When the Dry Bones Come to Life

When it comes to discerning the times, Israel is the two important messages into this hour, one by Dr. David Reagan, and then short comments by Dr. Mark Hitchcock. These commentaries will be pointing to Israel in Bible prophecy.

Scholars call this nation the super sign and the clock that measures the time as it concerns Bible prophecy. The conclusion is we are one minute to midnight. Here is today's program. Welcome to the program. So glad you can join me. Just a reminder that the Behold He Comes Bible Prophecy Conference is this Saturday, September 11th at Calvary Chapel, Chino Hills.

You can still sign up for it. The streaming pass is just $5 and you can watch the presentation anytime if this weekend is not convenient. Go to beholdhecomes.org, beholdhecomes.org. By the way, I have passed my conference baton to Pastor Jack Hibbs of Calvary Chapel.

Again, the time will be 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific time, 9 to 5 p.m. Pacific time. So today I'm playing a message given by Dr. David Reagan on Israel in prophecy. The nation of Israel has an amazing past, present, and future, but her role in Bible prophecy is staggering.

On the end time clock Israel is the timepiece, Jerusalem is the minute hand, and the Temple Mount is the second hand. Let's let Dr. David Reagan founder of Lamb & Lion Ministries explain it all. Well the theme of this conference is what on earth is God doing?

And the reason I selected that theme is because we get letters to that effect all the time. People writing and saying, you know the whole world has just fallen apart. Is God really caring about this? Does He really realize what's going on? Is He really in control?

Well, we are going to talk about that tonight. What on earth is God doing? And every presentation of this conference is going to be in response to that theme. But my response to it, one of the things God is doing is He's preparing the people of Israel for salvation. He is orchestrating the salvation of the Jewish people.

And I'll show you how He's doing that. And in the process we are going to consider four prophecies fulfilled in the 20th Century, seven fulfilled in part or in whole during the 20th Century, and five that are yet to be fulfilled. And we are going to take a look at the significance of these prophecies for you and me today. What is the significance of a bunch of prophecies being fulfilled concerning Israel to a group of Gentiles here in Houston, Texas in the 21st Century?

Well, we are going to show you. Let's begin with the prophecies that were fulfilled before the beginning of the 20th Century. They can be summed up in four words, dispersion, persecution, desolation, and preservation. Those four words.

Let's quickly look at these four prophecies fulfilled before the 20th Century began. God has promised that He would discipline the children of Israel if they were not faithful. Before they went to the Promised Land Moses gave a long, long speech recorded in the book of Deuteronomy in which he told them, you must not marry these people. You must not interact with them.

You must not accept anything in their culture. You are to be separate and apart. You are to be witnesses of me. And he told them that if you violate the rules that I have given you I will bring all kinds of discipline upon you.

In fact in Deuteronomy the thing is 28 and 29 he lists all kinds of disciplines that he would put upon them, what I call remedial judgments. He said you will have rebellion of teenagers. You will have a divorce epidemic. You will have crops that will fail.

You will lose in wars, and on, and on, and on. But he said, let me tell you something after I've put all that on you if you don't repent then what's going to happen is this, if you are not careful to observe all the words of this law which are written in this book the Lord Yahweh will scatter you among all peoples from one end of the earth to the other. So their eviction from the land, their scattering all over the world was going to be the greatest thing that God would do to them, the greatest punishment.

And he was faithful to what he said there. The fulfillment again when the kingdom of David and Solomon split. You remember after Solomon's death this kingdom split into a northern kingdom called Israel and a southern kingdom called Judah. Now that northern kingdom lasted about 200 years and during that time never had one king, not one who was considered righteous in the eyes of God. They were in rebellion against God from the beginning to the end and the end came in 722 BC when the Assyrians came in, conquered them, scattered them all over Asia and moved other peoples in there who intermixed with Jews and became what were called Samaritans. The southern kingdom of Judah was disciplined by God when He allowed the Babylonians to take them in 586 BC. They destroyed Jerusalem, He took them into captivity. But God in His grace and His mercy allowed these people to come back to their land 70 years later.

And then what happened is that they still refused to respond to Him. They still refused to repent. And when they rejected Yeshua as their Messiah He allowed the Romans to come in and destroy them in 70 AD.

That's when they were beginning to spread literally all over the world, all over the world. By the beginning of the 20th Century there were Jews in every continent on planet earth, they were everywhere all over this world. And everywhere they went they were persecuted. They were persecuted as no people have ever been persecuted in all of history. And this is in fulfillment of prophecy, Deuteronomy 28, and among these nations, the nations where you will be scattered, you will find no rest but Yahweh will give you a trembling heart, failing of eyes, despair of soul, so that your life shall hang in doubt before you and you shall be in dread night and day and shall have no assurance of your life. And if you know anything about the history of the Jewish people you know that the wandering Jew became the suffering Jew, they were harassed, they were persecuted, they were murdered wherever they went in the world. The climax being the Holocaust when six million were killed including one and a half million children. I took this picture myself at the Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. And what this is is a sculpture illustrating how many of the people in the concentration camps committed suicide. They would come out in the morning to have the roll call and suddenly start running as fast as they could run. And they would run to the barbed wire fences which were electrified and jump on them and be electrocuted.

And so the sculpture shows bodies hanging on the barbed wire fence. Well, the next was the desolation of the land. The Lord said, I'm going to scatter you all over the world.

