Dave and Tom Classic: Judgment Day - Is God Setting the Stage?

Gary: Welcome to Search the Scriptures 24/7, a radio ministry of The Berean Call. I’m Gary Carmichael. We’re glad you could join us. In today’s program, we continue our series of classics from our Search the Scriptures Daily archives with the late founder of The Berean Call, Dave Hunt, and T.A. McMahon, with Part 2 of their radio discussion of Dave’s book Judgment Day — “Is God Setting the Stage?” first broadcast in 2006. Along with Dave Hunt, here’s TBC executive director, Tom McMahon.

Tom: Thanks, Gary. You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him. 

In this segment of our program, Dave Hunt and I will be discussing his new book Judgment Day! Islam, Israel, and the Nations. As we mentioned last week, it’s not a book that you would find in a make-you-happy-and feel-good-about-the-world-situation section of your local bookstore. On the other hand, if anyone is interested in truth - that is, what God has declared about what’s taking place in the world today - this book is for you. 

Now, Dave, before we pick up where we left off last week, could you give our listeners a brief synopsis of the book?

Dave: Tom, that’s not easy to do, but what we are trying to do in the book is present the truth - the truth about the Middle East, the truth about our world today, what’s happening, what’s been happening. So we give you not only the truth from the Word of God, the truth from prophecy, but from history as well. I use prophecies that are irrefutably for our day, and we talked about a couple of them last week. You cannot escape it: they are being fulfilled in our day. They pertain to Israel; Israel is the major topic in the Bible. 

We deal with the problem in the Middle East: it’s between the Jews, to whom God gave that land 4,000 years ago - they have a title deed signed by God Himself given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - and people who call themselves Palestinians. We explain who the “Palestinians,” so-called, are. They’re not Palestinians; there never was a place called Palestine, and we give you the details of that in the book. They happen to be Arabs; they claim descent from Ishmael, and Ishmael was certainly not a Palestinian. They claim that they are descended from the original inhabitants of this land, and it was the Jews [who] came in and occupied their land, and they ought to have it back. It simply isn’t true; it’s irrefutable. We present the lies and the truth, so we show what’s really going on over there. We show what is the motivation behind their desire to get Israel out. There’s not an Arab map in the world that even shows the existence of Israel. 

The Qur’an promises the Muslims victory over the Jews. It says that that land belongs to them. On the other hand, I give you many quotations from the Qur’an where it says Allah gave that land to the Jews, even brought them out of Egypt through the Red Sea, and so forth, so we do have some contradictions there. 

So we show what the Bible says is going to happen. There are horrible times ahead for Israel and for this world. It’s called Judgment Day! Islam, Israel, and the Nations. And as we mentioned last week, God is angry, and His anger is getting hotter against the nations of this world who are defying Him because He promised that land to the Jews. And in fact the Bible says that the latter end of Israel will be better than the first, and yet we even have Christians today - D. James Kennedy, people like this, Calvinists, Reconstructionists, and so forth - who deny that Israel has any role today in God’s plan.

Tom: Right, this is Replacement Theology.

Dave: Right, replacing Israel with the church. And so we give the prophecies, the hundreds of prophecies. Israel is the major topic of the Bible; you cannot escape it, and we show what God says is going to happen, and that the nations of this world are, in fact, defying Him. And we, I think, give a lot of interesting details from history to show that it was not just Hitler, the whole world is responsible for the Holocaust, and we go into some details on that - that Britain and America, in fact, agreed that they would not push Hitler about this Holocaust, because if they did, he would disgorge these Jews on them, and they did not want them. 

We talk about the 500,000 Hungarian Jews untouched by the Nazis in 1944. Hitler offered to sell them for $2 a piece. England said, “No room in Palestine for them.” We point out the demise of the British Empire, upon which “the sun never sank,” because when they betrayed the Jews…the prophecy in Scripture, Genesis:12:3And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
See All..., God said, “I will curse those who curse you.” That came upon England. 

So, Tom, I think it’s my most important book. I think it lays out the picture very clearly. It shows that the latest plan, the “Road Map to Peace,” so-called…President Bush is the architect of that; President Putin of Russia has joined him; the European Union, the United Nations - they call them the “quartet,” and I simply point out from Scripture that they need to repent, and if they do not repent, they are bringing this entire world to the judgment. 

