August 11
Neh 1:1-3:14 | PS 31:19-24 | Prov 21:4 | 1 Cor 7:1-24
Will the vaccine eventually require a chip to verify having received it, and will this eventually become the mark (this current vaccine is not the mark)? I don’t know, but, you can know for certain that one day there will be a chip and a mark (Revelation 13:16-18). Will this current trend in the United States continue to spiral downward removing us from our position as leaders of the free world? Will it be because of the cancelling of everything that is for God from our government, the media, social media, our educational system, or, will it be due the wide scale rapture of Christians in America? I don’t know if this is the time, but in End Times the United States no longer has a prominent role, so it will happen. Will the current circumstances and the nations gathering in Syria be the beginning of the fulfillment on the all out attack on Israel or will it be some time in the future? I don’t know, but from Ezekiel 38-39, I do know that these are the nations and one day they will attack. It is said that 27% of the Bible is prophecy. Roughly half of which has already been fulfilled with 100% accuracy. The other half, therefore, will also be fulfilled with this same level of accuracy, we are just ignorant as to the timing. Yet, despite this it has been said that less than 2% of all sermons actually are about prophecy. For the believer prophecy should not be scary. We should not be desiring feel good messages about how our time on earth will all be wonderful, though this is not a bad thing. We, believers, don’t belong here. We belong in heaven, as this is where our citizenship is (Philippians 3:20). Prophecy is God’s fingerprint in the Bible which distinguishes His book from every other book of antiquity and every other religious book. This is why we can take our stand on the authority of God’s Word.
At a quick glance, the beginning of one of the most amazing prophecies could easily be missed from today's reading. We read in Nehemiah 2:1, "And it came to pass in the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes,..." So we have a date. Nehemiah tells the king in 2:3, "Why should my face not be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers' tombs, lies in waste, and its gates are burned with fire." Nehemiah makes a request to go to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls of the city and we read in 2:6, that the king agreed and sent him. If we turn to Daniel 9:25, we see why this date is so important, "Know therefore and understand, That from the going forth of the command To restore and build Jerusalem Until Messiah the Prince, There shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks;...". Daniel wrote this prophecy over 500 years before Jesus was born in Bethlehem. These weeks mentioned are weeks of years (7 years). The beginning of this prophecy is when Nehemiah is told to restore the walls. If we take the 483 years given by the 69 weeks mentioned above , we get 173,880 days using the 360 day calendar which was in use at the time. If you do the math, accounting for no year "0", incorporating leap years and using our modern 365 day Gregorian calendar, we arrive on the exact date of Palm Sunday, when Jesus was openly declared Messiah. It is on this same Palm Sunday road, that the day prophesied by the Psalmist came true in Psalm 118:24-26, and the people all shouted, "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!". It was on this same road that the prophecy in Zechariah 9:9, that, "Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation, Lowly and riding on a donkey." Daniel's seventy-weeks prophecy goes on in Daniel 9:26, "And after sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself;...", describing that our Messiah would be killed but for us, not for Himself.
This amazing prophecy described in razor sharp accuracy the Palm Sunday road entry and His death for our salvation. This is why the entirety of Scripture is so important, there are no portions which are irrelevant. Some will state that they already believe, they don't need any more proof. That's great, but we are living now in very uncertain times. The Bible is not just to convince us of history, it is to reassure us about our future. We have nothing to fear, because we follow and serve a God who already has it all planned out. Revelation was written, not to frighten people, but to calm them down unveiling the future, to let God's people know that He will ultimately win and so will those of us who are on His side. Those who have not yet made a decision to accept Jesus' offer of salvation and enter into a relationship with Him, please do so now. We read in 2 Thessalonians 2:3, "Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition,". As our pastor taught us, the "falling away" is better rendered departure as it was originally translated. This refers to a physical departure. The Day refers to Jesus' second coming. So, moving forward on the prophetic timetable, we have the Rapture or the physical removal of those in a relationship with Jesus Christ, followed by the unveiling of the Antichrist. It is not that these events might happen, they will happen. People within the church might differ on timing, etc., but God's Word is infallible and will come to pass. This should comfort all of us and cause peace in times of seeming chaos.
Messages from Pastor Lloyd Pulley: