I. THE INTERCESSORY CRY INITIATING THE SECOND COMING OF JESUS. 2. Come for your Bride the prophetic cry for intimacy:

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1 Session Twenty: Second Coming of Jesus and the Battle of Jerusalem pt. 1 Unless otherwise noted, all scripture references are from the New King James Version. I. THE INTERCESSORY CRY INITIATING THE SECOND COMING OF JESUS A. In the timing of the Lord related to His end-time plan, the Holy Spirit will initiate the Second Coming procession through the intercession of the saints in heaven and on the earth. This will be the greatest intercessory cry in all of history. There will be three factors at the end of the age that play a critical role in the timing of Jesus' return to earth: (1) the nations' final rejection of Jesus; (2) the unified invitation of His Bride for Him to return; and (3) the nations' rage against Jerusalem and the Jews. B. The intercessory cry of the end-time Church will stir Jesus' heart about all three issues: And the Spirit and the bride say, Come! And let him who hears say, Come! (Rev. 22:17) 1. Come judge the nations the prophetic cry for justice: And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth? (Rev. 6:10) Then another angel, having a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all the saints (intercession for justice) upon the golden altar which was before the throne. (Rev. 8:3) Great and marvelous are Your works (manifest judgments), Lord God Almighty! Just and true are your ways (leadership exercised through judgment), O King of the saints! (Rev. 15:3) a. The critical moment of agreement in heaven between the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and the church will come: it will be time to judge the nations that have rejected the coming King and His Kingdom and attempted to preserve their own kingdom. b. When the nations become fully reprobate, irrevocably hardened against the Lord, after the sixth trumpet, there will be a cry from heaven that the time has come for judgment and wrath to be poured out on the nations. Most of the hymns of Revelation will be sung just prior to the Second Coming and are related to the agreement in heaven that it is time for the bowls of wrath to be poured out on the nations. c. The saints will participate in the judgments of God, which include the Second Coming the third woe (Rev. 11:14) as a judgment on the reprobate. 2. Come for your Bride the prophetic cry for intimacy:

2 Session 20 Second Coming and the Battle of Jerusalem pt. 1 Page 2 For I am hard pressed between the two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better. Nevertheless to remain in the flesh is more needful for you. And being confident of this, I know that I shall remain and continue with you all for your progress and joy of faith (Phil. 1:23-25) a. The common understanding of the final prophetic cry of the end-time Bride, who will be in full agreement with the Holy Spirit, is that the cry will be birthed from a place of deep lovesickness and longing to be reunited with Jesus. b. Though it is critical that the end-time Church on the earth function in authority and power in accordance with God s strategy to show mercy to many throughout the nations, the great longing of believers in that hour will be to be fully united with Jesus, or to be with Him where He is. It will not be time yet to be together with Him there is still much to accomplish on earth among the nations. This was the tension the apostle Paul lived in, the tension between love and the necessary service that is a dynamic part of love, the internal pain of the two greatest commandments of Jesus. c. This tension is important from heaven s perspective. There is a burning desire within the God Man to invade the earth, judge wickedness, and save His people; yet will continue to constrain Himself until there is an earthly invitation that welcomes Him. In His desire for partnership, he will not simply take from. Rather, He will come and join with believers who want Him to come and who are in unity with the Holy Spirit. d. The end-of-the-age prophetic cry for Jesus to Come! will be birthed out of a deep desire for more than intimacy. It will be birthed out of intimacy in the fullness of the longings of the heart of Jesus. In other words, we will be fully abandoned in our love for Him to the things He wants and cares about we will have no concern for our own needs or desires. We will be truly mature in love abandoned to His will and plans. We will be in full agreement with the Holy Spirit about when Jesus will answer the cry of His own heart, expressed in John 17:24: Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory (beauty of His majesty expressed through His rule) which You have given Me; for You have loved Me from the foundation of the world. (John 17:24) e. Our cry will be to join Him where He longs to be: expressing the fullness of His glory through His eternal mandate to bring heaven and earth together in one realm. It will only be in this context that we fully enjoy true intimacy with Jesus, the One who fully expresses Himself as King and Priest before His Father. that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on the earth in Him. (Eph. 1:10) 3. Come rescue Your people the prophetic cry for mercy:

