Jerusalem, the city of gold. A city long caught in the fire of conflict. Twice destroyed, besieged 23 times, captured 44, attacked 52 times. Yet it stands. All right, so we're talking about Israel in the end times. This is a two-part series. We did this last Sunday as well. We know that God has promised Israel to be regathered for the final end times events. We are in biblical times. We are in times of the Bible actually being, the Bible's prophecies actually being fulfilled. I was at the embassy. of Israel to the United States in Washington, D.C. on Friday. And we were invited to a special session there. We got to hear from a really neat author, Oz Guinness, if you know him. We were able to be reminded of the miracle of Israel. It is a miracle that they should not exist. They have been destroyed and led captive twice. Babylonians did it, the Assyrians too, and then the Romans. They should not exist, but they do, folks, they do, by a miracle. On May 14th, 1948, and this is the 77th anniversary of the independence of Israel. Now, they're already celebrating this in Israel because they go by the Jewish calendar, but right now, we are remembering 77 years Never has the world been so primed for the end times as of right now. We actually have an evangelical, a Baptist pastor that is now the ambassador of the United States to Israel, Mike Huckabee. This is unbelievable. And he is more pro-Jew than the Jewish people are. He says, this is your land, don't give it away, don't divide it. Oh my goodness, so last time we talked about a seven year Gaza ceasefire proposal. Now I haven't seen anything more on that and I'm guessing that, well I don't know, I don't know what that's gonna all end up being, but still watch the news on this, okay? We also talked about the length of the tribulation, we're gonna talk about that a little more today. We talked about the fact that Israel is forever, the United States is not. Whoa, you thought like, we're the superpower, we're the, no. I mean, we're in decline. We might have a bit of a reprieve right now, but we are gonna slide, I think, into oblivion. I really do. Israel will exist. I'm more worried about us than Israel. We talked about the regathering prophecies, and then we talked about the new pope and one world religion. I couldn't believe this headline. This was just yesterday when I saw this. They've actually selected a new pope. I thought it was gonna be this week sometime, but I guess they already did. And this shocked me when I saw this. I just couldn't really believe it. You know, President Trump posted that. Somebody said, hey, would you like to be the new pope? He's like, yeah, I'd love to. I'm like, how do you say things like that? He's a button pusher. Man, he likes to push buttons. Oh my goodness, anyways. I'm surprised Tom Murray didn't send that to me. Did he send that to any of you? Tom Murray is our meme expert. And I finally blocked him, as I said. Don't tell him I blocked him. Now this is honestly pretty scary. This happened this morning. A few hours ago, a Houthi rocket got through. We have, there's, Israel has, they called Iron Dome, which is mainly for closer rockets from like Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza. Then they have the higher tiers, they have Arrow, they have the THAAD system from the United States. They missed this Houthi rocket incoming, and it's really an Iranian rocket, let's just call it for what it is. Last week we talked about the port blowing up. That was rocket, solid rocket fuel, ingredients for that for some of these rockets that are coming into Israel. But one made it through, and the scary thing is, it happened at Ben Gurion Airport. Now, this is gonna be a tough thing to get you convinced to go to Israel on our next Israel trip. And I'm positive. Airlines have already canceled flights. Lufthansa canceled and some other ones. Pray that they don't pull out of Israel again. They've already done this with COVID. They've already done this a couple times with this Gaza conflict. And if airlines start pulling out, it's so hard to get them to resume. But this is dangerous. A missile hit while planes were coming and going. in Israel. Now, somehow, someway, God protected Israel, and there was only minor injuries. But if you see the video, there's mud. You see all of that, it's just debris that's flying up from this incredible impact. There's mud just all over the place, and it hit an orange grove where it's kind of muddy ground. By the way, the Shia, Militant group Houthis their battle cry is death to America death to Israel That's why this is so connected That's why we need to fight back curse the Jews and victory to Islam is their cry and that is I think also the cry of the Iranian leadership not the people but the leadership and Now we talked about the end times charts. Here's the one we call Armageddon's Dawn. This is a chart about revelation. The next event on the prophetic calendar is the rapture of the church when Jesus