Romans Lesson 29: The Limited Time of the Gentiles :: By Sean Gooding

Published on: August 18, 2020 by RR7

Chapter 9:14-29

“¹⁴ What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not! ¹⁵For He says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.’ ¹⁶ So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. ¹⁷ For the Scripture says to the Pharaoh, ‘For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth.’ ¹⁸ Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens.

“¹⁹ You will say to me then, ‘Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?’ ²⁰ But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why have you made me like this?’ ²¹ Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?²² What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, ²³and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory, ²⁴ even us whom He called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?

“²⁵As He says also in Hosea: ‘I will call them My people, who were not My people, And her beloved, who was not beloved.’ ²⁶ ‘And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not My people,’ There they shall be called sons of the living God.’ ²⁷Isaiah also cries out concerning Israel: ‘Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, The remnant will be saved. ²⁸For He will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness Because the Lord will make a short work upon the earth.’ ²⁹And as Isaiah said before: ‘Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, We would have become like Sodom, And we would have been made like Gomorrah.'”

Thanks for the responses to the last article. It is glad to know that someone is reading them.

The subject of Israel is one that is not often spoken about in many churches. Thankfully, we have sites like Rapture Ready that focus on the end times, and as such, there must be discussions about Israel. God is not done with Israel as yet, and since Jesus is coming to rule the world from David’s throne, is it obvious that God is not done with Jerusalem either. Salvation has been offered to all men everywhere freely. From the very first blood sacrifice in Genesis 3, where God made Adam and Eve clothes of skin, to the public execution of Jesus, salvation has always been made available at the expense of another to us. In the OT, the blood of bulls and goats offered temporary coverings for sin that had to be repeated each year; and then in Jesus, His once-for-all sacrifice is the end of the OT daily sacrifices.

However, God is the one who offers salvation, and it is a limited time offer. This is one of the hardest things to accept as humans. But in Hebrews 9:27, we are told that once a person is dead, their fate is sealed by the choice they made while alive as far as Jesus and salvation are concerned.

In the account of Lazarus and the rich man, Abraham made it clear that they each made their choices while alive, and their eternity was based on that choice. Death then ends the choice as far as eternity is concerned.

There are those that teach a purgatory, where one’s sins can be atoned for after death by the prayers and indulgences of one’s loved ones. This is just emotional blackmail by a false religion. There is no salvation after death.

In this passage, Paul uses the person of Pharaoh as an example. Some would read this passage and come to the conclusion that there was no way of salvation for Pharaoh. He, we are told, was used as an example by God. But what God knew as being God and what He did as a deliberate action are two different things. Let me explain.

God knew that Pharaoh would rebel for the whole ten plagues and that, even after his apparent humility, he would change his mind and try to kill off the nation. This Pharaoh, we are told, did not know the God of Joseph, but he got a face-to-face introduction; he saw God’s almighty hand face-to-face over a long period. But he chose to rebel; all he had to do to save his land was to let the Jews go. That simple, that plain, and that easy. But pride is the forerunner to destructions, and Pharaoh forgot who was God and who was the man.

Thus, his whole nation was destroyed by God. But in the midst of that, there were Egyptians that went out with the Jews as they left Egypt, Genesis 12: 38, called a mixed people. These believed the power of God and humbled themselves and lived. God chose that Pharaoh because he knew he would be a rebellious man, and He, God, used him to demonstrate His power, but the Egyptians who believed and humbled themselves were saved. When a person, in this case, Pharaoh, pridefully shakes his fist in God’s face, then God turns up the heat, and they get what they ask for, God’s power on display.

The same will be true in the Tribulation; the people of the earth will know that God is doing the things that are happening, but they will rebel even more and not humble themselves (see Revelation 16:9); the people cursed the name of God and refused to repent (see verses 11 and 21 as well). This is what happened to Pharaoh; he knew that God was real but refused to humble himself.

In Romans 9:22, we see that God is long-suffering and patient with sinful men. Before Judah went into captivity in Babylon, God patiently waited 490 years before He sent judgment. God extends to us grace and mercy beyond all we deserve; He puts up with sinful piles of dust that rebel and defy Him face-to- face as we deny His existence and claim to be our own gods. We are told over the next few verses (23-24) that God was patient for our sakes. Whose sakes? We the Gentiles? God has, for 2,000 years, patiently waited for the Gospel to reach the utter parts of the earth – for the translations to be done, the printing press to be invented, and for churches to send missionaries all over the world so that every last Gentile who will be saved, is saved.

