Genesis 4: 1-12, NKJV

“Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, ‘I have acquired a man from the Lord.’ ² Then she bore again, this time his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. ³ And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord. ⁴ Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And the Lord respected Abel and his offering, ⁵ but He did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. ⁶ So the Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? ⁷ If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.’

⁸ Now Cain talked with Abel his brother; and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him. ⁹ Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Where is Abel your brother?’ He said, ‘I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?’ ¹⁰ And He said, ‘What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground. ¹¹ So now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. ¹² When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength to you. A fugitive and a vagabond you shall be on the earth.‘”

I pray that all of you had a good Easter week. I saw reports from a lot of our sister churches in the US and here in Canada of visitors, salvations, and baptisms. It is good to hear that the Kingdom of Heaven is expanding and growing. It is good to see people standing and publicly declaring their love for our Lord Jesus. One sister church had eight baptisms in one day; we had one join the Guelph church where I am helping to pastor. The people are inviting friends and instigating Bible-question fellowships, and we are seeing growth in many areas.

Over the course of the last few weeks and just today, I have watched some videos and seen some news feeds that made me ask a few questions. Over the past few years, and in particular the last 2 with the COVID mess, we have had a serious infringement on our rights. This, of course, has brought this to the front and center with many people. I sadly listened to an interview with Glen Beck this week with Pastor Artur Pawlowski, a minister here in the Province of Alberta. He is an immigrant whose families fled the regimes of Europe to come and find freedoms in Canada. He was arrested multiple times and kept in horrible circumstances by our government for holding services during the COVID lockdowns.

I encourage you to hear the interview for yourself and draw your own conclusions. But at the end of it, he was asked if it was all worth it, and he said, “Yes, I do not want my kids and grandkids to lose out on the rights they are to have.”

Later this week, I saw another video, and the professor was talking about the fact that we have raised a people that are all concerned about their rights but have not been taught responsibility. He put it this way, “Your rights are my responsibility, and the vice-versa is also true. My rights are your responsibility.” As I was thinking about this, the passage up top came to mind, and I want to explore that a bit here and explore the responsibilities that we have to and for each other.

• Sins’ Quick Progression

Many of us are familiar with this story; it is the very first murder recorded in history. Cain and Abel are brothers born to Adam and Eve. One of the sad lessons we learn is how far sin will take you, from eating the forbidden fruit to your kids murdering each other in a very short period of time. How fast sin infests us and takes over our lives. It eats away at the very fabric of our lives, our families, and our societies.

Cain and Abel both offered offerings to God. Cain offered a blood sacrifice; this was the God-established acceptable sacrifice that paid for sin (see Genesis 3:21). God made tunics of skin to cover the shame of Adam and Eve; these tunics would have been provided by killing an animal or two and clothing Adam and his wife. God established that a blood sacrifice was needed to cover our sinfulness and shame.

This, of course, was a picture of the shed blood that Jesus would offer for us at that Passover in 32 AD. Thus, for Cain to offer a bloodless offering was simply an affront to God. It is clear that he is angry with God (see verse 6). God simply points out that if he would obey, his sacrifice would be accepted as well. Abel made a choice to kill his brother out of jealousy rather than humble himself and obey God. He chose not to be his brother’s keeper. He chose to kill his brother over jealousy and, frankly, hatred for God’s laws and ways.

• Where is Abel your brother? Verse 9

God knew where he was. Abel was dead. But God gave Cain the freedom to come clean, admit his wrongdoing and accept the consequences. Cain did not do that. Rather, he states, “I do not know.” Obviously, he did. Why did he lie to God? We do it all the time as if God does not know the truth about all things, even the bad things. We lie to ourselves first of all and then to God. Both know the truth.

God confronts him with the truth; you did it. You killed your brother. I know, and I saw it all. I know where the body is. His blood is screaming out to me, and there needs to be a consequence. Go back to verse 6, and we will see that all of this came around when Cain’s anger got the best of him. He was angry at God, and since he could not hurt God, he hurt Cain.

