← Prophecy Watchers
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I just want to tell you again, as I probably do every time, that you have no idea how blessed you are to have a pastor like Matt. Truly. Amen. Because we hear it all the time. Just constant of the church in general, especially some of the trips that we take international. That prophecy is like this curse word. It's to me, even the idea of Israel is, Has become really unfortunate, I guess, in many people's conversations. But the reason I'm going to talk about this today is because this is happening right now as we speak. And I want to kind of deconstruct something for a minute because how many of you truly are waiting for the Lord's return? See, you guys just. You got it all wrong. There's nothing to wait for. It all was fulfilled in 70 AD. You didn't know that? You didn't get the memo. I mean, this is, this is probably. I would say that view is. Probably covers 80% of the church today. Yeah, exactly. I always tell my wife, be careful what I ask. I like to ask trick questions because what we see is this idea that whether it's full preterism that says everything is over and this right now, what we're living in is the best that it's going to get. You think, how depressing is that? That this is the best that it's ever going to be in the history of humanity. And then you have those that are. Would say, no, no, we're not full preterist. It's kind of a fancy word. We're partial. And that means we. There was. Most things were fulfilled in 70 A.D. and yeah, Jesus is coming back one day. We don't know when. There's no signs to look for. It's just whenever it happens. But the fact of the matter is we, we are living in the millennium right now. This is the millennium. It's a spiritual millennium. Yeah, exactly. And it's our job to simply preach the gospel, which we would agree with that for sure. And to make the world better. We would agree with that. But the idea that Jesus is going to come back and reign on earth and fulfill all of what we see in the Old Testament, it's all spiritual. Everything is fulfilled in Jesus. That's the answer. And which is really unfortunate. So I want to, I want us to deconstruct a couple of things and say, why do we, why do we believe what we do and how do we get there? And so let me see if I can get this. There we go. All right. So I do want to talk about the key in all this to understand really what we see in the future about Israel. And of course, our salvation is to look at Israel's past, present and future. And so I'm going to go kind of quick because. But I want us to see something that, as you guys know, I have an archeology background. But this is what God says in Isaiah 41 as it relates to prophecy. He says, set forth your case, says the Lord. He's speaking like a lawyer. Bring your proofs, says the king of Jacob. Let them bring them and tell us what is going to happen. Tell us the former things, what they are, that we may consider them, that we may know their outcome, or declare to us the things to come, tell us what is to come hereafter, that we may know that you are God's do good or do harm, that we may be dismayed and terrified. What he's saying, what God is saying through Isaiah here is, you know what, if you want to know who's truly God, I mean, think about Mormonism or Islam or any of the other religions. Let's just simply bring everybody together. Let's bring the proofs out and let's see which one can predict the future. If they can do that with 100% precision, then we will know that guy we need to fear because he's speaking for the Lord God Almighty. And so prophecy and archaeology both show the reliability of scripture. And so I want us to see something here, because here's this again. Preliminary thoughts. Which one are you on all this? What eschatological views do you hold? I wouldn't even go all through those. I was showing this to my daughter last night and that's what she said. Huh. What is all this? These are your choices in the sense of what you have within the Christian church right now that are offering you all these things. And the third one there is amillennialism, which again is the one that we're going to kind of address. But of course there's others. And I'm not saying that anybody that holds these are not saved. In fact, most of our brothers and sisters that we're going to spend eternity with, they believe a whole bunch of this. And some people I say in the bottom and some people just say, I don't want to be involved and it's all going to pan out in the end. And they're a pan millennialist. Okay? That's the idea. So what I want to do is I really love hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is just the art and science of how do you Interpret the Bible. And this is the problem where we end up in error is based on how you approach this idea of hermeneutics. And so again, in most of my life and most of my education was all about trying to understand the Bible. That's why, again, I say it all the time. My undergrad was in Jewish studies. Why? Because Jesus was Jewish. If Jesus was Chinese, I would have learned Chinese. But because he's Jewish, you go to learn your Hebrew, you learn Greek in the time that he was there. So you learn about language, you learn about when you open the Bible up. I see this often with people who believe in flat earth. Okay, just. If you do, God bless you, I love you. But they often will quote certain things that are found in the Psalms. And I remember just at a conference not too long ago, a lady, very sweet lady, because we have all of our pictures, you know, our astronomy pictures. And she goes, I don't know if I believe that. And I was like, are you calling me a liar? I mean, do you think that we have a telescope just as a prop in the background while I'm creating the CGI images? And. But she said, well, you know, and she quoted some things. And I just shared Psalm 91 as it relates to genre. And I said, it says that God hides us under the shadow of his wings. I go, do you believe God has wings? And she goes, well, yeah, it could be true. And I just stood there and I waited. And she goes, no, I don't believe God has wings. I don't believe he's a chicken. I said, look, because you're