You're going to be persecuted wherever you go. And your land will become a desolation. God had a purpose for that. He made this land so unlovely that nobody wanted it. And He preserved it for 2,000 years for the Jews to come back to. But look at the prophecy concerning this in Deuteronomy 29. Your sons who rise up after you and the foreigner who comes from a distant land when they see the plagues of the land, the diseases with which Yahweh has afflicted it, they will say, All the land is brimstone and salt, a burning waste, unsown, unproductive, no grass grows in it. All the nations will say, Why has Yahweh done this to the land?

Why this great outburst of anger? Then men will say, Because they forsook the covenant of Yahweh, the God of their fathers, which He made with them when He brought them out of the land of Egypt. And they went and served other gods. And therefore, the anger of Yahweh burned against this land." The fulfillment, here is a picture of the Judean wilderness today on the other side of Jerusalem toward the Jordan River. The reason I show you this picture is by the beginning of the 20th Century nearly all of Israel looked like this. All of the trees south of the Galilee had been cut down. Israel was a barren, forsaken land.

One of the persons who helped us understand how bad it was was Mark Twain. He was never a believer. But Mark Twain wanted to go to the Holy Land for some reason. He was a reporter in San Francisco for a newspaper.

Nobody knew who he was. He traveled all the way to New York, joined a group that was going, a church group that was going to the Holy Land. It took him two months to get there. And then it took him forever to ride a horse from Damascus all the way down to Jerusalem.

But he went all over the Holy Land in 1866. And in 1867 the first book he ever wrote was published, Innocence Abroad. If you've never read it, get it. You can find it at any bookstore. And it is the very first book he wrote, and it was the most popular book he wrote. In fact until the beginning of the 20th Century this was his number one bestselling book better than Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn.

Today it has been forgotten, but it is a great book. And here is how he described the Holy Land. He said, it is a blistering, naked, treeless land. He said it is a desolation is here that not even imagination can grace. He said, of all the lands there are for dismal sinry I think Palestine must be the prince. It is a hopeless, dreary, heartbroken land. And then his final comment, Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes.

It is desolate and unlovely. He tells about how he rode a horse for three days from the Sea of Galilee to Jerusalem. And he said, in those three days I never saw one tree. I never saw one bush. I never saw one human being.

And I never saw any animals of any kind. All he said I saw was just rock, after rock, after rock, a barren, desolate land in fulfillment of prophecy. So, God said, I'm going to scatter you all over the world. You will be persecuted wherever you go.

Your land will become a desolation. And one very positive prophecy, I will preserve you. This is probably one of the greatest miracles that God has ever performed. The preservation of the Jewish people. No people have been scattered all over the world, persecuted like the Jewish people and preserved.

It is supernatural. It is a miracle of God, the preservation of the Jewish people. But He promised over and over in the Hebrew Scriptures that this would occur. Look at this Jeremiah 30, "'I am with you,' declares Yahweh, to save you for I will destroy completely all the nations where I have scattered you.

Only I will not destroy you completely but I will chasten you justly and will by no means leave you unpunished." 2 Samuel 7 24 states that God has established the people of Israel as His own people forever, forever. And look at Jeremiah 31 again, the Jewish people will cease to be a nation when the fixed order of the universe ends and when all the foundations and heavens of the earth have been measured. That is a powerful passage. God says, I will tell you when the nation of Israel will cease being a nation.

It is when you have explored everything in the heavens, everything under the seas, and when there is no longer a fixed order of the universe. When the sun does not come up, the sun does not go down, that is when I will no longer have Israel. It all reminds me of this man Carl Ketcherseid. Carl Ketcherseid was a spiritual mentor of mine when I was a very young man.

He's gone home to be with the Lord many years ago. He didn't know a thing about Bible prophecy. He didn't even claim to know anything about Bible prophecy, at least I didn't think he knew anything. I went to hear him speak one time and when he finished speaking he usually talked about Christian love. Somebody he opened up the questions and the first question was this, Mr. Ketcherseid if you were going to give person only one piece of evidence that the Bible is the Word of God what would it be?

Immediately I thought, you know, fulfill prophecy, that's what I always say. But that wasn't what he said. In fact what he said astounded everybody. He thought for a moment and he said, I think the greatest evidence that the Bible is the Word of God can be found in the yellow pages of the phone book.

Everybody just sat there you know looking at him. And he said, I can see that you are wondering what I'm talking about. He said, pick up the yellow pages and look at the names of the physicians. The names of the lawyers. The names of the accountants. The names of banks.

The names of department stores. And you will see Jewish name, after Jewish name, after Jewish name. God said, I will preserve them. And He preserved them. And it is proof positive that the Bible is the Word of God.

Boy, I never, ever forgot that particular illustration. Well the continuing existence of the Jewish people is proof positive that the Bible is true and that God is in control of history. I want you to think about it. Where are the Assyrians? Where are the Babylonians? Where are the Romans?

In the dustbin of history. And where are the Jews regathered to the land of Israel? Well that brings us to prophecies that were fulfilled in whole or in part during the 20th Century and which are continuing today to be fulfilled in whole or in part.

And this is a remarkable group. First is the regathering of the Jewish people. God said one day that I will regather you and I will regather you in unbelief. Look at this, Isaiah 11, then it will come about in that day. I don't know how familiar you are with the book of Isaiah, but every time in the book of Isaiah without exception when he says, in that day he is talking about the end times. So he says it will come about in that day that the nations will resort to the root of Jesse who will stand as a signal for the peoples. Then it will happen on that day that Yahweh will again recover the second time with His hand the remnant of His people who will remain from Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Cush, Elam, Shinar, Hamath, and from the islands of the sea.

And incidentally that is islands of the sea is simply a Jewish colloquialism for the whole world. He says the time is coming when I am going to regather you from the whole world. It is going to be a second regather. The first was from Babylon, this is going to be from all the nations.

