Chapter
9
GREAT ENDTIME REVIVAL
See the book: Great Endtime
Revival
The
global economy will suffer total collapse with no hope of a bailout,
while the globalists in charge of the world intend to let it lay dead
until a mass die-off of the human population runs its course, except
that a revival of Christianity unexpectedly occurs and throws a wrench
in their plans, forcing them to unveil their one-world economy earlier
than they wanted, powered by the Mark of the Beast. This will cause the first five seals
of Satan's wrath in
Revelation chapter six to be fulfilled. Everything about the first five
seals can be explained by a collapsed economy: anarchy, rioting,
pillaging, murder, war, death and destruction will run its course.
Violent protesting, mass die-offs through starvation,
pestilence and various diseases followed by a pandemic that will wipe
out millions of people, and at the top of the list of world-events will be anti-Semitism.
The
world will want to know who was responsible for this global economic
collapse, and the Beast will cite the Jews, claiming that they have
controlled the economy since the 18th century, having financed both
world wars. Therefore, a great persecution of the Jews will ensue, and
the whole world will come against them, except devout Christian
gentiles, who will rally at their side, telling the world that if they
want to kill the Jews, you will have to go through us, and the Beast
will fully agree with them, instructing the world that the gentiles have
been prophesying something like this would happen for centuries, and now
it has happened as a self-fulfilled prophecy, and so the Beast will hold
both Jews and Christians responsible for the deterioration of
civilization.
The
Jewish people will
not stand by and watch world events shape into another mass genocide of
their people, and they will refuse to peacefully march into anybody’s concentration
camps as they did in World War II, nor can they fight the whole world. Instead,
they will see that devout Christians are risking their lives to support
them, and from sheer desperation they will finally come to realize that Jesus Christ is their
Messiah. There will be 144,000 that God will choose, and from them He
will call Two
Witnesses depicted in Revelation chapter eleven, who will remain
in Jerusalem, while the
rest flee into the wilderness. They will not all gather in one
place but will scatter to rural areas throughout the earth, iconic to the early
Church that fled from the persecution in Jerusalem in 70 AD. They will set up camps, and anyone
seeking refuge from the antichrist may go there, and God Himself will
take care of them.
The
tribulation period is segmented into three phases. The first phase is the first six seals; the seventh seal
comprises seven trumpets, and the last trumpet sounds the alarm
for the Rapture and contains the third phase of God’s judgment in the
bowls. The 144,000 Jewish witnesses will
appear at some point early within the first five seals, and they will remain in the world throughout the
trumpets. The Two Witnesses will blossom from benevolent leaders of God’s Church
to adjudicators of His judgment against antichrist’s kingdom. Instead of
rapturing His Church immediately, God will protect His people from the
antichrist during the trumpets using His Jewish
witnesses in much the same way that God protected the Israelites from Pharaoh and his
armies in the days of Moses, commanding them to remain in the land of
Goshen.
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A great endtime revival is scheduled to
occur, starting with messianic Jews headquartered in Jerusalem,
sparking a Christian revival that will extend to
the gentiles. This will happen when society is
in utter chaos and the world economy has completely dissolved, and when
Satan is establishing his New World Order primarily in the developed
nations of the world. A
newfound interest in Christianity will surface among the gentiles, yet
without effective leadership. This Christian effort will flounder, until
God raises His Two Witnesses, who will
raise the 144,000 Jews spoken in Revelation chapters 7&14, who will
take on the role of leading the gentile revival that will blossom in
unprecedented ways. The Jewish witnesses will turn from their unbelief
to become the most powerful Christians the world has ever seen. They
will become Jewish apostles similar to Paul, all preaching a message of
repentance and faith toward God, orchestrating the global endtime
revival spoken by Joel, under the watchful supervision of the Two
Witnesses, who are under the supervision of Christ.
The
Jews expected their messiah to come and set up His kingdom in Jerusalem
2000 years ago (Jn 6-14,15), which they rightly derived from Old Testament teachings,
but those teachings were meant for the Millennium after the age of
grace. Now that those days
have come, God will call upon the Jews to be leaders of a Great Endtime
Revival, and they will answer His call by rallying together twelve thousand from every tribe of Israel, and will preach a
gospel of repentance in preparation to receive their kingdom. The Jews who once hated
Christianity will now lead the world into the greatest spiritual revival
of all time, just as God intended it from the very beginning. It
doesn’t matter how far back you look, even while God was delivering
Israel from the Pharaoh of Egypt He was thinking ahead to this time in which His people would do battle against Satan for the souls
of mankind. The enemy of goodness, righteousness and truth will finally
be put in its place through the weakness of human flesh through His
chosen people, Israel.
A
satanically driven man of pure evil will see the revival transpiring under his nose and will
create a diversion by offering the world an alternative world religion
in Catholicism. The spirit of pure malevolence will put on a
new hat, the one the Pope is wearing in a desperate attempt to quell
the spiritual revival without violence, while the world is watching.
