Rabbi Schneider - Be Ready for Jesus' Second Coming
So many people are interested in the Book of Revelation. I mean, people that aren't even Christians, they're mystified, they're curious. What is the Book of Revelation all about? And through this series, beloved, I am gonna transmit to you the basic blocks of the Book of Revelation. Those of you that sit with me through this entire series, you're gonna come away from it really feeling a joy because finally many of you are gonna feel like you know what, I understand it. I'm not so afraid of it. I'm not so confused by it. Now let me say that I'm not gonna be able to make sense of every detail, because frankly, some of the elements of the Book of Revelation we won't completely understand until they're actually happening. But I do believe I'm gonna give you a general sense of it, and it's gonna be a blessing, and help you, because Jesus said in the Book of Revelation and about it, Blessed is everyone that studies the Words of this Book. Now I'm continuing where I left off last week.
Last week I was talking about the beginning of the events that lead up to Jesus's return. Jesus spoke about a tribulation happening on planet Earth that would lead up to and climax with His return from heaven. I showed you how the Hebrew prophets wrote about it in the Book of Jeremiah, for example, in the Book of Daniel. And at the end of last week's broadcast, I brought you to Matthew, chapter 24. And in Matthew, 24, Jesus was answering His apostles' question when they asked Him, What will be the signs of the end and of Your return? And in answer to their question Jesus first of all quoted Daniel. So when Jesus reveals end times' events, He goes back to what Daniel said about them, verifying and confirming Daniel's words about the end times are accurate and true. And then Jesus also, in Matthew, 24, said, listen, it's gonna be like this on planet Earth before My return.
And what He did is He quoted from two events in the Book of Genesis, the Torah, we call in Hebrew the Book of Genesis, Bereshit. He talked about the flood during the time of Noah, and He talked about Lot. He said this, He said, Just as it was in the time of Lot, He said, so it will be on planet Earth when I return. And we looked at that portion of Scripture last week in the Book of Genesis, and we read the specific events surrounding Lot when homosexuality was so aggressive on the planet that the, the, the angel, the man of God, literally was in danger of being raped by a homosexual community. Lot protected this man. And when Lot protected this man, the corrupt society said to Lot, Who are you to judge us; meaning that homosexuality was so widespread that anybody that rose up and said, this is corrupt, this is defile, this is wrong, don't do this wickedness, those that were practicing homosexuals said, Who are you setting yourself up as our judge?
And the point is, beloved ones, that's exactly the type of phenomenon that's taking place on planet Earth today. In other words, when someone, when a Bible-believing Christian or a Torah-observing Jewish person says homosexuality is not what God designed for mankind, the one that's saying that is accused of being narrow-minded, bigoted, and who do you think you are setting yourself up as our judge? In fact, those that say that homosexuality is wrong, they are being condemned by the vast majority of society. And it's not just here in the United States, beloved, it's spreading across the whole planet like wildfire, wildfire.
Now let me say once again and we're gonna move on, and I mean this, beloved, from the bottom of my heart. Look, my eyes, my eyes are wide open. I want you to know, if you're in a homosexual lifestyle right now, I want you to know God loves you just as much as He loves me. God loves you. That's why He sent His Son to save us, to save you, to save me. Jesus didn't come to condemn the world. Jesus came to save the world. If we were perfect, if we didn't have problems, Jesus wouldn't have had to come. But the Bible says that we shall call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sin. I want to just encourage you right now to know Jesus loves you if you're trapped in a homosexual lifestyle. I know that some of you don't know how you got trapped in the lifestyle. From your earliest memory you, you had homosexual thoughts.
I want you to know we live in a world that's, that, that, that is either so much sin, so many things go wrong because of sin, but in the beginning the Bible says God made us male and female. It's the original identity that God gave mankind. We read in Genesis, 1-2, God created them, meaning mankind, in His own image; male and female He created He them. So think about this. Mankind's most basic identity is either maleness if you're a man or femaleness if you're a woman. So when we live outside of the basic identity that God gave us, what happens is God's divine design, His divine blueprint within the human being, beloved, gets defiled. It gets corrupted. Jesus wants to bring us back to God's original intention. This is not a condemnation towards you if you're trapped in this lifestyle, if you think about yourself as homosexual or, or if you have an effeminate way of, personality right now.
