• The Lamb, the Throne, and the Desert: Introduction
  • The Lamb, the Throne and the Desert: I. Jesus, the Origin of God’s Creation
  • The Lamb, the Throne, and the Desert: II. Falling; III. Rebellion, Restoration, and the Battle of the Ages; IV. The Man Who Walks with God
  • The Lamb, the Throne, and the Desert: V. Abraham, life as sacrifice, and the call to another country
  • The Lamb, the Throne, and the Desert: VI. Guardians of the Promise; VII. The Name and the Lamb; VIII. The Sinai Covenant
  • Who May Speak?
  • Lest the Stones Cry Out
  • The Grace of the King is the Destruction of the Accuser
  • The City of God, The City of the World and the Great Deception
  • About this site
  • The Alien’s Haggadah
  • Zionism and the Messiah, by D.M. Panton
  • The Change of the Times and the Laws
  • The Non-Christian and Anti-cosmic Roots of Amillennialism, by Sam A. Smith
  • The Temple, The Mosque, the Vatican and Building 7
  • Faithful in Battle
  • On the Other Side of the Mass for Christ
  • To Him Alone
  • Dominionism and Islam
  • Creation in the Image of God
  • A Reading of Revelation, the Disclosure from Yeshua Messiah

Jerusalem Graffiti

~ The person & politics of Yeshua my king

Jerusalem Graffiti

Tag Archives: Zionism

The Fundamentalist abandonment of the kingship of Yeshua, the Messiah of Israel

12 Thursday Nov 2015

Posted by jerusalemgraffiti in Abrahamic promises, premillennial dispensationalism, The Israel of God, The Messiah of Israel

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the heavenly throne, the Israel of God, the promises to Abraham, throne of David, Zionism

 

i

The renunciation

In a recent post I noted the obscenity of the Papal dismissal of the crucifixion.  But it would be unfair of me to criticize the Pope and ignore the excesses at the heart of modern Protestantism.  The Pope is not alone in redacting whole chapters of the life of our Messiah.  Conservative Protestant theology has taken possession of an equally distasteful renunciation of the Messiah, a renunciation which goes unnoticed because it has been so thoroughly established in the culture of the last century, so well prepared in the preceding centuries of Catholicism.

The conservative Protestants do not wait for the crucifixion to demean their Lord.  They start a week early, on what is called Palm Sunday, the day of the ritual entry of Yeshua into Jerusalem riding on a donkey, in fulfillment of the prophecy of Zechariah.

His entry on a donkey was a culturally explicit declaration that he entered the city as king.  Accordingly he received the honor and adoration of the people as their king:

“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!  Peace in heaven and glory in the highest.”[1]

And, more specifically,

            “Blessed is the king of Israel.”[2]

And, indicating that he was seen as the rightful heir to the throne of David:

“Hosanna to the Son of David.”[3]

Were the people of Jerusalem guilty of hyperbole when they hailed Yeshua as their king?  The priests thought so, therefore they asked him to rebuke and silence his followers.  Yeshua responded with the suggestion that this was a moment which no force of history could impede:

“If they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”[4]

Yes. The arrival of Yeshua as king over Israel was so certain and so fundamental to the history of all the world, that, should we fail in recognition, then nature itself feels the wound and must give witness.  It is inconceivable that Yeshua would have accorded himself the form of entry into Jerusalem as king, coupled with the receipt of praise as king, were it not already certain that he, on his way to the cross, was in fact in full possession of his royal role and character.

Then what is the affront of the great majority of conservative Protestants and fundamentalists?   It is that they deny that Yeshua is king upon the eternal throne over Israel, transcendent Israel, the Israel of God.  Nor do they recognize the existence of this Israel.  They see only genetic Israel and the geopolitical construct of recent decades.  They seem to imagine that a seat of royal authority must be a gilded throne within view of the masses.  They fault the Creator of the universe for not having an office in downtown Jerusalem.  They confuse transcendent Israel with an earthly fabrication along lines of Zionist politics and genetic descent.

It has not always been so.  Prior to this century it was common to find members of the church who, given in their hearts to the Messiah of Israel, and not genetically Jewish, still saw themselves as citizens of the transcendent Israel of God.  Witness this hymn of John Newton[1725-1807]:

Glorious things of thee are spoken,
Zion, city of our God!
He, whose word cannot be broken,
Form’d thee for His own abode:
On the Rock of ages founded,
What can shake thy sure repose?
With salvation’s walls surrounded,
Thou may’st smile at all thy foes.

Bless’d inhabitants of Zion,
Wash’d in the Redeemer’s blood!
Jesus, whom their souls rely on,
Makes them kings and priests to God.
‘Tis His love His people raises
Over self to reign as kings,
And as priests, His solemn praises
Each for a thank-off’ring brings.

Saviour, if of Zion’s city
I through grace a member am,

Let the world deride or pity,
I will glory in Thy name:
Fading is the worldling’s pleasure,
All his boasted pomp and show:
Solid joys and lasting treasure,
None but Zion’s children know.

For John Newton, Zion is the home of all children of God, and we, the children of Yeshua, are to the manor born.  Like Abraham, Zion is our home, whether or not it is occupied by others, for we who have eternal life occupy the eternal promise which, in His own time, God will fulfill.

Corruption crept into Protestant thinking.  Belief in the kingship of Yeshua was thrown aside.  Toward the middle of the nineteenth century John Nelson Darby, [1800-1882], an Irish Anglican priest, began to formalize a theology which rested on 1.] the complete separation of the church and Israel, 2.] the belief that Yeshua came as “candidate” for kingship but was rejected by the Jewish people and so returned to heaven in failure, [his hopes dashed?], and 3.] a belief in two completely different destinies for genetic Israel and the church, the church to be raptured up into heaven at the beginning of the final seven years of tribulation, the Jews to remain on earth and tough it out, battling the Beast Kingdom, compensated only by the fact that they are finally rid of those annoying gentiles.  Such a theology has great utility to the Zionists, and brings great pleasure to the architects of Catholicism.

It is useful to the Zionists because it gets Protestants to back off from Israel and abandon their claims upon its destiny.  This allows the secular Zionist to claim for himself, on genetic grounds, all the ancient promises, in particular the promise to Abraham of a land “from the River of Egypt to the Euphrates.”

It is pleasurable to Catholic ambition because it causes Protestants to abandon every earthly claim to the kingdom of God and the promises to Abraham.  As consequence, the Messianic hopes of the church can remain in heaven, up in the sky: this sky within which the Catholic church has sequestered Christ since its inception.  Like the Zionists, therefore, the Vatican also is free to pursue its earthy objectives.  [It has always been the program of the Catholic institution to offer mankind the semblance of the knowledge of God while inserting itself between man and God and usurping to itself the power and authority which rightly belong to God alone, even making the Pope the Vicarius Filii Dei, the” Representative of the Son of God,”  the vicarious substitute for the presence and rule of Christ in the world.  They even ordain each priest with the blasphemous phrase, Tu es alter Christus, “you are another Christ,” further displacing Christ in their cosmology.]

As for the Protestants, this recent deformation of their theology, known academically as “premillennial dispensationalism,” renounces the kingship of Yeshua and hardly deserves a rebuttal, any more than we would wish to debate Scripture with that false prophet, Pope Francis.  Only let it be known that their impoverished line of thought has nothing to do with what is actually written in Scripture.

Nevertheless, Darby’s anemic philosophy broadly prevails within the halls of conservative Protestantism.  On the heels of Darby, who was not widely known, came C.I. Scofield and his vastly popular Scofield Reference Bible in which, through copious footnotes, he and his accomplices interpreted all of Scripture in the light of their redefinition of Israel and the church, in light of their gross mishandling of the triumph of Yeshua at the cross.  So who were his readers to believe? the Expert? or their own eyes?  In laziness they chose “the Expert,” by the thousands.  And with them went the leaders of the Evangelical church and the seminaries.

 

ii

Peter affirms the kingship of Yeshua

Anyone with a basic command of the English language and the ability to think for himself can figure out the falsehood of their pre-tribulation rapture by reading I Thessalonians 4.13-17 and II Thessalonians 2.1-10.  [They can also read the article, Boiling Frogs and the Return of the King, on this blogsite.]

Anyone who thinks Yeshua came as “candidate” for kingship has never read the Bible.

Anyone who thinks that the church of Yahveh and the Israel of Yahveh are mutually exclusive has done nothing but listen to sermons rather than read the Bible.

Anyone who wants to know if Yeshua is on the eternal throne at this moment should read carefully the following Scriptures – and should make personal discovery of the politics of Yeshua through swearing fealty to his person, through kneeling before him who is seated on the heavenly throne, and through opening the heart to the commanding presence of his Spirit.

On the Day of Pentecost when the Spirit of God first descended in power upon the people of God in Jerusalem, Peter addressed the onlookers, explaining that this was the fulfillment of the prophecies of Joel that the Spirit would be poured out.  Then he told them that even though they, the people of Israel, had crucified Christ, yet God had not abandoned Yeshua to the grave and he had risen from the dead.  Peter then reminded them that David also had prophesied about the coming Messiah, the coming anointed king, and had said,

“that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne.”[5]

Peter then continued to explain how recent events were the very groundwork of the fulfillment of the Messianic prophecy:

“Seeing what was ahead, he [David] spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to the grave, nor did his body see decay.  God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact.  Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear….Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Yeshua, whom you crucified, both Lord and Anointed King [Christ].”[6]

Yes, Pentecost and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit is the evidence that Yeshua is on the throne of heaven reaching out into all the world to all his subjects in power and healing and instruction.  The Holy Spirit is the matrix and the cement of the kingdom through which Yeshua is able to rule in our hearts as no other king can rule.

Catholics are willing to call Yeshua king as long as he stays at a distance, the tragically abused child of their “Queen of Heaven.”  Their churches often have Latin slogans naming Yeshua as Rex, though not king of the Jews but king of “the kingdom.”  [Rex Regnum Sum.]  This causes them no pain because Yeshua has been shelved in the heavens, co-opted by his mother Mary, and now the Pope wears the actual crown of authority.  In fact his blasphemous crown has three rings or tiers, signifying that he has taken upon himself ultimate ecclesiastical authority, ultimate temporal authority, and ultimate cosmic authority!

Protestants are willing to see Yeshua as their coming king, while in present time he is merely their personal savior.  They expect him to have royal authority in the future, although for all their skill in interpreting the Bible, no one identifies the scenario of the future coronation.

 

iii

Daniel identifies the kingship of the Messiah in the course of history

Daniel, however, received from God quite a different timeline.  For Daniel the royalty of the Messiah and his kingship over his people does not come at the end of history.  It all comes about within the course of the political doings of the kings of the earth.

In the second chapter of the book of Daniel, we find him interpreting a dream of Nebuchadnezzar.  The king has envisioned a statue with a head of gold, chest and arms of silver, belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, feet partly iron and partly baked clay.  Prophetically, Daniel shares the divine interpretation that the elements of the statue represent the great kingdoms of history, beginning with Nebuchadnezzar as the head of gold.  The subsequent kingdoms are now recognized as the Medo-Persian Empire [silver], the Greek Empire [bronze], the Roman Empire [iron]… and a later confederation of Rome with other powers, in a ten part division…sounding something like the coming partnership and dominion of the Vatican [Rome], the UN, and Islam [OIC].  And where does the kingdom of Yeshua fit in?  Daniel describes its entry and the outcome.

Daniel says to Nebuchadnezzar  that

“while you were watching [the statue], a rock was cut out, but not by human hands.”[7]

In the interpretation Daniel explains,

”In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people.”[8]

As for the outcome, in the dream it was noticed,

“It [the rock] struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them.  Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were broken to pieces at the same time and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer.  The wind swept them away without leaving a trace.  But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.”[9]

As interpretation, Daniel says,

“It [the kingdom created in the time of those kings] will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.”[10]

In other words it is in the course of history, not at the end of history, that we are to find Yeshua as king over his people.  Yeshua first appeared as king within the dominion of Rome.  Now, in a world where every national leader kisses the ring of the Pope, we are in the amalgam of Rome with “baked clay.”  And throughout all this we see the remnants of Babylon and Greece and Persia.  But, in transcendence, the kingdom of Yeshua is more real than every kingdom.

Gideon had thirty- two thousand nominal soldiers, but God told him to take only three hundred tested soldiers.  Three hundred were given victory over the entire army of Midian.  So for us today.  The handful of faithful on earth will march with the armies of heaven and in the coming years will see the victory of Yeshua over the nations who cynically join themselves together, thinking that they will take ownership of the earth.

 

                                                            iv

Prophetically, David sees God’s chosen king besieged by the nations

The second Psalm similarly creates a picture of the Messianic king who has not yet assumed power over brick and dust, who, as Lord over a transcendent Zion, is also “in the time of those kings,” beleaguered by national powers in opposition to his sovereign power.  It is especially now, in the approach of the new global society, that we see revealed the depth and ancient roots of the conspiracy of rebellion to establish a world without the laws of the covenant and without the people of the covenant:

“Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain?  The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Anointed One.  “Let us break their chains,” they say, “and throw off their fetters.”  The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them.  Then he rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath, saying, “I have installed my King on Zion, my holy hill.”[11]

Be he in the dust of Zion or on the heavenly throne, the living Messiah, Yeshua, rules substantially in the hearts of his subjects through the power and presence of his Spirit reaching into us and binding us to himself with cords of steel.  We are the ones who have the responsibility to stand in our faith, to own the covenant and to live as the people of the covenant.  Only ignorance and cowardice can cause people to abandon a covenant sealed by the blood of Yeshua.

 

 

                                                                        v

The anointing of Yeshua

The great truths of Scripture, the ponderous informing moments in the life of our Lord, are not intelligible to the masses.  No matter what we have been taught, the great truths of faith are esoteric, not exoteric.  Yeshua delighted in making himself obscure to those who claimed they knew it all.  And when Peter saw what others could not see, Yeshua remarked that it was only through the voice of the Father that he could know such things.

To anyone who does not know Yeshua intimately, the cross is a mystery.  Similarly the anointing of Yeshua is not apparent to the eye of the world, as it expects to witness the affirmation of a Westminster Abbey, of pomp and ceremony.  The anointing of Yeshua is esoterically and spiritually perceived.

To anoint is to ordain or to consecrate.   To ordain is to select and, by virtue of authority, to appoint.  To consecrate is to set apart, to devote.  Mere application of substance, even special oil, by a person without specific authority, could not make anyone the Messiah.   And what oil would the Father use to add gravity to his appointment and consecration of his Son as ruler over his holy people and ruler over all Creation?  Surely nothing could be more grave than his own hand and his own word.

David could not have been anointed by Samuel as king on the throne of Israel, were it not that Samuel acted under the direction and command of God.  Through Samuel, Yahveh himself chose David.  The oil of anointing was merely a witness to the presence of the voice of Yahveh in the selection.

In the appointment of Yeshua, the voice of Yahveh alone, emanating from the heavens, is sufficient.  That moment in which Mary of Bethany broke open the costly container of nard and anointed Yeshua was a moment of powerful significance in the heart of Yeshua.  But it was not within her sphere of power to anoint Yeshua as Messiah. She was a simple woman enacting a very special custom of appreciation.  Yeshua said that her act had special meaning as it looked forward to his burial.  But she did not anoint him as Messiah.

