We're updating and republishing my booklet Israel, God's Timepiece. Our plan is to roll out the new edition at our prophecy conference in Branson, MO, next year (www.godisraelandyou.com). 

I originally wrote IGT in the late 1980s. Dr. Halff (the founder of our ministry who went to Heaven in November of 2000) suggested the title. A lot has changed in the world since then (the Soviet Union was still in business back in those days, if you can believe it!), so we felt it was time to revisit this important topic.

Once we started working on the rewrite, we realized that we all know a lot more about prophecy today than we did 25 years ago. And I mean a LOT. In fact, there's so much new material, we ended up tossing out the entire text of the old one and starting from scratch. The new version covers the topic much more thoroughly and makes the point with greater effectiveness.

The main point of the booklet, as you may have deduced from the title, is that the modern State of Israel can serve as a sort of prophetic "clock." By watching the Middle East, if we know what we're doing, we can gain a general idea of where we are on God's prophetic timetable.

But simply having a clock isn't enough. We have to know how to read the clock. I'm sure we all remember learning how to tell time when we were kids. We were told about the big hand and the little hand, and how their relative positions on the face of the clock pinpointed the time. If the big hand was on the 12 and the little hand was on the two, for example, we knew it was two o'clock.

Likewise, it's not enough simply to know that Israel can function as a timepiece. We have to learn how the clock functions and how to read it correctly. That's what this new booklet is about.

The booklet has two main sections. Part One of the new IGT is about prophecy in general—what it is and what it isn't. We distinguish between the extremes of (1) sensationalist date setting and (2) ignoring prophetic signs completely. Are there signs for the Rapture or is it a completely signless event? We respond to these questions in the new IGT.

We even touch on the relatively new phenomenon of Darwinian eschatology (an offshoot of the new scientific discipline of astrobiology). Yes, Darwinism is a religion in almost every sense of the word—and its high priests have developed their own system of eschatology! They agree with us that the world had a definite beginning (they call it the Big Bang) and that it will have a definite end someday—but of course, they disagree with us on when and how.

This new edition has several new charts. One compares the historical development and teachings of the three major prophetic systems: premillennialism (and its ancient forerunner, chiliasm), amillennialism, and postmillennialism. Another one is a side-by-side comparison of the two phases of the Second Coming. And a third one shows how the Eschaton (lit., "end things") fits into the overall scheme of "salvation history" (Heilsgeschichte in German)—and how this helps us understand the 2,000-year perceived "delay" in the Lord's return.

We also talk about the pre- versus post-Trib Rapture debate, concentrating on the two stages of the Second Coming (the Rapture and Messiah's coming in glory). There's even a chart that shows the dual profile of the Second Coming in the NT.

Some readers might be taken slightly aback by my rather blunt response to people who say, "When is the Lord coming back? For Pete's sake, we've been waiting for 2,000 years already!" I just said what I felt needed to be said. Next year, when you have a chance to read it for yourself, let me know what you think.

We also spend some time in IGT talking about the vast common ground we have (as biblical literalists and messianic evangelicals) with much of Orthodox Judaism. Both we and our conservative Jewish counterparts see the Bible as literally true and we both anticipate a literal coming of the Messiah. We also share a belief in a literal Kingdom on earth where the Messiah will reign from the throne of His father David in Jerusalem. The watershed issue between our two camps is the question of who the Messiah is. We believe He's been here before in the Person of Yeshua of Nazareth—and that He's coming again. Our Orthodox Jewish friends, on the other hand, say he will be a newcomer.

Part Two delves into the main thesis (about telling the time prophetically) and outlines the five prophetic convergences that come together to indicate our position on the prophetic timeline. In the military, they might call this something like "triangulation"; that is, using multiple points of reference to zero in on a target. Here we emphasize Israel's central role in future prophecy.

There are also two appendices—one showing the historical development of the modern messianic (Jewish-Christian) movement and another one documenting the United Nations' anti-Israel bias vis-à-vis its own recorded resolutions.

Roughly a third of the booklet consists of endnotes—which I think is somewhat unique. Rather than interrupting the flow of the text at various points where additional explanation was needed, we used endnotes to present the extra, explanatory material. Hundreds of hours of tedious work and research went into producing these endnotes. We're suggesting that you read the booklet twice—once without the endnotes and then a second time with them. We decided on endnotes rather than footnotes to minimize the disruption of the text. When there's a footnote at the bottom of a page, the reader is tempted to glance downward to see what it says. With endnotes, though, you have to flip back toward the end of the booklet to find the notations. It removes at least some of the distraction.

Since the booklet won't actually go to the printer until the beginning of next year (2011), there's still time to let us know if there are any particular questions or  issues you'd like us to address in the new IGT. Feel free to address your input to GHedrick@att.net.