THIS IS THE FIRST OF A SERIES OF MESSAGES BROTHER JACKSON PREACHED IN 1998. IN FAITH ASSEMBLY CHURCH HOUSE, WE HAVE A LARGE CHART ON THE WALL, WHICH SHOWS WHERE EACH EVENT COVERED WILL FIT INTO THE OVERALL PICTURE. THESE MESSAGES HAVE BEEN ON OUR INTERNET WEB SITE FOR QUITE SOME TIME, BUT SINCE THERE ARE SO MANY WHO CANNOT ACCESS THAT OPPORTUNITY, WE HAVE DETERMINED TO PRINT ALL OF THEM IN THE CONTENDER.

I want to address our Jewish friends, and I say that because it is through the word of God we are made to be friends and not enemies, because we are different races of people and we all have our own ways. I acknowledge the Jewish people first of all, because the Bible we hold dear to our hearts is a Jewish book: Not one Gentile wrote one adjective or verb in it. It has all been written by Jewish prophets of the Old Testament, and Jewish apostles of the New Testament. We are a people that believe very strongly that we are living in the last days of time. There are too many written scriptures in the Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, that show us that the human race of people on the earth today are facing a point in time that is destined to bring about drastic changes. Time will never return to the normalcy we have known in past years. Everything that occurs today which is negative in the light of political, social, economic, or whatever else there might be, is only pressing time now, to an end time finish, as it is recorded in the scriptures. Therefore it would behoove people that have confidence in this book called the Bible, to begin to pray to their God to give them a little insight as to what is just ahead of us. In other words, Where are we in time, according to the word of God? We as Gentile Christians, have known for several years now, that there had to be the re-gathering of the Jewish people from all her areas of international dispersion since the close of WW2, and we understand that this has not been going on without a purpose of God being accomplished. It is sad to see that many of the Jewish politicians who have risen to the rank of leadership of the nation, have taken the attitude that their heritage of the land is not as important as compromise, which causes them to look at things like they are doing presently. We remember the Six Day War. We realized when it started, that we did not know how long such a conflict would last, but to our surprise this conflict only lasted six days. I have been privileged myself to talk to one of the generals that led an armored division through the Sinai to the Red Sea. He gave us a little insight on how the power of God was present to help them, and how by the grace of God He (God) intervened to give victory to the Israeli troops, both in the desert as well as when they took the old city back. This makes us Gentile Christians want to rejoice, not because human lives were taken in a conflict, but because we can see the little nation of Israel, which was out numbered, out gunned, out planed, and in every way looked upon as little against much, but God made all the material numbers the enemy brought against Israel as if they were nothing. God took what Israel had and multiplied it to make it sufficient against their enemies, and yet there are more that have forgotten all of that, than there are that acknowledge the intervening power of God. Therefore we can say, God proved Himself to Israel in the Six Day War, and that He was with them in taking the land they took, so it ought not be looked upon as if it was nothing. We can say this, For thirty years now, there has been nothing but international squabbling, quarreling, fussing and swapping ideas and it has brought no stability to the Mideast whatsoever. There have been Jews that have died thinking that the day would come when all this international conflict and opposition to Israel being back in their land would end, but the whole affair is still just as troublesome as it has been in the past: It looks like the world, through the authority of the United Nations, have tried with their best efforts to erase from the minds of the political leadership of Israel, that there is such a biblical thing going to be fulfilled in this day and hour, such as God restoring Israel back to all the land of their heritage, restoring them back to their ancient borders. I stand to assure you, that the prophecies which were written concerning this very thing will literally be fulfilled, because God’s word stands above all of the ideas of carnal minded mankind. We know this, In that Six Day War when they took the Gaza Strip, they took the ancient land of the Philistines. They took it all the way down to the Red Sea, all of which fulfilled the prophecy in Zephaniah. What started me studying this setup and what I want to explain to the Jewish people that might hear this message, is the way God has led my life and the things He has enabled me to see and understand in His Bible. I do not want anyone to get the Idea that I think I am the smartest man alive today: I know I am not, but I am grateful to God for the way He has led me in my lifetime and especially the last forty years. He has allowed me to see things in the Bible that are quite contrary to the average viewpoint of Gentile preachers of prophecy. Some of the things they teach are correct, but many of the things they speak are incorrect, so how can that add stability to anyone’s thinking? It is my purpose, because of the experience that God gave me, to be able to relate to you what I feel like the world as a whole is getting ready to face. I will say this, Right now there is being nothing said from the standpoint of the world that really allows Gentile Christians to understand what to expect; and nothing to cause the Jewish people to expect something to unfold that fulfills the very desires of their heart. Sure there will be some sad stories, but when the time is right God will fight for Israel and they will once again gain victories that will startle those who have no time for God.

WHAT THE PROPHET HOSEA WROTE

What really started my mind on this line of thinking that led up to this message was, one day I was reading the writings of the prophet Hosea and the first few verses of chapter 6 really caught my attention. If you have your Bible’s, open to that 6th chapter with me and let us read them. This was written almost eight hundred years before the advent of Christ. The first three verses of this 6th chapter is what we will read. “Come and let us return unto the Lord: for He hath torn, and He will heal us, He hath smitten, and He will bind us up.” When I saw that, I remembered talking, in 1968, to a Jewish Rabbi in Jerusalem. We had the opportunity to ask him, How did the Jewish people back at the beginning of the 20th century, begin to look at the reclaiming of the land? He spoke about the Zionist movement. I am not an expert on the Zionist movement myself, neither from the political nor the religious standpoint, but I have read some of the objectives they had in mind when that was all drawn up. It was in their minds, in the natural way of looking at it, that the time had come when they ought to be getting to where they as a people begin to get interested and concerned about going back there. When I read this first verse, I see this as a prayer written well in advance of the time, and it has been lying here in the written structure of the Bible for all these centuries. The Holy Spirit that authorized these things to be written, also meant for this prayer to be speaking in the future tense, in a time that there would be an element of Jewish people the world over, regardless of where they are, that would begin to have a feeling inside, Come and let us return unto the Lord, and the us is implying the Jewish people, for He hath torn and He will heal us. When we begin to study the different histories written of the Jewish people from 69 A.D., after the fall of Jerusalem, when the Jewish people were sold by the Roman Empire on three different slave markets, Cairo, Constantinople, and Rome, we realize that most Gentiles could not care less about that history. They know the Jewish people have been dispersed and scattered from the east, the west, the north and south, but why should they care where they were, or how long they would be scattered out there? Well I am one Gentile that does not feel that way: I have to say I am concerned, because if I am concerned, it makes me know God has an answer in His book, and that He has a time to reveal it. This is a prayer showing how some of the Jewish people felt, back at the beginning of the 20th century when the Zionist movement began to send their rabbis out, gathering the Jews together in the various areas of nations and cities. The rabbi we talked to said that as many of these spokesmen for the Zionists gathered a crowd and stood in front of them saying, Brethren, it is time for us to begin to think about returning home, back to the home land of our father’s, many times they were booed down by their own Jewish people, just as though they did not believe a word of it. Nevertheless this same prayer goes on into a revelation. The 2nd verse says, “After two days will He revive us.” This was not written by Gentiles, it was written as a prophecy speaking of the future tense when the same Jewish people that would say, Come and let us return unto the Lord, are the very ones that would say, After two days will He revive us. Therefore the Jewish people, when they would reach an era of time, were the ones who were beginning to say, “After two days He will revive us.” No Gentile ever said that. No Gentile ever perceived the reality of that. Only the Jewish people that would live in the century and generation which this prophecy was to become a reality to, would see it like that. After two days. When I saw that, then I could begin to understand why this prophecy was written so long before the advent of Christ. It was because this prophecy is not merely dealing with the two southern tribes as the week of Daniel approaches, but with the whole house of Israel in the ending of the ages. This will be the time for the entire house of Israel to be dealt with, so God would begin to deal with all of them, wherever they are, so that not only would the Southern tribes be re-gathered, but also the other ten along with them, bringing the whole thing toward a finished objective. Therefore as we read this, “after two days,” the question could be asked, Is this two days of twenty four hours? Absolutely not! It is two dispensational days, with each day of a dispensation being a thousand years. I will say this, It is not two days of two thousand years of Julian calendar time: It is two thousand years of prophetic time, with just 360 days to the year. When we begin to see why this was put in the scriptures so far in advance of the time for it to be fulfilled, we realize how important it is for them to really stand out, here in the end time. They were to be understood here in the end time, when there is not only a generation of Jewish people living, through which these scriptures are going to be fulfilled, but they are also to be understood by an element of true Gentile believers. As Gentiles, when we look at our so called Christian church world of this hour of time, many of the multitudes of people that go to churches could not care less about what these prophecies pertain to. A brother asked me just this morning, Why are there so many people that go to church professing to be Christians, that do not even realize that Christianity went through an era of Dark Ages when the true meaning of so many scriptures was lost to them, and then were restored back to us in the Reformation? I just have to say, There has been so much emphasis placed upon John 3:16, that an awful lot of church-going people think that is about all there is for them to know. They do not even know that God used many men in an outstanding way, coming out of the Dark Ages, beginning about 1520, and continuing on for the last five hundred years. God has used men, ministers, that would preach things He would reveal to them, and the denominational leadership many times would shut their doors to such preaching, saying, We will not have anything to do with that nonsense! Well, it is the same with Israel: After 1900 and some years of Jewish history, from the call of Abraham to the advent of Christ, then also the giving of the Law at Sinai, the Jewish nation had crept into the same state of complacency and indifference. That was the state of the Jewish religious society 2000 years ago, the time when one of the greatest prophecies of their hour was fulfilled. He had sent a forerunner, which was the voice of Isaiah 40:3. He had fulfilled also Malachi 3:1-2. He had sent them a Messiah, and we read from the four gospels what that religious element of Jewish people did to Him: They dogmatically rejected Him as their Messiah. I do not say any of these things to be derogatory, but being a Gentile I have to see the reason they were scattered to the ends of the earth. What did bring on this great scattering, or dispersion that they have had to go through in the last 2000 years? It was not because the stock market crashed. That is not what put them out there. It was because of that attitude, that motive they had of being able to go to the synagogue and read the scriptures that were fulfilled before their very eyes, yet they were blinded to the reality of what those scriptures pertained to. We can read that and get a picture of what conditions were like, but then we have to say, Thank God, there were a few Jews that saw what God was doing and accepted it, and became the early followers of that man Jesus whom we know as the Christ.

