In the Word

Pastor Mike Warren: Ezekiel chapter 38 this evening. As you are turning to Ezekiel chapter 38, let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. Again, the prophet Amos—and we just studied through the 12 minor prophets—tells us in the third chapter and in the seventh verse that you do nothing except first you reveal those secret things to your servants, the prophets. I like that, Father. We can know, maybe not the day or the hour, but the time and the seasons that we are living in prophetically.

Then you tell us through Paul, as he's writing to Timothy in one of the pastoral epistles, that we are to study to show ourselves approved of God, workmen who need not to be ashamed, but those who can rightly divide the word of truth. We want to be studious, Lord. It takes effort and work to put together the pieces, to connect the dots, and to come up with a chronology and a systematic theology as it comes to eschatology. That's what we want to do. That's what we've been trying to do the last several Wednesday nights as we've finished the 12 minor prophets. Before we pick up another one of the Old Testament books, we want to look at this again. We want to be reminded of these things that we already know.

Father, again, give us ears to hear. May we never grow weary in well-doing because if we faint not, Lord, we know that one day we're going to receive a reward. Help us to remain focused to the very end. We ask these things in Jesus' name. All God's kids said, amen.

If you get your pad and pen out, if you're a note-taker this evening, my goal the last several Wednesday nights and the next few Wednesday nights until we get done with this—however long it's going to take—is to lay out before you a chronology that you can wrap your heads around. Often you hear me say on Sunday mornings, Wednesday nights, and the men on Monday nights, that I believe that we're living in the last of the last days. I believe that we're the last generation. I do believe that. It is a conviction that I have from studying eschatology. It's not a wishful, want-to-be thing, although it is. Who doesn't want to go home and leave this cesspool? Who doesn't want to go to the Father's house, live in a mansion that's paid for, get a new body, and know no more pain, no more sorrow, and no more parting?

None of that stuff. All done away with. You never have to say you're sorry again or repent. No more bad behavior. No more convicting work of the Holy Spirit because you're standing before the Lord perfect. Who doesn't want that? Every generation from the first century who came to Christ, as you read through those generations, through the early church fathers, as people wrote in the third and fourth and on through the generations, there's always been a longing for that moment because it's called the Blessed Hope.

Jesus warns us in the Gospels to never lose sight of the Blessed Hope. John tells us in one of his epistles, 1st John, that all who have this hope, this Blessed Hope, they purify themselves. So we know one of the advantages of studying biblical prophecy is that it has a refining effect upon us. Jesus often challenged us. He said, be watching, be waiting. That idea is to be in anticipation for that moment because you know not the day or the hour. We don't know the day or the hour. We can't figure it out, but we can understand the times and the seasons because there are things that were told to us by the prophets of old and of the apostles in the New Testament that would have to transpire before that day could take place.

By the way, if you're a student of prophecy, there's not much left. We studied last week Psalm 83. It is a psalm that is yet to be fulfilled. Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown, in their commentary, said—and they wrote this a hundred years ago—that Psalm has not been fulfilled. It is a future event. You and I are living in the generation where we're seeing that event coming together in a very real way.

We talked about that last week, and I gave you the outline about the nations. You picked one up tonight as you came in. Those countries we talked about last week that will be surrounding Israel calling for their destruction. Israel is in such a dire condition. They know that their only hope—when you look at these radically Islamic countries calling for the destruction of Israel—you would understand, if you were living in that little piece of real estate over there, that your only hope is the God that you trust, the God you believe in.

There's no other way humanly possible you could ever come through that battle that's about to take place unless the Lord shows up. They know that. In 2011, Psalm 83, the fulfillment of it, began to take place in what we call the Arab Spring. But really, this was this caliphate, this coalition, this confederating of these 10 kings, which I believe represent—now, you can believe something different—but I believe they represent the 10 toes of Daniel's vision.

We looked at that a few weeks ago. We know that the two churches have come down as the legs: the Roman Catholic in the West and the Eastern Byzantine Church that represent the split between the two churches coming down to the last days. We know there's going to be these 10 kings that rise. Find me a better representative of these 10 kings. Jesus strikes these 10 toes, and the whole world system comes down. This stone grows into a great mountain and rules the whole earth. That is Isaiah chapter 9. Unto you is given a son, unto you a child was born, and one day He's going to rule the governments.

I think we're living at that time. I'll prove the point further as we move through Ezekiel 37, 38, and 39. Those 10 kings, as we studied last week, I believe are these 10 kingdoms that are surrounding Israel. Something is going to set off this battle. I don't know if it's the United States attacking Iran and them retaliating on Israel. I don't know if it's Israel taking out the centrifuges so that Iran cannot develop a nuclear weapon.

They are close. They have passed beyond the treaty that the former administration had set up, and they're getting close to refining uranium to the point of making a weapon. Israel's intelligence is the best on the planet. They're not going to let that happen. Netanyahu has already said we will never allow them to possess a nuclear weapon because we know the moment they have one, they're going to use it on us. They're that kind of crazy over there.

