All modern trends are moving inexorably in the direction predicted by the Hebrew prophets. In addition to keeping the church wakeful, this fact should be continually pointed to in the church’s witness, as a powerful evidence of the Bible’s authority and inspiration, and as a call to come to terms […]
The Remnant Tasting the Bitterness of the Nations
[…] In considering judgment on nations and particular localities, we should remember the pattern we observe in scripture. However righteous and set apart, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel were required to taste the bitterness of exile along with the rest of the apostate nation. Therefore, though the end of an individual may be quite different in the ‘long run’, he or she may well be required to suffer in the judgements that descend on a nation whose iniquity has come to full. That is the pattern we see in Israel’s exile, and I can’t see where it would be too different in a world where the church is called to be a ‘diaspora’ people, scattered throughout the earth as a witness people. Why, even the church’s sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s table are suitably quite portable. We are a pilgrim people, in every place, and often on the move.
The church is called to be a light in a dark world. What part of the world does not lie in wickedness? Where does one go to hide their loved ones from the judgment that hovers over a cursed land? If we flee from certain levels of societal debauchery that seems to especially concentrated in some cities or nations more than others, we might well be fleeing to a worse place where God has marked a perhaps more hidden but just as hateful kind of pride. […]
The Eschatology of the Everlasting Covenant
… The New Covenant, also called the Everlasting Covenant, envisions nothing short of the salvation of ‘all’ Israel. “And so all Israel shall be saved: … for this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sin” (Ro 11:26-27). In the context of Paul’s argument, a future event is in view. It is based on nothing other than the covenant. Hence, there can be no doubt that at least something of the covenant remains unfulfilled where Israel is concerned. Whatever is understood of the phrase, “and so all Israel shall be saved,” one thing is clear: For Paul, there can be no final fulfillment of the covenant that stops short of this future ‘fullness’ (compare Ro 11:12 w/ 25-29). We need to understand what Paul means by “and so all Israel shall be saved,” as interpreters are divided over just about every word of this much disputed phrase. …
How soon is “The Time of Jacob’s Trouble?”
[…] Ezekiel shows that when the Spirit is poured out at the day of the Lord, the face of God will never again be hidden from the nation that is now saved to the last man (Ezek 39:22-29 with Isa. 54:13; 59:21; 60:21).
This is the time that the sealed book (Dan 9:24; 12:4, 9) is revealed to Israel. But the sealed vision is not sealed to all. During the days of the tribulation, there is a remnant ‘that understand among the people’ (11:33; 12:3, 10). They will know the secret (the mystery of the gospel) and through their witness many will be turned to righteousness. A comparison of Zech 12:10 with Mt 23:39 will show that the end of the age waits till the beleaguered survivors of Israel receive the same revelation of the gospel that came down from heaven at Pentecost (1Pet 1:12). This is the rock on which the church is built; it is the revelation of Christ that cannot come by flesh and blood.
So I believe the two days of Hos 6:2 coincide with the events that span the time between Christ’s two advents to Israel. Although history is littered with one shameful debacle of failed prediction after another, the time is coming when the question of the time will no longer be a question for the true church. The last seven years is clearly marked by a highly descript sequence of definite events that nothing in the past has come near to fulfilling (e.g., Dan 11:21-45). It is paramount that we know the distinctive character of the end time events in order to avoid the false alarms of prophetic speculation, and to recognize the real thing when it does come. […]
Sin. Who created it?
[…] So how is God not directly responsible for the fall that was indispensable in His preordained plan of redemption? Well, I’ve already mentioned the implications of Ro 8:20, and a considerable collection of other passages combine to show that redemption was never a divine afterthought. So I theorize that God cannot be justly charged with injustice if He did not elect to extend special grace that might have upheld Adam in the day of powerful temptation. God does not have to impose sin in order to ordain that it serve a role in His perfect and unalterable eternal purpose in grace.
