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SECTION NINE

 LOOK AT THE FOURTEENTH ISLAND

 CHAPTERS EIGHTEEN and NINETEEN

Israelis, Israel and the Lord;
their returns, His return
and the Final  Confrontations,
Comradeship and Culmination ...

Returns ? There are physical ones (accomplished)
and spiritual ones (yet to be) for the Israel.

There has been a sacrificial coming (accomplished)
and there is to be a regal coming (yet to be) for the Lord.

Staring the facts in the face, rather than tying them in name-tag bundles, one may then
discern the pattern, program and the pulse of truth in history, from beyond it,
as contained in the Bible, and planned by the Lord. 

We come then at length to the.

CONCLUSION

WITH SOME LOOK AT THE COMMENCEMENT FOR

THE BEGINNING AND THE END ARE CORRELATIVE

The SECOND SECTOR

Final  Confrontations,
Comradeship and Culmination

See also Deliver Us from Dispensatonalism

and Ch. 4 above

Part I

Their physical return has been covered in part in Part I, that is the first section, Ch. 18. Their spiritual return is focussed in Ch. 19 below, with the eschatological, the summary, the consummative phases of history for this earth.

One Imposing Fact

In this procedure, it is important to realise one imposing fact. Many nations exulted, seeing the once so notable, for some notorious, the brilliantly victorious Israel of former and ancient times, reduced to ruin so palpable that when Christ declared this breed would not fail till He came back, it seemed a vastly vulnerable prediction for any but GOD, from whom indeed it came, the very lips of the Messiah saying so. The triumphant kings and prophets who wrought by faith in fidelity, such as Hezekiah, as David going back, as Solomon, as Joshua, whose word could be made to stand even if the very configuration of the earth's orbit were to be changed, or asteroids should fall: these were past.

Now the Messiah had come, the acme of power and the marvel of majesty, the deity in flesh, and they had served notice on Him to quit. He died but did not quit. Immortality is like that. He rose in body from the dead and His work continued by the power of His Spirit, He having made not only a sacrifice for eternity, efficient, proficient and palpable, but the final exhibition of power before judgment. No search could locate His body; no traitor (and such there were) could find it; no power on earth could secure it, no army could conserve it, no situation could harass it, nor any political, judicial or social power confine it. He took it, and it was not there.

Moreover, He even did it to arithmetical specifications on the third day, as He so often declared, and the word of prophecy had stated from over half a millenium before, and the typology of Moses before that (cf. Matthew 16-17, SMR Ch. 6).

Thus, with their fiasco replacing faith (very much as when Israel did NOT enter the Promised Land under Moses, and suffered exceedingly for it cf. Hebrews 4, I Corinthians 10, Numbers 14), and the Lord Himself defaced in human form, an object for spittle, harassed beyond hospital, marshalled for morgue, there seemed a marvellous interim, interval, inter-regnum, opportunity. The cat's claw was gone; the cat's meat was missing. Mice ? they could play.

It was one thing when, as often, Israel was chastened by the Lord (as in the Assyrian overthrow of the Northern kingdom and the Babylonian devastation on the South under Nebuchadnezzar); but this was temporary. They arose again. Now however there was a whole AGE, the Age of the Gentiles. The Jew had gone to the seat of power, and lowered; and now the Gentile could come to that same seat (though often he did the exact opposite, as if keen to create a parallel to the follies of Israel, so that the whole human race could be obtuse and obfuscatory, misaligned and ready for destruction). He lowered very often not only at Israel and the Jew (as in the horrendous Roman Catholic Inquisition - Ancient Words ... Ch. 14 - but in pogroms and United Nations follies after that, as in 1947); now he goes far further.

Nation after nation of the Gentile era now systematically scorns morality, praises sexual perversion, sets up situational ethics, ignores absolutes and marshals increasingly, law as an enforcement agency, to quell opposition and even persecute and so prosecute those who protest, object or even announce the folly of perversion. Sodom received its due non-praise from the Lord (cf. Jude), and certainly Sodom might have something to learn from sophisticated Gentile nations, not a few, in our era! How man provokes the Lord, impugns first His patience as weakness, and then seeks to impale His power as persecution or cruelty!

Now many of the Gentiles love to imagine a new situation. Forgetting the ancient facts, and the word of God, constantly and continually fulfilled to the letter, they now imagine that they have a new world, one available for manipulation, for mastery by pedants, push by philosophers and subjection by politicians and their armies, whether of bureaucrats or more obvious weaponry.

They seek, with the Jew power gone, to imagine that there is none; and they desire, with various heresies abounding, as if man had lost his mind or sold his soul, or even both, to relativise and improvise and create as if the entire universe were their creation, though they are but a portent within it, created for God, by God, in the will of God, and with His oversight.

They want comparative religions, when this is the precise opposite of the facts; for NONE has ANY rational ground in logic,  validity and verification even comparable to any degree, with that of the Bible

(cf. Light Dwells with the Lord's Christ, Reason, Revelation and the Redeemer).

They desire to contemplate their navels, with navies and air forces, with armies and controls, and find the extra-terrestrials while their absence is a monument to pride and an abyss to folly; and yet they ignore the systematic dicta found in the DNA, far surpassing in brilliance of enteprise, technical magnificence and conception of unity of the result, and efficacy, anything that man has even himself, begun to create. The very liberty to deny the obvious, and to be oblivious of the necessary (cf. SMR), is part of the creation which man is powerless to touch in its heights, and to control in its depths. Millions die, but he does not control.  The antichrist (John 2), who though long present in spirit, is yet to come with a face (the devil's messiah, just as Christ is the Lord's Incarnation), he will do a little better for a little while (I Thessalonians 5, II Thessalonians 2, Revelation 13, John 14:30, Matthew 24:15).

In what way, better ? you ask. It is only in efficiency. Hitler and Mao both made amazingly diligent efforts to reach that deep projection into hell which would give them such a control over the human race, but were soon in the pits. The final effort (Revelation 13,17), will be far more thorough, and for a little while, it will seem to have the entire world in its will. It is just that rebellion before God always finds it come-uppance; and at times whole empires have their imperial little dog's day, before going their way, continual lessons for history. However man loves to ignore it, always imagining he is 'developing', whereas devilry is his due advance, and folly his favoured domain. If technically, he slowly learns some little parts of God's vast programs, yet in the word of God he becomes as an illiterate, just as history has its mouth filled with philosophy, lest it should speak.

This final acme of evil will come only soon to go, for the confrontation being then more total, so will be the end! (cf. II Thessalonians 1!).

Thus the point we wish to develop is this. Man now loves to roam around in imaginary comparative religion premises, as if it all depended on what HE CHOSE. Objectivity however is no more to be attained by such subjectivistic tilts at truth, in spiritual understanding, than in scientific domains. It just does not work that way. You have to be thorough, precise, careful and diligent in both, and when you are, then you may avoid the follies that seek to gate-crash into either. This is increasingly avoided, even scientific method being as much distorted by many in the field of science, as scriptural exegesis and authority is in the field of theology. It is the century of vagrancy, flapping its broken wings, and hurting, hurting...

The Jew however, as a nation is back, though still rebellious. Nothing alters that. He is WHERE he is supposed to be, but not yet doing WHAT he is supposed to be doing, towards the Lord. Where the divorce first came, for the nonce, it continues!

The Arab, the Iranian, the Moslem, the Romanist, the Judaiser, the terrorist of religious bent, these all seek their own concepts. They cannot win. They are all, being wrong, in confrontation with God. It never works in the end; and while it is not quite a waste of time, in that the lessons of history mount as with wings and soar over man with great declamations, yet he does not hear.

Some want Jerusalem for this or that political purpose. In May 2007, we learn that PM Blair is now filled with talk about mutual accommodation among religions, and seeks some sort of understanding, for example, between Jew and Arab, Judaism and Islam, and more beside, claiming a common Abraham. However the common Abraham is as much an invention as is the mass (cf. SMR pp. 1080ff.). The actual one is on record as to his dealings in one ancient place only, the Bible. The covenant is present in detail and has been for well over a millenium before Muhammad, tested and found valid, as his words are tested ? but what is there to test in proper verificatory manner ? It is just that his alleged power is met by actual force-type failure! (cf. SMR pp. 830ff.), just as the Koran seeks to build on what does not support it in the Old Testament, or sanction it by reason (cf. SMR 1080ff., More Marvels ... Ch. 4).

It is moreover far too late, this Koran,  to cover the sin case, as exhibited by the Bible, going back to the time of need from the first. It is many generations later, and too late! God never varies from His opposition to sin, and leaves NOTHING without removal or remedy; and if the remedy, as now, has two millenia for application, it is THERE, and available at this precise minute for ANY ONE who calls on the name of the Lord and Father, whom Christ revealed, Himself the explicit and eternal word of God made flesh, shining in glory amongst resistant man! How marvellous that some came to Him, following the irrefutable evidence; but acting in faith!

But man now, wallowing in non-wisdom, retching with moral relativism, and seeking to import spiritual relativity as well, imagines that many gods and things (cf. the South Australian EXPLICIT folly in its educational field, delcaring just such things to School Principals in terms of curriculum, as in TMR Ch. 8) are not really very apt at fact. This marvellous invention, vomiting reality and assailing fact as well as the Lord in its implications, stands a monument to non-scholarship and oblivion to truth. This is merely a SYMPTOM of what is moving amid the nations.

But the Arab CANNOT remove Israel, because it is sent back (cf. Ezekiel 36), in disgrace assuredly - 36:22, but in the very face of the human race, whatever its efforts as in the Madrid Quartet or the UN, to alter or limit it, or to hand it back to the oil nations, in part, in rural parts, or even in Jerusalem.

This cannot be done. Nor can Israel have peace while she insists on insulting the Lord's Christ. He, although their long promised and wholly verified Messiah (cf. SMR Chs. 8-9), is still by the nation rejected. It is breach of covenant, and what is to be expected for that! Their prosperity is foretold, and the vast national movements against it, likewise (as in Zechariah 12, moving on to their substantial conversion to this same Messiah, to come in one of the most dramatic moments of history).

No one can absolutely win; no peace can substantially for long prevail; no plan can avail; and the politicians vex their fingers with typing fidgets, or their minds with diligent digits, only to find that no, Mr Clinton, no, Mr Bush, no Mr UN, no Mr M Quartet, it does not, because it cannot work. It is like trying to work in the field of electricity, without understanding volts and amps!

It is useless for man, provocative for man, and a diligence bringing drama to be sure, but bulging with red face and burst arteries. Indeed multitudes lie dead in the midst of the mental mist and spiritual dilemmas brought about by spiritual rorts.

This then is beginning to appear as the generation of lost causes for good reasons; lost opportunities for bad actions; hopeful pride in flesh for hopeless aspirations, and more and more power to back the sure failures that come. If this spells calamity in any other field, it is no less so in this one. It continues to demonstrate itself continually as such. The smile fades, the grandiose plans recede into the mist, and the musts of mountebanks become musty.

The facts remain. God has a people. They failed at last, but first were given both scripture and Christ. God has brought them back as He said He would. Nations try to contest, but fail. Israel tries to bring quiet, but fails. The world whirls into prophetic limelight, inheriting as God said it would, not only for this nonsense in the Middle East, but for a thousand other reasons in die-hard unbelief, fixed ideas and educational follies, as if to seduce the young, lest any seeing the light, lead it out of its now congenital blindness and resultant blights!

There are not many valid contenders for truth, but there is one God, one Book of the Lord, one incarnate Christ who verified both Himself and the long written word of God, there is one Lord who then spoke and there is one history which has done, and it has verified one only, and it has spoken as an echo to the word of God, and man stuffs his ears with desire and his mind with delusion, closing his eyes, as the Lord Jesus Christ put it to Israel, they should see with eyes and hear with their ears, and be converted and He should heal them!

What glorious ingratitude, and what impressive ineptitude. Yet they talk and teach and beseech, and complain of fate, or chance or any other irrelevant invention of thought to cover non-facts about the authority in the universe (cf. Ancient Words and Modern Events Chs.  9 , 13), rumble about relativism, ruin design and malign it, as if it were not enough to breach the very conditions of their own lives, but must also breach the authority behind it, substituting their own, as if captains of history, marshals of the future or mesmerists of fate!

THE CENTURY OF CONFRONTATION is likely to be the last; for when the issues reach down to hell and up to heaven, the short-circuit stands ready to act, with huge electrical discharge. Already multiplied millions have refused to become minions to the mischiefs of false religions such as Communism, Romanism and Islam, and all the adventurisms which make for virtual, but not virtuous religion, made not in Japan, or China, or Russia, but in Man!

Part II

EVOKING THE END

Adapted from

Chapter 1,

The Biblical Workman

We see the approach to the end of the spiritual saga for Israel and not only for it, but for many. There can been a considerable addition in size to this chapter, in terms of the original!

THE ASSAULT ON ISRAEL -        

THE AWAKENING IN ISRAEL

The assault on Israel could not, incidentally, come DURING the millenium, for this ferociously provocative wallowing in the power of the flesh against the Lord and His promises, is precisely contrary to millenium depiction, uniformly in the Bible (cf. Isaiah 65:25). Nor could it, for that matter, come at the end of it, for then there is no time left on earth for the protracted peace in the fulness of blessing as the knowledge of the glory of the Lord covers the earth as the waters cover the sea. It must therefore necessarily precede the millenium, and thus, in the uninterrupted fabric of history as repeatedly presented in the prophets.

Nor can it occur in the midst of horrific hatred of Christ, entrenched in the antichrist and his hour of (comparative but cruel) power, just prior to the return in power and victory, of Jesus Christ who with His saints "shall reign upon the earth" (Revelation 2:26-27, 19:7,14, Ephesians 5:28-33, John 3:29, Matthew 9:13, 25:6ff., Zechariah 14:5-9, cf. Revelation 5:10, 20:4-6; cf. Revelation 20:6 with II Thessalonians 2:8-12).

In other words, this grand awakening in Israel (Zechariah 12:10), it  appears before the bride, the whole beloved corpus of the people of God, not cut up into parts, but one, is taken to the marriage feast of the lamb (Revelation 19:7-8), so that "death is swallowed up in victory" (Isaiah 25:8) in every sense. In this way, when the Lord comes, it is with ALL the saints (Zechariah 14:5, I Thessalonians 3:13), not some of them, and His affianced is now married in heaven, not some portion of her, the legs left behind for example.

Now is the time of Paul's declaration on the wonderful unity in the ONE faith of the ONE family of the ONE God (cf. Romans 11:25ff., Ephesians 4:4, Galatians 3:28) in ONE Gospel (cf. Galatians 1:6-9) in ONE way, after MANY divagations, distresses, divisions and divergencies. These go, He has come, and the twofold-ness if finished, in one. Such is the message of Romans 11.

Now is the healing, now the demise of the wheeler-dealing of many false prophets, internal and external to Jew and Christian, and now is the paean of praise of Paul fulfilled in just the way he proclaimed.

TALKING TREES

Israel the nation ? Once they were the tree, its principal foliage, then they departed from the Lord chiefly through assisting His departure from themselves, AS A NATION, in the most pointed way, the points being nails on the Cross of Calvary. Then they were of course cut out (cf. Zechariah 11, where the covenant is broken,  and Romans 11), and the Gentiles were brought in.

WHY were they brought in  ? It is for the same reason as that for which Israel as a nation, was cut out of the tree of living faith. That is what Paul declares.

Here we must be careful. This is not at all the same as being cut out of the promises, which being God's word, ALWAYS stand (Ezekiel 36 makes it clear that for HIS OWN NAME'S sake God will honour these promises, even though Israel, on whose behalf He honours them, is to be utterly ashamed at her disreputable conduct, a point patent in 36:22 especially). It is DESPITE their lack of grace, that He acts in the grace of truth and faithfulness. That is what God declares. If you want to know the mind of God, it is good to listen.

The Gentiles then come in because of faith, Israel goes out as a nation-exhibit for the Lord (cf. Isaiah 43:21),an expression of life in Himself, and suffers as Leviticus 26 so sharply showed in prediction, because of lack of that same faith. "So," says the word of God, after the sale of Christ, concerning the covenant, "so it was broken on that day."

No more was the mode of Israel to be used as a criterion, only as exhibit. It is necessary to be balanced: both to avoid the aversion from the Jew, because of what Israel the nation did, and to void the imagination that Israel, having crucified Christ as a nation, has any future as a spiritual exemplar! Write it in a book for ever and ever, that this is a rebellious people, says Isaiah 30, and Israel will be one with Egypt, and Assyria, says Isaiah19.

Yet its special history has enormous teaching power, and God's faithfulness to specific promises, which both include its restoration to the land and its exclusion from any place in the midst of Gospel rejoicing peoples, except in restoration to that Gospel, and in its specific terms, any division of diversity from Gentile Christians (Isaiah 65, 19, Galatians 11, Colossians 3, Ephesians 1), is sure.

What then at the turning point, when they are restored to the SPIRITUAL reality of the ONE TREE as in Romans 11 ?