We have a natural aversion to killing people. Most soldiers and even most police officers have to learn the skills of killing a person. There is a barrier that pops up; the sanctity of life that comes to the forefront for us. God put that there because, unlike the animals, we are made in the image of God. So how angry was Cain that all of the natural prohibitions that God put in place were done away with and he killed his brother, not just any other man – his brother. We see this kind of anger and hatred repeated again in Genesis 37: 18-20 (NKJV)

“Now when they saw him afar off, even before he came near them, they conspired against him to kill him. Then they said to one another, ‘Look, this dreamer is coming! Come therefore, let us now kill him and cast him into some pit; and we shall say, ‘Some wild beast has devoured him.’ We shall see what will become of his dreams!'”

Joseph’s own brothers, save one, conspired to kill him and eventually sell him into slavery and lied to their dad that a wild animal killed him. They carried out this hoax for more than a decade, about 13 years actually before God brought the truth to light. Joseph became his brothers’ keeper, and he fed and cared for the very men who wanted him dead.

In the New Testament, we often look at Peter on that fateful night in the Garden when Jesus was arrested, and there are elaborate accounts of Peter’s denial of Jesus. But tucked away in Mark 14: 49-50 (NKJV), we find these comments,

“Every day I was with you, teaching in the temple courts, and you did not arrest Me. But this has happened that the Scriptures would be fulfilled.’ Then everyone deserted Him and fled.”

Everyone deserted Jesus that night, all of them except John. We know that John went into the trial with Jesus, and Peter was in the courtyard. How did Jesus handle them fleeing? How did He act or react to them after the events? We meet him in the Garden by the tomb, and He sends a message to the disciples via Mary. This is what He says, Matthew 28: 9-10 (NKJV),

“Suddenly Jesus met them and said, ‘Greetings!’ They came to Him, grasped His feet, and worshiped Him. ‘Do not be afraid,’ said Jesus. ‘Go and tell My brothers to go to Galilee. There they will see Me.'”

Go tell MY BROTHERS; this was how He addressed the men who abandoned Him on the hardest night of His earthly life and left Him after all the love He had showered on them. Jesus that day was still His brothers’ keeper, and He still loved them no matter what they had done.

• Am I My Brother’s Keeper? Verse 9

The answer is YES!! When I was a young man, one of my mentors who had served in the US military for many years told me that, unlike the military, the Christian Army goes back to make sure its wounded are dead. This is the very opposite of being our brother’s keeper. I have seen ‘Christian’ men so angry that they tear down the character of another brother and hurt them so that they leave the ministry, leave the Lord’s churches, and emotionally scar their children. I have seen it with my own eyes. I have felt it in my heart and borne it in my mind. You and I are responsible for each other, and we will answer to God for it. We are called to carry each other and make each other better. In Proverbs 27:17 (NKJV), we see this very familiar verse,

“As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.”

We often quote part one of the verse, but the second part says that he ‘sharpens’ the countenance of his friend. He lifts his face, which makes him joyful or more confident. The idea of sharpening is not just about the skills; it is about the very psyche of the brother or sister. When we take responsibility for each other, we are able to truly lift each other up, not just with a smile on the face but with a smile in the heart and mind. When we truly become responsible for each other, we will rejoice when the other obeys God, and we will lift them up rather than kill them. Often, we do not kill people with a knife but with words. We say hateful and hurtful things to them and about them. Or we cut them off and shun them.

One of the harshest criticisms from those both outside and inside the Lord’s churches is the sad way that we treat each other. Too many of us have or know of someone who has been hurt by someone in a church. The stories are hard to hear, and they are hard to believe at times. The carnage is horrible; the numbers of bodies lost along the way continue to stack up, and the ramifications are horrendous as we lose the next two or three generations from this one harm. Many of these wrongs, as we can learn from Cain, come when we are jealous that God is blessing someone for obedience. And rather than follow step, we hate their obedience; and like Cain, since we cannot hurt God, we hurt His children. And yes, this happens even amongst the saved, not just the lost.

Somewhere along the line, we will need to make a conscious decision that we will be our brother’s and sister’s keepers. We will pray for, love, serve, encourage, and defend each other. We will hold each other in high regard and do all that we can to ensure that we never are involved in nor sit to the side and watch the character assassination of a brother or sister. The wounds that can be inflicted by our harsh anger-filled words would leave them wishing we had killed them; it would be less painful.

