You know, there is a very special group of people I want to introduce you to. They are a group of people who are passionate about the gospel of Jesus Christ being proclaimed in this nation and beyond. Without them, Harvest Ministries could not even exist. We call them Harvest Partners. They are people who have chosen to give monthly to Harvest to keep the gospel moving forward.
In our lifetime, let's do this together. Just go to Harvest.org These proxy organizations, did you know almost 272 Americans have been killed? And of course, another 1,300 or more Israelis have been killed as well. I don't know if you know this, but Iran's regime is deeply involved in Shiite end times ideology. It's their own form of eschatology, which is a study of end times events where they have their last days Messiah that they call Ba'alah. The Mahdi. They believe the way they will prepare the way for their Mahdi is creating chaos.
And that's what they've been doing for a long time, provoking Israel and the West. You know, President Trump recently addressed the nation from the White House. He thanked the American military and many others, but most significantly, he thanked God. And he said something that I have to admit caught me by surprise.
He said, God, we love you. Everyone's mind is what does this mean? Is this just another chapter in the ongoing Middle East conflict?
Or could it be something more? Could we be actually witnessing the first sparks of the prophetic conflict foretold by the prophet Ezekiel in chapter 38 and 39 of his book? And what role does Iran play in Bible prophecy? And where does Israel fit into God's end time plan?
And hey, what about America? Are we seeing the stage set for the return of Jesus Christ? Let's talk about it. There's a knock at the door.
He opens the door and there standing before him is a guy with bloodshot eyes who says, for crying out loud, will you take the other shoe off so I can go to sleep? I feel like right now in our culture, people are waiting for the other shoe to drop. In other words, what's going to happen next? And we wonder about those big prophetic events. So we hear expressions like the rapture, the tribulation period, the antichrist, the mark of the beast, the battle of Armageddon, the second coming, and much more.
And we wonder, what does this all mean? Well, I want to talk about some of those things, but I want to focus specifically on Israel because they are at the very epicenter of everything that is going on in the world. And they are God's prophetic time clock. It all starts on May 14th, 1948. Israel became a nation again. I'm happy to say that the first nation to acknowledge that Israel was now a nation was the United States of America under President Truman. But this event had incredible prophetic significance.
Why? Because the Bible predicted that the Jewish people would be scattered to the four corners of the earth. They would then be regathered into their homeland. And the Bible says specifically, when this happened, this would be a sign of the times and effectively the prophetic time clock would start ticking.
So this is unprecedented. There's no other nation in history that has maintained its identity after centuries of exile, except Israel. It's really impossible to understand the miracle of the rebirth of the nation of Israel apart from the worst event in their history known as the Holocaust. So after Adolf Hitler ascended to power and became the Fuhrer of Germany, of course, he was hell bent on establishing what he called the Third Reich, where he would extend this Aryan empire across the planet. But then it became clear that he had another agenda in mind that was classified as the final solution. The final solution was to eradicate all of the Jewish people in Europe. Now, at first they were trying to do it by simply shooting them, but he wanted to find a more efficient way. And they designed these concentration camps where these Jewish men, women and children were systematically sent into these crematoriums to be gassed and then burned.
And then their ashes scattered. And they actually killed six million Jewish people, others as well. In the aftermath of this, the Jews, as if on cue, and I believe they were on cue, began to return to their homeland realizing no one was going to look out for them. No one was going to protect them.
They needed to defend themselves. And so the modern state of Israel was born. Why is there this hatred against the Jewish people? It's called anti-Semitism.
It really is just Jew hatred, hatred of the Jewish people. So the song goes back to the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve, our first parents, ate of the forbidden fruit. God told them they could enjoy all that was in the garden, but don't go to this tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
But that is exactly where they went. And they ate of their forbidden fruit and sin entered into the human race. And then a curse came upon Satan and a battle line was drawn.
God said to Satan, there is coming one who will crush your head, but you will bruise his heel. Effectively, God was announcing the Messiah was going to come. Okay, so fast forward to the next book in the Bible, the book of Exodus. We see the Pharaoh giving a decree that all of the Jewish baby boys should be put to death. But of course the Jewish midwives disobeyed the Pharaoh and spared the little baby boys. And one of those baby boys that was spared was Moses, who ultimately led the Israelites out of the bondage of Egypt toward the Promised Land. Joshua took him in.
But here's the point. This hatred against the Jews. Now you fast forward and you go to the book of Esther. There is a wicked man named Haman who hatches a plot to destroy the Jewish people. It was almost like he was almost like a forerunner to Hitler. And he wanted them all executed.
And it was because of the courageous efforts of Queen Esther, who was married to the king, who stepped in and spoke up for her fellow Jews and managed to save them all. And then fast forward into the New Testament. Jesus Christ is born. The Messiah arrives. And what does Satan try to do?
He tries to stop Jesus through the crucifixion. So anti-Semitism started a long time ago and we see it rearing its ugly head again in modern culture. You would have thought on the heels of the Holocaust we would never see anything like that again. But look at our college campuses.
Ivy League universities like Yale and Harvard and others where young students are out speaking up in favor of terrorist groups like Hamas. I mean, think about after October 7th when Hamas, a proxy terrorist organization funded and supported by Iran, attacked Israel and they killed over 1,200 Jewish men, women and children. You would have thought there would have been a global day of mourning, but instead there is this uprising of anti-Semitism and they're flying banners with slogans like, From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. Do these people even know what that means? Do they know what the river is? Do they know what the sea is? The river is the Jordan.
The sea is the Mediterranean. If you look at a map and you look at the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, you will see between the two of them is a tiny little nation about the size of New Jersey called Israel. When they say from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, they're really saying we don't want the Jews.
We don't want them in their land. And that is certainly a view that is shared by the leaders of Iran today. They've spoken repeatedly of the desire to wipe Israel off the face of the map. So why should we as Christians even care that much about this little speck of land about the size of New Jersey in the Middle East called the nation Israel? Some would even say that God has broken his covenant with Israel and now it's given over to the church.
This is called replacement theology. I don't believe that God breaks promises that he makes. I believe God chose the Jewish people and they are still his chosen people. God made a beautiful statement to Abraham. He said, I'll bless those that bless you.
I'll curse those that curse you. We have been so blessed by the Jewish people. Where did our Bible come from? From the Jews. Where did our Messiah come from?
From the Jews. I had the opportunity to be in Israel only days ago when we presented an armored ambulance to the state of Israel. And think about that, an armored ambulance.
Only in a place like that would they need an ambulance that's built literally like a tank, effectively a bulletproof hospital on wheels because the terrorist organizations had specifically said that they should target the first responders. So we presented this ambulance to them in the name of Jesus Christ. And standing before representatives of the government, I said the reason I'm here is because my life was changed by Jesus Christ. And I began to read the Bible, which tells us all about God and his plan for our life. But I said, it also tells me the history of your people, the Jewish people.
And so I've come to love you. And there's a blessing promised to those that would bless you. So I think that's one reason we should do it. In fact, I believe one of the reasons God has blessed the United States of America is because we have been a staunch ally and friend to Israel ever since they became a nation again on May 14th, 1948. That doesn't mean that everything the modern state of Israel does is always the right decision any more than it means everything that America does, depending on who's leading us, is always making the right decision. But it means that we support the Jewish people and we support Israel because it's the Jewish homeland, you see. Some would say, well, they're colonizers. They've taken the land from the people that are indigenous to the region. No, they're not colonizers. The Jewish people are the people who are indigenous to the land.
God gave them that land. And God says in Romans chapter 11 that he has not cast off his people. Fact of the matter is, and I mean the Jews when I see his people, I as a Gentile, no, I'm not Jewish, wish I was, but I'm not. I as a Gentile have been grafted into the promises of God.
So I benefit from the promises made by God to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We need to let our Jewish friends know that they have a friend in the evangelical Christian. We need to let them know that we're praying for them and that we care about them. Yes, we want them to come and know Jesus as the Messiah. But let's just start by showing our love in a tangible way and continue to pray that their eyes would be opened spiritually and they would realize that the God of Israel that gave them that land also sent them their Messiah and that they would come to put their faith and trust in him. So that's sort of a flyover of what's going on in Israel and why Israel exists.
