Hebrew Voices – Iran in Bible Prophecy – Live Webinar

Lynell: It’s preparing to live stream, we’ll see. Before we start, Dev, I do want you to talk about the Support Team and the Scholar Club, please. All right, it looks like it did it right. Let’s see. Now, if you guys don’t want to stream your video, you can do whatever you want, but we’re live. So, as my friend Narelle said, she was like, “So, that means I can’t come in my pajamas.” Well, you could come in your pajamas, as long as they’re decent and people will see… no, just so you know that people see you.

Nehemia: Depends on your comfort level.

Lynell: Your comfort level. So, I thought it was so cute this morning. Nehemia and I had a phone call with our family in Israel. We always have a live phone call on Sundays, God willing.

Nehemia: You know, it’s not obvious that pajamas are only for the bedroom. There are cultures where they wear pajamas like, or they used to, anyway, I don’t know if they still do, where they’d work all day, and then they’d come home, put on their pajamas and go out to, like, cafes and stuff. Like… So, the Iraqi Jews were known for that, and when they came to Israel, it really stood out. So, they were known as “the pijama”.

Lynell: [Laughter] Well, she said, “That means I can’t wear my pajamas.” I said, “No, that’s not what that means.” Okay, so, we should be live; everything should be streamed. I would… everybody mute yourself. Elizabeth, you need to mute yourself. And let’s see who’s not muted. Elizabeth isn’t there. I’m muting her. Okay. Anybody else? Guys, do you hear anything? Are we good?

Nehemia: I see, there’s a few other people…

Lynell: James, you need to mute.

Nehemia: I don’t know how to mute them.

Lynell: Yeah. Let’s mute everybody that’s not muted, guys. Mary, mute. We will talk afterwards; we’ll have plenty of time to talk. And I’m going to view based on speaker, because Nehemia’s going to mostly speak. And there we go. So, we’ll see Nehemia, then afterwards we’ll see everybody. So, Deb, would you please unmute, and would you please tell us a little bit about the Scholar Club and our Support Team, and what the difference is and how those levels work? We have the programming done. I just don’t have it live, because I haven’t tested it yet, so, just heads up.

Deb Daniel: I just want to welcome everybody to the live stream today. People you see on your screen are Scholar Club members, and we cordially invite you all to become a member of the Scholar Club. On our website, there’s a black bar across the website, and you’ll see a tab there called Scholar Club, and you can go there and get lots more information. You’ll see after today, this will be a deep dive, and that’s what the Scholar Club is all about. And we’re just, you know, excited to get Nehemia’s information out to the world. That’s really the purpose.

And we also want to invite you to become a member of the Support Team. Again, on the black tab, you’ll see just the word “donate”. You can go to that, and it will explain everything about the Support Team. And I just want to tell you… let me go back and say there’s probably, I’m going to say, about eight presentations in the Scholar Club so far, because we just started in November, and so I’m not sure if that’s like eight or nine presentations in the Scholar Club so far. But in the Support Team studies, and I am going to count them. I wished I had done it on Friday, and I just lost time, but there are well over 200 deep dive Support Team studies. I’m going to go out on a limb and say there’s 300. I am going to count them, but I think there’s over 300.

You know, Nehemia is a “short story long”, so that’s why there’s so many, but it is a very deep dive. All of Nehemia’s research on the name Yehovah is in there. There are all the Hebrew Gospel Pearls Plus episodes in there, on the Hebrew Matthew. He adds to this… almost every other week there is a new Support Team study, a new topic, or, you know, a new person to interview. And so, if you’re a Scholar Club member, you already have access to all of that. If you just want to become a Support Team member, please go on the website to the word in the black bar, “donate”, read all about it. We would love to have you.

It’s a twofold thing, you know. It helps us get Nehemiah’s messages and teachings out to the world. But it also helps you a lot with, you know, deeper information, more information. So, we just want you to know we appreciate you. We’re glad everybody’s here today, and please let me know if I can help. If you call the 800 number, you’re probably going to get me. So, if I can help, please let me know. Thank you.

Lynell: So, there’s a lot of things, guys, that we can’t say live, or we don’t say, that we put on like YouTube or Facebook, and so those things we have behind an area that you have to log in to get, and there’s a lot of reasons for that. Penguin, you are muted just so you know.

Nehemia: Yeah, I was just waiting for Dev…

Lynell: Okay. All right.

Lynell: So, for people who are in the Support Team, you have access to those. And the Scholar Club has access to other studies that we do. Like, we do individual studies just for our Scholar Team, so they have access to a different area. There will be an email that goes out, guys. By the way, I think I’ve got everything set up, I just haven’t tested it.

Nehemia: Can we mute everybody who’s not a host? Is that a possibility?

Lynell: I’m going to try to right now.

Nehemia: We have to mute each person individually as they’re coming in. Oh, I think… I muted you, but I can hear you from the other room.

Lynell: I can unmute myself. That’s perfect.

Nehemia: Let’s mute everybody who’s not a host, and then we can open it up later for questions and whatnot.

Lynell: Yes. Okay.

Nehemia: All right, guys, we really need your support, and the Scholar Club is the backbone of what we’re doing, along with the Support Team. Between those two groups of people, we’re able to do the research that we’re doing and get information out to people, and some of it we can’t share until… actually years after we do it. But we are working on a whole bunch of really exciting, really, like, groundbreaking stuff. Like I said, some of which I can’t share right now, certainly not as it’s going out in public.

We also live in a world, whether we like it or not, of censorship, and if we want to continue to get our message out, there are some things, like we said, that we have to only say not in the public sphere. And look, I understand if you’re a one of our “tech oligarchs” and there’s things you don’t want said, okay, that’s your decision. On my website, I can say whatever I want. And so that, you know, that’s really what it comes down to. Am I speaking in somebody else’s forum or in my own forum? And so, there’s some things I just save for my forum for, you know, nehemiaswall.com.

All right, guys, so, it’s interesting. I planned this… did we plan this before the attack on Iran happened? I actually don’t remember. Before Donald Trump… now, I think we can agree will go down in history, however you look at it, as a great, you know… he’s the one who stopped Iran from having nuclear weapons and disseminating them to their terrorist allies. Which was, I mean, that’s what they were… the direction they were going. Right? They knew they couldn’t use them themselves without facing all kinds of consequences, so they were going to dole them out to the Houthis and Hezbollah and other evil organizations. So, stopping them was extremely important. And he will go down in history… I mean, literally, in the history of the world, this is a seminal event that happened yesterday.

And so, I think we… I think, I don’t remember if we decided to do this before Israel launched Operation Am Ke’Lavi, which is “Rising Lion” or “People Like a Lion.” And it got me thinking, “Okay, what is the role of Iran in Bible prophecy?” That’s what I want to look at. And so really Ezekiel 38-39… we’re going to talk about a bunch of passages. I feel like we’re going to end up with more questions than answers. If you’re looking for, “Nehemiah, what is the date and the hour in 2025 or 2027 where everything’s going to happen?” That’s not this teaching. But I thought, this is a great opportunity to learn: what does the Tanakh say? What do we understand? What do we not understand? And, yeah, let’s have a look. And we’re going to do a study here.

So, we’re going to turn to Ezekiel 38 and 39. Nelson… can I have Nelson read? Because Lynell, your voice is suffering. Or should I have you read? Should I put you on the spot?

Lynell: I can do some. I’m happy to. I’m prepared.

Nehemia: Okay, that’s… take some and share with…

Lynell: Yes, he will.

Nehemia: And as Deb said earlier, I’m known as “short story long”. So, there were about 10 or 20 passages I wanted to bring that I decided not to. We’re going to try to keep this short, but you’re going to see there’s a lot more to it than we can even bring today. So, Ezekiel 38… and the reason we’re looking at Ezekiel 38 is, it talks about this end times war, this apocalyptic war. And in verse 5 it mentions Persia. And Iran is Persia, right? That’s not a secret, you know. They changed their name to Iran, or Iran, in the 20th century, but they were known as Persia throughout the world. At least other countries knew them as Persia. So, the Persian Empire.

And the Persian Empire is important in Jewish history, in the history of Israel, because Israel was sent into exile by the Babylonians and then came back from exile under the Persians. And let me actually read that passage. That’s a really interesting passage. We were looking at this before the war, for sure, this particular part.

In fact, I’m going to do something really interesting here. I’m going to have Lynell read from Ezra chapter 1 verses 1-4, and Nelson, can you open up 2 Chronicles chapter 36 verses 22-23? And I want you to jump in when there’s something that’s different. And I don’t mean like one letter, like, you know, that doesn’t come across in English. But when there’s actually something very different, I want you to jump in and say, “Hey, that’s not in 2 Chronicles 36:22-23.” And 2 Chronicles 36:23 is the end of the of the Tanakh, right? Meaning, the current common order is that it goes from Genesis, obviously, all the way to, at the end is… well, in the English it’s Malachi, but in the Hebrew it’s Chronicles. Although in some Hebrew manuscripts it doesn’t end with Chronicles, but that’s a different story. Yes, Lynell.

Lynell: Where are we in Ezra?

Nehemia: We are in Ezra, chapter 1 verses 1-4.

Lynell: Okay, I am there. Tell me when.

Nehemia: Oh, go ahead. Nelson, are you on there? In 2 Chronicles 36:22-23?

Nelson: Yes. I’m ready.

Nehemia: All right.

Lynell: Okay. “In the first year of King Cyrus of Persia, when the word of Yehovah spoken by Jeremiah was fulfilled, Yehovah roused the spirit of King Cyrus of Persia to issue a proclamation throughout his realm by word of mouth and in writing, as follows.”

Nehemia: And let me just jump in here. There wasn’t a single word that was different between Chronicles and Ezra. There was one letter. Nelson, what was the letter?

Nelson: I don’t think I saw it. Is it in Hebrew? I’m reading the English.

Nehemia: In Hebrew. So, I put it in red there. So, the name Jeremiah in Chronicles is Yermiyahu, and in Ezra it’s Yermiyah. Right? Which is… doesn’t come across even in the, you know… that’s six of one, one half dozen of the other. Generally, it’s thought that Yermiyahu is the more archaic form, and Yermiyah is kind of like, I don’t know, it’s kind of like an abbreviation. Like, instead of calling her Lynell, we might call her Lynn. Right? It’s that kind of thing.

All right, so let’s go on. Verse two in Ezra 1, chapter 2, or sorry, Ezra chapter 1 verse 2, which is in 2 Chronicles 36:23, and here we will have a significant difference. No… go ahead.

Lynell: “Thus said King Cyrus of Persia, ‘Yehovah, God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and has charged me with building him a house in Jerusalem which is in Judah. Any one of you…’”

Nehemia: By the way, up until then it was identical, although in 2 Chronicles the verses…

Mima Cole: I will send you the link.

Lynell: Mima, you are… okay.

Mima Cole: Oh, sorry. It said I was muted.

Lynell: You are now. Okay, Nehemia you’re muted. I muted everybody, yeah.

Nehemia: Can we make it so everyone’s automatically muted if they’re not a host? Because if, let’s say, people come in late, then they’re going to not realize that they’re unmuted… Is that an option, or no?

Lynell: Give me a minute and I’ll find it. There’ll be something that I can do.

Nehemia: I appreciate it.

Lynell: All right.

Nehemia: Sorry guys.

Lynell: I’ll figure it out.

Nehemia: All right.

Lynell: Verse 3.

Nehemia: So, in 2 Chronicles, the verse continues verbatim, the same as what’s in Ezra, although in Ezra it’s a new verse. It’s now verse 3.

Lynell: “Any one of you, all of his people, may his God be with him and let him go up to Jerusalem.”

Nehemia: And so, in Chronicles it ends. It says, “And may he go up.” It doesn’t say to where. And that’s the end of the Bible, the end of the Tanakh. But then it continues in Ezra, “May he go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah.”

Lynell: “‘And build the house of Yehovah, God of Israel, the God that is in Jerusalem. And…’”

Nehemia: Which is really interesting, “the God that is in Jerusalem” is the way that Lynell’s translation translates it. There’s another way to read that, which is “let him build the house of Yehovah, the God of Israel, hu ha’elohim,” “He is God.” Right? That’s what it says in Deuteronomy, “Yehovah hu ha’elohim”. And then on Mount Carmel, under Elijah, they said, “Yehovah hu ha’elohim”, right? Who do you choose, Yehovah or Baal? And they said, “Yehovah hu ha’elohim. Yehovah hu ha’elohim.” “Yehovah, He is God.” Right? So, if that’s the case, then hu ha’elohim would then… “He is God,” would be like a parenthetic statement. Which maybe isn’t what Cyrus is saying, because Cyrus is a Zoroastrian, from what we know in history and from the Tanakh, from Isaiah 45, so hu ha’elohim is Ezra’s commentary there. Parenthetically. “Which is in Jerusalem.”

So, in other words, “And He will build the house of Yehovah, the God of Israel, which is in Jerusalem.” And then Ezra tells us “He is God.” Right? There is no other. Right? Which is pretty cool. I love that, that’s very cool. And then there’s a whole other verse which isn’t in Chronicles! Let’s read that other verse. Verse 4 of chapter 1 of Ezra.

Lynell: “And all who stay behind, wherever he may be living, let the people of his place assist him with silver, gold, goods, and livestock, besides the freewill offering to the house of God that is in Jerusalem.”

Nehemia: Which is really interesting, because not all the Israelites went back to the land. In fact, only probably about ten percent, as far as we can tell, went back. Another 90 percent stayed in exile. And he’s saying, “If you decide not to go back, you have to support the people who are in Israel, who are doing God’s work,” which, you know… Amen.

So, we have King Cyrus, who’s the king of Persia, who… it was foretold by Jeremiah that after 70 years they would go back. That seems unlikely in the time of Jeremiah. And there’s this challenge in Jeremiah 28 between Jeremiah and the false prophet. And we actually don’t know, at the time it takes place, who the false prophet is. We don’t know if Jeremiah is the false prophet or this other guy, whose name nobody remembers unless you, you know, you read the chapter. Right?

And Jeremiah says, “You won’t know for 70 years if I’m a true prophet. The other guy, you’ll know very soon if he’s a false prophet. But you won’t know who the… If I’m a true… Maybe we’re both false prophets,” basically, Jeremiah says. You won’t know until Israel comes back. And we came back after 70 years under Cyrus because God stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, even though Cyrus was a Zoroastrian, which is a religion who believes in two gods, a good one and evil. He only worships one god, but he believes there’s another one he doesn’t worship. That’s the idea of Zoroastrianism, or at least in the time of Cyrus.

All right. So, that gives us the background of Persia. Now let’s go to Iran today. And it’s interesting; the Iranians are still culturally Zoroastrians, the same religion of Cyrus. Religiously, they’re Muslims. There is this expert in Israel who’s talking about how she has all these friends in Iran, and she says, “I’ll see you at the conference in Germany in December.” And they say, when’s that? And she tells them the Islamic date. And they’re like, “We have no idea when that is.” And she has to tell them the Zoroastrian date. Because, like, on a daily basis, they still use the Zoroastrian calendar. It’s amazing.

Okay. Our dentist, who is an Iranian Jew, she celebrates Nowruz, which is the Zoroastrian New Year. And I’m like, “Why would you celebrate that?” Well, it’s like celebrating the secular Gregorian New Year. I’m not a Catholic, why would I celebrate the Zoroastrian New Year? But a lot of American Jews do, and I understand why.

Okay, so let’s look at Ezekiel 38-39, and I’m going to do a little bit of spoil… you know what? Let’s read it. All right. I’ll have you read, and I’ll jump in and interrupt you as I am wont to do.

Lynell: Go for it.

Nehemia: All right.

Lynell: “The word of Yehovah came to me: ‘O mortal.’”

Nehemia: And I love the word for mortal here. In Hebrew, it’s ben adam, “son of man”, which, Lynell is reading from the JPS. Yeah, like the King James has “son of man”. Ben adam.

Lynell: “Turn your face toward Gog of the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech, and Tubal. Prophesy against him and say…”

Nehemia: Let’s stop there for a second. Who on earth is Gog of the land of Magog? So, Magog is mentioned in Genesis 10:2 and 1 Chronicles 1:5, which is really a repeat of Genesis 10. And it is one of the nations where sons of Yefet… Right? There’s three sons of Noah; Shem, Cham, and Yefet, and they’re one of the sons of Yefet. Which… what does that mean? So, here’s where we have a bit of a challenge. How do we translate that into modern terms? Well, Meshech and Tuval, who are also part of that constellation of peoples, these are all peoples which in today are Turkey, or what we could say… Turkey is a country; geographically that could be called Asia Minor or Anatolia, and it’s eastern Turkey.

So, is that the Turks? Well, no, the Turks are Johnny-come-latelies; they only recently got to Anatolia. In the time of Ezekiel, there wasn’t a single Turk living in Anatolia. It’s funny, they talk about the Jewish occupation? They literally invaded that area and drove out the indigenous inhabitants, many of which they killed in the Armenian Genocide. We just got this video banned in Turkey by mentioning the Armenian Genocide because literally, by law, it’s forbidden to talk about the Armenian Genocide. They deny that it happened, where they killed over a million Armenians. Hitler famously gave a speech on the eve of World War II in which he said, “What of it if we kill all the Jews and the Slavs? Nobody today talks about the Armenian Genocide.” Right? Nobody will care.

Little did he know that less than 100 years later, there’d be large swaths of the world who… I mean, go and look on the comments on social media, and there are people who are saying literally and openly, they’re saying unashamedly, “We owe Hitler an apology.” Because if he had killed all the Jews, then we wouldn’t have Jews in the world today, which they think is a good thing. Like, wow! That went fast. Like, who knew we would go back to that so quickly?

All right, so, these are nations who… are they literally Turkey, meaning, are they the modern Turks? Or are they the people who the Turks drove out, some of whom they killed, which would mean they’re Greeks. Maybe they’re various Europeans. There were Celts who were living in that region at the time. Right? So, who are these? I don’t know, right, that’s again, like I said, more of a question than an answer. And maybe it’s something metaphorical, right? You could say, “Oh, this refers to the Czech Republic because they’re symbolic…” Like, you can make up anything. Right? “They’re symbolically the Anatolians of today.” Right? Whatever, okay. And some people would say it’s like Russia, or if you’re living in Russia, maybe you’d say it’s Ukraine. I have no idea, right? All right, let’s go on.

Verse 3.

Lynell: “And say, ‘Thus said Lord Yehovah: Lo, I am coming to deal with you, O Gog, chief prince of Meshech and Tubal.’”

Nehemia: And look, this is where people today will do what they call, when they… And I don’t mean this to be judgmental. And I’ll explain a little bit more about this later, why I don’t do it. But there’s a lot of people who will do what they call Bible prophecy, and they’ll say, “Gog today is Assad.” Hmm. That didn’t work out too well. Um…

Lynell: [Laughter]

Nehemia: “So, it’s Erdogan!” Right? Okay, I don’t know. Maybe it is Erdogan. I don’t know, maybe it’s, you know, Vladimir Putin, right? People make up all kinds… And look, it could be. Right? Here’s the beauty of it. When Gog actually does appear, someone will say, “You know, this guy named Jason Statham, who is the dictator of Romania…” He’s made up something, right? “He is Gog.” And that time they’ll be right. Right? So, right? I mean, somebody’s going to be right someday. Maimonides, I think, was the one who said, or maybe it’s just attributed to him. “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.” That doesn’t work with digital, but it does with analog. All right. Go ahead.

Lynell: Okay. Nehemia, you said something to me in my study that I want to bring up, when we did it ourselves.

Nehemia: What’s that?

Lynell: You talked about the Turks that were historically horse tribes. That’s the reason for the picture.

Nehemia: We haven’t gotten there. That’s the next verse. Hold that.

Lynell: Okay. All right. I’ll be quiet. “I will turn you around and put hooks in your jaws and lead you out with all your army, horses, and horsemen, all of them clothed in splendor, a vast assembly, all of them with bucklers and shields, wielding swords.”

Nehemia: So, there’s some kind of a horse-based army here that is being described, and one of the features of the Turks is that they lived on the Central Asian steppes. The Central Asian steppes here is, by the way, spelled s-t-e-p-p-e-s, and what that refers to something like the Great Plains in the Americas, in North America. Right? It’s an area where there really is just flat, open fields of grass all the way from Mongolia, actually to Hungary. And there’s a little bit of things here and there in the middle, but it’s one of the things that actually informs Russian foreign policy. Like, why is it that the Russians want to conquer Ukraine?

One of the reasons is that, if you’re in Ukraine, there’s literally no geographical feature between you and Moscow, so they want to push the border a little bit further to get what they call strategic depth. In Israel, we’ve heard of that, things called strategic depth. We don’t have it. It’d be nice to have. So, strategic depth is if the enemy invades, I can fall back and keep falling back and, you know, burn the fields and whatever, which… well, when you have tanks, your strategic depth doesn’t count for as much as it does when people are coming by horse.

So, why do we mention this? Because some of these people, Meshech and Tuval, might have actually been… they might have been the Turks. Like, literally the Turks. Meaning, they were what the ancient Greeks called Scythians. Scythians was kind of this catch all term for anybody who lived on horseback in the Central Asian steppes. And some of those were literal Turks. So, maybe they are the Turks, I don’t know. But anyway, so, Gog is a man, and he is the ruler of the land of Magog, and he’s also the prince over Meshech and Tuval, whatever those are. And then he has allies, and that’s where we get the Persians here.

And by the way, if we take this very literally and say, “Hey, it’s the Turks,” then this isn’t today. Because right now, the Turks are kind of like armchair allies of the Iranians. They’re like, “Yeah, Iranians, go, you should fight to the last Persian,” right? That’s what they want, right? But they’re not willing to put any of their own people on the line. But maybe that’ll… hopefully that won’t change. But I guess at some point in history it will. Ezekiel 38:5.

Lynell: The one thing you said during the study that I will never forget, because you gave me this word picture…

Nehemia: Of who are these horse tribes!

Lynell: Do you remember what you said?

Nehemia: I said, it’s like the Dothraki in Game of Thrones. But it’s not just like the Dothraki in the Game of Thrones. The author of the book series, A Song of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin, literally fashioned the Dothraki after the Mongols and the Turks and other horse peoples of the Central Asian steppes. Literally, right? Meaning, it’s not a coincidence. He’s like, “Let me make up a fictional people that represents the Huns and the Turks and the Mongols.” Right? And other, Asiatic, Central Asian, and the Hungarians actually, as well, who very much to this day pride themselves that they were a horse people. Right?

Like, these are people who invented the stirrup. Right? Like, you know, we take for granted that we have something called stirrups. Like, think about this; this is interesting. I know I’m completely off topic here. But why is it that when we look in the Bible, people primarily used chariots, right? You read in the book of Joshua, and they’re fighting against chariots, and they don’t have chariots. They don’t have cavalry, but they don’t have chariots either. Why do we never read about chariots with the Mongols or the Turks, if you read history?

