Transcription
Uh, this week is the week that just flies. This is the exciting week. It's the day of the Lord you just heard about and I heard about 20 minutes of that, and we're going to see that. But how do we interpret prophecy?
And before we pray, uh, the Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew 24 gives his longest prophetic sermon. And in that sermon, he takes all of the Old Testament 28% that's about the future and Israel's judgment and salvation you heard about last hour, and he gives us a grid and puts it all in there. Matthew 24. Then that's in place. The apostles know about it, and Peter, and John, and Jude, and uh, you know, the writer of Hebrews, all of those fit in pieces into that grid that Jesus gives, and all that together is earth's final day.
Now, remember, the whole purpose of Matthew 24 and Revelation is that we know what's going on, that we understand where everything's headed, that we live our lives anchored to the Bible because we know what God has planned.
So, to start, I'm going to read to you Matthew 24. You all have been such a good class. Um, so responsive. I love watching you ask your questions. Uh, and I, I learned from Dr. August. I said, "How did you do that?" And he takes the same Keynote slides I have, but he strips away all the stuff I have underneath them. I love how he writes your questions on top of that. Maybe next year, if you slip in the back with the second-year kids and look in, I might be like Dr. August.
But Matthew 24, I'm going to read the first uh four verses, and I invite you to stand with me for the reading of God's word, and then I'll pray. Matthew 24.
"Then Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and his disciples came up to show him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said to them, 'Do you see all these things? Assuredly I say to you, not one stone will be left here upon another that shall not be thrown down.'"
Well, that got their attention. Their pride and joy was the temple of Herod. And it was like, well, it had one of the largest blocks of stone ever used in any temple in the world. A 5 and 70 metric ton stone. You can still see in Jerusalem today, one of Herod's stones that built the Temple Mount. So they were quite interested.
Verse three. "Now as he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. This a private conference. Can you imagine a prophetic conference with Jesus himself? And they said, 'Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?'"
And Jesus answered them. Verse four.
"So that's what we're going to do today. Let's pray. Father, I pray that you would help your word to give us hope and joy and peace in believing and boldness and confidence that we, that we are walking in step with your coming kingdom and that each of us are doing our part to serve you. That's really why you gave us revelation. That's why we have your word, and that is the joy of our salvation. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen."
And you may be seated. As you're seated, we're going to take a rapid journey. Okay, here we go. Watch out. It's coming. God gave us a map of the future. He introduced it in the Lord's Prayer. We covered that last week. "Thy kingdom come." Talking about the day of the Lord, what we call the tribulation, wrath of God. He outlines it in this section. And I just started reading. He says in verse 8, we'll see in a moment, there's going to be these these trends or signs, or he calls them birth pains. And then all of them are illustrated in the book of Revelation. So Revelation is the illustration of what we see Jesus describing in the book of Matthew.
In Matthew 24:2, Jesus said what I just read to you. And they said, "When?" And Jesus said the first thing in verse four at the bottom there, what I didn't read just a moment ago, "Take heed that no one deceives you." Jesus talked about the deceptive element. Satan is a deceiver.
Then he goes on in verse eight and says, "All of these are the beginning of sorrows." The Greek word *odin*, which means pain, birth pains in particular, the uh contractions that women go through in preparation for the birth of a baby. Verse 33, which is interesting. "So you also," he's still talking, he's still having his private conference on prophecy with his disciples. "So you disciples also, when you see all these things," that's why it's so important to study what Jesus said. He said that when you see all these things, know that it's close.
Verse 34. "Assuredly I say to you, this generation," what generation? "The generation that sees all these things." That's the context. "Will by no means pass away till, there it is, all these things take place." So Jesus is describing a point in the future when everything will be lined up that he talked about.
