THE HOPE OF ISRAEL - The Preterist Archive

44 The Hope of Israel: What Is It?
and mercy with them that love Him and keep His
commandments," yet He "repayeth them that hate Him
to their face, to destroy them." (vv. 9, 10).
Deut. 8:1-18. This chapter is of capital importance.
Moses charges the children of Israel to remem-
God's dealings with them in Egypt and in the
In it
ber all
wilderness, saying:
"Otherwise it shall be, if thou do at all forget
the Lord thy God, and walk after other gods
and serve them, I testify against you this day
that ye shall surely perish. As the nations which
the Lord destroyed before your face, so shall ye
perish, because ye would not be obedient unto
the voice of the Lord your God."
Here God declares explicitly the completeness of
their destruction as a nation. It was to be such as
obliterated those nations which the Lord had destroyed
before their face.
Can it be supposed He did not mean
this? And if He meant it, how can anyone maintain,
in the face of so clear a statement, the doctrine of a
national restoration for Israel?
Furthermore, the form of this tremendously impressive
warning, "Ye shall surely perish" is like that given
to Adam, "Thou shalt surely die." But in the case
of Adam, God's enemy, the father of lies, raised a
question concerning the Divine utterance; "Yea, hath
God said?" With this example and its disastrous consequences
in mind, we should be suspicious as to the
source of the doctrine which declares, concerning the
nation of Israel, that, it shall not perish, but that, on
the contrary, it is to be not only saved, but also is to be
exalted to the place of supremacy among and over the
nations of the world.