[...] Note that the unequaled trouble lasts a brief 3 1/2 years and ends in nothing short of the resurrection of the righteous (Dan 12:1-2, 11-13). So Jeremiah’s reference to a coming ‘time of Jacob’s trouble’, also described as without equal (Jer 30:7) is shown in Daniel as concluding the last half of the final week of years. In language almost identical to Daniel and Jeremiah, Jesus refers explicitly to Daniel’s prophecy of the abomination of desolation as marking the start of the unequaled tribulation (Mt 24:15, 21), which ends with His return (Mt 24:29-31), as also Paul in 2Thes 2:1-8. Most of John’s revelation is primarily occupied with the same brief period of 3 1/2 years (Rev 6-19). [...]

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[...] This future reinstatement of the ‘natural branches’ awaits ‘the set time’ (Ps 102:13; Dan 11:27, 29, 35).

That time of fulfillment is clearly future, as shown in Paul’s reference to Isa 59:21 together with a number of other clear passages that speak of Israel’s restoration at the future day of the Lord, also called the ‘last day’ (see Dan 12:1-2 for the time of Israel’s national “deliverance”). That is the time that the final Antichrist is destroyed (Dan 11:36 -12:2 with 2Thes 2:4-8) when Christ returns to establish His thousand year reign over the nations out of a restored Jerusalem. “In that day” Israel receives the revelation that has already come to you and me through the gospel (compare Isa 8:16-17; 66:8; Ezek 39:22-29 with Zech 12:10 and Mt 23:39). In the future ‘day of God’s power’ (Ps 110:3), the surviving remnant of the unequaled tribulation becomes willing concerning the gospel because it has just passed through the greatest trial in their nation’s history, a time called “Jacob’s trouble” (Jer 30:7; Dan 12:1; Mt 24:21). Tom believes with me that the church will be here during this time and that it will be the witness people that God will use to prepare Jewish hearts as we share with them many of the tribulations and persecutions of this final time of judgment and divine pleading (see Ezek 20:33-38; Amos 9:8-15). [...]

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… But for ‘the escaped of Israel’, it is the ‘Spirit of grace and supplication’ unto repentance, because they see Him in the sense of 2Cor 3:16-18 unto transformation. It is like Paul when he said, “But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal His Son in me, …” ( Gal 1:15-16). It comes by a sudden divine arrest at a pre-set time. “Thou shalt arise, and have mercy upon Zion: for the time to favour her, yea, the set time, is come (Ps 102:13). It’s on a fixed divine schedule (see Dan 8:19; 11:27, 29, 35-36). It is what the old English divines called “distinguishing grace.” Still, such a divine act is no less sovereign because it comes at the end of a divinely arranged process (compare Deut 32:36 with Dan 12:7). Significantly, it comes at the end of Jacob’s strength, just as it comes at the end of ours. Therefore, we see that Jewish hearts are prepared for this divinely pre-determined event, and the church has a crucial part and role in that preparation as witness (see Dan 11:33), just as I believe that Stephen’s testimony and martyrdom had a preparatory influence for the predestined event of Paul’s revelation of Christ on Damascus road. …

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… So we fully affirm that a rapture will occur, but not as it is being taught. Those that teach that the rapture is BEFORE the tribulation (called the “pre-tribulational view. ‘Pre’ means before) see it as escape and exemption from the last persecution, which they confuse with the wrath of God, and point out that believers are not ‘appointed to wrath’ (1Thes 5:9). There is, of course, a clear distinction between tribulation and divine wrath. There is a clear distinction throughout the book of Revelation between the saints endure the wrath of man and those that are called ‘earth dwellers’ that experience the wrath of God. Manifestly, there are many saints in the tribulation period that are not “appointed to wrath,” but this exemption does not require physical removal from the scene (Lk 21:18; Rev 7:3; 12:6). …

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[...] If ever there was an interpretation getting away with exegetical ‘murder’, it’s certainly preterism. They are forced to separate what God has joined. For example, it is exegetically impossible to separate the day of the Lord from the destruction of Jerusalem. The day of the Lord is the hope of Israel in the OT and the church’s hope of Christ’s return in the new. Orthodox preterists rightly recognize the NT’s references to the day of the Lord as still pertaining to the church’s ‘blessed hope’ of Christ’s return, but inconsistently deny its relation to the tribulation and Jerusalem for entirely dogmatic reasons. To do this, they must deny that the post-tribulational return of Christ described in the synoptics (MT 24; Mk 13; Lk 21) is connected with the church’s hope of Christ return, which, of course, the NT itself unambiguously identifies with the still future day of the Lord [...]

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[...] It is not scriptural to expect that the church of the last tribulation will attain to a stature that will so eclipse the earliest church as to provoke the Jew to jealousy in a way never accomplished through the apostles themselves. No, rather, it is as you suggest. There will always be the mixed reaction, and I believe until the end, the response will be predominantly negative, more often anger than emulation. Though, of course, there will always be “some,” but ‘only’ some that will be moved to the kind of jealousy that leads to salvation, but even this will often, perhaps most often, follow an initial reaction of hostility.

I especially appreciated how you put it: “the entire group could not have been anything but provoked just by the mere preaching of gospel of grace that demolishes religious self-righteousness and extends mercy to them who are ‘no people’”. That’s the point. But NOT only Israel’s salvation at the end of tribulation, but the purification and maturation of the church through tribulation (Dan 12:10; Acts 14:22) is all part of God’s strategy to vindicate His name and glory in both as inextricable aspects of the eschatological vindication of the Word concerning both. [...]

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[...] Remember, the church, the body of Christ, in continuity with the righteous remnant of the OT, is NOT a NEW, but a ‘newly revealed’ entity (important distinction). Such a revealed entity does not end with the rapture, as held by some. Rather, at the end of Jacob’s trouble, the remnant of Israel that are left are transformed by the same revelation that arrested Paul on the Damascus road. It is this life giving revelation that makes the church the church (Mt 16:17-18), regardless of dispensation, whether now, or in a future millennium. The saved of Israel, together with all that will be gathered to Christ throughout the millennium, will be at that time the born again body of Christ on earth awaiting glorification at the second resurrection, but under a unique stewardship appropriately suited to that dispensation of divine purpose.

So then, who is ‘all Israel’? In Paul’s usage, ‘all Israel’ does not mean all that will ultimately be saved, i.e., the final coming in of all the elect. That is an attractive interpretation, but it does not satisfy the demands of the context. Manifestly, Paul has in mind the national regeneration of Israel at the end of the age.

Nor does “all Israel” mean every Jew, because two thirds will have been cut off out of the Land, and also many will fall in the wilderness of the nations during the desolations of Jacob’s trouble. Rather, the term ‘all Israel’ has in view a phenomenal uniformity of Jewish salvation that will obtain and endure throughout the millennium, extending into final perfection at the second resurrection. [...]

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