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Gaza & the Gospel of the Kingdom // An Open Letter to My Fellow Millennials

An appeal from the producer of the ‘Covenant and Controversy’ film library

 

Current events have a way of confronting what we really believe to be true—rather, they have a way of confronting us with what we really believe to be true. The fourteenth of May in 1948 pressed us with what we’d really been reading into Scripture’s declarations; the redrawn national borders of Israel continue to confront us still. That fateful Friday in 1948 relit a slow-burning powder keg of animosity; the last week or two have set off fireworks—and we are, again, confronted.

We’re meant to be.[1]

And we’re found wanting.

Just before His Ascension, the disciples asked Jesus an earnest question: “Lord, will You now restore the Kingdom to Israel?”[2] How we read His answer could serve to suffice for how we’d distill the Gospel down to a sentence if need be.

 

Disciples: “Lord, will You now restore the Kingdom to Israel?”

Jesus: “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”[3]

 

It really matters for Palestinian people that we read this correctly. There runs a ditch on either side of the narrow road of truth,[4] and many are the victims to the numerous mudslides running through them. The straight and narrow is this: He did not rebuke them for asking the question. He just said, “The answer isn’t yours to know. It’s His. Right now, I have work for you to do.”

“You will be My witnesses….”

Witnesses of what? Of “this Gospel of the Kingdom,” the one Jesus so specifically referred to just a month or more before.[5] Witnesses to where? “Everywhere, but start with the City of the Great King[6] and make your way through what many now call the West Bank. Hit Ramallah on your way to Doha. Hit Beirut on your way to Baghdad. Hit Gaza on your way to Guatemala. Go as far as you can on this round globe you call home, and go far enough that if you took one more step, because it’s round, you’d start your journey home. Go to the ends of the earth.”

Every Jewish ear within sonic range would’ve recognized Jesus’ verbiage because they were familiar with the prophets—because they’d actually read and re-read the Old Testament. They didn’t disregard its implications or excuse away its prophecies. David sang about the ends of the earth.[7] Isaiah wrote at length about them.[8] Jeremiah chimed in.[9] Crucially, they would’ve understood what “this Gospel of the Kingdom” meant, because all their hopes were hanging on it.[10] They knew Jesus to be the Son of God, Man, and David,[11] and they knew exactly why it is in everybody-since-Abraham’s best interests that He rule and reign from the City of Peace.[12] They knew the “new song” of the “new covenant” would erupt from David’s city and run across the nations until it hit New Zealand.[13] They knew it would make its way back until Muslims in Mecca and Amman bowed the knee to his Lord.[14] They knew the Arab world would be the last Gospel frontier before Jerusalem realized she killed her own Passover-preserved firstborn.[15] They knew the inauguration of the Davidic throne to be their “blessed hope,”[16] and they were waiting for it. 

“About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.”[17] I shudder to wonder what the author of Hebrews would say to us now if he could see what we’ve done with the Name of Him who is greater than Moses, Melchizedek, and every king.[18] I shudder to wonder how Peter, Paul, or (especially!) Jesus would respond if we could time-travel back to this moment on the Mount called Olivet, raise our hands, and say, “Wait—You mean all that stuff Zechariah and Isaiah and Malachi and Micah and Hosea and Jeremiah and Daniel and David said is actually literal and legit and You’re really gonna do it?”

“You mean you’re the teacher of Israel and you don’t know these things? You need to be born again.”[19]

What does this have to do with Gaza? And what does it mean for the Great Return March?

I was born in the eighties and grew up at least nominally affiliated with Christian culture. I was raised, christened, and nearly confirmed Catholic before entering Protestant evangelicalism just in time for the “if you like this demonic secular band then you should listen to this Nashville-crafted CCM substitute instead” posters and True Love Waits campaigns. The late nineties and early two thousands had a bizarre evangelical culture and I was there for it. I was there for the kissing-dating-goodbye and birth of ska (shoutout to Five Iron!). And I was there for it when we all hit college and basically altogether left the faith (find your old youth group buddies on Facebook—who’s still walking with the Lord?). I was there when the leaders of the “emergent church” wrote a bunch of books to rewrite the Bible. I was there when we grappled with questions and realized we’d graduated high school with inch-deep theology and youth group faith. The world had problems, and we did not have answers—but we were determined to find them. “Social justice” became our buzzword and we seriously considered making our own clothes so we didn’t have some kind of Blood Diamond situation with our blue jeans.

We didn’t make our own clothes, but we read some books by some people who did.

We mostly didn’t notice when they quoted Ghandi with the same sentiment they quoted Jesus.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict confronts our glaring doctrinal inadequacy and missiological ineptitude. It pushes back on our cheap narratives and Twitter-feed news intake. It challenges our historical ignorance. It holds the mirror up to those of us who are a generation removed from the ashes of the Shoah. We don’t have Holocaust sympathies like our parents and grandparents did and far too many of us can’t answer basic questions about its historicity.[20] Most of us can’t answer basic questions about “this Gospel of the Kingdom.” This is a problem, but we can’t fix it if we don’t address it.

None of us want inch-deep theology and youth group faith. None of us want to author our own Gospel. And, none of us want to be sentimental, naive, Bible-ignorant hyper-Zionists who can’t see the forest for the trees. No one wants to be complicit in supporting (what we are told is) an aggressive, apartheid Jewish nation-state against the Palestinian people. I get it. Also, none of us want the wool pulled over our eyes by journalists who lie in order to live through their assignment.[21]

Intelligent information matters, but The New York Times isn’t Bible and the only words we can really rely on are Bible. Doctrine matters—it really matters—but it’s not the jugular issue. Jesus is the jugular issue. How we respond to something like the Great Return March or—heaven forbid—a Third Intifada is shaped and informed by what we believe the Gospel of the Kingdom to be, and who we believe Jesus of Nazareth to be in light of that. We’ve deviated from “this Gospel of the Kingdom” for so long, we can’t recognize our glaring doctrinal and missiological insufficiencies when they stare us in the face.

Gaza and the #GreatReturnMarch are staring us in the face.

