Zechariah 7:13 – “Therefore it is come to pass, that as he cried, and they would not hear; so they cried, and I would not hear, saith the LORD of hosts.”

According to history, many events considered disastrous by the Jews have occurred on the Ninth of Av, also called Tish’a B’Av, the saddest day in Jewish history.

The date for Tish’a B’Av 2021 is Sunday, July 18, in the Hebrew Year 5781.

Tish’a B’Av begins at sunset Saturday, July 17, and ends at sunset Sunday, July 18.

Tish’a B’Av is the culmination of a three-week period of increasing mourning that begins with the Fast of the 17th of Tammuz. During this three-week period, the Scroll of Lamentations is read, prayers are recited during the evening services, and the Torah Scroll cabinet (Ark) is covered by black cloth. In some synagogues, the Scroll of Job is read on the morning of Tish’a B’Av.

Tish’a B’Av primarily commemorates the destruction of the first and second Temples, both of which were destroyed on the ninth of Av. The first Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC, and the second Temple by the Romans in 70 AD.

The First Occurrence

• Av 9, 1312 BC – Only two of the twelve spies sent by Moses to observe the land of Canaan, Joshua and Caleb, returned with a positive report. The ten-spy report caused the Hebrews to cry, panic, and despair of ever entering their Promised Land. For this, they were punished, and Yahweh decreed that their generation would not enter the land and that for all future generations, this date would become one of crying and misfortune for their descendants, the Jewish people (Numbers 13:25-14:12, Zechariah 7:3-5, 8:19).

First and Second Temple Destructions

• Av 9, 586 BC – The First Temple built by King Solomon was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, and the Judeans were sent into Babylonian exile. About 100,000 Jews were killed during the invasion. The remaining tribes in the southern kingdom were exiled to Babylon and Persia.
• Av 9, 70 AD – The Second Temple built by Ezra and Nehemiah was destroyed by the Romans on August 4, 70 AD. Over 2,500,000 Jews died as a result of war, famine and disease. Over 1,000,000 Jews were exiled to all parts of the Roman Empire. Over 100,000 Jews were sold as slaves by Romans or were killed and tortured in gladiatorial “games” and pagan celebrations.