Then God opens the eyes of a mass in Israel (as in Romans 11:25), a fact as Paul declares, of which we MUST NOT be ignorant. Next this being so, they repent and seeing the saving action of Christ with the eyes of faith as in Zechariah 12:10, they become Christians. There is only one Christianity, one faith, one gospel, on crucified Christ, one Lord of all (Ephesians 4:4), one dying into Christ, one living in Him, one salvation all of grace, one place for any in any race in the domain of grace, in the halls of holiness, in the way to it. However the beginnings vary at the start, this is the case for any race in the end (Ephesians 1:10). We are not gathered up in two or more, but in one in Christ (cf. Galatians 3:28). When all is lost, and all is forfeited by all, then the claims for MORE are void, and the promises given to all, are all.

God may indeed use Jerusalem, where not Israel but Christ, God in human form, Himself, was crucified, as a centre as in Micah 4^*A; but this is no more Jewish, in differential grandeur ultimately, since Israel killed Christ, than it is Gentile. Christ is all and in all (Colossians 3:11). It is a city where GOD is vindicated against all who mocked Israel wrongly, and mocked Christ wrongly, being Gentile and Jew respectively. Israel is now merely one with the others, as in Isaiah 19. Its special place as a race has been a witness and means of witness (as in Romans 9) to God, both constructively and destructively. Its leadership is lost in Christ (Isaiah 54:5).

The Jew is vindicated in that His Lord was Lord indeed, and the Exodus was from God assuredly, and the testimony of the word of God as given in the prophets was infallible truth (cf. Isaiah 8:20, 59:21). The Gentile is vindicated in that the Gospel on which he insisted, as being fulfilled in the crucified Messiah, is just so: his testimony also is correct. But he was slow to come, and Israel alas left; and in neither is there any ground for pride. Each must come empty, or being 'rich', be sent empty away. it is only God who is vindicated without sin, glorified without distaste, and to be exalted. NOTHING ELSE (Isaiah 2).

The Gentile addition has been the same in humiliation and restoration from bankruptcy by grace (Ephesians 2:8), as was the Jewish extraction (cf. Romans 4:10-25,Galatians 4:21-31). The original plan through Abraham was designed for all of faith, designated to all, achieved for all as one people. The vast deliverance of Israel (Micah 7, Ezekiel 38-39) is in a context of dealing with the haters of God who hate Israel derivatively (Jeremiah 30:16-17), for believing or not, it stands like a peak to remind all of what God has done with it, through it and despite it, in accord with His word which He gave through it!

The result is that all will realise that God called, disciplined and restored Israel at His will (Ezekiel 39:23-29, Zephaniah 3:8-13) and it is not as eminent, distinctive in majesty or power, for that is the place of the Messiah (Galatians 6:14), but as a "meek and humble people" that they then find their spiritual location, and all else follows. Indeed, "you will no longer be haughty in My holy mountain." It IS the LORD's holy mountain (Zephaniah 3:11). ALL if of Him and through Him and to Him  as Paul declares in His summary of the whole plan of salvation and dispersion, desolation and restoration, humiliation of all and deliverance in Christ and in His merit only, of ANY ! (Romans 11:33). While for a time, pending eternity (II Peter 3) when the very works of the earth are burnt up and all things become new, there are assignments and places, it is only in His graces, for none is superior to any (Isaiah 19), and this is emphatic and dramatic, both, in the word of God.

What then of Jew and Gentile ?

Now both can forget their clamour for superiority and be at peace as ONE in Christ, for there is no difference. "You are all one in Christ," as Paul denotes in Galatians 3:28, and here you are in the broader domain of Abraham's seed, that of the seed of Christ who, unifying all, gives all to all (Gal. 3:29). This is the spiritual seed of Abraham which Paul assures the Gentile Galatians they are. Spiritually, this is the case; and he is indeed a Jew spiritually, who is one inwardly.  There is no other kind spiritually, and Christ in John 8, is seen to rebuke Jewishness as a spiritual criterion, as much as Paul in Romans 2.

The true Jew is one inwardly (Romans 2:29); and while this does remove the distinctive pattern of history which God ordained for them, it does remove any sense of a divergence in the end, where the spiritual reality is shared manifestly by ALL in ONE tree, by grace which is universally both free and valid in ONE WAY ONLY. The one part of the body had special task, mission,  enterprise and vision for a time, then blindness; the other part had world-wide call (cf. Isaiah 65:1-15), while the majesty-hungry nation of Israel lost all place but that in coming mercy (Ezekiel 36), and even that in a fashion most fastidiously excluded any self-glory! (36:22).

It was repudiated with a divine rigour (Isaiah 30, 65:13-15) that made of the Gentile converts during its long blindness (Romans 11:25), something most distinctive in their turn. Then the wheel turns, the welts soften (Jeremiah 31:18-22), the incarnation provides mercy in a new release (30:9, 31:22), the mercy flows, humiliation reaches its spiritual depth for the nation (Ezekiel 36:22), the Jew awakens in Israel, the Lord bathes the wounds, rebukes the outrageously imperious aggressors and settles all things down to the place where the Gentiles indeed rejoice with His people, and they who were not His people are now called His people, all one in Christ Jesus (Romans 9:25ff.). The only division of note now is that between the autocracy of Satan and Co. and the regality of Christ and His meek people, Jew and Gentile, over whom alike He rules in the beauty of holiness as the earth is filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11, Psalm 72), one Lord, one baptism, one faith!

Isaiah 65:13ff., and 30:8ff. thunder against ANY return to specially select status in spiritual terms, in any way whatsoever. The end is unitary, final, consummatory, in Christ plus nothing (Colossians 3:11), for Christ is all and in all. There is no addition or subtraction. HE ONLY now is given.

-ISMITIS LIKE 'FLU IS HEADY

Amillenialism tries to remove history because of this fact; and replacement theology, stuttering on after the keys of the car are turned off, tries in increase the spiritual domain into a diversity. They are tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee, and their opposition is sure, since neither both stays with, and stops at, the word of God. Each takes a point, valid in a given context because of its parameters, and then ignoring other realities, rams it over all. Rightly dividing the word of God is a matter of stopping where each context stops, and starting where it starts, not startling with things which simply ignore the dimensions of the word of God, spelled out in most clamantly obvious principle.

GOD will be FAITHFUL and do all He said; and GOD alone will be honoured (Isaiah 2:17), when having sealed the segments, He brings all to the only One in the only life in the only domain now suffered for any; for all are forfeit except in Christ. Indeed, this desire for something special, not merely in the movements of peoples and lands, in order to show the power of God, but in spiritual terms, in some new exemplification after the Gospel has come to Israel, it becomes an impediment to faith for the Jew.

In what way ? It is this. It looms into the land of having that proud hope of MORE for me, for mine, which is so decisively and with such confrontation, dismissed in the Bible. It is as hard for a man to enter into the kingdom of heaven, when the riches of inheritance or power or prestige or anything else clinging to him, as for a camel to go through the eye of the needle. It is necessary to unpack the baggage swelling out the sides of the camel, if the Jew or the Gentile alike to is get in at ALL!

As to the power and majesty of God: Exemplification of His word in its precision is one thing, and a testimony; the amillenialist fails here. Stopping at the arrests in His word is another, and the replacement theologian in its broad expression in the magazine noted, fails here. Back to the mainland all, and there is the peace of abiding in His word:  precision and principle alike honoured.

How often did Christ reject those who insisted on some appearance in His word, who did not see the most obvious principles, and use these are controls for comprehension! (cf. Luke 20:27ff. with Matthew 22:29, Matthew 24:1ff., 23:16-23).

What then of Romans 11:25ff., Zechariah 12:10ff. ? .This, then, is the time of His recovery of that great segment of Israel, leading to such rejoicing among the nations. The bride is prepared. The sleepers do not awake. What does awake is His, in precisely the same way as any other who at any other time has 'awakened' (cf. I Corinthians 6:1ff.).

As to the bride, she is now in unity and completeness. Those awakened are ready (and soon the two sets will be seen, sheep and goats - not two sets of sheep: Matthew 25:1-10). Ungodliness will now be seen as just such a a retarded and unspiritual thing as it is (Romans 11:26). It is in this way, as they go to the 'fountain' in Jerusalem (Zechariah 13 following on from 12:10), now not a mere journeying site for those interested in zeal or for knowledge, but signifying that very Cross of Christ for which it is so famous: that they come to the only place to which one may go. It is then that cleansing comes in Israel, and Paul's hymn of praise (Romans 11:28-36) arises in its impact. It is then that the broken covenant revives, life is restored, the tree is realised, and its branches wave jointly in the wind of divine blessing.

It is indeed to a tree which is still there on earth, that Israel is restored, and in that tree together is their mutuality.

Enemies because of their gospel rejection, as at Paul's time was the plight of the nation of Israel (cf. Romans 10), they yet are remembered because of the patriarchal promises (11:28ff.).God does not RENEGE! The gifts and calling of God are "without repentance" (Romans 11:29). What He lays down in the scope of history, He does. What He promises, He performs. What He eliminates, goes. It is all, not some, of His word which He graciously and reliably applies, and He makes no additions, let alone cancellation of always operable principles. He does not apply philosophical replacements or defacements, the one or the other: but what is written, this He applies.

