Thoughts on How God's Judgement is Working Today.

Does God judge nations and cities through sending disaster as was recently [falsely] predicted for Christchurch?

In scripture he tended to leave nations alone UNLESS they mistreated Israel*. I see the same thing indicated in end time prophecy. It is mistreatment of His people (church and Israel) that brings about His end time outpouring of wrath.

Romans 1 and 2 give a graphic view of how God judges sin in the present day. He gives people over to their sin so they "stor[e] up wrath ...for the day of God's wrath, when his righteous judgement will be revealed."

That is a very sobering passage of scripture as well as enlightening regarding the nature of God's judgement today (more subtle than blasting cities).

Those He loves He chastens - how tragic for those He ceases chastening and hands over to the "sinful desires of their heart". THAT is the most terrible judgement we could receive prior to that day of His wrath.

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* Israel has a unique position, being the only nation with whom God made a covenant with promises of blessing for obedience and curses for disobedience.
Blessing and cursing of other nations was stated as being conditional upon their treatment of the nation God promised from among Abraham's descendants. (Gen 12)

Refined not Redefined

Two of the proof texts favoured by the promoters of replacement theology are:

Rom 2: 28-29 A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit

And

Rom 9: 6-8 For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham's children. On the contrary, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned." In other words, it is not the natural children who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring.

But to use those texts as support for their theology, the replacement promoters need to totally ignore the clear context of their proof texts.

Regarding Romans 2:28.

Go back several verses and you will read in verse 17:

“ Now you, if you call yourself a Jew; if you rely on the law and boast in God…”

It is specifically addressed to Jews who were trusting in their blood heritage and their relationship to the law. Paul was saying their heritage was not enough. It was not addressing gentiles and saying they have been made Jews through "circumcision of the heart". It was addressing Jews, saying that MORE than heredity and law observance were needed to be part of God’s people. An inward change worked by the Spirit is necessary.

Regarding Romans 9.

When Paul writes “not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.” He is referring to a faithful remnant of the descendants of Abraham Isaac and Jacob.

The statement is excluding SOME of those descended from Israel - it is NOT a statement intended to include others who are not descended from Israel.

It is not a statement that redefines what Israel means. It is a statement that refines what Israel means.

It does not shift the identity of Israel from one group to another - it narrows down the identity of Israel from a wider inclusive ethnic group to a smaller specific section of that wider group.

It pinpoints the faithful remnant AMONG the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It is not transferring attention outside of those descendants.

It's like saying that not all born into a Christian family are Christian - only those who have their own faith in Jesus.

Israel the nation wiped off the map: what would it mean?

On a forum I frequent someone asked:

“Lets say hypothetically Israel the nation was wiped of the map. What would that mean to everyone?”

This is my answer to that question:

It should mean nothing to those who look to the truth of God's word instead of to the world's political map.

Israel as nation WAS wiped off the map for almost 2000 years - and was restored in 1948.

Their long absence from the map is one of the reasons for the creation of replacement theology. With Israel gone, the church needed to give meaning to the many scriptural promises made to Israel, so they assumed that the church had replaced Israel in God's plans.

They overlooked the clearest meaning that Israel's existence did not depend on man's political "realities", but on God's promise. And HIS promises are kept and fulfilled according to HIS timing.

So even if the present day political nation of Israel is wiped off the map again, it would merely mean that Israel will be restored to the land again at some future point in accordance with the prophetic promises given by God.

We should not confuse today's political nation of Israel with the Israel of God. God's Israel takes into account people descended from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob no matter where they live. Despite the creation of the nation state, the majority of Israel remains in exile. One day that exile will end and God's Israel will be totally returned to the land He promised them and they AS A COMPLETE NATION will recognise their Messiah, Jesus and will enter the new covenant through faith in Him.

Are Gentile believers in Jesus “spiritual Jews” or “spiritual Israel”

Are Gentile believers in Jesus “spiritual Jews” or "spiritual Israel"?

Here is a link to an excellent article looking at this question.

http://dailyminyan.wordpress.com/2011/05/25/are-christiansgentile-believers-spiritual-jews-or-israelites-part-i/

Recent David Pawson Sermons

Some more David Pawson sermons can be found here:


The Uniqueness of Christ

See also:

Israel and the Church


They were recorded at IHOP over the last few days (with some still to come). The links may contain sermons by other preachers who I do not know and therefore cannot recommend.
But I have confidence in David Pawson's teaching.

Posts regarding David Pawson are the most viewed on this blog. Next are some about the Arminianism/Calvinism debate. Those with an interest in the latter may find the two part sermon entitled "Grace: Saving, Sovereign, or Free?" interesting. It can be found through the "Uniqueness of Christ" link.


