Appendix Objection A1

From Sovereign Grace and the Scope of Election: A Comparative Examination of Attainment Theology and Grace Theology, with Particular Attention to the Question of Whether God's Elect Are Found Among All Nations and Religions

God gave the land to Abraham's seed as an everlasting possession (Genesis 17:8). The 1948 state is that promise being kept. To deny it is to make God a covenant-breaker.

Two answers, each sufficient. First, Scripture records the land promise as fulfilled: "And the LORD gave unto Israel all the land which he sware to give unto their fathers; and they possessed it, and dwelt therein... There failed not ought of any good thing which the LORD had spoken unto the house of Israel; all came to pass" (Joshua 21:43-45; likewise 1 Kings 4:20-21; Nehemiah 9:8, "and hast performed thy words; for thou art righteous"). A promise Scripture three times pronounces performed cannot be pending upon a modern government. Continued tenure in the land was always expressly conditional (Deuteronomy 28; Leviticus 26), and the condition was national covenant fidelity, which no secular state professes.

Second, and deeper: the New Testament reveals what the land always typified. Abraham himself, standing on the soil of promise, "sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country... for he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God... they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city" (Hebrews 11:9-16). Abraham read his own land promise heavenward. Paul universalizes it: the promise was "that he should be the heir of the world" (Romans 4:13), not of one strip of the eastern Mediterranean, inherited through the righteousness of faith by all the seed. The meek "shall inherit the earth" (Matthew 5:5). Canaan was the down payment and the picture; the new heavens and new earth are the estate. To trade the estate back for the picture is the same error, in geography, that Part VI-C exposed in eschatology: the carnalizing of a spiritual and eternal promise.