That is indeed the outworking of the fruit of His life within us, as to our sanctification, but it’s foundation and root is deeper still. It’s root is the resurrection life of Jesus, as both imputed and imparted to the justified believer. Its source is as far from the strength of nature as the budding of Aaron’s rod.

Paul says this righteousness is now revealed in the recently unveiled “mystery of the gospel” (Eph 6:19).

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith” (Ro 1:7).

Paul shows that the mystery that could not come to full light until the revelation of the gospel was fully foretold in the prophetic writings (Acts 26:22-23). Yet, kept secret in times past till the appointed time of revelation (1Cor 2:7-8; Ro 16:25-26). Why only now, with the post-resurrection revelation of the gospel, is this righteousness revealed? Wasn’t the righteousness of God already fully revealed and well established all throughout the scriptures? What kind of righteousness is this that has waited till now to be “revealed”?

How is the righteousness of God which might be seen as a source of terror to a sin stricken conscience to be understood as good news? It is because this is the justifying righteousness of God whereby He justifies the ungodly (Ro 3:25-26; 4:5). It is the righteousness by which a helpless condemned sinner is enabled to stand blameless in the presence of unapproachable holiness.

This righteousness is wholly other, because it is nothing of our own (Ro 10:3; Phil 3:9). It has no point of intersection with even the highest ethic within human reach or power. It is of a completely different origin and source in that it resides in only one person.

Of course we are speaking of the very righteousness of the Lord Himself, but particularly as wrought out, performed, and perfected in only one place. That is the seamless garment of His own humanity as our representative, fulfilling in His flesh so much more, infinitely more, than was lost in ours.

As the last Adam, Jesus’ sinless life qualifies Him to take our place as penal substitute for the debt we owed to the holiness of the law as the ground of God’s just government. His predestined atonement on the cross purchased the Holy Spirit’s eternal right of access to lawfully and justly “quicken whom He will” (Jn 5:21; Ro 3:26; 9:18).

As the risen “second man from heaven”, He becomes the head of a new spiritual race. But even before the atonement was made in time, it was no less the basis on which He quickened His saints before the cross. “I am the the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Mt 22:32).

On the basis of the “blood of the everlasting covenant” (Heb 13:20) that would be shed “in the fullness of time” (Gal 4:4), Jesus was always known to the Father as “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev 13:8). The eternal surety of the Redeemer’s blood was the only basis by which any of His saints were quickened (Ps 80:18; 119:50, 93; Jn 5:21; 6:63; Ro 4:17; Eph 2:1, 5; Col 2:13), “born again by the Word of God “(1Pet 1:23),  and brought into living union with the divine nature (2Pet 1:4).

Then as now, the natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit unless first made alive by the Spirit (Rom 8:7; 1Cor 2:14). Then as now, there were the “children of the flesh” who persecuted those who were “born of the Spirit” (Jn 3:6; Gal 4:29). And Peter will say the Spirit who filled and indwelt the OT faithful (Gen 41:38; Ex 31:3; ; Num 11:26; Deut 34:9; Neh 9:30; Ps 51:10-12; 139:7; Prov 1:23; Isa 63:11; Eze 2:2; 18:31; Dan 5:14; Mic 3:8) was none other than “the Spirit of Christ” (1Pet 1:11).

This is to point out that when Jesus rose as the “second man, the Lord of heaven”, He was made a quickening (life giving) spirit (1Cor 15:54), not only to those who would believe after the cross, but to all the regenerate children of God since the beginning. In all times, it is only by the Spirit that the dead live, and that Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. “Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2Cor 3:17).

As our head, Jesus took us with Him to the cross. When He died, we died. “Our old man is crucified with him” (Ro 6:6). When He was buried, we were buried with Him (Ro 6:4; Col 2:12). When He arose, we rose with Him (Eph 2:6; Col 2:12; 3:1). When He ascended, we ascended and set down with Him at His Father’s right hand (Eph 2:6; Rev 3:21).

While there remains an ongoing, active “putting off” of old things (Eph 4:22; Col 3:8), the purpose and the power to “die daily” lies in the freedom of being dead, not only reckoned as dead but actually being dead, having once and forever “put off” (past tense) the old man (Col 3:9). It is this knowledge of something that is finished that empowers victory over the flesh.

Being dead to the first Adam and eternally alive to the “second man, the Lord from heaven”, we are no longer “under the law” (Ro 3:19; 6:14-15). To be in the first Adam is to be in the flesh. To be in the flesh is to be “under the law”. We are “dead to the law” and married to another by the crucified and ascended body of Christ (Ro 7:1-5). This is because we are no longer alive to the “old man” against whom the law breathes out its fearful threatening (Ex 19:16).

Paul’s seeming vehemence against the law in this negative sense, so unique to his writings, is best understood by understanding a single verse. That verse is found in 1Cor 15:56:

“The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.”

For Paul, the strength of sin is the law, not because of any defect in the law, but only because the strength of the law to condemn resides in what Paul elsewhere calls, “confidence in the flesh” (see Phil 3:3-8). The law holds dominion over the conscience as long as confidence remains in anything of natural human ability. It is the problem of self reliance to meet the holiness of the requirement.

Paul fully understands that his kinsmen of the school of the Pharisees knew that trust in God was necessary for salvation. However, they regarded this requirement as fully within their power to perform. They did NOT, as some ignorantly suppose, believe that salvation depended entirely on themselves. This is not their fall.

No, their fall lay in the ill fated presumption that this trust could be mixed with some residual measure of trust in themselves. This is what grace cannot tolerate. Paul utterly condemns the perverse presumption that grace and works, Spirit and flesh, the perfect righteousness of Christ and some measure, any measure, of human contribution can mix (compare Ro 11:6; Gal 5:9). For Paul, grace is all or nothing.

When the heart is divided in its trust, then the broken law continues to have claim and dominion over the conscience. Paul’s point is that the law becomes the strength of sin when there is confidence in the strength of man to meet the holiness of the standard (“But I say unto you”; Mt 5:22, 28, 12:36; 39, 44; James 2:10).

This is the lie that gives sin its strength to accuse. It is also the source of the pride that God must resist. It is this misplaced confidence that gives Satan access and opportunity to accuse the conscience by his prosecutorial use of the law (Jn 5:45; 2Cor 3:9; Rev 12:10).

When Christians fail to grasp the all sufficiency of Christ’s righteousness alone, not only for justification, but also for power, this divided dependence limits, if not completely defeats, the freedom of the Spirit to bear true and permanent fruit unto God (Jn 15:16; Ro 6:22; 7:4; Gal 5:22; Eph 5:9). This is the double mind of which James speaks in Ja 1:8; 4:8. This is what afflicts and binds up many poor defeated Christians, and also many who are in peril of “failing of the grace of God” (Heb 12:15).

Therefore, being dead to the old man over whom the law, and therefore sin and Satan, held accusing, condemning jurisdiction, we have become “dead to the law” (Ro 7:4; Gal 2:19). “In Christ” the law has reached both its goal and termination, but only in the sense of its capacity as a “ministry of death and condemnation” (2Cor 3:7, 9). And also the completion of its tutelage to bring (drive) the despairing soul to Christ who is, in this sense, “the end of the law for righteousness” (Ro 10:4; Gal 3:23-25).

It is in this sense that the law has been completely “taken out of the way” (Col 2:14), and “done away” (2Cor 3:7, 11, 14). We are no longer “in” the first Adam’s nature, but the last’s. “For you are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God” (Col 3:3). This is how Paul can say “it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20).

Not only is our life located in another person who also lives in us (Col 1:27; 1Pet 1:11); it is in another place, “far above all principalities and power” (Eph 1:21; 4:10), and therefore secure beyond Satan’s reach (compare Rev 12:5 with 1Jn 5:18; especially in light of the implications of Ro 7:17, 20 in light of 1Pet 1:23; 1Pet 3:2; 1Jn 3:6, 9).

Our life is now in heaven, because when He ascended, we ascended and sit down with Him at the Father’s right hand (Eph 1:20; 2:6; Col 3:1; Heb 12:2; Rev 3:21). The language of “set down and seated” implies something that is finished. Like Him, we are waiting till all things are put under (Ps 110:1; Heb 2:8), but as to the certainty of our position and hope of inheritance, “it is finished!” The new creation has irrevocably begun. The first fruits have been secured and brought in. If Jesus is raised, He lives, and if He lives, He is able to come again.

