The Destruction of the Nations, Part 4

Selected Scriptures

Tonight's facet of study regarding the subject of prophecy and the destruction of the nations takes us to the alignment and war of the nations.  And that perhaps would be a title that we might chose if we were going to entitle the message the alignment and war of the nations. 

You know, it's amazing the last few days the whole attention of the world is focused upon the Mideast.  Some exciting things have begun to happen with some very direct relationship to God's plan for the world.  Israel is at war with the Arabs.  Egypt and Syria are battling on two fronts, and I understand Jordan is now in the battle.  Russia, which for a little while seemed to be rather passive, has become active and in just the last couple of days has really unleashed a certain form of involvement by sending material to supply the forces of the Arabs and ships and airplanes as well carrying tremendous amount of arms to arm the Arabs. 

Brezhnev quoted in the L.A. Times about three or four days ago, said this.  "All our sympathies are on the side of the victims of aggression, the Arabs."  Now that's an interesting thing that the Arabs are fighting Israel, but that's nothing new.  But what makes it prophetically exciting is the involvement of other major powers in what's going on.  Particularly the involvement of the nation Russia.

To see a battle going on the Middle East isn't anything new, but to see all of the formations that have been so familiar to us over the last say, 15 to 20 years, has exciting prophetic significance.

What we're really seeing today is a preview of Armageddon, at least in its initial phases.  Now let me hasten to say this.  All of the wars that make up all of the battles that make up the great battle of Armageddon complex will take place during the tribulation.  The tribulation is a time after the church is removed the world.  So what we are seeing now is not part of that final battle, but it certainly shows that the nations are lining up in the right configuration for that final battle.

Now just to remind you of God's plan a little bit, I'll give you a little insight into what we've been talking about.  We're living in a period known as the church age.  The church age ends with the rapture, New Testament saints, as the arrow indicates, are taken out of the world.  Immediately, a period begins on the earth known as the period of the tribulation, the last three and a half years are called the great tribulation.

That period closes with a final conflagration known as Armageddon.  At the end of Armageddon, Christ himself returns with those of us who went up there in the rapture.  We come back with Him and He sets up His kingdom.  Now we have been studying the various facets of this period known as the tribulation.  We found, first of all, that the church age is going to end with the rapture.  And we studied carefully about the catching away of the church.

Then we found out that after the raptured church leaves, then God begins to deal in judgment with those left on earth and that really involves two groups, Jews and Gentiles. And for the Jews, the time of tribulation involves two things, punishment and salvation.  God chastises them for sin and God redeems them as a nation.

Then it involves also the Gentile peoples who are left here who did not go with the church for they were not believing in Christ.  During this period of time, there is going to be a tremendous God appointed destruction that's going to come upon the nations of the world.  Now it is true that there will be a believing remnant from the nations, right?  Revelation 7, so many they can't be counted.  But the residue of all men will fall under terrible destruction.  And that seven year period will end with a horrible worldwide battle call the battle of Armageddon, because that's one of the areas where it will be fought.  And that battle is ended in the coming of Jesus Christ.

Now we then have discussed all of these various features.  In fact, we discussed at least for three weeks in a row why believe the church does not go through the tribulation.  Why we believe we're going to leave.  Now the question is this, we know when man's day is going to end as we know it.  It's going to end at the end of the tribulation.  We know that.

The question we want to answer tonight is how it's going to end.  How it's going to end.  We know it will end.  We know it will end at the end of the tribulation, but how and what is the actual sequence of events that takes place.  Now let me hasten to add to that that there is much theory and speculation in regard to all of the features of Armageddon.  And I'm not going to stand here as any expert.  And while I'm saying that to say this, there are some things upon which we cannot be dogmatic.  And I am not saying tonight that I have found the answer to all of the sequence of events of the tribulation in terms of the final alignment and the final war. 

That really focuses on the end of the times of the Gentiles.  I do not propose to have the answers as opposed to everybody else's supplied answers.  But let me say this, I have come to some conclusions in my own mind.  To one degree or another they satisfy me.  Some satisfy me more than others.  I'll just present them to you and if you want to pursue the study further, the Lord blessed you have a great time.  You'll run into the same difficulties that I ran into.

There are many people who are offering speculation today about how the world's going to end, right?  We hear all the time...I told you three weeks ago about the guy who said that it's going to end in five billion years because the sun's going to all of a sudden run out.  And another guys said the moon's on a rubber band kind of thing, and eventually it's going to snap back and destroy the earth.  And this is going to take X number of millions of years.  And there are all kinds of seers and visionaries and prophets and even the philosophers are into the thing now and they have decided that man is going to destroy himself with certain particulars.  And the scientists are involved as well and man is going to pollute himself out of existence by the year 2000 and so forth.

So there are many people that are giving us a dooms day reports.  But let me add in the words of Peter, "we have a more sure word of prophecy" than human speculation and that is the testimony of the word of God, the scripture.  And so what we'll endeavor to do tonight is to give you a picture of the ending of man's day as it finally comes to an end in the tribulation as it is revealed in the word of God, the Bible. 

Now we find ourselves in our study in the tribulation.  And discussing the nations in the tribulation.  Now we've given several points, let me mention them in retrospect.  One, we studied the times of the nations.  And in that study we found that God has set a time in which Gentiles will rule over the land of Israel.  It's called the times of the Gentiles by Christ Himself.

It began around the year 600 B.C. and it extends until the second coming of Christ.  This entire period of time in which there is Gentile rule in the promised land to Israel to one degree or another, this Gentile rule extends itself, but during this time, Gentiles will rule and it's call the times of the Gentiles or the times of the nations.

It's been going on for 2,600 years.  But there are boundaries on it.  It will end at the coming of Christ.  Now just prior to the coming of Christ, this whole Gentile kind of rule in the world is going to begin to fall apart.  And that's what we're going to look at tonight.

Now secondly, not only do we look at the times of the nations but we look at the ruler of the nations.  And we saw that during this seven year period there's going to be one man who is going to rise to the for to rule the world.  He is going to kind of bring together all the Gentile nations in one great world government.  He's called the little horn.  He's called the king of fierce countenance.  He's called the willful king.  He's call the lawless one.  Son of perdition, the beast, etc., we know him as antichrist.

He will be a final world leader, an intellectual military, economic and religious genius.  He's going to pull off a real...well, unheard of non-historic kind of a thing that has never been done before, and that is he's going to unify the world under one banner. 

Thirdly, we saw not only the times of the nations and the ruler of the nations, but last time we saw the religion of the nations.  And we saw that during the tribulation, since religion is the opiate of the people and people always have religion, they event it because the need it, there will be religion in the tribulation even though the true church is gone and we've been taken up to heaven and we're having the marriage supper, the lamb, and the beamacy, which is the reward judgment.

Even though we're out of here religion will exist.  False religion will take off and we talked about the false church, the great ecumenical church.  We talked about Babylon, remember, how Mystery Babylon all of the false systems are going to come together again.  I was so interested to get an article in the paper that recently said that the Dali Lama...you say who's that?  The Dali Lama is the leader of 1.3 million Tibetan Buddhists and he just had a historic meeting with the Pope.

I picked up the L.A. Times today and read a big spread on one of the inside sections of the Times that informed us that in North Hollywood at the Congregational Church they are now sharing their church with the Tauists, which is a false religion from the Orient.  They have a Tauist priest and a Protestant pastor.  And when the Protestant pastor needs to be on vacation, he lets the Tauist preach in his place.

What we're seeing is all of this system moving together for a final consummation in one world system of false religion.  And we saw last week that the beast uses it as long as he needs it and then he gobbles it up and sets himself up as the only one to be worshiped and makes the world worship him.

Now tonight we're going to look at the fourth point in our little outline regarding the Gentiles.  We've seen the times of the nations, we've seen the ruler of the nations and the religion of the nations, tonight we're going to see the alignment and war of the nations.  The alignment and war of the nations.

During the tribulation, the world is going to divide itself into great powers and these are in reference to the land of Israel.  And in that time there's going to be a great war.  There are four major powers that are going to exist during the tribulation, four of them.  And all of them are designated in geographical relationship to Israel.  One is west, one is north, one is south, and one is east.  They are all designated, as I said, in geographical reference to the land of Israel. 

And little by little we'll try to unfold them to you by using the overhead.  Now all of these great powers ultimately are going to converge on Israel.  They're ultimately going to just kind of converge on Israel in a final great holocaust, war like no other war in history and this is called in the Bible, Armageddon.

Now, let me give you a little idea, just a reminder of what Satan's attempt is going to be.  Satan has always desired to hinder the purpose of God.  And so throughout history, he has had two particular things that he attacked.  One is the seed.  Remember how in the Old Testament he always tried to destroy the messianic seed, the messianic line and tried to destroy the Messiah?  He always wanted to destroy the king.

Secondly, he always wanted to destroy his kingdom.  Throughout all of history not only did Satan attempt to destroy the seed, but he always attempted to destroy the people of God, didn't he?  Now in the tribulation Satan again is going to attempt to wipe out all the Jews and to slaughter everybody who names the name of Christ.  We know that in that time there's going to be tremendous slaughter of all those who name the name of Christ.  Right, if they don't take the mark of the beast, what happens to them?  They get killed. 

Satan's plot is to destroy the kingdom by destroying all the subjects so there can no earthly millennium because nobody's alive.  So he attempts to destroy all the Jews.  In order to get all of this destruction done, he winds up with all the major powers in the world landing in Israel.  And Israel is in a bloodbath. 

Now in the midst of this bloodbath, Jesus Christ arrives and believe me there are some subjects left for His kingdom.  And He arrives in glory and power.  And Satan finds that all of his effort has gone to not.  Now let me begin by just giving you a simple start.  The center of history in the Bible is Jerusalem.  The red represents or pink whatever it happens to be up there, represents the great power of the revived Roman empire.

Now we've talked about this in reference to Daniel and again I'm backing up and if you'd like to get the tapes, you can so you can pick up where you missed, but we know that in the last phase of Gentile world government, there is going to be a revival of the Roman empire, right?  Remember Daniel's image, the final phase of the great image was the legs and the feet of iron and clay mixed and they were symbolic of Rome.  There would be a final phase in the Roman government, and then ten toes and the ten kings and the ten horns all signify a ten nation confederacy and we know that the common market in Europe now is flirting with a ten nation confederacy.  I don't know if there's exactly ten, but they're flirting with that.  And it's a revival of the old Roman empire.  They even make statements like that.

So we've seen this western European confederacy growing up.  They tell us there's going to be common currency very soon, and there may be a common government.  One government governing all of Europe, except the communist block.  Now this great power then, during the tribulation is going to sweep over and encompass the holy land.  In fact, this great world leader who runs that revived Roman Empire, you know the little horn that rises out of the ten nation confederacy, he's going to make a covenant with Israel isn't he?

Daniel 9, he makes a covenant with Israel.  He says, "I'll protect you and I'll take care of you" and so forth and so on and I know what...you can imagine what he gets in return for protection.  He probably gets oil or chemicals from the Dead Sea or some of the tremendous wealth of the land.  So under his leadership he brings a false world peace.  However, it only lasts for three and a half years for half of the tribulation.

Now watch, at the mid point, I believe his power is challenged.  He's managed to establish himself, he's made a covenant with Israel from the very beginning because it says it's a covenant for one week, which is seven and it's a period of seven years, not seven days.  But the covenant is already established.  He's already swept into Jerusalem.  He's in control, but at the middle of the three and a half years, his power is going to be challenged.  And I'm telling you from that time on, the first at that mid point when his power is challenged, from then on all hell breaks loose.

That literally blows the lid off the tribulation period.  And it stays that way until Jesus returns.  From that moment on, the big war machines begin to roll.  And the next thing you know the north comes down, then the south comes up, then the east invades and you've got world war landing on the land of Israel.  Now I want to show you three things tonight just to give you a simple outline.  The war, the victory, and the aftermath. 

The war, the victory, and the aftermath.  First of all the war.  In order to understand the war, we have to understand who's fighting, because I don't understand the power to begin with.  The first power is this power represented by Roman empire.  They begin to dominate that part of the world.  They are in control, and they rule in Jerusalem.  And the beast is riding high.  This is the empire that Daniel predicted was going to come to pass.  You can read it in Daniel and several different passages.  It's all framed there.  We've been through that detail by detail.

Now, I told you somebody's going to challenge the power of this revived Roman empire.  I believe it is going to be the army from the north.  And I believe from the north is going to come a great army to challenge the power of this great revived Roman empire that has managed to recapture the world for Rome. 

Now let me add this, one of the most...and I'm not a very much of a student of political science, but I'm enough of a student of it to know this and so are you.  One of the most amazing, political features that has happened in modern history or any history is the rapid rise of the nation Russia in the last 25 years.

Do you know that after World War II Russia was totally crushed.  It's army was beaten.  It's cities were in absolute ruin, and if it hadn't been for the United States, Russia would have been totally destroyed.  And in 25 years, Russia became a prominent nation with worldwide influence which few nations in history ever achieved outside of those four that ruled the whole world.

In just 25 years from being smashed, Russia became a great world power.  Now such the...such a fantastic rise of so godless and blasphemous a nation is significant.  It's also significant that Russia's where it is.  Russia is not on the lower tip of South America. And Russia is not in the eastern part of Africa.  Russia is to the north.

And this is significant.  It fits the biblical picture.  You say does the Bible talk about Russia?  It doesn't mention the word Russia, but turn to Ezekiel 38.  And I want to show you where I believe Russia fits in to the picture.  Ezekiel 38, now remember the scene, the church is gone, the tribulation period starts out with peace, remember?  This guy sets a world peace kind of in motion.  He conquers without arrows, Revelation 6.  Everything's going kind of hunky dorey.  He promises a utopia and it looks pretty good.  Everything's going great.  He made a pact with Israel.  He's protecting Israel in exchange for something that Israel may give him.  I don't know what.  It doesn't say what it will be. 

Now in the midst of this there's a power to the north that gets jealous of the land of Israel.  I don't know one power in the world that wouldn't like to have that land.  And the great power in the north begins to get jealous of this western control over Israel.  Now, I want you to notice verse 14 of Ezekiel 38.  And I want to show you first of all why we believe this to be Russia.