K-515 a Prophetic Scenario (1 of 2) — Art Katz

Ezekiel 37 and the Everlasting Davidic Kingdom

In verse 22, I will make them one nation in the land and upon the mountains of Israel, and one king, and shall be king to them all, all of this is yet future. Verse 23, I will save them, in the last portion of that verse, out of all their dwelling places wherein they have sinned, and will cleanse them.

So shall they be my people, I will be their God. 24, and David my servant shall be king over them. They shall have one shepherd, they shall also walk in my judgments, absorb my statutes, and do them. They shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt.

They shall dwell therein, even they and their children, their children's children, forever. Here's that crowning word that shows that this is the final, permanent, enduring, millennial blessedness. And my servant David shall be their prince forever.

Here's God honoring and fulfilling his covenant promise to Israel that someone who is a descendant of David and who would be seated upon the throne of David would rule over Israel forever. Maybe we need to be reminded that that promise was stated in the very advent of Jesus's coming and birth in Luke chapter 1.

The pronouncement made to Mary bears an echo of that same promise now fulfilled at the end of Ezekiel 37, where the angel came unto her in verse 28 and said, Herald thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women, and tells her about the child that shall be born in her, that his name shall be called Jesus.

In verse 32, he shall be great, he shall be called the son of the highest, and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David, and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end.

So the very first angelic pronouncement about the advent of Jesus has to do with his theocratic purpose, the reason for his coming, the prince that would rule over the house of Jacob forever, but upon the throne of David.

So that goes back to that this is the kingdom of God promised Israel in keeping with the covenant promises of God, literal genealogy, a literal throne, a literal place, but once it is established, it's established forever, and for that reason the fury of the powers of darkness is all the greater.

Their loss is without remedy. Once they lose their false and usurping place, it's never again altered, and so their last fury will be the greatest. And so that these verses now come at the end of Ezekiel 37 shows again the same pattern of all the prophets, time of severe tribulation, devastation, desolation, ruin, out of it a restoration of a remnant, their return to the land, the putting of his spirit within them, the forgiving of their sins, their coming to the awareness themselves with great remorse and recognition of their sins and the sins of their fathers, and then the theocratic rule coming to them and through them to the nations.

The Millennial Sanctuary and Zion

Verse 26, I will make a covenant of peace with them, it shall be an everlasting covenant with them. I will place them and multiply them and set my sanctuary in the midst of them forevermore. My tabernacle also shall be with them.

Yea, I will be their God, they shall be my people, and the heathen shall know that I, the Lord, do sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them forevermore. Not only the seat of government, but the actual residence of the resurrected and ascendant king out of a place in the earth that the world despises.

Isn't that remarkable? That the center of his world rule is not the United Nations or Geneva or New York City, but the holy hill of Zion. It is another calculated offense against the sensibilities of men that would have submitted other locations as having been superior.

It's because it's a hill that God has chosen it. It's because it's despised that he prefers it, because that's the kind of God that he is, lowly and meek. And so just to understand that the whole of 37, the death and resurrection, is couched in this whole theocratic glory that comes with the resurrection of that people, and God's placement, his actual literal, physical locus, his sanctuary, his tabernacle and dwelling place, is with his people in that city.

It's so easy to dismiss that or to spiritualize that, but it's literal. That's why all these could die not having received the promise, but having embraced it, seeing it afar off, that they knew that there would come a time when they would inherit the promise in actuality, in the land that God had given, in their resurrection.

And it would be for them then an eternal inheritance and an unbroken and continuing blessedness. Every one of these categories violate and offend human consideration. It's utterly supernatural. Resurrection is the thing that men most stagger at.

The Resurrection of Christ as the Foundation of Prophetic Fulfillment

There's something about resurrection that is a calculated offense to human sensibility. We can believe anything, but not that God can raise from the dead. And even when we believe, we don't believe. There's just a way in which we dismiss it.

And yet, it's the nub of the faith. Christ and him crucified implies Christ crucified and risen. And that was the great apocalyptic event that has already come into time. And by it, all of this is set in motion.

The power that raises Israel through the word of the remnant church that is prophetic, whose word is creative, is that power. None of this could take place if there had not first been the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

That is the great signal event in all time and history. And if we make of that a commonplace and allow that to become trivialized, we will have lost the faith. And we're dangerously close to that historically right now.

