“Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years; the one who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere child; the one who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed” (Isaiah 65:20).
The global situation for Israel becomes more dire by the day.
Opponents are becoming increasingly emboldened and outrageous in their demands of the tiny Jewish state. Many within the West, including those within the Church, see her days as numbered; in the eyes of these people, Israel’s end is a mere inevitability.
Yet this is not so. In a recent article titled, “God will not abandon Israel” [1], I discussed how the covenants established between God and mankind, through Abraham and then later confirmed with his children, ensured Israel’s eternal future. I discussed how these covenants were not conditional covenants, dependent upon the actions of both parties for their eventual fulfillment, but how they were unconditional in their nature.
Israel has an eternal future and the fulfillment of any of the four main biblical covenants has nothing at all to do with the actions of Israel. The responsibility for the fulfillment of these covenants rest entirely upon the Lord, upon God Himself.
To question the right of Israel to the land they currently occupy, or worse—to teach that Israel has been cast away by God because of past disobedience, is to question the integrity of God. It is a blasphemy, because in doing so one is testifying to his or her belief that God is a liar. This is absolutely contrary to the character of God,
“God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?” (Numbers 23:19).
Paul affirms this core truth in the New Testament,
“…in the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time…” (Titus 1:2)
Instead of seeing the rejection of Israel, her dispersal around the world in a global Diaspora that lasted nearly two thousand years, and then her subsequent re-gathering from the four corners of the earth, is an amazing fulfillment of Bible prophecy. A large number of people today, and in the Church, are willfully accepting a lie. Many have been deceived.
The modern western Church, fast growing into one of Israel’s greatest critics, should in fact be her greatest ally and defender. Instead of the vitriol that is spewed from pulpits about Israel’s lack of so-called “legitimacy,” we should be witness to Israel’s robust defense, week after week, in sermon after sermon in the churches we attend.
This abandonment of Israel is one of the clearest signs of the times and a crystal clear indicator that the apostasy spoken of by Paul is already here. We are deeply enmeshed in this apostasy already. It will soon get much, much worse.
This apostasy, borne out of an almost complete biblical illiteracy, growing apathy from the body of Christ and blatant false teaching from pastors who should know better, is leading a multitude of “Christians” down a path of outright rebellion against God.
False teachers who seek only to collect for themselves followers to influence, are wolves in sheep’s clothing, “…for whom the blackest darkness is reserved forever” (2 Peter 2:17).
It is ironic and utterly shameful that the position the church should be occupying today, defending Israel against a hostile world, will be the exact same position that the Antichrist himself will come to occupy. He will appear as the great defender of Israel against an overwhelmingly an anti-Semitic, hate filled world.
He will assume the position the Church should be standing in right now. It is the Church’s abdication of this role that has created this necessary void and will allow the Antichrist himself to come in and fill this role after the Rapture has occurred.
In the signing of his seven-year peace treaty, on the face of it defending Israel and her legitimacy for a time, Antichrist will no doubt—even cast a reproachful glance across at the church that remains and exists in that time post-Rapture, for their incessant antagonisms toward Israel.
What a perverse juxtaposition that will be. It is a mark of just how deep the current apostasy is becoming. There is not much falling away that has to happen now, beyond this point.
Homosexuality is now of no consequence. Members who are LGBT within the church, instead of being seen as those who need our help, patience and prayers are being celebrated as freedom fighters.
Transgender ministers stand in the pulpit and declare that, “…an angel of reason” showed them that the Bible was wrong and they in fact were right, and they are lauded as an example by the church. Some churches even have avowed atheists as their ministers. The blind leading the blind.
This falling away has inevitably led to anti-Semitism within our own ranks. The social gospel preachers teaching in conferences like Christ at the Checkpoint 2016 are all wrong. Dead wrong. Israel is not an apartheid nation and they most certainly have not been abandoned by God, as many subtly imply in their messages.
Three of the most important chapters in the entire Bible are found in Romans 9, 10 and 11. These three chapters are so important that without a clear understanding of them and their implications, any Christian’s worldview is open to being manipulated and warped.
These are the three main chapters in which the apostle Paul, not a disciple but an apostle because he was taught personally by revelation from Jesus Christ, reveals God’s will for his holy inheritance, Israel.
Any professing Christian who has doubts about the validity of Israel in God’s eyes should spend some time alone with these chapters. In them Paul encourages the Jews in Rome that Israel still has a future, even if as a nation they had just at that time rejected Jesus Christ as Messiah. Paul maintained a great love for his own people,
“I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom belongs the adoption as sons, and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law and the temple service and the promises, whose are the fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen” (Romans 9:1-3)
Throughout all of Romans Paul is entirely consistent. He is consistent about the key truth that God is not partial, that God judges all men equally,
“…there is no difference between Jew and Greek (gentile)…” (Romans 10:12)
The main theme in Romans is how the only hope for mankind is through the gospel of Jesus Christ,
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written:
“The righteous will live by faith” (Romans 1:16-17).
In Chapter 9, Paul asserts that the Jews as a nation are the chosen people of God, (vv. 1-5), but that they fell when they failed to recognize their Messiah because they were seeking salvation through works found in the Law, not righteousness through faith alone,
“What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not attained their goal. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone” (Romans 9:30-32)
The Jews fell because they were seeking salvation through works, not the righteousness that comes through faith alone. Like many in the modern social justice gospel, then? Or am I wrong about this?
Chapter 10 of Romans continues this discussion by explaining and clarifying that salvation for Jews and Gentiles is exactly the same; it is a matter of faith in Jesus Christ, not works or the law, (Romans 10:4-17).
Chapter 11 rounds the argument off by explaining that God has not abandoned Israel but that ultimately the nation currently, “…set aside…” by God will then find the salvation they have so desperately sought,
“…in this way all Israel will be saved. As it is written: “The deliverer will come from Zion; he will turn godlessness away from Jacob” (Romans 11:26).
All Israel will be saved, Paul could not be clearer.
During the soon approaching Tribulation period when the people of Israel have, “…been refined in the fire,” they will call out to God in desperation as all their other hope at that point will be gone,
“This third I will put into the fire; I will refine them like silver and test them like gold. They will call on my name and I will answer them; I will say, ‘They are my people,’ and they will say, ‘The LORD is our God’” (Zechariah 13:9)
They will cry out to their God for their salvation, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” God will hear their cries and rescue them.
It will be at this time that, “…they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only son…” (Zechariah 12:10), as they recognize that the person currently known derogatively in Israel as, “…that Man,” was and is their Messiah and King, sent by God and promised in Scripture from Abraham onward.
He is Jesus Christ, God’s Anointed One, promised eons ago as the Deliverer of all in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3).
Israel will, at this point, turn en masse back to God and accept Jesus as her Messiah, Lord and King. They will accept Jesus on a personal and a corporate level. Jesus will then come with His Bride, “…with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones (Jude 1:14), and He will personally save Israel and deliver them from the hand of Antichrist and all the worlds armies gathered against her.
Ominously, the text also states that when Jesus comes at this time he will also be coming to,
“…execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him” (Jude 1:15).
A new and glorious era will then begin for Israel and the world! A new era where Israel becomes, as God initially planned and intended, the preeminent nation of this world.
It will be a time when, “…In those days ten people from all languages and nations will take firm hold of one Jew by the hem of his robe and say, ‘Let us go with you, because we have heard that God is with you’” (Zechariah 8:23).
Israel will no longer be despised or despoiled, but honored and reverenced as the chosen Holy nation of God, the nation through whom salvation came to the very ends of the earth and whose King, Jesus, will rule those nations, “…with an iron sceptre and shatter the nations like pottery,” (Revelation 2:27).
His rule will be from his capital Jerusalem, the City of the King, and it’s knew name will be, “The Throne of the LORD’” (Jeremiah 3:17).
This will be the time spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when the streets of Jerusalem will teem with the young and the old, at ease and finally at peace, “Old men and old women will again sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each man with his staff in his hand because of age. ‘And the streets of the city will be filled with boys and girls playing in its streets” (Zechariah 8:5).
Deliverance and restoration will have finally come to Zion! Amen.
A concluding word of warning though, to those who believe Israel to be abandoned of God. As Paul so clearly pointed out,
“If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this:
You do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, “Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.” Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but tremble. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either.” (Romans 11:17-21)
Israel is so very precious to God. Believe that and be on the right side of history.