HOW TO WATCH THE NEWS PROPHETICALLY: EZEKIEL 37-39 IS GOD'S PLAN FOR--THE BATTLE OF JERUSALEM

let's open our bibles to luke chapter 21. to understand ezekiel 36 37 38-39 you have to understand that jesus believed and taught and predicated his teaching on the reality that israel had a prophetic future a part of god's future plan that was written about majorly in the prophets so this is what jesus was saying after he talks about what we would consider to be the the events that are around the tribulation but in luke 21 he talks about jerusalem being destroyed verse 20 is the destruction of jerusalem and then it says 21 let those who are in judea flee and then look look what it says in verse 24 and they will fall by the edge of the sword and be led away captive into all nations and by the way that's what happened a million jews were slaughtered and every other one they could find they sold the romans sold into slavery and jerusalem will be trampled by gentiles now look at this ending until the times of the gentiles are fulfilled when jesus explained to his disciples the future he built everything about the future around the city of jerusalem and he said that that even the the very end is determined by when the trampling of jerusalem by the gentiles is over then you know that god is moving into the next phase well that's what we're going to look at this evening and basically jerusalem god says is the trigger and by the way it's it's had a history of of being a troublesome place no city has been coveted and fought over as much as jerusalem among all the cities of the world no city has been conquered destroyed conquered destroyed conquered destroyed into the dozens of times like jerusalem has and as i said last week there's really no reason jerusalem the city of peace was conquered by the babylonians the macedonians the ptolemies the seleucids the romans the byzantines the persians the arabs the seljuks the crusaders the mongols the mamluks the turks the british the jordanians and that's only some of the conquerors even within that there were subsets who who worked and their names have flooded across the pages of its bloody history and anguish past jerusalem is a sacred city a city that has played a role in history totally out of proportion for either its economy its size or its strategic value it's only because god so forcefully placed his name on that city so this evening i would just love to remind you and i started this last week that jerusalem is god's timer now luke 21 24 you see that god says that after the destruction of jerusalem and that took place i mean very clearly the romans came 80 70 you can look it up it's a huge event in history in fact there's a carving of it in modern-day rome that that titus the general that conquered and and decimated jerusalem inside of this arch of his triumph he has a relief you can go there and stand and look up at the temple treasures being taken out so that is a historic event jesus said that would launch a time period he calls the times of the gentiles so what are the times of the gentiles that that has jerusalem as the center point of all of god's plans well basically the first period of jerusalem's history and and there's a little picture of a little bit of the splendor of what solomon's temple looked like remember david the the wealthiest man on earth he had cornered the gold market he had a million talents of silver in a town of 60 pounds so he had 60 million pounds of silver at 16 ounces a pound that's almost a billion ounces and with silver i don't know what silver is these days but i mean like twelve dollars i mean that's twelve billion dollars cash hard that's not electronic that was real then he had a hundred thousand talents of gold which is six million pounds and then just do the math there and you're talking about just wealth like nobody else had he passes on to solomon so solomon poured it into this most beautiful temple to any god ever created on the planet and of course it became a magnet and in 586 it was destroyed the second period of jewish history is the second temple that's herod's temple that's 40 acres you see in front of you uh that's where uh the the epicenter of all of christ's ministry when he was in jerusalem and then the early church met on the right-hand side that long portico was called solomon's portico uh the cleaning out of the money changers would have been at the kind of the orange roof deal with all the steps going up that is what all the the different times that we're reading about jerusalem in the new testament it was here but as i said in 1870 it was destroyed that brings us to the miracle of what god has done preserving israel all these years through all of the trampling of the gentiles and basically the the trampling of the gentiles which jesus said there would be centered on jerusalem and so let me just give you that that history again the romans centered on there until 3 30 a.d then the the kind of the christian romans the byzantines uh were focused on jerusalem building their monumental structures till 638 when the persians came in that's called the first muslim period and they stayed there till the crusaders bumped him out in 1099 and then the the the later muslim period that's uh the the uh another portion of the the muslims from a different area they were first from persia then they were coming from egypt then finally they end up coming from the turkish period in the time of martin luther there 1517. then the british as a byproduct of world war one took over and kind of ran the place for 31 years currently 1948 the reason 1948 is there is because that's the first time that jerusalem was a nation and we're going to look at that and how that's spoken of in ezekiel but there's another period after the trampling of the gentiles the bible defines the next period as the tribulational period and that's where if you want