Romans Chapter 11:24-28

What else needs to happen before this event called the Rapture?

Won't you listen to me closely? As I read the Bible and as I've studied it for years, nothing. There is not a historical event that stands between us and the Rapture. And friend, if you've been waiting to get right with God to begin to follow the Lord, might I strongly suggest you realize that we're close? Welcome to Cross the Bridge with David Magee.

You know, it could happen at any moment. Christ returning and changing the world forever. We should live ready and expected lives because of this. Find out more about this concept as David Magee continues in Romans 11 with his teaching, We Should Be Kingdom-Minded. We find ourselves today in Romans chapter 11. Let's open up with Romans chapter 11 verse 24.

For if you were cut out of the olive tree, which is wild by nature, and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these who are natural branches be grafted into their own olive tree? For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel till the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so this time frame, apparently there's the fullness of the Gentiles, then the Jewish people will see. And some of them are seeing now.

We've talked about this. Five years ago there was about a hundred messianic congregations in Israel. Now there's about a hundred and fifty. I mean, they're growing exponentially. So this is already starting to happen, but not to the degree that it's going to be happening during what we refer to as that seven-year tribulation period. Look at verse 26, and it says, And so all Israel will be saved as it is written, The Deliverer will come out of Zion, and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob. The word saved in verse 26 could also be delivered. So all Israel will be delivered. They will have the chance, the opportunity to believe in Jesus as the Messiah. Verse 27, For this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins. Look at verse 28, Concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sake.

But concerning the election, they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. See, God still has a place in His heart for the Jewish people. Now that doesn't, so many Christians, they get insecure and they think, well, if God still loves Israel, that means He doesn't love me as much.

No, He loves you. Let's remember, prophetically, this announcement that Messiah was coming, Jesus was coming, was originally to the Jewish people. That when we look in the book of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John, over and over to the Jewish people. And then we see in the book of Acts, it was extended to the Gentiles.

Now I'm grateful that it was extended to us. And the New Living Translation is verse 28 says, Many of the Jews are now enemies of the good news, but this has been to your benefit, for God has given His gifts to you Gentiles. Yet the Jews are still His chosen people because of His promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Don't feel insecure about that because we've looked at the passages that said that we can be heirs to the promises of Abraham.

And let that represent to you that even though sometimes we get off track, even sometimes we mess up, God will still extend Himself towards us, even as we see historically as He does and has with the Jewish people. We're in the church age. And you might ask yourself, okay, so we're in the church age and this rapture thing is going to happen. And obviously, it's going to happen in a split second, twinkling of eye. That's what the Bible says. Lightning comes from the east to the west.

It's pretty quick. So what has to happen before the rapture of the church occurs? Well, let's go through a few things. There needs to be an alliance between ancient Persia, Iran, and Iraq, and a great company of the north and the kings of the east. And they need to have a large army, and that army will attack Israel. That's plain when you go through Ezekiel 37, 38, 39. Well, when you look at the world today and the reference in Ezekiel 38 says this, Then you will come from your place out of the far north, you and many peoples with you, all of them riding on horses, a great company and a mighty army. You will come up against My people Israel like a cloud to cover the land.

And it will be in the latter days that I will bring you against My land so that the nations may know Me when I am hallowed in you, O God, before their eyes. Again, we go back 50 years, this situation wasn't as the way it is now. Well, even 10 years ago, 15 years ago, China, and I'm going to have to discuss politics, and I'll try to keep factual so I don't alienate anybody. But China and Russia both have trees with Iran. Russia is supplying the nuclear fuel and capabilities to Iran.

While the rest of the world says, oh, well, you need to stop that. Iran, you need to stop doing your nuclear things. And at the same time, Russia is pumping, making billions. One contract for nuclear fuel was $1 billion from Russia. And the UN has economic sanctions against Iran. Russia has a treaty with Iran.

And here's the thing that makes it even more sensitive. Iran and China had options on the fuel and the oil that was in Iraq. When we went into Iraq, we declared all those contracts and all those treaties to buy all that oil null and void. We re-awarded those contracts to Britain and the United States. China and Russia weren't real happy about that. Those same contracts exist with Iran. I'm thinking they're not going to take lightly any sort of invasion into Iran sponsored by the United States.

Why? Because they stand to lose, not millions, they stand to lose billions and billions of dollars. Are you beginning to get the picture that perhaps these economic sanctions against Iran aren't going to work? They're laughable because the whole time they're doing big business with China and Russia, establishing these treaties. And meanwhile, understand, Iran has called for the annihilation of Israel.

It's not like it's a secret. I mean, openly, their government has said, we want to annihilate Israel. We want to see the end of Israel, the end of Zionism. And one of the reasons that we're not standing with Israel in doing a nuclear strike because they've done a nuclear, not a nuclear strike, they've done a strike on a nuclear facility in Iran before is because of these ties to China and Russia. Do you understand how the whole thing is just a ticking time bomb? So already this exists that when Israel and Iran go to battle, it's very likely that World War III emerges.

