Luke 21:24   "And  Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." 

In other words, the period that is labeled  the times of the Gentiles  is the period in which Jerusalem is trampled underfoot by the Gentiles.

The beginning of the times of the Gentiles is something we can pinpoint in history. 

This is not even a debatable point anymore in the study of prophecy. 

It began with Nebuchadnezzar. 

He was the first one to lay siege to Jerusalem and to destroy it after David had become king.

Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion was several hundred years after David’s reign, but notice that Egypt is not included in the dream of Nebuchadnezzar as one of the world empires, and yet Egypt had been a great world empire.

Neither was the Assyrian empire included, though Assyria did lay siege to Jerusalem around 700 B.C. 

Isaiah 37 records God’s deliverance of Judah, 

God did not permit even one arrow of the Assyrian army to be shot into the city. 

God would not allow Assyria to take Jerusalem  -  He held them back  -  giving to His own people an opportunity to return to Him.

When David was king, God had said to him,

"I’m going to give you an everlasting kingdom." 

He also said to David, 

"It will be a worldwide kingdom, not just over Palestine but over this entire earth." 

We find that the psalmists picked up this promise and that the prophets repeatedly spoke of it. 

In Isaiah 2:1-5,  we see that this kingdom which the prophets spoke about was not just confined to Palestine but that it was to be worldwide.

"The Word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD’S house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the Word of the LORD from Jerusalem. And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the LORD."

This is not speaking of the last days of the church. The last days of the church pertain to the time of spiritual apostasy. Apostle Paul makes this very clear in his pastoral epistles of 1 and 2 Timothy: "Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith …" (1 Timothy 4:1). We can clearly see that the "latter times" of the church and the "last days" of Israel are not identical, nor are they contemporary, although there is some overlapping. Certainly they do not refer to the same period of time. 

It is important to note this.

The "last days" in this verse refer to the Great Tribulation Period. 

Our Lord made it clear, when His disciples asked Him, 

"When shall these things be?" (Luke 21:7)  -   refers to the destruction of Jerusalem) that by the "last days" He meant the Great Tribulation Period. 

The Great Tribulation ends with the 2nd coming of the Lord Jesus Christ to the earth to set up His kingdom. 

The first section of Isaiah chapters 2–5, deals with the Great Tribulation Period and the kingdom that He shall be set up on this earth.

"The mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains." 

This pertains to the nation of Israel after the church has been removed. 

The word mountain in Scripture means  "a kingdom, an authority, or a rule."

Daniel makes this clear in his prophecy.

"The Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains"  - that is,  

above all the kingdoms of this earth. 

The kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, for He is the King of Kings. 

One of the reasons why Israel is such a sensitive piece of real estate today is because it is the very spot that God has chosen to be the political and religious center of the world during the kingdom age. 

Speaking of those days Daniel says,

 "Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth" (Daniel 2:35).

God’s kingdom will be exalted above all the kingdoms of this world.

Both government and religion will center in Jerusalem. 

The Lord Jesus Christ will sit upon the throne of David. 

One of the primary concerns of those who inhabit the earth will be to discover and do the will of God. They will seek to learn His ways and walk in His paths.

"He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people." 

The period of the reign of Christ on the earth during the Millennium is another trial period for mankind. 

And there will be a great many judged during that period; and, of course, multitudes will be saved during that time also.

"They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks"  

the rule of the Lord Jesus upon this earth at this time will be righteous, and He will compel the nations to practice justice and fairness with each other. 

For the first time all countries will dwell together in peace. 

Only during the kingdom age will the people be able 

"to beat their swords in into plowshares."

Joel 3:10 tells us that during the Tribulation just the opposite will be true:

the people will beat their plowshares into swords. 

In fact, we are living in times like that right now.

In the New Testament the Lord Jesus said,

"When a strong man armed keepeth his palace …" (Luke 11:21). 

If we are going to have peace and safety, we must have law and order. 

The prophecy of "beating swords into plowshares" will be fulfilled during the Millennium, when Christ is reigning. 

Then one will be able to take the locks off of our doors, and we will be able to walk the streets in safety. 

