From a January 2016 GFW Saturday night Bible Study, this Session was on Isaiah 17.

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Full Transcript below:

Tom, it would be an interesting exercise to go through the prophets. Of course, actually, not just the Old Testament, because the New Testament is very clear that Jerusalem is the special object of Antichrist’s hatred, the treading under foot for 42 months. So this is not some Old Testament thing that a bunch of, you know, hyper literalists are latching on to here.

But this is everywhere. This is everywhere you read about the Day of the Lord. Everywhere.

Not only when that name, that word is particularly used, and it’s close associated terms in that day and in those days, etc. And then often the things that will be accomplished at that day are mentioned that have fulfillment in no other time. I mean, I know there’s some partial fulfillment throughout history, but.

So all roads lead to the Day of the Lord. And I just want to give a little story. It had to do with something that John Piper wrote some years back, and Art gave it to me, and Art was impressed with it, and I somewhat was, too.

Art said, what do you think of this? In other words, is he right? My answer was yes and no. Well, that was tentative at the time. Right now it would be a resounding no.

But it was very appealing because it asked this question, does Israel, in their present unbelief on this side of new covenant righteousness, do they have, and he used this term, talk about a slippery term. I don’t suggest at all that he did it consciously, of course, but it’s a disarming term. The word is, and some of you all may have heard this, does Israel in their present state have a quote-unquote divine right to the land? Well, first of all, that’s disarming, because how can you at once speak of grace and right? You know, there is no right, yet, you know, God has put his whole big picture together around one nation.

That’s the nation that gives the framework and the context, not only of the past, but of the future. And let’s see, where I want to go with this is this, so the idea is, is that Israel’s pretty much fair game. They’re like any other nation.

I heard one leading pastor use such a crass term as, there’s no more significance to modern Israel or to the to the Middle East conflict, biblically, than a border war between, I think he said Paraguay and Uruguay, but I don’t think those nations are actually, there’s not a natural border there. I don’t know what, but you get the point. In other words, he reduces it to a non-significance that has all to do with the Jewish apocalyptic dream, they’re back in the land.

And yet, Phil, I believe it was, one of you just a moment ago, read Joel chapter 3, verses 1, 2, and 3 there, and that clearly is the day of the Lord. And all through the scriptures, the day of the Lord is all about the the climax to a ultimate showdown in the Middle East between Israel and her neighbors most immediately, but a trembling Jerusalem, a burdensome stone that has brought all the nations into a vortex and entangled and engaged all nations in a way that they cannot disentangle themselves from. And so, you know, God is flushing something to the surface here.

And so I began to think about that, and I thought, well, when has Israel ever been in New Covenant righteousness? There is always, as June was just saying, there’s only ever been a remnant like Joshua and Caleb who had a different spirit. Moses himself knew for himself the circumcised heart, but he said to his Jewish compatriots, to his people, he says, but I know you guys, I know that you will not prolong your days in the land. You will go into the land, and you will possess it.

And be very sure, Deuteronomy chapter 9, that this is not about your righteousness, because you’re like this and not like that, and so on. In other words, this is nothing to do with any merit on your part. But it’s true that, now, and I didn’t let you go in until the iniquity of the Amorites had been fully fulfilled.

And by the way, he will bear in that land a largely unbelieving Jewish nation, as he has many times over and through many generations, so long as their iniquity has not reached a certain intolerable threshold with God. God is all, he’s very well aware that he’s only got a remnant, and for the sake of that remnant, and for the sake of his larger purpose, he bears that nation with much long-suffering. And he blesses them with common grace, and more than common grace, he blesses them with families, with a measure, but they’re always under the looming, hanging, you know, jeopardy of the covenant.

They’re under the threat of a covenant that, okay, God will be patient, he will bear, he will send prophets, but there is a threshold, just like the Amorites had a threshold of iniquity, that when you reach that threshold, Tom, you’re frozen there. Is there something going on technologically here that, I mean, can you guys hear me? I can hear you. I don’t want to get in too deep here, I’ve been enjoying, I don’t want to, but so the great, they’re coming into the land, yet Moses says, you will not be able to keep the land until I see ahead to a future time.

It’s in the latter days, and he gives it the name that the prophets are going to carry and develop the great tribulation. Now, the prophets will call it trouble, affliction, distress, many names, calamity, but it’s the great tribulation, and only at that time of great tribulation, at that time of transitioning crisis, will all the nation know him, because until then, there’ll only be a remnant, and that remnant that is righteous will, may, as we’ve often pointed out, may forestall, may give a moment of revival, may forestall captivity and exile, but can never finally prevent it. They can be assault and a lie, but they can never finally prevent the ever-present threat of the covenant and the cycles of judgment and of exile.

As you know, Daniel and Ezekiel and others went right down into exile and suffered with their nation, but always they were aware, they knew they had a new heart, they knew they even had the sure mercies of David, they would speak about the peace and the righteousness that they had by the Spirit, they had the Spirit, but they knew that was never enough. Only when all of Israel, after a time of final purging and final discipline, at the end of their power, when they would all have at that time a circumcised heart, what the later prophets will call a new heart or a sprinkled heart, only then would the Kingdom of God be able to come on earth, because it cannot come on earth unless that people and not another, I want to stress that, that people and not another are able to inherit that land and keep it forever. Now, the point I’m making against Piper’s thesis and many of these others who have joined in, is that they’re saying, well, Israel can’t really have a divine right to the land until they qualify under the new covenant, but never in their history did they qualify as a nation that was for the larger part, even for the larger part, let alone in that new covenant righteousness, in that righteousness, of course, that, and this is difficult because, you know, well, the new covenant wasn’t here until Jews was here.

Yes, in a way, the regenerating work of the Spirit was certainly here, it was on the basis of what Jews would accomplish in history, in His blood, but all of history has waited for this nation to be altogether righteous in that land, no longer subject to the threat of their enemies, no longer subject to be uprooted and put out into the nations, or even in a way where that, now, by the way, that does not mean, and the scriptures are very clear, that millennial Israel will be without sin. There’s a sin offering right in the midst of the land, there’s a continual reminder, just like we have, we’re reminded continually of our continual need of cleansing. They will have that.

The terms of the new covenant existed before Jeremiah would particularly call it new, and it was given in Psalm 89, 2 Samuel 7, you know, verse 10, a lot of places, 1 Chronicles 16, other places, where this everlasting covenant was something that was presented as present and active, but it would not, it would not be fully secure to Israel until the coming in of the everlasting righteousness, which would come at the great day of the Lord, for them, for them. It’s come already for the church, it’s come already in Christ, but this, there is an outstanding abiding not yet, and what the age is waiting for is for that nation, for ungodliness to be turned away from Jacob. So God has put all of his marbles, so to speak, all of his investment, with the bringing in of that historically impossible people, you know, intractable, you can’t, you know, you can plead with them, but for the larger part, Israel would always tend to backslide.

The new covenant promises a final victory over that tendency, the tendency to slide away backwards. The new covenant promises that, and that is given, that will come to Israel, it’s already come to the church, to the masculine, to the believing remnant, but it waits to the time when it would come to Israel, when the face of God would no longer be hidden from that nation again forever, and when they would possess that land from the Euphrates. So it’s all about, it’s all about God’s original word and his original promise that he would bring that people in, and they would be able to keep that land forever, but that would only come at the end of a final tribulation in the latter days, when not just a few of them had the circumcised heart, because there was always a remnant, but where now, all of them would have the circumcised heart, and they would no longer need to teach everyone his neighbor, but they would all know him, speaking particularly of Jewish families, would all know him from the least to the greatest, and all their children after that would be taught of God, and his spirit that was upon Isaiah, and would be upon Israel in that day, would never again depart, not only from them, but not even from their children’s children.

So now you have real security in the land by a nation who has been brought into a righteousness, not just of a few, but of a whole nation, but that righteousness, and back to what you’re saying, Tom, was never the righteousness of even the best of well-intentioned man, it was the righteousness of God. It could not be any other righteousness than the righteousness of the Spirit, working, quickening and working in the believer, and that’s why I like to talk about this point about stumbling. Adam was talking about stumbling at this thing where how we see the Jew in the last day.

What we do with these, his brethren, when they’re in their beleaguered, imperiled, in flight, you know, what we do with them in that day being very telling of our eternal destiny. I mean, he says, as you did it to them, you’ve done it to me, as you overlooked and neglected to do it to them, and while that’s true in principle of anyone, you know, of mercy and of whatever, but this is particularly, we talked about this before, this is particularly true of how people view Israel. Now, we know that we’re not saved on the basis of how we view Israel, let’s be very clear, nor are we saved by some end-time righteous work of hiding Jews.

No. What’s clear, though, is that these things are a manifestation of a disposition and bent of the heart, that we love what God loves, that we are in touch and even in fellowship with what God is doing and what he has chosen to do, and we’re in sync and we’re in step with the Holy Spirit and with the intentions and purposes and goals of God and in union with God. So, the Jew then becomes very telling.

Art would call him a litmus test. They become very telling of our true relationship with God. How we really, what kind of knowledge of God do we really have? Do we have a knowledge of God where his word is just as true and if Israel remains in exile forever, if they’re never brought in, if ungodliness is never turned away from the natural branches, is that going to be okay? Or are we really looking to God to vindicate his word and to avenge his great covenant promise and to know that we’re in the thick of it with God, like the prophets of old.

We may indict Israel, we may call Israel’s hand on their neglect of God and of his covenant and their need of a new heart, but we love Israel. We are completely in travail, like a midwife, till Christ be formed. Our heads are full of tears, God helping us.

Our heads are full of the sorrow of Paul, not because Paul warned his countrymen, say, but because God, Paul wanted the glory of God in his name vindicated and famous throughout the earth. And that the principalities and powers that began this whole war on the word that goes all the way back to Eden, they began by asking, has God really said? That’s what they’re still asking. And what significance is an unbelieving Jewish people in the land? And why does God, at the great day of God, take it out on the nations and avenge himself so absolutely, fiercely, when the people of Israel were absolutely the objects of Hitler, they were sitting ducks for divine discipline.

They had really brought upon them, through their provocation of God, through their making a covenant with death that held with very Antichrist, they had brought upon them the final throes of Jacob’s trouble itself, the greatest and most unequal time of Jewish suffering, dispersion, and throughout, you know, of history, another Holocaust. So yet, the people that are under that, by their own deserving, by their own provocation of divine wrath, and the nations, like the Assyrian being the very instrument of that wrath, yet God says, you know, woe to you who are the instruments. Woe to you who are the unwitting and willing despisers of Israel, because in your despising them, you’ve despised me.

When you laid hands upon them, and this is not just true of the last days, it’s true of all days, when you laid hands upon them, humanistic, unknowing, undiscerning hands, you were laying them on me, just like they laid them on me when they manhandled my own son. And so, Israel stumbled before Jesus came. Before Jesus came, before they stumbled at the stumbling block, Paul says they had already stumbled.

Where is that? That’s Romans 9. It says Israel stumbled at the stumbling block, and he didn’t just give that stumbling the name Jesus. Jesus would be the perfect and ultimate embodiment of an ongoing condition of truth. And that condition was summed up this way.

They had the right standard, but they had the wrong approach. They sought the righteousness that was represented in the law as if, when it never was, but as if it was a righteousness of works, when in fact it was a righteousness of faith. How they perceived and how they sought it, it was very telling of the condition of their heart.

So Jesus came and exposed an already existing condition. Now, what I submit is that what’s going to happen with Israel, and just this week I’ve learned of close friends and families and sterling homeschool families that already some of their more academic sons and so forth, they’re actually entertaining and buying in to anti-Zionist, pro-Palestinian. I mean, it’s sad.

And at the same time, European Jews are feeling increasingly unsafe all over the world. There’s this circulating doctrine throughout the church that, oh yeah, the natural branches may come in someday, but they have no right to that present land. They’re nothing until Jesus comes back.

They have signified nothing but Jewish dreams and Jewish aggressions and Jewish occupation. That’s going on all throughout evangelicalism. Do you see what’s the writing on the wall? The rising tide of anti-Semitism and its resurgence.

I mean, these things should sober and make us understand. We’ve got to tell the church that, you know, I once heard a very well beloved and reputable minister who, and I know he meant well, but he says, you know, Jehovah is not in covenant with Ahab. I was a young guy when I heard that. It’s very respected that I look up to this guy.

I go, wait a minute, something’s wrong with that. You know what? Jehovah is not in a new covenant relationship with Ahab. That’s so true. But Jehovah is in covenant with Ahab, and that’s why Ahab gets a double discipline.

The Jewish people are in covenant even when they’re outside of Christ, as witness history and their exposure to a double discipline that someday will meet with a double glory. But right now and until that day, they remain under a double discipline of God. The scriptures are very clear.

You only have I known among the nations. Amos 3:2. Therefore I will punish you. Well, anyhow, so I’m talking about a couple things.

This war on the word. Has God really said? That’s what’s at stake. In Numbers 14, when God said to Moses, step aside.

The great question was, can I and will I and have I spoken concerning this people? And Moses reminds God, of course God fully knows that he would be stirring the intercessor Christ and Moses would then plead. God had already ordained he would answer that prayer. So God says, you know, indeed I’ve heard your prayer and I will forgive this people.

I will not desert them or sign off on them or go to another more cooperative people or make a nation out of a godly Moses. I will not relinquish or relent on my pursuit to bring this people in. The people that I brought out, though they be ever so recalcitrant, ever so, you know, corrupting of themselves, I will not sign off.

I will persist until my glory fills all the earth. Why? Because when the Jews return and they look upon them and unbelief is purged away forever from Israel, it will be like the parting of the Red Sea. Certainly Jesus will be back.

He will crack the sky. His feet is touched down. But at the same time, that seismic event is still happening.

The Jewish people, the heart of the Jewish people are being rent. At the same time, the Mount of Olives is dividing. Their heart is being rent as they look upon Him.

And it’s an absolute end. Now the collective veil is taken away from the Jewish people and God’s name is vindicated. So my point is, Israel stumbled at Jesus.

Jesus exposed an already existing condition. He embodied a principle. Did they know God? People knew God.

Nathaniel was an Israelite indeed. People knew God and they would prove that they knew God by hearing this carpenter’s, this prophet’s words and recognizing who he was by the Spirit. They would, whether they knew God or not, would be found out by this stumbling block in their midst.

Whether people know God or have they true Jesus. You know, there’s another Jesus. Paul speaks about another Jesus, another spirit.

That will be proven, not made one way or the other so much as proven and exposed, found out and revealed by how they will respond to the crisis of Israel. How they will understand the the controversy of Zion and what God is doing. God is closing in on the Jew.

He’s not, He cannot, His name and in words is at stake. He cannot leave them in that condition. So the issue of the Jew is the issue of a righteousness that is God’s alone.

