The Justice of God: The lie attributed to Romans 11:18

The Justice of God: The lie attributed to Romans 11:18

First of all the main thing to remember is that Jesus Christ is the Word and Immortal Son of God the Father. It was ALWAYS Jesus Christ (pre-incarnate to Adam and Noah and Moses etc. and then Incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the blessed virgin Mary forevermore) who spoke to the faithful in all ages. Of course He spoke with complete absolute foreknowledge and omniscience and always does.

The lie attributed to Romans 11:18 is that it speaks about some future conversion of the Jews as a nation. IT DOES NOT. That lie is a Freemasonic invention and absolutely has no truth to it at all, not a scintilla - nothing.

St. Paul while at Corinth wrote the epistle to the Romans in 57/58 A.D. Let us always remember St. Justin Martyr's admonition to understand scripture in its historical context. At that time St. Paul still held the olive branch out to the Jews in spite of their obstinate hardened hearts. This was before St. Paul's journey to Jerusalem at which the synagogue saw to it that he was ensnared in their trap and subsequently St. Paul was sent to Rome to be judged by Caesar just as Paul's Master, Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, had been judged by Caesar's representative Pontius Pilate earlier. After this time and just before the siege of Jerusalem St. Paul told of the withdrawing of even this olive branch then (Acts 28:25-28). See:

ACTS 18

CHAPTER XVIII.

Paul founds the church of Corinth: and preaches at Ephesus, &c. Apollo goes to Corinth

6 But they [the Jews] contradicting and blaspheming, shaking his garments, he [Paul] said to them: Your blood be upon your own heads: I am clean: from henceforth I will go to the Gentiles.

ACTS 28

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Paul, after three months' stay in Malta, continues his voyage, and arrives at Rome. His conference there with the Jews.

1 And when we had escaped, then we knew that the island was called Melita. But the barbarians shewed us no small courtesy.

2 For kindling a fire, they refreshed us all, because of the rain which was falling, and of the cold.

3 And when Paul had gathered together a bundle of sticks, and had laid them on the fire, a viper coming out of the heat, fastened on his hand.

4 And when the barbarians saw the beast hanging on his hand, they said one to another: Undoubtedly this man is a murderer, who, though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth him not to live.

5 And he indeed shaking off the beast into the fire, suffered no harm.

6 But they supposed that he would begin to swell up, and that he would suddenly fall down and die.  But after they had waited a long time, and seeing that there no harm was done to him, changing their minds, they said he was a god.

7 Now in those places were possessions of the chief man of the island, named Publius, who received us, and for three days entertained us courteously.

8 And it happened that the father of Publius lay sick of a fever, and of a bloody flux. To whom Paul entered in: and when he had prayed, and laid his hands on him, he healed him.

9 Which being done, all that had diseases in the island came, and were healed:

10 Who also honoured us with many honours, and when we were to setting sail, they laded us with such things as were necessary.

11 *And after three months, we sailed in a ship of Alexandria, that had wintered in the island, whose sign was the Castors.

12 And when we were come to Syracusa, we remained there three days.

13 From thence coasting, we came to Rhegium: and after one day, the south wind blowing, we came the second day to Puteoli:

14 Where finding brethren [Christians], we were invited to stay with them seven days: and so we went for Rome.

15 And from thence, when the brethren had heard of us, they came to meet us as far as Appii-forum and the Three taverns: whom when Paul saw, he gave thanks to God, and took courage.

16 And when we were come to Rome, Paul was permitted to dwell by himself, with a soldier that guarded him.

17 And after the third day, he called together the chief of the Jews. And when they were assembled, he said to them: Men, brethren, I, having done nothing against the people, or the custom of our fathers, was delivered up a prisoner from Jerusalem into the hands of the Romans:

18 Who when they had examined me, would have let me go, for that there was no cause of death in me:

19 But the Jews opposing it, I was forced to appeal unto Cæsar, not that I had any thing to accuse my nation of.

20 For this cause, therefore, I desired to see you, and to speak to you. Because that for the hope of Israel, I am bound with this chain.

21 But they said to him: We neither received letters concerning thee from Judea, neither did any of the brethren that came hither, relate or speak any evil of thee. [This was an exception in this case concerning these particular individual Jews, but it still only represented no commitment to Christ.]

22 But we desire to hear from thee what thou thinkest: for as concerning this sect, we know that it is every where gainsayed. [gainsayed by the Jews, that is. This was typical of the Jews in Palestine and Rome.]

