First, my apologies for having added a paragraph to my observations instead of drafting a new post. It is now deleted and follows below.

Upon re-reading the last post over lunch I believe there’s more to be considered about the role of the cloud of witnesses. (I’d stress I’ve not been watching Paul Keith Davis’  videos.)

Again, here’s what the God-breathed Word states at the juncture of Hebrews chapter 11 with 12, Apostle Paul’s summation on the Hebrew fathers of faith.

³⁹ And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise,  ⁴⁰ God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us.  ¹ Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, ² looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 

The key is in the closing verse of chapter 11, emboldened above. It states there’s a direct connection between our attaining perfection in faith, and pre-Christian believers in the Holy One of Israel coming into the perfection of their faith.  That is, our destinies are directly linked with those who are already in heaven!

Huh? I need to recalibrate my brain to get a grip of that.

Verse 40 means God has promised Christians a far better deal than He’s promised the fathers of the Judaic faith because of our faith in Jesus. Yet, His goal for them is the same as it is for us, as herein; ‘that they should not be made perfect apart from us’. Thus, together with them we will be receiving the same promise – not one party (Old Covenant) without the other (New Covenant)!

This notion is more obvious in the original Greek of verse 40, ‘tou theo hEmOn  ktreitton ti problepsamenou  hina  mE chOris hEmOn teleiOthOsin’, as seen in it’s word-for-word direct translation below. The present continuous tense of ‘looking’ and ‘be being’, rather than using past tense, distinctly conveys an ongoing process, one that’s in play today, viz:

of God concerning us better something of-looking-forward-to that not apart from us they-may-be-being matured (Greek Interlinear Bible)

Clearly, therefore, God’s intention has always been to bring about at the end of the Age a highly prized unity in Christ Jesus for both Jew and Christian, or as some say; the original Israel and spiritual Israel. Or perhaps, the Bride of Christ and those invited to the Wedding; Jews who’ll look on Jesus whom their forebears pierced (Zecharia 12:10).

Furthermore, with the passage of time, this cloud now includes multitudes of Christians.

As Almighty God – and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who came in the body of a Jewish man – therefore sees hardly any distinction between Jew and Christian, then how dare some church leaders denigrate, even loathe, our Jewish brethren and their national state of Israel?

With this in mind, in the knowledge that several prestigious American churches declared their stance against Israel last year (Elliot Abrams’ CFR article), I’d draw your attention to the Jerusalem Declaration by representatives of mainline Protestant churches. For an introduction to the Protestant Consultation on Israel and the Middle East click here.