Author: Steven R. Bruck
Revelation About Revelation?
If you have been following my ministry, you know that I rarely talk about anything dealing with Eschatology, which in Hebrew we call the Acharit HaYamim (End Days.) Different narratives of this event are found throughout the writings of the Prophets in the Tanakh, and in the great detail in the Book of Revelation.
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But today I thought I might go a little far afield for me and discuss something that I was thinking about. I am not saying this is a definitive understanding or a new “revelation” regarding Revelation, but I think it is interesting.
We read about the 7 seals that are broken and the 7 bowls of God’s wrath which are released upon the earth and its inhabitants. There is a pattern I noticed that we could use to ascertain if these seals and bowls are being put into practice at this time.
By the way, you don’t have to agree and can certainly disagree with whatever I am saying; I am no expert on this topic, by any stretch of the imagination. I welcome any comments or corrections from those who have made a deeper study of this topic.
The order of events with the seals is that there is an authority established throughout the world, perhaps meaning the one-world government? Next, there will be wars and the economy will suffer. This is followed by plagues and famine, and the 5th seal states those who have been martyred ask for justice, which they are told is coming soon. This might mean that the previous events will create an environment where the government declares martial rule, for the “protection of the people”, but in fact establishes a totalitarian state where people will be placed under arrest and incarcerated without due process, being denied justice by the government. Sounds reasonable, right?
The 6th seal results in ecological disasters and with the opening of the 7th seal, nearly 2/3 of the earth, plants, animals, and people are totally destroyed.
I don’t know about you, but that does not sound like fun to me. Not at all.
The bowls of wrath seem to be in a similar order, but they concentrate more on the ecology. First, there is disease released upon the people, which is followed by the oceans becoming polluted. The 3rd bowl pollutes the freshwater sources, and this is interesting because the freshwater sources feed the oceans, not the other way around, yet in God’s plan it will be the oceans that are first affected.
The 4th bowl will burn people, and I think that might be caused by the loss of the Ozone layer around the earth, which would allow the sun’s damaging rays to penetrate our atmosphere. After these disasters, we read how the 5th bowl will affect the non-Believers worse, and with the 6th bowl the Middle East rivers, especially the Euphrates, will dry up completely.
Finally, there is a total ecological disaster, with the earth and everything in it being nearly totally destroyed.
In Revelation these seals and bowls appear to be released upon the earth in order, starting with the seals and ending with the bowls, with other events occurring between them. I am not sure, though, if the bowls and seals are different, or just another way of announcing within the vision what is to come. We have to remember that this is a vision, which means it isn’t literal all the time and also may not be in any chronological order.
I think the main thing to understand is that there will be a single authority established in the world, which should be the signal that these events will begin. These events will affect people, animals, and the environment. We will see our natural resources disappearing or becoming unusable, which will lead to disease, leading to unrest, leading to conflict for resources (wars), leading to government take-over, leading to rebellion, leading to destruction, death, and disorder on a worldwide scale. Eventually, given the destructive weaponry that nearly every country has available to them, the nearly total destruction of the earth and everything in it will be accomplished.
We read that God instructs the angels to release these terrible events upon the earth, but (again) this is a vision, and the angels may represent us! God promised Noah he would never again destroy the earth, but he never said he wouldn’t allow mankind to do it.
God allows sin to continue not because he is weak or unwilling to punish, but because he is giving us time to repent. Once we reach the limit of his allowance, he will act! We have seen this happen to the tribes that were outside Israel (Gad, Rueben, and Manasseh), later to Israel (the Northern kingdom), then to Judah (the Southern kingdom), to the enemies of God’s chosen people living in the Middle East (Assyrians, Babylonians, Philistines, etc.), to Spain after the Inquisition, and most recently to the Nazi’s. There are plenty of reasons to expect this will happen to all the nations of the earth, as well, once God decides to drop the hammer.
And given the rise in anti-Semitism that we are seeing throughout Europe lately, the red flags should be waving and the bells should be ringing.
