Another incorrect or incomplete assumption or approach to fulfilling the Divine vision is as follows:

The promise has been fulfilled in me already although there is no evidence of it.

There are instances when the Lord tells us the work is done, and we then are to praise Him for the answer. This is not uncommon and is an example of the correct approach to fulfilling the vision. But this is different from stating (apart from the revelation of the Lord to us personally) that the promises of the Scriptures have been fulfilled in our lives when there is no evidence people can view. To pursue this approach is to lose touch with reality.

To state "we have it because the Scripture says it" is to enter a textualistic kind of "salvation" that is static and barren, having none of the corn and wine of Canaan.

There is no example of the "it says it therefore I am" approach to the work of restoration, in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. Rather, the saints of God inherited the promises by faith and patience, by seeking after God until they possessed the reality of the fulfillment.

All the promises are fulfilled in me by grace, by imputation.

It is obvious no saint of the eleventh chapter of Hebrews utilized this approach to fulfilling the vision of restoration, to entering the rest of God.

But, one will say, they were under the old covenant. They had to follow God in faith and patience. However, under the new covenant we are given all these things by grace, by imputation, as we take our place in Christ.

If this were true, the writer of the Book of Hebrews would not have used the experiences of the patriarchs as an illustration of "the just shall live by faith."

Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. (Hebrews 10:38)

Right here is exposed one of the errors of current theology. It is the concept that the Christian Church is a new, special work of God; that it is not a true part of Israel; that it somehow is primarily Gentile; that it is not of the Kingdom of which the Hebrew Prophets spoke but is a "mystery" destined to be carried up to Heaven—there to abide forever under "grace" in imputed righteousness.

Any Bible scholar should be able to see at once that the concept of the preceding paragraph is a distortion of the holy Scriptures—that seamless robe of Christ. But, amazingly enough, devout scholars have accepted the idea that there is a "Gentile Church," a Body of Christ that is not part of Israel. The result of such doctrinal confusion is that the Church of Christ is a valley of dry bones, having no clear destiny, no part in Israel, no place in the Kingdom of God set forth by the Prophets.

If their hypothesis were correct we Christians could not claim any of the promises of the Old Testament, including the twenty-third and ninety-first Psalms, or even the new covenant, for all these are made to Israel. But the contemporary scholars are in error. The Church is one and is the Kingdom of God announced by the Prophets of Israel.

To be continued.