A Preterist Supersessionism Part 2 (The Historical Case)

Watch this blog on this week’s episode of The PRODCAST.

INTRO

Last week, we stepped into a doctrine that modern evangelicals treat like a live grenade: which is supersessionism. And before we go any further today, let’s define that term and even say the quiet part out loud:

There is no special covenant for the modern day Jews.
There is no future temple coming. At least not one that has any Biblical significance

There is no end-time ethnic revival for the Jews as Jews on God’s prophetic schedule.
Their only hope—the only hope for every Jew—is to turn from the dead religion of Judaism and bow the knee to Jesus Christ. Anything other than that is a fantasy that leads to eternal destruction! And, it is outright rebellion against the New Testament.

That is what supersessionism means. It means that the Jews have no unique covenant status any longer and they have no future apart from repenting and turning to Jesus Christ.  

This is not a highfalutin academic concept that only the scholars can understand. This is simply what the New Testament teaches and we ought not be ashamed of it. And once you see it, the Biblical story, as well as the mission of the Kingdom of God on earth, explode with newfound clarity, which is why we are talking about it. 

Now… Last week we built the covenant scaffolding for this view: demonstrating that Christ is the true Israel, He is the fulfillment of every covenant, and He is the cornerstone of a new creation and global people who are made in union with Him. He is the true tree by which Old Covenant Israel and the New Creation world will be grafted in. We looked at that last week and if you have not seen that episode pause this video and go and check it out. 

THIS WEEK… we continue ripping the Jewish bandade off so that we can see clearly and also so that we can offer to Jews the only hope that exists in the world, and that is Jesus! 

Because the modern idea that an unbelieving Jew can and does still have covenant status…
or that God is waiting to restore national Israel…
or that a third temple must rise…
is not just empathy for our long lost older brother… That view is a direct assault on the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the only hope of anyone, whether they be Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female. 

Let me put it bluntly:

If you believe that unbelieving Jews, who curse Jesus, blaspheme Him in their descriptions of Him, and still have a disdain for His one true bride, are still God’s chosen people in any sense of that term, then you are saying the cross didn’t matter. You are saying that Calvary, at the very best was a side quest for Jesus, where He accepts a bastard people, while He waits on the ones He really loves to be provoked to jealousy and come back to Him. The consequences of this theology are scandalous! 

Let me say it even plainer… If you believe modern day Jews, who hate your Lord and savior Jesus Christ, still by consequence of unprovable genetics, have a covenant with God apart from faith in Jesus Christ, then you are denying hope of the New Testament. 
If you believe Israel will be restored without repentance, which would require leaving their demonic religion, and fleeing into the arms of Jesus (which by the way would make them Christian) then you are contradicting the plan of salvation Jesus offered them, Paul earnestly presented them, Peter prayed for them, and Hebrews bid they enter. You are making up a fantasy version of Christian doctrine for some other reason than fidelity to the text. 

So with that, today, we’re going to show how the Jews have been cut out of the covenant, that the Old Mosaic Covenant has been so thoroughly ended, that the only way for a Jew to be saved is to believe in Jesus, which means their ethnicity and their judaism have no bearing whatsoever on their salvation. The Jews, as Jews, have no covenant status. The only hope they have is Christ. Now, to prove that, we are going to make the historical case: that the covenant ending curses of Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26 were poured out on the first century generation of Jews thereby ending the old covenant. We are going to show how the believing remnant that Paul speaks about in Romans 11 already happened in the first century. And we are going to show how the mission of God guarantees that the only hope for the world is Jesus, and there will never be a return to Judaism again.   

This episode is not for people who subscribe to Christianity Today
This is not for Zionists who are taking money from Aipac
This is not one of those Ted Cruz tropes that if you “bless geopolitical Israel” you are fulfilling the Abrahamic covenant.

