https://www.jewishhistory.org/a-mystical-view-of-exile/  (from jewishhistory.org)

Notice these extracts from the above article:

“What sin of the Jewish people was so great that it required such a long, bloody and painful exile – with seemingly no end? The Jews may have sinned, but if we compare the Jews’ behavior to many other nations and religious groups in history, it is difficult to place them at the bottom of the ladder. We are not found to be that wanting morally or spiritually. The punishment seems disproportionate to the sin.”

“What purpose does this exile accomplish?”

“The exile was transformed from being viewed as a punishment for the sins of the Jewish people into a vehicle for redemption”

In this last sentence and what follows, we see the problem of the exile being collapsed into one aspect of a common Jewish answer to the so called, “problem of evil”:

“only through darkness could light shine.”

This softens the blow of the traditional view of exile as punishment for sin. It doesn’t deny sin, but it makes sin, and evil in general, to be the means by which the nobility of innate human goodness can be applied towards some eschatological ’re-assembling’ of the good, ultimately purged and freed of the power of evil through good deeds.

How much more optimistic of a properly “educated” and incentivized human nature could there be than this?!

Kabalistic Judaism is an enormous leap of faith in man as the ultimate cooperator to assist God to put the world right. At best, God can do no more than help us “get ourselves back to the Garden”. The golden age dawns when this elusive mutual endeavor has been achieved.

The Hebrew prophets who continually describe a golden age of peace held no such optimism concerning man’s role in bringing such an age into existence. Only an apocalyptic in-breaking of supernatural divine power would ever be sufficient to break unending cycle of wars and rumors of war.

According to Judaism’s boundless optimism in the potential of human nature, the messianic era waits for man to come around to a sufficient cooperation with God to finally end the exile, but for how long? How long can the messianic era, once it comes, be expected to endure apart from a radical change at the root of human nature?

This is precisely where we must make much of the promise of the Holy Spirit as indispensable to the hope of the nation then, “in that day”, and the individual now, in this day.

We must show in our Jewish evangelism that the hope of the nation is the same as the hope of the individual. That is the indispensable necessity of vital regeneration. “You MUST be born again!”

The prophets recognized that only the outpouring of the Spirit on the “whole” of the surviving nation (ALL Israel) is the indispensable necessity that marks the end of exile (see Isa 32:15; 44:3; 59:21; Eze 39:29; Zech 12:10). It is Zechariah who reveals the ground of this great eschatological event as a transforming revelation that will come to the Jewish survivors of the tribulation, as it came to Isaiah when he saw the Lord (Isa 6:1-8; Jn 12:41 with Zech 12:10; Mt 23:39; Ro 11:26 with Joel 3:16 & Rev 1:7).

The NT will make explicit what was implicit in the OT, that the eschatological promise of the Spirit would be given on the basis of faith in “the blood of the everlasting covenant” in Yeshua’s atoning sacrifice. According to Paul, the apostolic proclamation was to be presented as the revelation of a mystery, fully foretold in “the scriptures of the prophets” (Acts 26:22), but kept secret until the appointed time when the Holy Spirit would be “sent down from heaven” (Ro 16:25-26; Eph 6:19; 1Pet 1:11-12).

We might ask how nearly our approach to evangelism conforms to Paul’s?

What follows is an overview of something that began with a text exchange with Adam this morning:

The exile (i.e., the Jews driven from the Land that God gave specifically to them as an everlasting possession) was once looked upon as a shocking and puzzling anomaly:

“Even all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the LORD done thus unto this land? what meaneth the heat of this great anger?” (Deut 29:24 KJV).

For the Hebrew prophets, the healing of the nations would not come until All Israel would be All righteous (Isa 60:21), ALL back in the Land (Eze 39:28), dwelling in everlasting security, “never again” to be menaced by the enemy within or without.

Therefore, an Orthodox Jew who reveres the scriptures and interprets them literally MUST deal with the fact that so long as his people are not ALL back home in that particular Land, ALL preserved in abiding holiness by reason of a new heart and new spirit (Isa 59:21; Jer 31:34; Eze 37:26, etc., etc.), an apocalyptic end of unequaled distress yet awaits his nation. It is crucial that this be stressed in our witness.

This unequaled trouble (“the time of Jacob’s trouble”) will bring about the deepest national humbling and breaking in the nation’s history (Deut 32:36 with Jer 30:6-7; Dan 12:1, 7; Mt 24:21). It will accomplish the permanent end of exile in the spiritual rebirth / resurrection of the nation in “one day” (Ps 102:13; Isa 66:8; Eze 39:8, 22; Zech 3:9).

Only an ultimately climactic, ultimately transformational event could ever hope to reconcile the great tension that exists between the unconditional, unilateral covenants promised to Abraham & David and the many conditions necessary to secure the inheritance that would be subsequently introduced at Sinai. That built in tension pointed to a covenant that could not be defeated by conditions that would invariably be broken through human weakness. Unlike the covenant mediated by Moses, this covenant would be incapable of EVER being broken again (Jer 31:31, 34; 32:40).

This is NOT because the stipulated conditions of obedience would be conveniently removed, but because all conditionality would be provided for, and guaranteed by the atonement of Messiah’s atoning blood and the promised gift of the outpoured Holy Spirit, poured out, not only on the perennial remnant, but on the whole of the newly born (Isa 66:8; Zech 3:9), newly raised, holy nation of born-again tribulation survivors.

This covenant that would subsume, supersede, and fulfill all others is what the prophets would call, “the everlasting / new covenant”. It would not be fully enacted with “ALL Israel” until AFTER the unequaled trouble when the Deliverer would come out of Zion “to turn ungodliness away from Jacob” (Isa 27:9; 59:20-21; Joel 3:16; Ro 11:26).

Because the Hebrew prophets entertained no such optimism concerning the intractability of fallen human nature, they cast their focus on a future apocalyptic event of ultimate divine intervention, comparable to the power of the original creation, the supernatural birth of Isaac, or the resurrection of the dead. Nothing less would avail. “Not by might not by power but (ONLY) by My Spirit, says the Lord.”

So the very concept of the Day of the Lord grows out of the logic of what we might call the crisis, or dilemma of the covenants.

To know both the extravagance and the certainty of the unilateral promises to Abraham and David, and to compare this to the hopeless weakness and predictability of the human condition is to raise the searching question: “what’s it going to take?” Surely nothing less than “the God who raises the dead” (2Cor 1:9).

Herein lies the unspeakably glorious resolution that the mystery of the gospel will reveal after Christ’s ascension at Pentecost. The shed blood of the Lamb of God would be the means by which the gift of the Spirit would secure the blessings of the everlasting covenant for “all the seed” (Isa 45:24-25 with Ro 4:16).

So contrary to popular replacement presumptions, the ultimate goal of the everlasting covenant does not reach its climax with the crucified and risen Messiah but with the age ending resurrection of an internationally impaled Jewish nation at His return.

That question: “What’s it going to take?”, must be pressed! It should be a pivotal point to be made in our apologetic to Israel.

This is because, according to any plain reading of plain language, an unparalleled time of devastation looms over the fledgling nation locally, and world Jewry internationally. Nothing could be clearer: Covenant chastisement cannot end until the exile has ended with every Jew filled with the Spirit, safe at home in his own Land (Eze 39:28-29).

With any opportunity, we must be careful to stress that while this time of unequaled trouble will touch everyone everywhere, it will be centered around the age old, “Jewish question”. When its implications are duly unpacked, this question is divinely designed to evoke an even more central question, namely, the Jesus question, and the question of the nature of justifying righteousness (Acts 13:38-39).

Before coming to the question of Jesus, we should point out that the fate of the nations hangs in the balance over an ancient covenant contention, namely Yahweh’s (“quarrel” KJV) controversy with “My people” (Lev 26:25; Mic 6:2; KJV).

Even God’s “controversy with the nations” (Isa 34:8) will be over how they see and interpret His controversy with His people (Joel 3:2; Eze 38:17), since both points of great divine contention revolve around the greatest and most decisive of all questions: “whom do men say that I, the Son of Man am? … what think ye of Christ?” Not only that Jesus is the promised Messiah, but that His is the only acceptable perfection of righteousness imputed to the believer that can stand in the judgment (Isa 45:24; 54:17; Jer 23:6; Dan 9:24; Ro 1:17; 3:21; ;1Cor 1:30; 2Cor 5:21; Phil 3:9)

The question of why a future great tribulation must yet come upon the Jewish nation locally and the Jew internationally, leads to the issue of the Holy Spirit received by faith in the finished work of Christ on the cross, as the only resolution to the perennial problem of covenant failure for both Jew and gentile. This is the resolution that the gospel reveals to the praise of the glory of His grace in Christ.

To summarize:
According to the prophets’ manifest interpretation of the divine covenants of Abraham and David, the world can never know abiding, unthreatened peace, until ALL (not some but ALL) the Jews are safe in their own Land, not only home, but “home free”, home to stay in an “everlasting righteousness” that extends to the entirety of an entirely saved Jewish population, unto children’s children (Isa 4:3; 45:17, 25; 44:3; 59:21; 60:21; 65:23; 66:22; Jer 31:34; 32:40; Eze 20:40; 37:25; 39:22, 28-29; Zeph 3:13, etc.).

The question why this should be so leads to the greater “glory of the story”. The end time proclamation that will bring the Jew at last to “consider” what the nation has been so reluctant to consider (Deut 32:29; Isa 1:3; 42:25 with Jer 23:20; 30:24) will be no less effective to reach the gentile, according to the approach of Ro 16:25-26.

These are the divinely ordained questions that an anointed and empowered ‘maskilim’ (those who “understand”) will be prepared to answer at a time when all the great questions of the faith will be pressed upon the nations, as the question of Jesus was pressed on first century Israel (Dan 11:32-33, 35; 12:3, 10; Mt 24:14; Rev 7:9, 13-14; 14:6).

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From the 2022 God’s Foretold Work: The Everlasting Gospel Convocation. The audio has been cleaned up compared to the LIVE version.

