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Well, we are in our 12 of Learning the Bible 24 Hours in which we're going to take a quick

survey of 12 so-called minor prophets.

And we, of course, are in the post, the exile and post-exile time period.

And we're going to focus in here on these 12 and try to put them in perspective for

you.

We have Hosea who spoke to the northern kingdom.

That's confusing because Hosea came from the south, but God commissions them as you'll

see to take a message to Jerobo in the second and the northern kingdom.

And Hosea's book is going to be very important because I see a real parallel between his

situation in our own.

And Amos is also from the south going against the northern kingdom to take his messages.

Obadiah is in the time of Jiahachim, but his message really goes to Edomites and so

forth.

Jonah is preaching to the Assyrian empire prior to them finally taking over the northern

kingdom.

So you need to understand that Jonah's reluctance to go there was because he was a patriot.

He knew they were the traditional enemy of Israel and we'll deal with that when we get

there.

And Micah is in times of Ahez, roughly contemporaneous with Isaiah.

Mayhem is about a century after Jonah, but again to the Assyrians.

Then we have Habakkuk between just after Jeremiah.

And see it's confusing because the order that they're in your Bible are not chronological

nor are they clustered by the people to whom they were speaking.

And so the order is what it is.

So we have Zephaniah who is well before Jeremiah between Isaiah and Jeremiah.

And Haggai is one that speaks to the rebuilding of the temple in the days of Ezra.

And Zechariah is in the days of Nehemiah just prior to the end much.

He says much about the second coming of Jesus Christ.

And then we have Malachi who closes the Old Testament period.

So that's a little confusing perhaps, but the order in your Bible are neither chronological

nor geographic.

This is an attempt to sort that out.

You can review that at Juliusius.

And Malachi are 400 years, sometimes called the silent years, between the Old and the

New Testaments.

But they're not really silent because as I've mentioned before, they are detailed for you

in the 11th chapter of Daniel.

They're written down in advance in large measure.

But let's get to Hosea.

His focus is the apostasy of the Northern Kingdom.

And he was to the Northern Kingdom what Jeremiah was to the Southern Kingdom in a sense.

And from Jerobo in the second to the Assyrian invasion is approximately 50 years.

Between the death of Jerobo in the second and the Assyrian invasion while Hezekiah is

still a ruler in Judah.

He murdered the son of Jaihul, which ends the Jaihul dynasty.

And Shalom slays Zechariah who only lasts six months.

Then Manheim slays Shalom.

And Pekka kills Bekoniah, the son of Manheim.

And then Hosea, a guy by name of Hosea, slays Pekka.

So you've got just murder after murder after murder, dynasty after dynasty after dynasty

continuing.

So you've got what, one, two, three, four, five, six, six or seven dynasties right here

in this profile.

Golden calves were of course erected at Bethal and Dan.

The original symbols, but they of course lead to nature worship and child sacrifice and

so forth.

Just as we are today, same thing happening.

They sacrificed their children on idols of bronze.

We found a way to sacrifice children in the most holy place of all the womb of the mother.

But the book of Hosea, the first few chapters are a prologue where he takes an adult or his

wife and through whom he has three children that God names prophetically, has him named

prophetically.

His focus of his book is national sin.

That it's intolerable and that it will be punished.

That's basically his theme.

In the prologue, we have his wife by the name of Gomer.

But her first child is named Jezreel, which means either scattered or sown of God.

These are homonyms really, in other words words that sound alike but mean different

things.

God will either scatter or God will sow in a constructive sense.

The reigning house of Israel succeeded to the throne through blood of Jezreel.

It was the site of Jehu's ruthless massacre of the house of Ahab in Jezreel.

That's in 2 Kings as we talked about it there.

In the future, it would be the scene of Israel's ultimate military demise.

Jezreel is the plane of Estrilon.

It's 10 miles in breadth from the Mediterranean and Mount Carmel roughly to the Jordan, from

the Galilee to the mountains of Ephraim.

It was the great battlefield of Gideon, you may recall.

It became a symbol of national disgrace and defeat as it had been after Saul's death.

Of course, it's also proximate to the Battle of Armageddon.

It's a very key site.

But that two children are named Lo-ruim.

Lo means no in Hebrew.

Lo-ruim means unloved and the other one is not my people.

So God has Hosea name these two children to represent a prophetic message.

Speaking of Israel.

You're unloved and you're not my people.

This is God's way of getting their attention.

The good news, so I don't leave you with that, before it's over, God will say, then

will I say to them, which were not my people, thou art my people and they shall say, thou

art my God.

So that will be repaired before it's over.

They will become rheuma and ami rather than lo-rumah and lo-ami.

But Hosea's message is one we really want to understand.

No other messenger gives so complete an outline of the ways God deals with His earthly people.

God suffers when His people are unfaithful to Him.

It's astonishing to realize that the creator of the universe can suffer, can be grieved.

You know, people say, you know, you think of the Father and the Son, what about the Holy

Spirit?

We tend to think of the Holy Spirit as sort of a force or something.

No, it's a person.

The Holy Spirit loves you.

How do I know that?

Because He's grieved.

You can grieve the Holy Spirit.

These person just have feelings.

God suffers when His people are unfaithful to Him.

But God cannot condone sin.

That's one of the restraints on His nature.

God will never cease to love His own and consequently He seeks to win back those that

have forsaken Him.

That's the message that comes through, that God cannot condone sin, but He does seek to

win back those that have forsaken Him.

Now the northern kingdom, we need to understand the northern kingdom to understand where we

stand.

The northern kingdom had, under Jerobo and the Second, was one of the most prosperous periods

in their history.

Their standing army had recovered all the territory previously lost.

They enjoyed unparalleled material prosperity.

Many of them had two homes and so forth.

You read through the text, you'll recognize they're very, very prosperous.

From their point of view, it was the best of times.

God's indictment, He has Hosea from the south go up there to give Him His indictment.

Accuses them, they had exchanged their loyalty to their heritage for pagan worship.

Well, that makes me uncomfortable.

Aren't we doing the same thing?

The results in the northern kingdom was the lowest ab of immorality they'd ever seen.

I'd spread adultery, social injustice, violent crime, religious hypocrisy, political rebellion,

selfish arrogance, spiritual ingratitude.

That's the whole ball of wax.

The worst it had ever been.

So this is their predicament.

It was the best of times in their eyes, but it was the worst of times in God's eyes.

You can't help but remind of the opening line of Charles Dickens' famous novel, Theo

Two Cities.

Best of times it was, at the same time, it was the worst of times.

Oh, how you look at it.

Hosea's message is to let them understand how it looks to God.

Although a loving and caring God had provided their abundance and prosperity, their sin,

disloyalty, and abandonment of Him will force Him to vindicate His justice with judgment.

Oh boy.

Thus, God is going to use their enemies as His instrument of judgment.

Shortly they will be history, and shortly they were.

Not long after Hosea's message, the Assyrian Empire wiped out the northern kingdom.

God used the Assyrians.

These are sinful people, but God uses tainted instruments to accomplish His purposes.

Here the word of the Lord, ye children of Israel, for the Lord hath a controversy with

the inhabitants of the land, because there is no love, no truth, no intimate knowledge

of God in the land.

This verse summarizes the situation of the northern kingdom that in God's eyes it also

provides the backbone verse for my wife's ministry.

She published a trilogy of books that have become classics in each of these areas.

The way of agape, that's understanding God's love, be transformed, understanding God's

truth, and faith in the night seasons, which is understanding God's intimate knowledge.

So this became her trilogy, and it has been taught all over the world.

So you check that out if you're interested.

But the question about Hosea that I have to insert here is they're in a parallel to

America.

Our stock indexes are unprecedented highs in general.

The people are buying their third and fourth cars.

Almost every home has a computer.

It's hard to find anyone without a belt with a phone hanging on it.

And fuel costs less than the water we drink.

Think about it.

You buy bottled water, it's more expensive than you guess.

But anyway, we would generally, many people argue it's the best of times.

It's the best of times in our sight.

I wonder how it looks to God.

Homosexuality is just an alternative lifestyle.

We murder babies that are socially inconvenient.

We change marriage partners like a fashion statement.

We've abandoned the sanctity of commitments in all of our relationships.

Not just marriages in business.

It used to be on Wall Street.

My word is my bond.

Today it's so summy.

Even if you're an accountant, if you're one of the referees.

God rebuked Israel for their brutality, their murder, and their warfare.

We've had Waco, Columbine High School, and so on.

New York City has recorded more crimes than England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Switzerland,

Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, combined.

One city and more than half a dozen countries.

Immorality and deceit have also come to characterize the highest offices of our land.

Our politics have condoned and covered up more murders than we dare list.

Our public enterprises have been prostituted for the convenes of the elite.

Our media unabashedly promoted, knowingly promoted falsehoods to try to topple a sitting

president during wartime.

Our entertainment industry celebrates adultery, fornication, violence, aberrant sexual practices,

and every imaginable form of evil they contrive things to make a market.

They celebrate these things.

We've become the primary exporters of all that God abhors.

When you see a movie star abroad bashing America, realize that her prophet, he or she, their

profitability hangs on the foreign movie rights.

Think about it.

Follow the money.

So for God's point of view, you could argue it's the worst of times.

The Hosea's message to the Northern Kingdom was although a loving and caring God provided

the abundance of prosperity, so ours, their sin dislodied in abandonment of him will

do what?

Force him to vindicate his justice with judgment.

Thomas Jefferson said it, I tremble when I recall that God is just and that his justice

will not sleep forever.

And so Hosea's message was God is going to use their enemies as his instrument of judgment.

And shortly they would be history.

I wonder if that's true of us.

It's a great mystery I run when I travel across the country.

The question I get most often asked, why hasn't God judged America?

Billy Graham summarized it several decades ago by saying if God doesn't judge America

he's going to have to apologize aside on Gomorrah.

That's a good summary.

And I think, I think, I think, Genesis 12, verses 2 and 3 is the key to our umbrella.

Let's change the subject a little bit to get back to Hosea.

There is a dictum you learn in seminaries that gets overemphasized.

So many of these things are true but can be overshackless.

You'll hear many competent scholars tell you that every verse has to be taken within

context.

It is context, context, context.

And that's certainly true to a point and yet there's some very provocative lessons

as we learn from the Scripture.

In Matthew chapter 2 verse 15 it says, until the death of Herod, this is when Joseph and

Mary go down to Egypt with the baby because Herod would kill all the babes of Bethlehem.

And it was there until the death of Herod that might be fulfilled which is spoken of

by the Lord by the prophet saying, out of Egypt have I called my son.

So Matthew is saying that phrase, he's quoting from Hosea, is referring to Jesus Christ.

That's why they're down there so it fulfills his prophecy.

Out of Egypt I've called my son.

Well that sounds pretty good until you get going to Hosea.

Here's where he was, he's quoting from Hosea 11.

When Israel was a child then I loved him and called my son out of Egypt.

What it's talking about in Hosea 11 is the nation Israel.

Yet Matthew is applying it messianically.

I'm not saying Matthew is wrong obviously, it's what he's doing but it's teaching us

a lesson.

There are places where you're dealing here with a double reference.

The context of Hosea 11, you never dream that it was messianic, it's talking about the

nation Israel.

But Matthew perceived in that a prophecy that was also true of the Messiah because the

Messiah was called out of Egypt and Jesus was.

He fulfilled that specification.

There's all kinds of specifications that Jesus complied with that many people aren't

even aware of.

But the lesson here is to recognize that when you want to talk about context, the ultimate

context is the whole council of God.

The whole council of God.

Not just the local verse itself.

Now there is a period of call to the time of Jacob's trouble that we talked about earlier

what has to happen there.

In Hosea 5 verse 15 there's a very key verse to reflect on.

It's the last verse of Hosea 5 where God says, I will go and return to my place.

Well if we got to say that he must have left his place in order to return, right?

So it's obviously a lieu to Jesus Christ.

I will go and return to my place till, there's that one of those magic words again, till

they acknowledge their offense.

That's singular and specific.

There's a specific offense they need to acknowledge, namely the rejection of their Messiah.

