Loading summary
Transcript15 lines
- [00:01]
A
Hello, everyone. Monro Gonzalez here in studio, And I am here with our good friend Graham Keeland, all the way from England. And we have spent four episodes now discussing the 144,000 that you see in the book of Revelation. We've kind of been discussing the different viewpoints, possibilities, new thoughts, knowing that nothing is put into a box. And so Graham has done a great job for us. It's speaking about that and me quizzing him about different things. So, Graham, welcome.
- [00:35]
B
Hey, Mondo, Good to join you again, continuing our journey.
- [00:39]
A
Yes, here we are. Here we are. And you know, it's, it's fascinating. You and I have talked about this again off camera as well, that when you come up with interesting thoughts, thinking outside the box is a good way to say it about traditions. Certainly in the Bible, Revelation, Chapter 7 and 14, and others very specifically labeling these guys as 144,000. We get, you get some comments, and some comments are. Some people are connecting the dots maybe quicker than others. Sometimes I find that people often will just read the title or they'll spend five minutes watching a video and then they make a, maybe a judge, a judgment, or they jump to conclusions. And so I just encourage people, look, if you're coming in at episode five, which is what this one is, reserve any sort of conclusion, good or bad, until you've seen the other four. Because a lot of this has been building upon each other. And so which I find it fascinating, again, if people know me, both Graham and I, we love scripture. We believe in the scripture is the word of God. But we also recognize that when it comes to prophecy, it's wise, it's humble to kind of hold things a little bit loose. The gospel is solid. We don't change. We're not changing that. But when it comes to some of these secondary or even tertiary issues as relates to prophecy, we look back and say, and I say this often, Graham is do we really think that we've learned everything there is about the Bible and we can just put it to bed and we got a nice little box on the shelf and nothing more to learn? I don't believe that for a second. Again, there is no, there is no new gospel. Jesus is the way, the truth and life, and there's no ambiguity or lack of clarity. But when it comes to, again, some of these other thoughts, it's okay. We should be invited to think outside and to do it in a way that is loving and kind to one another. We are brothers and sisters. We're going to spend together forever in heaven. So Graham, with that kind of as an introduction, maybe for again, as always, can you summarize the last four sessions and then where we're going to be going today?
- [02:56]
B
Yes. So what we've done is we've taken the Scriptures, the two chapters there in the book of Revelation that speak about the 144,000, 7 and 14, that John is seeing them there in Mount Zion up in heaven, and it is the heavenly Zion. And I've kind of presented some a different way at looking at how these, this company of men, and they are a company of men, how they might have arrived in Revelation 7:14 from the past, rather than just turning up in the future. So what I mean by that is that if you put Revelation 7 and the sealing of the 144,000 and then 40, if you put that entirely in the future, then that means at some time in the future that a ceiling is going to go on. You know, an angel is going to come with a seal and he's going to seal 144,000 out of the 12 tribes. We don't necessarily know what those tribal divisions are today, you know, and how, how the angel, that angel would do that. But, you know, all things are possible. Yeah, God knows DNA, somebody made a comment on that. So, yeah, he could, he, he could do that. But I'm thinking that, that the story reaches further back and that's the story that we've been exploring. And so the first part of that was the idea, mondo, that this 144,000, they're considered the first fruits of mankind, Jews and Gentiles, the first fruits of mankind. And so when we look at that, we understood, well, what does that actually mean? And then we saw that Jesus himself is the firstfruits. So Jesus the first fruits, does this group of men, the company of men, do they somehow fit in with Jesus resurrection? And so we looked at the idea in the Gospels there of those men, the supernatural men, the resurrected men. And they were resurrected men. They weren't men who were raised to die again because it says they appeared in, in flesh. They were like literally flashing men, flashing clothes, dazzling white, you know, white linen. The sort of language which is also spoken of, of Jesus on the mount of transfiguration and of angels. So this is not a case of like Lazarus, when Jesus rose Lazarus from the dead, bound him, and then we know that Lazarus died again. So Lazarus wasn't resurrected. Of course, nobody could be resurrected until Jesus himself was resurrected. So the idea then that this is the company of men because somebody's got to be the first fruits. And so if Jesus is raising people out of the graves, then with him, those people are the first fruits. Well, then you can have them be the first fruits and then these other people in the future being the first fruits. And you end up trying to like jump through a whole lot of loops. Well, that's the first fruit of the harvest, the barley and the wheat and the. And it's to maintain a position instead of just saying, well, actually if we put these men in Revelation 7, if we put them here at the tomb, at the tomb, the resurrection of Jesus, then we know if they are those, then we know that they must have lived sometime before. And we have then begun to explore when they might have lived and what their purpose had been. And we understood that from Isaiah and from the other prophets as well, particularly