Why is all this stuff happening?
God chose a man named Moses (age 80 years) to lead his people out of Egypt to the land God had taken for Himself, which included Jerusalem.
RULES:
God told Moses to tell his people certain rules that eventually totaled 613.
PARTICULAR NOTABLE RULES
De 15:1 At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts.
Le 25:8 “‘Count off seven sabbaths of years– seven times seven years– so that the seven sabbaths of years amount to a period of forty-nine years.
9 Then have the trumpet sounded everywhere on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement sound the trumpet throughout your land.
10 Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each one of you is to return to his family property and each to his own clan.
11 The fiftieth year shall be a Jubilee for you; do not sow and do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the untended vines.
12 For it is a jubilee and is to be holy for you; eat only what is taken directly from the fields.
13 “‘In this Year of Jubilee everyone is to return to his own property. Everything returns to it’s original state of being just as the Jews have been called back to Israel since 1948 when it became a Nation. Applying this same principal to Christianity, Christians will return to their first spiritual state of being. As Jonathan Cahn (1) describes it, “we will witness a departure of Western civilization from its biblical foundations, a departure from the faith that defined it, a departure in spirituality, in morality and ethics, in culture and worldview”. “Just as Israel returns to its original state –of being pagan — so the Western world will become pagan once again”.
Continuing what appears to be a giant circle, followers of Yeshua (Jew or Gentile) will return to the spiritual state/time of the first Yeshua Messiah Pentecost and there will once again be a massive spiritual explosion.
“In the beginning of the age, true believers used the Hebrew name of Yeshua (Jesus) and it is being spoken again. In the beginning of the age, Jewish and Gentile believers were one. This too is repeating.
BLESSINGS:
After the promises of many blessings, Moses stated:
De 28:1 If you fully obey the LORD your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations on earth.
2 All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the LORD your God:
3 You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country.
4 The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock– the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.
5 Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed.
6 You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out.
7 The LORD will grant that the enemies who rise up against you will be defeated before you. They will come at you from one direction but flee from you in seven.
8 The LORD will send a blessing on your barns and on everything you put your hand to. The LORD your God will bless you in the land he is giving you.
9 The LORD will establish you as his holy people, as he promised you on oath, if you keep the commands of the LORD your God and walk in his ways.
10 Then all the peoples on earth will see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they will fear you.
11 The LORD will grant you abundant prosperity– in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your ground– in the land he swore to your forefathers to give you.
12 The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none.
13 The LORD will make you the head, not the tail. If you pay attention to the commands of the LORD your God that I give you this day and carefully follow them, you will always be at the top, never at the bottom.
14 Do not turn aside from any of the commands I give you today, to the right or to the left, following other gods and serving them.
CURSES –
15 However, if you do not obey the LORD your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you:
16 You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.
17 Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed.
18 The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.
19 You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out.
20 The LORD will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him.
21 The LORD will plague you with diseases until he has destroyed you from the land you are entering to possess.
22 The LORD will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish.
23 The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron.
24 The LORD will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed.
25 The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but flee from them in seven, and you will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms on earth.
26 Your carcasses will be food for all the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and there will be no one to frighten them away.
27 The LORD will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, festering sores and the itch, from which you cannot be cured.
28 The LORD will afflict you with madness, blindness and confusion of mind.
29 At midday you will grope about like a blind man in the dark. You will be unsuccessful in everything you do; day after day you will be oppressed and robbed, with no one to rescue you.
30 You will be pledged to be married to a woman, but another will take her and ravish her. You will build a house, but you will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will not even begin to enjoy its fruit.
31 Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will eat none of it. Your donkey will be forcibly taken from you and will not be returned. Your sheep will be given to your enemies, and no one will rescue them.
32 Your sons and daughters will be given to another nation, and you will wear out your eyes watching for them day after day, powerless to lift a hand.
33 A people that you do not know will eat what your land and labor produce, and you will have nothing but cruel oppression all your days.
34 The sights you see will drive you mad.
35 The LORD will afflict your knees and legs with painful boils that cannot be cured, spreading from the soles of your feet to the top of your head.
36 The LORD will drive you and the king you set over you to a nation unknown to you or your fathers. There you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone.
37 You will become a thing of horror and an object of scorn and ridicule to all the nations where the LORD will drive you.
38 You will sow much seed in the field but you will harvest little, because locusts will devour it.
39 You will plant vineyards and cultivate them but you will not drink the wine or gather the grapes, because worms will eat them.
