I know many are commenting on the situation in the Middle East, but I feel compelled to add a few comments here. Jesus said this to Peter at the arrest in Gethsemane – Matthew 26:52 “Then Jesus said to him, ‘Put your sword back into its place, for all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword.” That was a lesson for impulsive Peter, but it is one of the principles of life.

Over recent times, I was curious to learn more about the famous outlaws of the American Wild West, names like Jesse James, the Younger Brothers, and Billy the Kid. These lived by the gun and died either by the gun or by hanging. What Jesus said to Peter has played out over and over in history.

[1].  HAMAN WAS HIS NAME

There was an evil man in Persia a long time ago who absolutely hated the Jews (let us say for simplicity, “The Jewish nation”). He despised one Jew in particular, whose name was Mordecai, the uncle of Queen Esther. This hateful man was called Haman. The world has seen thousands of Hamans since that time.

Mordecai refused to inflate the ego of the hateful and godless man – Esther 3:1-2 “After these events King Ahasuerus promoted Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, and advanced him and established his authority over all the princes who were with him. All the king’s servants who were at the king’s gate bowed down and paid homage to Haman; for so the king had commanded concerning him. BUT MORDECAI NEITHER BOWED DOWN NOR PAID HOMAGE.”

For that reason, Haman set out to destroy Mordecai and built a set of gallows on which to hang righteous Mordecai, but what satanic men do not realize is that if you oppose Israel or the Jews, then the following verse comes into operation – Genesis 12:3 “I will bless those who bless you, and THE ONE WHO CURSES YOU I WILL CURSE. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Well, in time, the God who never slumbers nor sleeps, at the last moment saved His people by the deliverance of His hand. As a result, this was the outcome – Esther 7:9-10 “Then Harbonah, one of the eunuchs who were before the king said, ‘Behold indeed, the gallows standing at Haman’s house fifty cubits high, which Haman made for Mordecai who spoke good on behalf of the king!’ and the king said, “Hang him on it.” So they hanged Haman on the gallows which he had prepared for Mordecai, and the king’s anger subsided.

The irony of this is that he who wanted to eliminate the Jews was eliminated by the same means he had planned for their elimination. Remember, Jesus said, “He who takes up the sword will perish by the sword.” Live by the sword and perish by the sword.

[2].  LET US TIME TRAVEL FOR 2,500 YEARS

Let us pass from Haman’s time to 2,500 years into the future to NOW. Any thinking person knows of the wickedness of the Iranian regime and its 40-year quest to eliminate Israel. God will never allow that to happen, of course, because His people Israel have a glorious future, full of blessing. Let us look at a little background.

There were two characters in the Old Testament who played a specific part in their time.  The first was JEHU, and this is the entrance for him – 1 Kings 19:16 “and JEHU the son of Nimshi you shall anoint king over Israel, and ELISHA the son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah you shall anoint as prophet in your place.” Elijah was commanded to anoint Jehu and Elisha.

Jehu was not a righteous man but had an appointment from God to be carried out. He did that and eliminated the great wickedness of Ahab and Jezebel from Israel. And he eliminated the worship of Baal.

The second great man was CYRUS THE GREAT. This is his entrance – Ezra 1:1-2 “Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he sent a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and also put it in writing, saying: ‘Thus says Cyrus king of Persia, ‘The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and He has appointed me to build Him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah.’”

Cyrus was not one of the redeemed of Israel, but God used him greatly for the blessing and welfare of His people. Cyrus was also Persian, probably the greatest ruler that nation had from then until now.

[3].  PRESIDENT TRUMP – WHO IS HE?

I don’t think Donald Trump is a born-again Christian, but he most certainly has Christian values, and there is no doubt whatever that God has raised him up for the welfare of His people Israel.

