Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Israel

I'm on this group on Facebook called "Calvinism: the Group that Chooses You."  It provides some interesting fodder for this blog and I think I'll use them for topics more.

One guy wrote, "What is your view as a Calvinist on Israel?"  There are many that answered that they are lost forever and their disbelief is a bigger enemy than Islam.  I am disheartened by this because it's so lacking in Christ-like love that we should have for all people, elect or reprobate, especially Israel.

Now, I'm not like John MacArthur who believes that the biological Israel will have a different eschatology than us.  I believe as a Christian that I am grafted into the family of Israel through faith in Christ as Abraham's promised seed.  I believe that Jews and Gentiles will have the same opportunities to reject Christ and to accept him until all the elect finally believe and then Christ comes back. 

I do find some kind of truth in MacA's dispensationalism.  The biological Jews rejected Christ for the most part and the majority of Christians from Christ until now are Gentiles.  I'm a Gentile.  But I am a Jew because of Christ's blood that has atoned me.  Maybe there will be a time when Jews come back to Jesus toward the for real end of time.  It's not going to be after the rapture because there is only one church. 

As for Israel now, it's continued existence is one of the biggest proofs for God's existence.  From the Holocaust to the Inquisition to the KKK to the Crusades, throughout all history they have been attacked ruthlessly, but God has saved a remnant.  They are mostly reprobates, but God still loves them and keeps their genes alive.  I see it as an abomination to want to take their land and give it to the Palestinian pirates who will take more than the inch given to them by the UN.  As Christians, we had better stand by Israel, especially as Americans because they have been our allies.  I remember a time when George W. Bush tried to compromise with the PLO and give them some Israeli land.  Weeks later, Katrina destroyed Louisiana.  That state still suffers the effects.  God will protect Israel no matter who attacks them, and we had better be on God's side.

As for the Calvinists on the Facebook page, this is the kind of cavalier Calvinism that John MacA warns against.  We're so proud of our knowledge of soteriology that we become hateful toward anyone who thinks differently.  We are to be humblest of humble because God saved his enemies and made them Christians apart from any will of ours.  We did not choose God and deserve hell.  How dare we act proudly toward other people and use our grace as a license to worship beer and crude jokes, and especially as a license against those who are different from us.  We should be mourning the reprobate deeply, not rubbing it in their faces.

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