Terry James Prophecy Line

Your Glorious Future!

February 5, 2024 9:42 am / 8 Comments on Your Glorious Future!

In constantly thinking on and writing about Bible prophecy, one can lose sensitivity to the reality that people –even the saved– often view such matters as gloomy at best and terrifying at worst. Maybe “lose” is the wrong word. We who believe we are given the assignment by our Lord to write on these topics perhaps “misplace” sensitivity to the fact that things are gloomy or terrifying to people, rather than “lose” that understanding. We easily forget believers need to be uplifted, not terrified. And there is a way in presenting Bible prophecy to accomplish the former rather than the latter.

In speaking not long ago to a good number of people, I was nudged in my spirit to begin by trying to make it clear that while I was there to talk about things involved in Bible prophecy, the ultimate outcome of all the end-times things we see going on only point to the glory that is to come.

Paul, the great apostle and writer of much of the New Testament, for example, wrote:

Eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the mind the things that God has prepared for those who love Him.

We are told that there is a “crown of righteousness” for those who love Christ’s appearing. Jesus, Himself, told us through the Apostle John that He –Jesus—will keep us from the time of the great trouble that is coming (Revelation 3: 10). Now all that encapsulates a glorious prospect, not gloom and doom!

I was told recently that my friend Dr. Ed Hindson, one of the greatest Bible prophecy teachers of our time, in his last moments of life opened his eyes and exclaimed something like: “I had no idea it was so glorious!”

I can relate perhaps only slightly to Dr. Hindson’s reported last-moments vision of Heaven, but certainly agree from firsthand experience. Many know of my dying clinically on Good Friday of 2011, April 22. What I saw was indeed glorious. (I don’t apologize for here over using the term “glorious”. One can’t overuse the term because there is none more appropriate to convey Heaven’s…well…glory!) I was, it has become apparent, “sent back” to tell exactly that truth to all who will listen. I cannot help but do so. Going to that place of glory was and remains something that comes to my mind at moments, particularly when things look to be gloomy, prophetically speaking. The trip to that sphere on three occasions of my heart stopping was truly glorious, and it was instantaneous upon each heart stoppage.

My thoughts on recalling those heavenly visits always go back to Paul telling us that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. There isn’t even a twinkling of an eye of time between the last heartbeat and bursting onto that glorious scene –not one fraction of a second.

Stephen, the first Christian martyr, as he was being stoned, saw the Lord Jesus Christ, Himself, stand from the right hand of God’s throne to welcome Stephen into glory. I am certain that, had God intended to keep me on that Good Friday, I would have been instantaneously in His holy presence. This will be the indescribably glorious reception each believer will experience when the final heartbeat instantaneously transfers us from this fallen sphere into the presence of the eternal magnificence our God has prepared for us.

Jesus said the following.

Let not your heart be troubled. Behold I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you I will come again, and will receive you unto myself, that where I am, there you may be also (John 14:1-3)

The glorious dwelling place Jesus has prepared for you and me is beyond comprehension, as Paul has assured. We can get but an inkling of that stupendous vista that will burst in our super-enhanced eyesight. Being blind for more than 30 years now, I’m particularly looking forward with great expectation and Anticipation to that scene, whether experiencing it through the instantaneous portal of death or the even-swifter entry into that heavenly presence in the Rapture.

Like the song lyrics of “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus” express: “The things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.”

The Lord is not willing for anyone to perish; He wants all to come to repentance. This desire to bring the lost to Christ should be in the deepest reaches of our own spirits. That’s why we must always carry out the Lord’s Great Commission to all who are lost in sin.

And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen. (Matthew 28: 18-20)

The future is glorious for all who put their trust in Jesus Christ for salvation. Here is how to become part of God’s eternal, heavenly family. Let us who are in that family point the unsaved in the direction of the heavenly gates with Scripture like the following.

That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (Romans 10: 9-10)

Swimming with Gators

February 4, 2024 9:40 am / 10 Comments on Swimming with Gators

Sometime ago, I considered the title “Swimming with Gators” for a book I was thinking about writing. It would, in my imaginative stage of thoughts, be about politics in America, presented from an end-of-the-age Bible prophecy perspective. The subtitle I had in mind was: “Staying Alive in the DC Swamp.”

I approached a Washington DC insider friend who worked within the US government in a relatively influential position. He liked the title and concept, but didn’t at the time want to co-write that book. So the idea just sort of fizzled, as book ideas do more times than not.

Still, the title continued to effervesce and finally has emerged here as a commentary on the end-times stage-setting going on in our nation and around the world.

I guess Lot, Abraham’s nephew, during the days leading up to God’s judgment on the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, would say that he was ”vexed.” At least that’s what the Genesis account says about the only righteous man to be found in the cities at the time. The righteous Lot was, the Bible account says, “vexed from day to day” dwelling among that wicked citizenry.

So I hope this article’s title frames to some extent a similar sense of “vexation” for those of us who desire moral uprightness in our cities and our nation. I believe many do sense that we are surrounded by swamp creatures. Much of our government leadership seems to thrive in creating for the rest of us the kind of swamp-like conditions in which they so lustily swim.

Their jaws are lined with row after row of what I view to be anti-American executive orders and legislative and judicial avarice. They afflict our daily lives by taking self-serving bites out of constitutional governance inspired by God—who, our founders acknowledged, gave us inalienable rights.

It seems though that these “gators” we swim with aren’t content to merely deal treacherously with those who are morally upright—particularly with those with Christian values. The DC “swamp,” as it has become known, is determined to, as Barack Obama stated when he was a candidate for president of the United States, “fundamentally transform America.”

His perceived view of America found the nation as a wicked place born of slavery. He set about to change America into a Marxist-socialist model –a type of inculcation under which he was raised. Michelle Obama, the first lady, then told those she was visiting in foreign lands that she was for the first time proud of America –now that her husband was elected to fundamentally change the nation, I presume.

With that transformation underway with a vengeance, the swamp set about to open America’s borders, allowing illegal aliens to flow from every quarter of planet earth –including young men of military-forces age from places in the Middle East and even from Red China. The year just past set all sorts of records in the illegal invasion of our southern borders. I heard a report that there are now more who have entered illegally just within the years of the Biden administration than entered legally through the migration process in more than sixty years. –Perhaps this is the change Mr. Obama envisioned when he made his statement before becoming president.

There are those who applaud this administration’s open-borders policy and who champion a movement to tear down the Statue of Liberty – because, in their view, it represents xenophobia and a symbol of America’s bigoted, racially evil past.

But the even more egregious danger from the swamp creatures in DC I believe is viciously underway by the use of developing surveillance technologies being used in conjunction with judicial, third-world tactics to bring about an Orwellian transformation. The following excerpt of a piece dealing with this, I think, informs further.

“You had to live – did live, from habit that became instinct – in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.” – George Orwell, 1984

Tread cautiously: the fiction of George Orwell has become an operation manual for the omnipresent, modern-day surveillance state.

It’s been 70 years since Orwell – dying, beset by fever and bloody coughing fits, and driven to warn against the rise of a society in which rampant abuse of power and mass manipulation are the norm – depicted the ominous rise of ubiquitous technology, fascism and totalitarianism in 1984.

Who could have predicted that 70 years after Orwell typed the final words to his dystopian novel, “He loved Big Brother,” we would fail to heed his warning and come to love Big Brother.

“To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone – to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink – greetings!”-George Orwell

1984 portrays a global society of total control in which people are not allowed to have thoughts that in any way disagree with the corporate state. There is no personal freedom, and advanced technology has become the driving force behind a surveillance-driven society. Snitches and cameras are everywhere. People are subject to the Thought Police, who deal with anyone guilty of thought crimes. The government, or “Party,” is headed by Big Brother who appears on posters everywhere with the words: “Big Brother is watching you.”

We have arrived, way ahead of schedule, into the dystopian future dreamed up by not only Orwell but also such fiction writers as Aldous Huxley, Margaret Atwood and Philip K. Dick…

What once seemed futuristic no longer occupies the realm of science fiction.

Incredibly, as the various nascent technologies employed and shared by the government and corporations alike—facial recognition, iris scanners, massive databases, behavior prediction software, and so on—are incorporated into a complex, interwoven cyber network aimed at tracking our movements, predicting our thoughts and controlling our behavior, the dystopian visions of past writers is fast becoming our reality…

Surveillance cameras are everywhere. Government agents listen in on our telephone calls and read our emails. Political correctness—a philosophy that discourages diversity—has become a guiding principle of modern society. (“The Omnipresent Surveillance State: Orwell’s 1984 Is No Longer Fiction,” by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute June 10, 2019)

We are “swimming with gators” as surely as are our representatives we elect to do just that. But the “gators” in the American government, as those within the WEF, UN, and all within the Ephesians 6:12 cabal of wickedness in high places are about to bite off more than they can chew.

