Messianic Viewpoint

Guest (Female): Shalom, shalom and welcome to this our first message in our series from the Book of Revelation. It is so exciting to consider this book from a Jewish perspective, and that is where Messianic leader Jacques Isaac Gabizon’s heart lies: to bring alive, to surface, and to point out so many of the Hebrew Scripture references that fill this Book of Revelation.

Yes, it is a book that relates to the Church. It relates to the days of tribulation and to the blessings of the eternal order. It is the last official written revelation coming from the penmanship of the God of Israel. But in looking at the connection Revelation has with the Hebrew Scriptures, we will hear in today’s message about the marked similarity between the Book of Revelation and especially the Book of Exodus.

And who is the one who bridges these two pieces of Scripture together? It is the Lamb of God. How wonderful we will get to know not only the Lamb who was slain on the doorpost in the Book of Exodus, the Lamb who was slain on the tav, on the cross in the Gospels, but now we will see the Lamb in heaven. We see him as the man of war, full of power and authority as he alone is worthy to take the scroll and open the seals.

And his authority is sealed as the King of Kings when he comes to judge the Earth and stop the war that would otherwise have ended humanity. This is our slain Lamb of God. So let us now open our books and open our hearts to this first message from the Book of Revelation from Messianic leader Jacques Isaac Gabizon. Be blessed as you listen in, and shalom, shalom.

Jacques Isaac Gabizon: I want to welcome everyone to Bet Ariel, even those who are watching on YouTube and Facebook. I want to tell you it is such a joy to see many of you gathered, even though we are a small group. But this gathering of believers is important. It is important also to God. We are called the body of the Messiah, and so it is again my prayer that soon we will be all together, like it was pre-COVID days.

This past week, we witnessed a major event when the United Arab Emirates normalized their relationship with Israel. We have always wondered how the Antichrist will convince the Muslim nations to draw a peace treaty with Israel. It already began. It began back in 1979 with a peace treaty with Egypt, then in 1994 with a peace treaty with Jordan, and now with the UAE in 2020. The way is paved for the Antichrist.

Of course, this was a political move. What may have prompted the United Arab Emirates to shake on an agreement with Israel and the US is Iran. Iran is so close, as you can see in the map, and is becoming more and more of a threat in this region. Back in the 1970s, Iran occupied two small islands belonging to the UAE and justified the invasion by claiming that they were part of the Persian Empire since the 6th century BC.

Lately, Iran has been very aggressive, and so this country, UAE, may seek protection from the West with this move. They know that Israel is not afraid of Iran. However, when it comes to Egypt and Jordan, we know that their peace treaty with Israel will not last until the end. In the Scriptures, Egypt is seen as the King of the South, as Daniel tells us, and Jordan as Edom, Moab, and Ammon. They will be at war with Israel, as Asaph tells us in Psalm 83.

However, the peace treaty with the United Arab Emirates may last until the second coming. It is Ezekiel the prophet who describes the war of Gog and Magog and spoke of two type of peoples who will take side with Israel against Iran, Russia, Turkey, and others, and complain about their invasion of Israel. The passage is in Ezekiel 38:13. After listing all the nations who will come against Jerusalem, we read in this verse, “Sheba and Dedan, the merchants of Tarshish and all their young lions will say to you,” that is to Gog.

“Have you come to take plunder? Have you gathered your army to take booty, to carry away silver and gold, to take away livestock and goods, to take great plunder?” Sheba and Dedan are located in the Arabian Peninsula, and it is very possible that they represent these countries like Saudi Arabia, Arab Emirates, along with Qatar and Oman, and perhaps Yemen. Sheba and Dedan were the sons of Abraham through Keturah, and both the Scriptures and Josephus tells us that they went in this area where they are today.

Lately, Saudi Arabia seems to tilt toward normalizing their relationship with Israel as well. Back in February of this year, they invited a rabbi, would you believe, as part of an interfaith meeting they hosted. This morning, Trump’s son-in-law Kushner, who engineered the whole thing, said that Israel and Saudi Arabia normalization is inevitable. While all these peace treaties are not happening at the same time, for as we will see today in our study of the Book of Revelation, God is very patient, desiring that many should come to the faith, especially when they see these things.

Yet, all of these things indicate to us once again that these end-time prophecies are closing in, and the time of the coming of our Lord is closer every single day. I cannot wait to start this other book of Revelation, where the news meets prophecies. But before we begin, let us bless our precious children with the Birkat HaBanim. Of course, we have no children here, but those who are watching, if you have your children, bring them close to you. Put your hand upon their head.