Then there will be no need for soldiers for there will be no more war. There will be no more need for weapons. 

The kingdom that the Lord Jesus Christ is going to establish upon this earth will be one of peace. 

For He is the Prince of Peace.

It is futile, nonsensical, and asinine for any man or nation to promise to bring peace upon the earth. The United Nations, which was founded to help bring peace on earth, is one of the greatest places to carry on battles. It has proven how impotent it is. It cannot bring peace on earth. It has only increased dictatorship on the earth. We do not have peace in this world. 

If you are a child of God with your thinking cap on and begin to think God’s thoughts after Him, you will find that you are living in a big, bad, evil world. 

If you expect to see a brotherhood of all men, you are doomed to disappointment, because man is not capable of bringing peace to this earth. 

There will be no peace as long as there is sin in the hearts of men and an overweening ambition to rule over other people.

In view of the future that is coming, we today should walk in the light of the Lord. 

This is the only way of peace.

While God is left out, there will never be peace.

That prophecy can be multiplied, and not only once, because there are many more prophecies from the Old Testament concerning that kingdom which is yet to be established upon this earth  -  universal and everlasting. 

That kingdom was represented by the scepter of David, and God kept telling those who followed in David’s line that if they continued on in sin that He would take that scepter away from them - temporarily - until

"the times of the Gentiles" would be fulfilled. 

However, they did not listen to the prophets whom God sent to them, and our Lord Jesus reminded the Jews of His day of that fact. 

And so the day came when God took the scepter out of the hands of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and He gave it to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.

God took the scepter of worldwide rulership and He  placed it in the hands of the Gentiles. 

That was well over twenty-five hundred years ago, and the scepter is to this day in the hands of the Gentiles.

The scepter represents world rulership.

Nebuchadnezzar,  overnight,  became a world ruler. 

He had defeated Necho, king of Egypt, and then he went on fighting in the delta of the Nile and overcame  -  everything fell before him  -  his father, Nabopolassar died and that made him an undisputed ruler of the world.

Since he had overcome everything, a little tribal deity up in Judah by the name of Jehovah did not amount to very much as far as he was concerned and so he thought, he could easily overcome there as well. 

Who was to stand in his way?

When Nebuchadnezzar returned to Babylon, he looked over the city and boasted of a great civilization. 

To this day we have not presented to the world, a civilization, any greater than the Babylonian. 

Then there came a question into his mind and into his heart about the future: 

All of a sudden,  he found himself a world ruler and He realized that in his hand had been placed a scepter. 

It must have come from somewhere. 

Who would it go to and what would happen to it? 

What would be the final outcome? 

To this very day, after so many years of human history,  since Nebuchadnezzar, this world is still wondering about that? 

God gave us the answer.

He spoke to Nebuchadnezzar in a dream one night. 

God answered his questions, and let him know the future and He also let him know  that these despised people whom he had brought into captivity were still His chosen people. 

It would be one of them, who would be Gods instrument to reveal to him the dream he had had  and to give him the interpretation of it.

This was a dream that troubled Nebuchadnezzar. 

He saw an image, tremendous and awesome. 

God spoke to him in the language he understood  -   

Babylon was the fountainhead of  idolatry. 

Babylon probably had as many idolatrous images as did Memphis in Egypt. In fact, all idolatry can be traced back to the Tower of Babel and this city of Babylon. 

God spoke to him by way of an image, a language he understood.

Nebuchadnezzar was troubled about this great image that stood before him and did nothing.

There was no movement at all. 

It just stood there in all its brightness - multicolored, polychrome, a multi-metallic image. 

He had never seen anything like it.

It was stupendous and awe inspiring.

It was fierce in its countenance. 

It was that which would incite terror!

Because Nebuchadnezzar was troubled about the dream he summoned all the wise men to come. 

When they came and stood before him, he told them that he had had a dream and that is was an important dream and that he wanted them to tell him not only the meaning of the dream but they were also to tell him what he had dreamt. He sure put them to the test. 

These poor wise men could not come up with the answer.

They did  not  represent  the best brains of the day.   They said, 

"We can tell you the interpretation if you will tell us the dream, but we do not know what the dream is."

