Shabbat shalom and may Yahweh give me the strength to deliver this message which has been troubling me for some time as preparing this has been one enormous uphill struggle as my health collapses more and more each day. Of late it has been a struggle to make videos at all, let alone write as I am doing today. My goal is to tie and loose ends that may be flapping in the wind before Yahweh takes me home. And today we have one particular subject that needs further attention because of all the confusion there is in the Body of Christ about it.

I myself am not a 'prophet', meaning I do not have the office of a prophet, so it's not something I do 'full-time', as it were. When I do prophecy, it is very rarely indeed. My main calling is teaching, preaching and pastoring. I have the office of a seer, meaning I see visions, and very often, sometimes on a daily basis. Many of these visions have prophetic content that I do not always - or at first - understand. Sometimes it may take months or years for me to understand them, and ones I don't understand I sometimes speculate as to their interpretation, and every now and then I misinterpret them...because I am not a prophet. Sometimes my wife gets a clear prophetic interpretation, sometimes others, and at other times different people are given bits of the puzzle which taken together make perfect sense. One way or another the visions do get interpreted, and on time. This is also true of biblical prophecy and as a teacher it is my job to lay out possible interpretations and to allow the reader or listener to come to their own conclusions. Yet every single regenerated, born-again believer is a navi or prophet in at least one sense: all can, and should, prophecy (and thus bear witness in power) that Yah'shua is the Messiah - Jesus is the Christ - as we are told in the Book of Revelation:

"For the testimony of Yah'shua (Jesus) is the spirit of prophecy" (Rev.19:19, NKJV).

This is what Peter did at Caesarea Philippi when Christ asked the apostles who the people were saying He was and who they though He was. Peter answered, "You are the Christ (Messiah), the Son of the Living Elohim (God)". Yah'shua (Jesus) responded by calling Peter blessed, noting that his revelation came from His Father in heaven, and was not the product of mere human knowledge, subsequently telling His apostle that "on this rock (of revelation) I will build my messianic community (koinonia, fellowship, kehilah, ekkesia, church)" (Mt.16:16-17). That is a prime example of prophecy and revelation which every true believer possesses. But more about this matter later.

As anyone knows who has tried to do exegesis of biblical prophecy, this is no simple matter. Not only do the nevi'im (prophets) seem to speak their own language, writing in a way quite unlike other scripture writers - just consider all the apocalyptic literature, and especially the Book of Revelation - but they're sometimes hard to understand, and you'll hopefully understand what I mean; not only is the symbolism of prophetic writing sometimes hard to grasp, but also Yahweh's sense of timing. And we, who are creatures bound by the taskmaster of time, but time itself appears to operate at different speeds not only according to our physical age but also our spirituality.

How are we to understand the Almighty's world when He tells us that a thousand of our years, as reckoned by the heavenly bodies, is like a day for Him (2 Pet.3:8)? The operative word is 'like', of course - it's not necessarily an exact mathematical formula that you can write up on a screen and tell a class of students to memorise and apply it with any degree of certainty that it's literally true:

1,000 man-years = 1 Elohim (God) day

You can't go and convert apocalyptic literature's heavenly 'days' to human years like a physicist would with some Universal Constant as the speed of light (c) in Einstein's famous mass-energy equivalence equation, E=mc². For one thing, astronomical catastrophes have changed our calendar multiple times throughout earth's history. The period of the earth around the sun, or of the moon around the earth, is very gradually changing though they appear to be constant. So is the distance between these bodies. Things appear more of the 'same' to us simply because they are tiny and we live for such a short span of time. But if you were to get on a time machine and head back to the pre-flood world of the patriarchs you would not only find men living for centuries but also maturing a lot later and growing to a larger size too. We thus get the impression that a 20 year-old starting a new family in our day would be equivalent to a 60 year-old back in the days of Methuseleh, since we don't find the great patriarchjs having children much before what we would consider our middle-age phase of life today. Did this mean they married much later in life? Was being single half a century natural for them? Who knows. Life was very, very different before the Great Deluge as strange accounts come to light of long lost cities hidden beneath two miles of ice in Antarctica, for instance, and the myths of places like Atlantis excite our curiosity.