THE TWO DAYS: ARE THEY CLOSING OUT?

The two days I am directing your attention to, I definitely want to put emphasis on, because time is very quickly reaching the end of them. Here is a sketch that deals with time from 445 B.C., down to the birth of Christ, the death of King Herod, and then the life span of Jesus and His ministry right up to His death, which occurred in 33 A.D., and I happen to have two writings that are in agreement on this. I personally have a Jewish history book printed in the 1800’s. This was a history book that covered the history of the Jewish people from the Babylonian captivity down through their coming back to Jerusalem through the time of the Maccabees, and through the birth of Christ and on to His crucifixion. That Jewish history book says this man called Jesus of Nazareth, because of something like an insurrection or an uprising, (That is the way they put it.) was executed in the year 33 C.E. To them that is called the Common Era, and we call it the Christian Era. Keep in mind, that is not the way history books were written during that period of time. Most all history books were recorded like this, In the first year of a certain king and his reign and so forth, such and such took place. That is what identified him and his period. He reigned fourteen years and so forth, and it might give a sketch of the battles that were fought and the things he accomplished. Then it will tell what brought on his death. Whether it is Gentile history or Jewish history, that is why when you see the writings of the Kings and Chronicles, you are reading the way those histories were written back then. That is why many times since the advent of Christ, it is way over here in the Christian era that finally the Roman Catholic Church began to want to correct histories that were written from this period on. This is why their historians, the monks, set about to correct the calendar, and the calendar we use in the west today is a calendar that came out of that era of correction. It has been corrected at least two or three times. My point is this, That is why, when they go back and rewrite the Old Testament histories, many times they will break it down like, In such and such a year B.C., this or that happened, and they are talking about time before the Christian Era. With this in mind then I just want to say, This purple line represents calendar time. Now, there is something we will add to this chart, because this is a different chart, so this represents the Grace Age, the Church Age of the Gentiles in this small scope, but when we come to this point and on to the end, over here, we magnify this because we are dealing with the last seven years of prophetic time on this earth. This is the seventieth year that is carried from the death of Christ on to this period over here, because, when Christ was cut off, in 33 C.E., (the Christian Era, or A.D.) that closed the sixty nine prophetic weeks of the writings of Daniel, chapter 9, 24-27. That does not include the 27th verse, but I put all the writings between those verses. With this in mind, having studied this seventy weeks of Daniel bringing it down into the different representative periods, I came to realize God has put a yardstick in here, a measuring instrument right here in His Bible. It is very strange, that most religious people do not even recognize that. If you were going out to buy a piece of property, real estate, and if the deed called for a certain amount of square feet, would you not be interested in taking some kind of measuring instrument along so you could measure it? Yes, you can take for granted, but some people are very curious, and wonder if they are getting cheated, so they will take a measuring instrument with them. This is why I say God put a yardstick in the Bible. For what purpose? That we as human beings, we who are interested in the time we live in, in our respective generations, when we begin to wonder just how much longer the conditions we are observing will continue on, may have something to go by. When you think, How does God look upon this thing? Is there anything in here that I can look at that will help to acquaint me with the time that I live in, God will direct your attention to the right place. After studying the 9th chapter of Daniel and seeing how the angel of the Lord came to Daniel and told him, These weeks of years, each week of seven years each, how many of these weeks were determined upon his people, which of course is referring to the Jewish people, when they were back in Babylonian captivity, you begin to see a picture. The angel told Daniel, Know therefore and understand that from the time a certain decree comes, he broke it down in three sequences. There is seven weeks, and that represents the first forty nine years. That would bring time from the time the Jews received the decree to go home and build the temple, to the time of the prophet Malachi, the last prophet Israel had of that era. He was the one that spoke about the coming of Elijah. He is the one that spoke about, in chapter 3, verse 1, the messenger of the covenant. When you read the whole prophecy of Malachi, you can begin to see that the Jewish people which have come back, are beginning to fall into a state of coldness, lethargy and indifference. That 49 year period is followed by the next sequence, which is 62 weeks. After threescore and two weeks, which is sixty two weeks that add up to four hundred and thirty four years, shall the Prince, it covers the period the Messiah is born. It covers the period of time the Messiah grew up, fulfilled His ministry and at the end of the four hundred and thirty four years, which when you add it and the forty nine together, you get four hundred and eighty three prophetic years. Then in the year of 33 C.E. or 33 A.D. the man called Jesus of Nazareth, was executed on a Roman cross, just as it said in Daniel’s writings. Therefore He was crucified precisely at the culminating of four hundred and eighty three prophetic years. When you break that down you get the number of days. It is all right up there on the chart. When I knew this was given, this whole structure of the prophecy of Daniel, in the 5th century B.C., then when I look at this, after two days, it has got to pertain to another period of time. This is speaking of when the major, overall nation, including the southern tribes, after what happened in 69 A.D., so that would be the time that would elapse before the events take place at the end of two days, two thousand years, but starting when? That is the question. Only God knew, so I want to say this morning, We today do not know whether our Roman calendar is correct or just approximate, due to the fact it has been updated two or three times. Therefore we can say, We are approximately, or within a very short period of being correct, but as I said, The Jewish history book I have, as well as a few years ago when there were two British scientists who wrote an article in a paper that I read, I have reason to believe we are close. I happened to be passing through a city and we stayed all night at a motel, so I bought the News Paper and read a certain article: Those two British scientists, through their calculations at that time, using the modern technology of the cycles, the equinox and such, they calculated backwards to the proximity of the crucifixion of Christ, and they absolutely agreed with the Jewish history book I have, that Jesus was crucified in 33 A.D., and I still have those two sources available. To me, it keeps arguments out of the point of what we are discussing. Somewhere, if you are discussing a point of history and time, and you are trying to bring out a fact and truth, you cannot say, Well approximately, approximately, more or less, it could be this or it could be that: You never learn anything like that. God remembers the times the sun rises and sets. I think the birds know more about that sometimes than human beings do, even with all the modern technology we have. With that in mind, I set about searching for the time of these two days, and we know this, It says, After two days will He revive us. Well where does the revival occur in the Bible? You find it in the 11th chapter of Revelation. In the first verses you see, And God will anoint His two prophets, which are the Moses and Elijah for that day and hour, and they prophesy in the streets of Jerusalem for a thousand two hundred and threescore days, which is the first half of Daniel’s seventieth week, three and one half years of prophetic time, and that takes place right in here, (Pointing to chart) so the two days (which is two thousand years of prophetic time) that end right before that, had to have a starting point. If that is the terminating point where this is to fulfill itself, there had to be a beginning point for that period of time. Realizing that, I began to figure, so I started right here, from 33 A.D. to the year 2000 calendar time. I soon began to see, that figuring it on the basis of two thousand years of Roman Calendar time I would not have enough time from 33 A.D. to the year 2000, so I then began to look at it another way; and began to take the total number of days of calendar time and break them down into prophetic years of 360 days each. By doing that, here is where we are standing: From 33 A.D. when Christ was crucified, (and the histories verify that as the date) to the termination of the two days written in Hosea 6:2, when you put it into prophetic time, that brings you to the point of 2004 ½, which is the middle of the year 2005 on your Roman Calendar. Now that being right, it lets me know we are living in the hour of a generation which Jesus spoke about, that would see all those certain things come to pass.

EXPLAINING ABOUT A CERTAIN GENERATION

You can read Matthew 24, and you will get the entire picture of what Jesus included in a statement He made. Jesus speaks in Matthew 24, that there will be disturbance of nations, perplexities, earthquakes and all kinds of chaotic problems. That lines up with the 12th chapter of Daniel, where it says there shall be a time of trouble such as there never was before, nor shall be hereafter. Jesus winds up his discourse on all the problems, which are the signs leading to the end time by saying, (Matthew 24:34-35) 34 “VERILY I SAY UNTO YOU, THIS GENERATION SHALL NOT PASS, TILL ALL THESE THINGS BE FULFILLED. 35 Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” What did He mean, THIS GENERATION? He had to be talking about the generation that shall see all these end time signs upon the earth. That is this generation. To the Jewish people, I look at the holocaust. I did not serve in Europe during my time in the army: I was in the Pacific. But coming home, through the years that followed, there were people that kept articles that were written about the European operations, about the Jewish people that suffered, by the thousands, even into the millions, all over the whole area of eastern Europe, even into the areas of Asia, especially over all of western Europe. Those Jews were treated like animals as they were being liquidated. I would not dare stand here and quote some of the atrocities I have heard of, how barbaric Hitler and his henchmen were. I started calculating, realizing that we like to think these signs in Matthew 24 are all pointing to the Gentile Church, and I knew it is not that at all. We have got to include the Holocaust in this. If this is the generation that is going to see all these things before the end comes and Christ returns, it has got to include that element of Jews that lived in that generation, that suffered the things they had to endure. Still living today, in the land of Israel, are some of those Jews, some of which were children brought through detention camps and such like. We can say, God, by His grace, saw to it that some of the children were spared, though miraculously, that they might see this hour. They have a testimony of the horrors they saw, how they saw their own kinfolk treated the way they were. Therefore I can say this, When Jesus said what He did in Matthew 24, He was including the human generation, both of Jews as well as Gentiles, that are interested in what the word of God says about the end time, and about time itself. This generation shall not pass away until all these things be fulfilled. That lets me know, Revelation 11, the time of the reviving of the Jewish nation, could not be some haphazard point in time: it is a specific time. Naturally some will say, Well we don’t know when it will be. Maybe not the day and hour, but I say this, Why did God put the yardstick in there? It is not put in there just to be taking up space. It is to be understood by some people somewhere. Why put something in there that is never to be understood? That is nonsense, for anyone to think like that. It was written for a purpose; not for the unbelievers, but for those who genuinely love the truth of God’s word, to understand the hour they are living in. Many things are hidden, then just simply concealed to all generations that will not be participants when it is fulfilled, (That is understandable.) but there comes a time when there will be a human generation alive, watching these signs and waiting for the Lord’s return, and they will understand. They are concerned for the right reasons, so God opens it up to them. I figured like this, When you take the next most important event in Jewish history of that Age, that would take you about thirty some years later on, to 69 A.D., when the Roman Army came in with such destruction and took captives for the slave markets, but by then the Church has already been born, in an Upper Room, in Jerusalem, according to the account in the book of Acts, but when we begin to read in the book of Acts the things the nation of Jewry did, how they thought toward the Christian Jews, we find that God has determined to chastise this nation. For what reason? Because the nation as a whole has rejected the fulfillment of scriptures, by condemning to crucifixion the man who was their very Messiah. Furthermore, if we figure the two days (two thousand years) from that point, then that will take us well beyond the year 2004 1/2., to a point when all those Jews that remembered the holocaust and were witnesses of it, will be dead. In other words, It puts time beyond the certain generation that was ordained to see all the end time signs and the wrap up, including the revival. All the Gentiles that lived through WW2, can remember by looking back, what brought it on, what the papers said about the conditions in Europe, so those that lived after the war was over, and they are living now, they can see a world in political upheaval. I read in yesterday’s paper, The South American stock market panicked. Yet somehow or other ours seems to be stable. I have to say, I am not an economist, I do not know one end from the other of that, but watching people react, lets me know we could be entering that time of trouble that the world will never be able to shake itself out of. They will wrestle with it, trying to legislate this and that as cures, but none of it will work. I have said, and still say, Natural man is very carnal. Sometimes, even with all of his college degrees, he still acts more like an animal, especially in this late hour of time, because God has smote him with blindness. He cannot see the day and hour he is living in, and does not know how to figure anything when he is in a panic. He just speculates: That is about all he can do. He just hopes he hits it right. The point is this, If we use 69 A.D., as the beginning of the two days, it carries us way beyond 2004 1/2, and the generations, both of Gentiles and Jews, that should live to see the end of it all, will be dead. You just simply cannot stretch that generation Jesus spoke about, on out another 30 some years. Therefore this lets us know we have got to begin by taking the two days and start it with the week of Daniel, and bring it back here to a fixed point, and that has to be when Christ was crucified. He was crucified in 33 A.D. This gives us something we can work with. When we can see this, He put this prophecy in here for the Jewish people, strictly for those that were to go back, rebuild the city, the walls, and the temple, and it all covered many years, to get it ready for the first advent of the coming of the Messiah. Then because the nation rejected Him, again that portion of Jewry was thrown into dispersion, to wander and drift among the nations, while the ten tribes were already out there. So once the ten tribes were already there, and now the two southern tribes were dispersed out there also, we can see that in two thousand years the whole nation was to exist outside the land of Israel, those are to be dealt with. Time went out, generations were born, lived, and died. I can remember as a little boy going to school, that you hardly ever read anything of major importance about the Jewish nation, because the world had lived so long having not seen a Jewish nation, and only seeing Jewish people. It was hard many times for historians to calculate or put together some kind of future picture that might be in the making. You had to go to the Bible, if you were interested enough. The Jewish people that are in the land today include a generation that has lived to see the hour that Israel once again is a timepiece in the hand of God. Regardless of how politicians look at it, I have to say, Israel is in the potential process of being restored back to her biblical heritage. While some of her politicians are willing to drift along with world politicians, I remember that after the Six Day War it was voiced, hoped, and believed that the people of Israel were home to stay. Jewish soldiers stood at the Western Wall, lifting their weapons up and with tears streaming from their eyes saying, Never again will we give this up. From the days of the Babylonians, the city of Jerusalem had lived under the sound of oppressive footsteps of soldiers of various nations. When they took the city in 1967, it was those soldiers that said, Never again! I ask you though, What has happened? Thirty years later some Jewish leaders are being almost persuaded, saying, Let’s give it up. For what purpose? World peace? I just want to say to my Jewish friends, It will never again be given up. There were too many Jewish lives laid on the line when they that fought in that war were facing the possibility of being slaughtered by the numbers of Arabs that were assembled against them, for anyone to even be entertaining the thought of giving up anything so precious. God has a different plan for the entire area of Jerusalem. If we can see and understand the purpose of what I am talking about, God’s yardstick, I think we can begin to look at the Bible and say, Yes, written all through the Bible from prophet to prophet, are many prophecies relating to what God is going to do in, with, and for Israel in the last days. How long do we expect these last days to last? Do we expect them to last two or three hundred years? No. This entire picture is going to culminate within one human generation of mankind, both Jew and Gentile, and I am speaking of a generation that is alive today. In our colleges and universities the world over, they almost look upon the Bible, the Jewish book, as though it is a book of mythology. I have to say this, Just stick around a little longer Mr. Unbelieving professor, whoever you are that has no respect for the Bible as the inspired word of God. I just hope I am able to look over your shoulder when you begin to see the reality in God’s word, what He says He is going to do in the last days coming to pass. Yes we can hope, we can pray, but we are getting very close to the beginning of something, and when it happens it is going to fulfill exactly what is written in Haggai, concerning the shaking of all things. Yet a little while will I not only shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land, I will shake all nations. That means God has a time that He is going to start something. I have to say, If you and I only knew the objective of some of these third world nations in the United Nations, their agenda, and the feelings they have toward America, and yet we pay a quarter of the bill for that godless body of human, political leadership, as they work to design the future for the nations of the world. God has a day of death for that godless outfit. What a death it will be. I personally, will be glad to see that mess go down the drain, simply because it is so contrary to the word of God. It is a hypothetical, imaginary thing. If you could see the politicians that are for the United Nations, how they are anti Bible, you would understand why they want that thing in control. They are all anti Bible, that go along with their future agenda. There are some in the United States government who are anti Bible, because they say, We need to get rid of this religious stuff. Well I say, Try it and see what it brings you to. When you think you are going to destroy everything that pertains to God, He will slap you in the face with reality. He is still in control. He is just allowing their cup of abomination to fill up to the rim. With this in mind then, turn with me to the book of Micah. To my Jewish friends, All these prophecies we are referring to are written in the Bible: God has them scattered here and there, and He reveals them to those of His choosing, in His appointed time. He did not let them be written by the prophets of old in any particular order. They are scattered, yet there is a precise order in the way the particular prophecies begin to add up to a future fulfillment. In the latter part of this message, I will tell the dream that actually started me on the study of it. If God had a yardstick for the Jews to measure the times by, before the first advent of Christ, with everything pertaining to that event laid out, both of the seventy weeks, and of the two days we are looking at, then be assured, It has got to fall in line precisely, for the purpose that God meant for it to. He did not have this put in the Bible so you and I can just take it and stretch it, break it, throw it out there helter skelter, and put it together the best way we can. God does not do things that way. I have said this before, If the Jewish people and especially the rabbis that came on the scene in the generations of the Jews that came back from Babylon to fulfill the things they were told to do, had followed the writings of Daniel and really studied the things he wrote, they should have been able to tell within a period of ten years, when their Messiah should be on the scene. They did not do it though: They were just like Gentile Christians are today: There are some things in the Bible they could not care less about: They just take what they want to take. I have to say, Everything in the Bible was written for a purpose, whether we choose to try to understand it or not. The fulfillment of all of it is for a people of a particular generation. With that in mind, please be assured that the two days we are interested in will be the same way. As the world begins to move toward the ending of the two days, God meant for someone to get interested and see this. It is going to stand out for those who will see it. Any time God has a yardstick for the calculation of time, some will be ordained to read it correctly. They are not just going to measure land: they are going to measure time. How much time do we have left here, that is the question? God always has an objective, and a timetable for obtaining it. In the light of political situations in the Middle East, what have you been hearing in the News about the squabble between the Arabs and the Jews? The Arabs are saying, next year, (in 1999, in the month of May) we will proclaim a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as our capital. It is going to be interesting to watch, because that is anti-bible. Will they ever get that far? I have to say, That is what they say, but that is not what the Bible says.