Thanks to Kevin Jackson for telling me about these.

David Pawson: ICEJ Recordings 2010

More David Pawson sermons. These are from an ICEJ Conference held in the UK, June 2010.

To listen follow this link:

http://www.billingefamilychurch.org/media_icej.htm

To download right click on the following links and select "save target as".

Who is Entitled to Jerusalem?

http://www.billingefamilychurch.org/media/sermons/icej/2010/download.php?file=040610_david_pawson.mp3

Jerusalem and Israel in Galatians

http://www.billingefamilychurch.org/media/sermons/icej/2010/download.php?file=j050610_david_pawson.mp3



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Oil Depletion, Israel and the Nations

The world will run out of oil around 100 years before replacement energy sources are available if oil use and development of new fuels continue at the current pace, a US study warns.

Full article here:
OIL Depletion

My comments:

What is partly HIDDEN in the article referenced above is the expected oil depletion date of 2054. Less than 44 years away.
And that year is stated to reflect a more “optimistic date” – which means oil is expected to run out well before then.

People are often most concerned about oil as a fuel and their immediate concerns are usually related to the COST of fuel.

But oil derivatives are essential components of modern food and material production. Our lives are dominated by products manufactured from oil. Many chemical based products rely on oil for components.

We should not live with the illusion that the end of oil production is a problem for the future, maybe beyond our lifetime. Reducing oil availability in the near future will cause greater problems than its eventual disappearance.

I guess we realise that the majority of oil comes from the Middle East – from countries that are strongly anti-Israel.
As the oil situation becomes increasingly dire, there will be more pressure placed on nations who have historically supported Israel. Oil supply will likely be affected depending on a country’s relationship with Israel.

Israel will increasingly be seen as a threat to world peace and security and will come under increasing pressure from the rest of the world to compromise on Arab demands. The nations of the world will be pressured into opposing Israel to maintain their supply of oil.

Ultimately the anti-Israel sentiment could lead to military threats from an oil hungry world. This is merely one scenario based on current world events and the status of world resources which has the potential to lead to the fulfilment of prophecy.

Is it coincidence that an anti-Israel, Arab world has most of the world’s oil resources? Is it coincidence that scripture lists these nations as a prominent part of an aggressive movement against Israel in the latter days? Is it likely that decreasing oil supply will give oil producing nations greater influence over the other nations of the world and their policies regarding Israel?

The True Israel of God: recommended article

There is an insightful and recommended article here:

The True Israel of God

It discusses God’s relationship with Israel as revealed through scripture, compared to God’s relationship with Israel according to man.

Where we stand on this issue depends on who we believe and who we follow: God and His word or man and apostate theology.

"Will Jews be expelled again from their Land?" by Reggie Kelly

Will Jews be expelled again from their Land?

Below is a link to a long but very interesting article about the return of Israel to their land and how it relates to the second coming of Messiah.

The article is by Reggie Kelly, a close friend of Art Katz.
Art Katz’s understanding of Israel’s future received a lot of opposition, particularly from Messianic believers in Israel.
While many see only good things ahead for the Jews and Israel, Katz understood there are still some very disturbing things to come.

After reading and listening to a lot of ideas about Israel I have come across two major, contradictory viewpoints from those who DO recognise that Israel as a nation has a future in God’s purposes.

One sees the restoration of Israel and the increasing number of Jews turning to Messiah as the forerunner of worldwide revival.

The other view (as seen by Art Katz) is not so optimistic about the immediate future. He saw another exile from the land during the great tribulation/ time of Jacob’s trouble. This period would be relatively brief (3 ½ years) and would end with the return of Jesus, when HE would bring His people back to their land, from which they would never again be uprooted.

For some time I have understood there will be a period in history that will eclipse the horrors of the holocaust. Through the ministry of Art Katz, and also articles like the one below, I have been encouraged that I have not been on the wrong prophetic track.

There is a lot in this article to consider and many supporting references to thoroughly check.

http://the.mysteryofisrael.org/2010/08/28/will-jews-be-expelled-again-from-their-land/

God’s Truth Not Man’s Opinion

Two forms of replacement theology which favour man’s opinion above biblical revelation. (1. The church has replaced Israel, 2. Scripture has replaced Spiritual gifts)
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In an earlier post, here, I linked to a sermon about Romans 9-11. That sermon helped me to understand why replacement theology gained such a strong foothold in the church.

For most of the church’s history Israel as a distinct and recognisable nation had been erased from the world map. So what understanding could be brought to the NT references to Israel, and in particular Paul’s strong statements that God had not and would not forsake Israel?
Israel was no more – so was Paul mistaken? Was scripture wrong?

