An attempt at refuting the A-millennial and Post-millennial positions concerning the abrogation of God's Land Covenant to Israel is not unlike casting pearls at swine. Many have done so with theses, dissertations and essays, but their noteworthy prolix has had almost zero impact on these ideologues of Reconstructionism. Both A-mill and Post-mill adherents essentially embrace a Replacement theology which extrapolates that any covenant relationship God made with Israel has been annulled at the First Coming of Jesus Christ. Therefore, it is their view that God is finished with the Jewish people as a nation, and they regard as justified individuals and nations that hesitate to recognise the State of Israel as legitimate, now or in the future. In their opinion, no Temple of God is to be re-built in Jerusalem, and no Millennial Kingdom for Israel is to be established with Jerusalem as its capital, any time in the future. What's more, according to Replacement theology, all of God's promises to Israel have been transferred to the church, which is the spiritual Israel.
It's my turn now to fight with my fellow pre-millennialists in the pre-millennial futurist trenches. There is absolutely no foundation, Scriptural, pragmatic or lexical, for the assertions of the Replacement teachings. For one, the church comprises both Jewish and Gentile believers in Jesus Christ and, so, is neither a nation nor a theocracy. On the other hand, physical Israel has always referred to the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to whom God gave the Land Covenant. For another, the Promised Land was never extended to the church, which is a separate entity from Israel and is under the New Covenant which is the Covenant of Grace. Search the Scriptures and you'd be hard pressed to find the church ever having been offered a Land Covenant. Therefore, the church has not replaced Israel as far as God's promises to her as a nation, and her restoration and restitution. God's Land Covenant to Israel is, thus, a fulfillment that is yet in the future.
In Genesis 12, the Lord said to Abraham,
“Now Yahweh said unto Abram, 'Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto the land that I will show thee.'"
The Lord promised Abraham that He would make a great nation from Abraham and to this nation He would give a land. The content of the Land Covenant is found in Deuteronomy 29:10-30. (See here.) As recorded in the book of Exodus, this covenant was first made between God and the people of Israel upon their release from Egyptian bondage under the leadership of Moses.
The Land Covenant, which has been expanded from the original Abrahamic Covenant, is an unconditional one. This fact cannot be adequately stressed. St. Augustine's fifth century AD support that gave leverage to the adherents of A-millennial Reconstructionism is a shameful indictment of western history's anti-semitic treatment of the Jews by the papacy and atrocities such as the Spanish Inquisition and Jewish Holocaust. The covenants that God made with Israel, which God swore to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, are eternal and are not in any way changed or altered by time. Neither are these unconditional covenants abrogated despite Israel's disobedience, even though she has failed to follow the Lord's commands that they be obedient to His laws. Time and again God has chastised His disobedient people, making it hard for them to enter the Promised Land, or exiling them, but God has never retracted His covenant with them. One of His promises is to re-gather them to Israel from wherever they are to be scattered in exile. This has been a recurrence: we read in the Old Testament several times God's fulfilling His promises of bringing the Israelites and Hebrews back to Israel after they had repented of their sin. God is immutable – He was faithful then, and He is faithful now. God will yet fulfill all His covenantal promises to Israel in the future.
In the 30th chapter of Deuteronomy, the Land Covenant stipulates the following promises from God: Israel will be re-gathered to the land (vs. 3-4), Israel is to possess all the Promised Land (vs. 5); Israel will be regenerated (vs. 6); and God will judge Israel's enemies (vs. 7). Only one of these has hitherto been fulfilled – Israel's regathering to her land from all the four corners of the world. However, this is a continuing effort requiring millions in funds and donations from Israel's allies and friends to bring all her exiles home from every part of the world. Although the Jews today have been restored to their Promised Land, they are not in total possession of all the land as promised by God. Arabs today occupy the Gaza Strip and West Bank, and Jordanians on the eastern part of the land constantly threaten their security. Jerusalem is still trampled by Gentiles; in particular, the Temple Mount which is the site of the ancient Holy of Holies, is in Arab hands under the Waqf, a Jordanian-controlled Muslim trust.
All of God's promises to Abraham and His generations will be fulfilled in the same manner that prophecy concerning the re-birth of Israel, as foretold in Ezekiel 37, has been fulfilled in 1948. This restoration of the nation Israel, after nearly 2000 years of exile, is truly a miracle. Equally miraculous is the restoration of their ancient Hebrew language and script to common everyday usage. On the basis of God's faithfulness and Scripture's foolproof record of the fulfillment of its prophetic content, we can confidently deduce that another miraculous restoration is soon to happen in the near future: this is the rebuilding of the Temple of God in Jerusalem, which will no longer be just a dream of every devout Jewish individual.
There is evidence that God's third Temple will be built on the site of Solomon's Temple: the plans for re-creating God's holy sanctuary have been discovered and drawn up; the Levitical priesthood has been re-established and the priesthood's vesture in accordance with the Levitical mandate is being recreated; the Sanhedrin that is the highest court that rules on Temple worship is being reconvened; the utensils, sacred objects, Oil of Anointing and ancient temple treasures are being retrieved, as is the location of the Ark of the Covenant in the process of being found; the red heifer that's presented as a sacrifice has been recovered and is being prepared - all of these have been documented by other writers and researchers as the progress made by the Temple Mount and Land of Israel Faithful Movement towards the inevitable re-building of the Temple. What now remains is the opportunity and signal to rebuild on the Temple Mount for this may be the present site of the Muslims' Dome of the Rock.
Just as foretold in Scripture, God has brought multitudes of exiled Jews back to their homeland, and many more are returning in waves from all the four corners of the world where they were scattered during the Jewish diaspora. However, the Jews will only truly enjoy complete occupation of all of the Promised Land, from the little River of Egypt to the great River Euphrates (Numbers 34), when they become a saved nation during their Millennial resurrection. Indeed, as prophesied, there will be a Millennial Kingdom for Israel where their Messiah, Christ Jesus, will sit on the promised throne of David and reign from Jerusalem.
God is obviously not done with Israel and the church has not replaced Israel. As a matter of fact, astute Biblical hermeneutics adduce that all the end times prophecies involve Israel one way or another and they are ineluctably coming to pass. Prophetic revelations are not given to instill fear but to provide an incentive to engage in some good housekeeping, for God has put the world on a countdown clock with a limited time to put their temples in order, recover their moral bearings, bridge their schism with the Jewish nation and make amends with their Creator.