Only the Father can own the authority to choose and appoint and devote his Son to the role of eternal king over his holy people.  Whether or not there has been or is yet to be a day of visible anointing with oil is not a determinant factor.  What is determinant is the explicit act of the Father to designate Yeshua as king over his holy people.

King David had three anointings.  David’s first anointing occurred on the day that Yahveh revealed his choice of David to Samuel.  He was definitively chosen to replace Saul as king over Israel, though the assumption of power was yet to come.

“Then the Lord said, ‘Rise and anoint him, he is the one.’  So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and from that day on the Spirit of the Lord came upon David in power.”[12]

It was not just a tentative or nominal anointing as evidenced by the fact that “the Spirit of the Lord came upon David in power.”  Prior to the anointing David was a shepherd.  Subsequent to the anointing he was a prince of Israel surrounded by a hedge of God’s presence and power.

Soon after the death of Saul, God told David to move to Hebron.  There he received a second anointing.

“Then the men of Judah came to Hebron and there they anointed David king over the house of Judah.”[13]

Now he was made ruling king over the tribe into which he was born, the tribe which has always owned the great Messianic promise.  These were his people.  And it was God’s will to establish him as king over them.

Soon Abner, the commander of Saul’s army, led the way in preparing all Israel to recognize David as their king, even conferring with the elders of Israel and telling them,

“The Lord promised David, ‘By my servant David I will rescue my people Israel from the hand of the Philistines and from the hand of all their enemies.’”[14]

David had been chosen by God to be king over Israel, and he was now ruling as king over the people of Judah.  With the third anointing he would assume sovereign power over all Israel:

“When all the elders of Israel had come to King David at Hebron, the king made a compact with them at Hebron before the Lord, and they anointed David king over Israel.”[15]

If David were not already in possession of royal authority he could not have made a compact [covenant] with the people.  A covenant is an oath defining allegiance between a king and his people.

The life of David and the series of anointings sealing his kingship are given to us as a type and as a key to understanding the anointings of Yeshua.

Up to this time we see Yeshua anointed twice in the course of his life on earth, in circumstances analogous to those of David.  It seems that there may come yet a third anointing when at last the rift is healed between Judah and Israel, so enabling the day when Yeshua will freely exercise his sovereignty over all of Israel.

Yeshua’s first anointing came at the time of his baptism in the Jordan.  In that moment Yahveh clearly marked him as the Messiah of Israel’s expectation, and the power of the Spirit of God was brought upon him.  Yeshua’s second anointing came on the Mount of Transfiguration.  In this moment he was again marked as Yahveh’s chosen king, and his children were called to fealty.   In each of these events Yahveh ordained Yeshua as Messiah by speaking highly significant phrases from the heavens in the hearing of those on the ground.  In each anointing he said the words,

“This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”[16]

We see that these are the words of divine anointing once we see that they, by God’s own word, announce the fulfillment in Yeshua of the Messianic prophecy, and this we will demonstrate.  First, however, to look at the record of the anointing at the Jordan.

Matthew’s account is as follows:

“As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water.  At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him.  And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’”[17]

Mark’s account is similar:

“At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.  As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove.  And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’”[18]

What must be shown from Scripture is the significance of these words in the speech of the Father.  But we must also consider the account of what Yahveh spoke on the Mount of Transfiguration.

As the time approached for Yeshua to enter Jerusalem and go to the cross, and being near Mount Hermon, he stopped with his disciples in Caesarea Phillippi, a place devoted to the worship of Roman gods.  Surrounded by the artifacts of false gods, Yeshua asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”  and he asked Peter, “Who do you say I am?”

Peter answered, “You are the Christ [ha Mashiach, the anointed king], the Son of the living God.”[19] Peter had come to know this, and, since the anointing at the Jordan, this was explicitly true.  Yeshua assured Peter that this was esoteric knowledge, that “this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven.”[20]  And then Yeshua “warned his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Christ.”  Yes, at this moment he was the anointed king.  But he was not yet in a position to assume power over all the people of the nation.  He was on course toward the assumption of power over the few, over his very own, over those who hold to him and recognize his sovereignty.  Therefore it was important that he not be hailed as mundane Messiah over the mundane nation.  Furthermore he was directed moment by moment toward the cross, which would become his first great royal achievement for his people.  He wanted no pointless adulation to come in the way of his mission.  For this purpose he insisted that his disciples tell no one that he was the Christ.

A week later Yeshua took Peter, John and James and “went up onto a mountain to pray,”[21] probably onto nearby Mount Hermon.

“As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning.”[22]

[Now he had the appearance which John attributes to him[23] in his vision of Yeshua in heaven after the resurrection and ascension into the heavens.]  And now, on the mountain,

“Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus.  They spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.”[24]

But the Greek for “departure” is exodus, and in this context they are referring to much more than his change of address from earth to heaven, but rather the Exodus which would soon be made possible at the cross as he “would deliver his people from the bondage of sin and bring to fulfillment the work of both Moses and Elijah.”[25]

“Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him.  As the men were leaving Jesus, Peter said to him, ‘Master, it is good for us to be here.  Let us put up three shelters – one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.’ [He did not know what he was saying.]”[26]

Even though Peter had been given the insight that Yeshua is the Christ, there still seemed to be limits to his understanding of Yeshua’s divinity, and he imagined Yeshua sharing some sort of architectural honor equally with Elijah and Moses.  Then the voice of Yahveh entered the scene in the hearing of Peter, James and John, and in the hearing of Moses and Elijah:

“While he was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.   Listen to him!’”

This time there is an additional appointment: Listen to him!  According to the construction in the Greek, “Listen to him” [Akouete autou] is acceptable but not strong enough.  Because autou is in the genitive case, a preferred translation would be “hearken to him and obey him.”  Yahveh is formally affirming that full authority now belongs to Yeshua.

With this anointing Yeshua is not only marked and set aside for kingship, he is now free to establish a covenant between himself and his people, free to act on their behalf, to undertake the Exodus which will lead them out of bondage to the enemy.  In the final weeks of Yeshua’s life he will act to affirm the actuality of his sovereign power.

 

vi

The prophetic content of the words of anointing

So now at last we look at the origin of the unusually simple words with which Yahveh appointed Yeshua as our great and eternal king.

We look first at one of the earliest Messianic prophecies which refer specifically to the Messianic occupation of royal power.  Here, uniquely, we find Yahveh characterizing the tenure of the role of Messiah in terms of a unique relationship which shall hold between himself and the anointed king over the holy people.  The prophet Nathan relayed to David the words of Yahveh promising David that from his offspring would come the eternal king, and here, as never previously, Yahveh identified the Messiah as his Son:

“’I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, …and I will establish his kingdom.  He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.  I will be his father and he will be my son….My love will never be taken away from him.  Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.’”[27]

Later, David, prophetically, recalls the words of this foundational prophecy in the words of the second Psalm:

“I have installed my King on Zion, my holy hill.”  I will proclaim the decree of Yahveh: He said to me, “You are my Son; today I have become your Father.  Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.”[28]

So with the prophecies of Nathan and of David, this unique event in which Yahveh calls someone his Son, this becomes an identifier of the coming eternal king over Israel.  Now then we look at the second phrase spoken each time from the heavens: “With you I am well pleased.” This also has its roots in Messianic prophecy, in Isaiah 42, where Yahveh promises the coming of the one who rules in union with his own will, who is given all the power of the Spirit, and who rules and brings justice to all the earth:

“Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations… In faithfulness he will bring forth justice; he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on the earth.  In his law the islands will put their hope… This is what God Yahveh says – he who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and all that comes out of it, who gives breath to its people, and life to those who walk on it:   ‘I, Yahveh, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand.  I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles, to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.’”[29]

Yahveh, in each event, spoke from the heavens, combining these two key phrases known to be prophetic references to the coming Messiah, and in speaking those phrases in each event, as his Son stood before John and the people gathered in search of righteousness at the river Jordan, and later as his Son stood glorified before the earthly witness of James and Peter and John and the heavenly witness of Moses and Elijah, so Yahveh poured out on Yeshua his absolute appointment of Yeshua as king over his holy people.

 

vii

Yeshua has assumed power over his people, transcendent Israel.  In the coming time he will assume power over all the earth.

Out of the anointing of Yeshua came the affirmation of his royal power.  Yeshua, knowing that the established powers of the Temple were seeking his death, entered Jerusalem as king and received the honor of his people as their true king.  Then, as king, Yeshua went to the cross, so standing in for his people, taking upon himself the penalty of their every shame, setting them free from the curse of death which clings to our sin, bringing to us the freedom to come into the presence of God.   Resurrected from the grave, Yeshua gave us a call to obedient fealty to him, and a mission to carry the gospel of the kingdom into all the world, empowered by the life of his Spirit within our bodies, assuring us at his ascension that,

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.  And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”[30]

Yes, it is the gospel of an actual kingdom that must be held up for men to see, especially at this time as the kingdoms of the world descend into what appears to be a conspiracy of global war. Our hope lies only with our king in his transcendent kingdom.  The renewal of all things awaits the completion of our mission.

“And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”[31]

Why does the church not see Yeshua ruling as king over them?  For the simple reason that they are happy to have his salvation, his counsel, and his blessings, but they reject his sovereign authority over them.

 

L.S. Jones

lawrencestewartjones@gmail.com

[1] Luke 19.38

[2] John 12.13

[3] Matthew 21.9

[4] Luke 19.40

[5] Acts 2.30

[6] Acts 2.31-36 excerpts

[7] Daniel 2.34

[8] Daniel 2.44

[9] Daniel 2.34,35

[10] Daniel 2.44

[11] Psalm 2.1-6

[12] I Samuel 16.12,13

[13] II Samuel 2.4

[14] II Samuel 3.18

[15] II Samuel 5.3

[16] Matthew 3.17

[17] Matthew 3.16,17

[18] Mark 1.9-11

[19] Matthew 16.16

[20] Matthew 16.17

[21] Luke 9.28

[22] Luke 9.29

[23] Revelation  1.13-18

[24] Luke 9.31

[25] NIV footnote on Luke 9.30, NIV Self-Study Bible, Concordia 1986

[26] Luke 9.32-34

[27] II Samuel 7.12-17 excerpts

[28] Psalm 2.6-8

[29] Isaiah 42.1-7 excerpts

[30] Matthew 28.18-20

[31] Matthew 24.14

Faithful in Battle

24 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by jerusalemgraffiti in Abrahamic promises, Apostasy, Holy Roman Empire, Revelation, The Israel of God, the Papacy, The Vatican, Uncategorized

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Constantine, dogmatic belief, Ecumenism, faith, Spirit, the covenant, the cross, the heavenly throne, the kingdom of heaven, the promises to Abraham, the soul, throne of David, Zionism

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“The primary primitive Christian confession was not of Jesus as Savior but of Jesus as Lord.  ‘If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” [Rom. 10.9].  This is more than a confession that Jesus is my Lord.  It is first a theological confession that I recognize that God has exalted Jesus to the status of Lord.  He is the Lord; he has been exalted to God’s right hand.  Therefore, I make him my Lord by bowing to his sovereignty….The same truth is clearly set forth in Peter’s Pentecost address which he concludes with the statement, ‘Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” [Acts 2.36].  Taken out of context, this verse might mean that Jesus became Lord and Christ at his exaltation.  However, Acts 3.18[1] makes it clear that it was as the Christ that Jesus endured his sufferings…Christ means ‘anointed one’ and refers to his role as the anointed Davidic King.  Lord is a religious word meaning absolute sovereign….In his session Jesus has been made Lord. He has also begun his reign as the Messianic Davidic King.  He has entered upon his reign as Lord and Christ.”[2]

                                                                    George Eldon Ladd 

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                                                                         i

 The death of neutrality

In spite of poverty, crime and illiteracy, in spite of the decay of education and the increase of war, many living in comfort and safety envision mankind evolving toward ever higher planes of consciousness until we attain a level called by some, “Christ consciousness,” where Christ is not so much person as principal.  It is expected that participation in this principle will reveal us to ourselves as gods.  Such is the dream of Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin and his “ascent” of man to what he calls the “Omega Point.”  Such also is the dream of the Transhumanists, although they are wise enough to have lost patience with evolution and are banking on the more hasty processes of bioengineering and nanotechnology to craft their perfection.

But the path of a man to the Christ of history is not a scramble up the stairway of consciousness.  It is rather the collision of the consciousness of the human person with the being and consciousness of the divine person, Yeshua of Nazareth.  He is the one who has informed us that he himself is the origin of God’s creation, the Logos, in whom all things find their beginning. Yeshua, having lived and died as a man, is now resurrected and seated in full authority over all of history, seated at the right hand of the God of all worlds.  Seated also, by his Spirit, in the hearts of his subjects.

Late in the first century A.D. Yeshua, from the throne of heaven, revealed to his disciple, John, prophetic messages pertaining to the end of this era.  What these messages foresaw was not an Omega Point but rather a Point of Frenzy in which mankind will no longer have the luxury of neutrality and will be forcefully divided into two groups – those who enlist in the agenda of the world mind and those who refuse and stand on their own.

Globalism, ecumenism, and war are spreading at such a pace that we who reject the reach of the world mind must take extra care to encourage each other to prepare our hearts, to be fully awake, and to be ready at all times to stand in the truth.  Those of us who merely acknowledge God will not survive.  We must be bound to our God.  We must own life as sacrifice, life given to God as Yeshua swore himself on our behalf and gave his life for us.  We must be bound in the knowledge that our hope lies with Him alone:

“Be faithful though you have to die for it, and I will give you the crown of life.”

                                                                   Revelation 2.10

 ii

 Compromise and dissent: the “Christian Empire” dilemma

Under the Roman emperor Diocletian there was a grim manhunt and a long persecution of all who refused to acknowledge the emperor’s claim to absolute authority over the lives of his subjects – persecution of those who, in the face of his royal prerogative, yet dared to brand themselves with the seditious claim, “Yeshua is my royal lord and sovereign king.”  They further brought offense by claiming loyalty to certain sacred Scriptures as having authority above all other writings and traditions.

Thousands of followers of Yeshua were killed, preferring to stand with their king, even in the loss of every earthly possession and enjoyment, even in the loss of life itself.  Many others, however, yielded to the demands of the emperor and were able to see their bodies spared.  Some even aided Diocletian in his persecutions by revealing the identities of fellow worshippers and by rendering to the enemy copies of the contested Scriptures.  Such people were infamously known as traditores, “those who turn things in.”

Then, in a change of imperial rule, Rome was transformed.  Under the emperor Constantine, faith in Yeshua – carefully refurbished as faith in a more Gentile and global Jesus – became the very faith of the realm.  Constantine, wisest of politicians, saw something exceptional in the “Christian” traditores: that they understood the supreme importance of personal faith bending before imperial power.  Therefore Constantine saw to it that large numbers of the bishops of his new Roman church were chosen from the ranks of the traditores.  So began the long marriage, or at very least détente, between ecclesiastical power and temporal power.  So began the contempt of the Catholic church for the supremacy and intimacy of the relationship between a man and his God.

