Sugar Land Bible Church

Dr. Andy Woods: I don't know whether to say "good morning, Lord" or "good Lord, it's morning." I think the latter was one of those mornings this morning. The alarm clock came around quick. Well, praise the Lord for giving us another day, right?

Can you see my PowerPoint? No? I've got some issues with the PowerPoint. There we go. You can see it? Usually, I have a confidence monitor back there where I can see my stuff on the wall, so that's why I don't have any confidence today. You guys are my confidence, right?

Let's take our Bibles and open up to the book of Revelation. People are always relieved when the pastor says, "Open to Revelation." People know where that is, right? Revelation chapter 12 and verse 1. The title of this session is "The Mystery of Antisemitism."

Olivier gave a great definition of antisemitism yesterday. My subpar definition compared to his is an irrational hatred and a transgenerational hatred for the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We see a lot of examples of antisemitism, don't we? Hitler, the Ayatollah, and who's that guy on the far left there? That's Martin Luther. Look at that.

We've seen situations in New York City where they have elected a—for lack of a better expression—a Jihadist. People say he's a socialist, and I'm like, that kind of undersells what he is. I think Marxist doesn't even cover it. The guy is a Jihadist. He doesn't believe Israel has a legitimate right to exist, and 20% of New York is Jewish. Look at that. Then we've seen antisemitism on the right coming from well-known conservative pundits that we used to trust a couple of years ago. Now, not so much.

I believe it was either Olivier or Paul yesterday that gave a quote from Martin Luther. Luther said, "First, their synagogues should be set on fire. Secondly, their homes should likewise be broken down and destroyed. Thirdly, they should be deprived of their prayer books and Talmuds." It goes on and on like this for about 80 pages. You see the ellipsis that I have there, meaning I had to jump through a lot of material because he just says the same thing over and over again. As was mentioned yesterday, this was Hitler's favorite theologian, Martin Luther. Even the Lutheran Church today has distanced itself publicly from these comments.

People can misspeak. I'm the expert at that. I've mangled a syllable or two in my time as a public speaker, but it's different when you write it down. When you're writing, it's more of a cool, calm, deliberate process. There's no way to let Luther off the hook for this, as many people have tried to do, saying he was just at the end of his life, grumpy. I've heard people say stuff like that. No, he moved towards the end of his life into antisemitic thought.

John Calvin, in certain circles, always gets a free pass on this, but an honest intellectual reading of John Calvin will not allow that. Calvin said of the Jewish people, "God has so blinded the whole people that they are like restive dogs. I have had much conversation with many Jews. I have never seen a drop of piety or a grain of truth or ingenuousness. Nay, I have never found common sense in any Jew." Could you imagine saying that about any other group?

Now, you probably have heard of Epic that's being built in the Plano area. It's a Muslim mini-city, for lack of a better word. The guy behind this is a guy named Yasir Qadhi. Yasir Qadhi was on my radar screen a long time ago before he came to Texas. He was living in the Tennessee area, and he is one of the leading scholars of Islam today in the United States. Here's a lengthy quote from him that you can easily find on YouTube. He makes a statement that Hitler never intended to mass destroy the Jews. He talks about a good book that everyone should read called *The Hoax of the Holocaust*. Then he says the Jews living in the land of Israel aren't really Jews. That's called the Khazar Theory. Olivier has written a lot of things debunking that, but that whole idea that the Jews living in Israel today aren't real Jews has been destroyed. There's no "there there" for that. By the way, if the Jews living in Israel today aren't real Jews, the Muslims never got the memo, did they?

We see this antisemitism all around us. What we're dealing with in this session is what causes it and what motivates it. That's why I had you open up to Revelation chapter 12. The Bible teaches over and over again—and I wish we had time to look up every one of these verses—but if you look all of them up, you'll see that what is happening in our physical world is being influenced by events happening in the angelic conflict, the fallen angelic realm. The things that are happening in that invisible realm that we can't see perpetually influence events in our physical world that we can see.

