The Church of Jesus Christ is dazed and confused. Not knowing what to do since the election was stolen from President Trump in November 2020 and January 2021. Some of the Church is likely waiting for a pre-Antichrist-appearing rapture, but it won’t happen.
So, what should the Church of Jesus Christ be doing? They should vigorously recognize the times they are in and then pray accordingly for the Leaders that the Lord wants to send them. This is what the believers in God did before the crisis presented by the Flood; and when the Israelites were in terrible slavery in Egypt; and when the Israelites were awaiting the appearance of their Messiah. Let us see what scripture says (all my dating is from The Annals of the World, Irish Archbishop James Ussher, 1658 (re-translated and published, 2003, Larry and Marion Pierce):
Before the Flood, 2348 B.C.
In times of great, significant changes for God’s people (people who believe in the Creator God, the God of the Universe, God sent an anointed leader to the people he wanted to save. In the early years of human history, 4004 B.C. to 2348 B.C., before the worldwide flood sent to destroy the world, humanity had been corrupted by cohabiting with fallen angels and so producing offspring that were initially half-human; half-whatever essence an angel is made of, in each successive generation, still retaining some of the angelic genetic material – beings that could not be saved from their sins because they were not fully human. The human race was being so thoroughly corrupted that, as God Himself said to Noah: “..for you alone I have seen to be righteous before Me in this time.” Genesis 7:1. But where had Noah come from? The righteous people living before the flood had pined away waiting for the One promised by God to Adam and Eve in the Garden, when God said to Satan, in his form as a serpent “…He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise Him on the heel”. Genesis 3:15. The righteous had been waiting and waiting now, unto 1,056 years, and no Deliverer from the evil around them had appeared. Then, when Lamech, born in the 8th generation from Creation, was 182, he had a son and, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit he “…called his name Noah, saying ‘This one shall give us rest from our work and from the toil of our hands arising from the ground which the Lord has cursed.'” Genesis 5:29. Noah means “rest” in Hebrew. But life went on for another 500 years, when Lamech was 682 and Noah 500, before the Lord began to define the purpose for which Noah had been created.
Noah’s Role
Noah was 500 when he had 3 sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, perhaps triplets. About that time (the Bible does not say when), “Then God said to Noah, ‘The end of all flesh has come before me, for the earth is filled with violence because of them [offspring of angels] and behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth. Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood…” Genesis 6:13-14. Why did God choose Noah? “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord…Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God.” Genesis 6:8-9. It can be assumed that Noah began to build, or accumulated building material, for 14 or so years, while his 3 sons were growing up. Then, from that point and the next 86 years, Noah and his sons, perhaps with hired workmen, built the ark. The only persons saved from the worldwide Flood were Noah and his wife, and his 3 sons and their 3 wives. What of Noah’s father Lamech – did he die in the Flood? No, he died 595 years after he had Noah, and the Flood did not come until the 600th year. Genesis 5:30. Also, Noah’s grandfather, Lamech’s father, Methuselah, who name means “When he dies, judgement”, lived 5 more years than his son Lamech, and died in the year of the Flood, but probably (it is not known), before the Flood. Genesis 5:27. These 8 people (and the human race, from 2348 B.C.) would not have been saved, unless Noah had been a man who obeyed God. He was an answer to Lamech’s prayers and, one can assume during the 100 years it took him to plan and build the ark, the righteous persons of the earth were interceding for him.
Babel, 2242 B.C.
The next crisis point for humanity was after the Flood and the new descendants of Noah’s 3 sons had begun to multiply and they built the tower of Babel, rather than disperse, as Noah, and his sons, had been instructed: “And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth…and …populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it.” Genesis 9:1,7. So, because all the people had not obeyed Noah, or Shem, or Ham, or Japheth, God said, “Come, let Us [the Trinity] go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city.” Genesis 11:7-8. So after the 70 different descendants of Shem, Ham and Japheth went out from Babel with their 70 different languages, God appointed 70 good angels to help the 70 Tribes cope with their new surroundings, all lacking some basic skills. (These 70 are, admittedly, a time-mixture, as they include 14 named sons and grandsons of Japheth; but 4 sons, 24 grandsons and 2 great grandsons of Ham; and 5 sons, 5 grandsons, 1 great grandson, 2 great-great grandsons and 13 great-great-great grandsons of Shem).
