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Matthew 24 Fulfilled
The true believers among the Jews in Jesus’ day were the true Jews; they were the faithful; they were the remnant. They were spiritual Israel. They were the ones who had no trouble in accepting Jesus as the Messiah He claimed to be. They accepted Him and were born again, becoming sons of God (John 1:11–12). His “own” rejected Him, but as many of those who accepted Him, they became the sons of God. It was this remnant of people, the spiritual Israel, the believing Jews, to whom applied the NEW COVENANT—a covenant not made in stone, but written in their hearts (Jeremiah 31:33). Spiritual Israel which had existed before Christ, and during the time of Christ, continued right on this side of Christ as more and more Jews accepted the gospel, as shown by the book of Acts. Those being saved in the early days of Christianity were known as “the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb” (Revelation 14:4). They were the firstfruits, the first ones, who were converted to Christianity. They are spoken of in Revelation 7:3–8 as 144,000 who were sealed, to be protected against the coming wrath of God upon the land of Israel. They all did escape to Pella when the land of Israel was devastated and Jerusalem was destroyed. Gentiles who by faith came into this believing body of people became part of the same body. They were like branches grafted into the main tree (see Romans 11:17, 19). Unbelieving Jews who were not spiritual Israel can also be grafted into the same spiritual tree (Romans 11:23). In this one body there is “neither Jew nor Greek” (Galatians 3:28), but all of them, both Jew and Gentile, are “Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:29). In all of this there is not, and never was, any acceptance by God on the basis of race of any of these people—either under the old covenant or the new, either before Christ or afterwards. All were saved by faith, all were God’s people (true Israel) by faith in God. The NATION was only a nation because to that group of people was given the covenant, though only those in that nation who were obedient to the covenant were God’s true people (spiritual Israel). When the old covenant ceased to be (Hebrews 10:9—“He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second”), then the nation of Israel ceased to be, for it was based on that covenant which God had given to them. The new covenant was one which had the laws written in their hearts, not just on stone (Hebrews 10:16). The way into the holiest, into the realm of the new covenant, was not MANIFESTED until the Temple was destroyed (“the