40 You will have olive trees throughout your country but you will not use the oil, because the olives will drop off.
41 You will have sons and daughters but you will not keep them, because they will go into captivity.
42 Swarms of locusts will take over all your trees and the crops of your land.
43 The alien who lives among you will rise above you higher and higher, but you will sink lower and lower.
44 He will lend to you, but you will not lend to him. He will be the head, but you will be the tail.
45 All these curses will come upon you. They will pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the LORD your God and observe the commands and decrees he gave you.
46 They will be a sign and a wonder to you and your descendants forever.
47 Because you did not serve the LORD your God joyfully and gladly in the time of prosperity,
48 therefore in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and dire poverty, you will serve the enemies the LORD sends against you. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you.
49 The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the ends of the earth, like an eagle swooping down, a nation whose language you will not understand,
50 a fierce-looking nation without respect for the old or pity for the young.
51 They will devour the young of your livestock and the crops of your land until you are destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine or oil, nor any calves of your herds or lambs of your flocks until you are ruined.
52 They will lay siege to all the cities throughout your land until the high fortified walls in which you trust fall down. They will besiege all the cities throughout the land the LORD your God is giving you.
53 Because of the suffering that your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the LORD your God has given you.
54 Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children,
55 and he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating. It will be all he has left because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of all your cities.
56 The most gentle and sensitive woman among you– so sensitive and gentle that she would not venture to touch the ground with the sole of her foot– will begrudge the husband she loves and her own son or daughter
57 the afterbirth from her womb and the children she bears. For she intends to eat them secretly during the siege and in the distress that your enemy will inflict on you in your cities.
58 If you do not carefully follow all the words of this law, which are written in this book, and do not revere this glorious and awesome name– the LORD your God–
59 the LORD will send fearful plagues on you and your descendants, harsh and prolonged disasters, and severe and lingering illnesses.
60 He will bring upon you all the diseases of Egypt that you dreaded, and they will cling to you.
61 The LORD will also bring on you every kind of sickness and disaster not recorded in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed.
62 You who were as numerous as the stars in the sky will be left but few in number, because you did not obey the LORD your God.
63 Just as it pleased the LORD to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you. You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess.
64 Then the LORD will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods– gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known.
65 Among those nations you will find no repose, no resting place for the sole of your foot. There the LORD will give you an anxious mind, eyes weary with longing, and a despairing heart.
66 You will live in constant suspense, filled with dread both night and day, never sure of your life.
67 In the morning you will say, “If only it were evening!” and in the evening, “If only it were morning!”– because of the terror that will fill your hearts and the sights that your eyes will see.
The First Covenant/Old Testament, shows a back and forth movement of the nation of Israelites i.e. first a blessing, then after awhile a falling away from God’s rules followed by the resultant curses, followed by repentance and a pleading to go back to the blessings. God did not want His people to suffer and often sent warning through Prophets, Judges, and certain people He would choose to lead the Israelites back to Him. Finally, a King named Saul was allowed, followed by the well known King David.
The curse often mentioned in biblical teachings was the Babylonian captivity. God told His Prophet, Jeremiah, the Israelites were to be taken captive by Babylon. There were three conquests. The first brought the young, the intelligent, the sons of “Nobles”, and others including Daniel and three other young men renamed Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Two more conquests brought a majority of the remaining Israelites. They were marched naked (men, women, and children) from Israel to Babylon, and were in essential captivity there for 70 years. The Israelites had not kept the 7 year rule (see Rules-Exodus 23:11.)
However, God chose to keep them safe there, essentially blessing them to a degree, and they prospered.
God knew He could work with the King of Babylon at that time named Nebuchadnezzar. During the beginning of the seventy years God caused Nebuchadnezzar to have a dream concerning the five kingdoms of the world that would come into being.
God through his servant Daniel (who was taken as a young slave to Babylon) was blessed by God to interpret dreams). Daniel gave God’s interpretation of the dream, thereby providing all people, a prophecy of the nations to come into power even up to the end of this age.
The dream revealed a statue showing the future five kingdoms of the earth. These were Gold-Nebuchadnezzar, Silver-Persian, Bronze-Greece, Iron-Rome and lastly -Iron mixed with clay between the toes, (thought by today’s scholars, to be a revived Roman empire), post Roman dispersion to lands now called Europe, on down to England, and from those areas eventually over time – to America via ships of the day. America is also considered the possible “revived Roman Empire“.
Scripture: Da 2:40 Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron– for iron breaks and smashes everything– and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others.
41 Just as you saw that the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay.
Daniel’s interpretation (which he received from God) reward was to be installed as the head of all the “wise men” of Babylon.
(More to Come)