by Leonard V Johnson
Greetings, dear friends ── in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, Yerevan, Armenia, North Shields, England, and Jerusalem, Israel. Along with my new friend in Sofia, Bulgaria. Welcome. This is Leonard V Johnson for the Church of Jesus Christ Online Ministries with the greatest of news the world could ever hear.
Because the tiny nation in the Middle East, Judah, is in the news so much here-of-late, let’s talk today about this Jewish nation that is called Israel.
Did ISRAEL ever cease from being a nation? You know, the majority of people believe that the Jewish people in the Middle East, the tiny nation there, is Israel. And that all that is left of Israel is there in that tiny nation. Yes, a great many have returned to Palestine and formed the nation they call Israel──but it was not a nation until May 14, 1948. And they were not a nation in the time of our Lord Jesus Christ. The southern kingdom of Judah had been invaded and taken captive around 586 BC, sending many to Babylonian exile, which sets the stage for what I’d like to explore with you today. They ceased being a nation. The people were taken as slaves into Babylon in the land of the Chaldeans. They were uprooted from their homes, their cities, their towns, and forcefully taken up into Babylon. They ceased being a nation ── JUDAH, I mean. The Jewish people were taken captive by King Nebuchadnezzar II.
Also, of course we know now that in 70 AD, after our Lord Jesus Christ was tortured and murdered, and was resurrected unto life and returned again to the upper heavenly realms──in 70 AD the Romans besieged Jerusalem and razed the temple, marking another major conquest of the Jewish people. They weren’t considered or recognized as a sovereign nation──until May 14th, 1948. Israel was established as a nation in Palestine. And it’s the Jewish people that are there, yet grave troubles have not ceased. There are still lots of troubles there.
Now, there’s a passage of Scripture that I want to focus on today──Jeremiah 31.
You know, almost one-third of all your Bible is actually devoted to prophecy pertaining to this present time, in the next few years from now. Let’s turn in our Bibles to Jeremiah 31. It sits in the “Book of Consolation,” which delivers a message of hope, restoration, and the LORD God’s promises to the children of Israel. It shifts from earlier judgments to a glorious vision of return and a renewal for the children of Israel. In the 31st chapter, it comes to the place where it is speaking about the covenant that the LORD God is going to make with the children of Israel ── in a time that is soon to come. When I spoke this to AI, that the text changes in verse 31, it answered, “the text itself focuses on restoration rather than explicitly describing a Millennial kingdom.” So, let us THANK ALMIGHTY GOD for the glorious Holy Spirit ── if one had only AI to help guide them, we’d be all confused. So, it was talking about a time of trouble ── and indeed this great time of trouble is coming upon the United States of America and the United Kingdom and her Commonwealth Nations, respectfully, in these latter days. Notice the last verse of chapter 30 ──
“The fierce anger of the LORD will not return until He has done it, And until He has performed the intents of His heart. In THE LATTER DAYS YOU WILL CONSIDER IT.” – Jeremiah 30:24.
It’s difficult for me to sometimes believe that the United States of America is actually considering using tactical nuclear weapons on the Islamic Regime of Iran ── especially on Pickaxe Mountain! Russia has warned that it would be ‘catastrophic’ for the US! 1
A worse time of troubles is coming for our Western nations!
Now it says here, as you find such as in the 5th chapter of Ezekiel and many other places throughout God’s living word ── that subjugation is coming just like the captivity of the northern kingdom of Israel around 722 BC, when Assyria seized Samaria and deported the Israelite tribes. Now the Neo-Babylonian Empire became an empire around 620 years before our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was born. And Nebuchadnezzar II was the second king, ruling from the death of his father Nabopolassar in 605 BC. This ancient Babylonian Empire was in full force when the Prophet Jeremiah wrote. Well, all that was a type of what is to come ── again. That was the original Babylon. But it’s also speaking of a dual prophecy, a prophecy for our time.
THIS MESSAGE is a message that is to be shouted to the chief nations today! In the 31st chapter of Jeremiah. It shows us our Lord Jesus Christ returning and taking the children of Israel out of a terrible tribulation, and that the children of Israel are going back to the land of Palestine once again. And a new covenant is made. Notice verse 31 ──
“’ Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah ──” – Jeremiah 31:31.
So, ‘Behold the days come, saith the Eternal One, when I will make a new agreement with the House of Israel and with the House of Judah.’ There are two ‘houses,’ two ‘kingdoms,’ two nations.
Now, I want you to pay close attention ── back in the Book of Hebrews, the 8th chapter, that’s where you find the Apostle Paul speaking about the new agreement. Let’s turn there and begin reading from verse 6 ──
“But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as He is also Mediator of a BETTER COVENANT, which was established on better promises. 7) For if that FIRST COVENANT had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. 8) Because finding fault with them, He says: …” ── and then he actually quotes Jeremiah 31:31. So, the Apostle Paul is speaking of the same ‘new covenant’ quoting word for word.
Now, our Savior, Jesus Christ, obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much more He is also the Mediator of a better covenant. And it’s better than the covenant made back in the time of the Prophet Moses under the Old Covenant. This better covenant is established on better promises. What are those ‘better promises’?
Notice the 9th chapter of Hebrews ──
“And for this reason He is the Mediator of the New Covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions UNDER THE FIRST COVENANT, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.” – Hebrews 9:15.
The children of Israel weren’t given any ‘promise of eternal inheritance’ back then.
They were given no promise of eternal salvation under the Old Covenant ── that covenant was made with a physical nation without the Holy Spirit. Its ‘promises’ were only those of race, not of grace. The ‘promises’ were only material, not spiritual. There was no promise of salvation or the gift of the Holy Spirit of God. If one is a true Christian, we’re going to be heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ ── inheritors also of what the LORD God promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And you’ll find that it is not to be the Third Heaven, but rather this Earth for an everlasting possession, eternal inheritance ── and that, my friends, is the ‘better promises’ of the New Covenant.
“For if the first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second.” What was the fault of the first covenant? The overall majority of these so-called Christian churches will tell you that it is God’s Law ── that awful and horrible Law that came from a harsh and stern God of the Old Testament! That God gave the people a Law, but our Lord Jesus came and did away with that Law and ‘fulfilled it,’ or ‘nailed it to the cross’ so that we no longer have to keep the Law. Well, they couldn’t be further from the truth. Yet, most of you have been taught that, and believe that. The LORD God is not at fault, but found fault with the people because they did not obey. They did not keep the holy and righteous Law of God. THAT WAS THE FAULT! The outright refusal of the people to obey! Who? “With the House of Israel and with the House of Judah.”
Now, speaking of the House of Judah ── this means the Jewish people. The House of Israel does not mean the Jewish people. In fact, the Jewish people DID cease from being a nation, and I’ll cover this with you in a moment. Yet, Israel NEVER ceased from being a nation. There is a recognized sovereign nation now calling itself Israel, but they are Judah. They are of Israel. They are descendants of Israel. Yes, they are Israelites. Nowhere in God’s living word are they called the kingdom of Israel or the nation of Israel. No place in your Bible! Notice verse 9 of Hebrews 8 ──
“’ not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; …’” – Hebrews 8:9.
That was in the days of the Prophet Moses, the Old Covenant ──
“ …’ because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the LORD.’” – Hebrews 8:9.
“’ For this is the covenant that I will make with the HOUSE OF ISRAEL …’” Not with Gentiles. Notice that it is with the House of Israel.
Our LORD continues ──
“ … ‘after those days, says the LORD: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be My people.’” – vs. 10.
Now, what “laws” is the LORD talking about? Again, this is quoted word by word from Jeremiah 31.
“’ Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah──32) not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant WHICH THEY BROKE, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD.’” – Jeremiah 31:31-32.
Alright, let’s look closely at this──that Old Covenant that was made with the children of Israel back in the days of the Prophet Moses was a marriage covenant. The LORD was married to them. He was a husband unto them. And they were His wife. They had been married in the 3rd and the 4th chapters of the Book of Jeremiah, and then we find that the LORD, God Almighty, the Eternal One, had divorced them. The marriage contract was the Old Covenant.
And certainly, something to properly understand is the Ten Commandments are not the Old Covenant──like so many try and teach. Of course, many will say that I’m wrong right now. You want to believe that misunderstanding that you’ve been taught and that you’ve assumed, and that you haven’t proved. But you believe it.
Now, the Ten Commandments did form part of the Old Covenant. And that was the part where the people were to obey. And indeed, the LORD God did give them promises on obedience, and the covenant was a contract and an agreement. Which was also a marriage contract. So, the Ten Commandments as such did “bind” the children of Israel to the LORD. The Old Covenant was a contract, an agreement, a parlance, that they would agree to be the wife; they agreed to obey the LORD. And in the LORD’s parlance, the wife obeys her husband── “For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the Church; …” – Ephesians 5:23.
Sadly, our societies have changed, but the LORD God has not (Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8). Yes, so many people think that “the God of the Old Testament is archaic.”
“’ Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.’”
And again, “ … ‘not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers’” – not according to the Old Covenant, because they broke that covenant. “’ though I was a husband to them, says the LORD.’” So, that was a marriage contract.
“’ But this is the covenant that I will make with the House of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; …’”
And again, the Apostle Paul quotes this from Jeremiah 31 word for word, but this was penned between 597 BC and 586 BC, after the first Babylonian deportation and before the fall of Jerusalem. And what was the LORD God’s law? The TEN COMMANDMENTS. He wasn’t talking about the law of animal sacrifices. You certainly don’t ‘put in your mind and heart’ animal sacrifices. But the spiritual Law of God you should!
It was our Lord Jesus Christ who has told us, “’ Hear and understand: 11) Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.’” – Matthew 15:10, 11. It defiles him spiritually. That which comes out of the heart that defiles him, not what goes into the mouth, but that which comes out of his heart. Mark 7 also ──
“ … ‘Are you thus without understanding also? Do you not perceive that whatever enters a man from outside cannot defile him. 19) because it does not enter his heart but his stomach, and is eliminated, thus purifying all foods?’” – Mark 7:18, 19.
I think I cover more of this in the article, “Pork ── is it a sin to eat?”
“And He said, ‘What comes out of a man, that defiles a man. 21) For from within, OUT OF THE HEART OF MEN, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, 22) thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. 23) All these evil things come from within and defile a man.’” – Mark 7:20-23.
So, it’s the Ten Commandments ── we are forbidden to commit adultery (physically and spiritually), which comes from the heart. Fornication and murder come from the heart. So, the Ten Commandments in your heart and in your mind, in your innermost being. The things that defile a man come from within ── a direct violation of the Ten Commandments. But the Ten Commandments were not written within the children of Israel of old, not written in their hearts and in their minds, and so came idolatry and adulteries and thefts and murders and all that sort of thing.
So, returning again to the Book of Jeremiah 31 ──
“ … ‘I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.’”
Now, the LORD God is who you obey. And the Lord GOD is our Master, but He’s the kind of master who is also our servant, and we need Him, and we need what He can bless us with, and indeed He’s here to help us in service to Him. He has promised to supply our every need. He has promised to deliver us out of every trouble and tribulation. He has promised to bless us with Wisdom and spiritual knowledge and guidance, and we need those things so desperately. So that is the kind of God He is ── “ …’ and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.’”
So, are you beginning to see and hear that it wasn’t the law of Moses that formed the Old Covenant, and that it was the Ten Commandments that the children of old broke?
“’ No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ …”
You won’t have to teach people to ‘know the LORD’ and describe to them just who and what is God, “ …’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. …’” – vs. 33, 34.
Well… how many atheists or agnostics ── a person who doesn’t even know if God exists ── do we have? How many characters like Sheldon Cooper of the television series The Big Bang Theory do we have? How many of them know the Eternal One today? (Be sure to read and study our free no-obligation PDF booklet, “Does God Exist?”). Are you aware that… well, certainly several surveys have been taken… but this survey, from Gritnux ── Recent research shows that about 68% of U.S. college students believe in God, but only 45% feel certain about it. 2 And it doesn’t mean that they’re converted or that they are a Christian or anything like that, but rather, they just believe in a God, they believe that God exists. Also, according to this survey, the unaffiliated rate among freshmen rose 5% per decade since the 1980s. That’s roughly 20%! Indeed, it makes us think of the Apostle Paul’s words ──
“ … they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not proper.” – Romans 1:28.
They do not know God.
And so, all during this present evil age, God’s true ministers have to teach people to know the Eternal One.
Well, at the glorious beginning of our Lord Jesus Christ’s Millennial reign, when He will make a New Covenant with the House of Israel and with the House of Judah, we won’t need to teach anymore, ‘Do you know the LORD?’ “ …’for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.’” Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is soon coming to deliver our people out of this “Babylon,” this grave spiritual confusion, this gauntlet of religious confusion that people are mired in today.