In response to this installation of traitors in positions of authority over the faithful, many believers rose in protest, setting themselves apart, asserting that it could not possibly be God’s will that they be shepherded by men with the character to betray the Scriptures and the lives of their brothers.  The new Roman theologians responded that, in any official capacity, the authority of an official of the church is not compromised by his personal idiosyncrasies or shortcomings.  Roman power then hunted down the dissenting purists and drove them either to their deaths or to the fringes of society.

So rose to currency the enduring adage: “Do not try to be holier than the church!”

iii

The wayward maiden matures into the global harlot.

Today Rome maintains that ancient role, orchestrating the ambitions of her cardinals with the ambitions of kings.  Rome, over time, resembles that cleverly constructed doll, which, by a few convolutions of her garments, reveals the ability to enact all the characters of a story.  In one time she is a mighty ecclesiastical institution with far reaching but concealed tentacles of temporal power.  In another time she appears to be a small temporal kingdom, while under her royal robes spread invisible cords of ecclesiastical power.  Rome assumes many forms, and yet she remains Imperial Rome.

Today she plays the part of the ecclesiast in disarray, shepherded by a diminutive Pope in white cassock, her temporal power but a handful of Swiss guards inside the Vatican.  In reality, however, she owns the treasure of centuries; owns controlling interest in banks; maintains universities and costly scientific enterprises; holds endless real estate, monasteries, vineyards, and distilleries; fields an army of priests and Jesuits in the hundreds of thousands – while the kings and lords of nations rarely deny their kiss of obeisance upon the papal ring.  The leaders of the world dare not separate themselves from Rome and hope to retain power.

The Pope, meanwhile, positions himself to be the great ecumenical mediator of the religions of the world.   John Paul II gathered the bishops and gurus and shamans of all religions at Assisi and had each one place his peculiar deity upon the Catholic altar, each to receive honor and glory in the blasphemy of ecumenical “godliness.”  The Popes equally have plied their trade with Shimon Peres and the Zionists in order to consolidate Roman power in Jerusalem.

John Paul II even made peace with the evolutionists and raised to a place of honor the heretical Jesuit, Teilhard de Chardin.  In Fe e Futuro, Cardinal Ratzinger, in brazen language, belittled the thought of man created in the image of God, and asserted that the church must adjust to the modern scientific conclusion that man is an animal that has not “fallen” but rather has ascended from primeval darkness into the light.

This “church,” which conducts its life as the handmaiden of world political power, has totally betrayed the truth of Yeshua, who is the only sovereign over the holy people of God, without need of any Pope or Pontiff or Vicar of any kind.  The Catholic institution, since the day of Constantine, has cynically inserted itself between the believer and his God, so gathering to the Catholic edifice those powers which appropriately belong to God alone.

The true presence of God in man is conveyed by the substantial presence of the Spirit of God in the believer as enabled immediately by the love and agency of Yeshua himself, and is not conveyed by the ludicrous and cynical charade of priestly conjurings over a factory-made wafer.

The forgiveness of God is conveyed directly to the person who kneels before God and confesses his sins, while the claim of a priest to have the power to forgive sins is a lie matched only by their claim to have the power to conjure the very being of God into a wafer.  Nor is there anything respectable in priests who sit in dark closets and draw out the confession of the most intimate secrets and disappointments of wives and maidens.[3]

The claims of the Popes – these very men who openly deny the creation of man in the image of God – these claims that they are the representatives [vicars] of God on earth are nothing short of the blasphemous representations of the anti-Christ, lies born in the heart of Satan himself.  John Paul II even dared to call himself “the replacement of the second person of the Trinity on earth!”[4]

The teaching that the mortal woman, Mary, is Queen of Heaven, Mother of God, and co-Redeemer with Christ is nothing less than the revelation of the roots of the Catholic church in a Gnosticism which adores the goddess Sophia as the queen of heaven, demotes the God of creation to a mere demi-god, and, in the ultimate obscenity, raises to the metaphysical zenith that princely consort of Sophia, who is none other than Lucifer!  This is a Gnosticism which is nothing short of the worship of Lucifer, wherein lies the bond which shall unite the false religions of the world.

The worshippers within the churches of Rome are mostly kept in ignorance of the abominations which are actually being spread by the authors of these teachings.  The penitent enter these churches in the hope of reaching out to God, while priests and teachers lead them to kneel, not at the feet of a loving and merciful God, but at the feet of men in cassocks, teach them to kneel before the overriding and crushing power of the church institution, its priests, its sacraments, its Pope, its distorted gods and false goddess.

This is the church modeled after the Pharisaic religion of the time of Yeshua on earth:

“Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key of knowledge; you yourselves have not entered in; and them that were entering you have hindered.”                                                                Luke 11.52

This is the church which is positioning itself in the middle of world affairs, which is preparing itself to nod benevolently toward people of all faiths, encouraging all to be no holier than the church, to hold hands and adopt a new mantra, for the sake of a new age of peace and good will.

iv

The new Roman Empire and the return of dissent

Where are the voices of dissent?  People attend mass, comfortable in the old liturgies, unaware that their leaders are selling them into a hell…not merely a betrayal of Scripture: the bishops and the Jesuits are working with the leaders of the Protestant churches and with the heads of nations to bring together a great new imperial society. Yes, in the words of the Popes, “It is time for a new age.”  In the words of the leaders of the United States and Europe, nationalism is no longer mentioned and all are occupied with talk of global cooperation in a New World Order.

The world religions and the national powers work together, every faction making sure that it will not be left out when the great union is achieved.  But that union will be a reinvention of the Rome of Constantine.  As such, it will be intolerable that the voices of divine authority should oppose or even seem to rise above the voices of civil power.  As in the days of Constantine, civil and ecclesiastical power must be seamlessly grafted together, and those with the temerity to occupy a ground more holy than that of the church shall be driven to the fringes of the world.

But we know from the revelation of Scripture that under the oppression of the world-mind, many shall rise as witnesses to the truth of Yeshua.  There shall be powerful voices of dissent.  There shall be those who stand in their faith and refuse to remain silent as the civil and religious powers compromise all that is noble in humanity.  For the living kingdom of Yeshua and the great hope of the Abrahamic promise, the hope of history, all belongs to us who are faithful to Yeshua.  Yeshua holds us to himself: We are bound together, and nothing, not even death, can separate us from him.

The stratification of society into those who adopt the world-mind and those who refuse it was portrayed two thousand years ago in the writings of John.  Confined to a prison cell off the coast of Greece, he received visions and recorded them in the book known as Revelation.  In his visions we hear the voice of those who serve their king and honor a kingdom which can not be seen, which king and kingdom they serve at the price of their lives.

John sees the world-mind in the image of “the Beast,” who represents both the world kingdom and the world master who stands at the head of the edifice:

“Then as I stood on the sand of the sea, I saw a Beast rising out of the sea.  The Beast I saw resembled a leopard, his feet were like a bear’s, and his mouth like a lion’s [i.e. bearing qualities of the constituent empires from which it is formed.]

                                                                            Revelation 13.1,2

The vision indicates that the dragon, Lucifer, will be recognized and honored as the source of the glory of the great empire, and the Beast will be feared and honored for its indomitable military might:

“…To him the dragon gave his own power and his own throne and great authority…. and the whole earth went after the Beast in wonder, worshiping the dragon for having given authority to the Beast, and worshiping the Beast with the cry, ‘Who is like the Beast?  Who can fight with him?’”  Revelation 13.2-4

The Beast is much more than a broad-minded globalist hoping to bring order out of chaos.  He is the virulent opponent of the God of Israel.

“He was allowed to utter loud and blasphemous vaunts, and allowed to exert authority for two and forty months; so he opened his mouth for blasphemies against God… He was allowed to wage war on the saints and to conquer them, and also given authority over every tribe and people and tongue and nation…”

                                                                           Revelation 13.5-7

And he will hold dominion over every person who does not take a stand with Yeshua:

“All dwellers on earth will be his worshippers, everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the Book of Life.”

                                                                               Revelation 13.8

In John’s vision we also meet the “miracle worker,” the director of worship, the doctrinal leader who brings metaphysics into the service of the world ruler:

“Then I saw another Beast rising from the land; he had two horns like a lamb, but he spoke like a dragon.  He exerts the full authority of the first Beast in his presence, causing the earth and its inhabitants to worship the first Beast….He performs amazing miracles, even making fire descend from heaven on earth in the sight of men, and by dint of the miracles he is allowed to perform in presence of the Beast, he seduces dwellers on earth; he bids the dwellers on earth erect a statue to the Beast who lived after being wounded by the sword, and to this statue of the Beast he was allowed to impart the breath of life, so that the statue of the Beast should actually speak.”                                      Revelation 13.11-15

We find that he who holds the very manual of righteousness — this author of all catechisms, this master of mythologies – we find that he also holds the sword of judgment.  He is aided in the efficient exercise of judgment by a global system of classification:

“He has everyone put to death who will not worship the statue of the Beast, and he obliges all men, low and high, rich and poor, freemen and slaves alike, to have a mark put upon their right hand or their forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he bears the mark, that is, the name of the Beast, or the cipher of his name.”                                                                                                Revelation 13.15-17 

The key to remaining safe within this world-mind society is our willingness to publicly give honor and devotion to the Beast and his image and, by implication, to endorse his values and goals and accomplishments.  In return for this willingness to pledge allegiance to the Beast we will be able to wear upon our right hand or forehead his cipher, his imprimatur, indicating that we are not in any way dissenters or opponents of the global  power, that we are above any form of protest or civil disobedience, for opposition and every form of disorder or threat to the world-mind society must be driven out.

Revelation makes it clear that those who belong to Yeshua will not qualify for this mark, nor will they accept it.

v

The bond of the Covenant

By word of our king, we are “in the world but not of the world.”  Now, however, the trench deepens between the City of God and the City of the World.  Our easy passage through the world-mind landscape is coming to an end.  For the world-mind is coveting to itself all devotion, as insurance of its global supremacy. It used to be enough that we occupy the role of citizen, but soon we will be called to play the part of world-mind supplicant.  For those of us who kneel in fealty only before God, the role of world-mind supplicant is quite impossible.

Are we now ready for an act of civil disobedience which may cost us our lives?  What will sustain us and fill our hearts with a devotion which can stand against the seduction and the threats coming from the world around us?  What will keep us fixed on a loyalty and a hope so grand that the threat of death can not undo it?  What will hold us firm in devotion to the unique truth of Yeshua when everyone calls us to save our lives and simply acknowledge the integrity of diverse religious inspiration?

The consolidation of the world-mind society into a homogeneous global structure under a “world messiah” is the final assault of the forces of rebellion against the God of creation.  It is the final test of the people of God, and it will be our final witness to the magnificent truth of our God.

It will be a test of the depth of our loyalty and our love for the person of our God.  It will be a test of our trust in the power of his Spirit to hold us and sustain us.  It will be a test of the vision by which we are separated off from the greater body of mankind.  It will be the great proof of the emptiness of the City of the World, and it will reveal the unshakable foundations of the City of God.

There is a prophetic passage in Daniel which reveals the architecture of that to which we must hold, that within which Yeshua brings us his power and renders us able to stand against the seductions and threats of the world mind.  This passage in Daniel states plainly the focal point of all the assaults of the anti-messiah, and so it is a revelation of that which is “the king’s queen,” that prize, the possession of which makes battle the richest privilege, the loss of which renders battle meaningless.

The core objective of the enemy’s hatred is the covenant between God and his people  — in particular the critical elements upon which every prior covenant did depend and upon which the new covenant is fashioned: 1.]Yeshua’s covenantal sacrifice of his blood, by which we are bought back from death, 2.] our loyalty to our sovereign king as his holy people, our loyalty to his covenant expectations, and 3.] our preservation of the core hope of the covenant: the promises to Abraham.

Against this covenant, element by element, the enemy has been striving since the early centuries.  Satan directs his hatred against this covenant because it is the essential in-historical content of God’s love for his people.   Because of the content of the covenant, our life with Yeshua is not mere wishful meditation but is history, is past and present and future and human destiny.  All our access to our God and the power of God to hold us to himself is enshrined within this covenant.  If Satan can simply spoil all understanding of the covenant between Yeshua and his subjects, then all worship will be reduced to the insipid babble prescribed by the world-mind, a worshipful mumble which can offend no one because it no longer possesses meaningful content.

To conclude that “the covenant” is the most determinant structure of our bond to Yeshua may sound like mere theology, but we will see that this which is so hated by Satan lies at the core of redemption and history.  If we are to survive, we must refuse to take the covenant for granted.  We must hold tight to every aspect of its riches.  Satan knows our weakness when any part of this treasure is carried away, therefore he has been carefully at work within every sect of those who attach themselves to Yeshua, doing all in his power to tailor for them a “civilized” semblance of faith which owns no need to bother itself with the details of that covenant which our sovereign king fashioned for our sake.

The passage in Daniel reveals Satan’s hatred for the covenant and reveals much about those who stand within it.

“The king of the North will return to his own country with great wealth, but his heart will be set against the holy covenant.  He will take action against it and then return to his own country.  At the appointed time he will invade the South again, but this time the outcome will be different from what it was before. Ships of the western coastlands will oppose him, and he will lose heart. Then he will turn back and vent his fury against the holy covenant.  He will return and show favor to those who forsake the holy covenant.

“His armed forces will rise up to desecrate the temple fortress and will abolish the daily sacrifice. Then they will set up the abomination that causes desolation.  With flattery he will corrupt those who have violated the covenant, but the people who know their God will firmly resist him.

“Those who are wise will instruct many, though for a time they will fall by the sword or be burned or captured or plundered.  When they fall, they will receive a little help, and many who are not sincere will join them.  Some of the wise will stumble, so that they may be refined, purified and made spotless until the time of the end, for it will still come at the appointed time.

“The king will do as he pleases.  He will exalt and magnify himself above every god and will say unheard-of things against the God of gods.  He will be successful until the time of wrath is completed, for what has been determined must take place.”                                                                            Dan. 11.28-36

Many suppose that concern with a “covenant” must be an Old Testament issue, and so they surmise that the battle against the covenant and the “abomination of desolation” are essentially 4th c. B.C. prophecies fulfilled in the 2nd c. B.C.  It is true that in the rage of the king of the North against the covenant, he is credited with deeds which seem to belong to the past:

‘His armed forces will rise up to desecrate the temple fortress and will abolish the daily sacrifice.  Then they will set up the abomination that causes desolation…”

                                                                                        Daniel 11.31

We do know that in 169 B.C. Antiochus Epiphanes did plunder the temple in Jerusalem and by 168 B.C. set up an altar to Zeus Olympus inside the temple, totally desecrating it.  And there has been neither temple fortress nor daily sacrifice since the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D.

We could be content that this is just a short term prophecy which has no bearing on our time were it not for the subsequent context in Daniel and a remark made by Yeshua in the Olivet Discourse.

Daniel’s “king of the North” openly blasphemes Yahveh and publicly magnifies himself above Yahveh.  These are hallmarks of the final “man of lawlessness.”  And Daniel, in the passage quoted, ran his narrative of the king of the North right on to “the time of the end” and “the time of wrath,” which suggests that the battle against the covenant, including the “abomination” event, are related to the time of the end.

