Some Thoughts on “Keeping the Law” or “Torah Observance”

Certainly for Paul, keeping the commandments in a true and living way was the equivalent of a new creation (in the sense of its sure and necessary evidence). This is clearly seen when 1 Cor 7:19 and Gal 6:15 are compared in juxtaposition. But the ‘keeping of the commandments’ is never the cause, but the sure and certain ‘result’ of “a new creation” (defined as vital regeneration, the resurrection life of Christ in every living believer). To ‘get the cart before the horse’ in this matter constitutes ‘another gospel.’

However, Paul just as clearly declared himself (not only gentiles as in Acts 15:10-29) ‘free’ (except for expedience sake) from certain regulations of the law (1Cor 6:12; 1Cor 9:19-21). In some instances, however, these ‘regulations’ were not merely rabbinic custom but divine commandment. How can this be? Since Paul never releases even gentile believers from the keeping of the essential commandments of God (far from it!), what has changed? Why is anyone at any time released from circumcision or any other commandment of the law?

Though not stated so explicitly (or where would be the controversy, and hence the divinely intended crisis?), there is a certain ‘kind’ of commandment that the apostle calls ‘carnal’ Heb 7:16 and 9:10). Which commandments come under this designation?

The evidence suggests to me that such a distinction has in view those particular commandments given specifically to Israel that are ‘physical’ and outward, the performance of which lies within the reach of the natural man, and do not require for their fulfillment the miracle of regeneration. It is not so with the perfect holiness required by the law. By divine intent, this requirement is necessarily beyond natural ability, and possible only to God through the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, “the power of an endless (or indestructible) life.” It is these physical ordinances in particular that formed part of Israel’s unique stewardship “under the law” that stood between Jew and gentile. But now, since “the time of reformation” Heb 9:10), these particular kinds of commandments are no longer permitted to divide between members of the eschatological ‘one new man.’ God is jealous that this issue of divine contention not be compromised by well meaning believers as did Peter in the episode that Paul records in Gal 2:11.

Paul is clear that to rest in any form of “works” (anything possible to man) for justification is ultimately fatal, but what of the question of observing such humanly doable ordinances strictly for the sake of witness or a presumed ‘higher sanctification’? In my view, this is to surrender something that is critical to the heart of the divine purpose for this dispensation. It misses entirely God’s very point in removing the temple and sacrifice and in giving the Spirit to gentiles “in order to provoke” the ‘observant’ Jew to jealousy [Paul argues that such fastidious ‘observance’ apart from the Spirit falls fatally short of true “commandment keeping”].

It is to miss entirely the very cause and nature of the believer’s distinctive stewardship ( calling / trust / responsibility ) ordained for this present time while the Jew is under the particular form of judgment decreed for this dispensation. To return ‘at this time’ to these particular kinds of ‘dispensationally conditioned’ ordinances is to give back the very ground that Paul rebukes Peter for yielding to the men that came from James (Gal 2:12-18). It is to build again what was destroyed (I ask, what was “destroyed”?), and makes the one returning to the old (something is “old”) standard of division a transgressor. Furthermore, it removes from God the very leverage of appeal that is intended to demonstrate to the Jew that “righteousness does not come by the law” (Gal 2:21; 3:11; Heb 10:8) which in Pauline usage means that perverse “confidence in the flesh” that imagines that the holiness of the law can be approached by man as man. Regardless of time or dispensation, the law is fulfilled only by the power of the Spirit, perfectly and flawlessly in Christ, but substantially and visibly in every ‘living’ believer.

Many of the laws first given at Mt. Sinai are provisional for a theocratic nation ‘in the land’. They are not eternal. Abraham was no less a commandment-keeping man of the Spirit, as are all his true born progeny (see John 8:39), yet he knew nothing of many of the laws first instituted at Mt. Sinai. These were distinctive and restrictive in their intention for the new theocratic nation. However, the righteousness embodied, articulated and required in that distinctive covenant is indeed eternal. The law requires nothing less than the perfect righteousness of God Himself and cuts off all else. This righteousness perfectly fulfilled only in Messiah’s flawless humanity (Lev 18:5; Mt 3:15; Gal 3:12), is in substantial measure fulfilled also in the believer by nothing less than a comparable incarnation of the Spirit (new creation) mediated through a regenerating miracle of divine revelation that issues in true repentance and saving faith. This is the work of the Holy Spirit, and is fundamentally axiomatic for any time or dispensation (the new birth is not peculiar to the New Testament “Are you a master in Israel …?”).

So the law instituted with the Sinaitic covenant is a divine trust given uniquely to the priestly nation, but it also functions as a test and witness to the reality of that nation’s true heart condition, i.e. its fidelity to God; it was a provisional stewardship for Israel in particular, conditioned in some respects on endurance in the Land, and never intended to reach beyond its purpose to bring in a new creation of completed perfection; it was therefore in that sense regarded by the apostles as a temporary dispensation (Heb 9:10). This is in no way contradicted by the recognition that certain elements belonging to that earlier dispensation will again be in force in the coming millennium when the kingdom is restored to Israel. But according to the mystery hid in other ages, the Church of this dispensation is revealed as the eschatological first-fruits, not only of Israel’s millennial salvation, but of something even more ultimate than millennial Israel, namely, the “one new man” of the new creation, the heavenly Zion, the completed assembly, the final tabernacle of God (Gal 4:26; Heb 12:22; 11:40; Rev 21:3). Thus, the mystery of the Body of Messiah reveals the Church in its essential nature as a kind of ‘eighth day’ phenomenon. In its invisible essence, the Church is the present realization of that new creation that is beyond even the millennial dispensation. This is not only the destiny, but the now present heavenly position of every true born child of God. Our citizenship is in heaven. And though no less true of all of the ‘living’ from every age (Mt 12:26-27), this, as so much else, has only come to full light through the revelation of gospel.

Though often confused and improperly differentiated, these important distinctions take absolutely nothing away from the unique role and special stewardship that Israel MUST fulfill throughout the millennium for the sake of ‘that’ necessary and public vindication of covenant faithfulness on God’s part (“This is my covenant with them…”). Rather, it is only to distinguish that the stewardship and calling of the Church of this age is unique to this age, though this is not the last age. The Church is a mystery organism, a phenomenon of divine revelation set ‘between the times’ as a witness to “the powers of the age to come.” Although the “powers” of the coming age have come in unexpected advance of the salvation of the ‘last day’ (Old Testament ‘Day of the Lord’) in the person and work of the Messiah and in the Spirit poured out upon the Church, the age itself is still future.

During this present age and dispensation (the time that Israel is under temporary divine hardening), the Church is to show forth the life, power, and freedom of that new order of existence “apart from the works of the law.” At the same time, through the eschatological gift of the Spirit, the believer (most remarkably the ‘gentile’ believer, Col 1:27) is able now to fulfill in real measure the very righteousness required by the law, which is nothing less than the righteousness of God Himself. The Church (when it is the Church) should be distinguished by those miraculous and inimitable fruits of the Spirit “against which there is no law,” and thus move Israel to jealousy, NOT because it is observant of those outward ordinances that are possible to unaided human performance, but because it manifests the power of the promise of the new age by the gift of faith in Christ’s imputed righteousness to the glory of God alone, and ALL most purposefully and emphatically “apart from the law!” (Ro 3:21). This is God’s method of removing all ground of boasting. This is the very point of divine contention. Shall we surrender it?

In my view, it is not only inconsistent, but a serious defection for the gentile believer to take on the yoke of Sabbaths, feasts and other physical ordinances of like kind, and thus remove from God the very thing that He has appointed to make His case against Israel’s greatest historic tendency and fatal presumption (Ro 9:32), namely, the lie of humanism, the presumption that in man is anything good. It is only as the Church comes into its appointed eschatological fullness that Israel will be made jealous. Israel will NOT be made jealous by an accommodating zeal for sanctification through Sabbatarian and kosher observance. On the contrary, such a presumption, though perhaps unconsciously, reveals the same inherent humanism that only retards the Church’s calling and hinders the fullness that Israel and the end of the age waits. It is by divine design that the Holy Spirit promised to the surviving remnant of Israel at the Day of the Lord should now be seen resting upon unqualified non-observant non-kosher gentiles! This is God’s very point; it is His contention with Israel. We must draw the line where an inspired and inerrant New Testament has drawn it. The offense must continue; it is divinely intended. Israel will come forth from its grave because God insists on being known as “the God that raises the dead,” not because we made them jealous through kosher observance or any other “carnal ordinance” (apostolically so-called; Heb 9:10). There is a place where the believer is obliged to not ‘give place … no, not for an hour; that the truth of the gospel might continue with you” (Gal 2:5). This is where Paul who could otherwise “become all things to all men” was obliged to draw the line.

I am aware that there is much more to this issue that requires consideration, but these few points are offered as a safeguard against the mounting threat of a Judaizing spirit that still stalks the church, though not always in its original Jewish form. I believe we can expect to see this crisis escalate with an unequaled subtlety towards the end. There is good reason to expect that the church’s greatest test will not be the Antichrist, but a deception of a more subtle kind, so that “if it were possible, they (the false anointed ones) shall deceive the very elect.” Signs and wonders are not fatal except as they lend support to a lie, and I believe it will be the lie of works righteousness. Licentious antinomianism is not subtle enough to threaten the very elect. However, works righteousness is subtle beyond imagination, as it only takes the least amount of that leaven to spoil the whole.

In trembling contention for the non-negotiable offense of the gospel,

Reggie

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“Let no man deceive you … the end is not yet!”

Certainly any war in the region has always the potential of acting as a catalyst bringing about the changes that prophecy requires.  We certainly do expect a great transforming event sufficient to change and dramatically realign the political landscape of Israel at some soon point, and this may well (even probably) take the form of war.  We may infer from scripture that events will move Israel into a posture of non-compromise concerning its absolute sovereignty over the city of Jerusalem.  We can think of nothing more likely to produce such an inflexible stance than a war that threatens the nation’s very survival, demonstrating again the futility of peace initiatives that imperil national defense.

Jewish intransigence over the Jerusalem question, the ultimate threat to world peace, is the most probable source for the final “flood” of anti-Semitism that will sweep over the world.  Also, scripture implies the necessity of orthodox control over the holy places of Jerusalem (Isa. 63:18; 64:11; Dan. 8:13; 9:26; 11:31; 12:11; Matt 24:15 et al), and the imposition of strict Sabbath observance impeding flight out of the region of “Judea” (compare Matt. 24:20; compare also Isa. 28:14-22 with Dan. 9:27; Dan 11:21-45; 12:1-13; Zech 12:2).  This we believe and expect.  However, in no way is it possible that the current threat of war with Iraq can be the final world tribulation precipitated by the anti-Christ.  There is just too much in prophecy that describes, in definite detail, a certain sequence of precursory events and requisite antecedent conditions that do not match the current scene; not least a deceptive peace arrangement (“covenant with death and hell” Isa 28:15) that relaxes Israel’s guard (Ezek. 38:8; 1 Thess. 5:1-3), and opens the way for the restoration of the appurtenances of the “holy covenant” (temple, sacrifice etc. (Dan 9:27; 11:31; 12:11; 2 Thes 2:4 et al).

This all goes to show how easy it is to “jump the gun” when the basic outline of Daniel’s prophecy is neglected or misinterpreted.  According to Dan 11:23-30, there is a whole detailed sequence of regional conflicts, stratagems, and events that occur after the “league” (false peace), but before the desecrating sacrilege that initiates the period of Israel’s final desolations (the so-called “footsteps of Messiah” of rabbinic eschatology). This foregoing sequence of events is, regrettably, by an impossible exegesis, attributed to the actions of Antiochus Epiphanes in the 2nd century B.C.  He was indeed a type that remarkably followed the pattern of the final oppressor, but as Keil and a host of other of the best exegetes will point out, there is a great deal of unaccounted non-fulfillment that fails to match in adequate detail the actions of the Syrian tyrant, pointing to a greater and more precise fulfillment in the future.  After all, Antiochus was not destroyed by the Son of Man as will be true of the “little horn” of Daniel’s prophecy (Dan 7:11-27; 8:9-14, 23-25 and Dan 11:21-45), and of “the man of sin” of Paul’s epistolary warning (compare esp. 2 Thes 2:3-8 with Dan. 11:35-37).  Neither did the persecuting career of Antiochus IV end in Israel’s final deliverance and the resurrection of the righteous (Dan. 11:45; 12:1)

We conclude with the verdict of scripture that anything short of this highly descript and definite order of events comes under the Lord’s restraining caution, “for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet,” and of Paul’s urgent warning, “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except …”

Jump to a later statement of the same title

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The time of the rapture is really a secondary outgrowth of dispensationalism’s distinctive doctrine of the church, which derives from their own peculiar and novel view of ‘the mystery.’ It is a false view of the mystery that supports a false view of the nature of the church, which supports dispensationalism’s unique duality between two eternally distinct peoples of God.

It is correct to distinguish between the ‘Israel after the flesh’ and the church. But dispensationalism incorrectly divides between the seed of Abraham after the Spirit, saying that saved Jews before Pentecost and saved Jews living in the millennium do not belong to the church. In this way, there are two distinct ‘regenerate’ peoples of God belonging to two eternally disinct entities with different destinies. This constitutes a false view of the nature of the church. Hence, they fail to see that those of the natural seed of Abraham that are predestined for national salvation at Christ’s return will be as much a part of the body of Christ on earth as any living now before the Lord’s return. It is a question of what defines the church.

So while the ‘two peoples of God’ theory is a distinguishing hallmark of dispensationalism, it is more particularly their distinctive interpretation of ‘the mystery’ as it pertains to the church that is the real bedrock of the whole edifice on which every other inference stands or falls. The whole system is of comparatively recent origin. It is beyond dispute that the particular synthesis of doctrine that defines modern dispensationalism began with John Nelson Darby of the Plymouth Brethren movement in the late 1830’s.

I hope sometime to make the case that it is precisely this perversion of Paul’s teaching concerning the mystery that needs most to be corrected if the pre trib error is ever to be adequately answered, particularly at the academic level. Dispensationalism is much more than the pre trib rapture. It is a tightly integrated system that is not the ‘easy knock off’ that many tend to think. As fantastic as it may seem to some, it is nonetheless a formidable heresy that has appeared at this time for a diabolical purpose. I believe it is a judgment on the Laodicean condition of much of the modern church. I see it as a ‘trojan horse’ in the evangelical camp, by which the church’s corporate vigilance is compromised, and timely calls to preparation, both spiritual and physical, go comfortably unheeded.

Worst of all, it completely removes from the church any consideration of its role towards Israel during the tribulation as a divinely ordained support and witness. It misses the genius of God that has ordained the wilderness meeting of Israel and the church through their common experience of flight from Antichrist persecution. God has ordained this ‘conversation in the wilderness’ between Israel and a largely gentile church that God has ordained should move some to envy.

Unless the church is ‘defined’ out of the tribulation on pre trib terms, it is apparent that the church will be instructing many (Dan 11:33). The church will hold the key of prophetic interpretation that will be a powerful testimony to Israel. God will appeal to the Jewish conscience through the apocalyptic events as the church presses on Jewish consideration the relationship between covenant responsibility and the gospel as its only fulfillment.

The pre tribulational view of the rapture prevents the church from anticipating any such divinely ordained encounter with Israel. But if the church can expect such an encounter in the near future, what should be the wisdom appropriate to such an expectation? I believe the call to the Jew forces the church to do its homework. Engagement with Jews, particularly the orthodox, does more than anything I know to intensify and deepen the church concerning its own faith. If this is true now, it will be even more so at that time.

The crisis of Israel, and the urgency of the church’s role towards the Jew, is perfectly designed to provoke the church to maturity. Although Israel does not exercise corporate faith until “the Deliverer comes out of Zion to turn ungodliness from Jacob,” (a reference to Christ’s return), Israel’s national return to the covenant does not happen apart from the preparatory witness of the church (Dan 11:32-33; 12:3).

The toll that that the pretribulational view of the rapture has taken on the church and threatens to take in the future is beyond human calculation. But because God is faithful to save His elect from being deceived ultimately, we may be sure that a time of correction and adjustment is coming to the church (“judgment must begin at the house of God”). But the cost of delay will be immense. Especially painful will be the regret of precious time and opportunity wasted on a lie.

The greatest and most tragic loss of all is the loss of the divinely chosen context of the glory that is never so gloriously revealed in any other context (Ro 11:33-36). The loss of ‘this mystery,’ so central to the eternal purpose, has put most of historical ‘Christendom’ out of touch with the cost of divine suffering in its accomplishment. Every Christian acknowledges that it cost God the sacrifice of His own dear Son, but few consider that it also cost Him the temporary setting aside of His beloved elect nation (“enemies for your sakes”).

Paul presents God’s eternal purpose in terms of a gloriously wise strategy designed to accomplish the overthrow of the demonic powers that rule this age through “this mystery” (i.e., the secret of the cross; 1Cor 1:27; also compare Ro 16:25; Eph 6:19; 1Pet 1:11; Rev 10:7). The hidden purpose meant that the elect nation would be left for now in its rebellion, not only as judgment for its own sin, but also for the sake of a greater glory than could be conceived in times past, namely, the inclusion of the gentiles into full covenant privilege through the mystery of the indwelling Christ.

Thus, through Israel’s fall, the blinded nation becomes the unknowing servant (“who is blind as my servant?”) of an eternal purpose now revealed to the church of the eschatological interim, and one day to be revealed to ‘all Israel’ at Christ’s return, when “they shall look upon the One they pierced.” This does not mean that the church did not exist before Pentecost. It means rather that the church could not be revealed as “the body of Christ,” until after the “mystery of Christ” had come to full light in the revelation of the gospel.

With the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost, it was understood and preached for the first time that Christ should come twice (Acts 3:18-21; 1Pet 1:12). Until then, the mystery was concealed from the prophets and even from the Lord’s disciples until the set time of revelation (Mt 16:22; Mk 9:9-10; Lk 18:34; Jn 16:25).

It is important to distinguish between something that is newly revealed and something that is newly existent. Take the revelation of Christ for example. Certainly Christ is without origin, but the revelation of Christ and the gospel came by the Spirit only after the cross. It is the same with the church. The church as the regenerate people of God, though called by different names (e.g., “the remnant according to the election of grace”) had an essential existence even before the gospel was revealed and proclaimed, but could not be revealed as the ‘body of Christ’ until after the ‘mystery of the gospel’ had been revealed.

The basic revelation of Jesus as Israel’s twice coming Messiah (declared first at Pentecost) formed the basis of Paul’s further revelation concerning the nature of the church as the “body of Christ.” The revelation of the one had to precede the revelation of the other. But both existed before the first century.

So the concealment of the prophetic plan of God in a mystery was part of a divine strategy to expose and defeat the powers, and also the means whereby atonement would be accomplished as the essential ground of salvation for all time, whether before and after the cross. But also to show that it is impossible for the everlasting covenant to fail of its predestined goal. This is why the scripture says, “”Unto Him be glory in the church …” Because when ‘all Israel’ will come to see the mystery of the gospel, it will then be no less the ‘body of Christ’ than any now living on this side of the Lord’s return.

At that time, the same people that endured the exiles, crusades, inquisitions, pogroms, and holocausts of continual recurrence, will exist as a completely regenerate nation (Jer 31:34), all returned to the Land (Ezek 39:28). Then will ‘all Israel’ also be part of the church on the earth during the millennium, which will continue to expand to include as many as the Lord shall call from among the nations. It will not be a strictly “Jewish church,” but a completely regenerate Jewish nation will indeed be a chosen witness in the service of the eternal church of God, composed of every tribe and nation, whether in heaven or on the earth.

So after the rapture, the church does not cease to exist on earth. How could it? The church will be comprised of both the glorified redeemed ruling and reigning with Christ, and also the saved of Israel and the nations. Israel and the nations are depicted as dwelling on the earth in their natural bodies throughout the millennium. Since none can enter the kingdom in its final fullness apart from the required ‘change’ (1Cor 15:50-53), it seems necessary to infer that millennial saints will be glorified at the second resurrection. Then will a fully gathered church inherit the new heaven and earth at the end of Christ’s mediatorial reign when God will be all in all (1Cor 15:24-28).

The church is the revelation of God’s eternal purpose to gather all things together in Christ. It is not a ‘speed bump’ on the way to the millennium. It is the eternal and indivisibly one people of God in Christ, whose unity is based on a new creation of shared divine nature through the indwelling Spirit of Christ. But Israel will have a special mediatorial role in the further calling out of the church throughout the time of the millennium. “Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fullness? … For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?”

So why was the distinction originally made between Jew and gentile? Why is this divinely ordained distinction visibly preserved now and throughout the balance of the millennium? Why not pass immediately into the eternal state at Christ’s return? That is the question that theologians have struggled to answer. It is indeed a mystery requiring a precious grace for its knowledge and apprehension, but the glory of God is bound up with it. The everlasting covenant cannot be entirely fulfilled and visibly vindicated apart from Israel’s total redemption. The age does not end ’till they (the ‘generation’ of perpetual defiance) shall say with one voice, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Mt 23:39). Christ’s return will mean “the restitution of all things spoken by the prophets” (Acts 3:21), which Paul cannot conceive apart from the salvation of ‘all Israel’.

One final note. I would want to offer an important caveat on the way that many replacement minded theologians are prone to exploit dispensationalism’s theory of two peoples of God in a way that obfuscates the mystery of Israel and the church. Many protest the propriety of referring to unsaved Jews as the “people of God.” Here’s why I have a huge problem with their objection:

Certainly there is no hope of eternal life for any Jewish person that dies outside of Christ, and certainly there is only ‘one people of God’ in Christ (in that sense). We know that every truly regenerate person or nation is incorporated into the one body of Christ in heaven and on earth. That is the point of Eph 1:9-10. However, and this is a big ‘however’, from the standpoint of an abiding ‘corporate solidarity’, individual Jews continue to belong to an elect race that is predestined for future salvation. Therefore, as ‘a people’, they retain their distinct national identity for the sake of a millennial calling and stewardship towards the nations. This is the goal of the everlasting covenant that is still outstanding “WITH THEM” when their national sin will be taken away. In that sense, they are a “people of God,” despite their present enmity, not in the sense of ‘present regeneration’, but of corporate election and predestination.

This abiding distinction between Israel and the church is vital to the intention of God to make a visible display and open demonstration of His witness nation, as essential to the demonstration of the glory that He will get for His name through them (Ezek 36:32). God promised Moses that He would not be defeated in His purpose to finally bring into the Land the very nation that He first brought out. He will yet prove that they are not too much for Him! I always like to say that as God got His man on the road to Damascus, He is able to get His nation at the time appointed (Ps 102:13; Gal 1:15). We know that this comes at the end of Jacob’s trouble, when He sees that their power is gone” (Deut 32:36 with Dan 12:7). “Your people shall be willing in the day of your power” (Ps 110:3).

Through this mighty act of divine power the whole earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord. To this end, and for the sake of this glory, Jewish racial identity has been sufficiently preserved. There is something deep in God’s heart and intention that will not be satisfied until “all that ‘see’ them shall acknowledge them, that they are the seed which the Lord hath blessed” (Isa 61:9). In this, God is making a very public statement and demonstration concerning His sovereign prerogative to “have mercy on whom He will have mercy.”

Furthermore, to say that the Jews are not ‘the chosen people’ is to empty Jewish suffering of its awesome significance. To deny to the Jewish people their special identity as “the people of God,” despite their momentary estrangement, is to rob God of the glory of His own self-appointed challenge to bring this people (and not another) back into the bond of the covenant, and hence back into the Land as a holy seed never to be removed again.

And finally, to denude this people of their high and privileged calling, though momentarily suspended through unbelief, robs the Christian of the fellowship of the divine suffering in Israel’s judgment. Jesus wept! In order to accomplish the salvation of the world, it was necessary to postpone the day of Israel’s national salvation “for your sakes!” Do we grasp this? Do we dare? Can it be that for my sake, God surrendered His beloved nation, with whom He had bound His very name and glory, to exile and the sword?

This is why I stop short of agreeing with those that insist that there is only “one people of God” when it is invoked to deny that the Jews belong to a chosen race of abiding national destiny. This is the trap that some of our post tribulational brethren are falling into, and for the same reason, namely, ignorance of the mystery, since both replacement and dispensationalism misinterpret the mystery.

In their zeal to distance themselves from some of the untenable aspects of pretribulational dispensationalism, some historic premillennialists tend to side with replacement’s tendency to strip Israel of significant national identity, and thus miss the whole point in what is at stake in the current trend of prophetic fulfillment that is moving the age ever closer to an ultimate showdown over the issue of the covenant, particularly as it pertains to the Land. What an awesome test this is shaping up to be!

This is why the issue of Israel’s election and irrevocable relationship to the everlasting covenant is so bound up with the gospel and the mystery of Christ’s twofold advent. That crucial and indivisible relationship is what the theology of Ro 9-11 is all about. The covenant issue of Israel is the divinely ordained context in which we are meant to understand the true nature of the gospel of grace. Can’t dwell on this now, but that is some food for thought till next opportunity.

Yours in the Beloved, Reggie

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What follows began as an email that turned into an essay, long to read but critical to know.

My trip to the south was put on hold, but I will be going through Vermont, upstate NY and on up into Ontario for some stops. I would especially appreciate your prayer for those days that begin the 21st of this month. I am looking to the Lord for some things to be brought forth that have been long in waiting. It has to do with a revelation I received as a young man, and I believe that it’s the Lord’s timing.

Glad you’ve enjoyed and benefited from your use of Watson’s “Prophetic Interpretations’. He labors the point concerning the literal / actual time of Christ’s three days in the tomb primarily to vindicate his literal approach to prophetic interpretation, proving that a day means a literal day. The whole exercise is aimed to correct the spiritualizing method that promotes the ruinous ‘year day theory’, which makes each day in Daniel and Revelation to count for a year. It is the method that has done the most to undermine and discredit the study of prophecy. It has been responsible for producing one failed date after another. But its greatest mischief has been its tendency to divert the literal application of prophecy away from Israel. Furthermore, the church is robbed of the very means that God has ordained to prepare the godly remnant for the last witness to Israel to and the nations. That is why I thought the most important aspect of Watson’s work is his interpretation of the key importance of the abomination of desolation.

These things are so critical and timely for us now. Watson rightly sees the abomination as the central and pivotal event on which all else turns. It is a decisive key to the church’s readiness for the last battle, even as Jesus directs His disciples to Daniel’s reference to the abomination, with the instruction, “let the reader understand” (Mt 24:15). Furthermore, a true interpretation of Daniel establishes a clear view of the glory of God in history. It is this grand overview of the mystery of God that so moved Paul to such exalted praise and worship (Ro 11:33-36). The prophetic vision is not only for the functional purpose of preparing the church for its final test, it is the divinely chosen context wherein God has set the revelation of His glory for the faith and worship of His people (at all times and under all circumstances).

We should not be afraid of the ‘set times’ of God, since the absolute sovereignty of God over all things is the only bed-rock of certainty. Nor should we imagine that the predetermined fulfillment of ‘the scriptures of the prophets’ (Mt 26:56; Dan 11:36) is in any way detached from the place and role of prevailing prayer. We may be sure that nothing of all that God has determined will be accomplished apart from the treasury of prayer. There is no disjunction; the end will not come apart from the ‘filling up’ of the full measure of the collective prayers and holy groanings of the saints (Lk 11:2; Rev 8:4-5), and this brings me to something that has been on my heart of late.

I believe that an accurate understanding of Daniel’s prophetic vision is critical to the church’s attainment of a corporate ‘heave’ in the Spirit that will be used of God in Michael’s eviction of Satan, which permits the final revelation of the mystery of iniquity. We need to understand what this mystery is and why the age cannot end until it is revealed in the Man of Sin. Furthermore, it is crucial that the church comes to an awareness of its own part in a travail that terminates in Michael’s heavenly victory.

Through the discernable fulfillment of a definitely foretold sequence of preliminary events, the believing remnant will be brought to a place of corporate travail and utterness towards God. In analogy to the way that Jesus said that Peter would be taken by another where he would not have gone, the church will also follow the Lamb into a final obedience unto death. This obedience will not come with dread or uncertainty, but through a love that has cast out fear; it will be greeted with ‘joy unspeakable and full of glory’. Furthermore, all that prophecy makes clear concerning the church’s future is tremendously instructive for the present. I am referring particularly to the role of the church as corporate intercessor in Michael’s pre-tribulational triumph over Satan. I do not believe that Satan’s eviction and casting down to the earth by the agency of Michael will happen apart from the prevailing prayer of the church that knows itself with definite certainty to be at the threshold of the final conflict. [Here are some of the passages that relate to Israel’s delusive peace pact that starts the 3 and 1/2 year countdown to the abomination: Isa 28:15-18; Ezek 38:8, 11, 14; 39:26; Dan 8:10-14, esp. Dan 8:25; 9:27; 11:23-30; 1Thes 5:3.]

The great transition point in both heaven and earth is initiated by Michael’s eviction of Satan. This event in heaven begins the final unequaled tribulation of the last 3 1/2 years. Note that the same event that meets with such triumphant jubilation in heaven also announces the time of unequaled woe for the earth, as the earth’s greatest sorrow coincides with heaven’s greatest victory since the resurrection and ascension of Christ. In fact, as the imagery of Revelation shows, this transitional point is figuratively represented in analogy with the birth and ascension of Christ. Without question, Satan’s eviction from heaven starts the final persecution of Israel and the church as the woman’s seed (Dan 12:1 with Rev 12:7-17).

It is true that the pattern represented in the apocalyptic imagery of Revelation, has had a measure of fulfillment throughout the entire inter-advent period. But this last 3 and 1/2 years is not merely symbolic of a short time, but is set off by distinct prophetic events that have never yet been fulfilled in literal detail. Therefore, since not one jot or tittle can pass without fulfillment, it is better to see the final tribulation as representing the intense conclusion and fullness of those underlying principles that have generally characterized the conflict of the ages. Here all things come to a head. The church has always known tribulation, suffering, and trial, but this is “the tribulation, the great one” (Rev 7:14 as literally translated from the Greek double article). This is the tribulation without equal or parallel (Jer 30:7; Dan 12:1; Mt 24:21), and so far from the church being absent, it will be the church’s ‘finest hour’ (Dan 11:32-33; 12:3; Rev 12:10).

The church will be deeply prepared by the events leading up to the abomination. This will bring the godly remnant to a ‘Daniel-like’ urgency of travail and prevailing prayer. Such depths of intercession and purification will come in direct relation to the ‘set times’ of prophetic fulfillment, and conversely, the ‘set times’ are inextricably related to the prayers of the saints. So we could say that “when the church will ‘travail’, Michael will ‘prevail’.

