Just "luck" - again.
Survival and complete recovery after 15 surgeries within 36 months. Two near-fatal catastrophes on the highway.
The calamity of a stroke. But renovation of a home afterward that demanded carrying 80 pound cement
bags and toting 90 pound roofing bundles at 70.
Psalms 34:7 states the reassuring words: "The angel of the Lord encamps around
those who fear him, and he delivers them." Even Satan knew the Scripture:
"For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee."
Lu.4:10 We who believe are at war with
the Prince of Darkness, but God has sent unseen silent angels to
"minister" to us in our time of need.
Heb.1:14 God cares for us, just as his eye
is on the sparrow.Matt.6:26 The very hairs
of our head are numbered.Matt.10:30 "Yes, though
I go through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil."
Ps.23 We who believe
cannot possibly get lost in the crowd, or be forgotten by him for even a nanosecond!
But why did God not simply use his sovereign supremacy to destroy Satan
along with all disobedient men?
Look at God's strategy for accomplishing his purpose through the agency of
humans - instruments
who were extremely incapable, often weak, and usually inferior to others.
God chose a stuttering Moses to lead the Jewish slaves out of Egypt.Exod.4:10-17
But the
Israelites had barely witnessed the miracle of escape through the Red
Sea in their journey to the Promised Land before they were bitterly
complaining at Marah that life had been better as beaten servants
working night and day making bricks to build Pharaoh's pyramids!
God chose a skeptical Gideon to conquer Jericho in Israel's quest to establish themselves
as a recognized nation in the land God had promised.Jude 6:39
The Jewish army won at Jericho by
simply blowing their trumpets after a brief march around the city. Confidence
from conquest should have bolstered their faith. But their
faith quickly mired into quicksand in their second attack because they lost sight of the
object of their faith.
God chose Solomon to transform the Jewish nation into the richest
kingdom in the world. But upon Solomon's death, the nation began to
splinter into divisive factions.
Yet, God even knew man would fail? His introspective omniscience
knows the heart before actions are produced in behavior. Why did God put his
reputation on the line with failures he knew in advance would take place?
Because of the failure of these chosen people, God allowed the
heathen tyrant Nebuchadnezzar to carry Israel, the Jews, into slavery again.
His Ultimate Gesture Rebuffed
Finally after so many attempts, God made one ultimate gesture. He brought himself down
to earth as the Son of God! Even then, the chosen Jewish race failed to recognize him as
the prophesied Messiah, and crucified him.
God had succeeded in giving his very best from heaven itself, only to be
ultimately rebuffed by the Jews.
And because of their continued rejection, God allowed the Roman Commander, Titus,
to devastate his chosen race, the Jews, in A.D.70. As the vicious horde of soldiers
climbed the rugged hill to the unapproachable walls fortifying Jerusalem, the Jews flung
pails of boiling oil atop the soldiers' heads as they scaled to the summit on ladders.
The Roman soldiers were infuriated. They were accustomed to winning, never
intimidated. With even
more resolve, they stormed the stronghold. The infamous attack killed 1,000,000 Jews, and 100,000 were
led captive to Rome to build the Coliseum where Christians were later fed to ravenous
lions for entertaining sport.
The attack of Titus blasted the Jews like a mighty shotgun
explosion into all
corners of world where their children and great-grandchildren still reside today. The devastation of A.D.70 was one of the worst battles ever
recorded in the annals of war. Historian Josephus records that even mothers ate their own babies in desperation to live!
The message was crystal clear: Believe, or else. When the Jews rejected Jesus,
God rejected the Jews.
This guy Saul
But just prior to this destruction of Jerusalem, God was up to something else. He
had something else up his sleeve.
There was this guy named Saul.
What a bigot! Conscientious, but stubborn diehard! Intensely religious,
but wrong, wrong, wrong.
He was so devoted to the Law of Moses and Judaism that anybody and anything that did not live up to
his standard of
exactness repulsed him. Saul was so conceited that he considered himself
"the best of the best."Phil.3:4-6
The ancient Ten Commandments given in the Law of Moses at Mount Sinai
had degenerated into a man-made set of 613 Rules of Conduct known as Judaism.
Jesus came to earth during this period, and he repudiated Judaism. Jesus contended that the
Law of Moses was God's law, but Judaism was well meaning forgery.
And this guy Saul was a zealot for Judaism, while Jesus was a zealot
for belief and obedience to the undiluted words of God Almighty, whom he
was.
And Saul was about the age of Jesus of Nazareth.
And Saul knew Jesus, whether by reputation or personally.
2 Cor.5:16
Who knows when or under what circumstances Saul came to know about Jesus. To
be sure, after Jesus began performing those "tricks" that were
called miracles, Saul heard about him like everyone else in Palestine.
After Jesus had astounded some guests at a wedding feast with his magic of turning
water into wine, everyone in Palestine began to hear about him through
The Evening Word-of-Mouth Gazette. After Jesus began magnetizing crowds who even
walked miles across the hot desert sands to the mountains to hear him,
Saul too began to hear about him. And when Jesus flabbergasted the Jewish
leaders with his unconventional jargon about Judaism, no doubt Saul
heard about him too.
Look at him out of the corner of your eye. At the edge of the crowd,
this guy Saul listened in awe to Jesus. He took it all in. He
immediately recognized this insurrectionist was an impostor of Judaism.
Saul could instantly tell Jesus was a dangerous threat to every belief
for which he himself stood, and all others of those "truly righteous Jews"
like himself. Saul had the uncanny
insight to know that Jesus was undermining everything that those strict,
conservative Jewish leaders like himself were struggling to preserve in
legalistic Judaism. He could see that Jesus was destroying the
"faith of the fathers" with his unorthodox speech. There had been
other rebels in Palestine, just like him, and Saul became intent on
squelching this one!
After all, Saul had been raised as a strict conservative of Judaism.
His sharp mind was matched with energy and dedication. He was a rabid
dog looking for a fight when it came to defending faithfulness to Almighty God and
the Law of Moses as interpreted through contemporary Judaism.
So Saul hated Jesus with a purple passion.
Saul was a loyal disciple of Gamaliel, the greatest intellectual rabbi of his
day.
Saul, like Gamaliel, was a pious Pharisee, the proud-as-a-peacock, self-righteous sect of
the Jews. No doubt Saul had actually listened to or heard about
Jesus call the Pharisees "snakes,"Matt.3:7
"children of the devil,"Jn.8:44 "hypocrites,"Matt. 23:13, 15, 23, 25, 27, 29
and "whitewashed tombs."Matt.23:27
Saul knew Jesus had told the crowds, "Your righteousness must
exceed that of the Pharisees."1 Pet.2:11; 1 Tim. 1:18; 6:12 Jesus had said, "The Pharisees are
such sticklers for ritualistic practices that they tithe
even the tiny leaves of a mint plant, but overlook the much more important things."
Lu.11:42 Jesus' most scathing
criticism of the religion of his day was directed against the Pharisees!
Saul felt the piercing jabs of Jesus' words aimed at him, like at all conceited Pharisees, and
he hated Jesus intensely.Matt.21:45
Saul saw himself as a pompous "Pharisee of Pharisees," and he
hated Jesus fiercely.
Saul was one of the 71-member ruling Jewish aristocracy, the Great Sanhedrin,
Ac. 6:9-10; 22:5
and he eventually even voted to kill Jesus on the cross!Mark 15:1; Ac. 26:10
Saul was probably wealthy, and may have lived in one of the finest homes in
town. The King James Version hints at his wealth in using the phrase, he "profited in the Jews' religion" above many
of his equals.Gal.1:14 As other members of the Sanhedrin, he too was probably married and
had a family. But his profound hatred for Jesus eventually
compelled him to leave the comforts of home to
initiate and lead a campaign to squash this newly formed rebel
uprising. He gave up the sumptuous living known only to the affluent,
and especially known to characterize the Sanhedrin elite. He even left his wife and children
at home, and perhaps they eventually deserted him because of his
extremely devout and persistent behavior for his beliefs that eventually led to the loss of
his cash flow.Matt.10:37
Saul was their "Goose that laid the Golden Egg."
Without doubt, Saul was a compelled man on a mission!Ac. 22:5
How can anyone's hatred become so stirred into violence that murder
becomes their living, breathing mantra? How can anyone's hatred become
such an intense, overwhelming obsession that they become a crusader to imprison
and kill innocent, defenseless women - not just men - just because they believed in
Jesus!
And even more alarming and nauseating, how in the world could God hand-pick this
guy???
But yet God did, just like he had selected so many other strange
personalities in the history of his activity.
Saul to Paul
God made his move on Saul at a special unguarded moment in a special
unanticipated circumstance. (By now, however, it has become obvious that
God's direct actions with men are always chosen by him as
"special" and often dramatic and unforeseen. Seems this is the very nature
of God's character.)
So, at an unexpected moment in time when the crescendo of Saul's emotions boiled
with rage in the stoning of Stephen as he next
carried death warrants for other Jesus-followers he hated...
God hurled an intense light ray from heaven - a laser beam, a bolt of
lightning - so powerful that Saul
was instantly blinded and brought trembling to his knees!
And the unmistakable voice that boomed from heaven in response to
Saul's sudden crouched helplessness on the ground said, "Why are you persecuting
me?"
And after moments of trying to pull himself together while grasping for some meaning
to this sudden baffling, traumatic experience, Saul mumbled...
"Who are you, Lord?"
