It's their land!

 
God told Abraham in Genesis 15, “I’m gonna make a covenant with you. I’m gonna give your seed this land (including the West Bank and Gaza). Walk up and down in it, kick the dust, get acquainted with it, it belongs to you!”

God then says, “But, by the way, your descendants are going to go out of the land for 400 years, into a strange land, and then I’m going to bring them back.”

Jordan explains, “Now if the (Jews) are going to be gone for 400 years, what would that tell Satan? He’s got 400 years to put his people in the land, doesn’t he?

“That’s why when God brought Israel back in under Joshua, He said, ‘Go in there, and those seven nations that have since fortified themselves in that land--sunk their roots in and tried to take that land--that’s your land; go in and wipe them all out!’

“And Israel didn’t do that and the conflict you see over there in the Middle East today is the result of Israel not doing what God told them to do in the Book of Joshua.

“See, Hezbollah didn’t just figure out how to do that! Satan says, ‘Dig your foxholes, make your fortifications, and get ready to hold the land.’ So, when God brings Israel up . . .

“God calls the (enemy) OUTLANDISH people; they’re not supposed to be there, but Jesus Christ is going to come back one day and do the job Himself.

“That’s why in Hebrews 4, referring to Joshua back in the Old Testament, it doesn’t say Joshua; it says Jesus. That name is the Greek form of the word Joshua. Both of them mean Jehovah Savior. Joshua’s a type of the Lord Jesus Christ, commissioned to do what Jesus Christ will ultimately do.”

*****

 “Ultimately, it’s all going back to the Middle East. In Daniel 8, you get some detailed information about the kingdom of the Antichrist in ‘the last days.’ Those kings of the east are going to come and join forces with the Antichrist in fighting against the nation of Israel.

“In those ‘last days’ Revelation is talking about, all the nations of the earth, United States included (but the U.S. will be so insignificant at that point it won’t really matter), will gather themselves against Jerusalem and against Israel. The Antichrist will be ruling that part of the world and gathering the influence of the nations under his rubric to fight against God’s plan and purpose in the earth.

“It won’t matter what forces he gathers together, though, God’s plan will still come through. But the Word of God tells you all about this ahead of time. That’s a fascinating thing.

*****

“The Antichrist is going to reign, not over the whole planet, but over the Middle East. Daniel 8:8, talking about the kingdom of Greece and how the kingdom is going to spawn the reign of the Antichrist, says, ‘Therefore the he goat (defined in verse 21 as Greece) waxed very great: and when he was strong, the great horn was broken; and for it came up four notable ones toward the four winds of heaven.’

“When Greece was divided up, it was divided up into four divisions that we know today as Greece, Turkey, Syria and Egypt. Verse 9 tells us that ‘little horn’ is the Antichrist. Now where does it say he came from? One of those four divisions in the Greek empire.

“We call them Greece, Turkey, Syria and Egypt. In Daniel 11, he’ll identify two of them—the king of the north (which is Syria) and the king of the south (Egypt). The Syrian, the king of the north, becomes the Antichrist.

“So all of the ideas prophecy preachers have been peddling for years--that the Antichrist is really going to come and take over the European Common Market, and the Antichrist is going to be the pope sitting in Rome reigning from Italy, taking over the Middle East from Italy--you know what that is? That’s idle speculation because the Antichrist doesn’t come from Europe! He doesn’t come from the Greek, or even the Turkey division of the Greek empire.

“By the way, the Roman empire was divided into two sections: one in Europe and then the eastern division of Turkey and Syria. So the part of the Roman Empire that he comes from is not the European division; it’s the Middle East division.”

Tribal seeds of our destruction

“We live in a world that’s divided in every way you can imagine,” said Jordan in his Sunday morning sermon the other week. “I’ve told you many times, you’re watching the world dissolve around you. All the things that have been important to people my age, and we’ve lived with and accepted as common life, are just crumbling.

“America is sort of a mirror to much of what the world is. The idea that our country would somehow be immune to the disintegration is nonsense. You see the stuff happening on our southern borders. A nation without a border--a clearly defined and defendable border--is no longer a nation. They’ll get some of that stuff solved eventually, but when they do it’s going to be so different than what you’re expecting it to be.

“You have understand something, folks, after the Cold War was over, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Soviet Union, what happened to them? They dissolved and they broke up into warring tribal groups.

“Culturally, socially, the thing that was always the cohesive thing in America, the 'melting pot' it was always called . . . by the way, did you know that in American history, from 1924 to 1960, immigration was largely outlawed?

“People have not always just been able to come here. It was strictly regulated, and the kind of thing you see today where just anybody comes; there were only two periods back in the 1800s when that was really the case.

“And the reason for that is we had a culture that understood you needed to be a melting pot where people would come and assimilate into the culture that’s here. Now they don’t do that. They do what they do in the Middle East. It’s the tribal culture. In fact, that’s now the big sociological term; the ‘tribalism.’

*****

“America’s turned into groups of tribes. People like you and me, Bible-believing Christians, we have little tribal culture areas where we live and we’re totally unaware of what’s going on in the other guy’s tribe. Sociologically, that’s a recent phenomenon in the last couple of decades.

“Years ago, when the Fundamentalist Christians abandoned the cities . . . what happens is people solve the problems where they are, but now they’re going to try to solve them without truth, and you see that tribal warfare going on all over the planet and it happens here.

“The only place on the planet that CAN be different is in the Body of Christ. In a local assembly, manifesting what the Body of Christ is, you’re not oblivious to it all when you’re out in the world, but among us you’re reconciled in one body, because who I am and who you are in our own resources isn’t the issue. Who we are in Christ is the issue.

