Israel was the name of a country

W W W W World Wide Web Witness Inc. Home Page Volume What is New

CHAPTER ONE

MERCY OUTDISTANCES JUDGMENT

See also Department of Bible Vol. 11, Chs. 2, 17, 19

It is good therefore to settle down, and apply oneself not to tradition, whether from this or that period, in accord with Christ's hatred of this style, of this sort of buff, as shown in Matthew 23, for example, but primarily to the Bible itself.

There is one field to which we look there at this moment, and that is that of various races and realities, directions for races and predictions for them, tasks and horrors as sins yield to inspection and truth and wonders the word of God unfold. It is part of a divine plan of great depth.

NAMES AND NECESSITIES

Consider.

Israel was the name of a country, derived from a person, whose name was in turn derived from a time of close encounter with God, as a close to the commencement part of his line in the call of his forbear, Abraham, whom God called for a special and unique purpose amid the nations.

It was highly distinctive, but the case was comprehensible with ease. The people of that land, to which Abraham was directed, were Canaanites and their wickedness was so great before God (as confirmed in type at Ras Shamra archeologically) that He set them a time-table before the end would come for them, a substantial terminus of their possession as secure and theirs, of their morally devastated land. They had some 400 years to go, Abraham was told.

As they went, after some 400 years (God does not hurry but He can move fast), then Israel would displace them, that it is moving people of Abrahamic descent would do so, as a then chosen method of divine judgment on the one hand, and appointment for His service on the other, for the one as deparing, and the other as arriving. Thus, though Israel's own tenure would then be not only a gift, a grant of the grace of God as He also judged a wicked and corrupt nation to be replaced by them, it was also a challenge, this for the Hebrews, and this only to accept it practically at first when the time came. Even some gifts require courage to receive them! Thus after an amazing exodus from slavery in Egypt, Israel was daunted by lack of faith on entry into this promised land, or at its door, and had to wait some 40 years before another opportunity came to take it over.

Indeed, they were duly warned through Moses, that if rebellious they should they merely to mirror those who would be in their due time (that 400 years from Abraham's appointment to the post), required to leave. Then they too, Israel itself, would be surrendered in marked measure. They too would find not solace but discipline, for God is not plasticIne that He should be mouldable by man, nor is that great instrument called man equally able to play god himself and invent his own life, rather than live it before God in peace and with understanding, when it has great vitality and resources.

This peril of a period of exile should they begin to mirror those whom they replaced, was made marked in a promise to this Israel, made to Moses: in Leviticus 26, for example. However, as seen in Deuteronomy 30-33, in the end, divine grace would prevail and they would with a panache and power eventually be restored to the appointment, misuse it though they would in some of the meantime, then returning to Him who returned to them. Though the trials were foreseen, through rebellion they would display, yet the end would be sweet, empowered, an overthrow of multitudes of assailants and they would again be cherished (Jeremiah 30:16-24, 31:18-37, 33:6-16, Ezekiel 36-37, Zechariah 12, Luke 21:24). Indeed, they would even take their eventual part in the Church of the Messiah, that One whom first they would kill (Isaiah 49:7, 52-54, 66, Jeremiah 31:31ff., Micah 5-7).

Whereas the land was lost, it would be found, whereas it was foundering, it would be restored, the hills would sing again, the peoples free from molestation, and the rebels dispersed for this chronic fault, would once again (Isaiah 11) be taken back from the lands of their world-wide dispersal to the one from which they came, from mockery and abandonment, duly deserved, to deliverance and victory. Great would be the humiliation of their tormentors, vast their humiliation in their exposure for what they are, and indeed at that last phase, the very 'cup' or judgment in fury which had been experienced by Israel, would be handed over to those, her oppressors, while the underlying cause of the trouble was righted rigorously, and the errors of Israel were in the interim and at last, corrected vigorously^*1.

That was like securing a faithful dog, after one that became atrocious, and though it would need discipline: yet in the end, this faithful one would be brought back to its place of former devotion. This however was not a house, but a land, a country.

Like any sheep-dog it had a task in view. This was to show forth the praise, the nature, power and mercy, the will and ways of God to a world (Isaiah 43:21) which had lost almost all of its inhabitants, and had been judged in a near-finale in a world-wide flood^*2, the vast and varied resultants of which in their unique surges and situations have such a testimony as to make for geology, books numerous in detailed attestation of what is explained better in terrestrial detail in this regard, than anything else can do, or does!

The name of the Lord was thus associated first with His own self, and then with the creation of purity, of man, then with the fall of man, though that was properly his own fault and name, then the name of Abraham, to become a nation of expositors but alas also exiles for their failures; and in a little, that of Israel, used in the case of Jacob.

This was to transfer to the ongoing epoch. Thus there was to be another climax, as before in the the case of the call of Abraham to this special land and task, the appointed site for it; and that was the prophecy over thousands of years in many detailed manners (cf. Genesis 17:7-8), of what would come and then culminate in God in person coming as what is called the Messiah (cf. Psalm 2, 40, 72), the Anointed One at this level, to save and to rule amid men, first as a necessary sacrifice on offer, but finished (Hebrews 9), then as a due power to receive and to process for all who should remain (John 3, Titus 3).

Israel, as predicted in date and method (Christ the Citadel Ch. 2), result and circumstances, including a splurge of healings and resurrection occurrences by the Messiah, though nationally treacherous to Christ, yet led on to becoming the site of the Messiah's own resurrection as a natural type of supernatural episode, that is, as one flowing in the sort of line which He had exhibited on earth so profusely, in raising the dead (cf. John 2, 11). Here it happened as foretold to the day, to Himself. It was to authenticate His life, His word, His power, His deity as foretold, His defeat of man's exit in disastrous death by paid-for and redeemed life, and to do all this as freely as was the case with the original CREATION. These two, creation and healing-resurrection performances in staggering multiplicity together, were an annunciation, the resurrection itself, a performance, like the creation.

This resurrection was to occur a definite number of days after His bodily death was given, three in fact, all of which had to - just as it did - happen. That is one of the chief reasons why some of the most acute lawyers and scholars find it rationally impossible to deny the testimony of truth concerning the Messiah, His saving purpose, His projected plans and His eventual return to an earth, to this world which, following Israel, would become a turn-coat. At first in much seeking Him, it would then become more negative, sophisticatedly braying against the truth, even denying truth while affirming it, in a multiplicity of confusion,. Thus many, as predicted, would be found leaving much of that testimony in the generations to come (II Peter 2, II Timothy 3:1-9), as social and psychic toxins became more popular, and man's aspirations, though in manifest folly, to manage the universe (II Timothy 3, II Peter 2, II Thessalonians 1-2) became more hypnotic. Yet with large numbers and in many kings, the so-called Gentiles (those other than Israel), the Christian ones, would in due course come to be highly evidenced among men in the ways of Christ, though in varying proportions, and would participate in the Gentile age or era.

In this period, with Israel starting as killer of Christ as a nation, naturally that nation could no longer represent Him specially at the spiritual level, though their own history to come had been shown in detail in numbers of prophets before He came. The office however, the job, the function was still needed in this world, so that among the Gentile nations in those not nationally, but humanly specially converted to Christ there came a new interim quasi-nation, a special people, that is, the actual Christians (I Peter 2:9).

The Gentiles in the round, however, they too would fall away successively and regressively, leaving not this time a nation's task, but for most but not all of the world, its Gentile task undone. But over time it would have been done, and sophisticated noses raised in the air did not mean unavailable gospel, but unassailable Gospel, yet rejected more and more by the pell-mell militarism and rowdy unreasonableness of the nations (foretold for example in Matthew 24, Luke 21, Revelation 13, Zechariah 14, Micah 7, Ezekiel 38-39, Joel 3:12-16).

VALIANT FOR THE TRUTH NEEDS PARTICIPANTS

Jeremiah 9:3

Naturally this led - and has led, for it has happened as pre-announced as it all does in outline and much detail as well - to a vast moral, spiritual and warring morass among the Gentiles, who add this to their multiple and multiplied persecutions of the disjoined and disjointed Israel which they practised often over centuries. Yet the testimony of truth has flowed to, poured on, reached to the depth of Gentile masses throughout the earth (cf. Matthew 24:14). That has to be done before the Messiah, Jesus the Christ, returns.

Thus, valiant for truth though infested with counterfeits in many structures, the church of Jesus Christ took over the spiritual exercise of Israel during its long departure as a nation, from the Lord, though it was many individuals of this self-same Jewish race who in contrasting faithfulness and salvation from the Messiah, helped to form it at the first. Christ specially selected leaders as apostles, and sending His Spirit as announced to work what man could not, brought His salvation to myriads.

This was what was worked and confirmed over centuries, despite frauds, as of yore in the days of Israel's spiritual leadership in the labours of the Lord. His work and witness selectively, despite the increasing fallout of this world, like pollution, made suffering a bye-word fo the Christian. It was not the frauds or those feverishly mutating and growing rich or slickly famous, who failed the commission as Israel had done, for this the world liked, for it was like it (hence you are forbidden if a Christian, to love it). It was the humble and the faithful who received the sharp thrust to the neck from the spiritual philanderers and activistic aliens in heart (cf. Matthew 7:7ff.) who with or without lip-service to Christ, came like wolves in sheep's clothing or spiritual terrorists with duplicitous dynamic.

REGARDING the first impact

of the MESSIANIC ADVENT

And MOVING to the Return of Israel

What stages have we then past ? There was the testimonial side with the patriarchs such as Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and the long prophetic line till Christ and His murder. Then, as in Micah 5, there was the temporary replacement step, when the Gentiles nations had to resume the task, the believers amid them making a sort of spiritual nation, with a missionary thrust. Then there has been the first stage of the promised and premised return of Israel as a nation to the most emphatically and dramatically specified site for spiritual service as at first announced, which of course by this time was that special site of what is soaring among the unique and most important events in the universe, beyond His creation of it.

This was His, the Lord's self-prescribed death in it in the form of a sacrifice for sinners, in the person of the Messiah, and His resurrection to perfect His program of power with glory, and suffering without survival, except for that certain and eventual survival (Acts 2:23-24). This, it came after delivering Himself into the deadly arms of sacrifice; for love's cherishing and mercy's pardon, which it was impossible to avoid when each participant in human form was a sinner, so needing the Lord Himself as alone adequate Saviour. Death sought to prey on Him (for in consenting to come as Saviour, He was like a prince taking a place in the army as a private - Philippians 2); for this neither changes what he suffers not who he is.

Yet He fed on mortality and broke its power, and exhibited the victory. He took the sting of sin on behalf of repentant believers, and with this, subdued it and granted with mercy and justice alike, eternal life. That it is the glory for man, who knows God, and for whom then it is unspeakably delightful (I Cor.15).

Meanwhile, as the centuries passed and Israel suffered in its self-imposed national shame, the Gentiles continued (amid many other preoccupations) their testimony on the part of some, and at last, the day came for the return of Israel, first to the land, and then to the faith, but now in its full--orbed Christ as Saviour fulness (cf. Hebrews 6-8).

What had they endured ? (cf. Hosmer, History of the Jews). Back there they were repeatedly, distinctively, definitively, acquainted from the prophets^*1 with their coming call back, to come as recipients once more, to be returnees in restoration to their sites and their mountains. To their city and to their site they would come, and this has ingredients of context and conception so numerous as to require a swift review to confirm its multi-faceted reality. But for now, we are specifying the steps. They did this, and it having occurred before my eyes, I cannot pretend that the book containing the word calling attention to its truth, and to this truth, in terms of the Sovereign of the Universe, the Lord, God Himself, has failed to materialise. It did come; Israel IS back; it has done this in the MANNER that was said, with the surrounding circumstances specified, including the power of God in their sustenance in vastly disproportionate wars, which they won despite overpowering odds. This is normal with the divine predictions in this book on various topics, and none lacks.

How often has the Lord specified that that there was no competitor as such a book (cf. Isaiah 34, 44-46, 48, Psalm 12, 111, 119, I Corinthians 2, I Thessalonians 1:5, 2:13, II Peter 1, 2), which has been shown at length (cf. SMR Appendix D) and which fulfils itself continually. It is like someone saying, Look, it is true I have this power, for look and you will each nation I specify disappear. And then it does it.

The scope of the power of this book, to say and then do, at levels from detail to massifs, is shown without limit.

This of course has not been simply a specifications of staggering works which both were to come and have now arrived, over a few days, but over a few millenia.

REVIEW AND OVERVIEW

Thus there is

	the Flood Phase (1); then
	the Patriarch Phase (2), then
	the Prophet Phase (3); followed by
	the Messianic arrival phase (4),
	the closely predicted Messianic murder and resurrection phase (5);
	the loss of the special spiritual function phase for Israel (6) - as shown briefly in overview in Romans 11 and Micah 5:1-3 (7); followed by
	the temporary spiritual distress and physical and national dispersion phase, (8) as predicted for Israel; parallel to
	the Gentile continuity phase, in the testimony of believers to the Lord (9);
	the Israel restoration physically and nationally phase (10), (as in Romans 11, implied in Luke 21:24 with Matthew 24:1); and this is completed by
	the consummation phase in which Israel defined by its past, is most acutely predicted to return to the Lord spiritually and just nationally (11),
	so completing that circuit, and compiling the components of the Christian Church, leading on to the glorifying of God as specified by the apostle Paul in in such a wonder of delight at the end of Romans11.

Such is their eventual complementarity in Christ.

What makes it the more amazing is this, that about half a millenium before Christ CAME to this earth as a man, Zechariah is famed for the prophet's prediction of this spiritual return to come on the part of Israel, included the kind of death to be carried out (piercing) on the Messiah, the kind of attitude (exceedingly odious and acutely to be repented of, in the prediction - all part of the prophetic phase). These then were all set in place, as if in rock, in the millenia-to-come predictions, together with many other details such as the cost of the betrayal to the temple authorities, at 30 pieces of silver, the point of the divine mission for the Messiah as in Isaiah 53 and His kind of suffering. As they were to be so, so in a multitude of items, all fulfilled, they stand for inspection over each set of years, sustained, supported, attested.

When this return of Israel, in large measure, to the Lord as predicted in its multitude of closely-knit and acutely historical presentations, amplified by many more types, then of course you have now TWO sources of this 'special nation', the current Christian one is one part.

Another part is on the way, and as Israel, was finished in its pre-Messianic role (as in Isaiah 30:8ff.), yet given an outstanding prophesied restoration, which God declared you could cancel if you could in effect cancel and re-create the astronomical universe to your own specifications! That is,a s God, He had His own plans, and in this, they were crucial, and only His overthrow could alter it. You are if not welcome to try, challenged twice in Jeremiah - 31, and 33!

Thus, coming of age after coming home, Israel in its restoration to the very One who of course was their own Messiah, whom they crucified, ends millenia of estrangement. This eventual return, it was so to do, first in land, then in spirit. The first is past, notoriously, while they remain menaced as predicted. But to anyone, to all called, the work of testimony of the truth and specific mercy of God in the Gospel of grace, continues. This is to proceed as Peter announced as Pentecost and the apostles repeatedly, till the Lord's coming back; and till Israel should return (as it is predicted to do in Zechariah 12, and Romans 11, most specifically and in great and diversified detail): and has now done.

As to the Christian Church, this special people (I Peter2:9ff.) with its selective membership amid believers of whatever race is the temporary substitute for the original Israel-appointment, and in the latter is the eventual site for restored unity as Israel, having come back to the site of the crucifixion and its reality, joins in Him who is its saving heritage, vindicated in restoration to the only land where the Messiah died and rose again. This singularity will never be forgotten. Christ will always be central. There is one Gospel and one salvation, and it has many channels to its reception!

Merging when its time comes fully, in the crucified Messiah's fulfilled saving mission, then weighed into this world mightily as had to happen before the Messiah would return (Matthew 24:14), this new adjunct, which in large part is nothing more than the old nation as Paul indicates and Isaiah 66 emphasises in prediction, continues its testimony. That is in an increasingly murderous WORLD this time, and this we see reaching also towards its coming culmination which, though like a Shakespearean Act 5 in a tragedy, also acutely resembles a triumph, for though the cost is vast, the gain is beyond all valuation. When the 'bride' ascends to be with Christ, before issuing back in triumph to this earth (as in Revelation 19:8ff., I Thess. 3:13), it is not as a portion, but a plethora, a total, the one fulfilling al preludes and every aspect. Brides do not come in instalments.

God then has an even vaster family, and to this end we are now nearly approached (Answers to Questions Ch. 5), as an equally vast series of signs and indexes are indicating far more clearly than the temperature chart speaks of climate. When this world is done in its work, it is to have, like a new car, a new case, a new world and a new site. God has shown His power in making such a thing as this universe, product of power and procurement, not nothing; and at that level, if indeed so vast is it nature, then it is at this level that the Almighty can and does work, at His option, and He has another in mind (cf. II Peter 3, Revelation 20-21).

It is this that it is at all fitting to call it a level, and to make another has its place. A car may seem to the primitive, too staggering to have another one made and the old scrapped; but if he only knew what went into it and how, he would realise his error. When God makes a world, it is as a car for man, no small item; but it is readily manageable (Isaiah 51, Matthew 24:35, II Peter 3). God being unlimited by any laws and rules beyond Himself (for if there were any, these would have to come from nothing, there then being no other source, and this is childish self-contradiction, not adorned by academic degrees).

The premiss and promises of God to Israel (like those specifically to Christians) are fulfilled to the last item, and Christ of course mentioned the standard of reference, the quality of these even most minor predictions (Matthew 5:17-19). That is the nature of truth: it relishes and does not fear exposure. What is exposed is only itself! There is therefore a certain buoyancy about it (as for example in Isaiah 40-55 in this field).

Even those of the temporary spiritual substitute are likewise, bold in testimony ("as a lion" we read in Proverbs). Not to be confused are they in both Israel and the other nations, at present, during the period of their deterioration. That leads to dismissal of both in their declined roles. As to the Gentile role, it is true that the special people of believers, the Church consignment FROM any nation, is not to be dismissed, but rather fulfilled in due course, in its own resurrection of Christians from every nation (Isaiah 26:9). Yet this is OUT OF this world, leaving a residue, just as has happened episodically with some from Israel over the millenia since the Messiah.

Then while the unbelieving residue finds its come-uppance, there is on the other side, the spiritual levy, so considerable in Israel as sound almost en bloc. This is then added to the 'special people'. Then there is a cross-assimilation on which Isaiah 66 dwells, which does not remove the historical way each part came in its time and day, but does remove any thought of differentiation in spiritual inheritance, status, and acceptance. They are all one as in Galatians 3. There may be different tones, but the voices have the same message.

It is nevertheless, repeatedly predicted that Jerusalem will return after the return of the Messiah, with its status as a centre, for it is not everywhere that the corpse of Christ, for the test period of 3 days, and its arousal to resurrection came to match those whom He and earlier raised in Israel Himself, may be found. It is not everywhere that this prodigy of power and purity, love and sacrifice, meekness and compassion, sacrifice and pardon, occurs (cf. Isaiah 2, Micah 4).

ONCE the world was made; ONCE its Creator came sacrificially to it to remove all other sacrifice and show but one way home to Jew and Gentile alike at the Gospel level; ONCE He was resurrected, ONCE gave a multiple testimony to it; ONCE He formed His Church, a spiritual body of believers; ONCE in a folder of many parts, showed the outline of all that was to be; and ONCE He both has done and is now performing final elements in that folder.

The personal actions that counted came in ONE phase of history, a little over three years, and what was accomplished there is central, and there is no substitute of place or time (the date, let us repeat, also was predicted as in Christ the Citadel Ch. 2). What would slighting of this grandeur a little resemble ? It would be as though the New Mexico explosion, historically both crucially and uniquely important, were but a dropped cigarette butt. The slaughter and resurrection of the sacrifice that changed this world, being so much greater than that, if slighted surpasses in folly the greatest battles in their exemption from history. What would it be like ? It would be as if insignificant or a matter of indifference, were the Normandy landings, and all that went into them.

This is not forgotten; nor is Jerusalem, not its reality, nor is the word of promise. Death happened. It happened ironically in the supposed site of religious pre-eminence. It happened by appointment, wrought against the Lord personally. Resurrection brings immortality to place and eternity to hand. There is nothing to countermand. Death as due and unacquitted is now a fallen foe, a doubly dead enemy. The victory is not lost, nor is it overcome.

Nor is God, He who is the only God, for it is He who created, who has also not failed to act savingly, overcoming with realism and power to supply what is then needed, becoming fatal to fatality and masterful over defeat, through love for His creation. Otherwise both fatal and dreaded was the judgment for man, and where insisting on continued separation from God especially, he is now experiencing it so obviously and in such ways, in line with the predictions, that even mankind, though largely blinded by his own shrapnel and sin, is beginning to wince.

These things are just facts, at first; and this they never cease to be. They are however glorious facts, crucial facts, undismissible data, eloquence that does not cease, magnificence that has as if always been there, outlasting millenia, savoured but often refused for its source by the poets or scientists or philosophers. Yet here and here alone is the explanation of all things fascinatingly provided with proof. On this see Ch. 4 below in particular.

Though its entire itinerary is often foolishly and gratuitously changed, as man seeks to hold the reins of history, as if this were not transparently clear in forecast and performance, yet each item remains immutable, in place, each step, now here, now there, coming into the line of vision, even when the stubborn head is averted.

NOTES

A Short Review of realms much visited,
in the Study of the Schema of the word of the Lord.

You find detail in such sites as Department of Bible...

Volumes 4, Ch. 5;

5, 4 - 5;

7:2 , 9:10 ,

10:4 , 11;1 ,

11:2 , 11:13. These present materials from all over the Bible concerning these data and themes, their application and indications.

See also Grand Biblical Perspectives Ch. 1 and Part II of Red Alert Ch. 10,
SMR Appendix A.

Is there a contrite return to their land as in Jeremiah 30 ? Is there a nation to be spared a full end ? is many another nation to receive, by contrast, such a fate ? Are Israel to be "brought back from the land of their captivity ?" (30:10), from their afflictions to which they went in chastisement, because their sins had increased ? (Jeremiah 30:15). Is this very fact a ground for the defilement of Israel's assailants ? that God who held her, who has punished her, who has scattered her from her close place to Him to lands throughout the earth, would emphatically bring her back to her place, preserve her and scarify by His own power, in war and devastation, her remorseless attackers ? (30:10).

It is distinctively, unambiguously, uniquely so, in sublime indifference to every attack, this time of their future, and not just their past and present, and this time, not by divine discipline but by human verbal intervention. Moreover, all this we learn, is for what was then "the latter days," as the Age thrust forward towards its uproarious end. Despite contrary theologians, God has this to say: "The fierce anger of the Lord will not return until He has done it, and until Has ha performed the intents of His heart. In the latter days you will consider it," Jeremiah 30:24.

"Again," says God, I will build you, and you shall be rebuilt, O virgin daughter of Israel," as in Jeremiah 31:4. Note the RE-building, and who it is that does it, the revival of the former estate being emphatic and specific, the restoration to the former position, close to the heart of the living God. This is depicted repeatedly and distinctively not the first relationship to the Almighty, as for Christians as such, but the revival of its reality, something true of no other nation, but Israel, whose is the history invoked in this promise, and whose is the restorative grant given. Her children, dispersed and troubled, are to be brought from afar. From "the ends of the earth," the Lord will gather them, and He will give them to walk in grace, for He is a Father to Israel (Jeremiah 31:8).

He sums it up in part in this: "Hear the word of the LORD, O nations, and declare it to the isles afar off, and say, 'He who scattered Israel will gather him,' " So we speak as directed to do here! but so we must also listen. God is so intent on carrying out all of this pageant, this opera, this distinctive declaration, this overall plan, this requiting of the rebels on Israel's return to their Lord, we remind ourselves that in the end of two separate Chapters in Jeremiah, He pledges His universe-controlling power to secure it, and issues the mocking challenge. Try to stop this reversal of reversal, this restoration of dismissal, this accomplishment of love's pity on renegades from service!

What is in view ? It is just this: Try to change My plans as announced so often, and you need only have the prior power to dispose universes at your pleasure and you might manage to contravene the passionately determined will of God in this sustaining of Israel in and to the end, back to its former nearness to God, if yours is the whole realm of astronomy to dispose at will. But IS IT!

in the character of the scenario, the plan of grace, the drama of faithfulness and the sting in the tail for Gentiles hordes never satisfied without burying the knife, hatchet, missile or whatever into the Jew (31:33ff., 33:19ff.), there is a quality, a tracery, a tracing, a declarative thrust that will not fade. God is going to act, as He has acted, in every phase, and with every grace, in each particular and as each case demands, as one Gospel soars over all, not to forget, but to save.

Let us revise it.

Indeed there will even be a New Covenant for the restored people, one which will be shared this time with the Gentile believers in that self-same Messiah (cf. Isaiah 42:6, 49:6), and what to the one party is restoration after rebellion, traced almost times without number in the word of God, becomes to the other, realisation after lostness in generic sin. Jew or Gentile come from different past specifics, to one present salvation and one eternity in that same Jesus, who died and rose again in resurrection most glorious.

Whichever slope was used, the result was the same in heart and spirit, and the surroundings and circumstances in the grand opera have many facets, features, but one case and character, one God with one majestic voice deploying all from first to last. Indeed, He is even called THE FIRST AND THE LAST.

Much that is now performed as earlier revealed, is a permanent and vast testimony to the undying love of God, the gracious faithfulness and His determination to carry out what He promises, not by a blank denial, as some strangely imagine, despite the happenings now before their very eyes, but by simply doing what He definably says. It is not good to act as if God were an allegorical lawyer, rather than an expanding donor, as if He went bent on matching things that not only do not fit, but jar exceedingly in terms of extremes and opposites. Antithetical allegories are for the dust bin, in any study.

One group failed on apprehension and closeness with the Lord, and had to find the enduring Rock, which they tended to forget (Isaiah 51:1) and the other failed ever to have known the Lord at all, and to have found Him relatively easily, for "I was found by those who did not seek Me," Isaiah 65:1. Nevertheless, both in the end come to Him by one revealed Gospel, long predicted to the Jew, and one performed sacrifice, long shown to the Gentile through the prophets whom God sent to the Jews. The finale in all aspects comes when the Lord is ready (as He was in the case of Canaan as noted, after 400 years, but we are now far advanced in our time). It comes when He launches the opening of the eyes, as in Micah 5:3, Isaiah 30:18. This follows on to the coming of the Lord in His own time with His saints, fulfilling the desire of the nations, battered though they be (Isaiah 32).

As Micah 7 so emphasises, after Micah 5 predicted the incarnation of God and His rejection by Israel, in the end, after Israel has suffered for its folly (Micah 5:3), there will be a turning, a restoration, a humiliating and devastating, overwhelming and shaming revelation of the Gentile hosts as a shambles. This vast and dramatic dynamic is to come as Israel is brought back with vast detriment to her hitherto persecuting and pugnacious agents of ruin, who will learn first hand what it is like to experience it! Mercy is not for hard hearts, but for those who receive, a beautiful reality as shown as Micah 7 ends.

It is as in Deuteronomy 32-33, where the same scenario plays out, in the continuity of the projected history of Israel; and again you find it in the praeternaturally blind returnees to the land, as predicted in the midst of the Messianic prophecies of Isaiah (42,49): these come back as almost definitional of blindness, though deemed servants of the Lord, specific and well-known in place. What a clash and contrast is here, and how deliberate! Here is not the light of the world! These are the blind servants, still unawakened as they move back to their land as in Ezekiel and Zechariah. These are not Christians or questions, but a nominally godly people, still blind. The oxymoron is intentional. God knows what He is saying, and should be heeded, not dismissed if life is valued.

It is not enough to limit the Gospel to Israel, the prophet declaims; but it is not enough to omit it either, as the Lord returns the emigrants to their land, still as blind spiritually as was Bartimaeus.

You see in some more detail, aspects of the same plan in Ezekiel 36-37, where specifically the world-wide dispersed bones of Israel, like a scattered land (how much further is it needed for us to be told and retold) is brought back in their day to their land of dispersal, and then later, to their Lord, when the command comes for the bones brought back to their land, to LIVE! Nor are those who would prefer them to die, to prevail. The result there is specified with the devastating wrath of God puncturing their evil enthusiasm, leaving the adversaries of a repentant Israel a heap of sprawled humanity, smitten, stricken, reduced from pompous expressions of power, to arms failures, terrified triflers, impotent adventurers, wanting once more to ruin Israel. Instead they inherit their own site, one of disinheritance, of devastation.

Quite simply, Israel was to come back; has done so; was to win staggering wars, seemingly ludicrously outnumbered (Zechariah 12), has done so to a famous point and pitch; was later to come back to the Lord as in Ezekiel, so in Zechariah 12:10-13:1; and was to become a site rather for worshipping God in this, that here was the body laid which rose. Such was to be and will be, not as pagan pre-occupation but the land where God did it, did what needed doing only once, and accomplished it, the mortality for mortality, immortality for believers/receivers of Himself, and did it once an for all (Hebrews 9).

Everything is real, not poetic; actual, not schematic merely; performed, not merely envisaged. It is recognised and recognisable. Things proceed like a cake cooking, ingredients in, defined, detailed, heated and the smell is now becoming as inviting as such confrontations may well be, for the oppressors will now be spoon-fed their own medicine, and genocidalists will find their come-uppance for their evil pains and lustful pangs.

God does not govern by force aborting love in the name of manipulation, for He is against all false prophets of terror and dissimulation. HE is the truth. What He does HAPPENS and is verified, yes to the jot and to the tittle (Matthew 5:17-20). When you are making universes, it is good to mean what you say; and God is beyond all, good, the very acme of goodness and the very torrent of mercy. He does what He says.

See on this the following.

The Great Divide Ch. 8, The Other News 1 ,
SMR Ch.2 , pp. 160-170, 234-248; 714-715,
News Facts and Forecasts 45,
Cascade of Truth, Torrent of Mercy Ch. 11,
Red Alert Ch. 14,
The Pitter-Patter of Prophetic Feet Ch. 6, esp. *3,
Red Heart, Dead Heart ... Ch. 4,
Impossible for Men, Open to God Ch. 1;
Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch. 8;
The Great Divide Ch. 8.

See also SMR index.