First Things First
First Things First
"There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; but glory, honour and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For God does not show favouritism." (Ro 2.9-11)
"These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel...I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves...When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another. I tell you the truth, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes." (Mt 10.5-23)
We know that the foundational Apostles did not complete their original and primary mission of "going through the cities of Israel", for the Son of Man did not return from Heaven during their earthly lives. Similarly, we know that the Church's endeavours to accomplish this apostolic task were violently interrupted and postponed by the Roman Army's destruction of Jerusalem in the late 60s. The siege left absolutely everything in ruins...including the city's seminal, Jewish-Christian Church, which was the mission's launching-pad. (Ac 15 Gal 1.18 & 2.1-2)
Rabbi Chaim Potok writes ("Wanderings - Chaim Potok's History of the Jews" Fawcett Crest NY 1978), "Jerusalem lay silent beneath a long, deadly night. The Jewish state came to an end. The Sanhedrin was abolished. The high priesthood ceased to exist. The Sadducean party disappeared. The Romans would not permit the temple to be rebuilt...From the hilltops of Judea one could see the hollow ruins of Jerusalem, ghostly in the summer sun and embowered with weeds and wild flowers after the winter rains."
Nevertheless, this was not to be the conclusion of the matter. Matthew 10.23b, contains three crucial points of prophecy (and implies a fourth) which the Church is bound to address ahead of all other concerns during these Last Days. They are:
1) The Lord Jesus Christ is going to return into this world from Heaven, to complete and perfect His great work of salvation, which was initiated upon The Cross. (Ac 3.20-21 & Heb 9.28)
2) A great awakening to Jesus as Messiah will sweep through The Land of Israel (city by city, and town by own) immediately before the 2nd Coming. (Jer 31.34)
3) This authentically national revival will be pushed through to its perfect completion ("all Israel will be saved"), literally by the Lord Himself, present in The Land. (Zec 14.4)
4) The Church's pre-eminent responsibility before God in these climactic days will be to "never cease crying aloud, day or night"; to "keep the Lord in remembrance"; to "take no rest, nor let Him rest neither, till He has restored Jerusalem, (and) spread her fame over all the earth." (Is 62.6-7)
(The Church will only succeed in fulfilling this its final calling, by conceding and submitting to God's Biblical principle that we are to be concerned for "the Jew first"...and also by actually believing in practice that by toiling in prayer for a great awakening of the Jews, the Church will herself obtain "greater riches"; even "life from the dead"? Ro 11.11-16 )
One very great and compelling reason why we ought to strongly apprehend that we are deeply, deeply into the End Times, is the objective fact and reality that God has already historically reignited and propelled forward the stalled Matthew 10.23 apostolic assignment. This He did in the late 1960s...precisely and exactly 19 centuries after its "suspension"! (See Footnote)
This rekindling occurred immediately after the 1967 Middle East Six-Day War with its "impossible" Israeli victory, and the consequent reunification of Jerusalem under Jewish jurisdiction and stewardship. And it has been made manifest and evident in the Messianic Movement in The Land...the first genuinely indigenous Jewish expression of faith in Jesus of Nazareth, since the days of the first Apostles. This Movement (which boasts at the very least 120 congregations today) is now actively fulfilling the Lord's original "through the cities of Israel" mandate. This great work of evangelization, which the Lord has re-commenced through these Israeli worshippers of Jesus, He will complete upon and by His return.
Each of these consequent prophetical events is clearly mapped and spelt-out for us in Psalm 122:
a) (Verse 3) Jerusalem is reunited and thus reconnected to its destiny to be "a city that is closely compacted together...where people come together in unity". (Between 1948 and 1967, east Jerusalem was controlled by Jordan.)
b) (Verse 4) Then, the whole nation is restored to worshipping God, when "the tribes of the Lord, (go up) to praise the name ('thou shalt call his name Jesus') of the Lord."
c) (Verse 5) And then, finally "there the thrones of judgement stand"...and are occupied by the Son of David and His 12 Apostles.
"Jesus said to them, I tell you the truth, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." (Mt 19.28)
My message here unmasks erroneous beliefs and activities...and also demands alteration and correction:
i) Are our Christian expectations Biblically ordered? Are we actually committed to proclaiming the Gospel of God's soon-coming King, or some trumped-up, Gentile-ish non-gospel of personal fulfillment, private enrichment, and self-aggrandizement?
Is His promised return really our "blessed (highest) hope"? (Tit 2.13) And are we actually "intensely watching for and expecting" His reappearance and parousia? (1 Co 1.7 Php 3.20)
ii) If we are in fact waiting for the 2nd Coming...is our disposition passive or active? Insofar as I've never once seen anyone lethargically drifting closer to God, similarly Christian "agnosticism" (on this subject!) and a general torpidity ("Wake me when He's back"!) is not going to draw the King of kings down out of Heaven. In fact the Apostle Peter exhorts us to not only "look forward to the day of God", but also to exercise ourselves and "speed its coming...do everything possible to hasten its coming"! (2 Pe 3.12)
iii) The major way in which we can now "hasten" Jesus' return is by throwing our primary prayer-weight in behind the Israeli Messianic Movement's evangelization of The Land. (This ought to be supplemented by financial and moral support!) They alone I believe have the apostolic mandate to fulfill the Lord's "through the cities of Israel' prophetic decree. It is not just that they could do with the Gentile Church's help, or deserve our assistance...both spiritual and material.
We really do need to get it into our heads, that when we favour beloved Israel ahead of ourselves, we are more like unto God who has said to the Jews, "To you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you." (Ac 3.26) And similarly, "It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you (the Jews)." (Ac 13.46)
Historically the Church's anti-Semitism has clothed us with shame and public humiliation. But these Last Days hold for us a second chance to truly put things right and honour ("respect by giving preference and precedence to" Ro 12.10) those whom God first called "my people, my chosen, the people I formed for myself." (Isa 43.20)
By so honouring and preferring Israel we may yet throw off the dirty rags of our long-term religious ignorance and racism, and discover ourselves clothed anew with "much greater riches" of grace; even "life from the dead"...fiery, unending Spirit of Messiah revival, during which the raising of the dead becomes almost commonplace (Ro 11.11-16); culminating in The Day of Jesus' return when "the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed." (1 Co 15.52)
Our choice is really quite stark. We can go on relentlessly and perpetually pushing and shoving our spiritually obese, Western selves to the head of God's blessing queue. Or we can freely choose to step back, to prayerfully lose our place in the line, and thereby create grace-space for our older, Jewish brothers and sisters, "the lost sheep of Israel". (Mt 10.6)
We have absolutely nothing to lose; in fact, more than we can presently imagine to gain. In the 1800s, the Scottish Presbyterian "missionary" to the Jews, Dr. Andrew Bonar, unequivocally asserted that when Christians stretch out a hand of care and benediction to Israel, "unspeakable blessings" are drawn down upon the Church.
David Baron (1855-1926 scholarly Jewish Believer and friend of Theodore Herzl, the "father" of modern Israel) wrote, "The work of conversion (of the Jews) is always a work which only the power of God can accomplish."
"But that does not mean," he said, "that the Church of Christ is to fold her hands as she has done for many centuries, and do next to nothing."
Above all things, according to David Baron (who co-founded the "Hebrew Christian Testimony to Israel" in London in the late 1800s) the Church's disposition towards Israel should be "an attitude of prayer".
"Let there be the heart's desire and believing prayer unto God for Israel that they may be saved...The distant sounds of our Master's chariots are already heard, and Jesus Christ is coming quickly to render to every man according to his work...Who will rise to the Lord's help against the mighty? Who by their prayers and substance will help to carry the gospel message to poor scattered Israel?"
"Judah will be besieged as well as Jerusalem. On that day, when all the nations of the earth are gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations...And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child...On that day a fountain will be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity." (Zec 12.2-3 & 10, 13.1)
"Coming up to them at that very moment, she (a prophetess, Anna) gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem." (Lk 2.38)
FOOTNOTE: It is no coincidence that the late 1960s were a time of tremendous restoration for God's beloved Israel...especially the genesis of the modern, indigenous Messianic Movement. One of the ways in which the Lord reveals Himself in history is by symmetry of times and seasons. According to Rabbi C. Potok, "Recent scholarship has recovered some wispy fragments from the lives, movements, and settlement patterns of people in the ancient world that seem to place Abraham between the years 2000 and 1900 BCE."
The 1960s BC?
"He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, even as he said to our fathers." (Lk 1.54-55)
