The BibleSearchers Reflections
March, 2004 Reflections on the Time of the End
Omens that Began at the Death of Jesus
The Sanhedrin banished from the Chamber of Hewn Stones
The Lamp on the Menorah refused to give any Light
The Doors of the Hekel open on their Own
The Star, the Comet and the Lamb birthed to the Red Heifer
Violence immediately erupted in the Days of Rage and two days later, the Jerusalem Post announced that the Oslo Accords were declared null and void, exactly seven years to the day, September 13, 1993, Tishri 5754 - September 28, 2000, Tishri 5761, when according to the calendar of the Lord, this ‘covenant of death’ was annulled.
Isaiah 28:14-15 - “Therefore hear the word of the Lord, you scornful men, who rule this people who are in Jerusalem, because you have said, “We have made a covenant with death, and with Sheol we are in agreement. When the overflowing scourge passes through, It will not come to us, for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood we have hidden ourselves.”
The Intifada, started on the Days of Rage, on September 28th, 2000 will be exactly three and a half years old on Passover, April 5, 2004. Is there a prophetic significance to this date? Let us look at all the profound events that will be tied together at this date.
According to Michael Rood and his team, the first sliver of the new moon gleaming over the horizon in Jerusalem occurred on March 22, 2004/Aviv 1 5764. The barley sheaves were also found ripened in Aviv on the side of the Mount of Zion and also ripened in Aviv in greater quantities at lower altitudes out the limits of the city of Jerusalem.
According to Nehemiah Gordon with Karaite Korner, their teams found barley ripened in Aviv in the Jordan Valley and in the northern Negev. Therefore the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Chag HaMatzot) will begin on sunset, Monday, April 5 and end on sunset on Monday, April 12, 2004. This is the month of Aviv (Abib) known as the Head of the Biblical New Year.
Tishri 1 5761, starting on September 28, 2000 was also a shemittah or Sabbatical year. According to Rabbinic traditions “the year that changes everything” would also herald a war cycle that would last until the next Sabbatical year in the Year 2007. Then according to the rabbis, the messiah will come. We feel that the Sabbatical Years were part of the fulfillment of the ministry and death of Jesus in the 1st century C.E.
This same year, the leading rabbi chose this year as the “Year of the Mikveh” and the “Year of Purification”. The mikveh is a baptistery in which they performed the rituals of purification. Taking our minds back to the biblical days, the mikveh was designed to hold 5,760 egg volumes of water, or the number of a full baptistery. Was the Jewish year 5760, when the mikveh baptistery became full? Was the Jewish Sabbatical year 5760, September 1999 to September 2000, the year in which the “Fullness of the Gentiles” was fulfilled? We need to remind ourselves of John the Baptist who was a ‘voice crying in the wilderness’ who said;
Matthew 3:2 - “Repent and be baptized, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
There in the Jordan, Jesus descended into a mikvoth ‘baptism’ and thereby began His ministry on Tishri 1, in the Sabbatical year of 26 CE. Three and a half years later, Jesus went through “The Passion of The Christ” and was crucified in the ‘midst of the week’ as He descended into hell and then was resurrected in triumph to a new life as the first-fruits of the dead.
Does the Apostle Paul suggest that the “blindness” of the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel and that the lost of identity of the Lost Tribes of Israel will end when the ‘fullness of the Gentiles is completed?
Romans 11:25 – “I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: ‘The Deliverer will come out of Zion, and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob (House of Judah and Israel); for this is My covenant with them when I take away their sins.’”
Did not the Apostle Paul state concerning the Israelites, “Has God cast away His people? Certainly not! For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of the Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew.” (Romans 11:1-2 (parts) The Pharisee and Rabbi Paul the ‘blindness’ of Israel was the due to the goodness of God’s will.
Romans 11:8 – “God has given them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see and ears that they should not hear, to this very day.”
Is there a possibility that in the midst of the Sabbatical Year 2000 to 2007, at the setting of the sun on Passover (Pesach), Monday, April 5, 2004 (Aviv 1, 5764) that the restoration of the House of Israel will begin? Are we on the eve of the greatest revival of all ages, the revival of the identity of the House of Israel in the Moshiach (Messiah) of Yahshua?
Or, is there another prophetic event that will happen?
With three and a half years since the beginning of the Intifada, major and potentially catastrophic trends appear to be colliding. It was only one month ago that we reported in February, 2004 BibleSearchers Reflections that there was a mass convergence of more peace plans than ever have been proposed in Middle East politics. Were we on the eve of a new peace pact and will this be the peace pact of the Antichrist or the Little Horn?