The United States is probably not going to side with Israel in self-interest. We talk about oil. Understand, some people say, well, Iraq was all about oil. Understand, oil is not just a capitalistic thing.

Oil is a national security issue. So this whole thing is being set up. And apparently from the Bible, it says that all nations will be gathered against Israel. It doesn't say all nations except the United States. And already you can see some cracks in our agreements with Israel. They gave away some land in the Gaza. A member of our government, they said, well, what do you think of this? And they said, well, it's a good start. Land for peace is never going to work.

It is never going to work. Next thing, the world needs to have the ability to trade, buy or sell goods all over the world. This needs to happen before that seven-year tribulation, or at least it needs to get set up in time for the seven-year tribulation. And so it speaks of this in Revelation chapter 13, verses 16 and 17. He calls us all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on the right hand or on the forehands, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name. That's the mark of the beast. That's the, you know, you've probably heard of that. What is the mark of the beast?

Let me be real clear in this. I don't know. I don't know what the mark of the beast. You know, I read these things and they say it's going to be this and it's going to be that.

No, I think it's going to be this. Years ago, the technology didn't exist for this type of transaction. Now, people are actually implanting chips in their body that have their credit card information, that have their bank card information.

Now, does that mean that's the mark? Again, I don't know. I'm not going to presume to know things that I don't know. I mean, some of this is unclear and some of this obviously falls in the field of conjecture, but some of it is extremely factual. As a matter of fact, recent events, China and Russia urged the world to replace the US dollar as the world standard with a new currency. A lot of people got real excited about that and it is, and understand the politics involved. China and Russia want this because our Federal Reserve System, when we pump money into the system and we say, hey, we're going to do this and we're going to sell more treasuries and we're going to pump money into the system. What happens is we do that as currency ratios and there's a whole currency market in the world 24-7.

These things put the world system in kind of chaos, if you will. So every time we come out and we say, hey, we're going to do this, well, Russia and China kind of have to deal with that. And understand, China is one of the biggest investors in our treasury bills of any nation in the world. Russia is a huge investor. Saudi Arabia is a huge investor. What does that mean? In simple terms, they own a portion of our government. If they decide at some point in the future to dump all these treasuries, our economic system, quite frankly, will collapse.

It will not be able to withstand. Am I saying that day is coming? Again, I don't know. I'm telling you that it exists, the possibility, the potential here. So they're talking about world currency.

Gang, let me tell you something. Worldwide currency is not coming. Worldwide currency is already here.

Let me explain. When I go on a Web site of a business that's based in Israel that deals in shekels and I buy something, I don't have to convert my dollars into shekels. I use my digital currency of my check card or my credit card to buy something. When I buy something from somebody in Europe, I don't have to transact in Euros. Digital currency is already here.

Now it seems like it perhaps might be the next step, and it's coming quicker than we would have imagined this worldwide currency. We'll return to David's teaching in just a moment. First, I want to tell you about a special booklet that would be the perfect gift for any man on your Christmas list this year. The booklet is entitled A Father's Blessing, and within its pages, David McGee discusses the power and responsibility a father has in caring for his family.

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Contact us today for your copy. Now let's return to David McGee's verse-by-verse teaching in the book of Romans. Next thing needs to happen. Israel needs to be restored to the land.

Well, most of you are already aware of this one. Ezekiel 37-21 says, Then say to them, Thus says the Lord God, Surely I will take the children of Israel from among the nations, wherever they have gone, and will gather them from every side and bring them into their own land. Guess what? May 14th, 1948, it happened. Israel was not a country for almost 2,000 years. And overnight, they became a nation again. Now, some people believe that it wasn't tied to that. They still didn't have Jerusalem. They got Jerusalem, the old city of Jerusalem, in June 1967 in the Six-Day War. Now, biblical prophecy is they have control over the city of Jerusalem. Except they allowed the control of the Temple Mount to the Imam, the Muslim cleric.

More on that in a second. But obviously, this has already happened. Israel needed to be restored to the land before that rapture could happen. Israel has been restored to the land. What's the next thing? Israel must be prepared to build and operate the third temple.

This is an extremely interesting one. Some of the verses, Daniel 11, 31, it says, Forces and forces shall be mustered by him, and they shall defile the sanctuary fortress. Then they shall take away the daily sacrifices and place there the abomination of desolation. New Testament reference, 2 Thessalonians, chapter 2, verse 4. He will exalt himself and defy every god there is and tear down every object of adoration and worship. He will position himself in the temple of God, claiming that he is himself as God. This is the abomination of desolation spoken of in the book of Daniel.

