16. Israel – the Thorn in the Flesh of the World (Part 2)

“But their (Israelite) minds were hardened; for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant (Torah) the same veil remains unlifted, because it is removed in Christ. But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart; but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:14-18)

Perhaps now you can see that God Himself has something to do with the ‘veil’ that Yeshua’s New Covenant apostle Paul says still remains over Israel’s spiritual eyes. Paul is saying that God removes the veil from the eyes of His Remnant so that through them, His living Word and Holy Spirit can continue to do the work of being God’s ‘Light to the Gentiles’ and fulfill the role Israel is to play in God’s Plan. And as we saw in part one, God created a profound redemptive Covenant union and identification between His living Word (Yeshua) and Israel, the Bride that He chose for His living Word. Despite surface appearances, spiritually speaking, through the testimonies of Yeshua’s Jewish Messianic apostles and disciples, Israel continues to bear her Husband’s ‘Salvation Fruit’ from within her womb. But if that’s the case, then what is the purpose of that veil?

When I think of the veil, I am reminded of knee-jerk reactions I  personally saw in many people who came to me for help in the past. They needed help in dealing with unresolved childhood issues…unhealed soul wounds and destructive habit patterns they developed as a result of abuse they had suffered in the past. They struggled with habitual codependency issues and addictive Sin-patterns that were plaguing their lives and seriously afflicting the lives and wellbeing and futures of their families.

One classic symptom that arises in abuse victims is a condition that, in the world of treatment and recovery is sometimes called, ‘toxic shame’. It is a chronic destructive sense of personal worthlessness and inferiority, shame caused by the way the person was mistreated in the past by significant, loved, trusted and admired people that, should have been adult allies and caretakers instead of abusers. The victims begin, unconsciously, to identify with the abuse they suffered! In that sense, they become the shame that they felt when it was happening to them. Thus they lose their grip on their true, God-given identity and purpose, and begin instead to identify with and cling to the shame-based message their abusers inflicted upon them. And thus they are left with a chronic ‘victim’ identity and mentality and a corresponding set of shame-based and self-destructive habit and reactions patterns they developed during the prolonged period of abuse. Thus the toxic shame contaminates and warps whatever the person tries to become or accomplish in the future.

This is why such people become terribly ‘stuck’ mentally and emotionally. And they have a great need for adequate help that can equip and enable them learn to disentangle with the legacy of abuse, so they can be free to reconnect with their true self. To do that, they must give up the lies they believed in favor of the Truth… just the way it is. So they must go through a process of daring to face the truth of what happened, squarely in the face and eyes… their own face and their own eyes. When they get in touch with what actually happened, and face it without ripping themselves apart from it, they are actually coming back to reclaim their true self. In that process, they gradually begin to learn to accept that part of their true self…the reality of their losses and the soul wounds caused by the way they were treated, neglected and rejected. Instead of rejecting that part of themselves, they make peace with their truth… and the severed, separated parts of their soul come back together and reintegrate at last. This happens when they can ‘get real’ and dare to face, accept and embrace their true, wounded selves, as they really are. Then they begin to ‘thaw out’ emotionally…and actually begin to feel their true feelings once more. When they allow their God-given reality-processing emotional equipment to get back in touch with the pain they’ve frozen and disconnected from, they can begin to feel what they really feel and are then able to grieve their losses and mentally, emotionally and physically vent the trapped energy they’ve been holding inside for such a long time. Thus they process the Truth… instead of running away from it.

To heal, they must actually feel and process that trapped emotional voltage. As they do that, they will begin to vent and discharge the enormous amounts of emotional voltage that they’ve been holding inside for so many years. And when that is done… to a sufficient, healing, resolving degree, they are able to exchange the false selves their shame-based behaviors tried to manufacture… and accept their true selves at an unprecedented level of integrity, honesty and freedom. Now they can begin to love and accept and start caring for themselves and their previously-neglected needs…and ‘garden’ their lives as they really are. Their minds are finally able to process and resolve the inner tension buildup that has been trapped within them since the wounds were first inflicted. And their souls begin to ‘press out’ or, express the trapped emotional energy. And they begin to heal and outgrow and overcome the issues of their past.

This finally frees and enables them to begin to change course so they can find and ‘dock’ with, their true, God-given identity, purpose and destiny. And they also become emotionally free enough to move into the next stage…which empowers them with the ability and desire to forgive the people that hurt them… thereby releasing themselves… as well as their abusers… from the horrors of being psychically and emotionally frozen together and stuck and entangled with each other in the past. Forgiveness sets the abuse victim’s tortured soul and brain free at last…free to heal and be restored to health and wholeness and a much brighter, shame-free, non-abusive future.

An example of healthy, normal shame is the way people blush and get flustered when they realize they said or did something foolish or after they make an embarrassing blunder. In healthy shame, the issue is: “I made a big mistake.” But the habitual mindset of someone who suffers from toxic shame is: “I AM a big mistake!” Victims of extended abuse, neglect, rejection and abandonment, as we said, actually identify with the mistreatment they received and the issues underlying it.

Thus they develop a deep abiding sense of inferiority, of being an inadequate ‘misfit’. And they carry the burden of nursing a chronic sense of impending doom…an ominous sense of being continually threatened…which makes them unable to trust anyone. So there’s always an invisible ‘wall’ that goes up between them and everyone they encounter. They labor under the terrible disadvantage of a ‘born to lose’ identity pattern. In their gut there abides an ominous permanent sense of ‘Nobody wants me; I’m unlovable and unacceptable. I’ll never be good enough’ and that gives rise to an abiding hopelessness and an inability to trust anyone because of an ever-present suspicion that ‘I’m liable to be betrayed again, so I’ve got to control and manipulate each situation. I must control what others think of me…to protect myself and make sure nobody rejects and betrays me again.’ 

But tragically, this shame based identity leads its victims into an unintended, unconscious result: the abuse victims become abusers of others, in their own right! And it is usually their own families, co-workers, neighbors and friends that bear the brunt of their disabilities.

I learned from some of my own painful personal experiences, that deeply wounded people need to create, develop and install new identity and thought and reaction patterns for themselves so they can outgrow the original, false, toxic patterns they developed in earlier days. So at the beginning, I would ask those that requested my help, to do a seemingly simple thing. I would ask them to accompany me to a large mirror, look themselves in the eye, and say to the one looking at them in the mirror: “You are a beautiful person made by God…and I love and respect you very much.”