So maybe you wake up tomorrow morning and Netanyahu and the Israeli Air Force have taken out all the centrifuges and now these Islamic nations retaliate. The beautiful part, as we looked at the last part of our study last week, is that when that takes place, God himself, in an Old Testament way, shows up so the whole world will know, as well as Israel, that God and God alone saved Israel. There's going to be something so miraculous about it that the whole world's going to acknowledge this was supernatural.

This was like Old Testament God showing up and protecting his people. This was like the time that he sent the one angel—probably a buck private, doesn't even give us his name—who went to the camp of the Assyrians and killed 185,000 of them in one night as they encamped against Israel, encamped against Jerusalem. This is going to be one of those kinds of things. When the smoke dissipates and the dust settles, Israel, as we studied last week, will now for the first time in the history of Israel since God promised to Abraham that piece of real estate, they will be in possession of everything that was given to them in the Abrahamic Covenant.

Do you understand that's never happened yet? We know that God's a covenant-keeping God. When the dust settles on that, then Israel will be in possession of all of the property that was given to them and all of the oil. That's very important because Psalm 83 is a Jihad. It is a holy war. It is radical Islam attacking the God of Israel and the people of the God of Israel. It is religiously oriented.

The next battle that follows it, as we're going to be looking at over the next couple of Wednesday nights, has nothing to do with a religious motivation but everything to do with a spoil, a commodity, a product, something they need that they're going to come after. That's what we need to acknowledge. I don't know how long—and I've been asked the question many times—how long do you think it's going to take between Psalm 83 and what we see is called the Battle of Hamon-Gog in Ezekiel 38? I don't know.

Will we be here at that time? I don't know. I told you last week I would like to be here at least after Psalm 83. I would like to be there when there's egg on people's faces as to whom the God we serve looks like and acts like and is in all of his might and all of his glory. I'd like to be there. I wouldn't even mind sticking around until after Ezekiel 38.

I know that I can't stick around too long. You and I can't be here too long because out of that war of Hamon-Gog comes this man that we're going to talk about as we work our way through the next few Wednesday nights in Daniel chapter 8. A man who has all the answers, a man who will take control and conquer through peace. As Daniel chapter 9 says, he'll make a covenant with Israel: go ahead and build your temple, settle down. He will bring in world peace. He'll bring in a one-world government.

I guarantee you at this time, when all of that's going on in the Middle East, the world would be looking for somebody to bring peace. He'll come with all the answers. Yet, Paul tells us we can't know who the guy is. He tells us that in his writings to the Thessalonians when he tells them, listen, that which constrains will continue to constrain until it's taken out of the way, and then the lawless one will be revealed.

Well, we know what's constraining. Jesus told us what's constraining. He said, you are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. Salt has that preserving effect; it stops the putrefaction. You are that. We are that. You're the light of the world; it dispels darkness. We are the light-bearers. We are the standard of truth. We are the salt of this earth. When we are removed, the wicked one, the absolute wicked one, the Antichrist will come to the fore.

For the first three and a half years, the whole world will follow him, even Israel. Then their eyes will be open as he offers the abomination of desolation whom Daniel and Jesus both spoke about. We know at that moment that Israel flees, probably to Petra. We'll be visiting that in March. We'll see where they're going to hide out for the last three and a half years. But we return with the Lord at the end of that seven-year tribulation period to establish his millennial reign where we rule and reign for a thousand years with Christ.

At the end of that thousand years, Satan is loosed for a short season. This is important because I believe when we're talking about Gog here tonight, Gog is a demon or he could even be Satan himself. It is a demonic force that is controlling the land of Magog. Revelation chapter 20, verse 8, says that when he releases Satan at the end of the millennial reign for a short season, Gog and Magog come out of that place where they're stored. They would have to be demonic spirits to be let back out of that pit.

Then the Lord destroys them and creates a new heaven and a new earth. That's the chronology. The chronology was that the Messiah was to come, and He did 2,000 years ago. When Israel rejected the Messiah, the 70-week vision of Daniel stopped at the 69th week and this parenthesis called the Church began. We've been going at this parenthesis for about 2,000 years, which would make sense when you look at from the creation of the world to the crucifixion of Christ was 4,000 years.

Then you look from the crucifixion to the end of the church; it's 2,000 years. There's a millennial, there's a thousand years left after this period of time we're in right now, and then a new heaven and a new earth, which would be 7,000 years. What's God's number of perfection? What is number eight? The number of new beginnings. I don't know about you, but I'm glad to be living in the generation I'm living in, with the information that we have, with the light that is being shed on the time that we're living in. It's exciting to me.

So the chronology is something's going to set off Psalm 83. Israel will be in control for the first time of the land God promised them in the Abrahamic Covenant, which is all the oil. Then we come to Ezekiel 38. Different characters, different group of people, but they will come and attack Israel. We're not going to get that far tonight. We'll probably get through chapter 38, but we won't get to 39. But we're going to understand there's going to be such a massacre that for seven months they're going to have to cleanse the land, gather up and bury the weapons in a very special way. For seven years they're going to be putting up markers.