And let me just mention it again, Tom: Joel:3:2I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land.
See All..., God says He will bring all the nations of this world into judgment. He is going to punish them severely - destroy them, in fact - destroy their armies at Israel, because of two things that they have done: number one, they have scattered His people all over this world. That’s been going on for centuries. Number two, they have divided His land, and that never, ever happened in history until our generation. Britain did it - gave most of it away to form the country Jordan. UN Resolution 181 called The Partition of the Land” did it; the nations of the world divided what the League of Nations, their Declaration of Principles, the 1919 Peace Conference, and so forth, in Paris, had all said that that land belongs to the Jews; it was set apart for a national homeland for the Jewish people. Britain was to administer it and see that it came about, and the Jews finally got 13 percent of what had been promised to them. And God is angry, and He says, “The nations have divided my land, and I am going to bring them into judgment.” And if there is not some repentance on the part of President Bush, President Putin, the UN, the European Union, and so forth…

Tom: And the Jews as well.

Dave: Yes, we also bring Israel into this. It’s going to be the worst time that Israel has ever experienced, because in spite of the, you know, the pressure - you could say it’s impossible pressure from the European Union, I don’t know. What do they buy from Israel, 30 billion dollars worth a year? I don’t know the latest figures, but they would just cut Israel off. Israel would die on the vine. So they have tremendous pressure from the European Union, from the United Nations, United States, and so forth. Nevertheless, they should not have bowed to that pressure. They should have said, “We will stand on the Word of God.” In fact, that’s how the modern Israel began. David Ben-Gurion stated it back there at the very beginning in ’45, that no Jew has the right to give any of this land to anybody. 

So, Tom, I think it’s an important book. I hope it will shake the world; I hope it will shake the church. It does include what Islam really is. It’s really a pagan religion, and we document that. And we have the gospel, I think, that is suitable for Jews, for Muslims, and for just anybody, and so it will be a valuable book from that standpoint, as well.

Tom: Dave, I think it’s valuable and important, and what impresses me about the book - I think is actually stunning - two things that you said: this book is about prophecy; in other words, it’s about what God says. Any Christian, any individual who claims to be a believer and loves the Word of God, we’re challenging - you’re exhorting - them to search the Scriptures to see what God is saying about that. 

You know, a sad commentary about the church today is that the growth of illiteracy, biblical illiteracy, is absolutely stunning. So all you are asking is - here are the Scriptures; the amount are overwhelming with regard to this issue. Search the Scriptures; check out what God has to say about these things. 

The second thing is, Dave, for those who haven’t read the Bible - you know, unbelievers and so on - check the history. I mean, all that you present in the book, people can find it; it’s documented. We’re just making an appeal to people to see what has taken place in history, and what is going on today.

Dave: Mm-hmm. There are probably some listeners out there… “Oh, this is sensationalism.” People who talk about Bible prophecy and so forth are criticized, “Oh, you just try to fit the daily news, or whatever it is, into prophecy.”

Tom: And that has been a problem among ministers.

Dave: Definitely, definitely. There are those out there who sensationalize the news. Everything that happens in the news - “Oh, that’s it, you know. The tsunami was a sign from God.”

Tom: Supposedly Y2K was; remember that?

Dave: Yeah, we dealt with that. The Gulf War - that was going to lead to Armageddon. In fact, we had some popular Christian leaders who said America would be destroyed in the Gulf War by Saddam Hussein’s troops. That was some kind of a joke. I mean, the United States is at least 10 years ahead of everybody, including China. How we stay that way with teaching self-esteem instead of math in our schools, I don’t know. 

But my youngest son, who has, you know, top clearance, he tells me, “Well, it just takes a little while to catch up.” But some of the people that are coming out of our universities now, they don’t know how to do the job, and he has to do it for them, the people working under him. 

But anyway, at the moment we are at least 10 years ahead with our weapons, which is why we can do what we are doing. Woe to the world were that in the hands of some dictator; so we need to really pray for America that the right kind of people will be power. 

But, Tom, we are not sensationalizing anything. I think I write in a very calm and straightforward manner just the facts. I don’t think they can be refuted, and I am just concerned that people would really recognize what the truth is and begin to pray.

Tom: Mm-hmm. Dave, let’s get into chapter 1. We’ll pick up where we left off last week. You’re talking about Israel. I mean, this country is minute with regard to - population-wise, size-wise, and so forth, it’s minute. Yet the Israeli Defense Forces are, as you point out, are among the best in the world, and that’s a fulfillment of prophecy, isn’t it?

Dave: Tom, actually I said the best in the world, but our editors here said, “Well, you better say, ‘among the best,’ because…” I don’t know whether I mentioned it, but I have talked to a few military leaders in the US, some of them working with elite troops, telling me, “Well, we’re training the military in 25 Muslim countries. And I say, “What, you’re training them?” “Well, we’re not so much training them as we are terrifying them when they see the weapons we have and we don’t give them to them.” 

