WARS AND RUMORS OF WARS
The Great Tribulation, Part 3: The Wars Before, and the Temple
Part 1 laid out the before stage, and Part 2 took up the war of Gog, the war that stands apart from all the rest.
This part stays way before the day of the LORD. The tribulation has not even started yet.
This series follows the order of the Sun and Moon post. That post carries the darkening and everything that comes with it. This series works the stretch before the darkening happens.
And before that day comes, things have to happen first. The wars have to happen. A lot of countries going to war, especially up against Israel.
And somewhere in there, a temple has to be built. Because none of the temple side of this can happen without it.
Ezekiel's war was Part 2, and it stands separate, the way we already stated it. The late wars at the end, the gathering against Jerusalem, get their own parts when the walk gets there.
This part is the front layer. The wars the Bible itself stamps as before, and the temple that still has to be built.
First, the wars. And I will tell you plain, there is not a whole lot in the Bible about these before wars. Jesus gives them three short runs, one in each Gospel, and He puts a cap on them Himself. The named wars, Ezekiel's war, Zechariah's war, belong to their own parts. This layer is short, and we are not going to pad it out into more than it is.
1. Matthew 24:4-8, wars and rumors of wars
4 And Jesus answered them, "See that no one leads you astray. 5 For many will come in my name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and they will lead many astray. 6 And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. 7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.
(Note: the KJV and NKJV read "the beginning of sorrows" in verse 8. The Greek word, odin, means labor pains, birth pains, as the ESV reads. It is a birth word in every version. Pains, like a woman having a baby.)
Jesus said it Himself. Wars and rumors of wars. Nation against nation, kingdom against kingdom. Famines and earthquakes right in the same run.
And Jesus put the cap on it Himself. This must take place, but the end is not yet. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.
These are the beginning of the birth pains, and the end is not yet. That is all Jesus claims for them, and it is all we claim. Jesus gave no date, and neither do we.
Notice, He named no nations here. No Gog, no kings, no named lands. Just wars, everywhere, running before. That is the whole size of this layer, and it is Jesus who sized it.
2. Mark 13:5-8, the same word from Mark
5 And Jesus began to say to them, "See that no one leads you astray. 6 Many will come in my name, saying, 'I am he!' and they will lead many astray. 7 And when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. This must take place, but the end is not yet. 8 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. These are but the beginning of the birth pains.
(Note: the KJV and NKJV add "and troubles" after "famines" in verse 8, and read "the beginnings of sorrows" at the end of it. The word for troubles (tarachai) stands in later Greek copies and is not in the earliest ones the ESV follows, and "sorrows" is the same birth pains word (odin) as in Matthew. The list of signs is the same either way.)
Mark tells it the same way. Do not be alarmed. This must take place, but the end is not yet.
Two Gospels, the same cap. These wars come first, and they are not the end of anything. They are the beginning.
3. Luke 21:8-11, the same word from Luke
8 And he said, "See that you are not led astray. For many will come in my name, saying, 'I am he!' and, 'The time is at hand!' Do not go after them. 9 And when you hear of wars and tumults, do not be terrified, for these things must first take place, but the end will not be at once." 10 Then he said to them, "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. 11 There will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and pestilences. And there will be terrors and great signs from heaven.
Luke puts the word "first" right in it. These things must first take place. First, before the end. And the end will not be at once.
Luke adds pestilences to the list, and terrors and great signs from heaven. Three Gospels, one layer, one stamp on it: before.
That is all the Bible says about the wars of this layer, and this part is not going to stretch it. Now we check it against our own day, the honest way, the way this series checks everything.
The wars today, checked
Nothing in our day is a fulfillment of any named war in the Bible. We checked them one by one, and not one of them lines up whole. Ezekiel's war has not happened. Zechariah's gathering has not happened. None of them.
But Jesus did not ask us to match these wars to a named war. He described a condition, and He graded it Himself: the beginning of the birth pains, the end not yet. So the condition is what we check.
