In the new heaven and new earth, no one will say, “I’m here because I was faithful.” - BA Purtle

Few verses in Paul’s letters get hijacked more often than Romans 9:6: “For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.”

Replacement theologians love this one. To them, it's the smoking gun — proof that Paul quietly redefined “Israel” to mean the Church. The Jewish people, they argue, forfeited their place; the “New Israel” is now anyone who believes in Yeshua, regardless of bloodline. Case closed.

The most sophisticated version of the argument comes from N.T. Wright, who has spent thousands of pages — most fully in Paul and the Faithfulness of God — insisting that Paul has “redefined” Israel “around the Messiah.” On Wright’s reading, the true Israel is now the Messianic family of Jew and Gentile together, while ethnic Israel, apart from faith, no longer carries the covenantal weight it once did. Wright resists the label “replacement theology,” and to his credit he is more careful than most. But the destination is functionally the same: Israel as a people, in any meaningful covenantal sense, has been absorbed. 

It’s a clean argument. It’s also wrong.

Let me show you why — and to do that, we just need to do something that’s apparently radical in certain theological circles: read the chapter Paul actually wrote.

Start where Paul starts

You cannot understand Romans 9:6 without Romans 9:1-5. And what does Paul say there? He tells us he has “great sorrow and unceasing anguish” in his heart. For whom? For his “kinsmen according to the flesh” — Israel. He is so grieved over their unbelief that he says he could wish himself “accursed and cut off from Messiah” for their sake.

Then he lists what still belongs to them: “the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the Law, the worship, and the promises… the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, is the Messiah.”

Stop and think about that for a second. If Paul believed ethnic Israel had been replaced by the Church: 

Why is he weeping? 

Why the anguish? 

Why list — in the present tense, “to them belong,” not belonged— covenants and promises that supposedly no longer belong to them?

You don't grieve over a people God has cast off. You grieve over a people God still loves.

WHAT 9:6 ACTUALLY SAYS!

Now we are ready for verse 6: “For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel, and not all are children because they are Abraham’s offspring.”

Paul is making a distinction within the Jewish people, not replacing them with someone else. He is saying what every Hebrew prophet said before him: physical descent from Abraham does not automatically make you faithful. Throughout the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible), God always preserved a believing remnant inside the larger nation — Elijah’s seven thousand who had not bowed to Baal, Isaiah’s faithful few. Paul is standing squarely in that prophetic tradition.

There is “Israel” — the entire physical nation descended from Jacob. And there is the believing remnant within Israel — Jews who trust the God of their fathers. Both are Israel. The remnant does not replace the rest; it lives inside the rest as a sign of God’s continued faithfulness to His covenant people. In fact, Romans 11 suggests that the faithful remnant intercedes for the unfaithful whole. (see Romans 11:5-6, 16).

Now notice what Paul does not say. He does not say, “And so the Gentiles are now the true Israel.” He does not even hint at it here. That reading has to be smuggled into the text from outside, which is why it was over 100 years before anyone began to preach such a thing. 

PINEAPPLE

If I fly to Hawaii, eat a pineapple, and taste flavors I have never experienced in any pineapple anywhere else, I might turn to my wife and say, “I don't think I have ever had pineapple before!” Of course, I have had pineapple. Plenty of times. Nobody listening would accuse me of lying. They would hear the rhetoric. What I am actually saying is: yes, I have had pineapple, but the pineapple here is so much better that it is as if I have never tasted pineapple in my life.

That is exactly what Paul is doing in Romans 9:6. He is saying that the truest, deepest, most realized sense of belonging to Israel is having a living relationship with the God of Israel through Yeshua. It is a rhetorical move, not a redefinition. Paul is not erasing ethnic Israel; he is emphasizing what covenantal Israel looks like at its fullest.