Subsequent Happenings on or Around Tish’a B’av

• Av 9, 71 AD – The Roman army plowed Jerusalem with salt on July 25, 71 AD.
• Av 9, 132 AD – The Romans crushed Bar Kokhba’s revolt and destroyed the city of Betar, killing over 100,000 Jews on July 8, 132.
• Av 9, 133 AD – July 29, 133. Turnus Rufus ploughed the site of the Temple. The Romans build the pagan city of Aelia Capitolina on the site of Jerusalem.
• Av 9, 135 AD – The destruction of Simeon Bar Kokhba’s army on August 5, 135 AD.
• Av 9, 1095 AD – The First Crusade was declared by Pope Urban II on July 20, 1095. The Crusades brought death and destruction to thousands of Jews, totally obliterating many communities in Rhineland and France.
• Av 9, 1190 AD – 500 Jews died as a result of the rich storming a castle in York, England, on July 14, 1190.
• Av 9, 1290 AD – July 25, 1290 – Jews forced out of England accompanied by pogroms and confiscation of books and property.
• Av 9, 1306 AD – July 22, 1306 – The Jews were expelled from France again, accompanied by pogroms and confiscation of books and property.
• Av 9, 1492 AD – August 11, 1492 – The Inquisition in Spain and Portugal culminated in the expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula. Families were separated, many died by drowning, and there was massive loss of property by all.
• Av 9, 1648 AD – On July 18, 1648, Bohdan Zenobi Chmielnicki, the leader of the Cossacks, a military class of Ukrainian-southern Russians, began the massacre of tens of thousands of Polish Jews. This massacre continued until 1651.
• Av 9, 1914 AD — World War I begins on August 1, 1914. Russia also launched persecutions against the Jews in Eastern Russia on this same day. There were over 400 pogroms immediately following World War I in Hungary, Ukraine, Poland, and Russia.
• Av 9, 1929 AD – August 15, 1929. Mufti Hajj Amin Al Hussein stirred up riots against Jews at the Wailing Wall; Hebron Massacre ensues.
• Av 9, 1941 AD – On August 2, 1941, SS commander Heinrich Himmler formally received approval from the Nazi Party for “The Final Solution.”
• Av 9, 1942 AD – The mass deportation began of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto, en route to the Treblinka Concentration Camp; began on the eve of July 23, 1942.
• Av 9, 1989 AD – On August 10, 1989, the Iraqis walked out of the talks with Kuwait, then invaded Kuwait and set fires to the oil wells. This action finally led to the Gulf War in 1992.
• Av 9, 1994 AD – The Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was bombed, killing 86 and wounding 300 others on Monday, July 18, 1994. On that same day, the twenty-one pieces of Shoemaker-Levi Comet began bombarding the Planet Jupiter!
• Av 9, 2005 AD – Starting at midnight on August 14, 2005, the entry and presence of Israeli citizens in the Gaza Strip is prohibited.
• Av 9, 2006 AD — The Lebanon War breaks out. On August 3, 2006, the Vatican sponsored the “Rome Peace Conference” and put the finishing touches on the “Rome Peace Accord.” This agreement halted the Israeli defensive thrust into Lebanon, and a Hezbollah commando force abducted two Israeli soldiers.
• Av 9, 2012 AD – The 2012 Olympics were inaugurated in London, England, on the evening of July 27, 2012. This date marked the 40th anniversary of the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, during which eight Palestinian terrorists infiltrated the Munich Olympic village and killed eleven members of the Israel Olympic team.
• Av 9, 2014 AD – On August 5, 2014, Israel commemorated past and present tragedies, especially the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem and the subsequent exile of the Jews from the Land of Israel.
• Av 9, 2015 AD – On July 25, 2015, the Statue to Satan (Baphomet) was unveiled by the Satanic Temple in Detroit.
• Av 9, 2016 AD – August 14, 2016. The Islamic Movement in Israel called for a mass ascent of Muslims to the Al Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount, and many Arabs violently rioted. The Olympics in Rio were rife with anti-Semitic incidents.
• Av 9, 2017 AD – August 1, 2017. Muslims escalated a war for the Temple Mount following the capitulation by the Israeli government over security measures on the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, or Kotel.
• Av 9, 2018AD – July 10, 2018. Marchers of the Faithful Movement on Tish’a B’Av 2018 were attacked with stones and other dangerous objects by Arab Islamic rioters. On the night of this year’s Tu B’Av, a completely red lunar eclipse appeared in the heavens above Israel.
• Av 9, 2019 AD – August 11, 2019. Palestinian Muslims shouted at Israeli security forces (unseen) in the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. At least five vehicles were damaged in attacks by Jerusalem Arabs hurling stones between the start of Tish’a B’Av (which began with the fall of darkness on Saturday evening) and Sunday at 12 noon. An 18-year-old Jewish boy was seriously wounded Sunday morning when he was attacked by an Arab terrorist on Hagai Street in Jerusalem.
• Av 9, 2020 AD – July 30, 2020. Protests against the Israeli government due to the Covid-19 lockdowns continued unabated. Hamas views Israel’s intentions to extend its sovereignty over parts of the Jordan Valley, Judea and Samaria as a declaration of war.

Conclusions

Yahweh declared that Tish’a B’Av would be a day of mourning and misfortune. To see these occurrences as simply coincidence would deny His word. Let us pray that Av 9th this year is not yet another day of disaster for our Jewish brothers.

Website: https://raptureparty.net

Email: jeff@raptureparty.net

Paul’s Sermon at Athens: Evidence of a Shepherd’s Heart

Summary: When Paul arrived in Athens, he was grieved over the rank idolatry of the city with its statues and temples dedicated to various gods and goddesses. He knew that the Gospel had to be proclaimed. Souls hung in the balance. This is the heart of a man of God and the example we need to follow today.

When Paul arrived in Athens to wait for Silas and Timothy to join him, he looked around the city and did not marvel at the beauty of the city’s temples or the culture or anything typical of a tourist’s curiosity. If he were to be classified as a “sightseer,” the sights he saw broke his heart because all he could really notice were the numerous altars to the varied gods and goddesses that had been a part of the Greek nation and former empire’s social and religious foundations. While the Athenians displayed a form of religious devotion and attention to ritual, they were spiritually lost and bound in the darkness of false belief that still plagues the world today.

The pastoral heart of the great lion of God truly hurt, not just for the Athenians but for his fellow Jews, and indeed, all who were lost in their sins who needed to hear of the freedom and grace of God given by Jesus Christ. Paul wanted the world to know of the love, mercy, and salvation that he himself had received on the Damascus Road through the risen Christ and the calling He placed on His former enemy to take His message to the Jew first, and then the Greek.