Let's go a little bit deeper now. So God not only predicted that the people of Israel would return to their homeland, but then he said a large force from her north would attack her. It's in Ezekiel 38 and 39. A large force known as Magog and one of the allies of Magog is a nation called Persia and that is the ancient name of Iran.
By the way, Persia changed her name to Iran in 1935. So that brings us to the present moment. What we're looking at right now over in the Middle East is that a fulfillment of what the Bible predicted. I would classify it as a foreshadowing, not necessarily a complete fulfillment.
In other words, it's a step in that direction. Have you seen this ominous image? It was just posted by the Ayatollah Khomeini. Check it out. What does this mean?
So think about this for a moment. We as Christians have our theology and as a part of our theology, we have what is called eschatology. Eschatology is the study of end times events.
Well, Islam has eschatology too. In the image you're looking at is of the Islamic Messiah who they call Imam Mahdi. He's the prophesied redeemer. They have their own version of Messiah. If you look closely at this image, this Mahdi figure, this messianic figure is entering a burning gate. Is this meant to be Jerusalem?
I don't know. But he's surrounded, note, by modern soldiers or Iranian fighters who see themselves as followers or helpers of the Mahdi. The fire raining down from above may represent divine wrath from Allah or it may represent missiles being fired from Iran toward Israel.
But the message that was posted along with this mysterious image said, in the name of the Mahdi, the battle begins. Let me say a word about the Iranian people or the people of Persia. These are wonderful people who had a very prosperous country for many years and we had a very good relationship with them in the United States. But these Islamic leaders came and imposed their Sharia law on the people and today many people of Iran, I would think the vast majority of them would like a change. So we hear of wonderful reports of Persian people, of Iranian people coming to put their faith in Jesus Christ and we pray that continues. But coming back to what is happening right now, so the leaders of Iran are enriching uranium to make nuclear weapons to use against Israel and against America. They call America the great Satan and they call Israel the little Satan. I spoke with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson recently about this.
Here's a little bit of our conversation. I'm just asking, like, how do you deal with a threat like Iran and all that they do? Because aren't they really behind so much of the terrorism in the world today?
Yes. If you were to cut the head off a snake, it would be Iran. That's pretty much what I was going to say. I mean, they're the center of all of it. We all know that. I think it is the inclination of the president to do exactly what you just said and if you recall, right before the inauguration, I think after the election, he said if you don't release the rest of those hostages, there will be hell to pay.
That was his words. His inclination is to go in and take care of that. But it's a delicate balance over there with our allied nations and the other Arab states and all of that and they're trying to work through it. You know where Israel is on this. I mean, they understand, as you and I do, that Iran is the constant threat.
You have to take care of it. They openly fired missiles on Israel. Right. So there is an ongoing debate right now. I mean, this isn't the classified part. In public, there's an ongoing debate amongst allied nations about how to handle this. We absolutely must ensure they don't have a nuclear program and we're in the midst of trying to resolve that right now.
I mean, you know, I'm of the mind, as you are, that we, at desperate times, call for desperate measures. But there's some really smart people trying to game this out and determine what that would mean and how that might destabilize the region and would it get us into a war and all that. You know, I'm privy to conversations with the heads of state of these other Arab nations. We talk, Bibi Netanyahu and I have become good friends.
We talk all the time. So there's a lot of dynamics to take into account. But I mean, I'm praying that everybody who makes that ultimate decision, ultimately it's President Trump's to make, that he has crystal clear wisdom and discernment about how to navigate through that. In fact, Russia and Iran have been working closely together as Iran has supplied Russia with these kamikaze-type drones and ballistic missiles that Russia is using in their ongoing war in Ukraine. So when we see Russia stepping into a conflict with Iran and Israel, we have to pay attention. Could this lead to the Ezekiel 37 scenario? Yes, it could. Will it?
No one knows for sure. But we certainly should pay attention and be aware of this. So another significant development, Russia has now told the United States to not engage in this conflict between Israel and Iran.
