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Thank you for answering my questions. Since you regard Jews as having been blinded by God to the point that they bear no moral responsibility to accept Jesus as Lord, you have parted from the Apostolic message.
35 years ago, the Lord led to dedicate the rest of my life to a new study of His prophetic books. One of the first things I learned from Daniel 12:11 was there would be 1290 days from the abolition of sacrifices in Daniel’s time until the “abomination that maketh desolate” would be set up. Ezekiel 4:5-6 reveals that a prophetic day should be understood as a year. Well, it is exactly 1290 Hebrew years, 1271.5 solar years, from when sacrifices were abolished in Daniel’s time until 688 A.D. when Kalifah Abd el Malik ibn Marwan began construction of the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount of God most
holy.
The next thing I noted was that there were prophetic days and months in Revelation and wondered if they too should be understood as years. I ran what appeared to be that cockamamie theory up a flagpole to see if anyone saluted. Revelation 11:2 states:
“But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.”
In the lead article of the March 1983 edition of the well-respected Biblical Archaeology Review, Israeli archaeologist Arthur F. Kaufman, proved through holes he found on the northern edge of the temple platform, drilled in the bedrock, spaced on the sacred cubit, that the original Temple of Solomon stood some 300 North of the Dome and that the Dome of the Rock
stood in what was once known as the court of the Gentiles.
Now look at that verse again: “But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.”
The holy city Jerusalem was freed from Gentile control on June 6, 1967, the Dome of the rock is in the court of the Gentiles, and 42 months is 1278.34 days.
1967-1278 = 688 A.D. and the construction of the Dome of the Rock! Not creative theology, brother, provable history!
Next, look at the two following verses, Revelation 11:3-4. Could they also be day years again?
“And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth.”
Revelation 1:20 states, “and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches,” so the two witnesses of 11:2-3 are churches unless God changes the definition of candlesticks somewhere between Revelation 1 and Revelation 11, which He didn’t, so Candlesticks are churches! But which churches, fortunately there is another figurative descriptor, “these are the two olive trees.”
Now it’s terrible hermeneutics to go to the Old Testament for the definition of new New Testament figurative language when there is a New Testament definition that fits perfectly, so we look around the New Testament and what do we find? Romans 11:24-25:
“For if thou (Gentile believers) wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and wert graffed contrary to nature into a good olive tree (the Jewish people): how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be graffed into their own olive tree? For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that
blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.”
So there are your two olive trees, but what about those 1260 days? The new nation of Israel was established on March 15, 1948, when the Jews were once again back in control of the land that God swore to give to the descendants of Abraham:
1948 -1260 equals 688 A.D and the Dome of the Rock again.
Now I might be able to accept one coincidence, two coincidences over 2573 years would be stretching my credulity, but three? No way, so we now have a provable doctrine! But will many here believe it? Probably not. They will argue about the details, and undoubtedly I’ll be called a heretic a few more times, but the evidence is overwhelming:
The Two Witnesses during the Christian era are the Jewish people and the Gentile church!
The rest should be downhill if we just accept Romans 2:28, Romans 4:15, Romans 11:8, Romans 11:11, Romans 11:24-29 at face value. Would one of God’s Two Witnesses to an unsaved world during the Christian era be lost? Of course not, and I have only shown here and in various other threads, a smattering of the biblical evidence showing that a devout Jew of our own time could be saved without recognizing Yeshua as his Messiah.
You see, brother, the Church today teaches a doctrinal salvation . . . that you need to have your doctrine right to be saved. I believe that to be false doctrine. All over the Bible we read that God is far more concerned with the condition of the heart then He is with doctrinal accuracy. To paraphrase 1 Samuel 16:7, “Man looketh upon the doctrine, but the Lord looketh upon the
heart.”