Mike Bickle addresses the profound and often politically incorrect topic of Jesus' second coming, focusing on His role in delivering Jewish captives from concentration camps and the implications of this event for both Israel and the church. He emphasizes that the second coming is not just a singular event but a process involving a significant military campaign centered around Jerusalem, where Jesus will liberate those imprisoned and confront the enemies of Israel. Bickle highlights the necessity for the church to stand with Israel during these times of persecution, as it is a critical aspect of God's plan and a test of faith for believers. He draws on Old Testament prophecies to illustrate the weighty nature of this subject, urging the church to prepare for the challenges ahead and to understand the importance of divine revelation over human sentiment.

Lord, we ask you to release the spirit of wisdom and the spirit of revelation upon us in the name of Jesus. Amen. Here's session four in our Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ series. This is one of the most sober, weighty subjects that you'll ever talk about in the Word of God on this side of eternity. What I'm going to cover in this session tonight, it's politically incorrect to everybody. The Christians don't like it. The Jews don't like it. Islam doesn't like it. They like part of it, but not the other part of it. Nobody likes what the Word of God says is going to happen in this dimension of the Second Coming procession. We'll develop this. I'm titling it, Jesus Will Deliver Jewish Captives. The implication is there are concentration camps and death camps from which he is delivering them from. They will exist. And it won't only be for Jewish people. That's the primary focus of the Hebrew prophets. But we know that the death camps that occurred in Nazi Germany had a whole lot of others involved in them that were not Jewish. It was focused on exterminating the Jews, but it wasn't completely that. A weighty subject, but it's a subject of which the Old Testament prophets have a surprising amount of material on. The thing we have to do is we have to commit in our hearts that the Scripture is going to be our judge. That we are going to let the weight of Scripture guide us, not human sentiment and not denominational eschatology. We have to go with divine revelation, not human sentiment, because this is very anti-human sentiment. But we want to be true. We want to be prepared. We want to have a clear voice. And there will be trouble in the church and outside of the church. In the proclamation of these truths. From number one, just review. The second coming is in context to the battle of Jerusalem. Jesus will march to Jerusalem to win the battle of Jerusalem, which will end the Armageddon campaign. The Armageddon campaign is a three and a half year military campaign. It's not one battle. The great battle that's often called the battle of Armageddon is really the battle for Jerusalem, or the battle of Jerusalem. Paragraph B. To understand the second coming, we have to have right paradigms. The necessary paradigm is in knowing that Jesus will rule the earth. The whole process of his coming and of his government. There will be a natural human processes will not be suspended, but they will be significantly enhanced by the supernatural dimension of the Spirit. We've said that a number of times, so I'll just move on. That's just by way of review. Paragraph C. Also review. There'll be three types of people on the earth when Jesus appears in the sky. First, the redeemed. And of course, they'll be raptured. Second, the reprobate. The ones that took the mark of the beast. And they'll end up in the lake of fire. And then third, the resistors. The unsaved survivors who didn't say yes to Jesus, but they didn't take the mark of the beast either. And there will be, my guess is, some hundreds of millions of them. Probably not billions, but hundreds of millions. It'll be substantial, though still a small percent of the earth's population, but still a substantial number in itself. There's no way to know the number, but that's my guess. Paragraph D. Jesus is coming as a procession that will involve three stages. First, which we've looked at the last couple weeks, he will come across the sky. And that will take a period of time. We don't know how much, perhaps several days, something like that. We don't know for sure, but more than a second is the point. More than a minute. He's going to cross the sky and every eye will see him of the whole planet. Stage two is what we're beginning on now. Although we've got to lay the foundation of this session in order for stage two to make sense. We'll begin that in the next session. It says, procession on the land. He marches up from Egypt and he goes through the nation of Jordan on his way to Jerusalem. His procession on the land, and if you've been around a while, there's significant amount of Bible verses describing this. It's a strange idea to many believers, just simply because they've never gone past just the most introductory topics about the second coming. But it's thoroughly biblical. We'll look at that at the next session. Stage three, it's his procession into Jerusalem and onto the Mount of Olives. Paragraph E. This session tonight provides the foundational understanding for Jesus' second coming procession. This is a, we're pausing and we're not going into the procession on the land per se. I'm going to refer to it here and there, but without this issue tonight about what is Jesus doing in the procession. He's liberating Jewish captives, prison camps, concentration camps. He's marching into them and he's shutting them down and he's killing, he's killing the participants in the Antichrist kingdom and those that are enmity against him. Paragraph E. This session provides foundational understanding to understand the second coming procession. An essential part, this is important. An essential part of the second coming, an essential part involves Jesus marching up from Egypt through Assyria back to Israel. And as he marches, he frees Jewish slaves in order to personally march them into the land of Israel. In this, he functions as the greater Moses. Moses was only a down payment of the great deliverer. Roman numeral two. Why do we need to understand this? Why do we need to know that Jesus is marching up through the land, freeing Jewish slaves in order to bring them to Israel and killing his enemies? I need to add that as well. Because there's many passages that emphasize that part. Why do we need to understand this? I have three reasons. Paragraph A. First, the situation of many Jews being in prison. Now, this might surprise you is one of the most prominent features in the Bible related to the second coming. I'm going to say that again. This is a weighty subject. This is a subject I was not looking forward to talking about. But it's a subject that I plan to talk about many, many times before the Lord returns or before I meet the Lord. The situation, let's say it again, of many Jews being in prison and Jesus liberating them. Obviously, a number of them will die in prison. But many will be liberated. We don't know the percentage. It is one, here's the point, it's one of the most prominent features in the Bible related to the second coming. The fact of Jews in prison camps, as seen in the Old Testament prophets, because the Old Testament prophets, it's the Hebrew prophets that emphasize this over and over. This idea is