He makes that clear in the next verse. And He will lift up a standard for the nations and will assemble the banished ones of Israel and gather the dispersed of Judah. Both Israel and Judah both are going to be regathered. And where are they going to be gathered from?

From the four corners of the earth. Wow. Well, God has fulfilled that. At the beginning of the 20th Century there were 40,000 people, 40,000 Jews in all of Israel. 40,000 at the beginning in 1900. Today there are almost 7 million.

They have now surpassed 6 million the number killed in the Holocaust and they are approaching 7 million. Incidentally before I go on there is just something I've got to show you. I just have to show you this. And that is let's go back and look at those words in yellow. He says, I'm going to raise a signal and it is going to be a standard. That is the same Hebrew word. Same Hebrew word. It is just translated differently in English in those two places.

But it is the same word. And the Hebrew word can be translated signal. It can be translated standard. It can be translated banner. On Psalm it can be translated flag. So it is saying that some sort of banner, some sort of flag, some sort of standard is going to be raised in the end time. And only it is going to be the root of Jesse and it is sort of like a magnet to draw the Jewish people back to Israel. Well here is the Israel flag. The very flag of Israel is a fulfillment of Bible prophecy. It is a standard that has been raised.

And what is on that standard? The root of Jesse. The Star of David.

David was the son of Jesse. And incidentally that flag was designed to look like a prayer shawl. You go to the Western Wall in Jerusalem and you see them praying with a prayer shawl and you'll see them white with blue stripes.

So the flag of Israel is a prayer shawl with the root of Jesse in the middle. And I know a lot of Jewish people and I love them dearly. But one thing you find out about Jewish people they love to argue.

They love to. And you get into an argument with a Jew and you start winning the argument. He'll change sides to keep the argument going. Their favorite expression is where two or three Jews are gathered there are at least five opinions. Well when they got ready to adopt the flag of Israel they had a knock down drag out over the flag. Is it going to have the menorah on it? Is it going to have the Lion of Judah? Is it going to have the Star of David?

Whatever. And they fought and fought over this and finally decided, ok, the lion will be the symbol of the flag of Jerusalem. The menorah will be the official signal of Israel on all of the official documents. And the Star of David will be on the flag.

If they had just read the Scriptures they wouldn't have to have the argument, they would have known. Ok, this brings us to the second and that is an outgrowth of the first. If you are going to regather the people it is only natural that the second thing you should do is re-establish the state. And the Bible is full of prophecies about the re-establishment of the State of Israel in the end times.

But my favorite is a symbolic prophecy put in symbolic language and here it is, before she travailed she brought forth. Before her pain came she gave birth to a son. Can a land be born in one day?

Can a nation be brought forth all at once? Who has ever heard of a woman having a baby and then having the pains? The pains come before the baby is delivered.

The pains cease after the baby has come. But this says, no, no, there is going to be a land born in one day and then the pains will come after the birth. And that is exactly what happened on May the 14th, 1948 this prophecy was fulfilled when David Ben-Gurion stood up in this tiny little room in Tel Aviv that at most could maybe hold 150, 200 if you squeeze people in and declared the existence of the State of Israel. And just as prophesied the next day five Arab nations attacked and tried to destroy Israel.

They said they were going to make the Mediterranean run red with the blood of the Jews. And the birth pangs started. And the birth pangs have continued to this day, to this very day 70 years later, war, after war, after war, after war. And the only thing that is in the future is more wars. Incidentally here I am 40 years after 1948, this was in 1987 I had the privilege of standing in that place where David Ben-Gurion read that Declaration of Independence and I read the same declaration.

That was a great day for me. The third prophecy, the Reclamation of the Land. This one has also been fulfilled in the 20th Century. There has been an incredible thing happening in Israel. This is what Israel looked like again. It was just a desolation, trees were cut down, massive erosion had taken place, valleys had become malaria infested swamplands. But the Bible promised that when the Jews returned it would become a glorious land once again.

And one of the most remarkable of those prophecies is to be found in Ezekiel 36, this one is almost breathtaking in nature. Look what it says, thus says Yahweh God, on that day I will cause the cities to be inhabited and the waste places will be rebuilt and the desolate land will be cultivated instead of being a desolation in the sight of everyone who passed by. And they will say, this desolate land has become like the Garden of Eden and the waste, desolate and ruined cities are fortified and inhabited.

And that is exactly what happened. The Jews came into that land, they began to drain the malaria infested swamps. They began to plant trees.

They planted 250 million trees in the 20th Century. And they turned that land once again into the Garden of Eden. This is what it looks like today. The Sharon Valley and the kibbutz at the Sea of Galilee. God kept His promise that when the Jews returned the land would be reclaimed. If you just join me you are listening to a message given by Dr. David Reagan. It's a fascinating message on Israel in Prophecy. Again her role in the last days is the primary role.

Let's get back to Dr. David Reagan. This brings us to the fourth prophecy that has been fulfilled concerning the Jews in the end time and that is the revival of the language. I just wish I had time to speak about this in detail because it is such a credible prophecy and fulfillment of it in particular.

It is just amazing. You see when I speak of revival what most people do not know is that when the Jews were scattered from their homeland they stopped speaking the Hebrew language. For 2,000 years they did not speak Hebrew. The only time they heard Hebrew was when they went to the synagogue and the Rabbi would read from the Scriptures and he usually read phonetically and he usually didn't even know what he was reading.

It would be like you trying to read the English of Chaucer. It was all done phonetically. People just stopped speaking. Hebrew became a dead language.

