Welcome to Rock Harbor Church's channel on Sermon Audio. We hope this message is a blessing to you and helps you in your daily walk with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So please settle in and grab your Bibles. Here's Pastor Brandon with this message. So I've entitled this message, Wars, Elijah and the Red Heifers. And again, I wanna stop in Genesis and I wanna focus on this to kinda tell you and relate to you what's going on there. And then when I get back, I'll pick up on Genesis when I get back from next week. Why I've titled this is the Bible predicts that Elijah must return before the great and terrible day of the Lord. It says this in Malachi, behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And that great and dreadful day is obviously the tribulation period, Jacob's trouble, the seven year, Daniel's 70th week. And this is the time where Israel will go through the most horrible time in history in order to break them to come to faith in the Messiah. And Elijah is sent back from heaven to prepare the nation of Israel for the receiving of the Messiah. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers. And that's a Jewish idiom. And I'm going to explain that later on in the sermon. but his main purpose is to prepare the ground, but there's a little unpacking there in the idiom that I will do later on. And then he says, lest I come and strike the land, the land of Israel, the Arez, with a curse, and it's called a harem, which means utterly destroy, and it's referring to, you know, utterly decimating not only just what's going on in Israel, but what's going on around the world. The good news is that we know how the story ends. We know that the harem does not utterly destroy all of Israel because a remnant is saved out of it. A third of Israel will get saved and come to faith in the Messiah, but two-thirds of Israel will be eliminated. There's no doubt about that, and you can't get around Zechariah chapter 13. But again, What's the purpose of Elijah? Again, Elijah is to prepare the ground. Now, if you recall, the disciples asked Jesus about this situation, because they knew about the passage of Malachi. And they were wondering, well, if you're the Messiah, where's Elijah? And Jesus answered them. He said, indeed, Elijah is coming first. and will restore all things. And then Jesus goes into his middle knowledge as God. Jesus is obviously omniscient because he's God, but when we talk about the middle knowledge of God, we're talking about that God knows counterfactuals, God knows hypotheticals, God knows all the range of possibilities, which could be a billion possibilities of people's decisions. And he continues to go on and explain to the disciples that if Israel would have accepted me, then John the Baptist would have fit that role of Elijah. He would not only been the forerunner that's predicted by Isaiah, but he would also play the role of Elijah. But the fact that they didn't, and he was saying that he would have been, but he's not, so Elijah does come, because there's gonna be a need for a second coming. Now, hypothetically, if Israel would have accepted the Messiah, he still would have been crucified by the Romans, he would have rose on the third day, and then he would have inaugurated the kingdom at that point in time. But as you know, that's not the way it went, and hence the need for the second coming. and the need for Elijah to come back. That's why at the Jewish Passover, they'll sit in an empty chair at Passover, and it's the chair of Elijah, and they'll go open the door and see if Elijah comes in because of this passage. Now, what you have to realize about Elijah and the need for Elijah is because Israel is facing giants that are seemingly overwhelming. When you're on the ground there, you get a sense of these giants, and I just, I don't know how to put this in words. There's a spiritual reality there on the ground and it cannot be overcome by human means. It's going to take God to intervene, it's going to take supernatural things to happen in Israel for them to overcome these giants in the land, so to speak. And obviously, Israel currently is facing a situation with Iran and its proxies that's facing annihilation. Now, the story between you and I is we know the rest of the story. They're not annihilated. They will survive all of this and survive even through the tribulation, one third. But that's not what they know. They don't know that. And so what they're dealing with is, look, we have an existential threat by our enemies. They want to kill us and annihilate us. It's a zero-sum game. We either kill them or they kill us. We annihilate them or they annihilate us. That's what Israel is facing. And obviously the fronts that Israel is dealing with, as you know, are like seven different fronts. Gaza, you know about that, but Lebanon, look, with Hezbollah in the north, I'll talk about that in just a bit, but that's a front. You got the West Bank, talking to people that live in the West Bank, they're like, dude, these people are a ticking time bomb. We were in Shiloh, I was in by Bethlehem in, in, Efrat, and the Jews living there know that the people living in the West Bank are nothing but a ticking time bomb. In one of the kibbutz, no, it was a mashav, I believe it's called, and it's full of all Messianic believers there. And we were sitting there talking to basically the mayor of that town, if you really wanna call her that, Aelia, I think her name is. And she was saying right there, about a mile away, is they come over, they steal our goats, they come over, they steal our computers, they come over and they do different things. And so we've had to help them with security in that area. And they're right there. I mean, they're like next to you. Okay, and we realize, talking to them, that the West Bank is attacking time bomb, it's another front. Obviously, the Golan Heights with Syria, and that eventually goes into the destruction of Damascus, but then you have Iraq, and then you have Iran, obviously, the head of the snake, and then you have the Houthis right there. So this is what Israel's facing. And you look at this and you're like, oh my goodness, how are they going to survive without divine intervention? Well, yeah, God's gonna be with them, there's no doubt about that. But I've talked about this and I wanna make this as clear as I possibly can so that you and I can offset the media, okay? Ezekiel predicts that the descendants of Esau have an ancient hatred and have shed the blood of the children of Israel by the power of the sword of the time of their calamity. And this continues on, this ancient hatred. And I honestly, you can read this, but you have to go on the ground and see the hatred for yourself. You have to see it in living color, it living and breathing in the people surrounding Israel. You have to see it to believe it. Because otherwise this is just theory. But I saw it. The Israelis see it, but the media doesn't report this. These people, are genocidal. They want every Jew to be killed, okay? And in talking to our