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T e e n S t r e e t   -   E r n s t   n'   C r o s s   o v e r

Teens in the Global World are in Teen Street. Teens are Teenstreeters. Teens are moving ahead with their exciting Dreams & Visions for Today and Tomorrow.

Teen Street is found all over the World. They are in Brazil, Czechia, Europe, Germany, India, Malaysia, RSA, Scandianavia, Uruguay, US etc There are TeenStreet also on a special Highway, namely TeenStreet and the Youth OM Conferences.

This little Swedish Blog M'Xp wants to send a special little Greeting from the North. We have started up a challenging exciting Story about Ernst and Hulda, two Swedish Teens. They gave their lives for Christ Jesus, left Sweden for Africa and worked as missionaries "once upon a time". This Story is called :: Cross over :: and is about the young boy Ernst and young girl Hulda from the region Smaland in Sweden. The Story is so dramatic and filled with unexpected events so that M'Xp wished we could show the Story as a Cinema, but waiting into that phase, we will introduce their experiences article by article in this Blog Address >>  ::Cross over::

M'Xp greets you Teens all over the world with special Greetings from Ernst & Hulda in the Story...

... :: Cross over :: ...

The Story is told in Swedish and then you also get good Language training in Swedish. Be welcome visiting us in our Country and TeenStreet in Sweden. If You never have been in Sweden then you should put some Questions about Sweden to Andrea Keller, Kari Carlsson, Hans Stom, Peter Magnusson or why not to Peter Maiden and George Verwer about Sweden, Fredrik Franson, Sancta Birgitta, King Carl XVI Gustaf, Queen Silvia, Crown Princess Victoria, Volvo, Saab, ASEA, Bjorn Borg, Vikings, IKEA, the Swedish Christianity or the wonderful Swedish Nature…

Welcome sharing the lives of Ernst & Hulda in the theme serial Cross over… Let us tell you that they are a little bit elder than the Teen Elder above; they were born 1882 and 1892, b-u-t Ernst and Hulda they were really youngsters and teens, indeed. Let me tell the story from the Viking Sweden to you. Already we have started up with about 20 articles, but it will be more than that for sure... 

Dag Selander
M'Xp editor
exOMer

Footnote:
Read more about TeenStreet International >> All about TS

The Mystery of Israel and the Church
by Art Katz

Israel and the Time of Jacob's Trouble - Chapter 15 (part 3 of 3)

