Views of Last Days’ Bible prophecies

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Contents:
- Jewish views on the Bible’s Last Days prophecies
- Christian views of the Bible’s Last Days prophecies
- Islamic views of the Bible’s Last Days prophecies
- Geopolitics of the Middle East and prophecy

Jewish people see current events in the Middle East as being significant because they’re bringing together various elements and trends in the region. Some Jewish and Christian scholars are suggesting we are on the way to the fulfilment of this prophecy.

#christianity #islam #judaism #lastdays #SignsOfTheTimes #prophecy

https://lightforthelastdays.co.uk/articles/views-of-last-days-bible-prophecies/

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00:00Now, there are a lot of interesting comments on this. Jewish people actually see it as
00:05being significant. Because of its coming together of various elements, with current events and
00:13trends in the Middle East, some Jewish and Christian scholars are suggesting we're on
00:17the way to the fulfillment of this prophecy. Now, there are a number of different interpretations
00:23of it. Some liberal scholars would say it's just a symbolic picture of the battle of good
00:28and evil, which should not be taken literally. I once discussed this with a, not a semi-Orthodox
00:36rabbi. He told me that it was about wars in the Persian Empire in the Bible times which
00:41have long passed, therefore does not have a future reference. I asked him which battles
00:46and he didn't really answer. Same time, the general Orthodox view is that it is a prophecy
00:52relating to an apocalyptic war at the dawn of the messianic age. There's a man in Israel
00:59called Rabbi Pincus Wilson. He's a very prolific writer. He's written over a hundred books
01:05on the subject and he identifies Ezekiel 38 and 39 and Zechariah 12 to 14 as pre-messianic
01:12wars over Israel. It takes a pretty similar line to us, except he doesn't believe the
01:17Messiah is Yeshua. According to the Orthodox Chabad website, that's Lubavitch, they say
01:23that the prophet Ezekiel chapters 38 to 39 describes a climatic battle that will be instigated
01:29by Gog and or Magog and be waged against Israel and God. And there's a rabbi in Jerusalem
01:37called Yekutiel Fish, prominent Jewish mystic, who stated unequivocally that the current
01:43war in Ukraine is a precursor to the pre-Messiah war of Gog and Magog. Rabbi cited the Midrash
01:51in Bereshit Rabbah, which dates, if you see kingdoms taunting each other, you can anticipate
01:57the coming, the footsteps of the Messiah. And he speaks about the armies which fight
02:03each other and then stop fighting each other and start fighting Israel. Says they will
02:07not succeed. This will of course be due to God intervening to prevent them from harming
02:12Israel. But you can see that there are Jewish people who are writing about this and saying
02:16that we're on the way to this being fulfilled. And of course there are Christians who are
02:21writing about it as well. A lot of different views on this subject. Perhaps the major ones,
02:28one expressed by Arnold Fruchtenbaum in his book The Footsteps of the Messiah. He says
02:32this event will happen before the event known as the rapture of the church. So the rapture
02:37of the church will happen first. Then the tribulation will come. But this battle will
02:45come before the rapture and therefore before the tribulation. In other words, it could
02:50happen any time now. It will set off the events which will lead to the seven year period at
02:58the end of the age and the day of the Lord. I get a magazine from Australia called Herald
03:04of Hope. They say that this event will happen in the first half of the tribulation period.
03:09In other words, after the rapture when Russian and Islamic forces invade the land of Israel.
03:16So you've got two options there, before or after the rapture. And finally there's a man
03:24called Joel Richardson who wrote a book called The Islamic Antichrist. He believes actually
03:29the rapture comes at the end of the tribulation. And he puts Ezekiel 38 and 39 as the same
03:34event as Armageddon. So in his view, this happens at the end of the tribulation is followed
03:40immediately by the return of the Lord to the earth and setting up of his messianic kingdom,
03:46Zechariah 14 and Revelation 16. Joel actually says this is an Islamic invasion not led by
03:53Russia, but by Muslim powers hostile to Israel. In his interpretation Gog, the leader of this
04:00alliance is the same person as the Islamic Mahdi, who according to Muslim belief will
04:05bring about the end of days battle and the worldwide victory of Islam. The Mahdi's objective
04:11in the war will be to restore full Islamic control of Jerusalem and end Israel, in particular
04:19of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the end Jewish control of Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock,
04:28which of course stand on the Temple Mount. In Joel's view actually Ezekiel's Gog is the
04:35same person as the beast or the Antichrist. He says he's a Muslim leader who comes probably
04:40out of Turkey. As we question some things about Israel, about Russia, this does raise
04:48itself as a possibility. I don't think it is Russia, I'll tell you in a moment. One
04:54thing we have to say is that since this event hasn't yet happened, we do have to be open
04:58to different possibilities of how it might happen. I'm telling you some of this. Okay,
05:05so let's go back and have a look at the current situation and see how it fits in and then
05:08we'll conclude with a word about the coming of the Lord. Now one of the issues, as I said,
05:16relating to Russia, Iran and Syria and China, is the fact that Russia today has been weakened
05:24by the Ukraine war. And it's one of the questions I used to wrestle with. I haven't really come
05:30to an answer yet, but the issue of Ukraine does raise questions about how prepared or
05:36able Russia will be to launch an invasion, bringing its troops into another part of the
05:43world. Ukraine war has actually turned into a disaster for Russia, with its army weakened,
05:48its morale and weaponry destroyed, its economy in trouble, and US estimates around 200,000
05:56Russian casualties in Ukraine, killed or seriously wounded, up to a million men have fled Russia
06:03to avoid being called up into the army, and the Russian army has been humiliated and exposed
06:08as badly equipped and guilty of war crimes against civilians. Nevertheless, I read yesterday's
06:16telegraph, said defeated Russia is still a threat to Britain. But he says here, it's very easy to
06:23look and think that the Russian military has collapsed and is in dire trouble. But it's
06:28uneven, said General Cavoli at a security conference in Tallinn in Estonia. And the
06:38ground forces are greatly eroded, he said. They've run into big trouble, but the Navy has
06:43lost almost nothing. Cyber has lost nothing. Space has lost nothing. How long would it take
06:48Russia to rebuild? Question is, how long would it take them to rebuild to do what? They're capable
06:54of doing things today. Now, there's all sorts of contradictory things being said about the state
07:00of Russia at the present time. But if it's right that Russia could rebuild, if it comes out of
07:05Ukraine, use its Navy, its Air Force, and also use cyber, try to disable Israel's technology,
07:15it's possible that Russia could be the leading force in this coming army. You also got Russia
07:22and Iran. One of the things which we're noticing is a deepening relationship between Russia and
07:27Iran. That's happening. There's Putin going to talk to the Ayatollahs in Iran. The Iranian regime
07:35itself is also in trouble, of course. It's got many people today rejecting the Islamic rulers,
07:42crying out to freedom from the imposition of Islamic tyranny. We saw at the end of the last
07:48year a rebellion against them, led largely by young people who are fed up with being told what
07:54to do by Islamists, whose main achievement since 1979 Islamic revolution has been to make Islam
08:01hated and feared by the majority. And of course, many young people actually want a secular Western
08:07style government and are open to Christianity and the Gospel. Presently, the Iranian regime
08:14seems to have contained the revolution, which erupted in 2022. It's only done this by suppressing
08:20the people, by imprisoning members of the opposition, thus making itself even more
08:25unpopular. What we're noticing, though, is that Russia and China are becoming more involved in
08:30Iran, and both have a strong interest in helping keeping the present regime in power. China has
08:37been giving them some cameras to put in Tehran and all around the place to pick out any troublemakers,
08:42pick out any women who are not making the hijab, and finding them on the spot so that they are
08:49basically controlling the people, with the kind of mechanism which China is also using to control
08:54its population. China's getting involved in these places. Now, if the Islamic regime should fall,
09:00or Russia should be defeated in Ukraine, it would actually make it quite difficult for this lineup
09:06to happen. But all things are possible. Now, one thing which you notice with Ezekiel is it implies
09:15that the leader of this alliance is going to send a lot of troops to fight in this battle. Another
09:23interesting little fact here about Russia and Syria. There's Mr. Assad, the president of Syria,
09:30with Putin. Russia came into Syria to keep Assad in power during the civil war. Got a long-term
09:39alliance. Russia needs to keep Assad in power because Russia has two warm water ports which
09:45it uses in Syria, one at a place called Latakia, one at a place called Tartus on the Syrian coast.
09:50It also has an air base at a place called Hymenium, and it's a very important strategic ally for Russia.
09:57Now, if you know your geography, Syria is just above Israel, so having Russia on the borders
10:02of Israel is interesting, to put it mildly. Russia was used to keep Assad in power. One of the ways
10:11they did it was to bomb the opposition into submission, particularly the city of Aleppo,
10:16the second city in Syria, which they basically reduced to rubble, as they've done in parts of
10:22Ukraine. Russia's tactic for winning wars is to bomb the places. Nevertheless, Assad has asked
10:32for more Russian soldiers to come into Syria. There's a Russian soldier, there's a bombed-out
10:37city in Syria. He asked Russia to maintain permanent bases in Syria. Russia's already
10:45supplying Syria with anti-aircraft missiles, SS-400s, by which it can control the airspace
10:52above Syria. Israel needs to get into the Syrian airspace to hit Iranian targets they want to hit
10:57there. It's recently hit targets in Damascus, which has not pleased either Assad or Putin.
11:06And you have this situation in Syria which is building up, which could bring Russia involved.
11:14Also, you have in Syria now Iranian and Turkish forces. So you've got Russia,
11:19Iran and Turkey already in Syria, just to the north of Israel. You've also got China taking
11:28a part in the situation. That's China making a peace deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia. That's
11:38just happened. Is that interesting? Is it significant? One of the things you're noticing
11:45is that China is taking a growing interest in the Middle East and a growing power in the world.
11:51China actually sees itself as a partner now with Russia. And Russia and China have their plan for
11:58a Russian-Chinese New World Order, which has other countries, including Iran and other nasty
12:05countries, involved in trying to make their New World Order. In fact, in this agreement,
12:11China is becoming the dominant partner, not Russia. And especially since the Ukraine war,
12:16Russia is losing power, China is gaining power. China is pushing for a peace settlement in Ukraine,
12:24proposing that I think the ideal is that Russia retains control of Crimea and the Donbass area,
12:31while committing not to take any more territory in Ukraine. Ukraine is then defended by NATO from
12:37any further aggression from Russia. Now, that is not happening at the moment. But Russia is actually
12:44basically subject to China in this situation. It's interesting. And Russia's weakness is making it
12:51more dependent on China. One of the things which if you, this is a bit away from the Middle East,
12:57as Russia has been expending 20,000 troops to get a town in Ukraine called Bakhmut,
13:03which they say is of no strategic value, is losing control over a vast area of Asia. The
13:10Central Asian republics, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, all those countries recently had a summit with
13:16China, which means that China is taking more and more interest and control over them. The
13:21far east of Russia, go to the end of the Trans-Siberian Railway, you get to a place
13:26called Vladivostok, which used to be a Chinese city. And now China is getting back into that
13:31and saying they want more interest, they're getting control of the port city. And you can
13:35see that China is actually making inroads into Russia's far east. So another interesting thing,
13:43but China is a dominant power. China is moving into all parts of the world, including the Middle
13:48East. And they made this deal with Iran and Saudi Arabia, very big deal. Saudi and Iran have been
13:56at loggerheads fighting Saudi, the leading Sunni power, Iran, the leading Shiite power, hostile to
14:04each other. Iran's actually hit Saudi with missiles, possibility of even conflict coming
14:12between those two countries. Now they've made a agreement, diplomatic relations again. And
14:18they're now beholden to China. Saudi is becoming more beholden to China as well. They're pushing
14:25to change the petrodollar system so that America will be pushed out and China will have growing
14:31control in that part of the world. Interestingly, China is also making proposals for an Israel-Palestine
14:36peace agreement. And China has an interest in Israel. It's got a lot of investment in Israel,
14:42remarkably. A few weeks ago, Barbara and I were in Tel Aviv. We were stuck in a traffic jam where
14:50they're making a new transit system. And we asked the taxi driver what was going on. He said,
14:54they're making this transit system. He told us that the people who are doing the work on it are
14:59Chinese immigrant workers. They've got thousands of Chinese immigrant workers in Israel, building
15:04up the infrastructure. Is that a good idea? Probably not. But China's involved in the Middle
15:10East, and it wants to be more involved. China, of course, is building up its army, threatening
15:16Taiwan, making a big investment in it, and has an eye on the Middle East. Is China part of the Kings
15:23of the East of Revelation chapter 16? I think so. So what's China? They're already involved. China
15:32also held naval drills in the last few months in the Middle East, in the Gulf of Oman, with Russia,
15:40China, and Iran coming together as a unit to assert some kind of power and to confront the United
15:47States and their power in a region which America sees as very significant to them. So you have
15:52Russia, China, Iran moving into that area.