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The Mystery of Israel and the Church
by Art Katz

Chapter 18 - Israel and the Fullness of the Spirit
 

"And it shall be in the last days," God says, "that I will pour forth of My Spirit upon all mankind [alt. 'flesh']; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; even upon My bondslaves, both men and women, I will in those days pour forth of My Spirit and they shall prophesy.  And I will grant wonders in the sky above, and signs on the earth beneath, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke.  The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and glorious day of the Lord shall come.  And it shall be, that every one who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved" (Acts 2:17-21).

Peter is referring here to Joel's prophecy, a salvation from a yet future Day of wrath.  The signs that Joel spoke of: devastating judgments, the cataclysmic signs in the heavens, the moon turning to blood, etc., are what biblically-minded Jews of that generation had anticipated in regard to the apocalyptic conclusion of history and the age, so that when they saw the one sign of the Spirit being poured out on the flesh present there that day, they assumed that the other signs would soon follow, and that indeed the apocalyptic end of the age was imminent.  And, if anyone wanted to be saved out of the judgment coming upon the world, and upon an apostate Israel, then it would behoove them to "Be saved from this perverse generation!" (Acts 2:40b).

We, who have come to regard the baptism of the Holy Spirit as a matter-of-fact, commonplace experience, need to know that the gift of the Spirit is a sign of something yet future, even to this hour, and that the context of Joel's prophecy is that the 'all flesh' being spoken of is all Jewish flesh.  The Church, as we have said, has been historically guilty of a usurpation of Israel's promises, and needs to understand that what happened on Pentecost fell on Jewish flesh, but it was only a foreshadowing, a token and a down payment of something that was reserved in full for the empowering of a restored Israel in the Last Days!

In a word, we have not yet seen the full outpouring of the Holy Spirit on all Jewish flesh.  And the reason we have not seen it, and do not anticipate it, is that we took what Peter clearly describes as a shadow, a token, and made of it the complete measure.  There is a danger that arises from what we have done historically, as the Church, in giving our denominations a certain kind of arrogance of spirit, and a 'we have it all' attitude that is just not compatible with the spiritual facts; and if we are ruthlessly honest, we know that we do not have it all.  One of the disappointments concerning the absence of the power and fullness that we thought would be our experience is the fact that it was never intended to be our experience, except as a down-payment, a foretaste of the fulfillment that would come, in order to direct our attention and prepare us for the future and the things that are yet before us.
We sympathize with untold numbers of evangelicals worldwide, who have been turned off by the kind of bumptious mentality and spirit that has been expressed by the Charismatic and Pentecostal movements.  Instead of the appropriate humility of a people who have been privileged to receive a down-payment and a foretaste, 'the people of the Spirit' have tended to demean those other 'poor souls' who do not have 'it.'  This is the kind of error that comes by our failing to recognize the context for the gift of the Spirit in the future destiny of Israel as a nation in the purposes of God.

We are saying that the baptism of Pentecost is a national pledge of something that is to be fulfilled at the end of the age, not through the predominantly Gentile Church (though there is some fulfillment), but the Jews!  The Church, made up of Jews and Gentiles of all ages, will receive glorified bodies upon the Lord's return, and Israel receives the baptism of the Holy Spirit in full measure of what, we the present Church, have only known in part, to give them the means whereby they fulfill their own millennial destiny and calling.  Those who have attained to sonship will be ruling and reigning with Christ, the glorified saints ascending and descending upon the Son of Man, but the restored Israel will be ruling from the plateau of the earth, from a restored nation, aiding and abetting the kingdom in the earth that has its central location in its own capital city, Jerusalem.  As the Scriptures say, "For the law will go forth from Zion, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem" (Micah 4:2).  

The Spirit as a Down-Payment
It is clear, from a look at history in the light of the scriptures, that the prophecy alluded to in Joel was not completely fulfilled at the Day of Pentecost.  It was only the foreshadowing, the first measure, of the Holy Spirit being poured out.  The other signs in the heavens also did not take place as they are yet future.
"...to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ should be to the praise of His glory. In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of His glory" (Eph. 1:12-14).