from Jeremiah, that there was a mourning for Zion that went on at the time of when Jerusalem was first destroyed under the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. We looked at how, you know, the beasts arise out of the sea at the time of Nebuchadnezzar. So it's the Babylonians. So we are reaching back to the Babylonians that these men lived. Then I made the proposition that the strange phrase that they hadn't defied themselves with women, I posited that, I think for me. But again, you can't prove that, but we might possibly be looking at eunuchs. So in other words, that they went through the extreme sacrifice. We're going to look at the word sacrifice today. The extreme sacrifice of presenting themselves to the Lord. And in that, they were literally then cast out of the assembly. They self exiled, they self excommunicated, communicated from the assembly of the Lord, because that's what units are. You're not allowed in the assembly of the Lord. And these were the ones that Jesus raised up at his resurrection. And these are the ones which will have a ministry in the future. So all of that is kind of in all those first four sessions, but we swam deep. We're not in the shallows. You know, I. It's just people Will, it's just me. I just don't. I don't swim in shallow waters. So it's just, you know, we launched again into the deep. So this is really, this is not everybody's thing. I'm not everybody's cup of tea. So, you know, this. It's kind of like for those who want to try and dig deep and connect all the narratives in the Old Testament, last time we looked at the idea of, well, who is the prophet who may have spearheaded this movement and, you know, to those who were going to be mourning for Zion. And what that meant, of course, sexual abstinence was also part of mourning for Zion, is that we looked at the prophet Zephaniah, whose name means the Treasured one, or the Lord is hidden, et cetera. And I did say that the trail kind of goes cold a bit here with trying to pinpoint them, but I think Zephaniah is a good place to stop. There is an interesting event which occurs and the pendulum swings for me on this one a bit. Mondo. I haven't nailed this completely. In Ezekiel, chapter nine, when there's a sealing which is going on in Jerusalem, the man clothed in fine linen, you know, that fine linen guy, he turns up with Daniel as well, you know, and he's the divine man there, we know he's the divine Son of man there. So there are some interesting connections there. But I think it's probably too deep to try and go into, into breaking that open in these sessions that we're doing. But the point was whether that is the actual ceiling or not, there's a ceiling which is going on there. And my pendulum tends to swing towards that being the event of Ezekiel's time. It's all happening around the time of Zephaniah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, it's all happening around that time. And so that's where we have we come to in our story. And so this session, I left the last session reading Isaiah 62, 6, 7. We'll pick it up again, Watchmen on the walls. Because one of the things that we looked at was when the tribes, the idea of the 10 lost tribes is a bit of a myth. There was a dispersion, don't get me wrong. But there was always a remnant of those tribes. And those tribes came down after, you know, seeing this destruction of Israel or getting out just in time, knowing that the writing was on the wall, to take a phrase from Daniel, for the kingdom of Israel, the northern kingdom of Israel, those tribes came down. And over the next 80 years or so, there is a suggestion that they settled on Mount Zion. Now, probably not all of them, but they settled in Jerusalem. And so Hezekiah built the walls, and he was the one who expanded Jerusalem, the city boundaries there on Mount Zion. If you go to Israel, if you take a tour there, you'll be able to tell them about this. He was the one who built the walls because the refugees from the northern kingdom, from all of the tribes had come down there. To settle. Now, over the course of the next 80 years or so, what's happened is it's going to be even worse for Judah than it was for Samaria, worse for Jerusalem than Samaria's. You know, we looked at that. You've not done. Your sister didn't do half of what you've done. You know, Samaria and Sodom, etc. So they see the writing very much on the wall again for Jerusalem, and they know its curtains. And so some sort of prophetic movement happens. And these men are somehow called, they're somehow sealed. We don't know how per se, but we know that God has determined the number of these particular stars, these particular suns, and we kind of like, explored that as well. So the fact is, there's a lot we have talked about, and I can understand if people have. Some people have given up and it's just too complicated. But I think the beauty of these narratives, Mondo, is once you see them, you just see how everything fits together and how you come back on yourself all the time. So I use the image of a jigsaw puzzle fitting the pieces. I'm going to change the metaphor a little bit. So I was driving down in London today, and I had some work down there. So when you go into London, there's a big motorway, which is called the orbital motorway, and it circumvents London, the Greater London area. Right. Well, what's interesting about this particular motorway here that we're on is you never seem to get off it. So everywhere we've gone with the different narratives, you think you've exited, but you're back on the loop. You immediately come back on the loop. And so you're on the M25, constantly going around. And it's not a boring drive. I find it quite fascinating. And so that's where we're at. And we'll discuss the watchman on the walls today. Did you want to take up from there anything?
