Content in category Prophecy

How Soon Jacob’s Trouble? (Followup)

[…] Writing after the exile, Zechariah mentions nothing of another dispersion, but he certainly contemplates a Jewish presence in the Land when describing the distress that precedes the day of the Lord. So unless the prophecies are to be spiritualized, something had to give. Somehow, the Jews had to be a nation again in the Land (Dan 12:1). That’s where we are today. We have come full circle. The early church lived and labored under the shadow of an imminent destruction of Jerusalem. We’re there again. The only difference is the church for the large part is sound asleep (Mt 25:5).

Of course, the expectation of the early church concerning Jerusalem was fulfilled, as also foretold by Jesus. However, with the destruction of Jerusalem, there came the crisis of what scholars call, “the delay of the Parousia” (coming). Although Jerusalem was destroyed, Jesus did not return to destroy the Antichrist “immediately after the tribulation of those days” (Mt 24:29; 2Thes 2:8), as expected. Furthermore, Daniel’s people were not delivered and the dead did not rise (Jer 30:7; Dan 12:1-2, 13; Ro 11:26). […]

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Recommended Reading: Israel Is to Be Restored (Ch. 15 of “Jesus is Coming”)

[… Perhaps, you say: “I don’t believe the Israelites are to be restored to Canaan, and Jerusalem rebuilt.”

Dear reader! have you read the declarations of God’s word about it? Surely nothing is more plainly stated in the Scriptures. We would that we had space to quote the passages, but we can only give you a portion of the references. We beg of you to read them thoughtfully. Divest yourself of prejudice and preconceived notions, and let the Holy Spirit show you, from His word, the glorious future of God’s chosen people, “who are beloved” (Rom. 11 :28), and dear unto Him as “the apple of His eye.” Zech. 2:8. […]

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Why Care About “Jacob’s Trouble?”

[…] The church that understands the issues related to Jacob’s trouble will be able to benefit from the divine intention that God has invested in that time to bring both the church and Israel into their place. Knowledge and acceptance of this truth is crucial if such great and costly judgments and the glorious fulfillment of the prophetic Word will not be lost on our understanding, since it is also through that understanding (particularly of Daniel’s vision) that the true remnant of the church will be able to instruct many (Dan 11:33; 12:3). This instruction will result in the salvation of an innumerable multitude (Rev 7:9) that will come to faith during the time of “the tribulation, the great one” (Rev 7:14; literal translation of the Greed double article). The key of interpretation and understanding will be the difference between life and death. It has always been so, but this is particularly said of “those days” (Dan 12:7; Mt 24:19, 22, 29) in particular.

Not only will Jacob’s trouble straighten Israel to its appointed place; it will also further purify and perfect the church (dn 11:33-35; 12:10). When the first travail of the heavenly woman (“the mother of us all,” i.e., all the elect) is completed with Michael’s eviction of Satan at the mid-point of the last week, then the travail of Israel can begin, which ends in the sudden and supernatural birth of the nation “in one day” (Isa 66:8; Ezek 39:22; Zech 3:9; 12:10 with Mt 23:39; Acts 3:21; Ro 11:26 with Isa 59:21; Joel 2:31; 3:14-16 with Mt 24:29).

All the great issues of God’s name and nature, his covenant contention, and pleading with the church, Israel, and the nations will come to its concentrated intensity and fullness, so that the mystery of God can be finished (Rev 10:7; 11:15) with the return of Christ to destroy the Man of Sin (2Thes 2:8) and to re-instate the natural branches for the millennial establishment of the “everlasting covenant”. […]

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Egypt in Prophecy

[…] That Paul has the same trumpet in view in 1Cor 15:52 is put beyond reasonable question when it is considered that he tells us precisely which time and which resurrection is in view. It is the time of the resurrection of the saints of the Old Testament Isa 25:8; 26:19). It is plainly evident that Paul is deliberately associating the time of the church’s translation with the time of the resurrection of the Old Testament saints. He clearly says that the time of the ‘last trump’ is also the time of the resurrection mentioned in Isa 25:8. This is precisely what Paul is doing when he says, “Then shall be brought to pass the saying which is written …” (1Cor 15:54).

