Welcome to Truth Talk Live, a daily program powered by the Truth Network, where pop culture, current events, and theology all come together. And now, here's today's Truth Talk Live host.
Oh, wow. It's a scary situation right now in California. I'm sure you have seen it, and heard about it, and are praying about it.
But, you know, California looks like it's on fireplaces that are burning, you know, that's not uncommon to have fires out there, but oh my goodness, what they're going through right now. And as they're going through that, obviously, a lot of us that are paying attention to the signs of the times are asking, you know, what might this have to do with the coming of Christ? And, you know, all of us looking forward to that, you know, what does that exactly say? And so, we're so blessed to have with us today, and so timely today, actually, Mark Biltz. He's been watching these times for some time, as he was the author originally of The Blood Moon.
You know, right now, he's got a book out, America at War, 2024 to 2026, and then this happens, Mark, and so what do you see? Well, thank you so much, first, for allowing me to be on your program. The most important thing that I can start off with is, you know, I talk to Christians, and I ask them if we're supposed to know the times and seasons, and they say yes. And then I ask them, what time is it? Well, I don't know. What season is it?
Oh, I don't know. And so, what I've been doing over the last 20 years is trying to explain to Christians so they know the times and the seasons accurately, and right now, as you know from Ecclesiastes, there's time for war and a time for peace. The problem is, much of the church is planting at plucking time and plucking at planting time. We are in a season of war, and I prove that scripturally and biblically from what is happening, exactly what time we are in, and for the next two years, we are in a time of war. You know, I'm sure like most of the listeners, I'm okay scripturally. How did you come to that conclusion?
Oh, absolutely. First off, let me explain one thing. The whole key is to be on God's calendar. All of Christianity has been stuck with the Catholic calendar, and I'm not against Catholics. I was raised a Catholic for 19 years.
He was said to be a priest. The Christian calendar, or the calendar, the Gregorian calendar is based only on the sun. The Islamic calendar is based only on the moon. The biblical calendar is based on both the sun and the moon, or the Jewish calendar. Now, what would your wife think if you told her you wanted to keep your anniversary on the Islamic calendar?
She's going to say you're crazy. Well, it's the same thing. If we want to meet with God, we need to be on his calendar. And so the the feast, like Passover, was an appointed time that needs to happen on Passover, because they were like dress rehearsals of what was going to happen on that very day. Well, the Catholic Gregorian calendar doesn't celebrate Passover when the Bible says to on the biblical calendar. And so that's why some years we celebrate the resurrection a month before he even dies.
So when you begin to understand the calendar, then you begin to understand the times and the seasons as well. Right. So as I recall, we're in like the Jewish year 3600, thereabouts, 3600? No, 5785. Really?
Okay. Yeah, we're in the biblical years 5785, which means 5785 years ago is when Adam was created. Now, I don't know if your listeners are familiar with the seven year Shemitah cycle is what it's called. But the way you know when the Shemitah year is, is simply math. If the Hebrew year is divisible by seven, you know that it's a Shemitah year. If it's divisible by 49, you know, the next year is a Jubilee year. And I explained that in my book.
As a matter of fact, I list mathematically, scientifically, biblically, every Shemitah year and Jubilee year clear back to creation. And so where are we in that cycle in 2025? Exactly.
You are asking all the right questions. Because I'm sure your listeners are familiar with Daniel's 70 weeks, right? Yes. And they know there's one week left of seven years. Is that correct?
Yes. That's what they call the tribulation, the seven year Shemitah week. And Daniel wasn't on the pagan Roman calendar.
And so think about this for a minute. This may be heavy theologically, because there's one Shemitah week left. That means the tribulation cannot start any day, any year. It has to begin the beginning of a Shemitah cycle. Therefore, right now, we are in the middle of a Shemitah cycle, which means the tribulation couldn't start until the fall of 2029.
And if it doesn't start then, it can't start until the year 2036. So this is why I try to help Christians understand the times and the seasons. We know Daniel was Jewish.
