Dropping the Hammer

As I'm sure many of you know, the coming Tribulation will be a time of unparalleled destruction and upheaval, as God purges His people Israel and pours out His judgment on the nations that have persecuted them and on a world that has spurned the grace and mercy He expressed to it through Christ.

As we read the book of Revelation, we find ourselves swimming in a sea of gut-wrenching images of the seal, trumpet, and bowl judgments that are unleashed during this brief period of time, and from the sound of things it's mind-boggling to think that anyone would or could survive this period at all. But many will, and those who do will ultimately be judged as to whether or not they warrant admittance to the Millennial Kingdom that follows.

The Tribulation will be especially hard on the Jews, however, since one of its purposes is to purge Israel and bring forth the believing remnant who will finally embrace their true Messiah—the one they pierced two thousand years ago. This believing remnant will be protected by God during the most intense period of the Tribulation, many believe in Petra in Jordan. God will protect them from the worst that the Antichrist can throw at them, as Satan launches his desperate, all-out effort to destroy the Jews so he can hang on to this little corner of the universe where he can "be like the Most High."

Game, set, match: Destroying the Jews has long been #1 on Satan's to-do list, and the reason is simple. The event that triggers the Second Coming is when the Jews implore the Lord to save them at the climax of the Tribulation (Hos. 5:15). And Satan is at least smart enough to know that if the Second Coming goes down, it's game, set, match for Jesus.

I have written about this before, but I have long believed that one of the primary reasons for this final and most intense phase of Israel's judgment will be their foolish decision to divide their land...er, I mean God's land (Joel 3:1–2) with their sworn enemies who are committed to their utter destruction. I believe this will be part and parcel of the treaty of Daniel 9:27, the implementation of which will serve as the starting gun for the Tribulation. But over the last few months a nagging question about this idea has been incubating in the murkier pockets of mush in my brain:

Does the crime really fit the punishment here?

The Great Tribulation will be the most horrific persecution the Jews will ever experience, and many believe (based on Zech. 13:8) that two out of three Jews will perish at the hands of the Antichrist (Satan got one out of three in the Holocaust, which was merely a shadow of the horrors to come). And just what exactly are they being judged so severely for, one might inquire.

Well, let's see...for starters, you've got them rejecting their promised Messiah and persuading their Roman masters to execute Him as a common criminal on trumped up charges of blasphemy, when all He did was fulfill messianic prophecy and speak the truth. I'm sure God was none too pleased over that one, and it's certainly safe to say that it provoked His judgment.

True to His prophetic Word, God drove the Jews from the land He promised them, and had the Roman army ransack their holy city, destroy their temple, and slaughter them like cattle. They were scattered to the four winds, and not only that, but they have suffered relentless persecution everywhere they have been scattered for the last two thousand years.

But now...again, true to His prophetic Word, He has restored them to their land, restored them as a nation, blessed them with prosperity, and has put them in a position to receive their ultimate blessing—their promised kingdom under the rule of the promised Messiah they rejected.

So, to the casual observer, it might seem as though Israel's judgment for rejecting their Messiah has already fallen, and is kinda...you know, over. But is that what we see? Is it over? Well, no...not exactly. As we get into the Tribulation period, we see God apparently saving the most horrifying blast of judgment for the very end. But why?

As I said, I have long attributed this last and most devastating round of judgment to Israel's foolish, feckless decision to divide the Promised Land God gave them with their sworn enemies, which I still believe will occur as a result of the treaty of Daniel 9:27. And yeah, dividing God's land is b-a-d.

But there's that nagging question again:

Is that it? Is dividing their land with their enemies in the pursuit of a flimsy and ulimately false peace so bad as to justify arguably the most severe round of judgment they will ever experience?

Now, don't misunderstand me. I am by no means presuming to second-guess the Creator of the universe.

I am certainly not questioning God's actions.
I am simply trying to understand them properly.

But somehow I just couldn't shake that nagging feeling that I was missing something somewhere...

So what am I missing?

A few months ago, my wife Phoebe and I were sitting at the dining room table, enjoying a cup of coffee and listening to a sermon by John MacArthur over the Internet, as we sometimes do on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. The sermon had to do with false religion, and in it Rev. MacArthur made mention of an incident that occurred between Jesus and the scribes and Pharisees that is recorded in the Gospel of Luke.

The scene opens in Luke 11:37, where Jesus has been invited to the home of a Pharisee for a meal, and according to Rev. MacArthur, it was probably a late morning brunch that was common in those days after a few hours of work in the morning:

Other scribes and Pharisees are present at the meal, and one of them notices that Jesus has failed to wash according to Jewish religious laws. Unfazed and without missing a beat, Jesus uses the opportunity to launch into a well-deserved condemnation of the Pharisees and their hypocrisy and hyper-legalistic religiosity.

Then one of the scribes pipes up and complains that in condemning the Pharisees, He is condemning the scribes as well:

At that point, Jesus lets 'em all have it with both barrels:

The ancestors of those same scribes and Pharisees Jesus was dining with had killed the prophets God sent Israel, and their descendants had built tombs for those prophets, and had painted and decorated them and honored them with lavish devotion. Jesus was telling them that they were "testifying" and "consenting" to the actions of their fathers, and the message was basically along these lines:

You guys think you're holier than your fathers, or spiritually superior to them—but I'm telling you that you are far worse. They killed the prophets, and rather than condemn their actions, you commemorate them. And you're gonna pay.

Then Rev. MacArthur highlighted what Jesus told the scribes and Pharisees, that the blood of all the prophets would be charged to that generation, and they would be held accountable for the collective guilt of all previous generations.

As I chewed on that idea, the Holy Spirit began to show me something concerning the reason for the intense outpouring of judgment on the Jews during the Tribulation, and nothing like it had ever occurred to me before. (Or maybe it was just the caffeine kicking in...I'll let you be the judge.)

And when it hit me, I almost spilled my coffee.

The full monty

It's not terribly difficult to understand why the generation of Jewish religious leaders Jesus was addressing would bear the guilt of all previous generations, who killed the prophets God had sent Israel and rejected their messages. This generation finally had the prophesied Messiah standing in their midst. No more promises. No more types and shadows.

They got the full monty.

They saw it all—the full expression of the power of the Holy Spirit at work in the Person of Christ. They had seen Jesus perform miracles everywhere He went for three and a half years—and not just any miracles. They watched Him make the lame walk, the mute speak, the blind see, and the deaf hear, all of which are the fulfillment of specific messianic prophecies given by the prophet Isaiah (Isa. 35:5–6). They also saw Him raise the dead, something only God has control over. And last but not least, they heard Jesus preach the gospel to the poor (Isa. 61:1), a class of society these highfalutin Pharisees callously dismissed as so much refuse.

The Messiah had finally come and stood in their midst—and they rejected Him and plotted to have Him killed.

No previous generation in Israel could make such a claim. No generation before them had received God's promised Messiah, who was to come and remove their sin and carry out the sine qua non of God's plan of redemption. Of course, I've long been cognizant of all this—it's just that the Holy Spirit finally got me to see this from a slightly different angle.

God had revealed to them a critical aspect of His nature (His triune nature, that is) through the Person of His one and only Son, and it's important to remember one thing:

God the Father honors His Son, and will do whatever is necessary to ensure His Son is ultimately honored by those He died to redeem.

So when this generation of Jewish leaders (who, with their knowledge of the Old Testament, should have known better) hardened their hearts and violently rejected that revelation, God didn't unleash any old garden variety judgment on them. Oh no.

You might say He singled them out for special treatment.

I believe the Holy Spirit was trying to get me to see that there is a fundamental principle at work in all of this:

With revelation comes responsibility.
Any generation that rejects one of God's greatest
revelations suffers some of God's greatest judgment.

So Jesus tells the scribes and Pharisees that the blood of all the prophets would be required of them. They were the generation that rejected God's revelation of His Son the Messiah.

Q. And what happened to that generation?

A. About 37 or 38 years later, that generation was driven out of their land, their holy city was trampled, their temple was so utterly destroyed that not one stone was left on top of another, and they were slaughtered like cattle (about 1.1 million, according to Roman historian Flavius Josephus).

God dropped the hammer of His judgment on that generation because they rejected His (arguably greatest) revelation—the revelation of His Son, who shed His blood to atone for their sin and make a way for men to be reconciled to a holy, just, loving God by grace through faith.

Now, it's true that throughout Scripture God judges and punishes His people in various ways for various things. Numerous times in the Old Testament, God judged Israel for their disobedience or idolatry, and that judgment could take different forms and could fall over long, sweeping arcs of time.

But here we see some of God's most severe judgment falling on one specific generation for the rejection of a great revelation:

He revealed His one and only Son as the promised Messiah to one generation of Jews who lived two thousand years ago.

And that generation of Jews vehemently rejected that revelation by having the Romans execute Him.

The result?

God gave them the full monty.

God's judgment fell with cataclysmic intensity on that generation. Of course, in a broad sense, all of Israel has been under judgment for the last two thousand years. But the fact remains: We see God dropping the hammer on the generation that rejected His revelation.

As I mentioned, the Holy Spirit got me to see that this is a fundamental principle, and that means we should see it in operation elsewhere in Scripture. And indeed we do.

