The Jewish Final Solution to the World's Problem - The Jews Between the Testaments

[0:00] He also told them what the penalty would be if they did that. He said that he would severely chasten them. He would punish them for their sin. And God does that not out of a revenge mode as much as out of a love mode.

[0:14] Because when you really love your children, you will not let them do everything they want to do. You will put restrictions on them. And you know you are doing it for their own good.

[0:27] Now, of course, they never believe that. And they won't be able to believe that until they become parents and the tide is reversed. But God disciplines and chastens his people because he loves them.

[0:40] And frankly, there is no nation that even comes close to having undergone the divine discipline and chastening like the nation of Israel.

[0:53] They have been a people who have been scattered throughout the world. They have been severely persecuted and hounded and murdered.

[1:05] As we know in the Holocaust, they have been mistreated and maligned and ridiculed and ostracized. And just about every negative thing you can think of has been brought down on the heads of the Jew.

[1:19] And there are a lot of people, particularly Gentiles, of course, who feel that they deserve it. They have it coming. And the greatest charge that is laid against them, of course, is the fact that they crucified their own Messiah, the very deliverer that God sent to them to be their rescuer.

[1:37] They were instrumental in putting them on the cross. And many in the world's population feel that it is their responsibility to make the Jew pay for that in perpetuity any way they can, anyhow they can, as often as they can.

[1:53] And this has a lot to do with why the Jew has been treated the way they have. They've received, I think, more accommodating treatment in the USA than they have anywhere in the world.

[2:07] But there are still, even in this country, there are still pockets of anti-Semitism around. So, a little bit of background. And where I would like to take you today is someplace that you will not find in the Bible.

[2:21] Because we are going to be talking about the intertestamental period. And the reason we're even bothering to talk about it, of course, is because that, too, is strategic for the nation of Israel.

[2:32] So, when you close out the Old Testament, which in our Bible is the book of Malachi, you just turn a couple of pages and you start the New Testament, which is Matthew.

[2:50] But what most people do not understand is, chronologically, there are 400 years between those two pages. There is a 400-year period of time between the Old and the New Testament where no revelation or prophecies were being given by God.

[3:12] No prophets were writing. Nothing was being inspired or recorded. Yet, time marched on. And Israel didn't cease to exist just because there were four silent centuries.

[3:24] So, what I want to do this morning is, in a very brief way, and it will have to be brief, try to explain somewhat the things that occurred in this nation's history during those 400 years.

[3:38] If you have a Roman Catholic Bible, a Rhames-Douet version, you can look between the Testaments and you will find, at least in most of them, I think, you will find another portion of Scripture that is referred to as the Apocrypha.

[3:54] These are 14 different books written during those 400 years. We do not believe that those are inspired of God and that they belong in the canon of Scripture.

[4:08] Of course, our Roman Catholic friends do, and that's why they are in their Bible. You will find 1st and 2nd Esdras, and you will find 1st and 2nd Maccabees, and Bell and the Dragon, and 1st and 2nd Esdras, and so on, the rest of Esther.

[4:22] Making up 14 books in between those. And you can read them, and it will become almost immediately apparent that they do not have the ring or the tone of Scripture, at least in the minds of those who do not accept them.

[4:38] But I suspect that if you are a Roman Catholic and you read those books, you'll think, this sounds just like Scripture to me. So it's kind of like beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or authority is in the mind of the one who reads it.

[4:51] But at any rate, we exclude what is known as the Apocrypha. And the word Apocrypha means the hidden. They are actually engaging a comprehensive history of mankind, particularly as it refers to the Jewish nation.

[5:08] And we will be spending a certain amount of time on modern-day Israel when we arrive at that chronologically, particularly with 1947 and the rebirthing of the nation.

[5:19] And then we will briefly follow it on through from the War of Independence, or the war that actually gained them their statehood, up through what is taking place there at the present.

[5:32] And then, of course, we will delve into the future as it involves the nation of Israel. And in case you are wondering, well, what is this all about the nation of Israel?

[5:43] It is because Israel is the keystone in the plan and program of God. And this becomes abundantly clear when you consider God's relationship with these people, whom he refers to as his covenant people, his chosen people.

[5:59] And it begins all the way back in Genesis chapter 12 with the call of Abraham. Christendom today is much divided over this aspect of Israel's importance.

[6:13] Some see Israel as a nation that is merely has been. And never will be again. And that God is finished with them. But those of us who are of a premillennial bent, and we'll explain these terms later when we get to them, we see very much Israel as being the key in the plan and program of God.