The trouble is that we tend to flatten the Bible. Taking the biblical narrative literally is good. Treating every single word as literal — and refusing to make room for rhetoric, hyperbole, and literary devices — is not. Everyone uses these tools. Including Yeshua Himself. Do you really think He wants you to poke out your eye? To hate your father and mother? Of course not. That is hyperbole, not instruction. And it is exactly the kind of language Paul is reaching for in Romans 9:6.

ROMANS 11 SLAMS THE DOOR

If there were any lingering doubt, Paul shuts it down two chapters later: “I ask, then, has God rejected His people? By no means!” (Romans 11:1). And then he says it again, just to make sure no one missed it: “God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew” (11:2). This is two chapters after romans 9:6, so either Paul is contradicting himself or those who are using Romans 9:6 to demonize Israel do not understand Paul.

Then comes the olive tree. Gentile believers, Paul says, are wild branches grafted into a cultivated tree whose root is Jewish. The natural branches that were broken off can be — and will be — grafted back in. “And in this way all Israel will be saved” (11:26).

That is not replacement. That is not even within shouting distance of replacement. That is restoration.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT TODAY?

This is exactly the point R. Kendall Soulen made so forcefully in The God of Israel and Christian Theology. Soulen showed that even Christian theologies that claim to honor Israel often quietly assume God’s covenant with the Jewish people was merely the prologue to a universal Church that would eventually render it obsolete. He gave that quiet assumption a name — “structural supersessionism” — and argued, rightly, that it cannot survive a serious reading of Paul. The election of Israel, for Soulen, is not a discarded first chapter. It is permanent, irrevocable, and the very framework within which the gospel itself unfolds.

Once you see that, the stakes of Romans 9:6 become obvious.

If Romans 9:6 means the Church has replaced Israel, then the modern State of Israel is a theological accident. The return of millions of Jews to the land, the rebirth of Hebrew as a living language, the regathering Ezekiel and Isaiah described in detail — all of it would be meaningless, or worse, a deception. Some replacement theologians have actually said exactly that. They interpret the promises of the restoration of Israel, spiritually, so the actual restoration of Israel was just a massive coincidence that God somehow didn’t notice happening. 

To be clear: this is not about the theology itself being argued. Theologians have wrestled with Romans 9 for two thousand years. That is what theologians do, and there is nothing wrong with the academic debate. What changed after October 7 is that this verse stopped being a seminary discussion point and became a slogan in the mouths of people who do not study Paul, do not love the Bible, and do not care what Soulen or Wright or anyone else thinks. They are quoting Romans 9:6 — six words from a Jewish apostle weeping over his own people — as proof that God has finally rejected the Jews, and that whatever happens to them now is therefore justified. They are not making a theological argument. They are using a Bible verse, out of context, to baptize their antisemitism. And that is exactly why this is so important today.

But if Paul means what he says — that God still has a people, that the natural branches will be regrafted, that “all Israel will be saved” — then what we are watching unfold today is precisely what the prophets promised. 

The Jewish people are returning. 

The land is bearing fruit. 

A growing remnant of Israel is recognizing Yeshua as Messiah. 

The trajectory is unmistakable to anyone willing to see it.

Romans 9:6 is not the death certificate of the Jewish people. It is a quiet reminder that even in Israel’s deepest unbelief, God has always preserved a remnant — and through that remnant, He is keeping every single promise He ever made, not the least of which is Romans 11:26, “and in this way all Israel should be saved.”

He has not replaced Israel.

He is restoring her.

—Dr. Ron Cantor 

My teaching on the parables of the kingdom for a VBS. Notes. Audio 1. Audio 2. 

I don’t fit neatly into the usual Christian boxes:

Orthodox

Reformed

Liberal

Dispensational

About 15 years ago, it became clear to me that each of these systems, in different ways, lacks continuity from Genesis to Revelation. They all attempt to make sense of the Scriptures—but each leaves gaps.

God Himself established a hermeneutic, and He did so in the Torah.

When you follow that framework, His interpretation remains consistent. Jesus does not reinterpret or overturn the Law and the Prophets—He speaks in complete alignment with them. His exegesis confirms what was already established.

