God has given His faithful Church today a royal gift, given to no other Church era: the new throne of David. This means God is also giving us a greater royal responsibility. He is raising the royal standard and our duty.
Genesis 49 contains a prophecy about what would befall the nations of Israel in the last days (verse 1). Verse 10 reads, “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet [this man would be a Jewish descendant], until Shiloh [or Christ] come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.”
As my book The New Throne of David explains (request a free copy), this is a combination of the scepter—representing the rule, the royal government—and the law, the royal law of God! The two have been united in a single office. This is necessary to have real success with this throne: You need the royal government to implement God’s royal law.
The expression “until Shiloh come” shows that this is for the last era of God’s Church. “Until Shiloh come” would better be translated “until He comes to whom it belongs.” This throne belongs to Jesus Christ. It’s His throne, but He’s going to share it with His firstfruits. They, too, will have a dual crown. When we understand that this verse is describing a dual crown—which God will shortly give to every one of His people—I believe Genesis 49:10 is one of the most inspiring verses in the Bible!
This verse is all about salvation through Christ. The Standard Dictionary defines scepter as “kingly office, royal power, badge of command or sovereignty.” It concludes by giving “grace to all”—or the offer of salvation to every human being who has ever lived! That is the end result—that’s what we’re all striving to achieve: salvation! Nothing else compares to that!
This new throne changes God’s Work significantly! Here I’ll give you four ways.
ONE | The new throne elevates our royal standard.
Having this throne, we must come to think about ourselves in a royal way.
We have to think about and study this throne deeply to appreciate what God has given us. We possess the very throne from which Jesus Christ will rule, and the very law He will administer, in the World Tomorrow! God wants His Church today to demonstrate to the world as best we can what that rule will be like! That is quite a responsibility. But we are doing all we can to fulfill it.
We must keep that new throne focus. We strive to make this Church as royal as we can. We have a royal Church, a royal Imperial Academy, a royal college. We have the only royal hope there is in this world: the new throne of David!
That throne’s namesake, King David, loved music and dance. He was highly skilled at these arts, and used them to glorify God. When he brought the ark into Jerusalem, “David danced before the Lord with all his might” (2 Samuel 6:14). When King Saul called for some uplifting art forms, one of his courtiers described the young David as “a skillful musician, a fine dancer, a gentleman, a good reciter and a handsome man, and the Everliving is with him” (1 Samuel 16:18; Ferrar Fenton). Even in music and dance, David honored God. That is royal dancing and music!
Our young people are being taught these skills. God’s Church today has royal musicians and royal dancers. They are learning that you can praise and honor God with music and dancing. I believe much of David’s dancing was along the lines of Irish dancing today. This summer, our Irish dancers will perform a new show called Celtic Throne. They are of high caliber and could fit in dancing before any royalty today. That dancing traces all the way back to King David!
Always strive to fulfill the vision of the new throne. If you have this vision, it makes a difference in your music, dance, or anything you do. God wants us to lift everything to a royal standard and dance like David would dance with all his heart—and like we will in the World Tomorrow! In all we do, we must try to take it up to the royal level! We have a huge responsibility to uphold God’s standard!
God is preparing us to be kings and priests! He is raising that standard and fashioning us into a supremely royal and majestic people who sit on the throne of David with Jesus Christ! We are contributing to the royal family rule of God!
TWO | The four chariots multiply the urgency of our work.
Zechariah 6:11 talks about the dual crown. Now, remember how God introduces this chapter. The context of Zechariah 6 is mind-shattering. What happened just before God gave the dual crown? Four chariots emerged from between two mountains, symbolizing God the Father and Jesus Christ (verse 1; this is explained in Chapter 7 of The New Throne of David).
God sends these chariots. He is preparing, giving specific commands about what these chariots are to do. It is a global effort. God has given these angels of Zechariah 6 instructions, and is dispatching spirits all over the globe, setting up and arranging for these catastrophic events that are already beginning to unfold before our eyes.
The red horses represent a bloody nuclear war—a global disaster far worse than the destruction of World War ii. The carnage will make Earth one big cemetery! This prophecy is already in development. Serious conflict could erupt with Iran at any time. Russia is developing nuclear weapons with terrifying destructive potential. These are problems mankind will not escape! Everybody ought to see that.