reading that in poetic language. So we understand that when we read there is poetic language. We talk about what's the theological intent of each book, what's the historical context, what's the culture. Again, we're reading it from a Jewish culture in the Middle east at a certain specific time, historically speaking. And of course, geography has a lot to play in what we see in Scripture. Now, my question is this. When we're looking at second coming prophecy, all these things that speak about Jesus return, and then we have, of course, prophecy related to Jesus first coming, I just asked this question. How did the New Testament writers, and even most scholars today, I mean all of them, how did they interpret the prophecies related to the first coming? Isaiah 7:14, the idea that a virgin would conceive and give birth, we see that in Matthew chapter one. Was that fulfilled symbolically or literally? It was literal. Micah 5, 2, that he would be born in Bethlehem. But don't wait Wait, Bethlehem means what? What does Bethlehem mean? House of bread. House of bread. See, you guys are missing. See, this is all about Jesus being the bread of life. It's not about him being born in a city called Bethlehem. And you go, no, no, no. Okay, what do we see in Matthew chapter two, Jesus was born in Bethlehem. It's taken, straightforward. Zechariah nine, talking about Jesus coming on a donkey, lowly on a donkey, in humility at the triumphal entry. And is that symbolic or is that real? Isaiah 53, 4, that Jesus, by his stripes, we are healed. Now, there is a certain level of, I would say, spiritual application there. But when you read Matthew 8, it says clear, when Jesus healed a leper, it says, thus, it was fulfilled by his stripes, we are healed. Every single believer, no matter what, maybe not in this life, but certainly the next, is going to be healed and have a perfect body. And that is rooted in the atonement of what Jesus did on the cross. But I want to show. I'll just go through this kind of quick because so what I did is I was like. I picked. Not even just random. I was like, what are the top 30 prophecies related to Jesus first coming, not his second coming. Because we want to do a test. And so I won't go through all these. But you just look at all these. And over on the right, literal, literal, literal, literal, literal. Straightforward. And then the one that is always quoted is in Hosea chapter 11. Or it's in Matthew chapter two, where Matthew says, out of Egypt I have called my son. And he says, thus it is fulfilled. And it's a quote from Hosea11. This is where Jesus went down to Egypt as a baby. And then when they came back, Matthew writes this. And there's a whole reason why Matthew is doing that. But in this particular instance, yes, that one was typological. Okay, so if we go on, you have others about John the Baptist, a voice cry in the wilderness, even Malachi 4 about Elijah being sent before the coming of the great day. I have there. It says typological, but it's hypothetical. We do know that Elijah is coming. Jesus said that in Matthew 17, he is coming again. But Jesus says, you know, hypothetically speaking, if the Jews would have received Jesus, which they didn't. If they would have received Jesus, then John the Baptist would have functioned as that Elijah type figure. But that didn't happen. So therefore it's still real in. In what's happening. And then, of course, here's some other ones being betrayed. 30 pieces of silver Hands and feet pierced, garments divided, what do we see? All literal, okay, and more despised and rejected, wounded, oppressed, all the Isaiah 53 super literal. Now, so if you look at all these, you will see that 90 to 95% of them are straightforward literal. And the thing about it is, is that most of the scholars today that are amillennial or they speak that the second coming scriptures are symbolic, you will ask them, do you believe all these are literal? And they go, well, yeah, of course. And so my question is, well, when did you decide to change the rules in the middle of the game? That's the key here, is that there's a switch, even for themselves. And so what you'll also find is like the few that are, let's say, typological or whatever, they will take those and they'll hang their hat on, on the exception rather than the rule. And that creates a whole bunch of confusion. So in the church today, if you go and you listen to one of them, they will spend all their time on that. And you go, okay, I'm not denying the Hosea 11 and these other typological passages, but is that representative of the rule of what the New Testament writers did or what we just saw here? This is only a sampling. You know, you could have some people say there's up to 300 prophecies related to Jesus first coming. And so when we come, this is a great statement. This is like a classic. When the plain sense of scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense. Therefore take every word at its primary, ordinary, usual literal meaning, unless the facts of the immediate context studied in the light of related passages and axiomatic and fundamental truths indicate clearly otherwise, that's pretty straightforward. We do this for every part of life. If your husband or wife says, hey, I left a note for you on the counter to go to the grocery store and get some certain things. I need you to get some white milk. Not chocolate, get some white milk. I need you to get this. And you go to your daughter. See, your mom loves poetry. She doesn't want me to go to the store. What this really means is this is about purity. This is about milk. It's about growth. It's about proteins. It's really. So she'd be like, no, I wanted you to go to the store. Don't make it up. And so this is, what you have here is, this is very, very just plain understanding. For example, John 10. So Jesus again said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. The now here's My question is Jesus mahogany, cedar, redwood, pine, we would say, well, he's obviously speaking figuratively there, okay? Because that's pretty obvious. Again, Jesus said, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Are we vampires? See, we know that obviously based on like this, when we read it in its