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THE SEASON OF GRACE

Apologetics, ,

THE SEASON OF GRACE

With the conflict in the Middle East growing in intensity, many are the would-be prophets and prophecy interpreters who are cashing in on the current situation. Without even reading the prophecies or the interpretations of the Israel/Gaza mayhem, I can almost guess what many of them are saying. In a nutshell, “This is the beginning of the end.” Throw into the mix the recent natural disasters that have decimated countries and killed thousands, and we have a situation ripe for all kinds of speculation.

Does the Bible have anything to say that will give us a timeline so that we can pinpoint where we are or at least find some clues to help us understand what is happening right now?

I am not a “fundi” on Bible prophecy. I make no claim accurately to interpret the present events. However, there are principles we can glean from Scripture that help us navigate these difficult times.

Firstly, I don’t think God likes timeliness. When we read through the history of God’s people in the Old Testament, prophecies pop up randomly in the story. We sometimes see prophecies fulfilled soon after the predictions were made, and we sometimes discover that prophecies can have a double fulfilment, soon after as well as decades or centuries after they were uttered.

God oversees history. He works according to a divine plan, weaving together human situations and His unfolding will according to His sovereign wisdom and power. All we can do is put our hope in Him because He is faithful to His Word.

He assures us, through His prophetic word, that He is working in our world and that He will fulfil everything He has promised. He does not intend for us to tick boxes when we read His Word. He wants to grow our faith and our anticipation for what lies ahead for faithful believers.

For several thousand years, God kept His people accountable to Him through His covenant with them at Mount Sinai. Apart from a few, they failed completely to be faithful to Him. However, even their unfaithfulness served His purposes.

Jesus fulfilled every prediction made about His first coming and will fulfill every promise about His return. He came to set the record straight for Israel and the Gentiles that no amount of rule-keeping will satisfy God’s demand for perfect holiness. Israel’s history confirms this truth.

Jesus also provided the solution for universal human failure by dying in our place and rising again to secure forgiveness and eternal life for those who surrender all rights to Him.

So, God’s grace is for everyone, Jew, and Gentile, to start again, to live for and in Christ. They experience the real life God wanted for everyone in the beginning.

However, there is a season of grace that God provides, a window of opportunity that God will open and close for Jews and Gentiles.

Romans 11:7 NLT
[7] “So this is the situation: Most of the people of Israel have not found the favor of God they are looking for so earnestly. A few have—the ones God has chosen—but the hearts of the rest were hardened. …
[11] Did God’s people stumble and fall beyond recovery? Of course not! They were disobedient, so God made salvation available to the Gentiles. But he wanted his own people to become jealous and claim it for themselves.”

Why did God allow this to happen? Israel’s season of unbelief has opened the door for the Gentiles to receive the gospel. Since the Apostle Paul took the message of Jesus to the Gentile world, for more than 2000 years the harvest among Gentiles is being gathered in.

Few Jews by comparison have believed in their Messiah? Will they ever stop rejecting Jesus and come to Him?

Zechariah prophesied thousands of years ago,

Zechariah 12:6-10 NLT
[6] “On that day I will make the clans of Judah like a flame that sets a woodpile ablaze or like a burning torch among sheaves of grain. They will burn up all the neighbouring nations right and left, while the people living in Jerusalem remain secure. [7] “The Lord will give victory to the rest of Judah first, before Jerusalem, so that the people of Jerusalem and the royal line of David will not have greater honor than the rest of Judah. [8] On that day the Lord will defend the people of Jerusalem; the weakest among them will be as mighty as King David! And the royal descendants will be like God, like the angel of the Lord who goes before them! [9] For on that day I will begin to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. [10] “Then I will pour out a spirit of grace and prayer on the family of David and on the people of Jerusalem. They will look on me whom they have pierced and mourn for him as for an only son. They will grieve bitterly for him as for a firstborn son who has died…. “

Since scenarios like this happened many times in Israel’s history, we cannot say for certain that this time the Jews will turn to the Lord. We can only say for certain that there will be a last time that God defends Israel against the world before He opens the eyes of their hearts to the truth about their Messiah. Will they see His wounds when He returns?  We don’t know.

“I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, 26 and in this way all Israel will be saved. As it is written:
“The deliverer will come from Zion;
he will turn godlessness away from Jacob.
27 And this is my covenant with them
when I take away their sins.”
28 As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies for your sake; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, 29 for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable. 30 Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, 31 so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you. 32 For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all” Romans 11:25-32


Since God’s predictions are scattered throughout the Bible in a seemingly disorderly fashion, on no orderly timeline, we can only really have that “Aha!” moment when they have been fulfilled. Only then will we able to say with certainty, “Now I understand what God meant when He said…”

God gives Habakkuk the correct understanding in situations like the present. He revealed His plan to the prophet to raise up the Babylonians who would inflict suffering and exile on his people. However, the bottom line, even in this national catastrophe, was the individual. Amid the terrible destruction of invasion and war, God is still concerned about the individual.

Habakkuk 2:4 NLT
[4] “Look at the proud! They trust in themselves, and their lives are crooked. But the righteous will live by their faithfulness to God.”

Jesus endorsed God’s heart in all this suffering,

Luke 13:1-5 NLT
[1] About this time Jesus was informed that Pilate had murdered some people from Galilee as they were offering sacrifices at the Temple. [2] “Do you think those Galileans were worse sinners than all the other people from Galilee?” Jesus asked. “Is that why they suffered? [3] Not at all! And you will perish, too, unless you repent of your sins and turn to God. [4] And what about the eighteen people who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them? Were they the worst sinners in Jerusalem? [5] No, and I tell you again that unless you repent, you will perish, too.”