And the condition ran at full strength from 2022 through 2025. War in Europe, the biggest there since 1945. Israel fighting on seven fronts at once. Famines officially declared in Sudan and in Gaza. Earthquakes, including the ones in Turkey and Syria in February 2023 that killed around sixty thousand people.
All four things Jesus named, wars, famines, earthquakes, and the rumors running ahead of all of it, present at the same time, in the same window. That is the honest grade, and it comes with Jesus' own cap on it: beginning, not end.
The fronts around Israel, named plain. Iran has been firing on Israel for over twenty five years through the armies it funds and arms. Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. Militias in Syria and Iraq. The Houthis in Yemen. That part is not new. It has been going on for decades.
The only new part is this. Since April 2024, Iran has fired from its own soil, three times. On April 13 and 14, 2024, around 320 projectiles. On October 1, 2024, 180 to 200 ballistic missiles. In June 2025, around 550 ballistic missiles and around 1,000 drones, and the United States struck Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, and a ceasefire came on June 24.
Both halves ride together. Twenty five years by proxy, and now three times direct. That is the record.
And the record runs the other way too, and this series keeps both sides of it. Egypt has been at peace with Israel since 1979. Jordan since 1994. The Abraham Accords are still unbroken. Syria's new government sat down to talks in 2025 instead of attacking.
The Bible never said this layer climbs in one straight line, and the record does not climb in one either. So nobody here is calling any of this a fulfillment. The pains are before, and the pains are running. That is all Jesus claimed for them, and it is all we claim.
Countries have come up against Israel before, in 1948, in 1967, in 1973, whole armies at once, and Israel still stands. Wars are as old as the record itself. What has never happened is the day all of this is running toward. That day is not here, and this part does not pretend it is.
Now the second half of the front layer. The temple.
4. The chain that cannot run without a building
Here is the plain fact. No temple stands in Jerusalem today. There has not been one since Rome destroyed the second temple in AD 70. No altar, no daily sacrifice, for almost two thousand years.
And a whole chain of passages cannot move until one does. Read them, and watch how physical every piece of it is.
Daniel 9:27, the covenant week, and the stopping at the half
27 And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.
(Note: the KJV reads "he shall confirm the covenant" and the NKJV "he shall confirm a covenant" in this verse. The Hebrew verb (higbir) means to make strong, to confirm. It never means to create or make a new one. The Hebrew reads "a covenant," as the NKJV and ESV have it. The stopping point reads "in the midst of the week" (KJV) and "in the middle of the week" (NKJV). The ESV reads "for half of the week.")
(Note: the sacrifice stopped here is the same offering Daniel names in 11:31 and 12:11. There the ESV reads "the regular burnt offering," and the KJV and NKJV read "the daily sacrifice." The Hebrew is one word, hattamid, the continual, regular offering, the twice a day lamb offering defined in Exodus 29 and Numbers 28.)
In this series, a week is seven years. Daniel's own book uses the word that way, and we have been through that already.
So there is a covenant, for seven years. And at the half of it, three and a half years in, sacrifice and offering get put to an end.
But you cannot put an end to something that is not running. Sacrifices have to be going before they can be stopped. And sacrifices need an altar, and an altar needs a temple. No temple, no stopping. The chain starts with a building.
And what is the sacrifice that gets stopped? It has a name and a definition. Moses called it the regular burnt offering, the tamid. Two lambs, a year old, every day. One in the morning, one at twilight, on the altar, day by day, through all the generations. That is Exodus 29:38-42. It is a real rite, with real animals, at real times. It can be running on one day and stopped on the next, and everybody would know the day it happened.
Daniel 11:31, forces take it away
31 Forces from him shall appear and profane the temple and fortress, and shall take away the regular burnt offering. And they shall set up the abomination that makes desolate.
Daniel 11's own stretch of that verse landed in history once already, under Antiochus in 167 BC, and it landed physical. Real sacrifices stopped in a real temple, and a pagan altar set up on God's altar. That is the kind of event this language describes when it touches history. Not a feeling. Not a picture. An act, in a building.
