God's Plans for Israel, Church & Nations

Someone said God has three streams of purpose: one for Israel, one for the Church, and one for the nations.

He said we need to know what God is saying to whom.

Sometimes His plans are intertwined, and sometimes they're separate, he said.

I'm still trying to understand God's plans for the future for Israel, the Church and the nations, in Bible Prophecy. 

But I've always felt uncomfortable with the interpretation that sees Jews, Christians and Gentiles traveling yearly to a rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem to keep the feasts in future - and cursed if they don't. 

These and similar Bible Prophecies were spoken around the period of Israel's captivity in Babylon.  And it seems there was a literal fulfilment soon afterwards, when the Temple and walls were rebuilt, the Levitical priesthood resumed, and the Jews resettled the land - and indeed God-fearers came yearly to Jerusalem for the feasts, as we see happening in Acts 2.

In the context of those prophecies regarding Israel are the Messianic prophecies. If we therefore place the prophecies about Israel exclusively and literally in the future, then we're also placing the prophecies about the Messiah in the future. 

But that's not how I see the Apostles applying prophecy. They asserted that the Messianic prophecies were already fulfilled in Jesus. 

And rather than seeing a delayed fulfilment of the prophecies regarding Israel, they explained the manner in which they were fulfilled already in Israel. They explained that the outcome they were seeing was precisely what the Prophets had written.

They didn't see the Gospel for the Gentiles merely as some unforeseen parenthesis in God's dealings with the world before God finally gets back to fulfilling His Old Covenant type prophecies regarding Israel.

Rather the Apostles saw the Gospel as THE ultimate plan that God had for all people, whether Jew or Gentile, promised before Israel ever became a nation, before the Law was ever given.  The very plan that the Patriarchs and Prophets foresaw. 

And yet a lot of modern ideas about God's intentions for the future seem to ignore this fulfilled aspect and instead place the majority of these prophecies entirely in the future, including all the references to Old Covenant, Levitical, Jerusalem-centric worship.

I can't help wondering how much it might reshape our outlook on the future if we draw a clear line in history at the point where Old Covenant-style worship ended forever.

It would mean that many popular, modern ideas about the future actually don't have their Biblical basis.

It would bring our understanding, focus and passion into alignment with the Apostles'.

So I'm beginning to feel quite assured about what can only be PAST - but still not dogmatic about what all exactly is yet to come in future.