Four Blood Moons Page 8

  24. I will also gather all nations,

  And bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat;

  And I will enter into judgment with them there

  On account of My people, My heritage Israel,

  Whom they have scattered among the nations;

  They have also divided up My land.

  (JOEL 3:2)

  25. I will plant them in their land,

  And no longer shall they be pulled up

  From the land I have given them,

  Says the LORD your God.

  (AMOS 9:15)

  I have provided these scriptures to establish in your mind how urgently God wants mankind to understand the eternal importance of His covenant of the Land with the Jewish people!

  God never breaks covenant! The above body of scriptures proves beyond all reasonable doubt that God gave to the Jewish people a specific piece of real estate that was to be theirs and was forever sealed by a blood covenant. That covenant cannot be rescinded by Russia, Syria, Iran and its radical legions, Hamas, Hezbollah, or even the United Nations and America. God will crush any nation that tries to drive the Jewish people off their sacred soil called Israel (Joel 3:2).

  THE DECEIT OF REPLACEMENT THEOLOGY

  Some Christians teach that God has broken covenant with the Jewish people. This teaching has come to be known as Replacement Theology; some refer to it as Supersessionism.

  Replacement Theology is a doctrine that presents three false concepts:

  1. God is finished with the Jewish people.

  2. The New Israel (the Christian church) takes the place of the Jewish people in the economy of God forever.

  3. God has broken covenant with the Jewish people and substituted His covenant with the Christian church.

  One of the texts typically used as a foundation for Replacement Theology is the parable of the fig tree (Matthew 21:18–22).

  These verses are falsely interpreted by Replacement advocates who teach that the fig tree represents the Jewish people, with the emphasis being put on the words of Jesus, “Let no fruit grow on you ever again” (Matthew 21:19). But the true message of this parable is the authority of the believer, not the state of Israel. In 21:21–22 Jesus said to His disciples, who saw the withered tree:

  Assuredly, I say to you, if you [the believer] have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but also if you say to this mountain, “Be removed and be cast into the sea,” it will be done. And whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.

  The central theme of this text is the authority of the believer in all things—even power over nature, not the replacement of the Jewish people.

  National Israel was reborn in May 1948 and is today one of the most prosperous nations in the world. It has more patents for new inventions per capita than any nation on earth.1 Spiritual Israel never ceased to be, and national Israel is flourishing like few nations on the face of the earth!

  The second Replacement concept, asserting that the Christian church has replaced the Jewish people, is a complete disregard for Scripture. God made an eternal covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and their seed forever that the land of Israel belonged to them by a blood covenant that was eternal.

  Why is the ownership of the land of Israel so crucial to our generation? Specifically, there are about 120 million hostile Arabs screaming for the blood of the Jewish people today, and threatening to plunge the Middle East and the world into World War III.

  What is the issue? It is the issue that has Iran building a nuclear bomb . . . the issue that has Hamas and Hezbollah loading long-range missiles to attack Jerusalem . . . the issue that is at the heart of the foremost geopolitical crisis of our generation: to whom does the land of Israel belong?

  Here is God’s position!

  God created the heavens and the earth and as the Owner of the heavens and the earth, He chose to make a real estate covenant with Abraham and his descendants decreeing that the land of Israel would belong to the seed of Abraham forever. He sealed the deed with a blood covenant. God is not man that He should lie and He does what He says He will do! (Numbers 23:19).

  Those who teach Replacement Theology—which holds that God has broken covenant with the Jewish people and replaced them with the church—need to stop and ask themselves a very important question: If God has broken covenant with His own flesh and blood, what confidence do we, as Gentiles, have that He will not break covenant with us?

  Paul weighs in on the subject of Replacement Theology with the question recorded in Romans 11:1: “I say then, has God cast away His people? Certainly not! For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.”

  Paul’s logic is flawless! He is saying, “I am a Jew. If God has cast away the Jewish people, then why is He using me to establish the New Testament church?” Paul repeats his position for those dull of hearing and those slow to catch on:

  I say then, have they [the Jewish people] stumbled that they should fall? Certainly not!

  (ROMANS 11:11)

  The Greek rendering of “certainly not” is the strongest language permitted in the Greek text. Paul is making it very clear that there is no way God has cut off the Jewish people from His blessing, His love, His mercy, or the eternal covenant He made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the land of Israel.

  WHATEVER GOD REMOVES NEVER REAPPEARS

  Replacement Theology is based on a bogus premise because whatever God removes never reappears. God removed Sodom and Gomorrah, and it has never been relocated. Some geologists even believe it’s at the bottom of the Dead Sea.2

  Israel is the only nation ever created by a sovereign act of God, which is recorded in Scripture, including its clear boundaries. God created Israel. God defends Israel, for “He who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep” (Psalm 121:4). God promised to restore Israel from the Diaspora (“scattering”) of AD 70.