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However, we see in rom. 11:25-29, there is reference to a covenant that remains outstanding with Israel (“the natural branches”, ie. the Jew as Jew, and the nation as nation) that is to be fulfilled in the future. What covenant is this? Clearly, it is the same new covenant that is already ratified eternally in the sacrifice of Messiah. Still, it is not completely fulfilled in its stated provisions until all Israel is saved” (Rom. 11:26, 27). “But this shall be the covenantthat I will make with the house of Israel, after those days, saith the LORD, I will putmy law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no moreevery man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD, for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jer. 31:33-34; see also Isa. 39:20-21, in context).

We will show that according to the provisions of the New Covenant, the salvation of “all Israel” signifies an eschatological contrast to the perennial presence of a remnant that has always remained in the midst of a predominantly apostate nation. The context of Jeremiah’s new covenant points to the Old Testament Day of the Lord, when a remnant that has survived “Jacob’s trouble” (and only those will survive who are appointed to salvation) become a new nation, “born in a day” (Isa. 66: 7—9), the iniquity of the land is “cleansed in one day” (Zech. 3:9,10). From this time, there will never again be a remnant in the land, because the whole of the nation “from the least to the greatest” will all know the Lord, and will be preserved in holiness for the duration of the thousand years. That is to say, because the covenant is fulfilled in their national and collective obedience, there is no longer a remnant, but the entire nation is preserved in an everlasting righteousness” (Jer. 32:40; Dan. 9:24).

Because the law is fulfilled, as there is now a new heart of faithful obedience shared by the entirety of the nation, there is also no further threat of exile, no longer the inevitable recurrence of national disruption through covenant violation (Lev. 26; Deut. 28-32). The chronic tendency to backslide that placed the nation in perpetual covenant jeopardy is now replace by a new and lively spirit that can, and by the law of an inherent new nature, will ‘certainly’ persevere in righteousness according to the tenor of the following passages:

“Behold, I will gather them out of all countries, whither I have driven them in mine anger, and in my fury, and in great wrath; and I will bring them again unto this place, and I will cause the to dwell safely: And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. And I will given them one heart, and one way, that they may fear me for ever, for the good of them, and of their children after them: And I will make an everlastingcovenant with the, that I will not turn awayfrom them, to do them good; but I will putmy fear in their hearts, that they shall not departfrom me. Yea, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will plant them in this land assuredly with my whole heart and with my whole soul. For thus saith the LORD; Like as I have brought all this great evil upon this people, so will I bring upon them all the good that I have promised them: (Jer. 32: 37-42).

“ In those days, and in that time, saith the LORD, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be none, and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found: for I will pardon them whom I reserve: (Jer. 50:20).

“Thy people also shall be all righteous; they shall inherit the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified(Isa. 60:2).

“In that day shall the branch of the LORD be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escapedof Israel. And it shall come to pass, that he that is leftin Zion, and he that remainethin Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even every onethat is written among the living in Jerusalem” (Isa. 4:2-3).

“But Israel shall be saved in the LORD with an everlasting salvation: ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded world without end…In the LORD shall allthe seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory” (Isa. 45:17, 25).

“And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the LORD. As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the LORD: My spirit that is upon thee, and my words, which I have put in thy mouth, shall not departout of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s seed, saith the LORD, from henceforth and for ever: (Jer. 31:33034; see also Isa. 59:20-21).

And so, Ezekiel and the other prophets: “For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heartalso will I giveyou, and a new spiritwill I putwithin you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and causeyou to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keepmy judgments, and dothem. And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God. I will also save you from all your uncleanness….” (Ezek. 37:24-29).

“For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice. And without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim; Afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the LORD their God, and David their king; and shall fear the LORD and his goodness in the latter days” (Hos. 3:4-5).

“Therefore wait ye upon me, saith the LORD, until the daythat I rise up to the prey: for my determination is to gather the nations, that I may assemble the kingdoms, to pour upon them mine indignation, even all my fierce anger: for all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of my jealousy. For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the LORD, to serve him with one consent…The remnant of Israel shall not do iniquity, nor speak lies; neither shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouth: for they shall feed and lie down, and none shall make them afraid” (Zeph. 3:8-13).

“And I will strengthen the house of Judah, and I will save the house of Joseph, and I will bring them again to place them; for I have mercy upon them: and they shall be as thought I had not cast them off: for I am the LORD their God, and will hear them…In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness: (Zech. 10:6; 13:1).

This is not to multiply passages merely to prove a point; though many more that say essentially the same thing could be cited almost indefinitely rather, it is to give you a sense of just what Paul has in mind when he says that the salvation of “all” Israel is according to “my covenant with them when I shalltake away their sin” (Rom. 11:27). This is clearly future; it concerns the “natural branches” that are currently “enemiesof the gospel”. This is, of course, the same New Covenant that the church (through the revelation of the mystery) has entered upon in unexpected advance of the Day of the Lord, in contrast to the expected “restoration of the kingdom to Israel” (Acts 1:6, 3:21; compare also Dan. 2:44 with Rev. 17:12 demonstrating the manifest futurity  of this restoration of the kingdom “to Israel”).

Now consider also that until one is in Christ, there is no true fulfillment of the law, and so one remains “under” the law for condemnation and not for blessing, because the blessing is only to the doer (Lev. 18:5). But there is no acceptable doing of the law except through the gift of the Spirit received by faith. This is why Israel stumbled even before Jesus came. Paul explains that Israel’s historic error was their failure to pursue the holiness of the law by faith (Rom. 9:32). Instead, Israel turned the standard of righteousness into a work of human ‘do-ability’. This is quintessential humanism; it is “confidence in the flesh” (Phil.3:3-r), a condition so resilient and intractable that it continues to war against the believer as well (2 Cor. 1:9, 12:7).

When the law was revealed from Mt. Sinai, it stood forth in its holiness as humanly unapproachable (Ex. 19, Heb. 12:18-21). Till this day, this is Israel’s humanly insoluble predicament. Israel remains under the curse of the broken covenant UNTIL the law is fulfilled by the creation of a new heart, and a new spirit. And until the law is consistently kept by the entire nation, there can be no final refuge from terror, and no lasting possession of the land. There is no discharge from that covenant except through fulfillment of the righteousness that it demands, but cannot confer.

The Abrahamic and Davidic covenants are both defined as “everlasting” (Gen. 17:7, 2 Sam. 23:5, Ps. 105:10, Isa. 55:3, 61:8, Jer. 31:35-37, 32:40, 33:25-26, Ezek. 37:26 et al), and belong to :my covenant (Gen. 17:19, Ex. 6:4, Lev. 26:42, 44, Ps. 89:28, 34, Isa. 59:21, Jer. 33:20-21, 25-26) “WITH THEM”(ie. the “natural” branches). This covenant is both fulfilled and unfulfilled. It is fulfilled in Christ, and with all who are in Christ. However, an essential feature of the covenant remains outstanding and unfulfilled until every Jewish soul living after Christ’s return will them be in Christ “from the day and forward” (Ezek.39:22, Acts 3:19-21, Rom. 11:25-27).

Significantly, God describes the broken law as “my covenant” in Jer. 31:32, as it is distinguished from the “new” covenant announced in the proceeding verse. Here, God calls the broken covenant “my covenant”, a term used elsewhere of the “everlasting” covenant. It is the same covenant that Paul unmistakeably identifies with the new covenant still to be established with the natural branches (Rom. 11;27 with Isa. 59:21 and Jer. 31:31-34). 

God seems to look upon the covenant in its distinct stages as a single and perpetual covenant that is both conditional and unconditional. And, whether this “everlasting” covenant is regarded as “old” from the standpoint of its failure, (because of human incapability), or “new” in its Divinely assured success (because of the promise of regeneration through Messiah’s atonement), it remains throughout, “My covenant” (compare esp. Jer. 31:32 with Isa. 59:21 and Rom.11:27). 

A comparison of these passages suggests that it is the same covenant, but differently regarded in different relationships. Viewed from the standpoint of Israel’s chronic failure, and the pessimism of the prophets concerning Israel’s spiritual capacity to fulfill its demands, the covenant is “old”, failed, and ineffectual. But viewed from the standpoint of God’s sovereign resolve to establish the covenant on the basis of grace and Divine enabling, it is new and everlasting. But the same covenant in both relations is called “the everlasting covenant”. It never ceases to be conditional, but its abiding conditionality cannot frustrate the promise, because it is God who unconditionally assures that its conditions are fulfilled on the human side as well.

On man’s part, the covenant is indeed quite breakable (Duet. 31:16, Isa. 24:5, with Jer. 31:32), but on God’s part, it is eternally secure, because it is sure of success through the power and determination of God (Isa. 59:21 with Jer. 31:31-34; 32:37-41). Therefore, we can say that the covenant that can never be fulfilled ‘by’ the people of the promise is nevertheless fulfilled ‘for’ them that it might be fulfilled ‘in’ them. Thus, when we speak of the unconditionality of the covenant, we assume, not the removal of its conditions, but the certainty of an eschatological Divine initiative that guarantees God’s own fulfillment of its human side. 

This is done for His people through the Messianic atonement, that it might be fulfilled in them through the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit. This gift is poured out upon “all Israel” in the great Day of the Lord (Is. 59:20-21, Ezek. 39:29, Joel 2:28-32; 3L14-21, Zech. 12:10-13:1), the grand demonstration in all of this is that there can be only one source of covenant fulfillment, because as Jesus said, “there is none good but one, that is, God!” (Matt. 19;17). Herein lies the key to Israel’s historic blindness and covenant failure (Rom. 9:32).

If, as some affirm, Israel is no longer “under the law”, and therefore no longer in jeopardy of its violation, no longer under the curse, then why is history such an open witness of the continued disciplines and judgments threatened in the covenant? (Lev. 26, Deut. 28-32). No one can read the threats of the covenant without being compelled to recognize that they are remarkably current in their fulfillment. Yes, anti-Semitism is indeed satanic. Nevertheless, the scripture is abundant in its testimony that God employs evil for the correction of His people (Isa. 10:5-6, 15, Ezek. 38:4). Even as Jesus said to Pilate; “You could have no power against me at all, but it be given you from above (Jn. 19:11).

This could as well be said of Satan in particular, whose limits are set by the sovereignty of God. So, while certainly, Satan is behind anti-Semitism, God is behind Satan. We know this because the Scripture is clear that if Israel (all Israel) should keep the covenant from the heart, God would make “even his enemies to be at peace with him” (Prov. 16:7). Then would Israel lie down in safety, and none make them afraid” (Lev. 25:18, 26:6, Deut. 12:10, 33:28; Hos.2:18).

