Clough Dispensations Lesson 7

The Dispensation of Israel – Dispensation of Law

Tonight we’re going to go back to the start of the dispensation of the Law because I realize I went through some of it fast and this is a very difficult dispensation to deal with because, for one reason there’s a debate on where it ends. And it’s difficult to see some of the characteristics and it’s a very important dispensation as far as what we learn from it as believers. So as always, with each dispensation I’m covering four items under each dispensation. Dispensations are just simply a way of categorizing history. Sooner or later you will run into some people that foam at the mouth when you mention the word dispensation. They have absolutely zero basis for doing so. There is no basis for opposing dispensations. The reason why some people don’t like it is because they’ve heard, what some dispensationalist was supposed to have said some time. Generally the reason the people don’t like the word is because they feel that we make Israel and the Church so distinct that we remove the Old Testament from the importance in a believer’s life. In other words, we cut the Bible right after the book of Acts and everything that’s left is for believers and everything that’s before that point is for Israel and so on. That’s a complete caricature of what dispensationalists have said, so just don’t listen to it. And if someone doesn’t like the word and you’re around them and you want to maintain friendship, just substitute the word ages and you’ll be all right.

Dispensation of the Law: the first item we always include under dispensations is the Scriptural area that encloses these dispensations. So if we start, for example, as we have with Israel, 2000 BC with Abraham, we come down in history to Moses, 1440 BC, approximately, and first you have the whole age of Israel begin under the dispensation of promise. And you remember the dispensation is promise is characterized by a looking forward, the chief thing is a looking forward that God is going to work in history, and it’s anticipatory. And the dispensation of promise back here is important because it illustrates the principle of faith, faith in the Word of God. And therefore there’s a whole modus operandi of Scriptures grounded on one factor, faith. And it’s shown by the very character of this first dispensation.

Now we come to the dispensation of the Law which began in 1440 BC and comes down to the cross of Jesus Christ. The Law extends from Exodus 20 on through to Acts 2, and then it actually is picked up again in a very modified form in the book of Revelation during the tribulation; I’ll explain that, not in its full force. So we might summarize by saying the Scripture goes all the way from Exodus 19 or 20 on up to Revelation 19 minus the New Testament epistles. However, you have to remember what I’m saying, that it goes on from the time of Moses up to the cross of Christ, skipping the Church Age, picking up again at the tribulation. I just want to warn you that these last seven years that are tacked on, the tribulation, the Law doesn’t strictly apply here. This is one of those areas of Scripture where things begin to get fuzzy because of the lack of information. So although I’ve said the Law extends from Exodus 20 on down to Revelation 19, just remember that when the Law picks up again after the rapture of the Church it’s in a different form, it’s not like it was before. So if you want to be tight about it and be perfectly logical you might want to say the Law extends only from Exodus 19 and 20 on down through Acts 2. There’s a reason for this, there’s a difficulty in the tribulation and as we go through I’ll show you why there’s this problem. So that’s the Scripture. Therefore, all Scripture within these books give new information about how God is working in history at this particular point.

Now we come to the second item of the dispensation of the Law and that is the chief characteristic of this era of history. What is the chief characteristic in a word, that summarizes this time of history? It basically is this, that blessings and cursings fall upon Israel in accordance to their positive or negative volition toward the Word of God. So that you might say this: what the Law is, is a legal relationship that locks God into a relationship with one nation, Israel, and it specifies the legal conditions of that relationship. It’s a legal relationship and it’s controlled by the content of the Law so that now God… you see, during this time, between 2000 BC and 1440 BC, during this time in history you had Abraham, you had Isaac, you had Jacob, you had the people, the nation being born in the womb of Egypt, and then you have them born, so to speak, in the Exodus generation. Now at that point Israel officially becomes a nation. So when you have the dispensation of the Law begins you have the nation, Israel, takes on a national characteristic. It didn’t have this before, it wasn’t a nation before, it was a family. One family went into Egypt and one family was transformed into a nation that came out of Egypt.

So the Law, then, is locking God into a legal relationship, or He locked Himself into a legal relationship with this national entity, Israel. And the major factor or feature in the Law is that the nation gets blessed if they respond to God’s Word and they get cursed if they reject it. Now it’s just either or.

Now, the Law does not abrogate the promise to Abraham. This is why previously I said watch out for the Abrahamic Covenant because the Abrahamic Covenant says that Israel is going to be a source of worldwide blessing, period. It is an unconditional covenant. Remember God Himself signed, it’s a contract signed by one person, God; not Abraham, Abraham didn’t sign it because this was a declaration of the sovereign plan of God. And so this promise goes on down through history, it is never abrogated, it is not as though this dispensation comes in and ends the dispensation of promise in one sense. It doesn’t cut the promise off; it adds to it and builds on top of it, so to speak.

What does this tell you? It tells you that Israel, in its relationship with God, prefigures our relationship to God as individual believer priests because this nation was supposed to be, according to Exodus 19, a kingdom of priests. Therefore, we can specify, if we want to diagram the legal relationship, we can specify Israel’s relationship to God by drawing two circles, and this is why I draw two circles up on the board so often to refer to your relationship if you’ve accepted Christ as your Savior. At the point that you received Christ you are joined with Him forever; that is your legal status before God. That cannot change because God Himself has instituted it. Now this, then, would correspond to the Abrahamic Covenant. At this point you are, what we call “elect,” you are “in the elect,” “in the Beloved,” “in Jesus Christ.” Now in the same way Israel was chosen in Abraham’s day and God made it clear that He did not chose all of Abraham’s seed. This is why you have the big story about Abraham; first you have Abraham, then you have Isaac, then you have Jacob. What’s the point in going through all those stories in Genesis? To show a principle; the principle is that God picks the seed of Abraham that are believers.

