The Daily Word of Righteousness

The Three Separations of the Royal Priesthood, #4

For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted. (Isaiah 60:12)

And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and the sons of the alien shall be your plowmen and your vinedressers. But ye shall be named the Priests of the LORD: men shall call you the Ministers of our God: ye shall eat the riches of the Gentiles, and in their glory shall ye boast yourselves. (Isaiah 61:5,6)

It appears obvious there will be nations alive on the earth in future ages that will serve Israel—nations that are "saved" in the sense of not being in Hell or the Lake of Fire but who are not part of God's Israel.

If we are to be kings and priests it appears evident there must be saved people over whom we rule, whom we serve as priests of God—people who are not part of the royal priesthood and yet who remain alive on the earth in the will of God.

The implication that there will be nations of the world that will be saved on the basis of their response to the Presence of God in Christ in the saints, who are not part of the Church but who believe in Christ through the saints and are willing to be taught by the saints, appears in both the Old Testament and the New.

For example, notice the manner in which the nations of the saved will come to the Lord's priests in Jerusalem to be taught of the Lord. The people who come up to Jerusalem are "saved" in the sense that they have not been cast into torment at the coming of Christ, but they obviously are not part of God's Israel. They themselves are not members of the Church, the Body of Christ:

And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. (Isaiah 2:2,3)

The current Christian teaching holds that the above two verses are speaking of physical Israel, that the Christian Church will be in Heaven while the Jews on the earth rule (in the flesh?) over nations of human beings on the earth. As long as one maintains this concept it is impossible to understand the Scriptures.

The material aspect of the Kingdom of God is the physical people and land of Israel. The spiritual aspect of the Kingdom of God is Christ and those who are part of Christ. There can be no Kingdom of God until the spiritual Jerusalem comes down from Heaven and clothes the material Jerusalem with eternal life and glory.

To be continued.