Rabbi Schneider - Revelation in the Old Testament
In Hebrew, we call the Old Testament, most of you know, we call it the Tanakh, the Tanakh stands for the Torah, which is the five books of Moses, the first five books of our Bible from Genesis to Deuteronomy, the Nevi’im or Prophetic Writings in the Old Testament, and the K’tuvim or the Writings. We speak of the Psalms, Job, the Proverbs, and other books are all part of the K’tuvim or Writings. So the Tanakh, the Torah, the first five books of our Bible, the Nevi’im, the prophetic books, and the K’tuvim, the other Writings like Proverbs, Psalms, and others as well, these three types of books together are called the Tanakh. And there’s so much in the Tanakh and in the words of the ancient Hebrew prophets that speak about the end times that oftentimes we haven’t been taught.
For example, this to me is stunning. Do you know that in the Torah, in the book of Bereshit, the first book of the Torah, the book of Beginnings (Genesis), when Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel, when he blessed his sons before he died, his sons, of course, became the heads of the 12 tribes of Israel. When Jacob blessed his sons, he spoke about the end times of the last days. This almost… I can’t even tell you what this makes me feel. Listen to what we read about this in the book of Genesis 49:1. Jacob is speaking. He’s speaking to his sons, and he says, «Gather yourselves together so that I might tell you what will befall you,» get this now, «in the last days».
From the very beginning of God’s Word, the Lord was revealing to us the reality of the last days, what would happen and what they would look like from the book of Genesis, through Malachi, through all the writings of the New Testament writers. I love this verse in Matthew 13:52. Messiah Jesus said this. Think about this. Because what I’m doing, I’m going to be teaching the book of Revelation, but not only will I be teaching from the book of Revelation, but I’ll be teaching the book of Revelation, get this now, through the eyes of the Hebrew prophets. So I’m going to take what John wrote in the book of Revelation, and I’m going to compare what John wrote to what the Hebrew prophets wrote about the last days.
Listen to what Yeshua said once again in Matthew 13:52. He said, «Every scribe…» And a scribe was someone that knew and taught the Hebrew scriptures during the time of Yeshua. So he said, «Every scribe who is discipled for the kingdom of heaven is like a man who is a master of the household who brings out of his treasure new and old things». In other words, Yeshua was saying that everyone that is discipled, every scribe, every Jew that knew the Hebrew Bible that became His disciple would be able to bring out of the storehouse of God’s word, treasures old and new. Yeshua said, «Do not think I’ve come to abolish the law. I’ve come to fulfill it or to fill it full». And He said, «And everybody that teaches others how to understand and live by the principles and teachings of the law and the prophets will be called greatest in the kingdom of God».
So I’m going to be teaching the book of Revelation, beloved ones, through the eyes of the Hebrew prophets. Now, it’s also really interesting to me that this expectation that we’re feeling right now in the earth, those of us that are believers, that something’s falling apart, that something’s wrong, we sense that Jesus is getting ready to come back, that what the Bible wrote about is happening, and we’re beginning to wake up that Jesus is real. Some are being shaken by what they see happening, recognizing that what the Bible teaches is happening right before their very eyes, that what the Bible warned us about is happening right before our very eyes.
And so some seeing what’s happening in the earth, the breakdown of morality, the chaos that’s happening in the world, the increase of danger, some are seeing this, they’re recognizing that the Bible warned about this and it’s causing them to wake up and get serious about their relationship with God. But there’s another level or concept that moves along the same trajectory of people waking up and recognizing this is what the Bible taught about what would happen in the earth before the Lord’s return. There’s another layer of this as well.
Stay with me for a second because I’m going to step over here for a second to come back over here. For about 1,700 years, from around the year 300 A.D. to around, well, 1948, when Jewish people returned to their homeland, from around 300, from the time of Constantine, when Constantine Romanized the church, when he made Christianity the state religion of Rome, and basically, he Romanized the church, from 300 A.D. to 1948, we see almost nothing in the writings of the church leaders about Jesus' return.
So for almost 1,700 years up until just recently, there was almost nothing in the writing of the church fathers. John Calvin. John Wesley. Martin Luther. I mean, these are the fathers of the major evangelical… I should say, Protestant denominations. There’s almost nothing written about the return of the Lord. Why? A few reasons. Number one, because of the fact that the church just got off base when it became really Romanized. But there’s a greater reason. And the greater reason is that those that knew God’s Word saw in God’s Word that the Messiah would not return until there was another prophecy that was first fulfilled. And the prophecy that Bible students saw that needed to be fulfilled before the Lord could return is that Jews, Israel, needed to return to their homeland.
So let me bring a little more information to the table here. I know that many of you are familiar with this. 70 AD the Romans came in and destroyed Jerusalem. When the Romans came in and destroyed Jerusalem, we have what is called the Diaspora. The Jews that were living in Jerusalem and in the surrounding region, they scattered. They scattered out of Israel, out of Judea, out of Jerusalem, to the four corners of the earth, just as the Torah and the prophets warned us would happen, that the city would be invaded and the people would be scattered. The Jewish people in Israel would be scattered to the four corners of the earth. That happened in 70 AD.
So Jews were outside of their homeland from 70 AD to 1948 when Israel was born again in a day, according to the Word of God, which I’m going to read in just a moment here. And when Jewish people started returning to Israel, they started returning actually in big numbers in the 1920s, 1930s, when they were fleeing persecution from the European nations where they were being targeted, where anti-Semitism was rampant.
Jews started returning to their homeland, 1920s, 1930s. But it didn’t blow up until Israel was given to the Jewish people in 1948. And when Israel became the homeland once again of the Jewish people after being out of their homeland for about 2,000 years and Jews began to return in mass from all over the world, all of a sudden, the church recognized that prophecy had been fulfilled and things were now in place for the return of Messiah.
Let me read you some prophecy. Ezekiel 36:24, the Lord speaking, speaking to Israel, for I will take you from among the nations and gather you out of all the countries and will bring you into your own land. So this prophecy is repeated throughout the Torah, throughout the Tanakh, that the Lord was gonna scatter His people amongst the nations of the earth, and then He was gonna miraculously bring them back to their own land. I want you to think about this. For almost 2,000 years, Israel is in the diaspora. They’re in exile. They’re separated from each other by oceans.
Some are in this nation, some are in that nation, some are in another nation. All over the earth, they’re scattered. They’re separated by bodies of water and oceans, so they can’t even talk to each other. Yet they retained their identity as Jews, which is a miracle. They were marked by their Creator at Sinai, when God appeared to approximately 3 to 6 million Jews at the base of the mountain, and they heard His voice, and they saw the fire, they saw His glory, and they never lost the memory of it.
So even when they were scattered amongst the nations of the world, they never lost their identity. They celebrated Passover every year, even amongst the nations where they were scattered, remembering how God called them out of Egypt. So here they are, 2,000 years, separated from each other and exile. Yet on May 14th, 1948, miraculously, Israel is reborn in a single day. So listen to Isaiah’s prophecy in Isaiah 66:8. Who has ever heard of such things? «Who has ever seen things like this? Can a country be born in a day, or a nation be brought forth in a moment»?
That’s exactly what happened. And when Israel was birthed on May 14th, 1948, and they became a nation, and there was demonstrations of both celebration amongst Jews in Israel, and Jews around the world, celebrations, and there was also demonstration of protest in Arab nations around the world, when that happened, beloved, the stage was set and people began to recognize, those that had eyes to see, that we are now at a place in prophetic history that the stage is set for Yeshua, the Messiah of Israel to return.