Conversion of the Jews (Future Event)

The phrase “all Israel will be saved” in Romans 11 is central to Christian discussions of Israel’s future and its relationship to the Church.[3] Some Christians understand Jewish conversion as the culmination of world history; others include Jews within a general mission to non-Christians, while still others reject mission to Jews because they regard Jewish faithfulness to the older covenant as outside the scope of conversion.[3] Some liberal Christian circles leave the question to the end of history and regard its resolution as a divine mystery.[3]

In particular evangelical end-times interpretations, the gathering of Diaspora Jews in Israel precedes a large-scale acceptance of Jesus shortly before his return.[4] Some adherents understood Israel’s founding in 1948 as a sign connected with this prophetic sequence.[4] The expectation belongs to particular theological frameworks rather than to Christianity as a whole, and evangelical views themselves vary substantially.[4][5]

The anticipated outcome is also described differently within evangelical discussion.[5] One account portrays Jews voluntarily accepting Jesus while remaining Jews, rather than undergoing conventional conversion into existing Christian institutions.[5] Other interpretations describe salvation as dependent on publicly accepting Jesus as Messiah and envisage the disappearance of a separate Jewish religion.[4]

Paul’s argument in Romans 11 connects the arrival of the “full number of the Gentiles” with the salvation of “all Israel.”[6] In this account, the success of the Gentile mission would provoke some Jews to jealousy and lead them to Christ; salvation would proceed through Gentiles and then Jews, reversing the sequence Paul understood as traditional.[6] Romans 9–11 also affirms that God has not rejected Israel, making these chapters important in later debates about whether the Church has superseded Israel.[3]

The expectation of eventual collective conversion persisted beyond Paul: Augustine retained hope for Jewish conversion, understood as an event associated with the End of Days.[1] During the Second Crusade, Bernard of Clairvaux opposed massacres of Jews and argued that they should be spared because the Church hoped for their eventual mass conversion.[7] A historical account of this episode also connects that expectation with a prayer instituted for Good Friday.[7]

In the seventeenth century, expectations about conversion intersected with questions of Jewish residence and restoration.[8] Oliver Cromwell’s support for permitting Jews to return to England in 1656 was partly inspired by the belief that their conversion would hasten the Second Coming.[8] Some Puritans in mid-seventeenth-century New England likewise expected Jews eventually to return to a homeland in Palestine as part of the end-time.[8] A Jewish Review of Books review traces one strand of this interpretation to Puritans who read “all Israel shall be saved” as encompassing both recognition of Christ and restoration to the Land of Israel; it quotes Massachusetts clergyman John Cotton predicting that Gentiles would convey Jews to their country.[9]

Dispensational premillennialism became an influential framework for connecting Jewish restoration with the Second Coming, with its principal influence traced to the nineteenth-century British preacher John Nelson Darby.[4] The Jewish Review of Books review describes Darby’s scenario as placing Israel’s territorial restoration within the final seven years before Christ’s return, followed by a covenant with the Antichrist, betrayal and persecution, and the rescue of a pious remnant through Christ’s visible return.[9]

Charles Gore’s 1901 commentary on Romans illustrates another developed reading of Paul’s argument.[10] It interprets Israel’s partial hardening as allowing the Gentile mission to proceed, with Gentile converts represented as wild branches grafted onto Israel’s olive tree.[10] Israel can be grafted back when unbelief gives way, while God’s gifts and calling remain in force.[10] In this reading, “all Israel shall be saved” need not mean every Israelite without exception, nor salvation regardless of human response; it expresses a divine purpose to provide an opportunity for Israel’s recovery.[10]

Premillennialism places Jesus’s return before a thousand-year earthly kingdom, whereas postmillennialism places the final events and his return after the millennium.[4] In one common evangelical sequence, Jewish ingathering to Israel is an initial stage, followed by Jesus’s return as a conquering king, his rule from Jerusalem, and Israel’s restoration to a favored position for a millennium.[5] A premillennial-dispensationalist version places the rapture of Christians before seven years of chaos culminating in the Second Coming, although this sequence is not accepted by all evangelicals.[5]

Within these expectations, the timing of Jewish acceptance of Jesus varies: some Christians place it before the Second Coming and others at the return itself.[11] Robert W. Nicholson’s account describes thousands of Jews voluntarily accepting Jesus shortly before his return while continuing to identify as Jews, with existing forms of organized religion transformed.[5] A review by Sarah Schmidt characterizes dispensationalist belief differently, emphasizing persecution before Jesus’s return, surviving Jews welcoming him as Messiah, and the prophetic importance assigned to evangelizing Jews.[12] The review quotes a Jewish convert-missionary describing converted Jews as a “pledge of the final salvation of all Israel.”[12]

