Rom. 11:25 For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery -so that you will not be wise in your own estimation -that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; 26 and so all Israel will be saved ; just as it is written, “The deliverer will come from Zion, he will remove ungodliness from Jacob." 27 this is my covenant with them, when I take away their sins."
Isa. 26:7 And on this mountain He will swallow up the covering which is over all peoples, Even the veil which is stretched over all nations. 8 He will swallow up death for all time, And the Lord GOD will wipe tears away from all faces, And He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth; For the LORD has spoken.
Rev. 20:1 Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. 2 And he laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; 3 and he threw him into the abyss, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he would not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were completed; after these things he must be released for a short time.
I’ve been much consumed the last few weeks with revelation regarding the state of Israel and the Holy Spirit’s “macro-operations” in our time regarding modern Israel’s relationship to the Lord’s return, the appearance of His Immortal Kingdom, and to the Christian gospel. It started just over two weeks ago (May 24, 2011) as I was led to watch the speech of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the U.S. Congress. I began writing on this under the title “Netanyahu Speaks to Congress,” until the Lord turned me even further into some deep historical research into the state of Israel. In course of this study, which is not complete, I came to spiritually understand even more about our times and what is in store for the church.
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The theme for today’s small glimpse into the Lord’s mind is “The Ship Is Turning.” The “ship” I refer to is the ship of salvation as it is in transition from the 2000 year old Gentile-oriented gospel ministry we have known to the revelation that brings the Jewish people en masse into the complete spiritual knowing of our same Lord and Savior. As you can see, this “ship” is a very big one. It’s as large a ship as it is possible to build.
The larger a ship, the more time and distance it takes to turn. An individual in a canoe can turn about in a very short space of a few feet / meters in just a few seconds. But an aircraft carrier can require several kilometers over a space of several minutes or more to turn around depending on sea conditions.
The same is true of the revelational dispensations of salvation. As we know already, the New Covenant church was not established overnight. It took decades of foundation laying ministry to ground the church and impart the bold revelation of salvation through faith apart from the law in the face of the previous revelation of faith under the law—a revelation back to Moses then 1500 years old (or 2000 years counting back to Abraham.)
The same is now in process regarding another coming revelation of Christ that brings the Jewish people into full transcendent spiritual salvation. By saying this, I am indicating that, whether we know it or not, we have begun navigating another “dispensational change” in the revelation of grace through faith, one that will again embrace the Jewish nation. It is as significant as the change that originally established the church—itself a “ship” now some 2000 years old. And just as it took decades to effect the transition to the church from the law, so are we going to watch over the next few decades a similarly massive “game-changing” transition in salvational revelation that brings the “one new man” into its real manifestation.
Preparations for this transition have been underway since the Father began 130 years ago supervising the spiritually blind human efforts that built the political state of Israel. Again, this is a very large “ship of state.” The Father requires much time in unfolding His ultimate purposes.
In 1996, I was moved to write the landmark treatise called The New Gentiles and the Next Revelation of Christ. At that time, I saw a major dispensational change coming to the people of God. The treatise outlined how the change in God’s self-revelation would be as different in nature from the present gospel era as the gospel revelation was from the time under the Law.
Now, some 15 years later, the Lord is beginning to show me that this “next revelation” is actually one with that great revelation of Christ to come to the Jewish people to which Paul refers in Romans 11. The multitudes of “unchurched” secular people I originally envisioned as the “new gentiles” are in fact none other than the Jewish people centered on modern Israel, as well as many others from what remains of the present gentile-centered era.
The “Fullness of the Gentiles”
Anyone schooled in standard Christian belief will recognize that I’m offering a very different idea of what Paul was indicating when he described the fullness of the gentiles that precedes Israel’s turning to the Lord. Traditionally we have believed that at some point, after a certain number of gentiles have come to know the Lord by the gospel, the Jewish people will also then start coming to know the Lord by the same kind of gospel ministry that has characterized the work among gentiles since Paul first wrote.
But now my understanding of what the Lord meant through Paul is being stretched to see something significantly beyond what we have understood and what Paul himself may have understood at the time. Review with me again these words from Rom. 11:25,
…a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in
The key words in this verse are hardening, until and fullness. The hardening referred to is not the ordinary unbelief we associate with someone who has simply never heard the gospel. It is rather a state to which Israel was consigned resulting from rejection of Messiah. It’s a state applied to people who once had truth and rejected it.
