This will be the third and final part of this matter. The biblical material would suffice for many more, but this will have to be enough. To remove any doubt that the people of Israel, those who are Abraham’s descendants according to their faith in the Messiah, Christ Yeshua, will be in the coming kingdom and thus have a prominent place in the events of the end times, we will first look at three significant statements from the NT and then look at some prophetic texts from the first covenant.
We begin our examination in Revelation chapter 7. Here a select number are marked with God’s seal before a devastating catastrophe strikes the present earth.
“He cried out with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea, saying: ‘Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees until we have sealed the servants of God in their foreheads!’ And now the remnant of the twelve tribes of Israel are counted as worthy to receive the seal. They are part of the great crowd, which no one could number, out of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues, dressed in white. They were standing before the throne and before the Lamb, dressed in white robes, and there were palm branches in their hands, and they were crying out with a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.”
In other words, God has fulfilled his promise of a saved remnant of Israel as well as the promise given to Abraham of a blessing to the rest of the world. The number 144,000 may be symbolic, but symbols indicate realities that lie beyond the symbol and are often far more significant than the symbol itself. None of those who by faith became Abraham’s offspring are missing at the fullness of time.
It is worth noting the difference between this list and how it looked in the days of the patriarchs according to Genesis. The twelve tribes listed in Genesis 49 are Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Zebulun, Issachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali and finally Benjamin. They are listed in a different order and with a modification in the Book of Revelation. Judah, Reuben, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Manasseh, Simeon, Levi, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, Benjamin. Note who is missing from the list 1,800 years after Genesis. What does this have to say to us today? First, it testifies to the unassailable place of these twelve tribes in actual history. Things happened during these hundreds of years that affected their future place in the coming kingdom of God. When John, somewhere around AD 95, writes down his visions, they point forward to a time still ahead of us, two thousand years later. If God has cherished his 12 tribes for some 3,800 years already, by what somersaulting theology do we dismiss their place in the future?
Why is the tribe of Dan missing? They failed to take their place in the geographical land as described in the Book of Judges. ( Judges 1:34-36) The original portion was along the coast north of modern day Gaza. Prophetic word was; “Dan shall be as a serpent by the way, an adder that biteth the horse’s feet, so that his rider falleth backward.” Genesis 49:17 The tribe of Judah is advanced because of “King David the son of Jesse” and another promise given many times: that there shall never be lacking a son of the house of David on the throne of Israel. “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he come to whom it belongs, and the obedience of the peoples shall be to him.” Genesis 49:10 (Who was born in the city of David?) Reuben, who had committed incest by sleeping with his own father’s wife, should not be included if one listens to Jacob’s judgment of his firstborn. “You are overflowing like water; you shall not be the first, because you went up to your father’s bed and defiled it.” Genesis 49:4 But as so often grace reigns over law. Remember that the law that was introduced through Moses later on stipulated the death of such a knave.
If Dan has faded away, who has replaced Dan? You may have noticed that in the prophetic literature Ephraim is mentioned a number of times. He was the second of Joseph’s sons after Manasseh. In Genesis 48 we learn that Jacob-Israel from his sickbed calls Joseph with his two sons. And Jacob-Israel adopts both Manasseh and Ephraim. “The God of my fathers.. he will bless the boys, and they will be called by my name and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and they will multiply and become many in the earth.” Genesis 48:15ff In the enumeration in the NT, it is Joseph and Manasseh who are mentioned, which is why it seems that Joseph and Ephraim denote the same tribe. So Israel’s grandchildren are included among the children and become a replacement for the lost Dan and their father.
That these brothers do not take their place in history without problems is witnessed in Isaiah 9:18-21. Godlessness also afflicted them and they are described as follows: “ Manasseh eats Ephraim, and Ephraim Manasseh, and together they attack Judah. For all this his anger is not turned away, his hand is still stretched out.” It is worth noting that the tribes of these brothers belonged to the northern kingdom, which came to be called Israel in contrast to Judah. And when they were taken out of the land, they fade from the physical picture but remain noticeable in the spiritual. But despite their fate, they are included in Rev 7 and in the New Jerusalem. Anyone who has read Hosea’s charged prophecy, where his own experience of a wife’s unfaithfulness forms the nerve of the prophecy, understands Yahweh’s concern with the unfaithful Ephraim, i.e. the northern kingdom of the 10 tribes. Listen to these excerpts from Hosea:
“Ephraim is oppressed, crushed by judgment, because he has willingly followed the commandments of men. Therefore I am like a moth to Ephraim and like rot to the house of Judah. When Ephraim saw his sickness and Judah his wound, Ephraim went to Assyria and sent to the great king. But he cannot heal you. Your wound will not be healed.. (The Lord says).. I myself will tear them and go my way I will drag them away and no one can rescue. I will go my way I will return to my dwelling place until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face, in their distress they will turn to me.” Hos 5:11 ff In the future they will acknowledge their guilt.
In chapter 7:1 the theme of healing is taken up again .
“When I would have gathered Israel together, the iniquity of Ephraim would be uncovered, and the wickedness of Samaria, because they have dealt treacherously. They do not consider in their hearts that I remember their wickedness. Now their deeds are before me, and they are surrounded by them… Ephraim is mixed with the peoples, he is like a cake that has not been turned. Strangers have devoured his strength, but he does not understand; even though he has gray hairs, he does not know it. The pride of Israel testifies against him. They do not return to the Lord their God, nor seek his help for all this.” “Rejoice not, O Israel, nor rejoice like the nations, for you have been unfaithful and have departed from your God.” (Hos 9:1)
That Israel, then and now, has turned away from its God and therefore has reaped what it sowed is not the end for them. Because God’s grace to Israel, both past and present, has not ceased. If God who had called His Son out of Egypt (the people of Israel before they were a people) were to reject His Son, then God would no longer be the same who is from eternity to eternity the unchangeable. Micah lets us know:
“Who is a God like You, who pardons iniquity and does not count sin against the remnant of Your inheritance? He does not retain His anger forever, for He delights in mercy. He will again have mercy on us and tread down our iniquities. You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. You will show faithfulness to Jacob and to Abraham, as you swore to our fathers in the days of old.”
Malachi concludes the writings of the first covenant with the words:
“I the LORD do not change, and you, the children of Jacob, are not consumed; from the days of your fathers you have turned away from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts.” “And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple, the messenger of the covenant whom you long for… Who can endure the day of his coming? And who can stand when he appears? He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi, and refine them like gold and silver…” Malachi 3, 4
Those who today deny that Israel still has a central role to play in the coming age must therefore not only rewrite the history of salvation from Genesis to Revelation, but they must also write out the God who is from eternity from the entire Bible and insert some other “Baal” according to their own mind. They must prove that God finally rejects his sons. They must prove that God does not keep his promises, that he will not remember mercy at all when he judges, that he says one thing but means another. If that is the case, why do they continue to pretend that God’s word is God’s word? The one who routinely prays “Father ours” merely as liturgical decoration but do not know that it is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who is being worshipped will feel gloom when the Lord one day says to them: “I do not know you, because you have never acknowledged me before men as the I AM.”
That the Jewish people are not out of the question is also established in Jesus’ own teaching in Matthew 19. Often the scriptures establish a positive by stating its natural negative.
“Then Peter spoke up, saying, ‘We have left everything and followed you. What will there be for us?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Truly I tell you, in the regeneration when the Son of Man sits on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel .’”
How can they be judged by the apostles if they no longer exist? If they no longer have their own identity, how can they then be subjects in the new world?
In a previous post I reminded you of Romans 11:15. There the future restoration of Israel was made the basis for “life from the dead”. The resurrection from the dead that all those who believe in Christ will experience can only happen when the times of the Gentiles are over and those who would gain salvation have done so , then the restoration of Israel will come first. An even stronger connection between Israel and us who do not have a root in Israel but are nevertheless, because of faith, Abraham’s offspring is found in Hebrews 11:39-40.
“And although all these (the group of believers from the first covenant) had a witness given to them through their faith, they did not receive the promise. God has prepared something better for us: that together with us they should first reach the goal.”
What is the goal? The Sabbath rest after the end of the work shift in this world that the same author describes in detail in chapter 4:1f
“Since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us be careful that none of you seems to fall short of it. The gospel was preached to us as well as to them, but the word they heard did not benefit them because it was not mixed in faith with those who heard. It is we who believe who enter the rest.”
Without them, without the restoration of Israel, we neither have a future. No Sabbath rest, no place in the kingdom of God established on Earth with Jerusalem as the hub and the King Christ, the Messiah as ruler.
If I see clearly, I understand that those who deny Israel’s future restoration cannot count on their own either.
A lingering thought asks the question: who or who is it that Jesus is talking about in Matthew 25?
“Then we will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not help you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me. And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’”
The anti-Semitic history of the churches shows that parts of them have not only accepted Jew-hatred but have been its main instigators. Anyone who today is unable to hold on to the hope and realization that God has not rejected Israel is, de facto, by his mere failure to take Israel’s restoration seriously, a fellow runner with Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. etc. It is not true that “he who sleeps does not sin”, a multitude of sins of omission will be revealed and exposed at the end of time. “What you have NOT done to me…”
If Jesus literally meant that “these the least of me” are his Jewish brothers and sisters, then every person should take heed.
Teddy Donobauer September 2025