1466 - Zechariah 14 “Messiah on the Mt of Olives”

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is Podcast 1466. Today I'm having eye surgery and I will be out of pocket the rest of the week. And so, because of that, I have asked our producer to play some of the most requested podcasts of the last six years. And I'm going to start today with the prophet Zechariah chapter 14. I pray you will be blessed throughout the rest of this week. I want to encourage you to pray for me. This is not something that is critical, but there is always danger anytime you start digging around in the eye. This is a surgery to correct some things that are not right in one of my eyes. I've already had the left corrected. This surgery will enable me, God willing, never to have to wear glasses again, never to have to wear contacts again for the rest of my life. And it will correct some problems that are developing. And so thank you for your patience, and I pray that you enjoy these days that we have together. Behold the day of the Lord is coming, and your spoil will be divided in your midst, for I will gather all the nations together to battle against Jerusalem. The city shall be taken, the houses rifled, the women ravished, half of the city shall go into captivity, and the remnant of the people shall not be cut off from that city. Now that is a day that is yet to come, and God only knows when it is. But Jesus himself will end this battle. You say, how do you know that? Zachariah was talking about the day of the Lord. Remember, Zechariah was a contemporary with Haggai. Yes, Haggai, the one that we've been talking about that called the people to work, he and Zechariah were contemporaries. That's interesting. Zachariah, that we call Zachariah, comes from the word to remember in Hebrew, and the word Yah, that is God remembers. God remembers everything, and God remembers all the promises he has made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to David, that one of his own, one of his seed, will rule one day all of the earth from Jerusalem, the city of God. I believe that what we have in Zechariah 14 is the beginning of that rule. I believe, without going into a lot of detail here in this podcast, that this will happen, what I'm about to read to you, at the end of the great tribulation period of seven years, when literally a personification of Satan himself, the anti Christos, the one who is against Christ, the one whose spirit of Antichrist was there during the days of the apostles, but will be manifest in the flesh. He is called the man of sin, the lawless one. He will make himself to be God, and the Lord Jesus Himself will end his reign and begin his own. It will be called the days of the Messiah. That's right, the messianic age. In our evangelical world, we call it the millennial reign. Why? Because in Revelation chapter 20, the Apostle John on the island of Patmos saw the vision, the pulling back of the curtain, the apocalypse, the apocalypto. That is the pulling back, the unveiling of what the future holds. And the scripture says in Revelation 20 that Messiah will reign for a thousand years. Often I'm asked, do you really believe it's going to be a thousand years? Of course I do. That's what the Bible says. And everything else in that passage is literal when it's speaking literal. And so I believe that's exactly what it is. When the Bible speaks literally, we need to take it literally. When it's a metaphor, we need to take it as a metaphor. When it's analogy as an analogy. But in Revelation chapter 20, there are symbols in Revelation chapter 20, but it is just historical narrative written in advance. It's surely going to happen. And I believe it will happen as Zechariah says. In the book of Zechariah, that same chapter, when I talked about how that the battle for Jerusalem will go on, then the scripture says, the Lord, and it's a word for God's person, L-O-R-D, all capitals, Yah, Hashem, Yahweh. Then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations. Who will fight against the nations? The Lord. And as he fights in the day of battle, that is, he's going to fight. This is not going to be some kind of battle that's going to last for any amount of time. When God gets in on it's over. And it says in that day his, who's his? What's the antecedent? The Lord L O R D, the personal name for the God of creation. The personal name of the God who met with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and David and Solomon and Hezekiah. Who is the Lord? It's the one that stood before John the Baptist and said, Baptize me, as we must fulfill all righteousness. Who is the Lord? He's the one that walked on the water. Who is the Lord? He's the one that cast out demons and raised the dead. Who is the Lord? He's the one that died on a cross as the Lamb of God as a substitution. Who is the Lord? He is the one that rose from the dead and ascended to heaven after forty days. Who is the Lord, L O R D? He's the one whose feet will step down on the Mount of Olives. And in that day his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east. And when he does, the Mount of Olives shall split in two from the east to the west, making a very large valley, and it will be that half of the mountain shall move toward the north and half toward the south. Now that's interesting. As you read that, that might not mean much to you. But it does. Because you