Dec 31, 2016 – Secretary of State, John Kerry recently made a statement that has caught the attention of many. Though not at all in the context of his intention, it stood out to me as ironically and profoundly correct. “Israel can either be democratic or it can be Jewish; […]
Where God Is Taking The Church
[…] Just as the virgin birth was a divine ‘by-pass’ of natural fertility, so is every aspect of the salvation of God. God is supremely jealous for this, because He is supremely jealous that to God alone be all the glory (Soli de Gloria). The cross signifies God’s rejection of all that man is and of anything that man might presume to contribute towards his own salvation. It signifies that the life of the Spirit can only begin at the place of utter death to all natural support (“I dare not trust the sweetest frame but wholly lean on Jesus’ name”). This is why the promised eschatological salvation of Israel is always depicted at the end of their power (Deut 32:36; Lev 26:29; Jer 30:6-7; Dan 12:7).
If this principle is true of Israel in the coming day of the Lord, it is no less true of the church of this age. In fact, that is what makes the church the church. Through the transforming power of the revelation of the gospel, the believer receives the salvation of the coming day in unexpected advance of that day. The church by definition is the first fruits of Israel’s coming salvation. The church is the church only so far as it has received the Spirit that will yet be given to the penitent remnant of Israel at the end of the great tribulation. […]
Amos 9 and the Order of the Return
What do you make of the fact the week the British mandate ended and Israel became a nation, May 14 1948, the Torah portion reading included Amos 9? I think it was a token that the Lord is gracious to encourage those who had so lately endured so much that […]
Shut Up to the God Who Raises the Dead
As it is written, I have made you a father of many nations… before Him whom he believed, even God, who quickens the dead, and calls those things which be not as though they were. Who against all hope believed in hope… I awoke this morning pondering this question: “What […]
More Thoughts on the Restrainer
I have heard you say that Satan is the “restrainer”. How can this be? Wouldn’t this put the timing of the end into Satan’s hands instead of God the Father, Who is sovereign over all? You are not alone in mistaking my meaning. Let me be clear: I do not […]
Israel, the Church and the One New Man
I have always taught that the church is not separate from Israel. It is however obviously distinct from Israel, in the same way that the prophets distinguished between the nation in its apostasy and the righteous remnant. Distinct but NOT separate! To my mind, the church, as I see the […]
When the LORD Brought Again the Captivity of Zion
I am contemplating the church’s necessary awakening to the necessary birth of the millennial nation of the long resistant natural branches, that great ‘without which not’ of the kingdom come on earth. But without this awakening, how will the church know its role as prophet priest intercessor and mid-wife in […]
“Never Again”
When the general boasts that the IDF is sufficient guarantee that the nation will “never again” suffer another Holocaust, it is nothing new. But surely there is a tragic prophetic irony to be detected when he unconsciously casts the ill-fated promise in the very language of scripture (“no weapon or intent formed against you will prosper”). Whether secular or religious, it is this deep humanism, by no means peculiar to Israel, that condemns the favored nation to another and another, simply because it is the object of God’s special election.
“They Were Longing for a Better Country, A Heavenly One”
What could be more “heavenly” than a country whose inhabitants transcend death and inherit God Himself?
That this should be in a literal Land that is inherited “forever” is no contradiction at all.
Even if we discover by ‘progressive revelation’ that the Land will someday be transcended by a new heavens and earth, this does not make the thousand year reign of Christ on earth, or the promise of an eternal inheritance of the Land any less heavenly.
The Waters of Shiloah vs The Waters of “The River”
You rightly point out that the comparison between the stream and the river [in Isaiah 8:6-8] is a comparison between kingdoms and the nature and disposition by which they rule, as seen in 2Sam 22:3-4 & Ps 72:4, 6, as gentle and just, as over against the arbitrary will of […]
