The Legacy of Jacob - Moriel Ministries

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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
God looks at Israel, what does He see “Israel” No, He sees “Jacob.” When God looks at Jewish believers He sees “Israel.” “Jacob” personifies and typifies the Jewish people. His whole, long life, in a sense, was in preparation for this one factor. It was not Abraham who began Israel, it was not Isaac who began Israel, it was Jacob—the twelve tribes came from him. Jacob gives a prophecy in Genesis 49 for the Jewish people whose ratifications encompass the whole of history and of God’s salvific plan for everybody, especially the Jews, extending all the way to Revelation. When we read through the Scriptures about the histories of the tribes of Israel and what they did, what happened to them and what they experienced, it winds up with what Jacob predicts. His whole life is a preparation for what he is going to do at the end of it, and the entire history of Israel is a preparation for what they are going to do at the end of it. His whole life was in preparation for this prophecy. Everything is a preparation for this one climactic event. It probably took him minutes. Imagine God preparing someone for ten minutes of ministry But on that ten minutes of ministry hinges the entire future of prophetic history. For the Jewish people it will be the same thing. The promises are for “Jacob,” the blessings are for “Israel.” At the very end it is all going to make sense to the Church and to them and then they are going to know why. The first Christians were Jews, and no matter what we hear, the last Christians are going to be Jews. God is going to bless the Church through Jewish people before He comes; everything is preparing the world for that. This is the framework for looking at Revelation 7. Jacob’s Prophecy Then Jacob summoned his sons and said, “Assemble yourselves that I may tell you what will befall you in the days to come. “Gather together and hear, O sons of Jacob; And listen to Israel your father. “Reuben, you are my firstborn; My might and the beginning of my strength, Preeminent in dignity and preeminent in power. Uncontrolled as water, you shall not have preeminence… (The first shall be last and the last shall be first.) Because you went up to your father’s bed; Then you defiled it—he went up to my couch. (The sins of the father are passed on to the sons; only the cross can break that.) “Simeon and Levi are brothers; Their swords are implements of violence. (This is because of what they did when they slaughtered those people, even though their anger had a good basis for it.) “Let my soul not enter into their council Let not my glory be united with their assembly; Because in their anger they slew men, And in their self-will they lamed oxen. (If they were people who were simply motivated by righteous indignation, that would be one thing, but when it is someone with a bad temper just looking for an excuse to do something, that is something else. They are just getting the excuse they need to go on the warpath. The great heroes of war are the people who prefer peace.) “Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce; And their wrath, for it is cruel. I will disperse them in Jacob, And scatter them in Israel. (And, again, the history of the tribes is played out.) “Judah, your brothers shall praise you; Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; Your father’s sons shall bow down to you. Judah is a lion’s whelp; From the prey, my son, you have gone up. He couches, he lies down as a lion,And as a lion, who dares rouse him up (It talks here about the lion of Judah.) “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, Nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, Until Shiloh comes, And to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. He ties his foal to the vine, And his donkey’s colt to the choice vine; He washes his garments in wine, And his robes in the blood of grapes. His eyes are dull from wine, And his teeth white from milk. “Zebulun will dwell at the seashore; And he shall be a haven for ships, (That is the land they received when the land was appropriated by Joshua.) And his flank shall be toward Sidon. “Issachar is a strong donkey, Lying down between the sheepfolds. When he saw that a resting place was good And that the land was pleasant, He bowed his shoulder to bear burdens, And became a slave at forced labor. “Dan shall judge his people, As one of the tribes of Israel. Dan shall be a serpent in the way, A horned snake in the path, That bites the horse’s heels, So that his rider falls backward. For Your salvation I wait, O LORD. (It all points to Jesus.) “Issachar is a strong donkey, “As for Gad, raiders shall raid him, But he will raid at their heels. “As for Asher, his food shall be rich, And he will yield royal dainties. “Naphtali is a doe let loose, He gives beautiful words. “Joseph is a fruitful bough, A fruitful bough by a spring; Its branches run over a wall. The archers bitterly attacked him, And shot at him and harassed him; But his bow remained firm, And his arms were agile, From the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob (From there is the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel), From the God of your father who helps you, And by the Almighty who blesses you With blessings of heaven above, Blessings of the deep that lies beneath, Blessings of the breasts and of the womb. The blessings of your father Have surpassed the blessings of my ancestors Up to the utmost bound of the everlasting hills; May they be on the head of Joseph, (He typifies the Messiah.) And on the crown of the head of the one distinguished among his brothers. (Again, he typifies the Lord.) Feature Article – Continued “Benjamin is a ravenous wolf; In the morning he devours the prey, And in the evening he divides the spoil.” (The early Church somehow saw this as a prophecy about Paul, that in the morning he would be a ravenous wolf and devour the prey the way he first persecuted the Church, but in the end he would divide the spoil by bringing blessing and provision to God’s people after his conversion.) All these are the twelve tribes of Israel, and this is what their father said to them when he blessed them. He blessed them, every one with the blessing appropriate to him. (They play out the history of what he said.) Then he charged them and said to them, “I am about to be gathered to my people; bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought along with the field from Ephron the Hittite for a burial site. There they buried Abraham and his wife Sarah, there they buried Isaac and his wife Rebekah, and there I buried Leah— the field and the cave that is in it, purchased from the sons of Heth.” When Jacob finished charging his sons, he drew his feet into the bed and breathed his last, and was gathered to his people. (Genesis 49:1-33) Right at the very end of his life is when he puts it all together. Everything he experienced clicks at the very end. So it will be with the Jewish people. The Holocaust, the inquisitions, the Old Testament, the New Testament, the early Church; Genesis 49 will have its ultimate fulfillment somehow in Revelation 7 and 14. At the very end it comes together, but not until every prophecy is fulfilled in Genesis 49. The Importance of Judah The most important prophecy is Judah. Except for that situation with Tamar (Gen. 38), Judah was always unique and good. Judah led the tribes through the wilderness in the configuration around the Ark. It was Judah who asked the brothers to have mercy on Joseph March 2012 • Moriel Quarterly 13
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The Legacy of Jacob - Moriel Ministries

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