FaithWalk Radio

Ron Susek: Hello friend, Ron Susek here. I'm going to take you to Bismarck, North Dakota with me today where I spoke on this subject, and that is Assyria setting the stage for the ministry of Jesus Christ.

For many, many years, we have written off the Assyrians as bad people. Why? Because they wiped out the top 10 tribes of Israel. They must be bad. No. You're going to learn something amazing. God prophesied that He was going to send them to do this because He was disciplining them for violating Him.

So my friend, stay with me, this is going to be an exciting time we have today. In fact, it's so rich and full, it's going to take us two programs to talk about it in more complete way. So stay with me for part one of Assyria: The Day She Set the Stage for Jesus' Ministry. Stay with me, I'll be right back.

Guest (Male): Finding and knowing God is a faith walk. The Bible says that without faith it is impossible to please God. Our hope lies in the coming Messiah, who will establish God's peaceful kingdom on earth.

This is FaithWalk with Ron Susek. Dr. Ron is an evangelist committed to encourage and equip your faith walk as we pass through these turbulent end-time days awaiting that soon-coming kingdom. Here again is Ron Susek.

Ron Susek: This little pamphlet I hope you'll take with you, and we wanted to just give you an idea what it is we've been doing over the past 11 years in our commitment to the Assyrian people. One that I would really love you to zero in on and focus on in prayer, and I'm hoping that when I leave here, I'm leaving here with a broadened prayer team because we are involved now in a project with the Assyrians that is international, that will be a mind-bender. It will attract the attention of the world.

I'm doing it as an evangelist because I can't think of anything greater than to establish a Christian, true Christian nation in the heart of Islam. Why? Because I'm in a contest? No. Because God told us to be a light to the world. I will tell you that it's a spiritual war. It's a mighty war, and we can win this in our power in prayer.

I really am hoping that you'll realize what I'm going to be sharing with you yesterday, this morning, and tonight is really bringing you to the front-row seat. This is a rare thing in history. A front-row seat of a prophecy that has been waiting for 2,700 years to begin to process, and it appears to be underway. Here you and I are, to be so honored to be alive in this hour but a participant before God in prayer and in our work to see this come to pass.

I hope you'll take this pamphlet. By the way, there's a card in there. I hope you'll follow us. Just be sure to fill it in and give us your name and address so that we can keep in touch, and we'll keep you informed because we are really living in a rare day and a rare hour.

This morning, I want to talk about God and His sovereign rule over the nations. I did a television program on this and you'll have my card, I think, on how to get into our television program. If you want to see this program, it's what I'm going to share this morning. Just simply look for the program Assyria Justified. That will be close enough and you'll find the program.

I want you to see how God is working in history. Before I do, I want to take you to an event that happened 2,700 years ago and help you grasp the seriousness of this prophecy. There was a man named Isaiah. You know him, he's in your Bible. Isaiah, I'm going to give you a little bit of a drama here just to burn into your mind something about this prophecy.

Isaiah was probably sitting at home in his little stone home overlooking Jerusalem, sitting at his desk with a candle burning and flames flickering on a torch in the wall. He hears rumbling of thunder off on the distant horizon and he begins to wonder, "Is that rain or is that God?" He knew what it was like to get messages from God, and this sounded familiar to a heavenly message coming.

The thunder got louder and louder, and Isaiah got up and went outside and looked in the sky. It was a star-studded sky. How can there be thunder? This must be God. So he went back in and got a scroll and opened the scroll, got his quill ready. Now the thunder is loud, the lightning is striking, even though the sky is empty of all clouds.

Isaiah hears the voice in his spirit: "In that day." He writes that down. "There shall be a highway. That highway will go from Assyria all the way down to Egypt. The Egyptians and the Assyrians will walk on that highway." He's writing this down and he pauses. Egyptians and Assyrians? They hate each other. They're implacable enemies.

All right, God, I'm ready. "They will worship together." No possibility. No possibility. "In that day, Israel will be a third with Egypt and Assyria." Impossible. He pauses, he looks up, he looks back at his notes. "A blessing in the midst of the earth." Staunch enemies—Assyria, Israel, Egypt—worshipping together? Blessing the entire world?