to turn back to zechariah and you've seen this many times but if you've never marked it in fact someone asked me today they said uh you know would you help me mark these things so that i could you know know how to defend what i believe well this is a good marking time zechariah 14 there's a fourth period in god's plan still future it's the battle of armageddon that will spill over into jerusalem again jerusalem is the center of the the countdown that god has for the world now look what zechariah writes in chapter 14 verse two and uh i took the extra time to print out these verses for you because uh it it's you know it's one thing to say it's nothing to see it and it says this is what god says for i this is the lord god jehovah himself i will gather all the nations against jerusalem now there is no reason why all of the south american and african and north american and asian no reason why they would all want to bother to go against jerusalem but god says i'm going to gather them i'm going to gather all the nations against jerusalem to battle interesting god remember god is watching over his word to make it happen because he said this is what i have written down this is my will and i'm going to watch over it and i'm going to cause the nations all of them to come and the city will be captured the house will be plundered the women will be ravished half the city will be exiled the rest of people will not be cut off from the city that is the tribulational trigger and that event of jerusalem being taken causes the the next two verses chapter 14 verses three and four and the tribulation is when all the nations of the earth turn against the jews and the antichrist is leading that just think of the hatred the vehemence the the anti-semitism of hitler and put that in a man who isn't just kind of spending all the money of germany and pillaging all the loot of europe someone that's running the whole world that's what the antichrist is and so what the lord does in verse 3 of zechariah 14 the lord will go forth and fight against those nations that's the armageddon scenario where the lord jesus christ is is at the front of the huge fan shaped army of heaven where we will be all it says all the saints will be with him so if you're a born-again believer as a born-again believer i will be behind him watching this and it will be a very interesting battle not a shot will be fired he speaks and they're gone he just kills them it's just to me kind of like a neutron bomb you know it's invisible and it just and and it it's terrible you can read uh zechariah what he does it it is like a neutron bomb it says that people's the enemies skin will melt off of them just with the you know radiance of his glory but he will go forth fight against the nations when he fights on the day of battle and in that day and as he's coming you know armageddon the place is actually 70 miles north of jerusalem it's over by it's just kind of to the east of haifa in the megiddo valley but jesus comes sweeping by there wiping out those armies heading to rescue jerusalem and he touches down right here his feet will stand on the mount of olives which is in front of jerusalem so that's the fourth period and then of course last week we talked about the fifth period the millennial and finally the eternal but we're not going to worry about that tonight but let's let's go to ezekiel now chapter 36 because i would like to give you a biblical in fact i heard the wonderful announcement about the new member class coming up and if you went to the new member class one thing you would see is that calvary bible church is historically for 80 years stood for the literal grammatical interpretation of the scriptures which you may have heard called the dispensational view which is predicated on god making a clear distinction between israel the nation and the church as the body of christ and that those two are not to be confounded confused intermingled commingled blended together or replaced by one another and that that is a very clearly and dearly held point of truth but let me show you why you know because many people aren't from that background if you're from presbyterianism methodism lutheranism all the branches of the reformed church or catholicism you were never brought up with that because that historically since saint augustine in the fifth century has been you know it was said that's why luther said kill the jews there's no reason for them you know there's no future for them it's you know too bad for martin luther i mean i'm glad he got everything else right you know and only made that mistake you know most of us make a lot more mistakes than that but what ezekiel says in chapter 36 is this for all the centuries since what we are going to read starting in chapter 36 ezekiel a prophet he was an exiled prophet he actually jerusalem in 586 way back in period one you know most people don't like history and dates and all runs together but just jerusalem the temple was destroyed 586 years before christ nebuchadnezzar you remember you know the fiery furnace and the lion's den daniel and all that nebuchadnezzar the babylonians are the ones that came but they came three times they came in 605 took daniel they came in 597 took ezekiel they came in 586 wiped the place out and freed jeremiah so there's three people you've heard of daniel goes in 605 ezekiel goes in 597 and jeremiah is allowed out of the prison that the israelites kept him in in jerusalem in 586 so that's kind of a span of prophets but ezekiel the one in the middle in 597 was taken to babylon and he writes letters prophetic letters back to the people living in jerusalem and he wrote those letters between in fact his ministry he was born about 623 bc and he died about 560 bc which those you know that's the jewish chronology it doesn't say that in the bible but the jewish people have said that in the