You can open your Bibles to Genesis 12. We're going to be finishing the miracle of Israel this evening. On the 9th of Av, Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the temple in 586. On the 9th of Av, the very same day, the very same month, Titus destroyed the temple in 70 AD. And the same date, the 9th of Av, is the exact date that Hitler fired up his crematoriums. Now isn't that another coincidence? Behind the scenes, Satan, the arch enemy of God's people. See, more than trying to get rid of the church, which he knows he can't, more than trying to wipe out individual Christians, Satan has always tried to destroy the Jewish people. Because back here in Genesis 12, and repeatedly through the Scriptures, God said, if you can, da da da da, then I will deny my people." And he says, if you can stop the seasons, if you can count the stars, if you can do all this, Satan thinks he can do it. He wants to destroy God's people. Well, just to give us a perspective, before I read our verses 1-3 in Genesis 12, I want to read to you what a mainstream person said about this. Probably no one is more mainstream in the world than Billy Graham. He is the center of the mainstream of Christianity. He might even be wider than many of us in this room would be comfortable with because he is comfortable with Roman Catholics and comfortable with a lot of groups. But his gospel message hasn't veered, so that's what's a blessing. But he is about as mainstream as you can get. Now, as you know, Billy Graham married into the Bell family, as in Alexander Graham Bell, as in the Bell telephone family. So he married into a Bell, and Ruth was a Bell. And her father, L. Nelson Bell, part of that great family, actually was the executive editor of Christianity Today, another mainstream Christian thing. By mainstream, I mean comfortable to every type of Christian. That's what mainstream Christianity is. We would be a little bit to the right. Others like some of the Baptists would be further to right and then, you know, I mean you keep going to the right. Mainstream is right here and this is where Christianity Today and Billy Graham and all those would be, and most of the focus on the family, all those would be center or even a little bit to the left, more socially involved than evangelically involved. But this is what Billy Graham's father-in-law wrote and Billy Graham used as an illustration as he went in his crusades. And I just want to read you, this is actually the editorial of Christianity Today, right after Israel, in front of a gaping world, conquered back in 1967 the West Bank, which they've been fighting about now for 34 years. Now the reason I'm reading this to you right now is, if you are a computer news reader, today, Fox News said that Israel is poised to do another 67 war. They are going to, according to the Fox News, which is no Christian outfit by any means, they're going to go straight up to Lebanon, they're going to go across to get the Iraqi troops in Jordan, and they're going to wipe out the entire infrastructure of the Palestinians. I mean, this is now on the news. Two weeks ago they saw the plans of exactly how, I mean, James defense showed the plans of how they're going to do it. So it's amazing we're in a very critical time. But listen to Graham Bell. There are many deep mysteries in God's dealing with and plans for Israel. It's obvious to all students of the Bible. In other words, what he's saying is prior to 1967, he thought God didn't really have a major future for Israel. It was curious they got their land back in 48, but he didn't think anything else was going to happen. Many wild interpretations have come out of the study of the subject, Bell says. But there's been a rich blessing to those who will let the Scriptures speak for themselves. In the Old Testament and the New, there are prophecies that speak definitely of Israel coming back as a nation. Many have been fulfilled. He's talking about 1948. In their literal fulfillment strengthens our faith. Other prophecies are not yet fulfilled. Our Lord giving a panorama of the last days and As long as he quotes us, let's turn over to Luke 21, because I want you to see what he's talking about for just a second. We'll come back to Genesis. But Luke 21 is what he references in Christianity today. And in Luke 21, he says Jesus, in his Olivet Discourse, it's called. Remember, our Lord, his last week, hung around Jerusalem. And every time we go through the Passover, Last Supper, and Easter, and all of Palm Sunday, I always give you the chronology. marched into town on the 10th and stayed in Jerusalem all those days, because the Lamb did at Passover. So he followed that. One of the days, he stood on the Mount of Olives and pointed out all the buildings, kind of like you do when you're on tour. And then he sat down and taught them the future. It's called the Olivet Discourse. This is Jesus talking about that. And in verse 24, this is what Luke 21-24 says, continuing with L. Nelson Bell. Jesus, when speaking of the panorama of the last days, the duration of which is not specifically stated, that was a little addition of Nelson Bell because hardly any Christians agree on whether the tribulation is seven years or three and a half years or whether it's not going to happen or whether it's already happened. You know, I mean, there's just total differences in opinion on that. So he was being polite there. He says, nobody knows how long it is. But Jesus said this, look at verse 