[6:36] They are a very, very strategic people. It is not that Israel was once God's chosen people. It is that they are God's chosen people, have been from the time he picked them, and will be into perpetuity.

[6:51] That riles and rancors a lot of the Gentiles, a lot of Christians who just don't see it that way. But our contention is that if you understand the Bible as a whole, you will have no difficulty, whatever, in giving Israel her proper due, and you are not in any way shortchanging the rest of the world, or shortchanging the church or Gentiles, by recognizing the prominent place that God has given to Israel.

[7:20] It is very key, and it needs to be considered as the Scriptures reveal it. We've spent the last few sessions dealing primarily with the prophetic warnings that God sent to his own people in the Old Testament, because when they came into the land of Egypt under the direction of Moses, well, Moses didn't make it into the land.

[7:49] As you know, he was buried on Mount Nebo, and God let him look at the land of Israel from afar off, but wouldn't allow him to enter. And the mantle was turned over to Joshua to bring the children of Israel in.

[8:02] And they were warned before they ever set foot in the land that when you come into the land, you are not to give your sons and daughters to those who were dwelling in the land.

[8:14] These were the Hivites, the Girgashites, the Perizzites, the Amorites, all the other Hivites. These were pagans. And you are not to give your sons and daughters to them, and they are not to take yours and yours to be no intermarriage there, because if you do, they will lead you astray into following their gods.

[8:35] All of those people. All of those whom would be referred to as the Philistines, they were just a part of it, the Amorites, the whole group there in ancient Israel, sometimes called Palestine, they were all idolaters.

[8:51] They were all pagans. And God said that if you begin intermarrying with them, they will lead you astray into the worship of their gods. And if you're interested in pursuing this theme of idolatry, the attraction and the rationale of it, you'll have to get one of the earlier CDs that we did at the origin, because we talked about idolatry, it's temptation, why people fell into it, what they expected to get from it, etc.

[9:18] So that's exactly what happened. Just as God told them not to, immediately, just like a three-year-old, when a parent says, don't do this, that's the very thing they want to do.

[9:31] And it was so with the children of Israel, and they eventually went worshipping these strange gods, these strange deities, and they forsook the Lord. And throughout the Old Testament, God likens himself to a husband, to Israel.

[9:48] And that Israel is like his wife, but she has become unfaithful to him, and she has gone after other lovers, other gods, and worshipped them.

[9:59] And just go to Ezekiel 5, and I'll be as brief as I can be. Ezekiel chapter 5. And Ezekiel is one of the exilic prophets, like Daniel.

[10:14] He prophesied, well, he was just a young man, when the captivity took place. And Ezekiel was carried away into Babylonian captivity, about ten years later.

[10:26] And he talks about that as he opens the book. And here in chapter 5, there's quite a passage here. Look at this. God says to Ezekiel, As for you, son of man, take a sharp sword, take and use it as a barber's razor on your head and beard.

[10:47] Well, I would hope it would be a sharp sword if you're going to shave with it. One third, he's going to have no hair on his face and no hair on his head.

[10:59] This is a really strange request that God is making of Ezekiel. And it is all for the purpose of creating an object lesson. He's going to use this as a display to his own people.

[11:13] Take scales for weighing and divide the hair. Now, you wouldn't need scales to weigh mine. But, Ezekiel may have been a real hairy guy, you know, with real long hair and a real big, thick, full beard.

[11:30] And they had pretty delicate scales back then. So, take scales for weighing and divide the hair. One third, one third of your hair. I want you to weigh your hair. One third of it you shall burn in the fire at the center of the city.

[11:48] Now, you can imagine there's going to be a crowd gathered there. People are going to be thinking, what is this? This is Ezekiel. What's he doing? How come he's bald? Why'd he shave his beard?

[11:58] What's going on here? So, a crowd starts collecting here in the center of the city. And when the days of the siege are completed, then you shall take one third and strike it with the sword all around the city.

[12:16] he's going to go all over town striking one third of his hair with a sword. That's weird. What is that saying? That's emblematic of what's going to happen to the nation.

[12:28] It's going to be spitting with a sword. These are the Babylonians that we're talking about that aren't here yet. But they're, well, they were there the first time and they're coming back and they're going to completely destroy the city.

[12:38] And one third you shall scatter to the wind and I will unsheathe a sword behind them. Take also a few in number from them and bind them in the edges of your robes and take some of them again and throw them into the fire and burn them in the fire.

