[…] If there’s anything I’m sure of, it is that the early apostolic church moved with great urgency under the shadow of an imminent destruction of Jerusalem, which they clearly associated with the onset of a final unequaled time of distress that they expected to immediately precede Christ’s return. This context and framework of the mystery is all but lost. Even where it is in some general sense expected, the church is typically absented from the scene, and hence from the responsibility. Jacob’s trouble becomes ‘Jacob’s problem’. Yet there it is: After millennia of comparative silence, Jerusalem is a modern cup of trembling threatening to “literalize” the language of the prophets. Only now, the church has moved so far away from the covenant and apocalyptic perspecitive and expectation of the early Jewish church that we’ve lost the perspective and with it the urgency as well. And not least is Israel’s relationship to how we understand the nature and context of the gospel itself, and there too lies great work to be done in these days of critical restoration. […]
One People. Two Entities?
[…] But though I agree with Kaiser that there is only one regenerate people of God, the elect of all ages, I also believe that it is not only permissible, but necessary to speak of Israel as the ‘people of God’, or ‘the chosen people’, even now in their present state of unbelief. Even the individual Jew in his unbelief and set to perish apart from gospel regeneration, is nonetheless part of a nation that is UNDER both judgment and promise of a sure and certain destiny. That’s unique to the Jew alone. Even in unbelief, he is part of a body, a nation, a distinct ‘entity’ if you will, that abides in a unique covenant relationship. Though Israel’s covenant does not guarantee the personal salvation of the individual, it does in fact guarantee covenant severity ‘UNTIL’ the end, and covenant mercy ‘AT’ the end. So in that sense, then yes, for the moment only, there are two peoples of God, but not in the dispensational sense. When ‘all Israel’ shall be saved, the two collapse into one forever.[…]
The Mark of the Beast
But compliance with the mark is a statement of an already existing condition that is only being manifested, namely, total and irreversible spiritual reprobation. The outward mark becomes the sign and seal of an irreversible threshold that has already been crossed. The mark is irreversible only because those that take it show that they have already passed into an irreversible union with the spirit of Satan. The scriptures speaks of those that are ‘past feeling’, and that have grieved the Spirit to the point of no return. There’s a mysterious threshold here that we see again at the end of the millennium. I have reason to infer that the false church in its steadfast resistance to the last prophetic testimony will not be able to repent past a certain point (I think the middle of the week), so that while a multitude that no one can number is being saved all throughout “the tribulation, the great one” (Mt 24:21; Rev 7:14), the false professing church of apostate ‘Christendom’ will have passed into final reprobation and may become some of the most rabid persecutors and treacherous betrayers of the true church.
“Reliance” on Doctors
[…] It would appear that the “beloved physician” laid all aside to devote himself to the missionary enterprise, as did the fishermen and tax collectors, but I can’t see where continued use of his medical skills would be in the least conflict with the gifts of healing in the church. A couple of things do come to mind. Anyone that is biblical understands that a living faith in the promises of God is incompatible with a carnal ‘reliance’ on man or mere nature. Asa’s death was attributed to his defection of faith in that he looked to the doctors rather than to the Lord (“Yet in his disease he sought not to the Lord , but to the physicians”). However, Isaiah prescribed a poultice (“For Isaiah had said, Let them take a lump of figs, and lay it for a plaister upon the boil, and he shall recover”). Hence, it is obvious that the believer is no less a believer by his or her use of many things in nature. We ‘use’ many things that we dare not ‘rely’ on, theologically speaking. “Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman wakes in vain.” That doesn’t mean it is vain to employ a ‘watchman’. What is vain is to put one’s trust in the sufficiency of anything ‘apart’ from the blessing and grace of God. It is the independent and self-sufficient spirit that God hates and will at length bring down. However, anything that is agreeable and compatible with the humility of the Spirit is, in my view, agreeable with God. […]
Dispensationalism & More on “One or Two Peoples of God?”
… With the new revelation has come a new language. But this is where we need to exercise caution. We learn from the doctrine of Christ’s pre-existence that for something to be newly revealed does not mean that it has come newly into existence.; This is an important distinction when we are speaking of Christ and the church. Much has come to light in the gospel that had real existence before the dispensation of the fuller revelation. This applies as much to the ‘body of Christ’ as to Christ Himself and the unity of persons in the Godhead. …
Calvin and Freedom of the Will
[…] All the language of the covenant (the divine “I wills”) is writ large with the prevailing power of transforming grace, which is also keeping grace. It’s the gospel of Old Testament promise, and this is precisely what’s at stake when it comes to the question of Israel in Ro 8-11. The very name and glory of God is at stake in this issue of ‘prevailing grace’. The gift of such a transforming revelation doesn’t occur in a vacuum, nor does it do violence to what I like to call ‘the rules of the race’. There is a preliminary work of the Spirit that prepares and goes before the Lord in His sovereign design to ‘quicken whom He will’. Only such ‘prevailing grace’ can guarantee that there will always be an “election according to grace.”
Now this implies no violence to the freedom of the will (properly understood). It simply leaves to God the sovereign prerogative to liberate the will from its natural bondage through a process of death and resurrection, a process that breaks the pride of our power, that shatters carnal confidence through tribulation preparing the way for revelation (compare Lev 26:19; Deut 32:36; Dan 12:7). But none of this without the hearing of faith, which assumes the role of the church as witness (Ro 10:14, 17; 1Cor 1:21). “The people (Israel) shall be ‘willing’ in the day of His power” (Ps 110:3). The time to favor Zion comes only at the ‘set time’ (Ps 102:13; “seventy weeks are ‘determined’; “that which is determined shall be done;” “the end shall be at the time appointed” etc.). And we know that that ‘set time’ is the time of Christ’s post-tribulational coming (Dan 12:1; Mt 24:29-31; 2Thes 2:8). It is then that the Deliverer comes out of Zion in order to “turn ungodliness from Jacob,” as nothing short of His return will finally accomplish the turning of the nation (Mt 23:39 with Acts 3:19-21). Paul said “when it pleased God to reveal His Son in me.” It is the same with the nation; I’m sure of that. […]
The Importance of Chronology in Prophetic Fulfillment
[…] much is conditional and contingent on prayer and obedience of the faithful, but there is a view that so ‘conditionalizes’ the prophetic scripture that some have even proposed to remove the future necessity for Israel’s experience of ‘great tribulation’ through united corporate prayer. However, Jesus said that heaven and earth would sooner pass away before “all these things” should fail of certain fulfillment. And while the believing remnant in the Land are instructed to pray that their flight ‘be not in winter or on the Sabbath’, it would be futile to pray that their flight ‘be not’. So believing that not all prophecy is conditional (see Dan 11:36; “that which is determined shall be done”), I only meant to say that if this unequaled tribulation is indeed future and without precedent or equal (please review in context Jer 30:7; Dan 12:1; Mt 24:21), then it is inexorably sure, regardless of our ability to fathom it. […]
The Time of Jacob’s (Unequaled) Trouble
[…] Note that the unequaled trouble lasts a brief 3 1/2 years and ends in nothing short of the resurrection of the righteous (Dan 12:1-2, 11-13). So Jeremiah’s reference to a coming ‘time of Jacob’s trouble’, also described as without equal (Jer 30:7) is shown in Daniel as concluding the last half of the final week of years. In language almost identical to Daniel and Jeremiah, Jesus refers explicitly to Daniel’s prophecy of the abomination of desolation as marking the start of the unequaled tribulation (Mt 24:15, 21), which ends with His return (Mt 24:29-31), as also Paul in 2Thes 2:1-8. Most of John’s revelation is primarily occupied with the same brief period of 3 1/2 years (Rev 6-19). […]
The Gentile Church: An Unexpected Anomaly
[…] This future reinstatement of the ‘natural branches’ awaits ‘the set time’ (Ps 102:13; Dan 11:27, 29, 35).
That time of fulfillment is clearly future, as shown in Paul’s reference to Isa 59:21 together with a number of other clear passages that speak of Israel’s restoration at the future day of the Lord, also called the ‘last day’ (see Dan 12:1-2 for the time of Israel’s national “deliverance”). That is the time that the final Antichrist is destroyed (Dan 11:36 -12:2 with 2Thes 2:4-8) when Christ returns to establish His thousand year reign over the nations out of a restored Jerusalem. “In that day” Israel receives the revelation that has already come to you and me through the gospel (compare Isa 8:16-17; 66:8; Ezek 39:22-29 with Zech 12:10 and Mt 23:39). In the future ‘day of God’s power’ (Ps 110:3), the surviving remnant of the unequaled tribulation becomes willing concerning the gospel because it has just passed through the greatest trial in their nation’s history, a time called “Jacob’s trouble” (Jer 30:7; Dan 12:1; Mt 24:21). Tom believes with me that the church will be here during this time and that it will be the witness people that God will use to prepare Jewish hearts as we share with them many of the tribulations and persecutions of this final time of judgment and divine pleading (see Ezek 20:33-38; Amos 9:8-15). […]
The ‘Messianic Secret’ and Apostolic Sending
[…] In this sense, ‘apostolic sending’ is itself ‘an apocalyptic phenonmenon’, theologically speaking. Because the secret is more than new information. It is an event not only of divine disclosure but of spiritual quickening. It at once kills and makes alive. The revealed secret, as only apprehended by the Spirit, completely shatters the pride of self-reliance and gives an open heaven of revelation and power. A full and true apprehension of the mystery of God in Christ designs not a knowledge by which one may glory above another (1Cor 4:7), as in gnosticism. But rather a freedom in love that casts out fear and enables a selfless obedience unto death. “And they loved not their lives unto death” (Rev 12:10). The power that loves the enemy, and the freedom from the fear of death are the tests that prove the value of any knowledge or any mystery (1Cor 13:2).
Ever since Pentecost the secret has been the ‘open secret’, but whether it has been apprehended by the Spirit is shown by one thing only, namely, the presence and power of the life of the age to come, Christ revealed in the church (Jn 13:35; Eph 3:21), with the result that “now is come salvation, strength, the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ” (Rev 12:10). Thus the ACTS of the apostles (Dan 11:32-33). […]
