[...] Baron is conservative; he imbibed none of the German higher criticism so stylish in the biblical scholarship of his day. He wrote a commentary on “The Visions and Prophecy of Zechariah”. That one should be readily available through Amazon, or christianbook.com. Among the titles by him are Rays of Messiah’s Glory; The Shepherd of Israel, The Servant of Jehovah, Types Psalms and Prophecies, A Divine Forecast of Jewish History; The History of the Ten “Lost” Tribes: Anglo-Israelism Examined; The Ancient Scriptures for the Modern Jew; and Israel in the Plan of God, also published under the title: The History of Israel: Its Spiritual Significance. There is also one on the Melchizedek Priesthood. These are all back in print through Keren Ahvah Meshihit; P. O. Box 10382, 91103 Jerusalem, Israel. [...]

[...] It is this “everlasting covenant of promise” that the prophets see as established permanently with the nation in the coming day of the Lord at the end of the last tribulation. And where Israel, as pertaining to the ‘natural branches’ is concerned, it will indeed yet be established WITH THEM at the ‘set time’ (Ps 102:13). But through the revelation of the mystery of the gospel, it is now seen that the power and spirit of that coming day has come already in unexpected advance of the “last day” (the day upon which all Jewish expectation was fixed). So while the ‘first’ covenant of the law is indeed obsolete, nothing of that former covenant can annul the sure confirmation of the oath that came 400 years earlier. It is that unconditional promise that the prophets have in mind when they speak of an ‘everlasting or new covenant’ to be established with the surviving remnant of the last tribulation, the ‘natural branches’. And though the church has gained advance access to the grace and glories of that everlasting / new covenant, the church of this age does not exhaust its fulfillment, since it is yet to be established with those with whom it was originally made. [...]

[...] If there’s anything I’m sure of, it is that the early apostolic church moved with great urgency under the shadow of an imminent destruction of Jerusalem, which they clearly associated with the onset of a final unequaled time of distress that they expected to immediately precede Christ’s return. This context and framework of the mystery is all but lost. Even where it is in some general sense expected, the church is typically absented from the scene, and hence from the responsibility. Jacob’s trouble becomes ‘Jacob’s problem’. Yet there it is: After millennia of comparative silence, Jerusalem is a modern cup of trembling threatening to “literalize” the language of the prophets. Only now, the church has moved so far away from the covenant and apocalyptic perspecitive and expectation of the early Jewish church that we’ve lost the perspective and with it the urgency as well. And not least is Israel’s relationship to how we understand the nature and context of the gospel itself, and there too lies great work to be done in these days of critical restoration. [...]

[...] But though I agree with Kaiser that there is only one regenerate people of God, the elect of all ages, I also believe that it is not only permissible, but necessary to speak of Israel as the ‘people of God’, or ‘the chosen people’, even now in their present state of unbelief. Even the individual Jew in his unbelief and set to perish apart from gospel regeneration, is nonetheless part of a nation that is UNDER both judgment and promise of a sure and certain destiny. That’s unique to the Jew alone. Even in unbelief, he is part of a body, a nation, a distinct ‘entity’ if you will, that abides in a unique covenant relationship. Though Israel’s covenant does not guarantee the personal salvation of the individual, it does in fact guarantee covenant severity ‘UNTIL’ the end, and covenant mercy ‘AT’ the end. So in that sense, then yes, for the moment only, there are two peoples of God, but not in the dispensational sense. When ‘all Israel’ shall be saved, the two collapse into one forever.[...]

But compliance with the mark is a statement of an already existing condition that is only being manifested, namely, total and irreversible spiritual reprobation. The outward mark becomes the sign and seal of an irreversible threshold that has already been crossed. The mark is irreversible only because those that take it show that they have already passed into an irreversible union with the spirit of Satan. The scriptures speaks of those that are ‘past feeling’, and that have grieved the Spirit to the point of no return. There’s a mysterious threshold here that we see again at the end of the millennium. I have reason to infer that the false church in its steadfast resistance to the last prophetic testimony will not be able to repent past a certain point (I think the middle of the week), so that while a multitude that no one can number is being saved all throughout “the tribulation, the great one” (Mt 24:21; Rev 7:14), the false professing church of apostate ‘Christendom’ will have passed into final reprobation and may become some of the most rabid persecutors and treacherous betrayers of the true church.