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CHAPTER 7

COVENANTS, NEW AND OLD

THE MESSIAH HAS EVERYTHING TO DO WITH IT

Chapter 5, above, had these words which follow.

What had the Messiah to do with it ? It is this. Part of the empirical evidence is that a certain book EXISTED (as of course it still exists), and it related, in no small part, to the history of the Jewish people and the working of God with them, to bless and to rebuke, over much time; and it cites the modes of morality and action desired by this God, and features in high profile the concept of covenant, by which a man can at God's own invitation, have sin remitted and redemption applied so that he may know God Himself personally, and so live that his life is a willing outcome of this relationship, and transferred from the temporal to the end, in the eternal realm WITH this God.

In this book, a certain MESSIAH was to come. This was part of the preliminary covenant that in one to come from Abraham all the nations of the earth would be blessed (Genesis 12). The criteria of such a Messiah were successively revealed, one aspect being that He would both be an eternal being from heaven, and the Judge of Israel, and another was that He would be sent with full divine honours, as entirely representative of and correlative to God Himself (Micah 5, Isaiah 48). His works would include the miraculous (Isaiah 35), and His death would be through unbelief (Isaiah 53), brilliantly turned into a triumph, by which He would even bear the iniquities of His persecutors, those of them who came to believe in Him and so accept His pardon.

There was a covenant between God and Abraham, a solemn divine undertaking in which man as recipient participated, by which God bound Himself by His own will with assurances, promises and procedures as seemed good to Him. In Romans 4, we learn of this covenant with Abraham, which included the point that in him all the nations of the earth would be blessed. From Abraham to mankind, a specialised and specific treat to come was foretold. To be sure an unconditional promise of the land assigned to him and his descendants was also involved; but this is not our present point. It has been laboured frequently elsewhere on this site (see Israel and SMR Appendix A).

In Genesis 15, we find Abraham wrestling with God about the fact that although he was to have this exceedingly significant seed, bringing blessing to all nations, yet at that time he had not one such in his household. God showed him the stars, and inculcated the point that an exceedingly large array of descendants would come from Abraham. While faith had to receive this, God assured it. It was unconditional, and as both Hebrews 11 and Romans 4 attest, Abraham is notable in this very field of faith. Indeed in this very Chapter, we find that Abraham believed God and it was accounted to the patriarch for righteousness: what is received even as a GIFT by faith, thus conducts in this covenantal fashion, a divine righteousness, sourced in heaven, transmitted to earth, costlessly applied to the believer, to the one having the relevant faith in the living God.

Romans 4 pursues this point and declares this.

¹³It was not through the law that the promise was made to Abraham and his descendants that he would inherit the world, but through the righteousness that comes from faith.

¹⁴For if those who adhere to the law are the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void.

¹⁵ For the law produces wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation.

¹⁶For this reason, it depends on faith, so that it may be a gift, and the promise may be guaranteed to all his descendants, not to those who only adhere to the law but to those who follow the faith of Abraham, who is the father of all of us,

¹⁷as it is written, “I have made you father of many nations.” He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into being what does not exist.

¹⁸He believed, hoping against hope, that he would become “the father of many nations,” according to what was said, “Thus shall your descendants be.”

¹⁹He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body as (already) dead (for he was almost a hundred years old) and the dead womb of Sarah.

²⁰ He did not doubt God’s promise in unbelief; rather, he was empowered by faith and gave glory to God

²¹and was fully convinced that what he had promised he was also able to do.

²²That is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.”

²³But it was not for him alone that it was written that “it was credited to him”;

²⁴it was also for us, to whom it will be credited, who believe in the one who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead,

²⁵who was handed over for our transgressions and was raised for our justification.

The New American Bible : With Revised New Testament. electronic ed. Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, 1986; Published in electronic form by Logos Research Systems, 1996, S. Ro 4:13

Law has the negative function of bringing the deep-seated rebellion against God to the surface in specific sins; see the note on Romans 1:18–32.

He did not doubt God’s promise in unbelief: any doubts Abraham might have had were resolved in commitment to God’s promise. Hebrews 11:8–12 emphasizes the faith of Abraham and Sarah.

