The Holy God-Story

The Bible is unparalleled in its story-telling! Everybody loves a great story, especially when it has a great plot, great characters, and a great ending. The Bible could be called the Greatest Book of All Times, and is the Holy Book for both Jews and Christians, who are known as God’s People. Though it was written by many different people at very diverse periods in time, God managed to assure that He was actually the true author by inspiring their writings. It has the greatest beginning, plot, twists, intrigues, characters, heroes, anti-heroes, suffering, victory, and ending! The Bible is not fictional, which makes it even more exceptional and unique. No other author can create and write a story as exquisitely as the Creator and Sustainer of life Himself. He is the author and main character of the entire Biblical drama, and we get to be a part of it!

The Holy God-Story is timeless, together with God’s own eternal and perfect Being, because God exists outside of time. He designed and created our timely physical realm, is still now actively present in our personal tangible reality, and will take us to be with Him forever, if we believe in Him and we join our lives to His.

The Bible provides evidence of who God is, describing Him from Genesis to Revelation. There were always three separate, yet united, divine “persons” in this ONE True Triune God: Genesis 1:1 calls Him Elohim, which is the plural generic form of God. He then declares His personal name in Genesis 2:4 as יהוה, also “I am who I am” (lit. I will be who I will be) in Exodus 3:14. Later, Isaiah 48:16 says: “Draw near to me, hear this: from the beginning I have not spoken in secret, from the time it came to be I have been there. And now the Lord GOD has sent Me, and his Spirit.” This verse identifies “God” as Adonai יהוה (sometimes called Father or Abba), “Me” who was sent by God (later termed Yeshua or Jesus and also the Son or Word of God (Jn. 8:18-58; 1:1), and God’s Spirit (Ruach HaKodesh). All three are equally “God” in different manifestations, also called the Trinity.

God’s storyline begins with His interaction with humankind, made in His “image,” and then with the Jewish people, who were chosen to be His light unto the nations (Isa. 42:6). But they struggled with their obedience to His Torah. In His limitless love and mercy, God said that He would send a Messiah or “Anointed One” who would redeem mankind from its sin in a perfect covenantal blood-sacrifice (Isa. 53:1-12; Matt. 26:28) so that His Law could be written in their hearts (Jer. 31:31-33) and His followers could reach their potential by being filled with the Holy Spirit (Ezek. 11:19-20). This Messiah was God temporarily incarnate (Psa. 2:2, 7), and then He regained His divine position next to the Father after rising from the dead (Jer. 30:9; Jn. 10:14-18). When the Jewish High Priest asked Jesus directly whether He was the Messiah, the son of God, He described Himself as the “Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Matt. 26:63-64), implying his future return. Jesus also warned of an Anti-Messiah (Antichrist), a satanic system that would come as a Counterfeit Messiah to try to ruin His redemptive plans (Mat. 24:24). God warned early about this enigmatic entity through ancient prophets, such as Daniel and the apostle John, though they are sometimes not very easy to understand.

As evidenced historically, the Anti-Messiah has been hard at work in order to destroy God’s people, both Jews and Christians. He has caused great suffering to the Jews in their diaspora, while also persecuting Yeshua’s “ekklesía,” or “called-out” Assembly of Believers (Rev. 12). The Gospel of Luke clearly expresses that after Jesus went back to heaven, there would be a time of “great distress” for the Jewish people (Lk. 21:20-24). Matthew 24:15-21 used the term “great tribulation” for this same period, also mentioned by Jeremiah as the time of Jacob’s trouble (Jer. 30:7). Jesus clarified that Jerusalem would be trampled on by the Gentiles and that the Jews would fall by the sword and be led captive among all nations (Lk. 21:24). Jeremiah 30 also explains that Israel would be led into captivity as a means of punishment and correction, but they would finally return “in the latter days.” This expulsion from their land happened in AD 70. Seven centuries later (after a symbolic “1,290 days,” according to Dan. 12:11), Islam came onto the scene, conquering almost all the previously Jewish and later Christian territories for Allah, destroying everything in its wake. Satan created this false god through Muhammad, who became the Counterfeit Messiah.[1] But we can see that the time of great tribulation for the Jews ended in 1948, following World Wars I and II, after two-thirds of them were destroyed (Zec. 13:7-9). With the help of faithful Christian armies that destroyed the Ottoman Empire and Hitler’s Nazi Empire, the nation of Israel was finally reborn, and Islam (which I call in this book the “First Beast from the Sea,” Rev. 13:1-10) was temporarily “slain.” But we will soon experience (if not already) another, shorter time of tribulation (Matt. 24:29-31), during which we will see the redemption of the Jews (Zec. 12:10) and then the resurrection of the saints as the Messiah appears in the heavens to gather up His people (Isa. 26:19; Joel 2:32). Then, Islam (in a revived version of the first, which I call the “Second Beast from the Earth”) will again take center stage (Rev. 13:11-18).

This book is a study and explanation about what Jesus really meant by the great “distress” (Lk. 21:23) or “tribulation” (Matt. 24:21) for the Jewish people, who are the “Beasts” (Dan. 7; Rev. 13), which is responsible for the “abomination of desolation” (Matt. 24:15) as well as for the latter worldwide government (Rev. 17:8), and when we will see the sign of the Son of Man in the clouds when He appears to gather His “elect” (Matt. 24:29-31). This perspective is very different from the many diverse Christian and Jewish eschatological theories, and I have named it the “Joint Christian and Jewish Resurrection Eschatological Theory.” I will support this theory by what Jesus told His early disciples, together with portions from the book of Daniel, John’s Revelation, and other Biblical texts that complement His foundational context. I will provide historical data regarding Islam as evidence regarding the person or entity of the Counterfeit Messiah, who has already been active in the past, and will be more active in the future after the joint resurrection/rapture of God’s true saints (1 Cor. 15:50-54).

It is my hope that this book will bring clarity to many people, whether Jewish, Christian or anything else, regarding the end-times and what it means for these two people groups, who are both God’s witnesses (Zech. 4:14), and who are God’s “elect” (Matt. 24:31). I believe that God’s people must become “one new man” (Eph. 2:15), “one flock” spiritually united under “one shepherd” before the time arrives for the Messiah’s return (Jn. 10:16).

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[1] Please note that I am not stating that all Muslims are evil, nor that they should be rejected or persecuted for their honest and misplaced faith, but that the socio-political and religious system of Islam has been founded by Satan himself through Muhammad (Rev. 11:7), fulfilling all past and future eschatological references to the Antichrist and the Man of Lawlessness. This is not Islamophobia, but true objectivity of what Islam has always clearly expressed itself to be down through history, and still does. We must be honest with the evident truth from our past and present days.