11 Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. Matthew 11:11

When rightly understood, this puzzling passage, elusive and so little agreed upon by commentators, literally explodes with unimaginable, incomprehensible glory. It is, as they say, “too good to be true!” To grasp its implications is to weep and rejoice at the magnitude of the promise of the kingdom, a promise and reality that doesn’t wait till a future day of the Lord, but stands presently accessible and available to all who enter the kingdom of heaven, as much at the time Jesus spoke these words as it does today.

Utterly outside the conceptual universe of His contemporaries, Jesus gives hint here of what will be much more fully unveiled and expounded by the rabbi from Tarsus. I am speaking of the revelation of the righteousness of God that is unveiled in one place only, i.e., the gospel.

16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. 17 For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith. Romans 1:16-17

If Jesus is the Messiah, this means He is the curse reversing seed of the woman that was promised from the beginning. As part of His mission to reveal the “mystery of the kingdom”, (a much broader concept than conceived by His contemporaries) Jesus is making allusion here to the imputation of the fullness of His own personal righteousness to each and every believer, not only as to justification but as to the hope of glory.

Jesus brings this out in an enigmatic, but nonetheless ultimately revealing way that would only be fully understood for the full glory of its implications in retrospect. In short, Jesus is laying the groundwork for Paul and the fuller revelation of the “mystery of the gospel” that would not come to fullest light until after the Spirit’s mighty descent at Pentecost. (Ro 16:25-26; Eph 6:18; 1Pet 1:12)

To fully grasp the unexpected magnitude of glory implicit in Jesus’ words, it is important to establish what He surely did not mean. He did NOT mean that John was not yet in the kingdom. He also did not mean that the kingdom was something that remained to be established in the future that John was not yet a part of. No, the kingdom was here ‘already’, present, active, and available for entrance, as many were already entering, as others were being hindered in their efforts to enter.

20 But if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you. Luke 11:20

12 And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force. Matthew 11:12

16 The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it. Luke 16:16

52 Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered. Luke 11:52

Clearly then, we are not to suppose that John somehow stood outside the kingdom while others were entering, and others opposing entrance. Nor are we to suppose that the kingdom, as Jesus understood it, lay only up ahead in the future. The kingdom is present and powerful in its working, albeit in a presently hidden form, recognized only by revelation, thus the ‘revelation’ of the “mystery of the kingdom.”

It is not completely correct to say that kingdom had only now arrived, although the King had arrived. It is better to understand that the kingdom has always been present (Ps 145:13; Dan 4:3, 34, et al) but is now ‘on the move’ in a decisive and ultimately determinative way that was not in keeping with the contemporary expectation, since the mystery of Messiah’s two comings being not yet known nor even conceived of before Pentecost. (Mt 11:3; 16:22; Acts 1:6; 1Pet 1:11-12)

No, Jesus was not saying that John had not entered the kingdom while others clearly were entering it at that very time. Rather, He is hinting at, and laying the conceptual groundwork for the most glorious revelation that lay completely outside any human ability to conceive or comprehend. He does this by taking their high regard for John as prophet and forerunner of the King and His kingdom, and pushing the popular conception of him beyond any conceivable limit.

Jesus does this to stress the inconceivable point that is calculated to burst into unimaginable glory. Something far beyond the highest spiritual example will be the common inheritance of even the very least who prevail to enter the then present and active kingdom of heaven. The very least citizen of that kingdom will possess the very righteousness of the King, the divine Son of God, as no lesser righteousness than His can be accepted in that place. (Mt 22:11-13)

Precisely because his greatness as a prophet was undoubted by the people, Jesus raises the bar far beyond their highest notions of John or of anything they could have identified or associated with John in terms of spiritual stature and status in the long expected kingdom. It must have shocked even John’s greatest admirers to hear Jesus say that of all born to woman, a greater than John has never existed. Now take that in. What is Jesus doing here?

He is preparing His hearers (and us) for the most astounding revelation that will eclipse anything ever conceived by even the most spiritual of His saints in ages past. And what is that? It is as we’ve said, the incomprehensible revelation of glory that the very righteousness wrought out in the spotless obedience of the Servant Messiah, the curse reversing seed of the woman, has been transferred (imputed credited accounted), not in the part but in the whole, to the least born again believer in Jesus.

They do not stand in their own righteousness, as neither did John, but in His righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne. This is seismic! It is beyond our grasp apart from the quickening illumination of the Holy Spirit, but to grasp it is to know a joy unspeakable that is full of glory.

Jesus is taking the highest contemporary standard of holiness and righteousness and raising that conception to an inconceivable new height precisely in order to make the greatest possible impression of what would be the common experience and possession of every believer entering this ever present kingdom by new birth.

We just don’t get it! Because if we did, I submit that the very earth would shake before us. Do we even begin to see what this means?! We have a righteousness that far exceeds our highest association, not only with a John Baptist, but an Abraham, a Moses, an Elijah! Why? Because a greater is here, and the very least of us are invested with His righteousness (there is no other acceptable), and are made perfectly complete in Him, as He alone is complete in Himself.

Woe to those poor theologians of Trent who called this glorious Jesus, Pauline, Reformed doctrine a “legal fiction”. If it is not a “legal fiction” that the spotless Lamb of God could be counted as sin for my sake, how is it a “legal fiction” if I, a poor sinner without strength, should be made (both counted and indwelt) righteous by His righteousness for His sake?

And let us be clear, as Paul was clear, as the Holy Spirit was clear when Jesus says to John, “permit it to be so now, for it is necessary for us to fulfill all righteousness”. This means that it is not simply God’s righteousness in His heaven above, but that particular righteousness that was perfected in our Lord’s spotless humanity over approximately 33 ½ years of testing, fulfilling all that was commanded in the law, both as to its letter and the spirit of its intention (Gal 4:4). It is THAT righteousness (“the LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS”; Isa 45:25; 54:17; Jer 23:5-6) that was performed and fulfilled in the representative humanity of Jesus.

It is His righteousness that is imputed, not in the part but in the whole, to the least justified believer, even now translated out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of His dear Son (Col 1:13). That’s where we are, seated far above all principality and power, robed right now and forever in the righteousness of another that Satan cannot touch (1Jn 3:6; 5:4, 18). THAT, my beloved friend, is the gospe!l, and woe to those who add to it or take from it, since to add even the least smattering of leaven is to pollute and spoil the whole, sterilizing it of its saving power. To grasp this in all its glorious implication is truest freedom and power for every good work.

