I'm taking up where I left off last week and the reason that I'm trying to lay this foundation between the house, the difference between the house of Israel and the house of Judah is to show that these are separate and distinct, the backdrop of making sure we understand who these people are is important to the interpretation of what happens in, not only just Revelation 7 with the 144,000, which if you read, most commentators will describe the 144,000 and say these are all Jews, which they are not, and in order to properly distinguish certain things it's important to trace the history and understanding of certain terminologies that begin to be used. I tried to trace, I don't want to preach last week's message, but tried to trace the beginning, starting as you can see, I left it board here with Abram, who becomes Abraham. God gives a promise to him, and we kind of traced the whole house of Israel that is Jacob who basically has children by two sisters and their handmaids that produces quote/unquote, “the house of Israel,” plus what will become the sons of Joseph, Manasseh and Ephraim who are adopted by Jacob who is Israel who will bless them, which compromise or make up the children of Israel that are seen as one, but actually the prophets writing, looking back, said God saw two distinct nations, including the fact that each time we have the birth of children such as Jacob and Esau, there is a preference uttered by God of who will, who will have what and who will be loved and who will be less loved if you want to put it that way. So as we trace these things we have essentially a people that are living together, just as they were in the womb, but they are two distinct nations; these two distinct nations, these two distinct people that the offspring as I said of Abram, God gives a promise and says, “To thy seed.” Abram takes it upon himself to try and have a child with his wife's handmaid Hagar that produces Ishmael, and God says, “No, not that one, I will give you a seed, you will produce a child, you and,” keep your mind on the Lord, “your dead loins and her dead womb will produce a child of promise, the seed,” which will be Isaac. And through Isaac we trace, again, the house, the children of Israel that then bifurcate at some point. I told you, you've got to travel through Scripture to the death of Solomon, and it is there that I'm going to pick up today to lay, to lay more foundation down because very easily here's what happens. We can trace what happens to the captivity of those who belong to the southern kingdom. If you remember in our study of Nehemiah, I dabbled there a little bit when we talked about when they were carried away; we call it the fall of Jerusalem, when they, when the people there of the southern kingdom were carriede away into captivity. What we haven't traced are those people who were carried away into captivity, those called, those, part of the northern kingdom, which make up the ten tribes to the north who were carried away by the Assyrians. And let me just take a side bar before I jump in to picking up last week. It's almost like no serious Bible scholar will deny or will even, you know, there's no quarrel about the captivity of the southern kingdom, those of the house of Judah being carried away. And the record is abundantly clear that when Cyrus issued the decree for those people who were in captivity to return to rebuild, we know out of the great multitude of people who were carried away, just a small portion of those returned, somewhere perhaps around 50,000 or less returned to rebuild the city. That was in our study of Nehemiah, also in the books of Ezra and the closing chapters, the edict; you'll find the edict in 2 Chronicles. With that being said, no serious Bible scholar or even historian will deny those events, but when you try and piece together the Assyrian kingdom and the carrying away of the people to the north, there is a lot of what I call spider's webs for people to get caught up into and they sorely confused. You've almost got to go back far enough into the Bible and I'm talking way back in the beginning. The mention, for example, of Nimrod and the beginning of his kingdom which is Calneh, Babylon, all of that, that area, which we might refer to historically as Sumer, or the Sumerians, and a whole history that is referred to in the secular world, identified by clay tablets and archeological finds as the land of Shinar, or the land of Akkad. You've got a plethora of names that cover that territory, including a far region of that, what I've just referenced, called Assyria. And if a person who is serious to trace the history of these people called the Assyrians, it's got a very interesting history and you can, as you try and trace these people, you can really see they became an incredible force in history. We tend to read the Bible, we read, and then the people are kind of, they're two-dimensional right there, but we can't try and pile on the rest of history to see how full and complete these might look. So you've got people who say, “Well, there's pieces missing.” And the pieces that are missing are not that many, but if you want to travel through secular history and find the building up of━and I'm just going to jump in at any given place. I can talk about Sargon I, who many people speculate might even be Nimrod. I'm not sure about that one, but definitely to the time of Hammurabi, and Hammurabi's code. And there, by the way, at that particular juncture in history when we refer to Hammurabi and Hammurabi's code, the prologue to that code has 24 cities named, names that we can Biblically identify, people that have, for example, Hurrians, and people would say, “Well, who are those?” Well, the Hurrians might be the Hivites of the Bible, which also would be