usually overlooked when we talk about the second coming. However, it's the first or second most prominent subject, meaning it has more Bible verses on this subject than all the other subjects related to the second coming, but it's the one that's overlooked. And the reason it's overlooked, one reason, one reason, because it is politically correct. There's nobody that applauds this reality. It only causes pain and weightiness in our heart to contemplate the seriousness and the weight of this. It makes the Christians mad, it makes the Jews mad, and it makes Islam mad. They don't mind them going into the camps, but they don't like the Jewish deliver saving them and then killing all the people that put them in the camps. They don't like that part. The whole doctrine is politically incorrect, but I want to say it again, it's one of the most prominent biblical themes under the banner of the second coming of Christ in the Bible. This doctrine or this reality reveals the nature of Satan's rage against Israel, as well as it reveals what God will use, the extreme to which God will go to purify the church and to purify Israel. It's this very theater of drama and conflict that's going to purify Israel and purify the church, because the Lord is requiring the church to stand with Israel in this dilemma. We all know of this different stories of godly men and women in Christ, Corrie ten Boom being one of the most famous ones who stood with the Jews in persecution, took them into her home, as she was a young girl, her father did, and they went into the death camps because of their stand, and most of her family died. I think all of her family died besides her, if I remember right. Dietrich Bonhoeffer is another famous example of a German pastor who took a stand for the Jews and against the concentration camps, against Adolf Hitler. And there's many of them that did, and he lost his life because of it. God is going to require the church to stand with Israel. And there's a second point. There's a second point. There is a parallel situation of the church being persecuted severely as well, unrelated to Israel, just in and of ourself, because we love Jesus. The primary weight of it in the scripture, though, is focused on us standing with Israel. But Satan is coming after born-again believers with the same rage, especially those that stand with God's purposes. Now, the church is going to be brought to, I'm still in paragraph A, I'm just giving us the reason why we need to understand this topic. The church will be brought to maturity by this dilemma, by this conflict. The great apostasy will take place in the wake of this. Before it as well, there's already, there's people falling away, but as the pressure begins to mount up, there'll be many falling away, but this will really intensify that situation. But it will also be the setting in which God will pour out His Spirit and bring in the great in-gathering of souls, the great end-time harvest, the great end-time revival at the end of the age. But the church is going to be brought to maturity in this context, and the church will be evaluated by God in eternity. When we stand before the Lord, the end-time church will be evaluated by Jesus, partially on our responses to Jesus's leadership in this issue. Many believers are completely unaware of that. Today in the church, one of the biggest questions in the West is, what's this Israel deal? Why are we messing around with Israel? Israel is the issue that God is bringing the conflict in the earth to a head around the issue of Israel. God requires that we stand with Israel in persecution. And if we don't have a clarity in the Word of God about this, we'll have many, many Bible verses that will let us, let our consciences off the hook to abandon Israel in this trouble, in this plight that's coming. We have to have clarity of understanding and iron in our soul by the Holy Spirit to take a stand. We have to understand how severe and how weighty and how prominent this issue is to God in the Bible. It's a very, very big issue in the Bible, the issue of Israel's persecution in the generation the Lord returns. Second reason we care about this subject, the first one's enough. The second reason, paragraph B, it gives us insight into God's heart towards His people who lose much because of their sin. We look at Israel losing so much because of sin, but the extravagant loving kindness of God to redeem them if they will repent and to give it all back to them. Yes, in the midst of fires of affliction, but the redemption is real and the full restoration is abundant. And when we see God's heart doing this to Israel, we know that God will do this in our lives as well, because God never changes. So it doesn't describe the restoration of the church per se. There's hints of it. It talks about the restoration of Israel, but we know the God who never changes, that we will have the same grace in the midst of some of the same fire, but the same grace and the same recovery of that which was lost because of our own sin and compromise. So we look at Israel and we say, if you'll do it for them, you'll do it for us. And I just need to say this every time. Jewish people cannot get saved except they become born again. Israel has no purpose except it is a born again nation in love with Jesus. That's the only way. There is no other kind of backdoor way. It's not, people talk about the church in Israel, and that's okay to say it, but Israel can't be redeemed unless it's born again. So it's a part of the church. It's the Gentile and the Jewish expressions of the one church, as we're really talking about the church. Because when we talk about Israel and God's purpose, it has to do with them becoming born again and obeying Jesus and walking it out in every area of their social, political, and economic life as well in the nation after the Lord returns. The third reason that we need to understand this heavy, weighty subject is because many second coming passages in the Old Testament, they can't be understood without this piece of the puzzle. This is one of the most prominent, most talked about pieces of the puzzle, so to speak, of the end time drama. And if we don't have this in our paradigm, many passages don't make sense. But with this clear in our understanding, the end time drama in the leadership of Jesus, we begin to read whole chapters at a time that makes sense, where before we had foundational training in the scriptures in the Old Testament, we might read a chapter and maybe one out of 10 verses kind of makes sense about the second coming. The other nine verses, they don't make any sense because our paradigm is off. But once we have this piece in our understanding, because this is, again, I don't know of another piece that has more repetition that is repeated more often than this. The issue of the negative and the death camps and the persecution and the devil's going to kill some of the nation of Israel, and God is killing the nation of Israel. Not just the devil, God is killing them because they hate God. And God wants them to own the fact that they hate him. Not the whole nation, but the majority of the nation. He's going to wake them up. They resist him. At the very end, there's a glorious reversal at the end. It's a very, very important part of understanding Jesus in the Bible. Because remember, the Jesus we love, his name is called the Word of God. He's not a American Western Jesus. He is the Word of God. He is the man whose heart is revealed from Genesis to