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Josephus' dispersion of tribes of Noah with Map




THE REDEMPTION PLAY
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1. THE NATIONS
2. ANTICHRIST EMPIRE
3. THE CHOSEN NATION


Act 2: Scene 1
 

Birth of the Nations

 

‘These are the families of the sons of Noah, after
their generations, in their nations
and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood. Gen. 10.32

 

God had nearly decided to stop production of "The Redemption Play", but Noah's righteousness caused Him to stay his hand. The Flood had washed the world clean and made it possible for a fresh new beginning. And now the second act of our story opens with the ark resting on top of Mount Ararat, the waters of destruction have given way to dry land, grassy hills and new hope. The doors of the ark are opened and Noah and his "cargo" descend from their safe keeping to offer God praise and honor. God declares in 2 Peter 2.5 that he, "spared not the old world, but saved Noah, the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly". When Noah's ark glided peacefully onto the slopes of Mount Ararat in the mountains of Armenia there were no people or animals left alive on earth save Noah and seven others: his wife, his three sons and their wives, and of course, the animals inside the ark. Noah immediately made prayer and sacrifice to God, and God blessed him, his family, and the animals, saying, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth." (Gen. 9.1)

            Therefore, every person alive today and since the Flood - African, Caucasian and Asian - every human being, is directly descended from one man: Noah. If "The Redemption Play" were to have songs it would surely include one declaring Noah as the father of all nations and races; every man, woman and child a member of his family tree. The implications are important to redemption's story because that means the foundation of all the nations can be directly linked to Noah and his three sons: Japheth, Ham and Shem. Genesis 10 tells of the generations of the three sons of Noah listing the names of Noah's grandchildren and great grandchildren, who sired the tribes of the world which are the forefathers of today's modern nations. Prophecy can trace modern nations and identify them with their ancient tribal names and homes. With relative speed, each of the branches grew into large tribes. Within just a couple of generations the world was repopulated and civilized society was re-established. At first the families and tribes were divided by nothing other than bloodlines. All races and peoples spoke one common language and the land was massed together, not yet divided by the oceans and the seas. It was not until the fourth generation after the Flood [the day of Peleg (Gen. 10)] that the tribes and nations were isolated from each other by sea and language, every tribe and family being scattered over the face of the earth.

The names of the second, third and fourth generation men who became fathers of tribes are listed in Genesis 10. Map 1 shows where each of these tribes ultimately established themselves. It was a patriarchal society under the lordship of God whose commands and principles were established in prophecies to Adam and Eve and made known to everyone by the preaching of the "priest" Shem and the righteous Noah. The first men lived to be seven, eight and more than nine centuries old, and it is certain that God used this longevity to create a kind of high priesthood of a few men who taught the rest of the world about his promises.

 

Just Two Priests Spanned Gap between Adam and Noah

Shem, the son of Noah who received the blessing of God, lived to be 777 years old, and importantly, was around prior to the Flood to learn the knowledge of the prophets from the contemporary of Adam, Methuselah. Methuselah passed down the promises of God first hand from Adam to Shem, who in turn carried their truth across the gulf of the Flood. Shem was not only a contemporary of antediluvian prophets, but because of his longevity he was, incredibly, a contemporary of Abraham, the father of the Chosen Nation. Shem therefore, was the priestly bridge between the prophecies given to Adam in antediluvian days – being just one generation removed from Adam - to the Chosen Nation. Confusing? Look at it this way. First there was Adam, then there was Methuselah, then Shem, then Abraham. Just two generations of "priests" spanned the gap from Adam to Abraham. That's right, only two: Methuselah and Shem. Incredible and wonderful!

Through this "priesthood" God handed down his truth of prophecy and his promise of the coming judgment of the world and the salvation of faithful men through a Savior. Certainly Shem must be the one who is called Melchizedek, the King of Salem, in Genesis. He is the one to whom Abraham gave tithes and received his blessing. He is, as disclosed in both Psalms and Hebrews, the one who came before Jesus, laying the groundwork for the eternal priesthood. "Thou [Jesus] art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek." Ps. 110.4 & Heb. 7.17,21 Truly Shem, though we get only a fleeting glimpse of him, is one of the great and special characters of God's quintessential history.

To his sons - and especially Shem - Noah had preached righteousness for one hundred and twenty-five years. To a deaf world before the Flood, he also passed down the truth of God's promise of salvation through a Messiah. He instilled in his sons the command for the necessity of the shedding of innocent blood to cover man's sins; a ritual of sacrifice that constantly spoke of the prophetic death of God's own innocent Son, Jesus the true Hero of ‘The Redemption Play’. Shem, Ham and Japheth in turn were responsible for the continued teaching of their households. As yet, there were no central governments, no military presence, no legal codes, no moral codes, no religious systems. Each man was required to do right before God, but apart from that there was nothing that bound people together. But an unholy alliance and the formation of an imperial state, with a centralized government and a swarming urban life, was close at hand.

