Content in category The Day of the Lord

When He sees that their power is gone. (A “witnessing” question)

[…] The goal of Jacob’s trouble is to bring the Jew to an end of His own power. It is significant that this is precisely the place where Jesus is revealed to the Jewish heart, namely, at the end of power (“when He sees that their power is gone …” compare Deut 32:36 with Dan 12:7). This is because the strength of the veil that is over the Jewish heart, and indeed over every natural heart, stands in what scripture calls, “the pride of your power” (Lev 26:19). It is what Paul calls, “confidence in the flesh” (2Cor 1:9; Phil 3:3-4). When this is taken away, so is the veil in the revelation of the face of Jesus Christ (2Cor 3:18; 4:6).

I believe the suffering of the Jews during the time of Jacob’s trouble will be different from all other times of covenant curse and judgment, because this time, their suffering will be in the full light of a powerfully declared and fully vindicated display of prophetic fulfillment. (Prophecy as mercy! Rev 19:10).

The presence of a prophetic people that have the key of interpretation (Dan 11:33) and who, because of the liberating power of the gospel, love not their lives unto the death (Rev 12:11), will be the difference between Jacob’s trouble and the Holocaust. One ends with the ultimately humanistic declaration, “never again!” While the other ends by the acceptance of Israel’s history of tribulation as all together just and not unequal to the nation’s corporate guilt (Lev 26:41-43; Hos 5:15; Zech 12:10). Such a corporate acknowledgment will indeed be a miracle of revelation and grace.

So we are to bring into Israel’s consciousness something much more than the case for the supernatural fulfillment of prophecy. We are to study how to press upon Jewish consideration the ancient covenant contention that has burned throughout the long age of exile and that must continue to burn to the end of Jacob’s trouble, when the face of God will be no longer hidden from a then fully regenerate (Isa 54:13; 59:21; 60:21; 66:8; Jer 31:34; Ezek 39:21, 29) and restored nation. […]

Kept From The Hour

But as I have said before: Even if it is insisted that “kept from the hour” should be interpreted as physical exemption, the word “hour” in Revelation is never used of the entire tribulation, but most particularly of the day of God almighty at its end (compare Rev 16:14-16 w/ […]

Recommended Reading: Joseph and Jesus

Joseph, Jesus and the Jewish People[…] First, let me recommend the below Bible study by long friend, Dean Van Druff: http://www.acts17-11.com/joseph.html I read it today for the second time and was as moved as I was the first time.

Also, I’ve not had much time with it yet, but I’m quite impressed with a book that I found while searching for this topic on Amazon.com It looks to be a very valuable resource for our interest. Other than Dean, this is the only author that I know of who has published something that compares Joseph’s self revelation to his brethren as a type of Jesus’ revelation to Israel at His return. She also says it is something that was for her a new discovery that she considers timely in the church’s relation to Israel. Just today, I notice she expects another expulsion and flight of Jews. That’s a comparatively rare perspective. The book is: “Joseph, Jesus, and the Jewish People: A Gospel Tract Hidden in the Torah” Reggie

The Tragic Cost of Replacement Theology

[…] Until recently, the church has, for the larger part, retired in defeat from Jewish evangelism. Yet nothing else is more calculated to prepare and deepen the church in its own faith than its encounter with the formidable Jew, the beloved enemy “for your sakes”. The Jew forces the church to do its homework. The challenge of outreach and witness to the Jew is calculated to deepen the church’s appreciation for the mystery of the faith as nothing else. If the church resigns its calling to go to the Jew first, it surrenders a key component in God’s larger strategy in the evangelism of the nations. Hence, the church that is ineffectual towards Israel is ineffectual in a crucial aspect of its mission, which must be accomplished in order for Christ to return.

Israel is God’s self appointed mission impossible. History has an appointment to keep. The glory of God is demonstrated in His ability to finally bring the very same people that He first brought out of Egypt into the Land to stay (see Num 14:11-21; Dan 2:44. Compare the phrase “other people in Lev 20:24, 26 with Dan 2:44). The divine conquest of Jewish unbelief will be the like the parting of the Red Sea. The birthing of Israel ‘in one day’ (Isa 66:8; Zech 3:9) will be a monument to irresistible grace, comparable to Paul’s sovereign divine arrest on the Damascus road (Gal 1:15-16; w/ Ps 102:13; 110:3). Only this will be public in the sight of all nations. Indeed God has bound the destiny of all nations to the fall and rising again of Israel. If the church knew this, as it once did, it could never pray for the kingdom to come on earth without this consciousness. It would see Israel’s salvation as a special object of its corporate travail (in analogy to Paul’s travail for his Galatians; Gal 4:19 w/ Isa 66:8; Rev 12:2). […]