We have a biblical imperative to preach the Gospel to the Palestinian people, and we have a biblical imperative to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom when we do. We’re under a Christ-imposed mandate to tell them about the little girl who gave it all for the Lord of the Resurrection.[22] This means we need to understand the Gospel, we need to understand the Kingdom, and we need to understand the Palestinians. We need to understand why Mary would waste it all at His feet. We need to understand Jesus like the prophets and the apostles understood Jesus. We need to understand Palestinian geopolitics and the Islamic worldview—and we need to understand it from the soil at the heart of Islam, instead of adopting a polished version of it from a community center in Detroit. We need to understand what Hamas is doing to the people of Gaza, and we need to care about it like we say we care about Israeli response to what we think are peaceful protests. And we need to evaluate if we really care about what we say we care about.

Ninety-nine-point-one percent of the Palestinian populous has not received a Gospel witness.[23] Nearly five million people live within Gaza and the West Bank, and 99.1 percent of them—99.1% of nearly five million people—are categorically unreached. Palestinian territories have an annual Gospel growth rate of precisely 0.0%[23]—so when our Twitter hashtags start trending some kind of #PrayForGaza solidarity sentiment, it is only that. It is only sentiment and it will be buried by the hashtag algorithm ten seconds later when something else goes viral. If we cared about the Palestinians, we’d get our feet on the ground and give them a Gospel witness. A Gospel witness is not a kind humanitarian witness. It includes that, but it is not limited to water distribution. It cannot be.[24] If we loved Jesus, we’d pour every drop of our blood and Bethany offering[25] out on the soil of the Promised Land if that’s what it took to do something about the border fence. If that's what it took to bring Him back.[26]

If we do not sober up and have a collective “come to Jesus” moment, I’m not sure we’re going to do the Middle East any good.

But believers are not debased, and we are not in the dark.[27] We are not bastard pagans.[28] We have a Father, and He is not unkind. Our Father is not unkind. He is the Father of mercies and lights.[29] He turned—and turns—the lights on for us. We have all the information we need.[30] We do not need to live in delusion. Scripture equips and enables us to respond intelligently and compassionately to Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Gaza with a distilled Gospel-clarity, free from “sides” and narrative banners that only betray our own ignorance and unbelief.

We believe eternity to be real, or we don’t. We believe justice to matter for the ages, or we don’t. We believe sin to be high treason against our Maker, or we don’t. We believe the Gospel premise that we’re all sinners and we all deserve death, but Jesus in His magnificent mercy bore our sentence to die in order to make us forever alive, or we don’t (this is true for us, for Palestinians, for Israelis—everybody). We believe God made promises to Abraham that really matter for all who call upon the God who raises the dead, or we don’t. We believe David’s Son deserves His throne and all war will cease when He sits upon it,[31] or I literally don’t know what we’re getting out of bed for in the morning. We believe the people of Gaza deserve “this Gospel of the Kingdom” and that Jesus is worth its declaration and their worship, or I have personally put my poor mother through far too much on this side of time and need to go home.

Gaza’s going to hear this Gospel of the Kingdom.[32] Are you going to be part of it?

 
 

Stephanie Quick serves as a lead writer and producer of the Covenant and Controversy film series and resource library, and editor-in-chief of FAI Publishing and Pilgrim Media. She lives in the Muslim world and can be reached for queries and bookings at stephanie@stephaniequick.org. 

 

 

 

 

[1] Zechariah 12:1-2
[2] Acts 1:6
[3] Acts 1:7
[4] Matthew 7:13-14
[5] Matthew 24:14, emphasis added
[6] Psalm 48:2; Matthew 5:35
[7] Psalm 2:8; 22:27; 48:10; 59:13; 65:5,8; 67:7; 72:8; 98:3
[8] Isaiah 5:26; 24:14-16; 40:28; 41:5,9; 45:22; 52:10
[9] Jeremiah 10:13; 16:19; 25:31; 51:16
[10] Matthew 24:3; Luke 2:38; 3:15; Acts 1:6
[11] Daniel 7:13; 8:17; Matthew 1:1,20; 8:20; 9:6,27; 10:23; 11:19; 12:23,40; 12:23; 13:37; 14:33; 15:22; 17:22; 19:28; 20:28-31; 21:9; 22:42; 24:27-29; 26:63-64; 27:40,43,54; Mark 1:1; 10:47-48; 13:26; 14:21,41,62; 15:39; Luke 1:35; 3:31,38; 11:30; 12:40; 17:24-30; 18:38-39; 19:10; John 1:34,49; 3:13-14; 5:27; 6:27; 9:35; 11:27; 12:23; 20:31
[12] Genesis 12:1-3; 14:17-20 (“Salem” was an early name for “Jerusalem” and meant “peace”); 22:18; Psalm 110:4; Hebrews 5:6-10
[13] See Isaiah 42:1-17
[14] See Isaiah 42:11; Kedar refers to Arabia and Sela to Amman. David calling his Son his LORD: See Psalm 110:1; cited Matthew 22:44; Mark 12:36; Luke 20:42-43; Acts 2:34-35
[15] See Exodus 12; Zechariah 12:10-14; Matthew 23:38
[16] Titus 2:13; the Davidic throne is introduced in 2 Samuel 7 and noted again in 1 Chronicles 17:11-14 and 2 Chronicles 6:16; see Psalm 2; 110; 132. Psalm 110 is the most-quoted Old Testament passage in the New Testament, bearing significant witness to the apostles’ prophetic anchor and bated hope in the reign of David’s Son, a Man scripturally concurrent with the Messiah/Son of Man (see Daniel 7:13; 8:17) and Son of God (see note 11).
[17] Hebrews 5:11
[18] See Hebrews 1:8-9,13; 3:3-6; 4:14-10
[19] See John 3, particularly verses 3 & 10
[20] Kelly, L. (2018). Shock poll: Two-thirds of millennials don’t know what Auschwitz is. Washington Times, 12 April 2018. Retrieved from https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/apr/12/many-americans-millennials-ignorant-holocaust-surv/
[21] Friedman, M. (2018). Falling for Hamas’s split-screen fallacy. The New York Times, 16 May 2018. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/16/opinion/hamas-israel-media-protests.html
[22] Matthew 26:13
[23] Joshua Project. (2018). Country: West Bank/Gaza. Retrieved from https://joshuaproject.net/countries/WE 21 May 2018.
[24] Matthew 10:42; Mark 9:41
[25] See the account of Mary of Bethany anointing Jesus for His death and burial as recorded by Matthew (chapter 26), Mark (chapter 13), and John (chapter 12).
[26] 2 Peter 3:12
[27] 1 Thessalonians 5:4
[28] Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:4-7
[29] 2 Corinthians 1:3; James 1:17
[30] See Matthew 16 and The Golan Heights & the Coming War to End All Wars
[31] Psalm 46:9; 72:1-20; Isaiah 2:1-4; 9:7; Micah 4:1-5; see Contention & Complexity: The Dangers of Zionism and Lack Thereof
[32] Matthew 24:14

