DOWN MEMORY LANES OF FUTURE PROPHECY FLIGHT
FROM JERUSALEM THROUGHT THE MOUNT OF OLIVES
TO AZAL, THEN SOUTH TO THE MOUNTAINS OF NEGEV
AND THEN LIVE THERE FOR ALMOST 3 & 1/2 YEARS!
March 4, 2015
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
Number 1
Zechariah 14:1-5 – Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. [2] 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. [3] Then shall the Lord go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle. [4] And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south. [5] And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains; for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azal: yea, ye shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah: and the Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with thee.
After I wrote my fist three book in the seventies, the city Azal was finally located by two geologists by two Israeli geologists.
Between 1873 and 1874, Clermont-Ganneau explored many tombs in a valley immediately south of Jerusalem, which the peasants of Silwan called Wady Yasul. Based on geographic and linguistic evidence, Clermont-Ganneau proposed that Wady Yasul is Azal. Currently, this valley is bordered on the west by the Jerusalem Peace Forest and the neighborhood of Talpiot, on the north by the Abu Tor neighborhood on the southern slope of the Hill of Evil Council, and on the south by the neighborhood of Jabel Mukaber on the ridge where the former UN headquarters sits. The mouth of the valley lies at the base of the southernmost summit of the Mount of Olives (Mount of Corruption). Its Hebrew name is Nahal Atzal.
This is evidence Clermont-Ganneau’s theory of Zechariah 14:5 is correct.
In 1984, Israeli geologists Daniel Wachs and Dov Levitte identified the location of a large landslide on the Mount of Olives that is directly adjacent to both Wady Yasul (Nahal Atzal) and the area of the ancient King’s Gardens at the juncture of the Hinnom and Kidron Valleys. Wachs’ and Levitte’s discovery validates Jewish historian Flavius Josephus‘ account of an earthquake-caused landslide during King Uzziah‘s reign blocking up the kings’ gardens in the valley. It also accords with the rendering of Zechariah 14:5, which states a valley will be blocked up as far as Azal.
Additionally, the Israelis named this valley (Atzal, or Etsel), which is the same Hebrew spelling of Azal
Begin Memory Lane Archive Prophecy Update of 12 Years Ago
July 26, 2003
Zechariah Exposition 13:8 to 14:16
Part 1
There are many principles in prophetic writings of which one must be aware when attempting to interpret them. Perhaps the first, and most basic of these principles, is the awareness that all the chapter and verse divisions in the KJV were made by the King James translators. I am glad they made the divisions, but the awareness that Zechariah wrote it as a continuous narrative, without chapter and verse divisions, is a great help in analyzing a passage for the purpose of correlation with preceding and subsequent verses.
After graduation from seminary I changed my viewpoints, concerning the interpretation of a couple of verses in Zechariah 14, because of the continuous narrative principle. In point, I changed my mind on the time frame of Zechariah 14:4,5, which I had long believed referred to the 2nd Advent, that is, the coming of the Lord at the end of what is called the tribulation period. I believed it referred to the 2nd Advent because of the last phrase in verse five: “and the Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with thee.” I came to believe that this phrase belongs time wise to verse six. If so, verse six would read: “And the Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with thee. And it shall come to pass in that day that the light shall not be clear nor dark.” (See Birth Pang 20 for verses four and five, and Birth Pangs 9 through 11 for verses six and seven)
Zechariah 14:4-7 – And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south. [5] And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains; for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azal: yea, ye shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah: [6] And the Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with thee. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not be clear, nor dark: [7] But it shall be one day which shall be known to the Lord, not day, nor night: but it shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall be light. (Verses 6 and 7 occur 1260 days after verses 4 and 5, and correlate with Matthew 24:29,30)
Matthew 24:29,30 – Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: [30] And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.
A seminary teacher, whom I love and greatly admire, took me aside after he heard my first lecture 24 years ago, and pointed out to me the splitting of the Mount of Olives occurs some 1260 days before Armageddon. After considering what he said, I changed my mind, coming to the conclusion he was correct.
With all this in mind, please consider the following exposition of the book of Zechariah from 13:8 to 14:16.
Zechariah 13:8 – And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the Lord, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein.
“All the land” refers to Israel. Two-thirds of its population will perish. The remaining one-third will survive the vicious attack, and will remain in the southern Negev wilderness of Israel for some 1260 days. If the attack happens to occur at some point in time between 2005 and 2008, this would mean between 1.7 and 1.9 million Jews would make it into the Negev alive.
SCAN DOWN TO READ PREVIOUS BLOGS