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ISBN 978-0-9573522-4-7

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Biblical quotations are from the New International Version ÂŠ International Bible Society 1973, 1978, 1984 unless otherwise stated.

ISBN 0-9573522-4-7

Published by Issachar Ministries UK, Moggerhanger Park, Bedford MK44 3RW

ISRAEL: THE PEOPLE OF GOD ‘God’s Servant: God’s Key to the Redemption of the World’

Contents Chapter

Page

Introduction: Tribute to Howard Taylor by David Torrance 1 Witness to the Nations 2 The Cross Sealed into the Heart of Israel 3 Chosen People - Positive and Negative 4 People and Land 5 The Political Situation in the Middle East in 1991 6 The Future Appendix: The Situation in 2014 by David Torrance MAP of Israel in 1991

3 5 12 20 25 32 42 47 41

Originally published by PWM Team Ministries in 1991 in their Biblical Basis series Republished for Issachar Ministries 2014

Howard Taylor

Israel: The People of God

Introduction Israel has occupied, and continues to occupy, a central position in God’s purposes for world redemption. As Howard Taylor says in Israel: the People of God, “The reason why Paul refuses to accept that unbelieving Israel has lost its destiny goes to the heart of the doctrine of the atonement in the sovereign purposes of God. The Jews’ rejection of Christ was in the purpose of God, for the salvation of the world. Indeed, it is not until ‘all Israel is saved’ that the church itself can be healed and fully realise its destiny in the resurrection of Christ (Romans 11:15). A proper understanding of God’s purposes in Israel greatly deepens our comprehension of the atonement and this is a strong confirmation that our understanding is true”. The Rev Howard Taylor, as a lecturer and conference speaker and through his various publications helped and influenced many people, many of whom recognised that he had a prophetic gift, not least in what he said about Israel. He died in February 2013. This booklet was first published in 1991. Because of its importance Issachar Ministries, who took over all the publications of PWM Team Ministries when it closed, have chosen to republish it. With the agreement of Eleanor Taylor, Howard’s widow, various references have been updated and minor alterations made without altering the thrust of what Howard originally said. This republication goes out with the prayer that it will be widely welcomed and be a help to many seeking to understand God’s purpose for Israel and the world’s redemption. Rev. David W. Torrance September 2014

Israel: The People of God

Chapter One

Witness to the Nations In 1948, against all earlier expectation and after nearly two thousand years of exile, the nation of Israel was reborn. In 1967 it regained sovereignty over its ancient capital Jerusalem. Over and over again the Old Testament prophets tell us that the history of the Jews will be unlike that of any other people, and that towards the end of time, after great suffering, they will return to the Promised Land, and there become the centre of world hostility. Eventually God will reconcile them to their Messiah, cleanse them from their sin, judge the nations that have hated them, and make them a blessing to all peoples (Isaiah 43-49; Jeremiah 30-33; Ezekiel 36-39; Zechariah 12 and 13 and many others). Later we shall see that the New Testament confirms this Old Testament promise. In Isaiah 11:10-12 we read that, in the last days, God will raise a banner for the nations to see. This banner will be the regathering of the exiles of Israel to the Promised Land. The events of the last fifty or so years have remarkably fulfilled this promise as Jews from more than eighty countries have returned to their ancient land in the most remarkable circumstances. It began with the rebirth of the State of Israel after nineteen hundred years of exile. From the beginning of 1990, the world's attention focused on Jews who, at the rate of a thousand a day, began arriving in Israel from the Soviet Union. Also thousands of black Jews have been rescued from Ethiopia and brought to Israel, the country that their ancestors left in the time of King Solomon, 2,900 years ago. It is surely extraordinary that the world cannot take its eyes off this little country, as if it were a banner held high for all to see. Israel is a tiny nation (the size of Wales) and yet it has absorbed far more of the United Nations' time than any other nation. We are not taking the view that everything Israel does is right. There is no nation that is fully righteous in the eyes of the Lord. As Paul says, 'There is no-one righteous, not even one' (Romans 3:10). 5