Many of you have contacted me to pray for you, and I do. I will put your request to the churches I serve, and we will pray. But to the best of my ability, I will try to be your keeper, and I pray that you will be mine. Take a look at Philippians 2:3 (NKJV),

“Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself.”

If we take on this mindset, we will not have any issues with jealousy and anger. We will have emotional and spiritual safety in our friendships and our churches. We will draw in the hurting and love them like Jesus. But it starts with understanding that, YES, I am my brother’s keeper, and we take responsibility for each other.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

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A sister in Christ sent me the link to an interesting teaching the other day. The video discusses God’s decree that at the end of each 7-year Shemitah period, the Israelites were to forgive their fellow Jews all their debts and let their land lie fallow. You know from reading the Old Testament that Israel failed badly to obey the Lord in this regard. This had consequences.

One of the points the teacher made in his message – that you can see at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtvLKayBiXQ&t=10s – is that the Jewish year of 5782, which is known on our western calendar as 2021-2022, is the seventh year of the Shemitah cycle, i.e., we’re currently in a Shemitah year. (According to Mark Blitz in the video, Shemitah years on the Jewish calendar are evenly divisible by seven.). The date correlates with what Jonathan Cahn wrote in his 2014 book The Mystery of the Shemitah.

When Cahn’s book was published, the Jewish year of 5775 equated to the 2014-2015 period on our calendar.

Carrying the cycle forward, the next Shemitah will be in 5789, or as we know it, in 2028-2029. Also, the last year in the 7-year cycle from our western perspective always includes the following year. Thus currently, 2022 teams with 2023 as the first year in the next sequence of years, and the new Shemitah cycle after that will begin in 2029-2030. To make this a little clearer, this abbreviated Shemitah chart may help:

1st Year                                7th Year

—                                           2014-2015 (5775)

2015-2016 (5776)              2021-2022 (5782)

2022-2033 (5783)              2028-2029 (5789)

2029-2030 (5790)              2035-2036 (5796)

2036-2037 (5797)              —

Another key aspect of these 7-year cycles is that every fifty years, i.e., after seven of these 7-year periods, is the year of Jubilee. This fiftieth year was a Sabbath of the Sabbaths where everything and everyone in the land were redeemed. Leviticus 25:19 declares how God will bless Israel for keeping the Jubilee:

“The land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and dwell in it securely.”

Israel didn’t obey the Lord with His command about the Jubilee, and He ultimately imposed His own 50-year Sabbaths on the land by casting the people of Israel out of it for a time. Because Israel failed to keep the Jubilee calendar, its current date is uncertain.

Was it after the previous Jewish year following 5775? Is it after this year of 5782? Or is it still to come subsequent to 5789 or even 5796?

This is all well and good, but the key point to these date periods is that Daniel’s Seventieth Week (Daniel 9:27) is a 7-year timeframe that has not yet happened. Now, I’m not a learned scholar of Jewish laws by any means, but my understanding is that, based on historical timing, Daniel’s seven years will likely correspond to a Shemitah cycle as God brings fullness to His promises, declarations, and judgments to Israel. The possibility also exists that Daniel’s Seventieth Week could also correspond to the final Shemitah prior to the Jubilee. If this is the case, it may be that we can determine with a high degree of accuracy when the Tribulation – Jacob’s Trouble – will begin. In fact, the subsequent Jubilee could correlate with the beginning of the Millennial Reign of Christ.

Three possibilities present themselves in this relationship of Shemitah cycles and the 7-year Tribulation.

They are:

1. Beginning in the 2022-2023 period
2. Beginning in the 2029-2030 period
3. Beginning some fifty years into the future as the next Jubilee

Based on what many of us who study and teach Bible prophecy have concluded, all the signs of the coming Tribulation have converged. As Pastor JD Farag says, these prophetic signs have a shelf life. With all the factors that make a prophecy relevant today, it is unlikely they will remain static and be applicable – say – in ten years.

We can also liken Bible prophecy to the stretching of a rubber band. It can only stretch so far before it breaks. Something has to happen. Given this reality, a 50-year hiatus until the next potential for the Tribulation and subsequent Jubilee with similar converging events seems improbable. As a result, I think we can rule out Option #3.