In John 12: 22-24, we see that even as He came to the end of the earthly ministry, the Gentiles were asking to see Jesus. I am currently reading through the book of Acts, and the Jewish Christians are astonished that the Holy Spirit went to the Gentiles as well. They have not one, but two conferences about that in the book of Acts. The second, in chapter 15, has some wanting the Gentile Christians to be circumcised; they are still blown away that the gospel came to us. But it did.

Nation will come around again. The entire focus of the Tribulation is the nation of Israel. The NT church is taken out at the beginning of Revelation 4. From that time on in Revelation, the church is not mentioned again as far as being on earth. Thus, the time of the Gentiles is over as far as the salvation we now have offered to us in Jesus. God has decided that we have this much time, and then He will proceed with the promises He made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and David; this requires a full return of His attention to the nation of Israel.

For now, rejoice, my brothers and sisters; God, our God, the God, has chosen to allow us to know the Gospel; to know about Jesus, His shed blood and His salvation. He has made known to us the riches of His love and grace; He deals with us in the framework of His love and mercy; He deals with us gently as mere dust; and He has prepared for us a home that will leave us jaw-dropped for a long time once we arrive. In 2 Corinthians 12:4, Paul could not even put into words what he saw on the other side. Paul, like Luke, was one of the more highly educated men who wrote the Bible, and he could not find the words to describe the other side.

Let me dispel a false doctrine that has permeated the NT church of late:

The doctrine is that God has chosen who will go to heaven and who will go to hell. Nothing could be further from the truth. This doctrine negates the need for evangelism and even personal spiritual growth. We see the idea of personal choice all the way through the scriptures. Adam made a choice to disobey; Cain made a choice to kill Abel; Joshua called Israel to choose whom they would serve; David made a choice to step on the battlefield with Goliath; and Joseph chose not to be bitter when the events of his life unfolded in Egypt. Jesus chose to stay on the cross. He laid down His life; no one compelled Him. Ananias and his wife chose to lie to the Holy Spirit, and on and on we can go.

We Gentiles have been grafted into the covenant that was given to Abraham; we are joint-heirs with Israel because, like Abraham, we believed God and it was accounted to us for righteousness. It was given to us, and this will go on for a short time longer. How do I know this? In Luke 21:24, we are told that the events of the end will go until the time of the ‘Gentiles are fulfilled’; we are told in Romans 11:25 that we will go on until the ‘number of Gentiles has come in’; and then God will revert to dealing with Israel. We all need to get to work and get to our peoples. The time is short.

The time is near, and the end is not far away. God has been patiently building for 2,000 years, and He has already allowed Israel to be resurrected. Jerusalem is the political capital city; so then, the return of Jesus is not far off. Are you ready? Do you know Jesus as Savior? If you do know Him, are you living surrendered and submitted to Him? Our time is coming to an end, and the time of Israel is fast approaching; the next phase is soon to be upon us in full force. The world has no clue what is coming, but we should be waiting with bated breath for the glory of God to be revealed and the return of our Savior, first to call us home, and then to bring us back to serve in His kingdom.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding

Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MississaugaMissionaryBaptistChurch

Online: https://www.mississaugamissionarybaptistchurch.com/

Email: missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca

The Beast at Our Door :: By Jonathan Brentner

Published on: August 18, 2020 by RR7

What comes to your mind when you hear the word “beast”? Although Webster’s Dictionary says the word applies to any four-legged animal, we tend to visualize something that’s large and perhaps ferocious when we hear the word “beast.” The dictionary also applies the term to a person that’s “brutal” or “vile.”

In Daniel 7, the Lord showed the prophet four beasts that represented world empires; these included Babylon and the three that would follow after it. Applied to world kingdoms, the idea of “beast” signifies fierceness and the devouring of those in their path.

“What does this have to do with today?” you ask. Daniel saw a future manifestation of the fourth beast that still awaits fulfillment. All the other empires that the Lord revealed to His prophet flourished for a time and then faded away except for the final expression of the fourth one, which has not yet appeared.

However, many believe it’s forming right before our eyes….

The Fourth Beast of Daniel 7

Daniel wrote this about the fourth beast, “After this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth; it devoured and broke in pieces and stamped what was left with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns” (Dan. 7:7). Scholars agree this refers to the Roman Empire, which displayed the precise viciousness Daniel saw centuries before its arrival on the world scene.

However, the appearance of the ten horns on this beast, which the Lord later described as “ten kings” (Dan. 7:24), remains an unfulfilled prophecy. The Roman Empire never existed with such a division.

John, writing at the end of the first century AD, also saw the fourth beast of Daniel 7 with these same “ten diadems” (Rev. 13:1-18). The apostle witnessed further details of this coming world order; one of the horns of the beast gained control of it and assumed the identity of the beast.

