This is a powerful verse that makes a powerful argument. The “gathering together unto Him” (II Thessalonians 2:1) are His saints that have a covenant with Him by sacrifice. Only believers will qualify. Psalm 50:4 are indeed the saints, the ones who awaited Messiah and sacrificed animals prior to His first coming, and the ones who accepted Him after the cross—the dead in Christ rise first, then the ones who are alive will follow.
The language in Psalm 50:4 is the same as in Matthew 24:31: “And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.” Gather together His elect for what? God is not the author of confusion. He has a purpose for doing things. The Rapture has many purposes, yet the Bible sets forth as one of the clear reasons a very practical one—the Raptured believers are coming with Christ to participate alongside Him in the great battle of Jerusalem as described in Zechariah 14:5: “Then you [Israel] shall flee through My mountain valley, For the mountain valley shall reach to Azal. Yes, you shall flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Thus the LORD my God will come, and all the saints [believers] with You” (Zechariah 14:5). God will come and all the saints are with Him? This reconciles Psalm 50, Isaiah 13, and Zechariah 14 with Joel 2. They all fit together perfectly.
In Zechariah 14:5 the context is clear—the saints are with Him in this battle. In Zechariah 14:3 it states: “The Lord will go forth and fight…His feet will stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives…and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two.” The earthquake is the same earthquake that we read about in Joel 2: “the earth quakes before them.” The Lord goes down to Jerusalem for a fight (Joel 2:10): “the Lord will go forth and fight.” This is to spare Israel from destruction. The whole context of Zechariah 14 is the Battle over Jerusalem. This matches what is written in Joel 2: “Let them say, “Spare your people O Lord, and do not give your inheritance to reproach, that the nations should rule over them. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’ Then the Lord will be zealous for His land, and pity His people.” (Joel 2:17-19) They are the army of Joel 2 and the people to be spared are the remnant of Israel. If the “inheritance” is the church, then where is The Church’s land? The verse is clear: “the Lord will be zealous for His land” which is always the greater Land of Israel.
For many Christians, the land of Israel is insignificant. But it is not insignificant to God. In fact, he clearly returns to judge those nations that divided His land. (Joel 3:2) The bride, His church, is involved in this battle with glorified bodies that do not die: “Though they lunge between the weapons, they are not cut down” (Joel 2:8).
They are not cut down? These people in Joel 2 can lunge between the weapons and do not die. When do these people become impervious to weapons? How do they become indestructible? It is only when they receive their glorified bodies.
Some argue with me on this issue, that these people simply lunge between the weapons and not into them, which is why they are not killed. If this argument is true, what is the purpose of the verse? Where is the miracle? The context is speaking of the miraculous—they run on the walls (v. 9). How can people run on walls? With glorified bodies, we can not only walk on walls, but walk through them. In verse 11, these are the Lord’s army: “The Lord gives voice before His army” (Joel 2:11). This must be the Lord’s army. This leaves no question that the army of Joel 2 are the good guys. In Zechariah 14:5 the army is defined: “all the saints with you.” They are the saints—both the martyred and the living.
THE MARTYRS REVENGE
The ones that Islam kills will come back to haunt them. It is these who are the real martyrs and not these evil Muslim “Shahids”—the suicide bombers who blow up innocent men, women and children. Remember, the enemy robs everything that belongs to us, and then applies it to his people. He then takes everything that they are guilty of, and applies that to us. Here I will show who the true martyrs are.
There is a debate that the, “marriage supper of the lamb” and the “marriage supper of the Great God” are two separate events.
What we first need to consider is that there is a purpose for everything: God is a God of order and purpose. In Revelation 19:7 we read: “Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready” as shown in the following: “Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal [must] put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where [is] thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:51-55).
He (the bridegroom) and the bride (the believers in Messiah), prepare for war leading up to the Marriage Supper of The Lamb. That is, believers in Messiah will participate in the Battle for Jerusalem prior to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. “Let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O LORD, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God? Then will the LORD be jealous for his land, and pity his people” (Joel 2:17-18). The Book of Joel describes a single event—the Day of the Lord and the Battle of Armageddon.
Both Joel 2 and I Corinthians 15 are passages speaking about the incorruptible body. But Joel 2 contextualizes this by placing the timing of this glorification of the believers’ bodies at the Great War for Jerusalem. In Joel 2, this incorruptible body is fighting on the Day of The Lord: “Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the LORD cometh, for it is nigh at hand” (Joel 2:1).