What about Option #1?

I know that many people believe we are on the absolute cusp of the beginning of the Tribulation. Some even – incorrectly – believe we’re already in it.

The idea of thinking the Tribulation may begin momentarily runs into a roadblock when we consider Ezekiel’s War, i.e., the War of Gog of Magog described in Ezekiel 38-39. In the almost-Tribulation scenario, you have to believe that Ezekiel’s War occurs within the defined 7-year period. I dispute that based on several issues, but the one of greatest importance is the 7-year clean-up that Israel conducts following the war (Daniel 39:9).

If you place this war within the 7-year Trib period, you have to believe that even after the Antichrist desecrates the newly-built Third Temple at the mid-point and begins persecuting the Jews, they will continue to go about their land clean-up duties as if life remains normal for them. That’s simply a fantasy. It is primarily for this reason that I believe Ezekiel’s War must begin at least 3 1/2 years prior to the official beginning of the Tribulation as defined by the Daniel 9:27 covenant agreement that Israel embraces.

Since none of the Ezekiel events have happened, it is impossible for the Tribulation to begin in this current timeframe of 2022-2023.

Lastly, let’s consider Option #2. This makes a lot of sense from my perspective because it also connects the dots of what we’re seeing in the world. What is the major emphasis coming at us today? It’s that we must Build Back Better through climate initiatives, financial restructuring, and transhumanist ideals pushed by the World Economic Forum.

What is the target date? It aligns with the United Nations and their Agenda 2030, i.e., the end of this decade – roughly 7 1/2 years from now in 2030.

And, guess what? The year 2030 correlates to the next beginning Shemitah 7-year cycle! From this dating, we can see that if the Tribulation and the next Shemitah cycle are one and the same, then the push by the globalists will intensify greatly in the coming few years. From this, we can also do some other calculations.

If Ezekiel’s War must occur at least 3 1/2 years prior to the Tribulation, then at the latest, it should happen in 2026 or sooner. I happen to believe there will be a Psalm 83 War prior to Ezekiel. That being the case, in order for this war’s consequences to play out, it has to erupt probably at least a couple of years earlier, around 2024.

Summarizing these major events, we have these potential dates:

• ~2024 – Psalm 83 War
• ~2026 – Ezekiel’s War
• ~2030 – Tribulation begins (per the Daniel 9:27 covenant agreement signing)
• ~2037 – Millennial Kingdom starts (corresponding to Jubilee)

I happen to like the Alternative View that Bill Salus postulates for the opening of the first five Seals. In this scenario, the Rapture occurs, and there is a Post Rapture / pre-Tribulation gap period of indeterminate length. There is nothing textual that specifically links the opening of the Seals with the signing of the covenant agreement that officially begins the 7-year Tribulation. Because of that, the possibility exists that these several Seals could be initiated earlier in the gap period after the Rapture. From our dating above, it’s conceivable that the Psalm 83 War and Ezekiel’s War could occur in this gap as part of the opening of the 2nd Seal with the rider on the red horse of war.

As a fervent proponent of the pre-Tribulation Rapture, I look at all these dots and wonder how they can connect. The most important dot of all, from my perspective, is the Rapture itself. I’m not a date-setter in any respect. What I have done in the past, and am doing now, is speculate that based on the way the world is devolving and all the signs of the times are converging, it seems difficult to conceive of the Rapture occurring any later than 2025. It’s just based on Berean and Issacharian Biblical understanding. Is there a red sky? Is it morning or evening? In Matthew 16:2-3, Jesus said:

…“When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.”

Do we heed the Lord’s Words and try to assess these things, or do we ignore them?

With the information I’ve presented in this article, it may even push up the Blessed Hope prior to 2024.

The Rapture is something we hold to be imminent, i.e., it could happen at any time because there are no preconditions.

Again, as Pastor JD Farag says, the Rapture is sooner than any of us can believe. The Bible tells us this, and the world is confirming it.

The dots have connected. Soon and very soon, we’ll be with Jesus.

—

Gary Ritter website: books & blog

http://garyritter.com/

Kindle Vella story: Tribulation Rising

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099Z462WD