[13:03] From it a fire will spread to all the house of Israel. Thus says the Lord God, this is Jerusalem. I have set her at the center of the nations with lands around her, but she has rebelled against my ordinances more wickedly than the nations and against my statutes more than the lands which surround her, for they have rejected my ordinances and have not walked in my statutes.

[13:30] Therefore, thus says the Lord God, because you have more turmoil than the nations which surround you and have not walked in my statutes nor observed my ordinances nor observed the ordinances of the nations which surround you.

[13:42] Therefore, says the Lord, I, even I, am against you and I will execute judgments among you in the sight of the nations. What's he going to do?

[13:53] Come down, if you may. This is a fulfillment of Ezekiel's hair in verse 12. One third of you will die by the plague or be consumed by famine among you.

[14:04] One third will fall by the sword. One third I will scatter to every wind and I will unsheathe the sword behind them.

[14:15] Now, this is just in Ezekiel 5, but in Ezekiel 12, verses 14 and 15, and chapter 22 and verse 15, and chapter 20 and verse 23, and chapter 22 and verse 15, and Leviticus 26, 33, Jeremiah 9, 16, 13, 24, 18, 17, 49, 32, and verse 36, Deuteronomy 4, 27, 28, 64, and Nehemiah 1, 8, Psalm 59, 11, 68, 30, 44, 11, 60, and verse 1, 106, and verse 27, Psalm 144, and verse 6, and I got tired accounting.

[14:57] You know what all of those verses are saying? In the history of Israel, when they had been able to recapture Jerusalem, it was under their control, they cleansed and purified the temple from all of the pagan and Gentile involvement and reestablished the principles of sacrifice, everything that they were accustomed to there, and they had this tremendous lighting ceremony that became the basis for today's Feast of Hanukkah.

[15:24] And by the way, that comes very close to our Christmas time in the month of December. Well, things were looking up, and they weren't doing all that bad until Pompeii of Rome, 63 B.C.

[15:45] And one of the reasons that Israel is always being picked on and tried upon is you look at their location. Israel is right smack dab in the center of three continents, Africa, Asia, and Europe.

[16:01] And you almost have to go through Israel to get from one of those to the other. So there were constantly armies traipsing through there virtually all the time from somewhere going somewhere.

[16:13] And very often, they would make use of Israel in whatever way they could. So they were a trodden down people, and this went on for literally centuries.

[16:26] In 63 B.C., Rome was moving throughout the world and had become the world's superpower.

[16:41] You see, these world's superpowers, like today, the United States is referred to as the only superpower. But there's nothing new about that because there was a time when the Babylonians were the superpower.

[16:53] And then the Medes and the Persians became the superpower. And then the Greeks under Alexander the Great, they became the superpower. And all these others just fade away into the dust, into oblivion.

[17:04] And then, after the Greeks, it is the Romans. And in 63 B.C., 63 years before Christ was born, the Roman general Pompey succeeded in overrunning and capturing and subjecting the land of Israel to Roman domination and control.

[17:25] And it will remain there for hundreds of years. They will be in power when Jesus is born, and it will be Herod the Great who is on the throne of Judea.

[17:38] He has been put on the throne by the Roman emperor. He controlled the world from his headquarters in Rome. And Israel was simply considered one of the outlying countries that Rome dominated.

[17:54] They forced the Jews to collect taxes. They used Jewish people to collect taxes from Jewish people, which made them hated by the Jewish people. And they would take their tax money and send it off to Rome.

[18:07] And this went on for decades. They were in power when Christ was born. It was Herod, the king of Judea, who ordered the massacre of the innocents in an effort to try and kill the Christ child.

[18:23] So, here is what's going on when Christ comes on the scene. And these 400 silent years, they are silent only in the respect that the Bible says nothing about them.

[18:37] We do not have any scripture that is relating to those periods of time. However, and I'm not going to turn to these references, but I know some of you take notes and some of you will want to get this material off of the CD.

[18:53] So, I'm just going to give you a few references from a couple of different places. And, it has to do with God's promising the people that if they persist in their rebellion against him, he is not only going to bring foreign nations against him, and these will be pagan nations.

[19:19] These will be Gentile pagan nations, idolatrous nations that he's going to use to spank his own people. But he says, in addition to that, I'm going to scatter you throughout the whole world.

[19:35] Well, let's go to Ezekiel. Let's go for just a couple of minutes. Oh my. Let's look at Ezekiel for just a minute. This is prophetic, and I realize it's not in the intertestamental period, but well, let's see.

