Jerusalem Blade
Puritan Board Professor
Holocausts
[Excerpted from A Poet Arises In Israel, Part II; from the larger book, A Great and Terrible Love]
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The fierce wrath behind the final cursings of that now expired Mosaic covenant was so hot it will remain unextinguished on this people till the threshing floor of the world gives up its chaff to the furnace of judgment and fiery indignation, the elect among us—the remnant which trusts Him—having first been culled out by God’s effectual calling of His people to Himself.
The linear—i.e., one-dimensional—thinking which views the Deuteronomic revelation of fierce wrath as expended and finished when the force of the curse was fully executed at the end of the Old Covenant era misses the nature and continuing power of that anger on the continuing sin that drew it forth in the first place.
One of the most important of these commandments came ten chapters earlier, in Deut 18:18, 19:
Not only did we not hearken to Him, but when, centuries later, He manifested in the flesh according to promise—our Messiah—we conspired to have Him put to death at the hands of Rome, and as He was a-dying—Himself the atoning sacrifice unto God for our sins—we walked by and mocked this Lamb God provided, not seeing His infinite heart of love burning immeasurably brighter than the bush Moses walked up to and took his shoes off to draw near.
But it is not too late for us to draw near this burning we once passed by. Not a bush, but a greater and more profound sight: a unique heart, and the divine presence aflame within it—a great hope, a great love therein. For we yet stagger under the wrath lying heavy upon us. We must not revolt at the monstrosity of evil which befell us under Hitler, cursing our God, for that monstrosity is a reflection of our own hearts’ murderous hatred of Him, the God of Jacob! And this judgment our hatred provoked is less than the offense that occasioned it. It is a warning for those with ears to hear: a time of threshing is to come upon us again, greater by far than what has already come. We should be ware.
The execution by crucifixion of Jesus the Messiah of Israel and Saviour of the world, a sacrifice for the sins of that of humankind which shall cleave to the true God, was the most horrendous judgment that can be conceived by man, even though its depths cannot be plumbed by us. Involved in this must be the understanding of His nature, true deity and true human—two natures, though not confused or mingled—yet one Person. His divine nature upheld His human nature while receiving the wrath of God as He punished the sin-bearer bearing our sin. The infinite dignity of His Person gave infinite worth to His priestly sacrifice. This was the true Passover Lamb, no type or symbol as were those sacrifices of old.
In the soul of His human nature the man Christ Jesus suffered, and endured, the wrath due untold millions of us, not being overcome by it, bearing its punishment—this “second death”—to the last drop, triumphing in obtaining our redemption; then bodily bearing the death-penalty, and died. One cannot compare even the nuclear devastation of entire vast lands with hundreds of millions destroyed to such agony, pain, and suffering as the Saviour endured for believing humankind. We underestimate the expanse and depth of His being, and the wrath due us. The Great Flood of Noah and its destruction was minuscule in comparison. It is hard for us to think on such vast scales. But let us try, briefly.
What happened to us under Hitler and his followers—all of it, all the worst—I want to tell you that even these depths of evil are light—small—compared to what we shall know in Hell. For there actual demons, and the devil, will be the company we’re in, and that forever—without end, ever. What liberty they will have to torment us I do not know. But what Messiah calls “the lake of fire” bespeaks something unfathomably terrible. The holocaust should not even be compared to this unending—eternal—torment, bad as that was. What is coming is infinitely worse. So when I say God shouts to us that it is not well with us—and we heard that shout then in the camps of death—rational people should take note.
When the sun shines there is warmth; when it recedes there is darkness and cold. The sun does not cause the darkness, its absence does. When God takes His covenant protection from us—when He withdraws from us because of the vileness of our hearts, and our disdain for His covenant—who is the cause of Him distancing from the moral repulsiveness of our ways? And when He is gone, and darkness is in our house, then devils come to wreak havoc in those once called the people of God. He said through the prophet Hosea, “yea, woe also to them when I depart from them!” (9:12) And through Moses He said—with respect to the breaking of the covenant,
There was light when Messiah made His offering for sin—our sin. We walked by this epochal event—and in spirit many continue doing so—as though it were nothing, worse than nothing, an affront to us, despite our being carefully instructed by our spiritual teachers—Moses and the prophets—and then no less a person than Messiah Himself, whom we despised, following renegade rabbis. The Holocaust, after the diaspora persecutions of twenty centuries, was a major judgment (though not of the order of things that are to come), to the end of alerting the nation—that is, world Jewry, particularly those of us within the newly-formed State of Israel, as well in America: it is time to wake up to the realities of our situation: time to revisit and reassess our history as the “people of the book” we purportedly are, and Yeshua’s Messianic claims.
Our forebears walking by the crucifixion—our ancient rabbis and priests—mocking the One who hung there making atonement (Leviticus 17:11) for the people according to the will of our God and Creator (Isaiah 53:5,8,10), set us on a path we have followed since, a path of blood, gore, and ignominy. It will not do to just leave it at that. If we are not utterly deadened at heart, and dull of mind, we may want to reassess those we blindly follow (or reject, and go secular) and what they have done, for we have partaken of their “reward”. Our ancient prophet, Isaiah, put it like this, “the leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed” (9:16)…
When I have spoken of the holocaust visited upon Messiah that was rightly meant for us—He bearing it as our substitute, just as the old animal sacrifices typified—this manifested the love of our God for us. We need to apprehend the truth, the reality, of that love, so as to cleave to Him with all the trust of our hearts and minds…
The fountain was His veins opened—and emptied unto death—for love of us who would come to Him for mercy. But He did not remain dead, as it is written in David,
He was raised from the dead according to the Scripture, and receives all who come to Him for grace in their desperate time of need. That Jehovah the eternal Son would so suffer in order to dispense such grace to the undeserving—even to justifying them by the gift of His own righteousness imputed to them—there is an unspeakable glory manifested thereby, and for which He is praised continually in the new temple over which He is tender and kind and mighty High Priest, the temple that is New Jerusalem in the heavens, and will comprise all of New Earth after the resurrection and judgment. Eternally blessed is the one whose feet tread that land! May that be you, dear reader.
[Excerpted from A Poet Arises In Israel, Part II; from the larger book, A Great and Terrible Love]
_______
The fierce wrath behind the final cursings of that now expired Mosaic covenant was so hot it will remain unextinguished on this people till the threshing floor of the world gives up its chaff to the furnace of judgment and fiery indignation, the elect among us—the remnant which trusts Him—having first been culled out by God’s effectual calling of His people to Himself.
The linear—i.e., one-dimensional—thinking which views the Deuteronomic revelation of fierce wrath as expended and finished when the force of the curse was fully executed at the end of the Old Covenant era misses the nature and continuing power of that anger on the continuing sin that drew it forth in the first place.
Deut 28:45, 46 …all these curses shall come upon thee, and shall pursue thee, and overtake thee, till thou be destroyed; because thou hearkenedst not unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which he commanded thee: And they shall be upon thee for a sign and for a wonder, and upon thy seed for ever.
One of the most important of these commandments came ten chapters earlier, in Deut 18:18, 19:
I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him.
Not only did we not hearken to Him, but when, centuries later, He manifested in the flesh according to promise—our Messiah—we conspired to have Him put to death at the hands of Rome, and as He was a-dying—Himself the atoning sacrifice unto God for our sins—we walked by and mocked this Lamb God provided, not seeing His infinite heart of love burning immeasurably brighter than the bush Moses walked up to and took his shoes off to draw near.
But it is not too late for us to draw near this burning we once passed by. Not a bush, but a greater and more profound sight: a unique heart, and the divine presence aflame within it—a great hope, a great love therein. For we yet stagger under the wrath lying heavy upon us. We must not revolt at the monstrosity of evil which befell us under Hitler, cursing our God, for that monstrosity is a reflection of our own hearts’ murderous hatred of Him, the God of Jacob! And this judgment our hatred provoked is less than the offense that occasioned it. It is a warning for those with ears to hear: a time of threshing is to come upon us again, greater by far than what has already come. We should be ware.
The execution by crucifixion of Jesus the Messiah of Israel and Saviour of the world, a sacrifice for the sins of that of humankind which shall cleave to the true God, was the most horrendous judgment that can be conceived by man, even though its depths cannot be plumbed by us. Involved in this must be the understanding of His nature, true deity and true human—two natures, though not confused or mingled—yet one Person. His divine nature upheld His human nature while receiving the wrath of God as He punished the sin-bearer bearing our sin. The infinite dignity of His Person gave infinite worth to His priestly sacrifice. This was the true Passover Lamb, no type or symbol as were those sacrifices of old.