But what it will be is showing what the New Testament teaches, so that we can call all people, Jews and Gentiles alike, to the only Gospel that saves!
So with that, let us dive right in, looking at: 

PART 1: THE COVENANT WAS TAKEN FROM THE JEWS 

When Jesus crested the ridge of the Mount of Olives and looked out over Jerusalem in the final week of His earthly ministry, He was not entering a neutral city. He was entering the city compared to the vineyard of God, the one place on earth obligated by covenant to bear fruit for Yahweh. And, for more than a millennium, the Lord had dug around this vineyard, pruned it, watered it, warned it, disciplined it, and sent prophet after prophet to cultivate it. 

But now the final moment had come. The Owner Himself was riding into the city on a donkey, riding in as King to inspect His realm, and when He arrived, He found the same thing He had always found—leaves without fruit, ritual without righteousness, religion without repentance. The city that was supposed to be a tree laden with figs only offered Jesus leaves on Palm Sunday, demonstrating that they were all show and no substance. Its temple was a magnificent corpse. Its priests were whitewashed tombs. Its leaders were polished chalices full of deadly poison. Everything about Jerusalem in those days looked alive from a distance, shimmering with the leaves of ancient glory, but up close it was barren, brittle, and hollow. 

This is why Jesus cursed the fig tree. It was not a lesson in horticulture; It was not Jesus being hangry; it was a covenant verdict. In the Old Testament the fig tree was Judah. The fruitless tree on the side of the road was representative of the fruitless state of the first century Jews… They had all the greenery and leaves, but none of the life giving fruit, which is why He condemned it! As a symbol of what was about to happen to that generation. When He cursed that pitiful tree, the curse echoed far beyond its bark, to the city looming in the distance. He was pronouncing judgment on the entire Old Covenant order. “No one shall ever eat fruit from you again” was not only a denunciation of that little withered tree, but also that soon, no one would travel to Jerusalem to know God. Fruit would be given by the Holy Spirit to people all over the earth who come to know the true temple Jesus. Those words, pronounced that morning, were aimed past the tree. They were aimed at the temple mount itself.

That is why, when He turned to His disciples, He pointed directly toward Jerusalem and said, “If you speak to THIS mountain and command it to be torn up and hurled into the sea, it will obey you.” The near demonstrative pronoun “this” leaves no doubt—Jesus was speaking about the mountain right in front of Him that bore the fruitless temple, the mountain that defined Judaism in the flesh. And He declared that the mountain of that Old Covenant would be uprooted and drowned in the depths of the sea. Which, if you know your history, happened at the behest of the Romans. From Josephus we learn that the armies of Titus ripped the mountain that housed the city of Jerusalem completely apart, tore its stones down to the foundation, and cast the whole institution of temple Judaism into their boats, and into the sea, where it would lose all covenantal significance as the trinkets and treasures of pagans. 

Jesus made this even clearer in His parables that follow immediately after the cursing of the fig tree. You see, He left the fig tree, marched right into the city, went down town, and got immediately into an exchange with the Jewish power brokers of His day, telling three sequential parables of doom. That is the only way these parables, found in Matthew 21-22, make sense. 

For instance, looking right into the eyes of the Pharisees, He told them about two sons in Matthew 21, exposing their hypocrisy. According to the logic of the parable they had been saying with their lips for centuries “We will obey God,” but for those same centuries their bodies had refused, which is why Jesus tells them that the tax collectors, sinners, and Gentiles were going to stream into the Kingdom ahead of them. Think about that. The Jews hated the tax collectors and sinners, they despised the Samaritans and prostitutes, but Jesus told them that the New Covenant Kingdom all of them were waiting on, was going to pass them by. And everyone they considered to be dirty rotten sinners were going to get in ahead of them. Now, this clearly points to the fact that the first century Jews were particularly wicked. But, it also proves that the covenant the Jews were responsible for stewarding, as the world awaited the coming of the New Covenant King, was ending. And the beneficiaries of this New Covenant Kingdom would not be the stewards of the old. Like Denathor, they would fall to a fiery death to make way for the coming King. 