But so long as such blessing is conditional on a obedience that is beyond Israel’s natural capacity to fulfill, the nation must continue in its tragic condition until “the day of His power” (Ps. 110:3). “In thatday”, the people will be “willing and obedient”, and thus will “eat the good of the land” (Isa. 1:19). In other words, the debarring “if” of the covenant’s conditional aspect will be overcome by unconditional Divine determination in the Day of the Lord (‘the day of His power”).

This is “the set time…the time appointed” to favor Zion” (Ps. 102:13, Dan. 11:27, 35, Ezek. 29:22). This is the great eschatological “UNTIL’ that stand between the “in part” of Rom.11:25, and the “all” of verse 26. It is the same “UNTIL” that appears in Mt. 23:39, Lk. 21:24, Acts 3:21, and many other such instances throughout the Psalms and the prophets. It marks the transition between an Israel that is saved “in part” (the remnant), and an eschatological “fulness” when every Jewish person, without exception, will be established in” everlasting righteousness” (Dn. 9:24) as a standing witness to the nations of God’s sovereignty in grace. It is the eschatological vindication of the everlasting covenant. Then it will be irresistibly visible “in the sight of all nations” that Israel is “the work of His hands” (Isa. 45:11; 60:21).

This witness “in the sight of all nations” (Ps. 98:2; Ezek. 28:25-26; 39:27) is the more remarkable and supernatural in view of the fact that renewed Israel exists as Spirit-filled believers (Joel 2:28-29; Isa. 44:3; 59:21, Ezek. 36:27; 37:14; 39:29), serving the Lord in natural bodies (Isa. 65:20-23; Ezek. 39:9-16; Zech. 14:16-19). And though there will be great evangelism among the nations (Isa. 2:3; 66:18-22; Zech. 8:23),it is only among the Jews that such uniform regeneration exists as to render Jewish evangelism forever unnecessary (Jer. 3:34; Ezek. 39:28).  Such is the nature of God’s intention for millennial Israel. Israel thus becomes the ultimate demonstration of the nature of the covenant, and of the sovereignty of grace in salvation, and so it is intended. As the Jew is to be provoked to jealousy through the Church’s fulness even so will the nations, “in that day” be likewise provoked to emulation through the demonstration of a nation among the family nations whose entire population is born again. “How much more their fulness!” “what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead!” (rom.11:12, 15). Israel’s future glory defines the nature of the New Covenant.

[Note:Let the future of the covenant as it will be displayed in Israel throughout the Millennium instruct and inspire the church to more fully apprehend and appropriate the implications of such a covenant for its own life and faith, even amid the conflict that persists in this present evil age before Satan is bound. By New Testament standards, the saints as stewards of the mysteries should recognize, appropriate, and exhibit the power of this eschatological demonstration in advance of Israel’s eschatological fulness by the 
Spirit of revelation, as custodians of the “secret of the Lor”, which is the covenant of salvation. (2 Sam. 23:5, Ps. 25:14; 91:16), known only by revelation (Isa. 8:16; 53:1, Dan. 11:32; 12:9-10).]

As a brief aside, it should be noted that coextensive with Israel’s Millennial blessedness is the binding of Satan (Rev. 20:2), and this is coincident with the destruction of the veil that is cast over all nations (Isa. 25:7). There is a manifest correlation between these events and the “finishing of the mystery of God” at the sounding of the seventh angel/trumpet (Rev. 10:7). It is no mere happenstance that with the sounding of the seventh angel, the mystery is “finished”, the veil is destroyed, and “the kingdoms of this world are now become the kingdom of our God and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever.” (Rev. 11:15; compare also 1 Cor. 15:51-54 with Isa. 25:7-8; 26:16-21; 27-13). 

The end of the age is waiting on a revelation event that comes to “the escaped of Israel” (Is. 4:2), and this happens with the return of Christ, the Deliverer who comes out of Zion (Isa. 59:21; Joel 3:16; Ro. 11:26). The return of Christ “immediately after the tribulation of those days” (Mt. 24:29-31) concludes Daniel’s 70^thweek of years (Dan 9:24). Until this point, the vision is ‘closed up”, “shut up”, “sealed up” (Dan. 9:24), “bound up”, and “hidden” (Isa 78:16-17; 29:11) from Israel (compare also Deut. 31:17-18; 32:20 with Ezk 39:29). The “times of the Gentiles” (Lk 21:24) is coextensive with the time of Israel’s national blindness (Ro 11:7-10, 25-27), a blindness that many scriptures show terminates with the Day of the Lord. This is very significant because it shows the relationship of the New Covenant to the revelation of “the mystery of the gospel” (Eph 6:19). This means that god has predetermined a “set time”, (compare Ps 102;13, Dan 9:24-27; 11:27, 35; Ezk 39:22), that He will reveal Christ and the gospel to the beleaguered nation (Zech 12:10-13:1), who will call with one consent on the name of the Lord (Joel 2:32, Mt 23:39) “in the day of their calamity” (Deut 32:35, Ezk 35:5; Obad 13). “For that that is determined shall be done.” (Dan 11:36)]

The final crisis is precipitated most specifically over the covenant. Clearly, the conflict that will engage and test all nations throughout the period of Jacob’s trouble has all to do with “the controversy of Zion” (Ps 2, Isa 34:8, Zech 12:2-3). The Authorized Version terms it “the quarrel of my covenant” (Lev 26-25 KJV). The nations rage, and Jerusalem is made “a cup of trembling” and “a burdensome stone”, precisely because of the abiding significance of the ‘literal’ city, land, and people of the covenant. And who will deny that scripture builds the closing scenes of prophetic and apocalyptic eschatology around the holy land? In both testaments, it is the ‘literal’ people, land, and city that are depicted as most violently under siege at the time of the end. Ironically, these are the particular aspects of the covenant that most of Christendom has traditionally regarded as obsolete, belonging to an “old” covenant. Has the church’s appropriation of the new covenant disannulled the literal aspects that once distinguished and defined the “everlasting” covenant? May it never be! A pompous Christendom (Ro 11:25) may forget, but He will not forget! (Isa 49:15).

But regardless of how unknown, disregarded, or misread this covenant may be in the minds of men, the principalities and powers know well its meaning, and viciously oppose it. Satanic hatred becomes a sign of the covenant’s abiding significance! Therefore, Jacob’s trouble represents, on one hand, the satanic assault of nations against the land and people of the covenant (Lev 26, Deut 28-32 et al), on a people who have not attained to the obedience of the ‘new’ covenant, and are therefore under the abiding wrath of the ‘old’ covenant.

[Note:Until Israel will be “in Christ”, they are yet “of the law”, and “under” its curse (Ga. 3:10). Until Christ is revealed to the heart, all persons are “under” the curse of the broken “first” of “old” covenant (Jer 31:31-32, 2 Cor 3:14, Heb 8:13), because by definition, “sin is the transgression of the law” (1 Jn 3:4). So let none suggest that because Christ has come and fulfilled the law, Israel is no longer “under” the threat of the broken covenant. Such pitiful theology reveals a sanguine and humanistic superficiality that ill prepares the church for what should have been its prophetic expectation and responsibility.]

Does God’s covenant remain steadfast with Israel in spite of their failure to recognize either its promise or its threat? This question will become especially critical for the church as we near the end of the age. The Holocaust is proof that Jewish disregard for the covenant provides no asylum from its “vengeance” (Lev 26:25). The same is true of the nations who have before, and will again, stumble over the same covenant. And the nations that despise or disregard God’s covenantal prerogatives towards Israel will likewise drink of the cup of Divine indignation for the pride of their rebellion. In the paradox of God’s sovereignty, it is both God that brings the Gentile powers down )Ezk 38:4, 17, Zech 14:1-4) against “the people of my wrath” (Isa 10:6, Lk 21:23), and it is God who judges the presumption of the nations for their complicity in Satan’s hatred and defiance of God’s covenant, particularly as it concerns the land and people of Israel, a defiance that many scriptures show is inspired by demons (Ps. 2, Rev. 16:14), because Jerusalem is the city of the great King, the locus of Christ’s Millennial rule.

[Note:It is interesting to ponder the logic of Satan’s futile opposition to God’s rule. From the beginning the war has been over the Word: “Hath God said?” “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy” (Rev. 19:10b). If the sovereignty of the prophetic Word can be at any point prevented, then the God in whose living presence the demons will be eternally tormented cannot exist, because if the Word of God can fail, then the God of the Word does not exist, and Satan is not doomed. This also explains why the nations are depicted in a demonic frenzy as Satan sees that his time is short. It is therefore instructive to observe what Satan is most committed to oppose.]

The powers o darkness know the threat that the ‘literal’ land,, people, and city pose to their usurping rule, and this is why the nations rage (Ps. 2:1). The principalities and powers (Dan 10:12-13, 20) move the nations to defy the covenant, because they know better than the church what the Jewish resettlement of the land signifies. It is the presence of a ‘recent’ returned nation (Ezk 38:8), still in a state of unbelief, and facing imminent Divine discipline (Zeph 2:1-2, Jer 30:7, Ezk 22:17-22, Dan 12P1), that signals the imminence of Messiah’s rule over all nations (Ps2, Rev 11:15-18), and the final displacement of the false “rulers, authorities, and cosmic powers of this dark age” (Eph 6:12 TEV). This “regathering” in unbelief is viewed as both human (Zeph 2:1-2), and Divine (Jer 30:3-7, Ezk 38:8). This is most certainly the order of return, because it is the nation’s continued state of unbelief and covenant defection that makes the Divine discipline of Jacob’s trouble necessary.

As previously noted, it is only as the new covenant is fulfilled in the salvation of “all Israel” (at 
Christ’s return) that the beleaguered nation will know undisturbed tranquility and enduring possession of the land. Though the Jew may dwell in the land for an extended period under even a provisional blessing, until the nation can keep the covenant, it cannot keep the land. Until the covenant is fulfilled by an enduring righteousness that extends to the entire nation at once and forever, Jewish tenure in the land is probationary at best. 

