Prophetic Insights
Axis Mundi
The Christian hermit, Thomas Merton (1915-1968), wrote in his diary during May of 1965, describing the Cross as "the axis mundi"...the axle of the cosmos!
His "vision" reminded me of the motto of the Carthusians...a community of Christian hermits planted in the French Alps during the 11th Century (and continuing to thrive there today) : "Stat Crux dum volvitur orbis"..."The Cross is steady, while the world is turning". It seems to me that this statement might be taken in two complementary ways:
* That the Cross of Christ remains, while all else is subject to change and decay.
* That everything that has any kind of real existence, is actually dependent for that existence upon the Cross and the Blood shed there by Jesus the Lamb of God..."slain from the foundation of the world". (Revelation 13.8)
The Carthusians' dictum in turn put me in mind of the 19th Century, Presbyterian hymn 113. The first verse runs:
"In the Cross of Christ I glory
Towering o'er the wrecks of time;
All the light of sacred story
Gathers round its head sublime."
Such was the Apostle Paul's core, articulated when he no doubt stunned the intellectually superior and super-spiritual and hyper-critical Corinthians, by asserting, "For I determined (judged) not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." (1 Corinthians 2.2)
The long-awaited and longed for universal awakening of God's Jewish People (Romans 11.26) immediately prior to the Second Coming, will be by "Jesus Christ, and Him crucified". As the prophet Zechariah so starkly foresaw, "And they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness (grieves) for his firstborn." (12.10)
In 1889, the Free Church of Scotland was exhorted by a Messianic Jew to "unceasingly hold up the Cross and its atoning sacrifice, for the Holy Spirit makes Israel 'mourn' when they look on the pierced One."
"My God, my God why have You forsaken me?...They pierced my hands and feet...And for my clothing they cast lots." (Psalm 22.1,16,18)
"But He was pierced through for our transgressions." (Isaiah 53.5)
Today there is much huffing and puffing and passing of gas surrounds speculation about Last Days' revival. Much of it is obsessed with discovering the right man, or message, or method, or movement! It's all a load of asinine, fatuous, lunacy. (And that's putting it politely!)
But as revival will go for the Jews at the End, so shall it transpire for the Gentiles. It will be a revival by the Holy Spirit, bearing witness to "Jesus Christ, and Him crucified".
Perhaps one of the greatest revivals of religion ever, occurred in the days of Elijah the Prophet. Israel was in a pitiful condition spiritually, and an utterly disastrous position politically and economically (years of drought and a witch on the throne)! But in a matter of hours, the nation was restored to Biblical faith and obedience unto God their Maker. (1 Kings 18)
According to the sacred Witness' account of that day, "When all the people saw (the fire of the Lord fell), they fell on their faces: And they said, The Lord, He is God; the Lord, He is God." (vs 38-39)
Now where did "the fire of the Lord" fall? On the prophet? On the prophet's prayer?
No! "The fire of the Lord fell" on "the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones (of the altar of the Lord)." (v38)
The Holy Spirit descends upon the Cross, and the Lamb of God, and His precious, shed Blood. Whatever might descend elsewhere, is something else. I know not what...most likely "strange" (adulterous, estranged) fire. (Leviticus 10.1)
What we see plainly in this report of revival is the importance, not of assembling an immense crowd, nor the eloquence or the theology of the prophet. The key moment and the crucial event, is when the seer humbles himself to the sweaty and solitary labour of repairing "the altar of the Lord that was broken down". (v30)
Now take note here, that the altar had not been subject to decay and merely fallen to pieces. It was "broken down"... deliberately and determinedly demolished and thus "in ruins".
Is it possible that modern evangelicalism, charismaticism, and pentecostalism...along with liberal Christianity...have all in fact "broken down" the Cross of Christ, and sought to replace it with a more "credible" and agreeable agency for the grace of God? Might it be that evangelicalism has preferred learning and social respectability; charismaticism has opted for worship and formulaic ministry; and pentecostalism has adopted shouting and yelling and the man of faith and power for the hour...over the Blood of the Cross?
When was the last time your church worshipped God with such words as, "Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to Thy Cross I cling." Or "Just as I am, without one plea, but that they Blood was shed for me."?
I believe that this has in fact happened. It is time for faithful preachers to "repair" ("heal" according to our text!) the Cross, by holding it forth to a backslidden Church and a perishing world, with the unequivocal and unabashed declaration, "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world." (John 1.29)
This is the testimony of the "greatest" prophet. "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven," John the Baptist said, "like a dove, and it abode and remained upon Him." (John 1.32)
Upon whom? Upon the Lamb of God, and His Cross, and His shed Blood.
"Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bidd'st me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come."
(Hymn 411)
"Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to Thy Cross I cling;
Naked, come to Thee for dress;
Helpless, look to Thee for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly;
Wash me, Saviour, or I die."
(Hymn 413)
Prophetic Silence
"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven...a time to be silent and a time to speak." (Ecclesiastes 3.1 and 7)
"It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young. Let him sit alone in silence, for the Lord has laid it on him." (Lamentations 3.27-28)
I simply will not believe that God is saying all that prophetic website after prophetic website proposes and reports today. There is too much noise; there is not enough silence.
Silence is a singular proof of the genuinely prophetic person.
"I will make your tongue stick to the roof of your mouth so that you will be silent and unable to rebuke them, though they are a rebellious house. But when I speak to you, I will open your mouth..." (Ezekiel 3.26-27)
"My strength is dried up like a potsherd (broken piece of earthenware), and My tongue sticks to the roof of My Mouth...Dogs have surrounded Me...they have pierced My hands and My feet." (Psalm 22.15-16)
"But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities...He was oppressed and afflicted, and yet He did not open His mouth; He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so He did not open His mouth." (Isaiah 53.5 and 7)
What meaneth such silence in our yackety-yack Church, and our ruined, clamorous world?
"But when I was silent and still, not even saying anything good, my anguish increased. My heart grew hot within me, and as I meditated, the fire burned; then I spoke with my tongue." (Psalm 39.2-3)
"So the word of the Lord has brought me insult and reproach all day long. But if I say I will not mention Him or speak any more in His name, His word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot." (Jeremiah 20.8-9)
It is God who shuts the prophet's mouth. He cancels the seer's speaking engagements. Not the "corporate" preachers, who foolishly believe that they've successfully marginalised and smothered the inconvenient voice.
The genuine prophet is regularly shutdown and left alone.
"Then the Spirit came into me and raised me to my feet. He spoke to me and said, 'Go, shut yourself inside your house. And you, son of man, they will tie with ropes; you will be bound so that you cannot go out among the people.' " (Ezekiel 3.24-25)
For in solitude and silence, God's word enters and begins burning with ever-increasing heat. Then it bursts out...not merely to warm a little or enlighten a tad. No! It springs forth to melt rock-hard hearts and destroy the vainglorious ziggurats of men...setting fire to the very air itself!
Such prophets might speak only once...but the fire lit will burn until The Day.
"I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled." (Luke 12.49)
"If anyone tries to harm them (My two witnesses), fire comes from their mouths and devours their enemies." (Revelation 11.5)
The prophet's heart is the blast-furnace of the Lord. In silence and solitude he is first-of-all smelted and refined in temperatures far greater than his hearers will ever have to bear. Then he may, in due season, speak a word worthy of the Saviour who sends it, and His Bride who must be wounded and then healed by it.
"The truth is formed in silence and work and suffering, with which we become true. But we interfere with God's work by talking too much about ourselves - even telling Him what we ought to be - advising Him how to make us perfect and listening for His voice to answer us with approval. We soon grow impatient and turn aside from the silence that disturbs us (the silence in which His work can best be done) and invent the answer and the approval, which will never come.
"SILENCE, THEN, IS THE ADORATION OF HIS TRUTH." (Thomas Merton, Trappist hermit, Kentucky 1915-68)
The Thrush and the Rat
If the holy angels of God were to disguise themselves as a creature, I do not doubt they would choose to be thrushes. Their beauty and fragility and song are exquisite. Sometimes, I just stand and listen to one singing; it is hard not to imagine that song going straight to touch the Creator's heart.
On the other hand, the vilest creature I am forced to share my environment with, is the rat. We are presently living near a creek which has been "rat-central", probably for centuries. If they stayed at home, that might be alright. But they insist on roaming and invading and destroying and defiling...my habitat.
Through the winter I've been at war with these filthy rodents...wiping out a few here and there with trap and bait. I've been very, very careful to place my traps as far away from innocent enquiry as possible;
successfully, until now.
The other afternoon I could see in the murk beneath our garden shed, that something was in the trap. My rejoicing - that another rat had been viciously and painfully executed - swifly turned to guilty and very great sorrow, when I found that I had killed a bird...and of all that play in our garden, it was a thrush!
"He has performed mighty deeds with His arm; He has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty." (Luke 1.51-53)
This prophesied, vigorous overturning of injustice by the Lord, we are waiting to see...especially in the Church. I believe there are those who now feel completely ring-fenced and immured from such an upheaval of the "established" order because it has gone on for so long. Injustice is the status quo!
"First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, 'Where is this "coming" He promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything has gone on as it has since the beginning of creation.' " (2 Peter 3.3-4)
Since my earliest days as a Christian preacher (1970s), I have been often perturbed (occasionally tempted to despair) that the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ appears all too often to be in the hands of "the rats", and not "the thrushes". I've been unable to fathom why, again and again, in ecclesiastical conundrum after ecclesiastical fracas, it's not "the rats" who end up in "the traps" of Church discipline and correction, but "the thrushes"?
How come? What meaneth this?
When I found the beautiful thrush, crushed in my ugly wood and wire trap, I felt like lying down in the dry dust and decomposing leaves of my yard and weeping for it...and for all the innocent Believers (especially servant-leaders) I've known personally who have been ground to fine dust by the insatiable, brutal jaws of religious power-politics. And incidentally, these crackbrained and treacherous "games" are played at every level - both high and low, clergy and laity - in God's House.
How come, time-and-again, "the thrushes" are killed, and "the rats" slip away to plot their next upwardly-mobile move in their campaign to create church in their own image? How come?
Because "the rats" set the traps which are meant to catch "the rats"...knowing full well that they and their henchmen in-the-know will never fall in. But with a little bit of "luck" one of those frustratingly "naive" thrushes will stumble in. Whack! Good job! One less inconvenient voice of truth and conscience to silence.
The Church "rats" loved Friar Girolamo Savonarola (1452-98). The fast-gaunt, Dominican priest-prophet drew their applause as his unsparing sermons tore into the irreligious excesses and immorality of Florence's temporal eminences...along with that Renaissance city's wayward residents.
But then he turned his homiletical guns on "the rats".
"In the primitive Church," he said, "the chalices were of wood, the prelates (leaders) of gold. In these days, the Church hath chalices of gold, and prelates of wood."
They up and killed him. That's what "rats" do to "thrushes"...when you really push them. Poor Girolamo! They suspended him from a cross in chains over a fire, which was kept stoked until even his dust had vanished away on the wind.
And if the writer...this out-of-fashion and no-account preacher...has seen through this strutting nonsense - the slanderous destruction of rivals, inflated accounts of others' failings (both real and imagined), exaggerated reports of meeting sizes and "revival", the misappropriation of finance collected for God, but kept for "the ministry" - then how much more clearly does the Maker of my eyes see you?
"In his arrogance the wicked man...says to himself, 'God has forgotten. He covers His face and never sees.' " (Psalm 10.2 and 11)
"Does He who formed the eye not see?" (Psalm 94.9)
"The Lord is in His holy temple; the Lord is on His heavenly throne. He observes the sons of men; His eyes examine them." (Psalm 11.4)
And no matter how "important" the man, ministry, church, movement-denomination may be to the Kingdom of God...we are accountable, and one day our account will be rendered and we will have to pay!
"Why does the wicked man revile God? Why does he say to himself, 'He won't call me to account'? But You, O God, do see trouble and grief; You consider it to take it in hand. The victim commits himself to You; You are the helper of the fatherless." (Psalm 10.13-14)
And do not delude yourself that because no account has ever been rendered to anyone you may know, that it will not come...that it does not even exist. No matter how many super-spiritual scholars or grandees you may gather in "holy" convocation, not one syllable of His Word can you strike down. Our bills must come. And if not today or tomorrow...then most certainly on the Last Day.
"The sins of some men are obvious, reaching the place of judgement ahead of them; the sins of others trail behind them." (1 Timothy 5.24)
"Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants." (Matthew 18.23)
"For we will all stand before God's judgement seat. It is written: 'As surely as I live,' says the Lord, 'every knee will bow before Me; every tongue will confess to God.' So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God." (Romans 14.10-12)
"So we make it our goal to please Him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done in the body, whether good or bad." (2 Corinthians 5.9-10)
"Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account." (Hebrews 13.17)
"But they will have to give account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead." (1 Peter 4.5)
"Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly (by a more severe standard)." (James 3.1)
What am I here agitating for? The swift destruction of "the rats" from amongst the People of God? No!
"The Lord...is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." (2 Peter 3.9)
"I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd (prudent) as snakes and as innocent (devoid of double-dealing) as doves." (Matthew 10.16)
Those who find themselves lowly placed (even as leaders!) in the Church, need not accept being used as door mats by their brothers and sisters in Christ. And even more importantly, those who discover themselves at an advantage over others, have an obligation before God to conduct themselves (and their ministries) humbly, selflessly, and with genuine purity of heart.
I am pleading for a Church wherein the poor, the weak, and the powerless are not beaten up for their petty misdemeanours. I am asking for a Church where the powerful, the wealthy, and the influential take off their (flashy) outer clothing, and wrap towels (of servanthood) around their waists; pour water into basins and begin to wash the disciples' feet, drying them with towels that are wrapped around them. (John 13.4-5)
And I am praying that we will do this ourselves through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. For if we will not so reform ourselves, then there is One who will.
"The Judge is standing at the door." (James 5.9)
A Very Slippery Slope
More than a century ago, the Church in England was warned that it was "going downhill at breakneck speed"! That prophetic alarm was ignored and the decline has continued unabated and in earnest. The present-day charismatic and pentecostal drift into extra-biblical mysticism is its latest manifestation (and casualty).
In 1887, the Baptist "prince of preachers", Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892), vigorously cautioned Christians that the Church was on a "downgrade", being "enamoured with worldly wisdom more than zeal for truth", and preferring "the husks of theological speculations...to the wholesome bread of Gospel truth".
(C.H. Spurgeon began his London ministry at the age of 20...eventually building up a congregation of 6000, which met at the Metropolitan Tabernacle. His preaching motto was, "I take my text and make a beeline to the Cross.")
The "foe" as he saw it, was "liberal theology", then beginning to be expressed (for the most part) by scholars in German theological schools. Many of these men were "children" of the 1700s Enlightenment...a philosophical movement which optimistically attached unbounded importance to and confidence in the power of the human mind. Man's capacity to reason became godlike, and everything (including the Bible) was set beneath its bar and sway. Overnight a revolution occurred. The Scriptures, which for millennia had been the tutor and the judge of the human race, became the object of humanity's judgement.
"As for the person who hears My words but does not keep them, I do not judge him. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save it. There is a judge for the one who rejects Me and does not accept My words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day." (John 12.47-48)
"But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it - he will be blessed in what he does." (James 1.25)
This revolution led to a "christian" creed described by the post-liberal theologian, Richard Niebuhr (1894-1962) as, "A God without wrath, (brings) man without sin, into a kingdom without judgement, through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross."
One hundred years earlier, Charles Spurgeon, had discerned the early leanings into this nose-dive. He received no applause from his peers...rather their scorn and rejection. Those closest to him believed the agony and stress of this "downgrade" controversy led to his untimely death. But throughout his final, lonely and tear-soaked years on earth, he unequivocally and intelligently expounded from his pulpit his complete confidence in the inspiration and given-ness of the whole Bible, the sovereignty of God in salvation, the full deity of Jesus Christ, and the power and efficacy of His Atonement through the Cross.
"Our want of faith has done more mischief to us than all the devils in hell, and all the heretics on earth. Some cry out against the Pope, and others against agnostics; but it is our own unbelief which is our worst enemy," Spurgeon said.