I know there are differing views on what the U.S. should or should not do, and it's not really my intention to opine in that. I'm looking at this for prophetic significance. In other words, in light of what the Bible says about the end times, to have Russia step into this conflict is noteworthy. Because don't forget the Ezekiel 37 scenario, Persia or Iran marches with Magog, and if Magog is Russia, that's something to pay attention to. We're seeing things play out today the Bible predicted thousands of years ago.
Consider this, Iran and Russia weren't always allies, but now they are. In fact, Ezekiel told us this would happen. So is this what is happening right now, a fulfillment of Bible prophecy? I would say it's a foreshadowing of things to come, and it could turn into those things, actually.
This is certainly a sign of the times. And Jesus said, when you see these things begin to happen, look up, for your redemption is drawing near. He did not say, freak out.
He said, look up. Bible prophecy is not given to scare us, but to prepare us. And when these things happen, we should not be terrified, but we should be reassured that God is keeping his promises. In John 14, Jesus said, let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
In my father's house and many dwelling places, if it were not so, I would have told you, I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again to receive you unto myself that where I am, you may be also. So how should we react to all that's going on around us? Don't be terrified.
Don't be afraid. Be reassured Christ is coming. Let me talk for a few moments now about the order of prophetic events as I see it. Okay, here's where people get really confused about end times events. What happens when?
This is the way I see it, for what it's worth. I believe the next event on the prophetic calendar is the rapture of the church. Now, people will say, well, the word rapture isn't in the Bible.
Actually, it is, depending on what translation you have. If you have a Latin translation, you would see the word rapturus, which is taken from the Greek word harpazo, which means to be taken by force. And in fact, the word harpazo is found many times in the Bible. Harpazo is the word used in 1 Thessalonians 4, where Paul says the Lord will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first and we will be caught up.
There's that word harpazo, caught up to meet the Lord in the air. The rapture can happen at any point. It is my firm conviction that the rapture will happen before the tribulation period begins. That's why I think it's futile to try to identify who Antichrist is. The Bible never tells us to be looking for Antichrist, but it tells us to be looking for Jesus Christ. But the Bible says he who now restrains will continue to do so until he is taken out of the way. Then that wicked one whom the Lord will destroy with the brightness of his coming will be revealed. So the point is that wicked one is Antichrist. He can't be revealed until the restraining force in the world today is removed. The restraining force in the world is the work of the Holy Spirit through the church. So I don't think you can even see Antichrist until the church is raptured.
Now let's talk about Antichrist. He inaugurates the beginning of the tribulation period. I also do not believe that Christians will go to the tribulation period because the scripture says if we'll keep his word, he'll keep us from the day of wrath that is coming upon the whole earth. And the Bible also says God has not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. The tribulation period is God's judgment being poured on the world. There's no instance in the Bible where when God judged, he judged his people. Before he judged Sodom and Gomorrah, he removed his people from that area. Then the judgment came down.
When the judgment came in the flood, he got all of the believers safely in the ark, and as the flood came down, the ark went up. So we will not face that tribulation period, but it's going to start rather peacefully. Some will even think Antichrist is Christ himself.
The prefix anti doesn't just mean against, and certainly this coming world figure is against Christ, but it also means instead of. He will come instead of Christ. He will come with global solutions. He will come with economic solutions. He'll be the greatest peacemaker that has ever lived.
But then it will soon be revealed that he's not a peacemaker, he's a troublemaker. He's going to help the Jews rebuild their temple again, but then at the halfway mark of the tribulation that lasts for seven years, the Antichrist will perform what Jesus described as the abomination of desolation. This is after the temple of the Jews is rebuilt, and Antichrist erects an image of himself and commands people to worship it. So that marks the halfway point of the tribulation, and then the judgment of God is poured out upon the earth.
There's some amazing things happening. God's going to still be at work. The Bible tells us that God is going to raise up two witnesses. These two witnesses are not identified, but we know that they have the power to stop the rain from coming, and they have the power to call fire down from heaven. Who does that remind you of? Well, I think of Elijah. I think of Moses, who, by the way, were the two people that stood with Jesus at the transfiguration. So will Elijah and Moses be brought back again for this special mission? We don't know. But they're going to be killed by Antichrist, and they're lying there in the streets of Jerusalem, and the Bible says all the world will see them. You know, it wasn't until fairly recently that this could even be true.
