Seraphim Hamilton

An error that drifts around Christian circles is what I call “hyper-supersessionism,” which maintains that, not only is the Church the New Israel, the physical descendants of Abraham are essentially irrelevant to biblical prophecy.  This is a false idea.  The Church is the organic continuation of old Israel.  The olive tree was not cut down and replaced, but those Jews who rejected Jesus as Messiah were cut off for their apostasy, and those Gentiles who accepted Jesus as Messiah were grafted into the olive tree and became sons of Abraham by their faith in Messiah.

With this in mind, read the words of Christ and Peter:

Acts 1:6-8: So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”  He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.  But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

This seems to imply that the Lord will one day place the land back in the hands of Israel — true Israel.  At the moment the land is possessed by the apostate Jews who were cut off from true Israel because of their rejection of Messiah.  However, I believe that their return to the land does have some significance in biblical prophecy.

Zechariah 12:10-11: And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.  On that day the mourning in Jerusalem will be as great as the mourning for Hadad-rimmon in the plain of Megiddo.

The Prophet Zechariah writes that at some point the inhabitants of Jerusalem will look on the LORD, whom they pierced, and they will mourn.  They will plead “Lord, have mercy!”  This implies a turning to God on the part of the ethnic Jews.  Combine this with Romans 11:25-27: Lest you be wise in your own conceits, I want you to understand this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.  And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob”; “and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins.”

So, at some point, ethnic Israel will cry out to the Lord and repent for rejecting their Messiah.  They will be grafted back into the tree of true Israel, and thus, the Nation of Israel will be converted to an Orthodox Christian state.