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Discipleship Volume 2 #6 Jacob and Joseph
54 Plays1 month ago
Like! Share! Subscribe! This time we'll be looking at Jesus Christ hidden--and now revealed--in two stories involving Jacob/Israel! Then we'll examine how his and Joseph's stories point to the Apocalypse!! Let's jump in! If you would like a copy of the Bible study, reach out to me and we'll make it happen! And in May, we're having a REVIVAL Men's Conference. Get your tickets on Eventbrite, too: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ohm-rize-mens-retreat-ireland-2026-tickets-1978682463513?aff=ebdssbdestsearch The content used in this video is intended for educational and informational purposes only. All rights to the images, music, clips, and other materials used belong to their respective owners. I do not claim ownership over any third-party content used. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📘 Order My Books Read faith-filled adventure, fantasy, and science-fiction books to support Christian entertainment. 👉 https://www.amazon.co.uk/GHOST-UNSAID-ONE-PANOPTICON-Triumvirate/dp/1948581647 👉https://www.amazon.co.uk/GHOST-UNSAID-BOOK-RECKONING-Triumvirate/dp/B0CH2H6LSX 🎥 Watch More Videos: Teaching, encouragement, testimony, and biblical truth. 👉 https://www.youtube.com/@brendanthomasmarrett9868/videos 🧢 From Dublin to Cleveland – Official Merch: Wear the message. Support the work. 👉 https://www.bonfire.com/from-dublin-to-cleveland-shirt/?srsltid=AfmBOorvSsSmUI-oAQ9mC4uSVWhkPmZvaMkeouFcmZEM8G3eJAqNyGnT ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🤝 Support the Ministry: If this ministry blesses you and you’d like to help it grow, please consider becoming a monthly supporter or making a one-off love offering: 💸 PayPal: paypal.me/BrendanMarrett 💵 Revolut: https://revolut.me/brendanthomasmarrett ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📬 Mail / Contact For letters, testimonies, or ministry-related mail: fromdublintocleveland@gmail.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode 6 and Discipleship Volume Two
00:00:01
Speaker
Happy days. Okay. So I cannot believe that it is already episode six in discipleship volume two.
00:00:13
Speaker
And where are the weeks going at all? I was half thinking earlier, what's discipleship volume three be? You know, we're nowhere near the end of this,
Focus on Jacob and Joseph from Genesis
00:00:24
Speaker
by the way. There'll be about 24 episodes and in this volume.
00:00:27
Speaker
What I'm partly thinking, maybe the end times, the apocalypse, is a very thematic one that a lot of people are just losing their minds right now. Like, the world is ending. this sky is falling down. but not a lot of people actually have the biblical know-how to actually articulate what the word God actually says about the end.
00:00:52
Speaker
So add that's something I'm around with at the moment. You know, maybe, will I? Won't don't know. um But ah yeah, watch this
Jacob's Family and Deception Stories
00:00:59
Speaker
space. But ah that will be for toward the tail end of this year at the earliest anyway.
00:01:05
Speaker
But for today, going look at two blokes in the book of Genesis in particular. Genesis is my favorite book in the Bible. this is still the very first book in the Bible.
00:01:18
Speaker
So you kind of see, you know, Jesus in the Old Testament. He appeared a lot in the Old Testament. He appeared a lot in the book of Genesis. And to be honest with you, year in, year out, I actually try to avoid reading Genesis because once I start, I find it very hard to get out of it because I love it that much. I actually don't want to move on to the rest, even though it's all amazing.
00:01:40
Speaker
And I'm going to look at Jacob first and then Joseph. Joseph is my absolute favorite person in the Bible, other than Jesus, obviously.
00:01:51
Speaker
um It used to be a top up between Joseph and David, but David had one or two hairy, questionable moments, and which Joseph doesn't have against him.
00:02:03
Speaker
So Joseph at some point just bypassed him. But i yeah, Joseph is my guy. um So in today's study, we're going to look first and foremost at Isaac, who we looked at a little bit last time. Abraham's son, and and he's the father of Jacob.
00:02:24
Speaker
So it's Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. We're not going look at Joseph in too much detail. um On my YouTube channel, I've got tons of videos on him, because again, he is my favorite person in the Bible.
00:02:37
Speaker
um But there's a particular angle that we can examine Jacob and Joseph's story through, which um I doubt many of you have considered before.
00:02:49
Speaker
So with Isaac, and this was Abraham's son. Remember, you know, will I kill him? Will I not? From last last week. there go When Isaac was 40 years old, he married a woman named Rebecca.
00:03:06
Speaker
um There's hope for me, yes. yes i am But Rebecca was barren. She was unable to conceive. And then by the time that she was 60, the Lord opened her womb miraculously.
00:03:24
Speaker
And for her trouble, he gave her a double portion. Although I'm not sure if that was actually a good thing. These two kids were crazy. And they were Esau and Jacob.
00:03:37
Speaker
Esau's name means red just because he had red hair.
00:03:43
Speaker
His nickname was Edom, which is the literally red. it's It's close to Adam in its pronunciation um and spelling.
00:03:54
Speaker
And then the younger twin boy was named Jacob. So basically when Esau was born, amp I've never seen this happen. Don't picture It's a bit weird. But basically, the baby's hand was sticking out of his mother's yu-ha and holding on to his older brother's foot. So they named Jacob Jacob, which means heel or heel grabber.
00:04:18
Speaker
But it also means deceiver. and And the name turned out to be very, very pathetic. And so for Esau, he was named Red, who had red hair.
00:04:29
Speaker
um But he was also very short tempered. He was constantly seeing red. And then Jacob was named the heel grabber, the heel grasper, the grasper of feet.
00:04:43
Speaker
um But his name also has a twist. It also means deceiver. And these names would indeed prove to be very, very prophetic in a very strained relationship between the two young men.
00:04:59
Speaker
So as they grew up, and Esau was a real hunter. was real man's man. And Isaac, the father, had a very good relationship with him.
00:05:10
Speaker
um If you were going to go on an adventure and Bear Grylls was unavailable, you would call Esau. and Jacob, other hand, was a real man-needs-boy.
00:05:23
Speaker
Bit of a spoiled brat. He was a very quiet man. He lived among the tents. Not very adventurous. Not very exciting. i So in their tradition, the older of the boys...
00:05:39
Speaker
would be given a special inheritance or blessing from the father. So Isaac was basically going to leave everything to Esau. And then one day esa comes back and Listen, maybe he meant it literally. i just think the whole thing sounds very melodramatic.
00:05:58
Speaker
And he's like, oh my goodness, I'm going to starve to death. I'm so hungry after being off on my adventure. I'm going to die unless I have some of your red soup or red stew.
00:06:11
Speaker
Isaac is like, as i Jacob is like, you know, give me your inheritance and i will give you some food. And again, i don't know if the guy was literally on death's door.
00:06:23
Speaker
Like, he'd been ravaged by wolves or something and barely escaped. Or if was just being melodramatic. You know, like when men get hungry, we get angry, we get hangry. and But... I used to read that story and think, this is whack.
00:06:39
Speaker
Imagine, Trey, in a way, your birthright, your inheritance, like everything that was coming to you. Perfuge. And you're having a laugh. But...
00:06:50
Speaker
Like I said, Esau's nickname was Edom, which is pronounced pretty closely to Adam. Adam literally was the king of the whole world.
00:07:02
Speaker
And he traded that away for fruit from a tree. So in the same way, you know, what Adam had done, Esau was just doing the same.
00:07:13
Speaker
Look how many people today trade away everlasting life with Jesus. And for what? You know, because they want to, don't know, commit adultery?
00:07:27
Speaker
Or to worship gods who are actually demons and despise them? Or they just think being a Christian is too inconvenient?
00:07:39
Speaker
What do you mean you have to go to church on Sundays once a week? oh That's the day that I iron the children's clothes for school. This kind nonsense. People have the most stupid and the silliest and the most inexcusable justifications, as they would call it, for a trading away the birthright Jesus wants them to have, which is being a citizen of the world of heaven, being a temple of Holy Spirit, being a living vessel in which he dwells.
Jacob's Time with Laban and Return to Canaan
00:08:16
Speaker
So it sounds like bit of a mad story, but actually we see it play out in real time. Every day, all around the world.
00:08:27
Speaker
But Isaac, and as he got older, went blind. Personally, I think it's a bit ironic that his name was Isaac and he went blind, but you know, I didn't write the Bible.
00:08:39
Speaker
um And his favorite son was Esau. Rebecca's favorite son. was Jacob. And like I said, Jacob was a mommy's boy. And Rebecca knew this, and she kind of liked it.
00:08:53
Speaker
So one day, she told Jacob, you know, your far hairier twin brother and is going to get a very special blessing from your father.
00:09:05
Speaker
My notes on, you should dress up as him, deceive your father, who is now blind, and take the blessing for yourself. I mean, you wouldn't see this nonsense on an episode Eastenders.
00:09:20
Speaker
Not that any of you watch Eastenders because you're sitting here listening to me instead.
00:09:26
Speaker
But um Jacob was like, okay. Yes, mother dearest. Why not? So he got some goat hair, so his brother i must have been really hairy.
00:09:40
Speaker
mean, sometimes I think that my arm hair is long, but um um I've got nothing on Esau. And puts this goat hair on himself. And you know, it's not just um the texture. It's going to smell as well. It's going smell like Esau. He spends all his time outside.
00:10:02
Speaker
and he comes to Isaac's tent. And he's like, m oh, I'm ready to get my blessing, dad. And Isaac is like, Jacob? No, Esau.
00:10:17
Speaker
And Isaac's bit confused. He's like, because you kind of sound like like like Jacob, but he puts his hands on on the on the hair and is like, okay, well, i maybe I'm wrong. You must be Esau.
00:10:29
Speaker
And he declares the most beautiful, phenomenal blessing over Jacob. And You know, sometimes you might find yourself in a church auditorium or but a platform and you hear someone praying for someone else.
00:10:48
Speaker
And they're just praying all the things you want for yourself. They're praying salvation for your family. They're praying that you win a car, even though you never buy a raffle ticket. um They're praying, you know, that time you have full prosperity in your soul and your finances.
00:11:04
Speaker
This is kind of evidence that you can actually claim a blessing. You can say, yes, Jesus, include me in that, please. Please and thank you. So Isaac blesses all this to Jacob by mistake.
00:11:17
Speaker
And when Esau finds out, he loses his mind. Like I said, Esau's nickname was Edom. It means red.