(What did Saul mean by "Lord???" Why, the intensely religious
Saul was muttering the Hebrew term held by the Jews in
lofty respect for only the highest of all beings in the universe. This
was the term reserved for unusual occasions when Jews approached the
highest portals of the Supreme Sovereign of heavens and earth. This moment
of truth suddenly became so solemnly austere in Saul's living-breathing existence that he
almost inaudibly murmured the response of "Lord" in a whisper of
complete submission of his
total lowly being to the Highest Being of the Universe!)
What emotional upheaval instantly shot throughout Saul's bewildered mind and trembling body
as the roaring voice from heaven distinctly answered:
"I am the very Jesus you are persecuting!!!"
Ac.9:5; 22:8; 26:15; Php.3:6
In that traumatic instant of mental analysis and inner soul-searching, Saul
emotionally collapsed in a crumpled heap of total helplessness. Every fiber of his
being was crushed in anguish. Saul experienced what he must have thought was instant final judgment of his soul in that
split-second of time, as all of the movie-frames of life unexpectedly froze before
him in a suspended moment! Saul was overwhelmingly convicted in that single twinkling
in time of how he had been
blinded in his thinking over his entire lifetime!
Saul was blinded by the bright light that day, but he had been blinded by error
in thinking since his aristocratic birth and noble training. He had been so convinced
that he was right when
most other Jews were wrong that
the shock of learning the truth was emotionally shattering.
He knew he had been right! He knew he was
among the few with special insight! He knew he was above the rest! Imagine,
if you can, the sudden reversal of what Saul had always
held as honest-to-goodness TRUTH. He had been an up-and-coming political and religious leader among
his peers in the entire province, and the integrity of his whole reputation and past was
suddenly being undermined!
Why had he
been living???
Don't know about you, but this experience would have scared me
to death!
And from that earth-shaking moment until the end of his life when he was
martyred as a Christian in Rome, Saul slaved untiringly for the cause of Jesus whom he had so vigorously
violated with such intense hatred. Saul exchanged a life of ease as a prominent, haughty politician to
a derelict eking out existence as a demeaning tent maker.
Gal.1:14; Php.3:4-8
Saul declared he was changed in that instant to be not just a "slave" for the Lord who was paid wages for work, but as
a "bond-servant" bought for a life of hard labor with no rights of his own.
Saul's overwhelming response from instant awareness of worthless life to
allegiance to the one-and-only true God
was not unlike any other genuine conversion. Just perhaps more dynamically graphic. All of us respond
similarly in that once-for-all-moment-of-decision
when enlightened about God's existence. It is not just an intellectual response of the head or an emotional response
of the heart, but
the response of totality in being.
And this was not the only sudden strange turn of God's events to unfold in
Saul's life, whose name was changed after his conversion from Saul (his Hebrew name
referencing his birthplace)
to Paul ("Apostle to the Gentiles").
Paul's gospel
God chose Saul as his ambassador of a brand new message to the offspring of Adam
and Eve.
God was at it again.
God had extensively prepared for this time in history.
He knew it before the foundations of the world.
Eph.1:4; 1 Pet.1:20
He had first announced it when Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden
of Eden.Gen.3:15
He had prepared for the coming of himself as Jesus through Abraham,
Gen.18:18 whom
God called "the father of those who live by faith."
Ro.4:11, 16
He had prepared the way through Joseph in Egypt, Moses in the
wilderness journey, Gideon in conquering the Promised Land, and in all
the prophets who foretold of his preparation.
He had even sent the hermit cousin of Jesus, John the Baptizer, the wilderness man who
thrived on a diet of leaping locusts of the field and honey dug out by his rough hands
from beehives in the hollow of trees. This was the strange man
with the strange message, "Prepare for the way of the Lord."
(Why does God pick these odd people!!!)
All this preparation had been for
TWO GOSPELS!
One was the gospel of Jesus,
and the other was
the gospel of Paul.
The Gospel of Jesus and The Gospel of Paul
Jesus' life was primarily a mission of preaching the Good News message,
or the "gospel," to the Jews.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote the historical account known as
the first four "gospels" of the New Testament.
These "gospels" were the story of Jesus' life as he mingled
on earth with the Jews. These "gospels" were the message of hope
for the Jews.
The Jews alone.
Oh yes, God had occasionally found believers among the Gentiles during his
intervening episodes among the swelling masses of humanity since the beginning.
Ruth's mother-in-law was a Gentile Moabite.Ruth 1:4
God had sent Jonah on a special mission to the Gentiles of Nineveh.
Jonah didn't like the idea, so God gave him a little taste of life in a whale's belly
when Jonah headed in the opposite direction of God's mission. Even
when Jonah came out alive from such an awesome experience of three days
without food within the stomach of a huge fish, Jonah still bellyached about
God's mission to the Gentiles. Jonah was a typical Jew ~ ~ ~ they all thought they had an exclusive
copyright on God. Jews knew they had been
exclusively chosen by God of all people on earth. Therefore, they thought God had no business
dealing with those dirty-dog Gentiles!Matt. 7:6; 15:26
Jesus had discretely separated the Law of Moses given by God's own
hand from the man-made interpretations of Law in Judaism. This
distinction led Jesus, a Jew, to follow Jewish mandates in the Law of
Moses as distinct from expected submission to the man-made 613 Rules of
Judaism in his day. The mission of Jesus was primarily a mission of this
distinct "gospel" to Jews.
Jesus, born as a Jew, came to the Jews, and worshipped as a Jew. But being a Jew
in a predominately Gentile world, he encountered Gentiles.
And take a look at his response to Gentiles.
Jesus at first refused to heal the child of a Gentile
mother.Matt.15:21-28 He
reflected Jewish exclusivity and isolationism by echoing the well-known Jewish phrase
that Gentiles were "dogs!" Jesus' "gospel" was to Jews.
His disciples continued a mission to Jews after Jesus'
resurrection. His disciples had experienced a close personal
relationship with Jesus during his three years of ministry. These disciples
became pillars in the new assembly of believers after Jesus arose and
ascended into heaven. It is no wonder that these disciples (or
"learners" of Jesus), who had become apostles (or "sent
ones" of Jesus) set out on their ministry as Jews teaching the
Good News "gospel" to the Jews.
The first church at Pentecost was only a mission of
believing Jews with a "gospel" to the Jews for several
years.Ac. 2:5; 11:19
But then, at that particular juncture of time, God again contrived a unique, isolated
experience.
It was such extreme uniqueness that it stands out almost as a sore thumb in the
Jewish experience and in the historical experience of God's modus operandi!
This was one of those unusual moments of time with such phenomenal ramifications
that it embraces the entire spectrum of humanity. This was God's introduction of a
brand new idea. God was now ready to expand his relationship with his race of people, the Jews,
begun with Abraham, to the broader spectrum of the Gentile nations. God had now
decided - at this moment in time - to
share his offer of a return of pagans to Paradise. The heathens. Polytheistic idolaters. Those vile
worshippers of every god imaginable in mythology, who turned their temples into brothels. In fact, God
was ready to punish the Jews for their rejection of his Son, Jesus, and open his
door of welcome to Gentiles for the first time since Abraham. And in his punishment of the
Jews,
God vowed to "hide his face from them"Ezek.39:23-29 until
he returned them to the Land of Promise.
Dancing with God
This was revolutionary!
And this far-reaching concept was nestled first in a solitary experience involving Peter, Jesus' disciple and a blood brother Jew.
And it was an experience that Peter witnessed in his flesh but never fully
comprehended in his mind.
And it was the precursor of changes in
God's magnificent plan of redemption.
Peter stood up on Pentecost as the leader among the disciples to preach the first sermon
in the new church-age. It was a sermon by Jews to Jews.
Ac.2:5 But only a few years later,
the Spirit of God
led Peter to Cornelius and his household, Greek
Gentiles.Ac.10
Peter would never have entered the home of this Gentile "dog" except that God
gave him a vision in a deep sleep. In the dream, God demanded that Peter
eat of unclean animals that were not kosher by Jewish standards. Jews
didn't eat pork chops and bacon, but God demanded that Peter break all the
conditioning of his lifetime by sitting down with Cornelius and his family for breakfast of
savory bacon and scrambled eggs like we would enjoy. No doubt
like a nightmare to him, this vision
compelled
Peter to baptize the first Gentiles into the fledging church!
God demanded it.
But Peter had always been a stubborn man. Once he adamantly blurted out to Jesus that he would never forsake him, until
Jesus gently predicted that he would deny him three times! But even with this
mandate for
taking the "gospel" to Gentiles delivered personally in a dream from God out of
the portals of heaven itself, Peter could not fathom that the
"gospel" of Jesus to the Jews could also be a
"gospel" to the Gentiles. Yet, Paul - a blood brother Jew to Peter - was sent as an "apostle to
the Gentiles."Rom.11:13
Paul had been "a vessel" chosen by God to be an administrator and caretaker
of "secret mysteries"
revealed uniquely to him.Ac.15:14-17; Rom.16:25; 1 Cor.4:1; Eph.3:2-5
Later Paul even had to counter Peter
"to his face"Gal. 2:11 because Peter never internalized the vision from God equating Gentiles
with Jews in God's ultimate plan.2 Pet.3:16
Despite God's revelation to Peter in a dream...
despite Peter baptizing the first Gentiles into the church...
no one yet had been chosen for the specific, life-long
mission of taking "the gospel" to the Greek and heathen Gentiles.
Until Paul, Saul of Tarsus.
Paul's Gospel to the Gentiles
God had given no mission of sending "the gospel" to Gentiles
until...he separated Saul of Tarsus.
Saul was chosen "out of season" as God's new ambassador
for the new mission of delivering this brand new "gospel" to the
Gentile world. Paul distinguishes the "gospel" he preached
as "my gospel."Rom.2:16, 16:25; 2 Tim.2:8 It was not only new as a never-before-message of God's
acceptance of Gentiles,
but it also defined and depicted God
as merciful-as-never-before-known.