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Covenant in the Cosmos

When His people began to wonder if He’d forgotten about His promises, He cited Genesis 1 in His résumé to prove His reliability.

 

Our canon of Scripture opens with the God of Heaven and Earth creating His said heavens and earth. We are given but glimpses to the working process of the Master Craftsman,[1] and yet time and telescopes to explore His creation. Lives and centuries have been dedicated to space exploration, and we’re still just getting to know the galaxy we’re in—not to mention hardly wrapping our minds around how many more there might be. We will literally still be scratching our heads and sending our satellites out till kingdom come. Space is meant to blow our minds. It’s also meant to reassure us.

We know the sun will rise tomorrow, because it rises every morning. His word is just as sure, and His mercies are as renewable as the day. Just because we understand the mechanics of orbit doesn’t mean we have any less to rest in. The waves will stop where He tells them to, never before nor breaching the boundaries He sets by His word. The clouds will wrap the waters like a garment just the way He tells them to.[2] He escorts every star, remembering every name He has given them, no matter the condescension required of Him to do so.[3] The sun, moon and stars are His. The ever-expanding cosmos is but a decree of His command, yet they are too small to contain Him.[4] Every burning light in the night sky marks His mercy, a submissive possession in His hand. Every rotating planet, every soaring meteor, every growing galaxy is a testimony to His word.[5]

When He told Abraham about his sons who would carry the covenant for generations to come, He told the man to walk outside at night and try to count the stars.[6] When He confirmed His commitment to give that man from Ur the seed, land and blessing He first promised, He pointed to the universe.[7] When challenged by Job’s buddies and Jacob’s accusers, He invited them to figure out exactly how He made the worlds work.[8] When Jerusalem’s sins had stained the world with scarlet, He illustrated her covenantal security in the cosmos.[9] When His people began to wonder if He’d forgotten about His promises, He cited Genesis 1 in His résumé to prove His reliability.[10]

What we see through the Hubble, a humble telescope and our naked eye in the middle of the night is there to move our hearts to wonder. All of created order is.[11] It’s also there to serve as a witness to His word, to worship when we fail to.[12] The existence of every sun, star, moon and planet is knit to the veracity of the Everlasting Covenant, the surety of His Word, and His commitment to everything He began in Hebron.[13] When we suggest we may know more than He does, the stars burn in the black sky. When we wonder if He has perhaps let injustices go unpunished, the sun rises the next morning to remind us He isn’t finished yet. When we count the sins of our brother, He asks us to count the stars and compare our tally marks to His. When we remind him of Israel’s guilt and folly for the new millennia she’s rejected her Messiah, He points us to His servants in the heavens for a cross-check.

Nothing in the skies will move nor shake till He tells them to. No black hole is going to absorb the sun until His covenant is confirmed. The cosmos won’t roll into a scroll until He’s fulfilled every word He’s ever spoken to us. Abraham will see the city he sought; his seed will inhabit the land and lie down in safety; Jerusalem will shine something like jasper and the glory of the LORD Himself will put both the sun and moon to shame.[14] But not until He says, and never too late.

 

 

 

________________________

 

[1]  See Proverbs 8:22-31; Colossians 1:16-17
[2]  Job 38:9
[3]  Psalm 147:4
[4]  See I Kings 8:27; II Chronicles 6:18; Isaiah 40:22; 66:1-2; Acts 17:24; I Timothy 6:16
[5]  See Genesis 1:1-19; John 1:1-5,10
[6]  Genesis 15:5; 22:17
[7]  Jeremiah 31:31-37
[8]  Job 38:1-7
[9]  Jeremiah 31:31-37
[10] See Isaiah 41
[11] Psalm 121:2; 146:6; Isaiah 51:13
[12] Job 38:7; Luke 19:40
[13] See Genesis 15
[14] Isaiah 24:23; Revelation 6:22-23

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The Restoration of the Jews

Spurgeon on Ezekiel 37: "He surely ought to have known his own mind, and led by the Holy Spirit, he gives us as an explanation of the vision, not— 'Thus says the Lord, My dying Church shall be restored,' but—'I will bring My people out of their graves, and bring them into the land of Israel.'"

 

BY CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON

On Thursday 16 June 1864, Charles H. Spurgeon preached a message
on Ezekiel 37:1-10 at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, in aid of the
Funds of the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews.
The following is the beginning excerpt of the sermon. You can read the rest here.

 

THIS vision has been used, from the time of Jerome onwards, as a description of the resurrection, and certainly it may be so accommodated with much effect. What a vision of the great day the words picture before the mind’s eye! The great army of the quick, who once were dead, seem to start up as we read. Here, too, we have a very fit and appropriate question to be asked in a tomb—“Son of man, can these bones live?” Looking down into the dark grave, or watching the grave digger as he throws up the moldering relics, once infused with life, well may unbelief suggest the inquiry—“Can these bones live?” Faith cannot at all times give a more satisfactory answer than this—“O Lord God, You know.” But while this interpretation of the vision may be very proper as an accommodation, it must be quite evident to any thinking person that this is not the meaning of the passage. There is no allusion made by Ezekiel to the resurrection, and such a topic would have been quite apart from the design of the prophet’s speech. I believe he was no more thinking of the resurrection of the dead than of the building of St. Pe- ter’s at Rome, or the emigration of the Pilgrim fathers! That topic is altogether foreign to the subject at hand, and could not by any possibility have crept into the prophet’s mind. He was talking about the peo- ple of Israel, and prophesying concerning them; and evidently the vision, according to God’s own inter- pretation of it, was concerning them, and them alone, for, “These bones are the whole house of Israel.” It was not a vision concerning all men, nor, indeed, concerning any men as to the resurrection of the dead—it had a direct and special bearing upon the Jewish people. 

