The Timeline Nobody Taught You

Are we in the last days? I mean, they've been saying it for centuries. They thought about it in the 1200s, 1600s, 1700s. One of the things that really deterred me from this was people setting dates. Rapture is going to happen at this date. Don't do that. Nobody knows the day or the hour, not the angels of God, not even the Son of Man. However, the Second Coming isn't an event. It's actually let's just be ready at all times. Come on. Second Coming will happen whenever it happens. Is that eagerly anticipating his coming?

No.

Why are they doing that? Because they don't understand the times? Why don't they understand the times? Could it be possible they're sleeping with the world? Arden, his second coming can happen at any moment. That causes me to shiver. Hey everyone, welcome to the John Bevere Podcast. I'm John Bevere, joined by my son Arden. Arden, last podcast we talked about aliens. We're not doing that anymore. No, it was kind of a— kind of an interesting podcast. But you know what I do want to talk about in this podcast?, and I really think it's important, and that is the second coming of Jesus.

Yeah. Which, I mean, I know you've been talking a lot about, which I'm super excited about your brand new book that is coming out soon called The King Is Coming.

Go ahead.

No, I was going to say, I can't encourage people enough just to jump down to the description below and you can go ahead and order the book right now.

Yeah. This book really impacted me. The Holy Spirit showed me things I'd never known before. To be honest with you, I really thought about writing this because I've gone 4 decades and not preached one message on the Second Coming. And people used to ask me, don't you talk about the Second Coming? I'd say, no, that's not my calling. That's what I would always say. And it's interesting, about 4 years ago, the Holy Spirit started drawing me in. In my personal walk, I had always kind of dabbled with it. And the more I started diving in, the more important I realized it was. And I started seeing fruit in my life. Number one, I became more passionate about ministry. I became more passionate about getting people saved. I became kinder to my wife. That's a big one right there. I became a lot more patient with my family. I didn't get upset as easy. I started noticing the fruit of the Spirit was actually good. Now, what kept me from talking about the second coming is back in the '80s when your mom and I were young believers, there was this guy who wrote a book called "88 Reasons Why Jesus Is Coming Back in 1988." Well, '88 came and gone.

And 2000 came and gone. Yeah, there's a few times.

And I started noticing people started stop paying their house payments. Yeah. Stop paying their credit card payments. They started doing stupid things. They started becoming idle. And I thought, no, no, this is not right. Well, it deterred me. And as I started studying in my personal life 4 years ago, I realized that anytime eschatology— and that's a big word, but eschatology simply means the study of end times— yeah, anytime it's preached and people get lazy start sitting around looking to escape that what's coming on the earth. Yeah, I realize either it's not being presented correctly or it's not being heard correctly. Yeah. So let me ask you, please, as we talk about this— and believe me, when you read this book, I make sure that it is heard correctly because we have a responsibility. There is a statement in Revelation that absolutely grabs my attention, and that is this: the wedding feast of the Lamb has come, and the bride— the bride would be the church, his wife— has made herself ready. It does not say God made her ready. Yeah, she made herself ready. And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. All of a sudden I'm like, wait a minute, we got a responsibility here. And then I discovered another scripture in 1 John chapter 2 where John says, little children, abide in him. Then when he says little children, is he talking to all humanity? No. Little children, abide in him. New Living Translation says, remain in fellowship with him. Yeah. So that when he appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed at his coming. I thought, wait a minute, this is Christians. There's Christians are going to be ashamed and there's Christians are going to have confidence. All of a sudden I'm realizing, wait a minute. So then I start doing a deep dive, and, and believe me, um, I, I know one of the things that really deterred me from this was people setting dates. Yeah, the Rapture is going to happen at this date. You know, I was actually taping the course for this. I think it was the course or it was something, and we were doing it in August of of 2025. Yeah. And someone— and I said, people are picking dates. And I said 1988. And I said another date. And I said, yeah, on September 23rd, 2025. Well, then when that segment was over, my team was just cracking up. They said, you actually one month beforehand said it's not going to happen. Yeah. And I said, exactly, because God's not going to let any flesh glory in his presence. And when he says nobody knows the day or the hour, not the angels of God, not even the Son of Man, Don't try to go over to the little, maybe coincidental thing that they called the particular Feast of Trumpets, not trumpets. It might have been anyway, the day or hour that nobody knows because it's over 2 days. It was the first sighting of the moon. I thought, don't do that. Let's just be ready at all times.

Yeah, let's prepare ourselves.

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This book here is really more about what we're supposed to be doing to be ready and be prepared. It's interesting. When I was at Purdue University, Arden, we didn't have phones like you guys got these phones. Okay, finals week.

I've got this phone too.

Everybody. Yeah, I've got it. Everybody has finals week, right? If you've ever been to university, you're familiar with finals week. Oh my gosh. The week that I remember fraternity brothers were pulling all-nighters because all semester long they're partying about 4 nights a week, 5 nights a week. They're out playing football, frisbee, everything all through the day, chasing girls. And then all of a sudden they're not— they're skipping classes, and all of a sudden finals week comes and they're not ready. They're not ready. Yeah. My dad paid my education, and I had fear and trembling about having a bad report card. Yeah. So my final week began the very first day of the semester. I found friends that would be good study partners. I would go to the library to get away from my fraternity brothers so I wouldn't be influenced by their behavior. And when I entered finals week, it was just reviewing for me. For them, it was cramming. But all that to say this, we would have to go to the engineering building. It was mechanical engineering at Purdue University. Now there's several engineering buildings. It's a whole mall of buildings. We'd have to find out the building, the classroom, and the time. And it was on a paper thing that was listed, right?