comes in the air for the church, ending the church age. Then there will be a seven-year peace treaty followed by a seven-year tribulation period that is brought forth by the Antichrist. It'll be a promise of peace, but it'll devolve quickly into bloodshed, war, famine, pestilence, and then God's judgments, the steel judgments, the trumpet judgments, and the bowl judgments. A very middle of the tribulation is significant. And we'll talk about that again today. And then Jesus comes back for the second coming, the glorious appearing where Christ returns to the earth, the battle of Armageddon and so on and so forth will happen. He'll set up a thousand year reign, the line of the lamb lay down together, Satan is bound. And then there's a final rebellion on the earth, a final judgment and eternity in hell and those that are redeemed, a new heaven and a new earth and the remade earth, heaven will actually come down to earth. It's incredible. Then we talked about Daniel. We have a prophecy chart called Deciphering Daniel. You can get all of these, I think, out in our bookstore. And we have Daniel's prophecy of the statue when Nebuchadnezzar dreamed a dream. And we found the interpretation leading to the major world empires of Babylon, the Medes and Persians, the Greek Empire, and the Romans. And we also found there's a time gap from the end of the Roman Empire until the rapture Which is a time gap of uncertain amount of years. It's been over 2 000 years. I think this is about to restart the the clock of daniel chapter 9 the 70 weeks of daniel the last week is left and that's the revised roman empire and then jesus comes back a giant rock Smashing the foot of the statue it goes into billions of little pieces and floats away. That's the gentile oppression man's attempt to govern apart from god And then we have the reign of Christ. We get to rule and reign with Israel as they will have been saved. So again, this is incredible stuff, but here's a question. When will the temple be rebuilt? And we talked about halfway through the tribulation, there is going to be a temple in Jerusalem. If you go to Jerusalem today, what you see on the Temple Mount is the dome of the rock. It's the gold dome structure. And we know that in the tribulation, the Bible says there will be a temple. We know for sure because it says the temple will be desecrated by the Antichrist. He'll stop the sacrifices. So we know if he's gonna desecrate a temple, there has to be a temple. And there is a call to rebuild the temple today. I'm gonna show you a couple clips from an In Grace series. on rebuilding the Jewish temple, the quest to rebuild the Jewish temple. And when you have a chance, please watch this. Welcome to In Grace, I'm Jim Scudder, Jr. And today we're going to go on a quest to check out the rebuilding of the Jewish temple. Is it possible that the temple will be rebuilt? There are many people here in Israel that want it to happen. Daniel the prophet actually predicts it will happen, so let's go on a journey to examine if the temple can be rebuilt. This will be the 10th heifer, and they believe it will be the one that will usher the coming of Moshiach. So we're just in the Dome of the Rock. Now we're going to go into the Al-Aqsa Mosque. We don't usually get access to go inside these buildings, so this is very special. So they have things like the menorah. They have things ready to go for rebuilding the temple. So give that a watch, it's on our YouTube channel, or you can get the DVD in our store here, either on ingrace.us or in the lobby. And by the way, the DVD version has a lot more than the YouTube version, okay? So the YouTube version's about half the length of the DVD. There's tons of people in Israel that are working hard to rebuild the temple. and it's pretty incredible to me. So I asked the question, are the Jews yearning to rebuild the temple? And they are, and I also want you to watch on this next video. there is a little bit of history of the Temple Mount. You see the Temple Mount there in the background? There's a history of the Temple Mount in this video that we're building with animation, so you can understand why is this such an important place in God's value, in God's, why is everything centered on Israel? Even today, the focal point of the world is on Israel, and there's a reason, and it actually sits right there, right where that golden dome is now. Rabbi Saki Memo was part of the group responsible for bringing the Texas red heifers to Israel. As we stood on the property on the Mount of Olives that had been bought for the red heifer ceremony, I wanted to know what the rebuilding of the temple meant to him. We are in time of redemption. And part of the redemption is to build new buildings, to build new trains, to build new autonomous cars. But the second level is to build a spirituality. Why is this spot so important to God? Well, there's a Jewish tradition that says that this rock is the foundation stone of creation. Many centuries