Yes, I believe and affirm that God preserves an ethnic distinction from among the natural branches precisely in order to demonstrate and set on public display His covenant word to Israel for the vindication of His sovereignty in divine election, and for the instruction of the nations and the fallen order of principalities and powers through what He has purposed to show through them. A preserved remnant from among the natural branches will indeed be born in a day (Isa 66:8; Zech 3:9) and gathered from all nations, never to be invaded again. That is sure and certain! Until then, they are made sufficiently distinguishable as a distinct ethnic race precisely in order to show in them the discipline of the covenant and to test the hearts of all nations concerning this blinded people who, though momentarily enemies of the gospel, are NONETHELESS BELOVED, and are to be so regarded, to the chagrin of those nations who have laid malicious, unfeeling hands on God’s afflicted in their pitiable ghetto condition, a presumption that will be much required in that day.

But this Pauline insistence that the covenant cannot be fulfilled in its complete scope apart from their return is a vast remove from the presumption that the salvation of Christ is somehow mysteriously operating among the nations on the principle of some hidden DNA. Interesting, is it not? That such a genetic connection is conveniently hidden under the radar of a Hitler? Do we put confidence in a genetic connection that is so hidden as to escape the costly identification with the nation that is marked off by a special divine discipline that has pursued the Jewish people across the millennia, that was to be a public instruction to all the other nations? (Amos 3:2). No, to find the Israel that is set apart for both a discipline of ultimate astonishment and an age concluding salvation, in order to trace the people of that well foretold history, one must follow the trail of tears and blood! That’s where you’ll find the people of the double curse who are destined for the double glory on a restored millennial earth!

A uniquely severe covenant curse attaches to this people of the high, but failed calling, as history has so conspicuously witnessed in its unrelieved, ever repeated cycles of judgement and persecution that must continue to the day of the Lord. This supposed hidden DNA, on the other hand, is able to conveniently escape the peculiar corporate suffering that has been the long witness of a continual divine pursuit that does not end till ‘that day’, the day of the Lord.

Due to its obscurity, this genetic connection is also able to escape Satan’s persecuting attentions. Shall we believe that it has only now been discovered, just in time to distinguish itself by its beliefs and its teachers for such a time as this? I don’t think so! It all smacks of pride to even look, or need to look, for some distinction that is other (for how could it be more?) of the inheritance of all things that is secured to even ‘the least of these’ who put simple faith and trust in Christ, and worship God in the Spirit with no confidence in the flesh.

What person from any nation could possibly profit by being distinguished as a descendant from one of the tribes that were taken into captivity by Assyria in the 8th century B.C.? Who needs it? According to Paul in many places, such a thing would count for nothing (Gal 6:15). It is pride to even investigate the evidence one way or the other. Even if it were true, it’s the last thing the flesh could need. All such vanity should rather be fled than pursued.

Therefore, in all simplicity, the only requirement, which is no small requirement, is that one be born again. This requires no prior virtue, since there isn’t any acceptable virtue outside of Christ, and nor any advantage through physical descent, except as God has determined before the world began to bring certain ones to faith. For that very cause, and to give His election a visible outward form for the sake of instruction, Israel exists in a visible way as an unbelieving nation precisely to make that demonstration through them, not on the basis of works but of Him who calls (Ro 9:11).

As also their special discipline is a reminder that whether in faith or unbelief, the covenant of both requirement and promise remains with them, as they show through their history the fearful truth of Jesus’ dictum that to whom much has been given (privilege, gift, stewardship), much more is required.

Obviously, or what should be obvious, regardless of belonging to a called and set apart nation, there is no personal benefit of the blessing of the covenant, or the inheritance of the New Covenant unless one is born again. Instead, there is only the special liability and exposure to covenant wrath if a Jew is NOT born again. I don’t see this special discipline on gentiles in general, as I would certainly expect if they belonged to the elect seed of either of the houses of Israel.

It is impossible to be “in Christ” and not also be “in Israel”. That’s why it is only in Him, the One seed, that the promises are yea and amen, nowhere else. This is only remedied through the new birth, nothing else. I see the church as ‘the Israel within Israel’ in continuity with the remnant according to the election of grace and the elect of all ages. To be newly revealed does not mean that the church is newly existent. The body of Christ exists wheresoever the Spirit indwells a believer, as it was nothing less than “the Spirit of Christ” who was “IN” the saints and prophets of old (1Pet 1:11). As Jesus would reprimand Nicodemus for his failure as a teacher to recognize that it is only by the Spirit that the nation will one day be born in a day in order to inherit the kingdom of God, how then could it be any different for the individual? So the new birth and the indwelling of the Spirit is not new, though its eternal basis in the blood of the everlasting covenant has come more fully to light in Christ.

In short, it is the new birth that holds together the whole redemptive drama. The physical-visible side of the promises only serve to underscore its necessity. The promise is not made on the basis of any virtue or natural advantage where the physical descendants of Abraham are concerned, obviously, and that’s precisely the point. Israel exists to destroy all boasting, simply because Israel exists (as a set apart, visible, corporate entity) to show the sovereignty of God’s electing grace in a people prone always to wander and slide back from the high standard that cannot be met except by the Spirit of Christ, who is only given on the basis of the holy exchange and imputation, which had its operation through the Spirit even before the mystery of how this would be accomplished, and its eternal basis in the blood of Christ would be revealed.

Since the revelation of the mystery of the gospel, there has been a notable change in the stewardship of responsibility, and this recognition of dispensational change does not make one a dispensationalist, of course, but all schools of thought, if they are Christian, will necessarily recognize a dispensational distinction of some kind. Since the revelation of the mystery, identification with Israel is no more through circumcision or any other such thing. That is why the gentile believer has been loosed from these things. “For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law” (Heb 7:12). If this were not so, the freedoms that the Jerusalem council pronounced for gentile believers would have been a breach, not merely of Jewish custom, but the stewardship of responsibility enjoined on everyone living under that dispensation.

The identification is in the Spirit of Christ. That is why one born of the Spirit should be more burdened and touched with what touches Israel, even in its unbelief, than even the natural Jew or home born Israeli. Israel is not be made jealous because we keep all the laws they do, but because, quite conspicuously apart from Kosher observance and the works of the law, the light and love of Israel shines through believing gentile faces towards all men, but most appropriately to the Jew first. This is God’s leverage to reason with His disobedient but no less elect people that the promised Spirit is received not through the law but through faith.

We must not rob God of this very leverage of demonstration by seeking to accommodate ourselves to any human presumption that suggests that Christ is not sufficient, or that His / the Spirit’s work depends on anything in man or that man can do. This is the upshot of NT revelation as I understand it: The only thing that God can accept is what He does in us and through us by His Spirit (Gal 6:15), not as a means unto but as the sure results of an already secured salvation, even the salvation of the everlasting covenant promised to Israel and received by whosoever will in Christ.

Again, to be in Christ is to be in Israel. No outward forms are its proof but the new heart, which, of course, will show itself in love and good works. Hence, you need not become anything other than a Christian in order to receive all things and full identification with Israel, and not the Israel of God only, but also the Israel that is in pain to be delivered for whom we travel till Christ be formed in them, since it is only in them, as a distinct ethnic race in the earth, that the covenant of grace will be finally and openly vindicated in the sight of all nations.

This is the clear teaching of the NT. We tend to complicate it: In Him are all things and He is the head and we are complete in Him. It’s that simple. To be in Christ is, in a sense, to be ‘already there’ seated with Him in heaven, being already delivered from this ‘present age’ (Gal 1:4), enjoying even now the first-fruits of the kingdom and foretaste of the “powers of the age to come” (Heb 6:5).

What I’d really like to talk about, and what I’m writing about occasionally, is the glories of the everlasting covenant that Christ has made sure to every believer now, as He will to ‘all Israel’ in that day. When we’re in Him, its a sealed deal. When we’re in Him, we’re automatically in both houses! We don’t need to sweat which house we belong to. We’re in His house forever! Where else is there?

I close with this admonition and warning to us all, which I suspect may be most especially applicable in these discussions:

“But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Chris (2Cor 11:3).

In brotherly love, Reggie

The post Ye MUST Be Born Again appeared first on Mystery of Israel.

“I only see differences WITHIN Israel”.

(What follows is part of a reply to friend’s objections to misleading ideas connected to what he argues is the misused and poorly translated term, ‘church’, as typically implying an entity separate and apart from Israel)

I’ve always maintained that “this one and that one were born in her” (the heavenly Zion; Ps 87:3-7; Gal 4:16; Heb 12:22-23; Rev 12:1-2, 17; 19:7; 21:2, 9-10 with Jn 3:29). The Psalmist can’t conceive of any of the saved of the nations, regardless of geographical location, as being born (born again) outside of Zion. But which Zion? There is an heavenly and an earthly, but until the twain do meet in that coming day, they remain distinct, though never separate.

The gentiles have always been debtors to their Hebrew roots since God first separated Abraham and declared His electing love of Zion. All redemptive goals take us to the heavenly city of the saved of all nations, but on the way towards that ultimate, post-millennial goal, the line of sovereign election must pass through the Jerusalem which is now in bondage with her children. The covenant must be openly vindicated on this present earth by its ultimate realization in the salvation of “all Israel”, preserved in faithful obedience by the new heart of the New Covenant for a thousand years. Here, we take a comparatively rare view of Paul’s meaning, “and so all Israel shall be saved” (Ro 11:26).

We are intensely agreed that Paul is NOT speaking of the full ingathering of all of God’s elect, an attractive suggestion by supercessionists, if looked at only superficially. But rather, Paul is reiterating what all the prophets understood as the climax and final resolution of the covenant, as the prophets envisioned an all saved Jewish, nation empowered by the outpoured Holy Spirit, and controlled by a new heart and new spirit to abide in covenant faithfulness for a thousand years of open testimony to the nations.

As shown elsewhere, scripture is clear that this will not only the mean the salvation of every Jewish survivor of the last tribulation, but also every child born to Jewish parentage “from that day and forward” (Isa 4:2-3; 45:17, 25; 54:13; 60:21; 66:22; Jer 31:34; Eze 39:22). None shall ever again depart (Isa 59:21; Jer 32:40). But what is far too overlooked, but especially to be underscored is that this amazing promise applies ONLY to the Jews for a thousand years of open, visible demonstration of God’s faithfulness to fulfill every jot and tittle of “My covenant with THEM.” Many scriptures agree to show that such uniform salvation is NOT promised to any other nation.

This is the great and significant anomaly of the millennium that so few recognize. If taken literally and plainly in their proper contexts, a considerable collection of scriptures agree to show that to NO OTHER nation is such a promise made of the salvation and preservation of all its members without the exception. The saved of the nations will be a remnant, perhaps a very large remnant in some localities, but no other nation will be completely saved and kept for a thousand years of open, covenant demonstration. Even less considered is God’s grand point in all of this, but my point is that for God to fully make and punctuate HIs point, He deliberately imposes and preserves distinctions, in this case, even within the body of Christ itself.

So where’s the body of Christ in the millennium? In our view, the body of Christ has been translated / raptured to assume a new capacity of rule. Yet, we hold that those coming to faith ‘AT’ Jesus’ return are NOT translated at that time with those who are already in the body, but enter the millennial age as newly born, Spirit filled believers, still in their natural bodies. In contrast with dispensationalism, we hold that these who do not believe until Jesus’ return become no less the body of Christ on earth at the day of the Lord when they look upon Him whom they pierced (Isa 66:8; Eze 39:22, 29;; Zech 12:10; Mt 23:39; Acts 3:21; Ro 11:26; Rev 1:7). There has been no “reversal of Pentecost”, as in dispensationalism. Nothing has changed, or ever could change the once and for all NT revelation that all who are in union with Christ through His Spirit are members of His body.

So what is my point? It is that here are distinctions, even among the saved of Israel and the saved of the nations who, though one body, are distinct, with assignments of stewardship during the millennium. Just as now, although differences such as male and female, Jew and Gentile are done away “in Christ” / “in the Spirit”, they are nevertheless maintained in the natural creation for abiding purposes of contrast and division, which is how God has always managed His household and mediated His revelation.

Obviously, this is never a matter of advantage or superiority, simply functional stewardship in the order of the mediatorial government of God. It is, however, a matter of sovereign election, which invariably tests the proud entitlement of the natural heart that envies against the Potter’s freedom to choose as He will choose. As one so well said, “God is not an equal opportunity employer”. So God’s free prerogative in election, unbiased by anything meritorious, is part of His enforcement of His sovereign right to rule, which to challenge is to challenge His rule.

Of course, with all of the above you happily agree. The only point I most wanted to stress for the refinement of our present discussion is this issue of distinction that does not separate or divide the essential unity of the one body by the one Spirit, which I see as obtaining across the ages. I’ll return to this.

In order to clarify some things easily confused, we need to see that the language of scripture supports two distinct kinds of election, personal and corporate. Every Jew belongs to a corporate election that does not guarantee personal regeneration, but with the advent of the millennium quite the opposite will be true when Israel’s corporate election will indeed guarantee the personal regeneration of every Jew. Until that day, Isaiah will distinguish the “holy seed” (Isa 6:13), and Paul will distinguish the “remnant according to the election of grace” (Ro 11:5, 7 with Mt 24:22; 2Tim 2:10), from the larger, mostly unregenerate ‘assembly’ of Israel.

You will also agree that this ‘holy seed’, the circumcised of heart, saw themselves, as we should now see ourselves, as inextricably bound and identified with the larger nation in its apostasy and affliction, as bound with them, not only in their destiny, but in their experience. Like the prophets before him, this apostle to the nations suffered the pathos that comes from knowing that until ‘ALL’ Israel will be saved and regathered, apostasy, desolation and death must continue to plague the nations. He also knew what all the prophets understood, that Israel’s repentance and return at the day of the Lord would be as “life from the dead”, not only for themselves but for the nations.