And when has it ever been otherwise throughout Israel’s history? Except for a remnant, and the rare occasion of a fleeting revival, the nation, form its inception, had never shown any other tendency than to slide backwards.  Still in spite of persistent covenant disobedience and the judgment of exile, restoration to Divine favor always meant restoration to the land, because the land continued to be regarded as Israel’s inalienable possession: “Thee are the people of the Lord, and are gone forth out of His land” (Ezk 36:24). As long as the covenant shall stand, possession of the land can never pass to “another people” (Lev 20:24, Dan 2:44).

This inexorable decree will be defiantly rejected and violently opposed by the nations (primarily Islamic, the descendants of Esau in particular – Ezk 35-36:11; 38-39). These nations will constitute a multinational (ten kings?) confederacy that will suddenly and unexpectedly descend upon the land people of the covenant. And though these historic enemies of the covenant will be violently overthrown in the Day of the Lord, and fearfully condemned for their “perpetual hatred” of Jacob, it is necessary (in view of other clear prophetic passages that describe a brief 3 1/2- year period that is bounded by two distinct invasions of the land) to infer that these nations do not meet with immediate judgment, but have an initial success against Israel, bringing upon the Jews the final desolations threatened in the covenant and in prophecy (Mt 24:15-21).

In our time, God has once more brought the Jews home, not to the lasting peace of the covenant, but rather to a final crucible of Divine pleading, (though there may be a brief period of deceptive peace through the Jews’ presumptuous covenant with Antichrist). This surprising anomaly in the order of return is anticipated in Jeremiah’s prophecy of Jacob’s trouble (Jer 30:4-7). What the Jews will now experience in the land will test and uncover (Isa 28:15-17) the true poverty of its condition, the cause, and at length, the cure of the nation’s perpetual predicament. If we read the prophets correctly, the present return is a final trust and stewardship of the land that is Divinely intended to compel Jews to grapple with the implications of an ignored covenant bond, its promises and threats, and ultimately, the necessity of the promised Redeemer, who is the goal of the covenant. But also, the issue of the land is designed to press the issue of the covenant on the consciousness of the nations.

Prophecy indicates that this final test of the nation’s stewardship of the land ends again in covenant failure, invasion, desolation, and expulsion. Even after a future space of security in the land (though tenuous and apparently under the auspices of an unholy league with the Antichrist), the nation’s spiritual condition is manifested in that its sins increase under these deceptively tranquil conditions (Ezk 39:26 in context of 38:8, 11, 14 with Isa 28:15-18, Dan 9:27;11:22, 31;12:11, Mt 24:15, Jer 30:7). Always, throughout the prophets, and reiterated in the eschatology of Jesus, Paul, and John, Israel’s final distress before millennial glory is set in the context of an apostate Jewish presence recently regathered to the land (Zeph 2:1-2, Ezk 38:8, Jer 30:4-7), and existing again as a “nation” (Dan 12:1).

Nonetheless, however tenuous and threatened by covenant defection, the land remains Israel’s by sovereign unconditional election. We must distinguish between Israel’s conditional enjoyment of the covenant and God’s sovereign right to unconditionally give the blessing to ‘whom He will’: “For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth” Rom 9:11). Hence, Jewish possession of the land is an inalienable part of the everlasting covenant, and this recognition is Divinely required of the nations, regardless of Israel’s temporal spiritual status. Israel’s temporal spiritual fitness is not the criterion by which God judges the nations concerning their attitude towards the covenant.

It is true that Jewish generational descent is no guarantee of anything but of certain judgment if the covenant is not fulfilled by personal and national holiness. No generation of the Jews may hope for enduring personal or national peace, apart from the righteousness of faith. However, though the conditional and temporal aspects of the covenant may be suspended through disobedience, and individually denied, the eternal and unconditional aspects of the covenant are never removed from the Jews corporately considered, ie. as a distinct people with an aboding “special Divine status”, precisely because of God’s sovereign prerogative to “quicken who He will”.

It is not just God’s ability to overcome Israel’s inability that makes the covenant sure, but it is His sovereign determination to overcome Israel’s natural unwillingness (Ezk 20:33-37) in the “day of His power”, “the set time”, “the time appointed” (Ps 1092:13, Dan 8:19; 11:27, 35). The conditions of the covenant are not set aside. It is just that God has unconditionally predetermined to enable this particular people, at a predetermined time, to fulfill all of the conditions that make the blessing of the covenant both certain and everlasting Prophecy is not mere foresight; it is the declared foreordination of God, the sovereign Creator who “does according to His will in the army of heaven” (Dan 4:35). And though Antichrist exalts himself to “do according to his will” (Dan 11:36), such autonomous ‘freedom’ cannot frustrate or exceed the limits set by God’s predetermined purpose: “for that that is determined shall be done” (Isa 14:24-27, Dan 11:36). 

It is the power and certainty of God’s predestinating grace that is the surety of the covenant and the consolation of all saints (see 2 Sam 23:5, Ps 89:28-34, Isa 55:3, Ro 8:28-39, Eph 1:11, 2 Tim 2:19). Though the covenant remains in constant jeopardy on the Jewish side until the bringing in of an “everlasting righteousness” (Jer. 32:20, Dan 9:24), the gift and promise of the land is not removed, but stands forever with this people only (Amos 3:2, Dan 2:44). 

God is free and righteous to distinguish! It is the prerogative of His rule as God. And Israel is the historical proof of this Divine prerogative. However blessed the nations through Israel’s national resurrection, the stewardship of this particular land belongs exclusively with this particular people, because of god’s intended purpose to make of Israel a visible, compelling, and consummately instructive exhibition to al nations of the sovereignty of His rule.

However ignorant, indifferent, or hostile, the nations are finally accountable for their attitude toward the covenant. Though Israel does not spiritually ‘qualify’ for undisturbed tranquility or enduring possession of the land, it is nonetheless the assault of the nations against the pole and land of the covenant that provokes God’s ultimate indignation against them: “then shall my fury come up in my face” (Ezk 38:18). God regards the world’s disregard and defiance of His covenant as an arrogant assault on Himself. But observe carefully that his ‘latter days’ multinational invasion takes place ‘while’ Israel is yet under covenant judgment. May the church of Jesus Christ hasten to observe this, because most of Christendom will also stumble over this ‘rock of offense’ that the covenant (“My covenant”) will be to the nations! [Note: Of course, the ‘rock of offense’ has first to do with the mystery of Messiah, but as we show elsewhere, this mystery touches both of Messiah’s advents to Israel, and has everything to do with the covenant.]

God, in the wisdom that is able to employ even the greatest of evils to show the sovereignty of His judgment and the glory of His grace, brings the presumptuous nations against ‘the people of His wrath’ (Isa 10:6, Lk 21:22-23), but utterly opposes the motives and pride of their demonically-inspired enterprise (cf. Ezk  38:16-23, Zech 14:2-4, Rev 16:14). To deny Jewish inheritance of the land, even on the basis of Jewish covenant failure, is to deny the covenant. 

Moreover, it is to deny “the foundation of the Lord”, because it denies the basis of election and grace. “Nevertheless, the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are His” (2 Tim 2:19 KJV). Not only does the Lord “know them that are His” (“my sheep”), but He knows them before they know Him. And so it is with God’s covenant with Israel, though it has conditions, it is not based on human ability to fulfill those conditions, but is is based on God’s predetermination to “give repentance” (Acts 5:31, 1 Tim 2:25), to have mercy on “whom He will” have mercy, and to quicken “whom He will” (Jn 5:21, Ro 9:18). It is the sovereign “whom He will” of grace that is the ultimate foundation of the everlasting (new)covenant. “for the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand. So then, it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy” (Ro 9:11, 16 KJV).

It is to this end, and in demonstration of this principle that God has made His covenant with Israel both literal and visible. The Jew is preserved in ethnic distinction (Jer 3:35-37) to show to all the helplessness of man and the sovereignty of grace. The power of this demonstration lies in its visible (literal) display with a specific race, whose distinction does not exist for its own sake (Ezk 36:32), but for the sake of the glory of God. Such demonstration intends the ultimate humbling of the nations, and the saving of many, as the nations are made to recognize the righteousness of God’s magisterial prerogatives in both judgment and grace towards Israel. “And the nations will know that the people of Israel went into exile for their sin, because they were unfaithful to me. So I hid my face from them and handed the over to their enemies, and they all fell by the sword” (Ezk 39:23). “Thus saith the LORD of hosts; in those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God I with you” (Zech 8:23). Whatever else the Day of the Lord will bring, the prophets are very express that all nations will b compelled to acknowledge Israel’s special Divine election (Ezk 37:28; 39:21-29). And no account of the everlasting covenant in prophecy can be detached from the  eschatological controversy concerning the city and the land.

Israel’s covenant delinquency has and will again bring the nation into judgment and exile. Though exile is a sign of Divine rebuke and displeasure, the attitude of the nations towards the wandering Jew in their midst is a Divine measurement of eternal consequence. The nations are eminently accountable as to their perception and regard for Israel’s abiding covenant status. Whether in the land or out of the land, whether in covenant compliance (and when has the nation been sustained by more than a remnant?), or sinful indifference, the covenant stands with this people, and with this land (“shall not be left to other people” Dan 2:44). God may take the Jews from the land, but He will never take the land from the Jews.

The issue of God’s reckoning and coice is the issue of His rule, and the principalities and powers know it, thus the rage of their opposition. The land was not initially given on the basis  of Israel’s righteousness. Therefore, even as the judgement of the covenant spews Israel out of the land, it remains their land, and Jerusalem remains the city of David. Though Israel cannot retain continued possession of the land apart from covenant obedience, the promise of return is irrevocable. The modern existence of Israel is not an accident of history. Jewish possession of the land is never incidental, regardless of God’s covenant contention with them. The nations will discover that God’s covenant contention extends to them as well. The test lies particularly in the question of Jewish fitness to possess the land. Though apart from national regeneration, Jewish possession of the land can never be assured of permanence, temporal tenure in the land has never been based on Israel’s spiritual worthiness! Though God may have sent the nation into exile, yet many were the days that God deal both bountifully and severely with the people in the land, and it was never the question whether the land should be theirs, but could they keep it? Could they prolong their days in the land? (Deut 4:26; 5:23; 11:9; 39:18; 32:47)

Thought God drive His people from the land, the land remains His, and because His, theirs. Not because of any virtue in the Jews, but to impress upon the nations the sovereignty of His decision, the chosen test-stone of His authority and rule, objections notwithstanding.  Therefore, the Divine entitlement of the land is non-negotiable; it cannot pass to another people, or God is not God! And while great care is enjoined concerning treatment of “the stranger’ in the land, Israel is biblically forbidden to enter into covenant or league with the inhabitants of the land (Ex 23:32-33; 34-12, Judges 2:2-3). To do so is a precursor of Divine judgment (“a snare and a thorn”, as evident in Israel’s last days “league” with the Antichrist (Dan 9:27;11:23). 

