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Isaiah, Prophet of Salvation, Book 6, part 3

The first prophecy of Isaiah 40 is about John the Baptist preparing the way for the coming of Christ. John fulfilled this prophecy by preparing the hearts of the people. He preached the gospel of repentance. In other words, his mission was to cause the people to return to God, which was to reverse the exile.

This shows that to return (shuwb) is to repent—to return to God. One did not need to return physically on a paved highway to fulfill the prophecy, for John the Baptist fulfilled his mission without doing any road construction. His concern was the condition of men’s hearts. The Hebrew word shuwb can be interpreted either literally or metaphorically. As we see so often, the prophets use literal word pictures to represent deeper truths.

How to Return

Israel had persisted in sin and was exiled to Assyria. This is clear from the first half of Isaiah. Recall the earlier prophecy in Isaiah 9:10, which says,

¹⁰ The bricks have fallen down, but we will rebuild with smooth stones; the sycamores have been cut down, but we will replace them with cedars.

In other words, Israel refused to repent when God sent them a harbinger of judgment as a warning. So also, when the Twin Towers were demolished on September 11, 2001, the politicians followed Israel’s bad example by quoting the verse above. They refused to repent. But Isaiah had prophesied this as well in Isaiah 9:13,

¹³ Yet the people do not turn back [shuwb, “return”] to Him who struck them, nor do they seek the Lord of hosts.

The requirement of God was not for Israel to travel down a particular highway but to repent and return to God. The required path is pictured in Isaiah 35:8 as the Highway of Holiness. This spiritual highway is described further in Isaiah 35:8-10,

⁸ … The unclean will not travel on it… ⁹ But the redeemed will walk there. ¹⁰ And the ransomed of the Lord will return [shuwb] and come with joyful shouting to Zion, with everlasting joy upon their heads, they will find gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

If this highway were physical, there might be an opportunity for the unclean to travel on it. However, this is a metaphorical highway, where only the repentant ones can walk. It is not possible for the unclean to walk on it.

The Jewish “Return”

In the past century many have applied these verses to a Jewish return to the old land. Somehow Jews who continue to reject Christ are cleansed apart from repentance. Somehow the Highway of Holiness has been turned into a literal path to the old land, where Jews may return to the “Holy Land” while yet remaining under the Old Covenant.

But that is obviously a misreading of the passage, at least from the standpoint of a believer who sees that Jesus is the Mediator of the New Covenant. Those who remain in Judaism are those who continue to reject the baptism of John, who bore witness of Christ and prepared the way before Him. John’s calling was rooted in Isaiah 40:3-5, and no one can reject John and Jesus and still return to God along the Highway of Holiness.

Prior to 1948 most Bible teachers believed and taught that the Jews would have to repent before returning to the old land. When the state of Israel was established in 1948 without seeing a great national repentance, they altered their view, saying that they would repent within 3½ years or perhaps 7 years at the most. When that did not happen, they quietly dropped that requirement instead of reexamining their understanding to see where they went wrong.

Out of this misunderstanding came a more sinister teaching called the Dual Covenant Theology, which teaches that Jews are saved by the Old Covenant, while Gentiles are saved by the New Covenant. The Wikipedia summarizes this view as follows:

“Dual-covenant theology is unique in holding that the Old Covenant or the Law of Moses remains valid for Jews while the New Covenant only applies to non-Jews or gentiles.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-covenant_theology

Such a view has arisen out of the idea that the God allowed the Jews to establish the State of Israel even though they continued to reject Jesus as the Messiah. Their conclusion is that the Jews must therefore be righteous and holy apart from Christ. Two paths of salvation, then, must exist side by side—one for the Jews and another for the gentiles. Hence, the Old Covenant must be the valid path for Jews, even while the New Covenant is the valid path for gentiles.

In my view, let me be clear, Dual Covenant Theology is nonsense. I believe Peter’s testimony which he gave in Acts 4:10-12 after healing the lame man,

¹⁰ Let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by this name this man stands here before you in good health. ¹¹ He is the stone which was rejected by you, the builders, but which became the chief corner stone. ¹² And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.

One cannot be saved by invoking the name of Moses. Though he was indeed a great man, he did not die for the sin of the world, for he was a blemished lamb and thus was in need of “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” As John the Baptist put it (John 1:29).

Dual Covenant Theology has attempted to resolve the difficulty of Zionism being successful apart from being founded on the Jesus Christ. Instead of questioning Zionism itself, such theologians have questioned Peter’s assertion in Acts 4:12. Their conclusion is that since the Jews appear to have fulfilled the prophecies of Israel’s “return” without accepting the Mediator of the New Covenant, this surely must mean that Jews are holy apart from Christ.

Yet I am reminded of the science experiment, where a young man pulled one leg off a cricket and then shouted at it: “JUMP!” The cricket jumped sideways. The man pulled the other leg off the cricket and again shouted: “JUMP!” The cricket did nothing. The young man then wrote his scientific report, concluding, “Legless crickets are deaf.”

The Return of Judah

In order to understand Isaiah’s prophecies of the return, we must first understand that Israel and Judah were two distinct nations. Each was given different prophecies. Each was exiled to a different empire, Israel to Assyria and Judah to Babylon.

Judah’s return from Babylon was accomplished under the Old Covenant, so it was a literal return. It was necessary to return physically so that the Messiah could come from Bethlehem of Judea. Yet the real preparation for His coming was done by John the Baptist, who issued a call to repentance. Hence, Judah’s “return” was a matter of turning from the traditions of men to the proper understanding of the law of God.

We know from the story in the gospels that while many Judeans (“Jews”) were baptized by John and later came to accept Jesus as the Messiah as well, the nation itself rejected Jesus. John 1:11 says,

¹¹ He came to His own [nation], and those who were His own did not receive Him.

We also know that John started an investigation known in Scripture as a “visitation,” to see if the nation would bear fruit (Matthew 3:8, 9, 10). His investigation was cut short after just one year, and Jesus continued it for another three years (Luke 13:6, 7, 8, 9). At the end of the investigation, Jesus found a fruitless fig tree, and knowing that it represented Judah, He cursed it, saying, “No longer shall there ever be any fruit from you” (Matthew 21:19).

This alone should have given Christians the understanding that the Jewish nation would never bear fruit. Only individuals within that nation could bear fruit, for God always sets apart a remnant for Himself. Jesus later prophesied that this “fig tree” (nation) would someday bring forth more leaves (Matthew 24:32-34), but He did not abrogate His curse.

The State of Israel, formed in 1948, fulfilled this prophecy. The fig tree did indeed come back to life, as prophesied. But the people as a whole did not turn to Christ, because the nation could not bring forth the fruit that God demands. John the Baptist had said in Matthew 3:8, 9,

⁸ Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance; ⁹ and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, “We have Abraham for our father”; for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham.

For this reason, it should have been clear from the beginning that the State of Israel would be formed apart from bearing “fruit in keeping with repentance.” Dual Covenant Theology is not the answer. The answer is that “God is able to raise up children to Abraham” without relying on Judah to provide those children. The fact that the Jewish nation yet refuses to accept Jesus as the Messiah should be no surprise to anyone. Yet many Christians have been blinded to this.

Such blindness was necessary, because, as I have already shown, the nation was also to fulfill the prophecies of Edom, having conquered and absorbed the Edomites more than a century earlier. The Edomites were forcibly converted to Judaism and by the time of Christ, they were also the most rabid and carnally minded among the Jews.

The State of Israel was established in order to do justice to Esau-Edom after Jacob had stolen Esau’s identity to obtain the birthright. So in 1948 Esau stole Jacob’s identity, claiming also his name, Israel. Most Christians do not know the history of Esau-Edom and therefore have misunderstood the significance of the Israeli state in prophecy.

Dual Covenant Theology is a warped view of salvation and the covenants, derived from ignorance of the divine plan regarding Esau-Edom as well as the fruitless fig tree of Judah. Likewise, they failed to distinguish between Israel and Judah, thinking that the Jews were the Israelites and misapplying Israel’s prophecies to Judah.

Hence, many prophecy teachers failed to understand God’s purpose in allowing the State of Israel to be established in 1948.

The conclusion, then, is that both Edom and the unrepentant portion of Judah wanted to return in a carnal manner to the old land. Edom’s Zionism is seen clearly in Malachi 1:4; Judah’s Zionism is prophesied in Matthew 24:32-34. Both have had this one factor in common: they have not repented, nor have they brought forth the fruit that God requires to fulfill the true “return.”