MICAH SPEAKS OF A DECREE

Let us look at this scripture here in Micah and realize this prophet spoke these words way back in the seventh century before the first advent of Christ. Does God not know what He is doing? Yes, He does: You can depend upon it. In the 7th chapter, starting in verse 11, the prophecy gets right to the point. “In the day that thy walls are to be built.” What is the prophet talking about? Is he talking about the walls of some dwelling house somewhere? No. God is speaking through him here, exclusively of the temple and the rebuilding of the old city. In the days that thy walls are to be built, means, in the mind of God, He has a precise time when it is going to be done. Bill Clinton has not one thing to do with it: Nothing he can say or do will keep these prophecies from being fulfilled. I just hope the American people will wake up to the fact that we now have one of the most power hungry men we have ever had in the White House as President. He has climbed to the top, but his outgoing can be with disgrace. “In that day shall the decree be far removed.” This prophet is speaking exactly, precisely about something that has been said by God long before this prophecy comes to its culmination. Let’s see what the dictionary calls a decree. It says, an official order or document. It consists of a decree of fate. You find that in Deuteronomy 28. What is there? God told Israel when she was coming into the land, one of the last things He told her before she crossed over to take it, the day that you turn your back on me, and you stop keeping my law, my statutes, and my judgments, God said, I will take great pleasure in scattering you to the ends of the earth. He did it. But it also said, afterward, I will regather you and I will do good unto you. I will show you mercy. That is why Hosea was written like that. He has torn us, but He will heal us. It lets me know that when that decree of fate, chastisement and punishment, has been fulfilled to the precise point, the Jews will be back in the land and then He is going to do good for them. No matter what Clinton or anyone else says, He is going to do good to the Jews. So I have to say, Gentiles, wake up, your days are numbered. In the 12th verse it says, because this verse explains how He will bring the Jews, no matter where they are, from whatever area, whether mountain, kingdom or whatever, He will bring them back. Nothing will stand in the way to prevent it. Verse 13 is conditional. Notice, this far back God knew that that land would be peopled with another people that would desecrate the land, and could not care less what it looked like. “Notwithstanding (however) the land shall be desolate because of them that dwell therein.” They are the ones that are screaming right now, Jerusalem is our capital! and world leaders will say, Yes, because the Palestinians were born there. It does not make two cents worth of difference, whether they were born there or not, not even if they occupy all that they claim: They do not carry a deed to that land, but Israel does. That is what makes the difference. That is why it is prophesied in Ezekiel. I will return you back and restore to you, and I will re-establish you according to your former estates. That is speaking of their real estate deed. You have to go to Isaiah 49, and read that. It tells you there, by the prophet Isaiah, what God is going to do with these Palestinians who have laid claim to that Israeli land. Their days of occupying it are numbered.

GOD HAS A PLAN FOR THE LAND OF ISRAEL

From this point on down, I am going to be reading some, because here is what the world can begin to get ready and look forward to. (Preached 9/13/98) So many today, are prophesying about the year 2000. Even Louis Farakhan made a big speech. (We got it off of the Internet.) By the year 2000 in America, he has prophesied there will be a conflict. I will say this to my black Christian brothers, Please run and hide from that man and his perverted spirit, because he has indoctrinated the Islamic people of the United States with a perverted picture. Little does that man realize what he is doing. He is taking prophecies of the Old Testament and prophecies of the New Testament, and he has taken prophecies out of the Islamic Koran Bible, and then he has mixed them, putting them together to suit his own agenda. That is a perverted picture that God will deal with. God will never fulfill it. That man is getting ready to lead his people to some kind of slaughter. God is not going to let that Islamic spirit walk over the face of this earth and taunt and do those derogatory deeds, being so cruel hearted and them have victory. I have to say, It is very possible that Louis Farakan has started a lot of troublesome problems in the United States. One thing we must remember, Islam did not found this nation. Islam did not found this government. Islam is not destined to rule forever. God have mercy, because there are a lot of mislead white people that belong to that Islamic religion. Do not ever think they are all black people. They are not. That Islamic spirit even went into the Orients. I think of some of the Oriental people, both in China and Malaysia, that are Islamic. It is a religion that has been blood thirsty ever since the day Mohammad died. I have their books, so I am not just referring you to something hypothetical. Well right here it tells us in the prophet Micah what God is going to do when the time comes for the Jewish people, with the leading and power of God Himself to rebuild old Jerusalem and the temple, and for what purpose? Getting it ready for the coming of the Messiah. Yes, in the 14th verse, He has promised in advance, how the Jews coming back are going to feed, both in the land which is Lebanon, and in Carmel, but also in the land of Gilead, which is across the Jordan River. Do not forget, part of the ten tribes lived over in that land. Let us just follow on here and notice how it is written. God has promised Israel this, “According to the days (Go back to Exodus and read it.) of thy coming out of the land of Egypt will I (the Lord) shew unto him (Israel) marvellous things.” (That refers back to the miracles wrought, in their deliverance from Egypt. If you care to go into the book of Exodus, you will see the miracles God began to put forth on behalf of His people Israel. “The nations shall see and be confounded.” The nations, especially the politicians of them, those that have made their big speeches. Scientists, Go ahead and make your speeches now also, because your day of accountability is drawing near. Tell the world what you plan on doing for the 21st century, and then we will see just how much of it God will allow! Professors, tell the young generation how futile it is to believe in God, and then be ready to run for the mountains and hide when your day of reckoning comes! Yes, the nations shall see and be confounded. I want to show you something. That language tells you that some way, when this is fulfilled, the world as a whole would be able to see it. How could that have been possible even a hundred years ago? India could not see what God is going to do in Israel, nor China. How could the millions of people in India and China, and the many other far away places see what God is going to do in Israel, when there were no television sets to see it on? Before the era of television, they had to depend on the printed page with a few pictures, to see what was going on in the world. By the time the News gets back to India like that, the News is old, so that in no way could fulfill this prophecy. The nations shall see. God knew there would be electronic instruments in that day, so it would not matter whether you were in the jungles of Africa, the remote islands of the sea, or where, you would be able to watch the events transpire. The TV has brought the world into the home of everyone that will allow it. What an hour. They shall see and be confounded. That means confused, bewildered, stupefied. What is going on? The closest thing to it, we can say, If you remember the Gulf War, how one morning the world wakes up and mad man Hussein has moved into Kuwait. It was a threat to the world, because he would have cut off the oil supply. Europe begins to wonder, What are we going to do? Immediately, air planes and ships begin to tie up at docks, armed forces were given orders and retaliation was underway. The National Guard, the Reserves were called up. In a few weeks time we were headed toward a buildup of four hundred thousand strong. It was estimated he had moved four hundred thousand men into the desert front. That mad man Hussein begins to taunt and tease, rant and carry on. You bunch of infidels, you will wallow in your blood. They began to design the possibility that we could have at least five thousand casualties. Body bags were sent. But there came the day that the leaders of the coalition said, strike. I will never forget the night we were listening to the CNN News reporter. He was in a hotel in Baghdad. As he was discussing the days News, all of a sudden, outside, was heard the sound of machine guns and antiaircraft guns. The news was, We are being attacked. I want to say, Within a matter of minutes, TV’s the world over were looking at the streaks of the tracer bullets going through the sky. Radar was fastened on those objects. They knew they were out there, but they could not see them. Then here came the cruise missiles in the night. The world was faced with a modern war they had never seen anything like. From then on for a number of days, there was hardly a day when the News was not broken into, and we were shown some outstanding development within the aerial conflict. The Iraqis could not hide their tanks away from those planes that were carrying certain types of bombs, because they had infrared bombing sights. They knew wherever there was a mound of sand, if that tank had been started that day to charge the battery, they had to start them every so many hours to keep them ready, the heat being generated from the metal, no matter whether it was morning or night, if there was a tank down there, it was detected. That is the war of the future. That was almost nine years ago now. What do you think this one in the Middle East is getting ready to explode into? It is going to show you a conflict the world has never seen. It will not only be brought into your homes and everywhere else, it is going to be an eye opener to a lot of college professors that have said there is no God. I am not saying this to make it sound derogatory, but the world needs an eye opener, because of their overall blindness. I have to say to the Jewish people, if they hear this, Your day is just up ahead a little space. Your prophets of old have spoken all about it. Yes, you are outnumbered as far as the public opinion, and you are outnumbered in guns, planes, tanks, and such like, but do not forget you have a sovereign, Omnipotent God on your side, the same God that brought your forefathers out of Egyptian bondage by a mighty deliverance. He brought them through a wilderness for forty years. Their clothes did not wear out. Their shoes did not wear out. They did not have to stop at McDonald’s for a hamburger. They had wafers all day and at morning quail meat. I think that is a lot better than hamburgers. God did it to show the nation of Israel what He has up ahead. Notice again, what He promised, “The nations shall see and be confounded at all their might.” Think what the U.S. has got. Think of what Russia has got. Think of what the western world has got, what the Arabs have got. “They shall lay their hand upon their mouth, their ears shall be deaf.” Can you not see them after watching these things develop in the Middle East, after seeing the outstanding miracles, the things accomplished that they know is impossible for a small army to accomplish, yet God, through that Israeli army and military might, will lay that whole Middle East from Egypt straight through to the Euphrates River, into a state of desolation. The world is going to have to watch it. I have to say, That is what causes the United Nations to literally fall into chaos. “They shall lick the dust like a serpent.” They need to, the way they have blasphemed God, spoken evil of Him, saying, We don’t even believe such a God exists. “They shall move out of their holes like worms of the earth: they shall be afraid of the Lord our God, and shall fear because of thee. Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He retaineth not His anger for ever, because He delighteth in mercy.” Thanks be to God, we serve a living God and I am grateful for the privilege of serving the God that let my Gentile eyes be opened one day, to the beauty and reality that He is a God that is real. He is not just a God of history: He is a God of the future. He is the God that was in the past, which is history, but He lives today, and He will be in the future forever. What a mighty God we serve!

