With all that’s going on right now in Israel, Lebanon and Iraq, the media’s once again doing stories about people fearing the approaching “end of the world.” Here’s what Bible scholar C.R. Stam once wrote on this matter:

“According to the Bible, the world, or earth, will never come to an end. The word ‘world,’ which our Lord uses in this connection, does not refer to the earth, or even the people on it. It is the old Greek word ‘aion,’ or age. Several ages in God’s program have already come to an end, and others will, but no matter what destructive weapons man may devise, the earth will never be destroyed. . . But doesn’t Rev. 21:1 predict ‘a new heaven and a new earth’? Yes, but the context clearly indicates that this refers to the future renewing of the present heaven and earth, not the creating of different ones. Verse 5 says: ‘He that sat upon the throne: said, Behold I make all things new.’ Note: He didn’t say, ‘I make all new things,’ but ‘I make all things new.’ There is a difference.”

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In today’s ‘dispensation of grace,’ outlined by the Apostle Paul, Israel and the Jews have no special privilege before God.

“You know it’s of no value to be a Jew today as far as God’s concerned—you don’t get a step up,” says my pastor, Richard Jordan of Shorewood Bible Church, Rolling Meadows, Ill. (www.graceimpact.org) , in an old study I have on tape. “All this business about the Messianic Jews and all that; they get saved just like any other lost sinner. They’ve got to realize they’re cut off just like any old cut-off Gentile and trust the Savior who came to the world to save sinners.”

Writing about this monumental status change of the Jews by God after the nation Israel rejected Jesus Christ as their Messiah, Paul says in Romans 11:11-13, “Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy.

“Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness?

“For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office.”

Jordan explains of the passage, “They’re fallen, they’re diminishing away. When something diminishes, it gets further out of sight and pretty soon you can’t see it anymore—it’s not an issue. And it’s through Israel not being an issue anymore that salvation goes to the Gentiles.

“Now notice where that information came from—it’s not in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and it sure isn’t in early Acts. Where did it come from? Verse 13 says, ‘For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office.’

“Who’s the apostle to the Gentiles? Are you a Gentile today? Who’s your apostle? That doesn’t take a lot of figuring out, does it? You don’t need three years in Seminary, two years of Greek, a year of Hebrew and five years of philosophy. You know what you need to get that? One verse out of a King James Bible that’s been around for 400 years that you can read at any time and all you need to do is believe it. You say, ‘Yeah, but. . .’ No, there isn’t any, ‘Yeah, buts’ about it; that’s what it says!”

As Bible scholar Stam also once wrote, “The theological confusion in the (Christian) Church today is basically the result of her rebellion against the authority of Paul as the divinely-appointed apostle for the present ‘dispensation of the grace of God’ (Eph. 3:1-3).

“On every hand Paul is referred to merely as one of the apostles, sometimes even as one of the twelve, though the record of Scripture proves that he could not possibly have qualified as one of the twelve (See Matt. 19:28 and cf. Acts 9:1).

“In Galatians 1 and 2 the Apostle throws down the certificate of his apostleship, as it were, to those who questioned it in his day. He opens his argument with the declaration:

"...I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man.
"For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ" (Gal. 1:11, 12).

“The Scriptures teach beyond the shadow of a doubt that Paul’s apostleship and message were absolutely unique and separate from that of the twelve or of any who had preceded him. This is what Christendom as a whole has refused to accept. Is it any wonder, then, that they confuse God’s prophesied kingdom program with ‘the mystery,’ committed to Paul for us in this present dispensation?

The Scriptures emphasize not only the Apostle’s constant use of the first person pronoun, ‘I,’ ‘me,’ ‘my,’ but the unique character of his apostleship and message. Ignore this fact and confusion must inevitably result; accept it and a hundred seeming contradictions in Scripture disappear.”