And you remember, and I'll show you once again, we are the church on earth. Uh, we know from the promises of God that the church on earth will be removed from the earth, taken to heaven, standing before the judgment seat of Christ as the tribulation unfolds. And that's what we're beginning right now from chapter 6 to 18. It's culminated with Christ's second coming. Christ comes to rescue the Jews. We already know that because Zechariah 12, 3, and 14 that I think Jared alluded to in one of his charts there today talks about that. Jesus comes as the chosen people of promise are in the final holocaust when the Antichrist has killed two-thirds of all living Jews. First, he herds them into one place. He surrounds them. That's what Armageddon's about. He's coming in like this to destroy them. He's ravaging them. It's very described in the book of Zechariah. And in that instant, the remnant, the third, look up. And they look up and they cry for God to save them. Kind of like the age-old, "Help us, Lord." And in that instant, that's where we see the second coming of Christ.
Well, as soon as that takes place, he sets up his thousand-year rule right there in Jerusalem. Uh, reconfigures the earth. But after a thousand years, humanity rebels and the Great White Throne judgment, and then we roll into uh what we call uh living in heaven.
Now, last week, one of you asked a question. You said, "Wait a minute. Wait, what? How do we know the red horse is what? How do we know that the white horse is it?" I said, "Next week it corresponds." And they said, "Oh, one of you." I don't remember which one of you, but I said I'll cover it next week. So, whoever asked that question, right here, this is Matthew 24:24:24. It's called the ET discourse. This is Revelation 6, the description of the tribulation. Jesus' framework is illustrated.
So when we were reading about the white horse, the red horse, the black horse, the *chloros*, pale green horse, the fifth seal, the sixth seal, when we were reading that, I was reading in all of these things because do you remember every verse of the Bible that you study has the weight of the other 31,000 verses pushing down on it? You see, we understand that Jesus gives the framework, but we don't understand the picture until we interleave all of these pictures from Revelation.
So in 24:4 and 5, he says, "Don't be deceived, false Christs are coming." That's the very first thing that chapter 6 talks about. In chapter 24, he talks about the wars and all the carnage and death. That's the red horse. In verse 7, he talks about famine. That's the black horse. In verse 9, he talks about death. That's the pale horse. And of course, it's expanded in Luke 21 and in other spots. And then he talks about martyrdom, that they're going to deliver you up. And that's the fifth seal, all those martyrs.
And then in Luke 21, and we'll see this uh deeply in a couple moments, he talks about the signs unfolding and the whole world seeing them and being fearful. So basically, if we were to summarize what Jesus says in Matthew 24, here are the trends that will come.
First, there'll be global deceptions, and they're going to get very believable. Then they're going to be global diseases. Only the global diseases are not going to be localized anymore. They'll become global and very lethal. Global warming. He talks about in Revelation, he talks about the sun scorching, the water uh disappearing. He talks about this this idea of dying of thirst. So not only does water disappear, but people are dying. They can only go four days without water. There's going to be mass starvation.
Now, it's very fascinating to think about. We've come to a place where people don't have control over food anymore. We've given it over to, well, in much of the world, we've given it over to huge commercial farms. And of course, we have these genetically modified seeds that only the farms can supply. And like we saw yesterday, if you were noticing what happened in the world, the whole Iberian Peninsula, the power went off. You say Iberia? Yeah. That's Spain and Portugal and the connected part of France. All their electricity went off. All the trains stopped. All the airports closed. All the subways. People were trapped underground. People were trapped in trains, in tunnels. People were trapped in elevators. All their electricity went off.
Now, they say they're not sure what happened. I mean, this morning, what they said is there was a 15 billion gigawatt hour, you know, the 15 gigawatt hours of electricity dropped in their grid. Uh, was it a cyber attack? We don't know. But what we have is we have a world that has become so interconnected that when the electricity goes off, the water stops. When the electricity goes off, you can't do anything. You can't even get your food. You can't get your air. Uh, global conflicts are going to get bigger and deadlier. In just a moment, we'll talk about just the power of one artillery shell that is being launched in Europe.
Global hatred for Christ is going to get more personal. It's going to be uh through global tracking. It's going to become very clear who is who and where they are, which is what your cell phone is all about. Remember I told you last week that the only way my cell phone works, and I have only two bars right now, is I'm triangulated between three cell towers, and they know right where my phone is. So they can send the packets of information. That means I have been triangulated. My location is known.
