All language subtitles for Chuck Missler - Learn the Bible in 24 Hours - Session 21

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Let's bow our hearts for a word of prayer.

Father, we once again just thank you for who you are.

And we thank you, Father.

Your kingdom, there are no accidents, no coincidences that we're all here right now

by your divine appointment.

So Father, we would just ask that your purposes be realized in each one of our lives, that

we each might grow and grace the knowledge of our Lord and Savior.

We pray, Father, as we search Your Word, that You just open our lives to what You would

have us do.

As we commit this time and ourselves into Your hands in the name of Yeshua, our Lord

and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Well, we are in Hour 21 of Learning the Bible in 24 Hours.

And in this particular hour, we've set this hour aside to summarize eschatology.

Eschatology is a study of last things.

Now we haven't tried to segment other aspects of the theological side of biblical studies.

However, the field of eschatology deserves some special mention for two reasons.

First of all, the study of eschatology will test your hermeneutics.

Your views about the end times will derive from your theory of interpretation.

Your hermeneutics is your theory of interpretation.

Some people have very strict hermeneutics.

That is, they have a very high view of the Scripture.

They take it very literally.

Others take it very softly.

They're willing to allegorize and take things a little softer.

Depending on your attitudes about that, that'll determine where you come out on some of these

controversial areas.

And the second reason eschatology is so important is not just because it's controversial, but

because there seems to be a widespread belief among many of us that we're being plunged

into a period of time about which the Bible says more than just about any other period

of time in history.

And so eschatology is no longer academic.

It's very practical.

Now if you take the classical divisions of theology, even different seminaries pretty much

categorize theology in these partitions, if you will.

The study of the Bible itself, the call bibliology, the attributes of God, that's theology property.

The study of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself is called Christology, the study of the Holy

Spirit, pneumatici.

Angiology covers that field, not just regular angels, but fallen angels, demons, all of

that falls into that category.

Their apology is their term for the study of man.

So teriology is the study of salvation.

Ecclesiology, the study of the church.

And I think many of the controversies in eschatology really are issues of ecclesiology.

Many people are confused because they don't really understand what the church is.

And of course the last, which is the one we're going to try to summarize in this hour, eschatology,

the end times, the last things.

So there are two reasons at least that we want to study eschatology.

It's the final test of your hermeneutics, your theory of interpretation.

But also it's very practical because I do believe you and I are being plunged into a

period of time about which the Bible says more than any other period of time in history,

including the time that Jesus was on the shores of Galilee.

And that's a preposter statement, and yet I challenge you to challenge that statement.

You have to do so, you have to do two things.

You have to find out what the Bible really says about these things.

Not what Chuck Mistler or whoever, what the Bible says about these things.

And the second thing you need to do then, which is a little more difficult, is find out what's

going on.

And you won't on the 10 o'clock news.

Fortunately, thanks to the internet, thanks to the alternative press, thanks to talk radio

and other things, it's now possible if you do your homework to find out what really is

going on.

And the more you know about your Bible and the more you know about what's really going

on in the world, the more you will begin to understand why it is so many scholars are

extremely excited about the horizon that we're moving into.

Because what we're dealing with is the return of Christ to rule.

And it's really remarkable how controversial this topic is.

You wouldn't think that it would be.

But there are over 1,800 references in the Old Testament to the return of Christ to rule

on planet earth.

17 books give prominence to the event in the Old Testament.

There are over 318 references in the New Testament in 216 chapters.

And 23 of the 27 books of the New Testament give prominence to this primary issue, the

return of Christ to rule on the planet earth.

You can understand why people might not believe the Bible, might take a different view, but

it's what's astonishing to me is how many people claim to believe the Bible, claim to

be Christian, and have no grasp of the idea that Christ is literally to return to inherit

the promises that God gave Israel throughout the Old and New Testament.

For every prophecy of Christ's first coming that we all celebrate, for every one of those

there are eight, seven or eight anyway, concerning His second coming.

So it has far more emphasis in the Scripture than even His first coming, as dominant as

that is.

Now one of the things that you will quickly discover is that most churches and many people

have a view that we call amillennialism, which is essentially a word meaning they don't really

believe in a literal millennium.

The idea that Christ is going to return for a thousand years as is recorded in the Scripture,

many people take allegorically while He's going to rule in our hearts, that sort of

thing.

That view is called amillennialism.

And there are many different topics we're going to take on that are very controversial,

different people have different views.

This is one that is a little disturbing to embrace because by embracing this view, in

my opinion, you really are making God a liar.

You're implying that the commitments that He's emphasized all through the Scripture,

He's not going to fulfill.

There's an early church father by the name of Oregon who had a theory of interpretation

of hermeneutics that leaned on allegorization.

He felt that much of the Bible wasn't to be taken literally.

It was just allegories.

They're nice stories for teaching purposes.

And so he had a theory or an approach that involved allegorizing most of the Scripture.

Well that was his approach, but the unfortunate part was that Augustine, the prominent person

in those days, adopted his style, his approach, and he formulated out of that allegorization

this view of amillennialism.

Now to understand this view, you need to realize the peculiar predicament that the leaders

were in in those days.

They were paid by the government.

Christianity had become a state religion.

Can you picture a government salary minister at a pulpit pointing out that God is going

to come back to free the world from all these evil rulers and God Himself is going to run

things right?

That didn't sell well.

So in that discomfort they really adopted a style saying, well he's not going to come

back literally.

He's going to rule in our hearts.

He's going to rule over spiritually.

And they find ways to soften that message.

That amillennial viewpoint was the viewpoint of the medieval church and it gets codified

of course in the Roman Catholic traditions.

So Roman Catholic eschatology is of course amillennial.

Then of course we get to the Reformation.

Now the Reformers were primarily occupied with the problems of soteriology, salvation

by faith alone.

They were burdened by the abuses of the church in so many of these other areas.

So they did an incredible job at correcting the errors in soteriology.

Salvation by faith alone was their watchwork.

And of course that led to the whole trauma of the Reformation in which millions were

burned at the stake willingly for their commitment to that soteriology.

The tragedy of the Reformation is that the fathers didn't reexamine the other areas.

They maintained the same eschatology that they inherited from the medieval church.

And so as a result most Protestant denominations are also amillennial in their backgrounds.

And they're also post-tribulational in their eschatological view.

And I'll explain what that is in a moment.

So you need to understand that denominationalism, whether it's Protestant or Catholic, tends

to be amillennial.

And their emerges of conflict with people who want to take the Bible seriously, who

believe that God means what He says and says what He means.

Amillennialism has some serious problems because the Bible is filled with messianic

promises throughout the Old Testament that speak of Jesus taking David's throne and ruling

the planet earth.

You have to do something with those.

