Revelation: Part 23

Who are the primarily Gentile. Ambassadors of God? Today, if you are a Jew or an Israelite and you believe in Jesus Christ, you’ve become one with Christ and part of the body of Christ. Today, if you’re a Gentile, you become one with Christ and become a part of the body of Christ.

And it says today there’s no difference in God’s sight between the Jew or a Gentile, an Israelite or a Gentile. We’re all one in Christ, right? Only Israelites are addressed as the evangelists, and only Israelites are mentioned as the prime movers during this period. It is proof positive that you and I ain’t gonna be here.

It’s just another one of those little postscripts from the Holy Spirit, see, I told you, you won’t be here. Because if we were still here, Gentile and Jew would be equal. But here they’re not. All right, now let’s read on.

Verse 4. And I heard the number of those who were sealed, 144,000 sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel. From the tribeof judah, 12,000, from the tribe of reuben, 12,000, from the tribeof asher, 12,000, from the tribe of naphtali, 12,000, from the tribe of manasseh, 12,000, from the tribe of simeon, 12,000, levi, 12,000, issachar, 12,000, zebulun, 12,000, Joseph, 12,000, and from the tribe of benjamin, 12,000. He was the youngest.

All right. Now, I’m gonna askyou a question. Who’s missing?

And?

Ephraim. Manessah and ephraim, ephraim, were actually given a portion with Joseph. But his two sons were given as one tribe a portion. But ephraim is not there.

Dan is not there. Why? Ephraim is the one who caused the civil war in Israel in ancient times, that divided Israel, divided the kingdom. The southern kingdom became known as judah.

And those that were in the southern kingdom are what we call Jews today. Jew means judah. And the ten tribes of the northern kingdom, which had included as one of them, ephraim. But why are they missing?

Well, ephraim we know. Hold your place here and turn with me to Genesis 49. The King James, a surprise, but it comes the closest to the Hebrew of the original than any of the translations. Even in its elizabethan english it does.

So it literally says then Jacob summoned his sons and said, assemble yourselves that I may tell you what shall befall you, not as it is in my version here, new American standard, which says in the days to come, but literally it says, in the last days. All right. So we know what the subject is, don’t we? Jacob is the grandson of Abraham.

And whenever we talk about the God of Israel, who did God himself call? He said I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And they are carefully delineated. Because Abraham had other sons and daughters.

You know, he was childless until he was a hundred years old. Then God fixed him so well that after his wife died at 135, he had a bunch of other children. Not including the one with hagar, of course, which was the firstborn he had, which was the real trouble. Ishmael.

Man, there sure was a lot of trouble caused in his tent. But Jacob is the -first the line was Isaac. And then the line, Jacob. And then the tribes.

Now, do you realize how many false religions there are that talk about the ten lost tribes? And, you know, some try to say that they’re one ofthe lost tribes, one of the lost ten. Remember armstrong? He used to -he built a whole religion on that almost.

And then there are the Jehovah witnesses. They believe they’re part of the 144,000. The rest of us are not gonna make it. Now, the interesting thing is this, though.

Dan is left out. And another thing, these tribes have never been lost. In the first century when James the apostle and half brother of Jesus wrote the book of James, he starts out in the first verse by saying what? James to the 12 tribes of Israel that are scattered abroad.

Well, they weren’t lost then, were they? And that was, what, 700 and some 60 years after the ten northern tribes had been scattered. He still knew they were around. Well, I’ve got news for you.

God does too. In fact, I’ve had such a wonderful friendship with a man named michael freund, which is strangely enough, german for friend. Michael freund. And he and his father-in-law, have spent a great deal of the fortune they had bringing back various pockets of some of those tribes.

And right now he’s bringing back a tribe from northeast india that have documented their stay there in northeast india for 2,700 years. And they traced themselves back to the tribe of asher. And they have records. They remained trueto what they knew of the law of Moses and so forth.

And he’s bringing them lock, stock and barrel back to Israel. But, get to the really important questions as far as the book of Revelation is concerned, why is dan left out? Well, let’s see what he predicted. Remember now, these are prophecies about the last days.

This is what wouldhappen to these tribes in the last days. Verse 16. Dan shall judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel. Dan shall be a serpent in the way.