Just as Michael came to Daniel’s aid by the removal of the opposing ‘prince of Persia’, the intercessory church, which will be moved to a great urgency by the manifest fulfillment of prophecy, will also receive help from Michael. This mighty break through of kingdom power comes with the final removal of the ‘one that hinders (compare 2Thes 2:7 with Rev 12:10). It is critical that we distinguish between the time that Satan is bound and the time that he is cast down. He is bound at the start of the millennium. He is cast down at the start of the tribulation, 3 and 1/2 years before the Lord’s return. Daniel shows that Michael stands up at the beginning of the tribulation (Dan 12:1), and Revelation shows that when Michael stands up, Satan is cast down to begin the “short time” of unequaled tribulation (Rev 12:7-17). We need to see the relationship of this heavenly transition to the events on earth that start the tribulation in order to understand its affect on Israel and the church.

Our interpretation will depend on whether we can justify making a connection between two key texts, namely, 2Thess 2:3-8 and Rev 12:7-17. We see in 2Thes 2:3-8 that the Day of the Lord awaits a particular event, namely, the revelation of the ‘mystery of iniquity’ in the Man of Sin (2:6), but this awaits the removal of the one that holds back or hinders (2:7). In Rev 12:10, we see that the kingdom cannot come so long as Satan retains his illicit residence in heaven. I believe the evidence will show that the restrainer that holds back the revealing of the mystery of iniquity is Satan. In analogy to Michael’s removal of the opposing Prince of Persia in Dan 10:13, Satan must also be forcibly dislodged from his place in heaven before the kingdom can come with Antichrist’s destruction at the post-tribulational Day of the Lord (2Thes 2:8; Rev 16:14-16; 19:17-21; Dan 7:11; Ezek 39:4-22).

A comparison of Dan 12:1 with Rev 12:7-12 will show that the same time is in view in both passages. Dan 11:36 with 2Thess 2:4 shows that same individual is in view, and Dan 8:11; 9:27; 11:31; 12:11 with Mt 24:15, 21 shows the relationship of all to the time of the abomination. Evidently the heavenly event of Satan’s expulsion is the catalyst for the earthly event of the abomination, since both are depicted as starting the tribulation. But of particular concern for the church is the observance that Michael is divinely empowered to evict Satan in response to the woman’s travail. We are interested to understand why the tribulation cannot begin until this happens and what kind of participatory role the church is destined to have in the travail that precedes the tribulation, a travail that appears to intensify as the time of birth (corporate birth?) draws near.

The metaphor of the woman’s travail to bring forth the seed reaches back to Gen 3:15. Isaiah employs the same language to describe a mysterious ‘before and after’ of Zion’s travail (Isa 66:7-8; see also Mic 5:3). The gospels reveal the fulfillment of the mystery of Gen 3:15 in Christ, the personal seed of the woman. [Significantly, Messiah’s conquest of sin and Satan proceeds according to the pattern of Israel’s history, from miraculous conception (Isaac), and escape (Moses), through rejection by His brethren (Joseph), through death by crucifixion (the exile, particularly ‘Jacob’s trouble), to resurrection, ascension, and return (after ‘two days’ the remnant of His brethren return with the millennial restoration and exaltation of Israel; Ezek 37:1-28; Hos 5:15 – 6:2; Mic 5:3; Mt 23:39).] However, the imagery doesn’t terminate on the personal seed, but extends to the corporate seed of the woman, the godly remnant, the ‘holy seed’, and ‘elect lady’.

According to Revelation 12:1-17, Christ’s return is contingent on a victory in the heavens that accomplishes a comparable pattern of birth and ascent in the experience of the corporate seed of the woman. This is often enough recognized by commentators, but what is too little recognized is the definite time of fulfillment. This great transition in the history of the kingdom of God happens at the mid-point of Daniel’s seventieth week (Dan 9:27), which marks the beginning of the last 3 1?2 years of the unequaled tribulation.

It is important to see that the tribulation coincides with the ‘short time’ of Satan’s wrath. According to Rev 12:10 the kingdom cannot come until after Satan has been cast down from heaven by Michael. This begins the final time of Satan’s wrath and woe for the earth (Rev 12:12). The earthly counterpart to this event in heaven is the self-exaltation of the Antichrist who enters the inner sanctuary of the temple of God at Jerusalem where he places the abomination of desolation (evidently an idol image of himself) in the holy place. Clearly, the great tribulation starts with this event (compare Dan 9:27; 11:31; 12:11; Mt 24:15-16, 21; 2Thes 2:4; Rev 11:2; 13:5).

We need to see the relationship between Michael’s forced eviction of Satan to the revelation of the mystery of iniquity as significantly concurrent with the time of the abomination. The revelation of the mystery of iniquity in the final Man of Sin means something much more than the recognition of his identity. This will be apparent well before he is revealed as the Man of Sin through a chronological order of events that lead up to the abomination (Dan 11:23-30). Though the Antichrist can be certainly identified by what is written of his pre-tribulational activities, this is not what is meant by the ‘revelation’ of the Man of Sin. Until the restrainer is removed, he is only ‘an’ antichrist, but his revelation as ‘the’ Man of Sin awaits a transitional miracle that happens in conjunction with Satan’s expulsion and the beginning of the tribulation (Rev 12:12-14).

The revelation of the mystery of iniquity (2Thes 2:7-8) in the final Man of Sin has to do with the point at which Satan takes up a full and unlimited residence in the revived body of the beast that suffered the mortal wound (Rev 13:3, 12). The full incarnation of the Serpent’s seed happens in conjunction with the resurrection of the mortally wounded beast. This happens in conjunction with the time as the result of Michael’s expulsion of Satan. With the miracle of the healing of the mortal wound, the beast is described as ascending out the abyss (Rev 11:7; 17:8) to continue a short space (Rev 17:10). The ‘short space’ of the last beast is identical to the ‘short time’ of Satan’s wrath (Rev 12:12). It is 42 month career of the Antichrist (Dan 7:11, 21, 25; Rev 12:12-14; 13:5) that begins in the middle of Daniel’s 70th week with the abomination (compare Mt 24:15, 21; 2Thes 2:3-4; Dan 9:27; 11:31-36; 12:1, 11).

With the astonishing revivification of the mortally wounded beast, the world of unredeemed humanity is made to “wonder … when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is” (Rev 17:8). This last beast, “who is of the seven,” appears to become the composite fullness of what all the former beasts revealed only in part (Rev 13:2), as the one “whose coming is after the working of Satan with ALL power and signs and lying wonders.” It will be the ultimate deception.

If this mystery is fulfilled in a man (and not in the revival of the Roman empire as some commentators assume), then it follows that the beast returns from the abyss at precisely the same time that Satan is being cast down to earth by Michael. So the heavenly event of Satan’s eviction is answered by a demonic resurrection that sets in motion the events of the tribulation. In the hubris of presumed invincibility, the resuscitated Antichrist proceeds at once to the temple of God in Jerusalem to place the abomination that starts the tribulation.

Paradoxically, all of heaven rejoices with the removal of Satan, even though it means the beginning of the earth’s greatest time of woe (Mt 24:21; Rev 12:12). But for the remnant that have passed through a time of deepest travail in view of what is at hand, the prospect of suffering cannot hurt the oil and wine of their joy, as the casting down of the Accuser will mean that a barrier of hindrance has been removed that permits a mighty break through of corporate power and fullness not seen since Pentecost (Rev 12:10-11). When Jesus said that “some standing here shall not taste of death till they see the kingdom come with power” (Mk 9:1), it is evident that He was not speaking of the kingdom that comes at the end of the times of the gentiles, but his reference was to a revelatory kind of seeing, such as the power that was revealed at Pentecost. This is the kind of apocalyptic in-breaking that the church can expect on the eve of the tribulation.

The wording of Rev 12:10 makes it evident that the power of the kingdom comes in some sense immediately upon Michael’s victory over Satan, suggesting something more immediate than the millennial reign that does not come until the end of the tribulation (Mt 24:29-31; 2Thes 2:8). This is evident by noting the relationship between the words ‘now’ and ‘because’. “Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ, because he who accuses our brethren has been thrown down once for all, he who accuses the before our God and night” (Wuest’s translation of NT).

Since it is clear that the Accuser is cast down in advance of the tribulation, it follows the “strength and power of Christ” spoken of in the above passage comes at the mid-point of the last week, and not only at the tribulation’s end. This would coincide with the time in Daniel when “the people that know their God shall be strong doing exploits” (11:32). So we can reasonably consider that the strength and power of Christ mentioned in this passage does not wait until the Lord’s post-tribulational return, but comes with power on the godly remnant at the middle of the week when the Accuser is cast down. This powerful apocalyptic break-through of revelation power and strength follows the pattern of Daniel’s travail and the opening of heaven over him to receive the decisive unveiling of the future of the kingdom. It is the same here.

Such transitional break-through of revelation and kingdom power may be likened to a birthing, in this instance a corporate birth, the birth of the man child in figurative analogy to the birth of Christ. The subsequent ascension of the man child speaks of an irreversible victory that secures for the seed a place ‘far above all principality and power’. For the believer, this ascent speaks of the victory of the finished work of Christ fully appropriated by an overcoming faith that is born of God (1Jn 5:4). It is the ‘full assurance of faith’ that secures the conscience of the believer out of Accuser’s reach in advance of the final test. This requires a clear apprehension and appropriation of the gospel. So with the casting down of the Accuser, the kingdom of God comes with power on the remnant that has travailed to the full inward formation of Christ, thus receiving the grace that will overcome and not fail in the last martyr witness of the church.

The tribulation church is simply the end-most expression of the apostolic church of the apocalyptic secret, which, I am careful to point out, is nothing other than the Christian gospel revealed at Pentecost, only now in final stages of tribulation fulfillment. The church of the last tribulation is not discouraged by what is coming on the world. They are in union with the exultation of heaven’s hallelujahs, because at this point, the millennial reign of Christ is just 3 ½ years away. The one that hinders has now been removed, thus setting in motion the final tribulation which brings the return of Christ (Mt 24:29-31). The heavenly event that is the catalyst for the abomination at Jerusalem will mark the time with utmost certainty. It will be clear to those of understanding that the Lord’s return is now just 3 ½ years away. Never has the time been so certainly known. We can scarce imagine the impact that these events, in the full light of revelation, will have on the godly remnant, and of the part that such prophetic clarity and decisiveness will play in the church’s final witness to Israel.

Certainly this imagery is rich with implication and application for the church of all time, but its specific timing must also not be missed for the church of the last time. What will this mean for the saints on earth during this time? The removal of Satan from heaven permits the mystery of iniquity to be revealed in the Man of Sin so that Christ can return (2Thes 2:3-8). We need to see the order. Only then, with the removal of the one that hinders, can the last tribulation come and so finish the mystery of God with Christ’s post-tribulational return (compare Rev 10:7; 11:15; with Mt 24:29-31; 1Cor 15:52; Isa 27:13).

The mystery of iniquity is nothing less than the full and unrestrained revelation of Satan in the flesh. It is the eschatological goal of the original enmity that was ‘put’ between the two seeds (Gen 3:15), and headed up in the two princes of Dan 9:25-26, both of whom fulfill a mystery of incarnation at their appointed times (2Thes 2:6). Thus we see that the mystery of iniquity (2Thes 2:7) and the mystery of godliness (1Tim 3:16) constitute a kind of dualism that exists side by side in the comprehensive ‘mystery of God’ (Rev 10:7), which is built around the mystery of Christ’s twofold appearing, all foretold in a mystery in Daniel’s famed seventy week prophecy.

The first century revelation of Messiah’s twofold advent has brought to glorious light the mystery of the two comings that was concealed in Daniel’s prophecy. According to the mystery of the atonement, the messianic Prince is ‘cut off’ (Dan 9:26 with Isa 53:8) at the end of Daniel’s 69th week. The 70th week is divided at the mid-point when the prince that exalts himself places the abomination (compare Dan 8:11-12; 9:27; 11:31-36; 12:11; Mt 24:15; 2Thes 2:4). It is the last half of Daniel’s last week that will see the finishing of Israel’s transgression and the revelation of the mystery of iniquity in the Man of Sin (‘the prince that shall come’), “whom the Lord shall consume with the Spirit of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming” (2Thes 2:8 with Isa 31:8; Dan 7:11; 8:25).

So the mysterious ‘gap’ that exists between the 69th and 70th weeks of Daniel comprehends both comings of Christ and the mystery of the incarnations of the two seeds in the two princes. Dan 9:24-27 is at the heart of the Old Testament mystery of Christ (Ro 16:25-26; Eph 6:19; 1Pet 1:11). Paul continually affirmed that his teaching and preaching was according to the revelation of this mystery that is to be known to the nations “by the prophetic writings’ (Acts 26:22 with Ro 16:26). It would be well if our preaching and teaching would be more consciously ‘according to the revelation of the mystery” that was revealed to the first century apostles and prophets, because the revelation of the mystery that brings all the pieces together into a revelation of perfect redemptive wisdom is the supreme apologetic for the vindication of the God of Israel (Rev 19:10b).

In view of the above, it should be very clear that the revelation of the ‘Man of Sin’ on earth (I think by way of spectacular revivification from the mortal wound) coincides with the time Michael casts down Satan to the earth. This heavenly event is soon answered in the abomination in the holy place at Jerusalem, which brings the final desolations of Jerusalem and the final woes on the earth. But all of this assumes that the true church, or at least a remnant of the true church has been brought to something transitional and transfiguring through the foregoing events leading up to this climactic point. How is this accomplished? We need to see that the events of the last 3 1?2 years are preceded by the events of the first 3 1?2 years. These events are likewise described with great detail and specificity (Dan 11:23-30) so that will be recognized by at least a sizeable remnant of the true church of God (Dan 11:33).

These events and the urgency that they signify will have a ‘straightening’ affect on the church. The sure and certain approach of the final tribulation will crowd the church to a place of deepest intercessory travail. Through a process of crisis urgency and transforming revelation, the church will be increasingly freed of the hindering power of self-reliance (2Cor 1:9), since this is what gives Satan power to accuse the saints. Where there is no confidence in the flesh, his power to accuse is canceled. As Israel is transformed only after they have been brought to an end of their power (compare Deut 32:36 with Dan 12:7), so must the church pass through a time of profound self-emptying before it can be raised (or birthed) to the fullness of kingdom love and power.

The veil that holds back the in-breaking of apocalyptic revelation is proportionate to the strength of the flesh. This is a profoundly important principle. This is why it is not until Israel’s power has been broken that “all these things shall be accomplished.” So is it any different with the church? What is the church but a people that have learned that grace only appears when one has come to an end of their own power? So the church that can overcome in the final test is a church that has learned that kingdom strength comes only at the end of our own strength. This is the basis by which we may confidently know that the church will be perfected in love in time for its final witness.

The Accuser will be cast down at that time by the same means that his power is broken now, namely, by the revelation of the gospel. But we must understand that there are degrees of apprehension of revealed truth, and we know that the greater the death to our own sufficiency will be the greater resurrection in the revelation of grace and glory, as the light shines brighter to the ‘perfect day’. This is why that even while the Antichrist is ‘wearing out’ the saints of the most high (Dan 7:25; Rev 13:7), they shall mount up with wings and overcome more and more as they are purged, purified, tested, and made white “even to the time of the end: because it is yet for a time appointed” (Dan 11:35; 12:10).

The power of Satan to accuse is broken when human self-sufficiency is broken. Israel’s captivity ends “when He sees that their power is gone” (Deut 32:36). So even before Israel has been brought to an end of their power by the judgments of Jacob’s trouble, the true remnant will also have come to an end of their power, not at first by great tribulation, but by great travail in response to the divine quickening of transforming revelation. So when our strength has given way to His, not only will the Accuser be ‘cast down’, but fear will be ‘cast out’, as love is made perfect through a deeper and clearer apprehension of the glorious gospel of Christ. This is why the next verse says, “and they loved not their lives unto the death!” We must not miss the conjunction between the end of Satan’s access to the consciences of the brethren to accuse, and the confidence that leads to the fearless obedience and selfless sacrifice that follows his removal by Michael (Rev 12:10-11 with Dan 11:32).

