One thing that is both biblically factual and admittedly difficult to reconcile is that Paul participated in Temple sacrifices decades after his conversion.

In Acts 21, Paul returns from a missionary journey and meets with James and the elders in Jerusalem. James tells Paul that many thousands of Jews have believed in Yeshua, and that they are all zealous for the Torah (Acts 21:20).

At the same time, rumors had spread that Paul was teaching Jews to forsake Moses, avoid circumcision, and abandon the customs (Acts 21:21).

To publicly refute those accusations, James tells Paul to join four men who are under a vow (Acts 21:23). These men would have been Jewish Christians. Otherwise, why would they be traveling with James?

The vow was certainly a Nazirite vow, because the men shaved their heads at the completion of the vow, in accordance with the Torah.

Acts 21:24:

Take them along and purify yourself together with them, and pay their expenses so that they may shave their heads.

Numbers 6:18:

The Nazirite shall then shave his consecrated head of hair at the entrance of the tent of meeting, and take the consecrated hair of his head and put it on the fire which is under the sacrifice of peace offerings.

Acts 21:26 says:

“Then Paul took the men, and the next day, after purifying himself together with them, he went into the temple giving notice of the completion of the days of purification, until the sacrifice was offered for each one of them.”

This demonstrates several important points:

1.  Paul purified himself before entering the Temple and participating in the offering process. Ritual purification was required for approaching the Temple in a state of cleanness, which involved immersion in water (this is where baptism comes from).

2.  These Jewish Christians completed their Nazirite vow with the required sacrifices, in accordance with Book of Numbers 6.

In addition, Acts 18:18 indicates that Paul himself had previously taken a Nazarite vow, which would have required a sacrifice at its conclusion:

“At Cenchreae he had his hair cut, for he was under a vow.”

This very well could have been the same vow that he concluded with the four men in Acts 21.

I am not unaware that this creates tension. Hebrews firmly teaches that Yeshua’s sacrifice was final and sufficient, offered once for all.

Yet the plain reading of Acts shows that while the Temple was still standing, Paul and others continued to participate in Temple practices, including the offering associated with the completion of a Nazirite vow.

Scripture must be allowed to speak for itself, even when the full implications are difficult to reconcile.

And Scripture explicitly states that Paul continued to keep the whole of Torah throughout his life.

Acts 21:24:

“...but that you yourself also walk orderly and keep the Torah.”

-Rabbi Brian Samuel

Galatians 4 doesn’t teach that the Jewish people are sons of the slave-girl Hagar, nor that we should cast out any notion of God’s promises to them. The discussion is about the danger of trying to be under the guardianship of the Torah (Law) to earn righteousness and salvation. - Josiah Geoffrey

Jesus lives on a fiery throne. When Nebuchadnezzar made the furnace seven times hotter, Jesus was probably like, “My kind of place.” - Bob Sorge

Until the Church understands what the prophets, the apostles, and Jesus Himself taught concerning Jerusalem and the Jews; until we grasp just why they wept over Israel; indeed, until we shed tears that are kindred to theirs, our eschatology will be muddled, myopic, and misguided. - BA Purtle

Justification gets you out of Egypt, but sanctification gets Egypt out of you. - Wes Huff

Sequentially, we should understand the shofar at Sinai as the “first trumpet” and the “great shofar” announcing the coming of the Messiah as “the last trumpet” [1 Corinthians 15:52]. The last trumpet is the “great trumpet” of Isaiah 27:13 that signals the ingathering: “He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet” [Matthew 24:31]. At that time, “The Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God” [1 Thessalonians 4:16]. -  D. Thomas Lancaster, Two Trumpets

That future theophany occurs not at Mount Sinai but at Mount Zion (i.e., Jerusalem). At Mount Sinai, the LORD appeared in the midst of the cloud of glory that covered the mountain. At Mount Zion, “they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory”. From Sinai, the nation heard the sound of the trumpet; from Zion, the whole world will hear the sound of the trumpet. At Mount Sinai, God’s feet stood on the mountain and “under His feet there appeared to be a pavement of sapphire, as clear as the sky itself”, but “in that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which is in front of Jerusalem on the east”. - D. Thomas Lancaster, Two Trumpets

The future Day of the LORD not only parallels the Pentecost at Mount Sinai, but it also goes far beyond it by many scales of magnitude. The writer of the book of Hebrews compares the two events. His argument runs like this: if the theophany at Mount Sinai was fearsome, how much more so the theophany of the Day of the LORD! The shaking that took place at Mount Sinai when God’s “voice shook the earth” will seem insignificant compared with the shaking of all things in the Day of the LORD. - D. Thomas Lancaster, Two Trumpets

