The Redeemer's coming to Zion relates to His second coming. At no other time can

the glories of these prophecies be fulfilled--certainly not by any activities of men,

Christian or otherwise. The olive tree was a parable of truth that fitted the Israel of the

Acts period. This is its divine setting; but to pull it out and try to make it fit the church

today is to attempt the impossible if the details of holy Scripture are carefully followed.

The olive tree cannot represent the Israel of today, for since Acts 28: their blinded

condition, through God's judgment, is the very negation of the New Covenant, which

relates to a new heart implanted by the Lord to keep his Truth. In no sense can a believer

be grafted into the hardened Israel of today. Neither can the olive tree be linked with any

of the denominations of Christendom, for if this was true, it would follow that the

denomination concerned would, according to Rom. 11:, receive back the broken-off

branches of Israel, which is impossible.

It has been objected that in Rom. 11: Paul says nothing about the restoration of an

earthly Davidic kingdom, or about natural reinstatement in the land of Israel. But why

should he? Had he done so it would have turned the Roman epistle into a lengthy treatise

and strayed away from his great subject, justification by faith. The restoration of the

nation of Israel has been given in great detail in the O.T., and no Jew needed this.

If the view of God's kingdom in the N.T. is completely different from that presented

in the O.T., then it was incumbent on the N.T. to make this perfectly clear. But we find

no such statement in the Gospels (where we would expect it) nor anywhere else. The

olive tree cannot be an illustration of the church which is the Body of Christ, for this

church consists of a new creation taken from both Jew and Gentile (Eph. 2: 11-16) and

blessed in perfect equality in the sphere of the highest heavens and seen to be enthroned

there in Christ (Eph. 2: 6), and its members are urged to set their minds there and not on

things on the earth (Colossians 3: 1, 2), for there is where our heavenly citizenship exists

(Phil. 3: 20). The olive, as we have seen, represents the nation of Israel and in it the Jew

still has priority (Rom. 11: 18) and this cannot be a fit illustration of a company where the

Jew nationally does not exist and its blessing placed in an exalted sphere where Christ

now reigns in the highest heavens.

The Apostle Paul now ends this section with a doxology:

The matchless wisdom, knowledge and judgments of God are untraceable by man

unless they are revealed, yet they all contribute to the carrying out and fulfillment of His

great redemptive plan which will come to a glorious conclusion in spite of Satan and all

human failure.