Again in both passages there is the trumpet. Joel describes this day as: “A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains: a great people and a strong; there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations. Fire devours before them; and behind them a flame burns: the land is as the Garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them” (Joel 2:2-4). “Neither shall one thrust another; they shall walk every one in his path: and when they fall upon the sword, they shall not be wounded” (Joel 2:8).
Here these fighters cannot be wounded because they have incorruptible bodies as described in I Corinthians 15. Muslims claim that those who die in their evil battles that they offer to Molech/Allah are martyrs and that their corpses do not corrupt. What utter rubbish and nonsense! They steal verses from Scripture and apply them to their dead criminals. This is the type of blasphemy that Islam offers. If this is true, they should keep the corpses for a few days and see how fast they swell and stink. Joel presents the believers as super-human and this event as a definite tribulation: “They shall run to and fro in the city; they shall run upon the wall, they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter in at the windows like a thief. The earth shall quake before them; the heavens shall tremble: the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining. And the LORD shall utter His voice before His army: for His camp is very great: for He is strong that executes His word: for the day of the LORD is great and very terrible; and who can abide it?” (Joel 2:9-11)
The “sun and the moon” being dark are none other than The Day of The Lord. Yet on that day, He speaks to His army in preparation for this battle of the Day of the Lord. Messiah is here in person, leading the defense of Jerusalem. This confirms that believers will fight physically in Jerusalem. O
ur fight in this world may be against spiritual forces, against powers and principalities, but this struggle will confound us in the physical realm too; Scripture makes that explicit. This declaration of the Lord before His army is supported in Revelation 19:15: “And out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should smite the nations: and He shall rule them with a rod of iron: and He treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.”
This “sharp sword” coming out of His mouth is the proclamation of war as written about in Joel 2:11: “And the LORD shall utter his voice before his army.” Some people claim that this “sword” is simply God destroying the enemies miraculously. Yet, the utterance from Messiah’s mouth is a command: “I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened” (Daniel 7:9-10).
It’s a command, an order, and a proclamation. Revelation 19:14 speaks of the Lord’s army: “And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.” Joel 2:16 describes it this way: “Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, and those that suck the breasts: let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber, and the bride out of her closet.”
Here is the Rapture in which the bridegroom (Messiah) meets the bride (Messiah’s followers) to participate in The Marriage Supper of The Lamb. The text continues to tell us what is to come: “Let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O LORD, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God?” (Joel 2:17)
Immediately after this intercessory cry is let out, the saints are transferred into the army to actually help fulfill their own prayers. In Revelation 19:13: “And He was clothed with a garment sprinkled with blood; and his name is called The Word of God… And the armies that were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron; and he treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.”
The armies followed Him to earth, in order to “smite the nations.” Notice, the armies are “clothed in fine linen, white and clean.”
According to Revelation 19:7-8, this is the attire of the bride of Christ. Many argue that His armies are angelic hosts, yet Scripture alludes to martyred-saints. Look out Islamo-Facist, here they come: “And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow servants also and their brethren, which should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled” (Revelation 6:9-11).
The believers, who are with the Lord, are given white robes, the same garments in which the armies are dressed. Messiah will come for battle with His army of believers: “Who is this that comes from Edom (Arabia) from Bozrah in garments stained crimson? Who is this so splendidly robed, marching in his great might? It is I, announcing vindication, mighty to save. Why are your robes red, and your garments like theirs who tread the wine press? I have trodden the wine press alone, and from the peoples no one was with me; I trod them in my anger and trampled them in my wrath; their juice spattered on my garments, and stained all my robes. For the day of vengeance was in my heart, and the year for my redeeming work had come. I looked, but there was no helper; I stared, but there was no one to sustain me; so my own arm brought me victory, and my wrath sustained me. I trampled down peoples in my anger, I crushed them in my wrath, and I poured out their lifeblood on the earth.” (Isaiah 63:1-6)
“I (the Lord) will send a fire into Teman: and it shall devour the houses of Bozrah.” (Amos 1:12)
These (Teman, Bozrah, etc.) are Muslim nations today. And the Lord is fighting them. This will be the day when Christians will finally participate in executing justice. Yet most Christians believe that a sword will come out of His mouth and poof! The enemy will be gone. Not so. The blade protruding from His mouth is symbolic, representing the Messiah’s judgment upon the nations. In other words Messiah will let the Christians have at it. And indeed we will. This will indeed be the day when Christians participate in executing justice.