For all its glorious gains through the revelation of the gospel and the powerful in-breaking of the power of the kingdom, the present age can hardly compare to what “their fullness” will mean for the exponential increase of blessing that will abound to the nations in the thousand year reign of Jesus. So how can a burden for the nations be separated from God’s ‘special’ burden for Israel? But the way to this hope for the nations will be the way of reverencing and loving God’s election, not only His election of His only begotten Son, but the election of His national son, all of which meet in the body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all, where His glory forever resides throughout all ages, world without end (Eph 1:23; 3:21).

In my view, the revelation of the mystery of the gospel made possible the related revelation that every child of God who is born of the Spirit is vitally connected to the Messiah in an organic union that the NT understands as belonging to the beginning (first-fruits) of the new creation of eschatological promise. I would differ with Dan Gruber that this is true only now since Pentecost. The revelation of the body of Christ is indeed new, but the reality is not. I see the body of Christ in continuity with that godly remnant, not yet revealed as the fullness of Messiah’s spiritual body in the full mystery of incarnation, of course, but always present in its essence as the living remnant of the Spirit, the “Israel within Israel”. I’ve often argued that the body of Christ, though newly revealed in conjunction with the revelation of the mystery of the gospel that came initially with the Spirit’s descent at Pentecost (see 1Pet 1:11-12), and more fully revealed to Paul, did NOT begin to exist at Pentecost. For something to be newly revealed does not necessarily imply new existence. Neglect of this principle is a great oversight that has created the ‘illusion’ of an entirely new, and ‘separate’ entity called ‘the church’. Not so! The revelation of the gospel has only identified and distinguished the living church of God, i.e., the remnant of the Spirit who were always there in the nation’s midst.

The future tense in Mt 16:18 tends to make the church seem to be something entirely new and future. This is a great overstep. Rather, it is the “revelation” (Mt 16:17) of Jesus’ identity as both Messiah and Son of God that becomes the new basis on which the church will be built in all its future progress. This will be the new dividing line of manifestation of who is under the salvation and blessing of the New Covenant. For those ‘outside’ the circle of Jesus’ disciples, this was a divinely kept secret (Mt 16:19) until the appointed time of revelation and public declaration (1Cor 2:7-8).

The revelation of Jesus of Nazareth as Messiah and divine Son would become the stone of division that would constitute the new dividing line that would pass through Israel, manifesting and distinguishing the living church of God from the rest of the nation that had been blinded. The revelation, and the confession based on the revelation is indeed new, but this does not mean that the body of Messiah did not exist in essence wherever there were those throughout the OT period who were “indwelt” by the “Spirit of Christ” (1Pet 1:11), and joined to the Lord by the one Spirit (1Cor 6:17). The visible and comprehensive ‘assembly’ or ‘kahal’, on the other hand, whether of Israel or the assembly of Jesus confessors, is a far more embracing concept, NOT to be equated with much more narrow concept of the body of Christ. This is why the word, ‘church’, can be so misleading if we fail to distinguish between the visible assembly, which is often a very mixed bag, if even alive (Rev 3:1), and the body of Christ, which by definition is comprised strictly of the regenerate.

Because of the ease with which this can be mistaken, together with some inadequate, if not false, understanding concerning the nature of regeneration, and particularly the Spirit’s role in the regeneration of OT believers, the unity and continuity of the one people has been greatly misunderstood. This has contributed dramatically to the church’s understanding of its relation to Israel. And certainly the converse is equally true. Israel has defined itself over against the church’s claim to replace Israel with a new religion that can trace its origins no further back than Pentecost. It’s a mess; but one that we should see as divinely ordained. Not that God approves of the pride that has made it so, but the historic impasse between church and synagogue is no accident of history. In His larger, overarching providence, God is using the sin of human self-reliance to bring, not only to bring the greater exposure and judgment on religious pride, but to bring the greater glory to Himself in His ability to resolve the impasse that is humanly impossible.

However we conceive of this “Israel of God” that is the “Israel within Israel”, even before we come to the further question of gentile inclusion, it is clear that this is what Paul calls, “the church of God”. This is the entity that Paul persecuted before his conversion when it was still entirely Jewish (Gal 1:13). Here was an example of Israel “after the flesh” persecuting the Israel ‘after the Spirit’, what Paul would later call the “Israel of God” (Gal 6:15 with Ro 2:28-29;9:6; 11:5; Rev 12:17)).

After his conversion, Paul commanded the elders of the largely gentile church at Ephesus to feed the “the church of God” (Acts 20:28), and to this could be added many examples of his inseparable association of the local assemblies of the body of Christ with the “church of God” (1Cor 1:2; 10:32; 11:22; 15:9; 1Cor 1:1; 1Tim 3:5). My point is that before this persecuted Jewish nucleus swelled to include gentiles from all nations, with assemblies scattered all over a very gentile world, it was called “the church of God” and was the equivalent, at least at that time, with what Paul would call, “the Israel of God”.

With many, I see the growing community of Jewish confessors of Jesus in continuity with the “holy seed”, the circumcised of heart, the perennial “remnant according to the election of grace”. Even if the term is not explicitly used in scripture, how is this not a distinct “Israel within Israel”? It is into THIS ‘Israel of God’ within the larger nation, that gentile believers are added and en-grafted upon their believing in Jesus. It is what Paul will call, “the household of faith” (Gal 6:10), and “household of God” (Eph 2:19; 1Tim 3:15; 1Pet 4:17).

These terms are manifestly NOT inclusive of the nation as a whole, but only of the regenerate assemblies of the saints, newly revealed as “the one new man” of the new creation. But again, I reiterate, one cannot be grafted into this ‘Israel within Israel’ without also being put into an inextricable bond of relationship with the whole of the elect nation on its way to its millennial fullness for which all creation groans in waiting. Even as the faithless vinedressers (stewards) of the vineyard are ‘replaced’ by faithful, we may be sure that the fruitful nation (the regenerate body), will not become usurpers, but travail in expectation for a kingdom that will only come in its fullness when ‘all Israel’ shall be saved. (Mt 21:33-43; Ro 11:25-29).

As I’ve often said, it is theologically impossible to be “in Christ” and not be “in Israel”. But to be “in” the Israel of God is also to be profoundly bound in spirit and deepest identification with the nation as a whole in all its tragic history and glorious story, sharing, as it were, in Jeremiah’s lamentation and Paul’s travail “till Messiah be formed” in them’ (Gal 4:19). It is not too far to say that perhaps the best way to conceptualize the church’s relation to Israel is to compare it to the relationship between the believer’s renewed spirit to the body awaiting resurrection. The two are distinct but inseparable, the one incomplete without the other.

How is that an argument for a separate entity? My mantra and oft repeated refrain in this discussion has been “distinction without separation!” As long as the church of God is defined as something internal to Israel, in spiritual essence and identification, by no means equivalent with affirming Israel’s political policies, of course, then isn’t this what you’re conceding? If not, I invite your kindness to present corrective evidence to the contrary.

Now, a second tier to our discussion must be ask, what are to make of this unexpected influx of gentiles into the one covenant people of God? Here is the question that faced the Jerusalem council. To what then were the gentiles being added by the Holy Spirit?. Was it to the larger kahal (congregation) or assembly of Israel as pertaining to the ethnic nation, without discrimination between saved and unsaved? If it was, then we need to carefully qualify what we mean, because larger Israel would have had nothing of it.

Let’s face it; the parting of the ways was inevitable and built right into God’s design that Jews be made jealous by gentiles believers, contrary to any natural probability. But we see Paul’s faith for the future of this largely gentile entity that rises from within Israel but appears outwardly as a detached, independent entity. This is the false illusion that we all deplore, but God has permitted the illusion for a still greater purpose. The question for us is do we have Paul’s faith for the church, that living organism that Jesus will not deny, despite all the defect and error in her visible assemblies? While it is true that the visible assembly is not the exact equivalent of the body of Christ, and must not be confused with the true seed of faith that exists only where saints are genuinely indwelt by the Spirit of Jesus, we must be careful of plucking up the wheat in our zeal to weed out the tares. By what standard are we judging?

No, believing gentiles were being added to the Israel within Israel, the church of God, equipped with its own, distinct, visible government. However, as pointed out, to be in the one is to be in the other, as there was no other nation with whom God has made this particular, everlasting covenant of grace. There is no other place to be grafted but Israel, because the covenant stands with no other people except by inclusion into THAT irrevocably elect people. Salvation is of the Jews! (Jn 4:22; Mt 10:6; 15:24, 26) and to the Jew first. If you will be saved, it is by being grafted “in among them”, and by “them”, Paul had in mind the natural branches as a whole. The olive tree is “THEIRS” (Ro 11:24), and God will see to it that the nations know it and submit to it.

As we have made much of the fact that it is naive to pray for the kingdom to come without notice that it must come through much tribulation; it is blind error to imagine a kingdom that can come on earth without the return of ‘all Israel’ to covenant favor, and that this will not happen in a vacuum. But in that qualified sense, I fully agree with you that to be ‘in Christ’ is to be also grafted “in among them”, not only to the inmost spirit of the nation, but to share, as the prophets shared, not only in Israel’s glorious future, but the agony of their present experience and fallenness as no less elect and beloved, as in it with them, feeling their afflictions as God is afflicted in their afflictions. That is what the church’s calling to be priest and servant means.

I’m saying that the Jews that were being added daily to the church and the gentiles that have been added ever since have always had gatherings and assemblies that were NOT received or incorporated into the religious government of the larger nation, but had their own governments and portable ordinances. I know this is obvious, but I’m just reminding us of how inevitable, even foretold that some of these increasingly gentile assemblies, and even very early on when yet heavily populated by Jews, would become aberrant and shot through with defect and error, some falling so far away as to have a name that they live while dead (Rev 3:1). Well, what did we expect? The question for us is what has God said He’s going to do about it? And what’s our part in the process?

When Paul warned of the gravity of missing this mystery, as when he corrected so many other serious errors, note how many times he showed patience, bearing with the ignorant, the blind, and the out of the way “UNTIL” we all come into the unity of the faith. There’s a lot of bearing with the assemblies of Jesus’ body in their various degrees of spiritual health, and a lot of wheat still to be found among the tares, both of which must wait till fully ripened and manifest, lest in our zeal (or disgust) we pluck up some of the wheat with the tares.

There is much to discuss, both doctrinally personally, even emotionally. There are many stones that have not been adequately turned over in our whole approach and stewardship of this mystery. To be continued …

Reggie

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The post Israel’s Hope: Our Hope [VIDEO] appeared first on Mystery of Israel.

This is exactly the distinction Paul is making in such texts as Ro 4:14; 9:6. But since Paul so clearly identifies believing gentiles as “Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Ro 8:17; Gal 3:29), some (I think not unreasonably), argue that Paul is indeed redefining the term, “Jew” in this context to include anyone who has the inward circumcision of the heart. I am one premillennialist who has no problem with that view, since, in my opinion, it is not crucial to the larger question. So who is a Jew?

Even if it is maintained that Paul is disqualifying the Jew who is only one outwardly from deserving of the name, and even if it could be certainly established that Paul is re-defining the term in this particular context to mean anyone who has the “inward circumcision of the heart, in the Spirit”, still, there are many contexts that will bear no such redefinition. Context determines usage.

Unlike many premillennialists who, because of abuse and misuse, are keen to avoid any reading that might lend support to so-called replacement theology, I am one among many premillennialists who believe that if gentiles can be reckoned as the true circumcision (Phil 3:3) and other such appellations once applied only to Jews (Ro 9:25; 1Pet 2:9-10), then it is no leap of faith for Paul to include regenerate gentiles among the true “Israel of God” (Ro 11:17; Gal 6:16; Eph 2:19). Whether anyone’s strong position will incline them to agree, it is only humility to see how easily these inferences can be made. For example, when we place Phil 3:3 side by side with Ro 2:29, it is difficult not to see the manifest parallel.

Phil 3:3: For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.

Ro 2:29: But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God. Romans 2:29

If Paul can speak of an “Israel according to the flesh” (1 Cor 10:18), it becomes an almost necessary inference to understand that there must be an ‘Israel according to the Spirit’. While it may be reasonably argued that in some contexts Paul has included gentiles in his definition of what constitutes the true Israel of God, this bears nothing on the many other contexts in both testaments where a large remnant of Jews (unbelieving until that time), are yet predestined for future salvation on the basis of an abiding, irrevocable covenant election that remains outstanding and unfulfilled until “their fullness” (their full inclusion; Ro 11:11, 25-29). Will you concede that much?

I am not among those who believe that believing gentiles belong to some new, separate entity. It is rather the case that believing gentiles are “grafted in among them” (Ro 11:17), that is, into the “commonwealth of Israel”, which, in my view, is the living “Israel of God” (Ro 9:6; Gal 6:16). The living, and therefore persevering wild branches are one eternal body with the living Jewish branches that remain connected to the life-giving root of the good olive tree. So I’m miles from the usual dispensational position.

I see a continuity of one corporate, fully regenerate people of God, not only since Pentecost, but wherever saints (the remnant circumcised of heart) were ‘indwelt’ by “the Spirit of Christ” (2Cor 13:5; 1Pet 1:11). There is one fold and one Shepherd. This newly revealed (not newly existing!) “body of Christ” / “one new man” extends beyond the present age into, and all throughout, a yet future millennium.

Unlike dispensationalism’s two peoples of God, in our view, the penitent survivors of Israel will be no less the body of Christ on earth in the coming millennium, ‘brothers of the others’, albeit with a unique millennial stewardship for the sake of the covenant demonstration that God has reserved for that unique period. This poses no conflict with the one new man anymore than the abiding distinction of male and female, both in creation and the governance of the body of Christ, raises any question of disadvantage or inferiority. It is a question of stewardship and not of any presumed spiritual advantage or superiority.

After the body of Christ has been revealed (not newly existing, but newly revealed), the one new man (the regenerated man of the Spirit) exists without distinction or superiority in one place only, “in Christ”! Notwithstanding, the scripture itself recognizes an abiding distinction between Jew and gentile in the creation, just as there remains a distinction in the role of male and female in the natural order. This distinction is preserved, actually quite miraculously, across the ages for a very important purpose. That purpose is to publicly vindicate in open display God’s abiding, covenanted commitment to the “natural branches” “For this is My covenant with THEM when I shall take away THEIR sin ….”

