In this sermon, the speaker discusses the signs that Jesus gave regarding his second coming. He explains that there are four main signs: famine, wars, earthquakes in the world; a great falling away and completion of evangelism in the church; the appearance of the Antichrist in the Middle East; and a darkened sky with no natural light. The speaker emphasizes that these signs are not yet fully present, with only the first sign being evident. He also addresses the interpretation of the fig tree mentioned by Jesus, stating that it is not an allegory for Israel's return, but rather an analogy indicating that when Israel is back in the land, the second coming is near.

Well, my body says good afternoon and good evening now. Another hour or two, I'll say good night to you. Are there any new signs that have appeared that would indicate where we are on God's clock? The answer is yes. There have always been earthquakes and famines and wars. There have been 36 international wars since World War II, and many civic wars as well. There have been natural and human disasters all through my lifetime. Have they increased? Earthquakes haven't increased, but the number of people killed by earthquakes has rapidly increased. It's partly because there are more people in the world, and partly because they will settle in dangerous areas and hope for the best. But there are two new events in my lifetime that were not there when I was born, which was 1930. There is something wrong with my ears, apparently. Right. The two new events in my lifetime are, first, that the Jews are returning to their own promised land, and that is completely new. It's the great new fact of the twentieth century that the name Israel is back on the world map and back in the school atlas again. The two key dates which have captured our imagination were 1948, the founding of the State of Israel, and 1967, when the whole of Jerusalem came back into their hands. They are now one of the most prosperous commercial economies in the world, and one of the few countries not to suffer from the recession that we've had. Have we been witnessing a miracle? I find I have to debate that even with Christians, because there are human explanations about the establishment of the State of Israel, that it is purely a political accident, and even Christians are embracing this theory. They say, first, it was a response to the Holocaust, and it happened within the same decade. 1942, the Holocaust, and 1948, the State of Israel. Secular politicians see the connection, and many Christians apparently see a connection, that the world, out of sympathy for their suffering in Germany, approved them having a state of their own immediately after World War II. The idea was that both the world and the church suddenly found themselves with a sympathy for the Jewish people, which again was a new feature. Of course, the Holocaust meant that the Jews were desperate to have a place of their own where they could live safely, where they were not occupied by a foreign power. And of course, the Promised Land was the obvious choice. The British government offered them a place in Kenya, in Africa, but they refused that and insisted on a homeland in their own country. Now all that says that the re-establishment of the State of Israel is purely a human event caused by human beings. I could not disagree more. I believe we have witnessed a divine event which is proof that God is not dead but still alive, and that he is the God of Israel. There are many indications of that for me. One is that when the State of Israel was announced by Ben-Gurion in Tel Aviv, the United Nations voted for it. And for the first and last time, America and Russia voted together. That is a unique event which takes some explaining, humanly speaking. Britain abstained to our shame from that vote, having been the last power to occupy the Holy Land. But America and Russia voting together is the first and last time for the State of Israel. But there is one thing that has convinced me that God is needed to explain the re-establishment of the State of Israel, and it is one that I know of nobody else appealing to. It is the simple fact of rain. The Holy Land is unique in that it depends on winds from the west bringing moisture from the Mediterranean and dropping it as rain on the hills of Judea. If the wind comes from the east, it comes from the Arabian Desert. They call the wind from the east the Hamsin, which is a very hot, drying wind. All the flowers of the field shrivel up and even the grass disappears. There are only two prevailing winds in the Middle East. One is west and one is east. But in my Bible it says that God used that to bless or curse his people. When they lived his way, he blessed them with a west wind and rain from the Mediterranean. I have stood on the top of Mount Carmel and looked west and seen one little cloud and been able to cover it with my hand. A cloud no bigger than a man's hand, but it wasn't long before it was raining in the Holy Land. That first little cloud was a sign that the wind had changed and was coming from the west. For three and a half years in the history of Israel, no rain came. The wind was from the east for three and a half years in the time of Elijah. It was Elijah's prayer that brought the rain back from the west. So