Our Father, we lift up our children to your throne and pray for great blessings for each one of them. We pray that their love for you would grow and increase in Yeshua’s name. We pray today that they will develop an eternal perspective and purpose, not an earthly one. I pray that they will set their minds on things above, not just what is going on here, and that they will be rooted and grounded in your love. Help them, Heavenly Father, to see life and every challenge through your eyes, eager and unafraid to share with others the good news of Yeshua Hamashiach wherever they go. In Yeshua’s name, Amen.

Today we are starting a new section of the Bible, a seasonable one, a book for today: the Book of Revelation. You can open up your scriptures to the first chapter. The word “Revelation,” “Apokalypsis,” means the unveiling, the uncovering of something that was hidden and now revealed. And while it is a word that is often associated with chaos and calamities, this is only a part of its scope, one that deals with only a very short period of time.

The rest of its content reveals to us some great and profound eternal truth unseen anywhere in the Scriptures. It will supply great details for us concerning the eternal home of those who have trusted their lives to God and to the Messiah. Both the outside and the inside of the most beautiful place called Heaven is described with many impressive and unforgettable details as we move towards the end of the book.

Details that will ignite and fan the eternal fire of hope in our hearts. It also carries us to where other prophets have in the spirit already been taken, right into the temple of God in Heaven. Did you know there is a great temple over there? And right in its midst, Revelation gives us a glimpse of God’s throne room, of its grandeur and the many colors that surround them. It will describe so many beings up there, all working in unison, and it seems actually that they are all waiting for our arrival, for the arrival of the believers so that a new phase of eternity can soon begin.

There is up there a whole other world to discover that the Book of Revelation will unfold before us. And above all, it does describe our Savior as he is now and in such a powerful manner as to be so strengthened and empowered by his love until he comes to take us home. This book is life-changing for the one who believes every single word of God.

This great description of the divine is contained within the first three chapters. These chapters are for the believers. They were written for us to encourage us. So powerful they are that John, who already had spent three years with Yeshua, after seeing all these things overwhelmed writes, “And I fell at his feet as dead,” in verse 17. And see what happens next: then Yeshua gently laid his right hand on him and told him, “Do not be afraid. I am the first and the last.”

This is the experience I pray we will undergo together as we go through the verses of this great book: first realizing this side of our Messiah that is so awesome and wonderful and experiencing his soothing touch through his word and through his spirit upon us and in us. As for John, I want to tell you that he needed so much to feel and be acquainted with the touch of the divine.

For he was about to see and describe for some the most evil beings and disastrous situations. However, we will see that when the time comes to relate the rising of the Antichrist or of those demons, he does it calmly, with a great composure, with not a hint of fear. Because he experienced the touch of Yeshua. This, then, is what the Book of Revelation is really about: the uncovering of the facet of our God that is so powerful that it will energize us and make us whole with confidence. Let us begin to read the first two verses.

“The revelation of Jesus the Messiah which God gave him to show to his bond-servant the things which must soon take place, and sent and communicated it to his angel and his bond-servant John, who testified to the word of God, to the testimony of Jesus the Messiah, even to all that he saw.” The revelation of Jesus Christ, of Jesus the Messiah. This is how the book begins. This is really the title of the book, which contains a double-edged revelation.

First, it is a disclosure of his revelation to us for the end times and for eternity. And second, it also contains fuller revelation to us of his very being, his nature, his essence. You have to be encouraged when you see how he is. These chapters contain a description of Jesus that had not been yet seen. He is no longer in a manger, nor is he on a cross anymore. But he is for us today what he will be for eternity: the all-powerful and almighty, self-existing, self-sustaining Judge of all beings, for God has put all things under his feet.

However, a most beautiful thing happens in Revelation. In this book, there is one more item in the description of Yeshua that may surprise you. Just when we expect him to come as a warrior on a white horse through the book, from chapter 5 to the moment of his second coming in chapter 19, and even through eternity in chapter 21 and 22, the Messiah appears as a Lamb.

The Lamb. Twenty-eight times over in this book, he is called the Lamb. As if he is always there to bless them through what he did for us, as if his death and resurrection would always be remembered for eternity. And notice the contrast in Revelation 5 when he is first called a lamb in this book. Just as the first seal is being opened, John is told to look at the Lion of the tribe of Judah. Then he turns around and who does he see? A Lamb, as though it has been slain.

And the word “slain,” I want to tell you, is the same word that the Septuagint used for the word “sacrifice,” which described in the Mosaic Law all the sacrifices of animals. The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible done by some seventy rabbis back in the third century BC. So here we see that the Lamb was not just killed, it was sacrificed like the Passover Lamb.