Yeshua affirms this as he alludes to this very passage in Daniel while talking with his disciples about the end of the era:

“So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet Daniel – let the reader understand – then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains…For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now – and never to be equaled again.”  Mat. 24.15,21

Daniel’s narrative also goes on to take that which seems to be buried in the past and connect it with the apocalyptic future as he narrates that “those who know their God” will resist the king of the North and instruct others in that faith; although some will struggle, it will serve the benefit of their understanding, and resistance will go on “until the time of the end.” 

vi 

The blood of the covenant

The Spirit of Yeshua is the indestructible cord of steel which binds us to our king, but the covenant is the structure which establishes the possibility of that bond and defines the nature of that bond.  Man and wife are bound by love, but the covenant of marriage sets the parameters of that relationship which finds its life in love.  A sovereign Lord and his subjects are bound by love and by devotion unto death, and the covenant is the oath of devotion which establishes the parameters of that commitment by virtue of which they give their lives to each other and to the welfare of their kingdom.  By such a covenantal oath we are bound to Yeshua our king.

The price and the power of this covenant are beyond measure, because at the center of it we come to the blood of Yeshua, shed at the cross and laid upon the horns of the heavenly altar.

“This cup  is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.”

                                                                                           Luke 22.20

“Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered once for all into the holy place thus obtaining eternal redemption for us.”

                                                                                         Hebrews 9.12

This sacrifice stands alone in history, towering over all of history, to stem the flow of damage coming from Satan’s seduction of mankind.   It is the blood of the long awaited Passover lamb, that blood prayerfully anticipated in every ancient Paschal sacrifice, that blood now at the center of our thanksgiving in every modern Paschal feast.

The power of the blood of Yeshua is such that by it Satan was thrown from heaven to earth.  It is no surprise then that Satan “has his heart set” and “vents his fury” and is in total war against this covenant sealed with the blood of Yeshua our king.  The evident power of the blood of our king in casting Satan down from heaven is part of the witness of John in the narration of Revelation:

“And war broke out in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting with the dragon; the dragon and his angels also fought, but they failed, and there was no place for them in heaven any longer.  So the huge dragon was thrown down – that old serpent called the Devil and Satan, the seducer of the whole world – thrown down to earth, and his angels thrown down along with him.  Then I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, ‘Now has it come, the salvation and power, the reign of our God and the authority of his Christ! – for the Accuser of our brothers is thrown down, who accused them day and night before our God.  But they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they had to die for it, but they did not cling to life.  Rejoice for this, O heavens and ye that dwell in them!  But woe to earth and sea!  The devil has descended to you in fierce anger, knowing that his time is short.’”              Rev. 12.7-11

Satan is struck down from heaven to earth, and we must be attentive to the fact that he is among us.  Meanwhile we rejoice that the throne of the heavens and the temple of heaven are free of him, so that no longer does God witness the droning of his accusations against us.  It is certainly in light of this very truth that Paul rejoices that now, under our covenant with Yeshua, No One can bring accusation against us for we are dressed in the colors of our king.  This passage is an exaltation of the sustaining and liberating power of the new covenant:

“Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?  It is God who justifies.  Who is he that condemns?  Christ Jesus, who died – more than that, who was raised to life – is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?  As it is written:

            ‘For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’     

“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Messiah Jesus our Lord.”                                                                                                                            Romans 8.33-39

                                                                         vii

The emblem and purpose of the covenant

In Scripture, the covenant of Yahveh, from its origins until its final realization through the victory of Yeshua, wears an emblem, a mantra, the repetition of  these words of Yahveh:

“I will be your God, and you will be my people.”

These words are an expression of the purpose of the covenant: that union be established between God and his people.

Yahveh began with Abraham to bring into the world the kingdom which would become the restoration of the earth.  Yahveh said to Abraham:

“I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.”                                                  Genesis 17.7

The above statement makes it clear that the covenant with Abraham is forever, and nothing can undo it.  But as the children of Abraham grow into a people set apart for God the covenant will become amplified.  Four hundred and thirty years after initiating the covenant with Abraham, Yahveh speaks with Moses, affirming that the promise to Abraham finds its fulfillment through Moses and the people of the exodus.  Again the appearance of the emblem:

“…and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm… I will take you as my own people and I will be your God ...And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”                          Exodus 6.6,7,8

He speaks to Moses again, specifying that “my people” means to be a people apart, both by definition and by distinction of their devotion to the will of their God expressed in the terms of the covenant:

“Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession.  Although the whole earth is mine, you will be a kingdom of priests for me and a holy nation.”                                       Exodus 19.5,6

It is clear in the above passage that “to keep the covenant” is to be obedient to the Lord of the covenant.  Through Jeremiah Yahveh delivered a warning against Israel’s abandonment of the covenant, their disobedience, their preference to follow their own will.  The dissolution of covenant loyalty became the collapse of Yahveh’s goal of union:

“I brought your forefathers out of Egypt…I gave them this command: Obey me [obey the commands of the covenant] and I will be your God and you will be my people.   Walk in all the ways I command you, that it may go well with you.  But they did not listen or pay attention; instead they followed the stubborn inclinations of their evil hearts.”                      Jeremiah 7.23,24

As a result of their disobedience Yahveh took down the fence of protection around his people and let them be carried off into exile in Babylon.  Then through Jeremiah came Yahveh’s promise to bring his people back from exile, to restore them to their covenant:

“My eyes will watch over them and I will bring them back to this land…. I will give them a heart to know me, that I am Yahveh.  They will be my people and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart.” Jeremiah 24.6,7

But the evidence is ample that the return was intended to be much more than the physical return to Canaan at the end of seventy years of absence.  Yahveh spoke of return in broad and mystical terms.  The promise of “a heart to know me” is uniquely the promise of the new covenant.  Restoration to the covenant had become, in the purpose of Yahveh, restoration through a new covenant.  In this light it is not surprising to see Jeremiah prophesying that restoration to covenant union will come under the rule of the Messiah:

“Their leader will be one of their own; their ruler will arise from among them…. So you will be my people and I will be your God.”       Jeremiah 30.21,22

As prophesied through Jeremiah, the promise of the new covenant would increase the power of the people to fulfill the expectation of the earlier covenants and better attain God’s goal of union between Him and his people:

“The time is coming when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah …This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, says the Lord.  I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.  I will be their God and they will be my people.”                                                         Jeremiah 31.31,33,34

Then came a huge promise through Ezekiel that the new covenant would be under the Messiah, would bring peace between man and God and would make possible God’s habitation among us – i.e. would tear down the veil of the Holy of Holies, that his Spirit might now be in immediate relationship with us, defining us as intimate with our God and separate to our God:

“And David my servant [i.e. Yeshua, heir to the throne of David] will be their prince forever. I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant. I will establish them and increase their numbers, and I will put my sanctuary among them forever.  My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God and they will be my people.  Then the nations will know that I Yahveh make Israel holy, when my sanctuary is among them forever.”       Ezekiel 37.25,26,27,28

Ezekiel conveyed the promise that it would ultimately be the new covenant which would  bring about the covenant union desired by Yahveh, providing the possibility of the Spirit of God resting immediately in the hearts of his subjects:

“I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them  …then they will follow my decrees…They will be my people and I will be their God.”                                                                                                               Ezekiel 11.19,20

Six hundred years later Paul asserted that we who live inside the new covenant are a fulfillment of the covenant goal, subjects living in immediate relationship to our God, without need of mediating priest or sacrifice other than what Yeshua has accomplished for us:

“For we are the temple of God.  As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God and they will be my people.”   II Corinthians 6.16

Then, in the vision of Revelation, in the ultimate fulfillment, as God brings to earth the New Jerusalem “like a bride” for his covenant people:

“And I heard a voice out of the throne, crying, ‘Lo, God’s dwelling place is with men, with men will he dwell; they shall be his people, and God will himself be with them.’”                                                                             Revelation 21.3

“Then he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Lo, I make all things new….I will let the thirsty drink of the fountain of the water of life without price.  The conqueror shall obtain this, and I will be his God and he shall be my son.”                                                                            Revelation 11.5,6,7,8 excerpts

ix

The parameters and the progression of the covenant

A covenant is a pact sovereignly administered between the covenant lord and his people.

Its purpose is to establish the conditions under which union of interest and purpose can be achieved.  Only the sovereign has the power to guarantee that the terms of the covenant will satisfy the goal of union. The covenant of a Sovereign and his people is not an exchange between equals. It is not a trade of loyalty in return for protection.

From a position of absolute power the sovereign calls for covenant loyalty from those who recognize his pre-existing right over them, from those who are ready to acknowledge and live within his royal claim.

Yahveh came to Abraham.  From the beginning Yahveh called him to separate himself from his family and his country and to set out for a land unknown.  Abraham recognized the voice of his Creator, his sovereign Lord, and he obeyed that voice.

Yahveh led Abraham to Canaan where he appeared before him and spoke with him:

“On that day Yahveh made a covenant with Abram and said, ‘To your seed I will give this land, from the River of Egypt to the great river the Euphrates’.”                                                                                                       Genesis 15.18

That promise was sealed by a covenant ritual in which animals were slaughtered and divided in half, and “a smoking firepot with a blazing torch [representing the presence of God] passed between the pieces.”  So it was sealed with the enactment of a self-maledictory oath, an indication of the “to the death” nature of the promise.

By the witness of Paul[5] and of Yeshua himself[6] we know that Abraham understood that “to your seed” meant something more than his immediate offspring, that it pointed to the Messiah who would be born into his line and would bring the rule of peace to the earth.

So the covenant with Abraham was a call to whole-hearted loyalty and also a great promise which would encompass and fulfill all of human history, finding its meaning and culmination in the ultimate rule of Yeshua on earth.

“And when Abram was ninety nine years old, Yahveh appeared to

Abram, and said unto him: ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be thou whole-hearted.  And I will make my covenant between me and you, and I will multiply you exceedingly.  And Abram fell on his face; and God talked with him, saying; ‘As for me, behold, my covenant is with you and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations.  Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for a father of a multitude of nations have I made you.  And I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations from you, and kings shall come out of you.  And I will establish my covenant between me and you, and between me and your seed after you, throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be unto you for a God, and to your seed after you.”                                                                             Genesis 17.1-7

Four centuries later, the descendants of Abraham, nearly a million in number, were led from Egypt by Moses acting in obedience to the call of Yahveh.  In the Sinai desert Yahveh gave his people an amplified covenant intended to establish them as a nation bound to Yahveh their king.

The Sinai covenant was not a replacement of the covenant with Abraham.  It was an expansion meant to amplify the capacity of the holy people to know the will of their God and be a people set apart to God.  As Paul wrote, nothing pre-empts the original promise to Abraham as the core of God’s relationship to his people:

“Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case.  The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed.  The Scripture does not say, “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,” meaning one person, who is Christ.  What I mean is this: the Law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise.  For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on a promise; but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise.”                                              Gal. 3.15-18

Paul is taking note that all covenant relationship is a function of God’s sovereign promise, God’s grace, the same grace extended to Abraham when it was noted that “Abraham believed Yahveh, and He credited it to him as righteousness.”[7]

Paul teaches furthermore that the Sinai covenant was meant and is meant to guide us to Yeshua.

“So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith.”                                                                                                         Galatians 3.24      

People like to make much of Paul’s statements suggesting that the old covenant is overturned by the new.  But it must be reckoned that the essence of the old covenant is not overturned: our king voices repeatedly, in the book of Revelation, his expectation that we follow his commandments.[8]  As he said during his time on earth,

“Until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.  Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.”                                                                                                 Matthew 5.18,19

The premier commandment of Yeshua is that we love God and our neighbor, but it is impossible to love God and our fellow man in a context of abandonment of the Sinai covenant.  Yeshua said,

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.  If you obey my commands you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love.  My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”                                                               John 15.9,10

Yeshua is not at all satisfied if we cobble together a worship of our own making while abandoning the commands of the covenant.  He said to the Pharisees that their teachings were but “rules taught by men,” and added,

“You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men….You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions.”                                                                         Mark 7.8,9

The only interpretation of Paul which is consistent with the teachings of Yeshua is, not that the Law is cast aside, but rather that the covenant supremacy of the Law has been exchanged for the new covenant supremacy of the living word from the mouth of our living  king, the living word of our king spoken directly into the heart of his subject.  This has been accomplished through the explicit advent of Yeshua’s redemption and his provision of his Spirit by which we live in his immediate presence.

Yeshua’s expectations of us are not somehow depreciated because he has provided the grounds of redemption.  If the expectations of the commandments were not significant in the extreme, then Yeshua’s suffering on the cross would be an obscenity.  His covenant expectations are higher than ever:

“For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and    the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”                                                                                                                     Matthew 5.20

The difference is that we now live within his life.  He in us.  We in him.  The love of the law is from its very root and origin in and from him.  “He in us” is the fulfillment of the promise of Jeremiah that Yahveh would place “the law within our hearts.”  Our attention therefore is free to be focused on the love of our king and the love of our neighbor and even our enemy, all of whom are loved and fall under the claim of our king.  Yeshua leads us in the attainment of the fulfillment of the law, after the manner of a patient father leading and teaching his children.  He seeks us out as sentient and devoted subjects of the realm, not as indifferent children who disdain the expectations of the Father.

x

The erosion of the covenant

The covenant is in great distress.  And so our king ponders, “Will I find faith when I return?”  The covenant erodes as Satan succeeds in dismantling our understanding of the critical elements of the covenant.  Failure of knowledge becomes failure of understanding.  Failure of understanding becomes failure of appreciation,        and that becomes love grown cold, the end of real allegiance.

1.] The first and most essential element of the covenant: it is the word of our sovereign king that union between God and men is founded exclusively upon the blood of Christ shed at the cross.

“Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the first born from the dead, and the prince over kings of earth… who loves us and has loosed us from our sins by shedding his blood.”                                                               Revelation 1.5

To this fundamental event we are called to respond by opening the heart to the presence and love and dominion of our king.  Even more, in a world which is perishing, we are called to stand in the breach and hold up this fundamental truth for the world to know, never to compromise with the myriad factions who attempt to dillute this truth.

Historically, however, the church itself has conceived obscene deceptions to disguise this truth from those who seek God – all in order to take to itself the dominion and authority which the true covenant bestows upon our God.  Satan, throughout the centuries of Catholic domination of Christian worship, has undone the understanding of the absolute and final power of the sacrifice of Yeshua.  The Catholic institution introduced the doctrine that, for salvation, a person can not depend on the power of the cross alone. Rather the individual must look to the additional support of the endless succession of bloodless sacrifices in the mass, as well as to the merit of the suffering and good works of the individual, rendering him who seeks God always somewhere short of knowing himself bound to God, rendering the covenant without meaning and without power – transferring all power conveniently to the institution of the Catholic church and its administration of “sacraments.”  An increasing number of Protestant sects also place value in eucharistic “magic” and the unending cycle of bloodless eucharistic sacrifice, essentially mocking the power of the true blood of the covenant.