Those problems are not limited to the Old Testament when Gabriel announced the birth of Jesus

to Mary.

He committed her that her child was going to sit on the throne of David.

Throne of David did not exist in those days.

The king in those days was appointed by Rome.

He was an Edomite, an enemy of Israel.

There was no David's throne.

The destiny of Israel in God's covenants for Israel hang on this issue.

And so it's not surprising that if you're amillennial that also usually leads to anti-Semitism because

there's no regard, no understanding of Israel's destiny.

And of course the promise given to Mary by the angel Gabriel is obviously a pivot in

the New Testament.

And there are numerous confirmations of these Old Testament issues in the New Testament.

So this is not an Old Testament issue, it's a total Bible issue.

And so we have in eschatology one of the first divisions that people get into us.

They study the Bible, they'll fall into one of two camps.

They'll either take this idea of Jesus' rule on the earth as being serious and really

going to happen.

We would call that prey millennial in favor of millennium.

In contrast to those who don't really believe in a literal millennium, they would call themselves

a millennial.

They would treat those passages allegorically or symbolically.

So that's the first division.

There is a group between those two that emerged for a while.

Those were people that felt the millennium was already started.

And that was pretty popular in the 17th, 18th century maybe, but as the people began to

realize the world was in big trouble, it was pretty clear to any thinking person that we're

obviously not in the millennium.

I love the way Chuck Smith would summarize that viewpoint.

If we're in the millennium, Satan's chain is too long.

So out of our millennialism, there's a form of that that's getting popular again strangely

called predarism.

And the predarists tend to feel that all these prophecies have all even fulfilled in

some way in the past.

And that too is a very close cousin of our millennialism because it really means you

have to allegorize all kinds of passages.

And while it's popular among some leadership that's publicly visible, it is clearly not

a biblically rooted point of view.

There's also a group of people that are called reconstructions, reconstructionists or kingdom

now or dominion theology.

These are people who believe it's the church's job to prepare the world for the return of

Christ.

And it's the job of the church to rule, take over the world and get it ready for Christ's

return.

And that may sound strange, but there are amazing number of very prominent Christians who when

you really understand their point of view are really reconstructionists or kingdom now,

dominionists and so forth.

Now Lindsey did an excellent book on this some years ago called The Road to Holocaust

because these views also will lead to the destruction or attempted destruction of Israel.

Now the point I'm going to try to get through here as we get into this, your hermeneutics,

your theory of interpretation will determine where you come out on these issues.

If you're among those that take the Bible very seriously, you believe God means what

He says and says what He means.

If you tend to take it seriously or I'll say the word literally, I don't like to use

the word literally because when you say that to an adversary they'll say well then you

think God has feathers because Psalm 91 under his wings they'll shall trust.

Taking it literally is not a denial of figures of speech, obviously there's figures of speech

in the Scripture.

But in fact it may shock you to discover how many different kinds of figures of speech

are in the Scripture.

There are similes, allegories, metaphors and I could go on and on.

Do you know how many different kinds of figures of speech are in the Scripture?

Over 200 and they are catalogued with examples in our appendix to our book on the subject.

But when I say literal I mean these are people that believe that in the original, not the

translations, in the originals they are free of error.

God superintended the Scripture to an astonishing degree.

So we from our point of view happen to be on the right side of this spectrum.

There are many good scholars who don't necessarily go as far as we do.

There are many competent scholars that are somewhere in the middle here.

So I'm not here to disparage them.

But if you are willing to allegorize, if you don't take the text that seriously then there

are constructions you can embrace that will take you to the left side of this spectrum.

So where you come out on that will determine your eschatology in effect.

Now I previously showed you the classical divisions of theology as taught in most seminaries

in America.

There is a segment of theology that's missing here.

There is a segment of theology that is not separated or taught in seminaries.

That particular segment of theology constitutes five-sixths of the Bible and yet is omitted

as a specific focus of study.

And that's the study of isriology.

Israel as an instrument of God in his plan of redemption.

And Dr. Arnold Frücktenbaum got his Ph.D. by highlighting that and demonstrating that

his book is on isriology is a classic in the field.

And the great tragedy of many Christians is they have no grasp of the Old Testament in

terms of its foundation for the new and they have no grasp of Israel's role in the future,

not just the past.

And so that's one of the things we want to be sensitive to.

One of the byproducts of ammonialism is confusion between the role of Israel and the church.

I encourage you as you study your Bible is to be sensitive to the possibilities at least,

that Israel and the church are distinctly different.

They have different origins.

They actually have different missions.

And they certainly have different destinies.

And I think being sensitive to that will clear up a lot of confusion.

This idea that Israel has been replaced by the church is what sometimes called replacement

theology.

Many, many prominent, publicly high-profile people actually come from a replacement theology

point of view.

As a result, they do not regard Israel as having any special place in God's future.

The problem with that viewpoint is that it makes God a liar because as you read the Old

Testament and the new, God repeatedly hammers away on this issue.

In fact, Paul spends three chapters in his definitive statement of Christian, Gospel

called the Book of Romans, hammering away on this very theme.

Now the other aspect of this issue of replacement theology is that lays the basis for anti-Semitism.

You can actually write a very competent essay from Augustan to Auschwitz that the

amillennialism led to the Holocaust in Germany.

If you want to lay the blame for the Holocaust at someone's feet, don't overlook laying it

to the feet of the pastors who were silent and did not discourage, in fact, encouraged some

of the abuses that led to the Holocaust in Germany.

That is this important because it's going to happen again.

When we studied the 70 weeks in Daniel, I want to remind you that the 70 weeks were specifically

addressed to Israel, not the church, and that's a very important distinction that many scholars

overlook.

If you study Paul's epistles, you'll notice that this period during which the Paul divides the

people into three categories, Jews, Gentiles, and the church.

And he makes that point several times in his epistles.

And it will not always be so when I'll come back to that when we get further in the revelation.

Because you're going to discover that from chapter four on in the Book of Revelation,

these distinctives between Jews and Gentiles reappear on the horizon.

During the church, Paul emphasizes the unity of the body of Christ.

But from chapter four on, you're going to discover there's an astonishing distinction made

between Jews and non-Jews in the book from chapter four through nineteen.

And we'll deal with that when we get there.

Now the other topic that comes up in eschatology is this whole concept that's called the rapture.

You hear people talk about the rapture.

And the skeptics will say the word rapture does not appear in the Bible.

Yes, it does in the Latin Bible, in the Vulgate.

It comes from the word in the Greek text is the harpazzo, which is a word meaning to be snatched up forcibly.

The great snatch is one way you could call it.

When the Greek was translated in the Latin, the word is rapture, and the word rapture is a derivative

from is an English adaptation of the Latin Vulgate.