This passage, again, has been very frequently, and I dare say very properly, used to describe the re- vival of a decayed church. This vision may be looked upon as descriptive of a state of lukewarmness and spiritual lethargy in a church, when the question may be sorrowfully asked—“Can these bones live?” Can that dull minister wake up to living power? Can these cold deacons glow with holy heat? Can those unspiritual members rise to something like holy, earnest self-sacrifice? Is it possible that the drowsy formal church could start up to real earnestness? Such suggestions might well have occurred to many minds at the time of the reformation. It did seem impossible, when popery was in its power, that spiritual life should ever again return to the Church. Piety seemed to be dead and buried, and the cloister, the clergy, superstition and deceit, like great graves, had swallowed up everything that was good; but the Lord appeared for His people, and brought up the buried truth of God out of its grave, and once more, in every part of the known world, the name of Jesus Christ was lifted up, and sound doctrine was preached! So was it in our own country. When both the establishment and dissent had fallen into spiritual death, we might well have said—“Can these bones live?” But Whitefield and Wesley were raised up by God, and they prophesied to the dry bones, and up they stood—filled with the Spirit of God—“an exceeding great army.” Let the crowds of Kingsdown, and the multitudes on Kennington Common, tell of the quickening power of Jesus’ name! Decayed churches can most certainly be revived by the preaching of the Word, accompanied by the coming of the heavenly “breath” from the four winds. O Lord, send us such revivals now, for many of Your churches need them—they are almost as dead as the corpses which sleep around them in the graveyard! 

But while we admit this to be a very fitting accommodation of our text, yet we are quite convinced that it is not to this that the passage refers. It would be altogether alien to the prophet’s train of thought to be thinking about the restoration of fallen zeal, and the rekindling of expiring love; he was not considering the reformation either of Luther or of Whitefield, or about the revival of one church or of an- other. No, he was talking of his own people, of his own race, and of his own tribe. He surely ought to have known his own mind, and led by the Holy Spirit, he gives us as an explanation of the vision, not— “Thus says the Lord, My dying Church shall be restored,” but—“I will bring My people out of their graves, and bring them into the land of Israel.”

 
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Messiah and the World

In the book of the Church we see, rooted in Israel, and beginning at Jerusalem, the history of Jesus and of the body joined to Him by the Spirit.

 

BY ADOLPH SAPHIR

This article is a chapter excerpt from Saphir's Christ and the Scriptures.
It was originally published in 1869.

Jesus was not merely man: He was a Jewish man; He belonged to Israel. We have already seen that this was according to God’s idea. But it may be necessary to add, that Jesus never gave up the Divine thought of Israel’s priority and peculiar position in the kingdom of God. While He protested the traditions of men, against Pharisaic pride and narrowness, He confirmed the promises made unto the Fathers.[1] He spake of Jerusalem as the city of the great King, of the times of the Gentiles, and of Israel’s future return to Him; and in the full possession of the Spirit, He anticipated the time when every jot and tittle of the law and prophets shall be fulfilled. Jesus was the true Israelite. His nationality is apparent throughout. Israel, the chosen nation, the servant of God, the nation of priests unto God finds its true exponent and fulfilment, flower and perfect fruit, in Jesus, even as He is the spirit and root of Israel, root and Lord of David.

And it is for this very reason is Jesus the man for all men of all nations. For the only centre of catholicity is Jerusalem. The Jews were chosen to be a nation separate, but in order to bless all mankind Israel is to be the centre of light and blessedness for all people; the purpose of their election is universal; the secret aim of their isolation is expansion; the very joy and glory of their destiny is a world-wide influence. Jesus as the King of the Jews, Jesus as the true Israel, is appointed to draw all men and to rule all men.[2]

As it is with Jesus, so it is with Scripture. It is Jewish and universal. Universal, not in spite, but in virtue, of Jewish character. In order to be universal, it must not be Paganised or Gentilised, or stript of its Jewish character. Its Jewish character is not a garment in which it is accidentally clothed; it is the body which the Spirit, according to God’s plan, has prepared. Eliminate the Jewish character, and you lose the essence: Christ and Christ’s thoughts are Jewish, and that according to God’s plan.

The Pagan and Gentile element in the Church has, to a very great extent, been the source of theoretical heresy and practical apostasy. And not even the Reformation has entirely got rid of the Gentile, though it freed itself nearly altogether form the Pagan element. Shem is to give room to Japheth; not Japheth to modify Shem. The facts and doctrines of the evangelists and apostles are Jewish; not otherwise can they be true understood.

The Messiah, the sin-bearing Lamb, the blood of Jesus Christ and all its efficacy, the kingdom of Israel, all the great, substantial, and glorious truths of the so-called “New Testament” have been often converted into Japhetic abstractions, in the well-meant hope of making them thereby accessible, plausible, and practical, to the Occidental mind. But in reality the offense of the cross is the ultimate source of this procedure. “Salvation is of the Jews;” and to Gentilise (Platonise) Jewish facts and ideas, is to falsify the Gospel, in order to please the Greeks who desire wisdom. Our theology (even that of believers) is far too abstract, unhistorical; looking at doctrines logically, instead of viewing them in connection with the history of the Kingdom and the Church. It is Japhetic, not Shemitic; it is Roman, logical, well-arranged, methodized, and scheduled; not Eastern according to the spirit and method of Scripture, which breathes in the atmosphere of a living God, who visits his people, and is coming again to manifest his glory.

