As we continue to ponder the meaning of the Biblical command to ‘repent’ in its New Covenant ramifications, let’s take an even deeper look at our text from Paul’s letter to the Romans, keeping in mind what we’ve been considering about the relationship that God, through His New Covenant with Israel, has created between Jewish and non-Jewish people that believe, follow and obey Messiah Yeshua as their Lord and Redeemer:
Romans 12:1-3
“Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies (including any wiring in your brains, and programming in your fallen souls that are unscriptural and filled with God-less Gentile viewpoints, attitudes and lifestyle patterns. I urge you to offer all of that up to God as) a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God (that is, put yourselves in line and in agreement with Father’s Biblical, Israelite New Covenant Revelation) which is (from this point forward, to be) your spiritual service of worship (now that you’re making your Exodus from the fallen world’s system and learning how to allow God to engraft you into His New Covenant Israelite Root of Salvation, who is Yeshua, Israel’s King and Messiah).
“And do not be conformed (any longer) to (the non-Biblical patterns of) this world (its anti-God, anti-Jewish and anti-New Covenant attitudes and mental patterns), but be transformed by the renewing of your mind (which will equip you to fathom and grasp God’s awesome, deep, spiritual New Covenant Israelite attitudes and Kingdom of Heaven Seed, that you must begin to plant into yourselves, in massive amounts) so that you may prove (actually demonstrate, embody and execute) what the will of God is (for His Last Days Fulfillment), that (supernatural, Spirit-empowered total union of Jews and Gentiles into one New Man in their common Messiah) which is good and acceptable and perfect (according to God’s Eternally Perfect Standards).
“For through the grace given to me (when I was Saul of Tarsus, and used to persecute God’s precious Jewish Messianic believers) I SAY TO EVERYONE AMONG YOU NOT TO THINK MORE HIGHLY OF HIMSELF THAN HE OUGHT TO THINK (as I myself used to do); but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each (of the two groups) a measure of faith (that will equip us Jews and you Gentiles both, to fulfill our respective God-given purposes and functions in His awesome Plan of Restoration for the created Universe).” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Beloved, would you agree that reading Romans, in its Biblical, historical and cultural first century context, throws a very different light on how it is to be interpreted? Doesn’t it bring to light issues and directives from God that, throughout subsequent Church history, have been, wittingly or unwittingly, ignored, neglected, misinterpreted and violated by believers even to our present day? Paul is speaking to all New Covenant disciples, urging us to repent of our former worldly, God-less identities and thought and action and reaction and interaction patterns. He’s telling us to renew our minds and wills by creating, installing and absorbing brand new spiritual Biblical patterns into our onboard computers that match what God has done in our spirits! We never had this reality in us before; but we do now. God is making us aware of what is actually at the heart of the Gospel’s true, life-transforming New Covenant level of boot camp training for our personal repentance and mind-renewal. He’s showing us what He is going to do to unite the human race, so that we’ll realize that only through God’s Yeshua-centered way, can these miraculous changes ever be able to happen.
The New Covenant is meant to make brand new, supernatural, Heavenly sons of God out of us all! And that has nothing to do with this fallen, temporary, here today, gone tomorrow world! God did not create any of us for the ‘living dead’ state we’re all in before Yeshua makes Himself known and summons us to follow Him. So we’re not to get bogged down with our original Sin-full state, nor are we to cling to sentimental worldly attachments and to the temporary things that this world values so highly! We are not here to absorb and reflect what the world assumes and thinks, nor are we to rely on what it presumes to offer as substitutes for God Himself. On the contrary, God regenerates those who are His own… and makes us to be full-blown citizens of His eternal Heavenly Kingdom! So now He must update and equip us to give out to the world what His Holy Spirit is here to transmit into us from our Heavenly Father’s Eternal Spiritual Kingdom! The world has nothing to give to us… but we have the awesome Presence and Finished Work of Almighty God to give to the world!
So, given our awesome Spirit-empowered New Covenant equipping and Legacy… at the end of chapter 12… Paul adds some very practical guidelines for the Gentile believers of Rome. He was doing his best to help guide their steps. They had recently come under a lot of pressure when the Roman emperor, Claudius, clamped down on the Jewish people. As a result, it was natural for non-Jews to try to escape the enormous antagonism, prejudice and contempt that were being heaped on their Israelite brothers. It was very tempting to separate themselves from their Messianic brethren and curry the favor of their fellow Romans. That would seem to make life easier, safer, and their futures far less complicated. And, since most Jews still despised and rejected Yeshua, and beheld and reacted to his believers with contempt and arrogant scorn anyway… many interpreted what was happening to the Jews as God’s Judgement and payback for their rejection and execution of Yeshua, and that of many of his disciples, like Stephen. So, in this context, notice what Paul urged these non-Jewish disciples to do:
Romans 12:9-21
“Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honor; not lagging behind in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer, contributing to the needs of the saints, practicing hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. Be of the same mind toward one another; do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation. Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. ‘But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.’ DO NOT BE OVERCOME BY EVIL, BUT OVERCOME EVIL WITH GOOD!”
Paul was using the context of this terrible upheaval the believers were undergoing to teach these Gentile believers what it means to be the image and likeness of God! He was describing Spirit-filled New Covenant God-Bringers… working together amid a world of needy, spiritually blind, God-seekers. He reminded them that New Covenant Jewish and non-Jewish disciples are equipped by the Holy Spirit to embody God’s character and disposition and Heavenly ways to the teeming millions of God-less people that populated the globe at that time! Paul was showing those disciples what Heavenly supernatural beings God is intent on making all of us to be. He will do it by His Word and Holy Spirit, from within our flesh! So Paul was describing God’s Blood Covenant Faithfulness as it is to be seen coming out of us… in the context of Israel’s Last Days New Covenant Fulfillment which had recently begun to spread across this fallen world! He was also describing what Israel and the Church are both going to look and sound like at the end, when God Himself has finished the process of fulfilling every one of His promises to Israel and the world, through Yeshua, His Living Word!
These New Covenant writings also serve to prefigure and announce the awesome Last Days Fulfillment of God’s True New Covenant with Israel… all those Jews and Gentiles who will allow God to transform them, spirit, soul and body… into One New Man in their Messiah. He was urging us all to remember that we are One Body, under One Head, filled with God’s Spirit, and commissioned to worship, praise, honor and serve Almighty God… for His Total Satisfaction, everlasting Praise, and Eternal Glory! So Paul wasn’t describing or advocating anything natural or earthly or man-originated! He was describing what God is here to do and to reveal to this world… through the supernatural union of all New Covenant disciples, thanks to the Perfect Finished Work of His beloved Son! He was telling us that the risen Lord is here, living in us and through us, to gather all of the Serpent-murdered children of Adam and bring them back to Life… His Righteous, Pure, Holy Life… so that, through New Covenant Israel, He might share His Eternal, Infinite Kingdom Inheritance with all of us, forever! There is nothing worldly, or earthly, or Sin-contaminated or man-originated, in these apostolic New Covenant writings! Nor should any of those things be allowed to remain in God’s people!
Pet Opinions Cannot Restore Us
Another way of expressing what the Gospel is here to reveal to us, and create within us, is to emphasize that nothing earthly, nothing created by human minds and devices, will ever be used by God to redeem, cleanse, forgive and restore anyone to His Original Plan and Purpose. Having white or black or brown or yellow or red skin and Adamic DNA and RNA in our temporary physical makeup won’t do it. Being ethnically Jewish or Arab or Chinese or Russian or Canadian or Greek won’t make a bit of difference. None of that can deliver us from the living death we inherited from Adam. Belonging to certain man-made, organized religions, like Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity or Islam won’t do it either. Fanatical adherence to this or that pet theology or philosophy or to certain sets of religious rituals also won’t do it. And fanatical adherence to the teachings of some dead inventor of a man-controlled religion certainly won’t do it. It will do no good to try to ram your pet opinions and denominational beliefs and political imperatives down the throats of the rest of the people in this world. Nor will man-controlled organizations or tribunals, like the United Nations or the World Court, be able to save or change anyone. All of those things are the products of fallen, Sin-corrupted, living dead sons of Adam! None of that comes from the real Living God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Israel!
The apostles were proclaiming that the only Truth, Reality, Authority and Power great enough to do whatever the human race needs, is a Divine Person! Only the Living Word of the Living God can do all of this! And, in fact, He has already done everything necessary to make it happen! (See Ephesians 1 & 2.) This New Covenant Reality already exists in the Kingdom of Heaven! First revealed in Genesis 1 and 2, it was the very Truth that Paul and the other apostolic writers were commissioned by God to explain and express to the world after God’s Living Word came to institute and launch and transmit the New Covenant realities into this fallen world.