Expectations about Israel do not necessarily translate into support for conversion efforts.[8] Some dispensationalists regard Jewish return to Palestine as necessary for the Second Coming but emphasize support for Jews and their return rather than favoring conversion.[8] Sociologist Shlomo Fischer distinguishes support rooted in popular End-of-Days narratives from support arising from a rethinking of Christian attitudes toward Jews; he argues that some evangelical organizations reject replacement theology and do not make conversion their goal.[13]

Present-day Christian approaches to mission encompass three broad positions: seeking the conversion of all Jews, sharing Christian faith universally without targeting Jews, and rejecting a conversionary outlook in favor of joint witness.[14] Mission to Jews in the sense of seeking converts has declined significantly in recent decades, alongside greater awareness of the traumatic history of Jewish–Christian relations and recognition of the relationship between the religions.[14]

Catholic developments illustrate the distinction between future theological expectations and contemporary outreach.[15] The Second Vatican Council’s 1965 document Nostra Aetate affirmed the religious bond between Jews and the Church and called for dialogue; its treatment of disagreement over Jesus was understood as leaving resolution to the end of history.[15] Although it did not explicitly settle whether Catholics should seek Jewish converts, subsequent Catholic teaching and practice opposed conversionary outreach to Jews.[15] In the years following the council, the Church refrained from targeting Jews for conversion, and Pope John Paul II’s 1986 address at Rome’s Great Synagogue, calling Jews “our elder brothers in faith,” became an important moment in Catholic–Jewish relations.[16] The Vatican’s 2015 document rejected Catholic efforts to convert Jews, a position not replicated across Protestantism.[11]

Israel’s modern existence has acquired prophetic significance for some evangelicals without producing agreement about the meaning of that significance.[5] A 2011 survey of more than 2,000 evangelical leaders found 48 percent agreeing that Israel’s existence fulfilled biblical prophecy relating to the Second Coming and 42 percent disagreeing.[5] An earlier Pew survey found that three-fifths of rank-and-file American evangelicals considered Israel prophetically significant, but there was no clear consensus about what that entailed.[5] End-times expectations therefore do not constitute either a universal evangelical belief or necessarily the dominant focus of evangelical faith.[5]

One evangelical expectation places the establishment of a Jewish state before the end times and subsequent Jewish conversion, although the anticipated conversion is less often discussed publicly by Jews or Christians.[17] Historically, some Christian theology treated Jewish nonacceptance of Christianity as delaying the Second Coming, thereby assigning mission to Jews a role in the fulfillment of history.[3] Yet predictions tied to specific dates have also provoked concern among Christians: those expecting Jesus’s return in 2000 were a small minority, and many Christians feared that failed predictions would undermine biblical authority.[4]

Jewish teachings about redemption describe a different religious future.[2][18] Deuteronomy 30 depicts Israel returning to God while dispersed among the nations, with the people and their children heeding God’s commands.[18] God then regathers them to their ancestral land and opens—or literally “circumcises”—their hearts to love God.[18] The passage concerns renewed observance and return to God, not acceptance of Christianity.[18]

Maimonides cites Deuteronomy 30:1–3 in teaching that Israel will repent toward the end of exile and then be redeemed.[2] His account of the messianic future likewise describes the Messiah gathering Israel’s dispersed and restoring observance of the commandments.[19] A Davidic king who leads Israel back to Torah observance and gathers the exiles is identified as the Messiah, who will then improve the world by motivating all nations to serve God together.[19] This is a vision of Jewish religious restoration rather than the replacement of Jewish observance by Christianity.[19]

The word “conversion” also has a different application in Jewish discussions of the messianic age.[20] Yevamot states that converts are not accepted in the days of the Messiah, as they were not accepted in the days of David or Solomon, relating the restriction to the difficulty of establishing sincere motives when God’s presence is openly revealed.[20] This concerns non-Jews entering Judaism, not Jews becoming Christians.[20]

Kaufmann Kohler’s 1918 formulation of Jewish theology describes the future hope as God’s kingdom on earth, with nations abandoning idolatry and recognizing divine sovereignty.[21] It explicitly contrasts that hope with Christian teaching about a kingdom entered through belief in a supernatural Savior.[21]

The expectation of future Jewish conversion is a theological interpretation, not an established future occurrence, and neither its meaning nor its relationship to present-day mission is shared across Christian traditions.[3][14] Some versions envisage Jews ceasing to exist as a people with a separate religion, history, and culture, and carry theological anti-Judaism or antisemitic overtones.[4] Fischer, in a commentary on evangelical support for Israel, criticizes a premillennial-dispensationalist narrative in which Jewish return is followed by the conversion of most Jews or their death, while distinguishing organizations that do not condition support for Israel on conversion.[13]

A separate debate concerns the boundary between an end-times hope and encouragement of contemporary proselytizing.[22] In a 2008 commentary on Catholic prayer, a professor of Jewish history at Yeshiva University argues that belief in future Jewish recognition of Christianity is not itself objectionable, but that a prayer not clearly confined to the end of days could encourage proselytizing and complicate Jewish–Christian dialogue.[22]