- [14:48]
A
Yeah. The only thing I would say is that the. Just for the sake of clarity, is Jesus at. After his resurrection, Matthew 27. These are people that are basically what we would call Old Testament saints. And he resurrects them after his own resurrection. So he comes out of the grave. And then whether it's immediate, it most likely probably would be closer to be more immediate after the third day, fourth day, whatever. So one of the things that we've been discussing is, okay, if Jesus raised these 144,000 at that time, and many of them came into the city and spoke with people, Matthew 27. The idea then also would be that at least a couple of them showed up at the Resurrection tomb. Okay. Some are called angels, some are just men in white. You know, it makes some distinctions. But the idea then is okay with all the descriptions that you see in Revelation 7 and Revelation 14, who could these people be from the Old Testament? So that's kind of been. The idea is searching based on those clues that you find in, again, the New Testament of the description of them is to go back and take those descriptors under the Old Testament literature and to say, is Zephaniah talking about these guys, you know, or. And then, of course, like you said, comparing it with other points of Scripture is going back and saying, could it be that the Old Testament is speaking about these same figures just kind of in a cryptic way that haven't been fully revealed until we get to the New Testament revelation? And then that would be the understanding. And then just to make sure, because you mentioned something earlier, when Jesus resurrects these, and then I'm going to put it back to you, you can correct any of my summary if it's wrong, is when Jesus resurrects these, these 144,000, they're all Jews. There's no Gentiles in this group, right?
- [17:09]
B
That's right.
- [17:10]
A
Okay. Okay. So even though later we know that the church primarily, well, through Peter in Acts chapter 10 and Acts chapter 11, the Gentiles are brought in under Cornelius and then certainly through Paul's ministry. But there's a period of time there between the church being specifically Jews only until again, that I don't know if it's two years, three years, whatever, until you get to Acts chapter 10. But nevertheless, these resurrected people that Jesus brings are Jews only from the 12 tribes that are later described. But we're going to find their lives, they lived their lives under the Old Testament period. Is that all fair to say is.
- [17:56]
B
Yes.
- [17:56]
A
Okay.
- [17:57]
B
Yeah. Because we're talking about the redemption and it's not just trying to figure out who they are. It's what's the story, what's the theological drive behind of all of this? Because it's the glory to the Jew first, the gospel to the Jew first. Well, this is the gospel resurrection from the dead. So it's to the Jew first. And I mentioned, I think it was in our last one, I said that what this does, it legitimizes Jerusalem, it legitimizes Israel, it legal the songs, the tribes, it legitimizes the land we spoke about atonement we did everything. So the Jews reap the benefits of the atonement first. And that's classic, you know, to the Jew first and then to the Greek. So, you know, and that's just the way it is. I mean, if people don't like that, it's just. It's just the way it is. You know. But it was only those Jews. It was only those, you know, those and why they. Why they were. Why they were raised. And I think we can get into is the redemption of Jerusalem. What is going on? Jesus is denouncing Jerusalem, but at the same time, he's denouncing Jerusalem, he's redeeming Jerusalem. That's just the magnificence of the Savior. Two sides to the same coin. And so we see Here, in Isaiah 62, 6 to 7, we quoted it, but I'll quote it again on this session on your. So remember the idea of the walls, the walls of Hezekiah around Mount Zion. And then you get these guys in Mount Zion in the Book of Revelation, in the Book of Hebrews, you get them on Mount Zion, and then you also get them in the Book of Revelation, in Mount Zion, the heavenly Zion on your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen all the day and all the night. They shall never be silent. Well, now, that kind of sort of expands that idea now of, oh, well, that's a very nice thing to say. Well, they'll never be silent because they never sleep and they never die. Right, Right. So these men are somehow connected to the walls I've set watchmen all day and all night. They shall never be silent. You who put the Lord in remembrance, take no rest, and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth. Well, Jerusalem, has it been truly established? Is it