The Israelites as Branches

in the Lord's Noble Olive Tree?

from the book YHWH Is Calling

Dear reader, do you understand who exactly the Israelites mentioned in the title refer to? Do you understand that it refers to all Jews who have received Jesus into their hearts, the descendants of the people of the ancient northern kingdom of Israel who have received Jesus into their hearts, and believers from among the Gentiles who have received Jesus into their hearts? Have you already come to understand that this ancient threefold division, based on the split of ancient Israel, is essentially the same as the twofold description: Messianic Jews and Christians? And if, dear reader, you have already grasped this topic being discussed under the title, you understand that all the aforementioned divisions also fall under one and the same definition: people who are grafted into the olive tree as Israelites, those who have accepted Jesus into their hearts as their Savior (their Messiah), regardless of their genetic heritage or congregational affiliation.

Regarding the matters related to the new era, it is essential to understand the original division of nations made by God, as revealed in the Word of the Bible. God divided the nations through the promise given to Abraham into the chosen people, consisting of the descendants of Jacob, and the Gentile nations. However, we must remember the eternal decree given by God even then: that He would also take as His own those from the Gentile nations who would join the chosen people. The condition was that the representatives of the Gentile nations would accept the statutes given to the chosen people and begin to live according to them.

“And if a stranger dwells with you,

or whoever is among you throughout

your generations, and would present an offering

made by fire, a sweet aroma to the Lord,

just as you do, so shall he do. One ordinance shall

be for you of the assembly and for the stranger

who dwells with you, an ordinance forever

throughout your generations;

as you are, so shall the stranger be

before the Lord. One law and one custom shall

be for you and for the stranger

who dwells with you.”

Numbers 15:14-16 (NKJV)

“Also the sons of the foreigner

Who join themselves to the Lord,

to serve Him, And to love the name of the Lord,

to be His servants— Everyone who keeps from

defiling the Sabbath, And holds fast My covenant—

Even them I will bring to My holy mountain,

And make them joyful in My house of prayer.

Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices

Will be accepted on My altar; For My house shall

be called a house of prayer for all nations.

The Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel,

says, ‘Yet I will gather to him Others besides

those who are gathered to him.’”

Isaiah 56:6-8 (NKJV)

Even in the time of Moses, the foundation was that neither belonging to any congregation nor one’s genetic heritage alone was a guarantee of salvation. During the Old Covenant, achieving righteousness in God’s eyes was emphasized through the concrete observance of the law given by God, although there were already examples of righteousness by faith, such as Abraham. It is important to note that, contrary to what one may hear preached in some places, the law did not cease to exist through Jesus' death on the cross. Jesus Himself emphasized this point in His speech, stating that not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, would disappear from the law until heaven and earth disappear and all is fulfilled (Matt. 5:17-20).

From Jesus’ teachings, we can observe that the New Covenant through Him renewed the existing covenants by modifying and completing the law, as well as other decrees and instructions given by God. A good example is circumcision, which God established as an eternal decree. Even that regulation, set in the Old Covenant, did not disappear with the New Covenant. God does not contradict Himself, nor does He need to use an eraser. Instead, as the prophets of the Old Testament already proclaimed, the time would come when, instead of circumcision of the foreskin, there would be circumcision of the heart. In practice, the circumcision of the heart means accepting Jesus as the Lord of one’s life, beginning to seek the will of His Father in the Word, listening to what the Holy Spirit starts to speak to the heart, and growing in obedience to God's will.

The matters that God has established as eternal ordinances should be carefully examined from the Scriptures. What ordinances did Jesus truly change, and how? And which ordinances, on the other hand, were not changed—what instructions from the Almighty should we still observe as we follow Jesus, taking Him as our example?

Yet it all starts with love. Do you already love the Lord according to the Word, in such a way that you desire to study His Word and His instructions? Does your faith and love for Him manifest in actions that align with His commands? Have you found, through studying the Word, that healthy fear of God which He Himself referred to when giving the commandments of His covenant, urging that they be taught to future generations? Surely, you have already experienced why the fear of the Lord is called the beginning of wisdom and a fountain of life, to avoid the snares of death (Proverbs 9:10, 14:27).

“Gather the people to Me,

and I will let them hear My words,

that they may learn to fear Me all

the days they live on the earth,

and that they may teach their children.”