God’s timing is immaculate. Donald Trump missed out in 2020 for President because of cheating and electoral rigging, but don’t miss this point – he missed that 2020 Presidency because God wanted him for the 2024 Presidency! Trump is both a modern-day Jehu to destroy the wickedness in Iran (to protect Israel) and a King Cyrus looking out for the welfare of the Jews and Israel.

No other President would have done that; never had the ability or interest. Obama was a traitor to American values, selling out to Islam, and Biden did not know what planet he was on and was totally controlled by Obama and Clinton.

[4].  THE AYATOLLAH ALI KHAMENEI

I won’t waste space on outlining the history of this satanic, barbaric man over the last 40 years, but he is modern-day HAMAN whose aim is to annihilate the Israeli State. However, Mordecai’s God is Israel’s God, and His protection is upon His people. The ability and ingenuity given to Israel for its protection are just amazing. The role that Mossad plays in intelligence and actions outstrips that of any other nation.

For decades, Iran under Khamenei has launched terror in the Middle East, and is assisted by Russia and China. Why Russia and China? Well, these two evil nations hate Israel, so Satan will see they have an alliance with Iran that will have future implications.

This wicked man in Iran has launched thousands upon thousands of missiles, with the great support of its proxies – Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis – to kill and maim people all over the Middle East, including a sizable number of American troops. He who lives by the sword dies by the sword. It is ironic again and fitting that this evil man died because of the “gallows” he prepared for Israel – that is, the ballistic missiles he rained down on others. He himself was taken out by a ballistic missile.

“God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap” (Galatians 6:7). This man sowed death and suffering upon others and has reaped the harvest himself. Is God pleased that this horrible man is dead? Ezekiel 18:23 “’Do I have any pleasure in the death of the wicked,’ declares the Lord GOD, ‘rather than that he should turn from his ways and live?’”

This man was not prepared to repent and had no time for repentance in his death, so he is in hell right now. Do not criticize me for saying this, as it is according to the Bible. There are only two ways: the way of life and the way of death. It must be a shocking thing to discover in hell that your whole life has been one of darkness and wickedness. That is why we urge upon EVERYONE the need for repentance, BUT DO NOT PUT IT OFF. Today is the day of salvation! Hebrews 3:7-8.

[5].  WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD?

I get fed up with these self-proclaimed prophets who think they have the solution to everything in the Bible. There are no prophets today, and God has given us His word and the Holy Spirit and understanding to determine as best we can in the light given.

There are many roads Iran can take from here. More democracy may be forthcoming.  Confusion may continue to reign. The evil forces in Iran could ascend again with their evil brutality.

An unknown factor here is President Trump, the American public, and the American elections. If the Lord tarries (that is, if the Rapture is a bit delayed) and in the 2028 Presidential election, if the Democrats win, then chaos will come to the United States, and the Middle East will not be a concern to Democrats.

There are a couple of absolute certainties, though, and I will outline them:

[1.]  THE RAPTURE. I know some don’t believe in this, which is a great shame. The non-belief in the Rapture comes from the Roman Catholic church, and the Reformers just went along with it. The Protestant Reformation was not complete.

The Rapture is imminent, and don’t say it has been like that for 1,900 years. Israel is God’s time clock. The events in the Middle East are at breaking point and will continue to be so.  The Lord Jesus most certainly is coming any day.

[2.]  AFTER THE RAPTURE. What happens immediately after the Rapture? Well, the seals of Revelation 6 are broken, and the first seal, the white horse, is the appearance of Antichrist. One of his very first acts is to draw up this covenant with Israel for peace for 7 years. That is one reason I think why the Middle East will not get peace until just after the Rapture when this “super man” comes, and then it will last with Israel only for 3.5 years.

The second seal of Revelation 6 is the red horse, and that will be horrendous, for this is what happens – Revelation 6:3-4 “When He broke the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, ‘Come,’ and another, a red horse, went out, and to him who sat on it, it was granted TO TAKE PEACE FROM THE EARTH, AND THAT MEN SHOULD SLAY ONE ANOTHER, and a great sword was given to him.”  Worldwide war will see a huge death count. The world’s nations are prepared for war, especially China. It will break out so quickly, but remember, the Church will not be here, for it has been raptured.