The first map, establishing the areas in which the tribes settled, is prophetically important because it uses ancient biblical tribal names and their traditional place of dwelling to pinpoint nations that would have end times significance in prophecy. Obviously God could not call Germany, Germany, or Russia, Russia, for example; so he calls them by the name of the tribes that originally inhabited the region. As depicted in Map 1, the descendants of Shem, the son of Noah who received the blessing, went to the central parts of the earth and settled mostly in the dry, arid desert lands of Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Japheth's people stayed to the north and spread out in a perimeter around the landing sight of Noah's Ark between the Caspian and Black Seas. Ham, the son cursed because of disrespect to his father, took to the south and his people grabbed up the fertile places like the Nile River valley, the Tigris-Euphrates valley and the land known by the name of one of the fathers of a Hamitic tribe, and later chosen by God as the Promised Land, Canaan, along the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The earth had been replenished and the foundation of the nations had been laid. Shem, with true roots going back to the beginning of creation, prophesied in the name of God telling Man about promises of judgment and salvation; but Man, true to form, again quickly rebelled, this time by rejecting God as his supplier and protector, in favor of setting up a self sufficient society glued together by the strength of an all imposing imperial government. Man's determination to wrest control of his own destiny found its earliest expression when the Spirit of Empire was introduced to the world scene by the notorious Antichrist figure, Nimrod.



Act 2, Scene2

 

The Spirit of Empire

 

 

“And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth.

He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: therefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord.

And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.” Gen. 10:8-10

 

            The previous scene opened serenely with the cooing of birds and the sounds of contented animals filling a rainbow framed world, one secure in the knowledge of God's promise of a new and bright future for Man. It did not take long for that serenity and beauty to be chased away by the ambitions of Man who quickly descended once again into opposition to the spirit of God. Scene 2 opens with the sound of rushing chariots and the horn of the hunter. Men are making bricks, they slop slime into hods and carry them up a tower being constructed. The ox grunts as it works, the laborer's mallet rings loud across the plain which has become the stage for a conspiracy to dethrone god on earth.

 

It took but two generations after the Flood for men to forge a conspiracy toward world empire. Nimrod, Babylon's proud leader, built the world's first cities along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers – not coincidentally, where the Garden of Eden had originally been - with the cities of Babel and Nineveh being the cornerstones of the earliest expression of Man's insatiable desire to dominate God's creation. Genesis Chapter 10 speaks briefly of this chain of cities linked together into a conglomerate power under the headship of the world's first Antichrist person.

The fortified life of the city provided Man with protection against wild beasts and marauding tribes. Secure under this umbrella of unification, Nimrod and his subjects became the ruling force on earth, a force able to contend with the Spirit of God for influence in Man's life.

   

False Religion Instituted Early

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To further his lust for power and to accommodate his military needs, Nimrod, under Satan's influence and special guidance, with the knowledge of the occult handed down from his father Cush, Nimrod with the help of Semiramis his wife, devised the Antichrist's greatest ally and mouthpiece: i.e. false religion. Perverting God's prophetic word, andusing mystical rites, while subtly mixing lies with a measure of truth, Nimrod seduced the people away from God. But, Oh!, the people were willing. Secure in the protection that Nimrod's network of cities provided, the people became easy prey for this hunter of men who captured their hearts and devoured their souls with a diabolical web of false religion which was woven to perfection by Satan. And so, the first empire on earth was wired together by rebellious unity, false religion and the occult. Here is an everlasting lesson for Mankind and one well worth scrutinizing in our time as the modern world clamors for unity at any price. The people felt strong and confident in their unity; but what was their purpose, what was their motive in unity? ”One of the recurring themes in God's history is the conspiracy of empire; that is, the conspiracy of Man and Devil to unite the nations and peoples of the earth into a force able to define and direct their own destiny, unimpeded by God's commands and will.