IDF and talking to other IDF soldiers that we came in contact with that were involved in getting the hostages out, it is clear to me that Hamas has to be annihilated. They have to be completely annihilated. They cannot be allowed to live with their mindset. Same thing with Hezbollah. Hezbollah has to be annihilated. You cannot live with this Islamic genocidal people that are willing to kill you and kill themselves in the process and use children and use anything they can to kill you. And we were talking to one of the IDF soldiers that went in and got the four hostages out. And he told us that there was a scene where they helped one of these Hamas soldiers out, and I don't know what was wrong with him, his leg was broke or whatever, and he was injured, and they took him to an Israeli hospital, fixed him up, bandaged him up, got him back, and let him, released him back in Gaza. And they asked him, do you still wanna kill us? He says, absolutely. I still want to kill you. Even after we fixed you, yes, I still want to kill you. And they're like, Brandon, that's the mindset we're dealing with. We're dealing with that kind of mindset. There's no appeasing them. There's nothing we can give them. There's nothing we can say, nothing we can do to appease them other than annihilate ourselves. That's what we're dealing with. And so this ancient hatred is real. And so you see this kind of in Sinwar, who's the head of Hamas, saying, look, man, if we have to kill our own civilians, we'll kill them in the process of killing Jews. Because every drop of Jews' blood is fighting for the cause of Allah. That's the genocidal mindset. And then he just came out recently, about two weeks ago, and said, these are necessary sacrifices that our own civilians die. He didn't care. What kind of leader does this? And yet the UN and the ICC and the ICJ listen to this guy or whoever, a Hamas official on death counts, they listen to them on how bad Israel's treating them. Who would give this guy any credibility? This guy's a terrorist, he's a genocidal maniac. He needs to be eliminated, I'm sorry. This is the kind of craziness that Israel has to deal with. You can't live next, you can't sit down with Yaya Sinuar and say, hey, let's have some tea and crumpets and let's work things out. This guy wants to kill you. Sorry. You know what we did with the Nazis? The myth of the innocent civilians is totally eroded in my mind, totally eroded after talking to the IDF, after talking to the guys that are going house to house and fighting, after talking to the guys that are going and rescuing the hostages. They're using kids to fight this war. The kids have RPGs. The kids are spying on the Israeli soldiers. The IDF told us, they couldn't figure out how they were finding their location, because they're in tunnels, but they're using kids. The kids come out, spy on the IDF, and then go back in the tunnels. And the IDF will not fire on a child. They won't do that. But that's how Hamas uses people, right? And then when we find out, this is from the IDF talking to us, our unit, and then the other guy we talked to, that 90% of the homes they went into had RPGs, weapons, hardcore anti-Israel, anti-Semitic propaganda in the homes, okay? So-called civilian homes. The other thing they found, the so-called Gazan civilians were holding the hostages. What do you call a so-called civilian who's holding hostages? I call them a terrorist. If you're a part of holding hostages, you're considered a terrorist at this point. So the IDF goes in there and they have to kill these people because they're combatants. But it comes out as, well, the IDF is killing civilians. No, they're not. Because the IDF soldier that we talked to that got the last four out went in there and he says, it's the civilians that are firing on us. As we're trying to take the hostage, we're having to fight with the civilians who have RPGs, who have guns and are firing at us. So let me ask you this. Do you think anyone that raised a gun to a cop Would be fired on upon that cop? Absolutely. So if I'm the IDF and I'm going, I'm clearing houses and I'm going in there and there's the hostage and the whole house has guns on me and they start shooting at me, what am I supposed to do? Sit there and throw down my weapons? Okay, let me go ahead and kill me? No, no, you fire back. You fire back and you have to kill them because they're going to kill you. So this is where the civilians are getting killed. They're saying, well, they're killing civilians. No, they're not. They're shooting at the IDF guys. They're having RPGs firing at them. The IDF has to take them out if they're being fired upon. And like the guy said, we are the most ethical army. We don't wanna kill children. We don't wanna kill innocent civilians, but what do we do when they're firing on us? They have to kill them. So in the last raid of getting the four hostages out, 45 people died. Guess what? All 45 were shooting at them. You leave them no choice. You want to say, I'm a civilian, but you're going to fire on the IDF. Guess what? You're going to die. You're just going to die. Other things. Many who joined the massacre of October 7th were not even part of Hamas. They're not even part. They're part of just civilians who joined in. They just joined in to kill people. They joined in because they got into the frenzy. And then the soldier that went and got hostages showed me scenes I probably shouldn't see, because it's on his phone. And he's showing us some of the things they found. Some of the things they found is so brutal, it's undescribable. But some of the things like what we found is they used acid on the hostages and burned the bodies down with acid to the bones. And he showed us the bones. This is what these monsters are doing. Okay, it's not just they're killing people, they're mutilating them. Okay, it's on a demonic level. So when you go back to Ezekiel 35 and you look at this perpetual hatred, it is turned into, yes, I will mutilate you, I will pour acid on your body to its bones and destroy you for Allah's cause. I'm sorry, I can't deal with you at this point. I'm done. Israel hostage including four were last rescued have come home telling stories being kept by captive in civilian households. We fundamentally misunderstood what Islamic terrorism is. It is not the fringe group of extremists, but an ethnic and religious ideological movement. The religious values of Islamic terrorists are universally shared by the vast majority of Muslims. Don't forget that. We have imported Islam into the United States. Oh, and then we're shocked that our schools are going anti-Semitic with these foreign Muslim kids coming in here, paid by Qatar and the rest of these other Muslim countries. And we wonder why the universities are in the mess they are in. Islam is a threat. Sorry, not politically correct anymore. Islam is a threat. Here's the guy that was holding one of the hostages. He worked for Al Jazeera. He was a news reporter. He wasn't part of Hamas. He was holding hostages. He got killed, and then his dad, the doctor, was also holding the hostages. Guess what? The doctor got killed too, because now you're combated. You're holding hostages. These are beyond Hamas, okay? 70% of Palestinians satisfied with Hamas terror war. Of course they are. It suits all this cause. They want to eliminate the Jews and every drop of blood from the Jew is gaining their land back. Look at the polls. 