Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not unto your own understanding (Proverbs 3:5).

Easter is a celebration of victory. Commemorating the day on which Jesus rose from the dead, it is a celebration of the fulfillment of the oldest prophecy in Scripture.

“And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her Seed; It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel” (Genesis 3:15).

It was in Jesus’ savage death on the Cross, up on Calvary’s hill, and in his subsequent resurrection from the dead that the Son of God decisively crushed the head of the Serpent, and in so doing defeated death for all time on our behalf.

Jesus Christ triumphed.

“…And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross” (Colossians 2:15).

Such was the victory of the cross that Jesus immediately descended into the very heart of Tartarus, to the very deepest, darkest places of Shoel, to preach victory to the rebellious spirits of long ago, imprisoned there because of their disobedience.

“After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits—to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built” (1 Peter 3:19-20).

This was a proclamation of victory, not a proclamation of repentance to those spirits of old who had disobeyed. This was a display to those disobedient spirits, long since confined to the Pit, of the final and ultimate victory of the Son of God, of the defeat of their nefarious aspirations to thwart God’s plans for His creation, and of the certainty of a near future restoration of all things.

All our hopes for the future are bound up in Jesus’ mighty victory at Easter. It represents our hopes for a life eternal with God, hope in our own personal restoration, and hope in a future Kingdom of believers. It is our hope in a future kingdom of perfect peace, justice and righteousness, where we will all be made whole again.

In an age when Christians are increasingly mocked, ridiculed and abused, the resurrection of Jesus Christ represents the certainty of our hope in the man who is God, Jesus Christ.

In an age when everything about the Christian faith seems to be increasingly ridiculed, and when the powers of this world are clearly trying with every fiber of their being to undermine the basis of our trust in Scripture, Easter is a time to remind ourselves of the absolute veracity of the word of God, and of just how much we can trust in Him.

It is a time to remember that we can trust the promises made to us in Scripture, and that we can trust its word for our lives and for the future. There is a very special blessing for us in Scripture regarding Easter, if only we could understand it.

Around 500 years before the birth of Christ, Daniel received the following prophecy:

 “Seventy ‘sevens’ are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the Most Holy Place.

“Know and understand this: From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing” (Daniel 9:24-26).

This prophecy is essentially telling us that Messiah, Jesus, will be “cut off,” or killed, sixty-nine ‘sevens’ after the order has been given to restore and rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.

“From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’”

The “sevens” refer to weeks of years. Just as there are seven days in a week, a week of years is seven years. Therefore, sixty-nine ‘sevens’ is sixty-nine multiplied by seven, equaling 483 years.

The prophecy is telling us that Messiah would come to Israel exactly 483 years after the order to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem had been issued.

However, the Jewish people were given a calendar that had 360 days per year in it, not 365.25 days per year, as our own has.

This is important to remember as it demonstrates the absolute specificity of this prophecy. It is telling us that God is so accurate in his predictive prophecies that we can hold him to account to the very day.

If the Jewish people work with a 360-day calendar, this means that they could work out, from the issuing of the decree to rebuild Jerusalem and its walls, the exact day on which their Messiah and King would come to them in the future!

Ancient Israel should have known the exact day Jesus would come to them as their Messiah and King!

360 (days in a year) x 483 years (69 ‘sevens’) = 173,880 days after the proclamation had gone forth!

Therefore, from the order to rebuild Jerusalem and its walls, there would be 173,880 days until the Messiah would come and be presented to the Jewish people – 173,880 days exactly, not a day more, not a day less. Prophecy does not get more specific than this.

Furthermore, because the issuing of this decree is a historically attested fact, recorded in antiquity, there can be no debate. The decree went forth on March 14^th, 445 BC by Artexerxes I. This means that from March 14^th, 445 BC, it was possible for the Jews to count forward and anticipate the coming of their own Messiah to the exact day!

What is shocking to realize is that Jesus himself held the Jewish people accountable for not recognizing his coming on this exact, specific day.

On every previous occasion during his ministry, when the people wanted to take Jesus and make him king, he always refused, usually slipping away.

“Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself” (John 6:15).

Jesus withdrew because he knew that it was not yet his time; he knew that it wasn’t the correct day. It wasn’t 173,880 days from the issuing of the decree!

But which day exactly was this 173,880^th day?

Count 173,880 days forward from 14^th March, 445 BC and we come to April 6^th, 32 AD. Jews know that day as the 10^th of Nissan. This was five days before Passover and, importantly, the 10^th of Nissan was the day in ancient Israel when the pure and blemishless Passover sacrifice was selected for the forthcoming Passover sacrifice.

It was on this exact day, at this exact time, that Israel’s true blemishless lamb, “…the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world” (Revelation 13:8) had come to them, presenting himself to the nation for the only time as their King. They failed to recognize him.

We know this day as Palm Sunday, when Jesus came to Jerusalem humbly, riding on a donkey.

“Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9).

This was the 173,880^th day from the issuing of the decree to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, Palm Sunday.

In the ages to come, the Jewish nation will regard this one day, and their failure in it to recognize their King’s coming to them, as a day of deep regret. This year Palm Sunday falls on the 25^th of March.

Clearly, we can trust the word of God, every part of it. We can trust what it tells us about Jesus Christ. We can trust that our personal salvation is found in Him alone. We can trust what it tells us about our future. It has never been wrong, not once.

It was correct when it foretold the birth of Israel, in a single day.

“Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Shall the earth be made to give birth in one day? Or shall a nation be born at once? For as soon as Zion was in labor, She gave birth to her children. Shall I bring to the time of birth, and not cause delivery?’ says the Lord” (Isaiah 66:8-9).

This happened on May 14^th, 1948 with the rebirth of Israel.

It was correct when Amos 9:14-15 prophesied that Jacobs’s descendants would regain control of Israel, never to be uprooted again. This, again, was fulfilled in 1948.

It was correct when Ezekiel 37: 10-14 prophesized that the second incarnation of Israel would be more impressive than the first, and in Jeremiah 16:14-15 that Israel’s army would be disproportionately powerful. Leviticus 26: 3, 7-8 also said this.

We can trust the word of God.

Scripture was accurate when it spoke of how God would one day restore the fortunes of Israel after gathering them from world-wide diaspora, scattered amongst the nations of all the world.

“…then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where he scattered you. Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back. He will bring you to the land that belonged to your fathers, and you will take possession of it. He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers” (Deuteronomy 30: 3-5).

We can trust when it tells us that one day soon a vast horde will come to attack Israel with the intention of annihilating her (Ezekiel 38–39). The beginnings of this disastrous and calamitous war are playing out right now in Syria and the Middle East. This horde is gathering. It will end in abject failure because mighty is the God who will judge them, and they will be utterly destroyed.

“I will execute judgment on him with plague and bloodshed; I will pour down torrents of rain, hailstones and burning sulfur on him and on his troops and on the many nations with him… On the mountains of Israel, you will fall, you and all your troops and the nations with you. I will give you as food to all kinds of carrion birds and to the wild animals. You will fall in the open field, for I have spoken, declares the Sovereign Lord” (Ezekiel 38:22; 39:4-5).

We can also trust Scripture when it predicts that one day soon all Damascus will be destroyed in but a single night, “…Damascus will no longer be a city but will become a heap of ruins” (Isaiah 17:1).

We stand on the cusp of this prophetic fulfillment right now.

We can trust when God tells us that all the nations of the world, at some point in the approaching future, will gather against Israel, and that Israel will be totally isolated, abandoned by all, including America (Zechariah 12:3).

We can trust when God tells us that in the last days Jerusalem will become a “burdensome stone” and a “cup of trembling” for all people (Zechariah 12:2-3). That day is now.

We can also trust when Scripture tells us that “all that burden themselves with it will be cut to pieces” (Zechariah 12:3).

Sadly, we can also trust when Scripture reveals that, as we increasingly approach the end, there will be a “…falling away…” (2 Thessalonians 2:1-3) and that the remnant, the true church, will increasingly come to experience isolation and persecution (John 15:20).

We can trust that the character of society in these end times will continue to degenerate to be like it was “…in the days of Noah…” (Matthew 24: 37) and that the “…love of most will grow cold…” (Matthew 24:12).

Yet we can also trust that, in these times, “Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever” (Daniel 12:3).

We can also trust that one day soon “…the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever” (2 Thessalonians 4:16-17).

We can trust and hold onto our Blessed Hope that one day very soon we will all see, “…a door standing open in heaven. “The first voice I heard was like the loud sound of a horn. It said, ‘Come up here’” (Revelation 4:1).

We can trust that one day soon “…heaven (will be) standing open and there… was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True, with justice he judges and wages war” (Revelation 19:11).

We can trust Enoch, seventh from Adam, when he prophesied in Jude that “…the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones, to judge everyone, and to convict all of them of all the ungodly acts they have committed in their ungodliness, and of all the defiant words ungodly sinners have spoken against him” (Jude 1:14).

We can trust that the Lord Jesus will overcome and defeat the antichrist, that usurper “…with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming (2 Thessalonians 2:8).

We can trust that no matter how much we are ridiculed or mocked, how much we are scorned or become hated, in this life or the next, at the name of Jesus one day soon “…every knee will bow” (Philippians 2:10).

We can trust God and we can trust His word to us.

We can trust that “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way” (Isaiah 53:6) despite what we are being told from the more “progressive” pulpits these last days.

We can trust that “There is no one righteous, not even one” (Romans 3:10), because “…all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). All of us “…have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags…our sins sweep us away” (Isaiah 66:6).

Yet we have hope because we trust in God, and we trust in His Son.

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (John3:16).

God Himself, through the Holy Spirit, declares that “…whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them” (John 3:36).

Jesus declares to you today, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). We can trust this word.

“For he says, ‘In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you. I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation’” (2 Corinthians 6:2).

This Easter, let go of all your doubts and worries, and simply trust in your God. As Jesus said to Peter 2,000 years ago, so He says to us today, “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?” (Matthew 14:31).

Be like the Patriarch Abraham. “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6).

“Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever” (Psalm 125:1).

Have a Happy Easter!

wardmatt1977@gmail.com

 

The Arab Spring

It was a mere fruit seller who was destined to change the world forever, one man, in 2010, who reached breaking point and decided that enough was enough. Despairing at his lack of economic prospects, and disgusted by his humiliation at the hands of a female police officer — she had slapped him in the face in public — he took the dramatic step of setting himself alight. Engulfed in flames, he writhed in agony in front of horrified market holders before finally succumbing to unconsciousness.

Tarek el-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi would later die of his terrible injuries in hospital with no knowledge of the profound impact his death would have on the Middle East and the world. This one act of desperate rebellion was to be the trigger for mass protests within Tunisia, and there began what is now widely referred to as the “Arab Spring.”

The Arab Spring has been a genuine watershed moment. It has been a catalyst for the most fundamental and unimaginable change. In the seven years since the Arab Spring began, there has been a seismic shift in the relationship between traditional Middle Eastern ruling Arab elites and the people they govern. The natural cultural affinity Arab’s feel for each other meant that the revolution that began on the streets of Tunisia quickly spread like wildfire throughout the rest of the Middle East. It is a revolution that has turned the region upside down.

The consequences of the Arab Spring are immense. The first is the end to the traditional perception of Arab exceptionalism. Ruling Arab elites, who for generations have oppressed their domestic populations, have now come to realize that they are no different from any Western nation when it comes to facing truly mass protest movements. They are just as vulnerable, no matter how big the walls they surround themselves with are, or how vicious their “security apparatus” is.

The traditional belief in the Arab world that “societies are weak, but the state is strong,” has been proved dead wrong. It was to become the ultimate paradox that the tactics of intimidation Arab State’s always previously employed became, to the masses, the final demonstration of the State’s ultimate weakness. The violence merely spurred the masses on.

Mass protest groups, initiated by middle classes using social media to push them on towards real political activism, sparked huge and widespread protests in streets and city centers of many Middle Eastern states. Like dominos quickly falling, these protests brought established regimes rapidly to their knees.

It was the sheer synergy of the masses that in the end brought down even the most entrenched Middle Eastern dictators. There was a feeling of Al shaab yuird, or “the people want,” that spread like wildfire across the region. It has left chaos, death and destruction in its wake.

The Arab Spring caused the downfall of some of the region’s most firmly established and brutal strongmen. Men like Colonel Muammar Gadhafi, the despotic ruler of Libya; Hosni Mubarak, long-time President of Egypt; and Ben Ali of Tunisia. All have lost power and come to ignominious ends. This is especially so of Libya’s Gadhafi, who was literally butchered with sharp knives and then executed by his own people in the streets near to where he was captured— all before he could even be taken into any form of official custody and within minutes of his capture.

The removal of these strongmen, and the subsequent dismantling of the apparatus they used to maintain personal control, led in turn to vast power vacuums across the Middle East, culminating in widespread lawlessness. That lawlessness today stretches from Libya, through Syria and deep into Iraq. Even in Egypt, one of the oldest functioning nation states in the world, the state system completely collapsed with the removal of Hosni Mubarak; for a period, total chaos ruled even there.

The West has only now learned the very bitter lesson that the removal of traditional authoritarian regimes in the Arab world does not necessarily lead to the immediate establishment of democracy thereafter, no matter how much money, effort or lives are poured into these countries. Instead, the removal of these “strongmen” led, in every case and with no exception, to the complete and systemic collapse of once functioning nation states. Popular resistance can force dictators from power, but it does not seem to be enough to bring the power to the people.

This swift collapse led in turn to the rapid and frenzied de-Christianization of vast areas of the Middle East. It is no exaggeration to say that Christianity in the Middle East has suffered more in the seven years since the Arab Spring began than it has in the last one thousand years of Middle Eastern history. This is because the Arab Spring itself has not really been a “spring,” so much as it has been an Islamic awakening; and Islam has shown over the last seven years that, in the heartland of all major religions, it will accept no rivals. Christianity has borne the brunt of this serious and sustained attempt at religious and ethnic genocide.

Once traditional authoritarian rulerships were removed, the Christian communities became vulnerable overnight. They were quickly subject to a severe deterioration in their positions within their Islamic-ally dominated societies and they were massacred while the West looked on, largely indifferently.

The power vacuum left when these despots were removed from office was then filled exclusively by Islamic Fundamentalists and criminal gangs. Anti-Christian sentiment increased; and very quickly both the traditional Christian communities and those new Christian converts, who originated from Muslim backgrounds, found themselves dead center of a second wave of sustained and vicious persecution, this time originating not from unorganized mobs, but from the corridors of new power itself.

There followed an empowerment of radical Islamist groups, especially by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria and Salafism in general across the region. This has devastated Christian communities throughout the whole Middle East.

This was only exacerbated by the trumped-up protests, fueled very publicly by President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2012, after they knowingly and falsely claimed that an anti-Islam film had been the main cause of the rebellion in Benghazi, resulting in the deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and a number of other US personnel.

Such an obviously false narrative, given by the President of the United States and his Secretary of State, effectively gave carte blanche to Islamic communities around the Middle East, who responded by mercilessly persecuting and wiping out the Christian communities in their midst. Some of these Christian communities had existed for nearly a thousand years. They were annihilated in a matter of weeks.

Today, as 2018 dawns, the situation for Christians in the Middle East remains extremely tenuous. While it is true to say that in some countries the Islamists have either been removed by the military or lost their positions of power through elections, the influence they wield in the corridors of power, in the military, and amongst the masses remains highly significant. In Egypt, attacks on Christians are still frequent and often deadly. There is no guarantee anymore for the rights of any Christian individual in Egypt in 2018.

Libya, at this point, seems to have slipped into outright lawlessness and has witnessed the whole scale, unrestrained persecution of Christians wherever they have been found. Libya in 2018 is a ruined land, a safe haven for all kinds of terrorism and terrorist groups. It has degenerated into the real “Wild West” of the Middle East, a no-man’s land of insurgency, criminality and anarchy.

It seems to me that the hand of God is recognizable as being all over the events of the Arab Spring. Sometimes events occur in a single day that change the world forever, like 9/11. At other times, as with the Arab Spring, events unfold more gradually over an extended period of time, making their long-term impacts less clear; yet its global and prophetic importance is no less significant for it.

The Arab Spring has changed the geopolitical and prophetic landscape irrevocably. The potential for the fulfillment of significant portions of Bible prophecy has lurched forward because of it.

The Arab Spring has seen the emergence of the Kurds, those ancient Medes, and their formidable Peshmerga as a force to be genuinely reckoned with in the Middle Eastern theatre. It is my belief that one day soon the Kurds will come to play a pivotal part in another end-times Bible prophecy involving the destruction of Babylon itself, as is described in numerous places in Bible prophecy, (Isaiah 13:17; Jeremiah 51:11; 51:28-29).

The Arab Spring has made the fulfillment of the infamous Burden of Damascus prophecy (Isaiah 17:1) an immediate and imminent potential reality. Since the Arab Spring, and the Syrian Civil War it has triggered, Damascus has been flooded not only with weaponry, but with the most entrenched and hardened Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle East.

Located today right underneath Damascus is what is considered by many Western intelligence agencies, including Israel’s, to be the single largest chemical and biological weapons storage facilities on the face of this earth. They sit underneath schools, hospitals and apartment blocks. Bible prophecy seems to indicate that one day soon, some of this arsenal will be used against Israel; and when it does, the Jewish State’s response will be as clinical as it will be devastating.

“Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap… And behold at eveningtide trouble; and before the morning he is not” (Isaiah 17).

The Arab Spring has brought a civilization that once used to lead the world to utter ruin. It is a civilization that is now being superceded by a coalition of nations that was predicted over 2,500 years ago by the prophet Ezekiel regarding Gomer, Beth Togarmah, Magog, Persia, Put and Cush. Today, 2,500 years later, these strange-sounding nations are known by other names: Turkey, Russia, Iran, Libya and Ethiopia.

The Arab Spring, and the upheaval it has caused, has crushed nation states and torn down long- established borders in the Middle East. This has allowed Russia, Iran, Turkey and their proxies to flood into Syria using the civil war as cover. In effect they have now succeeded in transforming Syria into one huge, forward-operating base, bringing a plethora of sophisticated weaponry, aircraft and men with them, all of whom will one day soon be used against little Israel.

Syria is now firmly in Russian-Iranian-Turkish hands, and they won’t be giving it back any time soon. Iran, for their part, continues to actively demonstrate their own intentions by setting up camp mere miles away from their real target, Israel.

It would seem to me that “hooks” have already pierced the jaws of Russia and her allies, drawing them inexorably, more and more deeply into Syria and towards the borders of the “beautiful land.” The revolution that began in 2010 with Tarek el-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi setting himself alight in a market place in Tunisia will soon end on the mountains of Israel in almost complete annihilation.

One day very soon Gog and all his hordes will sweep down against Israel to “take a spoil.” When they do, they will meet their doom, because mighty is the God who will judge them.

“Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep” (Psalm 121:4).

“Therefore, thou son of man, prophesy against Gog, and say, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal: And I will turn thee back, and leave but the sixth part of thee, and will cause thee to come up from the north parts, and will bring thee upon the mountains of Israel:

“And I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause thine arrows to fall out of thy right hand. Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel, thou, and all thy bands, and the people that is with thee: I will give thee unto the ravenous birds of every sort, and to the beasts of the field to be devoured.

“Thou shalt fall upon the open field: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God. And I will send a fire on Magog, and among them that dwell carelessly in the isles: and they shall know that I am the Lord. So will I make my holy name known in the midst of my people Israel; and I will not let them pollute my holy name any more: and the heathen shall know that I am the Lord, the Holy One in Israel” (Ezekiel 39: 1-7).

wardmatt1977@gmail.com