Article series: INTRODUCTION – WHO IS JEHOVAH? – WHO IS THE REAL ISRAEL – THE SCATTERING – THE GATHERING: ONE-FOLD – ONE ISRAELTHE MODERN STATE OF ISRAEL NOT CHOSEN – DANIEL 9 AND THE PRE-TRIBULATION DECEPTION – JUDAISM ACE IS NOT A GODLY REPRESENTATION OF OT – THE BIRTH OF THE MODERN STATE OF ISRAEL – THE DIFFERENCE (between Biblical Israel taking of Canaan and modern Israel taking of Palestine)
I was once in a meeting in the synagogue where Christians and Jews gathered to hear a speaker from Israel defending its right to defend itself against the Palestinians. During the talk, the question about Jesus came, and he answered to the amusement of everyone there: “When our Messiah comes we will ask him: Have you been here before? And if he says “yes”, we will believe him”. Everyone laughed.
For a long time, many evangelicals have believed in a pre-rapture where the Christians are brought to heaven and a Jewish kingdom simultaneously begins here on earth. The Jews get another chance to choose Christ. The promises of the greatness of their kingdom, not fulfilled at Christ’s first coming, will happen then.
Unfortunately, if this interpretation is false, it means that both the evangelical and the Jew are in for a great end-time surprise, finding themselves unprepared for the deceptions of Satan. If the warnings in Revelation are to Christians, and they think it is going to happen to the Jews after they have gone to heaven, they will miss out on both a warning meant for them and advice on how to be saved through the trials.
For the Jew, it is problematic if he thinks he can wait to make up his mind about following Jesus until Jesus comes. When Jesus comes, it will be too late.
The pre-tribulation doctrine entered the masses in the evangelical churches through Scofield’s commentary Bible. It was a successful Jesuit attack on the protestant churches.
When the reformation became more and more influential in the 16th Century, the Papacy instituted a society, their primary task was to combat the reformation by slowly changing their doctrines and to create division among them to weaken their progress.
No protestant would listen to what the Catholic Church had to say anymore because they believed the Pope was the Antichrist. One of the key goals was to come up with an alternative belief to who the Antichrist was and move it away from the Papacy and to an unknown figure in the future. They had to create a new common enemy. Then they had to infiltrate this idea into Protestantism and make them think it was their own idea and understanding. When this had been accomplished, the gap between them would be small enough to pull the Protestants towards submission to the Catholic Church once again. If the Papacy was not the Antichrist, then they should cooperate against the real Antichrist, right?
The idea they presented was that the temple mentioned as the place where “the man of sin” would sit wasn’t God’s congregation. Nor was it the individual believer like Paul said (1Co,3:16, 1Co,6:19, 2Co,6:16) but a physical building. Not just any physical building, but the Jewish Temple itself. And that the Antichrist would sit in this temple. Since there was no temple in Jerusalem anymore, it had to talk about some distant future.
This way they could slowly bring Protestantism back to themselves under the guise that they are all Christians with a common enemy, this future mystic person.
In 1585, Jesuit Francisco Ribera and Robert Bellarmine started writing down these ideas of the future Antichrist and that the papacy was the wrong person. Slowly the ideas were planted among the Protestants, but not really received. The understanding that the Papacy was the Antichrist and would lead people into false Christianity and damnation, had deep roots.
The Jesuit ideas were spread slowly and quietly.
In 1744 Morgon Edwards shared similar thoughts with a Baptist college creating more interest in the alternative future antichrist.
In 1791 – Manuel De Lacunza (1731–1801), a Jesuit from Chile, wrote a manuscript in Spanish titled under the pen name of Juan Josafa [Rabbi] Ben-Ezra. Lacunza wrote under a Jewish name to hide the fact that he was a Catholic. The idea was that the Jewish name would give his book better acceptance in Protestantism, his intended audience. He also gives this futuristic interpretation in his book.
