The timing of the end of Israel is inextricably linked to the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham concerning the nations.
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The Fullness of the Gentiles
In a literal translation of Isaiah 6:3, the seraphim proclaim, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of armies; the fullness of all the earth is His glory.” Yes, Yahweh is “thrice holy” and glorious. But does an angel from heaven ever merely state the obvious? No. So what does this statement actually mean?
Firstly, it tells us that any abundance that Man enjoys upon the earth comes from the hand of God. As discussed, that very fact is the basis for the offerings made by the faithful as tokens of gratitude to God. As the Woman is the glory of the Man, so God’s ultimate or extended glory is His own glory “multiplied” in the “bridal” glory of His people on earth. Our kingly glory as God’s hand is always subsequent to prior priestly faithful obedience under God’s hand. Like Adam, we are called to submit to His authority that we might then represent His authority.
But that leads us to the second point, which relates to Israel’s failure to continue in priestly obedience as mediating “sons of God” following the reign of Solomon. In the context of commissioning the prophet Isaiah to speak against his own people on God’s behalf, this proclamation by angelic “fiery serpents” in God’s court must also be understood as a veiled threat. The word “hosts” connotes the idea of armies going forth. The Lord had warned the Israelites that if they disobeyed the Law of Moses He would bring Gentile invaders against them to discipline them (as He did repeatedly in the book of Judges), and, if necessary, to plunder and destroy them (Deuteronomy 28:49-50).
Throughout the Old Testament, the concept of “fullness” was in regard to fertility. But right from the beginning, God’s blessings always hinged upon faithful obedience. The meek “obedience” of mother earth during the “forming” and “filling” of the Creation Week established the pattern for those who were made out of the stuff of the world. Adam became a thief because he was not “rich toward God” (Luke 12:21). If the removal of God’s blessing upon the fruit of the land and the womb would not successfully “prune” Israel’s pride and lead them to repentance (as it presumably did for Adam and Eve), then God’s “indwelling” glory—and thus His fatherly blessing and protection, the “food and shelter” of the true Tree of Righteousness—would depart from Israel, leaving the nation vulnerable to the world. Using the terms of the exodus, the absence of the glory cloud would mean the destruction of the people by a “flood” of Egyptian troops.
The mention of “hosts” by the seraphim also contrasts Israel’s “priestly” smallness, weakness, and barrenness with the apparently effortless advancement of the surrounding “big brother” nations. In this case it was the relative fertility of the “swarming” empires of Assyria and Babylon, whose preoccupation with earthly pursuits, along with the natural gifts given to them by God (like those enjoyed by the “kingly” line of Cain) made them as strong as iron. But even that abundance came via necessary trade-offs, the despotic, involuntary, sacrificial “contributions” coerced from others as tributes to the advancement of their dominion. Indeed, “the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.” Like Adam and Joseph, the human bookends of Genesis, the people of Israel were called to be faithful with little first that God might entrust them with much (Luke 16:8-13). While the nations amassed wealth and built cities quickly through theft and oppression, their “fullness” would ultimately be given by God to His own people as an inheritance. Israel would take possession of the “fullness” of the nations. The meek (submissive to God) would inherit the Land. In the book of Joshua, that inheritance included cities and vineyards, both of which are “bridal” symbols of “Day 7”—rest and rule. They would also inherit the slow-growing oak trees planted in patient faith by Abraham for the shelter and enjoyment of his descendants many centuries later.
When something is “full” it has grown to maturity. That is not its ultimate end but a new beginning: cultivation (under authority, forming) for the purpose of representation (bearing authority, filling). Just as a farmer waits for wheat and tares to bear fruit so that he might tell them apart (Matthew 13:24-20), so God did not judge the Amorites in the time of Abraham because their sins were not yet “full” (Genesis 15:16). A slave and an heir both receive tutelage in childhood, but the heir is destined for rule while the slave remains infantilized under bondage to men (Galatians 4:1-7). So also, Paul said that his own witness for Christ was a “filling up” of what was lacking in his Master’s sufferings (Colossians 1:24), an incarnate corroboration of the testimony of Jesus. This is the language of firstfruits and harvest. What Jesus began in the Garden as a single Adamic seed, Paul was multiplying in the Abrahamic Land. The holy, ascended head of the sacrifice called for the offering of the washed body (Leviticus 1:8-9), that they might be where He is, in the place He had prepared for them (John 14:3), a house of many rooms like the ark of Noah.
No one could learn that song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth. It is these who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins. It is these who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. These have been redeemed from mankind as firstfruits for God and the Lamb, and in their mouth no lie was found, for they are blameless. (Revelation 14:3-5)
The joy which the Father set before Christ, for which He endured the cross, was the glory of the Church, the spiritual “offspring” of His ministry (Hebrews 2:13, 12:2; John 16:21). We keep His commandments that the Father might be glorified in our fruit bearing, and that Jesus’ joy might not only be in us, but also that it might be full (John 15:8-11), that is, mature and complete. Our firstfruits “taste” of death in the flesh and blood of Jesus in the Garden-Sanctuary results in a wheat silo loaded to capacity and a cup that overflows with new wine. This is how the glory of Western culture, despite its foibles, flaws, excesses, and travesties, must be understood. It was the slow-growing harvest of the faithful witness of the early saints who offered themselves as living sacrifices and brought about the death of priestly Israel and the conversion of Rome. (The judgment of the West will be tragic, but, in the bigger picture, merely one more growth ring in God’s priest-king conquest of the nations. Its glory is being placed on the altar as the firstfruits of an even greater Christian harvest in history.)
It was always God’s intention that the faithful witness of Israel would lead to the conversion of the Gentiles, who would bring their abundant skills, might, and wealth to the house of God as willing donors, “earthy” sponsors of “heavenly” worship. The prime example of this is Hiram of Tyre, who was ultimately short-changed by greedy King Solomon.The sins of theft and false witness were linked at the hip in Eden because they are the sinful inversion and reversal of the Oath and Sanctions of the covenant. This international generosity was prefigured in the intranational offerings of the tribes of Israel for the mediating work of the Tabernacle in the book of Numbers.
Israel was always a microcosm of the bigger picture, and thus the generous offerings made by Israelites to the ministry conducted by the Levite priests on their behalf served as a blueprint for Israel’s imminent role among the nations. This pattern of “witness-and-abundance” was to be the outflow of the liturgical “Word-and-response” inherent in Israel’s worship and culture. Just as the Lord was a bridegroom to “bridal” Israel, so Israel was to be a bridegroom to the greater “bride” of the nations. God always works through self-sacrificial mediators. In the same way that Israel had freely received from God, Israel was also to freely give (Matthew 10:8).
Each harvest year was a process of preparing and purifying Israel to serve the nations at the Feast of Booths. Since this feast was about giving rather than receiving, about the blessed cup of Israel’s kingdom overflowing in generosity, this was also the festival that was most neglected by the Israelites. Consequently, the fulfillment of this festival is the event that Paul has in mind when he speaks of the “fullness of the Gentiles.” It was on “the last and greatest day” of the Feast of Booths that Jesus proclaimed, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his belly will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38). Israel would be de-formed and de-filled (humbled as a sacrifice) so that Israel and the nations could be reformed and refilled as a new creation.
The question is, would Israel’s testimony be one of glad self-sacrifice (the goodness of God demonstrated in substitutionary atonement), or a testimony in its judgment by God (atoning for its own sins under the severity of God)? As Paul says, “For, as it is written, ‘The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you’” (Romans 2:24). Would the nations bring their plunder to Israel, or would they come to plunder Israel? Would they be summoned by God to join with faithful Israel in combined worship of the Most High God, or would they be summoned by God as enemies and avengers to curse Israel according to the Law? Would the Gentiles dine with Israel as honored guests, or feast upon Israel’s corpse like scavenging birds? As we know, both of these scenarios occurred in the first century, and that was only possible because the Gospel of Christ had cut Israel in half like an Abrahamic sacrifice.
It was during the era of Israel’s disobedient kings that the first “imperial beasts” of the World began to take shape. Because Israel had failed to take kingly dominion over the “beasts” through priestly meekness before God in the Garden, the beasts which Yahweh had driven from the Land He would summon once again to devour the offspring of Jacob.
“The Lord your God will clear away these nations before you little by little. You may not make an end of them at once, lest the wild beasts grow too numerous for you. But the Lord your God will give them over to you and throw them into great confusion, until they are destroyed. And he will give their kings into your hand, and you shall make their name perish from under heaven.” (Deuteronomy 7:22-24)
“Then if you walk contrary to me and will not listen to me, I will continue striking you, sevenfold for your sins. And I will let loose the wild beasts against you, which shall bereave you of your children and destroy your livestock and make you few in number, so that your roads shall be deserted.” (Leviticus 26:21-22)
The covenant curse in Leviticus was, of course, the reason for Elisha’s summoning of the bears (2 Kings 2:19-24). But that event also helps us to understand Paul’s meaning in Romans 11 because he describes a similar irony which occurred in the first century when Jews disbelieved while Gentiles believed. It was after Elisha had healed the miscarriages of the women in Jericho (of all places!) that he loosed the wild bears upon the children of Bethel. This was the location of one of Jeroboam’s golden calves and thus a center of idolatry.
Jesus’ mention of Naaman the Aramean and the widow of Sidon was another deliberate insult to a Jewish audience, since these Gentile believers put to shame their faithless Jewish counterparts (Luke 4:24-28). Through these allusions, Jesus was actually likening His Jewish detractors to Gehazi and Jezebel, and thus accusing them of theft and idolatry, bearing a false witness of God’s character instead of shining as a beacon of truth and righteousness.
Similarly, when Paul’s testimony was received by the Gentiles in Pisidian Antioch, it provoked the Jews to jealousy. He and Barnabas turned to the Gentiles, and the Jews were rejected.
“It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you. Since you thrust it aside and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles. For so the Lord has commanded us, saying, “‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’” (Acts 13:46-47)
And disagreeing among themselves, they departed after Paul had made one statement: “The Holy Spirit was right in saying to your fathers through Isaiah the prophet: “‘Go to this people, and say, “You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive.” For this people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed; lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.’ Therefore let it be known to you that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will listen.” (Acts 28:25-28)
God’s ways are counterintuitive to the flesh, but not to the Spirit. The turning of Israel’s house of prayer for all nations into a den of thieves was the “working out” of the earthy heart of the Jewish rulers. As an Adamic “Sanctuary sin,” this corruption through a desire for self-preservation instead of a reliance upon God for preservation is common to all men, and indeed to all institutions. The Pharisees condemned the tax collectors and harlots of Israel but the Apocalyse would expose their own power structure as an institutionalized form of theft and harlotry. The “fullness” of Israel was to result from her receiving the riches of the kings of the nations as gracious donations, not through self-preserving deception, assassinations, and graft.
By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. (Revelation 21:24).
This theme of the Gentiles bringing their “fullness” to Israel is found right at the beginning of the New Testament. In Matthew 2, the coming of the wise men from Babylon (the disciples of Daniel) with extravagant gifts for the miraculous Son of Mary was not only an indictment of the Herods but also a picture of the ultimate glory of the Church.
This is hinted at even earlier, in Matthew 1, where the author’s inclusion of women, and, even worse, converted Gentile women, in the genealogy of Jesus was a deliberate provocation of Jews to remember the ultimate purpose of their nation and its careful genealogies. Since Israel was called to bear, and reverse by faith, the curses upon the land and womb on behalf of all nations, Israel’s impurity continually rendered the nation weak and barren, so an “ingrafting” of Gentile strength was occasionally required, an infusion of “new blood.” It was the shedding of innocent blood at the end of the book of Judges that resulted in the barrenness in land and womb at the beginning of the book of Ruth. Similarly, the bloodshed committed by the Herods (first the sons of men, then the Sons of God) resulted in famines in the land and a “hardening” of hearts. Once again, the divine solution was to bring in the “fullness of the Gentiles,” this time in an ultimate, antitypical, and corporate sense. (Of course, the hard-hearted reaction of the Jewish rulers would then bring the very Gentiles with whom they had conspired against them as God’s avengers.)
The “fullness” of the Gentiles thus relates to Eve, the mother of all living, as the “multiplier” of Adam. The Spirit of God continually associates women with wells because the Edenic spring which watered the Land was related to the breaking of the waters of the womb.This is the only true infant baptism in the Bible. Paedobaptism is an Abrahamic fertility rite like circumcision. With the Woman by his side, Adam was not only no longer alone, but also fruitful. Likewise, Israel was one but the nations were many. Israel needed the riches of the fertility of the Gentiles, but the Gentiles needed the spiritual riches of the guidance, the “light,” of Israel. Paul exults in the fact that even the stumbling and disciplining of Israel would be used by God as a “light,” just as the public disciplining of a child by its father is a sign to other children, who behold not only the goodness but also the severity (Romans 11:22). Whether Israel bore the curses for the nations in obedience or disobedience, God would use it to bless the nations.
As a marriage between a Jew and a Gentile, the union of Boaz and Ruth pictured the ultimate end of the Jew-Gentile estrangement. Her symbolic act of meekness in sleeping at Boaz’ feet on the threshing floor not only reminds readers of the awakening of Adam to discover Eve, but also of the relationship between his blessed reversal of the barrenness of the land and the promise of the fruit of the womb.
Ruth’s request that Boaz spread his “wings” (that is, the “corners” of his robe) over his servant as her redeemer (Ruth 3:9) is also a brief glimpse of some fascinating imagery concerning the end of Israel.
