When our spirits resonate with truth we will discover that there are many wonders beyond those specifically mentioned in the Bible. We are walking with God on a relational journey to discover more about Him and ourselves and what our role is in restoration. We have the Holy Spirit of Truth in us and with us as our guide. We have Jesus, the way, truth and life, in us and with us to disciple us. We have our loving Father in us and with us to Father us into sonship. Agape love should be what we use to measure and test everything against. If you don’t resonate with anything on the journey, park it and continue to pursue the truth with God directly. There are many things that I don’t yet fully understand cognitively but that does not necessarily make them wrong. There have been many things that I was convinced were true that I now realize were merely man’s opinions and ideas.
The 4 streams of thought that are converging into one mighty river are: Mystic sonship, Realized eschatology, Universal reconciliation, Energy frequency healing.
We are learning how to engage God, so we have been focused on the mystic stream. So, now we are going to cover the other 3 streams in these messages.
When people link Jesus’ prophecies in Matt 24 with the distant future rather than with that generation, they also link the prophesies of Gehenna / “Hell” with the future; and restoration is then irrelevant as everything will be destroyed and only restored by Jesus at His coming.
There are many doctrines linked to eschatology that can side track us from the goal of restoration.
Fruit of the poisonous tree of Brethrenism.
The second coming as a future rapture rather than a past event. The eschatological event that Jesus prophesied to occur in that generation was to Israel, to end the old covenant fully. This judgment was on an old, obsolete, fading system, not on people. There were many signs Jesus warned them to look out for to be ready. Jesus Christ announced in Matthew 24 that five specific things would happen prior to the destruction of Jerusalem and His coming. 1-There would be false Christs and false prophets,2- wars and rumors of wars, 3 famines, 4 diseases, and 5 earthquakes. These are called ‘the signs of the end times’ by Christians. Does the historical record mention these five signs?
Literal signs and figurative symbolic signs both have relevance. Spiritual and literal can be fulfilled in the same sign.
Sign 1: False Christs and prophets. Flavius Josephus repeatedly mentions large numbers of false prophets who deceived the Jews during the years before and during the Jewish-Roman war. They rejected Jesus, the true Messiah, and were open to deception. These are some examples: ‘Now there was then a great number of false prophets, suborned by the tyrants, to impose on the people: who denounced this to them, that they should wait for deliverance from God.’ (Flavius Josephus, Wars of the Jews, Book VI, Chapter V, Section 2) ‘And now these impostors and deceivers persuaded the multitude to follow them into the wilderness: and pretended that they would exhibit manifest wonders and signs, that should be performed by the providence of God.’ (Flavius Josephus, Wars of the Jews, Book XX, Chapter VIII, Section 6) ‘The need for this warning soon became apparent, for within a year of ascension, Dositheus the Samaritan rose up, who had the nerve to claim that he was the Messiah whom Moses predicted; while his disciple Simon Magus misled large crowds into believing that he was the ‘great power of God.’
Sign 2: Wars and rumours of wars.
The ‘wars and rumors of wars’ are also specifically described in the writings of both Josephus and Tacitus as well as various others.
This is what Tacitus wrote about the years right before the siege of Jerusalem: ‘I am entering on the history of a period rich in disasters, frightful in its wars, torn by civil strife, and even in peace full of horrors. Four emperors perished by the sword. There were three civil wars; there were more with foreign enemies; there were often wars that had both characters at once. … Besides the manifold vicissitudes of human affairs, there were prodigies in heaven and earth, the warning voices of the thunder, and other intimations of the future, auspicious or gloomy, doubtful or not to be mistaken. … Never surely did more terrible calamities of the Roman People, or evidence more conclusive, prove that the Gods take no thought for our happiness, but only for our punishment.’ (Gaius Tacitus, The Histories, Book I, January-March AD69).
About the many wars that broke out everywhere, Josephus wrote: ‘… a great multitude of the Germans were in commotion and tended to rebellion. And as the Gauls in their neighborhood joined with them, they conspired together…’; ‘… every part of the habitable earth under them was in an unsettled and tottering condition … They then over-ran all the region that had been subject to him; tearing and rending everything that fell in their way.’ (Flavius Josephus, Wars of the Jews, Book VII, section 2 and 3)
In February-March of the year 68 AD, Idumeans looted Jerusalem, killing thousands. Simon Bar Giora, a leader of the Zealots, destroyed Idumea in 69 NC. There were records of many wars and rumours of wars.
Sign 3: Famines Holford writes that the great famine predicted by Agabus in Acts 11:27-30 began in the fourth year of the reign of Claudius (i.e. 45 AD) and was “very long-lived.” The famine spread to Greece, and even Italy, but it was felt most heavily in Judea and especially in Jerusalem, where many died for lack of bread.
