Making Room for Mystery

In the third chapter of his letter to the Ephesians, Paul writes that he was made a steward of a mystery that no one before had been able to understand. The mystery as he states it in verse six is that “the Gentiles are fellow heirs, and fellow members of the body, and fellow sharers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” Beginning with the call of Abraham, God’s plan of redemption was carried out through Abraham’s descendants who eventually became the nation of Israel. It is important to notice that the continuation of God’s plan as revealed to Abraham was that ultimately “all families of the earth will be blessed in you.”

It seems probable that God had intended Israel to share their lessons about Yahweh’s sovereign rule and His covenant love for His people, but instead of spreading Yahweh’s fame, they abandoned Him and followed other gods. Time after time the prophets admonished wayward Israel for their idolatry, and for a while they would repent and return to the Lord. Ultimately, because of their serial disobedience, God had the northern tribes captured and relocated by Assyria and later the southern tribes were taken captive to Babylon. God told them in advance that they would spend seventy years in exile in Babylon before God would release them to return home.

Just prior to, during, and after the Babylonian exile, the prophets of Yahweh began to tell of a post-exile period when the temple at Jerusalem would be rebuilt, and God would once again be worshipped there. It is in this context that the mystery begins to unfold. Many of the prophets spoke of a servant who would come from the line of David and rule from Jerusalem. That part wasn’t hard for the Jews to imagine as they were fastidious about keeping up with their genealogies, and David was promised a king to sit on the throne forever.

The thing that began to mystify them was the scope of the coming king’s rule. While the coming king would rule “from Jerusalem,” the extent of his reign appears to cover all the nations of the world according to many of the prophecies. This should have made sense given the promise to Abraham that his descendants would eventually bring blessings to all nations. To further confound them, even before they could complete the temple, the people around them began to resist their efforts. They eventually completed the temple, but before long, they were once again trampled by more powerful nations. In the period between Malachi and Matthew, some 400 years, Israel was under some nation’s thumb almost continually.

I have been reading the minor prophets in my through-the-Bible reading program, and I am reminded of the many references to the “Day of the Lord.” The phrase has two distinctly different meanings. On one hand, it refers to that glorious day when God’s Servant rules in righteousness from Jerusalem. Other times, it ominously refers to God coming in judgment either to Israel or the other nations. We know that many of the nations called out for judgment were dealt with in the lifetime of the prophets who declared their doom: Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Edom, Moab, etc. The one judgment that didn’t fall was God’s prediction against post-exile Israel. Babylon exacted God’s judgment of Israel the first time, but the later prophecies foretold another catastrophic destruction of Jerusalem and the temple.

The final cataclysmic end of the nation of Israel and its temple was postponed until “the last days” according to the prophets. It is popular, especially in America, to think of the last days as the time before an expected rapture of the church and a seven-year tribulation which ushers in the millennial kingdom. While that may be a possible future scenario, I find the Scripture clearly proclaiming the last days had come at the culmination of the Messiah’s ministry. In the first gospel sermon, the Apostle Peter asserted that Joel’s prophecy of the last days had come to pass on that day. He was referring to the coming of the Holy Spirit and the initiation of the Church of Christ.

Zechariah, often quoted as an end times prophet, is clearly speaking about physical Israel in most of the book. The prediction details neatly fit what did happen when the Jewish religious leaders rejected their Messiah and had Jesus crucified. The mystery continues to unfold as Zechariah slips into apparently apocalyptic language in the later chapters. Jesus quoted 12:7 when predicting His disciples’ abandonment: “Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will scatter.” John uses Zechariah twice in reference to Jesus being pierced at His crucifixion, once in his gospel and again in Revelation. It is worth noting that the passage in Revelation is referring to Jesus coming in judgment.

This aspect of Messiah’s coming in judgment is also present in Malachi. They were anticipating Messiah’s coming as their deliverance, but Yahweh asks, “Who can endure the day of his coming…. For he is like a refiner’s fire.” The prophet Joel and Isaiah both told wayward Israel to wail, for the day of Yahweh is near. It will come like destruction from Shaddai! As already noted, Joel’s prophecy was fulfilled when Peter preached on the day of Pentecost, and no one doubts the messianic allusions of Isaiah. Finally, Malachi ends his prophecy promising that before the “great and awesome Day of the Lord, I will send you Elijah the prophet.” Jesus said that John the Baptist was the promised Elijah.

Another curiosity in Zechariah is Yahweh’s statement that the area of Jerusalem would be “lifted up.” It is at this point that people from many nations will come to “Jerusalem” where “living water” flows forth, and Yahweh will be king of all the earth. That all sounds very much like what John saw in his apocalyptic vision of the heavenly Jerusalem reported in Revelation. Couple this with the statements by Paul and the Hebrew writer that believers in their day “have come” (present perfect tense) to the New Jerusalem. In their minds, the New Jerusalem was present in their day. Knowing this, it is not hard to imagine that Zechariah’s prophecies have already come to pass.

This is the mystery that was not understood until Jesus revealed it to Paul and the other Apostles – and now to us. It has two mysterious aspects. The first is that even Gentiles (all nations) would be coming to the New Jerusalem. The Jews had resisted this idea throughout their history. The second mysterious aspect is the spiritual nature of the New Jerusalem and the Messiah’s reign. Like many people today, the Jews were stuck in temporal, earthly thinking about God’s kingdom. They didn’t understand that God intended to move from a physical Jerusalem and the physical descendants of Abraham to a heavenly Jerusalem and a spiritual people chosen from all nations, tribes, and tongues.

Although I am fairly confident in the truth of my position, I remain open to the possibility that I may be wrong. My confidence is based primarily on my own study of the Scriptures and the fact that it is in harmony with the doctrine of the church throughout history. Only recently (since the nineteenth century) has the idea of Israel’s special place in the end times become popular. That popularity is primarily an American occurrence, whereas most of the present-day church would agree that “Israel” in the New Testament is all faithful through the ages, not just the physical descendants of Abraham.

I like A.W. Tozer’s suggestion that we “make room for mystery.” There will always be some things about God that remain a mystery. When Jesus came preaching that the kingdom of God had come, there were many who were mystified. Jesus explained His use of parables to His disciples saying, “To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to those people it has not been granted.” A few verses later He continued: “The prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says, ‘You will listen carefully and will never understand, and you will look closely and will never perceive.’ For truly I say to you that many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it.” Here is the message for us: don’t be like the unbelieving Israelites; make room for mystery but always seek to understand.

Related Posts: Who are the Other Gods? Heaven Can Wait; Isaiah as a Cautionary Tale

Post Script: The mystery that remains for me is whether God will once again deal with physical Israel in a unique way. I don’t think so, but I must admit that the situation in the Mideast today is curiously similar to the time of Israel’s prophets. Christian Zionists and those who teach a premillennial/dispensational eschatology believe God has a separate plan for Israel in the end times. These people believe the “last days” prophecies refer to a time yet to come. They believe Israel will once again be the focal point of God’s judgment on all nations.

They also believe Paul’s analogy of the olive tree teaches that broken branches (meaning unbelieving Israel) get grafted back into God’s tree. However, Paul makes it abundantly clear in Romans that God’s favor was not granted on the basis of genealogy but because of faith. The true root of God’s olive tree is not physical Abraham but faith like Abraham’s. Israel’s faithlessness (rejecting Messiah) caused them to be broken off the tree; if they (Abraham’s descendants) repent and believe in Jesus as their Messiah, they can be grafted back into the tree of faith.