71% of Gaza support Hamas. 56% expect Hamas to win the war. 62% in Gaza are happy to performance of Hamas. 59% want Hamas to stay in power. Of course they do. Of course, but they can't. But the United States wants them to. The United States wants Israel to stop the war with Hamas. They want Hamas to win. They want Hamas to take control and do some uniparty with Fatah and have Mahmoud Abbas form some type of coalition and then they run the joint again. Excuse me, that would be a cold day in hell if I would ever let Fatah or Hamas or PLO run Gaza again. Israel has to run Gaza. They have to run it. Otherwise they're gonna get killed again. Now, one of the things about Israel... and talking to a lot of the Israelis on the ground, they learned a valuable lesson after October 7th, that this appeasement with these terrorist mindsets and these Islamist mindsets has to stop, okay? They were trying to appease Hamas, they were trying to appease the Palestinians and the Gaza, whatever, and giving them jobs, giving them all kinds of financial benefits and stuff like that, thinking, well, if I give an Islamic genocidist terrorist money, then they'll not wanna kill me. No. They'll have your money and they still wanna kill you. That's what they learned. And here's the funny thing is, Jacob was doing the same thing. Remember, he was appeasing Esau by sending him presents. Seems like history is repeating itself again. Jacob again, typology for Israel. So he goes, I will appease him. He uses the word appease in the Hebrew. So, you know, Israel's making the same mistake again. But now they're waking up to it, that whether you're dealing with the Houthis, Hezbollah, Iran, you can't do this. And now they admit it. So I was talking to a Messianic believer who I will not disclose his name. He's one of our contacts there in Israel and gives us a lot of information. And he said, he even admitted, he says, up until October 7th, Brandon, he says, I was under the illusion that we could live in peace with the Gazans. but I was wrong, we can't, it's not possible. So this is the realization, no more, no more, can't do it. I stood on that area, we went down there with Danny the Digger Herman, an archeologist in Israel, and he took us down to the Nova Music Festival. He took us to the different kibbutzims that were hit, we stayed on the outside and we saw the destruction. When you're there, it feels like you're walking through Yad Vashem. It feels like you're walking through the Holocaust Memorial in Israel or even the one in LA or whatever. You can sense that, man, something evil happened here. When I was there, I was sicker than a dog because I got dehydrated, but I did step out of the car for a while and walk around in the Nova area. It hit me, I walked out and I was walking a few places and you know when you step on something you can feel it under your foot? I felt something, I'm like, okay, something's under my foot. So I moved and I looked down and it was a woman's underwear. And I stared at it and I thought, is that one of the rape victim's underwear? that I've just stepped on. Because they hadn't cleaned up a lot of the area. They've cleaned up some of it. But I thought, oh my gosh, I possibly could have stepped on a woman's underwear that was raped by Hamas. I, we were taken by Danny to other places where the bomb shelters are by the bus stations. There was one of them, like 45 people were shot because the bomb shelters, they went into the bomb shelters because the sirens went off and they went into the bomb shelters thinking there's bombs, but there was a death trap because Hamas got them all in there and shot them all up. Well, in one area, the guy, there was a guy out in front who actually survived it and he was there and he was crying in front of it. Because he survived, and the way he survived, because all the other dead bodies were on top of him, that got shot, and there were like 45 people that got killed in this one bomb shelter. And he survived, and we got to talk to him. When you see this and you see this kind of monstrosity, this demonic level, you realize these people have to be eliminated. You cannot negotiate when they're that wicked and evil. It takes me back to Joshua when God says, when you go in there, I want you to drive the inhabitants out of the land. And a lot of people from the Western society don't get this. They don't, that looks like genocide. That looks like, you know, look, the Canaanites had 450 years to get their heads screwed on straight. By the time Joshua gets there, they're committing the atrocities and evil that you see today. I get Joshua's command. because that's what Israel needs to do with Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran and the Houthis and whoever comes against them, they have to drive these people away because you can't exist with them, okay? So that's the giant, okay? The problem is the United States. That's the problem. So the United States is in a mode of appeasing these animals, these monsters. that rape women and mutilate them with acid and put babies in ovens. They are appeasing them. And so what's happening is Israel is learning that the Biden administration is no friend of theirs. And let me tell you what's going on in Israel politically so everyone can understand it. The Biden administration is working through the general staff of the IDF. Please understand the guys at the IDF that are in the general staff are political appointees. According to the IDF, you can rise to maybe colonel, but after that, it's a political appointee, just like our generals are as well, okay? So like Milley and Austin, those guys are woke, right? So are these guys. These guys are to blame for not listening to the warnings from the lower echelon of the IDF telling them Hamas is planning to attack. These guys said it never could happen. You need to shut up. Don't say anything anymore. And what happened? They were even warned on the night before they were attacked and they let it happen. This dude on the right was in a lot having a vacation with his family and he totally ignored it. But the problem what we have going on here is the Biden administration has been pressuring the general staff to do what they're told to do. Otherwise we'll cut the weapons off. This at the current situation right now is undermining the government of Israel, the Netanyahu coalition. It is undermining this because the generals don't wanna do what they're told to do. They're undermining the whole situation because they're doing what the Biden administration wants. So you have a huge rift in Israel currently speaking. And it's not like Netanyahu's an angel or anything like that, but he did get duly elected. And