Jacob's Trouble: Why the Tribulation is for Israel, Not the Church

Hello and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. Good evening, and again, it's always good to see so many of you take the time to come apart and be a part of this television class, and so I'm going to ask you to be turning to Matthew 24 first for a moment, and then we'll go back to Daniel chapter 9. While you're looking that up, I want to welcome our television audience, and we distrust you'll be part of the class, which means you have to have a Bible. Follow these references with us so that you can see for yourself what the Word says and not simply lean on what any individual says, whether it's me or anyone else. And again, we'd like to remind you that we have classes in Macalester, Wilburton, Tahlequah, and Tulsa, and if you're interested in attending any of those as well as this television programming, we invite you to call our 800 number, it's toll free, it'll be on the screen from time to time. All right, now for those of you here in the studio, let's go to Matthew chapter 24 just as a quick review of our last program where we left off with Jesus telling the twelve the events of the tribulation. And in Matthew 24 then, verse 15, He makes a tremendous statement that gives veracity to the book of Daniel, a book that has probably been under more attack by the scoffers and liberals as any other book in the Bible except maybe Genesis. But here in Matthew 24, Jesus puts His stamp of approval upon the prophet Daniel when He says in verse 15, When you therefore, now remember He's talking to the twelve, and so He naturally is talking primarily to the Jew, because never lose sight of the fact that this great tribulation period, the seven years spoken of throughout all the Old Testament, referred to here by Christ, and then of course the road map of it is in the book of Revelation, that that seven year period is primarily according to Jeremiah chapter 30, Jacob's trouble. It's the time of Jacob's trouble, which means it is primarily God dealing with the nation of Israel after all these years of seemingly ignoring them, and yet not really, because always remember one of the greatest miracles of the whole human race is the nation of Israel. They should have been long gone, but here they are after over four thousand years of history, and more than one government, more than one empire, more than one king has tried to obliterate them, and yet here they are. I'm always reminded of a little anecdote I read years ago that during the time of Bismarck, I think it was, and the Prussian Empire, he was an unbeliever and almost an agnostic, but he had one of his top generals who was a very devout believer, and so one day as he was going down his inspections he came to this general and sneeringly says, General tell me, why do you still believe the Bible? And he says, tell me in one or two words. And the general without even a pause said, Sir, the Jew. And you see that is, that's the proof of this book, is the nation of Israel, and so always remember that God is not through with them, He's still bringing them back to the land, that's why we're seeing this mass immigration into that little postage stamp piece of real estate, because God is getting ready to once again pick up where He left off with His favored nation. All right, so now in Matthew 24 verse 15, he says to the twelve, When you therefore shall see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, that would be in the temple, whoso readeth, let him understand. Now let's go back to Daniel and pick up again those verses that Jesus was referring to, so we can tie it all together. Now as I was driving up here to Tulsa, I've been trying to just sort things out in my own mind, because this is not just a 30 minute sermon, and we can just go on to another subject some other time. We're trying to teach the whole scope of Scripture from Genesis through Revelation, and not in just bits and pieces, not as a shotgun approach, but we're trying to tie everything together. And I've known in my classes when people have gone through from Genesis to Revelation four, five, six times with me, every time they will pick up things that they'd never caught before. And so I used to apologize for reviewing, but I don't anymore, because every time I review I know that somebody picks up a little bit that they had either forgotten or had never actually tied into. So now in Daniel chapter 9, we always like to drop down to verse 24, where this prophet is again dealing with the nation of Israel, it's Old Testament, and for some who may say, well wait a minute, you mean that the Old Testament isn't for us? Of course it is. All Scripture, Paul writes, is by inspiration, and is profitable. So we don't put a line through any of it. But I always do maintain we have to always be aware of to whom was a particular passage directed. And so here again, Daniel makes it so plain that 70 weeks or 70 weeks of years, or if you happen to have a newer translation, many of them now put in 490 years, or 70 times 7, 490 years are determined upon thy people. Now God is speaking, of course, to the prophets, so who are Daniel's people? Well, the Jew, Israel, the nation. So 490 years are determined upon the nation of Israel, and upon thy holy city, Jerusalem, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and of course that all took place at the cross. That's where sin was paid for, that's where all these things came to its culmination. But, on the other hand, there's still some time to go on after the cross, and then the verse continues on, that it's to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up the vision of the prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy. Then as you come into the next few verses, and this is not an in-depth study on prophecy, we're still going to go back to Genesis just as quickly as we can get there, but as I mentioned last program or two, we've had so many requests from our television