The effects of Israel’s hardening have produced turmoil and distress throughout church-age history, both for the Jewish people and the gentiles among whom they have dwelt. Those effects are today focused on the Middle East conflict over the establishment of the Zionist state with all the ramifications of world war that has produced since about 1880.
It is not to detail all these things now. My main point is that the kind of hardening indicated in Romans requires a far more piercing work of salvation to break through it. Being of no ordinary ignorant unbelief, it will require a more advanced revelation of Christ of a “higher potency” than what has been witnessed throughout the gentile-oriented gospel age.
Indeed, if the effects of Israel’s hardening are as I have described, then there must be a more powerful revelation of Christ to come to them. This is because the state of world conflict evoked by that hardening stands in the way of Christ’s kingdom; a kingdom that cannot come apart from a salvation powerful enough to defeat that conflict—something which our gospel era ministry has not achieved.
The word until is important because it indicates a demarcation between spiritual operations at a given point in time based on the occurrence of certain conditions. If the word hardening is as revelatorily significant as I have described, then the word until indicates a significant change point in God’s operation of salvation.
The word fullness indicates the culminating of a purpose that has come to an end. It is similar to when Paul said, “When the fullness of time came, God sent His Son…” indicating the end of the time of the Law. What a monumental change in God’s self-revelation that fullness of time brought.
The idea here then is similar. Once worldwide ministry among the gentiles has reached a certain critical mass, the focus of God’s purposes will move away and beyond the nature of ministry that has been used to reach them throughout this age. This means that the kind of ministry we have all grown up to know in a gentile context is going to dramatically change.
The Veil on All Nations
The gospel ministry we have known under the times of the Gentiles has been conducted beneath a veil of deception upon the nations that has never been pierced. This veil is a larger expansion of the hardness of heart that is uniquely upon the Jewish people. There is a veil on the Jews. There is also a veil on the Arabs. There is a veil on the Europeans, and Americans, and Chinese, and so on. The gospel era revelation of Christ that has permeated the nations has nonetheless never penetrated this veil.
What is the nature of this veil? The best way to describe it is to refer to what I will call the “underbelly” of history. Underneath human history as we perceive it in all the textbooks and on the news channels is a hidden untold story of satanic conspiracy and intrigue designed to culminate in the enslavement and destruction of both Israel and all the nations—all without the knowledge of the people.
Outside of Christ (and sadly in some cases even inside of Christ) Jews and gentiles alike have been lured into becoming witting or unwitting participants of satan’s secret plans for world domination and destruction under this veil. And to be sure, the Zionist cause which God has overseen unto the re-establishment of modern Israel has been brought forth under this same veil.
Most Christians are oblivious to the plans and workings underneath this veil of secrecy, though more is gradually coming to light as we progress onward into the kingdom class knowing of the Lord. In later writing, I will as led discuss more regarding this.
But for now, besides bringing this veil to our attention, I want to note that Isaiah says God will remove the “reproach” of Israel in conjunction with the removal of this veil. Significantly, the removal of Israel’s reproach (and that of all God’s people) and the removal of this worldwide conspiratorial veil also happens in conjunction with the “swallowing up of death for all time.”
In other words, the lifting of Israel’s reproach and of the world veil of deception conjoins the translation and resurrection! Wow. This entirely agrees with Romans 11 when Paul says that the receiving back of Israel will result in “life from the dead.” How significant is to be that which demarks the salvation and restoration of the Jewish people.
The Role of the Messianics
Before concluding, I must briefly answer the anticipated question: “What then is the role of all the Messianic Jews who have turned to Christ in this present time? Are they not the first fulfillments of Romans 11:26?”
This is a very good question, which I will answer this way: The Messianic movement within Israel and the West may be considered as a “pre”-fulfillment of Romans 11:26. While it indeed professes faith in Christ, Messianism does not really rise to the class of that which the scriptures identify will mark Israel’s salvation as a national whole. The movement remains persecuted within national Israel itself. Beyond this, it remains blind overall to very fundamental tenets regarding deliverance from the Law and the true heritage-free transnational nature of the New Covenant as articulated by Paul.
Messianism’s vision of salvation history is backwards, not forwards. It retains some of the same Pharisaic hardness of Judaism that Israel is to be saved from, opposing the Law-free faith of their gentile brethren. (In the extreme, some Messianics cannot be considered truly Christian, but are rather proponents of “another gospel.”)