Paul's gospel was God, the
Savior of Grace, without Works.Mentioned 100 times by Paul
God gave Paul this strange new task when he accepted his
miraculous calling on his way to kill Christian Jews.
And God's task in training
Paul for this task was
monumental!
Not only had Paul grown to hate Jesus, who now he
learned was God. Now he was given a mission to take a special revealed gospel
to the Gentiles known to him as heathen "dogs." Every Jew saw polytheistic
heathens as detestable "dogs" in the eyes of every Gentile they met.
Jews were required to bathe if they even encountered Gentiles! Imagine Paul's
culture shock! Yet Paul's change was so fundamental and intense that he came to understand
that Gentiles and Jews were equal!Rom.3:8-10
And grace without works was a far cry from the impossibly burdensome
works of the Law. Without this change in God's requirements for obedience,
every Christian in the world today would have to raise animals in their backyard, sever
the jugular vein of their favorite pet, and splash the gory carcass in a fiery pit
for sacrifice! But Paul's "gospel," in contrast to Jesus' "gospel," explained that
Jesus' blood on the cross had eliminated that ole ritual required by Moses in
the Old Testament Law. What a blessed
relief for his beloved creation! Justified by the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus on the
cross - without the need for repetitive animal sacrifices or any "works"
of any kind
to prove anything! What a confirmation of God's supreme love!
In his new mission, God had revealed his desire to save us by grace without any
performance on our part ~ ~ ~ because of his performance in sending his own Son on the
cross and raising him from the dead!
But how could God reverse Paul's life-long conditioning?
God did not send Paul to Jesus' disciples for a seminary class on "Salvation 101." Instead,
Paul went immediately into Arabia and then returned to Damascus where he had seen God in
that piercing light that blinded his eyes. Only then, did Paul go to Jerusalem where Jesus'
disciples were residing and preaching to the Jews, and then he saw James only briefly and
stayed just 15 days with Peter, the leader of the church who was fulfilling Jesus' prediction
that he would "build my church."Gal.1:17-19; Matt.16:18
Reading the incredible details between the lines, Paul was immediately whisked away by God's
Spirit after his conversion into the same Arabian desert where God had given the Ten
Commandments on Mount Sinai to Moses 1500 years previously!Gal.1:17
God had personally spoken the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai,
who chiseled them into tablets of stone. Now God spent three years teaching
Paul the brand new Gospel to the Gentiles on Mount Sinai,
Gal.4:24-25 where he
miraculously transfigured Paul's body into spiritual form
in transporting him upward into the magnificent Third Heaven level of God's throne where he saw glories
forbidden to be told!2 Cor.12:2 God came down on Mount Sinai to speak the Law to Moses,
but Paul was transported up to learn the unsearchable riches of God's message
of grace.
What an awesome experience for Paul to hold in memory during
the unbelievable persecution he would soon endure for his
faith in this God ~ ~ ~ suffering a miserable, aggravating "thorn
in the flesh," often without food and water in his toiling, in danger of robbers, sleepless nights,
exposure in the cold, encountering a poisonous snake bite, shipwreck and lost on storm-tossed seas,
stoned as a misfit
worthy of death, solitary confinement in a dungeon, countless beatings, three
caustic batterings from Roman rods, and
five ravenous floggings with lashes that almost killed him. Paul's
faith in this God was not to be
coddled in a continued life of ease as a prominent, affluent Pharisee of
the Sanhedrin. Paul's
faith in this God was to be
tested as it is with all disciples and as it was with Jesus -
even to the point of death! "All that will live godly in Christ Jesus
shall suffer persecution.2 Tim.3:12
"If any man will come after me,
let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me."
Lu.9:23
God had taken Moses into the wilderness for the 40-year
Preparation Class in Leadership to posture him for piloting Israel out of Egypt.
And God
gave Paul a three-year Crash Course in Perceiving God's Grace at Mount Sinai for taking the gospel
of grace-without-works to the Greek heathens.
The apostles had spent three years in personally learning about God at the feet
of Jesus. And Paul
spent three years in personally learning from God himself during his training
at Mount Sinai. So Paul defended his apostleship to Judaizer critics as
one "born out of due season."1 Cor.15:8 Paul declared he was not "one whit" behind the other
apostles2 Cor.11:5 because of the manner in which God had prepared him for his own particular
task.
How did God manage this?
And how could Paul's mental balance absorb such mind-bending reversals?
First, God had to reveal to Paul that his intense hatred of Jesus had been
inadvertently directed to God's own precious Son
sent from heaven as a sacrifice for the sins of all men.
Then second, God revealed at Mount Sinai that Paul was to take
this never-before-revealed gospel of grace to the very Gentiles whom Paul had been
taught to hate his entire life as dogs unworthy of his own spit!
Grace so powerful ~ ~ ~ that it forgave Paul of his wrongs and can forgive you
and me of the most horrible of all of our evil, and even could have forgiven
Hitler of all of his wickedness!!!
And equally difficult, it took three years of discipline from God himself to
get the deeply ingrained system of works in Judaism out of Paul!
The disciples of Jesus were a natural extension of Jesus' ministry on
earth. The disciples' ministry carried to Jews after the resurrection simply expanded
Jesus' teaching during his
three years on earth. But Paul had become an apostle "born out of due season."
God had to mold him into the unique spokesman who was totally-unlike his
past life, with totally unlike mindset, to carry a totally unlike message
the world had never heard!
As Jesus had come only to the "house of Israel" during his
ministry before the "finish" of the Law at the cross,
Lu.13:32; Jn.4:34; 17:4; 19:30 Paul was
now being sent to the Gentile world to announce God's love for all humanity.
As the apostles started the church
with the Jews at Pentecost and continued their ministry with the Jews,
Paul was now being sent to the entire world of non-Jewish Gentiles.
Peter had been so cautious in obeying the Spirit's call to teach
Cornelius and his Gentile household the message of Jesus. Peter was
cautious because these "dogs" had always been unworthy and
unwelcome in Judaism. Even this disciple of the Lord who was shown a
heavenly vision that the Gentile heathens were NOT unclean, Peter had
such psychological aversion to Gentile Christianity that Paul had to
later "withstand him" to his face over the issue! Peter even admits
that some of Paul's writings were "hard to understand."2 Pet.3:16
Peter, the apostle and student of Jesus Christ, never
internalized Gentile Christianity, just as most Jews today refuse to accept
Jesus as more than a mere man.
While the apostles' mission was centered on preaching the gospel to Jews in Jerusalem
after the crucifixion and resurrection, Paul preached an expanded gospel of grace
to the Gentile world he had
learned from God at Mount Sinai. And Paul's expanded gospel of grace to Gentiles was hard to comprehend by the other apostles and Jewish
Christians, just as it must have been difficult for Paul himself to comprehend
this new concept
at first. Purging Paul of
Judaism took God himself three years of personal indoctrination at Mount Sinai!
The issue of God's open arms of love for Gentiles as well as Jews had been a
non-issue for Jews since Abraham. The issue was a No-No. It was ultimately only settled
theologically by the church leaders at the Jerusalem
Conference.Ac.15
Yet most Jews have never internalized this concept to this day. In fact, Paul was
constantly and continuously dogged
in his mission to Gentiles by Judaizers who insisted that the true gospel of Christ in Christianity
should only be mixed with an allegiance to the Ten Commandments,
the Torah, and those 613 Rules of Conduct in Judaism.
And three times, Paul refers to his mission to the Gentiles as "my gospel."
Rom.2:16; 16:25; 2 Tim.2:8; 1 Cor.15:1 Not "another gospel," but
the unfolding expansion and extension of God's eternal
plan so unique that he could call it, "my gospel!"Gal.1:8,9 Paul's gospel extended an
understanding of God with terminology never uttered from the lips of even
Jesus himself, such as "grace" and
"the body of Christ." Jesus taught his followers to "keep the Commandments" - not to revel in grace -
for he had not yet
died to fulfill the Law.Matt. 5:17; 19:17 Jesus' teachings always
referred to the "kingdom" - not the body of Christ - because he was
"the King of the Jews."Matt.27:11-37 Paul's
gospel amplified secret mysteries, such as God's grace,Zech.12:10 hidden
by God since before the world began and for which earlier prophets searched
diligently!Eph.3; Rom.16:25; 1 Pet.1:10
Nothing
in the Old Testament or in any
Jewish writing even remotely referred to Jews and Gentiles together in the
body of Christ even in an earthly kingdom, and certainly not in heaven!
The apostles in Jerusalem met immense opposition to their mission from orthodox Jews and
the Romans in Palestine. But Paul met immense opposition in his missionary journeys
from polytheistic heathens throughout the Gentile world as well as Jewish Judaizers.
And Paul had the unbelievable task of teaching Gentiles who had no idea about the
God of Abraham! They had no conception of worshipping The One and Only God of the
Universe! They had no background of Old Testament Scriptures to guide them to
know the God of Creation!
Tracking God's dramatic activity from Adam to the Jerusalem Church and to God's
mission beyond until The End is
unfathomable.
Breath-taking!
How did God actually do it???
How was it possibly achievable???
From start to finish
And how could anyone predict what God was up to from the creation of the
world until now?
Could anyone predict the twists and turns God maneuvered since that moment in the
beginning of time when God communicated with Adam, his highest created being?
It is only because we know that God placed Adam and Eve in the Garden
of Eden that
we know God's ultimate goal is to find "those few" for close communion in the Bliss
of Paradise.
