Revelation in the Old Testament | Revelation Decoded Season 1

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: 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. So many things are happening in the world that are like neon lights pointing to the soon return of Yeshua HaMashiach. Beloved, the Book of Revelation is 22 chapters long. It's the longest theological revelation of what's going to be happening in the end times, during the end times. It's the longest revelation we have of what the last days look like in the Bible. But some of us don't know that there's actually about 150 chapters in the Bible that talk about the end times. The Book of Revelation is 22 chapters, but there's actually at least 150 chapters in the Word of God from Genesis to Revelation, whose main theme is the last days or the end times. What this means is there's 128 chapters in the Bible, not including the Book of Revelation. There's an additional 128 chapters in the Bible other than the Book of Revelation that speak to us about what's going to happen in the end times. 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 Ketuvim or the writings. The Psalms, Job, the Proverbs, and other books are all part of the Ketuvim or writings. So the Tanakh, the Torah, the first five books of our Bible, the Nevi'im, the prophetic books, and the Ketuvim, 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 Bereishit, 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 or the last days. I can't even tell you what this makes me feel. Listen to what we read about this in the Book of Genesis chapter 49, verse number one. 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 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. For about 1700 years, from around the year 300 AD 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 AD to 1948, we've seen almost nothing in the writings of the church leaders about Jesus' return. So for almost 1700 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 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 and 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 antisemitism 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.
Guest (Dustin Roberts): This is Discovering the Jewish Jesus, and Rabbi Schneider will be right back. But first, I want to ask you the most important question you could ever be asked. And that's, do you know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? If you haven't yet invited Jesus into your heart today to lead your life and ask God to save you from your sins, I want to invite you, do that right now. If you're ready, then I want you to pray this prayer with me. Father God, I repent of my sins and I ask you to cleanse me with the blood of Jesus. I accept Jesus Christ, your son, as my Lord and Savior. Help me to follow you all the days of my life as you show me how in Jesus' name, Amen. Friend, if you just prayed that prayer, I'm so excited for you. Let us know by clicking find Jesus at discoveringthejewishjesus.com. And now, here's Rabbi.
Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Let me read you some prophecy. Ezekiel 36:24, the Lord 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 there's prophecies repeated throughout the Torah, throughout the Tanakh, that the Lord was going to scatter his people amongst the nations of the earth, and then he was going to miraculously bring them back to their own land. Now 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 six million, three to six 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 in 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 a 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. So Messianic expectation right now is at a place that it hasn't been at for almost 2,000 years. It began when Israel became a nation, but it's gotten stronger and stronger and stronger as the years have gone by, as we see what's happening in the world and the breakdown of sanity. I've already covered a lot of this, but I'm just thinking of AI right now and what is going on where artificial intelligence is basically crippling man's ability to think. I could go on on this and I will because I'm going to be walking you through the Book of Revelation and I'm going to be taking things apart and showing you specifically what the Book of Revelation told us is happening and will happen and how it's happening in the world right now. Here are some of the topics I'm going to be covering as I walk you through the Book of Revelation in the season ahead. I'm going to be talking about what the Torah calls the Time of Jacob's Trouble. That's a code word for what the church understands as the Great Tribulation. The Hebrew prophets alluded to it, they called it the Time of Jacob's Trouble. All the nations of the earth are going to be gathered against Israel. It's going to be a tremendous, horrendous time for Jews and for Israel, even as we're experiencing now with antisemitism at an all-time high since World War II. We're going to be talking about that. We're going to be looking at what the Bible says, what the Book of Revelation and what the other New Testament writers had to say about the Time of Jacob's Trouble. We're going to be looking at what the Book of Revelation calls the Antichrist. Did you know that the Hebrew prophets also wrote about the Anti-Messiah? We're going to be looking at what the Hebrew prophets taught us about the Anti-Messiah, and we're going to be putting that together with what the Book of Revelation teaches about the Anti-Messiah. And we're going to see the synchronicity between the B'rit Hadasha, which is the New Covenant Scriptures and the Old Testament or Tanakh, how they fit together like a hand in a glove. We're going to be looking at the mark of the Beast. What did John, the Revelator, mean when he spoke to us about the mark of the Beast? What is the mark of the Beast? We're going to be talking about that. We're going to be looking about what is known as the Abomination of Desolation. Yeshua said, "Let the reader understand." He said, "When you see the Abomination of Desolation, which Daniel, the Hebrew prophet Daniel, wrote about, let the reader understand that the time is nigh." What is the Abomination of Desolation? We're going to look at the difference between the seven seals in the Book of Revelation, the seven trumpets and the seven bowls of wrath, and we're going to glean from that what I believe to be the timing of what is known as the rapture of the church. And I'm going to share some things with you that you may not have been taught before. I'm going to try to be as clear and simple as possible and I'll let the Word of God speak for itself. We're going to look at Armageddon. We're going to be looking at the focal point of the return of Messiah. I remember a funny episode I had years ago, I was in a third world country teaching on the return of the Lord and how the Lord would return. The disciples looked up in the sky, they saw him lifted up into the clouds, and then angels appeared and they said to the disciples as they were looking up into the clouds as Yeshua was disappearing, "This Yeshua is going to come to you in just the same way." That he's going to return and he's going to first hit the earth at the Mount of Olives. The scriptures talk more about this. And I remember teaching this in a third world country and somebody asked me, because he's going to return first at the Mount of Olives, they asked, "Will we see it happen over the internet?" And I just thought that was kind of comical and kind of cute, a very innocent soul. But no, Yeshua's glory is going to first spark at the Mount of Olives. It's going to hit there first, but in an instant it's going to cover the entire earth. We're going to be looking, beloved, at the return of the Lord. We're going to look at the salvation of Israel. We're going to be looking at the mystery of the ten lost tribes. We often hear about the ten lost tribes of Israel. Right now we only have two and a half tribes for the most part, generally speaking, living in Israel. We have the tribe of Judah, Benjamin, and Levi. But what about the other ten tribes? Where are they? We're going to be talking about that. I'm going to be looking at the judgment seat of Christ, how the Lord's going to give us a reward when we stand before him for what we did. We're going to be looking at the reality of hell. Is hell really in the center of the earth? And is there a difference between hell and the lake of fire? Is there a difference between the first and the second heaven? We're going to be going into a lot of mystery and a lot of intricacies in the scripture. And I believe, beloved, that your faith will be reignited. That this is going to cause you to fall in love with the Lord in a new way, that it's going to cause you, I believe this is a prophetic word for some of you right now, to rise up out of those relationships that you're in right now that are holding you back from the Lord, that you're going to rise up out of those relationships and be set free to run after him. Do you know in a sense, we're all missionaries. We oftentimes think of a missionary as somebody that travels to a foreign land to preach the gospel. But beloved, we're all missionaries in the sense that the Lord has given each and every one of his followers a mission. He said this to the church, "Go out and preach the gospel to all creation, making disciples of all nations." Some people like myself have an open door to reach people through media in such a way that the Lord calls upon those that don't have huge platforms to support those that do. Paul said we should support men that go out for the sake of the truth. Beloved, if you believe in me and you think this ministry is authentic, I want to ask you to financially support us with your tithes and offerings. We're able to lift up the banner of King Jesus and proclaim his soon return all over the world because of people that love him like you that are supporting this ministry. So simply, if you believe in what we're doing, you want to see the gospel preached and be a fellow worker with the truth, would you lift up your heart and ask him how he would like you to participate in giving to this ministry.
Guest (Dustin Roberts): You can give to Discovering the Jewish Jesus by visiting our website, discoveringthejewishjesus.com. And if it's easier for you, give us a call. Our number is 800-777-7835. And you know, every single week it brings new challenges. That's why we have a weekly Seeds of Revelation email where Rabbi equips you with timeless biblical principles that address real-life struggles. We want to help you every single week, whether it's overcoming fear or wanting to know more about walking in love, or if you're simply wanting to understand God's character better. Rabbi Schneider and the weekly devotional, it's going to provide practical scripture-based guidance for your scripture journey. So I want to encourage you, let God be your guide to victory and peace. You can sign up today online at discoveringthejewishjesus.com. And hey, while you're there, don't forget that you can partner with us each and every month by giving a donation to this ministry. And you know what? It's okay no matter what size it is. Make it fit your budget. You can join a community of believers who are giving and Discovering the Jewish Jesus and experiencing refreshment in their faith. So come on and partner today. Give us a call at 800-777-7835 or go online and give at discoveringthejewishjesus.com. You can also send your donation in the mail. Our address is Discovering the Jewish Jesus, PO Box 777, Blissfield, Michigan 49228. And now here's Rabbi again with God's sacred and special blessing. I hope the words of this benediction bless you and your family.
Rabbi K.A. Schneider: In the Book of Numbers chapter six, we find a personal blessing from God our Father. This blessing should touch our hearts because it's so personal. Father God wants to intimately bless you. So receive his blessing into your life today with gladness and an open heart. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift you up with his countenance and the Lord give you, beloved one, his peace. And now in Hebrew. Y'varechecha Adonai v'yishmerecha. Ya'er Adonai panav eilecha v'yichuneka. Yisa Adonai panav eilecha v'yasem l'cha shalom. God bless you and shalom.
Guest (Dustin Roberts): This program is produced and sponsored by Discovering the Jewish Jesus. And I'm your host, Dustin Roberts. Tomorrow Rabbi Schneider's going to reveal how Jeremiah's prophecy of Jacob's Trouble connects Israel, the tribulation, and events unfolding right now. That's Thursday on Discovering the Jewish Jesus.