Israel’s Horse and Buggy: what if God’s land promises to Israel were but inferior forerunners of a greater future blessing? Can this be the case? This the premise proposed in a book, “Time for Favor: Scottish Evangelism among the Jewish People 1838 to 1852” by John Stuart Ross.
The first I want to say is that I appreciate many aspects of the book. I love the Scottish ministers and am hearted by the likes of M’Cheyne, Milne, the Bonars and others. Though holding to Covenant Theology, many of these men were premillennial and loved the Jews, even seeing a biblical promise of Israel’s restoration. I also liked the interesting behind the scenes tidbits this book offered, bringing alive those times.
While the author honored the Bonars’ efforts to evangelize the Jews, he was less sympathetic to their premillennialism. Andrew Bonar on more than one occasion, mentioned how he, his brother and others, felt on the outer for being premillennial—or by the suggestion that Edward Irving overtly influenced them.
On page 77, Stuart Ross wrote critically of their view on prophecy regarding Israel. He mentions their “relentless for rigid hermeneutical consistency.” He maintains that it “failed to allow for an adequately dynamic fulfillment of the Old Testament promises in the New Covenant…”
Dispensationalists know where that line of dynamic argumentation is headed.
Israel’s Horse and Buggy versus a car
Stuart Ross gives an illustration of a father promising his son that, on reaching maturity, he would buy him a horse and buggy. But as time goes by, the car is invented and the old theology is made redundant. He asserts that no reasonable person would disagree that this would exceed the promised expectations.
What is really occurring in the above assertion? And why is it put forward to begin with?
God explicitly promised Israel a land; to call this a Horse and Buggy promise demeans its original worth. In fact, passages as found in Isaiah chapter 60 might bother Gentile sentiment. These promises are explicit and valued by both God and Israel. If Israel cannot trust God at His word in Amos 9:14-15, then neither can the church trust in its salvation.
In the dynamic fulfillment, national Israel transfers its identity to a Spiritual Israel comprised of mainly Gentiles, and Jews to a much lesser extent. While saved Jews share in the inheritance of the entire world, they lose unique ownership of the specific land God promised. The car illustration fails; the argument comes close to a bait and switch.
One can rightly say that saved Jews ought to identify with Christ. But we might respond that the church then ought to discard its identification with Israel as well.
Moreover, the New Covenant is referenced in Jeremiah 31:31-37, and is specially tied to the horse and buggy land promise (vv 35-37). Paul reminds us of these promises in Romans 11. See David Guzik’s commentary HERE.
Motivation for the buggy illustration
God foresees the future and is perfectly able to convey this to His intended audience through the prophets. The only need for such an illustration is if one’s traditional theology doesn’t align with plain promises given to Israel. When one believes that the church is spiritual Israel, one must spiritualize entire passages which don’t make sense of the church; and the charge of rigid hermeneutics is thus invoked.
A Covenant Theology writer has referred to Ezekiel 36:25-27 as a beautiful illustration of the Christian’s conversion. While believers can certainly look to these verses with comfort, the context is directed at a future national Israel. The rest of the chapter goes on to describe the physical land promises. Again, if Christians can take heart in this, then so must Israel.
This is another example where a traditional theology obfuscates the original application by transferring it to another entity. The church needs to reform of its need to appropriate Israel’s identity and prophecies.
One last thing
The author was critical of the Bonars’ alleged pessimism regarding Israel’s national conversion (as opposed to the salvation of individual Jews) being “reserved for the coming of the Messiah.” He claimed that the ultimate effect of this view was to “dampen zeal for missions and quash all hope for their success.”
However, eschatology didn’t dampen the Bonars’ zeal for Jewish evangelism. Neither does it affect the zeal of modern dispensationalists who evangelize in Israel as I write. Many Jews have come to Christ as a result.
Ironically, some opponents of Calvinism suggest that certain proponents supposedly don’t evangelize because God has already sovereignly predestined the elect. But, in fact, Calvinists (as Spurgeon did for example) readily evangelize the unsaved.
For more on this subject, see J. I. Packer’s book, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God.
Likewise, God revealed that national Israel will come to salvation at the time of Christ’s return (Hos 5:15, Matt 23:37-39 and Matthew 24). Yet we are still commanded to make disciples of all the nations—and that includes Israel.
Maranatha!
Further reading and resources
The Parameters of Meaning (Dr. Reluctant)
Israel in the Biblical Worldview
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