    The great focal point of Nimrod's Empire was his great tower, the Tower of Babel, built to reach to the heavens. This tower, later restored around 600 B.C. by King Nebuchadnezzar, and seen by the Greek traveler and historian, Herodotus, was an astrological tower used in rites for the earliest forms of the occult. The tower and its associate activities were an affront to God and seems to have been a rallying point for some kind of conspiracy to undermine God's influence in the affairs of Man. Astrology as an occult practice was conceived and given birth at Babel. Instead of the stars being recognized for their true purpose; to tell the Savior's story, men were encouraged to use them to predict their own future, to tell their own story, and thumb their nose at God. The tower was like nothing ever before created by Man. Six hundred and fifty feet high, its eight stories were set on a base of dried brick a quarter of a mile square. That's right, a quarter of a mile square. What can it be compared to in the modern world? Not even modern skyscrapers are a mile in circumference. Genesis chapter 11 says that God came down to look at the city and the tower and all that the men had built and he was greatly concerned. The people had come together in one cause, with one mind, deceived by false religion, intent on controlling their own fate. In their hearts they were rebelling against him. They were aspiring to be their own gods; secure, together, spiritual; all without the One True God. God's concern is hinted at in verse 9, "And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do." From this we can get only a partial sense of the terrible threat this conspiracy had on the well being of Mankind and how it might undermine the work of true salvation. Man might even imagine that he could attain eternal life apart from God, believing he could steal life without being rid of sin and selfishness. God knew this would be the greatest of all tragedies: Man might find a kind of "life" without being freed from the bondage of self and sin. Man might think he could be saved without the intervention of God, without turning with his whole heart to the one and only Redeemer. If Man ever slipped into that delusion, what then? Who could be saved? Man and Creation would be doomed to a living Hell, cast from God's presence forever. For that very reason God had already barred Man access to the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden.

 

“And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever:

Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

           So He drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the Garden of Eden Cherubims, and flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.” Gen. 3.22-24

 

Nimrod's bogus religion headed by the deities of himself, his wife Semiramis and their savior child, Tammuz stayed alive even after God had busted up the conspiracy. This mystery religion centered around multiple triads which signified and institutionalized the deification of man. This religion immediately found its way to Egypt where it changed the names of the deities to suit their Nile habitat, but it remained essentially the same with revisions and refinements until it became the basis and foundation for the great mystery rites which were it has served as the basis for false religion to this very day. Many perversions of spiritual things and the mixing and mangling of God's prophecies were peddled to the Antichrist Empire religion and eventually became the basis for all Greek mystery religions, as well as those that later invaded the Roman Empire from the East during the age of Imperialism. Once embedded in the Roman Empire it never left. (See: Mystery Babylon: Nimrod, Father of Harlots) Deceived by False Religion, Man had swarmed together to make a life exclusive of his Maker. The hope of the empire was based on a unity in opposition to God. It would be the first of many such unholy coalitions decked out in the spirit of togetherness. In time to come the conspiracy to build a unified empire of the nations would become an obsession with Satan and his Antichrist. False Religion and political gospels masquerading as salvation would become more and more sophisticated as concepts of humanism were honed to a fine edge. But unity of flesh and corruptness of spirit would always be the common thread woven throughout the empire's sinister cloak of godly sounding words and pseudo-righteousness. Be sure, unity on Man's terms, always, always, opposes God. Yes, 50 million Frenchmen can be wrong. Men can be in harmony with other men, have a strong, mutually beneficial unity, and be altogether out of harmony with the Creator. So the question is: Why did God allow the formation of nations and the emergence of empires? Why didn't he demand that Man live in pastoral surroundings under tribal and family society? Certainly it is in Man's nature to swarm together, but one main reason for God allowing cities and nations is that he, in his unique way, would use the very tools of Man's rebellion to keep him from uniting. While Satan intended nations and empires for rebellion, God, in typical fashion, decided to use nations and empires to keep Man isolated and divided from one another so the Tower of Babel on a world-wide scale would not be repeated - at least not until the end time, not until the final days when it will meet judgment's requirements for Man to once again unite in foolish rebellion against his Maker. Nimrod made the first lunge to unite the world, and though God shattered it quickly, it was only the first in a long succession of attempts. Again, this conspiracy to unite against God's proclaimed plan (even though many times the perpetrators claim to be doing God's will) is a recurring plot conjured up throughout history by the Antichrist Empire, no matter where it happens to be seated at a given point in history. Almost immediately after the people were scattered, other cultures headed by mighty men followed the lead of Nimrod. Great cultures began to jockey for position and the competition to become the greatest empires on earth began to heat up. The Hittites to the north, the Phoenicians in the center, and the Egyptians in the south, all developed into pompous influential kingdoms that dominated life in their region of the world. Egypt, a disciple of Babel, became very powerful, and along with Babel, the ruled their respective kingdoms in great majesty and authority. Map 2 shows these fledgling empires which paved the way for the beasts that would later rule the earth with even greater Antichrist-like ferocity and power.