They can build a Tower of Babel, they can have, you know, they could, they can, they can reconstruct their temple, have all their sacrifice, they can do everything. But unless they have come into what’s called the righteousness of the Lord Himself, the righteousness that is everlasting, that is to say the righteousness of the Holy Spirit. Until they come into that righteousness and seeing that unsealed, revealed mystery, the gospel, they are condemned to continue the cycle of judgment.

They remain completely vulnerable and exposed to further covenant discipline, which will in the tribulation include another dispersal. I mean, you can’t, they come down to scatter my people. I tell you, they accomplish it.

They don’t just come down there with intentions to scatter the Jewish people, they accomplish to scatter the Jewish people. And everything waits on that people coming to the end of that power and to the end of that veil that’s over their hearts, and knowing Him, not just a few, but that remaining remnant, so that every one of them that goes in the Millennium know Him from the least to greatest. What does the end of the covenant really, therefore, say? That God cannot rest until Jerusalem is appraised in the whole earth.

And what does that mean? That means the Jews have come into such a righteousness as that they will never again depart. Jeremiah 32 verse 40. To such a righteousness that no enemy can ever threaten their peace again, that they lie down safely and none can ever again make them afraid.

That’s the day when the present boast of never again will become a true fulfillment of divine promise. And so, God, the war, it’s on the Word. That’s what Israel is all about.

That’s why Satan goes after the woman with such a vehemence, because his time is short. If they come into that land and possess it as an all-righteous nation, it’s over. His tenure over the nations is utterly broken, and God’s name and Word is openly, publicly vindicated.

And so, God is the proof of the pudding. It’s not just, you know, we know and believe in Christ’s resurrection, but He was seen of chosen witnesses. His resurrection was not a public event.

It was in the sight of heaven, but it was known of hell, but it was only known of witnesses and those who would believe through their word. The resurrection of national Israel will be open and public to the confounding of every gainsaying spirit, because the mystery of God will be finished and the veil that covers the nations will be removed. When? In one day.

That’s why we get here at the end of Isaiah 17:14. Behold, an evening in trouble. You know, the Assyrian that was contemporary, that was local, that was threatening Israel, that made Isaiah’s contemporary prophecy have contemporary relevance, that guy went home after he was frustrated at the walls of Jerusalem and lived several more years.

Now, his kingdom began to decline and would later give way to Babylon, but all the prophecies that talk about this Assyrian, who, by the way, we’ve made a great case in our other gatherings, this is the Antichrist. He’s cut off in one hour, just like Israel was born in one day, this guy is destroyed in one hour, and it’s repeated many places. This evening time sounds very much like Zechariah 14, in, you know, it shall not be evening.

In other words, that one day that’s known to the Lord is the day of the Antichrist’s destruction, is the day when the Lord appears to destroy him with the brightness of his mouth, and I believe there’s a great case to be made that that’s the same day that Israel was born again, not as a secular nation, largely secular, but as a holy nation in one day. This is the Antichrist. This is not the contemporary Assyrian.

He passed off the scene, you know, and he went back home and survived a number of years, but this guy, the one that he was a mere, you know, he was a mere type of this ultimate anti-type, he is cut off in one day. So, before Jesus can come, the mystery of iniquity’s got to be fulfilled. Think with me now.

Go to 2 Thessalonians 2. Christ cannot come back right now. Why can’t he come back right now, Paul? Let no man deceive you by any means. That day will not come, except there come a falling away first, the man of sin be revealed.

Now, why? Because the mystery of iniquity has all together to do with this final man of sin who will embody this principle that was in some measure shown in all these former great aggressors and oppressors of Israel. But this guy is the ultimate embodiment of this principle, of this Lucifer, this king of Babylon, this Assyrian, same, different guys with same spirit, same essence, must come to a final climactic embodiment in this Antichrist who’s destroyed in one day. Why? Because he’s the one that’s the rod of God through which Israel is smitten and brought down to the end of their power.

And his destruction is their resurrection, is their revelation of the gospel and of the mystery of the gospel. They see Jesus like Paul saw him on the road to Damascus in one day. And I wish we had a little time, you know, if you check it sometime, just look up the word hour and you’ll see how often this Antichrist is destroyed by the voice of the Lord in one hour, in one moment.

It’s the same moment that Israel is looking upon it. It’s from that day and forward they know him, for the iniquity of that land will be cleansed in one day, and so on we could continue. But this is a crisis critical moment.

Israel is at the end of their power. This man has ruled oppressively, you know, ruled the nations for 42 months and he’s trampled Israel down for 42 months. This is what we’re looking at and his destruction is a picture of all those who have this ancient anti-semitic hatred in their heart.

God is going to use the issue of Israel and the end times to flush this out, to bring this out in the open and hearts are going to be divided and exposed over the issue of Israel. In some cases more clearly than the issue of Christ. Christ would come and expose who really knew God and who knew him not.

Israel is going to expose the hearts of those who call themselves Christians and are not. I better quit, but you see what you see that this is this is the big picture. There is this commitment of God to bring this people in because it’s his ultimate vindication against the continual hatred and opposition of Satan.

His name is at stake. That’s what Israel means and Israel is showing that no other righteousness than the righteousness that raises the dead and and preserves someone in a holiness and a righteousness that is not their own. Only a righteousness of that kind of perpetuity, of that kind of continuance can see an all-saved nation and that salvation extend to children’s children.

No wonder the commentators and theologians say that has to happen. Why? Because they can’t conceive of literal Jews on this literal planet having literal children born with natural fallen natures who before they’re of any mature age already know the Lord and that every one of them know the Lord from the least to greatest and every one of their children born to them for a thousand years of divine demonstration, of burning bush testimony and witness to every spirit that says, oh he can’t bring them in. They’re too much for him.

I tell you the Jews not too much for God any more than Paul in the road to Damascus was too much for God. For in the day of his power, the scripture says, they will be made willing. When the time to come and the time to favor Zion, yes, the set time has come.

God knows how to bring the people to their end and quicken them in a resurrection authority and power, not literal. There’ll be literal resurrection but there’ll be a spiritual resurrection for the Jews that go into the kingdom in their natural bodies and that resurrection life will show itself in that people for a thousand years. They won’t be perfect and they won’t be sinless but they will be holy and they will keep covenant and therefore the covenant will be so kept by the power of the new nature, by the power of the the outpoured spirit that they’ll never go back again or slide back and become exposed again to the threat of the broken covenant.

So those are the things that we need to simplify, clarify, make plain on tables, show the case, make the case and then put it before the nations because God will not come back and judge a world that has not become very, very accountable through the prophetic anointing and authority of clearly spoken witnesses. Like Travis’s loves that word, the credible witness of the church. That church has got to come to fullness.

Thank you, June, for that. It’s got to come to fullness. Everything waits on the church.

It’s got to come to fullness. Everything waits on the church and yet the church also waits on God because only God can take us where we corporately would not have gone. He is the one who must intervene and straighten us with a straightening of his own wise choosing that we could never get it together with all of our brilliant, you know, there’s never been a time when I’ve seen a greater dearth for the word, yet there’s a glut, simultaneously a glut of every kind of wonderful, even evangelical, even sound and accurate.

I mean, it looks like anything but a dearth for the word and yet subtly and there’s a hidden holocaust almost of a dearth for the true prophetic Word of God in its cutting-edge holiness and calling and preparation of a people unto death for the sake of this worldwide witness that must go out because the nations come down against Israel are coming down there over the dead body, so to speak, of chosen witnesses that will have spoken very clearly and confronted them. They will be confronted. They will know or have opportunity to know what they’re doing and we won’t just go out and say, oh, God loves Jews.

He chose the Jews. We’re going to be giving them the reasons why God chose the Jews. What’s at issue? What is God’s great point? Now, first of all, it’s certainly just enough that he did choose them and that’s his word.

Don’t go against his word, but God wants you to fellowship. He wants you to come on in and understand his thinking. Why he chose the Jew is not so peculiar once you begin to understand the purposes that he’s invested in them so that he could attain those great goals which have all to do with his glory in all the earth through no other means than choosing a people who would show themselves absolutely unable forevermore to get it together and yet for all their inability God would accomplish a miracle that would bring them to a place of apostolic priesthood like Paul and make them the light to the nations they were first called to be.

The age can’t end without that. We can’t just skip a millennium. We can’t just go, you know, straight to new heavens and new earth and be done with this whole Israel thing, divesting the modern state of Israel of any particular significance, making it just a war between aggressive people and victim people and all these other things.

This is God who’s brought them back and the nations are very, very accountable and I think we’ve seen nothing yet. We’ve seen nothing of how very accountable the nations are going to be when this war begins to gel and the strands begin to pull together and we begin to be very clear and this vision is made plain on tables. It will be compact, pressed together, and it will literally really challenge hearts, but it’ll give the hungry and the weary and the willing and it will give them an opportunity for glory, but it’s a costly glory and it’s going to be important that they taste that glory because only a taste of that glory will give them the stamina to be objective and not look for pre-trib raptures or some other, you know, excuse, but to prepare them to go the distance in such incredible difficult times, only it’s going to be by the same means that Jesus went the distance because the joy that was set before Him.

Unless we’ve seen and tasted the glory, it’s not about just a happy life, you know, God gives that in measure, but that’s always something we must leave and sacrifice for the glory. God is in it for the glory. He’s the only being in all the universe who literally must, in consistency with His own nature, seek His own glory because His glory is the best thing for this whole world.

So I love it when He says to Moses, I will forgive this people, this intractable nation, I will not go and find a more compliant people, I will not leave, I knew who they were and what they would be like before I even called them, you know. He called Jacob from the womb. He called him before the womb, that it might be very clear that before the children were born, that his basis for calling and the election of Jacob had nothing to do with Jacob’s merit or works and that’s the issue with Israel.

You hit it right on the head, Tom. It’s the issue of a righteousness that is not our own. And unless we attain to that righteousness, which is only attainable by faith and by the gift of the Spirit, I don’t care what you accomplish, I don’t care how you cultivate, you know, by every studied discipline you can conceive, by every accurate consent to every truth, unless that righteousness is your righteousness, then your righteousness and the best that you can do cannot stand before an infinitely holy God.

It will writhe in retreat because it’s unbearable to stand before that God without the covering that’s only provided through Messiah’s blood. That’s our task. I think we’ve got a task to the church to bring them up to with Israel of what he’s invested, why the end of the age climax is around the Israel, the issue of Israel, and why it’s not a separate issue from the gospel, but it’s intimately related.

And then the next, that’s so educating the church, but we also have to bring to the Jewish attention that anti-semitism is not just assigned to the church, it’s assigned to them, that their calamities must continue, that they must be continually exposed from one cycle of judgment to the other until their proud boast of never again comes down in the dust and they are raised into a righteousness that is not their own. But this issue, in it, Romans 117, in it is the righteousness of God revealed. I was thinking the other day, I’ve talked about the word, I think Art gave the term apocalyptic evangelism.

We’ll see. What we’re really preaching is an apocalyptic righteousness. It’s a righteousness that can only be and is only revealed by the Spirit.

It’s only found in Christ and that alone fulfills the law and it’s all of its demands. And that righteousness must be revealed by the Spirit, not by mere teaching. I mean teaching has its preparatory, preliminary role, but that’s a righteousness that must be quickened.

When Peter said, when Jesus said to Peter, upon this rock I will build my church. He wasn’t just talking about Peter’s accurate confession. He certainly wasn’t talking about Peter the man, like in Roman Catholicism, but he was talking about Peter’s revelation, which the flesh and blood could not mediate or communicate.

You must have a revelation to be alive to God that flesh and blood is powerless to quicken or communicate. You must know God by the Spirit, by the Spirit of revelation. And only when you’ve seen his face are you changed from glory to glory.

And that’s only by the Spirit. Flesh and blood cannot reveal it. The teaching can bring you up to a point and ideally it brings you to the point of crisis.

And crisis brings you to the point of weakness and self despair. And that weakness is the issue of the veil. Then the revelation of God comes.

Where does it come? It comes to those who have been touched by the finger of God that’s brought them to a death that they could never have come to. To a sense of sin and its exceeding simpleness that they could have never known except by the Spirit. So it’s all about the Spirit.

And Israel is the great test that will test the hearts of those that claim they love God and know God when they do not understand the lengths to which God will go and must go to to bring Israel back under the bond of the covenant. He’ll spare nothing. Who hates his child is the one that spares his child.

Israel will not be spared. And for those who know what Israel must go through and not have a broken heart and all they can occupy themselves is with those those immoral Jews who have gay parades in Tel Aviv. That’s all they’ve got.

That’s really knowing Israel after the flesh. That’s not knowing God’s heart. That’s a moralistic self-righteous um you know It misses the whole point.

Part of that very point is these people are helpless to lift themselves out of the quagmire of their own corruptions. They are helpless. The leopard cannot change his spots.

The Ethiopian cannot change his skin. These people that are cut, they cannot. You can count on one thing from the natural man.

That’s the natural man will act naturally. And so certainly Israel’s a bit guilty of aggressions and things that are not that not even in keeping with some of their own ideals and ethics, but that doesn’t change anything of God’s election. And the way that we presume that God is in this thing looking for a few good guys like the marines, that’s completely a misunderstanding of grace and the way it even works.

But Israel exists to demonstrate grace. They are the open public. I’ve always said, you know, they’re the window through which we see ourselves.

But if you just see them, you haven’t seen anything. But in looking at them, if you see yourself and you know that there’s no difference, then you’re seeing something and then you can be instructed. Anyhow, you opened some very rich questions, Tom.

I hope I spoke to some of them and maybe you can call out from some of that. But yeah, God is in covenant with Ahab because Ahab belongs to a corporate entity of which the gifts and calling are never revoked based on behavior. Ahab will die and go to hell without Christ, but Ahab will pay a double price on the way to hell.

That nation endures a special chasing. That is God’s national son. Prodigal? Yes.

But elect and beloved forevermore. They are his eternal nation. Other nations come and go.

And I loved what Adam’s saying, you know, you don’t see God speak of any other nation like people’s very eternal destinies being bound up with their attitude towards other nations. He is, God is born with these nations rising up and swallowing up and whatever. He’s rebuked it.

He’s judged it. He’s prophetically condemned it, but he’s born it. He’s tolerated.

But this time when these nations come down upon a rehabilitated nation of Israel that’s been in the dust of exile for 18 centuries, 19 centuries, and they sweep down like the wolf on the fold, upon that nation they’ve crossed a red line and his fury comes up in his face and says, you’ve gone too far. I’m dealing with my people. I will discipline them.

I will bring them to their end, but there’ll be redemption. But for those of you that win now, you’ll lose forever. And for the Jew that loses now, he’ll win forever.

And there’s a great table-turning thing. And so antisemitism, do we owe it to the world to warn them of the cost and the high price of it? And how come the church is falling under it, making all kinds of adjustments to begin to see, oh, they’ll even say, you know, the Jews will someday be grafted back in in some way into some end-time evangelism. And then when Christ comes and the Christians inherit the earth, the Jews may have some pinch of it and there may be some significance to the land then.