The idea became more and more accepted, but only by a smaller protestant minority. However, there were some problems with this theory. There was no Jewish state and no Jewish temple for the antichrist to sit in. It made the idea seem unlikely and distant. This was one of the biggest problems when introducing this idea. To have an Antichrist in a physical Jewish temple, the temple had to be rebuilt and in order for the temple to be rebuilt, Jerusalem would have to be a Jewish state. The first attempt to point out an Antichrist was to divert it from the papacy and to a Jew. If the Jews created a state in Jerusalem, the Protestants would be convinced the doctrine was correct and completely abandon the Pope as the Antichrist and look for this mystic one to come. But Jerusalem was protected by the Turks. Their mosques were on the site of the temple. The Turks had to go.
In 1826 Samuel Roffey Maitland the Archbishop of Canterbury, presented the futuristic idea and it was spreading
And in 1827 Edward Irving, a Scottish Presbyterian and forerunner of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements, translated Lacunza’s (the Jesuit pretending to be a Jew) work from Spanish into English.
In 1830, John Nelson Darby presented even further speculation and theories concerning this same topic, backing up the other’s view.
To have an Antichrist in a Jewish temple, you had to have a Jewish temple, to have a Jewish temple you need a Jewish state in Jerusalem and to have that, Jews had to return in large numbers to Israel. But Jews had not turned away from their defiance or met God’s criteria to rule from their land as they once had. Jesus had said that their living peacefully in their land was tied to their acceptance of Him. (Luk.19,41-44; Matt.23,38-39; Joh.4,23)
If the Jews were to come back, it would have to be because God gave them the land, but they hadn’t met God’s criteria and didn’t seem to want to and so the theory that there was one salvation for Jews and another for Christians was created to make all of this make sense. Before, there had only been one salvation and one destiny, regardless of who you were. (Col.3:11; Gal.3:28; Rom.10:12)
Now, this view has changed. The idea was that Jews would get their messianic experience and a second chance after a rapture of Christians was introduced. With this theory, people would accept the Jews returning even though they hadn’t accepted Christ as the Messiah. This, as we saw in the previous chapter, is against God’s Torah where God said a conversion has to happen while they are scattered in the foreign lands. This is God’s law — and the order of things.
It was not considered an insult to God creating a theory where if the Jews did not like the humble self-sacrificing messiah, then it was the messiah who “came in the wrong way” and had to change his approach and come as a political hero just as they wanted.
To help unconverted Jews return to the land without conversion is a violation of God’s Torah. This did not stop Christians. They believed Jews would get the land back even though they hadn’t accepted Christ, as their election was by heritage and not by faith. The idea was that God’s people weren’t those who did God’s will, but those who were born that way. The hypocrisy of the theory was evident as many of Jewish descent were no longer Jewish, and even numerous Muslims were actually at one time Jews before they converted. And so it wasn’t about being of Jewish descent in reality, it was about being of Jewish descent and rejecting Christ, as no interest was given to Jews with other ideologies. When you start a series of lies, it becomes a web of lies with holes and inconsistencies.
Although the doctrine was becoming complicated, larger and more influential groups now believed it. Scriptures from the Bible about the return of Israel from Babylon were now used to support a future gathering of Jews in Palestine. Or they would use scriptures referring to Christ’s second coming and the gathering then. All the scriptures the Bible had about Jews being God’s people were no longer tied to converted Jews but to the unconverted. In other words, to be accepted and blessed, you had to be a Jew who denied Christ as the Messiah. The ideas were more and more widespread and bible verses were picked and put together with no respect for other scripture saying something different, and they were placed together to make it all seem Biblical.
The more widespread the idea got, the more they realized that in order for Jesus to come back they had to have a Jewish state. Jesus had said that He would come back when the gospel had been spread to the world: “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.» (Mat 24:14) Yet now another stumbling-stone had been placed in the path of the evangelical’s understanding. A Jewish state had to be made in order for the end-time events, as they saw it, could happen and Jesus to come. But nothing seemed to happen to make it happen, and the larger group of Jews themselves seemed to want to wait until their Messiah came to do it. The Christians then took it upon themselves to fulfill what they believed was a prophecy. If God would not, they would make it happen themselves. A smaller group of Jews had themselves started a Zionist movement to return, as they believed the land was still theirs, and they were also inspired by the evangelicals to their presumed right to the land. Together, the evangelicals and Zionists would push for the creation of the new Jewish state.