And then I asked, “Well, are you training Israel?” I know what they’re going to say, because I’ve heard it before: “Well, no, we don’t train Israel. They’re better than we are.” So this is what top military people in the United States say. 

Now, we do work with Israel; we’ve worked with Israel on the Arrow II, which is the only really viable missile defense system in the world, and we’re learning a lot from Israel. Where was it - I think it was in Qatar in the Gulf state over there, when an American missile got a car full of terrorists out in the middle of the desert. I said, “They’ve been learning from the Israelis.” 

When you consider that Hamas votes in a new leader and he walks out of a mosque, gets in a car, and within a hundred yards or so, zam! An Israeli missile has got him! Now, to know who’s in that car, to zero in, not hit the crowd of people around him, and then when they voted in another one a month later, Israel got him too! Now, they don’t tell us who their leader is, but Israel will find out, and then the world rises up in anger - “Oh, look at that! How could they possibly do that? They’re assassinating a man.” Wait a minute! These people have trained hundreds of suicide bombers, thousands of them; they have declared over and over that they are going to destroy Israel. That is their goal, and then the world says nothing about that. You could have suicide bombers get on children’s school buses and blow it up - not a word of complaint! But when Israel gets the leader who is behind all this, then the world rises up in anger. It doesn’t make any sense, but that’s another one of the things we point out in the book: anti-Semitism, and it is on the rise, especially in Europe and on our university campuses in America. This is one of the great proofs of God’s existence and that the Bible is His Word, because He foretold all of this.

Tom: Mm-hmm. You quote from Zechariah:12:6In that day will I make the governors of Judah like an hearth of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire in a sheaf; and they shall devour all the people round about, on the right hand and on the left: and Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place, even in Jerusalem.
See All...: “In that day will I make the governors of Judah like a hearth of fire among the wood, and they shall devour all the people round about.” And you point out, it’s “I will,” that is, God is doing this, and the example you give is the Yom Kippur War of October 1973.

Dave: Yeah, Tom, and there were some horrible things there, too, that we point out. The United States knew about this. They knew…

Tom: Yeah. This was the Nixon administration.

Dave: Right. They knew that a Pearl Harbor was coming for Israel. In fact, the Russians moved all their people out, their employees and their dependents and so forth. They knew exactly what was going to happen.

Tom: The day before they got everybody out.

Dave: Dispatch after dispatch from the National Security Administration to Nixon’s desk; he sat on them, and Henry Kissinger hid out in a hotel in New York, wouldn’t call the United Nations emergency session of the security council for three days, hoping that Israel would get bloodied up a bit. It was the closest Israel ever came to being destroyed. They were virtually all on holiday, the Yom Kippur holiday, the highest holiday of the year; troops were not ready. Well, it was Israel’s fault, you know, to a large extent. They had 500 defenders along the Suez. They were overwhelmed, of course, by 80,000 Egyptian soldiers and 1,400 Syrian tanks coming down the Golan, and you’ve got one Israeli tank in operation down there to withstand them. You could punch right through Israel; it’s a very small country. Patton could have done it, you know, and so forth, but God intervened. It’s amazing what God has done over there. 

It cost Israel 3,000 men, killed in that war. At the same population the United States has, if we had that percentage of our troops gone, it would be 150,000. But when Israel finally, you know, turned the tide, the Israeli tanks were on the outskirts of Cairo and Damascus and could have taken those cities. So God said, “I’ll make them like a fire devouring the nations around them.” 

By the way, Tom, we deal with some of these things in one of our videos or DVDs, Israel, Islam, and Armageddon. And you see the tanks, and the planes, and the Twin Towers coming down, and so forth.

Tom: [You wrote]: “A stern warning to all nations: God goes on to say through His prophet that all that burdened themselves with it - that is, Jerusalem and Israel - shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.” It’s very direct, Dave. 

Dave: Yes!

Tom: These are not Nostradamus’ promises, okay? These are very direct, very straightforward, very clear.

Dave: Very clear, and I point out - I guess we did it last week, but let’s just go over it very briefly, because it’s very important. Between verse 2 and verse 3 of Zechariah 12, a very clear distinction: Israel will be a “cup of trembling,” that is, a terror to the nations around it - all of its neighbors. It says specifically, “When they are in the siege against Jerusalem and Judah….” Never in history have all the nations surrounding Israel been joined together until our day. What joins them? Islam. Islam must destroy the Jews; Muhammad said that every Jew on the face of this earth must be killed before the last day comes, the day of resurrection, when the Muslim will be sent either to heaven or to hell.

Tom: Islam… We’re talking about distinct people groups here: Egyptians, Persians, Turks, Arabs, on and on.