Their covenanted election, and the sovereign power manifested in their corporate salvation will be put beyond all question for a thousand years of open display, as God makes of this people the great object lesson of history. In the salvation of ‘all Israel’ (in the sense that Paul intends that phrase), God is vindicating openly and publicly in the sight of all nations His very purpose in first setting Jacob apart before birth or before behaviour. This was “in order that the purpose of God might stand, not of works but of Him who calls” (Ro 9:11, 16). There it is! God has preserved the visibility and abiding distinction of the Jewish race for this one primary purpose. That purpose is to show in them His ability to bring in, finally and forever, the very people He first brought out (Num 14:11-21).

This He will do by bringing them to the end of their power in the final time of unequaled trouble (Deut 32:36; Dan 12:1, 7), and to the place of regeneration by faith, thus securing their ability to remain safely and permanently in the Land without further threat of the curses of the broken covenant. Only by an ‘everlasting righteousness’ (Dan 9:24; Jer 32:40), that is NOT their own (Isa 45:25; 54:17; Jer 23:5-6), extending not only to a remnant, but to ‘all Israel’ (regenerate Israel) “unto children’s children” (Deut 30:6; Isa 59:21; 65:23; Eze 37:25). Only then can Israel keep their covenanted Land forever in abiding safety and peace. Only by such an eternally secure righteousness can the abiding threat of covenant jeopardy be overcome forever. The thousand years is set apart to mark and make much of this open spectacle of covenant fulfillment.

Only a righteousness that is forever can possess the Land forever. This is the point that God is determined to press upon the nations in an open, visible, undeniable display of sovereign, electing grace and power that will continue unabated for one thousand years before concluding His purpose for this earth in the final perfection of new heavens and new earth. He has a point to make through the Jewish people that is dear to His heart. It is a point that is directed against all forms of pride and self righteousness. How? “They will look upon Him whom they pierced (Zech 12:10; Mt 23:39; Rev 1:7). When?  “From that day and forward” (Eze 39:8, 22, 28-29), “they will all know Me from the least of them to the greatest” (Jer 31:34).

Not only will the penitent survivors of the last tribulation all know Him “from that day and forward”, but this uniformity of salvation will continue “unto children’s children, without fail or exception throughout all their succeeding generations. Sound fantastic, unheard of, inconceivable? Read it there in the scriptures (Isa 4:3-4; 45:17, 25; 54:13; 59:21; 60:21; 61:9; 65:23; 66:22; Jer 31:34; 32:40; Eze 20:40; 37:25; Zeph 3:13, et al).

This is what Paul means when he says, “and so then (when the Deliverer comes to turn away ungodliness from Jacob), ALL Israel shall be saved.” Then will an all-holy nation of penitent survivors be “born in one day” (Isa 66:8; Eze 39:22; Dan 12:1-2; Isa 59:20-21; Zech 3:9; 12:10). Now begins the millennial demonstration of the everlasting covenant that still stands irrevocably with THEM (i.e., the “natural branches”; Ro 11:25-29), thus fulfilling a vast host of OT promises connected to an inviolable, eternal covenant promise that must be fulfilled on this earth with this people (Daniel’s people) in particular (Dan 2:44; 12:1).

This great revelatory seeing of Jesus (not by mere sight, of course, but by the Spirit of revelation, as with Paul on the Damascus road) will secure for the surviving remnant of Israel the everlasting righteousness of the everlasting covenant that is now, according to the revelation of the mystery, available to every penitent believer in the resurrected Jesus. Yet, this revelation must at length break upon the understanding of a final remnant from among the natural branches. This is in order to fulfill all that God promised to that nation in particular. This takes place at no sooner time than the return of Jesus to raise the dead (Dan 12:1-2; Mt 24:29-31). This is the “set time” that He has chosen to “favor Zion” (Ps 102:13). It is the time that His people will have been made “willing in the day of His power” (Ps 110:3).

You are right about some things that dispensationalists are wrong about, but I believe you need to much more carefully consider whether you may be wrong about some things futurists (not necessarily pre-trib dispensationalists), may be right about. It’s the old tendency towards “guilt by association” that tends to toss out the baby (at least parts of the baby) with the proverbial bath water.  It is no wonder that Paul calls this a “mystery” (Ro 11:25), as it will invariably elude prideful self reliance. They will never see rightly who do not approach the revealed mysteries of God with genuine fear and trembling. I’m sure you agree.

Speaking of my intelligence, it may interest you to know that the last grade I finished was the 9th. I can’t imagine charging you, or any other earnest believer honestly seeking the harmony of scripture, with “tickling their intellectual fancies”.

Cordially yours in His great name,

Reggie Kelly

The post Who Is the True Jew? appeared first on Mystery of Israel.

Reformed theologians emphatically maintain that their Covenant Theology is not Replacement Theology. I have read their arguments in support of their position over and over again and I don’t see a dime’s worth of difference, except what seems to me more semantics than actual differences. Every time I go back and compare the two, I still essentially come up with the same sum totals. So what can you add, correct, or clarify of this perception?

There are different kinds and degrees of replacement theology that has very little to do with how one cuts the covenants. Covenant theology is usually placed over against dispensational theology / eschatology. Once again, it is largely illusional of extremes that are more imagined than real, and certainly not necessary.

There are many amillennialists who do not believe Christ can return any moment like pre-trib dispensationalists do. Why? Because they recognize what Paul calls, “their fullness” (Ro 11:12). By this, they understand a future fullness for the natural branches. Many of our premillennial brethren do not know this, but it’s a conviction among more amills and post-mills than many think. So you can see why they may not think they’re being fairly tagged ‘replacement’. Give me those guys any day to many who are virulently replacement like JW’s, Adventists, and many amills who believe Jesus can just show up, no Jews needed.

The same could be said of many historic pre-mill types who are willing to see a sizable number from among the Jewish branches that will be grafted in again to their own good olive tree before the age can end. (They identify the olive tree as the covenant with Israel, and those who persevere in faith as the true body of Christ, so that when the branches are grafted back in, they are coming into the body, baptized by the Spirit into the one body). So, while not denying a future for a sizable remnant of Jews, this is still, in one sense, yet a ‘kind’ of replacement. How so? It is because of the implications that follow from NOT seeing the particular relation of the Jew to the Land in the covenants of promise.

Failing of this, they likewise fail to discern the significance and covenant investment of God in the ‘controversy of Zion’, i.e., the Jerusalem centered crisis of the end. Thus, they do not see the covenantal necessity of a post-tribulational deliverance of Israel, as a nation born in one day, with a millennial destiny that is peculiar to an all saved Jewish nation, preserved in uninterrupted holiness for a thousand years of covenant faithfulness (“their fullness”; Ro 11:12) and vindication of every jot and tittle of the literally interpreted scripture.

In short, they do not see, for reasons they think the NT supports, the covenant necessity of a literal, Jewish Israel at the head of the nations during a millennial rule of Jesus out of a restored Zion, here on earth. They thus deny a ‘Judeo-centric’ crisis over Jerusalem at the end of the age, and the Judeo-centric millennium to follow. They see it as building again the middle wall of partition. If there is a millennium, it is the meek, Christians in general, that inherit the world in general. The specificity and particularity of the covenants and promises to Jews as Jews, are considered a myopic, nationalistic anachronism that the NT, not only expands but corrects.

Covenant theologians are such simply because they apply to the elect in general the many scriptures that we show to have a clearly post-tribulational, millennial context. That’s why they’re mystified and divided among themselves on just how to understand why all their kids (“children of the covenant) don’t all get saved. It’s been a great puzzlement, because they’re trying to take over Israel’s millennial promises and have them all fulfilled, in all their implications for the children of born again families in this age, so that every child born to regenerate parents are necessarily sure of eventual salvation and a home in heaven. But obviously, that doesn’t always work out, so its been a perennial problem and source qualification and debate.

It is this understanding of the covenant’s promise of continuance to all who are truly regenerate that led George Whitfield to caution and exhort his close friend, John Wesley, concerning Wesley’s contention that true regeneration can be fatally and finally reversed. That is to say that a truly regenerate believer can lose salvation. Whereas both expected a great falling away, and had already seen many leave a promising beginning, they were divided on whether the many that would fall from the faith once delivered to the saints, as a body of saving truth, had ever really passed through the straight gate of true regeneration, as having no deep root, as in the example of Judas, Hymenaeus and Philetus, etc. (Jn 6:64, 70; Mt 7:21-23; Jn Acts 15:54 with 1Jn 2:19; 2Tim 2:17-20. Whitfield saw Wesley’s assumption that true regeneration can be reversed as striking ultimately at the heart of the everlasting covenant and ‘foundation of God’.

On a certain occasion, when in heated exchange of papers between Wesley and Augustus Toplady, author of “Rock of Ages”, Wesley was pronouncing imprecations on his own head if the God of the Calvinists exists, to him an impossible thought. Disturbed and concerned at his friend’s haste and presumption, Whitfield endeavored to restrain Wesley by appealing to him to make a more “careful reading of the covenant”.

By this, George was trying to help John to see God was able to keep His own eternally, as represented in the covenant promises to be realized by millennial Israel. It is this that made many of that era incline towards the ‘covenant theology’ of the Reformation, many of whom, even most of whom, did grant some ‘kind’ of necessary future ‘fullness’ for the natural branches. Among the great covenant theologians of the Dutch Reformed, most saw a future for Israel, NOT necessarily millennial (though there were some millennialists), but before this age can end. They never, or many of them, never entertained the possibility of a return of Jesus without the prior return of a future remnant from among the natural branches.

So this is the dilemma: Whether or not the passages that we see as manifestly post-tribulational, and millennial in their context, how far can believers of this age claim the blessing of the New Covenant, as it will be true of millennial Jews and their children?

Before answering that, we need to observe that this understanding of the end and goal of the covenant, as made exclusively and specially to the natural seed of Abraham, means that the Jewish nation in the millennium is promised a uniformity of salvation that is NOT promised to any other nation in the millennial age. Many prophecies, and even the logic of a final revolt, proves this beyond reasonable dispute. So while there is an election of grace among the nations, it is only in ONE Land, with ONE people, that an unbroken continuity of salvation is promised and maintained, whereby all the seed / children born to born again, Spirit filled Jewish parents, are scripturally guaranteed salvation and preservation, without exception forever (the thousand years). Conspicuously, this is only among the Jews, and that is the divinely intended spectacle, defying all nature, that is set before the nations for a thousand years.

It is rare to find any writer, let alone any well known school of interpretation, that seems to face or draw out what should seem the unavoidable implications of this profound truth, so continuously reiterated throughout the prophets. It is the background and logic of Paul’s insistence on the outstanding ‘covenant necessity’ of an all saved Jewish nation on this earth, and not merely the gathering into the body of Christ some extra Jews at the end of this age. Even when this much is granted among covenant theologians, it is seldom in the scriptural context of a Judeo-centered tribulation and end of this age.

Usually, interpreters of this school will recognize some kind of Jewish re-ingraftement, but they will plead modest ignorance of just how or when this will come about, when in fact, scripture could hardly be more pronounced as to exactly when and how. This view of a Jewish, Jerusalem centered millennium is so decisive for the question of the covenant, as scripture conceives and unfolds it. When this is missed, and even when it is acknowledged, many fail to connect the divinely intended meaning, the point that God is making through a nation appointed to resurrection and new birth in one day (Isa 66:8; Eze 39:22; Zech 3:9), with a thousand years following of astounding preservation in un-forfeited holiness. How can such a thing be? Exactly! And what is God’s point? If we know everything about Israel and miss the main point, we have missed the very point of God’s unspeakably costly investment in their covenant history, and its vital instruction for the church.

To me, any view that comes short of THIS understanding of Paul’s meaning when he says, ‘and so then all Israel shall be saved’, is inherently replacement in its perhaps unconscious denial of the millennial vindication of the covenant, as conceived by the prophets and passionately reiterated by Paul. And not only this, but the whole meaning of why the age ends just where it does, around the issues it does, is also missed, leaving the church disarmed and unprepared to be the maskilim (persons of insight) bringing the key of interpretation to Israel and the nations. Yet, who but he church, as the ‘pillar and ground of truth’, will God entrust with this holy task? Dispensationalism says the 144,000 Jewish evangelists that come to faith after the church has been taken to heaven by the rapture.

What Paul means by this much disputed phrase (“and so all Israel shall be saved”) has been the topic of great disagreement and challenge among interpreters. I believe the case is easily made that Paul was reading the prophets as teaching the covenant necessity of the existence on this earth of a completely saved and eternally secure Jewish nation that would now be able to hold the Land promised to their fathers in permanent continuance. This is all presented by the prophets as requiring conditions that will not obtain on this earth until the tribulation has ended with the great and terrible day of the Lord.

So never did Paul expect these conditions of an all saved Israel before this age had run its course to its appointed end in the day of the Lord. It is the tribulation, and the Antichrist as obsessed most directly with Jerusalem and the Jewish descendents of Jacob that seems most neglected by covenant expositors. It is the weakest link in their defenses. Once it is shown beyond reasonable dispute that the Antichrist is pitted particularly against the covenant symbols centered at Jerusalem. Once you show that the tribulation begins THERE, with the object of exterminating the covenant nation, it is a small step to establish the covenant background and abiding literal promises that must follow to Israel, which, of course, requires a millennium. It all stands or falls together. That’s our apologetic. It is to show that one cannot separate events that God has indivisibly joined.

At the end of the final tribulation, the Deliverer comes out of Zion to accomplish the final purification of the elect nation, which will then exist in abiding righteousness, while yet in natural bodies in their own Land on this earth, and, as we are informed by John’s Revelation, this witness in the sight of angels and nations will continue for a thousand years. Obviously, this is not the majority view. It is comparatively quite rare. I have only heard one other expositor make mention of it in a short quote from Adolph Saphir in his commentary on Hebrews that Bryan Purtle sent to some of us recently. We must be prepared to show and defend what any plain reading of plain language demands, as these things are NOT veiled in symbol or figurative speech. Moreover, we are prepared to give account of its purpose and meaning. It is one thing to know the what, even the when of God’s declared intention, and still miss the all important ‘WHY’ of His ultimate point in the eschatology of the covenant.

