Revelation Six - When The Four Horsemen Ride
Zechariah 2 is yet another difficult chapter in two parts. The first is a prophecy of how big Jerusalem will be and that God will be a wall of fire around her and that He will be the glory in the midst of the city. The second part speaks of God calling the people of Israel from the North, to the Land of Israel. Furthermore, He also speaks of being in their midst and many nations joining themselves to them. The question is... Has any of this happened yet? Let's see if we can answer that. ———————————— Keep this ministry alive with a donation. And, read my two books: I created five Android Apps that will help you read through the Bible in a Year. You can find them here: https://revelationsix.com/android-apps/ If you miss my rantings about geopolitics, idiocy, resource collapse and incompetent globalism, follow me on Twitter. ———————————— Zechariah Part 3Zechariah 2 opens with the vision of a man who is going out to measure Jerusalem to see how big it will be. And, the angel that is with Zechariah, speaks to the man to tell Zechariah what Jerusalem will be like.
At the time Zechariah is experiencing this vision, Jerusalem hasn't been rebuilt yet, and God is already speaking of how huge the city will be. So, that raises a question: Has Jerusalem ever been this big? Try finding that out, and you will get a ton of different answers. Some historians and archeologists will give a number as low as 20 thousand. Some have even said 250 thousand. And yes, you will get that much of a difference in estimates. When would this have happened? Right around the time of Jesus. The Hasmonean Dynasty had been successful in reconstituting the land of Israel. They had recaptured everything that the Sleucids had controlled of Israel, and then expanded further - even taking out the people of Edom. And then... they fell apart. They fought among themselves and the Seleucids kept sticking their foot in, before the Romans came along and threw everyone out. For the briefest period of time, between the Seleucids and the Romans, Israel had full sovereignty until they destroyed themselves. What a classic bit of tragedy. And, the only thing that has kept modern Israel from doing the same, were the Arabs that wouldn't stop trying to destroy them. Seriously, at the beginning of the State of Israel, one of biggest worries was civil war. And, that civil war had begun even before the State of Israel had been founded. Jews were killing Jews, but the Arab threat to their existence united them in ways that nothing else could. Just look at what happened on October 7th of last year. On October 6th, the Tel Aviv Left was tearing Israel apart and threatening a civil war. After October 7th, there was no thought of that. If you want to destroy Israel, give them peace for a few decades. But wait, I 'forgot' to mention the last verse in that first section:
Okay, so that hasn't happened yet. Not even a little. This is definitely the future.
No. There won't be ANY need of that. So, we are left with the Redemption of Israel. And, for quite some time, Jerusalem and Israel will be at peace, because the rest of the world will be spending all of its efforts trying to restart civilization. Only when corruption comes again to Jerusalem, will the 'wall of fire' be taken away, and the Antichrist will place his abomination that makes desolate. The Redemption of IsraelThen, in the next section God calls for Israel to escape from the North, from the daughter of Babylon. Who is the daughter of Babylon? That's a very good question. If you do a search for the 'daughter of Babylon', you will find only five references:
I'm not sure how many know this, but Babylon has never been destroyed. Instead of being destroyed, it was captured by Cyrus the Great via a clever sneak attack by his general Gobryas. It was - in every sense - a special forces raid that made it into the Babylonian King's inner palace where all the leaders of Babylon were. Gobryas and his men killed all of Babylon's leadership, and the rest of Babylon surrendered. The takeover of Babylon was almost a bloodless coup. Only the leadership of Babylon died. And, this presents us with a problem. Babylon was never destroyed. It was only abandoned. When Persia took over, it became a regional capital. When Alexander the Great took over and died in Nebuchadnezzar's palace, the Seleucids continued using it as a regional capital, but it was all downhill from there. When the Persians pushed back the Seleucids, Babylon was captured, lost once or twice to the Romans, got it back... eventually, it became nothing more than a frontier village. And, when the Arabs rampaged across the Middle East, everyone forgot where Babylon was. None of that is the way Jeremiah 50 and 51, Psalm 137, describe the destruction of Babylon. Only Isaiah 47 could be considered, if you squint. So, who is this daughter of Babylon? I don't know. No one does. The best that we have are theories. And, the best of those theories are about what might be coming in the future. You could make a case for the destruction of Iraq as being a kind of beginning of the fulfillment of Babylon's destruction, but it is still habitable. What hasn't happened yet is the part where the daughter of Babylon will never be inhabited again, and it may only happen when Gog and Magog come, with the cataclysmic destruction that follows. However, we do know that the Jews have come from the North. In fact, the first of them came from the North, from Europe. But, that was just the beginning. Here are the first two verses that we have been talking bout:
And indeed, Israel was spread to the four winds of heaven, and from the four winds they have returned. And, those Jews who lived in Iraq? After Israel became a nation Iraqis began to have a more and more hostile view of the Jews, to the point where they needed to flee Iraq for Israel. Mossad organized the airlift via Iran and Cyprus. The operation was called Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, and over a 120 thousand Jews were in that airlift. It is a fact that the vast majority of Israeli Jews came from other places than the West. However, that doesn't stop the antisemites from making claims that there are no real Jews in Israel. Then there are two very interesting verses:
Those that have abused the Jews have found themselves being forced to help Israel. Not a single nation that has persecuted the Jewish people has been unaffected by this. They have all been forced to aid Israel in some way. And, the stories that have been told about this are as numerous as they are fantastic. But, the last part of the chapter is the best of all:
For those of you who have read When Gog Comes and Ezekiel's Fire, you know that the whole world will experience a massive cataclysm that will prove to them that Yehovah is God, and that He has chosen Israel. And, the number of prophecies about this outnumber any other prophecies about the Last Days. Furthermore, as verse 13 says, the world will indeed be silent, and God will be the protector of an Israel that has come to faith in Jesus Christ. And people everywhere will understand this, and Christians will want to be a part of it. (At least, those of us who have survived.) Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. ———————————— My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. ———————————— Keep this ministry alive with a donation. And, read my two books: I created five Android Apps that will help you read through the Bible in a Year. You can find them here: https://revelationsix.com/android-apps/ If you miss my rantings about geopolitics, idiocy, resource collapse and incompetent globalism, follow me on Twitter. |
