End TIMES 3

Pastor Sam Chess

Grace Emmanuel Church

Racing toward End Times_3

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I. Ten Steps in God’s Prophetic Roadmap for the Future…

Step #1. God picked His chosen people

Step #2. God presented them a promised

Step #3. God proceeded to settle them in their land

Step #4. God promised to judge them if they broke covenant with Him

Step #5. God prophesied to scatter them if they worshipped idols

Step #1. God picked His _______________

Step #2. God presented them a ____________________

Step #3. God proceeded to __________________ them in their land

Step #4. God promised to _______________ them if they broke covenant with Him

Step #5. God prophesied to _____________ them if they worshipped idols

Step #1. God ____________ His _______________

Step #2. God ______________ them a ____________________

Step #3. God _____________ to __________________ them in their land

Step #4. God ____________ to_____________ them if they broke covenant with Him

Step #5. God ____________ to _____________ them if they worshipped idols

Deuteronomy 28:64 Then the LORD will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods—gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known.

The first five steps we tend to remember from Sunday School Bible stories… the next five steps tend to be talked about less…understood less…

Step #6. God promised a curse on His chosen people as they wandered the world

The first five steps we tend to remember from Sunday School Bible stories… the next five steps tend to be talked about less…understood less…

Step #6. God promised a curse on His chosen people as they wandered the world

Jeremiah 29:18 I will pursue them with the sword, famine and plague and will make them abhorrent to all the kingdoms of the earth and an object of cursing and horror, of scorn and reproach, among all the nations where I drive them.

Step #7. God promised to chasten His people until He restored them to Himself

Jeremiah 24:9 I will make them abhorrent and an offense to all the kingdoms of the earth, a reproach and a byword, an object of ridicule and cursing, wherever I banish them. (NIV)

These two steps don’t make good Sunday School stories… I handed out a ten page history lesson on Wednesday evening that was shocking…almost nauseating… Let me give you the two minute recap…

In the years after Jesus died, rose from the dead, and ascended back to heaven the militant Jewish Zealots, like Simon, Jesus disciple, became more aggressive against the Romans… assassinating them, attacking their soldiers…finally the Emperor got sick of it and decided to wipe them out… Thousand and thousands of Jews were rounded up across the Roman empire and exterminated. The final battle came just forty years after Jesus, when General Titus… after slaughtering ten of thousands on his way to Jerusalem… surrounded the city and squeezed…. for weeks until people were starving by the thousands… bodies stacked up.. .too many to bury. As he would take another part of the town he would slaughter everyone… until finally he had, literally, squeezed the life out of the town knocking down every single building, killing one million people and taking 100,000 people back to Rome to be used as human bait against wild animals in the circus. This is what Jesus was crying about when he entered Jerusalem before his death. Remember “Jesus wept”?... This is why… he saw this coming.

Over the next hundred years many Jews continued to be rounded up and killed. All were forbidden from practicing circumcision, reading the Torah, eating unleavened bread at Passover, etc.

A temple dedicated to the Roman god Jupiter is erected on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. A temple to the Roman god Venus is built over Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified.

Jews and Christian are, both, being persecuted until Constantine “is converted” and makes Christianity legal, 300 years after Jesus…but as the Christians gain more rights the Jews lose even more. Now they are branded as the “Jesus killers”… something that stays with them right through Hitler and even today.

Over the next thousand years everything is blamed on the Jews. Hundreds of thousands are killed across the world. Jews are made to wear a yellow patch…something Hitler picked up again 70 years ago… Christians in the Crusades took out as many Jews as they did Muslims with the motto: "Christ-killers, embrace the Cross or die!"

When the “black death plague” came in the mid 1300’s… who did everyone believe had clearly had poisoned the water? _____________________

Over the next five hundred years… hundreds of thousands more are hunted down and killed in every country… In the 1930’s Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf: "Today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."

Hitler didn’t care a hoot about the Almighty Creator, and while he was fulfilling prophesy… he definitely wasn’t fighting for the work of the Lord.

