Timeline Of God‟s People ~ Kay Arthur

Jeremiah, Part 1 (Return To Me)

Program 32 – Timeline Of God‟s People

When you have the Bible in one hand and you have the news in the other and you know this Bible; you understand it. Then you have a commentary of what is happening in the world. Then you’re not left in the dark. And you’re not led astray by false prophets. If you understand God’s timeline for Israel, and that’s what we’re going to look at today, the past and the future, then you’re going to know the timeline for the nations also. Got your coffee? Got your tea? Get something to drink. Have you got the Word of God? Have you got a pencil? Have you got paper? Let’s go, and let’s continue our study of the timeline, the timeline that has to do with Israel.

What we did is we started with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Abraham was the first of the nation of Israel. From Abraham God would make a great nation. We saw next, as we drew that timeline and I hope that you’ve gone and downloaded it at least since ah yesterday’s program, that you’ve gone to “preceptsforlife.com” and downloaded it. It’s there. It’s for you. It’s free. But I want you to draw your own drawing even though you have it because the drawing of it will help, okay.

So then we had a “V” going down from that line because they went down to Egypt. That’s where Moses was born in 1525. They come out of Egypt in 1445. In 1405 B.C. they’re in the land. When they get in the land eventually in 965 they build a temple. So I’ve got a blue temple on that line and 965 below it.

Then we come to the days of Jeremiah. We know in the days of Jeremiah there’s a temple. We know in the days of Jeremiah that God is telling him that He is going to bring disaster upon them, that He is going to pay them double for all their sins. (See Jeremiah 16:18) They’re going to pay twofold because they have rebelled against God. Jeremiah begins his prophecy in 637 B.C. in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah. (See Jeremiah 1:2)

If you have an Inductive Study Bible by the way, all of this information is in there, all the history, all the dates. It’s awesome! In 586 B.C. that temple is going to be destroyed. We’re going to study about it. We’re going to read about its destruction in the book of Jeremiah. That happens in 586 B.C.

Now draw another “V” down that parallels the “V” down there with Egypt and you come over this time they’re going into Babylon. They’re going into captivity. This power, this evil from the north we’re going to find out and God’s going to name it in Jeremiah, so you don’t miss it, it is Babylon. They are in captivity.

Now I’m not going to tell you how long because you’re going to study that and when you do you can come back and you can put it on the chart. When you study it you’ll find out why it is that amount of time. And what it shows you is what truth this whole week is about, that there is a glorious throne. Above this line is a throne with God on the throne. There is “A glorious throne on high from the beginning [and it] is the place of our sanctuary.” (Jeremiah 17:12)

God takes all the situations of life, Beloved, and He uses them to draw us to Him so that He becomes our sanctuary, so He becomes the very air that we breathe. He becomes our all in all. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. He is El Olam, the everlasting God.

They’re in Babylon and they come out of Babylon and what is the thing that they need to do? When they come back to their land they have to build a temple. And so what you want to do is after that “V” for Babylon then you come back and you draw another temple. This temple cannot be compared with Solomon’s temple. It is described in the book of Haggai and the people weep when they see it because of its smallness, because of its nothingness compared to the glory of Solomon’s temple. (See Haggai 2:3)

But that temple is eventually rebuilt and completed and you want to put “516 B.C.” It is completed 516 B.C. You see this in the book of Ezra. You see this in the book of Haggai. These are books that tell you about this reconstruction of the temple. Now this is: “Temple #2”. So above that temple write “Temple #2”. It is going to be called Herod’s Temple. Herod the Great who loves to build is going to make that temple more and more magnificent.

A boy is born to a virgin. His name is Immanuel, God with us. (See Matthew 1:23-25) That birth of that Son, and I’m drawing a little crib, a little manger, that is the coming of the Messiah, the One that they have been waiting for, the One that they have been talking about ever since Genesis chapter 3, verse 15. Finally the Messiah, the Christ, the promised One is here. He is born. He has ah, ah, He lives about 33 years and then He is crucified. So right after the crib put a cross. That is the birth and then the death of Jesus Christ, the burial and the resurrection.

Now when Jesus Christ comes what is His message? And you want to remember this. It is the same message of Jeremiah. It is “Repent.” It is return to God. It is come to Him and let Him get rid of your sins. And what does Jesus Christ preach? He preaches “…Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 4:17) The King is here! It’s King Jesus. This is the One that they have been looking for. This is the Messiah. And He is going to bring in His kingdom. But before He can bring it in, before He can take people into His kingdom He has to die. A corn of wheat has to fall in the ground and die, and if it does not die it abides alone.

So He says: “...What shall I say, „Father, save Me from this hour‟?” (John 12:27) [No, for this hour I came into the world.] (PARAPHRASE, John 12:27) Jesus Christ came to give His life as a ransom, a payment, for your sins and for my sins. (See Matthew 20:28) He died on the cross, Jesus who knew no sin was made to be sin for you and me, so that you and I might have His righteousness, so that we might have forgiveness of sins. (See 2 Corinthians 5:21)

Now listen carefully. Jeremiah is going to talk about the mission of Jesus Christ. He’s gonna talk about the mission of Jesus Christ when we get to Jeremiah chapter 31. It is gonna be so exciting. And because you know this chart and because you get the fundamentals in your heart and because you understand yes, there are earthly temples, but there is “A glorious throne [of majesty] on high from the beginning [and this] is the place of our sanctuary.” (Jeremiah 17:12) This is the place of our security. So whether there’s a temple on earth or not really doesn’t matter to us as new covenant people because we have a throne on high and Israel had a throne on high.

So now what Jesus does is, during this earthly ministry, He prophesies to them and He says, “Woe unto you Jerusalem”. He says, “Because the day is coming when not one stone will be left upon another. This temple is going to be destroyed.” (See Matthew 24:2) And that happens, the destruction of the temple, and you can just take an arrow from “Temple #2” and come down and just put blue bricks, right there. That temple is destroyed in 70 A.D.

Now Jesus is born about 4 B.C. He’s born the same year that Herod dies, so in 4 B.C. Jesus is born. All right, He dies about 29 A.D. All right, in 70 A.D. the temple is destroyed. This is destruction number two. This is “Temple #2”.

All right now, what does the future hold and where do we go from here? Because you see, as we look at the days of Jeremiah when everything was unraveling, when everything was falling apart and God reminds them, “Hey, the Lord is your refuge. He is your refuge in the day of disaster. There is, “A glorious throne on high from the beginning [It] is the place of [y]our sanctuary.” (Jeremiah 17:12) You are trusting in the arm of flesh. Stop it. Stop it. He is sovereign. He is in charge. Isaiah chapter 45 tells us that He is the LORD and there is no other. He creates light and He creates darkness. He creates good and He creates calamity. (See Isaiah 45:5-7) And you want to remember that word “calamity” because it is a key word in Jeremiah chapter 18.

So the temple is destroyed. What happens when the temple is destroyed? Well come over here on the line and put another downward “V” because what happens when the temple is destroyed then the Jews are scattered throughout the earth. It is called and referred to as the “Diaspora”; the Diaspora.

And so with the destruction of Jerusalem under Titus, the Roman general in 70 A.D. then the Jews, some of them were killed and slaughtered and others were dispersed around the world. Now when you read in the Prophets, you’ve got to look at what he is talking about. What dispersion is he talking about? Is he talking about the dispersion under Babylon? Is he talking about the dispersion after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.?

So the children of Israel begin to come back into the land. In 1917. And we’ll talk about that in just a minute. In 1917 the Brits, so to speak, took over Israel. They called it the Land of Palestine. I never call it Palestine and I will tell you why. The Bible never calls it Palestine. It is always referred to as the land of Israel, the land that belongs to Jacob, the land that belongs to his twelve sons by covenant from God.

But in 1917 we have the British Mandate. And with the British Mandate then Jews eventually began to straggle back into the land. And they started coming back because God had laid it in their hearts that they were to make “Aliyah.” “Aliyah” means to “go up,” “go up” to Jerusalem. So they came back, and through blood and sweat and toil and tears and sickness and death they began to get this land ready.

In 1947; and this is very important for you to know, in 1947 there was such distress between the Arabs living in he land and the Jews living in the land that the UN stepped in and said, “Okay, we’re gonna take the land west of the Jordan, west of the Jordan which is present-day Israel now. We’re going to take that land and we’re going to divide it. We’re gonna give half of it to Israel and we’re gonna give half of it to the Arabs.”

And the Jews said, “Okay. All right, we’ll do it.” They wanted their land. Why did they want their land? They’d been through the holocaust. They have been put to death in these ovens, five million; I believe it was five million Jews were killed in Auschwitz and in these other camps. They want a place where they can be secure.