We are not on our way to becoming a new creation; we ARE a new creation! This is because we are safely and forever in Him whose victory over Satan, sin, death, and the grave is the first fruits, not only of the resurrection in its order (1Cor 15:20, 23), but the entire creation (Ro 8:20).

Christ, the whole Christ, not only the death He died for us, but the life He lived for us, is now our very life, so that His appearing will be the appearing of our life. “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory” (Col 3:4). Here is the sublime logic of a most inconceivable glory, promised to every believer: “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1Jn 3:2).

Here is a profound principle. Our deeper, fuller transformation into His likeness does not depend on a new reality, but an ever increasing revelation of Him “as He is“. “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2Cor 3:18). This means the  transformative vision that begins now by the Spirit awaits its fullest revelation beyond the veil at at His return when the transformation will be complete. 

As the promised Seed of the woman, Jesus’ birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension has secured the complete reversal of the curse for all who are in Him. That is the key word, “in Him”. He has done this, not only by expiating our guilt, but by imputing to us the very righteousness that He perfected in our representative humanity, as necessarily lived out “under the law” (Mt 3:15 with Gal 4:4).

In this we see that the life He lived was as crucial to our salvation as the death He died. It is the righteousness of His life that He lived for us that is imputed, and put to our account, as though we lived that fully examined, fully approved life.

This is not the righteousness whereby God is righteous in His heaven, though it is in perfect union with that too. No, our justification is located, not in ourselves, but in another person’s righteousness (Ro 3:25-26). That is the righteousness that was perfected in the Lamb of God over 33 1/2 years of spotless obedience under the exacting inspection of the law.

It is this righteousness that is put to the everlasting seal of everyone who has the faith that is “born of God” (1Jn 5:4). This kind of faith is so much more than mental consent to a correct creed. Saving faith is born by the Spirit.

According to Paul, we are inwardly changed and transformed, not only by believing the right facts, but by the Spirit’s revelation of the face of Jesus, which is to say, a revelation of His mind and heart (2Cor 3:18 with Mt 11:27; Jn 5:21; Ro 9:18). That moment of true believing is itself a resurrection event (Eph 2:1; Tit 3:5). “How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed!” (Amazing Grace, John Newton).

This is the only righteousness that God can accept. To presume to come before Him in anything less or other than this man’s righteousness is an affront of intolerable presumption. The imputation of this one, only acceptable, pure, unmixed, fully complete righteousness of Christ Himself is the indispensable wedding garment that alone stands between joyful, abundant acceptance and stern rejection (Mt 22:11-13).

Christians must know by the Spirit the holy dread of presuming to appear before God in any lesser righteousness than this. It is this righteousness that is given to the least truly regenerate believer, not in the part but in the whole, as though perfectly performed by each one under the exacting scrutiny of the law.

If we could grasp this for all its implication by the Spirit of revelation, as a dear brother once said, “the ground would shake before us!” Some things are just too glorious for us to grasp, even when acknowledged as true, unless it comes by the power of divine revelation, and how rare is that?

This righteousness not only exceeds the righteousness of the scribes Pharisees; it even surpasses Jesus’ contemporaries’ highest conceptions of John the Baptist. We must ask, why does Jesus use the example of John the Baptist to send home the point that even the least citizen of the kingdom of heaven is greater than him?  What is Jesus’ meaning here?

Jesus appropriates the popular view of John’s high spiritual and prophetic stature to push their conceptions of him to the completely inconceivable level of “none greater” born of woman (Mt 11:11). He did this to underscore and magnify how much greater the very least citizen of that realm is than even the most spiritual and approved among God’s servants of whom none has ever been greater.

Think how this must have been taken. Jesus is inviting them to conceive the inconceivable, and for one purpose. That purpose, I submit, is to show, not an exceedingly surpassing greatness, but an exceedingly surpassing righteousness. As in the case when Jesus terrifies His Jewish contemporaries with the forbidding task of exceeding the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees (Mt 5:20). So here, He sets before them the possibility of exceeding the highest conceptions of John’s spiritual greatness. How can these things be? Exactly!

Jesus is laying the foundations for Paul’s doctrine of justification by the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, as a unique kind of righteousness, which has no earthly comparison. He is giving us to understand that this righteousness of the kingdom of heaven is nothing of our own, but wholly His alone.

This is the OT promise of an “everlasting righteousness” (Dan 9:24). It is the righteousness of the new / everlasting covenant (Isa 59:21; Jer 31-34; 32:40). It is the promise that “in the Lord will all Israel be saved with an everlasting salvation” (Isa 45:17). It is the righteousness of the Lord by which “all the seed of Israel shall be justified and shall glory” (Isa 45:25). It is the expectation that in that day, it will be the Lord who works all their works in them (Isa 26:12). “And their righteousness is of ME, says the Lord” (Isa 54:17).

It is the righteousness of the Lord Himself, but particularly as wrought out, performed, and fulfilled in the person of our representative humanity, the scion of David, the curse reversing Seed of the woman, the second Adam.

“Behold, the days come, says the LORD, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In His days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby He shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS” (Jer 23:5-6).

The implication of this glorious truth will be totally lost if we assume that John stood on the outside of the kingdom of heaven. Quite the contrary! Some were pressing into the kingdom at that very time and taking it by force (Mt 11:12; Lk 16:16). Others were refusing to enter and blocking the way for those seeking to enter (Mt 23:13).

So this is not a kingdom that is only future on the far side of the great tribulation, as commonly and correctly expected by the Jews. Rather, Jesus is revealing the mystery of the kingdom as present and active, even as the outward structures of this evil age remain.

The kingdom is a revelatory (apocalyptic) phenomenon as well as a chronological event. It can be “at hand”, not only in terms of chronological time, though that too, but in terms of a realm that is only accessible to the Spirit of revelation. One must be made spiritually alive (born again) to see it (Jn 3:3 with 1Pet 1:23). It is present and suffering violence now, as it is being brought decisively near by the presence of its uncrowned King.

The action of the King is the action of the kingdom. The proof that the kingdom has come in power is in the binding of the strong man and the spoiling of his house, as demonstrated by the expulsion of demons by the finger of God (Mt 12:28-29).

So it is clear that John was in the kingdom as Jesus was preparing His disciples to understand its presence among them, as He begins to reveal to them what He calls, the “mystery of the kingdom”. The popular and correct understanding was that the messianic deliverance of the kingdom of God on earth comes only after the tribulation and its climax in the long awaited great day of the Lord. Against this background, Jesus begins to introduce the revolutionary new concept that the promised deliverance of the long awaited kingdom of God has two distinct stages, one present and one to come.

This kingdom that Jesus announces as presently “at hand” is not entirely new. It has always been an ever present and active reality (Ps 103:19; 145:11-13; Dan 4:17, 25, 32), but now “the time is fulfilled” for the great transition that brings the first fruits of the fulfillment of the ancient promise (M 1:15) . Even with the promise now partially fulfilled in the suffering of the Lamb that precedes the glory (Acts 3:18-21; 1Pet 1:11), there is a future glory and greater fulfillment and manifestation of the kingdom of God when all the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea (Isa 11:9; Hab 2:14). But now, even in the temporary absence of the risen and ascended King (Lk 19:11-15 with Dan 7:13-14), the kingdom is no less present in mystery form, as active in the person and power of the Holy Spirit, not only in the age to come but even now.

This revelation of the mystery of the kingdom stood in contrast (but not contradiction) to the common Jewish expectation of one coming of the Messiah in connection with Israel’s post-tribulational deliverance at the day of the Lord. The mystery of the kingdom is based on the unknown secret of two separate comings of Messiah (Acts 26:22-23; Ro 16:25-26).

The foundation of this kingdom is not simply righteousness as the world, with its religions, sects, and cults has always conceived of God and the demands of His character and laws. That understanding is common to man and leaves one fatally short of the righteousness of God that is imputed to the believer in Jesus alone.

No, this is an “apocalyptic” (unveiled) righteousness that requires the Spirit’s revelation to understand and grace, because it is a righteousness of another kind. The Reformers called this an “iustitia alien” (alien righteousness).  It is apart from me; it’s not mine inherently. It belongs to Christ. It’s source is God alone by grace alone through faith alone. Yet the imputation of His righteousness assures that the Holy Spirit has come to work the works of God in and through the justified believer.

This is why we are careful to clarify and insist that “whereas we are justified by faith alone, the faith that justifies is never alone”. The righteousness that justifies us also guarantees its lively working in and through us by the indwelling Spirit of Christ. The truth of whether we are in the faith in vital reality (2Cor 13:5) is shown and vindicated by the fruits of the Spirit (Mt 7:19; Mk 4:20; Jn 15:2; Ro 7:4; Gal 5:22; Phil 1:11; Ja 2:18) , albeit in varied measure differing between believers (“some thirty, some sixty, and some a hundred fold”; Mk 4:8).

To see (really see and apprehend by the Spirit) this righteousness of the King, as actually belonging to everyone in the kingdom, even those of the least spiritual maturity or stature, one must be born again, since “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (Jn 3:3).

According to Jesus, the spiritual birth is not new. Nicodemus should have understood this as a fundamental presupposition of all spiritual life (Jn 3:10). This righteousness is the only ground and basis by which anyone was ever justified at any time or dispensation.

The Father already had in His secure possession the predestined work of the Son, counted as already done, even before the beginning of creation (Ro 8:20; Eph 1:4-5, 9-11; 3:11; Heb 9:12; 13:20; Rev 13:8). This is how God could give the Spirit of Christ to OT believers on the basis of a work yet to be accomplished in “the fullness of time” (Gal 4:4), even before the full revelation of how this would be accomplished in the gospel of the Messiah’s twofold appearing to Israel (Acts 26:22-23; Ro 16:25-26; Eph 6:19; 1Pet 1:11)

Can we even begin to take this in? In the words of Fanny J. Crosby, “I scarse can take it in!” Indeed, no one can, except by the quickening of the Spirit’s illumination. Yet when we see this clearly and grasp its implications by the grace of the Spirit’s illumination, we will begin to grasp the unfathomable glory implied by such a righteousness as this.

Can we believe that we really are, not only someday, but right now this very righteousness of God in Christ? The scripture certainly affirms this. “For He made (counted) Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2Cor 5:21).

Only by the grace of revelation can we begin to grasp the inconceivable implications of 2Cor 5:21 and therefore the glory of Jn 5:24. What had, until then, only been associated with a future hope is here declared by Jesus to be the present possession of every truly regenerate believer. “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.”

Could grasping this by the Spirit be what it means to enter His rest? I think so. The writer of Hebrews calls this blessed estate, “the full assurance of faith.” This is far more rare than usually assumed by superficial views of the nature of true, Spirit quickened, saving faith.

This is the overcoming faith that shows itself through testing to be truly “born of God” (1Jn 5:4). It is not the lifeless, fruitless faith that is no better than the faith of demons (Ja 2:19). It is not the superficial, rootless faith that is quickly withered by the heat of temptation and adversity (Lk 8:13). It is the very faith of Christ at work in the believer (Jn 6:28-29; Rom 3:22; Gal 2:16, 20). It is the faith that Paul calls, “the faith of God’s elect” (Tit 1:1).

The Roman Catholics at Trent branded this glorious doctrine of imputed righteousness a “legal fiction”. To which I answer, if it is no legal fiction that He who knew no sin could counted as sin, not by His own sin, but by the imputation of mine; how is it a legal fiction if I should be counted the righteousness of God by a righteousness that is not mine, but His freely imputed to me? Oh wonder of wonders!

“And indeed, this is one of the greatest mysteries in the world; namely, that a righteousness that resides in heaven should justify me, a sinner on earth!” (John Bunyan).

No wonder Jesus said, “except a man be born again, he cannot see …” Not only can he not see the kingdom; he cannot see or understand the kingdom’s unique and only righteousness. This righteousness is not only impossible for the natural man to receive; it is impossible for him to conceive. It must be revealed.

Romans 1:17
“For therein (the gospel) is the righteousness of God revealed ….”

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Do you guys have anything on the the theme of testing/purification/refining of the saints during the great tribulation and the end of the age in general?

In contrast to dispensationalists, we believe the saints of the last tribulation are the body of Christ. Clearly then, Daniel’s vision of the refining, whitening, and purification of the saints of that particular, ‘unequaled’ tribulation expects something climactic and unique, distinct from the more common experience of tribulation in general, as characteristic of the age in general.

We know God’s vision for post-tribulational Israel. What is less considered is His perfecting purpose for the church of the last generation. God has not finished with His intention to educate the powers through the church, “the pillar and ground of truth”. It is that holy entity that is called to walk in the path of the Servant, demonstrating the wisdom of the cross before principalities and powers, answering most especially at the end, “have you considered My servant …”

If God will have an all saved Jewish nation, miraculously born and cleansed “in one day” (Isa 66:8; Eze 39:22; Zech 3:9), then God is able to perfect the church unto climactic translation, not only because the chronological clock has struck, but because the church has been brought to something unprecedented, that can only be compared to the translation of Enoch and the catching up of Elijah.

Unlike tribulation in general, as the church by definition is a tribulation people, the ‘great’ tribulation is much more particularly the great transition between this age and the age to come. This is why the great tribulation is compared to a final travail unto the birth of the new age of covenant promise. Also called the time of Jacob’s trouble and ‘Zion’s travail’, the unequaled tribulation ends with the birth of Israel and the translation of the church. This is very significant, because this convergence is not only because Jesus returns at this time, but because of what God has accomplished in these two, elect entities.

In the case of Israel, the beleaguered remnant according to the election of grace has been brought finally, and fully to “the end of their power” (Deut 32:36; Dan 12:7) in preparation to look upon Him whom they pierced when He comes in the clouds (Zech 12:10; Mt 23:39; 24:30; Acts 3:21; Ro 11:26; Rev 1:7). In the case of the church, a process of revelation and experience of divine power in the furnace of affliction has brought the corporate body of Christ to its promised eschatological perfection (Dan 11:32-33, 35; 12:3, 10; Jn 17:23; Eph 4:13; Heb 4:9; 1Jn 4:18; Rev 12:11; 19:7).

This twin event of birth and resurrection at Jesus’ return begins the liberation of the creation described in Ro 8:20, which we see as realized in two stages, pre and post millennial (Isa 24:22; Ro 8:20; Rev 20). All of this means the end of the age is not only waiting on the completion of His purpose to bring Israel back to Him, not only His intention to fully reveal the mystery of iniquity, but His intention to perfect His corporate servant, the church, in a final demonstration before principalities and powers. I call this the ‘final straightening of the church’.

The tribulation, with its clearly marked certainty of the time, and abundance of unsealed revelation and prophetic fulfillment, will function as a kind of birthing canal, emptying not only Israel but the church of their power. This is why I believe we should see the enormous use that God has invested in the first half of the week.

What God has invested in giving the church the critical preparation of the first half of the week is exactly WHY the church will be straightened and prepared for the great transition that takes place at the beginning of the second half. This time will mark Michael’s clearing the heaven of Satan’s hindering presence (Rev 12:7-14 with Dan 12:1).

This brings Satan down for his ‘short time’ (Rev 12:12), but it also signals the time that the two witnesses receive their power, but not ONLY the two witnesses, but a whole body of ‘maskilim’ who receive strength and power at precisely the same time that Michael is evicting Satan (Rev 12:10-11). These who “love not their lives unto the death” are shown in Daniel’s prophecy to be receiving this power to “be strong and do great exploits and instruct many” at the very time the abomination is being placed that begins the unequaled time of trouble (Dan 11:31-33; 12:1-2, 7, 11). It is no accident that THIS is the very time the two witnesses are receiving their power for final tribulation witness.

I hope we can see this. It cannot be too greatly stressed that this great transition at the mid-point of Daniel’s final week is, not only the time that Satan is being thrust out of heaven and confined to earth for his ‘short time’ of unparalleled destruction; it is the same time the daily sacrifice is being taken away and the abomination of desolation placed in Judea to begin the great tribulation, just 3 1/2 years before “the end” (Dan 9:27; 12:7, 11). We must not miss this connection! Michael’s heavenly victory results, not only in woe for the earth, but in great anointing of power coming upon the church for the final testimony that results in a multitude beyond human ability to count coming out of ‘the tribulation, the great one’ (Rev 7:9, 13-14).

