Jerusalem in the End Times Part 2

the following presentation was recorded live during the 2012 Feast of Tabernacles presented by the International Christian embassy Jerusalem to purchase additional resources from the Feast of Tabernacles or of the IC EJ please visit us at www.fortuigence.com and I've had plenty of comments some very interesting adjectives one was hard another was fearless and I will give you the rest but I wonder which was the biggest surprise or even shock to you yesterday was it that Israel is still going to suffer in this land was it that you thought their sufferings were all over and would not happen again or was it I wonder the fact that it was God who was going to do this to them that he would bring that invading army if that second shock was yours let me ask you to re-examine your theology now everybody is a theologian whether they know it or not because theology is just the way we think about God and many times people say to me well of course I'm not at the illusion of course they are everybody is it's just which theology you believe and what you really think God is like let me tell you now quite straight that that disaster of Jerusalem falling into gentle hands again which is yet to happen was an expression of God's love and if you don't understand that you'll have to re-examine your understanding of what the word love means when we apply it to God God chastens those he loves he disciplines those he loves in fact the New Testament says if God doesn't Trace in you you better question whether you're one of his sons and that's God's love we live in the day when it's considered that parents who really love their children never punish them that's rubbish if you really love your children you will discipline them and it's hard to discipline your children at times and God is disciplining Israel in fact he is going to do that to prepare them for his son's arrival and he's doing it in love I remember back in 1973 I was here in Israel in the month of May for the Independence Day Parade and quite deliberately the authorities in Israel had chosen to make that parade go right through East Jerusalem the Arab quarter and we stood in East Jerusalem to watch the position and the cars carrying the Israeli leaders came by and I was watching with my church group that I brought from England and I saw ben-gurion for the only time I saw him and then go to my air and sitting beside her moshe dayan with his eyepatch and i was shocked by their appearance why because there was on their faces a look of sheer arrogance and pride which said we are invincible it was after the six-day war which Moshe Dan did so much to save the war and there they were riding through Arab East Jerusalem with an expression on their faces that said nobody can beat us with our the invincible nation and there was pride in that and I turned to one of the elders of my church and I said you know God is going to humble them he can't let them go on feeling this he will bring them down and just a month or two later on the day of Yom Kippur they were totally caught out by surprise and the nation has been humbled ever since they no longer believe that they are invincible I just mentioned that because the final sack of Jerusalem is God's way of dealing with their pride of bringing them lower bringing them to the point where they know all the nations are against them and there is nowhere else to turn but to God and that's the moment that God has been waiting for that's the moment that he's preparing them for so that finally as a whole nation they were pleading with the Spirit of supplication given to help them and plead with God to enter the battlefield and he will answer that rare I told you yesterday today is the day of good news for you from Zechariah 12 to 14 because the context of the promise which is the theme of this conference is full of good promises but the bad ones come before the good ones and that is God's usual order he disciplines us first he brings our pride lo first he brings us and many of you could testify to this he brings you to the end of yourself and only when you get to the end of yourself do you ask for his mercy and then he's so glad to give it because he's full of it he mercy full and he loves to hear the prayer God be merciful to me a sinner that's the friend he's waiting for from this nation and because he loves them he treats them as children who need discipline who need to be spanked and that final discipline will come with the fall of Jerusalem because they are saying this is our city we took it in 1960 seventies our capital our eternal and undivided capital God is longing for them too to hear him say this is his capital it is his undivided City it is his Eternal City it's the city of the Great King that's what he's longing for they're very proud to conquer this city in 1967 and gained it back for Israel and that's quite an achievement but I believe God is wanting to say to them but I decide whether you keep it I am the king of the city and therefore I will take it from you temporarily and then give it back to you to remind you I am the king and it's my fitty and my capital and my place on earth and so we're beginning to answer the important question why should God allow such a catastrophe why should he even cause it and there are two reasons that God is going to do it and the first is for his own people to bring them low enough to look up and supplicate him but the second reason is to deal with the nations and Humble them and judge them for what he is going to do