We've had satellite TV for a long time, but, you know, around 2008 with the development of the smartphone, now you can pretty much watch something as it is happening in real time on that little computer that we carry in our pocket. So all the world could watch us, and then God's going to do something wonderful. He's going to raise them from the dead, and they're going to ascend to heaven.
So this would be a real miracle. Also, we read that angels will fly to the heavens proclaiming the everlasting gospel, because sometimes people think the Holy Spirit is going to be taken from the earth after the rapture. No, the Holy Spirit will still be here working in people's hearts and bringing people to Christ, and, in fact, a great spiritual awakening will happen during the tribulation period as well. But everything sort of builds to the final battles, the battle of Armageddon.
That's based on the root word harmageddon, or Megiddo, because that is the location of the final battle there in Israel. So the battle of Armageddon is raging, and then the second coming takes place, where the heavens open up and Christ appears with armies following him on white horses. I believe that will be us, because I believe we've been raptured, and then we will return to the earth with the Lord. So if you've ever wanted to go to Israel, this is going to be the ultimate Holy Land tour conducted by Jesus.
No, you won't be in a tour bus, but you'll see it from a whole new perspective. And so let me draw a distinction between the rapture and the second coming. The rapture happens before the tribulation. The second coming happens at the end of the tribulation. In the rapture, he comes for his church. In the second coming, he returns with his church. In the rapture, it happens before judgment. In the second coming, Christ returns with judgment. And then he establishes what we call the millennium.
The word millennium means 1,000, the 1,000-year reign of Christ. And then we as Christians who have returned with Christ will rule and reign with him during the millennial reign. And then heaven comes to earth. At the end of Revelation, John says, I beheld the new Jerusalem coming as a bride adorned for her husband. Heaven and earth become what? This is the fulfillment of the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray.
We call it the Lord's Prayer. And we are taught to say, Thy kingdom come that will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So that's the big flyover of end times events. A lot of exciting things. But the first event will be the rapture.
So let me ask you this question. How does this strike you? In other words, how do you find yourself reacting to this teaching that Christ could come back at any moment? Do you get excited about that? Remember when you were a little kid and maybe you were a bad boy or girl and your mother said, Just wait till your father gets home. It was very scary. And you weren't looking forward to dad returning. But if you were a good little boy or girl and daddy showed up, you were excited to see him. I think if we're walking with the Lord, we're excited about this because it could mean, Oh, I could meet the Lord in heaven. I could meet the Lord in the air. You know, but if you're not right with the Lord, it could cause a sense of dread. I love the way that John writes, Even so, come Lord Jesus.
That should be the attitude of every believer. We should say, Even so, come Lord Jesus. But Jesus also warned about the wicked servant who was not ready for his master's return. And then the master came and he was not prepared. Are you ready?
Listen to this. Heaven is a prepared place for prepared people. And the way that you prepare for heaven is by having your ticket. So when you travel, you don't just walk down to the airport and board a plane without a ticket. You have to buy your ticket. You have to have a reserved seat. You have to go through security. You have to eat really awful food in airports because airport food is an oxymoron, as is airline food.
But I digress. Then you take your seat that you booked in the same way. If you want to go to heaven, you have to have your ticket that has been purchased for you by Jesus Christ at the cross, redide for your sins. So if you've turned from your sin and you've asked Christ to come into your life, you're ready to go and you're prepared for heaven. The way to buy your ticket, the way to be ready for heaven, the way to be assured that you are a prepared person, headed to a prepared place, is by putting your faith in Jesus Christ.
Have you done that yet? If not, let me lead you in a little prayer, a little prayer that you could pray out loud, if you like, where you would be asking Christ to come into your life. If you've never asked Jesus to forgive you of your sin, if you don't have the assurance that you will go to heaven when you die, pray this prayer after me.
Ready? Just pray this. Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner, but I know that you are the Savior who died on the cross for my sin and rose again from the dead. I turn now from my sin and I choose to follow you from this moment forward. Thank you for hearing this prayer and answering this prayer. In Jesus' name I pray.