Deuteronomy 4:10 (NKJV)

Arguably, the most significant change in the New Covenant was that through it, we received Jesus' perfection and the grace made possible by His work on the cross to cover our own shortcomings in order to attain saving righteousness. However, this did not mean that we could live from then on without any effort to understand God's will as revealed in His Word, nor without following, for example, the ordinances established as eternal. With the New Covenant, we truly gained the opportunity to be saved by faith in Jesus alone, as long as we are willing to follow His example and allow our hearts to be circumcised by the Holy Spirit in accordance with God’s will.

Observing the generations of Israelites after their deliverance from Egypt, God noted that people were quite incapable of passing down the covenant instructions from generation to generation and living according to them. In the New Covenant, the Lord desired to take full responsibility for the teaching involved in the circumcision of an individual’s heart through His Holy Spirit. Every born-again believer knows what this means. If a believer dedicates even the amount of time set aside for the covenant sign of the holy day—just one day a week—to seek God's will from His Word, they will surely have experienced at some point the reality of the Lord’s teaching. In an astounding way, the Spirit Himself begins to teach the Scriptures and, step by step, trains the believer in obedience. Naturally, this does not mean that the Lord has abandoned the task He assigned to the teaching proclaimed from the mouths of people.

So, who are the Israelites referred to in the Word, to whom the Lord, through the New Covenant, grants the opportunity to be grafted into God’s noble olive tree?

Israelites refer to all people in the world who have come to faith in God’s only Son, Jesus Christ (in Hebrew, Yeshua HaMashiach), have received Him into their lives as their Savior, and have begun to follow Him.

Since over the centuries, many strange doctrines have been proclaimed, such as the idea that only the members of certain congregations would be saved, or that Jews must convert to Christianity, placing the customs created during the ancient Roman Empire above the feasts established in the Scriptures, it may be useful to revisit Paul’s teaching about God’s noble olive tree in this context.

As Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, the unbelief that prevailed among ancient Judah and the subsequent exile of the people of Judah signified the beginning of the era of grace for the Gentile nations. However, Paul immediately issued a serious warning to the surrounding Gentile nations not to become prideful in the grace they had received at the expense of the stumbling of the chosen people.

Paul compared the descendants of Abraham, the chosen people of God, to a noble olive tree, whose care is determined solely by God. Paul reminded the Gentiles, even at that time, that the root of the tree would never change. The tree would remain the same, even if God had to cut off branches from the chosen people who had fallen into unbelief and graft in wild olive branches from the Gentile nations during the era of grace.

“For if the firstfruit is holy, the lump is also holy;

and if the root is holy, so are the branches.

And if some of the branches were broken off,

and you, being a wild olive tree, were grafted

in among them, and with them became

a partaker of the root and fatness of the olive tree,

do not boast against the branches.

But if you do boast, remember that

you do not support the root, but the root supports you.

You will say then, ‘Branches were broken off that

I might be grafted in.’ Well said. Because of unbelief

they were broken off, and you stand by faith.

Do not be haughty, but fear. For if God did

not spare the natural branches,

He may not spare you either. Therefore consider

the goodness and severity of God:

on those who fell, severity; but toward you,

goodness, if you continue in His goodness.

Otherwise you also will be cut off.

And they also, if they do not continue in unbelief,

will be grafted in, for God is able to graft

them in again. For if you were cut out of the olive

tree which is wild by nature, and were grafted

contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree,

how much more will these,

who are natural branches,

be grafted into their own olive tree?”

Romans 11:16-24 (NKJV)

But what can we observe from the history books about what happened, despite the warnings!

From history books, we can read about Emperor Constantine’s hatred of the Jews in the 4th century and its influence on the decision-making of the early church councils. In addition to his anti-Semitism, Constantine’s decisions were also influenced by the long-standing pagan worship practices that had already been prevalent in the Roman Empire. Due to his own worldview, Emperor Constantine did not want to implement the matters of the Scriptures as they were written in the Word. In order to more easily integrate Christianity into the religions that existed within the Roman Empire, he, through the first church council, created a version of the biblical message that was more palatable and easier for his contemporaries to adopt into the nation.

