Your Redemption Draws Near! 8
Redemption as the exaltation of Jerusalem and all Israel.
In some respects the Kingdom of Solomon may have been the most exalted, the wealthiest, of all the kingdoms of history. Because of the righteousness of David in God’s sight, the Israelis gained dominion over all their enemies. Solomon, David’s son, inherited a magnificent, powerful throne.
The most important aspect of Jerusalem (after the Presence of the Lord) was the Temple of God. The moral law of God as expressed in the Law of Moses was the standard for moral behavior for all the peoples of the earth. No other nation possessed the Words of God. Their religions were given by demons.
The Jews continued to sin and rebel against the holy Law. The punishment of God came upon them, as Moses had warned. They had known the goodness of God. Now they came to know the severity of the Father of spirits (Leviticus 26:16).
For 2,500 years the Jews have been slandered and persecuted. The Holocaust was a climax of such torment but the attacks continue to the present hour.
The Jews look for their national redemption to come with the appearing of Christ. They do not look in vain. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament promise that God shall bring Jacob home and that the Redeemer shall come from Zion and save the physical land and nation of Israel from sin and the consequences of sin.
And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. (Luke 21:24)
Fear not: for I am with thee: I will bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee from the west; I will say to the north, give up; and to the south, keep not back: bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth; (Isaiah 43:5,6)
But fear not thou, O my servant Jacob, and be not dismayed, O Israel: for, behold, I will save thee from afar off, and thy seed from the land of their captivity; and Jacob shall return, and be in rest and at ease, and none shall make him afraid. (Jeremiah 46:27)
But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. (Jeremiah 31:32,33)
And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: (Romans 11:26)
It is being taught today that the Christian Church has replaced the Jews in God's affection and that God has turned away from the physical people and land of Israel. This is not true.
It is a fact that the Christian disciple, Jew or Gentile, is an integral part of the Seed of Abraham (which is Christ). True Israel is the Lord Jesus Christ and those who are part of Him, whether Jewish or Gentile by physical birth.
However, the Scriptures teach with utmost clarity that the gifts and callings of God are without repentance and God will restore the physical people and land of Israel at the end of the Church Age and the beginning of the thousand-year Kingdom Age.
The Jews are to lift up their heads when they see the great signs in the heavens because their redemption draws near. The Divine redemption from Heaven will bring the Presence of God and eternal life, the forgiveness of sin for all who receive their Christ, deliverance from the presence of sin, the change from bodily corruption to bodily incorruption for those whose life the Lord Jesus is, and the exaltation of Jerusalem and all Israel to supremacy among the governments of the world.