Abraham’s Role
But God chose Abraham for himself to be the one through whom He would keep alive the truth faith in the Creator God. This is borne out from Deuteronomy 32:8-9 which states, “When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of man [at Babel], He set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. For the Lord’s portion is His people, Jacob is the allotment of His inheritance”. The NASB says “Israel” instead of “God”, but Micheal S. Heiser, in The Unseen Realm, believes it is mistranslated (see page 113). There are 70 different descendants of Noah mentioned in Genesis 10, and that Chapter concludes by saying in verse 32, “These are the families of the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies, by their nations; and out of these the nations were separated on the earth after the flood.” So, the 70 nations, according to the The Unseen Realm, page 114, footnote 7, were each to be guided by an angel assigned by God, but God himself would lead the nation begun by Abraham. See also Numbers 23:9, “…behold, a people who dwells apart, and shall not be reckoned among the nations.” Psalm 82 is the support for the angels assigned to rule the 70 nations: “God takes His stand in His own congregation; He judges in the midst of the rulers [footnoted, “gods”]. How long will you judge unjustly, and show partiality to the wicked? Vindicate the weak and fatherless; do justice to the afflicted and destitute’. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them out of the hand of the wicked…I said ‘You are gods and all of you are sons of the Most High. nevertheless, you will die like men, and fall like any one of the princes.'” So, God needed to start His order over with a new man and he found Abraham and began anew the line of believers in God. Why did God choose Abraham? God says, “For I have chosen him in order that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice…” Genesis 18:19. God knew Abraham was a man who would insist his descendants follow God’s ways, unlike either Shem, Ham or Japheth.
The Exodus, 1491 B.C.
Next up is when the Israelites, under Jacob, had gone down to Egypt to survive the famine, under the leadership of Jacob’s son Joseph, at that time second in charge of all Egypt and chief in charge of the food distribution during the 7 famine years. Jacob went down to Egypt with his 65 descendants plus himself; Joseph, his wife and two sons, already in Egypt, made 70 in all. Genesis 46:26-27. Abraham left his home for Canaan in 1921 B.C. 215 years later, Jacob entered Egypt. The Israelites had lived in Egypt a long time after the famine ended, since they had been invited, and had the protection of Joseph and the Pharaoh, while Joseph was still living, after they first settled in. Then, the Egyptians forgot why they had come to their land and had also forgotten about the famine that had devastated Egypt itself. “So they appointed taskmasters over them to afflict them in hard labor.” Exodus 1:11.
Moses’ Role
Finally, after 215 years of living in Egypt, Israel had had enough and remembered they were supposed to be being led by God, “…the sons of Israel sighed because of the heavy bondage, and they cried out; and their cry for help because of their bondage rose up to God. So God heard their groaning and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” So God sent Moses, who had already been prepared for 40 years as an adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter Hatshepsut, and then 40 years living in Midian after he had killed an Egyptian and was wanted for murder. God called Moses to save Israel and you know the story about the Red Sea. Israel left Egypt exactly 430 years after Abraham had first set foot in Canaan. Exodus 12:41.
Waiting for the Messiah, 416 B.C. to 29 A.D.
Israel entered the promised land in 1451 B.C. By 586 B.C. their Temple, built by Solomon, had been destroyed, they had lived as exiles in Babylon, they had come back to the land under Cyrus the Persian, but although they had their own local Governor, they were ruled successively by the Persians, then Greeks, and then the Romans. All this time, although their 2nd Temple had been built in 516 B.C. and beautified by Herod the Great from 17 B.C. to 29 A.D., most of the people of Israel pined for the glory days of Kings David, and his son Solomon, who had ruled in justice for 80 years. Malachi was the last prophet, after the exile, and he famously stated, “Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple; and the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, behold, He is coming, says the Lord of hosts.” Malachi 3:1. Malachi’s word was given around 416 B.C.