Had Paul seen the millennium as a definite limited interim between the DOL return of Jesus and the post-millennial revolt? I think the interim most likely, but we have nothing conclusive of what was believed about its duration till John’s Revelation. However, it is likely that many saw the 7th millennium as following the 6 millennia of the kingdom of man. But this depends on what Peter may have had in mind in his reference to a day equalling a thousand years in 2Pet 3. We know that among some examples of inter-testamental evidence, and rabbinical speculations that the future age was divided and sometimes conceived of as a sabbath millennial rest in analogy to the 7 days of creation.

I speculate that it was Paul’s wrestling with the coincidence of the glorified saints co-habiting the millennial earth with a Jewish nation still in their natural bodies that led him to the revelation of the mystery of the rapture (1Cor 15). It seems a necessary inference then, that since the body must be changed, translation of those saved during the millennium will evidently come at the next great transitional epoch in the history of redemption at the end of the millennium, as necessary to begin the eternal state. In the meantime, it seems probable that the glorified church of this age will be present and ruling with Jesus over the cities of the millennial earth, but perhaps not at all times visible to the saints on earth, and obviously not to the unregenerate multitudes that will repopulate the millennium.

I mention this, because it is to be admitted that we premillenialists have some ‘loose ends’ that are not directly, and explicitly addressed in scripture, as true of a great many things. It is true we are left with some more or less necessary inferences, but none of this can be turned into a justification to diminish or in any way ‘re-interpret’ the plain, grammatical, historic sense of scripture, particularly when the language used does not fall under the category of poetic, hyperbolic, symbolic, or figurative.

So how far does Israel’s millennial experience of the New Covenant apply to believers and their children in the present age of New Covenant fulfillment through the Spirit of Christ? That is the very thing that covenant theologians and their adherents wrestle with at a practical level when their children do not show the necessary signs of regeneration. It is also some of the thinking behind infant baptism, though they do not make the baptism of their children to count for regeneration, as in the sacramentalism of Catholics and Lutherans.

I think we can take the post-tribulational experience of the nations as our key to this question. They will be no less saved, loved, and promised glorification of their bodies than Jews living in the millennium. But uniform continuity of salvation is NOT promised to every one of their children, as the case with millennial Israel. If that is true, it is an inference, since it is not explicitly stated in scripture. We also know that Jesus applies the millennial promise concerning the uniform salvation of all of Israel’s children to believers of the present age who are drawn to faith in Jesus (compare Isa 54:13; 59:21 with Jn 6:45) but this cannot be taken to mean that every child born to this elect company is guaranteed salvation, as we see of the children of Jews in the millennium.

Thus, there is the necessary distinction between the spiritual application of ‘eternal life’ promised in the covenants, as properly applied to ‘all’ the spiritual seed of Abraham, but this has limits in this age, as the scripture itself makes clear. Neither believing gentiles nor believing Jews of this present age, are explicitly promised that it is impossible that any of their children fail of regeneration (Mt 10:36). But this is precisely what is promised in the millennium, along with their perseverance in holiness.

As much as we would like to believe that not one of the children of regenerate parents can fail of salvation, there is a reason we do not see this kind of uniformity of salvation among the elect of this age. It is NOT promised! It is only promised to Jews in the coming age after the tribulation, and it exists in just that way it does, at that time it does, for a very special purpose of divine demonstration of God’s great point in His original election of Jacob, as apart from works, but that is another discussion.

For Israel to be sure of the promises of a people who can continue in the Land forever, without further threat from the curse of the broken law, something had to be done with the habitual tendency to backslide. For this, true and lasting regeneration would have to come to ‘all Israel’ and NOT only to the perennial, typically small remnant. This is clear; because if only a remnant is saved, as the case throughout Israel’s history, then the remnant would also suffer exposure to the discipline and judgements of the covenant, including exile. What then would be necessary to guarantee perpetuity and assured freedom from the curse of the broken covenant? Nothing short of an ‘everlasting righteousness’ (Jer 32:40; Dan 9:24) that would extend to children’s children, from which they would “never again depart” (Isa 59:;21; Jer 32:40).

So the logic of the covenant, as understood by the prophets, was clear: Israel must at some point exist as an all righteous nation, no more as a mixed multitude. A mere remnant would not suffice. They must all be saved. This would require an ultimate solution to the problem of apostasy. Only then could the Land be safe from enemy invaders and the promise sure of eternal continuance. And for this to be sure, not only to those entering the Land after the final tribulation, but to all future generations, it must follow that ‘all’ their children must also be saved and kept saved (Jer 31:34; Isa 54:13; 59:21; 60:21; 65:23; 66:22 et al).

Otherwise, new and succeeding generations would put the covenant back in jeopardy. Hence, the divinely intended necessity of a New Covenant that would insure the regeneration and sure continuance of ‘all Israel’, a particularly Jewish Israel, safe in the Land forever. Even where the New Covenant scriptures will expand on these themes, they are not changed, nor require to be changed. Israel continues to mean Israel in the sense intended by the prophets, and manifestly understood by Paul.

Jews must be Jews, not only in the coming calamity, but in its millennial aftermath. It is crucial to the divine purpose that Jews be preserved as Jews. They are the sign people! They must be Jews, sufficiently visible and distinguishable, in order to make the point that God has invested an entire history of covenant unfolding to make THROUGH THEM! (Ro 11:27). This is the primary purpose of the millennium. It is not an unnecessary appendix in the divine drama. The millennium is the scene of that necessary stage of God’s making good on every promise, every jot and tittle of His Word and oath to the natural branches.

Now we come to covenant theology’s principal opposition and alternative view of the covenants. Since many historic, post-trib premills hold to some form of what dispensationalists brand, ‘covenant theology’ (a term that should NOT be taken as NECESSARILY replacement), the competing position opposing covenant theology is, of course, pretibulational dispensationalism. A good example of someone who holds our view of covenantal development along the controlling principle of the history of the promise, is Walter Kaiser. I believe I recall correctly that dispensationalists consider him a ‘covenant theologian’. But some would categorize him as a ‘modified dispensationalists’, simply because he is premillennial, but NOT pre-trib. Here is an example of a world renowned evangelical scholar who is miles removed from replacement theology of any kind, yet takes a non dispensational approach to the covenants.

Old school dispensationalists would speak of two new covenants, one for the church now, and another, completely distinct new covenant (though based on the same blood) for Israel after the tribulation. More recently, so-called, “progressive dispensationalism”, sees the ‘already and not yet’ aspects of the one and only New / Everlasting Covenant, but still divide the church from Israel in order to justify a pre-trib rapture. According to pre-tribulational dispensationalism, the dominant view among those who see the great tribulation as future, the body of Christ must be distinguished as completely distinct from saints that come to faith after the rapture. Though blood washed and born again by the Spirit, these so-called, ‘tribulation saints’ are held o belong to another people of God. This is what covenant theologians rightly find so repugnant and inconceivable.

Both classical and progressive dispensationalists see the necessity of the literally interpreted prophecies as demanding a Jewish nation, all saved and returned to their land, with none ‘left behind’ (Eze 39:22, 28-29). So far so good. But then, as mentioned, they divide the regenerate elect into two distinct peoples with two distinct destinies. Therefore, they do not see the saved of the tribulation, nor the saved of post-tribulational Israel, as belonging to the body of Christ.

So obviously, in this view, the covenants of God with Israel are retained just for Israel, as gentiles and Jews of the present age belong to a distinct and separate body, i.e., the body of Christ. This means that the body of Christ does NOT inherit Israel’s promises, but our question is, ‘what other promises, and what other covenants are there to inherit? We are grafted “in among them”. We are made fellow heirs and of the same commonwealth of Israel with all saints (not only the saints since Pentecost) in one body, one new man, as the mystery of Christ has been revealed to show God’s eternal intention to gather together into one all (elect) things (and persons) into Him (Eph 1:9-10).

While we make the distinction between saved Jews and saved gentiles both in this age and the age to come; we do not divide them. They are one body, one new man, yet not without divinely ordained distinctions. Jews in the millennium have a unique stewardship over the city and the Land for God’s millennial purpose and demonstration, but they are no less the body of Christ, and one Spirit with their brothers and sisters from the nations.

The great disjuncture between this age and the next is that NOT all Israel is regenerate, but, as Paul insists, “all Israel shall be saved”. When is this? How is this? According to the language and logic of what is promised in the covenants, as understood and applied by the prophets, the covenant has not reached its full scope and goal until there is not to be found a single descendent of Jewish parents that will not know the Lord and be filled with the Holy Spirit. This would be one thing for the saints in glory, but this is NOT what the scriptures envisions. These penitent survivors of the last holocaust will enter the millennium in natural bodies.

As the Jewish survivors of the tribulation see the One whom they pierced, as the tribes all mourn at the revelatory, transforming sight of their returning Joseph (Zech 12:10-13:1), in remarkable analogy to Paul’s Damascus road vision, the Spirit is poured out, but this is the first-fruits of the Spirit that leaves the survivors of Israel still in their natural bodies to fulfill the millennial promises. Their repentance and new birth is happening at the same the last trump (1Cor 15:52 with Mt 24:31; Isa 27:13; Rev 10:7) is translating the members of Christ’s body (1Cor 15:23) into final glorification. So Paul reveals the mystery of the rapture, which accomplishes the divide between those receiving regeneration at the last trump, and those already regenerate receiving final glorification of their bodies.

So the penitent survivors of Israel enter the millennial period in their natural bodies, born again and full of the Spirit, but able still have children, build houses and multiply in the Land, but without the threat of lapsing again under covenant failure that would jeopardize their security and everlasting continuance in the Land. That is how the prophets saw it, as any plain reading will confirm. They didn’t see all that God had planned, true, but what they saw was true and requires no change or re-interpretation. From the perspective of the NT, the Day of the Lord still lies ahead, as does the great tribulation, and not one word shall fail of its plain literal sense.

The Land will be theirs uniquely and specifically. Others will come and go, as joyous, grateful sojourners, with certain assigned portions, defrauded of no good thing in Christ. But only one people, preserved in that mysterious distinction that has sealed them to unparalleled suffering and incomparable glory, will ‘all’ be holy in their Land. The kingdom, in this sense, will NOT be given to another people (“not another”; Isa 65:21-23; “not left to another people”; Dan 2:44). Then and only then will they lie down in safety so that none make them afraid, so that the “children of wickedness will NEVER AGAIN afflict them as before” (2Sam 7:10).

Like the face of Pharaoh, they will not see the face of another Antichrist or gentile invader to threaten their peace. Isaiah shows that from the time that the last gentile aggressor is destroyed, as prefigured by the kings of Bablyon and Assyria (Isa 14:4, 25), which is to say, from the time that Satan is bound, “no feller is come up against us” (Isa 14:8; KJV). And when the Lord, in His providence, permits the last rebellion to gather in utter futility, it accomplishes nothing, except the ordained display that is given to prove that when Satan is released for the last test, the hidden depravity that lurks in the untested heart of the unregenerate will be fully exposed for a last time in the appointed day of temptation. Thus, the post-millennial exhibition of man’s depravity is also designed to show the invincibility of the Davidic covenant in its millennial expression. “They shall surely gather together, but NOT by Me … no weapon formed against you shall prosper” (Isa 54:15, 17).

Hallelujah! What a witness they will be in the earth! What an anomaly! What a burning bush of inexplicable divine testimony! Everyday, as people carry on their natural lives, this will be set before them. It can only be compared to what we can imagine it must have been for Abraham. Everyday, as God’s friend went about his normal routine, with all the tests and adversities common to this life, he could look over to his side and see that little miracle boy, who, by every natural reckoning, should not be there. What a constant reminder of the supernatural existence and intervention of His / our mighty God. It is that kind of daily reminder that Israel will be to the nations.

As the physically preserved sign nation, God has a statement ‘through them’ that will reverberate through all eternity, world without end (Isa 45:17). It is His ultimate, eschatological statement. It is very intentionally, necessarily visible, public, and literal. Not only through the return of Jesus, but through the return of Israel, God will once and for all answer the question, ‘has God really said?’ That’s what’s most ultimately at stake in the covenants and their eschatological conclusion on this earth.

The grand point is clear. It is to answer the question first raised by God Himself, as first put to Moses. It is the question of replacement theology (see Num 14). Can He bring into the Land and keep in the Land, the very people He first brought out of Egypt? What will be required? The answer is an apocalyptic transformation that will circumcise the heart of an entire nation. Moses sees at the end of a final and unequaled tribulation (Deut 4:29-30; 29:4; 30:1-5). The prophets will call this apocalyptic intervention the day of the Lord. This is the New Covenant, “My covenant with THEM”, but it is first, according to the mystery, established now ‘in Christ’ in unexpected advance of ‘that day’. Yet, this mystery does nothing to compromise the sure fulfillment that remains to be established with ‘all Israel’ in the coming, post-tribulational day of the Lord.

Present access into the grace of the covenants does nothing to redirect or cancel their predestined appointment with post-tribulational Israel. What possible NT passage has ever remotely suggested otherwise? Scripturally, biblically, with no violence to the present New Covenant standing of believers of this age, WHY CAN”T every outstanding promise in its plain, post-tribulational context, yet be made good to the literal people of Israel at the time appointed? (Ps 102:13; 1103). Not to a mystical Israel, without arguing that question, but the people that to this day have borne the heat of the day, in covenant curses, divine discipline, and untold suffering among the nations? All for what? Shame on those who can conceive what to God is impossible (‘as I live …’), that the covenant of the Land made with the descendents of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob could conceivably stop short of an all righteous Jewish nation, safe in their Land forever. Read there in your Bible! But do not restrict your reading the final third. Ask the Holy Spirit if one truth need rule out another.

Why either or? Why not believe both, since God said both? If we don’t believe, how will we get God’s costly point? How will we enter into the fellowship of His suffering where Israel is concerned, and the unspeakable cost He’s invested in the outworking of the covenants that demand more than the discipline and judgment of God’s national son, but his future millennial glory on earth?