Here's what happened. The Jews that were scattered to Europe took Hebrew mixed it with German and came up with a new language called Yiddish. And the Jews that were spread to the Mediterranean basin they took Hebrew mixed it with Spanish and came up with a new language called Ladino. So they were either speaking Yiddish or Ladino but they were not speaking Hebrew.

But there was a prophecy that it would be revived. Zephaniah 3.9, then I will give to the peoples a pure speech that all of them may call on the name of Yahweh. And even more clear Jeremiah 31, thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, once again they will speak this speech in the land of Judah and in its cities when I restore their fortunes. And the person who did it was this man Eliezer Ben Yehuda. Almost every city and town in Israel, that's a Jewish town, has a street named Ben Yehuda Street.

In fact it is one of the main streets of Jerusalem. This man was born in Lithuania in the early 19th Century. And by the time he was 16 years old he started dying of tuberculosis. The doctors told him he only had about six months to live and he decided that if he was going to die he was going to die in his homeland. And so he went to Jerusalem which was a terrible place to go. Jerusalem was a shoddy, run down, disease ridden city. Every disease you could imagine and yet that's where he went.

And guess what? He lived in 1922 and he devoted his life to the revival of the Hebrew language. It's a marvelous book about this, it's just unbelievable. This man was a purist. He was absolutely obsessed with reviving the language. He would not take a word like telephone, telegraph, anything. He would not take that and put it into the Hebrew language. I studied Russian and the Russians they just take all those English words and just put them into, so the word for Russian telephone is telephon.

But he wouldn't do that. No, he had to have a root word, a Hebrew word and then he would develop a word from that. And then he had to invent hundreds and thousands of words. Think the language had not been spoken for 2,000 years. He had to take up words for every invention, every historical event.

It was unbelievable. He had a small group of disciples and he would test the words with them and sometimes they would say, well he still liked that word. So he would come up with another word.

He devoted his life to it. And about three months before he died in 1922 the British government which had control of Palestine adopted three languages as the official languages of Palestine. They adopted Arabic, English, and Biblical Hebrew. When you go to Israel today they speak Biblical Hebrew. The centerpiece at the Dead Sea Scrolls Museum is the Isaiah Scroll on a huge platform up here.

And you can see the scroll all the way, it goes all the way around. And the last time I was there I was explaining all this to the tour group and when we got ready to leave I heard somebody speaking Hebrew and I turned around and it was a boy about 12 years old I think he was practicing for his bar mitzvah. And he had a pointer and he was reading that Isaiah scroll, that Isaiah scroll that was written 2,000 years ago copied. And he was reading it because it is in his language is Biblical Hebrew. A child in Greece today can't read the Greek of Homer. No child in America today that I know of can read the English of Chaucer.

And we are only talking about 800 years ago. That's Chaucer. That's English 800 years ago. What if I stood up and said God spoke to me and told me He didn't like the English of the day.

We are supposed to go back to the English of Chaucer. You'd think I was nuts. They thought he was nuts too. And did you know both sides tried to kill him? The Orthodox hated him with a passion because they said Hebrew is the language of God. It's a spiritual language should only be spoken in the synagogue not in the street. And all the leaders of Israel were either Atheists or Agnostics most of them Socialists from Europe they didn't want to speak it either. They didn't want to speak German or something they didn't want to speak a language of the Bible.

So both sides hated him. But he won because God had called him to revive the Hebrew language. The fifth the resurgence of the military.

The resurgence of the military. Yes God said that in the end times that Israel was going to have a great military presence in the world. And folks this is another very, very remarkable prophecy. Here's the prophecy in Zechariah 12, in that day again in the end times I will make the clans of Judah like a fire pot among pieces of wood and a flaming torch among sheaves so that they will consume on the right hand, on the left all the surrounding peoples while the inhabitants of Jerusalem again dwell on their own sites in Jerusalem. And he continues, in that day Yahweh will defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the one who is feeble among them in that day will be like David, like David against Goliath. And the house of David will be like God like the angel of Yahweh before them. And in that day I will set about to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.

Well God has fulfilled this and I'm telling you this is a remarkable prophecy, and a remarkable fulfillment. Since the establishment of the state in 1948 Israel has won war, after war, after war. And they have pulled off some of the most brilliant military maneuvers and raids in the history of military. Today they are ranked as one of the world's strongest military powers despite the fact that they are one of the world's smallest nations. Do you ever realize how small Israel is? It's smaller than the state of New Jersey. It's only about 270 miles long by 70 miles wide.

You could drive all over it in one day's time. It's amazing that this tiny little country is ranked right now by every one, you go to the internet and check it, by all those who rank military power it's ranked in the top ten in the world. And many rank it number one in the effective use of its military power.

They are very restrained. Israel could wipe out Hamas tomorrow. They could wipe out the Palestinians tomorrow.

But they were very restrained in their use of power. That brings us to number six, the reoccupation of the city of Jerusalem. Again this was prophesied in many places. One is in Zechariah 12 in that day, here we go, I will make the clans of Judah like a fire pot, this is the one I just read, among pieces of wood, a flaming torch, among sheaves, they will consume with the right hand on the left all the surrounding peoples. Look at this, while the inhabitants of Jerusalem again dwell on their own sites.

Where? In Jerusalem. Even Jesus prophesied this, Luke 21, 24, He said, The prophecy was fulfilled at least in part on June 7, 1967 when the Jews reoccupied the city of Jerusalem for the first time in 1,897 years. And then number seven, the refocusing of world politics on Israel.