It is quite clear that Paul understands the baptism of the Holy Spirit, not as a thing in itself, but as a foretaste, a pledge and a down payment of a fullness that would come later as an inheritance, in the redemptive and final workings of God for Israel.  It would do us a world of good to bring our perspective into alignment with God's!  That is not to say that the down payment we have received is insignificant, for the Spirit is very God Himself, but the outpouring has its final and ultimate fulfillment with Israel.  Even our raising up of 'spirit-filled' denominations grows out of our failure to see that the fulfillment of it is yet future, that what we have now is humblingly partial, and a sign of what is yet to come with the coming of the King and the establishment of His kingdom.

The Lord is not coming to provide escape for the Church through a convenient rapture, though there is a 'going to meet Him in the air.'  The Greek word parousia used here, is best understood as 'a rising to meet and accompany a dignitary as he comes to his place of honor, and there to rule and reign with him.'  If Israel is going to have the honor of being the location of the seat of that rule, and of participating with Him in extending that rule to the nations, then they need the baptism in the Holy Spirit in a measure beyond anything that we have ourselves ever known.  Conversely, they will not have come to that place except by the power of that Spirit expressed in us!  However much we have received it in part, it is a most precious part, and not to be either denigrated nor ignored.  
The Church has been robbed of much of its sense of the future, by thinking that we have the whole fullness rather than only the pledge or the down payment.  A church without a future is depleted and no longer a church.  A church that does not anticipate a climax and consummation of the age as being the glory of God forever is not the Church.  When we do not have that future, we risk degenerating into a mere succession of Sunday services.  Our children are bored, and we often have to drag them by the scruff of the neck to our functions.  They would not be sitting in the back of our congregations waiting for the thing to end, nor would they be drawn off and attracted to questionable amusements, if we were living in this expectation.  The general character of our meetings is a terrible indictment on a Church that has not raised up for our own children a standard and quality of life that compels their attention and their participation.  We have not persuaded our children that what we are about is earnest.  Though they may not articulate it, we are to them no more than some kind of adult Sunday culture.  When we lose a sense of the future, we lose sight of God's intention for the restoration of the nation, Israel, who would not have been our choice, but which is His choice, as the God who chooses.

Chapter 19 - Conclusion

In the final analysis, failing to know God as He is, and having an improper view of ourselves, go hand in hand, and are at the crux of mankind's every disorder.  Truly, we do not know Him as we ought.  One of the ways in which it has pleased the Lord to communicate the knowledge of Himself is through the example of Israel.  Nothing is more instructive in the way of God than in His dealing with the people whom He calls the apple of His eye, but now mourns as a father for a prodigal son.  If God will go as far as to bring them nigh unto death, in a severity that eclipses anything that we could fathom that He would allow, then how far will He go with us as the Church?  How far will He go with the nations?  The lightness and frivolity that we presently have in the Church likely stems from this inadequate knowledge of God, both in His goodness and especially in His severity.  Our souls shrink from beholding His severity as well as His goodness, but if we will not learn from the goodness of God, then we will, assuredly, have to learn from His severity.

The false prophets of old always gave false comfort and security to Israel by voicing the presumption, "God is not going to allow that to happen.  He is not going to allow His own temple to be destroyed and His holy city to be leveled."  Jews made of the temple and Jerusalem a fetish, and a hoped-for security.  But sadly, history has shown us what has happened to dash that vain hope.  God has allowed His temple to be destroyed, His city to be laid waste, and His people to be exiled over the face of the earth.  Who are we to tell God what He will allow?

Only as a nation restored back to God can Israel demonstrate a life of unity, peace, righteousness and justice to the human race.  And only nations who model themselves after Israel's example can live in a truly peaceful relationship with one another.  Imagine what Israel's restoration will be, as the land of the Messianic kingdom in the millennium.  It is said that if you get two Jews, you have three arguments.  Are there a people more opinionated and more divisive than we?  But Israel will be an example to the nations, a redeemed society in which God is to be glorified, modeling a societal salvation to all the nations.  Israel will be a model to all nations of what God's millennial rule will be, but only if they will allow their government "to rest upon His shoulders" (Isa. 9:6b).  Only an entirely restored nation can demonstrate a life of unity, even as the Church is called to demonstrate the same.  This is not a call for individual spiritual virtuosos, but for a Church in its totality, its corporateness, in all of its diversity, being one!

God as Creator
God takes the initiative to dispose Israel to obey, and to be capable of obeying; in fact, no differently from what He has done with us.  The self-determination of His creatures is placed in abeyance as the Creator God works a deliverance in the very heart of man.  God's act of transformation is amplified so that God as Creator perfects and refashions all of nature, as well as Israel's inner being.  That is why creation is groaning and travailing until now, waiting for the redemption of the sons of God (Rom. 8:19).   To know God as Creator is to know God as God, and with the same power that it took Him to create the universe and all that is in it, He will redeem, re-create and restore it.

Our knowledge of God, as we have said, affects our every reckoning.  Therefore, God's Last Days' stratagem is calculated to reveal Himself as He in fact is: the God who does not hesitate to devastate, but who also restores; the God who judges, but who also blesses; the God who is unsparing in the judgment that needs to be administered, but who is also full of tender mercy and kindness.  Unless we see God in that totality, we do not see God in the depth in which He desires to be known.  We Jews suffer from an inadequate and inferior concept of God because we missed it at the most important juncture where God revealed Himself in truth, namely, at the Cross of Christ Jesus, the judgment that came upon the Son of God.  Nothing is more instructive about the nature of sin than what was required of Jesus at the Cross, to be a propitiation for it.  But because we have shrunk from that revelation, and would not consider it, we have scant knowledge of sin, either about ourselves, or man in general.  We therefore remain supreme humanists, having a rosy view of man, and have to learn the truth of what man is by suffering at his hand as we did, for example, in the Holocaust, and see now, increasingly, in our own behavior.

God shall have His final glory because He has purposed it.  In the day of His power, we will be willing. He will break the privatistic power of selfishness, and bring us to be the incarnation of God that we must be.  Everything hinges on our being that kind of Church.  We must enter the depth of this grand and intense epoch of Israel's history, the physical restoration of Israel's kingdom, as a chief participant, if not the principal agency, of our own eschatological hope.  Israel remains the people of God with a yet unfinished destiny, according to the covenantal promises of God to their fathers.  But why should that be of concern to us?  It is because our God is a God who keeps His promises, and how shall we be assured that He will keep His promises to us if He fails to keep them to Israel? 
How is He then God?

The cosmic conclusion of God's redemptive saga consummates in the establishment of an eternal kingdom, a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.  What makes them new is that they will converge into one.  They will no longer be separate and distinct regions.  Heaven has come to earth, and earth has become heaven.  It is an apocalyptic scenario of things violent and devastating that requires the obliteration of this present earth and of the heavens, except for any part in the earth and heavens that is already in the realm of the eternal kingdom of God.  It is the final, ultimate and last reconciliation of all.  The Jerusalem from above comes down and over the Jerusalem below, and everything is one.  God is One, reality is one, and creation is one; it is the final consummation of everything.  The government is upon His shoulder, and every knee has bowed and every tongue confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord.

When Jesus, in His resurrected body, instructed the disciples for forty days on the things pertaining to the kingdom of God, they asked Him, "Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6).  Jesus did not reprove their question, "When are you guys going to wise up?  This is not a kingdom for you; this is a universal, global rule."  He replied, rather, "It is not for you to know times and epochs..." which implies that there is a time, and that, as Jews, they have every legitimate, biblically-affirmed right to expect a kingdom that pertains to them.  In fact, if it does not come to them first, it does not come to the rest of mankind at all.

Israel has been chosen that the world might know the true God.  Jewish history itself is the visible, experiential act of revelation.  Israel is called to demonstrate to all who want to see that the God of Israel is not a humanly derived concept, but the living God.  Israel is God's testimony to the nations, particularly His deliverance of her in her destitute and finally broken condition, when she will be supernaturally raised from it, and be restored to the Land.  We will then be able to distinguish the difference between Israel establishing herself to the Land, and God's planting her in the Land (Amos 9:15).  It will be the Zionist experiment of 1948, which was humanly commendable and impressive, God-sanctioned and necessary, contrasted to the divine and supernatural restoration that is yet to come.

This is the mystery of Israel and the Church.  This is the final stroke of God that comes in the Last Days, at the consummation of history, that raises the nation, and brings in the millennial kingdom and the King Himself, through the Church, in order that: "For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.  To Him be the glory forever.  Amen" (Rom. 11:36).

--- end The Mystery... by Art Katz Chapter 1-19 ------------