And I spoke about it yesterday, Easter bunnies and chocolate things and all other kinds of things that turn holy days into holidays. It's a calculated offense by the enemy to rob the church and the world of the most stunning event that has ever taken place in human history, namely the intervention of God in time and place, and the demonstration of the power of God against every force of darkness calculated for the death of his son to raise him from that death and bring him to a place of ascension and glory and honor at the very throne of God.

And that's what Stephen saw. I see the heavens opened and Jesus at the right hand of power. And that statement just drove men on the earth to a fury because it signaled to them that their tenure was finished.

Something had been established as very fact that was only a matter of time before the logic and the unfolding of it would finally undo all earthly kingdoms and bring to pass supernaturally from the throne of heaven, the theocratic rule of God.

The Government of God and Millennial Glory

I've been using that phrase liberally, assuming that everybody knows what that means. Theophilus is a lover of God. Theology, the study of God. Theocracy, the government of God. And we need to cultivate this government.

The word government has fallen into such low repute. I chafe at the word government. I despise it. I was a history teacher, and in our American schools we call that social studies, and I was required at times to teach government, and I despised it.

I don't like the mechanics of governments and something that when is operated by men, so lends itself to corruption. But we must not allow the human concept of government to impinge upon divine government.

It is something else altogether. It is the wisdom, the benevolence, the kindness, the goodness of God manifested and demonstrated and proclaimed and set forth before the nations that there might live insanity, righteousness, and peace.

In the millennial age, you know, if your juices are not flowing, you've not yet understood it. And I think for most of us, we're dry mouthed. We know the phrase, but we cannot conjure up an image of what this glory is, and the eternality of it.

It goes on forever, and what a rejoicing. The trees clap their hands. The hills skip as lands. Nature itself rejoices and is groaning and travailing until now, waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God, which is to say, the conditions that will eventuate in this millennial blessedness.

We're living such a sub-normal life, only we've lived it so long that it seems normal. We're living beneath the glory of God. It's pathetic, and it takes its toll, but its toll is so familiar to us that we expect it.

We expect the mental institutions to be crowded out. We expect our prisons to be bulging at the walls. We expect deformed, crippled, marred, psychologically beaten pieces of humanity. You can't walk in New York City and stop at a corner waiting for the light to change and hear people talking to themselves.

There are deranged people billowing out all over the earth, psychologically warped, mentally broken, emotionally disturbed. They're freaked out because God has made us physiologically to live righteously in sanity and truth and in love.

And when those conditions are not provided, and somehow we have to adjust our organisms to some substandard mode of life, it's tremendous, the tenacity of the human frame, how much abuse it can endure, but God never intended for that.

So we just need to understand that shame on us that dumb and inanimate nature is crying out and groaning and travailing in sensate nature, senses more acutely what we who have minds and hearts and spirits and the Word of God do not yet understand nor long for.

Longing for the Appearing of the Lord

It's only those who long for his appearing. It's not the appearing as a doctrinal matter of fact that we have to accept. There's a longing. And if you're not longing, something's amiss. And we need to seek the Lord about that.

And Lord, do something for me that I would anticipate and look for and seek. And maybe the problem is this. Unlike righteous Job, we are not chafed by the evil that is about us. His righteous soul was vexed.

He couldn't stand Sodom and Gomorrah. It was painful. He got there by consequence of his own greed. He looked down on the valley and it was lush. He chose the kinds of places that would inevitably lead him into a Sodom and Gomorrah.

But once he was there and saw the evil of it, his righteous soul was vexed. And when your soul is vexed, you say, come Lord Jesus. If it's not vexed and you've learned to live with it and get by and maybe this is yet the best of all worlds and there's no longing.

The longing for the coming of the Lord is personal. We want to see him. We desire that communion and fellowship. But it's also desiring his vindication. He's been blasphemed. They've made stupid theatrical pieces about him.

What is it called? Jesus Christ Superstar and other kinds of mocking things. He's blasphemed everywhere. I'm spared from it. I don't have to go out in the world and punch a time card and listen to men, jerks talking about GD this and GD that.

I don't hear that language, but I know it's frequent on every carnal man's lips. And God hears it. Continuous stream of abuse, profanity, and blasphemy that goes up out of the earth that God has made by men who do not even acknowledge him and despise him.