Israel: The People of God

It is amazing that we should expect Israel to be more righteous than other nations! There is plenty of evidence that Israel is guilty of human rights violations against its Palestinian Arab minority, who have sided with its enemies. Yet when compared with the crimes committed by despotic rulers in many other countries it really is astonishing that this little land of Israel should be the focus of so much international attention and censure. Other countries behave in far worse ways to minorities under their rule with far less excuse. Ever since its refounding, Israel has faced ferocious and violent opposition to its very existence from huge, rich, fanatical, and heavily armed neighbours who have attempted on several occasions to wipe it off the map. Israel's survival, even with American aid, is surely amazing. Arab oil wealth is far, far greater than American aid to Israel. A long time ago in the book of Psalms the following commentary was written about Israel and the surrounding nations: 'With cunning they conspire against your people; they plot against those you cherish. "Come," they say, "let us destroy them as a nation that the name of Israel may be remembered no more." With one mind they plot together; they form an alliance against you' (Psalm 83:3-5).

Map of the Arab/Islamic nations showing the relative size of Israel

Israel: The People of God

‘That Israel may be remembered no more' is indeed a principal focus of the struggle or Holy War (Jihad) of the vast world of Islam. As long as Israel exists, it is a challenge to the very heart of Islamic faith. We shall see why later. It is also a wonderful confirmation that the God of the Bible is true to his word, and that one day, before the Judge of all the earth, all nations and individuals will give account of themselves. His word also tells us how he longs to redeem all peoples, including Israel's Arab and Muslim enemies whom he loves just as he loves Israel. This is surely the message on God's banner. Isaiah chapter 11 uses the metaphor of the banner in the context of another metaphor: that of a tree which has been cut down, leaving only a stump. The stump represents the people of God who were cut off from the promised land and had lost the royal line of kings who had descended from David, son of Jesse. This happened hundreds of years before the appearance on earth of Christ, when Israel was taken into exile by the Babylonians. Isaiah promises that a shoot will grow from the stump and will bear fruit in all the earth. And so, seven hundred years later, Jesus, a descendant of David, was born into the world. He was and is that prophesied 'shoot', 'son of David' and 'king of the Jews'. For the last two thousand years the church has borne witness to him as it has taken the gospel into all nations. But Isaiah goes on to speak of the root of Jesse that would one day be the banner. For while the church has been bearing conscious witness to the Messiah, God has not forgotten the hidden root from whom the Messiah sprang, namely Israel. God's hidden purposes have been continuing throughout history. The story of the Jews, in a remarkable way, bears witness to the word of God as revealed in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Isaiah tells us that in the last days God will take this root and raise it up like a banner for all to see. This banner will be none other than the regathering of the very people whom God had scattered. Not long ago names such as Bethlehem, Jerusalem, the Mount of Olives, Bethany, and Jericho were associated in our minds only with places in the Bible story. But now, with the Jews at last regathered to their land, we read of them regularly in our newspapers. The banner is there for all to see. The attempt to extinguish the Jewish people did not begin with Arab 7

Israel: The People of God

hostility to the new State of Israel. It was born out of one of the most appalling crimes committed in the history of mankind. The deliberate and methodical attempt by the Nazis to gas to death the whole Jewish population of Europe was uniquely evil. There have been many other mass killings in history but they generally have been committed against a background of great fear or the anger of war. The Jews were not part of any war effort against the Germans. They were not killed in the heat of battle. The holocaust was a carefully devised and researched plan to look for every individual Jew including the very old and the very young so as to erase them from the face of the earth. Hitler even gave greater priority to exterminating the Jews than to winning the war against the allies. Trains needed desperately by the German army to transport troops to the Eastern front to fight the Soviet Union were instead diverted by the Nazis for the purpose of transporting Jewish civilians to the gas-chambers. Centuries before the rise of Hitler, during the dark ages of medieval Europe, many millions of Jews had been killed because of their Jewish identity. Indeed the history of anti-Semitism goes back into Old Testament times. We read in the book of Esther of the attempt by Haman to exterminate all the Jews who lived in the Persian empire. Yet God has wonderfully preserved them down the ages. They are like the burning bush which Moses saw: they cannot be consumed. Their unique history goes back to the earliest times of the Bible, and is something that even they have difficulty in explaining. A former Prime Minister of Israel, Mr Yitzhak Shamir, said in a speech that generations of research had failed to find an answer to the question of why the Jews had always been subject to such boundless hatred. Does all this have any meaning? Yes, and it is the purpose of this booklet to explore that meaning. Prof Alan Richardson, a prominent Anglican scholar, writes: 'In view of the remarkable history of the Jewish people it ought not to seem strange to us that they should have some unique destiny to fulfil in the providence of God. The history of other nations provides not even a single remote parallel to the phenomenon of Jewish existence down the ages and to this day. What other nation of antiquity has preserved its identity and character as the Jews have done, though exiled from their homeland and dispersed throughout the world? 8