Daniel 12:11, the count from the stopping
11 And from the time that the regular burnt offering is taken away and the abomination that makes desolate is set up, there shall be 1,290 days.
(Note: "the regular burnt offering" in this verse is the same word as in Daniel 11:31, hattamid, the continual, regular offering. The KJV and NKJV read "the daily sacrifice.")
It starts from a day, the day the offering is taken away and the abomination is set up. One thousand two hundred ninety days, and Daniel says the one who waits and arrives at 1,335 days is blessed.
You cannot count days from a symbol. The starting act has to be a public thing that happens on a day people can point to.
Matthew 24:15-16, standing in the holy place, then flee
15 So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), 16 then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.
Jesus puts it in a place. The holy place. Standing there, where people can see it.
And the answer to seeing it is not spiritual either. Run. People in Judea flee to the mountains. The next verses say do not go back into the house, do not turn back for your coat, and pray it does not happen in winter or on a Sabbath. Winter weather and a Sabbath only matter if real people have to move through real country, fast. A metaphor never sent anybody out of his house without his coat.
2 Thessalonians 2:3-4, the man seated in the temple
3 Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, 4 who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.
(Note: the KJV reads "a falling away" and the NKJV "the falling away" in verse 3. The Greek has the word with "the" in front of it (he apostasia), one named event, and the word means a defection, a revolt, a rebellion against authority, not a general drifting away. The ESV reads "the rebellion.")
(Note: the KJV and NKJV read "the man of sin" in verse 3. The earliest Greek copies read "the man of lawlessness" (anomia), the same word as "the mystery of lawlessness" in verse 7 and "the lawless one" in verse 8, as the ESV reads.)
Paul calls it the temple of God, and a man takes his seat in it. A seat is taken by a body, in a place, in front of people. And he proclaims himself to be God, out loud, in God's house.
The day does not come until this man is revealed and seated. And he cannot sit in a temple that is not standing there.
Revelation 11:1-2, the temple measured, the court left out
1 Then I was given a measuring rod like a staff, and I was told, "Rise and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there, 2 but do not measure the court outside the temple; leave that out, for it is given over to the nations, and they will trample the holy city for forty-two months."
John measures a temple. The temple, the altar, and the people worshiping there. And one court, the outside court, he is told to leave out, on purpose, because it is given over to the nations.
Measuring takes boundaries. Leaving a court out takes an inside and an outside. And the nations trample the holy city for forty two months, a counted time, in a real city.
Every piece of this chain is physical. A building, an altar, lambs morning and evening, a stopping on a day, a count of days, a thing standing where it should not stand, a man sitting down, people running to the mountains, a court measured and a court left out. It all waits on one thing being true first: a temple is standing.
Revelation 11:3-14, the two witnesses
3 And I will grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth." 4 These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. 5 And if anyone would harm them, fire pours from their mouth and consumes their foes. If anyone would harm them, this is how he is doomed to be killed. 6 They have the power to shut the sky, that no rain may fall during the days of their prophesying, and they have power over the waters to turn them into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague, as often as they desire. 7 And when they have finished their testimony, the beast that rises from the bottomless pit will make war on them and conquer them and kill them, 8 and their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that symbolically is called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified. 9 For three and a half days some from the peoples and tribes and languages and nations will gaze at their dead bodies and refuse to let them be placed in a tomb, 10 and those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them and make merry and exchange presents, because these two prophets had been a torment to those who dwell on the earth. 11 But after the three and a half days a breath of life from God entered them, and they stood up on their feet, and great fear fell on those who saw them. 12 Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, "Come up here!" And they went up to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies watched them. 13 And at that hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven. 14 The second woe has passed; behold, the third woe is soon to come.
(Note: the KJV and NKJV read "spiritually" in verse 8, where the ESV reads "symbolically." The Greek word (pneumatikos) means spiritually, in the spiritual sense.)
The same chapter does not stop at the measuring. Right after the temple and the court comes the two witnesses, and they belong to this same stretch.