But right now there’s no significance to that land. Right now there’s no particular significance to a people that have come back against all odds for, you know, after centuries of peculiar, strange, divine chastisement, persecution, hatred among the nations. And the Jews know it.

I mean, listen to Bibi Netanyahu. He speaks about this. He says, it’s nothing new to us, this Jew hatred.

It’s nothing new. And you guys are acting like it’s nothing. And you’re letting it go.

It’s building up again. He sees it coming. And all they can do is try to muscle up and answer an insoluble dilemma in the only way they know, through strength.

And yet the only strength that God can receive is His own strength, through faith. So who cannot see Israel as a pitiable race, a byword spoken against and, you know, bowed down always. And, you know, sure, a lot of them are in Hollywood and doing, you know, prospering or whatever.

But for the larger part, they’re haunted. Even those that are in Hollywood that are living it up, they’re haunted by what happened only a generation ago to their people and what now is building up again. We have got to exploit the neurosis and fear and the natural concern in the Jewish heart to bring the great issues of the covenant and the claims of the covenant back to their consciousness.

And use that as a crowding, pointing effect to point them to the only righteousness that can ever fulfill the covenant, which is to say, is the Lord our righteousness, Jesus. And God help us. I just hope that we can be clear, because it is a rather multifaceted issue.

And it’s not enough just to say, oh, the Jews are God’s chosen people. You’ve got to show what God is doing with them. He is testing hearts.

He’s saying, what do you do with my people? Just like what do you do with my son? What do you do with them? What do you do with the Jew in your midst will be very telling of what you have done and will do with God. Even in their offensiveness, even in their unbelief and in their opposition and their vexations, God has made them that way so that we’re not loving them on the basis of some impressive morality or high standard of democracy or whatever. In other words, those cannot be the reasons that we love and receive and pray for and intercede and travail for the Jewish people.

The reason has got to be the glory of God and, of course, the mercy upon their souls. And that’s what I… Go ahead, Tom. Take it on.

Amen. Excellent. And I just have a prayer in my heart to ask the Lord to… Lord, send laborers into the harvest and send this message.

Lord, send warning to the nations that are gathering against Israel. Send warning, Lord. And send the gospel to Israel, Lord.

Gospel warning to hide yourself from the wrath to come. Lord, send laborers. Send this message.

Send your heart and speak it forth, Lord, in the earth. Send, oh God, send. You are the great sender.

It’s futile to go unless one is sent, Lord. So invest in that sending and, Lord, hasten your work in us, path in us, till we’re filled with your glory and we’re telling your story over the land and sea. Lord, publish it among the nations.

You said the Lord gave the word and great was the company that published it. That everyone that has truly read by the Spirit, Lord, will have a fire that cannot be quenched until they run and indefatigably run throughout the nations, Lord, with a witness that cannot be easily gain said or resisted, that removes the cloak and the covering and the hiding place. Lord, make us clear as simple as that a child could write it, Lord.

Let us use these complex and difficult issues, but Lord, reduce them to a simplicity that makes it accessible to the wayfaring man. Lord, make it plain. Make it simple.

Make it clear. Make it pure, unadulterated, unmixed, unconfused, and let your own claims and your own challenges be clear so that the world has a clear choice in Jesus’ name. Thank you, Lord.

Come and shut the mouths of those high speeches that are spoken against you daily. Those that lift up themselves in our universities and all throughout the world. Those who know so much and yet they know so little.

And Lord, that you would even give many of them repentance, just like you gave many of those that were official priest and Pharisees repentance. Some of them also believed. Lord, open that wonderful gate, that glorious gate of whosoever will.

But let it, Lord, come so clear that the choice is before us. And let us make that connection, the Jerusalem-Jesus connection. Let us make it clear so that the power of the prophetic scripture to blow away all the hiding place of unbelief, to expose it, and to force the choice.

And Lord, I know that not a hungry, weakened, desperate, needful person, Lord, it will not elude them. But you’ve hidden it from the wisdom of this age, Lord. Even though it’s declared, you said, I will do a work in your day, a work which you shall in no wise believe no man declared to you, Lord.

But it won’t be because it wasn’t clear. It won’t be because you had not spoken and done works which no other one can work, Lord. It won’t be because you did not bring your church to fullness and prepare the way.

Oh God, I pray, Lord, that a great line in the sand will be drawn and that the issue of anti-Semitism, we’ll know in wisdom how to use that issue to save many alive and to turn many to righteousness, Lord, and how to use the issue of God’s relentless covenant pursuit of Israel to bring them to the end of themselves and therefore to an end of the law for righteousness in the face of Jesus Christ. I just pray, God, for wisdom, you were so simple and clear. Your parables were so amazing.

Lord, give us that kind of simplicity. Lord, we don’t care that any one of us have it, but that all of us together contributing and working and laboring and sharing thoughts and helping each other, Lord, would forge and form a clear word that the young people can use with one another and that, you know, housewives and others can use to teach and to share with their loved ones. Lord, something that will be a standard lifted, a clear trumpet sound, Lord, that will go to the nations and, Lord, that many, many, Lord, will instruct many.

Lord, raise up that company. I know it’s not numerical. It is qualitative.

Raise up that company that will instruct the many and let that instruction begin now, Lord. Lord, don’t defer and wait only till the tribulations upon us, but let there be a clear word in the earth so that no one has a truly justified excuse. We just thank you, God.

We just thank you. Come, Lord. It’s you.

You paid for it. Lord, this is your day, Lord. Make your way back, Lord.

Make straight your own way back, Lord. Bring the rest of the outstanding things that you have yet to be fulfilled. Bring them to pass, Lord.

Lord, accomplish it. Fulfill your two days. Lord, bring quickly, Lord, your kingdom.

Lord, not the American dream, not just another day in paradise, but Lord, bring your kingdom, Lord, and let us love your glory more than our own comforts, enough that we will sacrifice and tremble and move with holy fear, and Lord, we repent. We repent. We’ve not been in that kind of place, but you know how to get us there, Lord.

Give us repentance, Lord. Break our hearts, Lord. Make us, Lord, a people who do not—oh, God—who do not hold back.

In Jesus’ name.

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04-14-11 Update: We have now made all articles viewable online for easier access to Scripture references.

08-23-22 Update: Originally posted on mysteryofisrael.org in 2011. More recently we have fixed all of the links and thought to bump it to the top again. We have also tagged a number of articles with the “Apocalyptic Evangelism” category.

Module 1:

1. What is Apocalyptic Evangelism? [PDF]
2. What Difference Does It Make How Christians View Prophecy? [PDF]
3. The National Hope in Context [PDF] (part of a larger piece called
   “The Historic Impasse Between Church and Synagogue”)
4. The Hebraic View of Prophecy [PDF]
5. The Significance of Jerusalem in Prophecy [PDF]

Module 2:

1. Restoring the Context: Pt. 2 [PDF]
2. The Key of the Mystery of Israel in the Reign of Grace [PDF]

For further information on the ongoing development of the Apocalytic Evangelism Course click/tap here.

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(1hr:25min)
 

Right Click to Download The Final Chapter of God’s Work – by Reggie Kelly (39mb)
 

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Before Art’s passing, the goal of the planned ‘table talks’ for the following summer was to bring together the scriptures that would establish an overview of the key themes of prophecy. He wanted to find something that would “pull the strands together” into a kind of synthesis, and then to use that synthesis to address and answer the classic Jewish objections to the faith.

What follows is an expansion on a brief overview sent to a brother with whom I shared a plan of presentation that aims to simplify many of the sometimes complex issues of prophecy. It also provides a convenient grid of reference for anyone wanting to present the case for Christ and the mystery of Israel from the Old Testament.

I first present some ideas for an initial introduction. This can be used with great versatility and comparative simplicity, depending on the situation. For those who want to take the subject further, I offer further suggestions on how this initial introductory outline can be used to go deeper, as understanding and maturity permits.

I believe that what I present here came in answer to prayer. For years I have looked to the Lord for a means to “make plain upon tables” (Dan 12:4; Hab 2:2-3) an appreciable amount of otherwise difficult and controversial subject matter. The goal is simplicity and clarity for the average person, regardless of academic background. But the real power of the truths that follow lies in the scriptures themselves. They are specific target passages that merit closest attention.

The approach builds around the well known story of Joseph, as type and parable of both comings of Christ to Israel. The idea is to begin with a couple of key portions of Old Testament prophecy in order to establish a simple outline of the prophetic future, particularly as it pertains to the relationship of Christ’s two comings to Israel. This will provide a convenient frame of reference that can enable and equip any believer to make the case for the mystery of the gospel in the Old Testament, particularly in its relationship to Israel and the events that conclude the age.

To open the subject, I sometimes begin with the familiar story of Bethlehem as an opportunity to show the amazing prophecy of Mic 5:2, pointing out its great antiquity (8th century contemporary of Isaiah). I then point out the lesser known feature of the prophecy the follows in the next verse. “Therefore (for this cause) will He (Yahweh) ‘give them up’ UNTIL the time that she who travails has brought forth; then shall the remnant of His brethren return to the children of Israel (Mic 5:3). The chosen nation is to be “given up UNTIL …”. This is the language of divine abandonment. What are the implications? What provocation was so great as to evoke such ominous language, anticipating the tragic nature of Jewish history?

The next verse shows that the return of “His brethren” coincides with the universal dominion of the ruler from Bethlehem. Exile ends forever with the Davidic king’s rod-iron rule over all nations that begins when His enemies are made His footstool with the destruction of the last invader of the gentiles (Ps 2:6-9; 110:1-6; Mic 5:4-6). This is the arch-persecutor whom Paul, citing Isa 11:4, will call, ‘the man of sin’, (compare Paul’s use of the Septuagint’s translation, “the Ungodly One” with the KJV’s, “that Wicked; 2Thes 2:8).

That verse 2 speaks of Israel’s promised Messiah from David’s line is undisputed by the Rabbis who freely acknowledge the Messiah’s pre-existence but do not accept any inference of deity. Indeed, the Hebrew does not require it, as examples can be shown where the language means only the days of old, but it is also understood that were a kind of divine son-ship in view, as in Christian theology, there is no other terminology in the Hebrew language that could more definitely indicate deity and co-eternality. Yet, if we compare Isaiah’s use of very similar language for the Davidic Messiah (Isa 7:14; 9:6-7 from Gen 3:15; Ps 2:7; 110:1-4), the evidence begins to mount in the direction of a divine figure.

By connecting verse 1 with verse 3 it becomes evident that the reason for the abandonment of verse 3, (“He shall give them up”), is that the smitten judge of verse 1 was not, as usually assumed, a mere humiliation of Israel’s contemporary king by the invading army (whether Hezekiah by the Assyrians, or Zedekiah by the Babylonians, as variously suggested), but the smitten judge was, in fact, the Messiah from Bethlehem who was rejected by “His brethren” (keeping in mind the Joseph analogy).

It has been well said that when we see a “therefore” in scripture, we need to pay close attention to what it’s ‘there for! ‘Therefore’ marks the transition from what is said and what the results or consequences are of what has been said. In this instance, I point out that the “therefore” (‘for this cause’) of verse 3 stands in causal connection to the smiting of the ruler of Israel in verse 1. The insertion of verse 2 between the cause of verse 1 and the effect of verse 3 explains the enormity of the offense that brings the judgement of Yahweh’s abandonment of the chosen people. It is because the smitten judge of verse 1 is not just any king or governor of Israel. He is the ruler from David’s line who has no beginning who brings the kingdom that has no end. The time in view is NOT the time of His birth, nor His ascension to the right hand of God, but when He comes (returns?) to destroy the final enemy (Ps 110:1-2; Isa 11:4; Mic 5:5-6).

The degree of punishment implies a greater crime than the more common sins of idolatry and covenant disloyalty from which there would a measure of recovery and revival, as under the prophets, Zechariah and Haggai, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Rather, the enormity of the punishment implies something more than sins in general, but a particular, consummate offense. This is evident in Hos 5:15-6:2 where the end of exile and the resurrection of the nation to begin the messianic age awaits acknowledgement, not simply of sins, or guilt in general, but of one offense in particular (compare also Zech 12:10, and Mt 23:39; Jn 19:37; Rev 1:7).

Such a long and unremitting experience of exile can only be explained by an offense that is on the scale of the national rejection (smiting) of God’s Messiah, the Davidic king whom He calls His son in Ps 2:7. It should not be lost on our attention that the prophet Isaiah, who is notably a contemporary of Micah, uses the same language to describe the suffering servant of Isa 50 and 53 who is likewise smitten by both the nation and by God as an atonement for sin. (compare, Job 16:10; Ps 69:26; Isa 50:6; 53:4, 10; Mic 5:1; Zech 13:7; Lam 3:30; Mt 26:31, 67-68; 27:30). .

Because it is so important to be clear on Israel’s predestined restoration to covenant favor, we are careful to emphasize that the “giving up” of Israel is never permanent, but only “UNTIL” the time of ‘Zion’s travail’. It is also important to point out that Micah’s reference to Israel’s travail is typical OT language for the great and unequaled tribulation (“Jacob’s trouble”) that ends in the spiritual birth or resurrection of the nation (compare Deut 4:30; Isa 13:8; 26:16-17; 66:8; Jer 30:6-7; Dan 12:1; Hos 5:15; Mic 5:3).

Most will have heard of the coming “great tribulation”, referred to in popular idiom as ‘the apocalypse’. The concept of a final great tribulation of unequaled severity was once a common theme in the eschatology of Judaism. The transition from exile to redemption was understood to follow a time of great and unequaled tribulation, which the Rabbis called “the messianic woes,” or “the footsteps of the Messiah.”

The Micah passage is only the first plank of evidence. The strength of the argument is in the cumulative evidence for a foretold prophetic mystery that is distributed here and there throughout the writings of the prophets (Isa 8:14-17; 28:9-13; 29:11; Dan 9:24; 12:9; 1Pet 1:11; Ro 16:25-26).

Pointing out the implications of Micah 5:1-4 for both comings of Messiah to Israel provides the perfect opportunity to turn to another significant “until” passage from the Old Testament, Hos 5:15-6:2. Here again, a time of divine desertion is in view, which can be shown to correspond to the two days of exile and the age long chastisement that ends with Israel’s national repentance and resurrection (Hos 6:2 with Isa 26:19-20; Eze 37:5, 11-12; Dan 12:1-2; Hos 13:13-14).

Notice that in both the Hosea passage and the Micah passage; the cause for divine desertion is blamed, not on guilt or transgression in general, but on a singular ‘offense’ or transgression. The nation’s release from the judgment of exile and tribulation comes when this particular offense is acknowledged (Hos 5:15; Zech 12:10; with Mt 23:39; Acts 3:19-21; Ro 11:26; Rev 1:7). Once again, we see that the transition comes “in their affliction” (Deut 4:30; Isa 48:10; Jer 30:6-7; Dan 12:1). It is important to stress that the day of national deliverance is always depicted as coming after a brief, but unequaled time of national birth pangs, affliction, or tribulation called “the time of Jacob’s trouble” (Deut 4:30; 32:36; Isa 13:6-8; 26:17-18; 66:8; Mic 4:9; 5:3; Jer 30:7; Dan 12:1, 7; Mt 24:21).

