(I’m drawing here from both Heiser and Moreau, and they don’t precisely agree.)
In Romans 11, Paul says “all Israel” will be saved. We’ve established in a past lesson that this had a specific meaning in Paul’s day, referring not to ethnic Jews, but to the covenant structure of the 12 Tribes of Israel. This is consistent across the whole of Second Temple literature and the Dead Sea Scrolls. It’s a very specific covenant phrase that does not overlap cleanly with “ethnic Jews”.
So, when Pauls says “all Israel will be saved”, he’s not saying all Jews will be converted at some future date. Paul uses “all Israel” as a theological term. It refers to something God talked about from the very beginning: covenant people. It does not exclude ethnic Jews by any means, but it does include Gentiles.
Drop back to Romans 9 and you get the language where Paul makes this distinction painfully clear. But there’s a lot more to this. He mentions Isaac, who is the very symbol of the child who should not have existed. He was born of parents 90+ years old, and then almost died on Mount Moriah.
Later in the same chapter, Paul makes note of Jacob versus Esau. Jacob was renamed Israel, and the whole thing refers to the second-born as the progenitor of the covenant nation. How many anomalies accompany this special nation? How about Joseph’s children, all half-Gentile? And the numerous major figures in Jesus’ own genealogy who were Gentiles? Why were they included? Why break all the rules?
Galatians is probably Paul’s first published letter still in existence, and in chapter 3 he flatly says that those who inherit the promises of Abraham are both Jews and Gentiles of Abrahamic faith, not Abraham’s DNA. Jesus said the same thing when He told the Pharisees that God could raise up stones who were better children of Abraham. Isaac was born of faith. His son Jacob was a man of faith, whereas Esau was incapable of it. And every Gentile who was included was someone of Abrahamic faith.
By quoting Hosea in Romans 9, Paul flatly replaces the Northern Kingdom, the Lost 10 Tribes, with Gentiles. Consider the logic. Hosea was writing just before the exile of the Northern Kingdom, warning them that God was divorcing them. They were no longer His people. They would be scattered across the Assyrian empire and be assimilated. They would become Gentiles.
If God is going to keep His promises of restoring the whole 12 Tribes, where will He get the Lost 10 Tribes? Since they became Gentiles, He would just pull from that open stock to restore His covenant nation. Further, He would suspend the still extant Judean Kingdom for a time.
Back to Romans 11:25-26 — a partial hardening, meaning most Judeans would not come to Christ during the time God is restructuring the Northern Kingdom from among the Gentiles. If the Jews were still involved in the process, they would reject the Gentiles God had chosen. He isn’t giving them a choice. He’ll keep them out of the way until He’s finished.
This is biblical eschatology. What then are we to make of 2 Thessalonians 2? We’ve talked about this before quite a bit: What hinders the Antichrist from manifesting himself? What is the order of events required for the Devil’s last hurrah before Christ returns?
The sequence is Israel’s rejection > Gentile fullness > Israel’s salvation. The first had already come; Paul had been part of that. In his letters, he was then trying to play his part on the middle item. And the mark for the last item would be the rise of the Antichrist.
In good translations of 2 Thessalonians 2:6-7, you’ll notice two different hindrances to the Antichrist. In the Greek, the first is neuter — a “what” — and the second is a masculine — a “who”. The “what” is the fullness of the Gentiles. Paul has in mind Isaiah 66:18-20, where God promises He would send His people out into the nations. This began in Acts 2, where Jews from all over the known world gathered for Passover, witnessed the crucifixion of Christ, and then heard the gospel message. Some were converted and went back out whence they came to share that gospel with the nations.
Paul had in mind Tarshish in particular, the farthest nation on the Table of Nations in Genesis 11. He wanted to insure that the process was fully under way with bringing in the Gentiles who belonged in the Covenant. Paul was convinced he was the “who” that restrained the Antichrist, but that’s not the only thing. Paul knew he had to die in order to complete his role in the items of the sequence. Once he had fulfilled his mission of planting a witness in the last nation on the list, the actual harvest of Gentiles could begin in earnest.
Paul had warned in the verses before that (2 Thess. 2:3-4) of a falling away, echoed in Jesus’ words in Matthew 24. This is part of my persistent warning that the End Times must manifest in an attack on faith itself, not just religion. Paul comes close to quoting the several OT passages that echo God’s condemnation of the Devil (Isaiah 14, Daniel 11 and Ezekiel 28). Whether symbolic or literal, the only way some figure can claim the throne of God is to clear away faith in any kind of transcendent deity. Once that begins, people who lack genuine faith will fall away. We will be shocked at how many that turns out to be from among our church memberships.
To be continued…
