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For life
to make sense and for us to have meaningful lives
- lives that will endure beyond this life - we
need to know where we came from and where we are
going. Starting with Genesis, the divinely inspired
book of origins, and ending with the book of Revelation,
the book focusing on the final things, the Special
Writings of Israel alone of all the world’s religious
books tell us exactly what we need to know. One
of the parts of the Word of God that has much
detailed information about where we are going
is found in Zechariah 12-14. It begins this way:
This is the word of the Lord concerning Israel.
The focus of this revelation, like the focus of
many of the prophecies of the Last Days, is our
nation - the nation of Israel. As Messianic believers,
we want to know everything that the Lord has revealed
about Israel, because we are part of Israel and
because the future of Israel will impact the entire
world. Therefore, since the prophecies affect
everyone, it’s the responsibility of all Believers
- Jewish and Gentile - to know and understand
them.
This
message is the Word of Adonai, the Yud Hay Vav
Hay, the great I Am, the Eternal God who alone
has life and being inherent within Himself. But
it is coming through a very special human being,
Zechariah, one of the last of a very special group
of human beings - the Jewish prophets. During
the 4,000 years of Israel’s history, there have
been only a very few select individuals to whom
the Lord chose to speak in a very clear way, who
would then give the Word of God to the rest of
us. Zechariah, who lived around 500 BC, is one
of these special human beings. He was a true prophet
whose life and ministry and writings have been
tested and found to be 100-percent reliable, so
this word is worthy of our complete trust.
To reinforce
the trustworthiness of this great prophetic message,
and so that we know whose word this is and why
it is reliable and why it should be believed,
Zechariah adds the following information: The
Lord, who stretches out the heavens, who lays
the foundation of the Earth, and who forms the
spirit of man within him: The One Who Was,
Who Is, And Who Is To Come created the vast expanses
of space and the mighty sun and the beautiful
silvery moon and the planets and comets and the
billions of far-flung galaxies, with their trillions
upon trillions of stars (and He is so infinitely
wise that He knows each and every star by name!).
Adonai, who stretches out the heavens, made the
vast reaches of the universe and everything in
them as easily as a man stretches out a small
tent in which to spend the night! And in addition,
the One Who Is The Source Of Existence created
this specially designed planet that we live on,
the 8,000-mile-in-diameter massive Earth with
its 260 billion cubic miles of matter. He laid
the foundation of the Earth. And the One Who Will
Be Who He Will Be made the subtle, immaterial,
inner part of mankind - our spirit, the non-physical
part of our being. The Lord forms the spirit of
man within him. The One Who Alone Has The Right
To Say “I Am” is the infinitely powerful and wise
Creator of everything that exists - from the vast
expanses of the mind-bogglingly huge universe,
to the core of the massive Earth, to the subtle
and living and self-aware spirit of human beings.
Do you
remember the old commercials with the slogan:
“When E.F. Hutton speaks, people listen”? A representative
from that financial firm would identify himself
to someone in a crowded room, and right before
he said something, everyone got suddenly quiet
so they could overhear the important and valuable
words that the person representing E.F. Hutton
was about to say. It is smart to listen to powerful
and informed people who have valuable information,
especially when they speak about their plans for
the future. It makes sense to listen to powerful
human beings who are dispensing valuable information
that benefits their listeners; and it is foolish
and harmful to ignore what they have to say. It
is even wiser to listen to the One who stretches
out the heavens, who lays the foundation of the
Earth, and who forms the spirit of man within
him, who has all this wisdom and power, and who
is revealing to us His prophetic plans about Israel
and the nations in a crucial period of history
that affects the future of the world!
Here
is what the All Powerful, All Wise Creator God
- who is in control of every force in the universe
and who is the sovereign Lord over human history
- says He will do in the Achareet HaYameem - the
Last Days: I am going to make Jerusalem a cup
that sends all the surrounding peoples reeling.
At the end of this age - the time that immediately
precedes the return of our wonderful King and
Savior and Messiah to planet Earth - the Lord’s
plan is not to make peace for Israel in the Middle
East, but trouble and difficulty and increasing
amounts of pressure that will result in the greatest
war in human history. That is what is going to
happen, and that is what we should expect.
Why will
the Lord bring us under increasing amounts of
pressure? Why will the fires of anti-Semitism
burn their hottest? Why will the nations of the
world turn against us and attempt to destroy us?
