Appendix Objection A3

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

Nations are blessed or cursed by their treatment of the Jewish state. Supporting modern Israel is a biblical duty; questioning this doctrine invites the curse.

The verse is spoken to Abram personally, and its terminus is stated in its own sentence: "in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed", which the New Testament interprets, definitively, as the gospel: "the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed" (Galatians 3:8), and "to Abraham and his seed were the promises made... which is Christ" (3:16). Peter preaches the same interpretation at Solomon's porch: "Ye are the children of the covenant... saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed. Unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities" (Acts 3:25-26). The blessing of Abraham is Christ and the Spirit received by faith (Galatians 3:14), not a foreign policy. To bless Abraham's seed today is to embrace Abraham's Seed; the church has no divine geopolitics, only a gospel. This also frees the believer's conscience: one may hold any prudential political view about any modern state, sympathetic or critical, without touching prophecy at all, because no modern state is a party to the covenant of grace.