The word serpent is viper. It means a deadly snake. What’s that remind you of? Satan.

You see, the best tool to study the Bible with is a concordance. You see something that obviously is being used in a symbolic sense. Trace through the Bible. Trace that word through the Bible and see how it’s used.

And you’ll find that a serpent, is often used of a vehicle of Satan that draws peopleaway from God or causes them to fall away from God. And he says of the tribe of dan, they’re going to be like a poisonous viper that hides in the way, literally. And it says a horned snake in the path that bites the horse’s heels, so that his rider falls backward. You see, what this is predicting is that someone from the tribe of dan would cause Israel to fall away backward from the Lord.

And that’s why I believe that dan is not mentioned among these evangelists that are going to be called. And why would that be? In other words, this is about the last days. What would it be about that?

Well, I can’t wait to get to Revelation 13, when we see the two great personalities that Satan uses during this period. One is the beast from the sea. The other is called the beast from the land. The land.

Israel. In other words, this is going to be I believe, someone from the tribe of dan that will be that second beast. He’s also called the false prophet. And he will cause the people of Israel to fall away backward.

He’ll lead them astray. He will lead them to believe in the Antichrist of Rome. He’ll cause them to fall astray. Now, back to Revelation 7 again.

So we have 144,000 Israelites that are given the sealof the living God in their forehead. Something about them, I believe, will be visible, I mean a physical, visible thing. But certainly it will be visible in their behavior. What happens here is that immediately after you and I as christians are taken out of the world, God will miraculously bring these 144,000 Israelites that believe in him.

How will that happen? You say, well, how can that happen? Well, what about the apostle Paul? No one led him to faith in Jesus.

God directly appeared to him. However, I don’t think everyone will be exactly the same. You and I may havewitnessed to some of these that after we’re gone, what you said to them, the Holy Spirit will bring back and use. I hope I’m among those that has said something or one of my books said something that gets -because these are going to be the most phenomenal evangelists in all of history.

You see, God created the people and thenation of Israel for basically four reasons. First and foremost, at a time when every nation was pushing the memory of God, the true God out of their memory, God did not want himself to be without witness, so he said, okay, since all the nations are going away from me, I’ll create my own nation. And that’s why he created the nation of Israel. To deliver to them a true revelation in writing that would reveal the true God.

And so you look through this book that we revere, and rightly so, you look through this book. They fulfill this purpose. Every book in this Bible was written by an Israelite, except for one. Which one?

Huh? What? You got it, job. Job was not an Israelite.

Luke wrote down the words, but you know whose version of the Gospel it was. It was the apostle Paul. You read through the Gospel of Luke, and you’ll find the apostle Paul’s -the apostle Paul’s stamp all through it. So it’s just like the Gospel of mark.

Who’s the source of it? Peter. Mark wrote it down. But it’s Peter’s version of what he saw.

Of course, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. So anyway, they kept this. All right, what’s another reason? They were created also to be a race of people that God’s dealingwith them could just through the wayhe deals with them, reflect to the world the truth of the true God and his existence.

And this means whether they were obedient or disobedient, either way, they are a witness to the true God. When they’re obedient to him, the world would see their blessing and they’d say, surely God’s among them. When there were outstanding members of Israel, they would draw people. Remember what Jesus said?

That the people came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon. David took the news of God to much of his world. And, of course, there have been some reluctant revivals, like Jonah. God called him to go to Nineveh and he went the opposite direction.

And then when he sent him there, he said, I ain’t going. And then after God miraculously delivered him there in the belly of a sea creature, and, boy, he must have been a sight. There must have been something, you know, all of the digestive juices and stuff, what does that do to somebody’s skin? But anyway, he delivered him.

He goes through Nineveh and for 40 days, preaches. And the whole place repents. And he goes up on a mountainside and he’s angry. And God says, why are you angry?

He said, isn’t this what I told you back there? That if I went there and spoke that they would believe? I want them to die. That’s what he said.

The story of the book of Jonah. And God said you cared more about this gourd, the gourd plant that gave him shade, you cared more about that than you did about these people. He says, and, besides, all of the animals. God even cared about the animals.

Now, God created them to be a witness. How are they a witness when they’re in rebellion? Because their own prophets predicted they would rebel, predicted all kinds of details about it. And it’s proof for anyone who wants to look at it that God has to be true, he has to be real, because the prophecies he made about these people have come true to the letter.

Every one. The third reason they were created, is God needed a physical race through whom he could -the second person of the godhead could come and make his entrance into the human race by being born from one of the people there. So it was a race through whom the Messiah, the Savior of the world, would be born. And fourth, he didn’t just create them to be a custodian of the Bible and all of these things.

He created them to evangelize the world. Now, there’s a verse that’s often quoted, and as far as this chart is concerned, it’s quoted always out of context. How many of you have heard it said to you, Jesus can’t come back until this Gospel of the kingdom is preached unto all the world? Well, first of all, the Gospel of the kingdom, is that the Gospel that we are to be preaching?

No. The good news that we preach, the ultimate end isnot the kingdom. We preach theeverlasting Gospel. We teach the Gospel of everlasting life.

This Gospel has a thousand-year kingdom. Now, that doesn’t mean they won’t have eternal life, but the focus of it is this kingdom that the Messiah will bound on earth. You see, when Jesus says and this Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world, as a witness to them and then the end shall come, hey, that’s talking about this little period right here. In seven years, these 144,000 Israelites will preach the Gospel to the whole world.

They will do in seven years what Israel has never done in their whole history. They will fulfill ultimately the ultimate reason for which that nation and people were created. Now, will they be successful? Well, let’s read one of the greatest evangelistic reports you’ll ever read.

They’re introduced. It says they’re going to be anointed. They’re going to be given the living seal of God and then immediately the scene shifts to heaven. Verse 9.

And after these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands. And they cry out with a loud voice saying, salvation to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb. And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God saying amen, blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen.

Which means I believe. And one of the elders answered saying to me -he’s speaking to the apostle John now, these who are clothed in white robes, who are they, and from where have they come? And I said to him, my Lord, you know. And he said to me, these are the ones who come out of what?

The Great Tribulation. And they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. For this reason, they are before the throne of God, and they serve him day and night in his temple, and he who sits on the throne will spread his tabernacle over them. They shall not hunger no more, neither thirst anymore.

Neither shall the sun beat down on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb in the center of the throne shall be their shepherd and shall guide them to the springs of water of life, and God shall wipe every tear from their eyes. These are from the, where? How many?

Too many to number. What evangelism. They’re going to bring a multitude too great to be numbered. I don’t know about you, but that just makes my heart -the grace of the living God in the place where all of this rebellion is there, such hardness of heart, and remember the fifth seal is the world turning on every believer that they can find and martyring them.

It’s gonna be something to behold. I believe the Lord Jesus is gonna let us see all of this from up there. Just be sure that you’ll be up yonder.

Make sure that you’ve received the gift of forgiveness that Jesus came to this earth to die in your place to purchase for you. You can neverearn salvation. You can never be good enough. And you do not have the power to change your life so God will accept you.

You have to just come as you are, take a step of faith, say, Lord, I don’t understand it all, but right now, the best I can, I’m reaching out to you and I’m saying, with my will, I receive the pardon that you offer. And God will add to that little teeny speck of faith all the faith it takes to move on. Any changing that needs to be done, well, he’s still dragging me through the divine woodshed and changing me all the time. I’m never gonna be up to snuff until he changes me into that immortal body.

But I’m sure having a fun time trying to do it. Let’s pray. Father, in Jesus’ name, I thank you for everyone here. Lord, just bring assurance to every heart they have received this gift of pardon that Jesus died to make free.

Give every person that assurance and may it build a fire to know that whatever they do for you will never be lost or be in vain. Now is the time to do everything we can to bring people to personal faith in Jesus. We ask that in Jesus’ name, amen.

If you have the guts to be a real revolutionary, come forward right now and accept Jesus Christ as your real revolutionary. And he’ll make a revolutionary that will change lives.

Thank you so much for standing with me as a watchman on the wall. I pray daily that he will reward your faithfulness and protect and prosper you in these difficult times. Thank you again for being a vital part of my team.