The Lord Jesus Christ is going to at any moment intervene catastrophically, call all believers to Himself, then drain the swamp this world has become.

Here is how to go to Him when He calls believers to Himself.

That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (Romans 10: 9–10)

Terry James Radio Interview with Crosspoint

February 3, 2024 9:00 am / Leave a comment

Terry interviews with Crosspoint host Mark Taylor about one of his latest books, Nearing Midnight: As It Was in the Days of Lot.

KNEO will air the program on February 3-4, 2024, on www.kneo.org stream or Terry James KNEO Interview with Crosspoint.

War Rumors Raging

January 29, 2024 9:47 am / 8 Comments on War Rumors Raging

War begins in each individual, the Apostle James reveals:

From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. (James 4:1–2)

The fallen nature, which came when sin was introduced to humanity, started a war that rages to this day and is intensifying by the minute, according to the hourly news reports that constantly bombard us.

Threats of war ebb and flow and reach, at times, the very brink of exploding into full-blown nuclear devastation. But that hasn’t happened to this point.

Those of my age remember the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 in which the US and Soviet Union faced off. I certainly remember that, as a 20-year-old, there was genuine fear, even by those of us so young at the time.

Sounder thinking prevailed, and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and US President John F. Kennedy pulled back from that fatal moment when the Doomsday Clock must have been one second from midnight.

Or did they?

Did these leaders of the enslaved and of the free world save the planet to fight instead in a thousand conventional conflicts into the future?

Or did physical salvation of everyone on the planet come from another source?

To answer His disciples’ question—“What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the world (age)?”—Jesus said:

And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. (Matthew 24:6)

I can’t remember when fear of world war has been more prevalent than in this present hour. The fear is being expressed not so much by average people of the world, but within the highest echelons of world diplomacy. The following somewhat puts this all into perspective.

According to media reporting on documents leaked from the German Ministry of Defense, European leaders are preparing for a “hybrid” Russian attack in Eastern Europe. The first stage, dubbed “Alliance Defense 2025,” would start this February with Russia mobilizing an additional 200,000 soldiers. Fox News reported on Tuesday that classified German documents outlined how the militaries of several European countries are planning to prepare for an offensive by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The story was first reported in the BILD newspaper based on information obtained from the German Ministry of Defense. The “Alliance Defense 2024” could start in February as Russia deploys about 200,000 soldiers in response to Western financial support for Ukraine drying up, according to the report…

Newsweek reported on Tuesday that Margarita Simony an, editor-in-chief of the Russian-state-owned broadcaster RT, predicted that World War III will “definitely” break out in the Middle East.

“And now the third world war,” Simonyan posted to Twitter on Monday evening. “Whether a world war will break out now or a little later depends on whether Washington believes that it will be useful to it now, before the elections, or vice versa. Judging by the choral silence of the American media, they are still thinking.” (Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz, “Media Warns of WWIII Starting in Mid-East after Presidential Elections,” World News, 1/19/24, https://www.israel365news.com)

Certainly it cannot be denied that armies are positioned around the world—particularly in the Middle East—for whatever reasons. They are there, and war-like tempers are in a rage.

Iran continues to develop its nuclear weapons program while threatening both Israel and America. It uses proxies to attack ships in the Red Sea and other places. Hezbollah makes noises of joining in the assaults on Israel. Lebanon threatens to join the fray for what is perceived as Israeli intrusions, even though attacks emanate from Lebanese territories. Turkey’s dictator talks in terms of war rhetoric as he observably moves Turkey into the coalition formed against the increasingly hated Jewish state.

In Asia, China is positioned to assault Taiwan, using provocative tactics to intimidate that state, which China considers its own.

Vladimir Putin is stepping up military action against Ukraine, while angered over Western—particularly US—funding of the Ukrainian military.

There is no weapon ever invented—including nuclear weapons—that hasn’t ultimately been used in war. The thermonuclear weapons developed since the atomic bombs used to end World War II are exponentially greater in power than those two bombs that killed more than one hundred thousand people.

So is World War III—a thermonuclear holocaust—about to destroy us all?

