Reasons for Believing that God’s Promises to the
Jews Already Have Been Abundantly Fulfilled
by Stuart DiNenno
If you think about the great wickedness of the Jews not only throughout their history but especially in the first century A.D., and the enormous blessings and honor God bestowed upon them during that same century, both during Christ’s ministry and immediately after they murdered him, which included large numbers of conversions to Christianity, you may rightly marvel that there are so many who insist that further blessings are to come.
Consider the following:
1. The Savior himself chose his abode on Earth among the Jews, explicitly said that he was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and that they were the children whose bread must not be given to dogs (Gentiles). They were the circumcision to whom he humbled himself to become their servant. He ordinarily preached in their synagogues, and among them he worked his miracles.
2. Christ appointed twelve apostles—as suited to the twelve tribes of Israel and to show them for whom his message was intended—and at first he expressly sent his apostles only to those twelve tribes.
3. Much of the success of the apostles’ preaching, by God’s grace, was among the Galileans and Samaritans. There is good reason to believe that many residing in these areas were descendants of the ten northern tribes of Israel and Judeans who had migrated northward during the inter-testamental era.
4. John’s gospel repeatedly tells us that many of the Jews believed in Christ (John 2:23; 7:31; 8:30; 11:45; 12:11; 12:42).
5. It is very clear that what is titled the Epistle to the Hebrews was indeed written to Jewish converts to Christianity and so implies the great success of the gospel in that ethnic group.
6. Peter, the apostle to the Jews, directs his first epistle to “the diaspora” scattered through Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, and speaks of their abundant grace. (Though it may be true, as some commentators believe, that his writings were addressed to all the Christians in these localities and that Peter was only using Hebrew terms metaphorically to apply to all Christians.)
7. James directs his epistle to the twelve tribes that are scattered abroad (i.e., “the diaspora”). The internal evidence is clear that his letter was addressed to ethnic Jews and it is also evident that he writes to them as Christians, again demonstrating the success of missionary work among them.
8. The Acts of the Apostles repeatedly tells us of the great success of the gospel among the Jews. We are told that there were three thousand men immediately converted in Jerusalem by the apostles preaching (Acts 2:41), to which another five thousand (Acts 4:4) were added later (or perhaps it means that the total number grew to five thousand). Later still we are told that “the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly” and that “a great company of priests were obedient to the faith,” (Acts 6:7). The same success continued when Paul, during his missionary journeys, preached to the Jews in their synagogues, where there were converts made, and sometimes many of them, as we see in Antioch of Pisidia (Acts 13:43), in Iconium (Acts 14:1), and in Berea (Acts 17:12), and presumably Ephesus as well, since Paul was preaching in the synagogue continually for three months before he “separated the disciples.” In addition, we read in Acts 21:20 that when Paul returned to Jerusalem from his third missionary journey, he was informed of “how many thousands of Jews there are which believe.” Note that in the original Greek it doesn’t just say “how many thousands (posai chilioi)” believed, but “how many tens of thousands (posai myriades)” believed.
9. All of this tells us that there was an ingrafting into the church of a very large number of Jewish Christians in the first century by the mercy and grace of God. The great multitude of Jewish believers in Jerusalem became the mother church, as it were, and thereby the Law went out of Zion, all nations were blessed in Abraham’s Seed, and Christ became a Light to the Gentiles and the Glory of his people Israel.
10. Add to this the great number who must have been saved at various times over the long history of Israel, and we can understand why Revelation gives the large numbers redeemed from among the twelve tribes (Revelation 7:4-8), of which we are told that 144,000 were sealed (meaning a great multitude but probably not literally 144,000). They are called the first fruits of God (Revelation 14:4), meaning the beginning of the church. In Revelation 14:1-5, these have the honor of being distinguished from all the other nations, which are mentioned immediately after (Revelation 14:6).
11. The teaching of Romans chapter eleven (though the interpretation is disputed). As John Lightfoot, one of the Westminster Assemblymen, pointed out, the question Paul was dealing with “in that chapter is not whether all the Jews should be at one time called; but whether all the Jews were wholly cast off.” In other words, the teaching of Paul in Romans is that only a remnant of the Jews are to be saved (Romans 9:27; 11:5); not the opposite, i.e., that the Jews are to be universally converted except for a remnant. It is this remnant we see being saved in all the aforementioned New Testament examples, and the only so-called Jews that we have remaining today are what Richard Baxter in the 17th century called a “self-cursed, infidel rabble.” I believe the evidence suggests that they are most likely a highly mongrelized rabble at that.
12. God blessed the Jews despite the fact that they had sinned worse than the heathen. For besides their contempt of all the religious benefits God gave them, which other nations never had, they outdid everyone in their apostasy. All nations had drifted into spiritual darkness and ignorance of the “invisible god” like the Greeks, but they had a relatively small amount of light. The Jews rejected the visible God, and that in favor of a murderer, when the light shined upon them as brightly as possible; as plainly as God could converse with men and show himself, i.e., in infinite goodness and holiness. They sinned against such light as shall never appear to the eyes of men again.
Anyone who tells you that God’s promises have not been fulfilled to the Jews, and that something more is owed to them, has not truly considered the tremendous amount of mercy and grace already bestowed upon them, not only in their larger history, but in the first century A.D. alone.