Yes, the ESV has some poorly translated spots here and there, but no more than most others. Except in the case of Dan 9:25 ESV, Dan 9:26 ESV. (Compare with Dan 9:25, 26 KJV) That isn’t just a poor translation; it’s bad! Yet, even there, there are arguments, coming mostly from liberal Christian and Jewish Hebrew scholars that make a case for it to be translated precisely as it is in the ESV. This translation has “given great occasion to the enemies” of the messianic interpretation.

That translation made the anti-missionaries happy, giving legitimization by Christian translators to what Jewish Hebrew scholars have been protesting all along. Of course, speaking from a strictly “technical” linguistic standpoint, it can also be JUST as legitimately translated the way KJV, NKJV, NASB, and nearly every other Christian translation in history has translated it UNTIL the ESV came along and makes this massive concession and capitulation to what Jewish scholars have been insisting all along to be the result of Christian bias, tampering with the text, giving it a forced, “unnatural” meaning. But unnatural to who?

They argue that it is the Christian who has the vested interest to “force” the text to yield a meaning that would be unnatural unless one was already predisposed to see in it one Messiah rather than two. For Jews who have no such vested interest (?), it is argued that one should see two messiahs, not Israel’s long awaited anointed Davidic ruler of ancient promise, but two priestly figures or anointed leaders, one after the first seven weeks (49 years) and another after the 62 weeks (434 years), with the latter anointed leader killed, usually by some usurper.

So what’s the tiebreaker between (some would argue) equally technical options? Well, it’s context! context! context!

But how one is inclined to see the context becomes the decisive question. Who then is willing to ask what would seem the “natural” and I think decisive question concerning the context? What is the burden of the context? Ask yourself; would Daniel be expecting an “end” (consummation) to the times of the Gentiles and Israel’s everlasting deliverance from exilic suffering, not to mention his own personal resurrection at the “END” of the final week? Would he be expecting all of this to take place WITHOUT a single reference to the appearance and death of the “curse reversing seed of the woman”, AKA the Messiah, son of David Son of God? This is what we’re asked to believe. Even the Son of Man in Dan 7 is to be interpreted simply as a metaphor for a corporate human figure symbolizing the kingdom of the saints in contrast to the beast-like kingdoms of carnal man.

Is the cutting off of the anointed prince there in Dan 9:26 just some priest that got killed by some usurper. This is the typical understanding of interpreters less “interested” to see Jesus or the Davidic Prince of Israel in this passage.

Or is this Isaiah’s suffering Servant, “cut off” (Isa 53:8) in substitutionary atonement for His people’s transgressions? Scholars just can’t figure out why this death of this particular anointed leader should just happen to fall exactly one week (7 years) before the end. But what end? The answer of liberal scholars has always been to see this as the death of Onias III and the seven years the “approximate” time of the 2300 days of Antiochus’ persecution of the Jews.

Or, is the “end” in view the “grand” end and climax of the covenant in Israel’s deliverance and the resurrection of the righteous? How about the same “end” that is mentioned all throughout the rest of the book? How about THAT end?! That’s an effective point in dialogue with Jews, Christians, and Joe unbeliever, but not pragmatic liberals. Here too, they will say, yes, this is exactly the “end” that a pseudonymous Daniel had in mind. He simply ventured a prediction that didn’t come to pass as expected.

Pseudo-Daniel’s predictive blunder permits liberal biblical criticism firm certainty that the book is to be dated circa 168 B.C. Why? Because this is where the pseudonymous author, presenting history as prophecy up to this point, now ventures to make an actual prediction concerning Antiochus’ end and the resurrection of the maskilim that simply failed to happen.

Still, somehow, such an obviously discredited “pious fraud” survived and made its way, not only into the Hebrew canon in the first century A.D., but into the library of the Essenes of the Qumran community in the second century B.C.

These were the contemporaries and successors to the history of the Maccabean struggle that saw Antiochus’ persecution as fulfillment, but also knew his end came about in a way that was completely contradictory to the end described of the the little horn / vile person of Daniel’s prophecy. And this is not even to mention that no resurrection happened, and Israel soon fell back under the power of Rome. How then does such obviously failed prophecy make it into canonical acceptance, as revered by even near contemporaries of when the liberals date the book?

You can see the assault of the powers of the air in their dread of this book’s contents and what this portends for their end. As Travis so often says, “and therein lies the problem!”

Why all the fuss and confusion? You’ll guess my usual answer, but “It’s the mystery, Watson!” Always the mystery! Closed up and sealed till the time of the end!

Not too often, but very occasionally, how we see the big picture will determine translational decisions for weal or for woe. Can we even conceive that God deliberately left us just enough rope to hang ourselves with if we are not very careful, believing that not one jot or tittle can pass without perfect, detailed fulfilment of every line of the sacred trust. This is no less true, even in the pious, most often completely sincere science / art of translation.

I believe that here too God has “hid these things from the wise and prudent”. To arrive at the truth that God Himself has hidden within the text takes a miracle of mercy. It doesn’t come naturally, and great learning is no advantage where the secrets of God are concerned.

By sovereign design, He has put these difficulties right in the text for His purposes in mercy and judgement and so none can glory. He has done just that in a few places throughout scripture, particularly where the sealed vision of eschatology is concerned.

Many fail to see beyond the partial, albeit sometimes quite remarkably parallels in history to insist on a much more precise and exhaustive fulfillment in the future at the end. Yet there are many instances of this telescoped perspective of blending the near and the far in Hebrew prophecy. We see this particularly in Dan 8 & 11 for just one example, but even somewhat in the Olivet prophecy.

This phenomenon of a double horizon in prophecy works as a kind of decoy, hiding and obscuring from the hasty scholarly mind the necessity of a more thoroughly detailed and exhaustive fulfilment at the end, repeating what took place in real pattern and principle on the near horizon, but now in much more exhaustive, fuller precision of detail at the end. Here we stand!

The post ESV on Dan 9:25-26? appeared first on Mystery of Israel.

I’ve never owned a Scofield Bible but a brother on the internet gave me the following below as an example of Scofield and dispensationalism teaching two peoples with two separate destinies. I dont quite know yet what to make of the statements. I just wanted to share them. I’m coming to see there is a difference between classical pre-mill dispensationalism and the historical pre-mill view although I’m still doing some sorting in my mind. The brother said these were Scofield’s notes on Hosea 2:2. Just thought I would share it.

That Israel is the wife of Jehovah (see vs. 16-23), now disowned but yet to be restored, is the clear teaching of the passages. This relationship is not to be confounded with that of the Church to Christ (John 3. 29, refs.). In the mystery of the Divine tri-unity both are true. The N.T. speaks of the Church as a virgin espoused to one husband (2 Cor. 11. 1,2); which could never be said of an adulterous wife, resored in grace. Israel is, then, to be the restored and forgiven wife of Jehovah, the Church the virgin wife of the Lamb (John 3.29; Rev. 19.6-8); Israel Jehovah’s earthly wife (Hos. 2.23); The Church the Lamb’s heavenly bride (Rev. 19.7).

Hi, Doc. Thanks for this. I actually have a Scofield (the ’67 edition with word changes) and like it a lot. I favor its literal and futuristic approach to prophecy and Israel, but not its particular variety of dispensationalism, particularly its view of the nature of the church.

There are two basic pillars that support ‘pre-tribulational’ dispensationalism. One is the doctrine of imminence (the view that no prophetic event stands in the way of the potentiality of an any moment coming of Christ, a potential that has existed since the earliest apostles first preached the ‘blessed hope’, which they define as exemption from the great tribulation). The second pillar is dispensationalism’s unique view of the nature of the church. According to dispensationalism, the church had no existence before Pentecost and does not (cannot) exist on earth after the rapture. I see both of these pillars as seriously flawed.

According to dispensationalism, there are two distinct programs of God, two distinct peoples of God, and two distinct dispensations for Israel and the church. The church belongs to God’s ‘mystery’ program for this dispensation only. The dispensation of the ‘church’ is seen as confined to the period between Pentecost and the rapture. In their view, the concept of the mystery removes the church from anything anticipated in OT prophecy. Therefore, it is believed that the dispensation of the church must end with the rapture before the “prophetic program” for Israel can be resumed. Thus the events of the last seven years (Daniel’s seventieth week), are understood to belong to an entirely different dispensation.

It is believed that the church is a mystery that occupies a parenthetical interim between Pentecost and the rapture, and thus stands in marked contrast to God’s “prophetic program” for Israel. According to dispensationalism’s erroneous view of the Pauline mystery, the church is so completely distinguished from even the righteous of Israel as to constitute a distinct people of God with its own distinct destiny. This doctrine of the two peoples of God is THE defining hallmark of pre-trib dispensationalism.

Note: (These features of dispensational thought developed in the mid 19th century out of an effort to understand the distinction between Israel and the church. Early, pretribulationism was not initially born out of a desire to escape tribulation as unfairly accused. Rather, the primary motive was to defend the hope that Christ could come any moment, i.e., the doctrine of imminence.)

We too distinguish between Israel and the church, but not in this way. There is another choice that does not require the dispensationalist’s notion of two peoples of God.

The election continues to go with the nation even in its unbelief. In that sense, the Jewish people remain beloved (foreloved) as a people, and can be rightly called ‘the chosen people’. But are they another ‘people of God’? True, the Jewish people remain a necessarily distinct people of covenant destiny. To this end the Jews are miraculously preserved in order to publicly demonstrate and openly vindicate the power and election of God towards this people. (“What shall the receiving again them be but life from the dead?”) But the promise of coming salvation, and the preservation of a national identity to that end, assumes nothing concerning personal salvation of individual Jews. So the question of whether there is more than one people of God is more nuanced than recognized by the simplistic ‘either / or’ choice pressed by one school against the other.

In contrast to both replacement theology and dispensationalism, we believe that the distinction between Israel and the church is better compared to the distinction that always existed between the elect nation and the more specific election of grace from within the nation, namely, the righteous remnant.

Through the revelation of the mystery of the gospel, that righteous remnant, now become the eschatological remnant of first-fruits, can be defined as the ‘body of Christ’ comprised of all who are indwelt by the ‘Spirit of Christ’. In my view, the body of Christ (though it could not have been known by that term) includes the OT righteous (see 1Pet 1:11, “the Spirit of Chirst which was ‘in’ them”).

With the new revelation has come a new language. But this is where we need to exercise caution. We learn from the doctrine of Christ’s pre-existence that for something to be newly revealed does not mean that it has come newly into existence. This is an important distinction when we are speaking of Christ and the church. Much has come to light in the gospel that had real existence before the dispensation of the fuller revelation. This applies as much to the ‘body of Christ’ as to Christ Himself and the unity of persons in the Godhead.

We believe that the church now revealed and described as the body of Christ is in indivisible continuity with the ‘remnant according to the election of grace’ that existed throughout Israel’s history and before. Israel as a nation remains elect despite its temporary unbelief. It’s destiny is only discernible by covenant and prophecy, not by its temporal behavior. The nation’s long history of apostasy cannot thwart the appointed time of transformation (Ps 102:13). This is necessary because of the demands of the covenant that remain unfulfilled apart from the reinstatement of the ‘natural branches’.

Never could the presence of a mere remnant guarantee the nation’s continuance in holiness in the Land as specified in promise and prophecy (literally understood). This can only be accomplished by the salvation of ‘all Israel’, which means the end of the remnant, since from that time ‘all’ know Him forever (Jer 31:34; 32:40; Ezek 34-39). This is everywhere shown to come no sooner than the apocalyptic day of the Lord (Isa 59:21; 66:8; Ezek 39:22; Zech 3:9). Only the coming of the revealing regenerating Spirit upon the surviving remnant as a whole can guarantee the kind of enduring national obedience necessary to continue in the Land ‘forever’, thus establishing the ‘everlasting’ covenant by an ‘everlasting’ righteousness (Dan 9:24; Jer 32:40; Isa 60:21).

Hence, Pentecost represents a first-fruits of that coming eschatologial transformation of the nation. This is the revelation that has made the church the church, and when Israel will receive the same revelation ‘in that day’, it too will be no less church, and no less the body of Christ, albeit in a unique stewardship of divine commission on the earth, as the long promised light that will lighten multitudes of gentiles throughout the millennium of Israel’s glory (Isa 60:5). It is to this church of the eschatological remnant of first-fruits that the gentiles have been added in unexpected numbers. As an eschatological entity, the church, like Paul (Act 13:47), understands its apostolic task as a first-fruits anticipation of Israel’s commission to lighten the nations. None of this supplants or replaces the covenant promise that envisions the salvation of the nation, but rather constitutes a first-fruits anticipation of that very eschatological glory, which is the “without which not” of covenant fulfillment (of any literal kind).