I will go and return to my place till they acknowledge their offense and seek my face.

In their affliction they will seek me earnestly.

The word sometimes translated early could mean earnestly, intensely.

But the purpose of the tribulation is to drive them to the wall to acknowledge their

offense of having rejected Jesus.

When they do it, when they acknowledge it and repent of it, he will return in power and

set up their kingdom.

That's what's going to be Daniel 12 that Jesus quotes from, to name it, the great tribulation

is from Daniel 12 verse 1.

At that time Michael shall stand up, the great prince would stand up for the children of thy

people, and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was a nation, even at that same

time.

At that time thy people shall be delivered, everyone that shall be found written in the

book.

So Israel will be delivered.

This is a commitment in Daniel 12 to Israel.

And so it ties to the Hosea 5 15 passage.

There's another thing to learn from Hosea in chapter 12 verse 10.

Where God through Hosea says, I have also spoken by the prophets and I have multiplied

visions and used similitudes by the ministry of the prophets.

Use similitudes, huh?

What other similitudes?

Well, these are rhetorical devices.

There are allegories, there are analogies, there are metaphors, there are similes, similitudes,

types.

These are all different kinds of figures of speech.

I've listed here just a half a dozen of them.

There's actually 200 different kinds of figures of speech cataloged in the appendix to our

cosmic codes book.

But just understand that God does use, Holy Spirit does use rhetorical devices.

And Hosea 12, 10 is your authority.

God uses similitudes and all the rest of these.

What are similitudes?

Well, the line of the tribe of Judah, that's a, excuse me, a simile.

The good shepherd, that's a simile.

The lily of the valley.

A root out of a dry ground, we saw, the fruitful branch.

He was without form or comineness, yet altogether lovely.

These are, in effect, the employment of similes.

There are also things called types.

These are more ambitious kinds of things.

The ark of the covenant is a type of Jesus Christ.

Do you need to understand why?

Study it and find out why.

The sacrifices on the brazen altar are anticipatory of Jesus Christ.

The mercy is in the sanctuary.

The propitiation of Jesus Christ.

The water from the rock, 1 Corinthians 10 and 4, Paul tells us that the water from the

rock was Christ.

The rock that followed was Christ.

And twice they get water from rock.

There's a whole study around that.

The manna from the sky.

I am the bread of life, Jesus says.

I am the living water.

See, these are all types of him.

The brazen serpent lifted up.

Makes no sense in Numbers 21 when you run into it there.

And yet Jesus explains it to you when you get to John 3.

As Moses said, the serpent, the water of social, the son of man be lifted up.

It's a type, an anticipatory type.

The Akkadaw, he studies, is the ultimate type.

The Passover land.

And of course, the scapegoat.

These are just examples.

There are books that catalog types in the Bible.

There are hundreds of them.

Some very overt, some very subtle.

Well, let's get to the book of Joel.

We'll shift now.

We've got 12 to get through here.

He's alarmed by invasion of a plague of locusts.

He talks a lot about that.

And it's God's appeal.

Turn ye to me and I will restore.

Basically, he's the message of Joel.

The day of the Lord is a key phrase in the book of Joel.

The day of YAHthe Vahthe.

As Rabbi, I might pronounce it, YAHthe, if you will, or whatever.

And at the present age, and the unprecedented plagues that will associate with it.

He says a lot about the army of locusts.

Locusts from the north.

That's strange.

They usually come from the south.

He says they're like horsemen.

That's interesting.

They're like chariots.

They're like men of war.

I wonder why they're compared to real ones.

Interesting enough.

My great army, Amos in Revelation, used that same term.

A very key thing to understand, the locusts have no king according to Proverbs 27 verse

30.

That's going to give us a discovery here when we get to the book of Amos.

But one of the quotes from Joel is that Peter takes that's been widely misunderstood.

Because in Acts chapter 2, when the gift of the Holy Spirit is given to the church,

church is born in effect, some people thought they had drunk too much liquor or something

because they're all babbling in different tongues and so on.

Peter quotes from Joel in the speech.

He says, for these are not drunken as you suppose.

Seeing is about the third hour of the day.

But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel.

And then Peter quotes from Joel chapter 2 in Acts chapter 2.

He says, then it shall come to pass in the last day, saith God I will pour out of my spirit

upon all flesh.

And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy and your young men shall see visions and your

old men shall dream dreams.

And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my spirit

and they shall prophesy.

And I will show wonders and heaven above and sides in the earth beneath blood and fire

and vapor of smoke.

The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood and before that great

and notable day of the Lord come.

And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall

be saved.

Now Joel's language is pretty extreme.

And yet Peter is quoting Joel as explaining what happened in Acts 2.

And some people confuse by that because gee where's the vapor and smoke and when is the

earth, these wonders and heaven and earth and so forth and the moon turned to blood

etc.

What he's saying is this outpouring of the Holy Spirit is started in Acts 2 and it will

continue in various forms right up until the day of the Lord formally.

And so this is a quote from Joel and it ties the period that we're in since Acts chapter

2 as the bridge to the big climax which is right on the horizon.

That's coming.

These things are just as certain as it happened in Acts 2 it's going to happen.

It just hasn't happened yet.

You follow me?

This is Joel's expression encompasses the entire period.

Let's go to Amos.

He was a rustic from Judea but he also was a prophet to the northern kingdom.

He's from Tkoa which is south of Bethlehem so he's from the southern area from the wilderness

of Judea.

This is where David had his refuge from Saul and so forth.

He's a layman.

He's a man of the fields.

He's not a trained prophet.

Yet he's sent up there to Befell, the center of calf worship and all of that.

So Amos is a tough dude.

He of course focused on the ultimate rule of David which is not a popular message up

there.

He mentions a judgment against what he calls burdens, eight burdens.

Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moeb.

He takes the Gentiles first.

He goes right around their world and takes against them.

But then he turns.

See, bear in mind he's talking to the north.

So he goes through all their enemies first.

Oh, they're applauding.

Yeah, let's get those guys.

Goes through Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moeb.

Then he talks about Judah, the place he came from, the southern kingdom.

But then he gets to Israel.

That's his target.

He has three sermons and five visions.

