Questions and Answers, Part 5
Selected Scriptures
In what way are we dealing with the Kingdom today? Now, we talk a lot about this, and Jesus came, as well as John the Baptist, preaching the Kingdom, so came Jesus preaching the Kingdom. The question says what way are we dealing with the Kingdom today? The millennium, obviously, hasn't come. Listen, friends, if this is the millennium, we're in real trouble. This is...this is, you're right, it isn't the millennium. Yet, it says, clearly that we have been, according to Colossians 1, we have been transformed into the Kingdom of God's dear Son. We're in the Kingdom, right? We're citizens of the Kingdom, and, yet, this can't be the millennium. No.
Now watch, and this is not easy to explain, so kinda keep your brain alert on this. We are experiencing at this time all of the features of the Kingdom that are spiritual. For example, maybe I can get you involved in this. Think of the millennium, and think of some of the things that will occur in the millennium. What are they? You got any ideas? Peace, that's...that's one we always think about. Okay. Absence of Satan. Okay, for part of it. Okay, justice. Okay, how about this one? The rule of Christ. Well, you know, you can go on with some things like this and just talk about the various features of the Kingdom. There...there is going to be, we have to include this, salvation, righteousness. You know, we can...we don't need to go any further than that. Let's leave it like that.
There are some basic things. Now, think about this. The beautiful thing about this, this is all going to happen in a physical world. This is all gonna take place in the physical; and the whole world will be dominated by these things. But lemme ask you this. You're a Christian, and you're living today. Do you have peace? Sure, do you have it in your life? If you don't, you're in trouble...Has Satan been dismissed from your life and replaced by the Spirit of God? Yes. Is there justice in your life? Is Christ ruling in your life? Yes. Salvation? Has He given you His righteousness? Do you see, in a spiritual sense, you have already begun to experience all that will be fully revealed in a physical sense in the Kingdom. In that sense, we are in a form of the Kingdom now.
We are...some say this is the mystery form of the Kingdom. The King is absent; and, yet, He has...He has sent His Holy Spirit to begin to plant within us all of the features of the Kingdom that are spiritual. Someday in the millennium, they'll all become both spiritual and physical; and Christ will literally bring peace on the whole earth. Literally, Satan will be bound. Literal justice, and He'll rule with a rod of iron. That Christ will actually sit on the seat of the throne of David. Salvation will be all around the world. Israel will be restored and redeemed, and God's righteousness will rule the world. Now, all of that will be in a total sense fulfilled the worldwide, physically, really, literally; but now is being fulfilled within us who are part of the Kingdom, spiritually. Do you see? So, in a sense, we are experiencing all the spiritual benefits of the Kingdom while we yet wait for the physical fulfillment of all that the Kingdom is.
Another question that comes in...in relationship to something that's happening in our current church scene today is explain why we have Messianic Jewish temples. What is the need for them? Are you familiar with this? Recently, there has been a...a...a surge of Messianic Jewish temples. Now, what this means is this. We all know that we are currently in the midst of what you might call an ethnic minority movement in our country; and I would be the first one to agree that many of the minorities in our country have suffered deeply from injustice. I do not deny that. Sometimes they have suffered because of the consequences of their own perpetuated society. Other times they have suffered consequences as a result of oppression.
But it's true. When the...when the Black Power movement and all of those movements began, and there was great liberation, much of it deserved among the blacks in the south; and when that all occurred, there...there was a natural tail to come along; and there became sort of a new identity if you were an ethnic. You...you, you know, before, everybody was an American, and everybody was waving the American flag, historically. You ever seen any newsreels of World War II, it's incredible. The victory after World War II. Everybody's Americans. You know, the melting pot; and now, all of a sudden, because of the drive of the ethnic movement, and because of the tremendous population growth and the mass, faceless humanity, everybody wants to be something. So now we've got movements among the brown people. We've got this over here, kind of a movement among these types of people. We've got...it's...you gotta be something. You can't just be you, who's an American. You've gotta be a...an Irish-American, a Polish-American, a...a gay American, a something...