Your prayers are so deeply appreciated. In His great goodness, Reggie

Followup Question:

On Mon, May 5, 2008:
Hi Reggie, have you ever seen or read the book, “The Great cover up” A research project (I guess) that traces the origination of pre trib back via, Dallas Theological College, Scofields the brethren and Darby to the McDonald family in Scotland. Apparently their daughter Mary I think was very prone to long (and way out) prophetic utterances (some of which were documented ) I believe Darby or Irving actually attended these meetings and took the idea back to the Brethren. The book contains some documentation and actual eye witness accounts.
I believe after promoting this view a number left the brethren over this including George Muller the father of orphans who said something like, I can have my bible or can have Darby and so I choose to leave and keep my bible.

It was a long time ago I read this so my memory may fail me but that was the gist

Christian love and kind regards

Hi Robert. Yes, I’ve read McPherson a long time ago in a first edition of his book. There was quite a gathering of gifted ministers in the original brethren movement. Some from both sides of the rapture question are noted for their substantial work as writers and theologians. My favorites are Tregelles and Newton; both parted ways with Darby over his innovation.

It is most interesting that just when so many gains were being made in the restoration of prophetic truth, the pre-trib rapture theory was brought in like the proverbial Trojan Horse into the evangelical camp. It became the dominant view.

Actually Margaret McDonald’s prophecies presupposed a split rapture distinguishing the spiritually fit (the five wise) from other less perfected believers who would get straightened out by passing through the tribulation. So it wasn’t the pretrib rapture of the classic dispensationalism variety as formulated by Darby and popularized in the Scofield Bible. This remains the view of those that identify themselves as ‘classic dispensationalist’. Margaret McDonald’s view was more in keeping with the partial rapture that some Pentecostals continue to teach.

I seem to recall that Darby’s more refined synthesis occurred to him during a season of illness somewhere in the mid 1830’s. The supposed revelation confirmed for him the the supposed separation of the church and Israel and their different destinies on the basis of 2Thes 2:7. He was the first to deduce that if the restrainer was the Holy Spirit, then His removal assumed the removal of the church, as those indwelt by the Spirit. The idea suggests a ‘reversal of Pentecost’ (John Walvoord) whereby the Holy Spirit will no longer indwell the so-called ‘tribulation saints’.

After the rapture, the Holy Spirit returns to His former relationship of merely ‘with’ or ‘upon’, but not ‘in’ the faithful, as believed to be the case with the saints of the OT. Thus, the pre-trib rapture of the church as concurrent with the removal of the Holy Spirit as the ‘one who now holds back’ the Antichrist, the ‘blessed hope’ is protected as an imminent event, since in this way the church of this ‘mystery dispensation’ is kept separate from the sign events of God’s prophetic program with Israel. Thus the two peoples of God. The church is the heavenly people with heavenly promises (covenants?) and heavenly destiny, while Israel is the earthly people of God, with earthly promises and an earthly destiny.

So the Lord’s manifest return after the tribulation (Mt 24:29-31) is not for the church. Rather, the purpose of Christ’s post-tribulational coming is to end the times of the Gentiles and to establish His mediatorial kingdom over the millennial earth and rule out of a restored Israel. So the rapture is distinguished from the so-called ‘kingdom coming’.

Grace and peace, Reggie

The post Israel and the Church: Two Views appeared first on Mystery of Israel.

In vs. 10 Jesus states that He will keep them from the hour of temptation which will come upon the whole world, to try them that dwell upon the Earth. My question is what is the hour of temptation?

Revelation 3:10
Because you have kept the word of my patience, I also will keep you from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.

Seen best in light of:

Luke 21:34-35
And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth.

And perhaps also:

Joel 3:14
Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision:
for the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision.

What is this hour, and what does it mean to be ‘kept from’ it?

The term hour in the NT is often used of an appointed time or a time that is in some way decisive (Mt 26:45; Jn 2:4; 4:23; 5:25; 12:23; 16:21; 17:1). In at least one instance in Rev 17:12, an hour is shown to cover the whole time that the ten kings give their strength and power to the beast. This would appear to include the entire 3 1/2 years of the unequaled tribulation. Elsewhere in the Revelation, the term carries a much more narrow usage, as in the case of great Babylon’s destruction. There, the hour describes the time of the 7th bowl of wrath, the very end of the end (Rev 16:17-18; 18:10, 17, 19). But in only one great and unequaled tribulation will the whole of the earth be so ultimately and finally tested.

In what sense is one to be ‘kept from’ the hour of testing? Some argue that here is promised, not only deliverance from what the hour threatens but physical removal from its very presence. Advocates of this view point out that the Greek words that are translated ‘kept from’ can as well be translated “kept out of”. However, we see the same words in John 17:15, and there the promise is not exemption from the presence of danger but protection from falling under the power of Satan.

I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one.

How can we determine whether to be ‘kept from’ or ‘kept out of’ the hour is promise of physical immunity from the time of the final, great test, or divine preservation within it?

Before coming to the specifics of that question, it is well we remember that this promise was addressed particularly to the deeply tested church of Philadelphia. Even though the ultimate, age ending great tribulation would not come until a later time, the promise of divine preservation in the midst of great trial was no less serviceable and applicable to believers under severe testing all throughout the whole time of the church’s struggle on earth. So however “kept from the hour” is understood, its meaning and application cannot be limited only to the time of the last persecution under the last beast.

It is clear that escape and protection is promised to tribulation believers, not from persecution and suffering, of course, (Dan 7:21, 25; 11:33-35; 12:10; Rev 6:11; 13:7; 14:13; 20:4), but from demonic deception, and the plagues of divine wrath that will be inflicted ONLY on those who take the mark.

We see this in the pre-tribulational sealing of the 144,000 (Rev 7:3), and in the flight of the woman (Israel) to seek refuge in the wilderness (Rev 12:6, 14). Not only are believers protected from the evil one (Jn 17:15), but even unbelievers, particularly the elect remnant of Israel, are seen to survive to the day of national repentance at the Lord’s return (Ps 102:13; Isa 59:20-21; 66:8; Eze 39:22; Zech 3:9; 12:10; Mt 23:39; Mt 24:22; Ro 11:26-27; Rev 1:7). Not only this, but the scripture makes equally clear that there will be gentile survivors who apparently were not saved in time for the rapture. These will join themselves to the penitent survivors of Israel and joyously assist in their return to the Land (see Zech 8:23; Isa 14:1-2; 49:22; 60:9; 66:20).

Such manifest survival, even by many who are not saved till the end, fully exposes the fallacy of the argument that in order for the church to escape wrath, she must be removed from the earth. There could hardly be a greater misuse and misapplication of the promise of 1Thes 5:9.

For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,

Interestingly, the words of the glorified Jesus in Rev 3:10 (red in some Bibles) are very nearly the same words He spoke on earth in Lk 21:34-35. This is remarkable proof that John is carefully writing the very words of Jesus that appear only here and in Luke’s account of the Olivet discourse. For me, such manifestly parallel usage is decisive for the interpretation of Rev 3:10.

When we closely examine the context of Luke’s account of Jesus’ parallel warning, we see that what is to be escaped by the wakeful, praying believer is not the time that these events will be happening, but the things (perils and pressures) that would threaten to subvert his or hers ability to “stand before the Son of man” (Lk 21:36). As the context makes indisputably clear, this time of ‘standing before the Son of man’ cannot refer to a presumed rapture before the tribulation but to Jesus’ post-tribulational return in power and glory (Lk 21:27 with Lk 21:36).

That ‘day’ comes suddenly, but not without warning. It will not come “unaware“, like a thief, upon wakeful and observant believers (Lk 21:34 with 1Thes 5:2-4) They will recognize the signs (Mt 24:3, 15; Lk 21:10-11, 20-21, 25-26; 1Thes 5:3; 2Thes 2:4). 

Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near (Lk 21:28). So you also, when you see these things happening, know that the kingdom of God is near (Lk 21:31).

Jesus anticipates that the matter will be quite the opposite with some claiming the Christian faith.  

But if that servant says in his heart, “My Lord delays His coming”; and begins to beat the male and female servants, and eat and drink and be drunk, the lord that servant will come on a day when he is not looking for him, and at an hour when it is not aware, and will cut him asunder and appoint him his portion with the unbelievers (Lk 12:45-46). 

Note how nearly the language here compares with Luke’s account of the Olivet prophecy, 

“But take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly. For it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man” (Lk 21:34-36), 

and also with Paul’s description of the day of the Lord in 1Thes 5:2-4.

For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night. For when they say, “Peace and safety!” then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape. But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this Day should overtake you as a thief.

In all of these references, we observe that the great scandal will be that many professing Christian faith will be caught unaware and unprepared, not for an imminent, un-signaled rapture of the church, but for the post-tribulational return of Christ.

Paul equates such ignorance with a state of spiritual darkness. Such darkness is fully expected of the world but not of believers. This is the scandal of the end times, and we see why.

It speaks of an unconscionable rejection of the truth, leaving one vulnerable to the great delusion that Paul says that God Himself will be obliged to send on all  who have not received the love of the truth. This will be particularly the case when it is seen just how much light professing Christendom will have rejected in the face of some of the most compelling evidence of fulfilled prophecy ever seen on earth since the time of Jesus. 

The scandal will not be that professing Christians were caught unprepared for a Lk any moment rapture. The far greater indictment will be that many who count themselves Christians will not be alerted by some of the most outstanding and clearly defined signs as laid down by the prophets, Jesus, and Paul.

This means that all of the fully foretold signs and otherwise recognizable evidence that the great tribulation is here, and the Lord’s return near, will have passed without awakening these professors of the Christian religion out of their spiritual stupor. 

This is not because there has been no signs. On the contrary, the scripture reads clear. These are professing Christians that will remain unmoved by the signs, even in their manifest presence. This is the great anomaly and scandal. It is the ultimate indictment on apostate Christendom. 

It is telling that as late as the 6th bowl, just before the final 7th bowl is poured out to bring the “great day of God Almighty” (Rev 16:16-17), Jesus interjects to announce that His coming, now so truly imminent, will yet take many as a thief, even Christians with stained garments (Rev 16:15).

This tells us that despite all the magnificent, fully foretold sign events of the tribulation, Jesus’ return will not only overtake the world as a thief, but many who claim Jesus as their Lord. Context will not permit us the luxury of applying this to an earlier, secret, un-signaled return. It is manifestly Jesus’ post-tribulational return that is shown to take the hypocrites unaware, as a thief, and this despite all the highly detailed prophecies clearly marking the time and describing the meaning of these events. There is good reason why and how this will be so, but that discussion would take us too far from our topic to enter upon here. 

Many ask how can such thoroughly foretold events take the world, and particularly Christians unaware, as a thief? For this very cause, some have argued for the necessity of an earlier, un-signaled return that is to be distinguished from the well signaled return after the tribulation (Mt 24:15-31; 2Thes 2:3-4; Rev 6-19), hence the ‘inference’ of two distinct comings. But aren’t we seeing this now? Behold the confusion that reigns in the study of prophecy! How many optional interpretations of the end can there be?! One can only think of Daniel’s prophecy. “Many shall be purified, made white, and refined, but the wicked shall do wickedly; and none of the wicked shall understand, but the wise shall understand” (Dan 12:10).

Those who “escape all these things” in order to be prepared to “stand before the Son of man” are the same wakeful believers who recognize the signs that are ‘beginning to come to pass.”

And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draws near (Lk 21:28). 

That certain definite, alerting signs can be seen does not comport with pretribulationism’s doctrine of an unsignaled, any moment rapture. Yet the very believers who are commanded to pray to “escape all these things” are being told that they will see “these things begin to come to pass”. In keeping with Jesus’ warning elsewhere in the other synoptic accounts of the Olivet prophecy, with Paul’s warning warning in 1Thes 5:2-4; 2Thes 2:3-4, Peter’s warning (2Pet 3:10), and Jesus’ warning in Rev 16:15, the only ones who will be caught “unawares” are those who abide in darkness and fail to vigilantly watch for “all these things” that will signal the Lord’s now truly ‘imminent’ return. 

So what are the “all these things” that is being escaped in Lk 21:36? Is it the foreboding portents of terror?   

“And there will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken” (Lk 21:25-26).

If that were so, we would not see the following encouragement. 

“Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near” Lk 21:28). 