Again we look at Jesus’ words:

And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. (Matthew 24:6)

Further, we are assured by Jesus Himself that the world will not end in thermonuclear cataclysm.

And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened. (Matthew 24:22)

So, as Jesus Himself said, “Let not your heart be troubled”—that is, if you are a child of God. Despite the rumors of war raging from every quarter, there will be no all-out nuclear World War III this side of the Rapture. And even following the Rapture, God will prevent Satan’s attempts to destroy humankind.

You don’t want to be here when Satan’s efforts to do just that will be at their horrendous worst during the Tribulation. Here is how to become a child of God and go instead to be within the safe harbor the Lord Jesus Christ provides for all who accept God’s salvation offer.

That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (Romans 10:9–10)

Movement into Madness

January 28, 2024 9:44 am / 21 Comments on Movement into Madness

Perhaps what we are witnessing today in the insanity going on around us can be encapsulated within two verses—a prophecy given to the Apostle Paul to warn this generation:

Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived. (2 Timothy 3:12–13)

And it is the great apostle who was given by the Holy Spirit the words to let us know the causes and effects of the evil deception:

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. (Romans 1:28–32)

The old saying, “What goes around comes around,” is certainly true, especially in terms of fallen humanity’s prophetic trek across linear time. The antediluvian evil and wickedness Paul delineates is mirrored precisely in this generation. We are enduring madness wrought by humanity turning its back to God and determining to do what is right in their own mind. Or, I should say more accurately, determining to do what is right in the eyes of their father, the devil.

For all who are not in Christ are fallen through Lucifer, their progenitor, in that sense. He introduced sin into the human bloodstream. That venom has the vast majority of humankind infected and affected by the reprobate mind—upside-down thinking that is opposite the thinking of the redeemed mind that produces righteous acts. That righteousness is found only in the Lord Jesus Christ, who takes away the sin of the world.

In thinking on the things ripping at the very fabric of civilization and their root causes, two quite timely articles came before me. The first gets more into the causes and the second into the effects. Here are excerpts of each:

Discussions on collapse often turn to signs and signals – The economy, politics and social tensions have become increasingly unstable for many years now, and much like adding more and more weight to a man standing on a frozen lake, eventually the ice is going to break. The question is, how do we know when that moment will be?

As cultural systems begin to dissolve due to political clashes and economic decline the real evil tends to slither out of the woodwork. It happens slowly at first, then all at once. A sure sign of accelerating collapse is the growing prevalence of psychopaths and psychopathic behavior in the open.

The US appears to have entered the middle stages of such a collapse with many sociopaths and psychopaths beginning to feel that they might be able to act out their worst impulses without consequences. They are beginning to test the waters to see what they can get away with. (Tyler Durden, “Increasing Psychopathic Behavior Is a Sign That Society Is on the Verge of Breaking Down,” ZeroHedge, 1/16/24)

When people have a distorted moral value system, that distortion applies to just about every issue. Just as a broken compass will almost always point in the wrong direction, a broken moral compass will do the same. However, to be more precise, people who say “men give birth” and who side with Hamas, i.e., progressives and leftists—liberals don’t believe men give birth or side with Hamas—do not merely have a broken moral compass. They have a moral compass that works in the way progressives and leftists have configured it: North always points south and east always points west.

Some examples of how the progressive compass works:

— Women who object to men who say they are women competing in women’s sports—even in weightlifting—are haters and bigots (“transphobes”). The men who compete against them are heroes.

Adults who object to schools’ sponsoring drag queen performances for 6-year-olds are haters and bigots (“transphobes”). The teachers who take children to drag queen events are progressive, compassionate and open-minded.

If a 9-year-old girl says she is a boy, the only therapists she is allowed to see are those who engage in “gender affirmation,” which is, of course, a left-wing Orwellian term. The one thing these therapists do not do is affirm the actual gender of the child.

All-black dorms on college campuses are anti-racist. Objecting to racially segregated dorms is racist.

Those who want to build walls or fences to prevent millions of people from illegally entering the country are xenophobic. Those who oppose building such barriers and declare their cities “sanctuary cities” are humanitarians.

Demanding that citizens show a voter ID before being allowed to vote—the norm in virtually every democracy in the world—constitutes “voter suppression.”

If we have fewer police officers, we will have safer cities.

Marriage is a product of patriarchal misogyny. It wasn’t created to protect and honor women, but to exploit them. Anyway, a woman needs a man as much as a fish needs a bicycle.