THE COUNTDOWN IS ON SECOND SERMON

As we continue on with this message, I want us to go to the book of Micah. I also want to be able to say things clear and understandable so there will be no misunderstanding of what is said. I am preaching this basically, that if the video would come into the hands of the Jewish people, I want them to know I am very deeply concerned about the Jewish people, the nation, their role in Bible prophecy and how things are developing in the hour in which we live. The world stands at a threshold. Most world leaders are unaware of what the world is being brought into. I Myself, being a Gentile, am very thankful to God for His grace that has allowed me to become, not only a believer in the Jewish Bible, but that He also has given me understanding of things that have been mysterious to a lot of preachers in this era of time. This is the only book in time, up until now, that gives us a historical background of creation, of mankind and his walk, his failures, and his destiny. I am very thankful to God, that He sent a Savior one day, and that He is truly the Savior of the world. No one is excluded. He came first to the Jewish nation. That is why it said, He came unto His own and they received Him not. I am not saying today, that the Jewish people of this hour are to blame. No. That is in the past, but the hour is upon us, when every living soul will have to answer this question that was asked of your forefathers, when (Matthew 27:22) “Pilate saith unto them, WHAT SHALL I DO THEN WITH JESUS WHICH IS CALLED CHRIST? They all say unto him, Let Him be crucified. 23 And the governor said, Why, what evil hath He done? But they cried out the more, saying, Let Him be crucified. 24 When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it. 25 Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.” God has a plan that He is working out, so let me say to any Jewish person that would dare to listen to a Gentile preacher: I am thankful that I am able to see it in a book, which is actually your book, but I love it. It is not our book: We have just had the privilege of borrowing it for a period of time while HE (God) deals with Gentiles which He also planned to redeem and establish. We are being dealt with during an era, or a period that was spoken about to Abraham when he left the land of the Chaldeans and came into Canaan’s land. God said to Abraham, He would make him a father of many nations. That is because, by faith we are seed of Abraham also. By faith, through the seed of Abraham, which is through the Lord Jesus Christ, we are brought into this great family of God. We have seen in the book of Micah, what God was going to do in the later days and we are in those last days. I want to point to the chart again and say, Right here, marks the time that Christ was crucified. This is a small chart showing the Grace Age we are now living in, and we are living now in the closing years of that era. Right here, we show the rapture of the Church. This is how God deals with the grace age Church, just before the world enters into the seventieth week of Daniel’s seventy weeks prophecy concerning the Jews. We have it enlarged here, as we try to break it down in sequence, to show what it is all about. This chart shows that the temple must be rebuilt, the altar of sacrifice is to be rebuilt, and God will again be dealing exclusively with the Jews. Not only that, but the old city has to be renovated. It is in the process of being renovated, rebuilt, restored, all of which sets the stage for it to come on this side where the Millennium will have its beginning. This then is the first half of the week in which all of this is fulfilled. Right here, in the first half of that week, is where the two prophets (Moses and Elijah of Revelation 11:3-12) appear in Israel. Then right here, in the middle of the week, is where the antichrist, which will come out of Rome, will break the covenant he has made with the nation of Israel and inaugurate an overall slaughter of every one that they find associated with God in any way. That is when Israel and the prophetic world will go off into all that is prophesied for the last half of that week, which will be exactly three and half years of time commonly referred to as the great tribulation period. That is really the conclusion of the time of trouble, such as there never was before and never shall be again. Micah promises that God will take Israel in this process of time, as we are approaching the end of this age and do for them what the world today, in its modern stage of technology and unbelief toward God, cannot believe that He is capable of doing. When God says here in Micah 7:15, “According to the days of thy coming out of the land of Egypt will I show unto him (ISRAEL) marvelous things,” that tells me He Is going to do supernatural things once again for Israel, like He did when He was leading them out of Egyptian bondage. That does not mean He has to repeat exactly, what He did back then, because circumstances are different, but He will show His power for them against their enemies. He will again show by His miraculous presence, power and superiority that He is with the Jewish people. That is why the heathen, (meaning the unbelieving Gentiles of all races, and not necessarily just the poor bushman of Africa, or some region of the South Sea islands that hardly knows anything about today’s civilization) will stand in awe and total shock, when they see how God fights for Israel. All these of the modern world of technology are going to be baffled, confused, confounded, surprised, frightened, scared half to death. How close could we be to that period? We could be as little as a half year or year away from it, but we will just have to wait and see. We need to realize that the calendar year 2000, could mark the beginning of what we are talking about. Israel, right now, their leadership is trying their best to break down, give back, give up or whatever it takes for peace. The Palestinians, through the United Nations, has set this type of agenda. They are trying to lay the demands on Israel, If you Jews that live here, want peace, you will also have to recognize us, because we were here before you came here. I say this to the Jewish people that would listen to this, It is true you have been brought back within the last portion of this century, but I would say to the Jews also, This is one reason why I am using your own prophecies to show you, you are coming back right on time. You are like a locomotive coming down the track: You are on schedule. You have your time agenda and you are moving right along the way man’s modern things run on a time factor. Therefore if you accept the fact that God is going to do something for you in a miraculous way, it does not matter if you are outnumbered in manpower. It does not matter if you are outnumbered in planes, tanks, and such: That is what makes it necessary for God to show Himself in the way the Bible says He will. We can easily look in the Bible, in the book of Exodus, and see what He did from Sinai on, for the months and years that lay ahead, how Israel was preserved. They were maintained in every way. Nothing wore out. All their needs were met. Therefore I want to call attention to something else for the Jewish people who may come in contact with this message, When the day came that Joshua crossed over the Jordan River, look where they crossed it: They did not cross the Jordan River in the face of the weakest Canaanite camp. Jericho was the strongest camp of the Canaanites and was their military stronghold in that hour of time. God designed the entire thing to show Israel what He, their God, could do, by leading them right into a place where the city had walls that were impregnable, according to their standards of warfare in those days. It would have been utterly impossible for the Jewish soldiers to think of having victory in such circumstances if everything was left entirely up to them. But look at the type that God unfolds in this battle. It covers a period of seven days. Six days they marched around those walls once each day, but on the seventh day they marched around it seven times. Why? We know this, the Gentile world did not know at that time what was going on, but around a city of baked brick and stuff they marched, after they had been in the wilderness for forty years. They had crossed the Jordan under unusual circumstances, and now they are marching around this Canaanite stronghold. Why did God say, Go around one time each day for six days, then return back to your camp? I want to show you how this represented the Grace Age, from the beginning of Christendom until the closing hour of the Age. That is why you find the seven churches, written in the first three chapters of Revelation, which are emphasized here, because each one of those local churches set a type of an age or period of time in the Age of grace.