“If there’s ever going to be a testimony to that, and you know the heart of the world longs for that, they strive for it, but it’s that Genesis 1 thing. In the beginning, who created? You’re going to create your own world or is God going to create it?

"Most of us want to create our own, and the world you create is going to be one of division and strife because you carry that seed in your heart. But when it’s one God created, then you live in His resources; He reconciled us to God in one body.

*****

“When a culture rejects God’s Word and turns away from it, it winds up with things in its culture that are the antithesis of the way God created it; the opposite of the natural. There was a day when our culture understood that.
 

“How many of you know what a McGuffey Reader is? It was the standard textbook of the one-room schoolhouse in the 1800s. In 1854, the first McGuffey reader published, had as a text in it—this is what was taught to children:

“ ‘If you can induce a community to doubt the genuineness and authenticity of the Scripture, to hesitate undecided whether there be any such thing as virtue or vice, whether there be an external state of retribution beyond the grave; or whether there exists any such being as God, you have broken down the barriers of moral virtue, and hoisted the flood gates of immorality and crime.’

“That didn’t say you needed to be a Christian, that just said you don’t need to be a part of Romans 1. Isaiah 5:20 says, ‘Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!’

“You know what that is; it’s foolishness. You can’t even identify reality. Paul writes in Romans 1:28, ‘And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.’

“There’s the problem. They didn’t want God: ‘I don’t want to think about Him, I don’t want Him around. Don’t talk about Him. We’re going to do it ourselves. Just remove any thought about Him from the culture.’

“They’ve done that in our day. If you’re under 40 years old, you were educated in a system that taught you fundamentally different than the system your parents were educated in.

“That which I read to you a minute ago was a fundamental understanding, and has been one of the fundamental principles of what we call western civilization, but about the time you younger people got into school, the prevailing wisdom of the education system was ‘multiculturalism, egalitarianism, every culture is equal; there’s no right, there’s no wrong.’

“People say, ‘Well, that’s the post-Christian.' You know what that is? That’s ancient paganism! That’s Romans 1. That ain’t nothing new. Everybody talks about modernity and post-modernity and I say, ‘Agh, phft! That’s Romans 1, man. Go back and look at it.’

“You see, to understand what’s going on in the world where we are, there’s the Body of Christ and not Israel’s (time past) program, but the world’s still the world. And when you deal with the world, you’re dealing with Romans 1.

“The result of that, as the end of the chapter reads, ‘Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
[30] Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
[31] Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
[32] Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.’
 

“That’s a neighborhood I’d like to live in?! The coarseness, and the cruelty, and the corruption and the violence, and the abominable sinfulness of that culture didn’t just happen. It came as the direct result of, ‘I don’t want to retain God in my knowledge and I’m going to substitute the lie program, and I’m going to sit down and figure out a way to make my thinking the common thinking.’

“So when you come to the end of Romans 1, you’re at the depths of sin. You don’t only do the things but you have pleasure in them that do them. You’re not only a sadist, torturing others, you’re a masochist, torturing yourself, and you’ve reached the depths of sin. Revelation 2 calls it ‘the depths of Satan.’ ”

Peace is in a Person

When the angels announced Jesus Christ’s birth, they said, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.’

“The new bibles change that because they don’t understand the message there,” said Jordan in his Sunday morning sermon. “They change it to say, ‘Glory to God on the highest, and on earth peace to men among whom there is good will.’

“They say, ‘See, the way you have peace is you have peace among men who have good will for one another,’ and that’s a good human viewpoint and religious idea, but that’s not what the verse says.

“Jesus Christ will come one day and be the ‘prince of peace’ and establish peace upon the planet and there will be worldwide, universal peace among all nations and all men. He will be the prince--the establisher, the maintainer, the governor--that produces peace on earth and good will toward men from God and from one another.


*****

“You say, ‘Wait a minute, did His mission fail?’ You look around the world today and you don’t see peace. Look around the planet. Our world is boiling with racial and tribal and cultural and moral conflict. Disintegration, separation and secession for racial and religious reasons is the order of the day.
 

“America always prided itself on the melting-pot philosophy, where you would come and meld in; leave where you were and become Americans.

“Today, our government, the leaders of academia, the leaders of our nation, they look at that melting- pot philosophy as just nativist bigotry, where you’re trying to lift up one culture above another. And what you hear constantly is ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘egalitarianism’; that is that every culture is equal and therefore every culture should be exalted. Listen, that kind of idea is not the American history. America has become a microcosm of the world on fire.
 

“America has always been that kind of a microcosm. That’s why the world has always looked toward America as a beacon, because here’s what we could aspire to and become. But in our lifetime, the whole thing’s been turned on its head and there’s no peace. You bring the nations to America today and what do they do? They don’t meld into a melting pot. It’s more like a boiling stew.

“You got one little group here and they reestablish their home community within the world and it’s, ‘Now we’re going to have our homeland here.’ Chicago’s full of it. There are over 270 different language groups spoken in the metropolitan area.

“I look at that, we got the little sign out front, ‘Reach the world by reaching Chicago,’ and it looks to me like a great fishing hole. There’s hardly anywhere you can go and reach the whole world by reaching one community. Just look at Agne and Darius and how they went back to their homeland in Lithuania. You get saved, you learn truth and you take the message back.

