Are the Jews still God's People?

Are the Jew's still considered God's chosen people? Do they still possess the land God's gave to Abraham?

In final statement of two-week conference, bishops' synod says Biblical concept of 'promised land' cannot be used to justify settlements.

Israel cannot use the Biblical concept of a promised land or a chosen people to justify new "settlements" in Jerusalem or territorial claims, a Vatican synod on the Middle East said on Saturday.

In its concluding message after two weeks of meetings, the synod of bishops from the Middle East also said it hoped a two-state solution for peace between Israel and the Palestinians could be lifted from dream to reality and called for peaceful conditions that would stop a Christian exodus from the region.

"We have meditated on the situation of the holy city of Jerusalem. We are anxious about the unilateral initiatives that threaten its composition and risk to change its demographic balance," the message said.

In a separate part of the document, a section on cooperation with Jews, the synod fathers also took issue with Jews who use the Bible to justify settlements in the West Bank, which Israel captured in 1967.

"Recourse to theological and biblical positions which use the Word of God to wrongly justify injustices is not acceptable," the document said.

Asked about the passage at a news conference, Greek-Melchite Archbishop Cyrille Salim Bustros, said: 

"We Christians cannot speak about the promised land for the Jewish people. There is no longer a chosen people. All men and women of all countries have become the chosen people.

"The concept of the promised land cannot be used as a base for the justification of the return of Jews to Israel and the displacement of Palestinians," he added. "The justification of Israel's occupation of the land of Palestine cannot be based on sacred scriptures."

The synod's concluding message repeated a Vatican call for Jerusalem to have a special status "which respects its particular character" as a city sacred to the three great monotheistic religions -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

 To see what is happening, and understanding that the anti-christ could come from the revived Roman Empire, it looks like we are very close to the Rapture of the Church.