Light on the Hill

James Kaddis: Today on Light on the Hill, when we have the discussion of Palm Sunday today, although I have traditionally made it all about prophecy, and although many people traditionally make it about the act of him walking into Jerusalem and the significance of the palms that you see around you, I will assert that the greatest point made of all of this centers around something completely different.

And that is the fact that Christians do not believe the Bible enough, and they do not believe in Bible prophecy enough to actually act on the things that they hear. As a matter of fact, what that amounts to is it amounts to what I would like to call missed opportunities.

Guest (Male): Get ready for a powerful message as we hear how God spoke to us about a very special moment in history. This moment didn't just alter the course of history; it changed the world forever. We're breaking away from our study of Revelation for a few weeks here on Light on the Hill so we can focus on the prophecies that changed the world forever. We'll start off with Luke chapter 19, where Jesus gets on a donkey and rides into Jerusalem. Here's Pastor James Kaddis.

James Kaddis: All right, Luke chapter 19. I love Luke's account of this passage. Perhaps one of the reasons why I like the way that Luke accounts for this is, first and foremost, Luke is a historian, and he is also a medical doctor. In writing this, the account that he provides is really remarkable in the fact that he is going to speak concerning events that are really critical to understanding history.

Perhaps this one is also a very useful tool in many ways: the fact that Luke is a Gentile. As he is one who is a non-Jew—by the way, the only non-Jew author in the Bible—when you see him writing this, it is interesting to see how his perspective brings even more value to the discussion of who Jesus was and what happened during Christ's time here on this earth.

There's a lot to be said here. Now, I will tell you this: it's very easy to get caught into the traditional teaching of this passage. That's something that I've never done. But the types of things that I traditionally teach through when I go over this passage are oftentimes the prophetic aspects of this passage. Although we will discuss the prophetic aspects and the significance of those prophetic aspects, the one thing I'm going to emphasize has nothing to do with the prophecy itself; rather, it has something to do with the way we respond to the prophecy.

I think that's more important. I could spend a lot of time talking about all of the passages that get tied into predicting this. I could get into Zechariah chapter 9 verse 9. I could get into Psalm 118 verse 24. I could get into Daniel chapter 9. Daniel chapter 9, of course, being one of the more significant of them, because in Daniel chapter 9, you actually get a literal, to-the-day prediction as to when this actually happened.

If you think about it in Daniel chapter 9, you get these 70 weeks that are being given to us. There is a very clear demarcation that tells us that of the 70 weeks, 69 of them are separated from the 70th. The 70th is the last section there. In every week, you've got seven days, and every day is indicative of a year. If you take 69 weeks and multiply it times seven, that gets you to 483 days, which in essence become years.

483 years times 360, if you do it according to the Babylonian calendar, gets you to 173,880 days. At 173,880 days, Daniel chapter 9 tells us that from the declaration to restore and rebuild, that's where the timeline actually starts. We know that the declaration was made by a man named Artaxerxes Longimanus, who made that declaration on March 14, 445 BC. You can read about that in Nehemiah chapter 2.

Starting March 14, 445 BC, if you count 173,880 days—there's a lot of math that has to be done within that context, it's not just a simple pull out the calendar and count—it gets you precisely to March 29, 33 AD, which was the exact day that Jesus rides into the city of Jerusalem. It's interesting; we could spend a lot of time emphasizing that, and I do that quite a bit. But the reality of it is there's a bigger picture that requires emphasis here. There's something more consequential, something more significant. When we learn that, I think it's going to be astounding to stop for one moment and to consider the impact of it all.

Let's look at verse 28 to get there. There's a reason why I'm starting at verse 28. It's really important. It says this in verse 28: "And when he had thus spoken, he went before, ascending up to Jerusalem." By the way, I should note this right away: if you look at the geographical features of the city of Jerusalem, you'll understand why they say that they're ascending to Jerusalem. The one thing that you have to understand when you look at all of this, geographically speaking, is going to Jerusalem was always considered to be a trip of ascent.

By all Jews today, it is referred to as a trip of ascension. Just by virtue of the fact that if you stop for one moment and you examine, geographically speaking, what that would look like, it would make exact sense. If you look at the city in and of itself, you'll recognize that it's surrounded by a series of valleys. If you're going to go into the city, you've got to literally walk down into the valley and then up out of the valley into Jerusalem. No matter what side of Jerusalem you are on, you're always ascending to the city of Jerusalem.

The other thing that we should also note is if you look at it from a wider geographical perspective, you're also ascending into the city of Jerusalem. I'll give you a great example of this: the distance of the lowest point in Jerusalem to the distance of the second-highest point. You are talking about quite a climb. By the way, just a little interesting geographical note with respect to Israel and its lowest point: if you go to the lowest point of Israel, that puts you smack dab in the middle of the Dead Sea.

If you are in the Dead Sea, it's the only place in the world where you can fly an airplane 1,600 feet AGL, while at the same time flying it at a negative 200 feet MSL. Let me explain to you what that means. When we use the term AGL, that means above ground level. MSL means mean sea level. At sea level, it's the only place in the world where you can fly an airplane 1,600 feet above ground level while at the same time flying 200 feet below sea level. That shows you how low of a point it is. It is actually believed to be the lowest point known to us on the earth.

If you were to start at the Dead Sea and you were to climb out to the city of Jerusalem, you are going thousands and thousands and thousands of feet higher. When they say they are ascending into Jerusalem, it's a pretty remarkable point to make to understand what that would actually look like. Don't get me wrong, there are other points in the state of Israel—the modern state of Israel and the ancient state of Israel—that are higher than that of Jerusalem. But we're talking about the idea of going from the lowest point of the country to basically Jerusalem; you're talking about a difference of thousands of feet.

Not to mention the fact that Jerusalem has always had remarkable significance to the Jewish people and, of course, to those who are not Jewish on many levels. I will also say this: speaking about Jerusalem having significance to other people groups, in the many times that I've gone to Israel, I've lost count of how many times I've done the drive to Jerusalem. Only one time that I can think of, I didn't see our Jewish tour guide get emotional. They all get emotional. When you do that drive and you go around the mountain where the city of Jerusalem is revealed to you, it is a spiritual experience. It's something that's very different.

But speaking of the city of Jerusalem, let me stop for one moment and talk about the significance of Bible prophecy and why it is we should trust the Lord in listening to Bible prophecy. Why Bible prophecy is important? Don't get me wrong, there are lots of people out there, including many that watch me on YouTube, who look at Bible prophecy as a source of entertainment. It's a place where people love to sensationalize. It's a place where people love going "ooh, ah" and all that kind of stuff. Some of that is pretty cool, and some of that is somewhat sensationalistic on a lot of levels.

But there are two major things that the study of Bible prophecy should do for you. Number one, it validates God's Word. I hate using the word "validate" because I don't think "validate" is a good word to use in that God's Word doesn't need to be validated; it is validated by virtue of what it is. The Word of God is perfect in every way and it does not need to be validated, although we have lots of things that validate it. Bible prophecy shows us the accuracy of God's Word—that when God makes a claim that something is going to happen, he actually is right, and it happens every bit of the time.

The second reason why Bible prophecy should become exquisitely valuable to us and extremely important for us to hold close to our hearts is because if God's Word gets it right every single time, then the assertions that it makes about our future ought to be listened to. It means we have great hope. It means the Lord is perfect in his promises and he never gets it wrong. With that, let me just simply say that when we have the discussion of Palm Sunday today, although I have traditionally made it all about prophecy, and although many people traditionally make it about the act of him walking into Jerusalem and the significance of the palms that you see around you, I will assert that the greatest point made of all of this centers around something completely different.

And that is the fact that Christians do not believe the Bible enough, and they do not believe in Bible prophecy enough to actually act on the things that they hear. As a matter of fact, what that amounts to is it amounts to what I would like to call missed opportunities—that we lose out on opportunities that God makes for us every single day because we refuse to take his word and apply it within the context that he intended for us to apply it in. In other words, we do not believe his word.

Can I make one statement that's probably going to shock some people, and it actually might irritate people and move them in the wrong way? But let me make one statement, especially considering the fact that I come from a Middle Eastern background. Actually, before I even make that statement influenced by the fact that my mom and dad were born and raised in Egypt, and I speak the Arabic language and have a relatively decent understanding of Semitic languages as well as other languages, before I even make any statement regarding that, let me also make this other statement, which I think is really critical.

So much of what we refuse to actually believe in comes from the fact that we have allowed ourselves to stay unfamiliar with the source material that we claim to believe in, if that makes any kind of sense. It's hilarious to me. I don't know if you guys have noticed this when you start looking at influencers on social media. Let me just simply say this: leftist influencers don't do this because most leftist influencers are just angry at the world. They spend most of their time tearing things down because they've never built anything a day in their lives. They're just, "defund this, defund that, break this, break that, we're going to cancel you here, cancel you there." That's leftists. Leftists are just angry. They hate the world, they hate themselves, they hate you, they hate everybody else. That's just them for the most part, right?

But the conservatives are also egregiously mistaken in so much of what I see them do on a regular basis. Case in point, have you ever noticed this? This is very common with conservative talk show hosts or conservative YouTubers or anything like that. Did you notice that conservative YouTubers all of a sudden become subject matter experts in whatever is the discussion of the moment? Have you ever noticed that? Like, right now they're talking about tariffs, and now everybody's an economist. Did you ever notice that?

They can tell you what's wrong with the tariffs, what isn't wrong, this, that, here, and there. Coming from the perspective of a person who has placed a lot of time studying economics, who spent a lot of time studying the law—actually have a formal legal education—who spent a lot of time studying the Bible—of course, I have also a formal biblical education—it drives me crazy to hear people becoming instant subject matter experts, especially as it relates to Middle Eastern geopolitics. It drives me nuts.

It's sad because so many of these people are literally grifters. That's what they are. They're grifters. They're literally liars. The free Palestine liars and so many of the other liars that are going on there. Like, here's one I just don't understand. I don't understand how all of a sudden, with you barely even understanding the Bible—not even understanding half the verses in the Bible, three-quarters of the verses in the Bible—now all of a sudden you become a biblical expert in asserting the fact that the Jews are no longer relevant to today? Is that really what you want to do? Do you really want to die on that hill? Because that's a hill that you will undoubtedly die on.

It's hilarious how that happens. But let me take it a step further. All of that said, and the lack of ability that people seem to have to apply God's Word to every area of their life—which, by the way, is a very true statement—people like to compartmentalize God. They don't like to take God's Word and apply it in every aspect of their life. They'll obey God maybe in one aspect of a relationship, but they'll completely ignore God when it comes to running their business. Or they'll obey God when it comes to one aspect of maybe some sociological project that they're working on, but they'll completely ignore God when it comes to how they spend their money.

It's funny how that works. What I think is hilarious about all of that is if you'll take God into every aspect of your life, it will completely change what you do. With that said, let me make the statement that I think is going to be taken as outrageous to a lot of people, but it's true. You ready for this? Here it is: the Muslims believe in Bible prophecy more than a lot of Christians do.

Muslims believe in Bible prophecy more than the average Christian believes in Bible prophecy. If you don't think I'm right, let me throw a few facts your way that will challenge these assertions. First of all, let's just stop for one moment to take a look at the Temple Mount. If you were to go to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem today, you'll see two primary structures on the Temple Mount that are regarded as consequential for Islam. The first one that you will see is Al-Aqsa Mosque. They consider that to be the second holiest site in all of Islam. The reality of it is they're beginning to understand the farce of Al-Aqsa, especially as it is related to its location on the Temple Mount. There's a whole discussion about that and Syria, and whether or not those two are conflated.

But the second structure, which is not regarded as one of the holy sites, not at the top holy sites of Islam, is a structure that some of you may refer to as the Mosque of Omar. Now, any of you that refer to it as that, understand that that's a very offensive term and it's not one that you should be using. You don't want to unnecessarily offend people. We in Arabic call it Al-Haram Al-Sharif. Some of you may call it the Golden Dome. Just like you never want to call the Western Wall the Wailing Wall; it's a very offensive term, you just don't use it.

With all that said, just stop for a minute and consider why those structures were put on the Temple Mount. Do you understand the reason why the Golden Dome was actually put on the Temple Mount? It was because during the time of the emergence of the Ottoman Empire, they were extremely fearful of the fact that a Jewish temple was going to be built based on Bible prophecy. So they built that there to make it impossible for a Jewish temple to be erected there.

How about we take it a step further? How about we have a conversation about what we're celebrating today? Today we're celebrating the fact that Jesus gets on a colt, a little donkey, and rides the donkey in through the Valley of Kidron, from the Mount of Olives. He's riding down from the Mount of Olives, in through the Kidron Valley, and going up to the Eastern Gate, in through the Eastern Gate into Jerusalem.

You want to laugh at something? The Muslims actually have right now sealed up the Eastern Gate. Did you know that? The Eastern Gate is completely sealed up. You cannot—it's with tons and tons, it's completely sealed up. By the way, there's even bullet holes in there to prove the fact of how thick that thing is sealed up. That was done by the Turks. Think about this for a second: if you notice that below the East Gate there is a cemetery. Why is there a cemetery there? That was put there on purpose by the Muslims. Why did they put that cemetery there? They put that cemetery there because they believe Zechariah chapter 14.

They believe that Zechariah is right when Zechariah says that Christ will touch his foot down on the Mount of Olives, it will split open into a new valley, and of course, Jesus will then go down into the valley of Kidron, up through that valley into the Eastern Gate. That's why they've got the Eastern Gate sealed, that's why they've got a cemetery there, because they know that no Jewish man would walk through a cemetery because they would be considered unclean in doing it.

Isn't that hilarious how that works? Isn't that funny when you really think about it? They believe in Bible prophecy more than most people do, more than we do as Christians oftentimes. When I talk about passages like this, people call me crazy. But I'll tell you who doesn't call me crazy in this: the Muslims. They don't call me crazy when I bring that up. They don't think I'm crazy for one second. Why? Because they stake their whole lives on the fact that that's going to happen, and they want to do everything that they can to stop it from happening.

How's that for interest? You want to know why the Muslims believe more about Bible prophecy than many people do who claim to be Christians? Because Islam was, in essence, a Christian heresy when it was started. Remember, we don't have a single extant manuscript of the Quran that exists during the time of Muhammad's life. As a matter of fact, the closest thing that we have of an extant manuscript of the Quran actually dates to the 9th century AD. So if you think about it, understand the fact that Islam was indeed a Christian heresy. It started as a Christian heresy. That's why there's so many beliefs and understandings of Christian values that came from that because it is, in essence, a fake.

So here's a thing that I think is really important. The emphasis of our study today is not going to be on the fact that God's Word has correctly predicted this moment, but it's going to be on a much more significant issue, and that is the fact that this moment was one that was completely ignored by the most religious people at that time, and they literally took an opportunity that God had given to them and they threw it away in little pieces. Isn't that a heavy thing when you think about it?

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Pastor James Kaddis on Light on the Hill and part of our new study, Prophecies that Changed the World Forever. Pastor James will be right back with more. There are a few ways you can listen to today's message or the entire five-part series again. We post all our programs to lightonthehillradio.com as well as oneplace.com. You'll also find Light on the Hill on most major podcast platforms like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google. We also have an app that makes listening to messages easy to do on any of your mobile devices. Just search for Calvary Chapel Signal Hill in the App Store or Google Play.

We're thankful to the Lord for the listeners that come alongside us with their prayers or financial support. It helps us do what we do every day. If you'd like to donate to the ministry today, please visit lightonthehillradio.com. You can also give through the Light on the Hill app. Start following James Kaddis on X, Instagram, and YouTube. Throughout the week, he shares biblical encouragement and videos that deal with current events and Bible prophecy. Pastor James is the senior pastor of Calvary Chapel Signal Hill, and we'd love to have you join us for our Good Friday and Easter services either in person or online. For more information, visit calvarychapelsignalhill.com. Now, let's return to Luke chapter 19 with Pastor James.

James Kaddis: Look at how the story goes on. This is heavy. Verse 29: "And it came to pass, when he was come nigh to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount called the mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying, 'Go ye into the village over against you; in the which at your entering ye shall find a colt tied, wherein yet never man sat. Loose him, and bring him hither. And if any man ask you, Why do ye loose him? thus shall ye say unto him, Because the Lord hath need of him.'"

Now, I do oftentimes spend a good amount of time monologuing about the fact that when Jesus made this request of his disciples, the request that he made of them was, in essence, an impossible request. Jesus was asking his disciples to go and to do something that would have amounted to a capital crime. He told them to go steal this donkey, in essence.

Well, I'm not going to use the term "steal," that's a strong word, but he told them to take a donkey that didn't belong to them. Then to make things worse, think about this for a second: it's not like this is a domesticated donkey. This is a donkey that's never been ridden. How in the world are you going to actually get a donkey from that location to where Jesus is? Remember, this isn't like the days that we have today where you can grab your Ford F-150 and get the horse trailer with you. You can't transport these animals that way; it doesn't work that way. The donkey better cooperate with you. If it's an undomesticated animal, how are you going to be able to pull it away?

The fact that you're going to pull it away is such an abrasive thought. It's like, what in the world? That doesn't even make sense. It's dangerous, I could get in trouble for this, I could probably lose my life over this. And then Jesus makes it worse by saying, "Oh yeah, by the way, when they ask you why in the world are you loosing the thing, you just tell them the Lord has need of it." What a crazy thing to say. Can you imagine? We'll hear more about the prophecies that changed the world forever next time on Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis.