Opus 2026-117: Survival Virtue

One of the rabbit trails that run through my head starts with a verse in Romans,

Romans 11:26 (KJV) And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob:

This generates a question, “Who or what is Israel?”  This leads to the theory that the Israel mentioned here is not everyone throughout history with Jewish DNA but the true Israel who are highlighted earlier in the book as Paul quotes Isaiah,

Romans 9:27 (KJV) Esaias also crieth concerning Israel, Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved:

What spoke to me today was a verse I read,

1 Kings 18:3 (KJV) And Ahab called Obadiah, which [was] the governor of [his] house. (Now Obadiah feared the LORD greatly:

Ahab was one of the most evil of the kings of Israel.  He was the one married to Jezebel.  Obadiah is called out as a faithful follower of God.  In spite of that he was allowed to serve as a high official in Ahab’s administration.  I found that encouraging.

Obadiah represents one form of God’s faithful remnant.  In this case he was in the middle of a pagan court and allowed to live his life.  I am not trying to make this a promise for us but it does point out that being faithful to God does not automatically produce a death sentence.

What does the future hold?  If the church does not stand up and become an agent of revival then it will not be a happy ending.  I think this points out that it will still pay off to be faithful.  It may be that when the evil elite gains control they will need a few honorable people they can trust. That might be you.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-484: Leftovers

As I was contemplating the relationship between God and Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, I found myself wanting the right word to express the status of the first humans.  At first, I wanted to say God fellowshiped with His creatures, but then I realized God also made the horses, cows, earthworms and oak trees.  He does not fellowship with them.  In trying to find the right term I stumbled across one that I probably first saw in a book by Michael Heiser, “image bearers”.

We are created in the image of God.  None of the other creatures does God fellowship with.  He didn’t walk with them in the garden.  He didn’t create for them a tree of life and a tree of knowledge of good and evil.  They were there for Adam and Eve to subdue and care for.  They were creatures.  They still are.  We were created in His image which makes “image bearers” a logical title for us.

From there, my mind did a sharp left turn, and I began to wonder if even many of the people that we consider human beings like ourselves were actually creatures instead of image bearers.  Somehow, I feel like I’m wondering into some kind of heresy.  We have people all the time talking about how we are all God’s children and how God loves His children and yet that does not play well in Peoria.  All through history, God has chosen individuals and groups of people to be special in His eyes.

He chose Noah and his sons to preserve out of all humanity.  He chose Abraham to be the father of a line of people leading toward the Messiah.  He chose the Jews to carry the banner of the law.  Even today he chooses those who believe in Jesus to have eternal life.  All through history, there have been the in-crowd and the outsiders.

The word that I’m coming up with from the Bible is “remnant”.

Remnant can have different meanings.  In our culture, remnants generally are referred to as leftovers.  When you go to a store that sells cloth and sewing supplies, the remnants are those little pieces of a bolt that were not sold.  They aren’t big enough to make a lot of clothes from, but they might be enough if carefully marshaled to produce one article.  It would seem in Bible times that the remnant would have that appearance to the masses.  They would be the ones who are out of step.  They would be the ones who are old-fashioned.  They would be the ones clinging to the past.

In God’s eyes this remnant are the chosen ones.  I often wonder how Paul and Romans 11:26 can claim that all Israel will be saved.

Romans 11:26 (KJV) And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob:

You either take the concept of salvation and separated it from any sense of responsibility or personal response and actually go back through history and reclaim every single Jew who lived, or you seek to understand the possibility that in this case “Israel” means something more, or less, than every DNA Jew through history.

It is more likely that it refers to the remnant, the faithful, the leftovers.  When you consider that what Paul said,

(Gal 3:28 KJV)  There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

Then there is a welcome mat out for faithful, believing Jews in the Body of Christ.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-314: Read with Your Eyes Open

I had two experiences this week separated by a couple of days.  The first took place on a zoom call.  We’re a bunch of us old guys were talking about whatever came into our heads.  Israel and its current crisis came up, and of course, that brings out the eschatology geeks who tend to think that they have it all figured out.  I didn’t bother putting my two cents worth in.  There are certain questions which can stop the discussion in its tracks, and they were having so much fun, expressing their views that I didn’t want to ask them in light of Romans,

Romans 11:26 (KJV) And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob:

Just who is Israel?  Who is a part of Israel?  Another way of saying it is, “Who is a Jew?”

Then this morning I was reading in Jeremiah and I came across one of those passages which the eschatology nuts just love to ignore and act like they don’t exist.

Jeremiah 44:27-28 (KJV) 27 Behold, I will watch over them for evil, and not for good: and all the men of Judah that are in the land of Egypt shall be consumed by the sword and by the famine, until there be an end of them. 28 Yet a small number that escape the sword shall return out of the land of Egypt into the land of Judah, and all the remnant of Judah, that are gone into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, shall know whose words shall stand, mine, or theirs.

If you take the time to read this, you’ll notice, there are two statements which cannot both be true.  The first one says that all the men of Judah will die.  The second statement is it a small number will escape.  Now either Jeremiah had an editor who was drunk that day and didn’t see the discrepancy or we’re talking about hyperbole and other types of literary devices.  You see logic says that if everyone is killed there is no one left to escape and conversely, if there’s someone left to escape everyone is not killed.

This is just one of many places where we see this kind of thing in scripture.  We need to start off with an awareness that the people who wrote this knew what they were writing and, not being stupid, they were aware of the discrepancy.  They also were aware that if they saw an angry father chasing his child across the yard, yelling, “I’m going to kill you”, he didn’t mean it.  He knew he didn’t mean it.  The kid knew he didn’t mean it.  All the bystanders knew he didn’t mean it.  They didn’t have to write an explanation. They just knew what was obvious.

So when you get involved in these kinds of discussions, have a good time.  Stick a broom handle in the spokes.  Be the odd man out.  Who knows, maybe you’ll get them to think a little bit.  Who knows, maybe you’ll learn something.

homo unius libri

Opus 2024-303: Israel’s Place

I struggle with the idea that Israel is some special group chosen by God.  I can’t deny that the Bible seems to say that.  They are special.  I think we tend to misinterpret and misunderstand that specialness.  I look at verses like this,

Romans 11:26 (KJV) And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob:

And all I can do is scratch my head and ask, “What?”  My first reaction is a disconnect between centuries of rebellion and rejection of God that I see going on in the Jews and the fact that all will be saved.  I think the key is in the second part of that verse and a better and modern translation of that.

Romans 11:26 (NASB95) and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, “THE DELIVERER WILL COME FROM ZION, HE WILL REMOVE UNGODLINESS FROM JACOB.”

Notice the difference.  What does it mean remove ungodliness from Jacob?  I think there are clues like one of the places and I came across one in my reading recently.

Isaiah 1:9 (KJV) Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah.

The context at the beginning of Isaiah has God dealing with disobedient people by bringing in other nations to destroy them.  In the middle of the destruction, there is the promise that there will be some left over.  Here it uses that word remnant.  What is hard for us to understand in our gentle, modern attitudes is the destruction that God is willing to wield when it comes to the disobedient.

It is a hard teaching, yet it is consistent through scripture.  Yes, God will bring Israel back as a nation.  But before He brings them back, He will purge them.  That means that the only ones being brought back will be those who have responded to the leadership of the Holy Spirit, and embraced the Messiah and the God of Israel.  I make that a double yardstick because Jesus is necessary and most Jews today have no idea who Yahweh is.  

It goes against my turn-the-other-cheek mentality, but God will not be mocked and His holiness will not be polluted.  Israel will be restored but it will be a much reduced Israel.

homo unius libri