Also, he will appeal to Israel’s ancient religion of the orthodox Jews who
have wanted nothing more than to rebuild their temple, for without the
temple the Jews virtually have no religion. He will attempt to obfuscate the
work of God by injecting the poison of obsolete Jewish temple services
into God’s new covenant Christian worship; his goal as usual is to
create confusion. The Pope will be his antichrist, but he will fail to undermine
this revival, though he will indulge himself in the Beast's glory, until
he becomes enraged and sets the Vatican in fire and then moves his
capital city to Jerusalem, where he will pose as the Jewish Messiah,
again in effort to obfuscate this Christian revival. He will convince the Middle East to let Israel
rebuild their temple. No one else has had the charisma or cunning to
smooth the differences between Israel and their neighboring Muslim
enemies, extending all the way back to Isaac and Ishmael. Once the temple
is rebuilt, the antichrist will pose as Israel’s messiah in a
desperate attempt to divert peoples’ attention off the global revival.
His plan, once he quells the revival, is to resume his position as
richest man in the world that he temporarily gave to the antichrist,
but these plans will never be realized, because God has plans of His own
to undo the kingdom of Satan through His saints.
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As
the antichrist enters the Most Holy Place, the orthodox Jews will
gasp in horror at the blasphemy of such a man and remove him from their
temple. This will mark the beginning of sorrows for Christians
on a global scale, which is all the Beast ever wanted to do anyway. He prefers murder over deceit if he can get away with it.
The Beast will institute an economy
wherein no one can buy or sell without receiving his mark.
People will know exactly what they are doing when they take the mark,
that it will represent their vote to martyr Christians and
irreversibly bar them from heaven. Because of their hollow stomachs, hoping
their lives will return to a semblance of normalcy, they will take the
mark, but sanity will not
return to this planet, until the glorious
age of millennium finally comes.
Throughout
the millennia Satan has always remained in the background, hidden in the
darkness, enslaving the nations with his malevolent spirit, but just as he
is laying the capstone on his world empire, Jesus Christ, who took
His seat at the right hand of the power of God, will initiate His
Millennial kingdom that will grow in size and affluence, starting in
Jerusalem and expanding outward around the globe, raising up two men
that He has prepared for that day and hour. The Two Witnesses will raise
up the 144,000, and together they will coax Satan from his dark lair of the spirit realm to take on human flesh as the
antichrist, who reveals himself as the man of lawlessness in
a panic, after all his efforts have failed to stop this revival. Satan
has worked throughout the generations to finally become leader of a one
world government, only to see it slip from his grasp from an
international Christian revival led by the Jews, who will finally realize
that Jesus Christ is indeed their Messiah.
The
benevolent wisdom of Joseph and Daniel will appear in Jerusalem,
submissive to authority, until the antichrist enters the temple and
emerges as Satan in human flesh. Then these two men will transition to a type of Moses
and Elijah, who called down fire from heaven and kept the earth from
raining on their enemies for three and a half years, and who
released the plagues against the pharaoh of Egypt until he let his
people go.
They will lead the Church from the Babylon of Egypt into the
wilderness in search of the promise land, the Millennium. When mass
starvation and poverty strikes at unprecedented levels, the Church will
symbolically journey to Egypt to buy grain from their brother, Joseph,
whom they left for dead decades earlier. There, the Church will finally
discover the will of God at the point of starvation, for their brother
Joseph the prophet, has prearranged everything in advance. God will
provide a way of escape for His people through these Two Witnesses. The trumpets of God's judgment represent the plagues of
Moses, while the Rapture represents crossing the Red Sea into the
promise land, suggesting that the bowls of God's judgment are symbolic
of Pharaoh and the Egyptians drowning in the Red Sea.
Jacob
was the father of Joseph, who earned the name ‘Man who wrestles with
God,’ which literally means “Israel.” Jacob’s offspring are
hence the sons of Israel, who were essentially the Church of the Old
Testament. Joseph was compliant with the will of God, unlike his
brothers. Joseph was faithful with the dreams and visions that God had
given him, and for that reason his brother’s hated him, and threw him
into a pit. They collected his varicolored tunic and dipped it in
goat’s blood, and gave it to their father, telling him that a lion
tore Joseph to pieces, so Jacob believed he lost his youngest son to the
beasts of the field and grieved his loss for years. What really happened
to Joseph? His brothers sold him into slavery to some countrymen
who were passing through that area on their way to Egypt. Joseph’s
dream was about binding sheaves in a field, and his brothers sheaves
bowed down to Joseph’s sheave, and his brothers complained,
Are you
actually going to rein over us, and are you going to rule over us?”
Then he had another dream, the sun, moon and stars were bowing down to
him, so he related it to his father and his brothers, and his father
rebuked him, saying, “What is this dream you have had? Shall I and
your mother and your brothers actually come and bow down before you to
the ground? And his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept
these things in his heart. Gen 37,6-11 NIV
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Joseph
represents the last-days’ contemporary prophets, who are currently
suffering under a silent persecution. After strangers pulled Joseph from the pit and
sold him
cheap to some travelers on their way to Egypt, he found himself slave to the house of Potiphar, who was the pharaoh’s chief guard, a man of
high standing with the king, who treated Joseph as one of his own sons,
until Potiphar’s wife desired relations with Joseph. He continuously
resisted her, but on one occasion when they were about to be discovered
during one of her flirtations, she made it appear that he was attempting
to rape her, and the authorities believed her over Joseph, which
furnished him a cell in Pharaoh's prison. After spending many of his youthful years
incarcerated it eventually became known to the king that Joseph was an
interpreter of dreams, and the opportunity to administer his gift as a
prophet finally surfaced by interpreting the pharaoh’s dream that no
one else could interpret. Pharaoh then released Joseph from prison and
raised him second in command only to himself in the most powerful
nation in the world at that time.