Yes, there is mystery. There is great difficulty in managing the many facets, but there is no excuse for unbelief or to be taught of man rather than the Spirit. Here’s the issue: The plain language and ‘authorial intentionality’ of Moses and the prophets show clearly their expectation of an age on this earth beyond the climactic Day of the Lord, wherein all the promises made to recalcitrant Israel would be established without fail, here, where the odds are most opposed. The NT still looks forward to that day. Why deplete that day of all that the prophets and apostles of both testaments bind inextricably to that day?

Without the perspective that comes from a plain reading of the promises, covenants, and prophecies, the question of why a millennium? must remain in misty non-resolution. When the centrality of Israel and a ‘Jewishly’ centered, millennial Jerusalem is denied or dissolved, the assemblies of God’s people are robbed of vital instruction concerning their covenant standing in the everlasting covenant in its present fulfillment. Moreover, they are robbed and disarmed of crucial preparation to understand and give answer in the coming time of Jacob’s trouble. “What meaneth these things? But but most tragically, ignorance of this mystery (Ro 11:25), whether willing or unconscious, robs God of His greater glory in revealing His secrets to His friends (Gen 18:27; Isa 41:8; James 2:23; Amos 3:7; Jn 15:15; Rev 10:7).”Come and see!”

It’s not about unprofitable academic arguments; it’s about care for a harmonized Bible and to grasp what God has been pleased to reveal to His servants in a rather manageable, lifetime stewardship of only 66 books.

The post Perspectives on Israel: What’s at Stake? appeared first on Mystery of Israel.

The virgin birth of Christ means that the “seed of the woman” is born into the world without the help of man. The same is true of the resurrection of the dead and of creation ‘ex nihilo’ (out of nothing). These are the metaphors that scripture uses to describe regeneration. In all of these examples: creation, birth, and resurrection, the subject is passive. It is not producing the action; it is being acted upon. The salvation of God is everywhere manifest to be a sovereign act of God “apart from works”.

The work must be God’s alone, because a division in the labor implies a division in the glory. Although the salvation of God is wrought ‘in’ man and manifest ‘through’ man, it is nothing ‘of’ man. This is precisely what sets the faith of Christ apart from all other religious systems. It is what made Paul an enemy not only to his nation but also many within the church. Their quarrel was not with Paul’s high Christology but his monergistic (only one working) soteriology (doctrine of salvation).

Just as the virgin birth was a divine ‘by-pass’ of natural fertility, so is every aspect of the salvation of God. God is supremely jealous for this, because He is supremely jealous that to God alone be all the glory. The cross signifies God’s utter rejection of anything that fallen might might presume to contribute to his own resurrection. “And you he made alive, who were dead …” (Eph 2:1). It signifies that the life of the Spirit can only begin at the place of utter death to all natural support (“I dare not trust the sweetest frame but wholly lean on Jesus’ name”). This is why the promised eschatological salvation of Israel is always depicted at the end of their power (Deut 32:36; Lev 26:19; Jer 30:6-7; Dan 12:1,7).

If this principle is true of Israel in the eschatological crisis, it is no less true of the church of this age. In fact, that is what makes the church the church. Through the transforming power of the revelation of the gospel, the believer receives the salvation of the coming day in unexpected advance of that day. The church by definition is the first fruits of Israel’s coming salvation. The church is the church only so far as it has received the Spirit that will yet be given to the penitent remnant of Israel at the end of the great tribulation.

We might say that the church is the product of a partially ‘realized’ eschatology. As such, it is NOT the negation of Israel’s eschatology, but as the people of the Spirit through revelation of the messianic secret (Mk 4:11; 8:30; 9:9; Ro 16:25-26; 1Cor 2:7-8; Eph 6:19; 1Pet 1:11-12; Rev 10:7), the church is the first fruits of millennial Israel. Living ‘between the times’, the church is the tribulation people, instructing many (Dan 11:33; 12:3). What then should the church be? What is the church called now to demonstrate before men and angels in anticipation of that day?

Obviously the so-called church of professing ‘Christendom’ falls miserably beneath the standard of God’s declared intention for the church. The searching divine question, “Where art thou?” finds most of what calls itself church naked and ashamed. This leaves many to ask, what is the church? Where is the church? The greatness of what God has decreed for the church, particularly in terms of what He has declared He will show forth and vindicate through the church, makes the church to ask with Mary, “How shall this be?”

I believe we can hear the same promise for the church of our day. “For with God nothing shall be impossible.” There is a sense that the age is waiting on something still to be accomplished in the church, something to which the church could never attain apart from the constraints and inducements that God will bring to her through the crisis of Israel.

The crisis of Israel, particularly as it concerns the covenant concerning the Land, and the controversy of Jerusalem (Isa 34:8; Zech 12:2) will constitute the final watershed issue that will evoke all the great issues of the faith. In short, God will provoke the nations to provoke Him, since it is when the nations lift themselves up to attack Israel that His fury comes up in His face (Ezek 38:18; Joel 3:2), as the ultimate provocation of His wrath. With this ultimate and final provocation, the line is crossed; there shall be no more delay.

The issue of Israel will be turned into a great test of the heart that will be a plumb line of division, not only among the nations but also in the church, not least because the Jewish people who will be the occasion for such world turmoil are by no means friends of the gospel. Hence, the issue of Israel will test the hearts of many, particularly since this people, entirely unworthy in themselves, are nonetheless predestined to be made righteous at the set time, as was Paul on the road to Damascus. Thus it is that what the church believes about Israel is very telling of whether it has understood the nature of its own grace.  

There is at the present a glorious church that is as much alive and hid with God in Christ as it will ever be. However, God has appointed a day of separation and manifestation through the determinative events and judgments of the tribulation. Of course, the essence of what the church will meet in the final tribulation is not without precedent. It is simply the ultimate intensification and concentrated embodiment of the church’s age long conflict. But a dispensation of requirement is at hand that will more clearly manifest the distinction between wheat and tare, even before the actual return of Christ.

Therefore, the present condition of the church is not the last word. God knows how to get us from here to there. “He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it” (1Thes 5:24). Hallelujah! That little verse, so big with meaning, says that what God has determined to do for and ‘in’ His people, He will certainly do. What a word of assurance! When I think of the present state of the church, and, of course, my own state, I think of the Lord’s words to Peter in John 21:18 “Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.”

So what wants and what waits in order for the church to attain to its full eschatological stature before this age can give way to millennial glory? No lesser power than the power that overshadowed Mary is required. That “holy thing” that is conceived is as holy and apart from the help of man as that “holy thing” that was conceived in Mary’s womb, i.e., the woman’s Seed, the incarnate Word and Spirit. We know also that the working of that power requires a divinely quickened humility of faith that only comes at the end of strength. God is able to bring the church to that holy end.

To propose a pre tribulation exit for the church, God’s chosen witness, called, “the pillar and ground of truth” (1Tim 3:15), is to settle for an anti-climax, unworthy and out of keeping with all that scripture reveals concerning the cruciform pattern of God’s ways with His people throughout redemptive history (“ought not Christ to have suffered …?”). The suffering saints of the tribulation are never depicted as subject to divine wrath, but only the persecution of men. Some are hid and fed (Isa 26:20; Rev 12:6), as many are preserved alive to the end while a vast host must be slain for the testimony of Jesus (Rev 6:10-11).

May we then assume that God is waiting upon the church? Or is the church waiting upon God for the greater emptying and fuller manifestation of His glory? There is a necessary order, but God is no more waiting on the church to come into her place than He is waiting on Jacob to return to his place apart from a powerful shaking of confidence in the flesh, which is the power of the veil. Israel will be willing in the day of His power and not until (Ps 102:13; 110:3). This much we know; He is not waiting on the help of man! (Isa 59:16; 63:5).

If history has shown anything, it is that if God were waiting on Israel, He would be waiting forever. No, while the sovereignty of God’s purpose never sets aside human obligation to fulfill the necessary requirements of righteousness, according to the eschatology of Israel, the willingness and obedience of the people awaits a special act of divine power. “Your people will be willing in the day of your power” (Ps 110:3; Jer 31:18; Gal 1:15). And significantly, that day follows the humbling of the nation through the chastisement of the Antichrist (Isa 10:5-6; Jer 30:14).

Certainly, the church has already come to this divine enablement in some measure by the gift of the Spirit; else it wouldn’t be the church. However, the power of Pentecost did not happen in a vacuum, and we may be sure that God’s determination to manifest the power of Christ through the church is yet to see a crescendo of glory in a final martyr witness of love and obedience unto death, which will register itself powerfully upon the conscience of Israel, moving some to anger and others to holy emulation (Deut 32:21; Ro 10:19; 11:11, 14). But whether to anger or emulation, a church that has come to its appointed stature is a church that provokes.

Just as the seed did not appear until the “fullness of time” (Gal 4:4), God’s full purpose for the church has its appointed time, and we believe that time will coincide with “the time of Jacob’s trouble” (Joel 2:1-3; Jer 30:7; Dan 12:1; Mt 24:21). The church needs to understand the time and nature of that time of ultimate crisis, what provokes it and what is ultimately at stake in it. We believe that this “understanding” (Dan 9:25; 11:33; 12:3, 10) is crucial and will prove priceless and transformative for the church. We believe that the first half of Daniel’s seventieth week will have everything to do with crowding the church into position for its final testimony, which not incidentally coincides with the time that Michael casts down Satan to begin the final tribulation, Satan’s ‘short time’ (Dan 12:7; Rev 12:12; 17:10).

Theologically, the church is the corporate seed of the woman through the Spirit of Christ, who has indwelt all the regenerate people of God since the beginning (1Pet 1:11), even as Christ is the personal seed of the woman. Born by miraculous conception of the Word (1Pet 1:23), she is the corporate fullness of Christ in His people through the Spirit. (Eph 1:23; Col 1:18-19). In essence, the church is as miraculously conceived and birthed as her ascended Lord. No less than Christ Himself, the church, and every living member in her, is born from above, “not by the will of the flesh or by the will of man, but of God” (Jn 1:13; Ps 87:5 with Gal 4:26).

Therefore, if the incarnate life of God in the people of God is the standard, many are anxious to see evidence of a corresponding reality in tangible manifestation, particularly in mighty demonstrations of the Holy Spirit’s power. Here we must caution of something very perverse in human nature. It is the spirit of demand. It is also a question of the purity of the motives for seeking powerful evidences for the manifest working of God.

A pure and single passion to see the greater glory of God in the church will learn to reckon on the lowliness and hiddenness of God’s ways among His people. Except for the sake of judgment, God will usually hide the greater manifestations of His power from pride. God makes it a point to bring His “good thing” out of Nazareth (Jn 1:46), and to conceal His glory underneath badger’s skins. As the Lord, so is the church without form or comeliness in the assessment of the world. Its beauty is a hidden beauty known only to God and to those who are begotten of Him.

The church is only strong when it is weak. It is only full when it is empty. The church demonstrates the wisdom of the cross in its rejection of all false forms of power through a resigned faith in “the God who raises the dead.” Such a faith cannot be intimidated by any earthly power. It is as free to die as to live. “If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed” (Jn 8:36). The freedom that is freedom indeed is the freedom of love that casts out fear (1Jn 4:8).

It is much to be observed that only a church that is perfect in love can be bold in the face of death, and this is exactly what the apocalyptic books of Daniel and Revelation depict of the tribulation saints. As Jesus learned obedience by the things He suffered, so the church of the last days will be perfected through sufferings. It is an inviolable principle of the faith (Acts 14:22). Whether Joseph or David (and where is the exception?), the afflictions of the sons of God establish the pattern that Christ, the preeminent Son, fulfills most ultimately (“ought not Christ to have suffered?”) Even as Israel must and will be brought to the end of their power in preparation for the revelation of Christ, so too the church must and will be brought to an end of its power. “Judgment must begin at the house of God” (1Pet 4:17).

The question that follows is what does God intend to employ in bringing the church to its predestined fullness? How will He get us from here to there, corporately speaking? Can we believe such ‘manifest’ glory for Israel at the end of their tribulation, and believe less for the church at the end of hers?

If I were a teacher giving a class an assignment, I would love to garner the collective insight concerning what scripture shows that God intends to employ to bring His church to its full eschatological destiny in preparation for Israel’s return.

Note that at the very moment the church is being glorified, Israel is being converted. Israel’s salvation does not happen gradually; it happens suddenly, “at once” and “in one day” (Isa 59:21; 66:8, Ezek 39:22; Zech 3:9; 12:10; Mt 23:29; Act 3:21; Ro 11:26; Rev 1:7), at the ‘set time’ (Ps 102:13; Dan 9:24; 11:35). Israel’s salvation at the day of the Lord can be compared to Paul’s sudden divine arrest on the road to Damascus.

We must understand, not only the fact that Israel’s restoration comes with Christ’s return at the day of the Lord, but why? Israel’s return to the Land as an all holy nation clothed in a righteousness that is not their own (Isa 45:17, 24-25; 54:17; Jer 23:5-6; Dan 9:24) is the sine quo non (the ‘without which not’) of God’s very Name and Word (Ex 32:11-13; Deut 7:7-8; 9:5-7, 26-28; Num 14:13-21; Ps 106:8; 115:1-2; Eze 36:22-23, 32; Jer 14:21). God’s self appointed mission impossible is to bring in, once and forever, the very people He first brought out of Egypt, not only to bring them in, but this time to invest them with an everlasting righteousness that will preserve them in the Land forever.

This is the promise of the New Covenant that God made with them before gentile believers were grafted in among them (Isa 27:9; 59:21; Jer 31:31-34; Ro 11:25-27). This is why Satan so fears and resists the coming in again of the natural branches (Dan 12:1, 11; Mt 23:39; Mt 24:15-16, 21; Acts 3:21; Ro 11:25-26; Rev 12:6, 14-15), because he knows better than the church that their return at Christ’s return marks the public vindication of His everlasting covenant “with them” (Ro 11:27), the end of the times of the gentiles and Satan’s tenure over the nations, as their return will be life from the dead (Ro 11:15).