Revelation. He is the Word of God, and that's the Jesus we're loyal to. We're not loyal to charismatic Western Christmas Jesus. That's not what we're loyal to. We're loyal to the Word of God Jesus. And let me say, you already know, the Word of God Jesus isn't that popular in the church. The preacher said, will the real Jesus please stand up? And when he stands up, the whole earth will shake when he arises, and he will stand up. Roman numeral three, top of page two. Obviously, those of you that have the notes, 12 pages, most of it is resource. We can't just cover just a bit of it. And I want to even tell you that 12 pages is the last six or eight pages is like mostly just pure scriptures. Beloved, this is amazing is that I have, you know, many pages of scriptures. I could have made this document 25 pages of just Bible verses on this. There are so many that I did not put on here just because of the notes, but it's not like we're done with the subject in one presentation of it. It's a vast subject in the Old Testament. I'm talking about Jesus liberating Jewish prison camps. It's what I'm talking about and killing his enemies in the process of it and revealing himself to the Jews. Roman numeral three, Jesus in Isaiah 42 and Jesus in Isaiah 49. Two fantastic chapters on the second coming. I mean, they are just delicious beyond measure. My spirit is so moved by these two chapters. And they might be new to some of you and I want to help equip you to understand it so you can just, I mean, you can just spend endless time on those two chapters. There's so much revelation of the God man and his glory and his wisdom, his power, his relationship with his father to him and his relationship to the church and to Israel. It's just absolutely amazing. Isaiah 42 and Isaiah 49. But these two chapters, you need to study them together because they run parallel. The same ideas are laid out, the same ideas in Isaiah 42 and Isaiah 49. Each one of them adds a different extra dimensions as well. But they're very, very complementary parallel passages, Isaiah 42 and Isaiah 49. Significant parallels related to Jesus' second coming possession. In both passages, Jesus is described as God's servant. He's called the servant of the Lord. When it talks about my servants, talking about Jesus, the father's talking. And what he does is God establishes his covenant with this man, this servant, who's Jesus. And then Jesus in covenant establishes justice in the earth with that covenant. He becomes the mediator of the covenant. He's not just, he's not just the means of the covenant. He is the covenant. And both of them emphasize the issue of the death camps. Isaiah 42 and Isaiah 49. Those are two of, well, there's quite a few pretty graphic chapters about this in the Bible. But these are two of the main ones. But the language is so similar. They were meant to be understood together. We're going to take just a quick kind of a view of Isaiah 42 and 49. Because if we see the two together, then the rest of the pages that we won't have time to look at tonight, you'll have a grid for them. Isaiah 42, verse 6 and 7. I, the Lord, he's talking to Jesus. I've called you in righteousness. I will hold your hand. What a sentence. It's the God, the father says, I'm going to be there. I'm going to be intimately involved with the second coming process. And I will keep you. What an interesting phrase. God, the father is going to keep. He's going to keep all that Jesus in his humanity has earned and all that he's worked for. God, the father is working with Jesus to keep it all alive and real and eternal. He says, I will keep you in it. He's talking about in his humanity. What an incredible sentence. I will hold your hand and I will keep you in your humanity related to the second coming. That all that has been promised to you will come to pass. Nothing will cause it to go to the right or the left. I myself will keep you. I don't want to get off on that, but I mean, each one of these are so many dynamic dimensions of the father's relationship to the son that come out of here. But I want to stay focused on the broad strokes here and not get off on any bunny trails. So Mike, stay with it. Okay, I will keep you. I will give you as a covenant to the people, to the Gentiles. I will give you as a light to the Gentiles. And here's what you're going to do to them. This is related to the second coming. Now, obviously the covenant was made at the cross, but the whole context of Isaiah 42 and Isaiah 49, the vast majority is his activity when he comes as a king to the earth the second time to rule the earth. That's his context very clearly. And obviously the covenant began at the cross and we get dimensions of it for 2000 years of church history. But the full open manifestation of it in the natural realm does not happen to the second coming. Here's what he's going to do. At the second coming, he's going to open blind eyes, not just spiritually blind eyes, of course, spiritually, but physical blind eyes as well. He's because that's something that said in the Old Testament prophets, I'm guessing without having the exact number eight or nine times Jesus opening physically blind eyes at the second coming is just emphasized over and over. For some reason, the Lord wants that point emphasized in the Old Testament. I mean, in the scripture, he says, here's what else I'm going to do. When I come the second time, I'm going to bring out prisoners from the prison. That's kind of an ominous feeling here. Like what? Who's in the prison? The prison, the prisoners are. Who are the prisoners? This is one of the major features of the second coming. He's going to take prisoners out of prison camps and he's going to liberate those who sit in darkness in the prison house. That's one of his primary activities at the second coming is to liberate people who sit in darkness. They're in the lights are off. They're in dark recesses down deep somewhere in a prison, whether in the earth or in a manmade prison, they're sitting in darkness. And, you know, some have sought to all these verses about prisoners and prisons to and I appreciate the Lord's grace to liberate us from the issues in our heart we're in bondage to. But that's not what he's talking about, although there's plenty of verses of the grace of God releasing our heart from bondage. But when he's talking about prisoners, he's talking about prison camps for real, specifically physical prisoners. Verse 10. He says, saying to the Lord, his praise all over the earth. So it's the whole prayer movement. And what happens at verse 13, when the whole earth is or the body of Christ worldwide, they're singing verse 13. The second coming happens. The second coming is going to happen in context to the bride singing. Come, Lord Jesus. Come, Lord Jesus. I don't mean the phrase come, Lord Jesus. But the bride in the spirit is going to be crying out. Come, Lord Jesus. He's coming in context to the body of Christ captured in prophetic worship and intercession. Verse 13 describes the second coming. It's one of the great second coming verses of the Old Testament. The Lord will go forth like a mighty man. He will stir up his zeal like a man of war. Because remember, the second coming is in context to a battle. He will cry out. The writer, I mean, Isaiah says, yes, you heard me. He will cry out. He will shout aloud. And he will prevail against his enemies. And of course, the primary enemy is this worldwide infrastructure led by the Antichrist. An evil man. It's not his