Like Adam, Jesus’ side was pierced, and water and blood flowed out (John 19:34). The “Adamic” blood that was spilled out upon the ground had finally became an “Edenic” spring, the water of life (Deuteronomy 12:16). “Daughter Jerusalem” was a barren woman who had suffered from a continued flow of blood for twelve years that could only be healed by the “wings” of Jesus, that is, the blue tassels of His robe. Every circumcised, robed Jew was a testimony to death and resurrection. He was cut as an Isaac (death) and clothed with glory (resurrection), a lamb at the center of a bridal city, a flow of red (division) stopped by the flow of four blue rivers that would water the whole earth (conquest). Even a Gentile eunuch, cut off without offspring like Jesus, could now be a lamb without blemish, an acceptable offering, and washed as a human sacrifice who, though crushed as a eunuch for the kingdom (Matthew 19:12; 1 Corinthians 7:6) would yet “see his offspring” (Isaiah 53:10), that is, Sons of God. All of these images prefigured the goal, and ultimate obsolescence, of the “land and womb” promises to Abraham as temporary, natural images of a coming permanent, supernatural reality.
The providential conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch was one more indication that the union of Adam and Eve was an image of the “end” of Israel—the “closing up” of the open flesh and the tearing open of the “veil of flesh” which separated Jew and Gentile. With God’s blessing, the enmity between Jew and Gentile was a hymen designed to be torn, a firmament put in place that it might be removed, uniting priesthood and kingdom, church and state, as the harmonious “one” that God intended. Now that the promised Seed had come, natural fertility was no longer front and center. Just as the focus had shifted from circumcision of flesh to circumcision of heart between the era of the patriarchs and the era of Moses within Israel, the focus now shifted in the same way in a global sense, resulting in the end of the circumcision altogether. As with the natural fertility of Ruth, the coming in of the “fullness” of the Gentiles was an engrafting of spiritual fertility, an induction into the priesthood of all fecund hearts that were rich toward God and already bearing spiritual fruits, regardless of pedigree.
The reason that this cannot possibly be an event that remains future to us is that the whiteness of the field described by Jesus (John 4:35) was the direct result of the “scattering” of the Israelites as seed among the nations of the empire during the exile. God never wastes a crisis. This harvest—which included the eunuch—was the outcome of three or four centuries of teaching the Scriptures in synagogues across the empire. These Gentiles were as much the “blessed” ones in the Beatitudes as humble, believing Jews. They, too, had heard the Law of Moses and it had led them to Christ. That is why Paul structured this very sentence after Israel’s annual festal calendar. Not only that, but the book of Revelation, which describes this harvest, is ordered according to the same structure. Where Paul’s verse opens the “mystery,” Jesus opens the New Covenant scroll. In each case, the Gentiles were the “grape” harvest at the end of the process, the event that brought “Noahic” rest to the divided world.
This first-century engrafting was a once-for-all event because it was a marriage. A farmer does not continually graft branches into a tree. Instead, he waits for fruit. The process that Paul describes was completed before the destruction of the Temple. God always completes the new house before He destroys the old one. Thus, all believers since AD70 are not “Gentile” branches grafted into some “Jewish” tree but the fruit of that foundational act of grafting together the believers from the priestly nation and the believers from the kingly nations. The tree is no longer “Jewish.” The two Edenic trees—priestly and kingly stock, the cultivated and the wild—were now permanently united as “one flesh.” What God joined together, no man can put asunder. The only division that remained after this work of breaking off and engrafting was completed was that between believers and unbelievers. If a “cultural” Jew is converted today, he is not a “branch” from the old tree because that tree no longer exists. Those unbelieving Jewish branches were cast into the fire (John 15:6). So what is he? Like the rest of us, he is fruit from those apostolic branches that were established once-and-for-all in the first century. Covenant history itself is a process of growth, working from the earth below to the sky above, from roots to fruits. That is why the believing Gentiles were not required to be circumcised (roots) but only baptized (fruits). Spiritual fruits made roots redundant. The circumcision itself was cut off on the cross.
For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God. (1 Corinthians 7:19)
For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God. (Galatians 6:15-16)
The Jew-Gentile wedding feast took place in heaven while the Jew-Gentile harlot was devoured by the birds and the beasts upon the earth. The fertile Church of Jesus Christ was awarded the succession of covenant history and the old Jew-Gentile order—along with its nascent conspiracy—was destroyed forever. Finally, the meaning of the “jealous inspection” of the woman suspected of adultery was made plain. Jerusalem was, in fact, two women, a notion that did not escape the thinkning of the Apostle Paul, who referred to earthy, natural Jerusalem as “Hagar” and heavenly, spiritual Jerusalem as “Sarah.” This brings us to the fate of the city of Jerusalem as the mother of all sacrifices.
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