Okay.

That took me 10 minutes. I basically had to go into the building, jot down when my times were, what classrooms, and I'm done. Okay. But I spent hours and hours and hours and hours preparing for that final. Mm-hmm. So in essence, when I look at eschatology, are we spending our time talking about the blood moons, the tsunamis, the wars, the rumors of wars? These are important, just like it's important for me to get the classroom correct. Yeah. But where should the majority of our time be spent? Yeah. Is the preparation, which is what this book deals with. Yeah.

Because there's so much what we're talking about today.

You got 5 virgins that are prepared, 5 virgins that aren't prepared. Yeah. And I'm like, 5? Jesus, why didn't you say 1? 1 was not prepared. 9 were prepared. That causes me to shiver. And I believe that— I believe the prophetic voice in the body of Christ. Remember, remember, it says all the virgins fell asleep and then a voice was heard. The bridegroom is coming. Now, these are all virgins. They're not harlots. They have lights. They are looking. For the return of the bridegroom, right? But 5 of them aren't ready. Even after the prophetic cry comes, "Everybody wake up, the bridegroom is coming." And so I realized how important it is for us to be prepared. Okay, so let me just say this. Are we in the last days? I mean, they've been saying it for centuries. I mean—

I would say yes.

They thought about it in the 1200s, the 1600s, the 1700s, the 1800s. What makes our generation any different?

I remember the little program that we used to have, whereas the John Bevere Ministries is like, look around you, we are living in the last days. So I just remember growing up, obviously always hearing that we are in the last days.

So as I start writing this book, I know this was the Holy Spirit because I never thought about it. I thought, well, wait a minute, there were people who were ready for Jesus's first coming, recognized his first coming. And there were people that weren't ready and people who didn't recognize him. And I thought, wouldn't it be best to go back and see the differences between the people that were ready and the people that weren't ready? Yeah. Okay. So I go back and I discover that, first of all, when he's born, Herod the King finds these leaders and says, where is this king going to be born? This is in the Gospels. And they tell him exactly, it's in Bethlehem. How do they know that? Because Micah wrote about it. Yeah. Okay. So I believe these leaders he went to were a part of a group called the Essenes. Yeah. So back in the days of Jesus, you have the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, were really the governmental and religious leaders. And do you know, a Pharisee, to complete his training, had to memorize the first 5 books of the Bible? Yeah. Genesis, Leviticus, Numbers, Exodus, Deuteronomy. Yeah.

It's not like he's memorizing the Gospels. He's memorizing those.

I'm like, I don't know very many people that can memorize all 4 Gospels and the Book of Acts. So these guys were very skilled in Scripture. Yeah, but yet when Jesus is casting out demons right in front of their eyes, when he's healing the sick right in front of their eyes, they're fighting against him. But then I look at this guy named Simeon. This guy is amazing because I want to set this up. So you got this young couple who are not even from Judea, so that the temple is in Judea. Now you got to remember, the temple is magnificent. It's not a building like in the days of Solomon. It's buildings because Herod greatly enhanced it, and the temple area is teeming with people. So you can't think of a cathedral like today. You go to a cathedral and it's like you could walk in on a Wednesday and it's like 2 people are there, right? The temple is— I mean, you've got people buying animals, you've got, you've got them doing their sacrifices. You've got people in the temple area doing all kinds of stuff, right?

Which you said Herod enhanced it.

Herod greatly enhanced the temple.

Okay. Interesting.

He created buildings, made it absolutely gorgeous. And this was prophesied by the prophet Haggai. He said the glory of this latter temple is going to be greater than the former. So here's this young couple, okay? Nobody knows who they are. I mean, the guy's a carpenter and she's a young girl. They walk in with a 40-day-old baby. All right. And this guy, Simeon. Yes. Rushes over to them. Amidst all these people, has no idea who they are, but he holds up that 40-day-old baby and says, 'The Messiah.' Yeah, I mean, Mary and Joseph are blown away. Okay, I mean, I, I love it. I've actually got it. The Holy Spirit was upon Simeon, and it revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen the Lord's Messiah. Now that's interesting. Yeah, the Holy Spirit revealed he would not die, but he would see the Lord's Messiah. I have been hearing from so many leaders who didn't preach on the second coming. They said, God is telling me, preach on this, preach on this, preach on this. I haven't had anybody say to me they're not going to die until they see the Lord's coming. Yeah, but they all sense by the Spirit and from the written Scripture, it's so close. All right. That day the Spirit led him to the temple. I love this. The steps of a good man are ordered of the Lord. So when Mary and Joseph came to present the baby Jesus to the Lord as the law required— so he's 40 days old at this point— Simeon was there. He took the child in his arms and, praising God, said, Sovereign Lord, now let your servant die in peace as you have promised. I have seen your salvation, which you have prepared for all people. He is the light to reveal God to the nations, and he is the glory of your people Israel. Now listen to this. Jesus' parents were amazed at what was being said about him. Yeah. Why is Mary amazed? Because when the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, the Bible specifically says she pondered all these things in her heart. She didn't even tell her— listen— her betrothed. When Joseph hears about Mary, yeah, he thinks he's gonna— he's gonna put her away privately. He's gonna divorce her. Yeah. Okay, because, because you're married when you're betrothed, and while you're in your separation stage, which is usually about a year, He finds out she's pregnant. He's like, she's been unfaithful, I'm going to divorce her. Yeah, our engagements, you don't divorce, you just break the engagement. Back then it was betrothal. Yeah, you were there once you agreed on the betrothal. So Joseph gets this dream that what's in her is holy, it's from the Lord. She ponders it in his heart. They have not told anybody. Okay, maybe their closest relatives. Yeah, I mean, obviously this guy walks up and starts saying things that she had been pondering in her heart, and she's blown away by it. Yeah. All right, so I started— I start, and I know this is the Holy Spirit while I'm writing this book— I started thinking, okay, what's different about Simeon than the Pharisees? Because I look 33 years later, Jesus full grown, He's preaching like with authority the secrets of the kingdom of God. He's casting out devils, raising the dead, opening up blind eyes. And these guys think he is a child of the devil. They think he's doing his miracles by the devil. They think he is a winebibber, a glutton, a friend of sinners. They think he's ungodly. So much so I mean, you look at the whole 3.5 years, you got a group of people that are putting their garments down when Jesus comes into Jerusalem. Then you got the Pharisees over there saying crucify him and the Sadducees and the others. Why are these people so different? I started thinking, okay, wait a minute, maybe if we do look at antiquity and we kind of review the difference between these guys, yeah, we're going to understand who are the people that are really going to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit, to Jesus's second coming, just as the people— there were people sensitive to his first coming.