For example, Abraham had Ishmael and Isaac, one was rejected and one is rejected and one is accepted. Who is accepted? To whom is that covenant reconfirmed? Isaac. All right, come down here and you have Isaac, and you have Jacob and Esau, the same thing. Who’s rejected? Esau is, Jacob is accepted. What’s the difference? Because Jacob is a more scintillating personality than Esau? No, because his word, yakab anyway means he’s a cheater, so as far as a human person is concerned I you saw the two brothers you would like, frankly most people here would probably like Esau, but God didn’t because God looked on the heart and He saw that Jacob, even though he’s a louse, when he got down to grace, he received it, he was willing to receive it. And Esau, although he had the personality and the scintillation and so on, he rejected it and so he was just rubbed out of the picture. So that is the key to the early chapters of Genesis, so that that the Abrahamic Covenant applies to that part of Israel that is born again, that part of Israel who are believers.

Now, you have them come out of Egypt as one group en masse; everybody who comes out of Egypt as far as we can tell must have been a believer because they had to have faith to put the blood on the door. So they come out, originally, in the first generation as all believers. And here in the bottom circle, which I usually use to designate your relationship to God in time, from moment to moment, this circles, would designate the Mosaic Law. Now I’m trying to make an analogy between you and Israel so don’t get confused, you’re not under the Law. The Mosaic Law here, I’m just trying to show the mechanics of how Israel worked in history. She always, every born again person in Israel, every person who was a believer in Israel was a recipient of divine grace through the Abrahamic Covenant and was part of the elect. However, the nation itself had blessing inside the circle, had cursing outside the circle. If they were in fellowship nationally with positive volition they received blessing; if they were out of fellowship nationally they received cursing. And so it was either or situation; either blessing or cursing, with no neutrality. And the history of Israel, down through history, is one of blessing or cursing, depending on their response to what God has given to them.

The cursing under this Mosaic Law does not negate the Abrahamic Covenant. In other words, even though Israel was cursed as a nation it does not mean that God has given the nation up; it does not mean that God is going to give the nation up. It means that He is disciplining the nation for a time in history, but eventually He will use that nation…eventually. Now if you get to the individual picture of whether individual people within the nation Israel are saved it’s another story, but I want you to see the nation as a nation first. We’re dealing with the whole mass now, not individuals in the mass, the whole mass itself under this Mosaic Law, either in the circle or out of the circle.

We said that Exodus 20, as an illustration, but all the Law actually, the whole Law basically is more than a Law; it’s not just like the code of Hammurabi, do this, don’t do this, do this, don’t do this, don’t do this and so on. It’s not just a simple law code. The Mosaic Law is more than a law code; the Mosaic Law is a treaty. Now we understand a little bit about what a treaty of that era mean from Meredith Kline and other people’s work. And basically we find that this Law, in which God locked Himself into a relationship with Israel, that Law had the format of an international treaty. So therefore we find this Mosaic Law means something else. It means that it’s as though God is ruling as King. Now remember that because if we have time tonight I want to show you the deity of Christ in the Old Testament and why Israel had to look forward to a divine Messiah and not a human one. And it’s all predicated on that you understand who’s king of Israel. The king of Israel has to be God Himself and none other; the king of Israel must be God ultimately because of this Mosaic Law. The very fact that it’s a treaty form, who makes treaties? The great king. Who made the treaty with Israel? The Great King Jehovah. So therefore the king of Israel is Jehovah.

Now we also showed last time another characteristic of the age of Law from Exodus 40 was that God is locally present, geographically, in a locality, He showed a sign of His presence in the tabernacle, He was really there in the form of a cloud and a pillar of fire. He was there in the Solomonic temple, with the Shekinah glory so that if you had been there and you were the high priest you could have gone in there with a camera and photographed the glory of God. Now what you would have gotten on your slide I don’t know what it would look like; I presume from the description in the Bible that it was kind of a vaporous light. But the Shekinah glory never appears, it goes out of history in 586 BC and the only other time it appears in history is the star of Bethlehem. Dr. Pentecost at seminary I think adequately explained the star of Bethlehem is actually the Shekinah glory that comes back to the earth to point the way to Jesus Christ. It was not a conjunction of stars; stars don’t move and stop. This did, and the wise men followed this star and then the star stopped, and that’s not an astronomical thing; it just doesn’t work out that way. So therefore it’s apparent that once the Shekinah glory left the temple in 586 under a condition of cursing, it never came back again until Messiah would come.

Now we come to the crucial passage of the Old Testament, Leviticus 26. Deuteronomy 28 is a parallel to this passage, Leviticus 26. this is an important chapter because it outlines for you the principles that God is going to use in history to work with this nation. So if you look down through the corridors of time and study the Old Testament and you’re an excellent historian with 100% perception you would notice what we call the five degrees of discipline applied to the nation Israel and they are described for us in Leviticus 26. Let’s look at these five degrees of discipline. Actually, if you wanted to draw a chart of Israel’s history you could do it by looking at these five degrees of discipline.

