“. . . there is no doubt about one hard and fast conclusion: the grip of anti-Semitism on the inhabitants of Planet Earth 70 years after the Holocaust remains powerful and perhaps impervious to reason. Why single out one of the world’s tiniest populations for such hatred? To that question, the survey offers no answer . . .” (Commentary magazine’s Jonathan Tobin)

Satan’s hatred is only part of the biblical explanation for what has been called, ‘the everlasting hatred’.

Traditional church interpretation is out of touch with the mystery that alone makes sense of the age old phenomenon of antisemitism. What is our answer? Has the church not abdicated its prophetic calling to point to this unspeakably costly, but fully predicted history of divine contention? The prophetic Spirit does not shrink from pressing this most costly point of divine appeal.

The proverbial elephant in the room is the hugely offensive but unavoidably clear biblical thesis that anti-Semitism cannot be dissociated from the sovereignty of God in judgment. The wrath of God works in profound conjunction with the exposure of the malice of the powers. Israel has been cast upon history as an alabaster box of unspeakable divine cost. They are His witnesses (Isa 43:10). But often, the lessons that this corporate Ebed Yahweh [Servant of the LORD] was intended to teach are too painful to consider or contemplate. Yet, what could be a more unconscionable waste of God’s costly investment, to demonstrate both His mercy and divine severity through them, if we skirt the issues that are raised by such an unique history?

However much it raises the great questions of theodicy, this ancient divine contention is made unavoidably plain by the Hebrew prophets themselves, who were by no means antisemitic. “Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?” (Gal 4:16). How then are we the prophetic people of the Spirit if we neglect to press the point that has cost God so much to make? A prophet, or any true witness for that matter, is one who presents God’s case, who interprets His action in history.

We have neglected God’s own witness and principal point of appeal in our appointed prophetic encounter with Israel! Blindness to the covenant context of history has made us cowardly and humanistic and therefore negligent to press God’s costly point. Only the sending home of that point by the revealing power of the Spirit will ever explain and ultimately end this otherwise irrational blight and curse on humanity. It is a judgment that works both ways, exposing all equally to the sin of Deicide, revealed no less in the spirit of anti-Semitism as in the crucifixion of Jesus, as neither could discern the mystery sent to expose the true disposition of the heart. Count on it! God always first comes to us incognito as the disallowed stone, in weakness and foolishness, in order to find us out. Thus it is with ‘the Jewish problem’.

How many are willing to consider that the wrath of man, even the opposition of Satan, is not Israel’s (or anyone’s) first concern? Such things are held within the bounds of an absolute sovereignty, so that these secondary causes point to a much more profoundly direct divine contention and holy confrontation.

“Who among you will give ear to this? who will hearken and hear for the time to come? Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the robbers? did not the Lord, he against whom we have sinned? for they would not walk in his ways, neither were they obedient unto his law. Therefore he hath poured upon him the fury of his anger, and the strength of battle: and it hath set him on fire round about, yet he knew not; and it burned him, yet he laid it not to heart” (Isa 42:23-25).

“You could have no power at all against Me unless it had been given you from above” (Jn 19:11).

This comes home when Israel is brought at last to consider that the opposition and rage of men is really much more directly the opposition of God Himself. Antisemitism is a continual reminder of the elect nation’s perennial opposition to God and resistance of His Spirit (Mt 23:30-31; Acts 7:51). All the promises are built around an apocalyptic end to this age long contention. It is the tragic side of the covenant (the ‘vengeance’ of the covenant; Lev 26:25; Mic 6:2) that must continue ‘until’ all Israel will be saved according to the promise of the everlasting / new covenant (Jer 31:34; 32:40). All of history groans and travails for this. The church, so far as it is true and in touch with its own calling and nature, groans and travails for this.

I would love to read your thoughts about the Harlot. I know it is a complicated subject, but any help in understanding Rev. 17 would be greatly appreciated! M

I know I have written on this question somewhere before, but was unable to find anything among the archives of past emails, so I’ll try to give you a brief summary of my present view. Though I believe the Lord has given light on the subject, I’m just as sure that much more remains, and I’ll be grateful for the opportunity to adjust my present view as the Lord grants more light, or correction through the body, as we labor together to faithfully compare scripture with scripture. At the annual conference in Ohio this year, Mark Klafter gave a discourse that agrees very nearly with my view. Travis Bennett is another brother who makes the case very well for the view I hold. I’ll invite him to see if he has anything he can send you.

If you’ve been tracking with some of our exchanges for very long, you may have run across my proposal that the ten kings of Dan 7 and Rev 17 may well prove to be an Arab / Islamic block that will unite as a counter measure to check western dominance. Apparently 7 give willing support to the Antichrist, while 3 are brought into the alliance through force. For example, Dan 11:25-27 may hold a clue to how non-compliant nations are forced to unite with him in his plot to invade Jerusalem.

