The Last days
As I read about what is happening in Israel right now and in the light of growing Anti-Semitism within the wider Body of the Messiah I feel moved to write once again about Israel as we are living in the last days before the return of our Lord Jesus especially since the rebirth of Israel as a nation in 1948. How far away the LORD’s return is we cannot know. When we look at the signs He spoke about in the gospels that would precede His Second Coming and see what is happening to Israel, observing ‘the birth pains’ of wars, disease, famine, pestilence and earthquakes increasing in intensity and frequency around the globe we know that the Kingdom of God is near even at the very gates!
A cup of reeling
Around 500 years before the birth of our Lord Jesus God Himself spoke through the prophet Zechariah concerning the City of Jerusalem in the last days; ““I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the surrounding peoples reeling. Judah will be besieged as well as Jerusalem. On that day, when all the nations of the earth are gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations. All who try to move it will injure themselves.” (Zechariah 12: 2-3)
Threats, intimidation and militancy
Today Jerusalem is central in world affairs and is facing enemies on every side. There are attacks from Syria over Israel’s Northern border, threats from Iran and rockets and flaming kites with incendiary devices attached sent over the Gaza border from Hamas. Then you have Hezbollah in Lebanon threating to send multiple rockets into Israeli cities and Turkey ‘waiting in the wings’ as it were, but with virulent hate for Israel if the truth be known. The International community, with its impotency to stand with Israel because of its bias and with the members of the UN and the EU looking on, all of them together are secretly wishing Israel were no more, not to mention the whole Islamic world. We do have President Trump seeking to support Israel but is his Middle-Eastern peace plan being hamstrung by political expediency? How many so called ‘peace plans’ have already been brokered but have failed? Will America defend Israel if they are attacked? Israel is being increasingly marginalized from the rest of the world. Many in Christendom are going over into the replacement theology camp and are saying and teaching that God has finished with Israel.
Removing the veil and the partial hardening of the heart
On the whole the hearts of the people of Israel are hardened towards God’s salvation provided in their Messiah our Lord Jesus but that hardness of their hearts is not a complete hardness. The Apostle Paul makes it clear that a partial hardening has come over Israel and that a veil is over their hearts concerning the Lord Jesus the Anointed Messiah but God is going to remove that veil and that partial hardness of spiritual blindness in and through the Messiah our Lord Jesus. (2 Corinthians 3:14) (Romans 11:25-29)
The Spirit of Grace and Supplication
As the prophet Zechariah writes…”I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn. In that day there will be great mourning in Jerusalem… (Zechariah 12:10-11) “In that day a fountain will be opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for impurity. “It will come about in that day,” declares the Lord of hosts, “that I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, and they will no longer be remembered; and I will also remove the prophets and the unclean spirit from the land.” (Zechariah 13:1-2)
Holiness to the LORD
As the prophet Zechariah also writes…”In that day there will be inscribed on the bells of the horses, “HOLY TO THE LORD.” And the cooking pots in the Lord’s house will be like the bowls before the altar. Every cooking pot in Jerusalem and in Judah will be holy to the Lord of hosts; and all who sacrifice will come and take of them and boil in them. And there will no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the Lord of hosts in that day. (Zechariah 14:20-21) As it is also written; “Holiness befits your house, O LORD, forevermore.” (Psalm 93:5b) At present Israel as a nation is far away from their Messiah our Lord Jesus and from “that holiness without which no one shall see the LORD” but just as Joseph’s wayward brothers, through adversity and applied pressure were brought to their knees at the feet of their brother Joseph to find reconciliation and forgiveness there, so Israel will be brought to the feet of the Messiah our Lord Jesus and recognize that their perfect Passover lamb has been sacrificed on their behalf. ‘Joseph’s brethren will have a reunion with their older brother whom they rejected and betrayed.’
Mt Zion in the City of David
What a day that will be for Israel! Tears of repentance and joy will flow throughout the City of Jerusalem and that fountain in Jesus’ blood opened up for uncleanliness and sin will have its full effect in the lives of the Israelis in Jerusalem and throughout the whole land of Israel and in the Millennial Messianic Kingdom Israel will become “the head and not the tail” and “possess their possessions.” They will “possess the gates of their enemies” and on that day “no one will make them afraid.” From the Wadi of Egypt to the River Euphrates Israel will be chief among the nations that have survived the Time of jacob’s Trouble and the Millennial Temple, standing on the real Mt Zion in the City of David, will be lifted higher than all of the other mountains (kingdoms) in the world. (Isaiah 2:1-5)
God’s gifts and call are irrevocable
Right now Israel may not look like this will be their destiny considering the opposition they are facing and tough times are ahead for them as a nation and I might add for Christendom on the whole in its apostate and spiritually backslidden state, but God is the divine potter and what He has designed and purposed for Israel the clay and by extension and inclusion the Body of the Messiah He will perform it to the very end because “the Gifts and call of God are irrevocable!” (Romans 11:29) As the late Derek prince used to say; “God does what He wants, when He wants and in the way He wants and asks no man’s permission…Can you make room for the sovereignty of God?” As God Himself has said through the prophet Isaiah; “I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me. I distinguish the end from the beginning, and ancient times from what is still to come, saying: “My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure.” (Isaiah 46:9-10)
The LORD’s portion is His people!
Let the UN the EU and Islam and the media and those within Christendom and the whole world for that matter denigrate and despise the Jewish people, however, what they do not know or recon on is that Israel is still the apple of God’s eye and God Himself has said concerning His covenant people; “But the LORD’s portion is His people, Jacob His allotted inheritance. He found him in a desolate land, in a barren, howling wilderness; He surrounded him, He instructed him, He guarded him as the apple of His eye. As an eagle stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, He spread His wings to catch them; He carried them on His pinions.” (Deuteronomy 32:9-11) Those who are seeking to pick a fight with Israel are picking a fight with God, a fight they cannot hope to win because “The LORD’S Portion is His People!”
