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Recently, as I was reading the first eleven chapters of Ezekiel's prophecy, I noticed how frequently Ezekiel claimed that the Lord spoke to him. Twenty-seven times he said that the Lord spoke to Him, beginning with the claim that "The word of the Lord came expressly unto Ezekiel."
But while Ezekiel was prophesying of God's wrath and destruction which was soon to come upon them, the prophets of Israel continued to prophesy just the opposite. The Lord said in Ezekiel 13, "Thy prophets have seen vanity and lying divination. - They have seduced my people, saying, 'Peace,' and there was no peace." God continued on about one building a wall, and others putting untempered mortar on it. Then God said, "So will I break down the wall which ye have daubed with untempered mortar. - Thus will I accomplish my wrath upon the wall, and upon them that have daubed it with untempered mortar, and will say unto you, The wall is no more, neither they that daubed it; to wit, the prophets of Israel which prophesy concerning Jerusalem and which see visions of peace for her and there is no peace, saith the Lord God." In 1 Thessalonians 5:1-9, the Apostle Paul showed that just before Jesus comes, the Gentile Christian ministers would do the very same thing.
About eleven years after Ezekiel was taken to Babylon, his prophecies concerning Judah and Jerusalem came to pass, as the armies of Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem. Those prophets may have made some citizens of the Kingdom of God feel good for a while, but it was Ezekiel who had spoken the word of the Lord. However, that was not the final fulfillment of Ezekiel's prophecy. All of those things were also fulfilled when "the end" for Israel, as the Kingdom of God, had come. That is what Jesus meant in Matthew 11:13, when He said, "All the prophets and the law prophesied til John (the Baptist)." That is to say, the final fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy did not begin until John. So in the days of the early Apostles, Israel had to face the reality of Ezekiel's prophecies concerning Israel. Likewise, Paul declared that the judgement of God upon Israel would be repeated upon Gentile Christianity, in our time (Romans 2:4-11; Acts 3:20,21; 1 Thess. 5:1-9).
The conclusion of the Grace Age is upon us, and the prophets/ministers of spiritual Israel, true and false, are finishing the fulfillment of Ezekiel's prophecy, even as I write. I hear some ministers telling us that we need to watch the signs appearing around us, and to watch for the coming of our Lord. Others keep telling us that there will be no signs, and no more prophecies will be fulfilled until all of Christianity is whisked away to Heaven, but that will not be the second coming of the Lord. They also insist that there is no way to know when all that is to occur. I wonder, have they not read 1 Cor, 15:20-23? Paul said, "Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of theme that slept. - But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they are Christ's at His coming." Paul did not say "The dead shall be raised three and a half or seven years before His coming."
We are told in the prophets that God said, "I am the Lord, I change not." Consider then that Amos said, "Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets." Accordingly, Paul said, in 1 Timothy 4:1, "Now the Spirit speaketh expressly" about the last days. We are under the same 'New Covenant" which Paul was under, with all of the same manifestations of the Holy Ghost, which God set in motion on that memorable day of Pentecost, and the Spirit is again speaking expressly concerning these last days, and the things which pertain to the second coming of the Son of God.
In April, 1962, I sat, ready to preach, as a special song was being sung, and I heard a voice which spoke to me, saying, "Preach barley harvest." Amazed and unsure, I turned toward the voice, and said, "Lord I don't even know what barley harvest is." Then I hurriedly scanned some of the scriptures about barley harvest and understood what it was which the Lord wanted me to preach in that service. I also understood that the Lord had revealed to me the process of the development of the time, and things, which pertain to the end of this era.
I readily saw that the "harvest, which is the end of the world" had begun with the lunar year that Spring, but that it was the harvest of the tares (Matt. 13:30). I also understood that there would be a series of seven year periods which at some time would be divided into 3½ year periods. Later that year, the Lord said to me in a vision, "You are like Noah, and your father is like Lamech, and your grandfather is like Methuselah. Just as Methuselah was 969 years old when he died, your grandfather will die in 1969, and you will know you're right about the time. Thus the Lord gave me a seven year sign, so that I would be absolutely certain of the things which He had revealed to me. So, Henry Allen McNabb died, at the word of the Lord, May 12, 1969, at 90 years of age.