“The radio station were on (WYLL 1160 AM in Chicago), there’s nine and a half million people in this area who can hear it. The last time they did an Arbitron rating of that station, 43,000 people were listening to (my show) every Sunday morning at 8:30. I don’t get to preach to 43,000 people every day, but I do there and I do every Saturday night on the television.

“Our whole culture’s changed and you say, ‘There’s no peace out there!’ but Isaiah says, ‘There’s no peace for the wicked, saith God.’

*****

“You say, ‘Well, then, if Jesus came to be the ‘prince of peace,’ and He came to preach peace, did His mission fail?’

“Well, no, because you realize through Paul’s epistles that the key to it is being able to ‘rightly divide the word’ and understand that this is not the day of the ‘prince of peace.’

“The only way you’re going to have world peace is for Jesus Christ to come back, sit on the throne of the governments of this world and produce peace through His kingdom.

“Being a premillennial Bible-believer is as much a political and economic statement, and sociological statement and ecological statement, as it is a doctrinal statement, because you’re saying there’s no hope for the peace of this planet--politically, economically, socially, ecologically--except in the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, and until then there’s going to be turmoil.

“You say, ‘Well, then, when Jesus Christ came and preached peace, what’s that all about if it isn’t bringing the Kingdom in?’

“Well, it had to do with what He’s talking about here. By the way, in this passage in Ephesians 2, when Paul says He comes to preach peace, did you notice there are three times Paul talks about peace here?

“In verse 14, he says, ‘For he is our peace.’ Verse 15, at the end, what does he do? ‘So making peace.’ And now in the text he comes and preaches peace.

*****

“What is peace? Keep reading verse 14-15: ‘Who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man . . . ’

“You see, in Paul’s mind, peace, and he defines it for you, is being one. In our mind peace is just the cessation of hostility. If we can stop conflict, but stopping conflict and stopping hostility, agreeing not to fight, is not real peace.

“I mean, it’s only superficial. It’s only temporary. It’s only external. Soon enough the animosity will resurface and what you’ll discover is we agreed to stop fighting simply because we were weary of the warfare at the moment, and we’ll stop awhile until we can recuperate and rearm ourselves and then go at it again. Nothing’s really settled.

"In families, moms and dads, husbands and wives, fight and argue and you just finally say, ‘Enough, I’m going to stop,’ but you don’t really resolve it. One of you just gives up for the moment, but it still boils inside. Nothing internally is really resolved. That’s not peace.

*****

“Paul says, ‘He is our peace.’ You see, the secret of peace is in a person. It’s not in a prescription, it’s not in getting a conflict management group to come in and tell you how to manage your conflict—that’s just helping you to stop fighting.

“Christ is the essence of what peace is all about. He’s the embodiment. In order to live at peace you have to have peace internally. Before you can live in tranquility with others, you have to have an inner tranquility with yourself.

“We want to start bringing peace by cleaning up the results of the conflict. God says, ‘I’m going to start with a person because the issue is a person.’

"Peace is a person, and to live in peace you have to be at peace with that person. If you have peace, then you can begin to resolve the conflict, genuinely. But peace starts, Romans 5 says, ‘Being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.’

“Until you have peace with God, not just in the sense of not arguing with Him, but a sense of a cessation of His being against you and you being against Him . . .

“How do you quit being against Him? How do you get Him to quit being against you? That’s what peace is, and that’s why at the end of verse 15, Paul says, ‘He’s made peace.’ How did He make peace? He made it through the blood of His cross. He made it by slaying the enmity of the law that was against us because we couldn’t keep it.

*****

“In Titus 3 is a fascinating word picture of a life without Christ. He’s going to describe what you know about who you were before you came to faith in Christ. Titus 3:3: ‘For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.’

“That’s life without Christ. You say, ‘Well, I don’t live like that.’ Well, that’s because you’re foolish and you’re deceived. You see, an unsaved person doesn’t really understand what life is about. They don’t really know how to live. They think they do but they’re foolish and they’re disobedient.

“They don’t do what God says and they’re deceived into thinking they know better. And they’re serving-- they’re the slaves, they’re being driven by--all kinds of lust, passions and pleasures. All kinds of thinking that says, ‘I want to be gratified, I want my jollies, I want to be happy and I’m going to do it my way.’ The result is they wind up living in malice and envy.

“If you want to know the culture around you, and you want to understand why the crudeness and vileness you see around is there, it’s because the minds of unsaved people are like a garbage can. They’re full of garbage. You know that because you used to be that way.

“Paul’s saying here, ‘Don’t get mad at lost people for being lost people; don’t you remember what it was like where you were lost?’

“Listen, the only way you can get rid of the garbage is to get rid of the garbage can that’s holding the garbage. If you just dump the can's contents out, you know what, it’s still there. There can still be a real, ripe odor to it. There’s the remnants.

“So you know what God does? Verse 4: you see, he saved us, not by our righteousness. Not by me saying, ‘I’m going to fix all those problems.’

“Titus 3: 4-5 says, 'But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared,
[5] Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.'

*****

 “You say, ‘I’m going to quit being foolish; I’m going to get educated. I’m going to start doing what God says to do and obey Him. I’m going to control my desires and just channel them in a certain way, discipline myself, and I’m not going to lie in envy and malice. I’m going to eliminate hatred and all the conflicts that come from it.’

“And God says, ‘Good luck.’ As I’ve said to you before, sin isn’t in the action; it starts in their heart. And to eliminate those things in Titus 3:3, you have to have a miracle from God that gives you a new heart and makes you a new person.

