Possessing All of Our Inheritance...

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Anyone who is acquainted with the Bible knows that the Israelites through fear, or unbelief, or disobedience, did not possess the inheritance that God had promised them. To the present hour, the Jews are living in just a small part of their land of promise. Even this little area is being contested bitterly by those who worship a different god.

(10/10/2010). Have you ever thought about the area that God has promised to the Jewish people" Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the great river, the Euphrates—all the Hittite country—to the Great Sea on the west. (Joshua 1:4)

The desert is the Negev on the south. Lebanon is on the north. The great river is the Euphrates. At its greatest extent the Hittite Empire covered much of Asia Minor, an area many times larger than Canaan. Perhaps it was not as large in the days of Joshua. The Great Sea on the west is the Mediterranean.

The Jews have not been able to possess this large area even though God, who owns all the earth, gave them title to it. The closest they came to possessing it, as far as I know, was during the governments of David and Solomon.

Because they did not serve the Lord as they should have, their inheritance was challenged continually until finally they were removed from their land by the Assyrians and the Babylonians.

Think of how today the Jews are being forced to give up, piece by piece, the tiny bit of land they are living in. Currently the West Bank and Jerusalem are at issue. Can they keep what they now have, including the Golan Heights—originally a City of Refuge? Time will tell.

The Israelites had some national promises, such as the defeat of their enemies. They also had many personal promises, such as those found in the twenty-third, the thirty-fourth, and the ninety-first psalms, and in other places in the Prophets. The personal promises included a long life, material prosperity, and deliverance from harm.

As far as I can remember, we Americans have no national promises. This is because America is not a people and land that God has chosen, such as is true of the Israelis and their land. But we have any number of personal promises. The following are some of the promises of God to those of us who care enough to pursue them through Christ. Just think of what we have been promised:

We have been promised that if we overcome we will sit on the highest Throne with the Lord Jesus Christ.

We will be termed "God's sons.

We will inherit all that God makes new after the present heavens and earth pass away and the new world of righteousness comes into view.

We will be filled with all the fullness of God, the same fullness that has been written concerning our Lord.

We will rule the nations of the earth with a rod of iron.

We will be loved by the Father as He loves His Firstborn Son.

We will receive the glory which has been given to the Lord Jesus.

We will be conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus.

We will dwell in Christ as part of the Father.

We will be crowned with righteousness and eternal life.

We will be more than a conqueror through Christ.

We will be filled with the Spirit of wisdom and revelation.

We will attain to the standard which is the full measure of Christ.

We will bear much fruit—reproducing Christ's image in ourselves and others.

We will inherit the nations of the earth.

We will bring justice to the nations of the earth.

We will inherit the farthest reaches of the earth.

We will be a living stone in the eternal Temple of God.

We will receive an eternal, Spirit-filled body in the Day of Resurrection.

We will know the Father.

We will see God.

We will be a member of the Royal Priesthood.

We will be a brother of Jesus Christ.

We will gain total victory through Jesus Christ over all sin and disobedience.

Do you know what our response has been to these promises? We have created a "rapture" that will carry us up to Heaven so we can escape Antichrist and the Great Tribulation and sit in a mansion, praising God for saving us by His grace while we lead an ungodly life.

The Jews never have been able to possess their inheritance due to fear, unbelief, sin, and disobedience. They have been squeezed into a tiny corner of what could have been a marvelous possession.

The Christians never have been able to possess their inheritance due to fear, unbelief, sin, and disobedience. We have given up on gaining victory over sin and possessing the earth and its peoples. We just want to flee to Heaven where there is no danger—we hope!

God is not pleased with our neglect of entering His rest, our Divinely ordained inheritance in Christ. God compares the unbelief and disobedience of the Jews with our unbelief and disobedience, and warns us of the consequences:

Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the desert? And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed

? So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief. (Hebrews 3:16-19)

The three great platforms of redemption are typified by the three major convocations of Israel:

Three times a year all your men must appear before the LORD your God at the place he will choose: at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Weeks and the Feast of Tabernacles. No man should appear before the LORD empty-handed: (Deuteronomy 16:16)

The Feast of Unleavened Bread represents our basic salvation experience: coming under the Passover blood; repenting and being baptized in water; and the born-again experience.