When Saul of Tarsus was overwhelmed and flattened on the way to Damascus, he encountered this awesome Person – Messiah Yeshua… the Living Word of God who took on our human flesh! And, through His Word, God created and sustains all things! So, Yeshua is the only Man that can and does supply everything that every human being will ever need. What comes from Him is from God, because He is the Living creative Word that proceeds out from God! In other words, He IS GOD’S LIVING CREATIVE, UNIVERSE-SUSTAINING WORD! Saul was overwhelmed by the one who is The Resurrection… the One that neither Death or Sin or anything created is able to conquer, hold, or stop. The Love Nature of God is the only Authority and Power able to conquer all things and to bless and restore all of Creation. All of this is contained exclusively in this One Unique Eternal Person… Messiah Yeshua of Israel! And when He appeared to Saul that day in such blazing, blinding Resurrection Glory, He identified Himself like this:
Acts 9:5b
“I AM YESHUA… whom you are persecuting!”
Yeshua is the Living Word through whom God says and does everything! He is the Major Revelation and Fact of Life and the Difference Maker that Saul, that brilliant Pharisee of Israel, had never in all his Sinai Covenant days, been able to know. But God made sure that this man whom He had chosen to serve as His Apostle to the Gentiles, would be crucified and stripped of all the ignorance, selfishness, prejudice and unbelieving soul-driven rebellion that stood in the way of his ability to know the Word of God in Spirit and in Truth. And it was because of the spiritual Reality that Paul experienced that day, and the awesome revelation that His risen Lord and Messiah gave to him, that he was finally able to understand and describe the tremendous New Covenant realities that God mercifully commissioned him to share with the entire world. And thereafter, Paul was able to express some of what he had learned about His Lord, with these words:
Colossians 1:15-20
“He is the Image of the invisible God, the Firstborn of all Creation. For by Him, all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also Head of the Body, the Church; and He is the Beginning, the Firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have First Place in everything. For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the Fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made Peace through the Blood of His Cross; through Him, I say, whether things on Earth or things in Heaven!”
Paul experienced for himself, who this awesome Person really is! And, thanks to the New Covenant God had made with Israel, His Living Word can now live in, and work through, each and every New Covenant disciple! So Paul realized what all the other Jewish apostles had come to realize… about how much all of their unbelieving Jewish brothers would still have to repent of and forsake in order to make the transition needed to enter into and enjoy God’s New Covenant with them. He saw how much of that Adamic living dead state of Sin was still present among Israel’s people, not to mention how much of that Sin was continuing to smother and kill the rest of the world!
John 4:19-24
“The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for Salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and Truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and Truth!”
Paul and the other apostles saw the vital importance and significance of that precious New Covenant Remnant that God had raised up from the midst of the sons of Israel… the apostolic Messianic disciples of Messiah Yeshua. Now he could also see that this Remnant was commissioned and empowered to lead the way and show Israel and the rest of the world, including the Gentile believers in Rome, what it means to forsake all past earthly identities and worldly man-controlled priorities, associations and traditions.
We will all have to be crucified to those things before we’re truly free to enter the New Covenant that God has specifically made with Israel to usher in Creation’s Ultimate Restoration. The Cross must strip away everything that prevents Jews from becoming one with Almighty God and with their non-Jewish brethren, in the New Covenant. And, correspondingly, there is also much of which all Gentile peoples will have to repent… before they will be truly willing and able to be grafted into Israel’s God-given New Covenant Spiritual Inheritance… in Spirit and in Truth! Each group must die to what it thought it was before it knew Messiah Yeshua. We must all die to whatever used to separate us from each other! We must die to whatever it was that we learned about ourselves in this fallen, temporal world, apart from God’s Living Word. In that sense, we must die to relying on ourselves and on our fallen soulish faculties and perspectives and opinions, attachments and Sin-corrupted passions. Not only must Israel die to everything she was in Egypt and in the wilderness… and so too must every Egyptian die to the very same kinds of things! Only God Himself can fulfill His New Covenant and save mankind. Only God’s Living Word and Holy Spirit… only omnipotent Divine Wisdom and Love Power can equip and energize and move us to operate and interact at such a supernatural, exalted, supernaturally Eternal and Heavenly Level! This is what Paul was finally able to see. And that is what he attempted to communicate through his letters.
So Paul realized that we must all update our brains and minds to align them with what only God can be and do and share from within us! There are no exceptions! None of this New Covenant Reality will come from the ideas, priorities, values and religious striving of the fallen Sin-corrupted souls of men. None of it can come from any created, Sin-corrupted structure, circumstance, event or any initiative, effort or device that originates in any fallen human soul. From now on… everything we receive must come to us from God’s Holy Spirit! (See John 14:16-31 and 16:12-15.) He will transmit to us what pertains to and comes from, the Perfect Finished Works of Creation and Redemption that only come from and through God’s Living Word… our Messiah! The Fullness of the Father that is in His Living Word must be the Source of all we will be and do… from now on! And all of that can only come to us from Eternity… through the Holy Spirit… and into and through our regenerated spirits… so that God can remove all traces of our original living death from us and transform us until we’re perfectly compatible with His Nature, and with our new Home and Heavenly citizenship, in Eternity!
Identifying With the Resurrected Life
If we’re truly serious about following the Living Word into the Fulfillment of God’s New Covenant with Israel, we need to absorb what is packed into this awesome letter to the believers of Rome. We must let its Truth pierce and penetrate us all the way to the very depths of our being. The seeds of repentance that God entrusted to the Messianic Jews and Gentiles of the first century must also be planted into us all! But we can’t do that for ourselves; nor can any other human like us do it for us. We must all deal with God’s Holy Spirit, personally, individually, and corporately. Our brains only listen to us! So we must tell them and steer them until they truly do forsake our former identities and come under the full Management of God’s Living Word. We must give to our own onboard computers the necessary amount of Biblical Truth and Instruction. We must wire and program God’s Order and His Ways into ourselves, with massive repetition! And, above all, we must identify completely with the Life of our resurrected Lord and keep always in mind that it is He who lives and operates from within our crucified flesh! This is what it will take to reconfigure and correct any fallen, misinformed human brain and mind. We must sow the Life-giving Seed that Scripture gives us, into the fields of our own brains, minds and hearts, in sufficient amounts. We must make sure this Seed takes over completely!
So the Holy Spirit is here to train and equip us to do what it takes to reap the Full, Final Last Days Harvest of the seeds of God’s worldwide Repentance. His written Word has been sowing those seeds and depositing them into the hearts of believers of every generation since the very beginning. Please understand that this radical level of repentance is the Ultimate Purpose for the Cross that our Lord commands us to take up for ourselves. The Cross is what God uses to set us free of our Sin-corrupted worldly selves! And that crucifixion of our radical independence from God makes room for Him to enter our hearts, to take over the management and care and direction and provision we so desperately need. And no one is exempt! The level of repentance that the apostles and their fellow disciples had to undergo in relation to the new Gentile believers the Holy Spirit was drawing to them… is the same level of repentance that all Jewish and Gentile believers of the Last Days will have to undergo before each other, if they wish to be part of God’s Final and Eternal Fulfillment!
So I urge you to ask yourself: In order to truly submit to the Absolute Authority of Israel’s resurrected Messiah, what level of brain re-wiring and mind reprogramming will it take for Gentiles to successfully complete their Exodus from Egypt… to Israel? Please do not underestimate the historical and cultural handicaps we must all deal with. Many of us have been marinated in the humanistic, idolatrous, brutal worldview of Greco-Roman Hellenism. And many others are saturated by the false teachings and claims of the myriads of competing religions. So what internal revolution must take place in our worldly hearts, before the Lord can truly and convincingly graft us into God’s Israelite Root of Salvation and Heavenly Legacy? What will it take before we can finally realize that Yeshua was sent to fulfill every last pen stroke of what was written for Israel and through Israel, throughout all of Scripture? God won’t forget or leave anything out; nor will He change or edit a speck of it. (See Matthew 5:17-20.) The Perfect Word of God will be utterly true to Himself! He will fulfill everything He revealed, commanded and promised to Perfection. What He said from the Beginning is what He will display before us in all of its consummated glory, at the End!
Embodying the Living Word
What will it cost us Jewish and non-Jewish believers to forsake our former inherited comfort zones and sectarian Jewish and non-Jewish religious ghettoes in this fallen world? What must we be willing to forsake in order to be purified of the selfish, self-serving, anti-Torah, anti-Semitic or anti-Gentile residues in our brains and souls that were put into them by the brutal, idolatrous, Sin-adoring atmosphere of the world in which we were originally formed? Isn’t all of that ‘Egypt’? Aren’t we all required to leave all of that behind? Will we see any of that in God’s Eternal Kingdom? The seeds of this awesome Restoration Revelation have always been contained throughout the Torah (for example, see Genesis 2:1-3 and the Books of Exodus and Leviticus), and also in the prophets (see Isaiah 55:1-11). But who could have comprehended and absorbed all of this before God actually chose to send His Living Word to become flesh? Did He not have to come Himself… to abide in our midst so that He could actually embody and demonstrate and begin to fulfill it before our very eyes?