Oh Lord, let us not come short or be diverted from this quickening, invariably transforming, fruit bearing revelation of the Spirit. Break in upon us, as you broke into them and show us that the Accuser has no rights against our conscience so far as we stand in nothing of our own righteousness but in His alone.

1 There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Romans 8:1

27 To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: Colossians 1:27

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This verse has long fascinated me. I find the words “must” and “all” most
compelling. Could you elaborate and shed more light?

“Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.” (Acts 3:21; KJV)

Your question is a very good one. As with Peter’s initial sermon on Pentecost, this passage also breaks the new, unexpected ground of the formerly unknown mystery of Messiah’s twice appearing to Israel.

In the rare instances where it might have been expected that Messiah would suffer before entering into His glory (Jn 1:29, 36; Lk 2:34-35; 24:26; 1Pet 1:11), this was typically conceived of something that would happen in the final tribulation, towards the very end, whereupon the slain Messiah would very shortly rise with the rest of the righteous dead, slay the Antichrist (compare Isa 11:4 in the Greek Septuagint with 2Thes 2:8) and begin His rod iron rule over the nations out of a cleansed and restored Jerusalem.

Though fully foretold in the mystery contained in the prophetic writings (Acts 26:22-23; Ro 16:25-26) no one had ever conceived that Messiah would come twice. Even where it might have been understood by the prophets and a rare few that Messiah must die before entering upon His rod iron reign over the nations, it was never imagined that His resurrection would not be at the ‘last day’, but in the midst of history, creating a new and unexpected interim between the advents. Before the Spirit’s revelation at Pentecost, this was NOT on anyone’s radar. This is why Paul would speak of the ‘mystery of Christ’ and the ‘mystery of the gospel’.

With the descent of the Spirit on Pentecost, it was now revealed (1Pet 1:11-12) that Jesus’ foretold death was to result in His ascension to God’s right hand, there to remain until His post-tribulational return. This is what Peter means by his use of the word, ‘must’. The heavens ‘must’ receive Jesus, which is to say He must continue to remain seated at God’s right hand, UNTIL His enemies are made His footstool at His return to destroy the Antichrist, raise the righteous dead, and Deliver captive Israel at the great day of the Lord (Dan 12:1-2). It is then, at that day, of which ‘ALL’ the prophets spoke, that Israel’s fortunes would be restored as at the first. It is then that ‘ALL’ the prophets expected all the covenants of promise to be most completely fulfilled in their regeneration and return, as a newly born, entirely Spirit filled nation. This is the day that ends the time of gentile dominion, with the judgment of the wicked and long awaited restoration of Israel. Until then, Jesus ‘must’ wait at God’s right hand ‘TILL’ His enemies are made His footstool.

This, of course, takes place with the Deliverer’s descent out of Zion (heavenly Zion) to the earthly Zion (Isa 59:17-21; Ro 11:25-29), as the beleaguered nation is spiritually born / raised “in one day” (Isa 66:8; Eze 39:22; Zech 3:9; 12:10), able now by the Spirit of revelation to ‘look upon’ their descending Messiah as the One whom the nation pierced (Ps 102:13; 110:3; Zech 12:10 with Mt 23:39; Acts 3:21; Ro 11:26; Rev 1:7).

Just to add this quick note not directly related: As Saul was profoundly impacted by the spectacle of Stephen’s martyrdom, his secure categories all shattered, just so, we may well infer that it will take the martyr witness of the end time remnant to prepare the Jewish heart world-wide for the lifting of the veil at Jesus’ return, we believe in remarkable analogy to Paul’s arrest on the road to Damascus. Here will be the difference in outcome between the Holocaust and Jacob’s trouble! It is where God will have brought the bride in final clarity of prophetic witness and the fullness of the stature of Jesus.

Her final witness will be as indelibly impressed on a restored Israel’s memory as Stephen’s martyrdom was to Paul. It is not only because the clock has struck, but because the body of Christ, as bearer of the precious seed, “the pillar and ground of truth”, will have been brought to its appointed completion. THIS is why Israel’s eyes will be opened “at the set time to favor Zion” (Ps 102:13). It is the vindication of God’s eschatological purpose that Israel be made jealous through a largely gentile bride, the “foolish nation” of prophecy.

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

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“After two days He will revive us; the third day we shall live in His sight” (Hos 6:2).”

According to the NT, the gospel reveals a mystery that was at once fully foretold in the writings of the prophets (Acts 26:22; Ro 16:25-26; Rev 10:7), but divinely concealed from both men and angels until the appointed time (Mk 8:30; 9:9; 1Cor 2:7-8). For example, all who accept the witness of the NT will recognize that Messiah’s twofold advent was not clearly distinguished before the gospel was revealed with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (1Pet 1:11-12). Whereas every aspect of the gospel was “according to the scriptures (Acts 26:22; 1Cor 15:3-4), Paul would nonetheless speak of it as a mystery (Eph 6:19-20 with Col 4:3-4). Its revelation in the ‘fullness of time,’ would bring to light all of the other related mysteries described in the NT (Ro 11:25-29; Eph 1:9-10; 3:4-5, 9-10; Col 1:26; 4:3-4; 1Tim 3:9, 16). Paul’s reference to the gospel as a mystery is anticipated by Jesus’ reference to the ‘mystery of the kingdom of God’ (Mk 4:11). At the heart of both is the formerly unknown fact that Messiah was to come twice.

The Spirit’s revelation of the gospel gives a clarity of hindsight that enables the detection of both comings in a number of OT prophecies that before would have been quite indistinguishable, particularly as it pertains to the time (1Pet 1:11). Often, aspects of both comings are mysteriously intermingled, or side by side, without clear distinction, with no clear evidence of an inter-advent period between. The present age thus forms the mysterious ‘gap’ between the advents that has been so much belittled in certain scholarly circles. However, had Messiah’s substitutionary atonement, and therefore His twofold advent, NOT been hidden until the appointed time, the princes of this age would not have crucified the Lord of glory (1Cor 2:7-8). Moreover, the mystery would not have accomplished its further purpose to test hearts and stumble pride.

The point to be made here is that the mystery of the gospel, and God’s wise use of it, is not something merely ‘hidden in God.’ All is contained in the prophets and God is glorified when the gospel is vindicated by reference to what was foretold. Every part of the mystery of the gospel is “according to the scriptures” (Lk 24:44-46; Acts 3:18-21; 26:22; Ro 16:25-26; 1Cor 15:3-4; 1Pet 1:11), but the prophecies were so given and arranged in a form and manner that was divinely calculated to conceal the cross and the knowledge that Christ should come twice until the time appointed.