But king Nebuchadnezzar said, 

"You must tell me the dream or I will not know that your interpretation is valid."

THIS WAS A VERY TALL ORDER FROM THE KING.

It was impossible for these men to know the dream.

God had given the dream and they did not know God.

Daniel 2:12  "For this cause the king was angry and very furious, and commanded to destroy all the wise men of Babylon." 

This was Satan’s effort, to destroy Daniel because Daniel had already become a conspicuous man, a man of purpose in that court. 

Daniel was a faithful man of God  -  and the devil wanted to destroy him.

When word was brought to Daniel that all of the wise men were to be destroyed unless they could tell what the dream was, Daniel with real confidence and faith in God asked for an audience with the king.

And he was ushered into the kings presence.

There he asked for time and gave the assurance that the king would get the valid interpretation.

King Nebuchadnezzar was willing to wait and he gave Daniel the oppertunity to go and find out what his dream had been. He admired Daniels confidence.

So Daniel went out and called his three friends and together, they had a prayer meeting.

I feel sure that this must have been the greatest prayer meeting ever held in Babylon.

They prayed fervently that night.

They lay hold of God that night, and God gave Daniel a vision of the dream and the interpretation of it.

Then Daniel asked for another audience with Nebuchadnezzar, and the guard ushered him in to the king.

Daniel told the king that he could tell him what he had dreamt and give him the interpretation of it.

Daniel wanted the king to understand that it was not his own wisdom and that he would take no credit because he wanted the king to know that there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets.

 I think that Nebuchadnezzar came to know that there is a God and that he became a converted man.

Daniel went on to described the dream to the king,

"You saw in your dream a great image." And the minute he said that, Nebuchadnezzar’s eyes must have lit up.

He might have been skeptical at first  as he watched this presumptuous young man who said that he knew what the dream was.

Nebuchadnezzar eagerly told Daniel to continue because He was on the right track, so Daniel went on

You saw a great image of splendor. It was frightful to look upon. That image just stood there. It had a head of gold. It had chest and arms of silver. It had an abdomen and thighs of brass and it had legs of iron, and feet, of iron and miry clay."

Nebuchadnezzar said, "you are right young man.

That is what I saw. That was my dream."

Daniel continued 

"And then you saw a stone cut out without hands and you saw it smite the image on the feet, and it pulverized it."

"That’s right said the king, that is what happened."

Daniel continued,

"I will give you the interpretation of it."

"Thou, O king … thou art this head of gold."

"What you saw king Nebuchadnezzar, is what God is going to do in the latter days, and God has given you the entire briefing of future rule. He set before you the course of Gentile domination down to the very end of Gentile world history."

The Lord Jesus Christ said that 

"… Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled" (Luke 21:24)     

Since that time the armies of these nations mentioned here, and others, have marched through Jerusalem.

To me, it is amazing that when the United Nations made the Jewish population of Israel a nation, the Jews wanted above everything else the ancient city of Jerusalem.

Over there today, Jerusalem is not in the hands of the nation of Israel.

The old city is in the hands of the Arabs.

The Word of God has made this crystal clear to us.

The kingdoms represented by the metals of the image are clearly identified.

We do not have to speculate.

Before the end of the book of Daniel we find that God actually names the first three kingdoms:

Babylon;

Media-Persia;

Greece;

and He so well describes the fourth kingdom as to leave no doubt that it is the Roman Empire.

Historically each empire has followed the other exactly as God said it would, each one becoming a little stronger and a little bigger but each one   becoming a little inferior to the one that preceded it.

King Nebuchadnezzar was an absolute monarch in the Babylonian Empire. He never asked anybody,  not even his wife, about anything. He never shared rulership.

When this man said, "Peace," there was peace in the world because he said it. 

After him came that oriental empire that dazzled the world, the Media-Persian Empire with all of its riches and oriental splendor.

When Xerxes, lusting for power, moved toward the West, God stopped him at Thermopylae.

The Greeks said the "gods" helped them there.

But it wasn’t gods (plural), it was singular  -  God helped the Greeks in that 

He stopped the invading Media-Persian Empire.