This is what Jesus talked about in Matthew 24, Luke 21. Israel right now, you can go to templeinstitute.org, is building the implements to use in the third temple. They are training the kohanim, the priest, to conduct services in the third temple.

Now here's the problem. Where is the temple going to be? It's going to be on the temple mount. What's up on the temple mount now?

Well, there's a mosque and there's a Muslim holy place. Now, gang, they're not going to set the new temple between the two. So if you ask them, some of them, if you say, How are you going to get the temple up there with all those other things? Some of them believe that a fireball from the sky is going to come and wipe out the temple and the mosque.

I don't know if any of them are volunteering to launch the fireball, but to me that's very interesting. And we went by a recent trip to Israel. We went by the temple institute, saw the things, and the girl, very passionate. She said, It's not that we believe that there will be a third temple and we will build it soon. She said, It is that we know.

We know. 2004, for the first time in about 1900 years, they reformed in Tiberius the Sanhedrin. It hadn't existed for 1900 years. In 2005, the Sanhedrin attempted to go up to the temple mount. And the government got involved and said, No, no, no, we can't do this. Politically incorrect. But are they ready to operate the temple? Obviously they are. That had to happen. And these are just the highlights.

There's like 50 things that I could have gone through. Obviously I don't have the time to do that. We're actually kind of moving quick as we are now. The church as a whole will abandon its primary call to teach and preach the word. 2 Timothy chapter 4 verse 1 says, I charge you, therefore, before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead and His appearing and His kingdom, preach the word. Be ready in season, out of season, convince, rebuke, exhort, longsuffering, and teaching, for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers. Hebrew scripture reference, Amos chapter 8 verse 11 says, Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord God, that I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, not a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.

I don't even know if this one needs comment. Because as you look around the world today and the church world today, there's a lot of churches that don't teach the word. That's a sad fact. I'm not church bashing, gang. There's a lot of wonderful churches out there, and I love some of the pastors out there, but a lot of them are not focused on the word of God. I heard one leading Christian pastor say the time for biblical verse-by-verse teaching is gone.

It's over. Guys, we need to understand the Bible. I understand that the stuff I'm talking about today, some of you are like, well, I've never heard this, and really, that's in there. I didn't know that was in there. The reason you're not aware that it's not, maybe you've been in churches for years and haven't heard this stuff.

Why is that? Perhaps because you've not been exposed to this verse-by-verse type teaching. See, when you do verse-by-verse teaching, I run across some hard stuff today. I mean, I understand somebody going, are you serious?

I mean, I'm sure that it would be more politically correct and whatnot when you're talking about other things. But see, I have a passion to communicate the word of God. And you won't come in here and I'll go, okay, now we're going to do a 16-week series on tithing.

It's not going to happen. We're going verse-by-verse, chapter-by-chapter. We take, and you've probably noticed by now, that we take a lot of time to teach the Bible. That's the main emphasis here.

Why is that? Because as we teach the Bible, a couple of things happen. First of all, those who don't know God and don't understand God loves them and are drawn to God to accept Him as their Savior. And the next thing that happens is Christians grow. So many, hundreds of people have said, you know what, I've learned more here in six months than I did in 10 years at other places.

Why? Because we're focused on the Bible. And if there's a 60-minute service and you say that your focus is on the Bible, but the sermon is 10 minutes, I'm sorry, your actions speak differently. There's people, there's churches, there's group, there's whole denominations now that say this is not the word of God.

The resurrection wasn't literal, that Jesus never claimed to be God. So this thing of this falling away and this abandon to teach the word has already happened. It's happening now. Let's run through.

Let's review these. There needs to be an alliance between ancient Persia, Iran, and Iraq, the company of the north and the kings of the east. They need to have a large army. That army will attack Israel. Check.

The world needs to have the ability to trade, buy, or sell goods all over the world. Check. Israel needs to be restored to the land. Check.

Israel must be prepared to build and operate the third temple. Check. The church as a whole will abandon its primary call to teach and preach the word.

Check. So what else needs to happen before this event called the rapture? Why don't you listen to me closely as I read the Bible and as I've studied it for years, nothing, nothing. There is not a historical event that stands between us and the rapture.

And friend, if you've been waiting to get right with God to begin to follow the Lord, might I strongly suggest that with this information you realize that we're close. Now, am I saying it's tomorrow? I don't know. I'm saying it could be. And you really can't sit there and say, well, I don't think it is. Well, are you sure?

No, you're not. Even as I'm not sure it's tomorrow, you can't tell me it's definitely not tomorrow as we look at these events. There's verses that point out, I believe this pre-tribulation rapture, I'll point out a couple. 1 Thessalonians 5, 9 says, For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to attain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

This time, the seven-year period is referred to as a time of wrath. 1 Thessalonians 5, 9 says, For God decided to save us through our Lord Jesus Christ, not to pour out his anger on us. We see the book of Revelation. That's a time of anger and judgment from God.