We see this concern and compassion for the lost modeled in our LORD as He saw the people of His own nation wandering in a desert of ritual and repetitious “worship” of the God of Israel without the love and devotion that He had asked of them over the centuries. The religious leaders had reduced the love for God and His Word to the point where the Sabbath itself had become a day of dread instead of rest due to the picky and near draconian penalties placed on the people for violating it.

When Jesus arrived on the scene, His preaching and teaching were not filled with the extras of man-made ritual and attention to rabbinical interpretations of the Scriptures, but were words of “Authority” that were the spiritual food and drink they had been missing for so long.

Let this be a lesson to all preachers who truly love and follow the Lord Jesus. Stay away from fads, trends, and worldly causes that sound noble but in reality, starve the flock of the good food of the Word of God. Do not preach the latest news or opinion from the denominational or political pundits, or try to be clever in your self-anointed “gift” of wit and yarn, but PREACH THE WORD (2 Tim. 4:1-5).

Whether people admit it or not, they are truly hungry for something that will give them assurance, comfort, and conviction and the wonderful news that God does love them and desires that they not perish and suffer in eternal torment. Preach that He has provided the ONLY way to real peace, escape from sin, and source of authentic forgiveness and mercy. Preach Jesus! Proclaim Jesus! Exalt Jesus! Never be swayed from the calling He has given you, fellow shepherd.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, this applies to you as well. Just because you see the same people, the same families, and the visitors who come to your place of worship and sit by you or near you and join in the songs, say prayers, and seem to pay attention to the sermon, never assume that they are saved and sealed in Christ. Those people who cross your paths during the week, such as friends, neighbors, coworkers, fellow students, and the strangers who might greet you, are all in the same predicament. They might be as lost as the garden-variety pagan that Paul witnessed in the streets and marketplaces of Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, and everywhere he ministered.

You do not have to have any special training or “call to ministry” to present the Gospel to people, and if you have been truly redeemed from your sins by the Lord Jesus, you have a story to tell. It may not be as dramatic as Paul’s, but, like him, you were lost and heading to eternal hell just as he was before Jesus transformed his life and purpose.

When we read of this encounter between Paul and the philosophers on Mars Hill, we might tend to overlook verses 16-18 of Acts 17, where Paul first reasoned with his fellow Jews in the synagogue before he ventured into the marketplaces and started preaching the Gospel to the Athenian citizens. This is an evangelism strategy that was modeled after Jesus’ prime mission, which was to reach out to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt. 10:6). Paul did not take anything for granted when it came to preaching the Gospel to his own people first. They had been recipients of the promise of a Messiah by God (Isaiah 53:1-12) and affirmed through the prophets. Yet, many had rejected Jesus for this very claim because He did not fit their idea of the Deliverer and restorer of the nation.

Paul, no doubt, explained to them that the deliverance and freedom of their souls from sin was far more important than freedom from the bonds of Roman rule, and Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross did just that. His sinless blood was the perfect and final sacrifice for our rebellion and unrighteousness.

We cannot redeem or justify ourselves in the sight of God by our own means (Ephesians 2:8-9). The deity we make of ourselves cannot and will not accomplish that task whether we like it or not (Romans 3:10-18, 23). The work of Christ fulfilled that task for us, and all we have to do is to receive it by faith and surrender our lives to Him as Lord and Savior. We do not need to do anything or add anything extra to what Christ has done for us. When He said from the cross, “IT IS FINISHED!” we can take His word for it.

This is what Paul preached to His fellow Jews, and many had their eyes opened to the grace and mercy of Almighty God, and that message rings true for all who are lost, without hope, and without a guiding and loving shepherd to show them the way home. Jesus is our Good Shepherd, and He had given Paul and all of us who follow and love Him the same opportunity and honor. Paul told the Good News to those with whom he was familiar, then took it to the streets where the Greeks heard it and who then invited him to present this message to the philosophers and the curious that gathered on Mars Hill.

God opens the doors to encounters every day, and like Paul, we all have that opportunity to go to the Mars Hill of our city, state, and country with the message that Jesus is LORD, now and forever.

Thank You, LORD, for entrusting us with the message of new life in Christ. Make us like Paul and the early church, and instill within all of us the courage and desire to go, tell, and trust You to open the people’s eyes and hearts. Amen.

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