But Map 2 not only portrays the "Spirit of Empire" it also ushers in the third and final one of the major characters of "The Redemption Play": the "Chosen Nation". Out of the line of Shem, from the land of Ham, God put out a call for a man named Abram. God beckoned this man to come from his home in Babylon and sojourn in the land of Canaan, to become "a stranger in a strange land". Given only the promise that his seed would someday grow into a great nation and possess the Promised Land, Abram believed God (as Adam and Noah before him had believed) and Abram did what God asked him to do. Having faith to rely totally upon God, Abram did not ally himself with men, nor did he find his solace in the security of a walled city, or under the benevolent lordship of some king or pharaoh. Because Abram so trusted God, God changed his name to Abraham, meaning: father of a great multitude; and the odyssey of the "Chosen Nation", and her dramatic conflict with the nations and the Antichrist "Spirit of Empire" in particular, was set in motion. 

 


Act 2, Scene 3:

 

The Chosen Nation

 

 

  “For the Lord's portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.

  He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. Deut. 32.9-10

 

  “For thus saith the Lord of Hosts; After the glory hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you: for he that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of his eye. Zechariah 2.8

 

            In the two thousand years that followed the Flood, the earth's population was replenished and the foundation of the nations were laid according to the divisions depicted in Map 1. All the while, urban life was springing up, and Man was gathering together in separate pockets of government, and the spirit of empire was gaining a foothold as seen in Map 2. With two of the three primary characters established – the Nations and the Spirit of Empire - it was now time for God to reveal the third and most vital character in "The Redemption Play": the "Chosen Nation", the nation entrusted with his teachings and his word, the nation through which the Hero would come, the nation of the faithful Abraham, the people and nation Israel, ‘the apple of his eye’. Abraham was hand selected by God - just as God had personally singled out Noah and Shem for his purposes before - to be the father of this Chosen Nation. God promised to make Abraham's seed multiply "as the dust of the earth", yet as always, God's call was of a solitary and unique nature, a calling which required a response of great faith because the promise, Abraham was told, was not to be fully realized for many generations to come. This Abraham, being seventy-five years-old, was anything but a young man when God told him to pull up stakes and migrate to a strange and hostile land full of giants and aggressive tribes and incessantly warring kingdoms. He and his wife Sarah had no children, nor did they have any hope of having children since she was barren and both were beyond child barring age. Nevertheless, Abraham chose to believe God when he was told to,

 

”Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee:

And I will make of thee a great nation,

and I will bless thee, and make thy name great;

and thou shalt be a blessing:

 And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth you: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” Gen. 12.1-3

 

Most anyone would have asked, "How can this be possible?'' but Abraham heard God's call and answered it obediently, travelling to the land of Canaan where he remained a stranger and a sojourner for the rest of his life. Because he believed in the Lord and acted on it, the Bible tells us, that God "counted it to him for righteousness". And God's pleasure and promises toward Abraham increased. The scene introducing the Chosen Nation might best open with a stark setting; a solitary old man, humbly sits before God in a quiet tent somewhere in the middle of a desert wilderness. God promised Abraham and his seed all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates Rivers as their everlasting inheritance Gen. 15.18. The Lord later instituted the covenant of circumcision to signify that the Promised Land would be an everlasting possession for Abraham's seed. A year later, after the establishment of the covenant of circumcision, as God's proof of this promise of inheritance, Abraham, at the age of 100, sired a son by his wife Sarah and they named him Isaac as God had instructed. God reconfirmed the promise in Isaac by tests of faith and gave him a son, Jacob. God also proved Jacob's faith with tests and trials, and as he had done with Abraham, gave Jacob a new name, Israel; meaning, one who prevails with God.

Through this process of confirmation and reconfirmation the Chosen Nation was incontrovertibly revealed as the children of Israel. The Chosen Nation would be of the line of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; not of the line of Abraham and Ishmael (the son of his servant Hagar), nor of the line of Abraham, Isaac and Esau (Jacob's twin brother), but the line of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, for it was that line, and that line alone, that was personally selected by God and had past the tests of his faith. It was that line of the fathers that "prevailed with God", and though claim jumpers, would-be robbers of the inheritance, and liars of all sort have tried to lay claim to the inheritance rights, no other people or nation will ever be able to make good on it except the children of Israel because their fathers "prevailed" with God.

 

A Brief History of Israel: The Battle Lines are Drawn

       God tested the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob just as he had tested Adam and Noah before them, and Israel prevailed. Once again, that is the very meaning of the word Israel. Each of the fathers of Israel prevailed in his test and that is why the promises of God were established in their line for ever. God's history is built on this fundamental truth and will never swerve from it. With the establishment of Israel as the chosen ones the battle line was now clearly drawn. God was making his stand in Israel. His plan of redemption would not only go through Israel, salvation would come out of Israel. From this point on Satan would try to disturb, disrupt, confuse, destroy or in any way possible stop God's declared prophecies concerning Israel. Satan would try to use his empires to combat the fulfillment of prophecy by undermining their faith or annihilating them as a people.

