Rabbi Schneider - Return of the King
I want to begin just by saying this, our Father that art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, Thy kingdom come, get this now, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Let's take a look at this clip.
During this time where everything is gearing up towards elections, I just want to encourage all of you, all my friends, all God's people, to keep our eyes on the main thing, to keep our eyes on Messiah Jesus, because no government, no president, no earthly power can ever solve the world's problems, the things that you and I are facing right now, that our children are facing, our grandchildren. The breakdown of absolute moral code in society where young kids are in school being indoctrinated to choose what sex they want to be. The danger of AI. Elon Musk on the forefront of AI intelligence said out loud directly this, he said, "AI is way, way more dangerous than any nuclear warhead".
We are entering into turbulent times, and I want to encourage you, my beloved friends, God's children, to keep our focus on Messiah as the answer to our world. He is the hope of the nations. Listen, our answer, our hope is not in this world. Our answer comes from another realm. I remember when Jesus stood before Pilate in John 18:36, and Pilate was questioning Him. And Jesus said this to Pilate. He said, "I am not of this world. My kingdom," He said, "is not of this world".
Our kingdom, beloved, isn't of this world. You and I are not of this world. We're aliens and strangers in this earth, the scripture tells us. We're looking for another city whose builder and architect is God, and no nation, no government, no president, no dictator can ever usher in the heavenly city that our citizenship lies in. We need to keep our eyes, beloved ones, focused on Jesus' return. The Bible says that we should be calling out to our King. We should be actively, not being passive, waiting for His return, but we should be active, church, calling upon Him to return.
The Bible tells us in Revelation 22:17 this. "The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come.'" Listen, we're to be actively involved. We're to be calling out. The Spirit, get it now, and the bride. You and I are the bride. The church is the bride. The Spirit and the bride say, Come. We're to be focused not on earthly politics only. I think you should vote. I encourage you to vote. We're the light of the earth. We're the light of the world. We're the salt of the earth. We should be involved influencing every sphere of this world, including politics.
I encourage you to be involved as the Lord leads. Vote your conscience. Vote for the person that you think will make the best choices for our nation. I encourage that. But I'm trying to call the church back to where our real help is going to come from. Our help, beloved ones, is going to come, hallelujah, from the Lord. Peter wrote this. He's writing to the church and he says, "We are looking for and hastening the coming day of the Lord..."
The church is to be involved, beloved, in bringing Jesus back. Jesus is going to return in combination with our longing for His return, our calling upon Him to return, our hastening His return, our expecting His return. This is the atmosphere that's going to be in the church when Jesus appears in the sky, when the lightning flashes to the east, to the west, and Yeshua and the glory of God cover the earth at His second coming. The church is not going to be asleep. We're going to be waiting like the wise virgins that were waiting and expecting that kept the oil burning. Hallelujah.
The Bible calls Yeshua's return the blessed hope. And so our hope, Church, and the hope that we have to offer is in Messiah Yeshua. So I want you to get involved in politics. Make your voice heard. Make your vote count. Influence the culture. But what I want to do is to help you understand that the only real answer is Messiah. You see, since the New Testament was written 2,000 years ago, the gospel has never changed. The gospel is all about the King of kings and the Lord of lords, the hope of the nation's Messiah Jesus. For 2,000 years governments have changed, politicians have come and gone, nations have arisen and fallen.
But the one thing that has never changed is the eternal gospel that Yeshua is Lord. That He is going to return to earth and reign. And that there's only going to be one King when He comes back to earth. So I want to get your heart and my heart in alignment with the only King. Let's not have hearts that are divided. We need to be hasting, beloved, His return, because His return is associated with our longing for His return, our calling out Him to return, and for our looking to Him as the answer in our lives and for the world.
Jesus said to the Jewish people in Matthew 23:39 the same thing. He said, "You will not see me again". "You will not see me," He said, "until you're saying, Baruch haba b'shem Adonai (Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord)". Jesus said to the Jewish people, "Until there's a critical mass of you calling out to me to return, saying, Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord, you're not going to see me". He said, "You're not going to see me". And then He said, listen to this, "Until".
You look at Matthew 23:39, notice the word "until". Until. Until you say, "Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord". They're going to be believing, looking for Him to return. Let the Spirit and the bride say, "Come". Compare that scripture now to what Isaiah tells us in Isaiah 31:1. Isaiah is one of the foremost leading prophets from eternity. Here's what Isaiah said. "Woe to those who rely on horses and trust in chariots, because they are many..." He continues, he says, "And in horsemen because they're very strong".
This is the same as trusting in politics. Again, hear me. I'm not telling you not to be involved in politics. Let's influence the culture. But at the end of the day, every politician is going to go down, every government is going to go down. Even America. In the kingdom of God, there will be no America. There will only be a new Jerusalem and the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And only His name is going to be glorified in the entire world. We're going to be united as one. The kingdom of God and the kingdom of earth will collide.
When the new Jerusalem comes down from heaven and hits planet earth, planet earth, and God's kingdom will collide. They will merge together. The two will become one. And at that time, beloved, there'll be only one government and there'll be only one King and the reign will be of the kingdom of God. So we need to prepare ourselves for that. We need to have hearts that are not divided. We need to have hearts that are pure and undivided. Our hopes need to be set on Him, the hope of the nations. I want to encourage us. Get our hearts right today. Let's be prepared for the political turmoil that we're about to face. Let's be involved. But we're not of this world, beloved ones. Like Abraham, we're looking for a city whose architect and builder is God Himself.