audience to just at least, spend a little time on end-time things, because we are getting so close to it all. And I agreed heartily, because when I look at how long it's taken to go through the first 24 verses of Genesis, I'm honestly convinced that we won't be here long enough to finish the whole book. We're going to be gone before it's all done. So anyway, we're just taking a brief overview, and not a detailed one. So then in verse 25 and 26, we see that these 490 years are broken down into a period that would be 483 years. Now maybe we can go to the board for a second, and always remember that Abram, the beginning of the Jewish nation, began at about 2000 B.C., and I guess we can put the cross about in the middle here. Now in this passage of Daniel, he is speaking of 483 years would transpire from the decree by the king, which we find in Nehemiah 2, Artaxerxes. And that decree was found to be dated in 445 B.C. I think the date, if I remember right, was March 14th. And we now know from chronology, and in fact it comes down, if you want to take a calculator sometime, all you've got to do is remember that a scriptural year is 360 days, not 365. It's 12 months of 30 days, or 360 days. But you still have to compensate for those 5 days and leap years. So you just punch it out in your calculator, even with our present day calendar from 445 B.C. And archaeologists have found this. This isn't just pulled out of a hat. From 445 B.C. until the year of the crucifixion, even as I calculated and as you would calculate it comes to within about one year. And there can easily be that much difference in calendarization and so forth. So always remember that the scripture is so accurate, nothing is guesswork. And if there's a discrepancy, it's ours, not God's. So anyway, he had determined that there would be 483 years from that decree of Nehemiah 2 until the crucifixion. But the total, remember, and we looked at this earlier, the total years that God was going to deal with Israel was 490. So if 483 took place up to the cross, that means there is 7 years left. And consequently, most Bible scholars and those who do a lot of writing will refer to this 7-year period as Daniel's 70th week. Sixty-nine were fulfilled at the cross, God's clock stopped, and the last 7 years are still ahead of us. They still have to be fulfilled. Now then, as you go into verse 26, it speaks of a coming prince. "...after the threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off," that's the crucifixion, not for Himself. He didn't die because of anything He had done. He died for us. And the people, now here's where you have to watch carefully as you read, "...the people of the prince that shall come." Now the prince that shall come is a small letter P. It's the reference to what we call the Antichrist. Christ is the prince. He'd be capitalized. But this one is a small letter, so it's a reference to the counterfeit Christ, the Antichrist, and it's the people out of which He will one day come that will destroy the temple. And we know that that was done by the Roman general Titus in 70 A.D. So that verse tells us that at the time of the Antichrist's appearance, He will have to come out of the geographical area that comprised the ancient Roman Empire. And of course, it's coming to pass right before our eyes. It's basically the European community, which by the end of this year they hope to be able to call a Federation of Europe or a United States of Europe. And so the geographical part of it is already in place, as someplace out of that revived Roman Empire will this prince make his appearance. Then in verse 27, we find what He's going to do. In verse 27, He is going to make a covenant or a treaty with Israel, that's the many, for how long? One week, seven years. Now there comes that 70th week of sevens, or that 483 to the 490. Now He's going to sign a seven-year treaty. So on that basis, I've taught that when that treaty is signed by the Antichrist and Israel, that puts God's time clock back in gear, which stopped back there at the cross, remember, and it has been an indeterminate number of years since then. But as soon as that man signs a treaty with Israel, God's seven-year time clock starts running. But now look on in the rest of that verse what's going to happen. And this is what Jesus was making reference to when He said in Matthew 24, when you see this desolation take place in the temple, then flee to the mountains. And here it is, in the middle of the week, in other words, at the end of three and a half years, He will cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease or to stop. Now the first thing you've got to ask yourself when you read something like that, well in order for Israel to have the temple worship and have it disrupted, what is Israel going to have to have first? Well, the temple. And so we know that one day soon, somehow or other, everything is going to fall into place that Israel will have her temple rebuilt. And we know from all of our news coming out of Israel that they've already got young men trained for the priesthood. They've already got all the garments of the priesthood hanging on mannequins. They've got everything ready, all they need is the temple. And that can go up rather quickly with the technology that they have today. In fact, I saw in the Jerusalem Post just last week, all of the damage that was done by the Scuds, and next to it was the picture of the same street today. You know what? Everything was rebuilt. You couldn't tell there'd been any damage. The streets were new. And they did that in one year. So just don't ever shrink and say, well, how can they build a temple and get everything going so quickly? It won't take that long. But anyway, in the middle of this seven years, the Antichrist is going to turn on that nation with whom he made this treaty. He's going to go into the temple, Daniel says, and he's going to cause an abomination. And he shall make it, the temple, desolate. In other words, he's