But he has it along the way.

He makes a number of interesting comments.

One, Amos 3, 7 says, surely the Lord God will do nothing but he reveals his secret into

his service to prophets.

That's quite a statement.

That means that everything God is doing you will find in the Scripture.

Surely that Lord God will do nothing but that which he reveals to his servant to prophets.

And so they're worthy of a serious study.

But there's also a discovery I want to share with you.

I'll give you some lessons in it.

In Amos 7 verse 1, your English Bible is translated from Masoretic text and it reads

this follows, thus hath the Lord God showed unto me and behold he formed grasshoppers

in the beginning of the shooting up of the ladder growth.

And lo it was the ladder growth after the king's mowing.

Really.

What does that mean?

I have no idea.

The more you study that, the less sense it makes.

What on earth is going on here?

Well, there's an interesting aspect here.

I was studying this for some other reasons one night and I looked it up in the Septuagint.

It turns out one little slightly mark in the Hebrew changes the whole complexion of the

verse.

In the Septuagint, this is translated as follows from the Greek version, the Lord has shown

me and behold a swarm of locusts were coming and behold one of the young devastating locusts

was Gog the king.

Well, this blew me away because for many years I've been troubled by Ezekiel 38 because

we have this Gog and Maygog thing, Maygog is the people, we know who they are.

Gog is obviously a title of a leader, but it's very unlike the Holy Spirit to introduce

a major person without some kind of preamble, some kind of linkage.

And there are no linkages to Gog that we could find earlier.

But here in Amos 7 1, we discover that Gog is the king of the locusts.

Now that's pretty strange because we know from Proverbs 30 verse 27, the locusts have

no king.

It's talking about real locusts, natural locusts.

The word locust here has been used idiomatically.

These locusts have a king and Gog is the king.

Now this swarm of locusts were coming and behold one of the young devastating locusts

was Gog the king.

In Amos 7 1, it's talking about a herd of demons.

Gog is the king of the demons, or at least a large group of them.

Well that explains a lot of things.

Then in Ezekiel 38, Gog and Magog, Gog is a demon leader enticing all this to go on.

That also explains why after the millennium, after a thousand years reign of Jesus Christ,

there again is a Gog Magog battle.

Many people get confused.

They see Gog and Magog in Revelation.

I think they try to tie it to Ezekiel 38.

No, they're totally different circumstances.

Magog is a people and it may be used idiomatically if everybody rebelling at that time.

Magog is a demon title.

So you can understand how a demon can survive the thousand years.

It's not a person, it's the title of a demon king.

Anyway, we picked that up by just comparing verse with verse with verse.

So, okay.

You see in Revelation 9, verse 3 and 11 says, there came out of the smoke locusts upon the

earth and unto them was given power as the scorpions of the earth have power.

Then down to verse 11 it says, and they had a king over them, which is the angel of the

bottom was Pitt, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue,

half is named Apollion.

Which means destroyer basically.

But see here again, in the study of Revelation 9 you realize that these locusts are not locusts.

We think they're demon because they have a demon king over them.

Because the locusts have no king, he's going to progress 37.

Okay, let's get on to Obadiah.

He's from the southern kingdom.

He argues against the enemies of Israel, the destruction of Edom, which is traditional.

Remember Esau and Edom, we went through all that in Genesis.

Esau means red, Mount Sears, the Dead Sea, and all the way to the Gulf of Ocaba.

And Basra or Petra or Sala is their capital.

They were fierce, cruel, proud and profane.

They always cheered for Israel's enemies.

If they weren't direct enemy themselves, they would help Israel's enemies.

They are the traditional enemy of Israel.

And Numbers 20 really hammers that.

They always had an active alliance with whoever was trying to destroy Israel.

So Obadiah takes after them.

Their sentence of course will be poetic justice.

They'll be extinct and be they are.

The Nabataeans, Arab tribe is where if you visit Petra, you'll see the tombs and all

of that stuff.

So see, Edom had indulged in treachery and Edom would perish through treachery.

And see, five years after they helped to raise Jerusalem that has burned it down, they felt

the yoke of Babylon.

And there upon the Nabataeans, the Arabian tribe that occupied Petra was their capital.

And then later in about 312 BC, and taken as one of the generals of Alexander the Great,

crushed these people and this boiled Petra.

And later the remaining Edomites sustained crushing defeats from Judas Maccabaeus and

the Maccabean revolt in the Hasmonean period.

Josephus tells us that still later Alexander and Janice completed their ruin.

They became absorbed in the desert tribes.

Oregon in the third century AD spoke of him as a people whose name and language had perished.

So Obadiah's prophecy had been fulfilled.

Edomites seized a chance to rob Judah, but Edom would be robbed and Edom indulged in

violence and Edom would perish by slaughter.

Edom sought an instruction visit on them.

It could be utterly destroyed and it has been.

Edom sought to dispossess Jerusalem and would be dispossessed by the remnant.

Now, Edom also is at geographic location.

Edom, Ammon and Moab are what we would call the day Jordan in terms of geography, but not

in terms of continuing culture or anything like that.

So Edom would be possessed by the remnant.

Okay, so we have Esau and Jacob.

In contrast to the natural man, we talked about this when we were in Genesis.

The Esau is always the red horse, the red dragon, etc.

Edom is a form of Adam or Adamah or the flesh.

So a pride, defiance, ambition, hatred, violence, cruelty, self-deception.

They're a type in effect of all nations that are hostile to God.

Ishmael and Isaac is the same nice self-life versus spiritual life.

All the way through the script, whether it's Cain and Abel or whether it's Esau and

Isaac, it's always the natural man, the flesh versus the spirit.

And so we've developed that as we go through slowly, but let's turn to the book of Jonah.

It's a well-known story, the storm.

Why did he flee?

Why did Jonah not want to go to Nineveh?

And this business of the fish, did that really happen in chapter 2?

And the city, why Nineveh?

What's going on there?

Why is that an issue?

And why do we have chapter 4?

It's a great little book with three chapters.

Chapter 4 is a weird one.

Mainly Jonah is up there pouting.

I knew you'd save most people.

The reluctant prophet.

There's a warning Nineveh.

