Well, hey, welcome to the podcast.

Yeah, we're going to tackle the big question today.

This is one that believers, even if they haven't consciously thought about it, once they do dive in or they see different verses or different teaching about it from different teachers, they get a little confused.

And the question is this, Israel and the church, what's the difference?

So, Jeff, that's what we're going to tackle

today, man. So in the nutshell, how can we set that up and kind of explain the problem or the

attention that's there? Yeah, well, I think the first thing we do is just acknowledge the elephant

in the room is that Israel's here and she's in the news like every day.

And we're in the last day. So could there be a connection between those three?

And indeed, we believe that there is. Now, we'll just go ahead and acknowledge that there are some who believe that the church is the new Israel.

But as you survey scripture, and particularly the New Testament, you'll find that anytime

Israel is mentioned is talking about Israel.

It's not talking about the church.

And so just from a survey of how the Bible uses its terms, the Bible separates those two entities.

So we want to talk about what are the distinctions between those two?

And I think, Todd, to begin with, maybe we just kind of acknowledge the fact that we as Christians,

and particularly American Christians, tend to read the Bible through our own grid.

And we interpret the Bible through our own times and our own experiences and our own culture and all that stuff. But we have to understand that the Bible originally was written by the Jewish people to the Jewish people. And that God, in His sovereignty, in Deuteronomy 7, he made a, in Genesis chapter 12, he chose to make a covenant with the Jewish people.

He said, look, I'm going to reach out to all the planet, and I'm going to choose this group of people called the Jews, and I'm going to have a special relationship with them as a nation.

And he didn't do that with the Canaanites or with the Jebusites or with Egypt or Babylon

or anybody else, only the Jews.

And so that's the beginning point of understanding that church didn't even exist.

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