SANDY:  Right. Right. And as Gentile Christians saw the Jewish people were inter-distancing themselves away from the Gospel, that only fueled the animosity that seemed to be there, so we have church fathers, esteemed church fathers, like the beloved Saint John Chrysostom, who’s venerated by Catholics and Protestants alike, writing venomous, venomous anti-Jewish treatises and stating that the synagogue was worse than a den of thieves, worse than a brothel, and a cave of demons. He made it extremely clear when he wrote, quote, “As for me I hate the synagogue and I hate the Jews.” That not only was he anti-synagogue but he was anti the Jewish people. That’s not God’s heart. Then we have just about a hundred or so years later Emperor Constantine who ruled over the Roman Empire for hundreds of years officially making Christianity the state religion. When he did so, he intentionally distanced himself from any vestiges of anything Jewish from the Hebraic roots of Christianity and imposed that on the Empire as well. He legislated specific anti-Jewish laws designed to isolate and ideally do away with the Jewish people in his Empire and— he wrote this particularly for the church of future generations. He wrote that he hoped it would be his legacy that the church would forever be separated from Israel and from its Jewish roots. And I think that we can say that to a significant degree, that has been the case.

SID:  And the thing that’s so amazing is Jesus is Jewish. When He was nailed to the cross, what did it say? King of the Jews. And— let me ask you this question. These people were intelligent, these church fathers. They loved God in their way, maybe, only God knows that one. What scriptural basis did they have for just denying their Jewish roots?

SANDY: Well, it related more to the way they interpreted the scripture than any particular verse, although they did take different isolated verses throughout the scriptures out of context completely, which is not the Hebraic way of interpreting the Bible at all. Context is everything. They would take—

SID:  That’s what, that’s what causes a lot of bad theology in all areas, when you pull one verse, you don’t look what was before it, you don’t look what was after it, and you come up with anything you want to come up with.

SANDY:  And you build a whole theology and worldview on it. Right. And so they would take verses out of context and attach spiritual, symbolic or allegorical interpretations onto those verses. What I mean by that is that traditionally the way of interpreting scriptures, which Jesus himself and all of the New Testament apostles employed when they penned the scriptures, is to interpret the Bible primarily,  fundamentally according to its straightforward, plain, common sense, ordinary meaning. After that we can see how the Lord puts— uses allegory, uses allegory in His word and we can interpret the word allegorically or symbolically and it’s through an allegorical interpretation many times that we see that believers of all nations enter into the promises that God has given to Israel. But those that adhered to replacement theology and those that were putting forth replacement theology interpreted the scriptures primarily allegorically so that when the Word speaks of Israel it’s taken to mean strictly the Church.

SID:  Well you know I’ve always been taught, Sandy, that if you toss out the literal, then you must take the literal first, before you have the right to take the allegorical. If you don’t do that, then you could take any parable and come up with any theology you want.

Perry: That is also found— exact wording, exact wording— “time, times and dividing of times,” Daniel 7:25. The first place it’s ever found is in Daniel. Hundreds of years later John uses the same term, the angel gives him the same term. Now that “Gog” and “Magog” battle. One of them is Ezekiel 38 and 39 but this one in the Book of Revelation is the same spirit coming out of the pit trying to do another battle against Jerusalem. So “Gog” and “Magog” is mentioned by Ezekiel and mentioned by John in the Book of Revelation. Michael fighting Satan in a cosmic war, Revelation 12 and 7.  Daniel spoke of Michael in Daniel, chapter 12 and verse 1 coming in a day of great trouble. Same, same, same picture here. You have the beast with ten horns, Revelation 13:1. The beast with ten horns in Daniel 7:7, verse 20 and verse 24. The battle of Armageddon, Revelation 16:16. You find that battle mentioned in Zechariah 14, 1, 2 through 3. Now when I tell you Armageddon there, it tells you Armageddon in Revelation 16:16, but it says I gather all nations against Jerusalem. That’s what that battle is. That’s why we know from Zechariah 14 that’s the same battle. The binding of Satan in the abyss or the pit is in Revelation 20:2 through 3. That’s Isaiah’s prediction in Isaiah chapter 14 in verse15. The return of the Messiah to Jerusalem is in Revelation chapters 19 and 20 and you’ll find Zechariah’s prediction actually starting in chapter 12, he speaks of Jerusalem but in Zechariah 14, 4 through 5 this is where the feet of the Lord will stand up on the Mount of Olives eastward in Jerusalem and the mount will cleave in two parts, one part to the east and also one part to the west. So the point I, the point I want to make about this is, and, and please get this kind of in your spirit, as this is just a kind of an introduction to the Book, is that, let’s kind of do a review here. Number one, is let’s look at the author, John. John is an Apostle. John outlived all the other Apostles. John wrote the Book in about 95 A.D. John wrote it from the Isle of Patmos. It was a series of visions. Some people think that John actually didn’t get it all at one time because he said “after this I saw,” then he says “after this I saw.” That he may have a got a few chapter and then after this he saw something else. Others— I kind of tend to believe this— I kind of believe it happened at one time. You know someone said to me ‘now wait a minute, how can a guy have a vision like that and remember it?” Are you kidding me? Are you absolutely kidding me? I mean if you have a vision of the throne of God and you’re standing there— do you think you— what’d you do— I had a vision last night. What was it? I don’t know. Something about God. I can’t remember what it was. You kidding me? Are you kidding me? I would, I would look at that thing and tell you what shoes He was wearing, you know. I mean this is something a real vision like he had gets in your spirit so deep, “cause I’ve had ‘em before, that you can recall details if it impresses in your spirit. The other thing you got to remember it’s the Holy Spirit who recalls things to your remembrance. You know because you got your critics out there “Well how could a man remember that long?” Well just because you ain’t got a good memory doesn’t mean John didn’t have one! You know? And the Jews, the Jews back then were taught to memorize. You have to understand that we’re not taught that today. We memorize for a test and then we forget everything. But back then they rehearsed it over and over and over again. Oh my, man I feel His presence talking about this Book! Hallelujah! All right. Now I’m going to, I’m going to just take just a couple more things here that I feel like I want to share with you. Let me go back to again something that has always been a question and this question always comes up, uh, and they will say to me “Where do you place the return of the Lord for the church?” Okay? Where do you place the return? Let’s go back again. The Lord says to John I want to show you the things that were, that are, and that will be. Future tense. So if he writes this in 95 A.D., chapter 1 he sees Christ as the High Priest, right? Christ then is doing something. He’s addressing 7 churches. You all want to know the nugget from the Temple days?