24. They will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive among all nations, and Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles until the Gentiles are fulfilled." Until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. And what he notes there is that Jesus has noted the fact that Jerusalem will be... Look at verse 20. I mean, he should have backed up to verse 20. You'll see Jerusalem surrounded by armies. It doesn't matter, there weren't any Jews in the surrounding armies for centuries. So see, when Luke wrote this, Jerusalem was full of people. Forty years later, they're all gone, carted off and killed. And there were no Jews in Jerusalem other than a handful of long, locked, bearded, black hooded, you know, these Orthodox that run to the wall folks. A handful of those lived and died within breathing distance of the Western Wall for hundreds of years. But nobody else really lived there, Jewish, until the late 1800s, 1880s. Then they started coming back and the Turks resisted them. And then at the turn of the century, they started building their farms, 1910s. Then Hitler started his things in the 1930s and they came back faster. And then at the end of Hitler's Holocaust, they came back in giant waves. Until now, Jerusalem is, verse 20 of Luke 21, Jerusalem is a Jewish city with 600,000 Jews, which easily could be surrounded with an army, because it's the prize if you want to destroy them. Back to Nelson Bell. For the first time, he says, in more than 2,000 years, Jerusalem is now completely in the hands of the Jews, which gives a student of the Bible a thrill and a renewed faith in the accuracy and validity of the Bible. That was in 1967. And I'll tell you what, if you knew anything about Bible conferences in 1967 and onward, they were dominated with the people being so excited because God's Word was being fulfilled for the first time. Israel, the Jewish people, since the time of Christ and before, were sovereign over Jerusalem. Do you realize that? They had not been sovereign over Jerusalem with no foreign power over them since almost 600 years before Christ. That was the last time. When the Babylonians took it away from them, they have never had sovereignty over Jerusalem for more than a few months. The Maccabeans reconquered it in about 200 BC and it was taken away again by the Romans and by the Persians and everybody else. But now, in 1967, they were a sovereign nation with control over Jerusalem and for a few hours over the Temple Mount. It's amazing. We'll talk about that tonight. The Jews as a separate people demonstrate a mystery and a hope, Bell says. Their continuance as a people in the midst of all other nations is in itself a miracle. We've already talked about that. The cohesiveness of the Jews, the fact that at least 96 countries, now in 67 there were 96. I told you that now it's over 100 countries around the world have imported or exported Jews to Israel. Well, this is the last thing that Nelson Bell said. He said, military experts, now remember he wrote this in July of 1967, right after the Six Day War. Military experts have used such terms as unbelievable, fantastic, and overwhelming to speak of the brilliant tactics and efficiency of the Six Day War. We ask, did this just happen? The pictures in the news magazine show pinpoint accuracy of the raid on the Arab airfields. In many cases, planes on the ground were destroyed one by one. If you know anything about history, Israel in their preemptive strike knocked out 400 airplanes parked on the ground. Now the way they did that was they developed all on their own a special airport runway bomb that had a little jet rocket engine in it and it would be deployed from an airplane on a parachute and all of a sudden as it was coming down on the parachute, the rocket would fire up and it would go straight down and it would drive it through concrete where it would blow up underneath and ruin the end of the runway so the jets couldn't take off. So they were just parked there. And so they'd come through and they'd, poof, the end of the runway and all the Arabs would get in airplanes and they couldn't take off and then they would just come over and they'd blow them up one at a time like this. That's what they did in 1967. without really damaging the rest of the landing strips. They only got the end of it, which was quite a, you know how we would carpet bomb the whole thing and try and wipe out, they just knocked out about a third of the way back spot, so they could never quite get enough to take off. Well, the Egyptian army was beginning to retreat in 1967 through the Malita Pass in the Sinai, and it perfectly placed bomb, destroyed one large Egyptian tank in the past, which completely blocked all the rest of the tank brigades escape. And Israel got all their tanks because the people jumped out and ran over the pass and went home. Hundreds of Egyptian tanks were stranded in this process. A veteran of Ramel, that's World War II's retreat at El Amin, and that's North Africa in World War II, said that this spectacle of destroyed or immobilized heavy equipment was unlike anything that was ever seen in the entire Second World War. And they did it, won this little handful of soldiers. We ask again, did that overwhelming victory found in every area of the Six Day War, did that just happen? One cannot help but thinking that in all of this God was working out his purposes far above and beyond the capabilities of men and nations. We as Christians must