Three hundred ships were destroyed, and Xerxes lost a million men in that expedition.

Then God took the scepter of world dominion out of the hand of oriental rulers and passed it on to Greece, placing it in the hands of Alexander the Great, who in just a brief span of eleven years conquered the world.

But Greece could not hold the scepter.

There was a division after the death of Alexander(32 years) and the empire was divided among his four generals.

Then the scepter was passed on to Rome, and Rome ruled.

The Media-Persian Empire had ruled from the Hellespont to the coral strands of India, from the top of the Euphrates down to the Persian Gulf. 

Then Rome came on the scene and conquered the then-known world. 

All the way from the rockbound coast of Scotland to the burning sands of the Sahara Desert, all the way from the Rock of Gibraltar to the Euphrates River, the great Roman Empire ruled.  

It is the fourth and the last empire.

Although the boundaries widened, as we move down in history  we can clearly see that there is deterioration from one empire to the next.

How different it is from man’s outline of history!

H. G. Wells wrote a book entitled, "The Outline of History."

He traced the history of man all the way up from the very beginning, from the Paleozoic to the Paleolithic to the Neolithic ages and up.

It is onward and upward forever, bigger and better.

That is the story of man according to H. G. Wells.

But the interesting thing is, that this man lived to see World War II, and before he died he said this:

"The world has come to the end of its tether, and civilization has come to an end. We’re standing on the brink, and we’ll fall over one of these days."

That does not sound like we are getting bigger and better. 

God said there would be no improvement.

God said there would be deterioration, and there is deterioration in four different aspects, as graphically depicted by the image. 

1) There is deterioration in the worth of the metals. 

Gold is more valuable than iron,  and it is gold to silver, to brass, to iron, and then to clay.

2) There is a deterioration in position.  

Nebuchadnezzar was the head of gold, and certainly the head occupies a more honored position than the foot occupies. 

There is deterioration here according to Scripture: 

"After thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee." 

God made it quite clear that each one in succession was to be inferior to the other.

Then there is something that Tregelles, the great Hebrew scholar who  called attention to the fact that even the specific gravity of these metals becomes less as you move down. 

All the way from the head of gold down to the feet of iron and clay there is deterioration.

Just as God said it would be.

There is something else here that is very important.  

When Daniel appeared before king Nebuchadnezzar he said,

"But there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, and maketh known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days" (Daniel 2:28).        

Note the expression "in the latter days," which has a very specific meaning. 

Those who are students of Scripture, and especially of prophecy, will recognize that it is an expression that occurs again and again in the Old Testament. 

We ought never to confuse the last days of Israel with the last days of the church.

They are not the same at all. 

The mentioning of the last days of Israel began way back, long before the people became a nation. 

When Jacob was on his deathbed he called his 12 sons to his bedside and he made a prophecy concerning them, and this is what we are told 

Genesis 49:1   "And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days."

The last days  -   in the latter times. 

We find in Scripture that all the prophets looked down the centuries to the last days. 

These last days concern the nation Israel.

What are these last days, these latter times? 

The fourth kingdom takes place, in the latter days. 

That fourth kingdom is Rome. 

Just look at something that is without doubt one of the most amazing things in the prophetic Word. 

No person could have guessed like this. 

There are only four worldwide kingdoms represented by these four different metals. 

There is first of all the head of gold, specifically stated to be Nebuchadnezzar in 

Daniel 2:38   "But there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, and maketh known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days.  Thy dream,  and the visions of thy head upon thy bed,  are these." 

Then there are the chest and the arms of silver, clearly identified as Media-Persia, 

And the brass abdomen and thighs of Greece, the Graeco-Macedonian Empire. 

Then there are the legs of iron with feet of iron and clay, the Roman Empire.

There are no more kingdoms after that. 

Rome is the last worldwide kingdom.

Notice, that Rome came to a dissolution about the fourth century A.D. 

It was in the fifth century that the barbarian hordes poured into the Roman Empire, and my ancestors and maybe yours were in those barbarian hordes. 

It’s awful to think that that we had barbarian ancestors, but we did. 

