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If God promised a certain land to the seed of Abraham, saying that it would be theirs "forever" (Gen. 13:15), why do Reformed churches teach that the Jews permanently lost their right to the land? What about all these Old Testament "forever" promises and prophesies made to the Jews? How should we understand the passages that seem to imply that the Israelites have a secure place in God's plan forever?

Just about everyone who reads the Bible will eventually end up asking questions like this. And if they don't arise from one's own reading of the Bible, one cannot avoid them for long in today's world. Not only does the Evangelical Christian culture in America relentlessly preach and popularize its own answer to these questions (i.e., Left Behind and all that), but the escalating conflict in the Middle East cannot but cause us to wonder about the place of modern Israel and the Jews in God's plan for history.

The simple answer is that when God said "forever" he meant it. . .

- Read the entire essay here.