But back to prophecy. As you read the New Testament it soon becomes clear that everyone - from apostle down to youth - seemed to believe that Yah'shua (Jesus) would return within their generation. Paul certainly did. And who can blame them? For did not Christ Himself, right at the end of the Book of Revelation (which was written at the end of the first century when John was the last surviving apostle), declare to him:

"Surely I am coming soon" (Rev.22:20, NRSV).

That was (if we assume John wrote in 99 AD, say) 1,927 years ago...or there abouts...having previously said to His talmidim (disciples), as recorded by all three of the Synoptic Gospel writers:

"Truly I tell, you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place" (Mt.24:34, NRSV; Mk.13:30; Lk.21:32).

What were "all these things"? Answer: the catastrophic events Yah'shua (Jesus) predicted in the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24:4-31 - namely, the persecution of believers, signs in the heavens, and the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. We know that the destruction of the temple happend - 70 AD - and that "this generation" could only have meant that the people listening to this discourse would witness these events within their lifetime. Moreover, this coming destruction of the temple would signal the end of the current messianic æon or age leading to the final (second) coming of Messiah. When John penned Revelation 22:20, this was 20 to 30 years after the Temple had been destroyed. So this was a past event. "I am coming soon," He said unambiguously, leading those survivors who had heard the Oliver Discourse, who by now would have been getting very old, to believe He would return any day now while they were yet alive. But apparently He didn't. Nevertheles, every generation has believed this saying which has kept every generation since on the alert in case He should suddenly arrive. So was that prophecy an act of deception of His part? Or a mistaken prediction? Or a scribal errors? Or are there things we're not properly understanding still? And why, whatever interpretation you lean towards, an evident lack of clarity? Did something go wrong?

We may confidently assume that Yah'shua (Jesus) knew full well how He would be interpreted since He was Elohim (God) and Elohim (God) is omniscient (all-knowing). When He told the Judeans that He would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days (Jn.2:19), they had no idea that He was speaking about His physical body rising from the dead after three days laying in the tomb following His crucifixion because Scripture tells us so. 'It took 46 years to build,' they said, 'so how could it be rebuilt in 3 days' (v.20)? Then the reader is told in verse 21 that He was speaking about 'the temple of His body' so there is no mystery for us. The thing is, it's perfectly clear that He didn't intend the unbelievers to understand which is why He didn't clarify for them. He was deliberately ambiguous so that the unspiritual would fail to understand. Indeed, He must surely have known that His enemies would use this saying of His as evidence that He prophesied falsely, evidence which would contribute to sending Him to His death on the cross...which, of course, is what He always intended. He did not lie. He was simply misunderstood, and on purpose, to ensure He was crucified for as He Himself testified, "for this cause I was born", hinting as early as Mark 10:45, Matthew 20:28 and John 18:37 that His mission was to atone for the sins of mankind and rise from the dead. And though they were in denial about this for some time, not wanting it to be true, His talmidim (disciples) were told multiple times that, mysteriously, His death would be the main event in His life. Not until after He had risen did they understand this purposefully dark saying.

Elohim (God) is no fool and He does not deceive, even though Jeremiah thought He did once in a moment of desperation because of his plight:

"O Yahweh, You have deceived me, and I was deceived; You are stronger than I, and You have prevailed" (Jer.20:7, ESV).

