Genesis 28:10-17
“Then Jacob departed from Beersheba and went toward Haran. He came to a certain place and spent the night there, because the sun had set; and he took one of the stones of the place and put it under his head, and lay down in that place. He had a dream, and behold, a ladder was set on the earth with its top reaching (and connecting Earth) to Heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.
“And behold, the (living Word of the) Lord stood above it and said, ‘I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie, I will give it to you and to your descendants. Your descendants will also be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and in you and in your descendants shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.’ Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.’ He was afraid and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This (Covenant relationship that God is making available to me and the others) is none other than the house of God, and THIS (Covenant relationship) IS THE GATE of Heaven.’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
John 1:49-51
“Nathanael (was as stunned as Jacob had been when he realized his Covenant Lord was always with Him and he had not known it. Then he) answered Him, ‘Rabbi, You are the Son of God; You are the King of Israel.’ Jesus (God’s living Word made flesh) answered and said to him, ‘Because I said to you that I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You will see greater things than these.’ And He said to him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see the heavens opened and the angels (constant interactive communication) of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Scripture is telling us that God’s living Word, Yeshua, is our open Gate to God and our connection with Him! This was originally revealed in Genesis. And it appears repeatedly throughout Scripture. For example, we see it in John’s Gospel. There the Lord reveals that the promises God’s Word had made to Jacob are still in effect. So, even after Jacob’s descendants violated their Covenant with God at Sinai, the Word of God who had once revealed Himself to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is still reaching out to His chosen people. And since God and His Word are one, since the Word is one with them, God is one with them. As promised, He will always be with Israel. So, because God has to sustain all of His Creation and keep us in existence, none of us are ever alone. But Israel is God’s chosen Covenant friend and it is especially true that she is required to respond to God’s abiding Presence and unite with Him in interactive Covenant love and faithfulness.
This opportunity always remains for Israel and for any others who, by obedient faith, will repent of their state of Sin and allow God’s Word to graft them into Israel’s eternal Covenant with God. If anyone embraces and believes and abides with the Word God sends to us, we thus abide with God and can know and become one with Him. The Perfection and All Sufficient Provision that eternally exist in Heaven are open and available to us…even now! This is what God was demonstrating and proving to Israel in the wilderness.
So remember what God said to Jacob in his dream, and also to Nathaniel, as you try to understand what took place in Exodus 32, after the golden calf incident. God’s Word once presented Himself to Jacob as a stairway or ladder that connects Heaven to Earth, and Earth to Heaven. And He promised to be with Jacob and his family and descendants, at all times…until all the promises He made to them in His Father’s Name would be fulfilled. So despite the fact that many people think God has finished with and forsaken Israel as a result of her failings, His Word reveals that He did not intend to leave, forsake, or replace them, when He was responding to their golden calf disaster!
God intends to establish, restore and maintain His relationship with Israel in every generation. And He extends the same opportunity to all of the other non-Jewish disciples of His Word. So, since He’s always with us, how should His Blood Covenant friends and regenerated sons respond to His awesome Presence? Should we forget about, or ignore Him for long periods of time? Or, should we regard His Presence as the Fountainhead…the Original Source and Central Focal Point of our entire existence? Notice how utterly stunned Jacob was when he awoke from that dream. The revelation he received shook him to his roots! He suddenly realized that Almighty God had always been with him, but he had never been aware of it! That realization of his total lack of awareness was what was so overwhelming and shocking to him! Spiritually, he had been as blind as the stone upon which he had rested his head…and wasn’t even aware of it!
‘Surely the Lord is in this place, AND I DID NOT KNOW IT!’ He was afraid and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the Gate of Heaven!’
So, God reveals that wherever Abraham’s Family goes in this world, God’s Presence is with them…through His living Word. He offers to each one, this awesome and unique Blood Covenant love bond and the endless faithfulness that it makes possible for them. So despite Israel’s failings, God tells us that He abides with His own at all times. And so beloved, we too will be utterly stunned when we realize how clueless and unaware we have been to the reality that God is always dynamically present with us too. When it finally dawns on us just how close and intimately involved He is with every aspect of our existence, we too will be rendered senseless! Almighty God Himself, through His Word and Holy Spirit, is The Gate of Heaven! He is the Portal that opens the way for us into His eternity! He is here not only to provide each breath, brain wave and heart beat we’ll ever have, but more importantly…to bond or unite us to Himself and to bring us into His Eternal dimension and Kingdom so that we can interact with Him endlessly! But how many humans know this?
God also revealed this stunning fact to Moses…and through him, to the whole world. So this is what all Israelites must learn, no matter where they may be scattered. It is their responsibility to demonstrate and teach this Truth to the rest of the world! This is for each person in every generation, including ours! But the human race is spiritually blind and dull and very slow to learn such things. It takes a long time for us to get a clue. We’re just as unaware of God as Jacob and Nathaniel were. Most of us have no sense of always being in His Presence. We assume that for the most part, we can be alone, and that no one can know what is going on in our inner being, in our personal thoughts, deliberations, schemes and plans. But nothing could be further from the truth. We’re never alone! He is always with us and knows us much more thoroughly than we know ourselves. Our Creator and Sustainer is always with us, to cover, redeem, cleanse, purify, sustain, provide for, protect… and to shock us into total wakefulness and free us from our Serpent-induced trance!
