How Could The Good News Have Been Rejected?

How can the Good News which Israel in the majority of her people rejected still be her Good News?

This is the mystery that those who fell to replacement theology could not comprehend. And even when many who inherited replacement theology tried to escape from that theology, due to the evident evil of its consequences, they still could not easily grasp this mystery or come to solve it.

But the Good News is nothing but the Good News of the Kingdom. In the Hebrew language, it is the Good News of Malchut. It is the Good News of Israel And Her Messiah. The true King subdued the enemy force, the force of sin, that had been occupying his kingdom. He did this without the majority of the subjects of his kingdom being aware that he had done this. For the majority of the people were, at the time of Her Messiah coming into the world, blinded by God at that time for the purpose of the revelation to all the world of God’s grace toward his kingdom, which He would reveal at a time to come, for the sake of the revelation before a world which would only at that time be prepared to hear as one the verdict of His Justice and Mercy upon Adam.

The unawareness of the majority of the Jews that the true king had overcome the rule of sin in his kingdom left this truth, in its fullness, as God's secret. It was revealed in part to only a remnant of Jews. Only a small minority of non-Jews who heard it and believed it were able to understand what they heard and were believing in their hearts. For the true King of the Kingdom of Israel, after he had accomplished this, was himself taken up into heaven. The full revelation of this Good News remained in God's hands. God promised to make it known only in the day when He brought the King of Israel back again from heaven to the earth. It was this secret of God, this veiled Good News of the Jews, that was then doubly concealed, not by God, but by the error of the other nations in the invention of replacement theology.

The great Puritan Bible Commentator, John Gill, writes:

The Jews, to whom the message of grace was first sent, and among whom the Gospel was first preached, having despised and rejected it; they and their posterity, in allusion to the word "Evangelion", most wickedly and blasphemously call the whole New Testament, און גליון or וצן גליון "Aven Gilion" (a), a "revelation", or "volume of iniquity and vanity"; but "blessed are the people that know the joyful sound", see Psa 89:15.

And here he makes two mistakes. He speaks of the Jews as if a certain collective constituted the corporate whole, and in doing so he affirms the error of replacement theology.

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a) T. Bab. Sabbat. fol. 116. 1. Vet. Nizzachou. p. 15, 39, 87, 94, 137, 186. Ed. Wagenseil.

[See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sefer_Nizzahon_Yashan]

This falls short of the understanding that God has in essence said to the House of David, ‘If you will not believe in my son and my salvation, then I will save you with irony, and then you will believe!’ As it is written to the House of David through Isaiah, “Therefore God Himself will give you a sign”. That is, as your refusal to ask for a sign from God through which you might believe indicates that you will not believe the sign that God gives you, God will give you a sign that will nevertheless, ironically, save you! For King Ajaz is treated here as speaming for the House of David.

And this irony of grace toward Israel is repeated again in the record of what Caiaphas the High Priest said, “It is Good that one man should die in place of the whole nation”. And again it is repeated here when it was said the Brit Hadasha was nothing but a revelation of iniquity and vanity. For whatever words would be found in the mouth of those who spoke for Israel, those very words God would make the words of salvation of Israel through Yehoshua His beloved son. For as Joseph said to his brothers, you meant this to me for ill, but God meant it for good, to the salvation of many. And as the words of Caiaphas spoken, perhaps in unbelief, were recorded as the testimony of faith, so here, we need to only hear the Gospel truth of the words that the Brit Hadasha is a revelation of the iniquity and vanity that fills the whole world, as also Israel, through which God has chosen the world for redemption.

Indeed, the precise quote from Gill’s commentary does not appear to come from the Talmud. The Talmud does go so far as to say that the books written by idolatrous sectarians are like books of blank pages, even if they contain within them instances of the name of God. Perhaps the specific play on words that Gill has found comes from here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sefer_Nizzahon_Yashan

And especially in this second reference any sectarians under consideration are likely to be Jewish persons who have become assimilated to the doctrines of replacement theology. Only this creates a condemning mirror of the evil constancy of the human heart and condition, און גליון or וצן גליון "Aven Gilion" — , a "revelation", or "volume of iniquity and vanity". Yet in His Irony and Grace God turns all this into a justifying mirror, in the language of Paul, saying, We judge according to the following evaluation: If one died for all, then all were dead, and we see he died for all that they should live, and not live according to the nature that was corrupted by sin but in accordance with the nature of him who died for them and rose again. 2 Cor. 5.

Despite their errors which kept them blinded through replacement theology, great Christian theologians like John Gill, if, as in the case of Gill, they clung to the commentaries, translations and teachings of the rabbis as a source of understanding the Scriptures, their works can be redeemed in this time of uncovering the veil placed over the Gospel of the Jews that God wanted to be seen. For it is in seeing this veil, as Israel saw the veil that Moshe placed over his face, that the whole world can be prepared for the unveiling, the Revelation of the Good News of the Jews.