“As He says also in Hosea: ‘I will call them My people, who were not My people, and her beloved, who was not beloved.’ ‘And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not My people,’ there they shall be called sons of the living God.’ Isaiah also cries out concerning Israel: ‘Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, the remnant will be saved. For He will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness, because the Lord will make a short work upon the earth.’ And as Isaiah said before: ‘Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we would have become like Sodom, and we would have been made like Gomorrah’” (Romans 9:25-29).
Few errors reflect greater Bible ignorance than the notion that the gospel of Jesus Christ and the church which He built therefrom were not predicted in the Old Testament. Such blasphemy is egregious.
In the thirty verses of Romans 9:25-10:21, the inspired pen of the apostle Paul marshals fourteen Old Testament quotations, providing overwhelming proof that various aspects of the gospel of God were “promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures” (Romans 1:2). In the final verses of Romans 9 alone, three seminal truths were clearly predicted:
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The inclusion of the Gentiles in the Israel of God (Romans 9:25-26; Hosea 2:23, 1:10)
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The exclusion of many Jews/salvation of only a remnant via obedience to the gospel (Romans 9:27-29; Isaiah 10:22-23, 1:9)
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The rejection of Christ and His gospel as a stumbling block and rock of offense to Paul’s countrymen according to the flesh (Romans 9:33; Isaiah 28:16).
The gospel of Jesus Christ and the church He built therefrom are not stopgap measures; they are the precise fulfillment of what is written in “the prophetic Scriptures” (Romans 16:26).
