Our study today brings us to a remarkable exploration of the prophecy of the Millennial Kingdom as depicted in Micah. Through the lens of listener testimonies from places like Venezuela and Burundi, we witness how the timeless message of God’s word continues to impact lives across the globe. Discover how the metaphor of spiritual bankruptcy and the emphasis on genuine faith serve as a call to introspection and action in a world that often places value on external appearances over spiritual truth.
The foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in his excellence.
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The day of the Lord begins in darkness but ends in the light of a new day. That’s the good news that Dr. J. Vernon McGee shares with us on Through the Bible. I’m Steve Schwetz, and I’m so glad to welcome you aboard the Bible bus for another great study in the Old Testament book of Micah. Now, if you’re new to our listening family, welcome, and I hope that you’ll hop on board the Bible bus daily. That’s what Dr. McGee liked to call this five-year journey through God’s entire word. Now, as we’ve said before, it doesn’t matter where you start. In just five years, we’re going to travel through all 66 books of the Bible. I know it sounds ambitious, but it’s completely doable, my friend. Don’t worry. In fact, many of our listeners have been with us for several five-year trips, myself included. Part of what makes this study so interesting is that Dr. McGee designed it to jump back and forth between the Old and New Testaments. So we understand the scriptures really in a deep, meaningful, and most importantly, integrated way. Well, for more information on Dr. McGee and Through the Bible, visit us anytime over at ttb.org. Now, if you were with us last time, you heard Dr. McGee begin to tell us about the real meaning of sin. And he ended with a question. What is covetousness? Listen to his answer now.
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Paul made it very clear that idolatry today is covetousness. And that raises the question, what is covetousness? It’s anything that has priority in your life. And it becomes idolatry then. Anything that you put first in your life. It could be money. It could be, well, it could be sex. It could be some sport. It could be a hobby. It could be something else that actually could not be categorized as some sinful thing. What is a Christian to do here in this world today? Personally, if you ask me, that we all are out on tangents today. We’ve got to make our marriage work and we’ve got to be made happy. Well, what is it that I can’t find in the Bible that God is going to make you happy? He never promised to make you happy. He promised you that you’d have trouble in the world. He says in the world, you’re going to have trouble. That’s a promise. And most of us have found out God makes good on his promises. What is the most important thing? And that is to do the will of God. And anything that gets into a Christian’s life that’s ahead of the will of God for his life, then that is covetousness, my friend. That’s idolatry. Now, he speaks also of spiritual bankruptcy of his day. Well, is there spiritual bankruptcy today? Well, we put such great emphasis on numbers today. It’s how big a thing is. How many seats do you have in your auditorium? Some men who invite me to come to speak and they tell me how many seats they have in the auditorium. I don’t care about that. I say to you, I’ve never yet accepted an invitation because they had a certain number of seats. I accepted it because I felt like I could be of some help there. I could… make some kind of a contribution. We’ve lost sight today of spiritual values. We follow some letter of the law. Our hearts are not tender toward God. And we spiritualize scripture today. We disembowel it. We get away from the true meaning. We do not interpret the word of God and then draw from it the lessons that come from a true interpretation. But we just make it entertainment today. May I say to you, friends, we are spiritually bankrupt today. Those of us that even claim to be, you know, in the will of God. Violence. You can’t walk our streets today. There’s corruption in politics and bribery and judges. Believe me, if God judged His people, for these sins back in the days of the Old Testament, he’s bound to get around to judging America today.