truly a praise of the earth? Well, not. Not as of today. Where we're speaking, there's no. It's war. It's making war in the earth. And so what we have seen then is that. Let me just go back to my motorway analogy. So all the narratives that we've spoken about, Mondo, they all loop into each other. So just when you think you're getting off the motorway, okay, we're going to do Joshua and Jericho. You know, you end up in the Resurrection, and then you end up in the Book of Revelation, and then you end up back in Joshua and Jericho, then you end up here, and you're just continually going around. But every time you go around, it's almost like, you know, you can go a little faster and it gets, well, this is a really interesting ride. So that's kind of what we're going to find. Let me put that together. I'll put that together with what we've done so far. So one of the narratives that we haven't looked at here, but I touched on it briefly, is the narrative of the Scarlet thread. So this is especially Judah's narrative, right? So people say, what do you mean by the narrative of the Scarlet thread? We touched on this in a previous session. We told the story of Judah and why he may top the list of the tribes in the book of Revelation. Because that tribal order there is not like in any other place. So why is Judah there? You know, first tribe? There's something in that. We looked at the idea that Judah is the one who introduced the concept of the Levirite marriage in Israel, which would then be incorporated into the law. And what that meant was if a man had a son and his son got married, this actually happens in Judah's case. So we'll go into that. But if a man dies and he's got a wife and he hasn't brought forth seed, a child, then his brother has to take his widow into his own house to raise up seed to his brother, right? And we see this with Judah's children is that he had a child, he had a son called Er, Er, and he died. And then he got his brother ER's brother. Judah said, now you have to raise up children for your brother. And he didn't want to do it. So the Lord killed him as well. So what happens is in the rest of that story is quite interesting. So should we read this in Genesis, chapter 38, verse 27? So we're looking now at the narrative of the Scarlet thread. And we know that you think, well, what on earth has this got to do with 144,000? Quite interesting. So let me just call this up. So Tamar is the daughter in law who couldn't raise up seed. And then Judah had one more son left and he was a bit young. So he told Tamar, he said, okay, when he gets older, I'm going to give him to you so he can raise up seed. So it continues, you know, in other words, he's still. He will raise up seed for your first husband. That's kind of, that's, that's the principle of that. Well, basically Judah forgets this or he decides he's not going to go ahead with this when his son comes of age to be given, you know, to be married. And so Tamar she dresses herself up as a prostitute, and she sits by the wayside and she kind of sort of seduces Jude, although I think Jude is looking for it. So he impregnates his daughter in law, not realizing he's impregnating his daughter in law. And then his daughter in law, you know, begins to show after three months. And then, you know, his kinfolks say, oh, your daughter in law, Tamar, she's been immoral. And Judah says, wait, we got to put her to death. But Tamar had very, very, very wisely, she said to Judah at the time they were having intercourse, said, well, you know, give me your staff and give me your, your, your. Your coat and your ribbon and all of that. And when you bring me the goat, you know, a goat to you, can. You can have that back. Well, she scarpeted with all of his stuff because she didn't want the goat. She, she wanted him to recognize that what, what he had done by not giving his, his final son to her in matrimony was wrong. So basically, let's pick up the story from verse 26. So she has now come out and she said, well, who do these belong to? Because this is the man who lay with me, right? And since she knows who he is, Judah gets a rude awakening. Oh, it was me. Then Judah identified them and said, she is more righteous than I, since I did not give her to my son Shelah. And he, Judah, did not know her again when the time of her labor came. Now, this is very interesting. There were twins in her womb, and when she was in labor, one put out a hand, and the midwife took and tied a scarlet thread on his hand, saying, this one came out first, right? But as he drew back his hand, behold, his brother came out. Because that's all about who's going to be the firstborn, right? The one who comes out. They're born in quick