after Abraham, King David captured the city of Jerusalem from the Jebusites. He moved his capital here, and he lived in the fortress of Zion, which he called the City of David. Since the time of the Exodus, the tabernacle was the place of meeting between God and man. David even brought the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem, and he yearned for a permanent place to be built to worship the Creator. While God did not allow David to construct the temple because he was a man of war, David did prepare the materials and purchased the threshing floor from Arunah, the same location where Abraham offered Isaac. Here, Solomon would build an amazingly beautiful temple. But sadly, that temple would be destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. After the Jewish Babylonian captivity, Zerubbabel would rebuild the Jewish temple, but much less grand than Solomon's. Later, King Herod the Great greatly expanded the temple mount platform and significantly enhanced the temple itself. This was the temple that Jesus frequented, and it was the temple that he predicted would be destroyed. There is still evidence of Solomon's and Herod's incredible feats of engineering, with massive stones making up the retaining wall still standing to this day. So when you go to Israel, you can actually see that massive, massive retaining wall that Herod put in place to make this incredibly large, flat area that used to be kind of a mountain, Mount Moriah, but he put in these walls and filled it in, and now it is this big 18-football field area that we go up on the Temple Mount, and it's amazing. So here's a question. When will the antichrist be revealed? If he's gonna desecrate the temple, Is he alive today? If he's gonna do this seven-year peace treaty, is he alive today? And also, will the rebuilding the temple be part of the negotiation of this peace treaty? I feel it will. I feel Israel should not give up any land. I think they should actually administer Gaza and administer Judea and Samaria. I think the two-state solution is a bust, and what proves that is that Israel foolishly gave Gaza back to the Palestinians 20 years ago, and they spent 20 years taking billions of our dollars, of the world's dollars, not building structures that will bless and benefit the Palestinian people, but building rockets and tunnels and preparation for war. And so if we wanna see that again, then yeah, give Gaza up again. You say, well, how can they rule? The Arabs that live in Israel, are blessed by the Jewish people because the Jewish people are pretty amazing at running societies. If you look at who would be the best people group to administrate the Holy Land, Israel's proven themselves. They shouldn't exist, but they do. And so I feel like don't divide the land, but they probably still will. And part of the negotiation, in my opinion, is going to be giving up east jerusalem and that's going to give somehow give permission for the jewish people to uh to rebuild the temple now when is this antichrist going to be revealed well here's here's a serious headline that i saw this week um and uh it's the muslim the muslim messiah is here and he is coming to replace the pope Now, I don't think this story actually has legs, but it is an actual story. There is an Egyptian-American, Abdullah Hashim, that is the founder of the Ahmadi religion of peace and light. Now, they only have like 7,000 adherents. It's not a big deal. But he is claiming to be the living successor of both Muhammad and Jesus. And his sermons, they say, bring a divine message to the global Christian community. He also claims to be the successor of Simon Peter, and the Catholics believe Simon Peter was the first pope, and so that this Muslim messiah would be the true legitimate pope. He also claims to be the Mahdi, the Muslim messiah. So, is he the Antichrist? I rather doubt it, but I'll just tell you this, it will probably be someone that will have broad appeal. You say, well, Is it possible that he would not be Jewish? Because it seems like the Jewish people are accepting of him. Are they accepting him as Messiah? Not necessarily, and they will definitely reject him once he sets himself up to be worshiped in the temple, and that's where Israel, God says, I'm gonna protect you. It seems like that's when Israel gets saved as a nation, when they realize that he is not who they thought he would be. So maybe he has, some Jewish descendancy, maybe he has some Middle Eastern or Arab, who knows? Maybe he's got some Western European blood, maybe he's got some Indian or African, we don't know, but somehow the whole world will coalesce to get behind a person that's gonna be seemingly brilliant, very smooth, coming out of nowhere. I've always believed that because the devil doesn't know when Jesus is coming back and when the rapture is gonna happen He's always had someone in the wings ready to go. So again, I don't believe it is this man But I do believe that there is an Antichrist alive today that could be the man of sin that brings in the Tribulation period. Why is the focus of the Tribulation on Israel? Well, we go to the Bible in Daniel 9, and we talked a little bit about some verses, 27 of Daniel 9 last time. But let's look a few verses earlier at Daniel 9.24. 