No 11

(Israel After the Rapture of the Church)

After the Church is raptured (1 Thess 4: 13-18), life on earth will continue and God’s time-clock for Israel will start up again. As we have seen in Daniel 9:24, Gabriel told Daniel that “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people”; the key in understanding this passage of Scripture is the term “upon thy people”. Who were Daniel’s people? – Israel, of course! Since 69 weeks will have already passed (Daniel 9:25), there still remains one week. This 70^th week is actually 7 years as were the 69 weeks we saw in our other studies (69 x 7 = 483 years); this period is commonly referred to as the seventieth week of Daniel or as Jeremiah calls it, “the time of Jacob’s trouble” (Jer 30:7). The 69 weeks were not for the Church age; the 70^th won’t be either; the seventy weeks apply to Israel!! In the Olivet discourse Jesus said in Matthew 24: 8 “All these are the beginning of sorrows“. He had given an answer to a question His disciples had asked – “What shall be the sign of Thy coming and the end of the world?” (24:3b). There is a parallel between verses 4-8 in Matthew 24 and Revelation 6 that speaks of antichrist who rides the 4 horses; these two passages describe the first half of the great tribulation. As Daniel 9: 27 indicates: “And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate”. After the rapture, antichrist will become the ruler of the political world as the 4 horsemen indicate and he will permit Israel to rebuild the temple and allow animal sacrifices to be reinstated.

There is another parallel between this passage in Daniel and what Jesus says in Matthew 24:15 “When ye shall see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, stand in the holy place”. What is this abomination of desolation? The answer is in 2 Thessalonians 2:4b “so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God showing himself that he is God” In the middle of the week or after 3 ½ years, antichrist will show his real colors and take over the religious world as well as the political world. He will be so bold that he will sit himself down in the temple of God in Jerusalem and declare that he is God. Of course, Israel is in the middle of all this and has still not recognized Jesus Christ as Messiah. There will be wars and judgments everywhere (Revelation 6 to18) in the second half of the week and antichrist’s end will finally come when Jesus Christ returns a second time as “faithful and true” and as“ King of kings and Lord of Lords” (Rev 19:11, 16) with “the armies which were with Him in heaven”; we are that army (v14). Then Israel, as a nation will finally recognize Jesus Christ as the true Saviour – “they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.” Zech 12:10. As we can see today in the world around us, we are no where near there yet but the rapture could occur at any time and all true Christians will be spared this terrible tribulation “For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess 5:9)