When our spirits resonate with truth we will discover that there are many wonders beyond those specifically mentioned in the Bible. We are walking with God on a relational journey to discover more about Him and ourselves and what our role is in restoration. We have the Holy Spirit of Truth in us and with us as our guide. We have Jesus, the way, truth and life, in us and with us to disciple us. We have our loving Father in us and with us to Father us into sonship.
Agape love should be what we use to measure and test everything against. If you don’t resonate with anything on the journey, park it and continue to pursue the truth with God directly. There are many things that I don’t yet fully understand cognitively but that does not necessarily make them wrong. There have been many things that I was convinced were true that I now realise were merely man’s opinions and ideas.
The 4 streams of thought that are converging into one mighty river are: Mystic sonship, Realized eschatology, Universal reconciliation, ·Energy frequency healing. We are going to cover the other 3 streams in this module. We have been focused on the mystic stream to engage God.
The fruit of the poisoned tree of Brethrenism are many, and include: · The rapture deception, The millennium deception, The Zionist deception, The dispensationalism deception, The cessationist deception.
The judgment of the second coming ended the Old Covenant religious system. Destroyed the old temple wineskin system. Removed the separation and partition between Jew and Gentile. Established one new man in Christ.
All of the types and shadows of the Old Covenant, including Israel and the land, have been fulfilled spiritually and literally in Jesus and in the New Covenant.
2 Cor 1:20 For as many as are the promises of God, in Him they are yes; therefore, also through Him is our Amen to the glory of God through us.
This issue is probably one of the greatest distractions to the restoration of all things. Are there 2 peoples of God?
Is Israel as a nation still God’s people? Is the restoration of Israel as a nation a fulfilment of prophecy? What is the origin of modern day Israel? Who engineered the formation of the state of Israel? Do all Jewish people support the Zionist view of Israel as a Jewish homeland?
We cannot afford to read the Old Testament including its ‘land’ promises as if the New Testament does not exist. If we do, we can become trapped in the deception of doctrinal confusion.
We can apply this principle to the Promised Land. That God gave the land to the Jews, that is obviously clear. According to the Old Testament, he promised it to Abraham and his descendants (Gen 15:18). But for how long, and for what purpose?
After the exodus from Egypt (that’s where those descendants ended, because of Jacob’s disobedience) they eventually ended up back in the Promised Land. Later, having been ousted from it at the exile to Babylon, a remnant returned to it again.
The New Testament has zero, absolutely nothing, to say about the Jews and the land. That in itself should make us cautious about Christian obsession with Israel and Middle Eastern territory.
The New Testament writers point us in a totally different direction. The New Testament writers give a global application to those Old Testament promises originally limited to the Holy Land.
Abraham would be ‘heir of the world’, Rom 4:13 – his descendants in every land, not just in one.
Rom 4:13 For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be heir of the world was not through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith.
The Middle East was never the objective, the whole world – in fact the whole creation – was.
The majority view within the church through history has been that the church is the New Israel and that the Jews have lost title to that claim.
The Zionist view is a very modern doctrine, formulated in the 1820’s by the Plymouth Brethren. The mindset of Zionism is that the return of Jews to Israel in our own day is a wonderful fulfilment of prophecy. The prophecies usually quoted in support of that view are more obviously interpreted: they actually refer to the return of a Jewish remnant from exile in Babylon around 500 BC. There are a number of Jewish Zionist and Christian Zionist assumptions that are often used to support their arguments for national Israel being a fulfilment of Old Covenant prophesy.
We will look at those assumptions and arguments in context. If you think for yourself, especially if you come to conclusions that are different than the crowd, you might legitimately be called a heretic.
Some people still think that’s bad. “Heresy” is defined as “adherence to a religious opinion contrary to church dogma.” It’s a word that was invented during the medieval 12th century.
It’s from the Greek hairetikós, “to choose,” and it was invented in order to identify the people that didn’t submit to Roman dogma.
This is not new to followers of Christ. The Apostle Paul saw himself as a heretic: “However, I admit that I worship the God of our ancestors as a follower of the Way, which they call a sect-hairetikós in the Greek which means heresy (Acts 24:14).