John the Baptist’s Role
Relying on Malachi, others in Israel, the praying ones, were seeking the Messiah promised by God to Adam and Eve way back in the Garden, The Israelites could all have gauged the time of Jesus’ arrival, based on the information given to Daniel and written down by him in Daniel 9:25. The praying, expectant Israelites included Simeon, who “…was righteous and devout, looking for the consolation of Israel [the Messiah];…And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. And he came in the Spirit into the Temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus…” to dedicate Him to God as required by the Law, 33 days after his birth, Simeon prophesied over Mary and Jesus. Luke 2:25-35. And at exactly the same time Anna, an 84 year old woman, who was a prophetess, “…at that very moment came up and began giving thanks to God and continued to speak of Him to all those who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.” Luke 2:38. But the man who really prepared the way for Jesus was, of course, John the Baptist, predicted, as just shown, in Malachi 3:1, but also in Malachi 4:5-6, “Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. And he will restore the hearts of fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with a curse.” (As God had done once, when Adam sinned by listening to Eve, when she ate of the fruit and gave some to him). Genesis 3:17). John correctly said (in John 1:23) he was the “messenger” of Malachi 3:1 and Isaiah 40:3; he denied being Elijah (John 1:21); but Jesus said he was (Matthew 17:12); and then Jesus said, nevertheless, “Elijah is coming and will restore all things…” Matthew 17:11; so there is another Elijah coming, in our day, to again prepare the way of Jesus’ return to both Gentiles and Jews as Messiah.
To Recap
So lets’ recap, before we conclude with what we all must be doing now: Before the world changing flood, God sent Noah; after the world changing confusion of one language into 70, God sent Abraham, to start over again. In order to get Israel into bondage, God sent Joseph, and to get them out he sent Moses, and they changed the world from that time on with the Ten Commandments delivered to Moses and all the Israelites by God at Mt. Sinai. After Israel had failed to make the First Temple a “house of prayer for all the nations”, Isaiah 56:6-7, Jeremiah 7:11 and Matthew 21:13, and so lost the governance of their own nation and were put back under the rule of the Gentile nations, the Israelites properly started looking for their (and the world’s) Messiah. God obliged them, by raising up John the Baptist to baptize and proclaim Jesus as God’s Son and the Messiah. John stated, “And I did not recognize Him, but He who sent me to baptize in water said to me, ‘He upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining upon Him, this is the one who baptizes in the Holy Spirit. And I have seen, and have borne witness, that this is the Son of God.” John 1:33-34.
We are on a Precipice
We are on the precipice of world changing events. Many Christians continue to ignore what the Spirit of God is telling them and say, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep [in the Flood] all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.” 2 Peter 3:4. They listen to their pastors and do not search the scriptures themselves. If their pastor says “We are in the last days”, they may not believe him, but at least they have been warned. Worse are the dominionist pastors, or those without supernatural spirituality and can not grasp that the things in the books of Daniel and Revelation, and verses in all the Prophetic books are, in fact, going to happen. The way to view this is to remember our acceptance of Jesus. Before we asked Him into our hearts, we lived in the ordinary “world”. As soon as we accepted Him, the lights came on inside of us and we see all of life from a different perspective. The same with entering into the last days – once you accept that we are, you can watch God unfold things in fulfilling every jot an tittle of His revealed Word.
Emmaus Example
The applicable scripture is what Jesus said to the disciples on the road to Emmaus the evening of the day when Jesus had risen. Jesus began to walk with them but God covered their eyes so they could not tell it was Jesus. These disciples are always held up as heroes because of their statement “Were not our hearts not burning…?”, Luke 24:32. They were not heroes. They had said to Jesus, sarcastically, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem and unaware of the things which have happened here in these days?” Luke 24:18. After they told Jesus what had happened, what was Jesus’ “compassionate” response? He does not even acknowledge that He knew them, although likely He did. Instead, He castigates them by saying, “O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!” So, He called them fools and hardhearted. That is how the Church is today. Still involved in foolishness and certainly hardhearted when it comes to the Prophetic books. Do you know there are entire Christian denominations who no longer believe they need to read the Old Testament (OT), as it was totally supplanted by the New Testament (I got a flyer in the mail from such a local church three days ago)? If you want to know what is going to happen and what you must do to prepare your hearts (that is the main thing to prepare), you must study the OT Prophetic books. If you think you can figure things out just by reading the book Revelation, you are mistaken.