2.] The second major element of the covenant:  it is the testament of our sovereign king that we are to obey his word, his royal law, his commandments.  A code which defines the behavior of the constituent parties, particularly the behavior of the subject toward his Lord, is an essential component of every covenant.  Conversely  it is implicit in our obedience to his royal law that we recognize the kingship of our covenant Lord and that we honor the covenant union as the substrate of our royal kingdom.

Yeshua described clearly the covenant condition that he gives all his life for us his people and, in response, we who love him do truly listen for his voice and follow his direction:

“I am the good shepherd.  The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep….My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.”[9] John 10.11,27

“If you love me, you will obey what I command….Whoever has my commands  and obeys them, he is the one who loves me.”                    John 14.15,21

“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”         John 15.12,13

As he has loved us, so are we called to offer our lives in service to his will.  This is the call of the covenant, to the last measure of devotion..

The church on the whole scorns the integrity and binding relevance of the commands given at Sinai.  These words of the Sinai covenant are, however, the most elementary basis of any life which intends to respect the lives of others and intends to honor God.  Yet huge swaths of the Protestant church disdain their significance, imagining that they individually are so bathed in the mercy and grace of God that He will never reproach them their rebellious lives.  Here again the covenant loses all power in the process of a slight of hand by which that power is transferred to the individual for his own pursuit of pleasure.

The Catholic institution has eliminated the second commandment and has established the absolute replacement of the fourth commandment by open rejection and sixteen centuries of denial throughout all of Christendom.

The elimination of the second commandment [You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in the heavens above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.] conveniently makes room for the adoration of the eucharistic host, the adoration of the saints, and the adoration of the mortal woman Mary as Queen of Heaven.

As for the fourth commandment, the Catholic institution takes great pride in announcing that its power to change the day of worship from the Sabbath, as clearly directed in the fourth commandment, to the day of the Sun, is evidence of “the power granted by God to the church to ordain tradition” and contravene the words of Scripture!   So again, the power and authority and honor which rightly belong to God, including the honor of the seventh day on which God rested from the activity of Creation – this power is transferred to an illegitimate institution and this honor is transferred from the miracle of creation to the God of the sun, who is none other than Lucifer himself.

In addition, Catholics and Protestants alike disregard the fundamental truth that Yeshua is this day king upon the throne of Israel.   Catholics since the day of Constantine have done their best to disassociate Yeshua from Israel.  Now Protestants and Catholics alike happily assign the name “Israel” to the secular Zionist entity which seizes the land of Palestinians in the name of divine right.  Protestant dispensationalists [the majority of fundamentalists] believe that Yeshua is no king, having been “rejected” by “Israel.”

3.]  The third critical element of the covenant: it is the testament of all of Scripture that our great hope as the children of the covenant is to share in the promises to Abraham: to be in total union with our God in the land of promise on this earth.  Beginning in the 4th century, Satan has worked skillfully and patiently to destroy the understanding of the subjects of Yeshua that the promises to Abraham are the core of their hope.  Now the church looks for its paradise “in the heavenlies” with no understanding that we are to stand in battle and see the victorious return of our king to this earth where he will establish us under his love in the land of promise.

xi

Faithful to the covenant

            “You are my king and my God.”                                     Psalm 44.4

The covenant defines the allegiance of subject to king.  We have noted that our covenant with Yahveh has passed through a progression.  The real progress of the covenant is the narration of a most wonderful transformation: the covenant which was external and explicit – even carved in stone – has become Spirit: internal and transcendent.  So the kingdom has been transformed from geo-political nation state to transcendent City of God, its throne in the heavens, its roots in the hearts of men around the world.

In the same vein we must note that the sign of the covenant has also been transformed – from an external and physical mark to an internal and spiritual engraving.

Yahveh concluded his covenant with Abraham with the condition that male children of the covenant must be marked with the outward sign of circumcision:

“Every male among you shall be circumcised.  You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you.  My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant.”                                                                   Genesis 17.10,11,13

Over time, however, men in their thinking substituted the mark of the covenant for true satisfaction of the original order of the covenant, which was a call to the trust and obedience which produce union:

“Walk before me and be thou whole hearted.  I will confirm my covenant between me and you.”                                                               Genesis 17.1,2

Forty years after the exodus, when time came to confirm the Sinai covenant with the generation which was preparing to enter into Canaan, Yahveh warned the people that there is no participation in the life of the covenant short of the devotion of the heart to Yahveh:

“Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from Yahveh our God to go and worship the gods of those nations; when such a person hears the words of this [covenant] oath, he invokes a blessing on himself and therefore thinks, ‘I will be safe, even though I persist in going my own way.’  This will bring disaster on the watered land as well as the dry.  Yahveh will never be willing to forgive him: his wrath and zeal will burn against that man….Yahveh will single him out from all the tribes of Israel for disaster.”                                                     Deuteronomy 29.18,19,20,21

Then, following these warnings to the people, Yahveh indicated that he knew in advance that the people would not adhere to the covenant, and that as a result he would see them overtaken by their enemies and dispersed among the nations.  But he followed this prophesy with a promise of hope, that a day was coming when they would seek God and his covenant commandments with all their hearts:

“…and when you and your children return to Yahveh your God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul according to everything I command you today, then Yahveh your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations.”        Deuteronomy 30.2,3

Yahveh then promised a new and more profound sign of the covenant:

“Yahveh your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul and live.”                                                               Deuteronomy 30.6

This promise of the circumcision of the heart is congruent with Jeremiah’s conveyance of the promise of the new covenant:

“‘This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,’ declares Yahveh.  ‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.  I will be their God and they will be my people.’”                                                          Jeremiah 31.33

Centuries later Paul confirmed that the circumcision of the heart is the sign of the new covenant:

“A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical.  No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code.  Such a man’s praise is not from men, but from God.” Romans 2.29                                      

Furthermore, we see in Paul’s words that it is the Spirit of God alone which effects the circumcision of the heart.  It is the blood of Yeshua as sacrifice, the fundamental event of the new covenant, which makes the Spirit available to us.  Therefore we may equally say that the receipt of the Spirit of Yeshua into our hearts is that circumcision of the heart and is similarly the new sign of the new covenant:

“Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession.”                                                                                           Ephesians 1.13,14

By the presence and power of this Spirit we are bound to our king and to each other.  We are formed into the great and ancient and enduring people of God.  What was begun in Adam and restored in Abraham and guaranteed through Yeshua will find its completion in us, by the power of his Spirit:

 “As you come to him, the living Stone – rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him – you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Yeshua the anointed king….You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”                                        I Peter 2.4,5,9,10

xii

Epilogue

Before his conversion, Paul stood in supervision at the martyrdom of Stephen.  Stephen belonged to God and was marked by the seal of his Spirit.  It is recorded that through the presence of the Spirit in Stephen he was “full of God’s grace and power.”  The synagogue opposed him,

“but they could not stand up against his wisdom or the Spirit by whom he                                           spoke.”                                                                                                              Acts 6.10

So they seized him and brought him before the Sanhedrin, producing false witnesses who claimed that he spoke against Moses and the Law [which he did not do.]  The Sanhedrin asked if the accusations of the “witnesses” were true.

Stephen began by telling his accusers that their very presence in the land of Canaan was rooted in the promises of God to Abraham, for the sake of which promises Moses had led the people of God out of Egypt.

Stephen pointed out that Moses himself had foreseen the coming of the Messiah when he had said,

“God will send you a prophet like me from your own people.”   Acts 7.37

Stephen reminded them that their fathers had refused to obey Moses so that God “turned away and gave them over to the worship of the heavenly bodies.”  [Acts 7.42]  He continued by telling them that their fathers had built a tabernacle and a temple to facilitate the presence of God among them and yet they refused to allow Him to rule in their hearts.  Stephen then cried out,

“‘You stiff-necked people with uncircumcised hearts and ears!  You are  just like your fathers:  You always resist the Holy Spirit!  Was there ever a prophet your fathers did not persecute?  They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One.  And now you have betrayed and murdered him – you who have received the law that was put into effect through angels but have not obeyed it.’

“When they heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him.  But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.’”        Acts 7.51-56

Stephen stood in covenant loyalty to his God.  Stephen’s root criticism of his accusers was that they did not own that Spiritual circumcision which is the true sign of fealty to  the covenant.

Stephen stood in the truth that Yeshua is the prophesied “Righteous One,” the one who  brings healing to his people in being “pierced for our transgressions.”  Stephen stood firm in the truth that Yeshua rules from the heavens, “standing at the right hand of God,” in royal authority with the Father.  Stephen stood in witness to the power and authority of the commandments of the covenant.  Stephen stood in the hope of God’s covenant with Abraham.

“Yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him…. While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’  Then he fell on his knees and cried out, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’”                               Acts 7.57,58,59,60

Stephen stood in the truth of the love of Yahveh for all mankind.

© Copyright 2013

Lawrence S. Jones

Chicago

Email: lawrencestewartjones@gmail.com

website: http://www.jerusalemgraffiti.com


[1] Acts 3.18: “But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Christ would suffer.”

[2] George Eldon Ladd, “Historic Premillennialism”, The Meaning of the Millennium, pp. 30,31, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL, 1977

[3] See Charles Chiniquy, The Woman and the Confessional

[4] Threshold of Hope, p.3, 1994

[5] Galatians 3.16 “The Scripture does not say ‘and to seeds,’ meaning many people, but ‘and to your seed,’ meaning one person, who is Christ.”

[6] John 8.56 “Abraham rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was glad.”

[7] Genesis 15.6

[8] Revelation  2.4; 2.23; 12.17; 14.12; 18.4; 21.7,8,27

[9] John 10.11,27

The City of God, the City of the World, and the Great Deception

22 Thursday Mar 2012

Posted by jerusalemgraffiti in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Constantine, Israel, John Newton, throne of David, Yeshua, Zionism

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,  the holy place where the Most High dwells.  God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day.  Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts…. Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.  Yahveh Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.                                                                              Psalm 46.4-6,10,11

Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain?  The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against Yahveh and against his Anointed One.  “Let us break their chains,” they say, “and throw off their fetters.”  The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them.  Then he rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath, saying, “I have installed my King on Zion, my holy hill.”

I will proclaim the decree of Yahveh: He said to me, “You are my Son; today I have become your Father.  Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance,  the ends of the earth your possession.                                                       Psalm 2.1-8

i

Mourning and Resistance

At the heart of modern political and religious life there lies a deception.  Its integration into society has been thorough.  Time has facilitated its acceptance within the cultural landscape.  Criticism of it is only occasional and subdued.  Those who call it into the open are rebuffed, greeted with distrust and irritation.

The great deception is the inversion of a great truth neglected by those who were meant to be its guardians.  Those who have established the deception, falsely usurping claims and titles, are perhaps less culpable than those who, over the centuries, held the truth in their hand but let it fall.  It is an essential part of the climax of the era that this truth will be restored and brought into the consciousness of the world.  It is our obligation to stand in affirmation of it.

Today it is difficult to take stock of the deception or find the platform from which to address it.  Politics has ingested it.  The general discussion has made a home for it.    Even the dialogues of religion, liberal and conservative, have adopted it. The very use of words has become confused.

The prevailing powers have learned that if a tale is spread thoroughly, there is little likelihood of meaningful opposition.  In the shadow of this tale other deceptions follow: the attacks of 9/11 enhanced by a claim that they were perpetrated by Arab terrorists, the attack on Afghanistan “to rout Al Qaeda,” the attack on Iraq“to seize their weapons of mass destruction,” and now the attack on Libya“because Qaddafi fired on his people.”

Where do we find the perspective from which to assess the truth of these events?  Not from within the government itself.

What about the press? They have the capacity and the duty to examine events.  They fought for the truth during the war in Vietnam and the struggle for civil rights.  But when they revealed their capacity to shake up the status quo they alerted the powers to edit their liberties.  Now it seems that only those with proven loyalties are allowed to bring us news from critical theaters of action.

There is broad impetus to self-censorship.  The new “enemy of the state” has no address.  The enemy could be any one and any where.  President Bush made it clear, “If you are not with us, you are against us.”  That warning leaves no room for critical thought or skepticism.  No one wants to share skepticism only to be branded an enemy of society.  People are careful of what they say.  Rules have changed with regard to who may be investigated and who may be detained.  Meanwhile, a sanitized media enables us in the distasteful comfort that the wounds of our victims are far from our consciousness.

What about our religious leaders?  During the sixties and seventies they were vocal participants in the civil rights movement and in the protest against the war, often suffering beatings and imprisonment.  Now we rarely hear them speak.  About what?  How many will even recognize that there are issues?  Our sensitivities have gone dead.  There is no leadership coming from church or synagogue.  The religious establishment is mute.

What remains is the ache of the Palestinian  people imprisoned behind thirty foot walls; the plea of a Rachel Corrie; the witness of the thousands of Afghan women who immolate themselves every year because war, drugs, corruption, and bad laws have made their lives unlivable; the deafening silence of a million souls murdered in Iraq since the beginning of the war, souls which cry out to God.  And, with regard to 9/11, we have the unrecognized voices of isolated scientists, those who measure with precision the extent of the lies disseminated by our government.

Niels Harrit and a group of Danish scientists analyzed debris and found that theWorldTradeCenter’s twin towers and Building #7 were brought down with the help of tons of thermite explosives.  He said of the quandary posed by his discoveries, “You can either speak out or you can live in shame.”

Is there a global conspiracy?  We must weigh the modern  import of the words in the second Psalm:

The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against Yahveh    and against his Anointed One.

ii

The dream of the transcendent society 

The great deception subtly distorts the common vision of the central pillar of human history and aspires to usurp for the deceivers a destiny which by right belongs not to a center of national power but to the devoted adherents of all nations.

The idea of human history as the development and maturing of the human person and his social instincts through the course of time has been dominated by the notion of National history, and that is now being translated into the narrative of inevitable Globalism.  The conversation about the intersection of the goals of God and man in history, culturally entertained for centuries, is a mystery unrecognized in the present time.  We find a sense of that great goal remembered, however, in the hymn “Jerusalem” based on a poem of William Blake, a hymn which ranks perhaps as England’s most popular patriotic song:

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England’s pleasant pastures seen!

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England’s green & pleasant Land. 

That ancient goal of history is nothing less than the realization on earth of the kingdom of heaven.  I quote this old hymn as witness to the fact that historically it has been close to the heart of Western culture for people to know themselves as the people of God and to hope to realize the society of God.  These verses from Blake ostensibly aspire to see an end to the “Satanic Mills” of industrialization and hail Jerusalem as metaphor for an England restored to a more pastoral divine standard.  More extravagantly, the hymn is also popular among the proponents of “English Israel”, those who consider England to be genetically rooted in the lost tribes of Israel, therefore touting a hope to see the people and perhaps the throne of God established on English soil.

Generally in the Western world it has been held that the nations of the earth are mundane and that the true society of God is without connection to the governments of nations but rather founded in the extended transcendent society of those who hold faith in the God of Israel.  For evidence of this we go to the hymn of another great Englishman, John Newton:

Glorious things of thee are spoken,
Zion, city of our God!
He, whose word cannot be broken,
Form’d thee for His own abode:
On the Rock of ages founded,
What can shake thy sure repose?
With salvation’s walls surrounded,
Thou may’st smile at all thy foes.