So, his coming as king is a great vindication, particularly in the city where he was mocked, cruelly treated, and lampooned as king. That sign over his head in three languages, Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews, was not meant to be edifying.

It was meant to be humiliating. That robe, that crown of thorns, these were all men taunting, mocking, and jeering at this itinerant preacher that he would have any profession to be king. He's going to come back in the exact city where he suffered these humiliations, and there be glorified, and be glorified there forever.

What a vindication, if you love him. How much do you desire to see that, and can hardly wait for that justification. And those of us who are suffering for his name's sake, catching the abuse that is directed toward his people, right at the end, and all of the anti-Christ tirade that will be poured out, and hanging in and barely surviving, also wait for his coming.

For our vindication, and our release, for the things that will requite our patient suffering, when he who comes, comes and brings his reward with him. So, if we don't have a sense of this, and an anticipation for this, everything else is academic.

And that's my great fear. Maybe somebody can help me, and help us, how we can communicate, and cultivate, and nurture. Apostolic anticipation. And make that so central to all of our being, like a focal point.

We're moving toward something. Everything is seen in the light of that. It's the great centerpiece. Or else our life is just an accumulation of days. Okay, I want to read this paper that I'm going to send to this magazine, this journal in England.

Ezekiel 37 as a Prophetic Scenario for the Last Days

But at the same time, it stands as a survey of what we were discussing last night. So, I'll try and go slow. Stop at the points. If it's not clear, that's exactly what I need to find out. Make corrections even now, that will go into the final draft that I'll send these people.

So, Ezekiel 37, the necessary death and resurrection of Israel. A prophetic scenario for the last days. As with the prophetic Son of Man of this dread and glorious chapter, so also are we, the prophetic people of God, pressed to be set down in the midst of a valley full of dry bones.

In such a place, one is required to dismiss all wishful thinking of things as we would like them to be, and to consider them as they in fact are. Which is to say, as God himself sees them, indeed as they must be seen, or later forfeit any prophetic use by which these bones can be brought to life again.

Everybody understands the connection with seeing and speaking. If we do not see as God sees, we cannot speak as God would speak. For to prophesy, that is to be as God's mouth, to speak the creative life-giving word, requires first an identification with God that is total, over and against any reluctance to face the grim fact of Israel's death.

From the opening first verses of this text, one suspects that the object of God's intention is not Israel alone, however glorious her restoration, but also that of the Son of Man. Who is this figure but the suggestion of the remnant church of the end times brought to its full prophetic constituency and stature?

What is more, compared to that condition by the very crisis of urgency that Israel in her hapless death requires, an action from outside herself by an ultimate prophetic faith and obedience of the other?

Who is this? I'm talking now about the Son of Man, that God's object is not only Israel's restoration, but he has another object in mind, namely the Son of Man. And who is this figure but the suggestion of the remnant church of the end times?

I'm not saying this is that. I'm making a suggestion, because the scriptures do not say what the Son of Man is. It's evidently some symbolic figure representing something, and I'm prophetically suggesting that what it represents is the church of the last days brought to its full prophetic constituency and maturity.

What is more, it is compelled to come to that condition by the very crisis of urgency that Israel in her hapless death requires. In other words, it's a state to which the church would not have come. There would have been no incentive for it, except that there's a requirement given it, and it alone, the restoration of Israel from the dead, that compels the church to find that prophetic ground where its word constitutes event.

This is the whole genius of the mystery of Israel and the church. And people might contend about this, that the church doesn't need this. It'll come to this perfection anyway. It'll come to this sanctification anyway.

But I feel like that this is something out of the genius of God, because Israel requires in that death an action from outside herself that can only be performed in an ultimate prophetic faith and obedience of the other.

Israel and the Church in Romans 11

Is not this theme of the reciprocal relationship between Israel and the church, by which the one is not made complete without the other, at the very heart of Paul's discourse in Romans 11? How did this thought occur to me in Ezekiel 37?

Because I'm already familiar with Romans 11. And Romans 11 shows the reciprocal relationship between Israel and the church. One locked in with the other, that one without the other, cannot attain to God's millennial blessedness.

And so, no accident that Ezekiel 37 should suggest the very same thing, seeing that it's the very same God. And where was Paul's inspiration for Romans 11? Very likely Ezekiel 37, and other of the prophetic scriptures that we were considering.

