THE HOPE OF ISRAEL - The Preterist Archive

Thq Hope of Israel: What Is It? 239
pel dispensation is ended. It matters little what era
that phrase indicates, for the passage speaks not a
word about restoring again the Jewish nation, but of
raising up the tabernacle of David a very different
matter (see chapter herein on The Tabernacle of
David). But the application which James makes of
these words (quoted by him from Amos 9:11) shows
plainly that the time indicated by the words "after
this" was the time then already come when the convocation
at Jerusalem was being held. A reference to the
text and context (Am. 9:9-11) will abundantly confirm
this.
Therefore, no other conclusion is possible from a
careful examination of the Scriptures cited in the article
we are discussing, than that the doctrine of a yet
future restoration of the Jewish nation has not a scriptural
leg to stand upon.
It would be, of course, a tedious business to examine
minutely every passage in which old covenant shadows
as Israel, Zion, Jerusalem, the temple, etc. are mentioned
as symbols of the eternal realities they represent.
Nor is there any need to do so in order to arrive
at the truth of the matter we are investigating. A
single plain statement 'of the New Testament will suffice
for that. This, for example :
"Nevertheless, what saith the Scripture? Cast out the bondwoman
and her son; for the son of the bondwoman shall not
be heir with the son of the freewoman" (Gal. 4:30).
In this pstesage the apostle Paul not only "spiritualizes"
the O. T. Scripture (as in fact he does habitually)
but he also makes it certain that all the unfulfilled
promises of God are for the spiritual seed of Abraham
(Gal. 3:7, 29; see also Heb. 2:16, marg. and Lu. 1:54,