As Jesus saw His appointed hour, those of understanding will see and prophetically apprehend the approaching test for all its unparalleled requirement. As the door of the last seven years is shut firmly behind us, many more of the awakening body of Christ will begin to foresee the evil and dig down deep, greatly hiding herself in Christ, knowing her natural inability to stand in the evil day. This will prepare and fit the church, not only for her final purification and perfection unto translation at Jesus’ return, but her ultimate testimony to the nations, more than at any other time moving Israel to jealousy.

As Jesus said of Peter, I believe it can be prophetically said of the church of the last hour, that another will take her and lead her where she would not have gone, even to a corporate cross of obedience unto death (Rev 12:11). So the purification of the saints of the last and unequaled tribulation is unto a divinely ordained perfection that ends in translation, with the removal of the veil cast over all nations (Isa 25:7-8; Rev 10:7). I am suggesting that the testing of the church, I would call it the great emptying of the church, is not unrelated to the veil that is spread over the nations being removed with the finishing of the mystery of God at Jesus’ return (Isa 25:7; Rev 10:7). There is something about the relation of revelation “at the end of power”, which is to say at the end of human self sufficiency, which must always removed as a necessary prerequisite for resurrection.

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I’m very interested in the overall impression that you will get while there [in Israel]. One thing is for sure, like you said, “So much going on in the Spirit that is so intense over here.”

Just like when a child of God is out of order and God will lead that one into some test of adversity to cure them of their presumption, I see the spirit of Islam, raised up like a Pharaoh to send a prodigal son running back into the Father’s arms to receive, in great brokenness, a new heart and spirit.

In the meantime, I see divine tenderness in bringing them back again into their own Land with great tokens of blessing of ‘common grace’. This is a milestone of immense significance, and for that reason so much the greater reason to soberly listen to their own prophets. Why? Well, of course that they might attain to the revelation of the righteousness of God, but also because for 18 centuries, there has been no Jewish nation, particularly one that has only recently returned “after the desolation of many generations” (Isa 61:4; Eze 38:8). Even beyond the explicit references to the return, this is what all the prophets presuppose as the necessary setting “in the Land” for God’s final pleading with His people in their greatest and final crisis. Only since the modern return from “the desolations of many generations” has the stage been set for the far greater and complete return that comes only after the tribulation when the Spirit is poured out on the surviving remnant (Isa 66:8; Zech 12:10; Eze 39:22, 28-29).

So while return to the Land is indeed a miraculous modern fulfillment of prophecy, the presence of an implacable enemy, still possessed of what Ezekiel calls, “the old hatred” (Eze 25:25) and “the everlasting hated” (Eze 35:5), should be sober reminder that though they are back home, they are not yet “home free”. But this is not the first time this situation has existed for Israel. Consider: When the Jews returned from Babylon, there was “a little reviving” (Ezra 9:8-9) . Notwithstanding, the prophets of the return, anticipating the inevitable drift back into apostasy, would continue to speak of the inexorable approach of an ultimate day of the Lord that would be preceded by an unequaled time of trouble, not only for Israel but the whole world. Nevertheless, according to Daniel’s prophecy, Israel’s deliverance would not come before the end of the 70 weeks. This would mean that for nearly 5 centuries the Jews would be back in their Land, but because of the partiality of their repentance, the nation would continue to reel under the cycles of persecution and occupation of successive kingdoms. Still, then as now, there would be extended periods of what we might call, ‘common grace’, which is the grace that God has on the poor, benighted condition of the natural man, as space for repentance is granted in divine patience, pity and love.

But where Israel is concerned especially, God cannot forever settle for this middle ground of in the Land, out of the Land, but never able to realize lasting security or guaranteed permanence in the Land apart from the promised righteousness of the everlasting covenant. As much as everything in our nature would like to avoid that day (Jer 30:6-7), it must come, because it is only an entirely regenerate nation that can fulfill the Abrahamic and Davidic covenants, as necessary for the kingdom of God to come on earth, and this cannot happen apart from “the bringing in of the everlasting righteousness”, not only for a remnant, but for the entirety of the nation (Isa 4:3; 45:17, 25; 54:13; 59:21; 60:21; Jer 31:34, et al.). That’s the part that so few are really seeing. God’s going for broke here. Can He pull this off? “Has God really said?” Can He, without going to a more ‘compliant’ people, take the same people He first brought out, and not only bring them in, but keep them in the Land forever, without further threat of covenant jeopardy surrendering them again and again to the will of their enemies?

This is the great test God has appointed for Himself, as He has chosen to bind up His Name and covenant oath with making good on this miracle promise, which is nothing less miraculous than Isaac’s or the Savior’s own miraculous birth (compare Gen 17:21; 21:2 with Ps 102:13; Isa 66:8). This is the great question that the millennium is given to settle openly and forever, in public vindication of the everlasting covenant, as it pertains to Israel in particular (the “scandal of particularity”).

What will make this so remarkable and manifestly miraculous is that this will be the experience of a nation that is NOT yet physically raised to glorified immortality, but newly born, filled with the Spirit, albeit still in their natural bodies. The uniform salvation of every Jewish survivor and every child ever born thereafter to Jewish parentage, will be a burning bush of standing witness to the nations of sovereign, electing grace, simply because while there will be great, unprecedented salvation and evangelistic outreach to the nations, in only one Land and among only one people will there be uniform salvation from the least to the greatest, so that not one of mature age need ever be taught to know the Lord, since they will ‘all’ know Him (Isa 4:3; 45:17, 25; 54:13; 59:21; 60:21; 66:22; Jer 31:34; 32:38-40; Eze 20:40; 37:25; 39:22, 28-29, et al).

This marvel of the uniform salvation of a remnant of penitent Jewish survivors of the last tribulation, together with their progeny that will be born to the them in the millennial age, all kept from departing from the new heart and new spirit of the everlasting covenant, is precisely what Paul meant when speaking of the salvation of ‘all Israel’ when the Deliverer comes out of Zion (note how Paul is conflating Isa 27:9; 59:20; Joel 3:16; Jer 31:34). The time made plain by the context is clearly the post-tribulational day of the Lord.

If this divinely ordained demonstration did not require flesh and blood embodiment on this earth, it is hard to see why a millennium would be required after the Lord’s return, which is exactly why so many cannot conceive of an earthly millennial interim beyond this age but before the final perfection. Yet, a volume of prophetic detail throughout the prophets would become superfluous without a place for fulfillment somewhere beyond this age, yet clearly incompatible with what is described of the final perfection of Rev 21-22.

This oversight an inattention to detail explains why many do not see the scriptural imperative of an abiding and unfulfilled aspect of the everlasting covenant that yet pertains to THEM (i.e., the natural branches). God yet has a cosmic point that He is determined to make through the Jew. What is that point? It is the very purpose for which Jacob was first set apart. It is “SO THAT the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of Him who calls” (irrevocably). The Jew exists as distinct, and very importantly visibly distinct, not only to preserve the holy oracles and give the world Jesus (and then to have no further purpose?), but they are miraculously preserved, against all odds, as distinct among the nations, that through them, by real embodiment of real, preserved ethnic identity, God might make this very point, and send it home for a thousand years of open, public witness.

The cumulative evidence leads to the conclusion that God has decreed that His free prerogative to choose as He will choose will have a physical embodiment on this earth for a thousand years before moving to the final, post-millennial perfection of new heavens and new earth. This will be the open, visible vindication of the everlasting covenant, as it pertains particularly to the natural branches. All indications are that God is very jealous for this. It is something that has been in His heart since the setting apart of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, which is to say, the God who elects.

Still, there will be pockets of contempt and envy against Israel’s election, until the earth has become full again of covenant haters, election despisers, showing that even under the most compelling and auspicious conditions, the wicked are unwilling to behold the majesty of the Lord.

“Let favour be shewed to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness: in the land of uprightness will he deal unjustly and will not behold the majesty of the Lord. Lord, when thy hand is lifted up, they will not see, but they shall see and be ashamed for their envy at the people; yea, the fire of thine enemies shall devour them” (Isa 26:10-11).

Another point I wanted to make is that NEVER before have such a number of often overlooked details of prophecy existed in such perfect alignment, some that have only fallen into place the last few years. Not only can Jesus NOT come until the man of sin is first revealed, but preterists and amillennialists alike should be apprised that only now, for the first time, the right enemies are in the right place for the fulfillment of prophecies that have never realized final and complete fulfillment, respecting all details, until now. Not Rome, but Gog and Magog and the distinct nations listed in Eze 38:5-6.