going to shut it down, and the reason he's going to shut it down is he's going to force Israel to worship him as their Messiah. Now I think for the first three and a half years, Israel will enjoy that protection of this individual, and they will be so awed by what he's been able to do, that they will begin to wonder if he isn't indeed the real Messiah. But then at the midpoint of that tribulation, they will suddenly realize that indeed he is not the Messiah, but in fact he is quite the opposite. I was reading a book the other evening concerning the New Age movement, and you know, it's amazing how gullible people can be. I just can't understand it. And these New Age people are actually elevating Lucifer and Satan and his man, the Antichrist, as the one who will bring in the utopia that the world is looking for. And we know from Scripture that this man is not going to bring in a utopia, he's going to bring in the most devastating years that this world has ever known. Now come back with me again to Matthew 24, so we can continue on for just a moment and see how Jesus describes these seven years, but in particularly the last three and a half, because He's talking about the time from when the Antichrist goes into the Temple, here in verse 15. Now we covered this in our last program, I know we did, so we're just going to take a real brief look at it. He now instructs the Jew living in the area of Jerusalem and Judea at the time that all this takes place, to flee to the mountains. In other words, they're going to have to get out of the area of Jerusalem and Judea. And then I gave you a good indication of all the various types of people that will be in that fleeing remnant of Israel. Just briefly again, look at it, and let him who is on the housetop not come down to take anything out. I indicated that as probably someone who is retired and maybe fairly well to do, and he's got no real day-to-day responsibilities. And then verse 18, we've got the opposite. We've got a younger person who is a laboring person. He's working every day. And Jesus said, let him not go back to get his clothes, but let him flee. And then verse 19, you have the young women of a society, some mothers, some mothers -to-be. But you've got a whole cross-section here, men, women, young children, infants, and those that are about to be born. And then in verse 20, here's the reference that Israel will be back under the Law. Now that's another thing a lot of people can't comprehend, is that Israel is getting so ready to go back under the old Mosaic Law. Oh, not in its purity as Moses gave it to them, but as it was perhaps at the time of Christ. And if you know anything at all of Judaism, you know that it was pretty well adulterated, and that's why Jesus made such an ado over the temple carryings on. But whatever, they're going to go back under the Law, they're going to have the temple worship, and at the midpoint of that last 7 years, I haven't got it on the board yet, but at the midpoint of that 7 years, and we don't know when it'll be, because this is a question mark period of time, but we do know that this is going to be 7 years. And Daniel divided it. Jesus divided it. He said, "...at the midpoint, when ye see the temple desecrated, and the abomination, then flee to the mountains." Now then, let's go on, well, to verse 21, "...for then," in other words, from the midpoint on, "...for then shall be great tribulation," now watch the language, "...such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time," or that time, he's speaking of it in the future tense, "...no, nor ever shall be." Now I do a lot of reading, I think you all know that by now, and last night I was reading something that came in the mail, and I don't know what group put it out, they didn't have their name on it, I've got a pretty good idea, but they were maintaining, of course, that we're just simply going right straight on through now to the Second Coming, Christ comes, and that ends it. And they completely ignore verses like this. But Jesus here is speaking of a time of trouble that this world has never seen, as over against what this particular little booklet was saying, that if the book of Revelation ever was acted out, it was back at the time of Nero and some of those areas in the Roman Empire. Well now, what these folk don't understand is, that there has never been a time in human history, not under the Caesars, not under the Hitlers or the Stalins, there has never been a time like that which is coming after the Antichrist turns upon the nation of Israel. And so look what he says, "...there shall be great tribulations such as was not since the beginning of the world, nor ever shall be." Now let's go back and take a look at this in Revelation. In Revelation chapter 11, now again I would like to point out that throughout Scripture this seven-year period is always broken down into the two halves. In fact, you might want to even look at chapter 11, oh let's see, verse 2, Revelation 11, verse 2. Now we're not going to make comment on the verse per se, except to say that the last part of the verse says, "...for it is given unto the Gentiles, and the holy city they shall tread under foot forty -two months." How long is that? Three and a half years. Now skip down into the next verse, "...and I will give power unto My two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and sixty days." How long is that? Forty-two months, three and a half years. Now then, come on a little further into chapter 11, and at verse 13, this is the exact midpoint of the seven years, there's going to be a tremendous earthquake in the area of Jerusalem. Now I think you're all aware that we're already seeing a progressive increase in the number of earthquakes all around the planet. They've started about 1972-73, and they've been increasing ever since. Well all during this seven years, along with all the other plagues and the wars and the famines and pestilence, there's going to be tremendous physical upheaval, much as it was during the Flood. Tremendous earthquakes, tremendous volcanoes, tidal waves, you name it. The world, the old earth, is going to come under all of this. So in verse 13, at the very midpoint, the same hour, there was a great earthquake, "...and the tenth part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain a men seven thousand, and the remnant..." Now we spoke of that in our last program, you remember, "...and the remnant gave glory to the God of heaven." Now this remnant, of course, will be these Jews fleeing, as Jesus said they better, out of Jerusalem at the midpoint, when a lot of things happen. Now when I teach the book of Revelation, what I try to do is first and foremost delineate all the events at the opening, and then all the major events at the middle, and then all the major events at the end, and then fill in, because that's the only way you can really comprehend the book of Revelation. Now here at the midpoint then, there's going to be a lot of things taking place. The two witnesses that have been preaching there for three and a half years are suddenly going to be killed and laid in the street three days, and then they're going to be resurrected and taken up so that the whole world can see them go. That happens at the midpoint. The Antichrist is going to move his headquarters, probably from Western Europe, down into the temple in Jerusalem, defile the temple, set up his throne room there and his seat of government. Along with that, Satan is going to be cast out of heaven for the last time, and so he comes down with all of his... Now this all takes place probably in a matter of hours at the midpoint of this seven years. Along with it is this tremendous earthquake and the fleeing of the remnant of Israel. That remnant we just saw in Matthew 24. Older people, middle-aged people, working people, young people, men and women, boys and girls, they'll be fleeing out of Jerusalem to their place of safety. But they go out in unbelief concerning the Messiah. Now pick that up here in verse 13. They gave glory to God. Now I enjoy reading that Jerusalem Post just to see the attitude, and every week there's an article in there by one of the chief rabbis of Israel. And oh, listen, they're getting more religious by the week over there. I said religious. And so the rabbis are speaking of God and all of His glory, but who are they still rejecting? The Christ, see? And so they will not recognize that Jesus was the Christ. And you've got the same thing even here. They're going to be fleeing out of Jerusalem. They're going to give glory to the God of Abraham, but they still don't know the Christ. All right, then let's pick them up in the couple little minutes we've got left, across into chapter 12 and verse 5, where it says that, "...she brought forth a man-child," that is the nation of Israel, "...who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron," and of course He is, it's coming closer now, "...and her child was caught up unto God, and to His throne." That was the Ascension. And now verse 6, we come back to this remnant of Israel fleeing Jerusalem, "...and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared of God, that they," the Godhead, the Trinity, that's why it's a plural pronoun, "...should feed her there," out in the mountains, how long? 1,260 days. They're that same number again, three and a half years. And it just keeps coming up over and over. So there's just no way we can explain away the fact that when this remnant up here of Israel will finally flee to the mountains, and I think it'll be down here in the mountains of Moab, probably the ancient city of Petra, but for three and a half years God will protect them out here, even in their unbelief. Don't forget that. Now He's going to protect those remnant Jews who have fled from the area of Jerusalem, much the same way as He did the Jews under Moses in the wilderness for forty years. Now you all know what happened there. Their shoes didn't wear out. Their clothes didn't wear out. They never went hungry. They never went thirsty. God provided everything, and so He will again. Now if you want to pick that up, carry it across to verse 14. Verse 14, in the same chapter, "...and to the woman," that is this fleeing remnant, "...were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place where she is nourished." God takes care of her for a time, one year, times, plural, for two, for a total of three, and half a time, three and a half, "...from the face of the serpent." Now we've got to go back and cover that statement in verse 14, that she's given the wings of a great eagle. Go back quickly with me, time has gone again, to Exodus chapter 19. Exodus 19, and I think you're all acquainted, especially if you've seen Cecil B. DeMille's Ten Commandments movie, Israel did not sprout wings and fly, no Air Force came and picked them up like some wags like to think they're going to this time. But how did they leave? Well they walked, but look what Exodus says about it. Verse 4, God is speaking to Moses there at Sinai now, and He says, "...you have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bear you on what?" Now can you learn something from this? Whenever you see something in Scripture that you can't make sense out of, always go back to the place of first mention. And here it is, "...I took you out on eagle's wings, but they walked." And He's going to take them out as if they were going on eagle's wings. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a weekly Bible study. If you would like more information about the Les Feldick Ministries, a Bible study in your area, or about this program, write to Les Feldick Ministries, Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. That's Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. Through the Bible with Les Feldick is viewer supported, and your gift is appreciated. Thank you, and be sure to tune in next time, for Through the Bible with Les Feldick.