Scientists who express skepticism about catastrophic man-made global warming are science-deniers.

These are some of the morally and factually perverse positions of the left. Just about every individual who holds these positions also holds the morally perverse position that Israel is the villain and Hamas and its Palestinian supporters are the moral party. (Dennis Prager, “If You Say ‘Men Give Birth,’ We All Know Your Position on Hamas,” Jewish World Review, Rapture Ready News, 1/18/24)

We are witnessing the prophesied movement into madness. It is increasingly clear to those who view Bible prophecy in its stage-setting as God’s Word plainly presents it—from the pre-Trib View—that the reprobate mind as in antediluvian times reported by Paul is now manifesting as in the days of Noah. Jesus said when this point is reached–“like it was in the days of Noah”—He would again intervene catastrophically into the evil and wicked affairs of humankind.

That intervention will come instantaneously (“in the twinkling of an eye”). It will be the Rapture of all whom God considers righteous. Here is how to make sure you possess that righteousness, thus will hear Christ’s call in the Rapture, and will go to Him and to safety from God’s wrath that will be poured upon the anti-God rebels on earth.

That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” (Romans 10:9–10)

An Open Letter to Those Who Have Been Taught That the Church Has Replaced Israel

January 23, 2024 2:57 pm / 2 Comments on An Open Letter to Those Who Have Been Taught That the Church Has Replaced Israel

Dear Brother or Sister in Christ,

If you are a member of a Catholic or mainline denominational church, you have probably been taught something called replacement theology (and perhaps you don’t even know it has that name). Replacement theology leads those who have adopted it to believe that Israel is no longer God’s people and that the modern regathering of the Jews in their historical land is theologically meaningless. Please know this is an error, and I write this letter to alert you to it so you can study God’s Word and reach your own conclusion.

Replacement theology, sometimes called supersessionism or fulfillment theology, is a doctrine stating either that the Church took Israel’s place as God’s people when Israel rejected Jesus as its Messiah or that the “old” Israel was set aside in favor of a “new” Israel, the Church, upon Jesus’s first coming. No matter how it got there, the Church is now God’s people and the beneficiary of the promises God made Israel in the Old Testament. Consequently, Jacob’s blood descendants have no unique destiny, and modern Israel’s existence has no significance. Because replacement theology is often woven into otherwise sound teachings on redemptive history, many believers aren’t even aware that it is a separate doctrine with its own name. Nonetheless, replacement theology is enshrined in Catholic dogma and runs rampant in mainline denominations, even among those that otherwise take the Bible seriously.

Replacement theology raises troubling implications about God’s character, not the least of which are: if God revoked his promises to Israel, what keeps him from revoking them again, and does God really change not (as Malachi 3:6 says)? Many who have been taught replacement theology have not considered these implications. Perhaps you have, but dismissed them out-of-hand or rationalized them away, possibly because they are too dreadful to imagine. Unfortunately, ignoring the implications does not make them go away.

Rather than addressing these (and other) broader implications, this letter will instead tackle the assumption that lies at the very heart of replacement theology: did Israel really forfeit its blessings? Did God really forsake or move past Israel? Fortunately, if you read the Bible without bias, it gives a clear answer.

One point is worth making before proceeding: I don’t have the ability or the moral duty to force you to reject replacement theology. Only the Holy Spirit can convict. All I can do is call relevant scripture to your attention and invite you to check it out yourself. That is what I will now do.

To keep this letter short and clear, I will rely only on two passages: Isaiah 6 and Romans 11. (If you are a Reformed believer, you tend to read Revelation figuratively, because you have been taught that it is “apocalyptic literature.” I will therefore deliberately avoid Revelation’s many passages affirming Israel’s destiny, knowing that you will be unwilling to read Isaiah and Romans figuratively.) I will cite the King James Version, but any good version will do.

Isaiah 6 contains the well-known “Here I am. Send me” passage in which Isaiah volunteers to convey a message God has for his people:

Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me. And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed. (Isaiah 6:8-10)

God informs his people not only that they are hardened (deaf, blind and without understanding) and he is the one hardening them, but also that he has hardened them to delay their repenting and being healed. Note that God does not tell them why he wants a delay.

When the disciples ask Jesus why he speaks “to them” in parables in Matthew 13, he quotes this passage of Isaiah 6:

He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath. Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive:” (Matthew 13:11-14)

Paul also quotes this same passage of Isaiah 6 in Acts 28, reminding the local leaders of the Jews that they are hardened.