This was never meant to be complicated. God meant what He said and said what He meant. When you hold to that, the major themes of Scripture remain stable and coherent from beginning to end.

When Gentile traditions depart from this, they become derivative—systems built outside the interpretive framework given by the Father and upheld by the Son.

First-century Jews understood the testimony of the Law and the Prophets to speak of real, future fulfillment—things God would accomplish as He declared. Messianic Jews still hold to this today. Many Orthodox Jews do as well. Gentiles who humble themselves before Jewish election also become sons of Abraham by faith and should hope and believe in those same things.

But…

Many modern Gentile frameworks contradict this, recasting those promises as primarily “spiritual” fulfillments instead, erasing Jewish election, and making Jesus the hero of a story He didn’t write— a story removed from Israel and the promises He and His Father intentionally made.  

That shift departs from the Father’s hermeneutic and the Son’s exegesis.

If you’ve never wrestled with this, there’s a good chance you’re operating inside a framework you didn’t even realize you inherited. I can assure you that if you unplug from that framework and ask the Holy Spirit to help you see the Scriptures as they are meant to be seen you will not regret it. - Stephen Holmes

When Leviticus disappears from our imaginations, we lose the story of Jesus—and with it, the story of our God. We may find ourselves drifting into a vision of the kingdom that looks nothing like the one heralded in song by a virgin in Nazareth, or the one expected by every disciple who walked with the child she bore. - Brianna Tittel, Leviticus is Eschatology

My teaching on the transfiguration in Luke 9. Notes. Audio 1. Audio 2. 

One of the worst things happening in certain sectors of the Church right now is the denial of the "Jewish roots" of our faith.

When I was discipled as a young man, and then trained in college and seminary, there was just this widespread understanding that because "Christianity" as we know it today did not exist in the time of Jesus and the Apostles, we have to put the New Testament back into its Jewish historical context for many things to make sense.

So sure, even though Jesus often had harsh words for the Jewish leaders in his day, and even though rabbinic Judaism continued to go astray after 70 AD, there was still what I call a "common stock" of Jewish theological ideas that were accepted by everyone, including Jesus and the Apostles, because this was just the cultural current they swam in, which was, for all its faults, still deeply biblical.

But now there is this movement afoot that is characterized by a pathological desire to completely sever Christian theological discourse from its Jewish context, and to resort instead primarily to the Church fathers or the Protestant reformers for everything.

And yea, the fathers and the reformers did a lot of good. But that does not mean theirs are the only voices we need to hear.

There were also Jewish people who lived before, during, and after the time of Jesus, yes, those within "Judaism," who understood many things rightly, which Christians often do not understand.  

So, instead of just saying, "We don't want to hear about all that Jewish stuff and Zionism," shouldn't we be open to whatever sources can shed real light on the Word of God?  

Are we absolutely sure that blanket prejudice against all Jewish sources, past, present, and future, is a wise principle of interpretation?  

It's not. I can guarantee you that. - Travis M. Snow

“If we read the Scripture's aright the Jews have a great deal to do with this world's history. They shall be gathered in; Messiah shall come, the Messiah they are looking for — the same Messiah who came once shall come again — shall come as they expected Him to come the first time. They then thought He would come a prince to reign over them, and so He will when He comes again. He will come to be king of the Jews, and to reign over His people most gloriously; for when He comes Jew and Gentile shall have equal privileges, though there shall yet be some distinction afforded to that royal family from whose loins Jesus came; for He shall sit upon the throne of His father David, and unto Him shall be gathered all nations.” - Charles Spurgeon

After walking on the sea, “Jesus got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves.” Mark 6:51–52

Jesus expects us to draw inferences from one wonder to expect another.

