The Daily Word of Righteousness

The Convergence, #10

And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the Lord, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein. And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The Lord is my God. (Zechariah 13:8,9)

Notice in the above passage that in the last days God will purify a remnant of natural Israel.

While it is possible the passage may apply also to spiritual Israel, the Church, it appears to be pointed toward natural Israel.

These two categories of the utterances of the Hebrew Prophets, those addressed to natural Israel and those addressed to spiritual Israel, are not laid out in neat packages. The words of the Prophets pass from one category to another such that only the Spirit of God can indicate to us what God is declaring. The efforts of scholars to analyze the Prophets do little more than divide the scholars.

The Prophets, when speaking of the Kingdom of God, were addressing Christ and those who are His, that is, spiritual Israel.

Unto whom [the Hebrew Prophets] it was revealed, that not unto themselves [the physical Israelites], but unto us [the Christians—Jews and Gentiles] they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into. (I Peter 1:12)

It is the writer's point of view that the richest yield of Divine truth is obtained when we accept the principle of convergence, recognizing that the Spirit of God moves back and forth between the natural land and people of Israel and their spiritual counterpart in the Christian Church, with the intention of bringing the natural kingdom into union with the perfected spiritual kingdom.

As we have stated previously, the thirty-seventh chapter of the Book of Ezekiel is an example of the moving of the Spirit of Christ back and forth between natural Israel and spiritual Israel, with the end in view of their convergence in Christ.

The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones, (Ezekiel 37:1)

Here is an example of prophetic utterance that applies both to physical Israel and spiritual Israel. It may be true that the dead bones are a picture of the Jewish people of today and also of the members of the Body of Christ. One does not have to strain the allegory in either instance.

If such be the case, the bringing of the bones together, the binding of them with sinew, and the covering of them with flesh and skin, is showing us that the Spirit of God in His sovereign workings will establish a powerful nation of Israel, and also make a powerful army of the members of the Body of Christ.

To be continued.