The refocusing of world politics. We find this prophecy in Zechariah chapter 12. Folks, I had a man say to me the other day, wouldn't it have been exciting to live in Bible times?

And I said, fella, we are living in Bible times. I mean most Christians don't know these prophecies. They don't know that they are living in a world where these prophecies are being fulfilled before their very eyes.

Look at that. All the nations of the earth will be gathered together against it. And that is exactly what's happening. And you know President Trump's recognition of the city of Jerusalem has intensified this. It's brought the nations of the world together so that we are seeing all these nations coming together against Jerusalem just as prophesied in Zechariah. Well let's pause for a summary for a moment of the prophecies that have been fulfilled in the 20th Century.

They are the regathering of the people, the reestablishment of the state, the reclamation of the land, the revival of the language, the resurgence of the military, and the reoccupation of the city of Jerusalem. This brings us to our conclusion concerning the prophecies that are yet to be fulfilled. Prophecies yet to be fulfilled. Well there are a refocusing of world on Israel. Prophecies yet to be fulfilled.

Well there is one terrible one, and then there are some very good ones. The terrible one is the first one to be fulfilled yet, and that is the Bible clearly prophesies that there is a second Holocaust coming for the Jewish people, a second Holocaust. It is prophesied in Zechariah 13, it will come about in the land, this is talking about the period of the Tribulation, declares Yahweh that two parts in it will be cut off and perished but the third will be left in it. And I will bring the third part through the fire and refine them as silver is refined and test them as gold is tested.

They will call on My name and I will answer them. The first Holocaust, the Nazi Holocaust resulted in a death of one-fourth of the Jewish people. This, the Holocaust of the Antichrist is going to result in the death of one-third of the Jewish people. One of the purposes of the Tribulation, there are many purposes of the Tribulation but one of the purposes is to hammer the Jewish people to the point that they finally come to the end of themselves so that they will then turn to God and receive their Messiah. God is not going to hammer him because he hates them, he loves them.

But sometimes even we have to be hit over the head with a two by four by God for Him to get our attention and for us to turn our hearts toward Him. And so, this is one of the purposes of the Tribulation and God is going to accomplish that purpose. Here is the second prophecy, repentance of the Jewish people. Over and over this is prophesied will happen at the end of the Tribulation that the Jewish people alive at that time will repent and turn to the Messiah. Deuteronomy 4 this is one of the oldest prophecies in the Bible, look it is given by Moses. Deuteronomy 4 when you are in distress and all these things have come upon you in the latter days you will return to the Lord your God and you will listen to His voice. The Jewish people are going to repent at the end of the Tribulation. And the result of that will be the salvation of a great remnant, a salvation of a great remnant. Zechariah 12, I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and of supplication so that they will look on me whom they have pierced and they will mourn for Him as one mourns for an only son. They will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn. And then in the next chapter verse 1 he says, In that day a fountain will be opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and iniquity."

That fountain will be the fountain of the blood of Jesus. Jesus Himself talked about this. Did you know that Jesus said, I will not return to this earth until the Jewish people accept me as Messiah. That's why God is orchestrating the Jewish people to accept Jesus. Look at this Matthew 23, Jesus said, The fourth prophecy yet to be fulfilled is a regathering in belief. Right now God is regathering the Jewish people in unbelief. But at the end of the Tribulation when He returns the first thing He is going to do is regather all the Jewish people in the world who have become believers and bring them back to the land of Israel.

Here is a description of that. Deuteronomy 30 again this is way back when Moses was prophesying. You and your sons He says at that time then Yahweh your God will restore you from captivity and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the peoples where Yahweh your God has scattered you.

If your asks are at the ends of the earth from there Yahweh your God will gather you from there He will bring you back. And that brings us to the fifth promise yet to be fulfilled. Primacy among the nations over and over God promises to be fulfilled. Over and over God promises that a day is coming when Jesus returns and the Jews are regathered and He will make them the prime nation of the world. This will be during the Millennial reign of Jesus when the little children like this can play with all the animals because there won't be any poisonous animals.

There won't be any meat eating animals. God is going to return His creation to the perfection that it had originally. When Jerusalem will be lifted up as one of the highest points on planet earth and where there will be peace over all the world and Jesus will reign in glory and majesty from Mount Zion in Jerusalem. Zechariah 8 says, Many peoples and mighty nations will come to seek the Lord of Hosts in Jerusalem and to entreat the favor of Him. Thus says Yahweh of Hosts, In those days ten men," look at this, it says, in that day ten men from the nations, ten men will walk with a Jew. When they see a Jew walking by it says they will grab his robe and say, May we walk with you." God is going to turn the earth just right upside down with regard to the Jewish people. Today they are the subjects of persecution, hatred, murder. But during the Millennial reign of Jesus they will realize, the world will realize that they are the blessed people. And all of the blessings of God are going to flow out from Israel to all over the world so that when a Jew walks by he will be treated with respect and honor.

And the Gentiles will say, May we walk with you, for we know that God is with you. Well, the message of Israel in prophecy. Let's conclude by considering what it is.

Several things come to mind. One is that God's Word is true and it is reliable. Another that God is in control.

Let me tell you folks He is in control. Do you know what Psalm 2 says? Every time I watch the news and get very upset by it, and I get upset with the news.

In fact my wife told me one time, said, you know you could have a great reality TV show all they would have to do is set up a camera and focus it on you while you are watching the news and you are screaming at the TV and all that. I said, well, when that happens I'll always think of Psalm 2. Because Psalm 2 says that while all of the leaders of the world are conspiring against God in His anointed one, God sits in the heavens and laughs.

Not because He's not concerned, He laughs because He's not concerned, but because He has the wisdom and the power to orchestrate all the evil of mankind to the triumph of Jesus Christ. So, God is in control. Another message, God still loves the Jewish people and He still has a great purpose for them. Another message, we are living on borrowed time because the fulfillment of these prophecies indicate that we are living in the season of the Lord's return. One final thing, what is the message of Israel in prophecy for you and me? What is the significance of the promise of it for the Church?

I would contend that it proves that God is faithful to keep all of His promises and that it is a very important message for the Church, a very important one because God has made a lot of promises to me. Folks, He's made a lot of promises to us. And because I see Him fulfilling these promises to Jews I know He's going to fulfill every promise that He has made to you and me, to His Church. He has promised that one day soon, very soon the Church age is going to come to an end, it's going to come to a halt. And when that happens, when Jesus appears in the heavens and takes us out of here in the Rapture of the Church there is going to be seven years of unparalleled horror here upon this earth, the seven years of the Tribulation. And during that time we are going to be in heaven being judged of our works not to determine our eternal destiny but to determine our degrees of reward. And after all the rewards have been handed out we are going to sit down with Jesus at the greatest feast the cosmos has ever seen.

And we are going to celebrate our union with the Lord Jesus Christ. And when He finishes we are going to say, let's go! And He's going to break from the heavens and we are coming with Him.

I don't know if you ever realized that before. It says in the book of Revelation that those to whom those rewards are given are going to come with Him. We will come with Jesus at the Second Coming. We will come with Him in our glorified bodies, hundreds of millions of glorified saints. And I think that we are going to be hovering in the sky and filling the Kidron Valley when He comes to the Mount of Olives and His foot touches that mountain and it splits in half. And He speaks that supernatural word and the Antichrist and his forces are destroyed just like that.

There is no Battle of Armageddon He just speaks a word and they are destroyed. Once before He did this, once before He came to the Mount of Olives but at that time it wasn't on a white war charger the symbol of a victorious general it was on a donkey. And He rode down in the Kidron Valley which was filled with thousands of people who had heard of His resurrection of Lazarus. And as He rode down that Kidron Valley they waved palm branches and they put cloaks on the ground and they shouted, you are the Hosanna of the Son of God.

And a week later they were shouting crucify Him, crucify Him. I think Jesus is going to replay that day in His life. He is going to come back on that great white war charger and He is going to ride down in that valley and hundreds of millions of glorified saints are going to be in the valley and the sky above. And I think we are going to be singing Hosanna the Son of David.

Hosanna every time I sing a song that has the word Hosanna in it I get cold chills all over me because I know I'm just preparing for that day. We are going to see Him ride down that valley, ride up to that Eastern Gate, read Psalm 24, it tells what is going to happen. As He approaches that gate it says the gate will blow open, it is the only gate of Jerusalem that is sealed and that was prophesied in Ezekiel 44. And it is going to blow open and the gate is going to say, come on in you King of Glory, come on in and be coronated the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

And we will see that. And we will see Him as He begins to reign in glory and majesty over all the world during the 1,000 years of the Millennial reign. And at the end of that reign I think we are going to be taken off this earth and we are going to be put in that new Jerusalem that He is preparing right now. And from the viewpoint of that new Jerusalem I think we are going to see the greatest fireworks display in all of history as this earth is consumed with fire to burn away the pollution of Satan's last revolt and replaced by a new earth, an eternal earth.

And then we are going to be lowered down in that new Jerusalem in our glorified bodies down to that new earth and we are going to live on that new earth eternally in our glorified bodies in the presence of God. It says we will serve Him. It says we will serve His face.

No one has ever seen the face of God. It says we will see His face which I think is an indication that we are going to have intimate relationship with our Creator eternally. What a day that will be.

What a day that will be. Jesus is the hope of Israel. Jesus is the hope of the Church. And Jesus is the world's only hope. One day He is returning to the Mount of Olives.

He will stand on that Mount of Olives and the Jewish people will come out of Jerusalem and bow before Him and receive Him as Messiah and they will cry out, they will cry out. It's only because of the fact or fiction, just ten dollars, when I come back, Dr. Mark Hitchcock will have some additional thoughts that I'd like you to consider and say, by the way, find us on a lot of social media. Find us on Rumble on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Gab and Telegram. Again, Rumble, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Gab and Telegram.

More in a minute. OliveTreeViews.org. You can call us Central Time at 763-559-4444. That's 763-559-4444. Write us through the mail at Olive Tree Ministries in Jan Markell, Post Office Box 1452, Maple Grove, Minnesota, 55311. That's Box 1452, Maple Grove, Minnesota, 55311.

All gifts are tax-deductible. In this age of fake news and false teaching, thank you for trusting Understanding the Times Radio and Olive Tree Ministries. The world is drowning in bad news, so why not plug into some of the best news there is? Understand the splendor that awaits you in eternity by reading a new book by Dr. Ed Heinsohn, Future Glory, Living in the Hope of the Rapture, Heaven and Eternity. The Bible promises a glorious new era that is rapidly approaching. Learn about our rewards, our participation in Jesus' triumphal return, and our eternal glory in heaven. As a believer, you can trust that a wonderful future awaits you. It is free of strife, pain, disappointment, and tears.

It is the essence of perfection. Order in our online store at OliveTreeViews.org. That's OliveTreeViews.org by calling our office Central Time at 763-559-4444, or by getting our print or e-newsletter.

Sign up online. Rejoice in what God has prepared for you. Yeah, that's right. He's the man with the plan. And after the rapture takes place and there's chaos in the world, everybody's going to be looking to someone.