The Scripture is like Jesus Christ, because He is the Spirit of Israel, and Scripture is the record of Israel, Viewing thus the Scripture as an organic growth (not an aggregate, a stone; but a plant), many interesting facts are explained, of which I single out only three:—

First. Every part is complete, containing the seed, the germ; and though subsequent parts contain a much fuller unfolding of the germ, the do not render their predecessors superfluous or antiquated. Thus the whole Gospel is in Genesis; even in Gen. iii. the Protevangelion contains the whole counsel of God in germ. More fully in Leviticus, more fully in David’s Psalms, more fully in Isaiah’s prophecy, more fully in Paul’s epistles. As Israel developed and grew in stature and wisdom (or rather the revelation of Christ in Israel, for the nation always fell short of the glory of God), so the Scripture develops. It is not that something is added to the old stock (as another stone to a collection of stones), but the plant, the organism, the body, grows. Beautiful and benign arrangement of our great and blessed God! Abraham rejoiced, and David rejoiced, and Isaiah rejoiced,, and Paul rejoiced; because to each there was given all, though on a different scale, in different degree and measure.

But though Paul possesses this whole more perfectly than David and Moses, does he throw aside David and Moses as a scaffolding is thrown aside when the building is finished? By no means: and, among many reasons, for this reason also,—that in Genesis, and in the Psalms, and the prophets, there is the revelation of a great comprehensive plan, the fulfillment of which reaches into the ages to come; so that without the previous portions of the Word we, and future generations, cannot be perfect; there is much of this whole which yet remains to be unfolded, and manifested in reality and actual existence. Thus the Apocalypse returns to Genesis, and the eleventh chapter of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans leads us back to Moses and the prophets.

If the Bible were like a collection of stones, we might select some and put aside others, as less valuable and beautiful; and although in such selection we might make great mistakes, we should still be in possession of something more or less complete. But the Bible is like a plant, and all its parts are not mechanically or accidentally connected, but organically united, and hence a law of life rules here; an He who reveres life will neither add nor take away from the beautiful plant, which the Father hath planted in and through Christ by the Spirit.

Secondly. If the Bible is a plant, a growth, or body, there are portions which are inferior in importance, value, beauty, but none which can be separated from it, or in which the same blood, or sap, or spirit, does not live. No person denies that in the human body the lungs are more important than the limbs; the heart more essential to life than the eyes; the eye a more delicate and noble part than the foot. Nobody asserts that a man would be killed if you cut off his hair or his nails. But there is a vital union of all the members. If you cut off my little finger I shall survive it, but it is my little finger you cut off, and it is a loss, a disfigurement. So with the Bible. Who would assert, that a chapter of names in the book of Chronicles is as important and precious as the third chapter of John’s gospel? Or that the account of Paul’s shipwreck is as essential as the account of Christ’s sufferings? But what we say is, that all Scripture is one organism, and that the same wisdom and love have formed the whole; and that down to every branch, and bough, and lead, it lives and breathes, and is beautiful and good. And the reason why many historical, and statistical, and prophetic portions of Scripture seem to us unimportant and even unmeaning, is because we do not sufficiently live in the whole circle of Divine ideas and purposes.

Thirdly. Christ being thus the Spirit of Scripture as well as the Spirit of Israel, the substance of Scripture throughout is Himself. All divine revelations have Christ not merely for their Mediator, but for their centre. We have not merely a succession of prophetic announcements of his coming, his work, and glory, but in all God’s dealings with Israel He revealed Himself to them in Christ. Abraham beheld the day of Christ; the Rock that followed Israel through the wilderness was Christ. In his love and sympathy, in his sufferings and faith, David was a type of the great Shepherd-King, even as Solomon prefigured his glory and widespread dominion. Through all the festivals and sacrifices shone the light of God in Christ. That God would descend from heaven to earth was impressed on Israel by the constant appearance of God as angel or messenger, as Angel of the Covenant, Angel, in whom is God’s name; as God manifest, whom man can see face to face. And that from earth, from among Israel, would grow up before God One who was perfect, the Servant of the Lord, filled with the Spirit and the delight of the Father, a child born unto Israel, a Son given unto them, and yet the “PELE,” Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace; this also the prophets expressed. Christ was thus beheld in a twofold aspect (which it must have been difficult to combine), Jehovah coming down, an Israel’s Representative, the Son of the Virgin of Zion, ascending from earth to heaven. They expected the Messenger of the Covenant from above. They saw a man who was Jehovah’s equal.

And as Christ’s person was the substance of all Jewish history and Scripture, his sufferings were continually witnessed in word, type, and experience.

Christ and Israel are thus connected, and for all ages, Scripture testifies of this Jehovah as Israel’s David, in whom glory cometh to the nation, and salvation to the uttermost ends of the earth. For the view which is so prevalent, that Israel is a shadow of the Church, and now the the type is fulfilled vanishes from our horizon, is altogether unscriptural. Israel is not the shadow fulfilled and absorbed in the Church, but the basis on which the Church rests.[3] And although during the times of the Gentiles Israel, as a nation, is set aside, Israel is not cast away, because Israel is not a transitory and temporary, but an integral part of God’s counsel. The gifts and calling of God are without repentance. Israel was chosen to be God’s people, the centre of his influence and reign on earth in the ages to come. The Church in the present parenthetic period does not supplant them. The book of the Kingdom awaits its fulfilment; and the Church, instructed by Jesus and the apostles, is not ignorant of this mystery.

This view explains many portions of the Scripture, and likewise explains why many portions are obscure,—passages which refer not to the present dispensation, but to the Kingdom of which all prophets bear witness.

In the book of the Church we see, rooted in Israel, and beginning at Jerusalem, the history of Jesus and of the body joined to Him by the Spirit.

 

 

 

________________________

 

[1]  Romans 15:8
[2]  This view meets us in all the apostolic writings. I would direct the reader’s attention to the testimony of John, whose Gospel has been called “the Spiritual Gospel.” His use of the word “nation” (Israel) is striking (John xi. 52). Jesus should die, not only for that nation, but “that He should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad.” We have here a nation and an election from among all peoples. Just as we read in Rev. vii. of the twelve tribes, and after this the great multitude of all nations, etc. Strange to say, this latter passage (verse 9) has been quoted to show that there is no more distinction between Israel and the other nations![3]  See Romans 11

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Abraham's but not Pilate's

A portrait of a father who would bear a blade in his hand, bear wood for a fire upon his son’s shoulders, and ascend a certain hill...