In other words, the principle of faith was present in Abraham and worked, as it does in current Christian believers, and he was not staggered at the sheer immensity of the provisions of God as given to Him, but rather in holy awe did not weaken in faith, but set his mind to the project, however old his body and speciously simple it would seem to say, It is impossible! This he did not do, and God accredited to him, His own righteousness, not as earned, but given, gift to faith. This is precisely what the Christian does: not now with a promise of such things to come, the assurance concerning the bringing forth of the blessed seed to come, but with that descendant come, believing in Him who is the fait accompli, the ransomer, redeemer and Saviour.

Thus similarly, to believe in Him, not now in prospect to be sure, but in retrospect, indeed in contemporaneous reality, since God has raised this seed, in fact the Saviour who came, from the dead, is alien to Abraham. Instead, it is the consummation, completion and main point of what Abraham did. This blessed seed, this Christ (cf. Luke 1:35) was in His foretold day (The Christian Prescription Ch. 2), raised up in body from the dead for our justification, the gift of God's own righteousness to us as in Romans 5:17. This is how the matter, in principle, has been consummated in history, and God being God, its focus is now the revealed Jesus Christ, sent Saviour, in dynamic reality for everyone who like Abraham, believes the covenant of God. Since He has now come, it is the New Covenant; since it is explicitly in His blood, symbol now become fact, it is the New Covenant in His blood.

What however, was the progressive manner of the fulfilment of this solemn word, namely that through Abraham, to whose generations so much was given through Abraham's faith ? What also of this singular seed promised (Possess Your Possessions Vol. 6, Ch. *2), who would focus as this special and specialised spiritual singularity ? this star from God, this consignment for glory ?

We learn from Genesis 17 that there would a 'sojourn' or international trip to another land for some 400 years, obviously becoming noxious so that God would JUDGE that nation, but with no small wealth, the Abrahamic nation to come, to be called Israel, would leave that nation.

Why the delay ? Not yet, at the time of the divine speaking to Abraham, were the inhabitants of that promised land ready for judgment; for not only was the land from which Israel would leave to be judged but the Hebrew nation, in coming to their own promised land, would do so just when God had determined, then and not before, that those in that promised land would themselves be judged. The two, the coming of Israel to that land after so long a time, and the judgment on it, would be coincidental, or better, correlatives.

Obviously, vast divine plans are here shown in action, and a conduct as of an army, is in progress. Indeed when the time for the entry into that promised land did at last come, complete with a 40 year stay because of lack of faith, the topic of Ch. 6 above, the Lord Himself appeared to Joshua. Are you for us or against us ? cried Joshua to the celestial figure. No, the Lord replied, for He had come as the COMMANDER of the host, of Israel in its entry to the promised land, thus fulfilling in person the contractual, indeed ultimately the intensely and intensively personal COVENANT. It had a multi-partite and sequential side to it. In Genesis 17, again the Lord speaks to Abraham, showing that there would be an everlasting establishment of his descendants, and it would apply as relevant, to the land in view.

In Genesis 22, even then, God is seen to make many more things clear to Abraham. Ready to sacrifice his son to God in zeal, and and showing thus that he preferred God even to his most precious possession or family member, indeed the very one through whom the whole procedure was to come to pass for the future, the 'transmitting seed', a pivotal feature and hence figure: Abraham is arrested. Do not kill the lad! comes the command.

His willingness clarified to the uttermost point, his faith exhibited in its totality and reality, the patriarch is told to hold, stay his sacrificial hand on the lad. A ram caught in the bushes is the divine choice. Though as in Hebrews 11, Abraham was prepared to believe that if he had to sacrifice his son, that would not be fatal, for God could raise him bodily and realistically, physically and entirely intact, from the dead, this was a measure, not a need. This was the scope of his faith. He was not preparing to act in violation of his faith, but carefully within its own dimension. The readiness was crucial; but what he was ready for was not only not needed, it was abhorrent.