only enemies, but he's going to prevail against. That's the primary political enemy on the earth at the time of the second coming. And it's massive. There'll be billions of people participating in it. Billions. The Lord says, verse 14, I have held my peace long enough. He's talking about 2,000 years of church history. I have been still. I have restrained myself. And now it's the day of the second coming. Now I will cry like a woman in labor. I will bring the blind by a way they do not know. Again, there's this repetitious emphasis on the blind at the related to the second coming. Again, I don't know how many times. I'm guessing seven, eight times in the Old Testament, this thing is highlighted. And that's a lot. I mean, that's way up at the top of the list of issue. I mean, activities that the Lord emphasizes. I will lead them in paths they have not known. Now, where are these blind people going? They're going back to Jerusalem is where they're going. He's walking. He's bringing them back. How are they getting there? They have natural bodies. He's not sending buses. He's not sending airplanes. There's millions of them. He's marching them back to the land. He's not marching all of them, but he's marching a large company of them. A large company. Micah chapter two, verse 13, it says the company is so large and the noise they make is so loud. I mean, I don't know how many, you know, maybe hundreds of thousands or millions. I don't know. I can't, I don't have a sense of that, but it's a large company. He goes, I will lead them in paths they have not known. I will make darkness light before them. So there's going to be a supernatural dimension because it's darkness. And the Lord is going to make light like he did. I mean, the parallel is obvious. It's what Moses, it's how the Lord led Moses with a pillar of fire. It threw the desert to the wilderness. In the nighttime, the fire of God shown the pathway so they could march. 3 million Jews marching through the Sinai wilderness. And when it's dark, the Lord will make supernatural light one way or the other. My guess is it's going to be the pillar of fire type thing. Because when God did it through Moses, it wasn't figurative. It was real. And it was meant to be understood as a down payment. What he did in Moses, what he did through Moses was only the initial of what God, the father will do when Jesus is the greater Moses marching the people back up to the land again. Verse 22, this is a people. Now we're talking about Israel. They are robbed as a nation. They are plundered. All of them are snared in holes. They are hidden in prison houses. Now you're reading this, right? This is your Bible, right? Or if you've got a different translation, open it up and look at it. They are, let's read it again. They are plundered, robbed by the nations. All of them are snared in holes. And the nation, not 100% of them, but many of them, a large number are hidden in prison houses. That's called death camps. They are prey to the nations and nobody speaks up for them. Nobody delivers them. Well, the body of Christ, the prophetic church will speak up for them. But there's no nation that will use military might to go and deliver them. The deliverance, it doesn't mean that nobody will speak up for them. That's not the right way to say that. But there's not a military on the earth that will stand and fight for them. They are completely cut off from any help, military, political help on the earth. Nobody will take a stand because of the resistance of this vast worldwide evil army. And the antichrist army will have its tentacles throughout the whole earth. It won't dominate the whole earth. It will have some nations it completely dominates and other nations where its presence is felt and other nations not felt as strong. But its tentacles will be worldwide. They are prey. No nation will stand up. No nation will take a stand economically, politically, or militarily for them. And for plunder and nobody says the nation of Israel is for plunder. Nobody says restore. The nations are plundering them. Very similar to Nazi Germany. They were being plundered by the Nazi regime. And nobody stood up for the Jews in that time. No nation did. A couple of nations in Europe kind of stood up for a minute. Then they kind of, kind of, you know, were put in their place. Now here's verse 23. Here's where you come in. Here's what Isaiah the prophet says to the generation this happens. That's this generation. I believe with all my heart. Here's what he's saying to the people of the generation Lord returns. Who among you will even listen to this? Who among you will listen and hear for the time to come? Who in the future in the generation this happens? Who is going to listen to this carefully? Verse 24. Now here's really offensive. Here's the question of the hour. Who gave up Jacob for plunder? Who gave up Israel to the robbers? Was it not I says the Lord? I did it. He against whom we have sent Isaiah. I tell you, Isaiah, they do not like him saying this, but it was still far enough away. He said some heavy things for his own generation, but this was still way down the road. I tell you the man or the woman that takes the stand that makes verse 24. Who's verse 23, who will listen to this? What man or woman will give an ear to this doctrine? And then if they do, who will say verse 24, that it was the Lord that gave them up? And it is the Lord that gave them up. Satan is on God's leash. Satan can't just ravish the nations at will. He has a certain rage that he's permitted to operate within boundaries. But in the big strokes of human history, Satan can't just destroy a nation, the nation of Israel arbitrarily. God's giving him room to vent his rage because it's under God's plan to awaken the nation. Beloved, I want to say this. The nation of Israel hates God. And that's a horrifying, I mean, I hate saying that, but it doesn't make sense unless you say that. Rabbinic Judaism hates God. Jesus told them with their fasting and prayer, he goes, you are of your father, the devil. You hate me because you don't know God at all. In all of your Torah memorization. Now, obviously not all rabbinic Judaism hates God or not all of Israel hates God, but the vast majority of the nation is atheistic and godless. And God has made a covenant to make them the leaders of the whole earth forever. And that means nothing to them. And that offends God. He's not just going to bless them for a short amount of time. He wants them to lead the earth forever. And that means nothing to most Jews. What do we care about leading the earth with Yahweh forever? We'd rather do our thing right now. God, you know, it's like, how dare you? They sold out their inheritance for a bowl of porridge like Esau did. They want now, they want their goods now. And they'll sell out for a moment of pleasure now in this age. And that angers the Lord because he gave them the choice position and his eternal plan in terms of function and role and honor. And the nation of Israel, as a rule, had no regard for it. But there's going to be a third of the nation, which was some millions. That's, you know, five, six, seven million of them, approximately. They will say yes. And they will be the core beginning when the Lord returns. They're going to be the core foundation of his government. That's a small number compared to the billions of the earth. But it's the number that's, it's going to be that kind of number that's going to begin this whole process of God's glory and honor