So basically, Jesus said all of these trends are going to have birth pain characteristics. They'll become more visible, more frequent, more intense, and their impact will be felt.
Now, let's just run through. Let's start with Jesus' favorite Old Testament prophecy prophet. This is the only prophet Jesus names by name in Matthew 24. He doesn't name any other Old Testament prophet. He starts quoting from Daniel and he says, "As Daniel..." and then he starts talking about the Antichrist and all that that is coming. Let's just talk about what Daniel said.
"But you, Daniel, this is uh the angel speaking to Daniel, 'Shut up the words and seal the book till the time of the end.'" Till the time of the end. What is the time of the end characterized by? First thing, "Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase." Many shall run to and fro. I'm sure Daniel thought things were really hopping in his day in Babylon. Let's look at the time from Daniel till now. In fact, let's predate Daniel uh by a few hundred years, by 300 years. Do you remember Jonah fleeing from the Lord? He got on a boat 3,000 years ago that was not dissimilar to the one that Paul sailed around and did his missionary journeys on, which was very similar to the boat Christopher Columbus came at the behest of the Spanish uh government searching for the new world, very much like Benjamin Franklin sailed trying to get the French to help us during the revolution. And then everything changed just over 200 years ago. The invent- no longer do we have wooden boats powered by air or paddles. All of a sudden, the steam engine rapidly marks the quick technological transformation of travel. And right after the steam engine came cars, and planes, and rockets. And now this year, unless the tariffs affect it, four billion people are going to fly on airplanes. Four billion. So we have the two and fro travel like never before.
Daniel also said knowledge would increase. Well, I have in my pocket, and so do you, a supercomputer. This supercomputer- describes just the camera in it. Okay, so just the camera has a chip with 19 billion transistors, a 16-core neural engine capable of 35 trillion operations per second, aka teraflops. What's that? That's a computing term. Now, we're not quite into quantum, you know, computing, which is off the charts. But for just a perspective, my phone has more power than any computer had in government labs just a little bit more than 24 years ago. Only buildingiz computers that were basically in the US with the military and a few research facilities could do teraflop, trillions of operations per second computing. Now, just my camera does that so that I can have, you know, all these different ways I can process my my photographs. We've gone from nanometer architecture to zettabytes to soon to be quantum computing, which remember the idea of the multiple states uh all at once operating, which will greatly exponentially expand computing.
So if you take Satan who wants to deceive the whole world, and you add artificial intelligence, which is machine learning, and you add them together, you have artificial truth coming. Now, let me show you what I mean by that. "AI Hustlers Stole Women's Faces and Put Them in Ads, and the Law Can't Help Them." That's Bezos's uh Washington Post right there. Uh, and and within just a few seconds of footage, a scammer can now combine video and audio using tools from companies like HeyGen, 11 Labs to generate a synthetic version of someone's voice, swap out the sound on an existing video, and animate the speaker's lips, making the doctored results even more believable. I mean, this is common. In fact, it's almost humorous. It's just people play these all the time on make these and play them on TikTok and Facebook Reels.
What did Jesus say? Matthew 24:24. "False Christs, false prophets will rise, show great signs and wonders, and deceive, if possible, even the elect." It's going to be that you're going to see people you know and trust. I don't know who your generation is going to look back at as someone you know and trust, but our generation, we trusted people like Billy Graham. I mean, preach the gospel to more people than anybody had in history. Can you imagine a video of Billy Graham surfacing where he says, "I just want you to know..." and he starts saying anti-Christian, false, satanic lies. And it's his voice, his intonation, his lip movement. I know we'd say, "No, that's not true." Well, that's just the beginning of where this is going.
Uh, do you remember in Acts 17, the people in Berea? They're famous. Acts 17:11. "These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, where Paul just walked from, in that they received the word with all readiness, and they searched the scriptures daily to find out whether these things, what things, what Paul said." The writer of half the New Testament, the preacher that planted churches that all of us are downline from, they checked him. They fact-checked him against the scriptures. You see, God says total deception is coming. Only the scriptures can be trusted.
