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CHAPTER FOUR

THE TIME OF TRANSITION,

JOY AND WRATH TO THE UTTERMOST:

THE ONE FREELY GIVEN,

but

THE OTHER GAINED WITH MUCH LABOUR

AWESOME ACTIONS OF THE LIVING GOD 2

ACTS 13.

THE RINGING, STINGING SPEECH OF PAUL

AND THE ERUPTIONS FOLLOWING

Paul, given the place of apostle to the Gentiles from the time of his conversion from ruthless persecutor of Christians, with the same sort of concentrated zest one often sees in those resisting the truth and living the lie (II Thess. 2:4-10), had been prepared from that famed Damascus road dazzlement that led to no doubt at all, but active engagement for Christ, had had a period of reflection and rebuilding (Galatians 1-2), and found by Barnabus, in his compassionate and pitiful heart, was brought soon to action for Christ.

Having so stirred the people of Damascus that he escaped via a basket let down from a wall-house, Paul sought the Lord and was apart from authorities in Jerusalem for three years, amid what appear to have been wild tribes in Arabia. From there he returned, perhaps by now an experienced preacher to Jerusalem, where the kindly heart and discerning mind of spiritually active Barnabus helped to give confidence to other Christians that Paul was no spy, but convicted, convinced and converted to Jesus Christ. He was received cordially by those in charge in Jerusalem (Acts 9:26-30).Many of the apostles at that time may have been at work in the field or scattered in persecutions as begun in the events of Acts 3-4, and made more rigorous as in Acts 12, and notable in Acts 11:19. He did however see Peter and James.

The cordiality however did not include those Jews incensed, it appears, but his change from vigorous, punitive prosecutor of Christians, to zealot amid the apostles, so once more they tried to kill him, and what a gap might have come, if they had succeeded. But God always succeeds with His plans, and having made plain what He wanted (Acts 9:15).

In Antioch, prayer was held in dire petition from God, for direction by some gathered, and it was found that Paul and Barnabus had been appointed, were to be anointed by God as missionaries, and off they went with dynamic results where the power of God to heal and reveal were eminently shown (Acts 13-14). While these things transpired, a group to be known as the circumcisionists became vocal and influential to the point that Paul determined to have the matter reviewed in Jerusalem. IF as they insisted, one HAD to be circumcised as a Christian (and many of the Gentiles, Paul's special apostolic domain, would NOT have been, making it an issue both physically and socially, as well as morally and spiritually), then was this not a part of the ceremonial law, that of the former covenant, specific to Israel, and not at all relevant to the wider domain of the Gentiles! If this were to become established, where would it end, with the law for Israel with its many symbolisms becoming a domain for all.

It is one thing to prepare for a baby to come in the house; it is quite another when it is there. What may have been excellent preparation (and in this case, was as in Romans 7), requires development when the child arrives, that is the Lord, the Messiah with the Gospel of free salvation in His name.

The Gospel was not to the Jew only, but to the Gentile, and not in the name of Abraham, but of Christ.

In Jerusalem (Acts 15), this was established when Paul and Barnabus went there to confront the issue and present data to those concerned. Indeed, in retrospect, Barnabus who seems to have done more than help him in his initial visit to Jerusalem after three years, and before that Council in Jerusalem, for he had also gone to find him in Tarsus, his native city, following the initial stay in Jerusalem (Acts 9:26ff.), so that he might work in harness with him, for many had been scattered after the events of Stephen's slaughter.

Indeed, following a donation for famine mission (Acts 11:27-30), in terms of which Barnabus and Paul were sent to Judea (Acts 12:25), there had been prayer in the Antioch Church and the Holy Spirit persuaded them to send them out as missionaries of the Gospel. There had been quite a specialised aggregation of workers in this Antioch, and this outreach became recognised and a sense of mandate arose in their midst for those two evangelists.

It was in due course in their journeys, in another Antioch, that in the region of Pisidia, to the North, that the speech was made to the Jews, following testimony in the synagogue.

This made something of a type of pattern, as first urging and arguing in the synagogue, then arousing widespread interest, the apostles found great Gentile interest in the revelation there made, and social upsets occurred with surprising results: but perhaps not SO surprising in view of the lethal condemnation of Jesus, the martyrdom of Stephen and the guile and defilement of the priestly party which had not celebrated but crucified their Lord, and ostensible Employer.

We look now at Paul's speech in this Northern Antioch, and some of the remarkable results of it, both practical and for the mission.

THE SPEECH

There were three especially significant aspects of this speech. First there was relative to Israel, the review of THE EGYPTIAN SAGA TO THE MESSIAH, then that of THE MESSIAH TO THE RESULTS, applied both positively and negatively, and then came THE RESULT TO THE REACTION! Like a building, the speech was not only a matter of something done, but it involved what followed. With the building, it is a house to live in, for good or for ill. With the speech, it awakened hearts for good or ill, and these went on to be lived in ...

I THE BARE FACTS

1) COMMENCEMENT IN EGYPT TO KING IN ISRAEL

Acts 13:17-22

Paul traces the record of Israel from its oppression in Egypt till the King Saul, of sad note. Following the Exodus, for some 40 years He "put up with their ways" in the wilderness, and when He had destroyed 7 nations in Canaan, He made a land distribution to them by allotment. Unfortunately both the AV and the NKJV, but not the ASV or the Berkeley versions, make the error of taking the reference to the time within which this had occurred, some 450 years, as if it came after

The NASV, duly covering Egypt, 400 years, and the Exodus (13:17-18), proceeds:

§"And when He had destroyed seven nations
in the land of Canaan,
He distributed their land as an inheritance -
all of which took about four hundred and fifty years.
And after these things He gave them judges
until Samuel the prophet."

The Berkeley Version translates similarly.

The time noted for Israel’s period in Egypt was 400 years (Genesis 15:13), the wilderness 40, and a little time was needed from Egypt to the failure to enter the land, as in Numbers 14, while Joshua, who began his military entry at a late age, proceeded for a small number of years to the allocation of the tribal lands. That is seen late in the book of Joshua, and anticipated in Numbers 33:54. It is a matter of some 450 years. This fits both grammatically, as we shall see, covering all the data both aptly and well, and historically as an approximation, which it statedly is.

The Majority Greek text has, literally: "And having destroyed seven nations in the land of Canaan, He distributed their land to them as inheritance. And after these things, in about four hundred and fifty years, He gave them judges until Samuel the prophet."

Thus the Greek text does not have the word order of the NKJV. It does not SAY after that He gave them judges for about 450 years, but after these things in about 450 years, He gave them judges. Why alter it ? This is a summary, time for what had just passed, not simply another duration. It is fine just as it is. Grammatically there is a difference in the way the 40 years are written and the way the 450 are given. The 40 is a matter of duration (accusative is used), but the 450 is set with another case (dative), specifying time within which, so that it was within about 450 years that the events just noted occurred, namely the early history of Israel from Egypt to its settlement in the land. After this, judges ruled till the major point to come, Samuel who would anoint David as King.

It is not wise to ignore grammatical change of case in a varied series of references to time. It is as if for a doctor there were a change in inflammation, and one simply ignored it, or for a mechanic, a change in engine noise, and one was listless about it. It is not put there, except for understanding. It is most understandable and also correct, as an approximation, about 450 years as the time within which there occurred the varied assortment of events from the stay in Egypt to the day of possession in their promised land. It was here, after the judges that Samuel, came, and so David and so the forecast of the Messiah.

That is the logical flow of Paul's speech. It is land of slavery to land of possession, about 450 years, judges as an interim, and then Samuel, David and the Messiah which is highlighted and indicated in the text. Neither changing the word order not ignoring the grammar is to the point. Otherwise, why write!

2) PROMISE FROM DAVID'S DAY TO MESSIAH

Acts 13:22-24

Saul, the king removed, is first noted, in the kingdom years, and then David, a man of God's own heart, as He stated, who was commissioned for an exacting and exact task. In a promise, God declared then that from His line there would come the Messiah: this was to be the human receptacle for the sublime work of incarnated the Messiah. This is seen in Psalm 16, 22, 40, 72, 89:13-27, 110, Isaiah 11, 54, II Samuel 7. This was in fact to be the One who, dispensing with sacrifice, came to deliver in the body prepared for Him in this descent to the earth from the celestial realm. There is no dispensing with sacrifice (Hebrews 9:22), this One becoming that very thing, so redeeming; and as to Redeemer, there is but One (Isaiah 44:6), the Lord.

Small wonder then that Paul in his preaching to those at Pisidian Antioch, declared this (13:23): "From this man's seed, according to the promise, God raised up for Israel a Saviour - Jesus..." So also was the promise in Isaiah 11, 7 and 9, 53-55.

When the time came, Paul

3) THE PROMISED SON OF DAVID HAS COME

AND WITH HIM SALVATION AS FORETOLD

Acts 13:25-31

Not John but Jesus was the Christ, emphatically attested by John, not finding himself worthy even to attend to Christ's sandals. , and Paul explains that thus to those listening then to him, "the word of this salvation has been sent." The prophets specifying the identikit for the Messiah to come, gave the lead, the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem killed Him as foretold, then placed in a tomb, He would not stay ground-ridden, so that for long He was seen by many witnesses

4) FROM THE RECENT PAST
THIS HAS BECOME READILY AVAILABLE

Acts 13:26

Paul explains that thus to those listening then to him, descendants of Abraham, through the lineage he has just traced, "to you the word of this salvation has been sent."

5) THE PROMISE MADE TO ISRAEL IS FULFILLED
IN THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST

Acts 13:27-33

The prophets specifying the identikit for the Messiah to come, gave the lead, the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem killed Him as foretold, then placed Him in a tomb. The Messiah however, would not stay ground-ridden, for God raised Him from the dead, so that for long He was seen by many witnesses. This has fulfilled the promise, the sublime premiss for the fathers, of the Lord of glory becoming man and sacrificial Saviour.

6) KING DAVID ON THIS SPOKE
OF CHRIST TO COME AND NOT OF HIMSELF

Acts 13:34-37

This resurrection is as foretold in Psalm 2, where the One whom the nations sought to throw away, cast out, defy and reject, was brought from the ground of death, which became like a womb for resurrection: that was how it was THIS day, after so long a time both in life and in conflict, that God 'begot' Him. This, said Paul, is what has now happened. Moreover it is, he declared, as in Isaiah 54 where "I will give you the sure mercies of David," concentrates the same point; for there the reference is for the One to come who is leader and commander, and fulfilment of the Covenant, all three; and indeed more also. There, Paul pursued it, is the fulfilment of Psalm 16: HIS BODY WILL NOT ROT! So it was to be; so it is, he asseverated.

David ? His body indeed rotted, but not the body of the One whose mighty work he predicted.

2 CONSEQUENCES, REMORSELESS OR REMEDIAL

1) FIRSTLY, TO THEM IS PREACHED THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS

Acts 13:38-39

THEREFORE, he continued in sequence, through Him for you there is available forgiveness of sins. Believers in Him are JUSTIFIED, he pointed out, using the prophecy of Isaiah at 53:11, where following His death, He is to JUSTIFY MANY.

Just how well known Isaiah was at this time, is shown not only from the Dead Sea Scrolls, but from the Ethiopian Eunuch's use of it, following a visit to Israel, and Philip's ready use of it to preach Jesus the Saviour (Acts 8).

2) FIBRILLATION AND FIASCO

Acts 13:41

It is not mere joy however; it is an operation which may be rejected. It is always rather attractive to see reasons for NOT having an operation, since it may be dangerous to health, life and contentment. However, its absence is often fatal. Paul has given reason, and if they reject the work of Jesus Christ, His anointing, His power, His works, His predicted place, His fulfiment of it, the wonder of the gift involved, then there are consequences. He cites Habakkuk 1:5.

"Beware, you who despise, he proclaimed, "for the Lord will work a work in your days, one you would not believe though one declared it to you." Already Paul is probing, and this text is a potential rebuke.

This is of course as in Isaiah 53:1, "Who has believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed." Habakkuk at once speaks of the first coming, that of Babylon as a rebuke and destruction of a people chronically given to severing sins distancing from the glory of God, disloyalty indeed; but in Joel 3, we see the core of the presentation. There the particular, the coming invasion, becomes the judgment for the whole earth: it is entree, that is the main course, to answer the prophet's lament.

The Lord will come WITH HIS MESSIAH in the end, after all the trials which had so distressed Habakkuk, and bring judgment to those who oppose truth and justice, and HE WILL BRING SALVATION. Neither do the wicked stand forever in their fat complacency and injustice, nor do the righteous fail to find deliverance.

3) RAGING AND NON-REPENTANCE

Acts 13:42-46

Jews were impressed, but only some, and Gentiles were avid to hear, so that on the next Sabbath a vast congregation was there. Many of the Jews however became envious of the scope of interest by Gentiles, not a special people, and now openly courted. Blaspheming, they brought something of the spirit of the priestly party in Jerusalem to this city of the North.

Paul then gave his second warning. It was necessary that the Gospel be preached first to you, he declared, for they as the people God anointed for His coming and salvation, vastly used in it, were not to be denied. But since, he continued, you judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life (an emphasis which many need to ponder, for it is most just, as in John 3:19), "we turn to the Gentiles."

4) THUS, TWO WARNINGS, NEITHER HEEDED

Acts 13:41,47

Beware lest this happen to you, he had cited from Habakkuk, and now, using Isaiah 49:6, he reminds them that the Bible itself has appointed a place to those with whom they were now contending in their own unbelief, those self-same Gentiles.

Citing Isaiah 49:6, he showed that this was a domain for the Messiah, and would now be pursued. By turning away, those of the Jews who so resisted, gained nothing but their own rejection. As for the nation, this has continued to be the situation ever since; though it is true that God has, as in Romans 11 and Ezekiel 36-37, major restoration on the basis of the same Messiah whom they had rejected.

5) GLAD GENTILES AND ERUPTIVE JEWS

Acts 13:46-49

Luke, used by God for the Book of Acts, then indicates that Gentiles were glad at this outreach to themselves, and that "as many as had been appointed to eternal life, believed." This is the other side of the matter. Not only does man reject God, as foreknown to God and often shown in history, but the entire matter is under divine control, so that not one whit of man's sinful will is involved in the positive selection of God.

It is before time and apart from works that man is chosen in the foreknowledge of God, in terms of the principles such as John 3:16-17 and Colossians 1:19ff.. The result of the seeking of God, of the predestination which logically FOLLOWED this divine foreknowledge, is quite certain. A person then is either appointed or not; and those who are not, are precisely those who show it when exposed to the truth, their underlying desires well understood by the God who made them, before any sin eroded their competence or marred their very image past functional capacity.

6) BUT JEW OR GENTILES,
SOME WERE APPOINTED TO SALVATION

Acts 13:48-52 with 13:43

There are thus two elements. One may rest in the assurance that it is neither a matter of one's own will (cf. Romans 9:1-3), or that of men in their sin, this salvation. God has appointed 1) the salvation as fitting for all, for whom He has desire; 2) those whom His love finds in His foreknowledge, wrought in terms of the generic principles of His desire; and 3) the results through predestination. Not fidgets of will, nor flourishes of bravado, not swellings of spirit or impulses are the ground of salvation.

It is Christ crucified and risen, object of faith, in whom one either believes or does not. You CANNOT NOT be ordained to life if God having desired you to be saved, in His outgoing desire, as He has foreknown you, you have also desired Him. HE shows restraint, for love does not bully, let alone subvert; but He has also wisdom, and He knows who are his.

So there are results of the preaching. Some believed. They were ordained so to do.

3 THE CURSE CAUSELESS WILL NOT COME (Proverbs 26)

whether to Jew or to Gentile

From these things, we find of the Lord, this one thing, that He is BOUNTIFUL, brimming with the beauty of holy giving, living and love; and of man, that he is accountable, whatever his race, before this one God, not as a heartless tyrant, but one of whom it is justly said that "in all their affliction He was afflicted," as in Isaiah 63:9. Indeed, He healed some and as to these ("we" and "us"), their sins He bore, thus effectually covering these one and all (Isaiah 53:4-6), being whipped as Messiah as preparation, crucified as consummation.

We find no less that man's plight, whether in Europe (as now) or in the Middle East (as now), or abroad in the coasts throughout the world to which ships may go, is surmountable. God did not merely show empathy, concern, commission, plan and remedy, but executed its requirements, just as men executed Him in the form of a man as Jesus Christ: and yet they wonder at His harshness as if demented!

Does it not occur that having the heart to love people after what they have done, and the equivocation, defamation, distortion that has followed through hundreds of sects or false prophets in follies and persecutions even carried out in His name by wolves and foxes, this is a wonder of grace! To allow continuance to this very hour of such, of those who are the deluded and the spiritually dispossessed, rampant meanwhile in rebellion and assault on His people, it is a marvel of forbearance and longsuffering.

To do so in the face of their slighting the supreme gift of eternal life, shown in the power to raise the victorious victim, Jesus Christ from the dead, just as He Himself had raised others, it is testimony to what only love can do. Love however is not laxity, and when every wile has been exposed, and every dream disposed of, empty in deed as in word, then the time does come for judgment. Now there is warning to Gentile, as in Paul's speech in Acts 13, especially to those who adopted the position of Israel, whose authorities condemned Christ. They are not alone in this! It is just that many another nation cannot get their hands on Him ... not now! They make do with slander and slaughter of His people.

What then lacks ? Indeed, something is missing. It is repentance and faith, while in myriads men fiddle with fairy stories about things inventing themselves from nothing, with nothing likewise the reason for their doing so. This is dreamed to occur in a world without provision for cause, though it caused in effect, and operates causally, and then is described as going on to invent mind and spirit and will and thought and understanding of this child of nothing, this world, all neatly arranged so that it may be neatly understood in terms of laws and routines. Always the concept of causing is used, as if to explain, and always it is omitted, like wind and not a child, in some false birth. This however is not able to create and instal a universe, or anything like it. Nothing is simply not apt, and begging the question is simply not logic.

This world, extreme in complexity and felicity, though nothing was supposedly its father is not really susceptible to magic. You need grounds. It is one thing for a child of poverty to 'make good', but for a child of nothing to be possessed of an elaborate, causally based power of comprehension and apprehension of a universe susceptible to formulations of this type, all coming from anything at all not like this, and indeed nothing at all, is a perversity of mind so profound that it is startling and amazing that it still exists.

While this revolt from reason, in the name of reason, proceeds on its ordained course (cf. Romans 1), and history takes up its foretold positions, with false churches, false prophets, false priests, false dreams, falsity of heart and treachery to Christ on the part of a countless seeming host still going to some species of Church (though as in Revelation 2-3, some remain faithful), there is concern at trouble! Would you wilfully burn down a beautiful, capacious, well-appointed house and expect no trouble! Would you complain if the drains were unclean, and the ceilings collapsed ? Why on earth ? Why so ? It is amazing there is any space left.

When children are served these opiates, one can readily see the ghastly horror of it, and realise that for this increasingly world-wide prostration before the goddess of naturalism, there has to be an end. This abuse of the child, to take but one feature, pawn of empty philosophy, dragooned out of the ways of God by mere propaganda, not even in many cases allowed to answer back in Science classes, it is a classic opiate. It is not only that it is not good for the intellectual digestion or the cultivating of scientific method, being authoritarian, it is to poison the mind and infect the spirit.

That all these things lead to the return of this same Jesus Christ (as in Acts 1, Matthew 24, Zechariah 14, Isaiah 59, Psalm 2, 72) where the righteousness of holiness and the peace of truth will be shown to this now so wanton earth, as in Isaiah 11, Micah 4 in its prelude to Micah 5's famed text which located Christ's first coming: this is a further gratifying evidence of divine grace. At the end of longsuffering is the Lord, and where He is, there is liberty; but no more for evil, for this has had its tail-wagging day, its empty splendours and avarice, its buying of the souls of men and its spiritual prostitution (cf. Hosea, which makes this phase to take a major place in the life of the prophet, as a display item!).

But there is the operation before the temporary restoration. First there are yet some more who must come to Christ (as in Revelation 6:9ff., Romans 11); there is that operation: it is that of salvation, regeneration. Then there is the time of Revelation 6ff. (where death becomes a mandated item in its battles and forays), and its confrontation with a wild ferment among men, before the majesty of His rule on this earth. Some are to be rescued, many renegades and rebels, to complete their ... artistry, exhibits to last! This comes before its final demise.

Thus is a vast wonder at length completed in mission (as in II Peter 3, Isaiah 51:6), one of grace, love and beauty, duty and responsibility, grace and salvation, repentance and regeneration on the one side; and the encyclopedic exercises of evil, revealing for all time its nature, emptiness, horror and vanity. As with many operations, it is not a pleasant one, and recovery from it will not be simple! For a time, the Lord will exhibit righteousness in this globe ( as in Revelation 20, Isaiah 65, 11, Micah 4); but then, the entire lustre of light is separated from the vast panorama of darkness, and this world is dispersed (II Peter 3).

Alas, worried world of many words and mischievous deeds, your career is too volatile to fly, too deadly to live, too remorseless for repentance. There is an end, just as there was a beginning, just as there is babe followed by the aged ancient lain to rest in the end. Thus, just as Christ predicted, there is thundering retribution to come (Matthew 24:19 in parallel with 23:35 for Israel, now largely fulfilled), down from the skies in power (II Thessalonians 1). There is a conclusion of its vain thoughts in pride, levelled at misdirected passions and abuse of the vast powers the Lord has made available (Revelation 19:13-21). Thus, for this world, man with a mind for power and madness alike, its condition will soon become not only a cause of worry and concern for many as now (a mode of anxiety foretold as in Luke 21:26), but a ground for oblivion, were not Christ to intervene. This He declares clearly in the text of Matthew 24:22.

But how does Proverbs put it in its generic, in its law, in its wisdom. It is like this:

	"Like a flitting sparrow,
	like a flying swallow,
	so a curse causeless shall not alight."

THE CURSE CAUSELESS DOES NOT COME. That is the point. There is a reason, always a reason, to believe in God, to believe in His salvation, to find the judgments upon this earth, as for man's desire to give reasons for thing, in defiance of all reason, in a sort of quivering see-sawing as if the motion would prevent anything ever settling down.

Not only did man EARN the CURSE by the wildest of follies at the first in Eden, setting himself in the clouds as if comparable with his Maker, and permitting himself to be moved by envious or spurious thoughts, but God has given all. First He presented not only words, but symbols for forgiveness in the sacrificial death of animals. Then He gave the final ground for it, in the sacrificial death of His Son (both offered to all as in Israel of old, and received by faith by some, in either era, the old or the new). He sent HIS SPIRIT to apply, sanctify and place grace in the hearts, wisdom in the heads, rebuke to evil and blessing to His people.

He gave in love; He received in human hatred; He deceived in nothing; He provided in full, but not by forced-feeding. Nevertheless, His banquet is sumptuous still. But you need to eat it.

1) IT IS UNNECESSARY

Hence this curse is unnecessary. To be sure, the world is still cursed as in Romans 8:20-21, where we see that not only was the creation subjected to futility, but still NOW groans and labours, awaiting deliverance from the bondage of corruption. No living soul on it, however, need inherit such a thing unrescinded as in Galatians 3. Christ bore the curse and that bearing is the ultimate ground of forbearing, for though the gift is to those who receive it, yet it is profound, and has affected the whole earth, as salt affects meet. It is superfluous to continue in such a condition, and worse, is like flicking away a pill to cure fever, with indifferent touch, despising both the condition and its cure.

There comes a time when at last folly inherits its own results (Isaiah 57:15-17), where mercy does not reach, where people, as in the day of Stephen, do always resist the Holy Spirit, as that martyr charged the nation. Man is not infinite, and when he plays the fool, he works out his own damnation as if gambling; there is a limit to the chips, though not to the love of God. Man cannot stumble about forever: has he not had enormous times, even to the point of thousands of years!

It is necessary as a woeful result of woe; it is unnecessary that it be borne by any man. Yet there is, as Paul spoke of it to those at Antioch, such a thing as deeming yourself unworthy of eternal life. It is not required to receive it. It is unnecessary however to forego it...

2) SPECIAL CASE ONE- THE JEW

Israel has indeed inherited the curse, being explicitly and dramatically directed to consider the case, in the great mountain orations of Deuteronomy 28-29. Its mordant impact is seen in eloquent mordancy in Isaiah 65:13-15. This is not the same as an eternal non-resolution, though it has been fierce as foretold in Leviticus 26, for example.

The CAUSE continues to this day, but it WILL cease, not with the destruction of Israel, as so many followers of false prophets may desire, as has often been the case since the days of Balaam, their prototype (Numbers 22), but with a far better thing.

What is that ?

Israel is to be stricken not with a pulverising series of annihilatory bombs, but with the power of the Holy Spirit which will so convict so many of their error in the day of Christ and before indeed, that seeing in heart Him whom they have pierced, they will, as many in the nation, realise their sin, repent and being forgiven, become washed in the fountain. Even in Jerusalem will this be, now no more alien to the Lord. Then in reconciliation, the long wasted years (yet for all that, ones used in instruction to many including themselves), will be restored, and with the rest of those who amid the Gentiles have found Christ, and been incorporated by Him into His spiritual body, they all will constitute one congregation of the redeemed as Paul so gladly declared in Romans 11:25ff..

3) SPECIAL CASE TWO - THE GENTILE

The Gentile is no better placed in the end, and Paul even warns them in his allegory of Romans 11, that just because Israel, so long for so much such a vehicle of good things, was as a nation cut out of the tree of faith and function in the life of the Lord ( a matter not of race, but nation), so Gentiles becoming puffed up need to realise something. It is this. THEIR standing is not as of something superior. If they play the fool with the faith, they too will receive the same reward; and here, it is in things eternal that we deal.

But again, this is unnecessary. WHY will you die! God asks a misled Israel (Ezekiel 33:11). He has no pleasure, He declares, in the death of the wicked (those who ignore the truth about their Maker, His redemption, the gift of eternal life and the everlasting resurrection in Christ, and so remain selectively outcast by their own folly). ALL have sinned, but when, as with Israel for long in those ancient days, and now as with the Gentiles for no less time in these modern ones, the remedy is rejected, what then ? Then judgment becomes irremediable: and it is UNNECESSARY.

God in His bounty has provided, man in his life is supplied and so the more accountable; and the position is surmounted, so that anyone, however grumbling and mumbling and harassed, may become a part of the treasure of Christ, redeemed, restored, forgiven, enabled, regenerated, participant in the triumph of Christ, available for the joy of resurrection and assured of the same.

This, to receive it, it is entirely NECESSARY (Acts 4:11-12).