“That’s the thing he’s talking about when he says, ‘The one new man.’ That’s the church the Body of Christ, but when God puts you in the Body of Christ, what the Body of Christ is you. You’ve been put into a transforming union with Him; made one with Him.

“He put you in His Son and makes His identity your identity; makes His reality your reality, His life your life, His righteousness your righteousness, His acceptance your acceptance. What belongs to Him now belongs to you because you’re in Him; you’re an heir of God and a joint-heir of Jesus Christ.

“The verse says, ‘Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.’

“He comes in and cleanses you by making you a new person. He regenerates you and gives you new life. God the Holy Spirit makes you into a new creature.”

Taking it literally, ladder and limb

During a Q & A period following a live Bible study over the internet, a man asked for advice on how to move his "head knowledge" of God's Word into his heart.

The preacher suggested, in part, that he go out and share the Word with other people. This would, in essence, "stir up" what he knew intellectually and give it a deeper, more personal context through the interaction and discourse with people from varied backgrounds who may have very different ideas about God and the Bible.

I thought this was a good answer and I can certainly attest to being helped myself through the years doing the exact same thing.

If this same question had been posed to me, though, I would have answered differently.

For me, I have to say some of my biggest faith leaps have come from more fully internalizing the fact that in the English language, the King James Bible—and only the King James Bible—is God's masterpiece as both the Book's author and editor.

Absolutely every single line—down to the last "jot and tittle," as Matthew 5:18 says—reveals His full intention as the supreme Artist behind it all.

There's not one word that's not the precise word He meant to use and He's placed every word exactly where He meant it to be. Each of the 66 books is ordered with this meticulousness.

*****

Jordan puts it this way:

"If you take your Bible this literally, and you don't say it's anthropomorphic expressions, and that it's wonderful words, but it isn’t really real because it's so far beyond you. . .

"You’re never going to completely understand God, but He's created a universe in which to manifest His glory, and if His glory can't be manifested so that you can comprehend it as best that you can comprehend it, then it isn't real.

"So the fact that He has deigned to condescend Himself to manifest Himself to us, and to speak to us in terms that we can understand, means that the things that He's communicated to us are real and you don’t need this Platonic kind of Neoplatonism where, 'It's these words but it's not real; it's just this shadow-on-the-wall kind of stuff.'

"That's just a bunch of superstitious stuff. I don't care if the best brains of the last 1,000-1,500 years says it's true, it's still just nonsense. But I know that when you take your Bible literally, it's like you climb out on a limb and pretty soon you're so far out on that limb that people look at you and say, 'You're nuts, man, that thing's going to fall out from under you.'

"You know that thing is strong and steady and it holds you up. Years ago, I used to paint and I used to watch guys climb up a 40-ft. ladder. I climbed up a 40-ft ladder to the end of it one time, and painted a little while and came down, and told the guy I was working with, 'You know, now I know why painters are either drunks or crazy. You either got to be drunk or nuts to go up that ladder twice and you wouldn't get me up in one again.'

"But you understand, I know what it's like to kind of be out on a limb. I used to watch Mr. Mackey climb up that ladder, fully extended 40-ft ladder, and then he'd bounce that ladder across the building. Literally walk that ladder. I could do that with a 20-footer, but man, I wasn't going to do it with a 40-footer!

"Nothing to hang on up there and, man, it's a long way to the ground. But after you do it awhile you gain a confidence and that's sort of what it is when you read these verses.

"After you study it 25-30 years you won't find it's quite so nutty."

*****

Similarly, Jordan said the other week in his Wednesday night study on Hosea, “The more you study your Bible, the more you climb up a tree of faith, and eventually you go out on a limb. The more you study, the more confident you are that that limb’s going to hold you up, and so you kind of go out on it a little bit more and you take what I call the dare of faith.

“You just dare to believe it and you begin to see things, and pretty soon you realize, ‘I’m way over here and the trunk of the tree’s over there and somebody’s going to come along between me and the tree and saw it off and then I might be in trouble.’

“But if you’re hanging onto the trunk and they saw the limb off, well, you still got the trunk. So I don’t mind when people come along and call me goofy and make all kind of accusations. What’s the chafe to the wheat? I don’t worry about it. The fascinating thing is that these kinds of things just keep multiplying.

*****

“Isaiah is sort of a miniature Bible and it’s one of these fascinating things about God’s Word that I don’t know how to explain except to say that it’s there for the eye of faith to see and to encourage your heart about. There’s 66 chapters in Isaiah that correlate with each of the 66 books in the Bible.

“You go to Isaiah and find that chapter that corresponds with the chronological order of the books and if you’re familiar enough with the particular book, you’ll see corresponding thinking in the chapter in Isaiah. You’re not going to see the relative doctrine necessarily, but you’ll see thinking patterns where you say, ‘Whoa!’ But you have to be familiar enough with those books.

“For example, there are at least 15 direct kinds of correlations between Isaiah 28 and Hosea (the 28th book) that I can identify. If I can find 15 I’d guess there’s probably another 8-10 I missed. I say that because I didn’t do 15 the first time I ever did this. I just kind of keep adding to them as I go along.

“Hosea ends with a reference to, ‘Who is wise, and he shall understand these things? prudent, and he shall know them? for the ways of the LORD are right, and the just shall walk in them: but the transgressors shall fall therein.’

"Now an obvious cross reference to that is back in Isaiah 28, beginning in verse 9: ‘Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts.’

“This is a very popular verse in regards to these things. If you look down at verse 26, it says, ‘For his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him.’ Verse 29 says, ‘This also cometh forth from the LORD of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working.’