Jebusites and possibly part of the Canaanites; part not all, of the Canaanites. And as you, as you travel this history of the Assyrian Kingdom and the building of the kingdom you begin to see an incredible force moving people around and displacing people, even before these people who many say are, might as well, many people say are “lost tribes” to the north, moving people around and we definitely have a point in history where we can look at and identify people who are moving in, trying to invade the territory of Assyria. They are people that I've mentioned, you've heard me probably on Festival talk about the Kassites and the Kassite Kingdom and some of you went “Er?” But people that brought with them for the first time, like the Hittites, brought with them for the first time, the use of a horse to either ride, a novelty, or to pull a chariot, another novelty. And we can trace these points in history that actually added to the building up of the Assyrian army and all of its splendor, which is leading to somewhere. At some point this army becomes quiet fortified, and you've got to travel the history to go down to people like Tiglath Pileser II and III, and Ashurbanipal, which we find tucked in to the Bible. You'll find them under different names, but you'll find them in the Bible, these names, to see that there is a definite building of this kingdom, which God will then use the Assyrian forces to carry away the tribes to the north, and then eventually this kingdom will essentially be overtaken once more. The Hittites will come back and essentially there's a crumbling that is about to happen and at the, the foretelling of this empire, which is about to be moved to Nineveh and then crumble apart, foretold by Zephaniah, foretold by Nahum. So we can read in, we can see the prophets were saying, “This thing's going to happen.” People are carried away, but there not carried away to the same captivity. This carrying away happened at a different time to the north and at the south and what happened to the people who were carried away to the north is somewhat interesting; they had great freedom. Unlike the people who were carried away to the south, the people to the north had great freedom, they had freedom to move about and they were actually placed in different towns that, if you want to go back a little bit you can trace towns they were moved into that were actually named with peculiar names like Abriania, which sounds a little bit like Abraham, and places like Suke, which we know is going to be attached to the name Isaac, places that names are deposited as conquered peoples now of this tribe or this group will live here. And we begin to see a migration of people. These people, strangely enough, this is where the serious people who are interested in looking into and following, they have no problem with the house of Judah and the southern kingdom being carried away and only a portion returns and where did the other 600,000-plus people go that didn't return to rebuild? A question mark; leave that one alone. But then where did all these people go? And that begins the quest of people saying, “Well, they're the lost house of Israel and they're lost and they've never been found again”" but certainly when you begin to trace the historical weavings of things, you find that they're not lost and in fact this is how we, we have a bifurcation of two distinct peoples, which even the Bible is very clear on: house of Judah, house of Israel, two distinct people, that many different accounts will tell of something that will happen to these peoples. They will be treated a certain way by God, which I'm going to get into the Scriptures, chapter and verse, and that at some point in the future these must become reunited again, which is what I referenced last week from the prophet Ezekiel, where Ezekiel is told to take two sticks, put these two sticks in one hand, they'll become one and at that time when these two sticks, the house of Judah, which may be, the Scripture may be reading differently, but essentially these two houses will be brought back together, put as one, and when that happens, now I'm going to make a big major jump, you've got to be able to understand that in order to understand these two sticks to be attached and then the issue of what comes right after that the chapter, we call them the Russian chapters of Gog, and an Magog, descending an coming down one thing must happen before another. These two sticks being put together and becoming one again, must be attached to the calling in many ways of the 144,000 preachers of righteousness. There is a correlation there that cannot be disconnected. Failure to read Ezekiel and what I just mentioned about Zephaniah and other prophesies in the Old Testament, failure to read them and bring them into Revelation will bring error for sure. So why I'm doing this and why I'm going to at least try one more message on this is to show, not only did God tell Abram his seed and the apostle Paul takes up that exact discourse about seed and not seeds through Romans. He makes it abundantly clear, he touches on it in Galatians, but this promise, which goes all the way down as I said has a bifurcation, the kingdoms were united until the death of Solomon. It was Solomon's falling away from serving the living God, his thousand women; that'll do it to you every time. His thousand women turned him away from serving the living God to this very bleak moment in time where basically God says, “Because you've done this thin”" essentially, and foretells of what will happen to the kingdom, but He says, “I won't do it, essentially for your father's sake, I won't do it until you die,” if that's not a picture of grace right there. But I start immediately in 1 Kings 11, that's where I, my line ends right