70 weeks, and we've already decided that each of those weeks is seven years, so we have 70 times seven. 490 years are determined upon thy people. If this is God speaking to Daniel, who are Daniel's people? Okay, the Jewish people, Israel, okay? So these 490 years are upon Israel. and upon thy holy city. Where is the holy city? What is that? It's Jerusalem, okay? And then it gives us six things that will happen in Israel, in Jerusalem, and basically upon the Jewish people. To finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make reconciliation for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, which again, some of these things have been accomplished by the death and resurrection of Jesus, but this hasn't all happened yet. So there's pieces of this in the 483 years that have occurred, namely Jesus, the Messiah coming and dying and rising again, but everlasting righteousness is not here right now. Read the newspaper. We live in a world that's full of pain and sin and cancer, right? So this would be part of the 70 weeks, the 490 years. And then to seal up the vision of prophecy, basically to accomplish everything the Bible has to say that is gonna be accomplished. Remember, the Bible was a quarter prophecy when written, and there's still about a third of those prophecies yet to be fulfilled. It'll be the culmination, the fulfilling of all the prophecies. And that's the fifth thing, and then the sixth is to anoint the most holy, and of course, we know Jesus will sit on the throne of David. So half of these things that were accomplished in the first 483 years, the other three will be accomplished in the last week, the last seven years of the tribulation. Now, somebody has said, hey, what about Ezekiel 37? What about the Valley of Dry Bones? You've heard about that song, right? Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones. You know that song, right? I'm gonna have a knee procedure and they're gonna make sure my knee is connected to my something, okay? They're gonna be like, oh, it's backwards. That's why you're having trouble. your knees on backwards, so. Ezekiel 37 talks about this valley of dry bones. Ezekiel has this vision, the Spirit of the Lord carries him into this valley, which is full of dry bones. And every time I see an image of the Holocaust and you just see piles of skeletal bodies, this is what I think of, Ezekiel's prophecies. And then it talks about, Lord, going on into the prophecy, what is this? And then the prophecy is, speak to these bones. And then the bones start to connect, and they start to form into bodies, and then the bones, the skeletons start to get flesh and muscles and everything. But then Ezekiel is told that they don't have life, they don't have breath. I think that's where we're at today. If this is Israel, which I'm convinced it is, God has regathered these dry bones from all over the countries, have brought them together into a land where they are a people again. But nationally, they don't have the spirit of God. There are many Jewish people that do believe in Jesus as the Messiah, Yeshua Habesha, but there are many that don't. And but one day the Bible says, the nation will be saved. So this is a partial fulfillment, if you read Ezekiel 37, of the regathering of Israel. They're there today. That's why I say the end times can happen tomorrow. Nothing has to happen next for the rapture, the taking away of the church, and then the end times, that 70th week of Daniel resumes. When will Israel be saved nationally? Everything I read about happens right in the middle of the tribulation, okay? In Ezekiel 20, 34, it says, I will bring you out from the people and gather you out from the countries wherein you are scattered with a mighty hand and with a stretched out arm with fury poured out, 35, and I will bring you into the wilderness of the people. Okay, so Israel is regathered. They're still coming back today, making aliyah, making assent to Israel, assent to Jerusalem. So they're back together. And then he says, I'm gonna bring you into the wilderness. So halfway through the tribulation, the Bible says the Antichrist will blaspheme, desecrate the temple, stop the sacrifices. And it says that the Jewish people will be aware that he is not the man of peace. He's not the man of promise. He's in no way any type of messianic figure. And then he's gonna bring Israel, he says, flee into the wilderness, and I'll give you those verses in a second. And he said, like I pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness of Egypt, so I will plead with you, saith the Lord God. The Lord wants his people to trust in him, not in their military, not in their wisdom, not in their start-up nation