A careful review of those verses leading up to the abomination of Dan 11:31 will support my view that a common hatred of the ‘holy covenant’ is the principal unifying force that brings these warring factions into common cause against the “holy covenant” (Dan 11:27-30). I take the reference to the “holy covenant” in those verses to represent Jerusalem and her recently restored institutions of temple and sacrifice (cf. Isa 63:18). It is this covenant that the ‘coming prince’ confirms in Dan 9:27. The “league” or treaty made with him in Dan 11:23 appears to be only one part of a much larger international peace arrangement.

I believe the ten kings who “hate the whore and burn her flesh with fire” are fulfilling the divinely ordained covenant discipline upon Jerusalem (Rev 17:17). This takes place in the middle of the week when the false security of the first half of the week is broken by the ten nation confederacy of the Antichrist. This invasion comes suddenly when Israel is dwelling in a short-lived delusion of false security (Isa 28:14-15, Eze 38:8, 11, 14; Dan 8:25; 11:23-24; 1Thes 5:3). Note how the prophets compare Jerusalem’s final desolation to an overwhelming flood (Isa 28:2, 14-15, 17-18; 59:18; with Eze 38:8-9; Dan 9:26; 11:22, 31; Mt 24:15-16; Lk 21:24; Rev 11:2).

We are not saying that the harlot is strictly synonymous with Jerusalem. On the contrary, it is very clear that the harlot represents something much more expansive in power and influence (Rev 17:15). Still, Jerusalem is nonetheless contemplated as ‘that great city,’ which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt. How can this be? In her apostasy, the ‘faithful city” is described as belonging in spirit and practice to the “city of confusion,” the symbol of world rebellion. The contradiction of the faithful city’s conformity to the spirit and practices of the surrounding nations was a constant lament of the prophets.

This is why I believe in what might be called a “two-fold” destruction of Babylon. The first stage of destruction is inflicted upon Jerusalem (and possibly her western allies) by the ten nation alliance under Antichrist at the start of the tribulation. This comes suddenly and without warning on the boastful leaders of Jerusalem who have arrogantly dismissed the prophetic warning of imminent disaster (Isa 28:14-15; 1Thes 5:3). The second stage is the great day of God Almighty when greater world-wide Babylon is destroyed with finality.

The ten kings are the divinely appointed instruments of God to inflict the first stage of judgement on the whore (Rev 17:17), but notice; they are not exempt from the second stage of divine wrath that comes upon greater world Babylon at the very end of the tribulation (Rev 16:10, 19). Therefore, in keeping with the prophets, Revelation seems to depict a mysterious intersection between mystery Babylon and Jerusalem in her apostasy.

Because of her high and privileged calling to represent the kingdom of God on earth, Jerusalem’s shame is so much the greater for adopting the character of the world. Thus, there is nothing that could be remotely construed as antisemitic about our view. It is the view of the prophets who continually pressed God’s warning that the elect nation would never be permitted to imitate the surrounding nations (Amos 3:2). It is language specific to the high calling of covenant election and privilege in full view of their exalted millennial destiny to be God’s servant to the nations.

I cannot, of course, prove it from scripture, but a great deal of scriptural evidence leads me to personally expect that at the same time the Antichrist invades Jerusalem, the west will also come under nuclear attack.

With brotherly love, Reggie

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A response to the above from another reader:

Shalom Reggie,

In Rev. 18:4 we read “come out of her my people” and that seems to indicate that not everyone in the environs of the “Great City” is actually a part of the faithless system seated in Sodom and Egypt – Babylon the Great.

It seems Revelation depicts two opposite, extreme poles of faith in Israel related to Messiah Yeshua – one very faithful and following the Lamb wherever he may go, and one apostate and hating God and killing Yeshua and his prophets. Between these two extreme poles there is an undecided mass. The two faithful prophets, and the single false prophet, attempt to convince the undecided mass, all the while the final terrible disasters come on the land and people, and the entire region and world, until the coming of the Lord of Lords and King of Kings, who is the Word of God.

Best wishes in Messiah Yeshua, H

As always, very valuable input. Your view is certainly rich with analogy from the OT and that speaks well for it. However, I am seeing more of the ancient dualism of the two seeds (natures) that divide all of humanity, going back to Gen 3:15. This doesn’t diminish the very Jewish background and framework of John’s Revelation, since the battle lines of that ancient enmity run right through a necessarily Jewish Jerusalem at the end.