Yeah, I mean, I'm immediately thinking right now of John the Baptist because I think it's so interesting because obviously you're talking about Simeon, but then John the Baptist— obviously Bible says that John acknowledged Jesus in Mary's womb. When, you know, when he's in his mother's womb, Mary walks into the room, he acknowledges Jesus. He baptized Jesus out in the wilderness. He watches— the Bible says the Holy Spirit depends descends upon him like a dove. Yep. Yet then John the Baptist is the one who is writing from prison and saying, hey, are you really the coming one, the Son of God? And I think it's so interesting because as you're saying these things, is like, one, yes, having that discernment, but that like hyper-awareness of how we have to continue to be discerning these times and led by the Spirit and aware of what God is doing. Yeah. Because here's John the Baptist who saw clear evidence, who was acknowledging Jesus from before he was even out of his mother's womb, and yet still he writes and asks that question.

And I think just what does Jesus do? He answers John. He says, go back and tell John, and he quotes Isaiah, the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, those in prison have the gospel preached. Right? And the captives, liberty, right? But then he adds something on it. And PS, blessed is he who's not offended in me. Now remember, Jesus called the stumbling stone the rock of offense. Yeah, John's sitting there trying to figure out— I, I spent 30 years of my life in the desert as an Essene. Many people believe, historians believe he was an Essene. I've spent 30 years in the desert. I have I have—

I preach the word, people come to me.

Preach the word, and my ministry only lasted 6 months. Yeah. I mean, think about it. He, he's 6 months older than Jesus. Yeah. He trains 30 years for basically a 6-month ministry. Okay. And now all of a sudden he has eaten locusts and wild honey. Yeah. He's lived in the desert. The word of the Lord comes to him in the desert, the people come out to him. True. But he's lived out there in the desert, and here's Jesus eating with sinners, going to their parties. He's not compromising. But John's in prison hearing about this, and he's like, wait a minute, I don't know anymore. Yeah.

So, so it's so interesting. Sorry, and this is just kind of off topic, but obviously Malachi, like the last, the last thing that they had going off of in terms of if they— their book wasn't written in this way. But obviously what we have is Malachi in the last verses from Malachi is talking about, behold, I'm going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and awesome day of Yahweh. Yep. And so there's so much awareness of what John the Baptist was. But like you're saying, his ministry was 6 months. And I know there's even— there's religions right now nowadays that are— they formed or their focus is solely on John the Baptist. They think Jesus was a prophet. But John the Baptist was actually— I didn't even— the one that was sent. Yes. Yeah. And so it's just interesting of that awareness of John the Baptist ministry, what he's doing, and Jesus coming onto the scene and clearly discerning the time periods that they're in and what we've got to understand as we're in the last days, what that means, what that looks like for us.

Wow, that's really good. I mean, Let's look, what is the difference between Simeon and what is the difference between the Pharisees? Yeah. So to me, I gotta know how does this guy recognize the Messiah when he's 40 days old? And how do these guys not recognize the Messiah when he's casting out demons? Mm-hmm. So Luke 2:25 gives us a little insight. It says that Simeon was righteous, number one. Yeah. He was devout. Number 2, and he was eagerly waiting for the Messiah to come. Now let's talk about these 3 characteristics. He was righteous. What does the Greek word for righteous mean there? It can— it means he conformed in his actions. Listen to this carefully. Conformed in his actions, not just his words, to his constitutionally just character. So in other words, he was a man that was obedient to the word of God, the scripture. He didn't just hear the scripture, he obeyed the scripture. Yeah. So he is a man that is obviously pursuing— we would say it like this in the New Testament— he's pursuing holiness. Yeah. He's totally focused every day. He's like denying himself, take— I'm going to put this in our language— denying myself, taking up my cross, and following the Lord my God. He is passionate about obedience. Yeah. So if you look at Jesus, he said, you Pharisees, you outwardly do all these, these, these, these commands as a pretense to show off your holiness, your godliness. But inside you are ravenous wolves. You are covetous. You are looking for, for the best places. You're full of pride. Right. You're— this man is not just godly outwardly. He's godly inwardly. Yeah. All right. So the first characteristic here we got that separates him from the Pharisees is that he's really pursuing holiness, whereas they're doing everything out of pretense. Yeah. What they're after is power. They're after the lusts of the flesh and the lusts of the eyes. They loved money. The Bible says the Pharisees loved money. Doesn't say that money's wrong. Money's not a sin. Money is not the root of all evil. The love of money is. They love money. Okay. Money's just a tool. Okay. All right. So now, second, he's devout. What does devout mean? The Greek actually defines this word as the fundamental meaning is one who has taken seriously God's promises and God's word. He doesn't have the attitude, well, when Messiah comes, he'll just come. Okay, what does Peter say is going to happen right before Jesus' second coming? He said, most importantly, I want you to know this. 2 Peter chapter 3. Most importantly, he said, most importantly, above everything else, I want you to know in the last days, right before Jesus returns, mockers are going to rise up and say, where's the promise of his coming? Ever since the fathers fell asleep, All things remain the same. Now wait a minute. These are people that call the church fathers fathers. These are not people that believe in evolution. They said ever since the creation, they actually say creation. They actually say church fathers. So these are people that actually believe the gospel, but they're gonna have this attitude. Maybe they read one too many books of why Jesus is coming back in 1988. Books like that, right? Maybe they've seen it. And they develop, but more so it says they're gonna be following after the dictates and the passions and the desires of their flesh. So these are gonna be very fleshly people. See, I don't think, I've been thinking a lot about this, Arden. I don't think people realize that when you start pursuing, flirting with and pursuing sin, indulgence, of the flesh. Yeah, you literally position yourself to be deceived. If you look at Romans 1, the more they, they, they get away from God in obedience to God, you see 3 times in the New Living Translation, God turned them over. God turned them over. God didn't make them, he allowed them to go. If you look at Jesus when he tells the parables, he said their eyes they have closed. Yeah, their ears they have shut, lest they would understand with their heart. So when you are a mocking person, there's probably something a little deeper here. What happened is you started dating sin, jumping in bed with the world. Now all of a sudden you get this attitude. See, Jesus makes a statement that's amazing. He said, he who wills to do his will will know that what I speak is the word of God. Listen to that. He who wills, wills to do his will. So in other words, you will notice that in 2 Thessalonians it says the people that are deceived right before Jesus' second coming are people who didn't love the truth. They may have had the truth, but they didn't love it.

Yeah.

Simeon is devout. He loves the truth. He wills to do God's will. And you know what this word actually also carries the meaning of? The fear of the Lord. Yeah. Hey, we'll get right back to the teaching in just a moment, but I want to share with you about something that I use in my Bible study constantly, and that is Logos. In fact, on The King Is Coming, I used it to research. I am using this search feature so much, and this is what's really cool, is they are offering offering our patrons, our people who watch the John Bevere Podcast, free Logos up to 60 days on a trial.

And not only that, but if you have already signed up, they have an amazing offer where they're offering up to 190 resources, which would normally cost around over $3,000, and they're doing a deal where it gives you 90% off. And here's the really important thing: when you're using the AI, the AI is very important to pull only from what you have in that library. So it's not pulling from things on the internet. And so when you add in books to that library, it is pulling things from those New Testament studies, from those different books. So jump over right now to logos.com/bavir and start your free trial or get your resources today. So when you're saying this and going back to even the 10 virgins, you're saying strictly not even so much of the world but the body of Christ, because obviously you're talking about the Pharisees and then you're talking about the difference between the Pharisees and Simeon. And that understanding of in the body of Christ, there are those who have given themselves so much over to their own means or own awarenesses that they're not actively living in the state the fear of the Lord, and they're putting themselves in the position.

Unfortunately, the way grace has been taught and the way grace has been heard— so it may not necessarily be on the teacher, it might be on the hearer— they've looked at it, as Jude says, as permission to live an ungodly life. Yeah. So they, they teach it, the grace of God, that he said there'll actually be people coming in the last days, they'll actually teach that you can live in sin but you're still covered by grace.

You know what I feel like has been such an, an emergence of recently is the amount of churches that have now become, which I feel like I did not see this as much, but the amount of churches that are the over-affirming, you know, we only talk about love here and all kinds of love is love, or God accepts you however you're made and whatever it is that you want to be, you know, you're seeing a lot more of these churches rise up. Is that a huge part of this? In his end times? Because I feel like before it was like you had the separations of denominations, which were more separations amongst the, you know, that we talked about a long time ago, the major— minors and the majors and majors and the minor, you know, the difference between— there's some minors within the gospel that are not things that are detrimental to your salvation, and there's disagreements amongst the body of Christ. And that's how you have oftentimes a lot of these different denominations. But now What I feel like we're seeing is there's a lot of churches that are now becoming, we're pro-sin, but yet God still loves us.

