Jesus Is Coming Back Very Shortly!

In the midst of this global economic gloom and political turmoil, there seems to be only one conclusion - that the stage is right for the Lord Jesus Christ to return. For the Orthodox Jews, His return will signify His coming to them since they never believed He had come the first time around; and for the Messianic Jews (and us Christians) this will be His Second Coming.

Here is an interesting extract from Israel Today newspaper

Culture & Jewish Life
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
The Messiah Boom - Messianic and Orthodox Jews may not agree on his identity, but both say Messiah is coming soon | Aviel Schneider

THE MESSIAH IS COMING SOON! Orthodox singer Ariel Zilber proclaims the Messiah on a Tel Aviv street corner. Together with his friends on a Tel Aviv street corner, Israeli singer Ariel Zilber cried out, “Wake up! Wake up! The Messiah is coming!”

“We want to awaken the nation so that they will call on their Messiah,” explained Zilber, who turned to Orthodox Judaism a few years ago. “We are longing for the Messiah. Without Him we will not succeed in anything.”

Passersby were unimpressed. Perhaps they were tired after a long day of work, or perhaps they thought these people blowing trumpets and shofars (ram’s horns) on a city street were “crazy” Messianic Jews like Yaakov Damkani, who proclaims Yeshua (Jesus) with trumpets during prayer walks in Tel Aviv.

So, world get ready to receive your God the Creator whether you like it or not. Believe in Jesus and what He had accomplished for you at the Cross and receive His grace and salvation for your life.

The Miracle of US Airways Flight 1549

When US Airways Flight 1549 crashed into the Hudson River off New York City on January 13, 2009, I thought it was just another aircraft disaster but this time the survivors were blessed because no one on-board died. I did not take much notice of the incident.

And then a friend posted a note on her account with Facebook and shared about the amazement of the number of people on board the aircraft and its significance and that was when I decided to look at that incident again and discovered something very interesting.

On that flight there were a total of 150 passengers and 5 crew members thus giving a total of 155 people. With 5 crew members, it can only mean that there were three flight attendants and two persons in the cockpit - the pilot and his co-pilot.

Now this is the interesting part. With two persons in the cockpit, there are now 153 in the body of the plane and that number rang a bell. After Jesus had risen from the dead, one early morning Jesus appeared on the beach and He enquired of His disciples whether they managed to catch any fish and their response to Him was that they had caught none. Jesus then proceeded to ask them to cast their net on the right side of the boat and they hauled in a large catch.

In John 21:11 we read, "Simon Peter went up and dragged the net to land, full of large fish, one hundred and fifty-three, and although there were so many, the net was not broken."

The aircraft landed on the river and up to today, other than the left engine falling off, it remained intact just like the net which the Apostle Peter used to haul in the fish - there was not a tear in the net.

The pilot, Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, is probably a Jew (going by his last name) and for a long time, the name of the co-pilot is not widely known. Now, is that not very uncanny? Jesus was a Jew and His partner, the Holy Spirit, never likes to draw attention to Himself and prefers to give all attention to Jesus. So I was not surprised to find that his name was hardly mentioned. And so to me the two persons in the cockpit spoke volumes to me about Jesus and the Holy Spirit that they were in charge.

Also Capt Sully made an extra effort to walk the aisle of the plane, not once but twice, to ensure that everyone had evacuated the plane before he left to be with his crew. Jesus is always there to ensure that we are safe.

And then the point about the number 153. Do you know that the arithmetic progression of the numbers 1 till 17 is 153? and in the Hebrew, the number 17 represents victory? And this (which I just found out last evening) really floored me. If you take the sum total of all the Hebrew alphabet for this statement, "I am God" it all adds up to 153.

So is the Lord telling us something? Certainly I believe so. The 'crash' taking place at a time so close to the inauguration ceremony of President Barrack Obama leads me to believe that God the Father is telling us that we need Him and with Him at the helm, everything will turn out right. We just have to train our eyes on Him.

The Book of Psalms As A Prophetic Book - Part 3

So what does Psalm 109 have to say to us about the year 2009 through israel?

The psalm begins with a cry from Israel for help from the Lord. And we have seen from the beginning of 2009 that the whole world is now turning against Israel for what it had done in moving into the Strip to compliment what its air force had achieved. The mopping up operations by the IDF had been with widespread criticism from the whole world.

Psalm 109: 2-3 -v2 For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful have opened against me; they have spoken against me with a lying tongue. v3 They have also surrounded me with words of hatred, and fought against me without a cause.

And the interesting point to note is that Psalm 109 ends on a praise note.

v30 - I will greatly praise the Lord with my mouth. Yes, I will praise Him among the multitude.
v31 - For He shall stand at the right hand of the poor, to save him from those who condemn him

The Lord has promised that He will defend His own people, the Israelites and they will prevail. All their accusers will be silenced. So I don't know about you but I am looking for a good closure to the Gaza situation.