In the soul of His human nature the man Christ Jesus suffered, and endured, the wrath due untold millions of us, not being overcome by it, bearing its punishment—this “second death”—to the last drop, triumphing in obtaining our redemption; then bodily bearing the death-penalty, and died. One cannot compare even the nuclear devastation of entire vast lands with hundreds of millions destroyed to such agony, pain, and suffering as the Saviour endured for believing humankind. We underestimate the expanse and depth of His being, and the wrath due us. The Great Flood of Noah and its destruction was minuscule in comparison. It is hard for us to think on such vast scales. But let us try, briefly.
What happened to us under Hitler and his followers—all of it, all the worst—I want to tell you that even these depths of evil are light—small—compared to what we shall know in Hell. For there actual demons, and the devil, will be the company we’re in, and that forever—without end, ever. What liberty they will have to torment us I do not know. But what Messiah calls “the lake of fire” bespeaks something unfathomably terrible. The holocaust should not even be compared to this unending—eternal—torment, bad as that was. What is coming is infinitely worse. So when I say God shouts to us that it is not well with us—and we heard that shout then in the camps of death—rational people should take note.
When the sun shines there is warmth; when it recedes there is darkness and cold. The sun does not cause the darkness, its absence does. When God takes His covenant protection from us—when He withdraws from us because of the vileness of our hearts, and our disdain for His covenant—who is the cause of Him distancing from the moral repulsiveness of our ways? And when He is gone, and darkness is in our house, then devils come to wreak havoc in those once called the people of God. He said through the prophet Hosea, “yea, woe also to them when I depart from them!” (9:12) And through Moses He said—with respect to the breaking of the covenant,
Then my anger shall be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide my face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall befall them; so that they will say in that day, Are not these evils come upon us, because our God is not among us? (Deuteronomy 31:17)
There was light when Messiah made His offering for sin—our sin. We walked by this epochal event—and in spirit many continue doing so—as though it were nothing, worse than nothing, an affront to us, despite our being carefully instructed by our spiritual teachers—Moses and the prophets—and then no less a person than Messiah Himself, whom we despised, following renegade rabbis. The Holocaust, after the diaspora persecutions of twenty centuries, was a major judgment (though not of the order of things that are to come), to the end of alerting the nation—that is, world Jewry, particularly those of us within the newly-formed State of Israel, as well in America: it is time to wake up to the realities of our situation: time to revisit and reassess our history as the “people of the book” we purportedly are, and Yeshua’s Messianic claims.
Our forebears walking by the crucifixion—our ancient rabbis and priests—mocking the One who hung there making atonement (Leviticus 17:11) for the people according to the will of our God and Creator (Isaiah 53:5,8,10), set us on a path we have followed since, a path of blood, gore, and ignominy. It will not do to just leave it at that. If we are not utterly deadened at heart, and dull of mind, we may want to reassess those we blindly follow (or reject, and go secular) and what they have done, for we have partaken of their “reward”. Our ancient prophet, Isaiah, put it like this, “the leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed” (9:16)…
When I have spoken of the holocaust visited upon Messiah that was rightly meant for us—He bearing it as our substitute, just as the old animal sacrifices typified—this manifested the love of our God for us. We need to apprehend the truth, the reality, of that love, so as to cleave to Him with all the trust of our hearts and minds…
In that day there shall be a fountain opened
to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem
for sin and for uncleanness (Zechariah the prophet 13:1).
The fountain was His veins opened—and emptied unto death—for love of us who would come to Him for mercy. But He did not remain dead, as it is written in David,
For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell;
neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption (Psalm 16:10).
He was raised from the dead according to the Scripture, and receives all who come to Him for grace in their desperate time of need. That Jehovah the eternal Son would so suffer in order to dispense such grace to the undeserving—even to justifying them by the gift of His own righteousness imputed to them—there is an unspeakable glory manifested thereby, and for which He is praised continually in the new temple over which He is tender and kind and mighty High Priest, the temple that is New Jerusalem in the heavens, and will comprise all of New Earth after the resurrection and judgment. Eternally blessed is the one whose feet tread that land! May that be you, dear reader.
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