See! the streams of living waters,
   Springing from eternal love,
Well supply thy sons and daughters,
   And all fear of want remove.
Who can faint when such a river
   Ever flows their thirst to assuage?
Grace, which, like the Lord, the giver,
   Never fails from age to age.

Round each habitation hov’ring,
   See the cloud and fire appear!
For a glory and a cov’ring,
   Showing that the Lord is near;
Thus deriving, from their banner,
   Light by night, and shade by day:
Safe they feed upon the manna
   Which He gives them when they pray.

Bless’d inhabitants of Zion,
   Wash’d in the Redeemer’s blood!
Jesus, whom their souls rely on,
   Makes them kings and priests to God.
‘Tis His love His people raises
   Over self to reign as kings,
And as priests, His solemn praises
   Each for a thank-off’ring brings.

Saviour, if of Zion’s city
   I through grace a member am,
Let the world deride or pity,
   I will glory in Thy name:
Fading is the worldling’s pleasure,
   All his boasted pomp and show:
Solid joys and lasting treasure,
  None but Zion’s children know.

Here the river which flows through the city ofGod is not the Thames but the Holy Spirit nourishing the souls of those who love God.  The inhabitants of Zion are from all nations, a transcendent society of people who are “washed in the Redeemer’s blood.”  At the end the sharpest difference is drawn between the “worldling” and “Zion’s children.”

Two centuries ago John Newton could speak of Zion without overtones of Zionism, the twentieth century secular movement to establish a homeland for Jews without any specific concern for religious factions or their hopes to realize an Israel of God under the rule of God in the person of his Messiah.

Quite unlike the modern Zionist, John Newton was a Zionist in the ancient tradition beginning with Abraham and Moses: he believed that Zion is the present society of those who give their lives to the God of Zion, and the ultimate domain of that people in the land of promise.  He, a former slave trader, had given his own life to Yahveh, the God of Israel, and to the Messiah of Zion who is Yeshua/Jesus our king.

iii

Heirs of the promises to Abraham… 

The great deception features a slight of hand whereby self-proclaimed representatives of a genetic group insinuate themselves as the unique people of God, thereby claiming to be genetically exclusive heirs to the heart of human history. 

By way of preface it must be affirmed that the God of history acts in history in finite moments and in dealings with real people, prominent among them the historic figure Abraham.  Finding in the spirit of Abraham a unique ground of faith, God promised that he would make him a father of nations, promised that he would bring blessing to his descendants, assured him that out of his descendants would come blessing for all mankind, and even promised the territoryof Canaan as an everlasting possession to him and his seed.[1]

Later, when the descendants of Abraham’s grandson, Jacob, had become a million strong and were called before God at Mt.Sinai, there to bind themselves by covenant to God, the second commandment of the covenant included the clause that God held for himself the liberty to bless a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments.  It was in this vein that God swore that, if for no other reason than the devotion of the patriarchs, he would never forget the descendants of Jacob.  Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures God asserts that in the end, no matter how much genetic Israel strays from him, there will be a remnant that is able to find him and to know him.[2]

This means that the God of Creation has a special relationship with the children of those people to whom he revealed himself, the people from whom has been born the Messiah of Israel, the Messiah who is the world’s ultimate blessing from the root of Abraham…..

But what is the extent of the genetic prerogative?

At the heart of the modern dilemma consuming the Abrahamic religions and the nations of the world lies the stance taken by the Zionists that they, along purely genetic lines, own the claim to the promises of God to Abraham. 

However, in the very Hebrew Scriptures which make record of God’s promises to Abraham, the recorded history of God’s dealings with the descendants of Abraham reveals that God did not simply sign a quit deed to Abraham and to every descendant who  claims a genetic bond.  The actual history reveals that, just as God intends Israel to be “not one of the nations,” so the land itself is not a normal piece of land.

First, although all the world belongs to God, he has declared his own elaborate vision of the territory of promise: that it is uniquely his own.  God said to Moses on Mt.Sinai:

“The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants.”                                                                    Leviticus 25.23

In lieu of which, in the next phrase God speaks of “the country that you hold as a possession.”

Second, no accession to this territory has received God’s blessing except as it came explicitly from the hand of God.  In case of point, at first reconnaissance, the people of the Exodus resisted God’s plan for them to move on into the land of promise.   God’s response was to command them to remain forty years in the desert until the next generation was ready to act in faith.  Immediately, without sanction of God or Moses, a large contingent set out to disregard this restriction and wage a campaign of war for the territory of Canaan.  They were swiftly defeated by the armies of the outlying regions.

Abraham himself never tried to conquer land inCanaan, even though it had been promised to him for eternity.  He lived in tents at peace with his neighbors, even making treaties of friendship with local lords.  He, among the few, knew that man’s life is eternal, and that the fulfillment of the promise is to come “in the fullness of time,” and only by the hand of God.

Third, God meticulously gave Moses rules by which to regulate the use of the land, and he has always had the highest expectations of people’s conduct upon the land.  On Mt. Sinai he warned Moses that if people disobeyed his covenant and abused the land, he would chase them from it:

“If in spite of this you still do not listen to me…, then in my anger…I will turn your cities into ruins and lay waste your sanctuaries…I will lay waste the land,… I will scatter you among the nations…Your land will be laid waste and your cities will lie in ruins…Those of you who are left will waste away in the lands of their enemies because of their sins; also because of their fathers’ sins they will waste away.  But if they will confess their sins and the sins of their fathers…then when their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they pay for their sin, I will remember my covenant with Jacob….and with Abraham, and I will remember the land.”                                                   Leviticus 26.27-42, excerpts

Fourth, the promise of the land is not a mere reward of real estate.  The land is the substrate or ground of the greatest promise of history: the rule of God in unity with and in the presence of his human creation.  This piece of land, so battered and arid and contested, is the precious earnest payment toward the coming realization of the kingdom of God in full-fleshed reality on this earth.  That which today is a living transcendent kingdom will someday find its water and its dirt and its stone in the territory of promise.  The land is inseparable from the great historic promise.

There is nothing in Scripture which is so cynical as to promise unconditional access to God or unconditional participation in the people of God apart from the submission of the heart to God.  If God favors genetic Israel it is in bringing to them both blessing and chastisement in order to lead them to the threshold of the universal truth of his being.  No one occupies the ultimate promise of God short of crossing that threshold.  As Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans:

He is no Jew who is merely a Jew outwardly, nor is circumcision  something outward in the flesh; he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, spiritual not literal – praised by God, not by man.    Romans 2.29

iv

The Great Deception: The City of the World Goes in Masquerade as the City of God 

The great deception sits enshrined in the allowances made by the governments of the world and by the religions of the world such that they recognize national Israel as the Israel of blessing, as heir to the promises of God to Abraham, even though the modern Israeli government is the purely secular fabrication of a group of genetic descendants, without regard for historic covenant or Torah or faith or Messiah.

 Two essential truths measure the falsehood of this deception:

Truth Number One:  The Israel of blessing, heir to the promises of Abraham, can only be a people in covenant relationship [i.e. bound by oath] with the God of Israel, who alone is the source of their blessing.  Just prior to the first sojourn of the children of Yahveh into the land of promise, Moses confirmed in these words the covenant which, since the formative event at Mt. Sinai, had bound the people to their God:

“You are standing here in order to enter into a covenant with Yahveh your God, a covenant Yahveh is making with you this day and sealing with an oath, to confirm you this day as his people, that he may be your God as he promised you and as he swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob….  Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from Yahveh our God to go and worship the gods of those nations….  When such a person hears the words of this oath, he invokes a blessing on himself and therefore thinks, ‘I will be safe even though I persist in going my own way.’  This will bring disaster….  Yahveh will never be willing to forgive him…and Yahveh shall separate him unto evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that is written in this book of the law.                   Deuteronomy 29.

In other words, apart from individual submission to the God of Israel,[3] there is no participation in Israel.

Furthermore, the faithful of Israel have always, since the day of Abraham, lived in anticipation of the coming Messiah.  The need for our Messiah, “the Lamb slain from the beginning of the world,” is built into the fabric of transcendent Israel as into the fabric of a sinful world, such that it was part of God’s plan for his people that through the Messiah he would transport them beyond the bounds of the Sinai covenant, as witnessed by Jeremiah:

“The time is coming,” declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand To lead them out of Egypt, Because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares Yahveh. “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,” declares Yahveh.  “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.  I will be their God, and they will be my people.”         Jeremiah 31.31-33

 We know that from the time that the Holy Spirit came to the first body of believers at Pentecost, the presence of the Spirit of God in the hearts of men has been the seal of their faith and the hallmark of the New Covenant.  As Peter said at the time,

“This is what was spoken of by the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people…and everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”                                                                  Acts 2.16,17,21

There is an essential historical fact which most of the world fails to reckon: The Messiah of Israel has come, and through him that new covenant “with the house of Israel.”  This is the most significant refinement to the nature of transcendent Israel.  Now, in this time, God’s covenant with his people has been sealed through the blood of their king upon a cross, and those who enter into that covenant are not defined by their genetics but by their sharing in the faith of Abraham, by the nature of their spiritual gesture to put aside their own will and seek the presence of the Spirit of God in their lives.[4]

In the celebration with his disciples of that Passover, for which he himself would be the Paschal lamb, Jesus raised the symbolic cup of wine before them and said,

“This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.”                                                                                       Luke 22.20 

In other words, apart from the Messiah of Israel, there is no transcendent Israel.

Truth Number Two: The enjoyment of the land of promise by the people of God is not ours to claim as our own in this time, nor is it ours to achieve by our own hand.  It is the work of our Messiah, in his time, upon his return, to establish us in Zion, as was clearly understood by Abraham himself:

It was by faith that he [Abraham] sojourned in the promised land, as in a foreign country, residing in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob who were co-heirs with him of  the same promise; he was waiting for the City with its fixed foundations, whose         builder and maker is God….These all died in faith without obtaining the promises; they only saw them far away and hailed them, owning that they were ‘strangers and exiles upon earth.’…That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God; he has prepared a City for them.                                                                 Hebrews 11.9,10,13,16

The Zion of this moment, the Zion in which John Newton and all other children of God rejoice, is the transcendent kingdom of God, lived out in present time and in direct communion with our king, who, by his Spirit, rules within our lives and within history.

 

v

The Usurpers of the Name “Israel” and Their Enablers…

The state of Israel, a recently fabricated political entity, assumes the stance of heir to the Promise, pretends to represent the people of Promise, violently lays claim to the land of Promise, and then receives the acknowledgement and honor of the nations of the earth, most particularly the honor of theUnited States, as in this speech by President Clinton before the Israeli Knesset on October 27, 1994:

“’If you abandon Israel, God will never forgive you’…it is God’s will that Israel, the biblical home of the people of Israel, continue for ever and ever….Your journey is our journey, and America will stand with you now and always.”

All American presidents recite similar oaths of unshakable fealty to secular, Zionist, genetically- defined Israel.  Anyone at all concerned with the opinion of Scripture on this subject will be familiar with John the Baptist.  His credentials are secure.  John the Baptist is famous for having great difficulty with the idea of a genetically defined Israel:

“Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.  And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’  I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham…. I baptize you with water for repentance.  But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry.  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”[5]

We find a very similar attitude toward the idea of a secular, nation-state Israel among many devout Jews in the present time.  Great numbers of Jews object to the hold of the Zionists upon the land of promise.  Neturei Karta [meaning “guardians of the city”] is a group of orthodox Jews which numbers itself in the thousands, representing hundreds of thousands of Jews who want the Zionists out of Palestine.  They claim that Judaism and Zionism are mutually contradictory visions of history and of the land of promise.  Members of Neturei Karta hold that diaspora Israel has no right to collect itself as a nation apart from its Messiah.  They hold that there can be no sovereignty of Israel apart from the Lordship of the God of Israel.  They recognize that the promise of God to Abraham is a promise to the transcendent Israel of faith and obedience.

Conversely, while most of the synagogues in this country would claim to seek first a transcendent Israel, virtually all have signs in the front of their sanctuaries with the Israeli flag and the claim “We stand with Israel,” meaning of course the current Israeli government, regardless of its policies.

As for the church in this country, the majority have no belief at all in the divinity of Jesus or in the unique import of the God of Israel.  The broader liberal church, in the name of Tolerance, will not tolerate any in-historical specificity in God which might in and of itself render the worship of other gods nonsensical.  The Catholic church, along with the liberal church, is in service to the broad “ecumenical” agenda of the United Nations and the Temple of Understanding.

The minority in the hierarchical church, the conservatives, who do claim faith in the God of Israel and belief in the divinity of Jesus, have mostly fallen under the spell of an ideology called premillennial dispensationalism, developed by an Irish Anglican priest, Nelson Darby, during the first half of the nineteenth century and fostered through the course of the last century by Americans such as the Chicagoans D.L. Moody and Harry Ironside, as well as by C.I. Scofield and his Scofield Bible, a popular text with ample notes interpreting all passages in terms of this theology.

In the process of perniciously ignoring the incredible unity in the work of God over millennia, these ideologues have divided the era into diverse “dispensations”, in each of which God deals with man differently.  In the process they have justified, to their thinking, a separate divine destiny for Jew and gentile, i.e. for “literal” Israel and “literal” church, most interesting being a rapture [sudden transferal into the heavens] of the gentile church just as the end time war of good and evil has need of martyrs, and, concomitantly, at that same moment the “Jews” [defined genetically] get to have free reign over the land of promise without the meddling of those [now raptured] troublesome gentiles.  In granting divine blessing on the moribund entity, “genetic/nation-state Israel” the dispensationalists create precedent for bestowing authenticity on another moribund and spiritless institution, the hierarchical and official “church.”

The dispensationalists are only making repairs on the exclusionary edifice erected by the emperor Constantine in the fourth century. Constantine, carving the foundation of the next thousand years of Catholicism, did his best to despise all things Jewish and to isolate the being and the message and the Messianic mission of Jesus from both the transcendent and the historical nation, Israel, from its centuries of hope and from its careful cultivation of the messianic expectation.  This is certainly the dark beginning of the Western world’s loss of understanding that Jesus is in fact king upon the historic throne of David. 

Constantine did his best to take the most important event in Jewish history and turn it into a gentile mythology.  At the hand of Constantine and his new hierarchical Roman church, this was nothing less than a cynical rejection of the historic roots of the kingdom of God on earth.

Theodoret’s Ecclesiastical History records The Epistle of the Emperor          Constantine, concerning the matters transacted at the Council [of Nicea],             addressed to those Bishops who were not present:

“It was, in the first place, declared improper to follow the custom of the Jews in    the celebration of this holy festival[6], because, their hands having been stained    with crime, the minds of these wretched men are necessarily blinded. … Let us,       then, have nothing in common with the Jews, who are our adversaries. … Let us …studiously avoid all contact with that evil way. … For how can they entertain   right views on any point who, after having compassed the death of the Lord, being  out of their minds, are guided not by sound reason, but by an unrestrained passion,  wherever their innate madness carries them. … lest your pure minds should appear to share in the customs of a people so utterly depraved. … Therefore, this  irregularity must be corrected, in order that we may no more have any thing in common with those parricides and the murderers of our Lord … no single point in common with the perjury of the Jews.”