"Blessed be Egypt, My people, and Assyria, the work of My hands, and Israel, My inheritance." Isaiah puts his pen down and he gets up and he walks outside again. The thunder is fading over the distant horizon, the lightning is going away, the star-studded sky is there again, and he realizes what this means.

He begins to talk to God. "God, You've given me a prophecy that will probably get me killed. My people hate the Assyrians. The Assyrians hate the Egyptians. The Egyptians hate us all. My God, this could mean my life."

And then he says, "But back in the temple, when I saw Your glory, I said to You when You asked the question, 'Who will go for us?' I said to You, 'Here am I, send me.' If it costs my life, I will deliver this prophecy." In my imagination, I believe that when Isaiah went to the temple steps to deliver this prophecy for the first time, they probably threw dirt in the air and stones at Isaiah as he ran back home.

This is not a prophecy that is possible on a human level. Now we are living in a day 2,700 years later. This prophecy has been overlooked all those years, not because of ignorance. My theologian friends have all said, "Ron, how did we miss this?" It's not because of ignorance. I believe that God shielded this prophecy with His hand until the right time.

You are living in that right time. Get excited and get committed to prayer. Become a participant because Jesus told us we are the ones that God has ordained to be on earth praying, "Thy will be done on earth as it's already finished in heaven." Don't miss that privilege and that opportunity.

Now, what I want to give you this morning is a sweep of history, and I'm going to move rapidly. You'll be able to get my notes if you want them. Not today, I've got to go back and have my wife edit them. She edits everything I do. I mean, I'm the most edited man on earth. We're sitting in a restaurant talking to friends and she's correcting my English. It's not even funny.

But I'll do everything I can to help educate you in this because it took me years to seek it out, study it, and learn it. I'm not expecting you to learn it in one Sunday morning, but hopefully you'll gain a fresh grasp of this. There are a number of parts that I want to share with you over history. Part one, it begins with Solomon.

David's son Solomon, and you recall that David told his son how to obey God, and he said this: "And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve Him with a whole heart and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought. If you seek Him, He will be found by you, but if you forsake Him, He will cast you off forever." What a message from a dad to a son. Right on.

Solomon was a stellar king until his latter years, and he began to marry pagan wives. Many times they did that for political reasons, but he also invited their gods to come with them. God said to Solomon, "I am going to divide the kingdom because of what you've done. I'm going to split the kingdom, but not under you. I'm going to do that under your son, Rehoboam."

When Solomon was about to die, he appointed Rehoboam to be the king of the southern kingdom. Most of you know this already from your Bible studies. That included Jerusalem, the tribe of Benjamin, and the tribe of Judah were the southern kingdom, and Rehoboam was the king of that region serving in Jerusalem.

North of that was Israel. They called that Israel. Isn't that interesting? We call the whole thing Israel, so that can get very confusing. But Judah is in the bottom and Israel is in the top. Jeroboam, a trusted hardworking worker, was appointed by Solomon to be the king of Israel, and that goes all the way up to the Sea of Galilee and around the Sea of Galilee.

Interestingly enough, there was always tension between those two nations. Always tension. One of the reasons was because every year every Jew from both kingdoms was to come to Jerusalem to offer their sacrifices to God. Jeroboam in the north, even though God appointed him, could not trust God. So what did he do?

He built high places and he was actually allowing these wives to bring in their pagan gods, and they're worshipping in places that God did not appoint or anoint with priests that God rejected because they were not going to Jerusalem. That was building more and more tension.

Then those tensions boiled over in Isaiah chapter 7, and this is a very significant text. Isaiah chapter 7, verses 1 and 2. In the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham—we'll skip over all the names—two kings were joining together against Ahaz, who was now the king of Judah, the southern kingdom. Those two kings were the king of the north, Israel, and the king of Syria. They were binding together in order to attack the king of Judah, which was now Ahaz.