It’s not surprising that a different approach to understanding scripture was seen as necessary. Ambiguous hints could be found that might suggest that the position of Israel had been taken over by the church. So references to Israel were seen as being symbolic instead of literal and the church was seen as the NEW or SPIRITUAL Israel.

That was perhaps the most logical position to take…
…until 1948, when Israel again appeared on the map.

Not everyone had accepted the idea of the church replacing Israel. Some remained faithful to a literal reading of scripture and expected Jews to return to the land of their ancestors. They trusted the word of biblical prophecy instead of geographical and political appearances.

Why is it that today, over 60 years after the return of Israel, the majority of the church still rejects the literal word of scripture regarding Israel? That literal word prophesied both the exile of Israel to all the nations, and also the return of Israel to the land of their ancestors.

They still reject it because they prefer the theology and reasoning of men above the clear word of scripture. Loved traditions are hard to abandon. This example also shows how much man prefers to base his beliefs on his own observations and his own reasoning rather than on the revelation of the word of God.

A similar thing can be seen with regard to Spiritual gifts, in particular those mentioned by Paul in 1 Corinthians. Wide sections of the church deny the relevance of those gifts. They say the gifts were made redundant by the compiling of the scriptures. They even quote Paul:

“But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.”

Their explanation is based on the assumption that “when perfection comes” refers to the coming of the scriptures – and therefore scripture has replaced Spiritual gifts within the church.

How can such a leap of logic take place and be so widely accepted?
The foundation of this assumption comes from a very tenuous inference projected into the phrase “when perfection comes”. It is a case of looking for something that can be MADE to support the already held conclusion that Spiritual gifts no longer exist.

Again it’s a matter of looking at the world around us and basing theology upon what is seen and interpreting scripture to support that view, instead of accepting scripture as written and seeking answers about why our experience doesn’t match scripture’s clearest meaning.

The process goes like this:

Example 1: The bible speaks about Israel and God’s continued faithfulness to Israel – but Israel no longer existed, so the church must have replaced Israel.

Example 2: Spiritual gifts are missing from the church, so they obvious no longer exist.

The final step in both of these examples is to find parts of scripture that can be interpreted in a way that supports the favoured conclusions.

The question arising out of all of this is: Do we REALLY rely on the revelation given in scripture and interpret our world and experience according to what God has revealed?

Or do we insist on interpreting the world and scripture according to our experience and what we can see?

Israel, is to Blame!!!

I’m reading a history of the 1967 Six day war, during which Israel regained control of Jerusalem. I’m only a short way into the book but I’ve learned enough to see how little things have changed over the last 43 years regarding anti-Israel propaganda.

The media today (and also many in the "church") have clearly taken a leaf out of the Soviet book:

…the hypocrisy of the rulers of the USSR, who permit themselves to mock at human intelligence when they put the blame on Israel. Every child in the street knows that the [1967] crisis is due to Nasser [President of Egypt] and he himself admits it. Yet [the soviet representative] at the UN, and his masters in the Kremlin, denounce the “aggression” of Israel. Nasser mobilises military forces and sends them to Sinai. Nasser entrusts the frontier to Shukeiry’s gangs . Nasser closes the Straits of Tiran. And Moscow yells that Israel is to blame…

From Mission Survival ed. R Bondy, O Zmora & R Bashan.

More Romans 9-11

In a previous post I gave links to sermons about Romans 9-11 by David Pawson. Here is another about the same chapters by Peter Tsukahira.

In the sermon he points out that this generation is the first since Paul’s time that is in a position to understand the situation Paul was addressing in his letter to believers in Rome. We live in a generation that can easily view these chapters literally.

Unfortunately, most Christians today miss the point because of their adherence to historical traditions and theologies. Those traditions were established in a time when the logical approach was to allegorise Paul’s references to Israel because to the natural eye Israel had ceased to exist. Replacement Theology was the result of that allegorical approach.

Romans 9-11

Personally I thought he was heading off track about halfway through by talking about revival around the world, but that was only a brief interruption. Others may not find that section to be a problem.

Observations of an Outsider

I recognise and confess to the fact that the following is based on personal observations of a very small cross section of blogs that I've found. If anyone thinks I've drawn wrong conclusions, I would welcome being pointed in the right direction.

As an outsider I see little difference between what seems to be happening in the Messianic fellowships and what is going on in the “churches”. Considering how recently the current Messianic movement started, they didn’t waste time finding reasons for disagreement. Ironically, in its attempt to provide a Jewish context for expressing faith in their messiah, most of the controversy I’ve noticed in the Messianic blogs I’ve found has been about how Messianic Jews should relate to gentile believers. Some believe there is no room for gentiles in their congregations, that non-Jewish believers should restrict themselves to attending churches and leave Jewish believers to have congregations of their own. Others see there is room for both as long as the context of the fellowship remains authentically Jewish in its expression.

