14.05 The Day Dawns

14 - The Unpardonable Sin; Section 5 THE DAY DAWNS The Jewish nation has passed through a time of great darkness. They have had deep sorrow. But if we are sure that God’s Word has been fulfilled in scattering them among the nations, and blinding their hearts to the glory of Christ, the Messiah, we should have no hesitation in believing that at the conclusion of this age God will gather them, and lift the dark veil from off their minds, for the promise of God unto them is sure: "And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you shall call them to mind among all the nations, whither the Lord your God has driven you, and you shall return unto the Lord your God, and shall obey His voice ... you and your children, with all your heart, and with all your soul; then the Lord your God will turn your captivity, and have compassion upon you, and will return and gather you from all the nations, whither the Lord your God has scattered you. And the Lord your God will bring you into the land which your father’s possessed, and you shall possess it; and He will do you good, and He will multiply you above your fathers. And the Lord your God will CIRCUMCISE YOUR HEART, AND THE HEART OF YOUR SEED, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, that you may live" (Deuteronomy 30:1-6).

George Hawtin has written: "In God’s holy word the house of Judah is likened unto a fig tree. See Jeremiah 24:1-8 where they are likened unto a basket of EVIL FIGS when they were first carried away into Babylon. The Jews understood this symbol in their day as clearly as though the Lord had called them by name. The account of the cursing of the fig tree (Matthew 21:19) is vivid in the mind of every student of scripture. The story records that Jesus, being hungry and ready to eat, saw a fig tree afar off having leaves upon it, but, upon coming to the tree, He found to His surprise that there was no fruit upon it. Though the time of figs was not yet, this strange instance is explained by the simple fact that, unlike other trees, it is the nature of the fig tree to bear her fruit first and the leaves afterward. Therefore, since there were leaves, the Lord was right to expect fruit also. What a picture this is of the house of Judah! Plenty of leaves! All manner of outward show! But no fruit. The children of Abraham on the outside, but the children of the devil within! So Jesus pronounced a curse upon the fig tree, which is symbolic of the house of Judah, commonly known as the Jews, saying, ’May no fruit grow on you to the age’ (Matthew 21:19, Diaglott). And when they returned and saw the tree the next day, it was dried up. In cursing the fig tree, He was symbolically cursing the house of Judah to the age, that is to say, unto the kingdom age. It is not correct to use the word forever here as in the common version, for Judah will be restored in the kingdom. True to God’s word the entire age of grace has come and gone, but nationally the Jews are as blind and fruitless as they were in that very day when the Lord pronounced the curse upon them. They rejected God’s Christ and God has rejected them for this entire age of grace. As a result they have wandered homeless throughout the whole earth as foretold by Jeremiah (Jeremiah 24:9-10). Only now are they being gathered in darkness, blindness and unbelief according to the word of the Lord, for He can never break His covenant with them. Even the apostle Paul, who upon several occasions, clearly stated that he was a Jew, for the tribe of Benjamin belonged to the house of Judah, made the significant statement that he was as one ’born out of due time’ (1 Corinthians 15:8). In other words it was not yet time for Judah to be reborn nationally, but because the Lord elected him to salvation, his eyes had been opened by Christ in spite of the curse that had been pronounced on the nation as a whole. This is the clearest possible evidence of election" - end quote.