The first degree is in Leviticus 26:14-17, those of you who have a Scofield Bible disregard the note about the sixth chastisement, there isn’t any sixth chastisement, there’s only five. The fist one, verses 14-17, “But if ye will not hearken unto Me, and will not do all these commandments, [15] And if ye shall despise My statutes, or if your soul abhor Mine ordinances, so that you will not do all My commandments, but that you break My covenant, [16] I will also do this to you: I will appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning fever, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart; and ye shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. [17] And I will set My face against you, and you shall be saline before your enemies; they that hate you shall reign over you, and ye shall flee when none pursue.”

Now that’s quite a strong sentence. What God is saying is what He says every time in history when He elects a group, and people as we do, who are Calvinistic in the sense that we believe in eternal security have to always recall that there’s another side of the coin to eternal security and the other side of the coin means discipline, and although we are eternally secure, the eternal security doctrine implies on the other side that in time God is going to spank because if we are eternally secure the only time He can punish the believer is in history, is in time, this life. And it doesn’t mean punish, it means in the sense of discipline to bring up to a path, it’s not that He’s a meany and likes to punish people. The point is that He disciplines people. And Hebrews 12 goes so far as to say that if you raise hell and get away with it with zero discipline, the chances are you’re not a believer. That’s how strong the New Testament is on this doctrine of discipline. A child of God can go just so far before he gets clobbered. Now what happens usually is that you have a believer get out of fellowship and he has what we call s-i-m, now for those of you who are interested in missions, that’s not the Sudan Interior Mission, it’s self-induced misery, and usually God does not have to discipline us because usually we wind up disciplining ourselves through our own misery. So God, then, is interested in disciplining.

Now look at the second degree, Leviticus 26:18, “And if ye will not yet for all this hearken unto Me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins. [19] And I will break the pride of your power; and I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as bronze,” which is an idiom which means He is going to remove the blessings from the weather and the climate. [20] And your strength shall be spent in vain; for your land shall not yield her increase, neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruits.” In other words, what God is doing here, this is an agricultural economy and He’s turning off the spicket, and He’s going to dry up the whole economy; He’s going to bring business calamity. So the second degree of discipline is climatic adversity and business failure. Those of you who aren’t used to thinking of God actively involving Himself in the history, in the big issues of history, you’d better reorient your thinking because this is the God who runs history and I want you to see what He does to nations.

The third degree of discipline, this is if they don’t listen to the first and second degree, He’s like a father, He spanks some more and so this is the third time He spanks. Leviticus 26:21-22, “And if you walk contrary unto Me, and will not hearken unto Me, I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins. [22] And I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number; and your highways shall be desolate.” When we get into some of the prophets you’re going to see how that came literally true; hordes of insects, hordes of wild animals came in and almost destroyed the nation.

The fourth degree of discipline, Leviticus 26:23-26, “And if ye will not be reformed by Me by these things, but will walk contrary unto Me, [24] Then I will also walk contrary unto you, and will punish you yet seven times for your sins.” Now watch, it gets really intense here. [25] “And I will bring a sword upon you, that shall avenge the vengeance of My covenant; and when you are gathered together within your cities, I will send a pestilence among you, and ye shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy. [26] And when I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver you your bread again by weight; and ye shall eat, and not be satisfied.” Famine, tremendous famine, a tremendous food shortage; there is enemy occupation. This again is God’s fourth degree of discipline.

Now finally the fifth and most horrible type of discipline ever know in history, actually, executed upon a nation begins in Leviticus 26:27, “And if you will not for all this hearken unto me, but walk contrary unto Me, [28] Then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury” now you see how God reacts when His children disobey? You see, the Gentiles don’t get this, Israel gets it because Israel was selected to do a job and she doesn’t do it and God demands that she does, and He will discipline to see that she does do it. And this is the same thing why believers, maybe you’ve wondered about this, how come I never can get away with anything and everybody else can. Well, God sees to it you’re not going to get away with things because He’s is in the business of seeing that you don’t get away with it. And so often times you’ll find yourself frustrated in life because it seems like you can’t step out of line two feet without getting caught. An unbeliever can go out and do all sorts, go to San Francisco and bring back 1600 pills of LSD like some kid did last week and scatter them all over town; the police only got 6 out of the 1600 pills, now you can figure out where the rest of the pills went.

Continuing, Leviticus 26:29, “And you shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat. [30] And I will destroy your high places and but down your images, and cast your carcasses upon the carcasses of your idols, and My shall abhor you.” You see almost what we would call the poetic irony of this. You get this in Isaiah, they burn the idols, verse 30, Israel goes into idolatry and what does God do? He kills them and then takes their bodies and sticks them on the idols, as though here’s your god, you like him, fine, I’ll put you in the same heap. “…cast your carcasses upon the carcasses of your idols, and My soul shall abhor you. [31] And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savor of your sweet odors,” which is an idiom for prayer. “If I regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear me.” This is again an idiom for prayer, the sweet smell before God. [32] “And I will bring the land into desolation: and your enemies who dwell therein shall be astonished at it. [33] “I will scatter you” now verse 33 is the beginning of the prediction of the final judgment upon Israel, the Diaspora. “I will scatter you among the nations, and will draw out a sword after you; and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. [34] Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lies desolate, and ye are in your enemies’ land; then shall the land rest, and enjoy her sabbaths. [35] As long as it lies desolate it shall rest; because it did not rest in your Sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon it.”

