SPEAKER_00: You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_01: In the last day, we're gonna see this restraining, lifted, and so don't be troubled.
SPEAKER_01: That's the point.
SPEAKER_01: Don't be shocked.
SPEAKER_01: Don't be surprised.
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_01: But the key is that if we walk with the Lord, we walk with the joy and the power of the Holy Spirit daily.
SPEAKER_01: And that we're a part of the power of the gospel reaching those who don't know him in new supernatural signs and wonders.
SPEAKER_00: Today, Pastor Steve continues his series on the Book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on the road, visit theroad.org.
SPEAKER_00: We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, turn in your Bibles to Luke chapter 21, and I want to make a note here.
SPEAKER_01: We are in the book of Revelation, actually, but this week, last week, and in the coming week, we're looking at what we're calling the times of the signs, and we've taken a break from Revelation chapter 6 because I'm kind of setting up Revelation chapter 6.
SPEAKER_01: And the Revelation chapter 6 is what we would classically call the beginning of sorrows in the last days.
SPEAKER_01: Some call that the Great Tribulation period, starting in Luke 6.
SPEAKER_01: I do not believe it is.
SPEAKER_01: I believe it's the beginning of sorrows.
SPEAKER_01: I think it's the birth pangs of the earth.
SPEAKER_01: That actually in Revelation chapter 8 is when we come to the seventh seal, and I consider that the great tribulation period.
SPEAKER_01: And to me, the debate is a healthy one.
SPEAKER_01: Doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_01: The reality is things are progressing toward the coming of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And so last week I talked about the first great sign, and I believe the most important sign of the last days is the nation of Israel being founded in 1948.
SPEAKER_01: And I've been to Israel a couple times.
SPEAKER_01: I brought an Israeli flag, it's up here right now.
SPEAKER_01: And then I brought actually an IDF, which is the Military Forces of the Israeli Army, which I was able to get on the Golan Heights when I was there.
SPEAKER_01: So that's here if you want to look at it later, but don't take it.
SPEAKER_01: If you take it, I will find you.
SPEAKER_01: No, but you can feel free to look at, enjoy looking at that because of what we're going to talk about today, which is another aspect of the nation of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: I want to say this at the very beginning.
SPEAKER_01: Just because we believe prophetically that God has a plan for the nation of Israel does not mean that we condone everything that Israel does politically.
SPEAKER_01: Do you understand that?
SPEAKER_01: I love America, I put my hand over my heart, I stand for the national anthem, but not everything in America is perfect.
SPEAKER_01: Politics is made up by men.
SPEAKER_01: Prophecy is made up by God.
SPEAKER_01: Do you understand that?
SPEAKER_01: So just because some aspects of the Palestinian, Arab issue, and the Israeli issue is very convoluted and confusing does not mean that we don't look at scriptures the way it was written that prophetically God has a plan for Israel in the last days, and we're seeing it right before us.
SPEAKER_01: Now, look at Luke 21, and I'm going to go through Luke 21 partially today because of my second sign of the times.
SPEAKER_01: But I want to start here at the beginning with verse 34 because this is the end of what we're going to read.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm going to start at the end and then we're going to go back.
SPEAKER_01: Because I want to share something that's coming up that our church is going to be a part of.
SPEAKER_01: Take heed to yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and the cares of this life.
SPEAKER_01: How many of you felt like you've been weighed down sometimes by the cares of this life?
SPEAKER_01: If you've been watching the news at all, we are really, really a nation that's cracking in our cities with issues and struggles.
SPEAKER_01: And that day, and in your Bible it's probably capitalized day, meaning the coming of the Lord, that that day come on you unexpectedly.
SPEAKER_01: So it wouldn't say that if it wasn't possible that this coming of the Lord, these last days, could come on you unexpectedly.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, he's warning you, he's giving you an intelligence report.
SPEAKER_01: Look, it is coming.
SPEAKER_01: And what he's done in Luke 21 and Matthew 24 is he's given us the signs before this.
SPEAKER_01: And we're going to cover a few of them this morning.
SPEAKER_01: For it will come as a snare.