"Oh! Spirit of God, being back Thy Church to a belief in the Gospel! Bring back her ministers to preach it once again with the Holy Ghost, and not striving after wit and learning. Then shall we see Thine arm made bare, O God, in the eyes of all the people, and the myriads shall be brought to rally round the throne of God and the Lamb," he prayed.
"Liberal theology" has continued its unrelenting colonisation of the Church through to today. But in this essay, I am more concerned to identify its impact upon those parts of the Christian Community which would automatically think of themselves as being doctrinally traditional, conservative, orthodox...in other words, Bible-believing.
Friedrich Schleiemacher (1768-1834) is generally considered the "father" of "liberal theology". In his writings he was concerned to emphasise the following:
* That the essence of religion is not "revelation outside of the self", but "feeling inside of the self".
* That "internal religious experience" is more important than "defining external religious truth".
This thinking contains the seeds of modern, spiritual subjectivism, which is now moving like wildfire through the tinder-dry imaginations and ambitions of Believers earnestly seeking to dwell on the cutting-edge of God's redeeming work in the world today.
A sincere desire for national revival is surely very close to the heart of the Saviour at this hour...the last hour of the last day of the Last Days. But that desire when unbridled by God's objective revelation of the truth, the Bible, and awash in the uncertain brew of subjectivism, becomes toxic and destructive.
Such disorder moved Jessie Penn-Lewis to replace Scripture-ordained water baptism with flag-waving over converts. It was what led the great apostle of healing, Alexander Dowie, to end his days holding court attired as an Old Testament high priest. It propelled the decline of William Branham into the conviction that he was a "reincarnation" of the prophet Elijah. Great and mighty 20th C saints each one, whose days ended in a "murkwood" of confusion (even deception) when the voice within smothered and quenched the voice without.
"When men tell you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquired of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living? To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn" (Isaiah 8.19-20)
"Believe God, that plainly (unmistakably, obviously, clearly) speaketh in His Word. And further than the Word teacheth you, you shall neither believe the one nor the other. The Word of God is plain in itself, and if there appear any obscurity in one place, the Holy Ghost, which is never contrarious to Himself, explains the same more clearly in other places." (John Knox, Scotland 1505-72)
I want you to notice here particularly, the contrast drawn by both Isaiah the Prophet and John Knox the Scottish Reformer. For both of these extraordinary scholar-prophets, God's objective Word is out-in-the-open...clear, intelligible. The "spiritual" words of those other than the Lord are murky, cryptic, ambiguous. These speakers announce one thing, and then later say that they meant something else. They exaggerate and obfuscate, and are casual with true truth. They appear willing even to negate the truth of the Bible...and in so doing, seem to be quite unaware, or even worse, not to care.
The object of this message is not to speak disparagingly of friends whose views concerning the inspiration of Scripture (intuition, illumination, dynamic, verbal, dictation?) are different or "lower" than my own. Nor is my goal to appear to disdain other friends who seem to be headed into the dangerous currents of extra-biblical mysticism. (See Postscript)
There is a mysticism which is holy and healthy. And there is a mysticism which is not.
"What you heard from me (the Apostle), keep as the pattern of sound (healthy) teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus." (2 Timothy 1.13)
"For the time will come when men will not put up with sound (healthy) doctrine. Instead to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths." (2 Timothy 4.3-4 and Titus 1.9, 2.1)
Bernard of Clairvaux (France, 1090-1153) is one of the Church's greatest mystical (charismatic) scholars. The contemplative (prayer) movement he reformed, still thrives today. Even today's "driest" Evangelicals would most likely be astonished (abashed?) at his dependence upon and abundant use of Scripture in the 300 sermons of his which are still in circulation.
"Liberal" theology asks that the Bible be brought to the bar of human reason, so that all which seems irrational or unthinkable contained therein can be discarded as "myth" or mistake!
The wisdom of God summons us to the bar of the "plain" truth of the Bible. There we are invited to discard everything (especially beliefs and spiritual revelations and experiences) which are not in unambiguous harmony with its clear, straightforward Light.
"How priceless is Your unfailing love! Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of Your wings...For with You is the fountain of life; in Your light we see light." (Psalm 36.7-9)
POSTSCRIPT: "There subsists an essential and vital connection between the eternal Word of God...and that written Word which testifies of Him...for He is the centre and kernel of the inspired record.
"It appears like reasoning in a circle when we say we receive the Bible because of Christ, and we receive Christ through the Bible...The difficulty disappears when we remember...that the same Spirit of God convinces us of the supremacy of Christ and of the supremacy of Scripture.
And, accordingly, we find that as the hearts of men are attracted by Jesus Christ...their minds are filled with reverence and love for the Scripture.
"For higher than the Bible, is - not reason, not the Church, not the Christian consciousness - but, the Holy Ghost, Who reveals Christ in the written Word, so that it becomes to us what it truly is, the Word of God, the voice of the Beloved." (Dr Adolph Saphir, 1831-91)
Becoming Like Jesus
In a recent dream, I saw an extremely old woman, clothed in the very latest and "brassy" fashion...wearing make-up more suited to someone 70 years her junior. She was holding-forth (pontificating) loud and long, railing against the new President of the United States of America. She was virulently opposed to him, as his election did not measure up to and conform to her political specifications and expectations.
The Trappist monk, Thomas Merton (Gethsemani Abbey, USA) once said that the Christian faith "enables, or should enable, a man to stand back from society and its institutions and realize that they all stand under the inscrutable judgement of God, and that, therefore, we can never give an unreserved assent to the policies, the progammes and the organizations of men."
"To do so is idolatry," he said, "the same kind of idolatry that was refused by the early martyrs who would not burn incense to the emperor.
"The policies of men contain within themselves the judgement and doom of God upon their society, and when the Church identifies her policies with theirs, she too is judged with them - for she has in this been unfaithful and is not truly 'the Church'."
Much Christian culture in New Zealand and the United States is interlocked...especially the infantilism (arrested developement) which automatically and without any serious consideration attributes righteousness to conservative parties, and likewise demonizes their liberal opponents.
At best, such behaviour is childish (but nevertheless still dangerous); at worst it is idolatrous!
"You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love Me and keep My commandments." (Exodus 20.4-6)
It is not the Church's mission to bring the world around it into submission to itself and its own fragmentary (and usually distorted) vision of the "perfect" society. Rather we are called to be conformed (individually and collectively) to our Lord Jesus Christ.
"For those God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers." (Romans 8.29)
"And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the Man from heaven." (1 Corinthians 15.49)
"And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." (2 Corinthians 3.18)
"But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body." (Philippians 3.20-21)
"Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as He is pure." (1 John 3.2-3)
"But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; and the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming." (2 Peter 3.10-12)
"For when I name the name of Jesus, I call to mind at once a man meek and lowly of heart, benign, pure, temperate, merciful; a man conspicuous for every honorable and saintly quality. And also in the same person, the Almighty God, so that He both restores me to health by His example and renders me strong by His assistance." (Bernard of Clairvaux 1090-1153)
Be Not Ashamed
"I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile." (Romans 1.16)
"Then I saw another angel flying in midair, and He had the eternal Gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth - to every nation, tribe, language and people." (Revelation 14.6)
A significant End Time crisis overshadows the Church and Israel today. It concerns the proclamation of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to God's Jewish People.
Since the unspeakable horrors and satanic abominations of the Holocaust, it has become commonplace for the Jewish Community in The Land and abroad to blame the Christian Religion for the event, more often than not discerning its seeds in such writings as the German Reformer, Martin Luther's,
"(The Jews') synagogues should be set on fire, and whatever does not burn-up should be covered or spread over with dirt...and this ought to be done for the honour of God and of Christianity in order that God may see that we are Christians, and that we have not wittingly tolerated or approved of such public lying, cursing, and blasphemy of His Son and His Christians."
But of course, antisemitism was not the invention of German Protestantism. It was preceded by the Crusades, the hysterical persecutions at the time of the Black Death, the Roman Catholic Inquisition, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and the centuries of ghetto-degradation!
Little wonder that Rabbi Chaim Potok writes in his book "Wanderings" (1978), "The Jew sees all his contemporary history refracted through the ocean of blood that is the Holocaust."
For some Holocaust survivors, their faith itself, in God Himself, perished in the European archipelago of Nazi concentration camps. The 1986 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Elie Wiesel, was sent as a child into the infernal killing machines of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. He later wrote ("Night" 1958),
"Never shall I forget that smoke...Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my Faith forever...Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust...Never."
For others, Christianity was confirmed forever as the "enemy". Immediately after WW2, the Yiddish author and poet, Leivick Halpern, challenged in the strongest possible terms those Holocaust survivors who were then contemplating embracing Christianity,
"Are you prepared to reward Hitler with a posthumous victory? Those who convert are turncoats who spend their lives in castles of their own ruins. Ruins forgotten by time. Such people are guilty of nothing less than self-annihilation!" ("Sunshine West" Jacob G Rosenberg)
But ought the Gospel of Jesus, and Jesus of Nazareth Who is the Gospel, be overturned and negated by history...however vile, sickening, and revolting?
It is chillingly true that "the Holocaust perpetrated as it was by leaders and citizens of a supposedly Christian nation, had led to a sense in some quarters that Christian credibility among Jews has been totally destroyed."
(The World Evangelical Fellowship "Willowbank Declaration", 1989)
But the fifteen Evangelical scholars who framed this document ask if this plain and extremely depressing fact, justified a shrinking back from "addressing the Jewish People with the Gospel".
"Some who see the creation of the State of Israel as a direct fulfillment of Biblical prophecy have concluded that the Christian task at this time is to 'comfort Israel', rather than to challenge Jews by direct evangelism," they observed.
"A new theology is being embraced which holds that God's covenant with Israel through Abraham establishes all Jews in God's favour for all time, and so makes faith in Jesus Christ for salvation needless so far as they are concerned."
"Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because He has come and has redeemed His people. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant David (as He said through His holy prophets of long ago)." (Luke 1.68-70)
"God exalted Him (Jesus) to His right hand as Prince and Saviour that He might give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel." (Acts 5.31)
"From this man's descendants God has brought to Israel the Saviour Jesus, as He promised." (Acts 13.23)
No matter how vehemently it may be repulsed by cogent protest, a clear distinction must always be drawn between Jesus Who is the Gospel, and everyone and everything which claims to speak and act in His holy Name. The Suffering Servant's Cross was never designed to be a screen and a cloak for corrupt creeds and evil deeds!
One of Britain's most eminent historians, Sir Martin Gilbert (b. 1936... and official biographer of Sir Winston Churchill) has argued strongly for this division.
The author of more than 80 books (including "Never Again: A History of the Holocaust", "From the Ends of the Earth: The Jews in the 20th Century", and "Jerusalem: Rebirth of a City") Sir Martin (who is himself Jewish) has said in an interview, "It's somehow a mistake to associate a long Christian tradition to convert Jews and other persecutions with what we call the Holocaust, which was conceived and carried out by people who certainly were not Christians and were hostile to every Christian value and were abhorrent to Churches and to many devout Christians."
(An aside: In 1942, Heinrich Himmler, in a speech to senior SS officers said, "This Christendom, this greatest pestilence which could have befallen us in history, which has weakened us for every conflict, we must finish with.")
"In writing or speaking about the Holocaust," Sir Martin said, "so grim were the elements of collaboration, of betrayal, of bystanders doing nothing, that what was done that was positive and helpful and remarkable and courageous, has been overlooked and as it were, dropped on the cutting floor of historical writing.
"It is important to remember that despite the terrifying dangers of helping Jews during the War, there were many, many Christians who risked their lives and many who suffered death for trying to help.
"Even in Berlin there are dozens of examples, actually hundreds of examples, of Christians who hid Jews at the risk of their own lives, or smuggled them though Germany to safe houses or even out of Germany."
In these last of the Last Days, it is crucial that the Christian Community permit nothing to rob us of the greatest gift we have to bless Israel with...Yeshua the Nazarene: Israel's Messiah and the world's Redeemer and Saviour. For if we shrink back from this proclamation (by word and deed) we hazard impeding the salvation of all Israel, and risk the loss in our own day of such luminous and scholarly Jews as Dr Adolph Saphir, Dr Alfred Edersheim (1825-1889), and David Baron (1855-1926).
Dr Saphir (1831-1891) was born in Hungary, studied theology in Germany and Scotland, and for the greater part of his life served God as a Presbyterian Minister in England...most notably at Greenwich and Notting Hill, London. The incomparable Baptist, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, called him "the Biblical student, the lover of the Word, the lover of the God of Israel". Such was his power as a preacher and teacher that his Notting Hill church was usually crowded with Anglicans, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Brethren...and of course Presbyterians.
In 1889, Dr Saphir addressed the 50th anniversary of the Free Church of Scotland's Jewish Mission. Forty six years earlier "with my dear father (Israel)...and my mother, my brother and three sisters, I was baptized into the holy name of our covenant God. That day shines forth in my memory above all other days of my life - a day of intense solemnity, sweetest peace, and most childlike assurance of the love of God in Christ Jesus."
The presence of the Presbyterian Jewish Mission in Budapest, Hungary, was the catalyst for this event.
Dr Saphir went on to tell the anniversary assembly, "My mother told me that I was born on the day of Atonement - the day on which God forgives the sins of His people; this simple fact roused strange and sad thoughts in my heart. Mysterious day, when Jews, clad in their white burial-garment, confess their sins with weeping and fasting. And the problem which pressed heavily upon me then...it was evident that we had no real and complete forgiveness of sin, since the day of Atonement had to be observed every year.
"When your Jewish missionaries came and preached to us the Gospel, this was the deepest conviction in our hearts, 'Now we know God', and with all the converts, however various their history, the central point was the forgiveness of sin through the atoning death of Christ. The verse through which I first saw the Gospel was, 'He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisment of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.' " (Isaiah 53.5)
And concerning Israel's future, Dr Saphir was full of the greatest hope, in spite of all possible circumstances .... ...favourable and hostile!
"Why," he asked, "should it be thought a strange thing that Israel's history will be consummated by a direct interference of God, 'the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour.'? (Titus 2.13)
"The memories of the past are solemn; the opportunities of the present are urgent; the hope for the future, according to the Word of God, is secure and glorious. Was not Israel's history miraculous from the very
beginning?...It was in the time of Judea's lowest condition, when subject to the Roman emperor, that God visited and redeemed His people...And thus the conclusion of Israel's history will be God's act, and manifest to the whole world as supernatural and divine. 'Hear the word of the Lord, O ye nations, and declare it in the isles afar off. He that scattered Israel will gather him and keep him as a shepherd doth his flock.' (Jeremiah 31.10)
"In conclusion, I beseech you not to forget the love to Israel which...so eminently characterised you."
"Brothers, I want you to grasp this divine secret which God has revealed to His own, because I do not want you to get the impression of your own cleverness. The insensitiveness of the hearts of the Jewish nation is not a total insensitiveness, and it will only last until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. After that has happened, all Israel will be saved. As scripture says: 'The Rescuer will come from Sion, He will drive all godlessness from Jacob. This is the covenant I will make with them, when I take away their sins.' Looked at from the point of view of the Gospel, they have incurred God's hatred, and it is all for your sake. Looked at from the point of view of God's eternal choice, they are still loved by God for the sake of the fathers. For God cannot go back on His gifts and His call." (Romans 11.25-29 W Barclay NT)
An Immutable Principle
In late 2000 I wrote, "I have just returned from seven days in Jerusalem, Israel, praying for Holy Ghost revival to fall on that city in these, the last of the Last Days. In the weeks immediately before my pilgrimage I had begun to prophesy and preach that we will experience End Time revival in our own nation (New Zealand) by the measure and to the extent that we seek and pray and work for, and also financially support, the outpouring of God's final world-shaking revival in and from His City." ("The Jerusalem Revival")
My prediction was then "greeted" by a prolonged ecclesiastical yawn, some unexpected and surprising hostility, and the discrete but firm shutting of many a "door of utterance" in my face.
But my statement does in fact contain the mind of Christ, and is entirely in accord and alignment with God's golden chain of apostolicity.