The Day of the Lord
In the “last days”, or “those days”, or “that day”, as the OT Prophets call it, to signify a future event, they are all referring to the time when it becomes the “Day of the Lord”. The best definition of that “Day” is in Isaiah 13:6 -13, “Wail, for the day of the Lord is near! It will come as destruction from the Almighty. Therefore all hands will fall limp, and every man’s heart will melt. And they will be terrified. Pains and anguish will take hold of them; they will writhe like a woman in labor, they will look at one another with astonishment, their faces aflame. Behold the day of the Lord is coming, cruel, with fury and burning anger, to make the land a desolation; and He will exterminate its sinners from it…Thus, I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will also put an end to the arrogance of the proud, and abase the haughtiness of the ruthless. I will make mortal man scarcer than fine gold…Therefore I shall make the heavens tremble, and the earth shall be shaken from its place at the fury of the Lord of Hosts in the day of His burning anger.” While that is happening, the Antichrist, whose “system” is being established already around us by the censorship of Facebook, Twitter and by banks cutting businesses off from using their services, will be revealed. He will rule for only 3 1/2 years, Daniel 7:25, Daniel 12:7, and Revelation 13:5. The false Prophet who is already known (the Pope), will also rule for only 3 1/2 years, Revelation 13:12. Satan will be confined to earth with all of the angels who rebelled 6,000 years ago, for the same 3 1/2 year period, Revelation 12:6-9, 12-14.
The Olivetrees
It seems like the last 3 1/2 years before the Lord returns will not be a good time for God and His people. But the evil will be mitigated because God has three persons already lined up to oppose the evil troika. Two of them are the two men who are called the “olivetrees” and “lampstands”. “And I said, ‘I see a lampstand…also two olivetrees by it…Then he said, ‘These are the two anointed ones, who are standing by the Lord of the whole earth'”. Zechariah 4:2-3, 11-14. They were first mentioned by God to David in Psalm 52:8, “But as for me, I am like a green olive tree in the house of God…”, then to Zechariah in 520 B.C. shortly after the Antichrist was revealed to Daniel in Babylon sometime between 586 to 533 B.C. Their skills are brought into focus in Revelation 11:3-7: “And I will grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1260 days [3 1/2 years], clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. And if anyone desires to harm them, fire proceeds out of their mouth and devours their enemies; and if anyone would desire to harm them, in this manner he must be killed. These have the power to shut up the sky, in order that rain may not fall during the days of their prophesying; and they have power over the waters to turn them into blood, to to smite the earth with every plague, as often as they desire. And when they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up out of the abyss will make war with them, and overcome them and kill them.” These are real men, alive today, waiting to be revealed when the Antichrist is, probably practicing their powers now.
Elijah
Also, we have Elijah, as mentioned above in Malachi 4:5-6. The first Elijah, John the Baptist, prepared the way for Jesus and he knew he was the prophesied messenger of God, as had also been revealed to his father, Zecharias, by the angel Gabriel in Luke 1:15-17; but John knew he really did not fit the description of Elijah in Malachi 4:5, because Jesus’ coming was not “…the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord”. That day is still to come, and, as Jesus said in Matthew 17:12, there is another Elijah coming in our day, but before the great and terrible day of the Lord. Since the olivetrees don’t take their roles until the Antichrist takes his, I personally do not believe that Elijah, who is also man alive today, is one of the two olivetrees, but no one knows. Elijah is scheduled to appear before the great and terrible day of the Lord, so his appearance will precede Russia’s Ezekiel 38 attack upon Israel and nuclear war upon the U.S. What powers does Elijah have? – I don’t know. Some believe his role is to reconcile the Jews (the fathers) with the Christians (the children), as opposed to another homeschool revolution.
Conclusion – Pray for these Men to appear!
Here is the point of all this: We are almost at the day of the Lord, which will begin with Russia’s attack on Israel, with help from Iran and Turkey. Russia and all the Muslim nations that participate will be completely destroyed and Israel will take over the middle east and will begin to rebuild its 3rd and final Temple, the one that Jesus is coming to enter. The Church must stop what it is doing and corporately cry out, not for “revival”, but for God to send Elijah, and the two olivetrees. Thanks for your time.