The Jerusalem Covenant — Part One

I'm sure some of you have already caught wind of this, but there has been a story making the rounds lately that is generating a certain amount of buzz in the watch community that has captured my attention. I first ran into this over at Revelation 12 Daily, but it seems to be gaining traction and I felt led to share with you some of my observations concerning this topic as well as some related prophetic implications and speculations.

The news item that has a few prophecy buffs buzzing these days concerns a document known as the Jerusalem Covenant—and if you've never heard of such a thing before now, welcome to the club. The buzz of which I speak concerns the fact that some are eyeing this document as possibly being the genuine, dyed-in-the-wool treaty of Daniel 9:27—the treaty referred to as "a covenant with many" by the prophet Daniel and which will be confirmed by the You Know Who, thus launching the seven-year You Know What.

Confession time: When I first viewed the video at Revelation 12 Daily (linked to above), which excitedly claims the Jerusalem Covenant is the treaty of Daniel 9:27, I was not immediately bowled over. I know it's silly, but my inner English teacher cringed when the sweet young lady named Deborah who made the video (YouTube channel: Speaking Truth in Love) breathlessly gushed that the story was "unbelievably amazing." Sorry—can't help it. Incidentally, the video borrows Daniel's phraseology and refers to the Jerusalem Covenant as the "covenant with many"; however, no Jewish source I have come across refers to it that way. But before I even finished watching the video, my inner skeptic had reared his pointy little head, and my reaction, rather than being something akin to "Wow!!! I've just gotta write an article about this unbelievably amazing topic!!!" was a bit more like:

No way, José.

Deborah's video contains a short clip from another YouTube video created by the person she identifies as the source of the story—a very warm and sincere woman named Kimberly Ballard (YouTube channel: Moses & Elijah). After watching the whole video, however, I was still ready to blow the whole thing off as a bit of Frappuccino-fueled Rapture mania—but the Holy Spirit had other ideas. Poke. Prod. Nudge. And I knew:

Not so fast, José.

I am going to do something with this topic I have never done in the entire seven and a half years I have been maintaining this website, and that is write a (gasp) two-part article. I've always had a tendency to avoid them, partly because I'm a full-blown Aspie who likes things to be thorough and complete, and perhaps because I have occasionally seen other writers take liberal advantage of the multi-part article idea and get a bit lazy. You know, write one article and break it into five pieces, and voilà—chalk up five articles to their credit. But many of my articles do end up being a bit longish, so...who knows. Maybe two-part articles have a future here at A Little Strength.

This topic, however, turned out to be an ideal candidate for a two-part treatment, and so be it. In part one, I want to do something that the above unbelievably amazing video didn't do (aargh...it's starting to grow on me), and that's take a detailed look at some of the things the Jerusalem Covenant actually says, and discuss why what it actually says is significant.

In part two, I want to examine the potential relationship between the Jerusalem Covenant and the treaty of Daniel 9:27, and consider a couple of possible prophetic scenarios involving the Jews, the treaty of Daniel 9:27, the Jerusalem Covenant, the Antichrist, the Jews' promised kingdom, and how these may interact with mainstream Jewish eschatological expectations.

And God only knows what else.

A little background

The Six Day War erupted in the early morning hours of June 5, 1967 with Israel launching a surprise air attack that flew in over the Mediterranean and under Egyptian radar (I have read that the Israeli planes were actually spotted by Jordanian radar in time for Egypt to intercept and engage them, but by some strange "coincidence" a change in the message coding the previous day caused confusion and the message never got through). By the time Egyptian pilots could don their flight suits, Israeli planes had effectively crippled Egypt's vaunted air force, which allowed Israel to quickly establish air superiority—a factor that proved critical to their ultimate success in the conflict.

Two days later, on June 7 (the 28th of Iyar), Israeli ground forces took the Old City in Jerusalem from the Jordanians, and for the first time in nearly two millennia, Israel once again had control over their eternal capital in fulfillment of Bible prophecy. Awestruck Israeli soldiers touched the Western Wall for the first time in their entire lives, and some wept openly as they stood before it and prayed, thanking and praising the God who had so swiftly delivered their enemies into their hands.

The following year, on May 12, 1968, the Israeli government designated the 28th of Iyar as Jerusalem Day, a day to commemorate the unification of Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty, and on March 23, 1998, the Knesset passed a measure known as the Jerusalem Day Law, which established the 28th of Iyar as a national holiday in Israel.

