CHAPTER TWO
The Suffering Generation

“Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.”
(Mat.24:32-35)
 
There are some groundworks to be laid before we can dig into the Great Tribulation in any meaningful way. The very first thing is to understand what Christ meant in the quote above about “this generation” that will suffer the woes of the Great Tribulation.
 
A study of the history of the Jews for the past two thousand years opens a door into these prophetic words of Jesus. Excluding the deniers, the whole world knows that this terrible Holocaust (H5930) (= burnt offering) the Jews as a nation suffered, was something that happened concurrently with World War Two. However, the woes of the Jews started much earlier, namely at the crucifixion of Jesus as the fulfilment of a curse they uttered over themselves right there in front of Pontius Pilate: “His blood be on us, and on our children.” (Mat.27:25)
 
That means that the people of Jesus’ time, “even those who pierced Him” (Rev.1:7) were in fact involved in Jesus’ “this generation.” Those people all died over time individually, but not so the “Generation!” It works like the Israelite generation of the Exodus about whom God swore: “Surely there shall not one of these men of this evil generation see that good land, which I swore to give unto your fathers…”
(Deu.1:35)
 
Those accursed Israelites that started the Exodus from Egypt after the killing of the Passover lamb on the Day of the Curse lived and died all along the way that stretched over almost the entire forty years of the Migration, but they were regarded as ONE generation.
 
By the same measure, the Jews who lived and died over the past nearly two thousand years must be regarded as ONE Generation, because the Exodus under the leadership of Moses was a prophetical enactment of another “cursed” Exodus (a curse they pronounced over themselves) that awaited them 1279 years after they left Egypt.
 
When Jesus, as God’s Passover Lamb died on the Day of the Curse of the year 30AZ, the Jews began with a different type of Exodus. This wandering in a spiritual wilderness would this time not be for 40 years, but for forty jubilees of 50 years. It means those two thousand years will end in 2030AZ, with the final seven years (from 2023AZ) reserved for the conquering of Canaan on the other side of the spiritual Jordan of the Great Tribulation.
 
That indicates that the Jewish spiritual Exodus to the Jordan will end on the Day of Shavuot 2023AZ (May 28, C23813), from where they will proceed with the rest of the world to the Great Tribulation, which is in fact the spiritual Jordan which will be the end of the road for the Suffering Generation, but the Glorious Generation will cross over to the other side to conquer the Promised Land.
 
When we look back at the history of the Jews over the past two thousand years, the suffering they experienced at the hands of their fellow human brothers and sisters JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE JEWS, were too ghastly to contemplate!
 
Their Holocaust they suffered during the Second World War was surely a crescendo when, at last, the curse was lifted from them, but it was not the end of their woes, and one can see it in the antisemitism that is still part of humanity, still very much alive and kicking. One can also see it in the battle they continuously have on their hands to cling to their sliver of Holy Land they own in the Middle East.
 
All their woes will only conclude in the Great Tribulation (See Mal.4:1-3) that is on the cards for the world, which would at the same time be the death of the Suffering Generation and the Baptism/Circumcision by fire of the Glorious Generation, humanity of the Sixth Generation.
 
Nevertheless, the Jews’ side of the story is just the A side of “this generation.” There is also a Flipside. This involves The Christians in particular, and the rest of the world in general. Hos.6:1-2 puts the finger on that pulse: “Come and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up. After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.”
 
For the Jews, the two days are in fact two thousand years, as the Apostle Peter explains in his second letter in Chapter 3:8 – “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” 
 
For the Christians, the two thousand years were pockmarked with events described by Jesus in Mat.24:7 – “For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in diverse places…” However, for them 2 days will be 2 days. For them, the tribulations of the Jews that stretched out over nearly two thousand years and practically ended in the Holocaust, will be crammed into just two days, although the history of Christianity over the past 2000 years show that life for them was also far removed from being a picnic.
 
The Christians also wandered in a spiritual desert the last nearly two thousand years, alongside the Jews. The Spirit which guided them from Pentecost of the year 30AZ was a Spirit of division, a Spirit of Collective Truth and the One that in fact became the “enemy that sowed weeds among the wheat,” because he caught the church Fathers “sleeping,” (Mat.13:25) an act which rendered their Holy Communion powerless and their unity shattered.
 
That means the Christians were also part of “this generation” of Jesus that were destined to suffer tribulation, but their Holocaust will be with that of the rest of the world in the Great Tribulation, apart from the one of the Jews which ended 78 years earlier.
 