00:11:27
Speaker
He goes crazy. crazy. He's seeing red, and actually he feels a murderous hatred towards his twin, and says, I'm going to kill him dead.
00:11:41
Speaker
Jacob is too old to be up to this nonsense. At this point in the story, Jacob is 77 years old. He knows exactly what he's doing. This is not a young guy just you know, made a mistake because his mother manipulated him. He's too old to be up to this stupidity.
00:11:57
Speaker
Now, again, these are the days of the patriarchs when people had a longer lifespan, nowhere and near as long as Noah and those before the flood, but still long.
00:12:09
Speaker
And Esau basically says, I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him. So Rebecca says, Jacob, run away. Flee. Get out of here.
00:12:20
Speaker
Or he will make good in his promise. He will take you out. So Jacob runs away and he comes across Laban, his mother's relative.
00:12:33
Speaker
And when he meets his uncle, Laban, he then meets Laban's daughter, Rachel, and he just falls head over heels in love with her.
00:12:46
Speaker
And Laban says, well, you can marry her, but I want something from you. Seven years of labor, please. Seven years of service.
00:13:01
Speaker
The trickster. Little does he know it, has become the tricked. Jacob went from being the kind of guy who if you played poker with him, you would lose house and home.
00:13:15
Speaker
And now... He's listening to Laban and says, sure, I'm going to work seven years because I just need your daughter to be my wife. She's the most fabulous specimen there is on earth. and they they pass, like it's like a blink.
00:13:34
Speaker
Seven years passes, like it's a day. he is in at Dave. He's just entranced by her beauty. He's in love with her. I'm sure she had a great personality too. We can assume.
00:13:45
Speaker
I hope that they spoke. And after the seven years, you know, it's it's the wedding day. And I don't know how this works. Maybe the bride was wearing a veil.
00:13:59
Speaker
um And it was, nighttime was dark. They didn't have electricity. Whatever happens. But when he woke up the next morning, Rachel was not the woman in his bed.
00:14:12
Speaker
It was her older sister, Leah. Because God makes everyone and he loves everyone and he's God of beauty, he would never say that Leah was ugly.
00:14:27
Speaker
Instead, the Bible says she had delicate eyes, yeah which I think is a polite way of saying She was a bit hard on the eyes.
00:14:40
Speaker
She looked pretty if you kind of squinted. laughed. She wasn't all that attractive. He woke up and he was horrified. He was like, oh my goodness, what is this?
00:14:52
Speaker
And then Laban is like, I'm sorry, didn't I tell you in the seven years we've been together, it's customary for a guy to marry off his ah his oldest daughter first. Whoopsie.
00:15:06
Speaker
Like I said, the trickster had become the trick. The deceiver had himself been deceived. The chancer had met someone who was willing to take much riskier chances.
00:15:23
Speaker
And Jacob was like, this is a disgrace. I can't believe you deceived me like this. And Laban said, well, look. Spend the next week with, you know, the woman you actually did marry.
00:15:37
Speaker
And then after that, i will let you marry the woman you want. I'll let you marry Rachel. But in return for another seven years service.
00:15:48
Speaker
So Jacob agreed. i mean, you can just imagine how poor Leah felt. and Having been overlooked her whole life long, her husband wakes up next to her on their wedding in the morning after the wedding, and his first reaction is, oh my goodness, how did I get married to this ugly cow? What's going on? And he's delighted to hear he only had to spend one week with her. but and So as time goes on,
00:16:18
Speaker
Jacob marries Rachel and then he marries Leah's maidservant and he marries Rachel's maidservant. And this one guy carries on this relationship with these four women.
00:16:34
Speaker
People in the Bible are just nuts. Sometimes i look at the body of Christ today and I just say, Jesus, where did it all go wrong? but but And then you read the book of Genesis and you're like, God, it was never right.
00:16:47
Speaker
Maybe the first two chapters of of Genesis, things were pretty good. And it all went downhill very quickly.
00:16:54
Speaker
So between the ages of 84 and 90, Jacob has one daughter named Dinah, and he has 11 sons.
00:17:09
Speaker
And after many years of being barren, just like his mother Rebecca had been, Jacob is 91 years of age when Rachel has baby named Joseph.
00:17:23
Speaker
Again, my favorite person in the Bible. Not to be confused with them Joseph, who would later marry Mary and raise Jesus, though he's also an amazing guy. Um, and Joseph became Jacob's favorite son because he'd had to wait so long for his favorite of four wives, Rachel, to conceive to have a child. So because he was so old and had had to wait so long, he had such a special preference for Joseph.
00:17:52
Speaker
Now, I'm not talking about the favor of the Lord was on it. Okay, the favor is just, you know, God extending kindness to you. I'm talking favoritism.
00:18:04
Speaker
where Jacob had a preferential treatment for Joseph and everybody knew it. And it made Joseph very, very unpopular with his brothers.
00:18:20
Speaker
Between the ages of 91 96,
00:18:24
Speaker
Jacob continued to live am on Laban's property, and the Lord began to give him different tools, different strategies, different techniques, divine solutions in ah agricultural farming, and his number of sheep just got more and more and more, greater and greater and greater. And and back then your wealth was attached to your livestock.
Jacob's Divine Encounters and Spiritual Lessons
00:18:52
Speaker
So he effectively grew to be incredibly rich.
00:18:56
Speaker
When he was 97, he decided to leave m Laban's property and instead to go back to the land of Canaan, later called the Promised Land, today called Israel.
00:19:10
Speaker
But on his way to the land of Canaan, he would have an encounter with Jesus. They would have a wrestling match.
00:19:20
Speaker
I don't know. Listen, I know people love tennis, people love soccer, people love Gaelic football, hurling, rugby, rounders. I can tolerate all them to an extent.
00:19:31
Speaker
I don't like watching them, but i can tolerate them to at a degree. Wrestling? I can't. I just can't. I've never been in primary school, someone told me it was fake, and I said, you know what?
00:19:42
Speaker
I think you're right. So why is wrestling the only one those sports that's in the Bible? Couldn't tell you. But he and Jesus had a wrestling match. Jesus cheated, used some magic, went psych, and the guy ended up with a limp. His hip came out of his socket.
00:19:56
Speaker
Okay, well, Jesus doesn't use magic, he uses powers. But I'm going look at that one in more detail in a few minutes. When Jacob was 108, his family was in crisis.
00:20:11
Speaker
His sons, by and large, despised Joseph. and Joseph had a younger brother, Benjamin. He he just loved and adored. But no, the older brothers despised Joseph because they knew he was Jacob's favorite.
00:20:29
Speaker
Joseph was a bit of a tattletale. He would bring bad reports to his father and say, oh, father, you'll never guess what my brothers did today. and And then the Lord began to speak to Joseph in dreams.
00:20:44
Speaker
So they were annoyed at Jacob's favoritism and a God's favor to Joseph. And their solution was to throw him down a well, consider murdering him,
00:20:59
Speaker
Settle on selling him for 20 pieces of silver. And then fake his death and pretend he'd been eaten by a wild animal. So when Jacob was 108 years of age, he believed his favorite son to have been eaten alive.
00:21:17
Speaker
It took 22 years before he would realize his son was actually alive and well and was the prime minister of the land of Egypt. and invited Jacob to live there with them.
00:21:32
Speaker
And then Jacob died at 147 years old.
00:21:40
Speaker
So this is an overview ah Jacob's life. Now we're going to have a look at two instances in particular in which he actually had an encounter with the pre-incarnate Christ.
00:21:56
Speaker
Again, in John chapter one, verse 18, Jesus said that by that stage, no one had ever seen God the Father except the Son who had come from him.
00:22:10
Speaker
Which is curious, because when you read the Old Testament, which takes up, you know, the vast majority of the Bible,
00:22:21
Speaker
lot of people saw God. They saw him sitting on a throne or a chariot or a throne with wheels, which is a chariot or standing on a staircase. Or he spoke to them and said, you will have a child. Or he appeared at the bottom of their bed and said, I will give you wisdom.
00:22:39
Speaker
Or he came walking in the Garden of Eden. The Old Testament is full to the brim of instances in which people saw God and lived. So who is God seen?
00:22:53
Speaker
Who is God revealed? Who is God with skin on Who is God in 3D? Jesus. So in Jacob's life, he had two instances of actually seeing Jesus. And we're going to have a look at them now. Let's start with the first one.
00:23:14
Speaker
If you have your Bible in front of you or your mobile phone, and we're going to turn to Genesis chapter 28. And to start at the halfway a point, verses 10 to 22.
00:23:35
Speaker
This is called Jacob's Dream at Bethel.
00:23:42
Speaker
Jacob left Beersheba. and set out for Haran. This is when he's on the run from his brother, Esau. Esau wants to kill him, and he has to escape.
00:23:55
Speaker
When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night, because the sun had set. So basically, he couldn't see where he was going, so he had nowhere else to go, so he just decided to fall asleep.
00:24:07
Speaker
Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head, and lay down to sleep. So he had a stone pillow. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth with its top reaching to heaven.
00:24:23
Speaker
And the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the Lord. And he said, am the Lord because Jacob had never seen him before.
00:24:38
Speaker
Abraham had, but Jacob never had. So Jesus says, I'm the Lord, the God of your father, Abraham, the God of Isaac.
00:24:48
Speaker
So Abraham was this his grandfather. Isaac was his dad. i will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants, that the nation of Israel, will be like the dust of the earth.
00:25:05
Speaker
And you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you your offspring.
00:25:16
Speaker
And what's famous and important of all Jewish offspring is of course, Jesus Christ himself. I am with you, which is very good to know if your twin brother wants to murder you, but the God of all reality is on your side.
00:25:32
Speaker
i am with you and will watch over you wherever you go. And I will bring you back to this land. So keep on running. You will arrive somewhere.
00:25:44
Speaker
I'll be with you when you are there. And I will take you home eventually. And that's the second time you would see Jesus.
00:25:52
Speaker
I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, surely the Lord is in this place.
00:26:04
Speaker
And I was not aware of it. He was afraid and said, how awesome is this place? This is none other than the house of God. This is the gate of heaven.
00:26:17
Speaker
There's a portal to everlasting here. Early the next morning, Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it.
00:26:32
Speaker
A pillar. At some point, I'm going to teach a sermon called From Pillow to Pillar. need to write that down before i forget it. He called that place Bethel, though the city used to be called Luz.
00:26:47
Speaker
Then Jacob made a vow, saying, If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey, I am taken and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear.
00:27:00
Speaker
I love that starts off with, you know, what Jesus actually did promise. And then he's like, bet I can curry a couple of more things out. I'm to twist his arm. Here are more things I want. So that I return safely to my father's house.
00:27:12
Speaker
Then the Lord will be my God. And this stone that I've set up as a pillar will be God's house. And of all that you give me, i will give you a tenth.
00:27:23
Speaker
So basically a tithe.
00:27:27
Speaker
It's an amazing and encounter that he has.
00:27:31
Speaker
Now, in the days of his grandfather, Abraham, there was a wicked tyrant on the earth, an emperor named Nimrod. Nimrod set up a city e called Babel, later the Empire Babylon.
00:27:48
Speaker
Akkad, um let's see, Nineveh, which became as the Empire Assyria. and several other ones, all in the Iran-Iraq area today, Mesopotamia.
00:28:04
Speaker
The Tower of Babel is the most famous structure that he created. and Historians believe that he did it to spite God. He did it, he made it out of mortar and burnt bricks.
00:28:18
Speaker
um which are materials that are not liable to let water in. so basically if ever God decided to flood the earth again, and this time all his people would be secure inside the tower and they would defy God. They built in their own image and their own honor.
00:28:35
Speaker
And they also wanted to penetrate to heaven. didn't just want to escape God's wrath. Sounds like they wanted to invade heaven themselves, have humans against angels.
00:28:48
Speaker
He had high notions of himself. The Tower of Babel is the most famous structure he built. It is not the only one. All across the cities and the kingdoms that he owned, all across his one world government, his empire, ziggurats are found.
00:29:06
Speaker
Ziggurats are temple towers, which were built on mountains. Effectively, it was a counterfeit Garden of Eden. Eden in Ezekiel 28 was on God's holy mountain, so Nimrod built these towers on mountains.
00:29:24
Speaker
The Garden of Eden had, know, trees and plants. These had trees and plants on the roofs. The Garden of Eden had a river, Eden, that broke into four streams.
00:29:38
Speaker
These buildings had four sides to represent four mystical rivers. In the Garden of Eden, Jesus would come down and spend time with the man and the woman. In these, demonic beings would come down and receive the praise and worship of the people.
00:29:56
Speaker
So these ziggurats were a perfect counterfeit or inversion of the Garden of Eden upon their conception. were an inversion by design. It was intentional.
00:30:09
Speaker
So in the Hebrew, the word for the stairs, is actually the same word for the staircases on a ziggurat. But on a ziggurat, the people had to go up up but but but but but but but but up, up, up, to have a divine encounter, but it was not a divine encounter. It was an encounter with the demonic.
00:30:32
Speaker
But in Jacob's dream,
00:30:36
Speaker
this staircase was resting on the earth. It's an interesting word, resting. People don't have to do anything. The angelic is coming down.
00:30:49
Speaker
The divine is coming down. God's glory is coming down. God's help is coming down. In Nimrod Ziggurat, the onus was on you to build it, and it was all human work, human religion, human effort, human strength.
00:31:06
Speaker
But this staircase was resting on the earth. Even in his rebellion, even as a deceiver on the run from stealing from a blind man, even still the grace of God was coming down to him. The grace of Jesus was coming down to him.
00:31:29
Speaker
I think this is such a humbling line when he says in verse 16, Surely the Lord is in this place.
00:31:40
Speaker
And I was not told of it. How often is that true for us? God is doing something and we don't perceive it. This all happened the context of ah of a vision and a dream. It was a dream, but it was really happening.
00:31:56
Speaker
God gives you a dream. You say, God doesn't speak in dream. That's nonsense. I'm not writing that down. Or you go to a church fellowship or an event.
00:32:08
Speaker
And God has something to do when people are too busy, they're too distracted on their mobile phones, or, i don't like that music. Oh, she sings off key. Oh, that's too loud. Oh, hymns. Oh, good ones for what we're living in the 1800s. And we don't perceive what God is doing. We're too distracted.
00:32:29
Speaker
But actually, this story is real challenge for us to become more aware, more alert of the fact that heavenly operations are all around us. And God has angelic visitations scheduled for us, an angelic operation for our health, for our defense, to protect us, to provide for us, to do incredible healing, restoring work for us.
00:32:57
Speaker
And I'm aware that not everyone perhaps knows too much about angels. I think in some church circles, pastors are afraid top of angels in case people start worshipping them or I'll go Catholic. But they're in the Bible, so I think it's only right and proper that we have some familiarity with them.
00:33:18
Speaker
First Corinthians 11 10 tells us that angels olds watch how you worship the Lord. And they form opinions. and it's a It's a sobering one.
00:33:35
Speaker
I've been in battleships before and maybe I didn't like the music or I didn't like how the sermon was going or someone's baby was crying too loudly and they weren't using the baby room 500 meters that away.
00:33:50
Speaker
I was just thinking, oh for goodness sakes, I can't believe I got bad for this. When angels look at you, what do they see? oh in Daniel 6, 22, we're told that they protect people from harm.
00:34:08
Speaker
Have you ever had an instance in your life where you were on the brink of death and miraculously at the last second you survived? i know it we had the revival back in June in Drew's townhouse in County Meath.
00:34:23
Speaker
was driving along. And next thing, I lost total control of the car. i was heading for a tree. i was heading for a wall. Had I hit it, I would have died. I would have been crushed.
00:34:35
Speaker
And it was only by the grace of God and his unseen assistants and employees that I walked out of that without a scratch. And even more miraculously, my car but but but but did not get scratched, which I was very grateful for.
00:34:55
Speaker
Angels receive instruction from God concerning us in Matthew 18.10. In Daniel 10, we see that they have the ability to heal humans.
00:35:06
Speaker
Yes, Jesus is our healer. He's our Jehovah. But he gives angels limited healing abilities. In Luke 16.22, we see that when a human dies, a righteous human, it's an angel who escorts you to happily ever after. her
00:35:27
Speaker
In Luke 22, 43, they comfort and encourage people.
00:35:34
Speaker
They get hungry, so they cook food for themselves, and they can also cook food for humans and first gangs nineteen five to six in they guard us and they prevent us from getting injured.
00:35:51
Speaker
Revelation 1 makes it crystal clear that there are angels who are over localities. Now there are demons who are over localities as well, but they're also godly angels whose job is to watch over and protect people in a certain area.
00:36:11
Speaker
Daniel 10.13 describes angelic princes called archangels, and they lead over other, they rule over other angels, they give them jobs to do, they're answerable to them.
00:36:27
Speaker
There are angel harvesters who war against the wicked, and they will be very busy come the apocalypse. Matthew 13, 37 to 40.
00:36:39
Speaker
Revelation 8, there are angels who collect prayers, and they pour them before the Lord's throne.
00:36:48
Speaker
Revelation 15, there is a temple in heaven. Now you might think the whole of heaven is a effectivelysy temple. Yeah, it still has a temple of its own and there are angels whose job is to work there.
00:37:00
Speaker
Revelation 5.13, there are angelic choirs, probably the the angels people think of most frequently.
00:37:10
Speaker
And they don't just sing. There are angels who are musicians. Revelation 8.2.
00:37:17
Speaker
There are angel scribes, angels who write what they see and the Lord gives them instructions and they jot it down. Ezekiel 9 too.
00:37:28
Speaker
Angels point the way to Jesus. Matthew 28, 5-7. They're
00:37:36
Speaker
they're amazing and they're incredible and they are so cool, but they do not like getting worshipped or praised. They want you to give glory to God. Revelation 22, 8-9.
00:37:50
Speaker
Angels serve humans. They are ministering spirits whose job is to make our life easier and more prosperous and safer.
00:38:02
Speaker
And they're also angels that God sends to answer people's prayers. Daniel 9, 20 to 23. twenty to twenty three And then just some more fun facts before we get back to Jesus and the wrestling match of the century.
00:38:19
Speaker
Angels have different languages. You know, human languages all began at the Terra Babel. It was common speech beforehand, and then the different languages began then. But angels have different tongues.
00:38:36
Speaker
Angels get hungry, and they eat food. And they can also... Now, they're metaphysical beings, okay? They live in the spirit realm, but they can still touch things. They can come to work, take on physical form for a time, and also eat food in that states
00:38:55
Speaker
state. 1 Peter 1.12 tells us that they long to understand the immeasurable glory found in Christ's atonement for human evil.
00:39:06
Speaker
They know that we're forgiven. They know that we're redeemed. But forgiveness was never offered to angels in rebellion. So they're obsessed with this. They think it's mad. um They're like, God, but but why? Look at them.
00:39:22
Speaker
Why? but i what is this? They have the head knowledge, but not the experiential knowledge.
00:39:30
Speaker
In Luke 15, 10, we're told that angels party when a human gets saved on the earth.
00:39:39
Speaker
I said earlier that archangels and angel princes chief princes and other angels are assigned i am certain localities to monitor.
00:39:51
Speaker
and Michael is the archangel, and probably the lead of the warring angels, Heaven's Army, and he has been assigned over Israel specifically, Daniel 12.1.
00:40:05
Speaker
And the warring angel heaven's army is called the host of heaven, the heavenly host, 1 Kings 22, 19. So these are the angel the Lord has created to watch over us, to help us, to assist us.
00:40:23
Speaker
So Jacob continues on his way, meets Laban, has the strange relationship with Rachel, Leah, their two maidservants.
00:40:33
Speaker
And after many, many years, decides, okay, I'm going go back to land of Canaan. And when he's on his way back to the land of Canaan, he's very concerned.
00:40:45
Speaker
Esau still lives there. And will his twin brother be happy to see him? Or will he be murderously hateful after all this time?
00:40:57
Speaker
So he sends caravans. ahead of him and says, here, please buy back my my brother's love. um If he's really upset, give him this and and you guys, you over there. And if he attacks you, well, you guys have half my property, just run somewhere else. And he's making this big strategy out of fear. And he's especially afraid when he hears that Esau's coming with 400 men. He thinks a war is a about to break out.
00:41:27
Speaker
So he's deeply, deeply distressed. Deeply, deeply disturbed. He sends his family across a river. And then he's alone. He probably didn't have a lot of alone time.
00:41:39
Speaker
He had four wives, one daughter, and 13 sons. Alone time is not privilege he was all that familiar with in his later years.
00:41:50
Speaker
But just as he was alone running away from Esau, now he's alone coming back. And then Jesus comes to him again. This time as a wrestler, because no offense if you like wrestling, I just don't get the hype. um And this is in Genesis 32. 22 to 32.
00:42:13
Speaker
the thirty two
00:42:20
Speaker
And it reads, That night, Jacob got up. and took his two wives, his two maidservants, and his eleven sons across the ford of the Jebok.
00:42:34
Speaker
After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. Now the title of this story is Jacob wrestles with God, so it's the God man, it's Jesus.
00:42:51
Speaker
So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak.
00:42:57
Speaker
When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip. So his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Kind of sounds to me like Jesus cheated.
00:43:12
Speaker
Then the man said, me go it's daybreak. This Jesus talking now. Let me go. But Jacob replied, i will not let you go until you bless me.
00:43:25
Speaker
The man asked him, What's your name? Jacob, he answered. Then the man said, Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men have overcome.
00:43:43
Speaker
Jacob said, Please tell me your name. But he replied, Why do you ask me my name?
00:43:52
Speaker
Why do you ask questions you already know the answer to? Then he blessed him there. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.
00:44:11
Speaker
The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip. Therefore, it to this day, the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the sockets of the hip.
00:44:23
Speaker
because the socket of Jacob's hip was touched near the tendon.
00:44:32
Speaker
What Jesus said to Jacob is very, very accurate. You have struggled with God and with men. He had struggled, presumably with his father Isaac, knowing that Isaac preferred his brother Esau,
00:44:53
Speaker
He had struggled with Esau in that he had cheated him out of his birthright and out of his and blessing from Isaac.
00:45:09
Speaker
He married two sisters.
00:45:13
Speaker
And the petty jealousy and manipulation that went on between them as to who got to spend the night with him on southern such and such a night was just insane. You kind of read it and you're like, am I actually still reading the Bible?
00:45:32
Speaker
Crazy people. Factor in but but but the yeah the two maidservants and just...
00:45:44
Speaker
A nuts family. Properly nuts. He had spent his whole life fighting with somebody.
00:45:55
Speaker
In the end, saviour, Uncle Laban, tricked him into servitude for 14 years. I'm sure after the first instance of, psych, you married the wrong woman. Whoopsie.
00:46:12
Speaker
I'm sure their relationship was tense and only got worse as time went on. He'd spent his whole life struggling.
00:46:20
Speaker
He'd spent his whole life fighting. He'd spent his life grieving. He'd spent his life in aggravation.
00:46:31
Speaker
And yet finally, he sees God face to face again. The same God who said, I'll be with you when you go. I'll be with you when you come back. And going make you a mighty nation.
00:46:44
Speaker
And this time he sees him and he grabs onto him. And he says, I will not let you go. It's like Mary Magdalene style at the empty grave. Clinging, I will not let you go. you have to bless me.
00:46:58
Speaker
Just one touch. Just one word. Just say something. Just do something. I just need something from you. That one special thing.
00:47:11
Speaker
And the Lord gives him the name Israel, which would, of course, become the name of the country. Because Jacob was a heel grabber. Jacob was a deceiver.
00:47:26
Speaker
And he had been a heel grabber. He'd been picking away at this, picking away at this, picking away at this, picking away at this. He had been a liar. He had been deceptive. And then people had grabbed things from him.
00:47:40
Speaker
And people had deceived him.
00:47:44
Speaker
And the Lord says, no, calling you Israel. I'm renaming you and giving you a new identity.
00:47:51
Speaker
Israel has four translations, according to most commentators and most translators.
00:48:00
Speaker
One is one who struggles with God. And he did struggle until eventually he gave up the fight.
00:48:11
Speaker
God is prince. And of course, Jesus is the king of of Israel.
00:48:20
Speaker
Three, he will be prince with God. Israel had a mandate to be the faith capital of the world, miracle central in the world.
00:48:35
Speaker
And it was their job to evangelize the rest of the nations. They didn't do so great a job of it. lot of people say, i love the Book of Acts. It's about how the church grew. I'm like, no, the Book of Acts is how the nation of Israel failed.
00:48:50
Speaker
They a couple good chapters and then things went downhill pretty quickly. And now it's the Gentiles' job but to evangelize the earth and work back in towards Israel.
00:49:02
Speaker
And then number four... He has become a receptacle in which God can be received and retained.
00:49:12
Speaker
They're supposed to have the knowledge of God in that nation
00:49:18
Speaker
and send it outward. They're supposed to get it right and spread it outward. They're supposed to retain the living water and spread it outward.
00:49:33
Speaker
These are the four main translations of Israel.
00:49:51
Speaker
Before we switch gears and look at this through an end times lens, are there any questions at the moment?
00:50:02
Speaker
on his biography or those encounters with Jesus.
00:50:16
Speaker
Brendan, I do have one. yeah them
00:50:20
Speaker
From things that I have heard, and did Jacob have to wait to work the seven years before he got the brides? Or did he get the bride and then still have to complete the the the amount of time that he needed to work?
00:50:35
Speaker
Both. a The first time to marry Rachel, he had to work seven years and then marry her. But they had a bit of a wife swap and him where he woke up and it was Leah. He was in bed beside him. And then Laban said, okay, fulfill your marital duty for one week.
00:51:02
Speaker
And then I will give you Rachel, but you have to work for me for another seven years. So it was work for seven years, get married the first time.
00:51:14
Speaker
One week later, get married a second time and then work for another seven years. So both are true, just in the reverse order. or Yeah. so Great.
00:51:29
Speaker
Brendan, when you share your screen and it's black with me, is that the same with everybody else? so No.
Polygamy and Family Dynamics in Biblical Times
00:51:40
Speaker
love got I know you're sharing something there when share your screen.
00:51:44
Speaker
Yeah. and I can see it fine. You can see it fine. Okay. What if I do... It must be something with my thing then. It's probably something with my friends I have to work with. Okay. What about this? do you Can you see it this time?
00:51:58
Speaker
No, it Brendan has started sharing screen there. can see it now. Okay, okay. aim Right, I know what's happening. The way that I did the first time was people could still see me on the screen and then the thing behind me.
00:52:14
Speaker
What I did this time was I put the image on the screen but not me. So for whatever reason, it's just picking it up differently on yours depending on which one do. Cool, cool. Okay, Brendan. No worries. Awesome.
00:52:29
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I have two questions. One, um um i ah ah really often wondered why why did Jesus put Jacob's hip out of joint?
00:52:46
Speaker
And the other one is, why did God allow them polygamy in the Old Testament? Yep, sure. Yeah. sorry um I think the reason he put his hip out of his joint was so that he would be humble.
00:53:05
Speaker
Because this was a guy who had cheated, who had stolen, showed could be very manipulative when he wanted to be. He was willing to do whatever it took to get what he wanted. Like we have a situation in RD at the moment where a woman in this town and who was a nurse, robbed I cannot tell you how many thousands of euros off her sick old patients.
00:53:37
Speaker
Just totally and utterly used and abused their trust andlic them and She was put in prison for a few days. sad she had things out.
00:53:49
Speaker
And then they were like, okay you can go home again. She stole thousands of old sick people. And she pretended she had a mental illness and they were like, OK, well, in that case, dear, you can just go home.
00:54:02
Speaker
And so a lot of people in the town are absolutely livid, properly furious because of the injustice of it. And the same way Jacob was willing teach a blind man, an old blind man,
00:54:19
Speaker
So the behavior is properly reprehensible. And yet he had this incredible encounter with Jesus the first time with the staircase. and And then a second time where it's not Jesus just standing on the top in this throne complex in the heavenlies.
00:54:38
Speaker
But now he's so close he can touch him. He's in 3D. He is right there with him. Had this incredible encounter. And he's told, listen, you are going to be and effectively, you know, the patriarch of this great nation that's going to redefine the trajectory of the human race.
00:54:59
Speaker
I think Jesus going up was keep him humble. Was so that he would have to rely on Jesus going forward. He'd walk with a bit of a limp.
00:55:10
Speaker
i But Jesus would be his walking stick. The Lord would be his crotch, as opposed to manipulation, as opposed to poker deck by today's reckoning.
00:55:27
Speaker
That's where I believe he did it. lo And then for the polygamy question, which is a great one. and God never said he wanted polygamy. He made one man and one woman to be one husband and one wife for life long.
00:55:45
Speaker
am But the polygamy started Cain's line. So Abeneuve's son Cain, his descendants are the ones who introduced polygamy. He had a descendant called Lamech.
00:56:01
Speaker
He the first human. The Bible had two wives. And the reality is we could say that's with anything. You know, why did God tolerate people who gossiped? Why did he tolerate people who lied? Why he tolerate blasphemers? Why he tolerate murderers? did he tolerate... You go through the whole long list, but his grace and his mercy forbears people.
00:56:24
Speaker
Didn't want it, didn't like it. It led to a very messy, unstable family for Jacob. um It led to a very unstable, unhealthy family for King David.
00:56:38
Speaker
You see it all across the Bible. it ends up in ruin and disaster. Embarrassingly humiliating stories.
00:56:47
Speaker
But he forbears at people. He shoots his patience cause because of his grace, because of his mercy. And even despite the nonsense people get up to, he still has an ability, according to his will, to work it together for a lot of time.
00:57:04
Speaker
Yeah. then It's a bit like Paul's thorn in the flesh, is it? and It's probably a thorn in the flesh for the Lord to have to look at more people doing the opposite of what he told them to do.
00:57:19
Speaker
a But even, let's say, David. David had multiple wives. Shouldn't have. Did. Um...
00:57:30
Speaker
the most infamous of them all was Bathsheba, how he acquired her. um Which I will teach on weeks from now. So we'll give spoilers here.
00:57:41
Speaker
But they had a son, Solomon. And the Lord was like, you know what, Solomon? You are going to be the king of this country. And through you, Jesus is going to come.
00:57:52
Speaker
um Mad family situation. His mother should never have been in David's house, let alone his wife.
00:58:03
Speaker
But even though people did the wrong thing, even though people committed sin, even though people did stupid, heinous, abysmal things, God still worked it to good for his redemption plan.
00:58:17
Speaker
Yeah, thanks. and Brendan. Yep. You said that you're saying that Jacob is a deceiver because he stole the blessing from me, so However, Esau had exchanged his birthright before that happened, so... Yes, beforehand.
00:58:39
Speaker
Would till he be a deceiver if that was his birthright, essentially? The reality is he still went into Isaac dressed as Esau, smelling of Esau.
00:58:53
Speaker
After Isaac was like, you sound like Jacob, but you smell and feel like Esau. I imagine he kind of probably changed his voice. Like, horror of course I'm Esau. You know, it sounded very brusque and manly.
00:59:08
Speaker
Like i know that the hunter in the family. Um, so you can, there's blame to go around. Esau was an idiot. Esau was a joke. He, whatever you can say about Adam and Eve, I think Esau is idiotic times 10. Um, but I, but Jacob still with an act of his will set out to deceive Isaac. I mean, yeah, to, to, to go to the effort of skinning a goat putting it around your arms, making sure that it was clasped tightly enough and he wasn't going to feel straps.
00:59:44
Speaker
He put thought and calculation to every second of it. Okay. Yeah, I get it now. So he takes two to tango. yeah But he's responsible for his parts in it.
00:59:56
Speaker
Yeah. No, make it makes sense now. Thank you. no worries.
01:00:07
Speaker
All right, guys, let's have a little look at this crazy, crazy wedding that took place a between Jacob and the two sisters.
01:00:19
Speaker
This is Genesis 29, 14 to something I really want to show you here, which perhaps you haven't completed before. it
01:00:33
Speaker
It says, then Laban said to him, You are my own flesh and blood. but He almost sounds like he cares. You know, he's probably already beginning to plot how can I use and abuse this guy.
01:00:44
Speaker
After Jacob had stayed with him a whole month, Laban said to him, Just because you're a relative of mine, should you work for me for nothing? Tell me what your wages should be.
01:00:56
Speaker
You know, you might be my relative, but that doesn't mean you have to get school to do freebies. I will pay you. Now, Laban had two daughters. the name The older one was Leah, the younger one was Rachel.
01:01:09
Speaker
Leah weak eyes, which is the Bible's polite way of saying. If you wanted to look at her, he had to squint. But Rachel was lovefully in form and beautiful.
01:01:21
Speaker
So you kind of see the the opposite of what this contrast is, yeah?
01:01:27
Speaker
Laban said, no, sorry, I skipped line. and Jacob was in love with Rachel and said, I'll work for you seven years in return for your younger daughter, Rachel. Laban said, it's better that I give her to you than to some other man.
01:01:44
Speaker
Stay here with me. So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seem like only a few days to him because of his love for her. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. wow wow
01:01:56
Speaker
Then Jacob said to Laban, give me my wife. My time is completed and I want to lie with her. i might have said that to your uncle about your cousin. Dude. So Laban brought together all the people of the place and gave a feast.
01:02:12
Speaker
But when evening came, he took his daughter Leah and gave her to Jacob and Jacob lay with her. And Laban gave his servant girl Zilpah to his daughter as her maidservant.
01:02:25
Speaker
probably not knowing Jacob would take her as a wife as well. When morning came, there was Leah with the best time the Bible ever used an exclamation point.
01:02:37
Speaker
So Jacob said to Laban, what is this you've done to me? i served you for Rachel, didn't Why have you deceived me? Laban replied, it's not our custom here or to give the younger daughter in marriage for the older one.
01:02:54
Speaker
Social mores. Norms. C'est la vie. It is what it is. Finish this daughter's bridal. So be good to her for seven days.
01:03:08
Speaker
Then we will give you the younger one also in return for another seven years work, of course. And Jacob did so. He finished the week with Leah and then Laban gave him his daughter, Rachel, to be his wife.
01:03:22
Speaker
Laban gave his servant girl Bilhat to his daughter Rachel as her maidservant. Jacob lay with Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah.
Joseph's Journey and Spiritual Parallels
01:03:31
Speaker
And he worked for Laban another seven years.
01:03:37
Speaker
So we have this story about a bridegroom who does some labor-intensive work for seven years in order to get his bride But it doesn't happen.
01:03:56
Speaker
Then there's a gap. Then another seven years are necessary in order to fully appropriate and procure his bride.
01:04:08
Speaker
You might be wondering what all these Bible verses are on the screen. I'm not going to go through them all. These are some of many that talk about the bride of Christ.
01:04:21
Speaker
as it pertains to nations on earth. One nation. Israel. The only country that any of these Bible verses speak of is Israel. The nation of Israel is the bride of Christ.
01:04:38
Speaker
We, the Gentiles, are called the body of Christ. Big difference. So, in all these Bible verses, you see the Lord's heart is for that one nation in particular.
01:04:53
Speaker
And in the end times, for those of you who don't know too much about the apocalypse, don't worry about it. Like I said, it could very well be Discipleship Volume 3. We'll get to in the future. But in the end times, in the apocalypse, in the Book of Revelation, and we basically see ah one world government in power, and the Lord is actively trying to win the nation Israel back for himself.
01:05:20
Speaker
But the Lord already spent seven years trying to win Israel the bride for himself. And it happened in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
01:05:32
Speaker
Luke chapter three, verses one to two, talks about when Tiberius Caesar became the ruler. um And effectively, if you go through the timeline, the dates,
01:05:46
Speaker
It shows that John the Baptist began ministering for three and a half years, beginning in 26 a d What was John the Baptist's job?
01:05:58
Speaker
It was to turn the hearts of parents to their children, children to their parents, to tell the nation to repent of their sin, to believe in the identity of the Messiah, to get water baptized.
01:06:13
Speaker
That was his message. He began this in 26 AD, and he served for three and a half years. Ultimately, didn't go so well for him.
01:06:25
Speaker
He got his head chopped off by yeah the puppet government. He wasn't really the king, but the puppet government in Israel at the time.
01:06:37
Speaker
Then Jesus spent three and a half years ministering, and that in total is seven years. A seven-year period. This presentation of the Messiah trying to win the lost sheep of Israel to himself.
01:06:56
Speaker
Trying to win you know, the ten virgins, this nation, this bride, to himself. But they did not want him.
01:07:09
Speaker
They beheaded John the Baptist. They crucified Jesus. And while Jesus was on the way to the Lothar to be crucified,
01:07:23
Speaker
and Luke 23, we've got a very sad story, very sad episode. It says, as the soldiers led him away, They seized Simon of Cyrene on his way in from the country, and they put the cross on him to carry behind Jesus.
01:07:41
Speaker
A great number of people followed him, including women who kept mourning and wailing for him. i think it's very specific, it was women. But Jesus turned them said, daughters of Jerusalem, don't weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.
01:08:00
Speaker
Look, The days are coming when people will say, blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore and breasts that never nursed.
01:08:14
Speaker
At that time, they will say to the mountains, fall on us and to the hills, cover us. For if men do these things while the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?
01:08:31
Speaker
You next see people begging for mountains to fall on top of them in the Book of Revelation during the Apocalypse. Between John the Baptist three and a half years and Jesus three and a half years, you have a seven-year period when the tree was green.
01:08:49
Speaker
Israel was miracle central. The Bible teaching was actually good. Prophetic utterances were very easy to come by.
01:09:01
Speaker
Creative miracles were happening. Lives were getting transformed. There were breakouts of deliverance here and breakouts of revival there. The tree was green. The country was flourishing.
01:09:12
Speaker
And they didn't want it. So what happened?
01:09:20
Speaker
The Lord needs a do-over. Another seven-year period in which things will be harder. The tree will be dry.
01:09:33
Speaker
Things will be barren. To have children will make your life a very scary place. It will be easier to have no one to look after. It'll be easier not to have the hush-up baby, because the Antichrist will be ruling the world. That's what lee he's saying here.
01:09:51
Speaker
I gave my bride seven years to choose me. Seven years. And what happened? Leah. Ugly.
01:10:04
Speaker
Rejected. Power plays. Manipulation. They did not want it. So instead, he has a do-over. He has a repeat.
01:10:14
Speaker
And the Book of Revelation, if you haven't read it, the last book in the Bible, it's wonderful and terrible and terrifying and gorgeous. And the majority of it takes place in a seven-year period.
01:10:28
Speaker
where the tree is very definitely dry, and the days are darker than ever before, and the horses have left the stables, and the horsemen are running amok, and there are wars, and there are rumors of wars, and there are earthquakes, and there are diseases, and there's witchcraft, and are their heads chopped off.
01:10:47
Speaker
But eventually, all Israel is saved. Not most, not many, not some. All Israel is eventually saved.
01:10:58
Speaker
in Revelation 19, when Jesus comes out of heaven on a white horse, holding a sword, kills the Antichrist, the evil ten kings, the wicked nations rising up against his bride, and finally he has his bride, he has his nation, and evil is entirely dealt with.
01:11:17
Speaker
So in Jacob's story, you have a seven-year period where things are so good, and it just feels like a few days, and there's much excitement in the air, And Laban goes, heck, psych.
01:11:31
Speaker
And then another seven years are required in order for him to procure his one true love. And in Jesus and John the Baptist ministry, they had seven years of miracles and fun and dynamism and excitement.
01:11:46
Speaker
And the nation he came to save. The nation said, Hosanna in the highest. Who threw frickin' palm branches in front of him. few days later said crucify him.
01:11:59
Speaker
He's a blasphemer. He deserves this. God hates him. Kill him. The very people, he could have said I i healed your child.
01:12:11
Speaker
He could have said
01:12:16
Speaker
had such plans for you. I had a destiny for you. I had good perfect pleasing plans for you and this is how you're claiming. He could have. But he didn't respond.
01:12:31
Speaker
He was obedient unto death, even death on a cross. But because they rejected him in those seven years, it's important for a do-over.
01:12:43
Speaker
For the word of God to be completed, another seven-year period has to be forced into the prophetic timeline. And that happens not when the tree is green. It happens when the tree is very definitely dry and as close to dead as dead can be. have a similar examination of Joseph, OK?
01:13:11
Speaker
Not as long and detailed as Jacob, but similar. Again, Joseph is my favorite character in the Bible. This is Jacob's son.
01:13:21
Speaker
When Joseph is 17, his father gives him Technicolor dream coat. It's amazing. And it sets him apart from all of his other brothers.
01:13:36
Speaker
His youngest brother, Benjamin, loves him to bits, has no problem. The older brothers deeply despise Joseph. So they take off his coat.
01:13:47
Speaker
They throw him down a well. They consider murdering him. They decide if we murder him, we have to cover up the crime. if we sell him, we get money.
01:14:01
Speaker
So they fake his death and they tell her their father that he was eaten.
01:14:08
Speaker
Between the ages of 17 and 28, he in Egypt.
01:14:12
Speaker
slave in egypt He's the best slave, works his way up to being the top slave for a man called Potiphar. And then Mrs. Potiphar puts the moves on him.
01:14:25
Speaker
Day after day, she's like, Joseph, you're so strong. Joseph. And he's like, please, lady. First of all, I'm 17 and you're 40.