Because what they did over centuries and millennia is they developed increasingly large horses to the point where a horse could carry one man full of armor. The horses in the time of Joshua, if you put a man with armor on them, that poor horse is going to fall over. I once rode a horse like that. I was in the Philippines, and there are these people who live on this island where there’s a volcano. And we went to the island on a boat, and they said, “You have to pay to go up to the top of the volcano.” “Oh, is this like a government fee?” “No, it’s basically squatters who live on the island, and they won’t let you go unless you pay to ride on the horseback.”

Okay. That poor horse. That poor, poor horse. First of all, my feet were literally dragging the ground, and I thought the horse was going to die. And on the way down, I said, “I’ll pay you the money, but I’m not getting on that horse,” because that will kill the horse. And that’s the kind of horse that they had in biblical times. It took like four of them to drag a chariot. Right? So, the Dothraki here, or the people being described in Ezekiel, they’ve developed horses that a man can ride with full armor on the horse. And they grow up on the horses, and they invented stirrups, right? So, they can literally… they can, like, sleep on the horse. They, like, know how to like… they’re really horse folk. Like, we take that for granted.

When I was a kid my mother took me horseback riding. In the Middle Ages it was illegal for a Jew to go on a horse, because only soldiers went on horses. And if you wanted to plow your field and you were a peasant, you could ride a horse. But it wasn’t a war horse. Right? It was like that Philippine horse, right? Basically, I rode a modern war horse, which you weren’t allowed to have. It’s like owning a tank. Even like three or four hundred years ago, Jews were not allowed to own horses or ride on horses. And if a Jew rode on, like, a transportation donkey or a horse, he had to ride like a woman, sideways. Right? That was part of the way of humiliating Jews under Islamic and Christian rule.

All right. So, these are horse folk! They’re living on horses, growing up on horses. They’re like Walker, Texas Ranger. What’s that guy’s name who plays that…

Lynell: [Laughter]

Nehemia: You know who I’m talking about? What’s that guy’s name, Nelson? The guy… we can’t hear you, Nelson.

Lynell: He’s muted.

Nehemia: Oh.

Lynell: And he can’t… and he can’t unmute because…

Nehemia: Oh, you can unmute him but mute everybody else.

Lynell: I did.

Nehemia: Or make him a co-host. Can you do that?

Lynell: Yes. Whoops. Cancel. Yes, I can.

Nehemia: Someone tell me. Who Walker… Chuck Norris! There’s, like, jokes about, like, you know, T-rexes fighting Chuck Norris, and Chuck Norris wins, and things like that. All right, anyway. Let’s read on. Nelson, can you read here? I’m going to let you jump in here. Ezekiel 38:6.

Lynell: We’re on 5.

Nehemia: Oh, didn’t we read 5?

Lynell: No.

Nehemia: Well, 5… Five is important. It’s the Moneyball.

Lynell: It is, that’s [Laughter]…

Nehemia: “Persia and Cush and Put with them… all of them with shield and helmet. Right? So, these are probably not the horse folk. Put is Libya, and Cush is either Ethiopia or Sudan, depending on which period of history you’re on. And Paras, Persia, is still Persia; it’s Iran. Right? Now, again, it could be symbolically… you could say… And it’s funny, I feel like I did a teaching on this like ten years ago, and I said, “You know, yeah, but Persia… Persia is like this small minor power,” like… So, maybe this is symbolically somebody else, because how could Persia be like some major invading army? Hopefully we’ll be back in that situation and Persia will be symbolic. But right now, Persia seems quite literal. All right. Verse 6, Nelson.

Nelson: Verse 6. Okay. “Gomer and all its cohorts.”

Nehemia: And Gomer is the Cimmerians in Greek literature. And Cimmerians, those are the horse people. That’s the one I was thinking of, by the way.

Nelson: “Beth-Togarmah in the remotest parts of the north, and…”

Nehemia: And certainly later, in later times, Togarmah was understood literally as Turk. Right? As if you switch around To-gar… Turk… that maybe it’s literally the Turks. Anyway, go on.

Nelson: “The many peoples with you.”

Nehemia: So, there’s a bunch of other people that aren’t being named, right? So, we can say some are notable and worthy of mention by name, but there’s a bunch of other allies that are coming to invade, and we haven’t actually said what they’ve invaded yet. Let’s keep reading, Nelson.

Nelson: “Be ready, prepare yourselves, you and all the battalions mustered about you, and hold yourself in reserve for them.”

Nehemia: And it’s really interesting, the word here for battalions… in the King James it has, “All thy company that are assembled unto thee.” And it’s all the kahal, all the congregation, is what it literally says. So, all the congregation congregated. Oh, and that’s really interesting. I’m looking here in the Septuagint and it’s, hei sinagoge, “all of the synagogue”, all of your synagogue, “that is synagogue”, that is gathered. How interesting. Wow! I’m not sure what that means, or if it means anything, but… meaning if there’s anything other than just there’s a big army. All right, let’s read on, verse 8.

Nelson: “After a long time, you shall be summoned. In the distant future, you shall march against the land of a people restored from the sword, gathered from the midst of many peoples, against the mountains of Israel, which have long lain desolate. A people liberated from the nations and now all dwelling secure.”

Nehemia: Okay, we have to stop here. This is huge. So, if we ask, is this today? A hundred percent no, it can’t be today. How do I know that? Because it talks about the… first of all, it says acherit ha’shanim, which is another way of saying “the end of days” or “the end of years”. It could also mean “a long time from now.” It doesn’t have to be “the end”. But it’s something like “the end of days” or “end of years”, literally. So, what we usually translate it as end of days.

And by the way, in Greek it’s eschatu, which is where we get eschaton; we talk about eschatology. It’s literally from verses like this that talk about acherit, the end, or the latter days, the latter years. So, it says, “In the latter years, will come upon you a people restored of sword…” or it could mean something else, but we won’t get into that. And “gathered,” and that’s mekubetzet, “which are kibbutz-ed”. We say today a kibbutz is where people are… originally meant where Jews would come back to the Land of Israel and they’d be gathered together in a commune. So, they’re “kibbutzed from many peoples around the mountains of Israel that were for a destruction, continually.” Right?

So, the nation has been restored; there’s some semblance of an ingathering of the exile. Oh, that’s today. Except it says, “And they dwelt securely, all of them.” So, at no point since 19… let’s say, 1880, when Jews first started coming, at least, in mass, you could say 1832… when Jews started coming in mass back to the Land of Israel, at no point have Jews lived securely for any appreciable period of time. I remember reading in history and reading the words of the Israeli prime ministers and historians of why they gave Sinai to the Egyptians in 1956 after they conquered it. “Why give Sinai back? Surely you knew ten years later there would be another war.” They said, ten years… this is what… literally what they said. I’m paraphrasing. They said, “If we could get ten years of peace on a country that’s just still recovering from the Holocaust, we might survive the next war.” That’s literally what they said. “Just give us ten years of peace. We haven’t had that yet.” So, sounds familiar. And that’s really how a lot of Israeli politics thinks. You know, in America everything’s in increments of four years. If we can get ten years of not being invaded, boy, that’s pretty good. We haven’t had that in my lifetime, of ten years without war. So… all right, verse 9. Let’s read. Lynell, you want to…

Lynell: Sure.

Nehemia: Oh, read one more verse… oh no, go ahead, verse 9.

Lynell: “You shall advance, coming like a storm.”

Nehemia: What’s the word for storm?

Lynell: Shoah.

Nehemia: Shoah. Which is the word in Hebrew for Holocaust. But it means a storm, like, think tornado, right? Lynell said hurricane, because she’s from the East coast. Israel doesn’t have hurricanes, but it does have tornadoes. Not like in Texas or Oklahoma, but we have tornadoes in Israel. So, “coming like a tornado” is really what that says.

Lynell: “You shall be like a cloud covering the earth. You and all your cohorts and the many peoples with you.”

Nehemia: So, this is going to be in invasion of Israel, which is a holocaust. That’s what that says. A destruction…

Lynell: “Thus said Lord Yehovah, ‘On that day, a thought will occur to you, and you will conceive a wicked design. You will say: I will invade a land of open towns. I will fall upon a tranquil people living secure, all of them living in unwalled towns and lacking bars and gates, in order to take spoil and seize plunder. To turn your hand against repopulated wastes and against a people gathered from among nations, acquiring livestock and possessions, living at the center of the earth.’”

Nehemia: So, the good news is, Ezekiel 38 isn’t today. The bad news is we’re going to have peace, and then there’s going to be an invasion, a worldwide invasion. That’s the plain reading here. And if somebody tells you, “No, this is today and here’s why…” Okay, I could be wrong. People have been wrong throughout history, which is one of the reasons Jews are very hesitant when talking… we’ll save that for later. Go on. Let’s burn through these quickly, because we want to get to some of the juicy stuff.

Lynell: “Sheba and Dedan and the merchants and all the magnates of Tarshish will say to you, ‘Have you come to take spoil? Is it to seize plunder that you assembled your hordes to carry off silver and gold, to make off with livestock and goods, to gather an immense booty?’ Therefore prophesy, O mortal, and say to Gog, ‘Thus said Lord Yehovah: Surely on that day when My people Israel are living secure, you will take note, and you will come from your home in the farthest north, you and many peoples with you, all of them mounted on horses, a vast horde, a mighty army…’”

Nehemia: This is the Dothraki invading. You know, this is like… something like the Mongols. And let’s assume that… Well, I guess maybe if there’s, like, World War III, we will be back on horses. Otherwise, this, in modern terms, would be something like, you know, tanks or whatever. Drones. I don’t know what the future is going to hold, right? All right.

Lynell: “‘And you will advance upon My people Israel like a cloud covering the earth. This shall happen on that distant day.’”

Nehemia: And by the way, here’s the word synagogue again.

Lynell: “I will bring you…”

Nehemia: Where it says, “a vast horde,” it’s a vast synagogue, is what it says. In Greek, it’s… Or in Hebrew, it’s kahal gadol, which is a great congregation. Sunagoge megale, which is a great synagogue, right? Because synagogue is just a place where you gather.

Lynell: “‘I will bring you to My land that the nations may know Me, when before their eyes I manifest My holiness through you, O Gog.’”

Nehemia: And then here we have again acherit hayamim, the end of days. It says here in JPS “distant day.” That distant day. That’s Hebrew acherit hayamim, that’s what we call the end times, right? That’s in Greek… that’s the eschaton, which is eschatology, right? This is a final battle, right? Maybe it’s not final, right, but it’s… sometime in the distant future. I mean, when this was spoken, for sure, it was the distant future. All right, go on.

Lynell: “Thus said, Lord Yehovah, ‘Why, you are the one I spoke of in ancient days, through My servants, the prophets of Israel…’”

Nehemia: This is important.

Lynell: “‘…who prophesied for years in those days that I would bring you against them.’”

Nehemia: So, when we’re done here with Ezekiel 38 and 39, which will be pretty quickly, I think, because we get the point, we’re going to look… what are those prophecies? Who are the ancient prophets? And this is how this could be like a six-hour study, and I’ve decided to try to restrain myself.

Lynell: [Laughter]

Nehemia: Because literally, we could go… There’s numerous prophecies this could refer to, but he’s saying, “Look, I’ve spoken about this in other places. It’s not the only… It’s the only time I mentioned Gog in the Tanakh.” There’s one in Revelation. I think we have to kind of assume that these are things that predate Ezekiel, so he’s not talking about Revelation. So, he’s also not talking about Daniel, but Daniel also talks about this, right? Because Daniel’s after Ezekiel, or maybe at the same time; it’s complicated. I guess it’s the same time because Ezekiel mentions Daniel. All right. So, all right, let’s read on.

Lynell: “On that day when Gog sets afoot on the soil of Israel,’ declares Lord Yehovah, ‘My raging anger shall flare up.’”

Nehemia: By the way, there’s this idea… I was meeting with this Christian pastor last week, and he mentioned how he’s part of a megachurch in Dallas, in the Dallas area. And he said, you know, “One of the things we really battle against in our ministry,” or he didn’t say battle, but “teach against is replacement theology.” Or it’s called supercesionism. Right? So, there’s this idea where, like, Candace Owens is famous for this, or infamous, I suppose, now. She says, “the Jews have been replaced.” She says, “Benjamin Netanyahu,” she calls him by, like, his Polish name, or his Russian name… which is funny, because Jews in Eastern Europe didn’t get surnames, with some rare exceptions, until like the late 1800s. And they got surnames so they could be taxed, and his family’s probably had the name Netanyahu longer than they had their previous name. Right? Meaning, they Hebrew-ized it when they came to Israel and got into government.

So, her view is that, you know, Netanyahu is no more a part of God’s people than, you know, than some random person, I don’t know, in the Pacific Islands or something, right? Because they’ve been replaced by the church. So, my question for the replacement theology crowd is, what does this mean here? Read again verse 19, and let’s assume that Candace Owens is right, and… Let’s assume Candace Owens is right and the Jews are not God’s chosen people, and whenever it says Israel, it means the church. What on earth is Ezekiel 38:19 talking about?

Lynell: On 18 it says, “On that day, when Gog sets foot on the soil of Israel…”

Nehemia: So, what is soil of Israel, according to Candace Owens? I have no idea. And she would have to say… and the Greek Orthodox Church, they have entire commentaries written on this. And they’ll say, “This refers to the church, and this is, you know, some event in the life of the church, and it refers to, you know, it could be like some heresy, right? It’s not a literal invasion by a foreign army, it’s, you know, the heresy of the Arians,” or some, you know, ridiculous thing like that. I don’t know, whatever. All right. Go on.

Lynell: “For I’ve decreed in My indignation and in My blazing wrath on that day a terrible earthquake shall befall the Land of Israel.”

Nehemia: And again, “Land of Israel.” What else could that be but the Land of Israel? I mean, you end up with ridiculous interpretations if you adopt replacement theology.

Lynell: “‘The fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the beasts of the field, all creeping things that move on the ground, and every human being on earth shall quake before Me. Mountains shall be overthrown, cliffs shall topple, and every wall shall crumble to the ground. I will then summon the sword against him throughout My mountains,’ declares Lord Yehovah, ‘and every man’s sword shall be turned against his brother. I will punish him with…’”

Nehemia: And that’s a really important statement. “Every man’s sword will be turned against his brother.” What that means is the army that invades Israel, they’ll turn on each other. Which… hmm, we’re going out in public here but… Abba Eban, who was Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, and I think to the US as well, he famously said, “The Arabs never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” And what he’s referring to is, first of all, they don’t want to have peace. We’ve offered them peace numerous times. But also, they end up turning on each other, and they’re their own worst enemies. That’s what’s going to happen in this final war; they’re going to invade the land of Israel, that’s prophesied, after a period of peace, and then they’re going to turn on each other. Now, who that’s going to be, I don’t know, but… And look, that could be friendly fire, so-called friendly fire. It could be, “You know what? He’s doing too well, those Turks. Now the Iranians are going to attack the Turks because the Turks are doing too well, and they’re going to get too much of the spoils.” It could be something like that. Happened many times in history. All right, go on.

Lynell: “I will punish him with pestilence and with bloodshed, and I will pour torrential rain, hailstones and sulfurous fire upon him and his hordes and the many peoples with him. Thus will I manifest My greatness and My holiness and make Myself known in the sight of many nations, and they shall know that I am Yehovah.”

Nehemia: That’s the important part to me, verse 23. I guess it’s all important. But look, why is God doing this? So He can glorify and magnify Himself amongst the nations, “And they’ll know that I am Yehovah.” Nelson, can you quickly… I’ll try, I’ll do my best, not to interrupt, in chapter 39, so that we can then go to some other passages that I think are also extremely important.

Lynell: You are muted.

Nelson: Okay, there we go. Sorry about that. Okay. “And you, O mortal [or son of man], prophesy against Gog and say, ‘Thus says the Lord Yehovah: I am going to deal with you, O Gog, chief prince of Meshech and Tubal.’”

Nehemia: Let me just jump in here, one thing. How does that guy say, “one more thing”? So, this is not sequential; in other words, this is a separate prophecy, and he’s retelling some of the things that already just happened. Because you might say, “Wait a minute. Gog has already been defeated. They turned against each other and God’s been glorified.” Yeah, this is retelling a little bit, right? It’s a separate prophecy, and so some of this is repeating, kind of repetitive of the previous prophecy. Go ahead.

Nelson: “‘I will turn you around and drive you on, and I will take you from the far north and lead you toward the mountains of Israel. I will strike your bow from your left hand, and I will loosen the arrows from your right hand. You shall fall on the mountains of Israel, you and all your battalions and the peoples who are with you. And I will give you as food to carrion birds of every sort, and to the beasts of the field, as you lie in the open field, for I have spoken,’ declares the Lord Yehovah. ‘And I will send a fire against Magog, and against those who dwell secure in the coastlands. And they shall know that I am Yehovah. I will make My holy name known among My people, Israel.’”

Nehemia: Amen! Come on.

Nelson: “‘And never again will I let My holy name be profaned. And the nations shall know that I am Yehovah, that I, Yehovah, am holy in Israel.’”

Nehemia: Or that could be, “That I am Yehovah, the Holy One in Israel.” Similar, but not exactly the same thing. All right, go on.

Nelson: “‘Ah! It has come. It has happened,’ declares the Lord Yehovah. ‘This is the day that I decreed. Then the inhabitants of the cities of Israel will go out and make fires and feed them with the weapons, shield and bucklers, bows and arrows, clubs and spears. They shall use them as fuel for seven years.’”

Nehemia: And if we say, which I think is a reasonable thing to say, that Ezekiel is describing what he could understand in his day, and in modern terms, that might mean we take, you know, the fuel from their nuclear weapons and we use it for our reactors, I don’t know. I don’t know. Who knows? Maybe it’s some technology I haven’t even thought of. Right? All right. That hasn’t been invented. Go ahead.

Nelson: “‘They will not gather firewood in the fields or cut any in the forests, but will use the weapons as fuel for their fires. They will despoil those who despoiled them and plunder those who plundered them,’ declares the Lord Yehovah. ‘On that day I will assign to Gog a burial site there in Israel, the valley of the travelers east of the sea. It shall block the path of travelers, for there, Gog and all his multitude will be buried. It shall be called the Valley of Gog’s Multitude. The house of Israel shall spend seven months burying them in order to cleanse the land. All the people…’”

Nehemia: Let’s jump ahead to verse 21. We’re going to see some similar things in some of the other prophecies. Let’s wrap this up and then we’ll go over to some of the other prophecies.

Nelson: Okay. Ezekiel 39:21. “‘Thus will I manifest My glory among the nations. And all the nations shall see the judgment that I executed and the power that I wielded against them. From that time on, the house of Israel shall know that I, Yehovah, am their God. And the nations shall know that the house of Israel were exiled only for their iniquity, because they transgressed against Me, trespassed against Me, so that I hid my face from them, and delivered them into the hand of their adversaries. And they all fell by the sword. When I hid My face from them, I dealt with them according to their uncleanness and their transgressions. Assuredly,’ thus says the Lord Yehovah, ‘I will now restore the fortunes of Jacob, and take the whole house of Israel back in love, and I will be zealous for My holy name.’”

Nehemia: So, for some reason the JPS likes to translate, “I will restore the captivity of Jacob” as “the fortunes of Jacob.” I think there’s some theology behind that, I’m not sure. But it says, “I will return the captivity of Jacob.” And I love this phrase: “I will be zealous for My holy name.” Zealous also means jealous. I don’t want any other name being worshiped. My holy name. All right. Let’s see… I think we kind of… Oh, let’s read a few more. Let’s finish up the chapter.

Nelson: “‘They will bear their shame and all their trespasses that they committed against Me when they dwelled in their land, secure and untroubled. When I have brought them back from among the peoples, and gathered them out of the lands of their enemies, and have manifested My holiness through them in the sight of many nations, they shall know that I, the Lord, am Yehovah, when, having exiled them among the nations, I gather them back into their land and leave none of them behind. I will never again hide My face from them. For I will pour out My spirit upon the house of Israel,’ declares the Lord Yehovah.”

Nehemia: Now, there are some people who will say, “Oh, this was fulfilled in the Second Temple times.” How do I know it wasn’t? Well, clearly this has not been fulfilled. And even if we just go on the level of not all of the Israelites returned to the land. Not even all of the Kingdom of Judah returned to the land, only like 10 percent did, and the rest stayed in Babylon and in Persia and in other lands where they had been scattered, what today is basically Iraq and Iran, maybe even as far as Afghanistan and Pakistan. There were Jews scattered over that whole region of the Persian Empire and in Egypt, and so this statement has never been fulfilled. It will be fulfilled in the future, I believe that, but this is a future prophecy, undoubtedly.

All right. So, for me the big question is… well, number one, we know it’s not going to… it hasn’t happened yet. It might happen in the future, but Ezekiel 38:17 said there’s a bunch of prophecies that talk about this. What are those other prophecies? Before we… and my working assumption is those are from the same time as Ezekiel, or before, but there might be ones after as well. So, I want to look at, just because I know there’s some people are going to say, “What about the New Testament? Nehemia, you’re forgetting Revelation!” So, let’s look at Revelation. Uh, Lynell, could you read this? Do you have a New Testament there, Lynell?

Lynell: Give me just a sec, I’ll grab it.

Nehemia: Oh my God.

Lynell: Yeah.

Nehemia: Your mother would be so upset. She’s going to grab it from the other room. She doesn’t have it in the JPS. All right. So, let’s read Revelation chapter 20.

Lynell: [Laughter]

Nehemia: And you knew this was coming. We spent a week doing this study.

Lynell: I know, I left it in the other room.

Nehemia: That’s why this is like the short version, because the full version took a week. So, let’s start in Revelation chapter 20. We’re going to have to cut this short, I suppose. Oh, I really don’t want to cut it short. Got to get the context. Let’s start in verse 1. Oh…

Lynell: “When I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain, he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent who is the devil and Satan, and bound him up for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and locked and sealed it over him, so that he would deceive the nations no more, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be let out for a little while.”

Nehemia: So, why are we reading this? Because Revelation is going to say Gog is that demonic force.

Lynell: “And I saw thrones, and those seated on them were given authority to judge. I also saw the souls of those who’d been beheaded for their testimony to Jesus and for the word of God. They had not worshipped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their forehead or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years.”

Nehemia: That’s Candace Owens, I guess, and her friends. I don’t know. That’s what she thinks, I’m sure. So, she can make Revelation make sense, but she can’t make Ezekiel make sense. But all right, go on.

Lynell: “The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection. Over these, the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him a thousand years.” Now in verse 7, “When the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, in order to gather them for battle. They are as numerous as the sands of the sea.”

Nehemia: Though it’s not clear: is Satan Gog? Or does Satan have Gog as one of his like, you know, henchmen, right? It sounds like Satan is kind of like the one pulling Gog’s strings. In Ezekiel, Gog is the prince, the ruler, and Magog is the land where he rules. Here it’s Gog and Magog. It’s not clear if they’re rulers or not. But presumably, based on Ezekiel, Gog is the ruler over Magog and their cohort. Right? All right, let’s read on.

Lynell: “They marched up over the breath of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, and fire came down from heaven and consumed them. And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night, forever and ever.”

Nehemia: Okay, so that’s the story of Gog and Magog in the Book of Revelation. There’s all kinds of other verses we can look at. The medieval Jewish commentaries, when they discuss the passage Ezekiel 38:17, they all agree this is talking about Zechariah 14. And some of them say also Isaiah, but they don’t say where in Isaiah. And there’s a bunch of passages; we don’t have time to get to all of them. We’re going to look at Zechariah 14 for starters. And maybe we won’t read the whole thing. I know I’ve taught on this before, because I see we are almost at an hour. But yeah, we have to read it.

Nelson, you want to read Zechariah 14? And how do we know this is the same thing? Or why do we think this is the same thing? Because it’s describing the people dwelling in Jerusalem and there being this great devastation and destruction. And that very much sounds… And by the way, you say… Wait; here’s what I said: “Ezekiel didn’t mention anything about Jerusalem, but Revelation ties it to Jerusalem as well. Where did it get that? Or where is confirmation of that?” It’s in Zechariah 14, which comes from Ezekiel 38:17, where he says, “You know, other prophets have spoken about this as well.” All right.

Nelson: “Lo, a day of Yehovah is coming when your spoil shall be divided in your very midst. For I will gather all the nations to Jerusalem for war. The city shall be captured, the houses plundered, and the women violated.”

Nehemia: And so, in Ezekiel he talked about many nations with them, and here it’s all the nations. And there’s this great destruction. I don’t know… Yeah, keep reading here.

Nelson: “And a part of the city shall go into exile. But the rest of the population shall not be uprooted from the city.”

Nehemia: And that actually explains something in Ezekiel. He says he’s going to restore “the fortunes” in the JPS, but in the Hebrew, it’s “the captivity”. What do you mean? What captivity? I thought they were living securely in the land, because some of them were taken captive again. And that’s what this is describing. Like, imagine October 7th times 100,000. Instead of 250, maybe it’s 250,000. Maybe it’s a million taken captive. Right? It’s a lot of people. It’s a big deal.

Nelson: “Then Yehovah will come forth and make war on those nations as He is wont to make war on a day of battle. On that day, He will set His feet on the Mount of Olives, near Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall split across from east to west, and one part of the mount shall shift to the north and the other to the south, a huge gorge. And the valley in the hills shall be stopped up, for the valley of the hills shall reach only to Azal. It shall be stopped up, as it was stopped up as a result of the earthquake in the days of King Uzziah of Judah. And Yehovah, my God, with all the holy beings, will come to you. In that day, there shall be neither sunlight nor cold moonlight, but there shall be a continuous day, only Yehovah knows when, of neither day nor night. And there shall be light at eventide. In that day, fresh water shall flow from Jerusalem. Part of it is…”

Nehemia: “Only Yehovah will know when that is.” And that very much sounds like what it says in the New Testament, that no one knows the day or the hour. Obviously, that’s related. I mean, I think that’s pretty straightforward. There’s going to be something in the future. “So, Nehemiah, it’s time to publish a book and give the exact date in the year 2026 so we can maximize sales. And we’re going to say the exact date…”

Lynell: [Laughter]

Nehemia: “And… if that goes wrong, we’ll just write another book and nobody will remember. It’s fine. It’s okay. We’ll make it so vague that it doesn’t hurt future sales.” Okay, go on. All right. “Nobody knows the day or the hour. Nobody knows, only Yehovah.” I mean, the New Testament says not even the son. That’s interesting. All right, let’s go on.

Nelson: “In that day, fresh water shall flow from Jerusalem, part of it to the east…”

Nehemia: Guys, this is a familiar prophecy, which is also in Ezekiel, this river of life that flows forth from the Temple. Let’s skip to verse 9 so we can get to some of the other prophecies.

Nelson: “And Yehovah shall be king over all the earth. In that day, there shall be one Yehovah with one name.”

Nehemia: So, it says, now let me read… oh, this is one of my favorite verses. “Ve’haya Yehovah le’melekh al kol ha’aretz,” “And Yehovah will be king over the entire earth.” “Bayom hahu,” “on that day,” yihiyeh… And here we have a little bit of a play on words. Yihiyeh, “he will be”, right, which is related to the name. “Yihiyeh Yehovah echad,” “Yehovah will be one.” They translate that there will be one Yehovah. “Yehovah will be one.” “Ushmo echad,” “And His name will be one.” Which is really interesting, because that implies up until that day there will be a multiplication. What does that mean? What does it mean to multiply Yehovah? I don’t know, we could do a whole teaching on that. But what it probably means is there’ll be people who identify Yehovah as more than one. Yeah, let’s leave that for a different study. All right? Because we want to get to a whole bunch of other stuff.

Daniel 12:1-3. Now, Daniel 11 is describing the war of Gog and Magog. Most people who interpret it say this is something that took place in the Persian period, or in the Hellenistic and Persian periods. It’s not possible, unless you believe Daniel was a false prophet. If you ask secular scholars, they’ll say it wasn’t written by Daniel. It was written in the year 160… and they’re very specific, like 166 BCE. And everything in Daniel 11 took place up until 166, and Daniel 12 was what he thought would take place in 165, and Daniel was wrong. Since I believe Daniel is a true prophet, I reject that and say this has to be something in the end. It has to be something that explains Daniel 12. So, Lynell, do you want to read that? Daniel 12:1-3.

Lynell: “At that time, the great prince, Michael…”

Nehemia: But when is it going to take place? At the time of Daniel 11. So, in other words, that’s why the secular atheist scholars will say… or the ones who deny prophecy, let’s put it that way; they may not be atheist. They’ll say, “Okay, Daniel got it wrong.” Since I believe Daniel got it right, because I believe in the Tanakh, whenever Daniel 11 takes place has to be followed immediately by Daniel 12. I guess you could say that, yes, Daniel 12 follows Daniel 11, but in the middle, God stuck in 4,000 years. I don’t know, maybe. It’s possible. Seems pretty ridiculous to me, but anything’s possible. Daniel 12. “At that time…”

Lynell: “…the great prince, Michael, who stands beside the sons of your people, will appear. It will be a time of trouble, the like of which has never been since the nation came into being.”

Nehemia: So, let’s read that again. We had a Holocaust in the 20th century. We had a pogrom equivalent, proportionately, at least for European Jews, to the Holocaust, in the 17th century, the Khmelnytsky Uprising, in which one-third of European Jews were killed. And at that time, there’s going to be something… a time of trouble which has not been since your people became a nation, until that time. This is going to be worse than the Holocaust and worse than the Khmelnytsky Uprising. That’s bad. Okay, go on.

Lynell: “At that time, your people will be rescued, all who are found inscribed in the book.”

Nehemia: And there, presumably, the book is the book described earlier in Daniel. I want to say it’s 7, you know… the Book of Life, where the angels are recording information.

Lynell: “Many of those that sleep in the dust,” many, didn’t say ‘all’, right? “Many of those that sleep in the dust of the earth will awake; some to eternal life, others to reproaches, to everlasting abhorrence. And the knowledgeable…”

Nehemia: So, this is obviously, at least, you know, from a Tanakh perspective, this is a resurrection. I would say the resurrection. Clearly, the Book of Revelation is referring to the same events, there’s a resurrection and it’s tied in… Right? There, there’s two resurrections. But this resurrection is tied into this end times battle where there’s never been anything so bad in the history of Israel. All right, go on.

Lynell: “And the knowledgeable will be radiant like the bright expanse of sky, and those who lead the many to righteousness will be like the stars forever and ever.”

Nehemia: So, this is some kind of eternal life. I mean, it says explicitly eternal life. Right? We don’t have to read that into the passage. All right. So, we have a resurrection, which is following the worst event in the history of Israel as a people. Okay. Has that happened yet? Well, we haven’t had a mass resurrection, to my knowledge, not of the scale that this is describing, and certainly we haven’t had this eternal punishment. All right, so, let’s do… what was the other one we want to look at?

Lynell: Joel 4.

Nehemia: Joel 4, in the JPS it’s verses 9-21. In the King James, it’s Joel 3:9-21. So, it’s a different division of the chapter, same verse numbers interestingly. All right, Nelson, can you read Joel 4:9-21? And I believe this is the same battle, because it’s also the nations are gathering and they’re being defeated by God.

Nelson: “Proclaim this among the nations: ‘Prepare for battle! Arouse the warriors! Let all the fighters come and draw near. Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears. Let even the weakling say: I am strong. Rouse yourselves and come. All you nations come together from round about. There, bring down your warriors, O Yehovah. Let the nations rouse themselves and march up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat, for there I will sit in judgment over all the nations round about.”

Nehemia: Let me stop you there for a second. So, this prophecy doesn’t mention Gog, it doesn’t mention Magog… how do we know it’s the same thing? Maybe it’s not, right? I’m proposing that as a possibility. I believe it is. I think the Book of Revelation clearly seemed to think it was, at least the way I read it. Is it? Well, I don’t know. We will find out. And here’s the point. There’s a lot of different prophecies… and this is interesting. So, in Ezekiel he said, “A lot of my prophets have prophesied about this.” He didn’t say which ones. So, which ones are they? I don’t know. There’s other prophecies in Ezekiel, or excuse me, in Isaiah; this could refer to Isaiah 66… probably is tied in. Isaiah 66 is definitely tied into Daniel 12, which then ties us into this same kind of end times war and resurrection. Right? Am I right? I don’t know. We will find out. Everyone will see in the end that I’m right or that I’m wrong. One of those two possibilities.

Lynell: [Laughter]

Nehemia: Hopefully, it’ll be the one where I’m right, but I don’t know. Actually, here, I kind of hope I’m wrong. It’s possible that these events are separated by a thousand years. Right? It’s possible. Or by 12 years or six years or seven years. Right? So, I know a lot of, especially, like, Protestant churches have this idea, like, we have this specific doctrine, Mid-trib, and if you’re not that, you’re going to hell. I don’t know how you could say that from a Tanakh perspective, right? Although I’ve been to hell, it’s just really hot. Anyway… Although I’ve seen snow in hell. I’ve seen it literally where it froze over. Very bad drought.

Lynell: You need to explain that, because not everybody gets it.

Nehemia: Yeah. Gehenna is a place in Jerusalem. It’s very hot, especially the summer. All right. Um…

Lynell: Isaiah 34 or Numbers…

Nehemia: No, let’s finish Joel.

Lynell: Oh.

Nehemia: Yeah, well, Joel 4:14 has the multitude which appears in Ezekiel 38 and 39. All right, so there are things there that are tied together. In English you might not see them, but in Hebrew you definitely see them. Read verse 17; we’ll stop with that, Nelson. And there you see a theme from Ezekiel 38 and 39. Why is God doing this? “So the world knows that I am Yehovah.” Can you read verse 17?

Nelson: “And you shall know that I am Yehovah your God…” Oh, excuse me, “And you shall know that I, Yehovah your God, dwell in Zion, My holy Mount, and Jerusalem shall be holy. Nevermore shall strangers pass through it.”

Nehemia: Which is really interesting, it then talks about… well, anyway, let’s jump to the next passage. Because I’ve probably exceeded my time limit here, of what I wanted to spend, and we’re not even maybe halfway done. Isaiah 34:1-17. I don’t think we’re going to read… I’m just going to skim that for you guys. What I find really interesting… So, Isaiah 34 is another passage that talks about many nations invading Israel, and it’s probably the same war. And it’s interesting, there are medieval Jewish commentators who say that Ezekiel 38:17, where he says, “the prophets of Israel prophesied about this,” everyone agrees it’s Zechariah 14, Zachariah 14. Some say it’s also Isaiah, but they don’t say where in Isaiah. But they’re almost certainly thinking of Isaiah 34. It says “approach, o nations and listen, give heed, o people, at the earth,” etc… “For Yehovah is angry at all the nations, furious at their hosts.” Hosts is an invading army. “He has doomed them, consigned them to the slaughter. Their slain shall be left lying.” Okay, well, that’s the same thing as Ezekiel 38-39, where it talks about them spending seven months gathering up the bodies and burying them. So, we’re going to skip that passage.

But guys, that’s your homework; read Isaiah 34:1-17. 34:16 is one of the most interesting verses in the Tanakh, and I think I’ll do a separate teaching about it, but it mentions something called the Book of Yehovah. What is that? We’ll do a teaching on the Book of Yehovah, because I think it’s that interesting. There’s a book called Sefer Yehovah, The Book of Yehovah. Who knew that? Let’s, at the end, can we do a, like, a little, what do you call that, babe, a quiz? Where you ask him, “Who knew that there was a book called The Book of Yehovah in the book of Isaiah 34:17?”

I want to read here a passage from a book that’s not in the Tanakh. It’s in what’s called the Jewish pseudepigrapha. Pseudepigrapha are books that purport to be written by biblical authors, but we don’t, as Jews, believe they are. If you want to believe that I suppose you could. There are some famous books of pseudepigrapha that I know, in the Hebrew Roots movement, some people put them in their Bible. Like the Book of Jubilees is a big thing that’s very popular these days. Jubilees was probably written around 200 BCE. Jews don’t accept that in the Tanakh. It might have been in the Tanakh of the Essenes, who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls; it probably was. But they also had a doctrine that there were 74 sacred books, 24 known to all Israel and 70 only known to the initiated. I don’t consider any book not known to all Israel. Meaning, it was never published, is the way they present it. So, you had to become a member of the Essene movement to know these 70 books.

Zerubabbel is not one of those, but it’s a book that was written later, maybe in the 4th century or the 6th century; it’s debated. So, there’s a passage in the Book of Zerubabbel I’m going to read you… this is a translation you can find online. It was written in Hebrew. Oh, and the Book of Zerubabbel, here’s why we’re reading this; here’s why it’s interesting to me. So, there’s a lot of different prophecies. And how do they fit together? You could take Revelation, not take Revelation. From the Tanakh itself or even with Revelation, there’s a lot of different prophecies and it’s not obvious how they fit together. Right?

What is the relationship between Isaiah 34 and, you know, Daniel 12? So, I connected them. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they have nothing to do with each other, and we could say, you know, “Isaiah 34 is going to be in the year 2532 and Ezekiel 38-39 is going to be in the year 2600.” Right? Who knows that I’m… Maybe I’m wrong, right? And they’re not related to each other. Zerubbabel is the book in English, the Book of Zerubbabel, or the Scroll of Zerubbabel, and it claims to have been written by Zerubbabel, who’s mentioned in the Tanakh. It is not part of the Tanakh. But it’s what I like to call “the exception that proves the rule”. So, what it is, is, it’s a book written sometime in, probably, the Byzantine period. And there’s a Jew who’s trying to figure out how all the prophecies fit together. And he gives a sequence down to the month of when everything’s going to take place in the year 1058.

Apparently, he was wrong, because the year 1058 came and went. Excuse me, 1060… is it 1058? I’m really bad at math. He says it’s the 990th year after the destruction of the Temple. And in Jewish sources, the Temple was destroyed in the year 68, not 70. Which you could say is wrong, but that’s what he thought. Yeah, the year 1058. So, we know it’s not the word of God, because in the year 1058 the Messiah didn’t come.

But it’s interesting because it’s an example of a book where somebody says, “How do all these prophecies fit together?” And do you know how many books there are like this in Jewish history? I know of one. You have literally libraries full of books written by Christians, some today, some a thousand years ago, some much longer than that, where they try to take all the prophecies in the Old and New Testament and they say, “How do these fit together?” We don’t have that in Jewish sources, which is a bit surprising, right? Where are those books?

So, the Book of Zerubabbel is an example of what we don’t have in Jewish literature. That’s why I call it the exception that proves the rule. The rule is Jews didn’t do that. And why didn’t they do it? We’ll talk about that in a minute. Maybe they should have done it. I’m not saying that was right that they didn’t. But maybe they should have done that. So, here’s what it says in the Book of the Zerubabbel. Let me give you some background. In the book of Zerubbabel, there are two messiahs; the Messiah who’s the son of Joseph, and his name is Nehemiah… not me.

Lynell: [Laughter]

Nehemia: I wasn’t born in 1058. And he’s Nehemiah ben Chushiel, and my mother or father were not named Chushiel. My mother’s name… maybe I shouldn’t tell you, because that’s how you get into my password. My mother’s name is Dina and my father’s name was Reuven. And so, this is Nehemiah ben Chushiel, and then the Messiah… and that’s the Joseph Messiah, Messiah the son of Joseph. And then there’s the Messiah, son of David, whose name is Menachem ben Amiel. And Menachem is a name which means “the comforter”, but it’s a name he gets from the Talmud. Whoever wrote this book, right, gets this from the Talmud. Or maybe the Talmud got it from here, I don’t know, depending when it was written. We don’t know exactly when it was written.

So, there’s a scene that begins… “He said to me…” oh, this is the angel speaking to Zerubbabel, supposedly, right? Obviously it wasn’t, because 1058 came and went. “The angel said to Zerubbabel, ‘Menahem the son of Amiel, will suddenly come in the 14th day of the first month,’” i.e. the month of Nissan. “He will wait in the Valley of Arbel.” We know where that is; the Valley of Arbel is next to Tiberius, which reveals where this is probably written. This is almost certainly written in Tiberius or that area. The author is intimately familiar with the geography. He’s getting the Valley of Arbel from Zechariah 14, because in Zechariah 14, the Mount of Olives splits in two. If you look at the Mount of Arbel, the Mount of Arbel literally is split in two by a… I mean, geologists tell me it’s an ancient volcano. It’s right next to the Horns of Hattin, which is where I believe Yeshua taught the Sermon on the Mount, where major battles have happened in history.

“He will wait by the valley.” Who is this? Menachem, who is the Davidic messiah according to this. “He will wait by the Valley of Arbel at a tract which belonged to Yeshua, the Son of Jehozadak, the priest.” Right? That’s the high priest at the time of the Zerubbabel. “And all of the surviving sages of Israel, only a few will remain due to the attack and pillage of Gog.” Right? So, Gog is mentioned here by name, right? This is the type of thing I would expect to find in Jewish sources in different centuries, who are trying to interpret and say, “Well, how is this going to play out?” But nobody does this, almost nobody does this. But this book does it.

“The pillage of Gog and Armilos.” Who’s Armilos? We’ll find out in a minute. Armilos is roughly, in Christian terms, the Antichrist. “And the plunderers who despoiled them will come out to him. Menahem Ben-Amiel will say,” and that’s the Davidic Messiah, “…will say to the elders and the sages, ‘I am the Lord’s Messiah. The Lord has sent me to encourage you and deliver you from the powers of these adversaries.’ The elders will scrutinize him and will despise him.” Isn’t that interesting? The Davidic Messiah will be rejected by the sages, by the rabbis. That’s what this says. Which is… this is a Rabbinical Jew writing this! There’s no doubt this is a Rabbinical Jew who’s saying the rabbis will reject the Davidic Messiah, whose name is Menachem ben Amiel.

“For they will see that despicable man garbed in rags,” that’s certainly a reference to Isaiah 53. Anyone tells you Jews didn’t read Isaiah 53, this author is reading Isaiah 53 and saying, “Yes, the Davidic Messiah, who is the comforter, will be rejected by the rabbis.” “…and they will despise him, just as you previously did.” And you have to read the rest of the book to see the previous thing. Yeah. “But then his anger will burn within him, and he will don garments of vengeance,” that’s a quote from Isaiah 59:17, “as his clothing, and will put on a cloak of zealousness. And he will journey to the gates of Jerusalem. Hephzibah, the mother of the Messiah.” So, his father’s name is Amiel, but his mother’s name is Hephzibah, which is a reference to Hephzibah in the Book of Isaiah, Right? There… I think it’s Isaiah, right? This is a prophecy, right, that they’re tying in to the Messiah and saying, “Oh, that refers to his mother.”

“Hephzibah, the mother of the Messiah will come and give…” And this is like a ridiculous story. What are guys talking… where you get all these things? What he did is, he read the same books we’re reading and tried to tie them together. This is what we don’t have in Jewish history almost in any other instance. And maybe you could say this is why because, in 1058, whoever wrote this was humiliated. Yeah, but he was dead for, like, 800 years. What did he care? He sold the book before that. “Hephzibah, the mother of the Messiah, will come and give him the rod by which the signs were performed.” Right? There’s some staff. “All the elders of the children of Israel will come and see that Nehemiah ben Chushiel is alive and standing unassisted.” Oh, wait, my father’s name was Chushiel. No, just kidding. Okay. And we have… “And immediately they will believe in the Messiah.” What gets the sages to believe in the Messiah? That Nehemiah Chushiel was killed, and he’s resurrected. That’s interesting.

By the way, this is a Jew after the time of Jesus writing this, right? This is written sometime clearly in the Byzantine period or slightly later. Well, the Byzantine period for Jews in Byzantium extended until 1453. So, this is being written almost certainly in… sometime before 1058, apparently. And so, they think the rabbis will believe in the Messiah when he’s resurrected from the dead. That’s really interesting. And they’re almost certainly getting this from Isaiah 53!

“Thus did,” let’s see. “Thus did Metatron, the leader of the host of the Lord, swear to me.” Right? So, now we’re hearing the name of the… of this angel who’s speaking to Zerubbabel, supposedly is Metatron. “This matter will truly come to pass, for there will be cooperation between them in accordance with the prophecy of Isaiah,” Isaiah 11:13. “Ephraim will not envy Judah, nor Judah antagonize Ephraim.” In other words, why do we have two messiahs, according to the Book of Zerubbabel, this fanciful tale? Because we have to have a cooperation between… there’s no envy and hatred between Judah and Ephraim, so, there’s an Ephramite messiah and a Judaite messiah. It’s fascinating. Amazing. This is fascinating stuff. Completely fictional, but it’s fascinating stuff. Or, it’s fiction based on truth, right? Which is the Tanakh prophecies, and we don’t know how they fit together. Right? This could have been right until 1058. In 1059, we knew this was false. Although in 1059 we could have said the Temple was destroyed in the year 70! “So, keep buying my book, we got two more years.”

Lynell: [Laughter]

Nehemia: That could have been that… “On the 21st day of the first month,” we’re still in the Book of Zerubbabel, or the Scroll of Zerubbabel. On the 21sh day of the first month, 990 years after the destruction of the Temple…” Somebody say uh oh… “…the deliverance of the Lord will take place for Israel.” Hey, I guarantee you, in the year 350, this sounded amazing. Now we know what we have to look for, look forward to.

Lynell: [Laughter]

Nehemia: “Menachem ben Amiel, Nehemiah ben Chushiel, and Elijah the prophet will come and stand by the Mediterranean Sea and read the prophecy of the Lord. All the bodies of those Israelites who had thrown themselves into the sea while fleeing from their enemies…” That’s fascinating, by the way, because in the 4th century there was a failed messiah in Cyprus who was called Moses. And he said, “I’m like the first Moses; I will split the sea, and we’ll walk into the sea, and we’ll return to Israel,” because we don’t have boats. And they all drown.

Nehemia: “All of the bodies of the Israelites who had thrown themselves…” So, you have to wonder if this is… Look, this could be what inspired the people in the time of Moses the Cypriot, to say “Well, it was foretold in the book of Zerubbabel!” I guess you don’t want to put your faith in books that you’re not too confident are true. That could end badly.

Lynell: Hmm.

Nehemia: Okay. Or let’s say even the books we know are true. Be careful how you interpret them, because you might end up walking into the sea. “All of the bodies of the Israelites who had thrown themselves into the sea while fleeing from their enemies will emerge. A sea wave will rise up.” Somebody say tsunami.

Lynell: Tsunami.

Nehemia: “Spread them out, deposit them alive in the valley of Jehoshaphat near the Nahal Shitim, for their judgement will transpire upon the nations.” Which is very strange, because the Valley of Yehoshaphat is supposed to be the northern end of the Kidron Valley, and here it sounds like it’s probably maybe the eastern end of the Kidron Valley. Probably the guy who wrote this lived in Tiberius and wasn’t too familiar with the geography of Jerusalem. That’s what it sounds like.

But imagine that; there’s going to be a tidal wave that will rise up from the Mediterranean and reach, like, where? The… Jerusalem? That’s like 700m, 2,100 or so feet above sea level. It’s going to sound… That’s a pretty big tidal wave. Don’t buy property in Tel Aviv, it’ll be washed away. So, that’s if you believe in this book. I don’t believe in this book. My point of bringing this book is, we don’t have a lot of books like this. We don’t even have Jewish Bible commentators. We have some, right? But we don’t have a whole lot of Jewish Bible commentators who say, “Look, I read all these prophecies. Let me make some kind of coherent story out of them.” Because the way we read them now is, they’re not a coherent story. Right? In other words, we have to say, “Oh! Isaiah 34, that’s Ezekiel 38:17.” And we can stitch them together like I tried to do, maybe unsuccessfully. But we don’t have a lot of instances of Jews doing this.

And I will tell you why. And I think this book itself is the reason why. There are Jews who did this, and they ended up suffering because they believed, “Oh, this is the fulfillment of the messianic promise, because I read in the book written by my cousin,” you know, I don’t know, “Jim Cohen, and he wrote a book, and we all bought it. We all copied it,” right? Back then, they didn’t really buy books. “And we put our faith in it, and now we all were killed by the…” Every time there was a guy who wrote a book… By the way, I was in the office of that pastor I mentioned to you earlier, and he had this book that I haven’t seen in like almost 15 years. It’s called 50 Jewish Messiahs. It got me thinking about it. He had a copy, this Christian pastor in Dallas, the book called 50 Jewish Messiahs. And it’s a really interesting book because the author says, “There are a lot more than 50, but it sounded like the good title of a book.” Right? Like 73 Jewish Messiahs isn’t a great title.

And he talks about how there were… in many different periods throughout history there were Jews who said, “This person is the Messiah. Let’s believe in him.” And then when that happened, the Messiah then inevitably failed, and the Jews were persecuted. And the result was that Jews became gun shy about predicting the end. And Maimonides talks about this in the 12th century. There was a messiah in Yemen whose name we don’t know, and he appears in Yemen, and he proclaims himself… he actually doesn’t say he’s the Mashiach, he says he’s the forerunner of the Mashiach. He’s Elijah, right? He’s John the Baptist. He doesn’t say that, right? But he says, “The Messiah will come imminently. He’s already here in the mountains of Yemen,” which had a massive Jewish community. And many Muslims believed in him, and certainly many Jews. And he appears before the Sultan of Yemen. And the Sultan said, “Prove that you’re the Messiah.” He said, “If you cut off my head, I’ll come back to life.” And the Sultan said, “If you come back to life, we will all renounce the religion of Islam and believe that you are the Messiah.” And he cut off his head. Can anybody guess how this ended?

Lynell: [Laughter]

Nehemia: Come on, what do you think?

Lynell: And he didn’t come back to life!

Nehemia: He didn’t come back to life. Lo and behold, shockingly! And Maimonides writes about this a few years later to the Jews of Marseille, and he says, “They cut off the head of the ani,” which means a poor person, in the sense of poverty. But here it means “the poor guy”. And Maimonides was a doctor, like a physician by profession, right? Rabbi doesn’t pay back then, so his day job was he was the court physician of Saladin. And he says… he actually says in both the letter to the Yemenite Jews before the guy’s head was cut off, and to the Jews of Marseilles, “The guy was mentally ill.” You can kind of blame him, but part of this you can’t blame because he was mentally ill and… and he says, “I don’t blame him, because he’s a mentally ill person. He thinks he’s the Messiah, the poor guy. Why are you following him? You should know better.”

And you know why they followed him? Because there were rumors and stories and accounts that he had raised people from the dead. That’s why the Muslims believed him, why many Jews believed in him. And Maimonides says, “Even if he fulfilled several dozen prophecies, I can point you to a thousand more,” he’s probably exaggerating there when he says a thousand more, “…that he didn’t fulfill, and you should know better than to believe in him.” But look, the guy who wrote the Scroll of Zerubbabel says, “Well, when Nehemiah ben Chushiel rises from the dead, then even the skeptical rabbis will know he’s the Messiah.”

So, Maimonides is coming with a little bit of… hindsight is 20/20… and saying, “We’ve fallen for that in the past. We’re not going to fall for it now. And until we’re living in world peace, don’t believe in anybody as the Messiah.” That’s really what Maimonides is saying. We have an expression in Judaism. “Yeah, that’ll happen when the Messiah comes.” “The president of the United States will balance the budget.” “Yeah, when the Mashiach comes.” Right? That’s how it’s used in everyday speech in Jewish circles, right? And it’s kind of in the sense like, “Yeah, I’ll believe that when I see it.” Right?

Now, are we right to say we’re never going to believe in the Messiah until we live in the era of world peace? I don’t know. Right? It worked in the time of Maimonides to save a bunch of people from being… Now, by the way, the Jews were persecuted after that guy’s head was cut off in Yemen, right? That’s the inevitable result; the Jews are persecuted, lots of people are killed, heavy taxes are put on the Jewish community. Why? “Because you rebelled against the king!” “How did I rebel?” “You said you believe that man is the Messiah, which means king. I’m the king.” Right? Meaning, the Sultan of Yemen said, “I’m already the king.” Right? “If you’re saying you believe that guy is the king, you’re a rebel. I can execute you, or you can buy your life from being executed. We’ll do a little bit of both just to be, you know, on the safe side. Kill a bunch of people, and then whoever didn’t believe in him, we’ll tax them to death, you know. Tax them into oblivion.”

So, there is this fear in Judaism of saying, “Oh, Assad is the Antichrist! He is the Gog.” Right? We don’t have the term Antichrist, but “He is Gog, and he’s going to lead the Turks and the Persians and Syria…” Why don’t we do that? Some rabbis do do that, by the way, today. There are rabbis who have done that, and evidently, up until now they’ve always been wrong. But generally, it’s not done, and it’s frowned upon, because there have been so many instances where they said, “Oh, this is it!” And they were wrong, and Jews were persecuted. Right? That’s the familiar story.

Now, when it actually happens, I think that it’s not going to be far off from what’s described in the Book of Zerubbabel, in the sense that the rabbis will look at the Messiah and say, “Eh, we’re not falling for that again.” No, but this time it’s the real one! “Eh…” You know, it’s… look, so the most widely accepted messiah in Jewish history was Shabtai Tzvi, who had followers all the way… and this is unusual; usually these messianic figures were localized, right? You had a messiah… And by the way, in the entire book, 50 Jewish Messiahs, in all Jewish history there’s only been one female messiah, and she was in Baghdad, I want to say, in the 11th century. She was also executed, if memory serves me correctly. But it was only in Iraq that they believed in her. Like, there was nobody in Israel that said, “Oh yeah, that lady in Baghdad, you know, she’s the Messiah.” Nobody did that.

But Shabtai Tzvi was accepted all the way from Amsterdam to Yemen and from Morocco to the far reaches of Eastern Europe, which was almost the entire Jewish world. It didn’t reach China or India as far as I know, but most of the Jewish world. He wasn’t accepted by everybody, but a lot of people accepted him, and there’s a book I found that was published in 16… I forget what the year is. It’s the year he converted to Islam and proved himself not to be the Messiah. And it was about two months after Shabtai Tzvi converted to Islam, and it’s written “in the year that Messiah came”. Well, wait a minute; it’s two months after he converted to Islam. But the news took several months to reach Amsterdam, where this book was printed.

Lynell: That didn’t turn out very well.

Nehemia: Yeah, that did not age well, that book. That was a big embarrassment to the people who printed that book. It’s a shock to me that it survived, because there’s a bunch of stuff that was destroyed to cover up, like, “Oh, we never said that!” Right? “Delete all those tweets where we said that Shabtai Tzvi was the Messiah!” A lot of people did that. So, in summation, short story long…

Lynell: Are we doing Numbers?

Nehemia: Oh! The most important passage!

Lynell: Yes, please! I’m waiting.

Nehemia: All right. But I only bring out all of that as introduction to the thing I really want to talk about, the Book of Numbers, chapter 24, which is… I want to be really careful to say we are now in the Messianic Era, because Iran actually still has a nuclear weapon that wasn’t destroyed, and they’re going to launch it at Israel. Let’s be really careful, guys. When the Messiah comes… many Jews will, when he really… let’s say, in Christian terms, when he comes back, and in Jewish terms when he comes, the Jews will be skeptical because we’ve been burned so many times. Look, and maybe that’s a plot from Satan to get us not to believe. Could be. I don’t rule that out as a possibility.

All right, but speaking of Satan, in Numbers 22 we have the prophet Bil’am the son Be’or, or Balaam in English. He’s going to prophesy, he’s hoping, against Israel, to curse Israel. He ends up blessing Israel. And it says, “The angel of Yehovah went out as a Satan against him.” It literally says that. Let’s read that verse. We’ll skip some of the story because I’ve probably exceeded the time I wanted to spend.

Lynell: It’s a really good story to read, though, guys.

Nehemia: Numbers 20… oh, yeah. It’s wonderful. Numbers 22:32. Nelson, can you read that? I think you’re muted, Nelson.

Nelson: Okay, I’ve got it up.

Nehemia: All right. Just read that.

Nelson: “The angel of Yehovah said to him…”

Nehemia: And guys, before he reads that… Lynell and I were reading this together with our son Heath yesterday, and I couldn’t stop laughing.

Lynell: I took a video of it, but I did not give it to anybody, because it’s so funny. When they start, when we’re reading the Bible…

Nehemia: Remember when we read the word “aton” in Hebrew, which is…

Lynell: They’re just such children.

Nehemia: A female donkey? I just couldn’t help myself.