"But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the LORD, "I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people" (verse 33).
"I will do it…I will…I will …I will."  It has nothing to do with them, but Him.
"And they shall not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them," declares the LORD, for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more" (verse 34).
If we were to count the number of "I wills" in these two verses, we would find exactly seven, the number of perfection.  Nothing will come from Israel; God reserves that right for Himself.  It will be an everlasting covenant that they will never break.  Up till now, however bad Israel's track record in covenant unfaithfulness is, we will never break the new covenant, because "I will, I will, I will, I will, I will..."  You can say that the past covenants were given to demonstrate our failure to keep them, and only God can succeed in honoring His own Word and His own law.  That, and only that, is what makes a righteous nation.
What a revelation of God!  "I will, and I will do it by choosing the absolutely foolish and weak thing, that no flesh shall touch My glory, and all the world shall know."  This is the revelation of God, the last and final one.  It is to His everlasting glory for Israel, in her abject failure, and only in her abject failure, to reveal the greatness of God, because He will choose whom He will choose, and He will have mercy upon whom He will have mercy.
In His "Olivet" discourse (Matthew 24), Jesus is asked by His disciples, "Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?" (v. 3b).  Jesus answers by giving one of the most pronounced signs of a time of trouble that shall come for the nation Israel,
For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever shall.  And unless those days had been cut short, no life [Jewish life] would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect those days shall be cut short (v. 21-22.  Parenthesis mine).
Jesus' whole statement in that chapter refers to the 'abomination of desolation,' which is referred to in Daniel, chapters 11 and 12, where he speaks of an antichrist coming to desecrate the temple and make the oblations and the sacrifice to cease, requiring the worship of the nation, having made with them a covenant of death that has brought a seeming peace for a short period of time.  All of this is clearly future, because there has been no such event in the history of Israel that has eventuated in an explosion of violence against them in their refusal to condescend to this antichrist figure, who has effected a seeming peace for a short time, through negotiation, that finally makes Israel to know that they have made a covenant with death and hell.
This is a sign of the end and of His coming that must take place in the Land, even as we read in Isaiah 6, that this is a desolation in the midst of the Land, which gives every reason why there needs be a preliminary Jewish existence in the Land.  The present-day state of Israel is not intended to fulfill the millennial intention of God for the nation, but rather, it sets in motion those tensions and conflicts that require this devastation, humiliation and expulsion, which, in turn, gives God the opportunity to effect their restoration and return, when the cities that have been laid waste shall be rebuilt, and in such a way that those nations that remain round about shall know that He is the Lord who has spoken and done this.
God gives to those who hold the office of prophet a view of prophecy that is not given to others, and when, in all my years as a believer, this issue of the church and Israel opened up to me for the first time, the questions came to me with a new intensity: who is truly speaking for God, and where is the prophetic voice that is giving a right interpretation of prophetic Scriptures?  The whole issue of true and false prophets came into focus in a way that I had not seen it before, and it is a critical issue for the Church to be able to discern and recognize which of these voices is indeed speaking the counsel of God.  Historically, false prophets have always said "peace, peace," when there is no peace.  The true prophets have always been the harbingers of doom, of coming devastation, and of judgment, which the nation has not wanted to hear, so their voices, being unpopular, have been shunted away.  That same alignment and reality is true to this day.
To assure Israel, therefore, that the time of judgment is past, when it is actually yet future and imminent, is to leave her wholly unprepared for both the suddenness and extent of the catastrophe.  To warn of its inevitability is to encourage as many as will into the ark of safety, the saving knowledge of the Messiah.  In the light of what I am suggesting, should we not be 'disturbing' Jews with the issue of the Gospel and salvation, especially if there is an imminent destruction?  And telling them that there is a place of safety that can be found, even now, in the Ark of Safety that Jesus Himself is?  In other words, we have every incentive to not relax the Gospel, but to promote it.  Our comprehension of the prophetic Scriptures, and our understanding of those things that are future for Israel, will determine our present stance and posture toward the present nation.
For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery, lest you be wise in your own estimation, that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fulness of the Gentiles has come in; and thus all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, "The Deliverer will come from Zion, He will remove ungodliness from Jacob. And this is My covenant with them, when I take away their sins" (Romans 11:25-27).
The issue of Israel's return is the issue of the character of God Himself, and incorporates His ability to keep covenant and to honor the word He has spoken.  The knowledge of God as God for Israel and the nations is the reason for these Last Days' severe judgments and mercy upon the nation, which is why God says, "I will show Myself holy through you."  When His global mission is accomplished, and God will have obtained a people for His name from among all nations, that "fulness being come in" releases the Deliverer to come out of Zion, and take ungodliness from Jacob.  And this is My covenant with them, when I take away their sins.  So that gives to us an incentive to complete our mission task, as the Church, of finding a people for His name among all nations.
It seems the Lord is interested in a specific number, a 'fulness' of Gentiles, possibly the number that corresponds to the vacancies that will have been created in the heavenly places by the expulsion of Satan and his fallen angels, who, up till now, have been the usurping, false rulers of this world.  According to the Scriptures, they will be cast out in the Last Days by a demonstration from the Church in the earth.  Those through whom that wisdom has been displayed, as the Church, and their willingness to suffer in that demonstration, will themselves be occupying those same places.  There is a ruling and reigning from the very places left vacant by the fallen angels.  I am not saying that I have this by any special revelation; rather, it is a kind of educated hunch, knowing that there will be a vacancy created in the heavenlies over nations that must be filled, some ruling over five cities, some over ten, in their glorified bodies, both in the stratum above the earth, and in the earth, with a restored Israel, equally in co-operation with God, now being redeemed and returned to Zion.
This is the millennial Kingdom and glory, but it waits on the Church, not Israel.  What if there is a qualitative aspect to this, as well as quantitative?  What if the 'fullness' means not only the actual number, but a certain quality that God waits for in the Church, a certain character, a certain identification with Himself, which has to do with our sanctification, the truth of our life, and what we are in the representation of Him?  Then again, both in number and in character, the issue of Israel's deliverance is the issue of the Church.
What is the responsibility of the Church if these things be true?  Do we have an obligation to sound a warning of impending disaster without which the unsuspecting would be left devastated?  Will their blood be on our hands if we do not?  To give Israel an advance comfort rather than warning before the time is to disqualify us, as the Church, prophetically.   To give Israel a false comfort now is to disqualify ourselves from standing later at their tomb, and saying, as it were, "Lazarus, come forth."  In His obedience to the Father, Jesus restrained every humane impulse to go to the bedside of a friend, whom He loved, and to wait for the moment of God's choosing, not just to effect a relief from illness, but a resurrection from the dead unto glory.
Israel is on its way toward that death, and then to be raised from it, but the word, "Come forth!" will have to come from a prophetic people speaking in the authority of God.  If we act prematurely, or out of a humane wanting to comfort, we will lose our prophetic ability to be the voice of God to bring about the greater resurrection from the dead, and therefore, the glory of God through it.
A Church that shrinks from such an apocalyptic view makes itself a candidate for apostasy, when the disillusionment and disappointment of unexpected calamity falls.  The Apostle Paul speaks of a great falling away in the Last Days, and we believe that part of this falling away will come out of the disappointment of a Church naively hoping that present Zionist Israel would be the fulfillment of God's prophetic intention.  In that 'failure,' God will be looked upon as having failed.  To save the Church from an apostasy which could arise out of disappointment, it is imperative that we have a correct and prophetic anticipation of those things that must necessarily come to pass, and not be disappointed when we see the present State dispersed and brought to nothing, knowing that there is a greater thing in store, for which this chastisement is necessary.
To hope that the nation, Israel, can be 'improved' is more of a progressive view of change than an apocalyptic view.  It is the humanistic mindset to think that there could be an improvement rather than the requirement of an apocalyptic judgment, death and resurrection.  So there is a remarkable question here of how we understand God and His redemptive work.  Even if the present threat to Israel were alleviated, have they not already crossed a point-of-no-return condition of moral character that cannot be retrieved?  The moral loss that comes through violence, corruption, and the use of torture cannot be regained.  Israel has already gone too far in a response to the threats from her enemies that we ourselves may have encouraged, so, even if the threat is alleviated, the character of the nation is already irretrievable, and can never be improved.  If the character of the nation could be improved, we, as believers, would not need our own salvation; we, too, could be improved in our natural condition, and would not ourselves need to be brought into death and raised up unto newness of life.  It is exactly the same question for us, as it pertains to Israel herself.
The crisis of Israel is God's provision to wake the Church up from its own escapist sleep and unpreparedness.  It should compel the Church to return to apostolic consciousness that has at its heart a necessary suffering that precedes the glory.  The issue of the "glory of God forever" ought to bring us to the kind of recognition of the Cross, imperative for us in the fulfillment of our own role toward Israel.  It is what we, the Church, will extend to Israel, at great cost to ourselves, that will cause "the ransomed [redeemed] of the Lord to return, and come with joyful shouting to Zion, with everlasting joy upon their heads. They will find gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing will flee away" (Isaiah 35:10.  Parenthesis mine).
In Psalm 102, there is another reference to the Deliverer coming out of Zion when the set time to favor Zion has come.  God is waiting for something, not from Israel herself, but 'someone' called 'His servants.'
Thou wilt arise and have compassion on Zion; for it is time to be gracious to her, for the appointed time has come.  Surely Thy servants find pleasure in her stones, and feel pity for her dust (vs.13-14).
At that time, the Deliverer will come out of Zion, and take away Israel's transgressions and restore her, not for anything that Israel does, but something that His servants do, who are not themselves Israel.  For if Israel were His servants, they would not be requiring judgment at all.  Is the dust referred to here the dust of antiquity?  Or are the stones, the stones of ancient cities?  Or of Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and all the present modern cities of Israel?  Could the servants be the believing Gentile Church, who are so identified with Israel, as to not be repelled by her judgments, but rather identified with her in them, and can, therefore, have godly compassion on sinful Israel in her judgment?  Did not Jesus identify with us, while we were yet in sin?  When we finally have an attitude toward Israel, in her sin, of the same kind the Lord had toward us while we were in ours, the fulfillment for which God waits will come; the set time to favor Zion comes when the true Church is in an identification with God, in ultimate union with Him, and in His compassion for Israel, as He expressed toward us in His compassion for us while we were yet sinners.
To have compassion on Israel's stones and pity on her dust will come at the same time that the world will be gloating in delight at the devastation that will bring Israel to ruin.  There will only be a small remnant in the earth that will not join this global chorus of delight in Israel's distress, namely, the true people of God, those who will have compassion on her stones and pity on her dust.  When God has obtained that in the Church, the set time to favor Zion has come, for the Church will have come into the place of God's intention, which releases Him to deliver Israel, a deliverance that does not depend on what Israel says or does, because she will be inert, helpless, and devastated.
It will be what we, as the Church, exhibit-not what we can express out of our humanity or religious intention, because, it is one thing to have a sentimental affection for Israel, but to have a compassion and mercy when she is in judgment for her sins, requiring the devastation of her cities and expulsion of her people, is an identification beyond anything we can perform humanly and religiously.  It is nothing less than what God is in Himself, now wrought in His people.  When He has a bridal Church like that, the purposes of God have been fulfilled, both for the Church and Israel.
The same thing is expressed in Isaiah 66 in a very cryptic and mysterious way:
"Before she travailed, she brought forth; before her pain came, she gave birth to a boy. Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things?  Can a land be born in one day? Can a nation be brought forth all at once? As soon as Zion travailed, she also brought forth her sons.  Shall I bring to the point of birth, and not give delivery?' says the Lord.  Or shall I who gives delivery shut the womb?" says your God.  "Be joyful with Jerusalem and rejoice for her, all you who love her; be exceedingly glad with her, all you who mourn over her, that you may nurse and be satisfied with her comforting breasts, that you may suck and be delighted with her bountiful bosom" (vs. 7-11).
What had been an object of mourning, has now become an object of delight.  What had been barren is now so copious in her bosom, that she is nursing and feeding the very ones who mourned for her, prayed for her, and birthed her into a nation, born in a day.
For thus says the Lord, "Behold, I extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream; and you shall be nursed, you shall be carried on the hip and fondled on the knees" (v.12).
Those who travailed in birth for Israel's redemption shall now be carried on her arms, and be nursed by her.  What you brought into being, by your labor of birth, is now benefiting you by a particular comfort that can only come from the consolation of an Israel that has been born in a day.  But if you had not travailed, if Zion had not travailed, there would be no birth.  Israel will be so stricken, depleted, and incapable of any action in herself to effect her birthing, as a nation, in a day, that someone else has got to bear the pangs of birth for her.
It is a rare woman today who has ever experienced the pangs of birth, and who would be willing to bear that pain for another woman.  It is precisely there that you have a picture of what God is waiting for in the Church.  Travail is painful, ultimate, and an embracing of 'death,' in order that something might be birthed out of death, even an Israel incapable of her own birthing.  It is entirely voluntary, but you will receive the benefit of what shall be birthed, and receive consolation and blessedness from what has been born in a day.  It is a mystery!
It is debatable whether Isaiah understood what he was talking about, but he had to express what the Spirit was giving him, and now we are the ones who need to fathom, interpret and rightly understand what is being mystically described here.  Who is this Zion?  Who is this servant who has compassion?  What is this fulness of the Gentiles?  Because wherever you look in the Scriptures, it is the confirmation of the mystery of which Paul speaks in Romans 11, that the Church is God's appointed agency.
Isaiah 35 shows a further role that this mysterious, unidentified servant people play where it says, "the wilderness and the desert will be glad" (v.1).  Inanimate nature rejoices in seeing something that passes through the wilderness, that makes it to leap and to blossom as Sharon.  They are seeing bedraggled Jews coming through the remote wildernesses, and they are rejoicing because they know that this is the final, redemptive dealing of this people, and that it will result in their conversion and return.  It will mean that the curse, which is upon creation itself, will be lifted; it is rejoicing for the end of its own bondage in which nature itself has been kept, until the restoration of all things.  Then we read in the text,
Say to those with anxious heart, "Take courage, fear not.  Behold, your God will come with vengeance;" (v. 4a).
Israel is not being addressed here.  The "say to them" is referring to someone in the wilderness with Israel, and being commanded to speak something to those who are spent and lame.
Encourage the exhausted, and strengthen the feeble (v3).
The exhausted and feeble will mostly be comprised of urbane Jews, who have never been on a desperate march like this in their life, in the most primitive of places and conditions, full of despair, and there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel.  It is terrifying to be lost in a wilderness, especially for city dwellers, as we Jews are, and all of a sudden to be thrust into the most unfamiliar and hopelessly barren situations.  But there is, evidently, someone there with us, who is being commanded by God,
Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped.  Then the lame will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the dumb will shout for joy.  For waters will break forth in the wilderness and streams in the Arabah (desert).  And the scorched land will become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water (vs. 5-7).
In the very speaking of that word, the lame leap, the blind see; nature itself is affected, the dry places break out in pools of water.  It will be a word that is more than human assurance, more than human well-meaning encouragement; it will be a word that always constitutes an event.  Something takes place when a prophetic word is spoken, because it is issued in the authority of God.  But it is also a word that is spoken by some mysterious and unidentified presence in the wilderness with the Jews, out of which salvation comes to them, even before the Lord's appearing.  A hope has come that makes them to leap merely on the statement, "Your God will come!"
But it has got to be with an assurance of such conviction that it creates the reality itself, and that is what a true prophetic word is. Who will speak it, and who is willing to be in the wilderness with this bedraggled and suffering people, and who will instantly heed the command, speaking with such an authority that it brings their restoration, even before the advent of the Lord's coming?  That is the task of the Church of the Last Days, and we are not going to find that prophetic unction or authority in a final moment, if it is not consistently the sum of all the moments that have preceded it!  The Church has always been called to be a prophetic presence in the earth, speaking for God with His authority, to communicate a hope, and, if it does not come to Jews in that condition of ultimate destitution, they will not survive.
The survival rate in the Nazi death camps was not highest for those who had the greatest physical strength, but those who had the greatest hope.  Hope has an inherent power.  Hopelessness comes when there is no light at the end of the tunnel, when you are filled with despair and ready to perish because your knees are feeble and your hands are dragging; you are downcast and lame, you are ready to go, and if you do not get a word of hope, you will not survive.  That word, therefore, is critical.
What, then, gives a prophetic word power and authority?  As the Church, we are called to be a prophetic presence, to speak in the authority of God to this people as they pass through, an authentic, authoritative word of hope that proceeds from the reality of our own corporate condition and experience.  This is altogether different from merely reciting a formula.  Do we really know a God who comes in ultimate distress, because we ourselves have been placed in ultimate distress, where we ourselves would have expired for the lack of encouragement?  Have we been tested in a comparable kind of situation to which we now are able to grant a word of assurance to Israel in that like situation?  Are we willing to be sifted? Are we willing to receive the intensive dealings that are its prerequisite?
Remember that the 'son of man' in Ezekiel 37 had to be brought down and into the valley of dry bones.  He had to see the grit of Israel's death before he could address it. We shun painful things, and our contemporary Christianity has disposed us to desire happier scenarios.  There will be a glorious ending for Israel, but not before the necessary suffering that precedes the glory.  Israel will be a chastised, broken nation, and that brokenness will remain as a permanent aspect of character that constitutes her priestliness.  Only in that condition can she minister to all of the nations of the earth, not out of the arrogance that we associate with Jews and Israel today, but out of the contrition and brokenness that comes with God's severest dealings and chastisement.  Israel's chastisement will not come in some cruel, arbitrary way, but in exact proportion to the sins that makes that judgment righteous, and indeed, it may well be the greatest statement of God's love.
We are suffering from a generation of fathers who do not love their sons enough to chastise them.  God says in the Book of Proverbs that the failure to chastise your son reveals an actual hatred for him, and a greater love for yourself in the sparing of it.  But true love requires the severity of a chastisement, one that God will not withhold from Israel, and in the severity of God's dealing, Israel will recognize His uttermost love.  God administers the chastisement, but, although He has experienced the excruciating pain of it, He did not withhold it.  Something happens in the moment of the son and the Father coming into an embrace of tears and brokenness, through the chastisement, that bonds the nation with the Father in a way that it has never known Him.  And it is in this relationship that Israel will continue to know Him all of the days of their lives.  This chastisement must come, and we must not be offended by it, but rather welcome it as such, or we will not be able to be to Israel what we must.  Even as God brings the chastisement, and inflicts the judgment, in His compassion, He Himself is broken-hearted over the necessity.  He does not delight in what Israel must experience, even at His hand, nor must we delight either, though we know that it is necessary.
Humanly speaking, we would rather hope for some other way in which Israel's restoration could be effected, saying with Abraham, "Can't Ishmael live?"  But we need to understand how glorious a destiny this nation has, and that it cannot be fulfilled on any cheap or lesser terms.  Israel's Last Days' chastisement, prophesied of in the Scriptures, must be fulfilled.  A remnant of Jews will meet their God face to face in the wilderness of the nations (Ezekiel 20), and, by it, come into the bond of His covenant, and under the rod of His authority, in order that they may return to the Land, to Zion, as the redeemed of the Lord.

