- Reconciling the Portraits

If the passages in the sprinkled collection of sub-glorious prophecies point to an end time Israeli return, how do we reconcile them to the dominant picture of glorified restoration—especially the opposite sequence between the repentance and the return?

Before we can reconcile them, we must see their distinctions clearly enough to know that they are not describing the same return. Although the glorious and sub-glorious prophecies intermingle and overlap, they are describing different phases of God’s hand toward Israel relative to the regeneration.

The sub-glorious prophecies refer to Israel’s conditional, tentative return to the Promised Land on the carnal plane in the mortal age. The glorious prophecies refer to Israel’s unconditional, permanent (everlasting) restoration that marks the transition to manifest regenerative dominion.

These portraits are ultimately separated by their relationship to the monumental inward transformation that defines restoration according to the Spirit. In one case, the return occurs in reconstructive blindness under disciplinary conditions, though still designed to lead to inward transformation. In the other, the return itself results from the transformation.

Because of the substantial divide between the two pictures, they cannot and do not mesh. That is, they cannot be reconciled by mongrelizing their components in an attempt to describe the same one final glorious restoration. Their elements are as different as water and oil.

But the two presentations do dovetail. They do have a sequence relative and show a common point of connection.

·        Establishing a Sequence and Connection Point

In the divine economy, testing and trial always precede final blessing. The wilderness always precedes establishment; the cross precedes resurrection; and the natural precedes the spiritual with its glorified manifestation. This means, to relate these two returns sequentially, the return under disciplinary trial must precede the return in permanent establishment.

The next question becomes: Is there anything common to the two portraits that allows us to directly relate them? If they are not the same event, do they at least have a shared connection point? Indeed they do.

·        Reconciling the Repentance Timing and Causality Issue

There remains one issue of apparent conflict between the two portraits.  It is the causality conflict between Israel’s repentance and their return. Ezekiel’s sub-glorious prophecies would indicate Israel’s return both precedes and causes their repentance. This is opposed to the glorious prophecies, which say Israel’s final return and restoration emerge out of their repentance.

There are two parts to resolving this conflict. Israel’s remnant presence in the Land after the final attack provides the first point of resolution. At the time of final crushing, not all the Jews will be driven off the Land to have to return again. Some—a very small number—will be protected to survive the onslaught and remain in the Land.

It is here in the Land, having arrived only once (ie, in the first unbelieving return), yet out of their final distress that Israel’s survivors on the Land will “remember their evil ways” and finally regeneratively turn to the Lord. Ezk. 20:42-43, the main passage at issue, refers specifically to this surviving remnant in the Land. It is not referring to that portion of the remnant driven out again. Those driven out again will remember their evil ways in the lands of exile (as the glorious prophecies assert, including Ezk. 6:8-10) to then return in final glory where they may “forget their shame” (Isa. 54:4).