Dear gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for the opportunity to gather around your word. We ask, Lord, that you would open our eyes by your spirit to behold the wonderful things from your word. We thank you, Lord, that he teaches us. We thank you, Lord, for all the gifted individuals you've given to the church, for the building up of the church and that every part is essential to proper function of your body. We thank you, Lord, for the uniqueness of the church and distinction from Israel. We pray, Lord, as we study the last things regarding Israel and the church, that we would have a better grasp of the nature of the distinctions that exist between these people and. Therefore, to understand your prophetic program, we ask, Lord, that you will bless this time that we have together today and to realize how important having a proper view of end times truly is. because of its impact on our lives in the present. We ask Lord you bless this time in Christ's name. Amen. All right. We are in the last section of the framework and in the previous section we dealt with a short series on church history to in order to trace the major doctrinal developments that have occurred over the last 2000 years. The major issues there were things like The source of authority, which is the canon of the script canon of Scripture, and what are the boundaries of the canon? Of course, the Trinity, which is a critical component to the Christian faith, Christology, the nature of Christ as God and man and hypostasis and salvation. That is what was accomplished on the cross. And then the other dimension of how what was accomplished on the cross. comes to our account. And we pointed out during this that we want to make sure we understand there is a logical progression down through church history as far as how the Holy Spirit teaches the church. That is, he has a pedagogy or a curriculum such that if if you don't have lesson A in place, then lesson B doesn't make much sense. Or if you reject lesson A as orthodox is in lesson B, you're also going to reject so that these pieces come in a logical order of lessons that need to be learned. Let the next lesson not be understood. So as he's taught us, there's a method and there's a plan to what comes next in the sequence. Now, the last two things in the sequence are ecclesiology. which is the nature of the church and eschatology. Which is the destiny of the church, so the nature of the church and the destiny of the church, and these are linked, OK, so your ecclesiology becomes the driving for a force or horse fuel behind behind your eschatology. So if your ecclesiology is all discombobulated, then what what is your eschatology going to be? Well, it's going to be discombobulated. So that is why it's critical to get the nature of the church correct. But another way you really cannot understand eschatology unless you have a clear understanding of the distinctions between the three groups of humans in history, Gentiles, Jews or Israel and the church. So these are distinct groups of people in so far as their nature is concerned in so far as their purpose is concerned. So. Now, we don't mean there are distinct ways of salvation. Let's be clear, there's only one way of salvation, so that is not the issue here. People from all three groups of people are saved the same way, that is, by grace through faith. So the issue is not salvation, but what is the nature of the saved group? And they're called Gentiles. What is the nature of that group before the flood? What is the nature of saved Jews and what is the nature of the thing called the church? And what destiny does God have for each of these groups in his overarching plan? Because there are prophecies concerning all three entities. And but too far often, what you will see people do is they will blend together all these people. And then you've got prophecies for Israel that are over here being applied to the church. And the New Testament begins to be read back into the Old Testament. And Old Testament Israel and the church become one in the same thing. So we're trying to show that's not the case. And. Therefore, there are these clear distinctions that have to be maintained if you're ever going to get a proper eschatological image in your mind of what God has in store. Now, we've been working with Israel and briefly just for two weeks now, there are several passages, many, many, many passages that show Israel's historical progress toward her marked out destiny. We showed, first of all, that the nation originated with the Abrahamic covenant, that God marked out his destiny when he birth or originated the nation that is with promising a land, a seed and a worldwide blessing. Of course, it's going to be only the believers in that nation, only the believers that enjoy those promises, but they are guaranteed by this covenant to finally enjoy them. Secondly, we looked at the nation given a law or a standard, whether that is what God wants them to do, how he wanted them to live. That's the Mosaic covenant. And God promised blessing for obedience and cursing for disobedience. And they finally disobeyed and they faced a whole series of cursing that led ultimately to their exile among all the nations. Third, the nation ultimately one day will be regenerated and will obey. And at the same time, the nations of the world who have cursed Israel will be judged. And fourth, finally, Israel will enter into her promised destiny. the blessings in the kingdom, and she will enjoy the land. So God is going to bring this about because God has promised that he's going to bring this about. And that is just a short, rough sketch. But we would say that all of that that we just went through was sketched as early as Moses Day. So the details, as you go into the later prophets, they get amplified, but they're just really Details that elaborate on upon an already previously established structure. So that explains the Old Testament. Now, today, we want to get into some Jewish vocabulary that's important to understand. There are terms that you've heard, like tribulation, the day of the Lord, Jacob, time of Jacob's trouble, birth pangs. OK, 70th week of Daniel, all these we want to understand. And the first thing we want to understand is that all this terminology relates to Israel and not to the church. OK, it was with Israel that this terminology originated. So if you turn to Deuteronomy four. The first term we'll talk about is tribulation. Notice how early this is, this is Moses, Deuteronomy four. This is a general term, OK, it's not a specific term that has some kind of a definite time element placed on. In other words, it's not necessarily just seven years or something, but it's just a general term used to characterize a period of history that will be very difficult. It will be very, very stressful on humanity and particularly Israel. And so you want to notice early on how early this was. This tribulation thing was forecast in God's prophetic plan. Thirty four over thirty four hundred years ago. Notice the language of verse 26 and Deuteronomy four. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, by the way, have we seen that before and we've seen that in the last few weeks over and Deuteronomy 32. Heaven and earth, that's not just poetic metaphor, that's calling the angelic observers of history to now witness something. I'm calling you to the task of being witnesses. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, Israel, that you will surely perish quickly from the land where you are going over to Jordan of the Jordan to possess it. You shall not live long on it, but will be utterly destroyed. The Lord will scatter you among the peoples. There's the exile. OK, so we haven't looked at this passage, but look, here's another one that traces their historical progress. And you will be left few in number among the nations where the Lord drives you. There you will serve God. The work of man's hands, wood and stone, which neither see nor hear nor eat nor smell. But from there, that is out in the nations. Where they're in idolatry, he says, you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him if you search for him with all your heart and all your soul when you are in distress. OK, and there's the Hebrew word for tribulation. OK, or difficulty right there in verse 30. When you are in distress and all these things have come upon you in the latter days, you might mark that. In the latter days, you will return to the Lord, your God, and listen to his voice for the Lord, your God is a compassionate God. He will not fail you nor destroy you, nor forget the covenant with your fathers, which he swore to them. OK, notice the covenant made with the fathers who are the fathers and Moses day. Abraham. Isaac and Jacob. So what covenant is he talking about? Verse thirty one. The Abrahamic covenant, the unconditional, I will do this for you covenant. But right there in verse 30, we have the origination of the idea that Israel, after she's gone into exile among all the nations, would come into a period of tribulation and then they at that time would turn back to the Lord. And God would fulfill the Abrahamic covenant to them. So the trouble is going to come when Israel's in exile. OK, when that exile is there for disciplinary purposes. OK, among all the nations of God. That's why they're put out there. They're put out there to learn a lesson. I mean, all discipline is designed to teach a lesson. And what lesson are they supposed to learn? Well. Fundamentally, they're supposed to learn the lesson that gimmicks will not keep the nation Israel in existence. OK. Gimmicks cannot keep them in existence. It will not lead to their survival. The nation Israel is the ultimate test case for whether gimmicks can provide security success survival. OK. And in their case geopolitical existence. And why do I say that. Why is that the fundamental lesson they have to learn. Well, I say it for a few reasons, but I'll give you a few. Because Israel has probably the most advanced intelligence agency in the world. Mossad is arguably more technologically advanced than, say, our CIA. I mean, they have guys right now embedded underground in Iranian nuclear facilities. OK, working alongside Iranian scientists. And they don't even know they're there because these guys are so deeply embedded. They know the language. They know they dress. They smell that way. OK, everything. And these guys are really good. So as far as military intelligence goes, the intelligence agency, they have probably one of the most elite in the world, along with our CIA. Then, of course, Israel. has tremendous military capability. Proportionate to the other nations on the earth, size-wise, I don't think there's another nation that even gets close to Israel. I mean, they are far stronger than most militaries on the entire earth, and they're the size of Delaware. So, one of the reasons that they have all these tremendous, what we consider capabilities, is because they require every man and woman to have military service, military training. Okay. It's not an option. I mean, they have a standing military and every citizen knows how to use weapons. They know how to detonate devices. They know military procedure. Okay. They know what's going on with some kind of military maneuvers going on. They know what's going on when some warnings go off and so forth and people don't freak out and go crazy because this is just standard operating procedure and they've been trained in this and they know the drill. So they have tremendous assets. But ultimately, what we're trying to say here is that those assets that the nation has cannot depend on those for survival. At some point in the future, they're going to have to realize that came Assad as advanced as they are. The weaponry as advanced as it is, is all gimmicks. Finally, OK, and their only hope for survival is going to be to turn to the Lord their God and he'll bear his mighty arm in history. OK. But he's the only thing that won't fail. He's the only thing that's not a gimmick. All those other things will fail. OK, the missiles will fail. The intelligence will fail. I mean, no matter how many agents you have out there, you cannot uncover every single plot. OK, no matter how many weapons you have, you cannot foil every attack. So the only thing that can save them from the future distress here that is coming for Israel is going to be the Lord. And this was forecast as early as Moses. So it's not something that Jesus or Paul or Peter invented or worse, like some people think, you know, we did sensationalists invented this thing, this distressed period, this tribulation thing. Now, this is entirely independent of the church. It has nothing to do with the church. The church doesn't even exist yet. When this was revealed, the church isn't going to exist for fifteen hundred years. So this vocabulary has been set up far prior to the origin of the church. And what is the purpose of this trouble? It's going to come not to erase Israel from history. It's to stimulate Israel to repent. OK, so a great goal of the tribulation is to get Israel to respond positively, positively to God. So that is one of the great purposes of the tribulation. People hit the New Testament and they don't read the Old Testament. They haven't got a clue what the tribulation is and what do they do? They throw the church in the tribulation. Have you ever seen that happen? OK, no, the tribulation is part of the Old Testament schema of history to produce an effect upon the nation. Israel. Has nothing to do with the church. So that's the first term. Tribulation. The second term. We'll look at is the day of the Lord. If you'll turn to Joel to Joel, the best place to show the several facets to this term, but the basic idea of a day or day of the Lord grows out of Genesis one, because that's where the Hebrew day begins. How did each day begin in Genesis? Did it begin with evening or did it begin with morning? Did it begin with darkness or did it begin with light? Darkness, it was a dark, dark light cycle. It's funny because Christians sometimes in the West, occasionally we just had the New Year. We'll say, well, we've got a New Year's resolution this year. I'm going to start every day off on the right foot. I'm going to open my Bible. I'm