So what did the Saviour mean when He said, in the penultimate verse of the Bible, that He was "coming soon" even when it seemed less and less likely that He was when that generation got very old? Well, "soon" could conceivably be a reference to the 'Elohim- or God-time' 1-divine-day-equals-1,000-human-years I spoke of earlier. From His point-of-view it would be quite 'soon'. From His point of view, He would only be going away for about two days before He came back 2,000 years later in our time perspective. But is that what Christ really meant? Why didn't He make that distinction clear to His own followers who were bound to wonder and potentially be disappointed when He didn't come back according to their human conception of time? And the answer to that question has to be: because we weren't supposed to know. Why weren't we supposed to know? So that we would always be prepared and not fall away because 2,000 years in the future would have seemed (in 100 AD) to just be 'too far away' to be bothered about because of our short attention span. Elohim (God) understands fallen human nature well enough, understanding that we get discouraged easily and need to be kept awake. Did not the talmidim (disciples) fall asleep when they were on watch while He was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane shortly before His arrest? (Mt.26:40-41)

If you're not completely happy with that explanation, know that there's another possibility too. Were you aware that the Greek word parousia, which is used in the Greek translation of the original Aramaic, can mean either 'arrival' or 'presence'? He could have been talking either about His physical return or a periof of time in which His spiritual presence would be experienced but not a literal physical coming. The Jehovah's Witnesses, as some of you may know, put great score on the 'presence' aspect of parousia but not because of honest scholarship but because of a false prophecy they made when they claimed He would return in the generation alive in 1914. When He didn't return in 1914, and when another prophecy that Abraham Isaac, Jacob and other greats would physically return in 1929 to California to start the millennium, and when the last person who was alive in 1914 had died and their third prophecy failed, the Watchtower organisation needed to do some major damage control to maintain its credibility, so they invented the notion that they were, after all, right, and that He actually did return in 1914 but invisibly. But to save their own prophetic skins, as it were, they were also now forced to teach that they don't expect Him to 'return' physically at all the way Scripture describes. He is just 'there' in their story of the future Earth Paradise.

Both the Seventh-Day Adventists and Mormons have made similar prophecies about Christ's physical return. The Adventists invented a spurious doctrine called the 'Investigative Judgment' to explain away their failed prophecy about Christ not returning around 1843 when William Miller, interpreting Daniel 8:14, said He would; and the Mormons invented an equally bogus explanation saying that He had indeed returned visibly and physically but secretly in one of their temples. In all these cases they predicted a date when Christ said that no man knew the date of His return, and that He Himself didn't know, or the malakim (angels), but only the Father. This was in the previously mentioned Olivet Discourse:

"But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the malakim (angels) of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only" (Mt.24:36, ESV).

The Jehovah's Witnesses may have prophesied falsely (and they did so one more time in 1975, saying that the 'system of things' would end then, leading their members to sell or give away all their possessions, and got that wrong too, and lost a lot of members as a result) but they were right in pointing out that parousia can indeed mean 'presence' in the non-physical sense; but because they were in damage-control mode, they falsely claimed that parousia can only mean 'invisible presence' when, in fact, it can mean both.

You will find parousia used in the New Testament to refer to both the literal physical coming or arrival of a peron or persons (e.g. 1 Thess.3:13; 4:15-17; 2 Thess.2:8; 1 Cor.15:23; 2 Pet.1:16) and the ongoing presence of such persons (e.g. Mt.24:27,37-39; 2 Pet.3:4; 2 Cor.10:10). Only the context can tell you which meaning is correct. Thus parousia is a complex term combining the initial arrival or physical coming and the subsequent, often unseen, authority, influence or invisible presence of Christ or an apostle.

So when Christ told John in Revelation 22:20 He was "coming soon", He could either have been referring to His physical arrival (i.e. Second Coming) or to His spiritual presence in the same or some other context OR BOTH SIMULTANEOUSLY. There can be no doubt that He will be returning visibly and physically in the same way that He departed at His ascension (Ac.1:9-11; Lk.24:50-51) but "I am coming soon" can, and does, mean that He will also manifest to every true believer who is born again, i.e. within his or her lifetime. Thus His careful choice of words serves multiple purposes - He is coming 'soon' in 'Elohim-' or 'God-time', and physically and visibly so, and He is coming to every true believer who is spiritually regenerated at least once in their life and throughout their life through the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit). Thus He is present spiritually (parousia) at all times in the one who is born again and living obediently to His mitzvot (commandments), and there are tens of thousands of people alive today who can testify of this. And - understand this too in the light of the rebuilding of the temple illustration I gave earlier - there is a third intent here in saying, "I am coming soon", which is to keep the doubting and weak in faith 'on their toes', as it were. If nothing else, this shows the great care He takes in using the words that He does. Is this not shere genius? Yes!