That may be a shock. But he was on a Shemitah cycle calendar. And so prophetically, it has to be fulfilled on time. And so just because some listeners may not, in fact, my producer sitting here is probably going, what's a Shemitah? And, you know, I know that a lot of folks are familiar with that. But just, you know, the rough version of it, that the Jews were to have these cycles of years, as far as a time of rest, like the Shabbat, like the Sabbath. Exactly.
And so can you go into a little bit so people know what Shemitah, because that might be a strange term to them. Yes, exactly. Just like every seventh day, people have to rest. God set it up. So every seventh year, the land got to rest. And there was an economic reset. This is where we got our bankruptcy laws from. You can only proclaim bankruptcy every seven years. Okay, it has to be seven years later.
So this makes it really simple. Every seven years, there was to be an economic reset, where and the land was to rest. The whole reason why Daniel went to Babylon and God judged Jerusalem is because they had not been honoring that.
They've been keeping people in economic bondage, and they never allowed the land to rest. And in Jeremiah, which is what Daniel read to understand, God was going to judge them for 70 years. The reason why is for 490 years, they never honored that seventh year. So you have the Shemitah cycle of seven years, but the Shemitah year is the seventh year. And so when Daniel proclaims their 70 weeks of judgment, that is 490 years. And we know prophetically, there's one Shemitah cycle of seven years left. Well, because he's Jewish, that last seven year cycle has to begin the beginning of the Shemitah cycle, which happens only every seven years. And the next one starts the fall of 2029.
All right, well, that music means we got to go to a break. But, you know, how does the fires connect to all this? And, you know, obviously, you know, pretty amazing what the Bible is teaching, and to have somebody like this on. So we got a whole lot more Truth Talk Live on these fires coming up. Welcome back to Truth Talk Live! Today we are really blessed, I'll tell you, to have Mark Biltz with us.
He is an amazing author of such bestsellers as The Blood Moon, and now America at War. But, you know, we're talking about the signs of the times and what these fires might indicate to us. And if you're just tuning in, I got to tell you, you're going to want to go, you know, later on and get the podcast of this show, because it is just an amazing time of learning about end times and cycles in Jewish years. Oh, my goodness, I'm like a kid in a candy store.
I hope you are. And along those lines, we're going to remind you that for some markets, Truth Talk Live! only goes for these first two segments. And so after this, you're going to hear some other programming, but you can, again, go back and download or, you know, get the podcast of the entire interview, but that will be at Truth Talk Live!
later today. So again, joining us is Mark Biltz. And when we left our hero, we were talking about these Smita years. But now, you know, I know a lot of listeners are wondering, you know, Mark, what do you see in these fires that is insight for the church right now? I mean, like, here we are. And as you're talking about America at War, we certainly are, right? Absolutely. Here's what's interesting.
We know the cycles. Now, bless Jimmy Carter at his death, but he was the very first president to create a two-state solution for Israel. And God declared in Zechariah 1 and in Joel 2 that he will terrorize every nation who tries to divide the land of Israel. So this is the beginning of our problems. And here, the Biden administration has been pushing a two-state solution, but our State Department doesn't realize it's not a land issue. It's a religious issue.
And that's why you can't make peace with an alligator, okay? And so God is bringing terror, I believe, over the next few years to all the nations that have been pushing a two-state solution. And we can also see that in the heavens when we understand that the heavens truly declare the glory of God. But with these fires, if you remember, God destroyed the world the first time with the flood, and he says the second time will be by fire. Now, we have to understand, God, the rain falls on the just and the unjust, the sun shines on the just and the unjust, and so judgment also falls on the just and the unjust, okay?
I live on the West Coast, which is like ready to be judged. Washington State is the most unchurched state in the entire United States, and we know how ungodly much of California is, even though there's a lot of godly churches within there. And so just like God says, don't stick your being facetious here, but just like if God were to say don't stick your hand in a blender when it's running, and then we stick our hand in a blender, we can't blame God because we've got our hand hurt. And so we also need to understand that these fires are happening to church people as well as ungodly people, but many don't realize some of these fires were started by arson.
