God of the Jews

"Redeem Israel, O God, out of all his troubles." (Ps 25:22)

THE BOOK OF REVELATION is, for the most part, a mystery, and it is meant to be that way. Men’s speculations, absent of the Spirit’s anointing, fall far short of what God wanted us to see. It is there to show that heaven is real, that God speaks to men still after the Resurrection, that the King is King of all and holy and worthy of worship. It shows us that God is in control of how things end, and we need not fear it. But though Jesus is the Lamb of God on the throne, this is a picture of His sacrifice and not a literal image. Does Jesus sit on the throne? Yes. Is He an actual lamb? He is human, and He is God.

We can see from John’s vision, that there is a throne room and angels and angelic creatures which worship there. We are told of the river of God and the trees which grow along its banks. We are invited through salvation to the celebration of the marriage supper of the Lamb. But just as the new Jerusalem is the bride, so is the church. Both images are to show our complete oneness with Him, our intimacy. That God’s love is that beautiful.

READ “Jesus Images Part 2.”

We cannot draw conclusions about the Word of God from our mind. I spent a year listening to the studies of a well-known and well-versed Rabbi and learned both what I did not know of the Old Testament stories, things where the Hebrew language speaks differently from the Christian church, and what other Jewish scholars do not know of what the Old Testament was meant to reveal. Both in my mental knowledge and from theirs comes reasoning and human intelligence not from the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, there were times when what the Rabbi spoke was extremely anointed and from the Spirit. He is an anointed minister for the Jewish people of his congregation and those who hear him. Jesus is a Jew and a Rabbi. He is the High Priest of the Jews. He was dedicated on the eighth day in the temple. He was taught the Torah as a boy and grew up attending synagogue, celebrating all the Levitical sacrifices and feasts which His body would represent, which He represents. He knew who He was, age twelve, when His parents sought for Him and found Him in the temple with the priests and the Pharisees. The leaders were amazed by His knowledge we are told. He is the foundation of the Christian church. He is CHRIST but, though He fulfills all the ministry offices, He did not leave the Jewish people and abandon His covenant with them. We have made Him a pastor and put Him in a suit when He is God, seen in John’s revelation as holy and worthy of all of man’s worship, the glory of the Spirit shining so brightly that John, His beloved disciple, feared and fell down on his face.

What of the Holocaust? What of the millions who died there at the hand of a demonically possessed man? The Scripture does not say, but what does your heart tell you? What does His character say to you? Where is the mercy of an everlasting God? What of covenant? I speak these to make you slow down and think, to have you hush up your negative talk of what we do not understand. Does God lose an individual lost in the destruction of their mind? Does He lose a sparrow? In Minister Duplantis’ vision of heaven, a man arrived at his side who then fell down on the ground and kissed it, exclaiming, “I made it! I can’t believe I made it!” There were others, one name surprising who he saw there along its healing riverbanks. Do we believe God can save these or not? We have written everything black-and-white and have used the Bible as an excuse for our critical behavior. I’m not saying to go against the Scriptures, NOT AT ALL, but we must admit we have limited knowledge. This is in the Word, which says we know now only in part, but then we will know face-to-face (1 Corinthians 13:12). We in the Christian church do not even speak the language Jesus grew up in, though there are singers who do so with much anointing. We know Hebrew only lightly and not in all of its inflections and usages. Yet, we are quick to correct those who do.

LISTEN to Seraphim Bit-Kharibi on Spotify.

To pray for Jerusalem, to pray for the Jewish people, is to bid them to follow their Messiah. It is to encourage their faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It is NOT to make them not be Jews nor to bid them enter the church. They may do so, and our Savior is delighted because these people are His heritage, the reason for His coming to earth. He came to fulfill the Law of Moses, who He was seen speaking with, alongside Elias the prophet on the Mount of Transfiguration. Because Abraham offered Isaac on the altar atop Mt. Moriah, Jesus was given atop Calvary. Christianity came out of His death and Resurrection. But we Gentiles were grafted in. Not to replace Jesus’ lineage but to fulfill the heart of the Father prophesied over millennia. The apostle Paul pleaded with them, with the Jews who he’d fought alongside in his destruction of the Christian church, He desired them to see Jesus and confess Him as Savior. But because he was sent to the Gentiles, He hit a figurative brick wall at every turn.

Minister Rick Renner speaks of this extensively in his writings on the subject. Paul did not find the opportunity to minister to them, that was left to the apostle Peter, a fisherman with no Hebraic training in the temple at all. How ironic this is, and how like God. Who chose to create a people from the midst of an oppressive government who they outpopulated before being freed in a miraculous hour. Here are, again, the words of Rabbi Soloveichik. No one in that day believed Gods crossed borders. The gods of Egypt stayed in Egypt, or so it was said. Yet in Jonah’s day, the shipmen feared the God of the Hebrews so much they threw the prophet overboard. Rahab told the spies of the fear of the people of Jericho, who had heard how their millions of ancestors had walked across the Red Sea on dry land.

“Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.” (Romans 10:1)

Who are we to think a faithful God, a living God, would go to such an extent for one man, Abraham, yet abandon all those who came after him, kings and priests and God’s blessed people? We have turned the God of the Old Covenant into the God of no covenant at all. Yet did not Jesus say He’d come not to destroy it but to fulfill it and shed His blood for all? And His disciples were sent first to the Jews, and only to the Gentiles after Peter’s vision of the sheet let down from heaven and Paul’s change of vision on the way to Damascus. And there we have it again – a man taught all there was to know by rabbinical scholars who spent his lifetime saving those lost in idolatry. This is our calling. We are sent out into the mountains of influence to reclaim what the world has thought theirs. To reclaim entertainment and media, government systems, and all forms of educational scholars. We are to GO YE into the world and then God will bring them into His church. Not as a building erected to collect members, nor as a body of social gatherings, but as His children – sons and daughters of an Almighty God that sent His Son to die for a nation, for Israel, then bid us all, Americans and Europeans, people of South America and Australia and all other nations of the earth, across Asia and Indonesia, Africa and the Sudan, to pray for their peace. Not so that we get something out of it, but so that our Messiah, our Jewish Savior, can embrace His people once again.

“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” (Matthew 5:17)

“When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.” (John 19:30)

“The Torah is the only monument that Israel needs, and as long as it remains loyal to the text inscribed on the stones, or one might say, as long as Israel goes out of its way to ensure that the words etched upon stone are also inscribed on their minds and hearts then, long after the disappearance of every emperor that proclaimed himself “King of Kings,” Israel will itself remain as the monument to the true King of Kings. That is the testimony of Joshua. And so it was, throughout the empires of the world, many more monuments would be erected as testimonies to the might of monarchs, and Rome in particular, would establish symbols, not only of its own power, but of the defeat of Judea, the Arch of Titus, and the Colosseum funded with the loot of Jerusalem. But a people that defines itself first and foremost by a power cannot survive when its power disappears. Whereas a nation defined by God’s Word will not die.” | Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, Bible 365, Episode 68

VISIT Meirsoloveichik.com.

“What emerged from the tale of Ai in the book of Joshua will mark many of the biblical battles from this point forward, a theme that will be most fully expressed in the career of David, which is, on the one hand, the best and most brilliant military strategy must be devised in order to assure victory. At times, a war against a city such as Ai will require one approach. At times, the battle against a Goliath will require another. But even as plans are made, even as war is waged, it is done in the knowledge, in the faith, that success is only possible with the help of God, and that in victory, all glory must be given to God.” | Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, Bible 365, Episode 67

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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com