  That promise was fulfilled in May 1948 when the exiles of Israel were gathered from the four corners of the earth and brought back to the land of covenant God gave the Jewish people.

  The prophet Amos makes it very clear that when the Jewish people return from exile, they will “never again be uprooted” from their land (9:14–15). Never again . . . means never again!

  God has not replaced Israel, because as we will see in coming chapters, His heavenly billboard of the Four Blood Moons is directly tied to significant events in the history of the Jewish people. And when Jesus Christ returns to earth as Messiah and King of kings, He is going to identify with the Jewish people.

  Jesus introduces Himself in Revelation 5:5 as “The Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David.” In His earthly ministry Jesus was a Jewish rabbi, and He will return as “this same Jesus,” according to Acts 1:11. The Jewish people have certainly not been cast aside, not now or in the future.

  According to Paul’s testimony, Jesus is in heaven right now speaking Hebrew.

  And when we had all fallen to the ground I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew dialect, “Saul, Saul, ‘why are you persecuting Me?’ ”

  (ACTS 26:14 NASB)

  Do you think He’s going to come back in a grey flannel suit looking like an evangelical preacher? Not hardly! He will be wearing a yarmulke underneath His crown and a prayer shawl (tallit) upon His shoulders!

  God Almighty has not replaced the Jewish people, because in Revelation 7, He chooses one hundred forty-four thousand Jews to be witnesses for Him during the Tribulation. Why would He use a people He has cast aside?

  The first thing Jesus will do in His millennial kingdom is to have the judgment of the nations. The purpose of the judgment of the nations (Matthew 25) is to punish all nations that abused the Jewish people. If God has cast aside the Jews, why would He judge nations for doing what He has been accused of doing by those who present Replacement Theology?

  THE STARS AND THE SAND

  Immediately following Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac, the
Lord said to Abraham:

  By Myself I have sworn, says the LORD, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son—blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies.

  (GENESIS 22:16–17)

  God identified Abraham’s descendants as the stars of the heavens and the sands of the seashore.

  The purpose of stars in Scripture:

  1. They produce light (Daniel 12:3; Genesis 1:14–15).

  2. They rule the darkness of the night (Genesis 1:16–18).

  3. They rule in heavenly places (Ephesians 6:12).

  4. They are prophetic messengers; part of God’s heavenly billboard (Joel 2:30–31; Luke 21:25, 27–28; Acts 2:19–20).

  The stars represent Abraham’s spiritual seed, which is the church, for Abraham is “the father of us all [all who believe]” (Romans 4:16–17).

  The purpose of the church is to be a light in a dark world. The Bible says, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).

  Jesus said to the church, “You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14). The purpose of the kingdom of light is to rule over the kingdom of darkness.

  Paul makes that clear in Hebrews 11:12: “Therefore from one man [Abraham] and him as good as dead, were born as many as the stars of the sky in multitude—innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore.”

  Sand of the sea represents the physical children of Abraham through Isaac, who are the Jewish people. The sand is forever connected to the land so the Jewish people are forever connected to the land of Israel by covenant.

  Concerning replacement—the stars never replace sand, and sand never replaces the stars. Each has its own sovereign purpose from God to exist. Israel and the church are unique. The church never replaces Israel, and Israel never replaces the church.

  Replacement Theology is intellectually and scripturally dishonest. I believe Replacement Theology is religious anti-Semitism; it is one of the most dangerous forms of deception in the church today.

  CHAPTER 8

  Wars and Rumors of Wars

  You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to

  it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen,

  but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against

  nation, and kingdom against kingdom.

  —MATTHEW 24:6–7 NIV1984

  As a student of history, allow me to plant a seed of thought in your mind.

  Begin with the basic concept that God is sovereign. He controls the lives of men, the destiny of nations, and all events that happen in the universe.

  Next, consider that God, as Creator and Owner of planet earth, made a real estate covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and their seed that the land of Israel, with boundaries established in the Bible, belongs to the Jewish people forever (Genesis 15:18–21; 17:7–8).

  Remember this very important fact; the Jewish people do not occupy the land; they own the land!

  Continue the logic that a sovereign God has made a pledge to the Jewish people that “He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep” (Psalm 121:4 KJV). Keepeth is a military term meaning “to defend and protect.” The major battles in the Bible had to do with God defending the Jewish people, “the apple of His eye” (Zechariah 2:8). Any nation or group of nations that tried to eliminate Israel was wiped out by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

  The enemies of the children of Israel at the Battle of Jericho, and the five armies at the Battle of Five Kings (Joshua 10) who tried to annihilate Israel as they journeyed from Egypt to the Promised Land, were stoned to death by God Himself when they attacked Israel. The Bible records the battle graphically:

  And it happened, as they fled before Israel . . . that the LORD cast down large hailstones from heaven on them . . . and they [five armies] died. There were more who died from the hailstones than the children of Israel killed with the sword.

