Ep. 16, End Time Studies

Our story into end times studies

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Hey guys, welcome to the Lafayette Pro Room Podcast. Lafayette Pro Room is located in Lafayette, Louisiana. I am Trista LaSorde and we have Katie LaSorde back with us again. You guys met her on other episodes. And today we finally get to do the episode on the end time studies because we've hinted at it in several other episodes. We're going to do a whole episode on end time studies. Well, we finally are doing the episode on end time studies. So my knowledge of end times before, prior to our course, um, I felt like over the last 15 to 20 years, I had slowly been learning more and more than I had before that. So I can't say I was completely literate on it, but I did not have a firm grasp at all. But I was starting to learn more and it was starting to pique my interest. I was starting to be able to connect a few dots that I was not able to connect before. So that was growing over time. I had lots of questions, lots of gaps in my understanding, and I knew at some point the Lord would have me do some kind of deep dive study. I just didn't know when. I know how he works with me. So I knew it was bubbling up and that eventually we would get to that, but it had not happened yet.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

As far as my in-time knowledge, I knew we needed to support Israel, to love Israel, to pray for Israel. That was just part of my upbringing. Like I knew about Israel very little. However, in ministry school, I was introduced to the bridal paradigm, is what they call it. And it's the perspective of Jesus as the bridegroom. And I knew Jesus somewhat growing up, but I didn't know that part of him. But I had no clue the perspective of him as a bridegroom who's coming back for his bride. And it's like the Jewish context, especially back in the days of Jesus, like when a man wanted to marry a young woman, he had to pay the father a dowry for her, and he would go away, prepare a place for them to live. And that's where the Ten Virgins story, you know, all the virgins are at the city gate waiting. Oh, is that my bridegroom? Is he coming? Like, am I about to go get married? And that was a whole perspective. Again, that's a Jewish context. I never knew about them coming back again for a bride. I never knew him that way. So there was very little that I knew about the end time story as far as details.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

So it is fall of 2021, and we are with our pro-run group, and we're having discussions about end times. And let me back up a second. I had been low-key listening to the course that we ended up doing, um, not planning like this is gonna be what we're gonna do, but I had just slowly here and there was listening, progressing through the course teachings, just occasionally listening to them, not studying anything else, just slowly. So I'm starting to become a little more familiar with the 150 chapters that we begin to learn are all in-time chapters, those 150. And so the group was like, What's those 150 chapters about? End time chapters, and I heard the Lord immediately say, You have to equip them, you have to give them this information that you are beginning to get. They're hungry, they don't know the information. It was kind of like just a charge, like you have to teach them, you have to lead them. So that that weekend that he spoke that to me, I thought, okay, I'll do the study. But he told me, do it with Katie. And that's where I backed up because I knew how labor-intensive the study was gonna be. I knew how I wanted to do it, not the details yet, but I knew if I was gonna deep dive, I was gonna deep dive. I was gonna really go all in, and I did not want to put that on you, is what I was afraid of. Like, I can't just go tell Katie we're gonna do this. You gotta put all this time and effort in. What if she doesn't want to even do it? Like, I and and I don't want you to do it, I didn't want you to do it to please me. So I was like, I don't want to put this on Katie, you know, and so I actually wrestled with them a little bit, like, I'll just do it myself, I'll just do it on my own. And it in that discussion ended with, I'm just gonna back, I told the Lord, I'm just gonna back burner this. If you want me to do it, something's gonna happen, and it'll bring it back to the front. And I kind of just filed it away, like I wasn't gonna think about it again until it popped up. Well, a couple of couple of weeks later, it's a Sunday morning, and I'm getting ready for church, and a text from you pops up saying, Yes, I remember this very clearly.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

I, you know, I'm not a dreamer, I do not dream a lot, and when I do, it's very specific, and I mean, very little do I dream specific dreams like this, and so obviously it was from the Lord once you hear this, but so my dream was Trista and I, you and I, were attached. Um, it was like we were in the spirit, but it was also in the physical as well, like we could not um be apart from one another. Everywhere each other went, we were going together, and we were in this um grocery store parking lot, and the parking lot was like the the audience, and in the parking lot was filled with teenagers, young adults, middle school kids, so it was all the next generation, and on the outskirts of it, so it was like a big rectangle, and on the outskirts were all older adults, and you and I were preaching. I remember I was I was preaching like the gospel all the way up to the return of Jesus, and then you preached on um like details of the end times, you know, get ready. And at the end of my preaching, I remember, I think I almost like woke up out of my dream because I physically said it, said it three times, and I pointed to the sky. I said, He's coming on the clouds. I said it three times, and everyone looked up. And the the teenagers and the young adults were literally on fire. Like, I want to know more. They were so hungry that they were coming to us after, like, we had like they were almost like it looked like they were thirsty, like physically hungry. We have to know more, but also with zeal, you know, not like desperation of oh, I need that, but it was like, I want this. And then fast forward, the adults that were on the outskirts, they came to us and they didn't say any words, but I I I told this to you in the dream what they were saying by their emotions. They came to us with a dread and weeping. And I told you, I said, they're saying, they're asking us why have we never heard this? Why have you never told us this? And so I wake up out of my dream and I'm like, what was that? That was intense. And so I remember I texted you, I said, Hey, I had this dream. I tell, I tell the dream, and I'm like, I guess we're supposed to be, you know, just messengers of the next generation, you know, definitely gonna be praying for that, you know. And you text back, I know exactly why you had that dream, period. And I was like, What?

