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The opening of the New Testament era found the Jews at a place in history where Gentiles were lording over them again. It was in the days of Herod the Great, an Edomite who was crowned king over Judah by Augustus and Antonius, the head-rulers of the Roman Empire. Herod was a brilliant but merciless ruler, a deceitful, cruel murderer: Mt. 2:16-18. To escape his tyranny, the Jews had their eye on the Messiah or Deliverer Whom God had promised to them in the Old Testament. But they expected their Messiah to be a physical king: Micah 5. A human politician, who would break the yoke of Herod and unite them once again to become a great nation. This was not what God had intended for them. He thought much further than their material world. Their need to be restored spiritually weighed heavier than their politics, religion, traditions, or any other kind of earthly comfort zone they wanted to hold on to – which is still the overall view of God for all of humankind today: Mt. 6:19-33; Lu. 13:24; 14:26-35; Jn. 18:36. The Old Testament is filled with God’s promises to restore Old Israel spiritually, yet with the birth of the Lord Jesus their religious leaders completely overlooked all of this. Isaiah promised in 7:14 and in 9:5-6 that the spiritual Messiah would be born from a virgin, born as a man, yet He would be God at the same time. He would descend from the royal house of David, from the tribe of Judah, [not from the tribe of Levi as God’s Old Testament, priestly government], and He would be Israel’s Spiritual, Theocratic King for all eternity: Heb. 7:14. Old Israel was completely bound to the mindset that they, the descendants of Abraham, were God’s chosen people and as a result, they were ‘predestined’ to inherit eternal life. They believed God would always be merciful to them, no matter how they lived, or whether they knew Him personally or not. They were so sure that their leaders were on the right track, they followed their religion slavishly instead of obeying God’s full, contextual Word: Mt. 3:8-9; Jn. 17:3; 2 Ths. 1:8. But Jesus brought His SPIRITUAL kingdom to this physical dimension and proclaimed: “My kingdom does not belong to this world. If My kingdom were of this dimension, My followers would have been fighting [physically] to keep Me from being handed over to the Jews [to be crucified]. But as it is, My kingdom is not from this realm; it has no such origin or source.” - Jn. 18:36; Mt. 26:52-53; 2 Cor. 10:3-6. The Jews, however, were so caught up in the carnality of their spiritually dead religion; their convenient man-made laws and traditions, they did not desire anything of God’s spiritual kingdom: Mt. 15:9; 22:29. In the end they insisted that their Roman government torture their sinless Messiah to death, since this spiritual Deliverer did not fit into their legalistic religion and political aspirations. The Jewish leaders deliberately rejected God’s Complete Mercy, the Lord Jesus Christ. And through a lack of spiritual knowledge, and a lack of love for the truth, the people allowed them to commit this great atrocity: Mt. 27:22-26; Gal. 2:21; Hos. 4:6. Rejected by the Jews, God extended His mercy to all of the Gentile nations. The Jews will always remain God’s chosen, physical nation, but under the New Testament dispensation, only belief in Jesus Christ will save them AND all of the genuine believers from the Gentile nations: Acts 10:28-36; 13:38,46; 1 Pet. 2:4-5; 9-10. Jn. 1:11-13; Rom. 9:25-26; Rev. 5:9-10; Gal. 3:10-18; 6:15-16.