Certainly, these are principles that are inherent in the revelation of the gospel for all time, but there is clearly an eschatological maturity of love and gospel confidence that comes in greater fullness and power when Michael engages on behalf of Israel and the church at the threshold of the last 3 1?2 years. Paul implies that the church composed predominately of gentiles attains a ‘fullness’ before the time that Israel attains its own fullness (contrast Ro 11:12 with verse 25). It is my view that this ‘fullness of the gentiles’ signifies something more than mere numerical fullness, but a fullness of stature in Christ (Eph 4:13).

It is imperative that the church comes to see its indispensable role as a kind of ‘corporate Daniel’ in the great transition that ends the age. I believe the church will be brought to this by the powerful constraints and inducements of prophetic fulfillment leading up to this transitional point on the eve of the great tribulation. For the Daniel remnant, the fulfillment of the prophetic word will be in clearest certainty, and this will work a powerful constraint of urgency in those that have understanding (Dan 11:33; 12:3, 10).

The strategic relationship that exists between the preliminary events leading up to the abomination and the role of the church in Michael’s triumph over Satan is absent from most of the church’s consciousness. From the time that the league is made with the Antichrist (Dan 11:23), which Isaiah calls a ‘covenant with death and hell’ (28:15, 18), every day that passes will bring nearer the now certain imminence of the great tribulation.

This will press upon the believing church a great urgency to lay hold of Christ’s strength in view of what is known to be at hand. Just as Daniel was aware that the ‘set time’ of Jeremiah’s seventy years had nearly expired when he ‘set his heart to understand’, so will the true remnant of the church recognize that the last crisis is at hand, and like Daniel, will enter a time of corporate urgency of prayer and spiritual preparation for the final test. The church’s participation in the travail of the heavenly Zion will accomplish a powerful break-through of corporate fullness and perfection of faith and love unto final sacrifice (compare Dan 11:32-33 with Rev 12:10-11). The figurative imagery of Rev 12 compares the church’s victory over Satan to the birth and ascension of the woman’s seed.

Notice in Rev 12:10 that the word ‘now’ marks a critical point of transition. The jubilant declaration that “now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ,” is not tied to Christ’s return at the end of the tribulation, but to the casting down of Satan at its start. This pre-tribulational clearing of the heavens opens the way for the revelation of the man of sin, and the start of the last tribulation which must precede the Day of the Lord (2Thes 2:3-4).

According to Dan 12:1 the unequaled tribulation begins when Michael ‘stands up’. It is the same in Revelation (12:7, 12). That a past event cannot be in view is shown by the fact that the unequaled tribulation ends with Israel’s restoration and the resurrection of the dead (Dan 12:1-2). Furthermore, Rev 12:7-17 shows that the final tribulation begins with Satan’s forced removal; it is evident that he is still in some sense lodged in heaven until that time. This is the inviolable order. Only with Satan’s removal by Michael can the Day of the Lord come (2Thes 2:3-4).

At first hearing, it may seem incredible that Satan would not be doing all in his power to bring forth his man. It is just the opposite! It is well to remember what the revelation of the mystery of iniquity will mean for Satan. It will mean that his time is short (Rev 12:12). Contrary to popular opinion, Satan is in no hurry to bring forth his man, because Satan’s final exposure in the revelation of “that Wicked” (2Thes 2:8) signals the end of his kingdom (Rev 20:2). This is not to say that Satan is holding back evil. On the contrary, he is ‘the one that hinders’ (2Thes 2:7). He hinders the saints by accusing them before God day and night. He hindered Paul (Ro 1:13; 1Thes 2:18). One of his chief princes hindered the messenger of revelation sent in answer to Daniel’s prayer (10:13). He hinders the coming in of the kingdom of God (Rev 12:7-10). It is not that Satan is holding back Satan, but rather the revelation and full exposure of Satan in the flesh, which signals the end of his tenure and heaven and seals his doom. Therefore, if this is what is holding back the Day of the Lord, then it follows that this is an event that Satan is devoted to resist with all his might.

Satan yet resides in the heavenly sphere where he occupies a position of rule among the fallen principalities and powers. He continually accuses the consciences of the brethren and resists the time that he will be forced down to earth, which will mean his final exposure and defeat. The tribulation starts when Satan is no longer able to hold back the revelation of the mystery (2Thes 2:7), which holds back the Day of the Lord (2:3, 6). When the woman’s travail is complete, Michael prevails to dislodge Satan from the place of obscurity and hindrance. His eviction by Michael forces the revelation / exposure of the mystery of iniquity in the Man of Sin which starts the tribulation with his appearance in the holy place at Jerusalem (Dan 11:31-36; 12:11; Mt 24:15; 2Thes 2:4). With the removal of the one that hinders, the mystery is revealed that is holding back the day of the Lord (2Thes 2:3-8). The Day of the Lord is the point of Antichrist’s destruction at Christ’s glorious appearing and kingdom (Mt 24:29; 2Thes 2:8). The evidence is too great to ignore. The correlation of events is clear. No other explanation so well accounts for the manifest conjunction of events. This is light for the remnant of whom it will be required to face the final test. It is cause to enter into a unity of corporate prayer for the decisive events that perfect the church and conclude the age.

Notice that Michael’s expulsion of Satan follows the pattern established in the book of Daniel. Certainly this is an instructive paradigm for prayer and spiritual warfare for all time, but the reference is clearly to a specific event that starts the final great tribulation (Dan 12:1; Rev 12:7, 12). Just as Michael was sent in answer to Daniel’s prayer to remove the hindering Prince of Persia, the church can rely on the same gracious divine intervention when it too, will be brought to a place of ultimate corporate travail and prevailing prayer.

The end time church will know what it means to ‘stand in the gap’ (Dan 9:2-21; Ezek 22:30) in priestly intercession for Israel in a proxy of travail, as when Paul said, “For whom I travail in birth until Christ is formed in you” (Gal 4:19). The church and Israel are destined to meet in the wilderness. Both will be in flight from a common enemy. By this time, the true church will know what is coming, but Israel together with most of Christendom will not. “For when they say, “Peace and safety!” then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape” (1Thes 5:3). The plumb-line of the prophetic scriptures will constitute a widening watershed of division that will ultimately expose the church of the great apostasy (foolish virgins?).

So we see that apocalyptic vision of Daniel not only predicts the final defeat of Satan, but becomes the means by which it is accomplished. By revelation and travail the church is brought to its eschatological fullness in order that Israel’s predestined fullness can follow in due course. This helps to explain why the book of Daniel has been the favorite object of attack by the so-called ‘higher criticism’ of academic scholarship. The late Sir Robert Anderson and the contemporary Josh McDowell have both written books with the title “Daniel in the Critics Den.” All of this is to say that unless one is a complete naturalist, it should be evident that Satan is most particularly threatened by the revelation of Daniel.

With the possible exception of Gen 1-11, the only other portion of scripture that has been the special target of the ‘destructive criticism’ of modern scholarship is the Lord’s Olivet prophecy (Mt 24, Mk 13, Lk 21). Significantly, Jesus’ prophetic discourse is based chiefly on Daniel, as He directs His listeners to Daniel with the instruction “whoever reads, let him ‘understand'” (Mt 24:15). [Note that the word ‘understand’ appears frequently throughout Daniel. The Hebrew is “Maskilim” and refers to those that have insight, particularly as it pertains to Daniel’s revelation.] I personally believe that the one that came to reveal to Daniel what “shall befall your people in the latter days” according to “that which is noted in the scripture of truth” is the same one that stood with His disciples on Mt. Olivet when He gave His church the key of Daniel.

May God awaken us to emulate Daniel and take up his burden for the covenant and the end of exile for both church and Israel. He was a man of ‘an excellent spirit’, full of wisdom and prophetic understanding, a true priestly intercessor in perfect identification and brokenness for his people’s tragic condition. He embodied the wisdom of the cross as a true witness to the God of Israel in the midst of the world’s power structures.

Finally, it is important that we mark the inseparable relationship that exists between intercessory prayer, prophetic revelation, and the set times of God in the church’s final victory over Satan. These are indispensable factors and dynamics that work towards the eviction of Satan in order that the kingdom can come in the only way that it was ordained to come, i.e., “through much tribulation” (Acts 14:22). So whether the church realizes it or not, to pray, “Thy kingdom come,” is a costly prayer indeed.

Yours in the Beloved, Reggie

P.S. I’d like to encourage that the friends that plan to attend our table talks in Vermont, NY, and North Bay spend some time in portions of scripture that deal especially with the Antichrist and the tribulation. I would suggest reading through Daniel as paradigmatic of the church of the last days. Also Rev chapters 11-13, 16-17, Mt 24 and 2Thes 2, Isa 24-28; Ezek 38-39; Zech 12-14 especially. Be on the look out for corroborating passages throughout the OT in general, where these themes are particularly referenced. Those scriptures will also be helpful to have on hand, since the apocalyptic portions are basically a summing up of the great themes of covenant promise and judgment that appear all throughout the OT, particularly in the prophets.

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There wasn’t anything allegorical about the recent events in Israel. These are concrete reality out-workings of the eschatology of the covenant appearing before our eyes. – “Doc”

So true. It’s the age ending conclusion to the quarrel that began in Abraham’s tents. Ezekiel calls it “the everlasting hatred” (Eze 35:5; compare also Eze 35-36 with Obadiah and Ps 83). It is the ancient envy and hatred of Jacob’s election that the Antichrist will be able to exploit to full advantage. Esau’s fury against Jacob is a preview of the rage that the Antichrist will have against what the scripture calls ‘the holy covenant’ (Dan 11:28, 30).

What is little conceived or considered is that the ‘covenant’ that the Antichrist confirms with many for one week (Dan 9:27) is something more than another peace agreement. It is that; but it is more. In what follows, I hope to show that it is an agreement, not only between the Antichrist and Israel (Dan 11:23), but very probably among many nations that will formally recognize, not only Israel’s right to exist as a nation, but also Jewish right of access to the forbidden temple mount.

Currently, the “noble sanctuary” is off limits to Jews. To presume to set foot on the ground held sacred by the Muslim world is, to use their words, to “open hell.” That’s got to change. What will be sufficient to change such adamant and rabid Muslim intransigence on the Jerusalem question, and the even more exasperating question of the temple mount? I’m thinking nothing less than a regional war on a much larger scale than we’re seeing now, though, of course, it only takes a spark to set the world on fire.

Before Jacob’s trouble can begin, there must be a restored sacrifice on the forbidden temple mount in order to fulfill the prophecy that says it will be stopped just 3 1/2 years before the end (Dan 9:27; 12:11). A comparison of the following scriptures will show that the daily sacrifice is taken away at the same time the abomination of desolation is placed in the holy place at Jerusalem (Dan 9:27; 11:31; 12:11).

Note that both Dan 9:27 and Dan 12:11 are especially clear in showing that the daily sacrifice is removed 3 1/2 years before the end. Some commentators, however, see the reference to the “end” in Dan 9:26-27 as limited to the 70 A.D. destruction of Jerusalem. However, in nearly every other reference throughout the book of Daniel, the point of reference for the term, ‘the end,’ is the end of the unequaled tribulation, the destruction of Antichrist, the resurrection, and the saints’ possession of the kingdom (Dan 7:25-26; 8:17, 19; 11:27, 35, 40; 12:2, 4, 6-9, 13). It is common in prophecy for the near type to overlap with the far antitype of the eschatological future. In this view, the 70 A.D. destruction is not the ‘end’ but a type of a yet future desolation of the city that begins with the desolating sacrilege (Dan 12:11 with Mt 24:15; Rev 11:2) and ends in the return of Christ and the resurrection (Dan 12:1 with Mt 24:29).

Rather than connecting the half week of Dan 9:27 with the 3 1/2 years of Dan 12:11, many commentators believe that it is ‘the anointed (Messiah) prince’ who stops the sacrifice in Dan 9:27 while it is the Romans who stop it in Dan 12:11. The second half of the seventieth seven in Dan 9:27 is not considered to be the 3 1/2 years of Dan 12:11. The 3 1/2 years that follow upon the stopping of the sacrifice in Dan 9:27 is thought to be an entirely different event and time from the 3 1/2 years that follow upon the stopping of the sacrifice in Dan 12:11.

In this view, the first half of the week is reckoned from the beginning of Jesus ministry with His baptism of John. Since it is reasonably well determined that Jesus’s ministry lasted 3 1/2 years, the stopping of the sacrifice “in the middle of week” is taken to mean that the atoning death of Jesus rendered the temple sacrifice forever obsolete. The second half of the week is believed to follow the first half in unbroken succession, expiring at some undesignated point 3 1/2 years later in the earliest years of the fledgling church. Some suggest the death of Stephen or the conversion of Paul. In this view, the Roman general Titus is seen as the “coming prince” that destroys the city and the sanctuary (Dan 9:26), but the desolator is believed to be the risen Lord, since the text makes clear that the one who confirms the covenant and puts an end to the sacrifice is also the desolator.

Most conservative scholars are agreed that Daniel’s seventieth week, like the former 69 sevens, is rightly understood as seven literal years, divided into two halves of 3 1/2 years each (Dan 9:24-27). However, when it comes to the interpretation of Dan 12:11, there is a great parting of the ways. In an effort to distinguish the second half of Dan 9:27 from the 3 1/2 years of Dan 12:11, many fanciful and contradictory theories have been offered.

When texts of such similar language and evident meaning can be interpreted so differently, we are made to wonder why. Why aren’t interpreters able to see the plain use that Jesus (Mt 24:15, 21), Paul (2Thes 2:4), and John (Rev 11:2-3; 12:6, 14; 13:5) make of Daniel’s prophecy? We believe it is because the evidence points in a direction that is incompatible with prior theological commitments.

For example, if it is accepted that Dan 12:11 is associated with a final 3 1/2 year persecution of the Antichrist, it would mean that Jesus’s reference to the abomination of desolation (Mt 24:15) is future. For many interpreters this is unthinkable, because a future Antichrist that is bent on the destruction of the Jewish people calls into question many strongly held assumptions that are not easily surrendered. A future Antichrist that will rise amidst an age ending crisis over the city of Jerusalem points to a still outstanding covenant election and millennial destiny of those whom Paul calls, ‘the natural branches’ (Ro 11:21, 24-29).

According to the eschatology of the day of the Lord, as conceived and depicted by the Hebrew prophets, this time of unequaled tribulation was seen as the last stage in the discipline of the covenant that ends in a transformational moment of revelation and regeneration of the surviving remnant (Isa 26:16-17; 66:8; Mic 5:3-4; Jer 30:6-7; Dn 12:1; Zech 12:10; 13:1). Never is Israel left to endless exile and the curse of the conditional covenant (Lev 26; Deut 28-32). Rather, in a transformational moment of revelation and repentance, ‘at the end of their power’ (Deut 32:36; Dan 12:7), Israel is brought into the “everlasting righteousness” of the “everlasting covenant” (Isa 45:17; 59:21; Jer 32:40; Dan 9:24). This deliverance is everywhere shown to come at the great transition called the day of the Lord. Jews rightly understood this to be the time of the resurrection of the ‘last day,’ which Daniel manifestly puts at the end of the unequaled tribulation (Dan 12:1-2, 13).

[Note: It is interesting to note with what great inconsistency Dan 12:11 is interpreted by those systems that deny special prophetic significance to natural Israel. One approach is to see Dan 12:11 as fulfilled in the second century B.C. when Antiochus IV desecrated the holy place and persecuted Jews loyal to the covenant. But a type is not an anti-type, as it is often the case in prophecy that a parallel fulfillment on the near horizon is only a type and pattern that points beyond itself to an eschatological fulfillment that will more perfectly match all the literal details of the prophecy, many of which were never fulfilled in the historical type. The other approach is to see the sacrifice as removed by the Romans, but since the sacrifice was not literally stopped until very near the end of the siege, this school of interpretation (‘historicist’) believes that each day should count for year, so that 1290 days becomes 1,290 years. However, there is little agreement among them as to which point in history ends the 1290 years.]

As mentioned, most conservative commentators interpret Dan 9:27 consistently as a literal seven year period, divided into two equal halves at the point where the sacrifice is stopped in “the middle of the week.” It becomes a question of consistency to find Dan 12:11 treated so differently, since it also speaks of the stopping of the sacrifice in connection with the time of desolation. In contrast to Dan 9:27, Dan 12:11 is either spiritualized as purely symbolic of a short time, or else converted into years.

Moreover, the specified time of 1290 days (3 1/2 years; 43 months) does not match the dates for the Roman siege. The sacrifice was not interrupted until only shortly (July 17th) before the Romans entered the temple (August 10th, 70 A.D). The actual siege lasted 134 days, a full four years after the beginning of the Jewish revolt. The events simply do not match. Most importantly, none of the events that Dan 12 associates with the time of the end were realized at that time.

It is better to see that the 3 1/2 years that follows the stopping of the sacrifice in Dan 9:27 is the same 3 1/2 years that follows the removal of the sacrifice in Dan 12:11, and that the sack of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 A.D constitutes the first of two distinct destructions, the former typical of the latter. This means that the “end” in Dn 9:26-27 looks beyond the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. to the abomination of desolation (Mt 24:15) that begins the final 3 1/2 years of great tribulation (Dan 7:25; 9:27; 12:7, 11; Rev 11:2-3; 12:6, 14; 13:5) that ends in nothing short of Jesus’s bodily return, the resurrection, and gathering of the saints (Dan 12:1-2; Mt 24:29, 31; Acts 1:11; 2Thes 2:1, 8).

It seems most inconsistent to make the half week of Dan 9:27 to end at some undesignated point 3 1/2 years after the cross, while assigning the 3 1/2 years of Dan 12:11 to the Roman sack of Jerusalem. The language of cessation of sacrifice and desolation, common to both passages, would never, apart from prior theological presumptions, lead one to conclude that the stopping of the sacrifice should be seen as separated from the placing of the abomination by 40 years, or by 1290 years, as in the year day theory of the historicist school. The text simply will not bear it, because both in tandem, as two sides of the same event, start the last 3 1/2 years of desolation that arrive at the resurrection of Daniel (Dan 12:1-2, 11, 13).

[Note: Jerusalem did not actually cease from being a Jewish city until after the revolt of Bar Kochba in 132-136 A.D. After that, the Romans changed its name to Aelia Capitolina, forbidding Jews to set foot in the city on pain of death. From that time, scholars began to interpret Jerusalem allegorically of the church, particularly since a literal Jewish Jerusalem seemed now a forgone conclusion. The end of Jerusalem as a city inhabited by Jews, seemed to lend support to the theology of replacement that would make such great room for the vilification and persecution of the Jew by “the arrogant kingdom,” the telling name the Jews would use to refer to the church that they knew in their experience.]

In Dan 9:25-26 mention is made of two princes, “‘Messiah, the prince,’ and ‘the prince that shall come.’ Which prince puts an end to the sacrifice in Dan 9:27? It is hard to over emphasize the importance of this question, as it will greatly determine how we see the end, particularly in relation to the Jewish question.

We believe the question is answered decisively by the simple observance that in every other reference to the desolating sacrilege throughout the book of Daniel, the daily sacrifice is taken away by the one who exalts himself (compare Dan 8:11; 11:31, 36-37; 12:11 with 2Thes 2:4). Conclusion: If it is not Christ but the Antichrist who stops the sacrifice “in the middle of the week” in Dan 9:27, then Daniel’s seventieth week must be future. It could no more have followed the 69th week in unbroken succession than the advent and career of the Antichrist could have immediately followed the death (‘cutting off;’ Dan 9:26) of Messiah.

The “end” in Dan 9:26-27 is consistent with “the end” in Dan 7:26; 8:17, 19; 12:4, 6, 8-9, 13. It is the short time (3 1/2 years), the half week of the unequaled tribulation (Dan 7:25; 9:27; 12:7, 11; Rev 11:2-3; 12:6, 14; 13:5). It is completely inconsistent to interpret the seven years as literal years divided into two halves of 3 1/2 years each, and then spiritualize the 3 1/2 years of great tribulation to be nothing more than a general ‘apocalyptic’ symbol for a short period of indefinite duration. Yet this is what we see with many commentators.

A comparison of Dan 12:1 with Rev 12:7 will further show the inseparable relation of events. Rev 12 shows that the standing up of Michael at the beginning of the unequaled trouble in Dan 12:1 is to cast down Satan to begin his ‘short time’ of wrath bringing great woe to the earth (Rev 12:12). Clearly, Satan’s short time coincides with the 3 1/2 years of the persecution of Israel and the church (Rev 12:6, 12, 14, 17).

Clearly, Michael’s heavenly triumph coincides with the time that the Antichrist enters the temple of God to place the abomination of desolation (Dan 11:31, 36-37; 12:11 with Mt 24:15; 2Thes 2:4). This observance invites us to consider the relationship between the casting down of Satan and the Antichrist’s defilement of the temple, since the two events stand equally at the beginning of the tribulation.

Many scorn the suggestion that scripture compels recognition of a gap between the 69th and 70th weeks of Dan 9:24-27. A little reflection should soften the criticism when it is understood that every interpretation must recognize a gap of some length. A gap will either be located between between the death of Jesus and the destruction of Jerusalem some 40 years later, or it will be the almost 2000 years between the advent of Christ and the advent of Antichrist.

There is nothing inherently incongruous or inconceivable about such a gap. It agrees perfectly with the pattern of the prophetic mystery of Christ’s twofold advent. Until its divinely appointed time of revelation, the gospel was a prophetic mystery concealed in the writings of the prophets (Ro 16:25-26; Eph 6:19; 1Pet 1:11). With the key of the gospel, we can see in retrospect many examples where both advents are combined and blended, without clear distinction. This explains why the Lord’s first coming presented such a formidable puzzle to Israel.

We believe this definite knowledge of the time will be strategic in the church’s intercessory travail for Israel, and will be answered by Michael’s victory over Satan at the threshold of the tribulation. Scripture is clear that it is only with the prior revelation of the mystery of iniquity that day of the Lord can come (2Thes 2:3, 7-8). A comparison of Rev 12:7-10 with Dan 12:1 would lead us to conclude that the revelation of the mystery of iniquity in the final Antichrist is directly related to Michael’s heavenly victory at the threshold of the tribulation when Satan is cast down to begin is ‘short time’ of wrath (Rev 12:12).

Thus, the church that would pray for the coming of the kingdom cannot ignore the cost of that prayer in what must come first. But when our view of His glory is such that we can love His appearing more than temporal ease and blessing, all hindrance will be removed; the Accuser will be cast down, and the kingdom of God will come with power (Rev 12:10).

The last days implies a deep corporate self emptying of the church that is connected to the time and the further opening of the sealed vision of Daniel (Isa 8:16-17; 29:11; Dan 9:24; 12:4, 9). There is a relation between the time of fulfillment and the knowledge of revealed secrets that God has strategically ordained to overcome the hindering powers and to crowd and quicken the church to vital intercession and divine break through in conjunction with His ‘set time’ (Ps 102:13; Dan 8:19; 11:27, 35).

There is a profound philosophy of history contained in the mystery of the seventy sevens. The inferred break between the 69th and 70th weeks of Daniel is built around two mysteries that both culminate in an incarnation. The first is the ‘mystery of godliness’ (1Tim 3:16) which answers to the mystery of the woman’s seed (Gen 3:15), as realized in the incarnation and atonement of the Messiah. The second is the “mystery of iniquity” (2Thes 2:7), which answers to the mystery of the Serpent’s seed, as realized in the incarnation of Satan in the man of sin.

As the 69 weeks would terminate with the accomplishment of the atonement in Messiah’s death (Dan 9:25-26), the 70th week would be reserved to bring in the time that the mystery of iniquity will be completed in the final Antichrist (2Thes 2:3, 7-8) and Messiah’s return to “finish the mystery of God” (Rev 10:7) in Israel’s deliverance (Jer 30:7; Dan 12:1) and the resurrection of the saints (Isa 25:7-8; 26:19; Dan 12:2; 1Cor 15:52-54).

Rather than terminating Daniel’s last week at some vague point 3 1/2 years after the cross, it is better to let Dan 12:11 be our the authoritative interpreter of Dan 9:27. Not Christ but the Antichrist confirms the covenant (Dan 8:25; 9:27; 11:23-24). Not Christ but the Antichrist stops the sacrifice 3 1/2 years before the end.

It seems to us most incongruous to suppose that Daniel could have conceived of an end of the seventy sevens that did not attain to the full promise of the eschatology of the covenant, which guaranteed Israel’s deliverance at the day of the Lord, together with the resurrection of the righteous (Isa 25:7-8; 26:16-17, 19; Dan 12:1, 13). Since this is found only at the end of the unequaled tribulation, it is hard to see the second half of the last seven expiring rather quietly in the first century, 3 1/2 years after the cross.

Furthermore, it is far better to see the “end” that is shown to come 3 1/2 years after the sacrifice is stopped “in the middle of the week,” not as confined to the 70 A.D. destruction by the Romans, but the “end” that follows a future desolation of Jerusalem, which Jesus connects so clearly to the unequaled tribulation that immediately precedes His return (Mt 24:29) and the resurrection and gathering of the church (Dan 12:1-2, 7, 13; Mt 24:31; 2Thes 1:7; 2:1). When such harmony of the evidence is discounted, we are inclined to look for the cause in something other than careful exegesis of the texts within their context.

All is to say that without the Jewish sanctuary and sacrifice situated in the only location sanctioned by scripture, the end cannot be imminent. It may be near, but it is not yet here. Until this particular set of inseparably related events are fully aligned, and until the stage is fully set in such an unmistakable way, we may be sure that Israel will continue to prevail in any conflict that may arise to threaten the nation’s survival.

Significantly, God’s final dealings with Israel begins, not when Israel is in a position of manifest danger, but when the nation is prosperous and secure. According to Eze 38:8, 12-13, Israel exists as a recently restored nation that has grown very prosperous when invaded suddenly and unexpected by the Antichrist. Not only are they enjoying for the first time in 19 centuries the restoration of temple and sacrifice, but they are secure in their expectation of continued peace and safety, assured, no doubt, that the messianic era has either begun or is near at hand. This is the circumstance that prophecy predicts of Israel when the proverbial hammer falls (Isa 28:15, 18; Eze 38:8, 11, 14; Dan 8:25; 11:23-24; 1Thes 5:3). The point that God is making through such an unexpected set of circumstances is something profoundly instructive for how He intends to plead with Israel, much to probe and ponder for us here.

We may ponder what kind of changes will be necessary to force Muslim acceptance of the presence of a Jewish sanctuary and sacrifice on the fiercely guarded temple mount. We notice too that according to Isa 63:18, it appears that the holy places have been only recently restored (“a little while”) when Jerusalem is suddenly ‘trodden down’ by the adversary (Isa 64:10-11; Rev 11:2). This suggests that Israel has only recently recovered access to the the temple mount when the Antichrist invades.

This implies that sometime between now and the time that Israel can freely proceed build and sacrifice on the forbidden temple mount, something seismic has happened to force Muslim acceptance of such an otherwise unthinkable arrangement. How this will come about will be a wonder to behold. Therefore, if we would not be distracted by premature excitement (the ‘false alarms of prophetic speculation’), we must pay close attention to what must be in place before the Antichrist can fulfill all that is written of him.

Not only must the temple and sacrifice be in place, but Dan 11:23 thru Dan 11:31 gives us a definite sequence of events that take place in the first half of the seven years after the peace arrangement but before the abomination. We note that sometime “AFTER the league made with him” (Dan 11:23), he conquers a powerful king to his south (Dan 11:25-26). After the defeat of this king, the conqueror and the conquered sit at one table to plot against the ‘holy covenant’ (Dan 11:28, 30) that pertains to the sanctuary and sacrifice according to the divine grant that appointed this specific place to one elect people as the place of His Name and covenant claim.

Indeed, if reference to the ‘holy covenant’ in Dan 11:28, 30 can be demonstrated to have a future fulfillment, then the whole question of divine right to the Land that is so much debated among evangelicals is decisively answered, since the covenant is called “holy” despite the unbelieving state of those appointed to the discipline of Jacob’s trouble.

[Note: Manifestly, God is holding the nations responsible to understand and revere His covenant with Israel, as it is clear that when the Antichrist presumes to lead his confederacy down to scatter His people (“My heritage”) and divide ‘His Land’ (Dan 11:39; Joel 3:2), a definite line has been crossed, a point of no return, as God’s fury “comes up into His face,” and a full end is declared (Eze 38:17; 39:8 with Rev 16:17). It is made to appear that this great presumption by the Antichrist is counted as the ultimate provocation, but note that it is particularly depicted as an assault against the ‘holy covenant.’ And what is that if it is not the Word of election and covenant that God has spoken concerning this particular people?]

Could the covenant that the Antichrist confirms with many at the beginning of Daniel’s 70th week be the same covenant that the Antichrist will hate, and conspire to destroy? We think so. In any event, the plans of these two kings do not prosper, because the time of the appointed end is not yet (Dan 11:27). Soon after this, the Antichrist (“vile person;” Dan 11:21) attempts another southward advance, but to no avail, as he is checked and turned back by the ‘ships of Chittim’ (Dan 11:29-30).

In biblical idiom, Chittim or Kittim was associated with the maritime coastlands of the northwestern Mediterranean. The prophecy suggests a formidable armada from the west that is able to momentarily check the movements of the one who will very shortly invade Israel with irresistible force (Dan 11:31 with Rev 13:4). This second move south is apparently perceived to threaten the security of the covenant.

In today’s world, the ‘ships of Chittim,’ would seem to indicate a western power such as the U.S. or NATO with a naval presence in the Mediterranean. We may safely assume that the ‘ships of Chittim’ represents a very formidable power, because it is able to turn back the one who will, in a very short time, command a military supremacy that none can hope to resist (Dan 11:31 with Rev 13:4).

The momentary success of the ships of Chittim will greatly reinforce the feeling that the security of the covenant is invincible under the guardianship of such a powerful force, as represented by the ‘ships of Chittim.’ But immediately after he is repulsed in his second southward advance, he begins to have secret intelligence with the other nations that apparently share his hatred for the covenant (Dan 11:28, 30, 32). We may safely assume that this intelligence (plotting) is indeed secret, because Israel, and the nations protecting the covenant, are taken completely by surprise by the invasion. Israel’s ‘presumption’ of security will be at its height when disaster strikes.

In addition to commanding the high ground in future negotiations over Jerusalem and the temple mount, we also may infer on the basis of Eze 38:12-13 that Israel has become the jewel of the Middle-East. This remarkable prosperity will further exasperate and vex the envy of the Antichrist and the cast of nations that will support his designs against the covenant. These are the nations that will seek opportunity to end western dominance over the resources of the region.

Not only Israel, but any nation that has backed the hated ‘Zionist’ state will be equally marked for destruction. Israel’s increasing prosperity exasperate not only Arab hatred, it will also excite the covetousness of the nations from the regions in the north (Eze 38:2, 5-6). It appears that the Antichrist will not only exploit Islamic hatred of the covenant, he may also gain support from nations that will support his plan to wrest the economic advantage from the west and restore it to its place of origin (Zech 5:5-11?).

A case can be made for a twofold destruction of Babylon. This brings harmony to a number of scriptures. The ten kingdoms under the command of the Antichrist will inflict a fiery judgment on the harlot, which in our view is primarily a reference to Jerusalem, but perhaps not only Jerusalem but the western powers that support and guard the covenant that is hated by the Antichrist and his supporters. Such nation or nations would be represented by the reference in Dan 11:30 to the ships of Chittim. The further second stage of the harlot’s destruction includes all of word-wide Babylon at the Lord’s return.

At the middle of the week, 3 1/2 years from the time that the covenant was confirmed (Dan 9:27; 12:7, 11), the invasion of the Antichrist will come in suddenly like an overwhelming flood (Dan 9:26; 11:22). The reversal will be staggering, not only for Israel, but also the nation or nations that pledged to guard the covenant (‘ships of Chittim’ ?) will be caught equally off guard when disaster strikes. That is when I can personally conceive, even expect, that the western powers that have pledged protection of the covenant may simultaneously come under nuclear attack against our major population centers and infrastructure. Whether that will be, one thing is very clear: The formidable western naval power that successfully repulsed the Antichrist such a short time before will be helpless to stop him.

Towards the end of the tribulation, it appears that some of these great powers such as China (“tidings from the east;” and “kings of the east”) and possibly some part or all of Russia or perhaps a western power (“king of the north”) will come against the Antichrist. This is little considered but very clear in the last verses of Dan 11 that describe a final ‘Waterloo’ for the Antichrist just before he is destroyed by the breath of the Lord.

The question is, were either or both of these super powers involved in a supportive role at the time of the Antichrist’s initial invasion of Jerusalem at the beginning of the tribulation? Daniel makes clear that a mighty nation from the north, another from the south, and “the kings of the east” will be pushing against him with great fury (Dan 11:40, 44; Rev 16:12-14) when he comes to his end in Dan 11:45.

Still, I don’t see anything so far that leads me to expect that the present crisis will necessarily lead immediately into the particular peace arrangement that will permit Jewish re-annexation, or even access to the temple mount. I would expect something more extreme, but anything is possible. If, however, this crisis escalates into a regional war that shakes things up and re-positions and re-shapes the current policy of accommodation by the secular state, then we can’t rule out that possibility. Things have the potential to change radically, almost overnight, as we saw in Russia.

A strategic and decisive victory for Israel (all the more if it proves very costly), coupled with the impressive prosperity that prophecy anticipates before the tribulation (Eze 38:12-13), would put Israel in a much more advantageous bargaining position requiring compromise from the Muslim world that would never be considered under the present circumstances. It suggests, not a complete subjugation of the Arab world, but a great and unprecedented advantage sufficient to induce compromise that would not, at the moment, be even remotely entertained. It is in such a climate and circumstance that I think we will see the confirmation of the covenant / peace arrangement that we’re looking for, but not until. We will know it’s the one because it will be attended by initiatives to restore the sanctuary and sacrifice on the temple mount.

This brings the further question: Is it possible that Jews will gain access to the temple mount before the last 7 begins? Or will this be a sign that we are in the last seven? I believe the latter. Here’s why: According to inferences based on what we consider the most credible interpretation of Dan 8:11-14, the regular sacrifice that is taken away in the middle of the week (see Dan 8:11; 9:27; 11:31; 12:11) has only recently been restored (‘possessed but a little while;’ Isa 63:18) when it is removed to begin the final 42 months of the prophesied desolation of Jerusalem (Isa 63:18; 64:10-11 with Dan 9:27; 11:31; 12:11; Mt 24:15-16; 2Thes 2:4; Rev 11:2), also called, ‘the time of Jacob’s trouble’ (compare Jer 30:7 with Dan 12:1; Mt 24:21).

We believe that the 2,300 day prophecy of Dan 8:12-14 comprehends the entire time from when the sacrifice is re-started until the end. Dan 9:27 with Dan 12:11 is clear in showing that from the mid-point of Daniel’s 70th week, there is 1290 days from the removal of the daily sacrifice to the end. The 2,300 days covers the longer period from the start of the sacrifice to the end.

In order for the sacrifice to be stopped 1290 days before the end, certainly it must first be started. We believe the purpose of the prophecy of the 2300 days is to show us that the sacrifice that is removed in the middle of the week has been only recently restarted very shortly after the covenant has been confirmed. If this is true, it greatly defines the nature of the covenant and how it can be distinguished from any other peace arrangement. I’ll come back to this, but this is much more than just one more peace arrangement in the Middle-East.

If the seven years is reckoned as an equal 1260 for both halves of the period, we have a total of 2,520 days. 2300 from 2,520 leaves 220 days. This would imply that the 2,300 days begins with the renewal of the sacrifice about 7 months and 10 days after the covenant was confirmed. However, the mysterious extension of days in Dan 12:11-12 prevents us from any such precision. Interestingly, the 1260 days, the 42 months, the time, times, and half of time of Dan 7:25; 12:7; Rev 11:2-3; 12:6, 14; 13:5, all seem to be reckoned from two nearly simultaneous events, one in heaven and one on earth. They are the abomination of desolation, which includes the removal of the daily sacrifice (Dan 8:11; 9:27; 11:31; 12:11; Mt 24:15), and the standing up of Michael in Dan 12:1 and Rev 12:7 at the beginning of the last 3 1/2 years of unequaled tribulation.

[Note: This correlation of events has been far too overlooked by commentators. It should not be missed that in Dan 12:1 Michael stands up at the beginning of the unequaled troubled. The same sequence is seen in Rev 12 where Michael prevails to cast down Satan to the earth. This results in Satan’s ‘short time’ (Rev 12:12), which is manifestly concurrent with the persecution of the last 3 1/2 years (Rev 12:6, 14-17). There can be no doubt that the same time is in view in both places. The standing of Michael to cast down Satan is clearly the heavenly event that is the catalyst for the earthly event of the abomination in the temple at Jerusalem. Both set in motion the unequaled tribulation that precedes Christ’s return.]

The difficulty in calculating the precise time that the sacrifice will start lies in the mysterious extension of days that we find in Dan 12:11-12. 1290 days is 30 days longer than 1260 days and 1335 is 45 days longer still, for a total of 75 days. What is the significance of this mysterious extension of days? We are not told specifically. We may, however, suppose such things as the time that the penitent remnant will go apart to mourn, or the cleansing of the sanctuary or dedication of the new temple (whether understood literally or symbolically, as this is a notable stumbling block for many). In any event, it is a time of special blessing of new beginnings for the newly regenerate nation.

It seems clear to me that none of the three terminal points (1260; 1290; 1335) can be the exact time of the Lord’s return, for the following 3 reasons:

1) Jesus said the exact day and hour of His return was unknown even to Him, at least during the time of His self-emptying on earth. Furthermore, I believe it is altogether possible that he had the mysterious extension of the days in Daniel specifically in mind when He gave that caveat.

2). Not only the 1335 but also the 1290 days appear to take us to a time beyond the the Lord’s return to destroy the Antichrist. This we conclude, because the Antichrist’s persecution of Israel and the saints is limited to 42 months (Dan 7:25; 12:7; Rev 11:2-3; 12:6, 14; 13:5), whereas the 1290 days is 43 months, and takes us to a point that seems a little beyond Christ’s return to destroy the Antichrist. Hence, the 1290 and 1335 are points of special significance in the earliest days of the millennium.

3). Nor does Jesus return at the end of the 1260th day. At the end of the 1260 days the two witnesses are killed and their dead bodies lie in the streets of Jerusalem for an additional 3 1/2 days. In the same hour of their ascent in the sight of their enemies, the ‘second woe,’ which is the 6th trumpet, is declared as past with the announcement that the ‘third woe,’ which is the 7th trumpet, is coming quickly. We may only wonder how quickly. Thus, it seems clear that the Lord’s return is somewhere between the 1263.5 days that conclude the 6th trumpet and the 1290th day. However, in view of the limitation of he Antichrist’s persecution of the woman and the saints to only 42 months, we must expect the Lord’s return at the seventh trumpet (Rev 10:7; 11:15-18) to come somewhere nearer to the expiration of the 1260 days than to the 1290th day, which amounts to 43 months.

[Note also that even so late as the 6th bowl of wrath, and just before the “great day of God Almighty,” which is clearly the seventh bowl (Rev 16:14-17 with Eze 39:8), we see the Lord interjecting between the 6th and 7th bowl these fateful words: “Behold, I am coming as a thief. Blessed is he who watches, and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame.” (Rev 16:15). In 2 Pet 3:10, 12, the day of the Lord is equated with the day of God, the only other place the day of God is mentioned in just those words other than here in the book of Revelation. It is ‘that day’ that Peter says will come as a thief, and here in Rev 16:15, after the 6th bowl but before the 7th, the Lord is warning that He is coming as a thief. Should we not understand that it is on “the great day of God Almighty” that He returns as a thief?]

All is to say that in order to calculate the 2,300 days of Dan 8:12-13 accurately, we would have to know the precise end-point for the event identified as the ‘cleansing of the sanctuary.’ From that point, counting backwards, we arrive at the starting point of the sacrifice. This means that the sacrifice that is started at the beginning of the 2,300 days is taken away approximately 3 1/2 years before the end, which “end” is shown in Dan 12:2, 13 to coincide with the time of Daniel’s personal resurrection at “the end of the days” (Dan 12:13). [It is exceedingly hard to understand the lengths to which some commentators will go to interpret such language as being satisfied by events that passed with the first century.]

As I see it, the precise day that the sanctuary will be cleansed, like the exact day of the Lord’s return, is deliberately veiled from us. We are not definitely told what happens at the end of the 1290th day or the 1335th day. We may speculate and infer but since the scripture does not say explicitly, we are not able to say precisely when the sanctuary is cleansed. It would be most reasonable to suppose that since the 1290th day is a further point, somewhat beyond the day of the Lord’s return, that it is the day that the sanctuary is cleansed. Perhaps so, but it is not definitely stated.

The full time from 1260 to 1335 is 75 additional days. That’s about 2 1/2 months. Given the additional terminal points beyond the 1260, and not knowing which, if either, of those specified days definitely mark the cleansing of the sanctuary, we can only say that sometime between 8 and 10 months after the covenant has been confirmed, the sacrifice will definitely be started again.

This does not require the completion of a temple (though, of course, in the modern world a temple could rise very quickly). We know this, because no sooner did the returning exiles under Zerubbabel return to the site of the altar, but they immediately began to offer sacrifice while work on the temple was only beginning. Furthermore, we know that the Greek word that Paul uses for the temple signifies its inner sanctum. This is in perfect keeping with Jesus’ mention of the inner room of the sanctuary called ‘the holy place.’ Therefore, a fully completed temple is not necessary for the prophecy to be fulfilled.

If we are correct that a restored sanctuary and sacrifice will be at the heart of the “holy covenant” (Dan 9:27 with Dan 11:28, 30, 32) that the Antichrist will ‘confirm’ (not create but ‘make firm’) with many (not necessarily ‘many’ Jews, but more probably many nations), then we will know when the seven years has begun regardless of who we may have thought the Antichrist would be or where he comes from. By this we will be able to distinguish it from any other peace arrangements along the way.

Even if we are ignorant or incorrect of exactly who the Antichrist is or where he comes from, we will nonetheless know with certainty that the seven years has begun. We will at least know that the Antichrist is among those heads of state that ratify the treaty that confirms Israel’s right to the appurtenances of the “holy covenant.” We will also know that “after the league made with him” (Dan 9:27; 11:23), the Jews will shortly begin to offer sacrifice again and evidently begin to build the temple that will house the ‘holy place’ that he defiles in the middle of the week.

If the language of scripture and historical precedent be given priority over conspiracy theory and speculation, this ‘holy covenant’ will certainly have to do with Jewish right to the Land and the city of Jerusalem, and particularly the temple mount. From the start, the Antichrist both hates and plots against the very  covenant that he confirmed with many (Dan 9:27; 11:23). This is the paradox. On one side, the treaty is a covenant with death and hell. It is unholy in that it trusts in man for its security. On the other side, it is holy in the sense that it recognizes, or rather pretends to recognize, Israel’s legitimacy and restored rights to temple and sacrifice. This is what the Antichrist will conspire against, first with a conquered king to his south (Dan 11:27), then with other nations who share a mutual hatred of the covenant (Dan 11:27-28, 30, 32).

I say that his intelligence with them who hate the covenant is “secret,” simply because scripture is clear that until he comes in suddenly “with the arms of a flood,” both Israel, and no doubt the western powers that are protectorates of the covenant (ships of Chittim), are unsuspecting of this sudden and overwhelming show of force (Dan 11:31 with Rev 13:4). At this point, Israel is basking in the presumed security of divine favor.

With the recent successful interdiction of the Antichrist’s southward initiative by the ships of Chittim, Israel will feel that the peace is more secure and invincible than ever and will securely dismiss the warnings of the prophetic witness that will be coming to them from within and without (Isa 28:11-12, 14-15). However, within whatever time may be considered to pass between Dan 11:30 and verse 31, a great shift of power has occurred.

Within a short time after he has been frustrated by the western armada, the Antichrist is able to secure the further backing needed to mount an irresistible invasion force against Israel.  Not only this, but a case can be made for the view that sometime after Dan 11:30 but before Dan 11:31, this beast has been resuscitated from a mortal wound to become the full incarnation of Satan, “with ALL power and signs of deceptive wonders” (2Thes 2:9). This is when the whole world wonders when they see the beast that was, and is not, and yet is (Rev 17:8).

It will be a demonic miracle, something much more deceptive and immediately compelling than the re-emegence of an empire, or an illusion of technology, as sometimes interpreted. It will be the ‘revelation of the mystery of iniquity’, which must be accomplished before Christ can return (2Thes 2:3, 7-8).

We believe this happens in immediate connection with Michael’s eviction of Satan in Rev 12:7-14, as also implied in Dan 12:1. It is then, upon the event of this supernatural empowerment from Satan (Dan 8:24 with Rev 13:2), that the Antichrist proceeds to enter the temple, claiming divine honors (Dan 11:36-37 with 2Thes 2:4). The Lord help you and give you grace to see the connection and the essence of things, as you search the scriptures to prove whether these things be so.

Yours in common waiting for the consolation of Israel, Reggie

The post Distinguishing The Peace We Are Looking For appeared first on Mystery of Israel.

Part I was written by the late Art Katz, and is still available on the Art Katz Ministries website. Part II, by Reggie Kelly, is below:

For just as “the whole world lies in wickedness,” so too is it also under judgment, even when through divine grace, judgment is postponed to give greater space for repentance (John 3:36). There is a common grace that daily supports the unbelieving world that is wholly undeserved. We might say that the world hangs by a thread of divine forbearance and mercy. It is certainly judgment anytime the hedge of covenant protection is sovereignly removed. We may thank God for any salutary effects that issue from calamity, as is often the case, but this cannot dismiss the component of judgment. However, there is much more to judgment than punishment. There is the sobering reminder of human vulnerability, frailty, and helplessness. Anything that weakens false security, and humbles the pride of the flesh is always a mercy, a temporal preview of eternity.

Jesus’ reference to the tower of Siloam (Luke 13:4) reflects a unique view of divine judgment. Jesus does not diminish the component of judgment in divine providence, but raises the question of moral equality. The judgment that came to the eighteen was not an index of greater moral defection than any in Israel, but a token of the judgment that is coming to all who remain impenitent. In this sense, it would be a mistake to interpret this judgment on America as a sign that our nation has excelled all others in iniquity and rebellion. I do not see this when I read history, nor now when I travel, quite the contrary!