So this is basically the deeds of the Nicolaitans that Jesus hated. This is what they taught. He said, don't worry about sin because your body is your body and it's going to do what it wants to do, but you're redeemed because you simply just acknowledge that Jesus has come. And that's a teaching that Jesus said he actually hated. And I think, I think what it does is it removes the fear of the Lord, because the fear of the Lord is to depart from evil. Yeah. Okay. Literally, the fear of the Lord is what protects us from jumping in bed with evil, flirting with evil, dating evil. Okay. It's what keeps us from committing adultery against our bridegroom. This whole book, what became a reality to me is the second coming isn't an event. It's actually, I'm gonna say this not irreverently, but I'm gonna use this word. It's a lovesick groom who can't wait to be united with his bride. So think about it. When that groom, when they were betrothed, he would leave and they wouldn't see each other again for, it was usually around a year. Can you imagine? I mean, I know how much you love your wife, Christian, Can you imagine you get engaged and Christian goes away for a year? Yeah, man, by the time you fly in for that wedding, you're like, I can't wait to see her, right? I really believe that's the way Jesus is with us. He is so excited about being united with us. I mean, I just look— this book really caused me to realize that God wanted a bride for his Son. Yes, he wanted a family. We all understand that. Beloved, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons and daughters of God. Man, is that amazing? Yeah, actually, that we're the children of God. However, he just didn't want a family. He wanted a bride for his son, that the bride and the king could rule and reign over all of his creation forever and ever and ever. And we're going to get into this in a future podcast. Because I asked myself a question as I was writing this book that I didn't really have the answer to, but the Holy Spirit gave it. I said, well, what's gonna cause us to not turn on God the way Lucifer turned on God? But that's for a future podcast. That's another whole story. But what I love is this man, okay, he was righteous, he was devout, and he was eagerly waiting. So he is eagerly, looking forward to the first coming of Jesus. So I started bringing this over into us and I started thinking, okay, are we pursuing holiness? It's a good idea. Keeps your lamp burning, puts oil in your lamp. Are we—

it says without which no man will see the Lord. Yeah, that's good.

All right. Are we devout? Are we walking in the fear of God? And are we eagerly looking? Because I believe when you do the first two, you have an eager Because remember, the Bible talks about he will appear to all who are eagerly looking for him. Okay, it says that in another epistle. Okay, so that eager anticipation of him coming isn't created just out of the air. It comes out of us pursuing holiness and out of us walking in the holy fear and love of God. Then we have an eager anticipation. Why? Because we're the bride that is lovesick for her groom. Yeah, we are just living. I mean, here's Paul who says, man, it'd be far better for me to depart. Why? Because for me to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. He just wants to be with Jesus.

He wants to be reunited.

Yeah. He's not saying, man, I'm loving this life and I get heaven one day, man, that's great. No, he has a heart to be united with his King. Now I'm looking at this and I'm like, okay, I'm seeing some correlations here that this man realizes it's the time of the Lord and he goes by the Spirit. But also, we know from history how devoted the Essenes were to the written scriptures. Mm-hmm. Now, there's a second aspect here that I believe Simeon had that we don't get directly from here, but we know from history and we know from scripture as far as other people go, and that is he was aware of the times and the seasons.

Was Simeon in a scene? Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

Okay. Simeon was in a scene.

Okay. Where the time of the season.

So I'm going to read a scripture to you that's interesting. The sons of Issachar, who had understanding of the times to know what Israel ought to do. So they're understanding the times created in them an awareness of how to behave. Do you remember Jesus saying to Jerusalem, the people of Jerusalem that rejected him, "If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace, but now they're hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you where your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you, and close you in on every side and level you and your children within you to the ground, and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because— here's the whole reason this is going to happen— you didn't know the time of your visitation. We have times in the natural, we have seasons in the natural. Yeah. Okay, suppose you look at me and say, um, I, I, I I know there are people that are not fans of the President of the United States, possibly, but let's just go there. John, you have been invited to have dinner at the White House with the President of the United States on October 14th at 5:30 PM. Okay. Now that's a set time. Yeah. And you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to be prepared. I'm gonna have my tux all cleaned up or my suit all cleaned up. I'm gonna have my shirt dry cleaned. I'm going to start getting dressed. I'm gonna arrive there early. Suppose at 5 o'clock on that day, I just go, oh yeah, that's right, I'm having dinner. And I throw on a shirt like this and I just head there. Yeah. Okay. Number one, I'm not taking this very seriously. Okay. Or let's say the date of this dinner is March 7th. And let's say I show up on March 14th. I didn't understand the time. Yeah, therefore I didn't do what was right. Okay, to know what Israel ought to do, they understood the times. Jesus is saying you didn't see the time of your visitation. Yeah, now there's a reason he says that, and the reason is why— why is it that the Essenes know? Do you know the Essenes predicted to the very week the Messiah would be crucified? Do you know that? No. Because Daniel wrote— Daniel fasts for 21 days, the angel Gabriel comes, he says, a period of 7 sets of 7 has been decreed for your people. Now wait a minute, who's Daniel's people? It's the Jews. Yeah. In other words, Gabriel is saying God is going to deal with your people for 7 sets of 7. That's 490 more years, okay? And he makes a statement. He said, now listen and understand. Well, let me just keep reading this. This is Daniel 9:24-26. A period of 70 sets of 7 has been decreed for your people. Think Jewish people, not the church. And your holy city to finish their rebellion, to put an end to their sin, to atone for their guilt, to bring everlasting righteousness. We're talking about eternity here. Okay. To confirm the prophetic vision and to anoint the most holy place. Now listen and understand. 7 sets of 7 plus 62 sets of 7. So that's 69 of those 70 weeks, right? Will pass from the time the command is given to rebuild Jerusalem until a ruler, the anointed one, comes. Jerusalem will be rebuilt with streets and strong defenses despite the perilous times. So the anointed one he's talking about is Jesus. So he's saying is it's going to be what, 69 weeks of years? He's saying it's going to be 483. 69 times 7 is 483 years until this happens. Yeah. After this period of 69 weeks. Yeah. The— now listen, I'm reading right from the Bible. The anointed one will be killed. Appearing to have accomplished nothing. When Jesus was crucified, his followers, like, he's accomplished nothing. He came, he was healing the sick. This is a senseless death. They were flabbergasted, right? And a ruler who will arise, whose armies will destroy the city and the temple. That, of course, would be Titus in 70 AD. This is what Jesus is prophesying. There will not be one brick left upon another. When Titus came into Jerusalem in 70 AD, the history says that he killed anywhere from 600,000 Jewish people to 1 million Jewish people. And they thought that they hid their valuables, their gold in the wall, so they tore down every stone. They also heard that they were swallowing their coins, their gold coins. So when the Roman soldiers found that out, they started disemboweling all these Jewish people. It was an absolute massacre. Jesus said, because you didn't realize, because, because you didn't know the time of your visitation. Now, how do the Essenes know? Because Daniel gives them the time period. Now, this is what's amazing. He said, from the time that the command is given to rebuild Jerusalem. Who gave the command to rebuild Jerusalem? Artaxerxes did. It was the Persian— remember Babylon took Israel into— or excuse me, Judah into captivity, right? Yep. But then Babylon was overcome in that 70 years by the Persians. And Artaxerxes was the Persian leader who Nehemiah was the cupbearer to. And during the 20th year of his reign. Yeah. Okay. Artaxerxes gives Nehemiah permission to take a group of people back to rebuild Jerusalem. Jerusalem. Okay. Now, this is amazing. The Encyclopedia Britannica says that Artaxerxes took the Persian throne July of 465 BC. I've actually got it right here. Okay. He took it in July of— you've got it right there. You can look at it. He took the throne in July of 465 BC. The 20th year of his reign would have been what? July of 445. Because remember, you're in BC, you're going backwards, right? So it was the first month of the year, Nehemiah 1:2 says. So it has to be March. Now, March is the first month of the year on the ancient Jewish calendar. All right, maybe I need to take a little break here and talk about this. We live by the Gregorian calendar. The Gregorian calendar is 365 days. Actually, it's 365.25 days a year.