I say all of this by way of a primer for something else I want to specifically talk to you about today. And I am not just talking about Second Coming prophecies in the Bible but of any and all prophecy which, as you will have learned (as we have talked about these things over the years, and especially when we did our Book of Revelation course) can have multiple applications at different times in history. These don't have to be in a particular sequence but some biblical prophecy refers specifically to events near the time of their fulfilment with subsequent historical events resembling the same pattern in future generations - or (thus making the prophecy seem to be repeating itself in multiple events over time), to events in the distant future with numerous events prior to literal fulfilment taking place, resembling in form or nature the main future event. Thus, to give a very familiar example, we see end-time-like 'antichrists' in numerous historical figures of the past like Nero, Gengis Khan, Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Gorbachov, Bill Clinton, King Charles III, Obama, and (currently Donald Trump in the minds of many) and many others, all of whom resemble the final Antichrist-to-come by their behaviour (all of whom have been misindentified in the past as the final Antichrist in their generation by various commentators). Yet all were 'antichrists' with a small 'a', as John taught (1 Jn.2:18,22; 4:3; 2 Jn.1:7) In Yahweh's system, as in Hebrew Scripture generally, time is cyclical, or better, 'spiral', when it comes both to human behaviour and to prophetic events.

A classic example is to be found in the Book of Judges where we see repeating patterns or cycles of behaviour over several generations. Israel prospers, becomes carnal, apostacises, is oppressed by invaders (like the Philistines and Midianites), repents, and Yahweh sends a human deliverer (like Samson). And then the cycle repeats itself. This is a tavnith or pattern we see throughout history hundreds of time. We are in such a moment of apostacy and oppression as I speak now, in an event - or more precisely, a series of events - which we call the Penultimate Judgment because it is one of those prophetic times that closely resembles the final Judgment. This Penultimate Judgment has been going on now for many years. Yes, it will reach a climax, but before that climax many things must first happen - reprieves when repentance is genuine, until repentance is not forthcoming any longer, and disaster strikes once again only more severely until there is a full ripening in sin and the pre-ordained punishment reaches its climax and conclusion. In the actual, 'historical' Judgment in the Book of Revelation there is no longer any space for repentance, and it is in this regard that the similarily ends.

It's as well to remember that the rhythm of ancient Israel was one of numerous countdowns. Each new moon, and each annual festivals involved countdowns. Perhaps the most famous one is the 'Omer Count' when approximately 100 days (7 creation sabbaths + 50 solar days) are counted starting at Yom haBikkurim (Firstfruits) and taking the faithful to Shavu'ot (Weeks/'Pentecost'). The first four annual counts take us to memorial festivals whereas the last three are as yet unfulfulfilled festival prophecies that portend vitally important events, the first of which is the Second Coming which I spoke about at the beginning and the last the Marriage Supper of the Lamb and the Millennium.

Each year we have a countdown in preparation for that day (Yom Teruah) when the Saviour's "coming soon" will finally be realised! We may not know which year Christ is coming back but we do know the time of the year, so naturally our interest grows in the autumn each year. 'Will it be this year?' we ask ourselves and so we prepare with an approximately 40 day countdown from the beginning of the sixth month which takes us all the way to the tenth day of the seventh month which is Yom haKippurim or Day of Atonements when the FINAL Judgment takes place after the Master's Return! This is traditionally called the Season of Teshuvah or Repentance which is an opportunity to get down to finally sorting out those things wrong in our lives that we ought to have been working on more diligently during the rest of the year! This countdown is obviously important because after the Final Judgment there is no more space for repentance.