on them. Paragraph C. Now we're going to Isaiah 49. It's the same, it's the same passage. It's the same concept in Isaiah 49. Jesus is releasing prisoners and he's taking, paragraph C, and taking captives on an exodus-type journey back to Israel. That's what's going on. In Isaiah 49, thus says the Lord, in the acceptable time, in the day of salvation, I helped you, I anointed you, I preserved you. It's the same language as Isaiah 42. And I will, in his tongue, the day of salvation, again, began at the cross. But in its open manifestation to the nations, in the open display, it's at the second coming. That's when the thing breaks forth open. It begins, obviously, on the, at the cross. But the, but the, it's such a limited manifestation of saving power being released in open display. It's significant, but it's still very, very minimal. It's very important. But the Lord, on the day of salvation, he's going to preserve Jesus. He's going to help Jesus. The Father is. He's going to anoint him at the second coming. He's going to get, the anointing of the Father will be with him to pull off this whole global reform. And here's what he's going to do. God, the Father is going to give Jesus as a covenant to the nations again, to the people. When you get the word people, more times than not, you can put the word nations there. And here's what Jesus is going to do with God's help as a man and as humanity. He is going to restore the whole earth. That's a pretty major assignment, isn't it? And he's going to cause them, he's going to cause his people to inherit the desolate heritages, because the heritages, they are desolate. The important places of the earth are desolate at the time of the second coming. That's why they're called desolate heritages. And here's, note this, verse 9, one of the featured emphasis of God's heart in the scripture, and Jesus will say to the prisoners, go forth. Because remember, Isaiah 42 said, nobody will speak up for them. Jesus is going to step out of heaven, and he's going to say, I will speak up for you, and I am a king. Go forth and open the prison doors. He's the only king that will speak up. And he's going to say to those that are in darkness, there it is again, those that are sitting in dark prison houses, what Isaiah 42 said. They're sitting in darkness. He's going to say, show yourself. In other words, come out of the prison, open the doors, and you're free. Show yourself. Come forth. The prison sentence is over. And then what's going to happen? They shall feed along the roads. He's going to walk them from Egypt and Assyria. He's going to walk them right back to Jerusalem. He's going to feed them on the way like Moses did. He's going to feed, and their pastures shall be on desolate heights. That's interesting, because a desolate height is like a mountaintop or a big hill where there's not a pasture up there. But God's going to have supernatural provision on hilltops where there would not be the kind of vegetation necessary for them to be fed. But he says, you wait and see. Watch this. So there's a supernatural dimension just like Moses had. Verse 10, they shall neither hunger nor thirst. I mean, we know from our recent crisis in our nation in New Orleans, it's really hard to feed 25,000 people in a stadium. There's going to be millions of them marching back to the land. How are they going to eat? Where are they going to drink? They're walking through the desert, the Sinai desert. It's what they're walking through again. The heat. What about the heat? The Lord says, I assure you this, I know what I'm doing. I've got a plan. It's already in place. The heat won't strike you, even in the desert, when you're with me. For he, that's Jesus, who has mercy on them, he will lead them even by springs of water, and he will make each of my mountains erode. Now, notice he calls it his mountains. The mountains are his mountains. Let's go to page 3. Well, I just want to give you a little kind of a snapshot of Isaiah 42 and Isaiah 49. Beloved, you really want to know these two chapters. You could just spend a significant amount of time reading them over and over. But if your paradigm doesn't have the basic biblical understanding, you're looking at it going, well, it must be figurative. I wonder what those dark prison houses mean. That sounds bad. I hope I don't have one of those. If it's figurative, maybe it's a disease or something, or maybe you don't know what it is. But it's not figurative. It's literal. Once the smoke clears and you see it, these chapters are awesome. They're dramatic. They're powerful. They are your God who loves you talking to you. Because if God will do this for Israel, if you're in a prison house, then God might do the very same thing for you. He may break in suddenly one day because we know he's the God who does this. Roman numeral four, I give a little overview of Isaiah 49. That's one of the great chapters about the second coming. It starts off verse one to seven. God the Father assigns Jesus a twofold task. Here's what he tells Jesus. Jesus, you're going to win Israel and you're going to win the nations. You're going to win both of them. That's how the chapter starts off. And B, then he begins on the process of liberating the Jewish prison camps. That's the next thing that happens. C, Israel speaks up in the middle of all these promises and says, I don't believe it. Israel says in verse 14, you've forgotten me. You've already written me off. They're here. They're in the midst of the great tribulation. They go, we don't even, we have no confidence that we have a good future. And the Lord says, I can handle that. That isn't in the deal, so to speak, the relationship. But Israel speaks up in her cynicism and her bruised heart and her, just the trials and tribulations. The whole world is turned against them, it seems like. Then the next is indeed God answers Israel by giving a bunch of prophetic promises. And he says over and over, I'm going to help you and I'm going to liberate the prisoners. And he says it over and over that he's going to let, he's going to reverse the, this status of being robbed and in prison. He's going to reverse it and he's going to give them great blessing in place of being plundered, robbed and destroyed. But the point I want to bring out is Israel will be plundered, robbed and destroyed in a significant way beyond any time in history, yet in the future, in a way that surpasses any time in history. She's going to be plundered, robbed and destroyed. And the body of Christ must stand with her under Jesus's leadership. And this is a weighty subject. And E, Isaiah 49 ends with all the nations are worshiping Jesus at the end. All the nations know that Israel's God, Messiah is God. He is God. The man marching up to the land is God. And all the nations know it at the end. So don't let somebody try to make this chapter figurative and it all took place 2000 years ago. No, this is literal, it's dramatic and it's powerful and it's about your life and it affects your children and your neighborhood and your employment and your future ministry. This chapter does, it really does. Probably have some decades before it begins to really get intense, but I don't want to wait till the day before and start getting connected. I want a root system. I want clarity. I want clarity in history with God long before it comes to a real dramatic crisis in the nations. Because we might be individually brought into a greater point of conflict even ahead of the others. I mean, the