After
telling Joseph’s story it becomes clear that he too had a wilderness
experience, but not like Moses, who literally wandered in the desert as
he sought the will of God, and when he finally
realized it, he spent another forty years wandering in the desert with
the sons of Israel because of their disobedience after their exile from
Egypt. Therefore, wilderness experiences are what Joseph and Moses had
in common. A second thing they had in common was they were on opposite
ends of the same story. Joseph’s story told how Israel came to live in
Egypt, while Moses story told how
they left.
Joseph’s
story also interfaces with the character of Daniel in that they
both had rank as second in command with the king in the greatest
nations of the world in their respective eras, using a common gift from
God of interpreting dreams to find favor with the king. Joseph’s
interpretation of the Pharaoh’s dream was a set of instructions to
gather grain for the next seven years, after which there would be seven
years of drought. Pharaoh kept the dream’s interpretation a secret so Egypt would be the sole suppliers of grain to their region during
the years of want, which made Pharaoh very rich. Hundreds of years later the Assyrians led the
sons of Jacob in captivity to
Babylon in the time of Daniel. His king had a dream too of a statue
made of different metals that represented the last kingdom on earth that
was demolished by a rock that was hewn from a mountainside
without human agency.
The
comparisons are now drawn between the figures of Joseph and Daniel, whom
God will use in ways that parallel Moses and Elijah; the stage is now
set to explain the biblical prophecies of their wilderness experiences
and what they mean to us who live in the present day.
The Church has been disobedient in a way similar
to the times of the Babylonian takeover, as before the days of
Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel. The Major Prophets prophesied against their
disobedience: Isaiah warned them to repent, Jeremiah told them it was
already too late but prescribed a course of action to minimize their
judgment, Ezekiel explained in detail their future suffering that was
coming by another nation that God was sending against them resulting
from their disobedience, and the book of Lamentations served as poetic
justice for an obstinate and nation that failed to heed the
admonition of its prophets. This is
precisely the case with the Church today. Stemming from their unbelief,
people in our contemporary age who call themselves by the name of God
are spiritually starving to death, and one day they will have no choice
but to get up and go to a place of bondage where there is food and buy
it from strangers, who would enslave them, except that Joseph is waiting
for them, whom they once despised and persecuted.
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The
Church will soon run out of options and have no choice but to listen to
their prophets. Joseph represents one of the Two Witnesses, whose
ministry begins as a benevolent leader of the saints before God calls
them to prophesy against the world for martyring the saints. It says in Rev
11-3, “And I will grant authority to my Two Witnesses, and they will
prophesy for twelve hundred and sixty days, clothed in sackcloth.” Who
are these Two Witnesses, where did they come from, and what were they
doing prior to their 3-½ year ministry? These are the are first Two Witnesses
that God spiritually raises from the ashes of unbelief, who
will raise the remainder of His army 144,000 Jewish witnesses, according to an often quoted
passage, describing the valley of dry bones.
"Prophesy
to these bones and say to them, `Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD!
This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath
enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and
make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in
you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the
LORD.'" So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was
prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came
together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them
and skin covered them… Ezek 37,4-8 NIV
For
many days the Two Witnesses will tread among a people who have not obeyed the will of
God or even heard the voice of a prophet for millennia. They will walk among the spiritually dead, prophesying in the
streets of Jerusalem a message that God is about to do something
marvelous in your eyes, and the message will resound in the ears of those who have been
thus prepared, and they will rise and answer the call of
God. The purpose of the Two Witnesses is to extend God’s invitation of
eternal life first to His chosen people the Jews, then using them to
lead the Church of the gentiles into the greatest revival of its
2000-year history. Many Jews will spiritually awaken from
their unbelief. Flesh that has figuratively rotted off bones will reappear, tendons and ligaments will stretch over skeletons,
blood will once again course through veins and arteries. God will put
breath into their nostrils and they will stand on their feet as a mighty
army, who will fight to the death with the weapons of the word of God
and prayer, by which they will come to know the truth and by that truth
they will carry an anointing more powerful and more pure than any
gentile, for the anointing was made for the Jew first, then also for the
gentile.