End of Chapter 15

The Mystery of Israel and the Church
by Art Katz

Israel and the Time of Jacob's Trouble - Chapter 15 (part 2 of 3)

The frequency of those words clearly indicates that Israel's last experience in her history is the memory of mourning, sighing, and sorrow, even as everlasting joy now comes upon their heads.  This has never been descriptive of any return to Israel, including the advent of the State in 1948, but it will be descriptive of the return that will come after the time of Jacob's Trouble.  They will return as the redeemed of the Lord, with mourning and sighing fleeing away.  In many other places, God's promise is that Israel will no longer sorrow, no longer be afraid, and no longer experience terror.  This indicates that the last historical experience of Israel, both in the nation and in the world, is fear, terror, violence, being devoured, being swallowed up and a mourning and sighing.  Mourning and sighing must precede the rejoicing and the dance, both young men and old together.  God is explicitly the agent, both of the expulsion and the judgment, as well as the return and the comfort.  Israel must know that "I am the Lord Who has spoken and done this."  God Himself will turn their sorrow to joy.
And the ransomed [redeemed] of the Lord will return, and come with joyful shouting to Zion, with everlasting joy upon their heads. They will find gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing will flee away (Isaiah 35:10.  Parentheses mine).
They will obtain from their God comfort and joy.  Israel must know God in this totality, both in the severity of their expulsion, and in the gladness and joy of their return, when they will obtain it, and not before by some humanly achieved alternative.
Part of my controversy with other prophetic spokesmen, who claim that the time of Jacob's Trouble was the Nazi Holocaust, and therefore, in the past, is resolved by the fact that the time of Jacob's Trouble does not have its inception in Europe, but in Israel itself, in the Land.  And this also indicates, therefore, something that has not yet taken place, although the stage is being set for that eruption and expulsion by the present Jewish presence in the Land.  Our mistake is to misconstrue the current resettlement, however extensive it is, to be the final return out of the chastisement of the Nazi Holocaust, and to continue in that error will bring about a tragic disappointment and a shameful unpreparedness to be to Israel what we will need to be for them in that hour.
And Jacob shall return, and shall quiet and at ease, and no one shall make him afraid (Jer 30:10f).
If Jacob's trouble and the return have already taken place, Israel should be experiencing a condition in which "no one shall make him afraid."  On the contrary, present Israel is riddled with fear, terror, apprehension, and anxiety, not knowing when the next human bomb is going to explode at a shopping mall or discotheque.  The fact that they are afraid clearly indicates the time of Jacob's Trouble is future.
And if Jacob's Trouble is future, and we are not giving warning and making preparation, then Israel and the Jew are going to suffer a sudden devastation without the mercy of someone telling them.  And we believers will be equally undone at the coming catastrophe, for which we have no expectation, at the very time when we should be providing refuge for a fleeing and panic-stricken remnant.  There are other unmistakable signs that indicate what is future or past, as we will see from other texts, and most important of the statements that God makes is, "In that day, Israel will know that it is God who has both spoken and performed it."   Israel does not know that now.
You may ask, where is the justice and righteousness of God, that He would expel them again, having brought them from Russia and Ethiopia in their hope for security in the Land?  What kind of righteous God is this?  Have they not suffered enough?  Is He a God who will bring calamity merely to serve His purposes, or are His judgments altogether righteous and true, and in exact proportion to the sins of the people who are experiencing them as judgment?  The judgments of God are not arbitrary; He is not cruel and malicious; He does not inflict without reason:
For I have wounded you with the wound of an enemy, with the punishment of a cruel one, because your iniquity is great and your sins are numerous (Jer. 30:14).
There are many acts of injustice and violence presently being perpetrated on the stranger in the Land: imprisonment without cause, brutal beatings, intimidation, fear, threat, and the kind of conduct that we could well understand coming from Gentile nations, but shocks us as coming from Jews.  God is allowing to be revealed what is in our hearts as man, and especially Jewish man, because Jewish man is not exempt from the nature of man.  God will allow it to have its expression so that our sins will judge us and find us out.  Being devoid of divinity, we shall be devoid of humanity.
The Land, we must remember, is not automatically guaranteed to Jewry, but the possession of it is relative to our covenantal obedience, and walking in the light of that enablement alone makes possible the understanding of how to treat the stranger in our midst.  Increasingly, there are certain sectors of Jewish society (40% in a recent poll) that would see the 'stranger' ruthlessly expelled without any mercy.  History has come full-circle, and ironically, Jews, who were once persecuted in other nations, are increasingly finding themselves in the role of the persecutor because of the presence that threatens their own security and preservation!
As a nation, Israel is exhibiting character of another kind, which will only worsen, and not get better, despite their own intention.  It must be so, and God will do whatever it takes to show them their self-deception.  Though God, in His sovereignty, allowed the resettlement of Israel in 1948, men were certainly prominent in effecting that return by their own finances, strength and prowess, so, my conclusion is that God has preserved them through previous wars because of the necessity of giving them this experience, that they might compare their own failed attempt with that which He Himself will bring when He will restore them and plant them in the Land.
In the final analysis, and much more than we know, it is our own lusts and desires that affect our theology and doctrine. So, what is the lust and desire here but an unwillingness that Israel should again face calamity; a wanting so much to see them succeed, particularly by Gentiles whose consciences have been bruised by the Holocaust and Jewish suffering, and who are unable to consider the Holocaust as the judgment of God, but rather as the failure of the Church, and want now to make up for it, and to encourage Israel to every false assurance of their safety.  It is a well-meaning desire, but as it is commonly said, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
A careful examination of the prophetic Scriptures indicates calamities for Israel that are yet future, because the things that follow are millennial blessedness, security, acceptance, restoration and the knowledge of God, for which there is no evidence in present Israel.  Present Israel is only 'of God' in the sense that it is a necessary preliminary to the full, true and ultimate return.  If there were not a nation to experience defeat and exile, there would not be the brokenness and dependency upon God that will characterize the final and enduring Israel.  There would not be the spiritual and heavenly unless there was first a natural (see I Corinthians 15).  It is 'of God,' which saves men from condemning and judging Israel, "Look at how they are failing.  Look what they are doing with the Palestinians."  We must remember that Israel must fail in the sense that there must be the death of their hope in themselves and of themselves in order to become the witness nation of God that they are meant to be.
Our failing to understand this may well be due to our failure to open our own lives to such dealings from God, where He will allow us a measure of success only to bring it to the place of failure, disappointment and heartbreak.  God wants to show us that we cannot have our confidence in ourselves, and we cannot learn that principle in any academic or abstract way, but only out of our own painful experience unto death.  You call that a loving God?  Yes, absolutely, especially in the light of eternity.  It is because we have wanted for ourselves to be spared the pain of God's dealings, that we want to spare Israel from similar such dealings.  We have been guilty of thinking only in terms of ourselves, and not in terms of "the glory of God forever" (Rom. 11:36).  That is why we have an inadequate view, because our focus has been on the issue of the avoidance of pain and suffering, rather than the issue of God's glory.
There is another unmistakable sign that can show us the difference between the judgments of God in the past, and those that are future: it is how God Himself judges the Gentile nations which bring His severity to Israel.  Look at verse 16 of Jeremiah 30,

Therefore all who devour you shall be devoured; and all your adversaries, every one of them, shall go into captivity; and those who plunder you shall be for plunder, and all who prey upon you I will give for prey.
Has Germany been devoured?  From other texts we know that what we today call Jordan (Edom) and Syria (Moab) are among those nations that will be judged; they are annihilated as nations.  God's judgments are severe upon those nations that have inflicted themselves upon Israel.  The fact that this has not yet taken place shows that we are speaking of something future.
...because they have called you an outcast (verse 17).
Let that word sink in.  An outcast is someone who has been cast out.
It is Zion, no one cares for her (verse 17).
That means that there was no evidence of any mercy being afforded this people.
The fierce anger of the Lord will not turn back, until He has performed, and until he has accomplished the intent of His heart; in the latter days you will understand this (verse 24.  Emphasis mine).
Jeremiah 31 brings us into the New Covenant that is made with His restored people, but look first at verse 2,
Thus says the LORD, "The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness-Israel, when it went to find its rest."
Out of the debacle of devastation, flight, persecution, exile and being cast into the wilderness, a remnant of Israel will yet find grace there.  God will prepare for them a place of safety and rest in the wilderness.  There is a further symbolic description of this in Revelation 12:6 where the Dragon seeks to devour the woman, who flees on the wings of an eagle into the wilderness, to a place prepared for her, where she can be fed for three-and-one-half years.  Look how God speaks in Jeremiah 31:4a,
Again I will build you, and you shall be rebuilt, O virgin of Israel!
Though Jerusalem is called 'the Sodom and Gomorrah' where the Lord Himself was crucified, here God speaks of Israel as a virgin!  How do we understand that?  It is the precious redemptive language of God, despite Israel's historic sins and the fact that we have blasphemed Him in every nation where He has driven us.  When He restores us, it is as if the past is blotted out and the remnant is called 'the virgin' and 'the redeemed of the LORD, with everlasting joy upon their heads."  This is our resurrection glory.  We have a new life and character that is virginal, which is what happens to us when we are saved, but now it happens to a complete nation for the first time.  God's redemptive dealings move from individual salvation to national salvation, and Israel is the first of the nations to experience it.
With weeping they shall come, and by supplications I will lead them (verse 9a).