Now, there is one more thing, and and uh, I do these updates on YouTube. I love doing them. And I have this little portable studio, and everywhere we travel, I update. Did you know there's a time coming when through cloud architecture of all the information stored on the cloud and the artificial intelligent machine learning that we have, that you can alter documents that are in the cloud now? We all know that. We call it being hacked. Can you imagine if you only have an electronic version of everything? Jared and I were just talking about that up here. He said he keeps his notes in case there's some, you know, meltdown of the system or the power goes out, where he can continue teaching without the electronics. Can you imagine if your only copy of the Bible is in the cloud? What will happen when it starts getting changed?
Now, they've already done this with hymns. The the National Council of Churches and all of the other major global religious organizations don't like some of the words, you know, uh, um, let's say John Newton, "Amazing Grace," Newton, remember "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me." You can't even find that in hymn books anymore. They've altered the words because they don't like these oppressive terms like calling humans wretches. So what happens when all that gets doctored by artificial truth? Well, Paul said this, "Test everything, but hold fast to what is good."
The next trend is going to be the explosion of global weather gone wild. There's always been bad weather, but look what it says there, "during this time of signs in the sun and the moon and the stars, and on the earth." Now, let's just get to weather. "Perplexity, the sea, the waves roaring." Well, they've always roared. But look what Jesus said is going to happen. "Men's hearts failing." You know what Greek word that is? *Opsuxo*. *Suxo* is like psychiatrist. *Suxo*, you know, it's your spirit, it's the inner person. *Op* means out. When you put *op* and *suxo* together, they didn't know how to translate it. They said, "Men's hearts will fail." What it means is their life will pop out of them. What is this talking about? People are going to see what's coming on the earth, and it's going to make them so afraid they're going to have panic attacks that morph into death events of heart attacks, heart failure.
Now, let me just, I mean, this was impossible in the old days. Look at this. This is one satellite view. We were on our way through Iowa last year, headed to Word of Life to go to the board meeting, and this thing actually preceded us. We were on the back end of it, coming. Bonnie and I drove for miles, and the corn fields were absolutely for miles. The corn fields were all flat, and everything was torn and twisted, and the highway signs were gone. We thought, you know, the atomic bomb had come through. No, it was a dericho, a straight-line wind. The satellites caught this, and people were so aware of this event. Never in history have people known the weather events like this. It's because of global communications.
See, it it says in Revelation 11 that we're going to see tomorrow, that people from the tribes and tongues and nations, which is always code for everybody, are going to see their dead bodies for three and a half days because the Antichrist doesn't allow the two witnesses to be buried. And "those who dwell on the earth," you know what that means? Every living human. Those are how else do you describe everybody? The dwell on the earth ones. Now, the dead ones are under the earth, but the people that are alive will rejoice over them, make merry, and send gifts to one another. What is going on here? Everybody is seeing this event happening live.
Now, there's a clip of yesterday at 4:30 p.m. The green are the Facebook broadcasters. They're doing live. Now, this is just Facebook. This is not all the other, you know, the TikTok-ing and everything else. I just, this one was simple to get. The blue are all the Facebook watchers. So, there are the broadcasters and the watchers. I mean, that's just about everywhere that the majority, the vast majority, the multiple billions of people that are online yesterday afternoon were all online watching and posting and everything. And guess what? He is making it more so. Old Elon. There are his 8,000, and it goes up almost every week, more satellites. And he now is offering phone service so that your cell phone will never be out of touch. Never. You'll have a phone like, you know, Jason Bourne or whoever does when they get out their sat phone, and they can talk anywhere on Earth, even whispering, you know, in the middle of some remote spot. He is allowing everyone to connect to his satellites while he's offering that service for a fee to totally connect our world.