Once
the world sets a bounty on the Two Witnesses, their formal ministry will
begin. They will hand the reigns to the 144,000, who will lead the
gentile Church into the wilderness, while the Two Witnesses make war
with the antichrist. They will act as a diversion for the Church, like a
mother duck draws attention to herself to protect her chicks from
predators. Joseph and Daniel were both made second in command in their
respective kingdoms because of their divine wisdom, even as the Two
Witnesses will have profound wisdom from God and become second in
authority only to the antichrist, who will come to Jerusalem in attempt
to stop the revival, first by using deception and confusion, then
murder. After being extricated from the Jewish temple and
realizing he is not fooling anyone, the antichrist will switch
tactics from deception to mass genocide, his preferred strategy. The Bible teaches that God will establish His Church right under
the nose of the antichrist, saying in Ex 9-16, “I have raised you up
[Pharaoh] for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that
my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” The story of Moses
delivering the children of Israel from the hand of pharaoh will rewrite
itself in the last days.
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In
Exodus chapter one it says that the king who did not know Joseph came to
power in Egypt and saw that the Israelites were becoming more numerous
than the Egyptians, and thought that if war broke out, they would join
their enemies, and prevail over them. For this reason they oppressed the
Israelites with forced labor to make them fear the Egyptians, but the more
they oppressed them the more numerous the Israelites became, “so the Egyptians
came to dread them” (Ex 1-12). Pharaoh punished the Israelites because of
fear. So it will be in the last days when the Great Endtime Revival
begins and Christians multiply by the tens of millions while the Beast is coming to
power; he will persecute both Jew
and gentile Christians through fear more than through hatred. Hitler’s
Germany also persecuted the Jews through fear (though they claimed it was
from hatred). The Jews were better merchants and bankers, and were pushing
out the German markets, and they were afraid that over time the Jews would
economically oppress the motherland under Jewish capitalism. Instead of
competing with them, they sought to eliminate them; so it will
be in the last days. When the devil takes on human flesh, he will come
to the same conclusion, and seek to eliminate Christians, who are
spiritually competing against his one-world empire. It says in Rev
7,3-14:
"Do
not harm the land or the sea or the trees until we put a seal on the
foreheads of the servants of our God." Then I heard the number of
those who were sealed: 144,000 from all the tribes of Israel… After
this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one
could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing
before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white
robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out
in a loud voice: "Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the
throne, and to the Lamb." All the angels were standing around the
throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell
down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying:
"Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power
and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!" Then one of
the elders asked me, "These in white robes-who are they, and where
did they come from?" I answered, "Sir, you know." And he
said, "These are they who have come out of the great tribulation;
they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the
Lamb.
In
the passage above it talks about the sons of Israel receiving the seal of God
on their foreheads, suggesting that their association with God will be
obvious to all. Then a few verses later it talks about an incalculable
multitude of saints in heaven so large they cannot be counted, clothed
in white robes and gathered around the throne. Based on these verses, it
is not a stretch to nominate the 144,000 Jews collectively as the woman
in Revelation chapter twelve. She will be responsible for this multitude
of gentile Christians who are her children (Rev 12-17). The antichrist will
establish his one-world government at the same time that God is
establishing the gentile Church through the Jewish ministry, gearing up
for the greatest spiritual battle of all time.
There
is another wilderness story that corresponds with the woman of
Revelation and her children in chapter 12, the story of Elijah in 1Kings 17, who
provides food for the old woman and her son in the desert. The next
chapter tells the story about his conflict with king Ahab, Jezebel and
the false prophets. After a drought had seized the whole land, God told
Elijah to go to a certain old woman who would provide food for him, for
the drought was very severe. When he got there she had nothing to eat,
but a little flour and a little oil at the bottom of two jars. She was
in the process of preparing for her and her son the last bit of food
they had when Elijah showed at her door, and told her to make a cake for
him too, promising that if she obeyed the word of the Lord, the flour
and the oil would not run out of the jars until the drought was
finished. She believed him at his word and did as he instructed her, and
it happened just as Elijah said; the flour and oil never ran out until
the drought had run its course.
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It
was Elijah’s word that fed the woman and her son, but it was the
woman’s faith that fed Elijah with the last of her supplies, for it
was her faith that continued drawing flower and oil from the vessels
until the draught ended and the rains returned. God required much faith
from the widow, who represents the 144,000 Jews of Revelation chapter 7,
but her son merely received God’s blessing. Very little was required
of him, who represents the gentile Church. The word of the Lord from
Elijah could have just as easily been the words of a shyster, who was
conning the woman out-of her last morsel, but she made him a cake
because she believed him to be a prophet without any signs to authenticate
him as a prophet. In other words, she discerned he was a man of God,
implying that one of the gifts of the spirit that will come in very
handy in the last days will be a healthy gift of discernment. Before the
beast makes his mark on the world, the saints will need a way of
identifying one another. God’s answer will be to disseminate the
Jewish seal of the 144,000 upon the gentile Church by endowing them with
an anointing and with it the gift of discernment to read
the seal. God loves to put His people in positions where they need to
walk in faith. In this way the Two Witnesses will speak the word of
the Lord to the 144,000 (the woman), and she will in turn speak to
her children (the gentile Church).
