Sid: My guest is red hot for the Messiah; his name is Mark Biltz I’m speaking to him at his home in Bonnie Lake, Washington which is a suburb of Tacoma, Washington. And Mark when you were a young man in the eighth grade you ran away from home and you had an amazing encounter.
Mark: Yes, I really did, Sid I was the second youngest of nine kids and I just felt un – not you know not any attention was being paid to me, you know. Most of my brothers and sisters were older and some were already gone from the house. But I ran away from home and I left a note that I’d run away from home you know, and so my brother who was a year younger and my sister was a year older went looking for me. And we lived in a small town of about eight hundred people, well everybody knew everybody. And I had gone out to this creek and by the creek it’s a wooded area a mile or so from my house, there was a train track and there was a highway going by. And I had my sleeping bag and my backpack and I’m just kind of lying down and I’m crying out to God, and you know “What should I do, what should I do?” And all of a sudden I hear my brother and my sister calling for me, yelling you know trying to find out where I am. And I thought, oh no they’re looking for me and so I cried out to God, I was just in tears you know and “What should I do, should I tell them where I am?” And then I heard this real loud booming voice like a police car on the highway with a megaphone and it says, “Mark, tell the kids where you are.” And it sounded like my Dad, so I wasn’t scared and I thought oh my goodness, I’m going to be in trouble with the police, I’m going to be taken to you know the Juvie Hall or something. And so it’s like oh no, so I cried out to God again real loud, I said, “God, what should I do, should I tell them where they are?” And I here this loud booming voice again over this loud speaker, like a police car saying, “Mark, tell the kids where you are.” And so I go ahead and I yell out to my brother and sister, “I’m over here,” and so they come running over and they find me. And I ask them “Am I going to be in trouble because Dad’s out there with the police?” And they said, “No, Dad’s at home we’re the only two looking for you?” And I said, “Didn’t you hear that loud voice of Dad?” And they said, “No, we didn’t hear a thing.” And then all of a sudden out in this creek comes this, 10:00 at night this guy starts walking toward us, he’s an adult and done of us know who he is. And that’s what was so strange because it’s a small community. So here out in the middle of the woods this guy comes out and says, can He be of help? And my sister says, “Well, he’s run away from home, but he’s agreed to come home.” And the guy says, “Good home is where he belongs and then he walked off.” And it was just a very supernatural experience.
Sid: Now, I believe without a shadow of a doubt that you heard and angel’s booming voice and then an angel came in human form to you, what do you believe?
Mark: Totally, totally and it just, I talked to my brother and sister about it today and it’s just remarkable.
Sid: Now you were raised in a Christian home, however they celebrated some of the Biblical Festivals, how come?
Mark: Well, you know my Dad was raised a Catholic, my Mom was raised a Protestant but my Dad and my Mom both really felt like they had Jewish roots because my Grandpa wasn’t allowed to play golf at golf clubs in California. But this last year, believe it or not we came to find out that we do have Jewish ancestry. I still have the Haggadah on Passover that we would use occasionally when I was a kid! And my Dad said, he thought we did, rumors were there but my brother had been doing some research and come to find our last name wasn’t always Biltz. In France our ancestor his name was Isaac Hersh and because of Jewish persecution he ended up changing his name to Naphtali Biltz. And his grandson, still lives in France and my brother got a hold of him and he told us the story. He sent us the genealogy; we have our Jewish roots going all the way back to like the seventeen hundreds.
Sid: You know I have a theory that somehow God wanted to bless the whole world and when he scattered the Jews and this is purely theory now, don’t hold me to it. When he scattered the Jews to the four corners of the earth, every single gentile somewhere back when has a little bit of Jewish blood. But the ones that have a great deal are the ones that are jumping into the Jewish roots right now, doesn’t make them Jewish, but it says that they have Jewish ancestry.
Mark: Oh, I totally agree, I’m really finding that to be true too; because clear back in ’75, 1975 was when I became a believer in the Messiah and the church I was going to believe it or not in ’77 was teaching on the Festivals. But they were teaching it from a totally Christian perspective. And then in ’93 my wife bought me a book by a Rabbi on the Festivals from a Hebrew perspective and I started looking at that and I thought, “Oh my gosh what a wealth of information that the Jews have because they’ve been studying this for thousands of years.” And so that’s when I just really became passionate about studying the Bible from a Hebrew perspective.