Israel: The People of God

Throughout centuries of persecution the Jewish race has survived the catastrophes which have so often destroyed the national identity of other peoples. Religious or secularised, a Jew remains a Jew - a voluntary or involuntary witness to the truth that is symbolised in the story of God's covenant with Abraham. This striking fact of the persistence of the Jewish race has long been recognised as important evidence of the truth of the biblical interpretation of history.’ Prof Richardson quotes Bishop Butler, an eighteenth century scholar, who wrote: ‘The Jews are dispersed through the most distant countries; in which state of dispersion they have remained fifteen hundred years; and ... they remain a numerous people, united amongst themselves, and distinguished from the rest of the world ... ; and everywhere looked upon in a manner, which one scarce knows how to express, but in the words of the prophetic account of it, given so many ages before it came to pass: "thou shalt become a proverb and a byword among all the nations whither the Lord shall lead thee" (Deuteronomy 28:37). Butler goes on to speak of ‘the appearance ... of a standing miracle in the Jews remaining a distinct people in their dispersion, and the confirmation which the event appears to give to the truth of revelation’. When Disraeli was asked what he thought was the most convincing proof of the existence of God, he replied, ‘The Jews’, It would seem that the Jewish people cannot escape their appointed mission of calling the attention of the rest of the world to the truth that God exists and has a purpose in history which must be carried out; they remain scattered through all the world as a question addressed to every nation concerning its responsibility before the Lord of history. ‘The uniqueness of the Jewish people is not something which has been invented by theologians ... : it is a startling fact of world history ... ‘ (Christian Apologetics, pp 141ff). Note Richardson's phrase that the Jews are 'a voluntary or involuntary witness’. The New Testament gives us a very good example of how a Jewish leader was, under God, an involuntary witness to the truth of Christ himself. This will help us to answer the question in many people's minds. How can the very people who rejected Christ still have a unique place in God's purposes in history and how can their history reveal anything of God's way of salvation in Christ? 9

Israel: The People of God

In John's gospel we read how the Jewish council was worried that Jesus might give the Roman authorities an excuse to destroy the nation and its temple. Verses 49-50 of chapter 11 record the plot to have Jesus killed: 'Then one of them named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, "You know nothing at all! You do not realise that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish." He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God to bring them together and make them one' (John 11:49-50 my italics). The main work of the high priest was to make the sacrifice for the sins of Israel. Here we find him, without knowledge of what he is doing, planning to make The great sacrifice that will take away the sins of Israel, and unwittingly prophesying that through this deed God's purposes to redeem the world will be fulfilled. As high priest that year he was unconsciously fulfilling Israel's destiny. He meant it for harm, but God meant it for good. Indeed it had been in God's purposes from the beginning of time. One of the great questions before Paul as he wrote to the Romans was this: Given that God had purposed that the Jews should reject Christ so that the world might be saved, do his ancient promises to them still apply? His answer is a resounding 'yes,' because they were disobedient for our sake and God had intended that it should be so! He therefore warns Gentile believers not to be conceited in their attitude to Jewish unbelief (Romans 3:1-5, 11:11-32). How the church has ignored that advice down the centuries to the present day! (Of course Paul is insistent that, for both the individual Jew and Gentile, Jesus is the only way of salvation, but this does not mean that God's purposes in history for the Jewish people are cancelled). In order to understand God's purposes in Israel we must root our thinking in the gospel itself and see how from the very beginning of Israel's calling, the cross was imprinted upon her very being.

Israel: The People of God

Questions: First read Isaiah 43:1-13. 1.

