Dear Mom,

Not long ago I watched a world leader step to the podium before the nations. Cameras flashed, delegates shifted in their seats, and as the speech began, many quietly stood and left the hall. The sight was striking — one small nation speaking to a room that seemed at once attentive and dismissive.

It reminded me how the story of Israel still stirs the world’s emotions. People line up either to stand with her or to walk away, yet the deeper story behind that nation’s name often goes unnoticed — the story God Himself tells in Scripture.

Thinking of that scene made me want to write to you about what the Bible actually says of Israel’s place in God’s plan.

I know how deeply you care about Israel. You’ve always prayed for that nation and rejoiced when you belived you’d seen prophecies fulfilled. That love is good and right. Paul himself said, “My heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved” (Rom. 10:1).

But here’s what I see in Scripture: the Bible doesn’t teach two separate peoples of God with two different destinies. Instead, it consistently teaches that Christ has broken down the wall between Jew and Gentile, making them one. Paul wrote that Jesus “has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility… that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two” (Eph. 2:14–15).

Jesus Himself said, “I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd” (John 10:16). Paul described Gentile believers not as a second people, but as wild olive shoots grafted into the same tree as Israel (Rom. 11:17–24). And he told the Galatians, “If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Gal. 3:29).

This unity is covenantal—marriage-like. When God joins two into one, He means for them to remain one. Jesus said, “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matt. 19:6). Mom, Darby’s teaching does exactly what Jesus warned against: it separates what God has joined. Jew and Gentile are one new man in Christ. To split them back apart is to undo the miracle of the cross.

This isn’t just my reading. Augustine, writing in the 5th century, said: “In the Old Testament the New is concealed; in the New Testament the Old is revealed.” The same God, the same covenant of grace, the same people gathered under one Shepherd. The idea of two separate peoples of God—one covenant for Israel and another for the Church—was unknown to the apostles, the church fathers, the Reformers, and even the Puritans. For eighteen centuries Christians spoke of one flock under one Shepherd. It was John Nelson Darby in the 19th century who first proposed that Israel and the Church had two distinct destinies. That split is not ancient truth recovered but a modern innovation that must be weighed against both Scripture and the long witness of the historic church.

Mom, the beauty of the gospel is that God has always had one plan and one covenant of grace. Salvation has always been by faith in His promises, whether for Abraham, Ruth, David, Peter, or us today.

With love,
Your son

Passages to read together:

• Ephesians 2:14–16
• John 10:16
• Romans 11:17–24
• Galatians 3:28–29
• Matthew 19:6