SPEAKER_01: This is really important.
SPEAKER_01: For it will come to you as a snare on those who dwell on the face of the whole earth.
SPEAKER_01: So there's actually a snare.
SPEAKER_01: You know what a snare is?
SPEAKER_01: I've used snares before to catch raccoons.
SPEAKER_01: Actually, I've used a cage, but it's similar.
SPEAKER_01: Didn't kill the raccoon, but I've had raccoons get into my chicken.
SPEAKER_01: So I've used a snare or a cage.
SPEAKER_01: He's saying, look, you could be walking along, you know, and you can just walk right into a snare if you're not expectant that this was predicted before, and then you're actually ready.
SPEAKER_01: So look at verse 36, because that's where he's leading.
SPEAKER_01: After all of chapter of Luke 21, he comes to verse 36.
SPEAKER_01: Watch therefore and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass and to stand before the Son of Man.
SPEAKER_01: So, September 29th, it's in four days.
SPEAKER_01: We're starting 40 days and nights of prayer alongside Every Hum for Christ, and what Dick is doing over at Every Hump for Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And we're using his booklet called Fast Forward America, and this is a beautiful guide, a wonderful guide on how to pray each day for the seven mountains or spheres of influence in our country, like religion and politics and arts and entertainment and stuff like that, to follow that.
SPEAKER_01: Now, alongside this as a companion of this, is we're going to go into 40 days of prayer walking for revival and awakening.
SPEAKER_01: And when you leave today, we've got a hundred of these ready, a hundred booklets and a hundred of these.
SPEAKER_01: And if we run out, we'll get more.
SPEAKER_01: But what we're doing is we're encouraging you guys to take time whenever you can.
SPEAKER_01: And this is not programmatic.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, it'll be up to you if you have a heart for this.
SPEAKER_01: You guys know that our prayer walk, Liz and I usually together, prayer walk almost every day up in Black Forest.
SPEAKER_01: But what we're what we're challenging our church to do is to saturate the Briargate area with prayer walking.
SPEAKER_01: There is a massive, let's see, it's about two, I'm gonna say two by four feet map now in the war room that you can see all the streets of Briargate, and on this sheet on what to pray for, and there's six things to pray for as you walk, there's gonna be a map on the back.
SPEAKER_01: And that is a map of Briargate.
SPEAKER_01: And here's what I'd like you to consider doing is during the week, as many times as you can, or just one time, but sometime, come into Briargate if you don't live here, and just start prayer walking.
SPEAKER_01: Write down, like mark it on this little piece of paper where you've gone, and then when you come in on next Sunday and the Sunday after that, and the Sunday after that, mark it.
SPEAKER_01: We'll have a we'll have a marker there.
SPEAKER_01: Mark where you've gone in Briargate.
SPEAKER_01: Show us the streets you've covered.
SPEAKER_01: And I would love to see all of Briargate saturated in prayer.
SPEAKER_01: And some of the prayer requests on here are like this.
SPEAKER_01: Pray for a spiritual revival of wholehearted love for Jesus in your personal life.
SPEAKER_01: Pray that Jesus would awaken you to love God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
SPEAKER_01: So if you're walking, say, Lord, and at first you'll have to kind of look at it.
SPEAKER_01: But after a while, it'll get all folded up and everything like this, and you'll stick it in your pocket, and then you'll start getting it.
SPEAKER_01: And then you pray that for your family, and then you pray that for that neighborhood, and then we pray for revival in Colorado Springs.
SPEAKER_01: And what we pray for is revival in the church's awakening in the city.
SPEAKER_01: Revival in the church's awakening city.
SPEAKER_01: How many of you know you can't revive something that's dead?
SPEAKER_01: In other words, something that's revived is something that once lived, right?
SPEAKER_01: But awakening is when you're asleep, you wake up.
SPEAKER_01: And so we're praying as we go through a street, Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I just pray, wake up people to the love of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Wake them up, wake them up, wake them up.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, revive the pastors of Colorado Springs.
SPEAKER_01: Revive the churches of Colorado Springs, because revival always leads to awakening.
SPEAKER_01: Revival historically always leads to an awakening.