A contributing factor to the problem is the increasing number of gentiles seeking fellowship within a Jewish context. Some Messianic fellowships are reportedly predominantly gentile in membership. I have even read reports that seem to suggest a prominent (gentile born) Messianic teacher has undergone (or at least seriously considered undergoing) conversion to Judaism (with all that entails), to practice his faith as a recognised Messianic Jewish “rabbi”.

Another feature muddying the Messianic waters is a belief being promoted by some non-Jews that they are descendants of the allegedly lost tribes of Israel. This modern day manifestation previously associated with British Israelism and also adopted by Mormons and the late Herbert W Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God, has pushed its way into the Messianic movement. Of course, there is no genealogical evidence to indicate the validity of this belief. It is all attributed to “spiritual revelation”. Some Jewish believers see the intrusion of these Israelite wannabes as another example of replacement theology in action.*

The questioning of whether gentile and Jewish believers should fit together in fellowship has its foundations in carnality. There should be no separation. We are one in Him. However, due to the actions of the gentile church for at least 1700 years, a division has been created. The theological error and bigotry of a dominant, apostate, gentile church has helped to further harden Jews against the gospel of THEIR Messiah.

In the present day, when Jews are coming to faith in Messiah in increasing numbers, they are still kept at a distance by the majority of the church through the lie of replacement theology or through an apathetic ignorance regarding God’s purposes for the Jewish people. Centuries of hostility and forced assimilation are difficult to overlook, especially when present day theologies show no real evidence of repentance.
Jewish believers are therefore understandably suspicious in their relationships with gentile believers. I’m sure they want to avoid a repetition of history.

Where does the answer lie?
Scripture reveals that salvation came to the gentile to make Israel jealous.
How would that happen?
Clearly not through hostility and bigotry towards the Jewish people.

But then again, is it likely to happen through gentiles envying the Jew and trying to blend into a Jewish cultural expression?

For gentile believers to succeed in making Israel jealous, their relationship to both Israel and more importantly the God of Israel needs to stand up to God’s expectations instead of being driven by faulty theology and/or misguided sentiment.

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* It was a belief that I had not personally come across before (though I was aware of it. However in the past month I have seen it increasing promoted in a variety of places.

Messianic Meditations: some personal thoughts

I have wanted to write more about the topic I looked at in my two previous (Messianic) articles. There is so much more to cover.

But my reading continues as I try to understand more about the relationship between the church, Jewish (Messianic) believers, and non-Messianic Jews.

I have also sought comment from a Jewish friend and brother who was involved with Messianic Judaism in its early days and in his words he saw “the good, the bad and the ugly” sides of the movement and has not been involved with them for many years, though he maintains His relationship with Jesus.

One of his observations was to compare the Messianic Judaism movement with the emergent church, saying “much of the Messianic Jewish Movement has also bought into the philosophy of maybe if they like us, they'll like our Jesus, too.”

Do the Messianic groups lean too far towards Judaism in their attempt to make the gospel relevant to other Jews? Through a week of looking over Messianic blogs and web pages I could easily conclude that some do.

There is perhaps no less variation of style and belief between the Messianic fellowships than there is among traditional Christian churches. There are a range of expressions from the ritual and liturgy of the “High church”, through to the informality associated with charismatics and house churches.

There is also a broad range of doctrines held, from strict views of “torah keeping” in which gentiles are expected to adhere to “torah” – (Paul’s Galatian letter comes to mind when I come across these) to others who recognise clear differences between requirements for Jewish believers and gentile believers.

Thinking over what I have discovered, from the very brief exposure I’ve had, I see a danger of a maintained division. The gentile church throughout history has treated Jews and even Jewish believers atrociously. Because of that, it would be easy for Messianic fellowships to maintain a distance and go their own way with no interaction with their gentile brothers and sisters. I suspect many are taking that route.

Another danger would be for both Jewish and Gentile believers to try to bring about the fulfilment of prophecy through their own efforts. I have seen several statements about the salvation of the Jews leading to revival among the gentiles. I have read accounts of a supposed increase in conversions throughout the world since the beginning of the growth in the Messianic movement. One figure stated that approximately 1/5 of the world’s population now confessed Christ as saviour. I would strongly doubt the accuracy of that statistic. Only the broadest and loosest definition of “Christian” would encompass such a number of people today*.