The history of Israel began hard. Because of a great famine in Canaan during Jacob's lifetime children of Israel were forced to go into Egypt where they stayed as slaves for four hundred years until God raised up the prophet Moses to deliver them out of their bondage. While in Egypt, Israel grew into a nation, but they were a nation without a home, a nation in despair. There the children of Israel languished without hope, living in bondage, servants and slaves to a cruel Egyptian master. But at the appointed time God heard their cries and sent the humble Moses to miraculously deliver them out of the hands of Pharaoh, the leader of the greatest and most powerful nation at the time. After the exodus from Egypt, God gave Moses his laws and teachings to hand down to Israel, and Israel prepared to enter into the land that God had promised to the father, Abraham. But Moses, as the representative of the law, was not the one chosen to bring the people into the Promised Land, that honor was saved for a man named Joshua, as a foreshadowing of Jesus which his name implies (Joshua is a Hebrew form of Jesus). For only Jesus, and not the law which Moses represented, can bring us into the promises of God. After forty years of strife and wandering, the people of Israel finally followed Joshua into Promised Land, dividing it according to the twelve tribes, which were established after the twelve patriarchal sons of Jacob. God raised up judges and prophets to minister justice to his nation over the next three-hundred-years. God used Moses, Joshua, and the Judges to establish Israel in the original way he had established the nations after the Flood. It was a true theocracy; a tribal society under the rule and direction of God himself.

 

Reject God in Favor of a King

Inevitably however, the adulterous heart of Israel crept in, just as with the nations and tribes of the rest of the earth, and was not satisfied with God as its leader. Israel gathered together to reject God as their leader and demanded they be ruled by a king. Proclaiming that they wished to be like the nations around them - the very nations God had warned them about, the very same nations that persecuted, harassed and enslaved them, the ones steeped in idolatry - Israel set off on its own course. Clamoring for a human king, she rejected God as King (1Sam.8) and because of her idolatry and rejection of God the prophecy of Moses (Deut. 28) foretelling the judgment of Israel was activated. Now God would initiate the next part of his plan. Using "the apple of his eye", his precious Israel, before completing her salvation, he would show the world the tragic fruits of a wandering heart. Judgment was by no means immediate however, it was a long process. God let the cup of disobedience and sin fill to the fullest before bringing his judgment down on her and it took five hundred years for that cup to fill to the brim. During that time God patiently confirmed and reconfirmed his love for Israel, reassuring her of his promises of salvation and inheritance through the ministry of his servants and prophets. After first anointing Saul as king, and then rejecting him because of disobedience, God appointed David of the tribe of Judah to be king over his people. Because David was a "man after God's own heart", God again confirmed the promise of the Chosen Nation in him by declaring that David's throne would be the everlasting throne; the throne of the Messiah, the Christ. But the promise was still far off, just as was to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; for the Gentile nations had to be offered salvation before the process could be completed. The nation that was conceived in Abraham, born and called out of Egypt, introduced to its God by Moses, given its land by Joshua, and made a unified nation under David, was destined to be used by God in the greatest of all mysteries: salvation. This nation that came out of nothing, from the loins of a 100 year old sojourner in a wilderness, would be made the gazing stock of the world. For two thousand years she would wander in judgment, cast off by her "Husband" so the world could learn about the disaster that ensues when men do not cleave to their Creator. In his plan to unmask the deathly nature of sin, God judged his nation, bringing disaster on her for her stubborn rebellion and sin, but she was not cast off forever.

The Scripture, "As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' [Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David] sake", is ever true. In 1491 B.C.E. the people of Israel, moving to possess the Promised Land, voted for God to be their leader, 396 years later, in 1095 B.C. they unsheathed the sword of judgment by rejecting God and clamoring instead for a king to rule over them. The sword began to fall in earnest after the reign of David's son, Solomon. For Solomon's idolatry, God split the nation into two opposing sister states, Israel and Judah and for the next three centuries the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob warred against itself. There was hardly a year of peace. The nation was beleaguered by evil leaders and corrupted by an idolatrous spirit. After a long period of slow descent into decadence, judgment began to come in heavy waves and the ominous words of the prophets Moses, Isaiah, Ezekiel and Jeremiah were fulfilled.

