00:00And some people say, well, why do you go on about Israel so much?
00:04It's a small country, 3,000 miles away.
00:08Plenty of other conflicts and situations in the world.
00:11You've got a situation in Sudan at the present time
00:13where there's, I think, 600,000 people on the starvation line,
00:17which hardly ever gets reported in the news.
00:21You've got all kinds of bad situations.
00:24You've got some, well, not many good ones, but one or two, maybe.
00:28But you've got Israel.
00:29And Israel is the epicenter.
00:30It's the epicenter.
00:31It's the focus of both a lot of hostility and hatred
00:35and also some love and some support.
00:40In fact, when you look around the world today,
00:41there's actually an anti-Israel obsession.
00:45Features in the media all the time.
00:48You've got this kind of red-green alliance of the Islamists
00:52and the left-wing who have resolution,
00:55have demonstrations all the time.
00:59You've got the UN making resolutions all the time.
01:02And they're all chanting from the river to the sea,
01:04Palestine shall be free.
01:06And that actually is a chant which talks about
01:09the elimination of the state of Israel.
01:13It means the end of Israel.
01:15You may notice they've even carried on demonstrating after the ceasefire,
01:18which tells you that actually they're not so much interested in the Palestinians,
01:21they're more interested in the end of Israel.
01:25But also there are Christians and Jews, like us, hopefully,
01:29who see that Israel is significant.
01:31And you see it's a fulfillment of Bible prophecy.
01:34That this little country here,
01:37within its borders, which are pretty narrow,
01:39is the epicenter of God's dealings in Bible history,
01:44in the past, in the present,
01:47and certainly in the days to come.
01:50You can go history back into the time of Abraham,
01:52when God made a covenant with Abraham,
01:54that he gave to him a multitude of descendants,
01:56as many as the stars on the sky,
01:59sand on the seashore,
02:00and he gave them the title deeds of ownership of the land
02:02upon which he was a stranger,
02:04the land of Israel.
02:05Go back to Moses,
02:07as he brought the children of Israel out of Egypt,
02:09and went to Mount Sinai,
02:11received the Ten Commandments,
02:13and led the Israelites to the land which became their home,
02:18based upon the Torah.
02:23And you see, in the outworking of history,
02:25in the Tenach, in the Bible,
02:27God's purpose is being recorded.
02:28Also, the prophecies of the coming of the Messiah,
02:31to be fulfilled in Yeshua, Jesus the Messiah,
02:34came the first time to die,
02:36and to sacrifice for the sin of the world.
02:39Fulfilling in Isaiah 53,
02:42taking place in Jerusalem,
02:44his death, his resurrection,
02:46the outpouring of the Holy Spirit,
02:47birth of the Christian Church,
02:50body of Messiah.
02:52You see, also the scattering of the Jewish people,
02:55and them coming back to the land in our time,
02:57which is surely a miracle.
02:59It's something which has not happened to any other people.
03:01Back in the land,
03:02speaking the same language,
03:03speaking Hebrew,
03:04rebuilding ancient cities,
03:05making the desert land to become a fertile land.
03:08All of these things prophesied in the book of Ezekiel,
03:11the book of Isaiah.
03:12They're in the Bible.
03:14And we see things happening,
03:15which have fulfilled the scriptures.
03:17We see the enemies gathering about,
03:19saying,
03:19let's make an end of the state of Israel.
03:21Destroy it.
03:22And yet Israel survives and prospers.
03:28It's all prophesied in the Bible.
03:30In Isaiah,
03:31in the Psalms,
03:32in Jeremiah,
03:33Ezekiel,
03:34even in Jesus' prophecies of the end of days.
03:37So we should pay attention to what happens in Israel.
03:40Jerusalem,
03:40the burdensome stone,
03:42all in the news today.
03:45The Bible also speaks about a time
03:47which appears to be some kind of a covenant
03:49being made with Israel.
03:51Maybe a false peace covenant,
03:53which you look at.
03:54We have looked at it in the last couple of weeks, actually,
03:56but we'll say a little bit more about it tonight.
03:59Peace covenant which will break down
04:00halfway through a time of tribulation
04:02and lead to the second coming of the Messiah.
04:05And that just as the Messiah fulfilled
04:06certain specific prophecies
04:08at his first coming,
04:09so he's going to fulfill
04:10specific prophecies at his second coming.
04:14And one of the things which is exciting and interesting
04:16is that you can see those things happening now,
04:18which leads us to believe
04:19that Yeshua, Jesus, is coming back again.
04:23We also see that there is a huge amount of hostility.
04:26I mentioned that.
04:28Now, I'm not saying that everything that Israel does is right,
04:31or even that everything that the Arabs do is wrong.
04:33But I would say that Israel is much more
04:35sinned against than sinning.
04:37And you've got much more of a hostility towards Israel.
04:40That shows that there is a spiritual force
04:43behind all this.
04:44It's not just human.
04:46There's a power which doesn't want Israel to exist.
04:48And certainly doesn't want Jesus
04:49to come back again to Israel.
04:51And that power is a power of darkness,
04:53the power of Satan.
04:54And he's a liar and a deceiver from the beginning.
04:57And you can see what's happening in the world today
04:59fits in with all of that.
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