primary. Unless the context is showing us something different. So what I want to talk about here is, let's talk about Israel for a moment because what we're going to see is, here's the question right now and I'll show you this, that if you ask many of these people who would be amillennial or others, and you say, is there any significance at all to Israel coming back in the land in 1948, they'll say, Absolutely not. No, no significance. Accident of history. Now I will say this, that many of them, not all, many of them would be Calvinist, okay? And if you understand Calvinism, which don't want to talk about that necessarily, except a Calvinist believes in the extreme sovereignty of God. They believe God is sovereign in everything. And you say. So you're telling me that in your view Israel coming back from the graveyard of nations is insignificant in the scheme of God, who is sovereign in everything. Come on, guys, at least live up to your own theology here of the fact that Israel is super important. But they will say no. Remember, there's nothing to see, there's nothing to look forward. And we are commanded twice, well, many times. But there's two things primarily as it relates to eschatology that we're commanded to do. One is occupy until Jesus actually comes. Okay? That's why we have church. That's why we build churches. That's why we continue to go, because we don't know when he's going to come. But the second thing he says in Mark 13:35 is to watch. We are to watch. But what some will tell you, there's nothing to watch for. But we know that Israel was kind of is certainly the key marker. And so we'll go into all the details again on this because of time. But what did God say? Well, this is important because this is before they even go into the land. Okay? This is Deuteronomy 4 and Moses is calling heaven and earth as a witness. And he says, you will not live long in the land, but will be utterly destroyed and the Lord will scatter you among the peoples and you will be left few in number among the nations. That's important. Plural, where the Lord will drive you when you are in tribulation and all these things come upon you in the latter days, that's super important. You will return to the Lord your God and obey his voice. And then he goes on for God's merciful. So what you see here is even before they go in the land, Moses is telling him, you guys are going to screw up. God's going to kick you out of the land. And then when you're out there, God will bring you back because he's merciful, but you're going to. It's going to extend even to the latter days. And so what we see here is, of course, the first time that they were kicked out of land, at least for the northern kingdom, was in 722 BC when they were basically removed to Assyria. And then, of course, we know the big one, at least prior to today, was the Babylonian captivity, where the Jews we know were exiled to where? To Babylon. Okay. And then they returned to the land of Israel under Zerubbabel from Babylon. So we have here where God talks about many nations. We're like, well, wait a minute. This. See, this is speaking about something else. This is speaking about a separate exile that involves being exiled to many, many nations, not just one. And so we see Jesus speak about this as well in Luke 11. He says, I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill, so that the blood of all the prophets shed from the foundation of the world may be charged against this generation. Okay, so this is pretty serious trouble that you have. Jesus is upset. And this is again more towards the end of his ministry after he had done many miracles. And he says, look, judgment is coming. And we see Here in Luke 21, again, this is referring to 70 AD they will fall by the edge of the sword right here and be led captive among all nations. And Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. So you have the Roman destruction under Titus in AD 70, as well as the full final Bar kakba revolt in 135. So then what do you have? Where's Israel gone? Scattered in the dispersion. And so the question is, and let's enter into church history, and no doubt that the. The first believers in Jesus were Jews. But as many, many more Gentiles came in, and really, I would say second century, third century, they began to despise the Jewish people. And so then you had a variety of perspectives as it relates to the church now replacing Israel. Israel is long gone. There's nothing more for them. And I'll show you some other things here. And so you have again, after 1878 years, Israel becomes a nation. And that's why I asked the question, is there any prophetic significance to modern Israel? And many will say no, nothing to see. Accident history. But this is what I wanted. So let's do a little test. This is, this is where I'm going. I always wanted to do this was to say this is about hermeneutics. This is about how we, how we interpret the Bible. Which one is right? How do we test that? Well, let's go look at some scriptures and that speak about what is coming in the future. Let's, let's put ourselves, let's say roughly the year 1800. Okay, maybe 1600. No, Israel's not around. Israel's been gone a long time. There's no sign of Israel even close to coming back. So let's do an examination. And so what you see in church history is again two groups, kind of the normal reading, what we would understand. And this is from Antioch, this is north of Israel today, southern Turkey. There's a couple Antiochs. The other one is the allegorical message which really became rooted in origin, which is again second, third century, as well as Augustine around 400 A.D. okay, so what I want to do here is for our test is we're going to look at how they, how these commentaries interpret certain passages that speak about Israel's return in the latter days. So John Calvin 1550, very early Matthew Henry. You guys have heard of Matthew Henry, right? Most people have, okay, pretty decent commentary. But we'll find out where he has some areas of improvement. And I thought let's find some old ones. The Cambridge Commentary 1897 and then the ICC International Critical Commentary. So these are all pre1948. So this will be fun to say. How do they address these