going to fall out of bed at five thirty a.m. and, you know, have a big yawn session studying this book. The interesting thing is that the day doesn't begin in the morning, does it? It begins in the evening. OK, I wondered what this would do for dreams if we actually did our Bible study at night. But if you really want to start your day off right, well, do Bible study in the evening. That's the beginning of the day. And the day of the Lord begins the same way. It begins with darkness at night, followed by light. Now, since darkness in the Bible came to signal symbolize. Judgment. And light came to symbolize. Blessing. OK, then. The day of the Lord refers to a period of darkness or judgment. Followed by a period of light or blessing. That is the general idea of the day of the Lord. OK, and it's important to recognize that it is dark first and then light because there are certain eschatological views like postmillennialism that have the light before the darkness, they reverse that order. OK, how do they do that? Well, because they have the kingdom coming before the final judgment, the blessings of the kingdom prior to the final judgment. OK, but the Scriptures put the judgment before the kingdom. Now, as far as the darkness phase is concerned, it's a judgment of God and God has his host. He's the lord of hosts, which means that the armies. Any everything is at his disposal. OK, so he has everything in all creation to be able to use to judge his enemies. So when you read these texts about, you know, God using a human army or you find God using these upheavals in nature. OK, notice Joel chapter two, verse two. OK, the end of verse one is talking about what? Verse one, end of verse one, what's the subject? the day of the Lord. OK, so we know what we're talking about here. Verse two describes the day of the Lord this way, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness. And that's atmospheric disruption. It's not just all poetry. OK, this is real atmospheric disruptions as the dawn is spread over the mountains. So there is a great and mighty people. OK, that's just not metaphor. It's some kind of army, human armies, we could say. There's never been anything like it, nor will there be again after it to the years of many generations. OK. Now, the point is that these are instruments of judgment, and you'll see since they're instruments, God is using an indirect approach, OK? He doesn't always just miraculously blast people, you know, shoot them with fire or something out of heaven. He doesn't always do that. He often uses human armies. He uses nature forces in these judgments and these become means of him judging. We've seen that throughout the Bible. I mentioned this that he uses these because later on we're going to discover a particular eschatological view that's rampant in Christian circles today that thinks that wherever you see a human army or earthquake. That's not the day of the Lord. OK. Well, sorry, we just read a passage here and Joel, too, that says the instruments God uses in the day of the Lord are human armies. They are nature things like atmospheric changes, and there are several days of the Lord in the Old Testament where God uses man and nature to judge. But in addition to that, we could also say that he does use direct judgments, miraculous judgments. So there are both direct and indirect means that he uses in the day of the Lord. You should have all these ideas of the book of Revelation here, right? Having said that now, the future day of the Lord is going to involve a complex of judgments following the model that's occurred earlier in the Old Testament. There will be human armies, a people of nature, miraculous judgments. You see all that stuff in the book of Revelation. And at the end of this judgment phase, there's going to come a single day of judgment that we call the second coming. But which the Old Testament prophets called the great and awesome day of the Lord. Notice verse 30. Joel to 30. I will display wonders in the sky and on the earth, blood, fire and columns of smoke, the sun will be turned into darkness and the moon into blood. before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. That's the second coming. So you have the upheavals in nature, all these great blood and sky and all this stuff prior to the great and awesome day of the Lord or prior to the second coming prior to the arrival, the 24 hour day when the Lord Jesus Christ comes back to Earth. OK, so then we have what we call in one sense the broad day of the Lord. This is what makes this term so difficult. One aspect of it is broad, it's speaking of a period longer than a day, obviously. OK, and that's everything there in verse 30 and and part of verse 31. And then you have the narrow day of the Lord, don't you? And that's the great and awesome day of the Lord. That's the actual day that he returns on. OK, so a day, well, we say a literal day, OK, 24 hour period. So you see, the term can refer to a broader period of time, which is judgment leading up to the narrow day of the Lord, which is the second coming. OK, but whether it's broad or narrow, they all refer to judgment. OK, they're all darkness. OK, then following the dark because the day has two phases, it starts dark and then it gets light. OK, comes the judgment. I mean, comes the blessing phase. OK. And for that, come down to chapter three, verse 18. See, all this is in Joel, so that's why we've come here. Trace the whole thing here, he just uses a shortened expression, he didn't say day of the Lord, he says in that day, which became in Hebrew thought everybody understood, well, that's not just some random thing. That's a reference to the day of the Lord that he's already spoken of earlier in the book. And in that day, The mountains will drip with sweet wine and the hills will flow with milk and all the brooks of Judah will flow with water and a spring will go out from the house of the Lord to water the Valley of Shittim. Now, does that sound like judgment? That sounds like blessing, and that's because it is a description of millennial blessing. What we know is the kingdom. So there are the two phases and, you know, darkness and light, and it's broken up into various uses. Yes, but understand the great idea. OK, that is, the Lord is going to intervene and he's going to judge his enemies catastrophically. He'll do it indirectly by human armies and nature forces will do it directly by miraculous power. But the result, when it's all said and done, is the blessing. OK, particularly upon Israel here. So, again, when you read this term Day of the Lord in the New Testament, understand that the meaning and the shape of this term comes from the Old Testament. And that it relates to Israel. It doesn't relate to the church, except to say in the New Testament that we don't enter that day. That's what the New Testament keeps saying. So it has nothing to do with the church. I mean, where do you read in the New Testament of the church being punished in the day of the Lord? Well, you never read that in the New Testament. Now, the thing to remember about the day of the Lord that will help you see the fallacy of some