Over in the holy is a nation of Jews. That in itself is a remarkable miracle. Driven from their homeland and dispersed among the Gentile nations in 70 A.D., the Jews somehow remained a unified people, looking forward to their coming Messiah and their restoration to the land as promised to them by God. Throughout the Christian era those Jews were persecuted by so-called Christians, driven into ghettos, robbed, raped, tortured, the Spanish Inquisition with 70,000 murdered, the Nazi Holocaust with 6,000,000 more, the skins of some turned into lampshades. And that is the people with whom God made an everlasting covenant.
God told Daniel, “from the time regular sacrifices are abolished and the abomination that makes desolate set up there shall be 1290 days.” From the time regular sacrifices were abolished in Daniel’s time until the Islamic Dome of the Rock was built in 688 A.D., on the Temple Mount of God most holy, was was exactly 1290 Hebrew years, That is a historic fact!
Then Jesus told John, “And the woman (Israel) fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that there they may nourish her a thousand two hundred and threescore days.” The new nation of Israel was established in 1948-1260=688 A.D., another historic fact!
Jesus also told John, “and the court which is without the temple leave without, and measure it not; for it hath been given unto the nations: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.” The Dome of the Rock is in the quarter that Gentiles, 300 feet South of where the Temple of Solomon once stood. 42 months is 1278.34 days. Jerusalem was freed of Gentile domination in 1967 –1278.34=688 A.D., one more historic fact!
So so it is obvious that the physical seed of Abraham, the Jewish people, were still part of God’s plan for the Christian era!
Jesus said further, “The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches: and the seven candlesticks are seven churches.” Jesus also told John, “I will give unto my two witnesses . . . these are the two olive trees and the two candlesticks, standing before the Lord of the earth.” Since candlesticks are churches in Revelation 1, they are also churches in Revelation 11 unless God changes the definition of candlesticks somewhere in between. He didn’t, so the two witnesses are two churches.
But who are the olive trees? You look for the closest contextual definition of olive trees in the New Testament and what do you find? “For if thou (the Gentile Church) wast cut out of that which is by nature a wild olive tree, and wast grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree (the Jewish People); how much more shall these, which are the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree? For I would not, brethren, have you ignorant of this mystery, lest ye be wise in your own conceits, that a hardening in part hath befallen Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.”
OK, OK, I see it, the Two Witnesses are the Church and the Jewish people, but those millions of Jews whom the so-called church tortured and killed throughout the Christian era, why they’re going to hell because they didn’t accept Yeshua as their Messiah. Not according to these verses: “As touching the gospel, they (the Jews) are enemies for your sake: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sake. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.”
Of course the Jews are enemies of the Gospel, the so-called Church did it to them! So rather than pompously declaring that God forgot His everlasting covenant with the physical seed of Abraham, we need to repent for what we have done to those precious Jews for whom our Savior died, who continued to follow the G-d of Torah and the writings, despite everything we have done to them.
God blinded the Jewish people to the Gospel, for our sake. He does take away the blindness from some, so it remains our duty to teach Jesus to them. But He does not take the blindness away from all. I do not now and never have taught a salvation outside of Jesus or that we should not try to lead every soul to the Lord we can. I must admit, though, that I’m sick of the distortions and misrepresentations of what I believe and have taught for 35 years.