Lessons in the Ladder Days

Candace Long: I'm Candace Long with Lessons in the Latter Days, offering biblical commentary to make sense of the times that we're living in.

Today I conclude the episode, "Is Christianity Daniel's Final Beast?" I trust you listened to Part 1, in which I explained this belief is held among rabbinical sources as well as many Messianic Rabbis. It's also found in many of our scriptures and the Old Testament prophets. In Part 1, I laid out eight biblical threads being woven together now for us to see. I covered the first four in Part 1 and addressed the final four in this episode.

Number 5 is a brief origin of Christianity. Number 6, how Christianity got linked to the growing kingdom of Edom. Number 7, scriptures that explain why Hellenistic Christianity is viewed as part of the final beast. And number 8, the split that's forming among Gentile Christians. Now time permits only providing key highlights. Some of the threads I'll spend more time on than others, but I will provide links in the description notes to take you deeper into each thread.

Thread number 5 is a brief overview showing four things that happened to Jesus' followers in the first three centuries after the resurrection. Number 1, in the first century, Gentile believers followed Jesus. They practiced Judaism. How do we know this? As their number grew through the ministry of Paul and Barnabas, the Jewish believers demanded that Gentiles follow the entire Torah. The controversy came before leaders of the main ecclesia in Jerusalem, which was led by James, our Lord's brother.

In Acts 15, James ruled that the Gentiles should focus on four Torah directives, but ended with verse 21: "For from early generations Moses has had in every city those who preach him, for he is read every Sabbath in the synagogues." It was well known that the early believers attended synagogues every Sabbath and studied the Torah.

Number 2, as the persecution grew following Stephen's martyrdom, the believers scattered. Acts 11 tells us it was in Antioch where the disciples were first called Christians. They were pressured by the liberal culture to conform to Hellenism. So much so that early apologists began to distort the foundation that was laid by the apostles by teaching that since Jesus rose on Sunday, the Sabbath should be replaced with Sunday. There was great conflict about this, so the Hellenists agreed to tolerate the Sabbath along with Sunday worship, allowing the people for a time to worship however they wanted to.

Number 3, by 321 AD, Roman tolerance was over. Roman Emperor Constantine issued an edict ordering Christianity to be the official state religion, and Sunday was proclaimed as the day of rest. Number 4, just 44 years later, in 365 AD, the Council of Laodicea mandated that Christians must work on the Sabbath and celebrate what they called the Lord's Day on Sunday.

This Council wrote that if Christians honored the Sabbath, "let them be anathema from Christ." This was a curse, declaring any Christian who honored the Sabbath would be cut off from Jesus altogether, or basically be damned to hell. Since then, Christians have grown further and further away from our Jewish heritage and have developed their own traditions.

Thread number 6 is how Christianity got linked to the kingdom of Edom. Since I have written two episodes on the origin of the kingdom of Edom, I will not repeat that content, but I'll provide links for those who want them. But the origin of the split between Judaism and Christianity is found in the Torah portion Toledot, which covers Genesis 25 through 28, with the generations of Isaac and the two fetuses fighting each other inside Rebecca's womb.

So much so that she was desperate for a word from the Lord. Where did she go? To our patriarch Shem, who founded a Torah Academy and taught the descendants of Abraham. Now what Shem told Rebecca is the 3,800-year-old prophecy that we see unfolding today. Genesis 25:23 reads: "The Lord said to her, 'Two nations are in your womb, and two manner of people will be separated from your bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people, and the elder shall serve the younger.'"

There's a lot to see in just this verse, but basically, these two kingdoms from Rebecca's loins were the kingdom of Edom and the kingdom of God. The prophecy is saying that the two will never be strong at the same time. They can never coexist. Esau's kingdom, or Edom, will be at its height at the very end of days before Messiah comes to destroy the Gentile nations belonging to that kingdom.

He will set up His kingdom and restore Jacob to his rightful place as governing the kingdom of God with Messiah, with the remnant of Esau serving him. In Genesis 36, you find the lineage of Esau, and two of his grandsons stand out. Number 1 is Amalek, who is the eternal enemy of the Lord that He vowed to destroy, according to Exodus 17:14. And number 2, Zepho, who founded Rome and ruled Italy for 50 years, according to the ancient book of Jasher.

My research discovered that Esau settled in Edom, but his descendants began to intermarry with European royalty, and they spread throughout the Western world. To the Jews, the name Edom has always been synonymous with Rome. Here is the definition of the word Edom in a book called *The Encyclopedia of Jewish Symbols*: "Edom, the nation supposedly descended from Esau, was also a symbol for Israel's eternal enemy."

"Edom participated in the destruction of the first temple with Babylon, and their legendary descendants, the Romans, destroyed the second temple. Herod, the despised agent of Rome, was an Edomite. And when Rome embraced Christianity, Edom became a symbol for Christian Rome, and then a symbol for Christianity in general."