[20:01] So, during this period, the Jews were continually embarrassed by the attempts of the Greeks to Hellenize all their subjects. Antiochus Epiphanes particularly was determined to Hellenize the Jews.

[20:15] No doubt, he probably saw them as a challenge. I am going to make these people knuckle under. They will! You know, that kind of thing.

[20:26] So, something really interesting happened. he made himself very unpopular by appointing high priests unacceptable to the Jews.

[20:41] Why was that unacceptable to the Jews? Because the high priest had already been chosen by God. The first high priest was Aaron.

[20:53] The next high priest would be Aaron's son. The next high priest would be Aaron's grandson. The next high priest would be Aaron's great-grandson. And so on. There was a priestly line of succession that God set in place.

[21:06] And these people, these Greeks came in and said, hey, you, you, and you, you're high priest, or whatever. Well, that didn't sit very well with the people, but they had them under their control. They were under their domination.

[21:17] They were under their thumb. They pretty much had to do what these occupational troops said. An interesting thing took place. It was a false report that got around that Antiochus Epiphanes had died.

[21:33] And all the Jews were having a big celebration. Threwed a big party celebrating the death of Antiochus Epiphanes. But when he learned of this, he returned to Jerusalem, determined more than ever to bring the people into complete subjection.

[21:51] He started by killing 40,000 of the Jews and sold many into slavery. The Jewish feasts, Jewish circumcision, and the Jewish observance of the Sabbath were abolished.

[22:12] No longer allowed to carry them out. A sow, for young people who may not know what a sow is, it's a female pig.

[22:23] If you know anything about Jewish law and Jewish ritual, pork is exclusively forbidden. And Antiochus Epiphanes sacrificed a sow on the Jewish altar of burnt offerings at the temple.

[22:42] These and other insults fanned the fury of the people into a flame. They revolted, and finally gained their independence.

[22:54] A patriotic and courageous priest by the name of Mattathias led the revolt against Antiochus Epiphanes. These are just ordinary people, just taking up arms.

[23:07] These were Israeli patriots who said, we have had it up to here with you, and we are going to rebel. And they started gathering together, roving bands, guerrilla teams that would strike quickly, and do whatever damage they could.

[23:23] They would sabotage the military any way that they could, who was occupying them. You see, this stuff goes on today. It's just a different place, different time, but nothing else has changed.

[23:34] And he and his five sons and other patriots gathered in the hills and declared war on Antiochus. These men and their descendants came to be known as Maccabeans.

[23:46] This is the Maccabean war. Judas Maccabeus was one of the principal characters of these five sons, and he was a military genius. And I don't know, other than just maybe something genetic, but the Jewish people have always had a penchant for cranking out military geniuses when they're needed.

[24:11] Moshe Dayan was the last one, and there will probably be others coming. Judas Maccabeus did the impossible and finally captured Jerusalem in 165 BC.

[24:26] He cleaned and rededicated the temple, an achievement commemorated in the Feast of Dedication. After defeating the Idumeans, Philistines, and Ammonites, he was in complete possession of much of Palestine.

[24:40] And when they cleansed the temple and they had this ceremony regarding the rededication of the temple and the lighting of all the candles and the menorah and everything, that became the basis for what the Jews today call the Feast of Hanukkah.

[24:53] It means the Feast of Lights, and it goes back to this time, a very dramatic and moving time. Each general receiving one fourth of the lands they had already conquered.

[25:06] Two of the four generals were named Seleucus and Ptolemy, and between 323 and 300 B.C., they both ruled at one time or another over the people of Israel and the Jewish population.

[25:22] I want to share something with you from a book, a survey of the Old and New Testaments. In fact, it was one of my textbooks, and I sweat over this book in 1957 when as a brand new Christian, I didn't know up from down, had no idea what the difference was between the Testaments or anything else.

[25:43] I was a new Christian, but the book helped me a lot. So let me share this with you and what our author has said. The constant warfare, well, let me start here.

[25:54] The Seleucids ruled Palestine and the Jews, but in 301 B.C., the Ptolemies came into control of Palestine and continued nominally to rule until 198 B.C.

[26:06] Now we're talking about 200 years before Christ was born. The constant warfare between the Ptolemies and the Seleucids caused Palestine to pass back and forth from the rule of one to the other several times.

[26:20] Within 25 years after Alexander's death, Jerusalem changed hands seven times as the Seleucids and Ptolemies contended for control.

[26:34] From 323 to 198 B.C., there were many wars between the two. The Jews were reasonably well treated by the Egyptians, that's what was involving Ptolemy, and they were allowed to build synagogues in their settlements.

[26:49] Alexandria in Egypt became a great Jewish center. It was during this period that the Hebrew scriptures were translated into the Greek language known as the Septuagint.

[27:00] In 198 B.C., Palestine passed back, Palestine using its synonymous with Israel, passed back to the Seleucids and remained under their power until 167 B.C.

[27:13] During this period, the Jews were continually embarrassed by the attempts of the Greeks to Hellenize all their subjects. You see, the Greek influence in thought and culture and certainly in language had prevailed all throughout the Mediterranean world.

[27:30] And a great many of these people could speak two and three or even four languages. They were not a bunch of dumbbells. If anyone could speak two languages, it was almost guaranteed that one of them would be Greek.

[27:43] And Alexander the Great did more in his short lifetime to succeed in Hellenizing, and the term is used as Hellenizing, it's because the word for Greek in the New Testament is Hellene.

[27:58] And of course it has nothing to do with Hell, although some people might think so, but it doesn't. It talks about Hellenistic influence, and that's just another word for Greek influence.

[28:09] And Alexander the Great did more to influence the world in literature and art and what we would call the fine arts and everything that went with it as it was realized under Greek control at the time.

[28:26] And many of the philosophers and a lot of the points of wisdom were expounded upon by the Greeks of this day, and we're talking about the Aristotles and Socrates and Plato and different people like that.

[28:43] So it was a time of real growth of culture and expansion of art, and much of the world was feeling the consequences and the results of this Greek influence all throughout the world.

[28:58] except, you might know, the Jews. They didn't take to it. And that did not please one of the chief Greeks at that time, and his name was Antiochus Epiphanes.

[29:12] The Jews simply wouldn't cave in because they considered much that the Greeks wanted them to do and become involved in was contrary to their beliefs and their religion, etc.

[29:23] And they were just flat out stubborn. They just said, no, thank you, we don't want anything to do with it. Well, that wasn't taken too kindly by people like Antiochus Epiphanes, and it was as if he was going to force something on them because his attitude probably was, you're not going to like this, but afterwards, trust me, you'll thank me for it.

[29:44] You'll be glad you did. Trust me. People today have the same attitude. You're too stupid to know what's good for you. I'm going to make you take this, and believe me, on down the road, you'll thank me for it.

[29:55] Some things never change. Okay? Land, so they can send the produce off to Assyria. Meanwhile, the two tribes in the south, referred to as Judah, are carrying on business as usual, and they had some pretty decent kings.

[30:12] They had two or three that were really godly, outstanding. They would mow down all of the idols and tear down all of the high places and try to establish an authentic worship again, but for the most part, their kings were evil.

[30:25] And in the north, they didn't have one good king that sat on the throne. Every one of them was corrupt. So in 586 B.C., God brought from Babylon, and for those of you who are with us today, Babylon is present-day Iraq.

[30:44] And God brought Nebuchadnezzar from Babylon and invaded the nation of Judah, and the Jews went into Babylonian captivity. And if you read the book of Daniel, you'll see Daniel talking about it in his first chapter, because he was one of those young men carried away into Babylonian captivity.

[31:06] In chapter 5 of Daniel, of the book of Daniel, there will be writing on the wall, and this is during the reign of Belshazzar, and he was the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, and he sees this writing on the wall, many, many, tekel-u-farsim, and the writing translated says, you are weighed in the balances and found wanting.

[31:28] They were in the middle of a raucous party. They were, the wine was flowing freely, this was a feast that had gone on for a couple of days, they had no idea what was happening, and the enemy was right outside the gates. And of course, they overran the city, and these were the Medes and the Persians.

[31:43] And for those of you with us today, the Medes are the present day Kurds. In northern Iraq, these are the same people, or descendants of the same people, that Saddam Hussein gassed back in the 1990s.

[31:57] You remember he used poison gas on them. Those people, the Kurds, are direct descendants of the Medes and Persians who overtook the Babylonians. And the Babylonians, of course, had overtaken the Jews and led them into captivity, so now the Jews are prisoners of people who are prisoners.

[32:14] And that meant that they were somewhat in sympathy with the new captors. And the Medes and the Persians treated them rather kindly. And, by the way, this is during the time of the book of Esther, too, so I'm getting back a little further than I want to.

[32:31] So, near the time of Nehemiah, Nehemiah is given permission to return to Israel and rebuild the wall. And the Persians kept control of the Jews and the land.

