Revelation: Part 29

Blessed be Abraham whose God is the owner of heaven and earth. Well, God did that to remind Abraham that God was the one who gave him the victory and that he was the possessor of heaven and earth. And so when the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah offered to give him tithes, or not tithes, but give him vast treasures, that had been retaken, they’d come from those cities. He said I will not even take a shoelace from you, lest you say that I have made Abraham great.

For I have lifted up my hand to the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth. And so that was our first acquaintance with this place that became known as Jerusalem. And then a thousand years after that, one of the descendants of Abraham named David, king David, captured that city, which was under the jebusites at that time, and he established the capital of Israel there. And God had told David that was the place where he wanted him to build a temple to him.

And so David conquered it. He set aside great treasures to build the temple. And because David was such a man of war, he said your son who will be a man of peace, Solomon will build it for me. Well, then a great temple was built there.

And, yet, Jerusalem means actually the city of peace. And, yet, it has not known but very little peace. And we see how it’s changed hands over and over again. How that the assyrians tried to take it when they destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel and God miraculously delivered them.

But because judah, levi, and benjamin that were the southern tribe known as the kingdom of judah, failed to follow God, he sent Nebuchadnezzar in the neo-Babylonian empire and they destroyed Jerusalem for the first time. They returned, they never really had full possession of Jerusalem after that. And then in 70 A.D. Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans.

And in 135 A.D., there was a revolt of the surviving Israelites trying to take the city back, they were beaten back. Then there was one power after another that took over the city. Finally, in 635 A.D., the muslims took it over. And the muslims, wanting to have a place that would be a reason for being greater than christianity or judaism, concocted this myth that muhammad had come there on his winged horse and there he had ascended to heaven.

Well, there’s no record of anything like that. That was a myth. But muslims will die for a myth quicker than they’ll die for the truth. And so from 635 A.D., they have basically held that.

Except for a few times during a period of 1100 to 1300 A.D., the muslims took it back, and the crusaders would take it, and the muslims would get it back. Finally, in 1300 A.D., they took it back and they kept it until the city was liberated in World War I by general allenby. And then the state of Israel was miraculously born in 1948. And, yet, they did not get Jerusalem back.

And then in 1967, the six-day war, June 7th took place. The six-day war happened and one of the great miracles in military history took place. The Israelis beat the combined force elaborately equipped by Russians and the Soviet Union. They beat all of the armies that came against them.

And for the first time, since Nebuchadnezzar, they took sovereign control of Jerusalem. That was a miracle. And since that time, the Israelites have failed to recognize that God gave them that with a miracle, and they were never to give it back to anyone. But they have caved in to political correctness, and the pressure of the nations around the world.

They’ve even talked about giving Jerusalem back. And all of that is the background for what we’re about to read here in Revelation 11:1. Then there was given me a measuring rod, like a staff; and someone said, get up and measure the temple of God, and the altar of those who worship in it. But leave out the court which is outside the temple, and do not measure it, for it has been given to the nations, literally the Gentiles, and they will tread under foot the holy city for forty-two months.

You know, I’ve made many, many trips to Israel. I’ve led 87 tours there, but I’ve also been there at other times on my own. And these two verses in my many, many studies done on the book of Revelation, I’ve always wondered why does he throw that in? What he’s talking about a measuring rod?

Who cares? You know, I’m always having these conversations with God. And I was telling the Lord I just don’t understand why you had to throw that in. What’s the point?

And then I was in Israel doing a bunch of photographs for a book that I was going to write called, a prophetical walk through the holy land. And while I was up on the Temple Mount, looking at the dome of the rock, the famous thing with the golden dome and so forth. I was standing there and I was reading the Bible. And by the way, I’ve been arrested three times by the muslims there for having a Bible up there.

But they didn’t get me this time. I was reading the Bible, and I just happened to open to these verses. And I had just been briefed on dr. Asher kaufman’s findings.

He’s a great archeologist in Israel. A great archeological work that he did about where the temple actually had stood. And he had clearly convinced me that the temple was not where the dome of the rock is but was north of it. And he had -he had made it clear that the key to finding exactly where the temple had been built was the eastern gate.

And, of course, there are many photographs of the eastern gate. It’s a gate that’s closed. It’s a double arch on the east side of the wall of Jerusalem by the Temple Mount. And it’s closed.

Well, there’s a reason for that, too. God predicted that. So I was reading these verses about measuring and I just heard about the dome of the rock not being in the right place. And all of a sudden, it was like electricity went through me.

The hair of my arms stood up, I don’t know what was going on in my head. I mean, I was like I had grabbed hold of a high current volt. Because all of a sudden, the Holy Spirit said, now, let me show you what this means. Then there was given me a measuring rod like a staff; and someone said, get up and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and those who worship in it.

Then verse 2 is important. Extremely important. Leave out the court which is outside the temple. Now, if you study the structure of the temple, the two that had existed there before, Solomon’s temple, and then the one that was rebuilt by those who returned from bondage in Babylon and Persia, the temple has what is called an inner court wall.

And there is — and in this inner court, only priests can go. And in the inner court, they had the altar of sacrifice on the outside. The great golden laver to wash -the priest to wash in. And then they had the temple itself, and then there was another wall within this compound that men could go to a certain point.

But there was another wall that was called the court of the women. And all of this was enclosed in kind of a wall that was called the inner temple walls. Then there was another great wall outside of that that was called the court of the Gentiles. And so it says that that court had been given to the Gentiles.

Don’t measure it. And this is what so electrified me. I thought for a minute, now wait a minute, how wide was the inner court wall? So I walked over and I found the east/west center line of the -of the line from the eastern gate that went right through a little cupola, that’s called the dome of the spirits and the dome of the tablets.

It’s in the northwest corner of the muslim compound. It’s called the temple compound by the muslims. Underneath that cupola, is a big flat rock that was one of the only two places on that mountain that no man had ever hewn out or smoothed out or anything else. There are two places.

There’s one rock underneath the dome of the rock, and the other rock that had never been hewn or touched by man, was under this little cupola that was in the northwest corner. And that, by dr. Kaufman said, that had to be the place where the ark of the covenant was put in the holy of holies. Because it was right on the center line east/west from the eastern gate.

And so I had already been over to the eastern gate. And I’m one of the few people that ever got to look under the present eastern gate that’s there now. See, that wall was built by suleiman the magnificent. They were pretty gaudy with their names.

Suleiman the magnificent rebuilt those walls that are there now on top exactly of the walls that existed before. And each gate that is there is built on the top of the gates that were there back in all of history. So I had -the day before this event, I had already been over, and I was able to get a palestinian guard to let me pull some rocks and things back and look down under the base of the present eastern gate, and I saw the top of the gate that had been there in Jesus’ time. So I knew that this gate was precisely where the old eastern gate was.

Now you may be a little bored here, so follow me. Okay, now I’m going somewhere with this. So I took a site, east/west, from the eastern gate, through that cupola with the rock where it’s believed the ark of the covenant stood in the holy of holies. Getting that -getting that dimension from the center line, I measured off how far from the center line the inner court wall would stand.

And when I measured it off, I found building the inner court wall, you would still have 26 meters from there to any point of the dome of the rock. Now does that begin to turn on some lights? God said don’t measure. He said measure the inner court.

Don’t measure the outer court. Why? It’s given to the Gentiles. What stands in the court of the Gentiles right now?

The dome of the rock. And what hit me there, right then I said thank you, Lord. You always have a reason for what you write. Because then I realized that the Israelites can rebuild their temple with the inner court walls, and there will still be 26 meters before the nearest point of one of the most important Gentile holy places on the Temple Mount.

So they both can stand together. You see, if the Israelites had to destroy the dome of the rock, in order to rebuild their temple, which prophecy says has to be done, it will be rebuilt. If they, if they were to tear that down, we would have world war three immediately. 1.3 billion muslims would declare jihad right away.

So then I realized the outer court wall wasn’t measured by the angels because it’s given to the Gentiles. And they will tread it down for forty-two months. In terms of years, how many years? Three and a half years, isn’t it?

Okay. Now that is, that will happen. It says it will be tread underfoot by the Gentiles for forty-two months. That is the last half of the Tribulation.

And why will they tread it down for that time? Because at the exact middle of the Tribulation what’s gonna happen? The Antichrist is going into the holy of holies in the Jewish temple and declaring himself to be God. So it will be tread down for forty-two months.

Now let me fill you in on a few other interesting details. It was during that time that I ran into one of the most interesting Israelis that I will ever meet. His name is gershon salomon. And I knew of him, so I sought him out.

Gershon salomon started what is called the temple institute. He was a soldier during the six-day war. He will tell you that he saw miracle after miracle. And I’m not talking about daydreams or just coincidences.

He saw miracles happen on the battlefield that gave them victory that had to be from God. And after the war was over, he was pondering this. And he told me that God spoke to him and said you are to prepare to rebuild the temple in this generation. And he has been doing that ever since the six-day war finished.

He has spearheaded the rebuilding of the intricate furniture that God described to Moses that has to be built exactly according to the pattern God gave Moses. And let me tell you something, no artisan, jeweler, or whatever could do this without God inspiring them. He has now built all of the furniture that goes into the temple when it’s built. All except the ark of the covenant.

He says we’re not gonna build that because we know God has it hidden. And he’s gonna show it to us. But he has built the golden candelabra, which is amazing. I mean, it’s a gigantic thing made of solid gold.

And it had to be built of one piece of gold. It couldn’t be soldered together or anything else. They had to start with one piece of gold. They had to hammer it out in such a way that the arms of the candelabra all came up and it was never separated from the original piece of gold.

It’s something awesome to look at, isn’t it, mike? Boy, I tell you, it gives me goosebumps every time I see it. But anyway, he has done this. And every year, he upsets all the Israelis and the palestinians and the muslims and everything else, because he leads a parade of people out there with a cornerstone to lay the temple.

And he doesn’t care. He gets thrown in jail or whatever, you know, and they say don’t you know you’re gonna start world war three? He says I don’t care. And he goes out there with the-he says one of these days I’m gonna lay that cornerstone.

But I’ll tell you, Jesus said when you see, this is Matthew 24, verse 15, he’s talking about this period of time. He said when you see the abomination that causes desolation, stand in the holy place. And then he says, let the reader understand. He said then do not even come down into your house to get your coat.

If you’re in the field, don’t return to get your clothes but flee to the mountains. For then there will be a Tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until then, nor ever shall be again. And unless those days were cut short, no one would be left alive but for the sake of the elect. And I’m sure gershon salomon will be one of those.

And the apostle Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2 said there would be two historic signs that would show that Christ was about to come back to the earth. One of those signs would be the man of lawlessness shall take his seat in the temple of God and declare himself to be God. See, that’s the abomination that causes desolation. So, it’s interesting that God is so precise in his prophecies, isn’t he?

And I’ll just add another little personal experience. After -you can imagine how interested the sharif, the muslim sharif in charge of the Temple Mount, the muslim Temple Mount was when I was over there measuring.

He thought I was measuring it up to set a bomb off or something. I’ve gotten real well -well, at least I was, really well acquainted with them. I was always getting put in jail and my buddies in the Israeli army would have to get me out. But after that, after this episode, I went over, I was checking dr.

Kaufman’s layout of what he had found. He found a cistern that was underneath where this temple had been and that was a cistern with water for the sacrifices. And it was right there underneath. And I went over to check out where the northwest corner of the temple wall would have been, the inner court wall.

And he said, he said go over there and you will find it. So I went over there, measured it out, and I found it. It’s not on the present muslim temple platform. It was off that platform.

You had to go over about, I think, it was about 30 meters from the steps at the northwest corner of that platform. I walked over there and sure enough there it was, in plain view, this worn cornerstone. And so I was sitting there and reading the Bible and praising God out loud. Almost absent mindedly, drew a crowd of christian pilgrims over there.

And so they asked me, you know, why was I so excited. And I started telling them about that. Well, of course, the sharif and the muslim guards were listening, and they were very upset. The next day I went out there, and they had covered it with about six feet of dirt and put a rose garden on top of it.

But I got photographs of it before they did that and exactly had it photographed where it is. Is this interesting?

Boy, it is to me. Because I’m telling you, everything, in minute details, God is setting things up for Christ to come back. And before all of this stuff happens, we got to go up with Christ. We’re gonna be snatched up to meet him in the air translated from mortal to immortal before any of this takes place.

But everything is prepared for it to take place, so I know he must be coming soon. Let’s pray. Father, thank you in Jesus’ name, that we live in such exciting times. I pray that every person who has any doubt about knowing whether Jesus Christ is in his or her life, that that person right now will realize that no one can be good enough for God to accept.

And that’s why Jesus came into this world, became a man, lived a perfect life in our place 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