In the second parable Jesus told the Jews, He ratcheted up the intensity even more, by telling a parable of the vineyard at the end of Matthew 21. Jesus told the entire story of Israel’s rebellion in a single breath. He told them, quoting Isaiah 5:1–7, that God had planted his people as a vineyard. And, ironically according to Jesus, the Jewish aristocracy standing in front of Him were not a part of the people of God. They were not the vineyard. They were hired hands, hired by the Vineyard Owner, who is God, to care for the people of God until the harvest had come. And yet, in an even greater twist of irony, it was these hired hands, the Jewish leadership, that Jesus blamed for the death of the prophets, the death of the first born Son, and as a punishment for their centuries long disobedience to God, the sentence was pronounced: 

“The kingdom will be taken from you and given to a people who will bear its fruit.” - Matthew 21:43

Not only will tax collectors and prostitutes get into the Kingdom ahead of the Jews, now Jesus intensifies the message to say that most of them won’t even get in at all… The Kingdom would be ripped away from these godless leaders. Yes, they were biologically Jews, yes they had the Hebrew bloodline, yes they had the right score on their ancestry.com test, yes they were the biological children of Abraham, but they were going to be lost and cut out of relationship with Yahweh because they cared more about their bloodlines and heritage than their God who came in the flesh to visit them! 

And here is something we need to realize about this parable. Jesus is not promising a temporary fulfillment. He is not saying that the covenant Kingdom will be taken for awhile, or even for two millenium, but forever. The Kingdom will be taken, with no qualification, with no promise of return. Not shelved for a future millennium. Taken. 

And, then, in the final parable in this triad, in the parable of the wedding feast, He made their judgment as clear and as visceral as it has ever been stated. He compared them to ones who were invited by the King (God) to a wedding feast, but they are the ones who refused to come. And what does the King do about it? He does not beg and plead. After centuries of kindness He reaches His limit, and He sends His armies to destroy their city, burning it down to ash, because they would not come to the wedding of His Son. This is not a metaphor or dramatic hyperbole. Jesus was telling the Sanhedrin, Scribes, and Pharisees that they would be set on fire, burned out of their covenant, because they refused the New Covenant King and His Son! This undoubtedly happened when God weaponized the Romans against them in AD 68-70, where the end result was that their city was set on fire and turned to smoldering ash. The parable came true with frightening clarity and they were removed from their covenant. 

Even the famous question about taxes later down in the chapter was not a lesson in ancient money markets or civics. It was a covenant indictment. When Jesus held up the Roman denarius and asked, “Whose image is this?” He was exposing their true allegiance. They were not imprinted with the image of God, in their rebellion they bore the stamp of the pagan Caesar. Jesus was telling them that they had been forged into Caesar’s coin, and the terrifying implication was that God would give them over to their master and Lord. When He said: “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s,” He was surely meaning, “You belong to him now.” “You will be rendered over to Him.” and within forty years they were. 

Then Jesus unleashed seven woes on them, verbal declarations of covenant curses that would be poured out on them, that are listed in Matthew 23. When He shouted these indictments against them, His voice cut through the temple courts like thunder. And sadly, few realize what He was doing when He did this. He was not complaining about them, He was not concerned about them, He was condemning them! He was announcing, a covenant curse formula detailed in Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26, which spells out what was going to happen to them. They would be the generation cut out of the covenant, brought under terrifying curses, so that their dead bodies stained the Judean hills and gave food for the circling vultures. He tells them that they, alone with their house—the temple, the city, the nation—would be left desolate, because they had filled up the measure of their fathers guilt, and judgment would come within a single generation. 

That is why Jesus begins Matthew 24 saying that the temple would be torn apart brick by brick. How false messiahs would rise and fill the nation full of filthy false hope. He described wars and rumors of wars shaking the Roman empire. He spoke of nation rising against nation, earthquakes tearing through the land, and famines starving the people. He warned His disciples of arrests, synagogue floggings, betrayals by family members, and hatred of Christians by all the ethnic peoples. He warned of a rising Jewish apostasy, Hebrew lawlessness, their love growing cold, false Jewish prophets multiplying like the plague of flies, and a situation in Judea where truth itself seemed to collapse in on itself. He said the gospel would be preached throughout the Roman world before the end of that old covenant came, and it came true just like He said. He warned of the abomination of desolation, of Jerusalem encircled by armies, of the desolation becoming unmistakable, of mothers nursing infants during a siege, of people running for their lives with no time to grab a cloak, of a tribulation so violent nothing in Israel’s history could compare with it.

