"THE WHOLE HOUSE OF ISRAEL."
By C. P. Bollman
IN the thirty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel is recorded one of the most sublime and striking prophecies in the entire Bible. The prophet says: "The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones." These bones, he tells us "were very many," "and, lo, they were very dry." The Lord then asked him, "Can these bones live?" And Ezekiel answered, "O Lord God, thou knowest." Then the prophet was commanded to prophecy unto the bones, and the sequel, as given in verse 10 is, "So I prophesied as he commanded me, . . . and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army."789Verses 11-14 give the explanation of this vision, as follows: "Then he said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel; behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost; we are cut off for our parts. Therefore prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves, and shall put my Spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land; then shall ye know that I the Lord have spoken it, and performed it, saith the Lord." An exhaustive examination of these verses is not possible in the limits of a single brief article, and so our attention will be confined principally to the words, "The whole house of Israel." And here the question naturally arises, Who are the whole house of Israel? The apostle Paul answers this in very few words; he says: "For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel; neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children; but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called." Rom. 9:6, 7. And again: "If ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." Gal. 3:29. And right here it might be remarked that these texts throw much light upon the declaration of the apostle, "And so all Israel shall be saved;" that is, all who belong to Christ shall be saved; for they, and they alone, are Israel. Some have imagined that by "all Israel" the apostle meant the Jews, the literal seed of Abraham, but we have seen that such is not the case. The apostle not only defines the term "Israel," and tells who are included in it, but he says plainly, "He is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; . . . but he is a Jew, which is one inwardly." Rom. 2:28, 29. It is clear, therefore, that the terms, "the whole house of Israel," and "all Israel," mean only the children of God, whether by birth they be Jews or Gentiles. But there are still other reasons for coming to this same conclusion, and as they are brought to view in the verses quoted from Eze. 37, it may be well to notice them briefly. The reader will observe that not only does the Lord promise to bring "the whole house of Israel" up out of their graves, but he also promises to bring them into "the land of Israel." Verse 12. The fulfillment of this promise is clearly the hope to which the apostle tells us (Acts 26:6, 7) the twelve tribes, instantly serving God day and night, hoped to come; and that they hoped to attain it through a resurrection from the dead is evident from the apostle's question to Agrippa: "Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?" The promise was made "to Abraham and to his seed" (Gal. 3:16); but Abraham was dead and several generations of his descendants were dead; and elsewhere the apostle tells us that they "all died not having received the promise;" and it is to this very fact that both he and Stephen appealed repeatedly to prove the resurrection—God's word is pledged, yea, he has sworn by himself, to give Abraham and his seed the world (Rom. 4:13); but Abraham is dead, and millions who will be reckoned as his children are dead; therefore, to fulfill the promise, they must be raised from the dead. This is Paul's argument, and if we believe that all the promises of God are yea and amen to his own glory, as they are declared to be in 2 Cor. 1:20, we must grant that the argument is a good one. But it may be asked what this has to do with showing that only the people of God are Israel, for the Scriptures teach the resurrection of both righteous and wicked. So they do; but the "land," "the world," the "new earth," is promised only to the righteous, and so "the whole house of Israel" and the righteous must be one and the same people. In the verses quoted from Ezekiel the Lord says: "O my people, I will . . . cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel;" and the psalmist testifies that they shall "dwell therein forever." Ps. 37:29. This promise is oft repeated, in substance, in the Old Testament, and agrees perfectly with the words of our Saviour recorded in Matt. 5:5, "Blessed are the meek; for they shall inherit the earth;" and also with the testimony of Peter: "We, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein the righteous dwell." 2 Peter 3:13, Wesley's translation. The Scriptures contain very many promises to Israel; but they are all of two classes: First, promises to literal Israel, contingent upon the fulfillment of certain conditions; and second, promises to the real Israel, the redeemed from every nation, kindred, tongue, and people. A failure to distinguish between these two classes of promises leads many into the grave error of supposing that the Jews, as a people, will yet all accept Christ, and that they will return to the land of Judea, and possess it in this mortal state. There is no scripture which warrants any such belief; and yet there are whole systems of "faith" built upon this very assumption; and it is generally the case that those who entertain these delusions affect to see in them marvelous beauty and symmetry. In truth they are only evidences of the truthfulness of the declaration that though God made man upright, "they have sought out many inventions." The Scriptures present but one plan of salvation for all: both Jew and Gentile must be saved, if saved at all, through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; "for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." And then, too, besides the whole tenor of Scripture, we are expressly told, "Behold now is the accepted time, behold now is the day of salvation." Then let none hope for salvation outside of Christ, or even for salvation through Christ in an age to come, or in a future state of existence. The Bible contains no such promises.