Paul understood the great commission (“the commandment of the everlasting God”) as a call to preach the gospel as it was indeed “according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began. But now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets (the instrumental means), according to the commandment of the everlasting God, (to be) made known to all nations for the obedience of faith.” God is most glorified when the divinely commanded means is properly united to its evangelistic goal.

I am suggesting that if Paul’s statement is unpacked for its full implications, then here we have God’s prescriptive command for the true apostolic approach to evangelism that was practiced all throughout the book of Acts. Built right into the proclamation of the gospel is the divinely intended apologetic. Only as the gospel could be shown to conform in all points to what stood written in the prophets was it to be accorded any credence at all (Acts 26:22). “The testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy” (Rev 19:10b).

This divinely ordained mystery is contained completely in the prophetic scriptures, verified and confirmed by its manifest conformity to the same (Acts 26:22; Ro 16:25-26), but it also reveals a parenthetical, hidden age that could only come to light after the revelation of the mystery of Messiah’s coming, departure, and return to Israel. With this advance in understanding, an unforeseen age discovers itself between the two advents of Jesus. However, although this age was not foreseen or clearly distinguished by the prophets (1Pet 1:11), it was nonetheless fully foretold.

Sometimes called, ‘the double horizon of prophecy’, it is a well noted characteristic of Hebrew prophecy to envision events widely separated in time as part of a single sweep of eschatological fulfillment.  In other words, the events belonging to Israel’s eschatological judgment and salvation were often presented as a single complex, with no clear indication of the considerable time that might elapse between undetectable stages of fulfillment.

Prophecies of a near range fulfillment anticipated in the contemporary crisis would include details of the ultimate redemption that did not follow, or fully come to pass after the threatened judgment that was, very remarkably fulfilled to the letter. How is this to be understood? How is it that the threatened judgments are so faithfully fulfilled when the extravagantly lavish descriptions of national salvation have either failed or been manifestly postponed?  

It seems apparent that even the prophets recognized, to some extent, this phenomenon of the near and far horizon within some of their own prophecies.  Fully knowing that earlier prophets, such as Isaiah, Micah, and Hosea had depicted the final redemption against the backdrop of the impending Assyrian invasion, the later prophets did not hesitate to apply some of these same prophecies, employing the same note of threatening imminence, to the impending invasion of Babylon or some more distant aggressor.

This observation suggests that the prophets themselves were keenly aware of a typology of the march of kingdoms and hostile ‘Antichrist’ figures (the ‘Assyrian’; the ‘Chaldean’, etc.) so that, for them, a contemporary, partial fulfillment of the ultimate day of the Lord did not disappoint nor exhaust their own abiding expectation of a yet greater, more complete and final fulfillment in the future. We might call this ‘pattern eschatology’.

It is also remarkable to observe how prophets living more than an hundred years after their predecessors would continue to use the same language of imminence (‘at hand’; ‘near’; ‘greatly hasting’) to describe the ultimate day of the Lord and final salvation of the nation, well after the foretold invasion of Assyria had come and gone. It seems the later prophets were able to understand a kind of abiding, ‘existential’ imminence that could as well apply to later generations facing similar judgment, even if the full and final eschatological deliverance of the nation was not yet.

Such a ‘first-fruits’ or advance ‘earnest’ of ultimate eschatological fulfillment, as well observed in the well known ‘already and not yet’ pattern of NT fulfillment, is not without OT precedent. It can be seen in the experience of the return of the exiles from Babylon. There was real fulfillment of the promise (the already) but not yet the full realization of ‘all’ the covenant had promised with all the highly descriptive elaborations of the prophets.

Remarkably, many of the prophecies describing the return would be presented as accomplishing the full and final redemption, without clear distinction of the stages of fulfillment that would supervene.  Such a telescopic view of prophecy is endorsed by evangelicals who recognize the authority and witness of the NT, but it is not so warmly received by critical scholars, both liberal and Jewish, who charge evangelicals with “eisegesis” (reading ‘into’ the text what one is interested to find).

Indeed, the early church’s view that the prophetic writings held a secret to be revealed by the Spirit in the last days (a view also held by the sectaries at Qumran), would not have passed muster with the critical norms and standards of modern exegesis and hermeneutical science, but all of this forms the background and context that is fully consistent with what the NT will speak of as a mystery contained in the prophetic writings, but intentionally preserved by God until the appointed time of revelation. The intent of the heavenly secrets were to function as a strategy of heavenly warfare to confound and overturn the wisdom of the powers of this age, both human and angelic.

I point this out because I hold a view of Hos 6:2 that is part of this mystery of Christ’s coming, departure, and return to Israel. As mentioned, the revelation of two comings of Messiah discovers a hidden age that would extend from Messiah’s ascension to the end of the times of the gentiles at the end of the great tribulation (Lk 21:24 with Rev 11:2). This is the long exile of covenant wrath and discipline during which Israel would remain under a judicial blindness, as God would “return to His place,” and hide His face from the nation, as a whole (Deut 31:17-18; 32:20; Isa 8:17; 54:8; 64:7; Eze 39:23-24, 29). This would continue until the transitional ‘day of the Lord,’ now revealed as Messiah’s second coming.

A favorite example of this mystery is demonstrated in the better translations of Mic 5:1-5. Here, both comings appear in the space of a few verses. The words, “Now gather yourself in troops, oh daughter of troops,” should be understood as prophetic sarcasm or taunt aimed at the futility of the nation’s tendency to trust in its military when it is not merely the king of Assyria, but Yahweh Himself who has “laid siege against us” (Mic 5:1). Most commentators interpret the rest of the verse, “they shall smite the judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek,” as merely referring to the indignity inflicted on the contemporary king of Israel by the Assyrian invaders. But is this sufficient cause for what follows in Mic 5:3?: “Therefore (for this cause) will He give them up.” Let these words resonate. These are words that chill the soul, as they summon contemplation of a staggeringly tragic history.

Note that this is no momentary ‘giving up’ but continues to the day of redemption that ends the exile forever with the advent of the ruler from Bethlehem. What great provocation, then, can account for such a prolonged surrendering of a people over to perpetual wandering and suffering to the end of the long exile? The prophets are clear that it is a matter of the heart. For the far larger part, the nation has departed from Yahweh’s steadfast covenant love, and violence against this covenant love has incurred the curse. But here, in this passage, a more particular offense is in view. A trajectory of covenant dereliction has reached its climax. “Therefore (for this cause) will He give them up …” Such words can only indicate some act of ultimate provocation.