This league is made with one whom “in a time of tranquility” (NASU), “security” (ASV), enters in, and “becomes strong with a mall people” (Dan 11:23-24 ASV). There are some references to “the fattest places of the province (realm)”, suggesting that the “little horn” (an entity of insignificant origins) is actually active within the land. This would certainly fit the pattern where some of these events have been pre-typified (though not fulfilled in certain specifics) in past history. The passage indicates that “during a time of security” (Dan 11:21), and contrary to natural laws of succession (“to whom they shall not give the honor of the kingdom“ KJV), he gains royal power by intrigue and stealth. This strategic piece of cunning and artifice moves the “little horn” into a much larger dominion (“the glory of the kingdom” Dan 11:20 KJV). He is now a more significant power, and thus begins a series of regional conquest (11:25), securing increasing solidarity among those who share his contempt for “the holy covenant” (11:27-30), deceiving, and receiving support from all who are mutually incensed against it (11:32).

[Note: Many scriptures are harmonized if the Antichrist should originate as head of a newly-formed nation in the region (Dan 7:8, “came up from AMONG them”; Dan 7:24, “and another shall arise AFTER them”). According to Dan 8:9, he emerges from somewhere north of Israel, most evidently from some part of the vast Israel once ruled by the Seleucid kingdom of antiquity, which was one of the divisions of Alexander’s Grecian empire. He is appropriately called a ‘little horn’, as “comes up and becomes strong with a small people” (Dan 11:23). In the earlier part of his career (“after the league made with him”, he will employ the deceitfully disarming tact of promises of peace (“by peace he shall destroy many” Dan 8:25). From his rise to power through intrigue and stealth (Dan 11:21), and under the auspices of a treacherous “league” with the inhabitants of the land (‘”it will surely be a snare unto you”; Ex 34:12), this “man of lawlessness” (opposed to all that is holy and set apart by covenant) will “work deceitfully” (11:23), to prosecute his program of unification (the ten nations) based on a shared hatred of the “holy covenant”, particularly as it stands with the Jewish people, their Land and the holy city. He will have secretive conspiracy (“intelligence” KJV) with others who mutually plot the sudden overthrow of “the holy covenant” by what biblical geography in light of the modern spread of Islam would indicate to be the Islamic capture and and ravaging of Jerusalem (11:28, 30; Rev 11:2). “For when they shall say, ‘Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape” (1Thess 5:3).]

There is a massive amount of biblical evidence to suggest that Israel’s final crisis is an eschatological reiteration of the quarrel that began in the tents of Abraham and Isaac. These ancient ‘brethren’ constitute the modern Arab world under the implacable banner of Islam, and will prove the ultimate thorn in Israel’s side. There is much to suggest that the ten kings that will confederate with the Antichrist in the final assault of Jerusalem are Arab nations (Ps 83; Eze 25:15; 35:5; 36:5; 38:5-6; Dan 8:9; 11:20-31; Obad; Mal 1:4, etc.) . In our view of the covenant, it is not surprising that the God who loves what He has chosen with an eternal love, nonetheless takes a very stringent view of Jerusalem in its pretribulational apostasy: “how is the faithful city become an harlot?” (Isa 1:21), “the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified” (Rev. 11:8). There can be little doubt that Jerusalem is to some extent identified with “that great city’ of apocalyptic mystery Babylon. There is no reason to make the identification complete, because there is evidence of two distinct destructions of “the whore”, one that inflicted initially by the ten kings, and another that comes at the end of the great tribulation with the last bowl of judgment in the great Day of God. This judgment of Babylon appears more comprehensive, (inclusive of the whole world system), and seems to include the ten kings (Rev 19:19). This is also the order of events in Israel’s apocalyptic eschatology. There is an initial invasion that begins the time of Jerusalem’s desolations (Ezk. 38, Jer30, Dan 9:26; 11:31-39; 12 :1, 11; Mt 24:15-21), and after 3 ½  years of great tribulation, there is subsequent convergence o nations (Armageddon), but this time the invasion is prompted by the presence of Antichrist, who is situated in the besieged city of Jerusalem (Dan 11:40-45, Rev 11:2). Towards the end of the tribulation, the nations are demonically induced to attack the Antichrist (Rev 16:14; 19:17-21 with Ezk 39:17-22). One can only infer why, but apparently his yoke has become to intolerable, and the nations revolt (?). 

All of this is to say that if the ten kings are indeed the descendants of Ismael and Esau, and if Jerusalem is rightly identified with the “harlot” of the apocalypse, we may reconsider the significance of the passage that says “And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore (in this instance Jerusalem), and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire” (Rev 17:16 KJV). If we have rightly understood this mystery, the disaster of 9/11 is a portent of the kind of Islamic contempt that will be targeted towards all who will be identified with Israel. The die is cast. But of particular significance for our view of the covenant is the following passage which adds: “For God hath put in their hearts to fulfill his will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto the beast, until  the words of God shall be fulfilled” (17:17). Again, it is the paradox of god’s sovereign employment of the greatest and most unlawful of evils to affect the judgments and desolations threatened in the covenant, and to convert these covenant severities into the salvation of “the remnant according to the election of grace” (Ro 11:5).

Contrary to international protest and rage, God will not surrender His land to Esau. If another people temporarily inhabit the land, the right o if inheritance cannot pass to them. In spite of Israel’s covenant rejection, possession of the land is an issue of inviolable Divine choice, and is not disannulled through Israel’s covenant faithfulness, because covenant faitfulness, though required, is to the work of man, but the gift of God. God must first give what He commands, o man, because he is fallen , will faithfully fail. Rather, the promise of the land, like all of the promises of the covenant, is base on God’s sovereign prerogative to give His irrevocable “gifts and calling” (Ro 11:29) to “whom He will” (Jn 5:21, Ro 9:18). But are the nations also required to recognize the prerogatives o God’s electing grace? Apparently so, in view of God’s “controversy’ with the nations that is provoked over the last days question of Jewish possession of Jerusalem and the land. The nations receive Divine rebuke for their presumption against the city and the people of the covenant, and this in spite of Israel’s own vulnerability to covenant wrath. It seems that it is one thing for God to judge concerning the duration of Israel’s temporal possession of the land, but not for another!

Scripture leaves to question that the Jews are back in the land for Divine dealings that conclude the age, not because they are worthy, but because they are His! And though It is true that according to the covenant, a secular and unbelieving people cannot prolong their days on the land (Deut 4:26; 30:18), yet, if Israel will be displaced in judgment, it is for God to remove them, but woe unto that nation by whom they are removed. It is indeed God’s prerogative to judge His people, but woe to those nations who lend themselves as willing agents of His wrath (Isa 10:5, 12, 15, Ezk 38:4, 17-18). God will indeed bring the nations down in Divine judgment against ‘His land’ (even employing demons in fulfillment of His sovereign determination to gather the nations (Zeph. 3:8 with Rev 16:14). They will come against the people that are paradoxically called “the people of My wrath” (Isa 10:6), but it is His people, and it is His wrath, and woe unto those nations who are so divinely-employed, because “they have broken the everlasting covenant” (Isa 24:5), and presumptuously “touched the apple of ‘His eye’” (Zech 2:8). This is the stone that will fall upon the nations. The same covenant that is blessing to the penitent is a trap and a snare to the proud that tumble. Thus, Israel becomes God’s magnet that irresistibly draws the nations into a “valley of decision” (Joel 3:14). 

All of this confirms beyond dispute the viability and continuity of the literal aspects of the everlasting covenant. And nowhere is this continuity, and the distinctions between ‘old’ and ‘new’, ‘first’ and ‘second’, better  thean in the incontrovertibly future events of Jacob’s trouble. As pointe ot earlier, Jacob’s trouble is that period of crisi and transition that brings the Jewish nation into its full eschatological appropriation of Jeremiah’s New Covenant. Therefore, the Day of the Lord accomplishes the final enforcement of the new covenant in its full appropriation by “all Israel” (the surviving remnant of “that day”), and this is the goal of Jacob’s trouble.

[Note:  Many scriptures show, however, that only a remnant, “one-third” Zech 13:8) will survive to become the “all Israel” of millennial salvation. Only the remnant “that is left” (Isa 4:3) receive the revelation that comes at the precise point of Christ’s return (Ezk 30:38, Zech 13:10, 
Ro 11:26, Isa 59:21; 66:8, Zech 3:9, Ezk 39:22 et al.)]

And as many of the foregoing passages demonstrate, the ‘literal’ people, land, and city (Jerusalem) belong to the promise structure of the ‘everlasting covenant”. However, the judgements that descend on the Jewish people at this time are what Jesus calls “the days of vengeance…and wrath upon this people” (Lk 21:22-23). It is “the vengeance of the covenant” (Lev 26:25). But such vengeance and curse is not according to the tenor of the ‘new covenant”. Such judgment assumes what Paul calls “the curse of the law” (Gal 3:10). And yet, it is through the severities and travail of the so-called ‘old’ covenant that the ‘new’ comes. During the final period of unequaled tribulation period (compare Jer 30:7 with Dan 12:1, Mt 24:21). Israel is brought through sever chastisement “into the bond of the covenant (Ezk 20:33-37). The “bond of the covenant” suggests Israel’s eschatological attainment of new covenant salvation issuing in true covenant obedience. But this transforming even is accomplished by means of covenant discipline, the “rod” (37) and “fury poured out”(33), according to the tenor of the so-called ‘old’ covenant with its threats of judgement and curse. Such Divine rebuke assumes that the nation has no attained to the blessing of the new, and still suffers the curse of the old.

So, we see the simultaneous presence and activity of both the ‘unconditional’ ‘everlasting’ covenant, and the conditional Deuteronomic covenant in the very events of Jacob’s trouble. However, there is a continuity of conditionality that subsists in the covenant that is never abrogated, but ‘Divinely’ fulfilled. And it is that conditionality that creates the practical distinctions between ‘old’ and ‘new’, ‘first’ and ‘second’. This aspect of conditionality is never ‘conveniently removed’ to accommodate the weakness of the flesh (the first creation, the first Adam). It does not cease to curse sin in the flesh. It is only through death to the flesh, and resurrection to newness of life that the curse of the law is removed. It is only removed because its demand for holiness is gloriously fulfilled through the Spirit. But the gift of the Spirit assumes the glorious mystery of the atonement in Christ’s blood. So the threat of the covenant is not removed merely because of a dispensational change (the nature of which has proven quite ambiguous in the history of the church), but only as Christ’s death and resurrection becomes ours by its repetition in us through a like pattern of death resurrection (the operation of the Spirit in regeneration, and of the pattern of the cross in our sanctification).

It is the Spirit that fulfills the covenant, first, and perfectly in Christ’s humanity, and by measure (Jn 3:34) in the believer who is delivered from the curse through death to the flesh (ie. death to confidence in the flesh). This means that Israel remains ‘under’ the curse of the broken covenant (the law) until the nation will attain the corporate obedience of the New covenant, then fulfilling the promise of the ‘everlasting covenant’. Thus, such distinctions of ‘old’ and ‘new’, ‘first’ and ‘second’ may be more accurately understood as referring to tow sides (human and Divine), two effects (judgment and redemption), and two stages in the historical progress of the same covenant. The New Covenant is the salvation side of the ‘everlasting’ covenant, and the ‘old’ covenant is ‘old’ by reason of the absence of the Spirit’s empowerment to meet its requirements and conditions. And of course, as there is no new Covenant, and no gift of the Spirit apart from the necessary work of Christ’s atonement, and it is the Spirit’s revelation of the fulfillment of the covenant in Christ that signifies a change of dispensation. Even the Rabbis recognized that with the advent of the messianic era. There would be significant changes in the administration of the law under the new millennial conditions, thus, a new dispensation. Therefore, certain dispensational changes adapted by the church (in keeping with its faith that the promised age of fulfillment has arrived in the relation of the gospel), actually constitute a strategic testimony to Israel, demonstrating (through the evidence of the promised Spirit) the inadequacy of the works of the law (ie. the works of human ability).

But remember, the covenant is fulfilled in one place only – “in Christ”. This of course takes place in real space-time history, and indeed changes history, and brings in a new form of administration, but until one is ‘in Christ’, for that one, the covenant is unfulfilled, and in the absence of faith and the indwelling Spirit, the curse remains. What remains outstanding and unfulfilled concerning the New Covenant is its promise of a day when there will be no singly Jewish person on earth that is not also, certainly, and forever ‘in Christ’. This is Paul’s meaning when he speaks of the future salvation of “all Israel”, and it is god’s meaning when He says, “this is my covenant with them, when I shall take away their sin.” (Ro 11:27, Isa 59:21). Already, there was a remnant according to the election of grace (in context, the term is used of the specifically Jewish remnant), but according to Paul, the salvation of a mere remnant still leaves the elect nation (with whom God has bound the ‘public’sanctification of His very name (Ezk 36:21-22) in its shame and reproach, and this is clearly short of the covenant promise (Paul is proving the inadequacy of a remnant to fulfill the promise, although the continued presence of the remnant is pledge that the covenant, though incomplete” as touching the election”, has not failed). No, the covenant will have its ultimate historical fulfillment in the resurrection of the elect nation out of the death of Jacob’s trouble (“in one day”). Then shall “the Jerusalem which is now” be united with “the Jerusalem which is above”, an through the quickening, liberating power of the Spirit, be made of God anopenand everlasting ‘praise in the earth” (Isa 62:7).

[Note:Observe the contrast between Paul’s negative term “the works of the law” (Rom 9:32, Gal. 2:16; 3:2,5,10) with his positive term “the righteousness of the law” (Ro 2:26, 8:4).]

Therefore, in any dispensation, the absence of the obedience that is reflective o regeneration places one under the curs of the law (see Isa 26:1-; 65:2-; Zech 14:16-19). And of course, true spiritual obedience is never the cause, but the inevitable sign of regeneration.

Decisive evidence for the continuity of the covenant is found in the eschatological book od 
Daniel. Here we see that the last days Antichrist siege of Jerusalem is directed against “the holy covenant” (Dan 9:27, 11:22, 28, 30, 32). That the covenant touching the land, the city of Jerusalem, and Israel’s holy places is still significantly in force at the end of the age is evident in Satan’s rage against these institutions. In view of such indisputable evidence, it is especially unsettling to hear some of our finest evangelical leaders publicly deny ‘special Divine status’ to the ‘ancient people’ (Isa 44:7), the Divinely-commended witnesses of the covenant (Isa 43:10, 22; 44:8). “For if the firstfruit be holy, the lump is also holy: and if the root be holy, so are the branches” (Ro 11:16). The though is not of active personal holiness, but ‘holy’ in the sense of ‘set apart’. As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they (the elect race) are belovedfor the fathers’ sakes, for the gifts and calling of God are without repentance” (Ro 11:28-29). They are beloved enemies! And all the more as we realize that the “door of faith” newly opened to the Gentiles (Acts 14:27) is the result of the Divine purpose accomplished “through their fall”, and Paul is unwilling to leave us unapprised of this costly transfer (Ro 11:11, 28). Even in Israel’s blindness to the New Covenant in Christ’s blood, there remains a conspicuous continuity in the covenant (for woe rather than weal) until the nation will escape its abiding conflict with “the vengeance of the covenant” (Lev 26:25 NKJV), through revelation of the mystery of the gospel (Ro 16:25-26, Eph 6:19), the very revelation that now constitutes the church as the eschatological mystery, and ‘fellow-heirs’ of Israel’s covenants (Rom 9:4, Eph 2:12).

In further defense of an apparent continuity, consider that before Jeremiah calls the covenant “new”, it is already known as the “EVERLASTING” covenant. The everlasting covenant made with the patriarch, declared to be unconditional with David (2 Sam 7:10-16; 23P5, Ps 89;28-37, Isa 55:3), and so often reiterated throughout the Psalms and Prophets, was first described as ‘new’ in relationship to the promise of an eschatological intervention that would come at the end of Jacob’s trouble (Jer 30:7). It represents the instantaneous regeneration of a final surviving remnant at one time only, the climactic Day of the Lord. From that day, Israel will not longer exist a s a mere remnant in the midst of a faithless nation, but as an entirely regenerate race, “from the least to the greatest, they shall ALL know me”….I have left none of them any more there.” The salvation of “all Israel” stands in contrast to “a hardening in part”. When the “Deliverer comes out of Zion”, there is not more “in part”.

And this eternal covenant has always been certain of success, because Christ is “the lamb slain before the creation” (Rev 13:8). This covenant also described as the “sure mercies of David” (Isa 55:3), that will one day take “all Israel” in its sweep, stood in other generations with the “remnant according to the election of grace” (Ro 11:5), in whose circumcised heart the law was written by the indwelling Holy Spirit.

[Note:  It is pitiful theology that presents the new birth as something peculiar to this dispensation. Nicodemus was reprimanded (Jn 3:10) for being a teacher in Israel, and yet failing to recognize the necessity of inward regeneration. Though the terminology (“born again”) is indeed original with Jesus, the concept belongs to Israel’s eschatological hope. Nicodemus failed to make the connection between Israel’s national hope, and the hope of the individual. The pattern is the same. If the nations is helpless in its dry bones state of spiritual destitution and death until it is raised to newness of life as represented in the promise of a new heart, and a new spirit, “the sprinkling of clean water:, in Ezekiel’s terms or being “born at once in Isaiah’s terms, should it be otherwise for the individual who is likewise dead in sin until quickened by the Spirit? (Eph 3:1). “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living!” (Mk 12:27). The natural man (in any dispensation) CANNOT (not merely ‘will not’) receive the things of the Spirit. It is a modern heresy that claims that the Old Testament saints were not ‘indwelt’ by the Spirit (“the Spirit of Christ whish was in them” 1 Pet 1:11), or that the law was not yet written in the hearts of the righteous remnant, contrary to the clear testimony of David (Ps 37:31; 40:8), and the prophets (Gen 41:38, Num 27:18, Isa 63:11).]

The New Covenant (confirmed in the fulness of time in Christ’s blood) is none other than the “everlasting covenant” that always stood with the righteousness of faith, and that stands not with the church in continuity with the elect remnant of Old Testament Israel. And it is this same covenant that yet remains to be established with ‘all’ Israel when the Deliverer will come out of Zion, when “they will look upon Me whom they have pierced” (Zech 12:10-13). In fact, in any dispensation, and not only in the end o f the age, this covenant is established with anyone who is enabled to “look” by the Spirit of revelation (Isa 45:22).

The everlasting covenant is at all times, and in every age, established with faith, and there is no want of personal holiness under the covenant, because righteousness myst be the issue of a heart that is purified by faith (Acts 15:9). And not only to natural Israelin the eschatological Day of the Lord, but in every generation, both before and since the cross, whether it is to an individual, or to an eschatological community (the church), righteousness is always imputed to faith (Ps 32:2, Ro 4:6-10), but a faith of what kind? We believe it is  faith that is ‘quickened’ by the free and sovereign grace of God who quickens “whom He will (Jn 5:21, Ro 8:18). It is “the faith of God’s elect” (Tit 1:1). It is the faith that is found in that number that Paul classifies as “the remnant according to the election of grace” (Ro 11:5). It is this kind of faith that millennial Israel will possess forever; and this faith does not fail (“if it were possible” mt 24:24), because it is sustained by the power of God (1 Pet 1:15), and the unfailing intercession f Christ (Lk 22:32), Ro 8:34, Heb 7:25), because it is the faith of the new covenant, based on the eternal “I will” of god. Such sovereign determination overcomes all resistance. Just as God was able to ‘get His  man’ on the road to Damascus, wo will He prevail to arrest His nation on its own ‘Calvary road’ of flight and international hatred. “For God is able to graft them in again” (Ro 11:232). However, we are not to imagine that such faith as here described is automatic, or arbitrarily quickened of God. It follows crisis, particularly the crisis of the Word, the preached Word. Apart from the Word, no amount of personal crisis, or Divine judgment can create faith. Faith comes at the end o strength (confidence in the flesh). “He takes away the first, that He may establish the second” (Heb 10:9). But such holy afflictions receive their saving significance only through “the hearing of faith” (Gal 3:2, 5), “Faith comes by hearing (Ro 10:17) as revelation destroys the veil over the heart (Isa 25:7, Zech 12:10, 2 Cor 3:14). This is the logic of Jacob’s trouble.