So, this is not about Gentiles becoming more ‘Jewish’. Nor is it about Jews becoming more like Gentiles. This is about everyone becoming more ‘Biblical’, more Word of God-obedient and compatible! So, in the New Covenant… becoming Biblical is about actually being one with and embodying the living Word of Almighty God! It isn’t just about the intellectual study of created scrolls or books that are written in human words. It is about us, actually embodying and revealing the living Presence of the Living Word of our Uncreated Living God!
How deeply did God require the original apostolic generation of Messianic Jews to retrain their brains, minds and hearts? Was it not total? Didn’t He require them to die to everything they were in the past, to free them to start anew? Were they not brand new spiritually regenerated creations of God, with a new Heavenly personal identity, purpose and eternal destiny?
And what about the new first century Gentiles like Cornelius, who believed, repented and allowed God to graft them into Israel’s New Covenant Root? Weren’t they required to repent of identifying with their former unbiblical, worldly pagan Gentile roots? Didn’t they have to forsake and leave behind all of their former self-centered mindsets and worldly ethnic and cultural traditional systems that were natural to those that are born into and conditioned by this fallen God-less, Jew-despising world?
Can you see that all non-Jewish believers are, at first, totally clueless when it comes to knowing and accepting the revelation and culture that God imparted and entrusted to His Jewish Israelite people? It was hard enough for Israel to comprehend God’s meaning and His plans; so how much more difficult must it be for clueless Gentiles that have no prior Biblical understanding? How will they ever learn to obey the God of Israel, and ‘learn the ropes’ of being New Covenant Israelites, if they are left to themselves? How can they properly align with what God has done in the past without the proper map and true coordinates? What chance will they have of arriving at the right destination, in the right condition simply by relying on their own hunches, natural preferences, and inbred do-it-yourself efforts? Who will show them their true, New Covenant Israelite identity? Who will teach them about that into which God has grafted them? Who can teach them to become all that God has made them to be in His sight… as long as they insist on living separated and aloof from their Jewish spiritual elder brothers?
A Radical Acceptance
Beloved, try to imagine the state of the minds and hearts of those first century Gentiles… Cornelius, his family, and those who began to follow them into the fold of those apostolic Messianic Jews! How profound was their Exodus? What did it do to their formerly ‘Jew-less’ Roman comfort zones and habitual attitudes? Consider the dicey situation in which that battle-hardened, upper class Italian Centurion, and his family found themselves, after those Messianic Jews in Israel had embraced and adopted them into their midst! What radical attitude changes did they have to make within themselves in order to begin to live as one with these Jews that were proclaiming Yeshua to be the Messiah of Israel… in the midst of unbelieving Israel’s knee-jerk hostility, as well as amid all of the pagan arrogance and brutal contempt that the surrounding Roman Empire was sure to heap upon them?
Consider the enormous ‘peer pressures’ to which each group was being continually subjected! How vigorously did the demonic forces conspire to prevent them from coming entirely out of that realm of total Darkness into which they had all been born? Consider what the Serpent tried to do to prevent them from repenting of living apart from God’s Living Word, and also from the written Word that God had entrusted to the care of Israel. Can you imagine how much demonic resistance they encountered that was intended to prevent them from persevering and overcoming and receiving the Holy Spirit who was there to cleanse and fill them with the awesome Heavenly Light of Yeshua’s indwelling Presence? They were chosen to be the first fruits of God’s New Covenant Fulfillment! They were required to learn to be the human embodiment of Israel’s Resurrected Messiah on Earth! So can you sense some of the enormity of what Paul was trying to get across to all of his fellow contemporary Jews as well as to all those ignorant Gentile newcomers… and to their successors of every generation… including us?
Ephesians 2:11-22
“Therefore remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called ‘Uncircumcision’ by the so-called ‘Circumcision,’ which is performed in the flesh by human hands— remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the Commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the Covenants of Promise, having NO HOPE and WITHOUT GOD in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the Blood of Christ. For He Himself is our Peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two into One New Man, thus establishing Peace, and might reconcile them both in One Body to God through the Cross, by it having put to death the (soulish) enmity. And He came and preached peace to you (Gentiles) who were far away, and peace to those (Jews) who were near; for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father.
“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the (Jewish) saints, and are of God’s Household, having been built on the foundation of the (Israelite) apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the Corner Stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a Holy Temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a (New Covenant) Dwelling of God in the Spirit.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Israel’s God-given task is to serve as the Bearer of the God-revealing Light that God’s Holy Spirit must shine into the Darkness that always enshrouds this fallen world (See Genesis 1:1-4). And it was the responsibility of the newly included Gentiles to forsake the dark worldliness that was in them and to remove it from their hearts and brains, so that room could be made in them to receive their new Bible-fulfilling Life and Light that can only come from Yeshua… the Word and Son of God, the Son of Abraham, and the Son of David and the Messiah of Israel!
Consider the heartfelt affection and debt of gratitude that Cornelius and his household must have felt toward Peter… and the other Jewish apostles… and to the Jewish community of New Covenant believers after they received the Holy Spirit and could see and begin to understand the awesome things God had done for them. How overwhelming it must have been to receive the love and acceptance of their fellow Jewish disciples! And to ponder the awesome commission and responsibility that God had entrusted to their joint care. The Gentile newcomers could not have helped but witness the enormous price that accepting them was forcing their Messianic brethren to pay. As they opened their homes, hearts and lives to them… they had to sacrifice everything they were and all that they once had with their families in Israelite society, prior to knowing and following Yeshua!
So what did it mean to the new Gentile believers to see these Jewish people bringing them and all the other Gentiles that God was drawing in, into His unique New Covenant Israelite Family, at such a frightful cost? Wasn’t the Holy Spirit forcing those two groups of disciples to learn to fit, live and work together? Were they not being broken and melted down by the fire of trial and persecution, so they could be reconfigured and forged and welded into one new unit? Together they were compelled to dare to venture into brand new, never-before explored Territory! For the first time in human history they had to learn to transform into one Body, and remain faithful to the death, to one another. And both groups said ‘Yes’ to God. And on that basis, they forged ahead… so that the Light of God’s New Covenant with Israel could begin to shine forth from their supernatural Union… to the lost portions of the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds!
Deuteronomy 10:8-9
“At that time the Lord set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, to stand before the Lord to serve Him and to bless in His name until this day. Therefore, Levi does not have a portion or inheritance with his brothers; the Lord is his inheritance, just as the Lord your God spoke to him.) (Emphasis added.)
So, since we are part of the current generation that is entering the Last Days Fulfillment Era and all of its uncertainties, do we not also owe to apostolic, Messianic Israel the very same debt of respect, love, gratitude and deep affection that Cornelius and his household owed to their contemporaries in the apostolic community? And isn’t God still commanding both groups to repent of their inherited pasts? Didn’t Peter and Paul and the other apostles and Messianic Jews have to die to everything that remained within them that would prevent their New Covenant community from including the Gentiles that God promised He would bless through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? And didn’t the new Gentile believers have to repent of all their former pagan prejudices against the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and His chosen people? Was not this level of repentance needed in order for them to be willing to allow God to engraft them into His Israelite Root of Salvation?
The truth is that God requires both groups to stop identifying themselves with whatever non-New Covenant Israelite ties they may have had before Yeshua invaded their world! He is ordering all of us to rid our brains and minds and lifestyles of all of our non-Biblical ‘Wall of Partition’ baggage. We must all be free to embrace, absorb and incorporate into our souls and bodies the incomprehensible, utterly new Realities into which God is planning to bring us both so we can transform into One New Man in Messiah. The efforts and loving, patient forbearance and self-sacrifice of the original Jewish New Covenant apostolic Jewish elder brothers in the Faith were responsible for making all of this available to Cornelius and his household and to the rest of the dying Gentile world!
Acts 2:37-39
“Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘Brethren, what shall we do?’ Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and each of you be baptized in the Name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the Gift of the Holy Spirit. For the Promise is for you and your children AND FOR ALL (the other peoples) WHO ARE FAR OFF, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself!”
God most certainly wasn’t asking these apostolic Jews to turn their backs on the Gentile world! Nor was He requiring Cornelius and the other Roman Gentiles to turn their backs on His chosen people, or moving them to forsake the Israelite Legacy that He was taking such great pains to make available to them at that time! God wasn’t inspiring and leading them to invent yet still another competing Gentile religion! He wasn’t requiring them to learn to become Catholic, Protestant, Baptist, Lutheran, Charismatic, Pentecostal, or Jewish! None of the things that our generation is so accustomed to emphasizing today even existed until centuries after the deaths of Yeshua’s original apostles! No, God wasn’t requiring His redeemed people to abandon the Biblical Israelite roots into which He graciously planned to engraft the whole world! He was requiring them to begin to fulfill them!