Map 3 shows first, the dividing of the land among the tribes of Israel during the time of the Judges and the subsequent splitting of the country into two competing parts. Second, it cites the judgment that fell on both parts of Israel. In 712 B.C. the ten tribes of the northern kingdom Israel were taken captive and removed into other countries by the Assyrian king, Sennacherib. A century later, Judah was judged, climaxed by the taking of the Holy City and the destruction of the Temple by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. The Jew no longer ruled in Israel. The sack of a Jerusalem, destruction of the Temple and captivity of the people ushered in twenty-five hundred years of turmoil, dispersion and hardship for Israel and marks the end of the second act of "The Redemption Play", planting the first seeds for The Time of the Gentiles, a time in the history of the world where God's focus would shift from the Chosen Nation to the rest of the world. The three main players in God's drama, and their true character are now conceived and fully established. Next in the spotlight will be the Antichrist Spirit and the evolution it will undergo as it turns into a great and horrible Beast that will dominate the Chosen Nation and the rest of the nations of the earth. The scribe for Act 3 is the prophet, Daniel, himself taken as part of the captives who were carried away into Babylon. During his captivity Daniel served as God's futuristic reporter, telling the world of what was to come directing prophecy's bright light onto the Beast, exposing the hidden truth about its inner nature.

Daniel simply recorded the prophecies, dreams, and visions given to him and others, and added the God given interpretations as they were given to him. They are reports of the coming of our Hero, his death, his return, Israel's salvation and of redemption's ultimate success; but they also track the growth of the four Antichrist empires into an unthinkable monster which is lead by the most vile person history will ever know. 

 

 

Act 2, Scene 4

 

Ultimate Salvation of Israel
  And the Time of the Gentiles

  

     “For I would not brethren that ye should be

ignorant of the mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part has happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.

     And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob

     For this is my covenant unto them; when I shall take away their sins.

     As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sakes.

     For the gifts and the calling of God are

without repentance.” Romans 11.25-29

 

Before going on to Act 3 we must get an important truth fixed in the forefront of our minds. Any and all understanding of prophecy must be painted with the broad brush of the ultimate salvation of the nation Israel. When the curtain comes down on Act 2, and before going up on Act 3, Daniel steps out from behind the curtain to deliver a critical soliloquy. "The Redemption Play" cannot go on until its truth is loudly proclaimed. So important is it, in fact, that the spotlight directs a laser-like beam onto the prophet and the "audience" is asked to keep their eyes and ears riveted to his message. The soliloquy begins with a word of caution. Despite worldly notions of what is important history and what is not, the real battle among the nations is over the promises God made directly to the Jew, and by extension, to the whole world. Any battle of history, no matter how important it may seem, that does not relate to this quintessential matter is at best a border skirmish and usually nothing more than a simple diversion. The promises to Mankind are of salvation, despite our evil heart. God is not fickle in his promises to us, as the Scripture says, it is not that we loved God, but that he loved us first, and that holds true for the Church. We best not be wise in our own conceits, the Gentile believer has been grafted into the chosen tree and can be cut off just as easily. It is only a matter of a short time before Christ returns to heal the original tree, Israel.

            Israel has always been, and will always be, God's chosen nation. No other nation can be. Jeremiah, called in the Bible, the prophet to the nations, was told, "Fear thou not, O Jacob my servant, saith the Lord: for I am with thee; for I will make a full end of all the nations whither I have driven thee: but I will not make a full end of thee, but correct thee in measure; yet will I not leave thee wholly unpunished." Jer. 46.28-30.11

God is not a respecter of persons but he surely respects his promises; therefore we can be certain Israel will be his saved nation. True, there is one other nation to be saved but it is a spiritual nation without borders and boundaries, without laws and government, that is, the holy nation, the peculiar nation, the Church 1 Pet. 2, which is the invisible body of Christ and most assuredly is not confined to any boundary, ideology, politic, or national allegiance. Let us not be ignorant or confused about what this means, though. The whole commonwealth of Israel is both the Jew and the Church.  It is the predetermined design of God that one day soon they shall become one together under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Christ is now using the Church to manifest his heavenly throne, but will use Israel in the age to come to manifest his earthly throne. At the end of a thousand year reign, commonly referred to as the Millennium, the two shall be completely merged. During the Millennium the governing of the earth by Christ the King will take place from the center of the earth, the place God has centered his promises; Jerusalem, the City of Peace.

