Sid: When you understand what my guest is teaching this week if you’re not red hot for the Messiah you got to be a zombie; you’ve got to be crazy. Or as we Jewish people say you got to be mashuga; another word for crazy. My guest Perry Stone; President and Founder of Voice of Evangelism. I’m featuring his latest book called “Unlocking Secrets in the Second Coming Scrolls” Subtitled “Searching for the Time of Messiah’s Return.” Now Perry everyone wants to know when the Messiah is going to return. But everyone know that we don’t know the exact time; it’s a mystery if you will. But you wrote a whole book giving indications; how come?
Perry: (Laughing) Well, one of the things I like to share with people when we talk about searching for the time and Sid you’re aware of this as I am. Especially people that are listening to us that have been in church or been Christian’s for a long time; both Jews and Gentiles. And that is that many times people have set dates when events would happen. They would calculate a year; they would calculate how long they thought a generation was. And you know the one verse that people uses if Matthew 24 where it says “This generation shall not pass until all of these things be fulfilled.” And then they do a study on how long is a generation and then they try to calculate. And then what happens in our day and time is people start with 1948 which was the year Israel became a nation or they start with 1967 when Jerusalem was reunited as the Capitol. And then we want to add a generation on to that to tie everything together. First of all when you talk about how long a generation is it depends on what you’re talking about. For example the Bible talks about in the Book of Genesis Chapter 2 and verse 4 “These are the generations of heaven and earth. And the generations of heaven and earth are 1000 year periods; because there’s going to be a millennial reign on earth according to Revelation 20 of the Messiah when He returns and that 1000 year reign is called the Day of the Lord. So a generation of heaven and earth is a 1000 year period. And then you have God telling Abraham in Genesis 15: 13-16. “Your seed shall be strangers in a land” speaking of Egypt “But I will bring them out after 4 generations.” When you divide four into 400 that’s 100 years; so in Abraham’s day the generations were 100 years in length each. Now one of the reasons for that may have been that Abraham was 100 years of age when his son Isaac was born and men lived longer back then than they do today. Men lived double and triple the age that they do so generations were longer then. And that maybe why a generation in Abraham’s day was a 100 year period. Now we come to Moses day which is 430 years approximately after Abraham’s time. And God says for 40 years I was grieved with that generation, speaking of the generation of unbelief in the wilderness. Psalms 95 verses 10-11. Now we see a generation there of unbelief is 40 years. We come to the New Testament talking about a generation and we see that Messiah gave prediction that says “Upon you shall come all the righteous blood that was shed from Abel to Zachariah whom you slew between the porch and the altar.” Well that was spoken probably around 30 AD and was fulfilled in the year 70 AD. So we have an approximate 40 years for a generation of unbelief. Now if we were to sit down and try to calculate when we think the Messiah will return; will it be here or there; this is one of the most important things I have ever shared with people. That I have found out that you can’t take time and count it that way because God counts time by covenants. And let me explain what I mean when I say God counts time by covenants. In Matthew 1:17 it says that all the generations from…it actually is giving us the details of fourteen generations, fourteen generations and fourteen generations. And so from the time of David to Babylon is fourteen; from Babylon until Christ is fourteen and from Abraham to David is fourteen. So you’ve got fourteen, fourteen, fourteen and now why does God talk about Abraham; why does he talk about David, Babylon and the Messiah all in that passage of Matthew 1:17.
Sid: And we know that there are no wasted words with God so there is meaning upon meaning upon meaning if you know the keys.
Perry: That is absolutely correct. Okay God made covenant with Abraham, God made covenant with Abraham for a nation called Israel. God made covenant with David for the city of Jerusalem for his seed would rule there. God then the Hebrew nation broke the covenant at the time of the Babylonian captivity. But then Machach or Messiah Jesus; Yeshua he brought a new covenant in. So notice that there’s 14 generations; 14, 14 and 14 that’s a pattern. But you can’t look at those generations and count years, you can only count them as this man had a son, he’s the second generation. He had a son third generation because if you add up the years they don’t add up equal. In others words the years between Abraham to David; from David to Babylon to Christ they’ll be one time frame they’ll be 490 years and one will be 560 years. So you can’t do it by years; you do it by covenants. Now here’s my point we are in the time frame of the dispensation of the grace of God and we know that there’s a time of tribulation coming in the future. But what happens is there’s an actual covenant transfer to where the church has the favor or God. And the church again consisting of both Jew and Gentile who are now one in Christ. But the church has the favor of God; and we’re preaching the gospel; Matthew 24:14. But our assignment to preach is finished what happens? We’re caught up to meet the Lord in the air 1 Thessalonians 4; then God turns His attention back to not the church but to Israel. And then He works to reestablish his covenant of the Messiah with Israel who had gone into unbelief. And so it’s very difficult when people say give me a time frame. Jesus said; the Lord said “There would be signs.” Matthew 24. And Paul said “We’re not in darkness that we would be overtaken unaware.” But at the same time we have to understand that it’s all about covenant with God. It’s all about the covenant that He has with His people through Yeshua and the covenant that He’s going to reestablish in faith as the eyes of the Hebrew nation will be opened there in the future in such a wonderful way. So the real key is understanding that God is counting time by covenant. But yet there are patterns; I mean when you use Matthew 1:17 Fourteen generations, 14, 14. It didn’t say 14, 20 and 6 or 18, 12 and 1; there’s a pattern. So in our book “Unlocking Secrets in the Second Coming Scrolls “ what I try to do is discover patterns that are in the scripture that will help people to understand some of the aspects about the Messiah and what was said about His return. And I’ll tell you what the more you dig into the scripture the more you find. And it’s almost like you can almost go in the word as deep just so deep it’s almost amazing. But yet it’s simple once you see it it’s so simple to understand it but it does take digging in to the word to get those nuggets out.