Step #8. God promised to preserve His chosen people from annihilation.

Jeremiah 30:11 "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.

There is a really important principle here. Do you remember a story in the Bible where a powerful ruler sets out to wipe the Jews off the face of the earth? (An OT Hitler)

It was the Persian Empire… there were about 100 million people in the empire and 15 million of them were Jews. The king was Xerxes and in 479BC… he chose a queen named _____________? Esther!

The Persian Empire was huge; it stretched from Greece to Afghanistan, and from Egypt to India. Inside it was tiny Israel where a few Jews had returned to rebuild the city and temple… but millions more were scattered across the kingdom.

One evil guy, (and I mean that because as we discussed last week… God’s enemy…satan…is behind this frantic need to wipe out God’s chosen people.) One evil guy named ______________ Haman…convinces the king to sign a death warrant for all 15 million Jews. The plo…t is stopped by a little Jewish guy named Mordecai and a Jewish Queen named Esther.

Here’s the point: Where is the Persian Empire now? ______________________

Every powerful kingdom that has ever come against the Jews has sooner or later ceased to exist!

J. Vernon McGee: “The Jews have attended the funeral of every one of the nations that tried to exterminate them!

Here’s the list:

Amalekites 1500 BC

Canaanites 1400-1300 BC

Philistines 1200-1000 BC

Syrians 1000-800 BC

Assyrians 800-700 BC

Babylonians 700-600 BC

Persians 600-300 BC

Greeks 300 BC - 100 BC

Romans 100 BC - 400 AD

Europeans, Russians, Muslims, 400 AD+++

God will defeat His enemies whoever they may be! Every enemy that has ever tried to destroy Israel has been destroyed. ( right from…)“I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you” was/is God’s promise to Israel (Gen. 12:3, NKJV),

God takes His covenant promises seriously… even if the nations of the world ignore them…This doesn’t mean that God approves everything Israel has done or will do, but it does mean that God doesn’t approve of anyone who tries to destroy His chosen people. Whether it’s Pharaoh in Egypt, Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon, Haman/Xerxes in Persia, or Hitler in Germany, or Achmadinajad in Iran….

The enemy of the Jews is the enemy of Almighty God and they will not succeed.

As a sidebar here… The Amalekites were the people Joshua defeated when Aaron and Hur held up Moses arms…(remember that?) God told Moses to write in Deut. That the Amalekites would be completely destroyed because of how they treated his people…Saul later had another shot at them and God told him to wipe them out completely or they would be trouble later on. Saul disobeyed and kept some alive… He lost his crown because of that disobedience… worse than that… Haman who tried to wipe out the Jews in Esther’s day was a descendant of the Amalekites… (Don’t imagine that there is not a bigger power at work here than just a bunch of human pawns.)

When we look at human history we are awed by these huge world powers that take over the world…but history shows that in a relatively short period of time they are deflated and snuffed out. Remember… to God… a day is like a thousand years so, all, this history we are talking about is less than a week on God’s calendar! God was completely unimpressed with Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon or Hitler in Germany. They showed up on God’s radar and in the snap of his fingers…they were gone!

See…They made one really bad mistake… they mistreated God’s chosen people!

If you, or someone you know is one of those people who hates Jews… that is a dangerous attitude… since God loves Jews. Having an attitude exactly opposite of God’s… has caused the destruction of whole civilizations!

A.W. Tozer compared God’s sovereign plans to an ocean liner, leaving New York City, bound for England. The people on board the ship are free to do as they please, but they aren’t free to change the course of the ship. You may have a group of them over in the corner having a food fight… but the ship plows on toward its prearranged destination.

The guy who throws a pie in the other guys face thinks he is changing the course of history… but a wave comes along….sweeps him over the side… and the ship steams on!