Six years earlier, on Jerusalem Day 1992, a special document that had been drafted by Deputy Chief Justice Rabbi Menachem Elon was formally presented to Israeli government officials in honor of the 25th anniversary of the Six Day War and the resultant unification of Jerusalem under Israeli control—a document known as the Jerusalem Covenant. The document was signed on May 19, 1993 by 70 representatives of World Jewry that had convened in the Israeli capital.

The Jerusalem Covenant was not all that well known outside of Israel for a number of years; however, in 2013 a group called Israel365, an organization founded by Rabbi Tuly Weisz in 2012 that "promotes the beauty and religious significance of the Land of Israel," started presenting a hard copy of the Jerusalem Covenant to the Mayor of Jerusalem every Jerusalem Day, a hard copy that had an ever-increasing number of signatures affixed to it from people all over the world.

On Jerusalem Day 2019, which fell on June 2, Rabbi Weisz presented a copy of the Jerusalem Covenant to Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion that bore 216,168 signatures from people from over 100 countries. (Note: According to the girl who made the above video, this is why it's called "a covenant with many"—because many people have signed it.) Although over the last several years a handful of believers have begun to awaken to the potential significance of the Jerusalem Covenant, suddenly it's a thing. Suddenly it's a topic in the watch community—the small segment of the Church that is actively obeying Christ's command to watch and wait for His appearing and so are paying rapt attention to the ongoing fulfillment of end-time prophecy and to the cornucopia of signs that point with stunning clarity to the nearness of the Rapture and the ensuing events that will rock a Christ-rejecting world to its very core.

So what does it say?

The Jerusalem Covenant was drafted in Israel in 1992, and, of course, was originally written in Hebrew. Various English translations exist on the Internet, and most vary slightly in the details of their wording, punctuation, etc., and some even contain typos and other minor errors. I have pored over every English translation I could find online, some dating back to when it was originally published in 1992, and have put together an English translation of it that reflects details from at least three or four different extant translations. So if you read the Jerusalem Covenant online, don't be surprised if its wording varies slightly from what you see here.

The Jerusalem Covenant officially and biblically declares that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Israel—it is the holy city of the Jewish people, and puts an exclamation point on the Jews claim over it. But it is also carefully worded in such a way as to apparently welcome all other people groups and religions to Jerusalem to worship their false gods and promises to protect their so-called holy sites in a tolerant, inclusive, politically correct manner, and appears to back it all up with a generous helping of quotes from both the Old Testament and rabbinical sources to slap Yahweh's seal of approval on it.

Before you even read the text, however, I want you to understand something in no uncertain terms, and by the time we're through I trust you will understand why I am stating this so emphatically:

I ain't signing it: In the final analysis, the Jerusalem Covenant is deceptively unscriptural. I can't say it any more plainly. Yes, Israel is the Jewish nation. Yes, Jerusalem is Israel's eternal capital. Yes yes yes. Although it is biblically correct in its overall thrust and sounds wonderfully appealing to the biblically untrained ear, in reality it skillfully takes passages from the Old Testament that have been misquoted or only partially quoted and taken completely out of context and blends them with the teachings of rabbis that have been elevated to the level of God's Word to concoct a document that may at least play a role in the creation of the treaty of Daniel 9:27, and help lead the Jews to believe that Messianic Age prophecies are being fulfilled and thus its advent is upon them. As a result, it may help goad Israel into embracing the peace-making impostor whom they will mistakenly accept as their Messiah—and I am convinced that precious few of the 200,000-plus people who have signed the Jerusalem Covenant have any idea what I'm talking about.

Here is the text of the Jerusalem Covenant, with a few Scripture references added, in addition to references to notes that I will discuss afterwards:

Note #1: The two phrases that express the idea that Jerusalem "unites the people of Israel to one another" and "links heavenly Jerusalem with earthly Jerusalem" are nowhere to be found in the Bible, but are quoted as if they were Scripture. I can find no source for them, so they are almost certainly from the Talmud—the teachings of thousands of rabbis that were collected in written form primarily from the second through the fifth centuries and that have been elevated to the level of Scripture in the minds of the Jews. Needless to say, this is a huge problem. The Jews routinely mix and match the words of a holy God with the opinions of highly learned but spiritually unregenerate men, and confusion and deception are the inevitable result.

Here, the first phrase is being used to emphasize the unity of the Jewish people, especially in regard to their love for Jerusalem. Of course, there is nothing wrong with that—that's a good thing. And that's the point: The Jerusalem Covenant is filled with lots of things that sound really good. The problem is that all the good-sounding stuff serves to mask a few things that are false and dangerously deceptive.

The second phrase is a reference to a "heavenly Jerusalem," which for biblically knowledgeable believers is eerily reminiscent of the New Jerusalem spoken of by the apostle John in Revelation 21, the future home of the Church. Of course, Jews regard the entire New Testament as so much contrived fiction, so it can't be that, no sir. So, gosh, I just can't imagine where the Jews might have gotten this idea—but they couldn't possibly have pilfered the germ of this idea from what John wrote around AD 95. Rabbi Art Vernon shares some interesting insights into the Jewish concept of a heavenly Jerusalem (and note the bizarre interpretation of Ps. 122:3):

So, this phrase serves to spin the fanciful and unbiblical notion that the earthly Jerusalem and the heavenly Jerusalem are to be joined together—and gosh, I can't imagine how...maybe with a little help from the Messiah, perhaps?

Speaking of whom...note the phrase "divine messianic redemption." For religious Jews, this is key. We'll get into this a bit more in part two, but that's where all this is heading: In the minds of the Jews, the mashiach will arrive soon, bring peace, and rebuild the temple. That's why the Jews will believe he is the mashiach—and hey, who knows...he might even be responsible for joining the earthly Jerusalem with its heavenly counterpart, with some Jews convinced that the heavenly Jerusalem will come floating down to earth from heaven, just like the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21:2. (Wow, another remarkable coincidence.)

Naturally, when the Jews say "divine messianic redemption," they assume the divine aspect of it is a divine God working through a mortal man.

Imagine their surprise when this mortal man claims to be divine, too.

Note #2: When the Jerusalem Covenant quotes Isaiah 2:2 concerning Jerusalem and says "all the nations shall stream towards it," it serves as a perfect example of a fundamental error that pervades much of Jewish thinking today in regard to the end times—their timing is all goofed up.

Isaiah has a lot to say about the Jews' promised kingdom, and arguably the first reference to it kicks off chapter 2:

Isaiah is clearly speaking of the Millennial Kingdom under the rule of the Messiah, which will be established following the Tribulation and the Second Coming. As born-again believers who study God's Word, we all know that. But that's just the problem:

Timing issues: Since the Jews have rejected their real Messiah, when they accept the Antichrist in His place, they will be gearing up for their kingdom to be established at that time, well before God's sovereignly ordained time. That's part of the deception.

Obviously the Jews have no concept of either Daniel's 70th Week or the Second Coming. They will sincerely believe the man they have mistakenly embraced as their Messiah will be ready to usher in their promised kingdom, since he's apparently brought them peace and given them their Third Temple. So...bada bing, bada boom: time for the kingdom.

In other words, they have their end-time timing completely mangled for one simple reason:

They have left Christ out of the picture.

I think it's God's brand of poetic justice that it will be the Jews' rejection of their Messiah two thousand years ago that will end up leading them into the arms of their false Messiah and into the final phase of His judgment.

When you remove Christ from Bible prophecy, the resulting confused jumble of disjoint prophetic pieces can be force-fitted together in a wide variety of creative ways—all of them wrong.

That's what it's gonna take: This is something that needs to be said, and I want to say it as clearly and as emphatically as my stumbling words will allow me to say it. Earlier I said that, in the final analysis, the Jerusalem Covenant is deceptively unscriptural—and indeed it is. But I don't mean that as an attack on the Jewish people. I am not calling the people of Israel liars or deceivers. It is they who have been lied to and deceived for two thousand years by their own religious leaders who have been forced to cover their own tracks as well as the tracks of their predecessors in order to re-invent Judaism after it was essentially destroyed in AD 70 and maintain their power and position, not to mention the fact that the Jewish people have been partially hardened to the identity of their Messiah by God Himself (Rom. 11:25). The Jews in Israel today who are eagerly anticipating the arrival of their (false) Messiah and the (false) peace he will bring them and the temple he will allow them to build are genuine and sincere, but are adrift in a sea of error due primarily to their deeply entrenched rejection of their true Messiah Yehoshua HaMashiach—rejection that has been relentlessly indoctrinated into them for two millennia. God is going to allow them to plunge headlong into the waiting arms of the Antichrist and into the throes of the Great Tribulation because He loves them and plans to reconcile them to Himself, but this is the only way He can get through to them. Israel has always has been and always will be the apple of God's eye, and His ultimate plan is to bless His Chosen People with their real kingdom after they come to accept their real Messiah. But that's what it's going to take to get them to that point.

