Contained within perhaps the greatest of all prophesied words in the Word of God, Isaiah, the great prophet to the people of Israel, is a missing link to our understanding of a characteristic of YHWH that unlocks and crystallizes all biblical prophecy as Truth in the waiting.
Furthermore, this characteristic releases understanding in born-again Saints in-dwelt by the Spirit of Christ and living life FROM His love, of some of the most difficult passages contained within the writings of Paul and all other New Testament writers. The entire integrity of Revelation of Yeshua, the last book of the Word of God, hinges on this passage. Not only New Testament writers, but the prophetic nature of the creation account and Satan's role in our past, present, and future.
Isa 46:9-10 (LSV) Remember former things of old, ‖ For I am Mighty, and there is none else, ‖ God—and there is none like Me. 10 Declaring the latter end from the beginning, ‖ And from of old that which has not been done, ‖ Saying, My counsel stands, ‖ And all My delight I do.
Driven by the Roman Catholic Church to disassociate from Hebrew culture in complete ignorance of the fact that Yeshua was a Jew, even the Protestant Reformations could not turn the tide of indifference to this important characteristic of YHWH.
Hell-bent on proving that YHWH pre-ordains those that will be saved before they are born, anti-semite Martin Luther quickly followed by John Calvin, protested this inconsistent doctrinal position to the many who listened.
So what did Paul mean by Romans 8:29-30?
Rom 8:28-30 (LSV) And we have known that to those loving God all things work together for good, to those who are called according to purpose; 29 because whom He foreknew, He also foreordained, conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be firstborn among many brothers; 30 and whom He foreordained, these also He called; and whom He called, these also He declared righteous; and whom He declared righteous, these also He glorified.
YHWH not only knows the end-of-life state of our planet and the circumstances preceding it, but He knows the end-of-life state of every human and the circumstances preceding it. Those professing the ever-popular Social Gospel cannot explain Malachi 1:3:
Mal 1:3 (LSV) Is not Esau Jacob’s brother?” A declaration of YHWH, ‖ “And I love Jacob, and Esau I have hated, ‖ And I make his mountains a desolation, ‖ And his inheritance for dragons of a wilderness.
Why did YHWH hate Esau?
Genesis 25:21-23 LSV And Isaac makes plea to YHWH before his wife, for she is barren: and YHWH accepts his plea, and his wife Rebekah conceives, (22) and the children struggle together within her, and she says, “If it is right—why am I thus?” And she goes to seek YHWH. (23) And YHWH says to her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from your bowels are parted; and the one people is stronger than the other people; and the older serves the younger.”
While the two boys were in the womb, YHWH declared the older would serve the younger. Esau was the older twins of Isaac and Rebekah and had his birthright stolen by deception by Rebekah and Jacob, his younger brother. He later becomes the head of the Edomites, the arch-enemies of Israel. YHWH knew his ending before he was born and allowed Jacob to become the chosen lineage of Abraham. Their stories are contained in Genesis 25-27.
Romans 8:29-30 espouses a spiritual truth that was common knowledge to the first-century Jewish audiences. As an all-knowing YHWH decrees, He knows the end from the beginning, those foreknown are the ones known by YHWH to finish their race and attain their prize.
The foreknown in Romans 8:28 are those that YHWH knows completed their lives with Christ as their living savior, those predestined and called, justified by faith and ready for Glory.
It DOES NOT mean that YHWH sovereignly decides in advance who lives eternally and who dies. This is a twisted view of this passage as Peter prophetically and factually pointed out in 2 Peter:
2Pe 3:15-16 (LSV) and count the long-suffering of our Lord as salvation, according as also our beloved brother Paul—according to the wisdom given to him—wrote to you, 16 as also in all the letters, speaking in them concerning these things, among which are some things that are hard to be understood, which the untaught and unstable twist, as also the other Writings, to their own destruction.
There is no break in the chain of these five events.
FOREKNOWN
PREDESTINED
CALLED
JUSTIFIED
GLORIFIED
They CANNOT be broken because YHWH knows they HAVE NOT been broken in advance. The doctrines of anti-semitism run very deep in our modern world of lukewarm Churchianity.
I trust you understand this profound truth of an all-knowing God of all creation.
Heavenly Father, I pray that you touch every person that reads this truth, that you internalize it into the fiber of their being, that they read all scripture from this perspective and prophesy their blessed hope knowing that you know their end from before their birth. Help each of us run this race of your calling to completion. In the name of Yeshua, I pray. AMEN.
Your in-dwelt spiritual slave to Yeshua (Gal 2:20 KJV)