Mike Stewart (@Surrealisticart)

1. God’s condition for the “Chosen People”- “If you will strictly obey my voice . . . , then you will certainly become my special property... And you yourselves will become to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Exodus 19:4-6) 2. After numerous times in which the Israelites broke their part of the covenant, even before the arrival of Jesus, God told them what was coming: “I shall no more show mercy again to the house of Israel, because I shall positively take them away. . . . You men are not my people and I myself shall prove to be not yours.” (Hosea 1:6, 9) 3. What Jesus told his Jewish opposers: “The kingdom of God will be taken from you and be given to a nation producing its fruits.” (Matthew 21:43) 4. And at Matthew 23:37, 38, Jesus said that God was abandoning the temple that was dedicated to his worship- “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the killer of the prophets and stoner of those sent forth to her,—how often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks together under her wings! But you people did not want it. Look! your house is abandoned to you.” Proof of this abandonment came with the destruction of Jerusalem A.D. 70, at which time the temple was destroyed for the last time, ending any worship that could be carried out according to the manner specified in the law covenant. In 136 A.D. the Roman emperor Hadrian dedicated a temple to Jupiter Capitolinus on the temple site, and then A.D. 691 ‘Abd-al-Malik built a Mohammedan mosque on the spot. This mosque, the Dome of the Rock, is still standing there. 5. The nation of Israel as God’s chosen people was replaced by a new nation, “The Israel of God” a symbolic group that was not limited to the natural descendants of Abraham, all members of the "New Covenant". This point is made repeatedly throughout the entire New Testament with statements like these: "Those not my people I will call “my people.’”—Romans 9:22-25. “For he is not a Jew that is one on the outside, nor is circumcision that which is on the outside upon the flesh. But he is a Jew that is one on the inside, and his circumcision is that of the heart by spirit, and not by a written code.”-Romans 2:28, 29 “God is not partial, but in every nation the man that fears him and works righteousness is acceptable to him.”—Acts 10:34, 35. In the book of Romans 11, Paul illustrated this, comparing Jews to a symbolic olive tree, the majority of which rejected Jesus and disqualified themselves as future members of the “Israel of God”, and became like olive branches that had been lopped off. In the year 36 C.E. Gentiles were chosen to become part of Abraham’s seed, or offspring, symbolized by wild olive branches that God had grafted onto the garden olive tree. And in the book of Revelation 7, the 12 tribes mentioned clearly refer to this "Spiritual Israel" for several reasons, including the fact that the tribal listing does not match that of the literal nation of Israel mentioned in earlier parts of the scriptures. To further the point, the modern "state" of Israel makes no claims to be God's creation. May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, the leader of Israel’s National Council, read The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel. “We. . . by virtue of our natural and historic right and on the strength of the Resolution of the United Nations General Assembly, hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel.” In the book Jerusalem Countdown, clergyman John Hagee states: “This momentous occasion had been recorded by the pen of the prophet Isaiah, saying, ‘A nation shall be born in a day.’ (See Isaiah 66:8.) . . . It was the greatest moment in prophetic history of the twentieth century. It was living evidence for all men to see that the God of Israel was alive and well." Modern Israel is governed as a secular democracy that officially makes no claim to rely on the God of the Bible. Did the Israelis in 1948 recognize Jehovah God as the one responsible for their declaration of statehood? They did not. Neither the name of God nor even the word “God” was mentioned anywhere in the original text of the proclamation. The modern State of Israel to this day bases its claim to statehood on a UN resolution and what it calls the natural and historic right of the Jewish people. Is it reasonable to expect that the God of the Bible would perform the greatest prophetic miracle in the 20th century in behalf of a people who refuse to give him credit? Modern Israel’s secular attitude contrasts sharply with the situation in 537 B.C. Back then, the nation of Israel was indeed ‘reborn’ as if in a day after being devastated and depopulated by the Babylonians 70 years earlier. At that time, Isaiah 66:8 was strikingly fulfilled when the Persian conqueror of Babylon, Cyrus the Great, authorized the return of the Jews to their homeland.—Ezra 1:2.