Because the Lord hates us? No. It’s the exact
opposite. We need this pressure to bring us to
the place where we need to get to in order for
the salvation of our nation and the subsequent
blessing of the world to be accomplished. For
centuries the Jewish people have been disobedient
to the Lord. We have broken our covenants with
Him, including the Sinai Covenant and the Messiah
Covenant, the New Covenant. Our people did not
recognize the day of our visitation, when the
eternal Son of God humbled Himself, left the honor
and glories and powers He had in Heaven, and came
to Earth and became a man. He came to His own,
but the majority of His own didn’t recognize Him
or receive Him, but tragically rejected and crucified
Him. Our people have, as a result, been exiled
among the nations for 2,000 years, where life
has been for the most part very difficult and
often painful. Yet, in spite of our blindness
and sin, we Jewish people will be graciously restored
to our special Land and to our special city, Jerusalem.
And, Zechariah and other prophets make it crystal
clear that we will be there in the Last Days prior
to the return of King Messiah. But this partial
regathering of the Jewish people to our ancient
land that God repeatedly promised to give to us
forever as part of an everlasting, unbreakable
covenant (the Abrahamic covenant - see Psalm 105:8-15)
will not be appreciated by the surrounding peoples.
They will not be supportive of partially regathered
Israel.
The hostility
that our people have been experiencing for decades
from the surrounding peoples should not come as
a surprise to us. We were forewarned by the Lord
2,500 years ago that they would not welcome us
back home with: “We are glad to have you back
home! Barucheem haba-eem - welcome back holy people
to your holy land and holy city that the holy
God of Israel reserved for you and for no one
else! And because we fear the God of Israel and
we understand His sovereign plan for your very
special nation, we want to help you return and
reestablish your land and cities! And may the
God of Israel bless us as we bless you according
to the promise in His Word”! Instead, they will
react to this divinely ordained and orchestrated
regathering with irrational hatred. They will
be like the man who drinks too much alcohol and
becomes unstable and irrational, reeling and stumbling
and saying and doing crazy things and making a
fool of himself.
It won’t
be only our capital city of Jerusalem that will
be hated and attacked by the irrational peoples
who surround us: Judah will be besieged as
well as Jerusalem. The enemies who surround
us will want more than a Jew-free Jerusalem to
control. They will be intent on destroying the
entire regathered nation in all of our cities
and land. The long tried, many-times-attempted
destruction of the Chosen People in the Holy Land
will be their goal.
The Supreme
Being, who self-exists, informs us that this Last
Days, Israel-centered struggle will spread beyond
the Middle East. On that day, when all the
nations of the Earth are gathered against her
... The irrational hatred and senseless behavior
of the surrounding peoples over regathered Israel
will draw the whole world into this end-of-days
conflict. Since the tower of Babel, many human
beings have longed for the reunification of divided
humanity, for the peoples and nations of the world
to unite and work together as one. Well, the unification
of the fractured nations will finally take place
in the Last Days, but one of the goals of this
coming together will be to destroy the partially
regathered Jewish nation! The gathered-together
nations will attempt the final destruction of
little Israel.
Right
now, there are about 5.5 million Jewish people
in Israel and approximately 6.6 billion people
in the world. The Jewish people in Israel are
less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the world’s
population. For every Jewish person in Israel,
there are 1,200 Gentiles in the world. If the
Lord returns fairly soon, and the ratio of Jews
to Gentiles stays relatively the same, our little
nation will be facing what may be the biggest
mismatch and the greatest odds against a nation
in the history of warfare.
What
will little Israel be able to do against the combined
forces of a united world? On our own, depending
on ourselves, our resources, our strength, our
intelligence, our weapons, we couldn’t do enough
to survive. But, because it is the gracious plan
of the Almighty and All-Gracious God to save our
nation, with His saving help we will be able to
do enough!
First,
He will make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the
surrounding peoples reeling. After that has had
the desired effect and drawn the united nations
into the final battle, it is the Lord’s predetermined
plan to supernaturally strengthen and empower
the Jewish nation to enable us to stand firm against
the onslaught of a God-despising, Jew-hating,
Bible-rejecting, truth-suppressing world. On
that day, when all the nations of the Earth are
gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an
immovable rock for all the nations. The Almighty
will make us like a solid rock that is rooted
deep within the Earth. No matter how hard the
nations try to move us out of our God-given, oath-sworn,
unconditional-covenant-provided holy land, they
will be unable to do so! And just as a man, if
he keeps on pushing and pushing harder and harder
against a rock that can’t be moved, eventually
hurts himself, so will any nation, any army, any
coalition of armies that tries to destroy Israel
or move the Jewish people out of our Creator-willed,
God-ordained place. All who try to move it
will injure themselves.
Then
the Lord, who prefers to save by the few, rather
than by the many, so that He is glorified and
not puny, weak human beings - the One who is supremely
worthy of our praise and who does not want sinful
creatures who are prone to pride, who have a deluded
and self-destructive independent attitude toward
the One who is the Source of Life and Blessing
to think that they are the source of saving power
- the Lord will intervene in our most desperate
moment, with the united nations of the world invading
us, intent on destroying us.