Now he’s talking here about one that was fulfilled literally. Israel went into captivity for seventy years, in the Babylonian captivity. And if you add up and study chronology, I’m told by those who do this that it’s interesting but they spent a year in jail for every sabbatical release that they forgot to give to the land. The land was supposed to be released every seventh year, and every fiftieth they had the jubilee, and these things worked out so that they spent a year in the cooler for every act of disobedience that they made on this one provision. So that’s how serious God was. He said okay, you can fool around, I’m not going to tamper with your volition; you’re a free responsible person and you can go out but you’re not going to get away with it, and so this is what He has done.

Leviticus 26:37, “And they shall fall one upon another, as it were before a sword, when none pursues, and you shall have no power to stand before your enemies. [38] And you shall perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up. [39] And they who are left of you shall pine way in their iniquity in your enemies’ lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them.” And later on it goes to show that He is going to remember this covenant. Watch. Those of you who have legalistic tendencies, of course, are very happy about all this, and you like to see other people get disciplined. But God never ends on a legalistic note. He always ends on a grace note, so if you’ll continue reading:

Leviticus 26:40, “If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against Me, and that also they have walked contrary unto Me, [41] And that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land…” and so on, “Then,” verse 42 will I remember My covenant with Jacob, and also My covenant with Isaac, and also My covenant with Abraham will I remembver; and I will remember the land.” Verse 45, “But I will for their sakes remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought forth in the land of Egypt of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God: I am the LORD.” So God says that there’s going to be a time when the discipline will end. But I want you to see something because this is going to happen two times in history. It happened one time in 586 BC when the Neo-Babylonian Empire came in under Nebuchadnezzar and completely eliminated the nation, shipped them out, literally, and left a group of peasants to run the land so that the land wouldn’t go foul. So they took this nation out.

Now at the end of 70 years the discipline was removed from the nation in part, but how was it removed? It was removed because Daniel, in the book of Daniel confessed, as a national confessor to the nation in Daniel 10. He said Lord, I confess the iniquities of my people, he fulfilled Leviticus 26 and the discipline was ended. So similarly has gone into the second captivity in 70 AD, when the temple was destroyed and you had the beginning of the end for the nation Israel, she is in Diaspora now and the only way she can get back, although it’s a prophesied event that it will happen, the only way she can get back is for herself to confess her sin once again and that’s why Zechariah prophesies “they shall look upon Him whom they have pieced” and there will be national mourning, because there will come a time when Israel will confess their sin and will be restored to the program of God. But she is not restored to the program of God until she recognizes that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah and when she does this as a nation then nationally she is restored to the program of God. So watch how these rules operate. The discipline is predicted to end; that’s a sovereign declaration but the means by which the discipline is ended is by a volitional act, an act of human volition… [tape turns]

… for approximately 100 to 150, maybe 300 years. Then we have Samuel and the kings, so we say that this first period of Israel’s history, from about 1400 down to 1050 is the pre-monarchial period. This is without kings; pre-monarchial, no kings in this period of time. You have, you might say a theocracy operating in its purest form. Then after this, you have from 1050 on down until 950 you have a monarchy; the first king was Saul; Saul screwed up and so God kicked him out and brought in David. Then David, He promised that He will never kick out your son, there will always be a son of David and only a son of David sitting on the throne of Israel. Now down in 950 we come down to a man by the name of Solomon, when he starts in Solomon teaches his son everything; Solomon gives his son one of the best educations that any young man has ever received. The young man’s name is Rehoboam, and Rehoboam is a cluck; he gets on the throne, brings his teen-age gang in and within two years they have split the nation. This is like a lot of the Harvard crowd that was trying to run the nation a few years ago; the young men just do not have the accumulated wisdom and they always manage to foul it up and Rehoboam did.

So you have the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. The northern kingdom is known as Israel, the southern kingdom is known as Judea. The northern kingdom is destroyed in 721 BC. They reach their end; God says I disciplined, I disciplined, I disciplined, I disciplined, now I’ve had it so He kicked them out of the land. Now we have the southern kingdom; this goes on to 586 BC; under the Neo-Babylonian Empire they are removed from the land, they go into captivity for 70 years, and come back, some of them, in 516, the 70 year captivity. Now watch it; you have the monarch period up from 1400 to 1050; the next period of Israel’s history is from 1050 on down to 586, this is the time of the monarchy, when there was a human king ruling in place of God. So this time we call it the age of the monarchy.

Now when this collapsed, when the monarchy collapsed, Israel has never been the same since, including the time of Jesus Christ. Israel has not been the same since 586 BC. If you examine the history of Israel 586 is a crucial year because 586 marks the end of Israel’s national existence. From this point on Israel technically no longer even exists as an independent nation. So from this time on not only do you have the ten tribes going out here, you have two tribes going out here, you have Jews scattered all over the ancient world, some and only some come back in 516 BC, a very small remnant; most of them are scattered around. What happened to these people? Read the book of Esther; that book was written to tell you about what happened to those who never came back to the land. So they come back but only some of them; it’s like the pilgrims coming to America, just a handful come back and start all over again.

The signal that God has done something radical in history in 586 BC was the apocalyptic book of Daniel. And you remember the four visions of Daniel; remember the visions of the four beasts that he saw and he saw the fact that now this would be the times of the Gentiles, he saw that first of all, he saw the first great beast which will signify the Babylonian Empire, then the Medo-Persian Empire, then the Greek Empire, then the Roman Empire. So according to Daniel’s book we have from 586 BC on in history the entire world basically has been given over to the Gentiles. Israel has lost her right to national independence because of her rejection at this point, even though she comes back in part in 516 BC. But I want to impress upon you 586 BC, this is a crucial date; Israel was never the same after this. You can sense it in reading the Old Testament, everything is lost and this is peanuts, operation peanuts from that point on compared to what Israel used to be.

All right, so she comes back on down through history and she comes down to the time of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ comes in and He did certain things, led to a national rejection, and so you have this problem. You have Jesus Christ, we’ll start the timeline here, you have Jesus Christ coming to the nation and announcing that He is the Messiah and if they will accept Him, then He will bring in the kingdom. This is why Jesus did not preach the gospel that you and I preach, the gospel of grace, He preached the gospel of the kingdom, which included salvation but it’s basic thrust was Israel, receive Me as your Messiah and I will gather you together and we can start the millennium now. But they rejected, and because they rejected Jesus Christ God gave the magic number forty again; every time you see forty in the Bible it usually refers to a testing period. And so therefore from 30 AD on to 70 AD God gave Israel 40 more years of grace to respond to Jesus Christ, and this is the teaching of the book of Acts.

But in 70 AD the time ran out and God began to lower the boom and at this time you have a man by the name of Vespasian. Vespasian was one of the greatest Roman generals in history. Vespasian brought his legions in and he decided they’d had enough of this revolt that was going on in Israel, and he wanted to put them down. And so he marched up to Jerusalem with his armies and surrounded them, and the Jewish people would get up on top of the wall and spit at the Romans. You don’t spit at Romans. And people in the ancient world found out that you don’t spit in the Roman’s face. You can do it to a policeman in America in 1969 but you never dare do that to a Roman soldier in 69 because if you did you found yourself on the wrong end of a machaira, which is a two-edged sword. So Vespasian said okay, I’ve had enough of these boys and so he began to build these big barricades and start the siege of Jerusalem. Vespasian was halfway through the siege of Jerusalem when he got word that the Emperor had died and Vespasian went back to Rome to become Emperor and he left his son, which we know in history by the name of Titus, and Titus liked what his father did, he was a good general in his own right, and he took over his father’s army and finished the slaughter.

The story goes that as Titus moved into the city he barricaded the city for three years, I think Josephus says, people got so hungry during this time that they would eat their own babies. And it’s one of the most vicious horrible sieges of history where you can read how Josephus describes the people were so hungry they’d take the shoes off their feet to eat the soles and when this was done they began to kill the dogs and the cats and the rats and the mice and every living thing in the city. And when this was done even the women killed their babies and would start to eat them, and at various times during the siege people’s hunger was so great that one woman would be eating a piece of her baby and another woman would come up and pull it out of her mouth. This is what goes on, and this is one of the most horrible sieges that has ever been known in history.

But this again is the response to God’s principles laid down in Leviticus 26, don’t mess with Me and My word because you’re going to be in trouble. And I can imagine people crying in Jerusalem, why is God letting this happen to us and so on. All you have to do is read the Word; it’s right in there, this is why God let it happen to you, because you rejected the gift, Truth, Jesus Christ, you rejected His Word and so on; it’s very simple.

So this went on and finally Titus got into the city, they broke through the walls and they were going to save… the Romans were like a lot of our military men today, they are not the people that you often hear of, that the TV commentators speak on TV and the way they speak it sounds like anybody that wears a uniform of the United States Armed Forces is some sort of a militarist that loves to go around killing people. That is a false image; the people who like to kill people, and the people who loved to slaughter people are your politicians and the United Nations and elsewhere, such as the butcher of Katanga and so on. Everywhere you find the United Nations and politicians engaged in war you will find horrible suffering. Not where you find military men in charge. Remember that the suffering in World War II was brought on by a civilian, Adolph Hitler, not the German general staff. If the German general staff had their say Britain could have been knocked off very quickly and with a minimum loss of casualties but Hitler wasn’t content with that; as a civilian he wanted to see them suffer and so he ordered the German Luftwaffe to come in and bomb London, and of course by doing so he lost his Luftwaffe. So therefore you see in the history of man it’s usually the military men that are the conservatives.

Titus was such a man and he gave strict orders to his soldiers, when you march into this city and you break through the walls, save the temple. But under the sovereignty of God that temple could not be saved because God had already predicted in Matthew 24 that that temple would be destroyed. Jesus said see those stones; there won’t be one left upon another, it’s just going to be a heap of rubble. So therefore even though Titus gave his orders to his strictly disciplined soldiers, leave the temple alone, somehow, and historians still to this day do not know what happened but as the Roman soldiers were charging someone, and some of them think the Jewish zealots did it, threw a torch into the temple that caught fire onto the tremendous curtains inside the temple and the thing burned, and while it was burning everything went wild and the whole thing came down. But it was an accident and Titus and the Romans did not want to destroy the temple, buy you see, God had predicted that that is what would happen, and in spite of Titus and his orders to his army, there was an accident that happened in the middle of that battle fulfilling this divine prophecy.