The black horses symbolize violence, famine and pestilence. We are into the preliminary stages of this already: Great cities in America and elsewhere are being overtaken by homelessness, drugs, filth and squalor—even diseases like tuberculosis and typhoid fever, some of which policemen are contracting! History shows plagues wiping out vast populations, and prophecy shows it will happen again! This trend in cities is the vanguard of what will befall America, Britain and Judah (the nation called Israel in the Middle East) if they don’t repent before God. These black horses are going to overtake the Earth!
Zechariah says the black horses “go forth into the north country” (verse 6)—referring to the number one tool of Satan: the Holy Roman Empire. Satan’s man will lead this empire to plunge the world into an indescribable crisis of crises.
I have said that the white horse is the Work God is doing for His people, but it may be talking about all religions, even those that are deceived.
This passage also describes bay horses, and says they go “to and fro through the earth” (verse 7). They are traveling around, preparing for the crises to come—and those potential crises are proliferating!
God is sending a number of globe-rattling events our way. This is reality, though some of it is not yet visible. What these angelic beings of Zechariah 6 are doing is astounding: They are out there right now getting ready for the Great Tribulation and the Day of the Lord and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ!
First you have all that happening with the four spirits, and then you have the dual crown. Everything is falling into place, step by step by step. The dual crown begins a countdown to the Great Tribulation and the Day of the Lord, then the Second Coming!
This is shocking understanding that we must not push aside. This should change the way we think about the phase we are in now, transitioning into the Second Coming! If we truly understand what God is already doing with these spirits, that should make us more urgent than ever to do God’s Work. These are the most earthshaking events you’ll ever see—and here is this little Church right in the middle of all of it. Think about how God will have to orchestrate His Work and what He wants to do in the midst of this explosion of satanic chaos!
God is not only preparing in the universe and all over the Earth for all these unfolding events, but He is also preparing Christ’s Bride! He is preparing this king and a priestly group of people that He wants to be His helpmeet! He is getting us ready for what we have to do when Christ arrives. That ought to motivate us mightily. We have to prepare just like those four spirits are out there preparing for what is coming.
We have the dual crown (verse 11)—God makes that clear. But first, He discusses this. And it shows the need for the dual crown. There is a need for kings and priests who know how to apply the royal law of God. We have to put an end to the rule of man over man! We have to be ready! We have to be royal and be loyal to God and His Son and what He is doing on Earth. We must be loyal and royal! This ought to fill us with the greatest urgency.
THREE | The dual crown increases our vision.
What a wonderful honor for God’s Church to be given a dual crown from God now—the crown of a king and a priest! (Zechariah 6:11-12). No other era of God’s Church ever received what we have received.
But think about this: The dual crown magnifies our reward after emphasizing Christ.
This all revolves around the Father and the Son. This prophecy is about Jesus Christ, and the king-priestly crown conferred on “The Branch.” Here you have an end-time Joshua receiving this dual crown, then right on the heels of that, Jesus Christ returns! This is a stunning turn of events!
Also, Joshua receiving this crown signals the fact that all of God’s firstfruit saints will receive the same dual crown, the crown of a king-priest! What an exalted office! Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords! That is coming, and we are getting ready right now (Revelation 19:7). Christ’s Bride gets ready because she sees the reward: We will be kings and priests sitting with Jesus Christ and helping Him implement the royal law from the very throne of God! She sees the madness of this world, and yearns to stop it! We must hurry, because time is running out!
This really magnifies you. God wants you to understand what your reward is going to be! He wants it to be real! He wants you to live like this is going to happen! The people serving Him today will have dual crowns and will sit on that throne with Christ for eternity!
The Moffatt translates Zechariah 6:12: “He [Jesus Christ] shall flourish where he is rooted.” Flourish is more accurate than “grow up”; it means to be at the peak of development—the very peak of being empowered.
He will flourish “where He is rooted.” We need to understand where Christ is rooted. Moffatt translates “The Branch” as Scion, which means a descendant of David. Clarke’s Commentary says “out of his place” means “out of David’s root.” Jesus Christ was a descendant of David. But this also points to Luke 1:30-33, which says David’s throne is a gift to Jesus Christ from the Father. Christ is rooted in this, and He wants us to be rooted in it as well! This reward has to be very inspiring to us. God really makes it vivid!
