Hello Reggie,
I hope you are fine and well.
You know that the teachers of spiritual Israel are teaching that the time for Israel is over and that Jesus has fulfilled everything and nothing remains beyond the time of the LORD’S return to judge. They also mostly don’t believe in a millennium. That’s what alerted me again and again towards their teachings.
With this site here, I found more clarity, and I ask you to study this too. If this is a key to expose the probably false teaching behind the spiritual Israel teaching, then we need to study Daniel again!!!
Dear H., thank you for sending this. There’s such a wealth of interesting material here that I want to get to when time permits.
You mention Daniel and the issue of the millennium. I can’t say much at the moment, but I know you’ll agree that there much more at issue here than mere questions of how different texts should be interpreted. I believe the battle is more spiritual than that. I believe how we see Israel is a gauge of how we see God. The tragic story of the church’s historic rejection of God’s declared intentions towards Israel is beyond mere flesh and blood.
Since time will not permit more, I want to call your attention to just one verse that is telling of so many others. It is Daniel 2:44. Notice that the scripture says “in the days of these kings.” What days? What kings? Dan 7:24 makes clear that the kings in view here are the ten kings that are contemporary with the final Antichrist. In John’s apocalypse, he is the beast that tramples down Jerusalem for the last 42 months (Rev 11:2; 13:5) before Christ’s return. Thus, it could hardly be clearer that these then kings are immediate contemporaries of the Antichrist. They are united with him through their mutual hostility against “the holy covenant” (Dan 11:29, 30). In this context, the term “holy covenant” is clearly identified with the ‘literal’ holy places and institutions, which are situated in a very literal Jerusalem (Dan 9:27; 11:31; 12:11; Mt 24:15-16). Hence, the Antichrist’s assault on Jerusalem is a further chapter in Satan’s long war against the covenant, which in this context is shown to be inseparably related to the literal Land and people of Israel.
Now observe: Regardless of when the book of Revelation is dated, Rev 17:12 is clear in showing that none of the ten kings had as yet come to power (“And the ten horns that you saw are ten kings that shall arise, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast”). If, therefore, the ten kings are contemporaries with that particular beast (‘little horn’; Dan 7:8; 8:9; the ‘king of fierce countenance’ (Dan 8:23), the ‘vile person’ (Dan 11:21), the ‘willful king’ (Dan 11:36), ‘man of sin’ (2Thes 2:4) that is on the scene when Christ returns (2Thes 2:4, 8), then it could hardly be more clear that it is NOT UNTIL the destruction of the beast, this “last” beast (Dan 7:11; Rev 19:20), that the God of heaven sets up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed …” (Dan 2:44; 7:14)
Regardless of what form the kingdom has taken in the present revelation of “the mystery of the kingdom” (Mk 4:11; Col 1:13), this is clearly the millennial (post day of the Lord) phase of the kingdom. This kingdom is not “set up” (in this particular sense) until “the days of these kings,” and it is clearly ‘set up’ on earth (“under the whole heaven” (Dan 7:27), “fills the whole earth” (Dan 2:35).
But here is what I particularly want us to notice: “And the kingdom shall not be left to another people.” That is a very significant phrase. Who are the people that receive the kingdom at this time? Well, to be sure, it is the ‘saints of the most high’ (Dan 7:18, 22, 27), but that is not all it means. According to Dan 9:24; 10:14; 11:14; 12:1, the people in view are Daniel’s people in particular (“your people”), i.e., the Jews. That is what is meant when the scripture says “not left to another people.” The “kingdom shall return to Jerusalem” (Mic 4:8), and “He shall yet choose Jerusalem again” (Zech 1:17; 2:12). When? Unmistakably, it is ‘after’ the unequaled trouble, at the same time the dead are raised (Dan 12:1-2). That is when “your people” (Daniel’s people) shall be delivered, and not a moment sooner (Ps 102:13; Dan 11:35).
It is the day of the Lord, the time spoken of by all the prophets. It happens at the end of Jacob’s trouble (Jer 30:7 w/ Dan 12:1), the time of unequaled “great tribulation,” (Mt 24:21), which is started by the Antichrist’s fateful desecration of the holy place in Jerusalem (Isa 63:18; 64:10-11; Dan 11:31; 12:11; Mt 24:15-16, 21-31; 2Thes 2:4). What could be clearer? The kingdom will in fact be “restored to Israel” (Acts 1:6) precisely “in the days of these kings.” This future certainty of the kingdom restored to Israel is precisely the contrast that Jesus has in mind when He calls this present age “the times of the gentiles” (Ezek 30:3; Lk 21:24; Ro 11:25; Rev 11:2). A people called to prophetic discernment should be asking why is something so plain so hidden, and for so long?
As Christ returns to destroy the Antichrist (“in the days of these kings”), the elect remnant that has been preserved through the terrors of Jacob’s trouble now become the “saints of the most high” through new birth (Isa 66:8; Ezek 39:22) when they “shall look upon Him whom they pierced” (Zech 12:10, thus fulfilling the glorious type of Joseph’s self disclosure to his brethren; Mic 5:3-4). Certainly, this is much more than a physical kind of ‘seeing.’ The best analogy would be Paul’s transforming encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus.
To conceive, let alone accept, such a privileged status for the Jewish people in the future millennial kingdom is a great offense to the church’s deeply replacement orientation. But the kingdom will return to Israel, and it shall “NOT be left to another people.” For a while God has provoked Israel to jealousy through ‘another people’ (a ‘foolish nation’, a ‘not a people’ (Deut 32:21), but not forever (Deut 32:36; Dan 12:7). God shall yet require all nations to acknowledge and honor His love and special election of this people in particular (Isa 49:22-23; 60:9, 14; 66:20; Zech 8:23; 14:16-17). God has a point to make, and one reason the millennium separates this age from the eternal state is precisely to drive home that point.
God knows infinitely better than we the deep contention that Satan and the powers have against Israel’s restoration. Satan knows that their regeneration and return spells the end of his illicit rule. Their restoration is the ultimate threat to Satan, because of what they represent concerning the covenanted Word of God, since it is through them that God has chosen to very publicly and demonstrably sanctify His name in the sight of all nations (Ezek 39:27). This well explains Satan’s desperate attempt to destroy the woman, not only her spiritual seed, but the physical seed (the “natural branches”), as the elect vessel that God will set forth in the sight of all nations as His great statement.
The question has always been whether God can bring in (into abiding inheritance through holiness) the very same people that He first called out (Num 14:15-21; Ezek 36:22-23). The Jew is God’s own self-chosen “mission impossible.” They were meant to be. That’s why it’s no accident that the church is translated and Satan is bound precisely at the point that the Word of God is openly vindicated by the regeneration and return of this impossible people. But before God’s eschatological triumph, the “Jew in the midst” has always been a divinely ordained test among the nations to reveal hearts, particularly what calls itself the church. We may be sure that this test will be pressed in an even more ultimate way as the day approaches. Considering all that God has intended Israel to represent, it is no wonder why Paul was so urgent that believers should not “be ignorant of this mystery.” Mystery indeed!
Yours in the Beloved, Reggie