The Palestinian Authority under the rule of Yasser Arafat appeared to be in decline and the power of Hamas was in ascendancy trying to wrestle control of the minds of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip from the PA. And then, on March 22, 2004, three missiles appeared to end the hope of all peace plans and in an event that may be one of those colliding events in history, three Israeli missiles were used to surgically assassinate the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, the wheel-chair bound cleric, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as he left the mosque from his early morning prayers.
Yassin’s Killing Opens New Chapter in Israeli-Palestinian War – March 22, 2004
DEBKAfile Special Report and Analysis - Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon has fired the Israel-Palestinian war up to a new plane. The targeted assassination of Hamas founder, leader and moving spirit, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Monday, March 22, was the prime minister’s thunderous reply to the critics who argue that his disengagement strategy would hand the Gaza Strip over to Hamas control. It signals his determination to purge Gaza of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists ahead its evacuation. Yassin’s death is but the precursor to liquidating the violent movement he founded in 1987 to "cleanse" Middle East of Jewish sovereignty and replace it with an Islamic republic. Before Yassin’s death, the Hamas was moving in the opposite direction, boycotting the PA and Arafat and accepting collaboration only with his Fatah-al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades for suicide attacks against Israel. The other party to watch now is Arafat himself. He may decide to take advantage of Hamas disarray and move in on the Gaza Strip and Gaza City where his people have been pushed to the sidelines in recent weeks. More.
Just on the eve of Passover, the Nation of Israel is now plunged into one of its most highly secured times in recent history. Now the question need to be asks, is this cycle the time for the Abomination of Desolation? Antiochus IV Epiphanes was a type. Is the future abomination literal or spiritual? Will the future Abomination of Desolation include a temple or not? Will it be a mega-disaster over the Temple Mount (over or near the site of the Holy of Holiest)? Will it be a nuclear dirty bomb with local, and very disastrous and geo-politically catastrophic? These questions are on the minds of some prophecy observers, including the article by David Dolan, author of “Israel in Crisis”.
All-out war in the Middle East? – March 25, 2004
WorldNetDaily - Ariel Sharon is trying to carry out the "Roadmap" peace plan. This has greatly upset most world leaders, including some of the primary sponsors of the international plan. They are angry that the Israeli leader has chosen to take matters into his own hands after his alleged peace partner, the Palestinian Authority, totally failed to implement its side of the bargain.
What is the aging PLO chairman advocating here? Does he really expect hundreds of thousands of kamikaze bomb-wearing Muslims to come marching into Israel's largely unrecognized capital city to blow themselves and their Jewish victims to smithereens? I think Arafat is promoting something far more sinister. He is calling upon the Palestinian's Mideast allies to fire non-conventional weapons, possibly nuclear ones, onto the territory of the detested "Zionist entity." If a million local Arabs die in the process, so be it. It should be somewhat difficult for Israel's many critics to construe this cheery Arafat admonition as "declaring an unequivocal end to violence and terrorism." More.
Here we see the archetypes of Amalek that was discussed in the March 2004 BibleSearchers Reflections. At the same time, the vulnerability of Yasser Arafat has increased significantly. With the mantra gone that Israel cannot go after the major league players in terrorism, Arafat is feeling considerable heat. Calls for help to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, Egypt’s Mubarak, Yemen’s Salah, Jordan’s Abdullah and Tunisian Bin Ali were received with deadly silence at the other end of the telephone. George Bush and the White House do not respond to the entreaties of Yasser Arafat. Yet at the beginning of the Intifada over three years ago, Arafat threatened that if they did not have a Palestinian State in three and a half-years that they would resort to more
violent and severe measures in their bid to drive the Jews into the sea.
US Refuses to Guarantee Arafat’s Safety – March 26, 2004
The Lekerev Newsletter - Apparently Arafat got the message sent by Israel with the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Hearing comments from the IDF Chief of Staff certainly didn't ease his mind. Arafat's men have now turned to the United States asking them to intervene and protect Arafat from any possible attack by Israel. The United States has refused to respond.
Israel has embraced a policy of intentional vagueness regarding further targets for assassination. In the framework of this policy, Israel does not intend to specify which terror leaders are targeted for future elimination, with the exception of Yassin's successor - Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi - whom Israel already tried to eliminate six months ago and who is known as a target. It is being reported that Rantisi has gone underground.
During the past week security measures for Arafat's protection in the Muqata in Ramallah were beefed up. Fearing those measures inadequate, Palestinians requested help from the American Intelligence service - the CIA- to intervene for Arafat's protection. Simultaneously, the Palestinians also pursued other avenues of assistance in the US. According to American sources, the US has refused to give a commitment to Arafat's men that Israel would not eliminate him too.
