What the Bible Really Says About the Times of the Gentiles

Welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a 30-minute walk through the Scriptures, teaching in-depth Bible truths that change people's lives. Now, here's your host, Les Feldick. And again, it's good to have everybody with us. And for those of you joining us on television, again, we want to welcome you. We want you to have your Bible handy and follow all these references with us. And now, for the last time, I'm going to announce Letter-Writing Month. Also, remember, we have a little booklet available if you just write and ask for it. Another thing we want to remind people constantly, if you're just recently coming into watching the program, we have all of our past programs from Genesis 1-1 up to the present available on the VCR videotapes. All right. Now, for those of you here in the studio class, again, you can be looking at Ezra. But I mentioned here two or three weeks ago about the spiritual wickedness in high places. And immediately, I felt I might have been misunderstood, so I qualified right away. I wasn't talking about our local pastors and men who are sincere and are proclaiming the Word. I'm not talking about that. What I talk about when I castigate some of these people, the false teachers and what have you, and when we made comment on the verse in Ephesians that we're up against spiritual wickedness in high places, I'm talking about the big-wheel scholars. And as I said in my last program, and I didn't have the magazine handy, I no more got home after that taping, and here was the Biblical Archaeology Review. And I don't know if it'll show on the screen or not, but the title of the article is, Did Re-Jesus Really Die on the Cross? Well, fortunately, I had seen a segment of a TV program interviewing the lady who wrote the book where she casts all this doubt on the Scriptures. And, of course, she is a, quote, unquote, scholar. And she is laboring down at the University of Sydney in Australia, and she is almost totally committed to studying the Dead Sea Scrolls. Nothing wrong with that, is there? But, you see, it's what they can come up with. Now, she has come up with the idea that the Gospels, especially, have been written on two levels. The one level is, for us poor nincompoops who don't know any better, and we have to have this kind of stuff to kind of enhance our ability to believe. But the reality of what they were writing was written on another level that only she is able to pull out of the Dead Sea Scrolls. And out of this, this is what she comes up with. Now, remember, this is not the view of biblical archaeology review. This is a book review, and they are certainly not in agreement with it. So, I want to make that very clear. But it says here, according to Thiering, that's her name, Dr. Thiering. Now, then, come down, she says she is helped by the Dead Sea Scrolls. The similarities that all scholars see between early Christianity and the Qumran sectarians suggest to her that the Qumran sect represented the form of Judaism out of which Christianity came. From there, she jumps to the conclusion that the famous teacher of righteousness of the Qumran text is John the Baptist, and that his opponent, now get this, and that his opponent, the wicked priest whom she conflates with the man of the lie, is none other than Jesus. Well, come on down, and I'd like to just read a little bit in another paragraph where she says that the virgin birth story is, quoting her now, written at the level of a miracle for those for whom the idea of a virginal conception had symbolic power. But at the same time, it is written in such a way that those who had special knowledge of the Essene marriage rules did not expect the supernatural would understand the real fact. In other words, she's poo-pooing the whole idea of the virgin birth, that in reality, Joseph was the father of Jesus. She goes on to say, of course, that, here I'll read it word by word, the story that he died on the cross is, quoting again, fiction for the babes. His post-Easter appearances were nothing less than, quote, the real flesh and blood Jesus holding an audience with his ministers. Now, the writer of the article says, we were meant to understand the text in this way when it is properly interpreted according to theory. Now, her book is deceptive in that it looks very thick, but in reality, it's very small in its basic content, and the rest is just bibliography and what have you. So the whole thing is a farce from start to finish. But anyway, this is what I'm talking about when I mention from time to time the false teachers and the spiritual wickedness in high places. You know, whenever I read something like this, and I want you to be aware of the verse in Romans, chapter 1, where Paul writes, thinking themselves wise, they became as fools. Now, isn't that perfect? And that's exactly what we're up against. Now, listen, I had a lady tell me a couple of years ago, she said, Les, she said, I'm beginning to feel a belligerent antagonism against my faith. And I thought maybe she was, you know, exaggerating a little bit. But listen, it's coming on strong. I'm having a lot of people in my classes, they're beginning to feel the Midwest are on the coast. Our Christian students are feeling the pressure in the university environment that to believe this stuff, you've got to be some kind of a nut. And now listen, here's where, again, we have to be concerned as Christians about our America and where we're going. I read an article by a university