The Mother in Israel

God — NOT Chirst — is the God of the TaNaKh, and therefore God — not Christ — “married” Israel. Believing otherwise was one of the great misunderstandings of the historic Worldwide Church of God. We were just blind to the many New Testament scriptures that prove that the God who is our Father was also the God of the Torah. And being blind to this we misunderstood some of the finer points of biblical imagery. One purpose of God’s marriage covenant with Israel (Jer 3:14; “for I am married unto you”) was to produce children. And therefore just as God is the Father of us all, so God’s wife (the celestial Jerusalem) is the mother of us all. Among these spiritual children is a firstborn Son — Messiah “the firstborn among many brethren” (Rm 8:29) — so we’re all siblings together and children of God's marriage covenant with Israel. But the marriage is on two levels. There are those Israelites after the flesh [who for a time may be sons of Satan spiritually — (Mt 16:23; Jn 8:44)], and then there are those sons begotten by the word (Jas 1:18). This, I believe, is Paul’s analogy in Galatians 4. We must see the Covenant — there really is only ONE Covenant — as on two levels — the one level producing children of the flesh and the other children of the spirit — meaning sons of the Torah — (Jn 6:63). Now just as there is a distinction between the Father and the Son, so is there a distinction between the Mother (the Father’s wife) and her virgin Daughter (who will wed the Son). There are thus two marriages. God entered into an eternal marriage covenant with Israel which is a covenant of life (Dt 30:19) — the hope of the resurrection issues from the fact that we become God's people — God’s children — (Mt 22:29-33). Jesus was a legitimate son of God via God's marriage — this not only by virtue of his special calling from the womb of Mary (Lk 1:35) one of the daughters of Sarah, but in that he was born by a resurrection from the dead (Col 1:18) — “the firstborn among many brethren” (Rm 8:29). “Jerusalem which is above ... which is the mother of us all” (Gal 4:26) equates with the woman in Revelation 12 (Rv 12:1) — not with the woman in Revelation 19 (Rv 19:7)! As I mentioned, Messiah and his bride are Adam and Eve who are not wed until the very eve of the seventh millennium. The covenant of universal salvation came long before in the third millennium — it was the covenant made between God and his footstool the Earth at the time when God gathered the waters into one place and the dry land (Israel) appeared. The acme of all the creation comes on the sixth day when the earth brings forth — first the creatures which will not be suitable for Adam to wed — and then God forms the King of the dust of the ground and Eve from a rib in the side of his body (Ep 5:32). “Before she travailed, she brought forth; before her pain came, she was delivered of a man child. Who hath heard such a thing? who hath seen such things? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? or shall a nation be born at once? for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children. Shall I bring to the birth, and not cause to bring forth? saith the LORD: shall I cause to bring forth, and shut the womb? saith thy God. Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that love her: rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for her” (Is 66:7-10). Another error in thinking, one that Leon Podles says has led to the “feminization of Christianity”, is this concept that we individually marry Christ. The Promise Keepers are even guilty — Podles says they are telling the men that they must become as women who will wed Christ. Such nonsense, Podles says, entered the Western Church with St. Bernard of Crusades fame and led rapidly to the exodus of men from the church — leaving the church emasculated with a largely effeminate (and often homosexual) clergy to dominate congregations of women and a few effeminate men. Sports has become the religion of men — not Christianity -- and Podles sees in such phenomena as the Promise Keepers an effort to bring men back into the fold. The effort will fail, he says, unless they abandon this doctrine that the soul is feminine (like the Greek word η ψυχη [he psyche]) and that it marries Christ. Individually, it would seem, our crowns are represented by the creatures brought forth on the fifth and sixth days of creation — “but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.” The Hebrew — עזר כנגדו ['ezer knegdo] — implies a help over across facing him, as a king and a queen both enthroned and facing each other. This is Eve, Adam’s bride, a city not brought forth until the first resurrection. Messiah covenants with that city, just as God did with the commonwealth of Israel. 29 Apr 2001

Email the author