Significantly, Hosea depicts the departure and return of God in language that fits the presence, departure, and return of the Messiah to His former place in heaven, as now ‘sit down’ (term of completion) at God’s right hand, “waiting till His enemies are made His footstool when He shall begin His rod-iron rule out of Zion (Ps 2:8-9; 110:1-2; Hos 5:15; Heb 10:12-13). It is important to point out that the One who departs to His place, returns when the offense that provoked His departure is finally acknowledged. This corresponds to Zech 12:10. “They shall look up Me whom they have pierced.” The manifest analogy with Joseph becomes even more compelling in light of Mt 23:39. “You will not see me again ‘till’ you will say, “Blessed is He who comes …”  Zech 12:10, used with Mt 23:39, takes on glorious force in relationship to the prophetic type of Joseph’s reunion with his estranged brethren. It is the fitting dénouement to the most costly, fiercely pursued love story ever conceived.

The smiting of the divine son of David is the key to determining when the two days of Hos 6:2 begins. The time of Israel’s final giving up conincides with the two days that begins when the smitten ruler returns to His place at the Father’s right hand, expecting till His enemies are made His footstool at Antichrist’s destruction and the return of the kingdom to Israel. (compare Mic 5:1-5; Hos 5:15-6:3). This is the ultimate provocation that caused the One who “came to His own” but was ‘despised’ of the nation (Ps 22:6; Isa 49:7; 53:3; Hos 9:7; Jn 1:11) to “go away and return to His place” (Hos 5:15 w/ Ps 110:1-3; Mt 22:44; 26:64; Acts 1:11; 2:34; 3:21; 7:56; Ro 8:34; Eph 1:20; Col 3:1; Heb 1:3, 13; 8:1; 10:12; 12:2). You can see how amazingly well Mic 5:1-4 and Hos 5:15-6:2 go together in setting forth this basic outline of prophetic history.

The order and the way one proceeds from here will be a matter of personal adaptation and choice, but at this point, I like to point out that the unexpected interval between two distinct comings of Messiah covers, not only the full time that God is hiding His face in disapproval (Deut 31:17-18; 32:20; Isa 8:17; Eze 39:24, 29), but it particularly marks the time that the Deuteronomic threat would be fulfilled that during Israel’s estrangement from covenant favor, another people, a ‘not a people’, would be called to make Israel jealous. (Deut 32:21; Isa Isa 49:5; 65:1; with Mt 21:43; Acts 14:27; 15:14; Ro 10:19; 11:11; 1Pet 2:9-10). This is the time of Messiah’s session at God’s right while His face remains hidden, as the vision and prophecy remains sealed from the errant nation who have not yet come into the everlasting righteousness of the New Covenant sealed by the ascended Redeemer’s blood (Ps 110:1-2; Isa 8:14-17; Isa 59:20-21; Jer 32:40; Dan 9:24).

This great and unexpected reversal begins with rejection of the ‘corner stone’ (Isa 8:14-15; 28:16; Mt 21:42; Acts 4:11; 1Pet 2:8) and continues until the Spirit is poured out upon the surviving remnant (Ezek 39:28-29; Joel 2:28; Zech 12:10). “From that day and forward the house of Israel will know that I am the Lord their God (Ezek 39:22). “And I will not hide My face from them anymore; for I shall have poured out My Spirit on the house of Israel, says the Lord God” (Ezek 39:29; compare also Isa 8:17; 59:19-21; Ro 11:25-27). This basic order of ongoing covenant discipline and the hiding of God’s face between the advents needs to be brought to Jewish attention, so that what many refuse to consider now, they will consider perfectly. “In the latter days, you will consider it perfectly” (see Deut 32:29; Isa 1:3; 42:22-25; Jer 23:30; 30:24)

After the two days of divine absence (Mt 23:39) that perfectly parallels the age long “giving up” of Israel described in Mic 5:3 and Hos 5:15-6:2, the rejected ruler from Bethlehem returns to revive the blinded nation by a miracle of revelation and regeneration that accomplishes the return and reunion of His estranged brethren (the broken off branches). With this, the covenant with Israel is vindicated, as Messiah begins His universal, rod-iron rule over the nations from a restored Zion (Mic 5:4). Notice how the language, “then the remnant of His brethren shall return” is so profoundly evocative of Joseph’s family reunion at the moment of his self revelation to his brethren who had formerly rejected and sold him.

If I am speaking to Christians who have heard of the millennium, I point out that the Jews are raised to live out the third day in His sight as a newly born / newly revived, now entirely regenerate nation (Isa 54:13; 59:21; 60:21; Jer 31:34 et al). Thus, the third day in which the resurrected nation lives in His sight, corresponds perfectly to the NT revelation of the thousand year reign that follows Messiah’s return.

With the national confession and repentance that concludes the second day, the resurrected nation then lives out the third day of millennial glory as an all living (fully regenerate) nation that has now come into the ‘everlasting righteousness’ of covenant promise (Jer 32:40; Dan 9:24). With the new heart and spirit that is no longer the experience of only a remnant (Eze 18:31), but now the entirety of a fully regenerate with none left among them who do not know the Lord (Jer 31:34; Eze 39:22), never again to depart (Isa 54:10; 59:21; Jer 32:40), the Land can now be kept in  guaranteed security, forever beyond the threat of curse and exile (2Sam 7:10; 1Chron 17:9; Isa 54:15-17; Jer 24:6-7; Eze 37:25-28; Am 9:14-15).

At this point, I will typically share my personal conviction that the two days should be reckoned from the point of the Lord’s return “to His place”.  The time of abandonment begins, not with the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D., but when Jesus returned to His former glory in heaven, to take His seat of authority and rule at the Father’s right hand. There He remains until another great ‘until’ of prophecy, “until His enemies are made His footstool” (see Ps 110:1-2), and from thence He will return “at the set time to favor Zion” (Ps 102:13; 110:3). The following verse, Ps 110:3, shows that the same time Messiah’s enemies are made His footstool, the nation, long apostate, is made ‘willing in the day of His power” (i.e., the day of the Lord). With this, the long captivity is over forever, as the times of the gentiles close with the Deliverer’s descent out of Zion to turn ungodliness from Jacob (Lk 21:24; Ro 11:25-29).

In His parting words, Jesus declares to the nation who would not be gathered, “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord” (Mt 23:38-39). With Israel’s fall, a “door of faith” would now be opened to the gentiles (Deut 32:21; Isa 49:5; 65:1; Acts 14:27; 15:14; Mt 21:43; Ro 1:5; 10:19; 16:25-26; 1Pet 2:9).

The death of Jesus would mark an unexpected extension of the long night of exilic judgment that must continue “UNTIL the times of the gentiles be fulfilled” (Lk 21:24). In the meantime, something completely unexpected would interpose itself into the eschatological time line. That is the present calling out of the gentiles a people for His name (Mt 24:14; 28:19; Acts 14:27; 15:14; Ro 16:26). This was, of course, very much expected but only in connection with the ‘end’ of exile, never as a result of Israel’s greater fall and further hardening (Ro 11:11). Though fully ‘written’ and foretold in the prophetic writings, all of this belonged to the mystery hidden in other ages (Isa 8:16; 29:11; Acts 26:22; Ro 16:25-26; 1Cor 2:7-8; 1Pet 1:11).

Astonishingly, before Israel’s regeneration and return, before the tribulation (Zion’s travail; Isa 66:7-8), not with Israel’s deliverance and exaltation, but “through their fall” (Ro 11:11). This unexpected turn took everyone by surprise. “Though Israel be NOT gathered”, yet,  Messiah’s labors would not be in vain, but receive a more immediate reward and vindication among the gentiles (Isa 49:5-6; 65:1). Even while the saved remnant will continue to ‘wait on Him who hides His face from Israel’ (Isa 8:17), the sealed vision, what Paul calls the ‘hidden wisdom’ is ‘bound up and sealed among My disciples’ (Isa 8:16). It is the ‘mystery of the gospel’ by which the gentiles are made fellow partakers and joint heirs with the household of faith (Ro 16:25-26; Eph 2:19; 3:5-6; 6:18).

Paradox of paradox, only in this way could the Deuteronomic threat of Moses be fulfilled, that for a certain season, during the nation had been ‘given up’, another people (‘not a people’ / gentiles) would be blessed in their place. How better to understand the great extension of exilic judgment than by the nation’s failure to recognize “the time of their visitation” resulting in the rejection and crucifixion of Jesus? (Mt 23:39 with Lk 19:44; Acts 2:23). In this light, few things uttered by mortal lips could be more chilling and prophetic than the tragic self-imprecation invoked in Pilate’s judgment hall, “His blood be on us and on our children!” (Mt 27:24-25).

By following through, using, and underlining for emphasis, the highly significant ‘tills’ and ‘untils’ of prophecy, the way is made clear to show that Israel’s blindness and exile is both temporary and everywhere connected to their national resurrection at Messiah’s return. With the question raised as to what great offense would be sufficient to condemn the nation to such an extended exile, one might turn to compare in Dan 9:26, where one called a ‘messiah’ is ‘cut off’, noting the same language is used to describe Isaiah’s suffering servant in Isa 53:8. Like Micah’s smitten king, He is likewise smitten, stricken, and despised of His own brethren (Isa 49:7; 50:6; 53:3-4). This comparison shows that the anonymous Servant in Isa 53 and the anointed Prince of Dan 9:26, are one and the same. He is the seed of the woman through whom the curse would be reversed by atoning substitution.

It is important to understand that the prophets well knew the implications of this most pregnant promise. Only one not under the curse could conceivably reverse it. Through unfolding revelation of David’s discernment of the significance of Abraham’s encounter with Melchizedek and his own investing of his future greater son with transcendent attributes of deity at God’s right hand (without “beginning of days”; Ps 110:4; Mic 5:2; Heb 7:3, or ‘end of days’; Isa 9:6-7), we may be very sure that the prophets foresaw, not only the sufferings of Messiah and the glories that would follow (1Pet 1:11), but also His necessary sinlessness and divine nature (Ps 2:7; 110:1, 4; Isa 7:14; 9:6-7; Mic 5:2; Jer 23:6).

As contemporaries in the southern kingdom of Judah, both Isaiah and Micah saw and foretold that the ruler from David’s line would be (in significant pattern with the sufferings of the rejected Joseph and the afflictions of David), rejected, despised, and ‘smitten’ by “His own brethren” (Ps 22:6, 16; Isa 49:7; 50:6; 53:3-4; Mic 5:1-3; Zech 12:10; Jn 19:37; Rev 1:7). They understood that before Messiah would enter into His glory, He would first be made a trap and snare for pride and unbelief, as the divinely ordained stone of stumbling (Isa 8:14; 28:6; Mk 12:10-11; Acts 4:11; Ro 9:32-33; 1Cor 1:23; 2Cor 2:16; 1Pet 2:4-8).  But it is just here, at the point of Israel’s greater fall by the rejection of their Messiah, that both Micah and Hosea, also contemporaries, speak of an extended time of divine abandonment (Mic 5:3; Hos 5:15).

Among the covenant curses of Deuteronomy it is written that while God’s face would be hidden from the nation (Deut 31:17-18), at the same time, He would be provoking them to jealousy by another people, a ‘not a people’, a ‘foolish nation’ (Deut 32:20-21). The foretold surrender of Israel over to an age long hardening (Job 34:29; Isa 6:9-11; 29:11) would never be more than partial, of course, since God would always preserve to Himself a remnant.

God’s face was never hidden from the remnant, but the prophets looked to the time when, not only a remnant, but all Israel would be saved, entirely, and without exception, all would be righteous and their children after them preserved in righteousness forever (Isa 4:3; 45:25; 54:13; 50:21; 60:21; Jer 31:34; 32:40 et al), when the face of God would no longer be hidden from any part of the now fully redeemed nation (Isa 8:17; Eze 39:22, 28-29).

This situation of a lively remnant in abiding contrast with a disobedient nation under judgment would continue only ‘UNTIL’ the Spirit is poured upon us from on high …” (Isa 32:15-17). Not the concurrence of the pouring out of the Spirit with the spiritual birth of the nation in one day (Isa 66:8; Zech 3:9; Eze 39:22) whereupon the erring nation will at last and forever enter into everlasting righteousness of the New Covenant (Isa 66:8; Jer 31:3131-34; Eze 11:19; 36:26-27). But note; a new spirit was always in times past available to the remnant who would turn to the Lord in repentance (Prov 1:23; Isa 55:1-3; Eze 18:31).

Not knowing the mystery of Messiah’s two comings and the purpose of God for the gentiles during an unexpected inter-advent period, nor the expansion of the remnant to include the wild branches from among the gentiles during an extended exile between the advents, the pouring out of the Spirit was always associated with the end of the final tribulation at the day of the Lord. The hiding of God’s face, not from the remnant, from whom His face was never hidden, but from the nation as a whole, ends forever with pouring out of the Spirit upon the newly born (Isa 66:8), resurrected (Isa 25:8; 26:19; Eze 37:12; Hos 6:2; 13:14) , and now entirely regenerate nation of penitent survivors at the end of the great and final tribulation (Isa 8:17; Isa 54:7-8; 57:17-18; 59:21; 64:7; Eze 36:26-27; 37:14; 39:8, 13; 22-24, 39; Joel 2:29-31; Zech 12:10).

Not only had Moses foretold the great anomaly of gentile salvation at the very time the face of God would be hidden from the larger nation, but Isaiah is just as clear, particularly when an exceptionally stubborn and much debated textual variant is duly considered. Time forbids giving an account and full documentation of the argumentation that has passed between both Jewish and Christian scholars, but the wording that is actually present in our surviving manuscripts (Kethiv) for Isa 49:5, but also questioned by the marginal reading (Quere) in some manuscripts, requires us to understand that Messiah’s mission to gather the tribes Israel would meet with momentary disappointment and seeming failure (“though Israel be NOT gathered”; see note below).

This momentary disappointment would be vindicated by the more immediate expansion of Messiah’s mission to bring the light of salvation to the nations and isles afar off (Isa 42:1; 49:1, 6), not AFTER Israel has been restored, but during the time that Israel is NOT gathered. Such a reading, along with Isa 65:1, suggests that the gathering of the gentiles would not be limited to the post-tribulational salvation of the nation, (which is no less true and forthcoming), but to the time that follows the rejection of Messiah, Jesus (Isa 49:7; 53:3; Mic 5:1; Zech 12:10).

This is just an opening for all the many evidences that can then, time permitting, be added to demonstrate the gospel in the Old Testament. Not only as a mystery that pertains to Christ’s two comings, but as a mystery that reveals God’s plan in all its glorious relationship to the fall and rising again of Israel. As I said, it provides a port of entrance by which one can move freely, fitting each additional piece into the framework that the mystery establishes of Messiah’s two comings and the extended judgment of exile that continues until His return.