see the natural topography of an earthquake that was just an ordinary earthquake would be from the north to the south. Why? Because that's the way of the fault lines. All of the valleys are north and south, not east and west. The great cracks in the earth that are already there are from the north to the south. The Mount of Olives has before it, looking west, Mount Moriah. On the other side of Mount Moriah, Mount Moriah is the cheesemaker's valley. Oh, it's been filled in during the days of Jesus and Solomon before that and the Hasmoneans in between there. And Herod the Great certainly built it up to where there were levels of streets. And the gray retaining wall that we still see the western part of it that has been seen for years that's called the western wall or the wailing wall. But it's the western retaining wall that's built to retain the dirt that was brought in to build a platform for the temple. But it is over a huge valley called the Tyropian Valley by the Romans, and it is east to west. And then behind the Mount of Olives to the east of the Mount of Olives is a 4,000 feet crack in the earth. There is a drop that goes to the lowest point on earth. The Mount of Olives is 2,700 feet above sea level, and the Dead Sea is 1,300 feet below sea level, and you can stand on the Mount of Olives and look down on the Dead Sea. That's right. You can see the Dead Sea from the Mount of Olives. I've done it many times. And across then you see the hills of Moab. That is what was the hills of Moab during the days of the Exodus. And so it was called Perea, that area was during the days of Jesus. Now the reason I'm telling you that is because the Bible says when the Messiah steps down on the Mount of Olives, that there's going to be a huge crack, an earthquake that's going to take place, and it's going to be from the east to the west. Very unnatural, or should I say supernatural. That's right, because there's going to be a purpose in the mountain cleaving to the north and to the south. That is, it's going to separate to the north and to the south, not the normal east to the west as would the cracks from north to south be. It will not run along the Kedron Valley and down to the Dead Sea, no. It will separate from the north and go toward what would be the tribe of Benjamin. It will go north toward Mount Scopus, and then it will go south toward Bethlehem, and that will create an east west valley. That's right. And so verse five says, Then you shall flee through my mountain valley, that is, the valley that will be formed, to the mountain valley to reach Azal. Yes, you shall flee, as you fled from the earthquake in the days of Utziah, King of Judah. Thus the Lord my God will come, and all the saints with him. Ah, all the saints with him. Now where did the saints come from? They came from that time when they would be raptured up and taken to be with the Lord, and it shall come to pass in that day that there shall be no light. The lights will diminish. It shall be one day which is known to the Lord, neither day nor night, but at evening time it shall happen that it will be light. It's going to be a supernatural day, and in that day it shall be that living waters shall flow from Jerusalem. Read the book of Ezekiel, and you will see in the chapters following thirty seven, thirty-eight, and thirty-nine, when the children of Israel are brought back into the land from the north and the south and the east and the west, and there is a great battle to try to come into the land, the battle of Gog and Magog. And then you're going to read in chapter 40, 41, 42 about the great river flowing to the Dead Sea. And it says, In that day it shall be that the living waters shall flow from Jerusalem, half of them toward the Eastern Sea, and half of them toward the Western Sea. The Western Sea is the Mediterranean. Everyone knows that. That's the sea that is west of Jerusalem. But why what is this, the Eastern Sea? Well, there is no word for East in the Hebrew language. It's the word Kadim, which is the word for forward. When you're standing on the Mount of Olives facing forward, you're facing east. You see, that's the Eastern Sea. It's talking about the Dead Sea. And the Scripture says, in both summer and winter it shall occur. That is, this river that runs from Moriah will flow to the Dead Sea. Ezekiel said in great detail that it will be such fresh water and in such great abundance that it will cause the Dead Sea, that is thirty thirty three percent salt to be like the Mediterranean where fish and life will grow up all around and the Dead Sea will live. And it says the Lord shall be the king over all the earth. In that day it shall be the Lord is one and his name one. It is an amazing sight that we will see one day. Jesus will come again. Yeshua Hamashiach, Jesus the Messiah, will reign over all the earth, and it will start at the end of the Great Tribulation Period when his feet touch down on the Mount of Olives, just as Zechariah said five hundred years before Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Zachariah was saying, It's gonna happen. Folks, it's going to happen. For on the way, this is Tony Chris.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Chris. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org, then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's Questions at TonyC R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.