“When He’s talking to Hosea about who is wise and who has understanding, and who is prudent and knew these things, the answer is in these people back here in Isaiah 28 who had the attitude of being a baby, a child in faith, and being instructed point by point, consistently over and over, by the Lord.

*****

"Now, if you take the Book of Isaiah and you break it in half, you’d have chapters 1-39 and then there’d be a break and you’d have chapters 40-66.

“That break between those two sections is so obvious and so startling that unbelievers, and textual critics and Bible critics, actually have a teaching they call ‘Deutero-Isaiah, meaning two Isaiahs.

“The idea is the Isaiah who wrote the first 39 chapters wrote in such a mindset, and about such topics, that is so different from the latter chapters that the same guy couldn’t have possibly written these ‘two books’ because they were so diametrically opposed to one another.

“The whole function of (chapters 1-39) is judgment and how the nation Israel’s going to be cursed and the captivity’s coming. You see the first verse in chapter 28? ‘Woe to the crown of pride.’ Chapter 29: ‘Woe to Ariel, to Ariel, the city where David dwelt! add ye year to year; let them kill sacrifices.’ That’s Jerusalem.

“You come down to verse 15: ‘Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the LORD, and their works are in the dark, and they say, Who seeth us? and who knoweth us?’ Chapter 30:1: ‘Woe to the rebellious children, saith the LORD, that take counsel, but not of me; and that cover with a covering, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin.’

“You go through chapter 28 and following and there are a series of six different woes against six different groups of people that end up with destruction.

“Then, in chapter 40, all of a sudden you have comfort: ‘Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. 2] Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the LORD's hand double for all her sins.’

“You now have God delivering people and Israel’s restored; you have salvation.

“So the idea is, ‘This is so different,’ and they say the first set of chapters were Isaiah 1 and the second set is Isaiah 2. Now you know that’s not true. You know one Isaiah wrote it all. How do you know that?

“Because in John 12, Jesus Christ quotes Isaiah 6 and then He quotes Isaiah 53 in the same breath and attributes both to the same guy. So Jesus Christ knew more about who wrote Isaiah than the textual critics but they come from a position of unbelief anyway.

“My point to you is there is such a division there. How many books are the in the Old Testament? 39. What’s the last word in the Old Testament? Malachi 4:6. ‘Curse’ is the last word. What does the law produce? Galatians 3:10.

“The 40^th book in the Bible is Matthew and the first thing you read in Matthew is the ‘voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord.’ That’s John the Baptist introducing the Messiah and you have the Redeemer and His redemption over here.

“The very first verse in Isaiah talks about the heaven and the earth. The last chapter talks about the new heaven and the new earth. Genesis, the first book in the Bible, starts with, ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’ In Revelation, it’s the ‘new heaven and new earth.’ "

Demonic locust nation ahead!

Joel 1:4 says, “That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpiller eaten.”

“Every time you read a commentary about the Book of Joel, they look at this insect infestation as a historical event but nobody knows when that took place," says Jordan. "There’s no record of it in Scripture outside of this passage.

“You can believe anything you want about it, but my own personal, private, subject, individual impression is that he’s not talking about an infestation in the past because he’s not talking about the past here; he’s talking about the future.

“It’s an infestation in the future that’s going to wind up with the destruction of the land and, in chapter 2, it’s going to be immediately followed by the battle of Armageddon. That takes place in the last half of the 70th week and at the end of it in the ‘day of the Lord.’

"So verse 15 says, ‘Alas for the day! for the day of the LORD is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come.’

“Really, what he’s describing here is a prophetic picture. If you want to say, as the commentaries all do, that it’s historically rooted in the past and Joel’s doing what Hosea said, using a similitude—‘Here’s a historic event and an illustration out of it’--I think you lose something if that’s all you get out of it.

*****

“You see how he says in verse 3, ‘Here’s what the old men are to do’: ‘Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.’

“Here’s something you need to pass on to your kids and make sure they understand it so they can pass it to their kids and let everybody remember this.

“Whenever you have someone in Israel telling them to remind their children about things, over and over again the context of what they’re reminding them about is going to be the restoration of Israel at the end of the time of Jacob’s trouble.

“How often have we looked at how many events in Israel’s past are really dress rehearsals for things coming in their future.

“Come with me to Psalm 78. You see how it says a ‘Maschil of Asaph.’ That word Maschil is a Hebrew title for a psalm designed to teach doctrine. This is not a devotional psalm; this is an instruction psalm designed to produce edification in its hearers. It’s by Asaph, David’s choir director, so to speak.

“But he was more than that. Matthew 13: 34-35 says, ‘All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them: 35] That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.’

“If you’ve got a Scofield Bible, it tells you where it’s a quote from. It’s from Psalm 78:2. Notice what Matthew calls the writer of Psalm 78. He doesn’t call him the psalmist, or the writer, or the devotional expositor. He calls him the prophet.

“So what do you expect to read in Psalm 78? Prophecy. Why? Because Matthew 13:35 said a prophet wrote it.

“I know I get way out on a limb some time and people think, ‘Brother Rick’s just nuts,’ but when you read these things, and you believe what you read and put them together, you begin to say, ‘Wow, this stuff is kind of fascinating!’

*****

“Here’s what the prophet says to them in Psalm 78: ‘1] Give ear, O my people, to my law: incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
[2] I will open my mouth in a parable: I will utter dark sayings of old:
[3] Which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us.
[4] We will not hide them from their children, shewing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done.
[5] For he established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children:
[6] That the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children:
[7] That they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments:

“That’s saying, ‘I’m going to tell you history like you learned our history, but our history is really a parable. Our history is a dress rehearsal about things taking place in the future.' It’s not just, 'I wonder what happened today; let’s turn on the news.’

“If you go on down through the chapter, and there’s 72 verses to it, he starts with the Exodus and goes all the way down to I Samuel 8 with David and goes through Israel’s history. He’ll do it in Psalm 105 and 106. The psalms do this over and over again.

“Each psalm has a particular doctrinal emphasis to it and they’ll pick out the history of Israel and lay it out and the psalmist will say, ‘You see what God did back there? He’s going to do the same thing over there.’

"Look at verses 43-45: 43] How he had wrought his signs in Egypt, and his wonders in the field of Zoan:
[44] And had turned their rivers into blood; and their floods, that they could not drink.
[45] He sent divers sorts of flies among them, which devoured them; and frogs, which destroyed them.

*****

“You remember all the plagues Moses put on Egypt? The Book of Numbers says he was judging the gods of Egypt. Each one of those plagues represented an attack on some of the pagan gods the Egyptians trusted and he bested them.

“In fact, after the one in Exodus 10 about the locusts, Pharaoh’s men come in and say, ‘Pharaoh, would you just get rid of this guy because we’re beat; he’s already beaten us.’

“Verse 46 says, ‘He gave also their increase unto the caterpiller, and their labour unto the locust.’  Verse 49 says, ‘He cast upon them the fierceness of his anger, wrath, and indignation, and trouble, by sending evil angels among them.’

“So what happened back in Egypt is a prophecy against what God’s going to do against the world. By the way, Isaiah calls the pharaoh that held Israel captive the Assyrian.

"The Antichrist who’s going to hold Israel captive in the tribulation is called the Assyrian. So the spiritual force behind the captivity of Israel in Exodus is the same satanic policy holding them captive in the tribulation.

“If you go to Joel 1:4, he actually has four categories for the plague of the locust (Exodus 10). Commentaries usually say those are four different stages of the life of a locust. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it’s fascinating to me that one bug can only eat so much so when he leaves, the next bug eats more and by the time you get to the end, there ain’t nothing left.

*****

“There’s a destruction coming in the land that Joel is prophesying about and, as we read the rest of the chapter, he’s going to describe how thorough the destruction is.

“There’s people who say that’s four different Gentile nations and they try to interpret it and so forth, but my own view is it’s a literal destruction of the land, only it’s looking to the future and that’s why he tells them to remember it.

“Joel 1: 19-20 says, 19] O LORD, to thee will I cry: for the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and the flame hath burned all the trees of the field.
[20] The beasts of the field cry also unto thee: for the rivers of waters are dried up, and the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness.

“Fire, flame, devouring--that’s not what locusts do. There’s something more than just bugs infesting, so when you keep reading in Joel 1 you begin to say, ‘Hmm.’

“Verses 5-6 say, ‘Awake, ye drunkards, and weep; and howl, all ye drinkers of wine, because of the new wine; for it is cut off from your mouth.
[6] For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a great lion.’

“Now, wait a minute, the locusts turn out to be a nation that’s come up upon the land, strong and without number, and they’ve got teeth like a great lion and they devour.

“Lions aren’t going to eat the grass. You go on down through here and you see they eat the grass, the trees, the apple trees, the pomegranate trees, the vine tree.

*****

“There’s something more than just literal locusts because now, in connection with that, there’s a nation. When it says they have teeth like the teeth of a lion, and have cheek teeth of a great lion, there’s a fascinating comparison there.

“In essence, what Joel is doing is announcing the judgment of that Fifth Course on Israel. The day of the Lord’s wrath is what that Fifth Course of captivity is and what Joel is saying is, ‘That Fifth Course is coming!’

“In all the other courses, He’ll destroy the land and let the Gentiles come in and take them, but God doesn’t clean wipe them out. But when you get down to that Fifth Course, you’re going to be down to the place where you’re so starved and your resources are so gone you’re going to start eating each other.

“Now, if you go back into Kings, you’ll see that historically. I know you and I, all fat and sassy, have never been that hungry. It’s easy for you to say what you wouldn’t do, but if you’re put in the exact same circumstances they’re in, then tell me you wouldn’t do it. That’s how desperate they’re going to be.

*****

“Deuteronomy 28, where it’s describing the outworking of these five courses of judgment, verse 38 says, ‘Thou shalt carry much seed out into the field, and shalt gather but little in; for the locust shall consume it.’

“One of the judgments of God against Israel is the harvest of their land being consumed by pestilence; by plagues of insects, specifically locusts.

“Verses 40-43 says, [40] Thou shalt have olive trees throughout all thy coasts, but thou shalt not anoint thyself with the oil; for thine olive shall cast his fruit.
[41] Thou shalt beget sons and daughters, but thou shalt not enjoy them; for they shall go into captivity.
[42] All thy trees and fruit of thy land shall the locust consume.

“God’s going to stop the natural production of the fruit of the trees. In verse 49 (‘The LORD shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand’) is the nation in Joel 1:6.

*****

“It’s a nation of locusts. Proverbs 30:27 says, ‘The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands.’

“If a locust has no king, would you properly describe him as a nation? Doesn’t a nation need a head? So it would be odd to call a band of locusts a nation if they didn’t have a king, but what if you had locusts who had a king?

“In Revelation 9 are some locusts. Where’d they come from? The bottomless pit. Well, obviously they weren’t insects. They are some kind of spirit creatures. They would be some of those evil angels like over in psalms.

“Revelation 9:3 says, ‘And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.’

“Along with the insect infestation that’s physically destroying the land, eating it down so it produces absolutely nothing of consumable value, now there’s a group of demonic in the spirit world coming.

“Verse 4 says, ‘And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.’

“So this locust is going to attack people who are lost. Revelation 9:5 says, ‘And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man. ‘

“They don’t kill you, they just torment you. It says they’ll want to die and they can’t. Verse 6 says, ‘And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.’

“The passage goes on, ‘7] And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men.
[8] And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions.
[9] And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle.
[10] And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months.
[11] And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.
[12] One woe is past; and, behold, there come two woes more hereafter.

“If that’s the first woe, think how bad the next two are going to be! And that first woe is what Joel is seeing. Not only is there just going to be the physical destruction of the land, the picture in Joel is that in the tribulation, there’s going to be this swarm of locusts.

“Revelation 11:3 says, ‘And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.’

“Those two witnesses are Moses and Elijah and they’re going to do something. Remember verse 6? Would that be a little bit difficult? You read in Joel about the rivers drying up and everything being parched.

“One of the plagues Moses smote Egypt with was locusts. In that second half of that 70^th week in the tribulation, literally the land’s going to be smitten with swarms of locusts that just take the form of the plagues out of Egypt.

“They cover the land, go in the houses and just infest everything, eat everything, decimate the land. Then you’re going to have on top of that these demonic locusts from Revelation 9 that come on the land as a nation whose teeth are like lions. All of that is going to be followed in chapter 2 of Joel with the battle of Armageddon.”

(Editor’s note: Another new article tomorrow)

Predicting the future

In 2000, economist Harry S. Dent, author of The Roaring 2000s, predicted the economic collapse of the fall of ’08. He predicted the country’s economic stresses wouldn’t be over until 2019.

“What Dent did was take his understanding of generational cycles in a nation, applying it to economics, and said the decade of the 2000s would be just like the decade of the ’20s,” explained Jordan in an old study.

“He said, ‘Okay, understanding that this is what it was then—the massive infusement of government money, the massive infusement of government takeover of economy, the massive infusement of social welfare programs . . .

“By the way, in the ’30s, the big government takeover was what? What did the government do in the ’30s that still affects everybody? That’s where Social Security came from. ‘We’re going to take care of your retirement.’ Now what are they trying to take over? Healthcare.

“You can beat your chest all you want to about how we’re not going to let it happen and you’ll be just like the birds back there who beat their chests and said, ‘We won’t let it happen!’ I’m sorry.

“So what do you do? Well, you either prepare for it or you don’t, and if you don’t, you know what happens? Whap, the hurricane wipes you out. If you do prepare, you live to fight another day.”

*****

Speaking specifically about Winter trends as they relate to fundamental Bible-believing Christians, Jordan says, “I know you’re interested in the politics of it as well as the economics, but the reality is most of your political views are on the outs anyway, even when they’re in.

“You see, there’s this myth of a ‘Christian Nation’ that we live in and there’s this myth that’s been sold to you to get your votes that says you can do something about the world we live in.

“What would a Christian nation look like in your mind? Sit down sometime and right down what it would look like.

 

"You say, ‘A world in which there’s no abortion. A world in which there’s no this or that.’ Then ask yourself what is God doing today. Is God today reclaiming nation states?

" ‘Boy, that’s a disappointment if when I go into the polls to vote He isn’t reclaiming nation states. My view of a Christian nation all of a sudden got a little different.’

“Where’s God working today? In the Believer. So if a nation’s going to reflect what God’s doing today, what would be the first thing available in a nation? Grace churches.

“Not that apostate religious system, but the sound churches where the Word of God is taught. Where God lives and work’s through His Word. It wouldn’t identify the political structure of the nation; it would identify the working of the Body of Christ.

“So, instead of trying to Christianize the government . . . You see, that’s what the reconstructionists, the ‘Kingdom Now’ people, dominion theologians like D. James Kennedy, Jim Dobson, Jerry Falwell—you just keep naming the leaders . . .

“That’s their doctrinal viewpoint. Jerry didn’t believe the Bible; he just used the Bible and was willing to allegorize the Bible just like D. James Kennedy.

“We’ve never been a Christian nation, but we’ve certainly been a nation that was formed by the fruit of the Protestant Reformation—the greatest spiritual enlightenment that’s ever hit the planet in the dispensation of grace.

“And the social impact of the Protestant Reformation helped to form a government based upon the concepts of freedom that are based upon the liberty that’s in Christ extended out into life. And you’re not afraid to live in a world that isn’t dominated by an oligarchy, but it’s left for individual Believers to function.”

*****

Jordan continues, “I understand the political stuff. We who are Americans are extremely fortunate to have a heritage. But it’s all over with, folks, I’m sorry. When the toothpaste is out of the tube, it’s gone. The foundations that built that are not in our country anymore.

“I have a book called The Next 100 Years. Boy, if you want to read something fun to read, this is the book! The author, George Friedman, predicts what’s going to happen for the next century and he says it’s impossible to predict the next century. He says, ‘You can’t even predict the next 20 years so I’m gonna do it anyway.’

“He says, ‘I’m gonna be wrong after 20 years. Absolutely, positively when my great-grandkids read this, they’re going to read it and say grandpa is wrong and I want them to know that I know I was going to be wrong but I’m going to be in the ball park.’