succession, right? But the one who comes out first will still be the firstborn. So the one baby sticks out his hand, the midwife puts a scarlet thread around, so that's the firstborn one, in case we get confused. But he drew back his hand. Behold, his brother came out. And she said, what a breach you have made for yourself. Therefore, his name was called Perez. Afterward, his brother came out with a scarlet thread on his hand, and his name was called Zerah. Now, so in other words, Zerah looked like he was coming out first, go to be the firstborn. But he went back up the birth canal and his brother Perez came out first. So Perez is The one who made the breach and his brother Zerah came out, you know, shortly afterwards. I don't know how many minutes it is in terms of a, you know, twin labor. So. But what have we got here? Well, we know that twins are born at the same partition, right? They're born at the same time. They. There's not a great time difference between, you know, when one twin is born and the other, and they are twins. So. So now here we are at Judah with the Scarlet thread, where we first seen the scarlet thread. Well, let's go on our motorway journey, and let's go back to the resurrection, which we have discussed, and you mentioned earlier on Mondo, is that when these men are raised, Who looks like who's going to be raised first? Okay, let me put this up. Whose graves were opened first? The graves that were opened first were open at the time of Jesus crucifixion. Remember, we had the earthquake and the rocks were rent and the graves were opened. It looks like Zerah is coming out first. It looks like Zerah is about to make the breach. Now, the word Paris means breach. The word Zerah means rising. So it looks like these men are going to rise first, but they don't. They go in the birthing language, they go back into the ground, right? They stay in the ground until Perez comes out first. And Perez is the one who makes the breach. But Zerah has the scarlet thread around the hand. Okay, now what we see here is that Perez also becomes the ancestor of Jesus. Interestingly enough, he becomes in the genealogical line of Jesus. So Jesus comes from Perez, not from Zerah. So Jesus comes from the one who makes the breach. All right, so hold that thought, because it gets even more interesting when we go then to the next moment we see the scarlet threat is where it's at Jericho. So people will know. The story of Jericho is that the spies are sent in to Jericho to spy it out to see how they can take the city. They meet a prostitute. The prostitute hears about, you know, what has gone on. She says, the whole city, we're all fearful of you because we've seen what your God can do. And when you come into the city, please spare my house and my family. And they give an oath to do that. And now what do they say for her to do? They say you need to hang the scarlet cord from. From the window so that when we come in, we will look for the scarlet thread hanging out of your window. So this is why it's called the narrative of the Scarlet thread. And it's Particularly Judah's narrative. So we see now that the prostitute and her family, they are the ones who get redeemed. And it's quite interesting is that Rahab also becomes an ancestor of Jesus. Right, so where was the cord? The cord was on the wall. Where was she living? She was living in the wall. She was watching on the wall. And when the troops came in, they were watching the walls as well, looking for the scarlet thread. So you get this connection here between the walls, the. Between the scarlet thread, between the 144,000, between those who were raised, those who were wearing the scarlet thread. Could you see how it's the dots just. The narratives just begin to feed into each other in a very fascinating way. Where you see, okay, oh, now we're back at Jericho. I thought we were at the Resurrection. No, I thought we were here. I thought. And so you just continue on this journey of the story getting more interesting and deeper as you go along. Do you want to say anything to that?
- [32:54]
A
You know, I think it's fascinating, Graham, when you look at what the Bible says, because the Bible doesn't do things accidentally. So when you have this scarlet cord appearing in Genesis and then appearing with Rahab, and then, of course, scarlet thread appearing in the rest of the book of, you know, in the sense of salvation and, you know, Day of Atonement, all these other imagery, these are. These are intentional. So I. I find it extremely fascinating. And so to me, I think people pay. Pay attention here to say, well, what's really being said here? Again, we're going deep. That's what you said. This is what we're here for.
- [33:33]
B
Yes. Yeah, yeah. It's just one of those little exits. It's just I'm taking this exit off the motorway, and before very long, you find I've come back onto the loop and you're seeing the same things, you're seeing the same narratives, and it's all tying it together. And what I loved about that little section that we did was that when you get Perez and you get Zerah, that comes into something that Isaiah prophesied. But we won't get that until the next session. But it's just all of these things connect, you know, so why. You know, why did the graves open at the crucifixion and nobody come out? Right, because it wasn't Zerah. Zerah is the redeemed Zerah is the one with the scarlet cord. The scarlet cord is on the walls, and we're talking about the walls. 144,000. It's connected with the walls, it's connected with Zerah. They're the twin of Jesus, let's just put it that way. They're birthed at the same time. But Zerah looks like he's coming out first. Those graves are open and it's like, where is anybody? But no, but they're not making the breach. Jesus is the one who makes the breach. Perez makes the breach, and after that, Zerah comes out. So the breach comes first and then the rising comes after and all that. Again, we're looking at the tribe of Judah, particularly, because we'll see something else here with Judah, which again, really, I think highlights why he's the top, the first named tribe, one of the reasons he might be the first named tribe. So let's transition here to our final point, Mondo, about all this. Let's try and pull it together. The book of Revelation, ultimately, what's it about? It's about cities, names and walls, right? So two cities names. So you know, which city are you going to be part of? So you know where it says of Babylon, it says, come out of her, my people. We're going to hear that phrase, is that that's a cry to all of those who want to respond to the city of God, to the Jerusalem. So in the book of Revelation, you've got the two cities. And then of course, you've got Jesus promising, you know, those who conquer and those who are faithful and unto death and all of that, you know, altogether I will give him a crown and I will write upon him the name of my God and the name of the city of my God and my own new name. Well, what's going on there, in contradistinction to that is the Antichrist is Babylon. Babylon is the great horse city in the book of Revelation, putting her name on everyone, right? Whose name are you going to bear the mark of the beast. And also whose walls, you know, because the city, the city, cities had walls. And so we're going to see that when we get into fall and fall and what is actually going on here. So, you know, just go into the Book of Revelation. Babylon is the great prostitute, right? The people he's called come out of her. My people. Well, strangely, who is the prostitute who came out of Jericho? It was Raham. She became one of the persons of the Lord. So we've got that Jericho connection now with Babylon. Remember when we first discussed this, we first opened up, we said a lot of the early church fathers saw the book of Revelation as a retelling of Joshua's conquest of Jericho, you know, with all the things about the sevens and going into the promised land. So you can now put Babylon and Jericho together in a motif and you find that they kind of speak to each other. So that's what we're going to do here on this last section. Babylon above anything else, was known for her walls. Now Herodotus, the Greek historian, these are his numbers. He says that the walls were 300ft high. And I said those are pretty tall walls. That has kind of been questioned. They think that's an exaggeration, that maybe they were 70 or 80ft high. But still those are very high walls. They were 56 miles in circumference, four square. And they didn't just incorporate the city itself, they incorporated the pasture lands around the city so people could keep farming. So it was a city which the walls enclosed paradise. Which is why Babylon takes great focal point in the book of Revelation, because the Babylon in the book of Revelation is compared to the paradise city of the heavenly Jerusalem. You have the paradise city of, of, of, of earth, of Babylon, but it's termed a great prostitute. So the idea is, is that everybody in there is a prostitute, right? That, that's kind of what's going on there with that language. It had a hundred bronze gates, it had 200 defensive towers. The walls were 80ft thick. And you could have chariot races on top of the walls, six, six deep. There's another something where I've read where I think it's Horatus says you could turn a four horse chariot, turn it full circle. So you didn't do reverse, you just turned full circle. Well think about this then, right? Just what's the imagery? If you're on the ground and you're looking at the chariots on top of the wall, racing around on top of the wall. What's the image that you're getting there? Because you know, the chariots were never, the cities were never secular. They were founded by gods, the deities, the gods of the nations. Well, what you have there are the gods in their chariots riding in the sky, right? It's just, just interesting imagery there because the chariot was the, was the, was the chosen, the chosen transportation of the gods, Apollo and his chariot and everything like that. So again, you just have that chariot racing on the walls and you're down here and it would look like the gods are racing, racing upon the walls, right? But effectively Babylon's walls were unbreachable. You could not get in there. So when Cyrus took over, he had to convince, he had to inside People opening the gates. You could not go through the walls. The city was impenetrable. But what's interesting, Babylon's walls were made of clay bricks. Now, you set that in distinction to the other city in the book of Revelation, which is the Jerusalem, the New Jerusalem. 