the Biden administration is trying to take him out as much as they can and undermine him. And so what do they do? They go meet with Gantz, his political opposition party who left the coalition, and they're meeting with all these other guys without the prime minister. I thought we didn't do regime change. Oh, apparently we do. So what's happening with Rafa? So that's the last stage where they wanna go in there. But the Biden administration has been slow walking Israel into Rafah. And basically this has allowed Hamas to regroup and get sympathy from the world and having pressure put on Israel to, hey, it's in this war, it's gone on too long. Hey, Hamas is not eliminated, you have to eliminate Hamas. I don't care how long it takes. But basically, the Biden administration is wanting to create a two-state solution and have, like I said, have them run the show. I'm sorry, that can't happen. So Israel now realizes you can't trust the Biden administration. Okay. At the same time, Netanyahu is trying to be ousted. So the Biden administration is working with like the Kaplan force in Israel, Gantz and other people to undermine Netanyahu. They want him out of there because Netanyahu is not playing ball with the United States. And by the way, the majority of Israel agrees with what Netanyahu is doing by the polls. So Netanyahu is not like going against the people, he's actually going with the polls. They don't want a two-state solution anymore. They're done with the Palestinians. They're done with all of this nonsense. Now we move to the North. So hang on with me. So while we were there, we were on Sukkot. It was during Sukkot, the Feast of Pentecost. And in two days, Hezbollah fired over 300 rockets and drones and missiles into the North. In two days. Now, we know they have a huge arsenal, 150,000 rockets. We know they're highly militarized. They're highly capable of staging a full-fledged war in the North. These are not ragtag group of guys. They're very organized, way more sophisticated than Hamas. and they pose a major existential threat to Israel. They get about $700 million from Iran per year. And what's going on now is the United States has put Israel in a defensive posture with Hezbollah, saying, look, you can defend yourself when they throw up their missiles, but we do not want you neutralizing Hezbollah, whatever, because we don't want to upset Iran. So the problem is Israel is paying, well, Hezbollah is paying pennies on the dollar for its weapons, and Israel is paying full price on their weapons to defend themselves. Look, if you know anything about military strategy, if you're always on the defensive, it's gonna cost you more economically. And Israel can't afford to lose all these weapons and always protecting itself. from these rocket barrages. So at some point, Israel has to go on the offensive and just take them out. So it stops. That actually helps you economically to go on the offensive militarily. Well, the Biden administration is saying, no, no, no, just consider defending yourself a win, defend. Iran fires over 300 missiles and rockets and drones. You defended 99% of them, consider that a win. You're insane, Joe Biden. You're insane, you can't do that. But that's what's happening in the North. And here's the thing, it's a zero-sum game. Either Israel eliminates Hezbollah or Hezbollah is going to eliminate them. That's what's happening. And so there's gonna be a split here. Look at the ability of Hezbollah to fire the rockets into Israel. Look at the ranges. This is not some little, you know, shooting up bottle rockets like Hamas does and they don't know where it's going and it's kind of all handmade. These guys have long range missiles and drones and can fly under radar. It's serious, man. And you look at what they can hit. So Hezbollah has operational control there. And at the same time, the Biden administration has embargoed Israel's weapons, basically $18 billion of F-15s, the 2,000 pound bomb, and those 2,000 pound bombs could be used to take out Hezbollah. And the United States is not giving them that. For some reason, they don't want Hezbollah taken out. The ammunition for Israel fighter jets, tank shells and artillery shells have been promised and allocated, get this, by Congress. It has already been voted by the US Congress that Israel is to get these weapons. But guess who's getting in the way of it? Biden. This has been approved by Congress. He is illegally acting right now. Basically, the Biden administration wants Israel to give up sovereign territory to Hezbollah in the north, which is inconceivable, unbelievable. Here's Netanyahu's speech that came out Monday, and good for him to push back on the Biden administration. When Secretary Blinken was recently here in Israel, we had a candid conversation. I said I deeply appreciated the support the U.S. has given Israel from the beginning of the war. But I also said something else. I said it's inconceivable that in the past few months, the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel. Israel, America's closest ally, fighting for its life, fighting against Iran and our other common enemies. Secretary Blinken assured me that the administration is working day and night to remove these bottlenecks. I certainly hope that's the case. It should be the case. During World War II, Churchill told the United States, give us the tools, we'll do the job. And I say, give us the tools and we'll finish the job a lot faster. Amen. Amen. Good for him. Good for him. Israel's at the point they can't appease enemies, and unfortunately, they're dealing with a satanic, Islamic, genocidal death cult. Let me explain something real quick before I go to Netanyahu. Israel is facing not just them, But scripture predicts other invasions, a Psalm 83 invasion. It predicts a Gog of Magog invasion, right, of Ezekiel 38 and 39. It predicts the destruction of Damascus in Isaiah 17, which appears to be like a nuclear devastation of Damascus. Then it has the judgment of Elam in Jeremiah 49. And that area of Elam, which is basically Iran, is where they have their nuclear facilities. And Jeremiah predicts that the destruction will happen in Elam. Now, there's a lot going on here. So, the good news is, is Israel has resolved to take care of business. That's the good news, and we have to continue to support that. Here's Netanyahu explaining this. At the beginning of the war, we said that we would return security to both the south and the north, and we will do so. Anyone who thinks that he has hurt us, and we will sit down and hold hands, is making a big mistake. We are preparing for a very strong operation in the north. This way or another, We will return security to the north. So he's gonna restore security of the north. You got, I mean, there's estimates between 85,000 and 100,000 people displaced from the north, living in the hotels in the Galilean area and Tiberias. And they're in the hotels and they've been out of their house for like eight months, okay? This is unbelievable. You have to be able to go back and they have to get