Rather, where the believer is concerned, it is the urgency to not fall prey to the great and unparalleled deception against which Jesus and Paul so gravely and repeatedly warn (Mt 24:4, 11, 24; 2Thes 2:3, 11). This is why I included Joel 3:14 as a possible reference to this “hour”. This is why there is such a great premium that must be placed on the interpretation of what these events mean that will be so decisive for the escape and salvation of many during the time of the great test (Dan 11:33). Therefore, the safe keeping that is promised cannot be immunity from persecution, but escape from the unequaled deception that will expose one to the wrath that will be poured out, not on believers, of course, but only upon the fatally deceived followers of the beast (Rev 11:18: 16:2, 10).

It is another discussion, too involved to enter upon here, but it can be shown exactly when Paul expected to be raised and translated at the resurrection on the last day. When this is proven beyond reasonable dispute, it becomes clear that however we understand “the hour” or the nature of what it means to be “kept from” it, one thing we know. It cannot mean an early exit, physical removal, or exemption from tribulation to which all saints are appointed (see Acts 14:22).

I tend to think the hour of Rev 3:10 includes more than the last hour of Babylon’s destruction, which is identified with the Lord’s thief-like return at the great day of God (2Pet 3:10-12; Rev 16:14-17; 18:10, 17, 19 with Eze 39:8). I believe it should be equated with the great tribulation of the final 3 1/2 years, and not just a final period of wrath at the very end, as some have argued. 

So in what sense are we kept from that hour? I think the promise is that the faithful will be kept from ‘the power of the hour’, which is to say, saved from the deception and the pressures to defect that will be extreme. The overcoming saints of Revelation are kept, not only from wrath but from the peril of loss of witness and the shame of a spotted garment (Rev 2:10, 22-23; 3:3, 16; 16:15).

One final point: never before the 19th century was the promise of being “kept from the hour” interpreted to mean physical exemption from the great test, and total removal from the earth, as this would be to contradict, not only many clear texts, but the whole pattern of God’s work in the past by setting forth in every season of crisis a witness of overcoming faith under fire. How then, by any reckoning, are tribulation saints, who are no less the dear children of God, to be denied the promise of being ‘kept from the hour’?

It is ridiculous to argue that only those believers living before the tribulation are “not appointed to wrath” (1Thes 5:9), as if to suggest that the saints living during the tribulation are any the less partakers of this promise. Whether living before or during the tribulation, never are the children of God the subject of divine wrath. This alone is sufficient to prove that one does not have to be absent from the hour of the test in order to escape its dangers and evils.    

Followup Question
Would you be able to direct me to the scripture(s) where Paul expects to be raised and resurrected at the end of the 3 1/2 years?

Yes, the object first must be to establish when the OT saints expected to be raised, show those passages in their native contexts, and then show that Paul expected his own resurrection with “all who belong to Christ” (1Cor 15:23) to be at the same time that the OT righteous are raised. A careful comparison of scripture will show decisively that the time of the resurrection never changed from OT to NT.

It is easy to prove from Job, Isaiah, and Daniel when the OT saints would be raised. Let’s start there and then move to Paul’s direct exclamation that ties his hope of translation to the same time, namely, the end of the final tribulation at the day of the Lord.

Let’s start with Job.

Notice that Job’s inspired expectation agrees with Paul’s affirmation that we all must be “changed” (1Cor 15:51-52).

Job 14:14
If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.

Then in Job 19, we have that grand and glorious assurance that Job will see that great, curse reversing, atoning “Redeemer” with human feet standing on the earth in the latter day.

Job 19:25-27
For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.

Zechariah tells us exactly when this will be.

Zechariah 14:4-5
And His feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and …. And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains; … and the LORD my God shall come,
and all the saints with thee.

Then there is Isaiah’s assurance of the time of his personal resurrection with all the righteous of Israel. Note especially Isa 25:7-8, which Paul will very significantly quote as referencing the time of the church’s resurrection in 1Cor 15:54.

Isaiah 25:7-8
And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the LORD hath spoken it.

Seen in its larger context, there is no scholar or interpreter of which I’m aware that does not recognize that this passage has in view the resurrection of the righteous of Israel at the post-tribulational day of the Lord. Now turn the page and see in the next chapter where Isaiah places his own resurrection AFTER the final travail that is elsewhere shown to be the tribulation / travail of Jacob’s trouble (see Isa 13:8; Isa 66:8; Mic 5:3; Jer 30:6-7; Dan 12:1).

Isaiah 26:17-19
Like as a woman with child, that draweth near the time of her delivery, is in pain, and crieth out in her pangs; so have we been in thy sight, O LORD. We have been with child, we have been in pain, we have as it were brought forth wind; we have not wrought any deliverance in the earth; neither have the inhabitants of the world fallen. Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.

Interestingly, in the next chapter, we see the very trumpet that all agree is the trumpet that Jesus has in view in Mt 24:31.

Isaiah 27:13
And it shall come to pass in that day, that the great trumpet shall be blown, and they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall worship the LORD in the holy mount at Jerusalem.

Could this be the same trumpet that Paul calls “last” in 1Cor 15:52? The evidence will leave no question that it is.

Now look at Daniel’s assurance that he would stand in his lot at the end of days (Dan 12:13) and receive his inheritance at that time with all the righteous who are to be raised AFTER the great, unequaled trouble.

Daniel 12:1-2
And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince who stands for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

So the time when the OT saints will be raised is put beyond reasonable dispute. After the devastating critique by Alexander Reese in his “The Approaching Advent of Christ” published in the 1940’s, modern pre-trib scholars now unanimously accept that the OT saints remain in “the dust of the earth” for an additional seven years while the bride is taken up to heaven for the marriage feast of the Lamb. What’s wrong with this picture?

Side note: According to the defenders of the pre-trib rapture, born again saints of the tribulation are not to be reckoned as “church saints” but “tribulation saints”, since in their view the body of Christ is believed to include only those living between Pentecost and the rapture. Saints living before Pentecost or after the rapture are not considered part of the body of Christ. Even though born of the Spirit, they are believed to belong to a different “people of God”, with a different destiny and uniquely distinct inheritance. This view was unheard of in church history until introduced in the mid 1800’s by J. N. Darby of the Plymouth Brethren movement. It was exponentially popularized by the publication of the famously well received Scofield reference Bible, first published in 1909.

So with the time of the resurrection of OT believers infallibly established, the question at hand becomes whether the body of Christ is to be raised at the same time or some earlier time? If so, what is the biblical basis for this inference?

Much more can be said concerning the NT view of the OT day of the Lord that also fixes the time of the resurrection of the NT believer no less than the OT saints, but before coming to the most decisive evidence of Paul’s own blessed hope, it is important to observe Jesus’ reference to this common Jewish hope of resurrection at the “last day” (Jn 11:24).

Jesus promised that all who the Father gives and draws to Him will be raised at the “last day” (Jn 6:39-40, 44). In Jn 11:24, we see from Martha’s reply that this was the common expectation of the Jews. Pre-tribulationists will point out that Jesus’ promise was before the church came newly into existence at Pentecost. On this presumption it is argued that only those dying before Pentecost will be raised at the last day.

While recognizing that the mystery of the many membered mystical body of Christ was not yet revealed (though new revelation does not necessarily mean new existence), it is most unnatural to suppose that the promise that those coming to Jesus would be raised at the last day only applied until Pentecost, and that believers dying after Pentecost, but before Paul’s revelation of the mystery of the rapture, were wrong to expect resurrection at the last day. It will surely be admitted that for one not already committed to the pre-trib position, this appears quite forced.

We are very familiar with Paul’s mention of the timing of the rapture / translation of living believers in connection with what he calls, “the last trump” (1Cor 15:52). However, pre-tribulationists are instant to caution us against associating Paul’s last trump with the 7th trumpet of Rev 10:7; 11:15, since John had not yet written the Revelation. Well, fair enough. Still, it is much to be observed that the last trumpet in the sequence of trumpets in the Revelation ‘just happens’ to have something very significantly in common with Paul’s last trump, namely, attendance by the Lord’s return to gather His saints.

Moreover, it was well known that Jesus spoke of a trumpet in connection with His return “immediately after the tribulation of those days” in Mt 24:39-31. There we see that the elect are “gathered together” and Paul will use this very language to describe “OUR gathering together” in 2Thes 2:1. So the old argument that Mt 24 is strictly “Jewish ground” that has nothing to do with the “church” will not hold up.

So would Paul have left his Corinthians without further qualification and distinction when such a natural ‘mis-association’ would have been so inevitable? But there is something even more decisive on the timing of the rapture that is seldom, if ever noticed.

All will agree that if we can rightly establish the time Paul’s last trump, we have established the time of the rapture. How then can we prove that Paul’s last trump is the same trumpet that Jesus says will attend His return after the tribulation? Paul tells us very plainly by his use of OT prophecy. Notice carefully.

1 Corinthians 15:51-54
Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.

Now the decisive question is this? When is then? What time is in view? The problem for the pre-trib view comes in when was ask where the saying is written? When we locate the saying that Paul is referencing in Isa 25:8, an examination of the context leaves no question that the time in view is the post-tribulational day of the Lord. Only by separating what God has clearly joined can the time of the last trump of 1Cor 15:52 be exegetically disjoined or logically separated from the time that this ‘saying’ will be fulfilled. “For then (at the last trump) shall the saying be brought to pass that is written …”

If we begin by assuming that the last trump is before the tribulation, we are faced by a serious conflict, because the saying recorded in Isa 25:8 very clearly has its fulfillment after the tribulation. Recognizing this, the pre-tribulationists must argue for a double fulfillment, one before the tribulation and another that is after.

Herein lies the conflict that demands honest resolution. Are we really to believe that Isa 25:8 is fulfilled for Paul and the church seven years earlier than it is for the righteous of Israel, for Job (Job 19:25; Zech 14:4), for Isaiah (Isa 26:19), or Daniel? (Dan 12:2). 

Not only this, but Isa 25:8 very significantly belongs to a literary section of Isaiah that has been very well distinguished and called by scholars, “Isaiah’s little apocalypse”. Isa 24 begins a highly developed description of the cataclysmic day of the Lord and continues on this theme through to Isa 27 that ends, again, very significantly, with the jubilee trumpet of Isa 27:12-13. This trumpet announces the end of tribulation and penitent Israel’s regathering to the Land.

Pre-trib scholars and teachers recognize that this is indeed the trumpet to which Jesus refers in Mt 24:31. Yet, they insist we should distinguish between this obviously later trumpet and Paul’s supposedly earlier “last” trump. But are we to suppose that Paul would not have anticipated such an easy and natural confusion? Would he not, in practical anticipation, have said more to qualify and clarify this very natural, really inevitable association?

How natural to interpret Paul as having the same time in view that anyone reading Isa 25:8 would assume. And how much more this would be expected in view of what Jesus says of His post-tribulational return being accompanied by the well known trumpet of Isa 27:13, as well as His clear promise of the resurrection of His elect at the last day? (Jn 6:39-40, 44).

I think even a devoted pre-tribber would find it hard to imagine that Paul would not have taken greater pains to distinguish the otherwise indistinguishable. Better to see that Paul fixes his own blessed hope with all the redeemed at the post-tribulational day of the Lord, which the Jews, but most importantly Jesus, identifies as taking place at “the last day.”

Thus, it is NOT the time of the resurrection that constitutes the mystery. That was well known. Rather, is the nature of the translation and catching up for re-location, re-union, and spiritual rule that adds crucial insight to what was already well established and well known.

This is only a sample of so much more that could be said. Obviously many books have been written. But in view of such evidence, (“the plain person’s plain reading of plain language”), it is hard to imagine anything but the most determined emotionalism that would insist on clinging to such a precarious and potentially disarming position.

With due respect for the earnest hearts and well meaning quest for harmony of scripture by godly, sincere believers, I have come to believe that the doctrine of an any moment return to rapture the church seven years before the Lord’s return to rule is a dangerously disarming Trojan horse that has come into the evangelical camp for such a time as this.

Hope that helps.

Yours in the Beloved, Reggie

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I realize I’ve said as much many times before, but feel this needs more urgently to be stressed now than ever. By its nature, my calling and part in the Body has exposed me, far more than I could wish, to the inner workings of many strong and compelling lies that powerfully oppose and threaten the church’s readiness to escape the unparalleled deception that Jesus said would both precede and accompany the unequaled tribulation.

Even now, throughout the far greater part of professing Christendom, the tribulation without parallel or equal is believed to be past. The tribulation has come and gone with the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. A fast-growing (two related words like this become one hyphenated adjective) community called ‘preterist’ believes that Jesus’ promised return “immediately after the tribulation of those days” has also come and gone, some stoutly affirming that the resurrection is also past. This, since Dan 12:1-2 so unequivocally connects the resurrection to the unequaled tribulation.