THE LAODICEAN CHURCH AGE

In 96 A.D. the Lord, through the apostle John, the last Jewish apostle, revealed the things He had against the particular churches of Asia Minor. Each one of those churches set a type of a certain period in the grace age era of time. We are presently living in the Laodicean age, typed by a city of Asia Minor, a city of commerce and trade. Naturally when you have a city like that, you have markets, income, industry, simply because they are not only exporting, they are also importing. People that live in those places usually have a better chance of livelihood than people in other places. Laodicea, in that ancient time, set a type of the age in which we are living, an age where the sky is the limit. This has been the age of time among the Gentile Christian era, that the Gentile world has climbed to its peak of material achievement. I can remember the time when in our American rural countryside, we did not even have electric lights. There are many of the older ones sitting in this congregation today, that can remember when it was like that. We had to depend on kerosene lamps. They finally began to modernize those things a little: They began to fix the Aladdin Lamp that would burn white gas with a combination of air that was pumped up. The wicks on those were a little carbon net thing that hung in the center. It could generate a tremendous amount of light, but in the hot summer time, that thing was like a stove. We thought we were living in heaven, when we could sit at the dining room table and do our school lessons with the light form the Aladdin lamp. Then along came the gasoline irons for ironing clothes, so we no longer had the cast iron ones sitting on the cook stove. I have seen my mother use those things many times, when that was all we had, but finally, thank God, we came out of the dark age period and Sears & Roebuck came out with the gas iron. People did not have the money to pay cash for them, but you could get them on the time payment plan. Either way, we began to feel like we were living in heaven. We thought we were really moving up. I use this only to show that in the last fifty or sixty years the western world has reached its peak of material achievement. Fifty years ago in the closing of WW2, we had no idea what a jet airplane would look like. It was in the making, but it had not been produced as a finished product. However, shortly thereafter here came the jet airplane. Now they fill the skies like crows over a corn field. I say all this to bring out the fact that almost everything we use today has been scientifically achieved in the last fifty some years. Economic wise the world has been lifted up into an economic era that was only a dream sixty years ago. People to the ends of the earth have lived on foreign aide from the United States, because we have been able to achieve things at a more rapid pace than others in the past fifty some years. It is not going to stay like this forever though: The Bible shows us the end, and I think we need to get ourselves ready for the approaching end. When man goes to sleep and thinks he is going to have it good forever, I am afraid he is going to be in for a great shock one day soon. Man cannot take these achievements that bring him ease and comfort, luxury, joy and material happiness, and then just forget all about God and expect to be trouble free forever. If man can take these and use them for the glory of God, I am sure there are a lot of other things in God’s category of things He can let man see, but why should He let pleasure seeking humanity see any more? Judgement is coming. As for these seven periods within the overall age of Grace, which is just about two thousand years, they serve a specific purpose in the overall plan of God. They enable us to understand many things we would not otherwise have a clue about. Just imagine, fourteen hundred years before Christ, the children of Israel marching around Jericho like that, one time the first day: That represents a church age. The Jews have been scattered for centuries, but the Gentiles have been given the privilege of carrying the Gospel of Jesus Christ all these many years and these different periods pertain to certain conditions the Church has been in during that time, but when the scriptures were written, all this was prophecy. They marched around a second time: That represents another age. On and on and on, but on the seventh day they marched around it seven times. That set a perfect type that seven times around they are repeating the gospel message that has been announced to each age, preceding that one. At the end of that seventh time around, they turned and faced the walls. That made the entire Israeli army completely encircle that city. Then they have not only blown the trumpets, but this shows that seven times around they repeated the gospel message, and a messenger came that restored the apostolic truth to the Gentile Church. While Israel was being re-gathered, this was going on. Now the Church has just about reached its full potential and the coming of the Lord is just ahead. Grace for Gentiles will end and God will again deal exclusively with the Jewish people once again. Look where Israel is today. She is standing facing the largest element of the Gentile world, knowing that they have the largest gathering of mass destruction weapons there ever has been on the face of this earth. Israel has to face all of that. That is why the United Nations is soon going to be past history, because, if they had their way it would be thumbs down on Israel. I will be so glad, and jump up and down with joy, when that thing falls to pieces. When God puts something in His word, mortal man will be able to succeed up to a point, but after that everything is in God’s hands. With this in mind, Israel stands as the seventh time around, and the gospel of the Gentiles has just about reached its duration. Israel stands ready to be turned loose, to look at the walls of military might. No, they are not walls of brick, but they are walls of scientific military weapons, that if you could magnify it somehow you would see the kill power and destructive potential the Gentile world has. In the eyes of God, that is nothing. That is why it says in Micah, 7:16, “The nations shall see and be confounded at all their might: they shall lay their hand upon their mouth, their ears shall be deaf.” They will become so confounded, dumbfounded, startled, scared, because they have never seen the God of Israel on the move like that before. I realize as I am saying this, there are so many Gentiles today that have such a dismal outlook toward the Bible and its prophecies, but I would like to remind them that God will vindicate everything that is written in His book. I am glad God let me see how true this book really is. It means everything to me.

WHAT ABOUT JERUSALEM: WHO GETS IT?