The problem with protestants actively wanting to fulfill their perception of the prophecy was crazy, as they needed a Jewish state for the Antichrist to come and deceive the whole world. Why would Christians want to engage in making the way for what they believed was the end-time deceiver? Were they now preparing the way for the antichrist? New theories were added to the theory to justify it: Jesus was to rule in Jerusalem with the Jews, and the Christians were to be raptured to heaven before the end time trouble began. This legitimized it being a preparation for Christ and not just the Antichrist. And the theory of the pre-tribulation rapture was used to make this complicated end-time understanding fit with the Bible. Either way, they needed a Jewish state, and so now they were gathering them for Christ’s sake so He could make their kingdom with them and not just prepare the way for the Antichrist. Their actions now seemed a bit more legit. Another problem came up with this theory. Many evangelicals now ended up believing that same wrong understanding that the Jews had believed, which once made them unprepared for the first coming of the Messiah. Now they believed what the Jews believed then and still do. Only the Christians needed the Antichrist first, and so they could not wait for Jesus to establish the Jewish state. While the Jews, in reality, were supported in the belief that made them reject Christ in the first place.
Many Christians were again doing what the Jews in the time of Christ had done, to turn the matter from spiritual obedience to a physical kingdom.
Protestants and evangelicals started paying out of their pockets to send Jews to what was then known as Palestine, which once had been the Jewish state in Biblical times. Christian missionaries went to Palestine, often even endangering their life trying to convert Jews or to help them understand “their role” in the end time. All this was done, and few were aware that they were fulfilling ideas that had been planted in their churches by the Jesuit organization, which wanted to bring protestants back into accepting the Pope as the Christian leader.
The British Literalists–strong among the Anglican Evangelicals and in various Nonconformist churches–were not about to abandon their hopes of converting Jews and sending them to Palestine to meet their Messiah, especially not around 1840 when the current British policy of offering protection to Jews living in Palestine raised great expectations among the pre-millennialists. Indeed, Literalist influence was unofficially helping to shape that policy. An ardent Literalist, Lord Ashley (later the Earl of Shaftesbury), was stepson-in-law and confidant of Lord Palmerston, the British foreign secretary. Ashley had private hopes of bringing about, through British action, the restoration of Israel to Palestine in preparation for the Second Advent. In 1840, he prodded Palmerston, by adducing political reasons, into seeking international backing for Jewish migration to Palestine, while he confided to his diary his own very different motives, which were distinctly religious:
“Dined with Palmerston. After dinner left alone with him. Propounded my scheme, which seemed to strike his fancy . . . . Palmerston has already been chosen by God to be an instrument of good to His ancient people; to do homage, as it were, to their inheritance, and to recognize their rights without believing their destiny . . . . I am forced to argue politically, financially, commercially; these considerations strike him home; he weeps not like his Master over Jerusalem, nor prays that now, at last, she may put on her beautiful garments. (Anthony Ashley, Earl of Shaftesbury, Diary entries, quoted in Edwin Hodder, The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, vol. 1, pp. 310, 311. Ashley was the one referred to, but not named (in London Times, Aug. 17, 1840, p. 3, col. 5), As the promoter of Western-sponsored Jewish migration to Palestine
Ashley’s influence was likewise behind the establishment of a consulate in Jerusalem in 1838, also the creation of an Anglican bishopric there in 1841, and the appointment to it of a Jewish Christian bishop. On October 16, 1841, he wrote in his diary: “Where would the Sultan’s permission [to build the bishop’s church] has been without Palmerston’s vigour in consequence of my repeated and earnest representations. (Hodder, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 377 (cf. pp. 370, 374). See also Harold Temperley, England and the Near East: The Crimea (1936), p. 443, note 275; Barbara W. Tuchman, Bible and Sword (1956, 1968), chap. 10.)
But Ashley’s dream of a British-sponsored and treaty-protected Jewish migration to Palestine did not materialize. The Four-Power Treaty of 1840 ignored the matter. Even the Jews themselves showed little interest; more than half a century passed before Zionism among the Jews arose.