When is “then”? Well, to the chagrin of pre-tribulational teaching, “the saying” is written in Isa 25:8, which is undeniably situated in a post-tribulational context. This is ignored by pre-tribulational teaching. Paul’s statement, “then shall be brought to pass the saying which is written,” is passed over in convenient silence. However, then means then, and Paul’s “then” is manifestly the time of the last trump. […]

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Christian Zionism | Stephen Sizer

[…] Through the mystery of the gospel, this grace (the salvation of the coming day) has appeared to all men in unexpected advance of THAT DAY. This is the revelation of the one new man through the mystery of Christ in you (even you gentiles), but this takes nothing from the promise that the gospel will yet be revealed to the beleaguered remnant at the end of Jacob’s trouble. That will be the time of the “restitution of all things spoken by all the prophets since the world began.” To conceive of that restoration as NOT including God’s covenant promise to ‘post-tribulational Israel would have been unthinkable, as it surely was to Paul. Instead, the church, for the larger part, continues to “boast against the branches” to this day, even while Jerusalem trembles (Isa 34:8; Zech 12:2), threatening the “literal” fulfillment of all unfulfilled prophecy that has been denied for most of church history.

So despite Jewish unbelief concerning Christ, the covenant places and institutions are still divinely regarded as “holy”. Therefore, when we speak of the rage of the Antichrist against the “holy covenant” (Dan 11:28, 30), we are speaking of Satan’s hatred of Jewish election and right to the Land on the basis of divine predestination. We are NOT suggesting that Jewish worship counts for anything apart from faith in Christ. Manifestly, it does not. Otherwise, their worship would be acceptable. That it is NOT acceptable is shown by the fact that Israel’s greatest discipline and judgment comes at the very time their religious self assurance is reaching its heights […]

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The Fundamental Error of Amillennialism

[…] How we read Daniel and Revelation is first an issue of whether we can trust what Luther called, the priesthood of every believer, or whether we can only safely follow the tradition of interpretation that has come down to us through many of the churchs theological heroes, such as the famed magisterial Reformers, Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, and their vast theological progeny, as also the popes and bishops of the church of Rome. For the larger part, all have been Augustinian in their interpretation of the Daniel and the Apocalypse. This is why amillennialism has dominated most of Protestant and nearly all Roman Catholic eschatology. It is well known that St. Augustine of Hippo is the father of the a-millennial interpretation of the thousand years (i.e., that the church is the kingdom of God on earth and the millennium is symbolic of the church age).

Augustinian denial of a future millennium is not the only system of interpretation that denies the literal interpretation of the many prophecies that depict the post-tribulational salvation of a surviving remnant of the Jewish people and the restoration of the nation as a distinctly Jewish nation (Dan 2:44). Simply put, if there is no millennium, there can be no literal fulfillment of the vast amount of prophecy that depicts a glorious future for benighted and beleaguered Israel after the unequaled tribulation at the coming day of the Lord, which the New Testament equates with the time of Christs return […]

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Seeing God in Israel’s Trouble… and Our Own

[…] Things are coming that will be tragic and pathetic beyond our ability to bear. Our hearts will break, as our faith will be tested to the core. “It will be a terror only to understand the report” (Isa 28:19). This was the prophet, Habakkuk’s, dilemma. He was perplexed at God’s choice to use a nation of far greater ferocity and wickedness to come down for the scourging of His covenant elect.

The prophet knew keenly the nation’s covenant dereliction, but it was difficult for Habakkuk to find the equal weight of justice, not so much in the severity of judgment, but in God’s choice to use as the instrument of that judgment a nation that far exceeded Israel for cruelty and pagan defiance of covenant righteousness (see Isa 10:5). It was particularly God’s use of a nation far more wicked and fierce than the victim nation that constituted the offense to Habakkuk’s own human perceptions and relative measurements. We see not as He sees (Isa 55:8-9).