Adam and Eve lost Paradise in the beginning of time because
God has temporarily allowed Satan, the Tempter, to be Prince of the Power of the Air.
Eph.2:2
Jn.12:31; 14:30; 16:11 This Tempter
once even had a shot at Jesus the Christ by offering him "ownership of all
earthly kingdoms," but Jesus rebuffed Satan easily and quickly with
only the spoken Word of Scripture.Matt.4:1-11
And this is the only way we too can rebuff Satan's onslaught of temptations enticing us today!
God had a plan in all of this.
And through the strange chain of events during 6000 years, God has worked out his
unfolding plan.
God selected Abraham who became the "Father of the Jews" and the "Father
of the Faithful." Abraham was that single solitary man God took a chance on. Abraham
haltingly began God's race of "the chosen few." But
4000 years later that race of Jews rejected Jesus after
God birthed him in a manager. The race of Jews rejected and crucified the very Messiah
that God had planned for
returning his "chosen few" back to the ecstasy of Paradise Bliss.
The world is God's creation, so he has the prerogative to operate any way through
any series of occurrences and with any kind of system he chooses.
One of my mother's favorite songs was "This Is My Father's World."
This is my Father’s world, and to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres.
This is my Father’s world: I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas;
His hand the wonders wrought.
This is my Father’s world, the birds their carols raise,
The morning light, the lily white, declare their Maker’s praise.
This is my Father’s world: He shines in all that’s fair;
In the rustling grass I hear Him pass;
He speaks to me everywhere.
This is my Father’s world. O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world: the battle is not done:
Jesus Who died shall be satisfied,
And earth and Heav’n be one.
This is my Father’s world, dreaming, I see His face.
I ope my eyes, and in glad surprise cry, “The Lord is in this place.”
This is my Father’s world, from the shining courts above,
The Beloved One, His Only Son,
Came—a pledge of deathless love.
This is my Father’s world, should my heart be ever sad?
The lord is King—let the heavens ring. God reigns—let the earth be glad.
This is my Father’s world. Now closer to Heaven bound,
For dear to God is the earth Christ trod.
No place but is holy ground.
This is my Father’s world. I walk a desert lone.
In a bush ablaze to my wondering gaze God makes His glory known.
This is my Father’s world, a wanderer I may roam
Whate’er my lot, it matters not,
My heart is still at home.
All that God did - in his world - through the eons of time up until to this present-day is called a mystery!
Dan.2; Rom.11:25; Eph.1:9 These were secret things known only
to God.Deut.29:29 And God has privately and confidentially
kept each segment of these
secret things of his mystery until the appropriate moment in time when he
has chosen to reveal them.Rom.16:25
The Role of Prophecy in Revealing God's Time-Table
When anyone wants to know imminent events in what God is up to, the answer lies in
(1) knowing and understanding Scripture, and (2) deciphering prophecy accurately. God is
supreme and sovereign. He has a plan.
And he has generously revealed himself and his plan ever so secretively and
subtlety in prophecy.
In fact, God did "nothing" without revealing his secrets to his prophets!!!
Amos 3:7; Dan.2:47 The Bible is
composed of 25% prophecy, and understanding prophecy is extremely critical in knowing
God's next move on earth in his time-table.2 Pet.1:19
It was prophecy that announced the Savior would return God's greatest creation
back to himself after the Fall in the Garden.Isa.43:11, 21; Hos.13:4; Rev.19:10
It was prophecy that predicted the Jews would reject Jesus, and God
smashed their landmarks and dissolved their national image as he scattered them
among the nations for their rejection.Lev.26:33
It was prophecy that predicted that the Gentiles would be joined with Jews in
the return to the Bliss of Paradise for an eternity with the Creator.
Gen.22:15; Ps.82:8 When the Jews
rejected God's Son specially-sent from heaven itself, God took his special plan to
non-Jews, the Gentiles. God took his special plan to those heathens who had made gods to every imaginable
controlling element in the universe and who had become unbelievably vile.
And it was prophecy, announced by Jesus, that
predicted the Jews would be disbursed and then revive, an event that began about 40 years
after he spoke those words and has lasted for almost 20 centuries until the
War of 1947-1948 when Israel once again became a nation.Matt.24; Mk.13:28
The Last Generation before God Returns
We don't have much time left. Only God knows the exact hour of his
return to bring everything together.Rev.3:3 But he has been extremely specific
about the approximate time of his return.
Jesus made the prediction to his disciples that his second coming - the culmination
of God's plan at "the end of
the age" - would come with complete surprise "after the gospel was
preached to all nations." Matt.24:14
Long before the Pony Express and FedEx, outreach "to all nations"
at the far corners of the globe
was a real stretch of the imagination. Before the
telegraph, Telstar, and satellite television, "preaching the
gospel to all nations of the world" was a far stretch of the imagination.