The Biblical matrix is the womb from which God gave us His Messiah! So, the truth is that God was commanding them to stop fighting against His written Word and to be willing to follow the Word into the New Covenant Land of Promise Fulfillment… into which God has always wanted to lead and transplant both groups! He commanded both groups to repent, truly and effectively, of everything they had learned and believed and become in ‘Egypt’. And Israel even had to repent of what she had learned to be all the while she insisted on remaining in the Wilderness. We all must forsake whatever we were clinging to… before Yeshua, God’s Living Word, physically entered our picture! He is here to take us into something that is startlingly, astoundingly, brand new… God’s Eternal, Heavenly, New Covenant Land of Promise!
This is what it will take before Jews and non-Jews can be fully grafted into the Promised Land of Israel’s Consummated Spiritual New Covenant Inheritance that God promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob! None of us can become one with God through His Messiah, until we’re truly willing to become one with each other… in our common Messiah! God’s Word is our only Root of Salvation and Restoration! Yeshua and all that He was sent to do to us, in us and through us, is the True, Infinite, Eternal Land of Promise. And anything short of Him… is part of Egypt or part of the wilderness that surrounds Egypt!
So the letter to the Romans requires both Jewish AND non-Jewish believers, to pick up their crosses together. There are to be no exceptions! We all have to die to our former Adamic comfort zones and identities, and worldly connections and un-Godly priorities and aspirations in order to respond truly and authentically to the call of the Gospel that will bring us into God’s Eternal Kingdom! And those who are willing to obey God will be part of the fulfillment of the promises that God originally made to Abraham. And during the days of Moses and the Sinai Covenant, it was understood that Israel was to be made into a nation so that she could lead all the other nations of the earth back to the one true Living God, Israel’s God!
Romans 2:25-29
“For indeed circumcision is of value if you practice the Law; but if you are a transgressor of the Law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. So if the uncircumcised man keeps the requirements of the Law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? And he who is physically uncircumcised, if he keeps the Law, will he not judge you who though having the letter of the Law and circumcision are a transgressor of the Law? For (in the eyes of Almighty God) he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, BY THE SPIRIT, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but FROM GOD!”
The Gospel requires all men, regardless of background, color, ethnicity, culture, former religious tradition and personal worldly identity… to allow His Living Word and Holy Spirit to regenerate their dead spirits with the Life and Righteousness of Almighty God Himself! Then they must bring their brains and minds up to date with all of this, making them compatible with this awesome new Spiritual Reality and the selfless, righteous, Love-imparting Lifestyle that God empowers His people to embody. So God is the one who requires us to make the most radical Exodus break with our pasts that we could ever imagine! He requires us to experience a most profound, gut-wrenching Paradigm-shift to go along with our spiritual, ‘born again’ Reality-shift, if we’re really going to be equipped to follow His Son, our Master, into the Heavenly Enormity that He has waiting for us!
So it behooves us to learn the ins and outs and unchanging principles about how human brains and minds work, so that we can steer them properly and use them effectively! So this letter to the Romans, and the other apostolic texts, are leading us into very deep waters. If you open your heart to what those texts are revealing, you must also open your heart and will to embrace the Cross so that the Lord can deepen your grasp of God’s Biblical principles of ‘repentant sowing and reaping’.
Matthew 13:3-9
“And He spoke many things to them in parables, saying, ‘Behold, the sower went out to sow; and as he sowed, some seeds fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate them up. Others fell on the rocky places, where they did not have much soil; and immediately they sprang up, because they had no depth of soil. But when the sun had risen, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. Others fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked them out. And others fell on the good soil and yielded a crop, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear!” (Emphasis added.)
In this text from Matthew, the Lord used a parable to show His Jewish and non-Jewish disciples what they’ll be up against as they continue to make their Exodus. And a few verses later, Yeshua explained that He was talking about Israelites who receive the Seed of God’s Word, as opposed to Israelites who are not willing to receive it:
Matthew 13:10-17
“…the disciples came and said to Him, ‘Why do You speak to them in parables?’ Jesus answered them, ‘To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but to them it has not been granted. For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. In their case the prophecy of Isaiah (chapter 6) is being fulfilled, which says, ‘You will keep on hearing, but will not understand; you will keep on seeing, but will not perceive; for the heart of this people has become dull, With their ears they scarcely hear, and they have closed their eyes, otherwise they would see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their heart and return, and I would heal them.’
“But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear. For truly I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it!”
In order for Peter and the other Messianic Jews of his day to be able to embrace Gentiles into their spiritual fold… they had to die to what they learned before about exclusive, standoffish Judaism and what it meant in those days to be ‘Jewish’. They had to die to their traditions concerning the ‘Wall of Partition’ that they had been taught to maintain, to keep themselves separate from unclean Gentiles. This is a New Covenant requirement. For if the Jewish people continue to abide behind their wall and shun close personal fellowship and interaction with non-Jewish Messianic people, and view them as unclean and untouchable, how will they ever be fit and equipped to serve as God’s Beacon of Redemption for the rest of the world? How will they become ‘Blood brothers’ to each other and to non-Jewish believers and be able to serve together, as God’s ‘Light to the Gentiles’, if they remain soulish and self righteously arrogant and standoffish in their hearts? How will they ever prove with authenticity, that they are true sons of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, unless they actually take and willingly receive, God’s Messiah, who is God’s Ultimate Blessing, and establish His Rule over their own hearts and lives? Only then will they be able to reflect and shine the Light of His Salvation upon all the peoples of the earth that live all around them! This is what God was requiring these pioneering New Covenant Jews and Gentiles to learn to do… together!
Genesis 12:2-3
“And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed!”
Beloved, make no mistake: God has ordained that He will bless the world through Israel! So, in response, Israel must be wholeheartedly willing to receive and to become and to freely share that Blessing she receives from God… with all the other peoples of the world! And all the other peoples must be willing, with all their hearts, to receive what God is here to be and do for them… through and from Israel! This is what Paul was trying to help the non-Jewish believers of Rome to start to understand and share in, so that they could value, appreciate and cherish the Treasure God had given them through His beloved chosen apostolic people – the Remnant of Israel. God doesn’t intend to perpetually keep Israel separate from all other nations and peoples. He separated them at first to train and equip them. But in the New Covenant Era, He released them and sent them out in all directions, to bring the Light of the World into all of the Darkness that engulfed the rest of the human race! God is now here… to make all of mankind into His one holy Nation of Israel… His one and only chosen People! Gentiles are supposed to merge with their Jewish brethren so that by their spiritual God-effected union, each group can be equipped and empowered do its God-appointed job in the coming Restoration.
So… to follow their Messiah, the Living Word of God, into the Fulfillment of the New Covenant that His Father made with Israel, Messianic Jewish believers must repent of anything in their pasts that contaminates, hinders or prevents their ability to unite and reach out to and include people from every nation, tribe, class, culture and region. They must be ready to welcome all comers into God’s awesome New Covenant Family. And that is what the New Covenant first century apostles of Yeshua, and their fellow believing Jewish brethren, actually began to do, for God’s Glory and for the best and highest good of all future believing Gentile peoples! They finally began to obey God’s commandment in Leviticus:
Leviticus 18:26
“But as for you, you are to keep My statutes and My judgments and shall not do any of these abominations, neither the native, nor the alien who sojourns among you.”
Leviticus 19:34
“The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God!” (Emphasis added.)
And, correspondingly, to be able to complete their Exodus, Cornelius and his fellow Gentiles had to forsake and surrender their radical independence from God, and allow that self-life to be crucified and executed. Then they had to leave behind all of the former worldly, pagan, anti-Israel, non-Biblical residue that remained embedded in their brains, minds and hearts! Only then would they be free to truly follow their Messiah, God’s Living all-Authoritative Word, the King of Israel and Lord of the entire Created Universe, all the way into the complete Fulfillment of His New Covenant with Israel! So they had to be willing to embrace His chosen people and become as one with them in the matters of the awesome Blood Covenant into which they had all been included. And they had to be willing to open doors for their Jewish brothers that would enable them to reach out to the rest of the Gentile world, so that together… these Messianic Jews and Gentiles could reach more and more of the Jewish and non-Jewish people who are still trapped in the demonic darkness that enshrouds this fallen world and draw them all to saving faith in their Messiah!