What will be the root of this weeping?  It is not the sentimental 'kissing of the ground' that we see on our television screens when Jews make return [aliyah] to Israel.  It is the weeping of the recognition of God, whom we have blasphemed and rejected, who has now proven Himself to be our very Deliverer out of a condition in which we would otherwise have found ourselves to be entirely hopeless.  God's returning of Israel to the Land will be one of the greatest miracles of the Last Days.  There will be no confusion at that time as to whether it was the work of man in his own ability and financing rather than the work of God.  It will be utterly supernatural, and at the same time, the magnitude of our sin will be revealed to us.  We will see our condition, our judgments, and God's mercies, and if that does not break our heart for weeping, then nothing will!  It will be the deepest national contrition and remorse ever seen in the history of the human race.  If a grace were not given, we would not be able to bear it.  We will be racked with convulsive sorrow, unable even to repent before each other:
And the land will mourn, every family by itself; the family of the house of David by itself, and their wives by themselves.... (Zechariah 12:12).
There will be an incredible depth of recognition of the historical sins of our fathers and ourselves, and the mercy of God that has yet saved us out of it.  Notice the admonition to the nations in Jeremiah 31:10:
Hear the word of the LORD, O nations, and declare in the coastlands afar off, and say, "He who scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him as a shepherd keeps his flock."
It is not men who have scattered Israel, neither is it adverse nations, the P.L.O. or Arafat.  God may employ such, but it is God who will scatter Israel.  The same God who is the God of severity and judgment is also the God of mercy and return.  Tell that to the nations, because they need to know it.
For the LORD has ransomed Jacob, and redeemed him from the hand of him who was stronger than he.  And they shall come and shout for joy on the height of Zion, and they shall be radiant over the bounty of the LORD-over the grain, and the new wine, and the oil, and over the young of the flock and the herd; and their life shall be like a watered garden, and they shall never languish again (verses 11-12).
This is clearly a description of something that has not yet come into the experience of Israel as a nation-but it will.  When God promises that they will never languish again, He is speaking of the millennial blessing.  Those who are now trying to bring a false comfort, and saying that Israel need not fear these things, are prematurely invoking a millennial blessedness before the time.  Has there ever been such a moment as this, when careful exegesis of the Scripture is a critical issue of a life-and-death kind for the Church?  We are being required to search the Scriptures, because the issue of whether something is past or future affects everything.
Then the virgin shall rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old, together, for I will turn their mourning into joy, and will comfort them, and give them joy for their sorrow (verse 13.  Emphasis mine).
All of these references to sorrow, mourning and fear are clearly a description of something future.  There is a joy, but this joy will come when God alleviates the mourning and sorrow His own judgments have precipitated; this joy shall be their eternal condition.  There shall never again be a blight of this kind, for there can only be a sorrow and mourning of this kind when one's deepest hope has been made absolutely desolate.  When our hope for a place of security among the nations of the world, exhibiting a character of Jewish civilization of a superior moral and ethical kind,  and which we thought we could have, finally crumbles and goes up in smoke, then shall the sorrow and mourning ensue.  It will be more than just a grief for physical loss; it will be a sorrow and mourning that comes when human hope, devoid of God, is made absolutely barren.
Thus says the LORD, "Restrain your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears; for your work shall be rewarded,' declares the LORD, 'and they shall return from the land of the enemy" (verse 16).
For the most part, present emigration to the Land has come from nations that cannot be described as, "the land of the enemy," so, does this scripture describe those who are yet to be their enemies?
And there is hope for your future, declares the LORD, and your children shall return to their own territory (verse 17).
It is a final, redemptive event:
Bring me back that I may be restored, for Thou art the LORD my God (verse 18b).
Here is Israel acknowledging their God:
For after I turned back, I repented (verse 19a).
Notice that even the issue of repentance is the work of God, and not of men.  God does not even give Israel the liberty or luxury of performing that act on the basis of their own ability.  In Zechariah 12:10a, God says,
And I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son...
That is to say, except that that Spirit be poured out, the depth of mourning necessary for the required repentance will not take place.  Look how absolute God is in His insistence upon Himself being the sole agent of Israel's total redemption.  God is determined to not allow Israel to be the agent of its own restoration, or even its own repentance, that even their capacity to repent is contingent upon the Spirit being poured out upon the house of David!  He will not trust us in anything, so that we can say afterwards, "It was my repentance that turned me," and that "I saw. . ." etc.  If He had not given them that grace, they would not have been able to repent.  God will not share His glory with another.
Israel represents Man in his self-sufficiency, therefore, God has got to demonstrate through Israel that in man, there is no good thing at all; that He is all in all, and must be the God of their restoration as much as He is the God of their judgment.  God is insistent, because, as we have said earlier, Israel needs to see the comparison of millennial Israel, built by God out of His own power, compared to her previous Zionist state, built on her own human prowess and ability.
God must go this far with that nation because Israel and the Jew are mankind in its stubborn and perverse humanity, and God is not going to give us an inch to do anything in which we can boast.  For it will be "from Him and through Him," even the repentance, in order that it might be "to Him" as glory forever.  If we have problems with this view, it is because we are not as absolute as Paul was for God's glory.  We ourselves want to mix in a little bit of what we do with what He does, that we might somehow catch a little bit of that glory.  Our inability to see God's dealing with Israel is the statement of our inability to see God for ourselves.  As the Church, we are projecting on to the state of Israel the liberty that we desire for ourselves, and have not recognized how absolute and jealous God is with regard to His glory forever.
How many of us like to live with God that way?  How many people want to be this destitute of any ability in themselves 'to do' for God?  Paul was not being poetic when he said, "For from Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things."  He knew this from the reality of his own life in God.  His statement, "For to me, to live is Christ" was not a little generality, but it was the most profound description of Paul's apostolic life and, unless it becomes ours, there will be no fulfillment of the mystery of the Church and Israel.
In Ezekiel 36:23, God's gives His last historical statement to the nations of Himself, by what is to be demonstrated in His conduct towards Israel:
"And I will vindicate the holiness of My great name which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst.  Then the nations will know that I am the Lord," declares the Lord of Hosts, "when I prove Myself holy among you in their sight."
In other words, "You have blasphemed My name in every nation where I have driven you, and do not think that I am bringing judgment on you for your sake, but it is for My holy Name's sake.  Your very expulsion from the Land is the statement of the blasphemy of your sins which demanded this kind of dealing from Me.  But I will be sanctified through you; My holiness will be proven and made apparent to all; through My dealings with you, My name will be rescued and honored again before all nations, and they will recognize that I am your Savior, Redeemer and Restorer, the Mighty One of Jacob."
This clearly does not correspond to any past restoration in Israel's history.  There has been the same pattern of sin, judgment and expulsion, but never this kind of witness or testimony to the nations, or even to Israel's own recognition of the Lord as Lord.  This acknowledgment is crucial, because the nation has a calling to bless all the families of the earth, and we cannot understand the extremity and length to which God will go in this dealing with Israel in painful judgment, devastation, expulsion and return, unless we consider it in the context of Israel's destiny and calling to be a nation of priests and a light unto the world.  The gifts and callings of God are irrevocable. They must be fulfilled; His word and covenant must be honoured.

continues >> part 3 of 3 in Chapter 15

The Mystery of Israel and the Church
by Art Katz

Israel and the Time of Jacob's Trouble - Chapter 15 (part 1 of 3)

It is an unwelcome task to put forth an overview of what the Scriptures call, "The time of Jacob's Trouble," a painful survey of the devastation and suffering, yet future, for Israel and the Jewish people.  But, the Church needs to have this view brought into its understanding, lest it finds itself offended at the lengths to which God will go in dealing with this Jacob nation to bring them to the place they might become, finally, the true Israel of God.  It is not only the Jacob in Israel who will be subjected to such devastation, but Jacob wherever he is to be found in the earth.  It is not so much the time of political Israel's trouble, but the time of Jacob's trouble.  The present political state of Israel is Jacob, but it does not encompass the Jacob that is outside the Land.  We need this brought home to us as the Church, because the 'Jacob people' who are in the nations of the world will not be exempt from the sifting and refining fire of God.