Lynell: They’re just children, they can’t help it! They’re little boys when they read this. Go ahead, Nelson. That’s why you’re reading it and I’m not reading it. He was…

Nehemia: Let’s read the JPS as it is, Nelson.

Nelson: Okay. “The angel of Yehovah said to him, ‘Why have you beaten your ass these three times? It is I who came out as an adversary for the errand is obnoxious to me.’”

Nehemia: All right, so he beat his donkey, his female donkey, three times. [Laughter] And he says, “It is I who came out as a satan,” it says. In Hebrew, it says literally… Can I show my screen here? It literally has the word satan. See? There’s JPS, adversary. King James has… What does King James have? “Behold, I went out to withstand thee,” and the word satan is withstand! And literally it’s Sin-Tet-Nun, Satan. All right.

But then there’s this word, “ki yarat ha’derekh le’negdi,” for he yarat, he did something of the way before me. And derekh is here, the object, because derekh is way, and that’s feminine. For he, satan, the angel of Yehovah, yarat. What does yarat mean? We don’t know what the word means, right? It says here perverse, obnoxious. And it says in the note here, “Precise meaning of Hebrew uncertain.” I would say it’s more than that. We have no… it’s what we call a hapax legomenon. Hapax legomenon is a unique word, it only appears once in the Tanakh. The rabbis don’t know what it means, which is really interesting. They’re supposed to have the Oral Law from Mount Sinai, which tells us the meaning of the Bible, of the Torah at least. They don’t know what it means. So, they have a bunch of Midrashic explanations, guesses.

In Modern Hebrew, the word yarat means “he intercepted”. “He intercepted the way before me.” And so, when you read the headlines in the newspapers and on the online news reports in Israel, this word yarat appears repeatedly. It says, “The interceptors went, and they stopped the Iranian ballistic missiles. The interceptors…” And that’s the word, meyartim, from this word yarat. Yarat means to intercept. Right? So, the angel of the Yehovah went out and intercepted.

Now, is that what it means in Numbers? Could mean anything. The Modern Hebrew word came from someone who interpreted it that way. Right? He says, “Oh, okay, the angel intercepted Balam, we can intercept a missile.” Right? So, they interpreted it that way. Is that the correct interpretation? Who knows? It can mean anything. Right?

Lynell: How crazy is it? How much crazy stuff must happen to this prophet of God? He was a real prophet. What kind of craziness did he have to have happen? That his donkey talks to him and he’s just like… answering him.

Nehemia: Yeah. Bil’am the son of Be’or, as far as I know, is the only prophet from the Tanakh mentioned in sources of his day outside the Tanakh. In other words, we don’t have a non-Tanakh source that mentions Moses. I’m not aware that we have a non-Tanakh source of that day, of the time of Isaiah, who mentions Isaiah. I don’t think we have a mention of Zecharia… like nobody doubts that Zecharia existed, right? Zachariah. But as far as I know, he’s not mentioned in Babylonian sources. Baruch, the son of Neria, who wasn’t a prophet, is mentioned. He was a guy who wrote a prophetic book. We don’t have any source that mentions a biblical prophet except for Balaam, who’s mentioned in an inscription from the biblical town of Sukkot in Transjordan. In Arabic, it’s called Der Allah.

Okay. So, Bil’am is this fascinating Gentile prophet. He has four prophecies. We’re going to jump to Numbers 24… Actually, the reason we have to think about Bil’am here, Balaam, the son of Be’or, is the name of the operation that Israel is carrying out is Numbers 23:24. And it says there, “Behold, a people like a lion will rise,” or like, “rises like a lion,” and like… another word for lion, he rises up. “He will not lay down until he eats the prey and he drinks the blood of the slain.” And Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet, or whoever, chose this, in English, “Rising Lion”. In Hebrew, its Am Ke’lavi, “people like a lion”, as the name of this operation. Netanyahu went to the Western Wall and wrote this verse down on a piece of paper and put it as a prayer into the Western Wall. And there’s a fascinating interview, we’ll link to it on the website, where Netanyahu was interviewed. And he said, “Look, when you do something like this, nobody knows how war is going to turn out. You have no idea if you’re going to go into Gaza and 10,000 soldiers will be killed, or if you, you know, if you’ll have the next Six Day War. You don’t know.” And he says, “There’s a certain amount of heavenly intervention that you need. You need help from heaven.” And so, he prays. He, who doesn’t seem, as far as I can tell, to be a very devout Jew, he prays before he carries out an operation like this. Because you know how war starts. You never know how it’s going to end. That’s what they say about war. And you have to know that; that’s part of war.

So… this is the… let’s see. So, Numbers 23:24 is one of the prophecies of Balaam, and then we have the… I thought I wrote down which one that was. Guys, you can go count. We have here the fourth vision of Balaam, it begins in Numbers 24 verse 14 and goes through 24. Let’s read that.

Lynell: There we are.

Nehemia: And here it mentions what most Jews understand to be the Messiah.

Lynell: “And now, as I go back to…”

Nehemia: “A star will rise out of Jacob,” and Jews understand that to be the end times messianic event.

Lynell: Do you want it read, babe?

Nehemia: Yes, please.

Lynell: Okay. “And now, as I go back to my people, let me inform you of what this people will do to your people at the end of days.”

Nehemia: And end of days. Like, you don’t have to speculate here. He tells you; this is the end of days.

Lynell: “He took up his theme, and said…”

Nehemia: And by the way, the reason this is important… why did I want to bring this? Because we read in Ezekiel 38:17 that Gog and his army would come against Israel, and the prophets of Israel spoke about this. And what we didn’t read is in Ezekiel 34:16, there’s the Book of Yehovah. And he says, “You can read about this in the Book of Yehovah.” Where? We’re reading it.

Lynell: “Word of Balaam, son of Be’or.’”

Nehemia: And I’ve got to say, it’s interesting. It didn’t say “in the Torah of Moses”, because this is Balaam’s prophecy being quoted by Moses.

Lynell: Mmm.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Lynell: “Word of man whose eyes…” Okay. The thing that I think is interesting too, Nehemia… don’t forget to read 24. In verse 2 it says, “The Spirit of God came upon him.”

Nehemia: Right, this is Yehovah speaking.

Lynell: Right.

Nehemia: That’s the point. Meaning, Balam has said from the very beginning, “I can’t speak anything Yehovah doesn’t allow me to speak.” And he’s been paid to curse Israel, and he just can’t get the words out. Instead, these blessings are coming out and he can’t control it. All right.

Lynell: “Word of him who hears God’s speech, who obtains knowledge from the Most High and beholds vision from the Almighty, prostrate but with eyes unveiled. What I see for them is not yet. What I behold will not be soon. A star rises from Jacob.”

Nehemia: And that’s almost certainly the end times manifestation of the Messiah. That’s certainly how it was understood throughout history by Jews. There was a Jewish king who rebelled against the Romans and was proclaimed king. His name was Ben Kozva. His father or mother was named Koziva, Kozva, Kosba. And they changed one letter and they called him Ben Kokhba or Bar Kokhba, “son of the star”, “Star Man”, based on this verse. Turns out he wasn’t actually the Messiah, because he was killed by the Romans and stayed dead. So, let’s keep going.

Lynell: “A scepter comes forth from Israel. It smashes the brow of Moab.”

Nehemia: And scepter is the symbol of a king, right? That goes without saying.

Lynell: “The foundation of all the children of Seth. Adam becomes a possession. Yea, Seir a possession of its enemies. But Israel is triumphant. A victor issues from Jacob to wipe out what is left of Ir.”

Nehemia: And Ir is the capital of Moab, Moav. And we have to ask the question, of course: Is this literal? Is it literally Moab? Which is now a province of the kingdom of Jordan. Or is this something that, in the end times… or it’s something else? And I will say that about all these other passages. There’s a prophecy here about Amalek and the Canaanites. And then we hear about, in verse 24, there’s ships coming from the quarter of Kittim, which at the time might have been something like Cyprus, but maybe it’s something prophetic in the future. And a bunch of other stuff.

So, there’s an end times prophecy in the Tanakh that most people aren’t aware of, and it ends with “there’s a great war by the Messiah against the enemies of Israel.” That’s how it ends. And that’s part of what the Scroll of Zerubbabel is trying to… “Okay. How do I fit all these together? Well, we got, you know…” And I don’t know exactly how he did it, but certainly he was taking Gog, explicitly from Ezekiel 38 and 39, and he was probably tying it to this and a bunch of other stuff, and then he said, “Well, there’s two messiahs, because there won’t be envy of Judah against Ephraim.” And then he had other traditions about the Messiah of the house of Joseph. Right? So, he’s pulling together a bunch of different things.

How will this really play out? Obviously not the way that the Scroll of Zerubbabel described it, but I don’t actually know. And I think we have to be really careful by stringing together these prophecies. I tried to do some of it here, but how will it play out? I don’t know. I know it will come. I know for sure it’ll be after there’s a long period of peace. How is it in 1058? They read the Scroll of Zerubbabel and said, “Oh, that’s now.” There hadn’t been any peace. They were conquered by foreigners. So, I don’t know that by 1058 anybody still believed in the Scroll of Zerubbabel. It’s interesting, they found a piece of it in the Cairo Genizah. And what was it doing in the Genizah? Well, somebody had probably read it and said, “That’s garbage, let’s put it in the Genizah.”

Lynell: [Laughter]

Nehemia: I think that’s probably what happened. I want to end with a prayer. Yehovah, avinu she’bashamayim, Yehovah, our Father in heaven, I am so thankful to You that You have moved, through Your spirit, the leaders, to protect those who love You and call on Your name and those who seek You and don’t know Your name. But millions of people around the world turn to You whether they understand who You are or not, and those people were in peril. They’re still in peril, but they were in intense peril from these Iranian nuclear weapons, and You put it in the heart of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu and many others to act. And Father, I believe You put it in the heart of others not to act, so the timing would be right, because everything is in Your timing. And I thank You for this miracle that happened. And Yehovah, I ask You to continue to protect Your people, and may we have that long period of peace. And I ask for mercy when that peace ends with this end times war where many are killed, and it’s like a day that Israel has never seen. But, Father, we’re not even near that, as far as I can tell, because we haven’t lived in the period of peace. So, I ask for peace. Amen.

Lynell: Amen. I’m going to stop our streaming service. Give me just a minute. And then we’re going to fellowship together, and we can… Well, I’ll unmute everyone. Let’s stop the streaming… more… live stream. Stop our live stream. Guys, thanks for joining us. I hope you’ll visit over on Nehemia’s Wall, and I hope that you’ll support Nehemia and all that he’s doing in his studies, and taking the name of Yehovah around the world. Bless everybody watching. We’re going to go to our Scholar Club meeting.

Nehemia: And look, Yehovah doesn’t need me, but the way He does it, or another way that He does it, is there’s massive wars where He defeats the enemies. But a lot of people die in those wars. So, hopefully as many people as possible will know about His name. And of course, there’s the prophecy where it says all those who call upon the name of Yehovah will be saved. And the description there is one of these end times wars. That’s the context.

Lynell: Mmm.

Nehemia: So, how important is it? That underscores one of the things I should have said in the recording, but I didn’t. Think how important that is. That… I should have ended with that prophecy, that those who call upon the name of Yehovah will be saved. Boy, we need to know that name, because there’s going to be a big war, which is the worst war in the history of Israel, the worst suffering.

Lynell: We haven’t stopped recording.

Nehemia: Well, there, I said it.

Lynell: [Laughter]