Paul believed things that the religious establishment hated and feared, and didn’t understand, and was labelled a heretic for it. (And then he went on to write half the books of the New Testament.)
We are following Paul’s arguments in context of that generation. So if you don’t blindly swallow what the religious leaders have taught you, and are instead engaging God for yourselves, you will sometimes arrive at conclusions that will challenge your own beliefs. Congratulations! You have broken free from the intellectual chains of needing somebody else do your thinking for you. Please engage the Truth, Jesus, yourselves and use the plumb line of love to measure things against.
Just because many people are conditioned by their religious programming and say this is the orthodox position does not make that position right
After all, that was once true of the gifts of the spirit, in orthodox cessationism only 150 years ago.
The usual argument is: ‘But the return from exile was a return from a single country, Babylon. The promise that God would bring them back from among “many nations” can only be fulfilled in the return of the Diaspora in our own times.’
Jeremiah saw the Babylonian Empire for what it was: a conglomerate of ‘many nations’, and the return of Jews from Babylon in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah fulfilled those prophecies perfectly, as he himself makes plain.
Jeremiah 29: 10 “For thus says the Lord, ‘When seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfil My good word to you, to bring you back to this place.
14 I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will restore your fortunes and will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile.’”
Another argument: What about Isaiah’s prophecy that God will bring his people back “a second time” in Isaiah 11:11? ‘The return from Babylon was clearly the first, so the second has to be today’s re-gathering’ is the argument used – Wrong.
Isaiah 11:11 Then it will happen on that day that the Lord will again recover the second time with His hand the remnant of His people, who will remain, From Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Cush, Elam, Shinar, Hamath, and from the islands of the sea.
A look at the context clarifies Isaiah states that the first return was, in fact, Israel’s arrival in the Promised Land from Egypt after their earlier escape from slavery at the exodus.
Against that background, the ‘second time’ is the return from Babylon after all. And there’s no mention of a third time to cover events since 1948.
Isa 11:16 And there will be a highway from Assyria for the remnant of His people who will be left, Just as there was for Israel in the day that they came up out of the land of Egypt.
First return from Egypt; and second from the Babylonian-controlled nations. Some see a third homecoming of a sort at Pentecost, the Jewish feast that, at the time of Jesus, annually brought Jews back to Jerusalem from their homes throughout the Roman Empire. This is actually the spiritual fulfilment on the day of Pentecost.
Acts 2:5 Now there were Jews living in Jerusalem, devout men from every nation under heaven. This fulfilled Matt 24:4- This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.
It is interesting that Luke’s list of their home areas echoes those mentioned in the homecoming promise of Isaiah (Acts 2:5-11 cf. Isaiah 11:11).
All the ‘Jews to Israel’ promises were fulfilled in the distant past. There’s no reason at all to look for any further fulfilment today.
Argument- What about the principle of double or multiple fulfilment of prophecy? Isn’t there room there for the Zionist return?’ No, because all prophecy finds its ultimate fulfilment in Jesus and His church.
Jesus is what life, history, the Bible and prophecy are all about.
Once Jesus came on the scene, all the strands of Old Testament prophecy came together in him.
Acts 3:24- And likewise, all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and his successors onward, also announced these days. 25 It is you who are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’
Luke 21:22 because these are days of vengeance, so that all things which are written will be fulfilled.
Luke 24:44 Now He said to them, “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” 45 Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures,
Luke 21:46 and He said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, 47 and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
There is no need for things to be fulfilled in ways unrelated to Jesus or to the church which is his body. The only homecoming that matters now is the exodus of God’s children from the ‘Egypt’ of lost identity through the blood of Jesus, God’s Passover lamb.
Their gathering of God’s children into the real, New Covenant Israel of God (which is the redeemed community, the church) is what all the Old Testament ‘return to the land’ prophecies were ultimately about.
Acts 3:24 And likewise, all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and his successors onward, also announced these days. 25 It is you who are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’
2 Corinthians 1:20 For as many as are the promises of God, in Him they are yes; therefore also through Him is our Amen to the glory of God through us.