Well, there's also another thing. Jesus talked about is nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and pestilences. That's how Luke captured Christ's word. We already talked about this. Remember the guy taking a shower and got a little bit of amoeba in his nose? There there are pestilences waiting to mushroom into global pandemics. I mean, here in America, we have this wasting uh deer disease. They call it the zombie deer disease. It's getting the elk where we live in Colorado. And the elk just walk around and don't know what they're doing, and they ram into things with their massive, you know, they weigh like 12,500 lb, at least 1,200, some of them. We have a hundred on our lawn often in Colorado. They're just, they make the house shake when they run, the hundred of them. Can you imagine what they have when people get this? How about what's going on right now? Bird flu is evolving, and attempts to stop it are not working. You say, "Why does that matter?" Because the lethality of these diseases makes COVID look pale. Here's COVID right there. Between '21 and '24, the 21st-century COVID pandemic only touched 1.2 million people with death. Look, look at what is possible. And can you imagine with the four billion people flying, how fast stuff can spread?
And then the Bible also talks about a global digital money. Notice what this says: "You cannot buy or sell except with the number of his name." That's the one everyone is so concerned about. Is this a tattoo? Is it a barcode? Is it an implanted chip? That's not the important thing. The important thing is you can't buy or sell without that number. Did you know we're already there? How do you think you wave your phone? I was sitting, coming back from Boston yesterday at Chipotle, and this guy just walked by, went, he just walked by like that with his phone. You know, no one thinks that was unheard of three, four years ago that you can, that you can electronically move your money around. I, I mean, I love this headline. "Facial Recognition Will Replace Your Keys, Your Passports, and Your Tickets Within 5 Years." Already has in China. You don't carry tickets in China. It's facial recognition. That's how they do their social credit system. If you jaywalk here in town, where you live in your hometown, there's a billboard and it says, "Billy jaywalked downtown." You know, tell him that's not good back home to people that know Billy. Well, it's worse than that. If you break a rule in China and you haven't settled it with the government, if you walk up to get on the train, it goes, "You can't ride the trains until you settle your score with the government." You don't have a ticket. It knows who you are, your face. You can't fly an airplane if you haven't settled your score. You can't. You understand what I mean? They totally use facial recognition. They have cameras. You should see the cameras. When Bonnie and I are in Shanghai or in Beijing, there are so many cameras. They have you from every angle, and they know, they're tracking everyone. And as soon as we get the quantum mechanics or the quantum computing, it will know where every phone and every person is, plus every contact in your phone, and who you're going to see in live real time. Our computers are not quite able to compute at that speed yet, but within the next few years, you read Wired magazine, they can.
Okay, how about this one? I love Wall Street Journal. "Amazon Wants Your Palm. The TSA Wants Your Face. What Saying Yes Means." We were at Shepherd's Conference in March in Los Angeles. We went to Whole Foods. I was the only one that stood in line for a person. Everyone else took their stuff in the bag, set it down, waved their palm, and walked out. The chips that were on every label, everything in their bag was was noted by the computer. They wave their palm and they walk. I mean, they don't even, they just sit and go like this and walk out of Whole Foods. There's no line, no wait, no unbagging, no embarrassment of everybody looking at what you bought. It's just where we're all going because we all want comfort and convenience. And the Bible says that day is coming.
How do you like the Elbo company here? They have a satellite capable of spying on your every move. It's set to launch this year. And that satellite was created by this startup company. They can read your license plates. They can zoom in on your face from space. And it's raising privacy concerns. That's a commercial venture. Just wait till the Antichrist is running it. And you cannot buy or sell unless you have authorization from him. That's what the Bible said is coming.