For example, neither Antiochus IV or Titus qualified as a ‘little horn’ (a small power in its origin; Dan 7:8; 8:8-9). The early church fathers would caution against associating any of the Caesars with the final beast in the absence of the ten kings. Yet, the ten kingdoms mentioned in Ps 83 include the very territories that are ranged against Israel now, who harbor to this day “the everlasting hatred” that the scripture depicts as alive and well at the time of the day of the Lord and Israel’s ultimate deliverance for kingdom glory (Obad; Eze 35-36, et al.). It is these nations in particular that all the prophets show to be participants in the final siege upon Israel that brings the great day of the Lord in all its finality. It is Lebanon, Edom (modern Jordan), Assyria (modern Iraq), Persia (modern Iran) and so on we could go. As in ages past, Israel’s modern enemies inhabit the same neighborhood that is currently brimming with what Ezekiel calls, “the everlasting hatred” (Eze 25:15; 35:5).

In only the last few years, even less, the nations that prophecy shows to be belligerents against Israel are turning from an only recent posture of friendship to open hostility. We see this with Turkey, the Togarmah of Eze 38. Conversely, other nations mentioned in prophecy as NOT opposing Israel in the final conflict, but instead being threatened and overrun by the Antichrist, have only very recently moved in the opposite direction. For example, the book of Ezekiel is most prolific in its mention of Egypt. Yet, when we come to the list of nations that are led by the principality, Gog, against the Land of Israel, Egypt is significant for its non-mention. How far this seemed from probable only a short while ago when the radical Muslim brotherhood Morsi government was leading Egypt towards absolute, obsessive belligerence against Israel. Not only so, but Egypt is particularly described in Dan 11:42 and in Isa 19 as being a special object of Antichrist rage, very possibly for a policy of moderation towards Israel. Note too that Egypt is overrun in Dan 11:42 only AFTER the abomination has been placed in Dan 11:31, showing this to be AFTER the middle of the week, making clear that Egypt was NOT one of the ten aggressors confederated with the Antichrist in his initial invasion of Israel.

Another compelling instance is Saudi Arabia (biblical Sheba and Dedan). Mutual regional strategic and economic interests have brought these onetime bitter enemies into just the kind of common cause that makes the Antichrist invasion of Israel an occasion for Saudi consternation (see Eze 38:13). Not only are the Saudis not supportive of the Antichrist invasion of Israel; they are threatened by it. All of these developments are very recent, but necessary to fulfill many often-overlooked details of prophecy.

Thus, we can say that whereas there are moderate Arab nations that will support the peace arrangement that the Antichrist disrupts in the middle of the week. It is incorrect to suppose that ‘all’ nations go against Israel. They do not! It is the Antichrist with his ten that break the peace and flood the Land of Israel with overwhelming forces. The onlooking nations, unable to repulse his advance (Dan 11:31 with Rev 13:4) are aghast and imperiled. They will be impotent to resist (Dan 11:31 with Rev 13:4). Dissenting nations will soon come under great pressure to capitulate to his demands. Evidently, he does not have complete military control over all the nations, certainly not at ‘the end’ (see Dan 11:40-45), but is able to use his strategic advantage over the flow of vital resources to exert control over the nations through economic sanctions. Besides the sweeping power of unrestrained deception, his chokehold on the world’s economy appears to be a primary means to manipulate compliance with his demands.

The hearts of men will be ultimately tested as to whether they will bow to his demands, and we may be sure that part of the price to escape economic strangulation will be the handing over of the Jews.

All’s to say, these conditions have never existed until now. These developments are remarkably new. So what does this mean for where we are at the moment? How long will the present status quo hold? When we look at the scriptures and the modern situation since Israel’s remarkable return and achievement of statehood, one does not get the impression that the tribulation is that far removed from Israel’s preliminary return in unbelief, coupled with great prosperity and beautification of the Land.

I mentioned that this beautification and prosperity of the Land comes “after many generations of desolation”. Think about it. When has this prophecy been fulfilled in the past? Is it the 70 years of captivity prophesied by Jeremiah? That was only ONE generation. Could it have been fulfilled anytime BEFORE Rome’s destruction of the temple when the Jews populated and tilled the Land all throughout the 490 years of Daniel’s 70 week prophecy? No, the only period long enough to account for this prophecy is the period since 70 A.D., especially since 132 A.D. It is only since then that the Land lay barren and untilled until the 19th century. Now observe: In Eze 38:8, the Antichrist invasion of the Land comes AFTER the Land has been for “many days … a continual waste”. This again refers to the long exile that answers to none other than the Roman exile since final Jewish eviction in 132 A.D. But while no definite time is given for how long the Jews will be in the Land and greatly prospering before the Antichrist invasion, it is hard to take the impression that the time can be very long from this preliminary regathering in unbelief to their ultimate regeneration and complete return when the face of God is no longer hidden and the Spirit poured out (Eze 39:22, 28-29).

It is also significant that this is AFTER the desolation of ‘many generations’ but BEFORE the brief desolation of the last 3 1/2 years. Joel describes the day of the Lord as coming to a land that is Edenic BEFORE it is attacked and turned into a “desolate wilderness” (Joel 2:3). This is exactly the condition of the Land that Ezekiel describes as existing just before the attack of Gog (Eze 38:12-13).
“Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand; A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains: a great people and a strong; there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations. A fire devours before them; and behind them a flame burns: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them” (Joel 2:1-3)

Upon the Lord’s return, the Land will be returned to its Edenic beauty during the millennium (Eze 36:35), but this is not to be confused with its pre-day of the Lord condition described by Joel and Ezekiel that is brought into ruin by the ravaging hordes of the Antichrist.

So we’ve come full circle. Jerusalem is again a cup of trembling, as the prophet says she must be just before her final deliverance and glory. It is the controversy of Zion again, only this time is the last time, because unlike former destructions and desolations, the players declared in the ‘fine print’ of prophecy are now, for the first time, even within the last few years, all now aligned in place. All that remains is a peace arrangement that provides for required recognition of Israel’s right to exist, and access for Jews to restore their ancient ritual and temple. This brings the really big question that has recently moved me to tears. What will THIS take and what will it cost?

As Dalton recently posted, and as confirmed by a friend that used to work within the intelligence community, all the other wars have been little wars compared to the big one that is presently building on the northern border. The missiles currently being stock-piled by Iran’s proxies, and now well concealed within Russian protected Syria, are not for self defense but for the day of strategic opportunity to destroy Israel, nothing less.

Knowing that the next US administration may not be so supportive, Israel may well decide to take preemptive action. It has long been my expectation that the changes required in the region to fulfill the final necessary requirements of prophecy will not come by any natural process of diplomacy. Nothing short of war, one that may well threaten Israel’s survival, could account for the kind of changes necessary to fulfill prophecy. Only a seismic re-balance and re-configuration of the whole political landscape could ever change the political deadlock that preserve the present status quo. Yes, it is a war that Israel will win but at what cost?

So how soon? How close are we? Note first that Israel has been in and out of the Land more than once since Jeremiah gave his prophecy concerning their final salvation at the end of the time of Jacob’s trouble (Jer 30:7 with Dan 12:1-2; Mt 24:21). What’s to say that after this return Israel may not dwell in the Land as a prosperous nation for many, many years yet to come? Well, no one text ‘says’ that Israel is only back in the Land a very little while before the great tribulation. However, ‘if’ the case is well enough made that the two days of Hos 5:15-6:2 are indeed symbolic, not of an indefinite short period of time (as most commentators) but as two definite millennia, to be reckoned from the Lord’s ascension. And ‘if’ the recent developments mentioned above are indeed preparation for the kind of conditions that will exist just before the Antichrist’s invasion, then we are looking at a short period of time for such seismic changes to take place.

When the prophecies are closely investigated, it seems clear that nothing on the present horizon, short of a regional, if not world war, could conceivably account for the kind of shift that would induce the Arab world to make the kinds of concessions that prophecy requires. Think about it. The Antichrist hates the covenant. He agrees to the peace only because it is expedient for the moment. From its very inception, he immediately begins to plot against the very covenant he confirms (Dan 11:23-31). This is the man who will bring the world of radical Islam with him in his attack on Jerusalem. Unless there was some unprecedented inducement, would such a man consent to a peace that he so deeply opposes?

It seems clear that the one who will be leader of the ten-nation confederacy that descends upon Israel would never countenance such a peace plan, particularly one that must necessarily include provisions for Jewish control of at least some part of the temple mount, unless Israel had attained an overwhelming advantage in the negotiations. It is this kind of advantage that I believe will come to Israel only after another war, sufficient to reshape the balance of power throughout the region and to profoundly revise opinion over how peace can be secured.

This will be particularly true if Israel’s survival is once more threatened by its attempts to accommodate outside pressure. It will produce in the Israeli’s another resolute ‘never again’ posture towards world opinion, as the moderate nations enter into a new phase of negotiations only after another bitter lesson of tragic cost. Of course, this will be the beginning of the end, precisely when things finally look hopeful after so many years of seemingly impossible deadlock and impasse. It will be mankind’s ultimate Babel of humanistic imagination that peace on earth can be attained short of kingdom righteousness, with an all saved Israel at its center.

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That’s really a true statement! Democracy is no better than its fast deteriorating ability to build on ideals and values borrowed from a Judaeo Christian heritage. But the kingdom of God is not a democracy! And, unbeknownst to the world, the crisis of Israel is divinely set to be the issue of the coming of that kingdom to earth.

The biblical story is built around the prophetic history and fortunes of an elect people, and the irrevocable divine gift of a specific land as ‘their’ everlasting possession. As go the people, so go the Land, but the gift is irrevocable and its ultimate destiny secure through the pre-determination of ‘the God who raises the dead’. This disturbing conviction, held by a few Christian and Jewish ‘fundamentalists’ is naturally looked upon, not merely as an antiquated world-view that is out of step with modernity, but a very dangerous threat to the progress of a peace that is based on the ‘democratic’ ethic of what ‘seems’ most humane and fair to the largest possible number.

Those claiming divine authority for their views concerning Israel’s existence and future will be seen as the enemy of progress and even hope from the standpoint of an humanistic ethic that presumes to be based on the best that is in man to unify and pacify the greatest number. Therein lies the collision. It is the age old question, originally put by the serpent, “Hath God really said?”

But since the nation’s beginning, it was the uniform understanding of the Hebrew prophets that this age would end around an international controversy over ‘the Jerusalem question’, which is really the age concluding resolution of the much older ‘Jewish question’, or, as some have called it, ‘the Jewish problem’. But what does it all mean?

It is interesting that the age would end here just where it does, in the way it does. Think about it. Why should it not be sufficient that the age end around only the question of Jesus and the gospel and perhaps a final persecution that proves the faithfulness of believers under pressure? Why should it so necessarily include the Jewish question? Yet, according to the uniform witness of all the Hebrew prophets, the resolution of this question is where all roads have been leading since God first gave the Land to Abraham’s descendants.

The question of Jerusalem is ultimately the question of ‘whose land?’, and the further question of the basis of ‘divine right’ to the Land. But here’s what I want to say: The question of divine right to the Land, for all its significance to underscore God’s prerogative to choose as He will choose, is really just the shell of a much more ultimate and decisive question.

It is not enough to know that the age ends in just the way prophecy shows. It is crucial that we understand why it ends in just this way. In other words, we need more than the ‘what’ of prophecy; we need to understand the ‘why’. What is God saying through these particular foretold events? What’s His point in it all? This is where we so often ‘lose the forest for the trees’.

We must see that the Mideast crisis, as climax and finale of an ancient family feud, designs the much deeper question of God’s right choose on a basis that has no point of intersection with anything in man or of man. In that sense only, the Land question becomes the question of righteousness, which leads to the Jesus question. Thus, the purpose and meaning of the Mideast crisis is completely missed unless it has sent us to this much more core question, specifically, the nature and basis of an “everlasting righteousness” that is nothing other than the righteousness of God Himself, His own divine nature, as perfectly incarnated in the Son, and only because of the Son, partially incarnated in the believer through the Holy Spirit.

The Mideast crises exists to evoke this much deeper and decisive question: how can a chosen nation (that remains no less chosen despite its historical track record), come at last to rest in abiding security from all their enemies round about? Answer that question and we will have moved much nearer to understanding the meaning of developments in the region where it all began and is destined very shortly to end.

Through the Jewish people, God is demonstrating before men and angels a magnificent drama intended to reveal and define the meaning of grace, as the sole basis of a righteousness that lasts forever. Because only a righteousness that is forever can secure a chronically disobedient people in the Land forever, which is what the everlasting covenant promised from the beginning.

This is how the Jerusalem question is inseparably connected to the Jesus question. Through the victory of the curse reversing seed of the woman, the ‘blood of the everlasting covenant’ is revealed to be the eternal ground and basis of the only kind of righteousness that can give Israel secure and enduring rest in the land. In this, the Word of God is finally and publicly vindicated, and sovereign, electing grace defined, as utterly apart from human merit. That is at once the glory but also the ‘rub’ of Israel that occasions either offense or humble prostration before the God who elects.

Reggie Kelly

The post Democracy, the Jerusalem Question, and the Coming Kingdom appeared first on Mystery of Israel.

I awoke this morning pondering this question: “What is required for the kingdom of God to come on earth?” How does a nation, prone always to backslide come at last, not only prolong their days in the Land, but to inherit it forever, in everlasting, indestructible peace? This is the dilemma faced by Moses and the prophets. This thought may be nothing new to many, but my invitation is to consider its implications for the bearing it should have on the church’s understanding of New Covenant righteousness, as it will be true in that coming day of an entirely saved Jewish nation after their final and greatest suffering, called “the time of Jacob’s trouble” (Jer 30:7; Dan 12:1; Joel 2:1-2; Mt 24:21).

Throughout the vicissitudes of Israel’s history — before apostasy had reached the point of no return — the prophets would hold out the hope that disaster could be averted by repentance and return. But this was never looked upon as more than a temporary fix.

Repentance and reform might indeed forestall disaster and constitute a ‘lengthening’ of the nation’s temporal tranquility (Dan 4:27), but such could never be sufficient to secure lasting peace in the Land, nor the coming of the kingdom on earth. For this, the hope was for the ‘bringing in’ of an ‘everlasting righteousness’ (Dan 9:24) that would secure everlasting peace, not only to a remnant, but to the whole of the nation, who would be preserved in this righteousness forever.

“From that day and forward,” all Israel will know the Lord throughout all their generations, so that never again will a Jew say to his neighbor, “know the Lord; for they will all know Me from the least to the greatest” (Jer 31:34. See also, Isa 4:3; 45:17, 25; 54:13; 59:21; 60:21; 66:22; Eze 20:40; 39:22; Zeph 3:13; et al). Moreover, this righteousness would not fade nor fail, but continue unabated, and without lapse ‘unto children’s children’ ( (Isa 54:13; 59:21; Eze 37:25).

Such an extravagant and unimaginable circumstance would not be possible except that the righteousness that the will justify all the seed of Israel (Isa 45:25) is not their own, but God’s alone (Isa 54:17). Because the righteousness of God is indestructible, so will be their peace, “world without end” (Isa 45:17). No weapon formed against them can prosper and no foe prevail (Isa 54:14-15, 17; with Rev 20:9)

Many think such an extravagant promise can only be fulfilled in heaven. Such unassailable righteousness and peace on this earth sounds preposterous. Add to this the even more inconceivable evidence of scripture that such completely uniform salvation is promised to no other nation. Rather than conceive the inconceivable, the natural recourse is to spiritualize these otherwise plain scriptures and to detach them from the people and Land of Israel.