end times viewpoints in our day is that As I said before, it involves these indirect things like geophysical events in nature. As well as human armies, because one of the errors that is now on the scene is that the day of the Lord does not begin until God directly and miraculously intervenes. OK, so they say, well, when you see earthquakes and meteor showers come on Earth, that's not the day of the Lord. Well, sorry, it doesn't work that way. Because when you check the background of this term one thing to remember is that they all describe them using those types of things and that is the day of the Lord. The second thing to remember about the day of the Lord is that it can be one specific event. OK. Like this narrow day or it can be a period we have all this stuff going on a broad period of time. OK. That's what is so difficult about the term, OK? Day of the Lord, you mean, well, it can mean just a literal day or you're saying, well, it can also mean a period of time. Yes. And the prophets kind of flip back and forth. I mean, in the blessing, it's used for a thousand years. We learn later in the judgment, you know, it's a 24 hour day here, you know, broad, you know, it's longer than the 24 hour period. So the point is that makes it difficult. But the point is, therefore, that the term has a latitude of usage. So there are many, many passages we could go to show more about this, but we'll move on. This is a survey. OK, we talked about the general time of tribulation. We talked about the day of the Lord, and now we want to talk about a third idea that occurs in the Old Testament prophetic text, and that is birth pains. So this is a metaphor that comes from childbirth in a fallen world. There was no concept of birth pains in the original unfallen creation because there was no pain. There was no suffering and that included in childbirth. And you know how would you like that ladies. Well Adam blew it for you. OK so we'll know we'll never know anything about painless childbirth. OK. But that was the original design and you can speculate how that could have occurred. But now it is marred and All of human existence, no matter what continent you are on, no matter what language you speak, no matter what skin tone, dark or light brown that you have, have experience of the birth pangs. No culture has escaped this revelation. Here's the deal with birth pangs. We'll make three points and I want to use a quote. I forgot to open my PowerPoint, so let me do that, but I'll take one from Randall Price. Randall Price. I don't know if you know him or not. I've heard of him. But he's a really neat guy to listen to. He studied the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. So he's fluent in Hebrew. He also went to Dallas Theological Seminary years ago. And he's worked. He's mainly an archaeologist. But, and he's done a lot of work at Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. And now what he's doing, well, I think they've got the last dig at Qumran this summer. But now what he's doing primarily is working on the search for the Ark. And he's been working on this for years. And he's very careful, not like the Chinese people that just put out a movie about, we found the Ark and it's all a big hoax. But anyway. So that's the big thing that he's working on right now. And he's a really interesting guy. I've talked to him on numerous occasions. He says about the birth pangs. He says they are the involuntary and uncontrollable nature of birth pangs, as well as their intensification, leading ultimately to a time of deliverance. Well, picture the concept of a time of divine judgment that must run its course until the promise of new life could be experienced. There are three things in that quote that we want to kind of single out. First of all, once birth pains start, OK, because there is such a thing called false labor, right? And that's not the birth pains. That's just false labor. Lots of women have had false labor. But once true labor starts, you're going to have a baby. OK, you can't stop it. It's going to happen. Baby's going to come. But second, secondly, that is so. So the first point is that once this birth pain start, you're going to have a baby. OK. And there's some of you smiled. OK, that's good. That's in there on purpose. The Bible teaches this second. However, to get to the baby, there's got to be an increase in the intensive intensity of the contractions. OK, so it's not just a steady. OK, they get they get more intense and they get closer together until the baby is born. Right. Well, that is characteristic of the birth pangs. OK. So the third thing then is that the actual deliverance of the baby, the baby will be born and the birth pains, they go away. Praise the Lord. So that's the joy on the other side that is so tremendous, so tremendous that some women in comparison will look back and they will say, well, I forgot the pain and the anguish and they get pregnant again. OK, God designed it that way. Price also says this, he says, So frightening was the prospect of encountering this time of tribulation preceding the messianic arrival that some sages hoped it would not come in their lifetimes. Among them was Rabbi Yochanan, who explained exclaimed, Let the Messiah come, but may I not see it? OK, now, how's that for prophecy? See, this is very different and you want to grab onto this because this is how an Old Testament person would have looked at prophecy. OK. A scary time. I don't want to be there. OK. Now, when you see in the New Testament. Oh, the Lord. What do we say? We want the Lord to come back. Comfort one another with these words of the Lord's arrival. You know, that is very different than this. They looked at the Old Testament prospect of his arrival as the most frightening period of history. And it gets back to the difference we're trying to highlight. Israel and the church are not the same thing. And you cannot go into these passages and just plop the church in there. OK, it doesn't fit because the attitude of the church to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ is utterly different than the coming of the Messiah to Israel. And here's the case in point, look at Rabbi Yochanan. OK, let the Messiah come. But may I not see it? You know, I want to die before this happens. Now, that's the attitude of a person In the Old Testament, who understood the power and the awesomeness of this coming time of trouble on Earth, they don't want to see it. OK, just let me die before it even happens. I'd rather not be here. OK, so that's very different, see, than first Thessalonians and comfort one another with these words. How do you get those two together? Turn to Matthew 24, because Jesus brings up the birth pangs. And Israelis who heard this, they knew what he was talking about because they knew this Old Testament theme of men shaking and grabbing their knees and. As a woman giving birth now, notice what he was saying to Israel. Very important, this is all written to Israel. Notice what he's saying in verse eight to Israel. But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pains. You say, well, what things are the beginning? What are