“On
that day I will strike every horse with panic
and its rider with madness,” declares the Lord
. The Lord will cause panic, fear, and irrational
thinking to overcome our enemies, just He did
with Gideon and his 300, and just as He did in
the time of good King Yehoshaphat when he faced
a coalition of armies. He will confuse our enemies
while protecting us from any confusion, and He
will supernaturally empower us, especially those
who are in our capital city. He promises: I
will keep a watchful eye over the house of Judah,
but I will blind all the horses of the nations.
Then the leaders of Judah will say in their hearts,
“The people of Jerusalem are strong, because the
Lord of Armies is their God” (their Mighty
One, the Source of Power).
The people
of Jerusalem, and especially the leaders, will
be divinely empowered to fight and have amazing
victories: On that day I will make the leaders
of Judah like a firepot in a woodpile, like a
flaming torch among sheaves. They will consume
right and left all the surrounding peoples, but
Jerusalem will remain intact in her place.
Our deadly, satanically inspired, Antichrist-led
enemies, vastly superior in numbers and weapons,
will be destroyed; and the Jewish soldiers who
fight for us will be strong and invincible, so
that Jerusalem will remain unmoved. Wow! How cool
is that? The leaders of Israel will be worthy
of great honor for the amazing victories accomplished
during this time, but so will the rest of the
Jewish people! The Lord will save the dwellings
of Judah first, so that the honor of the house
of David and of Jerusalem's inhabitants may not
be greater than that of Judah. And it won’t
be just the people of Jerusalem and our leaders
who will be supernaturally strong like Samson,
but so will all of the Jewish people living in
Israel, from the leaders to the weakest of the
people. On that day the Lord will shield
- supernaturally protect and empower - those
who live in Jerusalem, so that the feeblest among
them will be like David - like David who fought
the giant Goliath and won, like David who was
one of our greatest soldiers and generals of all
time; and the house of David will be like God,
like the Angel of the Lord going before them.
If the weak and feeble Jews will be as strong
as David the mighty giant killer, then the royal
line of David will be even more powerful - not
even like mortals, but like the Malach Adonai,
the very special and very powerful Angel of the
Lord, and like Eloheem, the Mighty God.
The Lord,
who stretches out the heavens, who lays the foundation
of the Earth, and who forms the spirit of man
within him, prophetically informs us that it is
His plan to utterly defeat this united nations
invasion. On that day I will set out to destroy
all the nations that attack Jerusalem. This
is His plan for the proud, arrogant, anti-Zionist,
Israel-hating, anti-Semitic, God-rejecting, Messiah-resisting,
Antichrist-accepting united nations of the Last
Days.
We have
experienced and celebrated quite a few miraculous
victories in our long history. Following this
greatest victory of our people from the most desperate
circumstances, where the end of our nation was
certain, one would think that the greatest relief,
the most joy and the best celebration ever would
follow. Not so. What follows this greatest of
salvations is the greatest of outpourings of the
Spirit, which results in the greatest of recognitions
and repentances and mournings over our sins. The
Lord will have saved us from physical and national
destruction; now He finally, after so many prayers
from so many righteous men and women over so many
centuries, will save us spiritually as well. The
Lord will pour out His Spirit on our nation, enabling
us to come closer to Him than we ever have before
as a people. And I will pour out on the house
of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit
of grace and supplication. The result of the
outpouring of the Spirit of God is our new ability
to fully receive all the good and gracious things
that God has done and wants to do for us. Accompanying
this greatest of national outpourings of the Spirit
is the recognition of the Suffering Messiah and
our responsibility for His suffering. They
will look on Me, the one they have pierced.
In the pouring out of the Spirit, King Messiah
will suddenly be recognized by His own as the
source of the salvation we just experienced. We
will have a supernatural revelation that the Messiah,
the anointed Prophet, Priest and King already
came, and it is Yeshua of Nazareth, the One whom
God the Father used to stretch out the heavens,
who laid the foundation of the Earth, and who
formed the spirit of man within him. He is the
Messiah whom we rejected, helped to crucify and
have despised for 2,000 years!
The Chosen
People will recognize that we made the very greatest
mistake in human history, a history that includes
many great mistakes, and we will be so terribly
sorry and repentant to the core of our national
being. We will go into a time of unprecedented
national mourning, the deepest and most profound
kind of national mourning. And they will mourn
for Him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve
bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn
son. This greatest threat, followed by the
greatest salvation, followed by the greatest outpouring
of the Spirit, followed by the greatest recognition
of saving truth and the greatest repentance, is
followed by the greatest national cleansing and
the elimination of all false religion and false
teachings among the Jewish people, within Judaism,
even within Messianic Judaism. True religion will
be established on Earth, centered in a new Temple
in Jerusalem. Israel and the nations of the world
will come under the wonderful administration of
Messiah Yeshua, the Lord who will have returned
to Earth on the Mount of Olives.