The barbarians poured into that empire. 

It just fell apart because it was rotten to the core.

It was a dictatorship, the like of which the world had never seen.  

Edward Gibbon, in the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, has written:

The empire of the Romans filled the world, and when the empire fell into the hands of the single person, the world became a safe and dreary prison for his enemies. To resist was fatal and it was impossible to fly. 

Robert Culver,  who wrote a brilliant book on Daniel says,

Two millennia ago, Rome gave the world the ecumenical unity which the League of Nations and the United Nations organizations have sought to revive in our time. The modern attempts are not original at all (as many of our contemporaries suppose), but are revivals of the ancient Roman ideal which never since the time of Augustus Caesar has been wholly lost.

Rome did not end. 

Rome fell apart.

It just came loose at the seams. 

It never died. 

Rome lived on and Rome lives today in the broken fragments of many countries of Western Europe. 

When Rome fell apart the barbarian hordes poured in? 

Attila the Hun sacked Rome, and was awestruck by what he saw. When he looked about and realized he could not handle such an empire, he took his army and left the city. 

There arose no fifth empire.

That’s something to think about.

In the seventh century, out of the East came the Arab hordes. 

They came from both East and West under the crescent  -  Moslems, fanatics to the core and armed with a sword  to convert the world. 

They almost destroyed the civilization of Western Europe at that time.

But they built no empire. 

The crescent of the Moslems was lifted over Constantinople, the capital of the eastern branch of the Roman Empire. 

One might have expected one of the caliphs to ascend the throne of the Caesars, but none ascended it.

Tartars and Turks moved through Asia. Genghis Khan, Suleiman the Great  -  but neither became a world ruler. 

Napoleon tried it, but on his way to Warsaw  

God stopped him with the weakest thing, a snowflake. 

Bismarck, the iron chancellor of Germany, tried to put Western Europe together and revive the Roman Empire. 

He failed. 

Kaiser Wilhelm tried, Hitler tried, and Mussolini tried. 

All failed.

There have been only 4 empires, 

And for over fifteen hundred years the nations of Europe have been at each other’s throats. 

There have been wars back and forth among those nations that composed the Roman Empire, and the Roman Empire is somewhere down in the feet of the image where there are 10 toes.

We cannot  identify the nations represented by the toes. 

But they will fall into place after the Rapture. 

Anyone who tries to identify these nations is like someone who goes into the nursery and plays with the little baby’s toes, "this  little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home…." 

Although we cannot identify the nations that will compose the revived Roman Empire, at this point we are somewhere in the time of the feet of the image. 

There will be a division.

At the beginning there are 2 legs of iron, now there are 10 toes representing the division of the empire. 

And they are made of clay and iron, the clay denoting weakness and the iron denoting strength. 

We know that in Europe there are both.

What is Western Europe waiting for at this hour? 

It is waiting for a man big enough and strong enough to come along and put Western Europe back together again, and they are making progress. 

Europe for years was caught between two colossi, two great juggernauts  -  Russia on one side, the United States on the other. 

The little nations of Europe are now moving together and are quickly gaining economic power. 

It is no longer difficult to cross over from Germany to France. They are breaking down the barriers. 

"They call themselves Europeans." 

Will that be the name of the new nation that will come out of this? 

Western Europe will come back together, 

And, we are told in the Word of God that this last empire will be headed up by the Antichrist, for he alone will bring it back together again. 

He will accomplish it  in the last days.

This will end the times of the Gentiles, 

for when it comes back together it will defy God again. 

Remember, 

this is the empire that crucified 

our Lord Jesus Christ. 

This empire in the days of Caesar Augustus sent out a decree that the whole world should be taxed. 

Does that sound familiar! 

Mary had to go down from Nazareth to Bethlehem, because she was of the house and lineage of David, in order to enroll for the taxation made by Rome. 

Rome will defy our Lord Jesus Christ again and will seek to destroy Him. 

Then the Lord Jesus Christ will come.

And this is His second coming to earth before us   

He is represented in the Word of God, by the stone, 

The Smiting Stone.

The prophet Daniel says,

"Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth" (Daniel 2:34-35).