Daniel's prophecies - and all prophecy - must be seen in the light of Israel's ultimate salvation, that the conflict among the nations is the result of Satan's opposition to the promises of God. Israel has therefore been the focus of satanic onslaught. The Devil has tried to corrupt them and defile them, to tempt them and to kill them, so he can either destroy them or provoke God into annihilating them himself. Satan hates the Jew as much as he hates the true Christian. An understanding of Daniel confirms that both God's plan and Satan's counter-plan revolve around Israel's trials and persecutions. Rom. 11

     

The Prophecy of the 70 Weeks of Daniel is of Great Importance

Despite his persistence, the Devil has been foiled in all attempts to destroy Israel or to provoke God. One of Daniel's primary prophetic purposes is to teach the end times Church and reassure Israel that God has not abandoned the Jewish nation. In spite of their backsliding God promises in Daniel that the Messiah will come and will in due time deliver Israel from their stony hearts and restore them to their God forever. The words of the Archangel, Gabriel, reported by Daniel 2,500 years ago, also declare the salvation of Israel, the coming of the Messiah, his death, and the restoration of Jerusalem.

Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy.

 

“Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and rebuild Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and three score and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall even in troublous times.

           And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for Himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.

And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.” Dan. 9.24-27

 

         This prophecy is of immense importance because it forecasts the rest of the acts of "The Redemption Play" and how it all revolves around God's dealings with Israel. In so few words (as is typical of Daniel's prophecies) such profound and far reaching things are foretold. It does take some tedious explaining so bear with it. To keep the prophecy veiled until the right time, the code word "weeks" was used to represent periods of seven years. The first 69 "weeks", or 483 year period (69 X 7=483 years), broken into three subdivisions of important crossroads, have already been fulfilled in Israel. Only the last "week", the fourth and final part of the prophecy remains to be fulfilled. At the end of this 70th "week" of years the promised salvation of the nation Israel shall come. The prophecy promises the forgiveness of sins, everlasting righteousness, and the anointing of Most Holy, their King and Savior (Jesus Christ).  The first 69 "weeks" of the prophecy neatly revealed the precise time of the return of the Jews after their captivity in Babylon, the rebuilding of Jerusalem, the first coming of Christ, and that he would be "cut off" for a time, "but not for Himself". Calculating the time that each thing would happen requires converting the "weeks" into the appropriate number of years  by multiplying 7 X the number of appropriate weeks. In the case of Jesus' coming it is helpful to convert the number of years even further into days according to the Babylonian calendar – then in use - of 360 days per year.

The first fulfillment came when the commandment came forth by the King of Persia, Artaxerxes, in 445 B.C. to restore and rebuild Jerusalem and seven "weeks", or forty-nine years later, the job was complete. The Jews were back in Jerusalem, the Temple was rebuilt and Jerusalem's walls were restored. And just as the prophecy had said, it was accomplished in "troublous times". Naturally, there was resistance to the Jews return  - as in any other time, including ours - so much so, that the Jews had to have armed guards protect those who did the restoration work. The whole story is fully recounted in the books of Nehemiah and Ezra.

            The second part of the prophecy is even more remarkable because it tells the exact time of the first coming of the Messiah. We find that from the time of the going forth of the commandment by the Persian Emperor in 445 B.C. and his command to rebuild Jerusalem and its walls to Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, when he was openly hailed as the Messiah, was exactly, to the very day, pinpointed. Artaxerxes made his decree on April 14, 445 B.C. and exactly 173,880 days later (483 years X 360 days) Jesus entered Jerusalem as the Messiah. Just a few short days later his crucifixion fulfilled the part of the prophecy about his being "cut off", the truth about his being the innocent lamb, slain for our sins that we might have life, further fulfilled the part about being cut off, "but not for himself".

The other parts of the prophecy also came to pass. Less than forty years after the Crucifixion, in A.D. 70, the city and the sanctuary were destroyed by the Emperor's Roman legions; and the age of the Gentiles was in full bloom. Using the code word "weeks", the prophecy had foretold the time of the rebuilding of Jerusalem and its circumstances, it foretold the coming and death of the Messiah, and it foretold the destruction of the temple sanctuary. All that remains to be fulfilled is the events of the final "week". It is no happenstance either that the prophecy draws a clear line between the 69th and 70th "week".

Between the 69th and 70th "weeks" is a kind of suspension of time so that the Time of the Gentile may be accomplished without any time limits. This gap is purely the Time of the Gentiles. Only the Father knows for sure when the time of the Gentiles is slated to end and when the time will be right for the start of the 70th Week and the ultimate salvation of Israel. The final "week" of "Jacob's Trouble" will see the Gentiles overwhelm Israel once again; the Jews shall be persecuted and dispersed, the Temple sanctuary defiled one last time. Then the promised salvation of Israel shall come and Christ shall judge the Antichrist and his followers. Judgment and salvation await only the resumption of Daniel's prophecy. Meanwhile we are still in the time of the Gentiles, a time, however, that further study of God's quintessential history shows, is swiftly coming to its dramatic climax.