Let my people go

You know the story...how God appeared to Moses in the burning bush and told him to go down to Egypt to tell Pharaoh to let His people go, and how Pharaoh refused as God poured out one plague after another on the Egyptians. Finally, the LORD killed the first born male child of every family that was not "covered by the blood of the lamb," so to speak, and Passover was born—a wonderful foreshadowing of what Christ would do some 1,500 years later.

After this final plague, the Egyptians didn't just let them go—they practically threw them a going away party. They loaded them down with goods and told 'em to have nice trip. God speed and all that.

And off they went in jubilation...but they didn't get very far before Pharaoh changed his mind and his men pursued them. With the Israelites stuck in a position from which they couldn't escape at the shore of Red Sea, they learned that the Egyptians were coming after them. And how did they react?

Did they boldly appeal to their God in faith, and trust in the One who had just delivered them from Egypt? Did they trust in His promises to lead them to their Promised Land? Uhh...not so you'd notice:

They had just witnessed the LORD deliver them from bondage with a series of miraculous plagues brought upon Egypt, and they had marched out of there only days earlier, singing His praises. God had revealed Himself to them as their Deliverer, as their Redeemer.

He had dramatically revealed to them in no uncertain terms that He was their God and they were His people, and that He would move heaven and earth to fight for them, protect them, and keep His promises to them.

And as soon as He did, what did they do? They cried and whined and accused Moses (and God) of leading them to their deaths in the desert.

But God wasn't quite done yet:

And that's exactly what they saw: the salvation of the LORD. God parted the Red Sea for the children of Israel, allowing them to cross on dry land. And as soon as they were safely across, God released the waters and utterly destroyed Pharaoh's finest, who were in hot pursuit.

Again, God showed Himself mighty on behalf of His people—again He revealed Himself to them as their Deliverer by saving them in miraculous fashion with His mighty outstretched arm.

A short time later, they were camped at Kadesh Barnea, virtually at the entrance of the Promised Land. They were ready to go in and take the land their God had told them to go in and take—the same God who had just revealed Himself as their mighty Deliverer, not only by delivering them from bondage in Egypt, but by miraculously parting the Red Sea for them and destroying their enemies.

God told Moses to send in 12 spies to reconnoiter the land they were about to enter, and after 40 days the spies returned with their reports. They told the people the land was an exceedingly good land, flowing with milk and honey...but there was just one problem: It was filled with giants.

Only two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, expressed confidence in God's promise to give them possession of the land, while the other 10 disheartened the people with tales of how they were but grasshoppers in the eyes of the scary giants who inhabited the land. These 10 spies insisted there was no way they could enter the land and take possession of it—their mighty Deliverer's promises to the contrary notwithstanding, and the people agreed with them:

In other words:

"Let my people go" morphed into
"Let my people go...back to Egypt!"

A distraught Moses went to the LORD to intercede for the people and beg Him to forgive their faithlessness, and the LORD answered:

Yes, He forgave them, but He didn't just let it slide. He had no choice but to teach them a lesson they would never forget. The LORD had revealed Himself to them as their God and their Deliverer with powerful miracles, and they had repeatedly and thoroughly rejected that revelation. After all He had done for them, after all He had revealed to them about His nature and about His relationship with them, they had repeatedly refused to trust Him and put their faith in His promises, and this provoked Him to wrath. And the result?

God dropped the hammer of judgment
on the generation that had rejected His
revelation, and they were denied entrance
into the Promised Land and died in the desert.

They would never see the Promised Land, and would wander through the desert for 40 years—according to Numbers 14:34, one year for each day the spies were in the land—until the corpses of all those who had doubted God and rejected His revelation were rotting in the scorched wilderness. Only then would the next generation of Israelites enter into the land and possess it, just as God promised they would 40 years earlier.

You guessed it

So, we see two clear-cut instances in Scripture where a single generation has rejected a great revelation of God, and it has provoked God to unleash a devastating round of judgment on that one generation. Now, let's fast forward to where we were at the outset: the Jews during the Tribulation.

As I said, during the Tribulation we see God dropping the hammer on one generation of Jews in what is arguably the most severe judgment they will ever experience as a people. And it just doesn't seem to me as if this is "Judgment for Rejecting the Messiah—Part 2." And I can't help but wonder if dividing their land warrants such a severe judgment, so...

Well, what else could it be? Is the generation of Jews subjected to the Tribulation guilty of rejecting some great revelation of God? Are they on par with the generation that refused to trust Him as their Deliverer and as a result died in the wilderness, or the generation that rejected their promised Messiah and had Him crucified like a common criminal and as a result were decimated, driven from their land, and saw the temple demolished?