So these are national countdowns. Sometimes we are given personal countdowns as was a very sick Hezekiah who was informed by the navi (prophet) Isaiah to prepare for death. This was a countdown without a specific number of days but the king knew it was imminent and begged Yahweh for mercy. He was given an extra 15 years (2 Ki.20:6; Is.38:5). I have my own 'countdowns' currently, one to a new operation for a new poacemaker battery and another for a new heart valve replacement, though the latter is provisional (and probably won't ever happen). All of these countdowns keep us on our toes and inspire us to be serious about "redeeming the time, because the days are evil" (Eph.5:15-16, KJV). Time is precious, we only get one shot at a mortal earth life, so we shouldn't waste time. Maintaining healthy rhythms is what it is all about. Many scriptures tell us to go to bed early and get up early because this is the best time to recharge our batteries, as it were. Yahweh "gives His beloved sleep" at the appointed times (Ps.127:2, NIV).

In recent times Messianic Evangelicals were given two very specific countdowns. There have always been crises and wars, I lived through the Cold War following World War II, and my parents - bless them - lived through two world wars! We had crises and wars in my first 50 years but they were nothing compared to what we have now! Even the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when it looked as though the world might be plunged into nuclear war (I was 8 then) pales into insignifcance when I think of the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East in particular and how close we've come to World War III in 2025 and 2026. Our politicians were a lot more responsible back in the 60's than they are today

The first of these two countdowns took place a little over a decade ago when I was directed to get our people and friends to get ready for economic collapse. This included, especially, prepping and taking the necessary steps to become self-sufficient. People had stopped taking preparedness seriously when President Trump entered the White House the first time and promised to 'drain the swamp' (end deep state corruption) and better the flailing economy. People were so confident that 'Uncle Donald' would fix things that in many cases they stopped prepping altogether. His efforts were sabotaged repeatedly by the 'swampers' so that he managed to achieve little. Then America got a President with Alzheimers whose controllers continued to implode the economy. The preppers got to work again. Then Trump won again, promising to 'Make America Great Again' (MAGA) by starting Trade Wars with the rest of the world and succeeded only in causing the European economies to implode.

Yahweh knew all of this was coming, but we didn't. Naïve but hopeful American and other Western Christians really hoped that 'The Donald' would fix things. He didn't, and hasn't, even if some good things have happened during his administration. In anticipation of today's chaos and financial collapse, the first of these was a 107-day count that began on 25 June and ended on 10 October 2015. It was a wake-up call for believers to properly prepare.

It all began when I was given the by now well-known 'Vision of the Fall of the USA & Israel the year before, on 12 April 2014 - I'll not repeat it here but leave a link for those who either have never heard of it or need their memories refreshing. It was given as the first of many signs to follow the beginning of the Second or Last Exodus which began at Pesach or Passover in 2014, the day after the USA/Israel vision on 13 April, initially (in the first few years) to be a spiritual 'exodus' of progressively leaving Babylon, to be followed later (still in the future) by a literal, physical Final gathering into 12 isolated settlements scattered around the world of each of the 12 Tribes of Israel, where they will remain for at least 7 years, corresponding with the Time of the Great Tribulation, to be followed by a secong leg of the journey to the Holy Land itself, where all twelve groups will converge. Many things have to happen before that day including the end of the current Israeli Republic caused in part by an ending of political, military and economic support by the global hegemon, the United States. All of this seemed very remote still back in 2014-15. KIt wasn't until the second presidential term of Donald Trump that the entire geopolitical landscape would change. We're in the midst of that upheaval right now.

