Israel in Prophecy — the Series

Who is Israel?

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In His answer to King Solomon’s dedication prayer for the temple, the Lord said,

I have heard your prayer and your plea, which you have made before me. I have consecrated this house that you have built by putting my name there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time. And as for you, if you walk before me, as David your father walked, with integrity of heart and uprightness, doing according to all that I have commanded you, and keeping my statutes and my rules, then I will establish your royal throne over Israel forever, as I promised David your father, saying, “You shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel.” But if you turn aside from following me, and do not keep my commandments and my statutes that I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel from the land that I have given them, and the house that I have consecrated for my name I will cast out of my sight, and Israel will become a proverb and a byword among all peoples. And this house will become a heap of ruins. Everyone passing by it will be astonished, and will hiss, and they will say, “Why has the Lord done this to this land and to this house?” Then they will say, “Because they abandoned the Lord their God who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt and laid hold on other gods and worshiped them and served them. Therefore the Lord has brought all this disaster on them.” (1 Kings 9:3-9 emphasis added)

The peoples of Israel remain a byword to this day. When asked why the Babylonian captivity, why the sacking of Jerusalem by Roman legions, why the Holocaust, the answer inevitably returns to because Israel abandoned the Lord their God who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt. The Exodus from Egypt remains the remembered event. The Ten Commandments remains the remembered movie about Israel. All other historic liberations of peoples pale into insignificance when compared to Israel’s exodus from Egypt three and a half millennia ago.

The promise the Lord made to King Solomon that if he, Solomon, turned aside from following the Lord, and did not keep His commandments and statutes that He have set before Solomon, but went and served other gods and worshiped them, then the Lord would cut off Israel from the land that He have given the nation has been kept. The fate of Israel hung on whether Solomon, the wisest man who has ever lived, kept the commandments and statutes set before him. Israel was given rest (1 Chron 22:9) as a foretaste of David’s reign over Israel in the Millennium, when Christ Jesus will be Lord of lords and King of kings. But wisdom--even godly wisdom--wasn’t enough to keep Solomon from sinning; for “Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and did not wholly follow the Lord, as David his father had done” (1 Kings 11:6). When the fate of Israel was in his hand, Solomon, like Esau before him, placed gratification of the flesh ahead of fully following the Lord. Instead of a bowl of porridge, Solomon went after foreign women of all sorts. In the end, he may have understood his mistake for he wrote, “The end of the matter: all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man [duty has been added by translators; the text better reads, the whole of man]. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil” (Eccl 12:13-14). But as with the nation that left Egypt (Num 14:40-41), Solomon’s repentance, if that is what the book of Ecclesiastes is, came too late. The fate of Israel was sealed. As the nation that left Egypt died in the wilderness and never entered God’s rest, the nation of Israel, given rest by the Lord, became a byword and proverb, a hated people blamed for killing the Son of God, for usurping the birthright promise that belonged to Ishmael, that belonged to Esau. Prohibited from owning land, confined to ghettos, periodically and systematically slain, Israel has borne the fate Solomon delivered to the nation when it was in his power to establish the royal throne of Israel forever. Solomon is, thus, an extremely important negative figure in Israel’s history.

Abraham by faith left his father and journeyed to a land he did not know (Heb 11:8). By faith, David killed Goliath. By faith, Solomon did what?

By faith, Noah built an ark. By faith, Moses entered the cloud (Exod 24:18). By faith, Elijah stopped rain and dew (1 Kings 17:1). By faith, Elisha followed Elijah (1 Kings 19:19-20). By faith, Solomon did what…and herein lies the problem of the second generation. If when far from the Lord, if when cast into a far land, Israel turned in faith and returned to the Lord, keeping His commandments and statutes, loving Him with heart and might, then the Lord would be faithful to return Israel to the land promised as an inheritance to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If when in a far land, Israel returned to the second covenant mediated by Moses, the covenant made at Moab, the Lord would spiritually circumcise the nation (Deu 30:1-6). But it is only the generation that returned to the Lord that turns in faith to obedience. The second or next generation is sanctified by the faith of their parents, just as Solomon was sanctified and given rest by David’s faith. The second generation is like the lawyer who asked what he must do to receive everlasting life (Luke 10:25), and like the rich young ruler who asked the same question (Luke 18:18).