there with Solomon and the death of Solomon. Solomon is not dead yet. God says, “Because you've done this thing,” listen, the God of Israel “appeared to him twice, commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods: but he kept not that which the LORD commanded,” that's 1 Kings 11, and I'm reading at verse 9, and in my Bible it's page 475. It makes that kind of easy, right? All right. “Wherefore the LORD said unto Solomon, Forasmuch as this is done of thee, thou hast not kept my covenant and my statutes, which I have commanded thee, I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, and will give it to thy servant. Notwithstanding in the days I will not do it for David thy father's sake: but I will rend it out of the hand of thy son.” And God foretells him this thing, which He indeed makes good on. He says, “Howbeit I will not rend away all the kingdom; but will give one tribe to thy son for David my servant's sake, and for Jerusalem's sake which I have chosen.” And if you keep reading foreword, you find that in fast-forwarding through the chapter, you have Jeroboam, beginning in verse 26, “the son of Nebat, and Ephrathite of Zereda, Solomon's servant, whose mother's name was Zeruah, a widow woman, even he lifted up his hand against the king. And this was cause that he lifted up his hand against the king: Solomon built Millo, repaired the breaches of the city of David his father. And the man Jeroboam was a mighty man of valour: and Solomon seeing the young man that he was industrious, he made him ruler of all the charge of the house of Joseph. It came to pass at that time when Jeroboam went out of Jerusalem, that the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite found him in the way; and he had clad himself in a new garment; and they two were alone in the field: Ahijah caught the new garment that was on him and rent it,” tore it, “in twelve pieces.” How many tribes? How many tribes? Right, “twelve pieces: he said to Jeroboam, Take thee ten pieces,” those ten pieces are representing the north, “for thus saith the LORD, God of Israel, Behold I will rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, but I will give thee, I will give to thee ten tribes, (but he shall have one tribe for my servant David's sake, and for Jerusalem's sake, the city which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel. " And there's a whole catalogue, and verse 34 says, “Howbeit I will not take the whole kingdom out of his hand: but I will make him prince all the days of his life for David my servant's sake, whom I chose, because he kept my commandments and my statutes: but I will take the kingdom out of his son's hand, and will give it unto thee, even ten tribes.” So if you kind of get the picture of what's going on and if you read, you could read it in the 1 Kings, the 12th chapter, but I'm going to read it actually out of 2 Chronicles, a kind of a recap of what happens in 2 Chronicles 11 just for a few pieces of information that happened. But there will be essentially a revolt, a ripping away which was foretold, “This will happen.” Solomon is now dead and I'm reading out of 2 Chronicles 11, and at, beginning at verse 11, this will tell you what happened with Rehoboam who dwelt in Jerusalem and built cities for defense in Judah, “He fortified the strong holds, put captains in them, and store of victual, and of oil and wine. And in every several city he put shields and spears, and made them exceeding strong, having Judah and Benjamin on his side. And the priests and the Levites that were also, that were all in Israel resorted to him out of there coasts.” Why? Because the Levites, they had to leave their suburbs and their possessions, and they came to Judah and Jerusalem: for Jeroboam and his son had cast them off from executing their office. So now we've got Judah and Benjamin and the Levites now ban together. “And he ordained for him priests for the high places, and for the devils, and for the calves which he had made. And after them out of all the tribes of Israel such as set their hearts to seek the LORD God of Israel came to Jerusalem to sacrifice unto the LORD God of their fathers. So they strengthened the kingdom of Judah, and made Rehoboam the son of Solomon strong, three years, for three years they walked in the way of David and Solomon.” Now after three years the whole thing falls apart, but what you have is somewhat of a recap going on of the events. Now it's not until this time, and we'll, I'll find the Scriptures, we'll look at them, we're going to do a lot of Scripture viewing today, so you're going to have to do a lot of page turning. But it's not until the death of Solomon and after the kingdoms split that for the first time in Scripture we have the word, the use of the word “Jew” for the first time. So when people talk about Jew, we're talking about the people of the kingdom of Judah, they were called Yuhadahi or Yahudahites that then became Jew, so there's a lot of confusion when people homogenize and they say, “Well, these people here, these tribes to the north” and they want to call these Jews as well because these were not Jews. These people, referring to those who were a part of the southern kingdom of Judah were called Jews. They were first called that after this separation occurred, so it becomes an error and I say because some of you read commentaries and you like to read these things, you'll find that a lot of these people get hooked into calling some group of people one thing and homogenizing and there's where you'll have error. Now the church has for the most part done this and said, “These are all Jews and everybody is a Jew and the whole house of Israel is a Jew,” and then they go and spiritualize the promises of God and say, “Well, it's to the Jew, but,” but there's a lot of problems with that because they're not dividing or rightly dividing the word of God to show that the kingship and lawmaking was placed here and the rest of the promises went that-a-way. So we have to talk about that to understand and you'd be surprised, the interesting thing about these 144,000 preachers of righteousness is if you look through, you will kind of get the idea now that these are peppered throughout the whole face of the planet, right? Now when it talks about the reuniting of these two houses together in one stick, it is going to be typified as these preachers of righteousness begin to preach and people will know, it will be revealed to them who they are and one has to understand that. It's almost like, you know, we have these, you can go and pay a certain amount of money online to get your family tree done and you find out that you're not really of this descent, but you're really of this descent right? You've seen the ads where people say, “I thought I was this, but I'm really that.” Well you're going to find a lot of people in those days when the sticks come together and the preaching, the preaching, the preachers of righteousness begin to preach, you're going to find a lot people going, “Me?” Because scales will fall off the eyes, they will come to know who they really are. So I say that very carefully and very distinctly through the Bible there is a distinction between these two houses. Now follow me please, because there's going to be a lot of jumbling around. Let's go first to Jeremiah. Today's goal is to just kind of set some absolute pegs in your mind. In Jeremiah 3, I've tried to do these in order, Jeremiah 3 and verse 8, “And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I put her away, and given her a bill of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also.” These two are being treated by the prophet as separate and distinct, calling them sisters. Another prophet will do the same thing, but separate and distinct. One of them is given a bill of divorcement, the other one, it says; we'll talk about it, because they're treated in interesting ways. Let me keep reading, “It came to pass through the lightness of her whoredom, that she defiled the land, and committed adultery with stones and with stocks. And yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah hath not turned unto me with her whole heart, but feignedly, saith the LORD. And the LORD said unto me the backsliding Israel hath justified herself more than treacherous Judah.” So again, here we have two distinct things being referenced. If you want to see a little bit more of that, I'll try and stay in the same book so you can see again and again. And really, this is just for the benefit of those people that will say, “How can you say these are separate?” Well, I'm not saying so, the Scripture says that. Turn to Jeremiah 30 and read carefully, it's, they are being spoken of as separate. Jeremiah 30 and verse 3━I told you we're going to move around a lot━“For, lo, the days come, saith the LORD, I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel and Judah, saith the LORD: I will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall possess it.” Now you almost have to think: question mark? For those people that say, “Well, hasn't that happened with the founding of the nation in 1948, of Israel?” And the answer's: no. Absolutely not, we're talking about two distinct people: Israel and Judah. Has that happened yet? No. Now just, a lot of people read stuff and they think, “Oh, well of course.” Just go a few pages more here, Jeremiah 33 and verse 7. Here's somewhat of a promise, “I will cause the captivity of Judah and the captivity of Israel to return, and will build them, as at the first.” Has that happened yet? I didn't think so. Wait a minute, I must have missed one here. I did, but we'll just keep going. Now my favorite one, I once did a message on this, my favorite one in this whole book is the dirty girdle. You know, you never hear anybody preach on these passages, you know, but the dirty girdle, that's in Jeremiah 13. I love my Bible. They're so polite, it says, “The sign of the marked undergarment.” That sounds kind of gross. Okay, if you have a Bible like mine, read the header, that's all you need to know, “The sign of the marked undergarment.” “What was the message today in church?” “Dirty underwear; somebody's got dirty underwear,” yep. “Thus saith the LORD unto me, Go and get thee a linen girdle, put it upon thy loins,” I'm not making this up, “put it not in water”━don't wash it, “So I got a girdle according to the word of the LORD”━where did he get the girdle? It's like where'd he get the water: where'd he get the girdle?━“and put it on my loins,” this is a little bit TMI, but “The word of the LORD came unto me the second time, saying, Take the girdle that thou hast got, which is upon thy loins, and arise, and go to Euphrates, and hide it there in a hole of a rock. It came to pass after many days,” that that just right there is kind of whew! “many days, that the LORD said unto me, Arise, go to Euphrates, take the girdle from thence, which I commanded thee to hide there. So I went to the Euphrates, and digged,” it wasn't bad enough that it was a dirty garment, but then he hid it and he had to dig for it so it's even more dirty, “took the girdle from that place where I had hid it: and, behold, the girdle was marred, it was profitable for nothing. Then the word of the LORD came unto me saying, Thus saith the LORD, After this manner I will mar the pride of Judah, and the great pride of Jerusalem. This evil people, which refuse to hear my words, which walk in the imagination of their heart, and walk after other gods, to serve them, and to worship them, shall be even as this