By Mikkel Stjernholm Kragh
From Genesis to Revelation the 12 tribes of Israel are God’s chosen people. But since Jesus Christ instituted the New Covenant, non-Israelites can also follow God through Christ, though Israel remains God’s chosen people.
This can be illustrated in three passages from the Holy Scriptures:
When Jesus and the disciples were met by a Canaanite woman who wanted Jesus to drive out a devil of her daughter, Jesus first completely ignored the Canaanite and said to the disciples: “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” (Matthew 15:24)
When the Canaanite then humbled herself and worshipped Jesus, Jesus compared Israelites to children and non-Israelites to dogs: “But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and cast it to dogs.” (Matthew 15:26) But the Canaanite woman then answered: “And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” (Matthew 15:27)
Jesus acknowledged this as a good answer and proper attitude, and then healed her daughter.
The relationship of God and Jesus Christ to the 12 tribes of Israel and the non-Israelite peoples can therefore be compared to children (the 12 tribes of Israel) eating, and dogs (the non-Israelites) who are eating the crumbs which fall from the children’s table.
There is a striking parallel in how Jesus treated this Canaanite woman, and how the Israelites treated the Canaanites in the Old Testament. The way that Jesus and the apostles treated the Canaanite was far better than the way that Joshua and Israel had treated the Canaanites in the Old Testament, where they killed them. Jesus and the apostles thus redeemed Joshua’s and Israel’s treatment of the Canaanites.
In Revelation 7:3-8 there is spoken of 144,000 Israelites, the servants of God, who will follow the Lamb. These 144,000 Israelites are specially chosen. But besides these 144,000 specially chosen Israelites, there is also a great multitude of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and languages, who also will follow God and the Lamb (Revelation 7:9-10).
The 144,000 specially chosen are Israelites. The descendants of the 12 tribes of Israel are today the Nordic, Germanic, and Anglo-Saxon peoples.
Ethnically, the Jews are the old tribe of Judah. Today, the Jews and the 12 tribes of Israel can be compared to Judas Iscariot, on the one hand, and the 11 apostles and Matthias, who replaced Judas, on the other hand. People of Jewish origin might therefore possibly also be among the 12,000 that are sealed of the tribe of Judah.
But people of all nations, colours, and races, Whites, Negroes, Asians, and people of Jewish origin, too, can be a part of the great multitude.
There is a parallel between the 144,000 Israelites and the great multitude in Revelation, and the app. 600,000 Israelites and the mixed multitude who followed Israel out of Egypt in Exodus (Exodus 12:37-38).
Isaiah had a vision of the last days where the Kingdom of God is established on the earth. Here, non-Israelite peoples will follow the God of Israel, too: “And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD’S house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” (Isaiah 2:2-4)
People of all nations and races can therefore follow God through Christ, but the 12 tribes of Israel remain God’s chosen people.
December 2008