This famine is described by Eusebius, Orosius and Josephus. In Wars of the Jews, Josephus mentions various famines, which were so severe that mothers ate their own children! ‘Now of those that perished by famine in the city, the number was prodigious; and the miseries they underwent were unspeakable.’ Flavius Josephus, War of the Jews, Book 6, Chapter 3, Paragraph 4).
Sign 4: Infectious diseases- The fourth sign Jesus predicted were infectious diseases. “History distinguishes two major cases of infectious diseases that occurred before the Jewish-Roman war.
The first epidemic occurred in Babylon around 40 AD and raged so alarmingly that many crowds of Jews fled from that city to Seleucia for safety.
The other happened in Rome 65 AD and cost the lives of amazing numbers of people.
Tacitus and Suetonius also described that similar disasters prevailed during this period, in different parts of the Roman Empire. After Jerusalem was surrounded by the army of Titus, pernicious diseases soon made their appearance, to aggravate the misery and to reinforce the horrors of the siege. They were caused in part by the huge crowds gathered together in the city, in part by the rotten exhalations caused by the unearthed dead, and in part by the spread of famine. (George Peter Holford, The Destruction of Jerusalem, 1805).
Sign 5: Earthquakes.
The last element announced by Jesus were earthquakes. In early 68 AD a storm broke out, accompanied by great earthquakes: ‘For there broke out a prodigious storm in the night, with the utmost violence, and very strong winds; with the largest showers of rain; with continual lightnings, terrible thundering’s, and amazing concussions and bellowing’s of the earth that was in an earthquake.’ (Josephus, Wars of the Jews, Book 4, chapter 3). These things were a manifest indication that some destruction was coming upon men, when the system of the world was put into this disorder; and anyone would guess that these wonders foreshowed some grand calamities that were coming.’ (Josephus, Wars of the Jews, Book 4, chapter 3).
Seneca the Younger, a Roman philosopher, wrote the following in 58 AD: ‘How often have cities in Asia and Achaea been hit by a fatal shock! So many cities were swallowed up in Syria, so many in Macedonia! How many times has Cyprus been destroyed by this disaster! How often has Paphos become a ruin! We often received the news of entire cities that were destroyed in one fell swoop.’ (Henry Alford, The New Testament for English Readers, p. 163.) In addition, major earthquakes occurred in Crete, Smyrna, Miletus, Chios, Samos, Laodicea, Hierapolis, Kolosse, Campania, Rome, Judea and Pompeii (February 5, 63 AD).
Other earthquakes are recorded in Matthew 27:51-54, Matthew 28:2 and Acts 16:26. Jesus prophesied accurately… The historians confirm what Jesus had prophesied: it was a time full of wars.
Josephus said that ‘every part of the habitable earth under them was in an unsettled and tottering condition’. There were a multitude of false Christs and prophets performing deceiving signs and wonders. Epidemic diseases, famines and earthquakes terrorized the people.
These were days Jesus warned them to look out for and get ready for the armies to attack Jerusalem.
Tacitus concluded this was a time in which the ‘gods’ poured out their wrath on the people, exactly as Jesus and the apostles had said: it was time for God’s judgment.
They were reaping what they had sown, as is recorded in Matt 23.
Matt 23:34 “Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city, 35 so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.
Matt 23:36 Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. 37 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. 38 Behold, your house is being left to you desolate!”
Jesus Christ was not unreliable, like the critics say, He was totally credible. Futurists make Jesus a liar to Muslims and Jews, who understand the word ‘generation’. This raises many other questions.
What about the resurrection of the dead? Weren’t we supposed to get a glorified body that is free of any sickness and pain? Doesn’t the Bible say all Christians all over the world would fly through the sky when Christ returns, the so called the ‘rapture’? Wouldn’t Jesus destroy the planet with fire, and create a brand new heaven and earth? What about the gospel being preached to all of mankind first? What about the thousand year reign? Wouldn’t Jesus take residence in a stone temple in Israel? And so on…
We have been taught so many things that are supposed to happen before, during or after the return of Jesus Christ, that some find it almost impossible to believe that Jesus coming actually happened, during the first generation of Christians.
It is important to discern between popular myths and the real truth. What does the Bible really says about the “Second Coming” and what are myths?
Would it indeed be a global event? Would every eye all over the planet see Him at the same time? Would it mean the total destruction all of mankind and creation? Would all Christians secretly disappear and fly through the sky? Would all the dead physically crawl out of their graves?