It is certainly well known that the two comings of Christ were foretold in prophecy, but the approach that I am commending here underscores and proves the relation of the second coming to Israel in particular. Then all the great points of divine contention that the end events will press to ultimate intensity can be considered in their proper context. This is something much more than the mere acknowledgement of prophetic fulfillment. It raises all the great issues of God that surface when we understand that the end of the age comes in relation to what Isaiah calls the “controversy of Zion” (Isa 34:8; Zech 12:2-3).

By demonstrating this structural outline of the mystery of Christ and Israel, one is able to verify from OT prophecy, that between the comings of Christ, the face of God is hidden from the nation at the very same time that God is provoking the Jew to jealousy by another people (the preponderantly Gentile church; Deut 32:21; Isa 49:5; 65:1 with Mt 21:43; Ro 10:19; 11:11). These scriptures establish the context and time for the calling out of a people from among the Gentiles (Acts 14:27; 15:14-18; Ro 11:15-17, 25) during the time that God is hiding His face from the nation as a whole (Deut 31:17-18; 32:20; Isa 8:17; Ezek 39:29; Mic 3:4).

I say “the nation as a whole,” because the face of God is not hidden from the elect remnant, among whom the testimony is “sealed up and bound” (Isa 8:16). The Spirit has already revealed the mystery of the gospel to the church (Ro 16:25-26 w/ Dan 11:32-33; 12:3, 10). What is waiting is for the Spirit to be poured out “in the whole house of Israel” at the day of the Lord (Isa 44:3; 59:21; Ezek 37:11, 14; 39:25, 29; Joel 2:28-29; Zech 12:10). Then will the ‘sealed vision’ be revealed to the penitent remnant of Israel by the outpoured Spirit of God (compare Isa 8:16-17 w/ Dan 9:24; Ezek 39:29; Zech 12:10) in the same way that the gospel was revealed by the Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 3:18-21 w/ 1Pet 1:11-12). From this we can see that Israel’s national regeneration “in one day” (Isa 66:8; Ezek 39:22; Zech 3:9; 12:10) stands in remarkable analogy to the amazing sovereignty of Christ’s revelation of Himself to Paul on the Damascus road (Gal 1:15-16 w/ Ps 102:13).

Ezekiel is clear that “from that day and forward” (Ezek 39:22), God’s face will never more be hidden from any part of the whole house of Israel (Ezek 39:28-29). From that time, every living Jewish survivor of the last tribulation (Jer 31:34), and every child ever born to Jewish parentage (Isa 54:13; 59:21), will ‘all’ know the Lord in the glory of the everlasting covenant (Isa 60:21; Jer 31:34). This is the covenant background behind Paul’s statement, “And so ‘all’ Israel shall be saved” (Ro 11:26).

The gentile believer, no less than the Jewish believer, needs to be prepared to show the evidence of the gospel as a prophetic mystery contained in the Old Testament, not only for the useful goal of personal salvation, but because God has literally ‘commanded’ that the mystery of the gospel should be made known to all nations (not only to Jews) “by the scriptures of the prophets” (Acts 18:28; Ro 16:26). Prophecy is God’s own chosen method of witness (Isa 41:21-22; 42:9; 43:10-12; 44:7-8; 45:11; 46:9-10; Rev 19:10). It is like Paul’s reference to the weakness and ‘foolishness” of preaching; it is the approach that has “pleased God.”

From the standpoint of evangelism, the early church made a point to proclaim the gospel as a revelation a mystery (Eph 6:19) that was completely foretold in the Old Testament (Acts 26:22), but yet kept secret until the set time of revelation (Isa 8:16; 29:11; Ro 16:25-26). Should this also be our approach to evangelism? I believe it should for the following reasons:

Among Jews of the first century, the test for any truth claim was the question: “Does it stand written?” The revelation of the gospel was commended, by the apostles, to Israel on one basis only, namely, its agreement with what Moses and the prophets foretold. Approaching the witnessing task in this way does some very important things. At the same time that it validates the gospel, it also shows decisive evidence for the miracle of prophecy. The demonstration of the divine purpose of God in prophecy gives purpose and meaning to history, which opens a door of hope to the hopeless, even as it removes the intellectual excuse. (Even when our witness does not result in someone’s salvation, God has willed the removal of the “hiding place” for purposes of clarity in His judgment (Ps 51:4; Isa 6:10; 28:13; Jn 15:22).

This original approach to evangelism also accomplishes something else that is very important but too slightly considered in modern times. It establishes the gospel as a mystery that was intentionally hidden until the time of its full revelation with the advent of the Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 3:18-21; Ro 16:25-26; 1Pet 1:11-12). We need to understand why the gospel of Christ was a mystery, because it bears greatly on how we understand the last days of this age.

There was a divine strategy to expose and defeat the principalities and powers of this present age by keeping the mystery of God’s hidden wisdom concerning Christ secret until after its accomplishment (compare Mk 8:30; 9:9; “see you tell no man;” w/ 1Cor 2:7-8; “For had they (the principalities and powers) known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory”. The mystery was a divinely prepared trap and snare against all self sufficient presumption, both human and demonic (Ps 69:22 w/ Isa 8:14-15; 28:16; Mt 21:42; 1Pet 2:6-8). In that sense, it was hidden for judgment (Jn 9:39).

Before its revelation, the gospel, though completely foretold, was a divinely designed mystery (the sealed testimony or vision; Isa 8:16; 29:11; Dan 9:24; 12:4, 9) prepared to function not only as revelation to the repentant, but as judgment to the impenitent. The church needs to present the gospel for the mystery that it was, and also for the revelation that it will yet be to the penitent survivors of Jacob’s trouble at the future day of the Lord.

The mystery of the gospel includes both comings of Christ, and the second coming is inextricably related to literal-physical Israel and all that pertains to the Antichrist, the tribulation, and Christ’s return at the day of the Lord. The greater mystery of God (Rev 10:7), “the mystery of His will” (Eph 1:9), or “the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ” (Eph 1:11), reveals God’s predestined means of fulfilling in literal detail His everlasting covenant with Israel. That is why it is so essential that the church understand its relationship to Israel’s future grace, since it is the same covenant of sure mercies, as established with Abraham and David.

In order for the hidden wisdom of God’s prophetic purpose in Christ to be concealed from the demonic realm, it was also necessary that it be hidden from man as well (Mt 13:35; Ro 16:25; Eph 3:5). Even after the mystery of the gospel has been revealed to the church in its outward form, its inner essence remains hidden and inaccessible to pride (Mt 11:25; 1Cor 2:14). It is not enough that the outward form of the gospel be only understood with the mind; it must be quickened by the Spirit, as only revelation by the Spirit is sufficient to create lasting inward transformation (2Cor 3:18). Enough evidence will make even a devil “believe” (Ja 2:19), but true trust in God is foreign to our nature. It must be in-wrought by the life giving Spirit of God.

This understanding of the ways of God in mystery as judgment, and through revelation as mercy, saves the church from taking for granted the extravagant cost and scope of the work of God with both Jew and gentile in His continual war against the pride of self-reliance. It brings into view a further aspect of God’s ability to accomplish both judgment and salvation by His wise use of a prophetic mystery that is at once His glory and special delight.

Paul spoke about the “fellowship of the mystery” (Eph 3:9 KJV), as a “hidden wisdom, which God decreed before the ages for our glory” (1 Cor 2:7). This carries huge implications for the church, not only for its more intelligent appreciation of the cost and glory of the gospel, but for its understanding of the modern crisis of Israel as we approach the concluding stages of the same prophetic mystery, as this mystery will again confront Israel (Isa 28:11-18), the church (Ro 11:25; 1Pet 4:17), and the nations (Ps 2:1-2, 6; Isa 29:7-8; 34:2, 8; Dan 11:28, 30; 40-45; Joel 3:2; Zeph 3:8; Zech 12:2-3, 9; 14:2-3).

It raises the issue of God’s employment of mystery and revelation in His conquest of Satan (Dan 10:12-13; 1Cor 2:7-8; Rev 12:7-10), as it also tests and exposes the hearts of men. Although the prophetic mystery that stumbled Israel is now an open secret, it remains hidden from the pride of impenitence (Isa 28:21). Such a concept of revealed mystery by a God who “hides Himself” (Isa 45:15) provides a radical readjustment of how God is perceived in this aspect of His judgment upon all human and demonic autonomy. If the ultra religious sects of Israel was not spared in the day of an unrecognized visitation (Lk 19:44), how shall the pride of the church be spared (Ro 11:21; 1Pet 4:17), as we near the time that the “the mystery of God” (Rev 10:7) is about to be finished?

In conclusion, this plan of presentation shows the basic outline of history in prophecy, and makes sense of the unexpectedly long interval that has already passed between the first and second comings, which brings us now full circle again to an imminent world crisis over Jerusalem as a modern cup of trembling, evoking all the great issues of God that conclude the age. It makes sense out of all that has followed in Jewish history.

The case for a future tribulation that is focused primarily on the nation of Israel opens up opportunity to call attention to the contemporary fulfillment of prophecy and to draw out the implications of current trends. Time permitting, particularly when witnessing to Jews; one could expand on the ancient contention of the covenant (Lev 26; Deut 28-32; Ezek 20:37), and the explanation this provides for the mystery of Jewish suffering throughout history. The way is then made to show that the great goal of the covenant and the solution to the crisis of Jewish history is the revelation of the righteousness of God in Christ. This is the crux; all else is secondary by comparison. The entire New Testament is occupied to expound the righteousness promised to Israel in the everlasting covenant. (“For therein (the gospel) is the righteousness of God revealed… But now the righteousness of God is manifested …; Ro 1:17; 3:21-22, 25-26; 10:3-4; 16:26).

In covenant and prophecy, all lines lead to the revelation of Messiah as “the Lord our righteousness” (Jer 23:6). No other righteousness is adequate to fulfill the law and no other sacrifice is acceptable to assuage divine wrath. The imputed righteousness of Christ is the “the everlasting righteousness” (Isa 26:12; 45:24-25; 54:17; Jer 23:6; 32:40; Dan 9:24) of covenant promise that will enable Israel to keep the Land forever. It is the righteousness revealed to the church at the end 69th week of Daniel, as it will be revealed to the penitent remnant of Israel at the end of Daniel’s seventieth week, fitting the newly born nation (Isa 66:8) for its millennial inheritance.

The gap that the above scriptures expose between Christ’s two advents can be discerned in Daniel’s famous prophecy of the seventy weeks (Dan 9:24-27). A hidden age between the advents is a common characteristic of Old Testament prophecy, where both comings of Christ are often blended in the same prophecy without clear distinction. The phenomenon also appears in many passages where near and distant aspects of prophecy are combined.

We need to understand that God deliberately concealed the foretold gospel of Christ in the form of a prophetic mystery, revealed in parts and pieces (“here a little, and there a little”) throughout the prophetic writings of the Old Testament (Ro 16:25-26; 1Pet 1:11-12). This needs to be underscored, because Daniel’s mysterious prophecy of the seventy weeks constitutes a perfect example of the OT mystery of Messiah’s coming, departure, and return to Israel, as a secret, divinely sealed and ‘kept under wraps’, or ‘encrypted’ (the Hebrew sense of Isa 8:16 according to Keil and Delitzsch) until its revelation by the Spirit (compare also Dan 9:24; 12:4, 9; Ro 16:25-26; 1Pet 1:11-12 etc.)

This is not the place to make the full case, but the seventy weeks are strategically constructed around the two great mysteries of incarnation (the woman’s and the serpent’s seed of Gen 3:15) that mark the beginning and the end of this present age. In One (“Messiah the Prince”), the mystery of godliness is revealed (1Tim 3:16). In the other, “the prince that shall come” heads up the mystery of iniquity, which Paul shows must be revealed before Christ can return (2Thes 2:7).

It can be demonstrated beyond reasonable dispute that the final week (Dan 9:27) of Daniel’s prophecy of the seventy weeks (Dan 9:24-27) is not in reference to Christ but the Antichrist. Therefore, a gap is necessarily observed between the 69th and 70th weeks. The controversy over whether the 70th week of Daniel is future, resolves itself into one decisive question: “Which of the two princes stops the daily sacrifice?” If the evidence within the immediate context of the book is given due priority, the answer is irrefutable. It is “the one who exalts himself” (compare Dan 8:11 w/ Dan 11:31-37; 2Thes 2:4).

Furthermore, chapter 12 of Daniel is particularly decisive in making the case for the futurity of Daniel’s final week, because it makes clear that the sacrifice that is stopped in “the middle of the week” in Dan 9:27, happens approximately 3 ½ years (1290 days) before the resurrection of the dead (compare Dan 12:1-2 with Dan 12:11; see also, Dan 7:25; 12:7; Rev 11:2-3; 12:16, 14; 13:5). To suppose that the 70th week of Daniel follows the 69th in unbroken succession is to ignore the internal evidence within the book, but worse, it is to miss the divinely intended mystery that will continue to offend the rationalism of higher criticism.

So the great tribulation is clearly the second half of the last seven years that starts with a covenant or league (Dan 9:27; 11:23) that is made with “the prince that shall come.” He is the Antichrist (“little horn” or “Man of Sin”) who makes the “covenant with death hell” that seduces Israel into a false sense of security (Isa 28:15-18; Dan 11:24 ASV). The false security that results from this ill-fated peace treaty (Ezek 38:8, 11, 14) prepares the way for the “sudden destruction” (1Thes 5:3) of Jacob’s trouble (Jer 30:7; Dan 12:1; Mt 24:21). Therefore, the tribulation starts at the mid point of the week when the Antichrist violates the covenant that he earlier confirmed at the start of the week (Dan 9:27; 11:23-31).

No single prophecy could ever be more important for the end time church to understand (“Let the reader understand;” Mt 24:15) than Daniel’s prophecy of the seventy weeks (Dan 9:24-27). Careful attention to Daniel is vital for opening up and showing so much else that is critically relevant for the church’s preparation for its role in these last days towards Israel and the nations (Dan 11:33; 12:3, 10). The specific chronology of Daniel is particularly dreaded by Satan, because his eviction by Michael in the middle of week (Rev 12:9-10) is directly related to the prophetic countdown of events that start with the beginning of Daniel’s seventieth week.

[Note 1: We have followed K and 4QIsd in reading lo‘ (‘not’; cf also Vg, Sym, Th), rather than Q and 1QIsa lô (‘to him’; cf also LXX, Tg, Syr). The latter reading implies the meaning ‘and so that Israel might be gathered to him’, which makes easier sense but thus seems to be a correction. Goldingay, J., & Payne, D. (2006). A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Isaiah 40–55. (G. I. Davies & G. N. Stanton, Eds.) (Vol. 2, p. 162). London; New York: T&T Clark.

[Note 2: That the book of Daniel has suffered greater attack by liberal scholarship than any other book of the Bible should alert the conservative believer to Satan’s special fear and hatred of its contents. (see Sir Robert Anderson’s, “Daniel in the Critics Den.” More recently, Josh McDowell has written an update of Anderson’s material by the same title.)]

[Note 3: The futurity of the entire seven years of Daniel’s seventieth week was specifically affirmed by Hippolytus (170-236 AD) in his “Treatise on Christ and Antichrist” (Ante Nicene Fathers Vol 5, Pt. 2:43). Hippolytus was a disciple of Irenaeus, who was a disciple of Polycarp, who was a disciple of John. So the really presumptuous allegation that the gap between the 69th and 70th weeks of Daniel is an invention of modern 19th century dispensationalism is patently false. On the contrary, the much maligned “gap theory” is intrinsic to the mystery of Christ in the Old Testament.]

Reggie

The post The Apostolic Approach to Evangelism appeared first on Mystery of Israel.

“After two days He will revive us; the third day we shall live in His sight” (Hos 6:2).”

According to the NT, the gospel reveals a mystery that was at once fully foretold in the writings of the prophets (Acts 26:22; Ro 16:25-26; Rev 10:7), but divinely concealed from both men and angels until the appointed time (Mk 8:30; 9:9; 1Cor 2:7-8). For example, all who accept the witness of the NT will recognize that Messiah’s twofold advent was not clearly distinguished before the gospel was revealed with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (1Pet 1:11-12). Whereas every aspect of the gospel was “according to the scriptures (Acts 26:22; 1Cor 15:3-4), Paul would nonetheless speak of it as a mystery (Eph 6:19-20 with Col 4:3-4). Its revelation in the ‘fullness of time,’ would bring to light all of the other related mysteries described in the NT (Ro 11:25-29; Eph 1:9-10; 3:4-5, 9-10; Col 1:26; 4:3-4; 1Tim 3:9, 16). Paul’s reference to the gospel as a mystery is anticipated by Jesus’ reference to the ‘mystery of the kingdom of God’ (Mk 4:11). At the heart of both is the formerly unknown fact that Messiah was to come twice.

The Spirit’s revelation of the gospel gives a clarity of hindsight that enables the detection of both comings in a number of OT prophecies that before would have been quite indistinguishable, particularly as it pertains to the time (1Pet 1:11). Often, aspects of both comings are mysteriously intermingled, or side by side, without clear distinction, with no clear evidence of an inter-advent period between. The present age thus forms the mysterious ‘gap’ between the advents that has been so much belittled in certain scholarly circles. However, had Messiah’s substitutionary atonement, and therefore His twofold advent, NOT been hidden until the appointed time, the princes of this age would not have crucified the Lord of glory (1Cor 2:7-8). Moreover, the mystery would not have accomplished its further purpose to test hearts and stumble pride.

The point to be made here is that the mystery of the gospel, and God’s wise use of it, is not something merely ‘hidden in God.’ All is contained in the prophets and God is glorified when the gospel is vindicated by reference to what was foretold. Every part of the mystery of the gospel is “according to the scriptures” (Lk 24:44-46; Acts 3:18-21; 26:22; Ro 16:25-26; 1Cor 15:3-4; 1Pet 1:11), but the prophecies were so given and arranged in a form and manner that was divinely calculated to conceal the cross and the knowledge that Christ should come twice until the time appointed.

Paul understood the great commission (“the commandment of the everlasting God”) as a call to preach the gospel as it was indeed “according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began. But now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets (the instrumental means), according to the commandment of the everlasting God, (to be) made known to all nations for the obedience of faith.” God is most glorified when the divinely commanded means is properly united to its evangelistic goal.

I am suggesting that if Paul’s statement is unpacked for its full implications, then here we have God’s prescriptive command for the true apostolic approach to evangelism that was practiced all throughout the book of Acts. Built right into the proclamation of the gospel is the divinely intended apologetic. Only as the gospel could be shown to conform in all points to what stood written in the prophets was it to be accorded any credence at all (Acts 26:22). “The testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy” (Rev 19:10b).

This divinely ordained mystery is contained completely in the prophetic scriptures, verified and confirmed by its manifest conformity to the same (Acts 26:22; Ro 16:25-26), but it also reveals a parenthetical, hidden age that could only come to light after the revelation of the mystery of Messiah’s coming, departure, and return to Israel. With this advance in understanding, an unforeseen age discovers itself between the two advents of Jesus. However, although this age was not foreseen or clearly distinguished by the prophets (1Pet 1:11), it was nonetheless fully foretold.

Sometimes called, ‘the double horizon of prophecy’, it is a well noted characteristic of Hebrew prophecy to envision events widely separated in time as part of a single sweep of eschatological fulfillment.  In other words, the events belonging to Israel’s eschatological judgment and salvation were often presented as a single complex, with no clear indication of the considerable time that might elapse between undetectable stages of fulfillment.

Prophecies of a near range fulfillment anticipated in the contemporary crisis would include details of the ultimate redemption that did not follow, or fully come to pass after the threatened judgment that was, very remarkably fulfilled to the letter. How is this to be understood? How is it that the threatened judgments are so faithfully fulfilled when the extravagantly lavish descriptions of national salvation have either failed or been manifestly postponed?  

It seems apparent that even the prophets recognized, to some extent, this phenomenon of the near and far horizon within some of their own prophecies.  Fully knowing that earlier prophets, such as Isaiah, Micah, and Hosea had depicted the final redemption against the backdrop of the impending Assyrian invasion, the later prophets did not hesitate to apply some of these same prophecies, employing the same note of threatening imminence, to the impending invasion of Babylon or some more distant aggressor.

This observation suggests that the prophets themselves were keenly aware of a typology of the march of kingdoms and hostile ‘Antichrist’ figures (the ‘Assyrian’; the ‘Chaldean’, etc.) so that, for them, a contemporary, partial fulfillment of the ultimate day of the Lord did not disappoint nor exhaust their own abiding expectation of a yet greater, more complete and final fulfillment in the future. We might call this ‘pattern eschatology’.

It is also remarkable to observe how prophets living more than an hundred years after their predecessors would continue to use the same language of imminence (‘at hand’; ‘near’; ‘greatly hasting’) to describe the ultimate day of the Lord and final salvation of the nation, well after the foretold invasion of Assyria had come and gone. It seems the later prophets were able to understand a kind of abiding, ‘existential’ imminence that could as well apply to later generations facing similar judgment, even if the full and final eschatological deliverance of the nation was not yet.

Such a ‘first-fruits’ or advance ‘earnest’ of ultimate eschatological fulfillment, as well observed in the well known ‘already and not yet’ pattern of NT fulfillment, is not without OT precedent. It can be seen in the experience of the return of the exiles from Babylon. There was real fulfillment of the promise (the already) but not yet the full realization of ‘all’ the covenant had promised with all the highly descriptive elaborations of the prophets.

Remarkably, many of the prophecies describing the return would be presented as accomplishing the full and final redemption, without clear distinction of the stages of fulfillment that would supervene.  Such a telescopic view of prophecy is endorsed by evangelicals who recognize the authority and witness of the NT, but it is not so warmly received by critical scholars, both liberal and Jewish, who charge evangelicals with “eisegesis” (reading ‘into’ the text what one is interested to find).

Indeed, the early church’s view that the prophetic writings held a secret to be revealed by the Spirit in the last days (a view also held by the sectaries at Qumran), would not have passed muster with the critical norms and standards of modern exegesis and hermeneutical science, but all of this forms the background and context that is fully consistent with what the NT will speak of as a mystery contained in the prophetic writings, but intentionally preserved by God until the appointed time of revelation. The intent of the heavenly secrets were to function as a strategy of heavenly warfare to confound and overturn the wisdom of the powers of this age, both human and angelic.

I point this out because I hold a view of Hos 6:2 that is part of this mystery of Christ’s coming, departure, and return to Israel. As mentioned, the revelation of two comings of Messiah discovers a hidden age that would extend from Messiah’s ascension to the end of the times of the gentiles at the end of the great tribulation (Lk 21:24 with Rev 11:2). This is the long exile of covenant wrath and discipline during which Israel would remain under a judicial blindness, as God would “return to His place,” and hide His face from the nation, as a whole (Deut 31:17-18; 32:20; Isa 8:17; 54:8; 64:7; Eze 39:23-24, 29). This would continue until the transitional ‘day of the Lord,’ now revealed as Messiah’s second coming.

A favorite example of this mystery is demonstrated in the better translations of Mic 5:1-5. Here, both comings appear in the space of a few verses. The words, “Now gather yourself in troops, oh daughter of troops,” should be understood as prophetic sarcasm or taunt aimed at the futility of the nation’s tendency to trust in its military when it is not merely the king of Assyria, but Yahweh Himself who has “laid siege against us” (Mic 5:1). Most commentators interpret the rest of the verse, “they shall smite the judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek,” as merely referring to the indignity inflicted on the contemporary king of Israel by the Assyrian invaders. But is this sufficient cause for what follows in Mic 5:3?: “Therefore (for this cause) will He give them up.” Let these words resonate. These are words that chill the soul, as they summon contemplation of a staggeringly tragic history.

Note that this is no momentary ‘giving up’ but continues to the day of redemption that ends the exile forever with the advent of the ruler from Bethlehem. What great provocation, then, can account for such a prolonged surrendering of a people over to perpetual wandering and suffering to the end of the long exile? The prophets are clear that it is a matter of the heart. For the far larger part, the nation has departed from Yahweh’s steadfast covenant love, and violence against this covenant love has incurred the curse. But here, in this passage, a more particular offense is in view. A trajectory of covenant dereliction has reached its climax. “Therefore (for this cause) will He give them up …” Such words can only indicate some act of ultimate provocation.

What is this that seals the nation’s perpetuity in exile until its eschatological resolution in the travail of Zion when the Redeemer, the ruler from Bethlehem, shall come in mighty deliverance? (Isa 59:20-21; 66:8; Jer 30:6-7). Can this be accounted for by anything less than some crowning act that epitomizes and exposes to view Israel’s tendency to trust in man rather than God, a tendency to “always resist the Holy Spirit” (Acts 7:51). It is this tendency that reaches climactic revelation in Israel’s own rejection of her King who is none other than Isaiah’s ‘Servant of Yahweh’ whom the nation would abhor and reject (Isa 49:7; 53:3). Since this great act of the rejection of Immanuel in their midst, the nation has been surrendered to blindness, but never forever. It is always only ‘UNTIL …’ (Mic 5:3; Hos 5:15; Mt 23:39; Acts 3:21; Ro 11:25).

Both Isaiah and Micah had spoken of the time of ultimate travail as concurrent with the eschatological day of the Lord, preceding the restoration of the Davidic kingdom of God on earth (Isa 13:8; 21:3;  26:16-18; 66:7-8; Mic 4:9-10; 5:3). Later, Jeremiah and other of the prophets would refer to this time of ultimate birth pangs as synonymous with Moses’ mention of the tribulation of the latter days (Deut 4:30; Jer 30:6-7, 24; Hos 5:15). It is ‘THEN’ that all the prophets concur that “the remnant of His (Messiah’s) brethren shall return.” Until then, Israel has been delivered over to the judicial blindness that is only removed at the Deliverer’s return to turn ungodliness from Jacob (Isa Ro 11:25-27).

Therefore, the particular offense that provokes the age long ‘giving up’ of Israel can be nothing less than the national sin of “smiting of the judge (ruler) upon the cheek.” The reason for so grave and awful a judgment, one that has lasted so long, is that the judge or ruler of verse one is no ordinary king. He is the ruler from Bethlehem, the Messiah from David’s line.

Only a provocation of such a magnitude is sufficient to account for those solemn and awful words that history has so tragically vindicated, “therefore, He shall give them up” (Mic 5:3). But for how long? Israel is ‘given up UNTIL’ the time that she who has come to travail has brought forth.” When is this? It is the time like no other; “it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble” (Joel 2:2; Jer 30:7: Dan 12:1). Following Moses, the prophets would continue to foretell of a an ultimate time of national travail and rebirth that would climax in the great day of the Lord (Isa 13:8-9; 26:17; 66:8; Jer 30:6-7; Mic 5:3 etc.). After Zion’s travail, the remnant of His brethren, who now recognize Messiah, as typified by Joseph’s self-disclosure to his estranged brethren, returns to the children of Israel. “For now shall He (the smitten ruler from Bethlehem) be great unto the ends of the earth” (compare Zech 9:9-10), and He shall stand and feed in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God; for now shall they abide (Israel’s millennial continuance in peace and righteousness): And this man shall be the peace …” (Mic 5:3-5).

With Mic 5 as background, Hos 5:15 – 6:2 comes gloriously into full light. Hos 5:15 can, of course, be naturally understood to refer to nothing more than the provocation that induced Yahweh to descend in judgment on Israel through the Assyrian, the rod of His indignation (Isa 10:5), and then to withdraw His presence and protection, as when the glory departed from the temple in Ezekiel chapters 10 and 11. Such a view is certainly in keeping with the pattern of judgment threatened the curses of the covenant of the covenant law suit in Deut 28-32, as continually reiterated and enforced by the prophets on the conscience of Israel. But in light of the glory of the mystery, the language of Hos 5:15 transcends any such limitation. Thus, it is far better taken to refer to an even more significant departure from the temple, even Jesus’ departure back to His Father’s right hand when He said, “Behold, Your house is left to you desolate. For I say to you, after this you will not see me again “UNTIL” you will say, BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD” (Mt 23:39). This is the time of Christ session at the right hand of God, as foretold in Ps 110 (another key “UNTIL” of prophecy). The language of Hos 5:15 is no accident! Pay close attention to this unusual language that so richly suggests what the mystery will reveal as the first and second comings of Christ: “I will return again to My place Till they acknowledge their offense. Then they will seek My face; In their affliction (Jacob’s trouble) they will earnestly seek Me.”

In view of what follows in Hos 6:1-2, how can it be lightly dismissed that this has something much more in view than only the idolatry of the northern kingdom? Rather, is this not the post-tribulational acknowledgement of the nation’s crowing offense? The offense that summed up a history of idolatry and apostasy? (Acts 7:51-52). It is not mere “guilt” or “trespasses” (plural), as in some translations. It is the consummate “offense” or ‘trespass” (singular) of the nation in the rejection of the Messiah. This is what is acknowledged at at time of great affliction that ends the elect nation’s long night of exile and estrangement from covenant favor (Hos 3:5). With this acknowledgement, the One who was here and departed now returns to revive the nation that will live out the third day in His sight of God as a resurrected nation. The Revelation of John will provide the key that permits us to identify the ‘third day” with the thousand year reign of Christ Jesus.

It is well known that before the time of Christ, there were conceptions that history would follow the analogy of creation week, for each day a thousand years. This tradition is referred to in the “Epistle of Barnabas,” which appears in vol. 1 of the Ante-Nicene Fathers. By no means am I alone in believing that the two days of Hos 6:2 signifies the time between the advents, but if it is true that a day stands for a thousand years, it means that the “set time” for Israel’s post-tribulational new birth and resurrection (Eze 37; 39:22, 28-29 with Isa 66:8; Mic 5:3), has always been two thousand years from the national rejection of the Son. The two days begins with the smiting, piercing, and ‘cutting off’ of the Messiah (Isa 53:8; Dan 9:26; Zech 12:10) and ends with the post-tribulational revival, so that nation will live out the third millennial day, as a living resurrected nation, with all their children taught of the Lord (Isa 54:13; 59:21; Jer 31:34). During this unforeseen, but certainly foretold interim, the covenant nation would be blinded, while a door of faith would be opened to the gentiles (Acts 14:27; 15:14; Ro 11:7). According to Paul, this is the time that Moses’ prophecy would be fulfilled that said that as Israel had moved God to jealousy by that which was ‘not God,’ so He would move them to jealousy by a ‘not a people’ (Deut 32:21 with Ro 10:19; 11:11). As they had hidden their face from Him (Isa 53:3), so He would hide His face from them (Deut 31:17-18; 32:20; Isa 8:17; 54:8; 64:7; Eze 39:23-24, 29). As nothing else, this would explain the unexpectedly long delay between the advents.

When the Messiah was smitten, pierced, and cut off, Israel was ‘given up.’ That is the language of divine abandonment, and some translations translate it thus, even the Jewish translation. This is the time that God would not only hide His face, He would quite literally “go away and return to His place” (at the Father’s right hand) TILL the nation would acknowledge their offense at a time of great affliction. This is exactly what the NT leads us to believe that Israel will do as they see Him whom they pierced (Zech 12:10 with Mt 24:39; 24:30; Acts 3:19-21; Ro 11:26; Rev 1:7). They will acknowledge a corporate complicity in Messiah’s death, a complicity that all fallen humanity shares in equally.

This is how a generation nearly two thousand years removed from their forebears can own to themselves the piercing of the Messiah (compare Mt 23:30-36). Therefore, in a context that anticipates the “end of sin” (Dan 9:24), the national resurrection that is implied in Hos 6:1-3 means that the acknowledgement of Hos 5:15 can have no lesser ‘offense’ in view than the consummate offense of the nation’s corporate rejection of the Messiah (Acts 2:23; 3:14-15, 17; 4:10-11; 7:51-52). The implications of such language can have no lesser meaning than the age long estrangement of blinded Israel between the two advents. No other interpretation does justice to the divine sacrifice that is implied in God’s surrender of His beloved prodigal nation to the sword and to continuous exile. This must continue, and any Jewish reader of the Hebrew Bible should should be able to recognize that God’s face will remain hidden from the nation, as a whole, until a surviving remnant is born into holy nationhood at the day of the Lord, after passing through the throes of an unequaled tribulation (Deut 4:30; Jer 30:7; Dan 12:1).

If this interpretation of the two days is true, then it is no wonder that Israel is back in the Land and Jerusalem is increasingly the cup of trembling that prophecy predicts (Zech 12:2-3). All present trends suggest that all that remains that is necessary to set the stage for the final seven years will be coming speedily into place. “For He will finish the work, and cut it short in righteousness: because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth.”

Regardless of what is ‘behind’ in the faith of the faithful, this can be ‘filled up’ very quickly (1Thes 3:10), because God is not waiting for man to ‘get his act together’ but He will arise and act, as He knows how to bring the foretold constraints and inducements that are calculated to take His people where they would not have gone (Jn 21:18), even very quickly (Ps 110:3; 102:13 with Gen 17:21)

If, however, this interpretation of Hos 6:2 is true, then God is greatly glorified by such amazing precision, showing His absolutely foreknown and predetermined schedule to His children (“those things that are revealed belong to us and to our children”). We certainly have precedent for this kind of chronological accuracy in the prophetic chronology of Daniel’s amazing prophecy of the seventy weeks. The really much debated question is whether God ever intends that we should have some knowledge of the time. Is there ever a time that it will be possible to know the time? Daniel’s prophecy is one clear example. Who, knowing the prophecy of the seventy weeks, would not also know something about where they stood in relation to the time of the Lord’s first advent, what those living before the revelation of the mystery would have understood as also the time that the kingdom would be restored to Israel. For 490 years, it was quite possible to know, at least with some degree of proximity, how near or distant one stood to the time of the great messianic redemption, as it was conceived by Jews living before the cross.

I maintained this view of the two days of Hosea very strongly amid the false excitement that came when many took the ’93 Oslo peace accords to be the false covenant that begins the 7 years. You’ll remember when Yassir Arafat and Yitzak Rabin shook hands in agreement in front of then president Clinton in those famed photographs. In those days, many insisted that the two days of Hosea should be reckoned from Christ’s birth. I would point out a number of things that should have followed the beginning of the 7 years that was clearly NOT in place, precluding even the possibility. Not least was the necessity of the daily sacrifice, since certainly there could be no stopping of a sacrifice in the “holy place” at Jerusalem if it had not first been started. Nothing in the Oslo accord had moved any closer to the unthinkable prospect of Jewish access to the Arab controlled temple mount, something that is feverishly guarded to this day.

Nothing could prevail to dissuade the advocates of that view until after the year 2000 had completely come and gone. It will be quite different when the real thing comes, because shortly after the false peace, the sacrifice that will be stopped in the middle of the week will be in clearly in place. Its removal in conjunction with the Antichrist’s desecration of the ‘holy place’ in Jerusalem starts the great tribulation (Mt 24:15-16, 21 with Dan 9:27; 11:31; 12:1, 11; 2Thes 2:4; Rev 11:2: 12:7-14). In the full context of all that will accompany and confirm this compelling sign, resistance and denial at this late stage will be a manifestation of the most advanced kind of unbelief. For the faithful, there will be no uncertainty as to the time, and this will have a deep working of sober urgency all throughout the body of Christ, as can hardly be imagined.

The false alarms of prophetic speculation that has littered the landscape of church history could have all been avoided if even the most basic order of events had been kept in proper order. This requires close and careful observance, all by the grace of the Spirit, of course, but we have in print a number of keen writers from past generations who knew and taught this basic outline (it is nothing new). Some were clear in their insistence that nothing on the immediate horizon gave any certain evidence of a near fulfillment. In no small part, this balance of judgment and clarity was due to a studied commitment to interpret prophecy in its plain and literal sense, not discounting, of course, the manifest use of symbol and imagery. In every case throughout history and today, the false alarms of prophetic speculation derives from a tendency to separate what God has joined.

Failure after embarrassing failure has only strengthened the argument that the time can never, and should never be known. But now as then, there is a time to know the time, just as when Jesus would rebuke the nation for not knowing the time of its visitation (Lk 19:44). But “seventy weeks are determined,” and whatever ambiguity may have attended this prophecy before the revelation of the mystery, still, the Jews of Jesus’ day should have known, by any reckoning, that the end of Daniel’s seventy sevens was imminently at hand. Doubtless, this is why Luke’s gospel would say that ‘all men were in expectation” (Lk 3:15). According to Jesus, ignorance of the time was reprehensible and worthy of divine rebuke. That seventy weeks were to be reckoned from the well known decree of the king of Persia to the time of the messianic redemption was NOT a mystery to those who received the scripture. For Israel, it was time to know the time, as also the time between would have precluded any false view of imminence.

Regardless of one’s view of the time of the rapture, if scripture is interpreted literally, it will be unmistakable to believers living at the time that they are in the unequaled tribulation. Since this will be marked by clearly revealed signs that require that certain preceding conditions be in place, believers will have great occasion to see the tribulation coming before it arrives. Who then can deny that it will be possible, at that time, to know the time, at least very approximately. If God has revealed it, then it becomes part of the believer’s stewardship, so that to not know the time when it is time that we should know it, is to reflect seriously on the condition of the heart. This is particularly true as the evidence mounts in the face of the most openly manifest and prolific fulfillment of prophecy in all of history. What was once a subject for speculation and debate becomes, at a certain advanced stage, a manifestation of the true disposition of the heart. It will be a dispensation of divine requirement, a new watershed of division and crisis of decision.

Those who recognize that the mystery of the gospel reveals an unforeseen gap between the 69th and 70th week of Daniel agree that there is yet a further installment on the divine calendar that is very well defined. Indeed, believers of that time will know with certainty that the peace arrangement that provides for Jewish return to the temple mount is not just another peace initiative in the perennially troubled Mideast. At this time, the sacrifice will again be in place and Israel will presume itself secure. This will not be done in a corner.

Such a compelling sign will only be resisted by the most advanced kind of unbelief. For the faithful remnant, there will be NO question of the time. Let me be clear that I do not put any confidence in my dream, except as something to hold in my heart. The apparent stress on the time is what impressed me most. I am, however, quite assured that the interpretation is correct that sees the two days of Hos 6:2 to be referring to the the time between the advents, between Israel’s rejection of Messiah and the revelation that comes to them at the time of His return. For this, a very considerable case can be made, as you may remember from the piece I did on Mic 5:1-4 and the Joseph analogy. The argument builds on a great deal more than mere assumption that the two days is equivalent to two thousand years.

Still, if the time rolls around and the particular line up of events required by prophecy are not in place and in clear view, then it will be obvious that I was wrong to read such specificity into Hos 6:2, as some translations leave out both the ‘two days’ and the “third day,” translating the passage thus: “He will restore us in a very ‘short time;’ he will heal us in a ‘little while,’ so that we may live in his presence.” Such presumption and liberty with the text is not translation; it is at best interpretation. In any event, the two days of Hos 6:2 has been anything but “short” for the Jewish people. The view I take of Hos 6:2 is only as good as it can be shown to belong to a whole complex of events that stand together.Only if and when the necessarily accompanying signs are all in place in proper relationship will our view be sufficiently confirmed to hold anyone else accountable to believe it. I present this only for those who will hold it tentatively in the hearts in the event trends move swiftly in the right direction. If that proves to be so, then who will not rejoice and stand in awe of yet another glorious example of the God who declares the end from the beginning, a tremendously edifying reality, already well enough demonstrated to make unbelief utterly without excuse.

For all who wait for the consolation of Israel, surely, these be the days! Reggie

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He will accomplish His unconditional promise by meeting the imposed conditions Himself by means of atonement and the gift of the Spirit. It was a remarkable epiphany when I discovered how God had used the issue of covenant jeopardy that always threatened Israel’s abiding security in the Land as the means by which God would constrain the prophets to see ahead to the necessity of the great apocalyptic in-breaking of the day of the Lord, but also the revelation of the mystery of the gospel as the basis of the ‘everlasting righteousness’ that could indeed guarantee an eternally secure peace in the Land, because He would become, “the Lord our Righteousness (Jer 23:5-6).

The logic goes like this: History is proof that if God were waiting on Israel, He’d be waiting forever. It is only if the tendency to backslide can be cured, once and for all, that the promise can be sure of everlasting continuance. With the covenant curses threatened on disobedience hanging always overhead, and with the tendency to slip back again into apostasy after every fleeting revival or reform, how can the promise of eternal security in the Land ever be sure to the wayward nation?

The jeopardy posed by the conditional covenant can only be overcome if all of the people, and not only a remnant, are partakers of an eternal righteousness that is unchangeable and secure, so that none will go back or depart, even unto children’s children (Isa 54:13; 59:21). This is exactly what is promised in the everlasting covenant, and it is all built around the promise of the Land as an everlasting possession by this ‘particular’ people, forever free from the curses of the law that that continually threaten invasion, desolation, and exile.

If we juxtapose Deut 4:29ff with Deut 29:4 (the inversion helps memory), we find an important clue in Moses that sets up the whole theology of the Day of the Lord that would be carried forward by the prophets. According to Moses, Israel’s days could not be prolonged in the Land (Deut 4:26; 30:18) until they would receive the heart that until now, God had not yet given them (Deut 29:4). This would not come to the nation as a whole (there was always a remnant who had the new heart) until after the ‘great tribulation’ of the latter days (Deut 4:26-31). This alone would overcome the perennial curse of the broken covenant, thus assuring unending security in the Land, from which they would “never again” be plucked up or afflicted anymore forever (2Sam 7:10; Jer 31:40; Amos 9:15).

This is the background for the eschatology of the day of the Lord as partial solution to the dilemma of covenant jeopardy. That the promise must wait until after the unequaled the tribulation of the Day of the Lord was well known. Unknown was the deeper and even more glorious solution that lay hidden in the mystery of Christ. You see then how God has built His plan around the all constraining question: How does a backsliding nation ever come to lie down safely in their own Land, never again to fear cursing or oppression from their enemies? The Land can only be eternally secure if all the nation, and not only a remnant, has a righteousness that is eternally secure unto children’s children, world without end. This is exactly what was promised in the everlasting covenant. It is the ‘everlasting righteousness’ that will come in at the end of Daniel’s final week (Dan 9:24).

However, the deeper mystery, hid in other ages, is that the New Covenant could only be purchased through the ‘blood of the everlasting covenant’ as basis for the imputation and indwelling of that righteousness that is ‘wholly other’ as perfected on the principle of an endless life in the humanity of the elect Servant Son. So the post-tribulational Day of the Lord (the time of Israel’s resurrection / birth into New Covenant righteousness), together with the revelation of the gospel, becomes the ultimate divine solution to the dilemma of the covenant, or perhaps I should say covenants, plural.

Paul shows that the addition of the Law, with its imposition of conditions, could not annul the immutability of the promise, because the meeting of the conditions would not be by the power of man but by the God who raises the dead. The giving of the Law creates the dilemma of how the promise could be certain of fulfillment, since if anything is left to man, the promise is at risk. Only through resurrection would a people who are dead be able to so fulfill the law as to be safe in the Land forever.

This is why Paul is so vehement against making the promise to depend on anything of man, else it would be uncertain and subject to defeat. But faith, rightly understood, is impossible to the flesh. Faith that is quickened of God is born of God. As such, it is as far removed from human ability as the living from the dead. Faith is not a work of man but of God. The devils believe but the faith of God’s elect is an overcoming faith precisely because it is born of God (1Jn 5:4). In that sense, the faith that is quickened by the Spirit is in itself ‘a piece of resurrection’ (Art’s words).

The sudden revelation of Christ to the surviving remnant of Israel at Jesus’ return, analogous to Paul’s revelation on the Damascus road, is all about God’s determination to show in Israel’s resurrection the same power that He showed in Christ’s resurrection. But whereas Jesus was seen alive by chosen witnesses, every survivor from among the nations in that day will see the spiritual resurrection and return of the national servant / son (Ex 4:23-24; Hos 1:11; Isa 41:8-9; 42:19; 43:10; 44:1-2, 21; 49:3).

It is the covenant as fulfilled through the death and resurrection of the personal Servant Son in the midst of history that becomes the basis by which He will raise the corporate son at the end of history, all in open vindication of His unfailing power to fulfill the conditions of the covenant by Himself alone, precisely so that no flesh might glory, and for this, it must be by grace alone from start to finish, with nothing depending on man, else all is put at risk, even His eternal inheritance in Christ.

That Abraham fell into a deep sleep and was not permitted to pass between the pieces was to underscore that this everlasting covenant was made within the Godhead and was not lent out to the mercy of human will or cooperation, but of Christ who was in Abraham by the divine nature, as one born of Word and Spirit. So, in that sense, it is not I but Christ who is the true cooperator, as certainly obedience is required but only Christ’s obedience through the Spirit can fulfill the righteousness required by the Law in a way that is living and acceptable.

It must be so, because the obedience of which man is capable is fatally short. This is why Paul will speak of the obedience of faith, which is really the obedience of Christ at work in the believer through the Spirit, as it was no less the Spirit of Christ in the OT righteous (1Pet 1:11). This is also how there is ultimately and essentially only one Seed that inherits the promise, as the inheritance of the corporate seed is only by Him, as partakers of His divine nature, as born of the Word of God.

Thus, Israel is given to show the true nature of grace as a resurrection phenomenon through the quickening of Spirit in those who are called according to His purpose, before and apart from consideration of their works. (Ro 9:11, 16). An all saved, holy nation, compromised specifically of Jews, will exist in that specific Land for a thousand years to give continuous witness that men live by mercy and not by works of righteousness which they have done. In that sense, Israel exists to destroy all boasting by putting this great principle of grace on display. This is why He requires that Israel’s special covenant election be recognized and honored by the nations for a thousand years.

For one thousand years, an all saved, eternally preserved nation will witness to what Satan and flesh protests and hates the most. That is discriminating grace that has the right to visit or to pass over without obligation, as so well captured in the glorious old hymn that says, “while on others thou art calling, do not pass me by.” Nothing is more despised by the pride of man. This is why for one thousand years, Israel will embody this principle openly, that through them, God might impress upon all flesh His righteous prerogative to save and keep apart from works of righteousness which have done. Yet, the righteousness that is wrought in us through the Spirit received by faith could never be more actual and real, yet nothing of ourselves.

The divine upholding of God’s right to choose and quicken whom He will does not cut off anyone from hope unless they insist on including something of themselves or their own power in that hope. Like Israel, election exists to destroy all boasting, but it cuts off no one, only the lie of human entitlement based on merit. I hope that is clear.

This is some of the more salient points that I see God making through the prophetic purpose that He has built around the election, the fall and rising again of Israel in that faithful pattern of life out of death.

The post Jacob’s Trouble and the Dilemma of the Covenant appeared first on Mystery of Israel.

This message followed immediately the short message on Zion and the Cross by Mark Klafter found HERE.

The post Before Zion Travailed She Brought Forth – [Video] appeared first on Mystery of Israel.

So I take it that God is very keen that the gospel be presented as the revelation of a mystery that was fully foretold in the prophets but hidden, not only from men, both just and unjust, but also from the principalities and powers of this age till its appointed time of revelation and manifestation. This gospel includes both comings and the relation of those comings to Israel. It is the OT mystery of Messiah’s coming, departure, and return to Israel. Now I realize that’s a mouthful and preaching the gospel does not have to follow a prescribed method, but this is the framework and understanding that all the apostles were proceeding. It was the approach they took and they understood the preaching of the gospel as the revelation of a mystery that proves itself by its conformity to what was written in the prophets. That’s its apologetic force and appeal that removes the intellectual refuge in the face of the miracle of fulfilled, and being fulfilled prophecy. This content and this means of making the gospel known was, in their understanding, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, since it pleases God to make Himself known as the God who declares the end from the beginning, the one to whom is known (and foretold) all His works from the beginning. “The testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy.”

This does not have to explicit in every preaching of the gospel, of course. There is great freedom. But this should be the context and framework of understanding that is understood as implicit, not as a rigid method, by no means, but as a consciousness of the aims of God, not only as to His ends but as to His commanded means, namely, the use of the scriptures of the prophets. When the gospel is preached in this way, built right into it is a powerful apologetic through the miracle of fulfilled prophecy. It is the power of prophecy in evangelism that has been all to neglected. Yet, it is this that God enjoins on us as ‘according to the commandment of the everlasting God’, as I understand Paul’s statement in Ro 16:25-26, and as observed in the common practice of apostolic preaching as we have it recorded in the book of Acts.

The gospel was first preached in an apocalyptic context of flight from the wrath to come, as an urgent message of repentance in view of the shortness of the time, beneath the shadow of an imminent destruction of Jerusalem that would naturally be understood in inextricable connection with the judgment of the nations and restoration of the kingdom to Israel. That’s where they were and where we find ourselves again, full circle.

It is also the “witness” (Travis’ “credible witness”) of the imminence of the kingdom of God (Mt 24:14) God will not judge fully and finally until there has first gone forth in power and clarity this “witness” so to leave all men without excuse for a very compelling opportunity for faith that to reject is to expose the powerful predisposition of the natural heart.

Apocalyptic evangelism is not limited to Jews, though it is meant to appeal to them, not only from the evidence of fulfilled prophecy but of things presently unfolding and soon to follow in their lifetime. Thus, it has the working of a delayed reaction bomb. This is especially seen in Isa 28 where the gospel is first dismissed, but soon enough the forewarned disaster falls and this is calculated to have powerful working on the Jewish conscience in his time of calamity. The same can be said of the rising tide of anti-Semitism, which a futuristic understanding of prophecy has always clearly anticipated. That too is again upon us. Apocalyptic evangelism exploits this evidence to point the Jew, and the nations to the implied divine contention over the nature of true covenant righteousness, and all the issues of God’s face being hidden from the beleaguered nation till the coming in of the everlasting righteousness. Even that statement presumes a mystery, since this righteousness was revealed in the gospel but waits to become the experience of the entirety of the nation when it is born in a day.

The target audience is “whosoever will.” The issue of Israel and the controversy God has with them is for the nations to consider, but they will not consider it rightly until they have understood how God is using the issue of Zion to confront the nations with His controversy with them. All is designed to bring down every high look, to destroy all boasting, whether Jewish or gentile. Actually, all evangelism is apocalyptic in the sense that all preaching of the gospel should presuppose this context of the everlasting covenant and the breaking in of the judgments of the day of the Lord, as well as the ever present danger of eternal hell for the spiritually dead. It is this apocalyptic righteousness of the Spirit that quickens the dead, apart from works, that the gospel reveals, now to those who obey and then to the surviving remnant who look upon Him whom they pierced and cry with one voice, “blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” Apocalyptic evangelism is a call to the nations, albeit in the context of a convincing witness of both the presence and imminence of the kingdom, which implies the return of the King to reign from Zion’s little hill over all nations through a restored “Jewish” nation. It’s that last part that stumbles many. It was so intended. That’s why this sovereign prerogative (the scandal of particularity) will be openly vindicated and employed as a divinely intended challenge to the nations for a thousand years (Isa 66:19-22; Zech 8:23; 14:17-18).

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Do you know how long the Jews have not believed in Adamic sin being imputed? How modern is that notion?

You ask an interesting question on the Jewish rejection of the imputation of Adam’s sin. I don’t think there was ever a time when rabbinic Judaism has not rejected the doctrine of original sin, and hence, the imputation of Adam’s sin. The imputation of Adam’s sin in Ro 5 is in keeping with the doctrine of original sin, which is strongly suggested in many scriptures in both testaments, but particularly required for our understanding of the necessity of Jesus’s virgin birth, since in this way the Messiah would circumvent the the fallen nature of Adam, as passed down through the seed of man. Jewish theology is particularly vocal and passionate in its rejection of the doctrine of original sin, strongly affirming instead the innate ability of man to achieve salvation, but not, of course, without the necessity of forgiveness and mercy through self-initiated repentance, nothing of the special drawing of the Spirit required.

Instead of original sin, Judaism teaches the notion of the two inclinations, with the free will of man being the arbiter as to which wins out in the struggle. They reject the Christian view that a deep root of corruption, received in the fall, pervades all our nature, rendering us incapable of a true and acceptable holiness apart from the special quickening of the Spirit. They believe that the only thing we inherit from Adam is the two inclinations inherent in human nature. With every new entry into the world, it is a fresh start of innocence that is progressively broken down or built up through free choices. No one enters into the world without the full right and ability to gain (earn?) eternal life through the wisdom and discipline of right choices (Ro 4:4). In Judaism, man is not inherently incapacitated for righteousness as in Christian theology (which is taken mostly, but not entirely from the scriptures of the NT that profoundly deny natural, unaided capacity for an acceptable righteousness (e.g., Ps 51:5; Jer 13:23; 17:9; Eze 16:5-6; Mt 19:17; Ro 7:14, 18, 23; 1Cor 2:14, Eph 2:1).

Although I believe that we do inherit the imputation of Adam’s particular sin, as he acted representatively in our nature, as in him all die; it is the fallen nature inherited from Adam that incapacitates us for true repentance, faith, and holiness, since this has rendered us as dead and inert apart from the special intervention of the Spirit. Hence, even the best that the unregenerate person is capable of producing, even in sincere obedience to divine commands, this cannot count for salvation, or even contribute towards eternal life. The way is barred from even the best of human will and noble intention (Ro 9:16, 31-32; 10:2-3). Of course, this is the offense of the cross, namely, the rejection of all that stands under the power of the first creation, not as always completely worthless in and of itself, but as necessarily rejected where the gift of eternal life is concerned.

Since this is getting at the heart of the mystery of the faith, that salvation comes only through a transforming revelation that creates a new union with the divine nature, it is to be expected that the natural man, and of course Jewish theology, would categorically reject such a foreign thesis. That “in man is nothing good” (MK 10:18; Ro 3:10; 7:18; Rev 15:4) is a consummate offense to reason, since it shatters hope in man. This is the hue and cry of humanism and the protest of every man centered theology.

This is not to say (though some have said) that all that pertains to the unsaved is worthless and evil. Even Calvin would speak of “the remnant of the image of God” in fallen man. All can see that the unregenerate are by no means incapable of a measure of goodness, but this cannot count for, or take the place of salvation. Lest any flesh should boast, this must be wholly the work of God by the Spirit. That’s the crucial difference. Man in the image of God, like the law written on stone, has a kind of glory; that is true, but it is fatally short of the glory of God. This is the problem.

It is an hard word indeed, but unless the thoughts and intent of the heart, however noble and selfless the motive, are the fruit of the indwelling Spirit of Christ received by faith, this cannot count with God where salvation and eternal reward is concerned. There may be temporary reward for wise living. A restrained and disciplined lifestyle with virtue and good works may even check and restrain the progress of sin and depravity and do some good in the world. But whatever its temporal value, it is short of the necessary miracle of the new creation and thus short of the glory God. As Paul would say, the only thing that counts is a new creation (Gal 6:15). Thus, Israel’s eschatological salvation in the present age becomes the paradigm and macrocosm of individual and corporate salvation through the transforming revelation of the gospel (Isa 45:17, 25; 54:13; 59:21; 66:8; Jer 31:34; 32:40; Eze 37:5; Dan 9:24 with Jn 3:3; 5:21; 6:45, 63; 2Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15; Eph 2:1; 1Pet 1:23)

The issue will always reduce to the issue of the Spirit. In Christ / in the Spirit is life eternal. Outside is wrath, regardless of time or dispensation, since only by the indwelling Spirit of Christ were any ever made alive to God. That is a rule that may be well inferred from a host of scriptures in both testaments (Gen 41:38; Nu 27:18; Isa 63:11; Dan 4:8-9, 18; 5:14; Mt 22:32, 43; Jn 3:3, 6, 10; 4:24; 6:63; 8:39; Ro 8:14-15; 9:8; 1Cor 2:14; 2Cor 3:17; Gal 4:29; 6:15; Eph 2:1; 1Pet 1:11). Not all receive the same reward or punishment (Lk 12:47-48), but eternal destiny is decided by the issue of life by Spirit through the imputed righteousness of Christ to true faith, which, of course, is a living, and thus a working faith.

Not even the most noble acts, however selflessly motivated, can count for salvation. Nothing of man or that stands in the will or power of man can avail. Only the imputation of Christ’s righteousness can justify before God, the evidence being the gift of the Spirit who creates the new heart of the New Covenant. It is the power and life of the new creation, born of the Spirit and the Word through the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. This alone justifies before God.

I think a central and non negotiable point of our message must always be the unthinkable terror of presuming to stand before infinite, unapproachable holiness, in anything less or other than the very righteousness that was perfected in Jesus’s 33 1/2 years of tested obedience under the law as the spotless Lamb (Mat 3:15; Gal 4:4-5). To come in any other covering is an inexcusable affront (Mt 22:11-13). To present anything less, or to mix something of man with its perfection is to pollute and nullify the whole. By itself, no human work can stand in the judgment, since all other ground is sinking sand. That one sacrifice cannot brook mixture. It is all or nothing. To presume to add anything within human reach or power to the finished work of Christ is to pollute the whole. “A little leaven.” I realize that’s an hard word; but the law requires perfection. Anything short is an affront to divine holiness and to the law.

The Spirit could never have quickened the first sinner apart from the divine certainty of the Surety’s divinely guaranteed success, being already counted as a fully accomplished event in the eternal counsel and foreknowledge of God. Jews need to understand that Jesus and His sacrifice was not an afterthought, not a new plan, but the ground of all salvation past and future, even before the revelation of the mystery that brought to full light the way and means of God’s eternally predestined will to gather together all things in Christ (Eph 1:9-10). Obviously, this means that those in the OT who trusted in God for a righteousness that was not their own had imputed to them much more than they could yet understand (Ps 32:2; Ro 4:6). Just as when Jesus said, “For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them” (Matt 13:17), since now, the way into the holiest of all has been made manifest.

What points of appeal can be brought to Jews that can break into such a powerful false covering, so seemingly supported by scripture itself? (Ro 10:2-3; Phil 3:5-9). Surely it is a blindness that is especially powerful and unique to this beloved enemy “for our sakes” (Ro 11:28). Who, more than the Jew is calculated to send believers back to do their homework in order to give answer? (Prov 15:28; 16:1; Isa 50:4; 2Tim 2:15; 1Pet 3:15). By this divinely ordained encounter, believers are either deepened or devastated in their faith. The Jew is a provision to see if the believer has apprehended the revelation of the gospel by the Spirit (Isa 53:1; Mt 16:17; Ro 1:17; 1Cor 2:14; Eph 6:19). Else, this formidable challenge has the power, as nothing else, to profoundly shake the faith that one only ‘seemed’ to have (Lk 8:18).

Somehow, it has pleased God that when the foolishness of the cross is preached, the Spirit cuts through all the otherwise impossible intellectual barriers. Although the consummate offense, there is something about the concept of a crucified Messiah that breaks into the human spirit as nothing else ever could. As someone has well said, “true faith begins precisely at the point the atheist thinks it should be at an end.”

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