That's why we have a leap year.

Every 4 years we have a leap year.

February 29th.

The ancient Jewish calendar— there's, there's the ancient Jewish calendar and there's the modern-day Jewish calendar. Okay, they're different. The modern-day Jewish calendar, when is the new year?

I would say, what, it would be past September, October. Yeah.

Okay, Rosh Hashanah, right? Yeah, it's right before the Feast of Trumpets. It's either September or October. Yeah, right. Do you know that God said in the book of Exodus Exodus chapter 12. I think I actually have it. Maybe, maybe. Yeah, Exodus 12. Now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, this month shall be the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year. And you know what he told him to do? The 14th day of that month is to have Passover. Passover is in the spring. It's March, April. Okay, so you can already see the ancient Jewish calendar and the modern-day Jewish calendar don't line up. No. Okay, the modern-day Jewish calendar, I think it has 354 days in the year because it's based on lunar-solar. Okay, the ancient Jewish calendar— ours has 365 days— the ancient Jewish calendar has 364 days in a year. Now, how do they work it out? There's 360 days, but they have 4 solstice days. They just don't even count as days. So what's your— or not, so what It's not solstice, it's equinox days. Okay, so what's your equinox day? That's, that's that year from winter to spring, spring to summer, right? March 21st, June 21st, right? All right, so when you go back here, March is the first month. Okay, if you look at our Gregorian calendar, it was Julius Caesar who changed everything in like 46 BC, but even the Gregorian calendar was set up with March being the beginning. Because if you look at it, September, Sep, that's 7. October, Oc, that's 8, octagon, 8, right? Novem— Nov is 9. Dec, decade, December, 10. January is 11. February is 12. What's the first month? March. Okay, when we have a leap year, why don't we put the extra day at the end of December? Why don't we put it at the end of February? Because the Gregorian calendar got changed. Okay, so when I'm saying— interesting, I know, I know. So when I'm saying that it was the— in the 25th year, uh, or excuse me, in the 20th year, we had to go to the beginning of the next year. It's March, and March is called in the Hebrew calendar Nisan. Nisan is the first month of the ancient Jewish calendar. Okay, are you following me? Yes. Okay, so now Do you just add your— we're back to the years. Yeah, you're 483 years. Do you just add it there? If you add it, it's not going to work. And the reason it's not going to work is because you're going to add it on our Gregorian calendar, not the Jewish calendar. So there was a guy named Julius Africanus in the 3rd century church that figured out the formula of how to convert it from the modern Gregorian calendar to the— am I losing you? No. Okay, to the ancient Jewish and back to the modern Gregorian.

Yeah.