God’s “kingdom” is referenced throughout the Scriptures, and it is clearly a kingdom that presently rules over all creation (cf. 1 Chronicles 29:11; Psalm 103:19, 145:11ff.; Jeremiah 10:7ff.; Daniel 4:3, 34; John 19:11; Acts 17:24; Revelation 4:2ff.). However, there are also many messianic references to an eschatological kingdom that is established on the earth based in Jerusalem (cf. Psalm 2:6ff.; Isaiah 9:7; Daniel 2:44, 7:14; Matthew 8:11, 20:21; Luke 22:30; 2 Peter 1:11; Revelation 11:15).

This distinction has been the source of much controversy, which is simply resolved by distinguishing between the two primary thrones of creation: one in the height of the heavens (cf. Psalm 2:4, 113:5; Isaiah 40:22, 66:1) and one delegated to mankind on the earth (cf. Genesis 1:26ff.; Psalm 8:4ff., 115:16). Thus, when referencing the “kingdom,” we need to delineate between God’s “universal kingdom,” ruling over all creation from everlasting to everlasting, and the Jewish “messianic kingdom,” to be established upon the earth at the end of the age establishing a glorified Davidic throne and restoring the original Adamic order.

However, the particular phrase, “kingdom of God,” which does not occur in the Hebrew Bible, needs to be understood as Jewish phraseology used during late Second Temple Judaism to refer specifically to the Jewish messianic kingdom. This was clearly the common Jewish expectation, and it is the plain meaning of the phrase in the vast majority of its usage in the New Testament. -  John P. Harrigan, Discipling the Gentiles into the Hope of Israel

Scholars have internalized, de-temporalized, de-historicized, cosmologized, spiritualized, allegorized, mysticized, psychologized, philosophized, and sociologized the concept of the kingdom of God. This has all been done for the purpose of denationalizing it. -George W. Buchanan, The Consequences of the Covenant

Realized eschatology undermines the Jewish apocalyptic framework, the cross-centered call to discipleship, and Israel’s unique calling. Instead, Jesus and Paul should be understood within their native Jewish apocalyptic worldview, discipling Gentiles into Israel’s hope of the Messiah’s return and the age to come.  -  John P. Harrigan, Discipling the Gentiles into the Hope of Israel

In Jesus’ teaching, parables and declarative statements generally match Jewish prophetic and apocalyptic hopes. Passages like Matthew 12, Luke 17, and others often cited for realized eschatology can be read instead as future-oriented, warning of divine judgment, not present spiritual fulfillment. Key translation issues (e.g., Greek verbal aspect) further support a future reading. Similarly, Paul’s fourteen kingdom references overwhelmingly look ahead to the return of Christ, resurrection, and judgment. Romans 14, 1 Corinthians 4, and Colossians 1, when read in context, address practical discipleship and eschatological hope, not mystical present fulfillment.  -  John P. Harrigan, Discipling the Gentiles into the Hope of Israel

Theology 101: Throughout history, marriages between Church and State ultimately led to manipulation, exploitation, and abuse. It’s a fundamentally toxic relationship that ends in tears if we’re lucky or bloodshed if we’re not. 

It’s best not even to start holding hands. - Dr. Micheal Svigel

Leviticus is not pointing backward to something that expired at the cross. It's pointing forward. - Brianna Tittel, Leviticus is Eschatology

The idea that Paul’s gospel revolved around realized eschatology (but not “over-realized eschatology”) is absurd. Paul ardently rejected the proto-gnostic realization of Jewish eschatology of his day (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:12; 2 Thessalonians 2:2; 1 Timothy 6:20; 2 Timothy 2:18), likening it to spiritual “gangrene” (2 Timothy 2:17). Realized eschatology does irreparable damage to biblical faith, particularly concerning (1) the Day of the LORD, (2) the cross, and (3) Jewish election. First, it takes the focus off the return of Jesus and mitigates urgency concerning the imminence of the Day of the LORD. Second, it changes the standard of discipleship from daily embrace of the cross and martyrdom to some form of spiritually realized “kingdom.” Third, it inevitably introduces an alternative “supersessionist” redemptive narrative that invalidates the unique calling of Israel. -  John P. Harrigan, Discipling the Gentiles into the Hope of Israel

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.