Transcript: God's Chosen People: Understanding the End Times

Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music In many churches today, there's a lot of fuss made about the need for Christians pray for the nation of Israel, as though the nation of Israel is still God's chosen people. We need to get all this groveling into perspective with what the Bible actually teaches about the true children of Israel. To help you do that, I have six brief points I'd like to make about the Jews and the end time. Number 1. The Jews are just two tribes out of twelve that made up the original children of Israel. The Revelation talks about bringing together twelve tribes of believers just before Jesus returns. These twelve tribes could not be the original twelve tribes of Israel because ten of them no longer exist. They disappeared long before Jesus was born. The Jews of today are named after the tribe of Judah, from which we get the words Judaism and Jews, although some of them are from the tribe of Benjamin as well. 2. The New Testament repeatedly refers to those who accept Jesus as the true children of Israel. All of the promises to Israel were according to Paul fulfilled in Jesus the Lion of the tribe of Judah the son or descendant of David that is the Messiah Paul said that faith in this one descendant Jesus is what God has been looking for all along He wants people with the kind of faith that Abraham had. Abraham, I want you to leave your own country and go to a new place. Unfortunately, the children of the kingdom, as Jesus described the Jews, those who were first, have finished up last. They have been cast out of Christ's kingdom. Others will inherit that kingdom, as Jesus predicted. Every attempt to focus attention on the nation of Israel has invariably taken attention away from Jesus and all that he brought. James' letter to the Christians in his day was addressed to the twelve tribes scattered abroad. In other words, James recognized the followers of Jesus as the true spiritual descendants of Abraham and Jacob. We need the faith to believe that too. We are no longer living in the Old Testament. Number three, even if someone did claim to be a descendant of one of the other ten sons of Jacob, there would be no way to prove it one way or the other. The revelation says of the 144,000 faithful believers who will make up the twelve tribes of the new Israel, that they are the ones who follow Jesus, the Lamb, wherever he goes. Even those so messianic Jews who call themselves Christians today need more than a name to prove that they are part of the new tribe of Judah or the new tribe of Benjamin They need to follow Jesus wherever he goes. Let's stop looking at everyone's genes and start looking at their behavior. Number 4. The names of the 12 tribes in the Revelation aren't even the same as those listed in the Old Testament. The tribe of Dan has been left out of the list that is given in the Revelation, and Joseph is given two tribes, one for himself and one for his son Manasseh. There are various theories as to why God describes spiritual Israel in this way, but it does underline the fact that the 144,000 members of those 12 tribes do not need to be literal descendants of the 12 or even the 11 sons of Jacob or Israel. Number five, even in the Old Testament, one could become a Jew by conversion. It never was absolutely essential that one trace their lineage back to Abraham in order to be regarded as a member of the children of Israel. What mattered most was whether they had the faith of Abraham. The harlot Rahab was not a descendant of Abraham, and yet she was included in the genealogy of Christ, the Messiah. The wife of Moses, like many other wives of Old Testament heroes, was not from any of the recognized tribes of Israel. Even in New Testament times, religious leaders scoured the world to make converts to Judaism out of foreigners. If the Pharisees could accept that a non-descendant of Israel could become an Israeli, then certainly followers of Jesus would become proper children of Israel in a way that those who rejected Jesus could not What they miss and what so many churchgoers miss today is that true faith is needed for anyone to become a true descendant of Abraham God wants to hear more than empty praise or legal documents regarding his promises to them. He wants obedience from his people, and just as he rejected the Jews, he will reject every church that fails to put its faith entirely in him. And finally, number six. From all this, we can conclude that at best, there will only be 24,000 Jewish followers of the Lamb when the tribulation begins. The other 120,000 members of the other 10 tribes of Israel will come from the rest of us. And that is only if flesh Jews make up the entire membership of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. Personally, I don't think their genes will make any difference at all. It all comes down to whether or not they, or we, are following the Lamb. So let's stop talking about the Jews like they are God's people. God can make better Israelites out of stones, and he is doing it today through a tiny handful of people around the world who are choosing to put Jesus first and step outside the limited political visions of institutional religion. We are preparing ourselves to become the true bride of Christ, spiritual virgins who have kept ourselves from the greedy whore of Babylon, and all that she represents.