Annual Introduction - AM 5980 (18 September 2020 - 6 September 2021)

Shalom Aleichem and welcome to the Issachar B7D Fellowship!

Jews celebrate the Feast of Trumpets (Yom Teruah - "Day of Trumpets") at sunset today (Friday, 18 September 2020) with the blowing of the Shofar (Ram's horn) to mark the beginning of a Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah - "head of the year"). We pray for that day when Israel will realise that this Feast is prophetic of Christ the Messiah’s glorious return at the Last Trumpet.

This is my second Annual Introduction since I started this annual countdown a year ago. According to the rough estimate used in my study, we are entering the year AM 5980 [NOTE: the year is AM 5781 according to the official Jewish calendar, or AM 5946 if we take into account the possibility of 165 missing years in this calendar]. But whatever the actual date, we are a year closer to the end of the Sixth Millennium before Christ returns to usher in His Millennial Sabbath Rule as symbolized by the Seventh Day of the original Creation account.

This past year was not just eventful; it was - I would dare use the word - prophetic. We are still recovering from COVID-19 which has ravaged the entire world. We experienced for ourselves the fear and anxiety, and are still feeling its impact on our day-to-day lives, from our workplaces to our churches and homes. It is unimaginable that such a minuscule virus could bring the entire world to its knees and yet, once this pandemic is over and life slowly returns back to a new normal, mankind will soon forget this ominous sign of the end that awaits them rather than kneel in repentance before the One True God.

For Christians, I pray that our Lord in His love, patience and mercy, will use this pandemic as a fire drill to bring about an awakening in us so that we start preparing ourselves for His return. Let us not take this warning call lightly as Christ's coming is nearer than we think. I had mentioned before my personal belief and deep conviction that God's final countdown started from the time of Israel’s 70th year of Independence in 2018, meaning that some of us will live to witness His return.

What the world has experienced this year is but a shadow and a foreshadowing of the immense trials and tribulations that will herald Christ’s coming. In Revelations 6:8, we are told how in the end times a fourth of the world will die by the sword, famine, plague and wild beasts of the earth. This translates to 2 billion of the world’s population today. In contrast, COVID-19 has taken a few hundred thousand lives. It will be THOUSANDS OF TIMES worse as we near the end! If we are already shaken by this pandemic, how much more will we be rocked by future events. It is therefore important that we start preparing ourselves now so that we will look forward in faith and not fear, in anticipation and not anxiety, to the Day of our Lord’s return.

Lord, as we step into a new year, shut our eyes to the deceptive return of calm and normalcy we see around us, and open our ears to Your warning call. Help us use this season to put our lives back in order, digging deep into Your Word to hear Your Rhema for us in this Kairos, what You want to tell us through this pandemic.

Harden our hearts against the lure of this world and soften it towards You so that we repent and turn to follow You in these last days whatever the sacrifice and cost. Give us Your wisdom to see the futility in striving for the things of this world. Change the taste buds of our hearts to desire Your heavenly will and kingdom alone.

Weaken the hold of sin and willfulness within us and strengthen our resolve to reach out to encourage and support our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, so that together we keep the Faith, persevere in Hope and Love the Body of Christ as a witness and light to this dark and dying world. Increase our boldness, keep us steady in Your Shalom, build us on the Rock of Christ to withstand the coming storms, and fill our lamps with the oil of Your Spirit so that we are ready and waiting when You finally return.

“Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’ “But he will answer, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from’ - Luke 13:24-25

God bless you,

Stephen & Wei Ling Lim

(#2 Session 7 - FINAL SESSION) Back to the Kairos Now

Shalom Aleichem and welcome to my bi-monthly blog!

As we conclude with this final session, I want to leave you with these 3 key takeaways:

ONE, we are fast approaching the end - we are in the twilight of the Sixth Day of Creation before the Seventh Day arrives at sunset, the end of the summer harvest before the Fall Feasts begin, the 70th Jubilee from the time Israel possessed the Promised Land and 40th Jubilee from the time of Jesus’ first coming and birth of the Church, and the final generation that will witness His return.

TWO, we will be tested in unprecedented ways - Israel and the Church share a common prophetic destiny according to God’s eternal will. Israel’s rejection of Jesus at His first coming was part of the mystery of God’s will opening the way for the salvation of the Gentile nations through the Body of Christ. However, once the fullness of the Gentiles have come in, the keys of the Kingdom will be handed back to the Jews as the Church falls into deception and apostasy and this apostate Church ultimately rejects Christ in favour of the Antichrist. We who are the true Gentile children of God will join in the sufferings of our Jewish brethren as God refines both them and us as one Body in Him in preparation for His coming.

THREE, we need to equip ourselves and others in the Body of Christ - in view of the coming flood and fire of apostasy and persecution, we need to uphold one another within our own fellowship groups and beyond to (1) keep the Faith, (2) persevere in Hope, and (3) Love the Body. We can only stand (and withstand) individually when we stand together with fellow saints of God, being one in Spirit as we look past our local church, denomination and the Church as a whole to embrace our Jewish brothers and sisters in ushering in God’s Kingdom.

