Signs of the Times, The Place of Israel

Eschatology is the study of the end times. I taught the subject several times at the college in Kenya, and I’ve preached on the Rapture, but I’ve never preached an entire series on the subject. So, last Sunday I started a series, and I thought I would write out the first message for your perusal. For extra reading I recommend to you Dr. David Jeremiah’s book, What In the World Is Going On? from which I have taken some of this information. Recent events, such as the US Supreme Court decision last Friday on gay marriage cause us to wonder how much longer the Lord will wait before calling us out. I hope this series will help give some perspective.

Signs Of The End Times
The Place of Israel

Text: Matthew 24:44.

Introduction: We are living in a day when people are obsessed with the end times. Every time there is an international crisis the question is asked will this lead us to Armageddon? Hollywood produces dozens of movies every year about end of the world scenarios, zombies, vampires, demons and aliens. Climate change fanatics tell us we are destroying the earth. Al Gore predicted the end of the world in 2016 if the US didn’t sign the Kyoto Accords. The US didn’t sign. Does that mean we only have a year to go?

The issue is further confused by end time preachers who set dates for the Rapture. The most recent was Harold Camping in Oakland, California who predicted May 21, 2011, and then refigured it October 21, 2011. Many of his followers had sold everything to travel across the country to warn people, but on October 22, they were disappointed. I sent an email out to everyone on my list asking if anyone had been raptured!

In the 1970s Hal Lindsay popularized end times teaching with his book, The Late Great Planet Earth. More recently evangelist Jimmy DeYoung has renewed interest in the subject. John Hagee has taught on the Rapture many times in his church. Perhaps you’ve seen him on TBN. He puts big charts on the platform and teaches through them. If you are not familiar with eschatology, which is the study of the end times, these charts can be confusing. This is one of Hagee’s charts about the Tribulation period.

Then there is Jack Van Impe, who is a one-subject preacher, the Rapture of the saints. He finds evidence in every event on a weekly basis to prove the Rapture is coming at any moment. He doesn’t set dates, so he says, but he has tried on several occasions to pinpoint a time frame for the Rapture. In 2001 he proclaimed that the Lord had revealed to him that it must come between 2002 and 2012. But hardly had he made that prediction when he had another revelation in 2004 saying that the Lord had revealed to him that the Rapture would take place by the end of 2018. Can we expect that to happen?

Based on the 70 weeks of Daniel in Daniel 9, and compared with I Thessalonians 4, I Corinthians 15:51, and Revelation, we believe in a system of theology called Dispensationalism, which specifically focuses on a pre-Tribulational Rapture.

Around 540 BC Daniel predicted a period of 70 weeks of years that would begin with a decree from the king of Persia to rebuild Jerusalem. That decree was given to Ezra around 458 BC, and was completed by Nehemiah in 445 BC. When 69 of those weeks had passed, the Messiah would be cut off. The time frame coincides with the crucifixion of Christ.

The 70th week has been on hold during the Church Age, which began with Christ. It will begin after the Rapture takes place. When we talk about the end times most people are interested in knowing what are the signs that lead up to the Rapture, and the Second Coming of Christ. When will they take place? Are they at the same time or separate? We believe that the Rapture of the saints, when Christ will call all of the believers out of this world, will take place seven years prior to Christ actually coming to establish His millennial kingdom.

An opposing view, held by Presbyterian and Reformed churches, is called Covenant Theology. It claims that the New Testament church is the extension of Old Testament Israel, and that the Jews are no longer God’s chosen people, rather Christians are. Leading covenant theologians like Hank Hannegraph and Gary DeMars mock Dispensationalism, which is the Baptist belief, as a discredited theology that was only invented 170 years ago. We might also say the same thing about Covenant Theology because it was only invented during the Reformation 500 years ago. Therefore, if we depend on the argument of time, Covenant Theology is no more valid than Dispensationalism.

