The Offer: Examining the Role of the Nation of Israel in the First and Second Comings of Jesus Christ

By Lance E. Clippinger

Almost 2,000 years ago Jesus offered to Israel not only spiritual salvation, but political and physical salvation as well. This offer was made with one crucial requirement or condition, which Israel failed to meet. Just before Jesus' second coming Israel will fulfill this condition and The Offer will be received.

Why did Jesus conceal and try to "hush up" some of His miracles?

Why did Jesus command the disciples to tell no one that He was the Christ?

Why was Jerusalem and its temple destroyed in 70 A.D. and will the temple be rebuilt?

Will there be a forerunner (like John the Baptist) who prepares the way for Jesus' second coming?

In the end times, how will the nation of Israel come to believe in Jesus?

What will it be like for Christians to live and rule with Jesus on the earth?

These questions and many more are answered in The Offer. Lance Clippinger demonstrates that if we understand what Jesus offered Israel, many of our questions about the Bible, Jesus, the time we live in, and the future of our world will be answered.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 19, 2006
• ISBN: 9780595836154

Lance E. Clippinger

Lance Clippinger is the author of The Offer: Examining the Role of the Nation of Israel in the First and Second Comings of Jesus Christ. He received his Masters of Divinity from Talbot School of Theology. He has pastored two churches for a total of 13 years. He currently resides with his wife in Mason, Ohio.

Book preview

The Offer

Examining the Role of the Nation

of Israel in the First and Second

Comings of Jesus Christ

Lance E. Clippinger

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Lincoln Shanghai

The Offer

Examining the Role of the Nation of Israel in the First and

Second Comings of Jesus Christ

Copyright © 2006 by Lance E. Clippinger

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN-13: 978-0-595-39225-4 (pbk)

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Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1 Asking the Right Question

Chapter 2 John the Baptist Rejected

Chapter 3 Was Jesus a Poor Communicator?

Chapter 4 The Kingdom Was at Hand

Chapter 5 All Those Miracles—What’s the Point?

Chapter 6 What Were Those Jews Thinking?

Chapter 7 The Purpose of Jesus’s Spiritual Teaching

Chapter 8 Getting the Message Out to Israel

Chapter 9 Judgment Begins to Fall on Israel

Chapter 10 The Mystery and the Church Age

Chapter 11 Why Is Jesus So Secretive?

Chapter 12 John the Baptist and Elijah

Chapter 13 Parables and the Kingdom Delayed

Chapter 14 Triumphal Entry: The Offer Made Official

Chapter 15 The King Weeps for Israel

Chapter 16 Acts: The Offer Back on the Table

Chapter 17 The Prophetic Parable Par Excellence

Chapter 18 Was Israel Replaced by the Church?

Chapter 19 Israel Will Be Left Behind: A Study of Matthew 24

Chapter 20 Israel and End-Times Evangelism

Chapter 21 The End-Times Elijah

Chapter 22 The Exodus Event: A Preview of Coming Attractions

Chapter 23 The Exodus Event: A Preview of Coming Attractions (Part 2)

Chapter 24 When God Comes to Live on the Earth

Chapter 25 Epilogue: A Jesus with Weight

Works Cited

END NOTES

Preface

This book is about the Bible. More precisely this book is my interpretation, or my understanding, of what God has said and done in history. If I were the only person in history to interpret the Bible as I do, you would have good reason to doubt the reliability of my interpretation. This is one reason I have chosen to make reference to many other works and commentaries on the Bible. I placed these references in footnotes, rather than endnotes, to make it easier for you to read them (underlining found in quotes has been added for emphasis). In the same way, I have chosen to put the text of the Bible before you, rather than just citing chapter and verse. The book will be very difficult to follow if you do not read the included text of the Bible. The Bible translation used in this book is the New American Standard, unless otherwise stated. This book is written so that each chapter builds on those previous. I don’t recommend skipping around in the book until after you have read it straight through.

Please understand that when I say this is my interpretation of the Bible, I do not mean that all interpretations are equally valid. Obviously they are not. Ultimately there is only one correct interpretation of the Bible, and it is up to us to try to find it. We are morally bound to seek the truth. We ought to try with all our minds, hearts, and strength to seek and find the true God, rather than the God created by the imaginations of men and women. Thankfully we do not have to interpret God’s Word 100 percent accurately to experience his saving work through his Son. Do I believe there are errors in my book? Yes, although I believe (and hope) the errors are not major ones. Any work in theology is always a work in progress.