23 And when they had appointed him a day, there came very many to him to his lodgings; to whom he expounded, testifying the kingdom of God, and persuading them concerning Jesus, out of the law of Moses and the prophets, from morning till evening.

24 And some believed the things that were said: but some believed not.

25 And when they agreed not among themselves, they departed, Paul saying this one word: Well did the Holy Ghost speak to our fathers by Isaias, the prophet,

26 *Saying: Go to this people, and say to them: With the ear you shall hear, and shall not understand: and seeing, you shall see, and shall not perceive.

27 For the heart of this people is grown gross, and with their ears have they heard heavily, and their eyes they have shut: lest perhaps they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.

28 Be it known, therefore, to you, that this salvation of God is sent to the Gentiles, and they will hear it.

29 And when he had said these things, the Jews went out from him, having much discussion among themselves.

30 And he remained two whole years* in his own hired lodging: and he received all that came in to him,

31 Preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching the things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, without prohibition.

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*

11: A.D. 61.

26: Isai. vi. 9.; Matt. xiii. 14.; Mark iv. 12.; Luke viii. 10.; John xii. 40.; Rom. xi. 8.

30: Until A.D. 63.

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St. Paul's epistle to the Roman Christians was to warn them not to be influenced by Jews who opposed the Gospel (the Jewish community there was presenting a terrible obstacle to the spread of the Gospel which soon under Poppea's instigation of Nero, an Antichrist and a prime type of the final Antichrist, resulted in the first rightly labeled Antichrist major historical persecution of the early Christians and our faith).

Romans 11:17 And if some of the branches be broken, and thou being a wild olive-tree, art ingrafted in them, and art made partaker of the root and of the fatness of the olive-tree,

First of all, the Olive Tree can ONLY be Christ and the Apostles, this is seen by Our Lord's words in the Gospel of John.

JOHN 15

CHAPTER XV.

A continuation of Christ's discourse to his disciples.

1 I am the true vine; and my Father is the husbandman.

2 Every branch in me, that beareth not fruit, he will take away: and every one that beareth fruit, he will purge it, that it may bring forth more fruit.

3 Now you are clean, by reason of the word, which I have spoken to you.

4 Remain in me: and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the vine: so neither can you, unless you abide in me.

5 I am the vine: you are the branches: he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for without me you can do nothing.

6 If any one remaineth not in me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither and they shall gather him up, and cast him into the fire, and he burneth.

7 If you remain in me, and my words remain in you: you shall ask whatever you will, and it shall be done to you.

8 In this is my Father glorified, that you bring forth very much fruit, and become my disciples.

9 As the Father hath loved me, I also have loved you. Remain in my love.

10 If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, as I also have kept my Father's commandments, and do remain in his love.

11 These things I have spoken to you: that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be filled.

12 This is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you.

13 Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

14 You are my friends, if you do the things that I command you.

15 I will not now call you servants: for the servant knoweth not what his lord doth. But I have called you friends: because all things whatsoever I have heard from my Father, I have made known to you.

16 You have not chosen me: but I have chosen you, and have appointed you, that you should go, and should bring forth fruit, and your fruit should remain: that whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.

The soon coming final judgement and condemnation of Israel as a nation forevermore, which came at the destruction of Jerusalem and temple by the Roman general Titus as God's rod of vengenace, is never to be retracted. This was foretold by Our Lord here:

MARK 11

CHAPTER XI.

Christ enters into Jerusalem upon an ass: curses the barren fig-tree: and drives the buyers and sellers out of the temple.

1 And when they were drawing near to Jerusalem, and to Bethania, at the mount of Olives, he sendeth two of his disciples,

2 And saith to them: Go into the village that is over-against you, and immediately at your coming in thither, you shall find a colt tied, upon which no man yet hath sat: loose him, and bring him.

3 And if any man shall say to you: What are you doing? say ye that the Lord hath need of him: and immediately he will let him come hither.

4 And going their way, they found the colt tied before the gate without, in the meeting of two ways: and they loose him.

5 And some of them that stood there, said to them: What do you, loosing the colt?

6 They said to them as Jesus had commanded them: and they let him go with them.

7 And they brought the colt to Jesus: and they lay their garments on him, and he sat upon him.

8 And many spread their garments in the way: and others cut down boughs from the trees, and strewed them in the way.

9 And they that went before and they that followed, cried, saying: Hosanna:

10 Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord: Blessed be the kingdom of our father, David, that cometh: Hosanna in the highest.

11 And he entered Jerusalem, into the temple: and having viewed all things round about, when now the hour of evening was come, he went out to Bethania with the twelve.

12 And the next day, when they came out from Bethania, he was hungry.

13 And when he had seen afar off a fig tree having leaves, he came, if perhaps he might find any thing on it. And when he was come to it, he found nothing but leaves: for it was not the time for figs.

14 And answering, he said to it: May no man hereafter eat fruit of thee any more for ever. And his disciples heard it.

15 And they came to Jerusalem. And when he was entered into the temple, he began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and the chairs of them that sold doves.

16 And he suffered not that any man should carry a vessel through the temple.

17 And he taught, saying to them: Is it not written: My house shall be called the house of prayer to all nations? But you have made it a den of thieves.

The broken branches are the apostate Jews in Rome who were stirring up persecution against the Christians. The Christians who were being warned by Paul were those faithful Christians who were tempted by the apostate Jews to go off on their own without the guidance of the Apostles. St. Paul is walking a thin line since the forty years (a generation) of Our Lord's prophecy concerning the time for the Jews as a nation to repent from their rejection of Christ had not yet been exhausted, Christ's final dispensation for the Jews was not up until they pronounced the curses in the Temple against God and His Christ and the Christians and brought everlasting destruction upon themselves as a nation beginning immediately with the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by the Roman general Titus, which destruction of the temple was complete in 70 A.D. After that there is NO salvation ever offered again by God to the Jews as a nation. Only individual Jews can come to Christ and profess Him and be saved.

Romans 11:18 Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast: thou bearest not the root, but the root thee.

In other words follow what is Apostolic from Christ and the Apostles.

St. Irenaeus explains the passage in Romans in his work Against Heresies, Book V, Chapter X; by the time, 180 A.D., that St. Irenaeus wrote Against Heresies, concerning St. Paul's admonitions about the olive tree and the branches, there was only left the allegorical meaning not to be unspiritual.

p. 536

Against Heresies, Book V, Chapter X.—By a comparison drawn from the wild olive-tree, whose quality but not whose nature is changed by grafting, he proves more important things; he points out also that man without the Spirit is not capable of bringing forth fruit, or of inheriting the kingdom of God.

1. This truth, therefore, [he declares], in order that we may not reject the engrafting of the Spirit while pampering the flesh. “But thou, being a wild olive-tree,” he says, “hast been grafted into the good olive-tree, and been made a partaker of the fatness of the olive-tree.” 4512 As, therefore, when the wild olive has been engrafted, if it remain in its former condition, viz., a wild olive, it is “cut off, and cast into the fire;” 4513 but if it takes kindly to the graft, and is changed into the good olive-tree, it becomes a fruit-bearing olive, planted, as it were, in a king’s park (paradiso): so likewise men, if they do truly progress by faith towards better things, and receive the Spirit of God, and bring forth the fruit thereof, shall be spiritual, as being planted in the paradise of God. But if they cast out the Spirit, and remain in their former condition, desirous of being of the flesh rather than of the Spirit, then it is very justly said with regard to men of this stamp, “That flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God;” 4514 just as if any one were to say that the wild olive is not received into the paradise of God. Admirably therefore does the apostle exhibit our nature, and God’s universal appointment, in his discourse about flesh and blood and the wild olive. For as the good olive, if neglected for a certain time, if left to grow wild and to run to wood, does itself become a wild olive; or again, if the wild olive be carefully tended and grafted, it naturally reverts to its former fruit-bearing condition: so men also, when they become careless, and bring forth for fruit the lusts of the flesh like woody produce, are rendered, by their own fault, unfruitful in righteousness. For when men sleep, the enemy sows the material of tares; 4515 and for this cause did the Lord command His disciples to be on the watch. 4516 And again, those persons who are not bringing forth the fruits of righteousness, and are, as it were, covered over and lost among brambles, if they use diligence, and receive the word of God as a graft, 4517 arrive at the pristine nature of man—that which was created after the image and likeness of God.