scriptures that speak about the return of Israel? Okay, so here in Isaiah 11, this is a passage where it talks about in that day the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time to recover the remnant of the remains of his people. Now this is important. From Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Cush, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamat, and from the coastlines of the sea, he will raise a signal for the nations and will assemble the banished of Israel and, and gather the dispersed of Judah from where? Okay, so already you have a whole list during the Babylonian captivity. We have a whole list of nations here during the Babylonian captivity when they went there, they went To Babylon. They didn't go to Egypt. So what Isaiah's prophesying is that in the future for Israel, there's going to be the second time. I'll explain that. That there's going to be a second regathering from all the four corners of the earth. Okay, well, most scholars will say that this second time is. Second is one of two. Okay. The second time is a recovery where God. This is right. Gonna be right before the millennium. But there is a first regathering or recovering of the remnant from all these four corners, which is, I think, what we see now in 1948. All Israel's come from everywhere. Four corners over the earth, not just Babylon. Okay, so what does John Calvin say? Okay, well, we won't go into all that, but the prediction about the future glory of the church. Man, I think I'm reading something different here. Okay, I thought I was just reading something about Israel and the whole context of the nation of Israel. So he says, though God disperses and scatters his church. Why would God scatter his church? I thought he loved his church. These are the believers. Okay. Yet it's impossible he can ever cast a whale together. And. And then on the bottom, what does he say? The language is metaphorical. This refers to the scattered church. And you go, bro, you missed it. You missed it. Something. Nowhere in there do I see anything about the church. This is clearly in context. So this is what you have is things being taken out of context. Okay, well, what does Matthew Henry say? Matthew Henry says this is said to be recovery of them the second time from Babylon. Such an instance of the power and the goodness of God and such a reviving to them as their first deliverance out of Egypt. Yeah, another one, bro. Okay, what he says from Babylon, we just saw all the different nations. So in their mind, see, in their mind, they have to see. They cannot see Israel here. It's like confirmation bias. But when they go here and they're like, well, it certainly can't refer to some regathering of Israel, because obviously, where's Israel at? They're not around. This has to refer to Babylon. And you're like, it clearly does not. So they. They end up reading into the text. What about the Cambridge. This is again, 1897. The language here seems to imply Jewish dispersion on a large scale. The only time in Isaiah's time, at least they're trying to stay in context, was those of the northern Israelites to the Assyrian empire. If the standpoint of the prophecy be post exilic, would be after Babylon. The most probable reference would be to the first return from exile under Cyrus. Otherwise we must understand the first time of Egypt of the Exodus, which is hardly natural, I would agree. Although the prophecy does abound in allusions to that great deliverance. So ultimately, you know what he says? A whole bunch of nothing. Because in his mind he cannot see anything about the nation of Israel. What about the ICC a little bit later, 1925? Again, I won't get all summary. He just says, well, this is about Exodus and about the Babylonian captivity, which we saw is clearly not. It's about multiple nations from the four corners of the earth. But as they're trying to interpret this, they have no framework because they've already eliminated the idea of taking the scripture straightforward. And so here, here's another one. Let's examine this one. Ezekiel 38. Okay, most of us believe that this is speaking about a future event of the Gog Magog war which is coming. And it says, this is the text. After many days you will be summoned, speaking to Gog in the latter years, you will come into the land that is restored from the sword, whose inhabitants have been gathered from many nations to the mountains of Israel, which had been a continual waste. But its people were brought out from the nations and they are living confidently or securely. Talk about looking at what we see right now, there's several things here. Latter years, there's a restoration, but the land itself was soared. But the mountains of Israel, which were a continual waste. You remember the quote by Mark Twain, he went to Israel like late 1800s. He's like, this is a cursed land, man. Who would want to live here? This is absolutely disgusting. And that's. The mountains were a continual waste for 1800 years. But God's saying here, when God comes to Israel in the latter years, he's going to come to a place where the inhabitants have been gathered for many nations which. And the mountains which had been a continual waste. What has Israel done today? Oh, phenomenal. Okay, now they're brought out from the nations plural, and they're living confidently. Does Israel live confidently right now? Oh, yeah, unfortunately. They're probably a little too confident, right? In their own. In their own power. Okay, we know in verse 12, agog and the gog Magog, they're going to come to capture, spoil and seize plunder, to turn your hand against the waste places which are now inhabited. So again, there's a now, even though they were waste for 1800 years, they are now inhabited. Okay, against the people who are gathered again from the nations who have required cattle and goods who live at the center of the world. Israel is one of the top 10 economies in the world. Think about that. 10 million people. And if you go back 100 years, what did the Arabs think of the land? They didn't care. They didn't. They didn't. They didn't love the land. They didn't have a connection to the land. They didn't produce the land. But Israel's been there again