Why Care About “Jacob’s Trouble?”

Question: In a brief clear manner could you describe why its God’s will & importance that the present church accept Jacob’s trouble… ?

PS Already thoughtful of the event coming up in Sept…

I appreciate the question and will try to get you at least a personal and shorter version of it real soon, as the Lord will help me.

I will prepare you a little for my more thoughtful answer by briefly sharing something I believe the Lord gave me for my own weak memory. It may sound a bit contrived, but I believe it is from the Lord. It is this: You’ve heard it said that “the Devil is in the details.” Well, I say unto you that the Downfall of the Devil is in the Details of Daniel through Divine Determinism.

This is what Satan fears most, because it will mean that his time is short (Rev 12:12). Not only does the book of Daniel give the actual time schedule of God’s hidden purpose to Destroy the Devil through Messiah’s Death (Dan 9:24-26; 1Cor 2:8; Ro 16:25, 26), but the same prophecy also gives just as clearly the set and pre Determined time that Satan will be cast Down in the middle of Daniel’s final week (the seventieth week) to begin his “short time” of unparalleled destruction and persecution of the church and Israel (Dan 12:1 with Rev 12:7-10, 11-14).

Through the events of the last seven years (of which Jacob’s trouble is the second half; Jer 30:7; Dan 9:27; 11:31; 12:1, 11, Mt 24:15, 21), first the church and then Israel will be brought to their appointed times of fullness that conclude the age. It is our view that before the grafting in of the natural branches with Christ’s return (Ro 11:26), the true body of Christ will be straightened to its appointed place of fullness and final demonstration through the constraining events of the first half of the week.

We believe the manifest fulfillment of time narrowing events will awaken and alert the true godly remnant who will enter into a Daniel-like earnestness of intercessory travail that will be assisted by Michael in the final eviction of Satan from heaven. We are persuaded that this time of the church’s travail will bring a deeper death to self that will issue in a deeper apprehension of the gospel and thus the fuller formation of Christ in His church (Dan 11:32-33; Ro 11:25; Gal 4:19; Eph 4:13; Rev 12:10).

The second half of the week begins with the abomination of desolation (Dan 9:27; 11:31; 12:1, 11, Mt 24:15-16, 21). This is the time of Jacob’s trouble, also called Zion’s travail (Isa 13:7-8; 66:8; Jer 30:6-7; Mic 5:3; Dan 12:1), which ends in the day of the Lord. It will be used of God to bring Jacob to an end of his power ((Deut 32:36; Dan 12:7). Significantly, the end of power is the day of God’s power, the set time of transforming revelation (Ps 102:13; 110:3; Zech 12:10; Rev 1:7).

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 and the clarity and decisiveness with which we be required to move. Also, it is 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 Greek double article). The key of interpretation and understanding will be the difference between life and death. It has always been so, but this will be particularly true of “those days” (Dan 12:7; Mt 24:19, 22, 29).

Not only will Jacob’s trouble straighten Israel to its appointed place; it will also further purify and perfect the church (Dan 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 pre-tribulational eviction of Satan at the mid-point of the last week (Isa 66:7 with Rev 12), the travail of Israel begins immediately with the revelation of the mystery of iniquity in the final man of sin (2Thes 2:3-4, 7-8). This time of travail is the time of Jacob’s trouble, also called the unequaled tribulation that ends in the day of the Lord and the sudden and supernatural birth of the nation “in one day” at the return of Christ (Isa 13:6-10; 26:16-17; 66:8; Joel 2:2-3, 6, 30-32; 3:2, 14-17, 20-21; Ezek 39:22; Zech 3:9; 12:10; 14:7; with Mt 23:39; 24:30; Acts 3:21; Ro 11:26 with Isa 59:19-21; Joel 2:31; 3:14-16 with Mt 24:21, 29).

All the great issues of God’s name and nature, his covenant contention, and pleading with the church, with Israel, and with the nations will come to its concentrated intensity and fullness, so that the mystery of God can be finished (Rev 10:7; 11:15) when Christ returns to destroy the Man of Sin (Isa 11:4 with 2Thes 2:8) and to re-instate the natural branches for the millennial vindication of the “everlasting covenant”.

All the great issues of the God and the gospel, sovereign election, authority and rule will be tested to the full. The lies that have bound and weakened the church and even more fatally deluded the nations will all be exposed and the veil that covers all nations shall be removed (Isa 25:7).

That’s just the tip of the iceberg of the importance that God attaches to this great transitional time that ends in the day of the Lord and begins a millennium of the open and public vindication of God in all that He “literally” spoke concerning Israel and the last days. The revelation of the believing remnant as the body of Christ did nothing to change the unchangeable Word of God concerning the future of national Israel, as the sign and seal of God’s power to perform all He promised. There can be no return of Christ apart from their return, since “what shall the receiving again of them be but life from the dead?”

We neglect and ignore the issues related to Jacob’s trouble to our own peril. It was Jesus that warned of a time of deception like no other (Mt 24:27) and instructed us to read and understand Daniel (Mt 24:15), and to take heed to His foretelling of all things (Mt 24:25; Mk 13:23) as the only means of escape.

Neglect of His directive to read Daniel’s prophecy with understanding and to fail to take heed to all He foretold is to doom oneself to sure and certain deception (Mk 13:14, 23)  Furthermore, Paul warned that neglect of “this mystery” (Ro 11:25) would result in the pride that goes before a no less fatal fall as befell the natural branches (Ro 11:18-22). The pride that boast itself as in any way above what happened to Israel dooms itself to a similar exposure and judgment, in all probability when many will turn a blind eye to Jacob in his calamity. Judgment must begin with the house of God (1Pet 4:17), as only a church that has come to the end of its power can be entrusted to be the witness that moves Jacob to jealousy while he is on the way to being brought to the end of his.

The test concerning “the Jew in our midst” has always been a watershed of exposure between the true and the false church. It shall be so again in a much more ultimate and openly decisive way. The false church of apostate Christendom that was so largely and directly responsible for the deep anti-Semitism of ‘Christian’ Europe will meet its final and utterly fatal test over the fast developing “controversy of Zion” (Isa 34:8; Zech 12:2-3), when once again, many will stumble over the mystery.

As the Christ-child was set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel, for a sign that would be spoken against, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed, even so has God set the crisis of Israel, particularly the question of the Land, as a test stone of division within the church itself. I feel certain that the issue of Israel, precisely because it does carry in it so many of the great issues of the faith, particularly God’s prerogative in election, will be in its own right a set stone of stumbling, by which many will break or be broken.

Well, that’s the short of it for now. Your brother, Reggie