Seeing Elijah helping the old woman and her son, it
becomes apparent that Elijah needed the woman as much as the woman
needed him. They were codependent on each other. As the Two Witnesses called down fire from heaven against their enemies, the 144,000 called
down manna from heaven for herself, for the Two Witnesses and for the Church, as God miraculously provided manna for
Moses and the Israelites. This is also similar to Jesus feeding the five thousand. After His
disciples reminded Him that they had assembled in a desolate place and
had nothing to eat, Jesus said to them, “You give them something to
eat” (Mat 14-15), so they supplied the needs of
the large crowd as Jesus reached into the basket and pulling out
more bread and fish for the people until they were satisfied. In this case Jesus
represents the Two Witnesses, His disciples represent the 144,000, and
the multitude represent the Church of the gentiles. All that is required
of the gentile believers is to accept and receive the teaching and
ministry of the Two Witnesses.
When
Jesus came the first time, God provided a minister to introduce Israel
to their Messiah, John the Baptist. At His second coming God will again provide a minister
to introduce the Son of God to the world through
the office of the Two Witnesses. They will have similar ministries.
The
beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; As it is
written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face,
which shall prepare thy way before thee. The voice of one crying in the
wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance
for the remission of sins. And [he] preached, saying, There cometh one
mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to
stoop down and unloose. I indeed have baptized you with water: but he
shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost.
Mark 1,1-4,7-8 (KJV).
The
purpose of John the Baptist was to prepare Israel for the ministry of
Jesus Christ with a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
His ministry laid the foundation for Jesus’ baptism of the Holy
Spirit, a concept central to the gospel, though people have misconstrued,
butchered and emasculated it over the millennia. Jesus said that His
Spirit
would be in us (Jn 14-17). Most everyone understands the indwelling Holy Spirit, but when we are baptized, water does not
go in us but wets our
extremities. Baptism illustrates the process of drowning (Rom 7,1-6), then
returning from
the water a new person in Christ through the Spirit. The anointing
is represented at the center of this ceremony. Baptism is not about the indwelling
Holy Spirit but about an outward manifestation of an inward
work, similar to Jesus’ parable in Matt 13-33, “The kingdom of
heaven is like leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three pecks of
meal, until it was all leavened” NASB. In this parable we see God
instilling His eternal life within the believer that matures to
externally manifest as the anointing, but it seems that few want any
part of this anointing. The name Christ literally means “anointed
one,” so if we are Christians, then we must be anointed ones.
Where is the anointing in the Church today? People think they can do the
will of God without walking in the Spirit, but if we
want to obey Christ, we must learn to carry His anointing, because we
can do nothing without Him (Jn 15-5). God will expect us to walk in His strength before He
returns as a means of surviving the last days.
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Jesus’
baptism of the Holy Spirit is the one thing the Church as a whole has
resisted throughout the ages. It is the one thing Jesus wanted to get
through to us. The anointing is like the trinity in that it is rarely if
ever mentioned in the Bible, yet it is central to the gospel. The
anointing is the power of God that He promised to those who believe in
Him, but after the apostles fell asleep it was the first thing to
disappear, since it requires an abiding relationship with Christ and a
deep understanding of the Scriptures to walk in it, along with
a strong commitment against religion to avoid replacing it with dribble. It also happens to be the only threat to Satan, and
therefore his primary target, making the anointing an elusive entity
indeed.
God earnestly desires to restore
the anointing to the Church in
preparation to receive the kingdom of God in the Millennium, and it will
come in the form of God's mark that He places on the foreheads of all
His People. The purpose
of the Two Witnesses is to “restore all things.” As Jesus handed the
bread and fish to His disciples, who distributed them to the five
thousand, so the Two Witnesses will reinstate the anointing,
delivering it to the 144,000 Jews, who will distribute God's mark to the gentile Church
in the form of a countenance. This will
have the effect of unifying the Church as a global entity, ending all
schisms and abolishing all religions and denominations within God’s
true Church, so they all agree with one truth according to the
instruction of the Holy Spirit. This will become the first and greatest
miracle that will make the world stand up and take notice as it says in
Rev 12-1, “And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman [the 144,000]
clothed with the sun, and the moon [Satan] under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (NASB). This transformation happens
before the Trumpet judgments according to Rev 7-3, "Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees until we have sealed the bond-servants of our God on their foreheads,"
suggesting that it happens sometime during the Seals of Satan's wrath.
The
disciples learned from the scribes that there was a connection between
John the Baptist and Elijah the prophet, and they asked Jesus about it.
The
disciples asked Him, saying ‘Why then do the scribes say that Elijah
must come first?’ And he answered and said, ‘Elijah is coming and
will restore all things; but I say to you, that Elijah already came, and
they did not recognize him, but did to him whatever they wished. So also
the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands.’ Then the disciples
understood that He had spoken to them about John the Baptist (Mat
17,10-13) NIV.