This is the awesome Eternal Covenant Fulfillment that God’s Biblical Revelation has revealed. It is our Family Legacy that God entrusted to Israel. And He has commissioned Yeshua’s New Covenant disciples to share it with the rest of the world. Believing Jews must be made new so that they can give this to the world with all of their hearts and souls… and believing Gentiles must be made new so that they can receive it from their Jewish brothers’ hands and make it their own, and share it with others with all of their hearts and souls – and work with them to share it with the rest of the world! In this totally supernatural way, Almighty God and His Word and Holy Spirit can make us all to be one… just as Almighty God Himself, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is ONE.
So the un-Biblical Jewish mentality and traditions and wiring and programming that cause Jewish people to separate themselves from Gentiles are on death row! And the same is true of the un-Biblical Gentile mentalities and traditions and programming that cause Gentile peoples to separate themselves from Israel and the Jewish people. The Cross must deal with all of that worldly soulish rebellion. And that is why I believe Paul was so deeply stirred and moved to address the trouble that was brewing in Rome when he heard that the Jewish and non-Jewish believers in Rome were drifting apart from each other, even while some of Yeshua’s original apostles, who sacrificed so much to bring them together, were still alive! The powers of Darkness were intending to do enormous damage to the work of the Gospel. And as we can see from centuries of subsequent history, the powers of darkness managed to slip a deadly virus into the inner workings of the organized, man-controlled religion within the New Covenant Church! Their deceptions injected a lethal element into the DNA of the Messiah’s New Covenant earthly Body. And it resulted in this habitual pattern:
If it is permissible for Gentile believers to separate from their Israelite Biblical Roots and their Jewish brethren, then it’s also permissible for the Gentile believers to ‘keep that demonic ball rolling’ and continue to split apart from one another, as well!
But beloved, that trait is the hallmark of the fallen, God-less pagan world!
Genesis 11:6-9
“The Lord said, ‘Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing, which they purpose to do, will be impossible for them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.’ So the Lord scattered them abroad from there, over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth.”
The fragmentation that is normal in this fallen ‘me first’ world is the very thing that the Serpent has managed to slip into the Body of our Messiah! Today, the latest count I am aware of tells us that there are more than 38,000 different Christian denominations, sects, and groups that have virtually nothing to do with each other! So, can you see how thoroughly the powers of Darkness have infected the Church with the same confusion, strife and division that are normal to the fallen Sin-corrupted world that lies trapped within the Serpent’s coils? With such Darkness lurking in our midst, how can the Light of our Lord shine forth from our flesh and produce its Heavenly supernatural Fruit… when all of that soulish demonic rebellion still dominates in so many hearts and clogs and prevents the free flow of God’s Grace from flowing from one member of the Lord’s Body to the other members?
Once Church leaders assumed the right to separate from their God-given Israelite Root… the deadly precedent was set. Without the spiritual Blood Covenant glue-like Bond that God created to keep Jews and non-Jews together as one, there was nothing to stop any of the world’s religious peoples from criticizing, judging, spurning and pulling themselves apart from each other! Without their common Israelite Covenant Root to keep them united, there was nothing Heavenly, nothing cohesive enough, to prevent the various rootless dying Gentile branches from drying up and disintegrating into smaller and smaller fragments!
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!’”
So, as long as modern Jewish and non-Jewish Covenant friends of God remain comfortable and content on their respective sides of The Wall of Partition, that genetic defect will prevail and we’ll all remain mired in our centuries-long state of dead branch fragmentation. The genetic defect will separate Messianic Jews from each other and also from their Jewish and non-Jewish fellow believers. And it will force the Gentile believers to continue to ignore and remain separated from the Jewish people, including their own Messianic brethren, and also from the other Gentiles with whom they do not agree. And it will keep driving wedges of separation into the hearts of God’s people. Thus Jews and Gentiles will continue to hide from each other on their respective sides of their walls, arguing, ignoring, spurning, splitting and breaking apart from each other, and the splitting will even spread to their own families! Marriages, families, friendships and heartfelt ties will continue to build countless additional walls in the hearts of human beings… in a never-ending orgy of sectarian strife and self-adoring divorce and selfish division!
Romans 11:17-18
“But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive, were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the rich root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches; but if you are arrogant, remember that it is not you who supports the Root, but the Root supports you!”
Christendom has done to itself exactly what the fallen world does to itself! And, as long as it continues to morph and twist God’s Living Word into shapes that are incompatible with God’s written Word, as God entrusted it to His chosen people, the curse of ongoing malice and fragmentation will plague this dying world, religious or otherwise. Thus God’s Plan and its Fulfillment will remain ‘on hold’. And the so-called Spirit-filled children of God will remain ‘uncrucified’ and scattered from each other, and at the mercy of the demonic predators, until Father sends His own Living Word to Earth once more… to take over and to fulfill the promises He Himself made to Israel in Ezekiel 34.
Ezekiel 34:16
“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.”
Notice that as God scattered the rebellious peoples of the world at Babel, He was revealing the condition of the Sin-ridden, mortally wounded Genesis 3-11 world. But in the next chapter, chapter 12, He begins to introduce His Life-giving Antidote and Blood Covenant Remedy to all of this. He reveals His Plan to transform and reunify and restore the world and bring everything back to Life… through His chosen people and their Messiah! This is what God began to reveal to Abraham, through His Living Word. And, at the same time, God was revealing the awesome Fullness and Significance and Universe-transforming Authority of His Living Word. The Word brought Abraham and his spiritual and physical descendants into God’s Eternal Covenant. And through that awesome reunion with God, this chosen Covenant Family was revealing to the world that their Living God has effectively dealt with the Serpent, and with Sin and all of its deadly effects, on behalf of all of humanity! (See Genesis 2:1-3 and John 19:30)
Through Abraham’s New Covenant Family, God will take us all the way. He will reverse the strife and chaos and divisions of this world, bringing all men back together once again, under the Authority of His Word. The Word of God, who was made flesh, is the Root of Salvation for all Jews and non-Jews. We were all created to be one, in Him, and to receive from God whatever we need to be fully restored! All of this is done by and through the Word, our Messiah. Our obedient faith unifies us under His Headship. And our union with Him makes us one with each other! And that effectively removes our state of living death and restores us to our original perfection. And those who are redeemed develop into God’s ‘New Covenant Israel’:
John 17:20-21
“I do not ask on behalf of these (original disciples) alone, but for those also who (throughout the centuries will) believe in Me through their word; that they may all be ONE; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, SO THAT THE WORLD MAY BELIEVE THAT YOU SENT ME!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
The letter to the Roman congregation was unpacking much of this most profound Eternal Mystery. And Paul was warning the non-Jewish believers against harboring traces of that demonic ‘Tower of Babel-like’ genetic defect that lurks within the minds and hearts of radically independent, soulish carnal people. We all, Jews and Gentiles alike, inherit that defect, and generation by generation, we are taught to walk in it by the very atmosphere of this fallen world into which we are born! So we must allow the Cross to remove every speck of that demonic residue from our hearts. We must be willing to repent of and forsake what we were originally taught and conditioned from birth to see and believe and do. God made us to be His image and likeness! And He is not in any way divided; He is ONE! But our worldly teachers knew nothing of that. Instead of modeling to us what it means to serve as God’s image and likeness, generation after generation they geared us to serve as their image and likeness! That’s why we remain so selfish and blind and so sectarian, divided, scattered, and distant from God!
The Holy Spirit is here to transform each one of us into the image and likeness of God’s Living Word! He is the Eternal Creator and Sustainer and Lord of the Universe. He is also ‘The Seed of the Woman’, ‘The Son of Abraham’, ‘The Passover Lamb of God’, ‘The Son of David’, and ‘The Messiah King and New Covenant Lord, Shepherd and Kinsman Redeemer of Israel, and He is also ‘The First and the Last’! So beloved, we must embrace and become one with Him in all of His Fullness, on His Father’s terms. We must accept the Word, exactly as Father revealed Him to us in writing! And we must realize that when we embrace God’s Word, we’re also embracing and becoming one with any Jew or Gentile that is also one with Him! We must always remember what Yeshua taught the apostles: Whatever you do to any one of My Blood brothers…YOU ARE ACTUALLY DOING IT TO ME! God Himself abides by this Blood Covenant Law and operates accordingly! This is how He sees and treats us! And this is how He requires us, who are learning to be His image and likeness, to see and treat each other! Jews are not exempt from this requirement, and neither are Gentiles. All children of Adam are summoned to repent of Sin and the Death it causes so that through Israel’s priestly service, all the families of every part of the earth may be thoroughly, deeply, comprehensively and eternally redeemed, restored and BLESSED!