The opportunity presented Solomon was to establish the second generation in faith. The wisdom given Solomon was for this establishment. But Solomon squandered the spirit given him and is thereby responsible (as the first Adam was responsible for sin entering the world) for the history of Israel, and for the nation being sent into captivity in far lands. Again, for it is when the nation remembers the Lord in a far land, and returns in faith to Him through keeping the commandments that Israel is returned to Judea. Return is, thus, contingent on faith--and a remnant has returned, with autonomy won in 1948. Remaining in Judea is now contingent upon the second generation also following the Lord in faith. Previous generations of the circumcised nation when returned to Jerusalem pursued a law that would have lead to righteousness if pursued by faith, but these generations pursued righteousness as if it were based upon works (Rom 9:31-32). As a result, they were not established in Judea, but returned to captivity.

Jesus told the lawyer who had asked about receiving everlasting life that he, the lawyer, had read the Law correctly, and to receive life the lawyer needed to do how he read the Law. The lawyer then asked who was his neighbor, for the lawyer did not want to love just anyone. Likewise, the rich young ruler did not want to sell all he had and follow Jesus. Both were as Solomon was. Both kept the Law, and both possessed knowledge of the Law, but no faith entered their keeping of the Law. Rather, their keeping of the Law was by ritual and by tradition.

The Lord sent Israel into captivity so that some might be saved, so that some might return by faith to keeping the commandments, to loving the Lord with all their heart and mind. These are those who have been promised to David who by faith became a man after God’s heart.

The prophet Ezekiel wrote,

And the word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, your brothers, even your brothers, your kinsmen, the whole house of Israel, all of them, are those of whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, ‘Go far from the Lord; to us this land is given for a possession.’ Therefore say, ‘Thus says the Lord God: though I removed them far off among the nations, and though I scattered them among the countries, yet I have been a sanctuary to them for a while [or in small measure] in the countries where they have gone.’ Therefore say, ‘Thus says the Lord God: I will gather you from the peoples and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel. And when they come there, they will remove from it all its detestable things and all its abominations. And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.’” (Ezek 11:14-20 emphasis added)

Priests and prophets at Jerusalem did not teach Israel to keep the commandments. Rather, they told the nation that it didn’t matter what they did, the land was Israel’s for the land was given as an everlasting inheritance to the descendants of Abraham. This Jerusalem below taught to the physically circumcised nation a message that foreshadowed the message that is today taught to the spiritually circumcised holy nation; i.e., Go far from the Lord; to us this land is given for a possession foreshadows Once saved, always saved.

The scattering of Israel into far nations was a curse that works for good. Through being a byword and a proverb, Israel took knowledge of the Lord wherever the nation went just as the 1^st-Century scattering of disciples took knowledge of Christ Jesus into the ends of the world. After the 2^nd and 3^rd Century Church rejected Apostolic teachings, electing instead to embrace Greco-Roman paganism in a manner similar to how Solomon’s heart clung in love to foreign women, not wholly following the Lord but building doctrines from the abominations of the nations, the conversion of circumcised Israelites (Crypto Jews) kept the gates of hell from prevailing against the Jerusalem above. These converts brought into the Church knowledge of the Law, which was nearly lost. With centuries of infant baptism, the Jerusalem above by the beginning of the 16^th-Century was as deserted as the Jerusalem below had been for seventy years. Thus, the 1^st-Century scattering of circumcised Israel into far countries following Rome’s sacking of Jerusalem parallels the spread of Christianity, and anticipates the captivity of the Church and the return of a remnant of Christianity to the Jerusalem above. Indeed, as a physically circumcised remnant returned to geographical Judea, a spiritually circumcised remnant returned to theological Judea. They first returned to retake the Apostle Paul’s present day Jerusalem (Gal 4:25); this is the Jerusalem below, the physical city. The latter returned to rebuild the Jerusalem that is above (v. 25).