  (JOSHUA 10:11)

  David, the shepherd boy, killed Goliath with the help of the Lord and the fling of his sling shot. In doing so, he saved Israel from becoming enslaved by the Philistines. This one act of bravery liberated Israel to produce the prophets who would pen the Holy Scriptures for the world to read. It liberated Israel to bring forth King David and ultimately King David’s great-great grandson—Jesus of Nazareth, who liberated the world from the kingdom of darkness.

  When Haman plotted to kill the Jews in Persia [modern Iran], he and his sons were hung on the gallows they built to hang the Jews. God was watching! Most of the Jews in the world at this point in history lived in Persia. For them to have been annihilated would have hindered the purposes of God. God saw to it that the architect of the Old Testament Holocaust hanged on the very gallows he built for the Jews.

  Jesus told us that before His second coming, we “will hear of wars and rumors of wars” and that “nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom” (Matthew 24:6–7 NIV1984). I believe that “nation will rise against nation” describes all major physical wars on earth from the time of Christ until today, including the wars against Israel.

  The point is this: God Almighty created the Jewish State and has sworn to defend it. Anyone—politicians from Haman to Hitler, military giants from Goliath to Iran, or any tormentor from Pharaoh to Putin—that presents an existential threat to Israel will utterly be destroyed by the hand of the Lord.

  God is jealous, and the LORD avenges;

  The LORD avenges and is furious.

  The LORD will take vengeance on His adversaries,

  And He reserves wrath for His enemies.

  (NAHUM 1:2)

  WORLD WAR I

  As we study the history of the Jewish people related to biblical prophecy, let us consider the impact of World War I on the State of Israel.

  In World War I, the British were cut off from their source to make cordite gunpowder. First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill went to Chaim Weizmann, a Jewish chemist, and asked him if he could find a way to make several tons of synthetic gunpowder. Without it bullets couldn’t be fired, artillery was useless, and cannons on ships were mere ornaments. The outcome of the war was at stake.

  Weizmann and his associates discovered how to make this massive amount of synthetic gunpowder within weeks. This Jewish inventor played a major role in the victory of WWI over Germany.

  After the war, Lord Balfour asked Chaim Weizmann what England could do to honor him. Weizmann asked that his people (the Jews) be given a homeland.

  Lord Balfour created a historic document known to this day as the Balfour Declaration, giving the Jewish people what God had already guaranteed in the book of Genesis—a homeland.

  Though the Balfour Declaration went through several drafts, the final version was issued on November 2, 1917, in a letter from Balfour to Lord Rothschild, president of the British Zionist Federation.

  The Zionists of the world continued to return to the Land of Promise. God’s all-seeing eye was watching over the seed of Abraham as He was regathering the exiles from the nations of the world.1

  WORLD WAR II

  In His discourse on the Mount of Olives, Jesus described the horror of future events, saying, “Unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake [the Jewish people] those days will be shortened” (Matthew 24:22). This verse clearly points to the coming Holocaust of the Jews, because the references in the Olivet Discourse to “the elect” refer to the Jewish people—not the church.

  Adolf Hitler was a demonized, anti-Semitic monster who came to power by virtue of the Treaty of Versailles, which mandated that Germany pay to America and England all expenses for World War I. It was an astronomical cost.

  In an effort to comply to this treaty Germany bankrupted itself by monetizing the debt, a method of financing national de
bt through printing new money, which inflates the currency until it has absolutely no value due to its huge supply. America is doing exactly this right now, as we race toward a twenty-trillion-dollar national debt.

  Hitler came to power promising the German people that he would not pay the debt to America and England for World War I. He vowed instead to invest in the German people by rebuilding the national highway infrastructure, which became known as the Autobahn, creating a car, which became the Volkswagen (people’s car), and reinstating their military. The people were thrilled; Hitler did not shoot his way to power; he was voted in by a well-educated and highly sophisticated German society.2

  Hitler hated the Jewish people just as radical Islamists hate the Jewish people. Before coming to power Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, which means “My Struggle.” It is no coincidence that the word jihad also means “my struggle.” Both Hitler’s struggle and the struggle of radical Islam was and is with the Jewish people. Both declared war and destruction against the seed of Abraham.

  Hitler made it clear in Mein Kampf that he intended to kill the Jewish people. The world simply did not believe he would do it. The birth of the “Final Solution” and the death of six million Jews is living proof he meant every word.

  The anti-Semitic spirit of Haman and Hitler lives on. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former president of Iran, repeatedly ranted for the whole world to hear that his mission was to wipe Israel off the face of the map. America’s leaders chose not to take him seriously!

  Iran has recently elected a new leader, and Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, knowing the mindset of Israel’s enemies, said, “We do not delude ourselves and must not be caught up in wishful thinking and be tempted to relax the pressure on Iran to halt its nuclear program.”

  Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, was quoted as saying,