Prophecy Special - 9/11 - The Final Solution of God, No. 6

PS06

Israel

The people who were to destroy the city of Jerusalem and the temple were the Romans, from whom, in the end times, will come the Antichrist. He will be a gentile. The destruction of Jerusalem, the temple, and the nation would come upon the Jews in 70 A.D., Daniel said, like a flood tide sweeping aside everything in its way. A million Jews were killed before it was over. From 70 A.D. on, the Jews would experience, Daniel said, the terrible sufferings of war and anti-Semitism, and so indeed they have, and they do to this day. That Palm Sunday rejection of the Messiah Jesus Christ left seven years unfulfilled of God's timetable of 490 years revealed to Daniel for the fulfillment of all the divine covenants with Israel. Only 483 years have been fulfilled.

The Mystery of the Church

The church is an entirely separate work of God from Israel. The two are unrelated. Israel was not cut off from its promises because they rejected the Messiah. They were placed under discipline. The church did not replace Israel in God's plan. The church and Israel have a beginning point in history in the Scriptures. At the end of the book of the Revelation, the church and Israel are both there, coming to their final things. That is a great truth. You take it and say, "Yeah, I know that." But you should thank God that you do know that because the great denominations out of the Reformation, they still don't know it. They still have Israel and the church all balled up together. Consequently, this is one of the great victories of Satan.

So here you have the church. Why did they not know about this in the Old Testament? Because it was a secret then. It was called a mystery. The church was inserted in the period between the 69th and the 70th weeks of Daniel when Israel was temporarily cut off from divine blessing. The church in the Old Testament was a secret plan that God had. The first reference to this secret plan of God was made by Jesus when he was outside the territory of Israel. This is recorded Matthew 16:18 when he said, "I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." The word "church" is the Greek word "ekklesia." The word "ekklesia" means "the called out ones." The church is a special distinctive body of believers. It has a lifestyle. It has a capacity for spiritual living. It has a capacity for rising to the finest levels that a human being can ever become. Most people grovel along with their human talents, trying to make good religiously, but they go nowhere.

The church itself is not called a mystery or a secret in Scripture, but many of the main features characterizing the church are called mysteries. They are unrevealed in the Old Testament. We have, for example, the mystery of the Jews and gentiles forming one body of saints, and they're all equal. In the Old Testament, the Jew was always superior to the gentiles, and they were never mixed into one body. If you wanted to come under God's blessing, you had to become a proselyte. You had to come under Judaism and become part of the Jewish religious system.

Then along came the church age. Paul was the great apostle of revealing church doctrine. In Ephesians 2:14-16, he indicates, "For He (Jesus Christ Himself) is our peace." "Our" refers to Jews and Gentiles who have been at odds with one another. "Who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the law of commandments contained in the ordinances, that in Himself He might make the two (Jew and Gentile) into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity."

There is a conflict between Jews and Gentiles. Today, everybody in the world is either a Jew, a gentile, or a Christian. These are three distinct groups. They never mix. Each has a program. When you get to the Book of Revelation, they're all out there having their final hour. So you're either a gentile, a Jew or a Christian. Christians come from gentiles and Jews.

Notice Ephesians 3:1-12: "For this reason, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you gentiles." You have heard of the stewardship, or the dispensation, of God's grace. The church is called the dispensation of the grace of God. This is in contrast to Israel that is the dispensation of the law. "Which was given to me for you, that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief." What mystery? The mystery was that Jews and gentiles would be in one religious body, and they'd be equal to one another. The Jews would not be superior to the gentiles. That was a secret that was unthinkable to the Jew.

"By referring to this, when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to the holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit." They didn't know about the church in the Old Testament. It was a secret. Now it was made known.

Verse 6 says, "To be specific, that the gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel, of which I was made a minister, according to the gift of God's grace which was given to me according to the working of His power. To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to preach to the gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ, and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things." What mystery? It is the mystery that Jews and gentiles would someday be in one spiritual body, "In order that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church, through the rulers, and the authorities in the heavenly places. This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him."

This was part of the plan of God. This wasn't God stumbling along, and when the Jews rejected Jesus Christ, God wasn't saying, "Well, what am I going to do now?" This was part of the decree all along, with all the outworking. This marvelous body of believers, the church age, has come into being. But the devil wasn't going to take this lying down. So what has he done? You know what he has done. He has made Christians totally ignorant of what it is to live by means of doctrine of the church age, and of the power system of the Holy Spirit. He has cut the power of the church because of that. There are so few Christians who know how to live by means of the Holy Spirit. Yet that is the greatest lifestyle.