Witnessing the events of the last moments of judgment on earth
by the entire world at the same moment as Jesus comes and "every eye shall behold
him"Rev.1:7
was a far stretch of the imagination until
CNN. But now Jesus'
prediction can be easily comprehended. God has reserved that secret moment of
the "day and hour" when he will consummate his plan, but an imminent return is easily
apparent. We already are experiencing prophetic prediction of
"wars and rumors of wars,"Lu.21:9
as "men get worse and worse."2 Tim.3:13
Wicked corruption will mark Jesus' second coming. The filthy wickedness of the
world will compare to the corruption of Noah's ageLu.17:26-27
and Sodom and Gomorrah.2 Pet.2:6 So, his return cannot be
too far off.
When God chose Abram, he gave him a two-fold
promise.
(1) He promised to
bless him with a child who would become a nation. That "race" of God's "chosen few" was
started with the miracle of Isaac who was born of a mom too old to get pregnant. From
that single family, the Jews
became God's "chosen few" who proliferated like the stars of the heavens and the
sands by the sea shore.Heb.11:12 (Astronomer Carl Sagan has estimated
that the total number of stars in the heavens
is comparable to the number of sands on the beaches.) But even as the "chosen few"
grew in number as a race, those among the Jewish people who really believed in the invisible God remained only a "few." God
barely retained even the "few" because the Jews repeatedly slipped into meaningless ritualism
and despicable violation of God's rules. Though God promised Israel his bounty of blessings like Eden
only limited by Adam's curse, "the race" of "the few" dwindled because Satan
thrives on one fact of life: living by faith in the unknown is far
more challenging
than gratifying immediate pleasures craved with physical sensations.
In other words, we have the ironical choice to wallow with indulgence through life
driven by the sensual satisfactions we perceive, or to
transcend the physical senses in recognition of the imperceptible God and his
strangely profound and mysterious guidance through life. What a challenge!
God's protocol is not our protocol. What God is attempting to achieve in the
world is not the world's ambition. What God is attempting to achieve in our
lives is not what we tend to aspire. We prefer sensual satisfaction rather than
true submission to the wishes of an invisible God who genuinely cares about each
of us. How easy it is for even believers to pray the prayer Jesus taught, "Thy will
be done,"Matt.6:10 while insisting on fulfillment
of our own will.
The Jewish race God established through Abraham had that same choice. They chose
to gratify physical sensations. And once again, God permitted full cycle to "the consequences of choice," even though
punishing his chosen people for disobedience meant the momentary defeat of his
own purposes.
God's promises are always certain, but always conditional. God
established the Jewish nation from Abraham's seed. But to be blessed as a Jew was
conditional upon obedience.
(2) God's second promise to Abram was ownership of a special land. Israel left Egypt as slaves to
become real estate owners that they themselves described as a "land flowing with milk
and honey." Israel would have conquered all of the land shown to Moses
before his death, if only their faith had been as buoyant
in defeating the tiny city of Ai as in simply marching around mighty Jericho until the
huge protective walls of the city
came tumbling down with their trumpet blasts.
But again, Satan was victorious in ultimately blinding the eyes of even God's "chosen few," and Israel was dispersed
and destroyed as a nation in their capture and deportation to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar in
586 B.C. God punished Israel, the Jews of his special choosing to be his own race, because
of their utter failure to believe, the very faith for which he had chosen them!
God's Manifesto of Promises cannot be received as long as our eyes are blinded.
Blinded. Blinded. Satan has been victorious in blinding eyes. Human eyes
that cannot perceive spiritual entities or the spiritual war between God and
Satan. Blinded eyes that Jesus came to heal so they could see once again.Isa.42:16; Matt.9:27-30; Lu.4:18
Saul's eyes that were blinded to the Jesus he persecuted, until "scales fell"
from his eyes.Ac.9:18 The eyes of the Jews that could
not recognize the identity of Jesus, that
blinded them for centuries until God brought the Gentiles into his "buy-back" plan.
Truth is light. Deceit and sin are darkness. Satan, "the god of this world," hides
the truth by blinding us to God's light.2 Cor.4:1-7
God has chosen the cross alone as his only power to break Satan's blinding power.
1 Cor.1:18; Rom.1:16; Col.1:20
Understanding the cross is God's only scalpel in the Open Heart Surgery of the willing patient
who is either ignorant or rebellious.Ac.16:13-15
God's integrity was at stake. His ultimate objective had not yet been fulfilled. The
human race was not at all qualified to live by faith in obedience to God's will in order
to move back into God's Garden of Eden!Isa.51:1-3 Yet, ever so dimly
as understood through a careful analysis
of historical perspective, unmistakable signs seemed to appear on the horizon that
hinted God was not quite through with his plan. But these signs did not follow human
conception of normal sequence of events or elements of time.
Then, after 1878 years, Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948,
following approval of the United Nations the previous year.
Surprisingly, the Jews
had once again regained Palestine, as in the time of Saul, David, and Solomon.