"The Lord saith, All the nations shall be blessed in Abraham: Hence I gather that the nation of the Jews shall be called, and converted to the participation of this blessing: When, and how, God knows: But that it shall be done before the end of the world we know." (William Perkins, Cambridge University Fellow, 1582)
"The faithful Jews rejoiced to think of the calling of the Gentiles; and why should we not joy to think of the calling of the Jews?" (Richard Sibbes, Puritan scholar, 1577-1635)
"O see the sight, next to Christ's coming in the clouds, the most joyful! Our elder brethren the Jews and Christ fall upon one another's necks and kiss each other! They have been long asunder; they will be kind to one another when they meet. O day! O longed-for and lovely day-dawn! O sweet Jesus, let me see that sight which will be as life from the dead, Thee and Thy ancient people in mutual embraces." (Samuel Rutherford, Professor of Divinity, Scotland, 1600-1661)
"Are you longing for a revival to the churches, now lying like dry bones, would you fain have the Spirit of life enter into them? Then pray for the Jews. 'For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world; what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead.' That will be a lively time, a time of a great outpouring of the Spirit, that will carry reformation to a greater height than yet has been." (Thomas Boston, Church of Scotland minister, 1716)
"Deliver the ten tribes of Israel from their blindness and estrangement, and make us acquainted with their sealed ones: bring in the tribe of Judah in its time, and bless its first fruits among us." (Moravian prayer, 1764)
In 1839, the Presbyterian Church of Scotland was "moved" to create a Mission of Inquiry, which was formally sent to the Holy Land to "make personal inquiries into the state of Israel".
One of the four ministers sent was Robert Murray M'Cheyne (1813-1843). Before the journey he wrote, "We should be like God in His peculiar affections; and the whole Bible shows that God has ever had, and still has, a peculiar love to the Jews. I now see plainly that all our views about the Jews being the chief object of missionary exertion are plain and sober truths, according to the Scripture."
"But as far as election if concerned, they (Israel) are loved on account of the patriarchs." (Romans 11.28)
"I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile." (Romans 1.16 Also Acts 3.26 and 13.46)
Further, Robert M'Cheyne made clear his expectation that "we might anticipate an outpouring of the Spirit when our Church should stretch out its hands to the Jews as well as to the Gentile."
One of his companions on the journey was Dr Andrew Bonar (1810-1892), who likewise vigorously asserted, "The cause of Israel, is a cause which God has brought into view, whenever there was any thing great to be done in His Kingdom below. When we give the Jews their proper place in our missionary work, we might look for special blessing at home."
"The Lord said to Abram...I will bless those who bless you." (Genesis 12.1-3)
"Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love you." (Psalm 122.6)
The Mission of Inquiry was away from Scotland for many months...spending ten days in Jerusalem, and seven in the shade of Elijah's Carmel.
While absent from his parish (St Peter's, Dundee), Robert M'Cheyne's pulpit was "occupied" by another young preacher, William Burns. On July 23, he preached in his father's church at nearby Kilsyth. According to Dr Bonar's record,
"While pressing upon them immediate acceptance of Christ with due solemnity, the whole of the vast assembly were overpowered. The Holy Spirit seemed to come down as a rushing mighty wind, and to fill the place. Very many were that day struck to the heart. The sanctuary was filled with distressed and inquiring souls. All Scotland heard the glad news that the sky was no longer as brass - that the rain had begun to fall. The Spirit in mighty power began to work from that day forward in many places of the land."
William Burns returned to Robert M'Cheyne's church on August 8, and the Spirit fell there as He had in Kilsyth. All the while the Mission of Inquiry, so very far away, continued to "seek the lost sheep of the house of Israel", fully convinced that their endeavours would "draw down unspeakable blessings on the Church of Scotland".
Andrew Bonar records events at St Peter's, "At the close of the usual Thursday evening prayer-meeting, Mr Burns invited those to remain who felt the need of an outpouring of the Spirit to convert them. At the conclusion of a solemn address to these anxious souls, suddenly the power of God seemed to descend, and all were bathed in tears.
"Next evening in the church, there was much melting of heart. A vast number pressed in with awful eagerness. It was like a pent-up flood breaking forth; tears were streaming forth from the eyes of many, and some fell on the ground groaning, and weeping, and crying for mercy.
"Meetings were held every day for many weeks. The whole town was moved. Many believers doubted. The ungodly raged. But the Word of God grew mightily and prevailed. Instances occurred where whole families were affected at once."
They were genuinely apostolic days, which we must most urgently recover today.
"Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ. When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, 'Brothers, what shall we do?' Peter replied, 'Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off - for all whom the Lord our God will call.' And with many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, 'Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.' Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day." (Acts 2.36-41)
Fifty years after the Mission of Inquiry, and the Kilsyth and Dundee revivals, Dr Andrew Bonar addressed the annual meeting of the Free Church of Scotland's General Assembly.
He recalled, "That year, 1839, saw the revival at Kilsyth, at the very time the deputation was seeking out the scattered Jews.
"Why might not we expect another shower of blessing at home, if now again we rouse ourselves to deeper interest in the people who are 'beloved for their fathers' sake'?"
POSTSCRIPT Genuine revival saves the lost and renews the saints; it also "proves" itself by reforming the Church. Those revivals which accompanied the Mission of Inquiry to the Jews, were followed by a prompt reformation of the Church of Scotland.
On May 18, 1843, 450 ministers of the Church of Scotland walked out of their General Assembly to form the Free Church of Scotland. Up until that time the Church had received financial support from Parliament, and so the State believed it should have the last word on the appointment and discipline of pastors. Even the Law Courts believed that the Established Church was a creation of the State and derived its legitimacy by an Act of Parliament.
The 450 (known as "Disrupters") separated themselves at huge cost (forfeiting their pulpits and incomes) to thereby assert and insist that Jesus Christ, and not Parliament, was the only King and Head of the Christian Church.
Dr Andrew Bonar was appointed Moderator of the Free Church in 1878.
Embracing Ultimate Dichotomy
"Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you." (Deuteronomy 8.5)
"I will be a father to him and he will be a son to me; when he commits iniquity, I will correct him with the rod of men and the strokes of the sons of men, but my lovingkindness shall not depart from him." (2 Samuel 7.14-15)
"My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline and do not resent His rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those He loves, as a father the son He delights in." (Proverbs 3.11-12 and Hebrews 12.5-6)
"You who were as numerous as the stars in the sky will be left but few in number, because you did not obey the Lord your God. Just as it pleased the Lord to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please Him to ruin and destroy you. You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess. Then the Lord will scatter you among all nations from one end of the earth to the other." (Deuteronomy 28.62-64)
"This is what the Lord says: 'When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill My gracious promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.' " (Jeremiah 29.10-12)
Because of the absolute almighty-ness of God and our complete minute-ness, faith in Him frequently requires us to embrace dichotomy. We are pressed to come to grips with truths clearly contained and expressed in the Bible which, to all extents and purposes, appear to us to be so far apart as to be disconnected...even contradictory.
Our failure to face and wrestle with such uncomfortable and inconvenient "discrepancies", paves the path to heresy...which is really the distortion and reduction (and destruction) of the Truth, to mere points of view which are rendered intellectually and spiritually convenient, comfortable and inoffensive.
"Our dear brother Paul...his letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do other Scriptures, to their own destruction." (2 Peter 3.16)
For example, the blindingly dazzling mystery of the Trinity (one God who effortlessly encounters us as three distinct Persons, simultaneously! Matthew 3.16-17) is rendered "comprehensible" and thus acceptable to Jehovah's Witnesses and "liberal" Christians alike, by their reduction of Jesus to mere man, and nothing other or more.
"For it pleased...that in (Jesus) should all fulness dwell...For in Him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." (Colossians 1.19 & 2.9)
Certainly in this life, we need to be humble enough to understand, acknowledge and accept that so far as our comprehension of God is concerned, we are watching colour movies on black and white TVs, and listening to CDs on antique gramophones.
All too often "unbelievable" subjects or issues are like the proverbial "elephant in the room". It takes up most of the space, but everyone studiously ignores its presence.
At this hour, there is just such a Biblical and spiritual "elephant" at large, which is so significant and so important, that I call it the "ultimate dichotomy"! And it is this: God's relationship with the Jews.
The two (humanly speaking) "contradictory" truths which go together to comprise the Truth of this "mystery" (Romans 11.25) of Israel are firstly, that the Jews are God's beloved People. And secondly, they are (and have been for much of their history, most of the past 2000 years) living under the most severe discipline and chastening of God.
1) Still Beloved.
"This is what the Lord says, He who appoints the sun by day, who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar - the Lord Almighty is His name: 'Only if these decrees vanish from My sight,' declares the Lord, 'will the descendants of Israel ever cease to be a nation before Me...Only if the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth below be searched out will I reject all the descendants of Israel because of all they have done.' " (Jeremiah 31.35-37)
"I ask then: Did God reject His people? By no means!...Did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all!...I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written...As far as the Gospel is concerned, they are enemies on your account; but as far as election is concerned they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God's gifts and His call are irrevocable." (Romans 11.1 & 11, 25-26, 28-29)
The survival of the Jewish People is testimony to God's love for them and His determination to keep and fulfill all of His covenant promises. This He has already done through Jesus of Nazareth, Israel's King and the world's Redeemer. This He has yet to do through that coming spiritual awakening when Abraham's children, en masse, will "look on Me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for Him as one mourns for an only child, and grieves for a firstborn son...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." (Zechariah 12.10 & 13.1)
The Reformed theologian, Karl Barth (1886-1968) - "the most important theologian since Thomas Aquinas" - asserts, "If one wanted to ask for a proof of God, for something visible and tangible, that no one could contest, which is unfolded before the eyes of all men, then we should have to turn to the Jews. Quite simply, there they are to the present day...In the person of the Jew there stands a witness before our eyes, the witness of God's covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob...Even one who does not understand Holy Scripture can see this reminder."
2) Under Severe Discipline.
"But if you (Solomon) or your sons turn away from Me and do not observe the commands and decrees I have given you and go off to serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel from the Land I have given them and will reject this Temple I have consecrated for My name." (1 Kings 9.6-9)
"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see Me again until you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.' " (Matthew 23.37-39)
The historical excoriation of God's Jewish People (vile in the extreme though it be) is likewise equally important testimony to His unchangeable purposes for Israel. For while the whole history of (especially European) antisemitism is satanic in origin and unutterably loathsome and villainous, it has nevertheless been (and is still) converted into an instrument of God's saving discipline.
"You intended to harm me (meant evil against me), but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives." (Genesis 50.20-21)
How could Israel ever hope to escape the carnage of Jewish history, being at one and the same time the object of satan's jealous hatred and rage at their belovedness, and being left uncovered and hedge-less since Calvary and the destruction of Herod's Temple?
"For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement (covering) for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one's life.' (Leviticus 17.11)
"In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness." (Hebrews 9.22)
"What more could have been done for My vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for grapes, why did it yield only bad? Now I will tell you what I am going to do to My vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed...The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the house of Israel." (Isaiah 5.4-5 & 7)
Addressing the absolutely sinister phenomenon which we call antisemitism (hatred of the Jews simply because they are Jews!), the Jewish prophet without peer, Art Katz, has proposed, "What we construe as antisemitism, and attribute to negative references to the Jews in the New Testament, and to other sociological and historical factors, may have its root in our own failed call...The truer remedy then it not safeguarding against the malevolent, but in our repentance and return to a spurned call and the Lord who gave it.
"That virtually no mention is made of God in every public discussion (about antisemitism) that I have attended, painfully reveals the truth of our Jewish condition, yarmulke wearing or no. We are at best deists if not effectual atheists, and do not expect, or all the more desire a divine intervention.
"Hence we continue to misconstrue the problem (of antisemitism) even as it mounts. For all our clever analysis and critique, only prophetic insight and prophetic proclamation offer the prospect of hope."
And speaking in the same vein, Karl Barth ("Dogmatics in Outline" - 1949) says that the picture which the Old Testament itself gives of the Israelite is "in an utterly shattering way that of the man who resists his own election and consequently the mission given him, who proves himself unworthy and incapable of the mission, and who in consequence, since he is the object of God's grace is continually struck down and broken by the judgement which afflicts him because he withdraws from grace.
"What a problematic people this people Israel is in all stages of its history, is described by almost every book of the Old Testament. It is a grief for all Israelites, to think on what Israel once was, and what has now become of it under the strokes of God, who loved it so much and whose love was so ill requited."
When the Church ignores (and seeks itself to replace) the eternal belovedness of the Jews, and willfully and obstinately overlooks or misinterprets the "strokes of God" upon a backsliding Israel...that is a recipe for genuine disaster. This is the great issue of the hour, as increasingly we shall witness the tide of international opinion and the fortunes of military conflict turning more and more in favour of the enemies of modern Judaism.
Mere emotional fascination with Jewish culture and a romantic attachment to the State of Israel is going to melt beneath the blow-torch of coming prophesied events.
As Art Katz has repeatedly warned and insisted, "There is something about the subject of Israel and the mystery of Israel for the Church that is so intrinsic, so central for its own sake, that the omission of it (which has been unhappily its historical experience) condemns the Church to a decrepit condition.
"There is I believe, something - a missing, crucial dimension - that God intended as normative; and that is the centrality of the people Israel who are out of the Way, out of the faith, blasphemous, and nevertheless yet God's people to whom (through their fathers) He has made great promises of a destiny still to be fulfilled.
"But not before they pass through the severest final testings known as 'the time of Jacob's trouble', to be brought out of it (as a surviving remnant) through the mercy of God extended uniquely through a non-grudging Church."
"If you are not disciplined...then you are illegitimate children and not true sons...Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good that we may share in His holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it." (Hebrews 12.8-11)
When we reduce this text from Hebrews to mere pious explanation for personal difficulties and sufferings, it's not a mistake...it's careless, shallow, dangerous and mad! Because this text proposes God's way of salvation for those of His children who have rejected Him, but who He has absolutely every intention of relentlessly pursuing, and no intention whatsoever of abandoning. It is the divine strategy for saving a whole nation.
"Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: 'The deliverer will come from Zion; He will turn godlessness away from Jacob.' " (Romans 11.25-26)
"Just as I watched over them to uproot and tear down, and to overthrow, destroy and bring disaster, so I will watch over them to build and to plant...This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time...No longer will a man teach his neighbour, or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord', because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord." (Jeremiah 31.27-34)
That Church which fails to embrace this dichotomy (to the modern mind) of the mystery of Israel, is doomed to stumble over its own Last Days' mission. Time's passing is accelerating and running out. God forbid that history record that we tripped over ourselves; jealous of Israel's belovedness, and fearful that to admit their severe chastening, we thereby acknowledge the necessity of our own.
"You only (O people of Israel) have I chosen of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your sins." (Amos 3.2)
"For it is time for judgement to begin with the family of God; and if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who do not obey the gospel of God?" (1 Peter 4.17)
There is a Christian clique ("circle of self-applauders") which salivates for and eagerly desires the "destruction of the ungodly". They are not inspired by the Spirit of Christ, who is "not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." (2 Peter 3.9)
Perhaps they, and we, ought to consider the possibility that our self-preserving unwillingness to admit Israel and the Church's necessary and severe chastening, is itself the "firewall" which is presently hindering God's hand from falling upon our world in judgement...which is not unto destruction, but rather correction unto salvation?
"God our Saviour, who wants all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth." (1 Timothy 2.3-4)
"For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him." (John 3.17)
Resisting the Antichrist
"Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour...But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. Who is the liar? It is the man who denies (refuses "(1 John 2.18-23)
"Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." (James 4.7)
"Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith..." (1 Peter 5.8-9)
An antichrist is the spirit of satan, when it inhabits human beings who are willing to serve the devil's plans to oppose, overthrow and replace Jesus Christ's government of the world.
"Don't let anyone deceive you in any way for that day (of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ) will not come until the rebellion (stepping away from to stand against) occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshipped, so that he sets himself up in God's temple (Holy of Holies), proclaiming himself to be God...The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders." (2 Thessalonians 2.3-12)
It is most starkly exposed and identified through its murderous hatred of the Jews, just because they are Jewish. It knows (probably better than most of the Church) that the locus of Christ the King's reign over the earth will be a physically and spiritually resurrected Kingdom of Israel.
"Son of man, these bones are the whole House of Israel...O My People, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them...I will put My Spirit in you and you will live...My servant David will be king over them, and they will all have one shepherd...I will put My sanctuary among them forever." (Ezekiel 37)
This entity has ever sought nothing less than the utter and complete extermination of God's Jewish People in their entirety! Thus are we to understand such malevolents of history as the Pharaoh of Exodus 1, Haman the Agagite in Esther's story, King Herod of Judea (Matthew 2 and Luke 1)...and in our own days, Adolf Hitler.
(British historian and Oxford University Fellow, Sir Martin Gilbert has written, "The annihilation of the Jews and of Judaism was a main objective of Hitler and his regime.")
These were each in their own time an antichrist. But immediately before Christ Himself returns to reign, the antichrist will come and seek to establish his quasi-throne, with all the ferocity of his last-chance. The Church will then be summoned to resist him - not so much for its own sake -but in order to be the sole line of defence between his murderous intent and God's Jewish People.
The devil's insane equation is, "No Jews...No Kingdom of Israel...no King of Israel...no Kingdom of God on earth."
As the eminent Jewish prophet, Art Katz (1929-2007) has said repeatedly and unequivocally, "There is a holocaust coming that will eclipse the Nazi time, because it will not be confined to Europe, but be global.
"Unless there is a Church that will extend itself for Jews in their 'time of Jacob's trouble', in the time of fierce opposition and threat to their lives...not one will survive.
"You have to invest yourself, and be willing to make your life count for the Kingdom of God, anticipating the coming of the King. The one investing himself knows that the King will not come except Israel first be restored. He knows that Israel will not be restored without first going through its last time of anguish and chastening.
"He knows," Art concludes, "that it is going to come even to our own backyard in our out-of-the-way places. He knows that it is going to require from us a mercy and a willingness to extend ourselves sacrificially, taking the risk even of death."
"They overcame him (that ancient serpent) by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death." (Revelation 12.11)
In our own day we have witnessed perhaps the most extreme and savage antichrist to date...Adolf Hitler and his "Final Solution". On May 7, 1945, WW2 in Europe came to an end...and the Holocaust was over. 6 million European Jews were dead; a million and a half were children.
A Jew who had been in the Warsaw ghetto later wrote, "Hundreds of thousands of children...were lost in the gas chambers when they were torn away from their parents. If you have a pathological imagination you may be able to picture this yourself, but if you are a normal person you will never be able to bring this chapter of horrors to life in spite of all your imaginings."
History in Germany during the first half of the 20th Century is presently prophesying to the Church. God help us all - especially Israel - if we refuse or fail to hearken. A nation which had been the cradle of the Protestant Reformation, and home to such cultural icons and luminaries as Beethoven, Durer, Hegel and Goethe...was conquered by an antichrist!
"He who has ears, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches." (Revelation 2.7)
It was no accident that Hitler, early in his political career, had predicted that upon attaining power he would build multiple gallows on the main street of Munich..."as many as traffic will allow". He bragged that there "the Jews will be hanged one after another, and they will stay hanging until they stink!"
The evil spirit which spoke through him, was the same that "inspired" Haman the Agagite.
"Having learned who Mordecai's people were, he scorned the idea of killing only Mordecai. Instead Haman looked for a way to destroy all Mordecai's people, the Jews, throughout the whole kingdom of Xerxes...His wife Zeresh and all his friends said to him, 'Have a gallows built, seventy-five feet high, and ask the king in the morning to have Mordecai hanged on it.' This suggestion delighted Haman, and he had the gallows built." (Esther 3.5-6 and 5.14)
Nor was it a coincidence that the Nazis boasted of creating an empire that would last for 1000 years. What provoked that? satanic jealously surely, of the true reality promised by God Himself,
"Blessed and holy are those who have a part in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with Him for a thousand years.' (Revelation 20.6)
One of the leaders of Christian resistance to Hitler, was the Swiss Reformed theologian, Karl Barth (1886-1968). He was teaching theology at the University of Bonn when Hitler seized power in 1933. Barth was in no doubt about the despot's identity,
"Right from its roots (National Socialism) was anti-semitic...in this movement it was realised with a simple demonic clarity, that the enemy is the Jew. Yes, the enemy in this matter had to be a Jew."
From May 29-31, 1934, Christians who opposed Hitler met in Barmen to "withstand in faith and unanimity, the destruction of the Confession of Faith (by the Nazis and their 'German Christian' followers), and thus the Evangelical Church in Germany".
This assembly produced a document called the "Theological Declaration of Barmen", and Karl Barth was instrumental in its formulation. He mailed a copy to Hitler, and was then driven from his university post in 1935.
It was Barth who later wrote, "To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world."
There can be no doubt that the Barmen Declaration was prophetic at the time of its being framed. But it is surely even more so today, proclaiming as it does God's firm foundations on which Believers will have to stand four-square if they are going to resist that one whose ancient and yet future goal is to oppose, usurp and replace Israel's King.
"But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth." (1 John 2.20)
Of these foundations stones, I highlight the following:
1) "Jesus Christ, as He is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death.
"We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamations, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God's revelation."
(John 14.6 and John 10.1&9)
2) "We reject the false doctrine, as though there were areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ, but to other lords...areas in which we would not need justification and sanctification through Him."
(1 Corinthians 1.30)
3) "The Christian Church is the congregation of the brethren in which Jesus Christ acts presently as the Lord in Word and Sacrament through the Holy Spirit...it is solely His property, and that it lives and wants to live solely from His comfort and from His direction in the expectation of His appearance.
"We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church were permitted to abandon the form of its message and order to its own pleasure or to changes in prevailing ideological and political convictions."
(Ephesians 4.15-16)
4) "The various offices of the Church do not establish a dominion of some over the others; on the contrary, they are for the exercise of the ministry entrusted to and enjoined upon the whole congregation."
(Matthew 20.25-26)
5) "We reject the false doctrine, as though the State, over and above its special commission, should and could become the single and totalitarian order of human life, thus fulfilling the Church's vocation as well."
(1 Peter 2.17)
6) "We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church in human arrogance could place the Word and work of the Lord in the service of any arbitrarily chosen desires, purposes and plans."
(Matthew 28.20 and 2 Timothy 2.9)
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FOOTNOTE A quote from Thomas Merton (1915-1968); a Trappist hermit at Gethsemani Monastery in Kentucky, and perhaps the 20th C's most influential mystical theologian.
"I am more and more convinced that Romans 9-11 (the chapters on the election of Israel) are the key to everything today. This is the point where we have to look, and press, and search, and listen to the Word. For here we enter the understanding of Scripture, the wholeness of revelation and of the Church.
"So we must look harder and further into this mystery. A 'contemplation' that is wide of this is simply a waste of time, vanity and vexation of spirit." (4/11/1964)
Obeying Our Parents
"Honour your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you." (Exodus 20.12)
"Children obey your parents in the Lord, for that is right. Honour your father and mother - which is the first commandment with a promise - that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth." (Ephesians 6.1-3)
"Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord." (Colossians 3.20)
There is abroad at this time, a fashionable epidemic of dismissive criticism of "over-the-hill" Christian leaders, by those who have newly gotten hold of the Church's reins! Sad...very sad! For too late will these "cognoscenti" recognise that the plain word of God is not to be lightly nor inconsequentially contradicted or voided. Too late will they wake up, upon finding themselves bereft of that which they were so eager to tear away from their elders.
But perhaps the greatest dishonouring of our spiritual fathers, is to simply ignore them; to consign their way-of-life and their doctrine (1 Timothy 4.16) to the scrap heap of history. This I believe to be especially true of much modern teaching concerning Israel and the Church.
It is imperative that we hear with freshly opened ears, the teaching of our Christian fathers, whose doctrine has not been pressed into the matrix of "pop" theology or contemporary history. After all, it is not the Bible teacher's role to sculpt the Scriptures to fit history, but rather to illuminate current events with the pure light of God's Word.
"My son, keep your father's commands...Bind them upon your heart forever...For these commands are a lamp, this teaching is a light." (Proverbs 6.20-24)
One such father is David Baron (1855-1926). He does not merely deserve to be heard; it is imperative that his teaching concering Israel and the Church, and the ultimate destiny of God's Jewish People, be heeded with the greatest urgency and gravity. Because, at crucial points, he begs to differ with those who today appear to hold a monopoly on this subject.