the beginning of the birth pains? Well, the things that he starts to describe in verse five, where he says, For many will come in my name saying, I am the Christ and will mislead many. So characteristic of the beginning of birth pains. Which, remember, when they start. They rather quickly intensify and you have a baby, right? So this is a very short period of time. So you're going to have multiple claims of the Messiah during this time, many people claiming to be the Christ, the Messiah. Verse six, here's some more parts of the birth pains, beginning of the birth pains. You'll be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. OK, global wars. See that you are not frightened for those things must take place. But that is not yet the end for nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. And in various places there will be famine and earthquakes. Those are the beginning of the birth pains. And you could try to say, like many prophecy people do, well, those things are all happening today. We got wars. We got famines. OK, now we got all these volcanic eruptions and earthquakes and so forth and all the rest of it. And they say, well, this all proves that we're in the birth pains right now. One of the problems with that analysis is that the data don't support all these increases that they keep talking about. They don't. As far as the data is concerned, for example, with earthquakes, In the 20th century, there was actually a slight decrease in the intensity and number of earthquakes for the last 120 years. In fact, the one decade in the 20th century that had the most intense and the greatest number of earthquakes was the 1940s. It's not true there have been an increase in earthquakes. Neither is it true that we've had increase in volcanic activity or something like that. Like you could go back to 1982 and say, well, Mount St. Helens exploded. Yeah, it did. But Mount St. Helens is just sort of a relatively small to average size volcano. And we saw what it did. OK, but, you know, entire Yellowstone National Park is a volcano, the entire thing. Which is much, much bigger than Mount St. Helens. So how would you like to be there when that one went off? OK. several thousand years ago, whenever the last time it really went off. I wouldn't want to be in the whole continent. Okay. So we know of periods that have been greater and much of the seafloor is covered in volcanoes, but, uh, and much larger than our entire continent, single volcanoes. So, uh, we know that there had been much, much greater volcanic and earthquake activity in the past. In fact, those things occurred on large scale much closer to the flood. Since the flood, there's been an exponential decay curve that the world has been on to where there's a slowly, slowly decreasing from that time to the present. When these things occur, these things are not being fulfilled today. When these things start occurring on this scale, we're talking about flood scale, global scale phenomena that have yet to be seen since anything like back at the time of the flood. We know. And further, we also know. So these things aren't being fulfilled today. These verses are. And we also know simply from the metaphor of birth pains that these things are not being fulfilled today because birth pains, when they begin, remember, one of the characteristics is that they occur very rapidly over a short period of time and then you have a baby. OK, so it's going to intensify and intensify and intensify until your whole body is convulsing. By parallel, the whole earth will be convulsing and then you have birth. Okay, and that's the imagery of birth pains. So you want to catch the idea, okay, that once this gets started, it's not a long, drawn-out process over like 100 years or 500 years or anything like that. It's a very short, quick, intense period of time, just like having a baby, okay, and when the first birth pain comes, it's short, quick, escalation of intensity, and then in just a few hours, what do you have? A baby. After the world goes through the birth pains. Then will come the birth. So after they go through this period. The question is what is the world going to give birth to. And the answer is. The kingdom. So the idea here is that in order for the kingdom to come the Jewish kingdom. This planet and its inhabitants are going to have to go through something like what a woman goes through when she gives birth to a child. A very short, very intense period of turmoil that results in the birth of the kingdom into history. But the beginning of the birth pains you see there in Matthew 24, five through eight. OK, we just went through. And if you want to do a study, you just compare those verses with Revelation six, which we're not going to do today. The seals. Those seal judgments first five seals or so. And you can do a parallel study on that and see how their parallel passages. But the point is these early birth pangs occur in the early stages of a future distress. The more intense the birth pangs get the closer you're getting to the birth of the kingdom. So that's the third term we wanted to deal with birth pangs. And now we want to deal with a couple others. Go to Daniel nine. And here's the term 70th week. Of Daniel. We've been prepped on this several times before, so remember, Daniel Daniel was the foreign minister. He's a very high person in the nation of Iraq and the nation of Iran. And Daniel was a dedicated Jew. He read the prophets and he knew them well. And during his lifetime, he realized that 70 years prophesied by Jeremiah would be the schedule for the nation's exile. OK, so he thought, well, this is coming up. It's almost over. So when he's in the Medo-Persian Empire. OK, verse two. OK, so this would be like modern day Iran. Verse two. In the first year of Darius, the son of Ahasuerus, a Median descent, who was making over the kingdom of the Caldeans. I, Daniel, observed in the books of the numbers of the years, which was revealed as the word of the Lord to Jeremiah, the prophet for the completion of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely 70 years. And we've been through that. Jeremiah, twenty five, Jeremiah, twenty nine. He says, OK, we're going to be studying my Bible. We're going to be here seven years. On that basis, he begins verse three. So I gave my attention to the Lord God to seek him. OK, and he begins to pray, OK, and he prays and prays and prays a big, long prayer. The prayer is essentially a confession of his nation's sin. OK, he's confessing on behalf of the nation. Why do you think he's confessing on behalf of the nation? Why would you do a thing like that? Well, because he knew from the Old Testament that Israel could never get to blessing apart from confessing their sin to God. OK, so he knew his little country, the Jew. Israel was he knew they were the key to the world peace. And he knew that's the whole purpose of the distress that the nation has to go through is to stimulate us to confess, to get right with God. So you see this mentality. It's coming through right here. OK, he says we've been out of the land for 70 years. The Lord is disciplining us. The Lord wants us to