And so what you have is when the Arabs turned that down; now I want you to remember they had their chance. And when they turned it down in 1948 what you have is you have Israel becoming a nation. You have Israel now declared. Can a nation be reborn? Oh yes! Oh yes! Here is a nation reborn. Here they are in the land. They have lived in Egypt as a people. They have lived in Babylon as a people. Then they have lived scattered.

And you want to remember this when you read the Prophet, ’cause He talks about how He’s going to go and how He’s going to bring His people back to the land, and how kings and queens are going to become their servants, their slaves to take care of them. So in 1948 they come back to the land. But have they had rest? Oh no! They’ve had one war after another war, after another war because the Palestinians, the PLO are saying to them, “Hey, this is our land. It is not your land.”

Well you go back and we know from Genesis chapter 15 God makes a covenant with Abraham and He lays out the boundaries of the land. (See Genesis 15:7, 18-21) God told them in Leviticus that this was His land and that it was to be His possession and His land was not to be sold. Why is it Israel is in such trouble today? Because Israel wants the friendship of the nations. Israel’s trusting in the arm of flesh. And in trusting in the arm of flesh they cut a deal and they give up the West Bank, and they make other concessions because they want peace when they will have no peace that way.

All right now, I want to go to the thousand year reign when Jesus Christ comes back and He sets up His kingdom. But what happens before that? Well I want to start from that thousand-year reign, the beginning of it, and I want to go backwards on the chart. I want to go backwards first of all for seven years. And this is called the seventieth week of Daniel. It’s in Daniel chapter 9. (See Daniel 9: 24-27)

It tells us that in a seven-year period this is what’s going to happen, that Israel is going to be allowed to make sacrifices, that they are going to be allowed to make grain offerings. The only way that Israel would make sacrifices and grain offering is if Israel had a temple. We know from Daniel chapter 7, and we know from Revelation chapter 11 and we know from 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, that there is going to be “Temple #3”. So write it down. Put it on the chart. You’ve got the temple. You’ve got the seven years divided into two periods of time of three and one half years each. In the middle of that seven year period after three and a half years, then a man is going to walk into the temple, into the holy of holies and he is going to declare himself as God. He’s going to take his seat in the temple, in the holy of holies. Nobody is supposed to be in there but God in His glory.

And then you’re going to have a reconfiguration of the economics of the world because at that time, according to Revelation chapter 13 you’re going to have a one-world ruler. And if you want to buy, if you want to sell you’re going to have to have a mark on your forehead or on your right hand. There are calls even now for a new economy, a new currency. There are calls where there is a global currency; a global economy. All of that is setting us up for the very last days.

But now listen very carefully. Just before these last seven years I think you’re going to see Iran and Russia and Ethiopia and others coming against Israel when Israel is at peace. So it could be right at the beginning of these seven years. So when you pick up the news and you read articles like, “Iran, Israel, Nuclear End-Game Now Much Closer”, you can look up if you know the Word of God. If you know Ezekiel you can say, “Hey, we’re getting close. We better get ready.”

In the article that appeared February 23rd in 2009 “The Cutting Edge” by Edwin Black, he says “In recent days four key developments have clicked in to edge Iran and Israel much closer to a military dénouement with profound consequences for American oil that the nation is not prepared to meet.”

What has happened? “First Iran has proved it can successfully launch a satellite into outer space as it did on February 2nd. Second, the International Atomic Energy Agency last week admitted that they had underestimated Iran’s nuclear stockpile by one third. Quite a mistake. Third, Iran has wrapped up its enrichment program with thousands of new home-grown highly advanced centrifuges.

Israeli counter-measures today have included a massive international covert program of equipment sabotage, assassination of key nuclear personnel and a vibrant dramatic offensive.” It says “The consequences for this confrontation between Israel and Iran are apocalyptic.”

Have you got that? They’re unveiling. The apocalypse is the book of Revelation. So today is the day that you need to decide that you are going to serve God, that you are going to acknowledge, “Hey, there is a glorious throne on high from the beginning, and I’m going to bow before that glorious throne and I’m going to give my life to the One that sits on that throne, to God Almighty”. I’m going to receive Jesus as My Savior. If you’ll do that you’ll be prepared for the days ahead.