Apocalyptic Evangelism

The idea of the course was to recover the context of the apocalyptic gospel of the first century as a call to flee to Christ from the wrath to come, and thus make personal appropriation of the messianic salvation in expectation of the imminence of Jersualem’s destruction, which represented the imminent tribulation to first century Jewish expectation. Well, we are there again. We have come full circle. We stand and witness once more under the shadow of an imminent world disaster over Jerusalem. Thus the same issues that confronted first century Israel are back in the forefront.

How soon is “The Time of Jacob’s Trouble?”

[…] Ezekiel shows that when the Spirit is poured out at the day of the Lord, the face of God will never again be hidden from the nation that is now saved to the last man (Ezek 39:22-29 with Isa. 54:13; 59:21; 60:21).

This is the time that the sealed book (Dan 9:24; 12:4, 9) is revealed to Israel. But the sealed vision is not sealed to all. During the days of the tribulation, there is a remnant ‘that understand among the people’ (11:33; 12:3, 10). They will know the secret (the mystery of the gospel) and through their witness many will be turned to righteousness. A comparison of Zech 12:10 with Mt 23:39 will show that the end of the age waits till the beleaguered survivors of Israel receive the same revelation of the gospel that came down from heaven at Pentecost (1Pet 1:12). This is the rock on which the church is built; it is the revelation of Christ that cannot come by flesh and blood.

So I believe the two days of Hos 6:2 coincide with the events that span the time between Christ’s two advents to Israel. Although history is littered with one shameful debacle of failed prediction after another, the time is coming when the question of the time will no longer be a question for the true church. The last seven years is clearly marked by a highly descript sequence of definite events that nothing in the past has come near to fulfilling (e.g., Dan 11:21-45). It is paramount that we know the distinctive character of the end time events in order to avoid the false alarms of prophetic speculation, and to recognize the real thing when it does come. […]

Dispensationalism & More on “One or Two Peoples of God?”

… 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. …

Israel’s Salvation Will Not Come By “Natural” Sight

… But for ‘the escaped of Israel’, it is the ‘Spirit of grace and supplication’ unto repentance, because they see Him in the sense of 2Cor 3:16-18 unto transformation. It is like Paul when he said, “But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal His Son in me, …” ( Gal 1:15-16). It comes by a sudden divine arrest at a pre-set time. “Thou shalt arise, and have mercy upon Zion: for the time to favour her, yea, the set time, is come (Ps 102:13). It’s on a fixed divine schedule (see Dan 8:19; 11:27, 29, 35-36). It is what the old English divines called “distinguishing grace.” Still, such a divine act is no less sovereign because it comes at the end of a divinely arranged process (compare Deut 32:36 with Dan 12:7). Significantly, it comes at the end of Jacob’s strength, just as it comes at the end of ours. Therefore, we see that Jewish hearts are prepared for this divinely pre-determined event, and the church has a crucial part and role in that preparation as witness (see Dan 11:33), just as I believe that Stephen’s testimony and martyrdom had a preparatory influence for the predestined event of Paul’s revelation of Christ on Damascus road.

The Falling Stars

[…] So the phenomena associated with the sixth seal takes us to the day of the Lord, which is at the end of the tribulation, whereas the activity of Dan 8:10 starts at the beginning and continues through the tribulation. It is not incorrect to see the relation of the casting down of the stars as a physical sign that the proud powers of the air are now being dethroned, but I would not let the language concerning the displacement of the stars hinder from understanding the passage to refer to physical phenomena as it will “appear” from our perspective. I think what we are seeing in these references are the visual effects of an all out nuclear war. There are many passages that more than suggest that this is taking place when the Lord returns to “destroy those that are destroying the earth” […]

Crucial Timing of the Day of the Lord

[…] Note that Jesus places the stellar upheaval and eclipse immediately AFTER the tribulation, whereas Joel’s prophecy shows this as happening BEFORE the great and notable ‘day of the Lord’. How then can the day of the Lord be held to include the tribulation if the darkness that comes BEFORE the day of the Lord is said by Jesus to come ‘immediately AFTER’ the tribulation? It simply cannot be done; scripture doesn’t permit it. But it must be done if pre-tribulationism is to survive. […]

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Mystery of Israel
Reflections on the Mystery of Israel and the Church... by Reggie Kelly

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