now, 78 years, and look what they've done. Look what God's done, let's say that way. Okay? And God has a reason, because God's bringing them back in order to save them. Okay, so what do we see? What does Matthew Henry say about. Well, I think I missed one here. No. Okay. Oh, I went too far. When he looks at Ezekiel 38, John Calvin didn't write any commentary on Ezekiel, so we could. We can't approach him. Okay, but Matthew Henry again, 1700s, general encouragement of God's victory. No specifics. He just blows right by it. It doesn't work for him. Cambridge commentary again, skips most of it. And then it says, well, this. This is symbolizing universal peace. See, they can't grasp and just read it in a normal way that, yes, the mountains, which were a continual waste, are now going to be filled with people. Okay, the icc, I love this one. These verses are vague and mysterious. If you just read it straightforward, you'll see. Okay, here's another one we can test on Ezekiel 36, talking about Israel again in the present. Okay, I scattered them among the nations and they were dispersed to the countries, plural. I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. And that is what has happened. And then the rest of the passage is what I think is going to happen at the Second Coming. Then he will sprinkle clean water on them. They'll be clean, so they're certainly not clean right now. Israel is not a very godly nation, as we know. But God says, again, I'm going to bring you from the countries into your own land. Well, what did our commentary say? Israel was wicked and kicked them out. And it skips the whole idea of regathering them all together because it doesn't work in their mind. Cambridge spiritualizes it as only a spiritual salvation of who? Now, this is. This is my favorite, the icc. This is not about Babylon. So they recognize that this regathering in Ezekiel 36 is not about Babylon. It says, but the prophets are allowed imaginative freedom what does that even mean? It's like. Well, if I read it straightforward, it talks about them regathering, but, you know, it was just all in their imagination. And they have the freedom to imagine what. What doesn't exist. Is that what we just heard in Isaiah 41? With prophecy, God says, let's bring them all together who can tell the truth in the specifics, okay? Now, Martin Luther, okay, Love him or hate him, doesn't matter. Okay? He certainly God used him for the Protestant Reformation. If the Jews are Abraham's descendants. Now, he hated the Jews, okay? Like the physical ethnic Jews that were around, okay? And he might have had reason, okay, in the sense of to hate not being anti Semitic, in the sense of my mind. But during his day, there was a lot of trouble by some of the Jewish people. He says if the Jews are Abraham's descendants, then we would expect to see them back in their own land. We would expect them to have a state of their own. But what do we see? We see them living scattered and despised. Well, what would we say to Martin, Bro, Just wait a little bit. Everything that he just said came true, didn't it? Mm. He just didn't wait long enough. But what's the bad thing, though? The bad thing is he is seeing in Scripture certain things. And he says that can't be the case because he's basing his interpretation of Scripture on what he sees. That's not how you interpret Scripture. Even though I think he was wrong. We don't interpret Scripture. We don't see, oh, Israel became a nation, and now we're going to go back and force that on the text. That's not right either. But what he was doing is he clearly understood in a very literal way all the stuff about atonement, old Protestant Reformation, that we're saved by grace through faith. He saw that very straight and literal. But when it came to the Jews, he said, no, what it says, we're not going to see it. We don't see it right now. Charles Hodge, another Covenant theologian, said this in 1872, which I like. I love these texts because it's way early. The literal interpretation of the Old Testament prophesies or the literal Old Testament prophecies relating to the restoration of Israel and the future kingdom of Christ cannot possibly be carried out. This guy is like a legend in those that are Covenant theologians in their. Their whole systematic theology. But he recognizes, see, the interpretation of the Old Testament prophecies cannot possibly be carried out. Why is God's arm all of a sudden short? See they're looking out at their time and they're like, where's Israel at? Israel's nowhere. Israel's been gone for six, seventeen hundred years. This was a fun one. Actually. Bob had a book on this and I thought, man, this is gold mine here. This was 1919 and this is a Seventh Day Adventist book. They said, consequently, all unfilled prophecies which pertain to national Israel are conditional prophecies that can never be fulfilled to them as such. Heeding this truth will save us from great blunders. Some of the prophecies of the Old Testament seem to convey the idea that Israelites, the Hebrews are to be restored as a nation and, and that in the last days they will be a separate people from the Gentiles and that the Lord will use them for the salvation of the Gentiles in the last days. These erroneous views are based upon Old Testament prophecies alone. Now there's of course a lot wrong here. 1919, there's Israel's not around, we're just getting out of World War I on this could never be fulfilled. But now we look and say, who has the great blunder now? And here you're going to see something. This idea of the Old Testament prophecies alone, what you see in typical amillennial thinking or covenant theologian thinking, and I spoke about this at the conference, was that they say that all those prophecies that we see that we just read, those are just some of them, they all are dissolved or absorbed or transferred into Jesus. Still trying to understand what that means. Actually you go, what do you mean? Well, once Jesus comes, they're all fulfilled in him. So there's nothing that you can read in the Old Testament that's going to be fulfilled in its normal way anymore. Because Jesus is the answer for all of it. They spiritualize it all and just dissolve it right into