It reads like you would cleanse the land after a nuclear exchange, but there's going to be a cleansing of the land for the next seven years. This catastrophe that's going to take place is going to rock the world. In the middle of this, the Antichrist, as we said, will come forward. Now, let's back up for a moment to Ezekiel 37. You're there at Ezekiel 38; just a chapter before. Here the prophet Ezekiel—who is one of the major prophets, he's not a minor prophet, and not that the minor prophets we just studied are less in value or less in insight.

They just are harder-hitting, writing shorter letters, and so we call them the minor prophets. Then you have major prophets like Daniel, like Isaiah, like Jeremiah, like Ezekiel. Now, Ezekiel had been given the privilege of writing about the time that you and I are living in. Can you imagine living that many thousand years ago and being given the privilege to see these things? When these prophets write, especially like Ezekiel, the idea is that he's actually been taken in the spirit and shown these things.

He's not just having impressions put on him; he is seeing these things and writing and recording what he's seeing in these visions. He's seeing these things in living color. So in Ezekiel 37, a very interesting thing happens. In verse 3, it said that the question was asked of Ezekiel as he's taken to this high mountain and he looks out over this valley and he sees all of these bones just scattered and they're laying on top of each other. If you know anything about Israel, that would never happen. That's a desecration. That's an insult.

Israel, after the diaspora, after Titus Vespasian, that great Roman general, rode in to quell an uprising of the Jews in 70 AD, when they sacked Jerusalem, when one of their captains in the fury of the battle threw a torch in and it set the timbers on fire and it burned so hot in the temple that literally the gold melted and it ran between the cracks. Just as Jesus had told them, they literally took one stone upon another and tore the whole temple down to get to the gold. Israel was cast, as prophesied, to the wind. They've remained in their ethnicity, they've remained in their religious fervency all of these 2,000 years until God said, I will bring them back to the land.

Ezekiel sees that. They've been desecrated, they've been abused. Look what happened in World War II with six million of them humiliated. God asks Ezekiel a question. He says, Son of man, can these bones live? Is there a possibility that Israel could ever be gathered together and have life in her again? He gives the right answer. He says, Oh Lord God, thou knowest. You know there are things that are too wonderful for us, there are things that are too marvelous for us, there are things we can't know completely. We look through a glass dimly, the Bible says.

So Ezekiel gives the right answer: I don't know, Lord, but you know. Verse 4 says, again he said unto me, prophesy upon these bones and say unto them, Oh ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. It is the word of God that brings life. Can I give you a side point? It doesn't cost you anything extra. This has nothing to do with the prophecy, but I'm a student of history and I'm a student of biblical history, I'm a student of the whole Christian history. It's interesting in the 12th century when the Roman Catholic Church really took over dominance and power and they had taken the word of God away from the common people and we had that whole Reformation.

What happened to the church? We call it the Dark Ages when they didn't have the word. Bad things happened. Let me give you a little clue. The church is moving toward a time where people are saying pastors and pulpits are declaring: you don't need to bring your Bible. Doctrine is divisive; we don't study that here. They teach sermonettes to Christianettes and they teach series instead of teaching through the Bible.

I've confronted some of these guys and they say, well, we teach from the Bible just like you do. I said, no you don't. I don't teach from the Bible; I teach the Bible. There's a difference. Verse by verse, chapter by chapter, book by book, and some of you know sometimes it's word by word. Sometimes we can barely get through a verse because it is the word of God that gives life to the spirit of man when you are born again. It is that manna that comes down from heaven. Don't ever complain or ever think or ever come to that point where you think going through the word of God verse by verse and chapter by chapter expositionally is boring.

It is feeding your soul. I can't remember every meal I have eaten, but I can tell you I've eaten enough that I'm healthy. Amen? I can't remember every message I've heard, but I'm healthy because of it. Would you say amen? Those things are cooking in us, they're working in us, we're laying a foundation, we're teaching systematic theology. That's why four or five years ago we took nine months on a Monday night and we went through every doctrinal theme of the Bible because that's your foundation.

Here Ezekiel's told: speak the word. Prophesy to these dry bones and say to them, Oh dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus, verse 5 says, thus saith the Lord God unto these bones: behold, I will cause breath to enter into you and you shall live. I will lay sinew upon you, I will put the flesh back upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.

Verse 7 says, so I prophesied—Ezekiel's being an obedient prophet doing what the Lord told him to do—he said, so I prophesied as I was commanded. As I prophesied, there was a noise and behold, a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone. I wonder if that's where they got the idea for the song—I won't even sing it—thigh bone connected to the... you know that song. I don't know, but can you imagine him seeing all these bones that have been disconnected, dry, laying out on this field, this valley, all starting to come together and joint to joint? Then the muscle and the sinew and the flesh and the tissue and the skin come upon these bones. Now they're standing there. He said, and when I beheld, lo, the sinew and the flesh came upon them and the skin covered them above, but there was no breath in them. See, this is a two-part prophecy. This is very important for us tonight as we look at this.