Turn with me to Zechariah. Micah gives us the time factor. It lets us see that there is going to be something that will trigger this move we are looking for. It has a starting point, meaning when it is time that the walls of the old city and the temple are to be rebuilt, so where does this objective originate? Around what does it start? Have you noticed in the last two or three years, how we have heard so much in international news, especially in Israel, that the Palestinians, from their position, are demanding the old city for their capital? Also, they do not want the Jews to build any more housing inside the occupied areas of the old city they took back in the Six Day War. They are demanding, through world popularity and opinion, saying, We want it, it is going to be our capital. However God has something to say about that. I would say to my Jewish friends, You ought to get ready to leap for joy, because your God, and it is your God, has good things in store for you. That is exactly why, when the time comes for this thing to go into operation, there is not a thing on earth that can stop it. Turn to the 12th chapter of Zechariah. We pick up in the 2nd verse. “Behold, I will make Jerusalem.” Notice He did not say Tiberias, neither did He say, Samaria, nor any other city except Jerusalem, I will make Jerusalem. (12:2) “Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem.” Why Jerusalem? What is it about Jerusalem that is so important? That is the capital of Israel. The two go together. They have politicians that are ready to sell out. They want peace at any cost, but in the end, that is not going to be what God allows them to do. God is going to have the last word. He is letting man, politically, get involved in all of this, but it is going to be at the expense of their own hurt. Come on and stick your nose into this thing, if you must; and then get ready for the final outcome of your meddling. The U.N. is going to do all they can in the matter. The Palestinians are going to get just that much more devilish and boastful, because they think they have world opinion on their side. However let us notice how this reads and try to understand why it is worded this way. “Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling (for who?) unto all the people round about, (You are looking at the Palestinian Arab people, they are the ones that live there. Sure, they can brag, We have lived here for hundreds of years: Why should we not have Jerusalem as our capital? That is true: They have lived there a long time: No one can deny that, but who gave them a deed to the land? They have been trespassers in the eyes of the great God that gave that Land to the children of Israel. When you look into your Bibles, do you find any place where the Palestinians have legal document of real estate? They came there uninvited. They came there because they used the vacuum when the Jews were gone. It is up for grabs, so let’s take it. They moved in and claimed the land because there was no one around to prevent it. I will say though, If I were to take you through the pages of history since the fall of Jerusalem in 69 A.D., it would involve many, many years of wars and conflicts. Basically the Gentiles of various nations around the Middle East, have come and gone from there, taking their place and writing their histories. The Palestinian Arabs have moved in and lived there for hundreds of years, according to their genealogy. Little do they realize, the record of this Bible will outweigh the Koran, (which is the bible of the Islamics). What does God mean by the term, a cup of trembling? What does this symbolize? A cup is made to contain liquid. You can pitch it, as long as there is nothing in it. When God said a cup of trembling, we have to realize, it has some contents. The Arabs, one by one, all the leaders in the Arab world, are going to be compelled to take it and take a sip, and cast their opinion, What do you want done with Jerusalem? Well we see that for the past two and half, going on three years, they have all said, Jerusalem shall be our capital, but it says here, “When they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem.” Basically they are against Judah holding on to any land whatsoever. The real problem is, they are after this main heart beat, Jerusalem. So as the Palestinians get involved, God says, Pass the cup. Imagine Arab leaders as they will one day be faced with the ultimatum, Come on and make your decision. I can see some of those Arab leaders begin to get nervous. When a man gets nervous and scared, his fear is expressed. It is utterly impossible for him to reach out and take a cup without trembling, therefore you can read his fear by watching his hands. How many understand what I am talking about? You do not have to ask, What is wrong with you? He has been forced to take the cup and commit himself to a decision. We realize this, it is not going to be left up just to the Arabs to decide. It will eventually pass from their category, to the United Nations. Why do I say the United Nations? Because the 3rd verse brings this out, and there has never been a time that a body of nations of the world have been collectively involved in political affairs of the world, like they have in the last fifty years, and it is that U.N. organization that takes the lead in it all. It stinks! Well the 3rd verse reads like this, “And in that day (or that period of time) will I make Jerusalem (We are still talking about the same city.) a burdensome stone.” A burdensome stone is not something you can pick up and handle very easy. It means it is not only an object that is heavy, but it is so odd shaped that it can hardly be handled. Jerusalem is like that. If we could read the historical background, geologically, where it is located, there is the lineage of David. In ancient times when Jerusalem was completely populated by Jewish people, true, it was Jews, but it was Jews who were all connected with the lineage of King David. That is why in other places it was called the city of David. David’s line came out of the tribe of Judah, but the basic tribe of Judah lived in the rural areas of the territory. Here it is King David’s line. God said He will make this city a burdensome stone for all people. All the United Nations, all that burden themselves with it, so come on United Nations, stick your nose into the situation and give your political decision. “All that burden themselves with it (Here is their end, and I cannot tell you how many preachers I have heard say, This is Armageddon. To my Jewish friends I would say, This is no more Armageddon than I am the general that is going to call it a war. This is an international body of world leaders brought to a point of making and negotiating a statement, What do you say about it? Well we know what the U.N. is going to say, No to Israel, demanding that Jerusalem be their the Capital of an Arab nation. They do not want Israel to be restored to its ancient borders. They want the Jews, however many million there are in the world, to be kept confined. They want to put fourteen million Jews in a quart jar and can them up. God will not tolerate such nonsense. He will not allow it. This is where the U.N. faces a dilemma, but God has already said, All that burden themselves with it, you read it.) shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.” That means diplomatically, they are all thumbs down for the Jews and thumbs up for the Palestinians. That is the way the vote would be cast, but let us see how God looks at this. The 4th verse tells how God takes a look at it and how the Jew of this hour can look at their time. “In that day, saith the Lord, I will smite every horse with astonishment.” This language is according to ancient battle structures, when cavalry, bows and arrows, spears, swords, shields and all that were used. When God word says He will smite every horse with astonishment, this means that as the Arab Palestinian armies mass their horsepower together, to face Israel and to demand their rights, God will smite the horse with astonishment. This is why there has been many a horse in battle, that became so frightened from the sound of the clash of sabers, men groaning, men screaming as they were hit and fell from their horse, but then on the other hand there have been some horses in battle that became well known. Instead of becoming frightened, the horse seemed to have a spirit in him to keep on, because sitting on his back was a man the horse has a loyalty to. The horse has the ability to move himself in ways to protect his rider. This is why it is written in language like this. You and I know, when we take it from the literal horse and his rider, and put it on the tanks of horsepower, or in a jet airplane of horsepower, the end results is the same. Imagine an Arab sitting in a tank facing the Israeli army, and God says He is going to smite every horse with astonishment. Inside that piece of metal that is running on diesel fuel, is a man utterly dependent upon how he positions that tank and how the crew can make it fulfill its battle objective. But if God for some reason, causes a breakdown to set up in this tank, the motor will not run right or something like that, what will it be like? Depending on a tank that will not hit all eight cylinders could cause a crew to feel very helpless. Then if the man becomes scared and knows he is a sitting duck for his enemy, I have to believe that is fulfilling the scriptures. Just as sure as He hits the horse with astonishment, meaning he is scared and frightened, the rider is affected likewise. “And his rider with madness: and I will open mine eyes upon the house of Judah.” Jews: the hour will come when those of the Judaistic people, those that were the instruments according to Zephaniah, that were used in the Six Day War, God said He would open his eyes upon the tribe of Judah, “and will smite every horse of the people with blindness.” That does not mean He is going to do the Israeli military that way. He is going to do Israeli enemies that way. Then when He opens his eyes upon the Jewish people, what does it say? “And the governors of Judah shall say in their heart,” (I want to say to the Jewish people, as well as to the Gentile Christians, that when the hour of time comes that God gets tired of Jewish leaders selling out to the U.N. cause, giving up, retreating for peace at any cost, He is going to put some men in the political lineup of Israel that have a different vision. Then He is going to put a backbone in them, and a heart and soul that will be instruments in fulfilling His word. They are going to begin to say, We are not going to succeed in anything as long as we compromise, give up, back off, and consent to all this negotiating nonsense. Only when we make up our minds that we are going to keep Jerusalem, and stand to see the day when Jerusalem will be inhabited by Jewish people, and they are going to say this, we believe we will be fulfilling God’s purpose and God will shine on us. Let us read this verse again, in its entirety.) “And the governors of Judah shall say in their heart, The inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be my strength in the Lord of hosts their God.” That means Jewish leaders will say, When we have a vision to see that Jerusalem is no longer a city populated by Arabs, when we have a love for this ancient capital, and we will see to it that it is peopled by Jews, now we can have confidence that God is going to be with us. “In that day will I make the governors of Judah like an hearth of fire among the wood.” That lets us know, that this is not the compromising leaders of the past: It will be leaders with a strong determination. They are going to say, Never will we give up, we are here to stay. I will be glad when the morning comes, that the World News is, There has been a Jewish leader, whoever it is, that looks up into the heavens and says, Never will we give up another inch. When that hour of time comes the world is going to realize, something is about to take place. With that in mind I say, When their leaders become like a torch, that everything they get close to is set on fire, time is short for Gentiles. “And like a torch of fire in a sheaf; (meaning a shock of grain) and they shall devour all the people round about, (Palestinians take a second thought. You trusted in Allah, but the day is coming when the God of the Jews, which was also the God of your ancestors in the days when they believed in the same God their father Abraham did, will again get your attention.) on the right hand and on the left: and Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place, even in Jerusalem.” By who? Jews who are of the lineage of the house of David. I would say to the Jewish people, You take that promise and read in the 49th chapter of Isaiah, what Isaiah said He would do about it. It plainly says there, that in that day of time God will create a condition and bring it about so that the Jews that are to come from the ends of the earth and seek habitation in Jerusalem, will come, and God knows where every one of them are. Read that 49th chapter of Isaiah, to get the full picture. The prophecy is spoken in language like the mountains of Zion are doing the talking. When they suddenly feel the feet of these children of Israel coming to take up occupancy within the territory, then Zion will say, These children of mine, where have they been since I lost the first ones? Where did they come from? Read the 49th chapter to get the entire effect. The 49th chapter says twice, They that made thee waste, shall go forth of thee. I have to say to the Palestinian Arab, I am not speaking this to be derogatory with you, if you should hear it, but if I were you, while I have opportunity, I would pack my suitcase and sell out to the Jewish people, whatever your possessions are, and get a ticket on a bus that would take me across the Jordan River and get me away from what is coming. It plainly says, they that made thee waste, run down, desolate, dirty, stinking, shall be far removed. Where to? Right back across the river where they came from. I can see the military army trucks of Israel loading them up, giving them one last opportunity, because negotiations have done broke down. I have to say, When that Israeli army goes into action they will have the finest tanks, all types of artillery and modern rocketry, from land to air missiles, and sitting on the runways are some of the world’s finest fighter planes. Let me say this, Even in the Arab world, they can have an F-16, or whatever, but because it does not have a Jewish pilot, they just as well have any old antique plane. When God smites the rider, the pilot, with madness, blindness, he will fly it into the desert and crash it. On the other hand, take the same plane and put a Jewish pilot in it, and God will give that man such wisdom, it will be equal to five F-16’s. All of God’s promises in ancient times are surely going to come to pass, even that one shall put a hundred to flight, and so on, just multiply it in the modern era of warfare. That is what God is talking about. When God sets His eye on Jerusalem, He is going to do something about it, and the first thing is, He will take it out of the hands of the Arabs and put it back in the hands of the people it is destined for. We can just watch prophecy on the move from here on out. To do that, means there is going to be war. God, through the Israeli leadership, will have to show the Arabs it is not going to be the way they have designed it. It is the way I have designed it, says He. Naturally it means warfare, but Israel shall have the victory. Arafat may wish he would have had a heart attack and left the scene before that. I know I am saying this in a strange way, but I have to say to the Jewish people who might hear it, The hour will be, when every TV on the face of this earth will have a portion of that battlefield in its scope. When those airplanes leave the airfield and the tanks start to roll, here is what it will mean, (Zephaniah, chapter 2). They will cross the Jordan River and take the land of Moab, they will go right on and take the land of the Edomites, and the land of the Ammonites, the land of the three primary people of ancient times that settled what is now called Jordan. Zep 2:8 “I have heard the reproach of Moab, and the revilings of the children of Ammon, whereby they have reproached my people, and magnified themselves against their border. Zep 2:9 Therefore as I live, saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, Surely Moab shall be as Sodom, and the children of Ammon as Gomorrah, even the breeding of nettles, and saltpits, and a perpetual desolation: the residue of my people shall spoil them, and the remnant of my people shall possess them. Zep 2:10 This shall they have for their pride, because they have reproached and magnified themselves against the people of the LORD of hosts. Zep 2:11 The LORD will be terrible unto them: for He will famish all the gods of the earth; and men shall worship Him, every one from his place, even all the isles of the heathen.” When it comes to the war they are going to fight, it is going to be a miracle war that will dumbfound, startle, even terrify an element of educated people. I do not advocate violence. Those who do are the kind that will crucify Christ if He was to be put on the court of public opinion today. Yes, you would do it in a heartbeat. It is this prevailing modernistic spirit that has helped put this world in its present dilemma. Therefore knowing that Israel is facing a world of hostility, one of the first things God will do, will be to break the diplomacy and governmental structure of that United Nations conglomeration. All He has to do is, put one thought in this certain leader, and another thought in another leader, they get into an argument and I tell you, You would not want to be there to hear the argument. One by one, day by day they will begin to walk out, because most of them are not supporting it in the first place. They are just living on the tax dollar of the United States government. They have rode our backs long enough, so I have to say, As we look at each verse here, we see a strategic accomplishment, Zechariah 12:7 “The Lord also shall save the tents of Judah first, (That means the rural countryside, that is the basic tribe, He will save the tents, the dwelling places, the rural areas of Judah, first.) that the glory of the house of David (meaning when Jerusalem does begin to rise in its renovating and restoration, then the Jews that come back to live there cannot glory in the fact that they live in Jerusalem. Well all Jews will know that, but God does not want them crowing about it, because it took these Jews in their tents and dwelling places in the rural countryside, to do the fighting for them and to take the city away from the enemy, and turn it over to these coming back. Can you not see the language of the hour? He does not want those Jewish city people crowing over the country farmers and sheep herders.) and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem do not magnify themselves against Judah.” They will have to look to the Judah tribe and say, Thank you brethren, it was your valor, it was your loyalty to fulfill the cause of God, because you did it according to the word of God. “In that day shall the Lord defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem: and he that is feeble among them at that day shall be as David: and the house of David shall be as God, as the angel of the Lord before them.” Meaning when the house of David is occupying the city, and the Judaistic tribe is in proper territorial relationship, that puts the people in a perspective lineup. They now know they have carried out God’s plan and God will begin to work in favor of whatever else there is in prophetic accomplishment ahead. Verse 9 is the climax. “And it shall come to pass in that day, (that same period of time) that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.” That come against Jerusalem being a Jewish capital, that is the analysis of it. The U.N. has a short term to live. Let me say this, Practically every prophet in the Old Testament spoke in his hour of time, something concerning this latter day. It tells me here in the book of Obadiah, which was prophesied in the eighth century before the advent of Christ, of the Babylonian captivity. Obadiah looked down through the scope of time, and in his prophecy he saw the day come when the Babylonian invasion would come to Jerusalem. God would be in the process of causing the Jews to be carried off into Babylonian captivity, and that prophet saw how the Edomites, the descendants of Esau, over on the other side, would act. You read Obadiah. There they stood on the other side, chanting Tear it to the ground, tear it to the ground. I can just hear them chant, We’ll be glad when they are gone: When they are gone we will move in and take over. Watch what happened. The day came that the walls were destroyed and the temple is burnt. The Babylonian army carries off into captivity hundreds and thousands of Jewish people, to spend time in captivity. That was almost six hundred years before Christ, but two hundred and some years after the prophet spoke it, there it fell in place. But watch, that same prophet that spoke that, part of his prophecy jumps to the day that you and I live in. I say this to my Jewish friends. Let us look at that day that you live in. Let’s ask ourselves, What does God have in mind? Let us go to your ancestors who are in Babylon, as captives. The Babylonian slave taskmaster have them out doing all kinds of work. Can you not see them in the 137th Psalm? There, it speaks of the Babylonian captors taunting them, Sing us a song of Zion, we want to hear how you sing. I can see those Jewish people with tears in their eyes, a long way from home, probably never to see it again in their life span. As those Babylonian captors tease and taunt them, humiliating them, shaming them, Sing us a song and entertain us. But the reply that came from the Jewish lips, (and I believe it came from lips that were trembling, and tears in their eyes, How can we sing the songs of Zion in a strange land? They knew exactly what the Edomites had said. They heard the reports of what they did. Let us hear these Jews in Babylon, as they weep, “O Lord, remember Edom in the days of Jerusalem.” Meaning when God will reclaim, once and for all, Jerusalem. Almost every prophet spoke something against those people on the other side of the river. Some included the Ammonites, others the Moabites, other Edomites. They all have it coming. But the world today in its modern makeup does not realize it. They are not preparing for it. I want to go to Ezekiel, for a scripture before we move on.