I don’t know if what I am sharing with you today is anything new; most likely, my revelation about Revelation is no real revelation to anyone. But I believe the logic behind the order of how things will be destroyed may help us to realize what is happening because once the fecal matter hits the air circulation unit, it will be very hard to stand back, observe, and reconcile what it all might mean because the world will be a total mishigas.
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Until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!
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Parashah B’midbar 2020 (In the desert) Numbers 1 – 4:20
At the beginning of this book of the Torah, we have Moses, at God’s command (which is the only right time to do this) take a census of the people. We also are given the arrangement of the campsite, as well as the duties of the Levites, with regards to moving the Sanctuary.
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The book of Numbers is a historical narration of the travels of the children of Israel as they wandered in the desert. The wandering was the result of their own sin, which was to reject the land that God brought them to, as he promised he would. They were at the border of Israel only a few months after they left Egypt, but after sending the spies into the land and receiving a bad report, they refused to go in. They were afraid that they would be destroyed by the Canaanites and other tribes that the spies reported as fearsome and powerful.
How quickly they forgot the miraculous events that God performed in Egypt; how quickly they forgot how God split the Red Sea; and how quickly they forgot the way God presented the Torah to them on Mount Sinai.
And isn’t it the same with people, today?
I was in Sales for a long time and I was very good at it. Yet, despite how good a salesman I was, I was never better than what I did yesterday. The standard joke we told each other was: “You’ve been the best salesman in the company for three months now, but what have you done for me today?”
We are in the midst of a world-wide pandemic, causing fear, which has led to the demoralization of the people and is crippling our economy, yet it is nothing compared to the past crises we have had to undergo. But does anyone remember those? Does anyone remember how this country has overcome wars and economic disasters? How did we do that? It was because we had the courage and faith in God to continue through the problems, instead of fearfully sitting on our butts and crying about it!
Does anyone remember that this country, America, was founded on faith in God, which is the real reason we were able to survive those calamities?
Apparently not.
As we go through this book of Numbers we will see how, over and over, God rescued his people when they turned to him and walked in faith towards the goal, the Promised Land. The generation which refused it caused all the people to wander aimlessly until that fearful generation were all gone. It took a new generation, a generation that did not have a slave mentality, a generation that was raised in the desert and didn’t know about living in a house or having everything you needed available to you, a generation that recognized God and accepted his help, THAT generation was the one that entered into the Promised Land and took possession of it.
And when we get to the book of Judges, we will see how they, too, forgot all about God and what he had done for them.
This country is populated now by people who have rejected God, who worship technology and sports and believe only in self-acceptance. They are all about themselves and that is why, after two months of this pandemic, you still can’t find toilet paper on the grocery shelves. Their fear is well-founded because they are depending on their individual ability to overcome problems instead of on God’s ability to protect them.
I am not saying that people should not take precautions when there is a chance of infection or infecting others, but to run and hide in the closet while you wait for someone else to fix things is not what faith is about. Take precautions, wear a facemask if you feel better doing that, and keep away from sick people.
(Do you believe that they have to tell us to do that? Do they think people are that stupid? And what is worse is that they may be right!)
The real problem we have is what President Roosevelt mentioned in his famous speech, which is a statement you most likely have heard used:
We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.
This country is crippled by fear, by their lack of faith in God, and we are all suffering for it. The shoe has dropped, and I believe the other shoe will drop soon; and when it does, those problems will be so much worse than what we are going through now that this country may not survive it.
The time for the judgment of the nations is now, and America has separated itself from God and joined the world, so we will be judged with the rest of the world. This pandemic is just the start, you mark my words: the next plague will really be deadly, and not just to a small portion of the population.
Learn the lessons we are given in the book of Numbers, see how repentance saved the Israelites while their fear caused them to reject God and suffer. America is doomed, but there will always be a remnant that will survive, so please make sure you are a member of that remnant.
Thank you for being here and please subscribe and share these messages with others, while there is still time. I welcome your comments and wish you all God’s peace which you will receive when you seek him out.
Until next time, L’hitraot and Shabbat Shalom!
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Everyone Gets Rained On
During the Sermon on the Mount, Yeshua tells the people that they should love their enemies and pray for them because that way they will become children of their father in heaven.
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He then tells them that God makes the sun to shine on good and bad people alike, as well as makes the rain to fall on the righteous and unrighteous, alike.
I have always thought this passage meant that God is such a loving God that even those who reject him and ignore his instructions will be able to receive goodness from him. The sunshine and the rains have always represented life to me, in as much as they both are necessary for growth, so when Yeshua said that God provides sun and rain even to the unrighteous, I felt that this was a good thing.
Recently, though, I have thought differently about this. I read Jeremiah 49 and I saw a totally different meaning to what Yeshua said.
In this chapter of Jeremiah, he is prophesying against the different nations surrounding Israel, and in his prophecy against Edom, he says this in Jeremiah 49:12 (CJB):
For this is what Adonai says: “Those who do not deserve to drink from this cup will have to drink it, anyway, so should you go unpunished? No, you will not go unpunished; you will certainly drink it.”
When I read that, even though it is in a distinctly different part of the Bible and is not the same subject matter as the Sermon on the Mount, I realized that what Yeshua said might be understood in a totally different light.
How many times have we heard people ask “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Now, after this revelation (if you will) of mine, I think one answer might be that it’s because they are “collateral damage.”
God loves all people, even the ones who hate him, and even though he knows every hair on every person’s head (which, finally, I will be able to get cut this evening), when he judges a nation, it is the entire nation. How many times has he told us, through the Prophets, that Israel is his son? Israel is seen by God as a unique and singular entity, meaning that God sees all the people that live in Israel as one. And how many times do we hear the Prophets confess the guilt of the people? Not for an individual or a select few but it is always the “sins of our fathers” or “the sins of your people” that they reference when praying to God for forgiveness. And, again, not for the forgiveness of a person or persons, but of the nation.
I came to realize that when God gives sun and rain in abundance at the right times, which is his blessing to the righteous, the unrighteous will be collateral beneficiaries. But, too much sunshine with too little rain, or too much rain without enough sunny days and you don’t have a blessing, you have a curse. And when God sends his curses on the unrighteous, the righteous will be collateral damage.
In other words, we are sometimes guilty by association. And perhaps that is why when God first gave us his instructions for how to live, he was very clear that those who were not clean were to be separated from the rest of the community and placed outside the camp. For example, in Numbers 16 before the ground swallowed up Dathan and Abiram, Moses told the people close by to separate themselves and get away from them, or they too would be swallowed up.
Too often things happen that we cannot explain, and when we look to God for answers, too often there are none to have. God is so far above us, and he doesn’t really care about our existence on Earth- he is focused on eternity. He is an eternal being, and although he can understand the finite, we, as finite beings, cannot understand the infinite. God has given us this life for one purpose, and one purpose only, which is to choose where we will spend eternity.
If a righteous person is taken from this life along with unrighteous people, then as sad as that may seem to us, it isn’t that bad for the righteous person taken because he or she is now in the eternal presence of the Lord. C’mon, really? What’s the downside of that? This existence is merely a wisp, a mist, and because we have only the amount of time God gives us, and we don’t know how long that is, it is best to make sure we are right with the Lord, first, then try to separate ourselves from evil and unrighteousness as much as possible.
I am not saying to cut off all relationships with non-Believers and run to the mountaintops, living as a hermit, but just to always try to be right with the Lord, and try to associate with the more righteous people as much as you can. It is a fallen and cursed world, and there are more evil and unrighteous people in it then righteous people, so you can never be fully separated from them. But when you know you are living as righteous a life as you can, then even if you end up as collateral damage, it won’t be so bad for you.
When you see good people suffer, it might be because they are collateral damage from someone close to them or something they were associated with. It doesn’t, by itself, means they were guilty of anything. Just like with Job, or the man born blind in John 9:3, whose blindness was not the result of anyone’s sin but so that God’s power and goodness could be made known, we can’t know why bad things happen to good people, nor should we feel it is unfair when bad people receive blessings because the one thing we can be sure of is that in the end, the good are rewarded and the bad receive their punishment.
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Until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!
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Parashah Behar / Bechukotay 2020 (On the mountain/ If you walk) Leviticus 25 – 27
We come now to the last three chapters of Leviticus. These chapters cover the Sabbatical Year, the Year of Jubilee, the regulations regarding the redemption of lands and of people in slavery, as well as the rules regarding how to treat a slave.
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God tells us how he will prosper and bless us when we obey these regulations, and he also tells us what will happen to us if we reject and disobey his regulations.
I have a short and sweet message today, which is this:
When God says something will happen, you can be as certain that it will happen as if it was already a part of history.
For example, lets’ look at Leviticus 26: 33-35 (CJB), which is what God says will happen if the people fail to observe the regulations regarding the resting of the land during the Sabbatical year:
I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out my sword and pursue you. Your land will be laid waste, and your cities will lie in ruins. Then the land will enjoy its sabbath years all the time that it lies desolate and you are in the country of your enemies; then the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths. All the time that it lies desolate, the land will have the rest it did not have during the sabbaths you lived in it.
Does this warning sound familiar? The prophet Jeremiah said that after the king of Babylon defeats Jerusalem, the people will be taken to Babylon and will be there, while the land becomes a desolate wasteland for 70 years (Jeremiah 25:11), and this is confirmed in 2 Chronicles 36:21.
When Judea was sinning, just as Israel had sinned, they rejected God’s commandments and failed to give the land its rest. We can figure that for (at least) 490 years leading to the exile of the Jews to Babylon, the Sabbatical Year rest for the land was not observed. That is why the exile lasted 70 years, in accordance with God’s word given through Jeremiah, which was the fulfillment of the warning God gave to Moses nearly a millennia before it happened; the same warning we read in today’s parashah.
Every warning God gave to the Children of Israel regarding disobedience, which they tested over and over, came true.
Just as God always ended his prophecies with a statement of hope, I will end today’s message with this: because every bad thing that God said would happen if we disobeyed came true, we can be positive that every promise of blessings when we do obey will also come true.
Given the absolute certainty that we will receive blessings if we do as God says, why would anyone teach others that we don’t have to obey?
We have reached the end of a book of the Torah, so we say:
Chazak! Chazak! V’nit chazek!
(Be strong! Be strong! And let us be strengthened!)
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Until next time, L’hitraot and Shabbat Shalom!
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Just for the Lost Sheep of Israel
In the Gospel of Matthew, we read in Chapter 15, verses 21-28 about a Canaanite woman who asked Yeshua to heal her daughter. This is what he replied to her (CJB):
He said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Isra’el.” But she came, fell at his feet and said, “Sir, help me!” He answered, “It is not right to take the children’s food and toss it to their pet dogs.” She said, “That is true, sir, but even the dogs eat the leftovers that fall from their master’s table.” Then Yeshua answered her, “Lady, you are a person of great trust. Let your desire be granted.” And her daughter was healed at that very moment.
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More than any other misunderstanding within Christianity is the teaching that Jesus is their Savior. Most every Christian I have ever met has been taught that Jews rejected Jesus and so they can’t be saved; Jesus is now only a Christian savior, and to be saved you must be a Christian.
I believe the wrongful teachings and doctrines of Christianity were developed after the original Disciples and many of the Jews who accepted Yeshua when he was still teaching had all died. The Jewish population of Believers was far outpaced by the Gentile converts to this (now) new religion calling itself Christianity. And, by the time Constantine got his fingers in the pie, what was supposed to be a group of people looking for salvation through the sacrifice of the Messiah, Yeshua, had turned into a new religion that worshiped Jesus Christ, who died for their sins.
He didn’t die for the sins of Jews, but for the sins of Christians.
I have seen many postings and had discussions with Christians who have held to the belief that because the Jews rejected Jesus, God has rejected the Jews; this is called Replacement Theology. I have also heard people say that the only laws that apply to Gentiles are the 10 Commandments, and the rest of the Torah instructions are just for Jews.
The truth is there are many, MANY traditional Christian teachings that are totally created by people, and not in accordance with anything that God said.
So, where is all this leading to? It’s to remind the Gentiles who accept Yeshua as their savior that he is not a Savior for the Gentiles: he is the Messiah of and for the Jews. It wasn’t until AFTER Yeshua did what he was supposed to do as the Messiah, providing the pathway to salvation for the Jewish people, that the Gentiles were also allowed to enter.
I don’t mean this to sound as derogatory or insulting, but the fact is that Gentiles who accept Yeshua/Jesus as their savior are getting the scraps that fell off our Jewish table. You are allowed to walk the path of salvation that was created for the Jewish people and to enter salvation through the doorway made for the Jewish people. There has NEVER been a separate path or door for Gentiles.
As such, when you are walking the pathway made for Jews, you are expected to walk the same way the Jews walk.
God has no religion, he only has his instructions for the way we are to worship him and the way we are to treat each other. There is not one passage in the New Covenant that is a direct instruction from God; in fact, the only place that God says anything in the New Covenant is in the Gospels, right after Yeshua has the Ruach (Spirit) fall on him and at the transformation on the mountain.
The letters from Shaul (Paul) to the Gentile congregations he started are not divine instructions or even against the existing instructions in the Torah- they are Shaul’s teaching the Gentiles, who had no idea how to live as God wants them to, in a way that the Gentiles could accept. The letter to the new believers written by the Elders (Acts 15) was never meant to be interpreted as the only things new Believers (later all Christians) had to do. It was meant to be understood as these things must be done immediately, and the rest of the Torah they will learn eventually (Acts 15:21), clearly showing that the Elders expected the Gentiles who were following Yeshua to adopt the Torah.
I am glad that God allowed the Gentiles, meaning everyone who is not Jewish by birth, to be saved. It was always his plan, which is why he told Abraham that his descendants will be a blessing to the whole world and told Moses that the Jewish people would be his (God’s) nation of priests. It was always meant for the Gentiles to be given the opportunity to receive forgiveness of sins.
It was never meant that the Gentiles would create their own religion with different holidays, a different Sabbath day, and different doctrines. And God never wanted them to bow down and pray to statues or bury their dead under the Sanctuary floor, or teach each other that God’s instructions are not for them.
Shaul knew this and tried to warn the early congregations about this in Romans 11:17-18 where he says:
But if some of the branches were broken off, and you — a wild olive — were grafted in among them and have become equal sharers in the rich root of the olive tree, then don’t boast as if you were better than the branches! However, if you do boast, remember that you are not supporting the root, the root is supporting you.
The fact is that Yeshua was sent only to, and only for, the Jewish people in order that God’s promises regarding the Messiah could be completed in Yeshua. Yeshua, himself, says this to the Canaanite woman. In other words, the Salvation Party was only for Jews, hosted by God, and paid for by a Jewish Messiah. Salvation has always been a Jewish event; when salvation was made possible for the Gentiles that was simply the after-party.
Anyone who accepts Yeshua as their Messiah and asks forgiveness for their sins through his sacrificial death will be saved, and once saved we are all in the body of Messiah, which means we are to try to live as he lived. And he lived according to God’s instructions in the Torah, where God told us how to worship him, which celebrations to observe, what to eat, how to treat each other, as well as many other instructions on how to live.
It comes down to this: you have to choose whether you will listen to what men say, or to what God says.
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Until next time, L’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!