“The Grand Deception” (Part 1)
God is a covenant making, covenant keeping God. He has made covenants with His people which He never breaks. Any covenant He makes with them is an everlasting defence for their benefit, not His! He always remembers His covenants (Psalm 105:8).
There are Five Biblical Covenants
1. The Abrahamic Covenant
The Abrahamic Covenant, which was cut between Abram (before he was called Abraham) and God through the sacrificial blood of an animal, guaranteed that Abraham’s descendants in the line of Isaac and Jacob would receive the promises of God and that these promises would not be fulfilled through the decedents of Ishmael and Esau.
This covenant guaranteed that when the time was right within God’s calendar through a physical descendant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob would come one who was the eternal Son of God made flesh and who would tabernacle among His people, and through whom salvation would come to the whole world. This covenant also guaranteed that the Land of Israel would be for the Jewish people an everlasting possession (Genesis 12:6-7; 13:14-17; 15:1-6, 17-19; 17:7-8, 15-22).
When Abraham prepared the animal for the sacrifice he cut it in half and placed the pieces opposite each other and between them was a trench into which the blood of the animal would flow making a walkway of blood.
In those times when two people or tribes made a covenant there would be a representative from both sides or families that would walk through the blood and then standing in the middle of the trench read out to each other the terms of the covenant agreement making the two one. It was a contract sealed in the blood of a sacrificial animal. These blood covenants were binding and so sacred that they were never to be broken.
When the Lord passed through that walkway of blood as a flaming torch Abraham knew beyond any doubt that God would keep His side of the agreement. In this particular case Abram did not walk through the blood. How could a sinful man make a covenant with a sinless God? He couldn’t but centuries later a sinless man on behalf of Abraham and his descendants would walk that walkway of blood guaranteeing the promises of God to Abram and his descendants. When God cut the blood covenant with Abraham on earth He was also cutting the covenant with Messiah in heaven before He became incarnate in a flesh and blood body.
As the apostle Paul was to write a few thousand years later; “Brothers, let me put this in human terms. Even a human covenant, once it is ratified, cannot be cancelled or amended. The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say, “and to seeds,” meaning many, but “and to your seed,” meaning One, who is Messiah” (Galatians 3:15-16).
Once the blessed Holy Spirit reveals this great truth of the permanency and complete efficacy of Messiah Jesus’ blood that has once and for all time atoned for sin to the inner spirit man of a New Covenant believer, they know deep down on the inside that the whole Word of God, the Bible, can be trusted because it has been sealed in the blood of Messiah, the sinless man who walked the walkway of blood on behalf of Abraham and his descendants and for the whole human race. This man was the sacrificial Passover Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the whole world (John 1:29) (1 Corinthians 5:7).
This is why when any person repents of their sin and believes on the Lord Jesus by faith to save them, and embraces the truth of what His blood can do for them and in them, receives forgiveness and cleaning from sin by that same blood. Not only this, but God justifies them on the basis of the shed blood and they will be sheltered from God’s wrath upon sin and rebellion which will be poured out om a Messiah hating, Messiah rejecting world (Romans 5:9).
So then this Abrahamic covenant also guarantees not only salvation but also the full restoration of Israel at the end of this age when the faithful remnant of New Covenant believers will inherit the land of Israel under the kingship of Messiah Jesus.
2. The Mosaic Covenant
The Mosaic Covenant was the one God established through Moses and through whom the Law (Torah) of God was given. This guaranteed that His people would know what He required of them, not that His intention was to justify them by keeping the law because no one can keep it, but that through the Law they would see sin for what it is and their need for their sins to be covered by a sacrificial system requiring the shedding of the blood of bulls and goats until Messiah came, and through His shed blood atoned for sin once and for all time, a truth clearly revealed in the New Testament and especially in the Book of Hebrews (Hebrews 1:3; 7:26-27; 9:26-28; 10:12).
While the ceremonial laws and sacrifices were all fulfilled in Messiah the spiritual and moral requirements of the Law are still applicable and incumbent upon every born again New Covenant believer in Messiah to keep, and that only by the power of the Holy Spirit, who has written these laws in the heart of all who have been truly saved and loosed from the power of sin (Jeremiah 31:31) (Revelation 1:6) (Romans 8:1-14) (Galatians 5:16-18).