[32:42] Israel, the land of Israel extended from about 538 to 332 B.C., a little more than 200 years.

[32:55] Persians controlled everything. And, by the way, during the reign of Artaxerxes and Persians and Queen Esther and all this, the Persian empire exceeded in territory and geography more than anybody had succeeded in accomplishing up to that time.

[33:11] For all practical purposes, they controlled and dominated the whole world. They had an extensive postal system set up, much on the order of our Pony Express type thing, whereby the word could get out quickly.

[33:24] And they were very, very advanced. However, from 332 to approximately 167, or a period of about 165 years, the Jewish people were subjected to another conqueror.

[33:39] This man's army, now remember, we're talking about in between the Testaments now. This man's army possessed the most formidable fighting force ever assembled to this date, although he was outnumbered by a margin of seven or eight to one.

[33:57] The military genius of the man and his four top generals exceeded anything the world had known at the time. He was a Greek and a man to be contended with by the name of Alexander the Great.

[34:13] Probably nobody has accomplished as much in a short lifetime of 32 years as Alexander the Great. He must have been quite a guy. Tradition tells us that Alexander lamented the fact that there were no more worlds to conquer, and history tells us that Alexander drank himself to death and expired at the tender age of 32.

[34:39] There being no pre-established line of succession upon Alexander's death, he probably had no idea he would be exiting that young, but he did, his four top generals struck a deal whereby they divided the then known world of the entire Mediterranean basin into four pardon books, or the undisclosed.

[35:03] And it might make interesting reading if you want to pick up an Apocrypha or a Catholic Bible and read them. They do not ring, as I said, with great authority, and there have been numerous errors have been pointed out in the Apocrypha historically, etc., otherwise.

[35:24] So, to make my point and show you a little bit about what you're missing, when you open the New Testament, assuming that you have read through the Old Testament, then when you open the New Testament, you run into some terms that are not familiar at all.

[35:43] You will find in the New Testament that there is a word that is called the synagogue. The synagogue, of course, is a place of meeting for the Jews, kind of like what we would call a church, only it's Jewish.

[35:58] But there aren't any synagogues in the Old Testament. You don't read about those there. And when you come into the New Testament, you encounter people called Pharisees. Where did they come from? They're not in the Old Testament either.

[36:10] They just pop up. They're there in the New Testament. How did these guys get on the scene? And you've got Sadducees. Where did they come from? And Zealots. What's this all about?

[36:21] What is a Zealot? One of our Lord's apostles name was Simon. Simon was a Zealot. He was, Simon was a right wing radical of his day.

[36:35] He was a guerrilla type fighter. But more about that later. So let me just give you a very rapid rundown, if I may, about where we're going in this intertestamental period.

[36:45] And if I can back up a little bit and get into the Old Testament, I'll just make this as brief as I can. So hold on to your seat and come with me and keep up if you can.

[37:00] We'll start with the reign of the second king, David. And David is going to reign for 40 years. And he will be on the throne approximately 950 years before Christ is born.

[37:17] And when David dies, his son Solomon comes to the throne to succeed him. And Solomon will reign for 40 years. And when he dies, son Rehoboam comes to the throne.

[37:28] And this will be in 931 B.C. Rehoboam decides that he wants to live a lifestyle that will surpass that of his father Solomon. And Solomon succeeded in raising the nation of Israel to a profound level of genius, of accomplishment, of technology, of modernization.

[37:51] And I'm talking about modernization for them in that day that no other nation in the world had ever seen. And the fame of Israel spread throughout the whole world.

[38:02] And you know the story about the queen of Sheba coming to visit and saying the half has not been told and so on. So he really reached the pinnacle of accomplishment for the nation of Israel that was unparalleled anywhere in the world.

[38:16] And when Rehoboam came to the throne, he decided he wanted to outdo his daddy. So in order to do that, he's going to have to raise a lot more money. And he said he was going to impose heavy taxes on the people.

[38:27] The people said no. And they rebelled. They pulled out of the union. Ten tribes became known as Israel. And they went north.

[38:38] And they started their own government, their own monarchy, put their own king on the throne, established their own priesthood, selected their own high priest, all of which was unauthorized because all of the originals were authorized by God.

[38:53] So this was a ten tribe of the nation in rebellion against the two. Numerous prophets, both major and minor, warned both the north and the south of coming judgment.

[39:05] So what you've got now is Israel divided. A civil war is eventually going to break out between them. And that will get healed. But each nation will have its own kings.