remember that in events like this we see only a tiny segment of history. God moves in mysterious ways, a day with him is as a thousand years, a thousand years is a day. And so then on and on he goes to talk about lots more where he was trying to figure out as a mainstream Christian who was of actually a reformed persuasion, who believed there was no future for Israel, that Israel had been subsumed in and identified with the church and was never going to be a separate entity again. He was trying to explain it. Well, how do you explain it? Let's go back to Genesis chapter 12. And tonight we're going to finish this series we've been working on, looking at the miracle of Israel. And after we get done with the miracle of Israel, we'll jump in and alternate between looking at Abraham's life and back in Genesis and some other things. But if you still have your little sheets, I'll give you the last of your fill-in-the-blanks. But Genesis 12, The Lord said to Abram, and I thought this was interesting, I was preaching, practicing my message at lunch this morning, or after church this afternoon, and one of my children said to this, I was talking about how even today there's really still problems going on, and one of my children said, well why don't they just get out the papers where Abraham got the land and bought it, and why don't they just show them the papers, the Arabs? I thought, isn't that childlike faith? Go get the papers and show them that Abraham bought Machpelah and they own Hebron. I mean, we believe the Bible, they don't believe that even happened. Genesis 12, now the Lord said to Abram, get out of your country. He lived in Iraq. Get out of your family. They were pagan moon worshippers. From your father's house, he was a wealthy businessman. They've excavated the housing of Ur of the Chaldees. These were three-story homes, 3,000 and 4,000 and 5,000 square feet, indoor plumbing. He was a wealthy man, very similar to our culture today. God says, leave all that and go live in a tent with goats and sheep in the desert with sand blowing in your face. in a beautiful, verdant, lush, green oasis on the shores of the river in a highly civilized society. And God says, get out of there to a land I'll show you, which you've never been to. It's 600 miles away walking and taking your family with you, I might add. And I will make you a great nation. I will bless you. I will make your name great. Abraham You know, you know someone's great when they're known by their first name. Alexander, Abraham, you know, the great people of the past that you just know them by one name, David. You know, you don't say David who, he didn't have a last name, David. And in, you know, King David. Well, look at verse three, I will bless those who bless you. and I will curse him who curses you. And in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed." Now, we already studied that at the front end of the series. That's Galatians 3.8, and that's the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel that we share, the gospel that we tell those that we meet in life's path, that the Spirit of God opens their heart's door and opens our mouth and we share the gospel, the gospel we share came to us through a group of Jewish prophets and Jewish apostles. It was written, by and large, in the land of Israel, under the influence of the Spirit of the God of Israel." They're Jewish. And that's through Abraham, all the nations are blessed. Well, that's point number one in your notes, if you're writing it down. God picked, in Genesis 12, a chosen people of destiny, the Jews, to be descendants of Abraham. He called them Israel. God picked one man in the era of the Chaldees. He asked him to walk. those 600 miles through the desert, through lands filled with powerful kingdom states, which he was endangered as he walked. And there, in a series of revelations, once he got to the promised land, the almighty God of the universe, and we did this the first night, solemnly swore to him as he cut up animals, Abraham had to cut up these animals and let their blood flow down into a ditch. And it says that God passed through the middle of that blood path And God made a covenant with himself to Abraham. Very stirring moment. God picked his chosen people. Secondly, if you're taking notes, if you keep going down to the end of chapter 15, and he says starting in verse 18, God secondly presented a land to his chosen people with clearly defined borders. In 18-21 he says, the Lord made a covenant with Abram and he said, to your descendants I have given this land from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, and he names all the occupants of the land and he said, those people are living in the land I give you. And so God presented a land to his chosen people of destiny, the Jews, with clearly defined boundaries. And now we get to the book of Exodus, and if you want to get over with me to Exodus chapter 6, it should be marked because we covered this about six weeks back, but Exodus 6, in verses 7 and 8, God Himself proceeded to bring His chosen people of destiny to the Promised Land. He personally took them. And this is what it says in Exodus 6, verses 7 and 8. I will take you as my people. I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brings you out from under the burden of the Egyptians. And verse 8 says, And I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And I will give it to you as a heritage. I am the Lord. I mean, you couldn't get it more