Now there is parity. How ? The Gentiles were enemies of God, when Israel being faithful, they did not know Him; and relaying the sin of Adam, they continued spiritually anaesthetised to the true knowing of the living God. They were OUT, Israel was IN.

Then Israel fell, Gentiles came to the Gospel which was presented by many, chiefly at first and decisively by the JEWISH apostles, and so the Gentile contingent was IN, and figuratively GRAFTED in, to the tree which GOD created, in which the Jewish people had been resident.

Just - says Paul, as YOU Gentiles were disobedient, and gained mercy "through their disobedience" (Romans 11:30), that is, the Gospel being relayed even when Israel the nation rejected it, so NOW, Paul continues, Israel has become disobedient, that through the mercy of the one Gospel being presented to them by the very Gentiles who were once OUT, they might come IN once again. It is one Gospel, one faith, one inclusion zone, one exclusion zone, one God, one word of mercy, applicable to any, exclusive for each.

Thus ALL, being sinners, are shown up as such; and to all, God being merciful, provides ONE mercy in one glorious principle, one costly principle, shown in ONE Gospel which is the ONE way for ANY (as in Galatians 1).  From this, any who depart by plus or minus, so changing it, so far from being a SPECIAL select elect, such as some Israel with new individuality in some new formulation of old things, are merely ACCURSED. This, quite specifically,  Galatians REPEATEDLY affirms, starting notoriously in Ch. 1. Israel then has nothing new coming to it; nor has the Gentile. ALL is then fulfilled, the word and the work and the one Gospel which makes Israel, through lack of it, to wail, and the Gentile through lack of it to be all but incredibly defiled (Isaiah 65, Romans 1).

If Paul himself would be accursed if he, a Jew, preached any other, as he states, so would any other Jew who preached any other, at any time, so that if any 'millenial state' imagined, were to have such waywardness, then what would follow ? It is this, and let it be here stressed: such an imagined State, instead of being a special elect, would be especially cursed.

Indeed, the devil will try to bring in, even as the millenium progresses, a new urge and surge, and as you see in the sects, this can take almost any cheeky form and format; but this one Gospel will not budge or alter or suffer accretion or decrement as in Galatians. Indeed, it is in this same Christ in this same Gospel, that there is neither Jew nor Gentile, and all things (Ephesians 1:10) are to be gathered together in ONE in this same Jesus Christ.

Thus the REPLACEMENT THEOLOGY, a useful taunt perhaps to those who imagine that God will NOT honour His promises to Israel (including that in Jeremiah 3:16 where the very sources of Old Testament worship will not come to MIND, and where the sacrifice of a lamb would then, because of Calvary, be as breaking the neck of a DOG - Isaiah 66), moves into realms as ridiculously off-beat as amillenialism. It becomes as far out from the word of God as if, on the other hand,  God there forgot what He said in Revelation 20, to say no more. You simply ignore the parameters of the road of faith and holiness, laid down in the word of God, this way or that.

The idea of removing from Israel its carefully painted part in things, both in coming and going and coming back, defined in Romans 11,  is as monstrous as that of improving on things, and granting it SOMETHING MORE. This is DEFACEMENT THEOLOGY, which impacts negatively on the Gospel of the Grace of God, with neither Jew nor Gentile headquarters and pre-eminence or pride, neither change nor moderation permitted, its distinctness as stated by Paul in Galatians intact in its integrity, with no combination, no permutation, no nice little history of Gentile and Jew anything but a romance of unity AFTER their return to the Lord to receive Him as crucified for their sin, as in Zechariah 12:10.

It is this same tendency to swing like some ape on a vine, from extreme to extreme, which defiles theology again and again, throughout history, each inventing for its side, some defiling tag, some sour distaste. Yet tags and truth are not as one!

Thus does it come about that the universal principles which are so clearly traced, are ignored, and some symbolism which MUST be interpreted in those terms, is left as if a witless extravaganza, while its message is not applied. Replacement of Israel by the Church as it stays outside in the Age of the Gentiles, is indeed a foolish failure to see the specificity of scripture. Replacement of the Church in its 'age',  by an Israel which loiters around on earth after the wedding in heaven, which brings ALL the saints back with the Lord, is just as bad. If the symbolism of Zechariah 14 is made to continue past its due date, instead of being interpreted as to its meaning by the ineluctable biblical principles of New Testament pre-eminence in the crucified and risen Christ,  and no return to the obsolete, that is so much the worse, the more morbid and mordant misuse of Covenantal times and purposes.

In each case, what God specifies, man denies. Displacement of the overall inclusiveness and exclusiveness of the Gospel in every way, when in fact, the Jew back, the tree being one, it is for all: this becomes violation of the most fundamental principle.

The agony of Christ becomes extended, in such a position, His pervasive pre-eminence as all things are gathered together in one to Him (Ephesians 1:10, Colossians 1:17-18, Ephesians 1:19-22), becoming a subject of reversionary recidivism of precisely the type assailed in Hebrews (cf. Glory, Vainglory and Goodness Ch. 7, *2). The Gospel can become obsolete instead of the Old Covenantal symbols (Hebrews 8:13) and the paraphernalia which pointed to Christ can be restored in a gamut of disgrace which parallels the Seventh Day Adventist harrowing of the Day of Rest, so that it falls back to the creation selection, and ignores the greatest work of all of God, from which the rest came with far more agony, that of the Cross.

Defacement theology is appalling, replacement theology is short-sighted. The Bible endorses neither, each stuffing the folds of flabby philosophical ideas into the elegant and controlling word of God, and neither doing anything like justice to the entire depiction found there. It is that sad case, of extremism, where tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee fight away, to no point or effect. Textual care is needed, not vaunting -isms, partial and then inflated.

The age of Israel was noted in Romans 11, before their cutting out. The age of Gentiles is noted in Romans 11, in their grafting in. It is simple, profound, explicit, clear, without possibility of confusion or addition or subtraction. It is specified. The restoration of Israel to the tree from which it was cut out is occasion for rejoicing not in diversity, but in unity, not in extensions of what is foregone (Zechariah 11) in blessing, reviled, ruined, blindly ignored in its fulfilment, but precisely in return to the reality which was ignored (Zechariah 12:10ff.), without which there is nothing.

Those are the two authorised phases, stages, and there is the partition. Then it goes, and Paul exults.

THUS the awakening of Israel, removal of its ophthalmic failure, anointing of eyes not only with sight, but with the sight to FAITH of the atoning death of Christ is specified.

Thus Paul speaks of the two phases, Jew in, Gentile out, Gentile in, Israel out, followed by the restoration of Israel, like life from the dead (Romans 11:15), and praises God for the unification following diversity and so the consummatory wonder of the grand plan which having abased all, in stages, Jew and Gentile, then restores all. Will we build another skyscraper on top of the appointed one which is consummatory, in order to exalt the builder ? The builder is God, and here is the end in a unity which only provocation of the divine, can breach.

Now  none is proud, or capable of being taking pride in separable specificity of holiness, none higher, each having suffered and learned: for all is restored both to God and to one another in Him, in parity of total grace, with all merit and power, glory and composure of Him, who at infinite cost made this one way to ANY place in His side at all.

It is ONE mercy on all in the precincts of ONE tree, to which ALL come. Thus the exhibit is this: there are two sets of people involved in this symbolically in this one arboreal basis. It has symbolism and reality both, reaching on to the fulfilments of the former in the totality of the latter, as shown so distinctively in Hebrews 7-10, where substance replaces shadow in Christ's atonement.  How great is the God in whom are all things, from whom all comes, to whom is glory forever! Such is the spiritual surge witnessed through Paul in Romans 11.

THE LITERAL LITTORAL AND THE SURGING SEA:
EXERCISES IN PRECISION

To try to submerge Israel, when apart and in time to be seen returning, into another name for the Church is precisely, as shown in SMR Appendix A, to ignore context and the precision and distinctiveness of the word of God, and violate definitions in repeated biblical contexts. To make Israel however EMERGE from this exclusion into SOMETHING more or other than the Gospel of Jesus Christ as specified once and for all in Galatians for example, or with more distinctive operating modelling, when all is spelled out with definitiveness completeness: this is as literalist in folly as is the amillenialist allegorical in imaginative insurgence. It is not the literal or the symbolical which is THE interpretation, but as in all literature, the index from context of what is literal and hat is not.

Neither approach as a theory of interpretation is possible in any literature at any time, or comprehension would become a thing of the past. You study the word of God and give yourself to it, not to some philosophy imposed from without.