And all of it came. Just like he predicted (as we have proven in our Matthew 24 series if you want a more detailed account over nearly 20 episodes). 

But, suffice it to say, His prophecy came true… The vultures circled. The city rotted. The sun of Israel’s covenant world went dark. The temple went up like tinder. The sword of God, the terrifying Day of the Lord, fell on the people. Blood filled the streets as high as the calves of Roman horses, until, as Josephus said, it ran down the steps of the sanctuary painting the burning streets. Children were slaughtered and roasted over the flames. Families starved to death. Men were crucified until there was no more wood left to make the crosses. Survivors, what few of them remained, were dragged off and thrown into Egyptian salt mines, or paraded through the streets of Rome to show the world their dominance (As depicted in the Arc of Titus). 

Jerusalem was trampled by the Gentiles. A nation once called God’s firstborn son was scattered to the four winds and removed from their covenant status. Everything Jesus said would happen before that generation passed away happened with horrifying precision. It was not a future event. It was a covenant judgment that if you will take even the smallest amount of time to research it, you will see it playing out in real time.

The apostles knew exactly what was occurring around them. Paul warned of wrath stored up for Israel. He said their hardening of heart was an act of God’s vengeance and judgment against them. Their blindness and stumbling were divinely initiated, and their branches were broken off by the vinedresser due to their unbelief. Peter said the end of all things was at hand, which does not mean the end of the world, but the end of all things related to the Old Covenant world. James said the Judge was standing at the door ready to make the Jews weep and howl in misery (James 5). Hebrews said the Old Covenant was not merely fading—it was vanishing like smoke and ready to disappear… Why? Because God was bringing its fulfillment in the coming of Christ. John, in his epistles, said it was the last hour. Not of the world. But of the Jewish covenant. Jude said judgment on the ungodly was imminent and it was. Revelation, over and over again, announced that the great city where the Lord was crucified—Jerusalem (also called Babylon, Sodom, and Gomorrah in John’s Apocalypse)—was about to drink the cup of God’s fury forever. Every book in the New Testament rings with the same urgent refrain. The old covenant age was collapsing, and those who clung to that dead system would sink to the bottom of a sea of wrath like Jack holding onto a piece of Titanic driftwood.

And that is exactly what happened. When Jerusalem burned and the temple fell, God was permanently ending every type and shadow that pointed to Jesus, so that no one should ever conclude that these items will ever be used again! The true and better has come! The types and shadows were cut off. The covenant where they belonged was terminated. It’s institutions were dissolved. Their priesthood was erased. Their sacrifices were ended. Their temple was destroyed. Their city was judged. Their nation was disinherited. Their bloodline and lineage rendered useless. So that the only WAY, the ONLY TRUTH, and the ONLY LIFE you could ever find, from that moment forward would be in Jesus Christ. We will not go back to the shadows because the perfect has come! 

In the simplest possible terms, this is the message the New Testament puts forward: God made a covenant with Israel, and Israel repeatedly broke it. At the right time, Jesus came as the final and greatest test of their faithfulness, and they rejected Him as well. Because of that rejection, God closed out the Old Covenant completely—its temple, its priesthood, its sacrifices, its nation, and its special status. So that it no longer matters what your blood line is, the only thing that matters is whether you are washed in the blood of the lamb. 

That is what Jesus taught, that is what the apostles preached, and that is the heart of supercessionism: the Jews as Jews need to leave their Judaism, repent, and follow Jesus or they will be doomed along with their ancestors. And for us, the Christian church, we need to cease immediately from dancing with the whore of Babylon. We need to stop playing footsie with Hosea’s prostitute. We need to get out of the bed of the Christ hating Jews, and serve our Bridegroom faithfully forever. 