The Narrow Gate
Ponder what God’s living Word made flesh, said to His disciple Nathaniel when He revealed to him that He is ‘the Ladder’ or ‘Gate of Heaven.’ He was letting Nathaniel know that just as He had been in the wilderness with Jacob, so was He always present to him! And ponder what He said later, about this ‘Gate of Heaven.’ He said it would not be widely known. The majority of mankind will remain unaware of it, and will not pass through it. This Heavenly Gate does not lead to a broad, widely traveled super highway upon which the majority of men travel. It is very rare and precious and seldom discovered. And in our next meditation, we will explore this idea and the consequences of unbelief at a deeper level.
Throughout Israel’s Biblical history, God sent prophets to warn His people that He, appearing as God’s living Word made flesh, would be widely rejected and known and accepted by relatively few:
Isaiah 53:1-3
“Who has believed our message (the message of Moses and the other prophets)? And to whom has the Arm of the Lord (the living Word of God) been revealed? For (when He appeared in human flesh) He grew up (in Israel) before Him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty that we (Israelites) should look upon Him, nor appearance that we (children of Jacob) should be attracted to Him. He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom (most Jewish and non-Jewish) men hide their face. He was despised, and we (sons of Adam and sons of Jacob) did not esteem Him.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
John 8:12-30;
“‘Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the Darkness, but will have the Light of Life.’ So the Pharisees said to Him, ‘You are testifying about Yourself; Your testimony is not true.’ Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Even if I testify about Myself, My testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going; but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. You judge according to the flesh; I am not judging anyone. But even if I do judge, My judgment is true; for I am not alone in it, but I and the Father who sent Me. Even in your Law (Torah) it has been written that the testimony of two men is true. I am He who testifies about Myself, and the Father who sent Me testifies about Me.’
“So they were saying to Him, ‘Where is Your Father?’ Jesus answered, ‘You know neither Me nor My Father; if you knew Me, you would know My Father also (and thus you would truly understand the words of Moses)!’ These words He spoke in the treasury, as He taught in the temple; and no one seized Him, because His hour had not yet come.
“Then He said again to them, ‘I go away, and you will seek Me, and will die in your sin; where I am going, you cannot come.’ So the (unbelieving religious elite Judean) Jews were saying, ‘Surely He will not kill Himself, will He, since He says, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come’?’ And He was saying to them, ‘You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He (the Word of God who appears to you as the Messiah), you will die in your sins.’
“So they were saying to Him, ‘Who are You?’ Jesus said to them, ‘What have I (God’s living Word) been saying to you from the beginning (since Genesis)? I have many things to speak and to judge concerning you, but He who sent Me is true; and the things which I heard from Him, these I speak to the world.’ They did not realize that He (God’s living Word) had been speaking to them about the Father. So Jesus said, ‘When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me. And He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him.’ As He spoke these things, many (of the Israelites that heard Him when He was on Earth, eventually) came to believe in Him.” (See also Isaiah 55:8-11)
The revelation Yeshua gave to His generation of Israelites agreed with and confirmed the revelation God had given through the Torah and His prophets. ‘The Stairway’ or ‘Ladder to Heaven’ was now before them, just as He had been before Jacob! And this is what flabbergasted Nathaniel and the rest of Yeshua’s first century disciples. Gradually each of His true disciples was pierced and penetrated by the Light of Truth. They finally realized who Yeshua really was! And, Glory to God, He is also here with us to reveal Himself to us! But most people of each generation never wake up to this Reality. And that is why Yeshua told His chosen disciples to pass along this warning to the rest of the world:
Matthew 7:13-23
“Enter through the narrow Gate (of God’s Pure Truth); for the gate (of unbelief leading to idolatry) is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the Gate (of Heaven) is small and the Way is narrow that leads to (Eternal) Life, and there are few who find it. Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs, from thistles, are they? So every good (Word-embodying) tree bears good fruit, but the bad (radically independent, Word-rejecting) tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear (My) good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will know them (not by their lip service, but) by their fruits.
“‘Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in Heaven (and embodies Me) will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you (you never allowed Me to become one with you…so you are not bearing My Fruit); depart from Me, you who practice Lawlessness (Torah-lessness)!’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
What is God’s will? He requires us to believe, embrace, follow and obey His living Word when He sends Him to us. The Torah reveals and promises that God’s chosen people, as well as the entire human race, can have the privilege, honor and opportunity to abide at all times in the living Word’s awesome Life-giving Presence. And by being one with Him, we are one with Almighty God, for He is one with His Word! The Word promised to be with Israel always, and also with those that allow Him to engraft them, through their obedient faith, into Israel’s Root of Salvation! Thus He is always with us to cover, protect, provide for and guide us, at every step of our journey through this time and space world. If we accept and submit to Him, He bonds us to the Father and God then lives in us and act as one with us, in all things. And this truly restores humans to the image and likeness of God!
This is the major thrust of the awesome good news that Moses was commissioned and inspired to reveal through His Genesis and Exodus Torah revelations. And Israel’s prophets and New Covenant apostles confirmed and testified to the Truth of all that Moses wrote. Union with God’s Word fully restores the human race to total union and fellowship with God! God wants no distance to exist between His Word and His chosen image and likeness humans. There is to be no gap separating us from Yeshua, our Messiah!
Exodus 19:5-6
“Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice (living Word) and (thereby) keep My Covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel.”