When Jesus mentioned His coming, He said the following: Matthew 16:27- ‘For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will repay each according to his works.’ They would reap in that generation, not at the end of the world. That means He would come to judge; but remember judgment is a verdict passed on the failure of the old covenant, not on people. The apostles Paul, James, Peter and John all said the same thing:
2 Thessalonians 1:6-8 When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.’
James 5:8 Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand… 9 Behold, the Judge is standing at the door!
Revelation 19:11 Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war.
Throughout the Old Testament the coming of the Lord in judgment had also been announced abundantly.
Isaiah 66:15 For behold, the Lord will come with fire and with His chariots, like a whirlwind, to render His anger with fury, and His rebuke with flames of fire.
Jesus, His prophets and His apostles unanimously said that He would come to execute judgment.
The “Second Coming” would be a time of judgment.
Who or what would be judged at the “Second Coming”? To whom was Jesus speaking, when He predicted the judgment and His coming? Americans? Africans? Europeans? Asians?
We have to respect the original audience to whom Jesus was speaking was the Jews in Israel.
To whom was He sent? Who were the people He ministered to? To whom did He predict His coming? Who did He prepare for this event? Who did He warn to flee Jerusalem when they saw armies approaching? Jesus Christ was speaking directly to the first century Jews in ancient Israel. They were His audience!
The apostle John wrote that Jesus came to ‘his own’, which is Israel:
John 1:11 He came to that which was His own. Jesus Himself also made a clear statement that He was primarily sent to Israel:
Matthew 15:24 ‘I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ Salvation eventually spreads to all the nations of the world.
At first Jesus Christ was sent to Israel, to fulfil what God had promised to Israel. The judgment was on the Old Covenant and by inference on those who did not heed the warnings and stayed in Jerusalem.
When we read the Old Testament, we see that God constantly announced two major events:
Firstly, God predicted severe judgment over Israel, because they kept ignoring God’s will and followed demons instead.
Secondly, God promised the restoration of the remnant of Israel. They would receive forgiveness, healing and a new future of hope.
You can read this in books like Isaiah, Zachariah, Zephaniah, and so on.
The destruction of ancient Israel and the restoration of the remnant are the two central themes throughout the Old Testament. It is basically what every prophet prophesied about.
End of the Old and beginning of the New Covenant. The end of ancient Israel would come, “which was called the day of the Lord“, His day of vengeance, the outpouring of His wrath, the day of Jacob’s trouble, the end of all things, and so on.
The era of ancient Israel would come to an end, in a catastrophic way. Though your people Israel were as many as the sand on the seashore, only a remnant will return.
Isaiah 10:22 For though your people, O Israel, be as the sand of the sea, A remnant of them will return; The destruction decreed shall overflow with righteousness. 23 For the Lord GOD of hosts
Will make a determined end in the midst of all the land.
Destruction has been decreed, and it will be overflowing with righteousness. For the Lord Yahweh, Commander of Angel Armies, will complete the destruction he has decreed upon the whole land. The destruction would however be followed by the glorious restoration of a brand-new Jerusalem. This new Jerusalem would be very different from the old. While the old Jerusalem was characterized by wickedness, deception and rebellion, the new Jerusalem would truly be a place of righteousness.
Zephaniah 3:12-13 ‘I will leave in your midst a meek and humble people, and they shall trust in the name of the Lord. The remnant of Israel shall do no unrighteousness and speak no lies. No deceitful tongue shall be found in their mouth; For they shall feed their flocks and lie down, and no one shall make them afraid.’
When would the remnant be restored?
Whenever God promised the restoration of the remnant of Israel, He said this would happen when the so called ‘Messiah’ would come.
He would become the king of God’s people and bring the reign of God on the earth.
Therefore, Israel was looking forward to this Messiah, this Anointed Servant of God who would save them. The prophet Jeremiah called this coming Messiah the ‘branch of righteousness’.
Jeremiah 33:14-15 ‘Behold, the days are coming,’ says the Lord, ‘that I will perform that good thing which I have promised to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah: In those days and at that time I will cause to grow up to David a Branch of righteousness; He shall execute judgment and righteousness in the earth.’
God’s promises would be fulfilled through this ‘Branch of righteousness’ – or the Messiah. He would execute God’s judgment on the old, rebellious Israel system and bring forth a new people who would love God.
That’s why Jesus quoted this passage from Isaiah when He began His ministry: ‘The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, Because the Lord has anointed Me To preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives, And the opening of the prison to those who are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, And the day of vengeance of our God.’ (Isaiah 61:1-2).
It is critical to understand that Jesus was, first of all, the promised Messiah who was sent to Israel.
Only later would His light spread all over the world. That’s why Jesus only ministered within Israel. He was the Messiah of Israel!