him. And so what they do is they make a distinction between what we read in the New Testament and, and the Old Testament and then they make them fight against each other. Is that our view of Scripture? Not at all. In second Timothy 3, 16, when Paul says all Scripture is inspired and profitable for doctrine and reproof and correction, for instruction of righteous, that the Christian, the believer, may be perfectly complete. What's he referring to? The Old Testament. There was no New Testament at that time. But what they try to say is, no, the way that we, the way that we, the Jews read the Old Testament, very literal minded, that's a Jewish thing. And therefore the Jews are blind and we need to read it through the banner and the lens of the New Testament. And therefore the New Testament reinterprets the Old Testament for us. I don't see that anywhere. Again, Louis Berkoff here. Again, well known, 1939. He's closer. It is very doubtful, however, whether Scripture warrants the expectation that Israel will finally be re established as a nation and will as a nation, turn to the Lord. Well, so this is my. Here's my point. I bring up these guys because of their hermeneutical method. The way they interpret Scripture leads them to say things like this in 1939. And as we know now, they are all 100% wrong. Their methodology led them down the wrong path to where they could not understand, or they wouldn't understand what Scripture was clearly saying about prophecy or even the second Coming or specifically, as we're talking about here, Israel. Now, let's give you a contrast, okay? Charles, Simeon, 1832, on Ezekiel 34, we just read those passages. Whatever reference these promises might have to the period of their return from Babylon, it is manifest that they did not receive at that time a full accomplishment. He recognized this is not about Babylon, okay? And consequently, that we must look forward to the future restoration of the Jews as the period fixed for their final completion. The Jews are destined to be restored to their own land. Well, bro, this guy's doing all right. He says, of this I conceive. Sorry. Of this I conceive there could be no reasonable doubt. The prophet speaks so fully and so plainly on the subject that we must divest language of all force and certainty before we can set aside the hope of their restoration to their own land. He's saying, if you don't see this, then you are getting rid of all language, all normal language because of your bias is basically what he's saying there. He says, whether that event shall precede or follow their conversion, I presume not to determine. Now, that was. He's very insightful here. He says, I don't know if that's. If they're going to come back in unbelief or they're going to come back after they're saved. And we now know based on the passages that they come back in unbelief. And it says, and then God says, then I will sprinkle clean water on you. He says, I will bring. Well, there I quoted it. He says, in the passage before us, the prophet speaks of their conversion as subsequent to their restoration, I will bring you into your own land. Then will I sprinkle clean Water on you and you shall be clean. All of these testimonies doubtless are true, and they are easily reconciled by only referring them to the different stages of their conversion, as viewed in its commencement, its progress, and its consummation. But whatever be determined with respect to this, their future restoration to the land of their fathers is as certain as any event which yet remains to be fulfilled. Beautiful. And why? Because he just read the text. He read the text and he allowed it to say what it says. He didn't spiritualize it, he didn't make it allegory, he didn't transfer it to the Church. And this is in 1832. And he goes, look, I don't get it. I don't see it. I don't see Israel anywhere. But if I read the text, this is what it says, and this is what we would expect to see. William Blackstone, 1908. Israel shall be restored to Palestine and no more be pulled out of the land. Okay? Robert Anderson, 1894, talking about Ezekiel 37, the dry bones vision. What the passage means is that God is going to bring his people Israel, who are buried in captivity in the graveyard of nations, and place them again in their own land. So here what we have, again, is two different interpretive methods. One is to see things figurative and spiritually. The other one is. Let's just read it. Can we just read it? Clarence Larkin, of course, well known. If it were suggested that we discuss the future of any other nation, then the Jewish nation, I, for one, would not attempt it, for the task would be simply a speculative one based on probabilities that would be likely to be upset by unforeseen circumstances. But the Jewish nation has the unique distinction of having for its historian the Holy Spirit, who has not simply recorded the past history of that nation, but has outlined its future. We indulge, then, in no idle and profitless speculations. When we attempt to forecast the future of the Jewish people, all we have to do is to gather together and place in their logical order what the Holy Spirit through the prophets has foretold of their future. The method is as simple as the result is. Sure, beautiful. I mean, again, this is. This is 1918. And so again, what we're doing, remember, we're having a test here. Let's test the methodology of those that are millennial or covenant, and they come up with all these just wacky ideas. And you have others that go, well, I'm just going to take it straightforward about Israel. I don't fully understand it all, but we can trust what the scripture is saying, here is a post millennialist again, not a guy that believes in the future. This disagreement I just showed you, this disagreement arises primarily because of the different methods of interpretation. It is generally agreed that if the prophecies are taken literally, they do foretell a restoration of the nation of Israel in the land of Palestine. And you go, uh huh, they do. Does he believe them? No, he does not believe them at all. And this is even in 1977, after Israel has been around for 30 some years. Okay, so where am I going here? Well, when we think about