This ship of history is headed somewhere and it is going to end up exactly where God prophetically says it’s going to end up…and all the arrogant dictators in the world are not going to change that!…

Let me show you something…I hesitated to bring this up in a Sunday sermon …but it will interest you all. . An attorney compiled this list of US interactions with Israel and correlated them with major events in the 1990’s. You may think this guy is crazy… you may think I’m crazy for even showing it to you… but here goes…

1) October 30, 1991: President George Bush 1, opens the Madrid Conference with an initiative for a Middle East peace plan involving Israel's land. On the same day, an extremely rare storm forms off the coast of Nova Scotia. (eventually called "The Perfect Storm," ) Record-setting 100-foot waves form at sea and pound the New England Coast, even causing heavy damage to President Bush's home in Kennebunkport, Maine.

2) August 23, 1992: The Madrid Conference moves to Washington D.C. and the peace talks resume, lasting four days. On that same day, Hurricane Andrew -- the worst natural disaster ever to hit America until Katrina -- leaves 180,000 homeless in Florida.

3) January 16, 1994: President Clinton meets with Syria's President Hafez el-Assad in Geneva. They talk about a peace agreement with Israel that includes giving up the Golan Heights. At the end of that day at exactly 730 PM Geneva time (430AM in LA), a powerful 6.9 earthquake rocks Southern California. This quake, centered in Northridge, is the second most destructive natural disaster to hit the United States, behind Hurricane Andrew.

4) March 1 to April 1997: The combination of PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat touring America and Clinton rebuking Israel for not giving away her land for peace coincide with some of the worst tornadoes and flooding in US history. On the very day Arafat lands in America, powerful tornadoes devastate huge sections of the nation, ripping across Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Kentucky and Tennessee. Arafat's American tour also coincides with the storms in the Dakotas, which result in the worst flooding of this century, in addition to weeks of major storms throughout the Midwest. Arafat finishes his tour and leaves the US and the storms stop. (That’s crazy!!???)

5) January 21, 1998: Netanyahu meets with President Clinton at the White House and is coldly received. Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright refuse to have lunch with him. Shortly afterwards that day, the Monica Lewinsky scandal breaks into the mass media and begins to occupy a major portion of Clinton's time.

6) September 27-28, 1998: Secretary of State Madeleine Albright works on the final details of an agreement in which Israel will give up 13 percent of Yesha. (salvation: agricultural land in southern Israel) The same day Hurricane Georges slams into the Gulf Coast with 110 mph winds and gusts up to 175. The hurricane hits the coast and stalls. On September 28, Clinton meets with Arafat and Netanyahu at the White House to finalize the land deal. Later, Arafat addresses the United Nations about declaring an independent Palestinian state by May 1999, while Hurricane Georges pounds the Gulf Coast causing $1 billion in damage. At the exact time Arafat departs the US the storm begins to dissipate. (That’s nuts!??)

7) October 15-22, 1998: On October 15, 1998, Yasser Arafat and Benjamin Netanyahu meet at the Wye River Plantation in Maryland, to continue the talks which ended on September 28. The talks are scheduled to last five days with the focus on Israel giving up land. The talks are extended and conclude on October 23. On October 17, awesome rains and tornadoes hit southern Texas. The San Antonio area is deluged with 20 inches of rain in one day. The rains and floods in Texas continue until October 22 and then subside. The floods ravage 25 percent of Texas and leave over one billion dollars in damage. On October 21, Clinton declares this section of Texas a major disaster area.

8) May 3, 1999: This is the same day in Israel that Yasser Arafat is scheduled to declare a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as the capital. The declaration is postponed to December 1999 at the request of President Clinton, whose letter to Arafat encourages him for his "aspirations for his own land." He also writes that the Palestinians have a right to "determine their own future on their own land," and that they deserve to "live free, today, tomorrow and forever." That same day, starting at 4:47 pm CDT, the most powerful tornado storm system ever to hit the United States sweeps across Oklahoma and Kansas. The winds are clocked at 316 mph the fastest wind speed ever recorded.

