THE GOSPEL OF JERUSALEM
Dec
19, 2018 by Dr. Stephen Jones
When
Scripture talks about the Bride of Christ, some say this is the church, while
others say it is Israel. Those who say it is Israel are divided according to
who they think Israel is.
Isaiah
62:4-6 addresses Jerusalem as a bride, saying,
4 It will no longer be said to you, “Forsaken,” nor to your land will it
any longer be said, “Desolate,” but you will be called [Hephzibah] “My delight
is in her,” and your land, [Beulah] “Married;” For the Lord delights in you,
and to Him your land will be married. 5 For as a young man marries a
virgin, so your sons will marry you; and as the bridegroom rejoices over the
bride, so your God will rejoice over you. 6 On your walls, O Jerusalem,
I have appointed watchmen…
This
prophecy comes in the context of the restoration of the house of Israel having
Jerusalem as its unified capital. Isaiah himself lived to see the exile of
Israel to Assyria (Isaiah 38, 39), which in turn occurred 210 years after
Israel and Judah were divided. But the prophet foresaw the reunification of
Israel and Judah under the Messiah with Jerusalem as its capital.
Most
people interpret this to mean that the Jewish nation that is today known as
Israel is fulfilling this prophecy. Most fail to see the difference between
Israel and Judah. They also interpret these names as biological references,
rather than seeing these nations as legal entities. As I have shown in recent
weblogs, the Israelites were taken to Assyria, while the house of Judah
(“Jews”) escaped that captivity and remained in the land for more than another
century before being taken temporarily to Babylon.
Two
Jerusalem Brides
The
key to understanding is first to know that Jerusalem is more than one city. The
Hebrew word is Ierushalayim, which literally means “Two Jerusalems.”
Hebrew has plurals (“im”) and duals (ayim). Ierushalayim
is a dual, which means “two.” The rabbis in the past could never figure out
why, but the apostles in the New Testament understood it to mean that there was
an earthly city and a heavenly city.
The
Old Testament prophets never distinguish between the two. Both cities are
interwoven in their prophecies, and it requires discernment to know which city
is being referenced in any given prophecy. Galatians
4:25, 26 shows that Paul understood this clearly. Revelation 21
describes the heavenly city while using passages from Isaiah about “Jerusalem.”
It is clear from this that John also understood the difference between the two
cities of Jerusalem.
So
in Revelation
21:2 says,
2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from
God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.
She
is “the bride, the wife of the Lamb,” a reference to Jesus Christ (Revelation
21:9). Jesus’s wife is not the earthly Jerusalem; His wife is the “new
Jerusalem.”
Yet
the Bible story shows that the Old Covenant was the marriage ceremony where God
(Christ) married Hagar, a bondwoman. That marriage ended in divorce (Jeremiah 3:8),
and the new marriage, prophesied in the book of Revelation and elsewhere, is
Christ’s marriage to a New Covenant bride, known prophetically as "Sarah.”
Only Sarah can bring forth the heirs of the Kingdom.
The
point is that the bride is Jerusalem, but we should know that in the big
picture, there are two brides, each with her own marriage ceremony (covenant).
Those two brides are yet in the world, existing side by side as groups of
people, and yet one has already been divorced.
Casting
out the Bondwoman Bride
The
Old Covenant bride was “cast out” long ago in order to make room for the New
Covenant bride. God will never again marry a bondwoman, yet there are many
individuals within that Old Covenant bride (a company of people) who insist
that Hagar is the true bride of Christ. They want Hagar to be the bride,
because those individuals are her children, and they love their mama.
Paul
makes it clear that Hagar and her children must be cast out (Galatians
4:30) in order to establish the calling of Sarah in Genesis
17:15, 16. Not many truly understand this, partly because the
Dispensationalists re-instated Hagar as the bride of Christ by making the
earthly city the mother of the Kingdom and by honoring fleshly people
(unbelieving Jews) as chosen people.
In
doing so, the Dispensationalists showed their love for their mother Hagar, and
so most of the evangelical and Pentecostal churches today are blatant advocates
of Hagar. The situation is comparable to the household of Abraham while he had
two wives in his house and two sons that were in contention as heirs of the
birthright.
At
some point in history, a lawful decision or verdict must be decreed, declaring
one or the other to be the heir. In Abraham’s time, this occurred when he sent
Hagar and Ishmael away (Genesis 21:10-12). Abraham was a type of Christ (having two
brides). Christ then came and cast out Hagar in a greater fulfillment of the
word to Abraham. The separation between the two cities is obvious by reading
the New Testament, and Paul gives his commentary in Galatians 4.
Paul
himself had persecuted the church before his conversion (Galatians
1:13, 14), and his testimony admits that he had been an Ishmael
at that time of his life. Even as Ishmael had persecuted Isaac (Galatians
4:29), so also had he persecuted the church—which, presumably was Isaac.
The problem was that the church was starting to revert back to Judaism, and
this was the beginning of the Christian reversion to being Ishmael, son of
Hagar. Paul’s gospel was designed to warn the church against that tendency.
Reclaiming
Hagar
The
Dispensationalists in the 1850’s cast aside all restraint and fully pushed to
make Hagar the mother of the church and the Kingdom. They did precisely what
Paul warned against in his gospel to the Galatians. When Pat Boone converted to
Judaism in the late 1960’s, after being taught Christian Zionism by these
Dispensationalists, it began a wave of conversions. In fact, far more
Christians converted to Judaism than Jews were converted to Christ.
If
he and others had understood Paul’s gospel, they never would have been fooled
into becoming Jews (by conversion). Yet the root problem was in their
misunderstanding of the two covenants. The root problem was in thinking that a
person is saved by his own vow, promise, or decision, for that is the Old
Covenant method of salvation (which always fails). When someone says, “I got
saved when I decided to follow Jesus,” it is the equivalent of Israel’s vow at
Mount Horeb, where they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do”
(Exodus
19:8).
When
men are saved by the power of their own will, it is an Old Covenant attempt to
be saved by the flesh. No man’s vow can save him unless he is able to fulfill
his vow and be fully obedient. But the moment he sins after making that vow,
his covenant is broken and is immediately null and void. He must then return to
the altar and be saved again—and again. This must be repeated, as with the
animal sacrifices, because it is based on the will of man. But John 1:13
says,
13 who were born [begotten] not of blood [i.e., bloodline], nor of the
will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
New
Covenant salvation is based upon the promise of God (Galatians
4:28), and New Covenant faith is the ability to believe that “what He
has promised, He was able also to perform” (Romans 4:21).
That is the faith of Abraham.
Those
who claim Hagar as their mother are blind to the promise of God. They turn the
promise into a statement of intent that is effective only if man himself gets
involved with his own will of the flesh. God’s promise, however, did not depend
upon man’s compliance. God’s promise was to make it happen. God took the
responsibility upon Himself to make it happen—not merely to give man opportunity
to make it happen.
Reclaiming
the Sarah Bride
The
New Covenant is a foreign doctrine to most Christians today. Having claimed
Hagar as their mother, they have been blinded to the truth of “the restoration
of all things” (Acts 3:21). They believe that most of humanity will be
lost, except for those few who have been saved through their Old Covenant
decision.
The
truth is that God “will have all men to be saved” (1 Timothy
2:4 KJV). At the Great White Throne, every knee will bow, and every tongue
will profess Christ (Philippians 2:10, 11).
Many will be judged, of course, so that they have time to mature spiritually
and learn obedience (Isaiah 26:9). In the end, however, all things that were
created will be put under the dominion (“feet”) of Christ (1
Corinthians 15:28; Colossians 1:16, 20),
so that God may be “all in all.”
Because
the outcome is based on God’s will and promise, rather than upon the will of
man and his broken promises, God will have total victory in the end. This does
not mean that man’s will is set aside or that any man will be saved apart from
submitting his will to God’s will. Far from it. No man will be saved UNTIL he
has submitted himself under the feet of Jesus Christ.
The
New Covenant only ensures that God will win and that all will indeed bow their
knees and profess Jesus as their Lord. The process, however, involves time, and
people will be saved at different points in time. In the present age, only a
few (the remnant of grace) have submitted to Christ and have been begotten by
the seed of the word. In the age to come (the thousand years of the Tabernacles
Age), many more will see the light, as the Stone Kingdom grows.
Then
comes the Great White Throne, where all the dead are raised and are summoned to
appear before the judgment seat of Christ. There all truth will be known to
all, and they will then bow their knees. In other words, they will become
believers in Christ and be filled with the Spirit. They will experience
Passover (justification) and Pentecost (sanctification), but that last age of
the baptism of fire will be necessary to bring these new believers into
spiritual maturity.
During
that final age, all flesh will disavow Hagar and claim Sarah as their mother.
To put it another way, all flesh will become part of the Hephzibah bride of
Christ, which is not the old Jerusalem but the new. John says that "the
holy city" is the "new Jerusalem" (Revelation
21:2). By claiming this new mother, they will follow the pattern of the
apostle Paul in his conversion from being a son of the earthly Jerusalem to a
son of the heavenly Jerusalem.
This
is not a matter of biological or genetic change. It is a legal matter. You are
who you claim to be, not necessarily by your words but by your beliefs and
actions. Hence, Paul was able to change his mother by believing the promise of
God in the Abrahamic manner. This is the same pattern that all mankind will
follow before the end of time as we know it.
In
the end, at the Creation Jubilee (after 49,000 years of Adamic history), all
debts will be cancelled, and all will return to the inheritance that they lost
when Adam sinned.
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