Dave: Right. Syrians.

Tom: Yes, so these are different peoples, yet they have this common bond in Islam.

Dave: That’s what unites them. The only thing that unites them is their hatred of Israel, and that comes from Islam. It’s not that Arabs hate Jews. They got along quite well centuries ago before Islam came into existence, so we put this at the door of Islam. These are not fanatics. This is Islam itself. 

Then verse 3, which you quoted, says that, “I will make Jerusalem a burdensome stone to all nations, and they will all come against Jerusalem, and I’m going to destroy them.” 

And you could go to the two chapters later - Zechariah 14, God says, “I will bring all the nations against Jerusalem.” He’s going to punish them there. 

So I think we probably mentioned it last week, but people often ask, “Well, is America in prophecy?” Yes, they are. “All nations,” Zechariah 14. 

“All nations,” Joel:3:2I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land.
See All.... 

“All nations,” right here. “All nations will be gathered together against Israel.” It’s anti-Semitism, it’s Hitler’s final solution, and the Israeli Defense Forces are, as we say, I think they’re the best in the world - of course, they’re among the smallest in the world, but it is still going to take the entire world coming against them to defeat them, and the world will imagine that this is what they are going to do, and God says He will intervene and destroy those nations. And that is when Jesus Christ comes at the Second Coming, not the Rapture. So we have Zechariah:12:10And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.
See All...; He says, “They will…” this is God speaking now. I wish the Jewish people could pay a little attention to this. This is their Yahweh, this is the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel. Two hundred and three times in the Bible, He is called the God of Israel. This is God speaking. 

He is going to return…you read Ezekiel 38, it says, “All the world will tremble, even the creeping things, the fish in the sea, everything is going to tremble at My presence,” God says. Okay, that’s who is speaking, but listen to what He says, “They will look on Me whom they have pierced,” and the word there is a piercing to the death like a sword or a spear in the side, and they will mourn. Israel will, at last, recognize - well, they will be in such desperate straits, they will cry out to the Messiah, “Please, come and rescue us!” He will, but they will recognize this is God, the God of Israel, and yet He came as a Man through a virgin birth; He died for our sins; we rejected Him and we crucified Him - the Romans did, the whole world did - and they will believe. And the Scripture says, “All Israel will be saved.” But Zechariah 13 says two-thirds of all Jews on the face of this earth will be killed. So this is Israel’s time of Jacob’s trouble, the worst time yet ahead. And, Tom, I think I’m within - what God would have me to do is simply to take His Word and to warn people of what is happening.

Tom: And, Dave, we mentioned this last week - we should repeat it over and over again: what you are presenting came through the Jewish prophets. This is not some Christian out there who - I mean, certainly are true believers - but it isn’t just some kind of Christian slant on the Jews; this is from the Jewish prophets themselves.

Dave: Exactly, and it is from those prophets that Paul preached the gospel. Acts:17:1Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews:
See All...,2,3, he went into the synagogue; he opened their Scriptures.

Tom: “To the Jew first.”

Dave: Exactly, and there were no…the New Testament hadn’t been written yet, and he preached the gospel out of the Old Testament, and he said, “Look what your prophets said about the Messiah. You cannot deny it was all fulfilled in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.” 

This is why Jesus, for example, in Luke 12, said to the Rabbis, “You can tell what the weather is going to be, whether it be stormy or a nice day. Why don’t you know the signs of these times?” Because Daniel’s prophecy in Daniel 9 told the very day the Messiah would ride into Jerusalem (we’ve talked about that in the past), and that day was just about to come. And when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, as the prophets had foretold, and then it said that they would reject Him and crucify Him. Here He comes, hailed as the Messiah - exactly as the prophets foretold. So that is how Paul would preach the gospel from the Jewish prophets and say, “Look, it’s all been fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth. You cannot deny that He is the Messiah.” Well, some believed, but they went about to persecute, and they stoned Paul the apostle, and finally he was martyred.

Gary: You’ve been listening to Search the Scriptures 24/7 with T.A. McMahon, a radio ministry of The Berean Call. The complete radio discussion of Dave Hunt’s Book Judgment Day – Israel, Islam & The Nations is available in Mp3 or Compact Disc from The Berean Call. We offer a wide variety of resources to help you in your study of God’s Word.  For a complete list of materials and a free subscription to our monthly newsletter, contact us at PO Box 7019, Bend, Oregon, 97708; call us at 800.937.6638; or visit our website at thebereancall.org.  I’m Gary Carmichael. Thanks for being here, and we invite you back again next week. Until then, we encourage you to Search the Scriptures 24/7.