But the word does occur, but if you want to smith hairs, the word is harpazzo in the Greek.

This is unquestionably the most preposterous belief in Christianity.

The idea that at some time at the snap of the finger, so to speak, all the true believers in Christ

are going to be snatched out of the world bodily, immediately, suddenly.

That sounds absolutely zany.

That sounds crazy.

There's only one thing that this theory has going for it.

It happens to be what the Bible teaches.

I'm reminded of Richard Feynman at Caltech, and he talks about particle physics.

He says that particle physics, as you get into it, is the most ridiculous theory that has ever come along in the field of physics.

The only thing that has got going for it is that it's unquestionably correct.

That's sort of exactly what you come out with with a strange view.

I think it's appropriate for us to understand how weird this must sound to someone that doesn't have the background in the Scripture.

And it's also astonishing to many how clear it is taught in the Scripture.

And I'm one of those extremists that even see it taught three different places in the Old Testament, let alone the new, but we won't give that here.

We talked before, we went through the Christian epistles.

We noticed that they were in a pattern, Dr. Epprofen Correction, Dr. Epprofen Correction.

We left out and left for this review, the first and second Thessalonians epistles, because they're doctrinal.

And see, Romans was doctrinal, but in the soteriology.

Ephesians was doctrinal, but focusing on ecclesiology, the Church.

Thessalonians is doctrinal focusing on eschatology.

And I left it to this hour because I wanted to focus on eschatology because this is where so many of the questions come up, so many, especially new people, the Bible get confused with all the funny words and what on earth is that all about.

That's why we're about it today.

The Thessalonians and the epistles are probably the two earliest of Paul's epistles, dated typically by some scholars in the very early, you know, 52, 53 AD time period.

First, they're both written from Corinth to Thessalonica.

The first Epistle of Thessalonians deals with our blessed hope.

Both these epistles are so important to us, the short little epistles, but they both happen to deal with the key topics of eschatology.

The first Epistle of The Thessalonians speaks of our blessed hope.

Now you need to understand why this letter, it's always when you read these epistles, it's worthwhile trying to understand why Paul was writing the letter.

And the background of the first Epistle to Thessalonians was, he was up there, he planted the Church, they're all excited, and he taught them,

about the Second Coming of Christ and so forth.

And after he's gone for a while, he finds that they're all upset because some of them among them have died.

And they're confused because apparently they may have felt that Christ's coming was coming so soon, it never occurred to them, some of their believing congregations passing away.

So Paul is dealing with that issue.

And his letter he first talks about looking back, he talks about the exemplar conversion and how exemplar evangelism they are and how they really turned on Church.

But now looking ahead, he's giving them information about comfort and he, what's interesting about this letter, he's reminding them of things that they had already been taught.

And it's interesting to realize he'd only been there a few weeks.

And this Church, he was planted by Paul, he'd been there a few weeks, he leaves now for a year or so, he's writing a letter back reminding them of things he taught them when he was among them.

So he taught them these issues during the first few weeks of their Christian experience.

And so we're going to take a look at that.

And where he hits their dilemma head on, is in chapter 4 of 1 Thessalonians, he says, but I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren,

concerning them which are asleep, that she sorrow not even as others who have no hope.

For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.

For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent or precede them which are asleep.

And he goes on to explain.

What he's dealing with here is that they will come when the dead in Christ will receive new bodies.

And we are not, we who might be alive at that time are not going to interfere with that.

He says, the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout and voice the archangel, Trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first.

They're going to get their bodies first.

Then we which are alive and remain, in other words we haven't died yet.

This is all going on presumably why there are some of us alive, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.

And so shall we ever be with the Lord.

Strange thing to try to sketch on a drawing board or something, try to visualize this.

There are all kinds of attempts in Christian movies and stuff to render this and it's no matter how you do it, it sounds pretty weird.

But there is a, what he's saying, there is a generation that's not going to die.

But the ones that have died that are in Christ will receive new bodies and we're going to, we will too and we'll be caught up with them in the clouds.

This is the, and this is all going to happen we're going to find out in the twinkling of an eye.

And not in the flink, blink of an eye, twink of an eye, and then it's intended it minus 35 seconds.

But anyway, this is, this is the harpazzo.

One of several passages on this topic and we are, shall be caught up together.

The word caught up in the Greek is harpazzo and the Latin Vulgate on the Jerome's translation, it was rapturo but here it's, and then translated into, into English should be caught up or snatched up.

But at the term of the Greek is very precise, it's to be forcibly caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.

And so from that point on, by the way, so shall we ever be with the Lord.

From that point on, we'll not be separated.

And there's lots of confusion because when a Christian dies, his soul and spirit is with the Lord.

His body decays in the grave.

What kind of body does he have in the meantime?

We don't know.

Some people guess maybe we have a temporary body.

We know he doesn't get his resurrection body until this event.

So what happens between?

There's all kinds of scholastic conjectures.

Most of what we know about the subject comes out of Luke 16 and there's a, we've done some special briefings on that, but let's us move on here.

This whole event that Paul is talking about in 1 Thessalonians, and he also alludes to it in 1 Corinthians 15, is a fulfillment of the promise Jesus gave them when they were in the upper room.

That night he was betrayed before he gets to Gethsemane.

They have the famous discourse in John 14 through 17.

He opens that, he says, let not your heart be troubled in John 14.

You believe in God, believe also in me, for in my father's house are many mansions.

For not so I would have told you, I go to prepare a place for you.

That's pretty exciting.

He left them to prepare a place for us, and he's been at it for 1900 years.

We know what God did in six days.

What could he do in 1900 years?

I mean, I'm not going to really make a parallel there, but I think it's interesting.

I go to prepare a place for you.

And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself.

That where I am, there you may be also.

There's that commitment again.

Not only will it come to get us, we'll be with him from that point on.

This is a little confusing because we think of the second coming when he comes with his armies to crush the enemy.

And all those things.

How can he come with us if he says here he's coming to receive us?

This is the first hint if we're paying attention that there's two comings involved.

Most people don't realize that he's coming back twice.

Once for the church and once for Israel.

Different events will come to that.

But okay.

Another thing is we get back to 1 Thessalonians.

When you get to chapter 5, there's some interesting commitments that,

that are often overlooked.

That God gives the church through Paul.

Paul continues in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5.

He says, but of the times and the seasons brethren, you have no need that I write unto you.

For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief of the night.

And I'm going to suggest to you when you read the whole passage, he's implicitly referring here to the children of the night.

Just trust me for a minute.

We'll come back to this.

So for yourselves, you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief of the night to those guys is what he's in effect going to be saying here.

For when they shall say peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them.

But ye brethren are not in darkness that that day should overtake you as a thief.

You're all children of the light and children of the day.

You're not of the night or of darkness.