So, this mystery is at the heart of Paul's discourse in Romans 11, and alone explains the ecstatic praise with which the chapter concludes, O the depths of the riches. For the mystery of which Paul speaks is not only Israel's restoration, but the transfiguration also of the last day's remnant church, obtained in being the very agent of that restoration.

This will require that the church be constituted then, not as it is in its present fragmentation and divisiveness, but as the whole people of God, in that authentic unity that is the key to speaking with one voice.

We didn't say much about this last night, but when we speak, it's got to be as one voice, which means a statement of our agreements. The church in all of its diversity, in all of the things that make it up, coming to such an agreement of mind and heart and soul and spirit, that it speaks with one voice as God.

Unity and the Fall of Jericho

Can you think of any place in the scripture where such a speaking was critical to a life and death situation for Israel? And if they had not attained to the unity that made that speaking with one voice, they might likely have perished.

Where would that have been? How about bringing down the walls of Jericho with a shout? A shout, not many shouts, a shout. And that shout had to be emitted when the priest blew their horn. They had to walk around that city for seven days in lockstep, in perfect divine order and arrangement.

Can you imagine every temptation to the flesh, to have the sand of the guy in front of you kicked in your teeth? And you don't like the way he walks, and he's a little out of pace, and you should be in front of him rather than he in front of you, and every kind of thing that is human and, what's the word, divisive.

Look at us this morning. My Lord, could we have found more things? How do I escape your scrutiny that you were offended by this and that, that you could not find equally something in me? There's something about us being men that finds fault, that makes comparisons, that doesn't like, that's invidious and exalts itself at the expense of another.

Well, how much more than for Jews walking around the city seven times in blazing sun in complete silence, and then on the seventh day walking seven times, waiting for a horn to blow, and when they heard that horn, they have to, with one shout, bring those walls down.

Can you imagine if their voices were creaky, if there was a note of unbelief in their voice, if there was not a resolute assurance that in that shout the walls would come down, what would have happened?

They would not have come down. Not only would they not have come down, but from behind those double thick ramparts would have come out these six, seven feet tall Canaanites and utterly demolished Israel in all of its weakness, all the more for having spent its great strength walking around the city seven times.

What an emptying of its resource that it would need in battle. It's a piece of foolishness if ever a strategy was contrived, was that strategy. And can you imagine the murmuring, it's getting hot, I'm thirsty, we've done this now for seven days, I'm getting tired, it's the fifth time, it's the sixth time, it's the seventh time, if this doesn't work, we've had it, then whoever said that this was God's strategy, who's this Joshua anyway?

I have my doubts about him. Look at the condition of his marriage. When that horn blew, and it only comes in one moment, guys, it's a once and for all moment that does not come again. When God is going to command the Son of Man company, whoever it is and wherever it is, to speak to those bones, it's got to be now.

Well, Lord, I'm not feeling very spiritual today. It was a late night last night. Can't we wait until I get my spiritual thing going? My sap is not yet flowing. When God says now, it's now. And I'll tell you in advance, your sap will not be flowing.

He's not going to choose a propitious moment. He never does it for me. The moments of greatest responsibility, whether before thousands or before a few, and I'm the naive kind of man that believes that every time I stand up for the Lord, before his people, life and death are at stake.

That eternity, pray for me, that's just my naive view, that the thing is loaded, and it's once and for all, and it will never come again. Right now, that world's got to... Invariably, you don't feel like it.

You're not reared up and ready to go and coming out snorting and ready to take it on. You feel limp, weak, out of it, dispirited. That's when God calls for the obedience. It better not be measured by what you can perform only when you feel like it.

And I wish I had a dollar. I'd be a multimillionaire for every saint that determines whether they're coming to the meeting tonight or they're going to do this, if they feel like it, or if the Lord will tell me.

So we need to come to another posture of obedience, not predicated by our feeling, but by the commandment of God. And as I'll say in this paper, if we are not habituated to being ordered by God through commandment, we'll not be able to be commanded in that day.

In other words, if our lives are slipshod, up and down, yes, we'll do something, we feel like it, we like it, we agree with it. But on the other hand, if we don't exercise our veto power, we're not consistent in our obediences, we'll miss it in that moment.

This final, ultimate, prophetic obedience must be preceded by a history of consistent obediences or we will miss it in the final obedience. That's why God is speaking now. It's not going to be a little piece of magic that is going to be affected by the waving of a wand.