[39:16] And God will send prophets to each of those nations, warning them about what's coming. And of course, they will not heed the warnings. So we've got a divided kingdom for all practical purposes, two different governments, two different religious establishments, two different kind of temples, etc.

[39:36] And they are going to survive in the north, those ten tribes, for about 200 years. And God is going to chasten them by bringing the Assyrians down.

[39:50] The Assyrians are going to overrun those ten tribes, defeat them, carry them into Assyrian captivity, and they will only leave enough people there to farm them. Every one of them is saying, And I'm going to scatter you like the wind throughout all the earth.

[40:07] And that's where they are today. You've got Jews in England, and Jews in France, and Jews in Germany, and Jews in the USA, and Jews in Brazil, and Jews everywhere, scattered all throughout the earth.

[40:24] But the thing that is really topping this for significance has to do with the prophecies that we will consider next week.

[40:35] And that is, and I'm going to regather you and bring you all back to this land. And you will be my people.

[40:47] And I will be your God. That's coming. And I see signs of it underfoot right now.

[40:59] There are more Jews that have left their original environs and their original homes in Europe that have returned to the nation of Israel.

[41:12] Israel. There was a time when the Soviet Union wouldn't let them go. Now, there have been in excess of 50,000 Jews just from Russia who have returned to the land of Israel.

[41:29] And they are coming home all over the world. They are flooding into Israel. They have established the law of return that says any Jew anywhere in the world who wants to come to Israel is welcome.

[41:44] We will welcome with open arms. We will care for their needs. We will find them employment. We will put them on our welfare program until they get settled. We will care for them.

[41:54] And Jews are making what they call is Aliyah. They are coming home to Israel. And we are going to see this increase and intensify as time goes on.

[42:05] It appears to me, just looking around and seeing what is happening in our world today, that things are beginning to warm up. And you know what? In concert with that, there are new waves of anti-Semitism that are arising all over the world as well.

[42:25] Even in one place where you would think it would never, ever exist again, and that is in Germany. And there are Germans who are rising up in an anti-Semitic fashion, once again, against the Jewish people.

[42:40] So all of this is what is in store, and what we've given you is just a very rapid-fire historical overlook between the Testaments. And next week, we'll begin looking at the New Testament and the prophecy for the return.

[42:55] And the most extensive prophetic portion of Scripture that our Lord gave is found in the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24 and 25.

[43:07] And of course, it is topped off with the second coming of Christ and will eventually be there, too. So we've got about seven minutes left, and you might very well have a lot of questions.

[43:20] So we'll see what we can do. And by the way, I am not an authority on the intertestamental period or even close to it. And by the way, let me say this. Even though you will not find any information to speak of in the Bible about this intertestamental content yet, you can consult any standard encyclopedia or any standard world history book that is of any reputation at all, and you will find all of these things spelled out in a great deal of detail that will answer a whole lot of questions that I didn't even touch on.

[43:54] So feel free to consult any encyclopedia. You'll find it all there. Any comments or questions? Anyone? Yeah, I guess I just need something a little bit clarified, I guess.

[44:15] And it isn't necessarily between Testaments, but it's when they were going to enter the promised land and the instructions that were given to Moses to give to the people.

[44:26] some of the things that were going to happen to those people who did not obey some of those, the harshness of those, of not obeying, it is really, I mean, is it something, it just seems very harsh.

[44:46] And when you think about that, you think about the current Sharia law and how those people are believing that that's the way to do things too?

[45:00] It is actually, it is the Jewish solution to the world's final problem. And of course, we realize that even behind it, the motivation is much bigger than that, because in reality, it isn't the Jewish solution, it's God's solution to the world's problem.

[45:18] And God's solution today is the same as it was 2,000 years ago when Jesus came. God's solution to human sin and all of the heartache and problems that it creates, God's solution is a Savior.

[45:39] And when the Savior came the first time, he wasn't all that welcome. But he will be the next time. And those who will be at the forefront welcoming him will be the ones whose ancestors said, crucify him, crucify him.

[45:59] They will look upon him whom they pierced and they shall mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, an only son. So, exciting times that we're living in today and they're going to get much more so.

[46:12] Would you stand with me, please? Father, we are so grateful that in the midst of all of these things, all of this human activity, all of the evil, all of the wars and conflicts and all of the retribution that takes place, you are ultimately in charge of it all.

[46:31] And we've got all of these negative, hurtful things because you created us with a will. You gave us a capacity to obey or disobey.

[46:42] And along with that, you gave us the consequences of each. And mankind through the years have chosen to go his own way and have suffered the consequences.