Pastor… you are crazy for even reading that stuff…OK…I don’t know that any of that stuff is actually correlated …but here’s what I do know…

Genesis 12:2-3 I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others. ³ I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.” Genesis 13:15 All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. (NLT)

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Step # 9. God promised to re-gather His chosen people back into the Promised Land.

Isaiah 11:11, 12 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set His hand again the second time to recover the remnant of His people, which shall be left, . . . and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth (NLT)

That prophecy was fulfilled in the rebirth of Israel in her Promised Land. It happened at last in 1948, nearly 1900 years after the final “Diaspora” at the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 by the Roman armies of Titus.

Almost 100 countries are represented in Israel today-from one end of the earth to the other… Why???

Jeremiah 31:8-12 See, I will bring them from the land of the north and gather them from the ends of the earth. Among them will be the blind and the lame, expectant mothers and women in labor; a great throng will return. 9 They will come with weeping; they will pray as I bring them back. I will lead them beside streams of water on a level path where they will not stumble, because I am Israel’s father, and Ephraim is my firstborn son. 10 Hear the word of the LORD, O nations; proclaim it in distant coastlands: He who scattered Israel will gather them and will watch over his flock like a shepherd.

Here’s the thing… Jesus, himself, would give little prophetic snippets along the way that mean a lot more when we look at them in this context: For instance…he said:

Luke 21:24 They will be killed by the sword or sent away as captives to all the nations of the world. And Jerusalem will be trampled down by the Gentiles until the period of the Gentiles comes to an end. (NLT)

Based on that Scripture… when Jerusalem stops being trampled down by the Gentiles we have entered a new era of prophesy… When did this new era begin? _____ 1948! The Jews, now, are completely in control of Jerusalem, except for the Temple Mount… which they have allowed the Arabs to control. Obviously they could take control of the Temple Mount in 10 minutes if they choose.

So for the last 61 years the period of the Gentiles has either come to an end… or is in the process of shuddering to an end…

When that transition is fully upon us… you who have studied your Bible to any degree, instinctively, know that the period of End Times will have begun. Will that be tomorrow, or next year…or 10 years from now? I don’t know! I very much doubt it will be 200 or 500 years from now…probably sooner rather than later…

I plucked verse 24 out of Luke 21… What it says around that is quite shocking…

Luke 21:1 8 And when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then you will know that the time of its destruction has arrived…. ²⁵ “And there will be strange signs in the sun, moon, and stars. And here on earth the nations will be in turmoil, perplexed by the roaring seas and strange tides. ²⁶ People will be terrified at what they see coming upon the earth, for the powers in the heavens will be shaken. ²⁷ Then everyone will see the Son of Man coming on a cloud with power and great glory^] ²⁸ So when all these things begin to happen, stand and look up, for your salvation is near!”

²⁹ Then he gave them this illustration: “Notice the fig tree, or any other tree. ³⁰ When the leaves come out, you know without being told that summer is near. ³¹ In the same way, when you see all these things taking place, you can know that the Kingdom of God is near. ³² I tell you the truth, this generation will not pass from the scene until all these things have taken place.

I’ve had some say in the last two weeks… I get scared when you talk like this… As believers… you don’t need to be afraid… One group that gets God’s undivided attention, far more, now, than his chosen people…is the church, His bride… believers like you and me. If God is going to so much trouble to protect Jews in the end times… imagine how much more effort he is going to spend to protect those who’ve accepted his gift of salvation.

The book of Revelation repeatedly calls what God is going to pour out on the earth

in the end times… The wrath of God… (11x)

Revelation 6:17 For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”

Throughout the New Testament the “wrath of God” is reserved for unbelievers…

John 3:36 He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”

Romans 2:5 But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God,

We are repeatedly told that the believer is not a target of God’s wrath…

Romans 5:9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.

1 Thessalonians 1:10 and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.

1 Thessalonians 5:9 For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,

If you have not made preparations by asking this coming King of the Universe to forgive your sin and accept him into your life as your Lord… you are not prepared for what is coming ahead…

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