01:14:38
Speaker
Secondly, you're married. This ain't happening. And in her bitterness, in her event, she takes his coat. And she says, this man tried to rape me.
01:14:52
Speaker
And without any investigation, without looking for witnesses, without a fair trial, he is thrown in prison and treated as a sexual predator.
01:15:11
Speaker
But the Lord is merciful to him, even in the prison. And he works his way up to being the number one inmate.
01:15:21
Speaker
Pharaoh's butler and baker.
01:15:26
Speaker
The man responsible for the wine and the bread. First communion. They get thrown into the prison. They have dreams. Joseph interprets them.
01:15:37
Speaker
One of them is told, you'll be lifted up. The other is told you will be hung on a tree and you're gonna die.
01:15:47
Speaker
And just like Jesus on the cross, one thief the one on his right, went to paradise with him. The one on his left perished and is still burning in hellfire.
01:16:04
Speaker
Between the ages of 28 and 30, he squats in that prison. The cupbearer, the butler, gets out. Doesn't think about him once. Doesn't tell anyone, oh wow, there's a dream interpreter in in the jail. This is amazing. No, just gives him no regard.
01:16:24
Speaker
When Joseph is 30, Pharaoh has a couple dreams. And in those dreams, he sees seven years of plenty. And he sees seven years of famine. You might see where I'm going with this.
01:16:38
Speaker
In view of what I just shared about Jacob.
01:16:42
Speaker
Pharaoh says, well, I don't know what this means, but it feels important. And the booker says, oh, hang on a second. know someone who can help you.
01:16:53
Speaker
His name's Joseph. So Joseph is taken out of prison. He's shaved because the Egyptians hated facial hair. That's important. You know, Jesus...
01:17:07
Speaker
After he left Pontius Pilate's presence, the beard was torn off his face. And Joseph is about to go to Pharaoh and his beard is removed as well.
01:17:21
Speaker
yeah To foreshadow Joseph's a picture of Jesus. And Joseph interprets the dream with the power of Holy Spirit. And he says seven years of such phenomenal abundance are coming to this land.
01:17:39
Speaker
But then they will be eclipsed by seven years of famine, so detrimental and imaginable, you've got to be ready. And Pharaoh makes him the prime minister of Egypt and names him Zaphon et Paneah.
01:17:54
Speaker
God lives and God speaks. Some translations even say the God of mysteries.
01:18:03
Speaker
Between the ages of 30 and 37, the seven years of plenty, Between the ages 37 and... and 44. for their I can count.
01:18:16
Speaker
thirty seven and forty four i can count i cant read. are the years of famine. But when 39, two years into the famine, his brothers arrive, looking for help.
01:18:28
Speaker
Canaan is also experiencing the famine.
01:18:33
Speaker
And Joseph looks at them, but he does not see his brother Benjamin amongst them. So he wonders, oh my goodness, with me out of the way, what the hell did they do to him?
01:18:45
Speaker
So he puts them through love tests.
01:18:50
Speaker
Tests designed to expose their character.
01:18:55
Speaker
You have another brother. Where is he? Go get him. Go all way back to your country, all the way back here. Show him to me. And by the way, one of you is going to go into prison. Until you get back.
01:19:08
Speaker
He needed to make sure that Benjamin was not being maltreated as he had been. He needs to make sure Benjamin was not a slave somewhere in Egypt like he had been.
01:19:20
Speaker
needs to make sure that Benjamin had not also been eaten by a wolf like he had been. And when he sees the deep love that they have,
01:19:33
Speaker
for a young Benjamin when he sees the devotion they have that they would go to prison or be killed before letting a single thing happen to that kid.
01:19:47
Speaker
He is overcome and undone. And he says, Zephanet Pineda is not my real name. I'm actually Joseph. van the brother of that.
01:20:00
Speaker
You're maltreated, you
01:20:04
Speaker
had evil intentions for me, but God has worked it together for the saving of many lives. I was sent ahead to do what is now being done, to see the multitudes being protected,
01:20:20
Speaker
to see my family being put back together again.
01:20:28
Speaker
As the famine worsens, Joseph has to change strategies in order to stop the Egyptians from starving to death.
01:20:37
Speaker
When he's 56, Jacob dies. When Joseph's 110, he dies himself, but says, guys, when you head back to Canaan, when you go back to the promised land, take my bones with you.
01:20:48
Speaker
I'll be buried in Egypt for now, but I don't want to stay here forever. Take my body back.
01:20:55
Speaker
But again, it's very significant, the seven years and the seven years. Seven years of plenty. They represent from 26 onwards, the three and a half year ministry of John the Baptist and the three and a half year ministry of Jesus.
01:21:13
Speaker
And we know that Jesus taught taught off for three and a half years because three different Passovers are mentioned in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And the time of miracles.
01:21:25
Speaker
healings, dead people literally coming back to life in real time, withered hands,
01:21:36
Speaker
and like baby skin, fully formed, blind eyes open, deaf ears hear, mute tongue speak, deliverance, a dirty word in some Christian circles, oh my goodness, but he did it, unapologetically, many times over,
01:21:56
Speaker
Casting demons out of people, seeing them set free.
01:22:01
Speaker
Prophecies, especially regarding the apocalypse, but sometimes shorter things as well. Even he died and came back from the dead. Seven years of plenty, one might say.
01:22:17
Speaker
And despite all of this, despite coming to feed the last sheep of Israel, despite both men giving their all for that country, for the Father's business, for the will of God to see it done, to see it made complete in their time, to see the fullness of the house of Israel coming to salvation.
01:22:44
Speaker
The very people who shouted Hosanna in the highest shouted crucify him. Daughters of Jerusalem, don't weep for me.
01:22:57
Speaker
Weep for yourselves and your children. He wasn't talking to the women right there. He's talking the women in the future. Look, the days are coming. Not here. They're coming. There's a gap.
01:23:12
Speaker
But it will come eventually. Think of Jacob got married. Gap. Another seven years. Look, the days are coming when people will say blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore, breasts that never nursed.
01:23:30
Speaker
Jesus would say in Matthew regarding the apocalypse and that it will be very terrible for women who have young children at that time. Imagine hiding from the forces of the Antichrist, i mean, a one world government that puts our one world government to shame.
01:23:49
Speaker
Ours is run by pensioners, sodomites, and pedophiles. Theirs will be run by the most wicked humans of all time.
01:23:58
Speaker
and at that time people will be so disturbed and distressed by the levels of evil that they will look at mountains and say, crush us. Just put us out of our misery. Let it be over and done with.
01:24:14
Speaker
You look at the book of Revelation, there are occasions in which Tartarus which is a hell dimension where demons from Noah's day escape. They're let out and they afflict the human race, giving them the sting of death that won't let them die.
01:24:30
Speaker
hot on their heels, demons come out of the abyss and they're murdering people by the billions.
01:24:38
Speaker
People say, cover us, hide us.
01:24:43
Speaker
But the nation... of Israel did not choose Jesus when the tree was green, when the times were good. So they need a do-over. And they will make that decision when the tree is dry, when things are bad, when things are hard, when it feels very much like the end, when reality is imploding on itself.
01:25:09
Speaker
And in Joseph's story, Seven Years of Plenty, Where are his brothers who betrayed him? Nowhere to be seen. And his brothers are the nation of Israel.
01:25:22
Speaker
But then you have the seven years of famine. hard famine. A dastardly famine. A famine that spread all across the regions.
01:25:34
Speaker
Horrific. But that's when the nation of Israel got put back together again. When they returned the one that they'd betrayed. when they returned to the one they had scorned, when they returned to the one that they had rejected, when they turned to the one they had despised.
01:25:56
Speaker
And he threw himself upon them, hugged them more tightly than he'd probably ever hugged his wife, wept, and they were restored as one family.
01:26:11
Speaker
And in the end times, that's what the the great tribulation is all about, the seven perilous years. It's about Jesus coming back for his nation, Israel, for his bride, for that nation he calls his family, to put the house of Israel, not just some of them, the whole house of Israel, back together again.
01:26:40
Speaker
So I know this is a very different kind of Wednesday teaching. Only two instances of they Jesus appearing to Jacob. But um I thought that the similarities between Jacob's 14 years and Joseph's 14 years, especially pertaining to the book of Revelation, were very, very interesting. That's I just said I'd pigeonhole them in for a bit of variety.
01:27:07
Speaker
Any thoughts, comments, questions, or queries? Or are your heads full?
01:27:15
Speaker
And if you're not too up to date on eschatology and the end times and that went way over head, don't worry about it. Like I said, we will look at it in the future.
01:27:25
Speaker
was just wondering, Brandon, does that the apocalypse and the all the diseases and everything, is that just focused on Israel or is it the whole world?
01:27:38
Speaker
You... So right now, Kitty, in the age of the body of Christ, God is primarily focusing on the Gentile nations.
01:27:49
Speaker
And his aim is to bring in the fullness of the Gentiles. So Israel gets jealous for Jesus and they get into that's his plan. And once the fullness of the Gentiles has been brought in once the maximum number of Gentile nations believe, that's when the rapture will happen. When he's going to scoop us up and take us to the world of heaven.
01:28:12
Speaker
And after that happens, when you read the book of Revelation, the Gentiles are the villains.
End Times Prophecies and Biblical Connections
01:28:21
Speaker
It's the Israelites who evangelize the earth. 144,000 Israelites evangelize the earth.
01:28:29
Speaker
It's the nation of Israel that the two witnesses, enoch and Elijah, come down to. and It's the nation of Israel and that Jesus, sorry, that the Antichrist tries to destroy.
01:28:44
Speaker
then Jesus comes out of heaven with the heavenly host and massacres the Antichrist and his evil army, the one world government, to liberate Israel. So when you, you will have wicked Israelites. You will have evil Israelites.
01:28:58
Speaker
But they will be done away with. They will be punished for for their crimes. But when the only people left in Israel are the faithful, are the believers, that's when Jesus is going to come back.
01:29:11
Speaker
So in the body of Christ dispensation, the church age, it's mainly Gentile nations who believe that Jesus Lord. He wants the Jews. He wants everybody. It's mainly Gentiles.
01:29:24
Speaker
In the end times in the seven perilous years in the great tribulation, in the apocalypse. And it is the righteous Israelite to evangelize the earth.
01:29:38
Speaker
But the Gentile nations are main villains. It kind of reverts.
01:29:48
Speaker
But the the um plagues and all that, are are they just for on on the Jews? No, no, they'll be all across the nations because it will be a one world government where you'll have the Antichrist in overall operation, but he divides the earth into ten sectors or districts and or zones with that a wicked king over all of them. So he has a it's a consortium, a conglomerate of ten wicked kings under him.