If you do this the way you do it, put it simply, and it's a lot more complex than this, you just multiply out how many days it is, then you switch over, divide by the other calendar's number of days in the years. Remember, 365, 364, right? All that. It's actually 360 for the ancient Jewish calendar, but I don't want to get into that. It really gets complex. Okay, he figured out how to do it. Then there's a guy in the 1800s who was the leader of all of Scotland Yard. He was an attorney, and his name was Sir Robert Anderson, and he figured it out. They later on discovered Julius Afrikaans, and they realized both men came up with the exact same formula. Yeah. So if you start this in, in March of 444 BC and you add the 69 weeks of years— okay, yeah, I've got it right here. You know where you come to? April 6th, 32 AD. Do you know if you go back and you look at the sun and the moon and the patterns, that week was Passover week on that particular year. Remember, because Passover can happen in March or April, our March or April. Now it's so complex how the Jews would actually change it, but Passover always happened on the 14th of Nisan., but they move things around it. I don't want to get into that because I'll really confuse everybody. It actually is the day Jesus came into Jerusalem on the donkey. How does this group of people know to throw down branches or palm branches and their coats? Yeah, Zechariah: Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout— this is Zechariah 9, verse 9— shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you. He is just and having salvation, lowly and riding on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey. Here comes Jesus in on the foal of the donkey. He comes in and they start putting these things down because they were able to look at Daniel's prophecy. They understood the times. Yeah, so right, and, and they knew exactly what to do. Whereas a couple days later, you got the Pharisees and the Sadducees screaming out, crucify him.

Yeah, because, because I think I've always heard people do the parallel of the people who were laying down palm trees one day are then screaming out, 'Crucify him!' But you're showing very clearly it's the Essenes who actually knew, and they were the ones—

my heart, it's the Essenes, because they understood the times and they understood the seasons.

Yeah, now there might be a few people in there that are switching, but the Essenes were establishing—

you're saying, well, they were established. They knew Simeon's an Essene. They say Mary's an Essene. All right, they say John the Baptist is an Essene. Who are the Essenes? They were the ones that diligently guarded the written word of God as well as the other Jewish ancient fathers' writings, and they hid them in the caves of Qumran, which they discovered starting in 1947. Isn't this interesting? That's when they discovered this, this aliens. I mean, it's all happening, last day stuff, right? Okay, so they understood the times. They knew what to do. They knew not to scream out, 'Crucify!' They knew to put the branches down, right? Now I look at people today who go, oh, come on, the second coming will happen whenever it happens. Is that eagerly anticipating his coming? No. Why are they doing that? Because they don't understand the times. Why don't they understand the times? Could it be possible? Could it be possible they're sleeping with the world? I'm going to church every Sunday. I profess to know Jesus Christ as my Lord, Savior, and King. Yeah, but are you one of those virgins that is sleeping, and when you wake up, you don't have oil in your lamp? Yeah. All right. Are you, are you, are you out of touch with the fact that he could come any moment? I mean, Arden, his second coming, his, his, I should say, his catching away of his bride can happen at any moment. Yeah. There is the second glorious coming and there's the catching away of the bride. It could happen at any time. And you know what? People who believe in the post-tribulation, quote, catching away of the church, like it happens at the end. I find that hard to believe because there is going to be an Antichrist. He is going to break the covenant of Israel with Israel right at midpoint. He is going to break it. And then it gives this specific amount of days until Jesus returns. But, but, but, but the Bible says that when he comes for us in the clouds, they're going to say peace and safety and then sudden destruction comes.

Yeah. Can I ask a question, Mike? Open up a big can of worms. So obviously when you're talking about Israel, I know there's so much significance to the date and time, but when I look at Israel as a nation right now, when we went to Israel, like the amount of just blatant sin that was so obvious— what does that look like in terms of when, when Israel is talked about in the second coming? Because I'm looking obviously at the the nation of Israel right now and the blatant sin that is taking form. Yeah. And then obviously the snatching away, the establishment of the new heavens and the new earth and what God is talking about of Israel. Mm-hmm.

What kind of— Yeah, like, what is the good question that should be addressed? Yeah. Was Israel God's people when they were sitting there eating their babies and breaking all of God's laws, setting up idols in the temple, like Ashtoreth poles in the temple, right? Okay, were they God's people when Nebuchadnezzar came and destroyed them because of their absolute disobedience, right? But then God says, I'll destroy— remember, Assyria destroyed or came in and captured Israel and were very harsh with them. And God says, I will punish you, Assyria, for touching my people. I will punish you, Nebuchadnezzar, because you are harsher on my people than I thought you were supposed to be. In other words, God says, here's Hosea, he marries a prostitute, and God says, hey, I'm gonna do this as an illustration that even though my people are so corrupt, so perverted, I'm still a faithful God and I will. Now, if you look at Daniel, the Book of Daniel shows that when the Antichrist comes, he's gonna conquer the people, the Jewish people. And the, the Tribulation Saints. He's going to conquer them. Jesus said the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. The church— Satan can't conquer the church. Okay, but in the Tribulation, he's going to, he's going to have dominion over the people. Yeah. All right. And it shows in Zechariah that two-thirds of the Jewish people are going to be murdered by this guy. Or by the judgments, and that one-third are going to come through the fire and they're going to be refined and purified. Because we got to remember, in the tribulation there's 144 Jewish evangelists who are totally devoted to Jesus. They're going to get a lot of Jewish people saved. But the Jewish people— Paul said once the number of the Gentiles is fulfilled in the book of Romans, then all of Israel is going to be saved. God sees where we're going. Yeah, not where we are right— just where we are right now. So God sees how these people are going to turn back to him. They are— he's faithful to them even though they've not been faithful to him. But there's coming a day when all of Israel is going to behold of the one that they pierced. Okay, they're going to look upon him who is pierced, and they're going to mourn deeply. Yeah, we, we were the ones that crucified our Messiah.