professor years ago, and I think he was at the University of Minnesota, where he then already, now it's probably back in the 60s, was advocating that if fundamental Christendom stands in the way of social progress, one of the ways to reduce their influence would be to commit them to insane asylums because after all, they are not mentally fit for our society. Now, you see, Hitler did that, Stalin did it, and now we've got people in our beloved America that are advocating the same thing. It's not that far away. Well, anyway, I'm not a prophet of doom and gloom. You all know that, but sometimes we have to be made aware of what we're up against. Now then, come back, if you will, to Ezra. You remember at the end of our last program, we saw the southern kingdom of Judah overrun by Nebuchadnezzar coming out from Babylon, and he empties the land of the Jews, and they end up in captivity for 70 years. Now, at the end of the 70 years, as we mentioned then out of Chronicles, Cyrus, the king of Persia, made a decree that the Jews could go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple and reestablish temple worship and reestablish their national entity, of course, under his sovereignty. Now, in Ezra chapter 1, verse 1, now, in the first year, Cyrus, king of Persia, the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled. Now, remember, he said it years before it happened. The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, the king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and put it in writing. And he said, The Lord God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he, the God of heaven, hath charged me with the responsibility now to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. So, he puts the proclamation out to the Jews who have been there now for 70 years. In fact, two things happened to the Jew in that 70 years. Number one, they were cured once and for all of idolatry. A Jew may be anything but orthodox, but he'll never be in idolatry. Now, you just think about it. You do not find a Jew worshiping Oriental religions. They may be agnostic. They may claim to be atheists, but they are not idolaters. They were cured of that once and for all. The second thing that happened to the Jew in those 70 years in Babylon, they found out that they had an acumen for business. That's where they learned it. In Babylon, they become, they became rather, tremendous business people. Now, you want to remember, Babylon was the beginning, was the source of our whole system of banking. Now, when I get to Daniel chapter 2, and we see all the various empires in that image that Nebuchadnezzar dreams of, and we see that all of it is consummated with the second coming of Christ. All of the remnants of those previous empires in Daniel 2, the Babylonian, the Mede Persian, the Greek, and the Roman, as well as the revived Roman, will all have residues of those previous empires with us today. And so, the residue of the ancient kingdom of Babylon that is part and parcel of our everyday existence in this very year in which we live is banking. The whole idea of interest and usury was really begun on that kind of a scale in Babylon. And so, the Jew just embraced that, and they take it back. But the amazing thing is, of probably at least hundreds of thousands, if not a million or more that were taken captive over to Babylon, precious few take up the offer to go back to Jerusalem and build the temple. And we pick that up in chapter 2, chapter 2, drop down to verse 64. Cyrus has now made it possible for any Jew that wants to go, go back to Jerusalem. Now, remember, it's a wilderness. It's barren. There's nothing there. It's going to take a lot of hard work, but it was still home. And so, he sends out the decree. Now, look how many take him up. In verse 64, the whole congregation together that goes back to Jerusalem out of Babylon, 42 ,360. Not very many, is it? 42,360 take up the offer to go back and rebuild the temple. Now, this is about 535, 36 B.C. Now, remember, Nebuchadnezzar came over here the first at 606, and then 70 years later, they are permitted to come back and begin to rebuild the temple. Then, turn over to the next book in your Bible, and that's Nehemiah. And somewhere down the road, we'll be coming back to Nehemiah chapter 2 when we get into Daniel chapter 9. But for now, I want you to get just a little view of all these historical events. Because they're so basic to understanding prophecy. Now, remember I said three weeks ago, I think, on our first program of this taping, that all prophecy is centered on the nation of Israel. There is no prophecy to the church. It is all centered on Israel. And so, if you really want to be a student of prophecy, you better learn and like history. Because everything is going to be prophetically based upon the history of the nation of Israel. Now, some years later, almost 100 years after Ezra led those 42,000 back and began to build the temple, there comes another group, also from Babylon, back to Jerusalem, under yet another king, and his name is Artaxerxes. And we'll pick this up in chapter 2, verse 1. Now, it came to pass in the month of Nisan, that is April, in the 20th year of Artaxerxes the king, that wine was before him and Nehemiah's writing, of course. And he says, and I took up the wine and gave it to the king. Now, I had never been sad in his presence. Wherefore, the king said unto me, why is thy countenance sad? Seeing thou art not sick, this is nothing else but sorrow of heart. Nehemiah says, I was sore afraid. Now, just