01:30:23
Speaker
and So the punishments will be meted out all across the world. How close are we to the Antichrist? Well, it's a great question, Caroline. The reality is the Antichrist has is not the devil's last plan.
01:30:48
Speaker
The Antichrist was always the devil's plan. If you look at Isaiah 14, most English translations kind of give a very flat, generic translation of it.
01:31:02
Speaker
i But if you look at the different words, different words can have multiple meanings. and And actually, in Isaiah 1.14, it actually can be translated as i want to make myself and like the Most High.
01:31:21
Speaker
Satan speaking. and Only one creature is like the Most High. Humans. Humans are made in God's image. So even when he first rebelled, Lucifer said, I want to make myself in the image of God. I want to make myself a human.
01:31:38
Speaker
Because he knew that you had to be a human if you wanted to rule planet Earth. um You look at Genesis 1-2, and talk with Holy Spirit hovering over the waters,
01:31:53
Speaker
Waters in Hebrew can mean the sea. It can mean urine. can mean something a little stronger than urine that I won't say in a Bible study.
01:32:05
Speaker
And it can also mean sperm or semen. So potentially, eve as soon as Lucifer got thrown of heaven, he was already trying to manufacture and a human being, a human vessel to live within.
01:32:20
Speaker
and You look at Genesis 3. now Okay, he didn't have live in a human body. Adam and Eve wouldn't have let him in. But he entered into a serpent. He entered into a physical creature to manipulate them.
01:32:34
Speaker
You look at Genesis 6 and you have angels sleeping with women creating Nephilim. Half angel, half humans. Hybrids. You look at Nimrod, who creates the first ever one world government.
01:32:49
Speaker
And...
01:32:52
Speaker
Historians believe that he married his mother, Semiramis. And it was the first instance in the Bible that you see of paganism, of worshiping people or things other than God.
01:33:10
Speaker
and It's when demonic worship of powers and principalities began. Most wicked religions on the earth today can be traced back the Tower of Babel You look at Nebuchadnezzar and his empire Babylon. Look at Assyria.
01:33:25
Speaker
The enemy has always tried to bring a one world government into the earth. He always wants an Antichrist ready because he doesn't know when the rapture will happen. So he always wants to be ready.
01:33:37
Speaker
But his big aim is in Daniel 7, 25 to wear out the saints. When God's people stop fighting,
01:33:49
Speaker
He knows he's got a very good chance of seizing total control. When God's people give up the fight, when God's people just don't give a damn. When God's people are apathetic or passive, indifferent or lazy, distracted.
01:34:04
Speaker
When God's people have too many shows to watch on Netflix, to body your bother evangelizing, to find out about Jesus Christ. and That's when he feels very, very confident.
01:34:18
Speaker
And it all says Daniel 7, 25, he wants to change laws and times. He knows what biblical prophecy says, but he wants to subvert and undo biblical prophecy. He's actually arrogant enough to believe can stop the word of God and take in place.
01:34:36
Speaker
So when will the rapture happen? The answer is when the fullness of the Gentiles has been brought in. When will the Antichrist emerge? Well, there's already an Antichrist in the world. The devil always has at least one.
01:34:52
Speaker
The capital A Antichrist can't rise until the body of Christ is no more. But he always has people on the earth. He always has men on the earth who are ready to step into that position.
01:35:09
Speaker
But again, when we do a full-on study on the end times... These are all the idiosyncrasies and nuances that we'll look into. Yeah, exactly. Because there's so much now in the world happening that describes it. Pretty crazy out there.
01:35:25
Speaker
Yeah. brendan And he he has contenders. He he has his eye on a few politicians in particular. And I can tell you who they are. i Go on, Hades. Yeah.
01:35:36
Speaker
Coming back to to the story of Jacob Lee and Rachel. Yeah. Sorry. okay so Which would be the representative of Gentiles and which one would be the representative of Israel?
01:35:54
Speaker
Great question. great so plato lea ye So and Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Jesus' primary objective was to save the lost sheep of Israel.
01:36:06
Speaker
He would say, go to the Gentiles. There were exceptions. But in general, don't go to the Gentiles. Preach the Israelites. Because he needed his is own people to believe before they could spread the message beyond their borders.
01:36:22
Speaker
So the first seven years was his plan to marry his one true love, Israel, and Rachel. But human manipulation got in.
01:36:37
Speaker
People in positions of authority began fiddling around kind of like the Pharisees, the chief priests Pontius Pilate did later on. So his aim was to wed Israel. His aim was to wed Rachel.
01:36:52
Speaker
Then you have the one week in between, you have a gap. You have a space. That's us. That's the body of Christ.
Biblical Eras and Prophecies of the Rapture
01:36:59
Speaker
That's the Gentiles. We are the gap. We are the unexpected.
01:37:03
Speaker
We are the, no one ever knew this was going to happen. We are the, this was never prophesied in the Old Testament. And then he comes back in those seven years again yeah and get guys Israel.
01:37:16
Speaker
So if you think of Adam and Eve to the Tower of Babel, he dealt with everybody. 2,000 years.
01:37:29
Speaker
You have Tower Babel, which is when he called Abram. Abram was a contemporary of Nimrod. Abram lived in Ur, which was one of Nimrod's regions.
01:37:41
Speaker
From Abram up until the end of the Book of Acts, when Paul just said, you know what? Screw it, is Israel. If you don't want Jesus, I'll go somewhere else. You've got about a 2,000-year period there too, where Israel is the focus.
01:37:56
Speaker
Then you have a 2,000-year period, which is the Gentiles, ourselves. That's from the Book of Romans. Salvation by faith alone, apart from the Old Testament law.
01:38:09
Speaker
Up until the book of Philemon, in which a slave returns to his master. We bond servants return to our master.
01:38:19
Speaker
Philemon is a prophecy of the rapture. People get hung up on the word slave. They're like, what do people who change? It's a prophecy about the rapture.
01:38:31
Speaker
We are the 2000 years here. And then once we are gone, Israel becomes his focus again. so you've got some however long will pass between the rapture and the tribulation beginning.
01:38:46
Speaker
Maybe it happens the day after. Maybe there's a gap of years. Doesn't matter. um And then you've got the seven years of tribulation and the 1000 years when Jesus rules as their king. So at least 1007 years, which will be Israel focused.
01:39:03
Speaker
Okay. Then the devil has his final attempt to destroy God's people once and for all. And um then Jesus remakes reality. Okay.
01:39:15
Speaker
Yeah. Brilliant. Thank you. we're Leah. We are Leah. we have we are lea
01:39:22
Speaker
We are just, we're we're we're in that that special, curious little gap. But listen, that you might feel like Aaliyah sometimes looking in the mirror and say, God, how did this ever become my life?
01:39:34
Speaker
But just know that he absolutely loves you to bits. He loves you with an undying love. You are not a citizen of Israel. You're a citizen of heaven.
Faith, Salvation, and the Body of Christ
01:39:44
Speaker
Amen. And we don't have the blood of Abel saying, you know, justice, avenge me and hand for hand.
01:39:52
Speaker
We have blood that speaks a better word than the blood of people. don't need to do all these rituals and follow all these commands in order to be in his good side.
01:40:08
Speaker
We get in because of what he did on the cross. And we don't have to meet as many of the Ten Commandments as possible because we've already broken them all.
01:40:20
Speaker
and because he's already fulfilled them all. And we're getting to heaven on his reputation. There's a party taking place in a nightclub, and we're like, oh yeah, maybe you've heard of my friend JC? Yeah, I'm with him. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:40:34
Speaker
And then the banter's like, come on in. You know, and sad it's it's it's better. It's never been easier to to be saved. Never easy.
01:40:45
Speaker
But, um... and's Yeah, i'm and you said that um Israel is the bride of Christ and we are the body of Christ. or I never heard that.
01:40:59
Speaker
Massive distinction. different Massive. Christians who call themselves the bride of Christ tend to spend way too much time living in the Old Testament and then whenever they have a bad day, they're flagellating themselves with whips telling themselves that a bad Christian they were they're I'm not really saved and I'm gonna go to hell because they're living under the law.
01:41:24
Speaker
um But to be the body of Christ is a unique revelation, a unique description that is only ever given to Gentile believers in the letters of Paul. Never, not once is are the Gentile church age Christians called the Bride of Christ. Never, not once.
01:41:44
Speaker
And when Christians believe that they're the bride, they start sticking themselves in the book of Revelation or sticking themselves in Bible books that they don't belong in. And that's when people's prophetic, our knowledge of prophecy gets very, very distorted.
01:42:00
Speaker
So yeah, we are the body, not the bride. They are two very different things. And even when you read the book of Revelation, you see no right reference to the body of Christ.
01:42:12
Speaker
it's all the bride who's coming for the nation of Israel because we will already have been raptured. We're already in heaven. We're not on the earth for the book of Revelation. So, um yeah, it's a very important distinction to make.
01:42:27
Speaker
I think it's lovely just that the picture of Joseph yeah when but his brothers came and he saw their love for the little fella. Yeah, yeah. i know It's like a picture of Jesus, isn't it?
01:42:42
Speaker
And his love for Israel. Wow. Yeah. It's an amazing. therapyy It shows that there... Because some people think he was cruel. Because he did put them through their paces. He played a lot of mind games.
01:42:55
Speaker
But same he needed to know... That their repentance was authentic, that it was legit, that it was real. um he couldn't have this nation moving into Egypt looking for help and then find out years later that they're actually still murderers and con artists and liars.
01:43:15
Speaker
um He had to make sure that their their love was sincere, that his brother was protected, was being honoured. And um that they were truly sorry that they had godly sorrow that they'd turned away from their wickedness and that some their evil ways.
01:43:31
Speaker
um So, ah yeah, some people think he was harsh, but there are times when you have to be prudent.
Testing Relationships and Authenticity
01:43:40
Speaker
There are times you have to test people. I do it too.
01:43:44
Speaker
There are times when if someone says, oh, Brendan, you're my best friend. You're amazing. and i just love to bits. And wow and I think, dan you? Really? ah So you know what? I will intentionally say an edgy joke when there I know they're within here in distance.
01:44:00
Speaker
Or I'll intentionally share something in the Bible that's just a little bit scandalous just to get the reaction. Or I'll say something about politics that I 100% would go to the grave for. i It is a hill I'm willing to die on that I know they disagree with just to see their reaction.