But for the promise to be established, as literally described and understood by the prophets, it shuts us up to the faith of Abraham in the God who raises the dead. This is so much more than salvation of a goodly number of Jews at the end of the age; it is the sudden resurrection and birth of a nation ‘at once’, in ‘one day’ (Isa 66:8; Zech 3:9; Eze 39:22). This is the divine logic of how a people who will never come, must be forcibly brought back ‘into the bond of the covenant’. “As I live, saith the Lord GOD, surely with a mighty hand, and with a stretched out arm, and with fury poured out, will I rule over you: And I will bring you out from the people, and will gather you out of the countries wherein ye are scattered, with a mighty hand, and with a stretched out arm, and with fury poured out. And I will cause you to pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant” (Eze 20:34-35, 37)

A remnant is not sufficient:

The salvation of ‘all Israel’ means there will no longer be a remnant of saved Jews in the midst of a largely unsaved nation. This has always been the case but here is why it cannot always be so, and why the prophets all looked ahead to the great transition of the day of the Lord:

History is witness that a mere remnant was never enough to keep the nation from further lapse and repeated exile. Regardless of temporary peace or fleeting revivals, the prophets well understood that the nature of human nature would always tend towards backsliding, thus my term, ‘prophetic pessimism’. As Jesus knew what was ‘in man’, so did the prophets (Jn 2:25 with Jer 10:23; 13:23; 17:9 et al). Thus my habit of saying, If history teaches anything, it is that if God were waiting on Israel, He’d be waiting forever.

In despair that the nation could ever sufficiently cooperate with God’s requirement for holiness to sustain themselves in the Land, particularly in the kind of permanence required to fulfill the promise, the prophets understood that Israel was being ‘shut up’ to the necessity of a miracle of divine intervention. For this cause, they would look on ahead to a time of radical, apocalyptic in-breaking of deepest shaking of judgment, resurrection power and new creation. They would call this time, ‘the day of the Lord’.

“When He sees that their power is gone …” (Lev 26:19; Deut 32:36 with Dan 12:7).

This principle of resurrection out of death tells us about the nature of power itself. The power of the veil lies in power itself, which is to say that intractable human tendency to put trust in any other power (Jer 17:5), which is quintessential idolatry. This innate confidence in the flesh is what is broken for the believer in the day of new birth and waits to be broken for all the surviving remnant of Israel in the coming day of the Lord. Confidence in the flesh is humanism, whether secular or religious. Thus, from the beginning, God has been at war with humanism, which is pride.

As Paul would show how the law works to ‘shut up’ (straighten, crowd) the believer to the necessity a transforming revelation (Gal 3:23), because the law was given to take away our power and to straighten us to Christ. By the same rule, Israel is raised ‘at the end of their power’. This is a very revealing principle that lies at the heart of what Paul will call, ‘the wisdom of the cross’. It is why Paul, and by the same rule, every believer, is always delivered over unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also might be manifest in our mortal flesh (2Cor 4:11). Here is answer for the church of today, because where there is not this death, there cannot be this life. We could say much on this but suffice it to say, here is the anemia of the modern church. It is cross avoidance!

Through much tribulation (Acts 14:22), even the great tribulation, the veil that covers the nations is destroyed (Isa 25:7). In that day, at the end of strength, Israel will see what Job saw so clearly through his suffering, which is often the place the veil gives way, as false reliance is shattered (Dan 12:7). It’s the place of truest seeing, perhaps the only place of the kind of seeing that truly transforms and quickens the divine nature. Though preceded by a process, Israel’s transformation is not a process; it comes ‘at once’, in ‘one day’ (Isa 66:8; Zech 3:9; 12:10; Mt 23:39; Ro 11:26; Rev 1:7). It comes “when He sees their power is gone.” How instructive this is for a triumphant, complacent, Laodicean church! “I counsel you to buy of Me gold refined in the fire.” Where else did we expect?

Since the believer’s new birth is a personal application of this principle in obvious analogy to the eschatological resurrection / birth of Israel, it raises the question: How many have been truly born again by a removal of the veil over the heart (again in analogy to Israel) who have not first had their own power broken? Until we have despaired through the law (the quickened law) of any hope in ourselves (Isa 57:10), have we really come through to real resurrection life? If coming to such an end of their power is required for Israel, what is required for the church?

According to Acts 14:22, what is true of Israel and the coming of the kingdom, is no less true of every believer. Thus the faith of Israel’s future is based in pattern and principle on the faith of her beginnings. As Sarah would be visited at the “set time” (Gen 17:21), and as Paul was arrested on the road to Damascus “when it pleased God … to reveal …,” just so, will He “arise, and have mercy upon Zion: for the time to favor her, yea, the ‘set time’, is come” (Ps 102:13). Until resurrection, we are shut up to the power and initiative of the God who raises the dead.

As God, in a perfectly timed sovereignty (Gal 1:15), arrested Paul on the road to Damascus, and transformed this self assured persecutor into the apostle to the nations, just so will He stop a nation in its tracks, and bring them all the way down, that He might bring them all the way up in the power of the resurrection by the sudden, transforming revelation of the gospel. That is why the natural man cannot really ‘get it’, at least not unto true transformation. It is because he is still trusting something in himself. He has yet to come to the end of his power.

In any view of scripture that has not been spiritualized beyond recognition, God has bound up His Name, His oath, yea, the very return of Jesus with whether He can, against all odds, bring in the very nation that He first brought out of Egypt, not momentarily, not provisionally, not as under probation till another cycle of judgment, but finally and forever!

What will it take?

What will it take? It will take resurrection that comes at the end of power. It will take the quickening of a transforming revelation. This is why the saving revelation of Christ comes, not only at the end of power; it comes at the end of the law. Christ is revealed at the end of the law, because true revelation comes at the end of strength, and the law was given to take away our strength, which is the strength of veil to hide the gospel. This is why Paul could say, “the strength of sin is the law” (1Cor 15:56), because to trust in the holy commandment as a means of life is nothing else than trusting in ourselves. It is fatal confidence in the flesh. In this sense, the strength of sin is strength, our strength. This principle of resurrection faith is as true for the church now, as it will be true for Israel in that day.

The answer to the often asked question, ‘what will it take’ for the church? is shown us in the eschatology of Israel. As surely as the church is indeed the ‘pillar and ground of truth’; as surely as she is built on the rock of divine revelation; and if “unto Him be glory in the church …, world without end …,” then we may be sure that God will not suffer this age to conclude in a lackluster, ‘Laodicean fizzle’. No! Before He will have His glory in “Israel My glory,” He will have it no less in the church as demonstration and power, all the more now, in this present evil age where the battle rages. He will be no less vindicated in the church in this age, as He will be vindicated in Israel in the age to come. Besides, Israel, together with all who will be called and joined to her in that day, will be no less the body of Christ on earth for the purposes of God for that time.

Why a millennium?

It is not enough that God have an elect in this age in partial and somewhat hidden fulfillment of the promise made to the fathers. No, His covenanted promise must be openly and literally vindicated on this earth. He is jealous for this, as nothing else can so fully show His power and glory in frail jars of clay, in the very presence of His enemies. He is a God of incarnation and embodiment and demonstration. He has a point to prove, not only to His people and the nations, but to the rebellious powers.

By bringing in, finally and forever, “not another people” (Dan 2:44), but the very people He first brought out, THIS will bring the rest to Jerusalem and to the nations for which the age, and God Himself has waited and commanded the unceasing prayers of His saints. When this outrageous impossibility will be ‘done’ (Eze 39:8 with Rev 16:17), the day breaks for Israel. As He said in reply to Moses’ intercessory protest, when THIS will be accomplished, the whole earth will be filled with His glory. “But as truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord!” (Num 14:21). Truly, Israel is God’s own, self-appointed ‘mission impossible’. Through them, grace is put on display to destroy all boasting.

Their resurrection from their helpless condition will be God’s most open demonstration and public vindication of His everlasting, covenant Word. It will confound and silence, as nothing has ever silenced, the original question: “Hath God really said?”

For this very cause, there must be a millennium of open demonstration and manifest divine embodiment BEFORE the final perfection of new heavens and earth. This must be accomplished here on this earth, not off in an invisible, perfected realm that is outside and beyond the test of time, but here, while yet in a natural bodies of frailty and imperfection, the Jewish race will be preserved on this earth for a thousand years in a blessed state of brokenness and holy weakness (Zeph 3:12-13). Truly, this will be a table spread in the presence of the enemy that has been bound to look on helplessly for a thousand years of open vindication of the Word of God.

True, Satan will be bound for a thousand years, and impotent to deceive the nations, as in times past, but this does not mean the righteous of Israel will not continue to war against the flesh. We know this, because chastisement continues to be threatened, even in the millennium, as there are highly descript provisions for continual cleansing and renewal in the kingdom age, but never is God’s covenant kindness completely removed them, because they are the true, spiritual, as well as natural seed of David’s greater son (2Sam 7:10, 14-15; Ps 89:22, 28-37; with Isa 55:3; Amos 9:15; Ro 8:28-39). They shall NEVER AGAIN depart (Isa 54:10; 59:21; Jer 32:40).

This raises the question: With it understood that redeemed Israel will be dwelling in the Land in mortal bodies, and given the notorious nature of the flesh to subvert even the most promising beginnings, how can such permanence be possible? Only by an abiding continuance in righteousness, not only of the few, but of ‘all Israel’ (the nation as a whole), can abiding peace in the Land be possible to a people who are yet in the frailty of their natural bodies, having children and building houses, as specified in many scriptures.

We really must take in and reflect deeply on the implications of what the scripture here implies. How is this possible? This could never be the case so long as only a remnant was righteous, as seen when the righteous would endure captivity along with the rebellious.

Consider that even during national revivals, when the righteous remnant would swell greatly, bringing great blessing upon the nation, and during the great reforms that followed their return from Babylon, the prophets living after the captivity would continue to look on ahead to the inevitable drift towards backsliding that would not be finally and permanently cured until the great day of the Lord and the coming in of the everlasting righteousness.

Not only does Israel start out in New Covenant righteousness; they continue in it forever. When we see the righteousness by which Israel will be kept a thousand years, can it be any other than the righteousness that keeps the believer now? (Ps 121:3-8). This says much about the kind of righteousness that is promised in Christ, as there is no other kind. His righteousness is the everlasting righteousness of millennial promise that all Israel will enter into after Jacob’s trouble (Jer 30-32). Is this not that millennial rest of ‘full assurance’ that is even now available to the believer who labors to enter into His rest? “And His rest shall be glorious!” (Isa 11:10). It is glorious now.

This righteousness is necessarily an apocalyptic (‘revealed’) righteousness (Ro 1:17). When Israel sees Him whom they pierced, they are seeing much more than Jesus’ glorified body; they are seeing the gospel by the Spirit, and behold the change that follows!

Such revelation necessarily transforms. It also necessarily produces after its own kind in some real measure (Mk 4:8). According to 2Cor 3:18, it is impossible to ‘see’ in this way and NOT be changed. This brings the question: Have we received the gospel, not only ‘as’ revelation, but ‘by’ the Spirit of revelation?

When Jesus said, “upon this rock I will build my church,” He wasn’t just speaking of Peter’s accurate confession. He was speaking of the great divide between the living and the dead. He was speaking of the way He must be known, not by mere teaching, but by revelation that flesh and blood is helpless to convey (Mt 16:17 with Gal 1:11).

Scripturally, the gospel forbids us to put too great a divide between the power and glory that will come to Israel after the tribulation and the power that has come, and is now available to the church, provided the essential conditions and dynamics are the same. This is why Paul could say in Hebrews that the powers of ‘the age to come’ can already be tasted, as the power of the kingdom shows itself now in mighty signs and wonders, even in its present form as a mystery (Heb 6:5; Mt 23:13; Mk 4:11; 9:1; 12:34; Lk 11:20).

In that day, the veil that covers the nations will be destroyed (Isa 25:7), as the mystery of God is finished at the seventh trumpet (Rev 10:7). Because of this, Israel will show forth openly what is no less true of His saints in this age, only in this age, there is the mixture of the tares and wheat in the visible, deeply beset and embattled church of God while Satan has not yet been bound.

Yet, the everlasting righteousness that will secure permanent peace for Israel at the end of Daniel’s 70th week has already come in for church with the cutting off of the Messiah at the end of the 69th week. The sealed vision that will not be unsealed for Israel until the end of the 70th week, has been revealed to the remnant (the ‘maskilim’ of Dan 11:32-35; 12:3, 10) who became the pillars of the fledgling assembly of Messiah. With the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost, not only did power come on the gathered assembly of disciples; the mystery of the gospel that was concealed in the writings of the prophets was revealed for the first time (Ro 16:25-26; 1Pet 1:11-12).

With the revelation of the gospel, the cornerstone of the whole divine edifice has been revealed as the glorious ground and basis of the everlasting covenant established in the Redeemer’s blood. In that day, when the surviving remnant of Israel will look upon Him, as the Spirit of grace and supplication is poured out (Zech 12:10), it is this gospel that they will immediately see to their lasting change and everlasting continuance in the Land. How astonishing! How glorious! How contrary to everything known or ever seen or imagined! And this is to be on this earth? Can it be? This is the faith of Abraham, who ‘against hope believed in hope’ that before the Word of God could fail, the very dead would rise (Heb 11:19).

If this is the righteousness that will be theirs in that day. If this is the covenant into which we have gained advance entrance through Messiah’s blood. If the power of continuance and the blessing of peace is based on this righteousness that is not their own but God’s own, what are the implications for the church of the present age? How far have we understood this righteousness? Have we laid hold of what will so gloriously sustain and set Israel apart for a thousand years?

Although every Jew in the Land will be fully alive to God; they will not be perfect. A considerable number of scriptures show their continued battle with personal weakness and sin and regular need of cleansing. No less then than now, their faith will be tested and proven whether it is ‘born of God’. They will have to overcome the power of the flesh, but they surely will overcome, because their faith will be ‘born of God’ and such faith ‘must’ overcome, precisely because it is born of God (1Jn 3:9; 5:4-5, 18). So now this question:

As surely as there is only one everlasting righteousness, then so far as one is truly ‘in Christ’, they are complete in Him (Col 2:10). They are a new creation right now, and not simply on the way to becoming one. We see that this life is claimed by many but what we see does not come up to the standard God gave us in the book of Acts. Why? What went wrong? Why did the glory fade? If we have the life, where is the power of the life? We see it at Pentecost. We see it at the return of Christ. We also see it in mighty exploits and anointing from the midpoint of Daniel’s 70th week and forward (Dan 11:31-33; Rev 11:3; 12:11 with Isa 40:29). Why then aren’t we seeing more of this power now?

I’ve already written much more than I set out, so I must cut this painfully short, but I believe the answer lies in what has been suggested. It is the issue of the Spirit. Of course, that is true, but the issue of the Spirit is the issue of the veil that receives its power to veil, to rob, and to hinder through the deceitful power of the flesh. It is thus, most ultimately, the issue of brokenness, as Watchman Nee develops in his classic, “The Release of the Spirit.”

The gospel may be ever so well taught and even substantially understood but it can only be “known” (in the biblical sense of that word) by the Spirit. When we survey the transitional events of the first century, with other great epoch moments throughout the OT, and compare these with the seismic transition that takes place in the middle of Daniel’s 70th week, we can begin to see the conditions and dynamics that are commonly at work. The setting is invariably one of crisis.

My beloved brother, Art Katz, used to turn Lord Acton’s famous quote, “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” into “crisis reveals and ultimate crises reveals ultimately.” Our apocalyptic perspective demands a theology of crisis. What will take place in the middle of Daniel’s final week is simply a much deeper, corporate experience and apprehension of nothing else or other than the gospel, the old, old story, apprehended and appropriated as never before. Why? Because the urgency of crisis that will straighten the church to holy weakness and the brokenness of the quickened Word. For Israel, this kind of willing, total surrender comes, not in the time of their choosing, but “in the day of His power” (Psa 110:3). It will be no less so for the church. We will be straightened to resurrection life and power for the final witness. As Jesus said to Peter, “when you were younger, you girded yourself and walked where you wished; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish.”

There is a sense in which revival waits on something that is required of the church. That is ever true, though God is the author and initiator of all that will stand and abide. But there is another sense, equally true, in which the church is ‘shut up’, as it were, to the initiative and orchestration of God. In this sense, the church is waiting on God who has ordained in their due season the necessary constraints and inducements that no amount of will or desire can ever bring about. There is a sense that flesh and sin is always to blame for what is not, while, paradoxically, only grace and nothing of man is to credit for what comes forth that counts with God.

In short, God will not leave His church to its own best intentions. We may be sure that the will is already very much present with the true bride, but ‘how to perform’ what is in her heart waits on God to supply the constraints and inducements that will get her from here to there, to the confounding and shame of every proud, legalistic, accusing spirit of denial. We are His handiwork. It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves …” (Ps 100:3), to the end that no flesh can glory.

Yours in the Beloved, Reggie

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