So God uses Israel’s Exodus as His ‘Template’ of Salvation. This Exodus from Egypt has to start with Israel; BUT, it has to finish IN ISRAEL! And this is what the New Covenant has made possible. We must follow God’s Word out of this fallen world that was formed by the scattered peoples of Babel. And we must allow Him to lead us into God’s Eternal Covenant with Israel. That Covenant will unify all of Creation and transform all repentant humans into children of God – One New Man in Messiah! God’s Story with us must end with all of us becoming His Fully Restored Israel! That’s why Israel has to lead… every step of the way… all the way, from the start of the Exodus to its Ultimate Conclusion! Israel is the prototype example, the demonstration template for what it will take for God to be able to save, bless and restore all the rest of mankind. God revealed this from the beginning, in His Torah, through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses and Joshua:
Exodus 12:37-39
“Now the sons of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot, aside from children. A mixed multitude also went up with them, along with flocks and herds, a very large number of livestock. They baked the dough, which they had brought out of Egypt into cakes of unleavened bread. For it had not become leavened, since they were driven out of Egypt and could not delay, nor had they prepared any provisions for themselves.” (Emphasis added.)
So, to finish this Exodus, Jews and non-Jews alike must follow God’s Word past and beyond the Covenant of Sinai… so that we can be free to follow Him into the New Covenant that He promised to make with Israel (Jeremiah 31:31-34). But to enter the New Covenant, Jews and non-Jews must become one, under their Messiah’s Headship! That’s why, in Romans, Paul was emphasizing the need for Jewish and non-Jewish believers to remain united. New Covenant believers must be very familiar with what God began to reveal in His Torah. When we see the Living Word of God being revealed there… we can recognize Him when He is actually standing before us in His New Covenant Fullness. Then we can know what He is here to fulfill in the future, through us!
That is what happened to the apostles, including Saul of Tarsus. And if we follow the lead of Israel’s apostles, we will all be able to recognize, embrace, obey and follow God’s Living Word made flesh… all the way to our Eternal Home… together. The Torah began to reveal Yeshua from the very beginning, in Genesis 1:1. And He continued to be revealed in the days of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses and Joshua! Before Joshua could lead the children of Israel into the Land of Promise, he had to wait for and submit to ‘The Captain of the Lord’s Host’ (See Joshua 5). Only when Moses and Joshua were able to recognize and follow this awesome Leader, who had previously appeared in human forms to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, was Israel prepared to cross the Jordan and begin the Exodus invasion of the Land of Promise, and move beyond what they had seen and heard under Moses.
Treasury of the Glorious Rest
Paul promised that the same Word of God will be revealed to all of Israel in the Last Days. As soon as Israel recognizes, embraces and becomes willing to follow Yeshua the way Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and Joshua did in their day… THEN God’s Living Word will take all believing Jews and Gentiles into The Eternal Fulfillment that God has waiting for us all. Sooner or later, the stubborn, Yeshua-rejecting children of Israel will undergo the gut-wrenching, soul-shaking experience that the brothers of Joseph experienced in Genesis 45:1-15. Joseph’s brothers were convinced they were dealing with a total stranger, an alien Gentile lord… the second in command to the Pharaoh himself. Joseph’s Egyptian name was, Zaphnath-paneah (Treasury of the glorious rest)! Joseph’s brothers had been in his presence before, but they never had a clue as to who and what he really was to them. They had once tried to kill him… but they did not succeed. But now, God was going to reveal who this apparent stranger really was, and what this was going to mean to them, and their future wellbeing!
So now they stood in his presence once again. And that was the moment Joseph was prompted to remove the veil from their eyes. He said to them in Hebrew: “Ani Yosef!” (I am Joseph!) And suddenly they realized he was their long-lost brother… and everything changed within them, and for them. The brothers were finally reunited, and Joseph was able to bless them and all of their households!
Beloved, I believe that Scripture is telling us that that reunion in Genesis was a prophetic revelation of what will happen between Messiah Yeshua and representative descendants of all of the patriarchs of the twelve tribes of Israel. Yeshua will say to them, what He said to Saul of Tarsus: “Ani Yeshua!”… I AM Yeshua! Suddenly, at that moment… they will all recognize Him as one of their very own… and His Truth will pierce their hearts. And just like Paul, they too will become ‘Messianic Jews’! And at the very same time, all Gentiles around the world will experience a simultaneous lightning bolt of revelation and gut-wrenching shock! Suddenly they will see their Messiah in all of His ‘Jewishness’ and grasp the significance of the Jewish people and understand their true God-given position before the entire world! Everyone will see the Truth in a brand new Fulfilling Light… with this Final Revelation of Yeshua. We will all see Him, and Israel, the way Almighty God has always seen them. And when Israel’s Lord and Master reveals Himself to His chosen people as He really is, they will embrace Him, and the Gentile believers and their Messianic Jewish brethren will embrace each other… and follow Him into all the Fullness that God has waiting for them all.
Both groups will be simultaneously pierced to the core of their being, just as Joseph’s brothers, and Moses and Joshua and Saul of Tarsus and Peter and Cornelius the Centurion were pierced! We will all be pierced with the revelation and unfolding and resolution of the awesome Mystery that Paul was trying so hard to convey in his letter to the Romans:
Romans 11:15
“For if their rejection (of the Gospel) is the reconciliation of the (rest of the) world, what will their acceptance be but Life from the dead?”
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.’” (Emphasis added.)
Romans 11:25-29
“For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this MYSTERY—so that you will not be wise in your own estimation—that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, ‘The Deliverer will come from Zion, He will remove ungodliness from Jacob.’
‘This is My Covenant with them, When I take away their sins.’ From the standpoint of the Gospel they are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of God’s Choice they are beloved for the sake of the fathers (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob); for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Beloved, when we do not know the things of God, they are a Mystery to us. But when God’s Word pierces our hearts and reveals those things to us, the ‘lights go on’ and then they become Revelation to us! And God’s Word first came to Abraham in Genesis 12, to give him this most awesome Revelation. He revealed Himself to Abraham and required him to repent of what he was in the sight of God, and embark on this Awesome Exodus… a total Departure from his earthly Adamic past… into a future destiny that would be totally God-imparted! Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, all of Israel, and everyone else in the rest of the world, are summoned to join Abraham on this radically profound and all-encompassing Journey! God’s Word is requiring all of us, like He first required Abraham to do… to repent of what we were in this world… and to die to ourselves as we were in the world… so that God may reveal His Living Word, Yeshua, to us, in us and through us, in all of His Glory!
Hebrews 11:8-10
“By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise; for he was looking for the City which has Foundations, whose Architect and Builder IS GOD!” (Emphasis added.)
So, when the Holy Spirit got Peter ready to embrace the idea of accepting Gentiles into God’s New Covenant Family in the first century, he showed him a vision that used unclean foods as an analogy. He urged Peter to ‘take and eat’. But Peter recoiled, assuming that the vision was about the Torah’s food regulations. But the Holy Spirit corrected him and showed him that the vision was about whether or not the Messianic Jews should embrace and welcome believing repentant Gentiles and accept them, as they were, into God’s New Covenant Family! Then Peter realized the truth of what God was telling him… and he shared it with the other apostles (See Acts 10:28). And after much debate, they finally decided that since God was accepting Gentiles “as is” and, thanks to Yeshua’s Blood Atonement, saw fit to fill them with His own Holy Spirit, they had no choice but to follow suit and accept the Gentiles that God was accepting, on God’s terms. And in his letter to Rome, Paul was asking the Gentile disciples to ‘return the favor’.
Our new birth that comes from being one with our Messiah causes us to be spiritually regenerated and fused into God’s Holy Spirit. But that severs us from – and causes us to – die to the naturally inherited soulish ties we had before we believed. And we must also be mentally, emotionally and neurologically ‘reborn’ and made new by identifying with our risen Lord, first in His Death, and then also in His Resurrection. We must retrain our fallen, Sin-corrupted faculties to adjust to God’s Heavenly ways and Blood Covenant Realities. When men become one with their Messiah, by faith… they also become one with each other! God’s Covenant marries us to each other and we become one in our spirits. So whatever separated us in the past is now dead and gone! And in God’s sight, all that remains is the new spiritual Reality that His Word has put within us. This is what the first century Messianic Jews and their Gentile fellow believers had to learn to identify with and demonstrate to the rest of the world… together!