Some of the tears that are going to be shed by believers in heaven are going to be because those believers didn't fulfill what was in store for them. Some of them are going to realize that they could have been people of great impact in this world scene. They could have been people of great influence. And tears are going to be rolling down their eyes as they realize that they blew it all because they never got under the power system of the church age that was provided for the humanity of Jesus Christ, and was field-tested by Him for the three years of His ministry. He never acted in His deity. He always acted in his humanity, and He showed what a human being, with the knowledge of doctrine in his mind; positive volition in his soul; and, subjection to the Spirit of God who indwells them could be. Then you would be on target; be wise; and, be extremely productive.

How much do you think you're missing of your destiny because you don't understand the power system of the church age; and, because you don't understand what it is to let God do the work? It gets to the point when you are on track with the things of God that it takes your breath away. I told Mrs. Danish today that there are just too many things of the fantastic workings of God that I don't even feel free to tell people about. It is almost to the point of sounding arrogant. When you play ball with God, with doctrine, so you know what He thinks, and you play by means of the power of the Spirit of God, you're going to have blessings pouring on you like you never believed. Then you're not going to get to heaven and realize what you could have been.

In Romans 16:25, the apostle Paul says, "Now to him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Christ Jesus, according to the revelation of the mystery which has been kept secret for long ages past." This is the mystery of a new body of believers, superior to the Jews, made up of Jews and gentiles.

Ephesians 6:19 uses the word "mystery" again: "And pray on my behalf," the apostle Paul says, "that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel." This is the gospel of the grace of God--that unique proclamation of this age. It is now revealed. Colossians 4:3 says, "Praying at the same time for us as well that God may open up to us a door for the Word, so we may speak forth the mystery of Christ, for which I have also been imprisoned." Paul constantly spoke about the mystery of the church--the mystery of a special body of believers made of Jews and gentiles.

Is that what Christians are hearing today? No. Christians are hearing how they're still under the Old Testament system; how they're still under tithing; how they're still under the roles of the Jewish system; and, how they're under holy days, and holy places, and special days when they must eat holy mackerel so they can please God. This nonsense and ignorance is so amazing that people who have escaped don't realize what God has done for them. And those who are still living under the Old Testament system, they get used to it, and they flee from the truth.

I turned the TV on the other day and saw a little part of the old movie The Omen. This child had been born as a child of Satan, and he had the old "666" on his forehead under his hair. It happened to be the day when the father and mother were taking him to church. He gets more and more restless in the car. He gets more and more uneasy, the closer they get to the church. When they pull up in front of the church building, a person comes out to greet this man. He happened to be an American ambassador in England. The door of the car opens, and the kid goes crazy in the car: screaming; yelling; and, fighting. He does not want to go into that church. He's a child of Satan. He does not want to go into the presence of Jesus Christ.

People do that today. They just don't make a big stink of it. They're always trying this. I've seen people get up in our church service when they heard something that hit them right between the eyes, and they get up and they flee. They run out, and they want to get out of this room just like that kid that didn't want to get into that church. He was so wild and uncontrollable that they had to shut the car door and drive off. Here it is--the greatest way of life; and, the greatest man that ever lived, the Lord Jesus Christ, the most tender person who made it possible to really be a significant person to fulfill your mission. ... What could you have been in life? Where could you have been at this point in time had you understood what it was to walk with God under the power system of the church age? Instead, people who are negative want to get out of this room where the Word of God is spoken. They want to flee, just like that poor kid who was trying to flee from the presence of spiritual things.

The Mystery of the Indwelling of God

In Colossians 1:25-27, Paul says, "I've been made a minister of the church. This special dispensation has been placed upon me that I might fully carry out the preaching of the Word of God." It was through the apostle Paul that the fullness of church doctrine was revealed. Verse 26: "That is, the mystery which has been hidden from ages past and generations, but has now been manifested to His saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory."

In John 14:20, Jesus said to the disciples, "You in Me, and I in you." But before the church age, believers never had a person of the Godhead permanently indwelling them. You and I, because of the church age have this secret now revealed that Christ dwells in us. That would help us keep from a lot of sinning, wouldn't it, mentally and overtly, if we were aware of the fact that He's there? If we saw Him, we'd have a second thought. But He's there just as well whether you see Him or not? The Scripture is true.