1200 square miles, the walls 144 cubits high. I worked that out as 220ft. I mean, that's pretty high. You had 12 gates sculpted from 12 individual pools. And the walls of these, of this city are not made of clay bricks. They're made of precious stones. So, so mankind is presented with a picture of two cities. You have Babylon, you have Jerusalem, both have watchmen on their walls. So this is where now we begin to get into a little bit of the end time ministry of the 144,000. Right? And it's interesting, you know, connection has been made with the 144,000 and then 144 cubits high on the walls. That is the same number. And we saw that God does determine the number of the stars in that particular instance. He's determining the number of the watchmen. So that's for another session. So this is what we see here, Mondo, in the book of Revelation. So where does our story come from and where is it taking us? Well, the 144,000 was sealed at the time of Babylon's zenith, right? So when Babylon was at its height, Babylon was the city of the world. It ruled the world. All the kingdoms fell under, came under the yoke of Babylon. And these 144,000, they witnessed the breaching of Jerusalem's walls. Because the Jerusalem, it was razed to the ground. The temple was gone, the city was gone. Now they are stationed as sentinels on the walls of a city that can never be breached. I mean, you've gone from, you know, from zero to a hundred. I mean, this is, you know, in terms of your expectations of a lived experience. Think about where you are on Mount Zion there in the time of the Babylonian conquest, and you're mourning for the city, and you know it's doomed. You know, the walls will not withstand the onslaught of the Babylonian kingdom. But now you've been raised to a place where you are now sentinel on the watchmen of the walls. And these walls will never be breached. And you will get to witness the divine vengeance upon the walls and the city that thought it was impenetrable. So this is why you get the cry in the book of Revelation, Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great. Well, hang on. Fallen, fallen. That sounds like we're back at Jericho because Jericho also had impenetrable walls. And what happened with those walls? They supernaturally, they fell down flat. They were literally flattened. And at that moment of flattening. So the priests bear the ark of the Lord, the ark around the city for six days, and then on the seventh day, seven times. And they sent. The heralds are out first, and then the trumpeters, and then the people are told to be quiet, but then the people are told to shout with a loud shout on the 7th Circuit. And of course, what does that mean is praise. And who is the tribe of praise? Judah. You just keep coming back to the same sort of narrative that these things. Jericho's not just happening. Oh, we've done the Jericho thing. That's happening there. The sky. Now we go into the. God is working out the entire plan of redemptive history for his people, his land, his city, and eventually the world through all of these individual acts of. They don't know what they're doing. Nobody. They're not thinking. They're not thinking. You know, when she ties her hand around the red cord around,
- [45:59]
A
you know,
- [46:00]
B
the twin, she's not thinking, oh, yeah, this is because we're going to have people raised from the dead in the future. And she's not thinking of any of that. Nobody is that God is orchestrating everything. And I think this is what makes this book so incredibly fascinating, because there's a divine author, not just in the stories, but in the entire outworking of redemption, of how he's going to bring the redemption of the cosmos, and he brings it through his people, through his land and through his city. And I think on that we should probably finish off if you wanted to say anything.
- [46:41]
A
Yeah. To me, the fascinating thing, as you said, is to find and to see these themes in the Bible again that are not. We say nothing's accidental or nothing's coincidental. I mean, no doubt. I think when you look at the. The place of first mention, that's a rule that people talk about in hermeneutics, or just an observation is very, very fascinating. And here you have the mystery of the scarlet thread and the 144,000 and going that from beginning to end is pretty fascinating. And we're not done yet, so we appreciate everybody watching, keep an eye out, because there's so much more here we're getting. We've kind of laid the big viewpoint here. Graham has. And then looking at some of the individual things and where this is heading again in more discovery is going to be very fascinating. So also want to remind everybody that we've talked about this, or maybe this is the first time Graham and I have talked about it before, that if you have questions that put capital letters question, put it in the comments, because we are going to collect those comments. And then Graham and I are planning on doing a Q and A after this series is over, which a couple more sessions we'll probably have and we will do. We'll answer those questions that you might have, but make sure to put them in the comments and we will get on them. So thank you, Graham, for joining us. Thank you, everybody, for joining us, as well as always, appreciate your prayers and support for what we do here at Prophecy Watchers. We love getting deep, and that's certainly what we're doing here. So thanks for watching, and we will catch you next time.