God has a purpose with Israel, but it is not because of Israel's virtue.  He chose them for no other reason than that He loves them and not because of their lovableness, but because of who and what God is.  The final revelation of God in His severe dealings and mercy upon this nation and people is a revelation of Himself. "I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy," not because the mercy is deserved, but because "I AM WHO I AM," and "I will be who I will be," and until that is established, God is not yet God in the eyes of mankind.  As long as we think that there is any condition or qualification, in either Israel or the Church that compels Him to be merciful, we still do not understand.
There is still something in us of a human self-righteousness that wants to be acknowledged for itself and this 'something' has not come to the poverty of spirit that alone inherits the blessings of God.  It is only the poor in spirit who recognize that they have no distinction or qualification in and of themselves, and God has got to go to great lengths to establish that point with us, because we have not correctly understood how deep-seated our human intransigence and sin are.  The history of God's dealings with Israel is God's textbook, but primarily, His dealing with them is the revelation of Himself; He is revealed in His dealings with them.  It has been a painful lesson for Israel, but it is a lesson that is going to last for all eternity.  Israel, even in her unbelief and apostasy, is the nation chosen to reveal God to the world.
God's free sovereign grace has chosen Jerusalem, the very same city where He was crucified and where the prophets were stoned and slain, yet, it is still His choice.  What would you say of a God like that?  We would have long ago rejected and discarded any people who had so shamefully abused their privilege as Israel has.  God's promises, nevertheless, remain irrevocable, even independent from and contrary to the desire of the people themselves, who give absolutely no thought to fulfilling their destiny, and who do not even want to be chosen.  If we are having difficulty with these statements, the issue is not intellectual, but it is because there is somewhere in us a residue of self-righteousness and confidence in ourselves as man, which we project onto our view of Israel.  We want them to succeed because we want to succeed on the basis of our own virtue and ability, rather than on the basis of His.  But God will not allow even the partial participation of man in his unaided humanity because He knows what is in man.
The name 'Israel' was given to Jacob after his climactic confrontation with the Son of God, the pre-incarnate revelation of Christ, when he saw Him face to face, wrestled with Him, was touched, made lame, and received the blessing.  'Israel' means, 'one who has prevailed both with God and with man.'  The name was given after a final, ultimate kind of confrontation between a man who lived in his 'Jacob' energy, strength of mind and determination, so much so that he virtually stole the inheritance from a willing Esau, whom God hated because he so readily gave it up.  Even though Jacob had a well-meaning intention, he was not much more than a 'conniver' (which is what the word 'Jacob' means), who succeeded by his own artifice and conniving, and no conniver is going to bless all the families of the earth.  Something has got to happen to the conniver in a final showdown in which he comes to the end of himself, and has such an intense interaction with God in a wrestling of ultimate combat  that he becomes another man-a lame man, who will no longer depend on his own sap and natural strength.
This is the very same scenario that is happening now in Israel.  The nation is called Israel, but 'Jacob' would be a more fitting name for it.  It is vexing its neighbours, and threatening the Middle East in the defense of its Jacob strength and life, trusting in the confidence of its own arm.  Jacob must become Israel, and it is not an exaggeration to say that this Last Days' time of Jacob's trouble is the beginning of the final end of Jacob.  He must pass through the searing dealings of God in a final wrestling, and he will not survive it, or come through it, except as the Israel of God in a transformed condition, because he has met Him face to face.  The whole saga will be a re-enactment of the struggle of the original Jacob with the Lord in order to become the Israel of God.  As long as Jews remain in their arrogant disdain and contempt for the Gentiles, they cannot bless the nations of the earth.
For Zion's sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not keep quiet, until her righteousness goes forth like brightness, and her salvation like a torch that is burning.  And the nations will see your righteousness...(Isaiah 62:1-2a).
When that people will be revealed as having a righteousness not of their own, but His, then God will be glorified in the sight of all nations.  To bring Israel to that place where her righteousness is God's will require a purging away of her own self-righteousness by a burning judgment, the likes of which has not been seen before.  By a certain logic, this judgment must be greater than all past tribulations.  Can we not assume, therefore, that being greater, it must subsume and exceed all past calamity, and again, necessarily include dispersion, exile and devastation in the Land?  When God says, 'great' or 'greater' than any previous calamity, it raises the question, "How great, then, must this final calamity be that purges Israel from its filth by the spirit of burning and of judgment?"  Jesus referred to this time in Matthew 24:21-22,
...for then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever shall.  And unless those days had been cut short, no life [Jewish life] would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect [of Israel] those days shall be cut short."  (Parentheses mine).
In Isaiah 6, the prophet saw the Lord high and lifted up, and cried out, "Woe is me, for I am ruined!" (v. 5a).  And after the angel had applied the coal to his lips, in agreement that he was a man of unclean lips, Isaiah's answer to, "Who shall go for Us?" (v. 8b) was, "Here am I.  Send me" (v.8b).  He then received the most fearful mandate, to be the mouthpiece that will not so much speak blessing, as it was to pronounce fearful judgment:
Go, and tell this people: "Keep on listening, but do not perceive; keep on looking, but do not understand."  Render the hearts of this people insensitive, their ears dull, and their eyes dim, lest they see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and return and be healed (vs. 9-10).
It was a word that was going to desensitize the people, deafen them and dull their hearts, fixing them in an apostate condition.  God's sending of the prophet was not to bring salvation, but judgment, and His word would condemn the nation to an inability to turn or hear.  But the prophet rightly asks in verse 11, "Lord, how long?"  Isaiah understood God's character well enough to know that judgment is not God's final word, but rather, a penultimate one, the word before the last word.  He wanted to know how long this condition would prevail.  It is not an exaggeration to say that this dullness of heart and deafness of ear describes Israel's present condition, and, in fact, Israel's historical condition.  That condition has not been alleviated or altered from Isaiah's time until this day, and the history of Israel, past and present, attests to that.  Israel is still under this judgment condition, and so the question of 'how long?' that Isaiah raises is enormously significant, and here is the answer,
Until cities are devastated and without inhabitant, houses are without people, and the land is utterly desolate, the Lord has removed men far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.  Yet there will be a tenth part in it, and it will again be subject to burning, like a terebinth or an oak whose stump remains when it is felled. The holy seed is its stump (vs. 11-13).
There has always been a saved remnant of Jews in every generation, but as a nation, Israel is still under this judgment and curse, until the 'until' is fulfilled-until a vast devastation comes upon the nation, laying waste its cities, its inhabitants, houses without people, the Land utterly desolate, and a great expulsion.  There will be a vast emptiness in the midst of the Land, and though only a remnant remains, the text suggests that even they shall be burned.  We have here an initial statement indicating that there is an until not yet fulfilled, and when it comes, it will require this devastation in the Land itself.  This is a devastation in the midst of the Land, so it requires a presence in the Land to suffer this judgment.  And when the Lord brings the 'redeemed of the Lord' back, the first function that awaits them is the rebuilding of the cities that lie in ruins and desolation.
It is clear that in order for Israel to be removed from this apostate condition, a certain character of events must take place that will leave the Land wholly desolate and in ruins, uninhabited, and the people cast far away.  This is suggestive of other periods in Israel's history where there has been desolation, expulsion and exile.  How, then, do we interpret this statement as being not yet fulfilled, and figure that it will be fulfilled only when these conditions are experienced?  These conditions are waiting for the 'until' of devastation and a great forsaking in the midst of the Land, also requiring a presence in the Land.  Our mistake is to view the present state of Israel as being, itself, the enduring Israel of God's intention, rather than the initial presence that must first experience desolation and ruin, out of which is to come the establishment of the millennial glory.  Our sense is that these verses are not a description of any of Israel's experiences to date, both of calamities and exiles, because a heart condition remains there now that would otherwise have been alleviated by this catastrophe, had it already taken place!
The Scriptures clearly state that when this violence of an ultimate ruin and devastation takes place, then the condition has been given by which the spiritual blindness, deafness and obdurate heart would be removed from the nation.  It takes an almost willful blindness to believe that the time of Jacob's trouble is past, and that, as some say, it was fulfilled in the Holocaust of Nazi Germany.  Deception has its opportunity when men are unwilling to consider hard things, when they have scant ability to bear things of an apocalyptic kind, and want to believe for a 'good' thing.  Deception comes to those who have not taken to heart the issue of the Cross and suffering.  In fact, this sense of what the future must hold need not come by some mystical revelation; the whole tenor of Scripture is clear that the redemptive way of God is always through death and resurrection.  It is a root principle of God from which even His own Son was not exempt, and neither His chosen nation nor the Church, for that matter, will be exempt from it.  To expect that Israel will somehow succeed without fulfilling that necessary requirement, though the Scriptures are explicitly clear that it will, is remarkably naïve.
My own prophetic understanding is that the cities that will be rebuilt upon the final and enduring return, effected by the Lord Himself, are not the cities of antiquity, but the existent modern cities of Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Tiberias, and so on.
Thus says the Lord God, 'On the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be inhabited, and the waste places will be rebuilt.  And the desolate land will be cultivated instead of being a desolation in the sight of everyone who passed by.  And they will say, 'This desolate land has become like the garden of Eden; and the waste, desolate, and ruined cities are fortified and inhabited' (Ezekiel 36:33-35).
This can be confusing, because it is easy to look at present day Israel, and assume that the building taking place now is the fulfillment of these Scriptures.  However, scrutiny of the Scriptures and attention to the detail of them, are more necessary now, in order to discern whether something being described is past or future.  And here we have to be careful Bible students, because it says that the desolation is the result of violence, and the rebuilding is in keeping with the time when "I cleanse you from all your iniquities," which, as Israel's present condition indicates, is yet future.  The devastation is future, the restoration is future, and the Scriptures indicate a certain time-"On the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities"-which has not yet come.
Ezekiel continues in chapter 36,
Then the nations that are left round about you will know that I, the Lord, have rebuilt the ruined places and planted that which was desolate; I, the Lord, have spoken and will do it (v. 36)
There is a knowing that is yet future, and the statement "that are left round about you," indicates a kind of regional disaster that may include Israel's use of its military capability. This is clearly a statement of that which is still future, and culminates in the nations themselves recognizing God in both the desolation and the rebuilding.  The same text concludes with a reference to the millennial blessing-yet future,
Like the flock for sacrifices, like the flock at Jerusalem during her appointed feasts, so will the waste cities be filled with flocks of men.  Then they will know that I am the Lord (v. 38).
Yes, there have been judgments, desolation, and expulsion in the past; this has been the characteristic pattern of God's judgments on Israel's sin, but this Scripture refers to a future and concluding judgment, because it ends with both Israel and the nations round about knowing that God is the Lord.  No previous desolation or ruin has ever eventuated in this knowledge, so, the Scripture itself indicates that we are speaking about a future time.
There is another supportive text in Amos 9,
"In that day I will raise up the fallen booth of David, and wall up its breaches; I will also raise up its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old; that they might possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations who are called by My name," declares the Lord who does this (v. 11-12).
"Also I will restore the captivity of My people Israel, and they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them" (v. 14).
From the context, it is clear that in Amos 9, the reference to the tabernacle [fallen booth] of David is not speaking of a form of worship, but a form of government.  The Scriptures that follow speak of an Edom and all the nations that are called by "My name" coming under, or being submitted to, or affected by, the restoration of the tabernacle of David.  It is not speaking of the performance of Hebraic dances (as some interpret the meaning to be), but the coming under the authority of the theocratic government that will be raised up at that time.  So, with Israel's restoration, there also will come the restoration or the establishment of the Kingdom of God, the Davidic Kingdom, which we know to be still in the future.  The word 'Edom' is a symbolic term that refers to Gentile nations.
"It is I who says of Jerusalem, 'She shall be inhabited!' And of the cities of Judah, 'They shall be built.'  And I will raise up her ruins again" (Isaiah 44:26.  Italics mine).
"For your waste and desolate places, and your destroyed [devastated] land-surely now you will be too cramped for the inhabitants, and those who swallowed you will be far away" (Isaiah 49:19.  Parenthesis mine).
The whole of Isaiah 51 speaks of Israel being trapped, as "antelopes in the net," with the enemy "walking over them."  It indicates a colossal defeat and humiliation, which makes greater sense, now, in the context of present world events.  The enemies of Israel, including Islamic hatred, are not satisfied with mere defeat, but want, and will obtain, an ultimate humiliation of Israel.  And so, it is not uncommon to have to wait until we come closer to the time of its fulfillment for an understanding of a prophetic text.  This reference in Isaiah 51 was in the Scriptures seven centuries before the advent of Christ, but it comes into greater focus now in this present hour, with the threat to Israel of the enemies that are surrounding her with their vitriolic hatred and their insatiable Islamic need for vengeance.  This is a way of reading and understanding Scriptures, which have been positionally there, but have waited for a closer proximity to the time and events of their fulfillment to become clearer.
Chapters 30 and 31 of the book of Jeremiah are the classic texts that graphically depict this devastation.
"For, behold, days are coming," declares the LORD, "when I will restore the fortunes (captivity) of My people Israel and Judah."  The LORD says, "I will also bring them back to the land that I gave to their forefathers, and they shall possess it."
Now these are the words which the LORD spoke concerning Israel and concerning Judah, for thus says the LORD, "I have heard a sound of terror, of dread, and there is no peace.  Ask now, and see, if a male can give birth.  Why do I see every man with his hands on his loins, as a woman in childbirth? And why have all faces turned pale?  Alas! For that day is great, there is none like it; and it is the time of Jacob's distress, but he will be saved from it ['out of it' - King James version].
And it shall come about on that day," declares the LORD of hosts, "that I will break his yoke from off their neck, and will tear off their bonds; and strangers shall no longer make them their slaves.  But they shall serve the LORD their God, and David their king, whom I will raise up for them.  And fear not, O Jacob My servant,' declares the LORD, 'and do not be dismayed, O Israel; for behold, I will save you from afar, and your offspring from the land of their captivity.  And Jacob shall return, and shall be quiet and at ease, and no one shall make him afraid.  For I am with you," declares the LORD, "to save you; For I will destroy completely all the nations where I have scattered you, only I will not destroy you completely.  But I will chasten you justly, and will by no means leave you unpunished."
For thus says the LORD, "Your wound is incurable, and your injury is serious.  There is no one to plead your cause; no healing for your sore, no recovery for you.  All your lovers have forgotten you, they do not seek you; for I have wounded you with the wound of an enemy, with the punishment of a cruel one, because your iniquity is great and your sins are numerous.  Why do you cry out over your injury?  Your pain is incurable.  Because your iniquity is great and your sins are numerous, I have done these things to you.
Therefore all who devour you shall be devoured; and all your adversaries, every one of them, shall go into captivity; and those who plunder you shall be for plunder, and all who prey upon you I will give for prey.  For I will restore you to health and I will heal you of your wounds," declares the LORD, "because they have called you an outcast, saying, 'It is Zion, no one cares for her.'"
Thus says the LORD, "Behold, I will restore the fortunes of the tents of Jacob and have compassion on his dwelling places; and the city shall be rebuilt on its ruin, and the palace shall stand on its rightful place.  And from them shall proceed thanksgiving and the voice of those who make merry; and I will multiply them, and they shall not be diminished; I will also honor them, and they shall not be insignificant.  Their children also shall be as formerly, and their congregation shall be established before Me; and I will punish all their oppressors" (Jeremiah 30: 3-20.  Italics mine).
The fierce anger of the LORD will not turn back, until He has performed, and until he has accomplished the intent of His heart; in the latter days you will understand this (verse 24).
We need to ask whether what is being described here is a description of things already in Israel's past.  Yes, there have been defeats; there have been expulsions; there have been enemies that have brought Israel into captivity.  But, "I will save you from afar," implies that Israel is cast out again into many nations, "and your offspring from the land of their captivity.  And Jacob shall return, and shall be quiet and at ease, and no one shall make him afraid."  This cannot be a description of the resettlement of Israel in 1948 because they are still being made afraid; they are not in that place of security.  This 'peace, rest and quiet' is something that follows the time of Jacob's trouble, and is evidently yet future because Israel's present condition cannot be described as being 'at rest.'  It is evident by the yet unchanged condition of the nation today that this is not the consequence of previous disasters.  Israel must exhibit its moral bankruptcy, not because it is Israel, but because it is statement of man in his unwillingness to recognize the declaration of God on the human condition, and therefore must be condemned to seeing it in its own degenerate conduct.
But they shall serve the Lord their God, and David their king, whom I will raise up for them (Jer. 30:9).
This is identical to the promise given in Ezekiel 37, after the dry bones of the whole house of Israel, or what remains of it, are given life, and raised out of their graves, and Judah and Israel, the two branches, are united, and then the Lord says, "And My servant David will be King over them, and they will all have one shepherd" (v. 24a).  This is another aspect that needs to be considered in the whole review of Scriptures that speak of devastation and return, namely, the millennial conclusion, that the King Himself, the greater David, Jesus, is raised up to rule over the nation now being restored, and whose ruins are being rebuilt.
"For I am with you," declares the Lord, "to save you; for I will destroy completely all the nations where I have scattered you, only I will not destroy you completely.  But I will chasten you justly, and will by no means leave you unpunished" (Jer. 30:11).
This scripture shows the effect of God's judgment on the nations which are employed to bring the chastisement to Israel.  He says, "I will destroy them."  We have not seen a destruction of the nations being used as the 'rod of chastisement,' indicating that the chastisement itself is yet future.  It is noteworthy that in the past, the nations employed to bring the destruction of God's judgment have historically and invariably gone beyond God's intention, spurred by demonic fury, and have taken an especial delight in bringing dimensions of suffering and humiliation to Israel, for which reason they themselves have suffered judgment.  "For I will destroy completely all the nations where I have scattered you, only I will not destroy you [Israel] completely" suggests that some of the nations existing today will lose their identity when God fulfills the judgments of which He speaks.
Therefore all who devour you shall be devoured; and all your adversaries, every one of them, shall go into captivity; and those who plunder you shall be for plunder, and all who prey upon you I will give for prey (Jer. 30:16).
The word devoured implies something of catastrophic proportions, rather than some minor discomfort, and shows the vehemence, bitterness, and total dominance that Israel's enemies shall have over them in this time of Trouble.  This violence will precipitate an expulsion of Jews, not only out of Israel, but also out of all nations, in fulfillment of Amos 9,
For behold, I am commanding, and I will shake the house of Israel among all nations (v.9a).
Ezekiel 20:23-44 supports this flight into the wilderness of the nations where Jews will encounter another entity, face to face, and in whose face will be seen the light of God.  At the end of this statement in Jeremiah 30 and 31 comes the millennial blessing, after the promised restoration. 
In Ezekiel 36, the Scriptures speak about Israel abhorring herself for her own sins after her return.
For I will turn their mourning into joy, and will comfort them, and give them joy for their sorrow (Jer. 31:13f).