During our commemoration of Pentecost in 1996, as I was leading a Bible study, I was suddenly surprised and thrilled when it occurred to me that the seven weeks of barley harvest, which were immediately followed by the day of Pentecost, and the 7 sevens of years which were followed by the year of Jubilee both were prophecies of the same 50 year period, which had begun in 1962, and would end by the spring of 2012, with the "acceptable year of the Lord:" the Jubilee year of the resurrection of the dead saints, and of our change. This truth clearly gives us the real meaning of Jesus' interpretation of his parable of the tares. He said, "The harvest is the end of the world."
In March, 2000, in our men's weekly study, we created, in the simplest of terms, a 10½ year chart, and began to try to see where to place the things which the Lord had prophesied concerning those three 3½ year periods in Revelation chs. 11 & 12. Their order in the text places the 42 months first, then the 1260 days, and the time, times and half a time was placed last. We arranged and rearranged them, trying to see if the events which were prophesied for each of those periods of time could occur in that order. For instance, could the 42 months be last? Then, on April 4, 2000, as Joel McNabb was preaching, the Lord gave me a vision, which confirmed that the order of their occurrence in Revelation is also the order of their fulfillment. The vision showed that there are 3 forty-month periods which run parallel to those 3½ year periods, and that the time, times, and half a time indicate that there are three different things which will occur in that period of time.
That half a time is the space which the Lord will move the beginning of the year back from the Spring equinox to Autumn, to compensate for the six months which the Lord added when He told Moses to change the beginning of the year to Abib. That adjustment must be made in order for Jesus to begin to take over the world at the very beginning of the 7th Millennium. For this reason, Israel was told to blow the trumpet of Jubilee on the tenth day of the seventh month. The first year of Adam's reign (Genesis 1:28) began at the end of harvest. So also shall Jesus begin His reign at the end of harvest, both the natural harvest and the harvest of his saints.
As we continued to meditate upon these things, on September 28, 2000, violence erupted in Jerusalem, when the forces of the Gentiles (Palestinian Islam) began to tread Jerusalem under their feet. At first we did not tie those events to John's prophecy of those three "times." However, by early 2002 we knew, and began to publish the fact that we were in that 42 months, and that Israel had once more proved the prophets to be true, and were a sign that we had entered into the last nine years of the Grace Age, and the last ten years of the sixth millennium.
Although Jesus has taken The Kingdom of God away from Israel (Matt. 21:43), the nation of Israel has been raised up to provide us signs of the soon coming of our King. Did not Isaiah prophesy saying, "Behold, I and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts, which dwelleth in mount Zion" (Isaiah 8:18).
There is at least one prominent prophecy which we will see fulfilled in Israel in the very near future. It is in Zech. 14. The Lord said, "Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city."
It is not difficult to see by this passage that the enemies of Israel are, even now, making preparation to make an attack upon Jerusalem which will be a complete success. When the dust and smoke settle, the powers that be shall force the victors to restore unto Israel half of Jerusalem. And by the beginning of the year 2012, Jesus will "go forth (from the wedding chamber), and fight against those nations, as when He fought in the day of battle." - "And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles." Thus shall begin the subjugation of the world to Christ the King.
Those will be exciting times for the redeemed, but for now, we are looking back at the 42 month period which ended March 27, 2004, and must move swiftly to accomplish all that must be accomplished during this 1260 days in which we find ourselves (Acts 3:20,21). Preparations must be made for the appearing of our Lord. For one thing, a group of Christians must form a nation, in fulfillment of Daniel 2:36-45, to which Jesus can give The Kingdom of God, and so finish what he started in 70 AD (Matt. 21:43). For God said, "In the days of these (ten) kings shall the God of Heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever."
I say unto you with the Apostle Peter, "The end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer" (1 Pet. 4:7).