For
Jesus to compare John the Baptist with Elijah, and for Elijah to display
many of the attributes of the Two Witnesses suggests that the Two Witnesses
will possess the traits of both John the Baptist and Elijah, in that
both ministries had the quality of restoration at their center. John the Baptist was to prepare Israel to receive their
Messiah, as the Two Witnesses will prepare the 144,000, who in turn prepares the Church of the gentiles
on a global scale to receive their Savior at the
second coming of Christ. The Two Witnesses will bring back the anointing
to the Church that was lost almost immediately after the apostles fell
asleep. They will cause millions of people to walk in the power of God
for the first time in two thousand years, giving them hope and faith to
establish God’s purpose in a dark and foreboding world where love has
been lost. Recall from the book of Acts that the apostles and others went about the countryside performing
miracles and preaching the gospel in the power of God, but instead of
twelve apostles there will be 144,000 Jews that will have the gift of
God in their fingertips and they will speak the unadulterated word of
God with boldness in the last days, along with millions of other gentile
Christians who will use their gifts to strengthen one another in the Church
and evangelize their communities until persecution drives them into the wilderness. This period of
evangelism will be short but effective.
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The
Scripture says, “I will send my messenger [John the Baptist] ahead of
you.” Likewise, in the last days God will send His Two Witnesses ahead
of the second coming of Christ to pave the way for His kingdom to be
established on the earth. After the antichrist turns up the heat and the
world begins martyring the saints, fulfilling the fifth seal (Rev 6,9-11), God will have transformed His
Two Witnesses from
benevolent shepherds of God’s Church to adjudicators of the world’s
unbelief, sent forth to defend the saints by afflicting the earth with
as many plagues as they desire. Later, they too will be martyred after becoming a diversion and a scapegoat to
alleviate the pressure from the saints, so more souls by all means
may be saved.
I was
given a reed like a measuring rod and was told, "Go and measure the
temple of God and the altar, and count the worshipers there. But exclude
the outer court; do not measure it, because it has been given to the
Gentiles. They will trample on the holy city for 42 months. (Rev 11,1-3
NIV)
These
verses were meant as an analogy to depict the Church in the last days,
who ventured into a spiritual domain with God that not even the early Church experienced; it will be a spiritual realm where the world
cannot go. The temple’s Holy of Holies, not the literal one, but a
spiritual domain that God has prepared where their enemies cannot go, analogous to
entering heaven, will be the means that God uses to protect His people.
He will hide His Church in the anointing (the wilderness) from the
wrath of the dragon, who is barred from such a holy place. Note
the paradox that the antichrist will enter the holy place of the actual
temple (Mat 24-15). Jesus said to the Pharisees who hated him, “You will seek Me, and will not find Me; and where I am, you cannot come” (Jn 7-34),
because the devil cannot follow the Church into
the sanctuary of God’s presence. The place that God
has prepared for the Church to hide from the wrath of the dragon is the
very presence of God, a place where Satan is neither welcome nor willing
to go.
According
to the verses above, the city along with the outer court of the temple
are trampled underfoot, implying that the domain of the outer court
belongs to the natural realm and therefore does not apply
to the heavenly realm where God intends to hide His people during the
reign of the antichrist. Once we step behind the veil into the most
holy place, we are standing on holy ground, where strangers and strange
spirits are not permitted, nor their doctrines. The outer court, therefore, depicts the
domain of the five foolish virgins, who refuse to walk in God’s
anointing, and they will be trampled underfoot
by men. God told John the revelator to measure the temple and count the
worshipers in it. To count them is to mark them as on a tally sheet,
similar to the book of life. Prior to calling down fire from heaven,
Elijah assembled the people and asked them a question (1Kings 18-21,22), the same question God will ask the Church in the
last days when the semblance of order is breaking down and all hope
appears to be lost, “Elijah went before the people and said, "How
long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow
him; but if Baal is God, follow him.’ But the people said
nothing."
God
intends to call huge masses of people into His eternal kingdom through a
colossal endtime revival, but will not protect those who refuse to enter
with Him into divine worship. Those who partake of the
endtime revival will put down their unbelieving flesh
to hear and obey the Holy Spirit, but many will reject God’s purpose
for themselves,
because the doctrines disseminating from the Two Witnesses and from the 144,000
Jews will conflict with their old worn-out religion. Ancient
mainstream religious doctrines are stained by centuries of malpractice,
according to Paul’s own words in Acts 20-29,30, “I know that after I
leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the
flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in
order to draw away disciples after them” NIV. God intends to reveal
the flaws of the gentile faith and its various denominations, proving that the
gentiles have not carried the gospel in its purity any better than
Israel followed the old covenant, “for we have already charged that
both Jews and Greeks are all under sin; as it is written, ‘there is
none righteous, not even one…” (Rom 3,9-12).
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The
Church today is steeped in manmade religion, and most people will not
surrender them to Christ, not for the love of God and not even for the hope of
eternal life. Some will recognize the signs of His return, but still
they will harden their hearts. Remember what happened to Israel, “That
which Israel is seeking for, it has not obtained, but those who were
chosen obtained it, and the rest were hardened.” (Rom 11-7) NASB. Many
within the Church today will go the way of Israel in the last days, and
will miss the second coming of Christ. It is written that Israel was broken
off as a branch so that the gentiles may be grafted in as wild branches
of the olive tree (who is Christ), “…They were broken off for their
unbelief, but you stand by your faith. Do not be conceited, but fear;
for if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will He spare
you. Behold then the kindness and severity of God; to those who fell,
severity, but to you, God’s kindness, if you continue in His kindness;
otherwise you also will be cut off” (Rom 11,20-22) NASB. Those who
resist the coming anointing and oppose the endtime revival
will miss God’s plan even as Israel missed Jesus at His first coming,
preferring their own religion, and their enraged jealousy will
drive them to receive the Mark of the Beast, and they will turn against the
true saints, even as the false prophets turned against Elijah.