What is this that seals the nation’s perpetuity in exile until its eschatological resolution in the travail of Zion when the Redeemer, the ruler from Bethlehem, shall come in mighty deliverance? (Isa 59:20-21; 66:8; Jer 30:6-7). Can this be accounted for by anything less than some crowning act that epitomizes and exposes to view Israel’s tendency to trust in man rather than God, a tendency to “always resist the Holy Spirit” (Acts 7:51). It is this tendency that reaches climactic revelation in Israel’s own rejection of her King who is none other than Isaiah’s ‘Servant of Yahweh’ whom the nation would abhor and reject (Isa 49:7; 53:3). Since this great act of the rejection of Immanuel in their midst, the nation has been surrendered to blindness, but never forever. It is always only ‘UNTIL …’ (Mic 5:3; Hos 5:15; Mt 23:39; Acts 3:21; Ro 11:25).

Both Isaiah and Micah had spoken of the time of ultimate travail as concurrent with the eschatological day of the Lord, preceding the restoration of the Davidic kingdom of God on earth (Isa 13:8; 21:3;  26:16-18; 66:7-8; Mic 4:9-10; 5:3). Later, Jeremiah and other of the prophets would refer to this time of ultimate birth pangs as synonymous with Moses’ mention of the tribulation of the latter days (Deut 4:30; Jer 30:6-7, 24; Hos 5:15). It is ‘THEN’ that all the prophets concur that “the remnant of His (Messiah’s) brethren shall return.” Until then, Israel has been delivered over to the judicial blindness that is only removed at the Deliverer’s return to turn ungodliness from Jacob (Isa Ro 11:25-27).

Therefore, the particular offense that provokes the age long ‘giving up’ of Israel can be nothing less than the national sin of “smiting of the judge (ruler) upon the cheek.” The reason for so grave and awful a judgment, one that has lasted so long, is that the judge or ruler of verse one is no ordinary king. He is the ruler from Bethlehem, the Messiah from David’s line.

Only a provocation of such a magnitude is sufficient to account for those solemn and awful words that history has so tragically vindicated, “therefore, He shall give them up” (Mic 5:3). But for how long? Israel is ‘given up UNTIL’ the time that she who has come to travail has brought forth.” When is this? It is the time like no other; “it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble” (Joel 2:2; Jer 30:7: Dan 12:1). Following Moses, the prophets would continue to foretell of a an ultimate time of national travail and rebirth that would climax in the great day of the Lord (Isa 13:8-9; 26:17; 66:8; Jer 30:6-7; Mic 5:3 etc.). After Zion’s travail, the remnant of His brethren, who now recognize Messiah, as typified by Joseph’s self-disclosure to his estranged brethren, returns to the children of Israel. “For now shall He (the smitten ruler from Bethlehem) be great unto the ends of the earth” (compare Zech 9:9-10), and He shall stand and feed in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God; for now shall they abide (Israel’s millennial continuance in peace and righteousness): And this man shall be the peace …” (Mic 5:3-5).

With Mic 5 as background, Hos 5:15 – 6:2 comes gloriously into full light. Hos 5:15 can, of course, be naturally understood to refer to nothing more than the provocation that induced Yahweh to descend in judgment on Israel through the Assyrian, the rod of His indignation (Isa 10:5), and then to withdraw His presence and protection, as when the glory departed from the temple in Ezekiel chapters 10 and 11. Such a view is certainly in keeping with the pattern of judgment threatened the curses of the covenant of the covenant law suit in Deut 28-32, as continually reiterated and enforced by the prophets on the conscience of Israel. But in light of the glory of the mystery, the language of Hos 5:15 transcends any such limitation. Thus, it is far better taken to refer to an even more significant departure from the temple, even Jesus’ departure back to His Father’s right hand when He said, “Behold, Your house is left to you desolate. For I say to you, after this you will not see me again “UNTIL” you will say, BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD” (Mt 23:39). This is the time of Christ session at the right hand of God, as foretold in Ps 110 (another key “UNTIL” of prophecy). The language of Hos 5:15 is no accident! Pay close attention to this unusual language that so richly suggests what the mystery will reveal as the first and second comings of Christ: “I will return again to My place Till they acknowledge their offense. Then they will seek My face; In their affliction (Jacob’s trouble) they will earnestly seek Me.”

In view of what follows in Hos 6:1-2, how can it be lightly dismissed that this has something much more in view than only the idolatry of the northern kingdom? Rather, is this not the post-tribulational acknowledgement of the nation’s crowing offense? The offense that summed up a history of idolatry and apostasy? (Acts 7:51-52). It is not mere “guilt” or “trespasses” (plural), as in some translations. It is the consummate “offense” or ‘trespass” (singular) of the nation in the rejection of the Messiah. This is what is acknowledged at at time of great affliction that ends the elect nation’s long night of exile and estrangement from covenant favor (Hos 3:5). With this acknowledgement, the One who was here and departed now returns to revive the nation that will live out the third day in His sight of God as a resurrected nation. The Revelation of John will provide the key that permits us to identify the ‘third day” with the thousand year reign of Christ Jesus.

It is well known that before the time of Christ, there were conceptions that history would follow the analogy of creation week, for each day a thousand years. This tradition is referred to in the “Epistle of Barnabas,” which appears in vol. 1 of the Ante-Nicene Fathers. By no means am I alone in believing that the two days of Hos 6:2 signifies the time between the advents, but if it is true that a day stands for a thousand years, it means that the “set time” for Israel’s post-tribulational new birth and resurrection (Eze 37; 39:22, 28-29 with Isa 66:8; Mic 5:3), has always been two thousand years from the national rejection of the Son. The two days begins with the smiting, piercing, and ‘cutting off’ of the Messiah (Isa 53:8; Dan 9:26; Zech 12:10) and ends with the post-tribulational revival, so that nation will live out the third millennial day, as a living resurrected nation, with all their children taught of the Lord (Isa 54:13; 59:21; Jer 31:34). During this unforeseen, but certainly foretold interim, the covenant nation would be blinded, while a door of faith would be opened to the gentiles (Acts 14:27; 15:14; Ro 11:7). According to Paul, this is the time that Moses’ prophecy would be fulfilled that said that as Israel had moved God to jealousy by that which was ‘not God,’ so He would move them to jealousy by a ‘not a people’ (Deut 32:21 with Ro 10:19; 11:11). As they had hidden their face from Him (Isa 53:3), so He would hide His face from them (Deut 31:17-18; 32:20; Isa 8:17; 54:8; 64:7; Eze 39:23-24, 29). As nothing else, this would explain the unexpectedly long delay between the advents.