I just want you to know, that's not God's original design. He created them male and female. And Jesus, beloved ones, listen, came to save us. The same thing is true, not just of, of, of, of, of the way we think about ourselves or in terms of our sexual practice, but beloved, it's even true today I'm seeing in, in, in the way that I'm hearing the younger generation talk. When I hear so many younger men talk today, you know in their twenties and so forth, there's like a spirit that comes through their voice that, you know, a lot of times I'm just, I'm just saying, beloved, please understand I'm speaking with a heart of love, but a lot of times, not always, but many times when someone is trapped in a homosexual lifestyle or considers himself to be homosexual, the way that they talk, as soon as one begins to talk, often times you can identify that this is a person that's homosexual or gay. It's a, it's a, it's, you can hear it in the way that they talk.
More and more young people are talking this way. More and more men are talking this way. Even if they're not actively practicing homosexual sex, they're beginning to talk this way. Why? Because this spirit is spreading across the earth, and this is why Jesus said in the, in Matthew, 24, that this spirit of homosexuality was gonna be so rampant across the world before His return, it's gonna be like it was in Lot's day. It's very serious, because once again, it is altering God's divine design for mankind. You see, the Lord was like this about many things. For example, He said that when the Israelite farmers planted, they shouldn't plant two types of seeds together 'cause He didn't want His original design which is perfect to be mixed. He instructed the Jewish people in the Torah to not wear fabrics that are mixed together. You either wear wool or you wear linen, but you don't mix them together.
God came against cross breeding animals. Why? Because His original design is perfect as it is. And so when men begin to become effeminate or engage in homosexual activity, or women begin to act masculinely and engage in homosexual activity, it is perverting God's design. I want you to know, Jesus is coming back and He loves us. And the reason that this is so serious is because not just it perverts our basic identity; remember in the beginning He created them male and female, male and female He created He them. Not only does it change our identity, our God-given identity, and mess with what God has done, but also, beloved, the Bible says that every other type of sin, if you steal something or whatever, is committed outside of our own body. It's a sin and it's wrong. But the Bible says when we create, when we have sexual sin in our life, even sexual sin that is heterosexual, but it's sin because, you know, maybe you're involved in, in just having multiple sex partners, or you're not married, or whatever it is, the Bible says sexual sin is worse than every other kind of sin.
We read about this in the Book of 1 Corinthians, chapter 6, verse 18, because the Bible says sexual sin is taking place in our own body. In other words, if I, if I steal something, that's wrong. It's terrible, and judgement comes because of it. But it's, stealing something is outside my body. But when I commit sexual sin, it's a sin that I commit inside, the Bible says, my own vessel. Something happens in me. You become one with the person that you're having sexual relations with. And so it's very serious, and, and, and we see that both in the time of Noah and in the time of Lot it was so serious that judgement came.
Remember Jesus said not only was it gonna be like the time of Lot that I just got done speaking of, but Jesus said it's also gonna be like the time of Noah. Well what was it like during the time of Noah? I shared last week, it was a time where the flesh was corrupt and the earth was filled with violence. And the Bible says in Genesis, 6: As the LORD looked upon the world when all flesh was corrupt and it was filled with violence, and every intent of man was wicked, the Bible says God was sorry that He had made man, and He grieved in His heart. And He said the, the end of all flesh has come before Me. And so what did God do? God washed it. He cleansed the earth, the Bible says, with the flood.
Now here's what I want you to get. Did God really flood the world in Noah's day? Because if God didn't really flood the world in Noah's day, then we can think, well you know what? What Jesus said about His return, it's not really gonna happen because Jesus talked about that it was gonna be like it was during the time of Noah. But if there really never was a time of Noah, if there never really was a figure named Noah, if there never really was a great flood that God washed the world of sinful humanity to start over with the new creation through Noah, if that really didn't happen, well then we shouldn't pay any attention to what Jesus said that His return is gonna be on earth like it was during the time of Noah. In other words, the earth would be similar in terms of its characteristics as it was in Noah's time.
But here's the thing I want you to hear, beloved ones, every major, get this now, every civilization on the planet, even though we've been separated from each other by great seas and great oceans so that there's people in the middle of an ocean that had no way of contacting with people on another continent because the ocean divided them, and this was before there was a radio so you could transmit through radio or, or, or Morse code, or television, before that, listen now, every major civilization, get me, has their own flood story. How can this be that all these civilizations that had no contact with each other, that were separated from each other with great bodies of water, every one of them, listen now, has a version of their own flood story; how there was a great flood on the planet. How did that happen, beloved? This ancient history that every major civilization carries, how could that be unless there really was a flood?