underlined than all those I's. And so that's what he says. He says, I'm going to do all this. And God proceeded to bring them And he brought them into his land. And Deuteronomy 14 says, You are a people holy to the Lord. Out of all the peoples on the face of the earth, you are my people. Fourthly, we saw in Deuteronomy, so keep going to the right to Deuteronomy 28, number one, God picked his chosen people. Number two, God presented them a land. Number three, he proceeded to bring them there. But in Deuteronomy 28, look at verse 64, fifth book of the Bible, Deuteronomy chapter 28, Every time I get to Deuteronomy 28, I always think about our wonderful lifeline mission strip when we went to see John Glass and the Merrills in Belarus. And Jim Kessler and Royce and I were all sitting in Poland having our devotions. And we read the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy because it was my turn. And I remember reading these verses inside a building, actually in the basement of a building. in the Jewish ghetto where Hitler and his Himmler assassins herded all the Jews into the ghetto in Warsaw, put walls around it and then proceeded to burn it down over their heads and just killed as many as they could. And we sat down in a cellar where they told us that so many people went there as their last resort to try and escape the flames and finally were overcome. And that cellar had become a restaurant of all things. And so we sat there in that basement cellar, which had been the last place for countless views, scores of views, before they died. And read, look at verse 64. The Lord shall scatter thee among all people from one end of the earth to the other. And look at verse 66. Your life will hang in doubt before thee, and thou wilt fear day and night, and shalt know assurance of thy life." And they certainly didn't. In fact, they had assurance only of death. And that's because, number four, God pronounced the curse upon His unfaithful, the chosen people, and they began wandering the world without a home. Number five, God preserved them. And that was Jeremiah 30. And if you remember last time, that's where we actually began. Isn't it amazing how fast you can go if you don't talk very much? We're already to where we were last week. It took us 14 weeks to get there. But Jeremiah 30 and verse 11, number 5, God preserved his chosen people of destiny from annihilation. And Jeremiah 30, 11, if you don't yet have it marked, it's so important. God says, yes, I'm going to curse you if you disobey Me. Yes, I'm going to scatter you. Yes, you'll have no place to call home. Yes, you will not know. In the morning, you'll wish it was night. In the night, you'll wish it's morning. You'll just be running for your life. But, look at verse 11, but I am with you and will save you, declares the Lord. Though I completely destroy all the nations among which I scatter you, I will not completely destroy you. I will discipline you, but only with justice. I will not let you go entirely unpunished, but I will preserve you, God says. And God, fifthly, preserved His chosen people as a distinct entity. He preserved them, and there is no group on earth that is more distinctly racially identifiable. Wherever they live, they stand out. I mean, the Jewish community in Miami, The Jewish community in Chicago, the Jewish community in San Francisco, the Jewish community in Paris, in Buenos Aires. They are so, there is, I mean, other groups, you know, you'll have the Chinatown and you'll have the, you know, Koreatown and all that. But you will not have the close-knit family structure. I remember when I was pastoring in Los Angeles, police chief Bob Vernon was one of the elders, and he's told some of the cutest stories, but he said, early in his life before he was assistant police chief, he was in over some small precinct or something. And he said that they picked up this kid for drunk driving, this teenager, and had him there in the police station. And they called his dad, and the dad says, I will be right down. Prominent Jewish doctor. He walked into the police station, walked up to his son, bam, knocked him right on the floor, bloody face. Picked him up, put him in the car. He said, he'll never do that again. And Bob says, he didn't. I mean, that's a close-knit family, you know what I mean? I'm not sure that's proper parenting techniques, but that is the Jewish, I mean, and that kid didn't say, I'm leaving the family, I have nothing to do with it. I mean, the Jewish family structure is very tight, even if you don't like each other or don't agree. The racial closeness that God has given them, so they didn't absorb. And the Jewish people, though they found themselves hostilely treated by all the people around them for 2,500 years have never been absorbed into society. Number six. Now we go back one book to Isaiah 11. From Jeremiah back one to Isaiah 11. And what we saw sixly, and this is where we finished up last time, God who gave them a land, He picked them, He presented them the land, He brought them there, He pronounced a curse, He preserved them, Number six, God promised to regather them. Listen to Isaiah 11, verse 11. And it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time. And we spent a long time talking about the first time was when he brought them back from the Babylonians to recover the remnant of his people. A second recovery. This is a second return. The first return was after, remember I said, Last week was the anniversary date for the destruction of Jerusalem. 