Actually, for my reading, Rev 18:4 is another reason I think the concept of mystery Babylon is intended to transcend any particular city. Jerusalem is the exception, because of the anomaly that the called and elect city should so much embody the spirit of the age. That spirit is expressed by its engagement to build up the kingdom of man, even religious man, on the basis of what is “in man.” For this, Jerusalem doesn’t have to be anything more than humanistic, because in biblical perspective, the spirit of self determinism, whether religious or secular, “IS” the ultimate affront.

There is a growing number that are taking a more localized view of Revelation, making much of how Rev 1:7 should be properly translated, “the tribes of the Land,” etc. This view, very popular among preterists, is no longer confined to them, but has growing acceptance in scholarly circles everywhere. I am still convinced of a more universal and cosmic reading.

The metaphor of Babylon, the great harlot, while it certainly includes apostate Jerusalem (as the astonishing anomaly of painful contradiction), cannot be limited to a single city. That is why “coming out of her” is not a simple matter of leaving the environs of any particular city. That is too easy. It is more profoundly a matter of the heart, since its essence is fearful dependency on man in all its forms. That is why the first thing that Cain did when he went out from the presence of the Lord was to build a city, the city of man. That is why I see the metaphor to work so well both ways. It is not ‘either / or’. It speaks of the spirit of Babylon in both its localized and universal presence.

If we compare closely the language that John borrows from the prophets when they speak of the great city centers of the world, not only Babylon, but no less Nineveh and Tyre, etc., it becomes apparent that Mystery Babylon has become a metaphor for man centered civilization. It is the rebellion of Babel come to full.

It has been too little noticed that the full ripening of divine wrath is significantly distinguished in the prophets by what Isaiah calls, ‘the controversy of Zion’ (Isa 34:8; Zech 12:2-3). It is the controversy of the covenant, the ancient covenant, older than the law, that is everlasting, not only with a remnant called the church, but a nation of destiny whose historic apostasy must be cleansed away forever before the age can give way to the kingdom of God on earth.

The church has tended to interpret all prophecy in terms of itself. The question of the nature of the great falling away is one such example, as this has been interpreted as an internal affair within professing Christendom. This is not the view of the prophets, and it is NOT how Paul and his contemporaries would have understood it. They were looking for an imminent world rebellion against the covenant of God with Israel, of which the church was only a part, as the elect remnant bound in hopeful travail to a still elect nation scheduled for unequaled judgment.

The great rebellion is the rebellion of the nations against the holy covenant (Dan 11:28-32). It is also the final stage of the discipline of the covenant outlined in Deut 28-32, as it pertains to God’s dealing with Israel to the end of the age. Not only does the time of the great rebellion coincided with the final wrestling of an elect Jacob on his way to becoming a transformed nation for all nations, it is also the time of God’s great reckoning with the nations concerning their regard for His irrevocable covenant bond with Israel. This explains why an assault on Jerusalem is an assault on the throne of God.

We should be careful to notice why it is that God’s long patience expires precisely when the nations under Antichrist come down to divide the Land and to take possession of a nation that has been only recently, and against all odds, regathered from many generations of exile and sword (Eze 38:8). This is VERY significant! The church has too little inquired why it should be here, at this particular point that “God’s fury comes up on His face” (Eze 38:18). Divine patience has reached its final threshold. Why here? What is this line that has only now been crossed in a way that is different from all former destructions of God’s covenant chastisement of Israel?

If we will be careful to observe the context and the time, as the events leading to the great transition of the day of the Lord. If we will observe the manifest connection of things, we will be compelled to consider that the great rebellion is about much more than the church. It is the rebellion of the nations against the God who elects. It is much more than deceit in the church or antisemitism in the church and the world; it is a rebellion against the covenant claims of the prophetic Word of God, which in turn forces every other issue.

The church, with its arrogant replacement hermeneutic, is responsible for how little the nations have even heard, let alone considered that line and why it means what it means to God. Certainly the great rebellion will divide and expose the false from the true, but the idolatry of man, as it will be embodied in the Antichrist is a phenomenon that goes well beyond ecclesiastical boundaries, though it is particularly appalling when it arrogantly asserts itself into the set apart things of God (Mt 24:15; 2Thes 2:4).

You will know, Hanoch, how that many of the apocalyptic writers who wrote in the period between the testaments would often conceive of the great rebellion in this way. For them, the great rebellion was conceived along the lines of a repetition of Antiochus’ violence against the temple and worship of covenant Israel, only they would portray the ultimate rebellion against all the finality of the earth shaking events of the unequaled tribulation and day of the Lord. The rabbis of the middle ages would see it this way too. All is to say that the ‘great divorce’ of the church from its OT / Jewish roots has taken a much greater toll than we tend to imagine on our interpretation of scripture. We are too illiterate of the OT. This is due to the application of a false dichotomy which has come from a false hermeneutic that would have been unthinkable to the early church. Thus was lost the context, not only of NT revelation, but an entire world view.