Still, the large party of the protestant movement continued to hold fast to the belief they had on the Antichrist, and that it was actually the institution of the Papacy that was claiming to be God’s throne on earth. All the great Christian leaders in the US still upheld this belief and were struggling against the Jesuits infiltrating their institutions.
In 1909 started what would forever determine the evangelical view of the end time, and take it away from their original belief. Cyrus I. Scofield engaged in all these views, and they were gathered in the Scofield Reference Bible. It was largely through the influence of Scofield’s notes that dispensationalism grew in influence among fundamentalist Christians in the United States. Scofield’s notes on the Book of Revelation are a major source for the various timetables, judgments, and plagues elaborated on by popular religious writers such as Hal Lindsey, Edgar C. Whisenant, and Tim LaHaye. Their writings have led to popular films such as Left Behind. In this ideology, the Christian churches had a new common enemy.
Someone once said: “Nothing unites humans like a common enemy”
The pope was no longer a threat, and slowly the hands between Protestant groups and the Papacy could meet. They were now Christian brothers or a Christian family.
The ideas that had been made up by Jesuits and planted became accepted as end-time facts, and many have been taught in this understanding from early on.
The papacy had successfully reversed the protestant movement enough for them to no longer be threatened by them.
The fight for a Jewish state or to get Jews to go to Palestine continued. If this didn’t happen, the theory would eventually be rejected. Did it happen, though, they would all see it as evidence that their interpretation was true, and even more would believe it. Maybe even God’s Christian commandment-keeping people would give up and follow.
The Ottoman stronghold had been weakened and Jerusalem was now under the control of the British mandate, a Christian protestant nation.
It was not until after the Second World War and the intense persecution of Jews by Nazi Germany that a larger party of the remaining Jews was motivated to move to Palestine. The sympathy in the aftermath also leads to acceptance and help.
Through the German Socialist Party and Hitler, millions of Jews were treated like animals, starved, tortured, experimented on, and lastly killed. When the truth came out, the world was abhorred. Even among the worst Jew-haters, heads were bowed in shame. It didn’t take long before the United Nations was founded, and they decided to give a portion of Palestine back to the Jews. Although the threat against them was removed and the need to move wasn’t really there if they could be restored and honored in their European countries, it was decided they were to be given Palestine instead. After the traumatic experience during World War, many Jews were happy to move back, trying to make a life for themselves away from the cruel hatred they had suffered. Many were running as fast as they could. After all, what had happened in Europe could happen again? The Jews had their common potential enemy: everyone else. Now they would make their fortress in the land that they once were driven from.
However, they weren’t given Jerusalem. What the Jews didn’t know was that they had just gone into another trap.
The Jews were now attacked by the Islamic countries who for long had controlled the temple mount in Jerusalem where the Jewish temple once stood. God had let the Islamic people protect the mount from the building of a new temple. Although God allowed the Jews to fight off their enemies, He did not allow them to take over the temple mount. Although coming to the mount during the war, they were quickly told to leave it a Muslim religious site by their own leaders. Many were distressed and didn’t understand the order. But it was given all the same. God let their decision be their rescue. Had they tried to rebuild the temple, God would have had to stop them.
The lie behind the doctrine
A large part of the reason the Jewish nation rejected Christ as their Messiah when he came was because they had a hope, awakened by scripture, of becoming a great nation in the world. The Messiah would come and deliver them and rule from Jerusalem. They would become the chosen people before the earth and be granted high positions.
When Jesus came, he showed no intention of fighting the Roman Empire or taking control of the political world. This did not seem consistent with the prophecy about the Messiah, and so they did not want him to be their long-awaited Messiah, and so they rejected him,
For them, the Messiah is a religious-political figure.
God, however, had tried to explain to them over and over again through their history that He cannot make an earthly kingdom if it is not on His terms and principles.
When they rejected Him in the past, God withdrew, and they were subdued by their enemies. When they cried for God to help them, He sent them judges, kings, and leaders to help them regain their independence once more. In the end, they were taken to Babylon. God’s throne and the Ark were hidden, and the temple was destroyed. Not because God was not stronger than Babylon, but because God would not be king in their midst if they did not represent Him right.