Daniel 2 prophesies that at the end of this age before the kingdom, the final earthly kingdom will be a mixture of iron, which is Edom as the extension of Rome, and will become a great power, during which it will be loosely allied with clay, representing the descendants of Ishmael, who are the Arab nations. And together, Edom and Ishmael will become terrible and dreadful and ultimately come against Israel.

And we are seeing this alliance come together now, under the UN's 2030 Agenda as well as Trump's plan for the international board of peace to govern Gaza. The stronger this alliance grows, the more Israel will be oppressed. In my recent teaching called "The Last Year of the Church Age Part 3", I quoted Israeli Rabbi Alon Anava discussing Trump's recent invasion of Venezuela, which is an ally of Iran.

He views Trump as the king of Edom and was reminded of a 13th-century prophecy in the Midrash that says: "Before Messiah comes, there will be friction between the king of Persia, Iran, and the king of Arabia, referring to Saudi Arabia. The result is that the Arab king will go to the king of Edom and then the king of Persia, Iran, will rise upon them and destroy half the world."

Thread number 7 is comprised of scriptures that point to Edom's rise and why Hellenistic Christianity is viewed as part of the final beast. I'm going to spend more of my time here because I want to share key points from Rabbi Itzhak Shapira's book, *The Fall of Edom: Decoding Obadiah's Vision*. This is a revelatory book that provides both scripture and key rabbinical sources that you can look up.

Rabbi Shapira grew up as an Orthodox Jew and came to Yeshua as the Messiah. His Ahavat Ammi Ministries is directed to Jews and Gentiles worldwide, and I regard him as one of today's leading voices preparing his people for what's to come and working to restore Yeshua back to his people as the Jewish Messiah. Shapira sees the Hamas attack in 2023 as a key signal that fulfills prophecies in Psalms 82 and 83.

He wrote: "The opening of the fence on October 7, along with the internal turmoil, confirms without a doubt that we are in the period of Miqetz, which means the end." He quoted Yossi Cohen, former head of the Mossad, who commented on the breached fence by saying, "The intelligence failure of the State of Israel is inconceivable." This fence he's talking about is the Gaza-Israel fence, which cost 1.2 billion US dollars to build.

Shapira writes that only God could have caused Israel's blindness, which allowed this breach. And he quotes the prophet Ezekiel 22:30: "I sought someone among them to erect the fence and to stand in the breach before me on behalf of this land, that I might not destroy it, but I found none." Shapira notes the Hebrew phrase that's used here: *goder gader*, which literally means the fence builder.

The fence that Ezekiel is referring to is the judgment of Psalm 82:8 which says, "Arise, O God, judge the earth, for to Thee belong the nations." And this in turn leads us to Psalm 83 that lists the nations of Gog and Magog coming together and breaking through the fence. Although Israel is punished initially, most of God's wrath will shift to the nations.

What Shapira is seeing is the international force that's forming to oversee Gaza. He then turns to ask an important question: what is it that caused such a catastrophic failure of the "human fence"? The notable commentator Rashi answered the question by writing, "You did not perform mitzvot to delay the evil." This echoes the rabbinical views of Targum Jonathan, which is an ancient Aramaic translation and interpretation of the prophets.

And it reads: "If you do mitzvot, your actions will count as merit in war, otherwise the enemy will control you." Now for benefit of Gentiles who may not understand the significance of the words used here. The mitzvot are wrongly translated as the commandments. They are the 613 do's and don'ts in the Torah that God gave the Jewish people at Mount Sinai to govern Israel as He governs His kingdom.

Throughout scripture, the continual message is this: if you do the mitzvot, in other words, do the things God said to do, there is great reward and Hashem will provide supernatural protection over your nation, your families, your crops, your health, everything. Just reread Deuteronomy 28, which is the last discourse that Moses gives before God takes him.

Verse 1 says: "If you listen to the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all His mitzvot, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth." And then verse 15 says: "If you will not listen to the voice of the Lord your God, to be careful to do all His mitzvot, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you."

Now the phrase "listening to the voice of the Lord" has always had the meaning of studying the Torah. If you are faithful to study the Torah, you'll do the right things. It is this very thing, doing the Torah, that Esau did not want to do. And that dismissal of doing Judaism lies at the core of Western Christianity. And this is what Israel has done, by and large.

The majority of Jews living in Israel have forsaken the Torah. And Shapira is saying that all of the prophets echo the warning that the fence is down and the enemy is invading. Listen again to Ezekiel 22:26: "Her priests have violated My teaching. They have profaned what is sacred to Me. They've not distinguished between the sacred and the profane. They've not taught the difference between the impure and the pure, and they have closed their eyes to My Sabbaths. I am profaned in their midst."

This is harsh. Shapira points out that the Hebrew word for violating God's teaching is the word *hamas*, explaining that the essence of Hamas is the violation or the abandonment of the Torah. Shapira believes that we will see more and more judgment upon Israel, and then the ultimate judgment will come upon those who have infected Israel and influenced Israel's core beliefs.

