Isaiah 59 Cannot Take a Futurist Interpretation

In a recent Bible study on Isaiah chapter 59, someone suggested a futurist interpretation should guide our understanding of 59:20,21. This passage reads:

20“The Redeemer will come to Zion, and to those who turn from transgression in Jacob,” says the Lord. 21“As for Me,” says the Lord, “this is My covenant with them: My Spirit who is upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouth, shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your descendants, nor from the mouth of your descendants’ descendants,” says the Lord, “from this time and forevermore.”

But I wish to demonstrate that this passage cannot possibly be interpreted as futurists suggest, i.e. as unfulfilled. Nor should we await a yet future fulfillment of this. In fact, I am appalled that such an interpretation is so widespread! For at least five reasons this passage is fulfilled, in the bride and church of Jesus our Lord---and wonderfully so!

First, The argument was made that in the entire Old Testament as well as in this passage, "Zion" and "Jacob" are terms that can ONLY refer to ethnic Israel, and can NEVER refer to the church or to Gentile believers. But such a presupposition does not have good grounds in the light of the New Testament, since the New Testament writers often use terms like Zion and Israel as types (prophetic symbols) of a greater spiritual reality.  

For example, in St. Paul's hermeneutic, Israel, then Isaac, then Jacob are interpreted as types of those who are the elect in Romans 9 (as well as in Galatians 4). In Romans 9:6ff we read,

6For they are not all Israel who are of Israel, 7nor are they all children because they are the seed of Abraham; but, “In Isaac your seed shall be called.” 8That is, those who are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God; but the children of the promise are counted as the seed. ... 11That the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of Him who calls. 

Paul is not arguing that Isaac and Jacob, but not Ishmael and Esau, were the heirs. This requires no argument and wouldn't be germane to his line of reasoning.  His point is that all were actual sons, but only Isaac and Jacob were accepted. The analogy is used to argue his doctrine of election.  He even explicitly rejects the notion that ALL ethnic Jews are God's children. Whoever God elects is true son, True Israel;  those He hardens [9:18] are not Israel even if they are of Israel.

Other examples of a non-literal hermeneutic abound in the NT: the Temple [John 2:19], the Holy Place and the curtain of the temple [Heb 10:19], Mount Zion and Jerusalem and "congregation of the firstborn" [Heb 12:22f], and "unshakable kingdom" [Heb 12:28], the priesthood [1Pe 2:5]; all are used of spiritual realities, of which the material Old Testament versions are but copies (or antitypes in the Greek). [Heb 9:24].

Second, Jesus DID come TO Zion and DID offer the kingdom, and thus the New Covenant and the Holy Spirit, to ethnic Israel. He took pains to make sure the disciples would "not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans" [Matt 10:5] until he later commanded them to do so. Peter also held out the promises first to the Jews saying [Acts 2:39]: "Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.”

Third, the promised covenant in Isaiah 59 is completely in concord with the New Covenant spoken of by Jeremiah 31:31ff and fulfilled in Jesus according to Hebrews 8:8ff. The Lord Jesus said, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you." [Lk 22:20, 1Cor 11:25] I ask, then, why is the New Covenant of Jeremiah 31---which Jesus proclaimed and Hebrews 8 claims is fulfilled---not the same covenant promised in Isaiah 59:21?  The knowledge of God HAS been given to us, as Jesus attests in John 17:6f:

6“I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world. They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. 7Now they have known that all things which You have given Me are from You.”

It makes no sense to hold that Isaiah 59 is not fulfilled and at the same time agree that Jesus did establish the New Covenant per Jeremiah 31, especially since 

Fourth, Isaiah's prophecy includes the giving of the Holy Spirit, Who was assuredly given by Jesus to both Jews and Gentiles. According to Jesus' words in John 16 and 17, it is the Spirit Who brings repentance, gives to all---that is, to all those who turn from transgression---knowledge of God and reminds us of the words of Jesus. [John 14:26, 16:8--13, &c] Perhaps many Christians have not experienced this revelation of truth that the Spirit gives as we go in His power, and so are convinced that such knowledge of God as Isaiah and Jeremiah foretold has not been given. But praise God, it IS given, and I have experienced it again and again when I had no idea what to teach or preach or witness.

Fifth, even if Jeremiah 31 is fulfilled and Isaiah 59 is not, for the sake of argument, nowhere in the NT is an additional new covenant ever promised to ethnic-national Israel, as the futurists argue. If some new outpouring of the Spirit or additional covenant is in store during a distant age, the NT authors never mention it. (The potential exception is discussed in the next paragraph.) 