When the Messiah was smitten, pierced, and cut off, Israel was ‘given up.’ That is the language of divine abandonment, and some translations translate it thus, even the Jewish translation. This is the time that God would not only hide His face, He would quite literally “go away and return to His place” (at the Father’s right hand) TILL the nation would acknowledge their offense at a time of great affliction. This is exactly what the NT leads us to believe that Israel will do as they see Him whom they pierced (Zech 12:10 with Mt 24:39; 24:30; Acts 3:19-21; Ro 11:26; Rev 1:7). They will acknowledge a corporate complicity in Messiah’s death, a complicity that all fallen humanity shares in equally.

This is how a generation nearly two thousand years removed from their forebears can own to themselves the piercing of the Messiah (compare Mt 23:30-36). Therefore, in a context that anticipates the “end of sin” (Dan 9:24), the national resurrection that is implied in Hos 6:1-3 means that the acknowledgement of Hos 5:15 can have no lesser ‘offense’ in view than the consummate offense of the nation’s corporate rejection of the Messiah (Acts 2:23; 3:14-15, 17; 4:10-11; 7:51-52). The implications of such language can have no lesser meaning than the age long estrangement of blinded Israel between the two advents. No other interpretation does justice to the divine sacrifice that is implied in God’s surrender of His beloved prodigal nation to the sword and to continuous exile. This must continue, and any Jewish reader of the Hebrew Bible should should be able to recognize that God’s face will remain hidden from the nation, as a whole, until a surviving remnant is born into holy nationhood at the day of the Lord, after passing through the throes of an unequaled tribulation (Deut 4:30; Jer 30:7; Dan 12:1).

If this interpretation of the two days is true, then it is no wonder that Israel is back in the Land and Jerusalem is increasingly the cup of trembling that prophecy predicts (Zech 12:2-3). All present trends suggest that all that remains that is necessary to set the stage for the final seven years will be coming speedily into place. “For He will finish the work, and cut it short in righteousness: because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth.”

Regardless of what is ‘behind’ in the faith of the faithful, this can be ‘filled up’ very quickly (1Thes 3:10), because God is not waiting for man to ‘get his act together’ but He will arise and act, as He knows how to bring the foretold constraints and inducements that are calculated to take His people where they would not have gone (Jn 21:18), even very quickly (Ps 110:3; 102:13 with Gen 17:21)

If, however, this interpretation of Hos 6:2 is true, then God is greatly glorified by such amazing precision, showing His absolutely foreknown and predetermined schedule to His children (“those things that are revealed belong to us and to our children”). We certainly have precedent for this kind of chronological accuracy in the prophetic chronology of Daniel’s amazing prophecy of the seventy weeks. The really much debated question is whether God ever intends that we should have some knowledge of the time. Is there ever a time that it will be possible to know the time? Daniel’s prophecy is one clear example. Who, knowing the prophecy of the seventy weeks, would not also know something about where they stood in relation to the time of the Lord’s first advent, what those living before the revelation of the mystery would have understood as also the time that the kingdom would be restored to Israel. For 490 years, it was quite possible to know, at least with some degree of proximity, how near or distant one stood to the time of the great messianic redemption, as it was conceived by Jews living before the cross.

I maintained this view of the two days of Hosea very strongly amid the false excitement that came when many took the ’93 Oslo peace accords to be the false covenant that begins the 7 years. You’ll remember when Yassir Arafat and Yitzak Rabin shook hands in agreement in front of then president Clinton in those famed photographs. In those days, many insisted that the two days of Hosea should be reckoned from Christ’s birth. I would point out a number of things that should have followed the beginning of the 7 years that was clearly NOT in place, precluding even the possibility. Not least was the necessity of the daily sacrifice, since certainly there could be no stopping of a sacrifice in the “holy place” at Jerusalem if it had not first been started. Nothing in the Oslo accord had moved any closer to the unthinkable prospect of Jewish access to the Arab controlled temple mount, something that is feverishly guarded to this day.

Nothing could prevail to dissuade the advocates of that view until after the year 2000 had completely come and gone. It will be quite different when the real thing comes, because shortly after the false peace, the sacrifice that will be stopped in the middle of the week will be in clearly in place. Its removal in conjunction with the Antichrist’s desecration of the ‘holy place’ in Jerusalem starts the great tribulation (Mt 24:15-16, 21 with Dan 9:27; 11:31; 12:1, 11; 2Thes 2:4; Rev 11:2: 12:7-14). In the full context of all that will accompany and confirm this compelling sign, resistance and denial at this late stage will be a manifestation of the most advanced kind of unbelief. For the faithful, there will be no uncertainty as to the time, and this will have a deep working of sober urgency all throughout the body of Christ, as can hardly be imagined.

The false alarms of prophetic speculation that has littered the landscape of church history could have all been avoided if even the most basic order of events had been kept in proper order. This requires close and careful observance, all by the grace of the Spirit, of course, but we have in print a number of keen writers from past generations who knew and taught this basic outline (it is nothing new). Some were clear in their insistence that nothing on the immediate horizon gave any certain evidence of a near fulfillment. In no small part, this balance of judgment and clarity was due to a studied commitment to interpret prophecy in its plain and literal sense, not discounting, of course, the manifest use of symbol and imagery. In every case throughout history and today, the false alarms of prophetic speculation derives from a tendency to separate what God has joined.

Failure after embarrassing failure has only strengthened the argument that the time can never, and should never be known. But now as then, there is a time to know the time, just as when Jesus would rebuke the nation for not knowing the time of its visitation (Lk 19:44). But “seventy weeks are determined,” and whatever ambiguity may have attended this prophecy before the revelation of the mystery, still, the Jews of Jesus’ day should have known, by any reckoning, that the end of Daniel’s seventy sevens was imminently at hand. Doubtless, this is why Luke’s gospel would say that ‘all men were in expectation” (Lk 3:15). According to Jesus, ignorance of the time was reprehensible and worthy of divine rebuke. That seventy weeks were to be reckoned from the well known decree of the king of Persia to the time of the messianic redemption was NOT a mystery to those who received the scripture. For Israel, it was time to know the time, as also the time between would have precluded any false view of imminence.