God gives them authority, and they prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth. That is the same number of days as the forty two months the city gets trampled in verse 2. Same length, same stretch, same city.
They prophesy in Jerusalem, the city where their Lord was crucified. And when they have finished, the beast makes war on them and kills them, right there, and their bodies lie in the street while the world watches and celebrates. Three and a half days later, God puts His breath back in them, they stand up, and they go up to heaven in a cloud, in front of their enemies.
Who they are, the text does not say. It says what they do, where they are, and how long they are there. And all of it stands in the temple stretch: a measured temple, a city being trampled, and two witnesses prophesying and dying and rising in it. No temple standing, no city in that state, no witnesses.
5. Where it has to be built
Not just anywhere. The Bible names the hill.
Jerusalem. The temple hill, Mount Moriah. That is where David bought the threshing floor of Araunah, after the plague was stopped there. And Chronicles says Solomon built the house of the LORD in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, on that same threshing floor. The first temple stood on that hill.
The second temple stood on the same hill, and it stood there until Rome burned it in AD 70. Since that year there has been no temple on that hill, and no daily sacrifice anywhere.
Today, the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa stand on that hill. That is just the fact of what is there, stated plain.
And the texts require a temple standing on that hill for this chain to run. Not a temple somewhere else. Not a temple in people's hearts. That hill, in Jerusalem.
Now hear what the Bible does not say. No text says how it gets built. No text says when. No text says who builds it. People argue about that all day, but the Bible does not tell us, so this series does not tell you either. The texts only say it has to be standing before the stopping, the seating, and the counting can happen.
There is one more measured temple in the Bible, and it rides beside this one. Ezekiel 40 to 48. A man who looks like bronze takes Ezekiel through a temple and measures all of it, wall by wall, court by court. And at the start, Ezekiel is told to look, and to listen, and to declare everything he is shown to the house of Israel. We carry Ezekiel's measured temple as the parallel to John's measured temple in Revelation 11. Whether it is this same temple, the texts do not say in so many words, so that stays open, the way we have always left it.
6. But people say it is symbolic
You will hear this one a lot. The temple is not a building, they say. It is symbolic. It is a metaphor. It is something spiritual, the church, or the believer's body, or heaven. The sacrifices are prayers and praise.
We tested every one of those readings against this chain, piece by piece, and here is the short of it.
If the sacrifices are prayers and praise, then tell me the day the prayers stopped, so the 1,290 days can start. Praise stopping has no public day, no altar, and no holy place for an abomination to stand in. The reading cannot carry the count.
If the temple is the church, or a believer's body, then show me its outside court. Show me how one man sits down in it, in one place, in front of everybody, while a city gets trampled for forty two months and people in Judea run to the mountains. A body has no court to leave out. The reading cannot carry the seat, the court, or the flight.
If the temple is heaven, then the nations are trampling heaven's court, and that is not what any of these verses say. The trampling is of the holy city, Jerusalem, on earth. The reading cannot carry the city.
And some say the whole chain ended at the cross, because Jesus' sacrifice is once for all. That is true, and no sacrifice in any rebuilt temple will ever take away sins or stand next to His. But Hebrews never mentions Daniel's covenant week, the 1,290 days, the man seated, or John's measured court. But that limit does not account for this chain. The chain still stands there, with all its concrete pieces, waiting for its building.
No symbolic reading carries all of it. Every one of them breaks on the same hard pieces: a measured court, a stopping you can count from, a thing standing in the holy place, a man seated, and people running for the mountains. The only reading that carries every piece in the same sense all the way through is the plain one. A physical temple, on that hill, with a real altar and a real daily offering.
First the temple, then the sacrifices, then they can be stopped.
7. The checkpoint today
Here is why this half matters so much. This is a check anybody on earth can run with their own eyes.
Go look at the hill. There is no temple. There is no altar in service. There is no daily sacrifice, and there has not been one since AD 70. There are no two witnesses prophesying in the city either. The required things themselves are absent. So this whole chain has not started, and cannot have started, whatever anybody tells you.
