TIMES AND SEASONS

TIMES AND SEASONS

                There are many ways to look at history from a Biblical perspective. We can trace the seed line of faith through History. We can track the various dispensations through time, and even if you don’t believe in dispensationalism, you will have to admit that there have been different ages and epics or seasons through time. For instance, before the flood the patriarchs lived before a written word and without religion so to speak. Men of faith built altars to worship the Lord and those altars became places of remembrance. Whatever they knew about God had been passed down from Adam.

                Even after the flood, patriarchs like Abraham heard the voice of God and followed Him by faith. They too built altars of worship, but they did not have a church or a tabernacle to attend.  But when God called Israel out of Egypt, He called them to be a holy nation and a kingdom of kings and priests.  He also called them to bring forth His Word and His Messiah. And god had them build Him a sanctuary to dwell among them and to serve as  a template of truth in types and shadows.

                As such, God used Israel to become a living pattern of His salvation plan, first in types and shadows leading to the Messiah and then in living realities as Jesus sent down His Holy Spirit to breathe life into His Bride and to bring her to maturity. To do this He gave His bride a legacy of experiences both good and bad. Israel became a template of both faith and rebellion so that we could benefit from their examples upon whom the ends of the age have come. 1 Cor. 10:11

                So, whether we like dispensationalism or not we can clearly see a dispensation of the patriarchs, followed by a dispensation of Law as brought to us by Moses and the children of Israel, and then there was a dispensation of grace, when the very Spirit of the Messiah was implanted in our hearts and we were adopted into the heavenly family as sons and daughters of God and joint heirs with Jesus.

                Another way of looking at history is through the feast days or appointed times of the Lord. The Passover that brought Israel to the Law became the Passover by which the true Lamb of God, Jesus, brought us into the dispensation of grace. The feast of unleavened bread that lead us to the sinless Body of Christ as He lay in the tomb, became the feast of unleavened bread whereby His body the church may die to the flesh and put away sin to serve the living God. The first fruits of the resurrection by which Jesus rose from the dead and presented Himself to the Father, leads to the first fruits of the resurrection when the righteous, both dead and living will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air.

                Likewise the Day of Pentecost by which Israel celebrated the giving of the Law on Sinai, became the feast of Pentecost wherein the church was conceived by the Holy Spirit and by His grace we are growing up into what Paul called the manifestation of the sons of God for which all of creation waits with anxious longing.

                Some years ago it was my discovery that the fall feasts were yet to be fulfilled that I launched into a study of the feasts, especially the fall feasts… for if Jesus had fulfilled the Spring Feasts with such accuracy as to both the events and their timing, then surely Jesus will do the same thing at His second coming. The fall feasts will be fulfilled with the same kind of pinpoint accuracy as the Spring Feasts and so it would be good for us to understand these feasts.

                Yet another way to look at the passage of time is in God’s eternal and irrevocable promises to Israel concerning their land.

                Ezekiel tells us that God is going to bring Gog against the land of Israel in the last days. Ez. 38:14-16. Ezekiel also gives a promise from God saying that He will make an everlasting covenant of peace with Israel and He will place them and multiply them and He will be their God and they will be His people when His sanctuary is in their midst forever. Ez. 37:26-28

                Again in Ez. 36:24-36 God promise that He will take them from the nations and bring them into their own land and give them new hearts and cause their cities to be inhabited and the waste places rebuilt.

Jeremiah talks about a time when the Lord will make a new covenant with Israel and He will write His laws in their hearts and Jerusalem shall be rebuilt and it will not be overthrown any more forever. Jer. 31:31-40

                Micah speaks of the mountain of the house of the Lord (The Temple Mount) being established as the chief of the mountains and many nations will come into it. This prophecy refers to the millennial reign of Christ from Jerusalem. Mica 4:1-7

                Zechariah talks about the time of the second coming of Christ when He will arrive with His saints and set foot on the Mt. of Olives and take up His millennial kingdom on earth. Zech. 14 1-21.

                Zechariah also talks about a time when Israel will look upon Him whom they have pierced and they will mourn for Him as one mourns for an only son. And this is reiterated in Revelation 1:7

                Daniel talks about the abomination of desolation that will take place as the antichrist comes into the temple of God claiming to be God. Dan. 9:27, 12:11 and then Jesus takes that prophecy and applies it to the time of the end in Mt. 24:15.

                Amos talks about a time when God will plant Israel in their land when they will not again be rooted from their land forever. Amos 9:11-15.

                So Israel plays a part in events leading right up to the second coming of Christ and beyond. They serve as a physical template of God’s plans as they are being worked out spiritually by the Holy Spirit and the church.

                We can also follow throughout history in terms of a Remnant people, for in every generation throughout time there have always been a remnant people. From Noah, to Abraham, to Moses, to Joshua, to Jesus to the end of time, God has always had a remnant people who were saved in every generation. It is like every generation has a remnant that is saved from that generation.

                Likewise we are told that in the final harvest only the remnant will be saved. Here we must pause to reflect upon our own lives. Am I a part of the Remnant? We have been predestined to be conformed to the image of God’s dear Son, Romans 8:29. Do I reflect that image? Do I reflect His character? Am I filled with His Holy Spirit so that His image is being formed in me? Am I spiritually a wise virgin? Do I have clean hands and a pure heart? Have my robes been washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb? Am I one of the overcomers to whom Jesus made promises in His messages to the seven churches? Am I truly living by His Spirit?

                Flesh and blood cannot accomplish even one of these things and so Paul tells us that it is those who are being led by the Spirit of God that are the sons of God. So then our obvious priority is to learn to live by the Spirit and not by the flesh. How are we doing?

                We are the people upon whom the ends of the age have come. God has given us a legacy of truth by which we can know what pleases Him and what does not. We have all of the experiences of Israel to draw from. We have the example and promises of Jesus to draw from. We have His Holy Spirit, whom He is so eager and willing to give to all who ask. He will guide us into all truth.

                We are also told that it is not the keeping of the Law that saves us. We live in a New Covenant and under a new priesthood called the Melchizedek priesthood. It is a priesthood that came 430 years before the Law and it is a covenant that the Law cannot invalidate. Galatians 3:17. So the Law was unable to save us because it depended upon our flesh to keep it and our flesh is weak and worthless when it comes to keeping the Law.

                What Jesus brought us is infinitely better than the Old Covenant and it is a covenant that the Old Covenant can only point to, but cannot produce. So the Law can only function as our tutor to bring us to Christ. It can only bring us to the foot of the cross where we die to the Law in order to live unto God.

                Friends, we have a New Covenant and a new priesthood. Jesus has become our new High Priest after the order of Melchizedek… not Aaron… not Moses, but Melchizedek and because Jesus serves after the order of Melchizedek who made covenant with Abraham, we become Abraham’s Seed and heirs according to promise and we do so through the New Covenant and not through the Old Covenant.

                This does not invalidate the Old Covenant since it serves to point us forward to the New covenant and since it serves as the God given foundation upon which the New Covenant sits, nevertheless we are no longer in the Old Covenant and we need to know and understand the difference because the Old Covenant cannot save you in any way, shape or form.

                We need to study carefully the book of Hebrews. It was written to the Hebrew Christians to help them to understand the transfer from the Old Covenant to the New. The book of Galatians is another important book dealing with this transfer from Law to Grace.

                Picture if you will, the Hebrew Christians being traumatized because they see Gentile Christians totally ignoring the law of circumcision. How could these new Christians even possibly be serious about their faith while ignoring circumcision? The same question is being asked today by Sabbath keepers as they wonder how anyone can be serious about their faith even as they keep Sunday rather than Saturday.

                But just as circumcision was done in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, so our true REST is in Christ as we rest from our own works even as God did from His. So, the Sabbath of the Law is a good thing to keep in obedience to God, but we must also understand that the Sabbath of the Law does not give us the kind of Rest that the New Covenant is talking about. The true REST can only come as we trust in the Righteousness of Christ for our salvation. For what the law could not do, weak as it was in the flesh, God did, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh… in order that the Law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. Romans 8:3, 4.

                All of these grand themes are bringing us to the final generation. Israel is back in their land. Plans for the third temple are under way. Negotiations for a final “covenant with the many” Dan. 9:26, 27 are under way. The spirit of antichrist and his coming global government are well under way; all of nature is beginning to writhe in its final birth pangs. The nations said to come against Israel in the last days are all in place. World War three is reaching a boiling point as the big players square off. There is a great falling away taking place right now in Christianity that will make way for the man of sin. There is also the beginning of a revival as hungry people cry out to God for an outpouring of His Holy Spirit in early and latter rain power. There are signs in the sun, moon and stars that warn us that we have entered into that specific time of the end.

                Do you think that maybe it is time for the church to wake up and to take these things seriously? Should we trim our lamps and make sure we are filled with oil. Should we not cry out to God to conform us by His Holy Spirit to the image of Christ? Should we not stop playing our little churchy games with our little churchy politics and our squabbles and to start praying earnestly for revival?

                It is not by might nor by power but by My Spirit saith the Lord … and so we must somehow learn how to live by that power and not our own. We must learn to live our lives by divine appointment as Jesus did. We must learn to love and to serve one another, for as it says in John 13:3 “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands … washed the disciple’s feet.

                Likewise Jesus has given us authority over serpents and scorpions and over all of the power of the enemy, but we will also use that authority to wash one another’s feet… to love and to serve one another even as Jesus served His disciples.

                So we have been given a whirlwind tour of the epic seasons and purposes of God. And God has given us these perspectives so that while most of the world is wandering in darkness we might know the plans and purposes of God. 1 Thess. 5:4 tells us that we are not in darkness that the day should overtake us like a thief. We may not know the exact day or the hour, but we can certainly read the signs of His coming and we can remain awake and alert.

                Then Paul says: “But since we are of the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love and as a helmet, the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ who died for us that whether we are awake or asleep  we may live together with Him.” 1 Thess. 5:8-10.

                If we don’t understand these broad outlines of biblical faith, we can become lost and confused. Without vision the people perish. Likewise large parts of the church are falling away today because they have abandoned these prophetic patterns and so they are joining up with the False Prophet to form a blasphemous one world religion… a religion into which Jesus Christ clearly does not fit.

                Now is the time to choose and to stand with the Lord!