He had been announced by the prophets of Israel and came to fulfil everything they had prophesied concerning Israel.
Jesus constantly preached directly at the Israelites, and He predicted judgment over them, because they had murdered God’s prophets.
That’s why Jesus said to His apostles that at His coming, they would judge Israel!
Matthew 19:28 ‘When the Son of Man sits on the throne of His glory, you who have followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.’
We must understand that Jesus was sent to Israel and what He prophesied was to Israel, not to us
Jesus only preached to the Jews. They were His audience. He predicted events they would experience. Israel would be judged and the remnant restored.
The Old Age would come to an end and a brand-new era would begin.
The message of Jesus: a new kingdom!
During His years of ministry Jesus announced a new kingdom of God, which was His good news, or the gospel. Jesus would make all things new! The proclamation of the brand new kingdom was His primary message:
Mark 1:15 ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.’
Jesus also predicted the end of the old era. He went into great detail about this time of judgment over a rebellious religious system, in chapters 23, 24 and 25 of the gospel of Matthew. Always directing judgment to the system and its leaders.
Matt 23:29 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, 30 and say, ‘If we had been living in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ 31 So you testify against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. 32 Fill up, then, the measure of the guilt of your fathers. 33 You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell? 34 “Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city, 35 so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. 36 Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. 37 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. 38 Behold, your house (temple system) is being left to you desolate!
Matthew 24:1-2 His disciples came up to show Him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said to them, “Do you not see all these things? Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down.”
Jesus said the Jews would receive the judgment of God. Why? Because they had murdered God’s prophets. Now they would reap what they had sown. Jerusalem would become desolate, and the temple would be utterly destroyed.
They broke the Old Covenant by whoring after foreign gods and were divorced.
The old covenant had blessings and curses associated with it.
Deut 28 describes the blessings and the curses that they agreed to
Deut 28:1 “Now it shall be, if you diligently obey the Lord your God, being careful to do all His commandments which I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. 2 All these blessings will come upon you and overtake you if you obey the Lord your God…”
Deut 28:15 “But it shall come about, if you do not obey the Lord your God, to observe to do all His commandments and His statutes with which I charge you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you…”
Deut 29:1 These are the words of the covenant which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the sons of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant which He had made with them at Horeb.
Deut 30:15 “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and adversity; 16 in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, that you may live and multiply, and that the Lord your God may bless you in the land where you are entering to possess it…” 17 “But if your heart turns away and you will not obey, but are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, 18 I declare to you today that you shall surely perish. You will not prolong your days in the land where you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess it.”
Jerusalem being destroyed, heaven and earth passing away, would be the end of rebellious religious system of Israel.
How do we know for sure the judgment of Jerusalem would indeed be the ‘coming of the Lord’?
We know this because of the significant question the disciples asked Jesus, right after He announced God’s judgment over Israel in Matthew 23. The disciples heard about all the horrible things that would happen to Jerusalem, and they asked Jesus:
Matthew 24:3 ‘Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your presence, and of the end of the age?’
To the disciples it was obvious that the destruction of Jerusalem would happen at ‘His coming‘ but they wanted to know when.
Matt 24:3 ‘When will these things be and what will be the sign of Your coming?’
Being religious Jews, the disciples of course knew the Scriptures where the coming of the Lord to judge Jerusalem had been predicted.
Rest is the key to restoration and revelation. Start to focus on your breathing, slowing it down, and start thinking of the name of God YHVH. Breathe in deeply and exhale slowly: Yod- Breathe in. Hei-breathe out. Repeat it several times so that your brain waves slow down to alpha waves. We have to be in a state of rest, total peace, to begin to see on the screen of our mind, our imagination. When I say imagination, I am talking about the reality of the Spirit realm of God’s kingdom. Invite love, joy and peace to flow in you, draw from the Spirit of the Lord so that you spirit is full of his anointing and presence, which then flows into your soul where it is illuminated and interprets what your spirit is sensing in union with God, then it flows through your body to create an atmosphere of rest around you. You are in a safe place. Start to think of an open heaven and set your desire upon it. Steps like Jacob’s ladder leading up to heaven. Hear the invitation to come up here. Shift the focus of your mind to think about heaven. Walk up those steps to the door. Now step through the veil into the kingdom realm. Jesus is standing in the doorway. Present yourself to Jesus, your High Priest, as a living sacrifice. Let Him take you by the hand. Ask Him to reveal restoration and the oracles of the Father’s heart Ask Him to take you into the eternal now. Ask Him to take you to the fire stones. Jesus, please take each person and show them what they need to receive the mandate for restoration. Go wherever He takes you.