continues >> part 2 and 3 in Chapter 15

Källan har utsetts till Månaden julis hetaste sajt.

Ett antal hängivna unga kristna på Västkusten - läs: Bästkusten - ger av sina gåvor för att inspirera till tro och liv för dem som inget vet och till dem som börjat tro och vill växa. Sajten är gedigen och har tyngd och bredd. Rekommenderas varje ledare som vill hänvisa unga till något mera än bara det allmänt mycket goda som finns på nätet.

Här är material för ordentligt vår- och höstbruksarbete. Inte glättigt katalogträdgård precis. Här är ordentligt (j)ordbruk. Spade och spett... inte hink och spade i sandlådan precis. Gud vare lovad för lätta tunga sajter som Livskällan/Källan! 

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Källan-teamet ger gedigen undervisning och utmanar ett och annat i tidens samhälle och kristenhetens allmänning. Källan - den är skön i sin nygamla stil! 

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Om Källan skriver Bibelskolan.com

så här >>  presentation, index m.m.

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Gör ett besök >> 

på hemsidan: Livskällan

/DS

PS

Kalle, Elisabeth, lillsyrran, Matti och Magda & alla era goa teammedarbetare tillönskas god NetNätsutveckling på alla fronter.

The Mystery of Israel and the Church
by Art Katz

Chapter 14 - The Anatomy of Resurrection

Of all the doctrines of the faith, resurrection is the most offensive to human sensibility and reason, and the most difficult to consider.  So deep-seated in man is the innate resistance to resurrection that the disciples themselves were disbelieving (Luke 24:41), even though the resurrected Christ was standing before them.  We need to understand the profundity of resurrection, and the equally great resistance to the truth of it, and how central it is to the whole purpose of God.
Let us examine the genius and the anatomy of resurrection itself.  What is it in resurrection that is so commendable and dear in God's own sight?  It took a power to raise a dead man, Jesus Himself, from the grave, but now we are going to be talking about the power that it takes to raise an entire nation.
The day of Jesus Christ is the day of resurrection.  That is to say, it is an event which cannot take place gradually and which leaves no room for realization in steps.  There are no transitions, no approximation, between the two.  There is a sharp line of demarcation and all continuity from one to the other by successive states of realization is excluded. This event is one which comes exclusively from God's side and not from ours (Emil Brunner - Source Unknown).
This Swiss-German theologian is striking at the very heart of the liberal mind, which predicates everything on gradual evolutionary process, or by a process of change.  Resurrection, however, is completely opposed to that; it is absolute, sudden, and a once-and-for-all event from God.  It has nothing to do with process of change.  Process implies the involvement of man through his ever-developing understanding.  Resurrection has to do with man, dead and incapable of effecting anything, in any way, in and of himself.  Therefore, anything that quickens him must be exclusively the operation of God that comes as 'event' in the moment of God's own choosing.  There is something in the evolutionary mindset that includes man as a necessary component in the process, but resurrection is absolutely God's doing, and in it, there is no room for man at all.
When all basis for hope was gone, Abraham hoped in God and believed, and he became the father of many nations according to what was spoken, "So shall your descendants be."  His descendants would be exactly like him.  When every basis for their hope was gone, they also would be resurrected to a new hope on the same basis of the word of God as it had come to Abraham.  The final demonstration to Israel of the sovereignty and the omnipotence of God will be due to the fact that He is the God whose very speaking constitutes their life.  Abraham had to see that there was no basis whatsoever for life in himself, and God must bring His restored Abrahamic nation to that place as well.  It is not a pleasant process, but it is of eternal consequence, and therefore, worth it all.

The issue of whether Israel is going to come into her millennial destiny and glory by process of change, or by resurrection, is a very great question.  You wonder how Israel, having the destiny that it does, could be exempted from the subject of resurrection.  God will not allow her to come into His glory in any other way but by resurrection, for anything that pertains to the glory of God must come by virtue of resurrection alone.  The whole tenor of Scripture reveals the implicit wisdom of resurrection as the theme that runs through the whole of God's ways.
There is something in man that wants to 'get in on the act.'  Do we realize that the language we use betrays the depth of our understanding of God?  For example, we say, "If God will help me, then I will walk in the way."  This implies that there are two independent entities: God and I.  And whether we say it or not, this is often our mentality, because we do not see ourselves as dead men wholly thrust in dependency upon the totality of His Life.  There is a world of difference between saying, "If God will help me" and Paul's statement, "For to me, to live is Christ."  Paul does not ask God to help him.  Paul asks God to be him.  Paul's whole sufficiency was Christ and "knowing Him and the power of His resurrection," for which reason he could count all things as rubbish, which does not mean just the questionable, murky things, but the best things: Paul's intelligence, his Jewish learning, his wisdom, his understanding, his own character, his own gifts.
Very few have really understood and appropriated the power of resurrection because of the failure to recognize the totality of it, its being exclusively and entirely of God.  We sin thereby, and fall short of the glory of God.  His glory is not something He will share with flesh, or with any other, but only when it is exclusively Himself.  As long as we feel that we can 'get by' in any measure with our puny, religious wisdom and understanding, we fall short of His glory.  That is why we do not see the glory of God.  We are not so much concerned with the glory of God as we are concerned with avoiding the embarrassment of failure, and we often see the fruit of this every Sunday from the majority of church pulpits.  That is why we have so little resurrection event in that preaching.  That is why apostolic preaching is different from conventional preaching.  Conventional preaching can be biblical, doctrinally sound, interesting, informative and even inspiring, but it is not an 'event' in God.29

The Law of Life
Death, i.e., death to all confidence in the flesh, is God's inexorably fixed law of Life.  The thing that pertains to His glory is the life that arises out of death.
For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah [i.e., the whole of God's Israel].  I, even I, [not Arafat, not terrorism, not the hordes of Islam] will tear to pieces and go away, I will carry away, and there will be none to deliver (Hosea 5:14).
This is not a lion who is going to lick, but one that is going to tear.  How do we comprehend God in using such an analogy for Himself in being to Judah and Ephraim a lion who tears?  Israel certainly was ravaged and torn in the Hitler time, yet the Nazi horror was not the final statement of the scriptures that we are now considering.
I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offense, and seek My face: in their affliction they will seek me early (Hosea 5:15 KJV).
This verse has not yet been fulfilled, for there is not one Jew in a ten thousand who thinks that there is any offense that needs to be brought before God, or that God needs to be sought concerning our offenses as Jews.  God has a great, unanswered controversy with Israel, which goes all the way back to the sins of our fathers, of which we have hardly any cognizance at all.  And yet God says that until we acknowledge the sins of our fathers and our own sins, He will not remember His covenant toward us (Lev. 26:40).  Our God is such a lover of our souls and so jealous over us in truth, that He will not allow us to languish in our deception about our own condition.  He will go so far as to even give us the state of Israel, not as something that is going to be established in success, but to reveal to us what nothing else would have revealed, namely, that merely having our own nation has not exhibited to the world a unique nation displaying an ethical and moral sensitivity unknown to nations.  God, rather, wants us to see that we are equally as capable as any other nation, of every depravity and every kind of crime, brutality and use of force employed by nations everywhere historically, and to this day, to preserve their own existence.