Long before, later years of Joash and earlier years of Jairbone II, Nineveh was actually

a quadrangle of cities, about 60 miles in circumference, 350 miles, square miles,

walls 100 feet high, 1500-foot, 1500 towers, 200 feet high.

Charts three abreast could have races on the wall.

Over a million population, which is large in those days.

Now is the story of Jonah and the fish true or not?

Well, Jesus himself authenticates it.

He speaks of that in Matthew 12 and 16.

The fish and also the repentance of Nineveh.

So he puts a ribbon on the whole thing.

And of course, there are also historic equivalents.

There have been people that have survived being swallowed by a whale.

They've been documented.

I won't go through all that here, but it's worth getting into.

See Jonah was a patriot.

The one reason he didn't want to go, he didn't want Nineveh to be spared.

He knew that Nineveh was an enemy of Israel.

Isaiah had written prophecies about it back in chapter 7 of Isaiah.

Jose had written prophecies about it.

Amos had got prophecies about it.

So he didn't want Nineveh spared.

He wanted them to be judged by God.

God wants them to go there and tell them to repent.

Now I won't go through Jonah's prayer, but when you read his prayer, you can build the

case that he actually died in the fish and came back to life.

It's a technicality perhaps, but there are scholars that believe he actually, that would

complete the model with Jesus Christ who died and was resurrected.

He uses Jonah as a sign.

Now whether he literally died or came close to death, that's probably a technicality, but

there are scholars that would argue that he actually died.

But let's get to the real issue.

Nineveh was a pagan capital of the world.

They were 40 days, got a decreed.

They were going to be wiped out in 40 days.

They were 40 days from ground zero.

And Jonah was the reluctant prophet.

He didn't want to go there.

He'll God explain it to him more clearly.

And he finally ends up going there.

When he goes there, he doesn't give them a market research user friendly message.

He goes through town and says, 40 days and you get yours.

And then an appealing message.

He was hoping they'd be wiped out.

He was doing what he got.

He got told him to warn him.

He told him, okay, 40 days guys and comes destruction.

And you know, there are 10 miracles in the book of Jonah, but the greatest one was not

the fish thing.

The greatest miracle in the Old Testament is what?

The repentance of the end of the 10 miracles.

The storm, the selection of Jonah's guilty was the sudden subsisting of the storm, the

great fish.

The fish is the right place at the right time.

The preservation of Jonah through the fish, the ejection safe and sound on dry land.

How many whales throw up somebody on the dry land?

That's pretty interesting.

Then there's the whole business of the gourd and the worms and the East wind that comes

in chapter four.

The biggest miracle of them all is the repentance of the entire city of Nineveh.

In 40 days, can any nation do anything in 40 days?

You've got to be kidding.

But the king repented on spec.

He didn't go through that account like John the Baptist, repent or else this is going

to happen.

He doesn't say this is going to happen.

The king reasoned that just maybe if we change our ways, God may change his mind.

So they did and so did God.

But it astonishes me that the king would do that on spec.

And the sign of Jonah, remember the Pharisees seek a sign.

See the story of this bleach prophet.

He probably, they speculate because the digestive juice of, he probably was, he probably was

a real sight walking through town.

Especially when you understand who they worshiped.

Worshiped Aegon, the fish guy.

Now this is of course the sign of Jonah.

Jesus himself identifies himself with it.

The death and burial of Jesus Christ is modeled here as a type.

Jonah is also a prophet of the Gentiles.

That's interesting.

Gentiles.

There are trio of prophets at the end of the northern kingdom.

Elisha dies in his buried.

Jonah dies and goes to Shilh and comes up uncorrupted and Elijah ascends into heaven.

That's all kind of interesting.

And Jonah foreshadows Israel's history.

So there's also a type you can study on your own, the story of Jonah in terms of Israel.

He was disobedient to the heavenly commission.

He was out of his own land.

He had a precarious refuge among the Gentiles that supported the ship.

Everywhere he was a source of trouble.

Yet he was still nevertheless witnessing to the true God.

He was cast out by the Gentiles.

They were miraculously preserved amid their calamities.

He calls on YAH, at the last part of it.

And on the third day, interestingly enough, there it is again, we find some, you can study

these stories and see how they are not only true historically on the one hand, but they

also model prophetically some other issues.

That's called a type.

Let's go on to Micah.

Ammonate judgments declared by Micah.

The Assyrians will strike at Egypt.

They had, Judah had foolishly relied on Egypt.

The Assyrians are going to come through and strike at Egypt by going through their back

yard.

So they'll march right through Micah's neighborhood.

And so, but the ultimate blessing will be promised.

The incarnation is alluded to here.

Very key first that you are familiar with.

And the key truth of Aquarless is the ruler is yet to come.

And the present repentance is pleaded and he talks a little bit about the last days.

But one of the verses that everybody knows from Micah 5 to.

But thou bethlem, thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall

he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel, whose going forth have been from

old from everlasting.

We can spend a week on this verse.

There's all kinds of things hidden in this verse.

The fact that he was preexistant, that his going forth have been from eternal eternity

past and so forth, that he's going to come forth to rule Jerusalem and Israel, that's

kind of interesting.

This is the primary point here is it mentions the birthplace of Jesus Christ, which is linked

to the house of David to the book of Ruth.

In any case, the birthplace of Mizzah.

And when the Magi visit Herod, drive him to panic, and say, where is he that's born

to king of the Jews, his scribes dig out this verse to identify the town.

And indeed, you know the story from the book of Matthew.

There's also an off quoted verse in Micah 6, 8, you'll find a hanging on many homes.

He has showed the O man what is good and what death the Lord require of thee but to do justly,

to love mercy, and to walk humbly before thy God.

That says it all.

Many people look at this as a perfect, pracy summary of God's requirements.

To do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before thy God.

Let's go to Mayhem.

In the Gospel of John, it says, no prophet come out of Galilee.

Remember that?

Who ever heard of the prophets coming out of Galilee?

Whoever said that hadn't read their Old Testament because there are two prophets at least.

Jonah was out of the Galilee, and so was Nahum.

And both of them were out of the Galilee and both of them to Nineveh, the Assyrians.

This is about a century after Jonah.

Again, they need repentance.

Nahum goes there with a message, they don't accept it, so they get wiped out.

So we have the doom of Nineveh, the world's greatest city in those days.

Capernaum, you all heard of Capernaum, it's Kefir Nahum, that's the village of Mayhem.

That's where he came from.

As vain messages that Yehovah will not acquit the wicked.

It objectifies for all peoples, for all time, the governmental method of God with Gentile

nations.

God will forgive sin that's repented of, he will not condone sin persistent in.

That says it all.

God will forgive sin repented of, not just confess, but repented of.

And he will not condone sin persisted in.

And that same God rules the world today.

That's why it's important, that's why these lessons have historical context, they have

prophetic context, they also have personal application, every one of them.

So in the book of Nahum, he talks about Nineveh's doom is declared, described, and deserved.

The decisive test of the prediction is fulfillment.

It certainly was fulfilled.

Do you realize that in the field of archeology for centuries they didn't even believe that

Nineveh existed?

There was no evidence of it.

Alexander went over, didn't even know it was there.

It was buried.

It was only lost, it was buried.

It was 1849 that scholars made history by discovering Nineveh, digging it up.

It's all in Iraq, the place that's called today is Iraq.

But it's a, never, never, never really was buried.

Let's go to Habakkuk.

He's agonized, he's perplexed because of the ostensible silence, inactivity, and apparent

unconcern of God.

He's from the way he sees it, he doesn't understand what's going on and why would God use a people

even more wicked than Judah themselves?

He's talking about God is going to use the Babylonians to wipe out Judah.

Babylonians are worse than Judah, he's struggling with good Nineveh and so forth.

But in this perplexity about God's apparent silence and the strangeness of God's apparent

ways, he brings up some very, very interesting things.

We're going to go to verse four in a minute, The Just Should Live By Faith, and he's going

to focus on rest in the day of tribulation.

But this interesting, many people don't realize how important Habakkuk 2.4 is.

The Just Should Live By Faith.

This was the catch word that led to the Reformation.

God, many Martin Luther was a very, very diligent, committed scholar and just totally disturbed

by his own sin.

He was really obsessed with his sinfulness.

And he went through all the trappings of the medieval church, all the things that they

did in those days to deal with that.

And it was just getting worse and worse until Amung said, look at Habakkuk 2.4.

And he looked at this verse, The Just Should Live By Faith.

And that caused him to wake up and to realize that you can't, no matter what you do in the

flesh, it's not going to work.

That you live by faith, not by abusing yourself and penance or tithing or going to services,

regularly, all those things are of the flesh.

The Just Should Live By Faith.

And when he realized what that meant, he tried to post some corrections in the denomination

he was part of.

All they did is excommunicate him and that led to the whole Reformation.

But that was the whole byword of the Reformation.

It's interesting that was all anticipated by the Apostle Paul.

He writes a trilogy of epistles on this verse.

The Just Should Live By Faith.

Who are the just?

Paul's definitive statement of Christian doctrine, called the Book of Romans, quotes this verse

as the key verse and explains justification, which is by faith alone.

Well, how should the Just Live?

How shall they live?

The Book of Galatians is Paul's answer to that one.

How shall they live?

Galatians 3, 11 quotes this verse as the cornerstone to the Book of Galatians.

How the Just Should Live.

The Just Should Live By Faith.

And Hebrews 1038, a verse or two just before the great faith chapter of the Bible, the

Hall of Faith of Romans 11.

Actually Hebrews 11, the great faith chapter, Hebrews 11, is on how the Just Should Live

By Faith.

So it's interesting that these three epistles, Romans, Galatians and Hebrews, are a trilogy

explaining, amplifying the homiletics, if you will, behind and the theology behind Habakkuk

II IV.

And some say, well, that doesn't prove that Paul wrote in Hebrews.

Well, Paul didn't write Hebrews, even a greater miracle that these different writers architected

a trilogy without their knowledge.

But could, would not stranger things have happened.

Now, it's interesting that some of these Obadiah and Nehem and Habakkuk were prophets

against Israel's enemies, Obadiah against Edom, Nehem against Assyrian, Habakkuk really

against Babylon.

Let's get to the book of Zephaniah, we're getting down to the wire here.

He talks about the wrath coming upon Judah and the wrath upon all nations.

He takes from west to east, Felicity in the law of an Ammon and then south to north,

Ethiopian Assyria.

And after the wrath, there will be healing, conversion of the Gentile nations and restoration

of the covenant people.

Zephaniah also includes, by the way, a little prediction that when Israel returns to the

land, they'll speak pure Hebrew.

Now, that's astonishing because they were out of the land for a good part of 2000 years.

And when they returned to the land, Hebrew was re-emerged as the language.

Many language experts said they had never come here to write a dead language.

Well, if Zephaniah was walking down Dosto-Darth Street, he could read the menus because it's

Hebrew he would understand.

The minor prophets, we went through 12.

We're going to go through a couple more here yet, but Hosea went to the northern kingdom,

Sotam Amos, Joel, Micah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Hagai, Zechariah, Malachi, to the southern

kingdom.

And then we have, of course, Obadiah to Edom, Jonah to end Nahum to the Assyrians.

So that's the quick spread of the minor prophets.

Again, they're not in chronological order, nor are they clustered by who they are dressing,

but that's the way they are.

These last three, Hagai, Zechariah, and Malachi, are prophets post-exile.

In other words, they prophesied after the nation came back from Babylon.

Hagai is burdened with the rebuilding of the temple, Zechariah and Malachi in the days

of Nehemiah.

Hagai has a message to arouse and support and confirm and assure all having to do with

the trauma going about trying to build the temple.

Many lessons in Hagai, just about our own personal walk, but his focus is rebuilding

of the temple.

The problem that he faces, the prophecy had become an archotic.

What I mean by that is that they knew that they were prophetically had arrived, they

were rebuilding the temple, so they kicked back.

God's going to do this.

And there's an analogy in a sense, many people who are pre-tribbed, the raptors coming,

and we're under grace, and so they just kick back and are not busy about God's work.