 

The Time of the Gentiles: A Suspension of Time

With the ultimate salvation of Israel firmly fixed in our minds, the soliloquy now shifts its message to the rest of the world's peoples: The Gentiles. We are told that God placed the firmament in the heavens to make order out of things and set the times and seasons. He set the sun, the moon and the stars there to direct and give order to our lives, and to teach us about salvation, redemption and spiritual realities. The sun, for instance, emanates great light, as the heavenly body representative of Christ. The moon on the other hand is representative of the Church, a body created to reflect the light of the Son. Fittingly, the Time of the Gentiles is also like the moon in that it has a bright side and a dark side.  The bright side of this Time of the Gentiles is that the "light of the world" would shine into all the world; the dark side however is that the Gentiles, as a whole, would reject the light of the Son and revolt against God. But in spite of knowing this, God's purpose in the Time of the Gentiles is to have mercy on the whole earth. The apostle Paul, in his letter to the Romans teaches that the period between the first and second coming of Christ is a time allotted to the Gentiles so they can seek and receive salvation.

Isaiah prophesied repeatedly of the light that would come to the Gentile world; but the scope of the Age of Grace and its mercy was not completely realized until Paul, at Antioch, was led of the Holy Ghost to turn from the supernaturally blinded Jews and go with fervor to the Gentiles offering the Gospel of Truth.

    

            “And the next sabbath day came almost the whole city together to hear the word of God.

But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy, and spake against those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming.

            Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold, and said, it was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.

For so hath the Lord commanded us, I have set thee to be a light to the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth.

            And when the Gentiles heard this they were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.

And the word of the Lord was published throughout all the region.”
 Acts 13.44-49

    

    Despite this, the days of the Gentile are numbered. The Time of the Gentiles has already lasted two millennia - and not because God is slack in his promises of the return of Christ - God in his mercy wants as many as possible to be saved.  This, once again, is the significance of the suspension of time and division between the 69th and 70th "weeks" of Daniel's prophecy.  God has temporarily put aside his dealings with the Jews so salvation can be offered to the world at large. The prophet, Isaiah, is quoted in the New Testament: “The land of Zabulon and the land of Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles; The people which sat in great darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.” Matthew 4.15-16 But if Isaiah prophesied of the light and glory of the Time of the Gentiles , the prophet Joel prophesied of it darkness:

           

“Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles; prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up:

           Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears: let the weak say I am strong.

           Assemble yourselves and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves round about: thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O Lord.

Let the heathen be wakened and come up to the valley of Jehosaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about.

           Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come get ye down; for the press is full, the vats overflow; for their wickedness is great.” Joel 3.9-13

 

God's light may be the glory of the Time of the Gentile, but Joel uncovers its shame: "their wickedness is great"; the nations have rebelled against God and their rebellion will finally swell to a world-wide conspiracy ending with judgment at the valleys of Jehosaphat and Armageddon in Israel.

During the time of the Gentiles, Satan and the nations have exploited God's great mercy by increasing their adulteries and rebellion. They have persecuted those who have truly worshipped God. They have whipped up lies about God and perverted his word while conniving to win the souls and hearts of men.  The Book of Daniel, with its prophecies exposes the true spirit of the Antichrist and the conspiracy of rebellion. It is a conspiracy so all encompassing that it is hardly to be believed. It has personally touched every man, woman and child ever born. Only by spiritual vision, by faith, and by understanding of prophecy can men begin to free themselves of the impact it has had on their lives.

The conspiracy began to take on its present form during Daniel's life. To a degree the Time of the Gentiles has its roots then, with the Babylonian control of Israel and the conquest of Jerusalem. From that time on Israel would be controlled by Gentile powers, one right after the other (with but one brief exception during the period of the Maccabees uprising around 150 B.C.) for the next two and a half millennia.

For 450 years before the coming of the Messiah, the four Antichrist Empires fingered in Daniel ruthlessly dominated the Promised Land in succession. These four, as a quasi-spiritual body, together make up the mature Antichrist Beast. These four empires embody the dark side of the Time of the Gentiles because they are the power behind the rebellion against God and God's people, and are the means by which Satan hopes to wrest control of the earth and undermine true faith. These beasts are the most prodigious carriers of Satan's counter-plan to steal the worship of Mankind. They are his seat and his throne. Though Satan is proficient at clothing his monster in a disarming facade of "love", the prophecies of Daniel search underneath the outward appearance like an x-ray to expose the nasty, brutal beastly character of this Antichrist Empire.