All the promises and covenants find their fulfilment spiritually in Jesus. Hebrews develops this theme, that a patch of Middle Eastern territory for the Jews was merely a picture of a spiritual homeland for all God’s people in Christ and the church.
First the physical then the spiritual fulfilment Argument. That’s all very spiritual. Don’t you believe there’s room for physical and geographical fulfilments as well? Surely there’s a heavenly people with a heavenly destiny, the church, and an earthly people with an earthly destiny, the Jews?’ Wrong assumption.
No, the Bible makes the progression clear: the natural comes first, then the spiritual.
1 Cor 15:46 However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual.
There is no need for another natural or physical fulfilment The one doesn’t run alongside the other; it supersedes it.
Now that Christ has come, turning back to the natural (Jews in Middle Eastern territory) is unthinkable. Returning to a physical temple in Jerusalem, reinstituting animal sacrifices, is unnecessary Everything is better in him. Why grasp at shadows when the reality is here?
Colossians 2:16 Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day 17 things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.
Why should the man who has just won millions on the lottery live in poverty? Even Abraham never saw Canaan as his ultimate destiny. He had a higher purpose: a heavenly country, a city whose architect and builder is God himself.
Heb 11:8 By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going. 10 for he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
Heb 11:15 And indeed if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them.
That’s the church, Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem. It is not just a future prospect, inaccessible until Christ’s return. Already those who are in Christ ‘have come to’ it.
Heb 12:22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.
The Old Jerusalem is not a patch on the new one! So, whether ethnic Jews live under the Israeli flag, or in New York, or Leeds, or wherever; like Cambodians, Englishmen, Americans, Greeks and Kashmiris, they all need the gospel, wherever they live. There can be but one conclusion about the Jews’ future in the New Testament.
The message expressed by Paul is that, despite Israel’s rejection and merited judgment, God continues to hold open the doors of His mercy so that the Jews can again be ingrafted individually through faith in Jesus.
Well over half the world’s Jews live outside Israel and, today, emigration continues to outstrip immigration. But if God is the God of all the earth, He can use the fact that lots of Jews do live in Israel to further His purposes. I trust He will do so; but let’s not get all misty-eyed and pseudo-spiritual about Zionism. It’s a deceptive side-line, nothing more.
The mainline? ‘Understand, that only those who believe in Jesus are children of Abraham.‘ Experience reveals that some people get very emotional about this subject. So please note the following: I am not anti-Semitic. I have as much time for Jews as I have for anyone else, but I have no favorites as all are God’s children.
The followers of Judaism and those non-religious Israelis need God’s grace, as do everyone else. According to the New Testament, that grace is equally available to both. Today there are not 3 people groups, Christians, non-Christians and Jews, just 2: believers and non-yet believers. I believe some people may feel God has given them a particular call to evangelize the Jews. Please don’t condemn those of us who may, instead, be called particularly to evangelize the British, the Moroccans, the Guatemalans or the Palestinians. The present-day State of Israel is a reality, even if there are serious doubts about the wisdom of its creation. For the sake of peace, the Arabs need to accept its existence and withdraw their determination to wipe it off the map. At the same time, some sort of Palestinian state is needed, existing alongside Israel and living in peace with it. Genocide is not acceptable for believers to support under any circumstances. The current mutual killing by both sides remains unacceptable, and Christians should certainly not adopt an unthinking support for Israel in the conflict on the mistaken assumption that the State of Israel somehow enjoys divine support. It does not.
This complicated issue is connected to futurist eschatology and old covenant mindsets This understanding of the relationship between old and new has far-reaching implications.
Those who like to keep the Covenants separate emphasize that God’s dealings under the Old Covenant were with the people of Israel, whereas his dealings under the new are with all who believe, which is true, but treats the two Covenants as if they are in separate, water-tight compartments. Therefore, every ancient promise to the Jews has to be literally fulfilled because, in their view, the Old Covenant continues to run parallel to the new one and God remains obliged to fulfil its promises to the letter. So, events in the Middle East since 1948, for example, are seen as the fulfilment of God’s Old Covenant promise of the land to the Jews.
That logic is not biblical because the Old Covenant is obsolete and has faded away according to Hebrews.
Heb 8:13 When He said, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.
The Old Covenant is radically fulfilled in the new; therefore, in respect of the Jews and the land, the new is bigger and better, at the same time both redirecting and reinterpreting the promises of the old one; which is exactly what the New Testament teaches.
Just as the post-flood world superseded its pre-flood counterpart, the arrival in Christ of the New and better Covenant signals that the Old one has now been superseded by being fulfilled in the New rather than continuing to run alongside it.
God deals no longer with Middle Eastern territory; his program has gone global, as his intention was always for all families to be blessed.
The old Israel has been superseded by the worldwide new Israel of God; that is, the church. This is the new order of things in Christ, bigger and better in every respect. The butterfly of the New Covenant has emerged from the chrysalis of the old, so we need to stop focusing on the old obsolete thing and rejoice in its fulfilment in the beauty of the new.
Replacement Theology.
The traditional Church belief was that the “Gentile” Church replaced the Jews as God’s chosen people. I do not believe this to be true.
Past theologians did not really understand the issue from the perspective of biblical law. There are symbols that relate to Israel and Judah that Paul uses: these are used to give insight into the Old and New Covenants and who were the true Jews. The fig tree and its branches are symbols used to illustrate continuation rather than replacement. What are Israel and Judah, therefore true Jews? The early Church, founded on Jesus Christ and the apostles, was the true Judah “tree” that produced the good figs in the first century application of Jeremiah 24.
However, Jesus’ followers were a tiny minority and were not in control of the temple in Jerusalem. When the bad figs rejected Jesus as Messiah, the believers were persecuted and finally expelled from the land. They were excommunicated from Judaism.
The good figs lost their identity as “Jews.” That is, the bad figs retained the identification with the tribe or nation of Judah, while the good figs became known in the world as “Christians” (Acts 11:26).
But God knew them as true Judah – the followers of the King of Judah, Jesus Christ. They were the good figs that God had expelled from the old land for their good.
The evil figs, however, remained in the old land in their state of rebellion until the nation was destroyed in 70-73 A.D. God gave them forty years in which to repent, but many of them refused. The Roman armies carried out that judgment: that was the reaping of the rejection of the Messiah they had sown.
Jesus said in His parable in Matthew 22:7, But the king [God] was enraged and sent HIS armies, and destroyed those murderers, and set their city on fire.
The point is that a “Gentile Church” did not replace a “Jewish Church.” The earliest Christians were always the good figs of Judah, carrying on the biblical dominion mandate that had been given to Judah. When the King of Judah came, they followed Him and were discipled by Him to be fruitful as a “good fig.” In accepting Him as Messiah, God made a New Covenant with them, as prophesied in:
Jeremiah 31:31, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a New Covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.
He did NOT make this covenant with a “Gentile Church.” He made it with the good figs of the true house of Judah, led by the Prince of that tribe, Jesus Christ.
If any non-Jew wants to be saved, he must transfer his citizenship to the house of Judah and its King, Jesus Christ. He then becomes a convert to the true house of Judah, symbolic of the fulfilment of the covenant made with David concerning the kingdom; he does not become a convert to Judaism. Judaism is the religion of the rebellious figs, who said in Luke 19:14, “We do not want this Man to reign over us.”
Their fate is given in Jesus’ words in Luke 19:27- But these enemies of Mine who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them in My presence.
They sowed rebellion and reaped the consequences. Zionism has brought representatives of the bad figs back to the land from virtually every nation in the world to continue not wanting Jesus Christ to reign over them. What is most astounding is that many Christians have paid their way through contributions to bring them back to continue their rebellion. The group of early Christian Jews (as God defines them), the light of the Gospel, added many converts to their ranks from nations not of Judah. Some of them were ex-Israelites of the Assyrian dispersion (745-721 B.C.). Others were not. Either way, the non-Judahites were not “natural” branches of this fig tree. Nonetheless, God grafted them into the tree of Judah, so that they could partake of the life of Jesus Christ and bear good fruit. If we think of these converts as branches from an apple tree being grafted on to a fig tree, we can see that each branch would bear its own type of fruit. One need not bear figs to be part of that fig tree of Judah. As for the unproductive branches of the fig tree, they were pruned, cut off.
In fact, by rejecting Jesus, and excommunicating His disciples, they were cutting themselves off the fig tree of Judah! They did not realize that by separating themselves from Jesus, the Root and offspring of David (Rev. 22:16), their branch would die. The bad figs were simply cut off, while the good figs of Judah carried the banner of the Judah Church.
There was no replacement here, as classic Church theology has taught in the past. The promises to Abraham were never transferred from one people to another. The promises simply continued through the unbroken line of the good fig tree of Judah. The fact that many non-Judahites have been grafted to that tree does not make it a “Gentile Church.” There may be an abundance of “Gentile” branches on that tree, but the trunk of the tree and its root has always been Jesus, the King of Judah.
When Christians today talk about the early Church as being a “Jewish Church,” they are absolutely correct. Unfortunately, because they do not know the biblical definition of a Jew, they often use this as an excuse to convert to Judaism. In so doing, they join themselves to the evil fig tree. They have forgotten that those who call themselves Jews today (who reject Christ) are in fact not Jews at all – not by God’s definition. Christians cannot become Jews by converting to Judaism. They already are Jews in the sight of God (True Jews, the Israel of God) and have been since the time of Christ. To convert to Judaism is to jump from the basket of good figs to the basket of evil figs. Let us put it another way: Replacement Theology teaches that the fig tree was rooted out and replaced by an apple tree. This did not happen.
The truth is that there were two fig trees, one good and one bad, as portrayed in Jer 24. Both were of Judah. The bad fig tree was rooted out, and the good fig tree remained to carry on the Kingdom of God upon the earth. The good fig tree did not replace anything, because it was always there as a remnant. When “Messianic Jews” today often claim that Christianity is a “Jewish” Church. They point to the fact that the disciples and the earliest believers were from Judea. That is absolutely correct. However, because they do not understand Jeremiah 24, they use this truth to convince Christian believers that they ought to unite with the Zionist Jews – as if we are all from the same fig tree. We are not; there are 2 different trees
The problem with this is that Christian Zionism is a move to engraft the branches of good figs to the bad fig tree, rather than the other way around. That teaching would ultimately bring all Christians into Judaism, rather than bringing Jews to Christ. The fact is, the bad fig tree will NEVER bring forth fruit, for that was the nature of Jesus’ curse in Matt. 21:19, where He said, “No longer shall there EVER be any fruit from you.”
The only solution is for the individual branches to be cut off from that dead fig tree and grafted to the only Tree that can give them life – Jesus Christ, the trunk of the good fig tree. Let’s make sure that we are not side-tracked by the Zionist agenda.
Let’s make sure that our kingdom role as sons and coheirs is not replaced by the deception of a future 1000-year kingdom for a restored Israel.
Rest is the key to restoration and revelation Start to focus on your breathing, slowing it down; and start thinking of the name of God, YHVH. Breathe in deeply and exhale slowly: Yod- Breathe in: Hei-breathe out. Vav- breath in. Hei-breathe out. Repeat.
Invite love, joy and peace to flow in you and through you to create an atmosphere of rest around you. You are in a safe place. Start to think of an open heaven and set your desire upon it. Steps like Jacob’s ladder leading up to heaven. Hear the invitation to come up here. Shift the focus of your mind to heaven. Walk up those steps to the door. Now step through the veil into the kingdom realm. Jesus is standing in the doorway. Present yourself to Jesus, your High Priest, as a living sacrifice. Let Him take you by the hand. Ask Him to reveal restoration and the oracles of the Father’s heart. Ask Him to take you into the eternal now. Ask Him to take you to the fire stones. Jesus, please take each person and show them what they need to receive the mandate for restoration. Go wherever He takes you.