encyclopedia judea cup but what he talks about i'm going to show you here never happened in his lifetime never in fact it's never happened for 2600 years in fact ezekiel describes israel as being a valley filled with dry bones kind of think of death valley and think of some 20 mule team you know borax thing going and the mules all die and and all the bones are bleached and just laying out in the desert and that's the picture that ezekiel sees of israel and so that's that's what we're going to look at this evening and this is what the lord says god god is looking over his word to perform it and and basically i i just when i think about this there was nothing for 2600 years to make israel a target of what it talks about in zechariah rome came against jerusalem but all the nations of the world remember we just read that because there was not a nation to come against there was no israel to be the target of a coalition of islamic nations or of all the nations of the world when ezekiel wrote in 600 bc all the way through to what we call the times the gentiles till 1948. by the way that's why 1948 was way back on those slides that's the end of the 2600 years in 1948 israel for the first time in 2600 years returned as a nation there was no israel nation from the time of ezekiel all the way through to 1948 which is only 65 years ago i mean it's amazing to think that for 2600 years the scriptures slumbered along god was watching over his word to perform it and a lot of things happen uh this this is the the basic overview that ezekiel 36 and 37 give a series i'm going to show you these and you can mark them in your bible a series of little little promises that god made for the nation of israel and if you look closely at their history none of those promises came to pass until modern times so i'll go through those with you number one uh the miracle of the rebirth of israel uh ezekiel's bones grew into a living breathing nation in 1948 and for centuries bible teachers had looked at ezekiel 36 and 37 in fact i i collect and i've told you this many times and i'll never forget my oldest commentary that i have on the bible was printed in 1610. now i know there's older ones but still there's oldest one i have and and when i read that and when i look at what people are saying when they looked at if they even bothered to look at ezekiel 36 they said this obviously can't mean israel because there was no israel in the land of israel the israelites were scattered all over i mean they were living in india they were living in in persia they were living all over europe i mean they were the bankers of italy they were the bankers of of central europe they were just everywhere except there now there was a handful there's always been a handful of them that were diehards and and they lived next to the wall and they would scrape away the dirt to try and touch it and pray near it but there was never a nation in fact mark twain went looking for him in the 1860s and 70s and he couldn't find him and he said it was a god forsaken desolate place a swamp he said and it was fit for nothing no human habitation well then as ezekiel's bones grew into a living breathing nation god continued to watch over his word what happened well basically in the late 1800s people started talking about making a place for the jews why because the russians were always having pogroms you know what pilgrims are they would come in and they would drive the jews right off their farms and they would kill them if they could get near them and they would burn everything and they'd throw them somewhere else the crusaders were doing that hundreds of years for the russians they'd just like to pick on the jews and if there was ever a problem in the town you say the jews did it and then you string up a few and and confiscate all their property that's just history in fact there are many many books written on the the succession of pogroms and and many holocausts before hitler but in the late 1800s finally people started saying we ought to make a place for the jews and you know who i are saying it is the british and others along uh those veins of thought and so what they what they did is they they allowed the turkish empire allowed jews to come in and start making little farms but they taxed them heavily and they weren't allowed to be a nation and they just basically made a lot of money off of them but then when hitler struck so savagely and when the world after 1945 and as the life magazine photographers and other european magazines went in and showed the pictures of those emaciated barely alive skeletal jewish people sympathy not love for god but sympathy began to rise in people's hearts and so hitler was actually [Music] kind of like a precipitator of this movement and the incomprehensible carnage caused the world to be moved to do something so in 1948 the league of nations that woodrow wilson and others had so valiantly worked on morphed into 1948 the united nations and in 1948 the united nations kind of is a good will gesture at the behest of the soviet union they're the ones that move for this they're the ones that that thought they were going to have a foothold in the middle east because they thought israel was communistic because they had collective farms and so many and i don't know if you know anything about the makeup of modern israel almost half of all jews living in israel today are from russia just under half in fact 13 of the last 14 prime ministers have been russian immigrant descendants of russian immigrant prime ministers of israel and so russia thought they had an inside in the soviet union and so they prompted in 1948 and the united nations voted and established a homeland for the jews and the nation was named israel and in that short period of time what happened in 1948 was for the first time since nebuchadnezzar's 2600 years ago for the first time in 2600 years