girdle, which is good for nothing. For as the girdle cleaveth to the loins of a man, so I have caused to cleave unto me the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah,” separate and distinct, “saith the LORD; that they might be unto me a people, and for a name, and for a praise, and for a glory: but they would not hear.” Now you'll hear the very similar thing out of the prophet Hosea's mouth where he talks about how He wants them to be, but they cannot be how He desires. And Hosea opens up with essentially telling the prophet, “Go marry a whore,” typifying God's relationship with His people. Now I don't care how you want to look at this, but every time you're going to read, we have separate and distinct people. Let's keep going. I'll take you to Hosea, because some of you who haven't been this way heretofore; roads less traveled, how's that? Now sometimes, I think I put it up there, sometimes the tribes to the north, as I said, called Israel, sometimes called Samaria, sometimes called Ephraim. And what will be referred to Judah, the southern portion, sometimes immediately attached to Jerusalem. Let's read what it says here; again separate and distinct things. Have I told you where to go yet? That didn't sound good, did it? I've been tempted. Start, start in Hosea━it happened in church. Start in, start in Hosea 7 and we'll, we'll navigate and see what, what is being said here. “When I would have healed Israel,” it's page 1,101. “When I would have healed Israel, then the iniquity of Ephraim was discovered, and the wickedness of Samaria: for they commit falsehood; and the thief cometh in, and the troop of robbers spoileth without.” So you've definitely got a picture of what's going on: Ephraim-Israel-Samaria. But let me, I'm actually going to read back in this. It's actually in the sixth chapter and the fourth verse; I just read right over it because the prophet speaking, he says, “O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee? for your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away.” So each time you're going to read separate, God is treating these separately. Now to one, He says, “I've issued a bill of divorcement,” and there's a good reason why the apostle Paul, in the New Testament, in writing in Romans 7 is talking about the law, the first husband, if you will, having to die and then that one is free to take and marry another, referring to those who are in Christ, referring to those who understand the message of the gospel, of the salvation that is in Jesus Christ. A bill of divorcement, to these people, makes it abundantly clear that when we begin to read into the New Testament, you're going to read several times where Jesus, out of His mouth, when He commissions the twelve, He tells them, “Don't go unto the gentiles or unto Samaria, unto the Samaritans, but go unto the lost house of Israel.” It's right there for us to read in the New Testament. He says it again regarding the woman; don't read the header in the Zodhiates Bible, it says, “Of a gentile woman,” but a woman that came from Canaan. And the disciples are saying, “Send this woman away,” because she has an issue, her daughter is sick and she wants her daughter to be healed. And He says essentially the same thing about the lost house of Israel. There is nothing more perplexing to me than people who will not make the distinguished separation between these two categories. He came to His own, Jesus from the tribe of Judah. He came to His own, the Jews, He came to His own and they received Him not. And very clearly in the New Testament, it's exposing exactly what we should be understanding: separate, distinct peoples. Now it's very plain, as you keep going. I can keep giving you these━it's through Hosea, through Jeremiah, through Ezekiel; each of these will be referring to the same thing: separate and distinct, except in Ezekiel, as I referenced, those two sticks being put together make way for two things: the understanding of the preachers of righteousness, the 144,000, and the clearing of the way for Gog and Magog to come down, which, you know, a lot of people are worried. They say, “Have you heard what's going in Russia?” And Vladimir Putin and people are worried about what I call the fear-mongers out there that are talking about, you know, what's going and are we going to have a nuclear war? And is this going to happen? Well, if the Bible━hold those thoughts━if the Bible is true and if God is not a man to lie and if God makes good on His word and if God's word is forever settled in heaven; if all those things be true, then equally, the uniting of Israel and Judah must happen first, before Gog and Magog can come down. And there are two events to that. The first event, which is described, Ezekiel 37 and 38, I just referenced, and what happens after the period of the thousand years in the book of Revelation, which is a secondary event concerning Gog and Magog. We'll get to that; trust me, we'll to that, but right now all I'm telling you is separate and distinct people. And why am I telling you this: because A) I want to be able to lay the foundation for proper understanding of what is in the book of Revelation to not have isolated or to not have preached an isolated passage without showing you that through this book, God has been saying the same thing. And the wonderful thing that Paul asks “Has God cast off His people or cast away His people forever?” And the response is “God forbid!” That tells you that not only is God in control and He hasn't forgotten, but God's grace that extends to both, both these people, quote/unquote, “lost tribes,” which are not lost, and the house of Judah. Let's talk about this briefly for a minute, because I, I've told you━I keep going back and forth between Old and New, because