Additionally, the movement remains under the veil on all nations as does the present gentile oriented gospel ministry. It displays no more power than the waning gentile ministry of the present. After several decades as a movement it has produced no “life from the dead” (i.e., no translation or resurrection has been triggered by its arising).
The Messianic movement is better thought of as a replica of the first century Jerusalem church under the gospel era than the fulfillment of what Romans 11 and the restoration prophecies fully envision. It may also be thought of as a “beta test” or a “trial run” ahead of the real conversion of national Israel that Paul describes.
But the emergence of Messianism is consistent with the way God displays Himself through very developmental processes. Messianism can be considered a forerunner of the salvation of “all Israel” to come—an evidence that the turning of the ship of salvation is already upon us.
What About Stewardship Salvation?
“But haven’t you said that stewardship salvation is the next phase of salvation we should be looking for?”
Again you raise a very good question! Yes I did say this. Is this a contradiction?
No. It’s not a contradiction. We are dealing with the fact that salvation to come has various facets that have to be understood in right relationship to each other as the Holy Spirit illuminates each one. Our task as prophetic people is to let God reveal the facets and work out their harmonizing for us in the spirit of the prophets past who “searched out” what time future salvation was to come and what nature it would take (I Pt. 1:10-11).
At this time I’m still in that “searching” mode even as I convey to you what I receive. So I don’t have all the answers. But I can point out that in the article on stewardship salvation, I noted there would be a dovetailing with the next revelation of Christ to the new gentiles.
What this now means is that stewardship salvation will dovetail with the nature of salvation that comes to the Jewish nation. And if you think about that, it actually makes sense. A key anointing associated with the Jewish people throughout history has been their propensity for financial prowess. Due to sin, that anointing has been severely corrupted and given over to satanic purposes on behalf of the world financial systems from which stewardship salvation will deliver us (We may discuss this more fully in later episodes).
So the twin ideas that the Lord “next” intends to introduce a new class of salvation that delivers all His people from the root sin of money love and that He “next” intends to break through the hardness of the natural Jewish heart with a new class of salvation, I can see as perfectly related.
(Bit by bit as revelation matures, scattered pieces will come together. I have to confess that I have had to wrestle with the idea that the love of money is the root of all evil when on the surface—looking at all the overt causes that create genocidal wars—it appears to me that racism is the root of all evil. But I will stick with the Lord’s call on it. In any case, I would rate racism as a close second! The good thing is, our Deliverer is ready to save us from both evils!)
To the Point
The prophetic point of this introductory discussion is this:
A macro transition is at hand in the revelation of God’s salvation, one that involves a move from gentile-centered gospel ministry to a far more potent revelation of Christ that is to break through the hardness of Israel and will go on to define the next era of salvation for all peoples together with Israel as a transcendent transnational “one new man.”
This next revelation of Christ will also conjoin the exposing and removing of the conspiratorial satanic veil under which the gentile-centered gospel era has been confined and under which the gentiles and Jews of the world have been locked in mortal combat.
This revelation will also conjoin the translation and resurrection of the saints.
The further prophetic point is that in God’s “macro economy of salvation” this massive change does not happen overnight, but happens over a great developmental space and period of time. Moreover, we are already in the middle of this great turning of the ship of salvation.
The purpose of this article then and any which follow-up is to help us begin turning our own internal gyroscopes to perceive this change and reorient our vision for the future of Christian ministry. The main way we will do this going forward is by taking a surgical look at the history of modern Israel and Israel’s present situation in the world in light of spiritual truth that can pierce the present veil of national deception.
As you can tell, we are venturing into some really uncharted territory with all this, and the topics are massive and forbidding. If this series continues, I will be applying prophetic perception and speaking into areas that are as taboo in the world as they are in the church.
But if you are as dissatisfied with the state of Christian ministry in the earth today as I am, and as hungry for seeing a Kingdom salvation that actually has the power to settle international disputes and overthrow world financial and racial powers to reveal the true millennial conditions the prophets foretold—if you are not satisfied to just to keep reading about these promises in a Book from generation to generation while people merely get converted only to later die to “go to heaven”—then you can understand why I am willing to press into these realms.
Hang on! The ride could get wild. Hope you’ll stay with me….
Until what comes forth next…..
Chris Anderson
First Love Ministry
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry.org06/11
Webmaster littleflock@netzero.net
Page created February 15 2017