Revelation 3, verse 10 says, Because you have kept my command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial, which shall come upon the whole world to test those who dwell on the earth. That dwell on the earth, earth dwellers in the book of Revelation, is an interesting term. There's believers, saints, and there's those who dwell on earth.

They're two separate. Those who dwell on the earth are unbelievers. 1 Thessalonians 4, 15.

I understand I'm moving fast, but I got to it. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord will present himself, will descend from heaven with a shout, and the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord.

Therefore, comfort one another with these words. The rapture of the church is when the people are called up in the clouds to meet the Lord. That second coming of Christ is when Jesus comes to the Mount of Olives and his feet touch ground, and then you have the Battle of Armageddon.

Okay? Those are two separate events. When you try to marry those events, what you end up with is at the end of the tribulation, everybody going up to meet them in the clouds and then immediately coming back down. It makes no sense, and it is against some of the scriptures that we're looking at today.

Now, it says that comfort one another with these words. Here's a big problem with men in post-tribulations. The next thing that they're looking, do you know who they're looking to appear? Not Jesus. The Antichrist. Well, there's a bright and cheery thought. When the Bible says we're supposed to be looking for our blessed hope, is your blessed hope the Antichrist?

Hopefully not. My blessed hope is Jesus. There's a lot of models, pictures, types, shadows in the Bible, and understand, if you develop a doctrine or belief over one verse, be very careful. What you need to do is look at it in the context, and as we go verse by verse, you always get the verse within the context, because I'm reading the verses before, I'm reading the verses after. I can't really twist the verse to make it mean what I want to.

I have to see what the intended meaning is. End times events are really mentioned from Genesis to Revelation, not just in the book of Revelation. I watched this very interesting thing on Discovery, no, History Channel last night about the apocalypse, which I thought was kind of cool.

And apocalypse isn't doom and gloom. Apocalypse really literally means an unveiling. An unveiling of what? No, no, no. An unveiling of who?

And that's Jesus. All this stuff that I've spoken of, it's a lot of fun. It's very intriguing to me.

But what do you do with it? I mean, if you just sit here and go, well, that's very interesting. You miss the point. The point is, at any moment, this rapture event could happen. And this life lesson is we should live ready and expectant lives. We should live ready and expectant lives.

If you knew it was going to happen tomorrow, what would you do differently today than let today be different? What you do with this knowledge really tells something about you. I've given you all this information.

Maybe it's okay. You've given us all this information. What do I do with this information? How do I process it?

What do I do now? Run, Forrest, run. No, I'm kidding. See, that's where a lot of prophecies teach you.

They miss the curve. You know, so you should buy guns, collect water, and dah, dah, dah, dah. If these events are coming, and I think they are.

I believe they are. I don't know when. But so many of this 50 years ago was not possible is now possible. When God was getting ready to judge Sodom and Gomorrah, he asked himself, should I reveal to Abraham what I'm about to do? And he decided to reveal to Abraham. Why did he do that?

Because Abraham was called a friend of God. Today, God is revealing these things to you. Why? Because he wants you to know.

Why? Because he wants you to live accordingly, expectantly. He wants you to engage in the great commission of telling other people about him, of loving God, of loving others. Luke 21, 28 says, now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads because your redemption draws near. When these things begin to happen. Gang, I've used a lot of facts here today. Final life lesson, we should be kingdom minded. We should be kingdom minded. Friend, do you know for sure that your sins have been forgiven?

You can know right now. I want to lead you in a short, simple prayer, simply telling God you're sorry and asking him to help you to live for him. Please pray this prayer with me out loud right now. Dear Jesus, I believe you died for me that I could be forgiven. And I believe you were raised from the dead that I could have a new life. And I've done wrong things. I have sinned.

And I'm sorry. Please forgive me of all those things. Please give me the power to live for you all of my days. In Jesus' name, amen. Friend, if you prayed that prayer according to the Bible, you've been forgiven. You've been born again. So congratulations, friend.

You just made the greatest decision that you will ever make. God bless you. If this was your first time praying that prayer with Pastor David, we would love to hear from you. You can call us toll free at 877-458-5508 to receive our First Steps package with helpful resources to help you begin your walk with Jesus. Also, if you have been blessed by the ministry of Cross the Bridge and David McGee, would you consider supporting us with a financial gift? This month when you give to Cross the Bridge, we will send David's powerful booklet on biblical fatherhood entitled A Father's Blessing. The number to call is 877-458-5508.

That's 877-458-5508. Or go online to crossthebridge.com. While you're there, make sure to sign up for David's email devotional and begin receiving daily inspiration in your inbox. That website again is crossthebridge.com. Thanks for listening today. We pray you will join us next time as we cross the bridge.