Regardless of one’s view of the time of the rapture, if scripture is interpreted literally, it will be unmistakable to believers living at the time that they are in the unequaled tribulation. Since this will be marked by clearly revealed signs that require that certain preceding conditions be in place, believers will have great occasion to see the tribulation coming before it arrives. Who then can deny that it will be possible, at that time, to know the time, at least very approximately. If God has revealed it, then it becomes part of the believer’s stewardship, so that to not know the time when it is time that we should know it, is to reflect seriously on the condition of the heart. This is particularly true as the evidence mounts in the face of the most openly manifest and prolific fulfillment of prophecy in all of history. What was once a subject for speculation and debate becomes, at a certain advanced stage, a manifestation of the true disposition of the heart. It will be a dispensation of divine requirement, a new watershed of division and crisis of decision.

Those who recognize that the mystery of the gospel reveals an unforeseen gap between the 69th and 70th week of Daniel agree that there is yet a further installment on the divine calendar that is very well defined. Indeed, believers of that time will know with certainty that the peace arrangement that provides for Jewish return to the temple mount is not just another peace initiative in the perennially troubled Mideast. At this time, the sacrifice will again be in place and Israel will presume itself secure. This will not be done in a corner.

Such a compelling sign will only be resisted by the most advanced kind of unbelief. For the faithful remnant, there will be NO question of the time. Let me be clear that I do not put any confidence in my dream, except as something to hold in my heart. The apparent stress on the time is what impressed me most. I am, however, quite assured that the interpretation is correct that sees the two days of Hos 6:2 to be referring to the the time between the advents, between Israel’s rejection of Messiah and the revelation that comes to them at the time of His return. For this, a very considerable case can be made, as you may remember from the piece I did on Mic 5:1-4 and the Joseph analogy. The argument builds on a great deal more than mere assumption that the two days is equivalent to two thousand years.

Still, if the time rolls around and the particular line up of events required by prophecy are not in place and in clear view, then it will be obvious that I was wrong to read such specificity into Hos 6:2, as some translations leave out both the ‘two days’ and the “third day,” translating the passage thus: “He will restore us in a very ‘short time;’ he will heal us in a ‘little while,’ so that we may live in his presence.” Such presumption and liberty with the text is not translation; it is at best interpretation. In any event, the two days of Hos 6:2 has been anything but “short” for the Jewish people. The view I take of Hos 6:2 is only as good as it can be shown to belong to a whole complex of events that stand together.Only if and when the necessarily accompanying signs are all in place in proper relationship will our view be sufficiently confirmed to hold anyone else accountable to believe it. I present this only for those who will hold it tentatively in the hearts in the event trends move swiftly in the right direction. If that proves to be so, then who will not rejoice and stand in awe of yet another glorious example of the God who declares the end from the beginning, a tremendously edifying reality, already well enough demonstrated to make unbelief utterly without excuse.

For all who wait for the consolation of Israel, surely, these be the days! Reggie

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In order not to be devoured by all the ‘coulda, shoulda, woulda’s that would overwhelm even the most saintly of saints, Paul warns against looking back: “… but this one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and reaching forth …” (Phil 3:13-14). But another, and even more deadly tendency is to look within, in hopes of finding faith sufficient to answer the crisis. That’s not where it’s to be found! It’s only in Him, and His to give. I’m taught of God that faith and peace is not to be found in my reach and power but in His outstretched hand, as when Peter sinking, cried out, and “immediately Jesus stretched forth His hand …” God has deliberately put saving faith beyond human reach and power that to Him might be all the glory when it is given us to miraculously believe and trust and rest.

Our only plea is mercy. There is no other; but we also seek the tender grace of a clear and full assurance that when it is our time to leave this world, we are not occupied with reward or any such thing. Our hope and stay is that our names are written in heaven. Our thought is not reward but mercy. For that assurance, we must put off all hope in ourselves, or any faith that we might produce to stand before infinite holiness. There is no sufficiency in ourselves and we only forsake our own mercies if we imagine otherwise.

With whatever reward we may meet, or whatever higher ground we may have attained, nothing that can be added that can make us anymore righteous or able to stand than the moment we were forever clothed up by the righteousness of another, in ‘the hour we first believed’. There and then and forever, I could never become more righteous than I was at that instant when I was accepted in the Beloved. I think not to appear or presume to appear in any other righteousness than that righteousness that was perfected over 33 1/2 years of Jesus’ active obedience in my behalf.

Not only did He die for me, He lived for me by fulfilling, as He said to John The Baptist, “‘ALL’ righteousness.” It is that righteousness, perfected under the law by a spotless obedience, that is imputed to the least believer, not in the part but the whole. It is not just the act of the cross but His cruciform life, lived under the exacting examination of the law, that covers and clothes us, so that in the matter of justifying righteousness, we thirst no more. Notice that as much as the righteous thirst after righteousness ceaselessly, Jesus speaks of one sense in which they never thirst again. What can that be but in the sense that they will forever have no want of righteousness when called to stand before the Lord? (Jn 4:14; 6:35).

This imputed righteousness is the ‘everlasting righteousness’ of the New / Everlasting covenant. It is NOT a process! It is an accomplished, eternally secure position at the right hand of God in our ascended Lord, whether He is in heaven or on earth. This is something quite distinguishable from even the truest works of the indwelling Holy Spirit in my life. That may factor in my sanctification and reward, but it can have nothing to do with my standing, or the ground of my eternal justification that cannot grow or mature.

The fruits of the Spirit are relative and by degree, but justification is an absolute, relative to nothing but our first and forever acceptance, as based on the righteousness of another, by even a faith born from above that is also, no less a free gift of grace, apart from any working or doing or ‘becoming’.

And that acceptance is also an absolute. It can’t grow; it doesn’t fluctuate. It is NOT a process! It is forever settled in heaven and waits to be revealed at the last day as an already, eternal, irreversible reality, as sure as the very foundation of God, because it has the unshakable seal of His eternal knowledge of His own, even when they, in moments of desperate shaking, fear and doubt, may, God forbid, question their knowledge of Him.

Brother, I have doubted many things to my shame. I have even doubted my own standing in Christ and feared greatly; but I cannot doubt that regeneration, by its very nature, provided it is indeed born from above, CANNOT be reversed. It is as sure as the seal of the foundation of God. I am not speaking of possible fluctuations in my own assurance, which to my shame, I’ve known. I’m speaking of the foundation of God, which is an entirely different matter.