put yourself in his shoes. You come before a king, and I'll tell you what, back in those days, kings had power. And if you insulted him just a little bit, he could just simply have you annihilated. So, I can see where old Nehemiah, when the king recognized that there was something bothering him, he was probably scared stiff, we'd say. And you know what he did? Now, here's the whole idea. You don't have to be in a prayer closet. You don't have to be on your knees in a church pew or at a church altar to pray. You don't even have to pray out loud. Did you know that? I hope you did. So, what does Nehemiah do? There he stands before that great oriental king, scared to death, and what does he do? The only thing left to do, he prayed. All right. And so, he said, I was sore afraid. And I said to the king, let the king live forever. Why should not my countenance be sad when the city, the place of my father's suffragettes lieth waste, and the gates are consumed with fire? Then the king said unto me, for what do you make request? And I can just see that king, and I can see poor old Nehemiah just melt. And now, what does he say? And so, I prayed to the God of heaven. Now, he didn't pray audibly in front of that king. So, how did he pray? Silently. Silently. Does God read our thoughts? You better believe it. The psalmist says it as plain as day. He knows our thoughts like an open book. Now, I know we can't add to Scripture, but once in a while, I can't help it. Like a book in large print. I mean, there's nothing we can keep from him. He knows our every thought. And so, he saw and heard Nehemiah's prayer. And so, as a result of it now then, Nehemiah is given permission to also go back to Jerusalem. But now, keep this little detail intact in your mind. Not to build the temple. They did that under Ezra. But under Nehemiah, they go back to rebuild the city wall. Now, I'm emphasizing that because when we get to Daniel chapter 9 in a few more weeks, the prophecy there is based on not the day that Ezra comes back, but on the day that Nehemiah comes back. And the reason I'm again emphasizing is because Daniel's prophecy from that day, which if I remember correctly was April, I think the archaeologists have actually found the decree, April 14th, something like 445 B.C. That's when Nehemiah got his permission to come back and rebuild the city wall. Not the temple. Ezra did that. But from this date until the coming of Christ into Jerusalem on what we call the triumphal entry, Palm Sunday, was fulfilled to the exact day from this date of Nehemiah. Not Ezra, but from Nehemiah. And so, now, I think for the next couple moments that we have left, let's go all the way up through the book of Job and the Psalms and the prophets and come to Daniel. Because, you see, Daniel is writing from Babylon while he's in captivity. And we're not going to get into the prophetic aspect of it, this program. I can see that already. But nevertheless, we're going to at least introduce you to the book of Daniel historically and hopefully prophetically. You all with me? Now, Daniel chapter 1. Now, when Nebuchadnezzar besieged and overran Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and he took the Jews captive, Daniel and his friends were just young lads, probably early teenagers. Now, the scoffers just love to scoff at the book of Daniel. And they maintain that some imposter wrote this long after the fact. That it's not what we claim it to be. And one of their main arguments is that Daniel writes a good portion of this book in the Aramaic language and then the rest of it in the Hebrew. But when you really analyze it, that's not a point of scoffing. That's a point of inspirational truth. Because here he's a young Hebrew lad when he's brought captive to Babylon. But just as if you picked up a young teenager today and sent him over to Russia after five or ten years in Russia and cohabiting with other teenagers over there, is he going to learn the Russian language? Oh, you bet he is. And so Daniel did the same thing. He had known his Hebrew, but he gets out to Babylon. And in the course of the instruction by the king to prepare Daniel and some of these other sharp young Jewish men for service in his government, Daniel learned the Aramaic language. And so it's just natural that he writes in Aramaic. Secondly, you have to remember that Daniel is a prophecy that is going to deal with the Gentile empires as they have contact with the nation of Israel. Now, that's why, again, prophecy is always centered on Israel. But it will include those Gentile empires that included Israel in their conquest. And that's why you don't read about any great Russian emperor or a German emperor. You don't read about the kingdom of Great Britain, because they were not centered with the nation of Israel. But these kingdoms, as we'll see them come on the scene in the book of Daniel, were all intricately involved with the Jew. And so they come into prophecy. All right. Now in Daniel chapter 1, just the first verse or two for today. In the third year of the reign of Jehiakim, the king of Judah, came Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord gave Jehiakim, the king of Judah, into his, Nebuchadnezzar's hand, as well as the part of the vessels of the house of God, which he carried to the land of Shinar, back to Babylon, to the house of his God. In other words, he took all those gold and silver and brazen vessels from Jerusalem, back to Babylon, and put it in one of the temples of his gods. Now, I think he got away with it