Almost amusingly, if the allegorical lack of faith, which imposed an idea of non-specificity into poor old scripture, on the part of the godless theories of the Liberals, is back at some distance from amillenialism, then is the impassioned surge of opinion the spoliage of the full replacement theologian, which does not heed the excisions, exclusions and insistences of the word of God on its own understanding. Each must take what is given, where it is given, in terms of the internal principles of scripture, not external formulations, either in reactionary insistences on what is in fact symbolic, or in intrusive assertions, against what is definably literal from the context.

As to the former, it is to add to the word of God, contradict it, ignore the fact that symbol to substance is the movement in this field as specified in Hebrews, and to have all things NOT gathered in one in Christ, but in two. As to the latter, it is to subtract from the word of God, and to ignore that what is definably and precisely imposed in a context, stands.

But we move now to the former, the replacement-displacement problem, giving new realms to Israel's day of grace, for it alone.

It is a ridiculous assertion, founded on excision of principle, as shown above. It is appalling to find such things appearing in Israel My Glory in the  May-June 2007 issue. This magazine has done some truly excellent work on Israel, but

	dispensationalism in this or any other form
	is merely the brother in arms of amillenialism,
	and its fight against replacement theology - a just one in its direction,  definitionally in the context of the Gospel -
	is as excellent in direction,
	as is foolish its extension of the militancy to make some other Gospel,
	or exhibition of Gospel,
	some other phase, some other Israel, some new place for pride and distinctiveness OUTSIDE the SAME Gospel in the SAME setting for the SAME ONE body of Christ into which, in being restored to their tree, grafted in again as Paul puts it, a tree now consummated into its final format, they then come to stand.

What then do we find ?

Let us then avoid the displacement of Israel into the Church in symbols, where the contexts demand this as shown in SMR Appendix A; and thus cease imagining that God has aborted His highly specific promises. That is the just aspect of the war on replacement theology. Let us equally avoid the defacement of the Gospel, and of the specific contextual definitions and terms concerning Israel AFTER she returns to the SAME faith in the SAME tree as base, in the SAME way as the Gentiles found their place. She was a lead in; the Gospel is the finality of Hebrews magnificent emphasis. Gentiles were then led in. Israel in shame and disgrace, eaten up by that same Christ crucified who prayed for those who slew Him, is then led back in. End of story.

No glory is permitted, and the follies of Romanist gloryings in the papacy (as in SMR pp. 912ff., 950ff.), is no exemplar for any follies of coming glory for Israel. NONE is available; only that in the LORD, for NONE shall be glorified in that day, but He (Isaiah 2). All have failed to the point of horror; let us have for pride no tomorrow.

Yet if some do, it is excluded, and the false glory becomes active shame. Meanwhile, as noted, this separatedness for some coming Israel back in, it is all too apt to be a residual part of a flesh which WILL not, even now, repent in oblivion of claim in the wonder of His name, and be content to be in His one body, undefiled by grace's pardon, and guilt's removal. As for any glory BEFORE they are back in, they are defined as BLIND in Romans 11, before this action of the Almighty, and there is no glory in being blind, spiritually. As for any after it, they are then submerged in the Gospel, and though God may indeed act territorially in their defence, and will in His own time do this assuredly (as in Micah 7:15ff., Isaiah 66), there is no spiritual place except IN Christ, nor any change in any part or portion, segment or field in the Gospel.

WHY, Paul queries, did Israel go ? Lack of faith. HOW, did the Gentile contingent come ? Presence of faith. WHAT could happen to some there ? Removal for the same reason that removed Israel, a lack of faith coming into the hearts of some. What then ? Jew or Gentile OUT for lack of faith, AS THE CASE ARISES. Jew or Gentile IN through faith, as the time comes. Into what ? into the same tree. What is the tree ? It is the entirety of the word of God in practical application to live, the living in God on His appointed revelatory nexus. What is the Gospel ? In Christ, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. To what does the Jew then come ? To that same Gospel into which the Gentile came.

How can this be readily misunderstood by misled minds ? In this way: It may be imagined that the tree IS Jewish and hence they have a better claim. Wrong. It is DIVINE, and Jew and Gentile, used now in this way and now in that, relate as faith operates, to the same tree, in and out, cut and graft, by GOD to GOD's tree.

STEALING GLORY IS PASSE

What is this idea of making the Jew to have another 'go' in some religiously significant spiritual fashion ? It is an endeavour to sequester the tree, as much asking for divine punishment as any other divorce from the ONE reality which Paul is at such pains to identify in Romans 9-11.

Jew and Gentile alike rebelled, alike were used, alike must be humbled, alike must come back, alike must receive what NEITHER in themselves earned, but what EITHER must take as  GIFT, the very same gift from God (Romans 6:23, Ephesians 2:1-10). That is the spiritual situation most clearly. If the  Gentile then despises the Jew (as in  past pogroms and Auschwitz), he does not understand that the Jew has a future. If the Jew in the same period despises the Gentile (Church, refusing to accredit it or credit the Messiah which it centres on in focus), then it does not understand the very God who called the Gentile on the SAME basis to the same glory in the unchanging Lord.

Indeed, Isaiah 30, on the one hand, and 65:13-15 on the other, make it startlingly clear that the Jew has NO claim on God, having forfeited everything, and is ready to inherit cursing, while the servants of God sing and rejoice. The thing is as pointed in contrast as one could possibly be. For ever and ever, says Isaiah, write that this is a rebellious people.

When they return, there is NO credit balance. They are vindicated against Gentile exclusion of their relevance, for God undertook to return them to their land and to the Lord in great and sudden action near the end of the Age; but they are not vindicated against God, before whom they have been a fabulously rebellious people. Their precious individuality has moved to such horrific defiance of the living God that they slew Him and for some 2000 years AS A NATION (only regaining that status in 1948 as predicted, suddenly - Isaiah 66:8), that it is lost as a teaching medium or salient spirituality. It is all one in Christ.

Were the Gentiles better ? Read Romans 1 - by no means. Were they worse ? How would it be possible - killing the Messiah. Did they gain in this then ? They put up idols in their hearts (Ezekiel 14), just as did Israel, and their painfully lapsing theologies were crucifying Christ afresh as much as Israel the first time.

When then ? ALL failed, ALL are brought back, elect from both segments. There is no glory in anyl only the glory of Christ in all. The Gentiles were without God, with a covenant as Paul reveals in Ephesians 2:12, and the Jews forsook the God who had called them. They became an exhibit indeed, in this pre-reconciliation mode, a hissing and a taunt as foretold; and in their return, amazing, sudden, fast, after so long, they again act as foretold. While some try to exterminate them as a people, God has other plans and acts with a vigour correlative with that of the Exodus days! (Micah 7:15ff., Deuteronomy 32, Isaiah 66).

When however, spiritually, they are back, the saga of separation is over, and all are one in Christ Jesus. The amillenialist tends to short-circuit the procedure divinely spelt out; the reactionary replacement theologian to add on to what is finally cut off. God however is neither unreliable or subject to human duress, when people ignore His stated principles and insist on this or that mode of interpretation, instead of the precisely contextual in the principial basis provided.

As to the reality however: All fail in all, and all are brought in by ONE who in ONE mercy in ONE unalterable Gospel has made it ONE stage restoration, one stop shop, for all. Glory is in Christ alone (Galatians 6:14), the Lord only, and His vindications are His victories, in which we all participate in the one Gospel of the one grace of the only God.

That is the Biblical depiction. Replacement theology is right in part, criticising displacement of context. It is wrong in part, adding to the biblical exclusion. It is like a car which, being started, on a hill, because of a flat batter, not only goes, but careers done the hill to its destruction. Once the car starts, you have to consult the map, the Bible, and stop when it stops, start when it starts.

Thus we see the see-saw process which in history has been so deplorable in so much. Thus you see the need in this field no less than in all the other cases, to recover the "islands". It is necessary for each divorced and extreme island to come back to the mainland, where reality and principle alike reign, and where literalistic follies, ignoring the means for interpreting symbols GIVEN in the Bible, seem to strut, just as allegorical follies, ignoring the specificity of definition in the scripture in dealing with practical realities, have appear to parade. It is all pride in human invention.

It is all either off the keys of the piano of scripture, playing some guitar of its own, or adding to the octaves, in some new musical instrument of its own.

Let us however return to the scenes and scenario which we were tracing together.

As to "the mark of the beast", the thralldom of Babylon, yes "mystery Babylon" (Revelation 17:5,20:4 and see The Kingdom of Heaven, Ch. 9, pp. 183ff., Biblical Blessings, Ch.2, pp. 19-26 and Barbs, Arrows and Balms 20. pp. 150-152): that great deception throughout the ages, brought to its pustular head in the great tribulation, has ever been rejected by His own, and in her is found "the blood of prophets and saints" (Revelation 19:24). Many are those who have rejected his mark, in many climes and times. Sore is the test at the end, but it is not different in kind, spiritually, from the challenges which went before. The crescendo nevertheless is reached.