The content of the first church council was therefore primarily influenced by a man who was neither knowledgeable of the Scriptures nor held any respect for God’s chosen people, displaying genuine hatred towards them. Constantine, for example, was unaware that God had established the Lord’s appointed feasts in His Word as eternal ordinances for His chosen people, to remind all future generations of the preordained phases of His global plan of salvation (through which, for instance, the probable season of the Lord’s return can be inferred, although the exact time can never be known). Instead of basing his decisions on knowledge of the Scriptures, Constantine, relying solely on the earthly authority he possessed, made decisions such as labeling the Lord’s feasts as celebrations that only applied to the Jews, and partially replacing them with practices drawn from the pagan worship rituals that were prevalent in the Roman Empire. Thankfully, Easter was allowed to remain, although many elements of fertility god worship have still been mixed into current traditions.

When objective analysis is prioritized over traditional doctrines that have been passed down and intertwined with culture, it becomes evident that something changed in relation to the original message with the rise of Constantine. One does not need to read the Bible extensively to grasp God's perspective on the matter.

It is humanly understandable that these man-made doctrines of Constantine spread in their form during those centuries of autocratic rule, as ordinary people did not have access to their own Bible and had no way to test what they heard from the pulpit. However, God watched over the whole situation and sent individual reformers to restore practices that were drifting further away from the Word of the Bible. It is no wonder that Martin Luther, for example, was tasked with proclaiming repentance for the sale of indulgences, as that man-made doctrine gravely dishonored the work of His Son on the cross.

In the midst of everything, it is important to remember a lesser-known fact: God had already foretold that He would allow such deceptive false doctrines to emerge as part of the exile punishments that followed the unfaithfulness of the ancient northern kingdom of Israel. Ezekiel chapter 20 beautifully describes the past periods of apostasy among the people of Israel. As part of testing the Lord’s call that is being proclaimed, I encourage the elders to prayerfully read through the entire chapter of Ezekiel 20 and its connection to why one can respond to this call from the Lord without shame over the false doctrines that have prevailed for centuries. When your eyes are opened to the number of missteps and the centuries they have lasted, you can take comfort in knowing that nothing in this world has happened without the Lord’s permission and prior warning. As part of the punishment for the repeated missteps of ancient Israel, God had already declared through the prophets, as part of dissolving the covenant, that He would take away the Sabbath, which was established as a sign of the covenant, along with the joy of service and the appointed feast days, and that He would allow misleading commands and false justifications to spread among the people.

“I will also cause all her mirth to cease,

Her feast days, Her New Moons,

Her Sabbaths— All her appointed feasts.”

Hosea 2:11 (NKJV)

“Also I raised My hand in an oath

to those in the wilderness,

that I would scatter them among the Gentiles

and disperse them throughout the countries,

because they had not executed My judgments,

but had despised My statutes, profaned My Sabbaths,

and their eyes were fixed on their fathers’ idols.

Therefore I also gave them up to statutes

that were not good, and judgments

by which they could not live;”

Ezekiel 20:23-25 (NKJV)

“‘As I live,’ says the Lord God, ‘surely with

a mighty hand, with an outstretched arm,

and with fury poured out, I will rule over you.

I will bring you out from the peoples and

gather you out of the countries

where you are scattered, with a mighty hand,

with an outstretched arm, and with fury poured out.

And I will bring you into the wilderness of

the peoples, and there I will plead My case

with you face to face. Just as I pleaded My case with

your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt,

so I will plead My case with you,’ says the Lord God.

‘I will make you pass under the rod, and I will bring

you into the bond of the covenant;

I will purge the rebels from among you,

and those who transgress against Me;

I will bring them out of the country where they dwell,

but they shall not enter the land of Israel.

Then you will know that I am the Lord.’”

Ezekiel 20:33-38 (NKJV)

“And for this reason God will send them

strong delusion, that they should believe the lie,

that they all may be condemned

who did not believe the truth

but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

But we are bound to give thanks to

God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord,

because God from the beginning

chose you for salvation

through sanctification by the Spirit

and belief in the truth,”

2. Thess. 2:11-13 (NKJV)

Now we are in the time that can be counted as Good News, when God, through His messengers, declares that the appointed time of punishment has come to an end. The Lord proclaims His mercy to ancient Israel (the northern kingdom of Ephraim, from whose descendants many Christians originate), declaring the end of their punishment. He is ready to renew His covenant among the Christian congregations that have taken missteps, all of which, in one way or another, bear the burden of the punishment once decreed upon ancient Ephraim. The Lord is ready to restore the appointed feast days and the joy of serving Him in all congregations. Now the Lord asks: Who is ready to humble themselves and admit to having taken missteps? Who is ready to receive the call to return to the original covenant with Him, as it was foretold to happen in the end times?