SPEAKER_01 8:21

Yeah, my mouth was hanging open as I was reading it. Because you didn't tell anyone, I did not tell not my husband, not you, not one soul on earth. We had no had the conversation, I put it on the back burner and I was done with it. Like it was if it was gonna be the Lord, it was gonna be the Lord. And so when I'm reading this text, I was like, okay, you just put it back on the front burner. So I text you back, I know exactly what this means. Let's meet for lunch this week and I'll tell you all about it. So we meet, I tell you, you know, the other half of this, and we kind of just you were you were excited and all in because I didn't want to feel like you know, I was making you do this. So, but when I saw that you were all in too, I was like, okay, she's not afraid to do the deep dive that we're about to do. So we started to plot out our course, it was a three-year course, and we knew we were doing it for us, but also to be able to teach it. So we were going in to make a curriculum of it, like to kind of make it our own. Um, so we went in with that goal. That's the goal we went in with to the course.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

So in the course, what we're studying and going through week by week is 150 chapters in the Bible that pertain to the end times. So it's chapters and verses that are linked to the end times in general. And so I I believe, and I was this person once, that there's a misconception, I feel like in the church of when we think of end times, we think of the book of Revelation. And while the book of Revelation is an end times chapter, 100%, that's not that's the end of the story. There is a whole storyline before that that we must know to have context for for that, and so being immersed in the whole storyline of the Bible in 150 chapters was new to me, and I was just so excited.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

It was a little intimidating, um, starting just because of number one, the time commitment, three years. Um, number two, there's 150 chapters that we are gonna not just surface touch, we're gonna dive into. So, but we were so hungry and so eager, like we were ready to go. So, what we did at that lunch, we structured what it's gonna look like. We basically decided at that point, okay, there's a teaching for each chapter, there's a weekly teaching. So we would each listen to the teaching on our own at home several times in a week, taking very detailed notes because those notes would become the curriculum. So as we're going through it, we are meticulously trying to go through those teachings. Um, and then we are taking whatever chapters we did that week, and we would do our own personal Bible studies with it. So just time, just us and the Bible, looking at it with our own eyes, apart from teaching, apart from anything else, asking the Holy Spirit to show us. So we would spend hours in a week on that because some of these chapters are large, and I mean, it's not like normally you do a deep dive Bible study, and you're doing a set passage of scripture. You're doing five scriptures, you know, maybe a little more. This was chapters, so it was a different pace, um, different time commitment, and then we would meet at the end of the week to discuss the teaching and our Bible studies, our debriefing. So we would meet and really hash it out. We'd meet at a coffee shop, you know. We'd on Fridays, we'd meet at a coffee shop and we'd really comb through what we had been through. And I just remember showing up week after week, and we were both so excited. We couldn't wait to get there and like start talking about everything that God had showed us, the moments we had had with him in our Bible studies. Like, oh, I started weeping at this point because this was hitting my heart, or he was telling me this. I just remember every week we showed up. I just don't ever remember showing up and being like, oh, I didn't get anything out of this week. Like every week we could not wait to get there and start talking about it.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Yeah, so that was so fun. I think the discussions and the debriefing that we had really spurred me on. It got me even more excited, having it in my mouth and even relaying what God showed me or what God showed you. I couldn't have done it. I couldn't have done this massive thing without that. And I that's what brought the fun in it as well.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

Yeah, because it made me start to realize something different happens and embedding it in me when I talk about it, when I hear from someone else on that exact same passage, that sets it in me differently, or it shines a little more light because you would come in and you'd be like, Oh, this is what the Lord was saying, and it was so good. I'll be like, wait, let me write it down to add to our notes our our our course. Like, that's what we did. We took what he showed us and put it in our course. So it was so many moments like that that were happening at that coffee shop. You know, there were times we were in tears there, you know, just gushing. We had these notebooks and pages, you know, that we were shuffling through. Uh, but it was really this the discussion of the chapters is a different way of learning it. Then had I just done it, would have gotten much benefit out of it just doing it on my own, having that time with the Lord. But then relaying concepts and images and what he said on this thing, that brought it to the surface in a different way. So it's very different than just doing it on your own. Uh, but so those were fun, and then later we added um worship with the word sets, and we'll talk about that later in the discussion.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

The course consisted of six modules and 15 sessions in each. So, I mean, each of us probably had a part-time job at home within, you know, I mean, I don't know if I had to guess, like 10 hours a week that we would spend Bible study on our own, listening to the message, doing our own digging, that and then discussing it together. That was that was a a lot of time within each week that we spent on this.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Yes, I would definitely say 10 to 12 hours is what I thought back and just was like as on an average, sometimes probably a little more, sometimes less. Uh, but when we jumped in, we jumped in and we went full force the whole time, like pedal to pedal, and we did not let out the whole time uh when we jumped in to make that commitment. So, yeah, I would say we called it our our part-time job because it really was. Um and both of our work schedules had shifted six months to a year before, and we didn't know God was making room for this um because we couldn't have done it before, but he had shifted things, and so when he brought this to the forefront, we could actually do it. I still we still had to work that into our right. It's not like we didn't have anything else on our schedule, we had other things we did, but he prepared our schedules for this.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

Yeah, it was a main priority in my week for sure.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

Yeah, yeah, because we knew when we jumped in our weeks would no longer our schedule wouldn't look like they looked before. This was gonna be different when we went when we made the commitment, we knew that.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

And also doing it with a friend or someone else, like I had to show up and discuss with you. I had to show up with stuff, you know. So, like that also was an accountability that I think helped as well.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

Right. If I would not have done it with you or with anybody, I don't know that I'd have finished it or it just I'd still be doing it. I I wouldn't have finished it in the three years for sure. Like I'd I'd have just taken it at my own pace when I didn't have anything holding my feet to the fire. I didn't have to show up to teach it the next week or show up to have a discussion. But knowing Friday was going to roll around and I had to come with those chapters done and my thoughts and my notes off of the teaching. So that really pushed me because it wouldn't have happened the same way, not the same intensity, it wouldn't have stayed with the same intensity, and it would have uh would have probably taken way longer or probably possibly even faded out.

SPEAKER_00 17:20

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

So going in, we'll talk a little bit about our expectations, kind of what we thought we were getting into and where we found very different things than we thought. I went in hungry, I said that before. Um, I was just fuzzy on a lot of things, um, gaps, but I really wanted to sink my teeth into it. So our course starts in the Old Testament. We begin to work through all the Old Testament end time prophecies before going into the New Testament end time prophecies into Revelation. So we knew there were old Old Testament chapters, we didn't realize how much information about the end times is all through the Old Testament that's gonna directly uh correlate to what is happening in the end times. So that was that was some surprising information. Looking at how he dealt with Israel through all those Old Testament chapters, how he instructed them, how he disciplined them, uh, how he kept going after them, and knowing that all of those little episodes, those snapshots all through the Old Testament, were snapshots and partial fulfillments of the ultimate fulfillment in the end time that would happen again to the fullest extent because none of those chapters were fulfilled completely in those settings in history. There was partial fulfillment, but there's little details in each one of those chapters that had not happened yet. It is yet to come. So building that grid of understanding, building that infrastructure as we went on and progressed, we realized several months in, under a year, but it was we were some months in, as we started to build, we saw the wisdom of going through the Old Testament in time chapters. We realized it was building a whole framework within us, a whole understanding of this much larger storyline than we thought it was. And for me, I know it started to put pieces of the puzzle in the right place where I felt like they were just loose before, but but now I'm seeing the patterns, I'm finding his heart in those patterns. I'm not just seeing Israel did this, God brought judgment. I'm I'm looking at all that happened in between and his heart and his dealings with them. So that was a new lens I was beginning to look through. When we got to Revelation, having gone through all those Old Testament chapters, so when we get to Revelation 19 and we know it goes with Psalm 45, well, I'm not studying 19 and then referencing back to Psalm 45. I have studied Psalm 45 and its context. So when now I get into Revelation 19 and I pair those together, they click in a different way than if I was just trying to pull references or where do they match? I know they go together. Ezekiel 39 and Revelation 19, 17 and 18, well, they they go together. Uh Isaiah 63, Revelation 14, we know those go together. And then when you get in Revelation and it says time, times half a time. Well, because we studied Daniel, we knew what to do with that. We knew where it went. So as we progressed and we kept being able to pull from those earlier chapters, it was like, oh, thank you, Lord, for the the path that was plotted for us to go through these chapters because it made more and more and more sense.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

And as we went through the study, it revealed some things where I was wrong in my theology, or I was wrong in this certain opinion of certain things.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

Yeah, as we went, I changed my mind on several things, not like doctrinal things, like Jesus, but on how I thought things would unfold. I would get to some scriptures, or there were several scriptures as we went through. I was like, all my life I've heard this scripture and applied it wrong. It was not in the context of what it meant. There's even a song I grew up with singing in church as a kid. And when I saw the verse, I was like, Yeah, that is not even what that means. We were singing that song forever, and that's not the context of what. It is. So right. We got we we ran into that a number of times, uh, which was it. I mean, it's fun. It's fun that the Lord's like, oh, that was cute, but let me let me show you, you know, where you're all. But yeah, I definitely changed my position on certain things, and the position I had before was not well informed or strictly biblically grounded, it was things I had learned, so it even exposed some faulty um foundations in those areas.

SPEAKER_00 22:35

Right. And for me, I you definitely knew a lot more than I did already, but being able to listen to the course, but then also we did our own Bible study. That nobody told us to do that. The Lord led us to do that, and I felt like I was able to change my opinion through that because it wasn't this teaching who told me this, it was I talked with the Lord about this. He revealed and showed me these scriptures, like you were saying, linking these, or that is out of context. That's not even the historical context of this. So even that was a gift to do it myself and see it from myself.

SPEAKER_01 23:20

Also, I realized how I had gotten partial information from here. I'd heard this scripture quoted all my life this way. Um, preachers or teachers, whatever things had been said, that kind of these partial ideas had accumulated and formed these assumptions and beliefs about how things would unfold. And I did not realize that that was part of my biblical framework. I had made it part of my beliefs and framework until I'm looking at the verses for myself and it's picking apart those other things. And I'm realizing, where did I even get that? Why did I think that? Why did I believe that? And have in realizing that was just information I was getting from here and there. And then I kind of made this conclusion off of these information, this information. So it helped me just undo a lot of that and realize look at the scriptures and talk to Jesus about it. Let him tell you what it means. So it was um a lot of that. It was, but until I sat and was going methodically through these chapters, I had never gone slow enough. I had never put the pieces all together on the board to look at to even realize where I was. It took that to even realize where I was off. So I'm just so thankful. I'm so grateful the Lord put us on this course, and it wasn't a fast thing. It gave me time to unwire and to rewire back. Because we know there will be a great falling away. The Bible says it in several places. There is going to be in the end times a great falling away. You can only fall away if you were once a believer of Jesus. So it is genuine believers that fall away, but there's going to be so much offense at the events that are happening. And I didn't know that was going to happen. You know, what kind of God are you if this happens? And that's part of us not knowing the information because he tells us all through the word what's going to happen. He arms us with the information, and then he puts his Holy Spirit in us to help us. And it's true, information, but having the timeline, the sequence of events, that is helpful, but that will not anchor me. I have to have love, intimacy with him to anchor me in the storm that's gonna hold when everything is raging against me. I have to have a heart that is deeply in love with him to be sustained through that time. And there was so much of his heart concerning the end time plan that I did not know. I knew him in intimacy. I had years of starting that journey, not having arrived at it, but have having years in intimacy with him. And it surprised me getting into this study how much of his heart that I had not even tapped into, that I didn't know. And these are plans from eternity past, like between the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit, however many years ago, thousands, millions, I don't know, but they formed this plan in detail. He has thought of every detail, every step of the way, and he gave us the information, and it reveals his heart all throughout it. So I was just like, how did I miss such a big part of you? And I want to know all of him. I don't want to be like the crowds when Jesus walked the earth and they just wanted him for what he could, you know, do the miracles, help us out of a bind. They only wanted certain parts of him. And then when he would tell his message, they didn't want all of him. I want all of him, but I don't love all of him if I don't even know all of him. So this was a whole other dimension of him that brought so much depth of knowing, oh, this was the plan all along from before creation. This was in your heart, and I hadn't even tapped into it at all. So I was just so thankful. I was finding his heart in it, and parts of his heart I had never known. And it was from eternity past that this plan was formed, and it is still the central thing in his heart. It's where it's all going, it's why Jesus became the human, it's why Jesus died on the cross. It didn't finish there. That was a huge part of it. You can never downplay what happened on the cross that brought us all in, but that was part of the story that is still unfolding, and what the cross accomplished is yet to fully be fulfilled. So it is looking and anticipating, not just to get out of here, you know, like, oh, it's life's hard, oh, I need relief, but knowing the details of what's in his heart, like, oh, I want to be where he died for me to be with him. Like there's there's just it's at the center still of everything.