STOP! It is not through the sacrifice of the CURRENT seed, Isaac his son, that the deed of blessing was to come to all nations. Nothing could be clearer. Not thus, not in some product of human flesh, in its enclosed pathway from Adam, was the blessing to be obtained. From the LORD Himself in His own gift, would come the spiritual seed, not as available to man, but as grant of God. That was always potential in Genesis 3:15, that the fraud of Satan, having 'killed' man, sundered spirituality and severed power, would need one far greater than the continuing seed of Adam and Eve to obliterate its cry of guilt, and restore felicity with rigour, not raggedness, in truth and not in illusion.

Thus, there WOULD be sacrifice. It would however be itself something given, a donation, a gift direct from God, provided on the spot when needed, and in this particular seed, this special sheep, when the time came, there would be - just through this one - the way to glory, to the activation of the gift of God, for the blessing to all nations. From beyond the crowd, it would bless the very earth where man fell, all its nations. Accordingly, God made firm the covenant, since Abraham had so acted: "In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice," Genesis 22:18. So it proceeds from faith to faith.

This being so, quite naturally many have sought to quench Israel, the continuing people from this patriarch of blessed assurance. Whether by subversion spiritually or of lusts of mind, body or spirit, this new fall would be furthered by all that Satan had, as in Revelation 12:15, the dragon 'spewing water' after those fleeing, a dynamic of drowning which, however, the ground swallowed. Some have in no small degree succeeded, as Satan did with Eve, and through her, with Adam; and of such doings we read frequently in Kings and Chronicles in many a fall and failure, of false prophet or foolish King. Israel has paid as foretold to Moses in Deuteronomy 32, though with hope of restoration, and in Leviticus 26, which shows the burden of the covenant for any light-headed disregard of it.

In the Psalms, as in Psalm 2, 16, 22, 40, 41, 55, 69, 72, 110, and in Isaiah, as in Isaiah 7, 9, 11, 32, 40, 42, 49-55, 61, as in Zechariah as in 9, and 11-14, Jeremiah as in 23, Micah as in 5, Daniel as in 9 and Hosea as in 13, we see further in detail the nature of that blessed 'seed' of Abraham who was to come, not at all the nation as such in this regard, but in ONE PERSON, sent from His everlasting station in heaven. It was seen to be God the Sent from God the sender^*1, who alone would perform the necessary act to procure this blessing for mankind: BY FAITH; for that from the first to the last was the emphatic, selective and singularly secure mode for this saving singularity, the work of God.

So has the covenant been fulfilled in this phase, which concerns the blessing to all nations. The new covenant is special, as was the old. In this, there is neither Jew nor Gentile is to the point (Galatians 3). Indeed, in this, the actions of Israel being such as they were toward God, notably at Calvary (though Rome indeed participated, and it has its own history to come - Revelation 18ff.), have severed it from being a RACIAL transcendence or specialised agent to the point that in Isaiah 65:13-15, God contrasts the blessings to come to believing Gentiles with the woe of heart to come to the unbelieving Israel, in its phase of spiritual rebellion towards that very SEED when He came (cf. Isaiah 49:7). So we see the severity of it again in Zechariah 11, and the scathing denunciation of the hypocrisy involved.

Indeed the whole concept of animal sacrifice now has become horrid (Isaiah 66:3), while the basics do not alter, namely as in Isaiah 66:1-2:

" Heaven is My throne,
And earth is My footstool.
Where is the house that you will build Me ?
And where is the place of My rest ?
For all those things My hand has made,
and all those things exist," says the LORD.
"But on this one will I look:
On him who is poor and of a contrite spirit,
And who trembles at My word."

God could make children of Abraham from stones, said John the Baptist (Luke 3:8), and as Paul was moved to express it, the essential Jew is the one who is so inwardly! Faith being the crucial pivot, and the object of that faith being God alone (Proverbs 3:4-5, Deuteronomy 13:4, 32:12, Psalm 72:18, 136:4), and the method of His gift being by faith entire, through grace alone (Romans 10, Ephesians 2), it operates now as then; and God being immutable (Psalm 102, James 1:17), there is no change at all in this disposition.