We know the personification of this beast as the antichrist, “the man of lawlessness” that Paul wrote about in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-10. He will demand that everyone in the world worship him under penalty of death for those who refuse (Rev. 13:15). The world has yet to see the emergence of this beast with its ten rulers, but we know it will happen, perhaps soon. Many rich and powerful forces in our world are working relentlessly to create a New World Order that has all the characteristics of this last beast.

The Great Reset

The powers behind the World Economic Forum refer to this New World Order as the “Great Reset.” It sounds far less frightening than the totalitarian government they plan to impose on the world.

Why do many students of prophecy believe that the Great Reset will lead to the final form of the fourth beast? It has all the characteristics of a regime that will ruthlessly dominate the world in the near future.

Let’s start with the quote below from the Fox Business website concerning the World Economic Forum’s meeting in June 2020:

The purpose of the Great Reset isn’t merely to enact policies that would lead to additional wealth redistribution, but rather to completely overhaul the world’s existing structures and institutions. Among other things, Schwab has said of the Great Reset, “the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions.”

We’re still in the earliest phase of the Great Reset. The full plan won’t be rolled out until January 2021, when the World Economic Forum will host its annual meeting in Davos. But the framework of the plan is clear: By combining many of the money-printing strategies endorsed by Modern Monetary Theory economists with global Green New Deal-like policies and corporate cronyism, the elites at the World Economic Forum can effectively control economic activity on a scale that has never been achieved.

The words “effectively control economic activity” sound remarkably similar to the words of Revelation 13, which describe how the beast, the antichrist, will control all the buying and selling worldwide.

The glowing descriptions of the “Great Reset” that one reads throughout the World Economic Forum’s website make this coming New World Order sound wonderful, the utopian answer to all the problems of the world. We see such optimism in this quote from the Emerging Europe website:

António Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, called the great reset “a welcome recognition that this human tragedy must be a wake-up call. We must build more equal, inclusive, and sustainable economies and societies that are more resilient in the face of pandemics, climate change, and the many other global changes we face.”

It sounds wonderful until one lifts up the hood to examine the details of the Great Reset. There we find the United Nation’s Agenda 2030 and in the much-hyped New Green Deal in the United States. Both of these programs place the world and the United States under a Marxist regime that will exercise total control of everyone. The objective of the left is Communism, which the goals of these two programs clearly reveal. [i] The totalitarian nature of these programs is nothing less than slavery.

The Beast at Our Door

As a longtime student of prophecy, I have taught about the coming kingdom of the antichrist for several decades. Even so, I confess to a bit of shock as I watch the beast of Daniel 7 and Revelation 13 openly discussed and planned by rich and powerful forces in our world.

Peter Koenig, a secular writer, recently wrote an article about the Great Reset entitled, The Global Reset – Unplugged. “The Deep State.” Though not for the faint of heart, I recommend reading it. The quote below comes from the introduction of his piece:

Imagine you are living in a world that you are told is a democracy – and you may even believe it – but in fact, your life and fate are in the hands of a few ultra-rich, ultra-powerful, and ultra-inhuman oligarchs. They may be called Deep State, or simply the Beast, or anything else obscure or untraceable – it doesn’t matter. They are less than the 0.0001%.

For lack of a better expression, let’s call them for now “obscure individuals.”

These obscure individuals who pretend running our world have never been elected. We don’t need to name them. You will figure out who they are and why they are famous, and some of them totally invisible. They have created structures or organisms without any legal format. They are fully out of international legality. They are a forefront for the Beast. Maybe there are several competing Beasts. But they have the same objective: A New or One-World Order (NWO, or OWO). [ii]

These “obscure individuals,” Koenig later tells us, lead the World Economic Forum and “have co-opted the UN to do their bidding.” [iii]

One might call these “individuals” opportunistic, but that’s not totally accurate. The COVID-19 “pandemic” did not surprise the elite of our world. Dr. Fauci told us it was coming back in 2017. On October 18, 2019, these “obscure individuals” held Event 201, which foreshadowed the COVID-19 outbreak with far too much specificity for one to consider the virus of 2020 unrelated to Event 201. Here is a quote from its website:

The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted Event 201, a high-level pandemic exercise on October 18, 2019, in New York, NY. The exercise illustrated areas where public/private partnerships will be necessary during the response to a severe pandemic in order to diminish large-scale economic and societal consequences. [iv]

Some believe Event 201 was nothing less than a planning session for COVID-19; I am one of them. The timing and matters discussed at this gathering track far too closely with COVID-19 for one to consider it a mere coincidence. The virus did not catch these “obscure individuals” by surprise; they were well-positioned to use the media to promote their far-reaching ambitions.

Peter Koenig wrote this about the role of COVID-19 in advancing the agenda of the elite:

We have become enslaved to the Beast. The Beast calls the shots on boom or bust of our economies, on who should be shackled by debt, when and where a pandemic should break out, and on the conditions of surviving the pandemic, for example, social confinement. And to top it all off – the instruments the Beast uses, very cleverly, are a tiny-tiny invisible enemy, called a virus, and a huge but also invisible monster, called FEAR. That keeps us off the street, off reunions with our friends, and off our social entertainment, theatre, sports, or a picnic in the park.

Soon the Beast will decide who will live and who will die, literally – if we let it. This may be not far away. Another wave of pandemic and people may beg, yell and scream for a vaccine, for their death knell, and for the super bonanza of Big Pharma – and towards the objectives of the eugenicists blatantly roaming the world – see this. There is still time to collectively say NO. Collectively and solidarity.

I will admit, it’s not easy reading about the demonic, sinister, and deadly motives of those who seek to enslave the world’s population in such a way. Despite the warnings, many remain deep in delusion, believing this time Marxism will somehow lead to the long-awaited utopia. They remain blissfully ignorant of the death and destruction that await them once they open the door to the beast.

The Beast is Exceedingly Dangerous

President Donald Trump, on August 6, 2020, made these ominous comments about how his latest executive order cut profits for the “middlemen” in the pharmaceutical industry, “… So I have a lot of enemies out there; this may be the last time you will see me for a while. [I have] a lot of very rich enemies, but they are not happy with what I am doing.” So far, he has remained in the public eye.

Why do I quote these words from the President? At the present time, he stands directly in the way of the beast. The exceedingly rich globalists and elite, AKA “obscure individuals,” need a weakened and cooperative United States to implement their plans for their Great Reset. President Trump recognizes the exceedingly dangerous nature of this group and the significant threat they pose to his future as well as that of the United States.

The President also understands the willingness of these powerful “obscure individuals” to do all it takes to bring about the Great Reset. We have already seen their willingness to create damaging fake news stories about him, destroy the lives of tens of millions of people by shutting down state economies, and wreak havoc on many more through rioting and lawlessness. They will not stop until they enslave every person on the planet.

Justin Haskins, writing for The Hill, issued this warning concerning this group:

For those of us who support free markets, the Great Reset is nothing short of terrifying. Our current crony capitalist system has many flaws, to be sure, but granting more power to the government agents who created that crony system and eroding property rights is not the best way forward. America is the world’s most powerful, prosperous nation precisely because of the very market principles the Great Reset supporters loathe, not in spite of them.

Although these “obscure individuals” represent extreme danger to the world, we possess a hopeful future as believers.

We Are So Close

The seven-year tribulation has not yet started, yet we see so many indicators today of what the book of Revelation tells us life will be like during these years. It’s now possible for one man, the antichrist, to control the buying and selling of everyone in the world. The Revelation 13 “mark of the beast” is well on its way to becoming a reality.

All these things tell us the rapture of the church must happen soon. The antichrist, who will eventually personify the final form of the fourth beast, cannot take control of the coming world government, the beast, until after the rapture. That is the clear message of 2 Thessalonians 2:1-11.

I would like to think that the November election in the United States will delay the efforts of these “obscure individuals” and their plans for the Great Reset, but I have my doubts. If President Trump wins reelection, we may see the worst violence in America since the Civil War. After 2016, the attempted coup was political. This time the coup will likely be violent and bloody. John Kerry recently stated that a Trump victory will lead to a “revolution.”

If Trump loses, the left will act with great speed to subject the United States to the Marxist’ demands of the elite and powerful forces of our world. Our constitutional rights, starting with freedom of religion, will disappear in a heartbeat. After that, the world will see “ten horns” or ten rulers of this coming world order, of which we do not yet know the exact details of this future alignment.

The day and hour of the Lord’s return for us will remain a mystery. The signs, however, tell us this is most certainly the season of His return for us. They tell us it’s time to watch with much intensity.

Maranatha!!

Jonathan Brentner

Website: Our Journey Home

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E-mail: Jonathanbrentner@yahoo.com

[i] See also Zachary B. Wolf, “Here’s what the Green New Deal actually says,” February 14, 2019, on the CNN website @ https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/14/politics/green-new-deal-proposal-breakdown/index.html and the United Nations website, Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda For Sustainable Development

[ii] Peter Koenig, The Global Reset – Unplugged. “The Deep State,” July 24, 2020, on the Global Research website @ https://www.globalresearch.ca/global-reset-unplugged/5716178

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Event 201 – A Global Pandemic Exercise, https://centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/