Fighting For Real Estate - Part #22: How Did Israel Stumble So Badly?

“Rejecting God’s Righteousness, They Clung to Their Own Righteousness” (Romans 10:3)

By Richard Allen – September 8, 2025

At the end of the last Blog in this series: “Should Jesus’ followers be Fighting for Real Estate – Part #21,” I asked several questions: “What has given rise to Zionism in our day?” More specifically I asked: “What has given rise to Christian Zionism?”  My simple answer: “The same human desires and frailties that gave rise to the Sacral Magisterial Church of the Dark Ages.”  To explain this more fully, I’d like to give the Biblical answer that the Apostle Paul gave to the Church in Rome:

“Dear brothers and sisters, the longing of my heart and my prayer to God is for the people of Israel to be saved. I know what enthusiasm they have for God, but it is misdirected zeal.  For they don’t understand God’s way of making people right with Himself (i.e. righteousness). Refusing to accept God’s way of being made right (i.e. righteousness), they cling to their own way of getting right with God by trying to keep the law. For Christ has already accomplished the purpose for which the law was given. As a result, all who believe in him are made right with God” (Romans 10:1-4).

For more than 1,500 years, the Church of Jesus – morphed into a Sacral Magisterial Kingdom – an imitation of the Jewish Sacral State as proscribed by the Law. In this type of kingdom, the Sacred (ritualistic) and the Magisterial (magistrate or government), are joined as one. And as I noted: “The human desires and frailties that gave rise to the Sacral Magisterial Church of the Dark Ages” – were the same human desires that propelled the Jews in Paul’s day to make themselves righteous before God with religious works and human effort.  It was this same desire that caused Paul the Apostle to acknowledge his own Jewish people as having “a zeal for God,” but he adds a caveat: “They did not understand God’s way of making people right with Himself” (the meaning of the word righteous).  He further explains that by works of the Law, and all its trappings, “no flesh could be made right with God!”  For Israel, during the first century, that is during Jesus’ day – the Jewish people were convinced that “to be right with God required them to keep the Law in their personal lives, and to offer the sacrifices in the Temple as proscribed by that same Law.” I marvel at how some Bible Scholars talk about the three parts of God’s Law: 1.) Civil, 2.) Ceremonial and 3.) Moral.  While there is some benefit in categorizing the three kinds of Laws given under the Old Covenant by God to Israel, make no mistake: To observant Jews, there wasn’t any division or consideration of the type, or kind of Law. If you violated any Law, it was an offense to a Holy God:  

“For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it” (James 2:10). 

This means that those who failed to tithe their income and possessions, as well as those who mixed two different kinds of fabric, were just as guilty of breaking the Law as adulterers, liars and thieves!  In order to understand the motivation and error of Dispensationalism, we need to understand the nature of Israel’s sin in Jesus’ day.  No question that it was “unbelief,” but exactly what did that unbelief look like? As Romans 10:3 states:

“They have not known the way in which God puts people right with himself (i.e. righteousness), and instead, they have tried to set up their own way (of righteousness); and so, they did not submit themselves to God's (righteousness) way of putting people right” (Romans 10:3 – Easy English Bible).

Again, the word “righteousness” used three times here in this one verse, means “to be put right with God.”  The Jews in Jesus’ day were ignorant of the way God puts men right with Himself, that is “by faith in Jesus Christ.” And they continued to use their own “temple sacrifices and obedience” as the way they could be made righteous. So deeply ingrained in the Rabbinical customs and rules of the first century, these Jewish leaders were convinced that through their “temple sacrifices and law-keeping” they were in good standing with God. Paul not only says they were wrong, but that these Jews were “ignorant of God’s righteousness.” And because of their “ignorance and their unwillingness to submit to God’s way of making people right with Him,” these Jews – even though they were “natural olive branches” – would be cut off from the people of God. Then God would graft Gentiles – who were wild olive branches – in their place (Romans 11:11-21), and drive these Jews from their land and scatter them throughout the world. And here we are – almost 2,000 years after the ignorance and rejection of Christ by these Jews after the flesh, and naïve Christians are offering the Jews the same failed way they tried in Jesus’ day, to “establish their own righteousness!”  These so-called “prophetic teachers” tell unbelieving Jews that God wants the recently reconstituted State of Israel to once again “build Jerusalem’s Temple” and offer thousands of animal sacrifices daily, so Jesus will return and sit on David’s throne a half mile away and reign for 1,000 years!  There’s something wrong with this picture.