to this city is not a judgment it's a chastisement it's discipline with the hope of bringing their character to the right place where he can save them to put it simply in the hope of bringing to repentance and I told you yesterday that accompanying that outpouring of the spirit of grace which means totally undeserved and the Spirit of publication is accompanied by a vision when they see him whom they pierced and realize what an appalling error they made in not saving Jesus from the cross now of course God intended that all along and they were doing God's will according to God's plan nevertheless it was a terrible mistake and Peter in his sermons accused them of that terrible crime he said you killed the Prince of life you did it and he wasn't talking to Pontius partner of Caiaphas and Anna's he was talking to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Peter dead to say to them you did it and I tried to say yesterday that by still rejecting him they are still doing it but now let's turn to the good news no I haven't finished with the bad news for the other nations why did he bring all the United Nations army to this city to judge them to expose them to show them what they were doing as well and that's why God steps in to the situation that point and completely turns the tables and terrible things happen to the United Nations who have come against this city so God steps in and deal to them he has brought them to this city for judgment final judgment and from Mount Scopus where their leaders will be stationed for the siege he will bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat to judge them so God knew what he was doing knows what he is going to do and he's doing it for Israel out of love for Israel and he's doing it to deal with all those nations who ganged up against his people and his capital that's the good news or the beginning of it and from here on Zechariah 12 to 14 which is the context for his promise of spirit and suffocate of Graces application from here on we have picture after picture of what will happen to this city then and it's great news now one of the problems of dealing with the Old Testament and the prophecies is that it's like opening a jigsaw puzzle box if I was speaking to his Raley's they'd understand exactly what I mean because the main hobby I learned in Israel is doing jigsaw puzzles did you know that they sell a huge number of jigsaw puzzles here in Israel they love doing them now when you open the box and you look at all the pieces and all the different bits of color they make no sense at all and you've got to try and find which one fits this one and fit them together Hebrews chapter one says this God spoke in the old days to the prophets in bits and pieces I like that phrase but in these days he has spoken to us in his son in other words you will find the story of redemption in the Old Testament in bits and pieces but if you won the picture on the lid read the news 10th New Testament I like doing jigsaw puzzles takes my mind right of other things and I'm afraid I have to look at the picture on the box cover all the time where does this piece go and then I can fit it in now that's the same with all the Old Testament prophecies they're scattered in bits and pieces through all the major and minor prophets and it's only in the light of the New Testament that we can put them together because Jesus is the picture on the lid and we can see through his eyes how all those things fit together now when I read zechariah 12 to 14 when i first began to study it deeply for this conference i thought these are just bits and pieces and i don't know how they all fit together and i've tried to fit them together they're not even chronological it's as if zechariah was just given a series of snapshots of photographs of what was going to happen have you had someone show you their holiday photographs from their digital camera and then they to get them in the wrong water and they'd show you oh no that was the previous week we did so that's reading Zechariah 12 to 14 one of the reasons that so many people have not noticed what I told you yesterday is that the verse I read to you of those terrible things to happen to Jerusalem isn't connected directly with the verse that says Jerusalem will be besieged and in fact the verse in chapter 12 that talks about Jerusalem under siege goes straight on to say the result the ultimate result of that encounter which is that Jerusalem will become a rock a large rock that anyone trying to lift it will injure themselves I heard of a a man in the in Scotland who finished up in a hospital with a double rupture and the doctor said what on earth were you doing to get this he said I was lifting a heavy crate unto my wife's back that's how he got his injury you try and lift something too heavy for you and let your knees part he you'll injure yourself Jerusalem ultimately will be a rock which will injure all those who try to lift it and mixing his metaphors Zechariah also said she will be a cup that will send the nations reeling drunk unable to walk now unfortunately in Chapter 12 you've got the announcement of the siege and immediately the ultimate result of that with Jerusalem triumphant and so people forget that there's another verse in chapter 14 that describes what happens between those two things do you see my point you've got to fit them together very carefully in the light of the New Testament particularly and so I'm going to give you some of these snapshots these pictures of the ultimate future of Jerusalem