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Dr. McGee is clear. We will face judgment. But he also reminds us that in the meantime, our job is to get God’s word out to the whole world. And that’s why we’re grateful to those of you who faithfully pray for and support through the Bible as we teach God’s word in more than 250 languages around the world. Let’s share a couple of letters from our fellow listeners that will hopefully give you an idea of how God is answering our prayers. Angel in Venezuela writes this. I’m a new believer. At 30 years old, I am now a servant and warrior for Christ also. Like all young people in the faith, needs nourishment to be strong and grow in the spirit. Thanks to an uncle who has years of experience and is dedicated to sharing your program day in and day out, I’ve been able to benefit greatly from this material. My job involves traveling, and on my trips while driving, I listen to this program, mostly when I travel on my motorcycle. I see and contemplate the scenery while I listen and learn from these valuable teachings that are so meaningful and important for new and adult believers. I hope God continues to bless you and that you can continue to reach more people from Venezuela. A hug. And next from a listener who joins us on the Bible bus in French from Burundi, we hear this. This week I heard the program and it brought me immense joy. In the past, I didn’t fear sin much. I was accustomed to it. However, after experiencing this program, I feel profoundly moved by God’s word. As a result, I’ve made the decision to confess and repent of all my sins. I will no longer allow sin to have a place in my life except for moments of omission. Thank you for creating such an impactful program that has truly transformed my life. Well, isn’t that amazing? Let’s thank the Lord for his strength and hope in our lives. Heavenly Father, thank you for the opportunity that we have to gather around your word. Would you speak to our hearts and then make the message that you have for each of us clear? We praise you for who you are and how much you love us. In Jesus’ name, amen. Let’s travel to Micah chapter 4 on Through the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee.
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Now, friends, we’re in this very marvelous fourth chapter of Micah, and we got down to verse 6. We saw here in the fourth chapter that the subject had changed. He passed from the darkness of the night to the light of the day. There’ll be a cloud or two passing over the sun in this section, but for the most part, it’s as bright as the noonday sun. And we have here actually a very great prophecy of the millennial kingdom. And the picture that’s given here is a day when God will return them back to the land. Now he’s going to make that very clear in this section here that begins with verse 6. and that’s as far as we got last time. And we have here, therefore, in verse 6, and I’m reading, in that day, and here we go, this is another reference to the last days, the day of the Lord. We picked that up way back at Hosea, and we found out that the first of these writing prophets, And all of the major prophets pick this term up. And that day of the Lord is a specific term. And it begins with the great tribulation, the night, just as this book began with the darkness of judgment. And it moves on to the light of the new day, that millennial day that shall break upon this earth. “…in that day, saith the Lord, will I assemble her that is lame.” And who is that? That’s the nation Israel. And we’ll gather her that is driven out and her that I have afflicted. And it looks as if God takes credit or probably, let’s say, takes the blame. for that which has happened to the nation Israel. I was talking to a man in front of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem several years ago, and he was a Jew that had come out of the Nazi persecution. He had escaped death, by the way, although he’d been sent to one of the concentration camps. And his argument to me was this, that he had become an atheist, he said. He said, where was our God? Why didn’t he help us during the time of our trouble? Well, why didn’t he deliver us? And I told him, I said, well, to tell the truth, I think he was around. But I said, maybe you’d like to blame him for the trouble that happened to you. And he says, well, I certainly do. If there is a God, he would have responded. I said, no, you folk had an opportunity way ahead of us. I said, when you had a knowledge of the living and true God as a nation, my people, my ancestors were heathen, pagan nations. in tribes, one tribe in Germany and the other tribe in Scotland. And they were, oh, they were dirty, filthy, ignorant heathen. And you had the light. And some of your people brought the light to my people back in those days, and I’m grateful for it. And I said, in one of your own books, God makes it very clear. And he not only did it in one book, he made it clear in great emphasis. He says, I have afflicted Israel. Now, I said, blame God for it. And if you will just read it all, you will find out that you not only can blame him, but he says, I’m not through with you. He intends to regather you. And you will, by that time, have learned a lesson that apparently you haven’t even learned now, that you cannot turn your back on the living God, especially when you have knowledge of him, without being punished. This is God’s universe and you had a knowledge of him and you rejected that knowledge. And of course, that’s the position and condition that our nation is coming in today. That’s the thing that alarms me today is the ignorance of the word of God in this land of ours. Not only ignorance, but ignoring the word of God, making light of the word of God. They have this type of thing that even comedians use today. The devil made me do it. He did not. It’s because you’ve got an old nature that’s as mean