Lord might assign an individual here or group here or there that has a, that takes a stand in a greater way even before the general conflict hits the globe. Roman numeral four. We go to the first part of Isaiah 49. I mean, Roman numeral five, I'm sorry. Roman numeral five. Jesus' twofold task is to win Israel and the Gentiles. I love this passage, verse five. The father, the father's talking, the Lord's the father, is talking, the one who formed me, Jesus is quoting the conversation. He goes, the one who formed me, the father, even from my womb to be a servant. And here's what the father told me, that I should bring Jacob back. I should bring the nation of Israel back. When Jesus was being formed in the womb, the father prophesied and said, hey, little, you know, in the womb, Jesus, listen, I'm prophesying. You will bring Israel back. That's why you're in the womb. Look at verse six then. Then indeed, the father says, it is too small of a thing. It's too small to only bring back the tribes of Jacob. It's too small to only restore Israel. I will give you as my covenant to restore all the nations, not just Israel. He looked at him when he's in the womb, God, the father prophesied. He goes, one nation's too small. Your stature is so grand. Your obedience and my favor on you, even in your, I mean, in your humanity, you, your stature is such you have to govern the whole earth. That means king of kings is what that boils down to. That's an Old Testament. That's an Old Testament down payment to the title king of kings. You're not going to restore, not only going to restore Israel, you're going to restore all the nations. Let's go to Roman numeral six. A, well, we already looked at this, but I just wanted to have it in its order here. He's going to free the end time Jewish prisoners. He's going to restore the earth in verse eight. He's going to restore the earth and he's going to set the prisoners free. Those are the two primary things that are given to him in Isaiah 49. Let's go to B, top of page four. Jesus is going to personally lead back some of the, some lead, some of the people back to Israel from Egypt. Jesus is going to lead them from Egypt and Assyria. And by the way, Assyria, ancient Assyria, it's not a nation anymore. But ancient Assyria comprises the, the nation of Jordan today, which is next to Israel. Most of you can picture Jordan. It's right next door to, to Israel and Syria. It's right next door as well. It's just at the top, it's at the north and Jordan is at the east and the south. So the two bordering nations are Syria and Jordan. And the next nation that it's right next to it is Iraq. Those three nations are the area, overlap the area of Assyria. So when it talks about Assyria, it's talking about Syria. And I've got that in the notes somewhere. It talked about Syria, Jordan and parts of Iraq, not the whole of Iraq, but a substantial part of it. I mean, enough of it to think of Iraq in your mind. So God's, Jesus is going to liberate captives from Egypt and then from the Jordan, Syria, Iraq area, which is we can sum it up in one term to say one name called Assyria, which is a nation that was functioning in Isaiah's day. But it was Nebuchadnezzar's father defeated the king of Assyria and it went out of a world prominence in the time of Nebuchadnezzar, about 610, 615 BC. That's when they were, they phased out and never to rise again. But Syria and Jordan and Iraq are still there and the peoples are still there. So don't be kind of thrown off by Assyria. Jesus is going to actually lead, He's going to lead a number of them Himself. He is the Moses figure. Well, it's more than that. He's the greater Moses. He's the substance of which Moses was the down payment of the great deliverer. Look at verse 10 of Isaiah 40. For behold, God shall come with a strong hand. That means power. He will feed His flock. He will gather them. He will carry them. And He will gently lead them. And He's not just talking about by the Holy Spirit when He's in heaven. He's going to actually lead them. He's going to actually be with them and bring them back like Moses did. He's going to manifest His power, His strong arm. Don't reduce this to symbolism of what He's been doing for 2,000 years in church history. In Isaiah 40, it's talking about the second coming of Christ. See, Jesus will take these captives on this exodus type journey. It's repetitive. We already went through this. But verse 9, we'll go to a little bit more detail. He shall feed them along roads. There's going to be roads they're walking on. There's a prominence, again, I don't know the real number, maybe 10 or 15 times. I mean, which is a lot. 10 or 15 times the subject of building a highway for these millions of people to walk on. There is a highway that's built. That's a literal highway. There's roadways that there's time and energy put into these constructing roads. I don't understand how all that works. But it's repeated over and over and over, 10 or 15 times. And when you get that much repetition from the Old Testament prophets, that's because one of the nature of prophecy in the Bible is its brevity. I mean, the Lord whispers a subject. He just puts it as a phrase, and it's a shout of importance. And when he repeats it over and over and over, beloved, he's shouting. When something gets in the script 10 or 15 times, he's shouting it. Even one phrase is a whisper, but it's a shout from heaven. It's anybody that's listening. Okay, let's go to top of page 5, Roman numeral 7. Israel finds this too difficult to believe that God's going to liberate them. They're so pressed. It's been so negative for them that they're giving up hope. Everybody is against them. Nobody is for them. The body of Christ, the prophetic church is saying, Jesus is with you. We don't want to hear about Jesus. We don't want to even hear about that. Obviously, many of them will be getting saved. There'll be many Jewish converts. The majority won't get saved, but they'll still be. The numbers are growing right now, and it's encouraging. But there's still a whole lot more that aren't getting saved than there are. But let's focus on the positive, that the numbers of Jewish converts is definitely, it's unprecedented in its growth. But the numbers are still very, very small percent, very, very, very small percent of the whole Jewish population. Here's what Zion, which is, Zion is the city of Jerusalem. Here's what Zion says in the midst of all these promises of God breaking in and power. In verse 14, Zion says, the Lord has forsaken me and the Lord has forgotten me. I'm hopeless. And beloved, this is going to be the mindset of Jews in the great tribulation. Three and a half year period. They're going to be saying the same thing that Isaiah mentioned in Isaiah 40. Isaiah 40 is all about the second coming as well. It's not only about the second coming, but that's its main subject. About the grandeur of God in the midst of the nation standing against Israel. And Israel is going to say in verse 27, God says to Israel, why are you saying, oh, Jacob? Or whenever it says, oh, Jacob, it's the Jewish nation. Why are you saying, Israel or Jacob? My way is hidden from God. Israel saying, God doesn't see me. My way is hidden. My God can't see the dilemma we're in. He's not listening at us. He's not looking anymore. And Israel says, my just claim has been passed over by God. God is ignoring us. That's what they're going to say. And so Isaiah gives us the language of despairing Israel at the end. Israel