…comes Heaven.
Well, hell and heaven on Earth anyway. Maybe not the real Hell and Heaven, but it might seem like it to those who experience it. Leviticus 26 describes seven phases of national existence as they relate to obedience or disobedience to God’s Laws. They only obliquely relate to faith in that faith in God is among his commands.
The Torah is both life and death, depending on how you relate to it. If you obey, it is life. If you disobey, it is death. (In another sense, if you rely for your salvation on your obedience to the letter of the law, then it becomes death again.) The first phase described is of obedience and blessing. Israel is promised an overabundance in every way if they obey God’s Torah.
The next six phases stem from disobedience. Each of these six phases, except perhaps the first and the last, is a seven-fold punishment, complete in itself. Each one represents another chance to repent and return to obedience. Before describing each of phases one through five God interjects an offer of forgiveness:
- “If you will not hearken unto me…”
- “And if ye will not yet for all this hearken unto me…”
- “And if ye walk contrary unto me, and will not hearken unto me…”
- “And if ye will not be reformed by me by these things…”
- “And if ye will not for all this hearken unto me…”
There is no explicit offer of forgiveness (although the possibility is implied) before phase six, which is exile. The last tribes of Israel entered exile in the sixth century BC, and except for a partial reprieve from 531 BC to 70 AD, she has remained in exile until recently. Even now, the return to the land is not total. As before, only a fraction of the people have returned and the current residents of the land are far from penitent. I believe that Israel will remain in exile until “their uncircumcised hearts be humbled,” they accept their punishment for what it is, and they seek forgiveness.
Some of the rabbis teach that Israel was returned to exile by Rome because of baseless hatred and lashon hora or speaking ill of others. Some of them blasphemed the Holy Spirit when they ascribed Yeshua’s power to Satan. Most of them blasphemed Yeshua when they called him a liar, an antinomian, a heretic, and a bastard. The made the same false accusations against the Twelve Disciples and the Apostles who followed them.
Most of the Jewish leadership is still guilty of those same things, but that is changing. Many rabbis are beginning to back away from those accusations and to realize they treated their Messiah unjustly. Many of them are even beginning to realize that he is their Messiah.
Every eye should be turned toward Jerusalem, because Israel is being drawn back again. Judah is looking again at Yeshua, and Ephraim is finding him and remembering Torah.
The cycle began with obedience and blessing followed by six levels of hell on earth, but God prophesied another level, one of repentance and forgiveness.
I will heal their apostasy; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them. I will be like the dew to Israel; he shall blossom like the lily; he shall take root like the trees of Lebanon; his shoots shall spread out; his beauty shall be like the olive, and his fragrance like Lebanon. They shall return and dwell beneath my shadow; they shall flourish like the grain; they shall blossom like the vine; their fame shall be like the wine of Lebanon.
Hosea 14:4-7
This eighth phase of this cycle, the restoration of the people of Israel (not the State of Israel!) and the return of Messiah Yeshua, may be approaching soon: A new beginning in greater obedience and greater blessing. May it be so!
Everything that Yeshua (aka Jesus) & the Apostles taught
Come with me as I draw out the connections that are so often missed |