we looked at the immediate future of Jerusalem yesterday but now let's look beyond that let's see how God gets them out of that trouble and he does it first by raising them around of the people in Jerusalem even after they've been invaded defeated looted raped deported even after that it says God raises them around and in every battle morale is the key factor if you lose that you'll lose the battle and so god raises them around it says he makes every inhabitant of Jerusalem have the same spirit as David who first conquered it and every inhabitant will be like David the king with his courage his ingenuity his morale because he was a man after God's own heart and with everybody in Jerusalem their hearts lifted feeling like King David that inspires the Jews in the environment the Jews in Judea to come to the aid of Jerusalem but they are told by God they must first liberate their own home and then come to the aid of their brethren in Jerusalem because an army that big will have already damaged homes around Jerusalem so God lifts them around of Jerusalem and he brings Jews from the environs to their aid and their spirits begin to lift and it's at this stage that we have an extraordinary but wonderful statement that in fact God's feet will stand on the Mount of Olives whether Zechariah realized that he was making a messianic prediction or not I don't know but God hasn't got a new feet so how can his feet stand on the Mount of Olives and the answer we know because we've got the picture on the lid in the New Testament and the answer is it isn't God the Father whose feet are gonna stand on the Mount of Olives but God the Son he has feet he still has its resurrection body and his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives the answer to their supplication to their pleading with God is very simple Jesus is coming back and that's the answer to their problem because he is invincible and nobody can conquer Jesus finally and he's on his way back and that means that God Himself is entering the battlefield there's another little picture of what happens when God directly fights in a battle and the answer is he sends a plague on the nations who've been attacking his city a plague that rots their flesh in particular that rots their eyes and their tongues it's a dreadful picture that's what will happen when God comes in and fights for his people can you imagine what happens to a modern invading well-equipped force of thousands of soldiers if they lose their eyesight and their speech and can no longer see who they're fighting with and can no longer communicate with each other and it says that in their blindness they will get hold of someone and kill them thinking they've got a Jew and they've got one of the Gentiles who's been attacking they are in utter confusion utter dismay utter helplessness when God enters that battlefield now you can read all this in Zechariah 12 14 and I hope when you get home that's the one of the first things you'll do check me out I beg you don't accept anything I say because I say it I'm not the Pope I'm not infallible I want you to check everything I say in your Bible go and find it there don't say do you know what David Paulson said don't ever say that go and check me out in your Bible and then said you know what the Bible says and you show them from the Word of God what you really believe so yes the enemy has finally routed those who have invaded this City and looted its property and raped its women and deported its men they are the ones who are now suffering terribly irredeemably and God is dealing with the nation's and now he is lifting up Jerusalem literally physically and he's putting down the nations of the world and their disgrace will stay with them when I said he's lifting up Jerusalem I meant it literally physically because another little photo in Zechariah's property prophecy says that he's going to elevate this city and lower the hills around it the first time I came to Jerusalem I got a big surprise I'd seen pictures of Jerusalem on the top of a mountain and people flowing up to it from all directions did you see that kind of picture I've seen it here on this stage of this feast of Jerusalem with all the people coming up to it and then I went walking and I went down to the place in front of the western wall and there was a big tent up there and I thought well who's in here and I went in found it was all Jews celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles and guess what they had the same picture up in the tent of Jerusalem on the top of a mountain and people flowing to it from all nations and from all directions but that's not what I saw when I first came to this city we climbed up that road up through the hills and I kept peering ahead to try and see Jerusalem and I never saw it and finally the coach breasted the rim of the hills around Jerusalem just outside this hall and suddenly we were in streets with houses this was the fall the new suburbs were built and then as we looked ahead we saw Jerusalem below us and for the first time I realized that Jerusalem is not on the top of the mountains that it's surrounded by Hills but it's in a hollow you look at the old city it's down below you it's in a hollow surrounded by hills and mountains and I had to revise my geography quickly but that's not how it's going to be it says there will be such motions in the earth itself and we're in a volcanic zone you can see the evidence of that every cliff you can see every time a road is cut through the hill you can see by the