Back in my basketball days, we would, over and over again before a game, watch videos of the other team playing that we were going to face that particular weekend. It just went on and on, watching game tape, video mandated by the coaching staff. Why would we do that? To figure out the other side's strategy—who's their leading scorer, where does the leading scorer like to shoot from, what kind of defense do they run? Is it man-to-man, is it half-court press, is it full-court press, is it zone defense, do they trap, how do we break the trap, who are their worst free-throw shooters? When the game's on the line, those are the people you want to foul. You're just taking in all of this information before you go out and play because the team that wins doesn't always have the best talent, but they have the best strategy.

There are strategies in life. There are retirement strategies, marketing strategies, political strategies. What we need to understand is the devil has strategies. Paul talks about them in 2 Corinthians 2:11, where he says, "See that no one be taken advantage of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes," which is a translation of the concept of strategies.

I'm here to tell you folks that Christianity today has no clue on the strategies of Satan, and yet they're laid out for us in blueprint form in Revelation 12 verses 1 through 5. The first five verses of the chapter deal with a past strategy of Satan revolving around the first coming of Christ that failed. After the failure of that strategy, he's moved into strategy two, which is the second part of the chapter, a future strategy of Satan destined to fail revolving around the second advent of Christ.

With those things being said, let's jump right in here and figure out the strategies of Satan, because when you see these, you'll see where antisemitism, proliferating all around us, comes from. Revelation 12:1 says, "A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed in the sun and the moon under her feet and upon her head a crown of twelve stars, and she was with child and she cried out, being in labor pain to give birth. And another sign was given in heaven: and behold, a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns and upon his head seven diadems. And his tail swept a third part of the stars of heaven and he did cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman that was about to give birth so that when she gave birth, he might devour her child. And she gave birth to a son, a male child who was to rule all of the nations with a rod of iron, and her child was caught up unto God and to his throne."

This here is a history lesson, but it's no ordinary history lesson. It's a history lesson about the birth of Christ told from the perspective of the angelic conflict. In this particular history lesson, we run into three characters: the Son mentioned in verse 5, to be distinguished from the sun mentioned in this passage; the dragon in verse 3; and the woman in verse 1. We know that this is symbolic language. Not everything in the Bible is to be taken literally when there's a clue that a symbol is in play.

What we've stumbled into in Revelation chapter 12 is the most symbolic chapter in the most symbolic book of the Bible, the book of Revelation. You can't get more intense symbolism than this. We know that because of the word "sign," a translation of the Greek word *semeion* used in verse 1 and verse 3. The question becomes, when you hit this kind of thing, how do we interpret it? There are some rules. You follow the rules, and you'll figure it out quick. If you don't follow the rules and you just apply your sanctified imagination, you'll come up with confusion and you'll probably get your own YouTube channel in the process.

The first rule that you follow when you hit a symbol is you always search the immediate context because, most of the time, the symbol is identified in the same context. The second rule you follow when you hit a symbol is, if you're in the book of Revelation, you search the Old Testament. The book of Revelation has 404 verses in it; 278 of those verses are allusions back to the Old Testament, and you'll typically find the symbol identified there. If you just follow those two rules, you can understand everything in the book of Revelation.

So let's apply the rules, shall we? Who's the Son? Well, the Son in verse 5 is Jesus because he's going to rule the nations with a rod of iron. That's familiar; that's Psalm 2:9 speaking of the Messiah. He was caught up to God and his throne. That's familiar; that's the ascension in Acts 1:9. So the Son is Jesus.

Who's the dragon? The dragon is the devil. How do I know that? Verse 9 of this chapter tells me that, as does chapter 20 verse 2 of the book of Revelation. It says in verse 9, "And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan." So that's an easy one.

Well, who's the woman? There are a lot of people running around today saying that the woman is the church. We have a problem with that because the woman is giving birth to Jesus. The church did not give birth to Jesus. Jesus gave birth to the church, right? Jesus said that in Matthew 16:18, "I say to you that you are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it." The church is the bride of Christ, not the mother of Christ. There's a famous preacher that I used to follow named Wellington Boone, and he had a sermon called "Your Wife Ain't Your Mama." I think of that every time I hear this translation—the woman is the church. No, your wife ain't your mama. Come on now.

So who in the world is this woman then, if it's not the church? It's not identified in the passage, so let's just follow our rules. Let's go into the Old Testament. If you're familiar with Joseph's dream, you know exactly who the woman is. This is a dream that Joseph had at the age of 17. Genesis 37:9 says, "Now he still had another dream and related it to his brothers and said, 'Lo, I have had still another dream,' and see if this imagery doesn't ring a bell. 'The sun and the moon and the eleven stars'—Joseph being the twelfth—'were bowing down to me.'" This is a dream that would be fulfilled about 13 years later. Joseph is 17; at the age of 30, we know that he would be elevated to second-in-command in all of Egypt. He related it to his father and his brothers, and his father rebuked him. You stupid 17-year-old, you don't know anything. His father rebuked him, and in the process of the rebuke, he fills out the imagery.

He related it to his father and to his brothers. This is why they wanted him thrown into the pit and sold as a slave and left him for dead—just sheer jealousy. He related it to his father and to his brothers, and his father rebuked him and said, "What is this dream you have had? Shall I"—that's the sun—"shall your mother"—that's the moon—"and your brothers"—that's the 11 stars, Joseph being the 12th star—"actually come to bow ourselves down before you to the ground?"

So the sun is Jacob, the moon is Leah—not Rachel, because Rachel died already. Jacob had two wives, and we don't recommend that, by the way, but it's how it worked out here. So the sun is Jacob, the moon is Leah, the 11 stars bowing down to the 12th star are Joseph's brothers, the 12th star is Joseph. From Joseph and his brothers came Israel's 12 tribes. The sun and the moon and the 12 stars is a representation symbolically of the nation of Israel. You would never know that if you didn't filter Genesis 12 through Genesis 37. The only thing you're left with if you won't follow the rules is your own sanctified imagination.

So the Son is Jesus, the dragon is the devil, and the woman is the nation of Israel. Do you see what I just took you through there? It's an exercise on how to interpret the book of Revelation, which everybody today tells me you can't understand it. Well, that's a little odd because the very title of the book is Revelation, coming from the Greek word *apokalypsis*, which means disclosure. How could a disclosure be non-understandable?

Henry Morris, in his commentary on the book of Revelation, writes, "It must be stressed that Revelation means unveiling, not veiling." All the way through church history, everybody acts like Revelation is something you can't understand. Luther didn't even consider the book of Revelation as an actual canonical book inspired by God. That's Martin Luther. No wonder he didn't understand prophecy. But you don't have to be afraid of the book of Revelation. You just follow a couple of rules, and you can understand everything in the book because that's the point of the book—to be understood. That's the title of the book.

The most important verse for our purpose is verse 4. It says the dragon—who's the dragon? Satan—stood before the woman—who is the woman? Israel—that was about to give birth so that he might devour her child. Who is the child? Jesus. What is being described here is what was happening in the angelic conflict, the spiritual realm, when Jesus Christ was born into our physical world. What was happening is Herod was insecure over his own throne. He didn't like the competition of a coming King of Kings. So you know the story, the famous Christmas story: he went out to have the innocent male children in Bethlehem wiped out. That's all Matthew 2 tells you.

John comes along on the island of Patmos and says, "Let me tell you what was happening in the spiritual world as those events were happening in the physical world." It was actually the devil using Herod's insecurity to stop the birth of Jesus Christ. Matthew just doesn't tell you that. John says, "I'll tell you the whole story."