God commanded in 2 Cor. 13:5: “[Unless you are counterfeits], you will examine and test and evaluate yourselves to see whether you are holding to [the correct] faith and showing the proper fruits of it.” If we, as sincere believers, wish to test our beliefs - even those that seem sacred to us as they were ingrained into our very being through our inherited culture - God’s full, contextual Word remains our only reliable directive. Although most nations would like to believe that they, too, are more special to God than the others - or that they descend from a so-called ‘lost tribe’ of Old Israel, therefore they were ‘foreordained’ to inherit salvation - the new dispensation makes it clear that, except for the Jews, God never chose any other PHYSICAL race, nation or denomination to be His PHYSICAL nation on earth: Jn. 3:16-21; 1:12-13; Tit. 2:11; Rev. 5:9; 7:9. One of the most misinterpreted portions of the Bible is Rom. 11, which explains God’s plan for the Jews and the way in which all the non-Jewish nations, the Gentiles, fit into His overall scheme. Accordingly, most of the Old Testament covenants only concern the Jewish nation. The only reason why we should study them, is because the Old Testament dispensation foreshadowed all the spiritual regulations of the New Testament dispensation: Heb. 10:1; 8:5; 7:22,18-19; 1 Cor. 10:6. It is completely unscriptural to apply any of the Old Testament covenants, which concerned physical Israel as a nation, to some of the New Testament, Gentile nations - except where a covenant relates to the entire New Testament nation, or body of spiritual believers, thereby fitting into the full context of God’s will for all of humankind: Heb. 8:6-13; 9:15; 1 Pet. 2:9-10. [For example: God promised Abraham in Gen. 15 that He would make Abraham the father of the entire New Testament, spiritual nation of true believers. This promise was fulfilled in Rom. 1:16; 4, 1 Cor. 12:13; Gal. 3:26-29; 13-14; Heb. 11:12-13.]
During the Old Testament age God dealt with His PHYSICAL nation, Old Israel, according to the Law. But during the New Testament He deals with His SPIRITUAL Israel through His Messiah - His Spiritual Covenant of Grace: Heb. 1:1-2. In order to bring this spiritual Israel into existence, God fulfilled the promise He made that day of The Fall. By incarnating His Son Jesus as a mere man, He placed the atoning cross of Calvary right in the middle of the two different dispensations. “When Jesus was born in Bethlehem… there came wise men from the East… saying: Where is He that is born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the east, and we came to worship Him. When Herod the king heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes together, he demanded of them where the Christ should be born…” - Mt. 2:1-5. The entire Jerusalem - God’s own people, His Old Testament, chosen nation - was troubled when they heard that their Messiah had been born. The religious leaders of the Jews knew where the Messiah would be born, even that His mother would be a virgin: Micah 5, Isa. 7:14. Yet they, the epicentre of God’s old, physical church, had no knowledge of their Saviour’s arrival that holy night. The circumstances of Jesus’ birth had been repeated for the last 2,000 years, yet nobody concentrated on the Jews’ initial reaction to this wonderful news. The main reason might be that the clergy told the story to suit their own perspective. But the Jews’ ignorance of their Messiah’s unobtrusive arrival, is in fact the key to understand Who Jesus Christ really Is. It also testifies to what He essentially came to do, and in which position or state He requires His followers to live. “In the same country shepherds were abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them…” - Lu. 2:8-10. It would have been logic for God to proclaim the Messiah’s birth to the chief priests and the scribes in order for them to announce it to the entire nation. Yet God ignored them in their political aspirations and their spiritually dead religion, and sent His angel to shepherds in the field. These shepherds were plain people with simple lives and humble hearts, who sincerely believed in the living God. The only others, to whom God proclaimed this wonderful news, were strangers from a far off land - the wise men from the East. These strangers knew that the Messiah, God’s Priestly King, the One, True God, became an ordinary human being that night. The Holy Spirit led them in the form of a star to His humble birthplace, while He concealed the Christ from His physical Israel. We can reason that the shepherds and the wise men symbolise the New Testament nation who would accept Jesus as their Messiah - a few sincere Jews and a multitude from all the Gentile nations: Rom. 9:27-33. All the other Jews who clung to their traditional, religious beliefs missed the arrival of their spiritual Messiah on planet earth that night. And from His first moment in this dimension, this spiritually dead, political-religious system became the Lord Jesus’ greatest enemy. This carnal, sanctimonious system and all of her descendants would remain His adversaries until that day on Golgotha and forever after: Mt. 27:25-26, Rev. 17:5. Find other discussions on the Home Page Discover the truth about God’s Holy Angels Fairies, Orbs, Angels and Other Phenomena |
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and the truth shall set you free! |
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the truth |
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You shall know |