The Continuing Dishonesty of the “Israel Only” Spokesmen
There is a group of people who claim that the story of the Bible is that only the direct blood descendants of Abraham were the focus of God’s love and scheme of redemption. “All Israel” -meaning all (and only) of the blood line of Abraham were saved in AD 70, and no Gentiles were ever saved or ever will be saved. God does not love you (or me) since we are not descended directly from Abraham by blood. Needless to say, this is a radical and revolutionary doctrine, and destructive t the faith of anyone caught up in it.
Let me say something right up front: While I am fairly certain that there are some sincere and honest people who have bought into that (ridiculous) view, in my personal experience, every single IO (Israel Only) spokesperson that I have engaged with has been unscrupulous and blatantly dishonest. The rejection or distortion of history, of scholarship, of linguistics, of sound hermeneutic, logic and exegesis has been and continues to manifest a horrible willingness to be dishonest with the facts. On 5-4 / 5-5-2022 on Facebook, a frequent IO poster, Michael Severtus posted the following on the FaceBook page World Without End:
Michael Servetus April 30, 2022
Jesus called disobedient Israelites “GENTILES.”
“If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. 16 But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed. 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a GENTILE and a tax collector.” Matthew 18:15-17 –
Did you catch that? Jesus told his fellow Jews that an unrepentant Israelite should be to them as a GENTILE. Proof positive that sinful and non-Torah practicing Israelites were considered “gentiles” by their fellow Jews.”
I was literally stunned at what a horrible and dishonest post this was, although, having engaged Servetus before, and having experienced his seemingly eager dishonesty, I should not have been surprised. But here is what I wrote in response:
5-5-2022
“More dishonest stuff from the IO folks. NO he (Jesus, DKP) did not call disobedient Israelites (edit) Gentiles. he said that the disobedient Israelite was to be consider AS A GENTILE.
Meaning that the Israelites WERE NOT GENTILES! So, as usual, your attempt to dishonestly apply the scriptures blows up in your face and actually falsifies your claims and exposes you– even more– as totally dishonest.”
Folks, do you see what Servetus has done? He is claiming that to be “as a Gentile” is the same as being a Gentile! This is ludicrous and illogical beyond belief, and yet, this is what passes as an “argument” from the IO folks.
Let’s see now, a Mustang is “like” or “as” a Corvette, therefore, a Mustang IS a Corvette– and vice versa! Anybody see a problem here?
But let’s look a bit deeper. Look at a couple of passages:
Exodus 12:48 – And when a stranger dwells with you and wants to keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it; and he shall be as a native of the land. For no uncircumcised person shall eat it.
Ok, so, when a Gentile would be obedient to Torah, and submitted to circumcision and obedience to Torah, he was to be considered “as a native of the land”– he was to be considered as an Israelite! Now, would he become a blood relative / descendant of Abraham? Patently not, but, in regard to covenantal standing, he would be “as a native born” Israelite!
Then, consider Ezekiel 47:22:
It shall be that you will divide it by lot as an inheritance for yourselves, and for the strangers who dwell among you and who bear children among you. They shall be to you as native-born among the children of Israel; they shall have an inheritance with you among the tribes of Israel.
So, in a passage that may well have been one of the many sources of Paul’s doctrine of the Jew / Gentile equality mystery of God, the Lord said that in the Messianic age the foreigner who would dwell among the Israelites was to be given an equal inheritance in the land and was to be considered “as native-born among the children of Israel.”
Of course, the thing to be noted here is that those in view are called strangers. They were foreigners. And keep in mind that the IO camp tries hard to convince us that in the Tanakh the references to foreigners was to the ten northern tribes who had gone into captivity. But wait! An Israelite- by blood– could never ever be anything except a descendant of Abraham! You can’t change your DNA and you can’t change your blood!
Yet, here in Ezekiel, the foreigners who joined themselves to Israel, obeying the Law of God, were to be considered “as native-born among the children of Israel.” Well, once again, they could never be Israelites by blood or DNA! They would only be of Israel by entering God’s covenant (once again refuting a fundamental tenet of the IO camp since they claim that Gentiles / foreigners / strangers could not be members of God’s covenant with Israel!)
The bottom line of course is that to be “as a Gentile” meant to be like those Paul described in Ephesians 2:11f– “Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh—who are called Uncircumcision by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands— that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”
By being disobedient to the Law of God, an Israelite, under covenant, would become like one of the Gentiles who not under covenant, and thus, without God.
It should be clear to any right thinking person that to be “like” or “as” a Gentile did not mean that a disobedient Israelite person lost their DNA, or their blood lineage to Abraham. They lost their covenantal standing and was “cut off out from among the people” forfeiting their relationship with God.
It thus becomes increasingly manifest and clear that the only way that the IO camp can “make a point” is to distort, pervert and deny the correct meaning of Scripture. Be sure to get a copy of my book, One Root, One Kingdom, All Nations for a further development of this very important issue.