SPEAKER_01: Revival is never just self-contained within a body of believers.
SPEAKER_01: It always spills over, or it's not a revival.
SPEAKER_01: It's not a revival if it doesn't spill over.
SPEAKER_01: And so that's our prayer.
SPEAKER_01: You'll see what the requests are.
SPEAKER_01: So as you leave today, even if you're coming to the seven-minute pit stop, just pick these up and pick up the booklet here as you go, because I think you'll find it really exciting.
SPEAKER_01: And I think it'll just be total revival in your own life to do that.
SPEAKER_01: So last week, what did we talk about?
SPEAKER_01: We talked about Israel.
SPEAKER_01: And I said the first sign of the times, or the times of the signs, is this.
SPEAKER_01: Now, some of you are new to my teaching.
SPEAKER_01: Normally we are verse by verse.
SPEAKER_01: Right now, this week, last week, and next week, you're gonna get some history.
SPEAKER_01: So this is gonna be a little bit of a history lesson.
SPEAKER_01: So if you're bored by history, then stare at me.
SPEAKER_01: And just stare at me really, really like you're excited and can't wait to hear it because it'll encourage me.
SPEAKER_01: But the reality is that it's important that you understand this history because you're not gonna hear it anywhere else.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm guarantee you, CBS, NBC, and MSNBC are not gonna have anything about Israel that's positive.
SPEAKER_01: But turn in your Bibles, keep your finger in Luke 21, but turn in your Bibles to 2 Thessalonians 2.
SPEAKER_01: 2 Thessalonians 2.
SPEAKER_01: I think this is a preface to Luke 21 and even actually the book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_01: You that have been with me through the whole study of Revelation up to this point have heard me reference this before, but I want to do it again because it's really so crucial to understanding the ways of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: 2 Thessalonians 2, and don't miss this, God measures time morally.
SPEAKER_01: God measures time morally.
SPEAKER_01: So here's where people get faked out, especially young people.
SPEAKER_01: You young people get faked out by this.
SPEAKER_01: You think that you're, you know, uh, I shouldn't say young people, why am I saying that?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's there's so many messed up older people, okay?
SPEAKER_01: Okay, we're all messed up, all right?
SPEAKER_01: And I'm messed up too, okay?
SPEAKER_01: But here's the thing that we tend to think because we got away with something that doesn't really matter.
SPEAKER_01: And so you're kind of guilty about something.
SPEAKER_01: You went and got drunk on Friday night, or you had sex on Saturday night, and you know, look, things are still going great.
SPEAKER_01: I'm still making money.
SPEAKER_01: I gotta raise at work.
SPEAKER_01: It's going great.
SPEAKER_01: But actually, when you start to move into the area of wickedness and evil in your actions, a clock starts.
SPEAKER_01: It's like it starts, a God starts a moral clock, and he gives you opportunity after opportunity to repent, to change, to come back to him, but there's a clock that's going, and there's a point where the jud, listen, the judgment of God falls.
SPEAKER_01: And he does that in a nation too.
SPEAKER_01: And I hear people all the time say, Well, look, I mean, look, you talk about all this stuff, you pastors talk about this stuff, and we've got all this stuff happening in Hollywood and this other stuff that's happening and in Washington DC, and I don't see any judgment.
SPEAKER_01: Stock market just keeps going up, Dow John's keeps going up, we're fine.
SPEAKER_01: There is a ticker going, gang.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna warn you, God measures timorly.
SPEAKER_01: Look at 2 Thessalonians chapter 2.
SPEAKER_01: Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to him, we ask you not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come.
SPEAKER_01: Let no one deceive you by any means.
SPEAKER_01: Again, we keep, there's two or three themes that run through on the day of the Lord theme in Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: And the first is that you can be deceived.
SPEAKER_01: He's talking, God, Jesus is always talking about being deceived.
SPEAKER_01: And then secondly, be alert, be watchful, be prayerful.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, now look at verse five.
SPEAKER_01: Do you not remember that when I was still with you, I told you these things?
SPEAKER_01: So obviously, when Paul had been in Thessalonica, he had taught them about the last days, and here's what he said.
SPEAKER_01: And now you know what is restraining that he may be revealed in his own time.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 7, for the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, only he who now restrains will do so until what?
SPEAKER_01: He's taken out of the way.
SPEAKER_01: So God measures time morally, and the Spirit of God, men and women, is holding back judgment, even in the United States right now.
SPEAKER_01: We see judgment, we see aspects of it, but the reality is there's still a restrainer in your own personal life.
SPEAKER_01: That you could be involved in stuff, nobody knows about it.
SPEAKER_01: You've got a secret life, God knows it, and he's restraining the judgment of the Lord until you repent.
SPEAKER_01: And if you don't repent, there'll be a point where the restrainer is removed and he allows judgment to come.
SPEAKER_01: And so we see it with some pastors and leaders over time where they're involved in stuff, nobody knew it.
SPEAKER_01: And they're like, well, how could he how could he keep preaching the gospel, see people come to know the Lord, church was growing, God was moving, and he was doing what?
SPEAKER_01: That's the goodness of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: That's totally the goodness of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: That was giving that man or that woman a chance to repent and get right.
SPEAKER_01: And if they don't, the restrainer is lifted.
SPEAKER_01: And in the last days, we're gonna see this restraining lifted, and so don't be troubled.
SPEAKER_01: That's the point.
SPEAKER_01: Don't be shocked, don't be surprised.
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_01: The key is that as we walk with the Lord, we walk with the joy and the power of the Holy Spirit daily, and that we're a part of the power of the gospel, reaching those who don't know him in new supernatural signs and wonders.
SPEAKER_01: That God's gonna do in the latter days also.
SPEAKER_01: So, first sign: the coming of Israel back to a nation.
SPEAKER_01: Second sign, second sign.
SPEAKER_01: On June 7th, 1967, God set up his second modern sign that the age is rapidly coming to a close, the unification of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: The unification of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: So now you're in Luke 21 already.
SPEAKER_01: Go back to Luke 21, and I want to just, again, I'm doing this really weird.
SPEAKER_01: I uh I admit it, this is really um convoluted the way I'm teaching today, but I'm gonna do it anyway.
SPEAKER_01: Uh look at verse 28.
SPEAKER_01: Again, we're going to the end, then we're gonna go back to the beginning.
SPEAKER_01: Luke verse 28.
SPEAKER_01: Now, when these things or these signs begin to happen, look up, lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near.
SPEAKER_01: Now it's interesting, the term lift up your heads is from the Greek word anakudo, and it means to take your attention off of something and put your attention on something else.
SPEAKER_01: So what are you saying?
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like you're watching TV, you know, you're watching the news, and then your baby is pulling the spread off of the dining room table, and plates are about to crash on their head, and so it gets your attention.
SPEAKER_01: It's like that.
SPEAKER_01: He says, look, take your attention and focus on this thing because this is about to happen.
SPEAKER_01: It's driving down I-25, you're going south, and suddenly, oh, I'll just tell you what happened to me.
SPEAKER_01: I was coming back from Denver the other day, and I turned this corner in Denver.
SPEAKER_01: It was a Rockies game.
SPEAKER_01: I was coming from a Rockies game, but turned this corner, and there was this massive truck with lights flashing, and I nearly hit it.
SPEAKER_01: And it was right there in the fourth lane, and I just slid, I didn't slide, but I almost slid to a stop because this guy had positioned himself in such a poor spot.
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Thank you very much, because I nearly got crashed into in the back too.
SPEAKER_01: But then we swerved and we made it out of the way.
SPEAKER_01: It got my attention.
SPEAKER_01: I was sitting there talking to my son, we're talking about the Rockies game, and suddenly, whoa, that's what it's like.
SPEAKER_01: He's saying, Look, be ready, be watchful.
SPEAKER_01: These are the signs.
SPEAKER_01: I'm giving you a heads up, I'm giving you an intelligence report from heaven.
SPEAKER_01: These are some of the things that are going to happen.
SPEAKER_01: So here's what he's about to do.
SPEAKER_01: In Luke 21, Jesus does an interesting thing.
SPEAKER_01: He gives us a near prophecy, and then he gives us a for prophecy.
SPEAKER_01: And you're going to see this all through scripture, not so much in Revelation, but especially in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Jesus does this.
SPEAKER_01: He says, look, here's how you're going to know that you can trust me in the latter days, is I'm going to predict something right now that you can see.
SPEAKER_01: And you're going to see it happen exactly the way I predicted it.
SPEAKER_01: And here's what he does in Luke 21.
SPEAKER_01: In Luke 21, he says, you are going to see the destruction of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: In your generation, you will see the destruction of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: You guys that are standing before me are going to see the destruction of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: Then he turns that prophetic, that near prophetic word into a far prophetic word, and he says, You're now going to see the Son of Man coming.
SPEAKER_01: And he starts to give the signs of that, which, by the way, are exactly the same signs in Revelation chapter 6.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: That's why we're starting, that's the reason we're doing it this way, is because you're going to then go into Revelation chapter 6 in a couple weeks, and we're going to actually see it from that perspective too.
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus begins to talk about the temple.
SPEAKER_01: So look at Luke 21, verses 5 and 6.
SPEAKER_01: So look at verses 5 and 6.
SPEAKER_01: Then, as some spoke of the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and donations.
SPEAKER_01: He said, These things which you see, the days will come in which not even one stone shall be left upon another that shall not be thrown down.
SPEAKER_01: Now you gotta understand, Herod's temple was massive.
SPEAKER_01: It took 84 years to build this temple.
SPEAKER_01: And the disciples are just country boys.
SPEAKER_01: They're like from Georgia.
SPEAKER_01: You know, and they were like, oh, I mean, that Herod's temple was one of the seven wonders of the world at that time.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it had stones that were 37 by 12 by 18 feet that weighed in excess of 160,000 pounds each on top of each other, laden in between with pure gold.
SPEAKER_01: And so this is stunning.
SPEAKER_01: And if you've seen pictures, and I almost brought my big picture I have of Jerusalem today, but I didn't feel like going to find a ladder to get up on my bookshelves to get it.
SPEAKER_01: But you see the Dome of the Rock.
SPEAKER_01: The Dome of the Rock, the second most holy place of Islam, right there on the Temple Mount.
SPEAKER_01: Well, imagine the Temple Mount at that time had Herod's temple on it.
SPEAKER_01: And he's saying, What?
SPEAKER_01: Not one stone will be stacked on top of another?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that it just seems humanly impossible.
SPEAKER_01: Do you guys realize that even today we don't know how they built it?
SPEAKER_01: I was doing some research this week, and they still believe, some still strongly believe, Jews believe that angels were a part of building Herod's temple.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, they don't know even how technically they figured out how to get 160,000 pounds of stone on top of each other as perfectly as they did.
SPEAKER_01: So it was it was one of the great feats of the world at that time.
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus looks out, he's on the Mount of Olives and he's looking across the Kidron Valley.
SPEAKER_01: So he's so he's right there on the Mount of Olives.
SPEAKER_01: He's looking across the Kidron Valley and he looks over at the temple and says, That temple is going to be destroyed.
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be destroyed.
SPEAKER_01: And he's gonna say, in your generation, It's going to be destroyed.
SPEAKER_01: And they're just shocked.
SPEAKER_01: There's no way.
SPEAKER_01: And so you may know that 38 years later, in 70 AD, the Romans turned on the Jews.
SPEAKER_01: And Titus, the great Roman general, was ordered to completely sack Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: Titus laid siege on the city, and no one could come or go.
SPEAKER_01: He let the Jews starve to death.
SPEAKER_01: For 134 days he laid siege, and after 140 days he entered the city and found a Holocaust.
SPEAKER_01: 1.1 million Jews stacked on top of each other, having starved to death.
SPEAKER_01: Josephus said their bodies were stacked like firewood.
SPEAKER_01: Titus was not finished.
SPEAKER_01: Then he completely burned the city, and guess what he did?
SPEAKER_01: When they found out there was gold between those stones, they took hundreds of thousands of men and began to shove those stones off, tearing it apart to steal the gold.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus had predicted it perfectly.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 7.
SPEAKER_01: So they asked him, saying, Teacher, but when will these things be?
SPEAKER_01: And what sign will there be when these things are about to take place?
SPEAKER_01: So he's not talking about the second coming.
SPEAKER_01: This is where there's been some discrepancies in the past.
SPEAKER_01: He's not talking about the second coming, he's talking about 70 AD, which is 38 years in the future.
SPEAKER_01: From verse, then here's what he does.
SPEAKER_01: This is what I'm talking about, near and far prophecy.
SPEAKER_01: Don't miss this.
SPEAKER_01: From verses 7 through 19, he gives us the opening.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, he gives us the opening of the seven seals that are found in Revelation chapter 6.
SPEAKER_01: And we're going to come back to that in a couple weeks.
SPEAKER_01: So now jump to verse 20.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 20.
SPEAKER_01: But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation is near, verse 21.
SPEAKER_01: Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those who are in the midst of her depart, and let not those who are in the country enter her.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 22.
SPEAKER_01: For these are the days of vengeance that all things which are written may be fulfilled.
SPEAKER_01: So Josephus, the great Jewish historian, wrote of the destruction of Jerusalem, quote, The siege of Jerusalem was one of the most horrible in history.
SPEAKER_01: Jerusalem was a difficult city to take, being on a hill.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus said, flee to the mountains.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what we know by Josephus historically is that the Christian Jews fled to Pella, 17 miles south of the Sea of Galilee.
SPEAKER_01: Excuse, 17 miles south of the Dead Sea.
SPEAKER_01: They fled because they remembered 38 years before that Jesus had predicted the sacking of Jerusalem and they were ready.
SPEAKER_01: I believe that there's probably, it's funny how when you're studying the Word of God and you keep studying a particular topic or subject, you start finding these cryptic passages all through Scripture to support things.
SPEAKER_01: I believe that's a sign, that's a clear sign of the rapture.
SPEAKER_01: Like in the days of Noah, remember, Noah and his family were forewarned, they knew it was coming, they prepared, and they were lifted out of the wrath of God.
SPEAKER_01: In this case, Jesus forewarned that the Jewish believers, now they're probably not even believers yet when they first heard it because he hadn't resurrected from the dead, he hadn't gone to the cross, but when they but when they came to know the Lord, probably at Pentecost and in the days that followed, as the church was said, remember, remember what Jesus said?
SPEAKER_01: He said, That generation shall not pass away.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna read that in just a second.
SPEAKER_01: He said, look, that's us.
SPEAKER_01: We're that generation.
SPEAKER_01: We need to be prepared.
SPEAKER_01: And so they were, and so the Christian, almost virtually, as far as we know, virtually all the Christian Jews at that time escaped the Holocaust, the Holocaust of what happened under Titus, the general of Rome.
SPEAKER_01: And so they fled over to Pella, and then the ethnic as well as the non-believing Jews were slaughtered.
SPEAKER_01: Josephus wrote, When the day came when men should have fled to the mountains, they did not.
SPEAKER_01: They crammed themselves into the midst of the city, and that very folly multiplied the horror one hundredfold.
SPEAKER_01: And I said about a million perished.
SPEAKER_01: Now, look at verse 32.
SPEAKER_01: Again, this is really weird for me to be jumping all over the place, but I think you'll understand the flow when I'm done.
SPEAKER_01: Surely I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place.
SPEAKER_01: Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will by no means pass away.
SPEAKER_01: And so a generation in the Bible is 40 years, and this took place 38 years later.
SPEAKER_01: So what does that tell us?
SPEAKER_01: Why does Jesus work that way?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'll just say this.
SPEAKER_01: We were in a meeting this week and we were talking about the mystery of God.
SPEAKER_01: I was with the elders of Chapel Hill's Church and the shepherds and the stewards of the road.
SPEAKER_01: We had a fantastic meeting about the Apostles' Creed.
SPEAKER_01: We were talking about the Apostles' Creed and what essentially unifies us as a church of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And in the in the discussion, we were talking about how really, since the demarcation of the two aspects of the church, where we have the Eastern Church and then we have the Western Church.
SPEAKER_01: So I won't go into a history lesson too much here because it's already a history lesson, but it's a little bit off the Rome became the capital of the Roman Catholic Church, and Constantinople became the capital of Eastern and later Russian Orthodoxy.
SPEAKER_01: The Eastern Church has always been comfortable with mystery.
SPEAKER_01: And the Western Church has always had difficulty with mystery.
SPEAKER_01: Well, we're the Western Church.
SPEAKER_01: We are the child of Rome, of Western Europe.
SPEAKER_01: That's where immigration came from Europe to us.
SPEAKER_01: And so you've got to become comfortable with the mystery of the way Jesus does stuff prophetically.
SPEAKER_01: And it seems as though he's saying to us, look, in the same way that I'm measuring time morally, and I'm measuring time on Israel and on Jerusalem, I'm also measuring time morally in the last days when I return and when I come back.
SPEAKER_01: So look at verse 24.
SPEAKER_01: And this is this one you need to bracket, you need to highlight, you need to underline whatever apparatus you're using.
SPEAKER_01: And they will fall by the edge of the sword, be led away captive into all nations, speaking of Israel, the Jews, and listen to this.
SPEAKER_01: And Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
SPEAKER_01: This is one of those cryptic, mysterious passages of Scripture that there is this period where this restrainer is allowing Gentiles to trample Jerusalem, and then there's going to be a switch, and the restraint is going to change, and there's going to be a time where the Gentiles, those who are non-Jews, can no longer trample Jerusalem, and that's a sign of the coming of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And so, as you may know, the Gentiles, that's us, those who are non-Jews, have trampled Jerusalem for thousands of years.
SPEAKER_01: And that's actually a sign.
SPEAKER_01: The Romans trampled Jerusalem in 70 AD, and this was the beginning of the trampling.
SPEAKER_01: In 615, control of Jerusalem went to the Persians.
SPEAKER_01: In 637 to Caliph Omar.
SPEAKER_01: In 1099 to the Crusaders.
SPEAKER_01: In 1187 to Celeiden.
SPEAKER_01: In 1215 to the Egyptians.
SPEAKER_01: In 1517 to the Turks.
SPEAKER_01: In 1917 to Great Britain.
SPEAKER_01: From 1938 to 1945, over seven million, no, over six million Jews were exterminated by Adolf Hitler, and the prophecy seemed ridiculous, doomed.
SPEAKER_01: Two-thirds, listen, two-thirds of the Jews in Europe were slaughtered by the Nazis.
SPEAKER_01: But in 1948, that trend began to change.
SPEAKER_01: Almost unbelievably, the Jews became a nation.
SPEAKER_01: And Jerusalem, listen, was still trampled by the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_01: Because at that point in 1948, Jerusalem was still split between the Jordanians and the Jews.
SPEAKER_01: And from 1948 to 1967, it was a divided city with Arabs and Jews separated by bobwire and machine guns.
SPEAKER_01: 1963, the Arab League had decided to introduce a new weapon against Israel named the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and the terror attacks began.
SPEAKER_01: The PLO began terrorist attacks on Israel in earnest in 1965 with 35 raids.
SPEAKER_01: In 1966 with 41 attacks.
SPEAKER_01: In just the first four months of 1967, there were 37 attacks.
SPEAKER_01: All the attacks targeted civilians.
SPEAKER_01: The Israelis were being taunted almost daily in the spring of 1967.
SPEAKER_01: Nasser, the leader of Egypt, said, quote, we shall not enter Palestine with its soil covered in sand.
SPEAKER_01: We shall enter it with its soil saturated in blood.
SPEAKER_01: Again, a few months later, Nasser expressed the Arabs' aspirations of the nations that surrounded Israel.
SPEAKER_01: Quote, the full restoration of the rights of the Palestinian people.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, we aim at the destruction of the state of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: The immediate aim, perfection of Arab military might.
SPEAKER_01: The national aim, the eradication, the eradication of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: By June of 1967, the Syrians, Jordanians, and Egyptians had encircled Israel with soldiers, planes, and tanks, preparing for a full-fledged annihilation of the nation of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: The United Nations Emergency Force, which had been a buffer since 1956, suddenly backed out of Sinai, leaving the southern territory completely unprotected against the Egyptian forces.
SPEAKER_01: On May 22nd, Egypt closed the Strait of Tehran, blocking trade for Israel's shipping.
SPEAKER_01: President Johnson refused to help Israel.
SPEAKER_01: Israel was all alone and surrounded.
SPEAKER_01: Nasser again taunted Israel, quote, our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: The Arab people want to fight.
SPEAKER_01: We will not accept any coexistence with Israel.
SPEAKER_01: The Arab rhetoric was matched with the mobilization of Arab forces, 465,000 troops, more than 2,800 tanks and 800 aircraft ringed Israel.
SPEAKER_01: But on June 5th, 1967, Israel launched a preempted strike as their intelligence, the Mossad, picked up that all of the Arab nations surrounding Israel were about to attack.
SPEAKER_01: At 7:14 a.m., the entire Israeli Air Force took off, with the exception of only 12 aircraft.
SPEAKER_01: So everything they had except for 12 planes, you know, took off.
SPEAKER_01: This is an amazing story.
SPEAKER_01: I get goosebumps whenever I tell this story.
SPEAKER_01: Israel knew when, where, and how the Muslims were coming, and they struck first.
SPEAKER_01: Dangerously below, the Russian installed radar, almost touching the waves of the Mediterranean Ocean.
SPEAKER_01: With phenomenal speed, the Israeli Air Force struck the Egyptian airfields and destroyed roughly 300 aircraft while still on the ground.
SPEAKER_01: They then struck the Jordanian and Syrian airfields and knocked out their entire air forces before the pilots had even had breakfast.
SPEAKER_01: At the end of the day, nearly all of the Egyptian and Jordanian air forces and half of the Syrians were destroyed.
SPEAKER_01: Now listen to what I'm going to read next, because I'll have to read it because I'll say it wrong.
SPEAKER_01: I'll get too excited and then I'll mess up.
SPEAKER_01: Then began, and you can look this up, one of the great tank battles of modern times on the Sinai Peninsula, in which comes one of the most strange and interesting stories of modern warfare.
SPEAKER_01: Egyptian tank officers testify of hearing noises that sounded like a huge tank force coming toward them.
SPEAKER_01: So loud and distinct was this sound that these men abandoned their tanks and ran away back to Egypt.
SPEAKER_01: There was no tank force coming.
SPEAKER_01: Angels?
SPEAKER_01: Supernatural intervention by God?
SPEAKER_01: Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria, the Gaza Strip from Egypt, and then pushed back Jordan back to the West Bank.
SPEAKER_01: And on June 7th, the order was given to recapture Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: Israeli paratroopers stormed the city and secured it.
SPEAKER_01: At 9.50 a.m.
SPEAKER_01: on June 7, 1967, David Ben Gurion announced to a stunned world, we are at the wall.
SPEAKER_01: We have taken control of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: The IDF chaplain, Rabbi Shlomo Gorin, blew the shofar to celebrate.
SPEAKER_01: On that day, the control of the Gentile nations ended.
SPEAKER_01: And the time of the Gentiles drew to a close.
SPEAKER_01: Men and women, the unification of Jerusalem is huge.
SPEAKER_01: And you need to understand that just these two alone give us pause.
SPEAKER_01: God's on the move.
SPEAKER_01: And this is the time to be praying for revival and awakening in our city.
SPEAKER_01: This is a time for us to be playing for revival and awakening in our nation.
SPEAKER_01: We cannot stand by.
SPEAKER_01: We cannot let the enemy just have his way.
SPEAKER_01: God, in the same way that is allowing the restrainer power upon the devil and his demons, God is empowering his church with the anointing of the Holy Spirit that all nations may hear.
SPEAKER_01: And I believe he's called this city to be a city of prayer for the nation.
SPEAKER_00: You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_00: We hope you have been blessed by today's message.
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SPEAKER_00: Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.