We have named the Feast of Weeks, "Pentecost" because it is celebrated fifty days after the Passover. It speaks of our obeying the Spirit of God. The Law of the Spirit of Life replaces the Law of Moses.

Our goal, our land of promise, is typified by the Feast of Tabernacles. Every other aspect of the program of redemption is for the purpose of bringing us to the spiritual fulfillment of the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles. Here is the rest of God. God finds rest in us. We find rest in God.

Immediately preceding the Feast of Tabernacles are the Blowing of Trumpets and the Day of Atonement. The Blowing of Trumpets, and the Day of Atonement are the final two steps toward Tabernacles. The Blowing of Trumpets announces the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, the King, to destroy His enemies. During the Day of Atonement we are reconciled to God as we overcome worldliness, sin, and self-will. These two steps make it possible for God to find rest in us and we in God.

By and large, the Christian churches experienced the first phase of redemption from the beginning of the Reformation to the twentieth century.

The spiritual fulfillment of Pentecost spread throughout the world during the twentieth century. The twentieth century was the "Pentecostal Century."

Now the Spirit of God is ready to bring us through Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and finally Tabernacles.

I think the Spirit of God is telling me it is urgent that God's people turn away from their numerous distractions and press forward into the spiritual fulfillment of Tabernacles. The Spirit is warning that the coming days will see the works of Satan abounding throughout the world. We will have to "die in the Lord," so to speak, and live by the Life of Christ if we are to survive spiritually and help others to survive.

As I pondered what the Spirit means by "urgent," the work of Ze'ev Jabotinsky came to mind. Just prior to the Holocaust, Jabotinsky went through some of the countries of Europe, warning the Jews that destruction was about to fall upon them. In particular, he urged the Jews in Poland, Hungary, and Romania to leave their countries and emigrate to Palestine.

It seems that very few heeded Jabotinsky's warning. He died in New York of heart failure at the age of 59, worn out from trying to instill a spirit of resistance in the Jewish people. This was in 1940. We know the rest.

I believe the Spirit of God is telling me that terrible days are ahead of us. If we are willing to "die in the Lord," and live by the Life of Jesus, we will, in the darkest hour, show forth the works of Christ. But no mere human will be able to testify of God in those days.

I do not know about other countries, but America is filled with every imaginable distraction. Just as was true of the European Jews, we are "at ease in Zion," so to speak, believing that nothing can possibly invade our security as we move toward retirement. The Jews in Europe had been there for centuries. Their roots were there. They just could not bring themselves to leave their homes and possessions and emigrate to an uncertain future in Palestine.

Then came the Nazis. Most of us know of the nearly unbelievable horrors that some eight million or so Jews suffered. If they had listened to Jabotinsky they would have found a home in Israel, at that time Palestine.

I do not know what is ahead of us. I do realize that sin is multiplying to an astonishing extent in what used to be a nominally Christian America.

The Spirit has been warning me for several years that much blood is going to be shed in our country. Christ, I believe it is, has directed me to write three books whose purpose is to remove the fear of death from people. One of the three, Heaven—God's Wonderful World, has been published.

In connection with the writing of these three books I am experiencing an increased awareness of the spirit world, which to my surprise is just an ordinary world in which ordinary people are working at ordinary tasks. Apparently the fantastic symbolism found in the Book of Revelation actually is speaking of ordinary events as seen from God's standpoint.

In any case, I am being warned clearly that the time is short. Each of us Christians is to make every possible effort to live as close to Jesus as he can, looking to Him for guidance and enablement in every activity of our life throughout the day and night.

You can hear the morning sermon at morning. http://www.wor.org/audio/audio.htm

You can hear the evening sermon at evening. http://www.wor.org/audio/audio.htm

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