A less popular but still thriving view, particularly among Adventist groups, is the so-called ‘historicist’ view of Revelation. This view sees the ‘great tribulation’, not as a brief period of time at the the end, but as stretching out to include either all or most of the inter-advent period. Many historic premillennialists (an accepted prefix – no need for a hyphen) view the half week (the 3 1/2 years of Daniel and Revelation) (delete comma – parentheses function as commas) as beginning with the ascension, basing their view on Rev. 12’s imagery of the catching up of the man-child, followed immediately in vision by the great tribulation.

Many, perhaps most, (add comma) evangelical lovers of Israel who see a future Antichrist invasion of Israel (delete comma between long subject and the verb) do not expect to be directly impacted by the last great deception. This is because they expect to be raptured to heaven where they will be celebrating the marriage supper while the Jewish people are experiencing their greatest hour of anguish without the church’s witness. This means that those living on this side of the rapture will not be so critically and decisively benefited by taking close heed to Jesus’ directive to read and understand Daniel in order to escape the deception that would imperil the very elect.

But if the church is exempt from the great tribulation, who then are the persecuted saints described in Daniel and Revelation? We are told these do not belong to the body of Christ, nor do they become part of the body of Christ when they are saved. Rather, it is supposed that the persecuted believers of the tribulation belong to another people of God altogether, with a different hope and destiny that is distinct from the hope and destiny of the church.

On this view, Jesus’ directive to carefully search out the meaning of Daniel’s prophecy will only be of vital relevance to those ‘left behind’ to face the dangers of those days. However, if this view is in error, it threatens to rob God’s people of vital preparation and protection from a deception so great as to threaten the very elect. Regardless then of one’s view, any fair-minded student of scripture should at least appreciate the reasonable cause for concern, at least taking stock of what is ultimately at stake in one’s perspective on the time and meaning of the tribulation and the question of the church’s relation to it.

Of all the competing views, the one that most insults and slights the sacred trust of the canon, and the Reformed doctrine of the perspicuity of scripture, is the lazy indifference that comfortably proclaims that it is impossible to know much that is definite or certain when it comes to eschatology. But it is Jesus Himself that prescribes with utmost clarity and simplicity what I like to call, “the plain man’s plain path through the millennial maze.”

Even before understanding the ‘what’ or the ‘when’ of the great tribulation, before discovering its approximate duration and then, most importantly, its meaning and purpose – even before knowing what the abomination of desolation might be – there is one simple directive that Jesus gives towards escaping the great deception that would threaten, “if possible”, the very elect. In Mt 24:15, Jesus is basically shouting, “pay attention to Daniel!” But much more particularly, He directs His sheep to one specific event that Daniel describes in considerable detail. In sum, He commands us to go to Daniel, find this particular event, “the abomination of desolation”, and to be careful that we understand what we read.

The reasons for this simple obedience will prove most crucial, not only towards escaping the great deception, but to a glorious unfolding of the whole sweep of God’s costly investment in scripture and history by which His Name is most fully glorified in all the earth. A knowledge of the relation of final things to the seedbed of covenant and promise is crucial for the church’s greater vision of God.
Jesus well knew this signal event to be the key to understanding the unsealed vision, which those with understanding (the maskilim of Dan 11:32-33, 35, 12:3, 9-10) would be proclaiming to Israel and the nations during the last persecution. According to Rev 7:9, 13-14, the testimony of tribulation saints will result in the evangelization of a vast number that will be saved out of ‘the tribulation, the great one’ (Rev 7:9, 13-14). The use of the double definite article in the Greek text is strong evidence that this is not tribulation in general, the common experience of all Christians in this age (Jn 16:33; Acts 14:22), but much more specifically, the great tribulation in particular.

Moreover, when one traces the oft-recurring theme of a final, unequaled tribulation and its centrality in the plan of God, beginning with Moses’ first mention in Deut 4:29-30, so much opens up concerning the nature and goals of God’s covenantal structure of history, and the conflict that rages over the authority of the Word, not only as to the moral and spiritual claims of the covenant, but particularly that greatest of all offenses, most calculated to test and reveal the heart, namely, God’s sovereign prerogative to choose as He will choose. This deep-seated protest and presumption of entitlement traces all the way back to Satan’s original envy (Ps 2; 48:2; Isa 14; note esp, verse 13; Eze 28). It is the basis of all antisemitism. It is why the Antichrist will be encamped on Mount Zion when the Lord returns (Dan 11:45).

I believe that at least part of the problem lies in what we bring to the scripture. When many read the Lord’s plain directive in Mt 24:15, they do not read it with virginal simplicity. “I will go to Daniel and read of this event and pray to understand”. Too often, there are already preconceived notions that have predetermined what one will find, and even much more, by what one must NOT find.

When we obey this all-too-neglected directive (“let the reader understand”) with an honest and open heart, uninfluenced by preconceived notions, we are only part way there. It is here we learn that revelation, skill, and insight came to Daniel when he “set his heart to understand” (Dan 10:12), just as the prophets before and after him would “inquire and search diligently” (1Pet 1:11). We are called into the fellowship of mysteries that require searching out with intense, holy desire, not for pragmatic self-interest, not even only for the purpose of avoiding deception. We are to have the attitude of “come and see” regarding the place of His dwelling, the beauty of His courts, and the secrets He has reserved for His friends. Our passion must be His glory, His wondrous handiwork, His costly investment, His manifold wisdom — and His greater glory in the fellowship of a ‘hidden wisdom’ ordained to our glory.

It is therefore most interesting how the mysteries of God can be so well hidden in such plain sight. It is not that they are intellectually obscure. On the contrary, there are basic protections built right in by the way that scripture interprets scripture. We will take for our best example what we find when we very simply obey Jesus by going to Daniel to look for the abomination of desolation. Jesus well knew that by so doing, we would discover, not only the meaning of this particular event, but very importantly, add comma what precedes and what follows.

By setting this initially strange, but ultimately strategic prophetic signpost at the end of Israel’s long history of covenant and promise, so much more of the overarching plan of God comes into much clearer light. It is no wonder then, comma that Daniel is situated at the center of the seven millennia of God’s prophetic schema of history, the “middle of the week”, so to speak. Interestingly, when Daniel asks, “How long till the end of these wonders?”, we understand the primary application will be the final 3.5 years, but another viable, perhaps dual, comma application would be that from Daniel’s place in history, there would be 3 1/2 millennia till “all these things would be finished”. On that view, which I think compelling, this would include the thousand-year reign of Christ and His saints.

Jesus well knew that this simple obedience would be the key that opens up, not only the order of the signal events of the end, but delete comma as noted, Daniel’s prophecy establishes the eschatological framework for the whole sweep of redemptive history from Genesis to Revelation. So, what do we find concerning this event that will prove such a protection against deception and a key to opening up and setting in right order the greater framework of prophecy? I submit it is by a simple refusal to separate what God has joined.

I cannot here begin to confirm by example, but in all my study, every system of prophetic interpretation (no comma) of which I’m aware (no comma) very obviously goes off at one of three places. Each of these is an example of separating what God has joined, but only by great violence to the text. I can only show a couple of examples.

The abomination of desolation is mentioned four times in Daniel (Dan 8:11; 9:27: 11:31; 12:11). In all four places it is accompanied by the removal of the regular, daily sacrifice. In Dan 12:11, the sacrifice is taken away 1290 days from the time that Daniel and all the righteous are raised from the dead (Dan 12:1-2). In Dan 9:27, the sacrifice is caused to stop at the midpoint of Daniel’s final week. This is 3 1/2 years from the end.

We must remember that Daniel was looking for the end of exile and the coming of the kingdom promised in the prophets before him. He is desperately seeking to understand when this tragic history would give way to kingdom glory. He is asking, “How long to the end of these wonders?” (Dan 12:7).

In Dan 9:24-27, Daniel had learned of the 70 weeks (for the readers unfamiliar with the shorthand) that Israel would be required to wait for the “coming in of the everlasting righteousness”, which would be the righteousness of the promised kingdom of David. This is the righteousness of the New Covenant that Jeremiah anticipates to come at the end of the period that he calls, “the time of Jacob’s trouble” (Jer 30:6-7).

This is the tribulation without equal, which the earlier prophets so commonly associate with the day of the Lord that ends a brief time of unparalleled national affliction and travail. Daniel will put the unequaled time of trouble at the end of the 70th 7, more particularly the second half of the last seven. In keeping with Jeremiah and the earlier prophets, Daniel puts the great transition between this age of covenant wrath and the coming age of kingdom peace and righteousness. He manifestly did not see the age between. This belonged to the mystery that would not be fully revealed and understood until the Spirit would be poured out at Pentecost (Rom 16:25-26; 1Pet 1:11-12)

But here’s what is too seldom observed or considered. In order for Jesus’ prophecy of the end to be fulfilled according to Daniel’s reference to the abomination of desolation, there MUST be a sacrifice that is stopped approximately 3 1/2 years before the final persecutor is destroyed and the dead are raised (Dan 12:1-2, 7, 11).
Likewise, in Dan 9:27 the half week begins when the sacrifice is stopped. Is the “end” that ends the half week of Dan 9:27 the same “end” that brings the deliverance of Daniel’s people and the resurrection of the righteous in Dan 12:1-2, 7, 11, 13? That is a question to be decided, but you can see how God has wisely given us pieces to a puzzle, but not without also providing us a plain path through it.

What and where is this sacrifice? Neither Jesus nor Paul specifically mentions the sacrifice, but both speak of a great violation and desecration that takes place in the temple in Jerusalem (Mt 24:15-16; 2Thes 2:4), as John will associate the temple to the final treading down of Jerusalem in Rev 11:1-2, again describing the half week of Daniel’s prophecy. There is no need to specify the sacrifice since Daniel has supplied this at every mention of the abomination. And it is clear that a temple service in the ‘holy place’ in Jerusalem is not going to exist without a sacrifice, which, of course, cannot continue beyond the point that the Antichrist imposes himself.

Stubbornness enters in when such things as presuppositions and preferences, even fears induced by taunts and the gross caricatures of a convenient ‘guilt by association’, are permitted to bias an objective handling of the evidence. All of this works to hinder us from making the otherwise obvious connections. The Lord sets a wise and perfect trap, particularly in the Word itself, for the pride of self-reliance and the momentum of uncrucified presumption. The interpretation of scripture is itself a test of the heart.
It is the power of our presumption that short circuits our objectivity, breaking the otherwise obvious connections. For example, where in 52 A.D. (add comma), when Paul is writing his second epistle, would the ‘temple of God’ be understood to be standing? It is preposterous to imagine that apart from any qualification to the contrary, Paul would have expected the Thessalonians to have any other kind of edifice in mind but the one in Jerusalem, particularly since he is so plainly ‘re’-establishing the same order of events revealed in Daniel, rehearsed during his earlier visit, and referenced by Jesus. This is even further confirmed by noting Paul’s use of language taken over from the Lord’s Olivet prophecy (compare, “our gathering together unto Him” 2Thes 2:1) where Paul is quite obviously citing Jesus’ well-known reference to the “gathering together of His elect” (Mt 24:31).

Particularly in view of all that both testaments affirm of the climactic day of the Lord, it becomes quite impossible, even exegetically dishonest, to try to separate the resurrection of the righteous from the tribulation of the half week in Daniel and Revelation. This is why those who believe the tribulation passed with 70 A.D., but believe the resurrection is yet future, are called ‘partial preterist’. In contrast, those who believe delete comma not only that the tribulation is past but that the resurrection is also past, call themselves “consistent preterist”, for good reason.
But before all the confusion and debate, it is plain for all to see what Daniel would have understood from his own prophecy. Go and learn what Daniel had inherited from the prophets that went before him, (add comma) who prophesied of these same events and goals of covenant and promise. For Daniel, the end of the 70 7’s could only mean one thing: add colon the end of gentile domination over captive Israel and the long expected (rightly expected) “post-tribulational” kingdom of God on earth. To suppose otherwise exposes a interested (unobjective?) bias, apparently formed by presumptive prior conclusions. It is not enough to say that this was merely the immature hope of OT believers, since the basic order is clearly re-affirmed in the NT (Mt 24; Mk 13; Lk 21: Acts 3:18-21; Ro 11:25-29; 2Thes 2; Rev 6-20).

This has gotten too long for any but the most patient and determined, but you see my point. The neglect to follow through on the Lord’s prescribed means of ‘understanding’ is not, of course, a blanket panacea against every possible form of deception, but it is going to be necessary. It is necessary now, not only for preparation against the ultimate deception, but for the much fuller picture of the overall context of the gospel, what I like to call, “the glory of the story”.

