Israel's time of trouble

Reggie Kelly has been given tremendous insight into the "times of the end."
Here is a little portion of a recent e-mail from him to give insight into
the "over-reaction" of the nations to Israel's defense of it's borders.







"In any event, God has chosen to permit the eternally beloved nation (beloved with all the pathos and affection that a good father has towards his errant child) to be morally and politically "framed" far out of proportion to their actual crimes (from the relative human point of view).

Things are coming that will be tragic and pathetic beyond our ability to bear. Our hearts will break, as our faith will be tested to the core. "It will be a terror only to understand the report" (Isa 28:19). This was the prophet, Habakkuk's, dilemma. He was perplexed at God's choice to use a nation of far greater ferocity and wickedness (by human standards) to come down for the scourging of His covenant elect.

The prophet knew keenly the nation's covenant dereliction, but it was difficult for Habakkuk to find the equal weight of justice, not so much in the severity of judgment, but in God's choice to use as the instrument of that judgement a nation that far exceeded Israel for cruelty and pagan defiance of covenant righteousness (see Isa 10:5). It was particularly God's use of a nation far more wicked and fierce than the victim nation that constituted the offense to Habakkuk's own human perceptions and relative measurements. We see not as He sees (Isa 55:8-9).


This is the mystery of God's use of evil in behalf of His elect. We need to see that behind the fierce countenance of Satan's hatred (in this case, the "ancient hatred" of Esau, which has found modern expression through the spirit of Islam; Ezk 35:5), is the even more ultimate opposition of God Himself. It is God who puts hooks into the jaws of the northern invader! (Ezk 38:4). It is God that puts it in the hearts of the ten kings to judge the harlot! (Rev 17:17). We may suppose that this is precisely because the harlot is more covenantally aware and responsible than the ten kings that serve not only the purposes of Antichrist but more ultimately of God.

We need to see this mystery, not only for Israel but for ourselves. When God's elect are exposed through disobedience to "the yoke of a cruel one," it is then they learn how easy His yoke is by comparison, and so flee back under the refuge of the covenant, which only the believer has in Christ.

To understand this hidden principle is to escape much that might otherwise offend and threaten the collapse of faith. We must know for Israel and for ourselves what Jesus understood when He said to Pilate: "You could have no power at all against Me unless it had been given you from above." Where God's true elect are concerned, this could as well be said of Satan as of Pilate (Ro 8:28).

If a prophet of Habakkuk's spiritual stature could be mystified and offended by God's use of evil, what can be expected for the latent humanism that so deeply pervades most of Christendom when Israel will be betrayed not only by the nations, but once more by institutional Christendom as well?

Therefore, we must not faint when our human sensibilities will be overwhelmed. The reason is clear: Just as God 'got His man' on the Damascus road, He will get His nation, regardless! He does not spare in His pursuit (Jacob's trouble; Jer 30:7; Dn 12:1; Mt 24:21-22; compare also Deut 32:36 with Dn 12:7; also Gal 1:15-16 with Ps 102:13; 110:3).

The church must come to understand what Israel will learn in the crucible of Jacob's trouble, namely, He will not spare to bring all the way down just so that He might raise His afflicted all the way up to sit in heavenly places in Christ, to behold His beauty forever! It will be worth it all.

It is so important that we do not get caught up in endless comparisons of things that are at best relative. It is our prophetic calling to see beyond the veil to that glorious heart and wisdom that does not spare to sacrifice the thing that is momentary for a far greater weight of glory. We must see this for Israel and for ourselves. The judgement may seem by every human measurement and reckoning to be excessive, but the eye of faith knows it is not, and chooses to justify God rather than man. "Blessed be the name of the Lord! "Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me" (Mt 11:6). "