Come, let us return to the Lord (Hosea 6:1a).
This is now Israel speaking, who are now seeking God out of an affliction, which is yet future, because there has never yet been this acknowledgment historically: "For He has torn us..."  World Jewry and Israel have not acknowledged that "He has torn us."  Circumstances have, and Hitler has, but not "He."  It is a remarkable acknowledgement that the causative factor in Israel's distress is not Arafat and the terror, but God Himself, who employs nations and men as the rod of His chastisement.
...but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us. He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third day that we may live before Him (Hosea 6:1b-2).
There is no more eloquent a statement than this, of Israel's death and resurrection "on the third day," which day we are approaching.  Preceding the glory of resurrection is the necessary falling into death from which only a resurrection can raise us.  Can we, like the Son of God before us, wait two days longer where we are, though we know that our friend Lazarus, whom we love, is sick unto death (John 11:1-45)?  Are we able to remain under the will of God and not seek to alleviate or alter the sickness that God Himself has imposed?  A word that is before its time, and is not "on the third day," but is calculated for comfort, is a false word.  It will not bring release for that nation, but on the contrary, it will inhibit us from being the prophetic voice that raises that nation from the dead.  Our motive must always be the glory of God the Father, not the alleviation of sickness and human ill.  The greatest statement of the love of God is His allowing suffering to run its full course because it eventuates, not just in the recovery of the suffering one, but in the glory of God forever.
We need to realistically understand God's stratagem; we need to die to those kinds of hopes and expectations that are not founded upon the Word of God, but upon our own humanistic assumption and projection for Israel, of the kind that we hoped for ourselves, namely, improvement and change for the better, not understanding that everything that pertains to the glory of God must issue from a resurrection out from death.
So let us know, let us press on to know the Lord.  His going forth is as certain as the dawn; and He will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain watering the earth (Hosea 6:3).
Only then will Israel be a blessed people that can bless all the families of the earth.  It is the event that is exclusively from God's side and exclusively in God's time, "on the third day."  We cannot order it sooner; we cannot be relieved of our death when we want to be, but only when He wants to do it.  We are "dead and hidden with Christ in God, until His life is revealed" (Col. 3:3 paraphrased).
The Intifada, the terrorism, the opposition of the Palestinians and the surrounding Arab states, and the growing world sentiment against Israel, are all part of God's program to bring Israel into death.  There is something here that is more than just a momentary political upset.  This is death working in the long run, and it will have its full work.  It should more rightly be understood as the death of disillusionment, of despair and of a growing sense that, "We are not going to succeed as the kind of nation that we had hoped to establish.  This is forcing us to realize that we are acting like every other nation. We are using so much force, intimidation, threat and terror, that even if somehow, miraculously, this Arab-Palestinian opposition would cease, and we could placate them, and give them what they want, so much moral damage has already been done to our national character that we can never recover.  We can never be the kind of state that we hoped to be."  Israel still thinks that they can extricate themselves from, or somehow resolve these terrible dilemmas, and find the basis for security, peace and national coherence, even to the point where they are willing to negotiate now again with their own avowed enemy.

Patient Love
God is not rushing to Israel's side.  The purpose of their sickness is to reveal the glory of God when He will raise them from the dead by His sovereign resurrection power "on the third day."  As we have seen from Ezekiel 37, God does not do it directly Himself, but through a 'son of man,' and as we have said, this is where the Gentile Church comes in.  However well-meaning we are, and yearn to see Israel established, and however much we want to say all the right things, there will not be a stirring in Israel's grave unless we ourselves are on the resurrection ground, because it is the word spoken from that side that opens that grave.
1 Corinthians 15 is the classic chapter on the theme of resurrection, and it would not be doing the scriptures an injustice to read Israel into these verses, particularly with regard to its present condition, and what it will increasingly become, until death has its full work.
But someone will say, 'How are the dead raised?  And with what kind of body do they come?'  You fool!  That which you sow does not come to life unless it dies (1 Cor. 15:35).
It is hard to understand how anyone who sees this, and understands it in his own experience as a believer, can have a moment's hesitation before recognizing that it must be true for Israel as well.  You can only be 'made alive' from the place of death.
So also is the resurrection of the dead.  Israel is sown a perishable body, Israel is raised an imperishable body; Israel is sown in dishonor, Israel is raised in glory; Israel is sown in weakness, Israel is raised in power; Israel is sown a natural body [a political, Zionist state]; Israel is raised a spiritual body [the millennial glory of Israel].  If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.  So also it is written, 'The first man Adam became a living soul.'  The last Adam became a life-giving spirit (1 Cor. 15:42-45).30
Israel will also be, as it were, a "life-giving spirit" but this time to the nations, and that is why her return will be "life from the dead" (Rom. 11:15).
However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural [Zionist state]; then the spiritual [the millennial glory].  The first man [Zionist state] is from the earth, earthy; the second man [the millennial glory] is from heaven.  As is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy; and as is the heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly.  And just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.  Now I say this, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable (1 Cor. 15:46-50).
Those who resist the message of the necessary death and resurrection of Israel need to take particular heed to these verses.  Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, not even Jewish flesh and blood, as impressive as that may be.  Flesh is flesh,31 earthy and natural, and therefore, cannot bless all the families of the earth.  Only God, working through a resurrection, life-imbued people, can bless all the families of the earth.
Our mistake is in thinking that present-day Israel is that final fulfillment, or can yet obtain it progressively.  It is only the preliminary, natural entity that must precede the spiritual, the Ishmael before the Isaac.  There is a corollary between those who celebrate present Israel as the final fulfillment of scriptures as those who believe that they will be raptured before the final tribulation.  On the other hand, those who see Israel as the natural thing that precedes the spiritual, and see that there is equally a necessary death scheduled, are a people who, themselves, are ready to bear, for their sake, a measure of that dying in Last Days' opposition and tribulation of an antichrist kind.  Someone who sees the Church going through a tribulation time, as we believe the scriptures indicate, will be more disposed also, to believe that Israel must equally go through a tribulation, a suffering and death.  Those who see a rapture as being saved out of suffering want to see Israel also saved out of suffering and to succeed on her present, earthy and natural basis.
We can become sympathetic for Israel and have a very high regard for Israel, but is that born out of a union with Christ in resurrection, or out of some measure of Christian guilt especially for the 'Christian' crimes that were inflicted on Jews through the ages?  Guilt may be sufficient to engender sympathy and many good works, but it cannot enable one to stand by Israel's tomb and say, "Come forth!"  One can only go so far with guilt and sentimentality, which in the absence of anything else may be quite impressive, but what the Last Days require are not something impressive, but rather, something unspeakably formidable, namely, to the raising of the dead itself!  We prevent ourselves from both seeing and participating in Israel's restoration, except from the more limited place of guilt and sentiment, which puts us strangely in opposition to those who do see the necessity of the death that precedes the resurrection.
Our inability to see this reveals something very deep about the issue of resurrection.  Is it a mercy of God to reveal our shortcoming now, rather than that we should die and learn on the other side of eternity that we had fallen short of the glory of God, and that our supposed well-meaning intentions and heartfelt sympathies were not enough.  Even in Israel's apostasy and unbelief, she fulfills a function with regard to the Church that is priceless, namely, she reveals us.  We would have preferred and been satisfied with sentimentality, and therefore, we would not have been aware that there was anything lacking until it is made clear that sentiment cannot raise Israel from the grave.