While the increasing numbers of Jews finding salvation through recognition of their Messiah is a reason for celebration. We need to hold to what scripture says to determine the truth of the situation. Does scripture reveal that more Jews will come to Messiah as a result of Jewish believers holding more closely to their Jewish traditions and heritage? Is that what has been foretold by the prophets? Will Jews come into relationship with Jesus apart from gentile believers? While that seems to be a logical possibility and while that seems to be the expectation of many Messianic Jews, that is not what is revealed in scripture.

Paul clearly reveals that “salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel jealous”. The journeys of gentile and Jewish believers are therefore not intended to be separate. What divisions there are between Messianic and gentile believers cannot and will not continue as long as both sets of branches (the natural and the wild) are maintained by the same root. Continued division can only result in the cutting off of the offending branches.


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* This claim is an attempt to show the fulfilment of Paul’s statement regarding the Jews, that “if their transgression means riches for the world, and their loss means riches for the Gentiles, how much greater riches will their fullness bring”. The assumption is that their “fullness” has now begun and that the “greater riches” means world revival

Reclaiming Messiah

(Continuing my companion piece to “Messianic Quintet” which began with the article “Hijacking Messiah”.)

In his book Betrayed, Stan Telchin describes how horrified he and his wife (both Jewish) were when their daughter revealed she had found faith in Jesus. He writes “To mention the name of Jesus is awkward enough. To consider Him as the Messiah is to betray our people, to join the enemy and to desecrate the memory of all our ancestors over the last two thousand years”. He continues with the reason for this: “…the knights of the Crusades…descended on Jews with a cross in one hand and a sword in the other. They murdered and raped and pillaged, all in the name of Christianity.”
“Then there was the Inquisition in Spain in 1492, when refusing to convert to Christianity would cost a Jew his life…”

The realities of a 2000 year history of persecution are not easily brushed away. And it is not distant history when we recognise how recently 6,000,000 Jews were added to the number of those murdered in previous vendettas of “Christendom” against the Jews. However Telchin didn’t need to look to history, even recent history, to make the point recalling, at the age of 5 or 6, of being labelled a “Christ-killer”.

Yohanna Chernoff in Born a Jew…Die a Jew reveals another reason Jews have found it difficult to accept the gospel: the fear of losing or forfeiting their cultural identity. What other national group have been required to abandon or hide their cultural roots? Do Americans stop being Americans after coming to faith in Jesus?
Jewish believers faced rejection from two sides – from other Jews who see belief in Jesus as betrayal, “Are you going to become like those people who have been persecuting us for two thousand years?” And from gentile believers, who foster barely disguised anti-Semitism in their expectation that Jews give up their Jewish identity.
This has been expressed most clearly in replacement theology which insists that the Jews are a people rejected by God having been replaced in His affections by the church.

Yohanna Chernoff and her husband Marty were among the recent pioneers of a movement among Jewish believers in which they celebrate their Messiah as Jews. They started one of the earliest successful Messianic Congregations in America, with the mission of taking the gospel to Jewish families and bringing them into an expression of Messianic faith that joyfully embraces its Jewish roots. This mission not only brought opposition from more traditional church groups, it attracted massive protests from orthodox Jewish groups. This story is told in the book Born a Jew…Die a Jew.

Prior to the late 1960s/early 1970s, there were few Jews expressing faith in Jesus the Messiah. This was the time of the “Jesus Movement” through which many young people started to find the Christian message appealing. This influx of young people, often from the hippy community, also affected the new Messianic fellowships. The Chernoffs saw this as the fulfilment of a vision received by Marty which referred to a “ragged righteous remnant”. Their Beth Yeshua (House of Salvation) fellowship gave a spiritual home to many young people searching for truth and was the birth place of Lamb and Kol Simcha, two groups of singers/musicians who introduced popular, Jewish influenced music to the wider church.

While many still insist that God has rejected Israel and replaced them with the church –thought of as “new” or “spiritual” Israel - they cannot honestly deny that a wonderful move of God has begun within the Jewish people. The numbers of Messianic Jewish believers has grown significantly over the last 30-40 years. Even so, while acknowledging this fact, many still insist that there is no future for the people of Israel. And in this insistence there is not only a denial of what is happening around them, there is a wilful denial of what the apostle Paul reveals in his letter to the church in Rome. His words should take away ALL doubt. He categorically states that God has not rejected the Jews, and he is equally categorical when he states that ALL Israel will be saved in the same way that gentile believers have been saved. This will happen after an unspecified number of gentiles have come to faith.

Don Finto’s God’s Promise and the Future of Israel brings an overview of what God has been doing among the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It gives a perspective of the history of Israel and the church, and moves on to the future that both will share together, becoming members of the one family of God. He writes of the important part that Israel plays in God’s future purposes, a future in which the Messiah will return to earth to establish the Kingdom promised throughout countless prophecies in scripture.

