The Roman general Titus in 70 A.D. destroyed the city of Jerusalem. He took many of them captive as slaves. History tells us some were used to help build the Coliseum in Rome. These people were identified as the 10 lost tribes of Israel. They were taken from their homeland to Italy. After that nobody knows what happened to them.
It is assumed they intermarried with Gentiles or traveled to other parts of the world to be lost. The problem we have in our text is that Paul declared to the Romans that the Jews would return to God’s good graces in Jesus as their Messiah. Elsewhere, it has been prophesied that the homeland of the Jews would be recognized as it did in 1948. What we face is to ask if those people who migrated to the homeland of Israel are the Jews that have been mentioned in Scripture. How do the Jews of ancient times compared to those who say they are Jews living in Israel today?
Our text uses the example of a branch being broken off as was the original Jews living in Jerusalem in 70 A.D. After that, they never had their own homeland. That means it was a long period of time from 70 A.D. to 1948. There were people living in the ghettos of Germany that were recognized as Jews and Hitler caused them to wear an armband verifying that.
Millions of people were taken to concentration camps as Jews. Does it mean that those who survived the Holocaust whether having been imprisoned or not are thoroughbreds Jews? The residents of modern-day Israel refer to themselves as Jews. There are two factors when talking about Jews. What persons have the bloodline of Jewishness by their DNA? What other persons, whether they have the bloodline or not, (perhaps proselytes ) observe the culture of Jewishness?
Originally the Jews were to be the evangelist to the world. They neglected that commission. They stayed with their own hybrid way of life. The good news of the gospel first came to the Jews. Then through Paul’s ministry the Gentiles came to believe in Christ as Savior.
There was a church council in Jerusalem in which they decided the Gentile converts could be recognized as members of the church without observing the entire law of Moses. Our text discusses the tearing off of the Jewish branch and the grafting in of the Gentile branch. After which Jews would be grafted back into the olive tree. We are still wrestling with the question whether or not those grafted back into the olive tree were genuine Jews by DNA.
This must be true at least in part according to Revelation, God recognized 144,000 virgin males that he protected during the tribulation. Those 144,000 men were called out separately by 12,000 from each tribe. That means those tribes whose census was not given but were likely authentic Jews by DNA.
We have the original Promise Land as a place for Jews to live and fulfill prophecies of their returning to their locale. We have people in a land living together in the fulfillment of the 1948 Prophecy. In the discussion of the book of Revelation, we discover people living in the tribulation who were genuine Jews.
For us now and for our understanding, there must be DNA Jews currently living in the land of Israel. Still, we must recognize the likelihood that many of those people that were not included in the prophecy were not Jews at all. In short, we have prophetic true Jews plus we have non-prophetic Jewish type people living in the same land and mixing in their culture.
Paul has given us the answer to the mystery of how the Jews could be saved as well as the Gentiles. There must come a time Jewish people recognize and accept Christ as their Messiah. Many of them will be martyred in the tribulation. (Revelation 20:4) We must pause and recognize another passage of Scripture in Romans 2: 26-29 that says an outward circumcision has no weight in a relationship with God. It is the inward circumcision of the heart that makes a person a spiritual Jew.
In summary, there are Jews by DNA who accept Christ. There are those with a circumcision of the heart that Paul says is a spiritual Jew. In the land of Israel likely both Jewish groups experience God’s blessing in the tribulation and millennium. As Gentiles who know Christ, we recognize separate groups as brothers and sisters through our Lord. The land of Israel contains true Jews by DNA and culture, there are those who claim to be Jews by cultural whose ancestry was a mixture of Gentile, and those who are Jewish by the blood of Jesus who are Gentiles but are spiritual Jewish brothers and sisters.
It is God’s oversight for the land of Israel where these people do and will have a homeland where Jesus will come. He will not go to Germany or England or the United States. When Jesus returns to earth he will come to Israel where he has established a spiritual family through his own blood. It is our duty to protect Israel from military attacks, because it has been the location of God’s activity in ancient times and prophesied to be his activity in future times. Whoever it may be living in Israel will see him return. Hopefully all those who profess to be Jews will become spiritual Jews along with Gentile brothers and sisters.
Christian Writer 