They were not brothers by flesh or by the soulish cultural upbringing they had stored in their fallen brains and souls. They were brothers by what God had done for them all in their new regenerated spirits! God became the Father of each one… so we are sons of God and brothers to each other… in Spirit and in Truth! And Paul was requiring the Roman congregation to repent of the natural soulish lusts that abide in all fallen flesh, lust for personal supremacy and lust for personal fleshly gratifications and ego-bloating sectarianism and divisive denominationalism by which Messiah-less people cling to their original worldly self-life attitudes and self-life prejudices. He was telling them to leave their age-old ‘Us vs. Them’ mindsets that had always been so common among the Jewish and Gentile fallen sons of Adam, since Babel! And that is why he put that ‘Therefore’ at the end of what he had been saying in chapters 9, 10 and 11:
Romans 12:1-3
“Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies (including the worldly wiring in your brains) a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to (the wiring and programming you inherited from) this world, but be transformed by the renewing of (the wiring in your brain and the programming in) your mind, so that you may prove (actually embody and demonstrate) what the (New Covenant purpose and) will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. For through the grace given to me (who formerly was a blatant example of what the Holy Spirit is warning you against) I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each (group) a measure of (obedient, flesh-crucifying, heart-transforming) faith!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Try to fathom the level of radical change that had to take place in Peter, and the other apostles, and all Jewish Messianic believers when God began to regenerate and forgive and embrace Gentiles that believed in Messiah Yeshua and had repented of their sinful state of living death! Put yourself in their sandals! All Torah observant Jews were wired and programmed by centuries of Sinai Covenant custom and tradition that programmed them to view Gentiles that were not physically circumcised and Torah-observant, by the standards of Sinai, to be spiritually unclean and off-limits to all true Jews! Close fellowship and intermingling between the two groups were unthinkable to first century religious Jews! They had been conditioned and wired and programmed by the influence of the Covenant of Sinai, to believe that all unclean Gentiles were to be vigorously avoided and suspected and kept in their proper place, at a distance! And that’s what most Torah-observant Jews of today still believe!
So consider this, beloved… what kind of profound, radical rewiring and reprogramming did the Lord’s apostles have to undergo in the beginning? What drastic changes did Saul of Tarsus have to make in his mindset and attitudes and lifestyle after he repented of despising Rabbi Yeshua, and saw Him for who He really is, and repented of persecuting his believing Messianic Jewish brothers? And how much more gut-wrenching, self-crucifying rewiring and reprogramming did he have to undergo, and how much brand new territory did he have to allow God to draw him into… since he was the one that God commissioned to become ‘The Apostle to the Gentiles’? Now the Holy Spirit drew his attention to the fact that even from the very beginning of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt… there were repentant believing Gentiles that were in their midst!
I doubt if any of us can imagine or empathize with the experiences of those original Jewish believers of the first century. Nor do we have any idea of the enormous debt of gratitude we will always owe to them, for being willing to be crucified to their personal heart attachments and comfort zones… in order to make room for the likes of so many alien Gentiles to come into God’s Family and become part of them. They really and truly did have to DIE to themselves and to everything they had once held dear! They died to the former mindsets, attitudes and time-honored family traditions and daily routines that they learned in their years of pre-Yeshua Judaism! They had to learn to embrace and wholeheartedly accept what they formerly believed God required them to despise and avoid at all costs! And they had to learn to take the initiative to create new ways and opportunities through which to reach out to Gentiles and do whatever was necessary to make them feel welcome and at ease in their midst!
From Sinai Covenant Customs to New Covenant Indwelling
They had to be forbearing and gut-wrenchingly understanding and patient with the gross ignorance of all those crass unclean strangers, concerning God’s Word and His ways. They had to bend over backwards to teach those worldly paganized aliens the elementary rudiments of God’s revelation and Torah-revealed Covenant ways and Heavenly perspective and mindset. They had to be willing to give them the time that their untaught brains would surely need to gradually get used to the Torah-based Israelite ways and finally update and rewire their pagan brains and reprogram their worldly pagan-loving sentiments and desires. And that’s exactly what they began to do.
But beloved, they could have never done that by gritting their teeth, clenching their fists and using their soulish will power and determination. They had to die to all of that too! All of that had to be crucified and removed… so that the Power of God’s Holy Spirit and the Glory and Reality of Yeshua’s indwelling Resurrection Presence could transform their hearts and do through them what only the Perfect Self-less Love of Almighty God Himself is able to empower our Sin-loving, death-ridden fallen flesh to do.
This was the enormous price that the original believing Messianic Jewish community paid in order to obey Almighty God. To follow God’s Living Word into the New Covenant Era, they had to violate their time-honored Sinai Covenant-derived customs, taboos and religious traditions. The Messianic Jewish believers had to suffer enormous antagonism, opposition, rejection, and ostracism from their own personal family members and close friends and former associates, who kept refusing to believe in Yeshua. And, in many cases, their modern day successors, our Messianic brother disciples, have to endure the very same things! So do you see the significance of the letter to the Romans? And beloved, can you see that despite Paul’s efforts, even today, many of Paul’s modern day Christian brothers regard Messianic Jews with suspicion and cold, uncaring aloofness? That is why believing Messianic Jews are always caught in the middle! They are rejected,despised, and ostracized by people that live on both sides of The Wall of Partition… and they persevere in their service to their Messiah at great cost to themselves and their families.
Acts 5:27-33
“When they had brought them, they stood them before the Council. The high priest questioned them, saying, ‘We gave you strict orders not to continue teaching in this Name, and yet, you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.’
“But Peter and the apostles answered, “WE MUST OBEY GOD RATHER THAN MEN! The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you had put to death by hanging Him on a cross. He is the one whom God exalted to His right hand as a Prince and a Savior, to grant repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses of these things; and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey Him. But when they heard this, they were cut to the quick and intended to kill them!” (Emphasis added.)
Will it be any less difficult or intense for the Last Days successors to those beloved apostles? Will we not have to be just as well trained and prepared during our time of boot camp training and equipping? Yes, of course we will. When Paul was writing to Ephesian believers in the first century, he was proclaiming that the death of our Messiah had destroyed the Wall of Partition. And he wrote his letter to the Romans because he feared that the attitudes and practices that were springing up in their midst would lead to the rebuilding of that wall! And, in fact, the wall was rebuilt… and it still stands to this day!
But beloved, the disciples of our generation are destined to set the stage for the Final Climax and Ultimate Fulfillment of our Father’s awesome Plan for the Restoration of His Creation! Why do I say that? I say it because when I look around me, I see that what Rome destroyed in 70 C.E., God has begun to rebuild! In the 1870’s C.E. the Hebrew language began to be restored and became a living language once again! And in 1948 C.E., as the smoke from the devastating horrors of the Nazi Holocaust was clearing, the nation of Israel was miraculously reestablished and given a place amid the world’s community of nations. That happened in one day! And although a horde of Israel’s enemies immediately declared war on her, Israel somehow managed to overcome them and the newly established nation survived and began to grow strong and thrive. And beloved, to me, that is miraculous!
So, despite the fact that the new nation of Israel is for the most part secular and Sin-loving, and despite the fact that the rebirth of the nation was driven by secular, socialistic humanistic Jews, and despite all of Israel’s current imperfections and gross worldliness and blatant sins… I can see the hand of God operating in the midst of all of that. The Restoration process isn’t finished yet, by any means. But it has begun! Life is starting to emerge out of all that Death! And what God begins… He finishes! It may appear very humble and grossly inadequate in the beginning… but by the End… it will be an endless Perfect Reflection of God… a Source of Eternal Praise, Glory and Thanksgiving to the One who has loved and treasured us all, from the very Beginning!
And notice this: In 1967 C.E., after Israel’s enemies tried, yet again, to destroy her and once again, and failed, Jerusalem, the City of David, came back under Israel’s control. And then, almost immediately, Jews from all around the world began once again to recognize Yeshua for who He really is… in increasing numbers! They realized that He is Israel’s long-awaited Messiah… and the Living Word of Almighty God! And so the original Messianic New Covenant successors to the apostles have now begun to rise out of the ashes. God has revived, and restored and spread the Messiah’s Gospel to more and more modern day Jews. And this resurgent Messianic Family of the Lord has begun to spread and multiply, all across the world again, just as it began to do in the first century!
So now, Yeshua’s Jewish disciples are well established across the continents… and also throughout the land of Israel itself. And they are hard at work… multiplying in number and relentlessly preparing the way for their Messiah’s Return to this demon-oppressed, strife-filled, self-destructive fallen world!
Isaiah 40:3-5
“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!”
Do not all of these things correspond to the prophetic warning signs that God embedded within His written Word for our instruction? Are we not seeing the first fruits of the coming Fulfillment of the Messianic Age? Yes, I believe we are. Admittedly, there is still enormous imperfection in it, and lots of demonic opposition continues to come against it. And the Wall of Partition that divides Israel and the Church still stands within many minds and hearts. And, Israel’s enemies are stronger and more numerous and malevolent than ever. And the Anti-Christ spirits in this world appear to be making enormous progress as they strive to twist, distort and completely obliterate any sign of God’s Living and written Word from the minds and hearts of this current generation. But… we knew that this was going to happen! Our Lord warned us, that just before His Return, world conditions would resemble the conditions that existed in the days of Noah and Lot! And that is exactly what we see happening now!