The argument of time does not actually disprove Dispensationalism. The Greek word translated “dispensation” is found four times in the KJV New Testament (I Cor. 9:17, Eph. 1:10; 3:2, Col. 1:25). The word means to administer or manage something. It is translated three other times in the New Testament as “stewardship.” The term is also found several times in the works of medieval theologians, but the modern revival of the teaching began with a Scottish theologian, John Darby, around 1830. In its biblical usage a dispensation is the administration of a period of time in history.

There are seven dispensational periods beginning with Adam and Eve in the Age of Innocence. We are now in the sixth, the Church Age. The Millennial Kingdom will be the seventh and last dispensation.

Dispensationalism depends on the literal interpretation of Scripture. Hannegraph and DeMars will tell you they believe in a literal translation, but then immediately contradict themselves by making the entire Book of Revelation an allegory that was fulfilled in the year AD 70. Of course that can only be possible if they take some spiritual meaning out of the book and not literal. When Hannegraph was asked about the thousand-year reign of Christ on his radio program, The Bible Answer Man, he made comparisons to Peter’s comment in 2 Peter 3:8, that a day with the Lord is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day, and concluded that the Millennial Kingdom is not literal. Clearly they do not believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible.

We do believe in a literal interpretation. We believe that if the 69 weeks of Daniel came true, and they did, that the 70th week will also come to pass when God is ready. We believe that Paul was not writing about some spiritual heart moving event when he wrote that we shall be caught up to be with the Lord in the air in I Thessalonians 4. We also believe that the 70th week will be the Tribulation period taught in Revelation 5-18, followed by the return of the Lord to the earth and the Millennial Kingdom of Christ.

The question then is, how close are we to the Rapture of the saints described in I Thessalonians 4? Are there signs and wonders that we can point to that tell us it is close? Can we set a date or a time frame when we believe it will happen? Since World War 2 Baptists have been sounding the clarion call that the Rapture is imminent.

As we have seen events unfolding, particularly now with ISIS creating a murderous Islamic state in the Middle East, the persecution of Christians increasing, an intolerance of Christianity growing in the United States and elsewhere, with the increase in sin, particularly homosexuality, and the total turning away from God by formerly Christian nations, can we say for certain we are in the last days? Is there any prophecy that gives us a clue to the time of the Rapture?

First, let us understand two things: 1. We are not setting a date for the Lord’s return. Jesus told the Apostles in Acts 1:7, it was not for them to know the time or season. And 2. There is only one prophecy that gives us any clue as to the time of the Second Coming of Christ. Everything else may help us understand the time, but only one prophecy gives us a clue as to the time. That’s what we are going to look at today.

I. The Abrahamic Covenant (Genesis 12:1-7; 13:14-17).

In Genesis 12 God called Abraham and told him to separate from his family and move to a place which He would show him. He made a covenant with Abraham, which is known as the Abrahamic Covenant. In this covenant God made four unconditional promises to Abraham.

First he told Abraham that He would bless him. This promise was only partly fulfilled in Abraham’s lifetime. Abraham was likely the wealthiest man in all of Palestine at the time as he had 318 servants that he trained to use weapons of war (Genesis 14:14). But this promise also extended to his descendants. When Solomon was king of Israel, the Queen of Sheba came to see the grandeur of Jerusalem she declared that the half had not even been told her (I Kings 10:7). No kingdom in history has ever owned the wealth that Solomon had. The temple, completely inlaid with gold, was likely the most magnificent building ever built in history (I Kings 6).

But God’s blessings didn’t end there. Jews throughout history have been among the leaders in education, science, literature and economics. From 1901 to 2013 there had been 855 individual Nobel prizes awarded. Of those 193, 22.6%, were awarded to Jews.
http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/10/29/richard-dawkins-perplexed-by-high-number-of-jewish-nobel-prize-winners/#

Atheist Richard Dawkins was perplexed by these numbers and could find no explanation for it. The answer is that God has blessed the Jews, in spite of the persecutions and pogroms that have been launched against them through the centuries.

Second, God promised to make Abraham’s descendants a great nation. Again, in spite of efforts to eliminate the Jews through the centuries, efforts like no other people have ever faced, today Israel is the strongest nation in the Middle East. Israel has a population of 8.2 million, of which 6.2 million are Jews, and there are some 9 million Jews living around the world outside of Israel. The Jews make up only 1/3 of one percent of the world’s population, but Mark Twain said of the Jews in 1899, “the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk.”

Third, God promised to make Abraham a blessing to all people, and he has been. Through Abraham’s descendants came the Old Testament Law, the Savior, and the way of salvation, which is free to all men through Jesus Christ.

Fourth, God promised to bless those who bless Israel. The United States is the only nation to fully support Israel in the world today, and the U.S. has been blessed like no other nation in history has ever been blessed. Now the argument could be made that God has blessed us because of our Christian foundation and God-honoring Founders, and that may be true. But America’s borders have always been open to Jewish immigrants, and while other nations have persecuted the Jews, there has never been a government-sanctioned persecution of any kind against the Jewish people.

God’s judgment has fallen upon all nations that have ever oppressed the Jews, from ancient Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Syria and Rome, to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. None of these nations, ancient or modern, exist today. Of course there is a Germany, but it is not Nazi. Even Great Britain has suffered for turning its back on the Jews. At the beginning of World War 2 the British Empire was the largest in the world and had been for 150 years. It was the British that had helped to establish the modern Jewish state, but as soon as Israel was recognized by the United Nations, Britain walked away and offered no help in the Jewish struggle against their Arab neighbors. The result was that in only 15 years the mighty British Empire crumbled.

The second part of the Abrahamic Covenant involved the Promised Land (Genesis 15:18-21). God told Abraham wherever he walked and as far as he could see would be the inheritance of his descendants, and then He delineated the borders. In this part of the covenant the word land means land here on the earth. It is not a spiritual reference to heaven. It is also an everlasting covenant (Genesis 17:7-8). The land will always be Israel’s land. No matter how loud the Palestinians shout about a homeland and non-existent heritage, the land belongs to Israel. The borders run from the Nile River to the Euphrates and includes Egypt, the Sinai, Jerusalem (Jebusites), the Hittites (eastern Turkey), and includes Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and parts of Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

You can see from this map just how small a portion of this land Israel holds today. And actually, this map is not quite accurate. The Hittite Empire before 1200 BC included most of Eastern Turkey, so the northern border goes much higher than is depicted here. Compare this with the extent of David’s and Solomon’s Kingdom from about 1015 to 975 BC. David had only conquered or controlled about 40% of the total, but this is the inheritance the Jews will have during the Millennial Kingdom.

II. The Scattering of the Jews.

The question then is what happened? Why have the Jews never occupied or controlled all of their Promised Land? Moses warned Israel that if they ever turned away from God into idolatry that God would scatter them (Deuteronomy 4:27). That’s exactly what happened.

Solomon was the wisest man that ever lived. He wrote Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon, yet he never learned from his own wisdom. He collected 700 wives and 300 concubines and they turned his heart away from the Lord to the point that at the end of his life he was leading Israel into idolatry. The result was a civil war that divided the kingdom in two. Ten tribes in the north became known as Israel, while two tribes in the south became known as Judah.

Israel turned away from God immediately and by 722 BC the Assyrians overthrew the kingdom and scattered the Jews all over their empire. Judah had a few good kings and revivals mixed into their history, but they finally rebelled against God as well and in 586 BC the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem and scattered the remaining Jews.

The Babylonian empire fell to the Persians and in 536 BC a decree by Cyrus the Persian allowed the Jews to begin returning to their homeland (Ezra 1). They remained in their land and won their independence from the Syrians in 175 BC, but 112 years later they were conquered by Rome. This was the beginning of the fullness of the times for Christ’s birth, but in AD 70 the Jews tried to throw off their yoke of bondage and were defeated by the Roman general, Titus, who leveled Jerusalem, and once again scattered the Jews.
Jewish communities have existed all across the Middle East to Persia, in Africa in Ethiopia, in Russia and all over Europe. They were persecuted severely for centuries, but the rise of the Nazis in Germany brought the worst persecution of all, the Holocaust. In 1933 there were 9 million Jews in Europe; in 1945 there were only 3 million.

Then suddenly, after being without a homeland for 1900 years, the Jews became a nation again. They are the only people in history to have been so decimated and scattered for so long to be reconstituted as a nation.

III. Rebirth of the Nation of Israel.

The return of the Jews to their homeland in Israel was prophesied several times in the Old Testament. Isaiah 11:11 says the remnant will be recovered. Isaiah 43:3-6 says they will be brought back from every direction. In Ezekiel 36-37 is the Valley of the Dry Bones vision showing that the nation will come alive again, and in Amos 9:14-15 it says that once they are returned they will never be removed again.

How this came about is primarily the due to the accomplishment of Chaim Weismann. Since the invention of gunpowder weapons had used a black powder that left heavy smoke and could blind the armies on a battlefield. In 1904 Weismann invented a smokeless powder, which gave the British an advantage on the battlefield.

The Ottoman Empire had held Palestine for over 500 years, but in World War 1 the British defeated the Ottomans and took control Palestine. Then in 1917, as a thank you to Weismann, the Balfour Declaration was issued declaring the intent of reestablishing a Jewish state. On May 14, 1948, Israel was recognized by the United Nations, but not before U.S. President Harry Truman cast the deciding vote, against the advice of his closest advisors including General George Marshall. Truman was a Baptist, and in spite of his problem with foul language, he understood the importance of Israel and would not turn his back on the new nation.

IV. Prophetic significance to the End Times (Matthew 24:32-35).

In Matthew 24 Jesus gave His longest and last discourse on the end times. In verse 32, He referred to the fig tree. Whenever the fig tree is mentioned in prophetic writing in the Scripture it is a reference to Israel. When you see Israel is in its homeland the time is near. This generation, He said, will see the coming of the Lord.

This verse has often been misunderstood. Critics often point to this passage to prove Jesus got it wrong. I’ve heard preachers as well teach that it meant that the return of the Lord is imminent and could have happened in that generation if God had intended. But that’s not what Jesus said. The generation He was talking about was the one that saw Israel in its land, the implication being that they had been out of it again.

I’m going to go out on a limb here because Baptists have always taught that the Rapture has always been imminent. I don’t think it has been. I imagine that the first century believers likely thought that Jesus was going to come back in their lifetime, so for them it was imminent. But once Jerusalem was destroyed and the Jews no longer had a homeland that changed, and the return of the Lord was not imminent for 19 centuries. But that changed on May 14, 1948. Since Israel has been restored as a nation we can definitely say that the return of the Lord, especially the Rapture, is imminent.

Conclusion: A biblical generation was generally considered to be 40 years. That would have been 1988 and is long passed. Van Impe used a formula from a passage in Jeremiah to suggest a generation is 70 years, and that’s how he came up with 2018. Don’t put any faith in that. It may be that the Lord will come before then, maybe not. Depending on how events in the world turn it could be some years. There is no specific definition in the Bible of a generation. To use the Van Impe model we might conclude from Genesis 6:3 that a generation is 120 years, which would mean Christ’s coming could still be 53 years away. Considering current affairs in the world I don’t think it will be that long. There is no way of knowing a specific date, but we do know that since May 14, 1948, the return of the Lord is imminent. It could come at any time.

Next week we will look at more specific details including the recent Supreme Court decision on gay marriage, and see how events in the world and modern technology can help us understand how events described in Revelation may take place, and how the nations are aligning for the antichrist. The thing we need to learn is to be ready because Jesus will come when we don’t expect Him (Matthew 24:44). Are you watching? Are you ready?