Why was Satan trying to do that? He was trying to stop something. This is strategy A. He was trying to stop the fulfillment of Genesis 3:15, which is a Messianic prophecy. It's the first Messianic prophecy in the whole Bible. Right when the fall of man happened, God put the devil on notice. He spoke these words to the serpent, and he says, "I will put enmity between you"—the serpent—"and the woman"—Eve—"between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel."

I say, "Aha! I've got an aha moment!" Because now little old me understands why there were countless attempts to stop the Messianic lineage leading to Jesus in the Old Testament. That's why Cain killed Abel—to stop the coming of the Messiah. That's why the angels were having a sexual relationship with human women in Genesis 6—it was to tamper with the genetics of the pre-flood gene pool so that a Messiah, who must be fully man, can never be born. So let's create a race of people that aren't fully human; they're called the Nephilim. It's why Pharaoh persecuted Israel and tried to drown the children in the Nile in Exodus 1.

If there ever were a time in history where Satan almost pulled it off—I mean, he was within a millimeter of victory—it's the story in 2 Chronicles 22 and 23 related to baby Joash, who was persecuted by Athaliah, a usurping wicked queen. Had it not been for the intervention of Jehoiada the priest, who hid baby Joash in the temple—and Joash was the last Davidic descendant on earth—had that not happened, Satan would have won and the Davidic lineage leading to Jesus would have been shut down. It's why Haman persecuted Israel in the feast of lots, etc., in the book of Esther. It's why Antiochus Epiphanes desecrated the temple in the intertestamental period, and it's why Herod persecuted the infants in Bethlehem in the Christmas story.

By the way, if you're a preacher and a teacher and you want a good Christmas message, this is it. Don't teach Matthew 2; they already know that story. I mean, teach it, but augment it, supplement it. Talk to them about Revelation 12 because that's the Christmas message. Satan tried over and over and over and over again to stop the lineage leading to Christ. Guess what? He failed. There's blood everywhere, all over the Bible, and it's a record of Satan's warfare against the seed of the woman. Satan lost round one. Now preach that on Christmas. You'll get their attention, believe me.

Now you might be saying, "Well, this is all fascinating, but what does this have to do with antisemitism?" It has everything to do with antisemitism because the second part of the chapter deals with strategy two that he is using. Both of these strategies are preemptive. It's a preemptive strike. I'm going to take you out before you take me out because I know you're coming to crush my head, Satan says, referring to Genesis 3:15, so I'm going to stop it from happening.

As we venture there into verse 6, we know that God has promised to bless the world through the nation of Israel. Genesis 12:3, God says, "In you, Israel, all the families of the earth will be blessed." Boy, has that not happened? We have the Scripture because of the Jews. There's not a Southern Baptist author in the whole Bible. There's not a Methodist author; there's not a Presbyterian author. They're all Jewish. The only one that's debated anymore is Luke, and evidence is coming in that maybe Luke was Jewish. No God working through the Jews, no Bible. We wouldn't have a Savior. Jesus was Jewish.

Those are the blessings he was trying to stop from coming with round one of his preemptive attacks. But there's a third blessing on the horizon that the devil hates more than anything else, and it's the kingdom. The kingdom is going to be headquartered in Jerusalem. Isaiah 2 verses 2 and 3, Zechariah 14 verses 16 through 18. You see, Israel is the gift that keeps on giving. God has not finished using Israel to bless planet Earth. He's given us the Bible through Israel, he's given us the Savior through Israel, but Israel's gifts are continuing to come. There's a third one coming: it's the coming of the kingdom, which will be birthed through the nation of Israel.

Of all the blessings, Satan hates that one because once that one hits, his days are over. He'll be bound in Revelation 20 verses 2 and 3 in the abyss for a thousand years. At the conclusion of that thousand-year time period, he will be cast forever into the lake of fire. Satan does not want to give up territory. He has enjoyed all of these millennia being an illegitimate usurper over planet Earth. All the New Testament verses teach that he is the prince and power of the air. He's the god of this world, the prince of this world. He's the one that we wrestle with; that's why we have to put on the full armor of God. He roams about like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.