there was actually a nation you could attack called israel before that there wasn't it was part of alexander's empire it was part of the roman empire it was part of the seleucid empire it was part of all the different muslim groups it was part of the tug of war between the turks and the british and finally it was the british mandate but then in 1948 britain moved out and the arab nation said let them move out let them make them a nation the day they become a nation and you all know this is history all of the arab league all of the the arab nations began marching and they said we're going to drive every jew into the ocean until they drowned and the combined armies of all the surrounding nations uh you know iraq and syria and egypt and jordan and all of them just started coming into the land the little tiny strip of israel and you all know history it was an unbelievable battle they didn't win the jews they just held off the combined armies of 100 million people and there were only three million of them which was kind of a david and goliath thing so the world you know wondered what was going to happen well 50 plus years passed and and bible scholars were looking at especially chapter 38 and they said 50 years from from 1948 passed and iran never i mean iran was america's ally and the shah of iran and the whole thing until 1979 and then it got a little dicey over there but they never began to be talking about destroying israel until about the last five or six years and now if you do google news searches you can't find a week going by where iran doesn't say something about annihilate exterminate or whatever israel and that's exactly what the bible says the god who watches over his word was waiting and directing the rulers of the world to do his bidding that's why 1948 came now there's hardly any day that doesn't have some new item about israel's annihilation and other nations now i mean syria has started to say it too and hezbollah and the muslim brotherhood that is fighting right now in egypt and all of them say either they're going to do it with with their missiles and their drones or whatever or they're just going to do with their armies but why is everybody so against israel there have been more resolutions in the united nations against them than any other nation on earth by a hundred fold i mean why does everybody hate israel well god has already described in detail what will happen in the future and every time what god has declared will happen always happens and by the way every time prophecy is fulfilled in the bible as in when daniel was calculating as when jeremiah was calculating as when each of the old testament prophets were calculating anything about prophecy all of them happened literally even down to christ's birth i mean they didn't know what that meant but when it happened it was literally what it said would happen and so god has a track record of literal fulfillment and so when we examine closely those involved and see what the people of this world are saying it's going to be fascinating to to look at what the lord has planned well basically the lesson tonight is we need to trust the god who wrote down in i mean and you can read these words we'll look at them tonight trust the god who told us in his word and promised israel would return now jesus told us but he told that 600 years after god had said it god the the father had said it through his spirit in the old testament god the son said it when he taught on earth they were saying the same thing that there's a future for israel so basically what is that future well in ezekiel 36 and 37 you can get down to verse 10. i'm going to read it in just a minute the god who rules the universe tells us that israel will one day be reborn as a modern country the jews will pour back into the holy land after centuries of exile the jews will rebuild ancient ruins i want you to think about that if you go to israel they're naming all the places the same thing that they are in the bible isn't that interesting that god said that all the ancient cities of the bible would be rebuilt and i mean they're very excited about it and doing it all the time they would make the desert bloom like god promised israel would develop a vast and powerful military it actually says that in the bible that israel would develop a powerful military by the way who was albert einstein a jew yeah how about all the other atomic scientists that worked alongside of him who developed some of the most powerful weapons in the world the jewish nobel prize winners they have a higher percentage of nobel prize winners per capita over all nations on earth the israelis do god just even in their unbelief has remarkably blessed them and finally ezekiel 38 tells us that israel will become remarkably wealthy if you've been listening to the news isn't it fascinating that within the coastal waters that belongs according to the whole world to the nation of israel in the mediterranean just so far in the last two years they've found 1.7 billion barrels of of oil just off the coast of israel nicely placed it would be nice if it was placed right off the coast of egypt they're starving down there it'd be nice it was placed right off the coast of turkey because they're buying their stuff from everybody else it'd be nice it would help italy if they had it right there because they're always in debt you know what i mean but isn't it interesting that in the whole basin of the mediterranean the first place they found unbelievably huge resources of of petroleum products is right there and it says that in the bible that that israel ezekiel 38 12 and 13 would be vastly wealthy and a lot of people attributed to banking but it's it's not well here we go number one here's god's first promise and you look at it with me verses 10 11. god promised this the return of the jews after centuries in exile now when did they