It wasn't a natural fire, it's a natural disaster, but some of these have been started by mankind. And so we have to understand that judgment is going to fall not because God hates us, it's because he loves us, and he wants us to repent. But as you very well know, people don't repent in the good times. They only turn to God in the bad times. Right. It's it, you know, I heard it on the segment I recorded this morning with another pastor who talked about, I forget who said it, but the pain quite often in the wilderness are entrances into, you know, God's wine cellar, where some of the best wine is served, you know, in those places that we, you know, we can't seem to learn any other way.
And I know he's taken me there several times personally. And I've, you know, learned that like, like John Bunyan said, the valley of despair is where the most fertile ground is, right? Well, exactly. And I compare it to, with all the light pollution in the cities, you can't see the stars. With all the noise pollution, you can't hear God. And so oftentimes, the only way we're going to see God and hear God, we have to go in the wilderness. That's where we have to go. And that's where it even says in Hosea, God will meet us. Well, that's simple. I love that.
And you know, I do boot camps and all sorts of stuff where we get guys out in the wilderness with that very purpose, to hear God, and to see the skies. Because you're right, if you go out in North Carolina, if you go out to the Outer Banks, where there's no light pollution, it blows your mind the glory of God. I know.
Exactly. And that's why what's interesting is, in Hebrew, the names of the first five books, like one of them isn't numbers. It's actually Bamidbar, which means in the wilderness. And the word bar is, you know, like in Bar Mitzvah means sun. And so the ver means words.
And so in the wilderness is where we hear from the Son of God. Wow. Isn't that beautiful? And I, you know, and the cool thing is, as I understand, that those books are not only named, you know, a lot differently, but they're usually taken from the very first word of the book. Exactly. Oh, I love it.
You get a lot of this. The first one, Genesis, is Bereshit, which means in the beginning, that's the first parts of Genesis. Exodus is Shemot, which means these are the names, and it names the children of Israel that are coming in. Okay. Then Leviticus is Vayikra, which means the Lord called out. Numbers is Bamidbar, which means in the wilderness.
Okay. And Deuteronomy is Devarim, which means these are the words. So when the Jewish people say the first five books, five books, they say in the beginning, these are the names the Lord called out in the wilderness, and this is what he said. Isn't that cool?
Yeah, it's absolutely beautiful. And also, I was thinking about it this morning, or actually this week as a study in a—or doing a study in Revelations, and the very first word in Revelation in Greek is Apocalyptic, and right, I mean, it's like so many people have such a huge misunderstanding what that word means. Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely. This is—what's amazing is in both Revelation 1 and in John 1 and in Genesis 1, in John 1 it says, in the beginning, which sounds just like Genesis, it was the word, well, in Hebrew it goes, bereshit, bara, elohim, et. Now the aleph tov isn't translated into English, it's like, we're missing a word! Well, yeah, and so what's fascinating, there are seven words in Hebrew words in Genesis 1, 1. Well, what does John see? A seven-branch menorah. Well, when you compare John 1, 1 to Genesis 1, there's seven words, that middle branch is the aleph tov, the alpha and omega, okay? He is seeing—Genesis 1, 1—he is seeing the menorah in heaven, and then in Revelation, what does he see? He sees a menorah, okay? And it's the aleph tov. And let me—I know that the listeners are like, this is just more than cool, but we've got to slow down just for a second.
Oh, I love it! Nobody loves it more than, believe me, if you knew how much I love Hebrew and all those kind of things, but just to slow down for a second so people can get the meat of what you're saying, Mark, the aleph that he's referring to is the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet, which, you know, Greek probably came out of Hebrew if you want to know what I think, but nonetheless, the first letter in the Greek alphabet is alpha, right? And so when Jesus said, I'm the alpha and the omega, what he was saying is, I am the aleph tov is the last letter in the Hebrew alphabet.