His purpose according to election MUST stand, and in order for it to stand, it must be ‘not of works but of Him who calls’. It has no basis in the willing or running of man (Ro 9:18). He knows His own, so that even if their most hated doubts should rise in unwanted denial of Him, He cannot deny Himself in them, that even if they should doubt of their knowledge of Him, He can never deny His own. They are bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh in an indissoluble union that is as sure as the everlasting covenant of righteousness that will stand with all Israel for a thousand years of open demonstration that what God elects, He brings down, and in, and keeps forever.

I long that you could share this conviction with me. I am more sure of it than anything concerning my own spiritual pulse, even if it should go flat-line in my own experience. It is because I know by revelation that it’s true. I know the problems. I know the arguments. I know the fearful warnings of coming short of the straight gate of regeneration. I know how fearfully close a Judas, or an Hymeneaus or Philetus can be, but I cannot doubt of the very foundation of God, which an everlasting covenant, steadfast and sure, well ordered in all things.

All the regrets, all the ‘shoulda, coulda, woulda’s of this beleaguered and halting life, with all its fits and starts, broken hearts, and set backs, with all its shame and regret, it will melt away in His face, as you become just like Him, perfectly like Him, in the moment that we see Him as He is. That’s a great big, astonishing, almost unimaginable promise.

In the meantime, I personally believe there’s a lot here left for us to walk out, so I expect a battle that will purify and perfect, but could never add one cubit to our complete acceptance in our Lord’s own righteousness. The Lord may show us hard things, but He is the resurrection and the life, and we have a divine, purchased right to a peace that passes all understanding. “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God.”

That’s a peace that doesn’t, or shouldn’t rise and fall with any experience or emotion in all the unexpected vicissitudes of this life. It is something that every believer has a right to every moment, even in the greatest trials that may threaten great discipline but never desertion, even when we may ‘feel’ most deserted. Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift, as we know, the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable.

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

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From the Saturday night LIVE Bible studies, this session on Hebrews Chapter 10 was particularly rich with Gospel proclamation. Reggie Kelly’s participation begins about 10 minutes into the study. (With Tom Quinlan, Ryan Couch, Phil Norcom, Travis Bennett and others)

Reggie’s participation begins at about the 10 minute mark. Don’t give up early. This session gets better and better as it goes on.

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When it comes to those who pass into reprobation, such as Pharaoh or Judas, I certainly don’t believe God is setting those guys up. He is, as you say, foreseeing and incorporating their own self chosen rebellion into His plan. However, once they have advanced to a certain place, God is free and just to take certain measures that He knows will exacerbate their condition and drive their fallen natures into greater exposure and damnation as judgement on an already existing condition.

On the other hand, even fully respecting a certain kind of limited free will, which I do, it cannot be denied that God does NOT operate according to the perceived rules of human fairness. What do I mean? I mean you have only to look at history, as also the history of revival and conversion. Paul himself and the surviving remnant of Israel (i.e., the third that is saved in one day), are perfect examples of God “tampering” with human freedom in a way that far exceeds and surpasses what He does with the general population over the general course of time.

Who can deny that in the case of some, much more than others, He brings far greater constraints and inducements? For example, for nearly 2,000 years, most of the remnant of God’s people was from among the Jewish nation. Then, for what has been nearly another 2,000 years, it is quite the exact opposite. Then, for a final 1,000 years, there is one nation under heaven whose population is 100 % saved while all throughout the nations there is ongoing evangelism and clearly a number of increasing preponderance, particularly towards the end of the millennium who refuse to behold the majesty of the Lord (Isa 26:10). Am I to believe that all of this happens only by God’s foreknowledge of men’s free will and actions. Besides Yada, as in Amos 3:2 and its Greek counterpart, prognosei, means intimacy or prearrangement of relationship, as when Adam knew his wife, Eve. It is much more than divine omniscience. .

I believe that God is free to bring such constraints as to conquer the natural resistance of the will without violence to the will. I further believe He is free to do this in the case of some without being thereby obligated to do the same in the case of all, and that, of course, is the offense. It is also the mystery of theodicy that Paul does not solve by merely invoking free will, which He so easily could have done in anticipation of the inevitable objections. Why did God choose Jacob, an individual and a nation, but not Esau, also both individual and nation independently of their works and before works were even possible. The answer is not mere foresight of their works. That would say nothing about grace. The scripture gives the reason very clearly. It was “in order that” His purpose in grace might stand, not of him who wills or works but of Him who calls, as always, “lest any flesh boast.” Special discrimination election was necessary for grace to be grace, that is of the biblical kind.

I would tend to go with you that this is only with regard to the Jewish nation as a corporate entity and your persuasion of that puts us at one in what I believe to be the main burden of Ro 11, but corporate entities are made up of individuals, and unless someone can explain a goodly number of scriptures that shows the instantaneous salvation of the Jewish nation, with all the subsequent population preserved in gospel holiness, without a single defection that is not met with quick chastisement and correction for a thousand years, then I’ve got to believe that something more than divine foresight is at work here. It is discriminating, apprehending grace that is NOT universal for the very reason that God’s lavish mercy on one does not obligate Him to the other, though He takes nothing from, nor imposes no disadvantage on the other. He is justly free to take special measures in behalf of one without this obligating Him to do the same for another, though He has done more than enough for the salvation of all so that all are without excuse. Their greatest damnation will be His goodness to all, but there’s a manifest difference between what some call ‘common grace’ and the special grace that is manifest by His deliberate and always successful pursuit of those the father gave to Jesus to bring home.

To fail to appropriate His provision lies entirely with the free will of man. God has done all on His part to be gracious, even pleading all the day long, not willing that any perish, taking no delight in the death of the wicked. On the other hand, those who appropriate God’s provision do so under conditions and constraints that do not prevail equally and at all times so that there is nothing in them to credit for the conversion of the will and transformation of their nature. That’s where I tend to leave it. While men are free and responsible for their actions, else judgement would be a mechanical sham, still, by any reckoning, there is more going on here than mere free will and divine foresight of what men will do with what comes their way.

As God got His man on the road to Damascus in one day by a sudden blast of transforming divine revelation (“when it pleased God to reveal His son in me”), just so, He will get His nation! (“the time to favor Zion, yea, the set time has come!”) In terms of a human perception of divine fairness, where does this leave the many generations that were not so specially constrained, their power fully shattered and met by a mighty, divinely timed in-breaking of transforming revelation that kills the old and quickens the new? Not an every day event, to be sure.