The re-engrafting of the natural branches is accomplished as God brings Jacob to the end of his power (compare Deut 32:36, Dan 12:7). It is then, “when thou art in tribulation, and all these things are come upon thee, even in the latter days…” (Deut 4:30), that “the LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, wo that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live” (Deut. 30:5-6). This is the Divine aim of Jacob’s trouble. “when He sees that their power is gone” (Deut. 32:36)! 

[Note:On the futurity of Jacob’s trouble, compare closely the parallel relationships between the evens described in Jer 30:7, Dan 12:1-2, Mt 24:21, Rev 12:12, also Dan 11:36-12:13 with 2 Thess 2:1-8, and observe the clear and inextricable association of a period of unequaled tribulation, the simultaneous brief career of Antichrist, the subsequent return of Christ, and the resurrection of the righteous dead. This complex of events is “immediately” (Mt 24:29) precursory to the final and everlasting deliverance of Israel, “thy (Daniel’s) people” (Dan 12:1).To place any of these events in past history is to deny their manifest connectedness, and clear proximity to the resurrection (Dan 12:1-2 with Mt 24:21-31).]

Paul explains that the covenant conditions of the law were ‘added’ to exclude the flesh from any participation in the fulfillment of the promise, thus cutting off all confidence in the flesh. The law that was handed down at Sinai (with promise only to the doer – Lev 18:5) is no hindrance to the promise. It is a barrier only to the flesh. Rather, the conditions of the covenant spelled out at Sinai only magnify the grace and glory of the promise, because it excludes the flesh from any part in its fulfillment. Because the law demands nothing less that the righteousness of God (perfected Messiah’s humanity alone), all are ‘shut up’ to the necessity of regeneration. In ay age, or dispensation, it is equally true. “You MUST be born again!”

[Note:The quickening of such faith in the heart is itself a resurrection event of Divine revelation, and Christ is most preciously revealed in “the end of the law”, not only in the sense of the end of a dispensation, but particularly as the goal of the law to destroy the presumption of human self-sufficiency. So, in a certain existential sense, the end/goal of the law is also the end of all the strength of the flesh. The biblical pattern shows that repentance is given particularly to those who despair of themselves (Is 57:10, Zech 12:10), “He will regard the prayer of the destitute: (Ps 102:17). There is great hope for those who say concerning themselves “There is not hope!” (Isa 57:10) And the destitute contrition always signals a salvation that has drawn very near. As we said, the salvation of the Lord is revealed at the end of strength.]

The ‘old’ covenant requires what the ‘new’ covenant assures, ie. “a new creation”, because in any dispensation, it is only a new creation that avails anything (
Gal 6:15). But the ‘new’ covenant pre-existed the ‘old’ covenant in the form of the ‘everlasting covenant’. The later conditionalizing of the promises at Sinai could not disannul the original Abrahamic promise because of the sovereign prerogative of God to fulfill both sides of the covenant by Himself alone. Surely this is the symbolism of Abraham’s ‘deep sleep’ (Gen. 15:12). “For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself” (Heb. 6:13).

This suggest not only the continuity of the covenant, but also the unity of the covenant, its temporary conditionality passing away only because of resurrection fulfillment. It suggest that ‘old’ and “new’ are different ways of describing transition and change in the program of the covenant. The ‘new’ is simply the ‘old’ fulfilled. Of course, such fulfillment implies a change of dispensation. The weakness of the first (old) creation has been replaced through death and resurrection by a new creation. Thus, “the second” covenant is the covenant of the new creation (Heb 10:9). It is the passing away of the old (first) creation that permits us to speak of the passing away of the ‘old’ (first) covenant (Heb 8:13). It is the old creation that is done away in Christ (2 Cor 5:17). All that pertains to the weak and beggarly elements of the first creation is manifestly cut off by the ‘old’ covenant. That was, and still is, its principle purpose. The life of the resurrection is the life of the new covenant, “against such, there is no law” (Gal 5:23).

I hope these thoughts, though very random, may contribute towards a sense of the continuity of the covenant in its different stages and distinction. Finally, there are three passages that most appropriately conclude these contemplations:

Be ye mindful always of his covenant; the word which he commanded to a thousand generations; Even of the covenant which he made with Abraham, and of his oath unto Isaac; And hath confirmed the same to Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting covenant, Saying, Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, the lot of your inheritance.   

 1 Chron 16:15-18

If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of the fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me, and that also they have walked contrary unto me; And that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity; Then will I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land. 

Lev 26:40-42 KJV

And as to the continuity of the covenant, I am particularly reminded of John’s contrast between old and new:

Brethren, I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that he have heard from the beginning. Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you, because the darkness is past, and the true light now shines.  

1 John 2:7-8

Yours in the Beloved,  Reggie Kelly

The post The Purview of the Everlasting Covenant appeared first on Mystery of Israel.

We are grateful to FAI for permission to share this here.

The interviewer is Dalton Thomas of FAI Missions.

The post Reggie Kelly Testimony: The Anatomy of a Revelation [VIDEO] appeared first on Mystery of Israel.

If I didn’t know how much it pleases the Lord, and is even commanded, to show Messiah’s fulfillment of the OT prophecies, I would look for some other source of apologetic to convince Jews, such as love, NT revelation just on its own, or martyrdom, etc., because “the devil is in the details” of almost every significant translation question as well as in everything else. In fact, one invariably finds he’s already, long since, been on the job fixing everything up before you even get there.

All goes to convince me even further, that for all the mockery and dismissal it receives from the academic community, it’s so amazing how often the KJV gets it right, not just in Daniel but on messianic prophecy, especially in the delicate nuances of translation that militate against what I’m almost tempted to call a cover up (try seeing how that suggestion flies).

Quite convinced personally that God chose a particular translation, or at least a particular history of manuscript transmission (the martyr’s bible) to marvelously preserve against the odds. From the looks of it, He has pretty much let men have their way with some of the others that do not seem to demonstrate such marvelous preservation. Don’t tell anyone I said that, though; it wouldn’t be any use for them to know more of my unscholarly, unjustifiable dogmatism. For sure, this war of words won’t be won by anything less than a mighty anointing, appropriately, a corporate anointing.

http://www.messiahrevealed.org/rejected.html
https://www.biblestudytools.com/isaiah/49-7-compare.html

The post Old Testament Proofs of Messiah’s Rejection by His Own appeared first on Mystery of Israel.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Underground Episode 44: Understanding God's Purposes With Israel with Reggie Kelly from Joel Richardson on Vimeo.

The post Understanding God’s Purposes with Israel (with Joel Richardson) – [VIDEO] appeared first on Mystery of Israel.

To my mind, the church, as I see the term used in the New Testament, means a local assembly under a local government of elders under the headship of Christ, independent but in a relationship of serving and sharing between sister congregations. This cannot be said of the nation in its unbelief, hence the obvious distinction. The body has its own autonomous government, and is not ‘under’ the authority of the religious leadership of the nation, except, of course, to honor all authority, both civil and religious, as scripturally appropriate.

For my view of the relation of the church to Israel, I see the regenerate believer in Christ as necessarily “in Israel,” since it seems to me a theological axiom that one cannot be ‘in Christ’ and not also be ‘in Israel’. To be ‘in Christ’ is to be ‘in Israel’ and heirs with all the saints of the commonwealth of Israel’s unique covenant status and everlasting election. The election is with no other nation! The claim of Christ’s body to be the election of Israel is because they are in the elect One who is quintessential Israel (Isa 49:3-4). To be in Him is to be in Israel. It is to belong most particularly to that living remnant that exists within the prodigal and spiritually dead nation that is awaiting the appointed day of birth and resurrection, as best compared to the sovereign arrest of Saul on the road to Damascus (Gal 1:15-16 with Ps 102:13).

Paul says, “we are the circumcision” and he was writing to Gentiles. He speaks of the “Israel of God” in Gal 6:16, though some will insist that he is only speaking this way of regenerate Jews in distinction from those who are not (Ro 9:6). But I am of the view that Paul is applying this term to believing gentiles in Christ. In Ro 2, Paul most apparently applies the term, ‘Jew’, to faithful gentiles who show the works of the law in their hearts apart from the law as written code. But here too, some will say that Paul means only to distinguish between Jews who are true to the covenant by regeneration from those who are not. I believe he is applying the term to regenerate gentiles who show the law written in their hearts. Elsewhere, that is language for the new nature.

Though the latter two examples are disputed, no one will deny that Paul can speak in Phil 3:3 of gentile believers as the true circumcision who worship God in the Spirit and put no confidence in the flesh. This being undeniable, how can it be ruled out that Paul is not doing the same in the other two, less certain passages? Besides, Jesus had already spoken of one fold and one Shepherd and the many that would be gathered from the east and west into a new, or better, renewed nation that would bring forth the fruits of the kingdom (Mt 21:43). Who or what is this nation to whom the kingdom is given? When is the kingdom given?

Some believe Jesus is speaking of the Israel of the millennial future. I don’t think so. I believe the nation in view is the holy nation of which Peter spoke (1Pet 2:9), which he manifestly applies to the present household of God, the church, the pillar and ground of truth (1Tim 3:15). Contrary to the opinion of replacement theologians, this provisional interim, mystery form of the kingdom does nothing at all to change, let alone cancel any of the promises that remain to be fulfilled to post-tribulational Israel. Furthermore, the Philippians 3:3 passage echoes strongly Jesus’ statement to the woman of Samaria when He looks ahead to those from other nations who would worship God in spirit and in truth. It seems to me that such a ‘nation’ in this sense, could rightly be called, ‘the Israel of God’ bringing forth the fruits that fruits of the kingdom in the new way that Jesus spoke of the kingdom as present already.