Nebuchadnezzar beheld the image in awe and wonder. 

The Stone, coming from beyond the environs of the image and without human origin or motivation, Smote the image on the feet of iron and clay with such force that all the metals were pulverized. 

And a wind blew the dust of the image away, entirely. 

Then the stone began to grow as a living stone, and it filled the whole world, taking the place of this image.

We are living in a world  where men in the religious community have been saying for years that the church is going to convert the world, that the Kingdom of God will be established by human effort. 

The Word of God says the contrary. 

When God is ready to set up His Kingdom, He will not need help from any church! 

This age in which we live will not end with a converted world as so many today seem to think. 

This age will end by the catastrophic and cataclysmic coming of Christ to this earth. He will put down Gentile misrule and He will take the scepter of world dominion.

He is the Smiting Stone of destruction.

The reason that Stone has not yet struck is because the last part of the prophecy has not quite been fulfilled. 

Antichrist is yet to appear, 

God is holding him back. 

Europe is crying out for a man. 

They will take any person if they will promise to bring them together and give them a measure of peace. 

That is exactly what the Antichrist will promise them and he will accomplish it for a brief time.

But there will be no real peace for this earth until Lord Jesus comes.

In the meantime, in patience our Lord is dealing with this world, and in mercy He is holding back the judgment. 

On one occasion when the Lord Jesus confronted the Pharisees, He said,

Matthew 24:43-44   "Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder."

Dear reader if  you will but fall upon the Stone, Christ Jesus, you will obtain mercy and be saved.

John 3:35-36   "The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hand.  He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." 

We have moved pretty close to the end of the age, to a day that is coming, when the Lord Jesus Christ will come forward and take the scepter back into His own hands. 

And there will never be peace on this earth

until that scepter is held by the  nail-pierced hands of the Lord Jesus Christ and He rules on this earth. 

It is not  till then that peace and righteousness will cover this earth as the waters cover the sea. 

That is our hope for today.

How I long for peace and righteousness on earth, I feel sure you do as well. 

Oh if only our Lord would come!

Well I’m tired and I'm weary

But I must go alone
Till the Lord comes and calls my soul away
Well the morning will be so bright
And the lamb will be the light
And the night will be black as the sea

There will be peace in the valley for me, some day
There will be peace in the valley, oh Lord I pray
There'll be no sadness, no sorrow
No trouble I see
There will be peace in the valley for me

Well the bear will be gentle
And the wolf will be tame
And the lion will lay down by the lamb
And the beasts from the wild
They'll be led by a little child
And I'll be changed from this creature that I am

There will be peace in the valley for me, some day
There will be peace in the valley, oh Lord I pray
There'll be no sadness, no sorrow
No trouble I see
There will be peace in the valley for me.

Even so come Lord Jesus! 

Please come today!

Amen!

Matthew 24:37–41   "But as the days of Noe [Noah] were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe (Noah) entered the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left." 

At the Revelation, unbelievers are removed from the earth. 

Notice Matthew 24, 

Our Lord gives the discourse we call the Olivet Discourse. 

The Olivet Discourse has nothing to do with the Rapture of the church. He is not talking about the church. 

He is simply answering the questions the apostles have put to Him. 

In Matthew’s account He is answering 2 of those questions: 

1) What is the sign of the end of the age? 

2) What is the sign of His coming? 

For the sign at the end of the age He gives this:

There are many people who think this refers to the Rapture, 

but He is not talking about the Rapture in the Olivet Discourse. It is so obvious what He is saying. 

He likens this to the days of Noah, 

As the conditions on the earth were in the days of Noah, when the flood came and took them all away. 

Whom did the flood take away? 

Noah and his family? 

No. 

Noah was left here on the earth to continue the existence of the human race on the earth. 

But it was that crowd of unbelievers, that crowd of great sinners, that were removed from the earth. 

They were the ones taken away, and they were taken away in judgment.

Our Lord Jesus Christ says here, 

"Just as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be when the Son of Man comes." 

Comes where?

To the earth of course. 

Who will be taken away? 

Those who are judged. 

And He leaves those here who will enter into the Kingdom and continue human life on this earth.