because he probably didn't use them until you come to that great drunken feast of Belshazzar, when they brought in the vessels and used it for their wine drinking and their partying or whatever you want to call it. And then what happened? The handwriting on the wall. But nevertheless, understand that all these vessels from that beautiful temple have been taken to Babylon. All right. Now before we go any further then in Daniel, since this now is into the area of the Gentile empires, I want to take you to Luke chapter 21. Luke 21. We probably won't get back to Daniel now again until our next class. But in Luke's gospel, chapter 21, we have Jesus speaking. And he is probably addressing the disciples. No, it's the priests and the scribes and the elders. I'm sorry. But I'd like to have you come down with me to verse 20. Luke 21, verse 20. And Jesus said, When you shall see Jerusalem compassed or encircled with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let them who are in the midst of it depart out. Let not them that are in the countries or the area around enter thereinto. For these, Jesus said, be days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. There's that word again. And prophecy will always be fulfilled. Nothing can stop that. Verse 23. But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that are nursing in those days. For there shall be great distress in the land, that is the land of Israel, and wrath upon this people. And of course, he's speaking to Jews. Verse 24. Jesus said, They shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations. Now, there's the clue as to what he's talking about. But let's finish the verse, and I'll come back to it. And Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles. And what's the next word? Until. Now, there's that time word. It doesn't put a day on it, but nevertheless, there's coming a time when the Gentiles will no longer trod the streets of Jerusalem. But now, come back. He says, They shall be led away captive into all nations. Now, the casual reader will read this verse, and they'll automatically think, well, this is Armageddon. This is the return. And it's not. Here, Jesus is referring to the besieging of Jerusalem by Titus, the Roman general, in 70 A.D. But as he makes this prophetic statement concerning Jerusalem, he goes on to say that Jerusalem shall be trodden down, or shall be under the heavy boot of Gentile armies until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. Now, he says, They shall be led away captive into all nations. Now, the casual reader will read this verse, and they'll automatically think, well, this is Armageddon. This is the return. And it's not. Here, Jesus is referring to the besieging of Jerusalem by Titus, the Roman general, in 70 A.D. But as he makes this prophetic statement concerning Jerusalem, he goes on to say that Jerusalem shall be trodden down, or shall be under the heavy boot of Gentile armies until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. Now, the times of the Gentiles, of course, started back here when Nebuchadnezzar was a Roman general. Caesar first took Jerusalem, a Gentile empire. Jerusalem, for the most part, has been under Gentile dominion ever since and will be until Christ returns. Now we look at Israel tonight and we think, well, she's a sovereign state. The Gentiles aren't overlord in her. Oh, no. How much can Israel do without the permissive as well as the financial aid of the Gentiles? They wouldn't last overnight. They are still so inadequate and even though they've accomplished a lot, they are still under the control, basically, of the Gentiles. And that's the times of the Gentiles. Now I think I've got just a minute of time left. Go back with me, if you will, to Romans now real quickly. And in Romans chapter 11, we have another statement concerning the Gentiles, but it's in the exact opposite setting. The times of the Gentiles is that period of history where Gentiles are overlording the nation of Israel, and I call it the filling of the cup of iniquity of the Gentiles. They are filling it and filling it and filling it as they make that slide down, down, down. But counteractive to that, we have another group of Gentiles, and here Paul speaks of it in Romans 11, verse 25, where he writes, I would not, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery or this secret that's never been revealed anywhere in Scripture before, lest you should be wise in your own conceit, that blindness, a spiritual blindness for a period of time, in part, has happened to Israel, and again that time word, until. Israel is spiritually blind until a point in time when what's going to happen? The fullness of the Gentiles is brought in. Now what's the fullness of the Gentiles? The body of Christ. As Gentiles are being saved, they're being placed into the body of Christ. And when the last Gentile has been saved and the body of Christ is full, it's going to be taken out and God will pick up where he left off with his children. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick. Through the Bible is a partner-supported ministry. If this program has been a help to your study of the Scriptures and you'd like to see others enjoy the teaching, your support would be greatly appreciated. Write to us at Les Feldick Ministries, 30706 West Lona Valley Road, Kenta, Okla., 74552. Or call 1-800-369-7856. Remember, all programs are available in printed form, audio cassette, and videotape. Be sure to tune in next time to Through the Bible with Les Feldick.