The Rapture

1 Thessalonians 4:13-17: "But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep (Christians who have died). That you may not grieve, as do the rest who have no hope." You never see those people again. They're unsaved. "For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, (and we do), even so, God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus (those Christians who have died). For this we say to you by the Word of the Lord (this is the direct instruction from God that we can pass on to you), that we who are alive (that is, at the coming of Christ) and remain until the coming of the Lord shall not precede those who have fallen asleep." People who are in the graves who are dead are going to go to heaven before us--church age believers. This event happens on the threshold of the beginning of the seven-year tribulation period.

"For the Lord himself, will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are still alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the cloud to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words."

In John 14:3, Jesus said, "If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also." That's the rapture of the church more fully explained than in the 1 Thessalonians passage we just read.

1 Corinthians 15:51-52 also deals with this secret--the mystery of the rapture: "Behold, I tell you a mystery (give you a secret) revealed to me by the Holy Spirit." Paul says, "We shall not all sleep (not all going to die), but we shall all be changed." There are some Christians who will never die. They'll be alive when the rapture takes place. But all of us are going to lose the old sin nature. All of us are going to have a glorified body incapable of sinning--perfect, at the prime of life. Verse 52: "And in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable. And we shall be changed."

The Bride of Christ

Verse 28: "So husbands ought also to love their own wives ('agape'--no mental attitude ill will) as their own bodies. For he who loves his own wife, loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body. For this cause, a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall join to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great, but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church." As the husband and wife become one body joined together, so Christians as a body are joined to Jesus Christ, and we are His bride. This was a secret.

So the church itself was never revealed in the Old Testament. It is something that was inserted because Daniel's timetable was interrupted. It was seven years short. Daniel 9:27 describes the events after the church age--after this secret mystery event is out of the way. It describes the events in that seven-year tribulation period.

The Peace Treaty

The Temple Rebuilt

World Dictatorship

When that happens, the antichrist says, "You know, I'm a god." That's just like the old Roman emperors used to say. What he does is that he looks at that temple, that beautiful temple that he helped the Jews rebuild, and he says, "That's where I should be. He sets himself up in that temple as the god of the world there to worship. He is now empowered by Satan, with power beyond anything that any man has ever had. The result is that when he's not there at the temple, he also has an image made of himself that's placed there. This is the final expression of blasphemy--the idolatry of worshiping this image representing the antichrist.

So in the middle of this seven-year period, he breaks the agreement with the all-time great persecution and horrors of anti-Semitism against the Jews. The Jewish temple system will be terminated. The antichrist puts his own image there to be worshipped--what Daniel called "the abomination that causes desolation," and he declares Himself as God. The antichrist with his false prophet at the end of the tribulation period will come under the final judgment of God. They will come under that final judgment by being cast alive into the lake of fire, where all those who have not accepted Christ as personal Savior will spend eternity in conscious suffering. Revelation 19:20 says, "And the Beast (the antichrist) will cease, and with him the false prophet who performed the signs in his presence." The false prophet is given enormous supernatural ability by Satan so that he does things that Jesus Christ did. The very miracles that Christ did, he reproduces.

The Muslims have had a big problem. It became clear to them early on that their prophet Muhammad could not be superior to Jesus Christ because he never performed any miracles. It is well-known that Jesus Christ performed miracles, confirming His claims. So the result was that the Muslims invented miracles that they recorded that Muhammad supposedly performed. They were very much like the miracles of Jesus. Jesus broke bread and fed 5,000 people, and another group of 4,000 on another occasion, and Muhammad created date trees that had constantly replacing dates on them, and fed a mob of people. Does that sound real to you? You see why the crescent moon is a symbol of Islam. You know where we put the crescent moon in our society.

"And the beast was seized, and with him the false prophet who performed the signs in his presence by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshipped his image; these two were thrown alive into the lake of fire which burns with fire and brimstone."

The Millennium

Here's an important Scripture. The Jehovah's Witnesses are wrong. You don't get wiped out of consciousness. 1,000 years later when Satan is thrown into the lake of fire, the antichrist and his right hand man the false prophet are still there alive ...

Let me read the verse one more time about what was revealed to Daniel. Daniel 9:27: "He'll make a firm covenant with the many for one week (seven years with the Jews). In the middle of this week (after three-and-a-half years), he'll and put a stop to the sacrifice and grain offerings." They'll stop the religious sacrifice ritual system of the Mosaic code. "And on the wing of abominations, will come one who makes desolate." On a wing of the temple, he'll put an abominable thing--a loathsome thing to God--an image of himself as the god whom all the world is to worship, "even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed is poured out on the one who makes desolate." As we have read, they will be thrown into the lake of fire.

In Revelation 13, we have the New Testament counterpart, which we'll now understand so much more clearly because we have understood what was revealed to Daniel in Daniel 9. Revelation 13:1-10 describe the antichrist and his career. Verse 1 says, "And he." That "he" is Satan. We know this from Revelation 12:17 which says, "The dragon (Satan) was enraged with the woman (Israel), and went off to make war with the rest of her offspring (that final persecution of the Jews--anti-Semitism--the white hot heat), those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus."

The background of this is that Satan has had a final battle with his angels and the angels of God under Michael. Michael, the archangel (who replaced Satan as the archangel), wins this battle. At this point, Satan is thrown out of heaven, and he is never permitted again to come into the presence of God to accuse the saints, which he is currently doing day-by-day, for every time we do something wrong. He throws it up in the face of God in the throne room with God. Because he lost this battle, he is enraged with the Jews. He has wanted to kill all of them so that there could not be a millennial kingdom. He sees now that his time is running out, and he's going to come against the Jews who respect the commandments of God and against the Christians who obey the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now we go back to Revelation 13:1. Satan is standing there now by the seashore, looking out across the water. He is brooding. This is symbolic talk here. When in the Bible (and in the Book of the Revelation) a symbol is used, it is either explained right there, or that symbol is used elsewhere in the Scriptures so that we know what it means. But the symbol always has a literal meaning.

Revelation 13:1: "So he (Satan) stood on the sand of the seashore." We find from Revelation 17:15 that the seashore (the sea) represents nations. Revelation 17:15: "And he said to me, the waters which you saw, where the harlot sits (the false church) are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues." So what Satan is doing is looking out across the sea of nations as they're mixed on the earth--mankind. He's referring to the gentiles. From a divine viewpoint, there is a beast (the antichrist). "And I saw a beast coming up out of the sea" (out from among these nations). From God's viewpoint, the antichrist is a beast. What he is doing in the fundamentalist Muslim world in the East is the act of the beast that he is. Under the influence of Satan, these men are in the spirit of the antichrist. He comes out to seek political power. This beast has ten horns and seven heads. On his horns are ten diadems (crowns of ruling), and on his heads were blasphemous names to insult God. We can't go into detail on this here, but you can study our other sessions on Bible prophecy.

The seven heads are the seven world empires that have existed: Egypt; Assyria; Babylon; Medo-Persia; Greece; and then, Rome. That's six. Then the seventh will be the restored Roman Empire which broke up into individual nations, and that restored empire is being brought together by the United Nations in our day. That's what's happening.

So he has seven heads and he has ten horns. That is a horn representing each nation. The antichrist rules over these ten nations rules in the Western Confederacy, with blasphemous names--contempt for God. Verse 2: "And the Beast which I saw was like this:" This beast was a mongrel beast. It was made up of different parts. It had part of a leopard. Leopards are characterized by their swiftness in seizing their prey, and the Scriptures are refined in the order of events, so that the leopard represented the Greek empire, swift in its conquest indeed, under Alexander the Great. Its feet were like those of a bear. The bear is strong and tenacious, which was the MedoPersian Empire, an empire that was noted for its strong determination following Greece. Then his mouth was like the mouth of a lion. The lion goes back one step more to the empire of Babylon. So going up the line from Greece, back to Medo-Persia, back to Babylon. Babylon was invincible.

Miracles

And he has a throne. Revelation 13:2 says, "He gave his power and gave his throne." Satan offered this throne, in Luke 4:1-13, to Jesus Christ. He said to Jesus, "Why go through the suffering? I am the master of all nations of the world. I am the God of this world. I'll make you the king of it all. You can have your kingdom and the millennium. I'll give it to you without suffering." And Jesus rejected it. He makes the same offer to the antichrist. The antichrist says, "I'll take the deal."

So the stipulation was to worship Satan. Jesus refused to do that, but the antichrist agrees. Regarding his authority, Satan is the absolute dictator. Verses 3-4: "And I saw one of his heads as if it had been slain, and his fatal wound was healed, and the whole earth was amazed and followed after the beast." One of the seven heads, the restored revived phase of the Roman Empire, receives a blow. The imperial form had been restored, and this is probably the Antichrist himself, representing this empire that receives a wound that should be mortal. It should be fatal. Instead of dying, he lives. It's like having a hole blown right through his brain, and instead of falling over dead, some miraculous power sustains his life and he lives. And, of course, that seemingly mortal wound is taken care of by the power of Satan.

Revelation 13:14 says, "And he (the false prophet) deceives those who dwell on the earth because of the signs which it was given him to perform (Satan's miracle power) in the presence of the beast (the antichrist), telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image of the beast who had the wound of a sword, and has come to life."

So he survives this wound. Satan cannot bring somebody back from the dead. There's no resurrection here, but he should have died by the wound that he received. This is a counterfeit resurrection once more, to imitate Jesus Christ, like Muhammad creates miracles to imitate Jesus Christ. The false prophet directs worship to the image of the beast because now the antichrist is viewed as God. This causes worldwide amazement, and dramatically moves the antichrist to stage center.

Verse 4: "And they worshipped the dragon (Satan) because he gave his authority to the beast (the antichrist), and they worshipped the antichrist saying, 'Who is like the beast (the antichrist)? Who is able to make war with him?'" The beast's survival causes Satan to be worshipped and causes the antichrist to be worshipped. In Isaiah 14:14, we're told that Satan wanted to be like God. He wanted to be worshipped. That was his original rebellion.

Please notice the temptations of Christ in Matthew 4:8-10: "Again, the devil took Jesus to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in their glory, and he said to Jesus, 'All these things will I give you if you fall down and worship me.' Then Jesus said to him, 'Be gone, Satan. For it is written you shall worship the Lord, your God, and serve Him only.'" Then the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and began to minister to Him. He had been fasting for 40 days. The result was that the Lord Jesus Christ rejected the deal, and Satan left him. If you read through the whole passage, the way Jesus met the temptation was by quoting Scripture. Doctrine is stored in the mind in the human spirit because you said "Amen" to it, and therefore, it is reserved for your use.

Worldwide amazement follows after the antichrist because of his seeming capacity to live. Now he has the world on a string. He's got control of everything. All opposition of all nations has been put down. 1 Thessalonians 5:3 says, "The world has come to peace and safety." But the apostle Paul says, "When they say peace and safety, then destruction will come upon them suddenly, like birth pains upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape. It will be a false peace. This false peace is what is behind what happened with terrorist activity on 9/11. What are we looking for? Peace and safety now. And how are we going to get it? By making the United Nations stronger, and making the Constitution and personal liberties weaker.

The world is being driven by God into each other's arms in order to prepare them to welcome, finally, a strong man who is going to bring peace and safety. If the Taliban, Osama bin Laden, and the fundamentalist Muslims have their way, these terrorist attacks will be all over the country. Then how are people going to feel? Then what are people going to look for? We need somebody with some real power to bring these people under control. We'll pay any price. Just do it. That's what's unraveling. But the world doesn't know it. They have no idea what's taking place.

Well, Revelation 13:5-6 says, "There was given to him a mouth (this is the antichrist) speaking arrogant words and blasphemy, and authority to act for 42 months was given to him (the last three-and-a-half years of the tribulation are his time). And he opened his mouth in blasphemies against God to blaspheme His name and His tabernacle" (that is, those who dwell in heaven). He blasphemes the Jews and those who live in heaven (that is, the Christians). So now he speaks blasphemies against God. He has no fear of God. The Christians who are dwelling in heaven are cursed. The Jews who are upon this earth who are fleeing from him are cursed. And the antichrist blows off the disappearance of all these millions of people. He thinks himself invincible.

Revelation 13:7-8: "It was given to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them." There is tremendous suffering and tremendous martyrdom on the part of those who have believed in Jesus Christ. They are believers in the tribulation. They're not part of the church now. That's has past, but they are believers like on Old Testament ground. "And authority was given him over every tribe and people and tongue and nation (he's a worldwide ruler) and all who dwell on the earth ('all who dwell on the earth' is the technical term for unsaved people) will worship him. Everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the lamb who has not been slain."

If your name is not written in the lamb's book of life as a saved person, you will worship the beast. People whose names are not in the lamb's book of life today, they will worship the world system. They will worship Satan. They will worship all that is coming. They are the people like that boy in The Omen who was fleeing. He was getting out of that room so he could not hear the Word of God. People who do that don't understand what terrible things are going to come upon them. When it comes, there's not going to be any return. So verse 9 says, "If anyone has an ear, let him hear." Those of you who are stupid, forget it. Those of you are smart better not blow off the only inerrant book that was ever written because it is the message of God.

Verse 10 says, "Okay, make your choice. Anyone that is destined to captivity, to captivity he goes. If that's how you're going to act, you'll be a captive. If anyone kills with the sword, with a sword he must be killed. If you want to fight your way back to have your way, you will go down. Here is the perseverance and the faith of the saints. The saints are in the protective custody of God, and they're going to win. Are you a winner, or are you a loser?

Dr. John E. Danish, 2002

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