SPEAKER_00 28:44

So another thing in this course was confronting and coming across scriptures of judgment, chapters of judgment. You know, in Ezekiel it says to eat the scroll, it's it's sweet, but then it's bitter. Like we we read and we digest and we pray and meditate on the good scriptures, the beautiful parts of scripture, but also the judgment. There's a reason behind it, and that was revealed to me in this. Like, he is not the harsh God. There's a reason, he is a covenant-keeping God, and there's a reason he is perfect and altogether lovely, and he was in covenant, and that was broken. It is right for that judgment to come to pass, and so that was a whole new realm to explore for me for sure.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

Yeah, that had to confront that when we started hitting, and we started in Isaiah. Well, there's a lot of negative uh judgment, you know, I mean, all through the chapters we were doing. And I just thought before the study, when I would read through these chapters, I did not know what to do with them. I knew he was right, so there was never the argument of you shouldn't be doing this, but I just would read through them and think, okay, Lord, I I don't know what to do with this, and then I keep reading, you know, like I didn't know what to do with it. And so as we started to put it more in context and see it through the end time lens and his heart, because his heart's all in those chapters, it's not just judgment. You see him uh trying to woo Israel and bring them back so many times. Seeing his heart in it, um, I also realized I had way more resistance in me about those judgments than I thought. Because I just kind of dismissed them before, I didn't think I was disagreeing with them necessarily. But when I had to sit for hours and look at these chapters and wrestle through, am I in agreement with this? Am I in agreement with what you say is right and good and just? And it it surprised me how much I wouldn't have said I had resistance, I would have never uh consciously thought those things, but I realized what was going on in my heart as I was wrestling over those scripture those scriptures. So I had to deal with it, and as I began to look at it as a whole, instead of just look at those weird judgment verses, I started to see his heart in the story, which began to win me over, and I began to see him as the most merciful one, the most patient one, not impatient, not harsh, not rash, not just angry. He was justified every time, and he had waited long. So, seeing that, and so then bringing that into the end time judgments, I saw the pattern with Israel. So looking at it now, I'm looking at the seven seals, the seven trumpets, the seven bowls, and I'm saying, yes, you are right, you are good, you bring justice when you judge.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

And just because you brought up the seals and the bowls and the trumpets, it is against evil and everything that comes against his love, him, righteousness, purity. Like I want to stand with Jesus for truth, righteousness, and purity, like Psalm 45, there's so much justice in it. There's so much righteousness in it.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

A quote that I'm reminded of that we heard years ago, but it really came into play through this study is that when we look at God's judgment and we think it's too harsh, it is because we do not understand the depth of sin and darkness. And studying the end time story and understanding how much darkness will be on the earth, how much perversity, how much cruelty, how much murder will be rampant on the earth in that time. It is right for him to come and judge evil men on the earth. It is right for him to come and purify the earth of defilement before he comes to live with us.

SPEAKER_00 33:27

Israel is front and center throughout this entire storyline. You know, he references Israel from the very beginning. Like Israel is his firstborn son, Israel is God's priesthood to the nations for all generations. Israel is the apple of his eye. And in this study, I'd never read Hosea fully, and I definitely didn't read it in context. And I feel like there was one part in there where I really captured his heart. And I'm I'll probably misquoting, but it says, like he's talking to Israel, and he's like, like a lean child from his mother. How can I forget you? How can I let you go? And that right there is throughout the entire story. Like you were saying, he cries out for her heart. It's not like messed up by, oh no, he tries time and time and time again. And I know we'll probably say this a couple times, but his mercy has been a massive thing that I've learned, not just for Israel, but in general, but for Israel. And another thing is, like I said at the beginning, I knew we were, as Christians and believers, we're supposed to support Israel. I had no rhyme or reason why. I just I knew that's what I had to do. And this really opened up my heart because as an American church, we're selfish, it's all about us, it's all about our comfort, our dreams, our life. But in reality, we're grafted into the story. Romans says it. We are grafted in, we are part of this family.

SPEAKER_01 35:22

Yeah, Israel being front and center all through, from the beginning, all through the storyline. Israel being front and center when Jesus comes and after was something I did not have solidified in my mind. I knew, yeah, technically, but it was kind of always faded to the back of my mind, and I always read all most of the scripture as you know, not Israel me. Because we are grafted in. There is truth in that. But I did not even realize I was subtly doing replacement theology, not consciously, not purposefully knowing it was a thing, but I always related to the word more me in place of Israel than me, the root Israel. And so we do not believe in replacement theology. We do not believe that we replace Israel. We believe that Israel maintains that position as his as the first, and we come through it. We're here because of Israel. Like, not okay, now now we're here discard, you know, now none of these apply to you. They all all the promises now apply to us. Like, any promise I get is because I've been grafted into Israel. And he set it up that way. Like, he started with a whiteboard, like, so to speak, you know, before nations even existed, before the world existed. He decided Israel is gonna be my land. The Jews are gonna be my people, they will be here on earth. Jerusalem is where I will set up my kingdom. He could have picked anywhere and anyone, but he chose them to launch to bring Jesus through and then us. So I'm not gonna come in and then somehow shift that order. I'm gonna appreciate the wisdom of how he set it up and love it because he does.

SPEAKER_00 37:32

And that's part of his mercy, is for time for them to turn. And I think one that's one of the biggest things that I've seen is his heart of mercy. And I think that's that's what has drawn me to love Israel. When I'm looking at this storyline, our hearts have grown to love Israel, and to see his long suffering has been one of the biggest impacts in my heart. He could have done this in numerous ways, but it's like there's something about the patience of God, the mercy of God, the long suffering. There's something in that we get to see and experience where if if that wasn't the plan, he would just scratch, move on to the next one. But there's beauty in his heart, and that's his love. And we wouldn't know that facet of him if that wasn't the plan. And I think that is beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 38:39

It impacted me the same because as I watch the pattern of okay, he said he chose Israel, extended this tremendous covenant to them, brought them in to the family, like made them his bride. Like it's huge what he offered them. They broke the covenant over and over and over. He never turned his back on them. He would discipline them. But the point of discipline was always to redeem, it was always to let me stop you from what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 39:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 39:19

I'm not gonna just let you go into darkness into hell. No, I love you enough to put roadblock after roadblock, judgment after judgment. Like seeing that he kept going after Israel gives me hope because when I do stupid things or I fail or I'm disappointed with myself, I know the pattern of how kind he is, how patient he is, how merciful he is. Because I've seen and felt the pattern of his heart for Israel. So many times he says, I choose you again. After she has betrayed him, he would come to Israel and say, even after judgment, and he'd say, I choose you again. Like when he made the covenant, that was it. So even after Jesus comes, he is fulfilling his covenant with Israel, and we're brought into that through them. Israel would go after idols, God would instruct them and send the prophets to talk to them for a decade or more. Israel would keep going in corruption, he would do things to wake them up, small judgments. Israel would keep going, more judgments. Israel would keep going, start sacrificing their children to demons. You see it over and over and over that you saw the pattern. And so God would be like, Okay, military invasion. Okay, then they would they turn around, they were arrogant to him. Okay, captivity. Like, and you felt his heartbreak at every turn because he kept going after them, going after them, reaching for them. Like, I love you too much to just let you go into darkness because they agreed to the covenant. He's like, I'll give you all these things, and they were like, Yes, we're in. And then they go after idols, so then he would go after them. But we saw the pattern of him going after them.

SPEAKER_00 41:17

And when we started this course, while really going through this course, we we would make comments of like, we we won't have to talk about Israel like these kinds of things for years to come. You know, we're we're preparing to have conversations with our family, our friends, etc. But little did we know, just a couple years, probably halfway through, maybe a little more than halfway through this course, the war in Israel pops off just a couple years ago.

SPEAKER_01 41:51

Yeah, because we started this. So me and Yani went to Israel in the spring of 2023. October 23 is when October 7th happened, and everything blew up when Israel was attacked, and then Israel Italian, and then it was gone. So from then on, it was in an insane rise to anti-Semitism and hate of Israel. But now it is now to speak up, it's it's a whole other thing than before.

SPEAKER_00 42:23

And so with the anti-Semitism, I'm so grateful to have this because the conversations are nationwide now. I mean, Israel is front and center currently with every nation, you know. And so I'm just thankful that I have this perspective and I have this behind me so that I am prepared for these conversations. Or if I have to stand up for Israel in conversations or social media, whatever it is, um God give me the grace for that. But I'm grateful that I have this perspective.

SPEAKER_01 42:59

Yeah, this anchor, I mean, like you said, the escalation of being anti-Israel or anti-Semitic hating Jews, it has gone to a level I did not know if I would see for decades, and it overnight. I feel like it was overnight. I know it was always brewing in universities and other places, but it just the it just went to 10 overnight. And I feel like um, even from us starting that busting out at about a halfway point in the study, how much it has changed in the last five to six years is so wild to me that it's from every angle, from every just voices from every people group. You are hearing it now across the board. And to stand with Israel doesn't mean I agree with everything Israel does. Israel is a corrupt nation, just like. All the other nations. They're not uniquely corrupt or they're not innocent. I don't think that means we just give them a blank check and say everything they do is good. I don't, but I still believe they are God's chosen people. I believe his promises for them will come to pass. I believe they have judgment coming for some of the things they've done, like all of us, all the nations do. So that's not to say that if I stand with Israel, I endorse everything Israel does. There are not godly men leading Israel right now, you know. So I don't agree with some of what they do. I don't agree with some of what my nation does either, along with every other nation. But studying these end-time chapters in the Old Testament and seeing how God deals with nations who come against Israel, seeing what God tells individuals who come against Israel has truly put a fear of the Lord in me of, I may not agree, I'm gonna pray. One thing I'm not gonna do is be somebody against Israel. I know how he feels about people who come against Israel and persecute Israel. And like I said, it doesn't mean you have to agree, but it means you're not gonna be somebody attacking his chosen people. And so it has shifted how I approach all of it. I'm I'm talking to him about it in prayer. I am praying all the promises I've just studied, and I know they're still the apple of his eye. He is still choosing them, he is still going after them. So I'm not gonna be against him. And even in Revelation, he there is still judgment and revelation on some of those same areas that persecuted Israel because they're gonna do it again in the end times at unprecedented levels. He has some specific judgments for them that reveal how he feels about people who are against his land and his people.

SPEAKER_00 45:56

And you know, he does command us to pray for Israel. We pray for the remnant of Israel, we pray for the salvation of her, we pray a lot of things for her. But once we were halfway through this study, our prayers in the prayer room, like specifically you and I, because we were deep into this, our hearts. The best way I can say is a literal river flowing when we would lead a focus for Israel and sing in the prayer room. It was like this thing opened up, and I mean, you and I would weep and weep because we sat and asked him for his heart. If you ask him, he will give it. I remember that was a big thing. Like, we've asked you because we can't get it on our own, we can't summon this up on our own. Like, it is his heart we're asking for to put in ours, and he will surely do it if you ask and take time. And that's what this course did for us. It gave us time, gave us time to ask, and a literal river is the best way I can explain it.

SPEAKER_01 47:07

It's so true. Because Saturday, so Saturday, Israel's one of our focuses that we pray for, and I mean, it just we pray for a lot of focuses that really need my heart because we've prayed for these focuses for years, so there's an emotional, mental, spiritual investment in them. So our hearts move, but Israel's is unique, the way my heart moves, not just when I'm praying or singing about Israel, when you start praying, you're right. Me and you leading the Israel focus together. I just remember I had never experienced moving in such unison with somebody in the spirit before, as what would happen inside of me when you would pray, and I was about to sing off of you, and hearing you come back off of me to pray like that. I do remember, especially it was new to us then. It's not that unusual now, but we would weep the whole time we were on the Israel focus, and I just remember sometimes we'll I had to stop because it was sobbing, it was not weeping, it was sobbing, but it was because he was giving us his heart exactly what you said. He did it. We asked for it, we gave him access and time by studying the chapters, and literally it flowed out of us. It still does. I remember even the rest of the the prayer team commenting at that time, they're like, we can tell a difference in y'all's prayers when now that y'all pray for Israel, and it made them hungry. They're like, we can't wait for y'all to teach it to us. Like, so it was just leaking out even before we realized anybody else could feel it or noticed it.

SPEAKER_00 48:54

And even off of that, just praying for them, having the storyline and knowing the promises and the fulfillments to come, that strategic prayer that you can take and pray for them, you know, like just for prayer in general, to have this to pray for them is massive. Because we are praying his word. You said this, so Lord, you do it.

SPEAKER_01 49:18

So let's talk a little bit about when we did start doing our worship with the words, because several months in, I don't know if it was a full year, but it was possibly close to a year. Um, we because at that time we weren't doing worship with the words. Me and you were doing the study. It was just you and I, nobody else was doing it with us. And it was one day in the prayer room. God, I can tell you where I was pacing, and God said start doing worship with the word sets with just the chapters each week. And I remember telling God, like, just being Katie in a room, that's weird. Like, that's gonna be weird. It's gonna be nobody's there to hear it or be part of it. Like, um, but I I didn't argue, I was just like, that's weird. But okay, okay. And I told you, I don't remember, I probably text you the next day or something, and uh you were like, okay, like what was your initial thoughts when I said that? I just kind of told you we were doing it.

SPEAKER_00 50:14

Well, I was kind of kind of nervous because we had never done it before, you know, just the like volleying back and forth. Um, that was new territory for both of us. But I was excited because I feel like from our debriefs, we had so much um excitement in it. We had we had so much to pull off of, and little did we know the adventure that was awaiting for us.

SPEAKER_01 50:43

Yeah, we stepped into a new realm of this end-time study when we started those sets. It was like we hit a floodgate, and now it was a whole new ball game. Again, it was another surprise, it was another twist and turn. And the study we didn't know we were heading into. That was never the plan, you know. We didn't know it would become that. But oh, we so a Friday would look like uh we would meet for breakfast, it shifted from the coffee shop to breakfast by that point, and so we would meet for breakfast every Friday morning, and then we had 10 o'clock prayer meeting. So we would go and do the prayer meeting, and then after the two-hour prayer meeting, then we would do our set on Friday afternoons.

SPEAKER_00 51:31

We were in this very tiny room, like very tiny.

SPEAKER_01 51:36

Yes, it was an individual music practice, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:39

And it was just you and I, you were on keys, you would lead the worship, and then I would pray, and then we would volley back and forth, just like a worship of the word. And I remember just a couple times in his presence was so heavy, like it would fall immediately. And I remember just a few times in you you just said one day, like he waits for us in this room to come.

SPEAKER_01 52:12

Yeah, I remember, I remember that day because I think we we had started out saying, praying, and singing, um like we're coming in here to meet with you, like come, Lord, you know, come meet with us. And and he just immediately I remember him showing, I I saw him before we came in the room, and he was like pacing in the room, waiting, anticipating. Like I could feel the longing in his heart to like do the experience with us, like to have that two hours with us. I could feel it and like, no, you're not coming in the room to invite me. He's like, I'm already here inviting you in to come and spend this time with me. I remember just like we did not know where we were gone with this, but you knew. You knew all of this time, all the hours in the week, all the little revelations, the debriefings to land in that place where now there's just exchange between us and the Holy Spirit. Like it was, it was a whole new world. It was just, it came alive. It was like real time. We were studying these historical stories, looking at the ones coming in the future. But then suddenly he'd bring us into live time with him concerning these stories and the part we played through intercession.

SPEAKER_00 53:42

I remember one speaking of that, I remember one specifically, I don't remember what chapter or what book we were in. It might have been Jeremiah when he prays for you know, the the pastors basically were not following the Lord. And Jeremiah raised up godly spiritual leaders to to lead the nation back to me. And they were not, and they were going the opposite. And I remember real time, like we started praying specifically for Lafayette, spiritual leaders, you know, to turn Lafayette back to the Lord. And we started like naming churches and people we knew, and it was like it was weaving our intercession into the storyline with him. That was so cool.

SPEAKER_01 54:32

Yeah, there were so many times those worship with the words would turn into intercession because worship with the word for us is different than an intercession set, but so many times um it would turn into intercession for Israel, it would apply to the body of Christ over all. Sometimes we felt him pull us in that direction. Other times it was very personal. He would take that Israel story and make it very personal to us. So there was we we just we never knew when we went in. We didn't even know what verses we were gonna do. We'd show up in the room. So we had done the debriefing that morning, and then we'd show up in the room and we'd look at our scriptures and we'd be like, which ones you want to do? So then we'd be like, Okay, let's do this set first. Like, so we literally came with nothing. Yeah, we were just like Lord following the Holy Spirit the whole time. And Ami, he showed up. I remember another time when um there was some verses about uh him setting preparing a table, a feast, and you know, um, and so we were like, Oh Lord, we want to come, we want to sit, we want to dine with you. And I remember all of a sudden this chorus started running through me, and I sang it for a while, we were both in tears, and I just started to say, because he revealed it to me like you are the feast, you are the feast. You have invited us into this room to feast on you, your heart, your goodness, your story, all of your purposes. You are the feast, you are the feast. I remember that phrase standing out among all those sets in those early years. That's one, you are the feast, and him showing up in that room so powerfully surprised us. But to me, that's also an indicator of how much the end time storyline means to him that he invited us into it, we responded, and then he responded to our response with this overwhelming just love and goodness and revelation and bringing us into himself. So that to me, in and of itself, was an indicator of how strongly he felt about where we were going in his heart and his story in these chapters. So we did it for uh probably a year by ourselves before uh then we brought in Felicia and Josh and Janie all in that little room. Or remember, we'd have to move out equipment like the those electric drums set up, like we were pieces, we'd have to go put them in the hall so that we could all fit in the room and set ourselves up. But man, he was just still showing up. We'd we'd have our cheeks wet with like not a tear, like our cheeks would be soaked sometimes with just he was so powerful in the room. And I remember one time um uh because we always go into praying in the spirit or praying in tongues, right off of a song before we start to to kind of land on the scriptures. And I remember we came off of a song I was leading, came off of a song, started praying in the spirit, so we all just start praying in the spirit together. And I remember just holding a minor chord. I don't know why that's sticking out in my mind. I just I remember it felt like a pause, and we sat, we started praying in the spirit, but immediately we felt something coming up in all of us, and I remember a volume was the loudest we had ever been in the room. Um, I remember me and Josh sitting on that cord ringing out really strong and just an intensity. I remember we were weeping probably for 10 minutes straight at a volume push that was very unusual for us in this room and stayed there. Uh, I just remember it being a very weighty moment where he stepped into the room in a different way than all the other times. It was a new and a different experience, like it was always different, but this was one that was unique. Um, and then afterwards we were just all like, what was that?

SPEAKER_00 58:38

Yes, I'll I'll never forget that. So we were halfway through the course, just you and I, and then we started to teach at the prayer room with our community, and what that looked like was we would have class, you would teach, um, it was typically on Saturday nights, and then everyone would go home and do their own Bible study, just like we did. Then we would have a Zoom, meet through Zoom and have a discussion, a debrief, going verse by verse. What what did you get? What did God show you? Even questions, you know, that was also a thing that we always had questions, some weren't answered, but that was also helpful with the community. And then once a Saturday would roll back around the previous week that we just did and had a discussion and studied on, we would do those scriptures and the worship with the word at the prayer on Saturdays. So it was exactly the format we did, but with the community.

SPEAKER_01 59:44

Yeah, and then after the worship with the words, we would have a debrief off the worship with the words, too. Because we would go from the worship with the word into the classroom to get ready for the new chapters, the new teaching. But we would debrief. So that was a whole other debrief, different than the Zoom debrief off of the Bible study. Now we're debriefing off of the worship with the word because everybody was just like, oh, this and this. Well, when we studied this, remember how we talked about this? And then they sang this, like it everything was coming together for them. So it was so fun to see them on the same journey as us, and that's why we made the course, the end-time study course at the Lafayette Prayer Room. We patterned it off of what we did because I just thought, I'm not gonna shortchange them. Like the Lord pieced this thing together like this for us. I want them to have the full experience too, you know. So they they're eating it up. And we walked into the study blind, you know. We we didn't know where the Lord was gonna lead us. He he just started taking us, he laid out our weekly rhythm, but we realized a little ways in the um because we were so consistent and look, we went hard. We did not miss weeks. If the only weeks we missed in three years were is it was a legitimate, like a real big holiday, or we were out of town. Like if we were in Lafayette, we were meeting, we did not let up. So we realized like halfway through that consistency had an accumulation to it because it was regular doses, regular doses, we were building, building, building experiences, experiences that that played a huge part. Had we um done it more hit and miss, or when it worked out, we would not have experienced near what we experienced because of the the accumulation of that thing building and growing and growing growing because of the constant cultivating it in our heart and the consistency that was huge.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:52

And I feel like off of that, it wasn't it was flowing into my private time with the Lord, it was flowing into how I viewed life, honestly, it was flowing into my marriage, conversations with family, like it really was just a whole perspective shift, like like eternity was really on my mind in that season, like constantly. And I I mean that's how we should be, you know, that's the goal. Um, but being so just deep into that perspective, the storyline, my whole life was being affected by the storyline. Like I didn't talk the way I did sometimes. I was changing how I spent my money on certain things, I was budgeting in ways I never did, um, just changing how I spent time. I had to because I needed to get this done. However, there was a lot of things in my lifestyle that was changing as well because of the eternal perspective. And we Hayden and I went through a miscarriage in the middle of this. And I'm going to be honest, this kept me grounded. The eternal perspective, the hope that we have, that was something I was not prepared for. But like I said, it was just a complete um eye-opening in another way in how I live this life in fear of the Lord, in love for him, and waiting for his return.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:32

Yeah, it definitely shifted eternity to the forefront because as you mentioned it earlier, as American Christians, we are super self-absorbed. Whatever makes my life easy and comfortable, that's the Lord. Anything that does not, that is the devil. Like we just view through that lens, and I mean, I do want an ease, I'm not going for a hard life, that's not the point. But when you put eternity before you, then suddenly everything that's temporary gets smaller, and eternity gets bigger the more you look at it. And it doesn't mean that everything here is not important, but I did start to see that many things weren't as important as I thought they were in light of the eternal perspective, and my heart began to long for that rather than make things good here, make things good here, which I wanted to do, and I pray for that all the time. But there began to be a bigger heart investment in eternity. There began to be more thinking of what was in his heart for when that time comes, and so where your heart is, your treasure is like it began to shift for me as well, and it even changed, like you're saying, it changed everything, it changed how I saw Christianity, it changed how I saw the word, it put the whole thing in a place, and not that we had, we do not, we still don't know so much. Like it's not that we've arrived or we we have more questions than answers, but I have way more answers than I've ever had before, which makes me want more. But it made me start to to solidify everything and it changed my orientation in my faith. It literally was that big of a shift for me in my life. My whole it changed my intercession, it changed how I, like you said, how I did many things. It did, it trickled into every little area, and that was again something I didn't go into the study not having a clue. I I thought it was just gonna be this one compartment last thing, and I didn't realize he was taking us on a journey that shifted our course forever. And now it is a staple in our prayer room. And our people like they love it, especially the ones who have been able to do this out. Saturdays and then the Zibs consistently. Like I remember telling them at one point, um, because you know it always everybody's interested, and then it kind of whittles down to your core, who kind of really stick it out. And I remember one Saturday, it was it wasn't many of us, uh, but I was like, I just want to share with y'all, y'all have been super consistent, and that accumulative effect means your experience is gonna be different than those who are kind of in and out, which it counts, and it's it is great. I don't want to act like that doesn't count. Do it when if you that's all you can do, do that. Uh, but I just I wanted to um acknowledge and praise them for because I know what it takes to make a commitment and stick with it, and that it is a different experience when you do that with consistency, like you're gonna encounter him in a different way. So, yeah, it shifted everything, and that was I kind of hit on it, but that was another point I wanted to make, is it wasn't because we were so great and so committed that we had we did have to make our own choices. God doesn't come and just override our will and make us make the choices, like there is a part we play, but it was his idea, he gave us the invitation, he invited us in, he helped us, gave us grace all along the way, and we kept encountering him. So once you encounter him, you're hooked. Then you keep coming back to the well. So it's because of him that we even followed through on it. So I don't want to make it seem like we were so great because we were so dedicated. We were weak, did not know what we were doing, and the Holy Spirit helped us every step of the way, and we're still nowhere near where we want to be. But I'm just thankful, I'm thankful he put us on this course and he's gonna see us all the way through. And at the end, I mean, we're almost done with the course with the prayer room. Like we're we're in our last module, probably within a couple months we will be done. And we've already decided that we're basically starting again. Um, it but it's just gonna look a little different. We're not having classes the same way, but we're still gonna all go and now just mine these scriptures even more because I know I felt like having to cover a chapter or two in a week, there is not enough time for me to go as in depth as I want to go. So I'm looking forward to this next lap through, just having more time. Whereas for me personally, I don't have to prepare to teach, I don't have to do notes, so I don't have to spend my hours in the week in that. I can spend more going deeper in the Bible study. So I'm excited to like rediscover the chapters. And then our Saturday night class time is gonna be the discussion of the chapters instead of the Zoom discussion. We're gonna have it and we're gonna start the worship with the words all over again on the chapters we worked on in the week. So I am looking forward to a slower pace with the chapters because one thing that we've seen is like we did it, then we went through it with them, how that helped anchor it, having it back to back, like keeping it fresh in our mind. I kind of don't want to let it go yet. I want to get another round of really solidifying things because not that we're gonna just fully let it go when we're done, but we will go on to something else. And so we won't be on it as much. I'm gonna miss it. So I'm just this last lap three for now, I'm looking forward to.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:29

For you, what was the most challenging thing?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:32

Uh, not being overwhelmed. That's what I would say first, because it was because it was a three-year course, because it was 150 chapters, and um because of the way we set up our structure of how to do it, um there were times I felt overwhelmed. There were certain chapters that I would initially look at and just be like, I have no idea what this means, Lord. This does not make sense. Please help. So there were moments of being, not mostly, but there were moments of being overwhelmed and initially looking at that whole thing, like, are we gonna be able to do this? Um, that probably was a little bit of an intimidation factor. So that was something even I encouraged with our group. I'm like, don't stress, you're not gonna get it all, and it's okay, none of us get it all, it's okay. The Lord uses all of us to nobody has it all, no person, no ministry knows it all and has all the answers. We all need each other to get there. So just like taking the pressure off and not being overwhelmed uh was helpful. What about you? What was the most challenging thing to you?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:46

Uh, like the long-term commitment, just that's it's it's a beast, it's a lot, and especially just being a young person and just committing to that, you know, in a generation that is not like commitment. Um, but I had no idea the beauty and the journey we would be on. And like you said, I I was excited. I was like, yeah, let's do this. And I mean, I would always think back at my dream um of like, yeah, I we are called to be messengers. And Lord, if you want to use me, use me. So I feel like that was also a fire under me of like, Lord, if you want to use me as a messenger, for my generation, even, whenever this will unfold, even if this doesn't happen and I see this with my own eyes, you know, if I don't live in in the last days, you know, I want to be a messenger to my children and my family and my friends and the ones I love because they need to know. And then and I'll just think back of the the older adults that were just, why did I not know this? Why were we never taught this?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:58

What encouragement would you give to someone who's wanting to dive deeper into end-time studies?

SPEAKER_00 1:12:05

Find someone, our group, who will do it with you and commit to it without you. Katie would love to think that I would have done it. Absolutely not. I would have gotten through a few weeks and called quits. I mean, because also I'm a I was young, like I don't I don't know a lot of the Bible. I still don't know, you know, but it's like that that was a big thing. Without someone to run with me, I would have not understood as much. I wouldn't know what I didn't know or even the questions to ask. Definitely find a running buddy or group that wants to do it with you.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:51

Yeah, and I would say also uh have a plan. Whether you follow a study from an another ministry or teacher, or there's tons of stuff online, but have a plan of what that's gonna look like on a weekly basis. Because without a plan, it will die before it gets off the ground. But if you have a plan and like you said, like follow do with that commitment, someone to run with, uh, it makes it doable and ask the Holy Spirit for help. Like just all especially when you're sitting in front of the the chapters, like just ask Holy Spirit, please speak to me. Please show me what I am not seeing. Uh, because he will the Lord is faithful if we ask he will help. So that would be my biggest piece of advice ask for help. So that wraps up our discussion on end time studies. We're so glad that you guys decided to join us today. Hopefully, it inspired you to want to dive deeper, or if it's a study you've done, uh just get with some of your friends and do it again or discuss it. Hopefully, if you're in a prayer community, you can actually pray a lot of the end time chapters and scriptures. So we'll see you guys next time. Bye.