Let me recall to you a passage quoted earlier from the gospel of Luke, which forms a key to understanding the significant time we are now living in - the end of the age. "And Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." There is, then, a limit to the desolation of Jerusalem. It was not to be "trodden down of the Gentiles" forever. It was only "until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." To the inhabitants of that same guilty but beloved city, the Lord Jesus said, "Behold, your house is left unto you desolate" (Matthew 23:38). Terrible words were these from such lips! Words of solemn import, but words through which shines the hope of a brighter day, for our Lord continued, "YOU shall not SEE ME henceforth, till you say, Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord" (Matthew 23:39). "Until" recalls the words of divinest grace. He will not hide His face forever. He left their house unto them desolate, and hid His face - His presence, His favor, His glory - from them, "till" - not for ever, but "till you say, Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord!" The dark covering that has been cast over the minds and hearts of the people of Judah for lo! two thousand years will be completely destroyed when the sons of God reign in the Kingdom of their Father. We have not yet witnessed the magnitude of ministry that shall be revealed through the manifested sons of God. God is preparing His perfected and mature body, anointed with the fullness of the seven-fold Spirit of God, and this enChristed company shall appear on the cosmic stage of history in these last days with ten thousand times more power than a Moses, a Joshua, a Samuel, a David, an Elijah, a Peter, a Paul, a St. Patrick, a Wesley, a Whitefield, a Finney, or any of the mighty ministries of this century. God has moved deeply upon my heart in these days to prophesy to God’s elect that there is coming a great and glorious MANIFESTATION OF CHRIST before the face of all nations and the whole earth. There will be a fresh and universal revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s going to come in the midst of a people who truly "love His appearing," and I see and hear signs that already He is beginning to come. We are standing on the threshold of a new and fresh and transcendental manifestation of the Lord. These things are burning like a furnace inside of me. I am being quickened by these things. I know God is on the move, and my deepest desire is to be a part of this manifestation that will usher in a new day for this sin-cursed planet. The Lord wants to reveal Himself in our midst in a new way, and through us to creation. I am asking God to unveil and manifest Himself to me in these days in a fuller way. Oh God! do a new thing. The whole earth and all creation is waiting for the glory of the Lord to be manifested. The dealings of God in your life and mine are fraught with divine purpose. There is something far greater ahead of us than walking on streets of gold or flitting about in white night gowns strumming harps. This was the mentality instilled into me as a young man. Thank God there is a heaven, but I want to tell you something. All the dealings of God toward us - the cross, the suffering, the processings, the blessings, the glory - all are intended to put something of His nature and character into US. This working will enable Him to be made manifest in this old dark world in which we live. God has purposed that righteousness and glory shine forth before all nations. This is going to be done through those who are being transformed into the likeness of His Son. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed from the living, completed temple of His body. His glory shall fill the earth. His power will shake the nations and all nations shall come and worship before HIM. The harvest of this age shall be gathered.

There is coming a day when all the glories of the Son of God will be revealed and manifested in the sons of God. With a heart of understanding and a spirit bright with the hope of God’s eonian purpose the apostle penned these meaningful words, "... it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by His grace, to REVEAL HIS SON I-N ME" (Galatians 1:15-16). As one has written, "Let us open our hearts that God may speak to us and show us what a son of God really is, for the greater works (John 14:12) of which Jesus spoke are not to be performed by ordinary believers, but by THAT VAST FAMILY OF SONS who are now nearing the hour of manifestation. They are that chosen company, selected from many ages, who through fires and furnaces of affliction have been brought into that same glorious IMAGE OF JESUS CHRIST. These sons of God are LIKE HIM. They are EXACTLY like Him. They are IN HIS IMAGE (Romans 8:29). They are IN HIS IMAGE AND AFTER HIS LIKENESS. They are so completely SONS OF GOD, and so completely LIKE HIM, so completely BORN OF HIM, so completely OF HIS MIND and WILL and PURPOSE their one difference is that He (the blessed Jesus) IS THE ELDEST IN THAT VAST FAMILY OF SONS and they with Him are the LAST ADAM IN ALL HIS COMPLETENESS" - The Page. When our Lord Jesus Christ told the Jews that they would not "see Him" anymore until they should say, "Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord," He spoke not of His coming again as the man of Galilee, descending ceremoniously through the clouds, to take up residence in some imposing edifice in the ancient city of Jerusalem. Seeing with the natural eye and hearing with the natural ear are not all there is of seeing and hearing. "No man has seen God at any time" thus, yet all God’s children have seen Him, and known Him, and held communion with Him. We HEAR God’s call, our "high calling," we HEAR the voice of our Shepherd, and are constantly LOOKING unto Jesus, and while we see not yet all things put under Him, we do SEE JESUS crowned with glory and honor and with unveiled face we BEHOLD the glory of the Lord and are changed into the same image, for God has shined in our hearts giving the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the FACE of Jesus Christ.