It will be required of the church….or will it?. This raises the crucial question of the relation of the rapture to the resurrection of the OT saints, another example of separating what God has joined. This squabble of comparatively recent origins significantly appears just in time to stand between a complacent Laodicean church and readiness to be those ‘maskilim’ who have the key of interpretation that can instruct many and turn many to righteousness (Dan 11:32-33; 12:3).

That this task should be delegated to a company that has only recently come to faith (no need for elders?) defies the biblical conception and definition of the body of Christ. It especially defies Paul’s definition of the church (defined as the corporate assembly of regenerate saints), as “the pillar and ground of truth”.

Once the context has been restored, we can begin to ask the very important question of the church’s role, and of what God has invested in granting the last sufferers a very certain and definite knowledge of the time. This will be a merciful provision intended to get the church to the place it needs to be for the ultimate witness. Thankfully, prophecy assures us that “those having understanding” (the body?, of course the body!) will be ready.

Anyway, you get the idea. It’s a burden I have. I fear we get too taken up with all the details, as there are indeed crucial details, but not to the neglect of the more critical, life-saving basics, the plum line of holy simplicity that will bring us to an otherwise impossible unity, as we become more and more constrained, searched, pruned, and emptied by the ever clearer light of fulfillment that does not depend on getting it all right.

The great falling away is greatly facilitated by the church’s dereliction precisely here. For all the wrong reasons, though ordained as judgment, the church will not awaken to the truth of these things until the end is very near. But because judgment “must” begin at the house of God, and in no small part because of the testimony of the Spirit of prophecy, the sleeping Bride will awaken, and when she does, hallelujah, what a glory! It will be the sweetest bitter, as the Jew will see his Messiah shining through weak jars of clay, a sight they’ll not forget for a thousand years.

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It is hard to overstate how far this runs against the a biblical theology of the Holy Spirit and the doctrine of regeneration, as it pertains to both testaments, but this is nonetheless a key component of the system. But many, even in their own camp, are often not aware of this, and have not thought through why this view is an essential pillar of pre-tribulational dispensationalism.

But if tribulation saints are not indwelt by the Spirit, what of the truth of the believer’s adoption and union with Christ, as common partakers of the divine nature? How does one sustain union with the divine nature if this is not internal? How is one who is born of the Spirit not also indwelt by the Spirit? What happens to the New Covenant promise of a new spirit and new heart? What of the new creation that the believer becomes through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit?

Is not the Spirit that came at Pentecost the same that was promised all throughout the prophets? And will this promise not have a yet further fulfillment when the penitent survivors of Israel will receive the Spirit in the yet coming Day of the Lord? Are we to believe that the blessing of Pentecost and the New Covenant will be different, or something inferior for tribulation saints and the Jews who come into the blessings of the New Covenant at Jesus’ return? And what of the saved of the nations throughout the millennium? Will they NOT be indwelt by the Holy Spirit and therefore NOT qualify as members of Christ’s body?

John F. Walvoord and other pre-trib defenders speak of a “reversal of Pentecost”. Does this not imply a ‘retraction’ of the blessing of Pentecost? How would that notion suit Pentecostals? Yet many of them embrace the pre-trib rapture of the bride whom they distinguish form the saints of the tribulation. But how can there be a reversal of Pentecost without the equally impossible notion of a reversal of the New Covenant? Since the gift of the Spirit’s indwelling belongs to the blessing of the New Covenant secured in the Redeemer’s blood, how can this be reversed in the case of believers who come to faith during the tribulation and beyond?

Since the Spirit was (in some sense) “not yet given” until Christ was glorified (Jn 7:39), it is no more possible for a reversal of Pentecost than the reversal of the basis on which He would now be given. Now that Jesus has been glorified, the Spirit has also been ‘forever given’ in the full light of the revelation of that once and for all event. The relation of these two realities, the glorification of Jesus and the gift of the Spirit, are inseparable, not only throughout this age, but no less the millennial age to come. Yet dispensationalists would have us believe that tribulation saints will not be indwelt. Why not? Simply because this would make them members of the body of Christ based on such scriptures as 1Cor 6:17; 12:13; Eph 2:17; 4:4, etc.

In its original context, the eschatological promise of the Spirit was to the penitent survivors of Israel at the post-tribulational Day of the Lord (Isa 32:15; 59:21; Eze 11:19; 36:26-27; 37:14; 39:29; Joel 2:29-32; Zech 12:10-13:1). With the glorification of Jesus, the “promise of the Father” has come as first fruits in unexpected advance of “that day”, but this does nothing to cancel or change its original application and fulfillment in the still future DOL. Now that the New Covenant has been sealed in the Savior’s blood, how can it be thought that those who receive the promise in that coming day will receive something inferior to what the church received at Pentecost in first-fruits fulfillment of that very promise?

What is it then about God’s beloved saints enduring the persecution of the Antichrist that deprives them of the advantage of the Spirit’s indwelling? Shall post-tribulational Israel receive something inferior in the day of their national repentance than the fledgling community of Jesus confessors received at Pentecost on the very basis of that very promise? This is a question pre-tribulationists ought to reconsider, since they hold with us that the penitent Jewish survivors of Jacob’s trouble will indeed receive the promise of the Spirit at that time.

To rephrase the question: will those who receive the promise of the Spirit in its original, post-tribulational context, receive something less (“with” but not “in”) than the body of Christ received at Pentecost? Yet if the receive the Pentecostal blessing of the Spirit’s indwelling that the church of this age receives, how will they not be members of Christ’s body, particularly now that Jesus has been glorified? Why would tribulation saints not also be baptized by the one Spirit into the one body now that Jesus has been glorified?

I don’t think most pre-tribulationists have thought this through, or really seriously faced the implications of their unique view of the church that depends entirely on some very erroneous notions of the Spirit’s indwelling, as limited only to a presumed mystery church age. Now that Jesus has been once and for all glorified, there is no returning to an inferior, pre-Pentecost relationship of only ‘with’ but not ‘in’. Why would there be? Such an inference would not exist were it not for its essential expedience to support a view of the church that did not exit before Darby. The reason is clear.

Dispensationalism’s defense of the doctrine of imminence depends entirely on their defense of an ecclesiology that keeps the church out of the tribulation and no less out of the millennium. This is because of their view that the church is a mystery organism, belonging strictly to this present mystery dispensation, unforeseen and unforetold in the prophets. All the saved before Pentecost and those saved after the pre-tribulation rapture cannot belong to the ‘mystery body of Christ’. They belong instead to God’s program for Israel and the nations. So those who believe on Jesus after the rapture cannot, on this view, be reckoned as belonging to the body of Christ.

Dispensationalism depends on a view of the Pauline mystery that must be regarded as completely separate and distinct from the “mystery of the gospel and of Christ” (Eph 6:19), which is admittedly foretold in the OT scriptures. It is not only God’s eternal purpose to incorporate gentiles into equal standing in one body that was hid in other ages (Eph 3:6), but the mystery of the gospel itself (Ro 16:25-26; 1Pet 1:11-12), and this mystery was certainly fully foretold in the “scriptures of the prophets”. So already the idea that a mystery can have nothing to do with what was foretold in prophecy breaks down. To support, then, the idea of the church as a mystery organism, separate and distinct from all other saints in the OT, the tribulation, or the millennium, dispensationalism must conceive of the church, not only as a new revelation, but an entirely new entity, separate and distinct from all who will be saved in the tribulation and beyond.

It is one thing to “distinguish” between the church as the regenerate people of God and “Israel after the flesh”, elect and predestined, but not yet in Christ, but to posit a separation between the regenerate saints of the present time from all who are no less born again in the tribulation and beyond, is opposed to the Bible’s own definition of the nature of regeneration, and what constitutes believers as the body of Christ by reason of living union through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Dispensationalism’s unique understanding of the Pauline mystery is foundational to the system introduced by Darby. Certainly the church was not, and could not be revealed as the body of Christ until the gospel was revealed, but does this mean that the church, in its essential nature, as joined to God by the Spirit, had no prior existence? (1Cor 6:17). Here is a principle too little considered: For something to be newly revealed, or come more fully to light, does not necessarily mean it has had no prior existence.

This is a very neglected consideration. We see this with the gospel, with Christ, and particularly His two comings, which were certainly foretold, but not understood until the gospel was publicly revealed with the Spirit’s descent at Pentecost (compare Ro 16:25-26; 1Pet 1:11=12). This was entirely new to the understanding, but not new to what could be shown to have been fully foretold in the writings of the prophets. Yet Paul calls this fully foretold gospel a mystery that was kept secret in other ages (Acts 26:22-23; Rom 16:25-26; Eph 6:19).

For the dispensational view of the mystery to stand, it must be distanced from anything foretold in the OT, and nothing of OT prophecy can intermingle with this ‘mystery age’ that the church is assumed to occupy, as extending only from Pentecost to the rapture. The tribulation belongs to another dispensation entirely.

Why do dispensationalists find it necessary to assume this? It is because there can be no compromise of imminence. If the abiding possibility of the rapture is not to be put off beyond any intervening events foretold in OT prophecy, then for imminence to stand as an abiding, ever present possibility, no foretold event can exist in OT prophecy that must be fulfilled before the 70th week begins. All outstanding and un-fulfilled OT prophecy can only be seen on the other side of the rapture, fully contained in Daniel’ 70th week. Otherwise, if it can be shown that there are prophecies in the OT that could only be fulfilled in the long age between the advents, then, of course, imminence becomes impossible.

But a careful study and comparison of parallels of Paul’s use of the term, mystery, or secret will not permit this kind of complete dissociation from the mystery contained in the OT scriptures. Yes, there are discrete and distinct mysteries, not all of which were specifically foretold in the prophets, but these could only come to light by the revelation of the gospel (Ro 16:25-26).

Certainly the mystery of Christ and the church could not be understood as it is now, but since the revelation of the mystery of the gospel, the means by which God would accomplish His eternal purpose to bring all things together into one could now be made be made known (Eph 1:9; 3:5-6), not only to the church but to the principalities and powers (Eph 3:10). The mystery revealed to Paul was that through the instrumentality of the gospel (“by the gospel”), as a secret now revealed, God would fulfill His original promise to bless all nations through Abraham’s Seed, only this would accomplish something far more grand than anything that could have been conceived before. Not only would the nations be blessed, they would become fellow equals in the inheritance of the saints in the one, regenerate people of God, revealed now as the body of Christ, God’s one new man (regenerate man).

This is NOT something that is temporary, as in dispensationalism, but continues to be the revelation of everyone who believes on Christ until the final perfection of new heavens and earth. Granted, this discrete mystery revealed to Paul was not specifically spelled out anywhere in the writings of the prophets, but it is bound to the larger revelation of the gospel that is its basis. Therefore, in Paul’s mind, the mystery of the church is a piece with the mystery of the gospel.

Notably, one aspect that shows the relationship of the mystery to OT prophecy is its wonderful capacity for verifying the truth claims of the gospel by solving the puzzle of prophecy (1Pet 1:11-12). The agreement of the revealed mystery with all that stood written in the prophets was regarded as the gospel’s greatest evidence of proof (Acts 26:22-23). Yet, this evidence, so compelling in retrospect, was purposely hidden, not only from the pride of man, but necessarily from the righteous too, until the time appointed.

This is so that the mystery would remain hidden, even from the rulers of the darkness of this age, so that they would not know the ‘hidden wisdom’ until it was too late (1Cor 2:7-8; Rom 16:25-26). It was a divinely set trap (Isa 8:14-17 with 1Cor 2:7-8). So Paul’s view of mystery is not disconnected from Jesus’ teaching on the “mystery of the kingdom”, as the new form the kingdom would take throughout an unexpected, inter-advent period.

This idea of a mystery, closed up and sealed among the Lord’s disciples, has its background in the OT’s view of the sealed vision (Isa 8:14-17; 29:11; Dan 9:24; 12:4, 9; Hab 2:2-3). It is this that make the Messiah to be a stone of stumbling in His appointed time, but that’s another whole study in its own right, but very relevant to how we would see Paul’s use of the concept of the revelation of concealed secrets in contrast to dispensationalism’s interest to divide between two, regenerate peoples of God in order to keep the church out of the tribulation.

But suppose the concession is made, (as some non-dispensationalist also believe), that the church (as now defined) did not exist in any form before Pentecost. What then? Surely this is no proof that the church does not appear on earth again after the rapture, and that believers who come to faith during the tribulation and beyond are any the less to be reckoned as members of Christ’s body. This would be to suggest that a once and for all revelation could somehow recede back to something inferior, according to the dispensationalists’s reading of Jn 7:39 with Jn 14:17.