Israel's future or for right now Israel's back in the land and we look forward, what's going to happen in the future for Israel? You have two options before you. You can go with the covenant theologian and say, well, it's all symbolic. There is no millennium. Jesus really isn't coming back for that. This is it right now, Israel's here as an accident of history. Or you can go, well, what does the text say in its normal way? Israel has a future. It's here for a reason. It's. And I'll explain with that in a minute. But so looking at this test, Israel's past, Israel's present, you see the two options. And like I said, this should be enough proof for any skeptic or scoffer that hey, the way that your ancestors, your spiritual ancestors, your previous amillennial or others post millennial people, they made these predictions based on their interpretive method. And you know what? They are wrong. They are clearly wrong. Therefore I don't give them any credibility when they are going to talk to me about the future of Israel. Sorry, you lost me. Your credibility is over. Because that whole stream of thinking was we had a test and that test came in 1948 when it happened. And the other people who said no, if we take it straightforward, this is going to happen. I don't understand it. 1832, now we go. That's the method that was correct. So as we look forward to the future of Israel again, here's our options. Who are we going to trust? Are we going to trust the literal normal method or are we going to trust the allegorical method which clearly has been proven false? And so when we look. Okay, so here's, here's, I'm going to wrap it up here. So then what is on the horizon for Israel in prophecy? What does the Bible tell us? Well, we know we're in the midst of this thing with Iran, which who knows where it's going to end up? What we do know is that Jeremiah 49, Bill Salus, our brothers, talked a lot about that. Elam, whether that's going to be destroyed. Of course he talks a lot about Psalm 83 as well. But most specifically, where most prophecy teachers agree on is Ezekiel 38 and 39. So all this stuff happening right now, we know that Iran is not going to be removed from the equation no matter what international things happen. Ebb and flow probably, sure, but they will be there on that day. They will be joining these northern confederates along with Turkey, most likely Russia as well, and they will be attacking Israel. So all this from a prophetic perspective. But again, others, as we saw in Ezekiel 38, they just say, well, this is, this is talking about spiritual peace. It's like, man, you really have no, I can't trust your methodology at all. So I'm not going to listen to you because your whole thinking has been proven false. Therefore, when the Bible talks about the future for Israel and maybe we'll see some of it, that whole agenda just doesn't work. We also know again, I talk a lot about the third temple again in Matthew 24:15. It's interesting too that we get so much flack from this from those in the Amlono camp. Again, our brothers and sisters whom we love. But they're like, the Bible never teaches that there's going to be a new Third Temple. Contraire, okay? In fact there's. And they'll say, and the. And church history never taught this as well. This is, this is completely fabricated by John Darby in the 1830s. And so what I've done is I've been collecting all these historical documents and if you go to Prophecy Watchers, if you're interested in this, I'm like, go to prophecywatchers.com temple. I made it real easy. And I have an article there where I simply ask the question, are we crazy to believe that a third Temple is going to be rebuilt? And then I go and I give like 20 examples in church history where all these going way back to the second century, they're like, well, we don't really understand it, but the Antichrist is becoming in the future and he's going to sit in a physical temple in Jerusalem. Well, that's exactly what the text says. And they will quote second Thessalonians chapter two going back to Irenaeus. I mean this is like 200 A.D. so people that make these claims, they're just, they're just wrong. I'm not trying to be mean, they're just wrong. And so I'll give you, I'll just give you a couple examples. Here we are. This is kind of fun that the third Temple is on its way. It's coming. They're talking about, you see it in stages. And right now they're talking about putting a synagogue up on the Temple Mount first order to upset the status quo. All of this is happening right now, like the last few weeks. They're discussing things and it's been started really since 1967. So it's amazing to me. What I say is these people that deny our view that there's going to be a third Temple. I just think we just got to wait a little longer. Kind of like Martin Luther, he didn't wait long enough. If we just wait a little longer. I mean here they have all of the elements, they have all the priestly garments, they have the golden menorah. You can see this. When you go to Israel, they got the golden crown. I mean all of the vessels at the Temple institute is all 100% prepared, 100% ready. And the amillennialists will tell you, well yeah, that's their delusion. They're doing this. It's never going to happen. You go, well, people have been talking about this long before they started doing this and sure enough, now it's coming to be. And of course I've talked a lot about the red heifer even here. And all this discussion, it's fascinating to me. You didn't have this discussion 100 years ago, 150 years ago at all. And so. But what else do we see? Well, is that Jerusalem is Jerusalem a point of contention? Right? And Zechariah 12 says this exact thing, that God in the last days would make Jerusalem this burdensome stone, this stone of contention. And again, if we could, we could go on to say, well, what did the, what did Matthew Henry say about this? What did John Calvin say about this? And it would be right over their head. They would come up with some fabricated spiritual application. When you, when you read it, it says in the latter times this is going to happen. And here we are. And we also know again, Elijah is going to arrive before the day of the Lord. Will we