Sid: I think for our listeners to understand exactly what the Spirit of God wants them to understand this week, you have to start with a scripture Leviticus Chapter 23 verse 2.
Mark: Yes, it says “Speak unto the children of Israel and say unto them, concerning the Feasts of the Lord which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations even these are My Feasts. And I think that that’s so important because when we hear the word Feast we generally think of food. But the Hebrew word is Moahd, it means an appointment, like a Devine appointment that God wants us to have with us. I think many of us believe in Devine appointments but how important it is to realize that there are some that God has set for us. And then the term convocations implies an assembly. But the Hebrew word is mikra and in addition it applies to a rehearsal, like a dress rehearsal. So we begin to understand the Feasts were literally the dress rehearsals for the Messiah’s two comings. And just as He fulfilled the spring Feasts to the day of His first coming He’ll fulfill the fall Feast to the day of His second coming.
Sid: Now what I believe is because going back to the Constantine episode, in which everything Jewish was literally instantly taken out of the church. I believe that’s why we have such an obscure understanding and so many diverse understandings of the return of Jesus because we haven’t seen as you said the rehearsal.
Mark: Right, exactly and I think it’s in the doing that we really get the understanding and just like at a wedding, you want to go to a wedding you want to be at the rehearsal and I think that when it comes to understanding end times we really need to understand the meaning of these fall Festivals.
Sid: And I’ll tell you something else that excites me no end, when God says “These are not just Jewish Feasts, these are not just Biblical Feasts He says these are My Feasts and then when we understand the word Feasts means appointment, God is literally saying, “I want to make a special appointment to sit down with you.” Now, someone would have to be mischugah, it’s a Hebrew word, it means crazy not to want to have an appointment with God.
Mark: Exactly, I think oh my gosh, we think the President of the United States is up there, but hey he’s nothing compared to God. And that He, like you said, “I think that it’s so important that there’s He’s Feasts. And so if we belong to the Lord, then these appointments belong with us.
Sid: Now you made another interesting statement, you said, “That the spring Feasts celebrate to the day the events that occurred in the First Coming of Jesus and the fall Feasts celebrate to the day the events of the Return of Jesus.” I wonder if you’d explain that a little bit and let’s look at the spring Feast.
Mark: Sure, I’d be glad to, as we know Passover is very significant and that is when the Lord died. And one of the amazing things to me, as many people are familiar with the Gospels it talks about how the Messiah, was nailed to the cross the third hour of the day. Well, that’s nine in the morning, and that’s also the time of the morning sacrifice and what’s interesting is at these appointed times of the morning sacrifice and the evening sacrifice and they’d be singing songs. And of course, they’ve be singing the Psalms which is also called the Hallel. And so I think that it’s so interesting in Psalms 118, all of Jerusalem could be heard and they’re singing this song from verse 27 of Psalm 118 which says, “God is the Lord, which has shown us light, ind the sacrifice with cords even to the horns of the altar.” So at nine in the morning their binding the Passover Lamb to the horns of the altar and at the same time they’re binding Messiah the Passover Lamb to the cross, at the very day, the very hour. And then at 3:00 in the afternoon, that’s the time of the evening sacrifice, well when Messiah died. And that’s the same time that they slew the Passover lamb, so I think that the timing is just incredible.
Sid: And you know I took a jump and maybe it was too big a stretch for some of our listeners, “Why were these Biblical appointments, God appointments if you will rehearsals of His first coming to the day, rehearsals of His return to the day taken out of the church?” What was the motivation?
Mark: Well, I think you were right in going back to a Constantine, but they didn’t want to do anything that was Jewish. A lot of it was persecution, but the amazing thing to me, do you know this actually it started even in the time of the Apostle John. Even the Apostle John if you go to Third Book of John it talks about a gentile leader of a congregation; his name was Diotrephes, which means lover of Zeus. And the amazing thing about it is he talks about how he remembers his deeds and he prays against us with malicious words. And he said, “He won’t allow me to come.” So he had already kicked the Apostle John out of the church and then in verse 10 he says, “Not only that he wouldn’t receive the other brethren, the other Jews and then he says that he forbid those that would and he kicks them out of the church.” And so even during the time of John they were already kicking the Jews out the church, they didn’t allow the Apostle John.
Sid Roth: But I want to find out why? What was the motivation behind it and we’ll pick up right there on tomorrows broadcast.
Tags: It's Supernatural, Sid Roth