 

Eternity will entertain the hearts and minds of all the saints with the mysteries of the triune Godhead revealed in the bush burning though not-quite;[1] in the Commander bearing a sword unsheathed on the outskirts of Jericho;[2] in the grown Man born to a young mother baptized in clouds above, wings of a dove and waters of the Jordan;[3] in the beautiful Name left unuttered;[4] in the “One” that is “Us” who created every seen and unseen thing and breathed life into the first lungs of dust and blood.[5]

Yet the knowledge of this One came escorted by mercy to fallen men and women of dust, made wicked by treacherous lust for power which cannot enable, for knowledge which cannot inform. That we may confess one of His Names with our unqualified lips and be cleansed is one magnificent privilege of grace; that we may know so many more is a prodigal provision of the extravagant God.[6]

The humility then required of this righteous King and just Judge to bend Himself so low to make Himself so known to fraudulent enemies and cursing sinners is incalculable. He who “sits in the heavens and does as He pleases” also “knows our frame” and “pities” us—as He must—as any father would sympathize with a toddler unable to govern their own emotions or explain quantum physics. The patience thus required of Him to “teach sinners in the way” and make proud men humble so as to “guide [them] in justice” is beyond the bounds of finite cognition and understanding.[7]

We cannot know Him.[8]

Yet, He bends and stoops and declares and makes known, giving grace to darkened minds and revelation to the otherwise unrenewed. “We love Him because He first loved us,” this One who is “High and Lofty,” “inhabits eternity” and “dwells in unapproachable light,” whom no man has or can see, who in bold audacity conforms those who believe into the image of Him whom they cannot see.[9] We are but trophies of unwarranted grace that does us so much good that it must cause us to pause, cease and bend our knees.

This grace should make us ask why we should receive such benevolent mercy.

Glimpses of this mystery are littered throughout the words and writings of Moses, David, and the pens of prophecy. The revelation of this One we do not deserve to know is laced throughout the canon of the Scriptures we hold so dear, earliest as the God in the Garden confronted sin and covered shame and later called a man named Abram to begin a journey that would bless every household to come.[10]

Fathering this nation, and indeed many more, required a particular conformation to the image of the Maker whose image Abraham bore—a portrait of a father who would bear a blade in his hand, bear wood for a fire upon his son’s shoulders, and ascend a certain hill; a father who would look to a day of resurrection when every promise would be finally and fully vindicated; a father whose confidence rested in the sufficiency of the Lord’s provision for the kind of sacrifice that would satisfy every demand of death’s curse and liberate every son of Adam and daughter of Eve who would “call upon the Name of the Lord.”[11]

Of all the idols and ideas invented by the mind of man, none come close to the true, nearly tangible Father who allowed His Son to offer Himself, nor to the Son who agreed with the will and wishes of His Father and bore the splintered wood up the hill of Golgotha, who kept the angelic hosts at bay so He could breathe His last and finish the task.[12] None could compare to the Holy One who forfeit glory for the form of the form of dusty men, who would allow the rage of unregenerate criminals to crucify the LORD of Hosts for the foulest of their ambitions since Babel was broken down and scattered throughout the nations.[13] None could compare to this Man who would bear the shame of questionable birth, three full decades of anonymity, and a criminal’s execution.

Yet this is the glory of this generous grace—the Holy will redeem the profane, cleanse our pagan tongues of idolatrous names, and draw us into an eternal communion conforming saints into the likeness of the Son.[14] Though it is well and right to tremble at the One who tells the waves where to cease and the sun when to shine, we may rest in the shadow of the Place of the Skull, nearest we know to the God who stayed Abraham’s hand on Moriah but deliberately chose not to stay Pilate’s.[15]

 

 

________________________

 

[1]  Exodus 3:2
[2]  Joshua 5:13-15
[3]  Matthew 1:18, 3:3:16-17; Luke 1:26-2:38
[4]  Joshua 13:17-21
[5]  Genesis 1:26, 2:7; Deuteronomy 6:4; Zechariah 14:9
[6]  Luke 15:11-31
[7]  Psalm 25:4-5, 8-9; 103:13-14
[8]  Job 36:26
[9]  Isaiah 57:15; I Timothy 6:16
[10] Genesis 3:8-21; 12:1-3
[11] Genesis 4:26; 22:1-19; Hebrews 11:17-19
[12] John 19:30
[13] Genesis 11; Philippians 2:5-11
[14] Job 38:11; Hosea 2:17; John 17:23-24; Romans 8:29; II Corinthians 3:18
[15] Genesis 22:11-14; John 19:11

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Jesus Christ Still Weeping

We are not able to measure such depth of love manward, because we cannot understand the height of their love Godward. We listen in silence.

BY ADOLPH SAPHIR

This is an excerpt from "Israel the Beloved," a lecture included in the volume Christ and Israel,
collection of Saphir's lectures edited by David Baron. It was originally printed in 1911.

PRE-EMINENT among the saints of God, of whom we read in the Holy Scriptures, are Moses, the servant of Jehovah, who was faithful in all God’s house, and Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, who was able to say, “Be ye followers of me, even as I am of Christ.” When we think of these two chosen vessels of God, of their wisdom, their meekness, their self-sacrifice, their zeal for God’s glory, their unwearied and ardent love, their sufferings, their patience; when we recall their tears, their words, their labours, their prayers, we feel so amazed at the grandeur of their characters and lives that we are lifted above the lower sentiment of admiration, and above the common expressions of eulogy, and we can only glorify God in them. As when we stand before a majestic Alpine mountain height, or gaze on a bright and beautiful star, we say: How great is God’s power, how beautiful are His works, how wonderful is His glory!

Moses and Paul show that love to God and love to man are one; that he who stands highest on the mount of God, and sees most of the glory of God, has the deepest compassion, the most burning love, the tenderest sympathy towards his brethren. Moses in his anguish said, “Blot me out of Thy book.” He could not bear the thought of Israel’s rejection. Paul in the intensity of his affection and sorrow could offer the same petition. We are not able to measure such depth of love manward, because we cannot understand the height of their love Godward. We listen in silence.

