Mr. Rice quotes Gen. 13:14, 15; 17:8, and comments: “You will notice from the context that it was the literal land over which Abraham walked and which he saw, called by the name, ‘the land of Canaan.’ The promise is unconditional, and utterly without time limit. It is ‘for an everlasting possession’.” And if Mr. Rice will read Josh. 21:43-45; 23:14, he will notice both from the text and the context that God fulfilled this promise to the letter—not one thing failed of all that God had promised. Yet the Jews are not in that land now. Why? Mr. Rice says the promise of the land to Abram’s seed was unconditional and without time limit. Who broke the covenant? If Mr. Rice is correct, the seed of Abraham did not break the land covenant, for there were no conditions for them to break. If Mr. Rice is correct, God was the only one that could break the covenant. God promised them unconditional possession of the land, and then dispossessed them of it. That is a reflection on the integrity of Jehovah.
Mr. Rice says: “The Lord foretold in Deut. 28:63-68 the dispersion of Israel ‘among all the peoples, from one end of the earth even unto the other;’ but in Deut. 30:1-6, the regathering of Israel to their own land to possess it is plainly foretold.” Why did Mr. Rice refer to so small a part of each of these chapters? Was he afraid the reader might discover something in the rest of these chapters that would upset his theory? Their dispersion was one of the curses that would come upon them if they disobeyed the law Moses gave them. (See Deut. 28:15.) Read Deut. 30:8, 10, and you will see that their return was conditioned on their keeping the commandments which Moses commanded them, and that after their return they were to keep all the commandments of the law of Moses. This condition is now impossible of fulfillment, for the law of Moses is not in force. If Mr. Rice will read Neh. 1:8, 9, he will find that the regathering here spoken of took place when the Jews returned from Babylonian captivity. Surely he will not take issue with Nehemiah. The other passages relied on to prove the future gathering of the Jews to Palestine refer to the same event.
Moses plainly told the Israelites that if they forgot God and turned from his commandments, they would as surely perish as that the nations whom they drove out of Palestine perished. (Deut. 8:19, 20.) These nations perished utterly as nations, and Moses said the nation of Israel would perish as they did. Because of their sins they were carried into captivity. Later, all who desired to return to Palestine were permitted to do so. They again fell into sin; and in John’s day they had again grown so corrupt that he told them the ax then lay at the root of the tree. (Matt. 3:10.) Then the Jewish nation murdered the Son of God—that is, the high court of the nation procured his murder. Under God’s law the penalty for murder was death. As this was murder by the nation, nothing but national death would satisfy divine justice. The tree had become wholly bad, and God used the Roman armies as the ax with which to cut down that tree. According to these future-kingdom advocates, the most glorious period of Jewish history is yet to be; but Jesus tells us that the last state of that race will be worse than the first. (See Matt. 12:43-45.)