this was God's control of his people through nature. When he blessed them, the wind came from the west, and when he cursed them, the wind came from the east. Now then, for years and years the Holy Land was a barren land, infertile. When your author Mark Twain went on his tour in the late nineteenth century, he described a land that was desert, that was inhabited by only a few Bedouins. The pictures brought back in those days are devastating. Now then, I have a brother-in-law, my wife's brother, who is a television weather forecaster. He is well known in England because he was the one who told us that rain was coming and would go on coming and go on coming. I got hold of him one day and I said, look Ernest, could you possibly get me the rainfall figures for the Middle East for the last hundred years? Well he said, I don't know if I can but I'll try. He came back with a list of the rainfall figures, only in figures. So I took a sheet of paper and graphed them on the paper, when the rain went up, when it went down, and so on. I was actually drawing on the graph the political history of modern Israel. Every time more Jews went back to the land, Medalia, and went back to live there, God sent more rain. And when they weren't allowed to go back by the British government after World War Two and were interned in Cyprus in camps, they came out of German camps, the British put them back into camps in Cyprus, the rains stopped increasing. And the highest rainfall for a hundred years was in 1948. Now nobody can explain that without bringing God into the picture. So far, I think I'm the only person who has ever drawn attention to that. When the first group of Jews came back in 1875, they landed on the shore from the boat and there was a cloudburst and rain poured down on them. And a rabbi who was in the group lifted his hand and said, praise God, the people are back and the rain is back. That convinced me that we're not dealing with a human situation here. We're dealing with a divine intervention with God sending rain back for his people. I've lost the graph unfortunately. It's somewhere in my study in my patent piling system, and I wish I could put my hands on it, but there it is to me, proof God brought them back. And this is the great fact of our time. Another factor which convinces me is that God used British Christians to bring them back and played a significant role in the re-establishment of the State of Israel. A book that I strongly recommend you to read all about that is called For the Love of Zion by a man called Kelvin Crumby. It's the history of the British Christian pioneering work from the middle of the 19th century that helped to re-establish the State of Israel. It's a little-known story, but without the British Christians, one wonders if it would ever have happened. So God used British Christians. Sadly, I have to tell you now that British Christians are turning against Israel in large numbers, and Zionism in England is held by a very small minority of people, which is sad since a hundred years ago we played such a crucial role in opening the door for Jews to get back to their own land. But we mustn't exaggerate the return of the Jews to the Promised Land, and people do. Firstly, only half of them have gone back. It has taken well over a hundred and twenty years for half of them to get back. Just suppose it took another hundred and twenty years for the rest to get back. God has his own way of bringing them home, and one is by arousing anti-Zionism feeling, anti-Semitic feeling in the countries where they are comfortable and assimilated, and America is the foremost of that. But believe me, anti-Semitism will grow in America, and life for Jews will become more and more difficult in America. God wants them back, and he has promised to take them back from every corner of the globe. So the first thing to say about the return of Israel to the land is only half of them are there yet, and the other half have to be brought back and make a lea. So it's not as if they've all come back and re-established the state, and they've only got a quarter of the Promised Land. So with only half of the people back, and only back to a quarter of the land that God gave them and promised them, the process of the return of Israel to the land is far from complete. It's not a complete sign yet. It's a real sign because God did it, but he hasn't done it all yet. He's begun to do it and is halfway through it, but there's another half yet to take place. So we mustn't fall into the trap of thinking that all the Jews have come back to the Promised Land. They haven't, not yet. We're in the middle of the process and therefore it's not a completed sign. What does the scripture say? There is no text in my Bible linking the return of Jews to the Promised Land with the imminent return of Christ. It is not listed among the signs in the New Testament of the Lord's return. I believe they have to be back in Jerusalem because they have to be back there to say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And some of them are back and ready to do so. But they're not all back, and the scripture does not say, when you see Israel back in the land, you know that Jesus is about to return. It never says that. There is, however, one scripture where Christians feel the New