Uh, the weapons of uh global wars, human death and destruction. Just for a second, think about what this verse says. Jesus said, "There will be great tribulation." That's the day of the Lord. "Such as has not been since the beginning of the world to this time." It's the ultimate. It's the final. It's his wrath that he's been waiting and patiently holding. "And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved." Jesus talked about a time when humanity was going to have the capability of mass destruction. Um, we know about it today because there's so much protesting it. Nuclear weapons is one of the things that is available today. Uh, you know, America, we have 6,550 operational ones. We have a lot more than that. But the SALT treaties, we decommissioned, we still have them all. Like 30,000, enough to melt all the surface to glass of all the continents that we have, that's just us. Russia has just as many. Well, no, a few, 300 more now. North Korea, China, India, Pakistan. Whoa, India and Pakistan. Yesterday, Pakistan, their P, their Secretary of State, comparable to Rubio, said to India, "All 120." They said, "So maybe they have 25 that aren't working right now, but Pakistan said, 'All 120 of our missiles are targeted on you guys.'" India, can you imagine such a time in history that Pakistan is threatening to to nuke the largest population country? China just got surpassed by India. And and we're at a time where they're fighting over, well, you know, Kashmir. There was a terrorist that killed 30 people in India from Pakistan. India controls the the Himalaya mountain water runoff from all the ice and snow, and they're going to divert it to all go to India and not go to Pakistan. And 65% of Pakistan's population depends on the Himalayan waters for all their crops and all their water. So we're talking about this is survival. Well, that's amazing. We all know that. But look at this. This is what the Ukrainian invasion has started. This is a picture of what one artillery shell. An artillery shell. Artillery shells are only this high. One of them America has developed has the potential to be exponentially more than than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And and we're we're warning Russia that if you if you keep going into Europe, this is what NATO wants. They want America to provide the nuclear umbrella. Now they're worried about it. So they're all developing artillery shells that can do that. This is not missiles. This is not rockets. This is one artillery shell. There, they're carrying it right there. And look what it does. It just. Well, Jesus said, "If we didn't stop them, they'd mutually destruct each other." That was impossible. In the time of the Bible's being written, what speed could you kill people at? The speed you could chase them. All you had were arrows, spears, swords, and flung rocks. And so you could kill someone that was within an arm's reach of you with your sword. A little bit further with your spear, or if you threw it a little bit further, you know, if you shot an arrow, and maybe a little bit further if you catapulted a stone from a siege engine. But while you were catapulting that way, everybody ran that way. While you were sorting them this way or riding your horse, you know, kind of like gladiator, they would be running that way. You never got them all. Never. Now, you can't run. Uh, the those artillery shells, one artillery shell would kill people multiple stories underground because the the blast vacuum would suck all the air and collapse their lungs if they were down below ground, unless they're in a totally sealed reinforced bomb shelter, which most people don't live in. And so instantaneously, there's danger for the whole world.
So, by the way, where is America in prophecy? You'll hear that all the time. People wonder that. Well, personally, remember one of the times I read through the Bible, I looked up every prophecy. I can't commend to you more. Take the time if you're going to be in Bible teaching or Bible counseling or Bible communicating ministry, you ought to cover the main areas you love to know about personally, like everything the Bible says about marriage, or family, or dating, or money, or prophecy. Prophecy. So I read 72 hours, highlighted every prophecy in the Bible, everything that was prophesied, every every detail. It gives you a complete view of everything God says on something. After reading the Bible a hundred times, I still haven't convincingly seen the USA described or portrayed in any prophetic event in the future.
So what happens to America? Well, think about the America you're living in today. Uh, the first thing that could happen is we align with the Antichrist revived Roman Empire of the West. Very possible. Did you know we're we're actually part of Rome? In that the Roman Empire basically set up the structure of Europe, and every piece of Europe has had its time of ruling the world. You know, the Portuguese for a while had massive colonial. So did the Spanish. You know, the British were the largest empire the world's ever known. The sun never set on the British Empire. And one piece of Roman Britain was over in the new world. That's us. So, we could just go back to alignment with them. Doesn't look like it this week, but you know what I mean. Uh, things change fast.
Or you know what would really wipe out America quickest? If all of a sudden the dollar is worthless because of our 34 trillion dollar we owe everybody in national debt. You know, another thing, Russia stops threatening and actually launches some of those Sarmat missiles we saw last week. That one missile could wipe out all of France. They have those things, you know, mobilely deployed in tunnel systems that are hundreds of miles long.
How about this? How about a low-tech nation like North Korea or Iran takes one container ship, and inside one container, they have a Scud missile, which is a low-tech missile, and they get out there, and they're waiting at the Baltimore port. I mean, there have been movies about this, you know. Uh, or they get outside of Los Angeles and they just park there, and they open up their one container and take their Scud and put it up at about 80 miles and just blow up an electromagnetic pulse. Depending on the altitude, if they get it at 150 miles, they could knock out all electric everything in America. That's what EMPs are. It only takes one. That's how vulnerable we are. And your phone wouldn't work. The lights wouldn't work. The water wouldn't work anywhere. We're totally dependent on electricity. EMPs could wipe out for five years America. And by then, who would be left to do anything with no sewer, no water, no air conditioning, no electric, anything. Amazing.
Or what we've seen for the last three years, this mega drought. I mean, right now, we're poised to have the worst summer fires ever in history. We already have fires in New Jersey. We have fires in Long Island. We have fires everywhere, all over the world. Can you imagine? This drought keeps coming, and I mean, it's it's amazing. I don't know what happens to America, but I do know what happens to the world.
There is an explosion of peace, prosperity, and materialism. This is what Paul said. See, the Antichrist rides in bringing peace and solutions. He's the one for when they say "peace and safety." That's what the global ruler brings. You know, he's going to solve the pandemic thing. He's going to solve the Israeli-Islamic thing. He's going to solve the, you know, Russia-Ukraine thing. He's going to solve America's all of our social problems and everything else and pollution. And, you know, he comes proclaiming peace and safety, and then sudden destruction comes. So the first thing that launches the tribulation is the rise of this peacemaker.
Zechariah 12 tells us that at the end, that Armageddon is prompted by this. "On that day I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples; and all who lift it will surely hurt themselves, and all the nations of the earth are going to gather against Jerusalem, the Jews." Universally, right now we've got America, Britain, somewhat France at times. You know who gave Israel their atomic weapons? France. France helped them develop them at Dimona because the French wanted to help the Jews. The British want to help the Jews. America, we're spending tens of billions each year helping the Jews in Israel. The day is coming when all of the earth, there's going to be nearly universal global hatred for Israel.
Now look at what you experienced last October. You all remember this? Iran strikes uh hundreds of ballistic missiles. Uh, US deterrence fails to stop. The world is on the edge. It's severe. Wow. You're living in a time where the Bible says in Ezekiel 38 that the global fight against Israel is going to be led by Persia. Oh, you don't know Persia? Well, they changed their name from Persia to Iran in 1947, but but they're still known as the Persians, and that's who God said is going to be the arch-enemy. And that's in the news every day.
Matthew 24:9. "They will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake." Who's that talking about? The Jewish people. That's who he was talking to. He says, "When you see Jerusalem surrounded, it's the people that live there." He said, "You're going to see all these events, Jewish people, you're going to be hated by all nations." Well, you know what this is? This is the Washington D.C. rally. It was the largest march supporting Palestinian rights in U.S. history. A half a million in D.C. a year ago in January. Unbelievable.
But the good news is this. There's going to be an explosion of global evangelism. "The gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come." And the gospel must first be preached to all the nations. When those words were written, when those words were spoken by Jesus, no human even knew where all the nations or all the peoples were. Uh, they, there are so many, we call these stone-age civilizations that are scattered in the valleys of Uraniia and, you know, in the remote valleys here and there. It wasn't until modern times, especially with the airplane, they could finally fly, and they found so much stuff they didn't even know about.
The IMB, International Mission Board of the Southern Baptists, they made this map of the world, and basically, they have located where all the unreached people groups are, and this has become a target. I mean, Wycliffe Bible Translators, and, you know, The Seed Company, and and all of the, you know, uh, what is New Tribes called now? Ethno-Nauts. All these people are working together to get the Bible translated. And they're able now to get the whole Bible translated into a native tongue so rapidly because of machine learning. They can record these people talking, and then they can find the repeated words and the syllables, and they can get a written language for them and teach it to them. What used to take a lifetime, one missionary's whole 40 years, they'd get the Gospel of John done, now can be done in a matter of months through machine learning.
And then Franklin Graham has started with Samaritan's Purse and a lot of other outfits putting medical missions right there in these spots of the world that are surrounded by unreached people groups. And every one of those nations want medical care for their their people, even though it's Christian, and they just say, "You can't proselytize," and they don't. They tell them, "You can't proselytize out in our country, but you can do whatever you want in your hospital." And those hospitals have become evangelistic centers for the world.
Well, basically, what we find in the scriptures is a plan that God has. And that plan, he said, is an answer to what the disciples ask in Matthew 24:3. "Tell us, when will these things be? What will be the signs of your coming and of the end of the age?" Jesus tells them. And what he says is, by the time we get to Matthew 24:33, "So also, when you see all of these things," when you see the capability for anyone on the earth to see things happening everywhere else on the earth, you know you're near the end. When you see the capability of buying or selling becoming digitalized, a number, without that number, you can't buy or sell. What keeps me from just pulling a coin out of my pocket? Well, the cashless society is soon going to be global, and there's going to be what Jesus said, and assuredly I say unto you, verse 34 of Matthew 24, "This generation will by no means pass away until all these things take place."
And then what does Jesus do? He launches from uh that verse to verse 32 and he starts applying the second coming of Christ. See, Jesus never scared people without a purpose. He scared the disciples, told them their temple was going to be destroyed. Then he tells these parables. Verse 32, "Learn the parable from the fig tree." What is the fig tree? The fig tree parable is that when you see the leaves come out, and then when you see the buds and blossoms come out, you know that the fruit is coming. What he said is there's going to be this growing visible nature of all this. And he goes all the way through chapter 25, and we'll cover all of those.
So, hey, we have two and a half minutes. Can you believe I finally finished one class with enough time to be like Jared to say, "How does he say that every time?" Do you have any comments or questions or what? He says the same thing every time. But yes, uh, that's a great question. Do you know the difference? And there's also the mid ones. So there are three. Uh, none of those are taught in the scriptures. The one that is taught in the scriptures is that he keeps us from the hour of wrath, which I believe made the early believers believe that they were going to be taken from the earth before the Antichrist is allowed to rule. Now, uh, so that would make me a pre-tribulation believer in the rapture. Now, there are godly people that don't believe in the rapture and don't believe in the millennium. You understand that? Half of all Christians don't believe what Word of Life believes. They don't believe in the rapture. They don't believe in the millennium. They're Christians. So, what we have is there are some doctrines in the Bible that godly people disagree on, and you never win an argument. But what I would say is this, that if you read the scriptures the way a slave person would, you'll have the same response that the slaves of the first century had. They believed Jesus was coming at any moment. And that's what a rapture believer believes in. So, I'm a pre-tribulationist. And what is your name so I can find you on my list? Malachi. Have I already met you? Okay. Tell me your last name later. What's your follow-up? Well, I believe what 28% of the Bible says, and we're going to cover that for about a half hour. Uh, there are more prophecies in the Bible about the millennium. Israel is going to be the center of the world. Uh, there's going to be unbelievable agriculture. The curse is not removed. It's rolled back. There are no carnivorous animals. You don't have to worry about anything biting you and chasing you. There's going to be no poisonous animals, no spiders and scorpions biting you. They'll still be here. They're just not carnivorous or poisonous anymore. Everything's going to grow. There'll still be weeds, but weeds will not run the place like they do now. It, it's a roll back of the curse, and it lasts a real thousand years. And we're going to cover that for about a half hour, Malachi. So, yes. Yes, sir. You are will again think about the Bible was written to primarily not university-educated people. Most of the early believers were slaves, kind of rural, kind of people. They could read, but they didn't go to high school. So when Jesus said, "The generation that sees this will not pass away till all of it fulfilled," what would common people have thought he meant? The people that are alive, that see all this happen, are going to see it completed. So what it sounds like the plain sense of the Bible usually is the right sense.