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Israel and the Church

Is the Church a separate program from Israel, or is the Church actually Israel itself, under a different name at a later stage of the same story? Hebrew Roots teacher Eddie Chumney argues for the latter — that "church" and "Israel" are, biblically, the same body.

The case for "the Church is Israel"

Summarizing Chumney's argument: Israel became "a holy nation" at Sinai (Exodus 19:5-6 (ESV)), entering a betrothal relationship with God (Jeremiah 2:2-3 (ESV)) as a "mixed multitude" of Israelite and non-Israelite alike who had come out of Egypt together (Exodus 12:38 (ESV)) — on this reading, that assembly (kahal/ekklesia) at Sinai is the church in its first form. After Solomon's reign the nation split into the northern kingdom (Israel) and southern kingdom (Judah); the northern kingdom was cut off from that covenant standing (Hosea 1 (ESV)). Gentile believers are later grafted into that same olive root through Christ (Romans 11:17-24 (ESV)), having formerly been "strangers to the covenants of promise" (Ephesians 2:11-12 (ESV)). Ezekiel's promise that the two kingdoms — pictured as two sticks — will one day become one again in God's hand (Ezekiel 37:15-27 (ESV)) points, on this reading, to a future reunification of a single people that redemptive history has only ever divided, never actually multiplied.

Chumney states the conclusion directly:

"The nation of Israel were a church / Kahal / Ekklesia at Mount Sinai... So, Biblically, the terms 'church' and 'Israel' are synonymous terms."

— Eddie Chumney, "Israel and the Church", Hebrew Roots Ministries archive. Note: this domain currently fails to load over HTTPS (certificate mismatch — it serves a *.hostmonster.com shared-hosting certificate rather than one for its own name), so treat the link as unverified until that's fixed on their end.

He develops the argument at greater length in his book Who is the Bride of Christ?, referenced in the same article.

Cautions

This site holds a dispensational view of prophecy (see Statement of Faith), which classically treats Israel and the Church as distinct programs with distinct promises rather than one interchangeable body — reading the Romans 11 olive tree, for instance, as a single root supporting two distinguishable kinds of branches rather than one undifferentiated tree, and reserving Israel's specific, unconditional land and kingdom promises to Israel rather than treating them as transferred to the Church. The "Israel is the Church" reading above sits in real tension with that: if the two labels are simply synonyms across redemptive history, there's no clear ground left for keeping their promises distinct either. That tension is worth sitting with — Ephesians 2, Romans 11, and Ezekiel 37 all have to be read together, not selectively — rather than resolved by picking a label.

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