turn to him. So he prays this prayer confession. And now we're going to get restored. Right now, our Messiah is going to come. He's going to rescue us. He's going to take us into the kingdom. It's all going to be glory, but. Oops, wait a minute. OK, he goes on in his prayer. But let's come all the way down to verse 20. OK, when he comes to the end of his prayer, he says, Now, while I was speaking and praying and confessing my sin and the sin of my people, Israel and presenting my supplication before the Lord, my God, in behalf of the holy mountain of my God. While I was still speaking in prayer, then the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision previously, came to me in my extreme weariness. By the way, look, look, look how long the guy was praying for. He's completely exhausted. Well, that puts me to shame. OK. Notice in verse twenty one there, he's totally weary by this time. And that's when the angel shows up. It was at evening. It's about the time of the evening offering. Verse twenty two. And he gave me instruction and talked with me and said, Oh, Daniel, I have come forth to give you insight with understanding. At the beginning of your supplications, the command was issued, which tells you how fast angels can move. I mean, here he is at the right. He's up at the throne of the father, wherever that is. And, you know, that's outside this heavens and earth, the second heavens and earth heavens. So it's outside of the second heaven. So it's I mean, it's out there. OK. And here he is, obviously, you know, one hundred eighty six thousand miles per second per second didn't mean anything to Gabriel. OK, just went zip right through that. Neither did, by the way, Daniel's prayer. It reached the throne faster than the speed of light. And that's sound, by the way. So we don't know everything about that, that there is to know. OK, so this is very rapid. At the beginning of your supplications, the command was issued and I have come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed. So give heed to the message and gain understanding of the vision. So verse 24 is the clarification. OK, and I'm going to take this off so we can have some space to. Follow this prophecy. Maybe. OK. 70 weeks have been decreed for your people in your holy city to finish the transgression to make an end to sin. OK, see when he says 70 weeks, actually it means 77. OK, that word week is just the word for a group of seven. OK, so here's that 490 thing again, 70 groups of seven. OK, which you do the math. It's 490 calendar time. Remember, we've Israel's on calendar time, 490 years to do what? Verse 24, to finish the transgression, to make an end to sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, To seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy place. OK, those six things. Verse 25. So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. OK, so here's the beginning of this is the beginning of the 490 years. This is when you start counting down. When there's a decree made in history to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. And we know that was Nehemiah. It was a chapter two. where Artaxerxes gives the decree, and that's 444 B.C., so you'd start counting 444. He says from there, you can count until Messiah, the prince. OK, so adding from 444, you add your. Six, seven weeks and 62 weeks together, OK, and that brings you to the Messiah, the prince. OK, so seven weeks. Or seven sevens is how many years? Forty nine. And the other one is sixty two weeks. So sixty two seven. And that math is a little. More laborious, but it gives you how many years. Seven times close. That's very close. Very good. Four hundred thirty seven times two is 14. So your last letters are numbers going to be a four four hundred thirty four. Very good. OK. In the first forty nine years. The temple will be rebuilt. OK, so this has to do with the temple. OK, that's what he's saying. Temple will be built after the first first 49 year period. Then there's a 434 year period that brings you up to Messiah. The prince. OK. Then look at verse 26. After the 62 weeks, the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing. So there's that's the crucifixion. He's cut off and he has nothing, meaning he has no kingdom, the kingdom that he's come to receive as air. Anybody doesn't have it. So you want to notice in verse 26, the crucifixion occurs after the 62 weeks. So you've had the forty nine. Right. All right. Temple is built. You've had the four hundred and thirty four added to this, to the forty nine. So that gives you how much? Four hundred eighty three years. OK, and after this is after the four hundred eighty three years, then you have three things. OK, you have the crucifixion. You have no kingdom. Those could really kind of go together. So three or four things, then you have the people of the prince who is to come destroying the city and the sanctuary. So who were the people who came in and destroyed the Jewish temple and destroyed Jerusalem? OK, so the Romans. So that's when did that happen? OK, so 80, 70. So I say one here, we'll take two here. We have destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. OK. Now, then you have a period of war and desolation, wars. This is just general wars. And like I said earlier, there's always been wars going on. ongoing war depiction of the world is basically going to be generally instable and as far as politics and military conquests are concerned. And we can go into that. But the point is to notice in verse 26 is that there's a gap in here in verse 26 between the 69th and the 70th weeks. See, because this is the whole prophecies about this. But we have the seven and the 62. How many weeks is seven and 62 together? Sixty nine. That's why verse 26 is after the 62nd week, because we've already had the seven. So now we're just talking about the 62 here, but the total is 69. So after the 69th week, we could say there are things that are going to happen. There's a gap of time. OK, now this is argued about and we have to deal with it. OK, a lot of people say there's no gap in here, but there is a gap in here. You see, in verse 25, there will be seven weeks and 62 weeks. So seven and 62 are 69. That leaves one seven left over. And he doesn't go straight into that last seven, does he? He mentions three things that happened in this gap that we just listed them over there, and the gap is indicated by the grammar of the passage. It says after the 62 weeks, it doesn't say it doesn't say in the 70th week. And it doesn't say or in the 62 weeks or any of that, it just says after the 62. So now what we see is there is an interruption or gap here in this calendar of events. And we covered some of the things that happened in the gap, these things over here. OK, then verse 27. And he. Say somebody pronoun in verse 27, he's we've got to go back because the rules for pronouns in grammar is that you have to go back to the nearest antecedent. Right. The nearest person listed in this case, he in the context to figure out who he is the now. So who's the nearest person in the text to the pronoun of verse 27? He who's the he. The prince who is to