Do I believe my interpretation of the Bible is generally correct? Yes, of course, or I would not have written this book. However, my certainty of the reliability of my interpretation is not much help to you, is it? You must decide what is a good interpretation of the Bible and what is not. You must be discerning. To use a politically incorrect term, you must be judgmental as you read this and any other book written by fallen humans. Much is riding on our interpretation of the Bible; if we misrepresent the Bible, we misrepresent Jesus and his way of salvation.

Again, thankfully, Christians are not alone and not without help as they seek to understand God’s Word. Believers in Christ have the Spirit of God aiding them: he who Jesus called the Helper and the Spirit of Truth and who the Apostle Paul called the Spirit of Christ. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, because he cannot lie, and he leads his people to the truth. The Holy Spirit does not work in a vacuum but works through God’s Word and through his church, the body of Christ, which is made up of believers in God’s Son.

The Spirit also works directly on our spirits and minds. I first experienced the latter when I heard the Gospel for the first time as a senior in high school. When I heard the Gospel (from my older sister), I somehow knew it was true, even before I had researched the reliability of the Bible. This somehow knowing is indeed mysterious and is an important part of the work of the Spirit of God. But much of the Spirit’s guidance and help comes in very mundane and nonspectacular ways. A significant portion of what I present in the following pages I learned while attending Talbot School of Theology. I learned it by taking endless notes in class and by professors forcing me to read much more than I cared to. As a pastor, the rest I learned by being forced to come up with sermons and study series for thirteen years. This is not a very mysterious way to learn, but I’m convinced that God’s Spirit was guiding my education. I have been blessed by reading books, and I hope you experience a blessing through mine.

Acknowledgments

I first want to thank my wife for believing (long before I did) that I could write this book. I would also like to thank the two churches that allowed me to be their pastor, Faith Bible Church of Reno, Nevada, and All of Grace Baptist Church of West Chester, Ohio. Together these churches allowed me to study and teach God’s word for thirteen years. This book is the fruit of their personal investment in my ministry. Most of all, I want to thank Jesus Christ, not just for dying for my sins, but for his promise that one day he will raise my dead bones from the grave. I really do dislike the whole dying process and would rather just skip it. I’m still hoping that I’m alive when he comes back for his own. I hope everyone who reads this book makes the choice to belong to him.

Lance

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Chapter 1

Asking the Right Question

The first time I saw Jesus portrayed on film was in the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. I was an unchurched, suburban, seventh-grade pagan who was forced to watch this musical in a public school social studies class. I had no idea how heretical the movie was, because I did not know the Jesus of the Gospels. The Superstar Jesus was a very nice person who was confused about his own identity. Of course this confused Jesus was a very poor communicator and left those who heard him wondering who or what he was claiming to be. Now, after believing in Jesus Christ for thirty years, I have come to the terrifying realization that there are great similarities between the Jesus portrayed in many evangelical pulpits and the Superstar Jesus in the rock opera.

Was Jesus confused about his identity, like some Eastern mystic? Was Jesus a terrible communicator, unable to understand his audience? Of course he was, and is, neither. But if you listen carefully to the majority of pastors and then follow their teaching through to its logical end, you would be forced to conclude that Jesus was at the very least a poor communicator…or something much worse.

When I first became a Christian, I enjoyed reading the Gospels. But the more teaching I heard on the Gospels, the more confused I became about Jesus. Through the teaching I received from pastors and books (conservative evangelical, no less), the Jesus of the Gospels had become to me a mysterious, vague, and even a rather pathetic figure (of course I did not let these terrible thoughts enter my conscious, everyday thinking). I did not know how confused my thinking was about Jesus until others showed me the truth about him. You don’t realize how bad your vision is until you are fitted with the right glasses. I received those glasses in seminary, and when I opened the Bible, the real Jesus finally began to come into focus.¹

After eleven years as a Christian, I had to travel across the country to seminary in order to begin to understand the Gospels. That ought not be. That is why I have written this book: maybe, like me, you have always been a little puzzled with the Gospels and with the Jesus in them. Maybe you don’t realize how out of focus Jesus is. I hope as you read the following pages, you will experience the same joy I did when I saw Jesus for who he really is.