Therefore let us not sleep as do others, but let us watch and be sober for they that sleep sleep in the night.

They that be drunk and are drunk in the night, but let us who are of the day be sober putting on the breastplate of faith and love and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.

For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by the Lord Jesus.

Let me go back so you get the tone of this.

Paul says, but of the times and the seasons brethren ye have no need that I write unto you.

For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief of the night.

Not to everybody, to those guys is what he's saying.

To the, you know, to the children of the night because he goes on to say, for when they shall say peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them.

But ye brethren are not in darkness that that day should overtake you as a thief.

You are all the children of the light, the children of the day. We are not of the night or of darkness.

Therefore let us not sleep as do others, but let us watch and be sober for they that sleep sleep in the night.

They that be drunk and are drunk in the night, but let us who are of the day be sober putting on the breastplate of faith and love and for helmet, for an helmet, the hope of salvation.

For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by the Lord Jesus Christ.

Do you follow the flow of that?

It is very important because people, he comes to the thief of the night. Yes.

If he comes to the thief of the night to you, that's because you're in the night, not the day.

That doesn't mean that the children of the day will know the time of the day of the hour, but they will know the times and the seasons you'll have, they'll be expecting him.

God teaches his own to be expecting him. That doesn't mean you know the day of the hour. Don't misunderstand that part of it.

But I want you to notice verse 9, for God hath not appointed us to wrath.

Understand the commitment here. God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by the Lord Jesus Christ.

The wrath of God will be the focus in the book of Revelation being poured out on the world.

Are we there? No. And I'll show you why in several places.

That's a very fundamental dispute among some scholars.

And I don't want to sell you my view. I want you to be aware of the view.

I want you to confirm it by your own studies. This is one I meant to say something else about this whole hour before we started.

And that at the top of your notepad put Acts 1711.

Acts 1711 is what Paul said about the Bereans, that they were more noble than those in Thessalonica.

And Thessalonica in that they received the word with all openness of mind, but they searched the Scriptures' daily to prove where those things be sold.

The Bereans were skeptical and encouraged that.

In other words, Acts 1711 is Luke's way of telling you don't believe anything Chuck Mr. tells you, but check it out for yourself.

But I'd be doing you a disservice of I don't least share with you the views that I have gleaned from 50 years of study.

Not that they're correct, but at least you'll be aware of those views.

God has not appointed us to wrath. He's speaking to the church.

And the church has several places that kind of commitment is very, very precious because it affects our perspective of the end times.

Let's get to the second Epistle Thessalonians. I'll call it our blessed hope part two.

Some time goes by and Paul once again down in Corinth learns that Thessalonians are now really upset.

You need to understand why they're upset in order to understand Paul's letter here.

He's answering a question. You won't understand the answer unless you know what the question was, so to speak.

Something else you'll discover as you get into the background of the second Thessalonians is that there was a forgery being circulated as if by Paul.

And Paul is responding to this letter that is not one that he wrote.

And I'll show you that in a minute.

They're really upset and Thessal-Lica because well that's what we're going to figure out what he is.

They're really upset because first of all, persecutions have begun.

Up till now the pressures on the church came from the Jewish leadership.

Every place you go in the book of Acts, there's these uprisings, but it's always the Jewish leaders that are resisting the Christians.

Something has changed here. Suddenly the Romans, up till now, didn't take sides. They just wanted peace. They didn't want insurrections.

But at this point we're starting to see persecution by the Romans.

The Thessal-Licans, thessalonians, are upset because they think the tribulation has begun.

They're really shook because they're starting to get the abuses under Nero and all the rest.

So they're upset for one of two reasons.

Either they think they've missed their rapture or Paul didn't teach them properly because they know they have been raptured and there's persecutions going on.

They're really upset. That fact alone tells you the kind of teaching they must have had.

They were taught not to expect the great tribulation. Doesn't they know mispersecutions, but people get those two topics confused.

So Paul is going to deal with the order of events.

He is going to deal with their misapprehensions. He's going to point out that what's coming soon but not yet.

And then he's going to talk about the coming challenge, work for the night is coming and so forth.

Now here's in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. One could argue that the second chapter, this is a little piss-all of just three chapters, an opening and closing in chapter 2.

Chapter 2 of 2 Thessalonians is one of the most important eschatological passages in the New Testament.

Let's take a look at what Paul is saying to them. He says, Now we beseech you brethren by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and are gathering together unto Him that you be not soon shaken in mind or be troubled,

either by spirit or by word or by letter as from us.

As that the day of the Lord is at hand.

The subject is the day of the Lord. He's using here in a denotative sense.

The day of the Lord is this time of all these cataclysmic final things.

And they think they've entered that and they don't understand why they're not raptured.

Don't be so soon shaken by any of these things or even by letter as if from us.

They apparently were subject to some kind of forgery here because he's going to sign the letter in a very large hand.

He's going to let him really know this one is from him.

As that day of the Lord is at hand or by letter as from us.

He says, Let no man deceive you by any means for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first.

And that man of sin be revealed to son of perdition.

The man of sin is one of 13 titles in the New Testament of the guy that we casually call the Antichrist.

The man of sin, the son of perdition. These are two titles that are used of this man of Satan, if you will.

He has 33 labels in the Old Testament, 13 in the New.

But this is one of the illusions here in the New Testament.

But I want to talk about this falling away first.

The word in the Greek is opposed to see it.

That word can mean one of two things. It can mean a falling away of the faith, like apostasy.

It can also mean the falling or catching away.

You can make a competent case, if you're a Greek expert, that this term apostasy here is referring to the rapture.

But I'm not going to make that case because I don't need to.

I'm going to take the other view because it serves our purpose just as well.

Let this simply mean a falling away because we certainly know from the scripture that in the end times the churches will fall away and we'll catch that in the next hour especially.

So without making the hard case, which can be made if you really want to get in the Greek technicalities, but let's set that aside.

There came a way of falling away, like apostasy, meaning just a falling away of faith in the church.

And that the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalves himself above all of it is called God or that is worshiped so that he has God,

the citizen temple of God, showing himself that he is God.

This is quite a sentence. Let's look at what he's really saying.

That the man of sin, the son of perdition, he's talking about the antichrist.

What is he going to do? He's going to oppose and exalt himself above all that is called God.

That's quite a statement.

This world leader is going to rise and he is going to exalt himself above Allah.

All that is called God.

He's going to exalt himself above the Pope.

He's going to exalt himself above any concept of a Jewish Messiah.

Take whatever you call God in the Catholic world, the Protestant world, or the Jewish world, or the Islamic world.

He is going to exalt himself above all that is called God.

This implicitly talks about a world religion worshiping him.

He will exalt himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped.

That's quite a bundle.

