PART IV – PLANS & PROPHECIES – MESSIAH & ANTICRHIST
There is a kind of Temple Fever going on – and End Times Jubilee, if you will. So much of the world is hurtling toward a denouement of history that will explain everything and tie up loose ends. It is a wish and a drive for a culmination. And it is affecting not just the Christian and Jewish world – but it is present in many strands of Islam also. Expressed in the Gospel of Matthew, we find the description of what it will be like when Jesus returns to earth. Jesus is addressing his unbelieving people, and He quotes Psalm 118 in the process. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! 38 See! Your house is left to you desolate; for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’” (Matthew 23:38-39) We are today beginning to see that longing for Messiah’s coming among elements of the Jewish people. Along with this longing comes prophecy and interpretation from Jewish and Christian scholars alike.
Probably surprisingly to many, Donald Trump seems to be at the center of many of these prophecies. In Part 3 of his latest series on the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, Thomas Horn asks: “Did God, who works all things together for good (see Romans 8:28), ordain the election of Donald Trump for a specific purpose and mission related to the Third Temple? If so, did the year of his election—2016—hold specific prophetic significance? Did something start in 2016 like a clock winding down to this momentous event(s)?” Then he goes on to begin to answer that question. [Much of today’s installment will be based on the work of Dr Horn.]
There are both Christian and Jewish scholars that see President Trump as a “Cyrus” figure, put in place by God to help the Jewish People. Horn goes on to explain that Cyrus was the “the pagan Persian king that Isaiah prophesied by name 200-years in advance (Is. 44:28), saying he would conquer Babylon (happened in 539 BC), the waters of the Euphrates would ‘dry up’ to make way for the army, the city’s gates would ‘not be shut,’ and thereby the Jews would be liberated and return to Jerusalem where they would rebuild the temple, all of which happened just as the prophet foresaw many years in advance. According to Wallnau, Trump was chosen by God to similarly rescue America from its catastrophic alternative (Hillary) [and to initiate the building of the Third Temple]”[i] Once such believer that Trump is playing that role is Dr Lance Wallnau, who sees Trump as “God’s ‘chaos’ president.” God’s use of President Trump may come as a shock to some …even many….who don’t believe the President’s professions of faith are real. But God uses even pagan instruments to work out His will. Nebuchadnezzar was an instrument of judgement on the Israelites as were the Assyrians.
Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz of Breaking Israel News takes it one farther. “Donald Trump (424) is the Gematria of ‘Messiah for the House of David’ (משיח בן דוד).” In the Kabbalah, the mystical interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures, Gematria refers to the assigned numbers of each letter in the Hebrew alphabet. And that gives it certain meanings. “That is not to say that Donald Trump is the Messiah, but that his presidency will usher in the Messianic era.”[ii] Thomas Horn names others. “Rabbi Matityahu Glazerson, who accurately predicted the Trump victory before the election using Bible codes,[ii] has chimed in. Glazerson found various connections between Trump and moshiach (‘messiah’) in the codes, which in Hebrew means ‘anointed,’ and led Glazerson to conclude that his election is connected to the coming of Messiah.” Rabbi Yosef Berger believes that it was the power of Messiah that gave Trump the victory over Hillary Clinton.[iii] Then there’s Rabbi Hillel Weis, a member of the Sanhedrin, who said, “We are poised to rebuild the Temple.”…and… “the leaders of Russia and America can lead the nations of the world to global peace through building the Temple, the source of peace.”[iv]
Weiss goes on to speak of the President’s central role in the rebuilding of the Temple and how his obedience to that God-ordained role – [in his opinion] – will be central to Trump’s success. “Trump’s goals will only come to fruition only if they are geared toward rebuilding the Jewish Temple…. Trump’s political agenda can only succeed if it is focused on building the Third Temple on the place that God chose: the Temple Mount. He must not advance any two-state solution or this will lead to his downfall.”[v]
THE FASCINATION WITH 2016
Then there is something much more curious going on. Sources dating back centuries – both Jewish and Christian – were pointing to the year 2016 and immensely significant on the End Times calendar. [Of course, we know with certainty that, as Jesus said it, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.” (Matthew 24:36)] Still, it is interesting to examine the evidence.
However, the scholars of Islam wanted, it seemed, to get into the fun. A few years back, Discovering Islam announced that the End Times were almost here. “Based on our numerical analysis of the Quran and Hadith, the official beginning of the End of Time and the coming of the Imam Mahdi will most likely be in 2015 (or 2016) and Jesus Christ will come down from Heaven to Earth in 2022, in-sha Allah (if Allah is willing).” As reported by Israel, Islam and End Times: “In the latest evidence of this messianic fervor, a mainstream Sunni Muslim website has decreed that the Islamic messiah, called the Mahdi, will appear this year or in 2016 and that the Muslim Jesus will return in 2022 to conquer the world for Islam.”[vi]
Then there’s the Zohar, the Kabbalistic set of books penned 7 centuries ago, which gives a date of 2012-2013 for the ‘secret presentation’ of the Messiah. [Recall, that the one who declares himself God in the Temple in the middle of the Tribulation will be the Antichrist.]
Then there are the Protestant theologians, a number of whom came to the conclusion that 2016 would usher in the revealing of the Antichrist. These include, as Horn points out, “the famous preacher Jonathan Edwards [who] was convinced of this possibility and held a postmillennial view based on the 1,260 days the woman is in the wilderness in Revelation 12:6. He interpreted those days as the years that the true Church was to be oppressed by the papists. Clarence Goen writes of this, ‘Edwards considered that the most likely time for the…reign of Antichrist was 1260 years after AD 756 (the acceding of temporal power to the Pope),” which would place the (beginning) of Antichrist’s power squarely in 2016.’”[vii] [viii]
Thomas Horn goes on to list several other sources that all named 2016 as the day of AC’s arrival. These include; The Theological Dictionary of Princeton University (1830), The American Biblical Repository (1840), The Christian Spectator, “The Monthly” (1885), The Presbyterian Magazine (1858) – and – Abridgement of Ecclesiastical History (1776) – among many others.
If this is really playing out the way these extra-biblical prophecies are predicting? Was 2016, the year of President Trump’s election a watershed year? Only time will tell. But we can say one thing with certainty. We are certainly living in interesting times.
[i]Dr Thomas Horn, SHOCKING NEW ONLINE SERIES To Probe Trump Administration, Rabbis, And Top-Secret Plan To Build Third
Temple, Skywatch TV – Part 3, February 21, 2019
[ii] Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz, Biblical Numerology Predicts Trump Will Usher in Messiah, Breaking Israel News, May 16 2016
[iii] Sam Kestenbaum, Why These Jewish Mystics Think God Helped Trump Win, Israel Forward, November 15, 2016
[iv] Hillel Fendel, Sanhedrin to Trump-Putin: Fulfill Cyrus-like Role in Jerusalem, November 15, 2016
[v] Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz, Sanhedrin Mints Silver Half-Shekel with Images of Trump and Cyrus, Breaking Israel News,
February 15, 2018
[vi] Islamic ‘Messiah’ al-Mahdi to Return by 2016, Followed By Jesus?, Israel, Islam and the End Times, May 19, 2015
[vii] Dr Thomas Horn, SHOCKING NEW ONLINE SERIES To Probe Trump Administration, Rabbis, And Top-Secret Plan To Build Third
Temple, Skywatch TV – Part 3, February 21, 2019
[viii] Clarence Goen, Jonathan Edwards: A New Departure in Eschatology, Church History 28, March 1, 1959, 29, 25–40
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