[46:56] You said we would suffer for doing that. And we see your word vindicated even in that way. As we pursue this subject, we trust that you will use it to enlighten and to comfort and to give us more and more confidence in the fact that you are the God of this world and you have a plan and you have a purpose and you are fully capable of bringing it to fruition.

[47:23] And we want to be part of however you want to use us to do it. We bless you for being the God you are in Christ's name. Amen. It'd be extremely harsh with people who don't obey their laws or their regulations.

[47:40] And I guess just going back, is that really how harsh that that was? And is that some of the things that these people disobeyed? Okay, that's a really good question. You're probably referring to the requirement that God gave to his own people that when they go into this one particular area that is mentioned that they are to annihilate them, kill every one of them.

[48:04] And that is the directive that is given. And that, by the way, is something that is very frequently brought up as a stumbling point.

[48:15] And some say that they can't conceive of God doing that. Well, I can conceive of God doing that, but it depends on the circumstances that they were facing, which we're not at all familiar.

[48:28] But I'd be happy to address that. It'll need more time than the two minutes that can be given. But I would just say this. Yes, that is what was said. And I don't think there's anything wrong with the translation or the text there.

[48:40] That is what was demanded. And there does seem to be a similarity with that and the Sharia law. And by the way, there's a book back there on the table, a couple of books just recently added that you might find very, very interesting.

[48:56] But it's called the Politically Incorrect Guide or Explanation of Islam. And the Sharia law covers that.

[49:09] As a matter of fact, I never made a connection before, but it almost seems like that there is a parallel there. Because under Sharia law, if an infidel, an infidel is anyone who is not a Muslim.

[49:23] If an infidel is not willing to convert to Islam, then they have the option of either paying a fine, which is like an ongoing tax, and subjecting themselves to second-class citizenry in that particular country.

[49:40] Or the other option is death. And that's it. You either convert, you pay the tax, and subjugate yourself to the government of Islam, or we will execute you.

[49:53] Those are your choices. There's no indication that those people to whom the Israelites were enjoined to exterminate, there's no indication that they were even given choices.

[50:06] He doesn't say, go in and try to convert them to Judaism, and if they won't convert, wipe them out. He just says, go in and wipe them out. Period. And it doesn't appear that there was any choice given at all.

[50:19] So, in a sense, that would be even more harsh, in our view. I mean, we look at that from a purely human standpoint, and we say, good grief, what did these people do to deserve that? Here they have these invaders coming in.

[50:31] Of course, they were coming back to the land that God had given them 400 years earlier. But under the dictates of a supposedly beneficent holy God, and he says, wipe them out, kill all of them, men, women, and children, all of them, how can you possibly justify that?

[50:46] That's a very good question. And I think I've got some answers, and I'll be glad to share them, but I'm not going to start right now. But thank you for bringing the question up, Gary.

[50:56] We'll deal with that next week. Anything else quickly that isn't so involved? Okay, all I'm trying to do is maintain a cohesiveness for what we are doing here.

[51:10] And you'll recall that this whole series came about in response to what is taking place in our world today. And I am not, really, I am not a big prophecy buff.

[51:23] I mean, it has been said that if you preach on prophecy, you're almost guaranteed a crowd, because everybody wants to know and wants to get in on it, you know, something exciting about prophecy.

[51:35] I don't think that legitimizes it at all. But yet, we do need to study these things, and many people are not aware of it, but a full 25% of the Bible relates to prophetic significance.

[51:48] A full 25%. Because history is going somewhere. And when I look at the events that are taking place today, and look at what's happening in Israel today, and look at Iran, and the threats of a nuclear bomb, and all the rest, the squeeze is on.

[52:02] These things are, they have showdown quality. And they are coming on, and it behooves us to not be caught flat-footed as to what is happening. We are beginning to see more and more things come into fruition, and we need to educate ourselves.

[52:19] And the Bible has given us the information we need. We just need to get in there and get it out. And I want to emphasize the nature of, and the strategic nature of Israel involving in all of this.

[52:32] And that's why I labeled this series as I did. We'll see you next time. That's a good question. Yeah. That's some kind of great information. So in chin, it's on me. Yeah, which one of those are the bearing to go about?

[52:43] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I thought there's a solution. Yeah. I'm trying. Okay. I think about it. I don't think about the education we have in them.

[52:54] I believe it. I think the resistance LFF folks have in the direction of man. So in custom blessing people, I'm going to get in a sense of the occasion.