Sadly, the target for one of those judgments is Western Christianity. Let me explain. In one of our Shabbat Shalom programs, I shared a teaching from Israeli Rabbi Alon Anava concerning the danger the Jewish people are in from Edom because they are living in America. Now he's referring to Hellenized Christianity. He quoted the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who is considered one of the most influential Jewish leaders of the 20th century and founder of Chabad.org.

And the Rebbe said, and I paraphrase: "20 to 30 years ago, the Holocaust that came from the descendants of Esau killed 6 million bodies of Jews. But America has killed 60 million souls of Jews who assimilated so much into the Hellenistic culture they have lost their identities as Jews. Before Messiah comes, Hashem has to wake up all those souls and call them home."

This is a sobering accusation, but if you stop and ponder it from God's point of view, there is truth here. We, I say we because I grew up under Hellenized Christianity and have had to deal with my participation in this, my guilt. We have lured Jews away from the Torah, saying that all they have to do is accept Jesus and they don't have to do Torah anymore. That Jesus did away with the law and set up a dispensation of grace.

This is the essence of replacement theology. Christianity has replaced Yeshua, the Jewish Messiah, with Jesus Christ, the Hellenized God-man who looks nothing like a Jewish rabbi. And thread number 8 is the split that is developing now between Christian and Christian. This centers on the core section of Rabbi Shapira's book, which is an extensive analysis of Obadiah's vision of the fall of Edom.

I encourage you to purchase this book because time permits only giving you a few takeaways. Now what makes the small book of Obadiah so riveting and pertinent to today is that Obadiah was an Edomite. He grew up under its culture and pulled away to become Torah observant. He was a trusted steward to King Ahab, and it was Obadiah who hid and fed 100 prophets that Queen Jezebel was rounding up to kill.

The Talmud, Sanhedrin 39b, describes his prophecy as one of destruction from a non-Jew to the non-Jewish world. Verse 1 says: "Thus says the Lord God concerning Edom, a messenger has been sent among the nations. Let us rise against her for battle." Obadiah heard the Lord's voice calling for the nations to rise up and destroy Edom.

Shapira quotes Abrabanel, who was a prominent 15th-century Portuguese Bible commentator, among others, who say that Obadiah is one single prophecy about the destruction of Edom, which they identify as Christianity. Now let me give you some hope. The Ramad is a respected 18th-century rabbi who's known for his work in the Psalms, and he says that the secret of the prophecy is who among the non-Jewish converts will awaken and return and fight Edom along with Israel and the Messiah.

Shapira reminds us that the Apostle Paul wrote of the mystery of the fullness of the Gentiles, which he believes represent the remnant who will come out of Hellenized Christianity. In other words, there will be remnant Christians who fight against Rome and against the spirit of Edom. And Shapira asks an important question: how can Christians fight against Christianity? And his answer is this: "The two are not the same. Today every Christian must question which Jesus they are associated with: the Jesus of Rome, Edom, or the Yeshua of Jacob."

Obadiah's cry to the Gentiles is not just an invitation but a great warning for the majority of the Church. In closing, I want us to tie this together with what we are studying right now in the Torah. Right before the Exodus, God began to separate the 20% who were delivered from the 80% who were not. And this is where we are. We are in the time of separation.

What I'm seeing is that those Gentiles who have already separated from Hellenized Christianity and are studying Torah to prepare for the kingdom will be taken at the first resurrection. Left behind will be a good percentage of Christians who have not yet awakened to what is missing. They will be distraught, weeping and broken, pouring over the scriptures, desperate for understanding. Now please understand that these will have seven years to put the pieces together.

But it is these whom Shapira believes will be the remnant who will stand with Israel during Jacob's trouble. These are the ones who will fulfill the prophecy of Zechariah 8:23, which says, "In those days ten men from the nations of every tongue will seize the tzitzit of a Jew, saying, 'Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.'"

If this is speaking to you, Shapira draws your attention to Obadiah verse 3, which identifies the sin of Edom: "The arrogance of your heart has deceived you. Though you soar aloft like the eagle, though your nest is set among the stars, thence I will bring you down, says the Lord." In one of his closing comments, Rabbi Shapira says, "Tragically today, so many Christians walk in exaggerated confidence that has turned into pride about their salvation, the Rapture, and the certainty of their own ascension to heaven without judgment."

May the Lord bless the understanding of this teaching. It calls for wisdom, insight, and humility in all of us. In His great mercy, our Father has given us insights into these prophecies that open up for us what is to come and how we can repent for the sins of our fathers. There is still time to learn to be spirit-filled and Torah observant.

To share this episode, go to candacelong.com/podcasts and look for the episode "Is Christianity Daniel's Final Beast? (Part 2)". Please consider studying the Torah with us every week on shabbatshalomradio.com. I'm Candace Long and you've been listening to *Lessons in the Latter Days*. God bless.