come, not the Messiah, the Messiah is at the first part of the verse 26, but the prince who is to come is the nearest to the pronoun he in verse 27. So he is the prince who is to come from the Roman people who destroyed Jerusalem. OK, so we said, well, he's antichrist. OK, he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week. So there's the last week. OK, the 70th week of Daniel. OK, so for one seven year period, he makes this treaty, this covenant, that the treaty for seven years. And if you look at the way the many is using the Jewish thought, it's the Jewish leadership. He's going to make a treaty with the Jewish leadership. I mean, who makes treaties anyways? Just the average Israeli citizen or does the leadership say the leadership, the leaders in the nation. So. Thinking about this, OK, what would be presupposed? I mean, if you're going to make a treaty with Jewish leadership, you've got to have a Jewish nation with Jewish leaders in order to make some treaties. OK, so that's presupposed. So he will make a treaty with the leadership of Israel for one week or the 77. But in the middle of the week, it says he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate even until a complete destruction. One that is decreed is poured out on the one who makes desolate. So there's this abomination thing here that's going to happen halfway through. that seven year seven last seven year period. And it's all going to be when he stops this grain sacrifice and so forth going on. So he's interfering with the temple and he's going to proclaim himself to be God in that temple. And that implies some other things have to be in place for all this to happen. So I'll make little note notes just make little notes about those little things that have to be there in place before these things can happen. Now turn to Matthew 24. Are you already there. Matthew 24. for Jesus' amplification of the 70th week. So we would say you have Daniel 9, 24 to 27. And then guess what Jesus does in Matthew 24. Four through, say, 31, he amplifies that same passage. He just broadens it, tells you more about it. So we're just referring to that last group of seven, though, the 77. I mean, the first 69 sevens have already happened. They've already been fulfilled. All that's happened. The only only the 70th week remains. So all Jesus is doing here is amplifying the 70th week of Daniel. OK, we've already been through the beginning, right? The birth pangs versus five through eight. So that's obviously going to happen in the first half. Of the 70th week, if we look at verse 15, we see what happens in the middle of the week, what happens in the middle? According to Daniel and Jesus, the abomination of desolation. Jesus knew the book of Daniel. Wow. And this is why you need to know the Old Testament before you go over to the New Testament passages or you'll make you'll just make a mess out of the whole thing. Really easy to make a mess out of. Therefore, when you see the abomination, verse 15, when you see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of through Daniel, the prophet standing in the holy place, let the reader understand. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Now, is that the church or is that Israel? That's Israel, get out of the city, what city? Where the temple is Jerusalem, get out of here. Verse 21, for then there will be a great tribulation such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will. We could go on that term and great tribulation, the latter half, the second half of the 70th week of Daniel. The most worst period of all human history, verse 22, unless those days have been cut short, no life would have been saved. But for the sake of the elect, those days will be cut short short. OK, question elect of the church or elect of Israel. Israel, this is all Israel has nothing to do with the church. I mean, the church is not the issue. The nation Israel's issue. What about Israel? Well, they have to go through this terribly distressing time. And then it goes on to describe their rescue. At the coming of the glorious son of man, also a Jewish issue, then what comes next? Guess what comes next? OK, in the New Testament scriptures, you go all the way to the last book of the Bible. There's a man named John who's on the Isle of Patmos. Right. And you guess what is he doing primarily? Well, he's amplifying Daniel 70th week. So now we have a greater amplification in Revelation 4 through 19. See how those all go together. This is a very careful structure that's being laid out in the Bible for us. And there's been some very careful research done on this. So it turns out that these chapters in Revelation end up being an expansion of Matthew 24, 4 to 31, which were an expansion on really just Daniel 9, 27, that last week. So it goes from one verse. to practically one chapter to practically one whole book. So. This is what we call progressive revelation, OK, that it means what God wanted to say about a topic he didn't say all in the same conversation, he said part of it in one conversation and then he had another conversation later and he gave you more and then he had a third conversation and he gave you even more. OK. So. If that's the case, then you already know what Matthew 24 and the book of Revelation are going to be about without knowing any of the New Testament. OK, I mean, throw your New Testament away for a minute. You don't even have all that. All you have is the Old Testament. What would you know is going to be the subject of Matthew 24 and the book of Revelation? Well, it's going to be about that time of distress that Israel has to go through. It's going to be about the day of the Lord. It's going to be about those birth pangs, OK? And what was all that was what's the purpose of all these things. To bring Israel to repentance. OK. Some have said it this way to purge them and to punish the nations. They say those are the two purposes of this period of time to purge Israel to repentance and to punish the nations so that the kingdom can come. Because the nations have to be destroyed for these kingdom the kingdom to come. So and how are they going to be judged? Well, read the book of Revelation. You got human armies. You got nations rising against nation. You got great convulsions in nature, great geophysical catastrophes. You've got atmospheric disruptions. And all this occurs before the great and awesome day of the Lord, before the second coming. See, so it's not an attractive time to look forward to from the Old Testament perspective. It's a horrible time. This is unprecedented destruction. unbridled never in the history of all mankind. Will there ever be a global destruction like this. This is not just one country having an earthquake. The Book of Revelation says every island sinks and there are over 18000 islands on earth and there's not going to be any after this is over. I frankly think that is why the depictions of the Battle of Armageddon have people you know they're lining up with pitchforks and riding on horses. It's simply because the catastrophes that have occurred by that time are so great that the technological infrastructure by that time