LINES DRAWN IN THE SAND
 
The Suffering Generation is marked out by two defined moments in history, two lines drawn in the sands of time, which decided its first day and another to show its very last moment. Then, at both ends of this period the LORD put heralds called Elijah, two humans that would signal to the world exactly where those invisible lines are.
 
ELIJAH NUMBER ONE: JOHN THE BAPTIST
Starter of the Suffering Generation
 
Matthew and Luke start their Gospel narratives around the birth of Jesus, but Mark and John go straight to the Message about the prophet who was the starter of this suffering marathon over two thousand years: John the Baptist.
 
When the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “who art thou?” he did not deny but confessed:
Not to be The Christ
Not to be Elijah
Not to be The Prophet
(Joh.1:19-21)
 
Yes, The Christ he certainly was not and The Prophet of Deu.18:18, the One that would be “like Moses,” he certainly was not. The Jews were expecting either The Christ or the Prophet, but they needed a precursor to confirm that The Christ was on the way: Elijah! This is what they proclaimed and believed, so why did John “not deny but confess” that he was NOT Elijah, if Jesus said he was? (See Mat.17:10-13) Rest assured that John did not lie, but “confessed” just what God TOLD him to say, laying the groundwork for his “voice crying in the wilderness” assignment as it is captured in Isa.40:3-8 – “prepare ye the way for the Lord.”
 
This came down to preparing the way to the cross and that is exactly what happened when the Jews in Jerusalem became convinced that, if John was not Elijah, then Jesus was not The Christ, but an imposter and a perfect fit for the Roman cross.
 
John, the Elijah to the Suffering Christ, the Eternal Word of God in the mortal cloak of flesh and blood: “The voice said, Cry. And he said, what shall I cry? All flesh is grass… the grass wither, the flower fade: because the spirit of the LORD blow upon it: surely the people is grass… but the word of our God shall stand for ever.” (Isa.40:6-8)
 
John The Baptist, the starter Elijah of the Suffering Marathon. The day when he baptised Jesus, in 22AZ he fired the starter pistol that would set the Suffering Messiah off to the Day of the Curse on Golgotha, and at the same time starting the Suffering Marathon that would end in the Holocaust for the Jews in 1945, and in the Great Tribulation for the Christians in 2023.
 
ELIJAH NUMBER TWO: BAREND BEN JOSEPH (ELIAH)
Marking the finish line of the Suffering Marathon
 
On April 5, 2022, 40 days after Vladimir Putin began his “special operation” of Ukraine, the final lap of one tropical year started for the Suffering Generation, which will take the clock to the 14th day of the first lunisolar month, which is the day of the Curse for 2023. In the following chapters we discuss exactly who this Barend Ben Joseph alias Eliah is, but just for the sake of a proper ending to this first chapter, he is the first of the two Witnesses of Revelations 11.
 
He is the Elijah of Mal.4:5 – “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD.”
This “dreadful day of the LORD” is the same thing as the day of the Great Tribulation that marks the end of the Suffering Generation. John the Baptist was precursing the way for Christ to the agony of Great Tribulation on the cross, while Eliah will be the precursor of the final agony for the Suffering Generation in the Great Tribulation of the Baptismal Fire of the Glorious Generation. Incomprehensible?
 
Well, the Suffering Generation is like the Phoenix that dies on its funeral pyre, the same pyre from which ashes the Glorious Generation will rise to fly off into the future.
 
The name Elijah is in fact a job description for both John the Baptist and the Eliah part of the End time Prophet. The assignment of Eliah further distinguishes the final Suffering Generation prophet from the starter prophet: “And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.”
(Mal.4:6)
 
We discuss this assignment of Eliah in later chapters, but just in closing: He is the Second Jonah that will warn Nineveh (Christianity) about the evil of the division and the false teachings in the Christian Church, urging this Body of Christ in the world to reunite and rid itself of the Lie, so that the Ultimate Truth can at last resurrect in the Church and rededicate the spiritual Christian Temple by ceremonially cleansing the Holy Communion Table with sanctified elements of Bread and Wine, the proof of the budding of the Cross.
 
In the next chapter things are starting to come together when the invasion of Ukraine by Putin is the fulfilment of a prophecy enacted by the battle between David and Goliath more than three thousand years ago. If you want to revert to the Index page, click here.