Lazarus - The Ultimate Test for the Church
How far will God go to perfect the Church for His purposes, especially in the Last Days?  Our sense of things is that God will bring the Church, or at least a remnant of it, to a place of existential crisis, thus compelling it to break through into a place of ultimate abandonment and consecration.  We prophetically believe, as already stated, that God will bring Israel into a death (Ezek. 37); analogous to the episode of Lazarus, in order to obtain something in the Church that evidently could not have been obtained in any lesser way. 
Are we are satisfied with the Church in its present condition?  How we view present Israel is very much a projection of how we see ourselves.  How we view ourselves is altogether related to how we view God.  What does it take to see God and to see as He sees?  A faulty view of God will show itself in our contentment with flourishing meetings, enjoyable conferences, and seeing present Israel successfully established.
For those who lay claim to being believers and related to God, there is going to be a choice to be made.  In fact the choice is so profound that not every one will be in the 'son of man' company so vividly portrayed in Ezekiel 37.  Not everyone will be that corporate expression of His Life that will be called to prophesy.  Many will fall away because the requirement is too great.  But if we have any intent with God of a glorious kind, we need to understand God's Last Days' workings, and give ourselves to them.  Israel's imminent predicament is going to place a requirement on the Church beyond all expectation, one that cannot be met on the basis of our unaided human or religious ability.  There is clearly only one basis for the fulfilling of His purposes: it must be on the basis of the power of His Life by that which has died to its own.  The death and resurrection of Israel implies the death and resurrection of the Church, or at least that part of the Church willing for it. 
As the ultimate Son of God, and as a son of obedience, Jesus was tested again and again in His humanity, but especially on hearing that His friend, Lazarus, was sick and nigh unto death. 
Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.  And it was the Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick. The sisters therefore sent to Him, saying, "Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick."  But when Jesus heard it, He said, "This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified by it."  Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. When therefore He heard that he was sick, He stayed two more days longer in the place where He was (John 11:1-6).
Jesus would not allow Himself to be distracted away from the place where He was to remain.  He would not be appealed to on the basis of His humanity to go and deliver His friend, whom He loved, from sickness.  It was His obedience to remain another two days, contrary to His every human impulse to go to His friend, which is the key to the prophetic power in finally raising Lazarus from his grave.  Jesus heard the words: "Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick," but He chose to remain where He was, itself a death.  God will test us to the point of breaking.  Our every impulse is to go now, or to speak now, or to do now.  Everything demands and cries for it: the man is sick, he is soaking in his sweat, writhing and turning in his bed, waiting for his friend, who had healed untold thousands, to come and do the same for him.  But no, Jesus did not appear.  He knew only too well what His failure to appear would mean, especially considering He did not offer an explanation.  Any explanation would have relieved the anxieties and tensions of men, and with it, the possibility of death as death, thereby nullifying any prospect for the resurrection that followed.
Jesus was forsaking his friend Lazarus for the greater glory.  God's glory is inexorably and always beyond the issue of what relieves us, but only what glorifies Him.  To come to the place where there is no vested self-interest or any self-satisfaction, where it is all the same to you whether you speak or not, whether you are seen or not, whether you are used or not, is to come to the place of obedience, and only then can you be prophetically used.  The prophet Balaam was not yet separated from himself.  He had the gift to employ, but he employed it for his own end and gain, and therefore was a false prophet.  Though his prophecy may have been true, the man was himself false. 
For Jesus to wait for Lazarus' death was a form of ultimate suffering.  It was an excruciating death to every corpuscle that cried out for an immediate alleviation of a present distress.  Everything that is human, in the best sense, wants naturally now to alleviate the distress, but Jesus remained two days longer where He was.  He was able to restrain Himself, the spirit of the prophet being subject to the prophet.  In His humanity, He must necessarily agonize over the suffering of His friend.  But God's purposes are never the alleviation of tension, only the revelation of His glory.  As long as we remain need-oriented, we forfeit being used to bring life from the dead. 
A son of God is not at liberty to address need, merely because he sees it.  Any true servant is not moved by his or her perception of the need.  We live in an age and a world that does not know how to contain itself.  If something comes up, we want it attended to; we have a question, we want it answered; we have a need, we want it met.  Everything is predicated upon our immediate interest.  The fact that it is a spiritual interest does not alter the fact that it is still self-interest.  God wants us at a place beyond where our self-interest dominates us; it is the place that Jesus was called to when he heard that his friend Lazarus was sick.  It was an extraordinary moment of testing. 
The fact of the matter is that this one act of Lazarus' resurrection set in motion the things that determined Jesus' own death: "So from that day on they [the chief priests and Pharisees] planned together to kill Him [Jesus]" (John 11:53).  It was the final offense, the straw that broke the camel's back, which really infuriated the religious establishment against Him, and infuriates it still.  The demonstration of resurrection power is always invariably the dividing line.  Either we have to fall before a Man capable of performing that by His word, or we have to reject Him, and put Him death.  There is no middle ground.  We do not want Israel to pass through what we ourselves are unwilling to pay the cost to obtain, but God is not going to allow us that luxury.  The 'son of man' company that is qualified to raise Israel from her death must of necessity also have passed through its own death and resurrection.  Only a word from such a place will raise the dead. 
It is interesting that the one sister, who was considered spiritual, and the other, who doted in the kitchen, both said exactly the same thing to Jesus, "Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died."  However spiritual we think we are, when the crisis comes of this kind, we reveal that we are just like Mary and Martha, and that we have certain expectancies we think ought to be fulfilled.  And so, we become disappointed when they are not fulfilled, and it is reflected in an accusatory tone, even against God.
There is a conjunction between the willingness and the ability to be unseen and unheard and to wait, and which has everything to do with the power, the glory, the authority that is exhibited when one is finally called to be employed.  One never knows when that calling will come, or even if it will come at all.  We have got to come to a priestly place where it makes no difference.  To wait on God, silently, is as much to render Him priestly service as to go.  The waiting precedes the going, the silence precedes the speaking, the death precedes the resurrection.
If we find ourselves too prolific in our speaking, or too verbal, and that we are trying to make up by volume of words what could have been expressed by few, there will be a dissipation of the value; our words will lose their cogency and authority, their life and power.  There is so much unnecessary noise, and verbiage that have no lasting value.  How much of our speaking is really for ourselves to be heard, to be observed, to be acknowledged, to be accepted?  What is our motive?  The value of speaking is relative to esteeming silence, patiently holding and containing it.  The act of waiting as a discipline is central to the whole priestly posture, and priestliness precedes and validates propheticness.
As long as we feel ourselves superior and above the condition of other men, we cannot be in the priestly 'son of man' company, or, for that matter, in any true ministry.  We need to identify with the world, not at its best, but at its worst.  Only then can we minister and be a blessing.  Our tendency is to lapse into a kind of religious superiority.  We need to realize, however, that we are capable of anything and everything, and the only reason we have not fallen is not by any virtue of ours, but the God who has kept us.32  We must not presume to think ourselves better than those to whom we are ministering.  The greater our spirituality the more true our understanding that "the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" (Jer.17:9 KJV).  We have no virtue in ourselves.  If we have not condescended to the worst depths of depravity, it is only because God's grace has kept us, and not we ourselves.  Unless we really know that as shared identification, how then can we speak the word of resurrection to those who are in such depths as Israel will inescapably be?
Israel's true death is the acknowledgement that "Our bones are dried up, and our hope has perished.  We are completely cut off" (Ezek. 37:11).  Israel, as well as much of the Church, is still fighting against that acknowledgment.  And the truth of that is revealed in the way Israel arms herself with the latest military technology and nuclear deterrents, while the Church arms herself with the comparable 'spiritual' weapons of some new fad or program to relieve the boredom, monotony and predictability of conventional church life.  God is bringing both to the necessary revelation of our own wicked heart.  Israel and the Church have not been willing to surrender to the radical truth of the word of God about the human condition, but more especially its own, and have elevated its own subjectivity over the word of God.  That is sin, and sin brings death and judgment. 
When Israel's repentance does come, it will exceed anything previously known.  It will be of such a depth of wailing, of gasps of contrition, the crying out of the ravaged soul as will take place in this people when the revelation, through His mercy, of the depth of their sin breaks through.  As we read, it will be every family apart and every husband and wife apart (Zech. 12:10-14).  It will be so agonizing that they will not even bear to be in the presence of each other.  It is oneself, alone before God in utter prostration.  This kind of convulsive gasp and sob is death itself, and the one who can come out of that will not be the same person that went into it.  This is how Israel comes into the newness of life, to become an entirely other people, out of the death of the convulsive repentance of the deepest kind, nationally, that has ever been historically experienced.  The redeemed of the Lord will return to Zion, but only after the mourning and sighing has fled away.

P r o f e t e r n a  s o m  h a r  h e l t  r ä t t  - Profetiskt (Nr 5)

Det finns sanna och falska profeter. När Israels folk i sitt hjärta undrade: "Hur skall vi känna igen det ord som HERREN inte har talat?", gav Mose ett klargörande svar. Folket får veta vad som är eldprovet för en sann profet: "När han talar i HERRENS namn, och det han säger inte sker och inte går i uppfyllelse, då är detta något som HERREN inte har talat."

De hebreiska profeterna - vars utsagor går tillbaka tre-fyra tusen år tillbaka - har bevarats åt oss i Bibelns texter och uppfyller alla kriterier för äkta och sann profetia.

Jesaja profeterar under en period av sextio år under fyra kungars regeringstid. Omkring 710 f.Kr. belägras Jerusalem av den väldiga assyriska armén som leds av den grymme kungen Sanherib. Profeten ger en kortsiktig profetia om att Sanherib inte skulle anfalla Jerusalem utan återvända till sitt land, enligt Jes. 37:36-38.
Så sker också. När Sanherib hör ryktas om inre stridigheter på hemmafronten, blåses belägringen av och han återvänder hem - och mördas.

Jesaja gör också långsiktiga förutsägelser. Han förutsäger att Babel skulle krossa Juda och bortföra alla Israels skatter. Och att de söner av kungligt blod som överlever skulle bli hovtjänare i Babel. År 586 f.Kr. - knappt ett hundra år senare - går denna förutsägelse i uppfyllelse (39:5-7).

Jesaja förutsäger att det oövervinnliga babyloniska herraväldet skulle erövras och att staden Babel skulle tillintetgöras så helt att den blev obeboelig. Den profetian (13:17-22) är verkligen riskabel, ty vid denna tid ansågs Babel vara en ointaglig stad med fyrtiofem meter höga murar och breda så att fem stridsvagnar kunde köras i bredd ovanpå dem. Staden som var en av den antika världens sju underverk var också självförsörjande och man ansåg den okänslig för belägring. - Efter cirka etthundrafemtio år efter att Jesaja förutsagt detta - den 16 oktober 539 f.Kr. faller Babel för mederna och perserna. Slutligen ligger staden i ruiner och den har aldrig hämtat sig. Irak har under senare år med Saddam Hussein sökt återuppbygga den.

Jesaja profeterar återigen att en kung som namngavs, nämligen Kores, skulle göra det möjligt att åter bygga upp templet och Jerusalem genom att tillåta de judiska fångar som så önskade att återvända till sitt hemland för detta ändamål (44:28-45:4). - Två hundra år senare gav den persiske kungen Kores judiska landsflyktingar, som var kvar efter den babyloniska fångenskapen, tillstånd att återvända till Jerusalem. Kores ordnande till och med byggnadsmaterial.

Jesaja har ett enastående rekord - om han nu gissade. En osannolik kortsiktig profetia som var helt rätt och riktig. Sedan tre fullständigt riktiga långsiktiga förutsägelser på 100, 150 och 200 år. Detta är ändå bara fyra av de många profetiska uttalandena som gjorts av de större gammaltestamentliga profeterna. Enbart gudomlig uppenbarelse kan förklara framsynthet av detta enastående slag.

Somliga forskare vill bortförklara undret med profetior genom att hävda att Jesaja levde långt senare än som tidigare antagits. Dylika "senaredateringar" av Jesaja antyder att han skrev sina profetior efter att de egentligen hade ägt rum, säger man. Jesaja görs med andra ord till en bedragare med sådan textkritisk "teologisk" forskning. Den gör också det judiska folket som bevarat Jesajas skrifter till bedragare. Givetvis kan vi lita på profeterna och på de bibliska texternas tillförlitlighet. Bibelns texter är Guds texter och Guds ord, och inte bara vilka texter vilka som helst.

Jesaja, Hesekiel, Daniel, Jeremia, David, Mika och ett antal profeter klarar en profets eldprov. Uttalanden har gått i uppfyllelse. Dussintalet olika profeter har i över sextio profetiska uttalanden gått i uppfyllelse avseende Jesus Kristus och hans födelse, liv, död och uppståndelse, trots att de i flera fall gjorts så tidigt som 1000 år före hans födelse.

Profeterna talar från Gud. Där är Jesus Kristus givetvis den störste av profeter, ty han talade ut många förutsägelser, men där är också apostlarna såsom Petrus och Paulus och Johannes på Patmos. Vi kan lita på de ord som alla dessa uttalat i form av profetior som ännu väntar på sin fullbordan. Alla deras ord är präglade av gudomlig tillförlitlighet.

Den svenska kristenheten har att förvalta också det profetiska ordet och de profetiska förutsägelser som väntar på sin uppfyllelse. I detta perspektiv har kristenheten ansvaret att i den helige Andes ljus och kraft bevara det Guds Ord som talar om tidens tecken, dess slut och Guds rikes fullbordan samt Jesu återkomst med allt vad detta innebär av majestätlig dom och konungslig seger.

"Profetia är bara historia som skrivits i förväg" har någon sagt...

/DS