and as alienated and far from God as it possibly can be. Don’t blame the devil because you’re the type of person that you are, because you’ve got an old nature. That’s the reason. And then others, well, I’ll tell God on you. You won’t tell God on anybody. You don’t have to tell him about somebody else’s sin. He already knows it. And he knows yours. You can’t make light of him and reject him. God says, I have afflicted you. And God takes the blame for it. And he never asked me to apologize or to try to explain it away. So I think he did it, friends. And that ought to be a warning to us today as a great nation. Now, he goes on to say here, verse 7, and I will make her that was lame a remnant. Now, I won’t dwell on this word remnant because after all, down through the long history of the nation Israel, it was never a 100% nation worshiping God. I have my doubts that there ever was a time, even in the greatest period, when you could say they 100% had turned to God. Always it was a remnant, and God always preserved a remnant. It was actually a remnant that entered the land that came out of Egypt. The generation that came out did not. Their children did. They entered the land, a remnant. It always was that remnant that God saved, by the way. And even in the days of Elijah, Elijah got very pessimistic. He said to the Lord, I only am left. Why, God says, you’re not the only one. I’ve got 7,000 in these mountains that have not bowed the knee to Baal, but they sure were running from Ahab and Jezebel. I’ll say that, and Elijah didn’t know about them. And I’m of the opinion that two things are true. I think that today there are more believers than we think there are, because I think that there are some that are like that 7,000, and they’re like the folk that never write to us. Somebody told me that only one out of 10,000 listeners write to any radio program, and he said he thought our program probably had a little better batting average than that, but not much. One out of 10,000. I don’t know about them. I can tell you that. I don’t hear from them. Elijah hadn’t heard from them. They hadn’t been writing to him, encouraging him, standing for God. But God had a remnant. He’s always had a remnant. And there was the few there at the coming of Christ. Don’t say the nation Israel rejected Christ. They did not. There was a little remnant that received him. And on the day of Pentecost, there was a great company that turned to Christ. But a remnant, always been a remnant. And very frankly, I think in the church today. Now, let me be very specific. I’ve made the statement. I think there are more Christians today than you. you think they are. I know several people that are not members of any church. They’re a little better toward the church, the local church, and they don’t join. But I think they’re believers. And I think that in the church today that there’s only a remnant that really are the believers. I think we’d be surprised if we knew how few church members and generally many of them that are active today in Christian circles, whether they’re genuine believers or not. And we may be in a period today that’s going to bring persecution. Or, as the writer to the Hebrews made it very clear, whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth. And every son that he receives, he’s going to put you through the mail to test you, you see. If you’ve got some metal and you think it’s gold, you can take it to the assayer’s office. And I tell you, he’ll really put the heat to it. But you’ll find out whether you’ve got gold or not. And God does that for those that are his own. And I’m of the opinion, very frankly, that all the church members we’ve been in an affluent society. We’ve been in a period that there’s been a lot that’s been phony. There’s been a lot of pseudo saints that are around today and they are not genuine by any means. They have not been born again. We saw in 1 John, there’s a real test. You can put the acid on them and determine whether they’re children of God or not. God has a remnant today, and he has a remnant in the nation Israel. There are, I think, more in the nation Israel that are believers than you think there are. Our letters reveal that, that there are many of them that are believers. You may not know about it, and I think that that’s true today in any place. I think that today one of the things that’s keeping many people out of good churches are the action of some of the members of the churches. I think we need to be very careful today as a member of a church that we’re not shutting the door. At the same time, we’re trying to talk about how evangelistic we are. We’re actually shutting the door to a great many believers. This word, the remnant, is a very important word in Scripture. Don’t just rush over it. I read this again, verse 7, “…and I will make her that was lame a remnant, and her that was cast far off a strong nation.” And the Lord shall reign over them in Mount Zion from henceforth even forever. And that hasn’t happened yet. This prophecy is not fulfilled, as you can see. Verse 8. And thou, O tower of the flock and stronghold to the daughter of Zion, unto thee shall it come, even the first dominion, the kingdom, shall come to the daughter of Jerusalem. And that kingdom has not come. And if they are back there today for anything, they’re not back there for the kingdom. They are back there for the great tribulation period. Now, here a cloud passes over the sunlight of this chapter. And we have here what a great many believe is the Babylonian captivity. There are others that believe that it’s the captivity by Titus. And there are others that believe that it has to do with that which is future that has not yet been fulfilled. Well, I think that this prophecy is rather specific, so let’s look at it. He says, “…now why dost thou cry out aloud?” Is there no king in thee? Is thy counselor perish? For pangs have taken thee like a woman in