THE FUTURE OF ISRAEL, EARLY CHRISTIAN HERMENEUTICS, AND THE APOCALYPSE OF JOHN.

STEWART, ALEXANDER

This study seeks to demonstrate that John did not interpret the OT promises to Israel as if they had to be fulfilled by ethnic or national Israel in the present or the future. He freely applied such promises to the community of God's people in his time, which was made up of both Jew and Gentile, or to the new creation. For John, God's promises to ethnic and national Israel were fulfilled by the community of both Jews and Gentiles brought into existence by the sacrificial death and resurrection of Israel's Messiah. In the Apocalypse of John, there is no sense that the church (as some Gentile association or organization distinct from God's people) had replaced Israel but that God's renewed people, centered on her Messiah, welcomed Gentiles into Israel's restoration which had begun and would after a period of tribulation culminate in eternal life in God's new creation.

CHRISTIAN biblical hermeneutics; SAINT John's Bible; BIBLICAL teaching on resurrection; BIBLICAL teaching on eschatology; CHRISTIANITY; PROPHECY

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 2018, Vol 61, Issue 3, p563

0360-8808

Academic Journal