see him? Not sure. That'll be interesting. Daniel 70 week. This is another thing. If you. I spent last at the conference talking about the different viewpoints on this and it's completely just kind of convoluted in the way if you just read it straightforward. There is a seven year period that's coming for Israel. We know that again, Israel is going to come to an agreement with the Antichrist. This Antichrist is going to deceive them. He's going to go and sit in a temple, as Second Thessalonians 2 says. But we also know what's the future for Israel. Salvation. Salvation. At the end of the tribulation period, Matthew 23, Jesus said to them, and this is amazing, he says, look, you won't see me again until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. But they will see him again once they come to that point. And right now, if you look at Israel as a whole, including the orthodox or the religious, and even the secular, they are so far away. I've discussed it here, what they think about Jesus. Well, let's wrap it up right here. To me, this is, this is phenomenal as it relates to the future. Paul says this. Did God's people talking about the Jews stumble and fall beyond recovery? No, they did stumble. They obviously rejected and killed Jesus. That's bad. But we know that the first believers and followers were Jews. He says, of course not. They were disobedient. So God made salvation available to the Gentiles, but he wanted his own people, the Jews, the national Israel Jews, to become jealous and claim it for themselves. Now, if the Gentiles were enriched because the people of Israel turned down God's offer of salvation, are we enriched? So in one sense we're like, well, I'm kind of glad they made that decision, because salvation then extended all the way across the world to me in this age and to you. He says, if the Gentiles were enriched because the people of Israel turned down God's offer of salvation, think how much greater a blessing the world will share when they finally accept it. Man, this. See, this is rich theology right here. This clearly goes on into verse 26, well into 25 as well, saying, I don't want you to be ignorant, brethren, that the Jews have been hardened in a part. There's partial hardening has come upon the Jews until when the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And then it says in verse 26, but all Israel will be saved. And then he says, and ungodliness will be removed from Jacob. So what we see right now with ungodliness in Israel, of course we do. It's bad. Okay, remember, July is going to be their pride month. I mean, you're like, God does not approve any of that. But what you see, again, the amillennial people for this, they say, no, this is all about the church. There is no future for Israel. And I just say, sorry, I'm not going to believe your methodology because your methodology has not worked historically. And so when we go to think about the future, which is pretty interesting, as Clarence Larkin says, if it wasn't the Holy Spirit, then we'd all be confused. But because the Holy Spirit has written these things, we can be 100% confident. When people ask us about Israel, we go, oh yeah, we know exactly what's going to happen. Well, isn't it spiritual? No, it's straightforward and literal as we've seen. And so that's really, this is the case as well. When you come to Isaiah 11 and talking about the wolf laying down with the lamb and the child, you know, playing by the cobra den and the bear hanging out and the lions eating straw, if you, if you ask them, they'll say completely figurative. That's not real, it's spiritual. You need to understand that. Don't, don't have this expectation of this coming physical millennium because it's all fulfilled in the church. And I say, I'm sorry, I reject that. There's nothing in that text when you read it that would not say that it is to be read straightforward. And that on that day when we are there ruling and reigning with him, that we're going to see the natural world changed and modified to glorify God. It comes down ultimately to here's the scary thing for me, if the Old Testament or again they're very much kind of anti Old Testament in some ways, don't want to overstate it. If that can't be read straightforward then where do we go? We just have this kind of nebulous interpretation grid that says, well it's all just fulfilled in Jesus. Well, we do believe Jesus is going to be the reigning king, but at the end of the day every promise from the Old Testament all the way forward is to be fulfilled exactly as it says God. Does God keep his promises or not? Absolutely. And that to me that's where this ultimately lands and is when I read the Bible I don't see them fighting against each other. I don't see the rules being changed in the middle of the game. That we see the first coming prophecies in this way and all of a sudden for the second coming it's all spiritual and non figurative. Even those same people see it that way. To me the promises of God are truly yes and amen in Jesus, but they're going to be fulfilled exactly as it says. That gives me comfort and hope. Let's pray shall we? Father? I'm just reminded of the importance of your word. And your word is so rich. We could have done this all day long with many other prophecies to show that the way they are written are the way that they come to pass. I thank you Lord, that you can give us comfort and hope as we spend our time not only occupying until Jesus comes, but that we are watching and that there are things to watch for we, we're not living in this deceived world, we're watching the world come and shape as we watch the new world order, we watch globalism, we watch all these things even with Israel. We're watching all of the scenario of the end of the age appear. And we're trying to be obedient to you and to watch these things. And why? So that we can reach as many people as possible. But in the meantime we will certainly occupy, Lord, until your son comes back for us. Ask Lord, that you would continue to equip us as your church to serve, to seek to see people saved, to equip them, to see them growing in you and watching. We pray this all in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you everyone.