Jesus Messiah Fellowship
Light To The Nations
The Time Of Jacob's Trouble
By Pastor G. Reckart
Copyright 1999 All Rights Reserved
Part of the heresy of Covenant Dispensationalism is segmentalism. They will take a part of a Scripture out from its text and the context and manipulate it to mean something that it does not mean.
This is a major violation of what we constitute Truth. Truth does not need lies to support it. And Covenant Dispensationalist do just that. Their entire doctrine needs segmentalism, lies, perversion of intent of a text, and a complete invention of a theory that was never believed or preached by Jesus or the Apostles. Dispensationalism is not found as a doctrine in the New Testament but must be fabricated using private interpretation of several passages. There is no evidence in the New Testament or in Church history that anyone fabricated these selected text into a dispensational system of belief or who used them collectively to teach a pre-tribulation rapture.
The fact is, that Covenant Dispensationism and its pre-tribulation rapture heresy was NEVER preached by Jesus, his Apostles, the Post-Apostolic Fathers, the Catholic patristic fathers, or any other group, Preacher, Rabbi, or Priest from 27AD to around 1775AD. The heresy first is presented by Rabbi Ben Ezra, a Jewish Jesuit, who allegedly converted (infiltrated) into the Catholic Church to impregnate it with Talmudic Pharisee theology on eschatology. He then took upon him the name of Emmanuel Lacunza. He introduce his heresy around 1775 in his book "The Coming Of Jesus In Glory And Splendor." This was translated into English by Edward Irving around 1830 and ironically Irving died within a year of completion of this dispensational foundation.
The book and the interpretations of Irving were instrumental in helping to form the Covenant Dispensationalism of John Darby, an English Freemason. Darby mixed Lacunza's Talmudic Pharisee Jewish eschatalogy, Irvings private interpretations, masonic teachings of a future restoration of Israel and rebuilding of the temple, and the prophecies of a thirteen year old girl name Margaret McDonald, to form his own eschatology of the endtimes.
One of the segmental corruptions of Lacunza, Irving, and Darby was the errant replacement of the time of Jacob's trouble from the time of the Babylonian Captivity to the time after the alleged rapture of the Church, otherwise called the "Great Tribulation Period." Will the text of Jeremiah chpaters 27-30 allow for this perversion? Will good men and women, regardless if they are Covenant Dispensationalist allow it? Or will they admit that according to the text and the context, the time of Jacob's Trouble is all ready fulfilled and past?
If they will not accept that the time of Jacob's Trouble is past, then these are hopelessly wanting a lie to be the truth. Such individuals are not honest, trustworthy, or true Ministers of the Word of God.
"Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble; but he shall be saved out of it" (Jer. 30:7).
The setting of this whole verse is the impending fulfillment of God's judgment upon Israel and Jerusalem for their great sins and iniquities. The entire ministry of Jeremiah has gone into saving this generation. He is the weeping Prophet who saw the judgments of God coming and the instrument of God's punishment, Babylon! The whole course of Israel history was about to change because they would not repent. They would not turn from their evils. The whole nation would be evicted from the land of their possession given to them by the Covenant of Abraham. Now, they were to be cast out of the vineyard as profane and ungodly. If as Moses prophesied, they would turn and repent, God would hear from heaven and restore them to their inheritance. So, the setting is established. God would evict them, send them to Babylon naked, and there they would discover their sins and iniquities had caused them to be cast out and the beloved city of Jerusalem. This is the time of Jacob's trouble. And the promise is that the Lord would save Israel out of it. Rightly, the term "Jacob" is symbolic of Israel. There is no saving of the person Jacob but his seed. We find this symbolic form used again in Jeremiah 30:9 when after the time of Jacob's trouble in Babylon, David or David's seed, that is the Messiah would come and be King over all Israel.
For those who are honest and do not feel a compelled purpose to twist the Word of God to fit into the shoes of a lie, take a look at Jeremiah chapter 29 and at least verse 28 and see if the setting for the following chapter is not Babylonian captivity as the time of Jacob's trouble.
"For therefore he sent unto us in Babylon, saying, This captivity is long: build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them" (Jer 29:28).
The setting is Babylon and the captivity. Now look at verse 31 and see if this does not refer to the Babylonian captivity.
"Send to all of them of the captivity, saying, Thus saith the LORD concerning Shemiah the Nehelamtie; because that Shemaiah hath prophesied unto you, and I sent him not, and he caused you to trust in a lie" (Jer 29:31).
Again, the setting is clearly Babylon and the captivity.
Then follow this to Jeremiah 30:1-7.
JER 30:1 The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying,
JER 30:2 Thus speaketh the LORD God of Israel, saying, Write thee all the words that I have spoken unto thee in a book.
JER 30:3 For, lo, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel and Judah, saith the LORD: and I will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall possess it.
JER 30:4 And these are the words that the LORD spake concerning Israel and concerning Judah.
JER 30:5 For thus saith the LORD; We have heard a voice of trembling, of fear, and not of peace.
JER 30:6 Ask ye now, and see whether a man doth travail with child? wherefore do I see every man with his hands on his loins, as a woman in travail, and all faces are turned into paleness?
JER 30:7 Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble; but he shall be saved out of it.
JER 30:8 For it shall come to pass in that day, saith the LORD of hosts, that I will break his yoke from off thy neck, and will burst thy bonds, and strangers shall no more serve themselves of him:
JER 30:9 But they shall serve the LORD their God, and David their king, whom I will raise up unto them.
Obviously the time of Jacob's trouble will be the time of the Babylonian captivity. And, taking other text of Jeremiah, we know this time period of punishment is not seven years as the Covenant Dispensationalist try to corrupt it, but SEVENTY YEARS. The same seventy years that Daniel observed was the fulfillment of the time of Jacob's trouble and began to pray for deliverance.
The sequence of the events is that Israel would be evicted out of the land of promise and carried to Babylon and there for seventy years they would be under the yoke of bondage (Jer. 25:11, 27:8). A remnant would return out of captivity to the land and then they would wait for the Messiah to restore the Kingdom. Bursting into the midst of this great calamity, the Messianic hope began anew to spring forth. The coming of the seed of David to rule over Israel. And it is when Daniel saw the seventy years of Jacob's trouble had ended that he set his heart to know how God would restore Israel to the land of promise. He began to pray and make supplication:
DAN 9:2 In the first year of his reign I Daniel understood by books the number of the years, whereof the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem.
DAN 9:3 And I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplication, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes.
It was then in the latter of this chapter that he received the time period to the coming of David's seed as the Messiah. The sequence of events is that Jacob's trouble will come, it will be fulfilled, and then will come the revelation of the coming Messiah.
Anyone who corrupts the intent of the Word of God that the time of Jacob's trouble was not the Babylonian Captivity and tries to make it instead a future seven years of tribulation after the Church is allegedly rapture, is simply a false prophet!