Note too how Israel’s national repentance and regeneration at Christ’s return to the premillennial binding of Satan. The mystery of God is finished when the 7th trumpet sounds (Isa 27:13; Mt 24:31; 1Cor 15:52; Rev 10:7; 11:15). As the survivors of Israel receive revelation of the One whom the nation pierced (Zech 12:10; Mt 23:39; 24:30; Rev 1:7), they are gathered from all nations (Isa 11:12, 15-16; 27:12-13; Eze 39:28-29; Zech 8:7-8, 23; 10:10-11). It is because the covenant has now been openly vindicated in the sight of all nations that God can take His rest in the salvation of Israel (Isa 62:1, 6-7).

Significantly, at the same time Satan is bound (whom Ezekiel calls the anointed cherub who covers; Eze 28:14), the veil that is spread over all nations is destroyed and the dead are raised (Isa 25:7-8; 26:16-21; Dan 12:1-2). At the end of the same unequaled tribulation (Jer 30:7; Dan 12:1), Zion’s travail is finished with the birth of the nation “in one day” (Isa 66:8; Mic 5:3; Eze 39:22; Zech 3:9). But is it only the earthly Zion that travails?

There is a mystery of the heavenly and the earthly Zion that intersects gloriously. We can only imagine how readers of Isa 66:7-8 puzzled to understand how it was that a man child could be born before Zion’s travail and that only after the travail of Zion would the nation be born in a day. The mystery of Christ solves the paradox (Rev 12:1-2, 5). The Savior would accomplish redemption before the tribulation, before the regeneration of the nation.

In the same pattern, I believe there is another travail that must be accomplished by the church before the mystery of iniquity can be revealed in the casting down of Satan to take up a full and unhindered residence in the man of sin (2Thes 2:3, 7-8). But first, in significant analogy to Daniel’s priestly intercession, self abasement and travail of soul (Dan 10:12-13), the church must, in like manner gain a victory in the heavens through a similar travail that receives the same intervention of Michael over the one who hinders (Dan 10:13; 1Thes 2:18; 2Thes 2:7).

According to Rev 12:7-14, Satan retains a place in heaven until he is forcibly cast down by Michael to begin the tribulation (Satan’s ‘short time’ of the last 3 1/2 years). Despite what it will mean for the earth dwellers, Satan’s forced removal is cause for great jubilation in heaven (Rev 12:10). This is because the kingdom of God cannot come until the mystery of iniquity is revealed with the removal of the one who hinders. If Satan is the one who hinders, what is he holding back? He is holding back the revelation of the mystery of iniquity in the final man of sin which must be revealed before Jesus can return. Satan dreads and resist this with all his ability because when he is cast down, his time will then be short (Rev 12:12), as the tribulation begins.

From what appears in Revelation, the 7th beast from the sea that receives the mortal wound is revived to ascend out of the abyss to become the 8th beast who now incorporates all the fullness of the former beasts (Rev 13:1-3; 11:7; 17:8-11). All of this ultimately concentrates in a man who must reveal in himself the mystery of iniquity before Christ can come. This is when a very great evil is necessary for a very great good. This is why it is so hard to conceive that something that portends such disaster on earth could cause such rejoicing in heaven, but that’s the paradox.

The point of all is that this will not happen independently of the church. As a kind of corporate Daniel, a church that has been greatly emptied of the power of the flesh by the cup of suffering that it knows it is about to drink, will be constrained to pray as Daniel prayed for the kingdom that brings a final end to the anguish of the Jews, but even more importantly, the glorious vindication of the Name and testimony of the God of Israel in all the earth! This means the church’s earnestness and love for the kingdom must rise to a level that moves it to travail as Daniel did, despite what it knows must come first. Then the prayer, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth” will be prayed in full view of the cost and will be heard on high.

What is the church’s role as witness to the prophetic testimony of Jesus in bringing Israel back to God? What will God do to bring the church to its appointed place in the Spirit in order to stand in the gap for Israel in the evil day? I welcome any input from the body, as i am doing some writing on some of these things. Your brother in Christ, Reggie

Jan 18th, 2010 followup
I’m struck and surprised at the response to that quickly done collage of notes and reflections. I’ve received two requests to have names removed from my comparatively small contact list. Others write to complain of a one sidedness that neglects the place of human “cooperation.” Another, making the same basic objection, said he didn’t have time for such “ramblings” that intrudes into things beyond what God has been pleased to reveal. So in view of such unexpected reactions, and now getting this encouragement from such a trusted old friend, I’m beginning to think that we’ve touched something here that is perhaps more than we know.

Years ago, I had some notes that showed how a religion of works is behind every form of anti trinitarian theology. I wish I could find those notes; I believe they were quickened one morning. But I entrusted them to a brother’s care who lost them. Of course, the fault was mine for letting them go. I’ve often asked the Lord to return to me the essence of that powerful argument against the meritolatry inherent in all forms of unitarianism, both Judaic and “Christian.”

Of course, evangelicals are keen on the incarnation of Christ but get drop jaw when we begin talking about the implications of God incarnating the same essential nature in the believer, albeit in measure.

Of course, this is simply what it means to be “in Christ.” The offense comes when we insist that the only “cooperation” that God receives is the cooperation of the new creation, which alone is capable of the required cooperation. Though indeed nothing “of man” in the sense of source, the life of God in the believer is no less fully human; it is incarnation, and incarnation is simply union, but that union is necessarily apart from any natural potency in man. To paraphrase Paul, “woe is me if I do not cooperate.” Yet, “who is sufficient?” “I labored more abundantly … I can say this without boasting because it wasn’t me” (“yet not I”).

Paul was not slack on responsibility or obedience; he never relaxed the requirement, but he was vehemently opposed to smuggling anything of fallen ‘man’ into the equation, lest there be, as I said, “a division in the glory.” So while it remains that “without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness …,” it also remains that the work of God defies any mixture with what lies in the power of man.

Paul’s monergistic view of grace and new creation is as much an offense to much of modern evangelicalism as it was in the religious atmosphere of his day. Subject to twisting and abuse? Sure. But if we are teaching something that does not meet with the same objections hat were leveled at Paul, it is likely we are teaching something more palatable to human sensibility.

The ‘non mixability’ of the work of God with anything of fallen man is a non negotiable of the faith. It is a question of the ultimate source of all righteousness. However apparently good any motive or deed, if it does not come by way of a new ceation, it is “short of the glory of God.” I know of no comfortable, more agreeable middle ground that does not yield to man what scripture refuses to grant, namely, a “piece of the action.”

Bottom line: we are ‘shut up’ to God to both will and to do. That truth, more than any other makes us to tremble. Though He presently working in His people, sometimes powerfully and in mighty measure, yet He has promised to perfect His glory in the church in a yet more manifest demonstration. We see it there in prophecy. The whole creation groans, and we groan. Thank God, you are one who groans for His glory in the church. It is just to say that He has promised more than we’re seeing, and we may be sure He has not resigned to leave things where they are now. This is NOT how it ends.

Jesus said, “When the Son of Man comes will He find faith on the earth?” He knew that prophecy had already answered His question (Dan 11:33; 12:3, 10). Why then does He put it thus? I believe it is because He knew how nearly absent the true faith of God would be in the earth in the days just before the final sequence of prophetic fulfillment brings the great constraints and inducements that will move the church to higher ground. I believe we are being permitted to build our religious towers of Babel while we come to an end of our own steam. That end will come when the requirement of faith exceeds the comfortable level of our optimistic presumptions concerning man. God is jealous for His own glory beyond anything we can imagine.

I expect that at some point I will respond to that objection and offer further explanation. I’m certainly OK with it being posted, though I admit it was not written to be an article but more of a discussion starter and to invite feedback in the interest of a fuller and better jointed statement in the future.

I really ask that you remember me in prayer, Dean, as I am careful to pray for you on every remembrance.

Your friend in the fray, Reggie

Jan 19th, 2010 followup

Is it possible to hasten the “End of Strength” in one’s personal life and in that of a church community, if one can find such?

Your question seems to ask concerning the present appropriation of the kind of reality that prophecy portrays of the church of the last tribulation. Granting that the power of Christ is revealed at the end of human self sufficiency, to what degree is this possible in the here and now? My answer is “much every way!” The New Testament reveals both a present ‘realized’ eschatology (the ‘already’), and a future fullness that awaits the final great tribulation (the ‘not yet’).

The principle that the revelation of Christ deals a death blow to human presumption concerning what is in man is a fundamental doctrine of the faith. That is why Paul emphasizes the role of tribulation in advancing the believer in experience and hope. The weaker the stronger. The path of the just grows brighter as the tendency to trust in self is driven ever deeper down into death.

The veil that blocks the full shining of Christ’s face is only as dense as our human self sufficiency, which is what the Spirit is always at war against even in a true believer. Paul said, “Indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead” (2 Cor 1:9). We know that Paul was given a buffeter from Satan to preserve him from pride in his high calling. If it had not been necessary, it would have been removed.

Paul said, “I die daily.” Beyond the particular dispensations of tribulation and divine dealing that are uniquely suited to each individual believer (which we cannot choose for ourselves), we are commanded to give diligence to make faithful use of the so-called means of grace (the Word, the fellowship of the church, the Lord’s table, good works and careful obedience to the leading of the Spirit). The taking up of the cross in the continual mortification of the self life is a daily duty that is fatal to neglect.

Indeed, nothing of the fullness that we expect to come in mighty power to the church at the beginning of the tribulation is entirely without precedent. In principle and pattern, the essence of what is coming has been present in every authentic revival of true religion throughout the history of the church. However, this will be unique in several particulars, which explains why this revival will not fade as all others.

The post Where God Is Taking The Church appeared first on Mystery of Israel.

Little considered, but essential to the promise is the relationship between the heavenly Zion and the earthly Zion. The two shall at length meet in glorious unity of spiritual birth and transformation of nature. A comparison of Isa 66:7-8 with Rev 12:1-14 makes us to understand two distinct travails of two distinct births of two distinct Zions, first the heavenly, then the earthly made heavenly through spiritual rebirth. The birth of the man-child is significantly BEFORE the tribulation, as the birth of the nation ‘in one day’ is significantly AFTER the tribulation (Zion’s travail). A careful comparison of Isa 66:7-8 with Rev 12:2-6 compels our recognition that while the birth of the man-child (divine offspring of the woman) takes place without the travail of the earthly Zion (i.e., the literal, unequaled, pre-day of the Lord tribulation), His birth does not come without travail. This is the pre-tribulational travail of the heavenly Zion of God (the heavenly woman).

It is a view that is to be argued more on the basis of spiritual principle than strict exegesis of just the immediate context. However, when these key texts are considered, not only in the light of their more immediate context but the principles enunciated elsewhere in scripture, these combine to argue for the fulfillment of a pattern that extends, not only to the Messiah as the personal seed of the woman, but to His seed, as the corporate seed of the woman, the godly remnant born of the Spirit of Christ. In this sense, the travail of the heavenly woman is not only Mary but the godly remnant, which in this age is identified with the body of Christ, the corporate seed of both Messiah and the heavenly woman. This is why we cannot restrict the birth and ascent of the man-child only to Mary and Jesus. There is something more cosmic and corporate in view that pertains to the coming of the kingdom on earth through a principle of spiritual travail that is born of faith and earnest longing. According to Paul’s cosmology of glory, when Jesus was taken up, we were taken up in Him. This is something utterly glorious that requires spiritual apprehension to begin to fully fathom or appreciate. As the Son of Man is in heaven, even while on earth (Jn 3:13), there is a profoundly real sense in which this is true of all His seed.

In Rev 12 we see that a great transition in heaven must take place in order for the final tribulation to come on earth that finishes the mystery of God (Rev 10:7). It cannot be missed that the revelation of the mystery of iniquity in the incarnation of Satan in the man of sin, for which the return of Christ awaits (2Thes 2:3-8; Rev 12:10-12), takes place at exactly the same time that Michael casts down Satan from heaven to begin the tribulation (Rev 12:12), obviously in the middle of the week. Though the text by itself does not require it, we can infer on the basis of the analogy of Dan 10 that Michael’s heavenly victory does not happen independently of the intercessory travail of the faithful, in notable analogy to Daniel’s self-abasement and deep intercession.

This leads to the further inference that the travail of the heavenly woman is not exhausted in Mary and Jesus, but forms a pattern that implies another great transition when the church will travail in like pattern to Daniel, so that Michael’s expulsion of Satan permits what Paul calls, ‘the mystery of iniquity’ (2Thes 2:7). We believe the mystery of iniquity is revealed when Satan takes up full and unhindered residence in the fallen and then revived body of the Antichrist. This cannot happen apart from Michael’s heavenly victory. We we believe Michael’s expulsion of Satan will not, cannot take place independently of the intercessory travail of the church. But such travail of love and holy groaning, as represented in Daniel and Paul for the longed for necessity of the covenant redemption of Israel, is not likely to issue from a church that has little consciousness of what must necessarily precede and attend the coming of the kingdom. Otherwise, we would know that apart from the regeneration of the long estranged prodigal nation, there can be no return of Christ and resurrection of the church, no resurrection of Israel, no resurrection of the church, and really, no God, since it His unbreakable Word that has bound the two inextricably together.

Christ doesn’t just appear. His return is dependent on these necessary preceding events.The Word of God stands or falls together and Satan knows it. That’s why his primary focus is to exterminate, not only the church as appointed to an heavenly, and, to mortal eyes, invisible destiny of rule over the millennial earth, but particularly the Jew who is appointed to national re-birth and millennial headship over the nations in public vindication of God’s corporate election of Jacob (Ro 9:11). Knowing this destiny as essential to the fulfillment of the Word, Satan mounts an all out assault on the natural seed of the woman when he sees his time as short, as now cast down by Michael in the middle of the week. It is only as he “sees” that the earth has helped the woman (by reason of the saints in the earth who foresaw the evil) that he turns his rage on the church, the spiritual seed of the woman. Satan’s logic is clear: If the natural branches survive to become an holy nation at the end of the tribulation, his tenure over the nations is over and his eternal damnation sealed.