You can't just be one of the faceless crowd. You have to be a minority, because that's the new identity; and I think, in this, all of sudden, there is this Jewishness concept. Listen, if there ever is a minority that has existed as a pure minority throughout history, it's the Jewish people; and they have waved the banner for years, because God has wanted them to maintain their dignity and their...their unity and their purity as a race. But what's happened is, I think that many well-meaning Christian people, evangelical people, are catering more to a sociological minority movement than they are to the Word of God. Because the Bible would never tolerate a Jewish church and a Gentile church. That is the one thing that the Apostle Paul spent the last months of his ministry trying to resolve, trying to get those two together; and when he wrote Ephesians, he said, "The middle wall is...what?...broken down and they two have become one new man." And my own belief is that it is ludicrous to have a Messianic Jewish temple, as much as it would be to have announced out here that this is the Grace Community Gentile church. Now, how do you think that would sit with Jewish people? They would say one thing. They're anti-Semitic. See? There's no reason for that.
Dr. Feinberg said to me one day, he says, "I don't know why everybody thinks because we're Jewish Christians, we're something special. We're not." Something special to God. Something marvelous to be Jewish, but not something for which you deserve an entire church all to yourselves. And now they have Christian bar mitzvahs. What is a Christian bar mitzvah?...You know, there were some people who filled out applications to go to Talbot Seminary, and they applied because they wanted to become Christian rabbis. Dr. Feinberg said to me, "What is a Christian rabbi?" They're out of their mind. They think a church wants a Christian rabbi? They think a synagogue wants a Christian rabbi? No, neither want either.
So you know what they do? They start their own Messianic temple. Some of these dear people really mean well; and I...I pray God that they'll win people to Christ; but that isn't what it's all about. That's, in a sense, Judaizing. I don't see any need for that at all. I praise God for the Jewish people in our...in our church. All you have to do is read Acts chapter 13, and you read about the five pastors there. Some of 'em were Jews. Some of 'em were Gentiles. Some of 'em were white. Some of 'em were black. Read it, Acts 13. They all pastor the same church. We don't have the Grace Community Irish-American Church. Don't see the point.
Another question. What is the abomination of desolation in the holy place, and how will it affect us or will it? What is the abomination of desolation? For that answer, we have to turn to Daniel chapter 9. Daniel chapter 9. This question is often asked when I have conferences. People ask about prophecy. Now, those are really the questions that usually dominate a question and answer time. I was pleased to see that they weren't dominating in your questions, not that they're...they shouldn't be asked, but that you should be preoccupied with other things than the future, namely, the present.
But in Daniel 9:24, it talks about the seventy weeks of Daniel. That's the period of history determined upon Israel, and you remember there's gonna be a period of Israel's history. Messiah's going to come...talks about the destruction of Jerusalem. Then in verse 27, it talks about the Tribulation...The antichrist is going to come. The prince that shall come, "And confirm the covenant with many for one week." One of the things that antichrist will do in the end time is make a pact with Israel for one seven-year period. One week means seven years. There will be a period of seven years that we call the Tribulation. At the beginning of that period, the antichrist will make a treaty with Israel to protect Israel. "However, in the midst of the week...in the middle of that time, three-and-a-half years...he will cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease." In other words, he...he will allow them the freedom to worship in their temple.
This is one of the reasons we believe Israel's gonna rebuild the temple, because they'll be worshipping during the Tribulation. They will be worshipping in the temple in the middle of the week. Antichrist swoops down, stops the sacrifices. Stops the oblation, "For the overspreading of abominations he makes it desolate." He comes in and just abominates or blasphemes, in their mind, the sacredness of that place. He wipes out their worship...in the middle of the week. That is the abomination of desolations.
Now, this had a very apt figure in history. In a sense, it was almost fulfilled in a preliminary manner with Antiochus Epiphanes, who, during the period of the Maccabees, between the ending of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament, the period of 400 years, when the Jews were under the yoke of Greece. The Greeks had set up a man in there by the name of Antiochus to rule them, to rule the Jews. Well, he was bad. I mean he was terrible. He was a madman. That's what the people called him, Epimanes, the madman; and, in order to show his hatred for Israel, he went in there and slew a pig on the altar in the temple; and t