There were chosen vehicles, and ways, and times, and moments, movements and phases, but the principle is one, as God is, as Genesis and Romans are. Israel may come and fail, but the Messiah comes only to stay (Isaiah 41:28-42:6). In fact, this seed, this anointed One for the universally available blessing, HE IS THE COVENANT (Isaiah 42:6, 49:6), and the light, and there is no other (Isaiah 65:13-15), be it race or parade (Galatians 1:6-9, Titus 2-3). As Christ declared it, the New Covenant is IN HIS BLOOD! You could not become more final, consummate and personal, all in one, than that.

Thus when one reads this, in Israel My Glory, November 2011, p. 22,

"We do not have to say that God implied these covenants; they are all recorded. They are clearly defined in Scripture. They were all initiated by God. They were given to the Jewish people, and they see their ultimate fulfillment through Israel. They also are unbreakable because their fulfillment is not based on Israel's obedience but on God's faithfulness. And they are everlasting covenants (Gen. 17:7-8, 19, Ps. 105:8-11),"

we have to apply the brakes.

Much indeed of the criticism of so-called covenant theology is sound. Alas, both dispensational and covenant approaches have something to present, but each tends to be too exclusivistic. To be sure, the trend in the latter to fail to realise the nature of divine writ when it makes categorical statements in clear contextual setting, when this offends their theology in this case, is deplorable (cf. Appendix A, of SMR). But the opposite error can be just as serious (cf. Deliver Us from Dispensationalism). Covenants proceed indeed on their stated bases, and the Old Covenant with Moses indeed waits for and is consummated in the New one in Christ (as in Hebrews 3-7), as pointed out in II Corinthians 3:7-12:

^"But if the ministry of death, written and engraved on stones, was glorious,
so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the face of Moses
because of the glory of his countenance, which glory was passing away, ⁸
how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious?
^"For if the ministry of condemnation had glory,
the ministry of righteousness exceeds much more in glory.
For even what was made glorious had no glory in this respect, because of the glory that excels.

"For if what is passing away was glorious, what remains is much more glorious.
Therefore, since we have such hope, we use great boldness of speech -unlike Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the children of Israel
could not look steadily at the end of what was passing away. But their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains
unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ.
But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart.

^"Nevertheless when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.
Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord,
are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord."

As Hebrews 8:13 has been caused to have it:

"In that He says, 'A new covenant,' He has made the first obsolete.
Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away."

As Deuteronomy 18 made clear, a new leader was to come whose word would become ultimate beyond that of Moses. This did not mean to delete Moses, but to fulfil (Matthew 5:17-20). What is unconditionally promised will always happen. What is given in a format of fulfilment and advance to come, will have that advance.

The sacrificial system has as Hebrews declares, become obsolete and is replaced, but this is according to the prophets themselves. It is not new, any more than Spring brings a new plant, but merely the transition season as well known, for the same plant, in the phase and fulfilment criteria which are native to it, and for it.

THE MESSIAH AS ALONE PERSONALLY GLORIOUS, FULFILS ALL, ALWAYS IN HIMSELF

As noted in Isaiah 65:13-15, we find that Israel per se, as distinct from the believing people with whom God dealt, has nothing to offer spiritually. It breaches the covenant and came in for the appalling curse terrain, as is plain to see, as in Leviticus. Its land has come as unconditionally promised. Its return likewise, its triumphs and its trials as in Zechariah 12-13, for example. Nothing is left out, nothing is to be added, nothing is merely possible, it is all quite clear. But Israel that was out, had to come in, as part of the stated and re-stated program (Romans 11, Hosea, Ezekiel 36-39^*2), and it had to come back without saving faith as in Ezekiel 37, that being a later episode in the prophetic power, as to be fulfilled. This has of course in the first aspect, already happened, and indeed the events in one's own lifetime have been both categorical and fascinating, the divine covenant working precisely as stated.