That America is suffering for a right thing at the same time that she is suffering for her own presumption and idolatry is not mutually exclusive. Throughout Israel’s history, God would sometimes judge His people’s covenant neglect by raising up against them a fierce and inhumane power of a much lesser moral conscience. What is fearful for America is the greater jealousy of God’s very love. God has a different kind of standard for a people that have been the recipients of the greater blessing of truth and light. So in one sense, though certainly relative, a greater evil is raised up to judge the lesser because of the greater privilege and responsibility of the latter. It seems rather that the greater divine jealousy in judgment is a sign of the greater covenant affection, as seen paradoxically in Israel’s historical judgments, and now more recently in the Holocaust.

God “put” into the heart of Israel’s enemies to hate His covenant people and to bring judgment upon them. This is sovereignty and predestination, the highest affront to our frail and hopelessly humanistic perspectives. His holy wrath will yet be revealed in the rage and hatred of demon possessed hordes that are destined to destroy two thirds of the Jewish race, and yet in such severity, there is the glory of divine love – mysteriously perhaps, but it is there! This pattern can be shown again and again. King David prays “in wrath, remember mercy.” Both are true, they are not mutually exclusive; they are true at the same time. Are there heroes during times of judgment? Are innocent children trapped in the seemingly indiscriminate disaster? Of course! And it was so in Israel when the righteous remnant would suffer with the nation who had brought down judgment on itself.

The church should see the writing on the wall. If it costs a secular nation this much to be identified with Israel, what will it cost the church? As for our beloved nation, I have to say with scripture that the only righteousness that God accepts is the righteousness of Christ; every other kind, however seemingly noble is ultimately wicked if it substitutes itself for this. God is revealed in no other place but “in Christ.” And this is as true in the Old Testament as in the New when the unique character of Hebraic faith is distinguished from all types of humanism. The faith of Abraham is the faith of Christ, and the faith of God’s elect in every age. All other “would be” faiths are doomed for all the reasons an infallible Bible makes clear. There is a veil of morality that humanism hides behind that will be stripped away and exposed in the coming crises. “Crises reveals, and ultimate crises reveals ultimately” (Art Katz). The die is cast. We are on collision course with Islam that reaches to the end of the age, and though I believe that the “Jack will be momentarily stuffed back in the box, it will soon enough spring out with a fury that will take Israel and the humanistic West by tragic surprise. “For when they shall say, ‘Peace and safety; the sudden destruction will come upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.’”

Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus!

Reggie Kelly

The post The Shaking of All Things That Can Be Shaken appeared first on Mystery of Israel.

Note: Art Katz expounded the following paper in a 3 message series (K-183, K-184 and K-185 Grace and the Election of Israel) at the 2000 Prophetic School.

In his majestic survey of salvation history recorded in Romans chapters nine through eleven, Paul shows that God has chosen to demonstrate the sovereignty of grace through a profound interplay of judgment and mercy between Israel and the nations. It is the eschatological resolution of this paradox of history that is calculated to abound to the highest revelation and praise of divine glory. So great is the spectacle of divine glory presented in the revelation of this mystery, that as Paul comes to the end of his magnificent review, he breaks out into what is perhaps the most rapturous hymn of praise to be found in all of scripture (Ro 11:33-36).

It is most significant that Paul sees in the mystery of Israel’s fall and final redemption a key to the whole sweep of redemptive wisdom. And therefore, if the end of “this mystery” is nothing less than “glory forever,” Paul’s zeal that the church at Rome should not continue in ignorance of its sublime content is all the better understood. If this mystery is indeed the divinely chosen medium and context by which alone the glory of an imponderable wisdom and knowledge is displayed, then how shall we explain the indifference that the church has shown towards this theme both now and through the ages? Such willing ignorance is not only to miss the glory that is invested in the mystery, but to be woefully untouched by the pathos of divine sacrifice and suffering necessary to its demonstration in history.

Hosea’s prophecy of the covenantal rejection of “Loammi (not my people)” illustrates a pattern consistently observed in the method of grace. (([1] It is hasty to assume that Paul’s use of the Hosea prophecy in the context of Romans chapter nine should be taken as a ‘reinterpretation’ of its original context and meaning. Nothing in Paul’s application of this prophecy to the anomaly of gentile incorporation into the covenant can be taken as support for the view that Israel’s national promises are now canceled and transferred to the church, a position known lately as ‘replacement theology’. Rather, Paul sees in Hosea’s prophecy a profound pattern of divine dealing that is properly applied to gentiles who, in like analogy to Israel, have passed from a ‘not my people’ status to become, through the election of grace, ‘the sons of the living God’. Such a principle, though appropriately interchangeable in its application, in no way alters Israel ’s millennial hope. So far from ‘reinterpreting’ or ‘spiritualizing’ the original context of Hosea in a way that cancels the promises of God to Israel, Paul points by comparison to the sovereign prerogative that is able to change a ‘not my people’ into covenant heirs. The reversal that the Gentiles have lately experienced as a former ‘not my people’ is in glorious parallel with what Israel will know ‘in that day’ when they are reinstated from the rejection of ‘not my people.’)) “And it shall come to pass that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God”. But why “there?” namely, “in the place where it was said?”

Through the mystery of a hidden wisdom not revealed in other ages, Israel and the Gentiles experience a profound reversal of status and role in the covenant exclusion of “not my people,” until the pride of human sufficiency is utterly exposed and finally broken. In order to underscore the controversy of the covenant, the elect nation is surrendered to an age long judgement of desolation and dispersion during the same period that God is extending mercy (“a door of faith”) to the Gentiles. This means that as Israel is blinded (([2] A host of Old Testament passages predict the hiding of God’s face until the eschatological restoration (Deut 31:17,18; 32:20; Ezek 39:24,29; Isa 54:8)) and given up to the curse of the covenant, God is granting repentance to those who were formerly ‘not a people’, calling out from among the Gentiles a people for His name (Acts 11:18; 15:14).

This astonishing turn of events is foreseen in the prophetic song that Moses was commanded to teach the children of Israel. The stated intention of the song is to provide a record of prophetic witness to be handed down to future generations. (([3] Now therefore, write down this song for yourselves, and teach it to the children of Israel ; put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for Me against the children of Israel . When I have brought them to the land flowing with milk and honey, of which I swore to their fathers, and they have eaten and filled themselves and grown fat, then they will turn to other gods and serve them; and they will provoke Me and break My covenant. Then it shall be, when many evils and troubles have come upon them, that this song will testify against them as a witness; for it will not be forgotten in the mouths of their descendants, for I know the inclination of their heart today, even before I have brought them to the land of which I swore to give them” (Deut 31:18-21).)) In both protest and promise, the song is a prophetic synopsis of the whole course of Jewish history. The song begins with Moses calling heaven and earth to witness “against” a chronically rebellious disposition of heart that is predicted to persist until the final tribulation of the “latter days.” (([4] Deut.31;27,29 with 29:4; but as to the promise compare 30:1-6; 32:43 with 4:29,30.))

Among the judgements named is God’s astounding purpose to ‘turn the tables’ on the covenant nation. “They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with those who are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation” (Deut 32:21). Thus it is seen that through a paradox of election and covenant exclusion, God has chosen to demonstrate His own sovereign prerogative in grace by turning to bless a “not a people.” (([5] Jesus’ application of Moses’ prophecy: “Therefore say I unto you, the kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. And he that falleth on this stone shall be broken to pieces: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will scatter him as dust”( Matt 21:43 -44). “And I say unto you, that many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matt 8:11-12).)) At the same time, Israel must drink the bitter cup of exile as a “no people.”

Through the reversal of covenant status, Israel is made to demonstrate the futility of approaching God on any basis other than grace through faith alone (Ro 11:6). Even before the stone of stumbling was historically embodied in Jesus , Israel had already stumbled through its habitual failure to seek the commanded righteousness on the basis of faith (Ro 9:31 ,32). Instead they approached the standard of righteousness “as if it were a law of works” (that is to say, as though it were possible with man). Certainly the Jews were not adverse to faith. They would have included faith as a necessary part of covenant obedience. But the faith of the remnant is distinguished by an utter despair of attaining righteousness through the law. Only through a death to every natural confidence is this faith given. So it is the cross in principle before it is the cross in history. When the commandment is seen at last to require a righteousness that is ‘impossible with man,’ the very ‘place’ of covenantal rejection and divine disenfranchisement then becomes the place of restoration and resurrection through the gracious imputation of a divine and everlasting righteousness.

Therefore we can say that the momentary rejection of Israel as “not my people” is a solemn judgment intended to remove confidence in the flesh and every ‘natural’ claim on divine grace. It intends to lay open the divine rejection of every unsound confidence, whether of lineal decent, or moral and religious advantage, indeed, “whatever is not of faith.” God will not be indebted to man as man, however moral or religious. Nothing else so stands between our natural presumption and the sovereignty of grace as the revelation of this mystery; particularly that the salvation now extended to Gentiles has come at Israel’s expense. And not on the basis of any superiority of the Gentile who has believed (seeing that faith itself is a gift of grace). That it is only “through their fall” that a “door of faith” is opened to the Gentiles. (([6] That the Gentiles would be blessed through Israel ’s millennial exaltation was no secret. But it was never imagined that this blessing would come through the revelation of a mystery at which Israel would offend and stumble, thus fulfilling the promise that Israel would be provoked to jealousy by a foolish nation.))

Only as the veil of human will and moral sufficiency is shattered by the ‘No’ of divine justice can the ‘Yes’ of God in Christ be heard. A kind of hearing is required that is only possible where there is first a death to any residue of confidence in one’s own righteousness. Such hearing comes only through ‘the Word of division’. For this, there must be first a “dividing asunder of soul and spirit” (Heb.4:12) that is only accomplished as the Word is quickened by the Spirit. It is the quickened Word that kills in order to regenerate, (([7] Compare ‘hearing’ in Heb 3:7 with ‘the word of division’ in Heb. 4:12)) that cuts in order to heal. (([8] Circumcision of the heart’ a frequent Old Testament term for regeneration.)) It is the principle of resurrection out of death. Therefore ‘in the place’ where the stern sentence of justice is clearest, ‘there’ the word and work of grace is dearest. The revelation of this grace comes with the revelation of death to all that the apostle Paul calls “confidence in the flesh.”

The word of grace and resurrection is always preceded by the word of judgment, and sanctified by an unfeigned acknowledgement of its awful righteousness, however severe (Lev.26:40-42). The righteousness of the Lord’s severity alone prepares the way for the glory of grace and mercy. “Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God” (Ro 11:22 ). To refuse to acknowledge the righteousness of God’s severity is to downgrade the cost, the sovereignty, and the glory of His goodness on the vessels of mercy. This wisdom is observed in the order of the dispensations: “For the law came by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (Jn.1:17).

Since the word of grace can not be more precious than the preceding word of judgement is clear and dreadful, the second (the word of grace) is only heard ‘in the place’ of the first (the word of judgement). Unless ‘the first’ is profoundly ‘heard’ and justified as utterly righteous and inexorable in its requirement, ‘the second’ can not come in a depth and power that endures (“because they had no depth of earth…no root in themselves,” Mt. 13:5, 6, 21).

We see this pattern demonstrated in the episode of Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophenecian woman (Mt 15:21-28; Mk. 7:25-30). To prepare the way of mercy, Jesus enforces recognition that the provisions of the covenant are restricted to Israel by right of unconditional election. The woman’s humble submission to the sovereignty that justly excludes her constitutes a study in true spiritual poverty. Far from an attitude of insult and offence towards the sovereignty of God’s discriminating choice, she justifies the righteousness of divine denial with the exclamation “truth Lord!”

Observe the method of grace in the tact that the Lord takes with this desperate woman. Through the wisdom of an initial denial, the woman is brought to a humility that now becomes the place of God’s boundless Yes! Natural and moral disqualification becomes the basis of gift and grace. Jesus must take before he can give, that is to say he must remove natural hope in order that she might receive God’s gift on the basis of grace that is only accessible to faith. After such a proving, grace is much more amazing and God is much more glorified. (([9] Incidentally, this event anticipates the New Testament revelation that through Christ, the covenant is made to stand essentially with all the seed of faith.)) Here once more we see an example of that great axiom of redemptive wisdom: “He takes away the first that He may establish the second.” The woman’s imploring words “Truth Lord!” embodies the starting point for any appeal to the ‘throne of grace’. (([10] Throne indeed, because for grace to be grace, it must be sovereign and unconstrained in all of its dispensations.))

Covenant exclusion, thus understood, becomes the necessary setting for grace, not only to Gentiles of this dispensation, but to all the saints of the older dispensation who despaired of perfecting righteousness under the first covenant. In order for grace to be free, sovereign, and unconditional, it is not only lawlessness that is rejected, but even the presumption of religious man who imagines a righteousness that requires something less than death and resurrection. The design of all is to empty the heart of this it’s most naturally resilient tendency.

However impressive it’s natural nobility and virtue, the ‘righteousness’ that issues out of the first creation is rejected as inadequate to fulfill the covenant. “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit” (Zech 4:6). Not only is man spiritually inert through original sin, he is further distanced from the life of God through the inclination of a fallen nature of enmity towards God. The principal character of this enmity is an irrepressible proclivity towards the autonomy of self will. It is the strength of this inborn presumption that stands between fallen humanity and the meekness of the divine nature.

The last obstacle to grace is not so much those things that men count vile, but the irrepressible presumption that righteousness stands even partly in human ability. At the end of power is the confession that no longer justifies self but God, “if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they accept of the punishment (that it was neither unjust nor incommensurate) of their iniquity” (Lev.26:40-42).

Nothing more effectively bars the door of grace than the delusive presumption of self-determinism. Hence, coming to terms with the justice of God’s sovereignty, whether in judgment or in distinguishing grace (([11] See Mt. 20:15 with Lk. 4:25 -28.)) is necessary if we will be brought to ‘the place’ (the dust of helplessness) where the ‘Yes’ of grace and resurrection can be ‘heard’ in transforming power. In this way the old is crucified to its own initiative so that the power to believe and live might appear as removed from human initiative as a corpse promoting its own resurrection. This since Christ is only revealed as our righteousness at the end of strength, and therefore ‘the end of the law’ (Ro. 10:4). “How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed” (Amazing Grace, John Newton). Indeed, grace is never so precious until faith itself, the one thing needful, is seen as ‘impossible to man’ apart from the gift of divine quickening.

This is how the truth of unconditional election severs at the root the one thing blocking the reach of reconciling mercy, namely, confidence in the flesh. Like the word of the cross, it destroys all hope of a righteousness that is one’s own; the best virtues of which fall hopelessly short of that righteousness which is Christ’s alone. Therefore, the most admired of those virtues that can be generated by human will and moral ability can never be the basis of divine acceptance (see Jn.1:13 with Ro.9:16). Because election assumes the total destitution of the natural man as spiritually dead, it ultimately becomes the ‘Yes’ of grace to all who justify God’s sovereign right to “quicken whom He will” (Jn.5:21), and that “apart from works” (Rom.4:6). “So then, it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs” (Ro.9:16).

Strategically, He has “concluded all [both] in unbelief” that no flesh might glory, and so that mercy might appear to the praise of the glory of grace alone. If grace is to be demonstrated as free, unconstrained, and uninfluenced it must be ‘according to election.’ And “in order that the purpose of God according to election might stand” (Ro.9:11), “it is [necessarily] not of him who runs or of him that wills” (Ro. 9:16 ).