But most of Christendom is blissfully unaware that such things are even at stake. Thus, to a very large extent, they are ignorant of the cosmic war that has raged, with its special focus on the Jew and the little hill of Zion ever since God declared the decree (Ps 2). It’s final focus will surface and concentrate and be required of all nations in what Isaiah calls, ‘the controversy of Zion’ (Isa 34:8). How can a church that is out of touch with the elect objects of this ‘everlasting hatred’ pray intelligently, let alone travail, for a kingdom that must come on earth but can only come through much tribulation?

When will the church see, or even care that apart from the redemption and return of the natural branches at the appointed day of the Deliverer’s return (Mt 23:39; Acts 3:21; Ro 11:26; Rev 1:7), there can be no kingdom on earth? This omission is much more costly than we tend to conceive, since the day of the Lord, which is now revealed as the return of Jesus, is everywhere depicted as inseparable from the restoration of the prodigal nation, whose return will be life from the dead. In scriptural revelation, God has bound up our resurrection with theirs (Ro 11:15), as the elect object of divine longing and open vindication of the everlasting covenant, “My covenant with THEM! (Ro 11:27).

The absence of this from the church’s consciousness, let alone expectation and hope, let alone intercessory travail, is nothing short of an abomination of utter detachment from, not only the plan, but the pain of God’s heart for Zion, as the great test and proof that puts finally to rest Satan’s original question, “Has God really said?” But the secure evangelical asks only this: “If one has salvation in Jesus, then how is Israel’s redemption and return to the Land necessary for the church’s hope?” This is what happens when men separate what God has united. This is the mentality that has won the day throughout most all of evangelicalism. It’s a light, ‘que sera sera’ attitude towards any of the controversial ‘details’ of prophecy. But here’s the maxim that is missing from the church’s consciousness and responsibility: There cannot be a birth without travail. But where does the travail come from? Does God travail in Himself alone? Is it only creation that shares in His travail? Is the travail of the heavenly woman accomplished in Mary and Jesus without further reiteration in the heavenly woman, i.e., the godly remnant, which is the church of God? Indeed, heavenly woman is comprised of the people of the Spirit who show themselves in union with Spirit, who travail till Christ be formed most particularly in that people whose long awaited salvation will make Jerusalem a praise in all the earth. This does not happen without the church as witness and intercessory mid-wife. It brings the question, what is the church?

In all of scripture, God does nothing but that He first reveals His secret to His servants the prophets (Amos 3:7). A prophet is one who is heavy with the burden of the Lord, with the vision of the glory of God. Ideally, just as the church is called to a corporate servant, she is called to be a corporate prophet to the nations. But a church that doesn’t know, or is out of touch, with the truth can hardly travail in unison with the Spirit of truth. So for what does the age wait? It waits for the travail of Zion, but not only the travail (final tribulation) of the earthly Jerusalem but the travail of the heavenly Zion, the mother of us all, as the pillar and ground of the truth.

Because the church, by very definition, is the pillar and ground of the truth, we can say that where the church is, there is the truth. Conversely, where the truth is not, there the church is not. And what is a prophet? A prophet is a friend of God, one in whom God is pleased to confide the secrets of His heart and mind (Jn 15:15; 1Cor 2:14). “Shall I hide from Abraham the thing which I do?” (Gen 18:17). “But you, Israel, are My servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham My FRIEND” (Isa 41:19). A prophet may not speak well, may not speak everything, is certainly not the whole body, but simply one who has been sent to declare the truth by the Spirit of truth. “Oh, that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that He would put His Spirit upon them!” (Num 11:29). If the church is anything, it is prophetic! It is the organism of the Spirit incarnate in jars of clay. If the testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy, then to be prophetic means much more than someone who is occupied with unfulfilled future events; it is about the very nature of seeing, and implies a deep saturation in the covenant as governing structure to all the principles, prophetic mysteries, and goals of God.

Whatever a prophet is or isn’t, there can be no change to God’s own fixed rule that He will surely NOT do anything until He has first confided His secret (hidden purpose) to His friends. That is a rule that does not change with times and dispensations. One might say that He has done this once and for all in the revelation of the mystery to His first century apostles and prophets, and that would be, in one sense, correct. But it also means that there will be a faithful witness to that revelation in all the earth at the time of the end, sufficient to make all accountable for what the Lord is about to do in that day, and this extends to the vital particulars of prophetic prediction.

As much as the warning of Ro 11:25 has had its dread fulfillment in the false presumptions of a triumphal, often anti-Semitic Christendom, we may also rest assured that a faithful witness to the true implications of Ro 11:25 will be sounded far and wide throughout all nations before the end can come. This is because it is always the Lord’s way to warn very clearly before His final judgments fall, particularly the judgments that conclude the age. Not only the what but the why of those judgments must be in open declaration and powerful evidence before the final strokes of judgment will fall. The world will be unwary but NOT unwarned.

So the church will stand forth in its ordained fullness and prove faithful to the end (Dan 11:32-33; Rev 12:11). The world will be without excuse. Because God is faithful, there will be a faithful witness and the church, as pillar and ground of the truth, will be that faithful witness. So while the age waits for the church to be the church, the church waits for God to constrain her to an pre-ordained maturity that makes her a fit mid-wife for the final travail of Zion, as those who understand what it will take for the kingdom to come on earth. As another would take Peter to a place he would not naturally have chosen, just so will the Lord take His church to its own cross, as we are sure that the final witness to Israel will not be entrusted to a church that has not first passed through the cross. This divine jealousy to reveal the Son in jars of clay is why judgment MUST first begin at the house of God. God has undertaken to see that quite apart from her own power, the church will be the church for such a time as this, even when, and especially when, such fulfillment is so manifestly against all odds, to the end that no flesh might glory.

This means that so far from the church being conveniently absent, there is no other appointed vessel by whom the witness to Israel and the nations can be fulfilled. This tells us that even before the Antichrist, the age is waiting for the church to be the church. The coming forth of the Antichrist is NOT the cause but the result of church’s maturity (pregnancy unto travail and birthing). As we have often made the case, Jesus cannot return until the mystery of iniquity is first revealed in its final embodiment in the man of sin (2Thes 2:3-8). And this cannot take place apart from Michael’s heavenly victory that casts down Satan to begin the tribulation that finishes the mystery of God (Rev 10:7; 12:7-14). In notable analogy to Michael’s intervention on Daniel’s behalf in Dan ch 10, we believe Michael’s engagement and victory over Satan in the middle of the week will NOT be apart from a similar intercessory travail on the part of the believing remnant who know and understand the truth (Dan 9:25; 11:33). For reasons everywhere witnessed in scripture, I cannot conceive that this great transition can take place independently of the role of the church as prophetic intercessor. How will God get us there, to such an urgency of travail for Israel and the kingdom? I believe the answer lies, in part, in the strategic use that God intends to make of the first half of Daniel’s final week and the events that will then be in clearest evidence to “those who understand among the people” (Dan 11:33).

In this sense, the end of the age is waiting on a church that has come to travail for a kingdom that they know must come through great tribulation. They will also know that the kingdom cannot until Satan is first cast down. The greatest woe for the earth will mean greatest rejoicing in heaven. This is because it is only with Satan’s expulsion that the mystery of iniquity can be revealed in the Antichrist. This is that one great event that must take place for Christ to return (2Thes 2:1-8; Rev 12:7-14). For this cause, it is cause for great rejoicing in heaven, since with Satan’s removal from his place in heaven as accuser, not only is the mystery of iniquity revealed, but the church has come into an unhindered apprehension of her place in heaven with the ascended Lord of Glory, even while she suffers the rage of Antichrist on earth. With Satan’s removal, the kingdom at once comes with power. This suggests a form of kingdom power that precedes the actual return 3 1/2 years after Satan has been thrust down. This appears to be the release and anointing that comes to a church who loves not its life unto the death (Rev 12:11).

Paradoxically, the casting down of Satan will also mean the church’s finest hour, at least as not seen since the apostolic period, as the gospel goes out in final kingdom power to all nations, reaping a harvest that no man can number. With the removal of the accuser, there is evidently a greater grasp and appropriation of the gospel that enables great power and anointing on those who will do great exploits. This suggest that the power that comes on the two witnesses at the start of the tribulation comes, in some measure, on a far greater number. It is now that the church will face the ultimate and final expression of the mystery of iniquity in the incarnation of Satan in the man of sin (“all power”; 2Thes 2:9). This is directed, not at first on the church (‘the remnant of her seed that keep the commandments of Jesus’), but most especially and significantly against Jerusalem and the Jews in particular. It is the climactic end of the ‘everlasting hatred’, as Satan’s aim has always been to stop the seed and so make void the Word of God that threatens his eternal destruction (Isa 14:13; Eze 25:15; 28:17-19, 25-26; 35:5; Dan 11:28, 32).

I like to say, ‘when the church will travail, Michael will prevail!’ Then and only then will the mystery of iniquity be revealed SO THAT the mystery of God can be finished (Rev 10:7). This is not only because Jesus has returned; it is also because His return will mean that the nation of covenant promise has been born in one day, the day of the Lord, the day His praise fills the earth as His feet touches down on the cosmically contested hill of Zion. So we believe and so we speak.

The post When the LORD Brought Again the Captivity of Zion appeared first on Mystery of Israel.

From the Glorious Church 2015 Conference in March. Reggie Kelly made it just in time to be included on the panel for a discussion of the nature and character of the Church during the great tribulation. This video along with messages from the co-panelists can be found at the Glorious Church 2015 YouTube Channel.

Co-panelists Ryan Couch, Fred London and Bryan Anthony delivered additional messages at the event. (Click their names to jump to specific messages)

The post The Glorious Church in the Great Tribulation [VIDEO] appeared first on Mystery of Israel.

The Land, with other key elements of the promise, would demand for its fulfillment the coming in of an ‘everlasting righteousness’, not for only a remnant but for the entirety of the nation (Isa 4:3; 45:25; 60:21; Jer 31:34; Eze 39:22, 28-29) Tragically, only a third of those living in the Land when the tribulation begins will survive to the day of their national salvation (Zech 13:8-9). The surviving remnant, come to birth in ‘one day’ (Isa 66:8; Zech 3:9; Eze 39:22; Dan 12:1), will enter the Land as penitent, Spirit filled believers in their natural bodies. This leads us to the necessary inference that because they were not saved before this time, the surviving remnant of Israel is not translated at the last trump with those who were already born of the Spirit (1Cor 15:23; 52).

They will look upon Him whom they pierced at the time of Jesus’ return after the tribulation (Zech 12:10; Mt 23:39; 24:30; Acts 3:21; Rev 1:7). From the evidence of many passages in both testaments, the repentance of ‘the escaped of Israel’ takes place at the time of the Lord’s return in clouds of glory at the end of the great tribulation (Isa 27:12-13; 66:8; Eze 39:22; Zech 3:9; 12:10-13; 12:14; 13:1; 14:7; Mt 23:39; 24:29-31; Acts 3:21; Ro 11:26; Rev 1:7). The Holy Spirit is poured out upon them at the same time their enemies are judged at the great day of the Lord (Isa 32:15; 59:21; Eze 36:26-27; 37:14; 39:29; Joel 2:28-29-32; Zech 12:10). At the end of Zion’s travail (a common metaphor for the great tribulation), the nation of destiny is “born in one day” (Deut 4:30; Isa 13:8; 26:16-17; 66:8; Mic 5:3; Jer 30:6-7; Dan 12:1; Hos 5:15; Mt 24:21, 29).

‘From that day and forward’ all Israel will know the Lord from the least to the greatest (Jer 31:34; Eze 39:22). This means every penitent survivor of the tribulation will “at once” become part of an entirely regenerate nation that will persevere in holiness throughout the millennium and on into the new heavens and earth, “world without end” (Isa 45:17; 66:17, 22). This miracle of saving, keeping grace will extend, without the exception, to every child born to Jewish parentage, and this will be with assured everlasting continuance  (Isa 54:13; 59:21; 66:22; Eze 37:25-26; 39:22; Jer 31:34).

Now observe; from the standpoint of the everlasting covenant that would be sealed in the blood of the Messiah, it is particularly the Landward side of the promise that would form the logical necessity, not only for a mighty apocalyptic in-breaking that would be called, ‘the great Day of the Lord’, but also an ‘everlasting salvation’ that would guarantee the abiding and irreversible regeneration of ‘all Israel’, so that the children of wickedness will never again afflict them, as previously (2Sam 7:10; Zeph 3:19). From that day and forward, Israel will lie down in safety and none make them afraid anymore again forever (Lev 25:18-19; 26:5-6; Jer 23:6; 32:7; 33:16; 46:27-28; Eze 34:28; Hos 2:18; Mic 4:3-4; Zeph 3:13; Zech 14:11). That was the hope, final rest and peace when the people and the Land would be married finally and forever (Isa 62:4-5).

We shall see that is through the implications of what was promised concerning the Land in particular that Abraham was able to see Jesus’ day and why Joseph would give commandment concerning his bones.

The dilemma of the covenant was this: How will a people prone always to backslide ever be fitted to inherit the Land forever, without further threat of judgment or exile? It was precisely the unconditional promise of eternal inheritance of the Land that would constrain the reflective OT believer to infer the necessity of an eternal regeneration that must extend, not only to a remnant, but to all the nation.

It was Abraham’s conviction of the literalness of the Land promise in particular that shut him up to the expectation of his own bodily resurrection. This is because the promise of eternal possession of the Land was not only to Abraham’s seed but to him personally as well. The Land of his sojourn would become his as an everlasting possession, not now, since he would die in a good old age, but later, after his yet unborn son’s family returns after an absence of four hundred years. This is how I believe Abraham saw Jesus’ day.

Remember, when Abraham is commanded to offer Isaac, it is after the covenant promise of Gen 15 that the nation that would proceed from the promised son would spend four hundred years in another country. How does a man die and yet inherit a literal tract of Land together with this son and his son’s progeny after an absence of four hundred years in another country? Not only so, but how else could Abraham have reckoned that such a promise could be fulfilled if the designated channel of the promise is put to death? We know that Abraham not only reckoned on the necessary resurrection of Isaac through whom the nation of promise would come. He also reckoned on the necessity of his own resurrection, since the promise of everlasting possession was to him and his seed, “to you and your seed.” This demands resurrection, not only of Isaac, but of Abraham as well.