So in order preserve the doctrine of imminence, the church must be raptured before any of the signs of the 70th week can begin, obviously. Therefore, to make the church of this present, “mystery age”, exempt from the tribulation, something must explain the presence of saints in the tribulation, as seen so clearly all throughout the book of Revelation. Here is where dispensationalists turn to texts on the Holy Spirit to support the concept that only believers of this age can belong to the body of Christ, because only believers of this age have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

To uphold the system, they must define the church out of the tribulation, ‘at all costs’. Identify tribulation believers as members of Christ’s body and all is lost, case closed. That would put the church in the tribulation. That’s the logic. Thus the invention of a new, and unprecedented doctrine of the church that denies to the faithful of the tribulation identity as members of Christ’s body. We may find traces of the doctrine of imminence in church history, most often on the presumption that the Antichrist is present, but never this. This is new, original with Darby.

Like tribulation saints, millennial believers are also believed to sustain a pre-Pentecostal relationship to the Spirit, “with” but not “in”. Fantastical, I know, but this is some of the ugly underbelly that is taught in the seminaries in the interest defending the indefensible. Unhappily, much of this never reaches the people in the pew. They get just enough to be inoculated from a fair hearing of an alternative, mediating view, and never learn what academic pre-tribulationists know very well to be necessary to sustain the system. As for example, what would the average pre-tribulationist think if they knew what the academics at the seminary know, that for the system to work, Job, Isaiah, Daniel, and all the saints of the OT must remain in the dust of the earth for another seven years after the rapture, while the church is in heaven celebrating the marriage of the Lamb?

By defining the church out of the tribulation period, not only is the church protected from wrath (as though tribulation saints and Jews fed and preserved in the wilderness will NOT be protected from divine wrath, not to mention the surviving gentiles who facilitate Jewish return after the tribulation is over), but by removing the church from earth before the onset of Daniel’s 70th week, the doctrine of imminence is safeguarded, because all of the signs that definitely signal the Lord’s return belong to the 70th week, safely on the other side of the rapture. So nothing needs to happen that might signal Jesus’ return to rapture the church, since the signs belong to the 70th week.

The problem with this is view of imminence is the necessary reconstitution of Israel as a viable nation populated by Jews, with Jerusalem at its center (see Dan 12:1; Eze 38:8; Zech 12:2-3 et al). This is a comparatively recent development that did not exist for centuries!

Think about it: For nearly 17 centuries, the Jews were almost everywhere else but in their own Land. The Land was to lie waste and desolate, not for one, but for “many generations” (Isa 61:4). Not only this, but the temple that the last aggressor will “tread down, burn, and lay waste” is very significantly one that has been only recently recovered to Jewish possession (“possessed it but a little while”; Isa 63:18; 64:10-11). The context is clearly the final desolation of Jerusalem and the Jews’ final deliverance at the DOL. No other assault, whether Babylon, Greece, or Rome has burned a temple that the Jews had possessed only a “little while”.

Either this language is merely a metaphorical of a ‘seemingly’ short time, or it is literal, and necessarily future. The point is this: No other period has answered to the “many generations” of desolation as referred to in Isa 61:4. The Babylonian captivity was a single generation, 70 years. Only the long Diaspora that followed the Roman destruction can answer to these details. So how could Jesus return at any moment since Paul allegedly introduced the mystery of the pre-trib rapture sometime before his first letter to the Corinthians? And what was the “blessed hope” of believers living between Pentecost and Paul’s supposed new revelation? May I suggest it must have been the hope that Jesus gave to every believer drawn by the Spirit, namely, resurrection at the “last day” (Jn 6:39, 44; 11:24).

How possible then was an imminent return when there was no Jewish nation in existence to strike an agreement with the Antichrist? It is one thing to teach an any moment coming when the temple was still standing, and Daniel’s 70th week might begin without obstacle. It might seem possible again to teach an imminent return before the tribulation after the modern repatriation of the Land, but HOW can pre-tribulationists consider a pre-tribulational return a viable possibility for the 17 centuries during which the Jewish people were everywhere but in the Land? Where would be the “many generations” of desolation, not to mention many other details of the foretold Jewish experience all throughout the long Diaspora that began with the Roman expulsion?

But I digress; back to the issue of the Spirit. So we see Dispensationalism’s ‘interest’ to find anything that might seem to support their distinction between the saints of this, so-called “church age” (a term so completely assumed you would almost think it exists in scripture). They believe they find justification to distinguish so-called “church saints” from so-called, “tribulation saints” by their understanding of Holy Spirit’s relation to the body of Christ as unique to believers of this mystery church age.

They argue, and who will not agree?, that the Spirit was in some sense “not yet given”, because Jesus was “not yet glorified” (Jn 7:39). They further point out that Jesus speaks of the Spirit who is now “with” the disciples but “will be” (future tense) “in” them (Jn 14:17). Dispensationalists make much of this to argue that before Pentecost the Spirit was only “with” OT believers. He was not “in” them. When it is pointed out that many of the OT saints were indwelt by the Spirit of Christ, with Peter affirming the same in the NT (1Pet 1:11), the response is, “yes, but the Spirt did not indwell them PERMANENTLY”. Well, they were either born again or they weren’t, and how else do the dead live and sustain a living relationship with the living God? (Mt 22:32). We can see from Jesus’ remarks to Nicodemus that He did not regard the new birth as something new or future, but a present necessity to discern the things of the Spirit, as Paul would also so clearly affirm (1Cor 2:14). In the OT, the children of the flesh persecuted the children of the Spirit, even as now (Gal 4:29), and so on we could multiply examples.

But perhaps the most exegetically unsupportable ‘reach’, illustrating how one unproven inference demands another, is when pre-tribulationists advance the notion that not only “assumes” that the Holy Spirit is the un-identified personal restrainer of 2Thes 2:7, but that it is the church that must be removed before the man of sin can be revealed. It is one thing to say the Holy Spirit is the one who is holding back the revelation of the man of sin (itself a mere inference); it is quite something else to say it is particularly His indwelling of the church that requires that the church be removed. How is this arrived at?

Pre-tribulationists do NOT want to say that the Holy Spirit is removed entirely from the earth. They know that no one could be born again after the rapture except by the Spirit, of course. Therefore they reason that it is particularly the Holy Spirit’s indwelling presence in the believers (of this age) that is removed. Thus, the church is removed. And, as we have shown, since the church as the body of Christ is defined by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, they reason that those who come to faith during the tribulation cannot be the body of Christ. Well, there it is. This is what they teach, and must teach in order to keep the church out of the tribulation, in order to maintain the any moment return to terminate the mystery body’s limited tenure on this earth.

It is a shameful grabbing at straws, and like all wood, hay, and straw, it will go up in smoke not many days hence, but at what cost? The prophetic people of God must not only identify error, they must ask why it has come, particularly just now? What does it threaten? What will it cost in the day when it will be required?

Before ending this, I can anticipate that many will want to ask in what sense was the Spirit “not yet given” in Jn 7:39? I may not know the right or complete answer, but I’m sure enough of a few things it cannot mean. It cannot mean that no one was ever indwelt by the Spirit before Pentecost. That would be a contradiction of a host of scriptures bearing upon the nature of vital regeneration and flatly contradict 1Pet 1:11 that says that the Spirit of Christ was “in” the prophets. When this is pointed out, it is ‘desperately’ argued that He ONLY in-dwelt the prophets, or worse, that He did not PERMANENTLY indwell them.

While the Spirit certainly came in a much fuller, ‘corporate’ measure, with signs following, there were signs before Pentecost. So in what way did He come that was wholly new? I can only suggest, but one thing that was truly new and without precedent. It is the Spirit’s descent upon the whole of the church. All that were being daily added to the church received the ‘coming upon’, ‘falling upon’ of the Spirit’s power and anointing. This fulfilled Moses’ desire that the prophetic anointing would come upon all the people (Num 11:29).

The special empowerment of the Spirit was no longer selective, as in the OT, but came upon all, not only in gifts and signs, but perhaps the best answer is that now, the Spirit would come as the Spirit of revelation, opening to clear view the mystery that many prophets and righteous, even angels desired to look into (Mt 13:17; 1Pet 1:12). The full glory of the revealed mystery could only break on the disciples’s understanding AFTER Jesus was glorified, and now the gospel could be proclaimed to the whole world. This is just the point of Pentecost. This is at least one sense in which the Spirit came in power that is not too much considered in studies and discussions of what changed at Pentecost.

I suspect that the phenomenon of revelation and the deep piercing of the heart, all in conjunction with the appointed time, is what sets Pentecost apart, as it set in motion the church’s mission to the nations. That’s perhaps part of the explanation of what unique, new sense the Spirit had not yet been given.

As for Jn 14:17, I suggest that far too much has been concluded beyond its simple intent. It is typically taken to mean that the Spirit who is “with” the disciples would come at some future time to be “in” them. I don’t think that’s the point, though, of course, it could be so argued, provided this was the only text to use this language, and provided that such a conclusion didn’t conflict with other clear texts bearing upon the question. But I invite us us to look at another text in John’s second epistle where the same language is used.

“For the truth’s sake, which dwells ‘in’ us, and shall be ‘with’; us forever” (2Jn 2). Observe that here we have an inversion of the same expression, “with”, and “shall be in”. Who would want to suggest that the truth, which now dwells “in us” will change His relation to an inferior position of only “dwelling WITH us” sometime in the future? I submit that this is simply what is called a ‘synonymous parallelism’, intended only to stress the abiding nature of the Spirit’s, or in this case, the truth’s relation to the believer, and not a change of position or relationship.

In my view, the disciples would hear this comfort from Jesus, not as a change of location, but an assurance that the One currently with them, would come to them in the person of ‘another Comforter’ and remain ‘in’ them forever, not that they were currently un-born again, or un-indwelt by the Spirit. Jesus had pronounced them all “clean”, except Judas (Jn 13:10), and this could never be said apart from the regenerating work of the Spirit that implies the indwelling of the divine nature, which Peter will make the equivalent of being ‘born again by the Word’, something that we may be sure distinguished the living from the dead, not only in the NT but no less in the OT (1Pet 1:23). Being born of the Word of God, as being partaker of the divine nature by the Spirit’s indwelling, is certainly NOT limited to NT believers, as a number of scriptures, and many necessary inferences can be produced to show. .

But again, even if it were granted that the Holy Spirit indwells believers in this age in some unique, unprecedented way, this would not mean that He will do less for tribulation saints, particularly since His indwelling is based on the once and for all glorification of Jesus. Conclusion: Tribulation saints, and all who come to faith throughout the millennium will be no less the body of Christ on earth than those who have the Spirit now.

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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.

Someone recently gave me a commentary on Daniel by Arno Gaebelein written in 1909. After reading his comments on the 70th week, and then Daniel 11, it was easy to see that he could be classified as a Dispensational, Pre-trib, Premillennialist. But, I know that he had a heart for the Jewish immigrants that were pouring into to New York at that time, and even ministered the gospel to them. So how would you reconcile his position?

Gaebelein was old school dispensational pre-trib. All I can say is that his view of Israel’s future, as based on a plain man’s plain reading of the ordinary sense of the prophecies (his hermeneutic) stood him well in seeing the centrality of Israel in the events of the end. But like so many since, the baby got mixed in with the bathwater of dispensationalism, with its view of the interim between 69th and 70th weeks as belonging to a completely UNFORETOLD mystery program that dispensationalists equate with the so-called “church age” that assumes the church begins at Pentecost and ends its sojourn on earth at the pre-tribulational rapture.

In order to maintain the present “age of the church” (a colossal misnomer in my view), dispensationalists argue that consistency demands that this age is the time of the mystery (as they see and define the mystery) that ends with the removal of the church from earth to heaven at the pre-tribulation rapture. Thus, the church, as they define the church, occupies the gap that they recognize between the 69 and 70th weeks of Dan 9:24-27. This provides that the ‘blessed hope’ of the church can be an imminent hope, with the ever present ‘potential’ that Jesus ‘could’ come at any moment. This why, in order for Christ’s return to be maintained as an ever imminent possibility, all the foretold signs that might interpose some necessary event between the believer and Christ’s return for His church, must be seen as taking place only on the other side of the rapture. There can be no outstanding event within this so-called age of the church that can stand between the believer and the ever imminent possibility that Christ might appear any moment.

Of course, this postulate raises so many questions, not least of which is how could the events that begin the 7 years have been possible during the many centuries of Jewish absence from the Land? Not only so, but far more than the 70 years of a single generation, Isaiah predicted that the Land would pass into “many generations” of desolation (Isa 61:4), and this fits with no other time in Israel’s history until the age long dispersion that began with the Roman destruction.