back into their homes and live there. And so Israel has to secure this area. Hezbollah is making the place unsecure. Okay, that being the case, the United States doesn't want that though. So it inevitably is going to lead Israel into a situation where they're protecting themselves, but they're gonna be vilified for protecting themselves and establishing its security. It has to establish its security. But again, every time they do it, they're gonna be vilified. And so even right now, the UN Rights Office said Tuesday that the killings of civilians in Gaza during their Israeli operation to free four hostages, as well as Palestinian armed groups holding of captives in densely populated areas could amount to war crimes, war crimes. They're not killing innocent civilians. What do you call a Gazan with a gun in its hand firing at you? I call that an enemy combatant, not a civilian. You decided to pick up arms, you're gonna die. But see, that's how it's being slanted. So anytime Israel has to defend itself, the International Court of Appeals, all this other junk, the UN are coming against them and demonizing them. This is what they have to deal with. International Criminal Court could issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Golan, and other top Israeli officials saying they're starving them out. They're not starving them out. Israel is providing all kinds of food and supplies and medical supplies all through that. But apparently that wasn't enough. 451 trucks per week was not enough. So for optics, the United States decides, well, we're gonna take the authority of getting the food into Gaza away from you, and we're gonna take it, so we're gonna build a stupid pier that won't even hold anything. That's all gone now. And then we're gonna do airdrops of food into the Gaza. Brilliant, Blinken, very brilliant. You took it out of the hands of Israel who can keep control of the food. So what? The United States starts doing airdrops, they drop the food and guess what happens? Riots ensue, Hamas gets its hands on the food and takes it away from the people. And they hold the food hostage and they divvy out how they want it and they bargain with it. And there, if anyone's starving, it's because Hamas is getting control of the food. It's not because of Israel starving anyone out, it's because of Hamas. But you don't hear that, you just hear Israel starving people. No, they're not. Hamas is. And stupid United States is playing right into the hands of that. Stupid. Zechariah chapter 12 predicts that Israel's gonna be by themselves. And I get it. When you're on the ground, they have to break away from the Biden administration. They have to. I don't see any other way around this. The Biden administration is making deals with the devil. And here's the thing. I already know that that's predicted, but here's the wild card. Genesis 12, three says, I will bless those who bless you and I will curse those who curse you. The Biden administration is cursing Israel. Guess what? The foreign policy of God is that you curse Israel, I will curse your land. Oh, this is where it starts hitting us. When you watch God in his cursing aspect, when you mess with Israel, the first thing you'll notice is he'll hit your economy. Is our economy already being hit? Yeah, welcome to judgment. And then it'll start trickling down to other things. But the first thing he usually wakes someone up with, and a country up with, you want your pocketbook hit? I'll hit your pocketbook. You keep messing with Israel, I'm gonna mess with your prosperity. And that's what's starting to happen with the Biden administration. It's been happening for the last three years. And I don't care if it's Biden and he's a Democrat. I don't care if it was a Republican. I don't care. You mess with Israel, Republican, Democrat, you mess with the bull, you're gonna get the horns. That's just the way it works. Now, let me pivot to Israel's problem internally. The reason for Elijah's return is to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the children to the fathers. That's a Jewish idiom. And it means, that idiom means that Elijah must transgenerationally connect the current generation of Jews with its ancestors, okay? It must connect them to Moses. It must connect them to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. It must connect them to Daniel and Isaiah and Samuel and David and all the ancestors of Israel. Why? Because the current generation is alienated from their own ancestors. They do not follow what Moses set out, okay? So again, this is where the idea, I will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to the father, it's a transgenerational thing and it also goes into a current situation as well. Okay, so let me explain something. When you study the life of Jacob, before Jacob wrestles with God, he seems to be somewhat spiritually alienated from the faith of Abraham and Isaac, his father. He's kind of doing his own thing. And then we have his moment where he gets saved. We think he got saved when he wrestled with God. Okay, and then after that, He seems to be on a different path. But before then, he seems alienated from how Abraham functioned with God and how Isaac functioned with God. That's very true. So his wrestling with God connects him back to the Abrahamic covenant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And so that's what the current generation has to do in order to prepare themselves for the Messiah. And then the other thing is, if you look at Jacob's family life, it was dysfunctional. I mean, you had four wives, and you had all kinds of weird stuff going on there. And then all of a sudden, the kids are out of control, and Ruben's sleeping with his dad's concubine, and then the brothers are getting mad at Joseph, and they sell him off to slavery, and they nearly kill him, and it's very dysfunctional. Dinah gets raped, and all kinds of stuff. I mean, it's just total dysfunction. And the family is not really put back together until they finally get into Goshen in Egypt and Joseph's down there. And Joseph basically mends all the familial relationships once he gets them back into Goshen. Interesting, Joseph is a typology for Messiah. They don't recognize Joseph at first, but they recognize him the second time. But it's Joseph, it's through Joseph that mends Jacob's dysfunction that he caused. Okay? So the same thing is true in Israel. Let's talk about the transgenerational alienation. So you have the tale of two cities in Israel. You have Tel Aviv, which is secular Israel. And then you have Jerusalem, which is religious Israel. Both are alienated from their ancestors. Now I know they practice the feasts and stuff like that. But when you look, let's look at the religious aspect, okay? When you look at the Haredim, you look at the Orthodox, you look at that, and you're thinking, I do not think that's what Moses intended. I'm sorry, I don't know where you got that stuff from. I love you, but you have taken Rabbinic Judaism off the charts. That is as far away from what Moses intended