Finto believes that the coming of this Kingdom is very near. The re-establishment of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent repossession of Jerusalem as its capital in 1967 are seen as major signs of the imminence of the Kingdom. Could these events be fulfilment of the return of Israel foretold by the old testament prophets: a return from ALL the nations (clearly a different event from the return from ONE nation after the exile to Babylon)? Those prophecies also promise that the people returning to the land of their ancestors will never again be uprooted – again the return from the Babylonian exile does not fulfil that condition considering they WERE uprooted again in 70AD.

Is it coincidence that Jerusalem came under Jewish control and an increase in the number of Jews recognising their Messiah started around the same time?

Hijacking Messiah

On my “literary” blog I will be posting an article called “Messianic Quintet”. It will briefly “review” five books with a common theme that I’ve been reading recently.

Three of the books are autobiographical while the other two offer personal observations of influences that have separated Christianity from its Jewish origins. This article is a companion piece, touching on the historical background of the relationship between Christianity and Israel. Following articles will look at the direction ahead.
This is a complex and potentially controversial issue I hope I’m able to address it with a degree of clarity and not merely add to the misunderstanding. Of course there is no way that the whole matter can be addressed in full and I can only touch the surface.

For the first decades of church history, the Christian faith was predominantly Jewish. It was not considered to be a new religion. Its followers recognised Jesus as “the Messiah”, the King of Israel, whose coming had been prophesied for hundreds of years.

Eventually, the message of the Messiah spread to a non-Jewish audience. The original followers of Jesus then had to decide whether it was necessary for the growing number of gentile followers to convert to Judaism, adopting its laws and traditions in order to be accepted by God.

At a conference in Jerusalem it was recognised that God had accepted gentile believers just as they were and conversion to Judaism was unnecessary (Acts 15)

Moving forward a couple of centuries and the nature of the church had changed significantly. The gentile influence had increased, far outweighing that of Jewish believers.

When the council of Nicea met in 325AD (during which some of the basic Christian beliefs were established as recorded in the Nicene Creed) they excluded all Jewish input. No leader from a Jewish background was invited to attend. It wasn’t long before all influence from Jewish believers was rejected.

The early Jewish leadership of the church saw that gentiles could become followers of Jesus without converting to Judaism, but when gentiles became the dominating influence the same liberty was not extended to Jews. They were expected to desert their Jewish culture and adopt gentile behaviour and lifestyle. It was forgotten that the Jesus at the heart of the church was Himself a Jew who had been proclaimed as King of the Jews.

For the most part of the last 2000 years, Jews have suffered at the hands of those professing to be Christians. “Christian” nations have treated them with scorn and violence, from the Spanish Inquisition, to the Russian Pogroms and of course the Holocaust, during which 1/3 of the world’s Jews was murdered by Hitler’s Nazis. These experiences throughout history contributed to the further hardening of the Jews against the Christian message.

During the church’s first years, prior to the coining of the term “Christian”, believers in Jesus called their faith and lifestyle “The Way” and considered themselves followers of The Way.
Steve Maltz has used this name in the title of his book How the Church Lost the Way. Throughout the book Maltz demonstrates how the Hebraic influence of the original followers of Jesus was replaced by the influences of Greek philosophy and how the acceptance of Jews within the church was ended.
I mentioned the council of Nicea earlier. Of this Maltz writes:

“…the first great Council of the Christian Church now takes a sinister turn and validates a policy that is going to result in nothing less than persecution, leading to genocide, of the Jewish people for centuries to come.”

This statement relates to an official letter circulated from the Council by the Emperor (and chairman of the Council) Constantine regarding the distancing of “Easter” celebrations from the original celebration of Passover, when Jesus was crucified according to the Jewish calendar.

“…it seemed to everyone a most unworthy thing that we should follow the custom of the Jews in the celebration of this most holy solemnity, who, polluted wretches, having stained their hands with a nefarious crime, are justly blinded in their minds…Let us therefore have nothing in common with the most hostile rabble of the Jews.”

Maltz continues, that this was “… the start of a long slide away from the Jewish roots of the faith” and notes that subsequent councils, “threatened excommunication for any Christian celebrating Passover with the Jews…” and “…extended this to all Jewish festivals as well as the Saturday Sabbath”.

In so clearly and categorically rejecting the Jewish origins of faith in the Jewish Messiah, the church did incalculable harm to itself and the integrity of its doctrines and practices. But also it did great harm to the Jew’s relationship with their long awaited King, helping to further harden them against Him and the message He preached.

(see Messianic Quintet

Romans 9 - 11

Links to David Pawson sermons on Romans 9-11

Romans 9

Romans 10

Romans 11

Parts of Romans 9-11 have been adopted by various theological groups to support their chosen doctrines. But what is the context of ALL of these chapters and what is Paul REALLY addressing.

God's Future for Israel

Some disagreements in doctrine are understandable. None of us have perfect knowledge or understanding of scripture and there are some parts of scripture that are ambiguous enough for us to come up with vastly different interpretations until further understanding is gained.

However, some truths could not be made clearer and I don’t know how wide sections of the Christian community can dismiss them.

One of these relates to Israel’s place in God’s purposes and in particular their future.

I don’t have to the time to go through all of the evidence, but scripture could not be more clear about the issue.

One day in the future Israel as a nation will recognise that Jesus is their Messiah and they will be saved under the new covenant in the same way that every other believer becomes saved under the new covenant.

When the future of Israel is revealed in prophecy, scripture is not referring to a “spiritual” Israel – meaning the church, as replacement theology insists.
Those prophecies are referring to NATIONAL Israel, physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to whom the physical land of Israel was promised.

If there was no other prophecy in scripture related to this matter, Ezekiel 36 should establish this truth once and for all.

This portion makes it absolutely clear of whom the Lord is referring.

“24 " 'For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. 28 You will live in the land I gave your forefathers; you will be my people, and I will be your God. 29 I will save you from all your uncleanness.

He is referring to a people who have been scattered among the nations and whose forefathers had been given a land. They will be returned to that land and live in it. And they will be cleansed and given a new heart and a new spirit. This clearly refers to the new birth – a fact recognised even by the replacement theologians who apply those references to themselves but ignore the fact that the context here in Ezekiel is specifically and CLEARLY referring to Israel.

Paul also makes Israel’s ultimate future clear when he writes in Romans 11:

26 And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written:
"The deliverer will come from Zion;
he will turn godlessness away from Jacob.
27 And this is my covenant with them
when I take away their sins."

“But”, say the replacement theologians, “Paul has already said that ‘not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.’” As if this statement is enough to deny that ANY descended from Israel are Israel and that the statement overturns all prophecy that promises Israel a future with God.

What does that statement mean? I think it is explained towards the end of Amos (chapter 9):

9 For I will give the command,
and I will shake the house of Israel
among all the nations
as grain is shaken in a sieve,
and not a pebble will reach the ground.
10 All the sinners among my people
will die by the sword,
all those who say,
'Disaster will not overtake or meet us.'
11 "In that day I will restore
David's fallen tent.
I will repair its broken places,
restore its ruins,
and build it as it used to be,
12 so that they may possess the remnant of Edom
and all the nations that bear my name, "
declares the LORD, who will do these things.
13 "The days are coming," declares the LORD,
"when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman
and the planter by the one treading grapes.
New wine will drip from the mountains
and flow from all the hills.
14 I will bring back my exiled people Israel;
they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them.
They will plant vineyards and drink their wine;
they will make gardens and eat their fruit.
15 I will plant Israel in their own land,
never again to be uprooted
from the land I have given them,"
says the LORD your God.

This section of scripture echo Ezekiel’s prophecy about Israel being returned to the land and adds NEVER AGAIN TO BE UPROOTED* (obviously referring to a time AFTER the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersal and exile of Jews from the land for almost 2000 years).
It also gives us a hint of who God considers to be the true Israel. Firstly taking into account OT prophecy there should be no doubt that Israel is ALWAYS national Israel because of the references to the land of their forefathers. Secondly we take into account Paul’s statement that not all descended from Israel are Israel. Thirdly we see in Amos that a shaking of Israel will take place in which sinners among God’s people of Israel will not survive. Therefore it will be the remnant of national Israel who will survive the shaking who will be that “All Israel” who will be saved in the end times.

It is probably not surprising that those who reject Israel’s future place in God’s plans, also deny the literal millennial reign of Jesus from Jerusalem. And to deny that its necessary to ignore or distort what is clearly revealed throughout the majority of scripture, in particular the Old Testament prophets and the writings of the apostles.


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* I think it would be a mistake to assume that the establishment of Israel as a nation in 1948 HAS to be the return being prophesied in scripture. It could well be - but personally I wouldn't take it for granted. I see the possibility of a further exile (possibly short term) in which Israel is again subjected to extreme persecution (possibly the sifting mentioned by Amos) after which the final and permanent return occurs.

Holocaust Past & Future

There’s a very interesting story here: The man who smuggled himself into Auschwitz

Thanks to the Arminian Today blog for making me aware of it.

This week I’ve been watching a BBC TV interpretation of “The Diary of Anne Frank”. There’s a 50 minute documentary on the DVD that I still have to watch – not about the Frank family, but about another girl of a very similar age who met the same fate.