This is the mystery of God’s use of evil in behalf of His elect. We need to see that behind the ‘fierce countenance’ (Deut 28:50; Dan 8:23) of Satan’s hatred (in this case, the “ancient hatred” of Esau, which has found modern expression through the spirit of Islam; Ezek 35:5), it is ultimately God Himself that is opposing Israel by permitting their enemies to prevail against them. The Antichrist, as pre-typified in the King of Assyria is called the “rod” of God’s chastisement (Isa 10:5). It is God Himself who puts hooks into the jaws of the northern invader (Ezek 38:4). God employs the “evil thought” of a wicked principality (Ezek 38:10) as the very means by which He brings judgment and corrective discipline upon His people for their neglect of the covenant relationship. In Rev 17:16-17, there is a curious use of language that shows the absolute sovereignty of God in the employment of evil for His more ultimate purpose. The decision of the ten kings to support the Antichrist in His assault on the Harlot is something that God Himself has “put” in their hearts “to fulfill His will …” […]

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Gog’s Assault in the Purposes of God

[…] But this great love and covenant privilege is also Israel’s greatest culpability. The same is true of the Christian. Because He has known them in a way He has chosen to know no other nation, He will not spare. “You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities (Amos 3:2). It is the same for the Christian (Heb 12:6-7). It is a rule belonging to the very nature of covenant that the greater the opportunity for blessing, the greater the severity when that privilege is slighted. God will employ the bitter hatred of the enemy to minister corrective discipline or final judgment where the divine pleading is fatally resisted.

It is the paradox of God’s sovereign over-ruling of evil to accomplish His own purpose in grace (“you thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good;” Gen 50:20). Here, Gog thinks an evil thought (Ezek 38:10), but God has planned from all eternity to use that evil thought to bring an end of Israel’s long night of exile by His sovereign employment of Satan’s hatred to bring Jacob to the end of his power (Deut 32:36; Dan 12:7). […]

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Gog (Ez 38) and the King Who Exalts Himself (Dan 11)

[…] Remember that Israel is dwelling securely when Gog comes down. At no time beyond the abomination could Israel be said to be dwelling safely (Rev 11:2). Note that this could NOT be the security of post-millennial Israel. It is the deceptive security that follows the presumptuous ‘league’, or ‘covenant with death and hell” (Isa 28:15; Dan 8:25; 9:27 11:23). This is further proven by the reference made to this particular kind of security described in Ezek 39:26. It is a security in which Israel’s sins only increase. This is not true of Israel’s millennial security. I believe this is the “time of tranquility” described in Dan 11:24, which follows upon the league made with ‘vile person’ in Dan 11:23. In other words, here is the false security of the first 3 /2 years of Daniel’s seventieth week.

The contrast between this security and millennial security is enormous. At the end of the millennium at the time of Satan’s momentary release, Israel has been abiding in the everlasting righteousness of covenant promise (Jer 32:40; Dan 9:24). The security that Israel enjoys in the Land throughout the millennium is based on the transformation that began at the day of the Lord (Isa 66:8; Ezek 39:22-29) and is guaranteed of unfailing continuance unto children’s children ((Isa 54:13; 59:21). They shall “all” be holy “from that day and forward” (Isa 4:3; 60:21; Jer 31:34; 32:40; Ezek 39:22). […]

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“Let The Reader Understand”

[…] My view is that IF we set our hearts, like Daniel, to “understand” what is written in the Scripture of truth (Dan 10:12, 21) in order to see how the prophetic scriptures line up (not only through close exegesis, but a deep dependency on the mercy that alone grants the Spirit’s illumination), then we will be able to recognize all that is necessary to not miss any of the critical turns that lie ahead. I believe a careful obedience to follow the Lord’s express instructions to ‘pay attention to Daniel’ (Mt 24:15 – “Let the reader understand,” i.e., understand what Daniel wrote) is critical in three vital areas:

1) Our protection from unequaled deception (Mt 24:4, 11, 24; Mk 13:23; 2Thes 2:3).

2) Our readiness to follow where God is taking the church corporately through the constraining influence of these specifically timed events.

3) Our ability to understand the true essence of what is at stake in terms of what these events reveal, but most importantly to apprehend with all saints the full weight of glory that God has invested in this eschatological vision (Isa 28:12; Dan 9:24; 12:9-10; Hab 2:2-3; Ro 11:25-36; Rev 10:7). […]

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Mystery of Israel
Reflections on the Mystery of Israel and the Church... by Reggie Kelly

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  • Weekly fellowship over the Word with the GFW crew on the ‘God’s Foretold Work’ YouTube Channel. We have gone LIVE on most Saturday nights at 7:30-7:45 PM EST to explore the “at hand” and “not yet” nature of the Kingdom of God as it relates to the mystery of Israel and the Church. (07/2025: We are currently on sabbatical until further notice).

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