To begin to understand Jesus and the Gospels, you have to answer one crucial question correctly. The question is simply this: what did Jesus offer to the nation of Israel at his first coming? Every Bible scholar admits Jesus offered something to Israel, but we must be clear on what that something was. This is where many of the finest conservative commentaries become vague and fuzzy. In fact they rarely raise the question, let alone give a clear answer to it. How you answer this question will determine how you interpret and understand the majority of Christ’s teaching. Therefore it is vital you answer the question correctly (something I was not able to do for years as a Christian). Again, what did Jesus offer to the nation of Israel at his first coming? You have three choices:

(a) Jesus offered spiritual salvation to the nation of Israel (Jesus offered to rule in the hearts of people through the forgiveness of sins and the salvation of the soul).

(b) Jesus offered political salvation to the nation of Israel (Jesus offered himself as the literal king of Israel to rule over the nation and defeat its enemies—the Roman Empire, etc.—for all time).

(c) Jesus offered physical salvation to Israel (Jesus offered the people of Israel resurrected bodies and a new earth to live on).

Jesus could not offer Israel any other kind of salvation. The three above exhaust the possibilities. So of the three, which did he offer? Most Christians have been taught that Jesus at his first coming offered Israel only (a), and he most certainly did not offer (b) or (c). This idea was taught by all the churches I attended and supported in all the commentaries I read before attending seminary. Jesus came and offered Israel only a spiritual kingdom in the hearts of men.² He did not offer Israel a political kingdom of any sort. I was taught that the Jews, being misguided, narrow-minded, and carnal, were looking for a political Messiah, a literal king to save their nation from oppression. But I was taught Jesus never offered himself as a literal, physical, political king. The conservative evangelical and very influential theologian George Ladd pulls no punches when he writes about what Jesus didn’t offer Israel:

The problem must be frankly faced. The Gospels portray a man who was conscious that in him dwelt transcendence. He was the Messiah in whom God’s kingly reign had come to humanity; but he wasn’t the nationalistic, political Messiah corresponding to the contemporary Jewish hopes. He was the anointed of the Lord to fulfill the messianic promises of the Old Testament, but their fulfillment was occurring in the spiritual realm, not in the socio-political realm.

And again Ladd writes, .Jesus knew himself to be the Messiah but not the sort of Messiah popularly expected. His mission was to bring the Kingdom of God but not the sort of kingdom the people wanted. He was indeed recognized as the King of Israel (Matt. 2:2; Luke 1:32; John 1:50), but his kingdom was a spiritual Kingdom and his messianic mission was a spiritual mission.³

Similarly, I was taught that the Jews completely and tragically misunderstood Jesus and thought Jesus was offering himself as a literal, political, messianic king who would rule over Israel. When it became clear Jesus wasn’t going to be the king the Jews wanted and expected, they became angry. In their anger, they rejected Jesus and turned him over to the Romans for crucifixion. Today this scenario, or something like it, is what many, if not most, evangelicals have been taught.⁴ But, as I will show in the following pages, this teaching greatly distorts our view of Jesus and makes much of the Gospels extremely difficult, if not impossible, to comprehend.

At seminary I was exposed to another answer to the question: What did Jesus offer to the nation of Israel at his first coming? After thirteen years of teaching as a pastor, I have tested this answer and find it makes the most sense of the Gospels and explains the most difficult passages with ease: I have come to believe that Jesus offered to Israel not just (a), but also (b) and (c). Yes, as strange as this sounds to evangelical ears, Jesus offered spiritual, political, and physical salvation to the nation of Israel almost two thousand years ago.

What I am saying is this: the Gospels (and the rest of the Bible) make clear that Jesus offered himself as the true Messiah-King of Israel.⁵ This means he offered to rule over Israel and set them free from all their political enemies. But someone might say, This is crazy. If Jesus offered himself as a literal king, why didn’t he begin ruling over Israel? Why didn’t he destroy Rome and set up his throne in Jerusalem two thousand years ago?

Great question. I asked the same one myself. Here is the answer, and it is wonderfully simple and yet quite profound: Jesus offered himself as the physical Messiah to Israel…but with one crucial spiritual requirement, or condition. Jesus required that Israel, as a nation, repent of sin and believe in him before he could be Israel’s Messiah and rule as king over the land. Israel failed to meet this crucial spiritual requirement, and therefore Jesus could not and would not rule over them and bless the nation with all three aspects of salvation (i.e., political, physical, and spiritual).

