(Psalm 66:8-12) “Praise our God, O peoples, let the sound of His praise be heard; He has preserved our lives and kept our feet from slipping. For you, O God, tested us; you refined us like silver. You brought us into prison and laid burdens on our backs. You let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and water, but you brought us to a place of abundance.”
Today Israel as a nation is in the crosshairs of their implacable enemies on all sides, not only from the Islamic nations, but also from the western nations as well if the truth be known. The nation of Israel is being tossed to and fro upon the stormy sea of adversity, affliction and testing and that ordained by God to bring His people into the reality of the Bond of the New Covenant cut in the blood of Messiah Jesus. In the last three and a half years Israel has had five election cycles which would destabilise any country. You have internal strife with the current government and there have been huge protests of about 100,000 Israelis marching against the new government, along with horrific terror attacks in both directions.
Within the government you have ultra-orthodox Jews that are seeking to stifle freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and freedom of religion and especially supress Messianic Jewish evangelism. While the Gospel of the Kingdom is making headway within Israel there are those within the current government who are opposing those who are sharing about Messiah Jesus to their fellow Jews. You also have threats from Iran on the verge of having the capacity to make a nuclear weapon. Then you have Hezbollah in the North with thousands of rockets ready to be rained down upon Israeli cities. You have Hamas in Gaza, and strife coming from Palestinian Arabs within Judea and Samaria over Jewish settlements there as well as international pressure from America, the EU and the UN that are seeking to stop the settlements being built.
Russia is not happy with Israel supplying weapons to Ukraine. And then you have the western democracies and the Arab world wanting to see a two state solution which God does not sanction and will judge those nations that are pushing for it (Joel 3:1-3). The Arabs under the leadership of Abbas and Co will never accept this “two-state solution from hell” as they want it all including the whole of Jerusalem. No other nation on earth has suffered at the hands of their enemies and adversaries as much as Israel has. However, since Noah and the eight members of his family were spared the wrath of God He has always had a remnant known to Him who has stayed faithful to Him down through Israel’s long and troubled history even to the present time.
Many Jews have come to faith in Messiah in Israel but there are still many more Jews whom God in His foreknowledge and wisdom has chosen to come to faith in Messiah Jesus before He returns to set up His Messianic Millennial kingdom with His earthly headquarters at Jerusalem (Romans 11:5). Also in needs to be said that within wider Christendom in the Gentile nations God also has a faithful remnant chosen by His foreknowledge and grace, that are also to be spiritually grafted into the Olive Tree, figuratively being the Israel of God and part of the Commonwealth of Israel.
When the last of those Gentiles chosen by God’s grace from out of the pagan nations have come to faith in Messiah Jesus, then every Jewish person left alive on earth will also come to faith in Him after the fullness of the Gentiles have come into the Commonwealth of Israel and become partakers of the blessings of the New Covenant made with the House of Israel and with the House of Judah, not with a Hellenised Christendom! In that day “All Israel will be saved” (Jeremiah 31:31) (Romans 11:25-27). At present Israel and Christendom with its denominational structures are being refined by God through applied pressure to bring forth His faithful remnant to become one flock under one shepherd, being Messiah Jesus, and destined to co-reign with Him in His Messianic kingdom to be inaugurated in the age to come (Ezekiel 20:36-38) (John 10:16) (Revelation 5:10).
In that day, after all opposition has been eradicated by Messiah at His Second Coming, the surviving nations will hear the praises of His people and recognise and acknowledge that He has preserved their lives through the time of tribulation and not allowed them to perish as His blood redeemed people. In that day the remnant, being the Israel of God as one new man in Messiah, will recognise that God had tested them and refined them like silver and even brought them into the prison of affliction where they were forced to look only to Him alone for their salvation and deliverance from the hands of all who hate them, delivered from the slavery of sin and to the Egypt of this world, and from Satan the Pharaoh and god of this world.
Through the blood of Messiah, the Passover lamb who has been sacrificed God will have removed forever the burdens He in His wise and divine providence has allowed to be laid upon their backs, not to destroy them, but that they might call out to Him and seek Him early in their affliction (Hosea 5:15). He will have allowed men to rule over them in the past by the Egyptians, the Assyrians, and the Babylonians, by the Romans and in the future by the forces of the Antichrist lasting for three and a half years (Daniel 7:21, 25; 12:7) (Revelation 13:5-7).
However, they will never be destroyed as a nation because God remembers His Covenant with Abraham, Isaac and with Jacob concerning the Land of Israel, cut in a blood covenant with Abraham and ratified with that final and perfect everlasting New Covenant cut in the blood of Messiah Jesus (Genesis 15:17-19; 17:7-8) (Jeremiah 31:31-34) (Matthew 26:28). In that day when Messiah Jesus rules over the surviving nations of the world in His Messianic glory and splendour with His redeemed saints being the Israel of God, His people will know that the refining fire and the flood of affliction and testing, trial and persecution they endured in the previous age He used to bring them out of slavery to sin into a place of abundance being His Millennial Messianic Kingdom on earth and of course ultimately into the final, perfect and eternal state, the New Jerusalem! (Revelation 21:1-4).
This is the glorious future of the Israeli remnant chosen by God’s grace within Israel and by extension and inclusion faithful Gentile New Covenant believers spiritually grafted into the Olive Tree, being the Commonwealth of Israel. This is God’s chosen nation out of all the nations of the world, and the Mountain or kingdom that will be raised above all other earthly kingdoms (Isaiah 2:1-5) (Micah 4:1-5). In the age to come Israel will indeed be a light to enlighten the Gentiles and that light which they will reflect will be the light of the wold, Messiah Jesus, the Lion from the Tribe of Judah unto whom will be the obedience of the nations! (Genesis 49:10).