What is the origin of the people of Israel? (v 1)

Many people have asked 'Where was God during Jewish suffering?' Does verse 2 help us to answer that question? (See also Isaiah 63:9)

Does Israel always understand what God is doing in its history? (v 8)

What great event in Israel's history is a 'Witness to the Nations'? (5-6; 9-10)

Israel: The People of God

Chapter Two

The Cross Sealed Into the Heart of Israel In order for God to fulfil his purpose of grace and mercy, he was determined to bear our sin so that he might take us through death into life and glory. To realise this objective he needed to allow us to reject him in person so that he might really suffer the full weight of our rebellion against him. This is a very important part of what we mean when we say that Christ died for our sins. To accomplish this objective he needed one people, with their sin, to represent all peoples and all sin. In the humanity of Jesus he came face to face with this people and meekly allowed them to do their deed. In a mysterious but nevertheless real way, we too were involved in the rebellion of this people against God. It was not just the self-righteousness of the religious leaders, nor the disloyalty of the disciples, nor the indifference of the passers-by that gave him pain. The song asks us, 'Were you there when they crucified my Lord?' The answer is surely 'Yes.' 'Died he for me who caused his pain, for me who him to death pursued?' (my italics) Charles Wesley wrote and we sing. Thus if we think that the Jews alone were guilty of his death, how can we say he died for our sins? God's further purpose is to redeem all of nature from its bondage to decay. So not only must there be a chosen people to represent all peoples but also a promised land to represent all lands. He began to draw near to the world when he called Abraham to be his friend so that through his descendants he might accomplish his painful but glorious purpose of redeeming mankind from sin. Not only did he promise Abraham that his descendants would be a blessing but, integral to his purpose, he led him to the Promised Land. It is significant that the land of Israel lies at the junction of Africa, Asia and Europe, the three ancient continents of the world. When I worked for many years for the church in Malawi, Africa, I found it important to be able to say that Jesus and his people were not white Europeans. God's chosen land was in an important 12

Israel: The People of God

.............................. (to be continued)

Israel: The People of God Series Objective The purpose of this series of mini-books is to outline the biblical basis of the teaching used in Issachar Ministries. The vision underlying Issachar Ministries is that of equipping the church to be the prophet to the world and to fulfil the mission of Christ given in the Great Commission. For this purpose the Holy Spirit has been given to the church bringing new life, power and spiritual gifts to all believers. A major objective is to mobilise the spiritual resources of the church by promoting greater understanding of spiritual gifts enabling individual believers to recognise and use their gifts. A further objective is to enable Christians to know what the Bible says on issues, to understand the signs of the times, to listen to God, to guard against deception, and to know what the Holy Spirit is saying to the churches.

Summary of this booklet

Israel is rarely out of the news today and is often the focus of controversy. Even facts concerning recent events in Israel are usually reported quite differently according to the sympathies of the reporter. Howard Taylor handles recent Middle-East history with great sensitivity as he explores the validity of both Old Testament and New Testament prophecies in relation to Israel. The result is a gripping as well as informed narrative that makes a profound contribution to the study of Israel: the People of God. Christians have a long history of anti-semitism and today there is much division in the church concerning Israel; but what does the Bible say? There is probably no greater need than for the church to have available sound biblical teaching on this subject. These are studies that every Christian will find both fascinating and enlightening.

The Rev Howard Taylor BSc BD was ordained into ministry by the African Presbyterian Church and for ten years conducted parish work there. He returned to Scotland, where for many years he led St David's Parish Church in Glasgow, lectured part-time at Glasgow Bible College, and spoke to conferences on science, belief and New Age topics. He also wrote regularly for Prophecy Today magazine and contributed greatly to that ministry. At the International Christian College in Glasgow he taught for many years a module "The Philosophy of Science and Religion" for which he won a $12,000 UK Templeton Award for educational excellence. He was appointed Chaplain to Heriot-Watt University at the start of the 1998-1999 academic session. From the summer 1999 to the end of the session 2007-08 he also taught first year "elective" modules in Moral and Social Philosophy in the Department of Economics at Heriot-Watt University. He died in 2013. This reprint is dedicated to his memory by The Rev David Torrance, a retired Church of Scotland minister. He was a longtime participant in joint Christian/Jewish dialogue, and an author and speaker on questions relating to the Jewish people.

e-published by Issachar Ministries UK ISBN 978-0-9573522-4-7