Did you see the video yesterday or the slide of Alex Newman with a world in the demon's hands? That's 1 John 5:19; the whole world lies in his power, and he doesn't want to give up territory. So his ambition, since he works preemptively, is to destroy the instrument through which the kingdom will come. That's how he thinks. His mind is not—well, it talks in Ezekiel 28 verses 12 through 17 about how his wisdom—because he was once a high-ranking, beautiful angel—when he fell, it became corrupted. He thinks that he can stop God. How self-deluded is that? He thinks he can stop God's prophecies from being fulfilled, and this is why he's working in history to do the things that he's doing. It's all an outworking, it's a manifestation of the angelic conflict.

So what is happening in the second half of the tribulation period is the most intense spiritual warfare that you'll ever see as Satan is working in history to blot out the Jewish nation. So let's pick it up here in verse 6, Revelation 12:6. It says the woman—who's the woman? Israel—fled into the wilderness, most likely Jordan, where she had a place prepared for her by God, most likely Petra, so that there she would be nourished for 1,260 days, which is a synonym, if you will, for the second half of the tribulation period.

This becomes an explanation of what is happening in the physical world in the second half of the tribulation period as it's being influenced by the spiritual world. That's exactly what happened in the first part of the chapter. What was happening in the spiritual world when Jesus was born into our physical world? What was happening in the angelic realm? Revelation 12:1-5, Satan's first strategy. Well, he lost that round. So the strategy moves to: "I'm going to destroy Israel so I can stop the coming of the kingdom." Matthew 24 verses 15 through 22, the fleeing of the Jews into the wilderness, narrates the story from the perspective of the physical world. But John says, "Let me tell you what is happening in the spiritual world, the angelic world that you can't see, as Israel is fleeing into the wilderness, as she's commanded to by Jesus once the beast desecrates the temple." Matthew: physical world. Revelation 12: spiritual world. It's like a puzzle; you just gotta take both pieces and put them together.

So you go down to verses 7 through 12, and it says this: "And there was a war in heaven. Michael and his angels were waging war with the dragon. The dragon and his angels waged war, and they were not strong enough for there was no place found for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world. He was thrown down to the earth and his angels were thrown down with him. Then I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, 'Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom'—you should underline that in your Bible, the Greek word *basileia*—'the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come. For the accuser of the brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our God day and night. And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death. And for this reason, rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them. But woe to the earth and the sea because the devil has come down to you having great wrath, knowing that he has a short time.'"

What's a short time? It's 1,260 days. You see, Satan, even now, has the ability to go into heaven—not to worship and serve as he once did as a high-ranking angel, but to communicate and accuse. If you doubt that, just read the book of Job. It talks about it very clearly. What will happen at exactly the midpoint of the tribulation period, once the beast desecrates the temple, is that privilege is gone. Satan now plummets to the earth. I actually believe that he will enter the beast at that point, a demonic possession. However he does it, he's got exactly 1,260 days left to destroy the instrument, Israel, through which the kingdom will come because, although he thinks he can stop prophecy, he understands prophecy. It's kind of a strange thing. He knows who the kingdom is going to come through—Israel—and "I've got exactly 1,260 days left to annihilate it so that the kingdom will not come."

So even before you get to Revelation 12, you get to the end of chapter 11. Chapter 11 comes before chapter 12. You guys agree with me on that? It says, "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ." The kingdom authority is coming; it's being transferred. Satan says, "I'm going to stop it and I'm going to stop it by gobbling up the woman, Israel, the woman clothed with the sun, moon, and 12 stars, so that the kingdom will never materialize." Because in the book of Revelation, God is taking the whole world out of bondage, just like he did in Exodus where he took a nation, the nation of Israel, out of Egyptian bondage. The book of Revelation is the ultimate Exodus where he's taking the whole world out of this Satanic bondage that it's been in and the illegitimate usurpation of authority by Satan going back to Genesis 3. That's why the judgments that you read about in the book of Exodus seem so parallel to the judgments that you read about in the book of Revelation.