It has both positive and negative aspects, however, and Israel has yet to become moved by the Spirit of grace and supplication, nationally, to repent of the crucifixion of Christ, the acme of faith, the seed of promise, the mode of bringing blessing to all nations. Even if as it were, the 'mother' were involved, yet if she fails, then the child alone continues, for it is in the CHILD (Isaiah 9), that the focus comes, and He alone becomes Lord of the nations, and without Him there is no salvation at all for any of any race whatever.

This being so, the concept that as to the covenants, "they see their ultimate fulfillment through Israel," cannot be accepted. If anything is ultimate as to covenant, it is the New Covenant as scripturally presented in flaming vigour as shown above. If ANYTHING would seek to alter or add or subtract or subdue or immure itself into this, it is sacrilegious and fails (Galatians 1, 3, 5). NO ONE and NOTHING but God will have ultimate glory in that day (Isaiah 2:17), and indeed, at this level, NONE may have glory (Isaiah 42:8).

To be sure, His glory may be seen upon His people, as the fire on Israel of old, but it is HIS! it is ON them. Many will be VINDICATED, Himself and His word first of all, but none will have anything left but humility (cf. Isaiah 19). ONLY God has done ALL, and ALL His servants but one have failed, but there is none who does not sin. ALL things are to be gathered in one in Christ, and HE is that ONE (Ephesians 1:10), as this statement from the inspired apostle makes very explicit, with no room whatever for doubtful implications or imputations. The promises see their ultimate fulfilment through Christ, many means and ways and steps having come, and Israel having come back to precisely that from which it precipitantly went as in Romans 11, removed through lack of faith, and in much to be restored as if life from the dead, on their return to this crucial pivot in the plans of God.

Redemption is by His blood (Ephesians 1:7) which leads to an ETERNAL inheritance (1:11), and the entire covenant is now IN HIS BLOOD (Matthew 26), for in Him it is all summed up, not to be forgetful of any, nor yet to be sharing it with any, whether Jew or Gentile, slave or free.

Certainly it is of grace, and in grace, each item and element has its place; and yet, none aborts it, for if there were any work, it would not be grace, and if there were any other medium for glory, or ultimacy, it would not be Christ's, who shares His glory with none, though He can confer a subsidiary blessing, one for all and for any; for there is no difference in this, that all have sinned and there is no Jew nor Greek in the kingdom which is His. These divisions are no longer substantial things. WHAT' He has said will be done; and THIS, it is one of them!

We look to the things to come, not maundering on the past; and though Israel will be vindicated against all who have mocked her history and future alike^*3, assailed her when often far worse, attacked her like vicious bulls, as if demonic while she endures, and indeed, being returned, will have her land till earth is removed, as is foretold for example in Isaiah 51, when no more will any such land exist for it is all gone like smoke: yet of glory neither she nor we nor any will have any, for what by grace through faith is delivered from hell, has nothing to speak of, and how would any but the humble and contrite heart be acceptable or even relevant...

It is a pity that to extremes one way or the other, some seem to go (cf. Bay of Islands); and although in this case, provocations from one side are often so extreme as to seem all but demented, yet we must not go in reaction, or beyond the principial parameters expressly cited in the Bible, the keys to understanding of given issues so prominent (cf. Aspects of the Glory of the God of All Grace, Ch. 8), the points where the brakes of the texts concerning the matters, come into a action.

Each and all of the words of God must be regarded, at any place; for He NEVER speaks amiss. It is indeed a perilous error for any to ignore the things promised and happening before our eyes, and it is entirely understandable what anguish and concern, what a sense of thanklessness or blindness, some may have at the short-circuiting of the direct promises of God to Israel, so that what He has done since 1948 is not even realised, and some even speaking amiss in Christ's name, assault the work of God in bringing Israel back, first to its land, and then to its spiritual senses: and that to come, by the Spirit of grace and supplications (Zechariah 12:10ff.), convicting as ALL Gentile Christians MUST be convicted if they are to be saved! Thus do they become one more component in that neither Jew nor Greek composition, the spiritual body of Christ. Thus comes the glorying of Paul in the wisdom and planning of the Lord, in Romans 11:27ff., at the synthetic simplicity: ALL from MUCH, come to ONE Lord, alone recipient of eternal glory, the light that sheds His beams on any or many.