I have also ordered a copy of a Martin Gilbert book, a history of the holocaust. Today’s comfortable westerners have no way of comprehending the experiences so many millions of people had at the hands of Hitler.

Many of those people were perhaps little different from ourselves, enjoying comfortable and successful lives until the world around them changed and they were thrown into an unimaginably miserable situation that millions didn’t survive.

We can look back on those events with justifiable horror and wonder how they could have happened. We can feel thankful that such atrocities could never happen again on such a scale. But it would be a misplaced sentiment. Not only will those evils be committed again, they will be surpassed.

Jesus warned of a time to come when: “there will be great distress, unequalled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equalled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.”

Can we afford to live in complacency? Note Jesus said that the time of distress would be unequalled both before and after. It will be the most horrific time in the history of mankind.

Around one third of the Jewish people were murdered through Hitler’s actions. What does that indicate about the future? Jesus' prophecy in Matthew 24 indicates terrible times for both Christians and Jews. It clearly doesn’t seem very bright and it would be easy to sink into a state of pessimism. But this time of unequalled distress is not the end. We need to remain aware that God has the last word, and no matter what evils man may commit, God will bring a glorious end to them with the return of His Son, the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

That return, that will end the "time of distress", is the great hope that will sustain followers of Jesus throughout that time of suffering. A motivating hope that will encourage believers to remain faithful despite the intense hardship they experience throughout the persecution they face.

"When Doctrine Matters" by Fred London

The admonishment of "rightly dividing" or "handling accurately the word of truth" has not as its focus the end result, but rather, the process which leads to a clear apprehension of God's thought to man. For if the process is sound, it is more than likely that the end result will also be sound. Conversely, if the process is faulty, we can expect a result which will be equally as faulty. Statements such as, "I don't get into doctrine" or "Doctrine doesn't matter," has the sound of spirituality to it, but it is a pseudo-spirituality. In fact, this rather "nice" sounding attitude flies in the face of Scripture. This is not the sort of peace and unity of which the Scripture speaks. "For there must also be factions among you so that those who are approved of God may become manifest."


Frankly, it smacks of ecumenicalism, which produces a false peace and a false unity because it is not held together by the Spirit of truth. We are exhorted to "speak the truth in love," meaning, you can't have one without the other. Nowhere does the Scripture teach the notion of unity at any cost. As one man has said, "It is better to be divided by truth than united in error." Scripture clearly forewarns that one of the major signs of then "last days" will be that so many will no longer adhere to sound doctrine. It cannot be stressed enough simply because God stresses this imperative from cover to cover throughout the Scriptures, that the authenticity of ministry is in direct proportion of the authenticity of the oral or written words with which the vessel represents the Mind of the Lord.


These days, in particular, there is a strong and irreverant tendency for those who would presume to speak for God to be far too glib and take license with "the holy things of God." Consequently, it would serve us well, having a healthy fear and trembling, to avoid at all cost, the presumptuous sin of "speaking that which the Lord has not spoken." Therefore, sound doctrine does matter, not from a legalistic standpoint where "the letter kills," but as it relates to a clear and accurate understanding of God's character, ways, and purposes. It matters as to how Christ is represented, in Heart, in Mind, and how that directly correlates into how His Body functions, and the type of witness she portrays to the world.


It matters because "For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks." It matters because, "For as a man thinks in his heart, so is he." It matters because of the great influence it has upon our world view. It matters because how we think about the Church's place and purposes for the "last days" and her relationship and obligation as it pertains to Israel (the Jewish people) will ultimately determine as to whether the "limb" we represent will be "put out of joint" or be a "vessel fit for the Master's use." With our being able "to discern the times" we therefore will know what needs to be done at the most critical time of church and world history.


Furthermore, though reading others' thoughts on a particular subject can be profitable, there comes a time where we reach a point of diminishing returns. Case in point: Jesus asked, "Who do men say that I am? Some say that you are Jeremiah, or Elijah, or John the Baptist raised from the dead. Then Jesus asked, "But, who do you say that I am?" In other words, there comes a point where referring people to other sources loses its effectiveness by no longer serving a useful purpose. Not unlike most, I have read many books and heard many teachings over the years, and it is important to always maintain a teachable spirit in order to continue to benefit from the spiritual deposits in others. But, there comes a point where it is time to be able to give an account for what we believe and why we believe it.


As it says in Ecclesiastes, "Be warned: the writing of many books is endless, and excessive devotion to books is wearying to the body." Today, we can just as easily apply that principle to websites. But, regardless of the means through which we receive the seeming never ending glut of teachings, it is high time for many of us grow up and not be so easily "driven by waves, and by every wind of doctrine." Why? Because doctrine does matter!