Saturday 11 October 2014

Genesis 22:17-18 « … in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heavens, and as the sand which is upon the seashore. And thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies. And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. »

Until the cross of Jesus all ethnicities were divided into two basic groups: the Hebrews (Jews) and everyone else. The word used for everyone else is the word « nation » from the Hebrew word gowyim. Some English translations also use the words, gentile, pagan, or Greek.  Through the death and resurrection of Jesus God created a third group of those who born-again, called the new creation(see Galatians 6:15) or the one new man(Ephesians 2:15).  And this third group is comprised of both Jews and non-Jews.

Paul taught that the seed of which God spoke to Abraham about is none other than our Lord Jesus (see Galatians 3).  And through Him all the nations (gowyim) are blessed because they have access now to the salvation which was given to the Jews.

Jesus said to His disciples in Matthew 16, « I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. »  He did not say that He was in the process of building it, but that He would build it, in the future. This work began on the day of Pentecost when the Spirit of God was poured out. (See Acts 2:47) Through the death and resurrection of Jesus the door was opened for all the gowyim to be grafted into the promises of God which began with Abraham.  And the Church is the direct fulfillment of that promise.

For a long time after the day of Pentecost the majority of the church enjoyed a rich understanding of the Biblical feasts as well as other aspects of Biblical culture through which the message of salvation came.  But after the conversion of the emperor Constantine in the fourth century, the church divorced itself from its Biblical roots and embraced many traditions rooted in Greek and Babylonian religions.

In our day God is restoring the root to the church.  And ultimately, through this process, a great number of Jews will come to know their true Messiah.  The one new man shall arise in the earth as a great beacon of the light of truth.  And the gowyim, the nations, shall come up to Jerusalem on the feast of Tabernacles to worship the God of Israel. (Zechariah 14:16)

Our’s is perhaps the greatest, and most blessed generation of all times.  For most people living today have known of the existence of the state of Israel since the time of our birth.  Such has not been the case for more than 2000 years.  We can afford to be forgiving to our spiritual ancestors who witnessed the destruction of Israel and the dispersion of the Jews and interpreted these events as a rejection from God. But for those alive today we have a great responsibility before God to participate in the revealing of the one new man.

Pray with us today that God would make us a subject of jealousy amongst the Jewish people.  Pray for God to open the eyes of His shepherds in the Church that they might see and understand God’s plan in this time.