3 Session 20 Second Coming and the Battle of Jerusalem pt. 1 Page 3 You will arise and have mercy on Zion; for the time to favor her, yes, the set time has come. For your servants take pleasure in her stones, and show favor to her dust. So the nations will fear the name of the Lord, and all the kings of the earth Your glory He shall regard the prayer of the destitute, and shall not despise their prayer. (Ps. 102:13-17) Let them give glory to the Lord, and declare His praise in the coastlands. The Lord shall go forth like a mighty man; He shall stir up His zeal like a man of war. He shall cry out, yes, shout aloud; He shall prevail against His enemies. (Is. 42:12-13) Sing with gladness for Jacob, and shout among the chief of the nations; proclaim, give praise, and say, O Lord, save your people, the remnant of Israel! (Jer. 31:7) And pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the Sabbath. (Matt. 24:20) Then the woman (the remnant of Israel) fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that they (Gentile believers) should feed her there one thousand two hundred and sixty days (Jacob s Trouble). (Rev. 12:6) a. The Lord desires to raise up a prayer and worship movement at the end of the age that will contend for the protection and preservation of the remnant of Israel those of natural Israel who will receive and enthrone Jesus as King over that nation and all the nations of the earth after His Second Coming. b. Spiritual Israel, or the one new man that has emerged as the offspring of the remnant of Israel (Rev. 12:17), are those who will invite Jesus to come to earth prior to His Second Coming. Spiritual Israel will receive Jesus as the worthy One to rule and reign from the heavenly Jerusalem. They will be those who receive glorified bodies at His Second Coming and serve alongside Him to disciple the nations in the Millennial Kingdom. c. Natural Israel is the group that will emerge from the fire of Jacob s Trouble (Zech. 13:8-9) with their power (pride and independence) completely shattered by the events of the last three and a half years (Dan. 12:7). This remnant will receive and invite Jesus to rule the earth from the earthly Jerusalem (Matt. 23:39). They are those who will have natural bodies and will serve under him to govern the nations in the Millennial Kingdom. d. With great rage, Satan will target Natural Israel for extermination (Rev. 12:13-17) in the final three and a half years before Jesus returns. e. However, out of mercy, the Lord will target Natural Israel for preservation at the same time. Both Jesus and Satan will seek to establish a prayer and worship movement, but for very different reasons.

4 Session 20 Second Coming and the Battle of Jerusalem pt. 1 Page 4 f. Jesus goal will be to contend for, preserve and win over this group. Satan s goal will be to deceive, destroy, and eliminate this group, and thus stop them from enthroning the true King and ensuring the defeat of the former one (Satan). g. At the most extreme point of trouble for the Jewish people, Jerusalem, and Israel when all the nations are gathered against them (Zech. 12:3), two-thirds of the Jews have perished (Zech. 13:8), and half of Jerusalem is in captivity (Zech. 14:2) with many others in prison camps throughout the nations as well (Is. 42:5-9; 49:8-12; 61:1-7) the Lord will initiate the prophetic cry from the heavens: what I hope would be 100 million Gentile intercessors will, in unity with the Holy Spirit, cry out that the time has come for Jesus to return (Rev. 11:15-19). h. The prophetic cry will be related to the need for Jerusalem to be liberated from the Antichrist and his demonized armies (gathered from among the nations) (Rev. 16:14). In response, the Greater Moses will come (Deut. 18:15) to effect the end-time deliverance of His people from the greater pharaoh. II. THE LAST TRUMPET: SIGNALING THE TIME OF JESUS RETURN And He will send His angels with the great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. (Matt. 24:31) In the days of the sounding of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, the mystery (hidden plans revealed for all to accept or reject) of God would be finished, as He declared to His prophets. (Rev. 10:7) For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. (1 Thess. 4:16) Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. (1 Cor. 15:51-52) Then seven priests bearing seven trumpets of ram s horns before the ark of the Lord went on continually and blew with the trumpets. And the armed men went before them. But the rear guard came after the ark of the Lord, while the priests continued blowing the trumpets and the seventh time it happened, when the priests blew the trumpets, that Joshua said to the people: Shout, for the Lord has given you the city! So the people shouted when the priests blew the trumpets. And it happened when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat. (Josh. 6:13-20) Then the seventh angel sounded: And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever! 16 And the twenty-four elders who sat before God on their thrones fell on their faces and worshiped God (Rev. 11:15-16)

5 Session 20 Second Coming and the Battle of Jerusalem pt. 1 Page 5 17 saying: We give You thanks, O Lord God Almighty, the One who is and who was and who is to come, because You have taken Your great power and reigned. 18 The nations were angry, and Your wrath has come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that You should reward Your servants the prophets and the saints, and those who fear Your name, small and great, and should destroy those who destroy the earth. (Rev. 11:17-18) A. It seems clear that the seventh trumpet in the book of Revelation corresponds with what Paul called the last trumpet in 1 Corinthians 15:52. Why did Paul reveal that there would be a final trumpet and what progression of trumpets was he speaking of? B. The apostle John would witness firsthand what Paul was revealing in part in Revelation John sees and hears a series of trumpet blasts related to the release of end-time judgments that shake the earth significantly before the coming of the Lord. The culmination of these trumpet judgments is the last trumpet the time of the return of Jesus and the victory of the saints. C. It is at the sounding of this trumpet in Revelation 11:15-19 that Jesus breaks into the sky above to take His great power over the earth and reign over the nations in a direct way. The possession of the nations, rightfully His, will now become fully His as it is time to remove all of His reprobate (fully seared in conscience) enemies who have rejected His kingdom invitation. It is now time to purge the earth of all of the wicked that would violently resist or reject His rule, or destroy those who destroy the earth. The nations are enraged by His judgments and, as they have become fully seared (or taken the mark of the beast) they are completely dead in their conscience and have no hope of salvation or redemption. Their time of final judgment is at hand. D. The Satanic strategy to exterminate the Jews will, at this stage, resemble the frantic, last-ditch efforts of Hitler at the end of World War II. The coming of Jesus will accelerate the efforts of the Antichrist to destroy the Jewish race (Rev. 12:17) as Jacob s Trouble (Jer. 30:7) will reach it s apex and the power of the holy people will be completely shattered (Dan. 12:7) by the demonic rage of the Antichrist in particular. Two-thirds of the Jewish race will have perished up to this point (Zech. 13:8). It will be time for the one-third who are left to be brought through the fire. E. One of the great catalysts that will be a fruit of the leadership of Jesus through the prayer movement will be the prayer of the Jews themselves to be delivered. Much like the groaning of prayer that proceeded the dramatic Exodus account and the sending of Moses, the intercessory groaning of the captives in the days to come will reach its apex related to their acknowledgement of offense and the seeking of His face in Ps. 102 and Hosea 5:15-6:3: I will return again to My place till they acknowledge their offense. Then they will seek My face; in their affliction they will earnestly seek Me. 1 Come, and let us return to the LORD; for He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind us up. 2 After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live in His sight. 3 Let us know, let us pursue the knowledge of the LORD. His going forth is established as the morning; He will come to us like the rain, like the latter and former rain to the earth. (Hos. 5:15-6:3)

6 Session 20 Second Coming and the Battle of Jerusalem pt. 1 Page 6 III. JESUS DECLARES WAR ON THE NATIONS AND FREES JEWISH CAPTIVES For behold, in those days and at that time, when I bring back the captives of Judah and Jerusalem, I will also gather all nations, and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat; I will enter into judgment with them there on account of My people, My heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations (Joel 3:1-2) Proclaim among the nations: Prepare for war! Wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near Let the nations be wakened, and come up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat; for there I will sit to judge all surrounding nations. Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, go down; for the winepress is full, the vats overflow for their wickedness it great. (Joel 3:9, 12-13) A. It is important that we understand the Second Coming of Christ as a three-fold progression through the air (to rapture the saints), through the land (to liberate Jewish captives from the rage of the nations) and into Jerusalem (to be received and enthroned as King). The Second Coming will not happen in a vacuum. It will take place in relation to the three critical issues of justice, intimacy, and mercy discussed earlier. These issues will be resolved when Jesus returns in a manner that brings about Israel s ultimate salvation and knits the hearts of His Bride to Him forever in voluntarily love (Joel 2:32; Ps. 110:3). B. Many imagine that Jesus will simply wave His hand at His appearing and everything will be instantaneously different. The Scriptures paint a radically different picture of Jesus return, in which He is actively and physically engaged in the process of deliverance and victory for His people and over His enemies. C. Scripture depicts Jesus as moving swiftly in the midst of darkness to release Jewish captives when He returns: I, the Lord, have called You in righteousness, and will hold your hand; I will keep You and give You as a covenant to the people, as a light to the Gentiles, to open blind eyes, to bring prisoners out of prison, those who sit in the darkness from the prison house. (Is. 42:6-7) In the acceptable time I have heard You, and in the day of salvation I have helped You; I will preserve You and give You as a covenant to the people, to restore the earth, to cause them to inherit the desolate heritages; that You may say to the prisoners, Go forth, to those who are in darkness, Show yourselves. (Is. 49:8-9) D. Jesus will encounter and shelter many Jews in this time of darkness, this time of wilderness: Thus says the Lord: The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness Israel, when I went to give him rest. (Jer. 31:2) And I will bring you into the wilderness of the peoples, and there I will plead My case with you face to face. Just as I pleaded My case with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so I will plead My case with you, says the Lord GOD. (Ezek. 20:35-36)

