Moving the embassy may or may not be a great political move. I’m not qualified to speak into that. But I would like to press on Christians supporting this move purely from a redemptive-historical (God’s plan of redemption over history) point of view. God has one plan for one group of people, the church.

As I scanned my Facebook feed this morning, I noticed a barrage of posts hailing Donald Trump’s decision to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. They weren’t hailing it for political reasons, but Biblical ones. The Jews, they argue, are God’s chosen people and God has earthly promises for them alone as a separate plan of redemption from His plan for Christians. This move of the US embassy, for them, marks a step closer to the fulfillment of those promises and Christ’s return.

Moving the embassy may or may not be a great political move. I’m not qualified to speak into that. But I would like to press on Christians supporting this move purely from a redemptive-historical (God’s plan of redemption over history) point of view. God has one plan for one group of people, the church.

One Plan

Genesis to Revelation is one progressive, continuous story about God’s pursuit of His people who have rebelled against Him. God lays the foundation for this plan with Abraham promising that through him all nations would be blessed (Genesis 18:18, 22:18). This promise follows his son, Isaac, and his grandson, Jacob, whose name is changed to Israel and through whom this nation would come about.

The plan from the beginning was that God would redeem all types of peoples through Jesus Christ and the seeds of that redemption were planted in Israel. It was through the line of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David that the Messiah would come. There was never a shift of plans. It was always a continuous, predetermined plan that would, one day, go global (Romans 4:11, Matthew 28:18-20).

One People

Theological problems arise when we fail to see the continuity of God’s plan in the Bible. One of these problems is this large division between God’s plan for Israel and God’s plan for the church. God’s plan has always been for one people, the church. God made a covenant with Israel (we call this the Old Covenant) and this physical covenant was always intended to be a forerunner to the better spiritual New Covenant. The ‘oldness’ of the Old Covenant is that not all the people in it were true believers (Jeremiah 31:32, Romans 9-11). Many in Israel did not believe resulting in a people of God made up of both believers (or remnant) and unbelievers.

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