Sid: Well, if I was to ask you a question that you’ve heard many a time is Jesus returning in your lifetime?
Perry: Your answer would be if things continue to go at the rate they’re going and continue to accelerate I believe it’s very very possible. However, I’m going to be one of those that’s going to be dogmatic on it because there are people in the past that have been dogmatic and they’ve already gone to be with the Lord. But if I should fulfill my days and one of the reasons I say this Sid is because when you look at Islamic terrorism and you look at the prophecies that the Muslim’s have about how they’re going to rule the world and the plans that they have there’s just like there’s something has been unleashed on the entire world at this point. And you know that if the weapons of mass destruction get into the wrong hands and you know that eventually they will then you can see all of these prophecies in the book of Revelation about these judgments and you know 1/3 dying here and grass being burned up and all these other strange scriptures how they can come to pass through the weapons developed or are being developed. So because of things like that I really believe that we are in the what’s called the time of the end. Or what would be addressed in the New Testament as the last days. And I believer that anyone that prays and is lead by the Holy Spirit can see that that’s true. And that you can feel it kind of feel deep down in your spirit and of course the Holy Spirit knows all things as it relates to things of God. And I think that the Holy Spirit is quickening a lot of people now to say to them “Hey, get your family to the Lord; begin to really pray; begin to support the gospel; get it out there because there is a time limitation you know quick work the Lord is going to do in the earth. And I think that we can see that happening.
Sid: Now where do you believe Islam is headed?
Perry: Sid I don’t know if you ever heard me teach this before but we wrote on this and we taught this publicly. After 12 years of studying this in great detail I believe that the man this is identified in the New Testament by our early fathers is a Muslim that rises up somewhere out of the 10 territory between Persia which is Iran up toward Syria, Lebanon. That whole strip that used to be the old Babylon territory.
Sid: But we have nothing to fear because the leaders of our country have said “Islam is a peace loving religion.
Perry: Well, I think those who said that I believe say they want to try to keep a retaliation from taking place in our country toward people of that faith.
Sid: So it’s a little like a white lie?
Perry: Well, and I think it’s a cover because it’s a person. I’ll be honest with you Sid a lot of people who never studied maybe the Koran or what Islam really teaches don’t really know what it teaches. If you just go by a Muslim who maybe on a talk show talking you know it sounds real simple.
Sid: Because you can pick and choose from the Koran and you can make it look peace loving or you can state what the words really mean.
Perry: Yeah. And if a person takes it literal then the Jihad, the war against infidels; their real mad; the real hatred to the Jews. And I have a friend of mine that’s a missionary and sometimes he goes to an Islamic countries. And he says “In America, he says to be honest they don’t like what our government does but they like me; when you bring up Israel and the Jews he says I can’t even talk about it because he says they get violent, at a table in a taxi. He says “You cannot even bring it up..” He said “Perry, it’s amazing.”
Sid: So why is it that in Europe even non-Moslems feel this hatred towards the Jew in Israel?
Perry: You know Sid I believe there is an actual spirit of anti-Christ. We know that according to John’s gospel there is a spirit of anti-Christ and then there is man called the Anti-Christ. And that spirit of the anti-christ produces a hatred toward anything that is truth.
Sid: I mean it’s got to be really manifest in a body called the United Nations based on there history.
Perry: Oh, and see if people even knew about the UN the security council is a lot of Islamic countries and Muslim countries and…
Sid: Oh, we’re out of time we’ll pick up here on tomorrow’s broadcast.
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth