The Spirit of Slumber
By C. Eldon McNabb

Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded (According as it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear;) unto this day." (Rom. 11:7,8)

Something less than two thousand years before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, God appeared to Abraham and began a long, and sometimes tumultuous, love affair with him and his descendants through Isaac and Jacob. About one thousand and fifteen hundred years before Jesus was born, God led the children of Israel out of Egypt, unto Mount Sinai and made a "marriage covenant" with them. That is, He gave them the ten commandments, and they said "We do." (Exod. 34:28)

Their stiff-necked and rebellious attitude caused them trouble from the time they left Egypt. They immediately lost forty years wandering in the wilderness. Then, after they had actually entered the land which God had promised them, they often fell into the debauchery of idol worship and all of the filth of sexual deviance which accompanied it. (Paul said it was a shame to even speak of the things of which they were guilty.) Each time they did so, God sold them into the hands their enemies. For that reason, they spent almost two hundred years of servitude during the time which they spent in the land which the Lord had given to them.

That idolatry reached such abominable proportions during the reign of Manasseh, that God finally cast them out of the land altogether. As it is written, "Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." Jerusalem was taken over by Nebuchadnezzar’s army in about 630 bc and was under control of one Gentile group or another until quite recently. The life, ministry, death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ of Nazareth took place under tribute to Cæsar. His life, death and resurrection brought life to those who believed. At His resurrection, all who had received the message of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ were born again. But to the general population of Israelites, it was all a big yawn. A heretic, pest and troublemaker had arisen in Israel and they dealt with it. However, they did not realize what had happened, "for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." (1 Cor. 2:8)

The words of Jesus show clearly what was happening in Matt. 13:10-15. "The disciples came, and said unto him, ‘Why speakest thou unto them in parables?’ He answered and said unto them, ‘Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.’ "

Isaiah could prophesy this for God had already determined that, because of their many years of stiff necked and idolatrous rebellion, He would "give them the spirit of slumber" when the time came for Messiah to come.

As the Jews were busy rejecting the Gospel of Jesus Christ, "Paul and Barnabas waxed bold, and said, ‘It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles. For so hath the Lord commanded us.’ "

They turned the thrust of their gospel effort to reach the Gentiles and God’s church gradually became almost totally made up of Gentiles. Within a short space after the martyrdom of the Jewish apostles and practically all of the Jewish church, Jude testified that the Gentile church had begun to do the same thing which the Jewish nation had done. He said in Jude 4, "There are certain men crept in unawares, ... turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ. I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not."

It is now the time of the preparation for the second coming of the Messiah. Jesus knew that the Gentile Christians would continue in Jude’s condemnation of them and prophesied what God was going to do about it a short while before His arrival. Jesus spoke of the Christians of our day saying, "Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom." "While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept." (Matt. 25:1,5)