600 years before Christ, Nebuchadnezzar did it. 70 years AD, 40 years after Christ, Titus did it. After the 600 years before Christ, God, 70 years later, under Zerubbabel and Ezra and Nehemiah, brought them back to the land. That was the first time God set his hand to have them return. That was before the time of Christ. That's the time when Nehemiah rebuilt the walls, and Ezra went back and restored the worship, and Zerubbabel, under the preaching of Haggai, got the temple rebuilt. That was during the time of Esther. We covered that last time. But God says, look at verse 11, a second time. Well, they hadn't even been scattered a second time. The second scattering to the ends of the earth was in A.D. 70. And He says, sometime after A.D. 70, God said, I will, a second time, pull them back to the land. That happened in its major part in the lifetime of many of you sitting here. In fact, the biggest surge of immigrants has happened in the lifetime of everyone sitting here. Over a million since 1989. Amazing to think about. On through we looked at lots of other verses, but the wandering Jews were without a national home for many days, but the prophecy and promise so long awaited was fulfilled with the rebirth of Israel in the promised land in 1948, 1900 years after the second diaspora or scattering, and their restoration as a sovereign nation 25 centuries after Nebuchadnezzar. All took place in 1948. Okay, number seven, and this is the last point, and this is where we're going to finish up tonight, and if you still have your notes, number seven is God prophesied, that's what goes on the little line, he would make his chosen people a destiny, a source of fear for the world. Now let's turn to Zechariah 12 and that's where we're going to conclude. And you can just park there and we will just be right in Zechariah 12 to 14. But I want you to think about this. God prophesied through Zechariah about six and a half centuries before Christ, just before Nebuchadnezzar wiped out Jerusalem. Zechariah was sitting in Jerusalem which at that time was not as big as it is today, the walled city. It was just primarily an ancient walled stone city on a hill with nothing really around it. No natural resources, no heavy duty trade routes. And as Zacharias sat inside that stone walled city in his little house, in fact, Zacharias' tomb is still there today, You can see it. You just look at it. It's the tomb of Zechariah. It's still sitting there. I mean, this guy lived there and died there. Look what he writes in chapter 12, verse 1. The burden of the word of the Lord against Israel. Thus says the Lord, and this is the Lord's calling card. You know how people give away their business cards and now some people give away those cute little CDs that are square and they spin. You can read them in your computer and it's kind of a real high-tech way to give out your business card. Of course, it's expensive, but whatever. But this is God's calling card. This is who I am. I stretched out the heavens. I laid the foundation of the earth. I formed the spirit of man within him. That's who I am. Do you know who I am? I am the creator of the geos, the earth. I'm the creator of the cosmos, the universe, and I'm the creator of the numos, the spirit of man. It's interesting, if you read it in the Septuagint, it rhymes. It has all these asses on the end. God said, that's who I am! Now listen to me. Nobody else has my calling card. Verse 2, Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of drunkenness to all the surrounding peoples. when they lay siege against Judah and Jerusalem. Amazing. Verse 3, And it will happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples. Does God exaggerate? Do we? Yes. Does God? No. The same God we saw this morning doesn't have the word accident in his vocabulary, does not exaggerate. He speaks the truth. He says that little walled city at 3,000 feet elevation on top of four hills in central Judea, that city is going to cause a burden to hang over the whole world. That city is going to cause the whole world to be fearful, that city. Amazing. A heavy stone for all people, all people. who would heave it away and surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth should be gathered against it." And that day the Lord defends him. He goes through that. Look at verse 6. And that day I will make the governors of Judah like a firepan in the woodpile, like a fiery torch in the sheaves. And they shall devour all the surrounding peoples on the right hand and on the left, but Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place. Jerusalem. Wow. Now, I don't want to get everybody scared, but today, today, in the news, the Jewish News Service, Arutz Sheva, I mean, that's their kind of associated press, they said they expect there to be a full-blown regional war before the end of the year. We're talking about thousands of people dying. They expect that. So if I was you, I'd plan your holy land trip soon. Or waiting to go with us after it's over. But, you know, either way. Because that's what they think. Now what's going to happen? I'm not by any means a prophet, but I will say this. It's interesting what verse 2 says. It's very, very carefully stated by God. Look at verse 2 of chapter 12. I will make Jerusalem a cup of drunkenness to all the surrounding people. That's the Hebrew word Saviv. And that word means Touching and so like here if we said all of the the touching property owners