It's going to come out of a disciplined people who can be commanded by the Lord, even when they don't feel like it. As I suspect many of you feel this morning, you don't feel like it. Yeah, amen to that.

I would prefer to be laying back in my bed right now. So this morning is more than just a talk, it's a discipline. Yeah, it's girding up your lines when you don't feel like it and applying yourself and giving yourself to the Word of God.

Authentic Unity Versus Institutional Ecumenism

So this speaking with one voice, critical, it requires the authentic unity that is its key and this can never be the product of contrived ecumenical arrangements. I'm getting my dig in. I'm just giving a little jab to all of this charismatic renewal pretense, this whole religious political muck that's going on by which supposed unity of the body of Christ is being affected between denominations as institutions.

The unity of the body of Christ can never be an institutional matter. It has ever and always to be an organic matter, exactly of the kind that we experienced this morning. If we're going to be a body that's of one mind and one heart and one soul, it's going to take what we did this morning.

Humiliation, confession, humbling, direct relationship, calling someone by name, I need to ask your forgiveness. And we're only taking first baby steps. You see, this is going to be over in another week or ten days, but what if it was forever?

What if this is it? Did I hear someone groaning? I just collapsed. We're not getting out of this place. This is it. This is God's fixed community, and we didn't choose each other. He chose us, but we've got to make it with each other.

And not just some kind of get-by thing, but a really an authentic union of agreement of heart and soul and mind and spirit. For God has given us prophetic tasks for the last days that can only be performed out of that unity.

What is it going to take? My God, the depths of things that were even beginning to be sounded. Insecurity, difficulty with the opposite sex that probably has a history that goes back through an entire lifetime, maybe to infancy, who knows?

These are the kinds of things that God is fingering and requiring the redemptive depth in order to bring the people to true unity. How about a marriage? My God, I've just turned the corner of the thing that's about 30 years, but we're still in kindergarten.

We're still in some very basic elementary place, in some accommodation, but my God, what it has required. But are we at the place that our marriage is a glory? Far from it. What will it take? Much more.

That will require time, intensive attention, application, learning and stumbling, and all of the rest of the kinds of things that would that make us cleave to God for grace. If we want something for our marriage is more than just a token compromise and getting by.

Getting by is the really effectual axiom of this nation and probably the whole Western world. Get by. Part of any memory remains with me from my high school teaching days. It's the kids who invariably came to the teacher's desk at the beginning of the first day of class to say, Mr. Katz, what's the minimum amount that we need to do to get by?

This is a get by nation. But if you take the glory of God seriously, the requirement eclipses getting by. And are we taking the issue of unity seriously? Or are we getting by? That is to say, we're free from any overt and evident rupture or tensions.

It's sufficient for us to operate and to enjoy the benefit of being together in the classroom. But is it the unity that they might be one as we are one? You know when the glory of God is revealed? When the condition of relationship between God's people is exactly akin to the condition of relationship between the persons of the Godhead themselves.

And the Lord showed me that on this last trip overseas in England, sitting in a charismatic conference, where they were talking about the unity of the body of Christ in the ecumenical way. And the brother begged me, Brother Zev, he said, I said, do you agree with this?

He said, do you think that this is unity? He said, what do you think is unity? I turned and I said, unity is when we will have attained on earth between ourselves the exact quality of relationship that God enjoys in his tri-unity in three persons.

That the world might know that the Father has sent me. When you shall be one as we are one. Think of what we've got to work through. Just the sex thing alone, male and female, he made them male and female.

There's nothing like a dame, nothing. The thing that makes men climb walls and ceilings, don't they understand? Can't it be logical? But I did say I forgave you. Isn't that enough? But you don't understand.

You didn't say it in a way that I really felt that you received me for myself as a person. You know what I mean? We're just scratching at the surface. But I'll tell you, we better start scratching now because Israel is already moving toward its death.

But are we moving toward our unity? People say, why are you preaching this message now? Because it's going to take that long to get us fitted to be what we need to be while God is already fitting them to be where they need to be.

Their death is already at the door, but we are far from the prophetic union that would make our word an event. I have a feeling that if the Lord gives grace, and I know that he will, in this very season of abstaining from ministry and giving myself to my own son's family relationships, that out of that is going to come a more powerful and effectual word.