get exiled well their first exile was in the babylonian time but that only lasted 70 years and then they came back rebuilt their temple and and we know zerubbabel we know ezra we know nehemiah we know that haggai telling them that they should build god's house before they build their own houses and all that's in the old testament but they never became a nation they they were under the greeks alexander came through they were under well actually the persians first sent the greeks then the romans and they were under the romans all the way until they got under the muslims but they never were not under someone but look what the lord says i will multiply men verse 10 upon you all the house of israel all of it and the cities shall be inhabited in the ruins rebuilt i will multiply on you man and beast and they shall increase and bear young and i will make you inhabited as in former times and do better for you than at your beginning now now look at what it says in verse 36 in that 11th verse it says and then you shall know that i am the lord that is repeated and repeated and repeated in fact that's one of the themes of this book it's repeated over 60 times the whole purpose of what god is doing in israel is so that israel and the world will know who the real lord is that he is not allah that he is jehovah but here's look at verse 12 same chapter it's the same theme the return of the jews after centuries in exile was promised by god therefore prophesy i say to them thus says the lord god behold oh my people now look at this you you might have said well that was the return you know in the time of the persians letting them out or that was the return when rome led a few of them back but look what it describes this return i will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves did you know that's how the secular world looked at the death camps when they when they brought out those people that couldn't even walk out of hitler's death camps the the commentators the journalists said that it was like people coming out of the grave and that that i don't think one of them ever had read ezekiel 36 but god said this return is going to be when it looks like graves are opened and people come up from the graves and this we're talking about the 40s now and bring you into the land of israel look down at verse 21 then say to them thus says the lord god surely i will take the children of israel from among the nations wherever they have gone and will gather them from every side and bring them into their own land that has never happened until modern times when the babylonians came only 50 000 of them want to leave you look at the numbers in ezra only 50 000 of the hundreds of thousands that were living in babylon it was too good to leave babylon was that's why they're still living there they're still in iraq they're still in iran there's still jews in iran of all places they're still living there they don't want to leave 50 000 of them came back to israel but look what the lord says here it's not just from one country it says this surely i'll take the children of israel right in the middle of that verse from among the nations wherever they have gone and will gather them from every side and bring them into their own land this is describing the event of 1948 it's when the graves opened and when people started streaming in i mean they were riding rusty leaking sinking boats they would do they used to run the boats ashore a ground on the shore and the people would just swim ashore they would do anything because finally there was a place in the whole world that was their land verse 22 and i will make them one nation in the land in the mountains of israel and one king shall be over them all no longer will they be two nations nor shall they ever be divided into two kingdoms again and this is speaking of them becoming a nation when did israel become a nation in 5 16 when they got out of persian no how about in a.d you know the time of christ 30 were they a nation no pilate roman pro-curator they were occupied when did they become a nation with the you know the byzantines nope the romans still ran them how about with the muslims do you think the muslims made them no they were never the turks no they were never a nation until 1948 they never were a kingdom a sovereign nation well it doesn't end there look at chapter 38 8 this is another part of the promise after many days you will be visited in the latter years you will come into the land of those brought back from the sword and gathered from many peoples on the mountains of israel which had long been desolate when the jews began arriving in israel pre-world war ii the north was malaria ridden it was so infested with swamps and with all kinds of diseases that the many of those early returnees died draining the swamps trying to make this land come back it was completely desolate by the way the reason that israel was desolate was the turks had a great idea you know they were ruling from turkey they controlled israel and they said we're going to make taxes simple we're just going to tax you for every tree you have on your property every year you know five bucks or whatever it was for every tree on your property well if you lived in israel and you knew that are in this land that that the turks ran that is now modern israel if you lived there knew they were going to only tax you on trees what would you do and they did they cut them all down and that was the the greatest blight to and we're talking about from 1517 when the turks instituted that all the way through 1917 during those 400 years israel began to look like a wasteland the the mountains just there was no forestation and the it just washed all the topsoil off in fact when you go to israel today it looks just like the moon i mean it's it's hardly it's just rock no topsail it's just rock except in the valleys and basically which