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The Apostle Paul said, “I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh: Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.
“Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel: neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, they which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted for the seed” (Romans 9:2-8).
To which Paul added in Romans 11:7, “What then? Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded (According as it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear;) unto this day.”
God worked with Abraham, and his seed after the flesh, for about 2,000 years; giving them the covenants and the promises; and ultimately the Messiah. After about five hundred years from the time God began to give His promises to Abraham, God raised up Moses who led His people out of Egypt; “a nation, great, mighty, and populous” (Deut. 26:5).
When Moses had managed to get the nation of Israel to Mount Sinai, God gave them the ten commandments, which is the covenant wherewith He married them (Exodus 34:28), and the law. Forty years later, as the people were assembled in Moab; ready to cross Jordan and possess the land which God had promised them, God gave them another covenant, “beside the covenant which he made with them in Horeb (Sinai),” (Deut. 6:1 through Deut. 29:1).
In Deuteronomy chapters 27 and 28, at the command of God, Moses commanded blessings upon Israel, saying, “It shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all His commandments which I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the Earth, etc.”
The Lord also spoke curses upon them, saying, “But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord they God, to observe to do all His commandments and His statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee.”
Then for about 1,500 years, God worked with that chosen nation; trying to keep them in line until He could bring forth the promised Messiah among them; and fulfill all of His promises and His covenants which He had made with them. He would endure their unfaithfulness: their idolatry for a time, and then He would sell them into the hands of their neighbors to punish them. Afterward, He restored to them freedom from their enemies; giving them sovereignty so that they would be able to serve and worship only Him.
For the first thousand years, more or less, that they dwelt in that land, they were afforded that sovereignty for only seventy times seven (490) years. Not once in all of that time did they obey God, and keep the seventh-year Sabbath which He had commanded them. Therefore, God sold them in slavery under the hands of the kings of Assyria, and the kings of Babylon and Persia for seventy years; one for every seven years that they were free to serve God, but would not give Him the seventh-year Sabbath.
It appears that, from the time when they were allowed to return to the land which God had given them, for at least seven weeks of years (the first 49 years of the “seventy weeks”), they finally kept the seventh year Sabbath (Daniel 9:25). However, “in the dispensation of the fullness of times,” when Messiah the Prince did come, there was only a small percentage of “Natural Israel” who believed on Him; and the rest were left behind.
A perpetual covenant had been given to Aaron, and to his sons, there in the wilderness of Sinai. But they were prone to laxity, as well as to idolatry. How often they did defile the temple; dishonoring God and bringing His wrath upon them. When Jesus came, He found them more devoted to money than to God in their service in the temple, and He took a scourge and drove the money changers out of that natural temple. In so doing Jesus fulfilled that prophecy in Psalm 69:9, “The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up.”
At the death of Jesus, Israel entered into the seventieth week of Daniel, in Daniel 9:24-27. He said, “He (Messiah the prince) shall confirm the covenant (the New Testament covenant which He purchased on the cross) with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.”
Once again the sins of Israel had caught up with them. But the time had changed, and this time, they were not merely sold into the hands of their enemies for a while. This time, the death of Jesus left them without a husband: without a covenant, and therefore, desolate; the woman without a husband. And they remained desolate until that which was determined was poured out upon them in 70 A.D.
In Acts 4, we see the apostate priesthood beginning to persecute the “Election” with floggings and threatenings. Then, when they prayed, they were all filled with the Holy Ghost with which they had already been “baptized.” As Luke continued the narrative we see the fulfillment of Jacob’s prophecy, in Genesis 28:17, in the death of Ananias and Sapphira. As Jacob said, “How dreadful is this place! This is none other than the House of God.” The House of God: the Temple had been replaced by the spiritual Temple: The Church of the Living God.”
It was in the middle of the seven years following the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that the perpetual covenant, under which the priesthood of Aaron had worked for so many centuries, was nullified. The sacrifice and oblation which God had, for so long a time, received at their hands ceased to be accepted by God (Daniel 9:27). That responsibility was then laid upon the sanctified and accepted “Church.” If that had not been the case, the death of Ananias and Sapphira would not have occurred as it did. That couple laid a defiled offering upon the New Testament altar: the Twelve Apostles (Hebrews 13:10). How much sorer punishment than was meted out unto them that they would have received under Moses (Hebrews 10:29).
That “sacrifice and oblation” which was presented to God by the priesthood of Aaron included burning the incense and lighting the seven lamps which were upon the candlestick. The Twelve alluded to the responsibility which pertained unto them in both of these things when they ordained the Seven Deacons in Acts 6, saying, “The Twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them, and said, It is not reason that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables. Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word.” The incense which the Sons of Aaron offered was actually a shadow of the Prayers of the “four Breasts, and four and twenty Elders” in the Jewish and, eventually, Gentile Church. It takes the twelve in both of those churches to fulfill that prophecy in Revelation 5.
Thus, Israel did not obtained that which he sought for; but the election did obtain it, and the fullness of the Jewish promises and covenants were manifested in the glorious Jewish Church through the end of the first century A.D. That “chosen generation” had become a “Royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, that they should show forth the praises of Him who had called them out of darkness into His marvelous light.”
Something marvelous happened at the time of the death of “the Lamb of God which takes away the sins of the world.” As it is written, “Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost. And the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom.”
Wherefore, Paul said, in Hebrews 4:15-16, “For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”
It is, perhaps, not perfectly clear at what exact time that the access to the throne of grace was made available to whosoever will come to God to find mercy. However, as I have shown, it was given to the Church for a season, perhaps as long as it was faithful to God under the anointed leadership of James and Jude (Genesis 49:10; Psalm 60:7).
When the new sanctuary: The Church had disappeared from the scene, and those Twelve were no longer there to relay the prayers of the saints to God, God began to receive all men of repentance and faith who would come boldly unto the Throne of Grace. From then, until now, all who would believe in Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, whether Gentile or Jew, have had the wonderful privilege of coming directly to God by Jesus Christ.
James, the brother of Jesus, in Acts 15:13-16, made an important statement concerning this phenomenon of God’s Church being a “Royal Priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9-10), and about the function of the Church, in that regard, when Jesus “raises it up again at the last day” (John 6:39).
James said, “Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name. And to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written, after this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up: that the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord, who doeth all these things.”
James did not say, “to take out of them people for His name.” He said A People. That is, a nation: a bride. The object of Him “visiting” the Gentiles was primarily to set the stage for the last few years of the Grace Age, when God would raise up “the House of God:” the Church again, with Gentiles this time. We must ask ourselves what that would have to do with whether or not “the residue of men might seek after the Lord?”
James cited the prophecy in Amos 9, of the fall of the early Church, and of it being rebuilt, using the term “The Tabernacle of David” (1 Chron. 15:29-16:1). Why the Tabernacle of David? Because that is where the Ark of the Covenant: the Mercy Seat was put when it was returned to God’s people, and that is where the “Throne of David” is prophesied to be “established in mercy” (Isaiah 16:1-5).
So, what does that have to do with people in this day being able to “seek after the Lord?” Paul pointed out, in Romans 2:5-11, that whatever God did to, or for, His Jewish people, He would also do to His Gentile people, be it blessing or curse.
In about A.D. 37, in the fulfillment of Daniel 9:27, because of “the overspreading of abominations,” God took the sacrifice and oblation away from His people Israel, and vested the Church with that honor.
Christianity today has done as the nation of Israel had done; they have followed after every false way, and carnality seems to be everywhere. All kinds of sexual sins, and presumptuous sins seem to be found at every level of authority in every church. Therefore, for the overspreading of abominations in Christianity in general, God has determined to take from us the privilege of coming directly to Him. Beginning almost immediately God will do this, and will appoint a people to relay the prayers of His people to His throne.
Then shall be fulfilled that saying in Daniel 12, “O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things? And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end. Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand. And from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days. Blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days.
God has shown me how to reckon the time of the end, particularly the last 2,300 days (about seven or eight months less than seven years). The period of 2,300 days began in March, 2004; the 1,290 days begins in January 2007, and the period of “time, times, and a half” begins in September, 2007.
God has appointed me to tell you what time it is, saying, “Who is a chosen man that I may appoint over her? for who is like Me? and who will appoint (for) Me the time (Jeremiah 49:19)?
Jesus told us that the story of Noah and the flood was a prophecy of the last days. When the first Noah was here, many of the “Sons of God” perished in the flood. The same thing will happen to Christians at this last time. Those who espouse the message which this man, who is spiritually called “Noah,” is delivering to Christianity today will “remain alive” with him, being delivered from the “flood out of the mouth of the dragon.” They shall go in to the marriage, and be changed to immortality at the appearing of our King. All the rest of “spiritual Israel” will be left behind. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. To God be the glory. AMEN!