for Mosaic Judaism versus Rabbinic Judaism. And the Rabbinic Judaism is alienating the Jews from their ancestors. I don't think that's what Moses intended. Okay? And I love them, but the religion of the rabbis is killing them. Okay? Now I move to the secularists. They're in the same boat in a different aspect. They too are alienated from their ancestors. Because I don't think Moses would approve of Tel Aviv being the gay capital of the world. Okay? So you can see that whether you're so-called religious or you're secular, you're still alienated from the original faith of your ancestors, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You're alienated. And obviously, when you talk to the Messianic believers there, they're not alienated. They have connected to the Messiah, and through that, they're totally in line with the ancestors, and it makes sense. So when you put these two together, you understand, oh, that's one of the reasons Elijah must return, because I look at both of those aspects, that cannot be overcome without supernatural intervention. It can't. just talking to the Orthodox, and it's just, their mindset is so dogmatic. You're looking at Pharisees like 10.0. It's like off the chart, man. And I don't mean to be critical of them. I love them. I feel sorry for them, but they have taken it out so far that it has no resemblance to the 613 commands of Moses. It's no resemblance to it whatsoever. Where did you get hats like that? I mean, with the fox fur, and they say they're crowned. I'm sorry, but I don't think Moses prescribed that. And then you go to Tel Aviv, and you're looking, it's like San Francisco. Hey, guys, what are we doing here? My heart breaks when I see this, because it means we're lost. We're lost. We're disconnected from our ancestors, from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And then let me bring to the contemporary. The contemporary problem in Israel is getting worse as we speak. Now, you don't hear this, but you have to be on the ground to hear it. When we were there, we were delivering PTSD books, okay? Because the whole nation's in trauma and talking to them, talking to people on the ground. They're like, they say, Brandon, there's like this cloud of sorrow that's all over us and we can't escape it. And a lot of the soldiers obviously having PTSD. I was talking to Danny, the digger, airman. He says, look, man, the stress of all this, he says, I had to get on high blood pressure medicine. It's affecting me so bad. And he's got kids in the IDF too. The loss of jobs is happening. And... Israel's tourism gets about four to $5 billion a year in regular year tourism. They've got nothing, nothing. You go into the old city, there's no one in the shops, there's no one walking around, it was just us. So a lot of the shops, they're not even open, they may come one or two times a day, and that's about one time a week, and that's it. So their economy is being tanked. and they're fighting the wars, they have this prolonged sorrow, and here's the interesting thing that I didn't realize until I started talking to them, they're skyrocketing in their divorce rates, particularly among the IDF. So these guys have been gone, been fighting, they come home, they're on leave, and the wife, the first thing out of her mouth says, I want a divorce. Now, I was just talking to them and saying, well, what do you think's causing it? Well, you know, like, you know, some of them saying, well, some of them had problems before the war, obviously. And so, you know, going to war and being separated exacerbated those situations. And some of the guys said they didn't wanna be home because it's so much a mess. And so they would rather be with the guys and, you know, fighting rather than at home. That's probably an odd thing to say, but it makes sense. You would rather be fighting Hamas than at home fighting with your wife. Very interesting, okay? Very interesting. And then some of them are coming home and, you know, hey, look, you're in war, you've had to kill people, right? And justifiably, right? And still though, like the guy we talked to, he gets killed a lot of people in rescuing hostages. And he needed, it's justified, he had to, okay? But even if it's justified, it changes you. You killed people, okay? And I'm not, you know, we have veterans that have killed people in wars too, and they're not the same. They're not the same anymore. And something has changed inside of them when they've had to kill somebody for even righteous reasons, right? It changes you. So these guys come back, they have the thousand yard stare, dude. And they come back and their wife's like, who are you? What happened to you? And they're changed. And the wife's like, I don't want anything to do with this. I'm out. And so what we're learning is the divorce rates are skyrocketing right now. And there's no end to this. The war's not gonna end next month. So this is gonna continue. And then they have the hatred from other people and the lies that's being told of them. And let me give you some positive things so you can continue to support them. Talking to the IDF guys, especially even the guy that went and got the four hostages, I'm talking right to him, man. And even our own IDF troop, Unit 66, they said, Brandon, you know what it means a lot to us is to know that there are people like you and Rock Harbor and your audience that supports us doing this. Because the whole world hates us and doesn't support what we're doing and lies about us, but it gives us strength to go in and do the right thing, knowing that there's actually people that support us, that believe in what we're doing. And I said, we do, we do believe it. And dude, it brings them to tears. It brings them to tears, and I think it's gonna open their hearts to the gospel, really, because that kind of support in the midst of all kinds of evil, that means a lot to them. But again, When you have all of this, think about it on your personal life. If life gets rough, any problems you have in your marriage, any problems you have relationally, it's gonna come out in hard times. Hard times reveal what's already there. And that's what's happening in Israel. And so they're being fractured as a society. They're having a societal breakdown in their marriage. Look, if you hit the marriages, that's the core of your society. If the marriages start falling apart, the rest of your society will go. Now I get why Elijah must return. He's got to connect them to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the true faith. And then he's got to connect the family units together to make them more receptive to the Messiah because they're falling apart as a society. I totally get it now. I'm seeing it right in front of our very eyes. Now, last part. Man, I'm running out of time. You gotta listen fast, okay? Listen really fast. Jacob has got to exercise faith in the Lord's Word instead of doing things that are not sanctioned. Okay, now we've been studying Jacob and we already studied that, hey, after coming out from Laban, he's supposed to go back