I know this is a radical view to many of you; it was to me when I first heard it from two of my seminary professors. But give me time to show you how clear this teaching is in the Gospels. And let me show you how this teaching exalts Jesus Christ and how it helps explain all the passages that might have puzzled you.

The Big What If

First let me deal with an objection that is often raised to the idea that Jesus offered himself as the literal king of Israel. The argument goes like this: If Jesus offered himself as a literal, political, messianic king to Israel, what would have happened if Israel had repented and believed in Jesus? Well (the argument goes), Jesus would have set up his kingdom two thousand years ago and would have never died for the world’s sin. He would not have become the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and since that could not happen, Jesus never offered himself as the literal king of Israel.

It is important to remember that the same question could be asked of those who say Christ was only offering a spiritual kingdom to Israel. What would have happened if Israel had received Jesus’s offer of his spiritual kingdom? Certainly Israel would not have turned Jesus over to the Romans for crucifixion if he was ruling in their hearts. Whether Christ was offering a physical or a spiritual kingdom, you have the same problem when dealing with the acceptance of the offer (Dr. Robert Saucy made this point in a lecture while I was attending Talbot Seminary).

In response to this argument, we can consider Adam and Eve in the garden. Did God offer to Adam and Eve the opportunity to live without sin in the perfect world he created? The answer is clearly yes. Adam and Eve could have chosen to obey God and avoid eating from the forbidden tree. But if they had received what God offered them, then there would have been no need to save humanity from its sin. There would have been no need for Jesus to die. But we are told in Scripture, Just as He chose us in him before the foundation of the world. (Eph. 1:4). In other words, before the world was created (i.e., before the foundation of the world), it was determined by God the Father that Jesus would die for the sins of humanity. Jesus was decreed to die even before Adam and Eve sinned! The fact that God knew that Adam and Eve would reject his offer does not make the offer any less real or any less legitimate.

So we are faced with the same paradox (the better word is mystery⁶) as with Jesus’s offer to Israel. In our finite minds, we are never going to fully comprehend the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man. Trying to answer all the what if questions will not solve the mystery. But the Bible indicates both are equally true: God is sovereign, and man has real choices to make with real consequences.⁷ So yes, Adam and Eve had a legitimate offer that they could have received. As a result of Adam’s rejection of God’s offer, mankind has suffered terribly ever since—it was a real choice with real consequences. In the same way, Jesus offered himself as king to Israel, and Israel willfully rejected his offer (for which Israel was severely judged in 70 AD and completely destroyed in 135 AD). But in rejecting Jesus, Israel fulfilled the perfect will of God. Jesus was murdered by evil men, but God sacrificed his son, that whosoever believes in Him may not die but have everlasting life. We see Peter making this same point in the book of Acts. After the death and resurrection of Jesus, Peter confronts the nation of Israel with their sin of rejection:

Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know—this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. (Acts 2:22-23)

Note carefully what Peter says. First Peter tells the Jews that they can’t plead ignorance. Jesus was attested to Israel as the Messiah with miracles that God did through him. In other words, Peter is saying Israel has no excuse (see also Acts 2:36). Israel did not crucify Jesus because of a communication problem. Israel sinned boldly when it rejected Jesus and turned him over to the Romans for execution. But then Peter refers to the sovereignty of God: it was God’s predetermined plan that his son die on a cross as the sacrifice for sins. The mystery is clearly presented by Peter…but left unexplained, for it cannot be.

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Chapter 2

John the Baptist Rejected

Before we look at what Jesus offered Israel, we must understand the ministry of John the Baptist. Just as Christians are confused about Jesus, they are confused about the ministry of the Baptist. Jesus tells us that John was a prophet but also much more, for John had the weighty responsibility of preparing Israel for Jesus’s coming (Matt. 11:9-10). To completely understand Jesus’s ministry, we must first look at his forerunner. The angel Gabriel, speaking to John’s father, described the purpose of John’s ministry:

And he will turn many of the sons of Israel back to the Lord their God. It is he who will go as a forerunner before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers back to the children, and the disobedient to the attitude of the righteous, so as to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. (Luke 1:16-17)

John the Baptist was to preach a message of repentance to Israel with the thought of Israel receiving Jesus as the long-awaited and promised Messiah-King. The angel Gabriel quotes and interprets a portion of Malachi 4:6. Let’s look at the passage Gabriel referred to, in context.