Indeed, much is the provocation from those who remain blind to a happening to fulfil prophecy in our generation even more staggering than the coming of the pillar of vapour as in Acts 2 (from the earlier prophecy of Joel), in the atomic bomb, for which this is the undoubtable, crisp and brief prediction as to its appearance, in so short a coverage as that of Acts and Joel. Yet failure to see the unity and felicity, the integration and the organic whole of the major covenants for sinners, and to give to Christ only above all races and any, the incomparable glory, this too can provoke. Moreover, love is not easily provoked, and while error must be corrected on one side as on the other, and the full evangelical and evangelistic power of prophecy applied to this most fortunate generation (in this!) since the days of Jesus the Christ on this earth, this gives no sanction to what goes beyond the word of God and its principles.

Indeed,

"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!

For who has known the mind of the LORD,
Or who has become His counsellor ?

Or who has first given to Him,
And it shall be repaid to him ?

For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen,"

Romans 11:34-36.

That He should so exalt Christ (Philippians 2:1-10), the name above every name, the incarnate Word of God, and so give place through Him to so lowly (Psalm 8) a being, after all, as man, so humble an aggregation as our race constitutes, because of vulnerabilities and sin so wilfully made a primary 'adaptation': this is a wonder of love, a torrent of grace mingled in the Gospel with a cascade of pardon, in peace, not through force, but through faith! (Romans 5:1ff., Ephesians 2). Again, what glorious wonder it is that Christ should so lower Himself from eternal glory as in Philippians 2, to assume such a format as our own, and endure such a journal of injustice, the ultimate in false charges, that through this very thing we might be delivered has both a profundity simplicity and an awesomeness of grandeur! (II Corinthians 5:17ff.).

How wonderful are His word, His ways, His covenants, and how He fulfils each, as Christ indicated, to the very jot and tittle (Matthew 5:17-20), acknowledging man's breach, as here or there, in this personal or national manner, yet fulfilling in mercy what in very spirit, in terms of His salvation, forbids any composition with our own works (Romans 10). In this base, basis and foundation, in word from the first (cf. Barbs ... 17), as later in deed, God is found to be consummating all in precisely the ways He has spelt out beforehand, for the reasons given and with the keys of understanding of each divinely stated principle never lost, never cast aside, but active. Not only is the scope awesome, the precision perfect, but the depth has its own splendour and the cohesion is in clusters, like cells in organs, in principles and in powers, like organs nexused into bodies^*3A, till the very summit in Christ^*4 is found (Ephesians 1:10, 2:1ff., 4:17-19), spectacular in lowliness, glorious in holiness, wise in performance.

Again, as in science, so here, what of the total operational felicity relating to each and every law, order or command, in nature without option, in mind with option of variable dimensions ? It is this. It is made to act in its necessary nexus, or within its composed limits, so that nothing broken, nothing is omitted. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. Abide and produce, and draw near to God in His own power at the personal and productive level. Each layer of law and truth has its application. God has differentially arranged all, the test for the godly, the trap for trhe cunning (Psalm 18:26, 11:4).

Alas, even in the natural realm, in science where some are seeking to sneak a peep at God, vacuously set as if integral to His product, often the same kind of problem comes, many denizens of this and that discipline omitting to open the eyes on all the data, so that some laws and principles, both logical and operational, concerning institution or execution in and of the universe, may be so noxiously covered with the gas of confusion, some aspects buried, that those who so truncate the truth are like servants for snippets. They are again, like married men, who cannot recall or find difficulty in recalling that they are married. Disorientation ensues. The world being now full of it, proclaimers of nebulosity like salesmen of retail goods, armed forces now proliferate with awesome weapons, misusing the powers of nature as of mind, and marrying both together, seeking a holocaust, not this time merely for the Jews, though with many this desire continues, but for the human racism in this ultimate form of racism, human racism.

Of this mischief, malady and pre-occupation focussed in naturalism (cf. The gods of naturalism have no go!), Chapter 5 has given expression. Precision becomes precisionism when details obscure direction, items obfuscate ideas, and hyper-activity becomes a substitute for thought.