Love to Israel, such as Moses and Paul felt, is a ray from that ineffable ocean of light which is in God. The Apostle, which he speaks of his great grief on account of Israel’s unbelief, is conscious that this feeling is not merely one of natural patriotism and affection, but of the Spirit, by virtue of his union with Christ. “I say the truth in Christ, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost.” He who referred all feelings of true and tender love to the indwelling of God’s Spirit, who longed after the Philippians in the bowels of Jesus Christ, is clearly conscious that his love to Israel is Christ-sprung, God-given, and Spirit-breathed; it is the Saviour’s mind and affection living in his heart. Behold, Jesus Christ still weeping over Jerusalem with the eyes of Paul.

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This isn't an Accident

This is the kind of confidence that lets us wonder at mysteries, and sleep like babies in our mother’s arms—confident she isn’t going to drop us, and we don’t need to wonder why.

 

Adolph Saphir once wrote, “There can be no true and full preaching of the Gospel without explaining the mystery of Israel.”[1] I agree. The truest, fullest declaration of the Person of God revealed in the glory of Christ necessarily requires exploring His past, present and future dealings with this people, land and nation. It has every bearing on who we understand this Nazarene to be.

The ground and background of the Gospel is the benevolent mercy of God extended to those who deserve death and the extravagant grace lavished upon those who deserve the same.[2] Truly, His “thoughts are not like [our] thoughts, nor [His] ways like [ours].”[3] In no sphere is this more apparent than the blood-stained soil at the Place of the Skull, where the God-Man breathed His last with a commanding decree: “It is finished.”[4]

Israel’s national, ethnic, and territorial covenantal peculiarity before the Maker of Heaven and Earth distinguishes her merits neither above nor below that of of any other nation, people or territory. Rather, her election has nothing to do with her and everything to do with Him. Assuredly, her blessing is a conduit to bless everyone else and it is with confidence in that Man on that hill[5] we may hang our hopes on future grace for that land, that people, and even ourselves through her own national regeneration.[6] The “restoration of the Kingdom” became known as the “blessed hope” of the prophets and apostles for good reason.[7] 

Just as two bloody planks of splintered wood intersected to put the Son of David to death, the election of God extended to Abraham and all his children runs smack into the sacrifice of the very Son of God—and it is there we find the juncture between the prodigal provision of the God of grace and the great equalizer grace itself functions as, for neither we deserve to be saved from the wrath to come, nor did God deserve to die to make it happen.[8]

Much of the in-house clamor the Church is drowning in arguing about the position of national, ethnic and territorial Israel in the temporal, contemporary purposes of the Eternal One[9] necessarily builds its argumentation on the logical fallacy that behavioral merit must be embedded within any claim. Short of enlightened understanding,[10] we are inclined to believe we get what we deserve. Israel is presently fallen, unbelieving and little has changed since the Son of Man was executed outside the Holy City—but the Church, all these well-behaved Gentiles, aren’t actively blaspheming His Name (presumably), so we can safely conclude that the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70 was a divine endorsement of the idea that God transferred all the blessing and promises made to wayward Jacob to an obedient Church and somehow we are now living in our happily ever after. Right?

Wrong.

Before we work through the complicated implications of Israel’s present condition, the armistice line, the social injustices, the bullet-scarred walls guarding the Old City,[11] we must set our eyes again on those pieces of cursed tree upon which hung a cursed Man setting Adam and Eve’s offspring free because He bled.[12] We must remember He was present at creation, and then His creation killed Him.[13] He was the Image of the Invisible, and those built to reflect that Image fractured themselves to shred Him.[14] He came to fulfill the Law, and those who studied it rebuked and blasphemed Him. He lived amongst His own, to whom scores of prophecies about His coming were given, and they rejected and cursed Him.

We are perhaps too familiar with the idea that it was the sinless Son of God hanging on that cross. It was the sinless Son of God hanging on that cross. He there shed the only qualified blood to seal the provisions of the Everlasting Covenant—not because He deserved to suffer through it, but because He decided within and upon Himself to do it.[15] He there redeemed, saved and secured the elect—not because any of us deserved to be included on such a holy, precious and expensive purchase order, but because He decided to include us in it.

Jerusalem is referred to by psalmists, prophets and the Person of Jesus Himself as the “city of the Great King.”[16] The LORD named Himself the “God of Israel,” and employed that self-reference countless times in Scripture.[17] So the issues of the city of Jerusalem, the ethnic descendants of Abraham and the actual territory referred to now as the modern State are important, but they are secondary issues to the veracity of the Word of God and the nature of His character. Meaning this isn’t actually about us or them—this actually about Him.

Thus, before we begin to address and unpack these important but secondary issues, we must first begin with the primary issue of the preeminent One, to whom every knee will bow and every tongue will confess and every man, woman and child on earth will eventually submit.[18] We must understand every Word in the Word is intentional, deliberate, ordained and eternal. None shall pass away, and all shall continue to serve revelation to us as we read, behold and worship throughout the ages to come because the Author is that big and that capable. And thus I implore you, reader, to reject any theological system requiring you to disregard entire portions and passages of Scripture as “outdated” or “irrelevant.” Genesis to Revelation continues to be our roadmap as we navigate this “present evil age”[19] and reveal to us who this Man from Nazareth is and what He is like.

Scripture encourages us, plumb lines us even, in the sovereignty of God. Nothing has ever been written in as some kind of sloppy Plan B. This has always been Plan A. Abraham was not an accident. Isaac, Jacob, and his twelve sons were not accidents. The death of the Son of David was not an accident. The ingrafting of believing Gentiles and the temporary hardening of ethnic Israel—nothing is accidental.[20] Paul himself would write this same encouragement to us, and was compelled to drop his pen for a moment, mesmerized by the magnificent, “unsearchable” riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God:

“For who has known the mind of the LORD?
Or who has become His counselor?
Or who has first given to Him
And it shall be repaid to him?”[21]

Resting in the truth of who God is, what He is like and how He behaves is the kind of bold confidence the writer of Hebrews encourages us to approach Him with.[22] Confident in His mercy. Confident in His humility. Confident in His benevolence. Confident in His precision. Confident in His purposes. Confidence in His covenant.