Around the time a more faithful remnant was to return to Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity, God gave Daniel an important message “to his people” regarding them and the future of Jerusalem, “thy holy city”.
God said He would give them, as a people and as a city, 70 prophetic weeks, which translates to 490 years to do one important thing to ensure their future in the land.
“Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy” (Dan.9:24)
Further, the angel explains that the Messiah would come during the last seven years, be killed in the middle of these seven years, and then their probation time would be over about 3,5 years after this. The time period is easily counted down to Christ’s first coming.
The time reflected the message Jesus gave to the Jews during the first 3.5 years of teaching them. Jesus would not first take the land, throw out Rome, and then try to convert them.
Instead, Christ told them that they needed to stop the rebellion, to become
a better representation, to allow themselves to be instructed and corrected, to end their sins and receive the atonement, that He would give them.
If they did according to the conditions and time granted them, their nation would most likely have been restored. But because Christ would not rule among them unless they changed their ways, Christ had to ask them to change their ways first.
The lie told Jews then, and told Jews now, is that the kingdom of Messiah starts politically and a conversion follows. This has never been God’s way. He would not even let them enter the promised land until they first made a covenant with Him. When they broke this covenant, He refused to let them enter until all the rebels among them had passed away. Then, when the new generation chose Him, only then were they allowed to enter the land. Even Moses was denied entering the land when he had sinned. God’s conditions are ever the same. This is why Jerusalem could only remain and be saved if they first accepted Christ. God’s kingdom among man never starts politically, it always starts spiritually.
Jesus said: “And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:
Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you” ( Luk 17:20-21)
That is not the answer they wanted because they thought they were already righteous. However, the constant debate between Christ and the leaders showed that they did not represent the law and God correctly. They were not sanctified to the truth they proclaimed.
“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.
Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.
Even so, ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity” (Mat 23:25-28).
God will not make a kingdom based on force or with a mob of hypocrites. That is why Jesus had to WIN THEM OVER, WIN THEIR HEARTS, to make a kingdom among them. When they rejected this, they also rejected the kingdom promised to them. The Kingdom starts within and then manifests on the outside, while the Jewish nation did not see a problem on the inside and wanted a kingdom to start on the outside and force the inside. “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are as graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them”
“Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat: All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not” (Luk 11:44 & Matt.23:2-3)
Christ warned against the danger of a hypocritical religion and how the heart and the goodness of God’s standard were destroyed in their representation.
Christ had to reach their hearts to reinstate Jerusalem as the capital of God. But they refused Christ’s righteousness, they threw away his teachings, and they killed their king.
As Pilate wrote above the cross of Christ it was: “And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. And the writing was, JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS. This title then read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin. Then said the chief priests of the Jews to Pilate, Write not, The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the Jews. Pilate answered, What I have written I have written” (Joh 19:19-22).
Now how could God reinstate Jerusalem as a great nation, and give them independence, when they refused to be led by Him, even casting Him away as they did?
When they had to choose between the only one who could give them political independence and suppression, they would rather be suppressed by the Roman leader than be in a kingdom run by Christ: “But they cried out, Away with him,away with him,crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, Shall I crucify your King? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar” (Joh 19:15)
There they sealed their destiny, they had left “their house desolate” and God could not do a kingdom with them anymore. They did not want to, they did not receive Him, and they would not agree to God’s terms. The 70 prophetic weeks finally ended, not with Christ’s death, but when they started the “scattering” of God’s faithful people and preventing “the holy city” from being a city proclaiming the truth from that time on. They did it to themselves, they chose this. Christ was killed in the middle of the last prophetic week of the 70 weeks, and the end of it was the stoning of Stephen and the scattering of Christ’s followers from Jerusalem (Acts.8:1).
The lie today is that the prophecy of the kingdom of the Messiah among the Jews is to be fulfilled in the end times after all. The very same doctrine that made them bewildered in the past, has resurfaced. The Jews are still waiting for their Messiah, a political figure, to give them power. They still will not receive Christ’s righteousness or accept they need this to be part of such a kingdom.
