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The Remnant of Israel
Posted : 7 Sep, 2012 07:51 AM
"The remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob, unto the mighty God.
For though thy people Israel be as the sand of the sea, yet a remnant of them shall return: the consumption decreed shall overflow with righteousness." Isaiah 10: 21-22
"Esaias also crieth concerning Israel, Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved:" Romans 9: 27
"Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace." Romans 11: 5
In Matthew 7: 13-14 Christ says "Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it."
Those who enter into the Kingdom of God through that narrow gate are the Remnant of Israel, and they become the Remnant of Israel under the New Covenant by being reborn in Christ (John 3: 1-6)
Christ warns in Luke 13: 25-27, "I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity.' Whence is an old English word that simply means where. Christ does not know those who have positioned themselves in doctrines that are not his. Those of the Remnant of Israel have positioned themselves in the doctrines of Christ, given to us by his Apostles. The Remnant also has a strong zeal for and love for the truth of "it is written (II Thessalonians 2: 10-11)."
In Ephesians 2: 11-13 Paul says "Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands; That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ."
But some Pharisees joined the Christian group in Jerusalem at a time before the destruction of the temple and the city in 70 A.D., and taught that Christians must observe the law of Moses, all of the Torah, including the ceremonial laws. The issue in Acts 15 was circumcision. James as the leader and spokesmen of the Jerusalem Christians compromised and said Gentile Christians should not eat meat offered to idols, or blood, or from things strangled and should not engage in fornication (Acts 15: 20, 29). But James also added in Acts 15: 21 that "Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being ead in the synagogues ever sabbath day."
Acts 15: 21 can be missed. But it is an important part of the compromise offered by James to solve the issue between Paul and his followers and the Pharisees who had joined the Jerusalem Christians.
If we interpret Acts 15: 21 by what James, and apparently the other elders at Jerusalem, said to Paul and Luke (and perhaps others of Paul's group), we can see that the Jerusalem Christians were being influenced by the Pharisees who had joined them as the Judaizers. The Jerusalem Christians then were moving toward advocating the observing of Torah, which was in opposition to the teachings of Paul, though Paul in Romans 7: 7, 12, 14, 22 affirms the law, by which he means the moral law of the Torah (to be consistent with Colossians 2: 16-17 and Hebrews 10: 1). In Acts 21: 17-31 James - and the Jerusalem elders - said to Paul that many thousands of Jews now believed and were zealous of the law (the Torah, both the ceremonial and moral law). The strong implication of Acts 21: 20 is that the elders agreed with what James, their spokesman, said to Paul.
Sometime between the last meeting of Paul with the Jerusalem elders in Acts 21 and the writing of I Peter and II Peter, Peter and probably John too, had come to accept the teachings of Paul as the truth from the Lord. Peter says in II Peter 3: 15-16 " And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction."
Since the falling away of II Thessalonians 2: 3-4 and the leavening of the churches of Luke 13: 21 began in the 19th century with several cults the mainstream, or broad way theology has moved toward that acceptance of the doctrines of the "Christian" Pharisees seen in Acts 15, in Galatians and elsewhere. In a sense then, the doctrines of the Remnant of Israel, as those of all bloodlines born again in Christ Jesus, are firmly in agreement with the teachings of Paul, and not of the "Christian" Pharisees
of the First Century or of the Twenty-First Century.
Traditional Calvinism knew something about the New Testament thread of Paul in Romans 2: 28-29, Romans 9: 6-8. Galatians 4:25-26, Galatians 3: 16-29, and Galatians 6: 16. These texts are contradicted and lost under Christian Zionism which teaches that God now has two separate and different peoples, the church as a Body of Christ and All Israel, meaning all physical Israel, which is still the chosen people based on race. What Paul says is that race as a way of getting into the kingdom of God was done away with and entry is no longer by having the physical bloodline from Abraham, but that the seed, spiritually and physically, from Abraham is Jesus Christ. All who are in Christ are the spiritual seed of Abraham. So then, as Paul says in Romans 2: 28-29 the true Jew is no longer one who can boast of being a descendant from Abraham, but the true Jew is one who is a Jew inwardly, who has a circumcision of the heart and is in the Spirit.
Then really, Ol Peter in I Peter 2: 5-9, confirms what Paul was teaching and talks about Christians being a spiritual house, a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people. John, the only Apostle who lived into old age, maybe into his nineties, also supports Paul in verses in the early chapters of the Book of Revelation, especially Revelation 2: 9, "I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, but are not, but are of the synagogue of Satan." This is in agreement with Romans 2; 28-29, and adds that Jews who boast of their physical lineage and their identity as the chosen people blaspheme.