The preparations are real, and we name them for what they are. Vessels have been made to the Bible's measurements. Plans have been drawn. Priests are being trained for the service. Red heifers were brought from Texas in 2022 for the purification rite. All of that is preparation, and preparation only. A vessel in a museum is not a sacrifice on an altar. A heifer in a pen is not the daily offering. A drawing is not a temple.
The setup is visible. The thing itself is not there. Watch for the thing itself.
The wars in order
So here is where this part stands in the whole order, both halves together.
First, this layer. The birth pains wars. Wars and rumors of wars, nation against nation, general, no named nations, and stamped before by Jesus Himself. They are running now, and they run before the tribulation starts.
Second, Ezekiel's war, Part 2. It stands apart from every other war in the Bible, God wins it Himself, and in the fitted order it stands late, beside Zechariah 12, before the darkening. It is never the same war as Revelation 20, and the two are never run together.
Third, the late wars at the end. Zechariah 12 and Joel 3, the nations gathering against Jerusalem, and Revelation 16 and Revelation 19. Those get their own parts when the walk gets there.
Fourth, Revelation 20's war. Separate entirely. It comes after the thousand years, when Satan is let loose. Nothing in this part belongs to it.
And somewhere in that stretch, before the stopping and the seating and the counting, the temple gets built on its hill in Jerusalem. The wars do not need the temple. The chain does. Without the building, the chain cannot move one step.
Then, after all of it, the day comes. And only then, when the day of the LORD starts to come, does anybody hide in rocks and caves. Nobody is hiding yet.
The places in this part
The wars run on a ring around Israel, and it is the same ring on the map today. Lebanon (Lebanon, the cedar mountains north of Israel, the country of Lebanon today) to the north. Syria to the northeast. Gaza (Gaza, the southern Philistine city, Gaza City and the Gaza Strip today) to the southwest. Jordan to the east. Egypt to the southwest, at peace since 1979. Yemen across the Red Sea to the south. And Iran (Persia, the empire east of Babylon across the Persian Gulf, called Iran on the map today), east beyond Iraq, the one funding and arming most of the ring.
And the temple's place stands in the middle of it all. Jerusalem (Jerusalem, the walled city on the Judean hills, the capital of Israel today), and on its hill, Mount Moriah, the threshing floor of Araunah, where both temples stood. The Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa stand on that hill today, and no temple stands there.
Parallels: Revelation 6:3-4 shows war let loose under the second seal, peace taken from the earth, and that is a far bigger thing than anything in this layer. Nothing in our day comes near it yet. It stands ahead, in the seals, not here.
Psalm 83 names a ring of peoples in one counsel together against Israel, to wipe out her name. It reads close to the ring on today's map, and its place in the order is still open. This part does not settle it.
Isaiah 17 speaks of Damascus ceasing to be a city. Damascus is badly hurt and still standing, and that passage is a candidate that has not been ruled into this series. It waits for its own ruling.
Zechariah 12 and Joel 3 tell the late gathering of the nations against Jerusalem, before the darkening. Their own parts come later in the walk.
Ezekiel 38 and 39, the war of Gog, stands in Part 2, apart from every other war, and nothing in this part changes that.
Ezekiel 40 to 48 carries the other measured temple, the parallel to John's measuring in Revelation 11, with its identity left open.
Daniel 11:31 and Daniel 12:11 carry the same taking away of the daily offering and the count that runs from it, inside Daniel's own book.
So those are the two front facts, and they are both checkable.
The wars are running. Jesus stamped them before, called them the beginning of the birth pains, and said the end is not yet. We can all see them, and they are running on every side of Israel.
And the temple is not built. No building, no altar, no daily sacrifice, on the one hill where all of it has to stand. Until that changes, the chain in Daniel, in Matthew, in Paul, and in Revelation cannot move.
The wars before, and the temple that is not built yet. That is where the front of this stands. The next part goes on from there, in the order the Bible gives it.