David Baron was a religious Jew, of Russian descent, who was raised in Poland. As a young man he emigrated to England, where (in spite of traditional antipathy towards Christianity) he read the New Testament and accepted Jesus of Nazareth as "Israel's Messiah and the world's Redeemer and Saviour". In the late 1800s (along with C.A. Schonberger)David Baron founded the "Hebrew Christian Testimony to Israel". They began this ministry in a rented room in London's East End and it grew to become "one of the best known and most respected Jewish missions in the world". Later in life, it was said of him that he "explained Christianity to Jews, and the Jews to Christianity". David Baron also knew Theodore Herzl (author of "The Jewish State") personally, attended early Zionist conferences, and was vitally interested in plans to establish a modern Jewish state.
During a visit to the United States (Northfield Congregational Church, Massachusetts) he delivered a paper (published in 1891) entitled, "The Jewish Problem". His core text was Jeremiah 30.1-17. Below, I "pick the eyes out" of this message, believing that the particular points I've chosen to emphasise are generally down-played, glossed-over or over-ruled today. But they are in fact crucially important and indispensable to any practical consideration of and creative involvement in the ultimate destiny of God's Old Covenant People.
1) David Baron begins his paper with a warning for the Church and the human race. He emphasises that the Apostle Paul (in Romans 9-11) was "most impressed with the importance of the Church having correct views on this subject (God's purposes in Israel); and feels he cannot leave them ignorant of this mystery, lest, through the erroneous notion that God hath cast away His People Israel which He fore knew, and that the special promises and privileges reserved to Israel nationally in the Word of God have been transferred to the Church, they should fall into the danger of self conceit.
"Apart from God's revelation, the Jew is an enigma, a problem beyond the vain attempts of man to solve; and attempts of the kind, if not based upon the Word of God, are futile and impious.
"The future of Israel is one of those subjects concerning which the great God has deigned to speak; and however difficult or improbable to man that future may appear, it behoves us to believe and receive, and not to speculate or rebel."
2) David Baron is also absolutely plain in his teaching concerning the utter sanctity and incorruptibility of the Gospel. Thus he anticipates and "puts to the sword" the modern phenomenon of those who propose some kind of "third covenant" or alternative way of salvation for Jews.
"I would have it most distinctly understood," he says, "that God's dealings with individual Jews and Gentiles are precisely one and the same. Without repentance, faith in Christ, and holiness of heart, no individual Jew or Gentile shall ever be saved.
"Like thousands more, the writer has in the infinite grace of God been brought out of the darkness of Rabbinical Judaism into the marvellous light and liberty of the glorious gospel of Christ."
3) While affirming the personal salvation of Jews, one-by-one, David Baron equally forcefully affirms the Biblical promises of "a restoration of the people of Israel to the land of their fathers", and their
subsequent "national conversion".
The restoration to The Land he observes in the Bible, is "a complete one".
"The number who will return," he says, "shall be 'a great company' (Jeremiah 31.8), so that even the whole of the promised land will not be large enough for them." (Isaiah 49.19-20, Zechariah 10.10)
And further, Israel's "complete" restoration to The Land, anticipates their "complete" restoration to God.
"Israel," according to David Baron, "nationally is then to enter into the blesssings of the New Covenant announced in this very prophecy (in Jeremiah 31.31-34 'They will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest'); which the election of individuals from all nations now enjoy, as it were, by anticipation. The same is clearly announced in Ezekiel."
"You will live in the land I gave your forefathers; you will be My people, and I will be your God...I will take the Israelites out of the nations where they have gone. I will gather them from all around and bring them back into their own land...They will be My people, and I will be their God. My servant David will be king over them, and they will all have one shepherd." (Ezekiel 36.28 and 37.20-24)
4) It is concerning the circumstances of Israel's national conversion that David Baron and most (of the few) contemporary Christian teachers who are actually pro-Israel, part company.
Appealing to his core text (Jeremiah 30.1-17), David Baron raises the issue of the "time of Jacob's trouble".
"How awful that day will be! None will be like it. It will be a time of trouble for Jacob, but he will be saved out of it...They will serve the Lord their God and David their king, whom I will raise up form them." (vs 7-9)
" 'What! you say. Will not all the sufferings of Israel through all these centuries suffice? Is there a yet future baptism of fire, through which they must pass?' Yes, this is clear from this (Jeremiah's) prophecy, as well as many others."
"Son of man, the house of Israel has become dross to Me...Because you have all become dross, I will gather you into Jerusalem...So I will gather you in My anger and My wrath and put you inside the city and melt you." (Ezekiel 22.17-22)
According to David Baron, the terrible fiery furnace immediately succeeds the gathering into the midst of Jerusalem.
"In one sense, 'the time of Jacob's trouble' may be only a summing up, a culmination, of all (dispersions, massacres, spoliations and oppressions of the Jews) that has preceded.
"But it is clear that there is a time of fiery judgement awaiting Israel after the return to their land, which will immediately precede their national conversion and the revelation to them of the Messiah, whom, as a nation they have so long rejected.
(At this point, I solemnly urge readers to stop and draw breath...and ponder this. David Baron's eschatology is entirely based upon Scripture, and undisturbed by any consideration of or pressure from events that have overtaken God's Jewish People since the time his message was delivered.)
"What have we in the last chapters of Zechariah? Israel in their land; not necessarily the entire nation, but the bulk of it, evidently restored in a state of unbelief. Then comes this awful announcement, 'In the whole land,' declares the Lord, 'two-thirds will be struck down and perish; yet one-third will be left in it. This third I will bring into the fire; I will refine them like silver and test them like gold. They will call on My name and I will answer them; I will say, They are My people, and they will say, The Lord is our God. I will gather all the nations to Jerusalem to fight against it; the city will be captured...Half the city will go into exile, but the rest of the people will not be taken from the city. Then the Lord will go out and fight against those nations, as He fights in the day of battle. On that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem.' " (Zechariah 13.8-14.4)
"Suddenly," David Baron continues, "when the cloud will be thickest, and the anguish most acute; when even the small remnant that shall be left of Israel shall despair of hope, and Israel's enemies be most certain in their own minds of accomplishing their purpose of utterly exterminating that people whom they will think has been given over to them as prey...Then, with the speed of lightning, and attended by all His saints and hosts of angels, shall the same Jesus, who ascended bodily and visibly on a cloud from the Mount of Olivet, so and in like manner, be revealed again. But this time in a special and peculiar manner, as Israel's King and Deliverer.
"So will the Shepherd of Israel 'save' the remnant of His people from the hands and jaws of those who are stronger than they; and slay them who devoured, broke in pieces, and stamped with their feet, His chosen, with a fierceness exceeding even that of the bear and the lion."
5) And finally, David Baron, is unflinching in his expecation of a Kingdom of God on this earth, which is as far from being merely spiritual or some how or other expressed solely by the Church, as the east is from the west!
He draws attention to the angelic announcement of Luke 1.26-37, "He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David, and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever; His Kingdom will never end."
And he asks, "What throne is that (of His father David)?"
"Not the throne of Heaven, nor yet the throne of God's spiritual Kingdom; for neither of these was, or could have been, occupied by David, or could be inherited by Christ as 'Son of David'.
"The throne intended, then, must be the throne of the kingdom of Israel, and that it is so, the words of the angel testify.
"At His first coming, Israel, as a nation deliberately rejected Him! But the national verdict with regard to Jesus of Nazareth will be revoked; the great mistake of the Jewish people shall yet be acknowledged and repented of...They will recognise His claims, not only as...the one whose right it is to reign over them; but they will deliberately declare Him...their elected or exalted one."
"They will live in the land I gave to My servant Jacob, the land where your fathers lived. They and their children and their children's children will live there forever, and David My servant will be their prince ('nassi" - elected by the free will of the people!) forever. I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant...I will put My sanctuary among them forever.' (Ezekiel 37.24-28)
David Baron concludes his treatise with a statement which is more like a hymn of praise than an essay, "But as sure as there was a cross planted for (Christ) on that Golgotha, outside the walls of Jerusalem, so surely, if the word and oath of our God stands for anything, is there yet to be a glorious throne for our Redeemer and Master on Mount Zion.
"And however marvellous and improbable in our eyes, Israel shall yet 'serve Jehovah their God and David their King', and deliberately elect Him, whom during centuries of unbelief they have despised and rejected, as their...freely chosen ruler and prince."