The time after the rapture, in its entirety, is held to be the Day of the Lord, thus, a continual day of wrath to which believers (of this age) are not appointed. This is a recent correction (innovation) to preserve the concept of imminence. In agreement with our view, Gaebelein put the DOL at the end of the tribulation, but since later post-tribulationists (such as Alexander Reese) would point out that believers of this age are instructed to look for, or hasten towards the DOL (e.g., 1Thes 5:2-6; 2Pet 3:10-12), it became obvious that a DOL that does not come till the end of the tribulation can hardly be looked for by believers waiting for a pre-tribulation rapture. The answer was to ‘expand’ the DOL to include the entirety of the 70th week, so that the DOL could start immediately with the pre-tribulation rapture.

In this way, believers could now look for the sudden, thief-like coming of the DOL, because it is seen to begin immediately with the Lord’s pre-tribulational return to catch up the church. In this way, the entire 7 years is made the DOL. Since believers are not appointed to wrath (1Thes 5:9), it is supposed that they cannot be thought to enter any part of the 7 years, which dispensational presuppositions make a seven year long ‘day of wrath’. The problem here is the clear evidence of scripture that saints in the tribulation are NOT under divine wrath. Divine wrath is only visited upon the wicked, but tribulation believers are not exempt from the wrath of man. So this argument fails since a believer’s presence in the tribulation does not imply exposure to divine wrath, demanding pre-trib rapture to escape. Are believers of the tribulation any more appointed to wrath than believers of this age? The answer is self evident, as also the contradiction of appealing to 1Thes 5:9 as support for exemption from tribulation.

Since Reese’s arguments, dispensationalists moved the DOL back seven years to begin with the rapture. This seemed to permit them to see the rapture as an imminent event. However, another, more modern post-tribulational writer, Robert Gundry, in his book, “The Church and the Great Tribulation, pointed out that Paul puts the revelation of the man of sin BEFORE the DOL (2Thes 2:2-3). How could the DOL be held as imminent if “THAT DAY shall come UNTIL the man of sin be revealed FIRST? This is, of course, an outstanding sign that precedes the DOL, precluding the notion that the DOL can happen suddenly, as a thief, with no predicted event preceding, as essential to the idea of imminency. This posed a real problem that was discussed intensely among the defenders of the pre-trib position, but the discussion remained mostly in scholarly journals behind seminary doors.

The proposed solution was to once more adjust the time of the DOL to permit another gap of some unknown duration (probably very brief) in order to permit time for the Antichrist to be revealed AFTER the rapture, yet before the start of the DOL. So twice the DOL has been moved in reaction to errors pointed out in the system. This is well documented.

It should also be mentioned that old school dispensationalists such as C.I.Scofield and Arno Gaebelein, understood the OT righteous to go up in the rapture. But after the arguments of Reese in his book, “The Approaching Advent of Christ,” the resurrection of OT believers was moved forward to the end of the week (‘the last day’). This would mean that Job, Isaiah, Daniel, and all the righteous dead of the OT would remain sleeping in the dust of the earth (Dan 12:1-2) for an additional 7 years after the church has been taken away to heaven. In that sense, they too are ‘left behind’.

All’s to say, dispensationalism stands or falls with the following two principal pillars: 1.) The doctrine of imminency (in the sense that Christ may appear for His church any moment since the earliest days of the church, particularly since Paul’s revelation of the secret rapture), and 2.) the doctrine of the church (ecclesiology), which assumes that the body of Christ did not exist until the Spirit came to indwell believers at Pentecost, supposing that He was only ‘with’ believers before this time and not ‘in’ them.

This is why dispensationalists interpret the restrainer of 2Thes 2:7 to be the Holy Spirit who must be removed before the man of sin can be revealed. However, they are instant to point out that this is not, of course, the Spirit’s removal from the earth, but only in the sense of His indwelling of believers of this age. Many leading dispensationalists, such as John F. Walvoord, defend this view by arguing for what he calls, “a reversal of Pentecost.” By this, he means that believers that come to faith after the rapture will be born again, of course, but that they will NOT be uniquely indwelt by the Holy Spirit, which dispensationalists believe is unique only to believers of this mystery age of the church.

To answer the many non-sequiturs of Dispensationalism is not something I can enter into now, but for many reasons that could be put forth, the whole edifice falls under its own weight. Any system that must make so many changes in reaction to admitted errors should be profoundly suspect. Yet, it is the leading view among most evangelicals that hold a favorable view of Israel’s place and purpose in the end times. Part of the reason is that most embracing the pre-trib rapture have been told only part of the story. They are not intimately familiar with its history and the principal pillars on which the system stands or falls. Many would blush if they only knew what their scholarly teachers understand to be essential to its defense.

How, particularly now, after the Spirit promised in Joel has been poured out on all who believe, now that Christ has been once and for all glorified (Jn 7:39), can it be imagined that there will be a retraction of Pentecost, so that those that come to faith in the tribulation or in the millennium to follow, are NOT reckoned as members of His body, are NOT baptized by one Spirit into the one Body? When the penitent survivors of Israel look upon Him whom they pierced and receive the Spirit (Zech 12:10), the very same Spirit promised by Joel that was poured out at Pentecost, will they be any less the body of Christ than the penitents of Pentecost? Will they be any less baptized by the promised Holy Spirit into the one Body that believers are baptized into now?

Dispensationalists say they will not. They hold that all who come to faith after the rapture belong to another people of God, with different promises and a different hope. So you can see that much more is at stake than simply where the rapture is placed. The very nature of what constitutes the body of Christ is put in question.

Not only does faith in a pre-trib rapture disarm the church for what it should be prepared to expect, but it robs God of the glory He has invested in the what He intends for the church’s role as prophetic witness to Israel and the nations, full of power, instructing many, and turning many to righteousness (Dan 11:32-33; 12:3; Rev 7:9, 13-14). But this assignment is NOT delegated to the 144,000 Jewish witnesses, unless they also belong to the “church of the living God, the pillar and ground of truth” (1Tim 3:15). Such a notion betrays a woeful ignorance of the nature and calling of the church. It makes the church merely a ‘speed bump’ (a parenthesis) on the way to a glorious millennium that is without the church on earth. How will the pillar and ground of truth be absent from the earth if the persecuted saints of the tribulation are not the body of Christ? It begs the question, what then is the body of Christ? How long shall it endure on the earth?

The whole conception of the nature of the mystery, as “fully foretold”, yet hidden within the prophetic writings (Acts 26:22; Ro 16:25-26; 1Pet 1:11), and the nature of the assembly of Messiah, as the revelation of His body, has been profoundly exchanged for something foreign and unheard of till the mid to late 19th century. As a dearest friend once exclaimed, “they’ve changed the story!”

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The Underground Episode 43: Discussing Premillennialism with Reggie Kelly from Joel Richardson on Vimeo.

The post Thoughts on the Timing of the Lord’s Return (with Joel Richardson) – [VIDEO] appeared first on Mystery of Israel.

If we can interpret and establish Rom. 11:15 “……what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?” to be the same time that the “dead in Christ” are raised, then is it settled that there can be no pre-trib rapture, since the resurrection of the “dead in Christ” is, by all accounts, the rapture, which is, of course, contemporaneous with the resurrection?

We can establish that the national resurrection / birth of the beleaguered nation takes place at the moment of Christ’s return (Isa 66:8; Eze 39:22; Zech 3:9; 12:10; Mt 23:39; 24:30; Lk 21:24; Acts 3:21; Ro 11:25-26; Rev 1:7; 11:2 et al.) But even after we prove the intersection between the national resurrection of the nation and personal resurrection of the saints, we have proven nothing against the rapture, at least not to their peculiar kind of thinking. Let me explain why.

They are instant to grant that Israel’s experience of tribulation ends in national resurrection at the return of Christ, which is simultaneous with the resurrection of OT believers and the martyrs of the tribulation who will come to faith AFTER the rapture. According to their view, everyone saved before Pentecost and after the pre-tribulational rapture belong to a distinct people of God, separate, not only from unbelieving Israel, but even from the regenerate saints of Israel who died before Pentecost, with those who come to faith after the rapture, thus dispensationalism’s famous theory of ‘two peoples’ of God. These groups are thought to belong to different economies or dispensations, thus the term, dispensationalism.

According to pre-tribulational dispensationalism, God’s “foretold” prophetic program for Israel is resumed only after the present ‘mystery’ dispensation (parenthesis / intercalation) that ends with the rapture. Recognizing that the books of Daniel and Revelation depict saints in the tribulation, so-called ‘church saints’distinguished from so-called ‘tribulation saints’. The former are removed by secret translation before the tribulation can begin. They acknowledge that the national resurrection of Israel comes with the end of the times of the gentiles and the sudden regeneration of the nation that Ezekiel and Hosea represent as a resurrection and Isaiah will depict as the moment of birth (Isa 66:8; Eze 37; Hos 6:2). Scripture is clear that the national rebirth or resurrection of the nation is contemporaneous with the post-tribulational resurrection of ‘those who sleep in the dust of the earth’ (Isa 26:16-21; Dan 12:1-2; Job 14:14 with 1Cor 15:52 & Job 19:25-27 with Zech 14:4, 7-9). This does not stop their theory because they simply assign the post-tribulational resurrection of OT saints to another dispensation that begins after the church has been removed. That is to say that saints who died before Pentecost do not go up in the rapture but continue to sleep in the dust of the earth for seven more years.

In contrast to God’s prophetically foretold purpose for Israel, it is believed that the church occupies an entirely distinct and completely un-foretold dispensation that was a mystery in other ages, the so-called, ‘church age’. Of course, we believe this is a complete misinterpretation of what Paul means by his use of the term, ‘mystery’. He is not using the term to dissociate the new revelation that has come to light in Christ from what stood written in the prophets. On the contrary, what has come to light in the gospel, though hidden until the appointed time of revelation, was fully foretold. That was the hallmark of its authenticity and verification that makes the world accountable (Acts 26:22; 1Cor 15:3-4 with Ro 16:25-26; 1Pet 1:11). That something has been newly revealed or brought to much fuller light, does not necessarily mean that it is newly existent. For example, the mystery of Christ and His pre-existence and co-eternality in the Godhead has come to much greater light since the revelation of the gospel. You see the point. I believe the same could be said of the church. It could not have been conceived as the body of Christ prior to the revelation of the mystery of Christ and the gospel, of course, but this does not mean that the church had no prior existence before Pentecost, as believed by dispensationalists.

Dispensationalists believe the mystery is the church as a new organism that has nothing to do with what was foretold in prophecy. Only after God’s mystery program for the church has been completed with the rapture does the focus turn again to God’s prophetic program for Israel (their words). Then begins the Day of the Lord, which they make to include the entirety of Daniel’s last week (another untenable claim). All who are saved after the rapture belong to another, completely distinct people of God. Not only the redeemed of Israel, but all who come to faith after the rapture, and all from among the nations that will be saved throughout the millennium, are NOT to be reckoned as belonging to the body of Christ, which belongs distinctly to the interim between Pentecost and the pre-tribulational rapture.

Dispensationalists will be the first to tell you that unless the body of Christ is restricted to those who are indwelt by the Spirit between Pentecost and the rapture, the case for a pre-tribulation rapture falls apart. Indeed, if the saints depicted in the tribulation in Daniel and Revelation belong to the body of Christ, then the conclusion cannot be avoided that the church is in the tribulation. Therefore, dispensatinalists would probably have no problem acknowledging that ‘life from the dead’ for national Israel coincides with the resurrection of Daniel and all the saints who died either before Pentecost or after the rapture. They know there is a spiritual resurrection of Israel at Christ’s return to establish the kingdom, they just don’t think this interferes with the inferences that they have built around the presupposition that the church, by definition, cannot be in the tribulation. That is what they do. They define the church out of the tribulation by a definition that was unknown until it was first proposed by John Nelson Darby as a break through insight from his sick bed in 1836.

Pre-tribulationists view the time between Pentecost and the rapture as ‘the dispensation of the church’ (the so-called, ‘the church age’). This is based on the belief that the church did not exist in the OT. They will cite Mt 16:18. “Upon this rock, I will (future tense) build my church.” They will point out that only with the pouring out of the Spirit (after the glorification of Jesus as Messiah; Jn 7:39) did the Spirit begin to baptize believers into the newly revealed body of the one new man. We take great exception to this view, but there are many besides dispensationalists who believe (I think incorrectly) that Pentecost was the ‘birthday’ of the church. But quite apart from that discussion, here is what is especially obnoxious to their system: It is the radically baseless inference that they haste to draw from 2Thes 2:7. The restrainer is held to be the Holy Spirit and His removal permits the Antichrist to be revealed. That is not the only interpretation for the identity of the restrainer, but even if it is allowed (though I do not allow) that the restrainer is the Holy Spirit, it would not necessarily follow that when He is withdrawn from His ministry of restraining evil, every believer who is indwelt by the Spirit is also taken away.

