(Expanded to cover additional material on 6/14/25)
Some years back, I remember an exchange of emails with a dear friend in which I mentioned things I have learned from my individual study, things preached/taught in the church I grew up in, that I subsequently found from my own direct study under the Holy Spirit as teacher, did not actually align with scripture. I mentioned several things, and my friend, who was raised in the same denominational background asked if there was anything else besides the things I mentioned in that email conversation. There was, but I still needed a lot more studying and chewing on those things before I could confidently articulate those in a coherent way, so I didn’t try.
Eventually, not that long after that conversation in the course of studying, it dawned on me, a resurfaced distinct memory of being told that all the promises God made to the Jews in the old testament, transferred over to the church when Jesus, their unrecognized Messiah, was crucified. I cannot even account for some of the things I currently/eventually came to understand about prophecy, over time and with more and more exposure, for sure. Like it says in Isaiah, we learn line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little there a little. God brings the pieces together for us as we continue to apply ourselves to studying.
God’s covanents are not all the same. Some are conditional; in conditional covenants The agreement stands on whether stipulations are met. The promisor is free of obligation if the promisee doesn’t keep his end of the bargain. In God’s 2 way covenants, man must meet stipulations.
The other kind are unconditional, meaning God promises to fulfill this regardless of cooperation by man.
Covenant is a word that appears 292 times in the KJV in various contexts. The first instance of covenant, though it wasn’t referred to by that term, was when God gave Adam and Eve dominion over the Earth, for as long as they were submitted to Him in that dominion, and to trusted Him. Man failed their part.
There are 5 very specific significant covenants between God and man. Four in the Old Testament. One is in the New Testament.
After the thoughts of men became “only evil continually” before God even sent the flood, He began making preparations for a restored creation. After the flood He made an unconditional covenant with Noah and all living creatures, never to destroy the earth again by water. He signified His promise with the rainbow. There’s no stipulation mankind and the rest of creation must meet. That covenant is unilateral. God cannot lie, and will do as He promised.
And sure enough, evil continued after the flood.
The next Covenant is the Abrahamic covenent, which has 3 parts. He promises Abraham 1) nearly innumerable descendants, 2) who would inherit a piece of land in Canaan and 3) this family would be a universal blessing to all people. (God reaffirmed this covenant to Isaac and Jacob in their day as well).
That covenant was mixed. Part of it conditional, part of it unconditional. God instructs Abraham to leave his homeland, follow wherever God leads and train this family also to do God’s will, and to practice circumcision in every generation.
We know they weren’t great about following and there were generations that weren’t circumcised, thus their arrival in the promised land was postponed and waylaid frequently. The generation that left Egypt nearly all died before they crossed Jordan. But ultimately God keeps His part by providing that huge family, providing that homeland, and blessing the world through the Jews. They preserved the scriptures. Jews hold more patents than any other nation and the number of Nobel Prize winners that are Jewish are disproportionally higher than other ethnicities. That’s just scratching the surface.
When the Hebrews were exiled to Egypt, they proliferated still, so much that Pharoah felt threatened by their number. They cried out to God, and God lifted up Moses to represent them and He revisits and reaffirms the Abrahamic promises on Mt Sinai, along with providing the 10 commandments as a “schoolmaster” and promising blessings if they obeyed , curses if they ignored the law. Their allegiance to Yahweh was meant to be outwardly demonstrated by keeping the commandments, practicing circumcision, and keeping the sabbath. They were to be set apart.
Once they enter Canaan, the people begin to demand a king. That brings us to, (after Saul), the Davidic Covenant. God considered David a Godly King, gave him great military victory for the Jews, restored order, destroyed pagan idols and the groves they were worshipped in. David desired to rebuild God’s temple. God promises to make David’s name great and to raise up a descendant who will sit on David’s throne and reign forever.
The New Covenant is of course, the promise of Messiah. The majority of Jews did not recognize Jesus as Messiah because they mistakenly assumed He would come as a conquering hero. What scripture they had as of that point in history, had not revealed the “great mystery” we refer to as “the church”. The Lord gave them part of the view, but the church age was like a valley that sits between two mountain peaks. You could say the era of David was the peak they were on, and God showed them the peak called the coming Messiah off in the distance. But they were blinded in part. Romans 11:25.
Their blindness will end when Jesus descends to the Mt of Olives. The Tribulation is the last week of years from Daniel 9. This is why it is called the time of Jacob’s trouble.
Daniel’s statue in chapter 2 represents literal periods of history and what empires and leaders dominated them.
