My Beloved Brother Steve continues:
Divine Destiny
“But now, when the sum total, fullness and abundance of time had come, the God commissioned the sending forth of His Son to transition from eternity to physical time and space, from out of a woman to emerge under the authority of law.” (Galatians 4:4)
Divine Destiny is a term used to describe an outcome or end goal of something that has been prescribed by God’s Plan. It is inalterable because the destiny’s scope and purpose has been determined and set before time began. The role of time is then to manifest and fulfill at the designated time the outcome so destined in His Plan.
Although the outcome of Divine Destiny is inalterable the conditions under which the destiny is carried out is not. This is where the Sovereignty of God intersects WITH the sovereignty of His Man. God decrees the outcome while God’s Man chooses the conditions under which he will experience and participate in that outcome – either WITH God or apart from God.
Since the Father has entrusted Jesus with all authority to carry out His Plan, if God’s Man chooses to experience the Divine Destiny WITH Him, then God’s Man will participate in the fulfillment of the destiny as a joint ruler WITH Jesus. If God’s Man chooses to experience the Divine Destiny apart from Him, then God’s Man will participate in the fulfillment of the destiny as a slave to the kingdom of darkness.
This is how Divine Destiny works. So, when Jesus told His Man in May 1985:
“The days that lie ahead are crucial, for your destiny as a nation is before you.”
And then repeated it to President Trump in the August 18, 2017 email, and then to those whom Jesus invited to join Him in the endeavor, He was obviously reaching out to give His Man the heads-up about the destiny that was coming.
And though we may not have been aware of the email’s existence at the time or even understood its contents or the invitation Jesus was extending with it, we certainly do now. Time has done its job by manifesting in physical time and space what was to many a mere collection of meaningless words just 3 short years ago. And yet, what we knew or didn’t know had virtually no effect on what Jesus said.
It happened and continues to happen just as He said it would. And not a single human choice has altered its outcome. Rather, the choices have only served to affect the condition under which the human who exercised the choice has experienced and participated in the “battle that is raging for control of this country” that has included the Coronavirus Pandemic and now the George Floyd flair up.
This is what the inalterability and choice dynamics of Divine Destiny look like in real time. The Apostle Peter was describing this phenomenon to his audience (and thus to us) when he explained how Jesus’ Divine Destiny intersected with theirs through His crucifixion:
“Israelite men, listen to and hear the words that embody this message: Jesus the Nazarene, a man that was openly shown to you to be from the God by certain proofs of power and the ability to perform miraculous wonders, and events of extraordinary supernatural effect on those who witnessed them, and miraculous signs to authenticate and exalt in the midst of you, which the God did through Him just as you yourselves know and spiritually perceive. “This One, given over thoroughly and successfully to the power of the lawless hand by the determined horizons and boundaries set by the resolved plan and foreknowledge of the God, you fastened to a cross and violently murdered.
“Whom the God raised up having loosened and dissolved the intense suffering of birth pangs that were necessary to bring in the new, because the preeminent power of the death was not to rule Him or to put Him under its authority as a subordinate.” (Acts 2:22 – 24)
Notice the meticulous choreography of events – even with the lawless hand – that time worked together at the designated time to fulfill the Divine Destiny related to the cross that was assigned to Jesus’ life before time began. This same choreography of events is happening now with The Transfer and the role this nation has been assigned to play in God’s Plan. And, it doesn’t matter how the kingdom of darkness reacts (coronavirus) or how it manipulates Man to wage its war against this nation on its behalf (George Floyd inferno). The outcome is inalterable.
And so, as God’s Man we are called upon to make a sovereign choice, a choice that will determine how we experience and participate in the fulfillment of The Transfer and the Divine Destiny assigned to this nation – either as joint rulers WITH Jesus or as slaves.
Choice.
The Nation
“The days that lie ahead are crucial, for your destiny as a nation is before you.” (May 1985)
When we hear the word nation, most of us think of a country, its people and its geographical borders. We may also think of the government (political unit) that makes and enforces its laws, defends its borders, and controls its population, military, foreign affairs, commerce and monetary system.
So, when we think of England or Germany or Canada or Russia or China or the US, we think of them as separate nations with governments that sovereignly rule their people.
This concept of the interchangeability of country, nation and political unit is demonstrated in the name we have given to the global political unit called, The United Nations. And so, when we hear Jesus giving notice that our “destiny as a nation is before” us, we quite naturally think He’s talking about the political unit called, the United States. But, we would be wrong.
The reason is because our modern notion of a nation is a redefinition of the word’s historical meaning. Our current idea of a nation is a relatively new concept that
began to emerge in the 15th century. The Westphalia Peace Treaty of 1648, which ended the 30 Years’ War, advanced this idea further. This treaty broke the power structure of the Holy Roman Empire while laying the foundation for today’s concepts of national self-determination and sovereignty as exercised by the political unit of a country.
Prior to that time, the primary political unit that ruled a mass of people wasn’t a nation or a country or a government, terms that are today interchangeable. It was either a kingdom or an empire, which ruled multiple kingdoms (ex: Babylonian Empire, Greek Empire, Roman Empire, British Empire, and so on).
The historical use and meaning of nation wasn’t associated with a kingdom. It was used to identify a race of people who were united by a common culture that was built on common customs, values, beliefs and language. And so, nation and race of people were the terms that were interchangeable.
This is what the Bible means when it talks about nations. It’s speaking of a race of people who are united by things that are important and common to them NOT a political unit. The significance of this distinction cannot be overstated because political units come and go while nations and races of people remain, in the same way the land they live on remains.
You can see this in the way YHVH structured the nation of Israel. After taking them out of Egypt and before taking them into the Promise Land (Canaan), YHVH set up an entirely new culture that was built on the single idea of a race of people who would individually listen to Him and then implement WITH Him what He said.
To support this highly relational culture, He then set up laws, practices, customs (feasts) and an economic system that time would then use to materialize the culture in physical time and space.
“ ‘For in the day I bid them to come out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak a word with your fathers nor did I give them charge, order or command concerning the downward aspect of the ascent of the holocaust of the burnt offering that goes up in smoke, or the slaughter of the flesh of the animal sacrifice.’
“ ‘Lo! For this word I charged, ordered and commanded them, saying, “Hear intelligently and give attention to My Voice that sounds and calls aloud, and I will exist to be the Elohim of you and you will exist to be My people; and come, go and walk in the whole and all of the way, manner and journey that I charge, order and command you, for the intent and purpose is to make it well, right, sound and beautiful with you.” ’ “ (Jeremiah 7:22, 23)
After setting the culture in place, YHVH stopped. He didn’t set up a political unit (a kingdom) to govern the people like the other nations had done. Instead, He Reigned over each member of the nation personally and directly. This culture distinguished the nation of Israel from all the other races of people in the earth, who were thereafter referred to as Gentiles or the Nations.