What should you be expecting this evening? - John Piper

The worst kind of Christian minister is the one who thinks that Jesus and the Church need them. - Joel Richardson

"John, one of Christ’s Apostles, received a revelation and foretold that the followers of Christ would dwell in Jerusalem for a thousand years, and that afterwards the universal and, in short, everlasting resurrection and judgment would take place." - Justin Martyr

There is no biblical case for Cessationism. There are only verses some point to and try to make a case from. It isn’t NEVER stated by the apostles or even hinted at.

You want me to believe Jesus planned for the gifts of the Spirit labeled in 1 Cor. 14 to stop after the apostles died, right when the Church would need them most?

No.

Cessationism is a sad Western doctrine for people who do not have the courage to walk in the gifts unless everything can be explained, measured, and controlled.

But you do not control the Holy Spirit.

Go live in a third world country for a year and see how active the gifts still are and how desperate the church needs them to function in this very hour.

Paul on the contrary encourages believers “Pursue love, yet desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy.

— 1 Corinthians 14:1

This is because Jesus taught Paul about the gifts. - Stephen Holmes

Spurgeon: “There will be no millennial reign without the King. . . no rule of righteousness except from the appearing of the righteous Lord. . . Paul does not paint the future with rose-colour: he is no smooth-tongued prophet of a golden age, into which this dull earth may be imagined to be glowing. There are sanguine brethren who are looking forward to everything growing better and better and better, until, at last, this present age ripens into a millennium. They will not be able to sustain their hopes, for Scripture gives them no solid basis to rest upon."

This is neither pessimism nor optimism. It's taking the whole counsel of Scripture seriously. Christ is building His church marvelously in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, and it will be so until the Day of the LORD comes. Don't be swayed by naive optimists nor by doomsayer pessimists. Hold fast to the Scriptures, enjoy life to the glory of God, pursue holiness, raise godly families, build up the church and advance the Gospel, let come what may. "Our redemption draweth nigh."-BA Purtle

The loss of this eschatological thrust for the Gospel message here coincided, as it always does, with a redefinition both of the redemption and of ‘Israel’. The redemption of the prophets—resurrection, the restoration of David’s throne in Jerusalem, the purging of wickedness from the earth—eventually gave way to a realized redemption. This redemption emphatically did not have Israel as a central feature, having exchanged the old, ethnic program for a new, universal plan.  -Bill Scofield, The Biblical Narrative and the Inconvenient Existence of Israel

What occurred over the following decades and centuries was a slow loss of the eschatological faith held by the earliest disciples of Jesus. What we have come to know as ‘church history’ is the process of detethering the Bible from this explicitly apocalyptic hope. The decades following the Messiah’s resurrection turned into centuries. The redemption’s delay increasingly required explanation. This dynamic gave rise to the spiritualization of the redemption in Christian theology. The inconvenience of needing to wait for Israel’s redemption for their own redemption proved too much to bear theologically—especially in periods when persecution ceased and the church gained influence and power.  -Bill Scofield, The Biblical Narrative and the Inconvenient Existence of Israel

After His resurrection, the Messiah spoke to these early followers over the course of a month and a half about the kingdom of God—a common eschatological theme within Judaism at the time. The disciples clearly perceived this familiar future thrust to the things He was saying. They responded, “Lord, are you restoring the kingdom to Israel at this time?” [Acts 1:6] Their question betrays a couple of things. First, this focused time with Jesus reinforced a future thrust to the Gospel message. That is, none of them thought the redemption had occurred because of His death or resurrection. Secondly, we see that future hope was clearly tethered to the restoration of Israel. This has been an expectation since the time of Moses and the writing of the Torah. As I’ve written in many other places, the redemption of Israel throughout the Hebrew Bible is the trigger for the redemption of the nations. This assumption is carried forward and reiterated by the teachings of the apostles. -Bill Scofield, The Biblical Narrative and the Inconvenient Existence of Israel

We can see this dynamic playing out across the pages of the Apostolic Writings as well. Jesus’s earliest disciples regularly anchored new disciples into the hope of future redemption. Assuring new disciples that “the night is almost gone; the day (that is, the redemption) is near,”[Romans 13:12] and exhorting them to “put all your hope fully in the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus, the Messiah.”[1 Peter 1:13]  Moreover, when they wavered from this emphasis, Paul and the other apostles argued that perseverance was the result of maintaining the hope for eschatological redemption.

