THE HOPE OF ISRAEL - The Preterist Archive

104 The Hope of Israel: What Is It?
pensation; and second, that in the N. T. all promises
of future blessing for the Jews are applied to the true
Israel, it being declared that "he is not a Jew who is
one outwardly but he is a Jew who ; . . is one inwardly"
.
(Rom. 2:28, 29), and that "we [Christians] are the
circumcision" (Phil. 3:3).
It is very easy indeed, for it requires no searching
of the Scriptures, or effort of the mind, or spiritual
discernment, to say of every prophecy concerning the
Jews that it must be taken "literally," that it has not
yet been fulfilled, and that it will be fulfilled to "Israel
after the flesh" in a coming dispensation. Those who
habitually deal with 0. T. prophecies after that fashion,
find the millennium a convenient, and indeed an indispensable,
receptacle for all passages whose meaning
does not lie on the surface. On the other hand, it
generally requires both patient effort, and also real
spiritual understanding, to explain a prophecy according
to the intent thereof, and according to the true
spiritual significance of the symbols and figures employed
therein.
Keeping these facts in mind, let us now take a rapid
survey of those prophecies of Ezekiel that have a bearing
upon the subject of our present inquiry.
In chapter XIV God declares through the prophet
the four sore judgments (the sword, the famine, the
noisome beast and the pestilence) He purposed to
bring upon Jerusalem, "to cut off from it man and
beast" (v. 21). But some of its inhabitants were to be
saved. For He goes on to say: "Yet, behold, therein
shall be left a remnant that shall be brought forth,
both sons and daughters" (v. 22).
Inasmuch as Isaiah had previously foretold the salvation
of "a remnant" at the time when God's judg-