The Book of Psalms As A Prophetic Book - Part 2

In my last post i discussed how the early years of Israel found its prophecies in the Book of Psalms and I paused at the year 1973, the year the Yom Kippor War took place. It was an amazing year and Israel took back the whole of the Golan Height which belonged to King Solomon during his reign and was included in the Book of Genesis when God declared that He will give the land to Abraham and his Seed forever.

Psalm 91 -In the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein rained 39 Scud missiles into Israel and miraculously none in the land was killed by any of the missiles. The Lord protected the nation like a mother hen would over her young chicks and we can find the reference in verse 4, "He shall cover you with His feathers and under His wings you shall take refuge." Who would have thought that when Israel was asked by the USA not to get involved in the Guilf War that Saddam Hussein would have fired all those 39 missiles and look at the wonder of our Lord protecting His own helpless ones in the land of Israel. The fact that no one was killed was a miracle. Granted there was one death but the cause of death was a heart attack - an old man saw the effects of the missile on his home and his heart gave way.
Psalm 205 -In this psalm we have an account of how our Lord delivered the children of Israel from the land of Egypt and how He had been given them the land as an inheritance (verses 42-45). In September 2005, the IDF was sent into Gaza Strip to remove the Jewish settlers so that the Palestinians could occupy their former homes. In the psalm there was much sorrow from the people but He was there to remind them that He is for them and that He will care for them.
Psalm 208:9 -"Moab is My washpot; Over Edom I will cast My shoe, Over Philistia I will triumph". Who would have thought that President Bush would be greeted by a pair of shoes when he visited Bagdad in November 2008 and who would have expected Israel to attack the Gaza Strip to take out the Hamas terrorists for what they had been doing to Israel - over 8000 shells were fired into Israel from Gaza Strip in the spell of three years. Israel finally said, "enough is enough!" and unilaterally took action to silence the terrorists. Verse 12-13 tells us, "Give us help from trouble, for the help of man is useless. Through God we will do valiantly for it is He who shall thread down our enemies." Israel had been left to defend for itself; even its best friend (USA) turned against it and criticize it for what it did.

The Book of Psalms As A Prophetic Book - Part 1

For a very long time, history has it that the rabbis, in the 1800s, felt something was very special about the Book of Psalms in the Bible. Because it is the 19th book in the Bible, they felt whatever had been written in that psalm could be linked with events that would happen in the year that corresponds with the number of the psalms; e.g. they said that Psalm 1 would correspond with the year 1901, Psalm 18 would correspond with 1918, etc. Based on that alignment, those psalms that are above 100 would speak about events in the 2000s; Psalm 105 would tie in with the year 2005 and Psalm 109 would point us therefore to the year 2009 which is this current year.

And so I did some comparisons, after the fact, and managed to find some associations: -

Psalm 17:12 - "As a lion is eager to tear his prey, and like a young lion lurking in secret places". In November 1917, a young British general by the name of Allenby rode into Jerusalem and freed the land from the Ottoman Turks and made Palestine a territory of the British Empire. Incidentally, the national symbol of Britain is the lion.

Psalm 38:6-8, 11-12, 21-22 - here the Psalmist prophetically seemed to be crying aloud to the Lord for deliverance; believe it or not that was the year that Hitler started to round up the Jews in Poland and Austria and put them in concentration camps.

Psalm 42:11 - In 1942, Hitler started to send the Jews to the gas chambers; initially in small numbers but as you read on from Psalm 43 and Psalm 44, the cry went up louder and more fervently - that was between 1943 and 1945.

Psalm 45:5 - "Your arrows are sharp in the heart of the King's enemies; the peoples fall under You." Notice that the arrows in this verse is in the plural and because the two atomic bombs landed in Nagasaki and Hiroshima like arrows and they struck the heart of the enemies of the Lord and the war ended immediately with the two bombs and Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945 while Germany had surrendered earlier on April 29, 1945.

Psalm 48- A lot of praise and worship as the people rejoice when they see the hand of God crafting out a place for Himself. On May 15, 1948 the tiny nation of Israel was birthed almost overnight. Verse 4 talks about the kings assembling and they passed by together. The UN Security Council met and decided to set up the nation after much deliberation. And the psalm went further to talk about the pangs of child-birth and we remember that the young nation was persecuted by her neighbors.

Psalm 67- In this psalm, the first two verses recorded for us a special prayer to God to be merciful to them. Prior to June 1967, three armies gathered in three different directions ready to attack Israel - Egypt was in the south, Jordan was on the east and Syria was poised on the north and Israel was hemmed in and the only place they could turn was the Mediterranean Sea on its west. The Six-Day War was decisive and Israel triumphed and won more land than they started with and so the rest of the psalm recorded the celebration of joy unto the Lord.

Psalm 73:25-26- "Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart fail; but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever". Once again Israel was attacked and on the most holy of their feast days - Yom Kippor or Day of Atonement - and they were almost wiped off except by the hand of God on their behalf. Through a miracle the Syrian army was driven back in the north and Israel conquered the Golan Heights.

Now are these coincidences or is the hand of God really at work here? You have to judge them for yourself. I have more to share but that will be on another day.