The head was the Babylonian empire.
The chest and arms represents Medo-Persia
Belly and Thighs, Greece under Alexander the Great
The Roman empire divides after that, one leg is the west at Rome, the other East at Constantinople. The ten toes are thise ten ruling kings mentioned in the book of Revelation (ten horns) who will rule the world and some will hand over their power to the antichrist, and 2 will be taken by force.
The calculation of the “seventy weeks” of Daniel 9, begins with the going forth of the commandment (v9:25) to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. (Neh 2:1)
The 70 week period plays out chronologically in time, but is divided into 3 sectors. The first chunk, (7 weeks or 49 years) encompasses the commandment to restore Jerusalem, the rebuilding of the temple, and restoration of Temple worship.
The second division is 62 “weeks of years” or 434 years up until the cutting off of Messiah. Bible scholar Sir Robert Anderson, in his book “The Coming Prince” (1895) suggested Christ only offered Himself as Israel’s Messiah once. (Zech 9:9, Mt 21:4-5) and Luke (in Luke19:42) mentions the exact day of His public offer to the nation of Israel, on April 6, 32 AD, which directly resulted in His being cut off. Anderson calculates the decree to restore Jerusalem to March 14, 445 BC. Between those two dates, (the going forth of the decree to rebuild, and crucifixion) is exactly 173,880 days which makes 483 luni-solar (360-day) years, as the Jewish calander is based upon.
The People of the Prince (the Beast or Antichrist) are Romsns. They are the ones responsiblefor the desecration and destruction of the temple in 70 AD.
The final chunk left of the 70 weeks that is yet to be fulfilled, is the 7 year tribulation. It can’t take place until we, the body and bride, are off the planet.
That is why Matthew tells us to watch for the signs of His Second coming. Wars, rumors of wars, pestilences, earthquakes, strange weather, increasing famine, when they all converge at once and build in frequency and intensity like labor pains of a pregnant woman.
Jesus said we won’t know the day nor hour, leaving open the possibility we will recognize the season if we study prophecy, as He instructs us to study the whole counsel.
He admonishes the Pharisees because they can discern the weather (red at night sailor’s delight, red in the morning, sailor take warning) but had not discerned the coming of their Messiah who stood speaking to them directly.
Just like God knew man would fail to obey as He progressively revealed Himself to mankind, as well as progressively revealing His over-arching plan for humanity (history written in advance), God knew the Jews would not keep the law, and that Jesus would be the offering, ( rejected by the Jews of old the living sacrifice to pay for the sins of every man by shedding his sinless blood. Yet every man is not saved. Why?
Because this is the 5th covenant and it is conditional. Covenant and testament carry the same meaning. He even couches it in terms of the marriage covenant to make it understandable. Or conversely, He created marriage as a demonstration of the new Covenant.
A testament does not come into effect until the death of the testator. Once Jesus died, old Testament saints had access to the inheritance. Prior to that, they were held in paradise until the covenant would be fulfilled.
In Daniel 9, God delineates a very precise and clear timeline to bring all this about, and bring the Jews to finally recognize and receive their Messiah. That is all in the whole “seventy weeks” passage.
When Daniel asks what some of it means, God tells him to close the book and go on his way, because it is not for him to understand, but that it will be understood at the time of the end. This speaks to the concept of “dispensations”. God didn’t just drop a knowledge and understanding of Himself and His grand plan on Adam and Eve at the beginning. You could say that like the military, some things are released on a need-to-know basis.
As His plan rolled out, He dispensed here a little, there a little, line by line, precept by precept, to use Isaiah’s terminology. The claim that dispensationalism is a construct invented by John Darby is simply not accurate. He just reminded Christendom of something taught in the Bible itself prior to the monopoly of Catholicism over scripture. He merely reclaimed the concept.
If God can reneg on any covenant at all, then the New Covenant in Christ Jesus can’t be counted on. We can’t have it both ways.
Daniel’s statue in chapter 2 represents literal periods of history and what empires and leaders dominated them.
The head was the Babylonian empire.
The chest and arms represents Medo-Persia
Belly and Thighs, Greece under Alexander the Great
The Roman empire divides after that, one leg is the west at Rome, the other East at Constantinople.
The ten toes are those ten ruling kings mentioned in the book of Revelation (ten horns) who will briefly rule the world then yield their power and authority to the beast. Some will hand over their power willingly and a couple will be conquered and taken by force.