When the Jerusalem Covenant speaks of Jerusalem and quotes Isaiah 2:2 and says "all the nations shall stream towards it," this is absolutely true; but it will be fulfilled in the Millennial Kingdom, under the rule of their Messiah Jesus Christ. This is not going to be fulfilled any time prior to that by an impostor the Jews have been duped into receiving as their Messiah. And make no mistake:

The misapplication of this verse is just one example of things that point toward the coming effort to internationalize Jerusalem.

And if you thought that was bad, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Note #3: This is one of the most egregious manhandlings of Scripture in the entire document, and it's hard to avoid concluding that it was manhandled for a reason. I want you to compare the Jerusalem Covenant's rendering of this verse side by side with the way it is normally rendered by the vast majority of English translations of the Bible.

Again, English translations of the Jerusalem Covenant do vary somewhat, but this rendering is typical. Note that some versions put quotation marks around the entire sentence as if it were entirely from Scripture, while some do not put quotation marks around the first clause "each and every nation will live by its own faith" (perhaps an acknowledgment that it's too much of a stretch to suggest it's scriptural). Either way, it's clear that the entire line is deceptively being offered as a rendering of a verse from the prophet Micah.

The Jerusalem Covenant presents the following as a version of Micah 4:5:

Now, here is the same verse from the venerable King James Version:

Not quite the same, wouldn't you agree? These two versions of this verse convey radically different meanings.

In reality, Micah is saying, and commentators are solidly aligned on this, that while the people of other nations may follow their false gods, the people of Israel will follow the LORD their God forever. Here is a snippet from what one source has to say, and this interpretation is completely representative of the way other commentators view this passage:

On the other hand, the Jerusalem Covenant says "each and every nation will live by its own faith: For all the peoples will go forward, each with its own Divine Name," which sounds very much like an open invitation to all the peoples of the world with whatever gods they worship to come marching into Jerusalem to proudly and openly worship those gods, right alongside the Jews who just happen to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

In stark contrast to the idea that "each and every nation will live by its own faith" and "all the peoples will go forward, each with its own Divine Name," the prophet Zechariah casts a different light on what will be required of the nations of the world under the rule of the Messiah during the Millennial Kingdom:

Every nation will be required to go to Jerusalem each year to keep the Feast of Tabernacles, and in so doing worship the God of Israel and Him alone. Gosh, that doesn't sound very tolerant and inclusive, now does it?

When you compare the phrase "each with its own Divine Name" to the real McCoy "every one in the name of his god," it's patently obvious that the verse actually says that other peoples will each walk in the name of their false god. The Jerusalem Covenant, however, manages to give this a politically correct spin by making it sound as if the verse means that all peoples will be free to proclaim the "Divine Name" of whatever god they worship—like that's a good thing. Or, maybe the Jews want to spin this to mean that all peoples worship the same God, but just call Him different "Divine Names." But that's just it:

It doesn't matter how you spin this, because both interpretations are 100 percent unscriptural and both arguably qualify as heresy.

The satanically inspired idea of people parading into Jerusalem proclaiming the "Divine Names" of false gods is not a good thing, nor is the satanically inspired idea that all religions worship the same God, but just call Him different "Divine Names." The bottom line is that there is only one God—the one true God whose prophetically self-confirming Word establishes Him as the God of the Bible—not the pagan deity described in the Qur'an or any other so-called holy book.

According to the prophet Zechariah, during the real kingdom, after the physical return of the real Messiah, the nations of the world will come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles and worship the one true God or they will be stricken with drought and plagues.

Any questions?

But this sparkling little gem in the Jerusalem Covenant, as politically correct as it is, does serve an important purpose:

It leads us squarely into the crosshairs of...

Note #4: The kill shot. So, immediately following the politically correct but heretical statements of Note #3, we have this:

And in this spirit... What spirit? The spirit of antichrist, that's what spirit. So the Jerusalem Covenant states that in the future, when the world fully recognizes Israel as the Jewish nation and Jerusalem as its capital, the Jews in turn will guarantee the rights of other religions (i.e. Islam) to worship their false gods (i.e. Allah) at their "holy places" (i.e. on the Temple Mount at the Al-Aqsa Mosque or at the Dome of the Rock) in total, guaranteed freedom.

Since the Six Day War in 1967, during which Moshe Dayan inexplicably surrendered the Temple Mount area to Jordanian control in what he saw as a grand, conciliatory gesture that he honestly believed would prevent another war (when in reality it all but guaranteed one), the Muslims have been free to do whatever they jolly well please on the Temple Mount. At the same time, Jews have had very limited access to what is in fact the holiest site in all of Judaism; and even if Jews do manage to make it up there, if they are seen moving their mouths silently, Muslim guards will assume they are praying and will immediately and forcefully remove them from the premises.

So, what the Jerusalem Covenant is driving at is this:

If the world will allow us as Jews to worship our God on the Temple Mount (in a T-E-M-P-L-E, hint...hint), we'll make sure the Muslims are allowed to continue worshiping their god on the Temple Mount in their mosque.

That sounds fair, right? That conveys a tolerant and inclusive tone, doesn't it?

I can only imagine how that sounds to the decidedly politically incorrect God of the Bible, who has this to say about idols and false gods like Allah:

And it's clear where this is leading:

Look, they can keep their mosque—but we want our temple.

And as we'll see in greater depth in part two, a charismatic world leader is going to come along soon enough and make darn sure they get it.

Note #5: The Jerusalem Covenant quotes Isaiah 2:4, which reads as follows:

However, the Jerusalem Covenant conveniently leaves out the first part of the verse which says "And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people." This is unquestionably a reference to Christ and His rule during the Millennial Kingdom, during which He will rule with a rod of iron. Why? Because during the entire 1,000 years sin will still exist, that's why.

By leaving out that rather negative-sounding part of the verse, the Jews are emphasizing only the positive aspects of what they believe will be their kingdom. Again, they are striving to sound politically correct and all that, and so would just as soon airbrush out that judging and rebuking business.

Don't worry—be happy...it's all aboard for the Mashiach, OK?

Why am I not surprised: By the way, this same truncated version of Isaiah 2:4 is inscribed on the United Nations Headquarters in New York City. So, the Jerusalem Covenant is on the same page as the United Nations. Hmm...now that's interesting.

Note #6: The following line is quoted and is identified as the writings of one of the Jewish sages, which presumably means it's from the Talmud:

"Comfort Jerusalem only with peace"? Oh, you bet your sweet bippy He will. I wanted to mention this passage because Jesus Christ is normally "the Holy One" referred to in the New Testament—"the Holy One" (1 John 2:20; Acts 2:27; John 6:69), "the Holy One of God" (Luke 4:34), "the Holy and Righteous One" (Acts 3:14), etc.

On the other hand, "the Blessed" is a phrase that typically refers to God the Father, even in the New Testament. For example:

Clearly, "the Blessed" here refers to the Father.

So this passage, quoted as if Scripture, could be interpreted by believers to refer to either God the Father or His Son the Messiah—certainly both could be considered to be bringing peace to Jerusalem during the kingdom.

We may get into this a bit more in part two, but for Jews this passage can only refer to Yahweh, HaShem, Adonai. In other words, it can only refer to God the Father, and certainly not their eminently human mashiach, whom they are convinced will not be divine, but just a mortal man.

But stick this little tidbit in your back pocket for safekeeping:

He'll be a mortal man who will appear to
have just comforted Jerusalem with peace.

That being the case, wouldn't this line from the Jerusalem Covenant be a convenient point for the Antichrist to use to justify his being worthy of the worship due God. Just saying.

Looking ahead

That brings us to the end of part one—so what do we have? We have the Jews pushing the Jerusalem Covenant, a document that presumes to put an official and biblical lock on the Jews' claim to Jerusalem. It affirms Israel's existence as the Jewish nation, affirms Jerusalem as their eternal capital, and that's great—but at the same time rolls out the politically correct red carpet for other religions of the world to thumb their nose at the one true God by worshiping their false gods in His holy city.

The impetus behind part two is this idea that some believers are convinced that the Jerusalem Covenant is in fact the treaty of Daniel 9:27—the treaty that will be "confirmed" by the Antichrist in the event that will kick off the Tribulation...and which the Rapture must precede.

As I said earlier, in part two I plan to focus on the nature of the treaty of Daniel 9:27 and its potential relationship to the Jerusalem Covenant. I want to examine this notion that they could be one and the same in the light of Scripture, and consider a couple of different possible ways in which matters pertaining to them could play out in the coming days, especially in view of Jewish eschatological expectations.

And I trust part two will be just as unbelievably amazing as part one.

(Sigh...pray for me.)

Greg Lauer — JUN '19

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