had long been desolate see when when jesus was walking around israel it seems like everywhere he walked something was growing he was as he was talking he was pulling off grain and eating it and his disciples were getting in trouble and everything is agricultural it wasn't like that for centuries it just became more and more desolate and then it says look at the end of that they will be brought out of the nations and now all of them dwell safely did the jews dwell safely under the persians no they murdered him whenever they wanted to the persians did did the turks were they nice no they murdered him too were the crusaders very nice no they killed any jew they could find in jerusalem when the crusaders came through nice folks you know just go through the history but look now all of them dwell in safety it's very interesting to think about and there's one more jeremiah if you want to turn back jeremiah 31 which is talking about the new covenant that's what we were celebrating this morning a little shocker is that god made the new covenant with israel and were allowed in instead of it being a replacement it's us the bible says true theology says in romans 9 10 11 that israel is the root and the trunk and we christ's church are grafted into israel read romans 9 10 11. it's not the church is the trunk and israel is this little branch we're going to clip it off israel is the root that the church is grafted into and what's interesting is the new covenant in chapter 31 was given to to israel and christ instituted it for his church but look what it says in verse 7 thus says the lord sing with gladness for jacob shout among the chief nations proclaim give praise and say oh lord save your people the remnant of israel look at verse 8 behold i will bring them from the north country and gather them from the ends of the earth did you know that just in the 80s one million russians migrated from russia to israel in the 80s 1 million we take tours over there every year i mean you couldn't go without running into a russian i mean they were doing their little you know how they they do that little dance with you know crouched down and kicking out their feet and they're playing their violins and they all are russians look what this says behold i will bring them from the north country but not just the north country verse 8 says and gather them from the ends of the earth israel today has citizens from 100 other countries of the 180 on the planet they have people from more than half of every country in the world is there any other place like that there's only six million of them and yet they represent more than half of all the countries now what does the bible say i will gather them from the ends of the earth is there any other i mean yeah there's a lot of people living in new york but they're there just to make money you ask people like our guide we always ask our guide in israel why did you come here and he says i don't know i just wanted to he said i left a high-paying job to pick carrots and a kibbutz he said i left the security and comforts of of the new york city area to live in a commune and work all day long and and to to break my back i said why did you come he says because i felt inside that i wanted he's jewish it's right here i will bring them look what verse 8 says from the north country i'm going to gather them from the ends of the earth among the blind and the lame the woman with child the one who labors with child great throngs shall return there they shall come with weeping you ought to see how these planes land in tel aviv they come they're bringing them even today i mean i get a little note every time new plane you know and i because i get the jewish newspapers and and they show a picture and the people come streaming down and they just fall down at the bottom of the gangway coming off the plane and they kiss the tarmac i mean why would you do that because they they come with weeping and the supplications they can't believe they're there i will lead them i will cause them to walk by the rivers of water in a straight way which they won't stumble i am the father to israel ephraim is my firstborn verse 10 hear the word of the lord o nations and declare in the far isles and far off he who scattered israel will gather him and keep him as a shepherd does his flock what happened since 1948 i know israel's cocky and i know israel thinks that you know they've invented everything and they're best fighters in the world but if you look i remember when billy graham was preaching about in the old days the 1956 war in israel and the 1967 war did you know that that israel was was caught off guard in 1973 almost got defeated by the the muslim forces coming but in every war 48 56 67 73 every one of those four great wars israel even commentators would say there's something supernatural about this that that they were able to defeat the combined armies of 100 million people and there's only three million to start with are actually two and then there was three and then there's four and then there's five now there's six million but why is it because he look at verse 10 who scattered israel will gather them back now this isn't by the way i'm not reading from hal lindsey or jack van impe or you know whoever john hagee this is god talking and he says i am going to bring israel back i am going to shepherd them okay jesus also promised look at matthew 24 and i want you to see uh this is a second passage of jesus promise and we'll get back to ezekiel but i want you to see christ's orientation and and and it really helps to see ezekiel in light of this the bottom line is jesus promised the rebirth of a nation called israel now of course he promised it because he's one that inspired the old testament peter says that all the old testament prophets including ezekiel and jeremiah spoke by the spirit of christ that was in them so literally you can say that that the spirit of christ was speaking in the old testament that's what the bible says but look what jesus says in the new testament the bottom line is jesus told us that when he returns there will already have been a return of the wandering jews back to their homeland jesus said that matthew 24. that jumps out clearly when you notice the orientation of christ's words in verses 15 and 16. this is what jesus said he says when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by daniel the prophet we've already looked at that that's in chapter 9. he's taught and by no it's not just in chapter 9 it's also in 11 and other spots but clearly in nine and jesus said you're gonna know it's the end when the jews are living back in their homeland when they have built a temple now that's what gets interesting about this how on earth with tens of thousands of missiles pointed at israel from every muslim nation how are they going to lift a finger upon the dome of the rock area something has to happen to offset the the kind of trigger that's set right now well jesus says this standing in the holy place that's the the hit around the the temple the place uh that was very clear i mean everybody that read this in the first century knew he was talking about the temple in jerusalem whoever reads let him understand verse 16 then let those who are in judea flee the mountains you know what the lord said he says yes the romans are going to come they're going to butcher everybody they're going to put a trench around they're going to siege and they're going to destroy jerusalem but in the future they're going to come back they're going to live there they're going to build their temple they're going to inhabit biblical judea and he says that's going to be the sign of the and you know we've already covered this of the antichrist okay back to ezekiel 36 or we'll never get done and i know you want to go home because it's labor day and you want to celebrate ezekiel 36 36 promise number two number one is they would return to their homeland number two god says they would rebuild they wouldn't just come back they would rebuild the ancient ruins and it says this then the nations which are left all around you shall know that i am the lord have rebuilt the ruined places and planted what was desolate and and what i think uh is amazing is do you think that the settlers the early settlers who named their cities after the biblical sites that they were building on were doing that because it said they were supposed to in ezekiel do you think that the people that came to to you know all of the cities like bet el which is l or caesarea which is caesarea or any of the other little towns that have been shaloa which is shiloh do you think that they said um ezekiel 36 says we got to rebuild the ruined places these are in obscure places and they search for them till they find where shiloh was where bethel was where and they just they find where it was in the bible times and they plant what you hear on the news a settlement there why are they doing that because god says they are doing it because look at the end of verse 36 i the lord have spoken it and i will do it why why is the whole world so upset that israel is building these little towns in the land that is theirs that they conquered in battle i mean uh do you think that we're going to give back you know the what we paid all those 50 000 lives for in korea that is now south korea we're going to give it back to china or korea i mean it's fair and square they want it they're we're defending it but israel want it nobody wants to defend it take it away from them don't build your cities why is everyone bothered by that because god says i'm the one that's behind the settlement building stuff i'm the one that wants the towns from the bible rebuilt but it doesn't stop there it's very interesting third promise god said the re-blossoming of desolate desert lands to produce abundant food in chapter 36 look at verses 8 9 but you owe mountains of israel you shall shoot forth your branches you will yield your fruit to my people israel for they are about to come for indeed i am for you god said i'm for you israel even though all the other nations in the world aren't i'm for you i will turn you you will be tilled and sown and verse 30 continues i will multiply the fruit of your trees now israel today supplies billions of dollars of fresh fruit and flowers to europe and the arab world they have to remark the boxes because none of the arabs will buy it from israel but if they put some other word on there they'll buy their apples isn't that funny and and what is amazing is the land of israel side by side where the jewish farmers are farming it is it looks like florida's old citrus groves before they all died from whatever bug got them and it looks like california used to look before they knocked all the trees down and built houses over it that's what israel looks like today you know what's interesting you can have a muslim farmer and you can have a jewish farmer and the jewish farmer with its drip irrigation in the middle of the desert it looks just like the garden of eden and the poor farmers farm looks just like it used to look just like nothing but then the farmer comes the jewish pharmacist could you show me how to do that and can you believe it they go yeah i'll sell it to you and they sell them and all of a sudden the muslim farm using the jewish technology begins to just beautifully produce billions of dollars of fruit did those agricultural engineers those irrigation pioneers those desert scientists devote their lives to israel turning it from a wasteland condition to make it ezekiel 36 8 9 30. do you think that all those drip technology engineers did it because they said verse 9 you will be tilled verse 30. i'm going to increase the fruit of your trees that's why i'm doing it no it's