And so he's saying, I am the aleph tov, as he says that in Revelation. And so we're going to spend some more time with Mark when we come back. You're not going to want to miss it.
Stay tuned. Welcome back to an amazing edition, from my perspective, of Truth Talk Live, as we are, oh, so blessed to have with us Mark Britz—Billitz, I'm sorry, I said that wrong. It's Billitz, and he is the pastor of an amazing church, and he's also an author of all these amazing books, The Blood Moon, God's Daytimer, and America at War is his latest.
It's just out and doing so super. But, you know, Mark, we were talking before we started the show, you have a very unique church that people can tune in anywhere, right, in the world and see you every week. Yes, E-S-M for LTI Ministries, it's just short E-S-M dot U-S for United States, and all of our videos and notes are available for free.
We even have them in Russian and Spanish as well. That's absolutely, again, it just really, it's so amazing to me how God so excites you about his Word and understanding the original language and some of those kind of things. And so, you know, just to further our discussion on these fires and some of the things we were talking about right at the end, how Jesus shows up in Revelation and once again goes back to the beginning, because as you pointed out in Genesis, you know, it's telling you what's going to happen in the beginning in that olive tub, that et is there, that you say that most English translations are going to have nothing to say about that. But yet, Jesus highlights it hugely throughout the book of Revelation to show you that the truth, you know, it just, logically, we don't know the truth till the end of the story. Exactly, exactly, which is why I think it says in Isaiah 25, God declared the end from the beginning. If we want to know what's going to happen in the end times, we have to know what is said in the beginning. And do you know, in the very first word of the Bible, in Hebrew, bereshit, I can show you the first and second comings of the Messiah, and all of prophecy is pre-written in the first word in Hebrew. Oh, absolutely.
That he was going to come and die. I can show you all of that in the first word. Yeah, it's an absolutely beautiful thing.
It really is. And volumes and volumes are written on that whole idea of bereshit. But yeah, and again, I hope people get your books and those kind of things. But what, now that we know this information, Mark, what do you think God would have us do in this time, obviously pray, obviously realize time is short, but what else, what do you see as a practical thing we can take this information and do with it? Well, a couple of things is we need to draw near. Not out of fear. We don't want to be like the ten spies who brought the bad report.
We want to be like the two good spies who brought the good report. The main thing is perfect love casts out fear. And so all of those who are fearful need to reconnect with God. Personally, I've almost died a dozen times. I've had guns at my head twice. I was almost eaten by lions in Africa.
Major car wrecks. And I finally realized if it's not my time, it's not going to happen. And if it is my time, there's nothing I can do about it. So my rest is that, you know. So to me, it's draw near to God spiritually, number one. Do what you can practically, but we need to be interceding.
Much of the church is woke instead of awake. And so we need to be interceding for one another. Right. And, you know, what better way to love somebody than to sincerely go, man, God, can you please help?
Because only God can change hearts. Exactly. And apart from him, we can do what?
Less than nothing. Yeah, unfortunately, you're right about that. I've experienced it on many occasions. And so prayer is so critical. And, you know, there's one part of my ministry I feel like, even though I spend a lot of time in prayer, I really am an underachiever in trying to get that. But as you say, as we draw near to him, and we enter into interceding. But also there's a part of boldness that clearly you have, Mark, of jumping out there and telling people what's going on.
I have to. You know, I say judgment is coming in the form of like a category five hurricane. I don't say it because I want people to feel like God's judging them.
It's got nothing to do with it. This is a warning I see spiritually, a category five hurricane coming, and I love people and tell them that they need to draw near to God now. Yeah, because, you know, if you don't see COVID as just an eye opening, like, oh my goodness, how in the world? I never thought a million years All America would shut down for a week. Do you think that this is just business as usual?
Do you think that these things that we're seeing in our times are business as usual? And so with that, you know, people are looking at me all the time. I'm sure they look at you, Mark, too, and they're saying, where is God in the midst of this disaster? Where is God in these fires?