We want answers to what is happening in the world. God’s response is simple, “What about you?” In the end, once again, the Bible assures us that God is at work in us, even through world events, to hone our faith in Him and our faithfulness to Him as we await the return of the Lord Jesus to finish what He started.

So, don’t ask the wrong questions. Ask the only question that really matters,

Matthew 16:15 NLT
[15] “Then he asked them, “But who do you say I am?”

and joyfully proclaim the only answer that counts…

Matthew 16:16 NLT
[16] Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”




Messiah’s Biblical-Historical Time Line

Apologetics, ,

MESSIAH’S BIBLICAL-HISTORICAL TIME-LINE

Having examined what the Bible has to say about the identity of antichrist and the circumstances in which he would be revealed, it is time to answer a few important questions.
The first question is: Does the Bible accurately predict the time of the coming of Messiah and the events surrounding His earthly life? How does this fit into God’s time frame?
When Daniel realised that Israel had been in captivity for almost seventy years, and that, according to Jeremiah’s prophecy (Jeremiah 25:11,12), God would bring judgment on Babylon, he began to pray for God’s mercy on His people and His city. In response, Daniel was visited by the angel Gabriel, who came with a message from God. “Seventy sevens are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the Most Holy.
“Know and understand this: From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘seven’s and sixty two ‘sevens’…After the sixty two ‘sevens’, the Anointed One will be cut off and will have nothing…” Daniel 9:24,25a (NIV).
Historically, the picture looks like this: In 445 BC Artaxerxes, king of Persia, issued a decree for the Jews to rebuild Jerusalem (Daniel 9:25,26). (The first seven ’sevens’ probably refer to the time of the rebuilding of the temple). According to Biblical scholarship, Jesus, ‘the Prince’, entered Jerusalem on a donkey in 32 AD and a few days later He was rejected as Israel’s king and crucified, ‘putting an end to sin, atoning for wickedness, and bringing in everlasting righteousness’ because He would be ‘cut off and have nothing.’
There is a discrepancy between the lunar calendar of the Jews and the solar calendar we use today. Daniel’s timeline was calculated according to the Jewish lunar year of 360 days, not the solar calendar of 365¼ days. (For a fuller discussion of Daniel’s prophetic timeline, go to http://www.harvardhouse.com/prophetictech/new/linear.htm#top).

ANTICHRIST’S BIBLICAL–HISTORICAL TIMELINE
The second question we must ask is: Can we verify the identity of antichrist as the papacy and Daniel’s fourth beast as Rome and subsequently the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages from history? How does this fit in with Biblical prophecy?
First of all, as we have already discovered, the Apostle Paul made it clear that the day of the Lord would not come until after the ‘rebellion’, the falling away from the faith, occurred, after which the antichrist would be revealed. He described the nature of the antichrist as someone who would come in the nature of Judas, from within the church, set himself up in God’s temple (the naos – the Holy of Holies which Paul consistently equated with the church), and proclaim himself to be God (2 Thessalonians 2:3,4). Daniel adds that he would have eyes and a mouth that would speak boastfully and that he would make war on the saints (Daniel 7:20).
(We have already discussed the ‘rebellion’ in a previous article – Antichrist Revealed)
The western section of the Roman Empire fell in 476 AD, but the Byzantine Empire continued to be ruled by Caesars from Constantinople, the capital. The power and influence of the Church of Roman was growing and began to dominate the known world until the Emperor Justinian who ruled from 527-565 AD, re-organised the government of the Empire and issued a decree in 538 AD, giving the pope total control of all the churches. (This marks the beginning of the 1260 years of oppression of which the angel spoke in Daniel 7:25b).
Daniel (in Daniel 7:15-28), records the angelic interpretation of his dream of the four beasts which parallel Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the statue recorded in Daniel 2. The fourth beast is a kingdom which would devour the whole earth with terrifying cruelty. A king would arise from this kingdom who would speak against the Most High God and oppress His saints for a time, times an half a time. This time period is generally accepted among biblical scholars to mean three and a half years, forty two months or 1260 days according to the interpretation that a day is equivalent to a year in the prophetic calendar. “For forty years – one year for each of the forty days you explored the land – you will suffer for your sins and know what it is like to have me against you.” Numbers 14:34, hence 1260 days would equal 1260 years.
Justinian’s decree in 538 AD gave the pope absolute power over all the churches and over the whole of Christendom. From then on the papacy and the church began to control even the politics of the empire. In 800 AD Charlemagne, king of the Franks, was crowned emperor by Pope Leo III and founded the Holy Roman Empire. In the years that followed 538, the power of the papacy was absolute and the persecution of believers escalated until at least 150 million Christians were slaughtered at the hands of the church.
In 1798, exactly 1260 years later, Napoleon’s Chief of Staff, Louis-Alexandre’ Berthier, “entered Italy, invaded the Vatican, organized the Roman republic, and took the pope Pius VI as prisoner back to Valence (France) where, after a torturous journey under Berthier’s supervision, the pope died, dealing a major blow to the Vatican’s political power.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis-Alexandre_Berthier)
According to Revelation 13:3 (NIV), “One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was astonished and followed the beast.” History bears witness to the fatal wound and the healing of the wound – today the papacy has a following of 1.2 billion people.
(To be continued…)