Hope that is seen is not hope, because who hopes for what he sees? Now if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance. [Romans 8:24-25]

In this way, the Jesus movement that emerged as a result of the Apostles’ teachings was thoroughly tethered to the hope of future redemption. -Bill Scofield, The Biblical Narrative and the Inconvenient Existence of Israel

The message of the Bible has an explicitly eschatological thrust centered on the future redemption of Israel. There is simply no way around it. This message was not only handed down to the Jewish people; it hinges on their own redemption. That is, “if their rejection brings reconciliation to the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?” (Romans 11:15) 

Christian history has generally been very averse to this basic view of the Scriptures; preferring instead to spiritualize the thrust of the Bible’s message. That is, it was speaking symbolically of spiritual realities, not of natural realities. Various movements across church history have only needed a decade or two of prosperity before the message of the Bible is reinterpreted. Yet, history has a way of scrutinizing truth claims. When we lose our way, God often grants evidence that history is indeed being driven by a divine agenda. -Bill Scofield, The Biblical Narrative and the Inconvenient Existence of Israel

A wedding service message for my cousin. 

There is no Christian Eschatology

 

“Holiness is not austerity or gloom; these are as alien to it as levity and flippancy; it is the offspring of conscious, present peace.” —Horatius Bonar

The funeral service I preached for my grandma. 

Until the Lord returns there will always be:

1. Poverty - Mk. 14.7: "For you always have the poor with you..."

2. Unbelievers/Wickedness - Mt. 24.37-39: "For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man." // 2 Thess. 2.3, "the rebellion" comes just prior to the Parousia (see also 2 Tim. 3.1-5); including wicked nations/rulers (see Zechariah 14:2, Revelation 16:12-16, Joel 3:1-2, 9-14, Ezekiel 38-39, Daniel 11:40-44, et al)

3. War - Dan. 9.26: "...to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed."

(See also Mt. 24.6-13)

4. Persecutions - 2 Thess. 1.6-8a: "God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire...." (See also Mt. 24.9-13; Acts 14.22)

The Gospel has and will advance gloriously among the nations, but poverty, war, persecutions, and wicked people/nations will be prevalent until Christ appears. - BA Purtle

At the end of your life, you will not regret sacrificially loving and building up families and local churches. There are all kinds of "ministries" one might take up that seem more titillating and impressive, but none more valuable to God. - BA Purtle

Theology 101: Stop lamenting the small voice the church has in the world; start repenting for the loud voice the world has in the church. - Dr. Michael Svigel

Husband— You want respect from your wife? Don’t beg for it.

Sacrificially love her. Be kind. Befriend and pursue her. Work hard. Keep your word. Lead with responsibility. Discipline and care for your children. Be satisfied with Christ. Be a churchman.

You will have her respect. - BA Purtle

A common response to the fine-tuning argument is to say that of course the universe is finely tuned, because if it wasn't we wouldn't be here to observe it.

That's a truism and a tautology, not an explanation.

Think of it this way. You're standing before a firing squad of dozens of skilled shooters, all with loaded weapons pointed straight at you, who all fire at you simultaneously. Yet you walk away unscathed. Your response? Well, if I hadn't survived, I wouldn't be here to observe it. Does that explain this extremely improbable outcome? No. It's a statement of the obvious, but you'd be searching for answers.

In the same way, the fine-tuning of the universe to allow conscious life cries out for an explanation. The possibilities are that this happened by

1. Chance

2. Necessity

3. Design

Option 1 is the firing squad problem. The odds are so overwhelmingly against this "just happening" that proponents have resorted to untestable and bizarre explanations like an infinite multiverse.

There is no evidence for Option 2. Nothing in the laws of nature requires the finely-tuned parameters of the universe to be the way they are.

Logically, this leaves Option 3 as the most probable explanation.

When I was a physics student coming out of my lifelong atheism, I was deeply moved by this argument. It didn't matter what my prejudices were, the logic was so sound that I couldn't see any way around it. - Sarah Salviander

The age to come is far more Jewish than what most Christians are currently comfortable with. - Tyler Luedke

Are you a dispensationalist?

Just because someone takes a futurist approach to eschatology does not mean they are a Zionist or a dispensationalist.

We are not disciples of Darby or Scofield. We are trying to trust that what God said in the Law and the Prophets agrees with what Jesus and the apostles taught, and that both stand in continuity with the eschatological expectations found in Second Temple Jewish literature.

Why does that matter? Because terms like Kingdom of God, Resurrection of the Dead, Eternal Life, Gehenna, and Son of David already had meaning before Jesus and the apostles. They were not inventing a new framework for a new religion or a new church. They were using language that was already defined and understood, then calling the Gentiles being grafted in to learn those terms according to their established meaning.

That is why Paul says the apostles received “grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for His name’s sake” (Romans 1:5). The apostolic mission was not to detach Gentiles from Israel’s promises, but to disciple them into the faith and hope those promises had already established.

So no, this does not make someone a dispensationalist. That label is often used as a convenient dismissal by those who argue that Scripture was never meant to be understood in its plain prophetic sense, and that Jesus and the apostles were redefining Israel’s promises away from their first century Jewish expectation.

But the opposite is true. The apostles were Jews trained by Jesus, commissioned by grace, and sent to disciple the nations into the expectation of the faith they themselves had received.

Now, that does not mean the modern state of Israel is righteous in all it does. It does not mean the current Israeli government is living faithfully according to the covenants given to the fathers. But it does mean there is a remnant within Israel that will be redeemed and will inherit what was promised in the Law and the Prophets, because that is the expectation shared by God’s prophets, by Jesus, and by the apostles.

The real problem is that Gentiles gradually broke away from those promises and began redefining everything around themselves instead of being discipled into the faith they were meant to be grafted into.

As R. Kendall Soulen has argued, this was an “incomplete conversion” of the Gentiles into the Jewish matrix of the faith. The result is the modern Gentile church often standing at a great distance from the very categories, promises, and expectations it was supposed to inherit.

So it is simply incorrect to label biblical Gentile disciples as dispensationalists just because they see a future for Israel.

A Gentile disciple who believes in Israel’s future restoration and understands himself as grafted into those promises is not importing a foreign system. He is taking the Bible seriously.

The future of Zion is what we believe in because that future is the only thing that gives proper context to the terms: Kingdom of God, Resurrection of the Dead, Eternal Life, Gehenna, and Son of David. - Stephen Holmes

Peter doesn’t invite us to speculate about timelines, but to examine our lives:

What sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness? [2 Peter 3:11]

Holiness, here, is not withdrawal from the world, but alignment with the world to come. It is a way of living that reflects the reality we are moving toward. A life that anticipates the day when righteousness will finally dwell on the earth.

When we live this way, our lives become signposts. Small glimpses of a future reality breaking into the present. We are not perfect, but oriented in the right direction. -  Sebastiaan van Wessem, The Future Pulling Us Foward

It wasn’t the severity of the whips or the size of the nails that made the Cross of Christ effectual. Rather, it was the Father’s sending of the Son, the Son’s willing sacrifice, and the work of “the Eternal Spirit” which carried out the Divine plan of bringing many sons to glory. - BA Purtle

There is coming a Day when a Jewish king will rule the world from Jerusalem, and all the nations will flourish under his leadership. Death, injustice, and lack will be no more. Sorrow and sighing will flee away. Maranatha.

~ Josh Hawkins, The Apocalyptic Gospel Podcast

The Kingdom and the Covenant