So that he, as God, siteth in the temple of God.

Really? This is one of the three places that we know that the temple is going to be standing at the end times.

Because Jesus, Paul here, and John all make reference to it, showing himself that he is God.

Now here's what the next sentence is kind of surprising.

Paul says, remember you not that when I was yet with you I told you these things.

Now wait a minute.

He was with them during the first two or three weeks of their Christian experience.

He went there, they got saved, and he was with them a couple of weeks, and he taught them all this stuff.

This is stuff you usually don't get until you've been a Christian for some years.

This is tough stuff.

Paul continues.

Now you know what restraineth or hinders that might be revealed in this time.

For the mystery of iniquity of already work, only he who now restrains will restrain until he be taken out of the way.

So now we have this mystery of this thing called the restrainer.

What on earth is the restrainer?

He restrains the mystery of iniquity.

I can make a theological case that this is not an angel.

This is not some force.

This is not the church.

There's all kinds of theories that have been advanced.

This is a person, only he who now restrains.

And the Greek grammar implies a neutr noun.

And the word for spirit is a neutr noun.

So without getting in all the technicalities, I'm just going to have rare here and let you study it on your own to find another explanation if you can find one.

This is the Holy Spirit, but in a very peculiar way.

The Holy Spirit will be very active in the forthcoming period.

But he is in a role today that is unique.

Most of Paul's epistles are hard to understand because you don't understand how astounded he was as a pharisaical Jew to realize the Holy Spirit was given to the believer without repentance.

That he sealed you, that he indwelled you.

And it's in that sense he's going to be removed.

He says, the Holy Spirit is going to be removed from the earth.

In a sense, yes, but people are going to be saved after he leaves and they are saved by him.

So he's going to be active, but he's going to be active the way he was in the Old Testament.

Jesus makes the remark that he had to leave so that the Holy Spirit could come in the unique way that he indwelled the church today.

There's a whole thing you've got to get into there.

But anyway, so in any case this removal of the Holy Spirit is again an illusion of the rapture.

And then shall the wicked one be revealed.

See this wicked one can't be revealed after the rapture.

And then shall the wicked one be revealed from the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.

He's there.

That's a broad statement of what ultimately will happen before it's all over.

The word until, until what? Until he's taken out of the way.

Then shall the wicked one be revealed.

You get that timing.

It's very important.

People miss that.

Let's look at it another way.

The whole subject is the day of the Lord.

This final consummation.

The day of the Lord shall not come except there be a falling away, the apostasy.

That word apostasy can mean the rapture, but I'm not going to insist on that.

Let's assume it just means a falling from the faith.

That day, except there falling away first, he who now restrains will restrain until he be taken out of the way.

Then shall the man of sin be revealed.

Do you get that order?

A falling away of faith?

The Holy Spirit?

The rapture?

Removed?

Then the man of sin is revealed, then the day of the Lord.

The man of sin is the guy that defines the seventy-three of Daniel.

So the seventy-three of Daniel can't start until the man of sin is revealed.

The man of sin can't be revealed until the rapture takes place.

So the rapture occurs not just before the tribulation, before the whole seventy-three of Daniel is the point.

And again, don't accept it.

Come down to your own study.

Come to your own conclusions.

But Paul continues, even him who's coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders.

Wait a minute.

Realize what he's saying.

This leader that's coming is going to work with all power and signs of lying wonders of Satan.

And with all deceivableness and unrighteousness in them that perish.

And receive not the love of the truth that they might be saved, and for this cause God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe the lie, not a lie, the lie.

Properly proper article.

I mean, definitely an article.

Many of us have been intrigued with a delightful fictional series developed by Tim LaHaye and his partner called Left Behind.

Tim's a good friend, a very able guy, and Jerry Jenkins who wrote that most of the stories is able writer.

And that very popular, very successful series caused many people to get interested in prophecy.

There is one aspect to it that is quite controversial among theologians because the whole premise of the Left Behind series is that people who rejected Christ before the rapture have a chance afterwards.

And there are good Bible scholars that may agree with that.

There are also many Bible scholars who don't think that's good proper because of this passage.

Because this passage implies that those who rejected Christ before the rapture, God will send them a strong delusion that they should believe the lie.

The picture that is painted here would seem to suggest that if someone has the head, the opportunity to accept Christ and reject Him, the rapture takes place, they don't really get a second chance.

I put it another way maybe that the odds are against it because they're going to be enmeshed in the lie that follows.

So the time to receive Christ is now is the point, in any case.

No competent theologian would argue that one. But there are two views on this I share with you.

But something else about the second coming, if you can collect a dozen passages, over a dozen passages, that talk about the second coming as a very dramatic event, obviously.

You can also collect a group of passages that describe the rapture in very different terms.

And I don't have the time to go through each one of these. I'm going to categorize them in a different way.

These two groups of passages are contradictory.

The group of passages that talk about the rapture I'll put in one bucket, the others, the second coming in other, and I'll call the different extensions.

In the one case you have the translation of believers only.

In the second coming of Christ there is no translation mentioned.

The translation occurs before the rapture or at the end of the thousand years.

There's two different things.

In the rapture the translated saints go to heaven.

In the second coming the translated saints return to the earth.

There's a difference, there are opposites in fact.

In the rapture the earth isn't judged, in the second coming that's the whole purpose of it, it is judged.

The rapture is described as being eminent, that is it could happen at any moment.

Jesus clearly instructs us to expect him at any time.

The second coming is quite different.

It follows after seven years of details that precede the second coming.

The rapture is not in the Old Testament. I think it's hinted in a couple of places, but it's not formally there.

The second coming is predicted all through the Old Testament.

The rapture is believers only. The second coming affects all men on the planet earth.

The rapture occurs before the day of wrath. The second coming concludes the day of wrath.

The rapture has no reference to Satan. The second coming Satan is bound.

In the rapture Jesus comes for his own and the second coming comes with his own.

He comes in the air. In the one case he comes to the earth and the other.

He claims his bride in the rapture. He comes with his bride in the second coming.

In the rapture only his own shall see him. Do you realize that from the crucifixion on

he was only seen by loving eyes and only handled by loving hands?

Interesting. And even the rapture, only his own will see him.

In the second coming every eye shall see him.

The rapture, the tribulation begins or shortly thereafter.

The second coming is when the millennium begins. Not the tribulation.

The rapture is the church only. The second coming there may be scars believe the Old Testament saved

or raised after the millennium. So let's get back to the eschatology.

Now we've got this tribulation issue. Among those of us that are pre-millennial,

there are three groups of variations here.

And there are those that believe, as I've emphasized here, that the rapture occurs

before the tribulation begins. We would call those pre-tribulation.

There are others that believe that the rapture occurs at the end of the

seventh week of Daniel and their post-tribulation will talk about the ones in the middle.