Particular attention must be given, in this new era for Christian congregations, to the fact that God allowed changes to occur in matters ordained as eternal only among the exiled portion of the people who form the foundation of Christian congregations—the people with whom God had dissolved the covenant with a certificate of divorce (the northern tribes of ancient Israel who had been exiled among the Gentiles even before the Jews). It is no wonder, then, that the Sabbath, which was established as an eternal sign of the covenant between God and His people, was changed among them both in day and practice, starting with Constantine and later rulers (as the Lord foretold would happen regarding this people who had committed spiritual adultery, as referenced in Hosea 2:11). Likewise, it is logical that the Sabbath, as a sign of the covenant, has remained nearly unchanged among the representatives of the ancient southern people, the Jews, preserving the practices that even Jesus Himself observed throughout these millennia.

It is also important to remember that, in His justice, God does not hold people accountable if they never had the opportunity to receive correct teaching and knowledge. Even during the past centuries, when the Lord had turned His face away from a portion of the people descended from Jacob through the certificate of divorce, and when He allowed the proclamation of the Truth to take missteps for a predetermined time, grace was still present over all the people of the nations, even in those centuries. According to the promise of the New Covenant, those who received Jesus into their hearts and sought Him in the Word have always been able to partake in the seal of the Holy Spirit and salvation. This is easy to understand when we remember that the grace available to an individual through faith is not bound to any particular earthly congregation. However, congregational fellowship plays an important role in helping one find faith, strengthen it, and succeed in the struggle of faith until reaching the goal and the promised reward.

Considering what is revealed in God's Word about the significance of the Lord's feasts for His people, it becomes easier to understand other missteps that God allowed within Christian congregations for a time. It is no coincidence that the foundational feast of grace—Passover, which was fulfilled in relation to the global plan of salvation at the time of Jesus' first coming—was allowed to remain in existence among Christians. On the other hand, it is understandable that for the people to whom the certificate of divorce was given as a sign of the covenant being broken, the Lord allowed the Feast of Tabernacles, which commemorates both the birth of Jesus and His still-awaited return, to be transformed into a pagan tradition with a date and practices not found in the Scriptures. Those familiar with the Scriptures understand that this also meant drifting away from a feast that carries an important meaning related to God's global plan of salvation—the annual celebration of the hope and anticipation of the Lord's return.

Since many Christians will face the same stumbling blocks in responding to the Lord’s call as during the time of ancient Judah (pride, fear of shame, or fear of losing status), the Lord offers encouragement and comfort by reminding all of His power and sovereignty in the matter. This call from the Lord is not a threat to Christian congregations but an opportunity. As the verse from Ezekiel, quoted earlier, states, it was the Lord alone who ordained the veils placed over the eyes of individuals and nations—both among the Jews (regarding Jesus' first coming) and then among the Christian congregations (regarding the influence of Constantine’s corruptions and their undoing before the Lord’s second coming). The Lord reminds us that no one should feel ashamed of the false doctrines that have persisted for centuries, mainly feeding national cultures. This was all ordained to occur for a precise period set by the Almighty.

Instead of feeling shame, we should rejoice that the Lord has now declared the beginning of a significant era. The Lord is ready to remove the veil from among the scattered Christian congregations and call everyone back to the original covenant, original obedience, and the blessings that come with it. The only ones who will ultimately feel shame in this era are those who hold man-made traditions so much higher that they refuse to even test the message brought by the Lord’s messenger in the Spirit (as referenced in the earlier passage from Thessalonians about loving falsehood more than God’s Word).

“‘For I am the Lord, I do not change;

Therefore you are not consumed,

O sons of Jacob. Yet from the days of your fathers

You have gone away from My ordinances

And have not kept them. Return to Me,

and I will return to you,’

Says the Lord of hosts. But you said,

‘In what way shall we return?’”

Malachi 3:6-7 (NKJV)

************************************************************************************

Scriptures taken from the New King James Version:

************************************************************************************