August 28, 2010

The Order of the Return (Part 1)

that ill-prepares the people of God for what is ahead for both Israel and the church. Preterism puts the tribulation in the past. Amillennialism conceives of a “little season” of Satan’s release at the end of this age, with little specificity, and certainly no definite relationship to Israel. Historicism, with its often failed ‘year day’ theory, spreads the tribulation out over history, with an intensive resurgence at the end, while Pre-tribulationism exempts the church from any presence or role in the tribulation, so that “Jacob’s trouble” is only “Jacob’s problem”, since the church is in heaven at the wedding feast while Israel suffers the Antichrist. Hence, ours is a comparatively rare perspective that sees both Israel and the church together in a literal tribulation of 3 ½ years of unequaled affliction, as the church is engaged in prophetic witness and intercessory travail for the final redemption of the covenant nation, amid a common experience of world wide flight and persecution.

When aware of a future great tribulation, the primary concern has been the purification of the church through persecution. This is true, and we believe the church will be greatly transformed, but the primary purpose of “the tribulation, the great one” is to accomplish the historic fulfillment of what the prophets call, the ‘everlasting covenant’ (Isa 59:21; Jer 32:40; Ro 11:27), which necessarily requires the full coming in of “all Israel”, whom Paul identifies as the “natural branches” of present enmity (Ro 11:21, 24, 28). In conjunction with Christ’s return, the restoration of Israel finishes the mystery of God (Rev 10:7) and begins the millennial reign of Christ. […]

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reggiekelly

August 5, 2010

Regarding “The Source of the Problem in the Middle East”

[…] Pre tribulational Dispensationalism is a comparatively recent branch of a much larger tree. It is only one form of premillennialism, which has a much longer history. Most of the early church fathers can be quoted to show clearly that they were premillennial, literalistic, and futuristic in their reading of prophecy. The allegorical approach to prophecy, basic to all forms of replacement theology, came much later with Origen and Augustine and has since dominated both Catholicism and Protestantism, but not without many great lights all through church history that continued to hold the plain reading of the prophetic scriptures.

There is one note of ‘half truth’ in this writer’s wild claims. Historically, wherever the scripture has been interpreted literally, there has been a favorable disposition towards the Jew. I believe this owes to one thing in particular. Any plain reading of Scripture gives the strong impression that though God is sometimes especially angry with this people, a closer look will reveal that this special anger is related to a special love, so that regardless how one understands the precise nature of divine election, one gets the impression that whatever it is, the Jew is God’s special witness to it. The Jew represents God’s divine right to choose as He will choose, which is precisely what is being so deeply tested and exposed through the issue of the Jew historically, as will be especially apparent in the coming “controversy of Zion” (Isa 34:8; Zech 12:2-3). […]

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reggiekelly

July 3, 2010

Christian Zionism | Stephen Sizer

[…] Through the mystery of the gospel, this grace (the salvation of the coming day) has appeared to all men in unexpected advance of THAT DAY. This is the revelation of the one new man through the mystery of Christ in you (even you gentiles), but this takes nothing from the promise that the gospel will yet be revealed to the beleaguered remnant at the end of Jacob’s trouble. That will be the time of the “restitution of all things spoken by all the prophets since the world began.” To conceive of that restoration as NOT including God’s covenant promise to ‘post-tribulational Israel would have been unthinkable, as it surely was to Paul. Instead, the church, for the larger part, continues to “boast against the branches” to this day, even while Jerusalem trembles (Isa 34:8; Zech 12:2), threatening the “literal” fulfillment of all unfulfilled prophecy that has been denied for most of church history.

So despite Jewish unbelief concerning Christ, the covenant places and institutions are still divinely regarded as “holy”. Therefore, when we speak of the rage of the Antichrist against the “holy covenant” (Dan 11:28, 30), we are speaking of Satan’s hatred of Jewish election and right to the Land on the basis of divine predestination. We are NOT suggesting that Jewish worship counts for anything apart from faith in Christ. Manifestly, it does not. Otherwise, their worship would be acceptable. That it is NOT acceptable is shown by the fact that Israel’s greatest discipline and judgment comes at the very time their religious self assurance is reaching its heights […]

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reggiekelly

June 20, 2010

Seeing God in Israel’s Trouble… and Our Own

[…] Things are coming that will be tragic and pathetic beyond our ability to bear. Our hearts will break, as our faith will be tested to the core. “It will be a terror only to understand the report” (Isa 28:19). This was the prophet, Habakkuk’s, dilemma. He was perplexed at God’s choice to use a nation of far greater ferocity and wickedness to come down for the scourging of His covenant elect.

The prophet knew keenly the nation’s covenant dereliction, but it was difficult for Habakkuk to find the equal weight of justice, not so much in the severity of judgment, but in God’s choice to use as the instrument of that judgment a nation that far exceeded Israel for cruelty and pagan defiance of covenant righteousness (see Isa 10:5). It was particularly God’s use of a nation far more wicked and fierce than the victim nation that constituted the offense to Habakkuk’s own human perceptions and relative measurements. We see not as He sees (Isa 55:8-9).

This is the mystery of God’s use of evil in behalf of His elect. We need to see that behind the ‘fierce countenance’ (Deut 28:50; Dan 8:23) of Satan’s hatred (in this case, the “ancient hatred” of Esau, which has found modern expression through the spirit of Islam; Ezek 35:5), it is ultimately God Himself that is opposing Israel by permitting their enemies to prevail against them. The Antichrist, as pre-typified in the King of Assyria is called the “rod” of God’s chastisement (Isa 10:5). It is God Himself who puts hooks into the jaws of the northern invader (Ezek 38:4). God employs the “evil thought” of a wicked principality (Ezek 38:10) as the very means by which He brings judgment and corrective discipline upon His people for their neglect of the covenant relationship. In Rev 17:16-17, there is a curious use of language that shows the absolute sovereignty of God in the employment of evil for His more ultimate purpose. The decision of the ten kings to support the Antichrist in His assault on the Harlot is something that God Himself has “put” in their hearts “to fulfill His will …” […]