Yeah, exactly. Well, that's what do you think Israel was saying during the Holocaust? You know, and I believe God is—we can go through anything if we know God is with us, and that's the key. We have to realize that God loves us.
He's with us. But we have to go through the fire. Even in Corinthians, it says we're all going to be tested by fire.
So the question is, are we building with wood, hay, and stubble? When you think of the California wildfires, there are people being saved, but they have nothing to show. Well, that's going to happen in these last days. A lot of Christians may have been building, they're going to be saved, but spiritually everything they've built is going to be destroyed unless they've been building with gold, silver, and precious stones. So you just said something that I think is absolutely incredible, and I learned this last night, and I've been studying it, that if God doesn't go with us, man, we're missing out on the—and Moses, right, in Exodus 32, had this discussion with God.
Yeah. And he pretty much tells God, you know, I ain't going nowhere unless you go with me. And Moses—and God has a very strange statement. Essentially, he says, Moses, leave me alone. Yeah. But, you know, I don't know if you're familiar with Rashi, you're probably way more familiar with him than me.
Very well. But he said something very interesting about that statement right there, that God was telling Moses, look, you have a part to play in this. Exactly. It's almost like when he told Moses, you've got to stick in your hand, go do something. And it's almost like you said the same thing.
Am I right? Or can you give me a little of your view of— No, no, you're exactly right. The amazing thing to me is, this is why I've come very strongly against what's called replacement theology. God told Moses, hey, I'll start over with you, and Moses could have said, hey, great, awesome. But you don't see in English, you see in Hebrew, when God said, I will go with you, it was in the singular. And that's why Moses turned out and said, hey, no, no, no, no, it's not about me.
Unless you go with all of the nation of Israel, I'm not even going. And so much of the church today needs to have more of the attitude of Moses, where God, if you're not going to save your children, you're going to be saved. You're going to have the same attitude of Moses, where God, if you're not going to save your kids, Jewish, you know, the Jews, then we're not going to go.
We need to have the same attitude of Moses and say, God, if you don't save us all, we're not going. Oh, that's beautiful. That really is beautiful. And, you know, really, isn't that the Aaronic blessing in and of itself, right?
Oh, my gosh, yes. It's so mind blowing in the Hebrew, because when it says the Lord bless you, everyone has to stand when this is said. And in Hebrew, the word bless also means to kneel. It's like we're going to bless the Lord. We kneel before the Lord. But this is, while everyone's standing, the Lord bless you. The Lord wants to come to you on bended knee and give you a blessing. Wow. Yeah, the whole idea of Barak and that idea of the camel kneeling.
Right. Because David, it says, come let us kneel before the Lord our maker. And the word kneel is the same Hebrew word. And then it says, may the Lord keep you. Well, the word keep is Shemar, and it means to guard or protect you from all the predators.
And they would put a hedge of thorns around the sheep to protect them from predators. So the very first part of this blessing is the Lord wants to come to you on bended knee, give you a gift, and protect you from every predator in your life. And then that word you just mentioned, keep, is such a Bible word.
That's okay. And you find it again in Revelation, actually, in the first chapter, where he blesses, he said, blessed is the one who keeps these words. And so I'd love your interpretation, because again, we're talking about end times, and here's this, like, beatitude right here at the beginning of Revelation.
Oh, absolutely. And the word keep means to guard and protect. We cannot do all the commandments. Men can't do what women do. We can't do what farmers in Israel do. We can't do what the priests do. But we can keep all of them, because keep means to guard and protect. So we want to keep and guard and protect all the commandments.
But that doesn't mean we can do them. Isn't that awesome? That's so good. That's just great.
It's so exciting. Well, again, Mark Billets, as you heard, your new book is America at War, am I right? Yes, 2024 through 2026.
We got 2025 where we are right now, right in the middle. Yeah, there you go. You got to check that out. You got to check out his church. Give him that website one more time. E F M dot us. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com