it would be PS over there and the Springs apartment over there and that a Apartment parking lot over there and all the people whose houses come up against our pretty wooden fence Okay, those would be our sub Eve the people that touch us It's interesting that it says in verse 2 that they will be a cup which causes reeling drunkenness. It's not talking about, you know, kind of some fine wine stuff that they're, you know, sampling and wine tasting. It's talking about reeling, like staggering and falling. The nations, literally if I was Ken Taylor doing the Living Bible, I would say, behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup which flattens or makes the people collapse that surround Jerusalem. And look at verse 6. The governors of Judah I like a fire pan in the woodpile, like a fiery torch in the sheaves. Again, we're getting agricultural pictures. The woodpile, all year long, as they trimmed off their vines, all the wood from the grapevines, they would carefully cut little pieces and stack for the winter. Every time they trimmed their olive trees, which is constant, they always are trimming the olive trees, they would keep all that and save it for their woodpiles for the winter, during the rainy season when it's cold. And that wood would sit out in that Middle Eastern hot, arid climate and would be tinderbox dry. Can you imagine bringing a handful of hot coals to your wood pile of little tiny sticks that are used from the trimming of your bushes? I mean, it would just go like that. And then he said the sheaves. Again, at harvest time, the way God designed the climate over there, it rains real heavily at the time of planting and it rains again Halfway through the crop season and then it doesn't, it rains and just the dews come through until harvest time. It is so dry over there that the fields are just, they're just dry and the chaff is just powdery and it blows as they harvest. Can you imagine bringing a torch to that standing straw that's dry and just sticking the torch like Samson did with the foxes? Do you remember when he burned all the fields? That's what God says. That's the picture here, devouring all the, and there's that word Saviv again, the surrounding peoples on the right hand and the left. If you are a paper reader, that could happen before long. Israel now stated that they are planning to go to southern Lebanon and clean out all the missiles that Iran has set up there. They're planning on going across to Jordan and taking care of the Iraqi troops that have been slowly building up in Jordan. And they're thinking of going down and taking care of all the Egyptian armaments that have piled up on the Gaza Strip border, and then they're going to totally take apart the Palestinian structure. All their munitions plants, all their power plants, and all their arms caches, and they're just going to get rid of all that. And today, the Middle East News Service said, and they might in the process take Iraq out too. That was stated today in public secular news. That would be a fire pan in the woodpile. That's what God says. Why did God say it? God prophesied 600 years before Christ, 2600 years ago, that Jerusalem would cause the whole... Did you know what I just said makes the American government, and the French government, and the German government, and the Soviet government, or the Russian government, and the Chinese government, and the Arab League very, very troubled. Very troubled. Because the Muslim faith says they are not supposed to lose wars. Allah says, you never give back any land. It's yours forever once you get it. So the Arab League, 21 countries in the world, which sit on 60% of all the oil reserves in the world, say, Israel can't do that to us. They can't do that to us. It's against our religion. The Chinese say, Israel can't do that. We're the ones supplying all that stuff. The Russians say, Israel can't do that. We're the ones supplying all that stuff. America says, Israel can't do that. We already have enough trouble in the world as it is. The European community says, Israel can't do that. It's a heavy stone. Everyone's passing the stone around right now. Well, real quickly, what an incredible fulfillment of prophecy it is every time you see Israel in the news. It's even more impossible than the fact that the people would regain their identity and homeland as the fact that they should return and establish themselves as a nation that causes the entire world. Six billion people are alarmed at six million people. Think about it. There are 1,000 people on the planet for every Jew in Israel. And those 1,000 are bothered by what that little speck is doing. It would fit six times in the panhandle of Oklahoma. Just our little narrow part that goes like that out. Six Israels could fit in that part of our state. That little section bothers the whole world. Israel. Well, number one, God is at work today in the saga of the Jews. He's bringing them back. But it appears that God is waiting for something to happen. And this is what I want to close this series with, because I want you to read the news carefully. Our Lord has not yet come. Remember what I opened with and read to you from Luke 21? It's very interesting. What I was reading to you, Jesus, the disciple, says, when are you going to come back and do all the big stuff? And Jesus says, when the times of the Gentiles are over. And that's why Nelson Graham Bell, what I read to you at the beginning, got all excited in 1967 because Israel had