This is an inference based on a presupposition that leads to absurd conclusions. Those who take this view do not blush to call this event “a reversal of Pentecost” (Walvoord and many others). I call it a ‘retraction’ of Pentecost, because that’s what the theory implies. They argue that since the Holy Spirit did not indwell saints before Pentecost (on the contrary, saints were indwelt by the Spirit), He will no longer indwell those who come to faith after the rapture. They will be born again but not indwelt (how is that?). Tribulation believers will sustain a relation to the Spirit that they assume (I think falsely) existed before Pentecost. It is believed (quite incorrectly) that the Holy Spirit did not indwell believers before Pentecost. Until Pentecost, He only resided “with” them. This view is built on what can be shown to be a faulty interpretation of Jn 14:17.

The two pillars of dispensationalism that are indispensable to its defense is first the doctrine of imminence and secondly their definition of the church as restricted only to this age. The second pillar is based on two principle presuppositions that are essential to its support: 1). Their own new view of Paul’s use of the term, mystery as applied to the new revelation by the Spirit, and 2), their view that Holy Spirit’s indwelling is restricted to saints living only between Pentecost and the pre-trib rapture. Touch either one of these pillar points and the whole edifice of modern dispensationalism starts to crumble. But that is only if one knows their own system well enough to know what is absolutely necessary to its support.

Most who embrace the pre-trib theory (with its doctrine of an any moment return and new and novel ecclessiology) might give pause if they only knew what the academic defenders of their position must teach in order to hold the system together, things so obnoxious to the normal believer as the thought that none of the righteous who died before Pentecost can participate in the marriage supper of the Lamb. Why? Because it is believed that no one living before Pentecost can belong to the body of Christ. All the righteous of the older dispensation continue their sleep in the dust of the earth for an additional seven years. This is clear from Dan 12:1-2 and a number of other scriptures that show that the resurrection of the OT faithful takes place only AFTER the tribulation at the time of Israel’s deliverance. Not only so, but Jesus said that those who would believe on Him would be raised, not at an undisclosed, pre-trib rapture, but ‘at the last day’ (Jn 6:39-40, 44, 54; 11:24; 12:48).

Such observations may not dissuade those who have deeply imbibed academic dispensationalism, but few things could be more obnoxious or theologically untenable to the average believer than the imaginative notion that the Spirit who has been once and for all given (as based on the once and for all glorification of Jesus; Jn 7:39), that His indwelling presence should also be taken away at the rapture, so that He will no longer indwell those who become saints after the rapture. Not only does this so-called ‘reversal of Pentecost’ obtain throughout the last seven years of this age. By the same principle, all who come to faith all throughout the millennium cannot be indwelt by the Spirit. He is with them but not in them, because that distinction is what makes the body unique to this dispensation. Believest thou this? Such is the price of consistency.

This is a point where they stand most to be embarrassed. For the sake of those who might give pause, love bids that we endeavor to educate the unwary of what the academic defenders of dispensationalism admit to be necessary to support the doctrine of an imminent, and therefore pretribulational rapture.

Not only was the Spirit given on the basis of Jesus’ once and for all glorification, which can NEVER be reversed, but as you so well asked, “how will the outpouring / baptism of the Spirit that will come to the penitent Jewish survivors ‘in that day’ NOT also baptize them into the body of Christ?” Exactly! How can the Spirit not put one in the body in that day no less than this? How can one be in Christ and not be in His body? And how can the Spirit who will be poured out upon the the penitent Jewish survivors of tribulation produce a lesser result than Pentecost, particularly when Pentecost was the first fruits of that which is to come? How is it that He baptizes believers now into the revealed body of Christ but He will not do the same for those who receive the ultimate promise made to Israel? Absurd! Not only is this poor eschatology; it is disastrous theology! It belies a terribly deficient understanding of the inward working and abiding union of the Spirit as the basis of that union with the divine nature that is salvation. And, though impossible apart from the cross and resurrection of Jesus, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is certainly NOT something that began only after the cross, as witness Jesus’ reprimand of Nicodemus for not recognizing that just as a nation cannot be born apart from the Spirit, neither can a person, and so on we could go in demonstrating by many scriptures and evidences too plain to dispute that the Spirit of Christ indwelt, not only the prophets (1Pet 1:11) but all the children born of the Spirit (Gal 4:29 etc.), but that’s another discussion, albeit a needful one.

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Do you know how long the Jews have not believed in Adamic sin being imputed? How modern is that notion?

You ask an interesting question on the Jewish rejection of the imputation of Adam’s sin. I don’t think there was ever a time when rabbinic Judaism has not rejected the doctrine of original sin, and hence, the imputation of Adam’s sin. The imputation of Adam’s sin in Ro 5 is in keeping with the doctrine of original sin, which is strongly suggested in many scriptures in both testaments, but particularly required for our understanding of the necessity of Jesus’s virgin birth, since in this way the Messiah would circumvent the the fallen nature of Adam, as passed down through the seed of man. Jewish theology is particularly vocal and passionate in its rejection of the doctrine of original sin, strongly affirming instead the innate ability of man to achieve salvation, but not, of course, without the necessity of forgiveness and mercy through self-initiated repentance, nothing of the special drawing of the Spirit required.

Instead of original sin, Judaism teaches the notion of the two inclinations, with the free will of man being the arbiter as to which wins out in the struggle. They reject the Christian view that a deep root of corruption, received in the fall, pervades all our nature, rendering us incapable of a true and acceptable holiness apart from the special quickening of the Spirit. They believe that the only thing we inherit from Adam is the two inclinations inherent in human nature. With every new entry into the world, it is a fresh start of innocence that is progressively broken down or built up through free choices. No one enters into the world without the full right and ability to gain (earn?) eternal life through the wisdom and discipline of right choices (Ro 4:4). In Judaism, man is not inherently incapacitated for righteousness as in Christian theology (which is taken mostly, but not entirely from the scriptures of the NT that profoundly deny natural, unaided capacity for an acceptable righteousness (e.g., Ps 51:5; Jer 13:23; 17:9; Eze 16:5-6; Mt 19:17; Ro 7:14, 18, 23; 1Cor 2:14, Eph 2:1).

Although I believe that we do inherit the imputation of Adam’s particular sin, as he acted representatively in our nature, as in him all die; it is the fallen nature inherited from Adam that incapacitates us for true repentance, faith, and holiness, since this has rendered us as dead and inert apart from the special intervention of the Spirit. Hence, even the best that the unregenerate person is capable of producing, even in sincere obedience to divine commands, this cannot count for salvation, or even contribute towards eternal life. The way is barred from even the best of human will and noble intention (Ro 9:16, 31-32; 10:2-3). Of course, this is the offense of the cross, namely, the rejection of all that stands under the power of the first creation, not as always completely worthless in and of itself, but as necessarily rejected where the gift of eternal life is concerned.

Since this is getting at the heart of the mystery of the faith, that salvation comes only through a transforming revelation that creates a new union with the divine nature, it is to be expected that the natural man, and of course Jewish theology, would categorically reject such a foreign thesis. That “in man is nothing good” (MK 10:18; Ro 3:10; 7:18; Rev 15:4) is a consummate offense to reason, since it shatters hope in man. This is the hue and cry of humanism and the protest of every man centered theology.

This is not to say (though some have said) that all that pertains to the unsaved is worthless and evil. Even Calvin would speak of “the remnant of the image of God” in fallen man. All can see that the unregenerate are by no means incapable of a measure of goodness, but this cannot count for, or take the place of salvation. Lest any flesh should boast, this must be wholly the work of God by the Spirit. That’s the crucial difference. Man in the image of God, like the law written on stone, has a kind of glory; that is true, but it is fatally short of the glory of God. This is the problem.

It is an hard word indeed, but unless the thoughts and intent of the heart, however noble and selfless the motive, are the fruit of the indwelling Spirit of Christ received by faith, this cannot count with God where salvation and eternal reward is concerned. There may be temporary reward for wise living. A restrained and disciplined lifestyle with virtue and good works may even check and restrain the progress of sin and depravity and do some good in the world. But whatever its temporal value, it is short of the necessary miracle of the new creation and thus short of the glory God. As Paul would say, the only thing that counts is a new creation (Gal 6:15). Thus, Israel’s eschatological salvation in the present age becomes the paradigm and macrocosm of individual and corporate salvation through the transforming revelation of the gospel (Isa 45:17, 25; 54:13; 59:21; 66:8; Jer 31:34; 32:40; Eze 37:5; Dan 9:24 with Jn 3:3; 5:21; 6:45, 63; 2Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15; Eph 2:1; 1Pet 1:23)

The issue will always reduce to the issue of the Spirit. In Christ / in the Spirit is life eternal. Outside is wrath, regardless of time or dispensation, since only by the indwelling Spirit of Christ were any ever made alive to God. That is a rule that may be well inferred from a host of scriptures in both testaments (Gen 41:38; Nu 27:18; Isa 63:11; Dan 4:8-9, 18; 5:14; Mt 22:32, 43; Jn 3:3, 6, 10; 4:24; 6:63; 8:39; Ro 8:14-15; 9:8; 1Cor 2:14; 2Cor 3:17; Gal 4:29; 6:15; Eph 2:1; 1Pet 1:11). Not all receive the same reward or punishment (Lk 12:47-48), but eternal destiny is decided by the issue of life by Spirit through the imputed righteousness of Christ to true faith, which, of course, is a living, and thus a working faith.

Not even the most noble acts, however selflessly motivated, can count for salvation. Nothing of man or that stands in the will or power of man can avail. Only the imputation of Christ’s righteousness can justify before God, the evidence being the gift of the Spirit who creates the new heart of the New Covenant. It is the power and life of the new creation, born of the Spirit and the Word through the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. This alone justifies before God.

I think a central and non negotiable point of our message must always be the unthinkable terror of presuming to stand before infinite, unapproachable holiness, in anything less or other than the very righteousness that was perfected in Jesus’s 33 1/2 years of tested obedience under the law as the spotless Lamb (Mat 3:15; Gal 4:4-5). To come in any other covering is an inexcusable affront (Mt 22:11-13). To present anything less, or to mix something of man with its perfection is to pollute and nullify the whole. By itself, no human work can stand in the judgment, since all other ground is sinking sand. That one sacrifice cannot brook mixture. It is all or nothing. To presume to add anything within human reach or power to the finished work of Christ is to pollute the whole. “A little leaven.” I realize that’s an hard word; but the law requires perfection. Anything short is an affront to divine holiness and to the law.

The Spirit could never have quickened the first sinner apart from the divine certainty of the Surety’s divinely guaranteed success, being already counted as a fully accomplished event in the eternal counsel and foreknowledge of God. Jews need to understand that Jesus and His sacrifice was not an afterthought, not a new plan, but the ground of all salvation past and future, even before the revelation of the mystery that brought to full light the way and means of God’s eternally predestined will to gather together all things in Christ (Eph 1:9-10). Obviously, this means that those in the OT who trusted in God for a righteousness that was not their own had imputed to them much more than they could yet understand (Ps 32:2; Ro 4:6). Just as when Jesus said, “For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them” (Matt 13:17), since now, the way into the holiest of all has been made manifest.

What points of appeal can be brought to Jews that can break into such a powerful false covering, so seemingly supported by scripture itself? (Ro 10:2-3; Phil 3:5-9). Surely it is a blindness that is especially powerful and unique to this beloved enemy “for our sakes” (Ro 11:28). Who, more than the Jew is calculated to send believers back to do their homework in order to give answer? (Prov 15:28; 16:1; Isa 50:4; 2Tim 2:15; 1Pet 3:15). By this divinely ordained encounter, believers are either deepened or devastated in their faith. The Jew is a provision to see if the believer has apprehended the revelation of the gospel by the Spirit (Isa 53:1; Mt 16:17; Ro 1:17; 1Cor 2:14; Eph 6:19). Else, this formidable challenge has the power, as nothing else, to profoundly shake the faith that one only ‘seemed’ to have (Lk 8:18).

Somehow, it has pleased God that when the foolishness of the cross is preached, the Spirit cuts through all the otherwise impossible intellectual barriers. Although the consummate offense, there is something about the concept of a crucified Messiah that breaks into the human spirit as nothing else ever could. As someone has well said, “true faith begins precisely at the point the atheist thinks it should be at an end.”

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