And this leads to a call for faith. Please hear what I'm about to say. Faith is by far one of the most significant issues at hand in your life. I hope you get a life lesson out of what I'm going to share in a moment because God is holding all of us accountable to whether or not we really believed Him. Knowing Him is one thing; believing Him is another.

I'm going to say this more than once in this message: Faith is not for wimps. This world, that is fallen in sin and inspired by Satan, will bring unbelievable pressures up against you to try to prove God to be a liar and faith to be silly. That is where you and I need to dig in and determine, "No, I am going to believe God above everything."

All the circumstances, they will melt. God will stand firm and He will always fulfill His word. I'm saying that emphatically. You need to build that into your personal life, as well as it's going to demand that kind of faith to believe that God can actually rearrange the Middle East and reestablish Assyria as a sovereign state in her historic homeland and become a witness of the Gospel to a very darkened world. Are you with me? Great. Thank you so much. I don't want to move too fast and lose you in the dust because this is critical stuff.

And then, in Isaiah chapter 7, verses 3 to 9, God said to Ahaz that these two nations that are banding together to attack you, they are smoldering embers. In other words, they're going to burn out. Don't worry about it. They are not going to attack you. And then God said, "It shall not stand and it shall not come to pass." Stop worrying about it.

The Bible says that he and the nation were shaking like trees in a windstorm. They were that frightened. They thought they were done. God said, "No, they're two burning embers. Don't worry about them. They're going to burn out. They're not going to attack you. Ahaz, can you believe Me?"

Circumstances say you're done. God said it's not going to happen. Now, which are you going to believe? I want you to not only be thinking about Ahaz, but think about yourself. How many times have you faced that kind of a dilemma in your life? Circumstances are telling you you're a loser, you're done, you're nailed, and God says, "Believe Me."

Believe Me. You can't see Him. I don't know how many times I have wished that God would send an angel to sit on my bedpost and speak to me. But He doesn't. In the silence, His word says, "Believe Me. Believe Me, not just about Me. Believe Me. Don't just read in history. Believe Me for now, for your life right now today." That's the calling of God that's upon us.

And then God made a profound statement, and I hope this burns into our minds. Here's what He said: "If you are not firm in faith, Ahaz, you will not be firm at all." When you're not firm in faith, you begin to compromise. Because when situations are bad, there's always someone there to give you a way out, but it's a compromising way out and ultimately it destroys you.

Satan is a master at that. This world has mastered that. God said, "No, stand firm and believe Me, what I said. I told you they're going to burn out. They're not going to attack you. They can't. I'm going to destroy them. Don't worry about that."

And then here's where it really gets interesting. There's a prophecy that begins to emerge here that we don't often see in this setting. That is found in Isaiah 7, verses 10 to 17. God said to Ahaz, "Okay, I see you shaking, you're nervous, you're frightened, the nation is frightened, you're not trusting Me. Ask Me for a sign. Ask Me for a sign."

Ahaz was—think about this. He's the king of Judea reigning in Jerusalem, knows the temple of God, and he cannot believe the God he's serving. Can't believe Him. What does he say? "Ask a sign of Me, the Lord your God, but make it as high as heaven and as low as Sheol." Make it impossible. Ask Me to do something totally impossible.

And this man was so full of unbelief, he said, "I will not ask and I will not put the Lord to the test." You know what he was really saying? "I don't believe You. I'm not going to even try this test because I'll flunk." He already failed.

And then God said, "Well, I'm going to give you a sign. If you think you could have invented a sign that was impossible for Me, I'm going to give you a tough one to believe. Get ready for this. Get ready for this." Now the Messiah comes into the picture. "Behold, the virgin will conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel." That's not going to happen for over 700 years. "Okay, Ahaz, you didn't give me your sign. There's My sign. Can you hang on for 700 and some years?" It's out of reach.

Then we come to the high cost of failure. We're now crossing a span of hundreds of years. We're coming to the high cost of failure in Isaiah 7:17: "The Lord will bring upon you and upon your people and upon your father's house such days as have not come since the day of Ephraim"—Ephraim is another name for Israel, the northern kingdom—"departed from Judah, the king of Assyria."