strata of the rock that there's been a terrific movement of the earth here and there were two huge cracks in the earth and the land between them fell lower than any part on earth and that's the Jordan Valley that's the Rift Valley that goes right down through Africa the this whole land has been moved around by God and it's going to be moved around by God again according to Zechariah and the hills surrounding Jerusalem will sink and Jerusalem will be raised up and then for the first time you'll be able to see it from a distance and we'll all go up to Jerusalem and make alia what a change now how does that fit in I don't really know I have a box in my study called wait-and-see and I file a lot of letters in that box and I reply to a lot of letters saying you have your own box and call it wait and see because how many people try to fit all these prophecies of the future together into some neat package and all the packages are different have you noticed features are never quite the same well Zechariah gives us these glimpses these pictures he gives us a picture of a Jerusalem in which there is nothing secular in which everything is sacred and holy to the Lord even the kitchen pots are sacred to the Lord what a picture this is a mix at the moment of a secular under sacred city and the sacred part pretty mixed it's a terribly religious City this you know that as you walk around but one day it's going to be a sacred city holy to the Lord with nothing secular in it at all that's the ultimate picture these shows at the end of his chapter and there's another picture too of a great reversal he begins with the nation's coming to Jerusalem to attack the city to besiege it to invade it but he ends with a picture of the nations of the world coming to Jerusalem to praise God and they're coming for the Feast of Tabernacles of which this is a mere foretaste I'll tell you this even if I'm not it another feast here I'll be at the big one I promise you I'll be there because as I've told as I told the folk in Bethlem yesterday Jesus was born during the Feast of Tabernacles Luke's Gospel tells us that and he tabernacled among us and he will come again at the Feast of Tabernacles they say this is the only big feast in the Jewish calendar that hasn't been fulfilled oh it was fulfilled Jesus first visit was during this feast but I changed the Wordle around a little and I say but the meaning of this feast will be filled full by his second visit so he fulfilled it by his first and he will fill fold it by his second and I'm coming to that I've booked my place and in fact I've got a free flight to the Holy Land and so will all of you can you imagine that reversal of fortunes from all the nations coming with their armies to invade the city to all the nations coming to praise God what could make such a difference I can tell you in one word because Jesus is back he's King now and therefore the nations will be under his rule and he will be king of kings and Lord of lords and he says come to the Feast of Tabernacles and the nations will come there are many other pictures I listed them all on the notes that I hope you've been given take those notes home and go through those three chapters and read the context for yourself I don't think I've yet got the right chronological order for all the pictures I'm going home to work on it much more maybe even write a little book on Zechariah I'd love to do that but seek the order in your own mind try and fit the pictures together in the light of the picture on the lid Jesus Christ Himself now that's all I feel I ought to say about Zechariah 12 to 14 as a series of pictures of the future of this great city I haven't covered all of them there are ten ten things that are all going to happen to this city on that day the day of the Lord so it's got to be a long day all those 10 things couldn't fit into a 12-hour day not at all it's going to be a long day the day on which of the evening time that will be light but I want finally while I've got time I've got 12 minutes so I can just draw your attention to two other things and I'm finished first in the middle of chapter 13 there are three verses that don't fit the rest I don't know if you've noticed it if you've read it I hope you've read Zechariah 12 to 14 while you've been here but here they are I'm going to read them because they're so different and so important awake o sword against my shepherd against the man who is close to me declares the Lord God Almighty strike the Shepherd and the sheep will be scattered I will turn my hand against the little ones in the whole land declares the Lord 2/3 will be struck down and perish yet one-third will be left in it and this third I will bring into the fire I will refine them like silver and test them like gold they will call on my name and I will answer them I will say they are my people and they will say the Lord is our God now the reason I say it doesn't fit those three verses is this there in poetry and all the rest of 12 to 14 is prose suddenly there's this song bursting into the prose poetry is directed to the heart prose is directed to the head I hope you have a Bible in which the poetry is laid out as poems with broken lines whereas the prose looks more like a newspaper article because then you will know when God is speaking to the heart to his people or when he's speaking to the head now most of zechariah 12 to 14 is to the head is to instruct us and tell us what to expect but these three verses are in poetry and they're an appeal to your heart and whereas the rest