I have never believed the church started at Pentecost or that this was the first time the Spirit indwelt the saints, as falsely taught by modern dispensationalism. The new birth is nothing new, as Jesus reprimands Nicodemus for not making the connection that as the nation could not enter the kingdom apart from a spiritual birth (Isa 66:8 et al), it cannot be different for the individual. Hence, Nicodemus, as a teacher in Israel, should have known that unless an individual is born of the Spirit and of the water (the metaphor for spiritual cleansing and renewal in Eze 36), that person, no less than the nation, cannot see the kingdom of God.

So while the body of Christ has been more perfectly ‘revealed’ as to its nature, as the result of the new revelation of the mystery of Christ, it is no more new than Christ is new. The body that is now revealed, as purchased by Jesus as the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, includes all the seed of the Spirit of all ages, and has a history that reaches back to righteous Abel and extends to the last person saved in the millennium.

When one is born of the Spirit, regardless of the age or dispensation, past or future, that person is indwelt by the Spirit of Christ, thus a member of His body, even if they were born of the Word and the Spirit in Old Testament times (1Pet 1:23), as Peter says the prophets (and we must infer all the living; Mt 22:32) were indwelt by none other than “the Spirit of Christ” (1Pet 1:11). To be alive by the Spirit is to be a child of God by reason of the divine nature, and this did not begin at Pentecost, and does not end at the rapture, as falsely taught by modern dispensationalism.

The idea that the saints of the tribulation, those who are born again after the tribulation has begun, do NOT belong to the body of Christ but to another, entirely separate people of God is an abominable theory that was unheard of till advanced by J.N. Darby in the mid 1800’s. It is a theory that has tranquilized the church, as you know. On the other hand, the other view that is most prominent in the modern church (which, of course, is never rightly identified as the living body of Christ) is the view that the church is the NEW Israel. The church has replaced Israel as the NEW people of God, the new spiritual nation, bringing forth the fruits of the kingdom is a favorite text (Mt 21:43). No future restoration of the literal nation of the Jews is in view. These are the two extremes that create the illusion of a choice, when there is no choice between equally false alternatives.

My concern is that reaction to these unscriptural extremes may go too far into a new extreme in which we completely jettison the word ‘church’ from our vocabulary as a legitimate referent to anything other than the false system that it presumably promotes. But I think the error derives, NOT so much from the word, but the false assumptions concerning its meaning. I think few informed scholars would question that the word has been misused but find the fault, not with the word itself, or even how it has been translated, but with the faulty theology that it has been misused to support and reinforce. Apart from the theological assumptions that I see as having little to do with the word itself, its meaning as originally intended by Jesus, Paul, Peter, and John is accessible to anyone with even the most basic use of a concordance and lexicon, or just comparing scripture with scripture, with the Spirit’s help, of course.

When we check its usage and basic meaning, we can see that the word, ‘church’ is only very rarely used to refer to the larger corporate body of Christ, as the corporate family of God in heaven and earth (e.g., Mt 16:18; Eph 3:10, 15; Col 1:18, 24; Heb 12:23). Otherwise, it is almost always used in connection with a local assembly of believers. The word itself, by itself, carries no particular religious sense at all. It just means an assembly, whether a mob is in view, as in Acts 19:32, 39, 41, or a distinctly local assembly of believers, as in the far greater instances of its use throughout the NT.

The Kahal (Hebrew transliteration), or congregation, translated ‘assembly’ in the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, was by no means a completely regenerate body (Acts 7:38), just as any local assembly since the cross may not be entirely regenerate. We might call this the ‘external’ church that, even when under scriptural church government, are not always all born again. Recognition of the predictability of this mixture, as anticipated in many of Jesus’ parables, prevents us from the habit of equating the outward assembly with the living body of Christ as known only perfectly to God (2Tim 2:19; 1Jn 2:19). This is well known but it contributes to the struggle to define the church in a way that does not separate it from the yet unbelieving but no less elect nation.

But this is not the case when we use the word, ‘church’ to refer to the body of Christ as a living organism, made up strictly of those who are alive to God by the Spirit. It is this assembly of the righteous that is vitally connected to Israel, and touched in all her tribulations on the way to her covenanted future. Like a Jeremiah in travail for the nation with whom God has bound His Name and Word, the living church of God should conceive of itself as internal entity within the nation, the remnant according to the election of grace, groaning in travail for the birth of the nation that the Word might be glorified in the coming of the kingdom to earth.

This election of grace is certainly NOT true of the outward assembly or ‘congregation’ of Israel, simply because not all, not even most of the congregation of Israel was ever saved at any time throughout the nation’s history. This is why the congregation of Old Testament Israel cannot be equated with the New Testament concept of the body of Christ. Though bound in covenant destiny and identity, the righteous remnant within the nation was always distinguished from the nation, though never conceived of independently from the nation. It is the same now. The true and living body of Christ is NOT the same as Israel! There is a distinction, of course; but distinction is not the same as independence and separation. What touches Israel touches those who are alive to the Spirit’s mind and purpose for Israel, her sufferings and her destiny, as bound together by covenant, even when the natural branches are insensible that they belong to a corporate election that commends them to both double judgment and double glory. The living branches of the gentiles are grafted in to become part of the tree of Israel. To be in the tree is to be ‘in Israel’. There’s no other place for the living to be! Those who live in the tree of Israel are inextricably bound by covenant to the natural branches that are temporarily cut off from the vital life and sap to which they must return, since their return is the ‘life from the dead’ for which the whole of creation is waiting.

The great mystery is how even those natural branches who are not yet alive are nonetheless reckoned as belonging to a corporate election that while guaranteeing eventual corporate salvation does NOT guarantee personal salvation apart from repentance and faith, but God will constrain their repentance at the appointed time (Ps 102:13). Like a corporate Jeremiah or Daniel, the church should conceive of itself in solidarity with the elect and eternally beloved nation, even in its momentary apostasy. The church is mid-wife to Israel’s redemption, prophesying, interceding, and travailing in hope till the whole nation be made alive, since only then can the covenant be fulfilled and the kingdom be established on earth.

The church should see itself as born in Zion (Ps 87:3-6; Gal 4:26), waiting in hope until the full coming in of ‘all Israel’ (the elect remnant) into the ‘everlasting righteousness’ of the New Covenant. Until then, whether spiritually alive or dead, whether for weal or woe, blessing or cursing, the Jew belongs to a corporate covenant election that is irrevocable, but for this to bring blessing rather than special cursing and discipline, faith must be born in the heart by the Spirit (Jn 6:63). This is NOT the case where apostate Christendom is concerned. God is not in covenant with that assembly! The New Covenant purchased in Christ’s blood has NOT reached its promised goal until the penitent Jewish survivors of the final tribulation are born ‘in one day’ to become the holy nation of millennial promise (Jer 30:7; Isa 66:8; Eze 39:22, 28-29; Dan 12:1; Zech 12:10; Mt 23:39; Acts 3:21; Ro 11:26; Rev 1:7 to mention only a few).

In contrast, apostate Christendom is NOT in covenant with God, except in the sense of greater responsibility due to greater and more stoutly resisted light. In contrast to apostate Christendom, Israel is in covenant for weal or for woe. Jews that come to faith in Christ are blessed with all the blessings of the New Covenant. Conversely, those who fail to turn remain no less in covenant but the covenant of works that bind them to the curses of the law, the end of which is hell. Hence, God is in covenant with Israel, despite her temporary unbelief. But He is NOT in covenant with apostate Christendom, the assembly of the ungodly, the false church.

Should we avoid the word, “church” in order to avoid the false associations that the word summons in the popular mind, as reinforcing the lie that the church is a separate institution that no longer has any direct bond to the covenant nation? The error is based on a great deal more than just misperceptions associated with how translators translate a Greek word. I submit that this tendency will not be corrected simply by clearing up the translation question and exposing the historic misuse of the word. The problem is far more theological than linguistic.

I have said that the church is “the true Israel of God within Israel” in continuity with the remnant according to the election of grace, inclusive of all saints, even those living before the cross. Others take the term, ‘the Israel of God’ in Gal 6:16 as reference to Jews that have been born again in contrast to those who are not the regenerate Israel of God in this sense. Even some scholars, mostly dispensational, take this view. They would not allow that term, ‘the Israel of God’ to be applied to what we call the church. But to say that gentile believers are never identified ‘as Israel’ would seem to contribute to the separation of the church and Israel, the very thing that they are trying to help us avoid.

If Paul does apply such terms to gentile believers, there is no such application to the external church as a visible institution, but only to the truly born again people of the Spirit, the living body of Christ. On the other hand, some may reasonably argue that whereas gentile believers are “in” Israel in the sense that they are grafted in among them (the natural branches), this does not mean that they become Israel. They contend that only Jews are ever called Israel, and when Paul is interested to distinguish the living from the dead, he proceeds to qualify that only regenerate Jews count as God’s true Israel.

It is here that I tend to disagree. If Paul can so undeniably call gentile believers ‘the circumcision’ in Phil 3:3, why should it be thought impossible that he call regenerate gentiles and Jews ‘the Israel of God’ in Gal 6:16 or Ro 2:26-29? But this point is perhaps not so crucial if we can agree that it is impossible that one who is ‘in Christ’ is necessarily also ‘in Israel’, and therefore bound to God’s covenant purpose for that nation’s present affliction and future millennial destiny. The Jewish Jesus is the gentile believer’s only claim to the promises made exclusively to Israel. His circumcision counts for their uncircumcision. His Jewish credentials as the ‘seed of David according to the flesh’ is counted over to them as His seed. His Jewish inheritance is theirs because they are in Him and that qualifies them for all that is promised to Israel, as all the promises are yea and amen in Him.

I can’t see how this is a problem. It seems self-evident. It so clearly follows, that if one is washed in the blood and born of the Spirit, how are they not then part of the body of Christ? We may be sure that the Spirit that will be poured out on the penitent survivors of Israel at the end of the tribulation is the same Spirit that baptized believers into the body of Christ at Pentecost and ever since. This means that post-tribulational Israel will be no less the body of Christ on earth in that day. The promised Holy Spirit will do for them what He does for believers today. He will baptize them into the one body. There is one body. Though the mystery is newly revealed, the body of Christ is not new. It did not begin at Pentecost and it does not end its tenure on earth at the rapture. The saved of Israel in that coming day, with all who come to faith from among the nations, will be no less the body of Christ on earth, though not yet glorified.

So much to sort through, I know, but that’s my view as it now stands.

In devoted friendship, Reggie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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