3. The Israel Covenant
The Israel Covenant which God ratified through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob guaranteed that their descendants would inherit the Promised Land and that even though they would go into exile God would bring them home to stay at the end of this present age because of His blood covenant cut with Abraham. While Israel is back in the land of Israel they are as yet still to possess all of the Land God gave them promised to Abraham, however, in the Messianic kingdom the faithful remnant will inherit all of it as affirmed in the Word of God, the Bible. This is clearly stated in Deuteronomy Chapter 33 and in the prophets.
4. The Davidic Covenant
The Davidic Covenant was God’s promise to King David that he would always have one of his descendants sitting on the throne of Israel. Messiah Jesus is the king of Israel and although He now reigns in the heavenly realms He will once again physically reign on earth from Jerusalem once He has come back as the King of the Jews! (Jeremiah 30:8-10; 33:17) (Ezekiel Chapter 36; 37:15-28) (Matthew Chapter 1:1-17). Jerusalem will be the capital of the whole world! (Isaiah 2:1-5).
5. The New Covenant
The New Covenant is the most essential covenant because it was sealed for ever in the blood of the Messiah at the cross (Matthew 26:28). All of the blood sacrifices temporarily stoned and covered for sin and the blood of bulls and goats could not get down on the inside of a person and cleanse them from sin (Hebrews 10:4). The blood of Messiah Jesus was the pure, undefiled and perfect blood which once and for all time atoned for our sin and has the power to go down into the depths of our heart, to cleanse it from the power of sin, to purge our conscience from dead works to serve the Living God, to give us who believe direct access into the very throne room of God where the golden sceptre of acceptance and forgiveness is stretched out towards us.
Messiah Jesus Himself is the Golden Sceptre God the Father holds out to us as His blood redeemed children, and through that blood of His Son He has purchased our redemption and provided forgiveness of all of our sins and offences against God and His righteous laws and commandments (Ephesians 1:7) (1 John 1:7-9) (Hebrews 9:14) (Hebrews 10:19-20) (Revelation 1:5). By the power of the same blood we can not only approach God but overcome Satan when we testify to what the Bible says the Blood of Messiah does for us and in us (Revelation 12:11).
The Grand Deception
The Grand Deception concerning the vital importance of Israel, especially in the last days, is that many within wider Christendom in the Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant denominations today no longer see Israel as important; rather they see the physical church as having replaced Israel and that God has finished with the Jews as a people and as a nation. No thanks to Constantine and the early Greek and Latin Church Fathers such as Augustine who started to interpret the Bible through the lenses of Greek thought and methods of interpretation in effect Hellenising the Word of God and removing it from its Jewish roots. They started to ‘spiritualise’ passages of scripture that related to the physical restoration of Israel at the end of this present age.
Hence, down through the history of Christendom, Anti-Semitism took off resulting in the persecution of the Jewish people within wider Christendom and the rejection of the Biblical truth that clearly reveals the spiritual and national restoration of Israel as a nation in God’s sight at the end of this present age. In fact those who see the Church as having replaced Israel have no inner revelation of the sacredness and solemnity and efficacy of a blood covenant cut in the Middle-east in Bible times, and the responsibility entailed by both parties cutting the covenant of blood, especially in the time of Abraham.
God’s prophetic end-time purposes are tied to Israel. If He cannot be depended upon to keep His promises to Israel, sworn in a blood covenant, then how can we know He can be depended upon to keep His promises to the Church? Has the Church been any more faithful than Israel? Who has had the greater light? We are without excuse if we neglect so great a salvation! The Church owes a great debt to Israel.
As Paul writes; “I am telling the truth in Messiah, I am not lying, my conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Messiah for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom belongs the adoption as sons, and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law and the temple service and the promises, whose are the fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen” (Romans 9:1-5).
God has a faithful remnant within wider Christendom as well as within Israel. They are not two separate people groups but one new man in Messiah (Ephesians 2:11-22). God has not rejected His people Israel. In fact His eternal plan was to spiritually graft Gentiles into the Commonwealth of Israel not to establish a people group separate from Israel (Romans 11:17-18). The apostles at Jerusalem recognised this fact (Acts 15:12-18). See also (Amos 9:11-12). This was the mystery revealed to the apostle Paul (Ephesians 3:2-6).