So does the great falling away happen in the church? Certainly! It must! Its line will run right through the church (Christendom), just as it runs through the earthly Jerusalem. It will certainly shake the church, as judgment must begin at the house of God. It is ordained to touch everything everywhere. This is why we need to so carefully reflect and consider what God has invested in this issue of covenant with Israel, and how He intends to employ it to drive home His great point / points. It concerns so much more than the exposure of the false church. It will accomplish that too, certainly, but God is requiring something of all nations and He is using the issue of the Land to do it. Not because the Land is anything by itself, not because Zion’s hill is anything by itself, but because God is God and when He speaks clearly, all flesh becomes accountable to hear and bow.

We should reflect much on this. Not only Jacob, but everyone in all places will be caused to wrestle with the great questions evoked by covenant and prophecy, since the testimony of Jesus ‘IS” the Spirit of prophecy. This will be the great tribunal that will shake all things. At issue will be His covenant claims, and the prophetic declarations of His mouth.

I don’t know how He will do it. I can imagine a few things, but I am sure that God intends to use the growing crisis of Israel, and issue of Jerusalem in particular, to first press and then expose everything that pertains to the final ripening of His indignation. Truly, a line has been crossed that has never been crossed in just such a way before (Isa 24:5). It is the point of no return that is the ultimate exposure of “man.”

Yours in the Beloved, Reggie

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

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

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

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

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

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

Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus!

Reggie Kelly

This is more than a predicted event of the end time; it is a principle of the Spirit. The veil that hides Christ is only as strong as the pride of human self sufficiency. Christ is revealed at the end of strength! The one obstruction to revelation is the veil of the flesh, which speaks of the strength that must be broken of “the pride of its power” (Lev 26:19). That is why Christ is the end (goal) of the law for righteousness, because the law was given to take away this perverse presumption of power.

If the last days are indeed the shaking of all things, we may be sure that the church that will speak to Jacob in the wilderness is not one that is a stranger to the lengths that God will go to remove this deceitful kind of power. What kind of power is this that requires such severe dealings, even, and particularly with religious man at his best? Are we right to suppose that this power is lodged more deeply in the religious humanism of Judaism than in Christianity? Hardly.

Will Christ be fully formed in the church of the last witness apart from a deep travail of the Spirit sufficient to ‘cast down’ this hidden conceit of the heart? (see Gal 4:19). What will press the church to this? If the church, as the pillar and ground of the truth, will be the prophetic voice to Israel in the tribulation (Dan 11:32-33; 12:3, 10; Rev 12:10), what kind of shaking must surely come in advance of that time in order to deeply empty the servant people that will speak to Jacob in his distress?

Christ was crucified in weakness and raised in power. Paul meant this not only descriptively of Jesus but prescriptively for the church. It is a statement of our corporate calling to Israel and the nations. This is why Jesus had more than a few isolated predictions in mind when He said, “Ought not Christ to have suffered …?” He was referring to the much larger pattern of the many servant sons (Joseph, David, etc.) who anticipated in their sufferings the preeminent Servant. This is how we must speak to Israel.

Must Jacob bear his tribulation alone and all the church go free? Are we to suppose that those sealed servants of God who will suffer with Israel during her wilderness flight have been only recently saved after an alleged pre-trib rapture? No, they are servants with a history in God who know the fellowship of His sufferings and the power of His resurrection. It seems that prophetic logic would forbid that God would speak to Jacob through any lesser agency than a corporate servant son who has passed through death to know and testify to “the God who raises the dead.” Only by such a church would God speak / prophesy to Jacob in the day of his calamity. This is why I am led to expect some deep dealings that will shake and humble the church in necessary advance of Jacob’s trouble, not only individually, but corporately.

As things threaten almost daily to bring radical changes to the world as we’ve known it, it is only a matter of time till the dam breaks, not in the final form of the last 3 ½ years of “the final and unequaled tribulation,” as many falsely expect, but in the form of seismic changes that must precede and prepare for that time. This too will be costly, but it is this time that I believe God will be doing His great work of preparation in the church for the final thrust of witness and evangelism (Dan 11:32-33; 12:3), which, according to Rev 7:9, 14 will result in the greatest harvest of souls the world has ever seen. So the last witness of the tribulation church is guaranteed unprecedented success by the inerrant Word of prophecy. If our eye will be made utterly single in the pursuit of His glory, we will count it privilege to suffer for His sake, as a supreme gift of grace (Phil 1:29).

I am hoping for just a little time to probe this question together in our upcoming conference.

Yours in the Beloved, Reggie