is a wreck. Satellites have been destroyed. GPS technology is unavailable. OK, your computers are down. I mean, we have computers down today and we don't have any of these problems. So just think how bad it will be when you do have these problems. OK, talk about the blue screen. But here they are. You've got to fight with something. OK. You've got to have some implements of war. Gas has gone to $20. Just think of the logistics. How else do you explain how the Battle of Armageddon sounds so primitive? I mean, I think the answer is right in the context. If you have the world facing these geophysical catastrophes, what's going to happen to all that technology that everybody required? What's going to happen to all that advanced weaponry? It's no good to have a smart bomb if you don't have a satellite. OK, big deal. OK, what's going to happen to oil? I mean, what what do we transport oil on? I mean, pipelines, what's going to happen if you have earthquakes all over the world to the pipelines, they're going to rupture. So where are you going to even get gas from? Right. OK, so people don't think about these things, but the Bible is very consistent. OK, if you just take the text, the way it is written and you stop and you try to imagine what it will be like. from our present world and saying, well, it's all this is all just primitive metaphors then because we have advanced weaponry. Surely that's what's going to be used. It won't. It couldn't literally be that way. Pitchforks and horses. Oh, yes, it will literally be that way. I mean, was Jesus born of a virgin or was that poetic metaphor? OK, well, we know that can't happen. Well, yeah, it was literal. With all that said, we've been through some of these prophecies, OK, a time of tribulation for Israel. The point is to induce repentance, a time of birth pains on the earth that gives birth to the kingdom, a day of the Lord judgment that involves human armies. It involves nature convulsions as well as miraculous destruction. And the result is a time of blessing. OK, and we've seen a 70 week of Daniel that accounts for this future treaty between Israel and the Roman prince who breaks the treaty in the middle of the week and exalt himself as God commits the abomination of desolation. Now, having said all that stuff, let's just very shortly, very quickly make some notes here. What is what is this? If we if that's the outline from the scripture, what does this all tell us has happened first? Well, first of all, there's got to be a nation, Israel. OK, I mean, how can the leadership enter into a treaty? If there is no leadership to enter into a treaty, if there's no nation, so Israel has to have a national entity, do they exist today? Since 1948, that's in place. Secondly, they have to have control of the eastern section of Jerusalem. They didn't have control of that in 1948. The Jordanians still had control of that. So why do they need to have the eastern section? Because what's located in the eastern section, the temple. Exactly. And if the Jews are going to offer sacrifice, they have to have this temple. So do they have the Temple Mount today? Well, since 1967. They have had it six days war. OK, so right now they do have legal. They do have legal control of the Temple Mount. They just don't exercise it because there's this little sensitive thing over there called the Mosque of Omar or the Dome of the Rock. OK, so the Temple Mount is in place in one sense. OK, legally they have it. But architecturally, is it prepared? No, that mosque has to be removed. OK, well, how's that going to happen? I don't know. Nobody knows for sure. But we do know that it has to be removed someday for the temple to be built there and start sacrificing because the Roman prince is going to come is going to stop sacrificing. So all these things are what we call stage setting. OK. That is things that by inference have to be in place before the prophecy can be fulfilled. That is there's this historical necessity that we have to go through to get God's program for history to take place. So these things don't mean like he's not just going to the temple is not just going to go up tomorrow. I mean, there's historical sequencing. These things don't just drop out of the clear blue. They're usually set up piece by piece, a piece here, a piece there. OK, and then and the whole thing is being put together in preparation for the fulfillment of prophecy, which is the point I'm trying to get to. This is not prophecy being fulfilled now. OK, I know of no prophecy being fulfilled today, you know, people talk about it all the time. What I do know about its stage setting for prophecy to be fulfilled. That's what we're watching in our day, and that is exciting. I mean, think of all the things you know that have been. I mean, generations of Christians lived. And for 1900 years and none of them ever saw a state of Israel in the land, none of them. And it's been our privilege to see that happen. Think of all the generations that did not see the Jews in control of the eastern half of Jerusalem. We have seen that. We may be the generation that sees the Dome of the Rock destroyed. You can say, well, it's really sensitive to the Arabs, and they'll never nuke Israel. But what is the goal of Islam? I mean, what is their eschatology? Is it to protect a little mosque on the Temple Mount? Is that really the eschatology of Islam? No, it has nothing to do with that. It's to exterminate Israel from the planet. I mean, we can rebuild a mosque after. OK, the Jews have rebuilt their temple several times. Why can't we? See, I don't think that that mosque over there is going to stop him from Ahmadinejad from nuking Israel or trying to. God may stop him, but Ahmadinejad isn't too concerned with it. So there are a number of ways that it could be removed that you could speculate. But our point is to get these terms that we've gone through down and to make sure we understand these terms relate to Israel, not one of these terms relates to the church. OK, they're all Israel, Israel. Israel. And when we get to the New Testament, we'll find out what terminology applies to the church, church, church. But you've got to keep these distinct or you'll just be all confused. All right, let's close with the word of prayer. Your gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, that you have revealed these things so perfectly clear to us in the scriptures so that we could have our heads right when it comes to interpreting present day events and not become newspaper exegetes and start trying to say that this is this and this is that in the Bible and all of that. But we will rest assured that while there's stage setting going on, this is exciting to watch, that this is preparatory for the great events that will unfold that relate to Israel and the nations and not to the church. We thank you for the comfort that you do have for us in the New Testament, a very different destiny for us that you've marked out, such that we do look forward to your arrival. We pray, Lord, we would live every moment in light of it. for your glory, for your namesake. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.