Sixth, now the futurist will say, "But, no! Paul applies this passage (Isaiah 59:21) in Romans 11 to the future awakening of ethnic Israel, not as being already fulfilled by Christ in the church." Let us look at Romans 11:

25For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. 26And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written:

“The Deliverer will come out of Zion,
And He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob;
27For this is My covenant with them,
When I take away their sins.”

Paul here is, in fact, applying Isaiah's promise to Jesus, the Deliverer out of Zion, who DID take away their sins, "first for the Jew, then for the Gentile". His point here is that God has worked among the Gentiles as a strategy to "provoke Israel to jealousy" [11:11]. When the fulness of the Gentiles have believed and been grafted into the olive tree, ethic Jewish believers will also be grafted back in, but only by believing in Jesus, the Deliverer from Zion. He is already turning ungodliness away from Jacob, that is, the remnant, and from those who are "of the faith of Abraham" ("who is the father of us all") and are thus counted as true sons. [Rom 4:16,17]  

Obviously I take the olive tree in Romans 11 to represent the true, spiritual Israel, which is just to say, the people of God, the holy nation, the assembly, the ekklesia, and what Jesus called "My church" and "the kingdom of heaven" in Matthew 16:18.  

It is interesting that Paul doesn't quote Isaiah fully, but summarizes his promise of the Holy Spirit and the indwelling knowledge of God with "When I take away their sins". It is, of course, God's Word and Spirit which sanctifies us [John 17:17], and Jesus' blood which takes away our sin [1Jn 1:7]. Some have even suggested that the ending of Rom 11:27 is juxtaposed by Paul directly from Jeremiah's version of the New Covenant, viz. [Jer 31:34]:

No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

If St. Paul conflates the two prophecies, as it appears he does, it is not without good reason, and certainly not without inspiration. He must have seen that to Know the Lord, and to be enlightened by the Holy Spirit, is to be freed from sin, made holy, and filled with the fullness of God!  I believe this is why Paul elsewhere exclaims, "But we have the mind of Christ!" [1Cor 2:16] 

Praise be to the Lord Jesus, our glorious Deliverer, Who has not only given us His precious blood to take away our sin, and the knowledge of God which IS eternal life [Jn 17:3], and His own power and Spirit to be in us forever, but His very mind!  We need not pine for a future kingdom which may come soon or not, as the Jews.  We have the New Covenant now!  To assume it is a future promise is, it seems, to make the same mistake as the Jews who rejected Christ, since He did not give (nor promise) them the carnal throne and political-military kingdom they craved.  But what He gave was a far greater, far more real, far better covenant [Heb 8:6] and a far better, spiritual, eternal and universal kingdom.

Hallelujah to the Father, to the Son and to the Holy Ghost, forever and ever.  Amen and amen!

A Postmil answer to the Crux of the Dispensational Argument

I recently got to good questions from my Premil friend, namely:

Since you asked about the Preterist view, I thought I'd share these thoughts on the very fine questions he raised at dinner, which were:

Israel?  What do Postmils have against Israel?

and

What about the failure of nearly every Christian nation to maintain it's Christian heritage? How can we be optimistic about the Church que millenial kingdom?   

I hope I understood the questions correctly. Even if not, these are nonetheless good, hard questions that might shut the mounts of many Postmils.  At least I needed time to think on them. 

Two very good questions, but which have one Biblical answer.  It should suffice to say that GOD had something against Israel as a nation.  Jesus makes this abundantly clear in the gospels, and nearly all the prophets agree with Him, right up to John the Baptist. Whether postmils have something against Israel is immaterial.  What Jesus said against them:

In conclusion to His parable of the vine-dressers, to which the Lord appends the prophecy of Isaiah, "The stone the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone", Jesus said quite plainly and without hidden meaning, "Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from YOU and given to a nation producing its fruit." [Mt 21:43]  It was clear that Caiaphas saw this coming in John 11:48ff, though He believed that Jesus was the problem, not himself and his people.  Caiaphas was ignorant, hermeneutically and eschatologically, of the import of his words.  John explains that God's children in all nations would be gathered together as one in the Church through Jesus' sacrifice, in that Temple of which Christ is the cornerstone (figuratively, of course).

Now, this is why it answers both questions:  Matthew 21:43 applies to any nation that rejects the Son as Lord, and certainly to any Church that will not bear good fruit.  They will be left behind, cast aside, vomited out and perhaps never visited again by the Spirit, as for example, Moab, which was utterly wiped out by the Romans.  It applied certainly to national Israel, and if to them, certainly to all the world.

