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Ron Wallace shows that the church is prophesied in the Old Testament. Isaiah 65 gives a unique summary of Israel’s failure to represent God properly. The prophet also prophesies of the group of elect servants who will temporarily replace Israel as the representatives of God on the earth.
After God freed the people of Israel from Egypt, He established them as a unique nation and appointed them to be the official evangelistic agent and representatives of God’s truth to the rest of the world. However, through the subsequent years, except for a few individuals, the nation as a whole failed to fulfill God’s plan for them.
As a result He had to discipline them at various times in order to steer them back to faithfulness. However, they continued to fail and ultimately rejected the very presence of the promised Messiah in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Because of this, God temporarily set the nation aside and removed them from being His representative on the earth. And since God never leaves Himself without a witness on the earth, He established the church to proclaim His character and word throughout the world. This new evangelistic agent would later be designated as an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and God’s personal possession.