The reason I have talked so much about Middle East developments over the years is because God is not finished with the Jews. That is why the tribulation is referred to as the Time of Jacob’s trouble, aka the seventy weeks, aka the Tribulation! Weeks, in this context, means 7 of something. In this case it is 70 weeks of years and it pertains ONLY to God’s Earthly (chosen) people and their land, although unsaved Gentiles will experience it as well.
The calculation of the “seventy weeks” of Daniel 9, begins with the going forth of the commandment (v9:25) to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. (Neh 2:1)
The 70 weeks play out chronologically in time, but are divided into 3 sectors. The first chunk, (7 weeks or 49 years) encompasses the commandment to restore Jerusalem, rebuilding of the temple, and restoration of Temple worship.
The second division is 62 “weeks of years” or 434 years up until the cutting off of Messiah. Bible scholar Sir Robert Anderson, in his book “The Coming Prince” (1895) suggested Christ only offered Himself as Israel’s Messiah once. (Zech 9:9, Mt 21:4-5) and Luke (in Luke19:42) mentions the exact day of His public offer to the nation of Israel, on April 6, 32 AD, which directly resulted in His being cut off. Anderson calculates the decree to restore Jerusalem to March 14, 445 BC. Between those two dates is exactly173,880 days which makes 483 lunisolar (360-day) years, which is what the Jewish calander goes by.
The People of the Prince (the Beast or Antichrist) referred to are the Romans. They are the ones who destroyed the temple in 70 AD.The revised Roman empire is taking shape.
The final chunk left of the 70 weeks that is yet to be fulfilled, is the 7 year tribulation. It can’t take place until we, the body and bride, are off the planet because we are not appointed to wrath. Because the blood of the lamb that was slain, has been applied to our sin account. Much like the passover lamb’s blood on the doorposts.
This is why Matthew, Mark and Luke tell us to watch for the signs of His Second coming. Wars, rumors if wars, pestilences, earthquakes, strange weather, increasing famine, ethnic group rising against ethnic group, evil called good and goid being called evil. When these things all converge at once and begin to build in frequency and intensity like labor pains of a pregnant woman. That’s when we can rest assured our redemtion is near.
Jesus said we won’t know the day nor hour, leaving open the possibility we will recognize the season if we study the whole counsel, which includes prophecy.
He admonishes the pharisees because they can discern the weather (red at night sailor’s delight, red in the morning, sailor take warning) but had not discerned the coming of their Messiah who stood in front of them speaking directly to them in person.
Zechariah 12:10 says when Christ returns to the Mt of Olives, they will “look upon me whom they have pierced, and they will mourn for Him as one mourns for an only child”
The swelling tide of Jew hatred is another sign. That’s why October 7th was and is such a big deal. At the very beginning there was compassion. But very quickly it was as if somebody in hell released something invisible that encompassed the entire world like a cloud, and most of the world had the holocaust wiped from collective memory, along with other Jewish history and particularly the legitimate process by which Israel came back to being a nation in the 40’s. They have instead believed the lie that Israel is occupying Palestinian land. “Palestine” is populated by Arabs. The word Palestine comes from the word Philistines, which was applied to that territory when some Jew-hating wise-acre dubbed the Jew’s land with the name of their worst enemies as a denigration.
The so called Palestinians that were and are living there already have a homeland. It’s called Jordan.
But that replacement theology upheld by the church I grew up in, has spread like cancer through the church. I imagine Catholicism played a huge role, which speaks back again to the context in which I had that initial discussion with my friend, as I had come to understand that the Protestant Reformation didn’t bring us as far out of Catholicism as we thought it did. I believe many Catholics are saved, but it’s in spite of Catholic theology and dogma, not because of it. The ones that read and study the Bible for themselves are the ones that receive truth.
Martin Luther was antisemitic.
The Holocaust happened. Why would a people, with a homeland the size of New Jersey be hated so vehemently by nearly the entire world if it were not a sentiment born out of hell itself and if God were finished with them, why would they still be targets of hate today? Satan tried to thwart God’s plan every step of the way. Get humans to fall. Pharoah tried to kill all the babies but God preserved Moses. Caesar repeated similar when the Wise Men made known the King of the Jews had been born.
The alliances in the Middle East, the friendliness between Iran Russia which has developed since the Ukraine war, and Turkey’s move away from Israel into the arms of Iran, the Muslim takeover of the EU nations, (with inroads reaching way deeper in the U s than most Americans realize) all has the prophetic chessboard set up for those battles that will happen right before and during the tribulation. Tech for universal surveillance, digital trackable and (“turn-off-able”) money. Real ID will merge with implantable tech. Nothing you haven’t read about here in the past, but there is no way to deny the increasing intensity and frwquency. I know Israel hit all of Iran’s nuclear facilities last night. Today I haven’t delved in to find out what’s happened since then, because I’m writing this.