Invariably, those deeply wounded people found it impossible to do as I asked. They could not look at themselves without being instantly engulfed by a knee-jerk reaction of violent aversion. They would flinch and turn away immediately because they could not bear to look at or be in their own presence! To do that would have required them to face their true self and the horrible things that had happened to that true self. It would force them to get back in touch with the indescribably painful, hurtful feelings they had become so good at anesthetizing and deadening by a variety of addictive, Truth-avoiding ploys. I might as well have been asking those people to place their hands on a red hot stove! That is how deeply and totally they had become ruptured and severed and disconnected from their true selves. In order to escape from their pain and disconnect themselves from having to feel it, they had to cut themselves off from their true selves!

And this was exactly what I wanted them to see and become aware of for the first time in their lives. I wanted them to realize that their souls had been torn in two…to know that they had created a false and totally unworkable substitute self that was far removed from the real person God wanted and had created for Himself. They were so used to ‘owning’ the false identity imposed on them by the abusers and their own pain-deadening pretenses, that they had completely lost contact with the true identity and the real purpose in life and eternal destiny that their Creator had originally given them before conception and birth!

So they became totally disconnected from their true, God-given self. They disconnected by doing things to freeze the emotional parts of their souls so they wouldn’t have to feel the terror, dread, desolate pain, shame, self-loathing, sorrow and outrage that kept festering and recycling within them. They found ways to numb and freeze that inner distress with a variety of mood-altering, mind-numbing, chemistry-changing, compensatory, reality-distorting activities and substances. They resorted to stalling and Truth-twisting tactics such as, chronic denial, avoidance, control obsession, lying, and concealing and mislabeling the Truth. They developed perfectionistic compulsions…and were driven to over-achieve and overwork and control obsessions of all kinds. They plunged into hyper-activity of all sorts, to try to drown their shame-filled pain and sorrow with hyper-achieving, materialism and drug, alcohol or sexual and religious and escapist addictions.

The World’s Abuse of Israel Takes Its Toll

So…what about Israel? Is she not the world’s foremost abuse victim of all times? And are not many of her people afflicted with the understandable ‘I can’t trust anybody’ self-defeating scars, phobias, anxieties and self-protective devices so common among deeply wounded, traumatized people? This is part of what I sense when I see Israel react with such aversion and denial whenever she’s asked to ‘look Yeshua in the eye.’ She instantly turns away just as Isaiah said she would. She can’t look at the ‘Suffering Servant’ that he describes in chapter 53. But could it be that Israel is so united to God’s living Word by the Covenant God made with her forefathers, that when she looks at herself, she sees Yeshua, and when she sees Yeshua in His bruised, bloodied and battered state, she’s actually looking at her own past history in this world? And is that brutal, bloody, bitter past not an aspect of herself that she chronically feels driven to try to escape?

“He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we (Israelites) 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 men hide their face He was despised, and we (Jewish people) did not esteem Him.” (Isaiah 53:2b-3)

When Israel is asked to look into Yeshua’s eyes, what does she see? Is she like those abuse victims looking at themselves in the mirror? When she looks into His eyes does she see the afflictions Gentile Egypt heaped on her and the destruction of her two Temples and the loss of her Land of Promise? Does she see the sack of Jerusalem, the destruction of the second temple, and the Inquisition and all the pogroms and burning synagogues and wholesale expulsions? Does she see Auschwitz and Belsen, Sobibor and Treblinka? When she looks into the mirror is she looking at all the disenfranchisements and expulsions and injustices and at all of the ghettoes, Intifadas, rocket attacks, tunnels, and bombs concealed in backpacks?

And because God’s living Word has become one with Israel, in Spirit and in Truth, has He not taken all of her Sin and Suffering and Rejection and that of the rest of the world upon Himself? And is that what she sees when she looks into His eyes? Does she see herself? Is that what makes her recoil and turn away at the sight of Him… because for now, the only part of Yeshua that the God-placed veil over her eyes allows her to see is the Sin, guilt, rejection, abandonment and horror and desolation and shame that He took off of her and all the rest of us, and placed it upon Himself when He became the atoning Blood Covenant Representative for the entire human race?

In that case, can you see how the sight of Him would arouse the toxic shame that her own Sin and centuries of bloody persecution, rejection and the outrage of injustices suffered at the hands of the Gentile world, including many so-called ‘Christians’ and self-righteous abusers from the Gentile world’s false religions keep doing, to her tortured soul? Her reaction to Him would be mixed with self-loathing, outrage, terror and that shame-based paranoia and ever-present threat of being an abused misfit that is sure to be beaten, bloodied and disfigured no matter where she goes or how hard she tries to ‘fit in’. The weight of this is too much for any human soul to bear. And that is why the living Word of God, her Husband, came to lift it off of her and bear it Himself…if only she could see that…when she is asked to behold Him!

“Pilate came out again and *said to them, ‘Behold, I am bringing Him out to you so that you may know that I find no guilt in Him.’  Jesus then came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate *said to them, ‘Behold, the Man!’  So when the chief priests and the officers saw Him, they cried out saying, ‘Crucify, crucify!’ Pilate *said to them, ‘Take Him yourselves and crucify Him, for I find no guilt in Him.'” (John 19:4-6)

The Husband Comes to Rescue His Beloved Bride

The horribly beaten, disfigured Husband looks the way He does because He is The Lamb that God sent to protect His Bride. God’s Word came to atone for her Sin…to the death! And even after His Resurrection and Ascension back to Heaven, she remains unable to see that part of Him through the veil. So, like Adam and Eve, she hides herself when He seeks her out and asks, ‘Where are you?’ And despite her protests, He covers all her lapses and sins, manifesting His eternal love and faithfulness to her. He covers her with the Righteousness that His finished, Perfect Atonement won for her. He sees to it that she maintains her eternal, glorious position by His side…until the time comes when she will be allowed to see Him in His Fullness, as He really is…and receive and put on the ‘Wedding Garment’ of Righteousness He offers to her so that she can join Him in the Glory of His Resurrection and partake of His eternal Inheritance:

“Then He said to me, ‘Son of man, these bones are the Whole (Jewish and non-Jewish) 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 (My Word) and (through my living Word made flesh) I have done it,” declares the Lord.’” (Ezekiel 37:11-14 Amplification and emphasis added.)

Historically, because of the bloodshed, terror, tribulation and terrible losses she has suffered at the hands of the world, much of Israel consistently recoils from the priestly identity and world-saving purpose God entrusted to her. Weariness, agonizing paranoia and an abiding sense of never belonging, are the result. And Tevye, the main character in ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ expressed those feelings very well when He said to God,

“Just once, could You please choose someone else?”

Throughout history, Jewish people have sought safety, security, anonymity and the long-desired sense of protective control they think they’ll find either by completely avoiding the Gentile world and living in an enclosed ethnic ‘bubble’ of their own, or by completely assimilating themselves into the Gentile world and becoming part of it. Both tactics weaken and diminish her world-blessing ‘light to the Gentiles’ purpose. Even if Jewish people survive and prosper for a season by such practices, their God-given reason for being is cloaked, diminished and muted by such self-protective behavior. If Israel indulges in isolationism, avoiding Gentiles for fear that their contamination will cause her to disappear and be exterminated; she hides her God-given Light from them. But if she’s willing to be assimilated into Gentile societies…the idolatry of ‘Egypt’ absorbs and smothers her – and dowses her God-given Light. But what else can she do under the present circumstances? She’s only human; and humans are but ‘dust’ (Gen. 2:7; Ps. 44:24-26; Ps. 90:2-4). Israel’s task is super-human, it is impossible for her to be what God’s Word reveals she must be. But God intended for His Word to be her Fulfillment. So He had to become flesh…to be and do in her place, what she could have never been or done by her own devices. She will do it, but not in her own strength. She will do it in and by and through Him! But at present, the veil prevents her from seeing that.

“Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me—to keep me from exalting myself! Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He has said to me, ‘My Grace is sufficient for you, for Power is perfected in weakness.’ Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the Power of Christ (Messiah) may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then (in Him) I am Strong!“ (2 Corinthians 12:7-10 Amplification and emphasis added.)

The Eternal Covenant Connection

God’s living Word and Israel are two ends of the same Covenant Staff! He is Israel’s Husband and she is His betrothed Bride. They are forever bonded to one another. So…in her place and in her name, He is fulfilling the redemptive purpose God gave to her. And because currently, she stays at a great distance from Him, she is not in the picture when most Gentiles regard Him. Their veiled eyes do not associate her with His Salvation, nor do they associate Him with her ‘Jewishness.’ Thus they assume they can ignore or reject her, even while they accept and cling to Him. In their eyes, only He is ‘acceptable.’ And so God’s living Word can serve as their True Israel and their True Light and Salvation, without arousing too much of that bias and aversion they have inherited for His Bride. They can thus come to Yeshua, and He can save them…just as He once saved Abraham, Isaac and Jacob! The fathers of the Faith could not have saved themselves any more than the rest of the world can save itself. So the genetic and spiritual Jewish and non-Jewish descendants of those fathers are no different. God’s Word has to save us all. And so Israel, by remaining far removed from Him, enables Him to do for the Gentiles what only God’s living creative Word could do.

Do not the Israelites that assimilate into the Gentile world and lose themselves and their God-given purpose have it backwards? God’s plan for Jewish people is not for them to abandon the commission God gave them so that they can make a reverse Exodus back to Egypt! The Egyptians are supposed to make the Exodus so that God can engraft and join them to His Israel! It’s not the Israelites that must disappear; it’s the God-less, idolatrous pagan Gentiles that must disappear…until all men, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, become one New Man under the Headship of their common Messiah – God’s living Word! Ponder what Paul writes to the non-Jewish believers of Ephesus who had recently become one with Messiah Yeshua:

“So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.

“But you did not learn Christ (Messiah) in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old (Lawless) self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new (Spirit-empowered, Word-embodying Israelite) self, which in the likeness of God has been created in (New Covenant) righteousness and holiness of the Truth. Therefore, laying aside (Gentile) falsehood, speak (Torah-fulfilling) Truth each one of you with his neighbor, for we (believing, New Covenant Jews and you believing New Covenant Gentiles) are members of one another.” (Ephesians 4:17-25 Amplification and emphasis added.)

The Exodus…in Reverse

Nevertheless, despite what God called them to be and do, many Jews reverse God’s Exodus. They become much more like ‘Egyptians’ than the true Israelites God describes in the Bible. They and their children remain unaware of their true identity and purpose, or else they choose to ignore or deny them. They strive to blend in with the Gentiles around them and adopt alien gods, cultures and lifestyle pursuits. Why do they do it? They do it to escape persecution and pressure…to protect their children and enable them to survive…to be able to prosper and live in peace. And many, after so many centuries of bloody persecution, have lost faith in God and His promises. They’re exhausted, outraged, discouraged and completely disillusioned with the things of God as their own leaders and those of the Christians and of other religions, have forced them to understand Him. So they seek safety, rest, peace and relief from the tremendous pressures their God-given calling and purpose place upon their shoulders. To be uniquely chosen for a Heavenly purpose forces you to be ‘different’ and ‘set apart from everyone else.’ You are ‘reserved exclusively for God’s service.’ And that’s the same priestly commission they are to demonstrate and teach to believing Gentiles who follow Israel’s Messiah as His disciples. But, except for Messianic Jews that embrace Yeshua, most of God’s chosen people are too weary and wary and suspicious to consider doing that (See Ezekiel 37).

So today’s New Covenant Messianic Jewish and non-Jewish disciples must be on duty…as descendants of their Messiah’s original first century Jewish apostles, and Jewish and Non-Jewish disciples. They must be ready to deal with and work through all of the historical ‘baggage’ bequeathed to us by former generations. And they must be on duty, ready to receive believing repentant Jews and Gentiles into the New Covenant God has made with Israel (Jeremiah 31:31-34). Just as the original apostles of Yeshua did in the first century, the Last Days generations of Messianic Jewish and non-Jewish disciples must swim against the worldly current and learn to serve together…as the ‘One New Man’ Remnant of Israel…supported and sustained by the Eternal Life that flows into them out of that awesome Root of God’s Covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob…as brought to full Fruition by their Messiah. That is the Root…into which God intends to graft the rest of the world…ALL OF IT!

However, what has actually been happening for centuries, is that even in Christendom, that ancient wall of partition that Yeshua died to destroy, is being continually rebuilt and maintained despite what God reveals and requires in Ephesians 2! Jews and Gentiles continue to abide on opposite sides of that wall, keeping it intact and in good condition, to make sure that they remain apart and God’s Plan remains unfulfilled. Nevertheless, despite that insanity, Israel’s Messiah continues to save more and more Gentiles from eternal perdition while there is still time for Him to do it.

The unbelieving, rebellious Jewish and non-Jewish world continues to resent, hate and reject what God requires believing Jews and Gentiles to be and do together under the Headship of their Messiah. They do not want to forsake their false gods and old resentments. They won’t leave ‘Egypt’ and submit to being transplanted and grafted together into Israel’s Root. If they were to transform into God’s True Israel, they would have to forsake their Lawless Gentile idols and worldly identities. And their disobedient lifestyles would have to be crucified, executed and disposed of permanently! So they choose an alternative – they cling to their self-life, religious or otherwise, and shun and disobey the living Word of God that has come to cover their nakedness.

So, according to the requirements that God’s Covenant puts upon God’s Word and Israel, His Bride, Yeshua steps in to do the work of Salvation for which He and His Bride are commissioned. He does His part and also Israel’s part…in her name. He continues to save more and more lost Gentiles. He serves as ‘The Light to the Gentiles’ and stands in Israel’s stead, on her behalf, for as long as she must remain, ‘temporarily indisposed.’

God as You Prefer to Think He Is…or God as He Actually Reveals Himself to be?

Over the centuries, Yeshua has been saving Gentile people, even though Gentile people have continually hounded, harassed and disenfranchised Jewish people. Many Gentiles find the thought of Jews being special, different and chosen by God, and to be their God-appointed teachers, tutors and spiritual elder brothers, to be a repugnant, unacceptable notion. So they reject and ignore the ‘Israel part’ of God’s revelation and his summons to join in with His agenda and future plans. They deem it more convenient to ignore God’s Covenant with Israel’s patriarchs, and replace it with Jewless substitute gospels and non-Biblical views of God and His ways. They fashion versions of a God made in their own ethnic, non-Jewish image and likeness. Instead of leaving Egypt, they ask the Lord to ‘come into’ their Egyptian lives, on their terms. But the thought of having to repent of and die to, their natural, worldly comfort zones in Egypt, and become Israelites in God’s ‘Exodus sense’ of the word, has been out of the question for centuries. In fact, people who call themselves ‘New Covenant Christians’ have persecuted and at times, even killed God’s Israelites. While claiming to be servants of Israel’s Messiah, they have harassed and sought to destroy Jews and their non-Jewish brothers in the Faith, in His Name!

“The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me!’” (Matthew 25:40 Emphasis added.)

So as long as Israel feels compelled to reinvent herself and become something other than what God originally made her to be, she’ll never find her true, God-allotted place in this world, or the peace and rest that she always seeks…but that constantly elude her grasp. As long as Israel’s soul remains dislocated and out of its proper place at her Messiah’s side…her painful discomfort will continue and she and the rest of the world will not enjoy the Fullness of God’s Salvation. Israel and the rest of the world will only be at peace and experience fulfillment when they both become, together, what God created them to be…the ‘one in the Holy Spirit’ Body of God’s Living Word…Messiah Yeshua. When Israel finally takes on her Messiah’s yoke and willingly shares it with Him…she along with all the other families of the earth will be completely blessed.

In other words, when Israel recognizes Yeshua for who He really is, and realizes what an enormous Blessing God has made Him to be on her behalf…the rest of the world will finally recognize who Israel really is. And it will realize and acknowledge the enormous Blessing she has been, to all the families of the earth. This is what I believe Scripture is saying to us all. It is only in Him, Messiah Yeshua, the risen Lord of Glory that Eternal Life and its Fulfillment can be found, by Jew and Gentile alike:

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

Israel belongs to God’s living Word forever. He created her and gave her identity, purpose and destiny. He made her for Himself and has sustained her throughout the centuries. Meanwhile, she writhes under the unconscious resentment and willful rage and animosity that the world spews on her and the shame and desolation that such continuous abuse keeps generating in her soul. But that brings to mind an ancient prophetic warning from the Torah:

“Now it shall be, if you diligently obey the (living Word of the) Lord your God, being careful to do all His commandments which I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. All these blessings will come upon you and overtake you if you obey the Lord your God: Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country. Blessed shall be the offspring of your body and the produce of your ground and the offspring of your beasts, the increase of your herd and the young of your flock. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out…

“…“But it shall come about, if you do not obey the (living Word of the) Lord your God, to observe to do all His commandments and His statutes with which I charge you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you: Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country. Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Cursed shall be the offspring of your body and the produce of your ground, the increase of your herd and the young of your flock. Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out.” (Deuteronomy 28:1-6; 15-19)

Could it be that one reason why so many Gentiles continue to resent and attack Israel is because, unconsciously, at a very primeval level, they sense that as long as she refuses to serve as the disciple nation of God’s living Word, the Gentile world won’t be able to experience the fullness of the fruits and ultimate consummation that is supposed to accompany their Salvation? Is Scripture telling us that not until Israel takes her rightful place at Yeshua’s royal side, will God’s plan and purpose be complete…and none of us, no matter who or what we think we are, will enjoy complete satisfaction and fulfillment?

“…Creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole Creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.” (Romans 8:21-23)

All of this swirls around in Israel’s heart of hearts and causes unbearable pressure, shame and agony. And so, like Gomer did in the book of Hosea who also revealed prophetically what would happen…Israel continues to run, hide and play ‘dramatic mind games’ with her Husband. But even so, her guilt and condemnation and their consequences have been placed on the shoulders of the Suffering Servant Redeemer sent by God, as He was revealed through Isaiah. He continues to transmit and impart God’s undying, eternal Love to His Bride…and through her…to all the rest of God’s groaning, Serpent-bitten and oppressed, Creation.

Of course it hasn’t helped to have brutal persecution and agony continually inflicted upon Israel ‘in the name of Jesus’ by misguided, greedy, blood-thirsty Gentile Christian hordes that claim to inflict those atrocities on her in the name of their Gentilized, non-Biblical, non-Messianic versions of ‘Christ!’ These non-Biblical representations of our Master that unbiblical non-Jews keep thrusting in Israel’s face and using to justify their criminal greed are gross examples of the very things God warned Israel against in the Scriptures (See Deuteronomy 13)! So it was only right that she has rejected those inaccurate, non-authentic versions of their unbiblical ‘messiah’ because they are not authentic or accurately in line with what God has already revealed Him to be in His written Word through Moses!

The Torah’s Warnings Against Following False gods

In the Torah that God entrusted to Israel’s care and commissioned her to teach to the whole world, God warned Israel against accepting alien versions of god, gods that Moses and the patriarchs did not know! He said every time that happened in the future, it would be God Almighty, testing her to see if she really loves Him with all her heart and soul.

So do you see what the issue is? God went to great pains to give us His Personal Self-Revelation in writing! He did that we could begin to know Him as He really is! He did it so that our knowledge of Him would be accurate, precise, authentic and permeated by His own integrity and Reality and Truth! He did it because there would be no other way by which we could know Him as He really is.

And when we deviate from what His written Word says about Him, we naturally slip into the quicksand of having to make up a substitute god that is a product of our own imaginations and personal preferences and natural desires! And the result of that is – another false god that has no basis in Truth and Reality. And that of course is to fall into the sin of Idolatry!

So the tragedy is that there are many non-Biblical, ‘Gentilized’ versions of ‘God’ and ‘Christ’ that this fallen world has devised and substituted for what God gave of Himself to the Jews, His chosen nation of priests, prophets and emissaries! So now there are Christian gentiles of many ‘persuasions’. And they promote many viewpoints that conflict with each other that are scattered throughout their vast Gentile religious ‘god-as-you-like-him-buffet.’ And many of those offerings do not match what the God of Abraham, through Moses, entrusted to the care of the Israelite people. And they know it! And, because God warned Israelites to avoid such things with dire threats (Cf. Deuteronomy 13; 28), they have no choice but to turn away from all that does not match their Biblical heritage – Torah and the Wisdom writings and the prophets!

So how’s that for a ‘Catch-22′ (being caught between a rock and a very hard place)?’ Yeshua Himself stressed to His disciples that Moses had been writing about HIM! But yet, much of Christendom bypasses and ignores what Moses wrote! And they manufacture alien, non-Israelite messiah’s that the Jews cannot possibly recognize as being their own!

But isn’t that a repetition of the Egyptian pharaoh’s unreasonable demands and merciless afflictions all over again? Israel must still produce their assigned quota of ‘bricks,’ but no ‘straw’ is provided for their use. That’s what it’s like when Gentiles disfigure and ‘morph’ their Messiah by yanking Him out of His God-given Biblical, Israelite matrix.

They change Him until Israel can’t possibly recognize Him as one of her own. But when Israel rejects the caricatures presented by the Gentiles, she is rejecting her true Messiah! What an unspeakable, unfair, insane trap that is! At least that’s how it seems on the surface. But knowing God in all of His Perfection, there has to be more to it than that. Could it be that this apparently insane dynamic is actually a part of God’s awesome salvation strategy?

On the surface, Jewish people cringe, recoil and back away from the many alien, unrecognizable Gentilized versions of ‘Jesus’ that non-Jewish Christians keep inventing and thrusting at them. But I believe that beneath the surface alienation between Yeshua and Israel, they remain united in their suffering. They share the same pain of rejection although it comes to each one from a different source.

Israel gets it from the Gentile world and Yeshua gets it from Israel. But they experience the effects together. And that makes it possible for the Messiah to continue to save endless streams of non-Jewish people!

In this sense, the mutual pain and suffering the Husband and Bride share…create and maintain a redemptive circuit which bonds and causes them to work together in perfect synchronization for the good of the rest of the world. The Eternal Covenant they share makes them essentially inseparable. What pertains to one, totally involves the other.

And so, they experience together, that perpetual ‘wandering Jew’ rejection and homelessness. Both serve as sacrificial ‘lambs’ and redemptive ‘scapegoats’ for the Sin of the whole world. Both embody and endure the same fate…the curses and disasters stemming from humanity’s disobedience, against which Leviticus and Deuteronomy gave Israel clear warning.

Together, the Husband and Wife share in this ongoing excruciating redemptive agony, by the Plan of and at the behest of God, who is intent on saving the whole world by this totally supernatural, Spirit-empowered-and-maintained means.

So there’s a lot of historical baggage that today’s Jewish and non-Jewish disciples must perceive, acknowledge, sort through, and grow beyond. We must keep in mind that to most Jewish people, the thought of ‘Jesus Christ’ as most Gentile believers present and proclaim Him, is unbearable because much of it is unbiblical and represents the very things against which God warned Israel! (See Deuteronomy 13.) It’s also unbearable because Jewish people can’t help but link Jesus Christ with the horror, carnage, misery and heartbreak that Gentiles –‘Christian’ Churchmen, Crusaders, Inquisitors, emperors, kings and other influential people have inflicted on them, in His Name!

This situation is intensified by the fact that many Jewish people are almost totally dependent on their human mediators – rabbis, teachers and revered sages who continue to add to or ignore or change the meaning of what God revealed in the Bible. The people are led to consult the writings of men in the Talmud and Mishna (written collections of rabbinical interpretations and commentaries pertaining to God and the Scriptures), and so they’ve lost touch with their own God-given Scriptures and focus almost entirely on the writings and traditions of men.

That’s another reason why they can’t recognize Messiah Yeshua, the living Word of God. They studiously avoid and ignore much of what their own Spirit-inspired wisdom writers and prophets, such as Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, David and Hosea, among others, revealed about their Messiah. God doesn’t reveal His living Word (His Son) through the Talmud; He revealed Him through the Tanach! (the Hebrew Scriptures that Christians flippantly and arrogantly call, ‘The Old Testament’.)

So if it’s true that this ‘Jesus’ whom most Jewish people reject, is truly their Messiah, then Israel is in an unthinkable, diabolically agonizing situation. Why does she not pay attention to all of the God-given prophecies in her God-given Scriptures that Yeshua has clearly fulfilled? Why does she quibble? Why can’t she acknowledge the stupendous impact this foremost Jew of all human history continues to have on the entire world? Why does she ignore or distort the Messianic Scriptures He has already fulfilled, instead of allowing them to pierce, penetrate and impregnate her innermost being with Yeshua’s Salvation and Resurrection Life? It’s because of the dreadful, desolation and shame she would have to endure if His claims prove to be true. But more profoundly…it is happening so that God can save as many Gentile pagans as possible.

TOTAL REPENTANCE EMBRACES YESHUA… EXACTLY AS GOD REVEALS HIM FROM GENESIS TO REVELATION!

So, to acknowledge Yeshua as her Messiah, would force Israel into a level of repentance that goes far beyond her current ability to comprehend, much less endure. But this is exactly comparable to the level of repentance that non-Jews will have to embrace and endure when it’s time for them to give up their false, home-made versions of Jesus and exchange them for the real Yeshua…as His Father actually chose to reveal Him! They will also have to own up to and repent of, all the error and criminal carnage, injustice, misery and grief they have inflicted on God’s chosen people! At present, both groups find the prospects facing them to be unthinkable, unbearable and unacceptable. But in the meantime, God’s living Word continues to cover all repentant Sin-stripped and corrupted sons of disobedient Adam…with His own Righteousness…just as He is doing for His Bride, Israel.

“For God has shut up all in disobedience so that He may show mercy to all!

“Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor? Or who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to him again? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.” (Romans 11:32-36)

This mystery is currently beyond our ability to fathom and understand. Israel remains so alienated and recoils and turns away from her Redeemer…even as God continues to save more and more Gentiles of all colors, races, cultures and backgrounds while there is still time for Him to do it. He is even saving many of His Bride’s most bitter, deadly, terror-inflicting enemies by awesome supernatural means! And all of this supernatural Salvation takes place amid the gross idolatry, error, selfishness and Jewish and non-Jewish cruelties that are rampant in this fallen, broken, Sin-corrupted demon-possessed world. But don’t miss this… all of that salvation is taking place at the excruciatingly painful expense of the Lamb of God…and His Bride.

God ordained that the families of the earth would be saved if they would repent and return to Him by identifying with the Ultimate Passover Lamb He revealed through Israel. The Lamb first totally identified Himself with Israel. But now He reveals that He has also come for the entire human race…many of whom continually hound and harass, or exclude and ignore His Bride! God promised that He would cover all of this too…in the beginning, when He sent His Word to cover the nakedness of Sin-blasted Adam and Eve. Now, He’s covering all of their offspring…the Jews first…and then the rest of the world!

Many Gentiles now realize that when they identify with the one that became as Sin for us all, they died when He died. Atonement is thus made available for their sins. Because He poured Himself out before God for their sake, they can join Him in His death, and partake in the glory of His Resurrection and share in His eternal Righteousness and abide with Him as co-heirs of His eternal Inheritance! But sooner or later, He is going to require them to realize that if they are going to embrace Him…the Husband…as He really is, they are also going to have to embrace and become one with His Bride, Israel…for their Master and His Bride are eternally one. They abide together, like two ends of the same stick. To reject the one, is to reject the other. But to embrace the one, is to embrace them both!

In God’s Wisdom, Mercy and Blood Covenant Faithfulness, there is no difference between repentant, redeemed Jewish and non-Jewish ex-sinners and the Lamb whose Life was offered in perfect substitution for their guilty lives. There is no difference in God’s sight between those who are redeemed and the Glorious One that redeemed them – the Risen Messiah of the entire universe. The awesome Eternal Blood Covenant of God makes us all one with God…and that also makes us one with each other.

I believe that for now, while God’s Plan and Time Table allow for Gentiles to be saved, the Sin, guilt, shame and agony Yeshua took upon Himself on Israel’s behalf is all that God permits most Jewish people to see as they regard Him at this time. And so they shun the bloody, wounded disfigurement they see when they regard Him and continue to wait for another, more appealing and more acceptable ‘Messiah’…that they hope is yet to come. But in the meantime, Israel’s Remnant people (the Jewish and non-Jewish New Covenant disciples of God’s living Word) remain ‘in uniform’…‘on duty’… under the Lamb’s orders…in the midst of the deadly spiritual war that rages across the heavens and all around the Earth between God’s Word and the powers of Darkness…to win over the minds, hearts and souls of all men…Jewish and non-Jewish alike.

Better Late…than Never

The issue Israel must face sooner or later, is this: What if the Messiah she is waiting for…the one she will recognize and embrace in the future…is the very same Messiah she has been rejecting and holding in contempt for thousands of years? Then what? Only God will be able to sort out all the ramifications of that in each individual case; and He most certainly will! But when our Messiah does return, He will not appear as He did the first time…as ‘Mashiach ben Yosef,’ the suffering, humbled Son of Joseph (the Suffering Slave). He will come as ‘Mashiach ben David,’ the glorious Savior of the World…the risen Messiah King, the Son of David…and the Lord of the Universe! THEN the era of the complete Fulfillment of all the prophecies will be at hand. And Israel will finally recognize and embrace her Messiah as He really is…along with the rest of the believing world. And so, as the saying goes, ‘Better late than never!’

None of us can possibly know all that will happen when He does return. That event will usher us all into a brand new, never before imagined state of Reality. At that time, we will not see Him as He  was in the past – in his former earthly state of abased suffering, limitation and humiliation He endured as Yeshua of Nazareth. Even John, His closest, most familiar Jewish disciple failed to recognize Him when he saw a vision of Him as He will appear in the future:

“Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking with me. And having turned I saw seven golden lampstands; and in the middle of the lampstands I saw one like a Son of Man, clothed in a robe reaching to the feet, and girded across His chest with a golden sash. His head and His hair were white like white wool, like snow; and His eyes were like a flame of fire. His feet were like burnished bronze, when it has been made to glow in a furnace, and His voice was like the sound of many waters. In His right hand He held seven stars, and out of His mouth came a sharp two-edged sword; and His face was like the sun shining in its strength. 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!” (Revelation 1:12-18 Emphasis added.)

When He comes the next time, we will see the Awesome One, whose appearance overwhelmed John and brought him to the brink of death. The Lord will come in all of His eternal Glory, and no Jew or Gentile will ever again mistake or misinterpret His identity and significance. Everyone will know who He is because God will make it very clear from that time forward that all of the claims of His living and written Word are absolutely true!

“The Lord says to my Lord: ‘Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.’ The Lord will stretch forth Your strong scepter from Zion, saying, ‘Rule in the midst of Your enemies.’

“Your people (Israel) will volunteer freely in the day of Your power; in holy array, from the womb of the dawn, Your youth are to You as the dew.” (Psalm 110:1-3)

When He returns, veils will no longer cover the eyes of Israel or the Church. Israel will embrace Yeshua and recognize Him as her own. She will finally be able to see the part of Him that until then is going to remain veiled. Then she will see that He is the living Word and Lamb of God; that He is the Suffering Son of Joseph that Isaiah described so faithfully and accurately. She will see her glorious, all-powerful King, the Son of David and Messiah of Israel…her Messiah…her Husband! She will know how much love He has been pouring over her throughout the centuries. And it will break her heart…and melt all of her resistance. And she will become one with God’s living Word, her Husband, at last.

And the Church will be able to see the complete picture as well. Then, when she looks at Israel, she will be looking into her own eyes…and into Yeshua’s eyes…for they will all be one, just as He prayed and asked His Father to allow it to be:

“The Glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.  Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My Glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17:22-24 Emphasis added.)

“So many peoples and mighty nations will come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem and to entreat the favor of the Lord.’ Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘In those days ten men from all the nations (Gentiles) will grasp the garment of a Jew, saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you!’” (Zechariah 8:22-23)

God’s Purpose Behind all of the Suffering

I’ve tried to express what, at this point, I think I see embedded within God’s Covenant with Israel. I still have many questions and a deep sense of awe. Is this really the part that God gave Israel to play in His salvation plan? Is this how, and why, in His awesome mercy, the fullness of the Gentiles can continue to run its course? Is Israel drawing Gentile contempt onto herself, to protect Yeshua from it, even though He is the Ultimate Jew of all Jews? Is she providing Him the space and freedom He needs to attract and save more and more Gentiles…by keeping herself at a distance and drawing Gentile contempt and hatred away from Him and taking it upon herself?

Consider what would have happened two thousand years ago if Israel had immediately recognized and embraced Yeshua as her Messiah. The Lord would still have to save the Gentile world. But if Israel had accepted Him immediately…He would not have been put to death as Israel’s Ultimate Passover Lamb! And the Gentile world that comprised the vast Roman Empire, and beyond, would have paid little attention to the Jewish commotion in Jerusalem. They would not have been able to identify with or appropriate for themselves, what was going on between the Jewish people and their Messiah King. They would have shrugged their shoulders, assuming that the hoopla that was causing the Jews to dance and sing with delirious joy, was only a private party…an insiders only, ‘Jewish thing,’ that did not concern or include them in the least.

Had that happened, the Redemption of the human race would not have taken place. and the wall of partition that keeps Gentiles and Jews apart would have walled Yeshua off from the entire Gentile World and everyone would have been deprived of their God-sent Redeemer!

But instead, because God had always been intent on saving the whole world…of Jews and Gentiles – He made a way to do it…at great expense to His beloved Israel. He hardened Israel’s heart and allowed her to reject the suffering ‘Son of Joseph’ part of her Messiah for the time being. Then He allowed her to create distance between herself and her Messiah. And then the Holy Spirit moved and empowered the Jewish apostles and disciples (the first century Remnant of Israel) to take the proclamation of Yeshua and His New Covenant and the Fulfillment of His Salvation, beyond Israel…and into the entire Gentile world.

Working around all of the Anti-Semitism

It is as if Israel had to step away from the Fullness of her birthright and inheritance so that the salvation of the Gentiles could take place. Her rejection of Yeshua freed the Jewish Messianic apostles to proclaim Him to the Gentiles, without having Him linked in the minds of Gentiles, to the Jewish world and the biblical heritage they knew and cared nothing about and would have naturally shunned and ignored. Because the true biblical revelation of Messiah is so ‘Jewish’ and ‘Hebrew,’ Anti-Semitic Gentiles would have held Him in contempt and would not have wanted anything to do with ‘that Jew, Yeshua‘. But since most of Israel ‘disowned’ Him, Gentiles naturally filled the vacuum that was left and began to see Him as ‘our Jesus’.

Even now, when most Gentiles ‘believe’ in Him, they can’t bring themselves to accept Him as His Father revealed Him. They can’t allow Him to be who He really is. They strip away His true God-given name and identity. They won’t accept Him in His authentic Hebrew, Biblical matrix in and from which His Father deliberately chose to reveal Him. That would be much too ‘Jewish’ for their tastes. So they uproot and reinvent Him until He becomes the ‘God of the Gentiles’. They reconfigure Him into their diverse cultural and ethnic images and likenesses. Instead of the Gentile world being transformed into His true, Israelite image and likeness, for the time being, it is the other way around. They expect Yeshua the Messiah of Israel…to come into their lives, while they remain comfortably established in their native sections of ‘Egypt.’

But Scripture emphasizes…that this will only last for a season. And then, in the fullness of time, all the pieces of the puzzle will begin to fall into place with increasing rapidity. Then, inevitably, the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth will prevail:

“…and one of the elders said to me, ‘Stop weeping; behold, THE LION that is from the Tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has overcome so as to open the book and its seven seals.’

“And I saw between the Throne (with the four living creatures) and the elders A LAMB STANDING, AS IF SLAIN, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God, sent out into all the earth. And He came and took the book out of the right hand of Him who sat on the Throne. When He had taken the book, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each one holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song, saying, ‘Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. You have made them to be a Kingdom and Priests to our God; and they will reign (as one) upon the earth.” (Revelation 5:6-10 Emphasis added.)

For centuries, Jews have rejected Yeshua because they saw Him as the Gentiles ad libbed and freely reconfigured Him into a variety of non-biblical forms. And Gentiles felt free to embrace, believe and adopt this reconfigured ‘Jesus’ as one of their own. So now, even as He covers them all, both groups are unable to recognize Him as His Father actually gave Him to the world. Both groups ‘morph’ Him into an endless variety of ‘Jew-less,’ Gentilized shapes and forms to suit themselves and their own agendas. So a veil covers the eyes of the whole world…preventing us all from seeing Him as He really is. That is the reason why many Israelites can’t recognize Him as their own long-awaited Messiah. And it is the reason why so many Gentiles continue to be saved. And so, for the time being, God keeps working around the veil that continues to remain over everyone’s eyes!

Israel rejects her suffering Messiah, the ‘Son of Joseph’, while she waits for some other glorious, more acceptable ‘Son of David’ to appear. And precisely because of that, she continues to serve as an instrument of salvation in the hand of God, on behalf of the rest of the world. God keeps Israel and her aspirations in the background, at a distance from her Messiah…for the time being. And, as Gentiles reject and threaten Israel with annihilation and extinction…nevertheless, behind the scenes, she remains linked, intimately, to Yeshua. She shares in His sufferings and pain as Gentiles keep inflicting it upon her, even as Yeshua shares that same pain with her as she inflicts it upon Him. He does it because He is ever-faithful to His veiled, misguided Bride, despite her rejection of Him. And He is faithful to all the rest of His equally misguided Creation. He covers it all from the wrath of God and shares with Israel the pain of rejection…so they can work together to cover and shield the rest of the repentant world…from the righteous wrath and Justice of Almighty God.

If there’s any accuracy in the perspective I offer for your consideration…it is indeed a unique and awesome way by which God draws those to Salvation who hear and tremble at His Word. Only the infinite Wisdom and Mercy of God could conceive and successfully execute such a profoundly mysterious Plan. And I personally, feel a great debt of gratitude to the Son of Man as well as to Israel, His Bride. And I keep trying to fathom the enormous depths of what Paul was hinting at concerning what is going on between Almighty God and His satanic, demonic spiritual enemies in the heavenly realms concerning all of this:

“…so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the Church (Israel’s New Covenant Remnant) to the (demonic) rulers and the (satanic) authorities in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 3:10 Amplification and emphasis added. See also Job 1:6-12)

What is the message God is conveying to the Serpent and his demonic cohorts through His Son’s disciples…the New Covenant Jews and Gentiles that abide with His Son? Isn’t He telling us that Satan and his powers of Darkness have played right into God’s Salvation Strategies? The more they have separated The Lamb and His Bride, the more the two have been able to work together. God keeps liberating more and more Gentiles from the Serpent’s coils, by using, …for His own redemptive purposes… what the Serpent keeps doing to harm and destroy God’s ‘Light to the Gentiles’ !

So regardless of these temporary external circumstances that hurt Yeshua and Israel so deeply, they remain one – in the Blood Covenant mind, heart and hand of God. The Living Word of God and His Bride keep working together in this mysterious way to fulfill what God revealed through His Israelite prophets. But the day is coming, which the prophets also foretold, when the Husband and Bride will be reconciled and united forever, enfolded in God’s Eternal Glory.

Revelation and Reconciliation

Just as Jacob had to send his eleven sons to seek salvation from starvation from the Gentiles in Egypt, and there they finally encountered and were reunited with their once-rejected brother Joseph (Gen. 45), so too will Yeshua’s brothers be moved by Father in the Last Days, to seek their salvation from among any Gentiles that will provide safe havens for them. And when they enter those havens and the two groups interact in their Last Days common cause, the veil will be suddenly removed from the eyes of Yeshua’s brethren. And suddenly they will see the Messiah Redeemer and King, standing in the place of the one they had loathed and rejected in the past. They will see Him, like they have never seen Him before, reaching out to them through the welcoming arms of His non-Jewish disciples. And at that time, the Gentiles who have been serving Him, in Israel’s absence, will also see Him in a brand new light. Suddenly He will be in His proper place, securely reunited amongst His Israelite brethren. Then they will realize that when they accept His brothers, even the least of them, they are accepting Him! And this is how He will suddenly make Himself known… to both Jews and Gentiles – as the glorious, eternal Living Word of God, the Son of David and Messiah of Israel…the Lord of all Creation!

So just as Joseph waited for His brothers to reveal Himself to them, Yeshua too waits for His brothers, in splendor, amid the Messianic Jews and Gentiles who currently serve Him during Israel’s period of indisposition. And when it is time for Yeshua to reveal Himself to His brothers, He will lift the veil from their eyes and reveal Himself to them in a new, glorious way. And He will kiss Israel and see to all of her needs. And the rest of the world will finally see her for what she has always been, in God’s sight. And they will see how spiritually united she has always been to the Lord and Master they thought they knew and had been abiding with all this time. They will realize that… all this time, Israel has been working with Yeshua, their Master, all this time…so that God could bring about their eternal Salvation… and make them all one with Him and with each other… at last!

Genesis through Revelation – the Plan of Salvation

Joseph was a prophetic revelation of Yeshua at the end of Genesis. And Yeshua will fulfill the Torah promises given through Joseph…through the writings of Moses…at the end of days…as described in the book of Revelation. By the time this painful separation between the Lamb and His Bride is over, the fullness of the Gentiles will have run its course. God will then speak and He will reveal His glorious living Word to His people in a new and unprecedented way. And they will all recognize the Son of God and embrace His true, full Identity and Life, Nature, Character and Disposition. This final revelation will be overwhelming, unmistakable, and Creation-transforming. All the suffering of the past will be blotted out by the ecstasy of all redeemed human beings being one at last, with God their Creator, and with each other, for all eternity. As Paul said so well:

“For if their (Israel’s) rejection (of Yeshua) is the reconciliation of the (Gentile) world, what will their acceptance (of Yeshua) be, but LIFE FROM THE DEAD?” (Romans 11:15 Amplification and emphasis added.)

No longer will the sting of these agonizing words be in force:

Zechariah, another one of Israel’s prophets envisioned what that ultimate glorious reconciliation will look like:

“And in that day I will set about to destroy all the nations (Gentiles) 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.” (Zechariah 12:9-10)

It is my personal hope and prayer that the awesome reunion between the Husband and His Bride may come soon and that more and more of the Lord’s disciples will be able to grasp more of the depths of the meaning of Israel and her true purpose as God’s ‘Light to the Gentiles.’ The more we disciples realize what God is doing and how, the better equipped and prepared will we be to expedite the Fullness of the revelation of the Lamb and His Bride…in all of its glorious, eternal Perfection! Amen.

“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 flesh will see it together; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” (Isaiah 40:1-5 Emphasis added.)

“The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me!” (Mt. 25:40)