The concept of a Jerusalem above lies at the heart of Christianity, and of typological exegesis. All prophetic understanding based upon typology incorporates the night/day metaphor in its reading strategy. The Apostle Paul uses this metaphor in his ministration of death versus the ministration of glory. His ministration of death has the laws of God written on two tablets of stone; the ministration of glory has these same laws written on tablets of flesh, the hearts and minds of disciples. Jesus also used this metaphor when He allegedly magnified the commandments, for murder is what the hand does; anger is what the heart does. Adultery is what the body does; lust is what the mind does. The laws written on tablets of stone pertain to what the hand and body do; the laws of God written on the heart and mind of disciples govern the inside of the cup, and when the inside is clean, the actions of the outside are also pure. By extension, now, the physically circumcised nation is the physically living but spiritually dead shadow of the spiritually alive (through being born-from-above) Church. Thus, the recorded history of the circumcised Israel forms the lifeless shadow of the living Church universal. Endtime prophecies about the recovery of Israel from the north country and from the corners of the earth have a primary application to the living reality of the spiritually lifeless (but physically circumcised) nation, which remains loved by God for their ancestors’ sake. Therefore, the endtime scenario revealed by prophecy gives to both the living reality (i.e., the Church) and its shadow equal opportunity for salvation when the Son of Man is revealed. Both will appear naked before God. Obedience will be both nations’ only covering for sin. And the Sabbath commandment--the commandment pertaining to when an Israelite is to enter God’s rest, prefigured by entrance into the promised land of Judea (Ps 95:10-11) and by the rest given to Solomon--will separate the wheat from the tares, the sheep from the goats, for the genuine Israelite will enter on the seventh day. Magnification of the Sabbath commandment does not pertain to another day, but goes from what the hand and body does on the seventh day to what the mind thinks on the seventh day. When the Son of Man is revealed, attempting to enter God’s rest on the following day (the eighth day) will cause God to send a great delusion over the disciple so that this disciple cannot repent of his (or her) spiritual and physical lawlessness. The disciple will have condemned himself (or herself) to the lake of fire; all the while, this disciple will believe that he (or she) serves God.

When the seven, endtime years of tribulation begin, the spiritually circumcised nation and the physically circumcised nation will have parity before God. To live, the spiritually circumcised nation will have to keep the commandments; to live, the physically circumcised nation will have to profess that Jesus is the Christ, and believe in its heart that God raised Him from the dead (Rom 10:9). Most of the spiritually circumcised nation will rebel against God, will not keep the commandments, and will spiritually die. Most of the physically circumcised nation will not profess Christ, and will physically die. The saints will be delivered into the hand of the lawless one for three and a half years. The righteous will die as righteous Abel died. The lawless will be marked as Cain was marked--they will take upon themselves the tattoo of the Cross, the mark of Death, the fourth horseman of the Apocalypse. Only a remnant, foreshadowed a second time by the return of Ezra from Babylon, will cross from the first half of the Tribulation into the second half. This is the remnant that keeps the commandments and holds the testimony of Jesus (Rev 12:17). The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy (Rev 19:10). The old dragon will come after this remnant, but will not prevail against it. Those disciples who keep the commandments and have the spirit of prophecy will, as Joshua and Caleb did, lead a new generation of Israelites to victory in God’s rest, for all who endure to the end shall be saved.

The prophet Zechariah wrote,

Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the man who stands next to me, declared the Lord of hosts. “Strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered; I will turn my hand against the little ones. In the whole land, declares the Lord, two thirds [i.e., two parts] shall be cut off and perish, and one third [one part] shall be left alive. And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and rest them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are my people’; and they will say, ‘The Lord is my God.’” (Zech 13:7-9)

Compare what the Lord says through Zechariah with what He said through Ezekiel: “’And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.’” (Ezek 11:20). It is after Israel receives a new heart and a new spirit, after one of three parts of the little ones has been tried by fire (with the other two parts dead) that the little ones are God’s. Israel requires a new heart and a new spirit that will be tested and purified.

Jesus identified Himself as the shepherd who would be struck (Matt 26:31). The little ones are the inhabitants of the whole land, not just disciples. But in the end, there will only be disciples. There will be no distinction between the physically circumcised nation and the spiritually circumcised nation--all of humanity that remains will be Israel following the wedding of Bride and Bridegroom.

(to be continued)