to Bethel and that's where he needs to go, where the pillar is, the rock he set up and made his oath to God, he needs to go there. Okay, that's where he needs to go. The problem is we already know he starts hanging out outside the border at a place called Sukkoth, which is tabernacles or booths. And then he ends up moving to Shechem, and again, that's where Dinah gets raped. And in the process of this, he builds an altar there to the Lord. I don't know, he wasn't sanctioned to do that, but he just felt I need to do this. And it's like, well, Jacob, you were supposed to go to Bethel. If you're gonna erect any altar erected at Bethel, but not erected in Shechem or erected in Sukkoth, you're doing things that really are not commissioned by God. You're not being told to do it, you're just doing it. And then maybe you're covering up your disobedience with religiosity. We studied that, okay. So the same mistake that Jacob is making is the same mistake that the religious element of Israel is making right now. And let me tell you how it's intertwined with geopolitics. There is a fervency in Israel underground, so to speak, of rebuilding their temple. Okay, there's an element that won't. Now, politically, the secularists could care less, okay? The politicians don't want it happening because they know it's going to ignite a fire, okay? After all what Hamas has done and said. So the idea is to push for a possible temple to the north. We'll see, I mean, this is all conjecture, but we do know a temple will be built to the north of Israel alongside the Dome of the Rock. And these are the 3D projections of it. And it would be something like this. Okay? Interesting, if it does get built like this, and I'm not saying it is, but I mean, this is the hypothetical, then, you know, where the Golden Dome is and Al-Aqsa Mosque, where the Black Mosque is on the left-hand side of your thing, those would be areas of the Court of the Gentiles, which would satisfy Revelation chapter 11 if this scenario actually happens. Again, we'll see, I don't know. For goodness sakes, a rocket out of Hamas could hit the Golden Dome and take the whole thing out. Who knows? who knows how it gets taken out. But we do know this, Israel is gonna rebuild their temple. Okay. But, and here's the passages that talk about a rebuilt temple. Daniel talks about it, Matthew, 2 Thessalonians, Revelation chapter 11. So we know it's gonna be built. But it is not commissioned by God. Okay, this is the Jews taking it upon themselves to do it. Like Jacob taking it upon themselves to build an altar. Who commissioned you to do this? Well, it's not. According to Isaiah 66, you can read Isaiah 66, God doesn't sanction this. The only temple that will be sanctioned by God is in the future when Messiah comes back and builds the millennial temple. And that's spelled out in Ezekiel 40 through 48. Okay, so this, what they're planning on doing is not sanctioned by God. Okay, but here's the catalyst for all of this. The red heifers. The red heifers are in Israel. I was with them. Right, I was two inches away from these guys. Now, if you wanna read about the red heifer, you read Numbers 19, but the red heifers are becoming a herald for the last days. Now, to explain the red heifers is you read Numbers 19, and it explains in order to consecrate the people, consecrate the area for the temple and the people, you need the ashes of a red heifer. And it's gotta have this elaborate sacrifice, and you have to burn the animal in a certain way. You have to burn the animal outside the camp. You mix it with different types of wood, citrus, and saffron, and stuff like that, and you mix it, and then you take the ashes, and you mix it with living water, and those ashes can be used to consecrate the people to go into the temple. Okay. Now, please understand this. There has only been nine red heifers since Moses. Okay, nine. There hasn't seen, we haven't seen a red heifer for almost 2,000 years. And all of a sudden, they appear. I wonder why. Maybe that's just a coincidence, right? All of a sudden, after 2,000 years, they pop up. And guess where they popped up? Texas. The five red heifers that I was with, they're in Shiloh. They're keeping them at Shiloh, which again, maybe they're not the real ones, maybe they're a decoy, I don't know. I can't believe Israel would tell people where the red heifers are. They come from Urbanoski Ranch in Houston, Texas, and the other four came from Triple Creek Ranch in Rockwall, Texas. They're inspected and they have to be inspected that they have no more than two hairs that are discolored. They can't be tagged or anything like that. And so these are the guys, these are the heifers in Shiloh. And... The farmers raising them didn't tag their ears, so they're without spot and blemish, and they're past two years old. So they have to be past two years old in order to be sacrificed, and so they're past that. They're at the age where they could be sacrificed. Here's their names, Hope, Redemption, Virtue, Rebirth, and Comfort. That's their names. And again, I was right there in the pen. I didn't go in the pen, but we met this guy, Larry Bontrager. He takes care of the red heifers in Shiloh, provides the heating, and boy, it was hot there, and cooling and whatnot. He takes care of them. Phileas is called to take care of them. Shiloh is where the tabernacle used to be before Israel moved it to Jerusalem, David moved to Jerusalem, and where that yellow circle is, that's where the red heifers are being kept there. They could be decoys, I don't know, but nonetheless, what's my point? Okay. We haven't seen the red heifers in 2000 years. In order for the temple to be reinstituted, you have to have the ashes of the red heifer, not only for the place, but for the people to be consecrated, to be able to go do temple worship. And we know scripture predicts this. But let me now move into what Hamas said about this. Okay, this is very important. Because talking to the average Israeli on the ground in Israel, they had no clue what we were talking about red heifers, the secularists. They didn't like, what are you talking about? What red, you know, what? And they were like clueless. Like, wait a second, Hamas knows more than you? Now I'm not talking about the religious, I'm talking about secular. I don't expect a lot out of the secular. But anyway, it is, look what Hamas said. Hamas spokesman Abu Abiada in Gaza had chosen the 100th day of the Israel war against Hamas. He cited the relocation of the five red heifers to Israel from Texas as the reason for the October 7th massacre. Now watch what he says. He said, at the core of these beliefs is a specific Jewish Zionist idea involving the burning of the five red heifers, sacrificing one of the heifers, utilizing its ashes in a unique cleansing ceremony, allows unrestricted access for Jews worldwide to enter the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Now when he talks about the Al-Aqsa Mosque, he's referring to the entire Temple Mount. He's not talking about the Black Mosque on the south, he's