will have a spirit of despair, but we need to stand with them. And they won't even appreciate all that we stand for when we stand with them. They will appreciate somebody standing. They have no friends. I remember being in a Israel, I don't know what it was. A big convention-type thing that Jack Hayford was leading and Robert Stearns in New York City and maybe 10 Knesset members, which is their parliament or their Washington, D.C. The Knesset, most of you know that name. And there's 10 of them, eight or 10 of them, some number like that. And I'm in a van, and it's a two-day thing, and we go back and forth to the convention center. And you know, New York traffic, you only go an inch. You know, you just sit there the whole time. And I somehow, by some strange way, I'm in, I'm assigned, I'm the only non-Knesset member in the van. So they're all talking in Hebrew and da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And they go, who are you? And here, I won't get off on it because I'm running out of time. Here was the interesting question. They said, what do you do? I said, what do I do? I said, you haven't been asked that question in a long time. What do I do? Huh. Well, I gave them an answer. And we started talking about Israel in the end times. I'll just tip you off as to what my answer was. And I said, what do you think? And one of the senior guys in the Knesset spoke up. He's one of the main guys in the land there. He was clearly the spokesman in the van. He said, our future is very, very bleak and very dark. We are afraid. We are anxious. We are angry. I was talking about what's Europe look like. Because we kept, in the van, every meeting, probably seven or eight times, and we ate our dinners together. We're all coming back and forth. And I'm thinking, I'm just going to really take advantage of this opportunity and see what's in their mind. And here's the interesting thing he said. And the others were nodding their head. He said this. He goes, the only friends in the earth we have. He goes, how do you say it? A fundamentalist. Are you guys fundamentalist Christians? Is that? I go, well, that's a big subject. I said, people who love Jesus. He goes, right. He goes, we don't really appreciate the Jesus part, but we appreciate the love part. He goes, you are the only friends on the planet we have. And he goes, we don't fully get it. I mean, we understand Jesus is a Jew, and he tells you to love us. We get that. It doesn't really make sense, but we understand the answer. But he goes, you guys, like, really do like us. It's what it looks like to us. You're our only friends. He says, but we don't really go for everything you believe in, but we do appreciate the love. Interesting conversation. But anyway, there'll be a spirit of despair on the nation. And the people that will stand with them as the prophetic church, and they won't fully appreciate the prophetic church's stance. They'll appreciate the love, though. It's overwhelming. I have in B, unsaved Israel through the book of Isaiah is pictured as this old, wretched, rejected, barren wife. I mean, it's the meanest picture. She's wretched. She's angry. She's barren. She's past the age. It's no future to have her family and to have her love her. She's alone. She's in despair. She's been plundered, and she's wretched. She's lost everything, and she's unsaved, and she's angry about it and despairing. That's the picture of this woman throughout the book of Isaiah. Isaiah makes it very clear. And the church is going to speak to this woman, speak to her heart and speak comfort to her heart and tell her that her marriage is going to shock her when she figures out who she's married to, God himself. Her children are going to be so numerous. All the nations of the earth are going to come to her aid. There's going to be a sudden turnaround, and everything is going to be renewed. But at verse 14, she's in a point of great despair, and that we will run into that spirit of despair. I saw it in that van. It isn't at the despair it's going to be, because it's going to get way, way more severe than it is right now for the nation of Israel. Here's what the angel told Daniel. Daniel chapter 12, verse 7, you see on the PowerPoint, the very end, it's a man clothed in linen. That's the angel. He held up his right hand. He swore by God, and he said, for a time, time, and half a time, that's three and a half year period, when the power of the holy people are completely shattered, then the great tribulation will be over. Beloved, the power of the nation of Israel, that's the holy people in context of Daniel, the power of the nation of Israel will be, I want to tell you what the angel said. I'm not going to put any more words except for what God said to the angel. The nation of Israel will be completely shattered before it's over. And the only people standing will be the prophetic church standing with them. And the nations will hate the stand of the church, and Jesus will require it. When I take this verse, I don't want to be negative. I don't want to just cause a conflict for the sake of it. But beloved, God told an angel, and the angel told Daniel, completely shattered. And when I talk to different leaders related to the nation of Israel, I go, beloved, we got to look at Daniel 12, verse seven. It's not going to get better and better, and then suddenly everything turns good. It's going to get worse and worse. There might be some breakthroughs of some victory in this area, some in that area. In the prayer movement, we need to fight for victory. I'm all for victory. But at the end of the day, God wants to shatter Israel's confidence in themselves. That's why the nation will be shattered. So they have no hope but God. Let's go to Roman numeral eight. God answers unbelieving Israel. In Roman numeral eight, He answers her with two different lines of thought. He says, He appeals to the mother, child who are deeply bonded, perhaps the greatest bond that it's nearly mystical, the bonding between a mother and a child because of the communication of life and the womb and the breast. There's, it's such a mystical dynamic. I don't know that you can put a, anybody could break it all down, but it's the most powerful bond. And God appeals to this bond. He says, Israel, you think I've forsaken you? He goes, can a woman forget her nursing child? Can a woman not have compassion on the child that was in her womb? Are you kidding? He goes, yes, some of them do forget, but I promise you this, my love is more intense than the love of a mom of a mother bonded to her children. My love for you, I am not giving up on you, though the great tribulation will happen. I am yours till the end if you want me. And beloved, this is the same thing He's telling us too. And then He goes to the next statement, verse 16, He goes, I've tattooed you. I've inscribed you. I've put your name on my hands because the tattooing was a common thing in the ancient world. They put it on their arm or their hand, just like today. There were a whole craft of doing that that was very popular in the ancient day. God says, I don't put you on my hand because I'll forget you. God says, I'm not writing on my hand because I'm afraid I'll get busy and I wouldn't need to look down and go, oh yeah, Israel. No, I'm just saying that, you know, it's like the soldier puts mom, you know, on his arm, you know, he goes to the Navy, you know, you've seen that in the whatever, seen a few of them. It's not because he forgot mom because he loves