Jesus said, You are not of this world. Our hope is in another world. When I see all this going on and my spirit just gets disturbed because I'm just surrounded by danger on every side, you know what brings me peace? God's Word. When I turn to God, I have peace. See, Jesus is the Prince of Peace. And Yeshua said, "My peace I give to you, not as the world gives, but my peace I give to you". And beloved one, hear me. That's what I'm wanting to offer God's people today. I'm wanting to get our hearts aligned rightly to prepare to meet the coming King and to be able to have the peace that we need to be at peace in this world when we're faced with so many dangers and so many horrific things.
You see, Peter told us, "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellences of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light". We're of a different realm, beloved. We're in this world but not of this world. And we need to be prepared right now, Church. We need to be sober-minded and prepared to be able to get through the difficult times that are coming. We're already in difficult times. I think most of you are woken up to realize that things are not as they were and they're never going to go back to what they used to be.
The planet and our country will never go back to what it was when you and I were growing up. I know I'm speaking to a large age demographic, but for almost all of us, what you remember, it was like when you were growing up. I remember when I was growing up, there was no fear of going outside and playing in my neighborhood, of riding my bicycle around. There was no fear of that. Today, as soon as a little one goes outside on their own, the first thing the parents think is fear, thoughts of them being abducted. This is how the enemy has broken into the world and has poisoned our mind and how he's operating in the earth in reality. It's a dangerous world. We didn't have to face that most of us when we were kids.
We didn't grow up in a world, many of us, where from the age of 8 years old or 10 years old or 13 years old, most of our free time was spent looking at a screen on our smartphone. We didn't grow up in a world like that. We grew up in a world where we played outside and there was peace. Many of you remember Leave It to Beaver. We're never going back to that. Everything has shifted. And the amount of change that has taken place in the last 15 or 20 years, it's going to exponentially increase during this next season of time.
As quickly as things have changed, even over the past five or ten years, they're going to continue to change that much quicker over the next five to ten years. And the planet will not become more peaceful, but the planet will become more disturbed, more divided, and more confused. I remember I had a dream, an ominous dream. I believe it was from the Lord, my friend. I wouldn't share it with you if I didn't believe it was from the Lord. And I know you can say, Oh, someone's just sharing a dream. I get that. But please hear me because I believe this was from the Lord. And it's a message not just for me, but for all of us. I have a platform all over the world.
So I believe the Lord speaks to me sometimes in dreams because He has a message that He wants communicated. And He's given me a platform to do it. He wants it to be heard. Here was the dream, beloved one. I was on this ship. It was a big military ship. And there were hundreds of people that were part of the crew of this ship. And we had been on some type of military expedition, some type of assignment. And we had been out at sea for months. And the assignment that we had been on was now coming to an end. And we had pulled into a port. And we were getting ready to disembark from the ship after being on that ship for months. And I was in my cabin getting dressed, ready to embark off the ship.
And I knew that many lives had been lost on the ship during the last season that we had all been on together over the last several months where we had been at sea. Many lives had been lost. I knew that there was much sadness, that people had been worn down and broken down from this very difficult assignment that we had been on. As I was getting dressed, getting ready to get off the ship, looking forward because that mission was over and had been accomplished, just as I was putting on my final piece of clothing before I was going to get off the ship, hoping I was going to go into fresh air, a military officer with way higher ranking than me walked into my little cabin where I was getting dressed.
And this is what he said to me. He said, "You think the last assignment and the last thing that you had been through was hard and difficult. The next one," he said, "is going to be much more difficult". America and everybody in the world that's watching right now, the things that we're going to face ahead are going to be more difficult than what we've been through, more difficult than coronavirus, more difficult than the division we're experiencing in society. We're heading in to more turbulent times. Paul said this to Timothy in chapter 3:1. "But realize this," he said, "in the last days difficult times will come".
In the book of Mark, in verse 20, speaking about the difficult times that we're going to face, Yeshua says this: "Unless the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect whom He chose, He shortened those days". And so I just want to wake you up, Church. We need to focus our hope on King Jesus. He's our only answer. He's our only answer. Be involved in politics. It's important. Whoever is elected president, it's going to affect us. We should elect the president that we think best reflects our values, biblical values. But know at the end of the day that no president can save us. No president can save us.
So let's keep that line clear in our head. That our real Savior is King Jesus. He came to save His people from their sins. And He that sets their hope upon Him will not be disappointed. I just want to pray with you now. Maybe you've been watching the news and you found that without realizing, your heart became entangled with the news. All the negativity that's going on in the world. All the toxic infighting of the political parties. And it's hurt you. It's corrupted you. It's defiled you. That's what the media does because the world's defiled and corrupted.
God loves you. And this is His love being extended to you now, beloved one, Church, to come back to an alignment and into agreement with Him. Let's stay involved in our society. Let's stay involved as the Lord leads us to. But let's keep our heart divided in such a way that we don't allow the world to infringe upon our love for our true lover, our true Messiah, keeping in mind that He's going to return soon. And He's going to return for those whose eyes are fixed and stayed upon Him. The one that died on the cross, beloved, He loves you more than any politician ever will.
Father, we love You today. Jesus, we love You and honor You and worship You today. And we ask You to forgive us if we've ever got our minds off of You, if we've ever drifted away from focusing only on You, being involved in the world for Your purposes to bring the kingdom of God to earth, putting politicians in place to the best of our ability that most reflect a biblical worldview, but realizing at the end of the day we all fall short. And our hope and confidence, King Jesus, is in You alone.
Beloved, vote your conscience, but keep your heart and mind stayed upon Jesus alone. Every man will fail you. Jesus never will.