With God, however, whether in the natural conglomeration of the physical universe, the pscyhical constitution of the human mind, the scope and sensitivity of the spirit given to man, whether indeed in the supernaturally endued word He has spoken, the Bible which explains the plan and program, the meaning and the need of man: nothing is to be put out or in; it is all to be taken in every aspect as it is. Realism finds revelation as in SMR Ch. 1, and both embrace in accord in admirable felicity.

As to His word, as He speaks, whether in particular or principle, so it is to be understood, in any context, with cohesion, in all contexts, in due correlation: each in all, all in each.

NOTES

*1 See Ch. 5 above, *3, and as marked.

*2 See It Bubbles ... Ch. 10 for example.

As in Micah 4, the Lord will indeed come to the land of Israel, Zechariah 14 indicating the venue at the first. It is however HE who has the glory, and bears it (as in Zechariah 6:13), and it is HIS vindication which above all, Jew and Gentile alike having failed so all but incredibly badly through incredulity, will be so obvious (as in Isaiah 41:27-49:4, 51:19-20 with 52:3-7), while on the other hand, there are points to be made. Thus Jerusalem, where He was judged and slain by the nation, will be His (I shall return...) clear focus, a glowing site of worship not for His grave but for the grace of His face (as in Psalm 72). Meanwhile the world will be reproved for the prodigious follies of its evil aspirations as in Psalm 2.

This in no way minimises, but rather gives basis and background for the fact that those who have believed in Israel, and hence come to inherit the promises (Jews and Gentile consignments to the same grace with the same result seen in Revelation 7, without number apparent), centred in Christ their Rock, are no more available for the taunts of this world, and their end is the mark of the Maker who also redeemed them.

When the believing segment of Israel comes, as in Romans 11, then indeed, with them back also geographically, former proud bullies may indeed find nothing less than multiplied shame at their self-aggrandisement and hypocrisy of heart, cursing when becoming cursed through murderous lust, parading as of pious! (Isaiah 40:23-26, 51:21-23) i heartless assault on Israel of old, and its people. They will also see why the Lord so acted for and against Israel, and learn when God delivers that people in the very midst of Gospel awakening (Zechariah 12-13, Ezekiel 37, 39:23), that it was for their sin, not some lapse in Him, that they went into the predicted perils. Israel will know it too (Ezekiel 39:25-29).

Just so He restores them by covenant, fulfilling the covenant in terms of the phases spelt out, enables the reality of what they missed to have due impact as they participate now in the New Covenant without which they are merely cursed (Isaiah 65:13-15) and through which only any, now that it has bloomed, can have any savour at all, as in Hebrews 3:1-6, 4:14-15, 7:18-28, 8:7-15, 10:19-25, 12:25-28.

*3A

It is time 'nexus' was given verbal function.

See Ch. 5 above, as marked, with The True God Has Go ... Ch. 5, *7. God's perfect expression (Hebrews 1:3), the LOGOS (John 1:1) is not a mere word, even we speaking thousands; for He is not bound by time, itself His invention in our type of causal universe. This being, incarnate as Jesus Christ, is the personal representation of God, who sends Him with His own authority, as One who works in His name; for He is eternal with Him (cf. Proverbs 8, John 17, 8:58).

As to God, His is a cohesion greater than space can provide, an infinite intimacy of persons functioning in fulness, specific but undivided. As a spiritual being, Himself eternal, He institutes the basis, acting as the author and executor, the Creator, and He does so in three persons, expressive, expressed and executive. In nothing does He learn from us, in His own form; but He moves with a trinitarian heart, neither triplicate, nor multiple, but as one in Being, increate and eternal, He comprises three Persons of one mind, interpreting, applying, winning, securing many in His salvation. Constitutive of that unity, in immeasurable fellowship, God speaks in words in the Bible, in Christ in the salvation and in power, in the body of Christ, whom He has redeemed, that aggregate of believers who know Him. (See also SMR pp. 532-560, A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 12).