Derek Prince - What Happens To The Jewish People During The Great Tribulation
This is an excerpt from: Pressures, Tests & Challenges
Now, I have just time to point out one more thing. If you turn to 1 Corinthians 10 verse 32, 1 Corinthians 10:32. It says to believers: Give no offense, either to the Jews or to the Greeks or to the church of God. So there are three categories of the human race: the Jews, the Greeks, that’s the Gentiles, the church of God. And Paul says don’t offend any of them. Each of those will undergo a separate judgment of God. I just want to point this out to you. First of all, I’ll share a principle with you about God’s blessing and God’s judgment. God blesses the Jews direct. He blesses the Gentiles through the Jews. All of us who are Gentiles owe every spiritual blessing we have to the Jews. But when it comes to judgment God judges the Gentiles direct, He judges the Jews through the Gentiles. You can see that all the way through the Old Testament. You need to assimilate that principle of judgment. God blesses the Jews direct. He blesses the Gentiles through the Jews. God judges the Gentiles direct. He judges the Jews through the Gentiles. There’s a separate throne of judgment for each one of those three categories. The church will be judged before the judgment seat of Christ.
2 Corinthians 5:10, Romans 14:10. The word judgment seat in Greek is bema. It means the seat on which a Roman official judged his subjects. It was the seat on which Pilate sat when he judged Jesus. So, the church, have their judgment, which I’ll talk about in another meeting and it’s before the judgment seat of Christ. The Jews will have their judgment during the great tribulation. The great tribulation will be the judgment time of the Jewish people. I’ll give you one Scripture out of many, Ezekiel 20. This is addressed specifically to Israel. Ezekiel 20 beginning at verse 32. He says to them: What you have in your mind shall never be, when you say ‘We will be like the Gentiles like the families in other countries serving wood and stone.’ That’s exactly what they’re saying at the moment. That is exactly the whole purpose of the present government in Israel. It’s to obliterate the distinction between Jews and other nations. And it will never work. God says it will never be. You can’t do it.
As I live, says the Lord God, surely with a mighty hand with an outstretched arm and with fury poured out I will rule over you [Jews]. I will bring you out from the peoples and gather you out of the countries where you are scattered, with a mighty hand, with an outstretched arm, and with fury poured out. And I will bring you into the wilderness of the peoples and there I will plead my case with you face to face. Just as I pleaded my case with your fathers in the wilderness, in the land of Egypt, so I will plead my case with you, says the Lord God. I will make you pass under the rod and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant. Passing under the rod describes the way a shepherd counted his sheep back into the fold. He put his rod down before each sheep, checked that it was one of his, then admitted it.
The Lord says, I’ll check each one of you whether you qualify. And then He says: I will purge the rebels from among you and those who transgress against me, I will bring them out of the country where they sojourn but they shall not enter the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am the Lord. The Lord says, I’ll let you come out but you’ll never come in. And He says, I will make you pass under the rod, I will count you back into the fold and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant. Remember that every permanent relationship of God with anybody is always based on a covenant. So that’s the judgment of the Jews. The judgment of the Gentiles we just looked at. We’ll talk more about judgment later on, if God wills and we live.