For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace; and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be chaff; and the day that is coming will set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings; and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall. You will tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day which I am preparing, says the Lord of hosts. Remember the law of Moses My servant, even the statutes and ordinances which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel. Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse. (Mal. 4:1-6)

The underlined portion of the above Scripture is what the angel Gabriel quoted and interpreted to John’s father. Clearly the context of this prophecy in Malachi refers to what we know today as the second coming of Jesus Christ. On that day, all the wicked will be finally punished, and those who belong to God will live in peace and righteousness on the earth. But please note the angel Gabriel refers to this passage in reference to Jesus’s first coming, not his second coming.

What is crucial to understand is that any Jew (including John’s father) reading Malachi chapter 4 in the first century would have thought it referred to what we today call Jesus’s second coming (i.e., end-time events). But this passage is what the angel Gabriel referred to when he spoke of Jesus’s first coming. If Gabriel did not mean the Jews to understand the events of the second coming in this passage, then Gabriel and God were intentionally misleading the Jews. I don’t believe God misleads his children. So God must have meant what he said. But someone might object, We all know the events described here in Malachi were not fulfilled at Jesus’s first coming. Yes, that is true…but why? Because Israel rejected the ministry of John the Baptist and failed to repent. So instead of receiving the blessing of Malachi chapter 4, Israel received the curse of Malachi chapter 4.

Note what God says in Malachi 4:6: .so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse. Israel needs to repent in that day if these blessings are to fall on them. If they do not repent, God says, he will smite the land with a curse. Israel failed to repent at Jesus’s first coming, and God judged Israel in 70 AD by destroying Jerusalem and the temple and finally the nation as a whole in the second century. The great scholar Alfred Edersheim in 1883 wrote,

. ..If Israel had received the Christ, He would have gathered them as a hen her chickens for protection; He would not only have been, but have visibly appeared as their King. But Israel did not know their Elijah [i.e., John the Baptist], and did unto him whatsoever they listed; and so, in logical sequence, would the Son of Man also suffer of them. And thus has the other part of Malachi’s prophecy been fulfilled; and the land of Israel been smitten with the ban.⁸

In other words, if Israel had repented at Jesus’s first coming, the events of the second coming (as described in Malachi 4) would have been fulfilled in the first century. But because Israel rejected Jesus at his first coming, we still await the fulfillment of Malachi chapter 4. You might say, How can that be? If the events of the second coming had occurred in the first century, there would have been no cross and no church age. Again we cannot understand the mystery of God’s sovereign plan in light of man’s responsibility. But we must accept what the Bible makes clear: God can and does make legitimate offers to people (or to the nation of Israel), and there are real consequences for the decisions they make.

Now let’s look at what John the Baptist was proclaiming. In Matthew 3:1-3, we read,

Now in those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is the one referred to by Isaiah the prophet when he said, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make ready the way of the Lord, make his paths straight!’

In ancient times, when a king was coming to one of his cities, the people of that city would work hard to fix the roads and prepare the city physically for his visit. John is saying Israel needs to be prepared not physically but spiritually for its coming king. John has a message of repentance for Israel. Israel was a perverse and crooked nation (Luke 3:5) and that is why John says the paths have to be made straight before they can receive the blessings of Jesus’s rule as king.

When John sees the leaders of Israel coming out to him, he confronts them with harsh but true words: You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance (Matt. 3:7b-8). Jesus later uses the same harsh words against the leaders (Matt. 23:33). In other words, the repentance John was calling for could not be superficial, but had to lead to changed hearts and lives. But did Israel repent? Did Israel bring forth the fruit of repentance? The answer, we will see, is no.

In Matthew 4:12, we read very ominous words. Now when He [Jesus] heard that John had been taken into custody, He withdrew into Galilee. The Gospels tell us that John is arrested by Herod and thrown into prison. This is ominous because John is the one who was to prepare Israel for the Messiah. If the forerunner is thrown into prison, what will happen to the one he points to? Herod the Tetrarch imprisons and eventually beheads John.⁹ But who is ultimately responsible for his death? Herod would be the obvious response…but not the correct one. Jesus gives us the answer:

But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market places, who call out to the other children, and say, We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn. For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He has a demon! The Son of