Plucking the Eagle's Wings

2001 to 2008 and the Fullness of the Gentiles

David, whose father was Jesse, was given the promise of a future kingdom that would be ruled by a Messiah coming from David's descendants. The Messiah would be from the house of David and would rule all nations with a rod of iron (Revelation 2:27). In Isaiah 11:1, the Messiah is identified as a "rod from the stem (tree) of Jesse." The Hebrew word for rod is cheten, which means a twig or tender shoot . This correlates with another Messianic prophecy in Isaiah 53, which states that the Messiah would "grow up before him as a tender plant and as a root out of dry ground" (Isaiah 53:2). We know Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the city of David and He is from the tribe of Judah. This fulfills prophecy. Isaiah 11:1 states, "A branch will come forth out of his roots." The word for a single branch in Hebrew is netzer, and the plural form is netzrim. Netzrim is the Hebrew word for Nazareth, where Christ was raised. There is evidence that the first Christians were actually called Netzrim before they were called Christians in Antioch (Acts 11:26). I have learned from Jewish friends that Netzrim is also the contemporary Hebrew word for Christian. We could translate Isaiah 11:1 to read: "There will come forth a rod from the stem of Jesse and Christians shall grow out of his roots." When Paul used the analogy of the olive tree to illustrate the acceptance of the Gentiles into the covenant, he might have been referring to Isaiah's prophecy. Paul taught that there are two olive trees—one is a natural olive tree representing Israel, and the other is a wild olive tree representing the Gentiles. According to Paul, the natural branches of the tree were broken off “because of their unbelief” (Romans 11:20). Christ came to His own people and was rejected by the priesthood and the religious leaders (John 1:11). Therefore, God grafted in branches from the wild Gentile olive tree (Romans 11:17). According to Paul, the root of the tree is Jewish in nature but the branches are now Gentile. Paul reveals to the Gentile believers that the natural branches were broken off so that we (Gentiles) might be grafted in (Romans 11:19). In the beginning of Christ's ministry, He worked only with Jews and told His disciples to avoid the Gentiles (Matthew 10:5-6). Eventually, the religious Jews began rejecting Christ's ministry and accused Him of being of the devil (Mark 3:20-30). In the middle of Christ's ministry, He began reaching out to the Gentiles. Later, at Christ's public trial, many of the religious Jews told Pilate, "His (Christ's) blood be upon us and upon our children" (Matthew 27:25). This rejection of Christ was unbelief, and Paul said it caused Israel's 213