War erupts (Zechariah 12, Ezekiel 39), Israel is challenged: though returned. Chastened (Ezekiel 36-37 cf. The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, Appendix A),  though many in it now embrace heartily the Lord, it is set for a profound change within the nation. Yet the tide of events, already militarily stupendous (Zechariah 12),  will turn far more. Then, complexity is replaced with simplicity.  History is fulfilled, its stubborn resistances subdued, its primal tests complete. The disjunction is past. Israel is delivered (Zechariah 12, Romans 11:25ff.) first in a vast mass of individuals by the Spirit of God (Zechariah 12:10), then in divine interposition of physical dimensions, on behalf of the nation (Ezekiel 39, Zechariah 12:9) - at a time in the very midst of this spiritual awakening of Zech. 12:10. One Gospel, as given in Isaiah 52-53, has one company.

Then will all the  preliminaries have yielded to the ultimates. The set time comes. The elect are removed (I Thessalonians 4, Matthew 24:29-31). The war against God becomes highly express and explicit. Subtlety is past (Revelation 19:19, cf. 16:14-16).

At that time, therefore, in this great awakening comes the cue for the trumpet call attesting the arrival of the Messiah, now drawing ever closer, the ground better and better prepared in all plan and detail. Soon the trumpet shall sound and the dead be raised incorruptible (I Cor. 15:50ff.).

What CAN be shaken, now WILL be! (Hebrews 12:25-28).

We have dealt above with the "bride of Christ". Now, to change the figure to another Biblical analogy (Romans 11 - see Ch. 3 below), let us become botanical. Thus now, Christian Jew and Christian Gentile in that wisely crafted, multiply grafted single "tree", are brought together with this specifically declared, new and sudden divine access to many in Israel (cf. Zechariah 12:10ff.):  gloriously unified, as the apostle exclaims in that chapter, marvelling in the wise combinations and the complexities which yield such unity (Romans 11:33ff.). The divisions of the ages have now in substantial measure been overcome: Gentiles not chosen to be the special people, while the Jews proclaimed the testimony, at first; Jews rejected, as many as rejected Christ, until they should be brought back

	a) to their land and
	b) to their Lord, while many Gentiles come to the Lord, with now
	c) a large body of Jews in ISRAEL redeemed from their error, joined by fellow Christians with rejoicing, their eyes now opened from what Paul calls their 'blindness for a season":

ALL are there. The FAMILY is gathered. The HOUSEHOLD OF FAITH is complete.
It is this which is depicted in the prophetic scriptures, from some two and a half millenia back. God did not tarry in telling; but man has tarried in hearing. Let us reflect then.
 
 

THE UNITY IN TRUTH, THE TRUTH IN UNITY

In that great time, the features intrigue.

The "fulness of the Gentiles", the world of other nations, the period of its hegemony, its headship in Christ, its leadership during the partial blindness of Israel (Romans 11:25) is swept aside, while a new and sudden expansion, explosive and sure (cf. Zechariah 12:10) occurs in the overarching context of Christ, one and for all. It is almost like a birth. As Paul puts it:

"For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead!" (Romans 11:15).

One does not therefore exaggerate in regaling the expectant eyes with such a sight as this, at which the apostle exults -

"Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!" (Romans 11:33).
 

	Just as "you nations" are to REJOICE at the giant swath of Jews now converted to their own Christ (Deuteronomy 32:43):
	this being a work in the Gentiles, essentially indicative of the hearts of Christians in the nations, still therefore present on earth in number at this epochal change in the heart of Israel, rather than of a hostile, ruling antichrist (whose  hand is at his crisis, over the nations, who would be one appalled, together with his entourage, at the salvation scene, and far from able to 'rejoice' at such a development)  -
	SO shall this Jewish "receiving" , this Hebrew restoration SPIRITUALLY (Romans 11:25), be "life from the dead" (11:15) for the balmed eyes of their fellow Christians among the Gentiles, who are still leavening the world.

The interactive relationship first brings mercy to the Gentiles, scope for reconciliation, then superabundant joy as they return.

"Out of Zion" is their Redeemer (Romans 11:26) who now saves them (exactly as in Zechariah 12:10) through the opening of their hearts by the Holy Spirit, as there attested in their epochal return to the Lord, leading to the opening of a "fountain ... for sin and for uncleanness" in Jerusalem (Zechariah 13:1), "in that day".  Their eyes now that any come, and when so many come to such a degree of plenitude, are now open to the fundamental realities of the 'substance' in Christ, and shadows are thus discerned as past. There is NOTHING then left for Israel, any more than for any other Christian in the throng, for some revisionist restoration. The actualities have supervened, and those things, now fulfilled, are obsolete. The principles underlying have been spelt out in calamitous clarity, and shutting the eyes once more, like returning to primary school after a doctorate, is mere folly. All that becomes obsolete as Hebrews announces in Hebrews 8.

It is not gore from war that they now see, but rather the blood for washing (cf. Revelation 1:5, Zechariah 13:1), even that of Him who "washed us from our sins in His own blood";  for only later does the Christ, the Messiah come "with all the saints" (Zechariah 14:5) TO Zion, in a WHOLLY different environment of terms, deeds and impact!

There, in that final Armageddon, war seethes to an utter outcome amidst the peoples who are not collected by the Lord (I Thess.4); here, in the awakening of Israel,  peace and the means to it are the focus, peace in heart, cleansing of heart, not judgment of life. Moreover, the awakening Biblically comes in the midst of the multi-national assault on Israel (Zechariah 12:1ff., 12;10); WHILE on the other hand, the coming of the Lord IS, or involves devastating power on all those now assembled for war WITH HIM, WITH the result  destruction on almost an unimaginable scale (Revelation 19:11-21, 16:14, 19:19).
 

• In the first case, before Christ comes: it is a matter  of the Jewish awakening, local deliverance and spiritual life is the focus; and the land is to be attacked by a multi-national force (Ezekiel 38ff., cf. The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, Appendix A), one to be eradicated, while the world sagely considered God's deliverance of His people (Ezekiel 39:23ff.).

• In the second, it is an unawakened morass of unholy menace which en bloc makes war with God, with judgment the keynote. Not Israel but God is their anti-focus. Not salvation but devastation is the result, while everlasting damnation not sage thought, comes as  impelling consequence in the spiritual theatre of action. Nor is it a European based antichrist who is the focus in the assault on the Jews, but a team of nations to the North. All this has been explained in The Shadow of a Mighty Rock (SMR), but here it is for swift review. (Cf. SMR pp. 502-516, 755-836; and see also, Barbs, Arrows, Balms Items 13,17, together with The Biblical Workman Ch.3, esp. End-note 1, Biblical Blessings Appendix 1, and Ch.3 )

We were noting, then, that Christ comes with "ALL THE SAINTS", from the marriage feast, and then comes to Israel as in Zechariah 14, physically.

But HOW do all the saints relate to Him at His coming ? Like this, in the word of God: by being with Him. In what way, then, with Him ? by His coming, all the saints with Him, who had indeed as the bride of Christ just been congregated in heaven (Revelation 19).
 
 

THE INELUCTABLE, IMMUTABLE, INTRACTABLE AND GLORIOUS GOSPEL
(cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms Item 17, The Everlasting Gospel)

So Paul rejoices in the unitary comprehensiveness of the divine action (Romans 11:17,24,31-33). It is not long division but addition; not severance but success; not strange new ways, but the one way of the Gospel, the ineluctable, unimpairable, indivisible, unimprovable, immovable, final and consummate Gospel which rules with one Lord, one faith, one sacrifice, one God and Father of all, over all in Christ (Ephesians 4:4, 3:9-10, Galatians 1:6-9, Colossians 1:19-23). That is the way it is; that is the way it is going to be; and neither hell, nor devil, nor power nor force, nor plan, nor presumption, nor New Age nor Old Age will be able to do anything, anything at all about it.

God is very deep; and His depths cannot be fathomed; but what He says, He does. That is one of the things which is MOST delightful about Him. He deals straight; He acts wisely and profoundly, and does what He says (Matthew 4:4, Isaiah 55:10-11, 42:11, 44:25-26, 45:23, 60:22, Jeremiah 1:12, II Chronicles 6:10, I Kings 8:56, Joel 2:23). The very root of the Hebrew word for truth indicates faithfulness, reliability, stability, soundness, and faithful is His name. He who sat, the Word of God incarnate in Revelation, ready to act in judgment. He has a name: "Faithful and True": - THAT is HIS name! So does this magnificent quality apply in His grace to the saints also (I Thessalonians 5:24, II Thess. 3:3).

THIS God, the ONLY true God, HE has said, in Romans 11, He has specified unity and a comprehensive assemblage in the faith, through the faith, with the faith, Jew and Gentile, delivered by One, re-united in One, offspring spiritually of One, starting from One, ending with One, in One gospel and in One grace. Many are left out of both Jew and Gentile; but those who are in, this is the interior into which they come.

Accordingly, to use this supreme integrative force of Romans 11:14ff, climaxing as the chapter ends, to separate what is statedly ONE olive tree, its parts constantly interactive, is like characterising  2+2=4 as a subtraction sum!

	ALL Israel comes thus to Christ (Romans 11:26), the slow drops over the millenia, and this last vast contribution when the blindness is removed, together making the main, primary and defined reference which relates to the Jewish people and nation.
	Then, as an overflow, as Isaiah 49:3 shows the ultimate and successful Israel as Christ, that infinite, intimate Prince of God, of whom the whole Church is His one body (Ephesians 2, 4, Isaiah 26:19), there is within the total context of scriptural teaching, an overtone which fits precisely. Now we have the Jew inwardly and the Jew outwardly all together, now they are IN CHRIST, becoming composed in one vast new family.
	This is the thrust of the rest of Romans 11 in its vast fusing of polis in Greek or Hebrew, into the metropolis of Christ, a pan-biblical insistence which in this Chapter, casts its glory behind it in the biblically defined terms as all Israel is saved. Children of Abraham, taunted Christ, you are of your father, the devil. The new Israel NOW comes in the eternal Saviour, the Divine Israel, Jesus Christ, to take its place in all to whom the victory and the prevailing is given, in that promised land of Christ, the spiritual antitype in the spiritual vein.
	If the land is to unqualified certainty, for Israel, the nation (Genesis 17:7-8, cf. Galloping Events Ch. 4, SMR Ch. 9), then the land of faith, the spiritual life,  is equally surely divorced, except on entirely new terms (Isaiah 65:13-15, Isaiah 30, 49:7, Zechariah 12:10), for the Israel of GOD! as Galatians has it, entertaining a rebuke to mere racial glory, pertinacity or hope, just as Christ did (John 8).
	It cannot be too greatly emphasised that the certainty of the land equals the certainty of repudiation of all attempt to make Israel the nation have in the faith, or without faith, alike, a spiritual place that is distinct! God is as faithful in the one, the territory, which does not depend in the end, on faith, as aggressively denunciatory of the other (John 8:37-51), which does.
	It does so whether for Jew or Gentile, for in Christ all are one, and without Him, all are none.
	The tributaries are distinct enough, and each comes in its own way, Jew and Gentile, Greek or Briton, to Christ, the last sudden impact from Israel the nation, being a specific scripturally depicted effusion of the Spirit (Zech. 12), as the one Gospel reaches in this late revival, this "rebellious people" as God calls them and that "for ever and ever" (Isaiah 30:).   Yet when this is done, there is what is frequently found in the Bible, the merger of all in one Christ, here involving the literal and the figurative Israels (cf. Galatians 6:16), the latter the body which actually BELIEVES the Gospel as it is presented (as in Galatians 3 and 5), and not as simple racial descendents have it in their cultural, national mind set. They all come to the same place, the place of grace, of God as man, the Israel of God Himself, "an Israel in whom I will be glorified," Jesus Christ, that servant who did NOT fail, and IN whom and OF whom all are in the end to be named in that name above every name (Philippians2). It is He,  who as in Isaiah 41-42, is focussed and featured as apart from, diverse from, and wholly disparate in power and purity, from any and all in Israel the nation.
	It is the same in Isaiah 51:17-23, 52:7-53. The people, Israel, is exhausted for there is none to stand in the gap.
	Yet as to the Lord, the Messiah, that Israel His servant in whom He delights (Isaiah 42:1), in complete contradistinction from the national one, as to Him who is the covenant Christ (42:6), sent to the people, Israel's elect being too small a prize, for Him (49:6): what of Him ?
	He is victorious on the one hand, and gentle on the other, not even extinguishing the smoking flax (Isaiah 42). There is an Israel comprehensive in power, purity and reliability who brings forth judgment to truth!
	So is the insistence met,  on Israel the nation being kept in mind when the context defines thus, a valid point; and then again, so is the broader context of many passages of the Bible, equally met, in its thrust, perspective and use of words. We do not have to sacrifice clarity for allegory with the amillenialist (cf. SMR Appendix A); or spiritual breadth for 'literal' interpretation , as if ignorant of biblical usage and scope, as in dispensationalist divagation: realising that neither literal nor allegorical has any place, except as required by the context: as in any good writing, the warrant for meaning being firstly in the passage in view locally, and then in the word of in its totality.
	Here, that is the word of God, the Bible, in its multi-usage and diverse emphases.
	What then on the components in the family of grace, those converted or to be converted, Jew and Gentile ?
	The one does not delete the other, for each, Jew and Gentile is definitionally distinct; but when the elect of both are at last found in the Head and Captain of our salvation, following the removal of 'blindness' from Israel, both are definitionally Christian and one (Galatians 3:28). Both now are part of that one Israel, Jesus Christ, whose benign being stretches over one and all.
	To ignore the merger and His nature, is like ignoring the tributaries and their natures. Both extremes need to be modified until the totality of meaning has justice done to it. Then there is mainland peace, without insisting on some mode of interpretation from one philosophy imposed, or some other, by another philosophy exposed.

Thus, distinctness is not only in the coming TO Him, but in the BEING IN Him! The former is diverse in Jew and Gentile; the latter is naturalised into Him, visa and password, whose new seed in regeneration is the same for all, the word of God (I Peter 2, I John 3).

But HOW do all the saints relate to Him at His coming ? Like this, in the word of God: by being with Him. In what way, then, with Him ? by His coming, all the saints with Him (Zechariah 14:5, cf. Rev. 19:14, II Thessalonians 1:10), who had indeed as the bride of Christ just been congregated in heaven (Revelation 19). Maybe there will be more than those who had just been the bride of the Lamb, and  "the armies which are in heaven" who accompany Him on His return in power to earth, certainly allows for that (Revelation 14).

Nevertheless, for a work of symbolism, the thought that the fine linen which had just been the distinguishing and distinctive dress of the BRIDE (19:8), should not relate to the garb of the "armies which are in heaven" (cf. Colossians 1:20) would seem so remote as almost to be inconceivable. It is after all linked in Revelation 7:14. In other words, the linkage of marriage feast of the Lamb, to linen of the bride, to washing their clothes in the blood of the Lamb and making them white (Rev. 7); and the immediate sequence from marriage feast with garb of fine linen so fitting for the saints from former explanation in Rev. 7, to the return of Christ with all His saints (as in Zechariah), with the armies of heaven (as in Revelation) seems to exclude all thought of divorce of what God has put so intimately and closely together. The saints then, freshly equipped from their glorious homecoming when called, the dead in Christ arising first as in I Thessalonians 4, come with Christ.

As the twelve thrones for judging Israel for the apostles would seem no less to indicate, they will share with His rule (Matthew 19:28). It will not be other than spiritual, not have a gospel variant, additive, not have other glory, not the a Jew time, but specifically it is a gospel glow time, with the very church apostles judically involved!

Assuredly the form of this earth will pass away (Matthew 24:35, Isaiah 51:6), but the new heavens and new earth, the New Jerusalem, these things are all like everything else in the plan and will of God, in their place. Eternity swallows up time as victory swallows up death (Isaiah 25:8). Whatever the brilliance of the millenial vindication of Christ (cf. SMR pp. 504-515), the eternity of glory will surpass it, wherein those tents eternal in the heavens, prepared for those things as this current remarkable 'clothing' of flesh, has been created for these times, these will be the garb of glory. (II Cor. 5:1ff.). The former things will be remembered no more! (Jeremiah 3:16, Isaiah 19, 65:17), nor will they come to mind. This is wholly diverse from misconceptions that they will be prominent or dominant or functional! As well continue in an obsessive fixation on Kindergarten days, as that! We are to grow up into our Head (Ephesians 2:18-22, 4:15-16), not divide in restless desires for the body of babyhood.

For as Paul puts it, "Now therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit." Nothing could be clearer, and what dearer, nor more dearly bought by "an Israel in whom I am well pleased" (Isaiah 49:3), one from whose face the beard was torn (Isaiah 50), given "as a covenant to the people, to restore the earth" (49:8), so that "by His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many" (Isaiah 53:11), because "He shall bear  their iniquities." .

But let us return to the restoration of the king, to the Return of the Lord, and "all the saints with Thee" (Zech. 14:5). Revelation 7 has shown them in their aggregations as they arrive en scène, in the tribulation period, as history is moving in a style that poises on eternity. As to His people, they follow Him wherever He goes! (Revelation 7:17), at which we compare I Thessalonians 4:13,17 which also asserts the same as Zechariah,  in the context of His coming for His own, and their being with Him.

Who are these all, then ? Why not less than Jew and Gentile, for all are one in Christ Jesus.

So Paul rejoices in the unitary comprehensiveness of the divine action (Romans 11:17,24,11:31-33).

It is in that way then, its beauty and unity glorious in the wisdom of Him whose ways are 'past finding out' in their depth and wonder, but freely declared at His will, that the Gentiles can rejoice "WITH His people" (Deuteronomy 32:43). This, let us emphasise, they would be far from doing if His church, that which restrains through His resident and present power (II Thessalonians 2) in a hostile world alienated from the life of God (Ephesians 4:18-19), were gone. This Jewish awakening is statedly a spiritual event; His return statedly martial. The TREE to which the Jew is brought back as in Romans 11 is still on site, still ready for the grafting back of a redeemed people from Israel, and the people thus rejoice in this as in life from the dead, as the apostle declares.

The new faith (Ezekiel 37, as it is for the Jews concerned, released and now realised in the New Covenant - Ezekiel 11, Jeremiah 31:31) of so many in Israel (Romans 11:23), what of it ? The Gentiles rejoice with Israel at this development (Deuteronomy 32:43). It  would rather to the uttermost be oppressed in any antichrist period, if that were in plenary operation at the time, following the removal of the church's restraint, the Lord being with it! Yet this is not so (Ezekiel 39, Micah 7). Gentile Christians, before the 'wedding' still on earth, would indeed rejoice however! So does the work of God interlace with precision, as it is followed without human 'aid'.

No and indeed, it was to apostles in the Church setting (Matthew 18:15-19) where the apostles are to operate, that Christ spoke (Matthew 24:1-3), in designating the manner and movements to "the end" in answer to this, their question. These who had given up all and followed Him, the Christians, those who asked Him the question: they were told what was to be, and the pronoun "you" indicates clearly those to whom the Lord is referring as He develops the climax in His account of the end, leading to His own return in glory. To whom then does the Christian Church relative to the apostles refer ? Is it to Jew or Gentile ? or is it not to ALL over whom Christ as ONE head has this ONE body, in ONE wedding of ALL His bride!

Concerning the church (Matthew 18:17), He gives current command for His will with His own; and concerning His people, He gives repeatedly, a coverage of what is to be (as in John 15:18-20, Matthew 24:23), right into the teeth of the rambunctious gale to blow in the tribulation.

In the Church, which is His body (the fulness of Him who fills all in all - Ephesians 1:23), there is neither Jew nor Greek (Galatians 3:26-29); and it is to His Christian representatives, that He spoke in answer to their question concerning the last times of the church, on earth, that for which formulation and command was already given (Matthew 24:1-2). Thus His words use to them, the significant adjective "your" , right up to verse 20. HE is telling these things to HIS people with HIS chosen representatives for this HIS Church, HIS one body (He is not equipped with two, for that would not be an incarnation but a multiplication, and He was made "like His brethren" in format - Hebrews 2:9-14). It was "fitting" that it be so, says the word of God.

Indeed,  in verse 22, it is "the elect" as between God in heaven and man on earth, not some of them, that category accordingly which is in view for whose sake the days of the great tribulation are to be shortened, but not annulled (Matthew 24:22) in that great tribulation JUST ANNOUNCED in verse 21! These go. To make partitive what God makes categorical is merely to defile if not defy the word of God. That is why when He returns, as both Old and New Testament straightly avow, it is with ALL His saints, in that very fulness of completion,  complementarity and unity of which Paul speaks in Romans 11. It is this which is the result on earth, of the glorious restoration SPIRITUALLY within Israel the nation in one vast swathe swept like grain, into His containment, as the apostle shows, and not some anomalous displacement and division.

In Matthew 24:26, past the announcement of the great tribulation, we even find "you " again is used, leading up to His magnificent, public, undisguisable appearing, His return itself, for His elect (Matthew 24:27-28). The kingdom is one, not two, and the church likewise, one body, one Lord, one baptism, one God and Creator of all (Ephesians 4:4). Accordingly, Christ is not describing something else, but the place of those represented by apostles, moving right up to His manifest appearing like lightning from East to West across the sky (24:26-27). These do not exclude His various and varied accretions and accumulations, but include all.

This coming too is distinguished from any private performance, and is used as a basis for NOT BELIEVING anything such, in Matthew 24:26-27. Indeed, here is the vast spiritual phenomenon of the dead in Christ from all ages and the living, in one total aggregation being brought to glory (I Thessalonians 4). The thought of omitting a segment in such a plenary session of past and present, at His coming, would be like publishing a book, and forgetting it had two volumes. Here is the unremitting divine insistence on unifying summation, and disavowal of divisive dissonance or particularistic partition as in Revelation 5. The crucial issue is Christ, is the New Covenant, is the completion, is all one in Christ Jesus, is God summing up all things in one in Christ (Ephesians 1:10). This is for the fulness of times, as the times of the Gentiles pass (Luke 21:24 with Jerusalem back with Israel), and consummation explodes.

To make all equal some, one of two portions, in these vast settings of introduction to eternity for the people of God, or to make some superior or diversified in racial kind, eminence of location, this would be to add to the word of God in categorical form. Far less would it be so in view of Isaiah 30. Of the partitions of pride or pre-eminence there is in the end,  ZERO as Christ made so clear to James and John, and indeed all, in Mark 10's report!

It is necessary to keep within its confines, narrow when they are narrow, broad when broad. If any out of due season oddity come later, this is scarcely the body itself, but merely as with the apostle Paul, some final finding. Yet even that is not sure. It is the totality which is in view in these constructions of the day of glorious recovery of sinners to the wedding of the Saviour to them, and in their recall to Him, the elect, and surging forth with Him, the same saints. Are those to be wedded to lack one summary and conspicuous portion, before all the saints come with Him! (Revelation 19:8ff.). Are brides exported by container ships at various dates!

Lightning across the sky from East to West is of course, and contextually this is emphasised, about as public an event as anyone could wish or describe, as undifferentiated and celestial occurrence as might be even imagined. For whom, then, is this: those summarily referred to as "the elect" - precisely as shown in the olive tree case (cf. End-note 1, in Chapter 3, below), a unified category in the presence of the Redeemer, mingled in common historical site with the Jewish remnant, now grafted back in. The elect and all the saints are correlatives. The olive tree is not in heaven when the Jews come back into it on earth! (Romans  11). Thus the times of the Gentiles are to be fulfilled before the tribulation is well into its finale (Luke 21:24ff.), and before the rapture (Luke 21:34ff.).

Earth remains home for all, well after the Gentile time is finished (21:24). Well before the return of Christ to the Mount of Olives (Zechariah 14:5), the Jewish nation is enlightened (Zechariah 12:19-13:1), in preparation for ALL the saints to come with Him. In His victorious return with His saints, He does not pick up a magnitude more on the way, still loitering in unnoticed wars, and supposedly just converted, but comes with ALL. If there is a saint anywhere, it is with THIS one that He comes from heaven with His armies. When all means some, and bride means arm or leg, the matter might need more thought. As it is, it needs more recognition. The divine movements are swift, decisive, categorical, defined by Himself, as in the creation, which first sets up the nature of time in its 'clock' and then specifies how many of that unit it took to act.

Creation and restoration, creation and confrontation, curse and salvation, bride and beast, all are exceedingly clear. When the act comes, it is sudden; when it is waiting for its time, like actors in the wings, it must abide (as in II Peter 3:9). The day of Christ, said Paul in II Thess. 2:1ff. is NOT impending, and to imagine the contrary was corruptive. MANY things, he proceeded, had to happen first, including the completion of the historical outline of the working of the 'mystery of iniquity'. When however these things cited by Matthew, Mark and Luke come in pattern together, it IS near, and as in the incarnation, God moves from the unseen to the seen in His own unique manner. NOTHING stops it, or dopes it, or qualifies it.

But let us return to Revelation 19, and watch the development as the Lord, who comes with all His saints (II Thessalonians 1:10, I Thessalonians 3:13, Zechariah 14:5 and Romans 11 as above), revisits with His now received bride, the earth which was the scene of His crucifixion. It is macabre, but realistic to the destinies to which men move, that the feast for the birds of prey is immediately subsequent to this blessed feast of the Lamb in heaven; for the abstraction, the removal of His own, Jew and Gentile, for there is no difference in Christ, removes "that which restrains", that is the power of the Lord present and resident in inhibition THROUGH His saints (II Thessalonians 2:7ff.).

There is a WORLD of difference upon their removal to THEIR feast, and there is a world in chaos, left to slug it out in its array, gathered (Rev. 16:14), "to the battle of that great day of God Almighty". It is then that they -