The restoration or really the transformation of physical Israel mired in the physical of racism as the descent from Abraham, circumcision, the literal temple building and all the shadows that point to Christ and the New Covenant begins in II Kings 21: 13, saying that God will stretch the plummet line over Jerusalem, meaning he will judge Israel, and will wipe Jerusalem, or Israel, like wiping a dish clean, and will turn Jerusalem, or old Israel upside down.
Then Isaiah 29: 16 picks up on this idea of turning old Israel upside down and in talking about it being esteemed as the potter's clay, points to Jeremiah 18:1-6, the parable of the potter who makes a pot on his wheel which is marred, and then puts that same lump of clay back on his potter's wheel and makes a new vessel out of the same lump which ios seen as pleasing to the potter who is God. A potter can take a still wet pot he has just thrown on the wheel, mix it with dry powdered clay, put it back on the table and knead it, then put it on the wheel and make an entirely different pot. Potters actually do this when they don't like a pot they have thrown on he wheel.
The Christian Zionists in their claim that physical Israel will all be saved sometime in the future use Amos 9: 11 as a proof text that God will turn again to the Jews to deal with them and save all of them. But they extract that one verse out of the verses from 9: 8-11, saying that God will judge old Israel, such that verse 11 is about the restoration or transformation of Israel in Jesus Christ.
Then the Christian Zionists fail to understand the parable of the vineyard in that important chapter in Luke, Luke 13. In the parable the Father says to cut down the fig tree which is old Israel because it is bearing no fruit. But the Son as the dresser of the vineyard asks the Father to let him dig about and dung it, and if it then bears no fruit to cut it down.
Christ pruned down old Israel in transforming it from a physical house into a spiritual house. In Acts 2: 41 about three thousand Jews were converted into spiritual Israel and in Acts 4: 4 about five thousand believed. But these groups and all who accepted Christ and began to give up their bondage to the shadows of the Old Covenant and give up Talmudic Judaism, the religion of the Pharisees, were a Remnant, the Remnant of Israel. Those of Old Israel who rejected Christ are said to be cut off in Romans 11: 17
Paul's teachings in Romans 2; 28-29, Romans 9: 6-8 and Galatians 3: 16-29, Galatians 4: 25-26 form the background for understanding his cryptic sayings in Romans 11: 26 (and so all Israel shall be saved) and talking about the Israel of God in Galatians 6; 16.
In Romans 11: 16 he is almost making a play on words. Since all who are saved are Israel, that is, all who are saved have their identity in Christ in Israel (because he came to save the lost sheep of the house of Israel), then all Israel shall be saved. Its not a prophecy for a future salvation of all Jews. The traditional Calvinists had some understanding of this.
In Galatians 6: 16 when Paul talks about the Israel of God, what he is doing is pointing out that there is a spiritual Israel called a spiritual house by Peter in I Peter Chapter 2 which is the Israel of God. In accordance with Romans 9: 8, the physical descendants from Abraham who rejected Christ are not the children of God, therefore they are not the Israel of God. What he means is that saved people of any race are the Israel which is of God as opposed to that Israel which is not of God. Those of physical Israel and their surrogates or proxies, the Christian Zionists, do not accept all of this, especially
that Israel was translated into a spiritual house and those who rejected Christ are not part of that house.
There is a Remnant in the New Testament.. In Revelation 12: 17 there is the seed of the metaphoric woman who flies on the wings of an eagle to the wilderness where she is nourished, which is the Remnant of Israel faithful to Christ and his Gospel in the last days.
"And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood.
16. And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth.
17. And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.
18. And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy." Revelation 12: 15-18
The wilderness is a metaphor for being outside the churches in the last days following the falling away of II Thessalonians 2: 3-4, and the leavening of the churches by false doctrines in Luke 13: 21. The call after the apostasy of the churches becomes widespread is in Revelation 18: 4, to come out of false religion, out of "mystery Babylon the great."
Even Hebrews 13: 13 says "Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach." This does not mean bearing the reproach from Christ on us, but bearing the reproach of the world, of organized religion which was on Christ and now on those who come out of organized religion. Without the camp is outside the churches. Of course, those in the churches would never agree with this interpretation - unless they are called to come out of the churches.
"I will also leave in the midst of thee an afflicted and poor people, and they shall trust in the name of the LORD.
13.The remnant of Israel shall not do iniquity, nor speak lies; neither shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouth: for they shall feed and lie down, and none shall make them afraid.
14.Sing, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel; be glad and rejoice with all the heart, O daughter of Jerusalem." Zephaniah 3: 12-14
"And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps:
And they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders: and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth.
These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. These were redeemed from among men, being the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb.
And in their mouth was found no guile: for they are without fault before the throne of God." Revelation 14: 1-5
"And they that understand among the people shall instruct many: yet they shall fall by the sword, and by flame, by captivity, and by spoil, many days." Daniel 11: 33
"And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
3.And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.' Revelation 21: 2-3
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