It seems evident that Abraham conceived of Isaac’s sacrifice as the fulfillment of the promise of Gen 3:15. With the sparing of Isaac, Abraham could see ahead to the day of Him who would not be spared. Messiah’s death and resurrection would accomplish the mortal wound to the Serpent’s head. Abraham could now see that through the Coming One, the fall and its dread effects would be reversed, so that he, together with his seed, would be raised to inherit the Land forever, as only possible by an indestructible and eternal righteousness. This is Abraham’s faith in the God who raises the dead. The logic of all is the revelation of God’s own righteousness imputed to us, living and working in us and through us by the Spirit, made possible through the sacrifice of the Woman’s Seed.

Apart from this conviction of the promise of eternal inheritance of a literal land by means of bodily resurrection through the reversal of the fall by the seed of the woman, none of the promises to Abraham would have pointed so clearly to the later developments of the promise through Moses and the prophets. For example, at the outskirts of the promised Land, Moses forbids Israel to imagine that their possession of the Land is because of any righteousness of their own (Deut 9:4-6). The gift of the Land is unconditional, indeed, but the ability to retain the Land is conditional. That is why Moses declares that Israel, in its present condition, will not be able to prolong their days upon the Land, precisely because “the Lord has not given you an heart, unto this day” (Deut 29:4). But this will not always be so, because  Moses looks ahead to a time of ‘great tribulation’ in the latter days (Deut 4:29-31) when Jacob will be brought to the end of his power (Deut 32:36; Dan 12:1). At that time, all of the nation will receive the circumcision of the heart (Deut 30:1-6), thus securing finally and forever the promise of everlasting possession of the Land.

The later conditions that were added did nothing to annul the unconditional certainty of the original covenant with Abraham (Gal 3:17). That God alone would secure the covenant despite human weakness is signified when God puts Abraham into a deep sleep before walking through the parted pieces alone. The covenant, though made with Abraham and his seed, will not depend on Abraham but God alone. Thus signifying that God will see that every necessary condition is fully met and fulfilled in the heirs of the promise, but by nothing in or of themselves. It will be God who works in us to do and to will of His own good pleasure. No other source of righteousness can find acceptance with God, that no flesh can glory. Thus the only thing that the later conditions cut off is the flesh, as necessarily excluded from any participation in the promise. It must all be by the Spirit received by grace through faith.

The righteous remnant within the nation was never sufficient to secure the nation from judgement and exile. On the contrary, the remnant would typically suffer with the nation. It is only when the habitual tendency to backslide has been cured once and for all by a new heart and new spirit that all Israel, and not only a remnant, will lie down in safety with assurance of everlasting continuance in the Land. That is the logic of the covenant that all the prophets understood. This alone would satisfy the covenant promise of everlasting possession of the Land. It is the Land, understood as literal, that demands the salvation of ‘all Israel’ whereby an all righteous, “Jewish” nation (‘natural branches’) is able to preserve themselves and their children’s children on the Land without further threat of curse or exile “forever” The rule is this: To inherit the Land forever, Israel must have a righteousness that is forever. This is exactly how I understand Paul’s understanding of that much disputed phrase in Ro 11:26, “and so all Israel shall be saved.” It is not a mere addendum to God’s abiding will that more Jews be saved; it is a covenant necessity! God’s Name and Word is bound up with their salvation and return to the Land. Until the time comes when every Jewish person on the earth is saved (Jer 31:34), the everlasting covenant, secured in the Savior’s blood, has not reached its full goal in the salvation of ‘all Israel’.

The revelation of the day of the Lord that secures the eternal inheritance of the Land is the climactic solution and eschatological resolution to what we might call ‘the dilemma of the covenant’. By definition, Jacob’s trouble, the ultimate travail and tribulation of Zion, is the last stage of covenant curse and discipline threatened in the law. Until then, Israel remains under covenant jeopardy so long as the disposition to backslide continues to threaten curse and exile. What will end this threat? Answer: the coming in of an ‘everlasting righteousness’ (Jer 32:40; Dan 9:24), not for a remnant only, but for the entirety of the nation, from the least to the greatest, i.e., ‘all Israel’ (Jer 31:34). As surely as Jer 31 follows chapt 30, this extravagant promise, so often spiritualized as too fantastic to be conceivable for historical fulfillment, is here on earth AFTER Jacob’s trouble.

Only as the nation is saved in its entirety in a way that preserves them in abiding covenant obedience (new heart and spirit), can the chronic problem of backsliding be finally overcome. That is why the regeneration of a mere remnant can never be sufficient to guarantee an end to the curse that must always follow sin and the continued threat of judgment and exile. Unless and until ‘all Israel’ is saved eternally, even the righteous remnant is subject to the cycles of judgment and exile, as in the case of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel.

Of course, we know that the DOL is only the partial solution to the dilemma of the broken covenant. The basis for all is the mystery of the gospel, which addresses not only the future of the promise but the very foundation of God in the calling out of His elect throughout all ages by an atonement that was eternally established before creation in the counsel of the Godhead. As we said last night, this means that many enjoyed the working of the Spirit that was based retroactively on an atonement that was not yet accomplished in time but counted as accomplished from the standpoint of God’s eternal predestination. Since the mystery of the gospel was not yet revealed, this means they enjoyed the benefit of much more than they understood.

This is how the day of the Lord ends the age long ‘discipline of the covenant’. Not only does it realize an abiding righteousness whereby the Land may be inherited safely forever; it also subdues and brings under the rod iron rule of Messiah the pride and power of the gentiles, forever ending the divinely allotted ‘times of the gentiles’ in the restoration of the kingdom to Israel, the time of “their fullness” (Ro 11:12). The day of the Lord brings a final end to what we might call ‘covenant jeopardy’ since it ends the threat of the broken covenant by the gift of the Spirit and new heart that keeps it in spirit and truth forever.

This means a mere remnant is not enough, else the problem of backsliding and judgment remains. What the promise requires is a nation that is entirely holy, not in the part but the whole. This alone can guarantee abiding inheritance without fail unto children’s children (Isa 59:21), By a guaranteed preservation through the ‘everlasting righteousness’ that is made sure to all the seed, the Land is assured of abiding inheritance, forever free from covenant jeopardy, because eternal regeneration fulfills the law and secures abiding blessing, not off in an invisible heaven, but here in open demonstration through Spirit filled saints dwelling securely in the Land without further threat of invasion or any of the curses of the broken covenant, as foretold in Lev 26 & Deut 28-32.

This is how Israel’s hope developed along the lines of the inviolable covenant law of the blessing and the curse but in the context of an unconditionally certain everlasting covenant that supersedes all human weakness through the determination of God to overcome all conditionality by real and actual fulfillment in our mortal bodies through grace by the imputation of Christ’s righteousness and the indwelling Holy Spirit.

Now it remains to show how and why the post-tribulational deliverance of Israel is no less the church’s hope, and how and why the foundation of all is the atoning death of a twice coming Messiah. Then there are the questions that rise concerning the new covenant believer’s relation to the law and how Israel’s unique and abiding election to millennial headship over the nations agrees with the revelation of the one new man, etc. The answer to these questions will materially affect how we conceive of the church’s role towards Israel, always, but especially the last seven years and the unequaled tribulation of the last 3 1/2 years in particular.

The post The Constraining Nature of the Land Promises appeared first on Mystery of Israel.

We find in the pattern of God that He continuously picks the least. Abel was exalted over Cain in that his offering was accepted, but Cain’s was rejected. Abraham’s son Isaac was given the blessing instead of Ishmael. It was said of Jacob before he was even born, “The elder shall serve the younger.” Even King David was the least of his brethren. So the question is: What is it about the lesser that God seems to find favor with? Why does it seem as though God chooses the second, when it is tradition that the firstborn and elder gets the blessing? I have a feeling that it is related to Israel and the end times.

Yes, even of Israel it was said, “you were the least of all people” (Deut 7:7). The Bible’s remarkable focus on the salvation and exaltation of the poor and needy is regarded by unbelieving scholars as a device invented by the Hebrews to preserve identity and national resilience in a world of evil where the strong rule over the weak, thus, the shepherd kingdom of Jewish eschatology. They are right in their observance of this remarkably consistent pattern, but dead wrong in their interpretation. “For though the Lord is high, he regards the lowly, but the proud he knows from afar” (Ps 138:6). It is a principle that is uniform throughout Scripture, but there is something deeper that God is emphasizing.

In all His ways and workings, God is jealous that His elect know Him most particularly and distinctly as ‘the God who raises the dead’. For this cause, they are always being ‘shut up’ to resurrection, not only ultimately, but daily. He is always ‘taking away the first that He may establish the second.” The pattern in Scripture where God chooses a second born over the first born is an illustration of this. God rejects what is born first (human strength) and choses what is born second (born again). In the case of Jacob and Esau, Jacob was the weaker one who came second, but his weakness was precisely the point. God wants to do something in His strength – not in human strength. It is a simple but glorious divine principal that God can only fill what He first empties, but no one is sufficiently emptied of their power by circumstances alone. Only divine revelation is sufficient to take away the veil that stands in the power of our power. That is why salvation and or maturity depends on first breaking the power of the flesh, but this is never accomplished by suffering alone but by revelation that devastates what Paul calls, ‘confidence in the flesh’.

Certainly the believer has personal responsibility and freedom to humble themselves, but the humility which God respects comes from the work of the Spirit. Our most sincere discipline and determined resolve cannot break confidence in the flesh. It takes the Spirit to bring new birth, and death and resurrection. We see this in our own lives and with eschatological Israel. It is very significant that the ‘set time’ to favor Zion works in perfect timing with the moment that the surviving remnant of Israel has been brought to the end of ‘their power’ (Deut 32:36 with Dan 12:7). Israel’s story is illustrating how regeneration works both for the individual and the nation.

Jacob’s trouble is designed by God to bring the surviving remnant of Israel to the transformational moment that takes place at Christ’s return (compare Gal 1:15-16 with Ps 102:13; 110:3; Isa 66:8; Zech 3:9; 12:10; Mt 23:39; Rev 1:7). There will be a witness to Israel that will prepare them to receive “Him whom they have pierced,” but that witness is not enough. God will also use the chastisement of the Antichrist to bring Jacob to the end of His power (Isa 10:5-6). God uses the Antichrist, as He uses suffering in our own life, to bring Israel to the end of her power, to a place she would not naturally go, so that He can pour out His Spirit on the entire nation.

This is why Israel’s eschatological birth and resurrection happens at the very time that Israel’s human strength is broken, just as the covenant predicted (Lev 26:19; Deut 32:36). Human strength must be broken to remove the veil that exists over the nations (Isaiah 25:7). We should notice carefully the profound relationship that exists between the power of the veil and the power of the flesh. The revelation that eternally transforms the nation must come with no help at all from man. This is why God says in Zechariah, “I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication” (Zec 12:10). He must give revelation unto repentance. It is remarkable to observe in how many ways that the eschatological salvation of the corporate ‘Ebhed Yahweh’ (servant of the Lord) is a reiteration of the cross and resurrection of Jesus, the personal Servant. This suggests that Israel will see His face mirrored in their own hour of ultimate calamity and prostration. There is a principle here that we must not miss.

The salvation of Israel, just like the resurrection of her Messiah, awaits an ultimate act of divine intervention and resurrection precisely at the point that their power is gone. Part of this ultimate end of human strength will be the revelation of Him whom they pierced (Zech 12:10). Thus we see how the Spirit of revelation works to destroy the last remains of human self reliance. The scripture says this comes to them suddenly, ‘in one day’ (Isa 66:8; Eze 39:22; Zech 3:9) – just as our new birth comes in a moment. Their travail is finished with the sudden birth of an all holy nation precisely at the point that the Spirit gives revelation and this revelation is given at the end of their human strength. It was so for Paul. It will be so for Israel (Gal 1:15-16 with Ps 102:13; 110:3). We cannot miss this principle. What then does this great principle portend for God’s purpose for the church that will speak for God to both Israel and the nations in the coming tribulation?

Whether in the initial moment of regeneration and divine quickening or the daily and progressive process of sanctification, the principle is always resurrection, whether a climactic event or a divinely orchestrated process whereby Christ is more deeply formed in the believer. But in all circumstances, it is invariably, and always at the ‘end of power’, i.e., power of the flesh. It must always be the work of the Spirit and not the strength of man.

That is why the believer is always being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake. It is the principle, in keeping with what Paul calls, ‘the mystery of the faith,’ that we see taking place in some measure whenever and wherever God’s elect are being ‘formed into the image of Christ.’ Whether this is in our initial regeneration or our progressive sanctification, either way the principle remains – He removes our power to replace it with His. it is the necessary first to remove carnal confidence that impedes spiritual progress, and this is why God orders the circumstances that keep us always cast upon Him.

“For we do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, of the tribulation we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead” (2Cor 1:8-9).

Paul is speaking of something far more than the doctrine of the resurrection at the last day. It is to know God experimentally, through many dangers, toils, snares, and “deaths.” We see this process continually in our own lives and in the story of Israel. This is how Israel’s story began and how it will end.

“And as for your nativity, in the day you were born your navel was not cut, neither were you washed in water to supple you. You were not salted at all, nor swaddled at all. No eye pitied you to do any of these things for you or to have compassion on you; but you were cast out in the open field, to the loathing of your person, in the day you were born. And when I passed by and saw you polluted in your own blood, I said to you when you were in your blood, Live! Yes, I said to you when you were in your blood, Live!” (Ezekiel 16:4-6)

As the old song says, “must Jesus bear the cross alone and all the world go free? No, there’s a cross for everyone and there’s a cross for me.” So many of us have experienced this pattern and, if we have not, we should ask serious questions about its absence. God is not going to bring Israel to maturity in a different way from the church. If the church will be a witness to Israel in the last days, how shall we speak to them of things that are strange to our own experience? The church, if it is to be the church, must learn the cross and experience its own death and resurrection before there can be any apostolic sending and certainly before the church can off an end times witness to Israel.

Edited by Samuel Clough

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