So, and as part of that too, just making sure, um, obviously Jewish people and like Israelis, obviously they're scattered amongst the world.

So is it God's vocation bringing them back? Isaiah chapter 11, behold, the days are coming, I'll bring you back the second time. What do you mean second time? It says it in Isaiah 11, the second time. When was the first time? When he brought them back from Persia.

Oh, from Persia. Okay. From Babylon rule.

Okay. But he says, I'm going to bring you back a second time from all the nations of the world. He scattered them to every nation of the world. Yeah. When 70 AD, between 70 AD and 135, 135 was the Bar Kokhba Rebellion. That is when the final blow was made by Rome on Israel. And basically the Jews were either killed, sold to slaves for other nations, or they fled before that. But they were completely dispersed. Yeah. And to eventually, eventually it didn't happen right away. Every known nation of the world. Now God is doing what? Raising up the flag and calling them back. That's why you got millions of Russian Jews coming back. You have Jews coming back from, from America, from all these other countries, because God's bringing them back because he's re-established the nation that is one day going to have the temple rebuilt, that there will be sacrifices being done, and the Antichrist will make a covenant with them for 7 years. He will break that covenant at 3 and a half years. This is stuff we'll go over next week, next podcast. Maybe he'll break that covenant after 3 and a half years. Then all of a sudden their eyes are going to be opened up when he sets up the object of desolation inside the temple that they had rebuilt. And he said, I am God, basically. And then they're going to realize— that's when their eyes are going to be opened up, realize we crucified our Messiah. And that's when the Antichrist literally wreaks havoc on them. And that's when, when, when Zechariah tells us that two-thirds of the Jewish people will be killed.

Wow. Is that— and just asking this question, I know we'll go more into this maybe next time, but obviously the correlation of— I feel like prophecies oftentimes has, has, uh, repercussions for back then and for even now. But I, I see so much as you're saying that the correlation of obviously Nero And I know there's thoughts around that. And so what Nero was basically established and then would do to the Jewish people and do to Christians, uh, is that kind of the establishment of there was an element of the Antichrist back then, and then there is still to come?

And more from the Spirit have— or not many times, they can sometimes have double application.

Yeah.

You look at Elijah. Elijah, Jesus said, has come, and Elijah is coming.

Yeah.

Elijah, remember, I'll send you Elijah, the day before the great and dreadful day of the Lord. But Jesus said John the Baptist was Elijah, but he said Elijah is coming. Yeah, and he's coming before the great and dreadful day of the Lord, not the first coming. So you have two different prophecies. Now you have an aspect of this that is much of this has happened back in those days, but let's remember, Nero was what, 60 to 70 AD? Revelation was written 92 AD. Okay, so if you're telling me that a lot of these things in Revelation already happened. Well, wait a minute. Nero was 30 years earlier. So, you know, you could see it's like, you know, it says that the Lord's going to descend with the voice of an archangel, with the trump of God. And at the last trump, we who are alive in Christ will be raised. The last trumpet says in 1 Corinthians 15. 1 Corinthians was written in 56 AD. Yeah. It's not the last trumpet of the seven trumpet judgments in Revelation because that was written 40 years later. Yeah. Okay. It's talking about the trumpet, the Feast of Trumpets. There were 100 trumpets blown. The first 99 were blown to say, hey, this is the Feast of Trumpets. And the 100th time they blew it, they blew it with a really long blast. So yeah, we can't confuse these things together.

Yeah. No, this is great. I just wanted to ask, clarify.

So in essence, we have people that are walking in godliness, pursuing holiness, that walk in the fear of the Lord. And if you think about it, What's the characteristic of the virgins? 5 are wise. Yeah. Fear of the Lord's beginning of wisdom. 5 are foolish. Yeah. People who don't walk in the fear of the Lord walk in foolishness. So you can see the correlation. You've got a wise man who recognizes the time and season, knows what to do, walks in, grabs a baby that's 40 days old. The Messiah. How much more should we follow his example today? Pursue holiness, godliness. Don't sleep with the world. Don't sit there and try to flirt with sin and get away with it. Let's live godly lives because God's put his spirit in us. He's put his character, he's put his divine nature in us. He redeemed us from the slavery to sin. Paul said 6 times, or it might even be, no, 5 times in Romans 6 that you have been freed freed from the slavery to sin. We couldn't get free from that slavery before we met Christ, but after we met Christ, he put his divine nature in us. Now we have the choice: I can obey my, my fleshly nature, or I can obey the Spirit. And if I, by the Spirit of God, put to death the deeds of the body, I experience life and peace. Yeah.

Wow, this is good. And I know we haven't even touched the, uh, I feel like the full scope of this 70 weeks and what that actually even looks like.

But I mean, I've shared basically one chapter chapter from this new book. I mean, this book's so impactful. There were mornings I couldn't even talk, I was so impacted by what the Holy Spirit was showing. And so please let me remind you again, you can order this on Amazon. If you're seeing this after March 3rd, 2026, they have it. It'll get to your house in 2 days. If you're ordering it before March 3rd, 2026, the day it launches, which is March the 3rd, it will be shipped to your house. You can pre-order it right now. So I can't stress it enough. I believe this is a timely message preparing you for what's coming in the very near future. Until next time, this has been the John Bevere Podcast. Arden, it has been a joy and a pleasure to be able to talk these things.

I love hearing all this stuff. So this is amazing.

All right. God bless. Yeah.