A century and a half ago, two leaders in the Dispensational movement – John Nelson Darby and C.I. Schofield – taught in Matthew:  That Jesus actually offered Israel a “physical kingdom” of meat, drink, sacrifice and dominion over the whole world. But for some unexplained reason, these first century Jews rejected God’s offer, the blessing they actually wanted:  A physical kingdom without Roman rule so the “Law could go forth out of Zion” and cover the whole earth (Isaiah 2:3). That is so odd, because on one occasion after Jesus fed more than 5,000 of His followers at one time – they actually came “by force to make Him king.” But Jesus, knowing their intentions – withdrew from them completely (John 6:1-15).  On another occasion, when asked by Pilate: “If you’re a king, why did your own nation and priests deliver you over to me?” (John 18:33-36) – Jesus responded:

“My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world” (John 18:36). 

This is certainly strange behavior – if what these “so-called prophecy teachers” say is true – regarding God’s intentions to set up Christ’s physical kingdom. Could it be that Jesus wasn’t here to set up another physical kingdom where men in the flesh would fight over Real Estate – and kill one another over earthly territory – all to sacrifice the “blood of bulls and goats” that could never make men right with God? What is even stranger, these teachers say God is going to give it one more try!

To make sure I don’t overstate this, it’s not just Dispensational “prophecy teachers” who misinterpreted the kingdom, the Church of Rome – along with Luther, Calvin and the Reformers mostly erred in the same way. Rome believed that Christ’s kingdom was an earthly kingdom, to be ruled over with a “rod of iron” by the “Holy Mother Church, Rome.” They fought wars, used the death penalty for heretics and wayward saints, believing that they were just “compelling men to come into the kingdom” as Augustine explained, using the parable of the Great Banquet (Luke 14:16-24). Most of the atrocities done during the past 2,000 years of Church history – were excused by a “carnal interpretation of the Kingdom of God.” The Sacral Magisterial Church interpreted the kingdom in “carnal-physical terms” from Constantine’s conversion to the mid-19^th Century.  As a result, Dispensational Evangelicals today teach, what God always wanted was another physical Temple in Jerusalem, with thousands of animal sacrifices – all the while King Jesus with the nail prints in His hands and feet – is sitting on an earthly throne a half mile away!  What’s wrong with this picture? The teaching of the entire New Testament is that Jesus’ Kingdom is a “spiritual kingdom,” one that would not come with physical observation:

“Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you” (Luke 17:20-21).

So I’m not misunderstood, I’m not saying that the kingdom of God is “metaphysical,” and only confined to the internal realm of men’s hearts, faith and obedience. Not at all, the Kingdom of God as I’ve said several times, is “Already,” and “Not Yet.”  It’s already here, anywhere that faithful men and women are indwelt by God’s Holy Spirit!  God is “Already” building a Holy Habitation (Temple) unto Himself “in the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:22), using “living stones” one upon another (1 Peter 2:5). But Christ will one day come again to receive us to Himself, while consuming unbelieving mankind in a “flame of fire.” It’s quite ironic that these same “prophecy teachers” who teach “Jesus’ Secret Coming,” often called the Rapture, aren’t skilled in interpreting the context of Scripture. Notice how Paul, writing to the Church at Thessalonica, combines Jesus' coming to grant relief and comfort to His Church – and at the same time visit vengeance on the ungodly:

“This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed” (2 Thessalonians 2:5-10).

I don’t think Scripture could be much clearer. Neither we – nor unbelieving Jews are called upon to use “carnal weapons of the flesh” to accomplish God’s Kingdom in this “Age of the Spirit!” Now that we understand the motive of “Christian Zionism,” that is proclaiming that the “Kingdom of God” will once again “Fight for Real Estate using carnal weapons just like Israel of old and the Sacral Magisterial Church,” we’ll take a look at Christian Zionism and how these “so-called prophecy teachers” helped spur on unbelieving Jews to once again seek an “earthly country” in Palestine, a country drenched in blood from centuries of Fighting for Real Estate!

Soli Deo Gloria