This has also led the BibleSearchers to reevaluate the Oracles of Zechariah and the King/s of Gaza in Zechariah 9:5. What has puzzled us is that even though Yasser Arafat has fit the imagery of the “King of Gaza” because he ‘liberated’ that city in 1974, Arafat does not live or reign in power in Gaza but at Ramallah, the home of Joseph of Arimathea. At the same time, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin who was assassinated on March 22, 2004 has lived and reigned in Gaza. Again we ask, will Yasser Arafat return to Gaza
In the Footsteps of the Master – “Crucified with Christ”
Galatians 2:20 – “I have been crucified with Christ …”
The literal pathway to the cross by Jesus becomes a spiritual pathway for His followers. We are not asked to deny our literal lives and the mission of life that we are destined to fulfill no more than we are asked to deny the literal lives of the chosen ones of the Lord, the House of Judah and the House of Israel and transform them into spiritual lives for ourselves. When Jesus asks us to “Follow Me” to the cross, it is an affirmation of our literal and physical being and yet it is a surrender of anything that is pretentious and deceitful in our lives. It is our mental reality that must be changed before we can be willing to grasp our new spiritual destiny.
The pathway to the cross is to surrender the destiny that we have plotted out for ourselves. It is a surrender of how we look at life and our world around us and begin looking at it from the perspective of God. It is a unmasking of ourselves and the willingness to become transparent to all mankind. It is a willingness to give up any claim that we are worthy to be counted as a righteous one of the Lord.
The affirmation of the Tzaddik nature of Yahshua is a willingness to accept that He truly was the Righteous One of Israel. This is an affirmation of the humanness of Jesus and that the pathway to the cross that He walked is also a pathway that we also must go. It was the role of Yahshua that He had to surrender Himself fully to the mission revealed to Him by His Father. If we choose to live the life of Jesus, we must give up our claim to everything we possess, desire or emotionally wish, to surrender any rights to ourselves and ‘follow Him’. We do not give up our individual uniqueness, but our motive for living in this world becomes radically changed. As Jesus cried out aloud on the cross, "Eli ... Eli ... Lamah azavtani" (from Psalms 22:2) which is interpreted as "My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?" so also we must cry out aloud on this pathway of absolute loneliness before we can affirm our new destiny as ‘sons and daughters of God’.
We are not asked to ‘beat up’ on ourselves. We are not asked to transform our literal lives but what will be transformed is how we look at life. We are not asked to give the Lord our ‘self-righteousness’, our goodness, integrity and our morality. Jesus does not need them. He wants us. We are asked to give up our sins, our hidden taboos, our secret passions, and those things that we nurture in the secret recesses of our souls. When we follow Jesus, we do not take with us our own roadmap, we follow His.
The pathway to the cross goes through the despair of the garden. It is the agony of Christ’s plea, “if possible, let this cup pass from me.” (Matthew 26:39) We come with our loneliness and despair will dwell all around us. When we kneel at the cross, it is not our sins that shock our reality, but the pride that opposes Jesus in our hearts. We begin to see ourselves as the captors of Jesus, as one of those that spat on His face and cursed Him, and as one of those who raised the whip and lashed His body. With shame, terror and horror, we realize that we are at the cross and with our pride we are afflicting the gashes upon His body and hanging the crown of thorns upon His head. Only then and there are we willing to surrender and give it all up to our Master. It is at this time that we sign our death certificate to ourselves. We lay down our sins at the cross; our emotions, our opinions and our intellectual beliefs on how our life should be.
In its place Jesus will install in our heart a new moral conviction against lust (the desire to have things now), emotions (the desire to pamper your own passions), and pride (the right to any claim to myself). No, we will not seek to imitate Christ, manipulate our lives so that it appears we are following Christ, or cast a façade over our lives to hide our satanic pride. We will release our claims to ourselves and allow God to instill a ‘new heart’ within us.
Yet the act of surrender is also the act of a purposeful determination to live a ‘new life in Christ’. When we surrender to Jesus, the Lord of hosts will give us new equipment to become defenders of our Master. These are called the ‘armor’ for the warriors for Jesus. As Jesus was the Agent for His Father, so now we must be the agent for Jesus. With the surrender of our ‘old life’ we are now willing to pick up our assignment or quest for our new life. So as Jesus truly did say on the cross, "Eli ... Eli ... Lemanah sabachthani," or "My God, My God, this was my destiny” just before He hung His head and gave up His spirit, it is our exciting mission to fulfill our destiny that will be given to us by the Lord. With the death to ourselves, we will shout with a new determination, “This is my destiny. I am now part of the remnant of the Lord’s and the family of God.”
Robert Mock MD