Testament does say that, and it's in Matthew 24, where after giving four clear signs to the disciples of his return, Jesus adds this, when you see the fig tree blossom, you know that summer is near. Many people say, Ah, fig tree! Fig tree is often used as an allegory of Israel. Therefore, Jesus is saying here, when Israel is back in the land, you know the second coming is near. I'm sorry, but that is a misuse of scripture. Jesus does say, after giving the four signs – perhaps I should go through those four signs for you – first is in the world, famines, wars, earthquakes. Second is in the church, a great falling away and yet evangelism being completed, gospel being preached to all the nations, then the end shall come. Third sign is in the Middle East and is clearly a reference to the Antichrist, the abomination of desolation. Daniel called him and Jesus said, when you see that, then get away from Jerusalem, flee quickly, get out of that imminent presence of the Antichrist. And the fourth sign is in the sky, when the sun and the moon and the stars simply go out and there is no natural light left in the world, a world of darkness. And then, like lightning from the east to the west, the return of Christ in a blaze of glory will light up the earth. Well, the third and fourth signs are not there yet. The first is there, the second is nearly there, the third is not there at all, and the fourth is not there yet. So these are the four signs Jesus gave. Then he added that word about the fig tree. If he really meant Israel's return by the fig tree blossoming, then that is the fifth sign. Notice it comes after all the other four, after the darkened sky, after the Antichrist. But it is not an allegory, it is an analogy. That is a big difference. Jesus is simply saying, when you see the fig tree blossom, you know that summer is near. That is all he is saying. Then he adds, when you see all these things happen, you know that he is at the door. All these things refer to the four major signs, not to the return of Israel. My proof that he was not meaning Israel at all in that, though you will hear preachers tell you this, is that in Luke's version of the same saying, Jesus says, when you see the fig tree and all the trees blossom, you know that he is near. And therefore it is a simple analogy, which does not make any sense if it is Israel, who are all the trees. You are just pressing detail far too heavily. And apart from anything, the position of that saying, after all the other four signs, would be in the wrong position because Israel has returned much earlier. So quite frankly, I can't find in my New Testament anything that says the return of Israel to the Promised Land is the supernatural sign that God is sending Jesus back very, very soon. But I do believe it is a sign that he will come back because they do need to be in Jerusalem. But would it upset your faith if it took another 150 years for God to bring the rest back? It wouldn't upset my faith. As Phillips Brooks, the American famous preacher of the former day, used to say, the trouble is I am in a hurry and God isn't. And I am afraid we are all in a hurry but God isn't. I mean, he has waited at least two thousand years to return his Son to us. To God? Oh! What's wrong with my ears? Right, thank you very much. Off we go again. There simply is no clear, plain statement about the connection between the Jews returning and Jesus returning except that they must return before he does, whether immediately before or a long time before. The Bible does not say. The other major factor happening in my lifetime is not only that the Jews are returning to their land, but the Jews are returning to the Lord. That's a wonderful sign. They're not becoming Christians, thank God for that, because Christian is a Gentile word. They're remaining Jews but they're believing in their own Messiah. Hallelujah for that. I'm glad that they remain Jews. Why did we want to turn them into Gentiles, which we've been doing for so many centuries? In fact, the opposite is happening these days. Gentiles are trying to be Jews, dressing up in Jewish costumes, singing Jewish songs and all the rest of it. I think some Jews just laugh at us when we try to do that. Look, I'm a Gentile, and I'm glad to be a Gentile, and I'm glad that God has extended his grace to me as a Gentile, and I will remain a Gentile. I'm so glad for my Jewish friends that they're Jews, and I'm glad about that. In Christ we're one new man together, and that's all that matters to me. I don't want Jews to become Gentiles. I don't want Gentiles to become Jews. I want us to be one flock under one shepherd, and Jesus promised that, so thank you Jesus. But Jews are turning to their own Messiah in unprecedented numbers, and that is something totally new in my lifetime. In 1948 you could count the number of believing Jews in Israel on two hands. Now the number is nearer fifteen thousand, and it's all happened without Gentile missionaries. It's an indigenous movement in which Jews are telling Jews about their own Messiah, and I find that very exciting. To go to some of the Israeli believing fellowships in Israel is a real treat, a real blessing. I hope you have some Jewish friends because they know the Bible better than we do, and they see it so clearly. You know, I was preaching in England, and there was a Jewess aged about twenty-five sitting in the congregation. After I'd spoken, she came to me and she said, Are you trying to tell me that Jesus of Nazareth is our Messiah? Notice the word our, not your, our. I said, that's true, that's why I'm here. I believe he is. And she said this, Well, if he's still alive, I can believe it myself. I said, oh, that's great. And she said, How can I find out if he's alive? I said, Come with me. And I took her to a room at the back of the platform and I said, Sit there. I said, I'm going to leave you for ten minutes, and I want you to talk to Jesus, because if he's alive, he'll answer you. So tell him all about yourself. Tell him about your upbringing, about your doubts about him, about all that you've longed to be in, about your place in the promised people. Just talk to him. I said, I'll come back in ten minutes. I left her there. I came back in ten minutes. He's alive! He's alive! And you know, within five minutes she was teaching me the Bible, and I'd been studying it for years. But she said, Then this, and this, and this is true. She'd got it all except the vital clue. The only thing that was needed to bring Saul of Tarsus to faith was to meet the risen Jesus, find out he's alive. And that's all Jews need today, to find out that he's alive, because if he's dead, then he's like every other prophet in Israel. If he's alive, and you can talk to him, and hear him talk to you, then that's a whole new ball game altogether. Well now, they are turning to the Lord. In Israel, 15,000. Over the whole world, probably 50,000. And the amazing thing, that has all happened since they got their land back. Even among those who haven't gone back, like many in America, a movement like Jews for Jesus sprang up spontaneously. You'll be hearing more about that from Dan Juster, I'm sure. But this is a whole new fact of our era that was not true when I was a boy. It's a fact they're turning back. The Bible says that God has hardened them. Those who did not accept his Messiah, he hardened. Always remember that God hardens people. He also softens their hearts, but he hardens them too. But he only hardens those who harden their own hearts. God doesn't act arbitrarily. He doesn't pick numbers out of a hat and say, I'll harden you and I'll soften you. He only hardens those who, like Pharaoh, hardened his own heart first. Out of the ten plagues in Egypt, Pharaoh hardened his heart seven times, and then God took over and hardened it three more times. That's what God does. He says, you choose to go that way, I'll help you down that road. Today, if you hear his voice, harden not your hearts. There are people listening to me now who could go out with God hardening their hearts. God doesn't remain indifferent. He doesn't sit back and just say, well, let's see who will listen, who will receive my word. He says, if you harden your heart against my word, I'll harden your heart for you. This he has done with the majority of Jews, and they are hard people to win for the Lord. No question about that. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing it. I'll say much more about that tomorrow morning, but Jews still not only need to be saved, but they can be saved. We all should make that a priority. The Gospel is for the Jew first, and then for us Gentiles. That's the order of priority. And in the end, it says God will remove the hardening, make those hearts soft again, so that all Israel will be saved. Again, I want to talk about that more tomorrow morning. But what a prospect! Now again, we can exaggerate, and we must be careful not to exaggerate. Given a total of 50,000 Jews who now believe in Jesus, that's less than one percent of the Jewish population. It's a tiny number still, and we mustn't get out of proportion and get overexcited about that minority. That's exciting in itself. But it's not all Israel by a very, very long way. Fifty thousand out of twelve million. You can work out the percentage for yourself, but it's the beginning of the end. We see in that a foretaste of a fulfilment that will come when all Israel responds to the Lord, and that will be like resurrection from the dead. It'll be a whole new era. And I just imagine Israelis going round, two by two, round the whole world, knocking on doors. Not the Mormons, Israelis, and going out and telling the whole world, we've found our Messiah. It'll come. But how significant is it that 50,000, less than one percent, have already come? Well, it is significant, and we should rejoice in it, but it's only a little drop in the bucket of what's going to come. So don't think it's all happened yet. It hasn't. They've neither all come back to the land, nor have they all come back to the Lord. So what will happen to the Jews in the end times, in the very last days? And I've just written down seven verbs which apply. I'm summarising predictions in our Bibles about the Jews at the end of this age. The first I've already mentioned, they will be repatriated. All of them. The word repatriated means brought back home, brought back to their own land. God has promised to do this from the four corners of the earth. It's not complete yet, but it will be. God will do it. He'll take the American Jews and get them back home somehow, and he'll take the British Jews and do the same. So he has made a promise to repatriate the whole nation, and this promise he will keep. I see in the rising anti-Semitism in America and Britain signs of God putting pressure on his people to come home. Second, the promises declare that in the end times Israel will be settled in the promised land. The Bible only predicts two exiles for the people of God, and both have already happened. So they will not, I believe, ever again be exiled from their land until they're saved. That's the second promise of God. He will bring them back and he will keep them there when he's brought them back for the third time. You think of a verse like Amos where he says, in the name of God, I will plant Israel in their own land never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them, says Yeshua. It's a promise, says Yahweh your God. Now that's a promise that I believe he will keep. I've been asked by some sceptics who said, will the people of Israel ever be exiled from their land again? And I said, no. God has promised they're back for good. I trust God. The third thing, they will not only be repatriated and settled permanently, they will be attacked. And I'm afraid this is part of the bad news. Jerusalem will be a rock of offence to the world and many will stumble over this rock of offence, even though they are immovable. Yet they will be attacked. Or put it simply, there may well be another holocaust but it won't be in another land, it will be in their own land. And if you read Zechariah 12 to 14 carefully, that clearly tells us that there's going to be a very tough time in Israel for the Jews that have gone back. The day of Jacob's trouble. Isn't it interesting when God refers to their unredeemed state, he calls them Jacob. When he refers to what they are in God, he calls them Israel. But when he refers to the Jews in their fallen human nature like ours, he calls them Jacob. They've gone back to being their old self. They've gone back to being Jacob before he was called Israel. And the time of Jacob's trouble clearly refers to an assault on Jerusalem and the people of God in the Middle East that is yet to come. So we have to wait for that as well. Fourthly, they will be protected right through the big trouble. Revelation chapter 7 begins with a description of the twelve tribes who will be supernaturally protected by God through the biggest crisis on earth. They are under his wing. And when you read the list of the twelve tribes in Revelation, you are surprised because it's not the same as the list of the twelve tribes originally. What tribe is missing? The answer is the tribe of Dan is not there. Just as in the New Testament of the twelve apostles one was missing – Judas Iscariot – so in the list of twelve tribes of Israel one is missing – Dan. And if you read your Old Testament you'll find out why Dan is not there. So this paragraph in Revelation chapter 7 tells me two things. First, there is no such thing as the lost tribes of Israel. God hasn't lost them, so they're not lost. How can they be? God knows exactly where they all are. This to me is a comfort because all these crazy theories about Britain or America being the lost tribes of Israel leaves me just laughing. God knows where they are. A God who has counted the hairs on my head knows my DNA, and therefore God knows where all the DNA of the twelve tribes of Israel are. So God hasn't lost any of the tribes, and it's quite clear that there will be representatives of twelve tribes in the big trouble, protected by God. That's a lovely thought. He's still looking after them, even though at that stage they are not yet his people by faith. He's still looking after them. The second thing it tells me is, of course, that one lost tribe has been replaced by dividing one of the others into two, just as Judas Iscariot was replaced by Matthias. God replaces those who get lost on the way. But the twelve tribes will be there on earth, and they will have divine protection through the big trouble. They're his chosen people after all. The next verb I want to apply to Israel in the end times is, they will be deceived. I've already mentioned to you in the earlier talk that there will be a treaty of peace and security, which will be false. Antichrist will reign over the earth from Jerusalem, it says. That will be his city. Of course, it's the city of the great King. It's the city of God. Therefore, it's the appropriate place for Antichrist to take over. I'm often asked, do you believe the temple will be rebuilt? I'll be very frank with you, and I'm just giving you my opinion and you can take it or leave it. But I believe it will be, because it is mentioned in three places in the New Testament about the future, that there will be a temple in Jerusalem. But – and this is a big but – I don't believe it's God's will to rebuild it. Every one of the three mentions of the temple in Jerusalem in the New Testament are connected with the Antichrist. It's his temple. The temple is not mentioned as somewhere for Christ. It will be rebuilt by Jews, and if you go to Jerusalem today, you can go to a place where you can see the golden furniture already, and the priest's robes already. They're all ready, and they're ready to rebuild it. I don't know how it can come about with the Dome of the Rock, but actually the Dome of the Rock, the Muslim mosque on the temple area, is not where the ancient temple was. It's a little south of it and there's room for both a Jewish temple and a Muslim mosque on the thirteen-acre site of the Temple Mound. But yes, I believe it may well be rebuilt by Jews, and they may even restore the sacrificial system of worship. But I don't believe that's of God at all. I believe that's a preparation for the Antichrist. So there's my opinion. Take it or leave it for what it's worth. But the Jews, the Orthodox Jews particularly, are determined to rebuild it. I think they may well achieve it, but that's not part of God's purpose or plan of redemption for us. It's a wrong move. Who needs sacrifice after Christ? Nobody. He's made a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world already. There's no need for any more blood. And even if they do restore it, it's not going to be part of God's plan, but it'll be Antichrist's plan. Well, I just throw that out, but it's a question people ask. Number six, they're going to be repatriated, settled, attacked, deceived, protected. And now, number six, they're going to be saved. And that's the most exciting one of the whole lot. You all know the prediction in Romans 11, and then, thus, all Israel will be saved. That's been argued about so much, especially by the replacement boys who believe that the Church has replaced Israel. Mind you, at the opposite end, there are what we call dispensationalists who believe that Israel is going to replace the Church. I'm not into replacement either way. I'm into integration of Jew and Gentile, not each replacing the other. I don't believe the Church has replaced Israel. I don't believe Israel will replace the Church. I believe both will be brought together into one new man in Christ Jesus. What then does it mean in Romans 11, all Israel will be saved? The word that comes before that is not the word then, but the word thus. In this way, all Israel will be saved. Therefore, many replacement people argue from the preceding phrase that when the Gentiles are all in, all Israel will be saved. They say that therefore refers to the Church. But I don't believe that. Israel, the word, is used seventy-plus times in the New Testament, always about ethnic Israel, always about the race of Israel, the ethnic group. It must mean that because in the very same statement, in the very same verse, Paul is saying this, that Israel has been hardened in part until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. Now tomorrow morning when we talk about the Church in the end times, I'll be telling you that God has fixed a number already of Gentiles he's going to be saving. And when that number is reached, then the time of the Gentiles will come to an end. But we'll talk about that more in detail tomorrow morning. But there will come a time when the Gentile mission is over and God has enough Gentiles to occupy the new heaven and the new earth for him. It's not all Gentiles, it's not all the world. I don't believe everybody's going to be saved. But there's one nation and only one nation on earth for whom God has promised a national revival, and it's not America, and it's not Britain. The only nation that God has ever promised to save as a nation is his chosen people Israel, because God made a covenant with them and he's never going to break that covenant, because God hates divorce. And so, what does it mean then, all Israel? Does it mean all Jews who've ever lived? No, I don't believe that. Jews alive today will go to hell unless we save them. That needs to be said loud and clear because there's a widespread view in the Church today that Jews are saved by their covenant and we are saved by ours. There's only one covenant of salvation and it's the new covenant. And it was made for the house of Judah and the house of Israel and not just for Gentiles. All Israel, they're not all the Jews who've ever lived, and they're not necessarily all Jews still alive when it happens. Again, I wouldn't be too dogmatic about that, but I want you to consider another possibility. Paul, whenever he uses phrases, invariably uses them from the Old Testament. He is steeped in scripture, Jewish scripture. The phrase, all Israel, occurs many times in your Old Testament and it doesn't mean every Jew. It does mean a large number of Jews representing every tribe. So, for example, it says that when David was in Hebron, before he took Jerusalem, it says, all Israel came to David in Hebron. Does that mean every Jew, every Israeli? No. It means representatives from every part of the nation came to him. Similarly with Solomon, all Israel came to Solomon. Does that mean every Jew? No. It means representatives of the whole nation. And I think when Paul says all Israel, he's using the word in its Old Testament sense. A large number of Israelis and Jews who represent the whole nation will come to the Lord in that day with their hardened hearts softened. It's an exciting prospect and it's one to which every Christian can look forward to seeing God's chosen people at last vindicated, saved. And the word saved there means exactly the same as it means in the Gentile case, saved by believing in Yeshua HaMashiach, saved by the blood of Jesus. Same thing. Now this presents us with a crisis. As I've said, one of the major reactions to the Holocaust in the mainline denominations is to withdraw from evangelising Jewish people and saying, Judaism is good enough to save them, and Christianity is good enough to save us. Have you come across this? It's called the dual covenant teaching and it's very strong. It says, don't evangelise Jews, dialogue with them so that you respect their religion, a religion which will save them as your religion saves you. It's related to the idea that all religions lead to God and all religions are equally valid. But in my Bible, there is no other name given under heaven by which men can be saved. And the name of Yeshua saved me and it will save them. And when they come as a whole nation, representing a whole lot of sacred history, when they come, I believe that we and them will be absolutely one, united in Christ. So I'm looking forward to the Jews being saved as a whole. That's perhaps the best translation of that phrase. Thus, Israel as a whole will be saved. And that's going to be one of the best days in the world history. Because the last verb I want to apply to them is that they will then be used to bless the whole world. And I can only begin to imagine the Jews have the whole world so much already just by their gifts to us. And the debt we owe to the Jewish people we can never repay. Everybody in America owes a debt to Jews. I'll again talk about more of the debt we owe tomorrow. But it includes, did you ever fly in an aeroplane? Now it wasn't the Wright brothers who discovered they were the first to have powered flight, but it was a Jew who discovered how to fly and the principles of flight. And as I flew here, I thank God for the Jew who invented flight, who discovered the laws of flight. Did you ever eat what we call a tomato and what you call a tomato? I don't know where you got that from, but it was a Jew who developed a tomato for consumption. Did you ever have an injection to stop pain in your teeth while the dentist dug around the big hole in the tooth? You owe that to a Jew. I could go on and on. Did you ever use a telephone? It wasn't Alexander Graham Bell who had the first telephone. It was a Jew. Once you really study what Jews have done for us, apart altogether from anything spiritual, we owe our daily lives to the Jewish people. 0.1% of the world population, they've provided 12% of the world's scientists. Isn't that incredible? And we just owe your entertainment. There were five major studios in Hollywood, all of them Jewish. Metro, Goldwyn, Mayer, and I could go through the whole lot. Your daily life, music, architecture, you owe to Jews. And that's to say nothing of what we owe to them spiritually, which I'll tell you tomorrow. But if they can be used to bless the whole human race so abundantly already, though they're a tiny proportion of the population, what will happen when they're all saved? And all that gifting and shrewdness and ability, and when all that is at the service of the Lord for the world. I just can't imagine it. I have a big box in my mind and it's labelled, Wait and See. And there are so many questions I'm asked about the future, I pop them into the box and I wait and see. I'm happy to wait and see. I can't give you all the details of the future. I can give you enough both to get you excited about it and to get ready for it and be prepared when it comes. So there's an awful lot in my Wait and See book. But one day I'll be satisfied and I'll throw the box away and all my questions will be answered. Hallelujah. I shall know the Lord as well as he knows me. Isn't that incredible? And I shall see God. At last I'll be granted that vision that really we're not fit to see at the moment, but it will all happen. Well, when Winston Churchill made a speech during World War Two to the British government about the great victory in North Africa on the Egyptian border in a little town called El Alamein where the British Army was led by General Montgomery, and for the first time in World War Two the enemies were beginning to be pushed back. Churchill in his speech said, this is not the end, it's not even the beginning of the end, but it's the end of the beginning. A matchless phrase. Well, in what we're seeing today it's not the end, but I would say it's the beginning of the end. And therefore we are to alert ourselves to watch for the signs, to watch and pray and begin to get ready for the great denouement in which Jesus will appear as King of the whole earth. You're not a republic in America. You're already a monarchy. You are. And a Jew is the King of America. Did you know that? I love to say this in republics because already Jesus is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, but the Americans don't see it. For there's coming a day when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. And so my prayer and your prayer is very simple. Even so, come Lord Jesus. We need you. We want you. Come quickly, come soon. But he will come at the right time in the right way and take the world for himself. Hallelujah and Amen. Thank you for listening to this teaching from the International House of Prayer in Kansas City. For additional teachings, resources and podcasts, as well as information on who we are and our upcoming events, please visit our website, ihop.org.