But this one and the many indications pull us to see the context of the scriptures because this is how we are going to understand Revelation. Because as one reads on, one sees so many similarities actually between the Book of Revelation and especially the Book of Exodus. So many correlations that the Book of Revelation is like a second Exodus in the way it brings us all this information from start to finish. When the Jewish people left Egypt, according to the book of Hebrews and history, they never reached the land. They never reached actually the rest.

The Shabbat of the Lord, they never reached. The Exodus never ended. And so we in the book of Hebrews 4:9 reminds us therefore that a rest is still there for the people of God. But the Exodus actually ends at the end of Revelation. Israel and the world still needs to enter the land, and Revelation leads us right to it in its closing chapters.

And along the way, the overall description in Revelation could be compared actually to the first Exodus. For instance, we have all read about Israel was protected from the plagues while in Egypt. With these plagues, while these plagues actually touched all the land, it left Israel untouched. When for example there was darkness over all the land of Egypt, when no one was able to see or move about for three days, light continued where the people of Israel lived, and a bright light it was.

In the same way, the 144,000 individuals, 12,000 from each tribe of Israel, will be protected during the seven-year tribulation. No plague from the seals or from the trumpets or from the bowls will touch them, for they will have the mark of God just like the Israelites had the blood of the lamb on the doorpost and lintel on their doors. And we hear that not only the 144,000 but many other believers will also prevail because of especially it says in Revelation 12:11, the blood of the Lamb.

“And they overcame him, that is the Antichrist, by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives even to the death.” And in this same chapter of Revelation, we read that the Lord will protect Israel using the same imagery that we have in Exodus. In Revelation 12, God gives the woman, who is Israel, two wings of a great eagle that she might fly into the wilderness, that is in Petra.

In the same way during the Exodus, Israel was brought to the wilderness away from Egypt with eagles’ wings. This is what God said in Exodus 19:4. Furthermore, when Moses and Aaron came before Pharaoh on behalf of Israel, Pharaoh was always angered by their presence, and these two ambassadors of God were always faithful. Similarly, there will be the two witnesses in the tribulation who will greatly disturb the Antichrist and his followers, so much so that when the beast and the false prophet succeed in killing the two witnesses, the earth rejoices with a three-and-a-half-day national holiday.

And in Revelation, the Song of Moses in Exodus 15 is sung along the song of the Lamb in Heaven. Another item we see in both Revelation and the Exodus is the hardness of man’s heart, which never changes unless there is a miracle. We remember Pharaoh, who after the ten plagues, even after so many of his own people died, he actually did not want to submit to God. Even after the tenth plague, he proceeded to command his army to chase the children of Israel.

This reckless decision caused the drowning of many of the army of Egypt. Never again after this time did Egypt rise to the same height as it was before. We see the same type of hardened soul after the so many plagues that will be poured on this earth. We read that after Armageddon in Revelation 16:16, the people were calling on the mountains and rocks to fall on us, they said, and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of what? The Lamb.

Did you notice that he comes as a Lamb, as if to offer them again and again salvation before the final day, as he did with Judas Iscariot? The language of Revelation pulls us back into Israel’s history, making the presentation and direction of this book so Jewish in context. These things will be brought back as we encounter them. But there is something that calls us to really look at the Lamb of God.

If Yeshua is portrayed as the Lamb, it is not just any lamb. John in Revelation uses a very special word for Lamb. The exclusive word used for Lamb in Revelation is “arnion,” as opposed to the other word “amnos” found in the rest of the New Testament. The word change may have been done to enhance the major difference between the work of the Lamb who was slain with the now resurrected Lamb, who is also a mighty warrior.

Unlike the persecuted and abused Lamb in the Tanakh and in the Gospel, the Lamb in Revelation is a most powerful one. Here in Revelation, the Lamb has seven horns, which symbolizes perfect and absolute power and authority. It has seven eyes, symbolizing omniscience and omnipresence. In Revelation, John picks up where Isaiah 53 left off, when he said he was led as a lamb to the slaughter.

And when it stood in Revelation, it triggered the twenty-four elders who represent the Ecclesia in Heaven to worship the Lamb. And at the end, it is the mighty Lamb who will stand on Mount Zion at his second coming, as we read in Zechariah, when he comes and every eye shall see him. He is the one who will overcome all evil forces. He is well identified. Just read Revelation 17:14: “These will make war with the Lamb and the Lamb will overcome them, for he is Lord of Lords, King of Kings, and those who are with him are called chosen and faithful.”

Once again, this is the same Lamb of God but now resurrected, and he is Lord of Lords, King of Kings. No one can touch him anymore. There is then a strong connection between Revelation and the rest of the Bible because we tend to look at Revelation as a book over there. Now before we leave this beautiful imagery of the power of the Lamb of Revelation, there is one more fact I want to bring to your attention, one which speaks to us today. Because the Book of Revelation at the end is very practical.