After taking care of the woman and her
son, Elijah
goes to battle with the false prophets of Ahab and Jezebel (Read 1Kings
chapters 17&18). The false prophets in Elijah’s time represent the false
brethren in the Church today, who will not give up their religion when
God raises up His Church; they will stand in opposition to the anointing
that God is establishing among His people. Elijah challenged the false
prophets of Ahab to call down fire from heaven to prove that he was serving
God and that they were serving demons, so they danced around the altar
from morning till noon, cutting themselves with knives to attract the
attention of the gods to no avail, while Elijah stood back and mocked
them as the blood gushed from their wounds. Later that afternoon it was
Elijah’s turn; he rebuilt the broken down altar and prepared the
evening offering, ordered a trench dug around the altar and water poured
on the offering until it filled the trench. Elijah then called upon the
God of Israel, and fire came from heaven in the presence of his enemies
and consumed the evening sacrifice, licking up the water that surrounded
the altar. Once he had proven that he was serving the Lord and that they
were serving demons, he ordered the false prophets rounded
up and slaughtered. The difference between this story and the account of
the Two Witnesses in Revelation 11 is that instead of calling down fire
on the evening sacrifice, the Two Witnesses will call down fire directly
on their enemies, who are the evening
sacrifice.
And I
will give power to my Two Witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260
days, clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees and the two
lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. If anyone tries to
harm them, fire comes from their mouths and devours their enemies. This
is how anyone who wants to harm them must die. These men have power to
shut up the sky so that it will not rain during the time they are
prophesying; and they have power to turn the waters into blood and to
strike the earth with every kind of plague as often as they want. (Rev
11,3-6 NIV).
The
Two Witnesses will give the world an opportunity to
repent, forcing everyone to make a conscious decision to follow
Christ or to follow Satan after presenting strong evidence that they are
serving the Most High. Some will repent and the
rest will be hardened. According to Rev 11-1,2, the city
is trampled underfoot by the antichrist while the Two Witnesses are
prophesying against him in Jerusalem. Their prophecies and plagues will
deliver the saints from their enemies by creating a diversion in order
to defer the Rapture, that God might lead His Church through the
Trumpets of God’s judgment against the wicked, corresponding with the days of
Moses, when God
delivered he and the Israelites from Pharaoh through the devastation
of Egypt.
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This
theme of delivering the Church through the tribulation runs throughout
the discourse of the Bible. The Two Witnesses will protect the Church
by fire that proceeds from their mouths through the Trumpet
judgments as they speak the oracle of God and strike the earth with as
many plagues as they desire. The fact that the Two Witnesses performed
miracles similar to Moses and Elijah strongly suggests that they hold
offices and carry anointings similar to these two ancient prophets. When
God judged Pharaoh, Israel lived nearby in the land of Goshen but were
unaffected by the plagues, because God made a distinction between His people and their enemies. So, we can trust that
God will again make a distinction between His people and their enemies
by ordering His true Church into the wilderness that God will set apart
as a type of Goshen. This suggests that God will call His Two Witnesses to aim their plagues at metropolitan areas, implying that He will call
His people to migrate from all the major cities of the world and set up
communes in wilderness places, where people can live and worship God in
preparation to receive His coming kingdom. Rev 18-4 says, "Come out
of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you
will not receive any of her plagues.” In the process of Moses
delivering Israel from the land of Egypt as it says in Ex 7,8-25, Aaron
threw down his staff and it became a serpent, so Pharaoh summoned his
Egyptian magicians and they also were able to duplicate many of the
plagues of Moses through their secret arts. Each one threw down his
staff and it became a snake. That’s actually pretty resourceful for a
sorcerer without the help of God to turn a piece of wood into a snake,
except they did it through trickery, just like the magicians of our day,
who can do some pretty amazing things, like temporarily removing the
statue of Liberty from it place as David Copperfield claimed to have
done in 1983. People in the last days will have an affinity to believe
in the devil, greedily accepting his irrational explanations for
rejecting the message of the Two Witnesses after seeing their signs and
wonders for 3 ½ years.
It
says that the Two Witnesses will turn water into blood, just as Moses
did in Exodus chapter seven. Aaron stretched out his staff over the
waters of Egypt and they turned into blood, but the Egyptian magicians
did the same things by their secret arts and pharaoh’s heart was
hardened. So it will be in the last days that the Two Witnesses will
perform miracles in the presence of the Beast, who will summon
his sorcerers to duplicate their miracles to discredit
their message of repentance. It says in Rev 11-5 that the Two Witnesses
called down fire from heaven on their enemies, and in Rev 13-13 it says that the
Beast "makes fire come down out of heaven to the earth in the presence of men,"
so the Beast counterfeited the Two Witnesses.