In Matthew 24 verse 21, Jesus is responding to a private briefing to four disciples about a second coming.

When he gets to verse 21, he says, for then shall be great tribulation,

such as was not since the beginning of the world, at this time, nor ever, shall be.

And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved, but for the elect's sake, those days shall be shortened.

Jesus here, in effect, is quoting from Daniel chapter 12 verse 1.

He is labeling this period as the great tribulation. He gives it that very label.

And so the holocaust in Germany took one Jew out of three in the planet of the planet of the Earth.

Zechariah 13 verse 8 and 9 indicates that this next one will take two out of three.

And that's a very disturbing revelation. I didn't say that. Zechariah did. Chapter 13 verse 8 and 9.

Great tribulation. It gets this label from Christ's quote here.

He's quoting from Daniel 12. At that time shall Michael stand up with the great prince, which standeth for the children by people,

and there shall be a time of trouble, since there was a nation even to that same time.

And at that time, thy people shall be delivered, everyone that shall be found written in the book.

And another label for this period of time is the time of Jacob's trouble.

Because the focus of the great tribulation is worldwide, but it's on Israel. It's focusing on Israel.

Alas, for the day is great so that none is like it. It is even the time of Jacob's trouble, but he shall be saved out of it.

Jeremiah 30 verse 7.

So we have this famed seven week that we studied so much in Daniel. The lat, and it's punctuated in the middle by this peculiar event called the

Bomination of Desolation. Paul's second letter of the Thessalonians talks about him setting himself up as God in the Holy Volleys.

From that event to the end of the seven year period, a three and a half year period is the great tribulation.

I want to call your attention to the fact that the great tribulation is not seven years long, it's three and a half.

People tend to use the term of the great tribulation for the whole week.

Technically, Jesus himself defines it as the last half of that week. Not a big deal, but be sensitive to the precision here.

If you're going to be serious about the Bible, watch the definitions.

The second coming concludes that seventieth week and sets up, of course, the millennium, so far so good.

The big debate comes, okay, where does the rapture take place?

People who are on millennial in the first place generally assume that the rapture, or the resurrection, if you'll call, they wouldn't call it the rapture part, but the resurrection occurs at the end of that

century. That's called post-tribulationism. And there's all different kinds, even the authors that hold those views all have different views.

There isn't a single consistent view, they all have different variations because they're all dealing with allegorization of the scripture in the first place.

There's some problems with the post-trib view that denies the teaching of eminence.

If the rapture doesn't occur until the end of the seven years, it can't happen tomorrow.

Donald Gray Barnhouse used to kid his students when he came in the office.

He said, hey, Jesus can't come back today. Meaning that if you're post-tribulation, you've got to wait seven years at least, maybe more.

Clearly, we're taught to expect them at any time.

The post-tribulation view also requires the church to be on the earth during the seventieth week, which also is contradicted by a number of passages.

Also, the post-tribulation view argues that the church will experience God's wrath, even though we were promised that it would not participate in several passages.

How can the bride come with him if he's coming at the end of it? See, you've got some contradictions.

There are other problems. You've got no problems. Who's going to populate the millennium because the unsaved are condemned and the ones that are saved are immortal,

and who's just populating the millennium that's going to have kids and die and so on.

So, there's some issues there.

Who are the sheep and goat judgment Matthew 25 is an issue?

How can the verdges of Matthew 25 by oil without the mark of the beach?

You get into some... You just discover this. If you can't hold that view and take the Bible with precision, you end up having to allegorize these things.

So, that's the one view.

The view that we lean towards, obviously, is called pre-tribulation or pre-millennialism.

We believe a literal millennium, of course, but we also believe that the rapture will occur before the tribulation.

But what we mean by that, we actually believe it's not only before the tribulations before the seventh week even begins.

I want you to notice... Now, there are some people that recognize the tribulations technically just that last half of the week.

So, they believe they'll be raptured by the middle of the week, still before the tribulation, but in the middle of the seventh week of Daniel.

And Rosanthol, so-called pre-ref. There's another positions that are variations of that.

They all have the same problem. They all deny eminency.

Anything that requires you to be in or any part of that week means it can't happen tomorrow.

Yet we're told, again and again, the doctrine of eminency implies that Jesus can come for us at any moment.

And that's clearly what he taught us. And so, all these other views are contrary to that issue.

But I want you to know something else. We don't put our little arrow up at the beginning of the seventh week.

Some people make charts a little sloppily. We don't know what the interval of time is between the time the rapture takes place

and the time that the Antichrist gets revealed becomes powerful enough to enforce a treaty

and then enforces a treaty with Israel for seven years.

That could be one day. It could be thirty years. We have no idea. So, there's an interval. I don't know how long.

It might be measured in hours or months or years between the rapture and the beginning of the seventh week of Daniel.

It probably isn't long for lots of reasons, but there is an interval as we see it.

So, the rapture precedes the tribulation because the seventh week is defined by the covenant enforced by the leader.

The great tribulation lasts half of that week. The leader cannot be revealed until after the rapture.

So, that's the buildup of that timing, if you will.

If you really verify this for yourself and your studies will clarify,

a lifted great deal of confusion that tends to occupy this area of study.

Again, the order of the day of the Lord can't come until the apostasia, whatever that is,

which in turn then the restrainer is removed. In any case,

and the man of sin is revealed, which is all before the seventeenth week of Daniel.

Therefore, before the tribulation.

Okay, so we've talked about the different portions of eschatology.

We've talked about the pre-trib, mid-trib and post-trib.

People who, the Amalennial post-trib accommodates most denominations have inherited that from the medieval church originally.

Most of us that are fundamentalists take the Bible very literally fall on the other end.

We're typically pre-amalennial, pre-tribulation in our viewpoints.

There are lies that the map, if you will, of eschatological views.

From allegorical to literal. It depends on what your harmonics are.

Now, many people say pre-tribulation is a new invention.

That's not true. It's written in the Epistle Barnabas in the first century, Irenaeus,

and his treatise against heresies, Hippolytus in the second century,

just martyr, the early church fathers.

One of the most interesting documents was just discovered a few years ago by Ephraim the Syrian.

Most of us inherit our understanding of the church history from the Western church, Western Europe.

You need to remember that the Eastern tradition goes deeper and longer by a thousand years.

The Greek traditions.

And one of the most prolific writers in the Greek tradition was a god by the name of Ephraim the Syrian,

brought in the fourth century.

And he wrote, most of his stuff has never been translated from Greek to English.

In one of his sermons, the title of which was on the last times the Antichrist in the end of the world.

In one of the sermons, we're talking and going out for this is fourth century.

It says, for all the saints in the elect of God are gathered prior to the tribulation there is to come

and are taken to the Lord lest they see the confusion that is to overwhelm the world because of our sins.