As we said, this is for all of mankind! We are all designed and created and intended to be as one with our Creator, at all times. And this is the relationship level that blew Jacob and Nathaniel away when they finally realized the gut-wrenching Truth of how close God wants to be with us, and even with our deadly enemies! God’s living Word and Holy Spirit eventually trained Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to understand this and to have an intensely personal and intimate relationship with Him. And that is the relationship He intends to have with us all. But tragically, we see throughout the book of Exodus, and the rest of the Bible, how much distance most Jewish and non-Jewish people continually maintain between themselves and God’s living, ever-present Word. So the more we learn about Israel, the more we can know ourselves:
Exodus 20:18-21
“All the people perceived the thunder and the lightning flashes and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled and stood at a distance. Then they said to Moses, ‘Speak to us yourself and we will listen; but let not God speak to us, or we will die.’ Moses said to the people, ‘Do not be afraid; for God has come in order to test you, and in order that the fear of Him may remain with you, so that you may not sin.’ So the people stood at a distance, while Moses approached the thick cloud where God was.” (Emphasis added.)
Our own hearts and eyes confirm to us, that, for a variety of reasons, tremendous distance continues to exist, between us, and the risen Lord of Glory. And, since God’s vision for Israel is that she is to be His instrument of ultimate Blessing for the entire world, we can see from the world’s chronic God-less condition, that the promises He made concerning Israel are still a long way from being perfectly fulfilled! This is why God’s Word and Holy Spirit hover continually over the Earth…looking for those who are truly open to God and His Truth.
Immanuel, God With Us
The good news is, that despite humanity’s woeful performance, God remains very close to Israel and all the other humans He has created. This will be true until all of His promises to Israel are fulfilled. Despite the present wretched spiritual condition of many Jewish and non-Jewish people, the Lord is still calling to our hearts, still working out His Father’s Plan for Reconciliation and full Restoration, still seeking to restore us to being His beloved image and likeness.
So could it be that the cold hearted mindless distance we maintain between God’s Word, the resurrected Messiah, and ourselves, is what prevents the complete Fulfillment of God’s promises from taking place? Is it because so many of us remain as clueless and insensitive to God’s Presence as Jacob and Nathaniel were before God’s Word pierced, penetrated and impregnated their innermost being with His Truth? Remember how totally shocked and stunned Nathaniel was when he suddenly realized that Yeshua had been with him while he sat under the fig tree. Nathaniel assumed he had been completely alone…that no one knew his thoughts as he was resting beneath that fig tree! So he was just as shocked as Jacob was, when he realized how totally oblivious of the Lord’s Presence he had been all of his life! He had no idea of who Yeshua really was until the lightning bolt of that overpowering realization struck his heart of hearts. God’s living Word and His Holy Spirit had always been present with Nathaniel. And Nathaniel had always assumed he was alone! But now, here He was, the living Word made flesh…revealing Truth and piercing Nathaniel to the depths with its blazing Glory!
Beloved, the Presence of God is ALWAYS with all of us! No one can escape from the Sustaining Power of His Presence! If He were not present to us, we would instantly disappear! We disciples know this now… that God is our one and only Source. And we know that His nature and will and purposes are Perfect and will never change. But most of the world does not know this. And so He continues to draw Jewish and non-Jewish people to His Word and to the Fulfillment of the oneness He says He desires to have with us.
So… how and when will the complete fulfillment of God’s promises actually come to pass? When will we finally realize that the living Word of God is with us at all times, waiting for us to wake up and embrace and possess the awesome Treasure that He is always here to be for us? The Word of God is the only One who is authoritative and powerful enough to make God’s wonderful Plan come to full fruition! Let me say that in another way: Moses was not able to finish the process he started with Israel. Even to this day, even after the recent restoration of the chosen people to their God-given Land, they are far from being able to fully possess and enjoy the total Fulfillment of the promises God made to her.
So when will the Fullness come? When will Israel finally be able to usher in the glorious Presence of her Messiah to the rest of the world? Will it not be when, like that Israelite Nathaniel in whom there was no guile, a generation of Israelites finally emerges that receives the same lightning bolt of Revelation all at the same time? Yes, it will happen when they all are able to see it simultaneously, then Israel will recognize Yeshua and realize who He really is! Like Moses, Israel too will never be able to make this Fulfillment take place in her own strength and by her devices, no matter how hard she tries to make it happen. There is only One who has the Authority and Power to actually make it happen! And when Israel recognizes Him, she will be as stunned as Jacob and Nathaniel were.
Zechariah 12:9-11
“And in that day I will set about to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. I will pour out on the House of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn. In that day there will be great mourning in Jerusalem, like the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the plain of Megiddo.”
What God did through Moses and the written Torah was a wonderful beginning. God revealed Himself and His Power and Authority to the world through Moses. And He also formed and established His chosen family into a nation that endures to this day. Israel now has a supernaturally strong (unbreakable) identity and permanent place among the nations of the world. No one can deny that Israel is truly unique. Many other nations and cultures, more recent than Israel, have come and gone. And myriads of kings, emperors, pharaohs, tyrants and armies have tried to exterminate Israel… and countless false teachers and prophets keep trying to twist, distort, reject, ignore and somehow eliminate God’s Torah revelation. Nevertheless, Israel and the Torah continue to reveal and represent God and His promises of Ultimate Blessing. And they continue to overcome and outlive all of their enemies! But that’s only the Beginning. Yes, Moses was empowered by God’s Word to free Israel from her slavery in Egypt. And he led God’s people for 40 years in the wilderness and gave her a clear, Torah-based sense of direction for the future.