It literally takes me hours to write a post for the blog. I understand why that is now, as I have vaguely touched on recently. But along with everthing else, it had gotten me to a point I was so discouraged at the amount of effort and the toll that comes with keeping abreast of so much versus the lack of interest from people I told about the blog in person over the years; pastors, people in the churches I attended, I all but quit posting. I was burnt out by other things as well, but every time I had to decide whether or not to keep paying for the domain name and template, I felt that same sorrow over those who haven’t been given the gospel and the uninformed and misinformed of the church.
Before a Covenant can benefit anyone people have to know about the offer of a covenant. The new Covenant in Christ is the most important one of all, and before anyone can decide to enter into it, they have to know.
That is why despite having paid for the sins of every man, that doesn’t make everyone automatically saved. God’s wrath has been satisfied, as pertains to those in the covenant. A sufficient sacrifice was made. The lamb is worthy to open the scrolls of Revelation because He settled the debt and acheived justice, but people don’t want the gift, because they want to be their own god. The unpardonable sin is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit came to Earth to lead us into all truth. The Holy Spirit does the convicting. So blasphemy of the Holy Spirit in essence, is calling the Holy Spirit a liar. Holy Spirit says “that’s wrong” but much of mankind has seared it’s conscience. Con means “with”. science means knowledge. We sin with knowledge that it is sin. Of those who profess Christianity, many people are worshipping a god or Jesus they have imagined in their own mind because they don’t actually know or in some cases don’t care, what the Bible says.
The Jews are still chosen. If God were through with them, where would that leave us. We were grafted in, how much more easily can God graft back in, a branch that is of the tree to begin with? Israel is still the Apple of God’s eye. In terms of a prophetic clock, Israel is the hour hand. When the whole world is focusing on that burdensome stone (Zech 12:2-3), that cup of trembling, we are in the final hour. When the world is focused on Jerusalem, (such as dividing it for a two-state-solution), we are in the last minutes, and when big developments regarding the Temple Mount are at play, we’re seeing the final seconds, figuratively speaking.
It’s taken years of study for me, learning all of this after a calling God put on my heart April 19, 2009, to be able to articulate the scope of what I have learned in the way I have here. It is a rough summary form. I can’t retain all of the pieces, the many passages and the greater scope of prophecy as far as all the moving parts, but hopefully this might help someone connect dots they haven’t been able to put together before.
I can remember my Dad and his mom talking prophecy when I was as young as maybe 10, and it piqued my interest even then.
It is wild the way God will take you aside every so often, and show you how this, that and the other thread in the tapestry of life fits into the design He is weaving. Every time I have asked, when things didn’t make sense and it was making enduring the hard things that much harder, He has always been faithful to raise me up high enough above the panorama to see a comprehensible design is indeed taking shape and even though specific purpose is not yet revealed, that alone really helps provide the impetus to keep on keeping on for another day. There are myriad others who write on these things and have a more thorough knowledge, but I want to sow into whatever portion of the body and especially of the lost, what I have to offer. Back to the where the blog started, a casting of bread upon the waters, for God to do with as only He can. One person’s “difficult” is another person’s “near-impossibility”……but God!
Serve Him in the Waiting 
It is obvious that you have a passion for the Word of God and conform to the criteria of 2 Timothy 2:15. And it is commendable that you’re motivated to diligently search the Scriptures and have developed a Biblically sound eschatology (including Daniel and Ezekiel), have circumvented the lies about dispensationalism, gained insight into the saturation of society with the occult, have understanding of the present day apostacy (2 Thessalonians 2:3) including worldwide antisemitism, perceive that the Hebrew race is the keystone of prophetic reality, are not blind to the muslim population replacement strategy in Europe and now in the U.S., know that Augustinian paganism flourished in Catholicism – much of the same baggage being hauled around by the Reformers, have an ingrained suspicion of digital technology, and last but not least, found an appreciation for the deeply spiritual intellect of Sir Robert Anderson.
It’s refreshing and a blessing to observe 1 John 2: 20, 27 “living and active” in someone’s life.
I believe that we are witnessing “the generation of God’s wrath” (Jeremiah 7:29) coming into being.
…keeping “alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints” (Ephesians 6:18).
Duncan
LikeLiked by 1 person