Yes. In my humble opinion, the generation of Jews that will be purged during the Tribulation will be guilty of exactly that, and I sincerely believe this is what the Holy Spirit was trying to show me.

This generation of Jews is going to witness something no other generation of Jews (or any group of people, for that matter) will have ever witnessed. They will see God do something that He clearly promised to do in His Word, and in so doing reveal to the world His sovereign power and authority over the entire earth and all of mankind. They will see God perform a stunning supernatural event on a global scale, the likes of which mankind will have never witnessed.

And I have a feeling you've already guessed what it is:

Wow, you're a good guesser:

The Rapture.

What, you never thought of the Rapture as a revelation of God? Oh, I hope to tell you. When God keeps His promise to the Church and snatches a couple hundred million members of the body of Christ clean out of here in a singularly spectacular manner, it will be God's greatest revelation of Himself and His power in two thousand years, and it will stun the world and kick-start the end-time scenario in ways we cannot currently imagine.

Mind blown: You're probably getting tired of hearing me say this, but I cannot emphasize it enough. We cannot begin to fathom the effect the Rapture is going to have on the world. There simply are no words. The world will be turned upside down and radically changed in ways we cannot imagine, and things will never be the same. And it will happen overnight...er, make that in the twinkling of an eye.

Now, stop and think. Do you suppose that when the Rapture occurs, millions of Jews all over the world will suddenly perk up and say something like...

"Hey, do you suppose what just happened was that Rapture thingy some Christians talked about?! Gosh, maybe they were right after all...maybe their New Testament's not just a bunch of contrived fiction! Maybe Jesus really is the Messiah! Oy vey, I guess we'd better get saved ASAP!"

Judging from the current views most Jews have of Christians, the validity of the New Testament, as well as the idea of the Rapture, I'm guessing no.

This generation of Jews will reject God's greatest revelation since the revelation of His Son the Messiah, with many chalking it up to an alien race evacuating those who are not ready for the ascension process, which I believe will become the prevailing explanation in its aftermath. Or maybe they'll think their new messianic BFF had something to do with it. Who knows...maybe the impostor they herald as their Messiah will claim to have had some part in cleansing the earth of those fundamentalist cretins.

Beastly Fiend Forever: Speaking of their messianic BFF, one might also consider Israel's acceptance of the Antichrist as their Messiah in place of Christ as a contributing factor in the final devastating round of judgment that falls on the Jews during the Tribulation. Although I wouldn't argue too strenuously with someone who chose to view it that way, I don't necessarily think it has to be interpreted in that manner.

In my mind, it makes sense to think of Israel's ultimate acceptance of the Antichrist as a natural outgrowth of the "partial hardening" God placed on them two thousand years ago (Rom. 11:25), when He shifted His attention to the fledgling body of Christ. In other words, I believe that hardening—which I believe will be solidified by the strong delusion God will pour out on them around the midpoint of the Tribulation (2 Thess. 2:8–12) is why they will accept the Antichrist as their Messiah in the first place.

For the last two thousand years, God has focused His attention on the Church while Israel has remained hardened to the identity of the real Messiah whom they crucified, and I see their mid-Tribulational acceptance of an impostor as the pinnacle of that hardening. I think God will have already unhardened the believing Jewish remnant, beginning with His miraculous intervention on their behalf in the battle of Gog-Magog before the Tribulation begins.

So, I tend to see Israel's acceptance of the Antichrist and their rejection of God's revelation in the form of the Rapture as being a case of apples and oranges in terms of what provokes Israel's final round of judgment during the Tribulation—especially the second half, or the Great Tribulation.

But whatever they think about the Rapture, this generation of Jews, right along with most of the rest of the world, will reject God's stunning revelation and as a result God will drop the hammer of judgment on that one generation...just like the last time and the time before that.

The bottom line is that the Jews' rejection of God's earth-shattering revelation in the form of the pre-tribulation Rapture will provide ample justification for God's final and most severe outpouring of judgment on His people (even if they do divide their land, which I believe they will).

Incidentally, this also serves to support the pre-trib timing of the Rapture (as if it needed it). Absent a pre-trib catching away of the Church, you're stuck assuming this final and most fearful outpouring of judgment on the Jews during the Tribulation is simply an extension of His judgment for rejecting their Messiah two thousand years ago, or because they divided their land, or because they accepted the Antichrist.

But for the reasons I have discussed, those ideas just didn't quite sit right with me, and it left me feeling unsettled and full of questions. And I am satisfied that the Holy Spirit answered those questions.

I just hope the next time He does it I'm not drinking coffee.

Greg Lauer — SEP '19

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