Now we come down to the final Diaspora, there is one intermediate step, in 135 or 130 I think the revolution of Bar-Kokhba, which was another revolt at this time but generally you have Israel dispersed throughout Europe at this time. And she goes back down into Diaspora condition, not to appear until 1948 when the nation Israel comes back. Now the nation Israel’s rendezvous in 1948, partial rendezvous since there are more Jews in the United States and probably in Brooklyn than there in Israel, yet there is a coming back. Now this coming back, I want to go into this because some of you asked questions about it.

The return of Israel is a return in unbelief. It is not saying that because they’re returning these people are saved. That’s not what the Bible is saying. What the Bible is saying is that in the sovereign plan of God Israel must be in the land, partially at least, when Jesus Christ returns. Many of the predictions have to be fulfilled that He’s going to come and stand on the Mount of Olives literally, and He’s going to come and there’s going to be a temple there and so on. All these prophecies to be fulfilled would deduce that Israel has to be in the land at that point in time in history when Jesus comes again. So therefore, since Israel has to be in the land it is of prophetic significance that they are returning to the land and they become a nation in 1948. However, let me warn you; this is not saying Israel could not be thrown out of the land tomorrow, come back in again to fulfill the prophecy. In other words, there’s no guarantee that Israel will from 1948 until the return of Christ be continually in the land. The prophecy only gives us this information, that when Christ comes and the tribulation begins and all the rest of it, when that happens, then Israel will be partially in the land. That’s all we know from prophecy. Now 1948 is significant because it’s the first time that Israel has even had a national existence since this time in history.

So you have Israel coming back to the land now, it does not mean that the individual Jews that come back to the land are saved people; that’s not what it says. This is not to say that Israel is saved; what it is saying is that this is one of these…you might say before God rules the game, we’re in the eighth inning, so to speak, and you can begin to see the final climactic means of history as God carefully lays step by step in preparation for the final climax and this is one step that has to happen before Christ returns. That is why the return of Israel to the land is significant.

So now we come down to the prophecy of Zechariah 12:10. Again, this is a prophecy about what the nation is going to do. Zechariah was a prophet that lived after Israel came back into the land, after the 70 year captivity, and you note a series of fantastic predictions, and many of these predictions are just absolutely amazing at how they worked out. For example, there’s one prophecy in this book of Zechariah that says that Jesus Christ in preincarnate form appears to Zechariah and says to Zechariah, I’m going to build a wall of fire around to protect you, because Zechariah is panicked, he comes back and it’s like the pilgrims landing in Massachusetts, there’s just a few people and there’s a lot of wild Indians around, how are we going to survive, and Jesus Christ says you just relax, you are here in My will, you trust My promises and I will provide the defense. That’s “Casting all your care upon Him for He cares for you,” it’s the same principle.

So in Zechariah 12:10 Zechariah makes another prophecy, God speaking through Zechariah, “And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem,” now see, some people have to be living in Jerusalem to fulfill the prophecy, and furthermore they have to be Jews because it’s the house of David, “the Spirit of grace and of supplications; and they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his first-born. [11] In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon, in the Valley of Megiddon. [12] And the land shall mourn, every family apart; the family of the house of David apart, and their wives apart; the family of the house of Nathan apart, and their wives apart” and so on. So here you have a tremendous national mourning.

Now turn to Zechariah 14:4, this is why, just as they mourn, they realize who Jesus is and as a nation they suddenly repent in history, which will make one of the most dramatic headlines that the world’s newspapers will ever have, is that you have a complete national…imagine if this happened in our day, to catch the significance of this prophecy let’s just imagine, suppose you had a nation, just suppose the state of Texas, okay, let’s just think of Texas and all the people that live in Texas, or the majority, say 90% of Texans were suddenly to believe on Jesus Christ within a matter of hours and suddenly turn to the Bible, you can imagine the fantastic effect this would have. Well, this is what effect is predicted in Zechariah, to visualize what this prophecy is saying.

There’s going to be a sudden national conversion, and then what is going to happen. Zechariah 14:4, speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ, “And His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives,” now isn’t this interesting, you haven’t even had the concept of the incarnation yet, and yet here in the Old Testament you’ve got the feet of Jehovah standing, “in that day upon the Mount of Olives which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall cleave in its midst toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south.” I was talking to Arnold Fruchtenbaum who’d been there and he pointed out that there is a geographical fault that lies right through the Mount of Olives and it’s interesting, just as though that’s the Trojan Horse; God has already geologically set it up and here’s the prophecy in Zechariah 14:4 that when Jesus Christ returns He’s going to locally descend to that geographical point and when He does there’s going to be an earthquake to split that mountain. And today we know there’s a fault lying right east-west through the Mount of Olives. Pan American was the one that paid for the research, they were going to build a hotel up on the top of the Mount of Olives and they started their ground survey and they decided perhaps they’d better not build a hotel, not because they believed Zechariah 14:4, it was on strictly structural grounds. So here we have then the prophecies that are coming through in the nation Israel.

Let’s go to the third section in the Law. The third great category under each dispensation, we’ve given you number one, the Scripture; number two, we’ve discussed the characteristics of the age; number three we give you a summary of the revelation made available in that age because the key note of dispensationalism is that it’s a careful analysis of the progress of divine revelation in history. If you want to think of dispensations in the most simple fashion, just think of it as God’s outline of history. You who have studied history in school know that they give you this jazz about the stone age and the iron age and frankly I’m not personally convinced that that’s a valid distinction, but the stone age and the iron age and this kind of age, and Marshall McLuhan has the electric age, the atomic age and so on. These are categories; well, that’s all a dispensation is; it’s a category of history from God’s viewpoint.

Now what about the amount of revelation they knew. First of all they still knew all of the old revelation that we’ve gone through in the previous dispensations. Very quickly, the command to reproduce in Genesis; the command to subdue the earth in Genesis; a knowledge of judgment from Genesis 3, a knowledge of grace in Genesis 3, a knowledge of death in Genesis 3, divine institution of government to execute God’s judgments in history, Genesis 9; divine institution given to extent and claim, Genesis 11; destiny of the world is now linked to Israel forever, Genesis 12; God Himself will ultimately save the world and reign, Genesis, 12, and a peculiar set of rules for the elect. Now we’ve gone through all those, now what. The age of the Law adds new content; new information is now added in this dispensation.

What is this new information that’s added to this previous information? First, the condition of Israel nationally depends upon her response to her Lord. In other words, before we knew that God was going to work through Israel, but now in the Law it’s made clear that Israel nationally is blessed only as she responds to Jehovah. So the role of volition comes in.

The second thing we know and this I want to spend the rest of our time on. God works politically through Israel as her king. That’s the second thing we know. In other words, the age of the Law tells us a lot about Israel; it tells us that her condition in history is a function of her response toward God; it also tells us that God rules her as the king. Now I want to show you an amazing parallel in prophecy because some people say that this business about Jesus being God and man is something that only appears in the New Testament, and you never get it in the Old Testament, and why does the Christian church make a big issue about Jesus Christ being undiminished deity in true humanity united in one person without mixture forever. Now why do they say that? The so-called doctrine of the hypostatic union; because in the Old Testament the issue is what kind of a king does it take to rule Israel. Now watch, I am going to present two parallel lines; one line is one set of prophecies that says that Israel’s king is only God Himself. The other line of prophecy says that Israel’s king is going to be a man and he’s going to be the Son of David. Now how do you combine the two lines without getting a God-man. If one set of prophecies say God Himself is king, and the next set of prophecies say that the king is going to be the Son of David, would you please tell me how you can synthesize the two without getting a God-man. You’ve got to, that’s the only way the two passages will fit. If you say God Himself is going to reign and He’s not a man, then you’ve eliminated one set of prophecies. If you say the king is going to be a man who is going to reign, then God is not the king any more.

Let’s look at the first set of prophecies, the prophecies that have to do with the fact that God Himself is going to be the king. We start in Isaiah 52:7-10, this is the prophecy of an announcement and there’s going to be a future announcement that God has begun to reign in Israel, and I claim that this is a set of prophecies that has to do with the fact that their king has to be God. Let’s read: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that brings good tidings, that publish peace; that bring good tidings of good, that publish salvation; that saith upon Zion, Thy God reigns!” Now the word “reign” is malak and it’s the word to rule as a king; the king is here and he’s now reigning. Verse 8, “Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice; with the voice together shall they sing; for they shall see eye to eye, when the Lord shall bring again Zion. [9] Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places of Jerusalem; for the LORD has comforted His people, He has redeemed Jerusalem. [10] The LORD has made bare His holy arm,” and the word “holy arm” is the Messianic code word in the Old Testament, in other words it’s a symbol for Jesus Christ. “He has made bare His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.”

So therefore it’s not only predicting a nation repentance but in verse 7, the phrase “Thy God reigns.” Now you may say that’s an insignificant verse but now I want to point you to the enthronement Psalms that all go out of this one announcement. Start at Psalm 47. There’s a whole set of Psalms in the Old Testament that hang together and that are technically known by Old Testament scholars as the enthronement Psalms. All of these enthronement Psalms amplify Isaiah’s announcement, “Thy God reigns.” All of them! So here you have a set of Psalms amplifying the fact that the God-king has come.

The first Psalm in the set is Psalm 47:1, I’ll just summarize these Psalms because we’ve got a bunch of them and I just want to take you through to give you the picture. “Oh, clap your hands, all ye peoples; shout unto God with the voice of triumph. [2] For the LORD Most High is awe inspiring, He is a great King over all the earth. [3] He shall subdue the peoples under us, and the nations under our feet.” Verse 5, “God is gone up with a shout, the LORD with the sound of a trumpet. [6] Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises unto our King, sing praises. [7] For God is the King of all the earth; sing ye praises with understanding. [8] God reigns,” there’s malak, He reigns politically “over the nations; God sits upon the throne of His holiness. [9] The princes of the peoples are gathered together, even the people of the God of Abraham; for the shields of the earth belong unto God. He is greatly exalted.” There you have an amplification of Isaiah’s announcement.

Turn to Psalm 96, the next in the set of so-called enthronement Psalms. You can recognize an enthronement Psalm as a rule of interpretation, you’ll always recognize an enthronement Psalm by the phrase Elohim malak, or God reigns, or Yahweh malak, Jehovah reigns. That’s the key word. Whenever you see that in the Psalm, that Psalm is an enthronement Psalm. Psalm 96:1, “Oh, sing unto the LORD a new song; sing unto the LORD, all the earth. [2] Sing unto the LORD, bless His name; show forth His salvation from day to day.” Now some of you immediately recognize this is in some of our hymns, but we can thank the ignorance of the hymn writer for not bringing out the true point. Do you realize what you’re singing about when you’re singing this? You’re singing about the Second Advent of Jesus Christ. [3] Declare His glory among the nations, His wonders among all peoples. [4] For the LORD is great, and greatly t be praised; He is to be feared above all gods.”

By the way, Psalm 96:5 proves monotheism in the Old Testament; you know, it talks about God and they oh well, Israel just believed in worshiping one God among many gods that existed; look at verse 5 again. “For all the gods of the nations are idols; but the LORD made the heavens.” So that proves that Israel did not believe the gods were real. “[6] Honor and majesty are before Him, strength and beauty are in His sanctuary. [7] Give unto the LORD, O ye kindreds of the peoples; give unto the LORD glory and strength. [8] Give unto the LORD the glory due unto His name; bring an offering, and come into His courts. [9] O, worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness; fear before Him all the earth.” Now verse 10, “Say among the nations that the LORD reigns.” There you have that same announcement of Isaiah 52, “Jehovah reigns. [The world also shall be established that it shall not be moved; He shall judge the peoples righteously. [11] Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and the fullness thereof. [12] Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein; then shall all the trees of the forest rejoice. [13] Before the LORD; for He comes, for He comes to judge the earth; He shall judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with His truth.]”

Next Psalm is 97:1 and you needn’t but read verse 1 to see that “The LORD reigns; let the earth rejoice; let the multitude of continents be glad. [2] Clouds and darkness are round about him; righteousness and justice are the habitation of His throne,” and so on. These would make fantastic lyrics for hymns, instead of these Mickey Mouse things we work with.

Psalm 98:1, “Oh, sing unto the LORD a new song; for He has done marvelous things; His right hand, and his holy arm, have gotten Him the victory. [2] The LORD has made known His salvation; his righteousness has He openly shown in the sight of the nations. [3] He has remembered His mercy and His truth toward the house of Israel; all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.” Verse 4, “Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all the earth; make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise. [5] Sing unto the LORD with the harp; with the harp, and with the voice of a psalm. [6] With trumpets and sound of cornet make a joyful noise before the LORD, the King. [7, Let the sea roar, and the fullness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein. [8] Let the floods clap their hands; let the hills be joyful together [9] Before the LORD; for He comes to judge the earth; with righteousness shall He judge the world, and the peoples with equity.”

Psalm 99:1 is another enthronement Psalm, look at verse 1, “The LORD reigns; let the peoples tremble. Ht sits between the cherubim; let the earth be moved. [2] The LORD is great in Zion, and He is high above all the peoples. [3, Let them praise thy Great and awe-inspiring name, for it is holy. [4] The king’s strength also loves justice; thou dost establish equity, thou executes justice and righteousness in Jacob. [5] Exalt ye the LORD our God, and worship at His footstool; for He is holy.]” All these are prophetic enthronement Psalms that God Himself is going to reign.\

Now two final verses in this series; Isaiah 9:6, Now we have what is known among scholars of the ancient east as a tutelary in verse 6. Now what is a tutelary? A tutelary is a list of king names. You can find tutelaries in Egypt, Assyria, and all the ancient cultures of the east. Tutelaries are names given to the king when he sits on the throne and he describes himself. For example, if you remember in the newspaper when Haile Salasse came to the United States, I think it was an AP dispatch, it gave his name, it’s humorous to read these things but something about the lion of the tribe of Judah and it goes on and on, he’s got about twenty names, and you say well what, does the guy walk in one day and call him the lion of the tribe of Judah, how ya’ doin’, and then the next day they walk in and call him something else. No; these titles were never used in a personal conversation; they were used to identify the destiny and the character of the king. And so when the man sat on the throne they’d hand him the tutelary which was a set of names that described the king’s character. Now this is the tutelary of the great Messiah, and when He sits on the throne He has these characteristics. These are what these names are about.

[“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulder; and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. [7] Of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon His kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with justice and with righteousness from henceforth even forever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this.”] The first name is “Wonderful Counselor,” no comma between “Wonderful” and “Counselor,” that’s all one title. He is called “Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God,” literally “The Father of Eternity,” not the everlasting Father, “the Father of eternity, the Prince of Peace.” Now the word, “The Mighty God” is a word which means God Himself. If you doubt that turn to Isaiah 10:21, some people say “The Mighty God” is not God. “The remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob, unto the mighty God.” Now is that God or someone else? It’s obviously Jehovah. So therefore part of this tutelary is to be called God Himself.

Now stop and think of the impact in a monotheistic nation of calling a man God. Now the more you think about this how can it possibly anything else but God, it couldn’t be anything else but God, it’d be blasphemy to get up in a nation that is so intensely monotheistic and call Himself “Mighty God.” You might get away with it in Assyria, you might get away with it in Egypt, but you’d never get away with it in Israel, unless it were really true.

All right, one more verse in the series; Micah 5:2, another title of the Messiah, “But thou, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting,” and the word “everlasting” means from eternity, and there’s an attribute of God. Who has been “from everlasting?” Only God, and so therefore this an ascription of the deity of the coming Messiah.

Next week we’ll come back and look at the other parallel line of Messianic prophecies, the fact that not only is Messiah supposed to be God who reigns, but He’s also going to be a man, the Son of David. Then the obvious question, who is history fulfills the two sets of prophecies.