The Legacy of Jacob - Moriel Ministries

Feature Article – Continued
long to Do you think they are literal Jews”
Obviously the sealing of the 144,000 Jews
replays the story of Ezekiel going into the city
and marking the anointed of the Lord before
the judgment came (Eze. 9:48).
The 144,000
And I heard the number of those who
were sealed, one hundred and forty-four
thousand sealed from every tribe of the
sons of Israel: From the tribe of Judah,
twelve thousand were sealed, from the
tribe of Reuben twelve thousand, from
the tribe of Gad twelve thousand, from
the tribe of Asher twelve thousand, from
the tribe of Naphtali twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Manasseh twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Simeon twelve
thousand, from the tribe of Levi twelve
thousand, from the tribe of Issachar
twelve thousand, from the tribe of Zebulun
twelve thousand, from the tribe
of Joseph twelve thousand, from the
tribe of Benjamin, twelve thousand were
sealed. (Revelation 7:4-8)
Now let us look at Revelation 14:
Then I looked, and behold, the Lamb was
standing on Mount Zion, and with Him
one hundred and forty-four thousand,
having His name and the name of His
Father written on their foreheads. And
I heard a voice from heaven, like the
sound of many waters and like the sound
of loud thunder, and the voice which I
heard was like the sound of harpists
playing on their harps. And they sang a
new song before the throne and before
the four living creatures and the elders;
and no one could learn the song except
the one hundred and forty-four thousand
who had been purchased from the earth.
(Revelation 14:1-3)
I am not going to try to figure out every
detail here because I do not know. I can tell
what other people say about it, but I will say
this: the first steps toward figuring it out is
not Revelation 7, it is not Revelation 14, it
is the final prophecy of Jacob in Genesis 49.
We cannot even be positive, and there is good
reason to believe, that these two groups of
144,000 are not even the same. One group
seems to be in heaven; the other seems to be
on earth. The description of one group is not
even the same as that of the other. One would
seem to be physical Jews, the other does not
necessarily seem to be.
The Issue of Identity
Anthropologically, who knows Arnold
Fruchtenbaum is right: the main thing is the
sign of the covenant in the giving of Jewish
identity. Jews have intermarried for centuries.
The entire Khazar Empire converted to Judaism.
Arthur Koestler and others agree that
the Ashkenazi Jewry came from the Khazar
Empire converted to Judaism. There were
massive conversions to Judaism in Morocco.
The whole Yemenite Empire converted. The
way that Constantine ostensibly converted
to Christendom is the same thing that happened
in the Jewish world. We would be hard
pressed, anthropologically, to make a case.
Jewish identity has to do with covenant.
Yes, there is the issue of the sons of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob, but how does it define
“sons” Some of those sons of the twelve
tribes were born of servants. We cannot even
directly trace the genetic line in that sense. It
has to do with covenant.
How do we determine what tribe somebody
is from My wife’s family name is “Segal.”
They were a priestly family, assistants within
the Levites. People with names like “Levine,”
“Cohen” and such we can speculate go back
to those priestly families, but who knows
I do not know, and I am very skeptical of
people who say they have it all figured out.
What I know is that in order to figure it out,
it does not begin with Revelation; it begins
with Jacob.
We looked at what Jacob meant personally,
now we are going to look at what he means
for Israel and the Jews as a nation.
Again, Jacob was someone always looking
to attain the blessings and purposes of God
according to his natural reason and ability.
What have the Jewish people done They
have tried to attain the blessings and purposes
of God according to their natural thinking.
Talmudic Judaism, founded in Yavneh by
Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai is not the Judaism
of Torah, it is another Judaism. It is a product
of the natural minds of rabbis, developed in
the centuries afterward by rabbis like Akiva
and others, ultimately redefined as an Aristotelian
religion by Rambam, and even more on
top of that.
Jews know they are different from other
people, but they do not know why. It is amazing
that Alan Ginsberg, the Jewish poet in
America from the Beatnik era (I used to see
him around New York), tells us that his religion
is Buddhist. Jewish people do not believe
in God and they go to the Wailing Wall
in Jerusalem and begin crying even though
they do not know why. They know something,
but they do not know what it is they
know and they do not even know why they
know it. Think of unsaved Jewish people as a
kind of backslider. The new covenant in Jeremiah
31:31 was not made with the Church,
it was made with the house of Judah and the
house of Israel. They have broken that covenant.
Jewish people are backslidden.
When somebody is born-again and they fall
away from Jesus and go back to the world,
their life can never be normal or the same.
They can never fit in because they know that
something is wrong and it is eating away at
their soul all the time, but they can know
what it is; Jewish people have something eating
away at their soul but they do not know
what it is. The rabbis think they know, but the
rabbis disagree with each other as to what it
is. I was talking in Hebrew for a couple hours
to the president of the Orthodox rabbis in
Leeds, witnessing to him. He is a wonderful
man with plenty of knowledge but so little
understanding.
Jacob would always scheme to try to attain
the purpose, the blessing, the heritage by his
devices, and it always blew up in his face. The
Jews are the same way. No matter what the
Jewish people try, it will blow up in their face.
Their Return to the Land
There is only one place the Jews will be
a secure people, and it is not in the land of
Israel. The Jews were never secure in the land
of Israel; it is a strategically vulnerable place.
The biggest Jewish disasters before the Holocaust,
undoubtedly, were the events of AD
70, and Bar Kochba’s Rebellion in the second
century which were the equivalent of the Holocaust.
Proportionately it was the same kind
of mass extermination, and yet it happened in
their own land. The only place the Jews will be
secure is in the palm of their Messiah, Yeshua.
So much for these organizations claiming
that the Jews can be blessed by bringing them
back to Israel. The Jews are not going back to
Israel for the blessing of God. There is only
one way God can bless the Jew and it is the
same way He can bless anybody: through
faith in the Messiah. Because the Gospel was
available to them first, the consequences for
rejecting it are on them first (Rom.9-11). Jeremiah
30 talks about “the time of Jacob’s trouble”
(Jer. 30:7). The Jewish people are back
in Israel for “the time of Jacob’s trouble.”
The metaphor or figure of the night in
Scripture is a metaphor for the Great Tribulation.
Jesus said He is coming like a thief in
the night (Rev. 15:15). “Watchman, watchman
how far is the night” (Is. 21:11). “Is
he coming in the second watch of the night
or the third” (Lk. 12:38). “Work while you
have the light for night will come when no
man can work” (Jn. 9:4). The wise virgins
have oil in their lamps to see at night (Mt.
25:1-13). When did Jacob get the blessing
At the end of the night (Gen. 32:24-32). The
Jews are wrestling with God, and they will
continue to wrestle until the end of the night.
“Jacob” vs. “Israel”
The Bible speaks of the difference between
“Israel” and “Jacob.” Throughout Scripture
we see “Israel” and “Jacob” used at various
times. Why does God call them by both
names “Israel” has been broken. Galatians
speaks about the Israel of God—even Gentiles
are grafted into Israel by faith in some
sense, but “Jacob” as the Jewish people is
an unbroken state—their name has not been
changed yet. The blessing is for “Israel,” the
promise is for “Jacob.”
God cannot break His promises to the
Jews, but they are never going to get it while
they are still called “Jacob”; they are going
to get it when they are called “Israel.” When
12 Moriel Quarterly • March 2012