status. It's an amazing country and amazing people. but don't trust in that. Trust in the one true God and the Savior that has come, the Messiah. And the Jewish people that want to rebuild the temple, they say, well, when will the temple be rebuilt? Many of them will say, when the Messiah comes. So that's why it's interesting that the Savior might be the one that they look at as the one that allows them to rebuild the third temple. Why is the tribulation's midpoint so significant? Daniel 12, seven, and also Daniel 7, 25, use an interesting term. It says for a time, times and half, or half a time. What does that mean in Daniel 12, Daniel seven? And also that same phraseology is used in Revelation 12, 14, that God is going to bring this woman into the wilderness. If you do the study on that, the woman is Israel, And God's going to bring them out halfway through the tribulation into the wilderness. Some people think it's Petra and Jordan. I kind of feel like that is logical. Satan's going to try to annihilate them. God's going to protect them. And in that protection, I believe he's going to be pleading with them and showing himself to them that, hey, I am the Messiah. and into her place, and she is nourished for a time, times, and half a time." There it is again. It's in Daniel and Revelation, thousands of years apart. One's in Greek and one's in Hebrew. What does that mean? Well, I think it's pretty simple. Time, times, and half a time. A time is a year, times is two years, and half a time is half a year. If you have two plus one plus one half, what do you have? Thank you, three and a half. You guys are so smart. Now, why is that three and a half time period so important? Because we know that halfway through a seven-year tribulation is three and a half years, right? Daniel 9, 27, 1 Thessalonians 2, the Antichrist boasting and setting himself up to be worshiped. And then we also, in Revelation 12, 6, read about 1,260 days. How many years is 1,260 days? If you have the lunar calendar, the prophetic calendar, the Jewish calendar, they're 30 day months, and you have 30 times 12 times 3.5, you have 1,260. It's again, all leading up to a seven-year tribulation period cut in half by the Antichrist desecrating the temple. And then you also have in Revelation 13, five, it says actually 42 months, which is, you math geniuses out there, three and a half years. So the timing is three and a half years, halfway through from the peace, seven-year peace treaty, halfway through that will be all of these things happening. How will God save Israel during the tribulation? Now look at these verses, Revelation 12. We already read about God bringing them into the wilderness, but here's the setup. There appeared a great wonder in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of 12 stars. Does that sound like Joseph's dream a little bit? Does this sound like the 12 tribes? This woman? And there's imagery, by the way, found in Daniel too. And she being with child, cry, travailing in birth and pain to be delivered. We know Rachel travailed in birth and died in birth, and her son, Benjamin, was born, son of my right hand. She said, no, I want his name to be Ben-Onai, which is son of my sorrow. Jesus comes, born of Mary in the same place. She's in travail in Bethlehem, and she has a child, a male child, who is both son of my sorrow, he came to die, son of my right hand, he came to reign. This is unbelievable, right? So she's with child, she's prevailing in birth to be delivered. And there appeared another wonder in heaven. Behold, a great red dragon. This is the imagery we read about in Revelation about the devil. The devil himself, Lucifer, Satan, having seven heads and 10 horns and seven crowns on his head. His tail drew a third of the stars of heaven. I've always interpreted that as when he fell, he brought a third of the angels. So however many angels there were, a third of them are demons. No, two thirds are righteous angels. And did cast them to earth and the dragon stood before the woman. So Satan can read, Satan knew the scripture, Satan knew the prophecy. He was ready 483 prophetic years after the decree to rebuild Jerusalem to devour the Messiah. And that's exactly what Herod said, I want to worship this child, this king that you find, to the Magi. Come back and tell me where you found them. No, he didn't. He wanted to annihilate the Messiah, this dragon. I'm certain Herod was probably possessed by a demon. And this dragon stood before the woman, was ready to be delivered, to devour her child. Who is this? This is Jesus. And did that happen? No, because God always wins. God always wins. She brought forth a man-child who was to rule all the nations. How do we know this is Jesus? There it is. We know Jesus is gonna rule on the throne of David for a thousand years and beyond with a rod of iron. He will be a righteous, good, just dictator. You know that's the best government you can have? Because, now I'm not saying we should have a king