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Two Contrasting Lands
By John R. Gavazzoni
The subject of land as of strategic importance to the administration of the kingdom of Heaven on earth emerges explicitly in the Bible's narrative of God's relationship with Abraham: a relationship centered in promise, and of faith as based-upon, emerging-from, and powered-by, promise. It is a central reference point for the apostle Paul for understanding and explaining the eonian purpose of God.
There is the land based totally upon promise without any conditional-mix. It is the land arrived at by the knowledge of, and confidence in, the faithfulness of God. In a word, it is the land which IS Christ, and all that is included in Him, within whose love Paul enjoined believers to be rooted and grounded: "...to inhabit (dwell down in, take up permanent abode in) the Christ (or: to house the Anointed One), through the faith and trust within your hearts, being folks having been rooted (or: having taken root) and now established and placed on a foundation within the midst of and in union with Love (or: having been grounded and rendered firm, centered in love") (Eph. 3:17, JMT)
That land is the land within which dwells the Jerusalem which is free, the Jerusalem, which is above, which is the mother of us all; the land of the Son born of promise. (Gal., chapter 4, KJV)) That land is the land of Mount Zion, and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels [[literal Greek: agents/messengers], to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than the blood of Abel. (Hebrews, chapter 12, KJV; insert, mine) That land is a spiritual land.
There is another land of penultimate destiny, a material land, a land of interposition, of interjection, a land of bondage, a land of law, a land branching off from the land of the Spirit, through which Israel uniquely and representatively, and all mankind generally, passes through on the way back to the Way that leads to the home of us all. This other land emerges within the biblical narrative in and by Moses; the land of legally-imposed imperatives which, by their interjection/interposition are intended for the purpose of making sin exceedingly sinful. (Paul: Rom. 7:13 KJV)
The latter land was given to Israel conditioned upon their faithfulness to the covenant of the law to which they agreed at the foot of Mount Zion. It would be the understatement of understatements to note that they failed wretchedly, miserably, nakedly, blindly, to be faithful to God according to that covenant. Paul made it clear that the lasting-covenant of promise was established by God with Abraham, BEFORE Moses, and that the latter was to be, not an abiding, but passing covenant. YET, within that passing covenant was a multitude of types and shadows of the abiding covenant.
Now, in the sense that the Book of Revelation, we might say, gets political in its imagery particularly of the great whore who rides upon the back of the beast, this article will do likewise. Today, there exists the infamous eschatological claim by a large portion of the evangelical community, that the modern State of Israel has a covenant right to claiming Palestine (from the river to the sea) as its inheritance in spite of the inspired record, to which they give lip-service, which makes clear, through Paul, that the promise to Abraham, belongs through his Seed, which is Christ, to those, in Him, who are of faith; they are the children of Abraham, not those who are physical lineage to Abraham.
The modern State of Israel fails magnificently according to that qualification. The modern State of Israel bears no resemblance to ancient Israel. It is a secular nation born of great power agendas, of political manipulation, for whom, Jesus, as Messiah, has no place; a nation at this very moment engaged in one of the most infamous crusades of genocide in history. Its claim to the land borders on blasphemy, as they dare to identify Palestinian Arabs with the ancient child-sacrificing Amalekites, going so far as calling those rightful inhabitants of the land animals. It's the official agenda of false-Israel, to rid the land of those they believe to be sub-human by forced expulsion and butchery.
Among those inhabitants is a not-insignificant community of Christians that the followers of J. N. Darby's eschatology, seem happy to watch being murdered with the rest so that "Israel" might regain the land to make way for the (supposed) return of Christ. Such theologically-based complicity in mass murder by Christians in this country happy to see their tax-dollars funding reveals a ghoulishness beneath a veneer of alleged orthodoxy that staggers the mind.
Let the reader be clear: this is no tirade against Jewish people who are committed to observing Torah, which is the only true qualification for being Jewish, albeit the deception involved in choosing Torah over Jesus, their Messiah. It is meant to be an exposure of modern Zionism which has nothing to do with the Zion of scripture.
PS: for more on this topic, see Who or What is Israel, by Jonathan Mitchell| John's Index | Greater Emmanuel | Email John |