travail. Now, this definitely to me is a picture of the Babylonian captivity, for he makes it clear in the next verse, and I should read it. “‘Be in pain and labor to bring forth, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in travail. For now shalt thou go forth out of the city, and thou shalt dwell in the field, and thou shalt go even to Babylon. There shalt thou be delivered. There the Lord shall redeem thee from the hand of thine enemies.'” Now, my feeling is that it’s too specific here to refer to anything other than the Babylonian captivity that was coming to the southern kingdom. He calls it, O daughter of Zion, which would label it as the southern kingdom. But the thing that interests me is the term that is used. And that is, it’s travail. And frankly, I can’t speak firsthand. One half of the human family does not know what it is to be in travail. That is, they have birth pangs. Only the female of the species knows about that. And all I know is what I saw my own wife go through and what I’ve been told by others. that birth pangs are frightful. And it’s something that actually no person could bear it forever. It has to be a temporary sort of thing if it lasted forever. Now, that’s the reason the Great Tribulation period is a brief period. And this is one of the figures of speech. that is used concerning that which is coming in the future. And the Babylonian captivity was a little adumbration of it. It was just a little picture of that which is coming upon the earth. And the Babylonian captivity is a warning. God has given many illustrations all through his word concerning future events. They are historical events that have in them a message, and God recorded them that we might get the message that he’s giving. And the picture here is that when Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem, and he actually came three times to the city, and finally he leveled it, burned it, destroyed the temple area, and absolutely left it in wreck and ruin. So that all of that is described as a woman in travail, a woman in birth pangs. And this has to be a brief period or the nation would not exist. It could not go on forever because they couldn’t endure it. It would be too frightful. It would be too terrible. And that is the reason that the great tribulation period must be a brief period. The Lord Jesus made that clear. He said, except those days were shortened, no flesh. would survive. They wouldn’t be able to make it through. But he says, since the days are shortened, well, there will again be those that are going to make it through. And again, you have a remnant, 144,000 that were sealed at the beginning of the Great Tribulation. We see them at the end. end of the great tribulation on Mount Zion. They made it through. They came through and not only did he have 100 sheep and one got lost and he had 99, but actually he started out 144,000 and he came through with 144,000, not 143,999. That’s a very comforting fact, by the way. We move now to another section that we have here. Because of this, he moves ahead and begins now to speak of that which is coming yonder in the far distant future. And this, of course, is the time of the Great Tribulation. Specifically, it will refer to the last war, not the Battle of Armageddon, but the War of Armageddon. Verse 11, “…now also many nations are gathered against thee, and say, Let her be defiled, and let her eye look upon Zion.” Now, immediately he’s moved away from the Babylonian, because here it’s many nations that are coming against the nation Israel. And the other was just Babylon. At least Babylon alone was mentioned. So we have something different here. Now, in verse 12, he says, “…but they know not the thoughts of the Lord, neither understand they his counsel, for he shall gather them as the sheaves into the floor.” Now, they’re coming against God’s people, and this is a world siege of Jerusalem. It brings Jerusalem into the focal point of the world here. And this is mentioned again in other scriptures, in Joel, the third chapter. And we haven’t come to Zechariah yet. We’ll see it there. But it was in Ezekiel 38 and 39. So that here will come the nations of the world against this people. Now, that’s in the time of the great tribulation. And it’s during the war of Armageddon. And they do not know what God’s going to do. They’re coming up blindly here for judgment, not realizing that. And now I’m reading verse 13. Arise and thresh, O daughter of Zion. For I will make thine horn iron, and I will make thy hoofs bronze. And thou shalt beat in pieces many peoples, and I will consecrate their gain unto the Lord, and their substance unto the Lord of the whole earth. Now, it’ll make the six-day war look like peanuts. And after all, they didn’t do so well in the last one. But in that day, God will enable them to defend themselves in that day. They are a weak nation today. They’re absolutely dependent upon other nations. But in that day, they’re going to be dependent upon the Lord. And you remember the prophet says, our help comes not from the north, it doesn’t come from Russia, nor from the south, doesn’t come from Egypt, nor from the west, doesn’t come from Europe or the United States, nor from the east, from China or the Arab countries. But our help comes from the Lord. the maker of heaven and earth. And this looks forward to that day and to the time of the war that concludes the great tribulation period, the war of Armageddon. Now we finish chapter 4 and next time we begin with chapter 5. So until then, may God richly bless you, my beloved.
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Jesus came in home.
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All to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow.
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Our journey on the Bible bus today is supported by the prayers and gifts of fellow passengers as we travel through the Bible.