talking about the entire Temple Mount. Wait a second, whoa. This is Hamas saying, one of the reasons we attack is not just we wanna annihilate Israel, is they're making a play on the temple and they have the red heifers and they're gonna sacrifice these red heifers. We needed to stop that. We do not want the Jews having control of the Temple Mount. Oh, you see now the religious aspect is playing into the geopolitical aspect now. It's bringing Hamas and Iran and Hezbollah all involved because the red heifers have made an appearance. And then Hamas knows what they're for. Wow. Here's the interview. I mean, you can translate this if you can. So if you picked up on that, he said the cattle are dying. No, but there's a whole thing that Hamas produced talking about the red heifers and that's why they attacked. Hey, that's a problem. Okay, so here's the thing. The red heifers are now, they've reached the age and they don't, apparently according to them, they don't have any spotting blemish, they can be sacrificed, okay? I don't know if Israel will publicize if they sacrifice them because it's going to create a holy war. You're like, well, how does one red heifer sanctify everybody? Well, again, it's according to Mosaic law. We're not under Mosaic law, but they say that the ashes of one red heifer mixed with living water can sanctify up to six million Jews and consecrate them. So they don't even have to sacrifice all of them. They just need to sacrifice one or two, and they can cover every Jew on the planet. to be consecrated. Well, this is going to spark a holy war, a Muslim war. And this is gonna stair-step them into more chaos. And here's the takeaway from this. What I am watching on the ground is scary. you have this eerie feeling inside when you're on the ground, like something's not right, something's not right, and it's not gonna be right. And Israel is moving more in a direction of isolation, but here's the thing, I was talking to Caroline Glick, we interviewed her, and we interviewed the former ambassador for the United States, Yoram Edinger, And anyway, they were giving us insight into this. And I asked Caroline, I said, please tell me, please tell me that Israel is manufacturing weapons now. And she says, yeah, they are. But the background is they're not gonna be able to keep up if they get attacked. They don't have enough weapons. They have to get them from the United States at this point still. They're starting to manufacture weapons, which is great, and they need to do that. But guys, I'm gonna tell you, I don't think they're gonna do it in time. I think eventually what I see after war, after war, after war, they're going to need help. And if they're gonna break away from the United States, guess who's gonna help them? A guy is gonna come on the scene who worships the God of war, according to Daniel chapter 11. And this guy who worships the God of war is the man of sin, the man of lawlessness. He will come and come to Israel and say, I'll be your protector. You don't need the United States. I can provide militarily for you. I can protect you from military invasion, Isaiah 28. So here's the thing. I'm your new best friend. I'll protect you. just do a seven year deal with me. And unfortunately, Israel does do a deal with the devil. It does. Now, That's what I felt when I was Israel, that this is not gonna end well in that sense. It does end well and Israel does get saved at the end through the tribulation after Antichrist turns on them. So a third gets saved, no doubt about that. And so that's the bright spot. But here's the takeaway for all of us. The takeaway is this, and I was talking to the IDF troop at dinner, and I said, look, here's my admonition to you. We here at Rock Harbor can't go in the trenches with you and fight Hamas, even though many of us would like to help you and go into the trenches and fight with you. I guarantee you that. But we can't go in the trenches with you. But what we can do is fight a different war for you. And it's a war for the truth. a war against the propaganda machine of the whole world, the satanic world that's lying about you. So if you fight your battle, and then we will help you by fighting our battle. And that's what we can do. And of course, we're gonna support them financially and all these other things that they need. But guys, the biggest thing, the takeaway is not only supporting them, but you and I have to beat people to the punch about the truth. If you go to dinner with a family member and they're saying, yeah, the Jews are committing genocide or the Jews are starving out people, dude, you have to correct that. You cannot let that just lie there. And it's, well, I don't want to offend them. Sorry, you offended me. I know what's going on in the ground and I'm going to set you straight. You're wrong. You've been listening to CNN. And that's how we help the Jews fight this war. We have to fight the war with truth. Okay, we're not in the, this is the trenches that you and I have to fight. So I don't care if it's your family member. I don't care if you have to hairlip the Pope. Who cares? You gotta get the truth out. You gotta get the truth. Not only is your family, your neighbor pops off and says, why are you flying that Israel flag? They're genocidal, they're occupation. No, you correct that. You correct that. You do that with gentleness and respect, but you correct that. That's how you fight. That's how we're going to fight. That's what they need. They have the bullets, they have the weapons. They need us to fight this other war. And if you and I can do that, then we will serve our duty. We will serve in our responsibility. And that's what the Lord asks us to do. Fight Him with the sword of the scripture, with the truth, right? That's how we can help. All right, let's pray. Father, thank you, Lord, for what you've exposed us to in Israel, the real story. And Father, we do support the Jewish people. We want them to come to faith in the Messiah. We pray for their security. We pray for their protection. We pray for the IDF guys that are going in there and risking their lives and putting it on the line. Protect them, Father. Send your angels to surround them as they go in and wipe out these monsters that want to annihilate them. Please, Father, help them through all these wars. We know you'll make good on your promises to them, but we do pray for their protection and for them to come to faith in Messiah soon. And Father, help us to get the truth out, to be those who stand in the gap, just to shine the light on error, and to set the record straight, Father, as much as we can, and that's how we will fight our war. Bless us now as we go, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Thanks for joining us for another lesson. We hope that this message is a blessing for you and helps you grow towards a more mature understanding of God's Word. For more information about our ministry, we invite you to check out our website at rockharborchurch.net. Until next time, remember, keep looking up for our redemption draws near.