This is the kind of confidence that lets us wonder at mysteries, and sleep like babies in our mother’s arms—confident she isn’t going to drop us, and we don’t need to wonder why.[23]

 

 

 

________________________

[1]  Saphir, A. (1911). Christ and Israel: Lectures on the Jews. London: Morgan and Scott, 15.
[2]  Romans 6:23; Ephesians 2:1-10
[3]  Isaiah 55:8-9
[4]  John 19:30
[5]  Genesis 12:1-3; See “Abraham's but not Pilate’s.”
[6]  Romans 11:15
[7]  Acts 1:16; Titus 2:13; See “The Coming Restoration of the Kingdom of Israel.”
[8]  Isaiah 13:9; Matthew 3:7; Luke 3:7; I Thessalonians 1:10; 2:16; Revelation 6:17
[9]  See “Burn the Banners.”
[10] Ephesians 1:18
[11] See “The History of the Conflict,” COMING SOON
[12] Deuteronomy 21:23; Galatians 3:13
[13] Proverbs 8:22-31; I Corinthians 2:8; Colossians 1:16-17
[14] Colossians 1:15
[15] John 10:17-18
[16] Psalm 48:2; Matthew 5:35
[17] More than 200 verses occur in Scripture naming the LORD the “God of Israel.” Some are: Exodus 5:1; 24:10; 32:27; 34:23; Numbers 16:9; Joshua 7:13, 19-20; 8:30; 9:19; 10:40, 42; 13:14; 14:14; 22:16, 24; 24:2, 23; Judges 4:6; 5:3; 6:8; 11:21, 23; 21:3; Ruth 2:12; I Samuel 1:17; 2:30; 5:7-8, 10-11; 6:3, 5; 10:18; 14:41; 20:12; 23:10-11; 25:32, 34; II Samuel 7:27; 12:7; 23:3; I Kings 1:30, 48; 8:15, 17; II Chronicles 29:10; Ezra 4:1; Psalm 68:8; Isaiah 17:6; Jeremiah 7:21; Matthew 15:31
[18] Isaiah 2:1-4; Philippians 2:10-11
[19] Galatians 1:4
[20] Romans 11:13-36
[21] Romans 11:34-36
[22] Hebrews 4:16
[23] Psalm 131

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The Order of the Return

Reggie Kelly addresses the distinctions between 1948 and the final return to the Land.

 

The following is an excerpt from "Amos 9 and the Order of the Return."
You can read the full article here.

Now consider. Jeremiah had predicted that Israel’s return from Babylon would not come until after the predicted seventy years of exile.[1] So when Jeremiah speaks of ‘the time of Jacob’s trouble’, what ‘day’ could he have in mind? It can only be the everywhere mentioned day of the Lord, because only then is the final oppressor destroyed and peace in the Land secure forever under the messianic king.[2]

This is our exegetical choice. Do we interpret “that day” of Jacob’s trouble as an event lying only in the past, only in the future, or with some, both past and future? To be sure, there have been visitations of divine judgment that presaged the day of the Lord, and some would argue for multiple ‘days’ of the Lord, but there is only one ‘day of the Lord’ that ends in the messianic kingdom that so clearly follows immediately after the time of Jacob’s trouble.[3] 

Even on the basis of Jeremiah’s limited perspective, the destruction of 587 B.C. must be ruled out as constituting ‘that day’, because this was not followed by the abiding peace and everlasting righteousness described in Jer 30, and reiterated all throughout the ‘book of consolation,’ but by seventy years of captivity in a foreign land. And by no stretch of the imagination can the term, ‘that day’ be made to stand for the entirety of the exile. Furthermore, Jeremiah would have been aware of Isaiah’s prophecy that associated the ‘day of the Lord’ with Babylon’s destruction at the hands of the Persians.[4]

It is noteworthy that the conditions that are described as following upon Babylon’s fall to the Persians in both Isaiah’s and Jeremiah’s prophecy[5] stand in marked contrast to the prophets’ vivid descriptions of the messianic era. Even before Daniel’s prophecy of a continuous succession of world empires, Isaiah and Jeremiah sees beyond Persia’s overthrow of Babylon, which proved only a type of a yet greater and more ultimate day of the Lord still to come. This is further evidence that Jeremiah sees this climactic, and ultimately transitional day somewhere quite beyond the liberation that Isaiah had associated with the destruction of Babylon at the hands of the Medes and Persians under Cyrus.[6]

The prophets show an implicit understanding of typology. Consider. As much as Isaiah knew that Babylon would be succeeded by Persia, and that Cyrus was only a figure of the liberation that could only come through the Messiah Redeemer from David’s line.[7] (Isa 9:6-7; 11:1-5). And as much as both Isaiah and Jeremiah knew that neither Assyria nor Babylon was the last of the great world empires to stand before the kingdom age, but that both stood as figures of a more ultimate oppressor to be destroyed by none other than the Messiah[8] it becomes evident that not only the Spirit who inspired them, but the prophets themselves were quite aware of a recurrent pattern of partial fulfillment that prefigured a more ultimate eschatological crisis that would usher in the rod iron rule of David’s greater son and Lord.[9]. This is something to ponder.

 

 

________________________

 

[1]  Jeremiah 29:10-14
[2]  Jeremiah 30:8-10; 16:22; 30-33
[3]  Jeremiah 30:8-10; 16:22;  30-33; Daniel 12:1-2; Ezekiel 39:8, 22, 28-29
[4]  Isaiah 13:1-19; 44:28; 45:1
[5]  Isaiah 13:17-19; Jeremiah 29:12-14; 50:9; 51:28-29
[6]  Isaiah 13:16-19; 48:28; 45:1-5; Jeremiah 25:12-14; 25; 51:11, 28
[7]  Isaiah 9:6-7; 11:1-5
[8]  Isaiah 9:4, 14; 10:5, 17, 20-27; 11:4-5, 24-27; 30:31; 31:8; Jeremiah 30:8, 14; see especially the Septuagint translation of Isaiah 11:4 as cited by Paul in II Thessalonians 2:8
[9]  Psalm 2; 110

 
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