now are in God s Kingdom? Those whom God has delivered from the power of darkness and has translated them into the Kingdom of His dear Son, in Whom we have redemption, even the forgiveness of our sins(Colossians 1:12-14).
Where now is the temple of God? The body of believers now is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Whom we have of God, and Who dwells in us, for God dwells not in temples made with hands (Acts 17:24).
Finally, what now is the Kingdom heritage, the Land of Promise? That inheritance, incorruptible and undefiled, is reserved in Heaven for believers (1 Peter 1:4).
If one would apply James 1:5,6 and ask the Lord for wisdom, which He promises to give liberally, if asked in faith, these Scriptures will open up his/her understanding of God s purpose for “spiritual” Israel, not “natural” Israel.
“It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I speak unto you, they are Spirit, and they are Life (John6:63).
Dick Meyer