7 Session 20 Second Coming and the Battle of Jerusalem pt. 1 Page 7 Therefore, behold, I will allure her, will bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfort to her. (Hosea 2:14) E. As He makes His way to Jerusalem, Jesus will make a highway in the wilderness so that His people will be able to eventually return: It shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall set His hand again the second time to recover the remnant of His people who are left, from Assyria and Egypt, from Pathros and Cush, from Elam and Shinar, from Hamath and the islands of the sea. He will set up a banner for the nations, and will assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. Also the envy of Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off the LORD will utterly destroy the tongue of the Sea of Egypt; with His mighty wind He will shake His fist over the River, and strike it in the seven streams, and make men cross over dry shod. There will be a highway for the remnant of His people who will be left from Assyria, as it was for Israel in the day that he came up from the land of Egypt. (Is. 11:11-15) In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian will come into Egypt and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians will serve with the Assyrians. (Is. 19:23) A highway shall be there, and a road, and it shall be called the Highway of Holiness. The unclean shall not pass over it, but it shall be for others. Whoever walks the road, although a fool, shall not go astray. (Is. 35:8) 1. Isaiah 11:11 describes the Lord recovering captives from Assyria (from Iraq to the southern part of Turkey down through modern-day Jordan) and Egypt; from Pathros (southern region of Egypt) and Cush (Ethiopia to the southern regions of Palestine); from Elam (the highlands east of Babylon) and Shinar (Babylon/southern Mesopotamia); and from Hamath (Lebanon/Syria) and the islands of the sea (possibly denoting the coastal regions of the Mediterranean). 2. Later in Isaiah chapter 11, it seems that Jesus may walk the same path that Moses and Israel originally did (which could have served as a type of Christ s deliverance to come). In Isaiah 11:15-16, we read that He utterly destroys the Sea of Egypt in context to a future Exodus that seems to be greater than the first. Zech. 10:9-11 is a great parallel passage describing this same event. F. Isaiah 19:1 describes the Lord riding on a swift cloud as He comes to Egypt with judgment. And the subsequent judgments of the chapter bear some resemblance to the bowl judgments of Revelation 16. Later in Isaiah 27:12-13, the Lord is described as threshing from the channel of the River (Euphrates) to the Brook of Egypt in relation to regathering Israel specifically those who are about to perish in the land of Assyria (v. 13), as well as the outcasts in the land of Egypt.

8 Session 20 Second Coming and the Battle of Jerusalem pt. 1 Page 8 G. Isaiah 42 and 49 both depict the Lord delivering captives from prison houses during a time of great darkness (which I believe is the time of the fifth bowl, or Revelation 16:10-11). Later, Isaiah 63:1-6 describes Jesus marching towards Jerusalem from Bozrah, mighty to save, covered in the blood of His enemies. H. Most people assume that Jesus will come to the Mount of Olives (Zechariah 14:3-5) first. But there is no explanation why Jesus would land there and make a way of escape for the Jews, who will be surrounded and under siege by the nations (Zech. 12:2-3; 14:2; Rev. 16:16); then appear later in Egypt, move east to Bozrah (Edom or modern-day Jordan), and then go back to Jerusalem while the armies of the nations chase down the fleeing Jews of 14:5. 1. Zechariah 14:6 establishes both the timeframe of the events of Jesus return (a time of great darkness, presumably after the fifth bowl, definitely after the sixth bowl), as well as the sequence of the events. Jesus will strike the nations by attacking Jerusalem with a plague and great panic. Zechariah 14:5 says that Jesus will come to the Jews in Jerusalem, who are under siege, to affect their ultimate salvation and their deliverance from the hands of the nations. 2. The Mount of Olives being split would have to be the culmination of Jesus movements after He comes to the earth, not His landing spot. He will go to the Mount of Olives after He moves across the sky (Matt. 24:27; 30-31), provoking and striking the nations in judgment through the initial bowls (Rev. 16:1-11). The initial bowls will both weaken the Antichrist kingdom of darkness, and enable Jesus to free captive Jews on His way to deliver Jerusalem from the enemies that will gather against Him at the time of the sixth bowl (Rev. 16:12-16). I. I believe that Jesus will retrace the steps of Moses with incredible precision after He descends to the earth at His return. The pillar of fire by night and the cloud by day would then have been prophetic types foreshadowing His throne chariot (Ps. 68:4; 104:3; Ezek. 1; Is. 19; Jer. 4:13; Dan. 7:13; Matt. 24:30; 26:64; Rev. 1:7; 14:14-16). All people will follow His throne chariot as He leads, as the Angel of God did during the Exodus (Ex. 14:19), and He will bring them into the land of promise. J. The one difference is that this time He will go through Bozrah/Edom instead of around it (Num. 20). I think He will even cross the Jordan in the same manner that Joshua did to go around the mountainous backside of Jerusalem (and the one part not surrounded by enemies, for there would be no escape routes that way) to split the Mount of Olives for the people to escape. His splitting the Mount of Olives is a parting of the Red Sea, in essence.