If you recall, we spoke of how, when David was rallying for support from the people to bring Israel under his rule following the death of King Saul, the men of the tribe of Issachar acted decisively to join him because they understood the times - meaning, God’s will for the nation then - and knew what Israel should do. They looked past the interests of their own tribe to join together with the other tribes of Israel to usher in God’s Kingdom rule through David.

In this Kairos Now, we believe that God is again speaking and releasing a similar message to His people. We, like the men of Issachar, need to hear, understand and act decisively in light of God’s Rhema and will to repair, rebuild and rescue His people and to release His prophetic word for this Kairos moment. We need to look past the interests of our own narrow “tribes” as it were to stand together with other like-minded saints and especially our Jewish brothers and sisters in Christ to rally behind and usher in the Kingdom of the Son of David, Jesus Christ. We do this “not by might nor by power” (Zech 4:6) as the world does, but by His Word (Rhema), Spirit and People that enables us to be overcomers in Faith, Hope and Love.

With this, we come to the end of our current study cycle and the end of another Jewish year. I hope you will join me here again in the new Jewish year as we begin a fresh cycle of faithfully hearing, understanding and acting on God’s Rhema until He returns to bring us back to eternity. Until then, may God’s Rhema and Spirit transform you into such future and Christ-ready fellowships in His Kairos. Amen!

Link to presentation.

(#1 Session 7) At Any Moment? Yes ... and No

Shalom Aleichem and welcome to my bi-monthly blog!

In our opening session, we had briefly mentioned an “Eighth Day” Sabbath that Jews celebrated after the end of the final seven-day Feast of Tabernacles prophetic of Christ’s Millennial Rule. According to Jewish tradition, after the Feast of Tabernacles, God invites His people to stay on for another day/Sabbath for a more intimate celebration.

The “Eighth Day” Sabbath marks the end of Creation and Time as we pass from this life into eternity. Here, the special Sabbath and Closing Assembly that is held is a picture of our eternal rest and communion with God as the heavens, earth and time itself give way to the New Heaven and Earth and a New Jerusalem in eternity, spoken of in the final two chapters of Revelations. If we recall from our opening session, the spiritual realm is timeless and eternal. God gave us time when He created the physical realm of the heavens and the earth. Now, as we return to eternity, what we know on earth as the beginning and end are one again in God, who is the “Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” (Rev 22:13). In Him, everything is now made complete, perfect and at rest (Shalom). God invites us to stay on for another “day/Sabbath” - which is none other than eternity itself - to have intimate communion and fellowship with Him forever.

The Simchat Torah (or rejoicing of the Torah, the first 5 books of the Bible) is also celebrated by Jews on that day to mark the end of the Torah public reading cycle. It is a picture of how the speaking out of God’s Word at set times - in other words, God’s cycle of Rhema and Kairos - will eventually end. From that point on, we will forever be in God’s presence and every moment (if we can even speak of moments in eternity) is Rhema and Kairos.

Realising how close we are to the edge of time and how we could fall into the eternity of God’s presence at any moment is what we want to look at next as we reflect on the often misunderstood idea that Christ could return at any moment and hence we cannot know when He is coming.

Some of you - especially if you believe in a sudden rapture and return of Christ - may object that since we already know when Christ will return based on the Seven Days of Creation, His coming is no longer imminent - no longer something that can happen at any moment. Let me try to answer you in terms of how the physical and the spiritual, time and eternity, Rhema and Kairos - how they intersect in our lives:

First, Christ’s coming can be said to be imminent because we will meet the Lord the instant we die and we do not know when that will happen - even on our deathbed, God can miraculously heal us, or for that matter, He can even choose to resurrect us after we are dead! But the moment we truly die, we are taken out of Chronos time and instantly transported into God’s presence - for those who are part of the First Resurrection, they will “time-jump” to that Kairos moment where they will meet the Lord in the air prior to the Millennium; for the rest of us, we will be taken out of Creation and Time completely to stand before the Throne of God at the Final Judgment.

Second, we already learnt how - on this Sixth Day of Creation that we are living in now - the spirit of this age is not the Holy Spirit of Truth but the lying spirit of the Antichrist. There is so much deception around us and in the Church that many will not be able to recognise - or even if they do, they will not believe - the signs of Christ’s coming. It was the same as with the Jews in Jesus’ day, who could not recognise the Messiah even when He was standing right before their eyes. Yes, Christ will indeed come suddenly, unexpectedly, to those who are spiritually blind.

Thus far, we spoke about God’s Rhema and Kairos for His people so that they understand the times and know what they should do. What God wants to say to us can be discerned from the Bible when seen through the perspective of the Seven Days of Creation. But there is also an Eighth Day Kairos - that split second instant that separates us from God’s very presence in eternity - which is called “Today.” And His Rhema for us in this Kairos Now is, “Today, if you hear his voice (Rhema), do not harden your hearts.”

The choice is ours to make … Today. For tomorrow may be too late.

Jesus said, “Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done.”

Are we ready? Have we done what we need to do to be confidently expectant of Jesus’ return? We may be called to meet Him anytime; but perhaps even more worrying, we may not be called to meet Him yet - and in the meantime, we need to trim our lamps and make sure our oil is filled so that when Jesus finally shows up, we are not left in the dark and blind to His presence.

Link to presentation.