THE HOPE OF ISRAEL - The Preterist Archive

12 The Hope of Israel: What Is It?
kingdom of earthly character which should have
dominion over all the world) they would have heard
him with intense satisfaction. But what Paul and all
the apostles preached was, that what God had promised
afore by His prophets in the Holy Scriptures was a
kingdom over which Jesus Christ of the seed of David
should reign in resurrection, a kingdom which flesh
and blood cannot inherit, a kingdom which does not
clash with the duly constituted governments of this
world, and one into which Gentiles are called upon
terms of perfect equality with Jews (Ac. 13:23, 34;
Ac. 17:2, 3, 7; Rom. 1:1-4; 14:17; 1 Cor. 15:50; 1 Pet.
1:12; cf. Lu. 24:26).
Thus the teaching of Christ and His apostles in respect
to the vitally important subject of the Kingdom
of God, the hope of Israel, came into violent collision
with that of the leaders of Israel ;
and because of this
He was crucified and they were persecuted.
It was not a question then, any more than it is a
question now, whether or not the prophets of Israel
were the mouthpieces of God; for the Jewish rabbis,
as well as Christ and His apostles, held firmly to the
full inspiration of "the scriptures of the prophets."
It was solely a question then, as it is solely a question
now, as to hoiv those prophecies are to be understood
a question of interpretation. The Jewish teachers
understood the scriptures, and still interpret them, in
what is now (wrongly) called the "literal" sense (i. e.
that "Israel" is an earthly people, "Zion" an earthly
locality, "Christ" an earthly conqueror, like David,
etc., etc.) ;
but Paul declared, when speaking of Jesus
Christ in one of their synagogues, that it was "because
they knew Him not, nor yet the voices of the
prophets which are read every Sabbath day, that they