“… And this shall come to pass, if ye will diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God” (Zechariah 6:15). It shall come to pass—God is already bringing it to pass at just the right time. But God says it will come to pass in your life if—He puts that big if there—you diligently obey His voice! We could certainly turn away if we so choose, but who wants to turn away from this? Nothing compares to these spectacular prophecies!
FOUR | We expose Satan’s Antiochus and the ‘deep state.’
I believe Jan. 16, 2017, was the single-most important anniversary of Herbert W. Armstrong’s death ever. It was when the God of Elijah revealed the new stone and the new throne. Four days later, Antiochus ended his reign in America, and Jeroboam began his. The alignment of these two events is no coincidence.
The connection between this new throne and new stone with Jeroboam and the political Antiochus and his “deep state” reveals our responsibility. A lot of our focus in warning must revolve around those two men. Surely we have to be talking about this, because God placed this transition right in between them! He wants us to really understand this!
Antiochus had one goal: to blot out the name of Israel, or the plan God has for Israel. So God sent Jeroboam to save Israel. “For the Ever-Living pitied the immeasurable miseries of Israel, both without and within, when there was no ease for Israel. The Ever-Living had not … decided to blot the name of Israel from beneath the heavens. Therefore, He rescued it by the hand of Jeroboam” (2 Kings 14:26-27; Ferrar Fenton).
We have to expose that Antiochus and what he did within the country and in foreign policy. He went around apologizing for America’s “mistakes” and “terrible past”; he depleted and weakened the military to a dangerous level; he cozied up to Iran and hated Israel (biblical Judah), America’s top ally in the Middle East; he destroyed America’s alliance with Egypt by aiding the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, a friend of Israel and America, and promoting the Muslim Brotherhood terrorists; he let China take over the South China Sea. He opened wide the Southern border so gangs, criminals and sickness could pour in to this country. He was destroying Israel! Yet half the people, at least, never saw it!
The Democrats want people who are dependent on big government. They think they know how to rule man. How ignorant are human beings! We need to get the crazy thought out of our minds that we can rule men! Do you think they can rule the world? Oh, God help us from being ruled by those people! Only God knows how to rule! We can’t do anything, spiritually, apart from God; even Christ couldn’t on this Earth!
Since Jeroboam has come to power, the deep state has been significantly exposed. Many people who essentially have a “blot out the name of Israel” attitude are now clearly evident within the intelligence and other government agencies and in the mainstream media. Many media personalities, especially on cable networks, lie all day long—and in many cases they have to know they’re lying!
However, even those who are exposing these lies do not see the spiritual dimension to what is happening. Antiochus’s success is an outgrowth of Satan and his demons being cast down to Earth (Revelation 12:12). Satan is the one who really wants to blot out the name of Israel!
In Matthew 3, the Pharisees and the Sadducees approached John the Baptist seeking some kind of an alliance. How did John deal with these people? John told them, “O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” (verse 7). What are you poisonous snakes doing here? Do you think you’re going to escape the wrath of God? You’re snakes! That wasn’t very nice!
But do you want to negotiate with a snake? Eve did that. Those Sadducees and Pharisees were the very people who were trying to kill Christ and ended up crucifying Him! John let those people know that they didn’t belong there. He plainly told them they were in rebellion against God and everything righteous.
It is possible that in the future, some of Jeroboam’s followers may approach us seeking some kind of alliance as well. But we must be able to discern who is a viper and a snake! We must recognize the devil at work. And we have a responsibility to expose his activities.
Soon, Israel will know God and learn to love His law. “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest” (Hebrews 8:10-11). Everyone will come to know God because He will put His law of love in their minds and write it in their hearts, and give them godly emotions! He’ll teach them how to govern themselves and to love other people and to love Him! This will change everything!
This has to happen to us today—right now!
And incidentally, if you get to know God this way, you will also be able to discern the devil. You will begin to discern someone who wants to blot out the name of Israel. You will recognize that attitude and understand Satan the devil.
God has given His Church today a heavy responsibility—and a glorious honor. He is going to use His people for a special purpose. We need to raise our royal standard, increase our urgency, honor the dual crown, and embolden our message against those who try to blot out the name of Israel. We must be laboring today to prepare to be the Bride of Christ and serve the nations of Israel—and all mankind—forever!