In that sense, some of these views can become self-limiting.

So this gave way to hopeless inevitability.

And that's one of the problems with Calvinism.

People, you predestinate to be saved, so okay, it's your problem.

Calvinists often aren't very energetic about evangelistic crusades because everything's

predestined, right?

There's an attitude that can come out of some of these views that's not constructive

and leads to indifference, and it can come from several points.

Many of these views, however valid they may be, can still give excuse to inaction.

We need to remember that without him we can, of course, but without us he won't.

We need to understand that prayer is God's way of enlisting us in what he wants to do,

putting burdens on us that will roll up our sleeves and accomplish what he's after.

And so that's really what.

Now it's a couple of other things that you might find interesting in Haggai, that's to

give you a few highlights here.

Haggai 2, 15, it says, now I pray you consider it from this day upward from before a stone

was laid upon stone in the temple of the Lord.

In other words, he's talking about the beginning, considering now from this day upward, from

the four and 20th day of the ninth month, even from the day that the foundation of the

Lord's temple was laid, consider it.

That's at Haggai 2, 2, 15, and 18.

The four and 20th day of the ninth month, pick that up.

In Ezekiel 24, it says, again, in the ninth year, in the tenth month and the tenth day

of the month, the word of the Lord came down to be saying, set a man right thee, the name

of the day, even this same day, the king of Babylon set himself against Jerusalem this

same day.

So that's the trigger, the other one's the consummation.

Let's take a look at the ninth year, the tenth month, tenth day of the month.

This is dated from 2 Kings 25 and Jeremiah 52, but here's the net of it is.

At the very time the Babylon army was surrounding Jerusalem, Ezekiel in Babylon, hundreds of

miles away, was writing that down.

The tenth day of Tebeth, 589 B.C., he's documenting it for God's purposes.

Later on, when they were finally released and Haggai, they started to build the temple,

Haggai nails down the date that these desolation of Jerusalem ended.

The 24th day of Kislev.

Well, that's kind of interesting because the interval between these two days is 25,000

and 25,000 200 days.

The interval is 25,000 200 days.

That's 70 years of 360 days each, to the very day of the 70 years that Jeremiah had

predicted, to the day, to the day.

You never use the word approximate in God in the same sentence.

I think he...

Zechariah, early prophecies about when the temple was being built, the later prophecy,

after they were built, and then a lot by the second coming.

He has all kinds of visions we can't go through all of them.

Some of them are quite enigmatic, some are quite very colorful.

There's four horses, four horns, four Smiths, and there's a measuring line.

Then there's crowning of Joshua the priest.

That's not Joshua, it's a different Joshua, obviously.

He's a priest.

But crowning a priest is Messianic.

Only Christ is both a priest and a king.

And then the one about the golden lamp stand, the filing...

The woman in the Ephab holds the key, I believe, to the mysteries about Babylon.

We'll be talking about that when we get to Revelation and we talk about mystery of Babylon

and the rest of it, and the four chariots and so forth.

But there's a couple here that I think is kind of interesting.

In prediction, in Zechariah 12, verse 2 and 3, you want to be aware of.

God says to Zechariah, behold, I'll make Jerusalem a cup of trembling to all the people

around about.

In that day, I'll make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people, all that burden themselves

with it shall be torn in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together

against it.

You know, that's actually ridiculous.

That may have made sense, 2500 years ago, the days of Zechariah that Jerusalem would

be a big issue.

But here's a city that has no natural resources, has no rivers, doesn't even have a house

of harbor.

It's no longer on critical caravan routes.

There's no reason for Jerusalem to be relevant to anyone except for religious reasons.

And I thought the world is a religious.

Well, not so.

Cup of trembling to all nations?

That's ostensibly absurd on the one hand, and yes, the reality of this is very nice.

As we have this discussion this evening, the late lights are burning in every capital of

every country on every, that are internationally relevant.

Struggling as to what position to take regarding the issue of Jerusalem.

How interesting that is that the entire world is struggling over this very issue.

The fallacy of the peace process, no sorry I spelled peace, P-I-E-C-E.

It's built out of false premise.

The peace process is based on the premise that reducing the size of Israel will bring

peace.

No.

The enemy's vision will make it very clear.

It's not the size of Israel, it's the issue, it's the existence of Israel.

They're insisting that Israel give up, but they cannot give up.

This whole process assures an armed conflict, in fact probably nuclear.

That's exactly what we see shaping up on our near horizon.

That's exactly what the Bible lays out.

How interesting it is.

And we go through all the background of this in briefings on this, and we also try to monitor

this for those of you that stay current with our subscriptions.

There are weekly newsletter on the internet which is free, or our journal comes out monthly.

Let's move on.

Zechariah 14 is a very famous passage, we all have heard it one time or another I'm

sure.

Then shall the Lord go forth and fight against those nations as when he fought in the day

of battle.

Whoops, wait a minute, when did the Lord fight in the day of battle?

Like I mentioned one Joshua 5, the battle of Jericho.

It wasn't Joshua, despite the song.

Check it out.

But he's going to fight again and he says, at his feet shall stand in that day upon the

Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall

cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a

very great valley.

Half of the mountain shall remove toward the north and half toward the south.

There is a fault line under the Mount of Olives that's waiting for the pressure of a foot.

His.

Interesting, interesting, very tangible, very real.

The second coming to you is Christ.

Well, Christ is going to rule in their hearts.

Yeah, I sure hope so, but that's what we'll talk about here.

He's talking about physically coming back and taking over.

And did he will.

There's another verse that's interesting in a number of ways here.

And I will pour upon the house of David upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of

grace and of supplications, and they shall look upon me whom they pierced.

Ooh, and they shall mourn for him as one mourn for his only son and shall be in bitterness

for him as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.

I'll pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of

grace and of supplications, and they shall look upon me whom they had pierced.

Here's a prediction again of crucifixion.

We find it in Psalm 22.

We find it all through the Old Testament.

Here again we find that he's going to have his piercings as emblems, just as he did before

Thomas.

Handled me in sea.

But there's something else about this thing that I think is even more provocative.

If you look carefully at this in the Hebrew, you'll discover there's an untranslated word.