So… can you see the ‘handwriting on the wall’? Can you feel that awesome shaking that crumbled and devastated what was temporary for Israel in the first century, beginning to tremble and quake once again? I feel it. I see signs that it is about to return. It appears as if the time has come for that shaking to resume. And so it has begun to shake the world, once again. And as the shaking continues, it will do in the Church what it once did in Israel! Remember: Israel is the template… the pattern… the model and example that God uses to warn and teach the rest of the peoples. Whatever happens to Israel… will happen to all the rest! Just as Israel’s organized, man-controlled religion was shaken and removed, so will the organized, man-controlled religions of the rest of the world disappear in the days ahead.
The Same Enmity and Resistance
The world, religious or otherwise, doesn’t want to hear any of this, any more than ancient Israel wanted to hear what God was telling her through Jeremiah. And this is why the Last Days Jewish and non-Jewish disciples of our Messiah still encounter the same kinds of opposition, enmity and resistance from the world that the prophets and original first century apostles encountered. Jews and Gentiles, religious or otherwise, still rage against this and oppose anything that threatens to take down The Wall that has been rebuilt with such diligence by so many. The moment believing Jews repent and are saved and filled with the Holy Spirit… they are despised and set upon by their own Jewish brethren. And the moment believing Gentiles forsake their identities and ties with this fallen world’s religions, and forsake their non-Biblical religious traditions so that they can embrace and become one with their Messianic Jewish brethren, they too are suspected, despised and set upon by unbelieving, ignorant family members, friends, associates, and even by many hyper-religious, Jew-less ‘believers’ that claim to want exactly what God wants!
And that is why the Holy Spirit’s Disciple Training Boot Camp centers are so vitally important. Jewish and non-Jewish New Covenant disciples must be trained, disciplined and prepared for what has already begun to happen to usher in the Last Days’ shaking! The Holy Spirit must prepare and equip them, just as rigorously as He trained the apostles… to love, understand, embrace and accept those that the Lord will begin to draw and save from any number of different places and backgrounds and personal histories. Regardless of how diverse their origins may be… God intends to blend and transform them all, into One New Man, under the Headship of His Living Word made flesh! And this first wave of ‘Last Days First Fruits’… the Jewish and non-Jewish believers of this time, must be taught, trained, equipped and prepared to understand the droves of newcomers that will soon join them. They must be equipped to love them with God’s Heavenly supernatural Love… and to accept them, and know how to lead, teach and guide them properly, in accord with the Destination that God has in mind for us all. The Holy Spirit will set our hearts on Fire with the Love of Almighty God. And He will draw all of us all closer and closer to Yeshua, and closer to each other. And Yeshua will draw all of us… into His Father’s Eternal Embrace.
The days are now upon us when Jews who formerly hated and wanted to kill the disciples, just as much as Saul of Tarsus wanted to kill Stephen and his fellow disciples, will suddenly be required and drawn by God to recognize, embrace and accept His beloved resurrected Son and become one with Yeshua and His disciples. And those disciples that these stunned Jews formerly rejected and held in contempt in the past, will suddenly be ready and willing to forgive and wholeheartedly accept all of these new repentant Jewish baby disciples that used to despise and spurn them in the past! Both groups will have to tear down the walls behind which they have learned to hide to protect themselves. It will be gut-wrenching at first… for disciples to be willing to merge with and embrace all of those strangers and former enemies, when in earlier times, they were both conditioned and wired to suspect, despise and avoid each other.
Matthew 19-25-26
“When the disciples heard this, they were very astonished and said, ‘Then who can be saved?’ And looking at them Jesus said to them, ‘With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’” (Emphasis added.)
So beloved, what we learn from Romans is telling us why our fallen flesh must be crucified and executed with boot camp-level rigor… on every level imaginable! Our soulishness must make way for God’s Holy Spirit! Even now, there are many Muslims who are being pierced by the Truth of God’s Word! Yes, even many murderous terrorists from their midst and also lifelong criminals and utterly selfish, ego-adoring humanistgs are suddenly beginning to hear Yeshua’s call to become His disciples! So they too will have to die to all they once were! God is freeing more and more people… making them willing to wholeheartedly embrace and totally accept their former ‘targets’… their risen Lord’s Jewish and Christian disciples. This is unprecedented and totally miraculous! And so God is preparing and equipping Jewish and Christian disciples to die to all they were, so they can be free to embrace, forgive and totally accept all former enemies – including the very jihadists that formerly had been intent on killing them!
This will be true for all people who are going to be ‘saved’ in Spirit and in Truth! We will all have to forsake and outgrow our former conditioning and programming so that we can love what we used to hate and include whoever we were once bent on excluding. The walls that separate Catholics and Protestants, and mainline believers from Pentecostals and Charismatics, and men from women and blacks from whites, and liberals from conservatives and Jews from Arabs, and Sunnis from Shiites, Hutus from Tutsis, and management from labor and the British from the Irish and the Turks from the Armenians, and the straight people from the gay people and the rich from the poor… all of those satanic walls that men and women erect against each other, every single one of them… will, in the end, be torn down and removed… by the overpowering, overwhelming, all-encompassing Supernatural Spirit and Perfect Righteousness and Grace and Life-giving Love of Almighty God!
But the Messianic New Covenant Israelite Remnant – the Jewish and non-Jewish successors to the early apostolic disciples, will have to lead the way. That is God’s established pattern. So, now can you see what the first century disciples were up against? Even though Claudius and his fellow pagan administrators held Jews in contempt and expelled them from the city… Paul’s epistle was calling upon all Gentile believers to remain faithful to their Jewish brothers in the Faith… even if it meant defying the emperor and violating Roman laws and local customs and putting themselves and their own families at risk! They were required to continue to see themselves as divinely ‘grafted into’ God’s Blood Covenant Jewish Family that had gathered around Messiah Yeshua. They had to cut themselves away from their Gentile roots… and rewire their Gentile brains… and reprogram their Gentile minds and convert themselves into something that was brand new to both the Jewish portion of the world, as well as to all non-Jewish peoples of the world. This is why Paul said to Jewish and Gentile New Covenant believers in Ephesus:
Ephesians 2:11-16
“Therefore remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called ‘Uncircumcision’ by the so-called ‘Circumcision,’ which is performed in the flesh by human hands – remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the Commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the Covenants of Promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who formerly were far off have been brought near, by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our Peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two into One New Man, thus establishing Peace, and might reconcile them both in One Body to God, through the Cross, by it having put to death the enmity.” (Emphasis added.)
So Jews aren’t required to become Gentiles… and Gentiles aren’t required to become Jews… and whites won’t become black, nor will blacks have to become white. Men won’t become women, nor women, men. The New Covenant Fulfillment will penetrate much deeper than any of those temporary, fleshy, soulish traits and classifications. The Cross penetrates all the way down to the original primitive ‘Dust’ that God first gathered to form Adam. We all must change and become ‘Lovers and Reflectors of God’, and allow His Life to pierce all the way down to our primordial Potential, where our spirits abide. We must be willing to submit to God so that He can be free to make of us all WHATEVER HE HAS SENT HIS WORD AND SPIRIT TO DO… TO US, IN US, AND THROUGH US, despite the fact that our poor minds and imaginations cannot at this time begin to figure out or imagine what that might be.
It is at this deepest level that God’s Word must and will regenerate us. He plans to make us into something so new and so Heavenly that this poor fallen world has never seen or been able to imagine anything like it. God is creating – One New Man – a many-membered Man – over which God’s Son, the Word, serves as Sole Head and Life Source. And by the Power of the Holy Spirit… all of those members of the Word will become perfectly synchronized and integrated with each other because – Messiah Yeshua will be their one Life and Sole Source and Head and only Purpose! And His Father’s Spirit living in Him and in each one of His human members… will cause all of them to live and act as one… as God’s beautiful image and likeness! And through these many members, the Head will produce His awesome Eternal Fruit… and His living members will bear it for Him… to the Eternal Glory and Perfect Satisfaction of their Father.
Romans 11:33-36
“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples. Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.” (John 15:7-11)
“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!” (Emphasis added.)
This, beloved brothers and sisters, is what I ask you to meditate upon. Ask the Holy Spirit to transmit into your innermost being… the Enormity of this Reality that was revealed to Paul and the other apostles. And not only do I ask you to consider the Reality, but go further, all the way to the Fulfillment of that Reality! It is our time to have that final perspective shown to us… for we too are commissioned to convey what Paul wrote to his non-Jewish brethren in Rome… and to allow the Lord to bring it to its complete Consummation… before the eyes of all those unbelieving peoples that live in our world, in our time! Will you follow your Messiah into the Fulfillment of His Father’s Glory?
REPENT… FOR THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS AT HAND!