I figure you can do this. You're able to do this, right? You're all able to do this, right? Yeah, you're all able to do that; it's like doing this, like; it's like a slinky, right? You're able to do this; I know you can do it. People talk about the fact that Dan is missing out of those chapters, and if you keep following this concept of people saying, “These ten tribes to the north are, are lost, and we don't know where they are,” which is not true, and I've told you that in Ezekiel, interestingly enough, looking at the future, which has a prophecy that has not yet come to pass, land allotments are given. The final temple specs are given, the city specs are given and the land allotment is given. And the first group of people that get a land allotment: Dan. Now that's caused a lot of people some, you know, it's disturbing because they get a land allotment but they're not part of 144,000 preachers of righteousness and they're not listed in that list, but guess what? They're not even listed in the list of the tables of genealogy that occur in 1 Chronicles 5, where it lists all the people. And interestingly enough, Dan is missed, he's not even there, so I don't know why you'd make it a spectacle in Revelation and not point out that those people apparently; not all of them, but a good portion of them are already gone somewhere. They've already disappeared. You go and you read in the passage of Judges where it talks about Deborah's chronicle and right there in the fifth chapter of Judges, it says that Dan was staying in its ships. The land allotment that it received was right by the seashore. They were already, for some reason, they were in ships and they were taken off somewhere and they just didn't disappear. And these are people that if we chronicle secular history and enough historians have chronicled this, but nobody wants to talk about it, as part of the people who are not lost, this group of people that I'm referring to, Dan, appears somewhere else. I brought stuff, which I'm not going to read, because it will be too much information. But these people appear in the land called Argos, they're, they're offspring that settle in an area near the Peloponnesus. We have a plethora of places named after them; Macedonia, with Dan in the middle, and all the places in between. We can watch this, its seed, which the prophet Hosea talks about a people who are scattered; Jezreel, scattered, sown, who essentially will name places throughout the map. If you look on the map, you'll find DN places, you know, Danish seems like the self-evident one, but they're sprinkled everywhere, which should probably give a little bit of a clue that these people are not lost and the same timeframe where people talk about these people being carried off, depending on how you reckon. I reckon Omri as the sixth king; there was one king, some classify him as the seventh; that doesn't matter. At the same time that these people disappear, they, and they disappear off the face of this radar over here, a group of people appear somewhere else. The same people with similar customs, a similar language and they begin to spread out all over the earth. So they're definitely not a lost people. So when we talk about this, it's important to understand that as you try and search out and put together and piece together, it's not a homogenized lump here; you just take the whole thing and you say, “Well, of course, this is all about the Jews.” It's not. And we'll talk about eventually the woman in Revelation, who is representative of the nation of Israel, important, who will bring forth the man child, which is representational of the 144,000. Now you might say, “Well, you just contradicted yourself.” No, not if you understand what is separate and distinct, not if you understand the separation of these things and as they are woven together, it's as if God was saying, “Look, I'm going to, I'm going to put a piece of information here and I'm going to put a piece of information here and I'm going to put a piece of information here and I'm going to put a piece of information here.” Now if you take all these pieces and put them together, you're going to see the whole picture laid out pretty clear.” Not only are these people not lost, but they're not homogenized with the people known as Jew or Judah. Now why am I telling you all this? Okay, hold that thought because there's something else I want to point out. If you will turn with me to Isaiah; I told you now, now I'm just racing, so who knows what will happen here? It's like who's in heaven? Nobody knows. Isaiah; all right, as I told you about the, the Assyrians and those people who would be invading and carrying these northern people away, and it's important to understand that there was a foretelling by the prophet and then there's the actual chronicle of the history. If a person takes the time to line these up, that's why I said it's impossible to deny that the northern people are carried away and we know they are carried away and deposited and I said they have freedom that if you combine the prophecy of Isaiah with the recorded history that appears in 1 Kings and you pick up the apocryphal of Ezra; 2 Esdras, and you read, you find that between this information in the apocryphal, between what the prophet says when he's sent to the river Chebar and he says and he saw these people deposited at this place, it's very clear these people were deposited somewhere and they did not return. The confusion I hear people always talk about if these people are one and the same is that a small remnant of Judah returned to rebuild. These people are already gone and they're not lost. So this is why I'm going to keep repeating this with enough Scripture that hopefully when I'm done anybody who says, “Well, but they're still Jews,” obviously need to go back and listen and follow the Scriptures carefully, because I think I've, I've tried to spell it out adequately. In, let's see, I want do this in the right order here. In Isaiah we have two things being said. One is in Isaiah 7 and one is in Isaiah 8, “The LORD shall bring upon thee,” verse 17 of chapter 7, “and upon thy people, and upon thy father's house, days that have not come, from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah; even the king of Assyria. It shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall hiss for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the river of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria. And they shall come, and they shall all the rest of them in the desolate valleys, and in the holes of the rocks, and upon all thorns, and upon all bushes. In the same day shall the Lord shave with a razor that is hired, namely, by them beyond the river, by the king of Assyria, the head, and the hair of the feet: and it shall also consume the beard. It shall come to pass in that day, that a man shall nourish a young cow, and two sheep,” painting a picture of whats going to happen. If you jump ahead into the eighth chapter, you'll read kind of an attaching to this what's about to happen. It says, “The Lord bringeth upon the waters of the river, strong and many, even a king of Assyria, and all of his glory: and he shall come up over his channels, and go over his banks: and he shall pass through Judah; he shall overflow and go over, he shall reach even to the neck; and the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, O Immanuel.” And there is a whole telling of what is going to happen, essentially a warning. And the call, by the way, from each of these prophets is “Turn back, turn back, turn back.” No one listens. And this is the, the prophecy. The history is recorded in 1 Kings, so if you want to keep weighing out something that is said by the prophet, “This is going to happen,” and then 1 and 2 Kings, and 1 and 2 Chronicles are the histories recorded by the north and south of certain events. Go and read the history of those events to see whether or not what the prophet declared would come to pass, and indeed it did. And amazingly, why I said there's still people writing commentaries and making comments about, not only the people referred to that are distinct and separate through the Old Testament, but including the people who should be considered distinct and separate as we come into what we'll call last days events. Now even by the mouth of Daniel, if you remember, “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people,” referring to those people, “thy people,” even there, separate and distinct. Probably the most important thing that I want to point out in this message is that if a person is going to take, take the time to study this word and realize that God has been laying out certain things, been declaring certain things, as the promise was given here to Abram to then Abraham passed through, now we have, although they were two distinct people before they became bifurcated, they were two distinct people while they were in bondage, but the bifurcation itself, the real splitting apart of what we'll call all of the promises that were given at the beginning here, split apart to what I've called the time of Solomon's death, and here we have two distinct people. These two distinct people will flow all the way, so if somebody is reading the close of the Old Testament canon; they're reading Malachi, the Old Testament closes with a curse. The Old Testament closes with a word, essentially a word of indictment to those people━who are the people in Malachi that are being addressed? They are the priests, the priests that are performing acts of pseudo, feigned faith, pseudo-offerings, pseudo-behavior; lip service, but the heart is not there, actions, but not committed the way God said, an indictment over here to those that are serving, by the way━and you can, you can take that however you want━that to this day, many of those people still refuse to hear; an indictment. But that's why when people talk about God's grace, and I, that's what I want to finish with here today. I want to say that God said He'd scatter this people. And the people that he once declared “are not my people,” in Scripture at least three different places where He declares, one time “not my people,” He says “these indeed will be my people again,” and where at the beginning He says “no mercy,” He says, “I will have mercy on these people.” This is why over and over in the New Testament, Jesus is going to reach in and He's going to pull these, what I've called rhemas and basically says, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy.” In other words, God can still decide who He wants to save and on whom He wants to dispense His mercy, on whom He will reach in and what we've called preveniently wake up, open up the receiver, the eyes and the ability to hear and receive that, you know, when you watch these programs, and I have seen these programs on TV of people talking about how they go and they witness to the Jewish community. I'm sure you've seen them, they're Jews; they're trying to proselyte Jews and say that, you know, “If we go out there and we can win these people and it”━I hate to tell you that's, you can talk until you're blue in the face. Unless God has opened up the receiver and had mercy on whom He wants to have mercy and has called whom He has called, and this is why I love the fact that God uses Paul to make clear the distinction, which I put up here, Romans 9, about all Israel and the distinction made very clear, which he says he's got great grief, he's in great distress for his kinsmen's sake; he, he even wishes to be accursed from God if it could help to, to save his kinsmen. Why didn't he say, “But I'll go over there and I'll go witness to all of my kinsmen and they'll be saved because I've got the gift of whatever-it-is that I can win people to the Lord: my people.” That's a joke. So my point here is understanding even the apostle Paul makes it clear. And we are not going to be, I'm not going to go too much more. I've said enough to make, to lay enough foundation. I can do the rest of this on Festival and lay out and we can chronicle and we can map out all the peoples if we want. But the point is to make sure it's understood separate and distinct to understand that these people here, making sure that we, we glean rightly the right to kingship, which ultimately the house of David and the line and the seat of David, which produces Christ and the lawmaking. The rest of the promises, we're going to say are like this, like seed━whoosh━sown out, scattered and cannot be claimed as a homogenized thing. Anybody that says all the promises were fulfilled in the Jew is erring because if you read the promises and the promises that were given, they, they don't even, they can't, they could not be realized now. They could not even be, if you read them, the, the populous being as the sand of the sea or stars of the heaven: that has not happened. But you can look at this group of people being scattered upon the face of the planet and know that God has accomplished His purpose and He's accomplished His word the way He said He would, not through the interpretation of the eyes of man, not through the tradition of men which makes void the word of God. So what do I want to tell you today? What I want you to leave here with today, not only that we've just traced a whole bunch of Scripture and we've gone through stuff, but once we get into that passage talking about these people, I want it to be clear in your head that God will, just like He spread these people over the face of the planet, God will raise up; it's a strange thing when it says this 144,000 will be virgins. Now you, you can do your own math if you want to, but if you look at this, the planet, there could be, that could be a plausible number through the face of the planet. Unfortunately there are sects and groups of people, I guess within Christendom, that say that they, they are making up the 144,000. They go door-to-door because they want, they want to tell you that they're part of the 144,000. The only problem is when you see them with their kids in tow; it's just a little problem right there. The Bible says very clearly what these will be like and how they will be. And that time is not yet come and it won't be because we elect to say we are part of that. Interestingly enough, God will do the drawing. If God was able to disperse and scatter the tongues from the tower of Babel and on the day of Pentecost He was able to make all of those tongues be able to hear and receive what was being said when the message was being preached, then He is able to call out from these far flung corners of the earth to know who are His, who are these who become the preachers of righteousness. It's very plausible, if you tried to think about 144,000, I'm going to twist something for a minute, 144,000 “Jews,” virgins; you know, I, I don't know about that, but if you said to me you've got 144,000 comprising of this whole group of what will become the two sticks put together that are scattered throughout the face of the planet, finding 144,000 virgins shouldn't be that difficult. If you tried to find them in America, you might have a challenge, but, but all over the━I'm just saying━but over the face of the planet, I could see it. It's completely plausible. Somebody's covering their face, going, “Oh, did she just say that?” So God will make good on His word and that brings me to just say this one thing. If God is in control of these details, including separate and distinct people, we know one thing, when He gave His Son He said, “Whosoever will; and whosoever will, will come,” He says, “I will in no wise cast out,” separate and distinct people become the banner for us as, we'll call it the divorced wife, if you will, to take out what Paul said in Galatians 3:28, which is “There is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female, but all are one in Christ Jesus.” The beauty of looking unto Him who is the Architect of our faith is understanding that the design for us is we don't have to look for a group of separate and distinct. We look unto Him and He, with His name carrying the banner for us, is our salvation. Now to the rest of these people who are still wondering, to the nutty people who preach things like “What will happen to those people at the end of days?” And they start telling you about the trauma that will happen that will fall upon the earth and it's doom━yes, there's going to be great catastrophe, but just as those who were safe in the ark that God said, “Go into and you'll be safe,” just as those who applied the blood on their doorposts and He said, “Death will pass over,” those of us who are in Christ know we will not be dragged through, we will not be put through, we will not be doomed. There is no ultimate condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, so rejoice that God found you and loved your miserable butts enough and loved my miserable butt enough to save me and take me all the way into His precious loving arms. And that's my message. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center. If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday morning at 11am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you'd like more teaching and you would like to go straight to our website, the address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com
