For it is the day of the LORD’s vengeance,
and the year of recompences for the controversy of Zion. Isaiah 34:8
Unknowingly, the world is waiting for an impossible people (who is not impossible?; Mk 10:26-27) to come to “everlasting salvation” (Isa 45:17), “at once”, “in one day”, at “the set time” (Ps 102:13; Isa 59:20; 66:8; Eze 39:22; Zech 3:9; 12:10; Mt 23:39; Ro 11:26; Rev 1:7) by the same power that raised Jesus (Hos 6:1-2; 13:14; Eze 37:9).
This will be according to the same pattern and by the same miraculous intervention by which Jesus was revealed to Paul on the Damascus road, “when it pleased God” (Ps 102:13; 110:3 with Gal 1:15-16), and not a moment sooner!
The controversy of Zion, as most clearly pronounced in Ps 2, is the united defiance of what God has declared He is determined to do in the face of the most determined opposition, namely, to set My Son on MY holy hill of Zion to judge and rule the nations with a rod of iron.
Paradoxically, Satan’s strategy to set his “son” (2Thes 2:3) on that very hill (Mount Zion “on the sides of the north”; Ps 48:2 with Isa 14:13 & Dan 11:45) is the very thing that God has chosen to use to fully unveil the heart of pride, particularly in its hatred of what He has particularly chosen, and about which He has most specifically spoken.
The controversy of Zion is the ancient contention come to its final head, a climax that was appointed from the beginning. It is the ancient antagonism against God’s election brought to its ultimate boiling point for the long awaited day of “recompense / vengeance” (Isa 34:8).
Why? Because once exposed to the light of what God has clearly and plainly spoken, a test of the heart is set up by which it will be revealed whether God, as self-identified and known by the things He has chosen, will be loved and embraced, or treated with indifference, if not studied hatred and defiance (Jn 3:19).
The controversy of Zion is God’s chosen bone of contention that exposes the pride of man. This is where God has chosen to pitch the final battle (Zeh 14:1-5). By this will all things be shaken and secret things searched out (Joel 3:13-17; Lk 21:35; Rev 3:10).
For this chosen demonstration of the human condition (seen again at the end of the millennium), God has ordained to force unavoidably onto the public stage this particular controversy because it, like nothing else, searches and exposes the presumptions of the heart concerning the rule of God and the justice of His ways in both judgment and unmerited grace.
The increasingly universal question of “Zionism” is being thrust upon the consciousness of the last generation, not incidentally, but because it is the wisely chosen centerpiece of divine testing that evokes all the great issues of the revealed truth of God for which all the world will be made supremely responsible, and universally accountable before the end.
2 Thessalonians 2:10-12
And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