The
Church will remain present during the Seals of Satan's wrath and the
Trumpets of God’s judgment, suggesting that God intends to use Satan to judge His people and the world. That
shouldn’t surprise anyone, since God often used wicked nations to
judge Israel throughout the Old Testament. It is fair to say that God
will judge the Church and the world for choosing
absolute evil instead of Him. The Bible says that God is a jealous God, meaning
that if someone tried to replace Him, and wanted to treat His creation with tender
loving care, He would still have a problem with it. God jealously
defends His throne, and the result benefits H is faithful ones. Whatever
desires to
replace Him is intrinsically evil, since no one can seek His throne with
good motives. Lucifer proved that by turning into a monster in
his evil pursuit of absolute power.
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The
Holy Spirit incorporated John the Baptist’s wilderness experience into
the anointing that he bestowed on Christ at His baptism, which
subsequently led Him into the wilderness for forty days and forty nights
to be tempted by the devil. In the same way, the Two Witnesses will have
lived in the wilderness before they are revealed in sackcloth, and
impart their wilderness anointing into the Jewish Church, who will in
turn pass their wilderness anointing to the gentile Church. In this way
God will lead His people by the Spirit into the wilderness protected
from the devil for 3½ years, shielded from the antichrist, after which the
Two Witnesses will be
killed. Then, after 3½ days their bodies will be raised from the dead
and caught up to heaven in the clouds in the resurrection of the
righteous, whose bodies rest
in their tombs listening for His voice, who have died in
faith since Adam. Then we who are
alive and remain will be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the
Lord in the air (1 Thessalonians 4).
There
is a steep grade of severity from the seals, to the trumpets to the
bowls of God’s judgment, blood being what they all have in common, as
it says in Rev 16-6, “For they have shed the blood of your saints and
prophets, and you have given them blood to drink as they deserve"
NIV. The sixth seal calls for an earthquake
that will rock every mountain on earth, while the seventh bowl calls for
an earthquake that will completely remove the mountains and fill all the
valleys (Rev 16,17-21),
creating a more spacious landmass in preparation for the millennium. God
has kept His Church here on earth as a witness to the works of God to
show Satan that something as weak as human flesh is stronger than all
the power of evil when man obeys the Holy Spirit. God will protect His
people from the Seals of Satan’s wrath and from the Trumpets of
God’s anger by providing them a way of escape in the wilderness
that God has prepared for the woman and her children. He will
supernaturally provide everything His people need during that time, as
He did for Elijah during his wilderness experiences with the woman and
her son, and for Moses and the Israelites during their forty-year trek
through the desert. Afterward, the Church will be Raptured to meet
Christ in the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.
Following
is a comparison/contrast of the Two Witnesses, John the Baptist, Moses,
Elijah and the bowls of Gods judgment.
-
Fear and jealousy are the
prime motives of the antichrist’s campaign against Christians.
-
Moses and Elijah were
hotly pursued by their enemies
-
The Two Witnesses will
be pursued and killed after their ministry is complete
-
John the Baptist was
killed after his ministry.
-
Moses and Elijah
characterize the Two Witnesses
-
They both had
wilderness experiences
-
They both met Jesus on
the mountaintop at Jesus' transfiguration.
-
The Two Witnesses turned
water into blood, as did Moses. The first seal and two bowls of
God’s judgment pertain to turning the oceans into blood and fresh
water streams and rivers into blood, making it the most common,
hence the most significant type of judgment.
-
God used blood to judge
the world for martyring His saints (Rev 16,3-7)
-
Blood is the
scale of frequency and intensity regarding martyrdom.
-
The Two Witnesses called
down fire from heaven to destroy their enemies
-
Elijah called down fire
to consume the evening offering (2King 1,10-12).
-
The Two Witnesses call
down fire from heaven on their enemies (Rev 11-5)
-
The false prophet will
call down fire using his magic arts as a way of discrediting the Two Witnesses.
-
The Two Witnesses will
protect the woman and her children (the Jewish and gentile Church)
-
Elijah took care of the
woman and her son (1Kings 17).
-
In the last days
signs, wonders and miracles will be commonplace, similar to the
days of Moses in the wilderness.
-
The Two Witnesses wore
sackcloth, which many of the Old Testament prophets wore while
fasting, similar to John the Baptist, who wore camel’s skin. These
garments are symbolic of living in the wilderness.
-
The Two Witnesses stopped
the rain, as did Elijah. One of the bowls of God’s judgment is a
scorching sun, implying a drought, which would account for the
drying up of the River Euphrates, another bowl of God’s judgment.
-
Revelation chapter eleven
says that the Two Witnesses were allowed to afflict the world with
as many plagues as they desired, which may include some or all the
plagues that Moses called on the Egyptians including but not limited
to: a swarm of frogs, a swarm of gnats, a swarm of flies, a swarm of
locusts, cattle of the Egyptians died, and the Egyptians first born
were slain.
Sheep Among Wolves
1:53:18
Revival in the End Times
1:06:04
The Central Role of Martyrdom
51:31
Israel: God's End Time Alarm Clock
36:08
End Time Revival & Tribulation | Asher Intrater
31:12
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List
James
R. Wuthrich
www.jeansbiblestudy.com