01:44:22
Speaker
Because there are people who,
01:44:27
Speaker
they'll pretend that they're on your side when they want something. But it doesn't take a lot to make them crack.
01:44:36
Speaker
And they Joseph knew this. You have to be as innocent as a dog, but you have to be as crafty as a snake to live in this world. They're Jesus words. And when I say this, I'm not talking unbelief, I'm talking Christians.
01:44:50
Speaker
but but um Don't worry, no one on this chat, I haven't done this test, any of That text he sent me, what did he mean? But im no, there are times it behooves you to me to be clever, to be crafty, to be stealthy.
01:45:08
Speaker
and And just get a little bit under people's skin, see what comes out. And sometimes you'll see something you don't like, but that you can work with. And sometimes you'll see that actually um the friendship wasn't real to begin with.
01:45:24
Speaker
And you you see Jesus do it too. use You know, what ah when he had all these crowds of followers, and then he said, what lads, it's for the crack. I'm going to tend the herd here.
01:45:37
Speaker
And he starts saying, you have no parts of me unless you start eating my flesh and drinking my blood. What happened? The vast majority of them went home. said, you know what, the Pharisees are right. This guy is a crazy old coosh.
01:45:51
Speaker
It didn't take a lot to show the artificiality, the superficiality, the underpinning offense, the we want to be part of this so long the tickles our ears, but don't give us anything curious. Don't give us anything difficult. And the thing is, he had a lot of chances to backpedal, to backtrack.
01:46:14
Speaker
With this idiom, this metaphor. And he dug his heels in and he was like, my flesh, drink my blood. Just to show what was actually inside them all along.
01:46:25
Speaker
And after he had thinned the herd, then he turned to his disciples and said, this is what I actually mean. When he was left with the only people who said, Jesus, we've got nowhere else to go.
01:46:36
Speaker
ah You can offend us. You can confuse us. You can speak in riddles all you like. We're in it with you, through thick and thin. That's what he's looking for. And with Joseph, you see a similar story. He wasn't afraid to twist the truth, to tell a lie, to play a mind game, to expose if his brother's hearts were real.
01:47:00
Speaker
and how they were willing to endure the unimaginable for Benjamin showed him, okay, they're actually sorry. They repented.
01:47:12
Speaker
We can be a family now. And um that's what we see in the end times.
Prophetic Fulfillment and Overcoming Evil
01:47:20
Speaker
The very nation who rejected Jesus, who put a thorn bush in his head for every wicked thought that we all have had,
01:47:30
Speaker
Who put nails in his hands for every wicked thing they'd ever put their hand to. Who put nails in his feet for every wicked thing our place we've ever gone. Who stabbed him through the heart for every wicked thought and intention we've ever had, every carnal desire.
01:47:47
Speaker
Who put and vinegar on his tongue for every wicked word we've ever spoken. Who beat him black and blue. Who beat him with sticks, with fists, who spat in him.
01:48:01
Speaker
who tore his back to shreds and ribbons with whips, he's going to come back for them. But the next time, the situation will be different. It'll be harder. It'll be more calamitous.
01:48:17
Speaker
But next thing he comes back, they'll be ready and they'll say, okay, Jesus, we're ready for you now. We believe in you now. We love you now. You are our king now. You are our Lord now. You're the God of God now.
01:48:31
Speaker
And what they should have had the first time, they'll get. Because not one pen stroke of biblical prophecy will fail to come to pass.
01:48:47
Speaker
He's going to do everything he can to make sure every iota of it happens. Every I is dotted, every T is crossed. No pun intended. And that's how much he loves them.
01:48:59
Speaker
But for now, you know what when and we have a mandate to evangelize the earth.
01:49:06
Speaker
But rendered when Jesus said to them, m i wanted to gather you to myself like a hen, gathered your chicks, but you wouldn't, none of it. and Was he referring to the Holocaust?
01:49:20
Speaker
He was referring to his contemporaries. He was referring to the people in that seven-year span, Kitty. The ones who rejected John the Baptist and the ones who were rejecting him and the Twelve in real time.
01:49:34
Speaker
Why do you think the Holocaust... and I mean... Why do I think it lasted similar stretch of time? Why did God allow it? Like it was so... arrangious, you know? The reality is There have been holocausts, even in this country, um in the eighteen forty s to 50s.
01:49:58
Speaker
Holocausts all throughout history. and Calamitous affairs because of the spiritual war that we're engaged in of wicked, evil despots and powers. Again, like you say, Hitler was an Antichrist. Not the capital A Antichrist, but an Antichrist.
01:50:15
Speaker
and Stalin in the USSR. It was an era in which the devil was trying to force in the end times, trying to force in the apocalypse, trying to force in the one world government.
01:50:27
Speaker
And if people are complicit and the saints are worn out and the saints don't fight back, evil has a field day. and And you can say that regarding any calamity that's ever happened.
01:50:42
Speaker
But there are amazing stories of how God rose up resistance to the Nazi regime or to the communists in the USSR and how they fought back against these tyrannies, his faithfulness, his power. i don't know if you've ever heard of Kari Ten Boom. I'm realising it with Cornelia. Kari Ten Boom. um just a She wrote a book called The Hiding Place. It is just...
01:51:09
Speaker
Phenomenal. um How God used her and her family to help protect the Jews from and the Nazis after they invaded Holland. and little town called Harlem. I've actually been inside her house and I watched up.
01:51:25
Speaker
and It's... an There are phenomenal stories about human resilience working hand in hand with God against these evil despots and dictatorships.
01:51:36
Speaker
But the same thing you see in the word... Empire of Nimrod, the Empire of Babylon, the Empire of Assyria, the Empire of Macedonia, the Empire of Greece, the Empire of Persia, Medes, the Empire of Rome.
01:51:51
Speaker
And this is just one book. There have been so many more empires since then. and Even egypt and Egypt in the book of Exodus. But while evil, there is a line to which evil can get to.
01:52:05
Speaker
But there is a line he will not let them cross. And he sets them up to fail. And he sets traps for them to tear them down. And to rescue the contrite, the oppressed, the broken hearted.
01:52:20
Speaker
but he does it through. he can do it through miraculous means if he wants to. But he he likes to it hand in hand with his people. He likes to do with his people.
01:52:32
Speaker
and Faithful, strong, loving what's good, hating what's evil. And willing to take a stand for righteousness against the forces of evil in their time.
01:52:46
Speaker
And there's a one world government on the earth today. like I said, they are made of pensioners, sodomites, and pedophiles. And just about all of them are Marxists, leftists, socialists, and communists, let's be honest.
01:53:01
Speaker
um And the owners have done us in these days to take a stand for righteousness. Not to be afraid of speaking out, not to be afraid of speaking truth to power, and not to be afraid of mobs on social media, am not to be afraid of them when they go on the media, on the news, and they say, we're going take away right to speech. We're going take away this. We're going to put you on lockdown again.
01:53:27
Speaker
choosing with an act of your will not to be afraid, not to cower to fear, but to take a stand for God's word and his plans. Thanks so much, Hades. You have a good night now, okay?
01:53:41
Speaker
yeah Yeah. Yeah, it requires faith, it requires bravery, requires courage, and to have such a reverential awe for the Lord.
01:53:55
Speaker
that no human can make you feel afraid. That no demon can put terror in you. Knowing that God's ability to save you and work only good things through you far trumps the enemy's ability to tear you down and destroy you.
01:54:15
Speaker
To steal, kill and destroy. I mean, is that why he's flooding Ireland with Muslims? Come again. The devil, he's flooding this country with Muslims.
01:54:28
Speaker
It's a big part of this, actually. And the Western world is going to have to contend with decisions that its policymakers have made pertaining that.
01:54:40
Speaker
Yeah. And perhaps we're not too far away from such a reckoning. I will say that much. I think that the someone told me the European Union is starting to clamp down on it.
01:54:57
Speaker
On the immigration. Thanks so much, Carolina. You have a good night now. and Yes, but now that said, ah the European Union part of the one world government.
01:55:08
Speaker
So anne i am I was happy to see that as a couple nights ago. But... Personally, i think I'd be happier to see the European Union dissolved.
01:55:22
Speaker
Yeah. and eve The ease of holiday making does not justify all the crap that they put this country through. Yeah. Yeah.
Closing Prayer and Reflections
01:55:37
Speaker
Alright guys, I know this is a very different kind of Wednesday teach time. We don't normally go into a the end of the world as much as we did today.
01:55:48
Speaker
But hopefully you enjoyed a little twist, something a little different. And um I want to thank you for your being here. it only happens because you're here.
01:56:00
Speaker
i appreciate the trust that you put in me to deliver the word of God to you in a way that's and helpful in a way that's clear. Thank you for your active of participation, for your engagement throughout.
01:56:17
Speaker
I pray, Laura Gah, that you do something wonderful and beautiful and amazing. in the lives of all of your children.
01:56:27
Speaker
Oh God. In discipleship group, Lord, those who are online on the sound of my voice right now, those who've had to tag out to it till early, those who are going to watch the replay and on the YouTube version, Lord, you know, the cry of their hearts, Lord, for Jacob.
01:56:50
Speaker
it was Rachel. For Joseph, it was his family. And for you, Lord Jesus, 2,000 years ago it was Israel. Now it's it's everybody. It's a free-for-all.
01:57:03
Speaker
Lord Jesus, you know their their hearts cry. you know their deepest desires. Fulfill those desires, Jesus. May they find all of their hopes are met in you.
01:57:18
Speaker
All of their dreams fulfilled in you. gold accomplished, and everything, Lord God, that you want for them, everything you have planned for them, everything you aspire for them, that they would be about the Father's business in these days, pushing back against the empire of darkness and expanding the territory of the kingdom of light, and that they would be strong and mighty in the Lord and in his power.
01:57:49
Speaker
power In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Amen. And friends, always remember gi G-I-A-G. G-I-A-G.
01:58:00
Speaker
God is absolutely good. God bless each and every one of you. Have a beautiful night with Jesus. And have sweet dreams. Amen. Thank you.
01:58:13
Speaker
Thank you so much. it's Good night, everybody. Thanks so much, Jamie. We've lovely message in the chat box.
01:58:23
Speaker
and happy resurrection sunday to everyone you're on at 11 is it hey yes on sunday for one hour only just one hour and because i know that people have to go to dinner parties or throw dinner parties so uh yes on sunday joshua generation church just the one hour into midday
01:58:48
Speaker
Alright, thanks so much Steve for the message chat box too. Good night guys, sleep well. i kindly