This is a pre-trib position taught way back in the early Greek church.

We also, you can go all through the ancient commentaries.

This is not a new idea.

There are people opposed to this view that try to promote the idea it was invented in the early 1800s.

That's not true.

What did happen in the 1800s, the God by the name of Emmanuel LaCunza popularized this.

The God by the Edward Irving and John Darby and Margaret McDonald followed suit.

And there was a big revival and an emphasis on this view.

But if you do your homework in terms of church history, you'll discover these views were held by a minority

from the beginning all through history.

They're the ones that are typically abused by the denominational interests whether you're Catholic or Protestant.

But something else standing away from all this, you realize there are three groups of people facing the judgment called the flood of Noah.

Those that perish in the flood of course is one group.

Those that were preserved through the flood, the eight people on that arc.

And as a third group those that were removed prior to the flood.

Enoch, remember?

And you say, well Chuck, that's just one person.

So is the body of Christ one person.

Paul emphasized that we are one body and so forth.

So, idiomatically at least we are one.

So, I'm very fascinated by this because I want to suggest to you that Enoch was not mid-plud or post-plud.

He was pre-flud.

Okay.

Thank you.

But what's interesting, I stumbled on something that fascinates me.

Among the rabbinical traditions they believe that Enoch was born on the day that they happened to observe Hogg-Shavote.

The tradition they have from some ancient rabbinical writings is that Enoch was translated,

or if I can say that he used the term raptured, on that same day.

In other words, he was translated on his birthday.

What makes this provocative to me, Hogg-Shavote is the Hebrew term for what we would call the Feast of Weeks or the Feast of Pentecost.

That was when the church was born in Acts chapter 2.

And I can't resist speculating or conjecturing.

Is it possible that if Enoch is a type of the church, is it possible that the church also has a type of the church?

That the church also will be translated on his birthday.

I don't know.

Now I don't want to set dates, don't start doing that to me.

But because Jesus said the day you think not, the Son of Man cometh.

But if that's the day you think not, then that's maybe the day you'll come.

Okay.

Stay away from date setters.

It's astonishing to make a chronicle of the people who have set dates.

Way back in the 13th century on.

And I won't go through all these.

I mentioned John Napier was one of them back in the 17th century.

And many others.

William Witson said it was coming back in 1715.

Then he decided it was 1734.

Then he moved it out to 1866, I'm sure we'll be honest with you.

And then William Miller, 1843, then he decided it was October 22nd, 1844.

C.T. Russell, 1874.

Remember A.E.C. Wizenance, 88 Reasons for 88.

If you have any of those old books saved them, they'll be collector's items.

Harold Camping, sure it was September 1994.

And of course, since we passed the year 2000, you can bet all kinds of people are going

to waltz out charts or formulas and whatever.

And the date setters are always there.

Let's just look at the scripture says, of that day and hour, no, no man, no, not the angels of heaven,

but my father only.

Matthew goes on, watch therefore for ye know not what hour the Lord does come.

Therefore be all so ready for in section hours you think not the Son of Man cometh.

Watch therefore for ye know neither the day nor the hour we're in the Son of Man cometh.

You'd think that the point would be made we don't set dates, right?

Times and seasons sure, but not dates.

We don't set dates.

Luke says therefore be ready also for the Son of Man cometh at an hour when ye think not indeed.

He said unto them it is not for you to know the times of seasons which the Father has put in his own power.

Luke, Luke, volume two.

There's another disease that I think is primarily American.

This is a malady, a manian, a mental derangement that occurs primarily in the United States.

I call it rapture,itis.

There is a tendency by people who get caught up in this rapture to see him just around the corner.

And that's fine that God tells us to expect from any moment, but they also what they end up doing is put a few on the desk and kick him back and say

boy he's coming from a week from Tuesday why pay off that mortgage?

Why send our kids to college?

He's coming back soon.

And you know many of those teenagers that came off the drug scene in the early 70s are now pastors of churches and panning the churches over to their sons

because it's time to slip by if you haven't noticed.

This idea that somehow we're not going to be facing, first of all it's a question of stewardship.

Jesus said to occupy till I come so it's a question of stewardship.

But it's also we need to have an expectation of persecution.

Jesus promises persecution.

Don't confuse persecution with that particular period of time called the Great Tribulation, the time of Jacob's Trouble.

And this is a form of arrogance.

Just because I think I can prove to you that church will not go through the Great Tribulation.

Why should we as Americans, they, escape what most of the body of Christ in most of the world for most of the 2000 years that have passed had to endure?

Not the Great Tribulation is just persecution.

Christ promised it to us.

And indeed we can expect that.

Yes and here in America.

It's been predicted by some scholars that not only will the real body of Christ have to go underground in America, it's the persecution against it will be led by the denominational churches.

That sounds preposterous at first.

Certainly did, I'm sure 20 years ago when J. very first announced that.

But the more you watch the tide of our culture and the use of hate crimes, these Christians in Philadelphia that were attacked and discovered the times that they were being taken away from the church,

were attacked and discovered that 10% of the attorneys in the federal government are homosexuals.

And when you examine what they did, all they were doing is reading from the scripture in public.

And they're facing judicial process around at this point.

What time is it of course you look at God's timepiece.

But there are other issues we haven't had time to look at.

The rise of the European super state, we didn't take a look at that but we did when we were in Daniel.

The rise of the Far East, the refuge in Edom where the Jews will flee from Jerusalem when the Antichrist does this thing.

The Battle of Armageddon we have in detail, we'll talk about that somewhat in the next hour or in the, oh after next.

The Magog invasion, the rebuilding of the temple and the rebuilding of Babylon.

These last three things are in effect topics that should be touched upon in a review of eschatology.

Let's just take a quick look at.

Now we talked about the big organ invasion.

Now that the Battle of Armageddon is at the end of the 70th week of Daniel, we talked about that before.

And we know that the temple will be standing by the middle of that week because Peter, I mean excuse me, James Paul and Jesus all talk about it.

The Magog invasion is equal 38 we talked about.

It's classically viewed as occurring at the end of the tribulation by Hal Lindsey and other very confident scholars on the one hand but there are many of us that have a slightly different view.

We think the Magog invasion occurs before the 73th week and for a number of technical reasons.

So there's that debate.

What I bring it up primarily for this reason, what we all agree on is the Magog invasion does occur after the Rapture of the Church.

So to the extent the Magog invasion seems to be on a horizon and many experts in the strategic arena believe so, then that means the Rapture is even closer.

So that's pretty exciting.

And we can talk more on that but let's move on.

The coming temple, Jesus mentioned it in Matthew 24, Paul and 2 Thessalonians 2 we saw, John will mention when we get to Revelation 11.

The rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem.

This is just of course a model of how they think it was reconstructed at one time.

Here's an area of photograph of the region taken from the northwest looking southeast, the Dome of the Rock, the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the western wall between on the side there.

And which is often photographed where they go to pray and so on.

This is actually not the, it's just the retaining wall that held the temple area.

If you go up to the temple area you'd go up on a right through the Magrabi Gate and onto the platform.

Here's an aerial view of the Temple Mount with north at the top.

And we have the traditional view is that the original temple stood where the Dome of the Rock stands today.

That is the official view of the nation Israel but it's not the view of the scientists that have studied this carefully.

There is a northern conjecture popularized by Dr. Asher Kauffman.

He's a good friend.

Chuck Smith and I funded his original research.

He has a number of reasons why he believes that the temple stood about 100 meters to the north of the Dome of the Rock.

There's a number of reasons he defends that view.

It made what caused a big stir many decades ago in this first service is that would put the Dome of the Rock in that region called the Court of the Gentiles.

And that complies in a sense with the passages that will encounter in Revelation 11 that create quite a stir.

However, there are some problems remaining.

If you try to create a three dimensional model of the temple area you run in some problems because there's a, if you take the Joseph, the Tsefta, the Mishnah, the Tanakh, the Old Testament and Josephus and a few other things.

And try to put that together.

A grip ahead of view of the Azerah, the place where the offer just doesn't work.

The Romans could also see from the wall what was going on in the Azerah as a part of the temple where they did the offerings.

And it just doesn't work three dimensionally.

There's also a water aqueduct, parts of which are still in place that fed the temple and it implies if the temple stood at the Dome of the Rock, it's 21 meters too high.

It would have to be further south at lower elevation because the bedrock drops going south.

There's also a location of a moat issue and anyway, when you start looking at these carefully, it implies that the temple stood south of the Dome of the Rock.

Now you need to understand a little history here.

At 7AD, of course, Jerusalem fell.

In 132 AD, Bar Kukba had his ill-fated revolt and it took the Romans about three years to get their act together.

He actually had wiped out the 12th Legion, something he never recovered from, but the Romans finally got their act together.

They regained Jerusalem, but by then, he had an emperor, he had never ruled that land as long as there's a Jewish present in Jerusalem.

So they buried the entire city, plowed under, built a Roman city on top of it called Ayala capitaline, named after he did.

Then a temple to Jupiter was built over the site of the Jewish temple.

From Jerome's come here in Isaiah, we know there was a question statue of Hadron installed right over the Holy of Holies.

Well, the question is where did there was this temple built?

Well, we don't know, but some architects, until they've even noticed something very strange, they noticed that the Dome of the Rock, the Alcaz Fout and the Oximosque are on a center line.

And that applies to an architect, a plan of some kind.

It invested just something that stood there earlier.

Two of you, Saguiv, is the main champion, this is also a good friend.

Up in Balbek Lebanon, the Romans built a temple.

And as people who study how the Romans built temples, they had an architectural pattern that looked better from the top.

They had a temple, a rectangular temple, a courtyard, and then a polygon on a circle or structure called rotunda at the other end.

And they put their statues and stuff in this courtyard in between.

If you take the temple at Balbek exactly as it's sitting there, it is built around a hexagon, not an octagon.

But other than that, if you take that, go to the Ayilah Kaplan or Jerusalem and put it there.

It fits perfectly.

The situation that's there.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque has been rebuilt six times due to earthquake damage.

It's not exactly the same size anymore.

The Dome of the Rock is an octagon, not a hexagon.

But other than that, if it's perfectly, and that implies, then, that the temple, that the right over the statue of Hadrian is over the Al-Qas fountain, which is standing there.

So that there seems to be increasing evidence that that's the correct conjecture.

This temple, and Jerusalem was built by the same guy who built the one in Lebanon at about the same time.

And so Hadrian statues are right over the holy of holies it would seem, and so we think we know where that is.

And so this is what I'll call the southern conjecture.

The traditional view is in the middle, and as you're talking about, we have these three different views that will only be resolved, where we can get good access and take care of it.

This is an infrared photograph flying over the Dome of the Rock, and we notice that pentagonal structure underneath it, which implies that it was part of the Antonio fortress.

By the way, they give you a long answer to this quick.

If you take an infrared profile of the wall from Mount of Olives, we notice a couple of interesting things.

You notice where the Golden Gate, the so-called Eastern Gate is, there really isn't, there's a once, the first century gate there, but down where the temple is, there is behind that wall, infrared evidence of another entrance.

So that's the bread rock falls far enough that you could build the temple to where I originally stood without touching the temple mount, because it's low enough and altitude.

I'm not suggesting I do this, it's just one proposal that is kind of interesting to throw up.

Okay, one other thing I'd like to profile quickly for you, we studied Babylon when we're in Isaiah 13 and 14 in Jeremiah 1551.

There would never again be inhabited after it's destroyed, and buildings and materials not reused.

This is a picture of Babylon today. Here's an aerial photograph, this is a 55 miles south of Baghdad.

And in this aerial photograph, you can see Saddam Hussein's palace that is prominent, the original rubble of the tower of Babel.

And if you blow that region up larger, you can see the processional way and the original palace of Nebuchadnezzar.

And when you blow that up, it's been rebuilt, not completely, but it's, it implies that it is yet to re- to re- emerge to prominence in order to receive the judgment that occurs in Isaiah 13 and Jeremiah 50.

So this is interesting because it's on a horizon today. There are many people who think this is silliness.

We need to do a sit back and watch, do your homework and see what happens.

The museum where Nebuchadnezzar had the, you know, the things he took from Jerusalem 70 years earlier before Belshazzar had his party and even to the story.

Okay, the challenge. You and I are being plunged into a period of time about which the Bible says more than does about any other period of time in history,

including the time that Jesus walked the shores of Galilee or climbed the mountains of Judea. That's our preposterous challenge.

To challenge this statement, I ask you to do two things. Find out what the Bible says and find out what is really going on.

The more you know about both of those, the more you'll see a concurrent concurrence.

We monitor strategic trends. We publish a news journal and I have a website that tries to monitor strategic trends.

These are a few of them, the primary ones. They're all biblically relevant. They're also areas of intelligence gathering in terms of the changes occurring on our immediate level.

It isn't any one of them. It's all of them that orchestrate the view that we're moving to an horizon, an exciting horizon.

And so with that, let's do two things. Study your Bible and make the effort to find out what's really happening.

And you won't do that on the 10 o'clock news. You've got to do a little homework.

But with internet, I'll turn to press and other resources available to you. It's not hard to find out what's happening.

But the more you know what's happening, the more exciting it is because we are moving into the final climax of human history.

God bless you.