With such a beginning, it should be no surprise that the church goes along in confused ignorance of its roots.  Now the hierarchical church, having given away the mantel and the responsibility and the honor and the throne and the titles of Israel, has become the enabler of the Zionists who take to themselves all that was promised to a people historically created to be “not one of the nations.”  The Zionists now cash in on it all, in order to become “one of the nations.”… even at the forefront of nations.

Premillennial dispensationalism is the natural mother of a movement known as Christian Zionism.  Premillennial dispensationalism is the ideological core of the conservative religious movement in this country as it supports the nation’s political right in its own service to the ambitions of secular Zionist Israel.[7]

The dispensationalists make the claim that Jesus came as a “candidate” for kingship and, having been rejected by “the Jews,” returned to heaven with his goal of kingship disappointed, until a later time.

In reality, Yeshua,  the long-awaited heir to the throne of David, fully king over transcendent and eternal Israel, went triumphantly to the cross, bearing in his body the shame of the sin of mankind, there to win redemption for his subjects while conquering forever the power of death over them.  As a result he is securely on the throne of heaven, the historic seat of power over those in Israel who love and obey him.

vi

The throne of David and the heir of promise

Jacob spoke prophetically of the line of his son Judah, that from him would come the king who would have a royal claim over the people of all nations:

“The scepter will not depart from Judah nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,      until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his.”[8]

 Balaam spoke prophetically to Moses of the future appearance of this king:

 “I see him, but not now, I behold him, but not near. A star will come out of Jacob,       a scepter will rise out of Israel.”[9]

 God spoke prophetically to King David through Nathan, speaking of a single eternal king to come in the line ofJudah, from the house of David:

 “…Yahveh will build a house for you: When your days are over and you go to be with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom….I will establish his throne forever.  I will be his father and he will be my son.  I will never take my love away from him, …I will set him over my house and my kingdom forever; his throne will be established forever.”                    I Chronicles 17.10, 11, 12, 13, 14

Psalm 89 calls for the immortal heir and eternal king in the line of David:

…”I have made a covenant with my chosen one, I have sworn to David my servant,     ‘I will establish your line forever and make your throne firm through all generations.’…  I will establish his line forever, his throne as long as the heavens endure.”                                                                                         Psalm 89.3,4,29

 Isaiah promised the immortal and eternal king who would reign on David’s throne, a king who would come as healer, savior, Prince of Peace, and Mighty God:

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light…For to us a child is born,…        and the government will be on his shoulders.  And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.  Of the increase of his government and peace  there will be no end.  He will reign on David’s throne          and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness   from that time on and forever.  The zeal of the Lord Almighty  will accomplish this.”                                                                          Isaiah 9.2,6,7 

So spoke also Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Zechariah, and many others. 

vii

 The throne of David… the expectation of in-historical fulfillment

 In spite of the desire of many to see the kingship of the Messiah be realized at the end of history, we see clearly in Psalm 2 and in Daniel 2 that by prophesy it is in the time of the kings of earth and in the midst of their struggle for dominion that the Messiah is, as established fact, seated on the throne of power over transcendent Zion, building and sustaining the kingdom which shall, over all others, retain the favor of God.  The witness of the Psalm is as follows:

The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against Yahveh    and against his Anointed One…the Lord scoffs at them.  Then he rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath, saying, “I have installed my King on Zion, my holy hill.”

Equally in the book of Daniel, in the 5th century B.C., Daniel, standing before Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, by inspiration told the king the content of a great dream and interpreted to him its significance, regarding the appearing of the Lord of history and the kingdom of promise:

“…This was the dream and now we will interpret it to the king. …The God of heaven has given you [Nebuchadnezzar] dominion…After you another kingdom will rise…Next a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth.  Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom….In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people.  It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.”                                                                                                  Daniel 2.36, 37, 39, 40, 44

 

viii

The throne of David…the pattern of ascendancy

Because of his disobedience before God, Saul had the throne of Israel taken from him.  Without ceremony, God informed Saul, through the prophet Samuel, that his right to power was taken from him:

But Samuel said to him, “…You have rejected the word of Yahveh and Yahveh has rejected you as king over Israel….Yahveh has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to one of your neighbors – to one better than you.  He who is the glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a man that he should change his mind.                                                          I Samuel 15.26,28,29

Without delay God sent Samuel to the house of Jesse to choose a king from among his sons and to anoint him king.

Then Yahveh said, “Rise and anoint him; he is the one.”  So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and from that day on the Spirit of the Lord came upon David in power.                      I Samuel 16.12,13

In obedience to God Samuel poured the anointing oil on the head of David, the youngest son, by which he was marked as devoted to the throne ofIsrael.  From that moment the right to royal power was in his hand.  David had become the Anointed of God, the Messiah.  But he did not immediately seize power: he waited for Yahveh to establish authority and dominion by his own hand.

When Yeshua came to earth, as John the Baptist anointed his head with the water of baptism, the Spirit of God fell upon Yeshua, and God spoke aloud from heaven words like those spoken into the heart of Samuel:

At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”                                  Matthew 3.16,17

These conjoined phrases are a double allusion to a pair of Messianic prophecies.  As God spoke the phrase “This is my son” he was calling out and marking the messianic fulfillment of the prophetic line in Psalm 2.7 given above,

“He said to me, ‘You are my son’.”  Today I have become your Father.  Ask of me,    and I will make the nations your inheritance…”

As God spoke the remaining phrase, “with him I am well pleased,” he was marking the messianic fulfillment of the prophetic lines of Isaiah 42.1.  [Note also that this moment of “putting my Spirit on him” is the mark of his entry into power]:

“Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight;            I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations.”

These two phrases, here quoted from Matthew, are the words spoken by God during the first outward anointing of Yeshua.  These words could not be spoken by God to anyone other than the Messiah of Israel.  Yeshua did not move aggressively to seize dominion over the nation state and free them from the Romans, but rather remained focused on the first ambition of his power, which was to go to the cross and stand in for the sins of his people, freeing them from the curse of death.

Without throne or other royal paraphernalia, David received a second anointing in the presence of the elders of Israel in the desert town of Hebron, while Jerusalem was still a Jebusite city, before David moved to capture the fortress ofZion.  This anointing functioned as public confirmation of the initial anointing and was coupled with a covenant between ruler and people.

When all the elders of Israel had come to King David at Hebron, the king made a compact with them at Hebron before Yahveh, and they anointed David king over Israel.                                                                                     II Samuel 5.3  

Soon after the anointing of baptism by John the Baptist and the anointing of the Holy Spirit at the hand of the Father, Jesus, in the presence of disciples, received confirmation of his anointing from the depths of the patriarchal past and from the Father in the heavens.  This confirmation was given again from heaven using the very same words spoken when he was anointed with the Holy Spirit.  The timing of the event of confirmation is measured by Matthew as six days from the day when Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say I am?” and Peter replied, “You are the Messiah [the one anointed to be king], the Son of the living God.”

After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves.  There he was transfigured before them.  His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light.  Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus….A bright cloud enveloped them and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.  Listen to him!”                                              Matthew 17.1-3, 5

 It could not be more clear that God himself has twice proclaimed Yeshua to be the long awaited king over Israel.

 

ix

The throne of David… the ascendancy of the one to whom it belongs

Jesus sealed his covenant with his people in the events of Passover, 30 A.D.  He did so by becoming the Passover lamb of expectation, shedding his blood for his people, standing in for them before God to claim them for himself.  Yeshua’s claim of Lordship, the highest possible claim to his people, was sealed at the cross.

In the hours before this great act of love he entered Jerusalem upon a donkey, the long prophesied gesture of the messianic king coming in peace.  He was greeted openly by the people of Jerusalem as king.  He went to the cross as king of his covenant people, Israel.

As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her.  Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, tell him that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.”

 This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet: [Zecharaiah]

“Say to the Daughter of Zion, ‘See, your king comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’” 

The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them.  They brought the donkey and the colt, placed their cloaks on them, and Jesus sat on them.  A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted,

 “Hosanna to the Son of David!”                                                    Matthew 21.1-9

 …the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices…:  “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord.”  …Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.”  “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”                                              Luke 19.38-40

…the great crowd that had come for the [Passover] Feast heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem.  They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting,  

“Blessed is the King of Israel!”                                                     John 12.12,13

 If any ordinary man were so gathered into his people as king, the world would have no trouble understanding that he was now the acknowledged king of his people.  The truth of the kingship of Yeshua,  so clearly witnessed in the gospel record, so amply prophesied by generations of prophets and kings, is lost to the modern mind for two reasons: first, because so few people give him the rule over the heart by which they may come to know his great power, and, second, because of the perverse misrepresentations of a “church” which in the 4th century married itself to the existing temporal powers, denying the royal  claims even of its own king; an apostate church which for centuries would not even allow its people to possess or read the very Scriptures which are the foundation of faith; an evil hierarchical church which for most of its history has placed its own power and mandate over its adherents well ahead of their freedom to grow in the knowledge of God; a church which has brutally tortured and even murdered those who claimed that faith in God did not necessitate placing the ecclesiastical institution between themselves and the being of God;  a church claiming to conjure the being of God in a cup, claiming that a Pope has the authority of God, and claiming that its priests are “Alter Christus/Another Christ” thus presuming to have the authority to forgive sin! 

It is time for each person to own the truth, time to recognize the extent to which the truth of Jesus our king has been twisted and perverted by the church itself, not only in the centuries during which there was only Catholicism, but also by the churches which are heirs of the Reformation.

After the triumphal entry intoJerusalem, Jesus went up into the temple and drove the beneficiaries of the hierarchical church out of the temple, rebuking them:

Then he entered the temple area and began driving out those who were selling.  “It is written,” he said to them, “’My house will be a house of prayer.’ but you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”                              Luke 19.45,46

Jesus then gathered his disciples into a second floor room to share in the Passover meal.  He taught them again that he would soon be leaving them, but that he would return in power. He washed their feet to show them that the royal road is the road of serving.  He taught them that he was going to die at the hands of a church which hated him for his challenge to their power. […The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this …and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.  Mark 11.18]  He taught them that just as the king must go to the cross, so the subjects are destined to suffer for the kingdom until the day of glory:

If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.  If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.  That is why the world hates you.  Remember the words I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’  If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also.                     John 15.18,19

He taught them that in going to join the Father on the throne of heaven he would make possible the presence of the Spirit of God with us who open our hearts to him.

“Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you….When he, the Spirit of truth, comes he will guide you into all truth.”                                                                                                         John 16.7,13

Finally, in the course of the Passover Feast, through the cup of blessing raised at dinner, he portrayed to them the covenant which he was about to seal with his own blood on the cross.

Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you.  This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”                                                   Matthew 26.27,28

 At the end of his instruction, Jesus turned in prayer to God:

After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed: “Father, the time has come.  Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.  For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him.  Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus the anointed king whom you have sent.    John 17.1-3

Jesus concluded this great prayer for his people with the plea that we be able to know  him in all his power and glory: 

Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.                                                                John 17.24

The church would have you believe that this vision of the glory of our king is to be reserved for the end of time.  They would have you believe that he is not yet king.  The church would have you surround yourself with crucifixes.  They would have you watch him crucified day after day in the mass.  They would have you believe that he was a pitiful “candidate” for kingship and that he failed under the weight of Jewish rejection.  These are lies.  This is not what our king seeks for us!  He asks the Father that through the informing power of his Spirit we will know him in all his royal power and intimate healing love.

The cross is victory for us and the great victory of the love of our God, a love which gives leaven to the entire universe.  As king our Lord went to the cross, standing in for us his people, Israel.

Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”    John 18.33

Jesus then spoke explicitly to him of our transcendent kingdom:

“My kingdom is not of this world.  If it were, my subjects would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews.  But now my kingdom is from another place.”

 “You are a king, then!” said Pilate. 

Jesus answered, “You are right in saying I am a king.  In fact for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.”           John 18.36,37

For Yeshua, with all the character and being of God himself, it is inconceivable that he would allow himself to be sacrificed under a banner which was in any way hyperbole or falsehood.  The “church” however stands alongside the chief priests in this final account:

Here they crucified him…Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross.  It read: JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS.  Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek. The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews.”  Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”                                 John 19.19-23

Near the close of his account, John writes,

“But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the anointed king, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”  John 20.31

People like to respond that Jesus is only king in some “limited” “Spiritual” or metaphorical sense, since his kingship is noted in terms of “belief” and “having life”.  Such a credo is only evidence that such people are still stuck at the gates of the kingdom and have not yet found the will to open their hearts and discover his searching power and the noble experience of being his subject.  When the king truly begins to rule, then the austere and ponderous reality of the transcendent kingdom becomes overpowering and evident.

x

 The throne of David… the throne in the heavens

The throne of Jesus in the heavens is the seat of power which reaches to the core of life on earth, which reaches into the innermost heart of those who open to him, and this throne is the throne of David.

The people of Israel were created through covenant with God.  The earthly throne, and the earthly rule over Israel, beginning at the hand of the prophet Samuel, are the direct creation of God.  The true exercise of power from the earthly seat of David over Israel has always transpired in the knowledge that its authority, power, and validity lay in the throne of God and nowhere else.

When Solomon succeeded his father David to the throne it was clearly stated that he was being entrusted with the throne over Israel as guardian of a seat whose true locus of power is in heaven in the person and throne of God.  At that time, David said of Solomon,

“Of all my sons – and the Lord has given me many – he has chosen my son Solomon to sit on the throne of the kingdom of the Lord over Israel.”   I Chronicles 28.5

Jesus, as he was about to ascend to the throne of God,  made clear to his disciples the true form of his power, that as he sat on the throne in the heavens that power would reach through every turn of life on earth:

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”   Matthew 28.18

Jesus, in the apocalyptic vision of Revelation, declared that his power, extending through heaven and earth, encloses within it the power of the Davidic throne, which is his true right and claim:

These are the words of the true Holy One, who holds the key of David, who opens  and none shall shut, who shuts and none shall open.    Revelation 3.7

To John, Jesus also declared repeatedly that, as in his life on earth, so in his universal power, he acts not in any way exclusive of the Father but always in total union with the Father:

“And the conqueror shall sit beside me on my throne as I myself have conquered   and sat down beside my Father on his throne.”                       Revelation 3.21

Between now and eternity there is no mention of any further anointing or coronation or change in the status of Yeshua, only that a day comes when Satan loses his prerogative in this world, and our king assumes the extended exercise of the power which is already in his hands:

Then the seventh angel blew; and loud voices followed in heaven, crying, “The rule of the world has passed to our Lord and his anointed king, and he shall reign forever and ever.”                                                                    Revelation 11.15  

 When he returns to earth in power and glory he has no need to pause for human “coronation.”  The centuries-old truth of his kingship is engraved upon him:

Then I saw heaven open wide – and there was a white horse!  His rider is faithful and true, yea, just are his judgments and his warfare; his eyes are a flame of fire, on his head are many diadems, he bears a written name which none knows but himself.  He is clad in a robe dipped in blood [his name is called THE LOGOS OF GOD], and the troops of heaven follow him on white horses, arrayed in pure white linen.  A sharp sword issues from his lips, wherewith to smite the nations; he will shepherd them with an iron flail, and trample the winepress of the passion of the wrath of God Almighty.         And on his robe, upon his thigh, his name is written, KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.                                                            Revelation 19.11-16

Between now and eternity it remains fact that Yeshua is on the heavenly throne with the Father, Yeshua and Yahveh bound in one seat of power, as denoted again so clearly at the end of the book of Revelation:

Then he showed me the river of the water of Life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the streets of the City;…the throne of God and the Lamb shall be within it.                         Revelation 21.1, 3

As always, as forever, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.

 xi

The heir to the throne of David…the witness of those who saw him on earth 

Simeon watched in Jerusalem for the coming of the anointed one, because it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he “would not die before he should see the Lord’s Messiah..”  Simeon, moved by the Spirit of God, took the infant Yeshua in his arms and sang out to God, saying,

“Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace.  For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”                                    Luke 2.28-32

Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, prophetically described Yeshua as the one who would be king upon the throne of David and would bring into history the fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham:

 “He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David….            …to remember his holy covenant, the oath he swore to our father Abraham: to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.”                     Luke 1.69,72-75

The detailed genealogies in Matthew 1 and Luke 3 are both meant to document that the one whose profile is the center of Scripture is bound, by both earthly parents, to the lineage of David and destined to sit upon the throne of David.