God is free to raise the dead and quicken whom He will, not just those who will and run. He’s God and that’s the point He seems to go out of His way to make, even for a thousand years of requiring the nations to recognize and honor His just prerogative in discriminating election and grace. It’s a mystery, hid and laid up among His treasures from the beginning. It is a mystery how one is made to differ from another only by God’s grace, yet without injustice to those not so specially wrought upon by God, even while His just severity is seen to fall without remedy on the unwilling for the very sake of their unwillingness. But the people will be willing, not of themselves, but in the day of His power. That’s not just any day that man chooses to make the day of God’s power. It is the time of His special act. It’s a day of resurrecting grace that is specially directed on one people, but no less every individual who will make up that nation.

That’s just some of my thinking on the matter. It makes no one happy on either side, so I’ve never gotten too spoiled to having the luxury of full doctrinal agreement on this among those I love and with whom I rejoice to fellowship. But here I stand though it loses me much support, as you can imagine, even though I’ve never pushed it or indulged in the philosophical problems it can tend to create beyond what the scripture explicitly or leaves to necessary inference. There it is: Man is responsible and God is sovereign and the twain do meet. But free will, by itself, or God’s foreknowledge by itself alone, does not seem to sufficiently account for what we see in scripture, history, and most especially prophecy.

God is free and just to constrain and bring powerful and rare inducements to an extent that becomes a natural offense when the same is not done equally for others. When you think about it, both the Calvinist and the Arminian must bear the implications of this scandal to humanistic reason. Why didn’t God provide atonement and potential for repentance for Satan? His grace towards man did not thereby obligate Him towards the angels that fell and I can imagine that this is part of their rage, but that is speculative and I have to quit. It’s all too deep for me but I am only obligated to affirm what the scriptures most plainly affirm regardless of how this perturbs or disturbs the reasoning mind, mine included. Hope that helps explain me a bit more though I doubt I can answer many of the questions it must raise. I’m as non plussed about much of this as the next person, but feel God is saying something through these things that we must not miss only because it boggles the mind and creates philosophical problems. The answer seems more to bow than to understand.

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So I take it that God is very keen that the gospel be presented as the revelation of a mystery that was fully foretold in the prophets but hidden, not only from men, both just and unjust, but also from the principalities and powers of this age till its appointed time of revelation and manifestation. This gospel includes both comings and the relation of those comings to Israel. It is the OT mystery of Messiah’s coming, departure, and return to Israel. Now I realize that’s a mouthful and preaching the gospel does not have to follow a prescribed method, but this is the framework and understanding that all the apostles were proceeding. It was the approach they took and they understood the preaching of the gospel as the revelation of a mystery that proves itself by its conformity to what was written in the prophets. That’s its apologetic force and appeal that removes the intellectual refuge in the face of the miracle of fulfilled, and being fulfilled prophecy. This content and this means of making the gospel known was, in their understanding, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, since it pleases God to make Himself known as the God who declares the end from the beginning, the one to whom is known (and foretold) all His works from the beginning. “The testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy.”

This does not have to explicit in every preaching of the gospel, of course. There is great freedom. But this should be the context and framework of understanding that is understood as implicit, not as a rigid method, by no means, but as a consciousness of the aims of God, not only as to His ends but as to His commanded means, namely, the use of the scriptures of the prophets. When the gospel is preached in this way, built right into it is a powerful apologetic through the miracle of fulfilled prophecy. It is the power of prophecy in evangelism that has been all to neglected. Yet, it is this that God enjoins on us as ‘according to the commandment of the everlasting God’, as I understand Paul’s statement in Ro 16:25-26, and as observed in the common practice of apostolic preaching as we have it recorded in the book of Acts.

The gospel was first preached in an apocalyptic context of flight from the wrath to come, as an urgent message of repentance in view of the shortness of the time, beneath the shadow of an imminent destruction of Jerusalem that would naturally be understood in inextricable connection with the judgment of the nations and restoration of the kingdom to Israel. That’s where they were and where we find ourselves again, full circle.

It is also the “witness” (Travis’ “credible witness”) of the imminence of the kingdom of God (Mt 24:14) God will not judge fully and finally until there has first gone forth in power and clarity this “witness” so to leave all men without excuse for a very compelling opportunity for faith that to reject is to expose the powerful predisposition of the natural heart.

Apocalyptic evangelism is not limited to Jews, though it is meant to appeal to them, not only from the evidence of fulfilled prophecy but of things presently unfolding and soon to follow in their lifetime. Thus, it has the working of a delayed reaction bomb. This is especially seen in Isa 28 where the gospel is first dismissed, but soon enough the forewarned disaster falls and this is calculated to have powerful working on the Jewish conscience in his time of calamity. The same can be said of the rising tide of anti-Semitism, which a futuristic understanding of prophecy has always clearly anticipated. That too is again upon us. Apocalyptic evangelism exploits this evidence to point the Jew, and the nations to the implied divine contention over the nature of true covenant righteousness, and all the issues of God’s face being hidden from the beleaguered nation till the coming in of the everlasting righteousness. Even that statement presumes a mystery, since this righteousness was revealed in the gospel but waits to become the experience of the entirety of the nation when it is born in a day.

The target audience is “whosoever will.” The issue of Israel and the controversy God has with them is for the nations to consider, but they will not consider it rightly until they have understood how God is using the issue of Zion to confront the nations with His controversy with them. All is designed to bring down every high look, to destroy all boasting, whether Jewish or gentile. Actually, all evangelism is apocalyptic in the sense that all preaching of the gospel should presuppose this context of the everlasting covenant and the breaking in of the judgments of the day of the Lord, as well as the ever present danger of eternal hell for the spiritually dead. It is this apocalyptic righteousness of the Spirit that quickens the dead, apart from works, that the gospel reveals, now to those who obey and then to the surviving remnant who look upon Him whom they pierced and cry with one voice, “blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” Apocalyptic evangelism is a call to the nations, albeit in the context of a convincing witness of both the presence and imminence of the kingdom, which implies the return of the King to reign from Zion’s little hill over all nations through a restored “Jewish” nation. It’s that last part that stumbles many. It was so intended. That’s why this sovereign prerogative (the scandal of particularity) will be openly vindicated and employed as a divinely intended challenge to the nations for a thousand years (Isa 66:19-22; Zech 8:23; 14:17-18).

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