In Part 1, I shared a vision that God has shared with me. It suggests a parallel between Old Testament and New Testament history. In turn, that suggests a hypothetical parallel between:
1) The failure of the daughter of Israel to obey God’s commands, God’s subsequent punishment, his undying love, and the ultimate restoration of Israel; and
2) The failure of the bride of Christ to obey God’s commands for sacrificial love and perfect unity, and whether a similar sequence of punishment, undying love, and ultimate restoration is at hand for the disunited church of Jesus Christ.
These are turbulent times and it is easy to overreact. But it is much easier to deny the handwriting on the wall if it is inconvenient. So all insights and hypotheses like the one above, coming directly from intense reading of the Bible, must be tested, since we do not have an Isaiah or Jeremiah or Ezekiel with us today.
For today, I will list just a few of the potential objections to this hypothesis:
1) Other than the foretelling of the coming Messiah, Old Testament history ended with Malachi and four hundred years of silence. Whether it is 2 Chronicles 7:14 or any other Scripture taken out of context from the Old Testament, it applied to ancient Israel and not to us.
2) There have always been major threats suggesting God’s punishment or even the approach of the end times, but Jesus made it clear we know neither the day nor the hour. Today’s events are no different than any other period of human history.
3) An American’s perspective is too narrow to represent the perspective of God’s children around the world.
I will address these initial objections in the next three blogs.
Then I will begin laying out the vision God has shared with me in more detail.
For now, I ask you to join me in the perfect unity of prayer.
Lord, thank you for beginning to stir hearts to understand what we have been missing in our disobedience and our disunity as your family. What would you have us learn for such a time as this?
1) The failure of the daughter of Israel to obey God’s commands, God’s subsequent punishment, his undying love, and the ultimate restoration of Israel; and
2) The failure of the bride of Christ to obey God’s commands for sacrificial love and perfect unity, and whether a similar sequence of punishment, undying love, and ultimate restoration is at hand for the disunited church of Jesus Christ.
These are turbulent times and it is easy to overreact. But it is much easier to deny the handwriting on the wall if it is inconvenient. So all insights and hypotheses like the one above, coming directly from intense reading of the Bible, must be tested, since we do not have an Isaiah or Jeremiah or Ezekiel with us today.
For today, I will list just a few of the potential objections to this hypothesis:
1) Other than the foretelling of the coming Messiah, Old Testament history ended with Malachi and four hundred years of silence. Whether it is 2 Chronicles 7:14 or any other Scripture taken out of context from the Old Testament, it applied to ancient Israel and not to us.
2) There have always been major threats suggesting God’s punishment or even the approach of the end times, but Jesus made it clear we know neither the day nor the hour. Today’s events are no different than any other period of human history.
3) An American’s perspective is too narrow to represent the perspective of God’s children around the world.
I will address these initial objections in the next three blogs.
Then I will begin laying out the vision God has shared with me in more detail.
For now, I ask you to join me in the perfect unity of prayer.
Lord, thank you for beginning to stir hearts to understand what we have been missing in our disobedience and our disunity as your family. What would you have us learn for such a time as this?
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