There's a little aliphon etal between the me and whom if it was untranslated.

Now the aliphon etal when it's connected with a macheph to a verb implies the direct object

of a verb.

That little aliphon etal has four different uses.

And one of them is as an indefinite pronoun, second person masculine singular.

It's called a hypocatastasis in the Greek or putting them underneath a hidden but declarative

implied metaphor expressing a superlative degree of resemblance, interestingly enough.

But there's no macheph on this one.

So it's not the direct object of verb.

Another way to read this would be they shall look upon me the aliph and the tau whom they've

pierced.

The aliphon etal is the Hebrew equivalent of the alph and the omega.

They shall look upon me, the aliph and the tau whom they've pierced.

We find that same thing in Genesis 1 by the way, that in the beginning, bearishii, barah,

elohim.

Aliphon etal there that can be, might be, an illusion to none other than one who is the

first and the last, the alph and the omega of the Jesus Christ.

There's one other thing in another little tidbit in Zechariah we'll throw out here.

It's the only physical description of the anacryse I can find in the Bible.

Here he's called the idol shepherd, not idol-like lazy, idol-like false worship.

Woke to the idol shepherd that leevith of lach, the sword shall be upon his arm and

upon his right eye.

His arm shall be cleaned right up and his right eye shall be utterly darkened.

False says, that's the end of that chapter goes on to other subjects, one of these little

tidbits.

This leader, this false leader, false shepherd apparently has got an arm that's useless and

a right eye that is lost.

And you wonder if that's a physical description that leads to taking an identity with him.

If you swear allegiance to him, you take his mark on your forehead or on your wrist as

an identity of allegiance to him.

Which if you do that is a forever barrier to being saved.

Much of what the book of Revelation deals with are people who will have this jeopardy

of having allegiance with him.

No man will be able to buy, sell or have a job without his number.

But I wonder if this is a, anyway that's for what it's worth.

One of the little tidbits in the book.

Let's go to the last book in the Old Testament, Malachi.

I sometimes say Malachi, the Italian book, but I'm kidding, of course.

This is the final message to a disobedient people.

The ceasing of prophecy with Malachi might account for the segmenting of the initial

week of Gable's prophecy in 70 weeks.

Now it was seven weeks and three is going two weeks and one of the conjectures, why is

it broken up that way?

They're adjacent so it doesn't matter but it may be that that is the issue here.

But in any case, you know it's interesting when Jesus has his temptations by Satan.

He makes the point you'd never tempt God.

All through the Scripture you can find admonitions that you never put God to the test.

And that's certainly you don't test God, you don't dare him.

But there is an exception and this exception is fascinating.

There is a dare that God gives you.

God dares you in a very peculiar way.

In fact, what he proposes here is the solution to every financial problem.

Wow, we're going to take a look at this.

In Malachi 3.10 God says, bring ye all the tides into the storehouse that there may be

meat in my house and prove me now here with, say, at the Lord of hosts, if I will not open

you the windows of heaven and pour you out of blessing that there shall not be room enough

to receive it.

God is daring you to put him to the test.

He says, prove me now here with.

You know this is an astonishing verse that the God of the universe would put himself in

a box.

He's saying, if you do this, call my bluff.

I dare you to tithe.

Because if you do, I will open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing and not

be room enough to receive it.

And you can find many, many people who will swear to this.

But that doesn't matter.

You need to find out for yourself.

You need to find out for yourself.

What an interesting dare.

Give ye all the tides into the storehouse that there may be meat in my house and prove

me now here with, say, at the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven

and pour you out of blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it.

Quite a commitment.

Prove me now here with.

Well we have the silent years between the testaments.

Deserve some quick comments.

We talk about anti-consipipiphanies and once you see the abomination of desolation, a

historical event that is very important to understand because Jesus makes allusion to

it as a trigger of one to split out of Jerusalem.

That event by anti-consipiphanies led to the Maccabean revolt in 165 BC, which led to the

rule of the Hasmoneans.

And that was subsequently followed by the Roman conquest pointing Herod the king.

And that closes the 400 years of silence from Malachi until an angel visits Zechariah.

You need to understand now we've just finished the Old Testament.

The Old Testament is incomplete.

It has unexplained ceremonies, all kinds of sacrificial rituals that need to be explained.

It has unachieved purposes.

There are all kinds of covenants yet to be fulfilled.

There are unappeased longings.

The Old Testament is full of those.

And unfulfilled prophecies.

There are 300 prophecies that were fulfilled in Jesus Christ's first coming.

For every one of those there is at least seven.

At well over two thousand, some between two and three thousand details.

About a second coming.

And they will be fulfilled.

Jesus challenges you.

Search the scriptures for in them you think you have eternal life and they are they which

testify of me.

And when he says scriptures here, he's re-taught about the Old Testament.

And John 5, that's what they had in their hands was the Septuagint.

Search them for you think and then you think you have eternal life.

They are they which testify of me.

He says, well the subsequent sessions are 13.

We'll go through the Messianic thread.

We'll talk about the Messianic thread in total.

We'll also demonstrate how sure can we be of these things.

Lord Calvin says, we don't know much about something until you can measure it.

Okay, can we measure our confidence?

We'll go into that in our 13.

Our 14, we'll talk about the New Testament, where it came from, how it was put together.

Many people, many Christians are woefully ignorant of that.

And in our 15, we'll take the gospels.

We'll actually go in one hour.

We'll put all four gospels together and trace a reconciliation of the whole package geographically.

It'll be our way of summarizing those four books.

That in itself is ambitious.

So with that, let's stand for a closing word prayer.

Well Father, we thank you for your word.

We thank you for the privilege you've given us to be able to meet without hassle, without

persecution, without interference.

We realize that that's a unique blessing.

Father, we just pray that you'd help us take advantage of these days, help us to discover

the treasures you've hidden here for us.

And above all things, Father, we pray that you would illuminate that path before us.

That through your Holy Spirit and your Word, you would make it ever more clear what you

would have of each of us in the days that remain as we seek to be more fruitful stewards

of the opportunities you've brought before us.

As we commit ourselves without any reservation into your hands in the name of Yeshua, our

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Amen.