Alright then… let’s now come to the opening question: Did ISRAEL ever cease from being a nation? Is Israel still a nation? Notice Jeremiah 31 and verse 35 ──
“Thus says the LORD, Who gives the sun for a light by day, The ordinances of the moon and the stars for a light by night, Who disturbs the sea, And its waves roar (The LORD of hosts is His name):
36) ‘If those ordinances depart From before Me, says the LORD, Then the seed of Israel shall also cease From being a nation before Me forever.’”
In other words, if you can take the sun, moon, and the stars from the sky, sayeth our Eternal One, and Psalm 8:3 tells us that our Lord ── how excellent is His name ── set them there. He is the Creator of the heavens, the sun, moon, and the stars; if those ordinances were taken away, then Israel would cease being a nation.
“’ If those ordinances depart from Me,’” in other words, if they depart from the sky ──and are no more there, then “ …’ I will also cast off all the seed of Israel ’” ── Israel would cease from being a nation before Him. The LORD God says that Israel would remain a nation forever because the sun, moon, and the stars are to remain in the sky. So, when King Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonian Empire took the Jews captive, where was Israel? Here, according to the Lord our God, Israel still existed as a nation when the Jews were dispersed in 70 AD, and was no longer a nation. Where was Israel? Because as our Lord God says here, “’ If those ordinances’” of the sun, moon, and stars cease, then “’ I will also cast off all the seed of Israel.’”
But is this how you’ve been taught, my friends? Is this what you’ve heard preached?
“’ If heaven above can be measured, And the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel For all that they have done, says the LORD.’” – Jeremiah 31:35-37.
But none of that has been done.
Have scientists measured the known universe? Well… the entire universe’s size remains unknown. What about the oceans of the Earth, the ‘foundations of the earth searched out beneath’? Have they been measured? As of 2026, only about 28.7% of the global seafloor has been mapped. 3 Now, scientists can certainly guesstimate the distance of the universe ── but to truly know, they do not. Is there an end to this known universe? Does logic dictate that it has an ending? Not necessarily; infinity can be “open” in one direction but finite in the other. In mathematics, infinity does not have to be infinite in both directions at once. For example, a universe could be infinite in one spatial direction but finite in the other. 4
So, Israel has not stopped being a nation.
Let’s move on to verse 38 ──
It begins to look ahead to Jerusalem’s full restoration after the Babylonian exile. It promises the rebuilding of the city from the Tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate. Spanning the north-west wall where later Persian-period walls were found.
“’ Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, that the city shall be built for the LORD from the Tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate. 39) The surveyor’s line shall again extend straight forward over the hill Gareb; then it shall turn toward Goath.’”
This prophecy was initially fulfilled under Prophet Nehemiah’s leadership around 445 BC, when the ‘surveyor’s line’ was laid and the walls were reconstructed. So, yes, this was fulfilled historically when the Prophet Nehemiah rebuilt Jerusalem’s walls, but it also points to a future, and permanent restoration of a holy city, that will “ ...‘not be plucked up or thrown down anymore forever’” ── the New Jerusalem described for us in the Book of Revelation.
“’ And the whole valley of the dead bodies and of the ashes, and all the fields as far as the Brook Kidron, to the corner of the Horse Gate toward the east, shall be holy to the LORD. …’” – vs.40.
Here, speaking of the Valley of Hinnom and the Kidron Valley. These valleys once saw fierce fighting during ancient sieges ──Assyrian forces massed chariots there in 701 BC, and the Babylonian troops surrounded Jerusalem in 586 BC. And sadly, there will be ‘dead bodies and of the ashes’ there in Har Megiddo, “the hill of Megiddo” ── that of Armageddon. The Battle of Armageddon is coming, and it’s coming soon.
So, where is Israel, where has Israel been all this time? If you would like to know, we do have an article, “Freedom ──A True Blessing From God,” that helps you to understand where the children of Israel, the kingdom of Israel, the nation of Israel, have dispersed to. Again… are you aware that nearly one-third of God’s living word is devoted to telling you and explaining to you what is going to occur to the United States of America, the United Kingdom and her Commonwealth Nations, along with the tiny nation in the Middle East ── Israel, as well as all of Europe in general. Sadly, this one-third of the Bible is often neglected or not properly understood. It is the least understood of God’s word. So, I ask, where did the United States of America originate from? Where is the US mentioned in your Bible? Be sure to read and study that article. Another wonderful book to read and study is Judah's Sceptre and Joseph's Birthright, by author J. H. Allen, which was originally published in 1902. □
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