Now God identifies what He's going to do and who He's going to do it through. "I am going to raise up the Assyrians." All these years we've been giving the Assyrians the bad rap, and it was God who raised them up and God who brought them into this purpose to attack the top 10 tribes of Israel. It was God.

I'm emphasizing that for this reason. If you study profane history or if you study many of our Bible scholars, they all condemn Assyria for taking out the top 10 tribes of Israel. Remember, God said they're a smoldering ember, they're going to be gone. He said, "I'm going to take them out of here by Assyria. I, God, am doing this, not the Assyrians."

Now, I don't think the Assyrians were—they had their problems. They were not sitting around saying, "Wow, God told us to do this." I don't know how God motivated them. I'm just pressing that God was the one who set the stage for this. Why? There's a high cost for failed faith. A high cost for failed faith.

Isaiah 7:17: "The Lord will bring upon you and upon your people and upon your father's house such days as have not come in the day of Ephraim, and the Assyrians are coming." What are they going to do in 722 BC? The Assyrians conquered and exiled the 10 tribes of Israel, who became known—get ready for this, this is a shocker—as the 10 lost tribes of Israel.

God told Ahaz way back there, "Just believe Me. Your problems are going to pass. Don't worry about what they're saying and all their threats and all their military getting ready. They're not going to attack. They're smoldering embers. I'm seeing to that. I am the sovereign God orchestrating history, not those people." Are you with me?

Apply this because we're looking at Ukraine and Russia. Is God not in command of what's going on? You better believe He is. All the whys, none of my business. He's sovereign. I don't know. I don't understand all of His ways. But we must trust Him. We have all kinds of complications taking place around the world.

God is in command where this world is going, and I'm going to tell you the end of the story right now. This world is being orchestrated by God for the day when every single knee shall bow and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. That's where we're headed.

I want to meet Elon Musk and tell him to stop wasting his money on Mars. I'm serious. The dear man, he's a great man, a brilliant man. I love the guy. But he's going to blow billions of dollars on something that ain't going to happen. This planet is what God created for His work with mankind.

Let me move on. If you know Elon, call him up and tell him that. Now, here's what happened. This is the point I'm building up to. Remember, we started with Solomon who sinned, he was imperfect, and he split the kingdom. Now we have two imperfect kingdoms and we have the king of the lower kingdom who can't believe God.

And now we come to an incredible picture, and that is this: God sent the Assyrians to take out the 10 tribes of Israel, the northern kingdom, and disperse them across Assyria so they can't rise up against them. And the Bible actually tells us the locations where He put them.

What did He do? He implanted Gentiles—you remember the Gentile woman who couldn't understand why Jesus would talk to her. Why? Because the Jews that remained still hated the Gentiles that were now living in their homes and working their land. Am I making this clear? Want me to say it again? I want to make sure you get this because this is a key hinge point.

Assyria was sent by God, and by the way, God told Ahaz in a prophecy, "This is going to happen in 65 years." In 65 years, the Assyrians showed up and took out the top 10 tribes of Israel, scattered them across Assyria, and implanted in their place Gentile nations to live in their homes and work their lands. That was not a barbarous Assyria; that was an act of God. That's why I call it Assyria's vindication.

Guest (Male): Dr. Ron has been talking to us about the end-time days and wants us to prepare for the coming kingdom. He has written a book titled *The Assyrian Prophecy* that is a missing part of the end-time puzzle.

"And He who sat on the throne said, 'Behold, I make all things new.' Write, for these words are true and faithful." The world is not ending; God is preparing a new world soon to begin. My new book, *The Assyrian Prophecy*, reveals how Assyria will join with Israel and Egypt to bless the world under the soon-coming Messiah. Amid today's chaos, God is searching for righteous people through whom He will bring the prophecy to completion. When you reach the end of this book, one question will be in your mind: "Lord, what would You have me do?"

You can learn more at theassyrianproject.org. Thanks for being with us today, and we hope you'll join us again next week as we find courage for the journey in our faith walk.