Smoodock's Blog

Long ago, actually, in the very beginning of the Lord’s covenant with Israel, he told Moses that after his death Israel would turn away from the Lord and follow other gods, and the Lord would judge them in the latter days (Deuteronomy 31:29). He would judge them for breaking their covenant with him, but he wouldn’t do that until after he had fulfilled his promise to the fathers by bringing their children, Israel, into the land that flowed with milk and honey (Deuteronomy 31:16, 20). The time of Israel’s judgment, therefore, would come in the latter days or the last days (Deuteronomy 31:29), i.e. the end of the age, the end of the age of the Old Covenant that the Lord made with Israel. This is what the Apostles were concerned about, when Jesus predicted the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem (Matthew 23:37-38; 24:3). They were astonished at his prediction, because they didn’t know how his coming, as King, could occur, if his coming into his Kingdom meant destroying the Temple and, thus, the covenant Israel had with God.

Notice what the Lord told Moses, and then commanded him to write a song (i.e. Deuteronomy 32) as a witness for God and against Israel:

And the LORD appeared in the tabernacle in a pillar of a cloud: and the pillar of the cloud stood over the door of the tabernacle. And the LORD said unto Moses, Behold, you will sleep with your fathers; and this people will rise up, and go a whoring after the gods of the strangers of the land, where they go to be among them, and will forsake me, and break my covenant which I have made with them. Then my anger will be kindled against them in that day, and I shall forsake them, and I shall hide my face from them, and they will be devoured, and many evils and troubles will befall them; so that they will say in that day, “Are not these evils come upon us, because our God is not among us?” And I shall surely hide my face in that day for all the evils which they will have wrought, in that they are turned unto other gods. Now therefore write this song, and teach it the children of Israel: put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me against the children of Israel. For when I shall have brought them into the land which I swore unto their fathers, that flows with milk and honey; and they will have eaten and filled themselves, and waxed fat; then will they turn unto other gods, and serve them, and provoke me, and break my covenant (Deuteronomy 31:15-20; emphasis mine).

Notice the phrase “in that day” and notice as well Paul’s use of it in 2Thessalonians 1:10, “When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day.” Moses used the phrase for judgment, but Paul uses it here for blessing. Nevertheless, the time of the blessing of the saints, the faithful of the Lord, is also the time of judgment upon the unfaithful ones, the disobedient and unrighteous who lift up their hands against the righteous in an effort to halt the preaching of the Gospel (2Thessalonians 1:4-9). In other words, unbelievers are in rebellion against the Lord, because they seek to prevent the righteous from doing what the Lord had commanded them to do (viz. Matthew 23:31-36; 1Thessalonians 1:14-16).

It was because of this rebellion that the children of Israel were judged in 70 AD with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, which brought the Old Covenant to an abrupt end. There is no Old Covenant today. Israel, the physical nation, has no covenant with God. The Lord brought **that** covenant to an end and made a New Covenant, not with the nation of Israel in the Middle East, but with the nation that isn’t a nation (Deuteronomy 32:21; Romans 10:19), the nation of God composed of the faithful of Israel and repentant gentiles, which is scattered throughout the nations of this world.