When the last Gentile has come into the bond of the New Covenant made with the House of Israel and with the House of Judah, all Israel will then be saved, because God’s gifts and His call are irrevocable (Romans 11:25-29). Saved Gentile New Covenant believers spiritually grafted by faith into the Olive Tree (Israel) are all collectively the Israel of God (Galatians 6:16). Messiah Jesus has only one bride! God has always had a faithful believing remnant since Abel. The Old Testament believers are one with the New Testament believers spiritually, and faith is the common principle that unites and links them together as one people (Hebrews 11:39). It is the faith of Abraham, the father of faith and of all who believe.
As Paul also writes; “I say then, God has not rejected His people, has He? May it never be! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew. Or do you not know what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel? “Lord, they have killed Your prophets, they have torn down Your altars, and I alone am left, and they are seeking my life.” But what is the divine response to him? “I have kept for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” In the same way then, there has also come to be at the present time a remnant according to God’s gracious choice. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace” (Romans 11:1-6).
Epilogue
As the Second Coming of Messiah Jesus comes closer Satan will be trying his very best to eradicate the Jews as a nation from the earth as he has tried to do down through history since they were slaves in Egypt. Pharaoh ordered to have the new born Israelite babies killed and it backfired on Him and that bigtime by God!!!
In the time of Esther it was Haman who sought to have all of the Jews killed and was himself impaled on a stale meant for Mordecai the Jew, and because of the faith of Mordecai and Esther the Jews were saved.
Shortly after the time of Messiah’s birth, King Herod the Great made an unsuccessful attempt to destroy the infant Jesus by ordering the slaughter of all male children age two and younger. The ecclesiastical name given to this killing of babies in Bethlehem and its surrounding regions is the Massacre of the Innocents. Herod died a terrible death! He had a chronic kidney disease complicated by a very uncomfortable case of maggot-infested gangrene of the genitals.
Then you have the Pogroms against the Jews as a race of people and of course you have the Holocaust which saw the extermination of 6 million Jews by the Nazis. God’s vengeance against the Nazis and Germany was a fiery bombardment by the allies air raids which brought an inferno to German cities especially Berlin.
Today in the countries where Jewish people live the persecution against them is rising at an alarming rate. Anti-Semitism is not only increasing in pagan society but also within wider Christendom. Satan knows now that his time is short and that Messiah Jesus will be back to destroy everything that Satan has sought to establish on earth, including his fixation to kill as many Jewish people as he can. Of course we know that Israel will survive as God always remembers His covenants and never breaks them! It does not pay to mess with Israel or with the Land God has given to them as their eternal inheritance!
As the Psalmist writes; “He has remembered His covenant forever, The word which He commanded to a thousand generations, The covenant which He made with Abraham, And His oath to Isaac. Then He confirmed it to Jacob for a statute, To Israel as an everlasting covenant, Saying, “To you I will give the land of Canaan As the portion of your inheritance,” (Psalm 105:8-11).
Those, both within and without Christendom, who argue against the national and spiritual restoration of Israel argue with God!!! You may hug your Bible and say you love Jesus, but if you do not love the Jewish people then you have a big problem!
Satan knows that the Second Coming of Messiah depends on the survival of Israel and that if Israel can be eradicated then there will be no kingdom for Messiah Jesus to come back to. Of course Satan is deluded and twisted in his thinking and knows that the battle has been lost at the cross and ultimately he also knows that he will be consigned to the eternal flames in the lake of fire by the very one who he has sought to destroy (Revelation 20:10).
The Grand Deception then, is that Satan has been rebuilding the wall of partition between Jew and Gentile since the first century which was broken down by Messiah (Ephesians 2:14-16). God’s intention was never a Gentile denominational system! This wall of partition separating Jew from Gentile, we see personified in the physical temple at Jerusalem which had a wall separating the Jews from the Gentiles.
Paul was seeking to pull down this ‘wall’ as it had started to be rebuilt again metaphorically speaking by the assembly of believers at Rome, and in his letter to them he had to reset their thinking Biblically. It was an early form of replacement theology he was addressing in the letter to the assembly at Rome.
Once again it needs to be stated clearly and Biblically that Messiah Jesus has only one bride, not two. At the end of the age when Messiah returns, destroys all opposition, imprisons Satan in the earth, raptures and resurrects all of the saints of all ages and establishes Jerusalem as the capital of the whole world, Israel will “possess their possession” and “possess the gates of their enemies.” The Torah of the Messiah will go forth from Israel across the length and breadth of the earth and the obedience of the surviving nations will be His! (Isaiah 2:2-3) (Genesis 49:9-10).