At the Rapture, the believers were removed. 

And at the Revelation unbelievers are removed.

At the Rapture there are no signs. 

At the Revelation, many signs. 

In fact Matthew 24 answers the question as to the signs of His coming to -  

the earth to establish His Kingdom. 

For example, He says, 

"When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place." 

I know He is not talking to believers because believers do not have a holy place. 

The only people that I know who ever had a holy place was Israel. 

Our Lord Jesus is apparently talking to them. 

The abomination of desolation, He says, will be there, and they are to look for that. 

Believers  are not looking for the abomination of desolation. 

I wouldn’t even know an abomination of desolation if I met one on the street! 

Thank God! Hallelujah!

I am not looking for that; 

I am looking for the the Lord Jesus.

There is a lot of difference between looking for Him and looking for an abomination!

The Book of Revelation is not a conglomerate of confusion, but it gives us  the orderly steps by which the Lord Jesus Christ is to become the Sovereign Ruler of this little earth. 

It deals with the past and the present and the future. 

They all are included in that wonderful Book of Revelation.

Then there is another distinction that we should make. 

It is the distinction that apostle Paul called to our attention. He said,

1 Corinthians 10:32   "Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God." 

This is the threefold division of the human family according to the Word of God: 

Jews,  Gentiles,  and   the Church.

In the Book of Revelation, after the church has been removed, we are told that before the great day of His wrath comes, before the Great Tribulation breaks in all its fury on this earth, two companies are sealed. 

One is a company of 144,000 Israelites (this is one group Scripture recognizes  -  "Give none offence, neither to the Jews …"). 

Then there is a great company of Gentiles who are sealed, just as the Israelites were sealed. 

There were 144,000 Israelites sealed, but of Gentiles there was sealed a great company that no man could number. 

We have here 2 divisions of the human family, sealed. 

Jews and Gentiles. 

But how about the third division, the church of God? 

They are not sealed. 

And it would be frightful indeed if the church went through the Great Tribulation without being sealed. 

It would be terrible to go through it sealed, but it would be tragic to go through it without protection. 

Remember that Christ in the Great Tribulation is no longer in the place of intercession, 

He is in the place of Judge. 

He is, at this point, directing the events that will finally bring Him to the earth to assume power. 

The poor church  -  if it were in the world  -  is left out and would not be sealed during this period. 

Why wasn’t the church sealed? 

because the church is with Him in the New Jerusalem. 

We need to observe that at the Rapture there is 

no angel ministry. 

This may seem like a very unimportant detail, but it is a noticeable detail.

1 Thessalonians 4:16  "For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first."

PRAYERFULLY MEDITATE ON:

The Lord Jesus said,

John 14:2-3   "I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." 

EVEN SO  COME  LORD JESUS!   AMEN.

"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved" 

"And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them. And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one’s bands were loosed. And the keeper of the prison awaking out of his sleep, and seeing the prison doors open, he drew out his sword, and would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had been fled. But Paul cried with a loud voice, saying, Do thyself no harm: for we are all here. Then he called for a light, and sprang in, and came trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas, And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. And they spake unto him the Word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes; and was baptized, he and all his, straightway. And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them, and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house" (Acts 16:25-34).

And He will sanctify you and keep you till He comes to receive you unto Himself at the Rapture of the church.

This is apostle Paul's prayer for all believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Man is a triune being; body, soul (mind), and spirit. "Sanctify you wholly"  -   we are to reach a place of maturation. We should not remain as babes in Christ; we should grow to maturity.

"Faithful is He that calleth you, who also will do it" (1 Thess. 5:24). 

There's mercy with the Lord,

And He will surely give you rest,  

By trusting in His Word.

For Jesus shed His precious blood  

Rich blessings to bestow;

Plunge now into the crimson flow  

That washes white as snow.

Yes Jesus is the truth, the way,  

That leads you into rest,

Believe in Him without delay,  

And you are fully blessed.

Come, then, and join this holy band,  

And on to glory go,

To dwell in that celestial land, 

Where joys immortal flow.

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THIS PAGE UPDATED:  9-11-2009.