With the principle of covenant rejection as background, we turn now to consider the process that effects the covenantal reinstatement of Israel as a redeemed nation. There is one condition for which Israel waits that must be realized before the Shekinah glory can return to a resurrected and reborn nation. Specifically, it is “when He sees that their power is gone” (Deut 32:36); (([12] Compare Lev.26:19 “the pride of their power;” also Isa.57:10 where the divine indictment is directed against a humanistic optimism that fails to acknowledge its destitution; “You were wearied by all your ways, but you would not say, ‘It is hopeless.’ You found renewal of your strength, and so you did not faint (NIV).)) and again “when He shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people, all these things shall be finished” (Dan 12:7). (([13] This prostration of Israel’s power in the time of Jacob’s trouble is necessary to finish Israel’s transgression (Dan.9:24; 12:1; Jer.30:7).)) Is this not also a principle that the church must realize for itself if it will attain to its own eschatological victory and fullness? (([14] The church completes its witness through a last days travail precipitated by the crises of Israel (Isa.66:7-8; Dan.11:33-35; 12:3,8-10; Rev.6:9-11; 12:2.))

The Mystery Explained
The same mystery of the gospel that seals the judgment of natural Israel [‘the children of the kingdom’] gathers in the Gentiles. The gospel is at once a “door of faith to the Gentiles,” and the eschatological judgment of Israel who by reason of a hidden fulfillment could not recognize, ‘the time of visitation.’ After generations of being “hewed by the prophets rising early,” (Hos.6:5; Jer.25:4) the plummet of judgment came in the form of the ‘messianic secret,’ when the long awaited Messiah appeared in the unexpected role as the eschatological ‘stone of stumbling’ and ‘rock of offense.’

The death of the Messiah came as a result of the mystery of his identity. “Who do men say that I am?” And “For had the princes of this world known the mystery, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1Cor.2:8). Why was His identity hidden from Israel? Manifestly, it was to affect the dual purpose of judgment and atonement.

The mystery means that the ‘hidden wisdom’ of redemption is only accessible by the Spirit of revelation. The mystery of the two advents (Messiah’s death and resurrection in the midst of history and His subsequent return at the day of the Lord) was completely hidden from Israel . And if this much was hidden, how much more the time between the two advents that must see the full extent of the Deuteronomic curse? (Paul shows how Moses foretold this period during which time God’s face remains hidden while a ‘not a people’ are chosen to provoke the nation to jealousy. (Compare Ro. 9-11 with Deut. 31:17,18; 32:20-21; Isa. 8:17; Isa. 54:8; and Ezek 39:23, 24, 29).

By its mysterious and therefore unforeseen character, the ‘secret’ at once ‘fulfills the scriptures of the prophets’ (Ro 16:25-26; Col 1:25), being ‘none other things than those which the prophets and Moses said should come’ (Acts 26:22), and brings the stroke of judgment quietly in unexpected advance of the day of the Lord. Indeed, if what was foretold in the prophetic writings had been known there could have been no atonement for Jew or Gentile. “For had they known it [the mystery] they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1Co 2:7). But because the plan, although foretold, was hidden in the mystery, the builders rejected the cornerstone of the entire covenant edifice. The secret which is a ‘trap and a snare’ to apostate Israel (Is 8:17) becomes a ‘revelation’ of the gospel to the remnant (“seal it up among my disciples”), and ‘a door of faith’ to the Gentiles, and all in strictest conformity to what stands written in the prophetic scriptures (Acts 26:22; Ro 1:5; 6:26 et al.).

Thus by means of a prophetic mystery, the dividing Word (veiled in a mystery of incarnation and prophetic paradox) passes through Israel like a winnowing scythe separating the remnant (the true ‘ekklesia’ or assembly of God) from ‘the rest [who] were blinded’ (Ro 11:7; based on Dt 31:17, 18; 32:20; Ezek 39:22-29) Paul shows that his own turning to the Gentiles is according to the judgment threatened by Moses Dt 32:21. This judgement continues throughout the balance of a period termed ‘the times of the Gentiles’ and reaching to “the fullness of the Gentiles” (Lk 21:24; Ro 11:25).

Paul will show that the eschatological ‘Israel of God’ is now as always the ‘preserved seed,’ ‘the election of grace’. However, according to the revelation of the mystery, the remnant of the ‘holy seed’ is now extended to include a remnant from among the Gentiles, “a people for his name” (Acts 15:14). These are grafted into the spiritual “Israel of God” and by this gain an interest in the promises covenanted with Israel . Notice that contrary to the presuppositions of ‘dispensational’ theologians, Paul equated the ‘hope of Israel ’ with the hope of the gospel (Acts 26:6-7).

The present inter-advent period is nowhere called ‘the church age’ as such, but ‘the dispensation of the grace of God to the Gentiles.’ This dispensation is unique occupying the period of Israel’s judicial blindness and dispersion. It is co-extensive with ‘the times of the Gentiles’ (Lk 21:24), but is distinguished as the time that God is “calling out from among the Gentiles a people for His name.” This particular time of Gentile blessing reaches to a ‘fullness of the Gentiles’ that issues in the ‘restitution of all things’ when the ‘deliverer shall come out of Zion to turn ungodliness away from Jacob’ (Ro 11:25 -26). This is the moment of Israel’s national regeneration as ‘the escaped of Israel ’ are born ‘at once’ (Isa 66:8), and the iniquity of the land ‘removed in one day’ (Zech 3:9).

While in one sense the church of this particular dispensation marks a provisional period, (a time of predominately Gentile election designed to move the Jew to jealousy), the church as a spiritual organism includes the elect of all ages (the corporate seed of the woman and the Spirit). The seed of Christ and of the Spirit are all redeemed by the same once and for all sacrifice and can not be limited to this dispensaton, but are part of a more comprehensive and “eternal purpose to gather into one all things in Christ” (Eph 1:9) “which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all” (Eph 1:23). The church is an organism made up of all the seed of the Spirit as “God is not the God of the dead but of the living” (Mt 22:32). The purpose of God to gather all things in Christ is a purpose that spans the dispensations. “Unto Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen” (Eph 3:21 ). The eternal purpose in Christ constitutes the end and goal of all the provisional dispensations and covenants whether conditional or unconditional, temporal and eternal. However, the eternal phenomenon of Christ and the church embracing all ages past and future was a mystery unknown until its revelation to the first century apostles and prophets. (([15] We must be careful not to conclude that because something is recently revealed that it is necessarily newly existent. How could the mystery of the church have been known prior to the revelation of the mystery of Christ and of the gospel? Indeed, such could not be revealed until “after the Son of Man be risen.” Therefore, just as both Christ and gospel existed before the time of full revelation, so the church as a spiritual entity had real organic existence even before it could be revealed in its full character as “the body of Christ”. Until then, the children of the Spirit could only be known by such designations as ‘the assembly of the righteous’, the circumcised of heart, the godly ‘seed’ or ‘remnant’ etc. Indeed, the very language of such a distinction as ‘the body of Christ’ could not have been used until after the revelation of the mystery of Christ and the gospel, neither of which had their origins in the first century.))

It was commonly understood from prophecy that all nations would benefit and be blessed as a result of Israel ’s national regeneration in ‘that day’ when a nation would be born ‘at once’. It was not known, however, that the covenant of regeneration (the ‘new covenant’ promised particularly to the nation; Jer 31:31-34; Is 59: 21,20; with Ro 11:26-29) would be extended to elect Gentiles before the time of Israel’s national deliverance (Ezek 39:22; Dan 12:1-2). Instead of the nations being blessed with the overflow of Israel’s millennial glory as well known from prophecy, ‘the revelation of the mystery hid in other ages’ means that the Gentiles are unexpectedly included in the covenant of regeneration (ratified in Messiah’s atoning death), and this not as a result of Israel’s restoration, but during a time of national judgement and blindness (Mic 5:3; Hos 5:14–6:2). (([16] Paul shows that the mystery hid in other ages involves also the means by which the Gentiles would be made fellow heirs. It was to be ‘by the gospel’ (Eph 3:6). That the gospel was the mystery by which the Gentiles would be made partakers of the covenants of promise is shown clearly by a comparison of Eph. 6:19 with Ro 16:25-26). This demonstrates how fully something may be foretold in the prophetic writings, and yet remain a mystery until the appointed time of revelation. Thus to say that the mystery that Paul has in view can not be something foretold in the scriptures of the prophets misses entirely the nature of the mystery. Paul himself claimed that the whole content of his preaching was ‘none other things than those which the prophets and Moses did say should come.” (Acts 26:22). Modern dispensational writers have defined the mystery as something “distinct from anything anticipated in the Old Testament.” The period between the two advents of Christ, dubiously called ‘the church age’ is understood to constitute a mystery ‘parenthesis’ in God’s prophetic program for Israel. The church is a new mystery organism existing on earth only between Pentecost and the rapture, and must therefore be removed from the world scene before the tribulation events of prophecy. This is because Old Testament prophecy concerns only Israel and not the church as conceived under this view of the mystery. An example of this kind of thinking is represented by the following quotation taken from J.F. Walvoord’s ‘The Rapture Question’: “Nothing should be plainer to one reading the Old Testament than that the foreview therein provided did not describe the period between the two advents.” This is a novel conception of the mystery, built up by dispensational presuppositions. The case for dispensationalism’s peculiar definition of the mystery is without support from Pauline usage of the term. This has already been demonstrated above by comparing Paul’s own use of the term in connection with the gospel. That the gospel is both a mystery and yet thoroughly foretold in the Old Testament is beyond dispute.))

During this temporary blindness and judgment, the face of God is hidden from the elect nation and a remnant (predominantly Gentile) is blessed in their place as foretold by Moses (Deut 31-33) and Jesus (Mt 21). This is the great anomaly of history, and is calculated to drive the apostate nation to jealousy as the despised remnant of Jew and Gentile in gospel community embody through the power of the promised Spirit the true intention of the covenant.

Note also that the election of Israel is conceived in terms of a corporate entity comprised of the natural descendants of Abraham through Isaac. The promise is never satisfied with only a remnant; the covenant of Israel’s election is not fulfilled apart from the repentance and regeneration of the whole of the nation. So long as one Jewish individual remains that may say to his fellow “know the Lord,” the covenant yet awaits to be established “with them” (Ro 11:27 with Jer 31:34).

Why then, if the middle wall of partition is dissolved, and the ‘church’ is now comprised of an election out of every nation, does this not sufficiently realize and fulfill the covenanted promise as now revealed in the gospel? Why, if the promise was never to the children of the flesh as such alone (but only ever to the remnant of election and promise), must there be a reinstatement of the natural branches in order to fulfill the provisions of the promise and covenant? And why must the Jews as Jews, the physical descendants of Abraham, be restored to the land as a physical national entity? Manifestly, there is a remnant of natural Jews presently in the church, but as Paul goes on to show, this is only the pledge of prescribed covenant conditions that can not be met short of the righteousness of “all Israel”. The promise speaks of time when there will no longer be only a remnant that attains to covenant righteousness, because the entirety of the nation, born in a day, will be regenerate and preserved in holiness forever (see Is 4:3; 54:13; 59:21; 60:21; Jer 31:34; 32:39-40).

It is commonly considered that since Israel’s role in history is completed with the advent of Christ and the universalism of the gospel, what further significance can possibly attach to ethnic distinctions? Superficiality here stems from superficiality at a more fundamental level. If the primary goal of the gospel is only to make salvation universally available, why take such a circuitous route? This fails to understand why Israel was chosen in the first place. And why is the preservation of Israel’s national distinction an intrinsic feature of the covenant of promise (Jer.31:35-37), and ultimately strategic to the future of divine purpose and glory? (([17] Manifestly, the divine preservation of Israel as a distinct race is necessary in order to demonstrate that the purpose of God is indeed ‘according to election’. The distinction between Jew and gentile, although spiritually abolished ‘in Christ’, is necessarily maintained in the creation in order to underscore and highlight this reigning principle: that grace, in order to be grace, must be “according to election,” thus distinguishing its true character and nature as perfectly free and sovereign in its working. Only the mercies of distinguishing, electing grace is suited to the kind of ultimate glory that will be the inheritance of God and the elect. The existence of Israel provokes world confrontation with the sovereignty of grace through unconditional election, manifestly apart from the will of man. This explains why for a final thousand years all nations are compelled to witness again history’s most lavish demonstration of distinguishing grace on this elect people. Grace is defined by election.))

Many look for an end-time ingathering of Jews to fulfill Romans 11:25-29, but treat it as something peripheral, indefinite, and incidental to the eschatological harvest of nations. The restoration of Israel is little considered as a necessary feature of the promise, intrinsic to the logic and nature of the covenant. Little attention is given to the centrality of Israel as the historical demonstration and vindication of the divine prerogative in election, calling, and grace. Not only this, but to treat the reinstatement of the natural branches as nothing more than an incidental feature of last days world evangelism, misses entirely the whole strategy and genius of the redemptive scheme. It certainly ignores the most preponderant theme of Old Testament prophecy (Israel ’s redemption from the midst of her darkest hour in the everywhere mentioned ‘day of the Lord’).

Not only does this ‘ignorance’ (Ro.11:25) obscure the place of the present period (“the dispensation of the grace of God to the gentiles”) in the larger scheme of the ages, but also the distinctive role of Israel and the gentiles in creation and history so that a strategic dialectic is maintained through which judgment and salvation is mediated to the glory of the free sovereignty of grace in election. Such a view, while seeming to grant to Israel a token acknowledgment, misses utterly the wisdom and strategy of the divine purpose, and not only this, but the cost and solemnity of the divine investment required for the theodicy (([18] Theodicy is the formal term for the problem of reconciling human and divine anguish with God’s goodness and sovereignty.)) of judgment and glory which lies at the heart of Israel ’s original calling and role in redemptive history.

As to the when and how of Paul’s statement, ‘and so all Israel shall be saved,” of which so many disavow certainty, let us state emphatically our amazement at the ‘modest reserve’ of these interpreters. No subject in all the prophetic scriptures is more abundantly revealed, or more specifically defined than the time, circumstances, and manner of Israel ’s final redemption. To disclaim certainty on this point betrays not a scarcity of definite biblical evidence concerning the nature and time of Israel’s eschatological redemption, but a woeful insensibility towards the plain language and context of the most prominent theme of prophecy and promise. Such modest ambivalence concerning this troublesome theme has nothing to do with any ambiguity inherent within the language and intent of the text. It is rather the product of an unwarranted process of ‘reinterpretation’ (spiritualization) applied only to those prophecies that promise the future repentance and glory of ethnic Israel.

It is noteworthy that among evangelical exegetes, no other category of biblical interpretation is handled in this way. It is just at the point of prophecy where Israel is particularly concerned that the ordinary meaning of words are denuded of their original context and meaning. The covenantal curses are maintained as applying literally to Israel, while the promises of grace and redemption are spiritualized and taken over by the ‘church.’

Instead of harmonizing the testaments, the plain sense of language is effectively spiritualized into oblivion. The original face of prophecy is disfigured beyond recognition. Hermeneutical method becomes a cloak for the plague of unbelief; and tragically, Israel is even more distanced, not by the divinely intended offense of Christ, but by the scandal of those inside the church who, in historic ignorance of the mystery, and against New Testament revelation, insist that Israel is forever ‘replaced’ by the church, failing to recognize that the covenant remains outstanding ‘with them’ (i.e., the Jew as Jew) until the nation and church are no longer separate entities (cf. Jer 31:34 with Ro 11:25-29) but co-expressions of a new creation.

A church that is yet ‘wise in its own conceits’ for want of this central mystery of redemptive history and wisdom is lost to all consciousness of its eschatological role and calling to provoke Israel to emulation and to faith. It is the one mystery that is calculated to level all proud flesh, Jewish and gentile alike. Indeed, it is at the heart of the comprehensive ‘mystery of God,’ the resolution of which history is waiting (compare Rev 10:7 with Ezek 39:21-23).

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