2. But as the engrafted wild olive does not certainly lose the substance of its wood, but changes the quality of its fruit, and receives another name, being now not a wild olive, but a fruit-bearing olive, and is called so; so also, when man is grafted in by faith and receives the Spirit of God, he certainly does not lose the substance of flesh, but changes the quality of the fruit [brought forth, i.e.,] of his works, and receives another name, 4518 showing that he has become changed for the better, being now not [mere] flesh and blood, but a spiritual man, and is called such. Then, again, as the wild olive, if it be not grafted in, remains useless to its lord because of its woody quality, and is cut down as a tree bearing no fruit, and cast into the fire; so also man, if he does not receive through faith the engrafting of the Spirit, remains in his old condition, and being [mere] flesh and blood, he cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Rightly therefore does the apostle declare, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God;” 4519 and, “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God:” 4520 not repudiating [by these words] the substance of flesh, but showing that into it the Spirit must be infused. 4521 And for this reason, he says, “This mortal must put on immortality, and this corruptible must put on incorruption.” 4522 And again he declares, “But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.” 4523 He sets this forth still more plainly, where he says, “The body indeed is dead, because of sin; but the Spirit is life, because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies, because of His Spirit dwelling in you.” 4524 And again he says, in the Epistle to the Romans, “For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die.” 4525 [Now by these words] he does not prohibit them from living their lives in the flesh, for he was himself in the flesh when he wrote to them; but he cuts away the lusts of the flesh, those which bring death upon a man. And for this reason he says in continuation, “But if ye through the Spirit do mortify the works of the flesh, ye shall live. For whosoever are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.”

See and understand this most especially.

Romans 11:25 For I do not want you to be ignorant brothers, of this musterion [revelation which is revealed - at that time only], unless you should be wise in yourselves, that hardness in part has happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles should comes in. 26 And so all Israel will be saved; as it has been written, “the one delivering will come out of Zion, He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob. 27 And this is the covenant from me to them when I take away the sins of them.” – This is quoted from Isaiah 59:20 and 20:21 and 27:9. None of this is future tense. It is present and the prophecy quoted is from Isaiah in the past and then fulfilled in the first advent of Our Only Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago. This is exactly what St. Paul is saying; all of Israel is saved when the last Gentile nation comes in. The Jews are not ever offered salvation as a nation again. Individual Jews can come to Christ and be saved, but only as individuals. Concerning the Gospel – it is to the Gentile nations only after the fall of Jerusalem in 70. A.D. See Our Lord’s words in the Great Commission: 

That commission begins at Jerusalem 2,000 years ago and then goes throughout the whole world and then comes the Second Coming of Christ. There is NO second salvation offered Jews as a nation in Jerusalem or any where else. To think that God will contradict His word and offer them salvation as a nation and  in addition totally violate Hebrews 6th Chapter is to simply fall into and promulgate the trap of the Antichrist and be damned forever with the Son of Perdition and the False Prophet and Satan.

Matthew 28:18 And Jesus coming, spoke to them, saying: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth.  19 Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. 20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world ["world" in the Greek is 'aeon' = age, this age of grace, then comes the judgment of all men at the Second Coming of Christ].

Mark 16:19 And the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God.  20 But they going forth preached everywhere: the Lord working withal, and confirming the word with signs that followed.

Luke 24:46 And he said to them: Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise again from the dead, the third day: 47 And that penance and remission of sins should be preached in his name, unto all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. 

St. Irenaeus also explains Romans 11:26 in Against Heresies Book IV, Chapter II, Section 7.  But as many as feared God, and were anxious about His law, these ran to Christ, and were all saved. For He said to His disciples: “Go ye to the sheep of the house of Israel, which have perished.” And many more Samaritans, it is said, when the Lord had tarried among them, two days, “believed because of His words, and said to the woman, Now we believe, not because of thy saying, for we ourselves have heard [Him], and know that this man is truly the Saviour of the world.” And Paul likewise declares, “And so all Israel shall be saved;” [Romans 11:26] but he has also said, that the law was our pedagogue [to bring us] to Christ Jesus. Let them not therefore ascribe to the law the unbelief of certain [among them]. For the law never hindered them from believing in the Son of God; nay, but it even exhorted them so to do, saying that men can be saved in no other way from the old wound of the serpent than by believing in Him who, in the likeness of sinful flesh, is lifted up from the earth upon the tree of martyrdom [Jesus Christ on His most Holy Cross, Crucified for us ONCE never a second time], and draws all things to Himself, and vivifies the dead.


Labels: Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, St. Paul, The lie attributed to Romans 11:18, wild olive tree