because god promised and he causes it well real quickly look at chapter 37 of ezekiel just some more here's a fourth promise this one's interesting god said i'm going to create in israel an exceedingly great army now i keep mentioning you know there are seven billion people in the world israel just hit seven million that means one out of every thousand people live there on the whole planet earth but look what it says in ezekiel 37 god says so i prophes so i prophesied as he commanded me ezekiel is the eye god is the he so ezekiel prophesied as god commanded him and breath came into them and they lived and stood on their feet an exceeding great army now it's very interesting the word that's used there and i ask you this did the atomic scientists and the military weapon engineers that have devised nuclear weapons the neutron bomb and the finest and only 99 accurate anti-missile defense system in the world which you read about the news every day called iron dome i mean even us americans we don't have that i mean we have our arrow thing but lob a few motor mortars that are soldiers and we won't blow them up we can't yet we're trying to buy the technology from israel but those little six million people god for some reason has given them such genius do you know what it's like to get a projectile coming that you didn't know when it was going to come and you track it and you triangulate it and you find out whether it's going to hit a field with plants or if it's going to hit a house with children and you do that in less than 10 seconds and in the meantime you shoot something to meet it and destroy it before it hurts anything amazing the technology they have no they weren't doing it because ezekiel said it those scientists were just trying to protect themselves defend themselves and make a living but in the process israel has become the third or the fourth most powerful military in the world how many nations have atomic weapons submarines thankfully not very many us russia france england israel now recently india you know bought a soviet one china bought a soviet one and who who has the who can do it on their own they're an exceeding great army because god is watching over them well before we go and we'll pick up here next week we need to trust the god who describes russia as the leader of the anti-israeli coalition that's described in ezekiel 38 and 39 look at 38 8 after many days you will be visited and this isn't a good visit in the latter years you will come into the land of those brought back from the sword this is israel brought back from the sword of all the pogroms all over the world and gathered for many people on the mountains of israel which had long been desolate we're talking about the same thing and we're brought out of the nations and now all of them dwell safely so here's israel back in the nation and look what happens 38 1-6 now the word of the lord came to me saying son of man set your face against gog now gog is kind of like pharaoh pharaoh is not his name if you went with joseph and says i'm looking for pharaoh you're talking about a title gog is a title it's not a person their name is g.o.g it's it's a person that is a title like pharaoh they're like the president you know our president's name is not president it you know it's barack obama it's not president you can call him president but that's not his name it's a title that's what gog is but he's of the land of magog and he is the prince or the ruler of rosh and meshech and tubal prophesy against him and say verse 3. that says the lord god i'm against you og the prince of rosh meshech and tubal i will turn you around i will put hooks in your jaws i will lead you out your arm and your horses and your horsemen all splendidly clothed the great company with bucklers and shield all of them handling swords verse 5. persia ethiopia and libya those three nations never contemporaneously ever were armed and attacking israel any time persia did the ethiopians came up with a million-man army but now while persia was in existence you understand that that this that this is a historic event in libya with them and all their shield and helmets and not just them but gomer and his troops in the house of togarma in the far north and his troops and many people with you we'll pick up there next time because when you see and wait to see and it's going to be interesting when you see a map and you overlay it with herodotus the father of history he was contemporary with ezra he lived 500 years before christ he names all these places that are named here because ezekiel was living in the same time period and herodotus a greek historian tells us where all these gomer and meshech are and when you look at that on the map you know what it looks like it looks like the new york times because exactly the nations today that are rattling their sabers and saying destroy israel for the first time in history every one of them are exactly lined up with what ezekiel 38 says jerusalem is god's timer for the end of the world and if you understand the fight for jerusalem you understand the god who made all these promises and is causing his word to come to pass [Music] you

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Keywords: Bible, God, Jesus, Christian, teaching, biblical, teach, sermon, trinity, church, lesson, traditional, truth, true, divine, theology, freedom, guilt, testament, pure, interpret, spirit, holy, John, Barnett, christ, father, heaven, hell, doctrine, doctrinal, sinful, forgive, forgiveness, history, teachings, chapters, verses, discover, the book, ministries, dtbm, Dr. Barnett, controversial, repent, helpful, sin, the, book, dr, john, doctor, barnett, training, videos, series, resources, savior, god, jesus, holy land, pilgrimage, spiritual renewal

Id: j47qLegQ2Rs

Length: 53min 31sec (3211 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 31 2021