The false bravery of Muslim warriors, the wolf packs that rape and kill innocent Christian women in Armenia, Sudan, and Lebanon will see the day when these women come back at them and their cowardly faces are wrenched with pain: “Before them the people writhe in pain; all faces are drained of color” (Joel 2:6). That’s right, you cowards that kill yourselves and others. Kim-Sun-il, the Korean translator that you killed is coming back. As the Messiah returns, so will he. This time it is you who will beg for your life while your teeth gnash with trembling and fear. What goes around will come around. God is just!
Zechariah 14:4 states that the Messiah will stand on the Mount of Olives with an earthquake, as he comes for the battle in Jerusalem. According to Christian doctrine, the nation of Israel was punished with 2000 years of Diaspora for not paying attention to “the time of thy visitation.” (Luke 19:44) Is it possible that the same problem will occur on His Second Coming? The issue was ignorance: “my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6). This is the attitude of some people today, “We will find out when He comes” or “We’ll know the truth when we die.”
It could be argued that they did not recognize His First Coming because they didn’t care how He was to come; they simply followed the mainstream interpretations of the most famous rabbis who said that the Messiah would defeat Rome. Noah preached for 120 years and not one person outside of his family listened to him: “And God spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly” (II Peter 2:5).
Every word regarding Messiah’s Second Coming is crucial. How else could we distinguish between the Antichrist, who performs signs and wonders, and the Messiah, who also performs signs and wonders? Most Christians’ attitude towards Israel is, at best, lukewarm, and so they must meditate on the written word of God to recognize that the Messiah is coming back for Israel and He will fight for her, so we ought to decide which side we are on right now. Do we sit by while her enemies try to crush her and say, “God will take care of it?”
The Lord will “catch up” the believers literally in the clouds and in His timing, they will descend together on earth to fight for Israel in the battle of Armageddon: “For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first” (I Thessalonians 4:16).
The Bible says that we ought to focus on His coming again and our meeting Him and being with Him. Messiah is simply coming for Israel to save his people, the Jewish nation, with his saints, and these saints are none other than the true Christians who rise up to meet him in the air and then descend down to fight the enemy on the ground: “So the angel that communed with me said unto me, Cry thou, saying, Thus Says the Lord of hosts; I am jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy” (Zechariah 1:14).
The Lord is greatly concerned for Jerusalem his Holy City and his people of Israel, to the point where He is jealous for His people and will fight for them in the Last-Days: “And I am very sore displeas
ed with the heathen that are at ease: for I was but a little displeased, and they helped forward the affliction” (Zechariah 1:15).
The Lord is very angry that the Muslim hordes round about have made the lives of Jewish people very hard and bitter, and other nations have stood by passively or even applied greater pressure on Israel. In light of this, we need to consider:
• The Muslim nations are bent on destroying Israel and driving her people into to the sea.
• Most Western nations sit there trying either to negotiate impossible peace deals or to force sanctions on Israel through the United Nations.
• Most Christians are lukewarm and don’t really care.
CHRISTIANS FIGHT FOR ISRAEL
Again, in Joel 2 it is clear why this army is at work: “Let them say, ‘Spare Your people O Lord, and do not give your inheritance to reproach, That the nations should rule over them. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’ Then the Lord will be zealous for His land, and pity His people” (Joel 2:17-19). At the end of the age, true believers should have this intercessory cry on their hearts. They should be spiritual intercessors and even political activists. As the spirit of anti-Semitism spreads even in the Church, Israel needs friends who will stand by her to the very end. Thus it will be these who will enjoy Israel’s new beginning. These are the saints that love Israel and who care about the land. Psalm 102 gives a litmus test: “For Your servants take pleasure in her stones, and show favor to her dust” (Psalm 102:14). This is the attitude of Christian pilgrims to Israel. They love to take home a sample of dust or dirt or olive wood from the land. This is the behavior that is consistent with those who love Israel. If Islam truly loved the land of Israel, then why was it a desolate wilderness until the Jews began to immigrate to it? At a pro-Palestine Christian event someone said that the real stones were the “living stones”—“the Palestinians.” If so, why didn’t God say so? He would have called them “Palestinians,” yet He didn’t. They are deceived by their own rebelliousness.
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