“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel … (Jer. 31:31).
“And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son” (Zech. 12:10).
“I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God” (Ezek. 36:25-28).
We have similar promises of revival from the mouth of Jesus Himself. Speaking to the Jews of Jerusalem, He said: “For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” (Matt. 23:39).
In Hebrew, blessed is he who comes (Baruch haba) is a greeting. Yeshua is saying I am not coming back until you welcome me—much like David, when he said he would not return to Jerusalem until his brothers from Judah came and retrieved him (2 Sam. 19:11-18).
Paul is even clearer when he says that after the “fullness of the Gentiles” … “all Israel will be saved” (Rom. 11:25-26).
Interestingly, he begins verse 25 with these words, “I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery …” In other words, understanding God’s plan for Israel in the end times took revelation—it was a mystery.
Just as Israel was blinded to the truth of Yeshua, the church was blinded to Israel’s call and future restoration.
But thank God in these days that more and more believers are honoring the natural brothers of the Messiah—even as more and more Jews are putting their faith in the Messiah.
Ron Cantor is the director of Messiah’s Mandate International in Israel, a Messianic ministry dedicated to taking the message of Jesus from Israel to the ends of the Earth (Acts 1:8). He is an author and serves on the pastoral team of Tiferet Yeshua, a Hebrew-speaking congregation in Tel Aviv.