And some believed the things which were spoken, and some believed not. And when they agreed not among themselves, they departed, after that Paul had spoken one word, Well spake the Holy Ghost by Esaias the prophet unto our fathers, saying, Go unto this people, and say, Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive: For the heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. (Acts 28:24-27)

Paul then discloses the reason why God hardened Israel, delaying its repenting and being healed:

Be it known therefore unto you, that the salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles, and that they will hear it. (Acts 28:28)

According to Paul, God hardened Israel so the Gospel could be taken to the Gentiles.

However, Isaiah 6 continues after the portion quoted in both Matthew 13 and Acts 28. God has more to say to Isaiah about his people. Returning to Isaiah 6, after hearing God’s decree against his people, the prophet begs God for an answer in verse 11, and God gives it to him:

Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate. And the LORD have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land. But yet in [the land] shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten: as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof. (Isaiah 6:11-13)

God promises that he will lift Israel’s partial hardening during or just after a widespread devastation. This may be a great war, even a nuclear war given the extent and degree of damage. However, it may be a direct act of God, acting in wrath. Only he knows.

Why then did Jesus and Paul’s quotations from Isaiah 6 stop short of verses 11-13? The answer is that they were speaking in the first century AD. Isaiah 6:11-13 would be fulfilled in the future. They were only talking about Israel’s hardened condition in those days, and not about when it would someday repent. Remember, Jesus was only answering a question from his disciples as to why he was teaching in parables, and Paul was only making the case for taking the Gospel to the Gentiles.

Now, let’s look at Romans 11, in which Paul answers the question his earlier chapters in Romans begged: if Christ is the answer and the law is not, what about the Jews, to whom God had given the law? Has God turned his back on Israel?

I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew. Wot ye not what the scripture saith of Elias? how he maketh intercession to God against Israel, saying, Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars; and I am left alone, and they seek my life. But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal. (Romans 11:1-4)

The answer is an emphatic “God forbid!” God will save an elect remnant of Israel, and God will save them by grace, not the law. To keep the Gentiles from being feeling superior to the Jews, Paul goes on to say:

I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy. Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness? For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office: If by any means I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh, and might save some of them. For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead? (Romans 11:11-15)

Then, after describing how the holy firstfruits of lump of dough renders the whole lump holy, how a holy root can render the entire tree holy, and how branches grafted onto a holy tree become holy, even branches that had previously been cut off, Paul reveals a mystery in verse 25:

For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. (Romans 11:25)

Though he does not outright quote Isaiah 6:11-13, he affirms the promise God made in those verses to end Israel’s hardening. The mystery Paul reveals is that the partial hardening of Israel’s elect will end when the “fulness of the Gentiles be (has) come in.”

It is important to note that none of these passages are talking about the Church. God has never hardened the Church. He has only hardened Israel, and only temporarily, for the express purpose of taking the Gospel to the Gentiles and building a Church that encompasses all peoples, nations, and languages. This he did at Israel’s great expense, but he will resurrect and magnify Israel because of it. Consider the supreme irony: God hardened Israel to benefit the Gentiles, and so many churches have returned their thanks to Israel by teaching replacement theology.

God’s reply in Isaiah 6 and Paul’s teaching in Romans 11 raise two questions: when will this widespread devastation occur, and when will the fulness of the Gentiles come in? The Bible gives no clear answer; God wants us to depend on him alone for the timing.

However, we can be sure of this – God will restore the elect of his people Israel. That unambiguous Biblical truth, stated explicitly both to Israel in the Old Testament and the Gentiles of the Church in the New Testament, exposes replacement theology as bad doctrine. Now it’s up to the Holy Spirit and informed believers to purge the Church of this sad error.

If replacement theology now troubles you as much as it does me, please do me a favor. Consider giving a copy of this letter to a brother or sister who has been mistaught. You will be helping them and doing a good work for God’s kingdom.

Some Things I Never Thought I Would See :: By Jan Markell

January 23, 2024 2:32 pm / 4 Comments on Some Things I Never Thought I Would See :: By Jan Markell

I’m at it again—mulling over the insanity of our day, even though such absurdities were predicted for the last days. I say a dozen times a day, “I never thought I would see the day.” Be honest. You do, too!

Here’s my current list: