Happy Independence Day! My nephews have been here all week
from Dayton, Ohio, and it was a surprise today, in between outings to play putt-putt
golf and get pizza, that they wanted to watch war documentaries on the History
Channel.
They are now in their early teens and have mostly grown up
without any television. Their father, my brother, actually gave up having a TV
in the ‘80s when he was studying for his doctorate at the University of
Kentucky.
The boys were watching a Civil War docu-drama on HC at breakfast
this morning, and I can say it had the usual anti-American slant, even using
Bill Maher for commentary! I was just
happy not to have Fox News blaring out at me for a change! My mom turns it on
as soon as she gets up and she likes the volume loud.
In keeping with the war and veterans-of-war theme of the holiday,
here’s an outtake from a study Jordan gave this past Wednesday:
“You know all that stuff going on in Iraq and Syria and with
this ISIS, you understand the Europeans drew all those boundary lines of the nations
over there at the end of World War I. The Belgians and the French and the
Englishmen. They divvied that up over there so they could control it and those
national boundaries are man-made.
“After World War II the agreement was made, ‘Okay, now we’ve
wiped out Europe and we’ve wiped out the East; we’ll go back and honor the boundaries
that were set up after WW I so we don’t have to have another fight as to where
the national borders ought to be.’ So they got reestablished.
“But those dudes over there, they don’t care about that
stuff. And as long as somebody with a gun isn’t there to make them go by what
some outlander said the borders are, they’re going to reestablish their own, and that’s what you’re seeing over there.
“Those people having tribal warfare; they still live in 7th
and 8th Century kind of thinking processes. The feudal system Europe
lived in is what they largely live in now, and as you take away the Western
imposed structure, you see these things.
*****
“But what you’re seeing is going to happen when the Antichrist
arises. There are going to be ten nations there. Only ten and he’s going to
come up and take control; subdue three of them and take over all of them and
become the head of the ten and the verse in Daniel says he’s going to do it
peaceably and ‘obtain the kingdom by flatteries.’*****
"The Antichrist's going to come in and stop the war, have the answer for
peace and flatter everybody into thinking, ‘I’m the guy!’ Daniel 11:22 says, ‘And
with the arms of a flood shall they be overflown from before him, and
shall be broken; yea, also the prince of the covenant.’
“He’s going to come in, deliver Israel and then make them
rich and get their loyalty. Verse 25: ‘And he shall stir up his power and his
courage against the king of the south with a great army; and the king of the
south shall be stirred up to battle with a very great and mighty army; but he
shall not stand: for they shall forecast devices against him.’
“The Antichrist's going to go out and there’s going to be another big
war and verse 27 says, ‘And both these kings' hearts shall be to do mischief,
and they shall speak lies at one table; but it shall not prosper: for yet the
end shall be at the time appointed.’
“You look at that and you think, ‘That just sounds like
modern American politics,’ but what goes on in America goes on everywhere else.
Listen, every country is the same way to one extent or another.
*****
“Now in the middle of all of that mess, verse 31 says, ‘And
arms shall stand on his part, and they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength,
and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination
that maketh desolate.’
“You see there the daily sacrifice and the sanctuary? He has
reestablished Judaism. One of the things the Antichrist does is rebuilds Israel’s temple
and lets them have their Mosaic system again.
“Verse 32 says, ‘And such as do wickedly against the
covenant shall he corrupt by flatteries: but the people that do know their God
shall be strong, and do exploits.’
“There are going to be some people who understand what’s
going on. Verse 35 says, ‘And some of them of understanding shall fall, to try
them, and to purge, and to make them white, even to the time of the end:
because it is yet for a time appointed.’
“So there’s going to be some wisdom among some people and they’re going to have an
awareness. Where are they going to get the awareness? Out of these books (of
the Prophets) that we’re reading!
“And Hosea says, ‘Who is wise? He’s going to understand.
Who’s prudent? He’s going to know.’ The way they know it is because God gave it
to them in a Book. These books!
*****
“You see that thing, ‘Who is wise?’ Isaiah 28:9 says, ‘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.’
“How they’re going to know is they’re going to get it out of
God’s Word. The Book of Hosea is the 28th book in the Bible. There’s
a strange thing about the Book of Isaiah.
“How many books are in the Bible? 66. How many chapters in
Isaiah? 66. Isaiah begins, ‘Earth, earth, earth, hear the word.’ The Bible
begins in Genesis with, ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’
“Isaiah 66 ends with a new heaven and a new earth and the
lake of fire. The last book in the Bible, Revelation, concludes with a new
heaven and a new earth and the lake of fire.
“How many books are in the Old Testament? 39. The first book
in the New Testament, the Book of Matthew, quotes Isaiah 40 with, ‘The voice of
one crying in the wilderness.’ John the Baptist shows up in Isaiah 40 just like
he shows up in Matthew. Strange thing. If you read Isaiah, you’ll discover that
each chapter in Isaiah, the thought patterns match that chapter of the Bible.
*****
“Daniel 11 is probably the hardest chapter in the Book of
Daniel for me to understand. Starting in verse 5, the conflict between the king
of the north and the king of the south is described. The way Daniel’s usually taught
is that that’s Antiochus Epiphanes, and Scofield’s got all kind of
hallucinations about who it is--Ptolemy and all these kinds of things, and
that’s just speculation. It’s really the speculation of unbelief because it’s
the excuse people use to try to put these things away.
“The whole chapter is future, and when you get down to verse
21, you’ve come to the Antichrist himself: ‘And in his estate shall stand up a vile person, to whom they shall not give the honour of the kingdom: but he
shall come in peaceably, and obtain the kingdom by flatteries.’
*****
“The other day I was listening to talk radio and I turned
over to a liberal talk show and this dude’s having a conniption fit about the
Bible and how nobody pays any attention to it.
“He was talking about how the Bible is so anti-ecology and
how it’s so anti-environment and his illustration was Jesus cursing the fig
tree. He said, ‘For no good reason He just went and cursed the fig tree,’ and
then he said, ‘But it didn’t work because they still bear fruit! You can still
get figs!’
“Listen, if Jesus had wanted all fig trees never to have any
figs on them again, there wouldn’t be any figs on any fig trees. It was one
incident and He was making a point to the nation Israel.
“What He was saying was, ‘You guys have a bunch of vain profession;
you’ve got all this religion where you draw near me with your lips but your
heart’s far from me. You’ve got all the outward appearance. You have a zeal of God
but not according to knowledge.’
“That’s what we’ve been seeing all through Hosea, and then
Christ said, ‘That religion; that empty, fruitless profession will never bear
fruit.’ And you know it’s true because the Mosaic Covenant never could get them
there because the Mosaic Covenant condemned them as a 'schoolmaster' to bring
them to the consciousness of needing a Savior.
“It wasn’t being anti-ecology or anti-environment. He didn’t
fumble the ball and the fig trees keep bearing figs. He wasn’t trying to stop
that. What He was saying was, ‘That religion that I gave you isn’t getting it
done because you can’t do it.’
*****
*****
“By the way, that ought to help you when you go over to
Matthew 24-25 and see the Parable of the Fig Tree and the idea that when you
see the fig tree budding, you know that the people who see that will see the
Second Coming of Christ.
“When it warns ‘when you see the fig tree bud,’ what people
do is they say, ‘Oh, that means when Israel becomes a nation,’ because they
take the fig tree and identify it with Israel as a nation in the earth. The
problem with that is it’s the vine tree that represents Israel as a nation in
the earth. The fig tree is Israel’s religion.
“It is true of the people who see Israel’s religion
re-established, and who’s going to establish that? The Antichrist is. That’s
what the book of Hebrews is all about.
“When you see that sacrificial Mosaic system and the temple
rebuilt and somebody sitting in that temple professing themselves to be God,
run! That’s not God; that’s the enemy!
“Hebrews gives you the transition from the old covenant to
the new covenant so the believing remnant, especially in that latter day, will
understand, ‘Hey, the Mosaic Covenant’s been set aside; the Messiah’s set it
aside; He’s taken care of that and established a new one.’
“We don’t go back to the old one; we go on to the new,
because the Antichrist himself is going to set up that old Mosaic system and
rebuild the temple.
“One of the first things he does, it won’t take but 220 days
after he signs that covenant with Israel that their temple worship will be
restored.
“It’s going to be a fast moving thing. When they see that
happen, instead of saying, ‘Wow, he’s the Messiah,’ it’s going to be, ‘Ooh,
he’s the Wicked one we’re going to have to run from!’
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