Without exception, all those of us who take an interest in biblical prophecy have ideas on how everything is going to pan out but we rarely get things right. The disastrous, genocidal Gaza War is still on-going and at one point it looked as though Israel was about to collapse when the USA and Israeli Republic bombed Iran's nuclear capability who proceeded to returned the favour with a devastating missile attack that Israel was unprepared for. With the rise of China, Russia and the BRICS economic confederation, we have seen the spectacular weakening of the USA as represented by the vision of the stripped American eagle:

The second countdown (lasting 30 days) began on 1 September 2016 ended on 1 October 2016 at Yom Teruah, a foreshadowing of the countdown to the Second Coming and subsequent Day of Judgment. This was the last opportunity for the muderous élites to repent, called a 'NOTICE OF EXECUTION'. And though nearly 10 years later this hasn't finally taken place, we are seeing clear signs from the revelations in the Epstein Files that their names are numbered. This last countdown was for the enemy, showing Yahweh's mercy, which they predictably spurned, though many whistleblowers on lower levels are now speaking. We have had the Pandemic and Ukrainian War in the interim and are seeing a partial fulfilment (what I refer to as a 'dress rehearsal for the Final Judgment) of Yah'shua's (Jesus') words:

"Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Therefore wahyatsoever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops" (Lk.12:2-3, ESV; also see Lk.8:17; Mk.4:22; Mt.10:26; Eccl.12:14; Heb.4:13; 1 Cor.4:5).

So we've not quite arrived there yet but all the signs now clearly point to this being the inevitable outcome. When a nation falls it does not all happen in a day. Yes, Babylon finally fell when the Medes breached its walls and captured the city, permanently ending a dynasty and world power, but its weakening before that was gradual, pattern we see in all declining empires. The same thing happened with Rome. The same thing happened with the Soviet Union. The same thing happened with the British Empire which, uniquely perhaps, peacefully (for the most part) dismantled itself. And the same thing is now happening with the undisputed world power since 1945 until now, the United States of America, and before our very eyes.

Let's wind this up. The need for further countdowns like the 107- and 30-day ones we've been discussing is unlikely given that everyone can see what's going on if they can be bothered to look past the enemy's hall of mirrors and smokescreens being projected in the form of state propaganda, and find reliable alternative media. The publication of millions of pages of the Epstein files, partly redacted, has accelerated the collapse, and it will continue to accelerate. More is yet to be revealed and more and more heads will roll.

Finally, one good way to evaluate the state of the economy (if like me you're not an economist) is to track the value of precious metals like gold, silver, platinum and palladium, for as these rapidly increase in value, so fiat or paper currency dwindles proportionately. If you look at the chart you will see that the start of the collapse really started getting underway around the beginning of 2024 when gold was priced at about $2,000 per ounce. In the space of two short years, proceeding to the end of 2025, the price has shot up to about $5,000 per ounce, more than double the January 2024 amount, and it's still rising. Once gold and silver triple in value, the bottom will quite literally fall out of the market which may well collapse by as much as 95 per cent, many say. It's not a smooth curve, as you can see, but the trend is unmistakable.

Yahweh has given us 10 years to prepare thanks in particular to the first countdown, not forgetting a third recent barley stalk countdown of 100 days in 2025, foreshadowing famine that will accompany the collapse in some parts of the world. We have seen how hopeful politicians have disappointed. Europe is rapidly deindustrialising and is becoming a second world collection of nations. We have to learn to be self-reliant. There isn't going to be any promised 'Golden Age' except for the super-rich oligarchs. The rest of us must learn to get by on very little. And we can if we are wise and hard-working. Only the other day I was advising African brethren to start farmiing, and in particular, permaculture farming, because you can start small and gradually build it up as you learn the ways of the land. And overarching all of this, we must be spiritually prepared, cultivating the soil of our hearts before Yah'shua (Jesus) so that He can plant a crop of righteousness in us for the sake of His Kingdom.

This has been a long sermon and you will not be getting another one like it probably before the spring. For many of us of the penultimate generation, the summer that's coming may be our last one. We shall see and we shall pray as Hezekiah did for mercy so that we may serve a bit longer if Father so wills it. Anyway, I hope this has blessed you in some small way, and though I wanted to get into the two major countdowns in more detail but I just don't have the strength. Preparing this talk has utterly drained me. So until the next time ink and paper meet, may the grace of our Master, Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) and the fellowship of the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) be with you all, to bless you and guide you in the turbulent and uncertain days ahead. Present yourself to Yahweh for service and do what He says, and all will be well! Amen.