[3.]  THE GOG MAGOG WAR. Yes, I know, some put this as happening any time, but it can’t because of the second half of Ezekiel 39. It will be at the end of the Tribulation, and that will be about 7 years after the Rapture. The participants in that war I have already covered several times in messages in the Eschatology Series, but by way of reminder, here are the verses:

The remote parts of the north are Russia, and Persia is Iran. Two of those big players are Russia and Iran (let’s not bother with the others at this time). The indications there are that Iran will continue hostility against Israel into the Tribulation, OR it springs to life again after the Rapture. What happens between now and the Rapture may suggest where it is heading.

[4.]  HATRED OF ISRAEL. Nations are going to become more anti-Semitic as we move along.  There is a hatred developing all over the Western world. China and Russia hate Israel anyway. That won’t change. China will be the kings of the east that come across from Asia to the Battle of Armageddon.

How correct are these observations? Well, it is the best I can see according to what is currently happening. In a month, the scenario could be different, but continue to study the signs of the times because we are meant to.

Matthew 16:2 “but He answered and said to them, ‘When it is evening you say, ‘It will be fair weather for the sky is red,’ and in the morning, ‘There will be a storm today for the sky is red and threatening.’ Do you know how to discern the appearance of the sky but cannot discern the signs of the times?’”

 

 

“He counts the stars and calls them all by name” (Psalm 147:4).

There is a deep meaning in the signs of the zodiac, and few there be that know of it: it is prophecy, what we know as Bible prophecy, but the zodiac itself, the heavens, testified to God’s prophecy even before there was a Bible as we know it.

Each of the astrological signs, in one way or another, talks about a mighty Person who is going to come, triumph over a great enemy, take away sin and its terrible consequences, and establish an era of great health, wealth, and well-being right here on this earth. This person is Jesus Christ. Each of these signs tells a part of the story of his return in triumphant glory — returning to establish his kingdom on this earth.

Before there was the written Word, remarkably, the astrological signs were God’s testimony, his own sign language, the revelation of his plan. Moses, who wrote the first five books of the Bible, was not born until 1571 B.C., some 2,433 years after the creation of Adam, yet he knew and understood God’s plan.

“And the sound of this testimony has gone into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world,” the apostle Paul wrote, quoting Psalm 19, where David writes about the stars, and how they declare the glory of God, a very specific, prophetic glory, not just the glory of shining orbs lighting up an otherwise pitch-dark night (Romans 10:18).

The word zodiac itself is taken from the Greek word zodiakos. It means ‘a circle.’ Since so many astrological signs depict animals, like that of a lion, fish, scorpion, ram, and so on, many have assumed that the word ‘zodiac’ comes from the Greek zoe, to live, the same place we get our word zoo, or zoology. But the root of zodiakos is actually zoad.

Zoad means a way, or a path, or a going by steps. In this connection, the word zoad describes how the sun appears to move through the stars — step by step — every twelve months. As the sun returns to almost the exact spot that it occupied on the same date a year earlier, this course is repeated every year. So, the path, or way, or the going by steps through the sky is called the zodiac.

Starting with Job

Most of us would assume that Genesis is probably the oldest book in the Bible, since it starts at the beginning of the story. Surprisingly, this is not the case. Possibly dating from as early as 2000 B.C., the book of Job is regarded by most scholars as the oldest book in the Bible. Interestingly, this is the book that most often mentions the stars. Job refers to two zodiac signs: Taurus, distinguished by the Pleiades, and Scorpio, called the “Chambers of the South” in the King James Version. Three other constellations are mentioned as well: Orion, the Bear, and Hydra.

After Job endured his immense suffering, God asks him a number of questions, including: “Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season?”

Now this strange word Mazzaroth occurs twice in Scripture, first in Job 38:32 and again in a slightly different form, Mazzaloth, in 2 Kings 23:5. It means The Separated, The Divided, or The Apportioned. It refers to the allotted spaces given to the twelve signs in the circle of the zodiac.

So the great God Jehovah is asking Job if he can bring forth the twelve signs in their successive order. Of course, he could not. Only Jehovah could bring these signs into view, at the appointed time, and for his own purpose.

Take that thought one step further and you quickly realize that these zodiac signs belong to Jehovah — not the astrologers. He invented them. He used them as his own “neon signs” during the early years of the history of man. (That’s how Enoch, seventh from Adam, was able to “see” the Lord coming with ten thousands of his saints (Jude v.14).

Jehovah, indeed, did regard the stars with a proprietary perspective. He created them. He created them for a purpose: to be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years (Genesis 1:14-19).

“A sign” is from the Hebrew avah. It means a prophetic mark.

“Seasons” is from the Hebrew moed. It means an appointed time, here a prophetic appointed time.

Days and years have a natural meaning here. The sun is a star. We get day and night from the turning of Earth in reference to our sun star.

But days and years, as Biblical terms, also have prophetic significance. For example, to the Lord, a thousand years is as a day, and a day as a thousand years (2 Peter 3.8). Or the day of Jacob’s trouble (Jeremiah 30:7). Or the three-and-one-half years of Great Tribulation (Matthew 24:21).

God also put the stars in specific places (Psalms 8:3). They are his work, his design. And most important of all, God named the stars (Psalms 147:4. “He counts the stars and calls them all by name” (Living Bible). As a shepherd leads his sheep, calling each by its pet name, and counts them to see that none are lost or strayed, so God does with stars and planets! (Isaiah 40:26). God left the naming of the animals to man, but He named the stars himself — because of their prophetic significance.

It’s by those names that God’s plan is revealed in the stars. Spica means The Branch. Arcturus means He Comes. Pollux means Who Comes to Suffer. Antares means The Wounded. Elnath means Slain. Procyon means The Redeemer. Orion means Coming as Light. Sirius means The Prince. Vega means He Shall Be Exalted.

In fact, many of our words have come down to us from God’s naming of the stars. For example, the brightest star in the sky is Sirius. Coming from this very same root is the Egyptian osiris, the Hebrew sirai, the Etruscan aesar, and the Indian aswara. These mean prince, sire, or sir. Those of us in the English-speaking world use the word sir every day as a term of dignity and respect.

If the ancients took words from these stars, did they, in fact, know the prophetic messages that God was presenting to them? They did, but unfortunately, it wasn’t long before the ancient Babylonian astrologers had twisted many of these stories, and then later the Greeks expanded them into their fantastic myths. And so the truth of the stars, the truth in the zodiac was lost.

However, it’s interesting to note that all cultures — the Hebrews, the Aztecs, the Babylonians, the Norsemen, the Egyptians, and the Chinese — all recognized the same names for the stars and the same patterns they make up. This has led some scholars to conclude that Judaism and Christianity descended from the “original religions.” Actually, just the opposite is true. Just as Satan has taken everything else that God has made and fashioned his own imitation, so too did he take the original, true religion that God wrote in the stars and transmogrified it into the heathen religions.

If this information was lost for so long, how did we get it back?

In the middle of the 19th century, a scholar of the ancient classics and the history of language was struck by Psalm 147:4, which says that God calls the stars by their names. This scholar, Frances Rolleston, spent most of the rest of her life studying the root meanings of the names of the stars in many ancient languages. Though most of the names of the stars were lost, some 100 or so were preserved in either Hebrew or Arabic. These continue to be used by astronomers today, though the meanings are unknown to them.

Frances Rolleston published her findings in 1863 in a book entitled, appropriately enough, Mazzaroth. Several other writers also took up the theme and popularized her work.

What she learned can help us be surer of the reality of the ‘rest of the story,’ the kingdom of heaven — where it is and what it will be like.

Walking the circle written in the sky

Twelve signs forming a circle. How can we know where to begin?

Through the “procession of the Equinoxes,” the sun gradually shifts its position a little each year, till in about every 2,000 years, it begins the year in a different sign. This was foreseen by the ancient Egyptians, and it was also foreseen that succeeding generations would not know when and where the sun had begun its course, and where the teaching of this heavenly book commenced, and where we were to open its first page.

And so the Sphinx was invented as a memorial guide to the heavens. It had the head of a woman and the body and tail of a lion, to tell us where to start and stop. The word “Sphinx” is from the Greek “sphingo,” to join — because it binds together the story’s two ends, making this circle of the heavens.

Confirmation of this is found in one of the oldest zodiacs, dating back to approximately the year 2000 B.C. This is the zodiac of Dendereh. It was discovered by scholars in the ceiling of the portico of the temple of Esneh in Egypt. In this zodiac, there is placed between the signs of Virgo and Leo a picture of the Sphinx.

That, then, solves the “riddle” of the Sphinx.

Compare the prophecies in the Bible with the prophecies in the heavens, and you may quickly further confirm that the place to begin is Virgo … the place to end is Leo.

Why?

In Genesis 3:15 (the first book of the Bible, notably), we have a promise concerning the Seed of the woman who would be wounded in the heel but, in turn, crush the head of his enemy. Virgo signifies a woman.

And then, in Revelation 5:5 (the last book of the Bible, notably again), we have a promise concerning triumph of the lion of the tribe of Judah. Leo signifies that lion.

The 12 signs of the zodiac are divided into three books of four signs each. As Bullinger brings out in an appendix of his Companion Bible, God is indeed a highly organized, precise personage. Here is how his heavenly book is organized: (The Companion Bible. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Bible Publishers) Appendix 12.)

First Book. The Redeemer. (His first coming)

Virgo. The prophecy of the promised seed of the woman. Christ, the Incarnate Son.

Libra. The Redeemer’s work (grace). Christ, the Redeemer.

Scorpio. The Redeemer’s conflict. Christ, the Sufferer.

Sagittarius. The prophecy fulfilled. Christ, the Conqueror.

Second Book. The Redeemed. (His work and results)

Capricornus. The prophecy of deliverance. Christ, the Sacrifice.

Aquarius. Results of work bestowed. Christ, the Living Water.

Pisces. Results of work enjoyed. Christ, the Liberator.

Aries. The prophesied deliverance fulfilled. Christ, the Crowned Lamb.

Third Book. The Redeemer. (His second coming)

Taurus. The prophecy of coming judgment. Christ, the Judge.

Gemini. The Redeemer’s reign in glory. Christ, the King.

Cancer. The Redeemer’s possession safe. Christ, the Protector.

Leo. The prophecy of triumph fulfilled. Christ, the Victor.

Simplifying that magnificent organization just a bit, the meanings of the signs would be as follows:

• The Seed of the woman.
• The required price paid.
• The mortal conflict.
• The final triumph.
• Life out of death.
• Blessing out of victory.
• Deliverance out of bondage.
• Glory out of humiliation.

These remain to be fulfilled:

• His glorious coming.
• His rule on Earth.
• His possessions held secure.
• His enemies destroyed.

We don’t know the meanings of these star groups because of the physical patterns they make up. They don’t make up patterns that look like fish or rams. We know the meanings from the names of the stars themselves, the names that God himself gave them.

The sign of Taurus is about to be fulfilled. In terms of both human years and eternity, we stand on the precipice.

Excerpted from After Armageddon by John A. Sarkett. Other titles: Bach and Heaven: The Promise of Afterlife in the Text of the Cantatas; Strangest Stories in the Bible; Revelation Illustrated. He is a frequent contributor to Rapture Ready.