I know that. I know the Lord has used me. He's blessed. But you ain't seen nothing yet. There's going to be a power and an authority and an anointing that's going to blister the walls. We're going to see men fall before the word.

They'll not be able to gain say, nor to resist it. We'll see God performing works in one night, in one message. He'll turn men completely around. He'll break through deception and fraud. He'll reveal the things of darkness.

He'll free and he'll deliver. He'll work his works. His word will become a work in the earth, because though I'm the sole one speaking at the point of delivery, I am reflecting and coming out of a matrix of real and authentic agreement with my wife, with my children, with the community, with those with whom I am joined.

That's the name of the game. Much easier just to be a pro and go out and do your individual professional thing. But you are so joined with those with whom God has knit you, and the quality of that relationship and the truth of it is reflected in the nuance and the rate of everything that resonates from your mouth.

We're in this together. Really in this together. It would take a lot of dying to come to the kind of agreement that would make that word in Minsk in Odessa, in Moscow, or Geneva, Switzerland, or wherever it is, to be like a sword that cuts asunder the soul and the spirit.

Because it's only one shot. You have a minister's conference, you're not going to have it again. Once and for all. And eternity is at stake. And so that word has got to be effectual and powerful and will reflect the whole matrix of relationship out of which it issues.

Apostolic Sending and the Laying on of Hands

Why do you think that in Acts 13, when Paul said, separate unto me Paul and Barnabas for the work unto I have called them, that after they had fasted and prayed, they laid their hands on them. So they, how does it say, having been prayed for, had their hands laid upon, were sent forth by the Holy Ghost.

God equating the laying on of the hands of the body with the actual sending of the Holy Spirit. That's how God sees it. And what is the laying on of hands? Is that some kind of a cheapie? Is that some kind of a ecclesiastical flourish?

Or is that some kind of deep statement of identification and union that very much, totally affects what happens with those who are sent. And those who have sent them and have laid hands on them have identified and stated to the powers of darkness, as well as to God, we are joined with those men and our travail and intercession for them will be effectual.

And therefore we shall equally share in the reward of their labors. My great cry and concern for the Ben Israel people is what they will suffer by loss, by their failure to participate in the work through their prayer, thousands of miles away, here in Minnesota, for what I am performing elsewhere in other nations.

Their indifference, their thinking that let George do it, art's a professional, I don't have to bestow myself, robs them of their share in the eternal reward for those labors. For God comes and rewards each man according to his works.

And intercession in behalf of the ministries of God is a significant work and labor. So with one voice, through many voices, as one voice is a critical key that can never be the product of contrived ecumenical arrangements, but that statement of apostolic authenticity itself.

Israel, the Church, and the Necessity of the Cross

Such a church would likely at first comprise such extremes as those who are indifferent toward Israel, if not hostile, with scant appreciation for her future, let alone for her destiny, as against those whose celebration is extravagant to the point of near idolatry.

You see the extremes of the reaction of the church toward Israel? Some don't give a rap. Some even feel that Israel is finished. And others, anything that Israel does is right somehow, and they're just aglow and suffuse with such a fascination for the things that are Jewish.

Neither one of these positions is right, and both need to be addressed at the cross to bring either him who rejects or him who idolizes to a place of true spiritual appreciation for that nation. Both will require appropriate depths of dealings from God that will constitute virtually a death from those unplumbed subtleties of heart that can only be met at the cross.

Why is the Ezekiel 37 message resisted and unpopular? Because if you've got half a mind, you realize that something is required by it that sounds strangely like the cross of Christ Jesus. It's not only Israel being called to death, but me also.

So intuiting and dreading that death, it is little wonder that so many of us till now have been quick to affirm and congratulate present Israel, despite her declining condition. Has she in fact not been the projection more than we could have understood of our own self-satisfaction and acceptance as the church?

As we have projected upon present Israel, very much the same kind of benign approval as we give to ourselves. I mean, after all, if we're doing okay, and we're not on resurrection ground, why do they have to be?

See what I mean? And I'm not saying this is conscious, but more than you can know, the way that you view Israel is very much a reflection of how you view yourself. You're looking through your own eyes.

There's a subjectivity by the same way by which you see yourself as the church. And if you're satisfied with yourself as the church, you're not going to be quick to find fault with present Israel. It's only when we've been made jealous for the glory of God, and by his seeing, that we see that both Israel and we have fallen short of the glory of God.