In fact, the world's really looking for that today. We know you can't always be by a radio. So just remember that our programming is posted to our website in both its audio and video format. Just go to OliveTreeViews.org, that's OliveTreeViews.org, and then to radio.

You can also find us on YouTube, Rumble, Light Source, and his channel. Now here is the conclusion to today's programming with Dr. Mark Hitchcock. Because Dr. Reagan's message was a little bit short, I wanted to grab a soundbite of Dr. Mark Hitchcock explaining the Gog Magog War found in Ezekiel 38 and 39. And because of the Afghanistan debacle back in August, many are asking, is Afghanistan in Bible prophecy?

The short answer is yes. Afghanistan is a part of Magog and the Gog Magog invasion, including the other stans, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, et cetera, all are a part of Magog. They will invade Israel. And I believe the Gog Magog War could be any day, but probably right after the rapture of the church. Here is Dr. Mark Hitchcock.

Author Mark Hitchcock joins us again today. And we look at Ezekiel 38, one and two, because we talked about the war coming against Israel. And Mark contends in his book, Iran and Israel, that it is going to be a combination of nations under the leadership of Russia.

Now this is extremely interesting and it's been challenged. Mark will give us the definition, but we pick it up from 38, one and two of Ezekiel's prophecy. And I hope you'll get a Bible and just open it to those two chapters. Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, son of man, set your face against Gog, the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal, Tubal and prophesy against him. Now here we have this verse that sets the stage of nations. And we know the bears coming down from the north.

Tell us who are these nations and why you so emphatically believe that Iran is going to be involved in an attack against Israel. Well, I think it's fascinating to me. You have Ezekiel 38 and 39, these two chapters that have never been fulfilled. So this is not something that's happened in the past.

It has to be future. Right before that's Ezekiel 37 and chapters 36 and 37 that talk about the regathering of Israel back to their land, which we've seen in our lifetime in the last couple of generations. Yeah.

Fulfilled. There they are in the land. And when they're there, then the Bible says this invasion is going to take place by this confederation of nations.

And they're listed there. And one of the things we have to remember is the names that were given there in Ezekiel chapter 38 were the names of these places in about 570 BC when Ezekiel wrote the prophecy. So we don't look on a map today and see Gog or Magog or Meshech or Tubal.

So our task is to find out where were these places when Ezekiel wrote. Then Gog, the first name that's mentioned there is probably the leader of this invasion because he's referred to repeatedly as a person. Now I don't think the person's name is literally going to be Gog. The word Gog means high or exalted.

It's probably like a title for this person. But it says Gog of the land of Magog, the chief prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal. When we go through and look at these places, ancient Magog is the area of central Asia today. It's where the ancient Scythians lived.

And central Asia today would be countries like Afghanistan, all the underbelly of the old Soviet Union, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan. I call them the Stans there, those different countries. About 60 million Muslims live there in that part of the world. So they're mentioned there. Then we have the word Rosh or Rosh, which I do believe refers to Russia. There was an ancient people called the Rosh or the Rosapu that lived to the north of Israel and eventually became what we know as Russia today.

You have Meshech and Tubal. Also, I believe later on in the prophecy, it mentions Gomer and Togarmah. All four of those, I believe, are in modern day Turkey.

So Turkey is going to be part of this invasion. Mark, it also says the verse five, Persia and Ethiopia. So Ethiopia would be the Sudan. We see the flaming eccentric Islam in the Sudan.

How does all that fit? Ron's going to be part of this ancient Persia, ancient Putt, which is the name for ancient Sudan is their Kush that's mentioned. So all these nations are going to come together in the end times, according to the Bible, and they're going to attack Israel. And it says it's going to happen later on in the Ezekiel prophecy when Israel is at rest and living securely. So there's going to be a time in the future.

It's hard for us to believe now that Israel under a treaty that's going to come into being is going to let their guard down. And all these nations are going to come into Israel, I think, as one final attempt to wipe out and to destroy the Jewish people. Just to clarify this battle of Gog and Magog is the first major military campaign of the end times. It is not Armageddon.

That's right. The battle of Armageddon that we often hear so much about is the final great battle that takes place in conjunction with the second coming of Jesus back to the earth. This Gog Magog war is going to happen earlier than that. It's going to happen in the end times when Israel is living under this treaty they're going to have with the Antichrist, the Bible tells us about.

Mark, when you look at this war, we ask ourselves how in the world could Israel have any peace covenant? Okay. And who's going to be the conduit of that?

Right. And with the proliferation and growth of Islam in that region of the world, how is Israel going to get a pseudo peace that's going to cause them to relax to be attacked? Well, I don't know. I don't think we really know. Give me your best theory. Well, I think that what's going to happen is I believe the rapture is going to take place one of these days.

That's the catching away of God's people, all the believers. Now we're going to talk about that in some of the programs later this week. But that event is going to take place. That's going to be a game changer, a world changer.

It's going to change everything. And I think we have no idea today to look at the world after that to see how things are going to unfold. But ultimately a strong man is going to come into place in the world, probably to bring order out of the chaos.

This person we know in the Bible is the Antichrist. And he's going to be able somehow to come and to forge this peace between Israel and her neighbors. I mean, it may be some type of enforced peace. He may even say, hey, you know that event where all these people disappeared?

I caused that to happen. And he may take credit for that and threaten people in the world somehow. But somehow he's going to be able to broker that kind of a peace agreement.

It's only going to last three and a half years. It'll be a pseudo peace, as you've said. But somehow he's going to bring that to pass. And that's one of the things that's going to launch him in the world's eyes to probably be Time's Man of the Year, probably win the Nobel Peace Prize. The world's going to look to him as the great savior because he's been able to solve this problem. But eventually everything will begin to unravel.

You indicate that this platform is prepared by what probably would look like the potential of complete annihilation, devastation. There's a desperate need to bring order. And he rises as the man who pulls it off.

Yeah, that's right. He's the man with the plan. And after the rapture takes place and there's chaos in the world, everybody's going to be looking to someone. In fact, the world's really looking for that today. Really looking for someone to kind of be the savior and come in and solve the problems and answer all the questions that we have. And no one has emerged like that. But Satan is going to have his man ready at that time to come in and to do things that really today we would see as unimaginable.

I want to save the impact on the United States, North America. Your book says something I've never read in all the prophecy books I've read. Me too. And I found something different. And I want to that is so powerful.

We're going to save that for tomorrow. Where's the United States, North American prophecy? But I want you to respond to this. We see the revival of an empire, Daniel's image and the vision that you deal with in your book. How does the economy, because we see a fractured Europe right now, I mean, even the Euro, Athens, look at the debt. It would seem to me that if there was some economic savior, there might be some kind of peace. Do you see anything in regard to the economic system of the world as it relates to that kind of peace covenant?

Sure. You know, I think what we see in the Bible is we see there's going to be a really a devastation of the world economy. There's going to be hyperinflation. When you look in Revelation chapter six, at those four horsemen of the apocalypse, you know, one of those is where it takes all the money that a person come up with every day just to buy enough to feed one or two people. So there's going to be a runaway inflation that's going to take place.

And we all know that the politicians always say it's the economy, stupid, you know, right? When the economy goes in the tank and everyone's scrambling like that, people will give over any amount of authority to anyone who can just give them the basic necessities of life. And I think that's what's going to launch this person to such great power. So I think the economy will be a real segue for this person to gain the military and political clout that they're going to have.

But not to jump ahead to what we want to unpack tomorrow. My understanding, and this is the first time I've seen this as clearly, is that the global economic collapse, which some of us might be a little trepidatious about even today, happens, you say, as a result of the Christians being sapped out of here. The rapture. That's the catalyst for economic global distress and sets the stage for a one-world money system.

You've got Moira and I like flipping out with excitement. I mean, we've got so many questions. Doesn't that make sense? It makes perfect sense because we see the forecast of that's already there. A trillion dollars the nation is, and there is no overspending. So given the dichotomy in the Middle East, those of us who've traveled there in all these nations, and I've been to a number of them, I just want you to come back and tell us that this amalgamation of nations, and we can see it on the perimeter of the map. I think they'll bring a map up right now to show, you know, to the north we have Lebanon controlled by Hezbollah. We have Syria, that's going to collapse.

We know that. And then we have Saudi Arabia, that's a rather neutral, historically pro-American party, and that'll change in the face of an Islamic uprise. How does this dichotomy get quelled even temporarily? Yeah, I just think the Antichrist, you know, the Bible tells us this Antichrist figure is going to be dominated by Satan like any person ever. And somehow he's going to be able to come in and bring the parties. He may give everybody a take it or leave it kind of a deal because the word in Daniel 9 27 that refers to this peace treaty says it's going to be a firm covenant. And some take that to be a compelled covenant, a forced covenant. In other words, he's going to force this upon people.

So we don't really know how he's going to be able to make this happen. Some people though even place the Gog Magog invasion we're talking about here before that period of time. They say that what enables him to come in and take control and do these kinds of things is that this Islamic army has been wiped out by God during that period of time. Do you have any problem with the gap in Daniel's 70 weeks as we come to Daniel 9 27? How do you explain that gap?

And we've always said that it's a grace period, etc. But what's happening in that period before the final week, the 70th week of Daniel? Well, during this current age that we live in, I call it the church age, during this age, God is taking out a people for his name, Jews and Gentiles together in one body, forming the body of Christ. But one of these days, again, at the rapture, this church age is going to end. That's one of the purposes of the rapture is to end the church age. And at that point in time, then that final week of Daniel 70 weeks, that final seven year period will unfold. There will be the final days before the second coming of Jesus Christ. But God's purpose in this age, in this day of grace is to build his church and to build the body of Jesus Christ. And that's our ultimate goal.

And that's our ultimate purpose during this time in which we live is to see people brought into this body of Christ that God is forming here on the earth during this age. This is the day of grace. Just a reminder, this is the weekend of the Behold, He Comes Bible Prophecy Conference, Calvary Chapel, Chino Hills, California, Saturday, September the 11th. If you did not get the streaming pass, we are going to offer DVDs here. They'll be available by October 1st. Speakers were Pastor Jack Hibbs, Amir Sarfati, Pastor Barry Stagner, and yours truly. Again, DVDs will be available by October 1st.

Call my office, sign up for our print or e-newsletter at our website, olivetreeviews.org. My goodness, what challenging times we live in. The end time clock is a minute to midnight, maybe 30 seconds to midnight. The stage is being set and we are in perhaps the final act of history before God calls His church home. Israel and the church both exist together for the first time in history. Therefore, I urge anyone listening who does not know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior to call on Him today. Ask Him to transform your life as only He can do.

It says in Romans that all who call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ will be saved. Do that today, won't you? I want to thank you for listening. We'll talk to you again next week. Jan Markell, Box 1452, Maple Grove, Minnesota, 55311. That's Box 1452, Maple Grove, Minnesota, 55311.

All gifts are tax-deductible. Remember that God has orchestrated events to play out as they are. He remains in control. You are in the palm of His hands and everything is falling into place.