Then you move to verses 13 through 16, and Satan goes into two preemptive strikes. The first one is given in verses 13 and 14. Here's strike one, and he's going to strike out, too. But it says this: "When the dragon saw that he was thrown down to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male child. But the two wings of the great eagle were given to the woman so that she could fly into the wilderness to her place where she was nourished for a time, times, and half a time from the presence of the serpent." Now "time, times, and half a time" is a synonym for 1,260 days, which is a synonym for 42 months. "Time," a Jewish year; "times," two Jewish years; "half a time," half a Jewish year—three and a half years. That Jewish calendar: 30 days per month. That adds up to 1,260 days, which translates into 42 months. We're dealing with the second half of the tribulation period when Satan pulls out all the stops and he persecutes the woman.

We're not sure how he does it, but the same word for persecution is used in Matthew 5, I think it's about verse 11 or so, where we are called blessed if we are persecuted. Just like God, through Jehoiada, hid baby Joash when Satan was within a millimeter of victory, God comes through for Israel when no one else will. That's where you get this imagery of eagle's wings. "But two wings of the great eagle were given to the woman or Israel so that she could fly into the wilderness to a place where she is protected by God."

Now don't get weird here, you guys. Don't lose your hermeneutics; don't lose your rules. I can't tell you how many sermons I've heard about how America's symbol is the eagle and Air Force One swoops in at the last minute. I'm a patriotic guy; I want all that to be true, but don't do stuff like that. Stick with the rules. What are the rules? If the symbol is not found in the immediate context, then we search the Old Testament. When you go back to Exodus 19:4, you'll find exactly what the two wings of the eagle represent. It's not a mystery. It's what God did for Israel as they were coming out of the Egyptian bondage: the Exodus, the parting of the Red Sea, all of that stuff. It's analogized to God rescuing Israel via eagle's wings. Exodus 19:4: "You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to Myself." So that's the interpretation you give when you see the exact same imagery in Revelation 12. God came through for Israel during her darkest hour in the Exodus events. The same phenomenon is going to happen when it looks bleakest and it looks like the devil is within a millimeter of victory. In strike one of his preemptive attacks, God comes through for Israel in a way that only He gets the credit. Air Force One doesn't get the credit; God gets the credit. That's how He's set up human history to glorify Himself.

Then you read strike two in verses 15 and 16. It says, "The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman so that he might cause her to be swept away with the flood. But the earth helped the woman and the earth opened its mouth and drank up the water which the dragon poured out of his mouth." So some kind of flood comes from the serpent or the devil. Now what's the flood? I have a tendency to think the flood is an army of some kind because when the prediction is given about Titus of Rome sacking Israel in A.D. 70—and that's predicted in the book of Daniel 600 years before it happened—it's analogized to the coming of a flood. So I think that's what the flood is.

What does God do? He opens the ground up and swallows up the army. By the way, God is really good at this—I mean, really good. Numbers 16: a bunch of people cornered Moses, "Hey Moses, we don't really like you as our pastor. You don't part your hair on the right side and you preach too long, you're not funny enough, and you don't use enough jokes." God says to Moses, "Hey, this one's on me," and the ground opens up and all the disgruntled church members go right into the ground. I mean, it's beautiful. It's like a pastoral dream.

So that becomes strike two failed. Then you have a summary statement at the end, verse 17. It says, "So the dragon was enraged with the woman and he went off to make war"—that's the Greek word *polemos*, war, which is the opposite of being irenic. *Eirene*, which is a beautiful name for a girl, meaning peaceful; *polemos* is the opposite of that. It says, "So the dragon was enraged with the woman and went off to make war with the rest of her children"—I would think that would be the 144,000 evangelists, perhaps, who are the first fruits saved, or maybe the converts that are reached in the tribulation period itself—"who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus."

In this summary statement, look at these words that are used to describe the Satanic hatred for Israel. As you grab these, you'll understand real clearly the mystery of antisemitism. What is Satan's attitude towards Israel? Wrath. That's the translation of the Greek word *orge*, which is a sexual term. You can think of the different sexual expressions that come from *orge*: unbridled passion. But here it's not being used in the sexual sense; it's being used in the emotional sense. It's uncontrolled rage. It's like you're working in your garage hammering away, and you miss and you whack your thumb, and you're so angry that you did something so stupid. In that second, you could take the hammer and throw it right through the window. Hopefully, the Holy Spirit works in us a little bit during that time, calms us down. But it's like you're just so mad about something, you just lose control. That is the attitude towards Satan when he looks at Israel, when he thinks of Israel, when he sees Israel. Because when he sees Israel, he sees his end of days. Because Israel is the gift that keeps on giving. That's what God said: "I'll bless the world through Israel," which includes the Savior, it includes the Scripture, and it includes the kingdom.

Then verse 13: he wants to persecute Israel. Verse 15: he wants to sweep Israel away. Verse 17: he's enraged—there's *orge* again—at Israel. Verse 17: he's at war with Israel. Why does he hate Israel? Because through Israel came the patriarchs, the law, which is a perfect revelation of God's character, the prophets, the Messiah, the apostles, the biblical writers, the early church, the early Christian martyrs, Paul and everything he did, and the future kingdom.

Israel can explain its existence without Christianity. Christianity, by contrast, cannot explain its existence without Israel. So when people within Christendom attack Israel, it's almost like you're out on a limb and you're sawing off the tree that is connected, and you're out on the edge. It's complete insanity. God has purposed to bless the world through Israel. We saw last night that the second coming can't even happen until Israel meets a condition.

So that is where antisemitism comes from. The core root of it is the angelic conflict. When you take a side on this—and you've got to choose. You notice how God is always making us make choices? "Choose this day whom you're going to serve." In your life, you'll run into, as a Christian, countless situations where you have to just plant your feet, get in defensive position, and even though the guy coming at you jumps higher than you and he's faster than you, you've got to plant your feet stationary and you've got to take a charge. You've got to let him hit you and you go down and hope the referee calls an offensive foul. You've got to start learning to do that. The earlier—I see some young people here—the earlier you can start doing that, the better. It gets easier as you go, but you've got to start making choices in all kinds of things. Right now, the Holy Spirit is saying to the church in this moment of insanity and confusion: choose. As for me and my house, we stand with Israel. I hope you're the same.

What are some points of application as we wrap up? Number one: we need to recognize antisemitism for what it is and its source. All these people saying all this stuff against Israel—they don't even know what they're saying. It's like Jesus saying to Peter—Peter, I love Peter because he reminds us of ourselves a little bit—he tried to talk Jesus out of going to the cross. Told Jesus, "Going to the cross is not a good career move for you." Jesus looks at the force motivating Peter and he says, "Get behind me, Satan." That's what you have to do with antisemitism.

Number two: you don't take part in it. Why would you send money, sign up for subscriptions to podcasts that are trashing Israel? Why would you like and share and support and comment on their stuff? The only thing you're doing when you do that is you're taking the wrong side in the angelic conflict.

Number three: expose it. That's really what this conference is all about. That was the original vision that Olivier and myself talked about five years ago. Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 11, it says, "Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but rather expose them."

Finally, number four: don't be surprised by antisemitism, which is kind of my mistake. I've been shocked, but I shouldn't be shocked. All I've got to do is read Revelation 12 and see it for what it is.

So there we have it, folks, the mystery of antisemitism. The Sugar Land Bible Church people are going to think this is miraculous because I ended two minutes and 25 seconds early. Praise the Lord. Thank you.