“… but that is all he knew. He had never heard the rest of the story.”
(Acts 18:25b, LB)
In the last teaching we offered a number of last perspectives on Israel, especially concerning the role of Israel during the endtimes. We pointed out that many of the endtime myths which are fabricated from Matt 24 do not take the explicit prophetic time frame in which it was prophesied into account, and that all of the signs of the endtime and the anticipated events have thus already been fulfilled.
Yet there is another aspect here which calls for our attention. In Matt 24:21 the following is said about the great tribulation – “for then shall be great tribulation, such as hath not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, nor ever shall be”. On account of a wrong interpretation of Daniel’s prophetic time line – which we explained in detail in the teachings of Day 346 to 359 – a false weight was tied to the importance of Israel.
We pointed out that Israel’s history spans up until the coming of the Anointed One, Jesus the Messiah. The prophetic fulfilment of this has been carefully researched, and from this we know that Daniel’s timeline of seventy prophetic weeks was fulfilled three and a half years after the crucifixion, and that this historically correlates with the stoning of Stephen. The New Covenant is nestled in an Anointed One, a Messiah, the Christ, who gave his blood and his body as a covenant, one which is first offered to the Jew, who rejected it. The conclusion of the Old Covenant and the prophetic act of the New Covenant which is offered to all nations, tribes and languages, occurs with the death of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. This new mystery, that the New Covenant is also offered to non-Jews, is a mystery which is entrusted to Saul, who later becomes Paul.
It is clear that Christendom may have placed a too strong emphasis on Israel and the Jewish nation. On account of such a false perspective on the end times Israel is sketched as a Godly pawn, which is sentimental and unbiblical.
We also discussed in great detail the 1948 coming to independence of the secular state of Israel, and how it has been wrongly seen as the first indication of the beginning of the end, with the events currently playing out in Israel seen as the impetus around which the end time will be concluded. (See for instance Ron Rhodes’ fanfare – Northern storm rising: Russia, Iran, and the emerging end-times coalition against Israel, which uses Hollywood special effects to present the end time as nothing short than an entertaining spectacle.) The reading of “signs of the end times” occur with inaccurate readings of the Old Testament prophecies, which have alas all been fulfilled.
Flogging a dead prophetic horse …
It is here that the crux of the problem surrounding Israel becomes clear – the exegesis (interpretation) of the Old Testament, which includes everything from Genesis up until the resurrection of Jesus). The inability to understand that “hidden development in the long succession of Hebrew generations” of the Old Testament, as Robert Rendall explains it in his History, Prophecy and God within the greater framework of the entirety of Scripture (2 Tim 3:16), points to the fact that they, like Apollos, “had never heard the rest of the story” (Acts 18:25, LB).
Obviously this issue – if we are reading the Bible in the correct way, as it asks to be read – is of utmost importance. The guidelines of such a reading are discussed in the next teaching.
- Sela: The Holy Spirit is the manifested Author of the entire Bible (2 Pet 1:21) – ask Him to lead you in this process of getting to the full truth of His Word (John 16:13)
- Read: Deut 30 & 31; Song of Songs
- Memorize: Deut 30: 14 & 19