And that leads us to

PART 2: THE “END TIME” REVIVAL ALREADY OCCURRED 

In the midst of all of the language about judgment, fire, disaster, and the covenant end of the Jews, there is also a small glimmer of hope that some of them, indeed a remnant, will be saved. Now, this is not as many commentators have argued, an end of human history full scale revival of the entire Jewish people. That is not what Paul argues for in Romans 11, which we will look at in greater detail in the weeks ahead. But for now, suffice it to say, when Paul says, “At the present time there is a remnant according to God’s gracious choice,” he is pointing out that not all of the first century Jews will undergo the disaster. The ones who clung to their Jewish identity, Jewish religion, and Jewish bloodlines would boil in the caldron of God’s fury. But, for those who would leave that Old Covenant religion, and bow the knee to Jesus Christ, they would be saved, although sadly, it was only a remnant. 

And here is the point we need to remember. When Paul mentions this remnant, that he saw with his own eyes, developing and growing all throughout the Roman world, he was not talking about an end of human history revival. He was telling us that he was noticing that a large number of Jewish people were repenting and turning to Jesus, which is absolutely astounding if you think about it. Thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of Jews, who grew up in a temple centric world, were abandoning everything they knew to follow Christ, and Paul is letting us in on the fact that this is a monumentally significant event! In fact, its presence in the first century not only fulfills Romans 11, but it virtually guarantees no future Jewish revival is coming! 

So, for a moment, I would like to sketch out for you just how deep and wide this Jewish revival was. How many people turned to Christ before the judgment of God fell upon their countrymen. And, how does this confirm the doctrine of supersessionism? That is our task in this section and we will again prove it across the entirety of the New Testament. 

For instance, before the book of Acts ever opens, before the Spirit descended, before Pentecost sets the world ablaze, the first sparks of the Jewish remnant were already glowing. What do I mean? Well… Long before even Calvary, believing Israelites were beginning to cluster around Jesus’ cradle 70 years before their national destruction. Here are a couple of examples. Zechariah and Elizabeth came to faith in Him as two of the first members of this Jewish remnant. Mary, a Jewish daughter of Israel, receives the word of God with the faith of Abraham and sings a psalm of covenant fulfillment. Joseph, a son of David, obeys God’s dream without hesitation, which means He became a Christian and we will see him again in heaven. Simeon, the elderly man who saw the baby Jesus in the temple, carries the consolation of Israel in his arms and prophesies the dawn of the new age. Anna, an elderly prophetess of the tribe of Asher, hurries from the temple to announce to everyone that Jerusalem’s redemption had come. These are not random seekers. They are a picture of the backbone of Israel, the quiet faithful who kept the old lamp burning during the long night between Matthew and Malachi, and now they rejoice to see their long awaited hope had come! 

Fast forward a little… And there you will find John the Baptist, who appears like Elijah on the banks of the Jordan, summoning Israel to repentance. And the crowds were coming to repent. And remember, they did not come as Gentiles; they came as Jews, confessing their sins, wading into that historic river, turning their backs on the hypocrisy of Jerusalem’s priests, so they could prepare themselves for the lamb of God who would come and take away the sins of the world! It is the first public dividing line inside Israel—the line between hardened, covenant-breaking leadership and the humble, repentant Israel, who followed Jesus. John is carving out a remnant that will soon receive the Christ even as early as his Jordanian ministry.

By the time Jesus begins His ministry, the remnant is no longer a spark but a campfire. The Twelve apostles are all Jewish men, who were leaving their old covenant faith, and chosen as the foundation stones of the new covenant people. Around them gathers a wider band of Jewish disciples, men and women from Galilee, Judea, and the surrounding regions that began to garner some significant crowd size. Now, we know not all of them were elect, because many of them left Him. But what we do know is that something significant was happening to a remnant within Israel, as Paul correctly notices in Romans 11.  

To this little flock of burgeoning followers, Jesus reminds them that God the Father has gladly given them the kingdom. What Kingdom? The Old Covenant Kingdom taken from the Jews, and made New in Him. 

How do we know this? Well… John’s Gospel confirms that many among the crowds believed in Jesus during the feasts, in the temple courts, in the alleyways of Jerusalem (John 2:23; John 7:31). Nicodemus, Israel’s teacher, begins with questions (John 3:1–10), then comes by night (John 3:1–2), and finally stands boldly at the tomb with costly spices (John 19:39). Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy council member, believes and gives his own tomb to the crucified King (John 19:38; Matthew 27:57–60). After Lazarus rises from the dead, many Jews abandon the establishment to follow Jesus, much to the Pharisees’ chagrin (John 11:45–48). The remnant was forming from within Israel’s own walls long before the Gentiles ever entered the picture.

By the time the book of Acts opens, the spark had become a small wildfire. Pentecost erupts, and the men gathered in Jerusalem are explicitly called Jews—devout Jews, covenant Jews, diaspora Jews from every nation. And now, three thousand or more of them believe in a single day and become Christians. Then, day after day, more Jews stream into the church. For instance, five thousand Jewish men believe after Peter’s sermon at Solomon’s Portico, which means they were leaving the faith of the Pharisees and believing squarely in a crucified and Resurrected Nazarene. This was not an insignificant event in the history of the Jewish people. 

By the early chapters of Acts, you have a fully Jewish church that is worshipping Jesus: still with their old Jewish worship rhythms, still participating in the Jewish feasts, still participating in a mostly Jewish communal life, still providing for their Jewish widows, being led by Jewish apostles, filling heaven full of Jewish sounding prayers prayers, with a growing number of Jewish disciples filling the streets of Jerusalem with the message of life in Christ. Does thart not qualify as Paul’s remnant? Is that not a revival? 

Then, notice that the first major conflict inside the church is not between Jews and Gentiles, but between Hellenistic Jewish widows and Hebrew-speaking Jewish widows. What this tells us is that overwhelmingly the large growing church described in Acts, began entirely as a Jewish church, filled with believing Jews, who now bowed to Jesus! You do not have this problem unless you have thousands of believing Jews trying to wrestle with how to now live for Christ.

Then comes one of the most breathtaking statements in the New Testament: Luke tells us that ‘a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith’ (Acts 6:7). The priests—the men whose very identity is tied to the temple, the sacrifices, the feasts, and the shadows—were beginning to defect from Old Covenant Judaism and they were fleeing to Christ. Is this not a substantial remnant? Would this not count as a tremendous revival among the hard hearted Jews?

As the gospel goes outward, Paul’s missionary strategy reveals how large and widespread the Jewish remnant truly was. He walks into synagogues across the empire—Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Thessalonica, Berea, Corinth, Ephesus—and in every single city, there were real flesh and blood Jews who believed. Many Jews believed. In Berea, Luke says “many of them” believed, referring directly to the Jews in the synagogue. Crispus, the synagogue ruler in the city of Corinth, believes in Jesus along with his entire household. Apollos appears—an Alexandrian Jew mighty in the Scriptures—and he converts becoming a towering preacher of the risen Christ. Aquila and Priscilla, Jewish tentmakers, disciple him further in the things of Christ and join Paul’s missionary team. By the time Paul returns to Jerusalem near the end of Acts, James looks him in the eye and says, “You see, brother, how many tens of thousands there are among the Jews who have believed.” (Acts 21:20). Tens of thousands, James says. Myriads upon myriads. A number so large Luke has to use language normally reserved for army regiments to describe them. Is this not the remnant Paul was describing with His own eyes? Is this not an inner Jewish revival?

And that is just it… Paul’s letters confirm this at every turn. He identifies himself as an Israelite, a Benjaminite, a Hebrew of Hebrews—yet one who has abandoned Old Covenant righteousness for the righteousness of Christ. He speaks of “we who are Jews by nature,” writing as a Jew who knows that justification comes only through faith in Jesus. He greets Jewish co-laborers who were in Christ before him. He refers to the church as the Israel of God, a term that would have been utterly meaningless unless there were Jewish believers forming the living nucleus of this new creation people. His entire theology of the “one new man” in Ephesians presupposes Jewish believers standing alongside Gentile believers in equal covenant union. Isn’t that the entire point of Romans 1, 2, and 3?

Think about the General Epistles, and how they assume the exact same thing. James writes to the twelve tribes scattered among the nations—tribes who confess Jesus as their Lord. Which means that they were Christians! Peter addresses the diaspora—using Israel’s ancient exile language—and calls them a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. Why? Because they held to the covenant types and shadows? I think not! Because they were the faithful remnant that bowed the knee to Jesus Christ! Hebrews warns Jewish Christians not to drift back into the temple shadows, proving that a substantial number of Jews had already left Moses for Christ before AD 70. Revelation tells us that as many as one hundred and forty-four thousand Israelites were sealed in Jesus, letting us know that a faithful Jewish remnant was preserved by God, even in the midst of the cataclysm that fell on the nation that rejected its King.

When Paul says in Romans 11, that there is a present remnant, he is using the present active indicative verb, which means it was happening in front of him! He was not speaking in yiddish riddles about an uncertain future. He is pointing out that faithful Jews around Jesus’ birth, repentant Jews under John, believing Jews during Jesus’ ministry, Jewish leaders following Christ, thousands and thousands of Jewish converts in Jerusalem, multitudes of Jews across the empire, Jewish apostles, Jewish co-laborers, Jewish Christian congregations, Jewish recipients of apostolic letters, and the symbolic sealing of faithful Israelites in Revelation, were all coming into this remnant as Romans 11:5 suggests. 

And here is why this matters. A remnant only exists when the larger body has been judged. Think about the remnant that survived and got to enter into the promised land, or the remnant of 7000 spared during the days of Elijah, or the remnant that survived the exile. In each of these cases, the majority of the nation was taken into judgment and death, while a few were set apart for salvation. This is precisely what happens when Jesus comes. Most of them face the ultimate and final covenant curse for rejecting their Lord. And some, even many by the grace of God, were spared and brought into His everlasting Kingdom. They became a New Jerusalem, along with believing Gentiles, that would replace the old and fallen one.  

This is the unavoidable truth and this is why Paul mentioning a remnant matters so profoundly. It is living, breathing, proof that God has already transferred the covenant to Christ and to those who belong to Him. It is proof that the old order was gone. It is proof that like Noah and His family, only a few were spared the destruction, and it is proof that there is no parallel Jewish covenant running alongside the gospel. There is a remnant saved from destruction because that old covenant was ending, and the only way they could be saved is to jump ship and hang onto the life raft of Jesus. And, it is certainly proof that the only future hope for the Jews is the same hope offered to the Gentiles: the crucified and risen King.

Which brings us to the final piece of today’s episode.

PART 3: THE MISSION IS UNDER ONE NAME. 

When the dust of that great collapse settled—when the smoke of the Old Covenant world drifted away like the last breath of a dying man—only one thing remained standing in the rubble: the risen Christ and His Church. All the scaffolding of ethnic privilege, genetic superiority, and Hebrew legacy had fallen. The temple was ash. The priesthood a bloodied memory. The sacrifices were ended. The genealogies were drowned in the blood and fire of AD 70. The only thing God preserved, the only thing He honored, the only thing He carried forward into the dawning era of the New Covenant was His Son and the people who belong to Him from both Testaments. Which is why the mission of God narrowed to a single point of blazing exclusivity: every man, every woman, and every child—Jew or Gentile— from that moment forward, if they wanted to be saved, must come through the narrow gate of Christ! Or they will never come! Not then. Not now. And never in our future! 

This is why supercessionism is such an important doctrine, because it is the only way to make sense of the frantic urgency that explodes off the pages of the New Testament. The apostles do not preach like men soothing a sleeping nation with lullabies of a future revival. They preach like firefighters pounding on the door of a burning house. They tell Israel that judgment has begun, that the covenant they trusted has collapsed, and that the only doorway left standing is the Crucified One whose wounds still plead for mercy. They offer Christ because there is nothing else left to offer. They offer Christ because everything else has been cut down to stumps. They offer Christ because He alone survived the fire.

This is why Paul bleeds over Romans 9 like a man staring at a battlefield. His kinsmen are not drowsing in a prophetic waiting room; they are accursed, cut off, outside the only covenant God now honors. Their centuries of advantages—adoption, temple, law, promises, patriarchs—lie around them like shattered relics of a shipwreck, unable to save unless Christ animates them. This is why Romans 10 blasts like Sinai torn open. Israel possesses zeal, but not righteousness. They cling to Moses, but Moses takes them by the hand and leads them directly to the Nazarene. The only righteousness left in the world is the righteousness that comes by faith in Jesus Christ, and Paul levels the entire globe beneath that single command. There is one Lord over all. One salvation offered to all. One pathway opened to all. No Jewish elevator to heaven. No ethnic bypass around the cross. If a Jew is saved, he is saved exactly as a Gentile is saved—by confessing Jesus as Lord and believing that God raised Him from the dead.

This is why Romans 11 refuses to flatter unbelieving Israel with sentimental niceties. Paul does not tell them their unbelief is temporary nobility. He says they are branches hacked off, lying in the dirt. And unless they repent, they will remain in the dirt. If they ever come back in, they must come through Christ. They must come as Christians. Paul leaves no room for an ethnic covenant that blooms apart from belief. God grafts only through Christ. God restores only through Christ. God saves only through Christ.

The rest of the New Testament joins him in perfect formation. Galatians declares that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything—only a new creation. Ephesians tells us that the dividing wall is not lowered, not softened, not preserved for a future dispensation—it is smashed to powder in the torn flesh of Jesus Christ so thoroughly that any attempt to rebuild it is an act of war against the cross. Hebrews declares with prophetic finality that the Old Covenant is obsolete, aging, vanishing—its priesthood dissolved, its sacrifices eclipsed, its shadows evaporated before the radiance of the Son. Revelation seals the faithful remnant of Israel, not because they bear Abraham’s blood, but because they bear the Lamb’s Name.

This is the world the apostles hand you. A world where every path but one has been closed by divine judgment. A world where salvation is no longer embroidered on lineage but engraved on Christ. A world where the covenant has been torn from the unclenched fists of unbelieving Israel and placed into the pierced hands of the Messiah. A world where the true Israel of God is the church—Jew and Gentile together, built into one living temple, one royal priesthood, one holy nation. A world where the mission of God flows from one fountain, one covenant, one King.

And that King is not Abraham. That King is not Israel. That King is not the land, the temple, or the lineage. That King is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Lion of Judah, the Root of David, the Lord of all nations, the heir of every promise God ever made. There is no salvation outside Him. There is no covenant apart from Him. There is no future for the Jews—or for anyone else—beyond Him. Everything now stands or falls on Christ alone.

That is why supercessionism is not a slogan. It is not a footnote. It is not a theological garnish for the academically adventurous. It is the bloodstream of the New Testament, the logic of Pentecost, the grammar of redemption, the architecture of the age to come. It is the thunderclap that announces that God has crowned His Son, that the nations belong to Him, that the old world has passed away, and that the new creation has already begun. There is one covenant people now. One kingdom now. One mission now. And one Name under heaven by which all must be saved. His.

And that brings us to our conclusion

CONCLUSION

When you strip away the Zionistic sentimentalism, the political flattery of modern Israel, and the theological stupidity of men like Theodore Cruz, the New Testament hands you one blazing truth: Christ did not come to affirm the blessings of the Old Covenant People, He did not offer her as a mistress the church could flirt with, He pulverizingly destroyed her so that He could be our entrance into Israel. This is why He is the temple, the priest, the sacrifice, the nation, the King, and the covenant. And when He rose and ascended and poured out His Spirit, the world shifted permanently and forever in the direction of Jesus. 

There is only one people of God, one covenant, and one Name under heaven by which all must be saved. Supersessionism, in that way, isn’t a mean spirited doctrine or anti-semitic… It is the apostolic worldview, the grammar of redemption, the blue print for how anyone and everyone can be saved. And if we are going to honor anything, we ought to honor that plan, instead of playing footsie with the synagogue of Satan. 

Now, next week is going to be even more of a doozy… Because, now that we have made the covenantal and the historical argument… Now we need to go into the underground bunker that everyone flees to, in order to try and undermine our view. And what you will see next time, is that Romans 11 actually proves supersessionism, and not just a little bit… But entirely.