Читать книгу Christian Zionism ... Enraptured Around a Golden Calf - Abraham A. van Kempen - Страница 24

The Gospel or Good News of the Universal Spiritual Kingdom of God is for Jews and Gentiles; for ALL mankind, EVEN SAMARITANS of old as well as our Samaritans [Palestinians] today. Ironically, today's ‘Samaritans,' living in the West Bank, are now cruelly maligned by their Israeli overlords, dispossessed and displaced from their land. They are captives interred behind iron walls in some of the most inhuman concentration camps on earth; detention-sites such as Gaza or the West Bank, part of Israel - Palestine for millennia now renamed Samaria by today's Israeli occupying forces.

The ‘New Covenant' is the story of salvation. It speaks of a new spirituality, a new orientation to worship God. It is the Good News that offers an incomparable priesthood in Christ, an unparalleled heavenly sanctuary of the spiritual kingdom of God in the heart, and grander promises for both Jew and Gentile (Hebrews 8: 6, 10, 13).⁵ Now, "the people of God are a creation of God's Spirit. Belonging to the people of God is not a matter of Israelite blood and ancestry."⁶

Peter, the Apostle, boldly takes the words given to Israel at Sinai and applies them to Gentile Christians:

"But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy" (I Peter 2: 9-10; Exodus 19: 4-6).

The people of God have a spiritual identity, and it does not require ancestry (John 1: 12-13; Romans 5: 1-8; 8: 3).