In the case of Israel, we know Paul says there will come a restoration. We all look forward to that day when Jews humble themselves and bow the knee to their Messiah, our Lord.  But they will be grafted back into that same Olive Tree whence they were formerly cut off, alongside the many Gentiles who since have been grafted in.  And so national Israel can never be equated with the Kingdom of God as might've been the case under David and Solomon, and was most certainly the case in the times of the Judges and of Samuel. For it was in the days of Samuel that they rejected God as their King, demanding a carnal king [1 Samuel 8:6f]  As long as they persist in this nationalistic narcissism, they will be handed over to suffer the results described in Romans 1, like any other nation.  And so these exact same divine sanctions have been levied against Laodicea when it was lukewarm, Rome when its church became corrupt, the Russian church at its greatest pettiness, Christian Germany at its intellectual zenith, and all other would-be nation-states or church hierarchies posing as the unique kingdom of God.  The Temple Jesus raises is not made by human hands. 

So this answers also the second question.  Many kingdoms and nations have received God's blessing after embracing the Christian gospel, Rome under Constantine being the first.  These nations are not the kingdom of God, any more than Israel was. The Kingdom of God is that invisible assembly (ekklesia) of His saints, which John saw coming (present tense) down out of heaven and who are called "the Lamb's bride" [Rev 21:9,10] This is not the Old City.  It bears the name "New Jerusalem' because it belongs to God and IS His dwelling place, that is His Church, His Temple, His Body, not because it belongs to the Jews. 

I don't speak for all pre-mils or preterists here.  But I find this vision extremely hopeful. It is why I think the church should fight, not give up, in the spiritual warfare she finds herself in to this day, until "all our Lord's enemies are under His feet".  The Lord Jesus bless you all to "reign on the earth with Him!" as His "Kingdom of priests and holy nation," and not by sword nor by might, "but by My Spirit, saith the Lord".  Amen

We Need Men of God Again

As I have been struggling to obey God's will for me, namely, to "go and preach the good news" here at the university, I am frustrated by the fact that I have the desire and the strong conviction to go and stand at the gates and preach prophetically, but not the courage. I am saddened greatly by this lack of boldness. But I am waiting, praying, preparing and expecting the anointing from the Lord that will empower me. Such encouragement as this I have found this week, from my dear brother A.W. Tozer, in his book Of God and Men:

The church at this moment needs men, the right kind of men, bold men. The talk is that we need revival, that we need a new baptism of the Spirit–and God knows we must have both; but God will not revive mice. He will not fill rabbits with the Holy Ghost.

We languish for men who feel themselves expendable in the warfare of the soul, who cannot be frightened by threats of death because they have already died to the allurements of this world. Such men will be free from the compulsions that control weaker men. They will not be forced to do things by the squeeze of circumstances; their only compulsion will come from within–or from above.

This kind of freedom is necessary if we are to have prophets in our pulpits again instead of mascots. These free men will serve God and mankind from motives too high to be understood by the rank and file of religious retainers who today shuttle in and out of the sanctuary. They will make no decisions out of fear, take no course out of a desire to please, accept no service for financial considerations, perform no religious act out of mere custom; nor will they allow themselves to be influenced by the love of publicity or the desire for reputation.

Much that the church–even the evangelical church–is doing these days she is doing because she is afraid not to. Ministerial associations take up projects for no higher reason than that they are being scared into it. Whatever their ear-to-the-ground, fear-inspired reconnoitering leads them to believe the world expects them to do they will be doing come next Monday morning with all kinds of trumped-up zeal and show of godliness. The pressure of public opinion calls these prophets, not the voice of Jehovah.

The true church has never sounded out public expectations before launching her crusades. Her leaders heard from God and went ahead wholly independent of popular support or the lack of it. They knew their Lord’s will and did it, and their people followed them–sometimes to triumph, oftener to insults and public persecution–and their sufficient reward was the satisfaction of being right in a wrong world.

Another characteristic of the true prophet has been love. The free man who has learned to hear God’s voice and dared to obey it has felt the moral burden that broke the hearts of the Old Testament prophets, crushed the soul of our Lord Jesus Christ and wrung streams of tears from the eyes of the apostles.

The free man has never been a religious tyrant, nor has he sought to lord it over God’s heritage. It is fear and lack of self-assurance that has led men to try to crush others under their feet. These have had some interest to protect, some position to secure, so they have demanded subjection from their followers as a guarantee of their own safety. But the free man–never; he has nothing to protect, no ambition to pursue and no enemy to fear. For that reason he is completely careless of his standing among men. If they follow him, well and good; if not, he loses nothing that he holds dear; but whether he is accepted or rejected he will go on loving his people with sincere devotion. And only death can silence his tender intercession for them.

Yes, if evangelical Christianity is to stay alive she must have men again, the right kind of men. She must repudiate the weaklings who dare not speak out, and she must seek in prayer and much humility the coming again of men of the stuff prophets and martyrs are made of. God will hear the cries of His people as He heard the cries of Israel in Egypt. And He will send deliverance by sending deliverers. It is His way among men.

And when the deliverers come–reformers, revivalists, prophets–they will be men of God and men of courage. They will have God on their side because they will be careful to stay on God’s side. They will be co-workers with Christ and instruments in the hand of the Holy Ghost. Such men will be baptized with the Spirit indeed, and through their labors He will baptize others and send the long delayed revival.

Lord, empower your people to preach prophetically. You are the God of all power, through that Word which created the worlds and IS our life. Give that word-life to us that will overflow as a spring of living water to people on campuses throughout this land. I find myself one of the weaklings in your church. Here, on my knees, I plead alone: Lord, please embolden me as those who first received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and glorify your Son through me, even Jesus. Amen.

Hosea 11 and America

⁷ My people are determined to turn from me.
Even if they call to the Most High,
he will by no means exalt them.

⁸ "How can I give you up, Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, Israel?
How can I treat you like Admah?
How can I make you like Zeboiim?
My heart is changed within me;
all my compassion is aroused.

⁹ I will not carry out my fierce anger,
nor will I turn and devastate Ephraim.
For I am God, and not man—
the Holy One among you.
I will not come in wrath. ^c]">[c]

There were so many times, I think, when God was about to give up on his nation Israel. But he never did. That is the love of God. And it is the spiritual example and pinnacle of fatherhood, the goal worthy fathers all strive for. "Ah! But a man's grasp should exceed his reach", wrote Browning, "or what's a heaven for?" So we strive to be compassionate like our heavenly father, and at the same time to be just and teach our children right from wrong.

At times---particularly as teens---our children seem bound and determined to turn from us. But compassion is suddenly aroused and our heart changed. We find ourselves crying out, "How can I give up on you, Ephraim?" So the Lord felt toward his people, who were determined to be their own man, go their own way, and reject God's law, leading and love.

I am often guilty of giving up on my country. If I read the news and listen to the pundits, or think very deeply about the ways politicians are eviscerating our Constitution and diminishing our freedoms, I feel the end is near and I am ready to give up on America. This is not the heart of God. He has not decreed captivity for America, at least I have not heard of it. But there was a time when he did this to Israel, finally, and I'm sure he will do the same for America if we continue on our selfish, godless path.

Yet even then, God did not give up on Israel. He brought them back, much humbled, and much poorer, and did give them back their land after 70 years in Babylon.

And so I feel it is time for God to greatly humble America. Many WILL go into captivity, or perhaps bankruptcy or poverty or will leave for some other place. But this isn't the end. It is God's discipline, which is reserved for those He truly loves.

Praise be to the Lord, who disciplines us. Father, I am not worthy of your blessing and discipline. But help me not to reject the one or doubt you when hardship comes to me and my nation. Lord, give us faith that bears the cross of shame and suffering and commits our spirits to you, when you discipline your sons. Turn Christians in America back to their faith and trust in God, and commitment to proclaim your truth at any cost. IJNA

Come out of her

There are lessons from history that are SOOOOO easily missed. I've thought a lot about the tower of Babel. How beautiful that God himself intervened to disrupt the arrogance of men, who wanted to "make a name for themselves" and "not be scattered". Their idol was themselves, their culture and their city, and their false religion. The fact that they spoke the same language they did not take for granted; they wanted to build on this natural unity and make their city a Thing of Beauty, that all the world would remember.

God of course intervened and confused their languages. The poignant question I wish to ponder here is this:

Will God do the same thing again today, or at least something supernatural that will frustrate the arrogance of our generation?

I believe he will, and is doing it. Thanks be to God!

What is he doing, exactly, that will frustrate and disrupt the power elite? He is doing precisely what the prophets foretold, throughout the Bible. I will not enumerate these here, but an example will suffice, I think, to make the case:

This year alone we have seen two devastating earthquakes in the Western Hemisphere, and bitterly frustrating snow/cold throughout the Northern Hemisphere. The economy is totally out of control, despite the priests of Keynes who continually tell us, "All is well, all is well", or "This was caused by the free market, which we are fighting against."

The power-elite, as much as they want, can only deceive the People of America for so long. We are a free people, we imagine. Will we submit to the yoke? I hope not, though many already have, particularly in the Public Sector jobs. As for us Christians, the word is,

"Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. ... Come out of them and be separate." [2Cor 6:14,17]

Many people blame Christians for this attitude, calling it "isolationism". But when the alternative is imperialism and globalism, I firmly believe isolationism is preferable, at least as far as government goes. Christians are the temple of God. "What fellowship can light have with darkness?" Why should WE, who belong to the Almighty God, beg for bread from a government that insists HE has no right to be mentioned in the public square?

The battle lines are drawn, spiritually, and it is our mission not to get into bed with the "harlot Babylon" (whoever she may be). May God strengthen our resolve and determination to live for God and God alone in these exciting time.