Unveiled Faces, Transformation & God's Purposes in Israel

 One of the things that I learned from Francis Frangipane is that God calls us to a love for others that is greater than what we can rise to without knowing His love in greater and greater measures.

I do believe this is the spiritual principle behind Psalm 84:7 "They go from strength to strength, until each appears before God in Zion." which finds its New Testament parallel in 2 Corinthians 3:17-18 "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into His image with intensifying glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit."

The reference to "unveiled face" hearkens back to Moses seeing God with an unveiled face, while all the children of Israel that Moses was leading to the Promised Land could not bear seeing the full glory of God, so they had to have a veil over their faces.

It was according to plan, as Deuteronomy 29:4 explains: "You saw with your own eyes the great trials, and those miraculous signs and wonders. Yet to this day the LORD has not given you a mind to understand, eyes to see, or ears to hear." And Romans 11:8 verifies it: "...as it is written: "God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that could not see, and ears that could not hear, to this very day." To what end? Romans 11:31-32 "so they (the Chosen People) too have now disobeyed, in order that they too may now receive mercy through the mercy shown to you. For God has bound up everyone to disobedience so that He may have mercy on everyone."

In the story of the "Transfiguration" better understood as "Transformation" Jesus takes Peter, James and John to a high mountain apart for prayer. While praying Jesus was "transformed," "His face did shine as the sun," "and his garments became glistering, exceeding white, so as no fuller on earth can whiten them." Moses and Elijah appeared to talk to Jesus about His coming self-sacrifice.

Now Peter, James and John witnessed these things but they were not instantly transformed themselves as the rest of the books of the New Testament show. They still had imperfect love, they still argued among themselves, they still separated because of conflicts, but they were each on God's journey of transformation of perfecting them in love, as were the other apostles and disciples ever since.

The thing I learned from Francis Frangipane is that is our journey too. We are not capable of just loving everybody as Yeshua/Jesus loves us, but we are able to commit to that journey to expand our love. Our first circle of love is loving those closest to us, our families. Some have more serious challenges with that than others, but we really cannot love the greater world if we do not find the way to love our own families with the love of the Lord first.

Our journey into loving like God loves is one that expands - strength to strength, glory to glory. It begins close and expands to include more and more. The key, if we go by what took place on the Mount of Transformation with Jesus, is that we go and pray for the ones we find it hard to love. God takes those prayers and transforms us first and grows our capacity to love others even farther away from us.

Yeshua, Jesus, laid down His own life in love for sinners, that we could join Him in being transformed by God from mere humanity, to people touched by God's love and glory, so we could reflect His glory through love to a people with veiled faces.

2 Corinthians 3:14-18 But their minds were closed (up by God). For to this day the same veil remains at the reading of the old covenant. It has not been lifted, because ONLY IN MESSIAH can it be removed. And even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into His image with intensifying glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

Praying for the removing of the veil over Jewish faces, is in perfect timing with God's ultimate purposes now: that "all Israel shall be saved." If that is so, then also it is so that those you have desired to open their eyes of faith in Jesus is also in perfect timing.

P.S. It also needs to be said that too much of Christian time has been focused on these verses in 2 Corinthians about the passing away of the Old Covenant to make way for the New Covenant in seeking to feel superior over "the Chosen People" that it has blinded much of Christianity from seeing all of the passages that say it was GOD who blocked the Jews from seeing so He could extend to the rest of the peoples of the world, the ONLY pathway to God and His eternal life. Only when we take that into account can we truly love Israel as we ought, when we see it we will see also that God PURPOSES to bring the Jews into right standing ONLY through faith in Yeshua. They don't have some other deal, but God has executed His plan for salvation of humanity through distinct phases - and we are in the the phase at long last when "all Israel shall be saved" by faith in the Messiah Yeshua.

We are not Under the Law BUT Read the Verses You Didn't Underline

 

We are not Under the Law BUT
Read the Verses You Didn't Underline
by Donna Diorio
June 25,2021

I remember when I was first introduced to Francis Frangipane, he was talking about us taking a look at our Bibles to see what we had underlined, and then to focus our meditating on the Word to what we had NOT underlined. What I am going to say is a thought much like that.

For one, I believe there is a defensiveness that a huge swath of Christianity has against accepting the true role that God has for the Jewish people even in the plan of the salvation of mankind and the revival of the last major spiritual harvest. I say that because instead of seeing that the Bible is full of promises to Israel by God, and laying out the plan by biblical prophetic and apostolic voices, many Christians only underline the "setting aside" part of the Chosen People, blind to the purpose of God in doing so.

When I left the Messianic congregation I was going to in order to go into churches to try to spread the understanding of God's One New Man plan, in one of the churches I found all the classic distancing maneuvers Christians use to deny the significance of the Jewish people and especially of the Israeli Messianic body of Messiah, in operation.

#1. Denial that the Jewish people, as a people, are still significant to God's plan in light of the new covenant in Jesus Christ that opened the Door of salvation to the Gentiles (nations). Some of the top level Christian ministers hold this idea to be true - I am talking about ministers who have lead in healing miracles, prophetic ministry - the top rung of Christian leadership. Yet when it comes to the place of the Jews in God's plans, they underlined the "setting aside" and "we are not under the Law" verses, instead of the scriptures that lay out God's plan for mankind's salvation developed over thousands of years, or how the Law (the teaching) of God is not evil, but is the stated Word of God on the level of righteousness He desires to see developed in us.

As Romans 2:13-15 - NEW COVENANT - says is:

13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but it is the doers of the law who will be declared righteous. 14 ***Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law*** 15 So ***they show that the work of the law is written on their hearts,*** their consciences also bearing witness,*** and their thoughts either accusing or defending them…***

It's a perfect example of the scriptures that are not underlined by many Christians, even the current top echelon of Christian leaders. At that church referred to earlier, I ran across so many instances - like the instance where as soon as one mentions having a heart for Israel, the default distancing maneuver is to put up the unnecessary shield of having a heart for the Palestinians.

Reality on the ground: there is NO group of believers with a truer heart for the Christian Arabs ministering the Gospel among the Palestinian people and the neighboring Muslim Arab nations as the Israeli Messianic Jews. The reason most Christians don't know that FACT is because they listen to Israel-hating Arabs (both Christian and Muslim - and yes, there are Jew-hating Christian Arabs too who have not been delivered of the extreme indoctrination against Israel and the Jews they have been raised in.

Almost ALL of the Israeli Messianic Jewish ministries I know of are in relationship with their Palestinian Christian Arab brothers and many of them donate funds to help their brothers spread the Gospel among Arabs. But unknowing Christian who don't know God's plan for using the Israeli Messianic Jews in the last days, use their concern for Palestinians as cudgel to beat off any advocate of them having a heart for Israeli Jews.

Another perfect example, and it would be the straw that broke the camel's back for me remaining in that congregation, was when they had a well known teacher in for an extended weekly series on the book of Romans...and the man just completely skipped over the Apostle Paul's most extensive exposition of God's plan in the Jews that is given in Romans 9-11. Not only did he not underline those passages of scripture, he skipped them altogether. I could not bear to sit in a place that was so headed in a direction the opposite of what I knew God wanted me to travel.

None of the leaders or followers described above are beyond coming to the knowledge of the truth in the matter of Israel and the Jews. But one thing they must do is recognize that even as they accuse the Jewish people of spiritual blindness in part through arrogance, the same can be rightly said of much of Christianity through history and to this day.