Why is
Zechariah 12-14 of particular interest to us today?
For several reasons. Isn’t it obvious that we
are living in the time that is approaching the
culmination of this amazing prophecy? After 1,900
years - after having lost sovereignty over the
land of Israel, with the majority having been
exiled from our Land and scattered among the nations
- the Jewish people are being returned to the
land of our fathers by the God of Israel. Since
1948, we are once again in control of the land
of Israel - just as this prophecy foretold.
The reestablishment of Israel is not a chance
occurrence, and anyone who believes that the rebirth
of Israel is a historical accident and has no
end-of-days significance is making a very foolish
and dangerous mistake. The surrounding nations
have an implacable hatred toward us. They want
us removed from our place. Dominated by Islam,
which will not allow a Jewish state to remain
in the heart of the Middle East, they have launched
a series of wars against us. They will not rest
until Israel, to them a heavy stone, is removed
from its place. That is why it is foolish to compromise
with them, divide God’s special land or exchange
land for a peace that can never exist.
This
Middle East conflict has already drawn in the
other nations of the world, and it will continue
to do so more and more . In fact, in November
2007, a so-called peace conference made up of
some 40 nations and hosted by the United States
convened to try to bring peace to the region by
pressuring Israel to divide God’s land in exchange
for promises of peace. The nations of the world
are uniting more and more - just as this prophecy
said they would. And most of the nations of the
world are already against us. As we get closer
to Messiah’s return, we can expect all the nations
of the world to unite against us.
The awareness
that this amazing prophecy is in the process of
being fulfilled confirms to us the utter reliability
of the Word of God. It confirms to us that all
the prophecies of the Word of God will be literally
fulfilled. It tells us and the nations of the
world what the will of God is about the regathered
nation of Israel. God is a Zionist. There is no
place for anti-Semitism or anti-Zionism among
the nations of the world, especially among those
identifying themselves as Christians. Pray that
the Church turns from all anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.
Pray that this nation continues to stand by the
partially regathered nation of Israel, so that
we will be blessed. This prophecy lets us know
that we are getting close to the end of this age.
The scattering and regathering of the Jewish people
to the Land that the Lord reserved for us is one
of the key signs that the return of our wonderful
Messiah is near. This should cause us to be focused
not the things of the world, but on the things
of God, and on purity and holiness and on evangelism.
One final
thought that is directed to my Messianic Jewish
brothers and sisters: We are part of this great
salvation of our Jewish people in the Achareet
HaYameem - the Last Days - even now! From just
one man, faithful Abraham, God created a small
but special nation of witnesses; and within that
small witness nation, was the even smaller faithful
remnant that the Lord used to bring truth and
victory and salvation to the rest. From Abraham,
Isaac and Israel, to Moses and Joshua and the
judges and the prophets, to the good priests and
kings, and to the valiant Maccabees and Lord Himself
and His small band of disciples, including all
the righteous men and women, and finally to us
- we, the small remnant of Messianic Jews, have
a part in preparing the way for the culmination
of this great salvation! And so do the wonderful
Gentile Christians who stand with us! We are the
Elijahs and the John the Baptists who are in the
wilderness of rejection, calling out to our people
to turn to the One whom we have pierced, who alone
can save us as individuals and as a nation, and
fulfill us as Jews. We are loosening the hard
soil of unbelief, leveling the uneven ground of
Messiah-rejection to make a highway for Him to
walk on. We are the prophets calling our people
back to truth, to a right relationship with God,
to salvation, to true Judaism, to the Jewish Messiah!
This amazing prophecy lets us know that one day
all of our efforts, our words, our witness, our
faithfulness amid opposition, our patient endurance,
will have their intended saving effect!
So don’t
be discouraged that Messianic Jews are a minority
within a minority - which can be difficult and
unpleasant. That is the way it has been throughout
the history of our people. Until the great salvation
of our people in the Last Days, the faithful remnant
will continue to be in the minority. Let’s continue
boldly and unashamedly calling our people to the
truth. And let’s be willing to endure hurtful
rejection, knowing that we are on the right side,
truth’s side, God’s side, salvation’s side, and
eventually we will see a good end to our efforts
and the efforts of those who may follow us. May
each one of us be found worthy to enjoy the rewards
given by our Returning King to those who have
faithfully served Him!
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