Nothing can be more glorious to God or precious to man as the grace of Christ, the Father’s greatest eternal delight. Grace will be the theme and song of all eternity. This is the glory that the persons of the Godhead rejoiced in before time, in perfect contemplation and enjoyment of what would be accomplished in the foreordained goal of creation. […]
The Dangerous Presumption of ‘Exemption from Tribulation’
[…] The great tribulation is not called ‘unequaled’ simply because of some unprecedented degree of human suffering. Though the ‘scale’ of human suffering will indeed be without precedent during the last tribulation, what individuals might face personally cannot be worse than what others of our brethren have faced throughout history without a rapture. The the final tribulation is said to be without equal because it extends to all the natural order. So, of course, human suffering will be co-extensive with the upheaval of a creation that has come to its greatest time of travail.
Therefore, it is not the ‘degree’ of personal suffering that makes this tribulation exceptional from all others, but its ‘scale’ of impact on the world of nature. So I ask: Do we detect a certain selfishness, or subtle presumption of moral superiority in the modern church’s expectation of exemption from a last repeat of the same kind of persecution that their ‘fellow servants and their brethren’ have faced in every age (see Rev 6:11)? I must say that such a doctrine sounds suspiciously accommodating of a soft and untested church that has embraced the cross only in theory as a historical fact in Jesus’ experience, and not as the invariable pattern of the very ‘way’ of God in the experience of every believer before and after Christ (but see Act 14:22). […]
Recommended Book: “Rapture? Sure… but When?”
Dear friends, I want to recommend a comparatively new book on the rapture question. It is clear and concise, the best thing I’ve seen since Ladd and Gundry. This is not only for those who have unresolved questions concerning the rapture, but for those interested to give answer and help […]
Recommended Reading on the Prophet Daniel
[…] In an instant, I have exactly who to recommend on Daniel. First, and most accessible would be S.P. Tregelles’ “Remarks on the Prophetic Visions in the Book of Daniel,” available through Sovereign Grace Advent Testimony in Essex (on line at sgat.org).
Second, or perhaps even first in importance is a much more rare book entitled “Prophetic Interpretations” by P.S.G. Watson. It is available to view on line through the Dallas Theological Online Library, Antiquarian Books. Unfortunately, they have it where it can only be leafed through; it can’t be copied to be printed. If upon your preview of the book, interest should happen to soar, I would be happy to take my xerox copy to a printer here and have a copy made to be sent. I could let you know the cost. But look through it first, and see what you think. In my view, no one is so good as Watson on the case for ‘futurism’ and a literal hermeneutic, particularly in regards to the ‘abomination of desolation’ and the centrality of its place and role in the unfolding of last days events. […]
David Baron, Adolph Saphir (and other Recommended Reading)
[…] Baron is conservative; he imbibed none of the German higher criticism so stylish in the biblical scholarship of his day. He wrote a commentary on “The Visions and Prophecy of Zechariah”. That one should be readily available through Amazon, or christianbook.com. Among the titles by him are Rays of Messiah’s Glory; The Shepherd of Israel, The Servant of Jehovah, Types Psalms and Prophecies, A Divine Forecast of Jewish History; The History of the Ten “Lost” Tribes: Anglo-Israelism Examined; The Ancient Scriptures for the Modern Jew; and Israel in the Plan of God, also published under the title: The History of Israel: Its Spiritual Significance. There is also one on the Melchizedek Priesthood. These are all back in print through Keren Ahvah Meshihit; P. O. Box 10382, 91103 Jerusalem, Israel. […]
God’s Covenants: The Obsolete and the Everlasting
[…] It is this “everlasting covenant of promise” that the prophets see as established permanently with the nation in the coming day of the Lord at the end of the last tribulation. And where Israel, as pertaining to the ‘natural branches’ is concerned, it will indeed yet be established WITH THEM at the ‘set time’ (Ps 102:13). But through the revelation of the mystery of the gospel, it is now seen that the power and spirit of that coming day has come already in unexpected advance of the “last day” (the day upon which all Jewish expectation was fixed). So while the ‘first’ covenant of the law is indeed obsolete, nothing of that former covenant can annul the sure confirmation of the oath that came 400 years earlier. It is that unconditional promise that the prophets have in mind when they speak of an ‘everlasting or new covenant’ to be established with the surviving remnant of the last tribulation, the ‘natural branches’. And though the church has gained advance access to the grace and glories of that everlasting / new covenant, the church of this age does not exhaust its fulfillment, since it is yet to be established with those with whom it was originally made. […]