“Think about every twenty years. Twenty years ago you could have never predicted where we are today. Think about the last century. 1900. The capital of the world in 1900 was London. You don’t remember that, you weren’t there, but it was. Europe ruled the world. The European Empire controlled the whole planet basically. Peace, prosperity, trading—everything was wonderful.

“Twenty years later, Europe is in a shambles. Everything’s been torn apart by a war; a whole European continental war. World War I we call it, but then it was just called the world war. The Austro-Hungarian, the Russian, the German, the Ottoman Empire that had filled up the world was gone. Communism dominated Russia.

“America, that little pipsqueak across the pond, has sent a million men to Europe and they’ve gone home in that 20-year period. Germany is decimated and they set up an armistice so that it could never again threaten and we had a ‘war to end all wars.’ You’d have never thought about that in 1900.

“Fast forward to 1940. Uh, huh, a little bit different again. In 1920 you’d have never thought that Germany would have risen back to its heights, conquered France, and dominated Europe. The Communists in Russia are allies with Nazi Germany, and the little island nation of Britain stood alone against the tyranny of Communism and Fascism.

“And you thought, ‘Well, Germany’s won, the war’s over; they’re going to dominate Europe and the old European empire for the next century.’ So you fast forward from 1940 to 1960. Where’s Germany? It’s been crushed. Europe’s been divided with what Churchill called the ‘Iron Curtain.’ It descended across the continent. The European empires collapsed around the planet.

“The ‘Cold War’ between Russia and the United States is in full swing. In 1960, what was the great threat, if you remember? People building bomb shelters in their backyard. Nuclear war. And there’s a stalemate. You look east and there comes Red China across the horizon. You’d have never predicted any of that in 1940.

“So you come to 1960 and then fast forward another 20 years to 1980. Every 20 years, if you’re looking forward you would have never predicted the scenario that actually happened. So when you look at life now . . .

*****

“People say, ‘Well the 20^th century was The American Century and the 21^st is The Asian Century.’ And in a lot of ways that’s going to be true, but let me encourage you about something. Don’t give up yet on America. The inherent power of the U.S. coupled with its geopolitical position make the U.S. the pivotal anchor for the 21^st Century. That’s the thesis of (Friedman’s) book.

“He predicts, for example, that every wintertime there’s a war that is decisive. He tells you there are three places it might happen. One of them (Turkey) is right where God’s Book says there’s going to be a world war one day. It’s fascinating!

“When I first read that I went, ‘Oh, whoa, man, that’s interesting because, just like Strauss and Howe (authors of the book, The Fourth Turning) didn’t know anything about the Bible but were teaching what the Bible teaches about history, this guy doesn’t believe anything about the Bible but he’s teaching things that when you read them you say, ‘That’s exactly how the Scripture says the scenario’s gonna come about!’

 

"I’m not saying that’s what’s going to happen; I’m just saying he said something that matched Scripture and he says you see it in the tea leaves.”

*****

"When I say don’t give up on America, geopolitics is based on two things. No. 1 it’s based on Genesis 9, 10 and 11. People organize themselves into larger units than families. In Genesis 1-6, all the units are families. What you learn is that family structure, volition; marriage . . . family is not enough to provide the safe, orderly maintenance of humanity and culture.

“So God wipes the slate clean, starts again, but when He starts again, He adds nationalism. Paul says in Acts 14, ‘God sets up the bounds of their habitations.’ The way He sets up the bounds of their habitation is through the character of a nation being determined to a great extent by its geographic boundaries.

“If you look at (Shorewood missionary) Bobby Barlow’s book Origin of the Races, you’ll see where he goes through Genesis 10 and how they divided up the nations, families, languages. Borders, languages and culture are basically what make up a nation and that’s exactly the foundation in Genesis 10.

“Geographic boundaries and a common language and the two things that will produce a common culture. Geopolitics is based upon the fact people instinctively organize themselves into bigger units than families—into communities and the homeowners associations and local towns—into nation states, and that they gain a characteristic based upon the geographic boundaries.

“Now what that has to with America is there is no nation on the planet like America or ever can be like America in that regard. There are two great oceans on the planet. The Atlantic and the Pacific. The only nation that has any potential to have a significantly large border on both oceans is us.

“You say, ‘Well, Canada can.’ Yeah, but who can get into Canada in the wintertime or would want to. You can get on the borders of Canada, but going TRANS-Canada isn’t easy for most of the year. You ever watch the show the Ice Truckers? Well they only run three months of the year. That’s why they make that ungodly amount of money.

“You say, ‘Well, South America.’ You ever wonder why Chile is such a little bitty country down the side? Look at the map. There’s some big mountains. You’re not going to go across South America down in the southern quarter of it because of the topography.

*****

“When the settlers came from Europe to America and started going west and got about to the Mississippi and went a little further, they developed a concept called ‘Manifest Destiny’.

“It just made common sense to go all the way to the Pacific—‘Look at all that territory out there!’—and made no sense not to. And you say, ‘What happened when they got to the Rockies?’ They said, ‘Oh, that’s no big deal, if the antelope and the caribou can go through it we can too and they built two railroads across it and you say, ‘Wow, geez, how’d they do that?’ They used their creative genius but they KNEW.

“So what we have is the ability to dominate the Atlantic and the Pacific, and the nation that dominates the ‘sea lanes’ dominates the world. The only Asian nation that can potentially challenge us in the Pacific is China because they have an ever-growing navy that they stole from us. And they’re crafty.

“But listen, they are way behind, and while I believe China and India are THE two significant future 21^st Century places in Asia . . . ”