of zechariah 12 to 14 happens in one day the day of the lord these three verses take two thousand years at least it's as if the his camera has zoomed back in the lens and is taking a wider view and looking at the whole purpose of God for Israel of which the final events in Jerusalem are only part so what does he say in these three verses forgive me for analyzing them but the first verse 7 I've called forsaken flock the shepherdess strunk and the sheep are scattered that refers to the days of Jesus two thousand years ago because he applied that verse to himself just before his death the shepherd is struck and the sheep are scattered that's what happened in this city two thousand years ago and then the next verse verse 8 talks about and the majority of the sheep will be lost even the little ones the children but the minority will stay and be kept and that covers the intervening 2,000 years between Jesus first Advent in' and us the majority of Jews have perished when this city was under siege from the Romans in AD 70 over a million Jews died the only ones to escape were the Jews who believed in Jesus and they fled across the Jordan many years later in 1/35 under the last rebellion under Bar Kochba the false messiah another eight hundred and fifty thousand Jews perished and here are some amazing facts we've gotten down somewhere in the last eighteen eight hundred years one half of all born Jews have been killed and in the last eighty years one-third of all Jews born have been murdered so verse 8 of chapter 13 is true the majority of the sheep will perish because the shepherd was struck and God calls that Shepherd the man who is closest to me what a description of Gd so the second verse in that song has also been true but listen now to the third verse and this is the exciting thing he says I will pass them the remainder the remnant I will pass them through fire and that will purify them as silver and gold is purified and I believe that last final assault on this city and its occupation by Gentiles again its trampling down again by Gentiles is the fire that God will finally put them through so that they will be made into silver and gold pure silver and pure gold and then it says the relationship between God and His people will be restored totally restored and they will say he is our God and I will say they're my people do you know that's a refrain that goes right through the Bible I will be their God and they will be my people you underline that in your Bible it runs right through right to the end of your Bible in the book of Revelation and they will be my people and I will be their God you see the three phases of Jewish history from when the Shepherd was struck and the Sheep was scattered when Jesus was crucified and the Jews were sent into the Diaspora how during the intervening years the majority of them have perished but there's always been a remnant that's been saved and how finally God brings them into the fire to refine them and prepare their character and you know when a refiner is refining gold in the furnace he knows when he's got it purified by one thing he can see his own face perfectly in the gold with no dross all been burnt away so that when God can look down in Israel and see his own face fully and perfectly reflected so that they are holy as he is holy so that they are loved as he is loved so they are mercy as he is message so that they're just like him then God says the process is complete and that process which he's doing to his people Israel he will do with us as well whatever top experiences we have to go through he's refining us making us pure gold and silver perfectly reflecting his image finally if I've got time I have three minutes I want to point out that the central character in Zechariah 12 to 14 is certainly not Zechariah and it's not Jerusalem it is Almighty God himself and this section begins with praising God as the maker of heaven and earth and the maker of every human being that's where we began that's where the whole story begins god is almighty father maker of heaven and earth and then through the whole three chapters this phrase keeps coming I will I will I will I will and this is the God not as the past creator but as the present king who is ultimately in charge of our universe and ruling it but it finishes up with God as our future monarch and there is one verse chapter 14 verse 9 where it says and God will be the lord of the whole earth here are the three things we need to know about God he is the Creator from whom we came he is the king under whose rule we lived and he is the future king monarch of all the nations so God is the central character in this whole drama so we've looked at Zechariah 12 to 14 not as much as I would like to have done I had much more that I would love to have set you but maybe they'll be a book on it we'll wait and see maybe it will stay in the waiting see box I don't know but look I want to thank you very much for the reception you've given me over 10 years since Malcolm heading invited me back to this platform I've appreciated that tremendously and I want to say that I've been encouraged by the attendance of my sessions which I don't take as a compliment I believe that the majority of you've come to hear me because you want the whole truth and by God's grace that's what I've tried you

Channel: David Pawson - Official

Views: 26,701

Rating: 4.8682632 out of 5

Keywords: David Pawson, Zechariah

Id: dtprHBo8G0M

Length: 44min 2sec (2642 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 11 2016