Because of the unfaithfulness of Judah, Christ had to change plans. Instead of Jerusalem being the center of His reign on earth, Christ had to give it up: “Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence. Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice” ( Joh 18:36-37).
There was a time when a group of Jews wanted to crown him king. After he had fed the 5000, they wanted to make Him king and by it start the political rebellion against Herod and the Roman empire:
“When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone” (Joh 6:15)
Jesus refused because He could not, would not, start a political armed revolt at this time. Just like the Lord could not in the past give His unfaithful people victory in wars, neither could He now. They had to receive His righteousness.
The very day after their attempt to announce Him king, they went looking for him again, and he tried to speak to them about what was important for their restoration.
“Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled.
He then went on and explained to them, that they had to: “eat his flesh and drink his blood” a symbol of letting Him change them, take away their sins, and atone for them. They needed to learn from Him and His example. “ (Joh 6:26 ; Joh 6:41)
The Jews then murmured at him because he said, I am the bread which came down from heaven.
They did not like Jesus speaking about their spiritual needs when they wanted to have their physical and political needs covered. “Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it?” “From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.” ( Joh 6:60 & 66)
This situation proves very well how those who wanted to make Christ a king did not even respect Him if He did not do the works they wanted Him to do.
They did not want a spiritual baptism. This made it impossible for God to restore His king in the land after the 70 weeks.
Right before Christ spoke the words “your house is left unto you desolate” he gave a parable where he discussed a powerful man inviting specially chosen people to his wedding feast. But the invited declined the great offer, and he had to call upon those who were not originally invited instead:
“And sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come. But they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise: And the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them. Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy. Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage” (Mat 22:3-9).
The evangelical lie
Because the prophecy of Daniel 9 shows perfectly that the probation of the Jews as God’s capital from Jerusalem is over, and they did not meet their criteria, the teachers decided that this prophecy had to be divided and the last week, the last 7 years, should be “cut off” from the 70 weeks and placed in the end times. In this way, they create a “gap” between the 69 weeks and the final week and within this gap, the Jews are scattered and in the final week they get to fulfill the requirements and succeed after all. They move the last prophetic week of the Jews’ probation in Jerusalem to the end.
There is nothing in the time prophecy that indicates whatsoever that the 70 weeks time can be separated by a two thousand-year-long gap. Rather, it is presented in the Bible as one prophecy with different waymarks.
By cutting up the prophecy and moving the last week (7 years) to the end, they now can claim that the last verses speak of an antichrist and thus make it fit with the previous teaching.
This is all an error and a belief that was strengthened when Jews made their return to the land.
The expectation of these 7 years is greater than ever, and the Jewish return is considered a confirmation that this theory is true.
Unfortunately, it has also led to the belief of Christians being spared of the great end-time conflicts. The book of Revelation, most of it, is rejected to be about the Christians, and instead, they claim it is speaking about what the Jews have to go through. The mark of the beast, the plagues, and the woman riding the beast, are all placed upon the trials the Jewish nation will face. Many Christians are unprepared failing to see that this is a warning given to them especially, and is even speaking of them, the false Christian movements. Making them a sitting duck to the “beast and the false prophets” end-time deceptions, not realizing it is speaking about their leaders fooling them. Even worse, by rejecting the book of Revelation to be relevant to them, they fulfilled the prophecy of the false prophet mentioned there.
The book of Revelation is “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass” (Rev.1:1) It was given as a warning to Christ’s followers to understand events connected to them.
The important thing to realize is that what were Christ’s principles before are still His principles now. He will not lead a Jewish nation that hates His character and teaching. It won’t happen. Christ’s righteousness is witnessed in scripture, a book most Jewish scholars reject still. The conditions are the same. They were given a time, and that time is long over. Now, because they rejected their Messiah, His kingdom is not of this world. The New Jerusalem is built in heaven not on earth, for His faithful, and will be placed on earth when all have been judged. There are no new chances to choose an earthly kingdom of God before the judgment. The Jewish desire will not happen.