"And they shall SEE the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory" (Matthew 24:30). "Behold, He comes with clouds; and every eye shall SEE Him" (Revelation 1:7). Every one who is a scholar knows that the words "see" and "know" are identical in their spiritual meaning. When I tell a brother something he did not see before, and I am trying to get him to see it, all at once there passes over his face the illumination which indicates intelligence. He says, "Brother Preston, I see it!" What does he mean? He does not mean that he sees anything with the eye of flesh. He means that he "knows" it. I talk to a blind man who has no eyes to see at all. I explain something to him and presently he says, "Brother, I SEE it." Does he see anything? No! But he KNOWS it. How many times in the day do you say, "I see it." Jesus said, "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall SEE GOD," yet no man has seen God at any time. Suppose I give you the meaning of this passage: "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall KNOW God." It is better to know God than even to see Him by the eyes of sense. There are many who saw Jesus who did not know Him. They saw the Christ, but they knew not that He was the Christ. They saw His miracles, but they did not know Him. They even rejected Him and hated Him, many of them. It took the illumination that comes only by the effectual influence of the Holy Spirit to say with the Roman centurion, "Truly this was the Son of God." You could see Jesus Himself in bodily form today, but unless you had purity of heart you could not know Him to be the Christ. It is only purity of heart which gives purity of sight.

We see God Himself if our eyes are opened to see things which are heavenly. We see in the apocalyptic vision how John the apostle saw Jesus; how he describes the wonderful revelation of Christ; how he fell at His feet as dead when he saw Him. His spiritual eyes saw Him, for he was IN THE SPIRIT on the Lord’s day. The following words by George Hawtin bear eloquent testimony to the truth I now proclaim. "I have often thought of the wonderful words ’no man can SEE GOD AND LIVE.’ Oh how often we have quoted that wonderful passage as proof that we may not hope to see His face. Will you allow me reverently to say something else? Though it is true that no man can see God and live, it is equally true that no man can see God and die. Men do not die in God’s presence, neither do they live AS THEY USED TO LIVE, but they are TRANSFORMED. Hallelujah! They are changed; they are transfigured; they come into THAT SAME IMAGE of Him who created them. In whatever measure God reveals Himself to man, to that same measure you are changed and nothing can avoid that conclusion. There is no possibility of any man’s ever being the same again or living as he used to live once he has personally met the Lord and his eyes have beheld Him, the King in His beauty. ’As for me,’ said David, ’I will behold Your face in righteousness. I shall be satisfied, when I awake with Your likeness.’ My own heart answers Amen. That is when I, too, shall be fully satisfied" - end quote.

Yes, the hour is wonderfully near at hand when the words of Christ shall be finally fulfilled, "You shall not see Me henceforth, till you shall say, Blessed is HE that comes in the name of the Lord." The time is nigh when the Jewish nation shall behold with astonishment the matchless wonder of the Christ coming again to be "glorified IN HIS SAINTS, and to be admired IN all them that believe in that day" (2 Thessalonians 1:10). Few of the Lord’s people understand that the rejection and disbursement of the Jews, and the reign of Mystery Babylon the Great (apostate Christianity) have been parallel and connected events. God dispersed the Jews among the nations, and then raised up that monstrous harlot religious system which falsely calls itself "the church" to become the prime dispenser of His judgments upon the Jewish people. Anti-Semitism is the direct creature of the Babylon Church System and those who call themselves sons of God, who yet rail against the Jews, perceive not that their contempt for the Jew is but another vestige of Babylon that must be purged from their spirit by the reconciling love of God. While Christians are often not aware of the history of contempt for Jews, Jews are generally aware only of that dimension of Christian history. The pages of Christian history that have been torn out of Christian textbooks and forgotten are often the only ones Jews tend to know. The history of Jewish persecution at the hands of so-called Christians forms a significant part of the backdrop against which Jews have tended to perceive Christians. The Christians they have known have, for the most part, been citizens of Mystery Babylon. They have not seen THE CHRIST. They have not beheld the love, wisdom or glory of God in His saints. Can we not see by this that when Jesus said, "You shall not see Me henceforth, till you shall say, Blessed is He that COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD," He spoke of the arising of a people into the name or nature of the Lord to so become the revelation of HIMSELF to the Jewish people that they shall cry, "BLESSED IS HE THAT COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD!" In scripture "name" means "nature." Ah, methinks that the Jew has not for two thousand years SEEN THE NATURE OF THE LORD in His people! All creation, including the Jew, stands on tiptoe to see the wonderful sight of God’s sons coming into their own, a people fashioned into His image and likeness, showing forth the virtues and excellencies of our God. When at last they behold this their hearts shall be ravished with the revelation of HIS LOVE, God shall anoint their eyes with heavenly eye salve, the divine harmony of truth shall sound upon their hearts until their spirits are caught away to the mount of the Lord, and in that vision of the sons of God standing upon mount Zion they shall say, "Blessed is HE that COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD!"

Few Jews have believed in millenniums past because there has been a veil over their understanding. Even to this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their hearts; nevertheless when it (the heart) shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away (2 Corinthians 3:15-16). The dispensation of the Kingdom of God is to be a dispensation of restoration. The things lost through the fall are all to be restored from the least to the greatest. All the callings and blessings and benefits of God lost through apostasy and shame are to be restored. It is my deep conviction that this glorious restoration, beyond man’s ability to comprehend, includes the restoration of the house of Judah. Meditate deeply, beloved, upon these meaningful words of the apostle Paul. "Now if the fall of them (the Jews) be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles (nations); how much more their fullness? For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office: if by any means I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh, and might save some of them. For if the casting away of them be the RECONCILING OF THE WORLD, what shall the receiving of them be, but LIFE FROM THE DEAD? For I would not, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part (the Jewish part) is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. And so ALL ISRAEL SHALL BE SAVED: as it is written, There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob ... for as you in times past have not believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief: even so have these also now not believed, that THROUGH Y-O-U-R MERCY THEY ALSO MAY OBTAIN MERCY. For God has concluded them ALL in unbelief, that He might have mercy upon A-L-L. O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!" (Romans 11:12-15; Romans 11:25-26; Romans 11:30-33).

Judah is being regathered in unbelief. They know not the Christ. No fruit has grown on the fig tree of their nation for a whole age. But now the hour is at hand for the curse to be lifted and Judah will accept Christ and the whole nation and people will be born again in this day by the power of the Holy Spirit. The next great event of earth-shaking importance, following the manifestation of the sons of God, will be the national conversion of the Jews. Jesus Christ will soon reveal Himself to Israel in and through the sons of God. The veil shall be lifted from their eyes and they shall SEE HIM IN HIS BODY and shall cry, "Blessed is HE that comes in the name (nature) of the Lord!" The hour is at hand when the word of the Lord by the prophet Zechariah is about to be fulfilled, "And I will pour upon the house of David (Judah), and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and supplications: and they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him, as one mourns for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn. In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and uncleanness" (Zechariah 12:10; Zechariah 13:1). The first step in this wondrous process here described is the descent of the Spirit upon them nationally, and first He comes upon them as a "spirit of grace," to which they are "twice dead" - devoid of it by nature, but over and above this judicially graceless because of the curse of their awful sin against the Holy Spirit. But along with this He shall come as a "spirit of supplications," leading them out of the depths to cry mightily unto God for mercy and light.

Thank God! the long night is almost over. The age of curse and judgment is even now drawing swiftly to a close. The sin against the Holy Spirit was grievous and the judgment severe and long. But - thank God! - there isN-O U-N-P-A-R-D-O-N-A-B-L-E S-I-N!