The Promises Stand ~ A Biblical Case For Israel’s Covenantal Future
Pastor Leslie Chua
“This is what the Lord says, he who appoints the sun to shine by day, who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar — the Lord Almighty is his name: “Only if these decrees vanish from my sight,” declares the Lord, “will Israel ever cease being a nation before me.”
This is what the Lord says: “Only if the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth below be searched out will I reject all the descendants of Israel because of all they have done,” declares the Lord.”
Recently, there has been a proliferation of teachings and articles arguing that Christ and the church have fulfilled God’s promises to Israel and that modern Israel is not identical to biblical Israel. This is another way of saying that Israel is no longer relevant to God’s redemptive purpose in these Last Days.
I believe such a position contradicts biblical theology and prophecy. The persistence of the Jewish people, the durability of the Abrahamic covenant, and the plain sense of Romans 11 all point in the same direction — the God who bound Himself by a unilateral oath has not walked away from His people.
The prophet Jeremiah, writing on the eve of Judah's Babylonian catastrophe, anchored Israel's survival in the operating decrees of the cosmos itself. As long as the sun rises, the moon and stars appear, and the sea roars, Israel will endure as a nation before God (Jeremiah 31:35–37).
It is a stunning theological claim — that the persistence of a small group of people is tied to the same fixed laws that govern the physics of the universe.
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However, Scripture is clear and unequivocal that God's covenantal commitment to ethnic Israel remains active, unrevoked, and moving towards a future national fulfilment. The events since Israel’s reconstitution as a nation-state in 1948 provide visible evidence of this reality.
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Yet significant strands of contemporary Christian theology now argue the opposite. The promises made to national Israel have been quietly absorbed into the Church, spiritualised as a heavenly inheritance, and removed from the ethnic descendants of Abraham.
However, Scripture is clear and unequivocal that God's covenantal commitment to ethnic Israel remains active, unrevoked, and moving towards a future national fulfilment. The events since Israel’s reconstitution as a nation-state in 1948 provide visible evidence of this reality.
I will give 9 Scriptural reasons to prove this point.
First: The Unconditional Character of the Abrahamic Covenant
Everything begins with what happened between two rows of animal pieces in Genesis 15. God had promised Abraham a land, but Abraham asked how he could know he would inherit it. In response, God instructed him to prepare a covenant ritual — cut the animals, arrange them opposite each other, and wait. Then God caused a deep sleep to fall on Abraham, and a smoking fire pot and a blazing torch passed alone between the pieces.
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Interestingly, God walked through the pieces of the cut animal alone while Abraham slept. This was a unilateral, self-imprecatory oath binding only God Himself, with Abraham's future faithfulness deliberately excluded from the conditions for fulfilment.
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In the ancient Near Eastern suzerain-vassal treaty format, both parties would normally walk between the pieces together — each swearing, in effect, "may this be done to me if I break the covenant."
Interestingly, God walked through the pieces of the cut animal alone while Abraham slept. This was a unilateral, self-imprecatory oath binding only God Himself, with Abraham's future faithfulness deliberately excluded from the conditions for fulfilment.
Genesis 15:18 (NIV) - On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates.
The unconditional character is reinforced two chapters later, when God describes the covenant as "an everlasting covenant" and the land grant as "an everlasting possession" (Genesis 17:7–8).
The Hebrew word ‘olam’ — everlasting — appears twice in these 2 verses. If the promise was always meant to point beyond the land of Canaan to a spiritualised new creation (the church), why would God choose such specific geographical language — the Euphrates, the Wadi of Egypt, and the land of Canaan? Specific geography demands specific fulfilment.
This prophecy in Genesis 15:18 will be fulfilled when Jesus returns to establish His Millennial Kingdom.
Second: Romans 9:6 In Its Actual Context
Israel in this verse refers to ethnic Israel, not the church.
The single verse most often marshalled against a national future for Israel is Romans 9:6: "not all who are descended from Israel are Israel."
Many interpreters treat this as a redefinition — as though Paul was quietly transferring the name "Israel" from the ethnic Jews to a Gentile-dominant Church. It is one of the most consequential misreadings in contemporary theology.
Paul's argument in Romans 9–10 is not about who counts as Israel in some newly expanded sense. It is about why so many of his kinsmen according to the flesh (9:3) have rejected the Messiah, and how this fact does not mean God's word has failed. His answer is that God has always worked through a believing remnant within ethnic Israel.
The word "Israel" appears 11 times in Romans 9–11. In every other occurrence, it refers unambiguously to the ethnic Jewish people. Reading “Israel” in Romans 9:6 as the church is exegetically flawed.
Third: Romans 11 – The Decisive Text
Romans 11 is the decisive text, in which Paul categorically rejects the idea that the church is the new Israel in the New Testament.
Paul opens Romans 11 with a question that seems to anticipate the deeply flawed theology now built on his letters: "Did God reject his people?" He then answers with the strongest negative available in Greek — mē genoito, "By no means!" — and offers himself, a biological Israelite of the tribe of Benjamin, as living proof (11:1).
The chapter that follows is a sustained argument for Israel's ongoing election and eventual restoration.
Paul explains that the temporary hardening of Israel serves to bring salvation to the Gentiles, and that Gentile salvation is intended to provoke Israel to jealousy (11:11), leading to their eventual restoration — which he calls "life from the dead" (11:15).
The olive tree metaphor makes the point clear: Gentile believers are wild branches grafted into the original olive tree. That tree is Israel. The natural branches broken off because of unbelief can — and, as Paul insists, will — be grafted back in. The root sustains the branches, not the other way round (11:17-19).
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God did not reject His people, whom He foreknew. The temporary hardening of Israel serves a divine purpose, not its cancellation.
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Paul then goes on to say: "As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies for your sake; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God's gifts and his call are irrevocable” (Romans 11:28-29).
That phrase in verse 29 – God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable – affirms the indestructibility of God's commitment to ethnic Israel. Any theology that requires this verse to mean anything other than what it plainly says should not be taken seriously.
God did not reject His people, whom He foreknew. The temporary hardening of Israel serves a divine purpose, not its cancellation.
Fourth: Acts 1:6-7 and the Uncorrected Expectation
Some of the strongest evidence for Israel's national future comes not from theological argument but from historical narrative. In Acts 1:6, just before the ascension, the disciples ask the risen Christ: "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?"
If the premise of the question were mistaken — if the kingdom would never again belong to ethnic Israel in any national sense — this would have been the perfect moment for Jesus to correct it. He had just spent forty days teaching them about the Kingdom of God (Acts 1:3).
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The national restoration of Israel is presupposed, not denied.
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He did not correct the premise. Instead, He corrected the timing: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority" (1:7).
Can you see? The national restoration of Israel is presupposed, not denied. Barry Horner, in his study Future Israel, notes that the disciples' expectation had been formed over years of Jesus's teaching — and that Jesus affirmed rather than dismantled it at the last possible moment.
Fifth: Ezekiel 37 and the Physical-Before-Spiritual Restoration Pattern
The valley of dry bones is one of the great restoration prophecies, often read as a general metaphor for spiritual renewal. But the chapter provides its own interpretation. In verses 11–14, God explicitly tells Ezekiel that the bones "are the people of Israel" — the whole house of Israel, scattered and dead as a nation, who will be brought back to their own land.
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Physical restoration precedes spiritual transformation.
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Observe the sequence of the vision. The bones come together first. Sinews and flesh form. Skin covers them. Only then does the breath enter. Physical restoration precedes spiritual transformation. This precisely matches the observable pattern of modern Israel — a political, largely secular national movement that precedes, not accompanies, spiritual renewal.
The prophet Ezekiel, writing under divine inspiration, structured the vision to account for this historically incomplete phase of restoration.
Sixth: The Scholarly Witness
The supersessionist position is often presented as the settled evangelical consensus, but this is not true.
Walter Kaiser, one of the most eminent Old Testament scholars in North American evangelicalism, has consistently argued for the literal fulfilment of the land promises, maintaining that the unconditional Abrahamic promise cannot be subsumed under the idea that Christ has fulfilled them.
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The supersessionist position is often presented as the settled evangelical consensus, but this is not true.
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Michael Rydelnik, a Jewish believer and professor at Moody Bible Institute, demonstrates in his book The Messianic Hope that the prophetic literature consistently distinguishes between the physical and spiritual dimensions of restoration without conflating them.
Even N.T. Wright, who is not a Christian Zionist, has acknowledged that Romans 9–11 concerns the future of ethnic Israel and that "all Israel shall be saved" in Romans 11:26 refers to the ethnic people, not the Church.
Progressive covenantalists and scholars within the New Covenant Theology stream have increasingly recognised that ethnic Israel will have a national future. This is exegetically unavoidable.
Seventh: Hebrews 11 Does Not Cancel the Land
Hebrews 11:10–16 describes Abraham looking forward to a "better country," a heavenly city — and this passage is sometimes cited as evidence that the land promise was always eschatological and celestial rather than geographical and national.
But this argument cannot hold, because by the same logic it can be argued that Abraham should have no interest in the specific, earthly land of Canaan. This would contradict the entire narrative of Genesis 12–25, in which Abraham buys a burial plot in Canaan as a down payment on the promise (Genesis 23) and insists that his son's wife not be a Canaanite, because the land of Canaan is the covenantal inheritance.
Abraham held the earthly and the heavenly in a both-and relationship, not an either-or. The fact that his ultimate hope transcended any single piece of earthly real estate does not mean the literal promise about that real estate was cancelled. The final fulfilment completes the intermediate fulfilments God promised along the way; it does not bypass them.
Eighth: Modern Israel – Continuity Without Perfection
A common objection is that modern Israel cannot be equated with biblical Israel because it is a secular, democratic state rather than a Torah-observant theocracy.
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The restoration prophecies never required the returning exiles to be a spiritually perfected community as a precondition for return.
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But this is a category error. The restoration prophecies never required the returning exiles to be a spiritually perfected community as a precondition for return. As Ezekiel 37 itself shows, physical restoration precedes spiritual transformation.
The Israelites who returned from Babylon under Zerubbabel and Ezra were not a fully Torah-observant theocracy either. They were a struggling, syncretistic, partly intermarried community under Persian imperial authority. Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi spent much of their ministries rebuking the returnees. Yet no one seriously argues that this proves the return from Babylon was not a fulfilment of prophecy.
The question is not whether modern Israel is religiously perfect, but whether it constitutes the beginning of the national restoration the prophets foretold.
Ninth: Paul’s Own Warning
In Romans 11:18–20, in the very olive tree passage so often quoted, Paul issues a warning: "Do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you… Do not be arrogant, but tremble” (Romans 11:18).
The theological argument that the Church has fulfilled and thereby superseded ethnic Israel — however carefully articulated and however firmly it disavows antisemitism — will lead to the delegitimisation of Jewish existence, spiritually at first and physically later.
Conclusion
Here are my brief concluding remarks. The promises of God to Abraham stand, not because of any virtue in the Jewish people, but because God walked through the pieces alone. The sun still rises. The stars still shine. The word given to Jeremiah — that Israel will continue as a nation before God as long as those cosmic fixtures endure — has, for nearly three millennia, been confirmed by the most stubborn of all theological witnesses: history itself.