But although his writings provide the revelation and guidelines for a proper relationship with God, all that God gave to the world through Moses and Israel have not been enough to take the human race all the way into that Ultimate Fulfillment Era of God’s promises. So what do we still lack? Is it that God’s Revelation and Work of Creation and Redemption are incomplete and faulty? Or is it that our full realization and acceptance of His Presence and the Perfect Work He has already done have not yet penetrated our hearts and registered within us? Moses delivered Israel from Egypt. But the one who revealed Himself to Moses is the only One who can and will deliver the entire human race from its slavery to the Serpent and Sin and from the curse of Death! And as long as we keep our distance from Him…we do not allow Him to pierce, penetrate and impregnate us with His Eternal Truth and Life-giving Reality.
Thus the bilateral Sinai Covenant and its commandments continue to be violated time and again by all of us. And that is why Israel, and the rest of us, cannot reach God’s promised Fulfillment. The world wallows in its Sin, because the Serpent still has his coils wound tightly around this fallen world’s throat! Israel has not yet become a people that abides in total union with God’s living Word. So let’s recall what Moses said to Israel:
Deuteronomy 9:4-6
“Do not say in your heart when the Lord your God has driven them out before you, ‘Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,’ but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is dispossessing them before you. It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God is driving them out before you, in order to confirm the oath, which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Know, then, it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stubborn people.” (Emphasis added.)
If God has to say this to Israel, He has to say it to all of us! Neither the Israelites or the other people they are commissioned to bless, have what it takes to redeem, sanctify and restore themselves. So although, through Moses, they entered into Covenant with God and promised to fulfill the responsibilities by which they swore to abide, God doesn’t put any hope or trust in their abilities. Remember: all are children of fallen Adam. So although God made a wonderful beginning through Moses, who was fallen and Sin-corrupted like the rest of us, much more is needed. God’s written Torah blesses and continues to deeply impact human history and its societies. But God’s Plan still has not reached perfect Completion and Fulfillment. But thanks to the written Torah, this is no surprise. God warned Moses; and Moses warned Israel, that it would be like this!
So… even from the beginning, God was preparing the groundwork for the appearance of One greater than Moses who would be powerful and authoritative enough to finally finish the job. This is how Moses foretold it:
“The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to Him. This is according to all that you asked of the Lord your God in Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, let me not see this great fire anymore, or I will die.’ The Lord said to me, ‘They have spoken well.
Deuteronomy 18:15-19
“I will raise up a Prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in His mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command Him. It shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words, which He shall speak in My Name; I Myself will require it of him!” (Emphasis added.)
Beloved, Ponder Deeply What This is Saying!
Who is this awesome One? Who is the only One in whom God places His own Authority and endows with Divine-level Responsibility? Who will God send to Israel in the future… and why is this necessary? Is it not because what God did through Moses was only the beginning? The Beginning is not the End. God entrusted His beginning, His written Torah, to Israel’s care. But now God is announcing the living Torah. And the living Torah is God’s own living Word! He will come to fulfill what Moses was inspired to write down.
Revelation 1:17-18
“When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man. And He placed His right hand on me, saying, ‘Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last, and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and of Hades.’” (Emphasis added.)
Throughout history, most people have not grasped the meaning of this. Most refuse to recognize, believe, submit to and embrace God’s Promised Anointed One into their hearts. The written Torah reveals and introduces Him to us. It prepared the way for His coming. And He did come… Yeshua is the Anointed Promised One. He came to Israel centuries after Moses to begin the New Covenant Era…but no Israelite generation has yet recognized Him, thus Israel has not been able to obey and fulfill what the written Torah requires of her, to God’s satisfaction. No matter how religious or smart or powerful the human race thinks it has become, each generation has continually failed! This is enough to let us know that the written Torah and the people that are commissioned to protect it, are not the complete Fulfillment of God’s restoration process.
The content of the Torah is perfect; but because as long as humans continue to ignore God’s living Torah, Messiah Yeshua, and remain oblivious to His abiding Presence, their ignorance and unbelief prevent the Living Torah from uniting with them so that He can obey the written Torah from within them, in their name. Rejection and mistrust of God’s living Word prevents people from recognizing Israel’s God and accepting Him as He really is. To reject the living Word, is to disbelieve the written Word. And to reject God’s Word, is to reject God Himself! That is what prevents us from receiving the complete fulfillment of God’s promises!
Someone that is far beyond us, who possesses a level of Holiness and Spiritual Authority much greater than anything our fallen flesh can muster, must finish the job. So, God is getting us ready for the world-wide realization that is to come… the enormous flash of Revelation, the cosmic ‘Light Bulb’ that will go off in the human race’s mind and heart. Then the world will wake up and recognize who the True Authentic, Eternal Moses really is. They will know the Real Redeemer and the Eternal Living Torah as He really is. Almighty God, through His beloved Son, the living Word, is the true Messiah for all of Creation! Only He can bring all of this to its Perfect Fulfillment. Only He knows all that is involved in the Restoration of every level and aspect of His enormous Creation. Only He knows what His full Plan for it is. Only He has the creative Power and Authority to complete the Restoration Process that will meet His Perfect Standard of Righteousness, perfectly.
The Torah clearly told us that an Authoritative Leader, much greater than Moses, had to come. Not only must He equal what Moses did, He must surpass it by far! And this successor did come to begin the process by redeeming us. And He will come again, in the fullness of God’s timing to complete it by glorifying us. He is the total Living Fulfillment of that original written Torah content. But the Fulfillment of the first Torah will appear in a completely different way – the New Covenant way. This time the Torah will not be created, something written in human words and etched on tablets of stone or scrolls of parchment or books made of paper. This time, God’s Uncreated Torah will appear. And God’s own Spirit will burn His living Word, or living Torah, into the hearts of His repentant people! And they will become one with God, as soon as God’s Living Word can pierce and penetrate their innermost depths!
Ezekiel 36:22-28
“Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus says the Lord God, ‘It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy Name, which you have profaned among the nations where you went. I will vindicate the holiness of My great Name which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord,’ declares the Lord God, ‘when I prove Myself holy among you in their sight. For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances. You will live in the land that I gave to your forefathers; so you will be My people, and I will be your God!”
The revelation given by Moses and the prophets of Israel is clear. Israel can’t fulfill her part of the Covenant of Sinai in her own strength. The only way the promises can be fulfilled is when God Himself does everything necessary to meet His own standards. No matter what religion or philosophy or mystical false spiritual techniques the Sin-corrupted, living dead children of Adam try to devise, they can never save themselves from the Serpent and the Death State he has inflicted on us all. We will never be ‘like God,’ nor will we ever approach or equal God’s Perfect level of Being and Doing.
There is Only One God
The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the one and only Source for everything. And so all men MUST look to Him and receive everything they will ever be, or have, or do, from His living creative Word! This is what the letter to the Hebrews is saying to Israelites who believed in Yeshua, but were grievously tempted to fall back into their old ways:
Hebrews 3:1-15
“Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession; He was faithful to Him who appointed Him, as Moses also was in all His house. For He has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, by just so much as the Builder of the House has more honor than the House. For every house is built by someone; but the Builder of all things is God! Now Moses was faithful in all His house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken later; but Christ was faithful as a Son over His House—whose House we are, if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end.
“Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today if you hear His voice,do not harden your hearts as when they provoked Me as in the day of trial in the wilderness, where your fathers tried Me by testing Me, and saw My works for forty years. Therefore I was angry with this generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart, and they did not know My ways’; as I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest.’
“Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called ‘Today,’ so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ, IF we hold fast the Beginning of our assurance firm until the End, while it is said, ‘Today, if you hear His voice do not harden your hearts, as when they provoked Me.’” (Emphasis added)
This confirms what Moses said about the Messiah that was to come. But even in the days of Moses, God’s living Word was doing all of the work! He led Israel out of its bondage to Egypt, through Moses. And He entrusted His Torah, and the responsibility for preserving and protecting it to Israel, through Moses. And through Israel, He preserved and protected what Moses was inspired to write and made it known all around the earth. God’s Word has always been present to preserve and protect and authenticate His True Israel! In this respect, Torah is not yet fully understood by many Israelites and Christians and all the rest. So much more ‘unpacking’ and ‘unfolding’ of its meaning must still take place.
Moses and the prophets warned us that the Torah and the Covenants it reveals would have to be renewed, that is, given to Israel once again. But the renewal would not be given externally, written on tablets of stone, or scrolls of parchment or sheets of paper, as in the beginning. This time it will be applied to Israelite hearts – internally and very personally and intimately! And just like Jacob and Nathaniel, a whole generation of God’s chosen people will suddenly awaken from their trance and realize, as never before, that God’s Word is living and active and gloriously, electrically present and intimately involved with everything that pertains to their past, present and future! But it is not only Israel that will realize this… the New Covenant Fulfillment will enable God to give this wonderful Gift to the whole human race, through Israel!
Joel 2:25-29
“Then I will make up to you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the creeping locust, the stripping locust and the gnawing locust, my great army which I sent among you. You will have plenty to eat and be satisfied and praise the name of the Lord your God, Who has dealt wondrously with you; then My people will never be put to shame. Thus you will know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the Lord your God, and there is no other; and My people will never be put to shame. It will come about after this that I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; and your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on the male and female servants, I will pour out My Spirit in those days.”
Jeremiah 31:31-34
“‘Behold, days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.
‘But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,’ declares the Lord, ‘I will put My Law (Living Torah) within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people!
“They will not teach again (through created symbols or intermediaries), each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me (personally, directly and intimately) from the least of them to the greatest of them,’ declares the Lord, ‘for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Ezekiel 37:11-14
“Then He said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the WHOLE house of Israel; behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope has perished. We are completely cut off.’ Therefore prophesy and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God, ‘Behold, I WILL open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves, My people; and I WILL bring you into the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am the Lord, when I HAVE OPENED your graves and caused you to come up out of your graves, My people. I WILL put My Spirit within you and you will come to life, and I WILL place you on your own land. THEN you will know that I, THE LORD, HAVE SPOKEN AND DONE IT,’ declares the Lord.’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Acts 26:22-23
“So, having obtained help from God, I stand to this day testifying both to small and great, stating nothing but what the Prophets and Moses said was going to take place; that the Christ (Messiah) was to suffer, and that by reason of His resurrection from the dead He would be the first to proclaim Light, both to the Jewish people and to the Gentiles!”
Thanks to the Torah and the prophets of Israel, none of this is new. Moses was inspired to promise that in the future, God would give Israel another Prophet like him. And the prophets were inspired to announce that God was going to give a totally renewed Torah to His chosen people! One greater than Moses will do all of this… the Messiah… the living Word or Living Torah of God! He will ‘write’ Himself upon the hearts of believing, repentant people, Jew and Gentile alike. God, acting as our Messiah, will fulfill His promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Only Almighty God Himself can bring such awesome, supernatural things to pass. And this is what Moses and the prophets wrote about what God, through His own living Word, would do in the New Covenant Era. The Word became flesh, to become our true, legal Representative before God, in His Eternal Covenant.
God deliberately chose Israel to be His unique instrument. He blessed and reserved her for His own service. And He transformed her so that, in many ways and on many levels, she would be a blessing to all the other families of the earth! But the Fullness of that Blessing is yet to arrive. God Himself is the Ultimate Blessing. Through Yeshua, the risen Messiah, God proves that He is The Blessing of all blessings! He gives Himself to us through His Word, Yeshua, who came into our time and space dimension to abide with us and connect us to God… and God’s Holy Spirit makes Yeshua to be real, and fully alive and fruitfully active in the lives of fallen human beings. And all of this comes to us through God’s chosen servant, Israel, but God Himself has done all of the Work:
Ezekiel 34:10-16
“Thus says the Lord God, ‘Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will demand My sheep from them and make them cease from feeding sheep. So the shepherds will not feed themselves anymore, but I will deliver My flock from their mouth, so that they will not be food for them.’ For thus says the Lord God, ‘Behold, I MYSELF will search for MY sheep and seek them out. As a shepherd cares for his herd in the day when he is among his scattered sheep, so I WILL CARE for My sheep and WILL DELIVER them from all the places to which they were scattered on a cloudy and gloomy day. I will bring them out from the peoples (pagan Gentiles) and gather them from the countries and bring them to their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the streams, and in all the inhabited places of the land. I will feed them in a good pasture, and their grazing ground will be on the mountain heights of Israel. There they will lie down on good grazing ground and feed in rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I will feed My flock and I will lead them to rest,” declares the Lord God. I will seek the lost, bring back the scattered, bind up the broken and strengthen the sick; but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with judgment.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Isaiah 55:9-11
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it!” (Emphasis added.)
God Himself – Our Ultimate and Only Source
So beloved, do you see what Moses and the other prophets were saying? They revealed that God does everything in, by and through His own living Word… EVERYTHING! The written Torah He gave to Israel centuries ago made a wonderful beginning. And, although the Work God reveals to us is completely finished and perfect in eternity, in this dimension of time and space, it only appears and manifests itself progressively. To us, it appears to be working its way to completion throughout the centuries. But actually it is already completely present in God’s Eternal Word. What is entirely present in our eternal God is being transmitted to us and unfolds and unpacks itself for us in our space and time dimension. This is why it appears to us as an Exodus Journey, a progressive ‘growth process’ that takes us into a future Ultimate Fulfillment.
Genesis revealed the complete Perfection of this to us as that ‘Ladder,’ or ‘Stairway,’ that exists in God’s eternity in all of its Perfection. But it is even now being offered to us here as we abide in this earthly time and space dimension. Everything necessary has already happened because it is eternal. But to us, it still appears to be unfinished. Nevertheless, we can know it now… by faith in God’s Credibility and by Resting in the Perfection and Fullness of His abiding Presence. Our Redemption is complete, and everything we’ll need in the future is ready to be transmitted to us through this ‘Stairway’ that connects God’s eternity to our time and space world. And once we receive our new glorified bodies that God promises, we will know this directly because we too will be equipped to see the Glory of God for ourselves!
1 Corinthians 13:9-12
“For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.” (Emphasis added.)
The Menu? Or the Meal Itself?
The writings of Moses and of the prophets and apostles of Israel are like a menu. They tell us something about the eternal Reality that God has already made available for us. And as we said, in space and time, it appears as if one course of this awesome Feast is following another. But Scripture tells us the entire Feast is already ours… in God’s living Word. So the written ‘Menu’ prepares us for what we can only know by faith at this time. It whets our appetite and gives us perfect assurance that we can afford to rejoice in God always… in every present moment… and abide in joyful and peaceful anticipation of the actual experience of Eternal Fulfillment and Perfection that comes to us through the channel of our obedient faith.
The ‘Menu’ tells us of the future experience of the eternal reality God has already given to us. It tells us what it will be like when we enter eternity and share in Almighty God’s endless enjoyment of it. God will even create a new Heaven and new Earth in which our glorified Sin-less new bodies will abide. His Kingdom will be completely pure and free of all Sin-contamination and Death. That is already a fact in eternity. So, even now, while we’re still passing through time and space, we can know now some of what it will be like once God actually ushers us into the fullness of the experience of all that awaits us in His Eternity. It is ours as soon as we believe, embrace and become one with our risen Messiah. As soon as we have Him, we have the Eternal Perfect One. The Word contains within Himself the entire Eternal Fullness of God!
John 5:39-40
“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have Life!” (Emphasis added.)
Yeshua tells us that it’s not enough to obsess over the menu and assume that it is the featured attraction. The created menu is an accurate, factual announcement of a feast to come; but, in itself, it is not The Uncreated, Infinite, Eternal Food! Your experience at a restaurant isn’t complete if you only obsess and rave over the menu, is it? The restaurant’s purpose can only be completely fulfilled when you have both the menu AND the actual life giving, strengthening and vivifying food that the menu announces and promises. And that is similar to the relationship between the original bilateral Covenant at Sinai as written in the Torah, and the New Covenant that will bring us the actual union with the living Torah, the Messiah. He is the Final Fulfillment of that prior, unilateral Eternal Covenant that God had already made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, centuries before the events at Sinai took place.
So we can conclude several things from this. For example, we can see that both halves of the Bible are absolutely essential! The original Covenant and what God reveals about Himself in it, is the menu of what we can expect later on. The menu helps us to know about something else. But to know and have that something else, we must also go beyond the menu and what it says. It’s not enough to know about God’s Good News. We must actually have God Himself and experience Him as He works His Good News into us and demonstrates it from within us!
To have Yeshua Himself is to fully understand and experience what the New Covenant part of the Bible announces and foretells. To be one with Yeshua and abide in His Spirit-imparted Presence is what actually fulfills God’s Covenant with Israel and all those whom He is able to graft into the Salvation Root that comes from Israel. But if we only value and obsess over God’s written Word, we can’t finish the story and possess the Reality it promises if we only have The Beginning. The Reality is ours when we have what comes at The End: God’s Living Word abiding in us and fulfilling the written Torah from within us!
But if the non-Jewish world ignores what God made Israel to be in The Beginning, and disregards the ‘menu’ that He entrusted to her charge, it won’t allow God to graft it properly into the True Salvation Root of Israel. The Root is The Beginning. The Fruit God produces through it is The End. But the End must naturally flow out of The Beginning! Thus the non-Israelite world won’t be equipped to know the one true God as He really is, if it ignores or forsakes the Beginning Root. Nor will it know what is really and authentically from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and what is only a cheap counterfeit substitute. Without Israel’s first part of the menu we won’t know what to expect, or how to recognize it when the Fulfillment part actually appears before us. In that case, we can’t safely make our way through the demonic ‘mine fields’ of delusion and death-dealing lies and deceptive traps that the powers of Darkness continually place across our paths. Ponder what God says about the revelation He gives in His Torah, through Moses:
Deuteronomy 13:1-5
“If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known through what Moses revealed) and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God is testing you to find out if you love the Lord your God (as He is revealed by Moses in the Torah) with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall follow the Lord your God and fear Him (as He revealed Himself to you through the Torah); and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him (by clinging to the revelation of Himself that He gave you through Moses).
“But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has counseled rebellion against the Lord your God who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, to seduce you from the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from among you.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Without the authentic, God-given function that the Torah performs, people, by default, naturally resort to trusting in their own perspectives, circumstances, experiences and feelings. And they misunderstand and misinterpret if all they have to work with is the second half of the Bible. Thus they’re vulnerable to demonic deceptions and falsehoods and naively settle for cheap counterfeits that false teachers keep placing before them. But when they know the Menu and the real purpose for it that Moses was inspired to reveal, they can discern Truth from falsehood and know what is authentically from the true God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as opposed to what is man-devised and fraudulent. Torah reveals the Beginning of God’s Story and it predisposes and prepares us to look for and embrace the real God-given experience and all that He has for us at The End – the actual union and intimate New Covenant interaction with His living Word and Holy Spirit that was originally revealed in the written Torah. The written Word is the Beginning revelation of the living Word that God gives us at the End. So the two must always go together. One cannot be properly understood or experienced without the other.
The Amazing Truth – We Can Actually Know God!
In The Beginning, God’s written Word begins to reveal the Father of the living Word. The Father speaks His Word and the Word obeys Him to Perfection. But even then we can begin to see that as the Word reveals the Father that sends Him, so too does the Father begin to reveal His Word. He shows us what He sends His Word to be and to do on our behalf. So, to know the Father, is to know His Word, for they are one. And, in knowing the Word, we know the Father. Thus we can only know God as He really and truly is, by knowing His Word. And, in this way we can also know ourselves as we really are… and the desperate need we have to become one with God’s Life giving, redemptive Word. We must know the Father AND the Son; and we must know the Son AND His Father!
1 John 2:20-24
“But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know. I have not written to you because you do not know the Truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie is of the truth. Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father AND the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also. As for you, let that abide in you, which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning (Genesis and Exodus) abides in you, you also will abide in the Son AND in the Father.” (Emphasis added.)
This is why Messiah Yeshua was so intent on making sure that His disciples understood Him and His true, authentic, God-given significance. Not only did they have to know this for themselves, they also had to know it so they could begin to proclaim their risen Master to the rest of the world! He is the Fulfillment that Moses promised. Israel is not the Fulfillment in herself. The Fulfillment comes out of Israel. The Fulfillment is God Himself… come to save and redeem and restore all of His people…Jewish and non-Jewish alike!
Zechariah 8:23
“Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘In those days ten men from all the (non-Israelite) nations will grasp the garment of a Jew, saying, “Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.”’”
Matthew 5:17-20
“Do not think that I came to abolish the Law (Torah) or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until Heaven and Earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven. For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that (Messiah-rejecting religiosity) of the (unbelieving) scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Yeshua says in so many words, to the whole non-Jewish Christian world:
‘Don’t assume that I am here to disparage or get rid of the Torah Menu My Father entrusted to His chosen people, Israel. That Menu reveals Me and what I was sent to be and to do and to fulfill, first for Israel…and then for you! I am the Beginning and the Fulfillment of everything the Torah and the rest of Scripture reveals and commands and promises! If you want to know Me and who I really AM, and what I have come to do, you must know what My Father told Moses to put into the Torah Menu! And when you know that, you will recognize and know Me, and Israel, and what My Father sent Me to be and to do for you, through Israel. If My Father sent Me to fulfill every jot and tittle of what Moses wrote, how can you assume that it’s alright for you to ignore, disregard or reject what Moses wrote and the people to whom he was writing? If you reject the written Torah of Israel… you reject Me, the living Torah of Israel! So not until I create the New Heaven and the New Earth and you actually have your new glorified bodies, will the Torah stop being necessary for you!’
And to the Israelites, He says:
‘Do not assume that just because you received the Menu that you’ve ‘arrived’ and have nothing more to learn and no more changes to undergo. The Beginning is not the End! Moses never told you to think like that or to assume you had the complete package. He said that you, just like all other sons of Adam, were a stiff-necked people and that the Torah would be useless to you, unless God Almighty was free to write Me, His living Torah, upon your hearts! When that happens… I will be the Righteousness and Truth and Obedience that no fallen flesh could ever have in itself. Only then will you have the End of the Story as well as the Beginning. External self-originated religiosity is of no value whatever! To offer that to God is to commit the sin of Cain! All of that comes from fallen Sin-corrupted flesh! But I am the True, Pure Feast that comes to you from the Spirit of Almighty God! When you submit to Me and become one with Me, I become for you, everything you could never be in yourself:
1 Corinthians 1:27-31
“…But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God. But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us Wisdom from God, and Righteousness and Sanctification, and Redemption, so that, just as it is written, ‘Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.’” (Emphasis added.)
‘Israel, this is why My Father’s Holy Spirit raised up so many prophets from among you… to make you aware of your many failings when necessary, and to remind you that before the rest of the world can repent and be saved, you must be the first to repent and be saved (born again)! That only happens when you have Me, Yeshua, The Real Feast… the Living Torah… branded into your heart of hearts. You must heed the warnings of Moses and embrace Me and obey Me and become one with Me! I am the one he wrote about! So when you have Me, you have the Fullness of what Moses promised to you. Hear O Israel…I AM the living Word of God, I AM The Feast…The Beginning AND The End!’
John 5:37-47
“…The Father who sent Me, He has testified of Me (in the Torah of Moses). You have neither heard His voice at any time nor seen His form. You do not have His Word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him (who stands before you) whom He sent. You search the Scriptures (Moses wrote) because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.
“I do not receive glory from men; but I know you, that you do not have the love of God in yourselves. I have come in My Father’s Name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe, when you (rabbinical sages) receive glory from one another and you do not seek the Glory that is from the one and only God? Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, FOR HE WROTE ABOUT ME! But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”
Oneness with God, through oneness with His living Word and Spirit, is the ultimate purpose of God’s Eternal Covenant! God must become one with us if we are to become one with His Righteousness and Eternal Joy and Peace and Rest. This only happens through God’s New, or renewed, Covenant with Israel. This is how He will protect and maintain our image and likeness status and level of union with Him. Through the New Covenant, Israel is privy to that privilege and glory. It comes to Israel first, and then, through Israel, to the rest of the world. Because we were created to be God’s image and likeness, and to think and act, react and interact as one with Him, anything short of that is total failure in God’s sight. He’s not satisfied with anything less than the perfect Fulfillment of His original Plan for us. So, when any human, regardless of ethnic or cultural origin and background and religion, does not know God’s living Word, then like Jacob and Nathaniel before they were pierced and penetrated by Him, they will, by default, settle for something less than total union with Him. But only God’s living Word, operating within us, can satisfy God’s Perfect Standards:
Psalm 51:15-17
“O Lord, open my lips, that my mouth may declare Your praise. For You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it; You are not pleased with burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.”
Isaiah 66:1-2
“Thus says the Lord: ‘Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool. Where then is a house you could build for Me? And where is a place that I may rest? For My hand made all these things, thus all these things came into being,’ declares the Lord. But to this one I will look, to him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My Word!”
Israel will always be the Lord’s beloved and chosen instrument for the redemption of Creation. But before the Ultimate Fulfillment can take place, Israel and the rest of the human race must be equipped for, and grounded in, and willing to receive and embody… the New Covenant Fullness of the Revelation of God’s living Word in and through Yeshua. The true Messiah of Israel is the Restoration because He is the living Word of God! We must all be fully united to and grounded in Him, for He is the Ultimate Fulfillment for which all of Creation groans and yearns. So this is how Isaiah describes the Word-embodying commission of the Messiah’s true disciples:
Isaiah 40:1-8
“‘Comfort, O comfort My people,’ says your God. Speak kindly to Jerusalem; and call out to her, that her warfare has ended, that her iniquity has been removed, that she has received of the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.A voice is calling, ‘Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness; make smooth in the desert a highway for our God. Let every valley be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; and let the rough ground become a plain, and the rugged terrain a broad valley; then the Glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all (Jewish and non-Jewish) flesh will see it together; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
A voice says, ‘Call out.” Then he answered, ‘What shall I call out?’
“All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)