HEAR EZEKIEL

In the 35th chapter of Ezekiel, we find what God showed Ezekiel, of what is going to fall on this element of people that lived in the mountain regions of Seir, (which is the ancient Edomites). I am not going to read it all. To think, written almost six hundred years before the advent of Christ, but it looks down through the scope of time, two thousand years further and sees this. I will start in verse 6. “Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord God, I will prepare thee unto blood, (Gentile people, Gentile church goers who do not know today, which end of this book to start reading from,) and blood shall pursue thee: sith thou hast not hated blood, even blood shall pursue thee. Thus will I make mount Seir most desolate, and cut off from it him that passeth out and him that returneth. And I will fill his mountains with his slain men: in thy hills, and in thy valleys, and in all thy rivers, shall they fall that are slain with the sword. I will make thee perpetual desolations, and thy cities shall not return: and ye shall know that I am the Lord. Because thou hast said, (Notice how their ancestors talked, as they gloated and boasted.) These two nations and these two countries shall be mine, (When they saw the northern tribes already gone, then they saw the two southern tribes go to the Babylonians, that left the land vacant. Now we will move in.) and we will possess it; whereas the Lord was there: Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord God, I will even do according to thine anger, and according to thine envy which thou hast used out of thy hatred against them; (the Jews) and I will make myself known among them, when I have judged thee. And thou shalt know that I am the Lord, and that I have heard all thy blasphemies which thou hast spoken against the mountains of Israel, saying, They are laid desolate, they are given us to consume. Thus with your mouth ye have boasted against me, and have multiplied your words against me: I have heard them. Thus saith the Lord God; When the whole earth rejoiceth, I will make thee desolate. As thou didst rejoice at the inheritance of the house of Israel, because it was desolate, so will I do unto thee: thou shalt be desolate, O mount Seir, and all Idumea, even all of it: and they shall know that I am the Lord.” In modern times, our world today does not realize He is not going to do this secretly. He is going to do it when the whole world is rejoicing, as though they have everything politically, just the way they want it. When God begins to take that little nation and disintegrate all their hopes and dreams that they have selfishly concocted, and He does it so the whole world can look on, I have to say, What a day we live in! There are thousands of people today that would probably say, Oh that is so ancient God has forgotten all about it a long time ago. Don’t kid yourself. He has never forgotten one word that is written and He never will. The nations of the world will get their chance to see how God remembers, and how He vindicates His people. If God was concerned about the way that mad man Sadam Hussein of Iraq did, and how he boasted of what he would do, He is concerned about this. Just look how quick God showed him who is still the boss. He boasted of how the infidels would wallow in their own blood, but did you know the land war, the actual engagement of men to men, fighter to fighter did not last but one hundred hours. They took that land so fast, old Sadam hardly knew what had happened. When you saw the final hour, the Iraqi army leaving Kuwait, they literally raped that city by taking everything they could take away from it. Those Kuwaiti people, which could not fight a war of that magnitude, had to depend upon help from somewhere else, but look at the cars and things the Kuwaiti people owned. As those Iraqi forces left Kuwait, tied on top of their vehicles were dish washers, clothes washers and dryers, every modern convenience being taken back to Iraq. Before they could cross the border though, all hell broke loose. They were met by some of the worst bombardment of air attack one could imagine. When it showed the picture, that area just before the border, God turned it into a grave yard. That is just a little foretaste of what you Jewish and the Gentile people are getting ready to see again. We are going to see the God of heaven, the God of this book, do something that is going to make this Gentile world stagger, look in bewilderment and say, I wish somebody had told me so. Well remember, I did tell you. I will say this right now, not that I am going to jump with glee when I see someone lying on the ground dead, but when I look at the scene, according the way this book has described it, God said, I will do this with my servant Israel. Then I have to say, Lord help us to be ready, and to realize that this time of the yardstick is just about over. Let us not take things for granted. Let us begin to realize, God has things in His hands, everything is under His control, and everything is going to go precisely the way He has ordained it to go. This is why, as this thing closes out, God is going to be known as the great God of this world, the Creator, the life giver, the only God there is. To think, when the prophet said, And the nations of the earth will see and be confounded, one could have asked, Well how in the world are they going to see, if they do not have anything to see with? I ask you a simple question: How did the people of the world see what took place during WW1? That was not a war that was easy for American people to keep up with. There was no such thing as TV’s. A lot of the News we got in the Newspapers was already a few days old. The photographs of the battlefields were only received after they had been mailed by the on field reporters. Well today it is a different story: You can readily see that what the prophet said was not a far-fetched, imagined thing. Whatever takes place anywhere from now on, will be viewed around the world instantly. I can just see them in India, college students sitting before TV screens. Look at that! There has to be a God that is bigger than Hinduism, Buddhism, or Shintoism. College graduates in China likewise. College students from the jungles of Africa. They are going to say, I will serve a God like that. Then when we get to the 60th chapter of Isaiah, verse 10, here is the conclusion, there where they have assembled, young men, they have studied construction engineering. They come to Israel and say, I volunteer six months of my practice. Notice, “The sons of strangers shall build up thy walls.” Hallelujah! What a God!