When Jesus made his triumphal entry intoJerusalem,

“…the crowds who went in front of him and who followed behind shouted,             ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!  Blessed be he who comes in the Lord’s name!        Hosanna in high heaven!’”                                            Mathew 21.9

The priests objected that children and disciples were hailing him as Messiah and heir to the throne of David, and said, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!” To which Jesus replied,

“I tell you, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”   Luke 19.40

The prophet Amos, in the 8th c. B.C., told Israel that Yahveh was about to punish the nation for its abandonment of its covenant, but he set out a fundamental sequence for the messianic future, recording the words of God declaring that through the coming of the messiah the throne of David would be restored, and that this then would be the foundation from which God would reach out to all nations.

Luke, in the book of Acts quotes James, the brother of Jesus, as he is speaking to an assembly of believers.  James quotes the following passage from the record of the prophet Amos in the process of asserting that Jesus, by his kingship, is accomplishing the long awaited restoration of the royal house of David, and that now on this basis they are reaching out beyond the nation state to the gentiles:

“After this I will return and rebuild David’s fallen tent.  Its ruins I will rebuild             and I will restore it, that the remnant of men may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who bear my name….”  Acts 15.16,17referring to Amos 9.11,12

Clearly the rebuilding of the house of David through the accession to the throne of the ultimate and eternal king is established here in prophecy as the ordained antecedent to the re-engineering of the kingdom by which we of the nations are called to the knowledge of the God of Israel.  It is this intended pattern which our king is calling out just before his ascension:

a.] “Full authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth;  b.] go and make disciples of all nations.”                                                               Matthew 28.18,19

The church’s denial of the kingship of Yeshua has been active since the 4th century and the evil fabrications of Constantine. Constantine did his best to replace the radical king of “a people apart” with a well dressed pantocrator and lord of the status quo, and then made himself the Vicar, the gentile Substitute, for that Lord…and in like manner the line of papal kings who descend from Constantine and usurp royalty.

The dispensationalist abandonment of the Messiah’s kingship has only left room for the fantasy that there might now be an actual Israel of God with a vacant throne, anxiously looking forward to “the one” who might occupy that throne.   In fact the powers of earth are making efficient use of the ignorance and apostasy of the church and are quite busily preparing for just such a day of deception when one of their own will make a great presentation of himself as the long awaited heir to the throne over all creation…which is the essence of the Dan Brown fantasies.  To them, however, will come the rude surprise that the throne of the Israel of God, the only Israel “of promise,” is already occupied.

For us, who have known his power in our lives and who know him as Lord over our historic and transcendent people, we know him and shall always know him as the fulfillment of every hope and as the indomitable Lord of history.

    

                                                        xii

Standing openly in our faith, holding to the one who rules the heart, the one who rules his people

When our king first came to live on earth within the structures of national Israel and imperial Rome, he gave us an example of how the subject of the transcendent kingdom is to live within the fabric of the city of the world.  Not only did he refuse to be intimidated by the evil of their threats to destroy him.  He, for the sake of his people, ran into the breach, seeking the face of the evil, the very power of death, which confronted us, and set himself to suffer in our stead in order that we might go free.  This is the nature of our calling, to follow the example of our king, to discover and name and face the threats laid down by the city of the world as it closes the circle on all who serve the God of history above every other god.  By speaking out, we create space and opportunity for others to know the words and intentions of our God, to discover the One who seeks to know and love each one of us.   By remaining silent, we do nothing but assist the spread of darkness.

The great deception is a wound upon the truth.  The lies fathered by this deception have become a wound upon the victims of their perpetrators, chiefly, at this particular moment, upon the people of Palestine and the people of the Muslim countries attacked by the United States since 9/11/2001.

The great deception is a wound upon the heart of every person who shares John Newton’s love for the Zion from which flows a river of life for all mankind.   That Zion, ruled from the throne of God, is the eternal and transcendent City of God.  That river is the Spirit of God.

Is the world incapable of sensing the gravity of the misrepresentations being spread by the churches, whether Catholic or fundamentalist or liberal?  Are those who adhere to the Messiah of Israel incapable of sensing the gravity of the suffering which is spread around the world in the name of the “security” and “national interest” of the United Statesand Israel?  Let it be known by all people that the Israel of God has no national interest to be defended with armaments of any kind. Nor does it find its security in violent force.  

It is necessary that the people of God claim openly the Messiah of Israel as their king, claiming the transcendent Israel of promise as the kingdomof God.  The silence of the Israel of God only feeds the illusion in the Arab world that the policies of the United States and Israel, generally supported by the Christian and Jewish communities, are somehow an expression of the character of the God of Israel.  This then stands to obstruct their vision of the true being of Yeshua.

The love of God as expressed through Yeshua is the call of God to all mankind to come to him and be his people alone.  We are not called to be Christians.  We are not called to be Jews.  We are not called to be Muslims.  We are called to open our hearts intimately to Yeshua alone.  In the process we are liberated from every false standard and are called to stand in the truth, to claim the transcendent kingdom of God as our own, to discover ourselves as members of the true people of God — true heirs of the promises to Abraham.

Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and sup with him and he with me.  The conqueror I will allow to sit beside me on my throne as I myself have conquered and sat down beside my Father on his throne.                                                                                    Revelation 3.19,20,21

*    *    *

Post Script

We have entered a time when the people of the world are compelled by their overlords to accept and live within mythologies.  Through fear of losing social status and economic security, through distraction, through ignorance and apathy, popular acceptance of these mythologies furnishes to government the freedom to carry out in plain view programs to which, normally, outside the mythology, we would object.

For the West, “the great danger of international terror” is the prime mythology of the moment.  It has facilitated our aggression into the Muslim world.  Our government knows the truth of what happened on September 11, 2001.  It could not have been carried out without the cooperation of people at the highest level.  The massive evidence which discredits the official mythology is available for all to consider.

We must observe that until the government of the  United States is ready to cast off this mythology and share the truth with its people, there is no ground for expectation of reasonable honest relations between the government and its people.  Every day in which our leaders rise to perpetuate the mythology is one more day without respect for the people of this country.  Our leaders betray us.

In the same vein let it be remarked that the followers of Yeshua, Jew and gentile, have allowed themselves to be lulled to sleep by the self-serving mythologies of the church and the synagogue.

In the first few centuries of the Christian era, during that short period before the installation of the state-sanctioned hierarchical church, followers of Yeshua greeted each other with the phrase, Jesus is Lord.  For them it was the core assertion that Yeshua is the anointed king, the long awaited Messiah of Israel.  Public identification with this core loyalty cost them their lives: it was an offense to Rome.  Rome needed to preserve the mythology that Israel is nothing more than a genetic group, whose leaders are bound within the sphere of Roman political power. Rome could not tolerate the thought that Israel should be a power outside its control with a king beyond its control, a king who is also God, who holds his people to a call above the call of Roman power.

The radical enthusiasm and power of New Covenant Israel which fully survived the physical destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. by Rome — this enthusiasm and power enjoyed by Jew and Gentile together in a new Israel of God — this was subsumed and rendered tame by Constantine and his Roman state religion.  Constantine flattered bishops, bought them off with basilicas, made himself the gracious arbiter of their theological differences, and married the filthy whole to the times and practices of his national pagan religion.

The comfort of modern religious life within the status quo is not due to some advanced condition that the modern Rome is more tolerant.  The comfort of the modern religious institution is due to the fact that it has given away the core being and the core assertion of the dissenting kingdom and in its stead has settled into a faith with purely personal dimensions and ramifications.

This private “iPod” sort of faith will never be an offense to Rome.  Under the modern mythology of Tolerance you may believe whatever fantastical thing you want to believe about Jesus or any imaginary God, so long as it has no implications beyond your own personal being, so long as it suggests no political imperative which might be a challenge to the authority ofRome.

But the time of the witness, the time of the martyr, is at hand.  Only a handful of nations stand in the way of the completion of globalization.  Rome will soon raise its standard, claiming authority over the whole earth.  Unless we are ready to give away our humanity, it will be necessary in this time to speak the truth that Rome does not want to hear: We who belong to the Messiah of Israel are the polis of God, true children of Abraham, not one of the nations.  We are the great and eternal political imperative of God.


[1] Genesis 17.1-8

[2] Romans 11.25-32

[3] As, equally, there can be no true Islam apart from submission to the God of Abraham, apart from which Mohammed’s prophetic mission makes no sense at all.

[4] It is the presence of the Spirit of God in the human heart which furnishes the heart with the love of God’s law, thus the fulfillment of the prophecy of  Jeremiah.  The broad provision of the Holy Spirit to the people of God was dependent upon the agency of our king to redeem us at the cross, to rise from the dead, and to return to the Father.  Jesus instructed his disciples beforehand:  “I am going to the Father….I will ask the Father to give you another Helper to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth: the world cannot receive him, because it neither sees nor knows him, but you know him, because he remains with you and will be within you.  I will not leave you forlorn; I am coming to you.”  John 14.12, 15-18 Moffatt translation.

[5] Matthew 3.8,9,11

[6] It should be noted that the reference here is to Passover.  In the Scriptures we find that God, through Moses, commanded that Passover is one of three festivals to be celebrated forever, but insteadConstantine abandons Passover and fabricates Easter along pagan lines.

[7] Nor is it only the political right in service toIsrael.  Through the power of AIPAC there is little that happens inWashington, right or  left, Senate or House, Executive or Judicial, outside the bounds of their approval.

[8] Genesis 49.10

[9] Numbers 24.17

Recent Posts

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FRAGMENTS

John 3.31-36: The witness of John the Baptist:

"The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks as one from the earth. The one who comes from heaven is above all. He testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no one accepts his testimony. The man who has accepted it has certified that God is truthful. For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit. The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him.

Isaiah 19.19-25.
In that day there will be an altar to the Lord in the heart of Egypt, and a monument to the Lord at its border. It will be a sign and witness to the Lord Almighty in the land of Egypt. When they cry out to the Lord because of their oppressors, he will send them a savior and defender, and he will rescue them. So the Lord will make himself known to the Egyptians, and in that day they will acknowledge the Lord. They will worship with sacrificies and grain offerings; they will make vows to the Lord and keep them. The Lord will strike Egypt with a plague; he will strike them and heal them. They will turn to the Lord, and he will respond to their pleas and heal them. In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. In that day Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing on the earth. The Lord Almighty will bless them, saying, "Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance.

Psalm 87
He has set his foundation on the holy mountain;
the Lord loves the gates of Zion
more than all the dwellings of Jacob.
Glorious things are said of you,
O City of God:
"I will record Rahab and Babylon
among those who acknowledge me --
Philistia too, and Tyre, along with Cush --
and will say, 'This one was born in Zion.'"
Indeed of Zion it will be said,
"This one and that one were born in her,
and the Most High himself will establish her."
The Lord will write in the register of the peoples:
"This one was born in Zion."
As they make music they will sing,
"All my fountains [sources] are in you."

The great hymn of John Newton [Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion, City of Our God, is based on Psalm 87 above. It represents the heart of the ancient love of Zion, before the advent of Herzl, the love of the City of God in its present transcendent reality, the City of those who love God. The banner of our city is Yeshua our king. By the hand of Yeshua, and by his hand alone, the day will come when our transcendent city will be reunited with the geographical city.

Isaiah 11.10
In that day the Root of Jesse [Yeshua our king] will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him and his place of rest will be glorious. In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the remnant that is left of his people from Assyria, from Lower Egypt, from Upper Egypt, from Cush, from Elam, from Babylonia, from Hamath and from the islands of the sea. He will raise a banner for the nations [Yeshua our king] and gather the exiles of Israel; he will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth.

Isaiah 44.3,5
I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring,
and my blessing on your descendants....
One will say, "I belong to the Lord";
another will call himself by the name of Jacob;
still another will write on his hand,
"The Lord's,"
and will take the name Israel."

Isaiah 56.3,6,7,8
Let no foreigner who has bound himself to the Lord say,
"The Lord will surely exclude me from his people."
And let not any eunuch complain,
"I am only a dry tree."
...And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord
to serve him,
to love the name of the Lord,
and to worship him,
all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it
and who hold fast to my covenant--
these I will bring to my holy mountain
and give them joy in my house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar;
for my house will be called
a house of prayer for all nations.
The Sovereign Lord declares --
he who gathers the exiles of Israel:
"I will gather still others to them
besides those already gathered."

Isaiah 66, excerpts:
"This is the one I esteem:
he who is humble and contrite in spirit,
and trembles at my word....
Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her,
all you who love her;
rejoice greatly with her,
all you who mourn over her.
For you will nurse and be satisfied
at her comforting breasts;
you will drink deeply
and delight in her overflowing abundance....
"I will extend peace to her like a river,
and the wealth of nations like a flooding stream;
...See, the Lord is coming with fire,
and his chariots are like a whirlwind;
For with fire and with his sword
the Lord will execute judgment upon all men,...
And I,...am about to come and gather all nations and tongues, and they will come and see my glory.
I will set a sign among them, [Yeshua our king] and I will send some of those who survive to the nations -- to Tarshish, to the Libyans and Lydians...to Tubal and Greece, and to the distant islands that have not heard of my fame or seen my glory. They will proclaim my glory among the nations. And they will bring all your brothers, from all the nations, to my holy mountain in Jerusalem..

Daniel 7.13,14
In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man [Yeshua our king], coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

Daniel 4.34,35,37
AT the end of that time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven...Then I praised the Most High; I honored and glorified him who lives forever.
His dominion is an eternal dominion;
his kingdom endures from generation to generation.
All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing.
He does as he pleases
with the powers of heaven
and the peoples of the earth.
No one can hold back his hand
or say to him: "What have you done?"
...Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven, because everything he does is right and all his ways are just. And those who walk in pride he is able to humble.

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