Listen, God is not mocked. What a man sows, he will also reap. Jesus said, Behold, I come quickly. Do not be asleep. I want you to hear me, Jesus loves us. The point of this is not to condemn us. It's not to condemn anybody. The point of this is to make everybody aware that there is a God. He created you. He created me. He created the world. And soon He's gonna reveal Himself to the world. And we need to be ready when that happens. You see, Jesus told the parable of the ten virgins in the Gospels. He said when He returned five of the ten virgins were able to go in with Him. The other five were not. What was the difference? Five of them were ready. They were ready to meet Him. They had made Him their focus. The other five had not.
My purpose is not to be some judgmental, bigoted, narrow-minded fundamentalist that's full of hate. No, my purpose is, beloved, to accurately preach God's Word, and to tell you that He loves you and me and He wants us to come to himself. Jesus said, all that are weary and heavy laden, come unto Me. Let's continue on. Jesus said, Repent, I'm coming quickly.
Now as we continue what, we're moving, we're moving here for a second. We're gonna move now, continuing down this trajectory. Jesus said the tribulation's coming. He told us what it would be like on planet Earth when it arrived; in other words, when things began to happen and right before His return. What we're gonna do now is we're gonna look into the Hebrew Bible and we're gonna look at some of the Scriptures in the Hebrew Bible that speak about how horrific the tribulation's gonna be.
In other words, when we look at things that have happened on the world, in the world, let me, let me say this. It's so difficult for us, you and I, all of us to come out of our own world. In other words, if we hear about a flood that happened 3,000 miles away, if we hear about a flood that happened in another state, many of us, we have a hard time relating to that. We see on the news the tragedies that are happening in that area, but the truth is, for most of us, we just go on with our own lives. It seems like that's far away and we have a hard time really getting too connected to what people are actually suffering. It's difficult for us, the point that I'm making is it's difficult for many of us to come out of our own world. We're so overcome with what's happening, or we're so absorbed is a better word, with what is happening day to day that we really can't come out of ourselves so much most of the time to understand what happened a hundred years ago, or fifty years ago, or a thousand years ago.
And we have a hard time really being too concerned about what's gonna happen a hundred years from now. But I want you to know, it's important right now for you and I to come out of ourselves and to recognize that something is gonna be happening in the world. It's gonna affect you, it's gonna be so horrific. It was only a little over seventy years ago that the madman Hitler almost took over the world; where the Nazi soldiers took little Jewish babies and threw them in the air and used them for target practice. It's so terrible to have to say this, but I'm just telling you it happened. You guys can turn me off because it's too horrific to think about, but beloved, face it, it happened. And something more horrific is gonna happen again in the near future.
Let's read now in, in the Book of Isaiah, chapter 13, beginning in verse number 9: See the day of the LORD comes... In other words, I want you to face there is a day that's coming. Jesus spoke of it. Daniel spoke of it. Now Isaiah's speaking of it: See the day of the LORD comes, cruel, both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate, and He shall destroy its sinners out of it. I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity... Isn't that what happened during Noah's time and during Lot's time? ...and I will cause the arrogance of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the ruthless. In other words, we look today in business, what are we saying, seeing in business today? We're seeing ruthless, arrogant people unashamedly bragging about their achievements; ruthless, arrogant people.
God says, I'm coming and I'm gonna put an end to the ruthless, arrogant spirit in men. I will make man more rare than fine gold. Therefore, I will shake the heavens, and the earth will be shaken out of her place at the wrath of the LORD of hosts and in the day of His fierce anger. We're gonna pick up next week, beloved, as I continue here. I want you to get ahold of this. Let's not stick our head in the ground like an ostrich pretending these things aren't real. Too many in the church today, all they want to hear is good. Paul told us in the last days men would turn aside from sound doctrine, no longer being willing to endure it; but instead, he said, they would accumulate for themselves teachers that would just tickle their ears.
In other words, men would no longer listen to truth, to what the Word says. It's too hard. They don't want to hear it. They just want to hear how God's gonna make them happy, how God's gonna bless them, how God's gonna make them wealthy without realizing, beloved, there's a lot more to the Word of God than just that. This is important.
Please join me next week. I want to encourage you once again, get the teaching notes, record these broadcasts. Invite your neighbors, people at work, over to your house to watch it every week with you. Use my teaching notes to start a Bible study. At the end of the teaching notes I've got all the Scriptures that I've used. You can look them up together, read them together, talk about them together. Beloved, let's start church in our home. I love you, my friends. I love you so much. I want to tell you I'm thankful for you. I'm in this together with you. I'm not setting myself up over anybody. I just want to faithfully preach God's Word. I want to thank you today, beloved, for tuning in. Father, in Yeshua's name, I ask your blessing on each and every open heart right now under the sound of my voice. I love you, my friends. God bless you and Shalom.