Amen. Did you just pray that prayer with me? If so, I want to say congratulations and welcome to the family of God. And I also want to send you a New Believers Bible. The New Believers Bible has sold over 10 million copies around the world. It's a very easy Bible to understand because what it is is the new living translation. And it has hundreds and hundreds of notes that I wrote that will encourage you in this commitment or recommitment you've just made to follow Christ. And by the way, I'll send it to you at no charge.
Look at the address there on the screen in order your free copy of the New Believers Bible. So I'm going to answer some questions now about end times events. One I often hear is when is the battle of Gog and Magog? When did they attack Israel? Is it before or after the rapture?
Ready for the answer? I don't know. I think it may be close to that event. It could be before and it could be right after.
The reason I think that it's before the tribulation period begins is because they burned the armaments from the battle for seven years, which would fit the seven-year period of the tribulation period. So to sum it up, you see any development in the Middle East and potential for war, especially if it involves Russia attacking Israel, wow, pay attention because that could be an indicator the rapture is coming soon. Here's another question.
I like this one. If this all has to happen, should we pray for peace over in the Middle East right now? I was speaking with some Jewish gentlemen from Israel that were professors at the University of Haifa at the Museum of the Bible not that long ago. And I said, let me clear up a misconception that Jewish people sometimes have about evangelical Christians when it comes to the end times. I said, you know, I think sometimes people may think that we Christians want Armageddon to come so we can all go to heaven. They said, yeah, we've heard that before.
That's really not true. We don't want Armageddon to come. We want to see peace in the Middle East. In fact, the Bible even says pray for the peace of Jerusalem. But it is going to come eventually.
It's not something we're looking forward to. So we should pray for peace. I hope there's some resolution to this conflict. I hope that this war stops because innocent people are being killed.
Innocent civilians are losing their lives right now. And so we would like to see that stop immediately. So absolutely let's be praying for peace. But let's also be aware that events can escalate into this end time scenario. So this would be my last question I'll answer. Are there things that need to happen before the rapture takes place?
Simple answer, no. For instance, there are things that need to happen before the second coming. The entire tribulation period has to take place and the Antichrist has to be revealed.
Clearly that has not happened yet. But there is nothing that needs to happen for the rapture to take place. Again, let me define the rapture coming from the Greek word harpazo is where we're caught up to meet the Lord in the air.
This could happen at any moment. So that's why the Bible tells us repeatedly to watch and be ready. Christ will come as a thief in the night. He said you don't know what hour your Lord will come.
I think it's futile to try to set dates. No one will ever crack the code and figure out the date of the rapture of the church. So we just need to always be ready, always be prepared to meet the Lord. Jesus said two will be in a field, one will be taken and the other left. Two will be in a bed, one will be taken and the other left.
So it's a global event affecting every time zone. Instantaneously millions of Christians caught up to meet the Lord in the air. One time years ago when I was newly married, I was laying in bed with my wife and she said, oh, Greg, just imagine the rapture could come and we could just wake up in heaven.
Wouldn't that be amazing if the Lord just came before we even woke up in the morning? And I had this devious thought. Wouldn't it be funny to slip out of bed very quietly?
And that's what I did. I got out of the bed and I was laying on the floor. Kathy is still talking. Just think about it, Greg. We could just be caught up to meet Jesus and she reaches over and I'm not there.
She says, Greg, Greg, Greg. So it was a bad joke. Don't try this at home. I'm a professional idiot. So that was just a joke. But when it really does happen, two will be lying in a bed, one will be taken and the other left says, Jesus, it won't be a joke.
It's real. So be ready to meet the Lord. Get right or get left. Hey, everybody, thanks for listening to my podcast. Before you go, I wanted to let you know about the important work we're doing here at Harvest. You know, we've had the same goal these last 50 years, which is simply this. We want to know God and we want to make Him known. And we do that in a lot of ways. Documentary films, animation, radio, television, large-scale evangelistic events and more. If you want to be a part of what we're doing to fulfill the Great Commission, you can support us with whatever you can give at harvest.org slash donate. Again, that's harvest.org slash donate. And thanks so much.