sovereignty over Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. But it's interesting, Moshe Dayan, after he conquered the Temple Mount, his paratroopers, and after the nation was in full control for the first time in 2,500 years, they presented the keys to the Temple Mount as a goodwill token. back to the Moslems. This is what I'd like to end with. Could God be waiting for one more thing to happen? The times of the Gentiles are still in full sway, even though Jerusalem has gone back to the Jews. There is one exception. The exception that makes all the difference indicates what fine lines the Holy Spirit has put into His Word. Jerusalem is not, in God's judgment, a collection of houses and streets like any other city. Jerusalem, God says, is a temple in which He dwells. Remember we started off the series saying God says, I have placed my name forever in Jerusalem? Not in the back alleys. He has placed his name forever on a 40 acre, 800 foot wide, 1220 foot long square, which we call the Temple Mount. That's where God says he's forever enthroned over that spot, which he calls Zion. That little 40 acre spot. God has his focus. on the temple where he dwelt, where his people approached him through sacrifice, and where he met with them. God has his focus on 40 acres of land. The same 40 acres Solomon built a temple on. The same 1,200 by 800 foot temple mount. God says in 2 Chronicles 6.6, I have chosen Jerusalem, my name will be there. It says in Deuteronomy 12.11, I will on that land look for your offerings. So what is ground zero? It's Mount Moriah. Second Chronicles 3.1, it's where God says, put the temple. First Chronicles 21, it's the spot that David purchased from Ornan the Jebusite. Genesis 22, it's the same spot that Abraham offered Isaac. Those 40 acres, only a short distance from Calvary itself, are the spot to the Jews and to God, which is the spot in Jerusalem, the only spot that is still controlled by the Muslims. Those 40 acres. Israel had it for a few hours. They gave it back. The one thing possibly the Lord is waiting for to trigger the tribulation time is for the Jews to get that back and for those Temple Mount faithful to finally be able to push their little rock up there and for some, and who knows what's going to be except God, is going to allow the world to allow them to rebuild the temple that Jesus saw in the tribulation, that Paul saw by the prophetic eye of faith in the tribulation and that John the Apostle saw. Three of the most notable authorities on future times saw a Jewish temple on Mount Moriah in the tribulation hour. Jesus, Paul, and John. And if those three saw it, I think it's going to be there. Well, something's going to happen because It is on Mount Moriah that the Arabs have built their famous Dome of the Rock, the second most holy place in the Muslim world, and the Jews, for political and other reasons, have not dared to expel the Arabs from that spot and build their temple, but they desire to. And God says, I prophesy, He says, that Jerusalem is going to be a stumbling block for the world. I'm going to regather my people, and He has. I'm going to preserve them, and he has. I'm going to curse him, and he has. He brought him to land. He presented him to land. He picked him. He's going to finish his work with him. That's the miracle of Israel. That's the God we serve. Let's bow before him and thank him for keeping his word. Father in heaven, I thank you that you still have your focus on that 40 acres. Mount Moriah is a very sacred place. You called it the place where your name dwells. That's where the sacrifices were offered. That's where the picture of Jesus Christ was offered. That's where the death angel stopped at the sacrifice David offered. That's the place where Abraham so clearly prefigured, you, O father, sacrificing your son, our Savior, the Lord Jesus. It's from that very same piece of rock that Golgotha was hewn and you, Lord Jesus, were cruelly crucified in a rock quarry. by the road to Damascus 2,000 years ago. Thank you, O Father, that you wrote a letter of love in blood on a wooden cross outside the gates of Jerusalem. And thank you that you reminded us of your redemption. And all of your prophecies point to your people getting back that spot and building their temple, and you returning to rescue them at the end of their troubles. Until that time, our heart's prayer is, even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus. We believe that you would take us out and reappear in your working with them through the tribulation time. But Lord, until that time, until the time of the Gentiles are completely full, you've left us here to lead men and women and boys and girls to Jesus. And it could be that that which triggers your return is the last one brought to Christ. It could be that in our efforts this week, or next week, or the next week, That last one that you are waiting for to come to Christ will be saved. And you will take us out of here, and you will return to your work with your people Israel. Until that moment, we say even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus. Looking at your word, we're so encouraged that you keep your promises. You'll keep them to us tonight and tomorrow. And until you come or call, give us great boldness. Labor for the Master from the dawn till setting sun. And let us talk of all of your blessings and be a blessing to one another. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen. And God bless you as you go.