or a dictator. I'm not saying that. But if you had a perfect righteous dictator, talk about efficiency. You don't have to go through all these different things. You say it, it happens. And if you're righteous, everything that you say will be for the good of the people, right? Unless they're rebelling. So this is Jesus, her child was caught up unto God, the ascension. Okay, he's coming back. And then the woman flees to the wilderness where she had a place prepared of God. And here's that 1,260 days. And that's the three and a half years, the second half of the tribulation period. And again, that's all in this section right here of our Daniel chart. We have the time of Jacob's troubles divided by the Antichrist, desecration of the temple, and the coming of Jesus back to earth in the second coming. Now, let's wrap this up, and I love Bible prophecy. I love teaching it, and there's so many scriptures. Most pastors won't touch this. Every time I teach on it, people come up to me like, wow, I've never heard this taught. Well, we're not teaching it anymore, because pastors are afraid, because there's different views. By the way, this is eschatology. I believe what I'm teaching you is exactly biblical as far as timing, but there's other views, okay? We don't have to break fellowship. This isn't like salvation stuff. But it all seems to fit the way that we understand that Jesus is going to rapture the church before the tribulation, the pre-tribulational rapture, and that Jesus is going to come back to the earth, the second coming, before the millennium, which is called pre-millennialism. Zechariah 12.10, I will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and supplications. They This is Israel, shall look upon me whom they have pierced. This is unique. They will mourn for him as one mourneth for his only son, shall be a bitterness as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn. I interpret this as Israel as a nation will suddenly realize that Yeshua was the Messiah. and they were complicit in him being crucified. I'm not saying they're to blame, and we should never say they're to blame, because that's wrong, because I'm to blame. I'm to blame. My sin nailed Jesus to the cross, okay? But they did reject him nationally as the Messiah when he was on trial before Pilate. And then John 19 says, when Jesus was dying on the cross, John connected the Zechariah 12.10 prophecy with Jesus being pierced. Remember, they came to Jesus and they didn't break his legs. They broke the legs of the two thieves because you would die quicker by asphyxiation if you couldn't lift yourself up. So instead of breaking his legs, they pierced him. Okay? That's what the Bible said. That is what Scripture said. And actually, in Revelation, Jesus, when he comes in the clouds, it says they also which pierced him. There's that same analogy. when he returns. And Isaiah 53 predicted, he was wounded. That word means to pierce. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him. And with his stripes, we are healed spiritually. Folks, we've all gone astray. We've all failed, we've all fallen, Jew and Gentile alike. There's coming a day when the king, a righteous king, will rule and reign. Until he comes, we get to be his representatives. We can be his hands and his feet and his mouth on this earth. We can do things that he has called us to do and work together to achieve, getting the gospel out there while we still have daylight, because the night is coming. but working for the Lord won't save you. What saves you is putting your trust in the Lord. See, the Bible says that we're sinners and we can't save ourselves. Let this be sin and let this be all of us. We have sinned, we've fallen short of the glory of God. Jesus, my left hand is on you. all of us. My wallet is sin. Jesus, my right hand was sinless, but he came and I take the wallet out of my left hand by the right hand. Jesus came and died for our sins and rose again. And now he's offering eternal life if you'll just believe in him. This is good news. This is great news. One day, the nation of Israel will recognize Jesus is the Messiah, is the promised Savior, and they will believe, and they will be saved, and God will protect them. All the end times are focused on Israel. That's why today I wanna stand with Israel. I wanna bless Israel. I wanna do everything I can, and it's taking my time. I've gotta go back to Washington tomorrow and Tuesday. There's a big rabbi, pastor, advocacy day. There's 300 of us that are gonna go to all the offices in Congress and our senators. If Durbin will even see me, I know he's retiring, or Duckworth or whoever. We're gonna go advocate for Israel, so pray for that. I'm gonna spend my time saying we love Israel, we support Israel because they gave us our Messiah. And I wanna share that message with everybody, to the Jew and to the Gentile. Jesus died for your sins and rose again. If you'll believe in him, you'll be saved, not just for today, but forever.