mom. He knows that praying mom is the only one that's going to get him through this thing. He puts the name on because of value, not to remind him. He says, you're the only, I put your name on me because of the extreme value. I've tattooed you on my hand. Think about it. That's what God's answer is to Israel. Then he goes on in C, God promises to restore the nation of Israel. Look at C, this is, this is graphic. It says your sons, this is a promise of restoration, but it's the restoration is really the heart of it. But you have to understand the circumstance from which they're being restored from. That's the burden that's on my heart. They're being restored from devastation and the devastation is yet to come. It says your sons will make haste. He means to come back from the nations to return because millions of them are all over the earth. He says your destroyers and those who laid you waste, they shall go away from you. Jesus is going to kill them. But beloved before Jesus kills them, before they go away, the nation will be destroyed and the nation will be laid waste. That's what God says. And he tells him verse 18, he goes, lift your eyes up. This despondent downcast nation. Look around. He goes, see, before you know it, they will be gathered together. They will come to you from all the nations. As I live, God promises and God makes a vow. He goes, I promise you, verse 18. First, you know, he talked about the mother and the inscribed name on them, the value in verse 15 or 16. Now, verse 18, he brings it to another notch. He swears an oath as I live. I swear to you. Your sons, the children of Israel will come back from so many nations that will be they will so adorn you as a nation. It will be like a bride adorning herself on her wedding day. You won't be this wretched, barren, lonely, defeated woman. You will be adorned with beauty by all of your children coming in all the favor of God that's on them. Now, Israel doesn't like that without if their only vision is for right now and they have no vision for after the Lord returns, that doesn't mean much to them. And that's where the nation is right now. They think tell somebody who cares. I want to know about right now. I don't know what to know about later. And the Lord says no later is forever. Later is going to last for billions of years. Your life right now is just a moment. You really do care about later. Paragraph E, the return of the family back to the land is overwhelming. This is what the Messiah. This is one of the chief works of the Messiah is to return the nation to bring the nation back. That's when the major things happening at the second coming for which if we don't understand this, many of the second coming passages do not make sense. It's like it's confusing. We reduce these passages to just symbolism and they don't have any real meaning. Paragraph E, the return of the family is overwhelming. Look at verse 19. It says for your waste and your desolate places and the land of your destruction is going to be too small because of all your children moving back in to the nation. But before we get excited about the moving back in because the nation is too small, because millions are going to come back and they're coming with the favor of God on them. But before that happens, the nation will be wasted. It will have desolate places and it will be called by God in the prophets, the land of destruction. And the Lord, I mean, Isaiah's got these two themes going on, the glory of the restoration, but the horror of the context right before the restoration. And beloved, we need to understand the horror of what's happening before the restoration, because that is part of the mandate of the church before the Lord returns to stand with them, to interpret it, to reveal Jesus to them and to not cower under the weight of it. Look what he says here. It says for your waste and desolate places, verse 19, the land of your destruction will even now be too small for the inhabitants and those who swallowed you up. Oh, what a phrase. They're going to be swallowed up by the nations, by the Antichrist regime. They will be far away. They'll be dead. They'll end up in the lake of fire. But beloved, Israel is going to be swallowed up. The children who you, the children you will have after those, after you have lost the others, first, she's going to lose her children for a season. Many will die, but then many are coming when the Lord returns. These children are going to say the place is too small. Israel is going to be so prominent in the favor of God and wealth and the glory of God and Jesus will be the leader of the nation. Verse 21, then you will say in your heart, Israel will then begin to ponder who gave me all these children? And as the events of the second coming begin to be established, Israel's going to say, who did all this? I lost my children. I am a desolate. I am a camp. I am desolate. I am captive. I'm a captive. I am wandering to and fro. Look at the state of the nation of Israel. Who brought these back to me? I was alone, but now where they've come from, the answer is Jesus did. The who that they're saying, who did this? And there's one answer. God's servant of Isaiah 40 and 49, the Lord Jesus, the one they despise is the one who brought the great reversal. Let's go to paragraph F. We'll just end with this. Well, no F and G. I just want to read the text. Verse 22. For thus says the Lord God, I will lift up my hand in an oath to the nations. This is Jesus. When they said, who did this? Jesus said, I'm going to lift my hand up an oath to the nation. I will raise up my standard for all the nations, and they will bring your sons back to Israel in their arms, and they will carry your daughters on their shoulders. Verse 23, Gentile kings will be your foster fathers, and the Gentile queens will be your nursing mothers. They will fall down to you with their face to the earth. The nations will be, the reversal will be so extreme. The nations that hated you, all those leaders are going to be captured and killed. And Jesus is going to see that that happens. And Jesus is going to put in new Gentile leaders. And these leaders are going to honor what God's doing in Israel. And the whole planet, atmosphere of the planet will be different related to Jesus in Israel. He says in verse, he goes on and, well, let's just go to paragraph G. There's so many great verses here. I'll just skip it. Let's just end with that. Worship team, come on up. Verse 24. Here's the question. Shall the prey be taken from the mighty? And the prey, the question is this. Who's going to take the captive Israel? Because Israel's the prey. Who's going to wrestle them out of the hand of the antichrist system? I mean, Israel is free slave labor. I mean, when a nation dominates a nation, they, one of the big points of war is to get free workforces. Says who is going to release the Israel, the prey from the mighty nations? Verse 25. But thus says the Lord, even the captives of these mighty nations, they shall be taken away and the prey of these terrible nations, the antichrist nations, they will be delivered. For I, the Lord will contend with the nation that contends with you. And I will save your children. And I will turn these nations against each other. They will, they will drink one another's blood. In other words, we're going to have civil war and total strife. And then it ends and says, and then all flesh will know that I am the savior. This is Jesus talking. All the nations will know that Jesus is God.